The Secret Diary of Dawn Summers, age 16 Ľ
Title: The Secret Diary of Dawn Summers,
Age 16Ľ.
Point of view: Dawn.
Time frame: During Episode 14 “Hotel California”, Episode
15 “Black Hole Sun”, and Episode 16 “Rescue Me”.
Contains spoilers for
BtVS Season 7
“She still thinks I'm Little Miss Nobody, just her
dumb little sister. Boy, is she in for a surprise”.
Yay me!
The Key turns both ways. Not swings both ways, important
difference here. Not that I’m
gay-bashing, or rather bi-bashing, works for
Babbling. Danger of
turning into
I can open things – Hellmouths
mainly, but also similar portals – and close them again. Without having to bleed to
death, big plussage. Bleeding to death,
or having big (tiny) sister throw herself into dimensional portal in my place,
really not of the good.
Oh, lots of other big things happened. Not big, but way cool, was Roxy the English
Slayer splatting Kennedy. Kennedy was all, hey, you’re a Potential, I’m
in charge of the Potentials, do what I say; and Roxy was all take hold of hand,
twist, and push; then Kennedy’s all flying lesson followed by turtle on its
back impression and Roxy’s all “Hey, Potential
Slayer, I’m a real Slayer”. Then
all the other Potentials are all “Roxy’s the coolest
thing since sliced bread, Kennedy sucks” and Kennedy is Sunnydale’s entry in
Olympic sulking event. Willow all pouty too.
Actually, Roxy is way cool. Cooler than me, which
sucks. English people are
supposed to be all tweedy and stiff upper lip.
Roxy wears her shorts too short, lipstick more Faithy
than Faith, and she’s seen
General handing out of rings. Mine boosts
Key powers, as described above. Giles’
makes him more Watchery, whatever that means, similar
ring for Mr. Wood. Buffy got one that makes
her even tougher – like she needed it!
Spike got one that lets him walk in the sunlight, except being Spike
took it to mean run round madly in sunlight flapping coat like wings. Really funny, until I remembered Spike is
Attempted Rape of Sister Guy now and not Tell Scary Stories and Help With Homework Guy any more, so frown appropriate expression
rather than grin.
Spike and Mr. Wood’s rings made them apologize to each
other for Eating Principal’s Mother and Tricking Vampire into Trap then Beating
Shit Out of Vampire incidents respectively. Wiggins!
Teresa, Slayer From Before the Dawn of Time (well,
before the Time of Dawn anyway, spent two hundred years as a vampire then got
cured, older than Spike) made all kinds of snarky
comments at Buffy, then revealed she is sort of Aunt to Dad’s new wife so sort
of step-Aunt to me and Buffy. Wiggins
bar raised to new heights for world record
attempt. She said Dad had wanted us to
come to wedding, would have sent money for fares, got brush-off from
Buffy. Sis may have good excuse, think
she may have been technically dead at the time, Buffy-Bot
might have answered phone when we weren’t watching. Or maybe it was Just Back From
Heaven and Really Pissed Buffy, not sure of timing, check later.
Then major development. Slayer in
Except Buffy then tells me that she was beating Spike
to a pulp on a regular basis last year for no particular reason except that she
was Pissed Buffy, she doesn’t rate the Attempted Rape as that big a deal by
comparison, she’s actually still trying to make up to Spike what she did to
him, and she wants me to be nice to Spike because she can’t take the way I’m
hurting him. Bar cleared, new Wiggins world record set, but I agreed to let Spike come
with us to
Oh, and Ampata Gutierrez, Inca Mummy Girl, is back from the dead and on
our side, not in love with Xander any more, and coming to
So, we flew to
Me rigging it so I could sit between Spike and new
Auntie Teresa.
Who is actually really nice.
She told me about Wicked Stepmother. “Skanky Dad-stealing
ho” turns out to be beautiful classy rich lady, only eight years older than
Buffy, who was engaged to Spanish cop killed by terrorists before they could
marry. Happy with Dad, him happy with
her, want to see us, all expenses paid trip to
Spike now Big Brother Guy again, I am Nibblet, big hugs all round. Feels good. Tia Teresa (the new
name for Teresa, means “Auntie” in Spanish) says we are Family; all agreed.
