DTLS Works are PG-13
- The images they invoke
are all in your mind.
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The Works of Dawn the Last Slayer (DTLS)
The immortal Key-born Slayer
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DTLS Works are PG-13 - The images they invoke
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The Works of Dawn the Last Slayer (DTLS) The immortal Key-born Slayer |
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| Glory's (Gloriana) Reminder: All primary references are to the real Dawn the Last Slayer and her circle in the 'Buffy-is-real' dimension. Do not confuse them with the similar, but not identical, 'Buffy-is-TV' dimension, or the actors/actresses portraying them. | All
things identified as being from the 'Buffy-is-real' dimension are derived
from the original works of Dawn the Last Slayer, not the fictional Buffy
character:
These are Copyright © 2001 gloryisagod.com/DS/G(G) |
Narrative Works of 'Dawn the Last Slayer'- # 2
"Dawn the Last Slayer" - Part 1 of 3
[Editor: Dawn's original title of this work, lined
out in the copy we have, was
"Dawn -The Key to Reality".
[Transcribed from the truly awful to-translate
handwritten documents provided by
'Dawn the Last Slayer' in her fall of
2001 and later from the "Buffy-is-Real"
dimension (corresponds to summer and later
in the "Buffy-is-TV" dimension) -
-Editor" Glory (Gloriana).
Comment: There have been
provided several versions of what actually happened
at the portal tower 5/22/01, Apparently the
portal-driven mergings caused some
confusion in the initial months that
were later sorted out as new information was
uncovered and incorporated into "Dawn
the Last Slayer's" narratives. The most
detailed information to date is in the
recently received longer work,
"The Twins -Sukkhal, The God-Killers".
Narrative Works of 'Dawn the Last Slayer'- #
2
Copyright
© 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
- Previous Narrative Work: "Buffy
& Glory - Beyond the Portal" # 1
- Next Narrative Work: "Dawn
- Three Days in Roswell"- # 3
- Primary Focus: Dawn the Last Slayer
Curupira/Tess
Clare/Glory, Pat
Anya, Xander, Giles, Willow, Tara, Spike
Glory, Buffy, Ben Hall
Doc
Woman on the Tower
- Primary Locations: Sunnydale:
Portal tower warehouse
hospital
Magic shop
Buffy's grave/cemetery
Summers' house
Glory's apartment
- Initial Date/Time: 5/22/01, dawn
[Source: "Dawn the
Last Slayer, Parts 1,2,3 " are transcribed from
copies of pp. 233-245, 250-288 of DTLS Notebook-B.]
Dawn was sitting on the steps that she'd come down the tower from after
Buffy jumped
into the portal.
It had closed and now she was looking at the gang clustering around
something. Just
barely, she could see Buffy's gray pants.
Tears welled in her eyes again. "Buffy, Buffy," she sobbed.
Giles was crying also, but he also was first and foremost a Watcher.
"Buffy was the greatest
Slayer, and I was her..." he was almost talking to himself, but Anya
did not want to look at mortal
death again and was instead watching Giles from her perch in Xander's
arms.
"I have to locate the next Slayer to help her watcher prepare her to
be the Slay..." he could not say
it. Buffy was 'The Only Slayer' in his mind. He knew he was rambling.
It had been too easy, his instincts told him. He and Anya
looked across to the other room
at the Ben he had smothered. Dawn followed their eyes. "Glory
will be back. She will." He had
suspected it and now knew it.
A sickening feeling of failure swept across him at what he saw.
Doc's magical cloaking spell dissolved Ben's image. He calmly got up
from the floor, peeled off
the black body suit and sprightly walked away out the back of the warehouse
wearing nothing,
his tail flicking as he walked. Briefly he locked his eyes on Dawn's
wide-eyed disbelieving ones
and smiled like a leprechaun with secrets.
Copyright
© 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
He winked his left eye at Dawn.
Then he was gone.
Copyright
© 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
Only the three had seen it, it happened so fast in the other room,
visible through the wrecking
ball hole
They did not see him flash a sign to someone further back in the warehouse,
beyond the
writing desk. It looked like a 'V' sign, but it wasn't. It was simply
Dawn's location. Two was the
tower base.
Anya still stared after his last sighting, as did Dawn. Giles turned
back to Buffy's body and was
consumed with guilt. Could he have done differently? The enormity of
what had occurred was
beginning to form in his mind. Buffy had been lured into the portal,
for what? By Glory and
this...Doc...creature?
Anya suddenly yelled out, "Hey, Hey, Hey!" almost causing Xander
to nearly drop her.
"Is that Glory again?"
This instantly got everyone turned to her and than following her pointing
right arm. A blur was
crossing the space from the other warehouse room to Dawn, who seemed
frozen in confusion,
still sitting on the lower steps of the tower in the Key's virgin sacrifice
Renaissance bodice outfit
that Glory had had her put on.
It stopped in the middle of the room and became a petite, almost
childlike, but obviously voluptuous
young woman, clad in skin-tight, but tendriled, forest green, with
matching color up her neck and the
sides of her face and ears. Her blonde hair was in a curious ball on
a rope hairdo.
She turned for a second to those around Buffy's body, blinked her big
gray eyes, smiled wanly,
turned and blurred to Dawn.
"She's after Dawn," Xander yelled. This roused the moribund Spike, still
in the shadows from the
rising sun. He remembered his promise to Buffy about Dawn one more
time and tried to get up, but
couldn't quite do it. The fall from the tower, his only exit choice
under the circumstances, had been
brutal, even for an undead vampire.
The green girl was staring at a petrified Dawn from arm's length. Then
she reached down, spread the
slices in Dawn's garment and touched the multiple shallow cut
wounds below her ribs on both sides,
still dripping slowly with blood.
