"OK, where were we?" Xander asked.
"Aren't we going to wait for Willow?" Buffy asked.
"Red can find out from you later," Xander replied unconcerned.
"Egg babies," Willow said.
"Got it," Xander said. "Buffy was having Slayer Dreams and then at her seventeenth birthday party me and Cordy came out of the closet about dating while Red brings Oz. Buffy and Angel bump into some vamps and end up bringing in a box that has a demon's arm in it. Giles says Angel must take the arm to the ends of the Earth because Spike and Dru are assembling The Judge, note the capital letters."
"They were dreams about Angel," Buffy said, "and Giles was insistent Angel had to leave immediately, on my birthday no less!"
"Vamps jump them at the pier and steal back the arm," Xander continues. "Buffy and Angel go to his place and bump uglies breaking the curse. Angelus being free once more, but driven insane by a century of dealing with Angel-"
"He was not!" Buffy interrupted.
"OK, then you explain why he didn't drain you and then take over the town," Xander said.
"I… don't know, maybe because he wanted to torture me and end the world?"
"Angelus was completely insane," Xander said not feeling like arguing. "He joined up with Drusilla and Spike, assembled The Judge and were prepared to power it up and end all of humanity. With Cordelia's help I broke into the local army base and stole a rocket launcher. I explained to Buffy how to use it and with the twitch of her finger the demon who couldn't be harmed by any weapon forged was soon raining down on the parking lot in so many pieces it could never be reassembled."
"I think that's around the time I joined," Amy said. "Seeing you care for Samantha and how you treated Cordite and Willow, I decide to make things official."
"The only change that made was you slept at your parents place less and stopped pretending to live there so your dad could turn your room into a den," Marcie said with a laugh.
"When did you join?" Human Amy asked Marcie.
"She's a Cheshire, they just show up," Willow replied.
"What does that mean?" Buffy asked.
"Xander was never stingy with his tamings if a girl was in need and Cheshires are almost impossible to find if they don't want to be," Willow explained, "so only Marcie knows how long she was actually a part of our harem."
"And she's not telling," Xander said with a grin.
"Being a Cheshire rocks," Marcie said smugly.
"Next a werewolf hunter came to town," Xander said.
"No werewolf hunters on our end," Cordite offered, "for obvious reasons."
"You have a cure," Buffy said with a nod.
"Buffy handed him his ass, Oz discovered he was a werewolf having gotten bit by his cousin who was teething," Xander said, "and let me say that is a really disappointing way to get Lycanthropy."
"I'll make a note to see about making something to cure everyone," Willow said. "There is probably something a lot cheaper to produce than a medal since we don't have unlimited supplies."
"Next you cast the love spell," Buffy said with a glare.
"No, next Cordelia dumped me in the middle of the dance during valentine's day when I had just given her a necklace I'd worked my ass off to buy," Xander corrected her.
"And I cast the love spell, which was just supposed to affect Cordelia, but instead affected everyone but Cordelia," Human Amy offered.
"I'll underline the note about a sacrifice to Aphrodite," Willow told Xander.
"Thanks," Xander said. "Somehow that convinced Cordelia to get back with me, I still don't understand why."
"I'm not sure myself," Buffy admitted.
"Then Angelus killed Miss Calendar, Giles' girlfriend and put her corpse in his bed, leaving a bunch of lit candles and a trail of rose petals to her," Xander said.
"That is horrifying," Human Amy said with a shudder.
"Pretty much," Buffy said, still feeling guilty for the part she'd played in Janna's death.
"Our valentine's day was a lot less stressful," Willow said, "it mainly consisted of dealing with girls who tried to sneak into the harem but didn't plan on staying."
"It's a huge and exhausting tradition," Cordite said with a smirk, "at least for Xander."
"Harem celebrations are held a week later to give tamers time to recover," Willow explained. "It's called Bonding day."
"I'm going to miss Harmony," Cordite said with a sigh.
Xander reached over and stroked her ear.
"I got to kill an invisible demon the next week," Buffy said.
"You could only see it if you were sick, so she infected herself with the flu," Xander said. "It preyed on children. I had to clean up the body, thankfully the hospital had an incinerator. I kept the scythe… but being invisible I can't find it."
"Next was the ghosts possessing people and doing the whole murder suicide thing," Buffy said.
"The less said about that the better," Xander decided. "After that was the whole swim team thing."
"Xander joined the swim team to find the demon that was skinning and eating the team," Buffy said.
"Turned out the coach was drugging them to make them better swimmers and they would turn into monsters and shed their skin," Xander said.
"How much crazy shit did you guys deal with?" Human Amy asked in disbelief.
"All of it," Xander and Buffy chorused.
"We actively hunted it down and dealt with it," Buffy added.
"Like a harem," Willow said.
"No!" Buffy quickly denied. "Not a harem, just a bunch of friends doing what needed to be done."
"Sounds like a harem, just a crappy one where everyone was perpetually horny," Cordite said.
