TEASER
MIDNIGHT - MEADOWBROOK GREYHOUND STATION
A dusty navy blue bus pulled into a large, dark parking lot on the edge of Meadowbrook where the little town ended and the timber began. The lot was lit by only the light from the Greyhound station and a nearly burnt out street lamp on the corner near where the sidewalks met. It was vast and empty save a few cars that were far past their prime and an old school bus stained with pink and red graffiti, all four tires missing.
With a crush of air, the bus doors opened and the passengers began to leave one by one down the few steps, making no effort to waste time in the parking lot but instead going straight inside of the bus terminal.
Among the busy travelers, a girl in her late teens stepped off of the bus and looked around. She was blonde, slight, and pretty, with expressive features, and had the phrase "I Love You" silk-screened across the front of her novelty sweatshirt. She watched as the other passengers disappeared into the depot but didn't follow them, instead opting to step over a cement divider and into the parking lot of a nearby JC Penny's store where the Willow and Xander had made arrangements to pick her up. The girl swept a stray lock of hair behind her ear while she rummaged through the tech bag she had slung around her body, looking for a tube of lip balm.
Something behind her jostled and she slowed to a stop, looking over her shoulder at the seemingly empty cement lot. "Hello?" the girl called out apprehensively, glancing warily about herself. There wasn't an echo. She waited quietly for a few moments and then shook her head, pulled the lip balm out of her bag, popped off the little cap, and slicked it across her bottom lip.
She pressed her lips together softly and raised a sarcastic eyebrow before turning back and starting off again. She closed the lip balm tube and slipped it back into her bag, shutting the front flap and securing the Velcro closure. "Great, Kim," she said to herself, "now you're imagining things. You're just...." As if it had read her mind, the jostle turned into the click-scratch of shoes on cement, "Being...paranoid...." She picked up her pace, jogging past a few shopping carts left in the lot toward the store and headed for a payphone that was attached to the wall right outside the store windows in front of her. She reached the curb in front of the store, glancing back long enough to see a man in black clothes and a wool ski mask.
"Oh...oh my God...." Her voice squeaked with desperation, realizing the pay phone and closed store couldn't do her any good now. She made a break for it, heading in a blind run across the lot toward the open gas station across the street.
12:07 A.M. XANDER'S PICK-UP TRUCK - STATION STREET, MEADOWBROOK
Xander sat behind the wheel of his battered truck, biting his lip in concentration as Willow, who was buckled into the passenger's seat, fumbled with a large map of Meadowbrook. She rested her feet on the aluminum baseball bat that had been strewn on the floor of the cab with a few other 'just in case' weapons. "'One of these times the light's not gonna be green, Nancy'," Xander boomed in a menacing voice, slowing the truck down enough to turn onto Station street.
"The Craft," Willow mumbled in absent-minded response, closely examining one of the map's artfully drawn streets after another. "This thing is so confusing," she griped, "...you'd think - ya know, logically - small town, small map. But nooo, that would hollow all the fun out of driving me crazy." She grumbled with defeat. "This thing reads like stereo instructions."
"Betelgeuse!" Xander blurted out with a wide, proud-of-himself grin.
Willow looked away from the map long enough to give Xander a patronizing glance. "That wasn't my movie quote, Xander, that was my 'Me' quote. I just can't understand this map. The roads are all twisty-turny, like the architect drew up the blue-prints with an Etch-a-Sketch. The whole town is built like a labyrinth."
Xander's brows knitted together with confusion and peered over her shoulder at the map. "Why would anyone wanna build a town like a maze?"
"Maybe they were big 'Aztecs' fans," Willow sighed with a tired frown, folding the map back up then shoving it into the overstuffed glove compartment. She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples gently. "I'm probably just reading it wrong. Been kinda overworked since that whole big, scary, wolf-monster thing."
Xander's eyes wandered over to Willow, worry lining his features. "Will, you okay?"
Willow nodded, wincing a little. "Yeah,...yeah I think so. I just need to catch some major winks is all." She looked up at Xander and smiled - weakly, but reassuringly - and looked out to the dark road ahead. Her smile quickly dissolved to a squint and then a wide eyed stare of shock and realization, "Xander, watch the road!"
Xander turned his attention back to the street, "Oh god!" He swerved the truck quickly, rear-ending a parked car in an attempt to narrowly miss some girl who'd darted across the street in front of them. Xander looked over at Willow, shaken. "You okay?"
"Yeah.... Wow." She took in a deep breath, "Wait - that girl, is she okay?"
"What...oh god, I didn't even think,...wait here. " Xander unfastened his seatbelt quickly and pushed the truck door open with a loud, shrill creek. He leapt out of the vehicle just as a dark figure sprinted past him at full speed with a weapon, (a long, stiletto-like dagger, a "stylet") gaining fast on the girl he'd been chasing, who had just dashed into another parking lot across the street - he was going to catch her. Xander didn't bother to close the truck door; he barreled after the man, tackling him at the waist and bringing him to his knees on the rain-soaked curb; the dagger skittered away from him into the lot. Willow rushed out of the truck and after them with the baseball bat.
"Xander!" she called out, almost shrieking, to get her friends attention and tossed the bat to Xander. He looked up just in time to throw up his right hand and catch the weapon clumsily. The ski-masked man and Xander scrambled to their feet. Xander took a swing and cracked the guy in his ribs; the man took the blow hard but caught the bat, wrested it from Xander, and used it's weight to backhand him bluntly across the face, sending Xander falling back onto the pavement. The man looked around quickly, saw his stylet on the ground, dropped the bat for some reason, and retrieved his weapon before rushing after the girl, who'd flitted towards the gas station's mini mart. After swiftly making-up the gap between them, the man caught the girl by her shoulder, tore her from the mini-mart doors before she could grasp their handles, and slammed her to the ground. He paused on seeing her gasping face, then plunged his stylet down.
Willow quickly helped Xander to his feet and he raced to help the girl, stumbling as he went. Willow looked ahead just in time to see the man stabbing the young woman in the throat. Willow's eyes widened, inky black swirling in her irises, and she raised one hand up in the man's direction, calling out, "Semoveo!" with desperation.
Her words threw the man off of the girl and rolling, a good six yards across the ground; he smashed against a parked car and set off it's noisy car-alarm, only to pop up to his feet acrobatically and make his escape across the road, into the sparse woods on the other side of it.
Xander started to chase after him, but stopped when he heard Willow's horrified gasp from behind him. "Willow, what is it? Is she okay?" Xander's tone was soft as he trotted back to where Willow had just dropped to her knees, kneeling over the girl.
She shook her head, her face pale with mortification as she craned her neck up to look wide and glassy-eyed at Xander, the white, neon light baring down on her. "We're too late."
SCENE ONE
SUMMERLAND ACADAMEY - NIGHT
Buffy, Giles, Willow, and Xander were sitting in the school library, where the same dim, golden light as always warmed the room. Buffy and Willow sat on the carpeted steps of the pentagon, drinking coffee from little Styrofoam cups, while Giles sat at one of the work stations, pouring over a large stack of the school's open mail. Xander sat nearby him, looking out of the new French Door -- it was a replacement for the formerly-smashed picture window. Xander had a chair under his now-bandaged right foot and was fiddling with a crook-handled cane; his cheek was blotted by a dark, purple bruise. He seemed incredibly depressed. "There was just so much carnage," he thought aloud. "Why do things like this have to happen all the time?"
"It just seems pointless," Willow said, stewing in her anger. "I can't understand -- what makes someone do something like that?"
"It's probably not a good idea to concentrate on why," Buffy told her, "some people are just demented."
"It's just common sense! What makes a grown man drop a French Door on his foot?"
"Technically," Xander interjected, "it was the frame, and I didn't 'drop it on my foot,' I cushioned the blow - protected it from the ground as it fell. But, looking at the finished product, you can see it was worth the blood shed."
"What blood?" Buffy snipped. "You have a sprained toe, and only because you butted in with real construction guys-."
"Hey, you weren't there when the crap hit the fan -- can I tell my side of the story?"
"No," Giles drawled with quiet annoyance. "As much as we'd all love to place priority on your most recent maladies, Xander, there is still the matter of the murder."
"Her name was Kim," Willow said gloomily, rotating the cup in her hand.
"She was the slayer you guys were supposed to pick up?" asked Buffy.
