Baseball (Dawn Does All the Bases)

Part 8: Seventh Inning Stretch Dawn and Kevin were alone in the house. Buffy had gone out right after dinner, expecting that tonight’s sweep would be a long one. She had taken the previous two nights off, recovering from her injuries, and she expected that she’d be busy tonight making up for it. She had taken Willow, Xander, Anya and Spike along as backup so Dawn wasn’t worried about a repeat of the Sunday night ambush. Anything that tried to ambush Buffy tonight would be making a serious mistake. They’d finished their homework, and were cuddling on the couch watching a little TV, just enjoying the warmth and closeness of each other. Dawn was leaning back against Kevin’s chest, and his hand glided over her breast. Dawn remembered the decision she had made while she was warming Buffy a couple of nights ago. “Kevin?” “Hmm?” “Want to start learning about demonology?” “What?” “You know that there’s something going on, right?” asked Dawn. “I’m reminded every time I look at my neck in the mirror.” “Of course.” The side of Dawn’uth uth quirked up. “Well…I usually help Buffy out with the researching side of things, but lately…I think I’ve been letting her down.” “Because you’ve been spending so much time with me.” said Kevin. “Ummm…yeah.” said Dawn, “So I was thinking…how’d you like to help with the demon research? That way I can still spend time with you, *and* help Buffy.” “Sounds like a plan.&rdqsaidsaid Kevin. “So what do we do?” Dawn got up. “We hit the books!” Kevin followed Dawn to the table at the back of the living room. He looked dubiously at the shelves of ancient volumes. “Where do we start?” “Okay…” Dawn started pointing at shelves. “Top shelf: Dark Magicks. *Don’t touch them!* Some of those books can do things just by opening them. Second shelf: other magic. Useful protection, transfiguration, divination and other such spells. Third shelf: demons. Descriptions of various demon species: habitats, feeding patterns, life cycles and so on. Fourth shelf: Slayer history, and Watcher diaries.” “Watcher?” asked Kevin. “That like those guys on /Highlander/?” Dawn smiled. “They don’t have silly identifying tatoos, but yeah, same idea. The Watchers find arainrain Slayers, and record what they do. There’s this whole Council of them in England… They’re mostly a bunch of pillocks. Gigantic pains in the ass. Buffy has mostly been running her own show for the past three years. Her Watcher—Mr. Giles—is a good guy, but the rest of them are mostly a waste of space. “Anyway, moving on to the bottom shelf: Books of Prophecy…mostly a waste of space. I have yet to read a prophecy that was worth the paper it was printed on. Most of them are worse than useless.” “Then why do you keep them?” asked Kevin. “Because a lot of them are true.” said Dawn. “Once you figure out what they’re really saying, which usually happens when you’re cleaning up the mess after everything’s over. Remember /Oedipus Rex/? Everyone in that play would have been a lot better off if they just ignored the damn prophecies.” &l;Oka;Okay.” Kevin looked up and down the shelves. “So where do we start?” Dawn sighed. “There’s nothing here that can help us…so we go to the high tech side.” She turned away from the book shelves, to Willow’s iBook lying closed on the table. She opened it up, and logged in. Dawn showed Kevin the back doors that Willow had developed into various Sunnydale organizations’ computer systems. The police department, coroner’s office, and /The Sunnydale Times/—it was useful sometimes to read the stories that the paper *didn’t* print. She showed him the sorts of things to look for. ‘Neck rupture’ in a report really meant ‘vampire bite.’ Any sort of ‘gang activity’ report usually meant demons. Even the human gangs in Sunnydale had been thoroughly infiltrated and taken over by demons. Dawn saw that Willow hadn’t updated their database of demonic activity since Saturday, so they spent some time adding the last few days incidents to it. Dawn switched over to the map display, showing the incidents over the past two months. Dawn looked at it when they were done. “No real pattern there.” “What do you mean?” asked Kevin. He pointed to a cluster of red dots around the school on the map. “What do you call that?” “The Hellmouth.” said Dawn. “There’s *always* a cluster there. Here, let me show you…” Dawn changed the display parameters a bit to show the *entire* database. The block around the school was obliterated by red dots. “And yet, they make us go to school there.” said Kevin. “Hey, Buffy tried to save us from that.” said Dawn. “She blew up the old school.” “I thought that was a gas leak.” said Kevin. “‘Gas leak’ is another popular code phrase.” said Dawn. She did a search on ‘gas leak’ over the past six years in Sunnydale, and pointed out the incidents that she knew were really demonic. “That was demonic possession by these things that hatched out of eggs…Buffy blew up a demon in the mall with a rocket launcher…The school…Secret government facility overrun by demons…” “Secret government facility?” “Yeah.” said Dawn. “They’re the ones who gave Spike his chip.” Something was niggling at Dawn’s brain. She went back to the original map showing the incidents over the past couple of months. She switched to the whole database map, and back to the map showing the last two months. She flipped back and forth between the two maps a few more times. