Buffy is not, and will never be, mine. Odds are I wouldn't want to own it even if that was possible; I'd be too afraid of screwing it up. I only own James McAnon and Laralek The Deceiver.
###
For Buffy, the next morning began with surprise and confusion when she saw police cars parked in front of the school. Her first thoughts were incredulous and frustrated. We have police? Where have they been every other week of the last school year?!
She had almost reached the front doors by the time the second question occurred to her. Why are they here now?! She suspected that she already knew the answer, but that didn't stop her from rushing to the library.
She burst through the library doors without slowing down, striding purposefully up to Giles where he was standing, next to the library table. "What happened?" She demanded immediately.
Giles turned around to face her. He took off his glasses to polish them as he gave her the news. "It would seem there has been another attack." He replied.
Buffy nodded. "Okay; what are we doing about it?"
"Well, Xander, Willow, and, um, James all are going to make sure the death fits the pattern, so that we can attempt to find anything the victims may have in common. Activities, clubs…anything that might attract a monster." Giles informed her as he sat down at the table.
"Make sure it fits the pattern? What, you weren't sure if the guys' head got bitten off?" Buffy shot back acerbically. "How would you miss that, exactly?"
"Well, the police are being rather tight-lipped about the whole affair, really." Giles defended. "How was a school librarian supposed to demand information from the authorities about a death? That is hardly in my capacity as book keeper."
"Watchers don't get any special 'looking-at-dead-things' licenses, huh?" Buffy asked rhetorically as she moved to sit down next to Giles.
"No, we don't. Perhaps I should phone in to the Council and suggest that. It would make things a great deal easier when dealing with incidents like this." Giles pondered with an inaudible sigh.
A comfortable, yet weary silence settled between the mentor and his charge for several moments before Buffy decided to break it.
"So. James is one of the crew now, huh?" She asked. Giles gestured vaguely. "I suppose he is. For now, at least. You know, Buffy," He began, "Someday we must really have a talk about bringing people into this life. Slayers aren't supposed to have anyone close to them, for fear that they could be used to control you. No family, no friends, and certainly nobody who would throw themselves into danger like Xander and Willow. And now you've brought James in on it…" Giles trailed off tiredly.
Buffy shook her head. "Sorry Giles, but I don't think that lifestyle would work for me." She disagreed.
"No, I don't suppose it would, would it?" Giles asked with a fond sigh.
Another comfortable silence descended.
"So, how do you think Xander, James and Willow are doing?"
###
"The police probably aren't just going to let us peek at the body. We need some sort of plan to distract them, or something." James suggested as the three strode quickly toward the police cars.
Xander spun around to face James, walking backwards. He held out one hand in the universal gesture of 'stop.' "Don't worry about it, James. Let us senior Scoobs take this."
James opened his mouth to protest, but Xander spun back around to face front, and picked up his pace.
"Hello, officer! Fine day we're having, isn't it?" Xander beamed at the officer, letting cheer pour out of every orifice.
The officer glared at the offensively cheerful teen. "I don't know if you've heard, son, but there's been a death. That's why I'm here." He spoke stoically.
Xander had the grace to act like he was embarrassed. "Well, actually officer…I have actually heard that, and really it's-it's kind of funny…"Xander artfully stammered.
"I'm not laughin'." The officer interjected.
"Right, sorry." Xander bowed his head. "But, ya see, my friend here," he gestured to Willow, "really, really wants to be a police officer once she gets out of school. So, we thought, 'hey! Why not start now!' You know, a little extra CSI training couldn't hurt, right?" Xander lied ardently, hopeful smile plastered across his face.
The officer's skeptical gaze shifted over to Willow, who tried to look like she wanted to be a police officer. "Oh, yeah! I want to be a policewoman! Serve and protect, that's my motto! I want to, you know, catch criminals, and other…police-y things…" Willow's lie trailed off and she frowned for a moment. However, she quickly remembered she was supposed to be fooling someone, and put her earnest face back on.
Willow was not a very good liar, and it showed.
"Right…" The officer said skeptically. "The truth is, the public isn't supposed to be able to see bodies being processed for investigation."