The girl's fingers, ending in long pointed green nails, glistened with
Dawn's Key blood. "There are
still a multitude of persistent portals being held open by those with
enough magic, for as long as you
bleed, Dawn..." the girl said with a pronounced musical accent. Dawn
also thought she heard distant
bells tinkling for a second. " I'm here to help you close them. Trust
me."
 |
 |
 |
"Looks like a Bloodsucker!" Tara screamed. "Do something, Willow!"
Willow hesitated, one of her failings that would haunt her in the future.
Dawn and the green girl stared into one another's eyes briefly. Dawn
saw no hate there. Then she
knew that the girl wanted to kiss her. She did not resist as their
lips met and something flooded
Dawn's mind, body and soul. Their lips parted wider and a torrent of
raw energy roared into Dawn.
Along with images of running through a forest as fast as the wind.
There was also a totally
different flash of a look-a-like girl with long blond hair.
The gang, except for Willow and Tara, was still trying to understand what was going on.
The kiss broke after a long time, during which the watchers appeared
confused as to whether to
charge or not charge. They seemed to be under a spell of some sort.
Dawn stood up, wobbling a bit as the girl released her. "I am the demon
Curupira, " she
said, carefully pronouncing each syllable, though her charming musical
accent had disappeared,
along with the faint bells. "I am... I'm... from one of the more
obscure dimensions ... the portal
opened them all..." she gestured up toward the top of the tower with
her green-nailed fingers
on her left hand. There was still blood there, but Dawn suddenly realized
that her cuts no longer
hurt,
Looking down, she felt them and they were gone, though some smears of blood remained.
Her indecision also was gone, Dawn took the girl's bloody left hand
in her right one and led her
down the last steps of the tower. She was reminded of the time Buffy
and she had shared
Summers' and Key blood in the hospital after the battle with Glory.
It seemed like a lifetime ago. 'As if I actually had a life to seem
like a lifetime ago," she thought
bitterly. The Doc thing swirled about her. What was going on? What
had been real and what
had been magical illusion? To what purpose?
The others parted to let them through to Buffy. Still holding Curupira's
bloody hand, Dawn
knelt beside Buffy, kissed her on her unresponsive lips for a few seconds
and ran her hand
along her cheek. "Bye, Buffy. I love you." she began crying again.
Curupira's grip was all
that kept her from falling down beside Buffy in utter grief.
Looking from Buffy's angelic face in death back up to the tower extension
where Buffy had
taken her plunge, Dawn's face grew hard. Something was not right. And
she was going to
find out what. And kill anyone who got in her way. 'Where did that
come from?' she
thought as she stood up.
Something changed for Dawn in that moment. Something that Buffy had
said before diving
from the tower. But, she stood and looked beyond Curupira at the room
where she had seen
a lifeless Ben turn into Doc. "Giles," she said, "I think that Glory
was on the tower as Doc...how..."
Copyright
© 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
...It suddenly became clear to her...
"Oh my God, " she exclaimed. Glory fooled us. But Buffy...", she looked
around at her dead
Slayer sister, "Buffy would have been able to tell who she was fighting..
unless.."
Spike feigned a look of total ignorance, though his mind was racing
in terror and guilt for
his devotion and help to Buffy that was now tearing the heart out of
the sister they had been
trying to save.
"No, No, No!" Dawn screamed at the top of her voice. "How could you,
Buffy, how could you
give up like that. I believed in you. I told Glory...she and you...?"
She stopped her piercing
screaming and simply stared at Buffy, then at the tower and the hole
in the outside wall
and the one in the wall to the other room, where she had been captive.
Spinning Curupira around on impulse with a show of astonishing speed
and strength, she
looked at her closely, seeing nothing she had not seen before. "You
came from that
direction, " Dawn said flatly. Did you see a little man with a tail?"
"He was also naked," Curupira replied carefully. "He was singing a little
song in an
unusual language. Something about 'When Glory comes back, there'll
be hell to pay',
or so I heard with my special powers of language from others in the
vicinity," she explained.
Dawn released her. She already knew from the other information that
had passed between them
that the girl was not Doc or Glory.
Turning to Giles, Dawn stated in a manner that none had ever heard from
her, "Giles, We have to
take care of Buffy. Please do ... call an ambulance or something. She
fell from the tower
is all we can say," she decided. "Willow, you and Tara do something
magic about getting rid of any
obvious evidence that there was a fight here...any of Glory's monk's
bodies..."
"Xander, take Anya to the hospital with Buffy...Buffy's body, " she spoke without hesitation.
"Spike, come with me and Curupira...if you can, " she softened her voice
as he winced from the
numerous injuries he had. With difficulty, he saluted, "Yes, ma'am,
you sound like ... already,"
he caught himself, realizing the enormity of what he'd been a part
of this night.
"Sorry, " Dawn said, "I just can't waste a minute. This place can't go unnoticed forever."
Curupira spoke up, "I'll help you understand what I have bestowed upon
you. That is
my gift."
"Yes, later," Dawn answered dismissing the input. "But for now,
I have other things to do, You
may, I realize, be the ...well...key ... to helping the Key find
out exactly what really happened
here and ... Buffy...and Glory... if they are really on Glory's world,
as it seems right now."
"I've given you much of my strength and speed and immortality," Curupira
persisted in
saying. Suddenly everyone looked at her incredulously.
"Whoa," Xander stated the obvious. "Dawn's immortal now?"
Dawn looked intensely and long at Curupira, who blushed red, having
fair skin where it
wasn't green on her face itself.
The green girl said, "You have great power... Key power...I made it
make you immortal like
me... beyond mere immortality." She tilted her head questioningly.
"You're not happy that
you'll never die?... Unless something really bad happens.. then I can
resurrect you, or, as
the Key yourself, with the proper magics learned, you can resurrect
yourself. That's a power
even a god probably cannot normally possess."
"Cripes and re-cripes!" Xander yelped. "This gets weirder and weirder.
We lose Buffy and you
say she may be with Glory. You become the instant Slayer with super
whatever... and the little
green...girl appears from nowhere, heals you and gives you a rather
more than friendly kiss
to make you even more super and immortal..." Does anyone see something
fishy here?" he
looked directly at Curupira as he spoke. "Maybe Glory or her magical
stooges are behind this?"
