Giles, slightly taken back by Buffy's insistence, nonetheless agreed. "Well, fine. We've got other things to attend to anyway."

"So, what is it that we're dealing with here?"

Willow was the first to respond, "A god."

"Yeah, so we've heard. But what kind of god? What does it want? Why is it here?"

Giles took over the explanation here, "Her name is Glory. She's comes from another dimension and from what we've been able to gather so far, she wants…" he hesitated here, as if the weight of what he was about to say was something he was still unable to come to terms with, "what she wants is Dawn."

Both brothers looked at each other and Dean actually smirked a little. It was Sam, however, that asked the obvious, looking at Buffy as he did, "Your little sister? What does a god want with a little girl?"

With that Dawn crossed her arms and gave him a look that said she wasn't pleased with his choice of words.

"No offense."

Giles continued with what the gang already knew, "Dawn wasn't always a "little girl" as you called her. In fact, she wasn't always human."

"Pardon me?" Dean couldn't help but interrupt.

"I wasn't human. I was a great big ball of energy good for nothing but evil and if Glory isn't stopped she's going to use me to get back to her world which will undoubtedly end ours."

Xander wrapped his arm around her, the fact that she was exhausted and terrified obvious despite the fact she was trying to sound indifferent to the whole thing.

"Not to pry but we need to know, Dawn is human now, at least she appears to be, so how is Glory supposed to use her to end the world?"

Buffy took this one, answering quietly, trying to sound calm so as not to get Dawn worked up, "She'll take her, and when the time is right, kill her."

"So there's a time frame here."

"Yes. But so far we haven't been able to think of a way to hold Glory off. She's too strong so fighting isn't an option until absolutely necessary. We can't run because she'll almost certainly find us."

"And what does that leave?"

Willow spoke up from here, "Well, that's what we're working on now. Trying to find some weakness of hers or some spell that can be used against her in some way."

Xander continued, "Problem is, there's not much written about her. Apparently she hasn't had many run-ins with people around here."

"Or at least not anyone who lived to tell about it." Xander gave another impatient look towards his girlfriend.

Sam suddenly looked confused as a new thought struck him, "So, she, Dawn, used to be a form of energy. Now she's human. How did you guys find her?"

Giles resumed his position at the head of the explaining, "A while back, a group of monks…made Dawn, I guess you could say. They made her human and it is important that the two of you realize that she is human. As real as you or I. They sent her to Buffy because, as the slayer, they knew she would protect Dawn at any cost and while Dawn may only have been with us for a short time, none of us can remember a time without her."

"So, the monks wiped your minds or something?"

"More like, they altered our memories. As far as anyone is concerned, Dawn has always been Buffy's sister. For all intents and purposes, she is Buffy's sister."

Dean was the first to break the silence that followed, "Do you guys, uh, mind if my brother and I take a minute or two to kind of go outside and digest this."

"No. We'll be here when you get back."

The brothers exited to shop silently, each stunned by what they had just heard.

"So, how do you think we should go about this? We should probably call Bobby; see what he's can dig up on killing a god."

Dean was silent, thoughtful, for a few seconds and then he spoke, "We have to kill her."

"Well, yeah, that's what I just said."

"The girl. We have to kill Dawn."

"Sam, that seems to be our best possibility right now. Hell, this might be the only possibility."

"How on earth do you justify killing a girl? We haven't even done any research of our own yet!"

"Sam, I know what I said and I know it's horrible. You don't think I know that? Just hear me out. From what they were saying Dawn isn't even human. At least not naturally. We don't know what she is. Energy? That could mean anything. Dawn said herself that as energy she was used for evil and if this Glory-chick wants her it's a pretty safe bet that she's right. Sam, if she can be used to end the world, she must still have some evil in her."

"Dean! We saw no evidence of that! We saw a normal sixteen-year-old girl…okay, maybe not normal in the everyday sense of the word…but we're not normal, either! Never have been! Whatever Dawn once was, it's not what she is now. She's just part of a family a lot like ours and instead of trying to kill her, maybe we should be sympathizing with her."

"Let me finish, Sam. They said Glory has a limited time to do this ritual or whatever, right? She kidnaps Dawn, game over. They can't figure out how to fight her and my guess is we're not going to have much luck either. If we can take care of the threat before it can be used against us then we win. No end of the world. We can't let our emotions get in the way here, Sam. We're talking billions of lives at stake versus one girl. It sucks, yes, but just don't rule it out yet."

"We're not talking about this, Dean. We're not killing a teenage girl, end of story."

With that, Sam turned his back to Dean and went back inside the shop. Dean had no choice but to follow.

Sorry it took so long to update. It's been a rough few weeks but I hope you guys enjoy this. Just in case people had been wondering, the Winchester characters are based off of earlier seasons of Supernatural, not the current season. As always, reviews are much appreciated :)