Okay, the title for this one comes from what Snyder said about the Class of '99, though it was originally called "The Rear Guard", for reasons that will soon become apparent. Enjoy!

Wesley's day had not gone well so far. To begin with, he hadn't slept in more hours than he cared to count, he had spent much of his sleepless night torn with anxiety over the seemingly imminent death of his best friend—only to be yelled at and half-strangled by that same friend once the danger had passed and he was the only one willing to stand by him, and he had spent ten highly unpleasant minutes on the phone with Quentin Travers, informing him that he and Buffy were both quitting the Council and that there would be no point sending a replacement Watcher because Faith was in a coma. As if that wasn't enough, approximately an hour before, all possibilities for future romantic dealings with Miss Chase had been categorically eliminated.

He wasn't particularly surprised to find Doyle asleep on his couch when he got back to his apartment, but he scowled at the sight of the mess of half-empty takeout cartons and beer bottles the Irishman had left strewn all over the coffee table and the floor around it. He was going to have to lay down a few rules after the battle. Quite against his will, he suddenly flashed back to his mortifying kiss with Cordelia in the library. That certainly hadn't gone the way he had fantasized it would. They had both been quite eager to begin, but then it was as if their mutual attraction simply imploded without warning, leaving behind nothing but awkwardness and the uncomfortable presence of foreign saliva in their mouths.

This unwanted recollection did nothing to improve his mood. With his goodwill already having sustained so many recent blows, and his nerves even nearer the breaking point in light of the approaching battle, Wesley was in no humor to proceed with delicacy. He picked up one of the sofa's uncomfortable decorative pillows, which had somehow made it rather far away from its proper place since he had last seen it, and threw it unceremoniously at his sleeping guest's head.

Doyle revived with a fair amount of comical flailing of limbs, with the result that he toppled off the sofa and landed the floor with a loud thump. "Oi! 'Aven't you English types ever 'eard of alarm clocks?" he demanded as he picked himself back up off the floor, tossing the pillow aside indignantly.

"We haven't a great deal of time," said Wesley, ignoring Doyle's complaints. "And do something about that mess, would you?" he added testily. "You'll find the bin under the kitchen sink."

Doyle subsided into sheepish silence and hastily cleared up the wreckage from his recent meals while Wesley opened a large trunk beside a bookcase and began rummaging inside it. "What're ye lookin' fer?" Doyle asked curiously when he came back to get the rest of the rubbish.

"We're going to be fighting the Mayor and his cronies in little over an hour, and I'd like to be armed. All of the weapons at the school are currently on loan to the senior class. Oh, and you're coming too."

"What!?" yelped Doyle. "I thought the plan was fer me to stay 'ere 'til the coast was clear! My job's to get Angel to L.A., which sort of implies livin' long enough to do it."

"We're going to need all the help we can get. The Mayor has a fair number of the vampires in town on his side, and they'll have free rein once the eclipse sets in. If you don't have a strategy already, then I would suggest head-butting in your demon form, followed immediately by staking. I can't recall—are a Brachen demon's spikes poisonous?"

"Ye mean fer me to show my demon face off to the whole crowd? As if that won't get me killed by one of the good guys in about two seconds."

Wesley coughed derisively. "As you know, our leader shares her bed with a vampire. Furthermore, one of her friends is a werewolf. I think you'll find that we're more accepting than you give us credit for. If you're really that worried about it, though, then don't transform until the second prior to each head-butt. I imagine it would provide a certain element of surprise that you could use to your advantage."

"Doesn't sound like I've got much of a choice," said Doyle with a mixture of apprehension and irritation.

"Consider participation in the battle your room and board," said Wesley, tossing him a stake and a cross from his trunk and straightening up, armed with more of the same. "Let's go."

Doyle gulped and followed him out of the apartment.

[o]

Even though Angel was having trouble pulling his thoughts away from Buffy, he couldn't help feeling impressed by the readiness with which the students he would be leading in the rear guard took up arms and prepared themselves for the fight. Clearly, the civilians of this town were not all as willfully ignorant as they sometimes seemed to be. Several of the kids even recognized him as "that older guy Buffy brought to the prom"—not that this had anything to do with their awareness of the danger, but it did seem to make him automatically worthy of their trust.

Luckily for Angel, every main building on campus was connected in some way, so he didn't have to get creative to stay out of the sun's reach en route from the library all the way around to the gym, where they would be ideally positioned to launch their assault on the Mayor's vamps once Xander's half of the "troops" had them on the run. The gym, however, was not quite empty when they arrived.

"Doyle," said Angel, a little surprised. "Didn't realize you were in the game."

"Yeah, well. I wasn't, until I got drafted by the Queen's Representative," said Doyle ruefully, jerking his head in the direction of Wesley, who was hanging back and looking uncharacteristically ill-tempered.

"Wes," said Angel.

"Angel," said Wesley stiffly.

This was the first time they'd been within speaking distance of each other since their confrontation at the mansion, not including when they had both been present at the same planning session. Angel saw the faint bruises around Wesley's throat and knew an apology was in order.

"I'm sorry about this morning."

"As you should be. Have you spoken with Buffy yet?"

Doyle noticed Wesley's tone and raised his eyebrows, intrigued. "What'd I miss?" he asked, glancing back and forth between them.

Angel ignored him. "Yeah. We spoke."

"Oh? And did you slam her up against the wall as well?"

Doyle looked even more interested, but didn't interrupt again.

"Well, I wouldn't exactly use the word 'slam', and I don't think she minded," said Angel blithely, though he was unable to stop a slight smirk from flitting across his features. Doyle grinned.

