DTLS Works are PG-13  - The images they invoke         are all in your mind.

..  The Works of Dawn the Last Slayer (DTLS) The immortal Key-born Slayer

Narrative Works of 'Dawn the Last Slayer'-  # 2
Copyright © 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
"Dawn the Last Slayer"  -   Part 2 of 3

.....Continued from Part 1.......

- 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.]

....Continued from Part 1.......
Copyright © 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
Curupira and Dawn worked well together.

Curupira was  faster than Dawn had seen Glory run on the campus or when she slaughtered
hundreds of knights dragging and carrying Dawn.

Granted, Dawn was nowhere near as fast, but, unlike Buffy, her own combination of magicallt
inherited Slayer strength, Curupiran strength, immortality and still in-training superpowers
made her the most powerful Slayer ever to claim the title.

As Curupira had said to her, "You'll be the last Slayer, Dawn."

"The end point of the Slayer mythos is with the Key-born Slayer," she had said mysteriously.
"And the greatest."  This made no sense to Dawn at the time, since she believed that she
would bring Buffy back some day, regardless of what Glory had planned for her.

And Buffy would still be a Slayer, as was the imprisoned Faith, who was rarely mentioned
without a dark frown.

Unlike their first and last encounter, Dawn was determined that she would take on Glory and
fight her personally, toe-to-toe, as the Slayer, when she returned to either gloat or to demonstrate
her powers to the peasants.

That would surprise the hell-bitch mightily!

Anyway, together they finally located the dragon in a clearing near a farm and Dawn proceeded
to hack it to death with a battle-axe while Curupira distracted it by holding onto its thrashing tail.

She felt the Slayer and Curupiran strength in her every blow.

It amazed her that someone as slight as she was could both swing the two-handed curved-blade
axe so easily and so fast, burying it feet deep in the tough hide and flesh of the roaring behemoth,
while easily avoiding its slashing claws and great teeth almost without thinking.

In the process, Dawn tasted her first kill's blood as she chopped away and was splattered all over.

"First Slayer kill, " she repeated it several times as she climbed atop the great beast with Curupira
and surveyed the immense size of it. She wondered if she could have done it without the green girl.
No matter, Curupira was proving herself to be the first recruit to the Slayer's circle to be added by
Dawn herself.

That fact impressed upon Dawn once more that she had real power. It was a heady feeling for
someone who had been treated as a mere kid for the less than a year she had been real.

Triumphantly, the two came back to the shop as the sun was setting, talking excitedly of the battle
with the dragon. They froze at the sight of Willow, Anya, Giles, Spike, Tara and Xander armed to the
teeth and looking very grim. Maybe because of the blood on her, she guessed.
Copyright © 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
"Triumphantly, the two came back to the shop as the sun was setting, talking excitedly of the battle..."
  Copyright © 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
Dawn, looking the part of a real Slayer for the first time, covered in blood and carrying the blooded axe
stated the obvious, "We killed the dragon...this is its blood, not mine..." her Slayer instincts kicked in
at that second and she whirled to face the apparent foe they were expecting.

Curupira mimicked her.

"No one, " Curupira relaxed.

The two just kept on turning until they faced the gang again, almost looking like a military maneuver
or a dance move. Willow spoke, since Giles seemed to be shaking like he had the chills. "Dawn,"
she said solemnly, "Glory was here today!"

It was like a thunderbolt to Dawn!

She hadn't expected to have to face Glory so soon. Surely her revenge on her world would take
more than a few weeks, unless she were so powerful..."What did she do?" Dawn asked angrily
and a bit fearfully. She had fallen from the heights of First Kill to the depths of facing Glory, all
in the space of a few heartbeats.

She'd hoped she'd have more time to prepare with Curupira for Glory's undoubted return.

Anya, helpful as usual, held out a card to Dawn. "She came in, Giles wet himself and Glory left
us a card with her cell phone number and address on it. She said it was her old apartment
building."

Anya stated as best as she could recall.

Curupira glanced at it, leaned over and briefly sniffed it in a classic Glory manner that both Spike
and Dawn had experienced first hand. Spike bristled, but Curupira simply said, "God presence,"
in a terrifying statement.

"Why is she leaving a phone number and address? That makes no sense. " Dawn was immediately
suspicious. "What exactly did she say?"

Anya repeated her version of her memories.

"She gave her name. Clare I think. She was blonde. Giles wet...uh, fainted when she shape-shifted
into the redheaded Glory. She caught him and put him on the table. She said that she wanted to
see Dawn about Slayer stuff. Said she'd be back and left the card," she paused to breathe.

"Oh, " Anya recalled," She mentioned that Giles had killed someone he thought was Ben. She
also kept saying something about 'our' and 'your' Glory, I think. Has she really gone fully insane
now?"

