Disclaimer: Don't own. Usual disclaimers apply.

A Hunter's Tale or How Did We Get from Here to There

By Colleen

Chapter 10 Summer Interludes

Summer has set in with its usual severity. ~Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Willow looked at herself one more time in the changing room mirror before wrapping back up in a beach towel. She took a deep breath. She could do this. It wasn't yellow or polka dot or even itsy bitsy or teenie weenie, but it was a bikini. She resisted the urge to look again and strode resolutely out of the concrete cabana and down to the beach where Oz was laying out a blanket next to a cooler and picnic basket. Xander had already set up a beach umbrella and was hand digging a hole large enough to lay out a body in.

"Hey." Oz greeted her as he knelt down on the blanket.

"Hey." She said back and then preparing herself for possible laughter, she let the towel drop.

THUD.

Startled she looked over to where the sound had come from.

"Xander, aren't you supposed to lie in the hole lengthwise if you want us to bury you?"

Xander pushed himself up onto his knees, spitting out the mouthful of sand he collected when he fell. "Sorry, I think the sun must be getting to me, I thought I saw…" He looked up at her and his mind fuzzed out as he took in his best friend wearing nothing more than a lime green bikini.

"Duh…"

"I'll second that." Oz smiled at her. He'd managed to collect his wits faster than Xander because, one, he was Oz, two, he'd already been on his knees, so he'd had less distance to fall and three, Xander managed to distract Willow until he pulled himself together.

Willow looked from him to her best friend. Her hands fluttered up to cover her stomach, but with a quick flash of her resolve face, they landed on her hips. "So, it's okay?"

Oz actually gave a short bark of laughter. "You're beautiful."

Xander nodded, going unnoticed as they focused on each other.

"Let's bury Xander in the sand and go play some volleyball." Oz suggested.

Once again, Willows hands briefly fluttered across her body, obviously wanting to cover herself. She clasped her hands behind her back to kill the impulse, not realizing the position did interesting things for her chest.

Both males swallowed.

"Volleyball, okay," she said.

A short while later all one could see of Xander was his head and his left hand. From the shade of the umbrella, he watched as Willow and Oz joined a beach volleyball game.

Willow had a wicked serve.

"God, I am such an idiot."

"Yep." His left hand was also watching the game. "I can't believe you let that get away."

Xander made a pained sound. "She's my best friend; I'm not supposed to think of her that way."

"That just makes you even more of an idiot."

Xander slumped and dug his chin into the sand. "Doesn't it just."

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Buffy sighed, looking around the party her father and his latest girlfriend brought her to. There were too many brittle, shallow people clumped together, pretending to have a good time while looking for the best way to stab their so-called friends in the back. Sadly, her dad was right in there, plotting away like the best, or perhaps the worst of them.

"You look like you could use one of these." A pleasant looking man, a little too close to her father's age for comfort, handed her a glass of Champaign.

She smiled and took it, but didn't drink. You only have to be drugged and almost sacrificed to a white worm demon guy once. After that, you don't trust anything handed to you at a party.

"I'm Buddy."

"Buffy."

He smiled. "Practically makes us a matching pair."

Buffy gave him a wry smile and nodded.

"So," he asked her, "Would you like to get some air. I don't think anyone's using the balcony at the moment."

"Sure."

Buffy abandoned her drink in a potted plant on the way. The balcony was deserted and Buddy led her off to one side of it, where they wouldn't be seen by anyone inside the apartment.

She smiled up at him while he ran one finger down the side of her face. "You're very lovely. Too bad you'll soon be dea…erk."

He looked at her in shock as Buffy pulled the stake she'd just thrust into his chest back out. He had just long enough to stare down at the wound before he burst into dust.

Buffy gave the stake a twirl, before returning it to her clutch bag.

"Oh, there you are."

"Hey Dad, you guys ready to head home yet?" She asked hopefully.

Hank Summers gave his head a little shake. He could remember a time when he had to drag his daughter out of parties like these. Now it was the other way around. "Sure, we'll just make our goodbyes." He headed back into the apartment.

Buffy sighed and leaned against the balcony railing, looking out at the night. That should only take them another half hour or so.

