A/N: People have been mentioning how Xander is mostly the damsel in distress here. This is all according to plan (insert Ikari Gendo-pose here)...

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"You're not the Slayer, I am!"

"Are not!"

"Am too!"

"Ow."

Everyone turned to the floor by the back wall, where Angel still lay under the table. Xander rushed over. "Angel! You okay?"

"Ow. Yeah. Wha' hit me?"

"A table." He turned to glare at Kendra. "And Buffy's right, there's only one Slayer, and you're not it."

Kendra was glaring right back, even though she had to be in agony from the arm. "You consort wit demons, why should I listen ta you?"

"Maybe not him, but you might listen to the lady with the bat."

Kendra turned, realizing her situation just as the bat made contact with her noggin. There was a metallic dink, and she dropped bonelessly to the floor.

Buffy stared at the downed girl, then sighed. "Great. Angel, bring the car up, me and Xander'll carry her."

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The world was out of focus. Or maybe that was just her eyes. Though she could hear voices, muffled, all around her. No eyesight and only limited hearing. Much like a Krielernian bat-hog. Ooooh, that wasn't good. Nauseous.

Kendra slowly opened her eyes, trying very hard not to vomit. Her hearing tuned in at roughly about the same time.

"...was, in fact, dead."

There was a deathly stillness in the room. A high soprano of a girl's voice followed. "Like...dead-dead?"

The cultured British voice continued. "Er, yes. I'm afraid so. At least long enough to, to call a second Slayer. This is, is unprecedented, and I'd be more excited about it if not for the fact they didn't bother informing me, even though I reported Buffy being alive not a week after the, the incident."

"So she really is the Slayer? A Slayer? Are we gonna have to start using plural, now?" She knew that voice. The boy who had distracted her. The warlock. Only...now she was wondering if maybe she hadn't gotten the situation a little wrong.

"It, it would appear so."

Kendra finally managed to focus. The room seemed full of people, and – and books? A library, then. A man in a sweater-vest, holding an ancient tome...oh, the Pyragian Archives, she knew that one. Basically an encyclopedia on demonic rituals. Then there was the scowling vampire in black, and the boy, and that cheating girl who had hit her with a bat! Unfair.

After them came a red-haired girl in plain vest and skirt, and a boy with strange green and blue hair and – was that nail polish?

The boy with odd-colored hair looked right at her. "I think she's awake."

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The next half hour was very confusing.

The blonde girl was, in fact, also the Slayer, which was strange and bizarre, but Mr Giles was a Watcher and would know. The boy was named Xander, which was short for Alexander, and was normal, though he looked away when they said that. The girl with red hair was named Willow and was skilled at computers and was training to be a witch, though all she could do so far was move a penny across a table. The boy with strange hair and nails was Oz, who was apparently also 'normal'.

And the last member of the group was Angelus, the Scourge of Europe...cursed with a soul.

As if she'd believe that. The Watcher seemed to trust him, if warily, so she would do the same – at least until he showed his true colors.

But why were they there?

"Because I need them." The girl Buffy looked at her seriously. "Not in the fight, as such. They're mostly normal."

She glanced at Angelus when saying 'mostly'. Kendra frowned. "But-"

"Hear me out. Xander there, knows more about rare and weird demons than even Giles does. He doesn't have the intel a Watcher would, but he knows stuff, and he knows who the local demons are. So does Angel, but, uh, he's not exactly able to go to school here. Willow there has, among many things, given us access to maps for the underground tunnels that riddle this town. Oz there is her boyfriend, and pretty good with a soddering gun, right Wills?"

Willow nodded. "Yuh-huh!"

"And those are just a few things they do. They're also good in a pinch, resourceful and clever. I would have died at least once before my time if Xander hadn't tagged along when I went down to find a friend of theirs. And he brought me back from the dead when all the prophecies said I'd die. So why are they here?`Because a Slayer is just one person." Buffy frowned, screwing up her eyes in amused confusion. "Well, two persons now. Which is weird. But still."

The boy, Xander looked up. "Speaking of handy people...Wills, how'd your thing go?"

Willow grinned. "The old lady's flat broke! I, um, gave it all away to charity. And I canceled the money transfer, it hadn't gone through yet. That cash now paid for the restoration of a London church I found online."