"Oh…" Willow imagined that she'd gotten a 'C' on a test, and her disappointed face came to the fore. If she'd looked around, she'd have seen Xander putting his own disappointed face on, and even James' near-flawless performance.
"Look," the officer said, a combination of annoyed and only slightly moved- or so he told himself-by the teens who wanted to follow in his footsteps. "I couldn't let you see the scene anyway. Not all of the evidence has been taken in yet. Just the body and a few other things that could contribute to the case."
"Oh…alright." Willow frowned, trying to keep her disappointed look on as she turned and walked away, the two guys trailing behind her.
As soon as the three turned the corner of the school, the façade dropped away, and Xander turned to James, smiling. "See? Told you we'd do it."
"Even though you didn't actually get him to let us see the body." James pointed out.
"Well, it wasn't there. But I'm sure he would have let us if it had been." Xander nodded firmly.
"Well, now we need to actually go find it." James told the other two.
"Well, that shouldn't be too hard. I already know where the police station is, and where else would they look at dead bodies for investigations?" Willow interjected.
"Doesn't the idea of breaking into a police station make you guys a little nervous?" James asked as they wended their way off campus.
"Nah, we sneak into morgues and other creepy places with dead people all the time." Xander reassured him. "Everything'll be fine."
"But we're going to be skipping classes to do it." James pointed out. "Snyder's going to be pissed if he finds out."
Xander nodded, having not really considered the possibility before. "If. If is good." He quoted to the other two, who nodded vehemently.
###
"So; how are we going to do this? We don't want to get caught breaking into the police station." James asked Xander.
"Hey, maybe we could do the distraction thing again." Willow offered.
"First let's look for another way in. I'd rather not walk right past the police if at all possible." James suggested.
"So, what do we do?" Xander asked.
"Just look for another way in, I guess." Willow suggested.
"Meet back here in five minutes?" James suggested. Both of the others nodded, and the three split up.
Xander wandered around the corner to the back of the police station, not entirely sure what he was looking for. He supposed a back door would be good, but other than that, he didn't really know.
As he walked past the back, something glimmered in the corner of his eye. Turning quickly, he followed the glint…and saw, to his utter surprise, a window, set in a hole in the ground. Curious, he laid down on his stomach and inched forward until he could peer through the window. He could see into a room with an object in the center that looked like an operating table.
As he watched, two police men entered, carrying a black body bag between them and accompanied by a man wearing glasses and a lab coat.
"Lookee here." Xander mumbled to himself. "I think I found what I'm looking for."
He pushed himself off the ground and began to make his way back to the meeting point. He made a brief attempt at whistling a jaunty tune as he brushed the stray gravel off of his shirt, but he gave up once he realized that his whistling sounded similar to a bird being hit with a rock.
He waited for barely a minute before the other two rounded the opposite corner from where he had investigated.
"I didn't find anything noteworthy." James informed them.
"I found a back door to the station!" Willow said brightly, pleased by her success.
Xander chuckled. "That's cute, Will. But let me show you what I found." He turned around and marched off, leading the way to the window. It didn't take long to get there, and once they arrived he stopped and gestured dramatically at it. "Lady and Gentleman, may I present to you…our entrance." He announced, bowing.
Willow giggled at his antics as James nodded his head. "Nice work Xander!" He smiled at the other boy in congratulations.
Xander bowed again, this time even more extravagantly. "Thank you, thank you, thank you very much." He slipped into a passable Elvis impression at the last four words.
"Alright; let's get in there and steal us a corpse!" Willow exclaimed with a broad grin.
###
"Oof!" Xander let out a grunt as he hit the ground at a slight angle, sending him tumbling to the floor of the cramped examination room. As he positioned himself to get up, his legs smacked into the back of Willow's legs, sending her to the floor after him.
James shook his head. "Alright, fellow stooges; quit the slapstick. We've got work to do." He took a step into the room-and promptly tripped when Willow's flailing foot hooked around his supporting ankle.