"I wish we coulda gotten there earlier, we just -- I guess I let myself get optimistic; never accounted for stabbings in Meadowbrook. Other than the Wolven guys, it's been so quiet here."
"I think we all relaxed a little," Buffy went on, taking in the steam from her coffee. "I haven't seen one vampire since we got here. Well, besides Angel.... So the guy stabbed her?"
"Big-time," Xander chimed in again. "He was sportin' some long, needley dagger thing, definitely not army issue. And style-wise, we can rule out The Bringers."
Giles looked up from a dense letter, his interest ignited. "A long dagger?" he asked. "Did it have a triangular blade?"
Xander shrugged irritably. "Coulda been."
"It was more of a slender, tapering blade," Willow replied. "Like Xander said, 'needley'." Giles quietly put down his letter, got up from the work station, and walked off to his office, disappearing for a moment. He returned, unsheathing a gold-plated stylet from a gilded scabbard. The others looked up at him with a mixture of amazement and suspicion . "That's the thing!" Willow blurted. "The needley thing!"
Xander arched a sarcastic brow. "Somethin' you wanna fess up to Giles?" he asked.
Oh, please," Giles muttered exasperatedly, placing the dagger on his table. "This...'needly thing,' as you call it, is a stylet. An ancient weapon of the aristocracy."
"Why would the Aristo-Cats wanna kill a slayer?" Buffy asked, scrunching her nose up in befuddlement. Giles and Willow winced, and Buffy -- picking up on their vicarious embarrassment -- backpedaled. "I was kidding," she said dismissively, though not very convincingly.
"I don't think we have to worry about this guy being an aristocrat," Willow said, trying to push the conversation forward. "He was the ski-mask variety. So why wouldn't this guy opt for more modern fire-power?"
Buffy thought a moment. "Giles, how was this stylish dealy used?" she asked him.
Giles sat back down to his letters. "The, um, 'stylet'...was used for close-quarters attack, discreet assassination. You would have to get within a close, alarmingly vulnerable distance to strike." His eyes scanned the pages of his letter. "Rather capricious, if you ask me. What kind of an idiot would bother chasing someone down with a stylet?"
"Maybe an idiot that was in it for the chase?" Buffy offered. "Think I should poke around the crime scene, try to figure out how this guy ticks?" She got to her feet spryly, climbed out of the pentagon, and headed for the door, taking her fur-lined, red coated-cotton trench off the front desk.
"You should take Faith with you," Giles said quietly, without looking up from his letter.
That stopped Buffy in her tracks. "I...don't know if that's such a good idea," she said, fidgeting a bit as she turn around. "I mean, Faith's out with Robin tonight, the whole thing'd be really awkward. And what would Faith do at the scene, anyway? Give insights into the criminal mind?"
At that, Giles and Willow gave Buffy extremely cross looks, both taking complete offense. "Buffy," Giles said, trying and failing to repress his displeasure and disappointment, "this killer -- whoever or whatever he may be -- has over-powered a slayer-."
"Okay," she relented, cutting him off, "I get it -- better safe than sorry. I'll go out there right now and deliver the news in person." She turned and made her way out, sighing playfully as she went. "I have to do everything myself...."
"Willow," Giles said absentmindedly as he read on. "Perhaps you should phone any forthcoming slayers, warn them against possible danger? There's a phone in the lounge."
"I'm on it," Willow answered, drudging herself up. "But I know you have a phone in your office."
"...That's for personal use," Giles said defensively. "Well, moving on, off y'go, then." Willow rolled her eyes and went out of the room quietly as Giles back. "And Xander?" he continued.
"Crap," Xander grumbled to himself.
"Could you see about the students? Make certain all of them are safe, inside?"
Xander's jaw dropped with an over-dramatic sense of injustice. "Hey, I'm the one-eyed sprain over here, how come Willow gets the comfy, 'phoning people' job?"
"Take. It up. With her," Giles said measuredly, sounding quite antagonized.
"Fine," Xander griped, gathering to his feet, leaning on his cane as he limped out. "We'll see how far that Bossy-Brit attitude takes you in the retirement home...."
Giles glared at Xander from the corner of his eye for a moment, then, feeling he'd certainly capped the night off for anger, returned to his letter. After reading for a few seconds longer, his brows knit with apprehension and foreboding, gasping gravely to himself, "Oh, dear...."
SCENE TWO
ON THE NORTH SHORE OF LAKE MILIMO - NIGHT
Robin walked beside Faith on the shore of a small, green lake nestled in the mountains near Summerland Academy. His eyes were fixed on the dirt trail in front of him, sighing, his hands pushed deep into his pockets. "I'm not saying it has to be a big deal," he told her. "I just wanted to take you out someplace nice. Do something different than we usually do."
He glanced over at Faith, who was busy making unpleasant faces. "What's wrong with what we usually do?" she asked, grimacing as she munched on a piece of chewing tobacco she'd bought, mistakenly thinking it was beef jerky. She quickly spat it out onto the lakeshore and pitched the rest of the tobacco stick into the murky water.
"...I guess, nothing," Robin answered, shrugging his shoulders up a bit. "Maybe I just think the 'Choco Taco' wants for romance."
Still grimacing, Faith stepped up onto the damp wooden dock and started walking it's length, Robin following dutifully. She turned her head, lifting her eyes to give Robin a slightly annoyed glare, "So we'll put a doily under it. Look, maybe I'm just not the type who gets buttery over the Barbara Cartland treatment twenty-four seven?"
Robin laughed softly and shook his head, "Okay, okay. I'm not trying to come on too strong-."
"But?"
"How'd you know there was gonna be a 'but'?" he asked with mock suspicion, arching a knowing brow.
Faith shrugged, folding her arms across her chest. "'Cause there's always a 'but'."
"You're pretty amazing, Faith."
"But?" she sighed exhaustedly, eyes hooded.
Robin put his hands up in defense, "No, no 'but', " he assured, his voice staying soft and mellow. "You just are. I guess, maybe you're not used to hearing that."
Faith's brow furrowed at Robin's comment, but she let a grateful, "Thanks," slip past her lips anyway.
"Now," he continued cagily, "...back to the 'but'-. The, uh, one from before...."
Before he could finish, Dawn came jogging up along side them breathlessly. "Guys! ...You! Stop...." She stopped and braced herself, huffing and practically hyperventilating.
"Whoa, what's wrong?" Robin asked. "Did something happen?"
"Buffy," Dawn puffed, looking up at them and tossing her hair back. "Total butt-monkey...."
"Yeah, thanks for recapping the year," Faith snorted, wiping the tobacco from the corner of her mouth.
"Just a sec," Dawn went on, trying to regain her composure. Robin and Faith waited while she took a breath and pulled herself together. "Giles wanted her to tell me to tell you, that a slayer got stabbed, and snake on the crime scene. If Buffy's gonna keep delegating, we need to get a monorail put in, I'm so completely sick of running everywhere for her."
"Back it up," Faith said. "A slayer got stabbed?"
"Yeah, Giles thinks you and Buffy should go do some recon, gather info on the killer guy."
"Yeah." Faith nearly cut Dawn's sentence off, "Yeah, recon. I'm on it. Tell Buff I'll meet her out by the lodge in 10 minutes."
Robin stood -- silently pouting -- behind Faith, who could barely contain her relief. She took a deep breath in and turned to face Robin, curling her fingers around his wrist and trying to aviod eye-contact.
"I gotta plow," she said, fiegning sincerity, "sorry to take off mid-sentence. Slayer crap. You know how it is." She let go of Robin's wrist and started off in the general direction of the lodge. About ten steps into her retreat, she turned around, walking backwards and giving Robin her patented double point, "Later. We will talk romance. Promise."
Dawn, still winded, was fanning herself with her hands girlishly, which had decidedly taken the edge off of Robin's stolid, protest-glare. SCENE THREE
MEADOWBROOK GAS STATION - NIGHT
The scene was still fresh at the gas pump as the quieted ambulance pulled into the lot. Squad cars were parked around the mini-mart, their red and blue roof light still rotating and cutting quick, silent paths through dark neighborhood. Half a dozen officers were swarming around, two of them tending to Kim's pale, depressing corpse, checking out her wounds. The police didn't seem all that official -- they weren't taping off the crime scene or outlining the victim's body.
Buffy and Faith stood out of sight in the shadows of the thin alleyway between the gas station and an antiques store that doubled as a hair salon.