In the background, Angelus started to snicker. Kendra looked at him in shock.

Mr Giles allowed himself a faint smile, then raised the book. "As, as amusing as that may be, I'm afraid I have some rather bad news. It appears the book that was stolen, in combination with the Du Lac cross, contains many rituals for vampires, including one that would, er, restore a sick vampire's unhealth, as it is."

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"Drusilla." Buffy frowned.

"Yes. Though the details of the ritual are unknown, I would suggest we do everything in our power to thwart their efforts. Drusilla is a very powerful seer, and if she is at her full vampiric strength as well..."

Angel nodded emphatically. "There's a reason I always considered her Angelus' greatest mistake. He was so caught up in doing the deed that he never considered the fact she might become too crazy to control." Then he paused. "Sometimes he was the dumbest smart guy I ever was."

She sighed, not bothering to point out the weirdness of talking about yourself like a different person. "Okay, so we might be in bigger danger now. Great. At least Willow stopped those assassin guys."

"Er, actually, I rather suspect they'll keep coming for a short while. It'll take at least a day or two for them to learn of the cancellation of the contract."

Her face fell. "Oh."

A warm hand touched her shoulder, and she looked up, a little startled. Xander was smiling at her. "We're all here, Buff. Like you said, we might not be frontline fighters, but we'll do what we can."

She smiled back, and then glanced over to Willow, who had suddenly sat up straight in her chair, staring at them with eyebrows climbing towards her hairline. Barely noticeably, Buffy nodded. Willow blushed, and then grinned. Mission accomplished.

...of course, she wasnt gonna tell anyone about the towel incident.

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School was...nervous. With assassins behind every locker, in every closet, under every desk, there wasn't much peace to be had.

Xander Harris walked down the hall and mainly thought about two things that had nothing whatsoever to do with demonic hitmen.

Buffy had kissed him. No, maybe he kissed her. It was...confusing. There had been lips and kissage and, um, yeah. His cheeks turned flaming hot every time he remembered it.

It hadn't been like his imagination had pictured kissing. His first real kiss, not counting kissing games at sixth grade parties. Those had been mostly wet and bruising and kind of embarrassing, and the imaginary ones had been lifeless pictures mostly taken from movies and TV-shows. No, it had been...

Would he be cliché if he said it had been like someone had attached a 12-volt battery to his lips? Or was that just him being weird again...he never knew. Sometimes he said stupid things.

Well, he'd been through his career day thing, Willow had had hers, but she was really quiet about it, claiming she'd signed a paper saying she couldn't tell much. Buffy was being forced to attend the law enforcement bit.

He knew she hated the very idea. To her, cops were donut-munching slackers who got in the way of her Slaying. In fairness, here in Sunnydale they mostly were.

Angel had said there was something odd going on with the cops here. Maybe they should check it out some time.

Any way, he'd seen Buffy in a towel. Damp Buffy in a towel. Damp Buffy in a towel, running just ahead of him.

He stopped, staring into empty air for a while. Then he shook himself, and continued on with his face beet red.

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"Summers? Is there a Buffy Summers here?"

Buffy sighed. Right. Face the music. Walk the plank. "Here."

The policewoman nodded, then reached behind her and pulled out a standard service revolver and opened fire.

In the time it took Buffy to process this, two shots had passed by her, someone had screamed 'Gun!' and someone had yelled in pain. Next thing she knew she had grabbed the arm with the gun, yanked it away and slammed the false cop into the wall so hard the lockers rattled on both sides of the hallway.

She breathed heavily as she dropped the woman to the floor, and turned around. Oh God. Willow!

"Will! Will, you okay?"

Willow looked up, her face pale. "I-I'm fine, but, but Oz!"

Buffy suddenly noticed the boy on the floor next to her friend. He was holding a hand to his shoulder, and the long-sleeved tee was slowly becoming dark red. "Oh, no. Someone call 911!"

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Things happened so fast, and yet everything took too damn long. By the time the ambulance and cops arrived, Oz was unconscious, Xander had arrived and was helping usher people away from the scene along with Giles and a few of the teachers.

Unfortunately, the shooter wasn't dead. Knocked out, but nowhere near dead.

