All five boys named Dale have left Sunnydale, in one way or another, and now the sun has left too, choked by the clouds and the approaching night.

The rain drips, and drips and drips.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

Off leaves.

Off cars.

Off walls and signs and it gathers and rolls off leather like its avoiding contact with the demon that stalks through the night searching for signs of life in the town’s empty streets.

It's a rainy night in Sunnydale, and despite the noise of rain collecting in and sliding off of wet leaves, a quiet one too.

No humans out and about. They don't like rain.

Boring.

She walks past a church. It's dark, the door locked and what windows remain boarded over.

The fonts are overflowing, the rain filling the basins and flowing over the lip. Water washing away sins. Figurative. She’d need a soul for that.

She wants blood. She’s hungry and bored and there’s been nothing for her to do since her puppy got dusted.

The wind shifts. Her head snaps around, straining to locate ... there. The crackle of twigs in a fire. Where there’s fire, there’s food. That, or burning and destruction, and destruction is always so pretty to look at, even when it isn’t her who made it.

Willow walks deeper into the shadows, between the trees and into the wood the cradles the back of the church, humming to herself. The song is an old one, only half remembered. The words have long since deserted her, but she hums it anyway.

The simple, predictable demon in her head and bones and blood thinks it’s irrelevant, counting one’s sins. Willow disagrees. Counting sins is fun. There’s so many of them to count up and add to and burn away also, if she finds herself bored while the sun shines and keeps her trapped indoors.

It’d be so much funner, though, to play with the girl sheltering from the downpour under a tree, next to the fire spluttering valiantly every time leaves funnel rainwater down into it. The smoke doesn’t bother her – she’s sleeping, curled in the embrace of the roots. Willow will just have to ... unroot her.

The moonlight, shining through a break in clouds catches at her hair. She’s blonde. Pretty, too. Almost pretty enough to make a pet.

There’s a sensation like an inside out body sneeze that makes the back of Willow’s eyes tingle.

And there’s a cat where the girl used to be.

Huh.

She doesn’t look demonic, not like the mutts. Looks like a cat. A big cat, but no horns or scales or anything interesting besides the fact that a minute ago she was a girl. She shakes her fur out and curls up again, nose to tail and a paw tucked over her face.

This is better than finding a snack. Better than finding Puppy, even.

Willow is going to have so much fun.