Yay people liked the story! Wahoo! Thank you thank you to the 17 wonderful, amazing ppl who reviewed!

Sara: There's gonna be almost two halves to this story. Faith isn't going to show up for the first one at least.

Moonluck:Yup, not got very far yet, 4 eps now so I really am half blind on the Tru Calling front.

Sabia:Faith looky like coming up…

Vampyr Moon: You're about to find out who jumped.

Thank you to Sam-453 for help with this and stick around to read her cross over of BTVS and Tru Calling which will hopefully be coming soon. BTW Sam i took your advice and changed this chapter slightly.

Over again

Tru's alarm clock beeped and she rolled over to hit snooze, groaning as she saw the clock flashing 9:00.

"I should not be up this early on holiday," Tru muttered a split second before realising that nor should she be in her own bed. Just to make sure, Tru opened her eyes fully and the sight of her bedroom confirmed that she was definitely not on holiday. "Crap." Tru exclaimed, knowing what had happened. In the next instant a million images flashed through her head; bolts of lightening, pools of blue energy, a rickety tower and a small band of people. There was a dark haired man carrying a woman in his arms, a look of surprising tenderness on his face, a figure cloaked in a long black coat held over its head as if shutting out the world, a red-haired girl, crying bitterly and holding onto a brunette as if she might collapse without support but these were not the clearest images. A tiny blonde figure walked alone looking as if the world had fallen from beneath her feet. Though Tru had been too far away to see her clearly she could sense fragility, as if the slightest contact would merge two worlds throwing everything into chaos. An older man was among the group, he had been carrying another girl, the girl whose ghostly pale face had turned beseechingly to Tru.

Tru sat bolt upright, the words of the girl's plea ringing in her ears, she could not have been more than a teenager, still a child really, and Tru knew what would have to be done. Moments later she was on the 'phone to American Airlines.

"I need to alter my flight…San Clemente…Sunnydale…You can't alter it? That doesn't matter. When's the next flight to Sunnydale?…No earlier?…No…ok…one ticket…how much?…I guess it'll have to do…Thanks for your help."

From then on the day was a blur. At some point Tru packed but it seemed barely any time before she was boarding her flight, this time directly to Sunnydale. The sounds and smells of the 'plane were over familiar and Tru was aware of just what lengths she was going to in order to save this girls' life. She was flying across the entirety of North America for a girl she had never met, paying a ridiculous amount of money for her 'plane ticket and she didn't even know if she would be able to help. It wasn't the first time Tru had questioned what extent she was willing to go to in order to save someone, she didn't usually come to an answer,but sitting on flight 1092AA with Richard Myers-your Captain for this American Airlines flight to Sunnydale, California, Tru knew that for the girl she would go all the way, whether it would work she didn't know. Tru knew she had the ability to relive days in order to save people but it wasn't always as clear-cut as she expected. Nick had died despite all she did to try and save him, the five murdered men whose lives had not ended were going to prison…who knew whether she would even reach the girl before she died, for all Tru knew she could be dead already.

At that moment the girl was not dead although she was in great danger. Dawn was in the company of alternately Glory, the Hell god, and Ben, the nurse along with Glory's scabby minions. She was quite plainly terrified although there was a spark of faith in her that kept hope alive. Glory was trying to wear it away, talking to Dawn as if there was nothing to hope for, as if destroying the world would do everyone a favour but Dawn was adamant in her own mind that the world was worth saving, that tough as it got people would take what life threw at them for as long as they could.

"How do they do it?" Glory asked. "People! How do they function here like this in this world with all this bile running through them? You have no control. People are puppets! Everyone getting jerked around by what they're feelin'. Am I wrong?…gonna bleed you either way."

"Depends on the person Dawn answered sullenly knowing that there were people, like Glory said, who couldn't face the trials of their emotions but sure of the fact that there were those too who used love, hate, fear, anger to build strength behind their cause and fight for it.

"Buffy." Dawn said firmly, her faith in her sister unbroken, knowing beyond anything she had ever known that Buffy's emotions would be channelled into fighting, into taking what the world threw at her and giving even more back. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for it would have killed the girl's hope, she did not know that Buffy was at that moment staring into space, locked in a world where which kept repeating…repeating the sequence of Dawn's death.

Tru landed in Sunnydale and hailed a cab instructing the driver to take her to the aerodrome just outside the town. He was surprised but headed in that direction trying to strike up a conversation with Tru about what brought her to Sunnydale.

"It's a strange little town. Not really somewhere many people think to come visit, sometimes I think people avoid it, wouldn't blame them." Tru was vaguely listening but was more focussed on looking out the window for…

"Stop." She said suddenly and the cab driver slammed on his brakes screeching to a halt.

"Geez, what the hell was that about?"

"Can you wait here for a minute?" Tru asked looking at the tower just to her left.

"No way miss, you crazy? You wanna get out here and you're on your own."

