A/N : Thanx muchly to you awesome reviewer type people; EMBER91, vanillagigglez, Moonjava, wolf116, Brunettepet, demonica mills, sheilamarie, spuffy4eva, Xtremely-Canadian, Daniel Wesley Rydell, Moluvsnumber17, marykaitlyn, and Freezyboncoolipants. This fic is supposed to have a kind of plot but a lot of it will be little Scoobies cuteness and hilarity...at least, thats the plan. Here's hoping it all works out and that you all continue to like it and leave nice reviews for me :-)
(For disclaimer, etc. - see chapter 1)

Chapter 5

"That was Mom on the phone" said Dawn as she came back into the living room, "Apparently shopping for five kids is taking longer than she thought, we have to get lunch for them" she explained.

"Bloody marvellous" Spike groaned as he pressed some more buttons on the remote and failed to find the one that would put the TV back into English.

The kids had mostly kept themselves amused so far, Willow and Tara seemed happy enough to sit quietly talking and floating the occasional object. Anya continued her pursuit of Xander until he made a point of hiding behind Buffy, at which point the other blonde got jealous and huffy and decided she was going to sit under the table until such time she felt she'd sulked long enough. Xander was relieved to say the least and very grateful to Buffy for helping him escape from the other little girl. Finding she had a sudden aversion to Spike, the little Slayer was happy to play with the brunette boy for a while, and the vampire she'd been obsessing over was only too pleased to be free of her for a while.

"You any good with technology, Little Bit?" Spike sighed, handing Dawnie the remote, "This thing's driving me insane. Is it so much to ask, I mean what does a fella have to do to watch a bit of telly in his own soddin' language" he complained.

"I think Mom keeps all the manuals to the appliances in the drawer over there" Dawn said thoughtfully, "I'll look for it, try to fix the TV in time for your show, on one condition" she smiled slightly and Spike shot her a look.

"What kind of a condition?" he asked suspiciously.

"Well" she said slowly, "Can you make something for the kids to eat?"

"Oh you have got to be kidding me" Spike sighed, "You want me to play chef as well as nurse maid now? Does nobody have respect for the Big Bad anymore!" he said possibly a little too loudly. Anya's head popped out from beneath the edge of the tablecloth so she could answer.

"Yes, I have respect for you" she told him with a nod, "You are a fellow former-demon and also nicely shaped and appropriately authoritative as a baby-sitter" she grinned.

Spike wasn't sure whether he should take that as a compliment or just ignore it all together, so he mumbled a thanks and headed off to the kitchen to see what he could rustle up for lunch, as well as warm himself some blood. He hadn't noticed that Anya had followed him into the kitchen until he turned around and almost tripped over her.

"Hi" he grinned up at him.

"Alright pet?" he checked as she tried to get herself up onto a stool by the counter and failed miserably. Spike rolled his eyes as he helped her in her task and she grinned at him when he'd done so.

"I want to ask you a question" she admitted as he searched the cupboards for possible lunch items, "It's a question that only a male would know the answer to" she informed him and Spike didn't like where this was going. Still, she may be Anya but she was only six years old, whatever she said, it couldn't be too bad surely.

"Go on then, luv" he encouraged her, "Ask your big question"

"Why am I not attractive?" she asked simply and Spike silently cursed who or what ever had turned the Scooby gang into kids, for about the eighth time today.

"I mean, I personally think I am very pretty" Anya went on to say, "but Xander has an uncontrollable urge to run away from me"

"I don't think that's so much to do with you, pet" Spike told her with a smirk, "Reckon Xander's just the run-away type, scared of everything that one"

The little boy in the living room was unaware he was being discussed and was much more interested in the friend that sat beside him as opposed to the people in the kitchen.

"Buffy? Buff!" Xander attempted to get her attention, but she really wasn't listening at all. Her mind was all in another place, mostly in the kitchen with Spike, wondering what he might be saying to Anya. He'd already said Tara was pretty and been really nice to her and Willow, he seemed to talk to Dawnie a lot too. Buffy didn't like it at all but she was feeling exceedingly jealous. Spike was hers, how dare any other girl so much as look at him! Okay so when he smoked he didn't exactly smell great and sometimes he said bad words that Mommy would yell at her for saying, but he was just so...Buffy didn't have words for whatever Spike so was.

"Buffy!" Xander tried again, finally getting the girl attention by pulling on her sleeve, "You're messing up your picture!" he told her urgently and the little Slayer looked down and realised she'd absently put a mess of red squiggles all over what should've been clear blue sky.

"It doesn't matter" she shrugged, scrambling to her feet, "I need to go see what's happening in the kitchen" she muttered as she ran through to the next room. Xander sighed, he didn't like being alone. At home there was no choice, his parents were always too busy yelling at each other to pay him any attention but if his friends were going to start abandoning him too...no sooner had he started the melancholy thought than he stopped again. Willow and Tara stood before him, holding hands and grinning.

"Can we share?" the little red-head asked shyly, "Me and Tara would like to draw stuff too"

"Sure" Xander smiled, making room for the two girls to sit with him and pushing the spare paper and crayons further into the middle of the space. The three were soon happily chatting and drawing, oblivious to their other friends distress.

