Warrior
Buffy was frantic the next day and she and Willow were about ready to leave the dorm when their phone rang. The blonde slayer used her enhanced speed to rush over to the phone. "Tara?" She asked hopefully.
She was answered by her mother's equally worried voice, "Buffy, have you heard from Anya since she dropped you off? She usually calls me in the morning…and Giles said she never showed up for work."
"Tara's missing too, she wasn't in any of her classes today, Willow and I'll be right over. We'll stop at Anya's place on the way." Buffy assured her mom before hanging up.
"Anya too?" Willow asked.
Buffy answered with a nod, "C'mon Will, it's time to check out Tara's room."
The two young women grabbed their things and rushed to the blonde witch's room, two floors above the one they shared. Buffy tried the door while Willow reached out with her mind to scan the room. "Door's locked." The slayer stated.
"No one's inside." The witch replied.
Buffy nodded and pressed her index finger against the key-hole on the doorknob, adding pressure until the locking mechanism buckled under the pressure. Once inside the room Buffy saw nothing out of place aside from the window being open. "I don't think we're going to find any clues here." Willow said.
"You're right." Buffy sighed, "Let's check Anya's apartment."
Buffy was about to leave Tara's room when Willow stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. She looked compassionately at her best friend, "Hey, Buffy, we'll find her. By the way, how long have you known?"
"Known what?" Buffy asked, thankful to have a caring friend as Willow's words helped a little.
"That you loved her." Willow clarified smiling.
"Oh," Buffy blushed. "I don't really know when, I think it all just clicked sometime in the last week."
"Well, I'm happy for you." Willow said, giving her friend a hug.
"We didn't find anything at Tara's dorm, but at Anya's apartment there were several broken knick-knacks and some out of place furniture, definite signs of a struggle." Buffy said to the gathered Scoobies and her mother.
"What next?" Joyce asked. "Should we go to the police?"
Buffy let out a sigh, "No, not yet, it might not be a supernatural situation, but I wanna make sure before going to the cops, I will pay a visit to…"
The blonde was interrupted by sudden loud noise out front on the street as two Humvees came to a screeching halt in front of the Summers' house. "…the Initiative." Buffy finished.
Riley and Colonel McKnight disembarked from the armored vehicles, making their way alone to Joyce's front door. "I'm sorry to bother you all, but we have a serious problem."
"This is definitely not a good time." Buffy said from the living room as Xander motioned for both men to enter. "Though I guess we might be able to help each other. We've got a couple people missing…Tara and Anya."
Colonel McKnight got a confused look as he tried to place the names. "Tara's the shy blonde Wiccan and Anya is the former demon who, now that she's human again, is very blunt in conversation, which is refreshing at times." Riley explained.
"Ah, thank you Major." McKnight replied before turning to Buffy, "Our problems might be the same Miss Summers. It seem that one of Professor Walsh's experiments…got loose, taking out three squads of my soldiers and capturing two of my men before we lost track of him. "Adam" is a human/demon/computer mish-mash. He has a titanium exoskeleton, the various demon parts make it hard to use magic on him and the computer parts make him extremely intelligent. He was meant to be a test for possible super-soldiers, but it appears he "woke up" at the wrong time and used Maggie's personal notes as a guideline rather than his programming. So now he sees himself as the next level of human evolution."
"Holy shit!" Dawn gasped.
"Watch your language young lady." Joyce frowned, "Holy shit!" She added, causing Dawn to cock an eyebrow.
"Alright, sounds like this is our best lead. Giles, Xander, go with the Colonel, you are our best people to work directly with them. Faith, you and I are gonna make the rounds through the demon community while Willow, mom, and Dawn stay here. Research as much as you can, call the covens we're friendly with too for possible ways to deal with this guy." Dawn looked like she was about to protest, but Buffy leaned near her and whispered so low even Faith couldn't pick out the words. "I know you want to help Dawn, and you feel like I'm leaving you out, but the research really is important. You also need to be here for mom while she worries about Anya and Tara and the rest of us. Plus, Faith will feel better knowing you're safe here and be able to do her job better." She pulled back, "Okay?" She added.
"Alright, but you owe me, shorty." Dawn answered, teasing her sister about her height.