"Glory is what, a demon?" Curupira responded, almost convincing herself.
"I'll kill her for you."
Copyright
© 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
Spike grunted and snidely said, "Glory is a god, little bimbo, an honest-to-god
god."
Curupira simply continued her offering, shaking her head, making the
ball of her hair
bob wildly. "What is a god? 'Glory is a god' means what?" It sounded
sincere even to her.
"it means," Spike said sarcastically, "that she eats little green demons
for lunch. Little
green demons by the spoonful, which is all you'd be to her, sprite."
"There is much you don't perceive," Curupira went on, blithely ignoring
Spike, "being mere
humans, except for the vampire, the one with the whiff of demon trace
and the Key. We, me
included, are two become one. When the portals all opened, some were
similar. They became
one, as did most living in them. Glory probably does not know this."
Copyright
© 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
"Giles," Dawn asked, "What does the girl...uh, Curupira... mean?"
"I fear that she's trying to explain that in some cases, similar dimensions
simply merged when
the portals opened, becoming one, and all similar inhabitants merged,"
Giles speculated on the
unexpected information. "She's also saying that we are possibly now
merged with our
counterparts in another similar dimension, courtesy of Glory's opening
all the portals."
"All the more reason," he said strongly, "That I should contact the
council and see about
their input on the next Slayer. I realize, Dawn, that you feel that
Buffy has to be sought
out by you personally, but that doesn't require that you be the next
Slayer...regardless
of your past and your newfound uniqueness..."
This was disturbing to Dawn. "I'm the Slayer and that's that, 'Mister'
Watcher!" Dawn said
with surprising authority. Now", she looked again at the group. "Where's
the ambulance?
Where's the magic cleanup? Where's something to cover my sister
up with?"
Everyone moved quickly. except the now reluctant Giles. Curupira quickly
leaned over to him
and whispered with a hiss so that only he could hear, "If you hinder
Dawn, I'll kill you where
you stand, worthless human." She seemed to lightly touch his arm, but
he was propelled away
by the tremendous force of the 'touch' and looked like he's suddenly
decided to run after the
others.
That threat, as usual, worked wonders, she smiled grimly. Especially
when assisted by some
subtle force.
Spike had wandered off slowly toward where they'd seen Curupira and
Dawn earlier. In the process,
he almost stepped on a small clear bottle with a stick-on label. Picking
it up, he saw that it had
handwritten on it "Dawn A POS" and appeared to contain blood --- and
some magic that made
him put it in his pocket and forget about it for now.
He turned and resumed his aimless pacing as Tara and Willow were casting some sort of spell.
In a few moments, the witches returned. Dawn had found, fittingly, Glory's
discarded robe to
cover Buffy. She'd also retrieved her own clothes and shoes from under
the chair in the other
room of the warehouse and put them on.
"We need a spell to make our story plausible when the ambulance arrives,"
Willow decided.
"Any ideas?" she asked Tara. "Also, the girl can't go out in pubic
like that, either. We better get
her out of sight."
"My name is Curupira, not 'the girl' she interjected," I believe that
I can assume the form of the
one that merged with me. She...we...I. have powers that I have yet
to test..." With that she
morphed suddenly into the petite blond that Dawn had briefly seen during
their kiss." I'm now
like Tess from a place far away from here," she examined her now not
green-nailed fingers
with interest.
All trace of her other persona's unusual features had disappeared.
"Where'd the costume go?" Anya, now sitting beside Xander, astutely
asked. Because the girl,
Tess/Curupira was now wearing exactly the same thing Dawn was - jeans,
top and the identical
shoes.
"Magic green costume," Tess responded absently, as she closed her eyes
and wove her first
Tess mindwarp, which was more intricate than anything she ever tried
as Curupira alone.
It was just in time, for the siren was audible coming up the street
to the warehouse.
Hours later, as Dawn and Tess exited the hospital with Willow and a
bandaged Anya, they left
the wounded Spike to make his way home underground. Dawn had forgotten
about the knife
wound to his back, but for some reason he never mentioned it bothering
him. She knew he'd
heal, but it would take awhile.
As they parted, Xander looked at back at Tess and the strangely composed
Dawn, then to
the hospital where Buffy lay in the morgue that her mother had so recently
been in. " Please
let's go," he told Anya, " before we experience still one more impossibility,
like." he sighed wearily,
"maybe the Olsen twins are from Mars?"
"But they are, didn't you know that?" Anya was heard to be saying as they drifted out of earshot.
Dawn shook her head at the dichotomy of death and deception, versus
the trivial things that make up
daily life. She reached out to Tess for reassurance that she was herself
still alive and that this was
not just an endless dream that she could not awaken from. Tess understood
her more than she
could possibly have imagined at this time.
Changing her grip on Glory's robe still folded under her other arm,
Tess remembered there were
things she had to do yet at the tower warehouse. That would have to
be tonight, after she settled
Dawn down and got her to sleep. She was confident that her mindwarp
would hold the ambulance
crew and the hospital at bay about Buffy. even anyone visiting the
warehouse,
But there needed to be some more spells cast without the witches present,
and some specific
cleanup of loose ends.
It had come to this, lying to the walking sorrow target that was
Dawn. No matter what she did,
Tess thought, Dawn would have more difficult times ahead before the
myriad possibilities
generated by the portals opening coalesced and became manageable.
If only there had not been the last minute deceptive deal between Buffy
and Glory. If only
they had been a little faster than Glory and Buffy had been, this would
be over and they
would not be having to fall back to the long term, risky Plan-B.
When it had been proposed those months ago, someone had called it Time-Share
Stupidity.
So it became TSS, pronounced 'TESS', naturally.
Recalling it as Curupira, she knew now that her Tess had known full
well that she would not
survive as a wholly separate individual after merging. Now they were
one, or at least melding
at a rapid rate into a single personality and set of memories. Though,
when morphed into Tess,
she, we, were flooded with Tess' personality and emotions and vice
versa.
