Disclaimer: Joss owns ‘em, I just play.

Author’s note: Thanks to Bloodytearsoflife for betaing this chapter, and to everyone who has been waiting patiently for me to update this fic. In particular, Shady who frequently asks me when I am going to update that fic with the really long title. This chapter is for you Shady!
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Chapter 13 : What they are really after.

The sounds of Andrew battling away on his Play Station emanated from the basement. It was way late, but Buffy, Spike, and Molly hadn’t returned from their patrol yet. Dawn stalked through the kitchen in search of something to occupy her time. She couldn’t sleep; she had too much to think about.

Okay, she had one thing to think about. It came in a yummy man type package. She hadn’t heard from Graham in a few days and she was starting to wonder if he had just wanted to get close to her to get some info. She didn’t think that he found out much, nothing Riley didn’t already know at least.

So why bother?

Besides from the fact that Buffy was really not this year’s Buffy, there was nothing special about them. Okay, nothing special for a mystical key, a vampire, and a Master Slayer, who had witches and demons as friends.

Yep, she concluded to herself, we are all freaks and the government wants to use us for testing. And my boyfriend is going to lead us to their door.

This was probably how it started with Riley and Buffy. Innocent kisses, hand holding, going out to public, well lit places. Except that Riley was in Buffy’s age range at the time and Graham was just way too old, or way too young depending how you looked at it. Ageism sucked, in Dawn’s opinion. Exhausted, by lack of sleep and an inability to find something to eat, Dawn yanked open the fridge door and stepped through, just in time for Andrew to come up the stairs and catch her in the act.

“Dawn!” he shouted as she disappeared into the blackness of Arashamahar.
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Dawn opened the door to Graham’s apartment and walked in. She’d been there only once before, when he had to pick something up for a friend. She closed the door gently behind her and stalked to his bedroom. He was there, laying spread eagled under the covers, his bare chest visible to her eyes even in the darkness.

She stared at him for a moment before she decided that she had come there for a reason and she was going to get answers. She reached over to his dresser and took the first thing that she got her hands on, his deodorant, and threw it at him.

“Holy shit!” he barked, fully awake the moment the stick of deodorant hit his chest. He stumbled out of bed, clutching the sheets to himself.

For the first time Dawn realised that she should have rethought the whole startling the naked former marine out of bed. But oooh, look at all the military goodness...

“Dawn?” he asked, startling her out of her drooling. “What are you doing here? How did you get in?”

“Can it!” she barked, regaining her focus. “Are you using me to spy on my family? Do you want to use Buffy, Spike, or me for testing?”

He looked down at the sheet that was covering up his bits and pieces, then back at Dawn, the girl he had been growing really close to over the last couple of dates they’d been on.

“Dawn...I wasn’t sure how to tell you this...” he started.

She didn’t let him finish. “You are using me!” she wailed, throwing her hands up in the air. “Well isn’t that just swell. I have just as much luck with my boyfriends as Buffy did!”

“Dawn...It’s not you...” he started again.

“Well I suppose that that is some consolation then, isn’t it? You don’t want the mystical key. Go find yourself a vampire and a slayer about to pursue marital bliss. I’m safe...goodie. Messing with my family is so not cool!”

“Dawn!” he barked, trying to make her stop babbling. “I’m not after you, or your family. I’m not going to turn you into a science experiment.”

“Oh,” she muttered, deflating and finding a seat to sit upon.

Carefully concealing himself, Graham sat down beside her on the bed. “I am here tracking a power source, that’s all. Nothing demon related, key related, slayer related. I promise you.”

Dawn nodded her head. “I should be getting home. I’m sorry about waking you up.” Dawn rose from the edge of the bed, turned towards her boyfriend, and smiled sadly. “If you forgive me, give me a call sometime and I’ll make it up to you. I’d like to blame the freaky stalker girl throwing things at you in the middle of the night on my sister, but it was all me.”

“I’ll call you,” he said with a smile.

“By the way, you look really good in a sheet,” she smiled, heading for his door.
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Dawn arrived home to find Spike and Andrew in the kitchen. Her appearance, coming out of the broom closet, surprisingly didn’t shock the two men in the kitchen.

“You are damned lucky that Buffy went straight to sleep after patrol. Before the nerd started wailing about you leaving,” started Spike.

“Great, so now he’s tattling on me. Wonderful.”

“You aren’t suppose to dimension hop, Dawn,” noted Andrew. “You could die!”

Dawn glared back at Andrew.

Spike took a hard sniff of the room and instantly knew where Dawn had been. It didn’t make him happy but he wasn’t willing to get into it with her and risk waking up his mate.

“Everything sorted?” was all he asked.

Dawn looked at him wide eyed, wondering if he knew exactly where she had been. She nodded conclusively. “Yes,” she answered wearily.

“Right then, off to bed with you. Got school tomorrow,” he said standing up from the stool he had been sitting on.

Quietly, Spike followed up the stairs after Dawn and bid good night to her as they parted in the hallway outside their rooms. Spike opened his bedroom door and walked in with a sigh.

Buffy turned on the bed, her blond hair tangling as she tried to find the best position to sleep in. She had been wiped after her training patrol with Molly. The nest of vamps that they had stumbled on had been much larger than they had expected. The numerous bruises and cracked ribs that both Molly and Buffy had sustained hadn’t made them any more willing to stay up and rehash what went wrong.