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Xander looked at his hands or more specifically his nails and fought back the desire to growl. They'd grown, apparently over night. Instead of the roughly cut fingernails they'd been yesterday, they were now long and perfectly shaped, as if he'd come from a manicure. If the manicure was for a woman.

They were elegant, yet they gave his hands a claw like look. But either way, they were going.

He got out a pair of nail clippers, stuck one of the nails between the two blades and squeezed.

CRACK.

The clippers fell apart in his hands. He wanted to call them cheap junk, but they worked fine a couple of days ago. A look at the nail showed it wasn't even been dented.

"Kid, there's only one thing that will work on those nails and that's your own teeth. Not that it will help much, they'll just grow back by the next morning."

Xander put his right hand to his forehead and groaned. He did not need more changes happening to his body. Frustrated, he ran his hand through his hair, freezing when his fingers brushed across something unexpected. Carefully he traced the edge of one ear with his fingertip.

The damn thing was pointed.

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Cordelia slumped in her seat in an opera house in Paris. Normally her father hauling her off to Europe as soon as school ended was fine. More than fine even. There was shopping, theatre and really good looking guys everywhere. It should have been Heaven. Instead, a day didn't go by she didn't want to be back home on the Hellmouth.

Her father handed her a pair of opera glasses. Bored out of her mind, she started people watching to kill time before the performance. She wasn't the only one. In fact, half the people she checked out were doing the same thing.

One of the audience members, up in the box seats, appeared to be watching without the help of little binoculars. Cordelia studied him until he turned in her direction and smiled at her. Flustered, she looked away, avoiding looking back at him until the opera started.

She glanced his way regularly during the opera and kept her eyes on him at intermission.

Despite where they were, it wasn't because she thought he was a phantom. Nor was it because he was attractive, even though he was. He had long, dark hair, an elegant face and a presence that could easily be called hypnotic.

He was also very pale.

Given some of her night-time activities that was what held her attention, even though he never did anything to verify her fears. It was obvious he was aware of her interest. When the last of the music ended, he rose, smiled in her direction one more time and left in the swirl of an opera cape.

He was stylish, refined and probably had a title or two to his name.

So why there something about him that reminded her of Xander?

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"Again."

Xander stifled a groan. He'd been the one who said he needed training where Giles could hear him. The Watcher hated being idle and with Buffy gone for the summer he had no one to torture…er, train. So, when Xander needed to work on meshing body with mind, Giles volunteered to help him.

"Xander, the obstacle course won't finish itself."

At least he thought it was supposed to be help.

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Oz and Willow walked to Oz's van one night after a movie. Parking was at a premium near the theatre, so they ended up on a quiet side street a little further away from the crowds than was necessarily safe.

Case in point.

"Ah, young love. I never get tired of it. Everyday I get to crush it is a gift."

The two teens jerked to a stop as someone tall and wide stepped in front of them. Dark and bearded, he physically reminded both of them of a lumberjack, without the plaid shirt.

"And they're always so fresh and full of despair by the time you're done with them."

The woman who came up behind them was tall, overdressed and adorned with obviously dyed red hair.

Willow threw a spell at her. She hadn't learned many yet and those she did know weren't very strong, but dealing with the nighttime 'life' in Sunnydale taught her not to hesitate, much.

The spell was essentially a burst of light, meant to dazzle an opponent.

"You bitch!" The woman shifted to game face even as she tried to get her eyes to focus.

"Ah, girly. You just earned yourself a special death." The man shifted to game face as well.

"Willow." Oz touched her shoulder briefly. "You're going to have to run now."

"What, no, not without…oh!" Willow's eyes widened as Oz' eyes turned yellow. Already she could see his mouth pushing forward as his teeth and jaws changed.

"Running now." Willow bolted, moving past the woman who was still trying to clear her vision.

"Don't go too far sweetie," she called out after the escaping teen. "We'll have our fun with you once we're done with your boyfriend."

"GROWL."

The female vampire turned towards the noise behind her, her eyesight finally clearing.

Teeth and claws and fur moved in a whirlwind, punctured by her partner's muffled yell. She was moving to help when the male vampire threw the werewolf off him. Oz landed like a coiled spring, compacting almost flat before he leapt, planting his hind legs on the vampire's shoulders while his clawed hands grabbed onto the bloodsucker's skull. With a twist and a pull the vampires head separated from his body. The werewolf had just long enough to growl into the startled face of his foe before both parts dusted.