Xander actually moaned now, "It was a good life while it lasted. I guess we're all dead now?" he
spoke with a dreadful sound to his voice.

Giles finally spoke, stuttering uncharacteristically, "I don't remember much, except Anya, whom I'm
now contemplating firing, kept telling Glory that I killed Ben, not her," he said accusingly.

Anya fired back, "He wet himself before fainting."

"You two stop blaming one another. We all know that wasn't Ben, but the two-faced Doc that
Giles thought he killed. Regardless, why didn't she just kill both of you?" Dawn asked rhetorically.

"This whole thing makes no sense at all." She began pacing around the counter area slowly,
thinking.

To everyone else's surprise, they found themselves looking at Dawn and waiting for her to suggest
the next course of action. Somehow she seemed different. Maybe it was the axe, the blood or the
attitude she sported now.
Copyright © 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
Dawn stopped behind the counter and, in a typical Buffy decision, picked up the phone and, to
everyone but Curupira's horror, began punching in the numbers from the card Glory had left.

"My God!" Willow and Giles screamed together, "What're you doing?",

"Calling  Glory, or whatever name she's using," Dawn continued punching, while all but Curupira
were yelling at her to stop. At that moment, the green girl stepped between Dawn and the rest of the
yellers, and folded her arms in a gesture of menace that stopped the yelling like a cold shower.

"A male voice answered, "Hello" was all he said. "Dawn Summers, the Slayer,"  she stated maturely.
Her voice was devoid of fear, she realized. She wondered if immortality meant much in  facing a God
like Glory.

"Ah, Dawn the new Slayer," the voice seemed slightly amused. "Clare said that you weren't there
but this Giles wet himself and fainted when she morphed into Glory..." he spoke all this matter-of-factly.

"We know, " she said, annoyed. Would this aspect of the visit never end? "Can I speak to Glory?"

"Clare's taking a bath right now. We just go in today and are still opening up boxes. This place is
a mess still," he said casually and conversationally.

The gang, hearing only one side of the call, grew more apprehensive, save for Curupira, who was able
to easily hear both sides of the call.

She was smiling a broad smile now.

"If you want to, come on over about nine-ish tomorrow, " he said. "We should be a little more settled
by then. Uh, is there a little green girl there about to explode?"

Dawn almost dropped the phone.

"S..Sure, Curupira..." At that, Curupira had turned around and darn if she didn't look as if she were
going to explode from excitement. Dawn was truly disturbed at this mystery. "How do you know her
and what are you in all this?" she asked him. She was beginning to get the idea that perhaps this
was some sort of setup and that Glory wasn't really back.

Yet, the call seemed so ordinary, except for the Curupira thing.

"Let me talk to her, please," he asked Dawn. She turned and held out the phone to Curupira, "He wants
to talk to you. she said. Curupira  blurred so fast that she simply seemed to appear on the other side
of the counter to all but the enhanced Dawn.

"Hi," Curupira said in a combination of shyness and eagerness Dawn had not witnessed before.

"Oh yes, " they heard her say. "I did. Yes and Ben, too. Tess merged. We've slain a dragon. But I
thought you'd never get here. Why did it take so long? Is she pregnant yet? Okay. What didn't go
exactly right? Clare, who's Clare?  But I want to come over right now! "

This rapid-fire chatter of hers that they were hearing was puzzling and disturbing.

"She's working with Glory. " Spike protested somewhat guiltily. "Sounds more like she's in love to me,"
Tara observed quietly and that stopped all the talking immediately. It was getting too complicated and
no one seemed to be thinking annihilation any more anyway.

"Okay," Curupira finally said, "I can be over there as soon as I know where it is. Bring it over?" She
whispered something after turning her face away from them. "OK, bye." Then several phrases  in an
unknown language.

Turning around, she asked quickly, "Where's the robot Buffy I returned here some weeks ago? Weren't
you working on it the other day?" she looked at Willow.

"Well, it's not working yet. We were planning on giving it back to Spike after we used it to substitute
for Buffy to keep the authorities from sniffing around. But you seem to have baffled everyone with your
little magics pretending to be Buffy instead," Willow explained.

"But why do you want it?"

"He says that they need to get Glory to extract some of the memories from it to help solve some of the
remaining mysteries of the mergings that occurred as the portal opened and closed, "Curupira said
in an earnest voice. "They don't need it to be working, Glory's magic and mine probably can do it."

"What?", Giles raised his voice. "You're going over tonight...and with the...robot...the bot...after Glory
beheaded it?  Exactly when did you get it and why did you wait a week or so to bring it here to Willow to
play with?"

Curupira explained as best she could, leaving out the things that she couldn't tell them.

