"Meow."
For some reason the sound of a cat meowing outside his door woke Xander from his sound sleep. He rolled over looking at his clock. "6am! Oh for . . ." He buried his head under the pillow trying to go back to sleep. Still, he could hear the cat.
After a few minutes, he could not take it anymore. He went to his door. It was just before sunrise and still dark, so he opened the door cautiously. He looked down to see an orange tabby cat sitting on a newspaper. The cat moved off the paper and looked at him expectantly.
"Well cat if you can enter without an invitation," he chuckled to himself, "I'll get you some milk." The cat didn't budge. Instead, it kept looking from Xander to the newspaper. For a moment he swore to himself that the cat was trying to get him to look at the newspaper.
"Fine." He said as he started to close the door. The cat began hissing and meowing frantically. Xander just stared at the cat. "You trying to tell me something girl? Is Timmy stuck in the well again?"
Later he would swear to himself that the cat rolled its eyes at him, before nudging the paper with its nose.
"Okay, Lassie." He sighed as he leaned out to pick-up the paper. "You want me to get the paper? Okay, I got the paper. Now, I suppose I should pay you for the special delivery? After all, my folks have never even read a newspaper much less had one delivered to the house and even if they did, I doubt it would be nicely folded and waiting in front of the basement door." He finished picking up the paper and closed his door. The cat entered the basement before he did.
Xander threw the paper down on the table and went to the fridge to get some milk and tuna fish for the cat.
When he turned around, he found the cat sitting on the paper again. "Alright you win!" He sat down and picked up the paper. "Happy now? Pushy much." He muttered.
He began reading. The headline was about the Sunydale special election for Mayor. There were more than 450 candidates and oddly the debates were being held at night because several of the candidates were severely allergic to the sun. "Politics as usual. You get what you vote for." Xander knew that several of the candidates were vamps that would be taken care of before the election, but he found it hysterical. Politics were the perfect place for vampires. After all, even he could translate the word 'Politics' from the original Greek; 'Poly' meaning many and 'tic' meaning blood sucking creatures.
"Not seeing what you wanted me to see Lassie." Xander said as he rubbed the cat behind her ears and scanned the rest of the page. His eye catching a headline, which read, "Local Girl found dead at Sunnydale University." He quickly read the article, which recounted the local police finding the body of Angela Darling a freshman who had been in his class at high school. According to the article, she had been a raped and beaten just after dawn as she walked through the woods on the way from her dorm to the school library. He wondered why Willow hadn't mentioned it last night. Angela wasn't what he would call a friend well not a close friend, but like Cordy and Willow, she had been in all his classes since first grade.
"Well, cat I don't know what you wanted, but you seem happy now." By now the sun was up. He decided that since he was up maybe he would see if he could catch Wills and Buffy for breakfast before their 8am class. "I think I will head over towards Sunnydale U. to see my girls." He could have sworn the cat smiled at him when he said that.
He got dressed, shoved the paper in his pocket to show the girls, and left. He decided to walk, which meant he would have to walk through the same path that Angela had before she was killed in order to reach the girls' dorm.
"NOOOOOOOO!"
Xander heard the scream and ran to see if he could help. However, he was momentarily shocked when he saw who had called. Standing before him was Angela Darling. More precisely laying on the ground crying with a hulk of a man standing over her.
He shook off the surprise and called out. "Hey Angela." This caused the assailant to look over at him and the victim to look up with hope. "Oh, where are my manners? Good morning Mr. Big Bad want-to- be."
"You have a death wish, fool?"
"You have a death wish, fool?" Xander repeated. "Who writes your line, Mr. T. Course, that isn't a put down. I loved that show, although Murdock was always my favorite." He was coming closer as he spoke. "Course, yours was obviously BA. How about you Angela?"
The guy was just staring at Xander confused as to what was going on. He was starting to get mad.
"Let, me guess. You liked Face. All the girls fell for him. It was the dimples, wasn't it? No, no, it was the 'vette. It was like when I had Uncle Rory's car, couldn't keep the girls away. Girls love a slick car."
By now he was practically on top of them. The would-be-rapist, realized this and moved on Xander swinging on him. However, Xander had been fighting vamps for three years and had managed to pick up some self-defense skills. It wasn't clear if Xander could have finished the guy off, but like most assailants, he didn't expect any resistance and quickly decided to get out of there. Xander thought about chasing him until he heard Angela crying on the ground.
He carried her to the nearest campus emergency phone.
After the emergency personnel took Angela he sat down. He pulled the paper from his jacket, but the article wasn't there. Instead it read, "Local Man prevents Murder." It was then that he noticed the date on the paper. It was tomorrow's. He had gotten tomorrow's paper today.