Mayor Wilkins took me for a walk today. Like I was his puppy or something. Maybe I am. I never had a real dad, maybe this is what it's like. He bought me nice things, my own room, he's nice to me, so now when he says "jump" I say, "how high?" Is that how it works? Maybe he's my sugar daddy more than he realizes. How wrong would it be for me to say "No, I don't feel like walking."?Not that I would. I'd do anything for the Mayor, even though he doesn't want everything. He just wants me to be his daughter. I wonder... did he use to have a daughter? Maybe I should ask him. Nah, that'd be wrong.

Did I just actually think something would be wrong? My God, Buffy turns everyone into a saint. I really can't wait to put our little plan into motion. We're bringing back her nightmare.. naughty Angel. It'll be so much fun. I get to knock Angel off his damn pedestal, and show Buffy that she can't save the entire world. She can't save me.

Well, me and the Mayor were walking, out on the main street of Sunnydale. That cracked me up. Here I was, defender of the world, Slayer of all things evil, walking down Main Street with a demon and plotting to end the world. Amazing the things that amuse you.

We walked by this girl, real little, maybe seven. Blonde hair. Reminded me of this picture of B I saw. So, this girl's wearing this real frilly, long dress, and these shoes that are about three times as big as her feet. It was obvious she was playing dress-up. Right when I saw her, I thought, that's me. I'm just that little, innocent girl, dressin' up in my mom's skin-tight leather and dark lipstick, going out and pretending to be the biggest bad, and I'm really just some lost little girl. I just need someone to come show me the right way to go, and I'll hop right on the straight and narrow. I'll go embrace my sacred duty and kill evil, instead of looking up to it.

I got kinda thrown out of that thought when these two big arms wrapped around the girl, one going over her mouth and one around her waist, and pulled her back into the alley she was standing by. My senses got all tingly, and I knew it was a vampire. I don't know why, but I let out a shout and start running to the alley. Mayor shouts out my name and I ignore him. I have to save that girl. I have to. It was just because I wanted to kill something, though. No way I wanted to be a goddamn hero.

I get to the alley and I see this vamp, morphed out, bending down to the girl's neck. "Hey!" I shout. He looks up. I punch him, and he staggers back. I grab the girl in my arms, and she screams. Guess who comes runnin' into the alley? Yep, the Marsha fucking Brady of Sunnyhell.

"Faith! So, now you're feeding vampires, too? What, demons not enough for you now?" She gives me a kinda leer, the closest thing to one that she can manage, when she says that.

Now, I know I said I'd do anything for the Mayor. And I meant it. If he wanted it... well, I've had worse. And for worse reasons. But for some reason, it seemed important to me to defend him. Not that Buffy and her oh- so-untarnished halo would be able to see that, but I had to try. "It's not like that."

"Really? Then why are you about to make with the Beelzebub worship? Let me guess: that's not really a girl, it's a demon? Oh, and the only way to destroy it is to feed it to a vampire, right?"

"No! I mean it's not like that with the mayor! And not with her, either. I'm not giving her to the vamp, B. I'm saving her."

She laughed at that. "Yeah sure. The mayor gives you all that stuff 'cause you said 'please'. I believe that. Oh, and I'm real glad to see you saving people. All that stuff about you killing was you experimenting, and now you're back to saving people again."

"Young lady, are you disturbing my Faith?" Shit. I really don't want the Mayor to see me around B. She really doesn't bring out the best in me. She doesn't.

I turn to him. "This is between me and her. I'll be out in a minute."

"Now Faith, do you really think I'm going to let you fight her? You could get hurt."

I glance down at the girl in my arms, and then at B, and then finally at Mayor. "She won't hurt me. Not tonight."

"Faith.."

"She won't. I swear. Please, just let us talk."

"Are you sure?"

"Of course she's sure." Buffy started walking towards Mayor. "Let's see how well you fight."

Damn it. She's gonna find out he's invincible. That's supposed to be a secret. "B. Leave him alone."

