Bitca: Part 3
by Theodore J Miller
In the school, Xander and Willow had sat through their first period class even more impatiently than usual. As soon as it ended, they rushed over to the library. "Giles!" Xander called as soon as they were inside. "Did you figure out what's up with Buffy?"
"Where IS Buffy?" Giles replied. "I left the window open, like you requested, but she hasn't arrived yet. And what was the 'something weird' that you said has happened?"
"She's not here?" Xander said incredulously. "She was supposed to come in here as soon as no one was outside to notice a dog jumping in the window."
"Excuse me," Giles replied, "but, a dog? Buffy was planning to jump in my window, accompanied by a dog? Would this be some American teenage ritual that I'm not familiar with?"
"Giles, no, it's terrible," Willow said. "Buffy's, well, she's turned into a dog. Really."
"Buffy has turned INTO a dog," Giles repeated. "Can I hope this is just a matter of slang usage, and Buffy has merely become somewhat unattractive?"
"No, she's a REAL dog," Xander said. "Four legs, tail, covered with fur, a DOG dog."
"Good lord," Giles said, "a lycanthropic transformation?"
"A what?" Xander asked.
"A lycanthropic... like a werewolf. Though there are other forms known, generally the dangerous predator in a particular region, tiger, leopard, etc. So I guess a weredog is a possible variant. And she was a dog by daylight?"
"Just before class, outside the school," Xander answered. "We were going to bring her in, but Snyder wouldn't let us."
"Hmm. The usual lycanthrope only changes at night, generally during the full moon period. Though cases are known where the transformation persists in daytime, as a permanent change.
"P-permanent?" Willow asked. "You mean Buffy's NEVER going to..."
"No, it's not necessarily that bad. It might be possible to reverse the process. I'd need access to the progenitor creature."
"The what?" Xander asked.
"Lycanthropy is normally transferred by a bite from another lycanthrope of the same species, in this case a dog," Giles explained. "Presumably Buffy was bitten by..."
"Cordelia!" Xander interrupted.
"I hardly think so," Giles said. "I've heard you describe Cordelia metaphorically as, well, what would literally mean a female dog, but in this case it would have to be..."
"No, Cordelia was at the Bronze last night," Xander explained. "She had this little dog with her, and it bit Buffy on the finger. That must be what did it."
"Ohhh," Willow said, looking pale. "I was watching that dog for Cordelia. Am I gonna..."
"It didn't actually bite you, did it?" Giles asked. When Willow said "no," Giles continued, "then presumably you were not affected. But we have to get that dog, both so I can cure Buffy, and to keep anyone else from being affected."
"Oh no," Xander said. "I don't remember seeing Cordelia this morning. Could SHE have been ..."
"I don't know; it's possible," Giles said.
"I've got math next period, and Cordelia's in that class," Xander said. "I'll go see if she's, well, if she's there, and if not..."
"Either way, you'll have to get that dog of hers," Giles said. "Without it, I won't be able to help Buffy, or anyone else who was affected." Xander left to check on Cordelia, but Willow remained behind for a minute.
"Giles," Willow said, "what about Buffy? Where is she?"
"I'll look around outside the school grounds," Giles said. "Maybe Buffy's still waiting out there. You said she wanted to get in here unobserved; maybe she didn't have the opportunity to do so."
"But what if something's happened to her?" Willow asked. "She said, well, she nodded, that she could still do the Slayer stuff, but maybe..."
"I'm sure Buffy will be fine, Willow. She's a very resourceful girl," Giles reassured Willow.
Willow nodded and started to leave, then stopped. "But she's not a girl now, she's a dog," and left.
"Buffy, I hope you're all right," Giles muttered after Willow left, and he went out to look for Buffy.
When Xander got to his math class, he looked around anxiously for Cordelia. "Where IS she?" he muttered. "Don't tell me that SHE'S become a..." Then he spotted Cordelia, and rushed over to her. "Cordelia, you're not a dog!" he blurted out.
"Xander Harris, if that's supposed to be a pickup line," Cordelia answered, "it's the LAMEST one I've ever heard. No wonder you can't get any girls, if the best you can come up with is to tell them they're not actually ugly." She snorted and turned her back on Xander, and took her seat as the teacher began talking.
Xander sat down too, and wrote out a note which he passed to Cordelia. He finally got her to read it, and her reaction was to blurt out, "WHAT? Are you on drugs or something?"