James sat up, nursing a bruised forehead and a wide grin. "Okay; I'll admit, that was funny." He whispered to the other two. "But seriously, we're here for a reason." He disentangled himself from the other two and stood up, Xander close behind him. Willow scrambled up after the two boys, blushing furiously at having been in such close contact with Xander. She had practically been lying on top of him!
Shaking her head, she brushed those thoughts out of her mind, and followed the two toward the examination table that held the body bag on it.
"Let Wills near the head." Xander suggested. "If anybody's going to be able to see and remember the stuff Giles listed off, it'll be her. James, you help her. And I'll…stand watch, I guess." With that, Xander wandered over to the 'proper' entry-I.E. the door-to make sure no officers came down to interfere with their dead body.
The two assigned to investigate the body walked over to the body bag, and stood staring at it for the next thirty seconds. While Willow knew she probably had seen more bodies than James had, she still had no desire to see another decapitated corpse. Especially not with Giles' theory that the head had actually been…bitten off.
James saw Willow staring hesitantly at the body bag out of the corner of his eye. He really, really didn't want to see the body either.
The two amateur investigators looked at each other, and then back at the bag.
"You know, we probably don't have to steal it." James pointed out. "We could just take a look."
Willow nodded. "Well, that's true. But what if we miss a vital clue that makes Giles look up the wrong monster? A-and then we can't figure out how to kill it properly, so it keeps coming back until it kills us!" Willow protested.
"Calm down, Will. We won't make that big of a mistake." James reassured her.
"Hey, guys? Could you maybe hurry up a smidge?" Xander hissed from the doorway. "I don't particularly want to be arrested for body browsing, okay!"
"O-okay!" Willow nodded earnestly at her old friend, who, noting her nervousness, gave her an encouraging smile.
Internally, James sighed. He really, really, re-he-eally didn't want to get that close to a second dead body in as many days, but the thought of making Willow do it made him cringe a little inside.
Chivalry taking over, James reached over and unzipped the body bag.
"Oh, gross!" Willow quietly exclaimed at the sight that greeted them.
"Ugh!" Was all James could really say, disgusted as he was by both the sight and the smell of such a large amount of blood. "I don't think I'm ever going to get used to that!" He groaned.
"I don't think one does get used to it." Willow agreed as she steeled herself to inspect the corpse.
"I think we can say it fits the pattern, Willow." James interjected, holding his nose against the coppery scent of gore.
"Not yet." Willow said, voice as firm as she could make it. "We need to see if the neck wound is consistent with the other victims." She insisted.
"Sure." James agreed. "I'll see what else I can find about him." He nodded toward the victim.
James stepped away from the head of the corpse, headed into the lab in general to see if he could find a file, or something of the sort. On an impulse, he stopped by the foot of the body, and reached into the bag. He grimaced at the feeling of cold flesh, but he persevered. Finding what he was looking for, he pulled the corpses' foot out of the bag and peered at the toe tag.
And his heart fell into his stomach. "Michael Adams." He muttered aloud. "Mike…" Michael was another member of the drama club, one of their most talented and passionate members. He had been intending to do the Yorik monologue from Hamlet for the fund-raiser.
Somehow, what with Michael being dead, and the fact that his head had been removed, that fact was like a dark, disturbing joke.
"Guys, hurry up! There are some other people down here!" Xander hissed at them from the doorway.
His warning galvanized the other two; Willow began checking over the neck with researching-for-an-apocalypse-level urgency, while James leapt for the table that would most likely have the file on it.
Xander could feel sweat running down his forehead as he tried to both hide behind the doorframe and watch at the same time. True, he'd faced down vampires and demons before, but this was something entirely different. This was trouble with the law, and that followed you.
Besides, Xander thought, the law isn't exactly something I can get Buffy to slay. His thoughts were interrupted by a quiet exclamation from Willow. "It matches!" Instantly, Xander swung around to face the room. "Alright, let's go! Hurry!"
By unspoken agreement, Willow went first. It was as much a chivalrous decision as a practical one; true, Willow needed to get back to Giles more than any of them, so she could tell them that the demon had, in fact, struck again. But both James and Xander cared greatly for her well-being, and didn't want her getting caught by the police.