Turns out Spike is not Evil Victorian Street Punk at all. He was soppy poet, rich family,
Which reminds me of further suckage
on the Roxy’s Cooler Than Me
front. I always thought
Note to self; nag Buffy for 32 inch Widescreen out of
back pay on return to Sunnydale.
Expected reply; no point in new TV when Harbingers likely to crash
through windows waving axes in TV-wards directions at any moment. Foil plans of First Evil, then new TV. Imaginary voice of Buffy in head has a
point. Make with the Foiling!
Hard to do anything constructive about Foiling at
30,000 feet. Make do with Bonding with new Auntie and
maybe-one-day-Brother-in-Law.
The Pittsburgh Scoobies
aren’t all that impressive. Witchy Watcher,
sort of Gwendolyn Post only not Evil.
Soldier Guy, sort of Riley type. Exotic Dancer girl, actually pretty
impressive on the looks and clothes front, not much on the combat. A couple of scared high
school kids. And Mad Souled Vampire Hiding in Basement.
Spike says he’s going to sue him for copyright
infringement.
Jocasta (new Head Watcher, giver of Large Amounts of
Money to Sister, pretty cool, vampire boyfriend!!) says that it’s lucky that
everywhere in
Mad Vampire, Drake, cured in new world record
time. Jocasta very forceful; Drake
wouldn’t have dared not be cured.
And so, to the Hellmouth,
bearing enough weapons to invade
Oh, and Roxy doesn’t have Scoobies. She has Roxettes. Cool and unanswerable. “Buffettes” would sound
like something you eat standing up at wedding receptions.
So, through the Hellmouth
now, emerged into a cave. Guess
what? Reception
committee. Ubervamps.
We beat the crap out of them.
Now that we know their chests are too tough to get a
stake through, but that otherwise they dust just like a regular vamp, they
aren’t so tough. Jocasta had got us
javelins from an athletics shop; the metal point punches through the
breastbone, then the wooden shaft does the staking. Spike has his own technique; he blows a hole
through the Ubervamp with a shotgun, then finishes it off with a stake. Roxy just chops their heads off with that
sword of hers.
One of them was riding a wolf the size of a pony; it
looked like it was going to ride for help, so Teresa shot the wolf to bits with
a machine gun.
We gathered up some of the weapons the Ubies had dropped, then walked out of the cave and got a
nasty surprise.
In this world, the sun burns us the way it burns vamps
in our world. We had to dive back into
the cave very quickly. Way unfair! Spike and Drake didn’t burn, but had only
normal human strength in the sun, so Drake tried taking his ring off, which was
not of the good. Instant Bad Vampire,
kill destroy suck blood. Roxy and Teresa
had to hold him down and stick the ring back on his finger before he could
return to being himself. Assume same
would happen to Spike, so no experiment.
We are in Vampire World.
We could see some animals under some trees, grazing in
the shade. Roxy checked them out with
her cool Zeiss binoculars, trophy of a staking, and
they turned out to be llamas. Spike and
Drake went over to check them out, and they ran round and round under the
trees, absolutely refusing to go out in the sun. Earth animals, we guess. They’d fry in the sunlight too.
Then we saw an animal native to this place, wandering
around in the sun, and – major wiggins
– it was a Unicorn! And it was friendly,
came over to us, checked us out. Friendly to me, friendly to
Roxy, to Manuelita, and to Ampata. Ampata was scared of it; she’d never seen a
horse before, let alone a unicorn, she got mummified before Pizarro arrived in
Unicorn not at all keen on Tia
Teresa, Jocasta, Anita, James, Drake, Spike.
Deduction: legends are correct about unicorns. Observation: super-cool, confident, Roxy is
still unicorn-friendly.
Manage to have chat with Roxy about boys. Roxy doesn’t have a boyfriend. Boys in
Normal girl moment interrupted by battle. Hell Dimension
not really that different to Sunnydale.
I fired a machine-gun!
