Hi there! This little story is definitely AU and set in the universe of a different TV show. No worries, I'm only borrowing the pre-existing mythology of that 'verse and you'll be totally fine if you've never seen a single episode of Buffy, I promise.

Things you should now: There used to be one girl in every generation with superpowers who fought demons, vampires, and basically all the bad guys. She dies, next one gets activated. All of this changed in 2003 when a bunch of people did some spell and all the Potential Slayers that could have been activated at some point became Actual Slayers. Meaning, there's a gazillion girls with superpowers all over the world now. That's it. Really. Everything else is pretty self explanatory.

A couple of warnings beforehand. This fic is shippy but romance is not the main focus of it. You'll be getting a lot of Spoby (and some other pairings) but like I said, it's not really the main focus of the story. Mystery, family and friendship are, though, so if you're into that, you've come to the right place.

On we go!

Part One: The Cruel Sister

Little ghost, so innocent and carefree
They would never stop hunting you
Little voice, life got the best of me
And in time that's what awaits you too
(Lee, Y)

Chapter 1

There weren't many things in her life that had stayed the same ever since that fateful day back in the spring of 2003. Sure, she still liked cheesy puffs and Friends and she still shot whoever admitted to have been Team Christina instead of Team Britney a dark glare, but truth was, she had given up clinging to routines and people a long time ago. They never stayed, anyway. In fact, these days, there were only four constants that she could always rely on.

Number one? Vampires.

She had spotted the first one twenty minutes ago in front of a restaurant and she had followed it without further thought; a dark-haired teenage girl wearing last year's fashion combined with what had to be the ugliest shoes she had ever seen and who was now backing a wiry boy with hipster glasses against a brick wall in a sparsely lit alley. Naturally—it didn't even surprise her anymore—he hadn't realized that there was something seriously wrong with his date slash potential girlfriend slash murderous one-night stand and was gladly granting her access to his long, freckled neck.

Yeah, alright, she had been hoping to make some kind of dramatic entrance, all hair blowing in the wind and maybe some suspenseful music playing in the background but when he actually pulled the vampire closer to him, his blatant stupidity stopped her.

"Really?" she exclaimed, snorting. "Are you blind or something? She went into her vampire face minutes ago."

The female vampire spun around immediately, snarling and blaring her nasty teeth at her before she came on running. The other girl easily threw her backwards and onto the ground.

"Run," she said with an eye-roll and glanced at the boy who was still standing frozen in his spot, mouth hanging wide open somewhere between a shocked gasp and a cry of horror, "and stop hooking up with strange women in dark alleys. Geez."

He immediately did as he was told, scurrying off in his skinny jeans like a squirrel, just as the vampire stood up from the ground and stared at her. Suddenly, there was recognition in her yellow eyes and damn, did it make her proud.

"Slayer," she whispered, raising one of her dark eyebrows...which looked absolutely ridiculous in her vampire mask, "I heard you were dead."

The vampire stalked closer to her, not going back into attacking yet, just observing, studying her with a curious look in her yellows.

The slayer grasped her stake firmly in her right hand and shrugged one shoulder. "Nope, got the wrong one," she replied. "You do know that there is, like, a gazillion of us now, right? Seriously, have you been living in a cave for the last eleven years? I mean, judging by your outfit..."

The dark-haired woman launched at her with a dangerous hiss but she had already seen it coming; she knocked the brunette's legs apart casually before she leaped onto her, straddling her stomach.

"No offense but what is it with you undead Americans that you feel the pressing need to walk around in clothes you were most likely buried in half a century ago?" she continued. "Look at me! I've been carrying the burden of slayerhood since I was seven. Do I use that as an excuse to run around like a total hobo? No. So why do you refuse to-"

Her customized ring tone interrupted her little rant and she immediately knew who was on the other line before The Police could go on singing Every Breath You Take.

Because there were four constants in her life and constant number two was her watcher.

"Hey boss!" she chirped, pressing the tip of her stake against the vampire's chest. "How's it going?"

"Where are you?"

"What do you mean where am I? Where are you?"

His breath was labored and she giggled softly at the thought of him chasing behind her and not being able to keep up. "This isn't funny, Hanna. Tell me where you are."

The vampire flipped them over unexpectedly so their positions were reversed. Hanna let out a surprised yelp as her cell phone landed on the concrete floor beside her head. "Can't talk! Kind of busy right now!" she called. "Just follow my voice!"

She couldn't hear his reply, of course, but she could easily picture his reaction. Sighing loudly at his slayer and going on and on about her refusing to cooperate with him, about her not taking him seriously, because that's how it was between them. Definitely the third constant in her life: driving her watcher nuts on a daily basis.