Two hours later Willow, Dawn, and Joyce were taking a break from staring at the books and Joyce was making tea while Willow made a call to the coven in Devon. Dawn walked into the kitchen to find her mother sobbing over the sink, she rushed over to her and wrapped her arms around her crying mom, their roles reversed from the usual at the moment as the child offered comfort to the parent. "Dawnie, I just found Anya. I don't wanna lose her, what if…"
Dawn interrupted her mom's train of thought, "No! That's not gonna happen mom. Buffy and the others are gonna find Anya and Tara and bring them home."
Joyce sniffed a couple times and forced herself to calm down giving her daughter a tight squeeze before releasing her from their embrace. "Now when did my little punkin belly grow up and get so wise?" Joyce smiled, tears still in her eyes. "How did you get so strong Dawnie?"
"From watching you." Answered the youngest Summers.
Buffy and Faith came back an hour later, a little worse for wear, but not seriously injured. They were followed shortly by Xander and Giles, both in similar condition. "What happened?" Dawn asked as she worried lookedly over Faith's various new bruises.
"Adam," Giles answered. "All of us together were not nearly a match for him."
"If Faith and I were stronger we could have taken him." Buffy added.
Willow came rushing into the room, "Did someone asked for a double-dose of slayer in one package?"
"What're you talking about Red?" Faith asked curiously.
"I just got off the phone with the Devon coven. In the past there was a slayer faced with a pure blood demon, she had her power fused with another mystical being, and they, combined, were able to defeat it. We have our warriors." Said the witch, pointing to Buffy and Faith, "We just need the catalyst."
"Cata-what now?" Faith asked.
"Catalyst…er…key. Blood of one warrior, soul of the other. Back then the catalyst was the slayer's watcher. The slayer was in love with him and he was the brother of the other warrior."
"So Dawn's your catalyst…key thing then." Joyce stated.
"Why Dawn?" Faith asked a bit nervously, not sure if she wanted to public about her feelings for the other girl just yet.
"Oh come on Faith, we can tell how you feel about the Dawnster. And as far as I'm concerned, good for you." Xander said.
Dawn turned toward the Bostonian slayer, "Maybe it's not how we wanted to let each other know, our how we would have wanted to tell the others, but I think we can deal with that later." She kissed the other brunette on the cheek before turning toward Willow and asked in tandem with Buffy, "What do you need for the spell Will?"
Soon Dawn found herself seated on the floor in her mother's living room, surrounded by chalk-drawn runes and beyond that a nearly finished circle of salt. Giles was sitting just outside the circle in front of her with Faith and Buffy in similar positions to her right and left respectively. Willow was about to complete the circle and take her seat at Dawn's back, "Wait!" Faith called out, causing Willow to stop her task.
The dark haired slayer stood quickly and walked up to Dawn, kissing her full on the lips, slipping her tongue into the younger girl's mouth before pulling back and retaking her seat. "Didn't want to leave anything undone just in case." She explained, nodding at Willow to continue.
The red haired witch completed the circle, which was meant to hold Dawn in place if something went wrong with the spell and she turned evil. Willow called on the goddess Brigit, huntress of the Irish Pantheon. Buffy called on the power of Vesta, Roman goddess of hearth and family, Giles in turn called upon Athena, Greek goddess of wisdom, warfare, and intelligence. Lastly Faith invoked the power of Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love. Afterward Willow began chanting in Latin, then there was a flash of light, followed by silence. "Did it work?" Buffy asked.
"I dunno B, I don't feel any different. Are you feelin okay Dawn?"
"Yeah, I don't think it worked though, we musta done something wrong." She said, glancing around the room, pausing briefly on Xander, who nodded to her after a few seconds. "I'm kinda tired of sitting here now though."
"Okay," Willow said, "Let me make sure everything's okay with you and then I'll break the circle."
Dawn nodded to Xander who stepped forward, kicked a hole in the circle and releasing Dawn, who rushed out the door too fast for Buffy or Faith to even have a hope in stopping her. Xander, however found himself faced with four angry women and an irritated Brit. "Alexander Lavelle Harris, you better have a good explanation." Willow glared at her boyfriend.
"It's a simple explanation really, Dawn and I figured it out right away while you guys were getting your bearings after the spell. This spell wasn't meant to make Buffy and Faith stronger, what it did, was take the slayer soul from BOTH Buffy and Faith, and transfer it to Dawn. She also got a bit of magic knowledge thanks to you and Giles, so she knew she had a limited time before the spell wears off and she becomes regular Dawn again."
"Oh, the coven didn't say anything about the catalyst becoming the warrior. I'll have to talk to them about that later." Willow mused.
"Yeah, later. Right now let's get to Adam's lair and help Dawn." Faith said urgently.