So she watched them take her on a stretcher right after Oz was carried out, and hoped the woman wouldn't be out to fight again.

There'd been enough death and violence today.

...crap. That bug guy was still out there. And her mom would be home soon. She frowned and looked over at Giles and Xander. "Guys? The bug guy."

They both froze, then nodded. Xander stepped closer. "I'll go with. We can bring Kendra, too. Never hurts to bring an extra gun, even one with a busted arm. And I have an idea on how to kill it."

She blinked. "Yeah?"

He grinned. "Ever watch old cartoons?"

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Their name was, at the moment, Norman Pfister. They had lived a long time, and had been many creatures, but in truth, they were legion. Oh, not literally. Not the famous one. A lot of demons liked to claim they were, but the Pfister had actually met Legion, and wasn't about to make it angry, wherever it was. But the Pfister was a hive mind, a group mind that held together as a single consciousness and took human shapes to better seek and hunt their prey unawares.

The Pfister had noticed many things about this Sunnydale place. For one, the energies here were invigorating. Losing a few units of itself earlier had not deterred them for long. Another was that their prey had escaped them. That would have angered them if they had anything close to an emotional response, but in truth they had nothing but hunger and a cold, calculating purpose.

The final part they had noticed was that they were not alone in stalking their prey. The insects in the grass sang to them, and the songs they sang were of watchers in the shadows who waited eagerly to whisper lies and deceit.

They didn't care. They had joined the Order of Teraka because they always gave them such interesting prey. If they had feelings, they would say that the prey they hunted now were exciting. And tasted delicious.

But they didn't.

Instead they sang back to their distant brethren that it was of no consequence. And they watched. And waited. Sooner or later, their prey would return here. If not, they would eat whomever or whatever entered anyway.

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There was a commotion near the back. Their brothers and sisters outside and in the earth sang of the giant bipeds, and the minds calling themselves Norman Pfister knew it was time.

It actually made sense that the prey would attempt entry from the rear. The prey probably believed they had gone. The Pfister was actually awaiting them on the ceiling in their myriad form, ready to fall upon them.

It waited.

And waited.

...odd.

The prey was clearly outside, whispering, tampering with the door. Had the prey forgotten its keys? It happened. The Pfister rarely bothered with such items, they could get in almost anywhere, and when they couldn't, well...they were patient.

...okay, what was taking it so long?

The Pfister dropped to the ground, briefly forming its human shape before falling apart yet again. If the prey was outside, they would go outside. Not like anything could stop them anyway.

As they poured through the thin crack under the door, the Pfister idly noted that there was a strong odor in the air. The odor confused their senses, made them briefly blinded, but once they had emerged in full they could easily overwhelm the prey anyway, so they poured on. And on.

And then the pain began. They couldn't move, something was holding them down, and the shrieks of the dying units were in the thousands. It died. Quickly, painfully, it died.

A final sliver of essence remained, burying itself within the proteins of the last unit. It had to escape. Had to crawl away, rebuild. It would take centuries, but it would-

"Oh, yuck." Squish.

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Buffy shook her head. "Crazy."

"Yeah, but it worked!" Xander grinned at her, handing over the can of hairspray. "Glue and hairspray. It's how my dad keeps the porch free of bugs in summer."

"Also, surprisingly easy to clean up. Good thing we set the trap in the back yard, mom would have a cow if the front door rug was wrecked." Buffy grinned at him. Oh, god, he was a little sweaty. From the heat, probably. Her stomach made a triple salto and landed on its ankle, stumbling and falling headlong into the mat. "So, uh, we, we kind of got interrupted. Before."

He blinked. "Huh?"

She hooked her arm in his, and tried not to look as nervous as she really was. "Well, how about we go get something to eat? Killing stuff always makes me hungry."

He gave her an odd but amused look, but shrugged. "Sure, why not."

And maybe, just maybe...she could get another kiss.

Her belly did another failed acrobatic act, but she didn't care. Behind them Kendra was poking the burned mass of bugs and worms with her sword and making a disgusted grimace, but after a while she followed.

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"They. Took. My. Money."

Spike exchanged an amused glance with Dru. "What, all of it?"

