After leaving the convenience store, Xander and Yazoo headed back to the condo. The night was cool, the atmosphere quiet, and the light breeze was pleasant enough to blow away any worries - at least for the moment. They both defaulted to a stroll in unspoken unison. Yazoo was eyeing an unwrapped Twinkie in his hand with obvious distrust and had yet to take a bite.

Xander was also eyeing the pastry with longing, and he was slowly mustering the courage to ask a leather-clad, gun-toting, testosterone-laden man from another dimension: 'Are you gonna eat that?' But his potential career as a Twinkie thief was interrupted when a vampire jumped out from the bushes with typical over-dramatics. It was dressed for a walk-on role in Miami Vice, the collar turned up crisply on its white half-sleeved jacket.

Xander whipped out his cross with an equally dramatic, "Heeyah!"

Yazoo furrowed his brow as he watched the standoff.

"Hisss," went the vamp with the slicked back hair.

"Back off, freak," went Xander.

"You wanna piece of me?"

"You wanna piece of this cross?"

"A little guy like you?" The vampire gave him a look-over that wasn't very flattering. "I can't tell if those are muscles or goosebumps."

"Oh yeah? Oh yeah?…" Xander paused a beat. "Well, your collar's flopped over."

The vampire guiltily adjusted his collar before resuming his fang-laden scowl, hands back out like claws.

Xander hastily threw his cross back up to ward off a half-hearted feint.

Yazoo's brow furrowed further.

Finally dropping out of his menacing pose, the vampire sighed in exasperation and addressed Xander in a normal voice. "Dude, can we just get with the fighting and the eating already? I'm hungry." He rubbed his stomach. "Got the munchies." His fangs glinted in glow of the streetlight.

"There will be no eating!" Xander yipped.

"Aw come on. I'm in a hurry and we both know how this is gonna end, so just drop the stake give in like a good little sandwich." He winked before dusting his jacket in self-appreciation. "The girls don't like it when I'm late."

"Girls?--" Xander recovered quickly. "No! I said no eating and I meant it."

The vampire huffed in annoyance.

Yazoo swapped his weight from one leg to the other, finally growing bored with the show. "This is a vampire?" Clearly underwhelmed, his tone showed it.

"Tell Mad Max, the Road Warrior, it's none of his business," shot back the vamp.

Xander ignored the snipe and replied over his shoulder. "Yep, it's another one of our friendly neighborhood fiends, spreading death and destruction wherever it goes." Xander brandished the cross closer.

The vampire hissed.

Xander tried to hiss back, making a passable attempt.

Yazoo rolled his eyes.

He tossed the Twinkie over his shoulder, slipped Velvet Nightmare from its holster, and let fly with two bullets to the torso, blazing streaks of blue fire in its wake. The gun was re-holstered before Xander could blurt out, "Bzuh?" He cleared his throat and tried again. "What kind of gun was that?!" He shook his head. "Wait. Doesn't matter. Guns are no good against vampires. Stake to the heart, beheadings, those are of the good. Guns? Not so much."

The vampire had been thrown to the ground by the force of the shots but was now dutifully making its way back to his feet to punctuate Xander's words. "Hey, that was harsh, dude." He adjusted his white coat with bruised dignity. Meanwhile, Xander was digging in his backpack muttering under his breath, "Where's that stupid stake?"

A slow smile spread over Yazoo's face.

The speed in which he moved blew Xander away. One minute he was behind him, the next he had flipped through the air to land crouched in front of the vamp, his hand flat against the sidewalk. He straightened with an uppercut that rocked the vampire off-balance, followed by a crisp spin-kick that sent his victim on a short flight ending in a bone-rattling collision with a nearby garage.

The fight ended all too quickly with the vampire plastered against the garage wall, its feet hanging down uselessly due to Yazoo's hand clasped around its throat. The vampire blew out a strangled, "Lame," as it wiggled in vain.

Xander eyed the scene appreciatively. "Woah, you're like a male Buffy. A Buffo, if ya will."

Yazoo studied the vamp with a slight frown. "Stake? "

"Yeah," Xander finally tugged the small stake from his backpack and handed it over, making sure to stay out of hissing distance. "Just make sure to get it through the heart."

Xander started to cry out when Yazoo let the vampire go, but promptly cut off mid-yelp when it only made three long strides before the stake pierced its heart from behind, exploding into a satisfying spray of dust.

"Woah... and the newcomer gets definite points for style."

Yazoo grinned with satisfaction. "I think I like your town."

Xander smiled back. "I think we like having you."

And he was only slightly surprised when he realized he meant it.

---

The rest of the walk back was subdued. As they drew close to the condo, Yazoo took the stairs leading up to the door slowly. Reality awaited him inside, questions without answers and an uncertain future. His steps slowed, weighed down by his thoughts.

"Sorry you didn't get a chance to try your Twinkie. I'll get you another one."

Yazoo looked up at Xander's apology, then wrinkled his nose. "It's fine." He paused and added, "Really."

Xander stopped with his hand on the doorknob. "Hey, I understand not wanting to go back in there. Life can be pretty much of the suck at times, and I know of what I speak." The happy-go-lucky Xander face slid away - just for a second – before it dutifully returned. "And as a secret between just us guys, lemme tell you. Girls? So not worth the trouble."

Yazoo grinned like a present had just been dumped in his lap. "Oh, I know." A few steps brought him close enough to whisper, "Trust me, men are much better."

Xander flared bright red and bolted through the door, leaving Yazoo to trail in after.

