Disclaimer: I own nothing but the new characters and anyone else you don't recognise. Also, I don't own the neuralizer, and hope no-one will get mad in the movie-making industry if it gets, ahem, briefly mentioned.

A/N: I apologise to the expectant throng of readers of this fic for the late update but hey, I'm on holiday. Also, you get a long chapter, with more Audreyness with a little Scoobiness and much Post-Chosenness. I hope you'll enjoy.

A/N 2 (Important): I just wanted to say something about a review. 'URGH!' reviewed saying that he/she was offended by something I wrote in chapter one. If you don't remember, basically it's Willow saying names with 'k's in them are weird, and the reviewer in question was offended by this. First of all, I wanted to apologise both to him/her and to whoever else might have had the same reaction upon reading that. Also, I wanted to make it clear that it was definitely not my intention to offend anyone. However, in my opinion (and I might be wrong) taking offence for something like that is not entirely justified. Firstly, what I write in a fic is not necessarily what I think. For example, I could make somebody say Miss Kitty Fantastico is not cute or that Harry and Hermione should get married, but that's definitely not what I think. In this case, it was what I thought Willow might think. Not what I think, and not what is right. Also, if you read on in that part of the fic, it's made fairly clear that Willow is just being silly and that what she's saying doesn't make any kind of sense. So before getting offended, perhaps 'URGH!' should have read on to realise that everybody, including Willow and the author, thinks names with a 'k' are perfectly all right. After all, both my name and surname have a 'k' in them (not that that's relevant).

Also, thanks to xanya-forever for the tip. I'll see to that ASAP.

You can trust a night at the Fishtank not to be quite as normal as a night anywhere else. I have this suspicion that the Hellmouth might not be at the bottom of the lake like we've always thought, but under the bar at the Fishtank. Because really, the place is a demon magnet. A bit like Dad.

Yesterday night, I was sitting at said bar. Graham and Julie were making out a few feet away and Albert was chatting me up, I guess, while I was thinking in a slightly depressed way about Andrew and his girlfriend having sex. That came out wrong. I wasn't thinking of them having sex so much as thinking of the idea of them having sex. Anyway, we were talking, nice and calm, and did I mention Albert has beautiful hands? In any case, there we all were, behaving like perfectly normal teenagers, when suddenly, around fifteen vampires in game face burst in. A few seconds of mass hysteria later, one guy, who was completely drunk, just goes there and stands right in front of the leading vamp, points a finger at him and says:

'Woah, man, what's up with your face?' And then, to his friend: 'Man, this stuff you gave me is real good!'

Which begs the question: 'Is alcohol all you had tonight?'

At this point, the leader prepares to spring forward and rip that guy's head off when an arrow flies out of nowhere and goes straight into his heart. So the guy's dust before he can say 'Huh?' Which is exactly what I was thinking at the time. Turns out, one of the girls in our little group was not a Watcher in Training but a Slayer. And, knowing the Fishtank's reputation for attracting hellspawn, she'd brought a crossbow with her. Where she managed to hide it is beyond my intellectual capacity, but at least, we had one less undead American prowling the land and looking for a helpless victim to feed on. Which is too bad. He might have run into Andrew's girlfriend. That bitch.

Anyway, at this point we were still badly outnumbered, fourteen vamps to 1 and a half Slayers (the half being all of us WiTs put together). So, Julie takes her state-of-the-art mobile out (the latest thing is the iris scanner instead of the PIN) and calls the Academy. Of course, since we don't live in Star Trek land, teletransportation is not an option (yet, but the Government's working on it) and we had to wait this one out and try to limit casualties until help got there.

So anyway, the vice-leader of the gang stepps up and yells: 'Slayer!' Which is so passé. Trust a bunch of newbies not to know they need to use the plural nowadays! Seriously, how clueless can you get? It's been sixteen years, wake up! I mean, even coming to the Hellmouth is not such a smart thing to do anymore. Yes, mystical energy abounds, but hey, so do Slayers! These vamps really had no clue. So anyway, this gang looked like they had enough brains between them to have a meaningful conversation with a caterpillar, so, on the whole, not very scary. And I think I was a little tipsy. More like very tipsy, because I just stood up and said: 'Yes, that's me.'

Can you believe that? I can't. Neither could Julie. Her mouth was literally hanging open, like in cartoons, and Graham, who up to then had ignored events and had been desperately trying to proceed with the make-out session, gave up to stare at me like I had three legs or something. Albert, on the other hand, just looked really worried. About me, you know. What a sweetie-pie!

Anyhow, fang-face goes: 'You killed our leader! You'll pay for that, bitch!'