Teresa needed to shoot a wolf out from under a Ubie,
riding off to get help (wolf obviously native animal as not combusting in
sunlight) and she didn’t have a clear shot, so she yelled at me to get up on
the unicorn and then tossed me the gun.
“Now I have a machine gun. Ho, ho, ho.” Pointed
it and pulled the trigger as if it was a crossbow. Worked, wolf turned into golf course (18
holes!). When Teresa does it the gun
only fires 3 shots at a time, but with me it just kept on firing until it was
empty. Climbing upwards all the time, so
Ubie on the wolf turned into golf course too. Yay me! Bullets don’t kill Ubies,
but it was so holey that it took a while before it could get up. By which time all the others were dead and
Spike and Drake could go over and dust it.
Other lessons learned: Ubervamps
eat llamas; unicorns really don’t like Ubies
and have got the weaponry to do something about it; Ampata is stronger than a Ubervamp, doesn’t die when she
gets an arrow through her, and can suck Ubies dry and
heal her wounds by doing it. Wiggins-o-meter gone through the red line and exploded.
Ain’t nothin’ gonna wig me
out now. Saw extinct prehistoric giant
camels with trunks – yawn. Saw giant
bird, cross between ostrich and eagle on steroids – don’t call me. Saw mammoths – bored now!
Waited for nightfall, trekked across plain. Saw
prehistoric animals as mentioned above.
Imported from Earth? All nocturnal, all very hairy (except for Big Bird) – protection
from nasty sunlight? Nobody
knows.
Stone building, another battle. Notable
incident; Drake threw a phosphorus grenade at a bunch of Ubies,
threw too high, hit the roof, bounced back at us, hit Spike on the head. Spike heads it back at the Ubies – hit them, Spike watches a lot of soccer – but it
spilled some on his forehead. So I was
all “Spike’s head, Spike’s head, Spike’s head is on fire” but luckily Roxy is
right behind him and thinks quickly. She
smothered the fire with Spike’s own coat, “she don’t need no
water but the vampire doesn’t burn”. He
was badly hurt, the burn went right through to the
bone, but way better than him being burned to ashes. Big thanks to Roxy.
Anita was doing our doctor thing, but she doesn’t know
how to heal vampires apart from giving them blood and waiting for them to
heal. So Jocasta says “why don’t you do
a spell?”, ‘cause Anita is a bit of a witch, and she
says “don’t know any healing spells for vamps.”
Feel sorry for Drake, then remember
Roxy says she should just make a spell up, comes up
with rhyme about “skin to thicken”, Anita tries it, Spike’s head starts to
heal. Cool! Not so cool a bit later, coming back to that.
No Kat. But we
do find her cell phone. Positive ID from ring tone.
Marilyn Manson – how lame is that?
So off across the plains again. Huge pyramid
type temple looms in distance. Teenage girls taking turns riding unicorn (except Ampata). Ampata leads train of pack llamas. So I start singing “California Dreaming”. Roxy says “Amy good gorilla!”, I reply “Ugly!
Gorilla! Peter mine!”, attack of the mutant giggles, girl to girl B-movie
bonding moment. Spike says “I’m your
Great White Hunter, but I happen to be – well, pretty white, actually”. Tia Teresa waves
machine gun and says “Put them on the endangered species list!”
Ampata & Manuelita share
a “these gringos are mad” moment, presumably
reclassified into “these non-Peruvians are mad” once Teresa (Spanish) joins in
the Congo-quoting.
Hey, it’s not a great film, but – lost cities, lasers,
eyeball-throwing, cute ape called Amy – what’s not to love?
Hide out for the day in abandoned stone building. During the day the thickening skin on Spike’s
wounded forehead continues to thicken.
In fact, he’s getting horny! By
nightfall he’s got a spike on his forehead six inches long and sharp as a
thorn. Anita’s all “Oops, sorry”, but no
idea how to fix it. Spike not happy
about how he looks, but cool about being able to gore
people. Announces he has urge to mate
with a Land Rover, but is kidding.