"Yes!" There was something feral in Pijavica's expression, even through the game-face she was sporting. "Those little maggot mortals took my money! It took me three hundred years to get to where I was! I even went through the trouble to put it all in accounts to gather interest! Do you have any idea how many accountants and bankers I had to torture and kill to do that?"

He shrugged. "Well, y'know what they say, easy come, easy g-"

He was up against the wall, her hand on her neck. Bloody hell. Sometimes he forgot she was almost five hundred years old, and strong as a bloody ox. "What was that, William?"

"Nth...nothing." The grip released, dropping him to the floor.

"It appears we will have to move our schedule ahead a few notches. No matter. I've been waiting to take off the kiddie gloves." Pijavica smirked coldly, then stormed away, sweeping out of the room with her long dress train trailing behind her.

Spike watched her leave, then looked at Dru, snarling.

Drusilla shook her head silently.

Not yet.

No...no, she was right. Not yet. But the day of reckoning was coming.

Spike never forgot a debt.

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Monday, December 8th, 1997.

The library was more crowded than normal, Buffy felt.

"...and den mister Zabuto says, 'Ya can't take de Gorukh out of the picture, dey are de picture!'"

Giles laughed. So did Angel, or more like a chuckle. And Xander.

Why was Xander laughing at those stupid jokes? What was so funny about a, a Gorky demon? She sighed, trying not to glare at Kendra. Instead she made her way over to Willow who was seated in the corner by the computer.

"Whatcha doing?" She kept her voice low.

Willow was frowning. "Uploading my Doogie Howser fanfic. Stupid shippers."

"Huh?"

"Oh, it's nothing. It's just, every time I upload a chapter of my Doogie-Michele fic, the Doogie-Wanda-shippers flood the forum with their own fics, sometimes just reposts of old fics or chapters they already put up before, and...sorry. Not important." Leaning back from the PC, Willow beamed a smile at her. "So how'd the date go?"

Buffy felt herself grin like that annoying cat in Alice in Wonderland. "It went great. Well, up until the one-eyed guy interrupted, but things went even better after." She leaned in and whispered in her friend's ear. "We kissed."

Willow's eyes widened. "You gotta spill."

"Okay, I was playing it cool, all smooth, even though my tummy was doing the mambo, and he was so sweet, and then after I killed the one-eyed guy, we had a moment."

Willow's beaming smile widened. "Moment? A real one?"

"Yuh-huh! And then...wow."

"It was a wow, huh?"

"Oh yeah. Definitely a wow. I mean, he's kind of an amateur, but way better than most." She grinned. "You sure he never kissed anyone before?"

"Totally. So then what?"

Buffy hesitated. Maybe she shouldn't mention all the details here. "Well, um, we went to my house and there was the bug guy so we ran, um, and ended up at his house. And we had another moment. No kiss, though."

Willow let out a little squeal, causing everyone in the library to look at them oddly. She blushed a furious red. "Sorry." Then she leaned in. "So everything went as planned, huh? I feel like such a yenta."

"Yeah, yeah, you're a regular Auntie Golda." Buffy rolled her eyes, but couldn't find anything to be annoyed by with her friend. After all, her matchmaking scheme had worked.

"So are you gonna go out again?"

Buffy froze. Oh. She hadn't thought about that. She'd been so caught up in the moment, so in the zone that she hadn't even considered asking or hinting at more dates. Or told her mom, though somehow she suspected Joyce had a clue already. "Uh, you think maybe we could do the same thing again?"

Willow shook her head. "No, he'll suspect if we do that. Either you're gonna have to ask or wait until he asks. And knowing him, it'll be a cold day in heck before he does that."

...'heck'? Sometimes Willow's refusal to use swearwords amused her greatly. Not so today. "Great. Is it too much to ask to be wooed? A little bit?"

"Whatcha gonna do, he's clueless." Willow grinned without even the slightest hint of empathy.

"Great. Well, you guys are coming with me after school right? Without any annoying interfering know-it-alls?"

She glanced at Kendra at that last, frowning slightly at how another dorky joke made Xander laugh. Stupid Kendra. Stupid new Slayer being prettier than her. Stupid Xander laughing at her jokes. Thank God Kendra was leaving today.