Xander nodded at James to go through next. James shook his head vehemently, but Xander nodded at the window even more vigorously. There was no way he was going to let a friend risk themselves when he would do just as well.
Apparently, James felt the same, as he shook his head again.
The two boys had a silent argument that lasted for the next twelve seconds, resulting in James walking over to the window, disgruntled.
As James was half-way through the window, Xander heard someone shout, "Hey! What are you doing?!" around the corner of the doorway. Acting quickly, Xander slammed the door shut-and heard a loud thunk. Apprehension filling his body, he opened the door just enough to peer around it-and saw the police officer from the parking lot sitting on the ground, holding his head in pain.
Xander shut the door again, and looked to see that James had made it out of the window. Xander bolted for it, taking a running start and jumping part of the way up the wall between him and the window. He grabbed on before he could fall, and began pulling himself into the window. When he was two-thirds of the way up, he felt a pair of hands on his arms-one set small and feminine, the other large and masculine.
"Thanks guys!" He grunted as they helped pull him up.
"No problem." An unfamiliar voice answered. Surprised, Xander looked up-to see a man and a woman dressed in police blues, each holding an arm, with his two friends behind them being eyed by two other police officers.
"Oh…umm…nice station you got, officers?" He offered with a weak chuckle.
###
Buffy couldn't help but grumble once she saw the list of supernatural suspects. "I can't even pronounce over half of these! What the heck's a jotun?" She asked, hitting the 'j' in the word hard.
"It's Norse for Giant." Giles' voice was distracted as he flipped furiously through one of his reference books for a likely culprit.
"I doubt that what I fought was Norse. I mean, where would the Norse have gotten the idea of scales from? Reptiles don't live in the cold like that." Buffy commented.
"Perhaps they learned of reptiles close to where they came up with a giant snake." Giles' sarcasm could have been cut with a knife and served for lunch. "And we don't know for absolute sure that what you fought is the culprit." He reminded her. "It may be a good assumption, but it is still that; an assumption. Assumptions can be quite deadly." Glancing back, he noticed she was ignoring him, lazily flipping through a book. "And of course, you are completely ignoring me." Giles added under his breath in irritation.
"Huh. Faith magic, huh? Maybe I should show James this. He was talking about going to church; maybe he could do it." Buffy commented off-handedly.
"Buffy, it takes much more than simply being willing to attend church to be able to practice faith magic. One must have a pure faith; not motivated by power, or defense, or even necessarily having any sort of proof. It's a very rare form of magic-" Giles was cut off by Buffy shooting to a full standing position, alarm and disbelief warring on her face. "That's him." She whispered.
"What?" Giles asked, moving to her side to look.
"That's the guy I fought. His name is," Buffy checked the caption at the bottom of the picture. "Laralek the Deceiver? Sounds like a pleasant guy."
"The Deceiver…" Giles flipped through his mental catalogue of notable demons. If this demon had a name on his own, especially a name like that one, it was probably an exceptionally powerful, tricky, or otherwise dangerous being.
"I believe I've heard that name before." The librarian retreated to his fortress of bookshelves to search for the applicable volume. "What does that book say about him?" His voice rang out from the depths of the stacks.
"Nothing. It only shows him in a picture and says his name in the caption." She yelled back as she glanced over the information on the page. She blinked and looked again. "Amendment: it shows him in a picture getting his head cut off." She uttered disbelievingly.
"Hey, Giles! If this is him getting his head cut off, why is he walking around eating people?!" She called out.
"I suspect that the picture may be somewhat of an exaggeration of the actual battle." Giles suggested from his position near the back of the room.
"Wait!" She called as she reread the caption. "It says he's an illusionist!"
"Well, yes; that would make sense." Giles' voice dwindled in volume as he emerged from the labyrinth that lay in the back of the library. "If he has earned the title of Deceiver, it would make sense for him to be a master of all forms of duplicity. Including, judging from the picture, the ability to fake his own death."
Giles grunted with effort as he put the small stack of heavy books on the table. "Well, Buffy; choose one, and we shall begin."
