As the sun set on the seemingly sleepy town of Sunnydale, Buffy Summers knelt down to pull up the zipper of her faux black leather boots. She pushed the faded denim of her bootleg jeans down over her boots and headed out with a stake in hand and a spare in the pocket. The sky was neither a blue, nor black, but a purplish haze of grey that hovered over the muted neighborhood. There was no distinguishing quality about the night to mark it in the mind of young blonde, but had there been, it's unlikely she would have noticed.
Buffy marched stoically down the streets towards the graveyard at the opposite edge of town. She took no pleasure in the walk, yet she prolonged it as much as possible, for it was much more favorable to find a walk dull than to be unfeeling to the company of her friends and family. It wasn't that her companions bothered her; it was just that she no longer felt the slightest desire to interact with them in any way. Not that she felt much more inclined to do anything else, but she was supposed to slay and so she would.
Upon entering the graveyard, she found no immediate signs of beasties that she might slay, so she began to wander aimlessly through the various headstones and memorials. Her thoughts drifted in several directions as she walked. She thought of her life before she had died and the people she has loved in that life. She had loved Angel so deeply she had often wished she could stop, just to end the pain of a love so powerful in a relationship so doomed. Now she wished she could remember what it felt like to have a passion so strong. Angel had once told her that passion was the emotion which had most guided his life—which he believed most guided all people's lives. Devoid of passion of any sort, Buffy felt as though her soul remained in the grave.
Well, of almost any sort. The only passion she seemed to be able to feel now was a passion of the flesh. The memory of her recent encounters with Spike brought a crimson blush to her cheeks. He had defiled her in ways she had never imagined and she had reveled in it. She could remember vividly the fire that his cold touches had evoked in her and realized with embarrassment that the thought of it excited her even now. Embarrassment turned into shame as she wondered what her friends would think if they found out, but it wasn't long before her mind returned to more pleasant thoughts of how good Spike's body felt and she became lost in her imagination.
By the time she approached the other end of the graveyard, the sky had morphed into an obsidian black and the moon had risen overhead. Buffy was startled out of her daydream by the sound of two voices. Instantly in slayer mode she crouched low behind a large headstone, ready to fight as she listened to the conversation between two males near a robust billowing tree.
"Dude, this is so sweet. We're like freaking immortals man! Watch this," Buffy heard a sharp intake of breath and peeked around the headstone to see that one of the two, both of whom appeared to be in their late teens, had stabbed himself in the heart with a hunting knife. I Must be fledglings. I The weird thing was, she wasn't getting any vamp vibes off the two at all. If she hadn't seen one just stab a knife through his heart and remain upright, albeit he was now holding his chest and moaning in pain, she would have thought them to be no more than a couple of kids hanging out where they ought not be. I Ah well, I know a vampire when I see one at least. Lack of spidy sense is probably just another lovely side affect of being dragged back from the afterlife. I
Buffy rose up and faced them, shoulders square, hands on hips, "Oh boys." She had their attention instantly and they looked hungry, but it only took a moment before she had slammed her stake into the spot where the hunting knife had been only a moment before.
Ready to take the next vamp in one quick maneuver Buffy spun around to face him, but she riveted back when she heard a loud thump on the ground beside her. Where a pile of dust should have been settling lay the fresh corpse of the vampire she had just killed, mouth open and eyes rolled back.
"Oh my God."