"Ms. Chase," the teacher said, "I take it that you strongly disagree with something I said. Would you care to elaborate for the class?"
"What?" Cordelia said. "Oh, I just meant that, well, nothing, I must have heard you wrong."
"In that case, if I can continue without further interruption..." The teacher continued lecturing, and Cordelia ignored all further attempts by Xander to communicate.
After class finally ended, Xander managed to corner Cordelia. "What kind of nonsense is this," she said, waving Xander's note. "Buffy's turned into a DOG, because my dog bit her? Is this some sick guy fantasy I don't understand, or have you just gone extremely psychotic?"
"No, it's REALLY happened," Xander insisted, "I saw Buffy outside the school, and she's a dog. A real dog. It's a werewolf thing. Giles said we have to have your dog here, so he can try to change Buffy back."
"This is just nuts," Cordelia replied. "People do NOT change into dogs, particularly not from being bitten by a dog, and certainly not from being bitten by a pedigreed, highly-expensive bichon frise like Napoleon."
"It doesn't MATTER how expensive the dog is, and what kind of fancy name it has. We need your dog, as soon as possible, so Giles can help Buffy. And this is all your fault anyway; you brought that dog to the Bronze in the first place."
"My fault? MY fault? Okay, that's it, I'm going to go get Napoleon, just so you and everyone else can see he's a perfectly normal, perfectly healthy, and really expensive dog, and not some weird kind of bite-people-and-turn-them-into-dogs thing!" And with that Cordelia flounced off.
Xander stood there, watching as she left. "She makes me so, so, so I don't KNOW what. And what I REALLY hate is that I want to finish the argument with her in the utility closet, with fewer clothes on."
Elsewhere, Buffy gradually woke up. *Ohhh, that was a WEIRD one," she thought. *Dreaming I was a DOG. That's got to have some bizarro psychological meaning.* She opened her eyes. *Huh, this isn't my bedroom. It's got cages, and there are all those dogs barking... Oh no. It wasn't real, was it? I couldn't be...* She reluctantly looked down at herself, then let out a yell that came out as a howl. *NOOO, I really AM a dog. This sucks. This sucks so INCREDIBLY much.*
Buffy looked around the room. It was long and thin, with a row of wire-mesh cages, and a door at one end. *Okay, I am NOT hanging around here," she thought. *It's time for Buffy Summers, the Chosen One, the one, um, the one dog in all the world with the strength and skill to defeat the dog-catchers, to make her move.* She managed to hook her front paws into one part of her cage, and her back paws into another part, and began to pull, and eventually the wire mesh pulled free.
Unfortunately, it was the wire mesh leading into the next cage which had come free. The German shepherd in that cage walked through, and came over to Buffy. *Hey, stop sniffing at me; I am EXTREMELY not your type. Get your nose AWAY from there,* she thought. She tried telling that to the other dog in dog language; unfortunately, there was no such thing as dog language, so all Buffy did was whine and growl a bit.
Buffy repositioned herself to try again to pull out the front of the cage. *Come on, open already. I want to get OUT. I hate being in here, I hate being a dog, and I hate that I'm starting to LIKE having this stupid German shepherd sniff me, and want to sniff him back. Stupid dog instincts.* She pulled again, and the front of the cage finally came free.
*Now we're getting somewhere,* Buffy thought. She trotted over to the door; her new friend, the German shepherd, followed behind her. She tried shoving the other dog away, but it came back to her, and Buffy didn't want to really hurt it. *Okay, fine, follow me, you stupid mutt. But don't complain if you can't keep up.*
Buffy jumped up and grabbed the door handle in her jaws, and after a bit of acrobatics, she got the door open. She peeked through, and saw a couple of guys in the next room, and a screen door that was letting in light from outside. *Yes! I'm outta here!* She ran past the two startled guys, and jumped at the screen door. The screen ripped, and she landed outside. The German shepherd landed just behind her. *Ohhh! You again! Well, try following this!* Buffy ran along, leaped over a fence, and landed on the street. She looked around, and recognized the part of Sunnydale she was in. *Bye-bye pooch! I've got a REAL boyfriend to go to!* And she ran down the street.
Angel was in his apartment when he heard a banging at the door. When he opened it, the golden retriever outside flung its paws over his shoulders, and began to lick his face.