Oz dropped to the ground and turned his head to look at the next threat. The woman stared back a moment, before she cut and ran.

She didn't make it half a block.

The werewolf came up behind her, his teeth biting down into her shoulder while he thrust his clawed hand into her back, wrapping it messily around her spine. She made a very unpleasant sound that Oz ignored. The spine was slipperier than he'd thought it would be, but he got a good hold and pulled back. A chunk of her shoulder came away in his mouth at the same time he ripped her spinal column out of her body.

Oz hacked up the ball of dust he was suddenly chewing on when she disintegrated. He made a disgusted sound and stalked back to the van, fighting the desire to piss on the vampire's remains and wanting nothing more than something to wash his mouth out with. He prowled impatiently around the vehicle when he got back to it, trying to find his way back to being human.

It took him longer than he liked to calm down enough to work through the triggers he set up in his mind that let him become human Oz once more. Naked, he quickly retrieved his keys and wallet from his shredded clothing. Thankfully, he'd started keeping a second set of clothing in the van. A little extra digging netted him a warm half bottle of soda and he did a swish and spit with it that didn't help as much as he'd hoped. Instead, his mouth now tasted of orange flavoured vampire dust.

He started searching for Willow, figuring she'd go to the first open place she came to. He found her at the Espresso Pump, forcing caffeine into her system at an excessive rate. Xander was also there, looking like he just got there. The cafe was far enough from his place that she must have called him as soon as she arrived.

"Hey."

"Oz." Willow had herself wrapped around her boyfriend in the next moment and Xander of let out a sigh of relief.

"I didn't realize you had that much control already."

"Neither did I." Oz said from the shelter of Willow's arms. "But they threatened Willow."

Xander's eyes narrowed and he nodded. Things didn't need any more explanation than that.

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In addition to working with Giles and upping the patrolling since Buffy was away, Left Hand had talked him into early morning Tai Chi practice. The slow, meditative movement helped a lot when it came to sorting out the different fighting styles D had studied over the years (centuries).

The first time, Xander had jogged to the nearest park. Working through several different styles of Tai Chi for a couple of hours proved beneficial. Losing himself as both the physical and mental worked together, allowed him to smoothly open doors in D's memories. It was an improvement over them stunning him stupid.

When he finished, Left Hand recommended that he work in some sword chi next time and pay more attention to his surroundings. He also suggested that he do the practices in his back yard.

He was going to disagree with that, until he looked around. A yoga group sat on the ground, their mats forgotten beside them. All of them were staring up at him in adoration. Mother's with strollers were parked in a ragged semi circle around where he was practicing, lust and a disturbing hunger in their eyes. On the ground, three joggers lay n the ground where they fell, the dazed expression on their faces not due to any injuries.

"Really?" Xander asked. Yeah, he knew D had this kind of… trouble, but there was no way he himself was that pretty, graceful or interesting to watch.

Left Hand just chuckled.

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Angel looked out at the gardens of the old mansion where they'd taken Acathla. He'd given up his ratty apartment and moved in shortly after Buffy went to LA for the summer.

He missed her.

That was when he knew he was going to be selfish just a little bit longer. He knew the time would come when he would take himself out of Buffy's life. They could never be together and the longer he hung around the longer she wouldn't, couldn't get on with her own life.

But he wasn't able do it just yet.

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Xander looked around the old frat house and nodded. It was shaping up rather nicely. The main and upper floors were all clean now and the basement, although still a disaster had yielded some excellent finds.

The first find was that back in 1982, when the house was closed, but before the zoning problems kicked in, they actually started to renovate. The plumbing, electrical, furnace, hot water heater, washers, dryers (there was a laundry room off the kitchen) and kitchen appliances had all been worked on or bought at that time and with a little cleaning and minor maintenance they were good to go.

Even better, they'd bought new furniture. This was a godsend as the only piece of furniture he kept from the stuff upstairs was the pool table that now sat in the game's room.