"I went over later that night and finished the cleanup. I cast a number of spells and wards to keep the
place free of the curious. The stuff I brought back to Dawn's house in a 'borrowed' truck. I've already
told Dawn and some of you  about all the mindwarps and faked documents to handle matters about
Buffy...her hospital records not showing her dead, the private service we had..."

Dawn spoke from the heart. "And that's something I thought was so the right thing to do for Buffy."
she sniffled a bit at the passing thoughts she had.

The others nodded.

"Glory." Curupira continued, her voice clear, "The Glory you fought, that took Buffy, or whatever
actually transpired between them - she's the 'bad' Glory. She kills on impulse. She's very immature,
essentially a girl of Dawn's... approximate level of maturity...uh, what Dawn was before..."

Dawn tried to look more mature.

"Anyway," Curupira began again, "The other Glory was the one from the magic-laden dimension
similar to this one. It merged at the time of the portals. I was merged with Tess, whom I had befriended.
There were others trying to ensure that we beat the 'bad' Glory to through her portal. Only one could
regain their power that way."

"We failed," she said with real sorrow.

"Buffy and Glory made some sort of deal and staged much of what was seen at the tower. We had
an alternate last-ditch desperation backup plan. My job was to cover for our good Glory if she
succeeded in using the stray powers she could tap from Glory's portal for the few minutes it was open.".

"She did and transferred to a female volunteer host much more compatible than our Ben was."

"Most of us were near by the warehouse. I myself was able to handle the merge with Tess long enough to
bestow powers on Dawn here as we also planned, to ensure that the Key became the next Slayer."

She paused, looking around.
Copyright © 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
Xander said it all, "Holy crapola, can this be all true?"

"Doc?", Dawn was shocked by all this that Curupira was telling for the first time.

"Also a merge. Our Doc helped our Glory, as did our Buffy and Dawn. They were to use her donated
blood, not to bleed her on your...the tower.  The Doc you saw, and I passed, was the merged one. He
apparently was more than happy that either Glory succeeded. Though he seemed to be pleased that
it was your 'bad" Glory."

Dawn grasped it and the implications. "But where is the other Buffy? Am I also merged with the other Dawn?"
It was a strange thought that she could be two people as one, but she'd see it in Curupira and Tess.

She'd always hoped that she was not merged.

"I presume you are, but it's such a perfect merging that I can no longer detect it," the green girl
responded, lying through her perfect teeth.

"I can only assume that our Buffy merged with your Buffy while the portal was open.  She
couldn't have merged with the ...dead...Buffy. Otherwise she'd be here talking to us right now.
I suspect that the net effect of both your mergings is positive, because the other Buffy and
Dawn, like our Glory, had been working together for months."

She let that sink in, wondering at the long term morality of continuing to lie about what had really
transpired in the other Sunnydale between that Buffy and that Dawn.

"So Buffy might try working with Glory instead of fighting her, but not know exactly why? " Dawn
deduced. "Won't that get her killed?"

"It might confuse Glory and actually help Buffy in the long run, " Curupira speculated. "It's at least
a hope of mine." She shrugged, "Who knows, they might even come to a truce. They worked together,
after all, in setting up the tower charade here."

"Does the 'bad' Glory know any of this?" Willow asked pointedly.

"We don't believe so. It's to our advantage to hide this as long as possible to work on the next steps
in out backup plan - to get our Glory's powers increased so she can confront the other Glory with
Dawn and Curupira when she returns, as she will."

The silence was deafening.

"The bot?" Curupira returned to her now forgotten question.

"This is impossible," Xander groaned. "We have to help this 'good' Glory, who, if I understand it, is more
powerful than the insane Glory that has Buffy. But she's nothing compared to what the insane Glory
will be when she comes marching back to Sunnydale. So we help the Glory here or she whips out asses."

"But if we help her, we all get our asses fried by the Glory that really counts!" he was shaking his head
in an alarming manner as he spoke. "We lose the peace and the war."

"And, "Giles added gravely, "The one new member of our group that says she's a powerful demon
immediately jumps up and joins the newest Glory in town the instant she hears the call of her
master... mistress." He was on a roll regardless of the consequences.

"How can we believe that any Glory is 'good'. It's only the word of someone who abandons us at
the first chance."

"Shut...up, Shut...up!" Dawn shouted. "Everyone shut up! Curupira is my friend and we've slayed
together. I trust her right now more than any of you quaking in you boots over anyone named Glory.
I was supposed to die for Glory, remember? But now I'll fight her to the end. Get a grip."

Dawn stomped rapidly out to go home alone, her slender diminutive figure exiting the front door with her
almost waist-length brown hair flying behind her like wings.

"Shouldn't someone go with Dawn?" Tara asked with concern.