So, evening comes and we set off to storm this great
big temple thing, Aztec pyramid style. Guards, of course. Minotaurs, Ubies, flying demons, and six-legged lizard thing. Jocasta said it was a basilisk, really could
turn us to stone, monsters out of Dungeons and Dragons are actually real. Guys who invented game knew some Watchers,
apparently. Watchers play D&D as
part of their training, monster stats adjusted to fit reality.
Teresa’s machine gun encourages monsters to seek
shelter. Basilisk digs itself into
ground and waits to ambush us. Good plan
for a lizard, but Ampata goes to where it is lurking and shoves a pike into the
ground and impales it. Death of basilisk. Go
Ampata!
Attack of the flying demons next. Not a good
move against a machine gun – well, not with Teresa doing the shooting, against
me it would probably have worked. And not clever against Spike’s shotgun. He is really good. Swings the gun up and fires
in one smooth move, hole blown through demon, swings further and blows hole
through second demon with other barrel.
Grouse shooting when he was a human, he says. Admits later that he hated
it then, wasn’t any good, was just expected of people of his class, but now has
vampire reflexes. Yay Spike!
So time to fight our way into the temple. Ubies and minotaurs,
at close quarters but with machine-gun back-up.
Advantage all with us.
Until arrow hits Ampata, and she starts shriveling
up. Withering. Turning into actual
lurching-in-pyramids mummy. Soul Eater on the arrow.
Not of the good. She grabs an Ubie, sucks it dry, returns to normal self – then starts shriveling again. Scary. We have to get the Soul Eater out fast – but
how? Roxy suggests we take the ring off
her, let her crumble, dig SE out of wreckage and then put back on. Desperate measures – but Ampata is dying in
front of our eyes, so we go for it.
Except she’s really far gone, and she crumbles
to dust.
Big scare. Soul Eater
spotted and squished, but no Ampata.
Search dust, somebody finds intact finger, I
put the ring on it – dust reforms into Inca Mummy Girl again. Huge relief!
After that, the rest of the fighting through the
temple is a bit of an anti-climax (suddenly channeling Anya – is there such a
thing as an anti-orgasm?). Spike takes
over phosphorus grenade duty, really good at it, fast and accurate. Says he played Cricket at
Eventually find room with human hostages, big fight,
we win, free hostages (with every ten gallons!). Some of them are from Sunnydale, one is
workmate of Xander’s, one is pizza guy who delivers to our house and Spike’s
crypt, promises us free pizza.
No missing Slayer.
Search on. Find room with wall
carvings telling story of how sun went crazy, started killing people and not
vampires, people started living underground, vamps (Ubies)
killed them off. Carvings not finished.
And the First Evil. Waiting for us in the form of Abraham Lincoln. Tells us we’ve won for now, says he has
65,000 Ubies hundreds of miles away at other Hellmouth, enjoy our victory while
we can, then walks away singing “
We find secret door, open it, prison cell containing
missing Slayer Kat. In
one piece, although has had blood taken from her often. Jocasta says blood has been used for scrying ritual. Eww! Great rejoicing from Anita.
Long trek back to Hellmouth,
taking freed hostages with us. Back in
the caves is nasty surprise waiting, Claymore mine – well, property of US Army
originally not Dawn Summers, also not large Scottish sword. Boom type mine. Lucky we hadn’t let guard down, thought
things had been a bit easy at the end, so we spot it and don’t get blown to
bits.
Then there is a huge monster waiting at this side of
the Hellmouth.
Tentacles, great big mouth. We’d fought things like it in the pyramid,
but smaller. Buffy says something like
it tried to come through our Hellmouth once. Spike chucks a grenade right into its
mouth. Burn baby burn. We rock!
Then major wig time. Unicorn
speaks, says goodbye to us – in
Emerge in
Until Jocasta reads her e-mails. Shit
happens. Major trouble in
And in Sunnydale. Three
Potentials dead, two injured. Xander has
lost an eye. New Big Bad in town,
tougher than Buffy and Faith put together.
So home again isn’t joyful and triumphant like I’d planned.
Goodbyes to
Me and Spike head back to Sunnydale by ourselves. Just the two of us, heading back into
danger. But I feel safe. Because I know he’ll protect me until the end
of the world.
Even if that happens to be tonight.
FIN