Faith fidgeted impatiently, "When did we get all below the law? I say we do something. I say I go in there and -"
Buffy cut Faith off by hissing a whispered, "Shhh...and do what? Get arrested? Again? Half of California is already looking for you, Faith, do you think there's even the slightest chance that those cops won't recognize you from a wanted poster?"
"Do they still have those?"
Buffy rolled her eyes and peered back around the corner, wincing as a blue light from a squad car nearly blinded her for a split second. "Not really the point I'm trying to make. Just...be quiet, we can charge in there and assert our girl-power after the cops are gone."
With a reluctant sigh, Faith nodded and both women reassumed their task, waiting and watching.
The clerk of the mini-mart, who stood out by the pumps with one of the officers, was a stocky mess of a man, with dark, thinning hair, adult-acne, and virtually no chin. The cop speaking to him was a tall, dumpy fellow, who looked and sounded an awful lot like the Glad man.
"You say you saw where the girl came from?" the officer questioned casually.
"That I did," the clerk replied, straightening his stained Quickstop T-shirt. "She came wanderin' over from the Penny's parkin' lot, looked a bit woozy. Prob'ly on drugs."
"Was there anyone with her?"
The clerk cast a cautious eye around. "Nobody of consequence, if ye get my meanin', but some young people came runnin' over t'mess with the body afterward. I didn't wanna go out there, though, I think they were on drugs, too, officer...?"
"Detective," the man corrected quickly. "Gillespie, sir."
"Ah, yeah, Gillespie. I know yer daughters, they come in here every week with the cheerleaders on two fer one pizza night -- those are some real beautiful girls ya got there."
"Well, I'll tell 'em you said so. You have a good night, sir."
"You too, officer."
Detective Gillespie turned away from the clerk and headed over to one the men examining the corpse as the ambulance drivers moved it into a black vinyl body bag. The man Gillespie went to was a short, thickset man in his forties, decked out in the full tan uniform, black sateen jacket, and a black Stetson. "Sheriff Hayward," the detective began, "it's just what you figured on."
"Drugs?" Hayward asked in his thick, mid-western accent.
"I owe you a Red Dog."
Hayward let his eyes wander to the body below him, where one of the other officers was trying to unzip the body bag. "Lucky!" Hayward grunted, pulling the young man aside as the corpse was moved to a gurney. "Boy," the sheriff went on, "what are you doin', foolin' around with the stiff? Now, I don't know what they taught you back in San Fran-cis-co, but around here, we keep our bare hands off the evidence."
Standing out as not only the youngest officers and the only officer on the scene without a hat, this 'Lucky' was also not nearly as suspicious as the others. He was tall, blonde, pretty-boy in his early twenties. Lean, with a Jim Carry quality about him; something like surfer boy meets Barney Fife. "I just wanted to get a look that wound," Lucky explained. "Maybe get an idea of this guy's M.O. for the day watch."
"We're not gonna need a beat team on this one," said Hayward, shaking his head with what might've been disgust. "It's an open-and-shut. Drug related."
"Drug related?" Lucky repeated incredulously. "How did we get to drug related?"
"Ya know, the other fellas could use a coffee, why don't you pop in the Quickstop and bring 'em out a few?"
"I'm getting coffee," Lucky said to himself in defeat. "And what are you gonna be doing?"
"I'm headin' to Rayleene's Bar," Hayward said, voice trailing as he smirked convivially and turned from the lad, starting back to his car. "Gillespie owes me a Red Dog...."
Lucky stood there, watching Hayward go with a frustrated and confounded expression as the other officers left to hang out by their cars, chewing the fat with one another. After a moment, Lucky worked up his inner strength and headed into the Quickstop to get coffee.
Buffy sighed, her brows knit together as she turned to look back at Faith who seemed equally cranky with the whole situation.
"So that's it?" Buffy's question sounded more like a frustrated statement. Buttoning up her jacket, she headed past Faith and began walking back down the alley the way they'd come. "They're just gonna stay there and have coffee?"
"With the body? That's twisted." Faith yawned and shrugged, both hands resting on her belt. "Sort of hits pause on the whole 'Girl Power' charge in there thing. Where you goin?" She started to follow Buffy, folding one arm and then the other behind her head to stretch them out.
"Back to the school. We're not gonna find anything with the police crawling all over the place."
Faith looked a bit surprised with Buffy's quickness to retreat, but followed after her anyway. "Okay, B...your call."
SCENE FOUR
SUMMERLAND ACADEMY LIBRARY - NIGHT
"Look all I'm sayin' is there's a huge chance the cops are knee deep in this." Faith pulled the strap from the large, black crossbow she'd been carrying over her head to take it off as she and Buffy walked through the library doors. "I mean did you check out how fast they pinned drugs on that girl? I'm tellin' you, I've seen it happen."
"I know it does look bad," Buffy agreed halfheartedly, "but, cops?" She shrugged out of her jacket and placed it neatly on the back of her chair out of habit, "Generally just clueless get-in-the-way types. Not exactly the mystic in the pizza."
Faith callously tossed her weapon onto a small research table, her features strained with a mixture of disbelief and disgust. "So what?" she asked. "We just look the other way?"
"I should say not," came an unfamiliar feminine voice, echoing from somewhere inside the library. This opinioned, disembodied voice was Australian and proper, but melodious and authoritative in tone. Upon hearing it, Buffy and Faith glanced around themselves, and then around the room, both finding the source of said voice at the same time. Two men and an attractive woman, all well dressed, were seated at one of the longer research tables in front of the newly patched up window. The men both stood politely as Buffy and Faith approached the table, but the woman, who sat apathetically at the table, simply touched her middle fingertip to the end of her tongue and turned a page in the thick-but-organized binder that sat in front of her.
This woman was an exotic extreme of beauty -- gracefully lean, with golden skin, and vivid blue eyes. Her long, silky blonde hair was pulled away from her face by the pair of effet, black glasses that rested atop her head. She was clad in Sabrina-healed, black leather ankle boots and the tailored layers of a stylish, three-piece, black-pinstriped suit; her chrome jewelry shone softly on the golden light of the library; her nails were artfully French-tipped. Somehow, the sum of all these attractive attributes combined with her attitude made it glaringly obvious that she was in possession of an extremely irritating personality. "Buffy and Faith, I infer," she drawled, without looking up from her reading material. "My, my, don't we have stories? Breech of secret identities, vandalism, murder, resisting arrest by The Council, resisting Chosen Destiny." She shook her head disapprovingly. "This doesn't do at all."
Buffy and Faith both proceeded forward, glancing suspiciously at one another every few moments. Buffy's questioning gaze found Giles, who stood helplessly by the end of the research table, cleaning his spotless glasses with a silk handkerchief. He was flanked by Willow and Xander. Buffy raised her brow pointedly as Giles regarded her, only to be disheartened by his vanquished expression. "Are they...?" she started to ask under her breath.
Faith folded her arms in front of her defensively, walking in sync with Buffy's steps towards the new menaces in front of her."Watchers," she hissed in quiet disgust, almost spitting her words.
Buffy anxiously tried and failed to smile through her confusion, as though hoping for a simple, acceptable explanation. "What's....going on?" she asked shakily. She quickly stepped out, breaking her stride with Faith and giving each of the strangers around her a mistrustful, accusatory glare, one that eventually landed on Giles.
Giles averted his eyes from Buffy's glare and continued to clean his already spotless glasses. "Buffy, Faith-." he began, gesturing to each stranger introduction-style. "Mirella Bartlet, Marcus Jones, and Onslow Barrie. They claim they are from...the Council."
Faith shook her head, letting herself fall back behind Buffy. "One page ahead of ya, G."
Buffy seethed but didn't seem surprised, as though she'd been expecting complications from some sort of authority some time now. "Watchers," she said to herself, matching Faith's animosity.
"They say," Faith snorted doubtfully as she finally reached the table, broadening her shoulders and letting her head rest deep into her neck. "The Council's toast, yo, like 'Mad Bomber What Bomb At Midnight' - toast."
The one called Marcus Jones took his seat casually. "Would you care to place a wager on that, Missy?" he piped up with a London-accented chuckle. Marcus was tall and handsome with broad shoulders and dirty blonde hair that was over-Jujed and looked like it came straight from the Queer Eye wardrobe department. He was young, not quite thirty, and decked out in a very expensive looking suit with a sort of macho yet pixie-like humor about him. He grinned broadly at the women in front of him, his hand finding the keys in his pocket and jingling them obnoxiously.