Her Tess had been the first real friend Curupira had had outside her
own dimension. She
had to communicate some of this to Dawn.
Perhaps.
As Dawn touched her hand, Tess made a point of squeezing Dawn's hand
and only said,
"I'm here for you, Dawn. You're not alone."
Dawn smiled a weak smile and they walked toward the Summers' home, a
home that was going
to really be empty now.
As soon as they were far enough away, Anya grabbed Xander and changed
her demeanor.
"I couldn't say this with Dawn around, but Glory's probably torturing
Buffy right now in her demon
dimension, if that's where she is," Anya said knowingly. "That's what
I'd do in her place."
Xander only stared at her. What could he say? She was probably right, he hated to think it though.
[Of course, due to the dimensional time rate differences,
Buffy was just now waking up after her second night
on Glory's world and was less than an hour away from
immortality and her discoveries about the real Glory
behind the perceived Glory. See prior work "Buffy &
Glory - Beyond the Portal" ---Editor]
Curupira awoke with a start, realizing she'd morphed from Tess in her
sleep. Something she'd
sensed? She looked across the darkened room from within Dawn's sleeping
bag to Dawn
sprawled on her bed. Her long, long dark brown hair was spilled all
over her elfin face.
Morphing back into Tess, she shivered. And not from the coolness, she decided.
The feeling lessened and she sensed no nearby threats. So she relaxed
and lay there listening to
Dawn's now extremely slow breathing. The breathing that went with the
slowed down heartbeat
of an immortal and more.
With Dawn being the Key and the blood heir to the Slayer-ship, her transformation
had been
within seconds of the completion of the bestowal kiss. There was much
to teach the new Slayer,
even while she, herself, had to learn what sort of individual she was
becoming
as the Curupiran and Tess parts of her intertwined and became one,
or not.
Copyright
© 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
It was almost a dance of equals.
Curupira was more than a demon even before, with her ability to both
bestow death or powers,
and the converse one to acquire powers with her kiss. In reality, she
had come over the past
months to realize that she could use these previously acquired powers
to increase her
magical reservoirs to a level not possible before she'd been drawn
into the small group
working to get the other Glory through the portal before this one.
Working with a god, however limited by her male prison, made her realize
that she herself was
more like a near-god, in that her potential for growth had no obvious
limits beyond herself.
Tess was a different sort of power. Her mysterious mixed origins, the
hint of technologically
induced magic and her raw, almost untrained, powers made her a formidable
ally. Her mindwarp
ability was what had gotten her recruited by the other Ben/Glory originally.
Together, as they merged into one individual with bi-modal mixed memories,
unlike either Ben/Glory
pair, they ... she... became aware that their magic was much vaster
than the simple combination of
their separate powers. It would take time and exploration to see where
the limits were.
In the meantime, there was the unfinished business.
Tess got up and morphed her magic costume from a T- shirt and panties
to Dawnish clothing
again. With a gesture and a word, she cast a complex mindwarp and magic
spell combination
that would allow Dawn to sleep without worry. Any unwelcome visitor
would wander the house
and never even find the door to where she was, and not even realize
it.
Simple and effective, yet beyond anything she could have spun as either of her former selves.
Slipping out of the house, she ran at superspeed the many blocks to the tower warehouse area.
It was strange to be doing this in Tess' form, which was not quite as
sturdy as the indestructible
Curupiran one. Still, the sensations were almost the same. The 300
feet per second or so
wind flowing her Tess hair behind her, unlike the ball on a rope hairdo
that wouldn't snag in tree
branches in her forest. Keeping her pace slow enough to be sure of
avoiding a collision.
She could sense various domesticated and small wild animals as she ran.
Brief sense sensations
told her of a stray vampire and a pair of demons not native to this
dimension. She entered the
warehouse via the side entrance by the tower base. Being able to see,
if needed, beyond the
range of normal sight,
Tess began a magical search for the first form, after de-spelling some
of her local mindwarp
on the place
She found it not far from where Buffy had fallen. It was this Glory's
Ben. His body had been
cloaked with a spell from the second he'd passed through the portal
energy and Glory had
slipped out of him. A second spell was overlain, Tess sensed, by the
other Glory as she
worked feverishly to implement Plan-B's first steps.
It was amazing that it had even worked.
But she'd used the time the portal was open and Glory was through, waiting
for Buffy to
make her diving decision, to absorb some of the godly powers leaking
past the portaled
Glory to extract herself from Ben's body to enter her waiting and willing
female host .
A host physically and mentally prepared to match Glory herself. That
was Time-Share
Stupidity, TES - now maybe not so stupid in retrospect.
Reshaping the magics, she made Ben's body visible for the first time.
He did not have Buffy's Slayer body so his wasn't in very good shape.
She was shocked to
see that his soul was still bound to his body by magics so powerful
that she couldn't even
figure out how they worked. Faintly she could see a ethereal form resembling
Ben saying
something she couldn't understand.
The form was too indistinct. How cruel, she thought. At the very least
she could see he wasn't buried
but placed into an above ground mausoleum. A sound behind her made
her whirl and prepare for
a fight.
Copyright
© 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
"Oh, she said, "It's only you, Ben."
"Only me," he protested. "How can you see? I've been stumbling around
her for hours waiting for
you."
Tess gestured and some of the warehouse lights nearby came on. Ben was
still dressed in the
other Glory's black body suit. "I assume that things are at least started
OK, since I'm here," he
guessed.
"Yes, Tess said, quickly catching him up to date and showing him where
the other Ben's body was
now visible. He winced at the sight. "Glory's bound his body to his
soul, too. Pretty vengeful,"
Tess added. "She's ruthless. When she decides to come back, there will
be problems."
"Disaster, I'd say," he wasn't optimistic.