"Pretty much," Xander agreed. "We dealt with all the problems of the world and didn't get laid."
"I think you'll like our harem better," Willow said, pulling him down to give him a kiss.
"I knew you guys dealt with some of the problems, but all of them?" Human Amy asked Buffy.
"I'm the Slayer it's my destiny," Buffy said. "There are prophecies and everything."
"I like being in a harem," Xander said when he caught his breath. "Next Kendra shows up with a blessed sword telling us she's had some bad dreams and Angelus gets a hold of a petrified demon with a sword in it that if you can pull it out you can doom the world."
"Kinda like a reverse sword in the stone," Amy noted.
"Pretty much," Buffy agreed.
"Willow tried to recast the curse on Angelus, but Drusilla was a seer and saw it coming, so the library got swamped by vamps, Drusilla killed Kendra and Giles got kidnapped,' Xander said.
"What was the stone called, the demon I mean," Marcie corrected herself.
"Acathla," Amy said. "We were dealing with feral checks the week the mayor took care of it. The entire thing was hilarious!"
"Acathla was hilarious?" Buffy asked in disbelief.
"How the mayor dealt with it was," Amy said with a huge grin. "He had it destroyed by a couple of his girls using sledge hammers, then he used some of the ground up demon in Paper-Mache to make a fake statue filled with explosives. He used the fake Acathla to lure in a large number of end-of-the-world types and when the 'worthy' one pulled out the sword…"
Xander laughed. "I like your mayor."
"He was a blast," Cordite agreed with a huge grin.
"Our story was not nearly as much fun," Buffy said. "Giles was tortured to find out how to pull out the sword. I made a deal with Spike since he didn't want the world to end either, he helped me and I let him and Dru escape as long as they left the Hellmouth."
"Sounds like a good trade," Willow said, "the entire world for a couple of vamps to be incinerated later."
"I thought so too," Buffy agreed. "Xander got Giles to the hospital and I faced Angelus. Unfortunately, Willow cast the ensouling spell when she awoke from her mini-coma and Angelus had already managed to draw out the sword."
"And a sacrifice was needed to close it," Willow realized.
"So, I sent Angel, who wasn't even aware enough to figure out what was going on, to hell," Buffy said.
"The summer was pretty quiet," Xander said, "me and Oz managed to get ninety percent of the fledges as they crawled out of the grave, but only about a third of the vamps we ran across. When they realized we were hunting them they'd run and there was no way we could catch them."
Buffy winced.
"Then Buffy came back and we threw a party at her place, naturally this was the cue for the Hellmouth to celebrate her return with a zombie apocalypse," Xander said.
"The Mask," Willow said with a groan.
"You guys dealt with it too?" Buffy asked surprised.
"Cordite and Xander did," Willow said shaking her head. "They could have dealt with it in seconds, instead it took nearly an hour."
Cordite smirked and Amy giggled.
"We were given permission to use firearms and Xander bought a lot of ammo," Marcie said. "Cordite was made to use a gun, but it's normally against the law so Xander decided to let her get some practice in."
"If by some you mean over two thousand rounds," Willow said. "He held off destroying the mask until they ran out of ammo while Amy and I used our magic to limit its effects."
"That sounds like fun, Xander said. "While we can't carry them around, we can go to a gun range and get in some practice if you like."
"I love you," Cordite said giving him a hug that popped his back.
"So, what happened?" Marcie asked.
"I poked out its eyes and then had to clean a load of corpses out of the house," Buffy said.
"Next Faith showed up being chased by kiss-my-toes," Buffy said.
"Faith was the next slayer called and she was running from Kakistos," Xander explained, "a vamp so old he looked like he was half goat and had skin like stone. The girls used the support beam of a warehouse to stake him."
"She was interesting," Cordite told Xander. "She's the first human I've seen who could keep up with me… well, almost keep up with me."
"I noticed from the way you barely even stabbed her and then spent a few seconds playing with her," Willow said.
Buffy looked at Cordite's smirk and couldn't decide whether a spar would be a great idea or a horrible one.
"Next I fell asleep wolf sitting Oz and everyone became convinced he'd gotten out and killed someone before meekly returning to his cage," Xander said.
"In hindsight that was pretty stupid," Buffy admitted. "It turned out to be an abusive boyfriend with the literal Jekyll and Hyde formula."
"Cool," Willow said. "We have safer ways to do stuff like that, but I'd love to get my hands on the original formula. Please tell me you still have some."
"Um… we burned the notes and poured the formula down the drain," Buffy admitted, making Willow pout.
"Next was homecoming," Xander said, "where Kakistos' second in command organized a slayer hunt and they mistook Cordelia for Faith and took her for the hunt."
"How'd she do?" Cordite asked.
"She lived the hunters died," Xander replied.
Cordite smiled.
Oz and Red returned, Oz now wearing a pair of gray sweatpants and a baggy tie dye shirt.
"I'm bigger," Oz told Xander.