One watcher remained standing out of consideration for the slayers. This was the man referred to as Onslow Barrie. "Ms. Summers," he whispered in an awe-filled Welsh brogue, nodding in respect with a nervous, but star struck, smile. He was fairly symmetrical, well-groomed, brunette, and very humane as far as looks went -- not unattractive -- but pale and awkwardly slight, lending him a withered aspect, like a neglected house plant. While his clothing was new and smart, it was oddly average in style and color. The Proper Watcher look was topped off by a pair of dark-framed glasses that were perched annoyingly at the tip of his nose. He held his left hand out to shake Buffy's, his right hand firmly curled round the handle of something that sat on the chair behind him. Buffy just stared at Onslow's hand and so he retracted it with a jittery chuckle. "I've read much about you, Ms. Summers, it truely is an honour to finally meet you."
Buffy didn't look amused, and Onslow lifted a shabby, brown, 1930's-esc suitcase off of his chair and took his seat, placing the case on his lap and hugging it meekly.
Faith narrowed her eyes, her hands finding the back pockets of her jeans, wedging their way into them, as she watched Buffy approach what seemed to be all that remained of the council. Faith opened her mouth to speak but Buffy got to the question first, folding her arms defiantly in front of her. "Sorry. Guess you have me at an advantage, since you know all about me and I don't have the slightest idea who you are. Does anybody wanna fill me in?"
"Us," Faith corrected, giving Buffy an odd sideways glance. "Fill us in."
Buffy paid no attention to Faith. "Giles," she went on, "we have real problems right now, I don't think any of us need to baby sit Council survivors on top of everything else."
"Well, Miss Summers," Onslow spoke up quietly, both hands clutching the handle of his suitcase carefully. "I'm s-sorry to say, i-it doesn't seem like we have much of a choice in the matter. You see, we were sent by your benefactor and the remaining Council, to help in the tutelage of your burgeoning slayers. Still a sh-shame, though, I really...really do appreciate what an inconvenience it must be to have us, what with your many problematic run-ins with the Council. But by some small miracle, we've managed to secure lodging in Meadowbrook for the duration of our stay, s-so you won't have to put up with us morning, noon, and night." He chuckled good-naturedly once more, but cut himself off at the lack of reciprecation, clearing his throat.
Mirella finally stood, tall and thin, to full height, staring lazily at Buffy as though she could see right through her. "You'd best acclimatize yourself, Ms. Summers," she said with a ghost of a threat in her voice. "This is the way the 'real world' works. So get aboard, or get out of the way."
"I beg you pardon?" Giles said defensively, narrowing his eyes at Mirella. "Just exactly who do you think your dealing with?"
While this drew no measure of attention from Mirella, Onslow stood up once more and beamed at Giles. "Rupert Giles, correct?" he asked sunnily. "I'm quite a great fan of your dissertations on the origions of the Primal."
Giles smiled in spite of himself. "You read those?" he asked. Onslow nodded. "Hmm," Giles muttered to himself, quietly proud, "I didn't know anyone read those." He slipped his glassed back on, turning to Buffy. "It's rather impossible to gain feedback through the out-dated channels-." He stopped when he saw Buffy Mirella's bemused expressions, his face falling.
"All finished?" Mirella asked. "Good, then, back to the subject at hand." She turned her attentions back to Buffy, clasping her hands together. "The young unfortunate that was killed, the circumstances of her death must be investigated, immediately. By all of us -- slayers and Council members."
Xander frowned, confused. "Young unfortunate?" he asked. "Are you saying she was a prostitute?"
Buffy and Mirella both gave Xander the same frustrated eye-roll. "She's unfortunate because she's dead," Buffy told him.
Xander smiled. "Not according to a Heather Graham movie," he giggled.
"Yeah," Buffy grunted, embarrassed for them both. She looked back at Mirella. "You want an investigation? Fine, we'll all go. Don't know what you expect to find."
SCENE FIVE
INT. FUNERAL HOME - MORNING
The morgue room of Meadowbrook's low end, flat-level funeral home was dark and colorless in the extremely early morning hours. Being in the basement of the building, there were no windows offering any soft blue moonlight of the outside nighttime world. The stainless steel wall of body lockers within was freakishly contrasted by filing cabinets and the two cluttered work desks on the other side of the vast, depressing room. Two straight hours of silence there were instantly pierced as the locked door's knob was snapped -- broken by force -- and Buffy pushed her way in. She moved to the side and held the door open for Marcus, Mirella, Willow, Xander, and Onslow, who followed Buffy in cautiously.
"You might've tried starting a fire," Mirella whispered to Buffy snottily as she pulled a penlight from her leather tote. "Lord knows that would've called less attention to us."
"Fine," Buffy whispered back. "The next time we go on a field trip, you break into the morgue, and I'll cower in the shadows like sore thumb."
Marcus gave a slight chuckle that, upon looking back and catching Mirella's chastising glare, quickly transformed itself into a cough. "Let's just get what we came for," Marcus said quietly, unable to hide his amusement. Buffy cast a glance over her shoulder at him; he smiled boyishly, pulled a flashlight from his jacket pocket, and shined the light up from his chin. "By all means," he whispered impishly, "play through, miss slayer."
Trying to suppress a return-smile, Buffy quickly busied herself, searching her messenger bag for a small, black walkie-talkie.
Marcus turned from her smugly and walked right into Onslow, who did some sort of Watcherly wild-take of fear, gasping deeply and snapping his eyes shut, hugging his briefcase. He soon recovered and tried unsuccessfully to pull the flashlight from Marcus's grasp. "Can you be serious for three minutes," Onslow hissed, trying to keep his voice down. "Honestly, you're an absolute gargoyle."
Buffy's fingertips finally brushed against the smooth plastic and she curled her hand around the walkie-talkie, pulling it clumsily out of her bag (a hot pink yo-yo spilled out along with it) and fiddled with the buttons until she found her frequency. "Giles," she whispered curtly.
There was a bit of feedback and Giles's voice answered her calmly: "Is everyone in?"
"All present and accounted for," Buffy replied.
While Giles went on almost incoherently to Buffy, Willow and Xander broke off from the group and headed for the filing cabinets. Willow already had a flashlight out. She sped over and opened one of the cabinets, sending a sympathetic look back to Xander as he fought to catch up. Xander had since abandoned the cane and now was propping himself up on crutches; the large bruise on his jaw was turning green at the outer edges. All that combined with his usual appearance made him look like death, warmed over.
"Do you wanna sit down?" Willow asked him quietly.
"I'm here t'help," Xander insisted sternly. "Neither rain, nor sleet, nor sprain of toe. What's my job?"
Willow appraised him warily for a moment, then brightened and put the butt of the flashlight in front of Xander's mouth. "Hold this, okay?" she asked quickly. Xander shrugged and accepted the flashlight with his teeth, doing his best to shine the light over Willow's work. She started walking her fingers through the files, studying the labels feverishly. "Let's see what other 'drug related' deaths Nevada County's been hiding...."
Back by the lockers, Onslow and Marcus were sliding out bodies while Mirella supervised, clutching her purse -- her penlight was tucked behind her ear like a pencil. Buffy stayed close to the door, gabbing breezily into the walkie-talkie while doing her level best to unravel a knotted yo-yo string. "I don't see why we need a sample from the body," Buffy grumbled quietly to the receiver. "We already know what Kim 'was'. Is the rest just Watcher kicks?"
"Barrie says it's the Council's new case file protocall," Marcus whispered reassuringly while closing a locker. "They apparently had to change procedure, what with all the potentials turning. Trust me, Ms. Summers, if there were anyone who'd know what any of us should be doing here, it'd be Barrie."
As Marcus spoke, Onslow was all business with his latex gloves, and as absorbed in his work as Willow was in hers. He motioned for Marcus to continue pulling out bodies with him, setting the briefcase down by his feet. Marcus opened another locker and slid the metal slab out, where a black body bag held someone's remains. Onslow cheerlessly unzipped the bag to see the upper quarter of Kim's pale and bloody, wide-eyed torso. He, Marcus, and Mirella turned simultaneously to look at Buffy, who shook her head.