'Oh yeah? Well I'm sorry, but I'm short of kittens right now. If you'll wait while I go to the ATM and back…'

Hey, it seemed funny at the time… I guess it was for someone, because two of the vampire gang actually started laughing before real Slayer-girl (who, I learned later, is called Liu An Qi and lactose intolerant) shot another arrow and dusted one of them. Now, it was their turn to panic. They all thought I had somehow shot that arrow without moving my arms, like I was uber-Slayer or something! So I turned to Liu An Qi and winked at her (in a very undetectable way) and continued with the role-playing.

'Who told you you could laugh?' I said to the other laughing vampire, at which he stopped laughing abruptly and pretended he was having a coughing fit.

Meanwhile, the new leader had gone, if possible, paler than before.

'Your stupid tricks don't scare us, Slayer! We're here to feed, and we're gonna feed! You'd better get out of our way if you wanna live.'

At this point, one woman in the club crawled out of the shadows, where the rest of the civilian population was pointlessly hiding, and positively screamed: 'Feed? You're here to feed? We can make food! This place has food! You don't have to hurt anybody, just let us go!'

Really! Couldn't she see the fangs? How stupid can you get? I bet she was Andrew's girlfriend. Anyway, it took me five seconds to prove that you can get even stupider than that:

'She's right. Why don't you let them go, so we can sort this out without interruptions?' Really, when did I turn so brave (and stupid)? It was like saying: 'Let them go so you can kill us instead!'

'Yeah, and next thing you're gonna ask me to take out my fangs!'

At which Liu An Qi fired yet another arrow right at leader n. 2, who promptly pulled Coughing Fit guy in front of him as a shield and then started sneezing because of the dust.

At this point, leader-vamp had had enough and they all rushed towards us, fangs out, yelling 'Death to the Slayer' and 'Kill her friends!'

'Well, Aud, that was smart, now we're screwed! Thank you for ending my young life!' Julie screamed at me. 'Oh, Graham, I'm so scar-' She stopped right there, because Graham was gone.

'Oh my God, what a jerk, he left me here to die all alone! I am so gonna kill you, you fu-' Luckily, a vamp was about to grab her at that time, so I had to push her away and interrupt the sentence, otherwise I might have been unable to conserve the strictly PG rating of this inner monologue of mine.

By then, I was in trouble myself. The leader was right there, stretching his arm to grab my neck. With the corner of my left eye, I saw Liu An Qi dispatching quite a few unsuspecting vamps and Julie setting one on fire with the candle lighting spell she learned at my last birthday from Willow. I thought I was about to die, like that time when I was five and Uncle D'Hoffryn dropped me outside the window and teleported to catch me right before I hit the ground. After I survived that, of course, he had to do it eighty-three more times that day until I got tired, because it was so much fun. Uncle D'Hoffryn is cool. Mom hates him, I don't know why, but I love him. He keeps sending me presents. He even sent me a squirmy pet thing (which I named Voldemort) that could actually learn to speak (before Hallie murdered it. Toasters are dangerous weapons.) How cool is that? That was for my eighth birthday where I also had my very first, full conversation, relevant to me eavesdropping experience; Mom vs. D'Hoffryn:

'The time is approaching, Anyanka. With your permission, I would love to take your daughter to visit Arashmahar, see how she likes it. She has vision, I can see it. Maybe not power (yet), but vision and creativity! She has reached her eighth birthday, and you know what that means. If she starts learning now, she could become one of the greatest vengeance demons in history! Will you deny her that, Anyanka? And, she'll get away from that inferior creature that is your husband. Let her come with me. After all, she is your daughter. She carries your chromosomes! She was born to be a vengeance demon! And if she doesn't like it, I'll let her leave Arashmahar and I will never ask again.'

And my mom was furious.

'Forget it, D'Hoffryn. My daughter is not going to become a vengeance demon, never, or my name is not Anyanka and even though it's technically not, that's off the point. It's final. No Demon-becoming or Arashmahar-visiting for Audrey, ever. That's it.'

'As you wish, Anyanka,' (he said this with a very melancholy air.) 'But do not forget that one day, she will come of age, and then she'll have to make her own choices. Don't you wish her to see the fire breathing, turquoise and purple striped flamingos of the Kingdom?' he added, with a fatherly smile.

Mom seemed to think this was a good point, but when she spoke, her tone was still very firm.

'No. And that's final. She's not going to end up like Hallie, if I can help it.'

At that time, the only person I knew named Hallie was my six year old little sister. I found her extremely ugly and annoying, so I happened to agree with Mom on that particular point.