Wesley went pink, coughed, and readjusted his glasses. "That's, er, well—I'm glad you two worked things out, at any rate, but you'll have to forgive me if I don't stop being angry just yet. It's nothing personal, but I suspect that if I do, the paralyzing fear would set in instead, and I'd rather not go into the fight like that."

"No problem," said Angel, his eyes sparkling with amusement as he clapped Wesley on the back. Suddenly, the light streaming diagonally across the room through the high windows began to dim. The students, who had also been chatting, fell silent immediately.

"It's the eclipse," said Angel loudly into the tense stillness. He wasn't accustomed to being in charge like this, but he put as much authority into his voice as he could muster and carried on anyway. "That's our cue to get in position. You all know what comes next." Grips tightened on weapons everywhere, and the students began to pour outside. By the time the last one had exited, it was dark enough for Angel to follow, which he did, flanked by Wesley and Doyle.

The hair-raising cry of the Mayor in his new demon form rent the air, and they all knew the battle had commenced. Xander was clearly doing a very good job with his half of the students, for the horde of vampires soon came into sight as they attempted to put more distance between themselves and the flaming arrows falling in their midst. Angel couldn't suppress a growl of eager anticipation. The energy of Buffy's blood was still coursing through him, and the means of releasing it was finally at hand. He dove into the fray first, taking on three at once.

Wesley followed his example, though less recklessly, and was immediately forced to duck a fist that came out of nowhere, which would surely have clotheslined him if it had met its mark. Percy and the rest of the students joined the fight on all sides. Doyle, not having come up with any better ideas than the one Wesley had given him, let out a cry that held almost more fear than rage and slammed his head into the oncoming fanged visage of a vampire, timing his transformation so that the blue spikes extended just before impact. The results were rather gruesome, but the move had definitely done the trick; while the vampire brought his hands up to his torn and bloody face in agony, Doyle was able to stake him with no trouble at all.

Angel's and Wesley's separate fights soon brought them almost back-to-back with each other. Angel, who had made short work of his first three opponents, used the momentum of the vampire he was currently facing against him, causing him to land flat on his back on the pavement. "How's it going, Wes?" he asked, having noticed the fear in Wesley's scent. He knew conversation would help steady his friend more than it would distract him, as had always been true when they sparred.

"Quite well, actually," Wesley replied loudly over the noise of the battle. "Have I mentioned how much I appreciate all the lessons?" He avoided another furious punch from his vampire so narrowly that he felt the wind from it sweep across his face. This time, he managed to retaliate with a vicious uppercut to the vampire's chin.

"Glad to see you've found a practical use for them," said Angel, driving his stake home and shifting smoothly back into his stance, ready for the next attack. He heard a shrill female scream from the direction of Xander's avant-garde at the other end of the battlefield, but he could only hope that someone nearer to the unknown girl would be able to intervene, because another vampire had just stepped in front of him and was now commanding his attention.

"Indeed I have," said Wesley with satisfaction, for he hadn't wasted the opening his previous blow created, and his own enemy was now dust as well. "Also, I thought I ought to tell you that I'm no longer in the Council's employ. Nor is Buffy, for that matter."

"Happy to hear it," said Angel, his fist sending his current opponent's head snapping backward. "Never really liked them, for some reason."

"And as Buffy has her other friends to help her and I doubt that Mr. Giles intends to leave her to her own devices any time soon, that leaves me free to go to Los Angeles with you," Wesley went on, his confidence building as the next vampire stepped up.

Angel paused, having just staked his fifth vampire of the battle. "Really?" A sixth vampire quickly took the place of the previous one, and he easily blocked the first attack and countered with his own. This vampire was practically a fledgling compared to him but seemed to know who he was dealing with, because he smelled even more strongly of fear than Wesley. He was almost anticlimactically easy to finish off, and once he was dust, a quick glance around the rest of the battlefield told Angel that the students were doing surprisingly well, though several were obviously injured. Most of them were fighting in small groups that took on the vampires one at a time, while the vampires showed no such coordination and were consequently growing more outnumbered by the second.

"Fond as I am of Buffy," Wesley was saying dryly, "she isn't in danger of being under the primary influence of a drunk, lazy Irishman who leaves his rubbish all over your coffee table."

"Hey!" said Angel, half indignant, half amused. "Times were different, that could be me you're talking about."

"Yes, and we wouldn't want to suffer a relapse, now, would we?"

"Not really," Angel allowed. "But you know I'm not going to be sharing an apartment with you, right?"

"As if I'd want to be anywhere near your place when Buffy visits, let alone living there," Wesley scoffed.

The vampires' ranks were definitely thinning now. A couple of them had managed to flee into the premature night, but most were dust. Using the same strategy even though it made him want to vomit rather a lot, Doyle had taken out two more since the first one, and he was just heading for another when a pretty brunette staked his target before he could get there, so he changed course. About ten seconds later, a colossal explosion erupted throughout the interior of school.

The Class of '99 and their allies all recoiled from the blast and the intense heat wave that it sent sweeping over them. The same young woman Doyle had just seen stake a vampire had leapt instinctively into the protective circle of his arms—a move that seemed to be quite as surprising for her as it was for him. He didn't mind in the slightest, though. Pretty had been an understatement. She was completely gorgeous.

"T-thanks," she said, staring at him with wide eyes.

With a massive effort, Doyle managed to stop gawking at her like an idiot and smirked, feeling immensely grateful that his features were currently human. "Any time, princess," he said. Someone knocked into them then and they broke apart. Before Doyle could pull himself together, the beautiful young woman had vanished from sight.

Poor Jonathan, didn't get to be the one to hold Cordy during the explosion. *grin* Also, that first punch that Wesley ducked was from canon. He just handled it better. :P One or two more canon Easter eggs in there, but I'll let you find them on your own.