You really didn't want to let things with Marcie play out the way they had before. You knew she'd been nesting inside the school for some time, the Hellmouth slowly twisting her up, before she finally attacked. It was a similar principle to how the nightmare realm had bled over into reality. Simply existing on top of the Hellmouth made reality more flexible, and thoughts could become true in ways that would have to be purposely induced in other places.
You scrounged around for some time in your house for a bit of spare change. You found enough to get a couple cheap cheeseburgers, and brought along some twinkies as well. You took it to the school and started looking around. "Marcie? Hey, Marcie? Are you around?" You knew there might still be some staff in the school. Most people chose to clear out pretty quickly, but occasionally the staff had a reason to linger longer. You seemed to be in luck today, not running into anyone else.
"Brought some burgers. And twinkies, the world's best food!" you tried to lure.
"Why are you looking for me?"
You jumped a foot in the air at the voice coming out of nowhere and whirled around. You were still alone. No, that wasn't right. Marcie was invisible. You were still rather freaked out by it. "Oh, hey." You took a deep breath. "Wasn't expecting you to come out of nowhere. Well, I was, but I thought I'd handle it better than that." You held out the bag. "Cheeseburger?"
The bag was snatched from your hand and you watched as a cheeseburger was pulled out and vanished into air as it was eaten. "You didn't answer. How did you know to look for me? No one noticed."
"It was-a dream. A really weird dream," you lied. "I looked after it, and realized I couldn't find you. So, figured it might be well. Not the first time." You gave a very awkward laugh.
"Weirdo. What do you want?"
"Well-" You stumbled as invisible hands pushed you.
"You're not gonna make fun of me, are you?"
"No, no! Nothing like that. Just concerned. I don't know if you've noticed, but Sunnydale's got a bit of a body problem. People die. A lot. I don't want to add you to the count."
"...why would you care? You didn't before."
"Like I said, a dream. It was..." You took a deep breath. "I didn't really know you before, had my own things going on. But I couldn't really ignore you after I saw that. Felt pretty pathetic, really. Like I was as bad as the Cordettes." Marcie gave a small giggle, and you smiled. "So, gonna help me escape that fate? Hang with me?"
"Sure," Marcie agreed.
The hangout was rather awkward. You couldn't see Marcie to guess how she was reacting to anything you were saying. It was good that you could ramble about your favorite shows and comics. A bit tricky, trying to stick to stuff that Marcie would know about, but hey, not your first time working around people not always knowing what you were talking about. And Marcie seemed excited to have someone acknowledge her existence. She was somewhat clingy when you left, but you promised that you'd introduce her to your friends and explain her invisible problem to them.
Buffy was rather incredulous about the entire situation. Willow and Giles were both intrigued, though Giles at least was approaching it as something to solve and not something to study like Willow was. It was quickly figured out that things Marcie interacted with for longer than five minutes would become invisible as well. There was nothing to give her to help her signal her presence to others that wouldn't fall to that fate as well. It explained the increasing desperation that had been seen in the show. You suggested chalk and markers to mark other things with, and that worked since the marks she made weren't connected to Marcie directly. The best way for her to communicate was still with sound, even if it continued to startle everyone.
You were feeling rather pleased about everything when the nightmares started spilling out into reality. That made you jumpy. You wanted to keep everyone in a group, it'd be easier to face it if you could help each other through the nightmares. They targeted individual fears best. You just didn't know what to expect. Would it be death? Being left behind? A clown, like Xander had feared?
[ ]Think of friendship to help fight the nightmares
[ ]Prepare to hit any threats for fighting the nightmares
[ ]Try to be logical about the nightmares
[ ]Write-in
