Who: Dawn & Dean When: A few days after the Buffy/Dawn thread, late afternoon Where: The alley behind the ballet studio Dawn's studying at What: Dawn runs into trouble and has to be rescued...nothing new ;-) Locked: to Dean Status: Incomplete
Dawn often stayed an hour or two after the other girls, rehearsing on her own. She had a lot to make up for, since she was coming into ballet so late in life-she really wished her mom had let her keep taking lessons when they first moved to Sunnydale. Though now she understood it had been a money issue-they simply hadn't had enough. But now, Dawn was making up for it. Just over two hours past the end of the last class, Dawn was in the locker room using a blow dryer on her hair, after having just taken a shower. She'd gotten to know the school's owner, and thus she had an extra key in the pocket of her jeans already, so that she could lock up when she finished.
Dragging a brush through her hair, her thoughts strayed to her sister. She had been acting strange, ever since the hospital, but wouldn't come clean about what was going on. It worried Dawn-the last time this had happened, her sister had been sleeping with Spike and hiding it. But Angel was here, so of course Buffy wouldn't be doing something like that, right? That'd be stupid. Pushing the thoughts aside, Dawn slipped her leotard and her brush and towel back into her duffle bag, then zipped it up. Giving herself another quick glance in the mirror, she headed for the exit.
A few minutes later, the brunette was outside the back door of the studio, locking the building up. Slipping the key back into her pocket, she shouldered her bag, then headed on down the alley. After a moment, she heard footsteps behind her. It was daytime-the sun was streaming into the alley-so there was no way it could be vampires. That left demons. Or, she realized while glancing over her shoulder, an actual gang. And here she was, a young woman, all alone. And a stake could kill these guys, but she couldn't actually kill a person That was one thing she knew for sure.
Dawn began to pick up her pace as she headed towards the mouth of the alley, where she could see the street. What alarmed her was the fact that the footsteps of the two guys behind her had also quickened to match her. She quickly gave up all pretenses and began to run-leading her to run straight into two more guys who stepped out from behind a dumpster. One of them caught her arm, stopping her.
"Help! Let me go!" She shouted it, and was rewarded with the second guy backhanding her in the mouth. The only thing that kept her from falling was the tight grip the first man had on her arm. She kneed him in the groin, causing him to release her arm, and spun-only to see that the original two stalkers had reached them. She was now surrounded by four guys, all bigger than her, and two of them had pulled out knives. Her only consolation was that the guy she'd kneed had fallen to the ground and seemed to be out for the moment. "Now...hey...I'm sorry about what I did to your friend, but you really don't want to mess with me, okay?" She reached into her bag and pulled out a stake, holding it menacingly.
"Whatcha gonna do, girly? Stick us in the eye with that thing?" One of the guys laughed, as another stepped forward and slashed at her with his knife, causing Dawn to stumble back into a wall in order to avoid the blade. The man smiled and advanced towards her and for a moment, Dawn could've sworn his eyes looked like they were completely black. Okay, not possible. She raised the stake in one hand, and balled her other hand in a fist as she let the bag slide to the ground beside her. Taking a deep breath, she called for help once again.