Cat stood in the kitchen of the Summers/Rosenberg/Maclay household with a steaming mug of coffee in one hand and a fluffy blue towel around her shoulders. Her coat and boots had been left in the hallway and now Buffy, Willow, Tara and Kennedy stood around her listening as she briefed them on the drama that had occurred on her shift at the hospital.
"He knew the demony thing, spot on." She said, taking the plate of toast Buffy offered her with a nod of thanks. She left her mug on the work surface behind her and lifted a triangle of buttered toast and took a large bite, suddenly finding herself starving hungry.
"Poor man." Tara murmured sympathetically, folding her arms over her chest and looking concerned.
"Good thing those people were around." Willow added. Cat nodded vigorously, munching on her breakfast.
"I know right?" She said around a mouthful of bread and butter. Willow raised an eyebrow at her manners and the reaper swallowed, licked her lips, and continued. "I spoke to them. Sounds like they surprised it, stopped the attack. If they hadn't then he'd be…Well, toast!" She held up her breakfast for emphasis.
"Okay, but why'd such a powerful demon get frightened off by two regular people?" Buffy asked, frowning into her bowl of cereal. "It was more than happy to take on me and you." She pointed at Cat with her spoon. Cat merely shrugged her shoulders and continued eating.
"Maybe it just doesn't like surprises." Kennedy suggested.
"Surprises are most definitely of the bad." Cat said. "Nobody likes surprises."
"I like surprises." Willow said cheerfully. "Tara gave me a nice surprise last night with a-"
"Cat! More coffee?" Tara offered loudly, diving for the coffee pot, as Kennedy snorted into her own mug.
"Um, anyway…" Buffy said, looking amused as a flustered Tara refilled Cat's mug. "I'll get word out of a Scooby meeting later? We need to figure out what this thing is and how to kill it. Fast."
"Yes, ma'am." Kennedy saluted.
"I'll go home, get changed and sleep." Cat said. "Be back later, say…around eight?"
"Sounds like a plan, Batman." Willow nodded her agreement.
"Okay…It's a date…Robin…?" Cat replied uncertainly. Willow wrinkled her nose.
"I'm not Robin." She grumbled. Tara bumped hips with her playfully.
"You're Batgirl." She said.
"If people knew we were the ones that rescued them they'd be mortified." Kennedy remarked drily.
"Ain't nothing wrong with nerds." Cat told her seriously.
It was gone 10am when Dawn emerged from her bedroom. Hunger had driven her from the warm cocoon of her bed and into the kitchen for breakfast. She heard voices from the TV in the living room and so poured herself a bowl of cereal, made coffee, and took it to the sofa to sit with Kennedy. The dark haired slayer had one of Willow and Tara's hefty magic books open in her lap, but sat completely ignoring it in favour of the mundane drama of some sitcom re-run.
"Morning." Kennedy greeted her, watching Dawn shuffle across the carpet. The teen merely grunted in response and dropped onto the sofa beside her. Kennedy turned back to the TV and waited for Dawn to get some caffeine into her system.
"So," Dawn said, several mouthfuls of coffee and sugary cereal later. "Are you doing voluntary research?" She looked down at the book Kennedy was 'reading'.
"No…" Kennedy sighed. "Cat dropped by after work. Some kind of craziness rocked up in the middle of her shift."
"I thought that only happened at the weekends?" Dawn said, spooning Apple Jacks into her mouth. "She okay?"
"Yeah. Our demon thing attacked some guy."
Dawn looked sideways at Kennedy, spoon halfway between the bowl and her mouth.
"He okay…?" She asked nervously.
"Apparently." The dark haired slayer nodded, flipping idly through her book. "There's gunna be a Scooby meeting later. Figured I might as well try and look into it. But…I don't actually know what I'm looking for so…" She dumped her book back amongst the pile swamping the coffee table and leaned back on the sofa.
"Needle meet haystack. Right?" Dawn asked, gesturing to the books.
"Yup."
"We need to find a way to narrow it down." Dawn said thoughtfully. Kennedy climbed to her feet and stretched out her spine.
"You figure it out, let me know." She said. "I'm going to the shop, want anything?" She looked down at Dawn who shook her head. "All right. Let me in when I get back."
"Sure." Dawn replied, concentrating now on her breakfast and puzzling over ways to narrow down their search. A moment later she heard the front door close. She dropped her spoon into her empty bowl, drained her mug of coffee and stood up, taking them into the kitchen and leaving them in the sink to wash up later.