He and Tess began a search for any other magically cloaked items. Some
of the cloaking was
Willow and Tara's rather simple magic. There were a number of
weapons, a few dead monks
and lost of tools and equipment. She and Ben hauled them into
a pile near the alleyway behind
the tower. "I'll go look for a truck to ... borrow:, but I'll need
you to get inside and start it, babe,"
Ben reminded her.
"No," she said, "Take this, " she showed him a key ring she's taken
from one of the monks' bodies.
Pausing, she cast a minor morphing spell on it. "For a few hours, these
keys will open any car or
truck. Just keep trying them until one works," she tossed them
to him.
When he left, she went up on the tower and quickly found both Glorys''
clothes and goodies'
magically cloaked trunks on the level below where the tower extension
platform was.
She was dragging them lightly down the last stairs, past where
she'd first touched Dawn
when she heard footsteps.
"Ben?" she called out without looking up.
She dropped the end straps on the huge trunks when she heard a strange
voice. "Well, well,"
what have you got there, little girl?" It was the taller of two men
dressed in work clothes.
"She don't look so much like a girl, now that I can see all of her,
" the other one laughed.
"She looks fine to me, just fine."
They spread apart to catch her if she started running. "Just do as we
say, little bitch, and
you might live a few more hours." The first man said.
"Hell, " the other one laughed, "I'd say she's worth a couple of days
of fun, like those two high
school girls we picked up last month. Too bad they ain't gonna ever
graduate. But they were
good while they lasted." Both laughed and came closer to Tess.
"Just what are you two idiots planning to do with me?" Tess managed
a worried look.
Her senses were picking up images of many, far too many, girls with
terror on their faces
and hopelessness in their eyes.
"Whatever we please, little girl, whatever we please," the taller
man was within reaching
distance of Tess now.
"You two are even more worthless than most humans," Tess said in a low
voice. "At least
vampires and demons have survival as a part of their killing. You're
beneath contempt,
preying on innocent girls for your sexual perversions, then killing
them and tossing them
out as if they were garbage. For that you will die," she smiled a smile
that should have
struck any intelligent being as a warning.
These two were blinded by their aroused lust at her insane, unafraid
reaction and her
entrancing beauty that promised a different sort of excitement than
they'd experienced to date.
Tess morphed.
Copyright
© 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
Curupira raked her right hand's long pointed green nails across the
guy reaching for her.
His arm was ripped with 5 cuts to the bone from his biceps to his wrist.
He fell back, confused
at his incredible pain and the sudden appearance of the green-clad
girl in place of the
helpless little blonde.
Ignoring his screams as he tried to staunch the blood pouring out of
his wounds, Curupira
launched herself at the other man, frozen in disbelief, "What are you?
"he managed to get
out as she stopped in front of him.
She was not smiling.
"I'm the one who's weeding you two useless humans out of the gene pool," she hissed.
She blurred.
And hit him full speed, slashing with both hands parallel to the floor
so fast that her
arms were barely visible as two arcing blurs. Now a solid sheet of
blood bloomed where
her long green nails sliced like 5-bladed buzz saws into the attacker's
torso and face. To
avoid most of the resulting puree of blood, flesh and bone, Curupira
stepped back and turned to
the other wounded guy, who was staring in his own pain and shock
in horror at what seconds
ago had been his partner in crime.
All he saw was two legs attached to a pair of hips. Everything above
the pants belt was
a collapsing cloud of red and white mist. He screamed as the pants
stood there by
themselves, then toppled over with a sickening splat into the huge
pool of foamed blood,
meat and bone.
"There is no mercy here for you, "she said, still hissing in anger,
"No more than you gave
your victims. I am justice. I am vengeance. I am death."
Curupira blurred again.
Ending with a step that turned into a blurry kick between his legs that
split him in two up
to his chest. "Bet that hurt," she smiled, and just stood there and
watched him die in
absolute agony as all his body cavities emptied out onto the floor
like yolk out of a broken egg.
By the time Ben drove up, Tess was sitting on one of the trunks, now
with the other
stuff near the alley. He got out and walked over to help load the pickup
he'd gotten.
His eyes strayed to the scene in front of the tower steps. "Jeez, what
happened... demons?"
he guessed, since there were bodies.
"Worse," Tess said quietly, "They were serial rapists and killers of
so many girls. They wanted me.
All I could think of was, what if it had been anyone else but me? I
remembered when we found the
other Dawn's body. I know, it wasn't the same, but it was still innocence
brutalized. To endure endless
terror and torture and then to be discarded like trash."
"Yeah," Ben shuddered at the memory and went over to examine the remains
to satisfy his medical
curiosity. One look told him that he really didn't want to get on her
bad list.
"Are you going to leave them like this?" he asked, returning to Tess.
"After we load the truck, " she got down of the trunk, " I'm going to
try another of Tess...my…
specialties, the old blast of fire trick. I'll have to bound it with
some magic to keep from burning
the place down."
Copyright
© 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
Ben watched the fireworks with interest later, as Tess flamed the floor
clean, leaving only a big
scorched place on the concrete. They'd added the monks' bodies to the
area before hand, also.
The broken body of the other Ben was wrapped in a piece of old carpet
and in the back of
the truck. The beheaded Bot was in a canvas bag that must have been
used for tools.
As they started to get into the truck they heard a voice, a female voice
from high above. Tess
also heard a faint sound of distant bells. Ben did not. Both looked
up. "Tess," the voice called
out. "Come on up her for a moment. Ben please stay there."
Tess had to find out who it was. She'd heard their Glory and Ben talking
of someone that they
never named. Ben urged Tess up. "This is something very special for
her to see you," he
smiled. "Go on, hurry."
Tess raced up the various levels of steps and ladders to the top level
of the tower. Standing out
on the edge of the extension was a very tall female figure clad in
a long wind blown skirt and a flowing,
long-sleeved blouse of shiny silk, it seemed. She was standing with
her wrists where this dimension's
Dawn had been bound with the large soft ropes.
"So," the figure said, "this is where she stood, awaiting her fate.