"You want someone who's just hacked a 30 foot dragon to death, and's still covered in honest-to
god dragon blood, to be escorted home in the dark?"  Xander asked incredulously. "I pity the fool
who messes with our poor little innocent Dawn..."

Tara had to laugh at his overdone, long out of vogue, impression and the image it invoked.

Giles muttered to himself, "Summers' Slayers, never by the book, never easy..."

"Okay, Okay," Spike pranced around, "The new Slayer is as stubborn as her sister ever was.

"The little green bitch is in the process of selling us out to this second Glory or Clare... and
we just sit her watching her and Dawn leave one by one?" He left toward the back door of
the shop, pulling a flask from his pocket.
Copyright © 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
Outside, Dawn was actually following Curupira, just as a precaution, she lied to herself.

The green girl was carrying a canvas bag with the Buffy-Bot inside, hefting it as if it were full
of air. She moved like a green cat in the dark, broken only by pools of light from the far apart
street lights. Or she moved, Dawn shuddered, like Glory did.

Did all demons and higher beings have that ability?... she wondered,  as she herself slipped from
shadow to shadow in a like manner and then across the park to the luxury apartment building where
she herself had been taken for some hours after Glory had captured her. That was before she was
taken to the warehouse.

Going back to search it, as she and Curupira had done recently, was hard to do.

And here she was being drawn there again. Following the confident Curupira inside.

From her vantage point below the stairs she could see her go in without knocking, after trying the
doorknob. Dawn ran lightly up the stairs to the landing and turned right, peeking around the door to
see the petite Curupira, minus the Bot in the bag, launching herself at a male figure somewhat
taller than she, but only average, or less.

This Dawn's senses told her while Curupira was getting airborne.
Copyright © 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
She was still pulling her feet up from the carpet when Dawn got to the other side of the door so she
could use the still partly opened door as a place to see inside without others seeing her in the darkened
landing area.

Holding her long brown hair back with both her hands, Dawn saw Curupira landing on the guy and
locking her green-clad  legs around his waist, knocking him to the carpeted floor with a whoosh.

She was kneeling atop him and was vigorously beginning her incredible kiss, as well Dawn could
remember.

Dawn's eyes widened as a leggy smallish blonde walked in from another room, clad only in a red
towel to her waist, with a big golden "G" on the edge Dawn could see....oh, crap, she recognized
those feet and those black toenails..

She had nice boobs though, Dawn thought, glancing down at her own chest unconsciously.

Curupira let out a yell and jumped up, staring at the guy on the floor. "She made you immortal,
I can smell her magic all over you!  I was supposed to do it, not her!" she swore in some obscure
language, then became aware of the blonde in the towel, who was looking at her in fascination.

"You're the one that was there..." the blonde said before Curupira reached out and grabbed her
by the upper arms.

"Ow, " she yelped, "that hurts!". Curupira lifted the larger girl off the floor.

"You're not the host I remember, " the little demon held the blond higher and looked hard at her face
and gray eyes. You look too much like Glory. "Are you in there. Glory?" she asked loudly.

"Where's the real host?" she looked  around for the familiar face  she remembered from the adjacent
warehouse when she and Tess had left to be closer to the tower. She and Tess were capable of
using the moments of the portal openings to slip between dimensions with almost no magic and no
Key blood, if need be. That, unfortunately,  proved to be of no value in the end.

The real host was not in this room, she decided.

"Wait, " Curupira began shaking the blonde a bit, "You're the sister with the sunglasses all the time..."

"Yes, stupid. I'm the sister. I'm Clare, not Callie. Put me down..." Clare struggled vainly against
the little, very strong, green girl.

The guy knew Curupira's powers, because he stayed on the floor after sitting up and was talking
steadily and soothingly to her. "I told you things went wrong in those first seconds of the portals
opening. Callie vanished. She merged, we think with some higher being located elsewhere.
It shouldn't have happened. Glory and you had cast all sorts of spells and wards on her
to prevent this."

"We had no other plan or a compatible host."

"Yeah, stupid little girl," Clare was angry now and tired of being held in the air. "I lost my little sister
to you lunatics. The only reason I was there was to see she wasn't hurt. Now you've lost her and
the only way to find her was to take her place and continue this "Twilight Zone", " X-Files"
nightmare on my own."

Curupira was not mollified, but she did put Clare back on the floor. The blonde immediately
threw a surprise left hook, using all her strength from the floor up, that connected on Curupira's
cute face with immediate effect.

It broke Clare's left wrist with a sickening crack!

Boxing gloves were one thing, bare-knuckled impacts against Curupira's indestructible body
were another thing entirely.  Clare spun around in pain as her immortalized body began healing
itself instantly, as advertised.

