"Statistical Anomaly" by A Gentleman of Leisure.
Disclaimer: See Part 1.
Part 5: "Overground, Underground...""Giles, what are we going to do about the G-man?"
"Well, Buffy, he is going to be a problem - unless we can dispose of those two vampire agents".
"Before they get him", said Willow. "He obviously has no idea what he's got mixed up in".
"Right", said Xander. "He'll just go right up to them next time he sees them, and say 'neat trick with the face guys. Howdja do it?' And they'll say 'observe, grasshopper' and wammo, three wise monkeys, instead of just two".
"With a side order of extra-shiny, pointy teeth. I hear ya".
"So I think an expedition underground is in order, don't you?", Giles said. "And the sooner the better".
"Tonight would be good", said Buffy, "even though it is a school night. Either we go early, and I can get home before curfew, mission accomplished, or alternatively we go later, when I do my usual Tarzan act down the pine tree outside my window, and we meet on the corner of Hadley and Crestview. How does that sound?"
She looked at the others. Only Cordelia didn't seem happy.
"I need my eight hours regular", she complained. "Going out on patrol till all hours does my skin condition no good at all".
"Except for when you're partying late, of course", Xander pointed out.
"An accelerated heart rate, such as caused by dancing, and boys, is beneficial to the complexion", Willow volunteered. "Or... or so I'm told".
"Yes, well, with any luck we should be able to provide Cordelia with an accelerated heart rate tonight when we hit the bad guys", Giles said, looking over his glasses at her. "Still, I can quite see that a lady must get her beauty sleep".
"Right", said Xander. "We'll just get on with the slaying, and tell you tomorrow about all the fun you missed".
"Fun?" Cordelia's voice went up half an octave - she could have screeched for the USA. "All sweaty, and running, and fangs, and fighting, and wet shoes, and torn clothes, and tunnels, and cobwebs? Oh, please. Ewww, or what!"
"How very eloquent", said Giles. "I must try to remember that speech verbatim for the Watcher's Diary. Shakespeare, eat your heart out".
Cordelia sighed.
"All right. I'll be there, but I'm driving myself in my daddy's car. I don't get my own until my next birthday".
"You know what?" said Willow. The others looked at her expectantly.
"What with Giles's Citroen, I think we just got us a convoy".
-----
"That's him!"
"He's wearing a tweed jacket. In California!" Scully shook her head, scandalised. "You were right, Mulder, there is something strange about the man - he's an out and out eccentric".
"He's a librarian. But that is really what's so strange, Scully. What is an Englishman doing working in a small town like Sunnydale, when he has a black flagged file? What does it signify?"
"Shouldn't we be following them?"
Mulder did a hasty U-turn and dimmed his lights. The Jeep Cherokee and the foreign car were safely down the road, but driving well within the speed limit, so they had no problem keeping them in sight. Instead it was rather difficult to go slow enough not to attract their attention by catching up with them.
"It looks as if they're heading for the place where I encountered our two missing people last night. 'The Lawns', I think it's called".
Scully scanned the street map spread out across the dashboard, and Mulder reached over and put his finger firmly on a square.
"It's there, downtown on Whedon Street. I spent this afternoon, while I was waiting for you to arrive, memorizing the layout of the whole town. It's not a very big place but I didn't want to risk getting lost again".
-----
"Sshh! Give me the crowbar".
"Hey, it's my crowbar. I'll lever up the manhole cover!"
Giles shrugged and moved out of Xander's way. If the boy wanted to show off his muscles in front of the girls that was up to him.
"What's taking so long? I thought we wanted to surprise them".
"Keep your voice down, Cordelia, or they'll be ready and waiting for us".
"And it'll be all your fault", Xander hissed, straining at the crowbar, which was not having much effect in shifting the manhole cover.
Buffy reached past him and casually added her strength. The fifty pound piece of cast metal flew up and thudded over onto the turf, narrowly missing the toes of Cordelia's trendy thigh length boots. She gave a little suppressed squeak and leaped back.
"I didn't need any help, Buff, I nearly had it", Xander said plaintively. "It was just starting to shift".
"I know. I'm sorry", Buffy told him, "I was just trying to be helpful".
She realised she could have hurt his feelings by so easily doing something he was struggling with. Sometimes she found it really difficult to stand by and not use her super strength to help people.
'It must be like that for Clark Kent too,' she told herself. 'I wonder how he manages?' and she sighed quietly. 'It's not so easy being The Slayer'.
The title of a song she hadn't heard for a while slipped irreverently into her mind - 'It's Not Easy Being Green'.
'Move over Kermit, and make room for Buffy Summers', she thought.
Giles snapped his fingers once to attract everyone's attention to the job in hand. Buffy silently stepped forwards, sat on the edge of the dark square hole for a moment, and then dropped out of sight. Not wanting to be outdone, Xander followed her in much the same manner. A thud and a muffled "Ow!" told them he'd successfully arrived at the bottom. After passing down the weapons bag, Giles, Cordelia and Willow more sensibly descended using the metal ladder.
