Chapter 1: YEMF 45
Chapter 2: YASEMF 63
Chapter 3: ANYASEMF 37

"Heavy Metal was a good cartoon," Willow admitted as Xander shut off the lights and climbed into bed with her, "Even with all the violence and… dirty stuff."

"It was fun," Xander agreed, knowing Willow wanted to talk about something from her tone and waiting to hear what it was.

"The girls had big breasts," Willow noted.

"They did," Xander agreed. "Cartoons always have exaggerated stuff."

"My breasts are kinda small," Willow said.

Xander waited but she didn't say anything else and he realized she was waiting for him to say something. "They are Willow sized," Xander said, "they'll get bigger when we're older."

Willow considered that. "Do you wanna feel them?" she asked nervously, wanting to make sure he still liked them even if they were small boobies. He was a boy and boys liked boobies so if he liked her then he must like her boobies, she thought, satisfied with the logic of it.

"Of course I do," Xander said, making her blush hard enough she was sure it was visible in the dark.

Her breath caught as his arms reached out, but instead of sliding his hands under her shirt like she expected, he simply pulled her close and wrapped his arms around her. "I thought you were going to feel them."

"I can feel them just fine," Xander told her, "they're pressed against me."

"I meant with your hands," Willow explained.

"We can play Doctor anytime," Xander said, "Right now I wanna cuddle and sleep with you."

"Playing doctor has stuff like that in it?" Willow asked curiously.

"That's mostly what playing Doctor is about," Xander replied.

"So… We're doing it wrong?" Willow asked slowly.

"We're doing it our way," Xander decided. "Our way got us cards that say we know how to do first aid, all they get is to tickle each other and in trouble with their parents if they get caught."

"Oh," Willow said. After a few seconds silence she said, "I like our way."

"So do I," Xander answered her, getting a big squeeze in return. "Night Willow."

"Night Xander," she said, a smile on her face.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

"More beef stroganoff?" Jesse asked as Xander and Willow laid out breakfast.

"We made a lot," Willow said.

"Don't knock the stroganoff," Sharon said, "this stuff is great!" She smiled brightly.

"Hey, you rhymed!" Jesse said, causing some laughter. "I'm not knocking it, I'm just surprised," he said, "I figured Willow would be gung ho about the whole food chain thing."

"We are higher on the food chain than stroganoff, bro," Xander assured him with a grin as the girls giggled.

Jesse frowned and puzzled out what he'd said wrong. "I meant pyramid."

"We are all getting some fruit too," Willow said, "and milk."

"Works for me," Jesse said and settled down to eat.

After a few minutes, Sharon asked, "So what are we doing today? Cause I don't have anything planned and Jessie is usually busy with you guys in the mornings."

"We are buying blood from the butcher shop to finish the wardrobe we built," Xander said.

"I don't think you need blood to make furniture," Sharon said, "Unless you need it to stain the wood?"

"It's magic," Willow said.

"Magic's not real," Sharon said.

"That's what I thought too," Willow agreed, "but it turns out the adults are just hiding it for some reason."

"Really?" she asked, turning to Jesse.

Jesse swallowed his food. "Yup, and it's more complicated than math," he complained.

"If it was easy everyone would be doing it," Xander said. "Willow looks up a lot of words and they aren't even in English."

"Yup," Willow said proudly.

"Cool," Sharon said, before finishing off her bowl and accepting an orange from Willow.

"We'll take the bus to the butcher's shop to get the blood, then Xander will finish the wardrobe and we'll see if the magic worked or not," Jesse said. "It's going to be a lot of fun."

"I don't have any money on me," Sharon admitted, looking down at her orange while she peeled it.

"It's okay, we have more than enough money," Willow assured her.

"How much blood do we need?" Jesse asked.

"About a gallon, but if it's cheap enough I say we each grab a gallon," Xander said. "There is… some stuff about blood nails, and it takes a lot of blood to get enough iron to make them."

"There's a disease where people get too much iron in their blood and they have to have doctors take their blood regularly so it doesn't build up too much," Willow said. "Let me go check!" she hopped up and darted out of the dining room before anyone could say anything.