The pain lasted for only half the spin she realized.

There was another snap as the bones popped back into place and welded together. She came out
of the spin with a clever ball of her bare foot kick against the side of one of Curupira's knees to see
if she could disable her and put her on the floor where she could be stomped and kicked a lot
more conveniently.

She lost her red towel in the process.

The green girl hissed and blurred. Clare got air for all her agility. "Glory, "she crabbed backward
from her annoyingly fast foe, "Are you asleep or just trying to teach me a lesson in humility?
Remember. I'm carrying our baby."

That stopped Curupira for a time.

"So,"  she looked curiously at the blonde, "you actually did go through with it instead of Callie?
Takes guts. You're pretty fast for a mere immortal. Liked the spin to recover from the broken
wrist. Clever." she paused.

"But if, Glory-you-lying-bitch, you don't show yourself now, I'll break so many of your pretty
host's bones that it'll sound like the proverbial bull in the china shop as she tries to heal them
while I keep re-breaking them..."

Glory morphed in.

Dawn suppressed a gasp at the familiar sight of the redhead, as unconcernedly naked as
Clare had been after the failed kick.

She swung the same first punch that Clare had, but this time it was blurry fast and flipped Curupira
completely around until her feet were up toward the ceiling. Glory then kicked her in the head with
a bare foot. The sound was that of kicking a wall.

She reached for the green girl's legs, but Curupira locked them about Glory's neck and began
pounding the redhead in the face with her fists after she raked her sharp green nails experimentally
across Glory's pale face once.

Her nails could slice steel like butter, but Glory only laughed and began kneeing Curupira in the
lower back as the girl hung from her neck. She also started methodical side of the fist smashes
on Curupira's ribs.

Dawn winced as each continued their sledge hammer blows on one another with no apparent
effect, except to get angrier and angrier at each another in obvious frustration.
Copyright © 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
She ran into the room and screamed, "Stop it you two!" She was joined by the guy, who'd gotten
up and was also yelling something again in a language she did not understand.

Warily, both stopped hitting one another and Curupira let her legs go to fall to the floor. Glory
resisted the urge to kick her in the backside as she lithely bounded back onto her feet, which weren't
backward, she observed.

"Abandoned the useless illusion here in the real world, I see," Glory quipped.
"Up yours, you pitiful excuse for a god, " Curupira made the Italian gesture at Glory.

Then she turned to him. "Don't you still love me?" she was almost crying now instead of being angry.

Glory's own anger died away as she realized that Curupira's anger was protective and possessive,
not aggressive.

He held out his arms, "Come on, I'll explain it to you, honey," he picked Curupira's small form up
in his arms and as he turned away to carry her up the stairs, Dawn was shocked to see her
morph her magic green costume completely off, revealing that only parts of her skin beneath it were
green.

She rested her chin on his left shoulder as he made his way easily up the stairs. Opening her mouth,
Curupira stuck her tongue way, way out at Glory and closed her eyes briefly.

Glory shook her head. "She's pretty brazen for someone who's a virgin every time." she said
cryptically to Dawn. Dawn decided not to think about what that meant right now.

"So, you're the Slayer now," Glory looked at her. "Towel?" she pointed. Dawn dutifully picked it
up and gave it to her to wrap around herself again. Then she morphed back into Clare, who immediately
examined her left wrist with interest.

"Did you see that," she said. "I broke it and it healed in a couple of seconds. They didn't tell me about that."

"Wanna go a couple of rounds, Dawnie? " Clare suggested. "Hey, is that drying blood all over you?
She poked rather rudely at Dawn's bloody top with a black-nailed forefinger, denting her left breast
briefly.

"You don't want to fight me. I'm the Slayer. I just hacked a dragon to death awhile ago," Dawn
wearily replied. Who was this bizarre girl? she thought.

"Oh, you mean like the one that supposedly came out of the sky then," Clare said mysteriously.

"Yeah, " Dawn said. "Why don't you tell me all about it - and you?"

"Come on into the guest bedroom and help me get the bed made up so I'll have a place
to sleep tonight, "Clare said pleasantly.  Dawn followed her uncertainly past the stairs, down a
hall and into a large bedroom with lots of windows and curtains. The new sheets and pillows
were still in shopping bags.

"Aren't you supposed to wash them first?" Dawn said as they put the fitted sheet, one with big
roses on it, atop a mattress pad. "Yeah, But we immortals don't worry about little things like
dye dust. Besides, " she added, "I'm not exactly a neatness  freak."

"Now why don't you get cleaned up and out of those filthy clothes?"

After washing herself off in the smaller adjacent bath and peeling her bloody clothes off to her
bra and panties, Dawn watched Clare as she blow dried her hair and changed into some sort of
silky sleep shirt that was way too big and loose. It looked like something from a maternity
section of the high-end department store the shopping bags had emblazoned on them.