When he finally arrived at scene, she was coughing and wiping off the vampire dust that had gotten into her blonde hair. Hanna gave him a triumphant grin. "Ding dong, the bitch is dead. Come on. Who's the best?"

"It was one vampire?" her watcher asked, baffled. "It was one vampire. It took you thirty minutes to follow one vampire and stake it?"

Hanna pouted playfully. "You never compliment me anymore," she responded in a whiny tone. "I feel like our relationship is slowly falling apart."

He only gave her a long look in response and she couldn't help but snicker again, walking over to him to hook her arm into his. "Don't be so grim, old man. Your slayer saved the world today. I say we party."

"It was one vampire," he mumbled, the sternness in his voice gradually fading away. He was never mad at her for too long. "And you took off again. How many times do I have to tell you that there is no point to going on patrol together if you just leave me standing in the middle of the cemetery?"

"I'm the one with superpowers, I can take care of myself," she huffed. "God, you really need a girlfriend or whatever it is that you old people do for fun, and stop babying me."

"I'm twenty-nine. I'm not old."

"I'm eighteen," Hanna reminded him. "Anything over twenty-five is, like, ancient to me. Remember?"

They exited the alley, slowly walking down the street in comfortable silence as other people passed them, completely oblivious to what had happened a mere ten minutes ago, blissfully ignorant to the creatures living among them. At times, Hanna envied them, envied their routines and their almost dull normalcy, but other times, especially now, when the rush of a recent kill was still flowing through her veins, making her giddy with adrenaline, she was immensely grateful for the turn her life had taken.

A while later, they finally reached the apartment building they were currently living in—no, not like that 'cuz eew—and the blonde spoke up again. "Hey, C, I need to..."

"Please don't call me that."

"Boss."

"Don't do that either."

"Fine," she sighed, throwing up her hands. "Mr. Cavanaugh. Mr. Watcher. Watcher T. Toby Smalls. MC Cavanaugh...can I please go on patrol alone tomorrow night?" He opened the door to their apartment and gave her another one of his trademarked looks so she rushed to get out the rest of her sentence as fast as possible, "I need to learn how to do stuff on my own and if I have to constantly worry about you getting lost because your legs are, like, way too human-y slow, I can never get anything done."

Toby took off his jacket and threw it over the back of the chair in the kitchen area without answering her question. That was good. At least he was thinking about it. She bit her lower lip and rocked back and forth on her heels.

"Hanna," he eventually said. "We discussed this. I don't think you're ready-"

She cut him off by groaning loudly. "You are the lamest watcher in existence."

Chuckling, he raised one eyebrow at her. "And you are the lamest slayer in existence."

"Am not."

"Are too."

"Am not."

"Are too."

Furrowing her brows, she punched him in his arm. Gently, though, because it was definitely not meant to hurt. Still, that didn't stop her slayer powers from making it hurt and he grasped his bicep automatically, drawing in a sharp breath, as she walked into her room, giving a smug smile.

And that was constant number four: as much as being a slayer sucked, sometimes, it was still pretty damn awesome.

Toby had given up trying to change Hanna a long, long time ago. Yes, she was undoubtedly an incredibly talented slayer but she was also immensely sarcastic, quick-witted and far too stubborn for her own good. Smiling a little as he went to order himself a drink at the bar, he thought back to their first meeting in England where thirteen-year-old Hanna had been sent off to after losing her first watcher under tragic circumstances. She had immediately expressed her dislike for him and he couldn't blame her. He had been only twenty-three, maybe twenty-four already, absolutely inexperienced with slayers and having just finished his training as watcher a month ago, after spending most of the required years behind the secured walls of the new Watchers Council. Needless to say, she wasn't what he had been expecting, what he had been taught, what he had been looking forward to work with, either.

Over the years, his strict orders of "You are patrolling tonight" had slowly transformed into "Can you please go on patrol tonight?" and more often than not, they became "Hey Hanna, if you don't have any plans, could you, maybe, do a quick sweep through the cemetery? But it's not a big deal if you don't want to..." and he knew that she had him tightly wrapped around her finger and he knew that she knew it, too, milking it at every opportunity she got. Batting eyelashes and innocent smiles and sucking up to him like to an older brother. It was probably his fault, anyway, for giving her as much space as she needed, for being too emotionally invested in that little girl with her pigtails from five years ago but no matter how angry he got with her—and it happened almost every day and he couldn't help but think that she liked to make him mad on purpose—he could never stay angry with her. Not really.

