Sometimes, mostly when she was nearly dying off world, Samantha Carter couldn't help but wonder if she wasn't missing something by never having done something truly domestic with her life. She ought to have gotten married and made lots of babies and cookies. Or something. To be honest, her ideas of domesticity weren't that firmly developed.

Then there were other days, days where she sat in the living room with her brother's family, that she felt she had made the correct life choice.

Family was terribly boring, was it not? I mean, the kids ripped open the presents that she had gotten them in minutes, and then complained about being bored. Mostly they made nuisances of themselves until you set them in front of some screen or another at which time they became absolute zombies.

She supposed they were spoiled, and she'd like to think that her children if she were ever to have them would never do such horrible things! But she knew the truth. She was likely to put a great deal less effort into child raising than her brother had, and her children were no doubt bound to turn out a whole lot worse than his were doing, no matter who she managed to get to contribute the other half of their genome.

She flipped open the paper completely out of boredom. The last time she'd read an honest to goodness ink and paper newspaper she'd been a sophomore in high school and had been offered extra credit for every error she found. It was a small town newspaper who got names and grammar muddled almost as often as it got it right, so the pickings had been very easy. She'd needed the extra credit, to be honest, because as skilled as she was at all things scientific she knew nothing (nor cared nothing) for gerunds or the other evil bits of grammar that start popping up in English by the time you reach high school.

This paper however, was not nearly as humdrum as the paper had been in that little town in Ohio. There wasn't even a "Neighborhood Happenings" section which reported who had gone "a-visiting" at whose house.

You would think someone like Samantha Carter couldn't be surprised by much, but you'd be wrong.

A giant serpent bringing fire from the sky and destroying a high school? It sounded like the poetic interpretation of a Goau'ld visitation that Daniel might read on the wall of a cave. There couldn't be Goa'uld in California though, could there? I mean, someone at Stargate command would have known if there were Goa'uld at…what was the name of the town? Oh yeah, Sunnydale.

-0-

As Buffy runs through the very familiar martial arts moves in her backyard, she can't help but think about the recent events, and how badly she had messed them up. She couldn't really blame herself though. Buffy hadn't prepared for a media presence after the whole incident at graduation. It wasn't like the media had ever been very interested in the happenings on the Helmouth. If Giles was there he no doubt would have said something clever that would have made them go away.

Buffy wasn't really clever. She wasn't sure she was really a whole lot of anything expect that which came by the gifts of the slayer. Sometimes she wondered what her life would have been if she wasn't chosen.

Normal probably. Average, maybe even a bit below average.

That would be nice.

A woman with short blond hair pulls up in a black car, and stares at Buffy behind dark sunglasses.

"Were you at the high school during the unfortunate incident?" the woman asks.

"I'm not going to do any more interviews," Buffy responds. She figures she's already done enough damage with that during the stunned interview that she felt had been ripped out of her as she panted for breath after saving the world.

Again.

"I'm not with the media," the woman says, pushing the glasses up on top of her head, and revealing brilliant blue eyes. "I'm actually with the Air Force."

"Ah, so this is a Men in Black thing?"

"Not exactly," the woman says, pinching her mouth together to keep herself from laughing. It looks like she has had a lot of practice doing that.

"That's good, because aliens," Buffy raises her eyebrows. "That's pretty out there."

The woman's mouth pinches in her 'I'm not going to laugh' face once more before she says, "Well, giant snakes starting buildings on fire, that's a bit out there as well."

"Listen, there was some accident at my high school graduation, I said something weird after almost dying, and some crazy newspaper reporter went and turned it into something sensational. It's definitely not anything that the United States Air Force would need to concern itself with."

The woman leans against her car with a slight smile on her face. "Still, if you're going to mutter something in delirium why would it be about giant snakes? It's a little bit random, don't you think?"

Buffy's stomach turns with the thought that they might know she had something to do with it all. For all she knew, this was their slightly roundabout way of charging her for blowing up the school.

Which she had done, technically. She didn't like to play the but I'm the slayer, the rules don't apply to me card, but if ever there was a time for it now would be it. Then again, you just can't go around admitting to the government that your favorite after school activity is fighting supernatural beings. Mostly because you won't be believed.