As Buffy got to the kitchen door she heard Spike's voice and then Anya as the little girl giggled.

"So, I really am pretty?" she checked, right as Buffy got through the door.

"Course, luv" Spike told her without even turning from the sink, "Prettiest girl here" he lied, anything just to keep her quiet. He turned sharply when he heard a little squeak from near the door and he hated to see little Buffy standing there, lip quivering like she was about to bawl.

"Buffy..." he said awkwardly, only to have Anya make things ten times worst.

"Hear that, Buffy" she grinned, "Spike thinks I'm the prettiest girl here" she said proudly and Spike suddenly wondered if it were considered inappropriate to drop kick annoying ex-demon children out of houses...he guessed it probably wasn't the thing to do right now and instead went after Buffy as she bolted from the room.

"Buffy?" Dawn frowned as she watched her older but littler sister run through the room and hide under the table, much as Anya had done earlier, but more significantly just like she and Spike had done when they were five years old under Willow's spell last year.

"What happened?" Dawn asked as Spike followed from the kitchen.

"Me and my big gob, that's what happened" he admitted, "Your sister heard me tellin' Anya she's pretty and now she's got all jealous and teary" he rolled his eyes, "I tell you Bit it's bloody hard work bein' this popular, 'specially when your fan club's three feet high"

Dawn tried to suppress a giggle but failed miserably.

"On the upside I fixed the TV" she told him, "Passions, and all other shows should now be in their correct languages...I think"

"Good job, Nibblet" Spike smiled, as he ruffled her hair, and she scowled as she tried to straighten it out again, "but that's the least of our worries right now. I've not got a clue what kids like to eat, and I reckon this lot'll be gettin' peckish any time soon" he told her, "Then there's the Buffy-under-the -table-in-a-snit issue to consider"

"Well, lunch is so your deal" Dawn told him firmly, "Spike, last time I was let lose in the kitchen it took my Mom a month to get over it"

"Food poisoning?" he checked with a frown.

"Wanton destruction of the kitchen" she smiled, "I'd rather deal with Buffy than my Mom when she see's the mess I would make"

"Right then, looks like I'm on chef duty after all" the vampire sighed as he headed back to the kitchen.

Dawn looked over at where she could just make out her sister's feet from under the table. She felt kind of sorry for her really. It was tough being little and having a crush on someone so much older that didn't care so much for you as girlfriend than a little sister or whatever. Dawnie had experience in that area, having loved Xander for so long. Now she saw him as a six year old boy, it was just disturbing.

"Buffy?" she called as she crouched by the table and moved the cloth aside, "Buffy, will you come out and talk to me?"

"No!" the little Slayer snapped, "I don't wanna talk to you, I don't wanna talk to anybody!" she said firmly, sniffling more than she would've liked.

Across the room, Willow craned her neck to see what was going on. She'd considered running after Buffy to make sure she was okay, but then Dawn had checked on her instead so she'd left them to it and gone right back to waiting for her turn with the orange crayon that Xander was still using.

"Almost done, Will" he said for the fourth time in as many minutes and patiently the little red-head continued to wait.

"Y-you could colour the, the sun y-yellow" Tara stammered, holding out the right coloured crayon to her friend. Willow leaned away from the other girl's hand with wide eyes as if she were holding a hand grenade or some such item. Willow didn't like yellow crayons, they were bad and dangerous and led to tearyness that she remembered only too well.

"I'll have the yellow, Tara" Xander told the blonde, taking it from her, "Wills can have the orange now, I'm all done" he smiled, handing it to her and watching his best friend draw a bright sun in the corner of her picture of the three of them at the park. He knew why she was afraid of yellow crayons, he remembered that first day of kindergarten too.

Giles added a tenth book to the stack of irrelevant and unhelpful tomes. So far he had just three that were actually of any use. The first spoke of lucky charms, various items such as four leafed clovers and rabbits feet that on rare occasions actually made wishes come true instantaneously. The second book he'd added to the pile had a whole chapter on the power of the mind and people wanting things so badly that they came to pass through sheer will alone. The third though seemed to Giles to be a more likely source, in that it held the names and details of many demons, put on the Earth simply to grant wishes to those in need of justice. Somewhere near the beginning of the alphabetical index, Anya herself was listed, though under her demon name Anyanka of course.

Giles strongly suspected one of these so-called Vengeance or Justice demons were to blame for what had happened, having over-heard Dawn's wish and granted it on the spot. He needed to research all other options as well of course but it was beginning to seem rather likely that an old friend of Anya's named Halfrek, the patron saint of wronged children, may be to blame for what was happening. If that was the case it meant tracking her down, finding a way to make her reverse the wish and then disposing of her somehow.

"It would all be so much easier with a Slayer" Giles sighed to himself as he opened up another book. For now he would have to cope alone and hope that between himself, Joyce, Spike, and Dawn the children could be turned back into their adult selves before it was too late. If Halfrek was to leave town or worse still the dimension before they found her, the Scoobies could be trapped as six year olds for some considerable time.

To Be Continued...