"One of the advertisements about the Hero Medal is that it'll make you of 'Heroic' proportions," Marcie said with a grin.
"I didn't notice any difference," Xander said.
"You are at least three inches taller and have all sorts of muscles," Buffy said, "how did you miss that?"
"It increases your penis size?" Human Amy asked, figuring out what they were talking about from how red, Red's face was.
"Yep," Willow said cheerfully. "Did you really expect them not to include that?"
"No, I know I'd kill for an extra cup size," Human Amy said, "and I know how guys are."
"Guys are expected to provide sex on demand, the least they can do is make sure they have the means to do so," Willow said reasonably. "I've also got stuff to increase bust size, we can talk about that later."
"What happened next?" Xander asked.
"Band Candy," Buffy said, resisting asking Willow about ways to increase her bust size.
"Ethan Rayne the chaos worshiper was hired by someone to provide a distraction, so they could sacrifice a bunch of babies to a worm demon in the sewer," Xander said. "I don't think he knew what they were going to do, he was just in it for the chaos."
"The candy made all the adults behave like they were teens," Buffy said. "Snyder was actually an OK guy as a teen. That still freaks me out."
"I don't recall anything like that, but it'd be easy to get a few dozen feral eggs," Willow said with a shrug.
"I still have tons of it," Xander said.
"Xander, that stuff's dangerous!" Red exclaimed.
Xander waved it off completely unconcerned, much to the Scoobs' surprise. "It makes you behave like a teen, I am a teen, thus it's just candy to me."
"That's a good point," Buffy said. "How much free chocolate did you score?"
Xander just grinned.
"Remember to share," Buffy said.
"I will," Xander promised. "Next we had a fake watcher show up, we discovered Buffy was hiding the fact that Angel had returned from hell, and the watcher was after some glove that let her throw lightning that she somehow thought would make her all powerful."
"And you and Faith instantly decided to stake Angel," Buffy said with a scowl.
Xander shrugged. "Demons come from hell, not good people and we didn't need a repeat of last year's events. If putting a stake in Angel's heart would make the world a safer place I'd do it in a heartbeat, but we were just investigating things, until he went for the glove and our new watcher said to take him out."
"He was destroying the glove as proof he wasn't evil," Buffy said, "and the new watcher was evil herself."
"Yeah, that was incredibly stupid," Xander said. "Proof he wasn't evil would have been openly letting us know he was around and submitting to a spell that proved he had his soul back."
"Do we even have a spell for that?" Buffy asked before turning to Willow. "Seriously, do we?"
"It's actually pretty easy to check," Amy offered, "a spell isn't even needed."
"Well… hindsight is twenty twenty," Buffy said.
"Let's move on to a less sensitive topic," Willow suggested. "What happened next?"
The Scoobs groaned, except for Oz who sighed.
"Spike kidnapped me and Red while we were arguing over an anti-lust spell because we couldn't seem to control ourselves," Xander said.
"Anti-lust spell?" Buffy asked.
"It would have worked and things would have returned to normal," Red explained.
"Any type of magic on the Hellmouth, that involves me would probably make things worse," Xander said. "I still say self-control and avoiding any situations where temptation could occur were the best way to go."
"I'd bet on magic over hormones," Oz offered, making Red smile and squeeze his hand.
"If it was just hormones I'd understand, I can deal with hormones," Xander disagreed. "Anyway, Spike was drunk and wanted Willow to cast a love spell on Dru who had left him for a chaos demon. I had a concussion and internal bleeding as Spike used me as motivation to make her do what he wanted."
"And you were saying goodbye since you figured Spike was going to kill you both when everyone burst in and my local self did something stupid," Cordite said with a snort, finding the whole situation stupid on a level she'd rarely seen before.
"Cordelia got seriously injured," Buffy said.
"We rushed her to the hospital," Red said, "even Giles was worried, he almost kept up with Oz's van."
"How'd she injure herself?" Willow asked Xander.
"She fell on some rebar," Xander said, beginning to wonder why he blamed himself for her own actions, "she has a small scar on her stomach that she goes on and on about."
"That's easy enough to fix," Willow told him. "We've got creams for that."
"She's insult you and refuse to use it," Xander said, knowing how petty and vindictive his ex could be. "I'm pretty sure she could have it removed with laser surgery, but she's getting too much mileage out of it right now."
"I'll take care of it," Cordite said.
"By take care of it, do you mean 'break her legs'?" Buffy asked. "Because that's the kinda vibe I'm getting."
"No, though I may smack her around a little, I would never seriously injure my other self," Cordite said.
"Not even a friendly stabbing?" Willow asked.
"Not with the way she bitches about scars," Cordite said. "I figure a little abject humiliation by showing how much stronger and faster I am than her and using a creme to remove the scar should be enough to put her in her place."
"You'll get along like a house on fire, I can tell," Xander said shaking his head.
"Flames everywhere and people screaming," Oz agreed.
Typed by: fyrewolf5