The Destroyer of Worlds made
human. So much for such a tragic innocent to bear. How is she, Tess?"
The figure remained in
the simulated bound position as she talked.
Tess walked closer, noticing that she was barefoot as Dawn had been
when healed. Her hair was
almost as long as Dawn's, but was a mass of flowing waves of
what was probably auburn hair
in the sunlight. She had to be 6 feet tall.
"Uh, " Tess answered. "I'm taking care of her. She's sleeping under
spell and mindwarp protection.
May I know to whom I speak?" she asked carefully.
"In time, little one, in time," was the response. "I just wanted to
thank you for all you've done this day
for Dawn and earlier for Glory and Ben from the other merged
dimension. You also have your own
merging to deal with, I see. Please, allow me the honor of Curupira
also."
"You're welcome," Tess replied uncertainly and morphed.
Copyright
© 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
"Come closer, little one," she was told.
As Curupira got within a few paces of the woman, she heard the bells
again over the suddenly
calmed wind. Looking up at her face she suddenly had a revelation of
who this might be.
Falling to the metal grating of the tower she prostrated herself with
her forehead
on the grating, trembling nervously
Two hands reached down and pulled her up by her wrists. "Little one,"
said the woman, "I don't
demand worship, nor do I intervene directly. I watch and work through
those willing to do the
things needed. You're now one such. We'll meet again as time goes by."
With that, she held Curupira's face up to her. "You're so cute, it hurts
to look at you. What a marvel
you are. Both of you as one! How unexpected and promising." She
kissed Curupira on her forehead
lightly in a motherly way. "Go, little one, and follow your nature.
It's the right way."
 |
 |
What they did for the next 3 hours was something they would never talk about without prodding.
Suffice it to say that that Buffy would never be cut upon for an autopsy.
That was a promise that
had been made in memory of both the other Dawn and the other Buffy
in case the good Glory failed
and they had to use Plan-B. Months ago they had surmised that this
Buffy would be killed trying to
save her Dawn.
The local Ben's body was placed in an 'available' above ground mausoleum
in the cemetery
where Buffy would be buried in the plot her mother had purchased long
ago.
The latter required mindwarping wrapped in lingering and forgetting
spells at the hospital, plus the
Tessian creation of faked documents. Ben left to return the truck and
Curupira ran home to Dawn
after seeing he was away OK to wherever he had planned. She suspected
he already was working
with at least the memorable and obviously powerful woman on the tower.
What was curious, she thought as she loped to Dawn's house on Rivelo
Drive in her familiar
Curupiran form, was that even her senses had been unable to classify
the woman. To cloak oneself
so completely was in itself a sign of immense power. She put that aside
as she detected several
demons ahead.
However, they took one look at her highway-speed running, her costume
and her looks and
retreated long before she arrived near them.
She must have appeared like something out of demon nightmares to them,
she smiled at the thought
as she slowed down at the Summers' house. Following a quick check of
Dawn, she settled down for
a whole 3 hours of sleep, or what passed for it in her body.
It was much later in the morning, after Tess and Dawn had partaken of
the usual immortals' huge intake
of food to keep their magic reservoirs expanding and full, that
she and Dawn arrived at the Magic
shop to find Spike huddled in the nearby alley in a dumpster. Dawn
handed him a large black doorman's
umbrella they'd found in a second hand store she knew of and picked
up on the way over.
Why no one had bothered to help him this way before was a mystery to her.
Once inside it was two hours before the shop opened on this day of mourning.
No one really wanted to
open it, but it kept some of them busy. Besides, none particularly
wanted to be alone this day. Tess
told Dawn just enough of what she had done about Buffy and was grateful
to see her relieved reaction
to not having to find her father and get him involved yet.
She seemed to have already accepted Tess as a sort of surrogate Buffy.
Tess morphed back into Curupira and began exploring the Magic shop and
its contents like a little
kid in a candy store. So much magic had been unavailable in her backward
world. She was learning
just by being aware that something was even possible. When she found
the forbidden books up the
stairs she sat down and began reading as the other five from the tower
debacle arrived at intervals.
Giles in particular watched her with concern as she began reading the
magic volumes at a rapid
pace in their diverse and arcane languages. "Miss, uh, Curu...Curupira,
" he said from the top of the
stairs, "That one you're looking at is powerful magic. We're not even
sure what the language is,
other than that the illustrations warn of all sorts of dire consequences
if a mistake is made."
"I know," the green girl responded.
"I can read it because I have great magic of my own, including both
written and spoken language
understanding. I'll explain the book to you if you wish. There's an
interesting spell her that allows
one to read another's thoughts, Unfortunately it also will kill the
spell caster unless a separate
protective spell is first cast. Still, just knowing it can be
done is power."
She gestured absently and the next book flew lightly into her hands.
Willow and Tara saw this as they came in and started whispering while
they joined the rest at the large
table. Dawn waved to Curupira to come down. They exchanged a glance
as she moved like a cat
down the stairs. Giles was still standing near the stairs, obviously
to keep an eye on the newcomer.
"So," Dawn asked in a light manner, emulating Buffy's casual attitude,
"What else's happened since the
great charade at the portal yesterday?"
Copyright
© 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
Obviously there'd been other discussions she'd not been a part of since
that pre-dawn battle. "Um,"
Giles finally said, "I've been in contact with the council and they
say that there have been marked
increases in strange creature sightings, but no disasters. They're
skeptical of the merging theory
reported by the green..., uh, Curupira."
"There are new nasties, but no real collapse of the universe..."
Dawn broke in, "That's not exactly true, Giles," she said boldly. "Curupira's
description of another similar
reality having merged with ours, as she told me in greater detail in
the last day, is that only some higher
beings will even recognize it has happened."
"Well," Giles responded instantly, "She's a demon, a disturbingly shape-shifting
one. How could we ever
be sure she wasn't a tool for Glory like that Doc thing was?"