And now they were in Columbus, Ohio. Their eight week, to be precise. The Watchers Council, being in charge of all the slayers and watchers in the world and all that, had sent them here, stating that one of the slayers had passed and that the city was in need of a new one. Hanna had always wanted to be a Real Slayer—whenever Toby told her that she already was a real one, Hanna would wave it off, explaining to him that a real slayer was protecting a town or a city on her own..."like some sort of superhero with a cape, you know?"—but she still hadn't taken the news very well. Truth be told, Toby hadn't either. Their lives in Seattle had been pretty good, something they hadn't wanted to leave behind, but neither had dared to protest against the decision that had been made for them.

Grabbing his drink, he turned to go back to his table and, lost in thought as he was, walked right into a person. No, he realized as he hastily looked up to apologize. Not just a person. It was her. Again. As cheesy as it sounded—and god, he knew that it sounded immensely cheesy—he would recognize those eyes anywhere.

"Sorry," Toby said quickly, reaching behind him to grab a few napkins from the bar and handed them to her, "I didn't look where I was going."

"It's alright. You didn't make me spill my drink this time," she said, smiling up at him broadly, and he noted that she was, once again, carrying a Margarita. "We keep on meeting like this. Almost as if the universe is trying to tell us something, right?"

When he didn't answer right away, too dumbstruck to even form a word, she raised one of her eyebrows provocatively, her smile still not faltering. "I'll try to think of a better pick-up line next time," she added in a low—was it seductive?—voice, moving past him but not before she made sure her hip nudged into his side playfully while doing so.

Toby watched her disappear in the crowd and turn her head slightly to throw him another glance, and he exhaled loudly. Had she been flirting with him? He couldn't tell. No matter how hard he tried to read her, he always ended up being wrong. Three weeks ago, he had approached her as she was sitting at an empty table, sipping her drink and scanning the crowd with those beautiful doe eyes of hers, and she had been unusually quiet and distant. Not that he knew what her usual mood was, anyway; he didn't even know her name and instead called her Margarita Girl in his head, due to the cocktail she seemed to constantly carry around with her wherever she went. So three weeks ago, she had completely ignored him, only smiling a little whenever her soft gaze met his, completely in contrast to their usual banter, and the next time they met, four days later, she had practically dragged him onto the dance floor despite his protests, forcing him through at least five songs, all sensual and grinding and touching and her hot breath on his face until...well, until she had disappeared without an explanation.

Margarita Girl was hard to read and his unexplainable shyness around her didn't help much either.

Now sitting at his usual spot, he sighed once more, trying to get his mind off of her, took out a notebook and pen out of his bag and began to write. Another thing that was different about Columbus was the resident Slayer School. Back in Seattle, there was only a small group of ten slayers and their watchers. They'd schedule a casual gathering every now and then, where the watchers exchanged some formalities and the slayers bragged about their recent achievements and that was it. Here, everything was much stricter. He had to report back every single vampire, demon and whatnot Hanna killed, keeping a journal about her patrols and daily training routine. Toby had gotten so used to the laziness of the Seattle watchers that he had almost entirely forgotten how to keep a proper watcher's journal. Hell, he couldn't even remember the right words for all the fighting techniques there were.

"So...do you come here often?"

Frowning, he looked up. Margarita Girl. Naturally. He felt his frown melt into a grin. "Is that the best pick-up line you could think of?"

She gave a loud, raspy laugh and he realized that he was hearing it for the first time. He had already seen her dazzling smile—memorized it perfectly, even—knew her grins and her smirks but he had never heard her laugh before. "I said I would try to think of one," she retorted easily and sat down across from him, setting down her Margarita next to his Gin & Tonic. "What? You think you know a better one?"

Toby mulled that over, closing his notebook when he saw her glance down at it. "Okay, here's one: Have you been to San Francisco?"

Margarita Girl gave another laugh and threw her head back. "Wow. I'm impressed. Have you been to San Francisco? Never heard that before."

"No, that's not...I'm from San Fran, originally, and for this line to work, you have to say why when I ask you, alright? Let's try that again. Have you been to San Francisco?"

"Nope," she replied and shook her head, eyes holding an amused twinkle. "Why?"

"Really? Didn't we take a class together? I could have sworn we had chemistry."

For a moment or two, she merely blinked at him, then she started roaring with laughter and even though one part of him wanted to blush furiously, another part was immensely pleased with himself for getting that kind of reaction out of her. "Oh god," she gasped, holding a hand against her chest, "oh god, that was so bad. I gotta remember that."

"Told you," he replied, sipping at this drink, "I'm really good at this."