He guessed the vamps had been comfortable enough with the furniture on the upper floors when they closed the house and hadn't bothered to unpack any of the stuff stored at one end of the basement. But with the place now empty, Xander was glad to find plastic wrapped area rugs, bed frames (no mattresses though), dressers, student desks, a huge dining room table with chairs, coffee tables, end tables, a kitchen table with chairs and several smaller versions of the reading table and chairs that they used in the Sunnydale High library. The last he was sure were intended for the study area/library that he suspected also doubled as a chapter room. There were also lamps. Reading lamps, floor lamps, sitting on table lamps. It was amazing how many of them a house needed.

As far as he could tell by the boxes, someone hit a wholesale furniture company and bought everything they could in one go. Bringing stuff up would probably take the rest of the summer. Most of the items were flat packed and needed assembly and he still needed some of the softer things. Couches, armchairs, mattresses… and maybe some curtains, so he didn't have to look at boarded up windows.

Maybe he'd buy some with the money he'd made off the other items in the house. He'd recently collected and sold every current edition textbook he could find in the place to the campus bookshop. University books must cost a ton, because even with the crappy rate they were offering he actually got a little over seven hundred dollars. Still, he wasn't keen to waste it on furniture and drapes.

Well, maybe something would come along.

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Kendra stared down at her shoes while her Watcher paced back and forward in front of her. He raged at her, lectured her and forbade her to go. Only this time she wasn't going to listen.

Because Kendra… had a date.

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Xander gave the horse in front of him a slightly nervous pat and checked the saddle over before swinging himself up into it.

He took a deep, startled breath. It felt like he'd been riding forever. Like he was born to ride.

So many of D's memories involved horses. While D had driven every manner of vehicle that had come along over the years, horses always remained his preference. Sure, 10,000 years into the future they were cyborg horses, but they were still horses.

Xander listened carefully to the trail leader and followed him as the group started out on the ninety-minute ride. He'd have to do this a lot more this summer. As many times as his finances would allow at least.

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Whistler landed hard and fought to reclaim the breath that had been knocked out him. The bosses were always doing petty crap like this when an employee screwed up. Only it wasn't his fault they couldn't be bothered to look and see what was actually happening on the Hellmouth, rather than assuming events were following the path they wanted.

He stood and dusted himself off. Looking around he heaved a giant groan as he realized where he was.

"Cleveland, I hate Cleveland. The last time I was here a giant duck tried to bite my face off." He pondered that memory for a moment. "His girlfriend was cute though."

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Joyce closed the book and sat back to digest it. Like the last book their club read, it was long on angst. Although this one had at least tempered it with startling moments of humour and quiet bits of introspection. Unlike their previous read, a depressing thing without any redeeming qualities and an ending so stupid that if the window she sat next to had been open she would have chucked the thing out it.

The book club really needed something a little lighter. Something that didn't sour the glass of wine she occasionally indulged in while reading in the evening.

Besides, all this angst was not helping to keep her from worrying about her daughter. Yes, she was strong. Yes, she was with her father… actually, now that she thought about it, that was a whole new level of worry. And yes, she could probably take on anything that came at her. But it didn't stop her from being the thing Joyce worried about the most.

Her little girl.

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Giles slid two eggs over easy onto a plate with toast and bacon and handed it to a slightly bed tousled Jenny who was sitting on a stool on the other side of the kitchen pass through. She smiled at him tiredly and tucked into the breakfast. Giles slid the last two eggs from the pan onto another plate with the same sides and placed it at the space beside her before joining her.

"So, any plans today." He asked as he poured himself a cup of tea and offered to do the same for her.

She held out her cup and shook her head. "Besides recovering from last night, not much." She smiled. It was so much fun, being with someone who could do what he did last night, but still blush about it the next morning.

"Yourself?"

"What?"

Jenny laughed lightly. "Do you have any plans for today?"

"Oh, well, I expect I'll be sparring with Xander today, as well as running sword drills for him. And I should check up with Willow. See what she's learned over the last week and if she needs any help with the…" Giles' voice ran down as the toes of Jenny's bare foot snuck up under the cuff of his trousers. "Or perhaps I should stay here and help you recover?"

Her smile could easily be considered wicked. "Yes, I think perhaps you should."

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Willow looked at Giles' magic texts though the mesh of the book cage, her fingers itching to touch them. Learning from the coven was good, but it was slow. She was certain she was ready to do more.