Slipping out of his clothes, Spike slid in between the covers and laid his head on his pillow, only to have his fiancée snuggle close. He sighed. He didn’t know what to do with Dawn. He didn’t like this solider boy she was seeing, but Buffy was extremely accepting of the situation. Probably because she had had her own dalliance with Captain Cardboard. But Spike didn’t like it at all.
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Buffy slept late the next day. She missed Molly and Dawn going off to school; she missed her first class of the day at Sunnydale U. She didn’t care. It hurt to breathe. She could tell that her wonderful healing abilities were in full force, but they hadn’t quite finished the job. Looking at the clock, she decided that today was going to be a sick day on her part and she closed her eyes to go back to sleep, against her mate’s tepid skin.

There was a loud bang from her sister’s room, which startled her, causing Buffy to sit straight up, disturbing Spike enough that he woke up too.

“I’ll check it out,” she whispered, patting him on the arm. She slid out of bed, her silk nighty falling smoothly against her skin.

Buffy crept out of her bedroom and into Dawn’s with the skill of a seasoned hunter. On Dawn’s bed, the teen was tearing up papers and throwing them roughly into the air, her face streaked with tears. Buffy instantly realised the loud bang was Dawn slamming her closet door.

“What happened?” asked Buffy already knowing where it was going to lead to.

“He dumped me!” Dawn cried angrily.

Good, she’d moved onto the angry stage.

“Graham? He dumped you?” asked Buffy softly.

“He said his superiors didn’t want him associating with someone that would compromise the mission. He had to choose between me and his career. I lost!”

“Oh Dawnie!” Buffy said soothingly, stepping towards her sister on the bed. “Wait,” stopped Buffy, a thought coming to her. “He dumped you at school?”

“No!” Dawn sniffed. “He phoned me at lunch. He dumped me over the phone, while I was sitting in the caf.”

“Bastard,” muttered Buffy.

“Tell me about it,” countered Dawn. “I couldn’t stay there!”

Buffy nodded in understanding.

“He’s tracking some ‘power’ in Sunnydale. They don’t know what it is. You would think that having me as a girlfriend would be an asset? I’m with the good guys. I know about these things!”

“A power?” asked Buffy curious. “Nothing more specific than that?”

Dawn shook her head before sighing. “My dumpage is sparking research isn’t it?”

“Yep,” noted Buffy. “But I’ll get you Häagen Dazs for the research.”

“Okay,” accepted Dawn weakly.
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Buffy looked on at Willow and Tara as they performed a locator spell to find all the sources of supernatural power in Sunnydale. Whatever this power was the Graham and his government flunkies were looking for, she was sure that her two witch friends would find it before anyone else. And if they didn’t, Buffy would take a stab at the spell herself.

The spell completed, all the Scoobies, except Anya and Nate (who was reading some book), looked at the map Willow and Tara had used. Little glowy dots indicated the power sources. Then Anya popped in.

“Are we doing a spell?” she asked leaning forward to get her own look.

On the map, another brighter glowy dot appeared.

“Ooh look! That’s me! I’m pretty,” noted the vengeance demon.

Everyone focused on the new dot, which began to dim.

“Why is it doing that?” asked Xander.

“Teleporting requires a lot of power,” replied Anya. “All these dots are people or demons that can teleport, or open portals. See? There’s Dawn and Buffy and Willow and Tara.”

Nate stepped back from the group and cleared his throat. “So, Miss Summers can teleport?” he asked.

“Oh, ya, I learned to do that a long time ago. Trying to tap into the slayer power, finding my purpose in my lonely life, blah blah blah. I don’t do it very often,” Buffy explained ignoring the questioningly look on Nate’s face. “And if you tell the Council, I will personally make it impossible for you to father children.”

Nate gulped. Spike chuckled.

“So the agency that Graham is presently working for is looking for the power to teleport or dimension hop?” asked Giles.

“He...He said he wasn’t after me!” whispered Dawn, sitting down on the floor beside the map.

“He didn’t know it was you Dawn,” soothed Buffy. “He thought you were just a normal girl.”

“Should we hide?” asked Willow. “I mean, Anya can just go back to Arashamahar, so can Dawn, to hide out. But Tara and I, we don’t have the super strength to fight off the military. We’ll be lab rats!” the witch moaned.

“You aren’t going to be lab rats!” protested Buffy.

“You can just teleport away,” offered Anya.

“The last time I teleported, nosebleed,” countered Willow.

“And I’ve...I’ve never done it,” noted Tara.

“They won’t come after you,” said Buffy resolutely. “And if they do, they will pay.”
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“What do you mean, I‘m forbidden to dimension hop?” cried Dawn.

She stared down Buffy’s watcher, daring him to explain himself. Giles looked at Nate for support. The other watcher just shrugged before speaking.

“We have concluded that the more you hop between dimensions the more you will incite the curiosity of the government. Therefore, it would be wise to cease all inter dimensional travel.”

“You have got to be kidding me!” protested Dawn.

“I agree with the key here,” stated Anya, her arms crossed looking at Giles with a glare, which everyone in the room knew was making Giles uncomfortable. “I do not want to be stuck in this dimension. I have things to do. Places to go! People to curse!”

“Anya,” interrupted Giles, trying to calm her.

“Where would I stay?” she asked, pouting, and Buffy swore there was a hopeful look in Anya’s eyes as she focused on Giles.

“I’m sure we can arrange something,” noted the elder watcher with a smile.
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tbc...