Finally, first day, finished… but sadness struck the students as they realized there was still a whole school year ahead of them. Buffy, Anya and Willow wandered through the halls of the school after everyone had left, they giggled as they walked the halls.

"You know the only reason that English position was open is because Mrs. Hamilton died." Anya stated the obvious as they walked outside and started walking around the building.

"I know all of our teachers are so old and crusty… it's nice to have a teacher with the… and those…" Willow blushed not really wanting to go into detail.

"Okay Pratt… he was very yummy… very cool, but kinda weird…" Buffy said, trying to hide the deeper attraction she had to him. They turned a corner, none of them had seen the said teacher just around the corner and Buffy ended up running blindly into the side of a very toned and firm body. She ended up falling backwards and dropping all of her books.

"Oh shit…" Spike said as he placed the cigarette he was smoking in his mouth and bent down to help Buffy with her things, "You okay?" He said removing the cigarette from his lips and handing her the last book.

"I'm ya…" She quickly scrambled up and stood close to her friends, trying to become invisible behind them, hoping he hadn't heard her comment about him. "I'm fine…" She blushed as she suddenly found her shoes were pretty interesting.

Spike gave them all a hard look as he wrapped his lips slowly around his cancer stick again and took a long drag, "You three are causing any trouble? You're acting awful peculiar…" He eyed them suspiciously as he freed the smoke from his lungs.

"No." They all said at the same time rather defensively, then eye-balled eachother quizzically.

"The unison denial isn't helping your case anymore ladies..." He flicked the ash from his cigarette as a black car pulled up, "Ah… there's my ride…" He looked at the girls as they turned to look at the car. They all had strange looks on their faces as they saw the driver was in a full Darth Vader costume and the other man in the back seat was in a storm trooper costume.

Spike shook his head and started walking the car, he turned around as he was walking, "You girlies stay out of trouble…" He smiled at them and got in the car.

"How was work today honey?" David said through his Vader mask.

Spike return to his normal English accent, "Your two are bonkers! What the hell are you doing?"

Nick popped up from the back seat, "You said to wear somethin' no one would notice us in…"

"Oh well you've done a very good job at getting noticed…" Spike said sarcastically and smacked Nick on the head. He turned back to David who was behind the wheel, "Vader doesn't drive... Vader is a supreme commander and far too powerful to do anything so menial as drive his own transportation..." He stated in a "duh" tone, "Move..." He began pushing a fighting David out of the car.

The girls still stood by the school, staring at the car as their teacher appeared to be beating up Darth Vader. They couldn't hear anything, but none the less they were still astonished. After the car rocked back and forth for a moment Vader finally seceded and fell out of the driver's side. Vader scrambled to his feet, as Mr. Pratt shifted over and started scooting the car forward. Vader ran about frantically trying to grab a door handle, suddenly Mr. Pratt hit the gas and sped forward leaving a nice cloud of rubber fire behind him. Vader, now yelling obscenities that none of the girl could comprehend made a dive into an open window that the storm trooper had rolled down in the back.

"Okay… more emphasis on the weird section…" Willow said as the black car peeled away with Darth Vader's lags still flailing out the window. Mr. Pratt rolled down his window and flicked his still burning cigarette out the window.

"Willow I don't think you could put enough emphasis on the weird…" Buffy said before they all started walking again.

Buffy sat at the dinner table with her mom, "How was your first day honey?" Joyce asked before taking a bite of her spaghetti.

"It was fine… boring, everyone telling about the rules… heard it a zillion times already…" Buffy took a drink of her milk, "Except for my English teacher… The new one in town… We didn't do anything but talk with him… it topped watching Ms. Anderson try and figure out how to spell 'posture' in Art."

"Well… he doesn't sound very professional…" Joyce said with concern in her voice.

"Well we were all pretty timid and he had to figure out some way to get us talking…" Buffy laughed a bit, "Oh mom, this Friday Willow and Xander wanna go to the Bronze, Is that okay?"

Joyce thought for a moment, making Buffy think she might say no, "Alright… but you need to be home by 12…"

Buffy nodded her head, reluctantly agreeing to her terms. Buffy took another bite of her food and thought more about her day.