Their monster demon thing had the characteristics of many different monster demon things, but none of them quite fit the bill. Luckily they had first hand witness reports of the thing so they could easily discount the creatures in their books. Unluckily, they were discounting most of the creatures in their books. Even the internet was throwing up useless hits.
So then maybe focussing on a different aspect would help them figure out exactly what they were dealing with.
Dawn frowned as she slowly wandered up the stairs to her bedroom. What could they investigate that may help? Her eyes widened as an idea formed, and she sprinted the rest of the way to her bedroom to get dressed.
She needed a computer, the internet and a printer, two of which she had at home, but all of which could be found in the local library.
Kennedy returned as Dawn was packing notebook and pens into her messenger bag in the hall. She pulled on her coat, swung the bag onto one shoulder and charged out the door calling out, "Going out, back later, bye!"
The door swung shut behind her and she hurried down the street, hands stuffed in coat pockets against the cold.
Puddles reflected the iron grey sky above. The pavement and roads were still soaked and the air still damp, though it had stopped raining a couple of hours ago. Dawn was swiftly rethinking choosing Converse as her footwear for this outing as she hopped over one large puddle and crossed the road.
She was grateful when she reached the library after twenty minutes brisk walking. It was a large square lump of concrete that had probably been built in the sixties and really hadn't changed much, but it was warm and quiet as all libraries should be. She pushed open the doors and entered, leaving behind the sounds of the city in exchange for hushed words and whispering pages. She could only see a handful of people milling around shelves, and a couple of library staff manning the front desk. She smiled at the staff and made her way over towards the bank of computers hidden away at the back of the building. One of them was taken already by a student furiously tapping away at the keyboard. Dawn chose the last computer at the end of the row in the corner. She dropped her bag beside the swivel chair, sat down and took her library card out of her pocket. She typed in her membership details and sat back to wait for the computer to log her in.
Her grand plan was to look into any strange disappearances over the past few months, particularly ones that fit the gruesome modus operandi of their monster, in the hope that something connected the victims. Something that might help them to figure out exactly what it was they were looking for. She knew it was a long shot, but it was better than nothing. And if she turned up nothing they could use in identifying the monster at least they would have a rough list of possible victims. That could be useful. Somehow…
Dawn sighed, feeling like she was already grasping at straws, and opened the internet browser. As the page loaded she realised she had no idea how to start her search. Cleveland missing persons? Cleveland murders? Cleveland crime September/October/November? Buffy had mentioned seeing posters around town asking for information on missing people, would she be able to get into the NamUs website to find information on them?
She stared blankly at the cursor blinking persistently in the search box, already feeling overwhelmed. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, and then finally she began to type. Google first. Government funded search engines later.
Fiery sunlight slanted in through the narrow windows set high up close to the ceiling around the walls of the library. Dawn blinked at the time displayed in the bottom right corner of the computer screen and realised she had been sat in the library all day. Buffy, Willow and Tara would be finishing work soon and heading home. She printed the latest document she had created and hurried to the printer to collect it. The printer was a hulking mass of grey plastic that hadn't been updated in years. It coughed and wheezed and generally made a scene of printing anything. Eventually it spat out Dawn's pages and she snatched them up and hurried to her work station to close the documents and websites and log off. She stuffed the printouts into her bag, pulled on her coat and headed out of the library, swinging her bag across her body as she shouldered open the doors and made her way onto the street.
The clouds had cleared somewhat while Dawn had been hidden away inside, though the streets were still damp with rain. The sky still looked cold and grey despite the warm colours of the sunset painting the remaining clouds and the horizon with fire. As night approached the temperature dropped and Dawn hunched her shoulders and stuffed her hands into her coat pockets to stay warm, heading home at a brisk pace.
It didn't take her long, and soon she was fishing in her bag for her house keys as she walked up the path to the front door. Apparently Kennedy heard her coming as the door opened before Dawn had even reached it to reveal the slayer towel drying her long hair. She wore pale grey tracksuit trousers and a white tank top, and stepped back to let Dawn in.
"Hey. I ordered Chinese for dinner." She announced as Dawn passed.
"You know you could have cooked?" The teen answered, dumping her bag on the floor and sitting on the stairs to untie the laces of her Converse. Kennedy shut the door and hung her towel around her neck to finger-comb her hair.
"Yeah but…I'm the guest and I couldn't be bothered." She replied. "Anyway, where've you been all day?"
"Library." Dawn said, standing and hanging her coat up by the front door.