Angel wasn't sure what to do, since he wasn't used to big, friendly dogs; they tend to get in the way of one's brooding. Then he looked into the dog's eyes, and vampire senses, or a deep connection between souls, told him something. "You... my God, Buffy? Is that you?" The dog nodded eagerly, and began licking his face again.
Angel held Buffy for a minute, then let her down. "Okay, Buffy, okay. You'd better stop now, before we do something that would not be, um, appropriate. And that I think my demon WANTS to do."
Buffy and Angel sat down and made an effort to rein in their respective alter egos. Buffy's canine instincts were heavily into displays of affection, and while she was resisting the urge for some heavy petting with Angel, she couldn't control the fact that whenever she looked at him, her tail wagged so hard it threatened to knock over the furniture. As for Angel, his demon/vampire side now found Buffy peculiarly attractive, identifying her transformation with a vampire game face (particularly the fangs), plus it also seemed quite taken with the sheer perverseness of the whole situation. So both Buffy and Angel were feeling the tension, as Buffy told Angel, via gesturing and pointing, and nodding or shaking her head in response to questions, what had happened to her so far.
"Buffy, what can I do?" Angel asked. Buffy immediately thought of one thing, and indicated Angel's clothing. "Get undressed?" he asked. "I really don't think... we shouldn't..."
Buffy interrupted by shaking her head no. "Something ELSE," Angel said with relief. "My clothes. Change my clothes?" Buffy pointed to herself. "You, your clothes? But you're not wearing... oh." He took a second to let this sink in. "You want me to get clothing for you?" Buffy nodded eagerly. "I think I can manage something." Angel opened a closet, took out a coat, and draped it over Buffy. "Is that better?" Buffy nodded eagerly again.
*Yes!* she thought. *It's a piece of CLOTHING! I get to wear CLOTHES again!* She closed her eyes and luxuriated in the feeling of actually wearing something again, after having to run around all morning technically naked. *When this is all over, I NEVER want to be naked again. I'm gonna get dressed before I take a shower!*
Buffy thought of something else; she walked over to the telephone, and nudged it. "The telephone?" Angel asked. "You want to call someone, no, you want me to call someone for you? Your mother?" An emphatic no. "Giles?" A nod yes. Angel picked up the phone and dialed.
Giles was in his office reading references on lycanthropy and looking worried. He'd looked all around the school, even calling "Here, Buffy, Buffy," but all he'd found was her pocketbook. Now he was very concerned that Buffy had been overwhelmed by her change, and had wandered off totally a dog. Thus he was highly relieved when he found out that Buffy was safe with Angel.
"Is Buffy, is she still a dog?" Giles asked, then listened. "But how is she mentally; is she still herself?" Listened again. "Thank goodness for that. Though it is odd that she's still maintaining that much of her normal human mentality. This weredog must be a very unusual variant of lycanthrope, or possibly it's because Buffy's the Slayer, and her body is resisting the change."
Giles thought. "Angel, I think you should get Buffy over here right away. Willow and Xander told me that Cordelia's dog bit Buffy last night, so Cordelia's bringing the dog here. Our best chance of reversing Buffy's change is to use its cause; the hair of the dog that bit her, so to speak. But it's difficult to reverse a lycanthropic change, and often doesn't work; the sooner we try it, while she still hasn't completely changed mentally, the better the chance of success."
Angel and Giles finished talking, and hung up. Angel told Buffy, "We have to get you to Giles right away. I've got a covered entrance to the sewer tunnels outside my door, and a route through them to the school, so I'll be able to get you to Giles without going into sunlight."
Angel heard a peculiar noise from Buffy; it looked like she was choking, then he realized she was laughing, but she couldn't tell him why. *We'll blend right in,* she was thinking. *Just another vampire out walking his dog, in the sewer.* She calmed down, and the two went out and then underground.
They ran into a few delays, as Buffy kept having to restrain her urges to root through garbage, roll in puddles, or retrieve dead rats, plus she had to take one extremely embarrassing bathroom break. But eventually they reached the school, where Giles, Willow, and Xander were all waiting in the library.
Giles had thought to set up a blackboard at floor level, and printed a large alphabet on it, so Buffy could spell out messages by pointing to letters. "Buffy, how are you feeling?" Giles asked, getting the response "HATE THIS."