"Now what?" whispered Scully.
-----
The two FBI agents were thirty yards away, hiding in a clump of laurel bushes beside a large mausoleum.
"We wait".
"What if they come out somewhere else?"
"What if they don't?" Mulder responded with a slight smile.
-----
"Turn off the flashlight!"
"It is off, Giles - that glow's coming from up around the bend", Buffy said quietly. She passed the flashlight back, and the next person did the same until it arrived at the tail end of the procession, in the hands of Cordelia.
"What am I supposed to do with this?" she asked in a stage whisper.
"Keep an eye on our rear", Giles told her.
"Oh, pleeeeese!" she responded. "Gross!"
Giles looked round at her, slightly surprised, and then silently pointed back the way they'd come.
"Our rear", he said quietly. "Keep looking back. We don't want anyone sneaking up behind us out of the dark. It's a very responsible job, Cordelia", he added.
In front of him he could hear Willow desperately struggling not to laugh, and he shook his head and straightened his glasses.
-----
"Someone's coming".
Mulder and Scully kept perfectly still as three tall, approximately human-shaped figures came padding quietly across the grass between the gravestones, and approached the manhole. It was difficult to see properly in the dim light away from the path, but Mulder felt his heart start to race.
They really did not look quite right - for a start their bodily proportions were all wrong, with short, thick, powerful looking legs, long torsos, and arms that almost reached the ground, like apes. And then again, people did not usually have shiny, bright blue-green scales for skin. Neither was it common to have great knobbly crests on top of their heads. Besides which, they were each at least seven feet in height, and very obviously had not a stitch of clothing on between them.
One of them stopped, lifted its head and peered all around, sniffing the air like a hunting beast. As it did so the moonlight illuminated its face and Mulder heard Scully give a quiet gasp of surprise.
"What on earth are they?" she whispered.
Mulder shook his head, unable to make any other response. For the moment he was effectively dumbstruck.
"I don't think I'd like to meet one of those on a dark night", Scully added with unconscious humour.
There was a moment or two's pause while they silently continued to observe the creatures.
Then Scully said quietly "Now I think I really have seen everything. I'm going to have to apologise to you in six different positions, aren't I?"
"'As the actress said to the bishop'", Mulder murmured.
Scully punched him gently on the arm. "I heard that", she whispered back.
Mulder smiled and said nothing, just continued watching the new arrivals, absolutely fascinated.
It was quite obvious that the creatures were not even remotely human. Beside their unusual body proportions, they had large, peculiarly shaped eyes, much larger than normal. In the quick glimpse the two agents got, it was apparent that they were also an odd colour - pure yellow throughout, without a separately coloured iris - and had unusual triangular pupils, unlike any animal either of them had ever seen before.
All three creatures were armed with exotic, antique weapons. They each carried ornate swords, and one of them also had some sort of spiked metal club, one a wicked looking axe and the third a short stabbing spear.
The one that had sniffed the air, Mulder thought of it as being the leader, spoke to the others in a guttural language that did not sound like anything he had ever heard before. It pointed into the manhole. The others grunted briefly, and one after the other the three of them jumped straight into it without even looking to see where they would land.
-----
"Well, now I know I've seen everything. Were those like the aliens you saw last night, Mulder?" Scully sounded really quite composed about what she'd just observed, all things considered.
Mulder shook his head again.
"Nothing like, at all", he replied quietly, which greatly surprised her. "Sorry. My two started out looking exactly like real people, and then they changed, but not into anything like those three. They're a whole other ball game. I think they must be a completely different type altogether.
"You've got to admit, though, they really do look like what people expect aliens to be like", he added.
Scully shook her head, still feeling confused. She thought that he too sounded amazingly calm about it all, under the circumstances. There was a short lull in the conversation.
"So what do we do now?" she said eventually.
"I think we might wait for a couple more minutes - give them a bit of a head start - and then follow them to try and find out what's really going on. We're going to have to be pretty cautious..."
-----
"Giles!"
"Sshh!"
"Giles!!"
"Sshh, Cordelia!!"
"Giles!!!"
Rupert Giles felt something hard poke him where the sun doesn't shine. He looked round over his shoulder and realised it was the expedition's flashlight, carried by Cordelia.
"What???!!!" he said as forcefully as he could without raising his voice above a whisper, but Cordelia wasn't looking his way. She was looking anxiously back over her shoulder into the dark.
"Giles, I just heard something behind us!!!"
He listened carefully but could hear nothing, and scowled at her.
"I did!!" she squeaked indignantly.
He shook his head and turned away, to find Buffy looking intently back past him.
"I think there's somebody behind us", she said.
END OF PART 5. TO BE CONTINUED...