Toby saw her freeze for a second so small, he was almost sure he was merely imagining it but then she turned her head to throw a look behind her left shoulder. As always, he didn't know what to make of it; that thought was already forgotten, however, when she faced him again, smirking a little this time.

"Really? Good at what? Picking up girls? Flirting?" she countered. "I mean, have you realized that it's almost always me who approaches you...asks you to dance with me..." She ran a hand through her dark hair, brushing some of it out of her face. "I've been flirting with you for almost seven weeks—and in case you haven't noticed, I'm doing it right now—and you still haven't asked what my name is."

He didn't reply and simply glanced at her. She began laughing again. "What?"

"Well, aren't you telling me?" he inquired.

"No. You have to ask nicely," Margarita Girl said, tilting her head, before a frown appeared between her eyebrows. "Do you hear that? Is that...is that the Batman theme?"

Toby listened up intently, mimicking her frown, until he eventually figured out that the sound was coming out of his bag. Right. Hanna had insisted on designing a ring tone for when she called him and after he had vehemently opposed Run the World (Girls), she had scoffed and done whatever she wanted, as per usual. "I'm sorry, that's my phone," he told the woman in front of him whose lips broke into yet another smile; it was addicting to watch, especially since he knew that it was meant for him, "I didn't set that ring tone. My...uh...um..." And with that, her smile was gone. She crossed her arms, face hardening almost instantly. "...little sister did," he finished lamely. He picked up the call.

"What is it, Hanna?" he asked, his tone a little harsher than intended.

"C, you gotta come outside, like, now-ish?" Hanna's voice came. "I need your help."

"What happened?" he said, already getting in motion and packing away his things. He shot the brown-haired woman an apologetic look but she was not looking back at him, her head once more turned to watch whatever it was that had been bothering her all night instead. "What's wrong?"

"Come outside. Back alley. Now," his slayer merely answered and hung up.

Toby stared at his phone for another moment before storing it away in his back pocket. He turned to Margarita Girl. "Sorry...my...umm...sister...needs my help with something."

"No, actually, I need to leave, too," she answered, glancing down at her own phone, getting up and finishing her drink hastily. "See you around."

He was, once again, too mesmerized by her beauty to even remember that Hanna was waiting for him outside and probably in trouble, and allowed himself to bask a little longer until she gave him another smile, a strained one this time, and started to walk away.

"Hey, hang on," he called after her, "what is your name?"

"You didn't ask nicely," she merely replied before disappearing in the crowd.

Why had he stood up again? Oh. Right. Hanna. He hurried to the back entrance of the bar, hands already busy searching for the stake he kept with him at all times, pulled the door open and almost ran into the blonde in question on his way out.

"What happened? A demon? A vampire?"

"More like a bouncer," Hanna said grumpily.

Toby blinked. "What?"

She shoved an ID into his face, shaking it a little. "He said that this was fake and that he would call the cops if I didn't leave."

"What?"

Hanna sighed. "Geez, boss, are you deaf or something? It was boring at home and I wanted to go out and I came here and the bouncer was all...I don't think you're twenty-one and then he said this ID was fake. Can you believe him?"

Snatching the ID out of her hands, he opened his mouth to speak, closed it, and opened it again. "This is your emergency? You're eighteen. Find another bar. Or go home."

"It totally is an emergency," Hanna retorted in her usual whiny tone she adapted whenever she tried to talk him into something, moving to get her fake ID back but he held it above her head, taking advantage of the only thing between them where he knew he would win. "Can't you just get me in? I can't open that door from the outside."

"Go. Home," Toby repeated. "I'm not your buddy or your stoner cousin or your cooler older brother, Hanna. I'm not smuggling you into a bar."

"This is so unfair! Why do you always get to have fun and get drunk?"

"Why can't you for once do as I tell you?"

"Why can't you for once be nice to me?"

"I'm always nice to you-"

"No, you are not! It's always Hanna this and Hanna that..."

Neither of them had noticed the vampire that was creeping up on them, not even Hanna, so when it exploded right in front of the blonde, Toby accidentally swallowed some of the dust and his slayer gave a very un-slayer-like, surprised screech. They stopped their banter right then and now, Hanna waving her hand to clear off her sight, and frowned at their rescuer.

"Well...a thank you would be nice."

Trust me: whatever you think is going to happen is most likely wrong. Unless you're psychic and I'm an even worse author than I'd initially thought. Then you may be right. But don't jump to any conclusions yet.

Anyway, I have three parts with ten chapters each and maybe an epilog planned out, and I'm currently in the middle of writing chapter six. Which basically means you'll be getting pretty regular updates, next one around next week-ish. Are y'all excited? I know I am.

Thanks for reading and I hope you have a great weekend. See you next week.