"I...didn't get to meet her," Buffy said soberly, forgetting to whisper. She looked helplessly back at Xander and Willow, but couldn't find her voice to call them.
Marcus shined his light on Kim's body and Onslow zipped the bag open a few more inches. He started handling the corpse's head and neck, examining. "This is our slayer, I think," he mumbled to himself, with a doctor-like drawl to his voice. "The cadaver appears to be fresh; carrion recently rendered; clearly died of a puncture wound from...." He trailed off and looked up and his fellow Watchers, nervous. "....From the brachiocephalic trunk," he went on timidly. "Straight on through to the vertebral artery."
"The vertebral artery?" Mirella asked, clutching her purse tighter. "Dear lord, that puts a chill in the bones."
Buffy raised her hand quizzically. "Uhh, once more in English for the muscle?" she asked, and then popped a large, orange cube of gum into her mouth.
Mirella smirked at Buffy for a moment, then cocked her brows at Marcus, insult implied.
"Whomever made that stab knew what he was doing," Marcus explained kindly. "The vertebral artery is located in the back of the neck and carries blood from the heart to the brain. The brachiocephalic arises directly from the aorta, which comes right up from the heart. It would've taken a miracle to get the vertebral artery and the brachiocephalic trunk in one blow, on accident. It's rather brilliant, actually."
"She m-must've died quickly," Onslow stuttered, gently shutting the corpse's eyes with a sweep of his hand. He stared blankly at the face for a moment, then took a shallow breath. "We should get the sample," he said, then bent down to his briefcase, clicked the locks open and went into it, fumbling around with some items in the dark. After a swift second, he straightened back up with a zip-lock bag and a small pair of surgical scissors. He handed the bag to Marcus. "Give a hand?" he asked softly.
"Of course," Marcus said with a nod, some measure of sympathy in his voice -- it wasn't clear what the sympathy was for. He took the bag and held it open as Onslow snipped a coil of long, blonde hair and dropped it safely in. Marcus zipped it shut. "That it?" he asked.
"All I need," Onslow answered, taking the bag and stowing it quickly with the scissors in his briefcase. He shut the case nimbly.
Mirella tried to catch a peak at it over his shoulder. "What exactly do you do with the hair?" she asked Onslow trepidly.
Buffy rolled her eyes slowly and with satisfaction as she smacked her gum. "Sounds like I'm not the only one who's out of the loop," she said, in a faux-innocent, sing-song tone.
Mirella sneered back at Buffy. "Are your little friends quite finished with their rummaging?" she asked. "I'd hate to think their puttering around pathetically with nothing to do."
EXT. FUNERAL HOME - MORNING
Summerland's dark green faculty van was parked just a street way from the funeral home. Robin sat in the driver's seat, his arms resting heavily on the steering wheel as he brooded. Faith was sitting in the passenger's side, peering out her window with a pair of binoculars, looking as though she were trying to concentrate.
"You see anything?" Robin asked sourly, not even looking at her.
"Just the nothin' I saw two minutes ago," Faith muttered, trying not to break her concentration.
There was much dividing her and Robin as they sat in silence, but it was more than the aura of contention they'd recently acquired -- Giles was seated in between them, looking horribly uncomfortable. Having long since shed his glasses, he sat stiffly with his walkie-talkie raised, his thumb holding down the "on" button firmly. "Almost finished in there?" he asked the receiver weakly, looking completely shell-shocked.
"It doesn't have to be a big deal," Robin blurted, resuming his and Faith's old conversation. "Just something special, to break the routine."
"Our 'routine' doesn't need breaking," Faith said sharply, and with much unnecessary attitude, making Air Quotes to "routine" without letting go of the binoculars. "I like the routine -- when I agreed to keep you, it was totally based on the routine!"
"But all we do now is eat and have sex!" griped Robin.
"Oh, dear lord," Giles groaned, shutting his eyes and massaging/pinching the bridge of his nose in aversion and embarrassment.
"Sounds like a good routine to me, man." Faith snorted passively.
Giles tried to press the "on" button harder on his walkie-talkie. "Buffy," he said into the receiver desperately, "try to move things along, if you can manage? ...Buffy? Buffy, I know you're listening, I can hear you blowing bubbles-."
INT. FUNERAL HOME - MORNING
Buffy moved her thumb guiltily off the "on" button of her walkie-talkie just as her orange gum-bubble broke and went flaccid. She chewed it back as Onslow and Marcus shut up Kim's locker.
"You guys almost finished?" Buffy called out to Willow and Xander.
"I think we're done," Willow said excitedly, rising from one of the lower cabinets. "Peepin' through the cold case files, it turns out Kim was ruled to be 'Classification: Acceptable', whatever that means, and she's not the only one. These files are full of strange deaths under that ruling."
"Amaffahfah-drra-hha!" Xander grunted, his words muffled by the flashlight. Willow took it from his teeth and he repeated. "And a lot of 'drug related'," he said. "Seems to be the backwoods euphemism for 'screw this murder, I'm goin' home'. Lotta stuff the local yokels are afraid to touch."
"Good enough for me," Buffy said zestfully. She raised the walkie-talkie and pressed "on". "That's it Giles," she said into the receiver. "We're goin' home."
Giles' voice responded -- "Oh, thank god." -- and with that, the crowd of white hats silently filed out of the morgue.
SCENE SIX
SUMMERLAND ACADAMEY - MORNING
Kennedy and Dawn had been sitting at one of the work stations in the library, playing a game of cards while they waited for the others to return. Kennedy showed the signs of her previous mauling, even to the point that she was wheelchair-bound, but having a slayer's healing abilities and threshold for pain, she seemed to be coping well.
Dawn peeked at Kennedy from over her spread of cards. "Go Fish," she said slyly.
"Go Fish?" Kennedy asked, annoyed. "I thought we were playing poker."
"Oh." Dawn happily laid her cards down on the table. "Gin." Kennedy gave her a dirty look. "I transgress boundaries," Dawn answered. "It's because of this that I win. I win!" Dawn did a little victory-boogie in her chair, but then stopped, reining herself in with self-deprecation. "I know, I'm in mortal need of a life." At that point, Buffy, her friends, and the new watchers dragged themselves back into the library, all of them silent. Dawn stood up from her chair when she saw them. "Any good news?" she asked Buffy.
"I dunno," Buffy replied edgily; she folded her arms and glared at Mirella, "where do we stand?"
Not yet breaking the character of the ingenious watcher persona, Mirella calmly slipped her glassed back on and started rummaging through her bag. "I think it's time to call upon the Council's resources," she said. "There's clearly something off about your little Meadowbrook."
Buffy sent a cavalier glance to Marcus. "Why is it always my Meadowbrook when it misbehaves?"
Marcus cracked a smile, which was stifled by the dire look he was getting from Onslow. "I don't think we need to get the council involved," Marcus said quickly to Mirella, starching up Britishly again. "This is most certainly within our grasp of control. Calling on them now seems rather premature."
"He's right," Giles and Onslow agreed simultaneously. From Giles expression, the fact that they were even slightly in sync clearly upset him.
"Well, then," Mirella said, breathlessly taken aback, "what do you boys propose?"
The male watchers looked amongst themselves, slightly baffled, all seeming to have the answer stuck on the tips of their tongues. Faith sneered at the British-ness of it. "I got an idea," she offered. "How 'bout we drop the protocal, do things the American way, and whang this guy when he tries to make his next move?"
Mirella narrowed her eyes at Faith antagonistically, while Onslow panotmimed the word "whang" to himself, hugging his suitcase. He looked worried and completely flummoxed.
Buffy side-stepped closer to Faith. "I second," Buffy said. "All for whanging?" At that, everyone in the room except Mirella and Onslow raised their hands -- everyone including Marcus, who tried to disguise his knee-jerk betrayal by scratching his ear.
"Then I suppose it's settled," Mirella went on in a malicious tone. "We'll follow Faith's plan and patrol for the remainder of the night."
Buffy made a small whining nose and gawked at Faith, who gawked back. "So not my idea," Faith defended herself, pointing at Mirella, "she totally crapped-up what I said. I just meant that, with all these wolven guys at our door, we don't need to be nursin' some whack-job in a helmit."
"Wolven guys?" Onslow echoed curiously.
"Yeah," Dawn said, leaning up against the table ledge. "The massive, demony things that live in the woods? Come on, you guys had to know about them, it's like your only job skills."