...wait, was she getting monosyllabic? Stupid jealousy...well, at least she was going patrolling with Willow and Xander, and then they'd stop by her house for some well-deserved Joyce-cooking.

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Ted was dead.

Was it yesterday she'd been joking with Willow and had nasty thoughts about Southpaw Kendra? Yesterday when she pondered various dirty things to do with a boy she knew?

She'd killed a man. A human man. A jerk, but still, human.

Balancing precariously on the tree-branch, she lightly tapped the window.

Nobody stirred inside. She swallowed, hard. The gnawing ache in her gut told her this was a stupid idea, she couldn't drag him into this, but she didn't know who to talk to, who else could help. Giles would freak and, and probably get her locked up. Or send her out of the country. Probably that. Willow would just panic.

She tapped the window again. The blankets on the bed stirred, and she almost jumped down from her perch, almost ran.

He made his way to the window. Apparently he slept in baggy too-large pajama pants...and nothing else. For a moment she found herself staring at his pale, surprisingly slim and muscled torso.

Damn.

She shook her head to clear it, and almost lost her balance.

The window opened. "...Angel?"

She blinked. Wait, did Angel...okay, now she was really getting freaksome vibes off that vampire. "It's me. Buffy."

Xander poked his head outside. "Buffy?" His sleep-drunk, confused face quickly turned to a concerned frown. "You okay?"

"N-no." She tried not to look pathetic, but he only looked at her once before holding out his hand to her.

His room was the same as before. Not that she'd memorized it or anything. At all. Like, she didn't know that the Amy Yip poster and the one of Jane Fonda as Barbarella were over above the desk next to the bed.

Uh...

He grabbed the desk chair and pulled it up next to the bed. Gently, he seated her on the bed while he sat on the chair with the back of it against her. Heh. Chastity guard. She wondered who taught him that. God, she had such a one-track mind these days. Hormones, her mom would say.

"Buffy, what's wrong?"

She took a deep breath. "T-Ted. I, I killed him."

He stared at her blankly, then frowned. "That's not funny."

"It-it's not a joke. I came home from p-patrol, and he was reading my diary, and when I got angry he started hitting me and, and I pushed him and he fell down the stairs and, and he fell, and he, he was dead and I ran, and..."

Suddenly his arms were around her, warmth and cheap deodorant and guy smells and him, and she let it all out. Mostly tears, but also some blubbering and a little snot. When she looked up to apologize for that he was muttering something.

It took some time to realize he was talking to himself, all quiet-like. "...knew there was something weird about that guy, those cookies tasted like ass..."

She looked up at him. He smiled at her, then brushed aside a few tears. "X-Xander? C-could I sleep here tonight?"

His face went all red and flushed, then he closed his eyes and sighed. "Sure. But, uh, just in case, we, uh," his face turned even more red here, "we maybe should have you on the bed and me on the floor. It's okay, I have a sleeping bag and all. And you gotta sneak out early before Tony and mom wakes up. Tomorrow morning we figure out what to do, 'kay?"

She nodded.

...then she frowned. "Wait, the cookies tasted like crap to you?"

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"Dematorin, I think." Willow grimaced. "It's a tranquilizer, makes you all loosey goosey, and it's related to ecstasy."

Oz nodded. "Legal designer drug."

No-one commented on Oz knowing anything about drugs, though Miss Calendar raised an amused eyebrow. Buffy was not happy, though. "But, but...you mean he was drugging you?"

Her furtive glance at Xander told everything. Everyone but him, who spat them out in the flower pot when nobody was watching. He looked away. Yeah, so he was a freak. Great. Hopefully Buffy wouldn't hate him for it. "So what does this mean?"

Giles sat down, putting a hand on Buffy's shoulder. "Well, it suggests something truly was wrong with him. I suggest we try making contact with the police before this escalates out of hand."

Police... "Not sure that's such a good idea." They turned to stare at him, and Xander wanted to slap himself. "Um...you guys know the cops around here are dirty, right?"

You could have heard a pin drop. Finally Giles took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose with a weary grimace. "No, Xander, we did not. And it might have helped endlessly if you had let us know this before."

Crap.

"So, um..."