"Willow would be proud." Kennedy remarked drily.
"Yup. What've you been up to all day, then?"
"Stuff." Kennedy said. "Training mainly. Research briefly."
"Find anything useful?" Dawn asked as she made her way into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water.
"Um…A lot of books need to be translated into English because dead languages are dead and that about sums it up." Kennedy said, following her in to raid the cupboards for a snack. Dawn considered that while gulping down water.
"I guess that counts." She said eventually.
Eight O'clock found the residents of the Summers/Rosenberg/Maclay household joined by Giles, Xander and Cat grouped around the coffee table in the living room. Books lay stacked around the table that was now hidden beneath left over Chinese in white cartons and on plates. Cat and Xander were happily scavenging unwanted lukewarm noodles and chicken as Buffy relayed the information Cat had gathered early that morning for the sake of Xander and Giles.
"-and really it should be Cat telling you this." She finished, while pointedly eyeing Cat. The reaper looked up and swallowed her mouthful of prawn crackers, chased it with the can of coke she had received on arrival and grinned sheepishly.
"Sorry. Free food." She explained. "You did a great job though."
"Yes, thank you, Buffy." Giles said, leaning forwards from his position on the sofa and resting his elbows on his knees to look at Cat, who was sitting cross legged on the floor at the other end of the coffee table. "And well done Cat for speaking to the young man. But all that does is reinforce the notion that we really need to identify this creature, find it, and put a stop to it. We have no real information to go off."
"Research is hard…" Xander whined.
"Which is why I went to the library this morning!" Dawn said. She had brought her bag into the living room with her and rummaged in it now to produce the wad of printouts she had gathered from the library. "I thought maybe if we can't figure out the demony thing maybe its victims could give us some clues."
"Great idea, Dawn." Tara encouraged and smiled at her. "What have you got for us?"
"I did some Googling and basically just looked into disappearances and deaths and things in the area that fit our demon's MO." Dawn said, handing out sheets of paper to the group sat around the coffee table.
"You have got to stop watching CSI." Buffy told her, accepting several sheets of paper with a photograph of a young woman above a series of bullet points.
"Also, excessive violence, evisceration, and chowing down on humans doesn't really narrow it down…" Xander piped up. "Not to rain on your parade or anything…" He added as Dawn scowled at him.
"Anyway, these are all cases from the past year. Things have really been picking up over the last six months though." Dawn continued.
"It's escalating." Giles commented, leafing through the pages he had been given to find there were mere weeks between each victim being reported missing. He recognised some from news broadcasts on TV.
"Huh…" Buffy said softly, staring down at the photograph she held of one of the victims. The sound of recognition was enough to stop the rustling of pages as everyone leafed through Dawn's work.
"Huh?" Willow prompted her friend. Buffy held up her paper to show the group a photo of a thirty-odd male with thick dark hair and a confident smile. He wore a T-shirt that showed off a tribal tattoo on one forearm.
"Daniel Mercer, reported missing nine months ago." Xander read from Dawn's bullet points beneath the image.
"He…looks familiar." Cat said, and Buffy nodded.
"Well, sure he does. He was on TV." Dawn said, picking out several other pages and laying them out on the coffee table. "Like these two. They were all friends and disappeared together without a trace so the story ran for a while. I couldn't find connections to any of the others. They're all different ages, both men and women, different backgrounds, some still missing, some found dead…" She sighed and stared at the pages. "But there's got to be something…"
"Unfortunately I doubt it's something we'll find in one sitting." Giles said, shuffling his papers back into a neat stack. "There's…a disturbingly large amount to go through." He frowned at the scattered pages. "And I don't think it's enough. We need to find a way to find this monster and kill it."
"But at least it might help us figure out what it is so we can find it and kill it." Dawn pointed out. "Right?"
"Right." Tara smiled at her. "You did good. It's a great idea."
"Mind if I keep these to read at home?" Giles asked Dawn, lifting his printouts. Dawn nodded.
"Sure."
"Some light bedtime reading." Xander quipped, folding his and stuffing them into the breast pocket of his shirt.
"Okay, so we'll just carry on researching and patrolling?" Buffy asked, unimpressed.
"Even with new information, it changes nothing. We'll be doing the same things we've been doing already." Kennedy said, raising one eyebrow as though daring the others to challenge the statement.
"It's better than nothing." Cat pointed out.
"Yeah, marginally." Buffy grumbled, feeling no optimism whatsoever. The demon was still out there, free to attack again.
Taunting her.