She glances at me. I look at Mayor. "Oh, alright." He says. "I'll go order us something in that shop over there." He points at the Expresso Pump. "Don't be too long."

We watch him go, silently. B realizes I'm touching her, staining her precious aura, and shakes my hand off. I can tell she really wants to punch me, 'cause her hand are in fists and she keeps looking between my face and the girl in my arms. "You know what's wrong with you?" I ask.

"Yep. You. But I'm guessing you have some kind of deep, psychological speech to give me, since you know me so well and you have such a great moral compass."

I decided to ignore her. I've watched her fight, and I know what she does. She draws whoever she's fighting into verbal exchanges instead of physical, so they're concentrating on saying something witty, or deciphering her lack of grammar, so she can catch them unawares. It's not like she's stuck around this long because she's good at what she does. Please. "You can't see anything in shades of grey. You can't admit that maybe Wilkins could be being nice to me, because he's a demon and it's too hard for you to kill him if you picture him as nice, and, because you're not getting any, you have to assume I'm giving him some. And you can't accept that maybe I can be evil and plotting with the latest evil to hit Sunnydale and be interested in saving some little girl."

"That's because nothing is grey. You're not trying to save this girl, you're getting something out of it. And maybe you aren't sleeping with the Mayor, but you're doing his dirty work. You're probably his strongest lackey. Do you really think he's not gonna give you what you want? No one is nice because they're altruistic. Altruisim isn't real, okay? You're getting something, the Mayor's getting something, even Giles gets paid to help me!"

"You really are something, you know that? 'Altruism isn't real'? Of course not. Not one person does something because they've got such a great soul. So, B, how are you gonna deal with this, huh? When you go home and look at your Scooby Gang, are you going to be thinking 'what do they get out of this'? Well, here's something else for you to think about. What if they can get something more out of being evil? What are they going to do then? Do you think they'll turn on you? How long before they go for the bigger reward?"

This is great. Foreshadowing for when evil Angel comes back. I'll have to remember to tell her that we offered a choice, explained he could waste his time lusting after her and being miserable until B got bored and finally realized her duty was staking vamps, no matter what she felt about them, and put him down, or he could come join me and Mayor and be great again. Oh yeah. I can't wait to see her face.

B looked about ready to kill me, but thankfully, the vamp, who I musta punched pretty hard, because he hadn't got up the whole time we were pulling the Socrates act, came and punched her. Hah. What an idiot. Here's me, holding a little girl, and there's B, about ready to kill something.

She gets to. I don't think I've ever seen her kill a vamp that fast. She doesn't even do her normal taunting routine, just turns, slams him into the wall, pulls out a stake and slams it into him. I musta really got to her, because she missed. By several inches. Lucky for her, the vamp wasn't strong enough to get up. Musta been a fledgeling. I watched her wriggling the stake around, slowly. She didn't just pull it out and plunge it back in, ending it. I think she actually enjoyed torturing that vamp. I never thought I'd see the day little-miss-innocent enjoyed torture. Hmm. Wonder if she'll enjoy it when I'm doing it to her? Guess I'll have to wait to see.

When he finally turns to dust, the girl in my arms screams again, and turns to me, burrowing into my arms. That really startled me. I mean, here's this little mini-B, seven-year-old kid turning to me for comfort. It startled me so much I dropped her. How could she turn to me? I shouldn't give comfort to little kids; I'd probably end up scarring them for life. It just didn't make sense.

She lets out this little sound when she hits the ground, a whimper-thing, and B glares at me. She stalks right over and picks up the girl. She didn't even notice how vulnerable she was leaving herself, bending over right in front of me. I coulda snapped her neck, or staked her. Instead I just watched her. It was kinda amusing; grown-up B holding little girl B.

"The only reason I'm not hurting you is this little girl. If we meet again..."

She didn't finish the threat. Instead, she hoisted the little girl in her arms and set out to the street, presumably to look for her parents. I watched her go. When she was out of sight, I went and joined Mayor at the Expresso shop.