"Whatever." Tru said distantly slapping down a note and sliding out the car. In a daze she crossed the road that was almost bare of traffic and headed straight for the unstable contraption that rose up in front of her. "Not exactly the Eiffel Tower." She muttered to herself, the "First sign of madness talking to yourself." Tru looked around and realised that no matter how much she talked to herself she wasn't close to madness, a small army of people was bustling around the base of the tower and they were most definitely crazier than her.

"Time, nearly time." Several of them murmured.

"Things to do, things to do."

"Build, build."
"All dark, all dark."

"The cab driver wasn't kidding when he said this town was strange." Tru headed towards the base of the tower, the crazy army, dressed in an assortment of regular clothes and hospital gowns, ignoring her. She looked up from the concrete slab below her feet to the tiny platform above and stared at the distance. "Girl shoulda used a bungee rope from this height" Tru remarked to herself pulling out her mobile and dialling the number of the morgue. "Hey Davis.."

"Please press one for obscure chemical facts, two for information about a corpse or three for a direct link to the encyclopaedia." Davis' voice said on the other end.

"Uh I'll take two, listen if someone fell from about a hundred metres onto concrete…they're gonna be pretty smashed up right?"

"Not necessarily from the outside. Depends on the fall but it's possible for almost every bone in the body to shatter on impact and yet the person looks perfectly normal. Corpses don't get bruises."

"So she could have fallen, or jumped maybe…but then why would she ask me for help?"

"Tru is this another of your rigmaroles 'cause I have work to do." Davis said snippily and Tru realised she had been talking out loud.

"Uh yeah, sure, thanks, you go back to slicing and dicing." Tru hung up hoping that he never saw the body of the girl who was still a complete stranger. "School." Tru said suddenly. "She has to go to school." So Tru headed back into Sunnydale and towards Sunnydale Junior High. "Nancy Drew would be so proud," Tru quipped thinking of the fictional detective's sleuthing methods and headed into the school. She began wandering the halls and ended up in a kind of entrance hall with trophies in glass cabinets and pictures on the walls. "Handy." Tru said and began searching through the hundreds of faces to find the one who would hopefully not die quite yet. "Dawn Summers" Tru read from the caption of a set of pictures, "This is not your time."

"Who are you?" An unfamiliar voice asked Tru and she spun around, just avoiding hitting a glass door with her bag.

"Uh…"
"What are you doing here?"

"Came to see my little cus. She comes to school here and I just thought I'd wander around. Figured she'd be done with lessons real soon and I could just wait for her right here."

"Interesting," the formidable looking man said dryly. "Whose your cousin?"

"Dawn Summers."

"Dawn's not in school today, do you have a pass?" Tru shook her head. "Schools are not open to the public, go to the main office and get a pass or please leave." Tru did the latter reluctantly but knowing that she wouldn't get permission to stay.

"Why do I always get kicked out of places for trying to save people" she muttered standing just outside the school gates. "Still, got a name, now I just need a whereabouts." A half hour later Tru was still standing outside the gates although suspicious looks had forced her to move around a bit during that time. Slowly at first but with increasing speed and volume waves of kids began to flood from the school doors. Tru grabbed at a random kid who looked about fifteen. "Hey, do you know Dawn Summers?" The kid shook his head looking scared and Tru let go of his jacket. She tried a couple more with no luck, then on her fourth try Tru got lucky. "Do you know Dawn Summers?" she asked a guy wearing a jacket that labelled him a jock. The guy looked her up and down in an appraising way that disturbed Tru, since it was coming from a pre-High School kid.

"Sure, weird girl, bit psycho."

"Do you know where I could find her?"

"Why?" the jock asked suspiciously.

"Old family friend, haven't seen her since she was little, wanted to pop by." Tru said praying the kid was easy to fleece.

"Tell ya for a kiss."

"Uh tell me first." Tru said again hoping the kid was as thick as he seemed.

"People say she hangs out at the Magic Shop in town."

"The Magic Shop?" Tru repeated, eyebrows raised.

"Called the Magic Box. Told ya she was weird. Now how 'bout the kiss?"

The Magic box's bell jangled as Buffy pushed the door open. Giles came into the front of the shop to see her walk in ahead of Willow, Tara and Anya. They sat down at a table and Buffy started off the conversation after no reference to her recent catatonic state other than confirming with Xander that she was ok.

"Hear you found the ritual text." Buffy stated and the others looked shifty.

"Uh something like that, yes." Giles confirmed without giving any specifics. The conversation that followed was awkward to say the least as Giles haltingly confirmed that Glory, by shedding Dawn's blood at a certain time and place, would open a portal causing dimensional barriers to rip apart, destroying reality and bring chaos on earth.

"So how do we stop it?" Buffy asked, unaware of how drastically the reply would change everything, how the earth's rotation would seem to stop and the strength she was cursed with tould vanish with Giles' words.