"That aside, he's right. I think maybe instead we should gather evidence and then approach the police." Giles glanced at Jenny, who nodded at him. "I think perhaps Xander and Buffy could investigate the house he lives - lived in, while we perform more academic research. Buffy, you shall need to ring your mother as well, let her know you're all right."

.

It wasn't as thrilling as maybe it should have been, being alone with Xander on a mission. Maybe because of the circumstances. She was a murderer now. A killer of human beings. The whole thing about being a Slayer was always a bit iffy, because, because what about all the nice demons? Of course, Giles had told her most demons weren't very nice, even the harmless ones. Baby-eaters and critters that poisoned the world around them or demon gods that made girls pregnant with little monsters that ate their way out and yuck.

Giles had a tendency to go into gruesome details while stuttering that was kind of disturbing. Like he knew it first-hand or something.

Maybe he did. He hadn't talked much about the whole Eyghon thing, and while he and Jenny had made up, it was still a bit of an elephant in the room with the gang.

Well, maybe he wouldn't be so quick to point out that Xander had secrets too, now, huh?

But as they approached the house that was Ted's address, Xander started making little faces. Finally she frowned and stopped.

"What?"

He looked at her. "Can't you smell that?"

"Smell what?"

Xander grimaced. "It smells like...ugh. I dunno. Gross."

"...oh-kayyy..." She gave him a look, then walked around the back.

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As it turned out, Xander's nose was more sensitive than hers. Which wasn't a good thing, as evidenced by him opening the secret hatch to the basement and then running out of the house to throw up for ten minutes.

Buffy stared at the wedding-dressed mummified corpses for the whole ten, and tried very desperately not to do the same. Not because she was unused to seeing decaying corpses, oh no, that was kind of old hat by now. But mainly because she knew her mother might have been one of the many.

If she hadn't killed Ted.

They made an anonymous phone call from a booth not far from Ted's house, then ran for it. Just in case.

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Funnily enough, the cops didn't seem to be making much of an effort. At all. And when Giles and Willow went to the morgue to ask a few subtle questions of the coroner, they got the wrong answer.

"Who?"

Needless to say, they didn't stay long. A corpse vanishing was always a sign of trouble in Sunnydale.

On the upside, as it turned out, nobody was looking for Ted's murderer. Not the police, at least. A quick phone call turned up the news that there was no murder, and no investigation.

So when Buffy and Xander showed up at the library, upset and green in their faces, the news that there had indeed been quite a lot of murders was a bit...shocking.

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"So what do we know?" Buffy sat down on the table, not far from Xander. She glanced at him. Maybe she should tell Giles about his enhanced sense of smell...

...nah. Giles was already totally paranoid about Xander. Not to mention it was Xander's secret to tell. Though she would have to ask him, sometime, at a quiet moment. Alone. Just the two of them.

She blushed a little and looked away.

"Well, according to what Willow managed to dig up on her infernal machine, it appears Ted is either more than eighty years old, or something impersonating the original Ted. Ted Wallace was an inventor who lived in Sunnydale in the late 1950's, an expert in robotics and the burgeoning field of electronics, he was one of the co-founders of a local company, but disappeared for three years roundabout 1963. His partners suspected he had fallen ill, as he had a heart condition. He then reappeared in 1965, seemingly in perfect health, and...well, doesn't seem to have aged a day since."

Buffy frowned. "Where the heck did you get all this stuff from? I thought Willow said she couldn't find any records?"

"She didn't. Well, she discovered the original inventor, but after that, well..." Giles smiled smugly. "The city library archives were most helpful."

Xander had been uncharacteristically silent through it all, but he raised his head. "So how do we know it's dead? Body's gone, and it's been around since the 60's." Then he frowned. "Wait...he was an expert in robotics and electronics? Not magic?"

"Well, er, no...oh. I say." Giles looked down at the copied sheets of paper he'd been looking at. "Perhaps some form of, er, automaton?"

Willow's face was lighting up with pure joy. "A robot!?"

"I prefer the term android, actually. And y-y-you are in big trouble, y-y-young lady."

They all turned to stare at the thing in the door. Ted was standing there, a fire axe in its hands, smiling. And obviously not human, because most humans couldn't walk around when their heads were at that angle.

Buffy narrowed her eyes. Oh he was so going down.

.

"Okay, why does everything bad happen around the library lately?"