Friday came faster than anyone had anticipated. School work had officially begun and everyone began to feel the pressure of it already. Luckily though it was Friday, the best day of the week, and Buffy was not going to waste her first Friday of the school year.

The end of the day seemed to utterly far away, it was only 3rd period, but at least Buffy could count on Mr. Pratt to pass the period quickly. She settled into her seat just as the bell rang, she pulled out her notebook and smiled as her teacher practically skipped to the front of the room.

"It's time to start the class! Time to start class…" He sang out loud, trying to get everyone awake and attentive. Spike knew his teaching method was already a bit unorthodox, okay very unorthodox, but that was the point. He wanted to get their attention, and then he knew the information wouldn't be nearly as hard to get into their still developing brains.

Spike started writing on the board, "Tell me what it is you want to learn from me…" He wrote as he spoke, "I want to know what this year you guys are looking forward too… are there certain books, or writings you want to explore… do you just want to sit on your ass and hope for the best when it comes to your grade…" He looked over at Angel who hadn't even opened his notebook yet, but instead was just zoning out.

Cordelia elbowed him and Angel finally processed what he was supposed to be doing. Buffy chuckled and noticed Riley right next to Angel, he seemed to be staring off as well, but mostly in Buffy's direction. She looked around, she had all guys surrounding her seat and her eyes went wide and she quickly returned to writing.

Spike waited for his exceptionally silent students to finished writing, "You know I have never ever heard of a class being nearly as quiet as you guys are… it's fascinating…" He received no reply. He sighed yet again and got up, heading to his office he pulled out a very worn book of his.

Quietly he waited for everyone to finish as he flipped through the book silently, looking for a good quote, "Ah… yes…" He hopped up onto Xander's desk and began reading a quote from it as he walked around the room, from desk to desk. "Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all, Walt Whitman…"

Spike stopped on Willows desk, and looked around the room, if he had to get their attention somehow, this would be it. "Can someone tell me what this quote means…?" He started walking again as he reading it out loud once more. "Anyone?"

No one answered, he quickly jumped across the aisle and stood on Riley's desk, "You… Country boy… Riley…" He said remembering his name, "What does it mean?"

Riley looked up, "Ummm…" He mentally reviewed the quote in his head, "English is a language made up of other languages?"

Spike clapped his hands together, "Yes!" He ran to the end of the desk and jumped off, and went to the board and wrote the word "marriage" on the board as an example. "Marriage originates from mariage…" He wrote down the different spellings. "This is middle English so around… 1200-1300 CE, yes?" Everyone could hear the excitement in his voice as he taught, it had them all interested, "mariage is from and Old French marier, which means to marry, and that in the end is Latin… marītāre and marītus…" He turned around, everyone was attentive, but not quite getting it...

Time for those extreme measures again, "The word 'fuck'" he heard a couple gasp as he wrote it on the board, "originally is German, which means to strike or hit… but ironically enough… in England an urban legend came about that in the 15the century if a married couple wanted to have a child they would go to their king, ask permission and they would get a sign to basically hang on the door. So while it was on the door people would know not to disturb them. The sign would say "Fornication, Under Consent, from the King, F.U.C.K. fuck…"

Everyone was smiling by now, it was something fun to learn, "You see what I'm saying here?" spike said, "The English language, it's a gathering from all cultures of the world… it's not just our language, it's everyone's. They say Math is a universal language, well without the universe you wouldn't have English…" He held up his book, "You wouldn't have Walt Whitman telling you this… Or me explaining it…"

"So we'd be stuck with someone else's language?" Riley asked.

"We might not even have the USA…" He shrugged, "English is the perfect example of unity throughout the world, because no matter what you say, you're connected to several other cultures at once, I mean look at the word marriage…" Riley had an 'oh I get it' moment and the rest of the class followed suit. Buffy had the understanding as soon as he was talking about marriage, but she didn't speak up.

The bell rang suddenly and everyone got up to leave, giggling and laughing as they left the room. Fuck is such an interesting word.