Dawn had only been there to look, she'd never had enough money to shop there. Clare must
have a dozen large shopping bags along the far wall, all bulging with clothes, shoe boxes or
house things. There were also several boxes with electronics and a new large screen TV, not
even plugged in yet.

Whatever Glory was, she wasn't a bargain shopper.

"Come on, Sweetie, " Clare sat on the bed and crossed her legs, "Let's talk of cabbages and kings."
Dawn plopped herself down on the edge of the bed.

"How," she asked, "Can you be so calm if they lost your sister and your husband's upstairs
...playing checkers...with my friend Curupira?"

Clare laughed until Dawn thought she'd choke. "Husband...checkers? ... explain the checkers."
Dawn did and Clare giggled again. "That's really cute, Dawnie."

"First of all he's not my husband, though we do have the faked legal paperwork and records,
courtesy of my other 'self', Glory. That's our cover. If there can be such a thing. We've been
around since the fiasco at the warehouse,  about a month ago I think."

"At first I didn't believe this dimensional crap Callie was spouting off to me when she came here,
there,  wherever, with that green girl wearing a cap and a scarf, and with a lookalike blonde,
Tess something."

"Callie was all starry-eyed about the whole magic thing and dimensions and junk. Like she was
gonna save the world."

"She wanted me to go along and make sure that she wasn't being scammed. We met a big
guy they kept calling Angel, sorta creepy, seemed to be afraid of the sun.  She said he was a
good vampire. We drove to Sunnydale in Callie's SUV, went into a warehouse and they did
some sort of magic with a little bottle they said was Key blood."

"The other Dawn's blood. Yeah, Curupira mentioned it, " Dawn remembered.

Clare looked askance at her, "Not likely, " she said in a lower voice. "There was only one Key
at portal time, and I assume you're still it, Dawn." She paused dramatically.

Dawn furrowed her brow, "Well she didn't exactly say that, I just assumed that it was..." she
was confused now. "Exactly what do you know about the warehouse and that night?"

"Oh, lots of things, but I wasn't that interested at the time, just making sure my little sis wasn't
in trouble. I was ready to call 911 on my cell phone and I had Mace in my fanny pack purse.
The girls being there, I just decided there was no real danger, and it was daylight, plus  this
guy Ben, who was pretty cute and polite. He was wearing a dress, though."

"Then it got weirder. They called me over and we held hands in a circle around Ben. He suddenly
changed into a redhead who sort of looked like me. I was so surprised I didn't realize that she was
pouring a drop of blood on the floor of the warehouse and chanting something with Curupira and
Tess.Callie was holding one of my hands and Tess the other. "

"There was a light flash and we were in what they told Callie was the magic dimension where
Buffy and Glory were to do battle over the Key. There was a strange little man there that I
could have swore had a tail. And Pat, the one upstairs now. He and Callie obviously knew one
another. They hugged."

"Hold it," Dawn put both hands on her temples. "I was there, I never saw you."

"They made us be quiet, I think we were in an adjoining warehouse section, because sometimes
Tess and Curupira would open a door and peek in. There were all sorts of construction noises
from that other warehouse area."

"We must've waited well into the night. My watch seemed to be out of synch. It got dark too soon, like
1:30," Clare continued, watching Dawn's tortured expressions all the time.
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"Then all hell broke loose next door. Screaming yelling, fighting sounds. The redhead, they called her
Glory,  began climbing a ladder to a section of the high wall where she removed a panel that covered
a hole opening on to what looked like an oil derrick - the tower someone called it. I could vaguely see
two women fighting on it, one in black and another with a white top. Then they disappeared out of
view."

"'It's time and Dawn's alone on the tower, '" Callie whispered to me. Glory started to go into the opening
when someone climbed past her outside. She stopped. Jumped down the ladder. I was stunned, it was
20 to 25 feet and she landed like it was nothing. "'That was Glory magically cloaked as Doc,'" she said in
a loud voice. "'Plan B, Plan B!  Callie! You ready?'"

"Callie was excited like I've never seen her. "'Clare, if we do it I'll be made immortal and they will do it
for you too. I wanted it that way.'"  "Of course I didn't understand in that minute. But I remembered it".

"And that was all we had, because there were huge flashes and bangs outside. Callie vanished at
that second. I was holding one of her hands with mine, when it went empty."

Glory ran over to me and spoke rapidly in my ear, it was too noisy to hear otherwise, "'Callie's and
my only chances are in your hands. I can make you immortal and we can find her later. She's not
dead,  just away...there are other things she agreed to.'"

Dawn was open-mouthed at what she was hearing.