"She's not," Dawn's voice rose in strength, "We've touched and shared
some of our minds in the ...
bestowal kiss...She's from a totally different dimension where Glory
was never even a rumor. I think that
she could be of enormous help to us when Glory returns, since her combined
powers as Tess and
Curupira are already, she says, allowing a massive expansion of her
superpowers and magics."
"Dawn," Willow spoke to her as if she were still a child. "We've seen
no evidence of all that she is telling
you. Just some magic tricks that could be simple illusions..."
Dawn slammed her right palm and fingers onto the tabletop with a bang
like a gunshot, driving them
half an inch into the wood! They all jumped involuntarily. Then took
deep intakes of air as she
slowly revealed the perfect impression in the varnished wood.
"It's not your call anymore, Willow," Dawn spoke into the sudden dead silence.
"Buffy's lied to me, to us, and gone with Glory, and until we get her
back, and we will, I'm the new
Slayer on the block." She paused, then grew up before their very eyes
from little sis to Slayer,
as she said, stopping between each word,
Copyright
© 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
"Get...used...to...it...or...get...out...of...my...way!"
All were obviously confused by her forcefulness. Except for one.
"OK with me," the ever practical Anya said, examining the impression
of Dawn's hand in the tabletop.
"Slayer," she added cautiously. Xander looked at her in bafflement.
Giles got his voice back. "The council is of a mind to come here to
try to find out what happened to you.
It's unheard of for a Slayer to be from the same family and to be so
irregularly self-selected," he spoke
extremely carefully this time.
Willow was still having trouble thinking of Dawn a anything other than
Buffy's little sister, Key though she
might be..."And the council, she broke in uncharacteristically, "they're
not sure that being the Key
qualifies as valid Slayer credentials..."
Dawn scoffed, Buffy-like.
"The council, as Buffy said in this very room when she first found out
that Glory was a god, is either
part of the solution helping the Slayer, me, or is out of the game,"
Dawn paraphrased.
"I'm it and I'm different and the Key, me, is unimaginably ancient.
"Glory said so to me in the hospital. But I'm also Buffy's sister by
blood and we can't waste time
quibbling - God knows what Buffy is enduring as we speak. I don't think
Glory is going to be very
kind to Buffy regardless of what they apparently planned together."
"I know how Glory treated me, and she needed me to die for her."
Dawn reminded them of her reason for existence. "I'm the Destroyer
of Universes made human.
Do you think I'm going to worry about little things like councils and
Watchers and Slayer succession
protocols and other trivial crap like that?"
[Editor - At that moment, unbeknownst to Dawn, Glory was
showing Buffy the place where she was
first transitioned into consciousness as a new, magically-constructed
god. Barely a tiny girl-child, but
not ever a baby, her 'birth" had taken endless millennia
to incrementally build to the moment that she
was a true individual. Such was the way gods were born
into the world, motherless and fatherless, but with
her 'creators' - her 'siblings'. Buffy could now understand
Glory's profound loneliness and looked at
her with even more understanding and loving sympathy.
See the prior work "Buffy & Glory - Beyond the Portal"
for how this relationship came to pass.]
Dawn finished speaking and there was a shocked silence. Again except for one.
"You sound just like, Buffy," Anya said sincerely. "She never paid any
attention to anyone in
her way either. So you must be the Slayer, " she looked around
for someone to agree with her.
Dawn simply waved to the watching Curupira to follow her. "We have to
get ready to patrol
tonight, " she told the green girl. "You and I have to sort out our
superpowers and how to use
them." Her tone was almost as if she were discussing what to have for
lunch. "And," she
added, turning to face the table again, "I'm asking you to have no
more meetings about
Slayer stuff decisions without me and Curupira present."
"We'll be back her at sunset and anyone is welcome to join us," she offered.
With that, Dawn stalked out. Curupira followed her and morphed in midstep
to Tess as they
neared the door. The bell rang as it was opened and then closed. They
all began talking at
once, except for Anya and Tara, who were still watching the pair of
girls crossing the street
until they passed the edge of the window.
That evening the first of the stray portal interlopers to be searched
out was the flying dragon
that Dawn had seen circling the tower before Buffy dived into the portal.
To everyone's surprise but Dawn's, it was Curupira who helped the most.
"It's a beast of the day," she concluded from Dawn's description. "Since
I was a forest demon,
I know beasts and can sense them and many of their thoughts, such as
they are. This creature
is so large that it has to be either atop a building or in a wooded
area. It probably has already
killed some of the nearby domesticated larger animals humans keep as
livestock."
Willow had pored over maps of Sunnydale and its surroundings.
There were only a few farming areas with nearby woodlands. It seemed
unlikely that it could find
food in Sunnydale proper without being readily seen in daylight - and
they'd heard no such reports,
other than the mysterious fires and street damage from the other night
that were being blamed on
lightning.
All the places identified would have to be checked out in the tomorrow.
So, after a swift patrol that
scared up nothing but ordinary vampires that they ignored, Dawn and
Curupira went home.
Dawn and Tess had been going through Glory's old apartment the previous afternoon.
Dawn had taken Ben's meager remaining belongings.
Until she read his badge she'd not realized that his last name was Hall.
She wondered if, when
Glory was morphed out of him, she used the almost comical name of "Glory
Hall", which sounded
vaguely obscene.
She had to have had some way to pay for the apartment, the clothes and
the bills, and that
required identification and records. Maybe some magic also, they
decided, before leaving.
Buffy's very private funeral was held the third day.
Tess' mindwarps had allowed it to proceed with no autopsy and no police.
Only the gang and
Tess were there. Since they were now sure that Buffy was probably with
Glory and that this shell
was only a memory of her, it wasn't as bad as they'd expected.
Still it was the end of an era and they all knew it.
Whatever happened from this day on would be wholly different from what had passed before.
There was some consternation when Dawn removed the cloth covering the
headstone. "I may not
be happy with Buffy and her pact with Glory," she said in a very serious
voice as she dropped the
cloth, "But she did it for me, and maybe because she'd saved the world
just one too many times."