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” she asked. “I’m not seeing anything.” said Kevin. “I’m not sure if it’s anything.” Dawn opened a spreadsheet page, imported the database data on incident coordinates and typed in a new formula. She brought up a graph mapping the proximity of incidents to the Hellmouth. She flipped back and forth between graphs using the two month data, and the full database. This time the difference was clearer. “There’s not as much happening at the school.” said Kevin. “I’m not sure that’s it.” said Dawn. “On average there are…1.53 incidents within a block of the school per week. Over the last two months we’ve got…1.65 incidents within a block of the school. Not really a significant difference…but we’ve got an overall rise in the total number of incidents…There’s *more* happening elsewhere.” She typed another formula into the spreadsheet which subtracted the long term average from the current data, and generated a new graph. A more or less horizontal line drew across the screen. “It’s not Hellmouth related.” said Kevin. “It’s a general increase across the board.” “Never dismiss the influence of the Hellmouth.” said Dawn. “But it isn’t *closely* related to the Hellmouth. So what does that mean?” “You’re the expert.” said Kevin. “You tell me.” “I haven’t got a clue.” said Dawn. Dawn showed Kevin some of the other online resources available. The /Demons Demons Demons Database/ and some of the forums and chat rooms where you could find discussions about real supernatural phenomena. After an hour without really learning anything new they decided to take a break. Kevin went into the kitchen to get cold drinks for himself and Dawn. He heard a light tapping on the back door. He went to it and peeked out through the blinds over the window. “*Whoa!*” Kevin jumped back from the door. He’d gotten a glimpse of someone…some*thing* with waxy pale skin. It looked like it had been made out of wax, and then half melted. Dawn came running into the kitchen. “What’s wrong?” Kevin pointed at the door. “There’s something out there.” There was another knock, a little harder this time. “Evil things don’t usually knock.” said Dawn. She went to the door and peeked through the blinds herself. She laughed, and opened the door. “Hi Clem! Come on in.” Kevin took another step back as the floppy eared demon stepped into the house. In the better light it looked like a sharpei, complete with the droopy sad looking eyes. It smiled, showing sharp teeth, and waved a clawed hand at him. “Hi. Didn’t mean to startle you.” “Oh, Clem, this is Kevin. Kevin, Clem. Nicest demon you are ever likely to meet. So what brings you around here?” she asked. “Your TiVo futzed up again?” “No, actually, I was hoping to see Buffy. Is she okay? There’ve been some rumours floating around, and no one’s seen her for a couple of days.” Dawn smiled. “She’s fine, and out making sure that the demon world learns that the rumours of her death have been greatly exaggerated.” “Oh, good, ’cause there were a couple of Scrags in Willie’s buying rounds for the joint, in celebration of how they set her up. They were claiming they’d killed her.” “I hope everyone was getting expensive drinks then.” said Dawn. She got a Sprite out of the fridge for Clem, and they went back to the research table. She pointed to the book shelves. “Look up ‘Scrags’ in the /Twilight Compendium/.” she told Kevin. “It’s the big red one on the right.” Kevin got the indicated book. He opened it and saw that it was an encyclopaedia of demon species. He flipped to the ‘S’s. “Sarbotzes…Sblovidors… Is it ‘Scrags’ with a ‘c’ or ‘Sckrags’ with a ‘ck’?” He laid the book down on the table in front of Clem. “Didn’t ask how to spell it.” Clem looked at the pictures of the two different demon species on the same page and shook his head. “It isn’t either of them.” Kevin flipped a couple of more pages. “How about ‘Skrags’ with a ‘k’?” Clem tapped the picture with a claw. “That’s them.” Dawn slid the book over in front of herself and read the description. “Okay, your basic scavenger demons…generally not killers, they clean up the remains after other things have done the killing…not particular about what they eat, but…eww…they prefer it to have been dead for a while. They like to hang out in—big surprise—cemeteries. Thanks Clem. This’ll be a big help. I’m not sure how late Buffy’s going to be, if you want to wait around…I can get you some chips.” “Oh, no. I’ve got a movie I rented at home I haven’t watched yet, and it has to be back tomorrow.” said Clem. “I’ll let you kids get back to work.” Dawn and Kevin escorted the demon to the back door, and said goodnight. Dawn thanked him again for the information. Once he was gone she turned back to Kevin and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I think we’ve done enough work for tonight, don’t you?” she kissed him. Kevin put his arms around her waist. “Most