The sound of an e-mail arriving in her inbox interrupted her just as she was reaching towards the cage door. Frowning, she walked to the reading desk where her laptop was and checked the message. It was from notsoglinda64, who was one of the members of the coven.

'Willow,' it ran, 'given what you told us about the incident with the two vampires, you're probably champing at the bit to learn something that could have stopped them sooner and without your boyfriend having to resort to, well, you know. To that end, I thought I would send you this. It's a little advanced for you at the moment. However, I think with some work you could have the basics of it down by the end of the summer.'

Below the message were the detailed instructions on how to achieve levitation. The coven recommended she start with something small and wooden, like a pencil. Small, because levitation was more difficult the heavier something was. Wooden, because given where she lived, being able to surprise a vampire with a flying pointy wooden thing could someday save her life.

Giles' books forgotten for the moment, Willow grabbed a small pencil from the libraries supplies and placed it on the table next to her laptop before sitting down to read the instructions.

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"Will this summer never end?"

Being dragged off to Europe for a month was bad enough, but at least there had been shopping. But instead of going home to relax, they only stopped in Sunnydale overnight before leaving again for Mexico.

"Ahhh." Swish, thud, crash. "Oh no you don't." Cordelia brandished a rolled up bamboo tanning mat at the corners of her room. "Four star resort my ass. I thought I left the giant demon bugs back in Sunnydale."

"Cordelia." A voice called through the door of her room.

"Daddy!"

"I've signed you up for dance lessons by the pool. Two o'clock. Don't be late. Oh, and we're doing water polo tomorrow."

Cordelia slumped. This was it; one of her worst fears had come true. Organized fun.

"Chitter."

She looked to the other end of her room as a ridiculously over sized cockroach peered out from behind her night table.

"I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I'd rather stay here with you."

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Garage sales. Sunnydale had a lot of them. It was something Xander hadn't noticed until he started looking for them one weekend. To be more specific, their town had a lot of estate and moving sales. Some people brushed up against the real Sunnydale and didn't survive, so their relatives came down and sold or gave away anything they didn't want. Other's moved to Sunnydale, found the place creeped them out without ever figuring out why and decided to leave again, selling off or giving away anything they didn't want to move a second time.

Deciding to see if he could get a few pieces of furniture or at the very least a couch for the frat house, he borrowed a paneled truck from his uncle. In one weekend, including a Friday afternoon and for just a little over two hundred dollars of the money he'd made off of the text books, Xander collected enough furniture and other items to fill the living room, the kitchen and get a start on the Library. There was even enough stuff to finish setting up five of the bedrooms (the house had fifteen bedrooms, ten of which where intended to be double occupancy; though he decided he wouldn't bother with those for the time being). On each day he went furniture hunting at least one of the sales offered him the whole of what was left, free, just as long as he'd haul it away.

He would probably toss or give away a fair bit of it, but he now had things like plates and pots and whatnots for the kitchen and towels and soap dishes and further whatnots for the bathrooms. Sheets, dust ruffles, blankets, quilts and curtains. Books, pens, notebooks, stationary. TV's, video recorders, video cassettes, CD players and discs, the list went on and on. There wasn't much that he would need, other than food, should he and everyone else need to use the place as a bolthole.

He was even becoming rather attached to the place. Enough that he knew he would be really depressed when city council stopped doing whatever it was they were doing and allowed its real owners to claim it once again.

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A hand broke through the dirt and found purchase on the earth under it. Another joined it and pulled, the effort breaking free the head and shoulders of a fledgling vampire, so starved that it was already in game face. He hauled the rest of his body out of his grave, freeing himself just as he noticed a young girl with a stake standing in front of him.

"That's right, Big Boy." Willow said down at him. "Come and get it."

The vampire leapt to his feet, snarling at her. Willow stepped back, the vampire followed. A whistling sound cut through the air and the vampire jerked to a stop. His head slid slightly sideways for a moment before he simply disintegrated into dust.

Xander stood behind him, sword in hand and still holding the position he'd ended in from cutting through the vampire's neck. Oz stepped out from a bush near Willow, a stake in his hand.

Xander straightened up and lowered the sword.

"Come and get it, Big Boy?"

Willow shrugged. "Well, Buffy always says a pun or a witty play on words and I think it throws the vampires off, and, and it makes them frightened because I'm wisecracking. Okay, I didn't really have a chance to work on that one, but you try it every time."

