Part 7:

"Something is definitely not right here," Faith mumbled as the gang made its way toward the Bronze.

"Something is?" Oz asked, looking around.

The streets were littered with adults of all ages. Some of them were simply hanging out, drinking beer, and hooting at women passing by. Others were playing soccer, baseball, or football. Still others were racing their cars. The occasional crashing sound in the distance told of how that was generally a very bad idea.

"I don't mean that," the Slayer said. "I mean ... here we've got all these people hanging out after dark."

"So?" Cordelia asked.

"So where are all the vampires?"

"Hey, she's right," Willow said. "This is like an all-you-can-eat-buffet for the undead and no one is eating."

Faith sighed, wondering what exactly she was doing here. She was the Slayer, which meant that she was supposed to go out and kill the monsters. Since coming to Sunnydale she had certainly had a lot of opportunity to do that as this town seemed to house more demons and assorted creatures than the rest of America put together.

Only there were no monsters here tonight. Just a lot of people behaving like they were dumb teenagers instead of supposedly responsible adults and since everybody's favourite Slayer Buffy Summers seemed to be among said crazy people it all fell on her. Where in the Slayer handbook did it say that she was supposed to be good at solving riddles? Or at taking charge of a group of teenagers who somehow wound up saving the world now and then?

It was not like she really had any sort of plan or even an inkling what to do right now.

"Where do you think all the vampires are?"

Cordelia, Oz, and Willow were looking at her again and she did not like it at all.

"How the fuck should I know? I just wish there were a few of them around so I could dust them."

Willow seemed a bit taken aback by her outburst, but was quickly distracted by her own racing thoughts.

"Maybe they all ate the chocolate, too, and are busy having teenager fun themselves. Or maybe they are all out of town for some reason. Or maybe ..."

"Slow down, red!" Faith put her hands on the young witch's shoulders. "B, Angel, and me slayed a couple of vamps earlier tonight, remember? They behaved normal enough."

"They were all fresh risers," Oz interjected.

"Right," Cordelia chirped in. "Not like they have a choice about when to wake up, right? But everyone who is already dead ... undead ... whatever, they're all gone."

Faith was glad that someone else seemed to be taking over the thinking part. God, she really wished Buffy or Giles where here. Or even Angel, figuring that he was older than sin he probably had the planning thing down pat, too.

"Gimme," someone yelled.

"Get your own you stupid son of a bitch!"

Faith looked up to see two men in their forties fighting tooth and nail, looking ready to kill each other over ... a piece of chocolate?

"I'll kill you, you ...", one began.

"No one is killing anyone here," Faith interrupted, going between them. They both immediately turned on her, but found themselves outmatched. Moments later they were down on their butts, nursing aching jaws. Faith was holding the chocolate.

"Good chocolate, eh?" She dangled the candy before them.

"Gimme!" One of the man surged up again, only to receive a moderately painful blow to his stomach which sent him down again.

"Why are you so crazy about this chocolate?" Faith asked them. "Tell me, boys, and Aunty Faith will give you the good chocolate."

#

"Uh, guys?"

Angel looked up from the guy he was breaking across his knee and his eyes narrowed, blazing amber. Buffy took notice of the new arrival as well, her face warping with revulsion.

"Xander," she spat out.

"Yeah, me," Xander said, rapidly losing whatever courage he might have had to begin with. "Look, I'm not sure what's going on here, but I don't think you really want to hurt that poor guy."

"Oh, really?" Buffy took a step toward him, looking liable to rip him to shreds at any moment. "And I suppose you are the expert on what I really want, right?"

"Uh, Buff ..."

"I seem to remember a time when you decided that I should not want Angel, so you did everything you could to force us apart. Like not telling me about a certain soul restoring ritual my best friend was performing at the moment. Remember that, too?"

"I ... I said I'm sorry for that." Xander took a step back, noticing that Angel seemed to have lessened the pressure on the guy's back a bit. Now if only he could get them to let him go without making himself the next candidate for a broken back. Or broken anythings.

"Sorry," Buffy repeated mockingly. "I seem to remember you saying that before. Quite a lot actually, at least as of late. Words are cheap, buster, especially when you're only saying them to save your own ass."

Xander had half a second to see Angel standing up, simply shoving the other guy off his knee and seemingly forgetting about him, when Buffy's hand shot out and grabbed him by the throat.

"I don't know what was holding me back before," she said as she began to squeeze, rapidly cutting off his breath, "but I should have done this a long time ago."

"Yeah, give it to him," someone was cheering from the sidelines.

Xander threw a desperate glance at Angel, but this time the vampire seemed in no way inclined to hold back his girlfriend. Quite the contrary, he was smiling in a very un-Angel-like way that would have sent a shiver of fear down Xander's back if he had not been too preoccupied fighting for breath. Even with both arms he could not get Buffy's hand off his throat.

"Buffy ...," he managed to choke out, "... this ... isn't you. ... You don't ... want to do ... this!"

"Oh, that is were you are wrong, Xander," she corrected him. "I've wanted to do this for over thirty years."

#

"The chocolate, of course!" Willow was clearly excited. "It all started when people ate that chocolate. Why didn't we think of that sooner?"

The men Faith had interrogated upon threat of chocolate removal had not been able to say why they craved the candy so much, only that they did. They behaved like junkies needing a fix.

"Snyder gave us that chocolate," Cordelia added. "How could it be anything but evil?"

"I'm wondering, though," Faith said. "We ate some of that chocolate as well, why aren't we affected?"

"Only some of us ate tons of the stuff," Cordelia remarked, giving the Slayer a look.

"It causes the adults to act like teenagers," Willow offered. "Maybe it doesn't work on those who already are teenagers."

That made sense, Faith had to admit.

"Snyder should know where it's coming from, right?" she asked the others. She did not know much about the school principal except that he was really tiny and a bastard. "Do you think he knew the chocolate would do this?"

"He's evil," Oz simply said.

"Not smart enough, though. He's more the unwitting pawn type."

"We should still find him," Willow reminded the others. "If we find out where the chocolate comes from we might find a way to reverse it's effect."

Faith sighed deeply. "Okay, if you were a tiny, fucked-up principal type and suddenly went all juvenile, where would you go?"

They all looked at each other for a long moment.

"Let's start at the Bronze," Faith finally said when no one else seemed to have an idea, seeing as they had been planning to go there anyway. For the hundredth time she felt that it was a bad idea putting her in charge of this little group.

Did anyone ask her, though? No, of course not. She was only in charge.

TO BE CONTINUED