definitely.” He kissed her back. Dawn lifted herself up, and wrapped her legs around Kevin’s waist. He carried her like that down the hall and into the living room. He barely made it to the sofa before he collapsed onto it with her. They lay together kissing and holding each other. Kevin’s hand slid up inside her shirt. Dawn was starting to think about moving this to her bedroom when she heard voices on the front porch. The front door opened and the voices became identifiable as Buffy’s and her band of demon hunters. They sounded merry tonight. Dawn and Kevin got up off the sofa, and went to the door. Buffy and her troop deposited their weapons on the floor. Dawn could see that they were looking tired as well as happy. She and Kevin helped gather jackets and hang them up. When they got back into the living room Dawn and Kevin saw that they had lost the sofa to Buffy, Xander, Willow and Anya, and Spike had snagged the comfy chair for himself. “Oh, I’m exhausted!” said Xander. “We hit every cemetery in town…and all dozen of them had something that needed killing.” “And it was so tiring for you standing there watching the Slayer and me do the killing.” said Spike. “I didn’t just stand there.” said Xander. “I shouted ‘look out’ and pointed too.” Since she and Kevin didn’t have a seat anymore, Dawn volunteered to get everyone refreshments. They went to kit kitchen to get drinks for everyone, and filled a couple of bowls with Doritos. Dawn gave one of the bowls to Buffy, and put the other down at the other end of the coffee table where the others could get at it. She asked Kevin to go get the book. Buffy raised her eyebrow. “You find something?” “Maybe.” said Dawn. She put the open book down on the coffee table in front of her sister and pointed to the picture of the Skrag demon. “Any of the things you killed look like this?” Buffy leaned forward for a better look at the picture and shook her head. “Nope.” She looked around a the others. “Any of you get one of those when I was busy?” Everyone looked at the picture, and shook their heads. There was a general chorus of ‘No’s around the room. Buffy looked up at her sister. “Okay, so why are you looking so pleased with yourself? What’s the deal with these Skrags?” “Clem stopped by.” said Dawn. “A couple of these Skrags were in Willie’s tonight, buying drinks for the house, and bragging about how they set you up on Sunday night. They were telling people you were dead.” Buffy stood up. “So, you think word’s got back to Willie’s yet?” A groan went down the sofa as Willow, Xander and Anya started to get up too. Buffy waved them back. “No, you guys stay here. I think Spike and I can handle this.” Spike got up and followed Buffy out of the house. Kevin and Dawn squeezed themselves into the chair he’d vacated. Dawn filled the others in on what else she and Kevin had noticed about the demonic activity while they’d been updating the database. They sat around brainstorming ideas about what might be causing it, or where to look for more information without coming up with anything new. Xander eventually gave up, and offered to give Kevin and Anya rides home. --- Dawn was preparing to go to bed when Buffy got back. She waited until Buffy had finished her shower before she knocked on the door to Buffy’s room, and was invited in. “So how’d things go at Willie’s” she asked. “Word of my not dying had gotten there ahead of us, so the Skrags had cleared out.” said Buffy. She smiled. “But the guys who brought the news waited until *after* they had ordered another round for the house before they delivered it. The Skrags ran off without paying for the last round, so Willie was real cooperative about telling me where to find t I j I just had to promise not to kill them until after they paid their bar bill.” “So you found ’em?” “We found ’em.” said Buffy. “And?” “And Spike’s supposed to deliver Willie’s money on his way back to Xander’s.” “Why’d they do it?” asked Dawn. “I mean Skrags aren’t supposed to be the sort of demon that’ll go Slayer hunting.” “They *said* they did it because they were tired of all the other demons looking down on them. They wanted to make a name for themselves, get some respect.” “But you don’t believe them.” “I’m wondering where a couple of low lifes like that got eh cah cash to drop a thousand bucks at Willie’s…That’s why he was a little slow collecting for that last round: they’d already paid for four earlier ones.” “So someone hired them to kill you.” said Dawn. “That’s scary.” “Yeah, but it isn’t like I don’t have lots of things trying to kill me already, and whoever did it is trying to work on the cheap. Spike says it cost him ten times as much to hire the Order of Taraka, and he ordered the cheap ‘we’ll make three attempts’ package, not the expensive ‘we’ll hunt her to the ends of the earth, no matter how long it takes’ deal.” “So what did you do with the Skrags?” asked Dawn. “Left them with sore heads.” said Buffy. “Even left them with most of what was left of their money. Spike just took what they owed Willie. We’ll keep an eye on ’em. Maybe they’ll lead us back to whoever hired ’em. “Now, it’s a school night, so off to bed with you.”