"Do you mind if I come in and have a chat?" the woman asks.

"No problem," Buffy says with false easiness after doing a mental check to make sure that there was nothing supernatural in her living room, "I'll just call Giles."

"You've had a lot of cause for a lawyer at your age?"

"He's not my lawyer, he's my librarian," Buffy replies, shooting the older woman a look of reproach.

-0-

Sam sits down on a couch in the middle of suburbia while a perky blond teenager goes to call up her school librarian on the phone. In many ways this scene is just as normal as the one she left behind at her brother's house. She's not fooled though. She wakes up in a house just as normal as this, before taking a morning run in a neighborhood that you would have to admit was completely typical, and then sipping her something super girly and mildly seasonal latte.

She did the normal thing, and then she went out and kicked alien butts.

Yeah, Samantha thought to herself, she herself wasn't quite as perky as the teenager, but she was blond, and she was pretty sure that whatever the secret the teenager and the librarian had together it was going to be just as weird as her own secret.

The teenager comes in looking more worried and confused then before, and sits down on a chair. She smiles at the woman across from her, and then sits on her hands.

"I'm sorry, I don't think I introduced myself, Colonel Samantha Carter," Sam says, extending her hand.

"Buffy," Buffy says, even more unnerved by the title before the woman's name.

"I'm just interested in your eye witness account," Sam cajoles, knowing that she has got to use the time before the librarian arrives to the best of her ability since he was able to quiet Buffy so effectively with just a phone call.

"We were graduating, and then there was the explosion," Buffy says with a shrug. "Like I said, I was pretty out of it at the time. I'm probably not the one you should ask." Then suddenly the teenagers eyes bulged, probably with the realization that whoever Sam decided to ask besides her would be far less able to deal with the selective release of information than she herself was. "You know what, it's really not worth your time to ask anyone. It was a little thing. Small potatoes."

Sam nods her head as if believing her, but inside her heart is leaping for joy that small town America is shaping up to be this interesting. She shouldn't be this excited by civilians in danger but…it would be hard to do her job if danger didn't excite her, and her job certainly needed to be done.

Just then a man runs into the room and says, "Buffy! We've got to go." The teenager runs out of the room with him without another thought, but the librarian turns back to her with a quick, "I'm sorry the interview will have to be canceled, she's late for her piano lesson."

The excuse is ridiculous, and was perhaps meant to be so. It was obvious to Sam that she is being brushed off, but that doesn't deter her at all. She waits until they think that they have enough lead on her that she will never be able to follow, and then she gets in her car and trails them.

-0-

"What kind of demon is it?" Buffy asks, standing at the thing before her. It's roughly hominid, to be sure. Her brief run-ins with it already has proven to Buffy that it is a lot stronger than the average human. It also has something on its arm that shoots out…it was a little hard to describe, but it can knock a slayer on her ass. Then there was the glowy-eye thing. That was new.

"I haven't the faintest." It isn't a surprise from Giles. It's a familiar pattern to her by now, and it doesn't scare her when he's clueless like it did when she first came to Sunnydale. It goes like this…They see something terrifying. Giles doesn't know what it is. Then Giles forces them to read books all night. Then he figures out what it is, and tells Buffy how she can kill it.

"Time for the retreat then," Buffy says, taking a few steps back as she says the words.

"Sha're?" a woman's voice says in question. Buffy turns to see the woman who was interviewing her before standing in front of the demon creature, standing in front of him like she knew what she was doing, and didn't fear her.

"Amaunet, actually, and this little girl thinks that I am a demon," the monster laughs over her and Giles to the woman before him.

"Come now, it can't be the first time someone has made that mistake," the woman shoots back like they are old friends bantering. Only one of them had just been seen by Giles pillaging the mayor's house and snapping the neck of a servant who tried to stop him. Maybe the woman who interviewed her was on the side of the beast who had just committed murder. Maybe all of those questions hadn't been trying to get her to admit that she had set fire to the school, but were actually trying to get information for a world take over, or who knows what else!

She had just had an interview with a demon, and hadn't even noticed, her radar must really be off.

"Oh Samantha, how I will enjoy killing you, again and again, and again," the demon with the curly brown hair announces, advancing toward her with the weapon that could knock a slayer on her ass raised and ready.