"Why are you making nails out of blood?" Sharon asked.

"There are some designs that mentioned them," Xander said. "Haven't managed to figure most of it out, but the nails sounded cool."

"And Max pays a lot for furniture made in the old ways," Jesse said with a grin.

"We sell the furniture we make to Max," Xander explained.

"The store isn't doing bad either," Jesse said, "though I think most of the profit is going into books."

Xander shrugged. "All the bins of stuff are getting filled, so I haven't really paid attention."

"Wills is doing pretty good," Jesse said, "even with the stuff we use, she's getting lots."

"I found it!" Willow announced as she returned with a heavy medical encyclopedia. "Hemochromatosis causes your body to absorb too much iron, storing excess in the liver, heart, and pancreas. They regularly have to donate blood and have between five to twenty times the amount of iron a normal person has."

"So they probably go to the hospital to have their blood drained regularly," Xander said. "If we had a way to get their blood, it'd be a lot easier to make nails. As is, I need about a gallon a nail which is about all the blood most people have."

"Cows are a lot bigger than people," Jesse said, "so if the butcher thing works out we'll be set."

"So one gallon of blood for the wardrobe and one for a nail?" Willow asked as she finished her breakfast.

"Most pieces of furniture need over a dozen nails," Xander pointed out, getting up to put his bowl in the sink.

"That's a lot of blood and it's going to be heavy too," Jesse said with a frown, "and I can't drive during the day until late. How long is the butcher shop open till?"

"No idea," Xander said, "We'll have to ask.

"I wanna know how you are going to turn blood into nails," Sharon said, following Xander's example and placing her bowl in the sink.

"Boil it until it's a goop, burn the goop until its ash, use water to clean off the not iron stuff, then melt it," Xander said. "The instructions are weird and hard to figure out, but they have pictures. Anyway we'll just get a gallon apiece to start so I can try it out."

"Hope the butcher has a lot of blood on hand," Willow said as she and Xander started cleaning up.

Sol and Saul's Butcher Shop

The four preteens stepped up to the counter and the broad shouldered old man who ran the place, arms bulging with muscles, leaned on the counter. "What can I do for you?" he asked.

"Do you sell blood?" Xander asked.

"Beef blood is ten a quart," the man replied automatically.

Xander smiled. "Great, we need four gallons."

"It's forty a gallon, so that'd come to a hundred and sixty dollars," the man replied, running a hand across his bald head as he tried to hide his surprise.

"That's fine," Xander said as Willow took a bundle of bills out of her pocket.

"Is it kosher?" Willow asked.

The old man chuckled. "Blood is never kosher, but it is all beef, not a trace of pig or rabbit," he assured her.

Willow nodded and paid the man. "No tax?"

"Not on blood," he assured her before going into the back and coming out with two bags and setting them on the counter to go into the back and retrieve two more.

Xander looked in one of the bags. "Four, one-quart containers, kinda like milk."

"Do you make deliveries and how late are you open?" Jesse asked.

"The front of the shop closes at eight, but we sell out the back until one AM," the butcher replied. "We do free deliveries on orders of over two hundred dollars, otherwise we charge a ten percent surcharge."

"How much blood can we order at once?" Xander asked.

"Most people only order a quart every other day at most, with a gallon or more being used for parties," he said thoughtfully. "We keep about twenty gallons on hand, but if you are making large orders it's best to call a week in advance so we don't run short for our regulars."

"Thanks," Xander said as the four each took a bag.

"It's no problem, have a nice day," the butcher said cheerfully.

"I'm hungry," Jesse told Willow.

"Wait until we're at work," Willow said, knowing he was about to go into his starving spiel to try and get them to stop at the ice cream shop since he always did this. "At least there, we can hose you off."

Jesse grinned, having always taken perverse pleasure in being extra messy with his ice cream as it drove Willow nuts.

Xander rolled his eyes but couldn't stop himself from grinning. "We can come back later," he said, thinking of the ice cream shop, "I wanna finish what we're working on first."