She'd assumed that this Glory and others were all in their own dimension, but they were dimension
hopping somehow ---with her own blood. "The hospital,,," she remembered when she and Buffy had
become sisters in the blood with their two wounds, which were later treated in the emergency room.

Now she remembered a cute little blonde nurse wearing big glasses and with her hair up, Tess?

"Curupira never actually said she came through a portal, " she replayed the words in her almost
eidetic memory. She needed to start writing again. Who knew what else she was missing? "OK, "
go on," she said gamely.

Clare uncrossed her legs and stretched them out onto the nearest pillow, leaning sideways as
she did to rest on her right elbow. "Oh, yeah, Glory gave me immortality. Bit by bit, The bit they
didn't have time to tell me was about having to get pregnant so Glory could have her own new
godly body one day to be able to get all her godly powers back."

She rubbed her not yet showing abdomen.

Dawn's eyes glazed over at this revelation. She recalled Curupira's use of the word over the phone
earlier. They definitely were going to have to have a talk. She had suspicions that even Clare's
version of events was only a part of the real story. Slayer instincts?

"Oh, I pissed and moaned while we jumped dimensions again, fled that Sunnydale and  looked for
Callie in all the obvious places," Clare seemed happy to have someone to spill her heart out  to
for a change. "Glory inside me and the changes did make me into a real super woman quickly and
Glory said that she was lots more powerful than when in Ben."

"So how'd you get pregnant, magic?, " Dawn was very curious, what with Curupira upstairs doing
whatever demons do with a guy. Though she suspected it was just plain old sex like Buffy did.

Clare smiled.

"There was magic involved for Glory to control the sex, had to be a girl. And to
pour lots of magic into every cell as she developed. That's to get the godly body, they said.
When she's born, Glory will load her up with more of her magic self periodically. At some point,
maybe 15-16, she downloads her full self into our god-girl."

"And you get your body back, " Dawn finally got it.

"Immortal me. Plus more. My daughter, the god Glory " she savored the phrase, "will jam her Mommy,
me,  full to the brim with magic and superpowers I can only dream about now. First thing I'm gonna do
is whip some little green butt, " she vowed.

Dawn started to remind her that it wasn't green. But Clare kept on talking.

" 'course, I had to," Clare smiled wanly, "play lots of games of checkers until Glory was satisfied
that all was perfect. Parthenogenesis it ain't," she said without explaining.

They talked far into the night. Dawn filed everything away in her memory and that's what started
her back writing a new journal again. She also was going to find out about using her blood to
jump dimensions and help Clare find her sister.

It took Dawn awhile to get used to getting into bed to sleep with the hall light, a night light and a
lamp on the table beside  the dresser all on. "It's a long story," Clare began as she spoke with
her eyes closed. "But just to have a real girl to talk to... and Glory never listens in unless I signal
her... Pat's OK, really sweet, but he's just not one of us girls."

She and Clare eventually fell asleep on adjacent pillows as they talked.

Upstairs, Curupira played checkers until dawn.

When she wandered downstairs it was just getting light. She followed the sunlight from the windows
to the side of the stairs and entered the guest bedroom where Dawn and Clare were sleeping.

Clare was sprawled out on her back in the royal position, sans sheets, while on the very edge
of the bed Dawn was curled up a bit on her side, sans bra, partially wrapped in the sheets pulled
from Clare.

Curupira's heart melted as she stared at the tableau, seeing the first rays of the rising sun
coming through the curtained windows to either side of the huge bed. How could she ever tell
such an innocent, even though she was the Key-born Slayer, what had really occurred on the
other side of the dimensional barrier in that other Sunnydale? How screwed up things had
been and how much of a disaster it had come down to?

She morphed to Tess and pulled on a pair of panties she'd been carrying from Clare's drawers
upstairs. Slipping over to Clare's side of the bed, she touched her lips with her finger, letting her
draw a breath of her scent. Instantly, Clare morphed into Glory as she awakened.

Shushing her with a finger over her lips, Tess led Glory by the hand back to the doorway into
the hallway. "Look at her," Tess stood close to the taller Glory. They watched Dawn sleeping
in silence.

Both were thinking the same thing.

In the dimension Tess and Glory were from, Buffy had been much more unstable. After killing
Angel permanently years before, she'd grown even more depressed and alone. Following
the magical arrival of Dawn, the Key-made sister, she got better. The false memories, fostered
by the monks and drawing on the very power of the Key to sustain them, gave her something to
fall back on.

Then she'd killed her lover Riley in a blind rage when he announced he was leaving. They
did not find out about this until much later,  while going through her possessions and reading a
diary of her tortured last months.
Copyright © 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
The earlier arrival of Glory/Ben and her attempts to work with the Slayer and Giles to get through
the portal were initially a diversion for Buffy. After the coming of Tess and Curupira, with their
ability as a pair to jump to the similar dimensions using donated Dawn blood, and talk of
another dimension Buffy who was fighting that Glory for the Key, Buffy gradually grew more
morose.

