"Buffy." Joyce Summers shook her sleeping daughter. "Wake up. You're going to be late for school!"
"Mmmph-wh-. Nuh, cannuh… still dark outside." The Slayer pulled the quilt over her head.
"That's the weather," Joyce said, giving another shake to the recumbent form. It's almost seven-thirty."
Buffy's head shot out from under the covers. "What?" She looked around the room. "It's like the middle of the night in here."
"It's the storm."
"It's still raining?"
Joyce turned in the doorway. "If anything, it's gotten worse."
The Slayer became aware of the throbbing hum that permeated the air. Water coursed down the window pane. She blinked and opened her mouth to speak when the room was illuminated blue-white by a flash of lightning. Thunder cracked and then rolled away into the distance. Joyce gasped and jumped, steadying herself with a hand on the doorjamb; Buffy scrambled out of bed.
"Whoa," she said.
"Why don't you shower and get dressed, then come down to breakfast," Joyce said. "I think I'll drive you to school today."
"I think I'll take that offer."
Giles hurried from the Citroen to the front door of the school. His umbrella was never intended to cope with this amount of rainfall. He stepped inside, closed the largely symbolic brolly, and shook his arms violently. Water flew away in all directions, but the jacket was still soaked. The rain on his glasses rendered the world as a blurry kaleidoscope.
Once in office, he hung his jacket over a chair to dry and used a towel to clean his glasses and dry his hair. He was wringing out his tie when he heard the library door open. He frowned. No students could be in the building this early. He stepped out of the office.
Stefan Warner leaned his elbows on the counter. Matti Hollis stepped around him and boosted herself lightly up onto the surface. For a moment, they all stared at each other.
"Can I help you?" Giles asked as he tried to smooth his hair, which was standing up in an impressive spray.
Warner shook his head. "Nah, this is more of a social call." Hollis arched an eyebrow at him. "Or something like that. I wanted to tell you that I've volunteered to be the Harris kid's homebound tutor."
"Excuse me?" Giles blinked.
"He won't be back to school for at least a few weeks. Admin asked for a volunteer to provide homebound instruction, so I stepped up." Warner rapped his knuckles on the counter. "It's a twofer. He needs the extra attention in my class and I thought I could keep an eye on him for you."
"He makes a pretty tempting target out there by himself," Hollis said. "We don't want the Slayer worried about her friend, at least not more than normal."
"Well, thank you." Giles pursed his lips. "We certainly do have enough on our plate already."
"As long as none of us tell our respective superiors, it's all copacetic." Hollis hopped down from the counter.
"What about this rain?" Warner asked. "Does it do this often?"
"I don't believe it does," Giles said as he stepped into his office and grabbed his jacket. "It certainly hasn't done so in the three years I've been here."
"Well," Warner said as he pushed away from the counter, "it can quit anytime."
Joyce's Jeep came to a careful stop. The streets were miniature white-water rapids as the torrent was funneled between the curbs. Students rushed through the crosswalk, trying to avoid the pelting storm. Raincoats and umbrellas afforded minimal, almost comical protection; students who decided to make a run for it were thoroughly drenched. A few enterprising souls had pulled large plastic garbage bags over their heads.
"Good God," Joyce breathed.
Buffy grimaced. "Give it a minute, I'm pretty sure we'll see an ark float by."
The rush of students thinned, but the rain did not. The Slayer hoisted her umbrella and grabbed the door handle.
"Buffy, are you going to be all right?" Joyce craned her neck to stare up through the windshield toward the sky.
"Mom, it's rain. As you told me all the time, I'm not salt, I won't melt. Plus, that's why I wore my canvas shoes, not leather. They can dry." She squeezed the door release and turned to her mother. "Wish me luck. I'm going in."
She slipped out of the Jeep. By the time she deployed the umbrella, her hair was plastered to her skull. There went a buck-fifty worth of mousse. She headed toward the school through water running so deep that a normal stride would not clear it. Instead, she plowed through, small wakes eddying around her legs. The sound of the rain on the umbrella, on the building, on the sidewalk was deafening. The Slayer merged with the flow of students and was carried through the door. Once inside she closed the umbrella and shook her head, trying to regain some hearing. Water flew from her hair in a thick spray.