"I'll be able to try to help you," Giles answered, "just as soon as Cordelia... speak of the devil," he interrupted himself as Cordelia came into the library, carrying a small white dog.
"Fine, here's Napoleon," Cordelia said crossly as she handed the dog to Giles. "Do you know I had to upset his whole schedule to bring him here? There's only one really top dog groomer in Sunnydale, and I had to interrupt Napoleon's appointment with him, and everything."
"Well, pardon us if we think saving Buffy is a little more important than having some overpriced dog-barber give you and your dog matching haircuts," Xander replied. "Just LOOK at what your dog's bite did to Buffy," he added, pointing to the golden retriever.
"I still think everyone here is crazy," Cordelia said. "That's not Buffy, that's a mangy-looking golden retriever, and this is a pure-bred bichon frise, and that's ALL they are." Angel and the golden retriever both growled at Cordelia. Then the golden retriever walked over to Cordelia, fastened its jaws on her dress, and braced itself to pull.
"Hey, don't rip this dress," Cordelia said worriedly, "it's a one-of-a-kind designer original." The dog nodded, and looked at her expectantly. "What?" Cordelia said, then "Oh. Okay, okay, you're Buffy, just leave the dress alone." The dog let go, with a self-satisfied expression on its face.
"I should begin now," Giles said. "Willow can assist me, but the rest of should, well, clear out and let me work. Oh wait, one more thing. It might help the process to have a target to concentrate on; does anyone have a picture of Buffy?"
Angel pulled out one; so did Xander. "Xander, why do you carry around a picture of Buffy?" Cordelia asked crossly.
"Well, um, just in case," Xander said.
"Just in case?" Cordelia repeated questioningly.
"Just in case Buffy, well, if she disappears or something, and we need to look for her, I can show people the picture and ask 'have you seen this girl?' That's useful, right?" Xander answered her.
"Oh sure, that's it," Cordelia said sarcastically.
"Um, people, if you will..." Giles began. Angel disappeared in his usual fashion, and Xander and Cordelia went out the library door, still arguing. Giles and Willow got to work.
Outside the library, Cordelia continued "Did you really expect me to swallow that lame excuse? I bet you pull out that picture of Buffy and moon over it every chance you get."
"Hey, I don't moon," Xander complained.
"I was giving you the benefit of the doubt," Cordelia retorted. "The other alternative was a lot more disgusting than just MOONING over it."
"What about you?" Xander said. "Buffy's had this terrible thing happen to her, and you caused it, and now you're more concerned about some overpriced mutt missing his beauty treatment. You're selfish, inconsiderate..."
"And you're a pathetic sicko."
"Utility closet?" Xander asked.
"Let's go," Cordelia replied.
The two started down the corridor, then paused as they turned the corner into the hallway leading to their usual make-out spot. A cleaning woman was coming down the hall the other way. Xander and Cordelia waited nonchalantly until she went around the corner, then dashed into the closet.
They started kissing, but then Xander began to laugh. "Oh, now I'm funny, am I?" Cordelia asked indignantly.
"No, it's just that cleaning woman, Mrs. um, well, however you pronounce A-e-a-e-a. At the Bronze last night, after we argued about this closet, Buffy actually suspected that I had a crush on her."
"On the woman who cleans the school?" Cordelia said incredulously. "That's ridiculous."
"Yeah, almost as ridiculous as that I'm in here making out with you," Xander said.
"Hey!" Cordelia replied, and another argument/kissing session began.
In the library, Giles had performed various tests and preparations, while Willow sat at the computer checking on-line references for him. "Buffy," Giles said apologetically, "there's something very odd here. This dog of Cordelia's tests as perfectly ordinary, with no trace of lycanthropy or any other mystical element. So the bite from it is not what caused you to change."
Buffy gave an interrogative growl, and Willow asked "Then, um, then what did change Buffy? And how do we reverse it?"
"I, well, I'm not sure," Giles replied. He thought a minute. "Though maybe... hmm. Maybe I'm looking at this wrong. Perhaps we should check for references to humans involuntarily assuming animal form, OTHER than lycanthropy."
That was as far as Giles got. The library door opened slightly, and an arm reached in and tossed something into the library. A cloud of odd-looking smoke appeared in the room, and when it dissipated, Buffy gave a startled bark. Giles and Willow were gone, but an owl was sitting at Giles' desk, and an auburn-furred mouse was on the computer keyboard.
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