"The portal will only close once the blood is stopped…and the only way for that to happen is, um…Buffy the only way is to kill Dawn." Giles looked at Buffy's young face, the face of the person he had nurtured for five years and felt as if he had never met her. The look on Buffy's face was firmer than any expression she had worn when facing the master, steelier than when she had faced the council, infiltrated with more pain than when she killed Angel and more determination than when she had set out to kill Faith.

The tinkling bell broke the moment but not before the bond of understanding between watcher and Slayer was shattered. A girl of about Buffy's age with dark wavy hair, stood in the doorway looking curiously at the group inside as if fitting their faces to an image she knew. Buffy stood up and crossed the shop floor to the door with firm strides. In the blink of an eye she pulled back her fist and socked the girl straight in the face.

"Not today." She said and walked straight out the door. Xander stared open-mouthed at the girl, the expression on his face mirrored closely on Willow, Anya and Giles' faces. Spike looked blank until Xander murmered,

"Faith."

"So that's the rogue 'un." Spike said staring at Tru, sprawled on the floor.

Tru was seriously confused. Her 'gift', 'job', 'purpose'-whatever you wanted to call it- had got her some very strange reactions but this, this was just bizarre. She was sure this was the group of people she had seen…today. The blonde who had just smacked her in the face was definitely the one who had been so shell-shocked and the man now talking had been carrying the (not yet) dead girl.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Giles asked, his voice low. Before Tru had a chance to answer Xander spoke up.

"Well I'm putting money on trying to kill us."

"What? No. I'm here to help…to save someone."

"Yeah. Is that before or after you kill the rest of us?"

"I don't even know you, why would I kill you?" Tru protested.

"Sure you don't." Anya piped up. "I guess you don't remember the Mayor either, or being Buffy, or…Willow help me out here."

"Or killing the deputy Mayor, or trying to change Angel, or holding me hostage…" Willow would have continued but Giles interrupted.

"I think Faith gets the message. She's not welcome here." Tru's mouth was open, far from getting the picture she was becoming more and more confused.

"Who's Faith?"

"Now that is a new one for you." A voice said from behind Tru. "Usually your disguise is a little more hi-tech than denial." Tru turned around to see the blonde girl who had left moments earlier. She backed away, moving further into the shop. "Now d'you want to tell us how you got your murderous backside out of prison?" Buffy demanded walking threateningly towards Tru.

"Prison?" Tru gaped at Buffy.

"Yeah you know place you're locked up behind bars when you kill people, guards, bunk in a little cell, twenty-five to life sentence? You can't have been let out already." Xander said still very shocked at seeing Faith. Buffy gripped Tru's arms very hard.

"We can find out any way you like…as long as it hurts…you that is." Buffy said in a friendly voice.

"Look I don't know what the hell is happening here but Dawn's in trouble." Tru said, plainly petrified.

"Tell us something we don't know." Buffy muttered rolling her eyes. Tru's eyes widened in surprise.

"You know?"

"More than you think." Giles said wearily sinking into a seat then standing up again when he realised exactly what was going on. He started inching towards the counter where a stack of weapons was hidden but caught Xander's eye and realised he had a sword behind his back. Tru looked around at the suspicious faces in front of her.

"How do you know about Dawn?" Tru asked.

"Oh I don't know, could be the Hell god having kidnapped her." Xander said in a voice rich with sarcasm, causing Giles to hiss his name with irritation.

"Question is, how do you know?" Buffy asked from behind Tru, standing aggressively with her arms crossed and her head tilted to the side.

"You wouldn't believe me."

"Try us, you'd be surprised how much we believe." Buffy said still keeping her eyes on Tru's face.

"Today already happened. I hear dead people ask for help on the day they died and I relive the day…to help them, to stop them dying." Tru said looking at the ground, knowing that she was risking the whole group believing her to be insane, still the magic shop and talk of a Hell god made her think maybe she would be sane in the strange world of Sunnydale occupants.

"Ok, that's a little beyond what I believe." Anya said. "Anyone else?" Buffy nodded.

"Faith, re-living days to save people, just a little unbelievable. Faith re-living days to come back and kill us maybe." Tru looked carefully at Buffy.

"Look I don't know what I have to say to convince you but I'm not this Faith person and I'm not a murderer. I've never met you guys and if it was up to me I wouldn't even be here. I didn't choose to hear some strange little dead girl ask for help."

"Dawn is not dead." Willow stated carefully, needing to reassure Buffy of that fact. "And she would never ask for your help."

"Whatever." Tru said and brushed past Buffy, out of the shop. "Dawn's in trouble and it's my job to save her." Buffy was too shocked to try and stop her, wondering whether she was right before, wondering whether she had killed her sister.

Three people murmured to themselves as Tru walked away.

"No, it's my job." Buffy whispered. "It's my destiny."

"Dawnie died today." Xander realised out loud but Spike's was the biggest surprise.

"So the bird's story was true."

Hope you liked it! Let me know! Is it going in the direction ppl thought? Right direction?Pleeeeeeeease review!