That was how the words "She saved the world a lot" got on the headstone.
What was not pointed out to them was that the all the engraving on the
stone was done solely by
the green fingernails of a certain little green girl. She who was the
first part of the wholly different
future that was about to affect them and others outside the tight little
Sunnydale world that had
been their primary focus for the past few years.
Copyright
© 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
A curious post-portal lull went on for almost three weeks, with Giles
pointing out behind her back that
Dawn had yet to make her first kill.
Anya was her only defender.
"I've heard her and the green girl talking. They're deliberately ignoring
the local vampires and
passing demons to allow the ones that came through the portals to believe
that there's no danger
in showing themselves. That the stories of the Slayer having been taken
by a hell god to her own
dimension are true and that this is a place where they can thrive."
Giles, Willow and even Spike were doubtful. "Maybe she's afraid of killing,
" Willow speculated more
than once.
Spike was less sure.
He knew more than he ever spoke, but he also was aware of the wild rumors
sweeping the local
non-human population. "They talk of the Slayer being taken by the hell
god, but also of a super
demon that has been seen with the Slayer's sister on patrol. What if
that's also keeping them
in hiding?"
Copyright
© 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
"Super demon?" Giles rolled his eyes. "All we've seen her do is shape
shift, cast a few illusions and
spells that are probably within the capability of Willow..."
Tara demurred. "She does her spells and morphing as if they were second
nature to her and we've
all watched her read and study every book and object here at least
once. She can read even the books
we can't...or so she says."
"But she has yet to explain the blonde Tess she morphs into, supposedly
the proof that she and
we are merged now with our counterparts," Giles phrased this carefully
in case it got back to Dawn.
Willow and Tara left to visit the hospital for records on Ben's past, now that they knew his last name.
Without either Dawn or Curupira at the Magic shop with Anya and himself,
Giles almost wet his pants
when Glory walked in - or at least a blonde version of her!
"...Glory...," he stammered as Anya prudently dropped behind the counter,
fully expecting fireballs or
worse! "Giles," she whispered up at him, "We're dead. And it was such
a short engagement, too," she
said fatalistically.
"Hi, " the blonde said, smiling a radiant Glory smile. "Is this where
the Slayer hangs out? Are you her
Watcher, the one who tried to kill Ben?"
Giles was quaking in his shoes and actually had now wet himself. Anya
noticed. He knew he was
a dead man, probably after endless torture by Glory.
The blonde, appearing taller than she really was due to her high heels,
looked down as Anya bravely
stood up and both peered disapprovingly at the puddle forming around
Giles' shoes. Anya finally
said, "Giles, you're ruining the floor with your pee."
Since he seemed to be unable to speak, the blonde shook her head and
made a grimace with her
mouth that indicated puzzlement.
"He thinks you're going to pull off his arms and legs and use him for
a planter," Anya jumped in with
her usual lack of forethought. "And he killed Ben, or what he thought
was Ben, not me!" she added
even faster and louder. The one customer looked about uneasily and
left hurriedly through the
door.
Anya noted that the blonde didn't even look around at the distraction,
but returned to her original
questions, "Well, is it and are you?"
"Yes," Anya responded with alacrity, "but Giles killed Ben, not me,"
she hoped that only Giles would
be killed and she, as a former demon, would be seen as helpful
to Glory.
"Hello, then," the blonde held out her right hand to Anya, "my name
is Clare. I'm from Los Angeles.
I need to see Dawn Summers about Slayer business."
Giles almost fainted with relief and could speak again,"...You just
look like someone we knew. Except
for the blonde hair..." his voice died away again.
"Yes. I know, "Clare smiled. "I'm our Glory's host now," she added deadpan,
"and we merged as she
began the process of making me immortal. That was a part of our deal,"
she smiled again at Giles
with a sly smile that resulted in more floor water.
"Glory," Clare said sweetly, "The man with the bladder problem wants to see you, I think."
Glory morphed in and Giles fainted dead away toward the wet floor.
Her light red curls flying, she blurred to catch him and simply tossed
him onto the long table nearby
in one motion, before pausing back at Anya's counter.
"He killed Ben, or at least he wanted to in this dimension anyway," Glory leaned on the counter.
"The other, your, Glory would kill him just for that, but fortunately
for all of you, including you,
sweetie though you're trying to be to me, I'm not quite as uncontrolled
as she has been here."
Anya, almost in a trance from fear, could only repeat, "He killed Ben, not me."
Exasperated, Glory gave up and looked around briefly in the back rooms,
then at the still out Giles
and the almost catatonic Anya.
"I'll be back when I can find someone who can talk intelligently. "Here's
my cell phone number," she
wrote on a small card," We're staying at your Glory and Ben's old apartment.
We bought the whole
building and the adjacent one the other day."
Anya's bulging eyes followed Glory's black nailed fingers as she placed
the card in Anya's frozen fingers.
Copyright
© 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
Her eyes followed the redhead as she left without bothering to shape
shift back to the blonde
called Clare. Being late in the day, there were no other customers.
It took a long while for Anya and
Giles to return to fearful normalcy,
They locked the door and tried to sort out what was going on, while
Anya waved the card in front of his
face. "When did Glory ever leave a cell phone number and tell us her
address?" she argued.
Giles was having none of it. "She's back and toying with us like a cat
with a mouse," he was convinced.
Copyright
© 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
End of Part 1....
| Continue to Part 2 of "Dawn the Last Slayer" |
NOTE: Road trip to Roswell in
the next work:
#3 "Dawn - Three Days in Roswell"
| Back to Dawn's Works List | Back to Main Page |
| All
things identified as being from the 'Buffy-is-real' dimension are derived
from the
original works of Dawn the Last Slayer, not the fictional Buffy character: These are Copyright © 2001 gloryisagod.com/DS/G(G) |
| Glory (Gloriana)
Gloryisagod.com -end- |
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