"Uh, if I may suggest: 'This time it's personal.' I mean, there's a reason why it's a classic. "Oz said.

Willow frowned at her boyfriend. "Well, yeah, but it wasn't, personal I mean. Vampire bad yes, hate, but this one…"

Xander and Oz each held up a hand to bring Willow's flow of words to a halt. "We get it, it wasn't personal, yet." Xander said. "Obviously we've been taking Buffy's punning for granted.

"Well, she'll be back soon." Willow said with a smile.

"Yeah, I can't believe she's going to get to miss the first couple of days of school because of an airline strike and her dad not wanting her to take the bus." Xander said, clearly jealous. "Which reminds me, given that we're school bound tomorrow, we should probably pack it in."

The other two nodded. Even Oz seemed willing to call it a night, although as far as Willow and Xander knew, having been a senior last year he was now free of school this year.

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The first day of school. Why, why had she spent so much of the summer wanting to get back here?

"Hi." Willow said to her as she entered the library.

Cordelia breathed a little easier. "Hey, Willow." Well at least someone in the loser group she attached herself to had survived the summer.

Willow asked her about her summer and Cordelia vented about the resort in Mexico and in return asked Willow about hers.

"Oh, it was okay."

Cordelia frowned slightly. She knew she wasn't the most empathic person around, but that sounded like Willow in understatement mode. Still, that meant that even if the summer had more going on than Willow bothered to explain, no one in the group had gotten seriously hurt or dead.

The two girls headed out of the library.

"Is Xander around?"

Willow glanced around. "He must still be in the office. There was some problem with his schedule. It gave him a Home Economics class even though he chose shop."

"Knowing Snyder, he'll be stuck with the Home Ec. class." A voice said behind them.

Both girls turned to see Oz standing behind them, carrying a pile of books.

"Oz, you came to visit me. You came with books? Are they books for me?"

"Well, actually, they're kind of for me."

Cordelia took this as her cue and walked off towards the office while Oz was explaining to Willow why he was back for one more year of school.

Somebody male and delicious came out of the office while she was walking towards it. Tall, slim, but wide of shoulder with long wavy brown hair that fell part way down his back. His face was refined and beautiful, but not feminine. She could eat him up with a…

She dropped her books, her eyes wide.

"Hey Cordy."

"Xander?"

"How was your summer?" He asked as he bent down and picked up her books for her.

"Ahh." She was screwed. Because she finally figured out why she'd spent the summer wanting to get back here.

She had it bad for Xander Harris.

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Have a few days off from the beginning of school and a Dad who has an emergency at work and is not going to notice you're missing when you go slaying and what happens? You run into someone you remember from Sunnydale. From an incident you would dearly like to forget, even if you never will.

On top of that, they recognize you and manage to find you the next night when you come back to the area, because even if you hadn't found anything, other than some local do-gooders offering help to the street kids, there's something about the place, something in the air that feels like sandpaper on skin. You still find nothing, but she has found you and asked for help finding the boy she had been with the other night.

You remember him from the other night; remember even the matching tattoos they had. You check the blood donation clinic, his friends and any place that they use to hang out together at, but find nothing. In the end, it's the tattoos that help, as it's the only way you know it's him when you find him dead. Even thought the body is that of an old man. In the space of a day, he must have age something like sixty or more years.

She can't handle it and takes off, hooking up with the do-gooders. You start over again, at the blood bank and shake the place down for information, finding out that the nurse there has been giving the names of the healthy donors to the do-gooders.

Seems they aren't such do-gooders after all.

In fact, they've been kidnapping the street kids and dropping them through a slimy portal into a hell dimension where they use them as slave labour.

All of this was how Buffy now found herself in said hell dimension with Lily, formally Chantarelle, and ended up beating the crap out of every demon that came along as they made their way out of there. Even Lily managed to do her part when the chips were down and they got themselves and the slaves to safety. The trip back through the slimy portal wasn't much fun, but at least the thing closed itself up after them.

Buffy looked down at her gloop and blood covered self. "All in all, if it wasn't for the fact that I managed to save everybody, I'd have rather been at school."

Of course, the gloop wouldn't look so bad after her first run in with Principal Snyder.