She especially did not like the way Dawn had taken to all of the newcomers so easily, while
she, herself, became more distant. Without a real role in the upcoming portal event, Buffy once
more sank into self pity. She started picking up guys on campus or at the Bronze, having
bad sex and then beating them severely. She was following the path to self-destruction that
many Slayers had fallen prey to, most recently Faith.

Finding her mother dead had been the last straw.
Copyright © 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
In a few days, she was totally insane. She resumed picking up guys and having sex, but now
she was killing them afterward. They never found all the bodies, but based on her diary
for the last few weeks, she was killing one or two each night.

Then she went the next step, killing her fake sister.
Copyright © 2001 gloryisagod.com/D

"Then she went the next  step, killing her fake sister."

Copyright © 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
She smothered Dawn, but not until after torturing and mutilating her sexually, then drinking
large quantities of her Key blood. The effect of the Slayer drinking the living Key blood was
to create a monster, an already insane Slayer with almost god-like powers.

Glory, Curupira and Tess had found the horribly mutilated Dawn on her blood-soaked bed.
They had not known what to do, so they headed for the Magic shop to tell the horrendous
news to Giles and the rest.

At the time they did not realize that Buffy was the murderer.

The shop had been turned into Buffy's personal slaughterhouse.

Using every conceivable means, and some not conceivable by the sane mind, Buffy had
tortured the entire gang and killed them in various places where they'd tried to flee or hide.
Blood and body parts were strewn about like trash.

Buffy herself was holding Cordelia's severed head by the hair and babbling to her, then
listening as if she were hearing a  response.

This they saw as they came in the door.

It took the three of them to finally kill the insane Key-powered Slayer. They did so in spite
of suspecting that her blood was now their only means capable of opening the portal for Glory.

They knew she could not be allowed to live, no matter their own cost. All three burned
with a vast disgust and hatred for what she had done torturing Dawn over many hours
while they were so unaware of her endless torment and helplessness.

Buffy was superfast and superstrong. But she did not know how to use most of her magic
powers, especially those associated with self-protection and projection. So she simply went
Slayer-berserk and tried to duplicate what she had done to the others.

But she was fighting a bound god, a near-god and a hybrid supergirl.

Still, it was a terrible battle. In the end, after beating Buffy senseless one more time, knowing
from earlier attempts she'd be re-powered with a few seconds of rest, Curupira and Glory had
held the Slayer between them, while Tess burned the building to the ground from outside and
kept  her flaming fires of hell going until Buffy was only a pile of ashes between their now naked,
sooty, but invulnerable forms.

Both shuddered at the memories. It was time to come back to now.

"I...Curupira...we didn't mean what we said," Tess looked up at Glory. "The fighting was
a mistake. He told me about it all and...poor Clare...dragged into this," Tess was talking
softly to avoid waking the sleeping Dawn.

Dawn's Slayer instincts and Curupiran senses had awakened her when Tess spoke her
first words. Through barely opened lids she watched and learned something about gods
and demons. What, she wasn't sure, but  it would stay in her mind. Partly because
she'd been memorizing that very same speech from the 'Merchant of Venice',  by the
woman lawyer Portia, back last semester.
Copyright © 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
She listened to the two whispering.

She did not know that on the bed beside the mutilated other Dawn, they had found the
same book, opened and marked.  Dawn's Key blood splattered across the very page, the
very passage.  She could not know that it was an anger make-up ritual among the three of
them now. In honor of the sweet Dawn they had come to know and love back there.
Copyright © 2001 gloryisagod.com/D
Tess, the instigator, began, "The quality of mercy is not strained
                                              It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath...

Glory, the target, replied, "It is twice blessed, it blesseth him that gives and him that takes,
                                         'tis mightier than the mightiest..."

"And 'her'  that gives and 'her' that takes..." Tess added, to feminize it.

Dawn watched as Glory pulled Tess up on her tiptoes and kissed her long and hard on the
mouth. Then they laughed, turned away and walked out of sight down the hall, holding hands.

"Hmm," Dawn murmured. "One more thing to talk to Curupira about, " then she drifted back
to sleep again. The sleep of the innocent. The sleep of the Key-born Slayer. The Slayer
beloved by the gods. The Last Slayer.
Copyright © 2001 gloryisagod.com/D

End of Part 2....
 

Continue to Part 3 of "Dawn the Last Slayer"

NOTE: Road trip to Roswell in the next work:
           #3 "Dawn - Three Days in Roswell"
 

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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)

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