"Right," Jesse said excitedly as the thought of going to Narnia pushed aside his desire for ice cream. "Is a gallon enough?" he asked, knowing Xander had been guessing on how much they needed for the spell.

"If not I'll share some of mine," Xander promised, figuring two and a half gallons would make enough nails for a small chest if he did it right, and they could always buy more.

"Cool, let's hurry!"

Saul watched the 'children' depart as his partner Sol came out of the back room.

"That was a large order, some group planning a huge party?" Sol asked, cleaning blood off his hands with a rag.

"No, just some big eaters," he replied. "How they're going to drink a gallon apiece I don't know and one wasn't sure even that would be enough."

Sal chuckled. "You see all types in this business, now help me get the steaks ready for the delivery to the Kendalls."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

"You work here?" Sharon asked while Xander took Willow's bag so she could unlock the office.

"It's not really working, it's fun!" Willow said as she opened the door to let everyone in.

"Eep!" Sharon jumped backwards and almost dropped her bag as she saw the 'statue'.

"I know, creepy isn't it?" Jesse said with a grin. "Don't know why the owner had a statue of a monster in mid yawn made, but we use it to hang our coats from."

"It's so lifelike," she said, examining it more closely.

"Do we need to refrigerate these?" Willow asked Xander, taking back her bag.

"Might as well," Xander replied, "there's lots of room in the fridge. I'll get started on the seal."

"Seal?" Sharon asked as she followed Jesse and Willow behind the counter and into a dinette off to the side.

"Like I said, magic is complicated," Jesse said. "Ya gotta figure out what to say and do, the instructions are rarely in English, and ya gotta make a complicated design in blood."

Willow set her empty bag on the counter and moved aside to let Jesse put his blood away. "It's not that bad, but the book Xander is working with is German so we have to translate it first. The Germans have a lot of oddly specific words too."

"Let me take that," Jesse said, passing the empty bag to Willow and taking Sharon's bag.

"Do you guys know a lot of magic?" Sharon asked.

"Nuh uh," Willow said, shaking her head. "We haven't gotten any simple books in, they're all complicated and/or stuff we don't want to do so far."

"Speak for yourself, I think cursing Cordelia would be a great idea," Jesse said, before closing the fridge and handing her the empty bag.

"No cursing people," Willow said, "not even her."

"The only thing we've found that we can all agree on is making a cabinet to Narnia," Jesse said.

"So how do you know magic exists?" she asked as they walked through the office and into the warehouse. She looked around curiously, her attention drawn to rows of shelves filled with containers and little measurement spoons hanging by them.

"Because monsters exist and that's who I've been getting books on magic from," Willow said as they watched Xander slowly pour blood into wooden channels cut into a thick sheet of plywood.

A large wooden wardrobe stood in the clear spot in the center of the carved design. The wardrobe was around six feet tall and a little over three feet wide, each side a slightly different color from the different woods used in its construction. Lines of carefully carved runes surrounded the base and the top of the curious looking cabinet, though it was hard to see what they looked like since were liberally coated in blood.

"It only took a quart and a half," Xander said as he finished up and rechecked his work.

"So, we're doing this?" Jesse asked excitedly.

"We're doing this," Xander said with a grin. "Grab the candles."

"Yes!" Jesse cheered and hurried over to where the tools and piles of wood they'd scavenged were. He dug among the piles and came up with a box. "Got the candles, who has the lighter?"

"I knew we forgot something," Xander said as they checked their pockets and came up empty.

"I got one," Sharon said, pulling a disposable lighter from her pocket.

"Why do you have a lighter?" Willow asked.

"I brought some left over fireworks from the fourth of July," she replied proudly, patting her backpack.

"We could fire them off in the wrecking yard!" Xander said excitedly.

"Let's go!" Jesse said, dropping the box of candles by the empty blood container.

The four kids rushed outside, leaving the blood to soak into the wood.

Typing by: Abyssal Angel

TN: I feel like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. Giles, Ethan, and their group did demon summoning on purpose for a high. I'd hate to imagine what four kids attempting to open a dimensional rift to another plane of existence when they're so dimensionally close to hell and have no idea what they're doing will accomplish…