"I agree with that plan." Joyce added.
With that being said, the remaining Scoobies rushed outside and piled into Joyce's Jeep and Xander's Mitsubishi Lancer. When they got to Adam's lair, Dawn had already made quick work of the Frankenstein's demon forces and was just confronting the experiment gone wrong.
"You are not one of the slayers." Adam said curiously.
"Nope. You've never seen anything like me before." Dawn replied, at this point she had stopped hiding the changes caused by the spell.
The teen's hair was now jet black and her body was rippling with taught muscle, but the thing that most stood out was her eyes which glowed orange, like a predator's reflecting light. "Dawn!" Faith said and made to step toward her.
Dawn looked over her shoulder and smiled at Faith, feeling the love she already knew she had for the Bostonian made clear and magnified by the spell. "Faith, love, you and Buffy need to go that way." She pointed down a path. "Tara and Anya are down that path, I can smell them." Simultaneously she relayed to Willow, Giles, Xander, and Joyce telepathically, Go with them, they still have their slayer powers, but they're a lot weaker than normal right now.
"You know," Dawn said, turning back to face Adam as the others left, "Normally I'd exchange some witty banter with you, but it's just not worth my time. Oh what the hell, I'll do a quip anyway, I came here to chew bubble gum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubble gum. See, I'm not good at the banter, so let's just skip to the fighting."
At that moment Dawn launched herself across the expanse of the cave and landed a brutal haymaker on Adam with her right hand, sending him crashing into the wall. The cyborg recovered quickly dealing a body-shot to Dawn's ribs and forcing her back and followed that up with a left hook. He tried a right cross, but Dawn caught his fist then grabbed the back of his head with her other hand, pulling his upper-body downward as she delivered multiple knee strikes to his body, denting his titanium armor.
Adam got out of Dawns grasp and created space between them, allowing his right arm to transform into a minigun, with which he immediately opened fire. Dawn quickly dove behind a large rock. Waiting for her next chance to attack. There was a lull in the gun fire then an explosion as Adam launched a grenade at the boulder Dawn was using for cover. The young woman reacted immediately, using the smoke and dust as cover she attacked Adam with a fierceness that surprised even her.
Unable to counter any of Dawn's attacks, Adam was forced back against the wall of the cave. Dawn rained down a series of vicious blows that broke both the cyborg's arms. She then cocked back her right arm and drove it forward, through Adam's armor and through his sternum. She wrapped her fingers around what would have been his heart had he been human, and ripped it out of his body. Using some of the magic she borrowed from Willow, Dawn used a teleportation spell to send Adam's uranium core, his power supply according to Riley and Colonel McKnight, to the sun.
After the power that spell took out of her, Dawn reverted back to herself, her energy spent. The borrowed power went right back to Willow, Buffy, Faith, and Giles. The Scoobies, leading Adam's captives out of the makeshift labs deep in the cave, found Dawn passed out near the defeated Adam. Faith rushed over to the girl, kneeling down and holding her head in her lap. Tara walked over a whispered a few words in Latin then smiled at Faith who was gently running her hand through Dawn's silken hair. "She's alright, but she'll probably sleep for the next two or three days. That spell took a lot out of her." She put her hand on Faith's shoulder in a reassuring gesture.
Buffy walked up to Tara and spun her around kissing her passionately before the blonde witch could react. After a brief moment of surprise, Tara's eyes fluttered closed as she returned the kiss with equal fervor. A moment later, Buffy pulled away, "W-wow! Not that I'm c-c-complaining, but where did that come f-from?" Tara asked.
"Actually, it was Faith that inspired me to do that, right before we did the spell, she kissed Dawn and said it was "just in case" because she didn't wanna regret not doing something like that if either she or Dawn didn't make it through this thing. So that's what that was, I know we have history, but I feel right when I'm with you, ever since I saw you on campus that night. I hope you've forgiven me for the past enough by now that you can consider, not only being my friend, but also maybe something more." Buffy said nervously.
"Well I'm definitely not opposed to that idea, but right now, I just wanna get out of here and get a shower and a real meal…like maybe a nice big, juicy steak."
"I thought you were vegetarian." Giles said.
"Most of the time I try to be vegetarian, right now I really want a big fucking steak though. Also, I cuss now." Tara replied.
"Well, one things for sure," Joyce said, "You're not boring, so you'll fit in fine with this crew."
A/N: I was listening to Disturbed while writing this. So if it seems different than other chapters, that's why.