Without bothering to look, Buffy dragged a book off of the top of the stack. They were pretty much all the same to her, anyway, so what difference did it make which one she chose?
"Buffy." Giles caught her attention with a tone both curious and doubtful. "I had no idea you could read Greek."
Frowning, Buffy looked down at the book she had chosen. As it turned out, it was in a foreign language she didn't recognize. However, she was willing to trust Giles that it was Greek.
Correction. The Slayer thought as she picked another book off of the top. All the ones I can read are the same to me.
Willow swallowed again, trying to keep her nervousness down as she glanced at her two companions. Xander looked like he was trying to get comfortable in the arm chair, which would be understandably difficult, Willow felt, given that the chair had been her friends' resting place for most of the several hours they'd been waiting in this room.
It was clearly intended to be an official waiting room, with two arm chairs, a couch, and a table in the middle with magazines covering it. However, it was much better appointed than the typical waiting room; the table with the magazines was made of a fine wood, the wallpaper was tastefully arranged, and the only timepiece in the room was an antique-looking grandfather clock in the corner. The whole room was attractive, but had an air of austerity, as if the room shouldn't have to bear anything even remotely disorganized.
Her gaze shifted to James. Unlike the last time she'd looked at him-probably at least twenty minutes ago-he was gripping the arm rests of his chair tightly, and he was breathing deeply. The look of mixed wonder and fear in his eyes made her suspect what he was thinking of, but she asked anyway.
"James? Are you alright?" She whispered.
He had to think for a few seconds before nodding. "Yeah. It's just, now that I have time to really think about everything, I'm kind of freaking out." He reassured her unsuccessfully. Noting the look on her face, he amended his statement. "Sorry; I'm really freaking out."
"How do you mean?" Willow asked, concerned.
"Just…that was a demon I saw last night." He lowered his voice in case someone was listening. "And in order to determine the identity of a demon, this morning before school we broke into a police station to inspect a dead body! And we got caught, and now we're waiting for whoever told the police to bring us here to do whatever it is they want to do!" His breathing sped up a little as panic began taking hold. Willow opened her mouth to calm him, but suddenly he stilled.
Well, that's good. Willow told herself.
"Oh god." James murmured. "We've missed the whole school day. Snyder is going to murder us."
And that's bad. Willow added to her previous thought.
"I don't think we have to worry about that." Xander broke in. "Since it's apparently our punishment to starve to death here." He passed a hand over the surface of his stomach as he made his complaint. Willow couldn't help but giggle a little; it was classic Xander. Ignore the big issues for the little ones. Making light of the stress and fear, buoying them all up, regardless of where the stress was coming from. Even James cracked a smile at the other boy's antics, welcoming the distraction from his own fears.
Noticing the positive reaction he got from his audience, Xander kept going. "I mean, would it kill them to put a Twinkie bar in here, at least?" He threw his out wide exasperatedly.
"I don't think a bar of any kind would fit in here, Xander." James pointed out dryly, a playful smirk gracing his features.
Xander nodded his head. "You know, I really think the intrepid members of the staff here at Mysterious Baddies Incorporated could make it work."
"Mysterious Baddies Incorporated?" Incredulity flooded from James' tone. "What is this, a dumbed-down PowerPuff Girls episode?"
"Well, I could see Wills being Blossom. You know, red hair, fights evil…" Xander trailed off.
"I think that's where the resemblance ends." Willow looked down at herself in mock regret as she said it.
"And if you suggest Buffy is Bubbles because she has blond hair, then you have serious issues." James pre-empted the clown. "She's not that air-headed." He then looked to Willow for confirmation. "She isn't, is she?"
Willow shook her head and smiled. "No, she isn't."
The light-hearted play was broken when the door opened, and a small man poked his head through. "The mayor will see you now." He informed them succinctly.
All three exchanged incredulous looks. The mayor?!
As all three rose, the aide held the door open for them. "I apologize for keeping you waiting for so long; the mayor is quite the busy man." He informed them as they passed.
"This way, please." He directed the teens, who followed him down the hall and into the office of Mayor Richard Wilkins the Third.