"I rather agree. If it continues like this, I shall have to purchase protective plastic covering for all the books here, just in case." Giles sighed, dropping a severed arm in the wheeled trashcan they'd 'borrowed' from the janitor's closet nearby.

Xander waved the other arm at him. "Need a hand?"

Buffy turned an amused glare at him. "Xander! Don't do that. It's tacky."

He grinned back. "And when you ripped it off and hit him with it, it was in perfect taste to say 'Why're you hitting yourself'?"

"Well, yeah. Because it was me saying it." She fired off a smug grin, then frowned. "I found most of the head, but not all of it."

A hand appeared behind a shelf, holding a floppy piece of ted. "Friends, Romans, countrymen...here's the ear back!"

"Willow!" Xander threw his hands up in glee. "You made a funny! A good one! Yay for the Shakespeare quote!"

"And that would be all of it. Toss it over." She caught the ear in flight, grimaced, then dumped it with the head in the can. "Gross. So, uh, Giles, Xander. Could you guys go with me to explain things to mom?"

Xander just nodded, giving her a reassuring smile. Giles, however, did not look too happy about the idea.

"Buffy, the Slayer has to be kept a secret, and-"

"So if she thinks I murdered a guy and got away with it, that's better?" She gave him a sardonic look.

"Well, er, no..."

"And if she invites the wrong guy in one night, and gets eaten, that's better?" This from Xander who had joined her in the snarky look department.

"Er, no, but-"

"Oooh, oooh, she's an antiques dealer, what if she finds a weird mystical thingy that eats people or explodes, how's that?" Buffy gave Willow a baffled glance. That was oddly specific...and reasonable, actually.

Giles sighed. "I suppose...I suppose it would be better if she was a little more cautious."

Xander nodded. "Buffy's right. She's already seen some weird stuff, might as well go all the way and tell her the rest. She might freak, at first, but she's a tough dame."

"'Dame'?" She gave him an amused look.

"Well, yeah. She's a dame. A feisty broad." He grinned back, unrepentant. Then his face fell a little. "Uh, I know you don't like him, but...maybe we should bring Angel, too. To show her what a vampire looks like."

After a moment, she nodded. "Okay. But he can't come inside."

.

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So how exactly do you tell your mother that vampires are real? Especially since last time you tried, she had you locked up for a week in an asylum. Well, the decision had been mostly her dad's, but her mom hadn't exactly protested all that much.

Yeah, one of the reasons she'd been on the outs with Joyce when they came to Sunnydale had been about that.

Maybe that was why she'd listened to Giles about the need for secrecy, even though they now lived in Demon Central. To be honest, she had to admit that a large part of her keeping the secret was that she kind of liked it. There was something that only she and a select few knew about, nobody else.

And yet...

...sometimes she wondered if people wouldn't be better off knowing. And not just her mother, everyone. In olden days, people had known. Like, people had known vampires and ghosts and demons were real. Then they just...stopped.

In any case, at least her mother should have the truth.

.

"Buffy!"

She endured the smothering hug for a while. Yeah, it was such a chore. No, not really. She hugged back after an awkward, frightened second, and just held on for a while.

Finally, her mother let go and stared at her with concern. "Are you all right? What happened? The police said there was no body, but, but I saw him fall and..."

Right. No time like the present. "Mom, there's something you need to know..."

.

It was almost like a show, Joyce felt. Rupert Giles, the school librarian, had shown her magic tricks. A ball of flame dancing in the air above the palm of his hand. A pencil floating across the room. Then Buffy had bent the poker from their fireplace into a pretzel, and picked up the sofa with all of her friends seated in it.

And finally they went to the door and introduced her to a tall, dark-haired man that reminded her of Xander, even if they didn't look related. The man called himself Angel, which was a somewhat unusual name, and proceeded to...to...

Not like a show. His face, it, it became inhuman. And he showed her that he couldn't enter without an...

She staggered back, overwhelmed by the sudden memories of that night at the school where a, a gang, no, not a gang, had been attacking the students and teachers, and...

"Mom? You okay?" She looked up into her daughter's worried face, and swallowed back the bitter taste threatening to shatter her composure.

