A/N As I've said before, I know little about the Marvel comics beyond the research I'm doing for these stories and the movies. If I get something wrong, I apologize. None of the events of the movies or tv shows will have much, if any impact on this story, just some of the characters will be appearing.

######

Timothy 'Dum Dum' Dugan had known Nick Fury for over fifty years. He'd been part of the Howling Commandos, a group led by Fury during WWII that had caused so much chaos for the Nazis that the Nazis had been moved to create a specialty team just to counter them. He was a man who'd seen and experienced a great deal. He was also more than a man.

Dum Dum Dugan arrived in Sunnydale around noon and found a pretty little seaside city. He spent the day just walking around the city making note of everything he saw. Most people were at work right now so there weren't a lot of other people walking around. He found something both interesting and disturbing. Sunnydale had several kindergarten centers, with a couple thousand kids total, four grade schools, three Junior Highs and two High School, one private, one public. A couple of thousand kindergartners, maybe 3/4 of that number in grade schools, maybe half as many total in the Junior Highs and at best 150 students in each grade of the Public High School, Sunnydale High School. Which meant the High School had maybe 600 students total across four grades. If people were moving to Sunnydale and not moving out as the population never seemed to increase, why were there fewer schools with fewer students in them the older the children got? And why so few children in the first place? As Dugan understood it, roughly thirty percent, on average, of a population should be children. Which in a population of 40,000 meant about 12,000 should be kids. There were nowhere near those numbers in Sunnydale. Either the adults weren't having as many kids as the average or something was happening to the kids. But what?

Dugan entered a convenience store and approached the clerk.

"Something I can help you with?" The clerk looked alert, a little tense. 'If there really are gangs around here, than they really have people on edge.' Dugan thought.

"Just looking for a newspaper. I'm new in town and wanted to see if there's anything interesting to do."

"Sunnydale doesn't have a newspaper, far as I know." The clerk told him. "But we do have a list of attraction." The clerk handed over a colorful paper with a list of said attractions.

"No newspaper? In a city this size?" Dugan asked, surprised as he took the offered paper.

"Never saw any need for it, I guess. The Mayor's office always made sure anything the public needs to know like gas leaks or such is announced. I hope the new Mayor keeps up with that practice."

"New Mayor? You had elections in winter?"

"Naw, there was a gas explosion in Mayor Wilkins house and it killed him. His Deputy Mayor is currently the Interim Mayor. I doubt he'll last long, he's scared of his own shadow. Real jumpy little guy."

'A gas explosion?' Dugan thought, incredulous. 'And he just buys that?! Doesn't sound like there was much of an investigation.'

"How long has he been the Interim Mayor?"

"Um, close to a month I think. I hope he finally does something about the pipes, they're old. We've had a few leaks. Last Halloween there was a bad one, had everyone thinking they were their costumes for awhile and recently there was one at the High School."

'People thought they were their costumes? That doesn't make any sense.' Dugan thought. 'A gas leak happens inside a structure because that's where the pipes run into. Multiple structures would have had to have been effected. If the pipes running under the streets were effected than there would have been some fires, not hallucinations. And people just accepted that explanation?'

He left the store and checked out the list of attractions, not all of which were currently open as they were summer attractions. 'Zoo, aquarium, amusement park, bowling, teen nightclub with named acts, miniature golfing, two story mall, movie theater, beach? All that and international airport, train station and harbor with freight ships? They never need to go anywhere, pretty much everything they want is available here.'

As night approached Dugan kept walking, making more notes. 'Twelve cemeteries, 43 churches, a population this size would normally have half that number of churches. I'd wonder about a cult, but they're all different denominations and some are shut down. Several parks, nice perks some with ponds and a woods and a warehouse district. Maybe I should check out that teen club, if there's an issue with kids around here or the gangs are recruiting, I might find answers there.' WIth a plan in mind, Dugan set out for the Bronze.

A/N Population statistics taken from wwwdot childstatsdotgov and averaged for purposes of this story. Replace dot with a period. A similar size city in Minnesota has thirteen grade schools and that's just the grade schools. I have no clues from the show itself on the number of kindergartens, grade schools and junior highs and there was only one other high school mentioned, Kent Preparatory School, but the BTVS graduating class wasn't anywhere near large enough for the size of the city.

A/N Reference to gas leak at the High School is the Bezoar incident.