After that, the conversation turned to more trivial matters, such as whereabouts in Manhattan should Uncle D'Hoffryn buy a house, so I went back to throwing teddy bears at Hallie.

Did I go off on a tangent or what? I really should get back to the action. As I was saying, I was on the brink of death when Arthur took a bottle of Holy Water out of his pocket and spilled it all over the vamp's face. Then, he pulled me away from it just in time for the cavalry's entrance. The usual in-town, small matters clean-up group, formed of Kennedy as leader and 5 other Slayers in constant rotation, was right there, fully armed and ready to kick some stinky vampire butt. We were saved. Yay!

After that, matters were quite routine. The vampires, sensing superior strength and therefore danger (which, we learned, is yet another one of their special abilities. As if they didn't have enough of those already!) stopped whatever they were doing to charge at the group of Slayers in order to eliminate said danger. Obviously, they had no idea they were fighting Slayers (and also, no chance), so the girls' job was beyond easy. What was a little harder to do was keeping every single civilian in the club long enough to neuralize them all. 'Neuralize' is actually not the right term to use. Technically, the process is called SELMERisation (SELMER stands for SELective MEmory Removal) but Dad insists on calling it Neuralization. He says the Government copied a movie, some old flick called 'Men in Black' (or 'Men in Slacks', I can't quite remember) so he keeps saying that and it stuck to me. (By the way, neuralizers are not the only cool gadgets we get. Working with the government has its advantages. Buffy got this cool freeze gun Andrew kept calling 'Warren's work of genius' and Mr. Giles got an amazing palm computer which contains every single book on demons, magic and the forces of darkness EVER written. We get loads of other stuff too, not to mention the patterned silk eye-patches Dad gets every week. And, we get free movie tickets.)

Anyway, back at the Fishtank, Kennedy was making the most of Government help. She flashed the SELMER ray around the club after giving all us non-civilians the 'close your eyes' signal (which is her yelling 'Acathla'. It works because only we know what it means so only we close our eyes. Buffy came up with it. I think it means 'close your eyes' in some old language. Sumerian, maybe. I'm not sure, we only start learning Ancient Sumerian next year. Aunt Dawn teaches it.) The way the SELMER works is that some sort of blue ray gets flashed at the target or targets and this does something to the synapses in their brain and reverses up to two hours of short term memory (you can change the settings from 1 minute to 117 minutes). After that, whoever's doing the reversing replaces the lost content with whatever they want to make up for the time slot. Apparently, all this was really familiar to Dad. As soon as he read the instruction booklet, when we first got the neuralizer, he was like: 'See? See how this is all copied from Men in Slacks? Everything's exactly the same! This is a conspiracy.' He still doesn't trust the Government. Something about 'Adam'.

So anyway, Kennedy invented a little story about how some kids in Halloween costumes had decided to make an appearance. It's what she says every single time, so it's surprising how nobody's realized yet she's making it up! But she does vary a little bit from time to time. The other time she said that everybody had realized that brushing your teeth is good. Today, it was: 'You had an enlightening conversation with someone and have come to the conclusion that homophobia is wrong.' How you can have any kind of conversation at the Fishtank is beyond me but the second part was good anyway. 'Two birds with one stone,' as the wise say.

After that we all went back to the Academy together to have a cup of cocoa. That's what we usually do when a crisis is over. We drink melted chocolate. Buffy and Willow came down too. Apparently, they'd been playing cards with Kennedy when we phoned but hey, they didn't come to save us! No-one cares. I think they were just glad to have some excuse to drink hot chocolate.

Albert cares though. He saved my life. How very sweet of him! If it wasn't for his Holy Water I'd be long dead. Of course, I had to thank him, so before Willow drove me home I went up to his room (he lives at the Academy).

'Albert?' I said from behind the door.

He opened the door and smiled. He has a nice smile.

'Hey Audrey. You okay?'

'Yes, I'm fine. I just wanted to thank you.'

'What for?'

'Well, for starters, you saved my life.'

At this, if possible, he smiled a wider smile.

'Oh. It was a pleasure.'

At that moment, my heart was beating so fast and I don't even know why. And also, I felt like I couldn't say another word, you know. And he still kept flashing that killer smile… So I just mumbled something like 'goodnight' and shuffled away and he didn't say anything, but I sort of felt his eyes on me (I know, cheesy!), and in any case, I didn't hear the door close. So in that very confused state I let Willow drive me home. She asked me once or twice if I was okay but seeing I was not in conversation mode, she didn't push it. So that was it. It took me a while to sleep, and I even heard Hallie and Nikki come back so it must have been late when I finally did fall asleep. And the weird thing is, I don't even know what's going on. With Albert, I mean. And the insomnia.