Xander Harris glanced at the car digital clock and noticed he'd made better time than planned. He now had at least an hour before the appointment with a new Slayer and her parents. *Get something to eat, first.*

Driving along the Pennsylvania highway, Xander looked for a fast-food place. While he no longer totally lived on junk food as he had done in Sunnydale, an occasional visit to America's culinary temples wasn't going to turn him into a blimp. *Let's see, now…..AAAAHHH!!! Not there!*

Shuddering in his driver's seat, Xander made a certain gesture at a familiar sign with golden arches that didn't really deserve to be bestowed with a pre-Atlantean gesticulation protecting oneself from absolute evil. If he'd had someone sharing the ride familiar with his past life, such as any of the Scoobies, every one of them would have groaned in exasperation at his pointing fingers and suggested that he just get over it.

Xander didn't care. He was perfectly okay with being in the same category as vegetarians, observant Jews and Hindus, and the Amish, as being one of the few American males past the age of teething who'd never eaten at McDonalds. Any corporation who had as their mascot an actual clown was in need of serious investigation by the Council, despite that a few months back, Giles had threatened to tie Xander to a chair and force him to watch the entire run of Coronation Street if the young man keep bringing up his suggestion at the demon-fighting organization's bi-annual conferences in London.

The man with an eyepatch stuck out his tongue at the small restaurant with a children's playground in front, and continued looking for somewhere else to eat. A few moments later, Xander pulled off the highway and parked in the lot of Ronald McDonald's competition. The former Sunnydale resident wasn't bothered the slightest by representations of royalty.

Five minutes later, Xander sat down at his table in the fast-food building and smacked his lips at the totally unhealthy, vein-clogging, heart-destroying, absolutely scrumptious meal that would have fed the entire population of a small African village for a week. The man bowed his head for a moment in thanks for his good fortune at being in the pinnacle of American civilization, and then started unwrapping his Whopper.

A plastic ball came bouncing along the floor on the man's right side, causing Xander to quickly reach down to pick up the toy. As he held the ball, a child's voice came from behind him, "Hey, mister, thanks."

Twisting around in his seat, Xander saw a cute young girl, about pre-school age, looking at him. Her eyes widened at seeing his eyepatch, but she only asked, "Can I have that back?" while pointing at the toy in his hand.

"Sure, here you go," smiled Xander, passing it over. He watched as she smiled back and then whirled around to skip back to her seat, singing along the way, "I only eat at Burger King…"

Xander chuckled at this, plus how the little girl had managed not to ask if he was a pirate. Even though he got that at least a couple of times a week from strangers, more often every time a new film with Johnny Depp came out, the head of the Cleveland Slayers House wouldn't have minded answering questions about this with that charming youngster. He would've even thrown in a pretty good "Yo, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum!" if he said so, himself.

Anyway, it was time to eat. Xander brought up his hamburger to his mouth, and as the realization burst in his mind, he chomped down on it so hard in sheer shock that honey mustard sauce went flying in all directions.

A sauce-covered Xander sat there unmoving for a few moments, and then he carefully put down his hamburger with a single bite missing from it, picked up napkins from his tray, and methodically began cleaning his face, including the front of his eyepatch, all while thoughtfully chewing. Only when he was finished, both in cleaning and chewing, did Xander swallow his food past the lump in his throat, as the man slowly turned in his seat to disbelievingly stare at the little girl with her parents at their booth.

A few seconds later, Xander had dumped his barely touched food in the trashcan, dropped the tray on top of this with a clatter, and half walked, half ran out of the Burger King restaurant, muttering under his breath, "How come NOW this place has also gone over to the dark side?"

Xander skidded to a stop right outside the door, seeing that in order to get back to his car, he'd have to walk past the part of the restaurant where the little girl was sitting and looking out of the window. The man casually sidled down the pathway, determinedly staring ahead. Unfortunately, he caught out of the corner of his eye the person-she-couldn't-possibly-be giving him a wave. Xander's arm came up despite himself in a jerkily returned wave, and then he abandoned all dignity to make an outright run for it.

Several minutes later, Xander's car came to a screeching stop on a residential street that was thankfully occupied by homes and not any kind of food-service industrial structures. Now parked on the side of the street, Xander just stared ahead blankly, and then his head fell forward for his forehead to rest on the rim of the steering wheel. An actual whimper came from his lips.

After a while, still in his position, Xander's right hand fumbled in his pocket for his cellphone, and then he straightened up in his car seat, as he looked thoughtful, working out in his head the time zones. Nodding in satisfaction as he realized that Buffy would now have consumed her required morning caffeine fix in the Scottish castle of the Council Main Headquarters where she currently lived, Xander pressed a button on his phone for her personal number. Unconsciously, with the idea of coffee lurking at the edges of his brain, as he waited for her to pick up the phone, the man's other hand reached down to pull away the crotch of his pants.

First-degree burns in that particular place will overcome etiquette any time.

Eventually, Xander's call was answered.

"Yo, Buffster, Big X here."

"……………."

"Giles hasn't ever stopped me from calling him G-man. There's no hope for you, either."

"……………!"

"Oooo, good one. Anyway, what I'm calling for is about something that happened way back when in Sunnydale. Just a few weeks after you moved in."

"……………?"

"Yeah, our first dinner there, me and Wils, with you and your mom."

"……………."

"Yeah, yeah, we've had that discussion about Dawn. Anyway, I want to talk about right after the dinner, when your mom got out the family photos."

"……………!!!!"

"I still think you were secretly relieved about your house going down with the sinkhole, since it took with it that photo of you when you were a year old taking a bath in the kitchen sink, topless except for a few bubbles, and your hair smushed into a mohawk."

"____________"

"I've heard all the threats, you know that. Even back then, it was worth me nearly choking on my dessert and Willow giggling so hard I thought she was going to wet herself."

"*******%^!!!"

"Yeah, if Joyce didn't know then you were the Slayer, you woulda stuffed us both into the empty Pepperridge Farms cookie package. I got that, I got that."

"……………."

"Nuh-huh. Any parental embarrassing photo of you trumps any humiliating photo of anyone else. Even the Christmas card you sent out last year that was taken the time you visited Cleveland during my little mishap with the tranquilizer gun."

"……………:)"

"Sisterly solidarity, my ass! Sooner or later, I'm gonna find out when you and the others waited for me to wake up exactly which Slayer came up with the idea of giving me a full Britney Spears makeover!"

"……………:P"

"Do you know how hard it was to get that much mascara off?! Somebody went overboard with the raccoon eyes!"

"……………0:)"

"You didn't…. Okay. My revenge will be terrible. Um. Look, the whole reason I called was about another photo. It was you for your pre-school class, a headshot of you maybe five years old, with white ribbons in your hair. Now, could you possibly remember what you were dressed like then? Was it a purple overall, with a white, long-sleeved blouse? Hello? Hello?"

Xander pulled away his now-silent phone from his ear, grimacing in disappointment. "Damn. I thought she didn't pay any attention to holidays that didn't involve gifts or time off from school. I wonder if someone tried to pull an April Fool's gag on her today….. Waaaaaaait a second."

The man's sole eye narrowed in suspicion, as he now remembered all that had happened for the last several years on the anniversary of this very day.

*Hah,* mused his unseen watcher. *I don't know whether to feel proud he finally spotted it, or disappointed it took him so long. Let's see if he actually remembers when next year comes around.*