Robin flinched jokingly. "Oooh, a shot to the skills," he chuckled, "that's gotta hurt."
"Mine are rather resilient," said Onslow. "If their an unreported breed of demon -- one that had yet to be survived until now -- there would be no way of alerting our sources. Besides, you people haven't seemed to draw any sharper conclusions." He turned back to Dawn. "Now these...'wolvens', as you call them? Can you describe them a bit more accurately? Should they take priority over present matters?"
"Probably," Kennedy interjected. "And I'm not just saying that because I got totally trashed by them, but those things are nasty. Like, 'grizzly bear' nasty. Their like werewolves."
"Only not werewolves," Willow broke in bitterly.
"Great," Buffy groaned. "So far, we've managed to classify 'grizzly bear-like Not-Werewolves'. Whatever, I'm patrolling. I need to go whang on something." She turned and started for the hallway, Giles right behind her. He caught up and stopped her with a light touch on her shoulder. She whipped around and glared at him. "What?"
"There's, um, quite a lot surfacing in Meadowbrook at the moment," Giles told her. "Maybe even more than you can handle. Perhaps it's best if we resumed some sort of, uh, training regiment. Focused your engergies-."
"Look, Giles," Buffy snapped. "I've already got three watchers breathing down my neck, not looking to shoot for a personal best. So why don't you try peddling your pearls of wisdom to some of the slayers who actually need them, 'cause, right now, I really don't." She turned away from Giles, went and got herself the Scythe from the display case by the weapons cabinet, and walked out purposefully.
After a moment, Marcus followed her, and Mirella followed Marcus, somewhat flustered. Willow and Xander looked and each other indifferently, then followed Mirella, and Kennedy frowned and followed Willow in her wheelchair.
Giles watched them all as they left with a severed expression of distaste. When they were gone, he looked at Faith expectantly. "Aren't you going with them?" he asked.
Faith looked down the hall and then back at Giles non-chalantly. "Yeah, sure," Faith said, nodding a bit. She kneeded her right fist into her left palm, fidgeting. "...But, I was just wonderin'," she went on, "if it's not a big deal or anything, maybe I could take you up on that offer?"
"Offer?" Giles asked cluelessly.
"You know, the whole 'pearls of wisdom' thing? I mean, if Buffy's not gonna need help, then...maybe I could use it." She shrugged for the breezy effect of shrugging, then turned and followed the others towards the hallway energetically, grabbing a hurling ax on her way out. Giles shadowed after her with an intrigued expression, and then Robin followed Giles, looking significantly less amused. SCENE SEVEN
SUMMERLAND ACADEMY HALLWAY - MORNING
Further out towards the front exit, Marcus caught up to and fell in step with Buffy. "This might not be the best time to ask," he started, "but myself and my colleagues will be needing accommodations. If the town of Meadobrook is, in fact, corrupt, it might be wise if we found quarter among your auxiliary."
Buffy stopped and gaped at Marcus for a long moment. "Huh?"
"I'm saying, I think we'd best stay at Summerland."
Buffy blanched. "You mean, with us?"
"That's the general idea, yes...."
Back in the library, Onslow and Dawn were standing alone now, casting their eyes around the room uncomfortably.
"So, the chain-gang's gone," Dawn said to him, gregariously as possible. "Do you wanna sit down? Let me take your case."
"Thank you," Onslow said with a benevolent smile, "but that's impossible." He peered around himself. "You have a problem with those wolven things, how do you keep them at bay?"
"It's a spell," Dawn answered, looking at him strangely. "A shield dealy from the 'Libey Magory'. It's this old book Giles picked up in La Boca."
Onslow started to wander toward the weapons cabinet. "I'm actually familiar with the Liber Magorum. My father had one when he was alive."
"Your father died?" Dawn asked, sympathetic, though clearly uneasy.
"Yes, when I was a child." Onslow peeked curiously through the weapons. "He had his copy of the book shut up with him in in the family vault."
Dawn grimaced. "Guess he really liked it."
Onslow gave her a sober, unassuming look. "Oh, that's not why."
Dawn folded her arms, shuddering slightly -- she obviously didn't like the way he said that. "So, why can't I carry your case?" she asked, changing the subject quickly.
"This is a very old case," he answered. "If you don't hold it just right, the blasted thing falls apart."
"Well, I could hold it super-duper careful, like you do. And after I find a place for it, we could play cards or something. Y'know, since everybody took off on us."
Onslow smiled at Dawn a bit. "Yes. I'd like that." SCENE EIGHT
SUMMERLAND ACADAMEY HALLWAY - MORNING
Faith pushed her way to the front of the small crowd in the hallway that consisted of Buffy's friends and two of the three new Watchers. She pushed her hair off of her face and pulled a bolt out of a small plastic tube that was strapped to her leg and waist like a gun holster and loaded it into a black plastic crossbow, "Okay, I'm good to go, we splittin' up or doin' double duty?"
Buffy's brows knit together and she sighed, softening a bit at Faith's willingness, "Double duty. I don't think it's a good idea for us to meet one of those...things at half strength."
"Right. I say we lose the peanut gallery and get to thwackin'." Faith recklessly aimed her crossbow around the hallway, including directly at a few of the people standing around her, some of whom covered their faces or ducked away from the weapon. Faith turned to look over her shoulder at Robin who was sternly glaring at her, as if by 'peanut gallery' she had directly insulted him and taken him out of the game. For a moment she looked at him sympathetically then turned back to Buffy who stood a few feet away, examining the scythe's blade for sharpness.
Robin stood quietly for a few moments then sighed with defeat, "Well one thing's for sure, if you two are gonna patrol you'll need someone -"
"To stay here and make sure the girls are safe." Buffy cut him off for fear that he might invite himself along on her patrol the way Faith had a few moments earlier. She turned the scythe handle in her hands and watched the blade spin slowly in front of her, "We'll be okay."
Both Robin and Xander were about to retort when the budding argument was pierced by the sound of shrill scream coming from outside the school's large steel and glass doors.
Buffy took it upon herself to take a few steps towards the door, reluctantly removing one hand from the scythe's handle and reaching it out to push the door open slightly. Outside of the school the weather was turbulent, wind sweeping clouds through the sky and past the moon, occasionally darkening the ground below that now seemed to swarm with wolf monsters.
"Oh god..." Upon closer inspection Buffy could distinctly make out three mammoth figures approaching the school and took a few steps backward before turning and walking into the middle of the small crowd of Scoobies, "We've got company."
"Wolves." Faith stated, readying her crossbow, her expression giving away no fear or anxiety about the coming fight.
Buffy nodded, gripping the scythe's handle in both hands, "Right, and we don't have time to argue. Giles, Willow, go try to get that spell thingie working again. Watchers, Xander, get in the library and stay there until I come for you. Faith, you're with me."
"I'm on it." Faith assured, following Buffy who'd already started walking towards the doors as the other Scoobies just nodded and slipped back into the library, some of them griping beneath their breath at Buffy's orders but ready to go about their assigned tasks anyway..
"Where do you want me?" Robin asked, the only Scooby left standing in the now empty hallway behind the Slayers. Buffy turned to look over her shoulder, her body still facing the exit.
"My sister's in that room, I know you'll make sure she's safe if one of those things gets in here."
Robin glanced from Buffy to Faith and then nodded disappointedly, "Got it." With that he disappeared back into the library, letting the door swing for a moment before losing momentum and stopping by itself.
Faith dutifully heads out after Buffy, shaking her head, "Whoa, Summers, you pulled out 'the speech'."
Buffy's eyes dart to Faith and then around the ground a bit nervously, "Well..he was gonna come with us.."
The Slayers exchanged smirks and turned to look ahead of themselves at the small but daunting pack of Wolvens that was now bounding towards them. "Here's crap in your eye." Faith snorted, warranting a disgusted nose scrunch from Buffy. Both women lifted their weapons and charged defiantly towards their enemies.
SUMMERLAND ACADEMY LIBRARY - MORNING
Back at the library, Dawn was in the middle of a nother card game, this time with Onslow Barrie, who peered warily from his hand to Dawn. He set a red queen on the top of the remaining deck and smiled.
"I've stolen your bundle," he said. "Give up while you've still got cards."