"I...no, Buffy. No, I'm not okay. You, you're telling me it's all real? All of it? Vampires, and, and demons and monsters and, and leprechauns-"

"Not leprechauns. They don't exist."

Joyce turned to the boy, Xander. "Oh, of course not. Why would they?"

She let out a little laugh that was maybe a bit shrill. Buffy sat down beside her, taking her hand in a firm grip. "Mom, I know this is a lot to take in. I reacted the same way the first time. But it's not something that goes away. And you have to know, because...because I can't stand the idea of you dying because you don't know about the dangerous things out there."

"Dangerous things. Right. And you, you fight them? Like a superhero?"

Buffy blushed. "Kinda."

Joyce took a few deep breaths. "That's...all right. No, it's not. You're just a girl! How can you – and you!" She turned her eye onto Giles. "You're in on it! You, you send her out there to, to get herself killed, every day!"

"Um, Mrs Summers?" She looked over at Xander. "I'm, uh, not sure what to say to you, but...when I was in junior high, my class had forty students in it. When I became a sophomore, twelve of my classmates had already vanished. They always said they'd run away or had accidents, but...we always wondered. Ever since Buffy came here, that number has gone down by like ninety percent. I mean, she can't be everywhere, but...if she didn't help stop these things, a lot of people would die. Including me, or Willow there, or, or...you. Buffy's pretty much all we got. We're alive because of her. And I get that you worry, we all do, but..."

She sat up. "I...I have to think about this. I, I...have you, have you tried not being the Slayer?"

Buffy smiled. No girl her age should have that expression, half bitter, half nostalgic. "Yeah. Didn't work out. And when I tried telling you last time..."

Joyce frowned, then paled. "Oh."

"Yeah. So...that's how it is."

"Wh-why are you telling me this?"

Buffy looked miserable. "Because I love you, mom. And I can't stand lying to you, and I can't stand the idea of you dying because you don't know how the world really works. What's really out there." She stood, then nodded at Xander, who left the room. "There's one more thing I have to show you. It's kind of horrifying, but it's something you have to see, because it proves that you were in real danger."

Joyce watched them, still frowning, as Xander rolled a barrel into the room. He opened the lid. She leaned forward and looked inside...

...into the dead, smiling face of Ted.

She gasped, recoiling. "Oh God!"

"Look again, mom."

She was about to tell Buffy no, this was sick, but something about their expressions stopped her. So she looked again. And blinked. "He was...he was a robot?"

"Yeah. Some guy built him in the 60's, only he made him wrong in the head. We searched his house, and he...he preyed on women, romanced them, drugged them, then dressed them in a wedding dress and..." Buffy stopped, swallowing hard. She looked nauseous.

I know the feeling.

"I...I kissed that?"

Buffy grimaced. "Great. Thanks for the reminder."

"S-sorry." Then it all became clear. Buffy's evasiveness, the way she had told her Ted was rude and threatening, the way she had ignored her... "Oh, God, Buffy! I'm so sorry I ever doubted you!"

She hugged her daughter tightly, feeling the tears well up, and wondered if she could ever accept this strangeness, this insanity that was their lives. She hugged her because of the bruises on Buffy's arms and because she had yelled at her that Ted was a fine man, hugged her because of how she had treated her like she was insane after the gym fire and...

She let go, leaning back. "The gym at, at Hemery High. There really were vampires, weren't there?"

Buffy let out a little laugh, wiping her tears. "Yeah. Mean ones. Should have seen their leader, guy had a serious Bela Lugosi fanboy thing going."

"God, how can I ever..."

"It's okay. It's not your fault. I mean, you thought you were doing me a favor, that you were helping me." Buffy smiled. "I was so angry at you, but...but you were no different from me when I lied about my nights. You were just trying to keep me safe."

Joyce bowed her head in shame, then looked at her only daughter. How could she have made such a wise, beautiful girl? "Buffy, we...we'll need to talk about all this, for real, later. But for now...who wants dinner?"

She looked around at surprised, then increasingly happy faces. Though she noticed that as they all relocated to the kitchen, Xander stepped outside and had a quiet talk with the man...thing called Angel.

And she noticed the way her daughter looked at the boy, and smiled a little to herself. Well, at least this time the boy wasn't some alcoholic on a motorcycle...