The halls of Sunnydale High were a cacophony: the boom of thunder, the constant hum and rumble of the rain, and the screech and squeak of wet shoes on tile. As loud as it was, it could have been worse. Buffy looked around the corridor; it seemed that maybe a third of the student body was absent.
"Get to class! It's just rain!" Principal Snyder was shouting at the top of his lungs as he attempted to direct traffic. Students shuffled and stumbled away toward their classes; they seemed dazed by the sensory overload of the storm.
Buffy hung a left and headed for the library. The new gym teacher, Ms. Hollis, was headed toward her. They nodded to each other as they passed. Buffy felt her socks squelch around her feet as she entered the library.
"Hey, Giles," she called. Her Watcher popped up from behind the counter. Buffy jumped as a high-pitched squeak erupted from her lungs. "Jeez," she said, "could you wear a bell if you're going to do that?"
"Why are you shouting?" Giles asked.
"Sorry." Buffy gestured toward the ceiling. "It's the rain. Feels like I'm inside a bass drum." The door swung inward, and Willow and Oz entered. Oz winced as they reached the counter.
"Are you all right?" Buffy asked.
He waved a hand beside his ear. "The rain. It's kind of overwhelming my hearing."
"The wolf?" Buffy's eyebrows went up.
Oz nodded. "Yeah. Downside to figuring out how to control it. I can stop the entire transformation, but the trade-off is a little more wolf in everyday me."
Buffy nodded. "Okay." She turned to Giles. "Everything was dead last night. I mean, deader than usual. I mean, dead as in nothing going on, not dead as in undead." She exhaled loudly.
"Nothing? Nothing at all?" The Watcher's eyes narrowed.
Buffy shook her head. "Nada."
Giles nodded. "So, a quiet night."
The Slayer shrugged. "I wouldn't say that."
The librarian's eyes narrowed. "How so?"
"I don't know. It just… nothing was happening, but it was strange." Buffy groped for words. "It was like everything was under pressure, packed tight, like something was about to happen."
Giles scrubbed his jaw with one hand. "When did it start raining?"
Buffy thought. "Right before I got home. I got caught in it."
The Watcher nodded. The trio of students watched as he thought. Buffy's impatience got the better of her.
"Giles, are you trying to blame it on the rain?"
Oz snorted. Willow giggled. Giles looked from one to the other, his expression puzzled, then shook his head. "I don't know, but have any of you seen it rain like this in Sunnydale?"
Buffy shrugged. "I haven't been here that long. Will, ball's in your court."
Willow frowned as she thought. Finally she said, "Not that I can ever remember. Oz?" He shook his head.
Willow turned to Giles, her eyes sparkling, then suddenly frowned.
"What?" Giles asked.
"I was going to say that we need to get everyone together and research this… then I realized that this is all the everyone we have." They all fell silent; the library filled with the thrumming of the rain.
"I mean, this is just the sadness," Willow said. "We're what now, a gang of three?"
"Not even a gang of four," observed Oz.
"Aha!" The three students turned toward Giles. His outburst seemed to have embarrassed the Watcher. "I mean," he said, smoothing his tie, "I placed the reference."
"Well, I didn't," Buffy said.
"Mark it down," Oz drawled. "The day Giles was hipper than Buffy."
The Slayer wheeled. "You take that back."
The second death was harder to ignore. The storm had turned the supermarket parking lot into a lagoon; the storm drains and runoff channels were hopelessly overwhelmed. The woman was protecting the bags in her cart as she tried to fish car keys out of her purse. The keys slipped from her hands and splashed in the torrent. Close to tears, she scrambled to find them, reaching into the cold water, feeling for the keys. A Toyota Camry slammed on its brakes; the driver leaned on the horn as she found the keys. She stood and held the keys up for the Camry driver to see. She hurried (as much as possible) to her car. She pushed the 'trunk' icon on her key fob as she got closer, but the dunking had shorted out the instrument. Grimacing in frustration, she tried to hold the cart with one hand and wrestle the key into the lock. She finally got it inserted and twisted. The trunk popped open; she sighed in relief.
The Camry hit her flush, driving her into and over the cart. Bags of groceries split and flew in all directions. The Camry slewed to the side and stopped.
Sunnydale PD listed the cause of death as 'vehicular misadventure'.