Dawn narrowed her eyes and the challenge. They both made decks of their hands and started slapping down cards, stouting in nar unision, Dawn pulling slightly ahead: "One, two, three, four, five -- Slap Jack!"
Onslow looked at the cards and groaned, while Dawn did her victory-boogy in her chair. "I win!" she sang. "I win, I win, I win, I win!"
The library doors pushed open, and Robin, Giles, Willow, and Kennedy came back into the room, follwed by Mirella and Marcus. "There's been a breech of the Sheild," Robin told them. "Some of the wolvens broke in again."
Onslow and Dawn put there cards down and pulled ou tof their chairs. "Is everybody okay?" Dawn asked.
"We don't know," Giles said, striding away from the others. "Buffy and Faith are handling it-."
"We're gonna try to put the shield up again," Willow added, "try to fortify it for the time being." She pushed some things off the nearest workstation and headed for the stacks.
Willow went off to the bookcage and Giles came to the table with a wide strong box. He set it down and pulled a set of keys from his pocket, selecting one, which he used to unlock the box. He opened it, revealing it to contain a baker's dozen runestones. The runes were in the formation of a circle, with one rune at the center, all sitting snugly in little cubbies that were etched into the three-inch-deep square of polystyrene that filled the box bottom. All of the runes were in place, save for one: the "Crossroads".
Giles muttered to himself angrily. "How did this happen?"
"How, indeed," Mirella blustered from behind him. She put her glasses on, glaring down at the circle of runes. "A Pictish banishment wall? Upon landing in Meadowbrook, I'd assumed we might have to endure some display of fatuous wizardry," she gave Giles a dirty look, "but not from you. This cannot go on, I forbid it."
"There's nothing else we can do," Giles said. He hurridly replaced the rune and turned back to Mirella. "There isn't another way"
She raised her hands to her hips, scowling up at him. "I said, 'No'."
"You can say it until you're blue in the face, Miss Bartlett," he growled, "it won't change who you're dealing with. So either arm yourself to help the others, or sit down and shut the hell up, unless you've got a better plan, in which case, let's here it?"
Mirella's lip curled in contempt. She stormed away from Giles and toward her Luggage. She opened a Louis Vuitton keepall and took out a short-handled, medieval looking ax. She bressed a brass button at the pummel and the handle extended itself triple the length. She sent a daggar-eyed glance back at Giles. "I think I'm needed outside." She turned to Marcus and Onslow. "We're heading out."
"Not alone?" Robin asked.
Everyone her a loud crack. That turned to see Xander at the weapon's cabenit, cocking a tranque gun. He smiled. "Not alone."
SCENE NINE
SUMMERLAND ACADEMY LIBRARY - MORNING
In the library, Willow had long since returned with the supplies that now surrounded her and the runes. There were sparrow feathers littering the table, spools of different colored cords, a long, golden chain pulled to pieces, and an engraved, wooden bowl full of yellow resin. Willow and Kennedy had quickly made a rope of the cords, knotting feathers and bits of chain into it.
Willow laughed meekly to herself as she slowly dropped the rope into the resin. "Let's just hope Buffy doesn't miss her necklace too much."
"That's what you're worried about?" Kennedy asked.
She moved in front of the rune circle and smiled at her friends. "You guys might wanna get cover your eyes, this place is gonna light up like the planetarium Laser Rock Show." Her friends moved back and Willow picked up the Liber Magorum and set it down open, beside the strong box; she studied the pages quietly.
Giles looked on, somewhat nervous. "Um, Willow," he started shakily. "The Liber Magorum -- it's spells are, uh,...rather draining. The invocatio of intial action is to the ancients, but the power for a secondary trangression requires a sacrifice of self, to an extent."
"Thanks for the heads-up," she said kindly, holding her hands over the runes. "I get how it works, only the first one's free. But, good for us, I happen to be majorly juiced today." She closed her eyes; there was a humming sound. The tables began to shake and the resin started forming syrupy bubbles. Willow looked out on the library again, her eyes had gone black. She began the spell imploringly: "Annulus defendans,...annulus beata,...non est mea culpa!" She placed one hand in the bubbling resin, keeping the other splayed over the runes. "Umbra ducens, solum potestis prohibere monstrum mali incognitum!" Violet, sulfuric streams of light began to lick up her arm from the resin like flames, climbing and swarming around her. "Monstrum repulsus pariei vis! Porta captivitas!"
Willow began to glow, brighter and brighter, until the library went yellow with light, dark orange streaks streaming like beams of sunlight from her very being.
SUMMERLAND SCHOOL GROUNDS - MORNING
A great shaggy body reared up then keeled and fell onto the ground weakly. The monster yelped a doglike shriek of pain as the Scythe cut a Buffy-induced wound into it's shoulder blade. It tucked it's head between it's two front legs and rolled into a somersault forward off of the blade then scrambled to it's feet to make a getaway into the shelter of the woods. Buffy watched it's retreat with a broad and satisfied smile before turning around to fight her way into the fray again.
"Buffy!" Faith, who was now weaponless having lost her crossbow in the fight, bellowed loudly as she was thrown against the white adobe-style face of the school building by a single swipe from the paw of the smallest wolf monster. She ricochetted off of the wall and fell to her knees on the ground, quickly standing upright and pulling her fist back. She socked the monster right in the eye and it reeled back for a moment, absorbing the blow with an aching howl. "B!" Faith shouted again, in hopes of getting some assistance from the only person around with a weapon.
The Scythe struck red mark across the face of a wolven and Buffy followed her blow with a kick to the jaw as the multitude of Wolvens swarmed around her, the fight and power of the blade in her hands proving too powerful a lure for her. She all but ignored Faith's call, punching and cutting her way through the pack of wolves that lacked only the monster who'd cornered Faith.
Faith grunted as she struggled with the beast, resting her back against the school building for leverage as she tried to rabbit-kick the animal's legs out from underneath it with no luck. She landed a kick to the monster's shoulder that sent it stumbling back a few feet, only to howl angrily and advance again.
The Wolven began to close in with a meanacing snarl but before it could pounce on Faith yelped and was pulled backwards, frustratedly swiping at Faith but unable to reach her. Faith watched as the monster was dragged farther from her by a long black cable. On the other end of the wrapped wire, Marcus and Mirella were both firmly holding onto dark green hand held harpoon that was too large for just one of the Watchers to carry by themselves but still small enough to be mobile during a fight. The Wolven struggled and thrashed, only to be met by an electrical charge that Mirella had deployed down the length of the cable from a yellow button on the harpoon's gun. The wolf spasmed and dropped to the ground.
Faith cracked the joints in her neck and coughed, rolling her shoulders as Marcus shoved a sword in her hand with a smirk and a sarcastic wink, "I'm sure you had the situation under control, but humour us, would you?"
Faith grumbled to herself, reluctantly taking the sword just in time to fend off a blow from an oncoming beast. Nearly a block away Mirella, longly followed by Marcus, joined Buffy in the wake of the pack that had since become more interested in the school than the Slayer. "Isn't this exciting?" Mirella called to Buffy over the sounds of the howling and various growls combined with the weather and the sounds of large bodies hitting the dirt. She reached out and grabbed Buffy by the wrist, tugging her forward. Mirella curled Buffy's hand around one handle bar of what looked like a small police-issued battering ram that had been hollowed out and loaded with a silver stake. "Hold this!"
Buffy did as she was told, watching the heavy instrument warily but with curiosity as Mirella took a hold of the handle on the other side and began to aim it at the closest wolf monster. She pulled a thin black hammer back and began to steady the gun, getting the animal in her site "There you are..."
Realizing that Mirella meant to shoot the Wolven, Buffy tugged on her side of the cannon just as Mirella triggered the blow. The 'bullet' clipped the monster's leg before embedding itself in a tree trunk. "What the hell are you doing?"
"Apparently what you cannot." Mirella scolded, furiously reloading the cannon only to have the bullet pulled out by Buffy.
"Hello? Didn't Giles let you in on the whole 'we think they're people' theory? You can't just shoot them until we know for sure."
Mirella yanked the cannon from Buffy's grip and started back towards the school, Buffy following at a close jog. "Have it your way, Miss Summers. How do you propose we deal with the current situation? Those ....things... will undoubtedly overtake the school in a matter of moments."
Buffy sighed and looked around herself, "The woods. Giles, Willow...they're putting the shield back up, if we can just drive the wolfie guys back into the woods we might buy ourselves enough time to shut them out permanently."