---

There was a redheaded girl fluttering around the living room and Yazoo realized this must be the girl, Willow, they'd been talking about earlier. Kadaj was back in the chair he had commandeered earlier to the left of the couch, and he was sniffing at her like fancy sauce on his T-bone that he wasn't sure what to do with. The attention made the girl flutter more. She was keeping a careful distance from Loz, who was fidgeting uncomfortably in a high-backed chair to the right of the couch.

Her hair was as red as Reno's but Yazoo could never imagine her lounging against a wall. She was strung too tight to ever lounge.

"This is amazing." She peered in close at Kadaj and pulled back quickly at his growl. "You're really from a whole different dimension?"

Xander rounded out the introductions from the end of the couch. "Willow, this is Yazoo. Kadaj's brother."

She gave him a small wave. Moving over to sit on the couch next to Giles, she tried whispering to him non-too adeptly out of the side of her mouth. "Do you think they dye their hair?"

Yazoo raised his eyebrow and was satisfied to see her blush. "Um, but that's not important right now. I have so many questions, I'm not sure where to start." She scooped her notebook up from the coffee table and situated it on her lap. "When exactly did you arrive here? There must be some sort of correlation."

"We just showed up in that graveyard while that blond person was skulking around," Kadaj answered.

Willow's head popped up from her notebook. "Skulking? She doesn't skulk. While, except for when she's patrolling, but that's good skulking, not bad skulking, and okay, I see where you may not know the difference but there it is."

Xander interrupted. "That was only a few hours ago then. And I was eating cookies, so unless Giles has magical dimension-traveling cookies, I'm off the hook!"

"A few hours ago?" Willow started twirling her pencil with obvious agitation. "Would this be about 7-ish?"

Xander and Giles looked at her with growing suspicion and Yazoo stood straighter.

She stared at her notebook. "Well, I was doing this... thing". She waved her hand vaguely.

"Thing?" Giles prompted.

Willow shrank back into the couch. "Just a little thing?"

Giles voice took on a tinge of warning. "Willow?"

Yazoo watched as the girl tried to hold back. Anyone could see it was a losing battle. It was just a matter of waiting for the dam to break.

"Alright, I did it! I did a spell."

Giles' face grew stony. "Witchcraft. I've warned you repeatedly--" he broke off sharply in frustration.

"But it was just a little spell..." She gazed around the room at three obviously not-so-little people from another dimension. "At least, it was supposed to be little."

Kadaj grunted in frustration. Loz, however, just smiled and scooted to the edge of his chair, leaning towards her. "You do this witchcraft often then?" His smile sent the girl into nervous titters.

"Well, I dabble, I do. I do dabble." She shoved a cookie in her mouth as if to stop herself from talking.

Giles was polishing his glasses. Again. He stopped briefly when his eyes locked on a floral picture on the far wall and he put his glasses back on with a renewed frown. "Willow does occasional spells, yes, though normally she talks it over with me first." The admonishment made her take another guilty bite of her cookie. "They have been known to go wrong."

Xander pointed. "You! You did a spell." He dropped his hand and looked around the room. "Though I'm not sure how that explains the Gleesome Threesome. But you did a spell." Point. Jab.

Willow cringed. "I thought I had practiced enough for it to go right."

Loz leered. "You can practice on me any time you want."

Willow dropped her cookie.

"I just felt so bad and I didn't know what else to do to fix it, and you know me, Xander," she looked up with doe eyes that could melt a glacier, "I was trying to help, really I was..."

She dribbled to a silence under the combined stares of Xander, Giles, and Kadaj. Loz continued leering.

Xander relented. "Well, I'll admit, it could've been worse. Women aren't chasing me, and Buffy's not a rat." He stopped. "Please tell me Buffy's not a rat."

Willow shook her head adamantly. "No, I just talked to her on the phone. There was no squeakage at all, promise."

"Whew. Okay then." He couldn't help but look at Yazoo. "Well, we made some new friends so no harm done, I guess. But Will? What was the spell for?"

Red worked its way up Willow's cheeks.

"I just wanted to fix things. I didn't want to see you unhappy, and it was all so crazy what with the kissing and Cordelia and big metal spikes through people's abdomens…" she trailed off.

"Me? But I'm fin-"

"No you weren't fine. You were mopey and covering it up like a big cover-upper. And it was all - well, partially - my fault. I just wanted you to be happy again! You know, since Oz and I are... But you and Cordelia aren't..."

"Um, Will?" Xander tilted his head and asked a question he wasn't sure he wanted the answer to. "What exactly did you wish for?"

She bit on her lip. "I just wanted to bring your true love to town."

Xander's cocked his head, as if he hadn't heard quite right.

"What?"

"I expected a new girl to transfer into school, but obviously it went all wrong and now these poor men are stuck here instead."

Xander was stuck on the only word he could think of. "What?" he repeated.

"I did everything right. I had the herbs, the candles. The room was quiet. And I was chanting, boy, you should have heard me chanting, I'm getting really good at it. You'd be so…" she caught Xander's intensity and his 'get to the point' expression, "but when I called on the goddess Gaia, she must have been in a cranky mood or something because, well," a quick wave at the brothers, "these guys."

Xander relaxed and broke out in a wide grin. "Gaia." He threw his hand up towards Giles. "Gaia."

Willow frowned.

Xander was obviously caught up in his exuberance over the explanation. "These three? Are from a place called Gaia," he pronounced happily and crossed his arms over his chest. "And, no offense, Will, but your track record isn't the greatest."

Yazoo rolled his eyes. At least they had their answer. A little girl meddling where she shouldn't. But the power that entailed. The things they could do here. It was mind-blowing.

And he could see Kadaj thinking the same.