Oz rode into town just after dawn, and headed onto the UC Sunnydale campus looking for breakfast. There had been a few early opening places for students who liked to get up at that time/left assignments to the last minute, if he could remember the addresses.
"That'll be a few minutes but your coffee will be right up." The waitress said as he sat down, aching all over. The waterfall sound in his head was there as always after many hours in the saddle. Most people don't appreciate that the wind roar is actually louder than the engine at highway speeds, and it does funny things after a few hours. And it had been many hours since he started this. Since the call.
"Nice bike, haven't seen one of those in a while." It was the waitress again, with his mug of black coffee. After riding from Quebec on an average of 4 hours sleep a day he was not quick to respond, but smiled at her while trying to get his brain working.
"You know bikes?" Because he certainly didn't, but he'd needed to get here fast and his friend had just smiled and said 'well this is what'll do it' and taken the van as payment.
"Laverda Jota, classic 1980's Italian roadburner. My husband had one when we met, good times." Then she smiled at him and left again. Basically the two wheeled equivalent of a Ferrari, he had been told that with the high beam on it wouldn't even keep the battery charged below 88 mph. The designer had just ASSUMED you wouldn't ever ride it that slowly, and he hadn't except in towns.
After days of riding stretched out over the tank in the semi-race crouch riding position ?how many days? He had lost track ? rarely below double the speed limit, stopping only for fuel and the minimum sleep possible, he was ravenous, saddle sore and probably smelled like a week dead mule. But he HAD to answer the call, he had to.
"There you are, sorry for the delay." Watching him dig in she was about to say more when he started sniffing the air, then looking around. She stepped back, she was born and raised in Sunnydale and wasn't so in denial as to not notice danger signs like this. The werewolf turned to see HER, stood up and walked at a little under a slow run. SHE turned in time to be engulfed in his arms, not realising who it was for a moment.
"Willow." She who was his mate, his reason for existence, his everything.
The red headed Wicca had changed her life patterns in the last few days. Habits had been established while under the spell, while the whole town was under a spell, and she had taken Alcoholic's Anonymous advice 'To break the addiction you have to stop doing the things you did while addicted, to avoid falling back on old addictive behaviour.'
Not everything of course, but sleeping in was an 'I love Tara' habit, therefore an 'under the spell' habit, so she got up early now. They had no idea how far back the spell went, but since her first 'kinda gay' incident? seriously thinking about taking Faith up on a 'lets fuck' offer - was late high school, and Faith said making her the offer was similarly out of character for her, they took that as the start time.
'Come on Willow.' She said to herself 'think of a nice crack of dawn breakfast as you nearly fall over the big orange motorcycle parked on the sidewalk not actually blocking the entrance and why has this biker grabbed you?'
"Willow." It was Oz, he was back, her love was back.
"Oz, you're back."
"Mm." He responded, eloquent as ever.
"What brought you back, not that I'm not happy to see you but what brought you back now not three years ago or?"
"You called."
"Oz, I didn't even know what continent you were on, how could I call you?"
"I felt your call."
"You felt me call?"
"Pain, you were in pain."
"Oh." She said while absentmindedly scratching him behind the ears. Fighting the urge to say 'good Oz, good boy, fetch the stick, fetch the stick' she sat down next to him and hugged him. She always had gotten those sort of feelings near him, and didn't know whether it was a werewolves mate instinct or just having seen one two many episodes of 'the adventures of Rin Tin Tin as a child with Xander.
"Oz, it was a spell, the Tara 'gay now' thing was a spell." And suddenly she realized she was sitting next to a murderously angry werewolf, he had started to change right there in daylight. "No Oz, bad Oz, down Oz, it's not Tara's fault, the whole town was under a spell for years."
And with that the purple haired werewolf went back to, well, wolfing down his breakfast. She ordered hers while absentmindedly continuing to hug, scratch and pat him on the head. She felt closer to him than she had in high school, was it his age as a werewolf affecting her or had that been the first real effect of the spell on her?
"Oz, its wonderful to have you back." He leaned into her hand and she took the hint and scratched a little harder. Then he looked at her and spoke.
"Good to be back."
Captain Alexander Lavelle Harris was back in the 'Dale after another long mission with Faith and the strike team. As usual he had a mountain of paperwork to deal with but the night was his. With the training detail patrolling with Buffy it was actually safe to walk the streets at night, the vamps were definitely on the defensive now. So he was looking forward to a relaxing dinner.
"Sir, we have a problem." It was Chan, and he seemed nervous, the Duty Officer noted. Lt. MacLaren saw it was an email and just wanted to know what it meant. "It's the name of the person who put the mind control spell on the town."
"Get the nearest patrol to handle it and send the alert team." Which should have been the obvious move without having to ask for higher authority. "And find out who sent it."
"It's hours late getting to us sir."
"Say again."
"It seems to have been sent on the University server to every student on Campus, plus the police, the local paper, radio station, TV."
"And we got it late due to that server crash I take it." The mail server had gone down in a screaming heap after a virus had infected it. They had to reconstruct everything and the low priority mail ? this had been identified as probably span ? was only now being read. "great."
The Initiative was a long way from the only organization that was looking for whoever done it. They were, however, probably the only one that the perp could afford to be found by.
"Ok, do you need us there or are you just informing us?"
"Ok, good, thanks for the heads up."
And with that Xander went back to dinner. Whoever it was was evil but handling that was what he did for a living, and it was at least not 'end of the world' evil. Faith was angry but willing to wait for the morning to 'kick the mortal snot' out of the guilty party. She was not to know, at that time, that she would never get the chance.
Anya was going for some extra food and condoms for tonight's party, booze they had but keeping the bowls of contraceptives full al night would need more than they had. She was thinking of where to get the cheapest decent quality nibble food when a .308 calibre bullet took entered her head on the left side and blew out the entire right side of her head going out.
The bomb squad slowed everything down, but that's just life. It turned out the victims car had two bombs in it, one rigged to go off when someone sat on it and the other in the process of being rigged into the ignition when something, probably the victim coming outside interrupted things.
"So Detective Stein, who done it?"
"Well for Christs sake Luke, half the town had motive. I make it three people set up just to kill outside the office." While most officers professed not to believe in the supernatural if you genuinely didn't you wouldn't take the precautions that kept you alive on night shift. And everyone got night shift sooner or later. "Send the bomb squad to her home next."
"Too late." One of the uniformed men shouted.
"What do you mean?"
"Its on fire, burning like a torch apparently."