Mirella nodded and the two women exchanged glances as they caught up with the pack, who were now being fended off by Faith and Xander.
SUMMERLAND ACADEMY LIBRARY - MORNING
Everyone in the library heard a loud, popping bang and the light abruptly died. Willow went limp and fell back to the ground hard.
"Willow!" Giles shouted involuntarily, darting to her side. He propped her head and shoulders up from the ground. She opened her eyes, staring wildly through the comparative darkness.
Kennedy rolled her chair to Willow's other side, "You alright, honey?" she asked.
Willow smiled stupidly at her, practically breathless. "Ladies and Gentleman -- Cosmic Light!"
Kennedy and Giles frowned in confusion. They looked back at the table; the bowl was broken and it's contents were gone. A familiar distortion swelled in a mushroom cloud from the rune circle, welling up slowly and ominously as a cartoon fire hose with a knotted end. It gained momentum and finally broke, washing the room in a great ripple of power that grew quickly too large to not have reach outside the school.
SUMMERLAND SCHOOL GROUNDS - MORNING
Marcus sprinted up to the Buffy and Mirella, gasping for air.
"Barrie, he's missing, I think he's run off! Terribly Cynophobic, you know."
Buffy looked thoroughly confused and Mirella shook her head, "No time to search for him now, we can only pray he makes it back into the school. The plan now seems to be - " she was cut off by a shot ringing out, a tranquilizer dart hitting her in the forearm. She looked down at the bolt in her flesh before stumbling forward and falling into unconsciousness in Marcus' arms.
"Well this is a stroke of luck, isn't it?" Marcus griped cynically beneath his breath as he dragged Mirella into the school.
Buffy didn't stay to watch them go, she was already in a dead run towards a Wolven. She raised the Scythe over her head and winced as she slashed the Wolven's back, making it let out a horrified human scream and howl before turning and bolting towards the timber, followed by the last of the pack that hadn't taken off in the earlier fight. The wolf with the human voice was nearly in the forest when a ripple of white magick spread out from the school and lifted the wolf into the air, throwing it into the woods with the large taser harpoon still in it's shoulder blades. Marcus, who'd just run back out of the building, watched his weapon go with a small frown.
"Oh, bleeding priceless! That was my personal property!"
Buffy wiped her forehead with relief and reached out to grab ahold of the tranquilizer gun that Xander had clutched in his hand. Xander chuckled to himself at the sight of the thrown beast, "That Air Wolf thing is even better the second time."
SUMMERLAND ACADEMY LIBRARY - LATE MORNING
In the aftermath of the wolven battle, The slayers, watchers, and other residents of Summerland Academy assembled themselves in the library once more. Xander entered the room with a wary sigh. On his shoulder he carried Onslow's axe that had been abandon in front of the school sometime during the battle. The long-missing Andrew had come in with him.
"...So, what have you been living on all this time?" Xander asked, still decidedly surprised to see him.
"I'd been collecting a little cache for myself," Andrew said, matter-of-factly, but still admittedly. "Skimming a little Hostess here and there."
Xander stopped and gave him a dirty look. "You didn't touch my Twinkie stash, did you?" he asked in his faux deep, macho voice.
Andrew averted his eyes. "I took what I needed to make it through-."
Xander pulled the axe back, as though he were going to calmly take Andrew's head off. "Nobody steals from the Twinkie Kid. Now you must die."
Andrew shrunk back defensively. "It was a survival scenario!" he argued, grabbing a chair to fend Xander off. "No fighting among the crew!"
Xander grumbled and lowered the axe, taking a breath and going to his Zen place. "The Twinkie Kid has had a busy day."
On the other side of the room, Robin was nearly through helping Kennedy distribute tall Styrofoam cups with hot water and steeping teabags from the main research table where he and Kennedy had put them together. "I can't believe I'm reduced to this," Robin muttered to himself, shaking his head. He handed a cup each to Dawn and Onslow, who sat together on the main stairwell. Onslow took a sip of his, to Robin's mild disgust. "The tea isn't done steeping yet," Robin told him.
"That's alright," Onslow said gratefully. "I don't mind." To that, Robin allowed himself a silent moment of perplexity before moving on to the others. Onslow turned to Dawn. "Made a proper showing, didn't I?" he asked, quite chagrined. "I should've said something about my fear of dogs before I went out and made an idiot of myself."
Dawn smiled at him and put a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. "Don't feel too bad. They don't even let me fight with them, they're so scared something's gonna happen to me-. You're lucky, they don't even care if you get hurt."
Onslow pursed his lips, slightly annoyed and pouting. "What a pretty way to look at it," he said to himself glumly.
"You wanna play Monopoly?" Dawn asked. Onslow glared at her, got up from the stairs, and walked away. Dawn watched him go and put up a relenting hand. "Okay, we'll go by the rules this time...."
Not too far from them, Faith leaned against the wall, looking at her axe and musing to herself. She was gladly startled when Robin came over to her with two cups of coffee. "Hey, I saved you a java," he said, giving her a kiss on the cheek.
"Thank god," she said, accepting her coffee. "I thought I was gonna hafta gag you with a teabag. SO it's not moonlight and roses, but, hey, we're havin' the big romance, right?"
"Say, maybe the wolvens'll cut the power again, and we can do candlelight."
Faith scrunched her nose, dipping her index finger into her coffee out of sheer boredom then popped it into her mouth, sucking the coffee off of her skin in a way that half disgusted Robin and half turned him on. "How the hell did they do that, anyway?"
A few feet away Buffy, Willow, Giles, and Xander sat down to one of the work stations together, smiling congenially at one another in their exhaustion.
"That was fun," Willow said sarcastically, still looking a little slagged.
"We've temporarily staved the wolves off," Giles said.
Buffy looked gravely over his shoulder. "Now what are we gonna do about them?"
Giles turned in regard to her look and saw the new watchers together again by the door of Giles office, Marcus and Mirella whispering among each other as the three gazed suspiciously out over the crowd of scoobies. "They better not go in there," Giles said. "If I found out they've moved anything of mine-."
"We have to find a place to put 'em," Xander said gloomily. "Street, maybe?"
"I don't trust them," Buffy said. "They could be anybody, from anywhere."
"Or worse," Giles suggested with a grimace. "They could actually be from the council."
The four of them group-shuttered. "But," Buffy added brightly, "at least we still rock."
That warranted a "Yeah," from Willow, a "Here-here," from Xander, and an arched brow from Giles. "You're enjoying this too much," he said, suppressing a smile as he raised his cup.
"Enjoyment might be too strong a word. I had some Buffy time to think about it and I've come to the conclusion that I genuinely like predictable. Predictable is Buffy's friend." Buffy sighed, sipping from her cup and lifting her eyes to stare at the new authority figures in their midst, "I dunno if I could handle any more surprises."
WOLFRAM AND HART BUILDING - LOS ANGELES - MEANWHILE
Angel tapped his pencil on an empty Starbuck's take out cup with a jittery sigh as Harmony walked into the room without knocking. She made her way to Angel's desk and set down a brown plastic tray with three more take out cups on it. Angel smiled as broadly as he could muster, "Thanks, Harmony." He reached for a cup and pulled the plastic lid off, looking down at the blood but not drinking. He glanced back at Harmony, who's watching him expectantly. "What?"
"Nothing, just, your blood's getting cold. I don't wanna nuke it again, that creepy guy from accounting's by the microwave and he keeps looking at me. I can't believe he's on the Faith case. He's gonna screw it up.... Don't tell him I said that! I think he own's Tiffany's."
"I won't...wait, the Faith case? There's a Faith case?" Angel asked with astonishment, "As in my Faith -uh the Slayer, Faith? As in I don't remember giving my O.K. for that?"
Harmony shrugged, "Could be?"
Angel sighed, "Okay, from now on, when something happens here I need to know, okay? No more out of the loop?"
"You're the boss, Boss." Harmony answered with a chipper smile as she lifted the blood track again and headed for the door, pushing her way out of the room and walking down the hall and into another office. She smiled brightly at all of the people in the room and set her tray down again in front of a client. Drusilla looked up at Harmony with a wide, toothy smile and Harmony pulled the lid off of a cup, holding it out to Dru. "Sorry, all out of human. Pheasent okay?"
FIN - Based on the Television Show created by Joss Wheadon.