Willow sighed despondently. She was sitting in a small cafe in New Brunswick, sipping the sweetest, most over-the-top-barely-still-recognizable-as-a-coffee-beverage and staring into her laptop. She frowned with adorable intensity as the harsh light from the screen reflected off her pale skin. She was exchanging emails, coordinating with agents of Summer Joys™ across the globe and other boring, managerial type things that she found herself responsible for nowadays. She took a break to stretch her lithe figure and stare dolefully out the rain-streaked window.
After the Fall of Sunnydale, several things had happened, including many epic tales and side adventures that could easily be told as one-shot stand alone stories. However, in the end the survivors had reformed the Council and the Scooby gang in a completely new form. The idea had strangely enough come from Xander. They had all been relaxing and eating Chinese food on the floor of Giles' new flat, much to his chagrin. The subject of Angel's abrupt descent into evil lawyerdom had come up, mostly because it was so ridiculous to think of "Grr! Arg!" Angel as a CEO. The jokes had been endless.
"But seriously, what was his plan?" Dawn had asked between giggles. "Vanquish evil through aggressive corporate restructuring?"
Buffy had shrugged, amused despite her conflicting feelings. "I think he had himself convinced he could 'change the system from the inside' or something." Xander had rolled his eyes.
"Puh-leez! This is what happens when you cut yourself off from pop culture. Everyone knows you don't defeat the evil organization by joining it. You set up your own, non-evil organization of equal or greater power. Legion of Doom v. Superfriends, Death Eaters v. Order of the Pheonix, GI Joe v. Cobra." Dawn had laughed.
"But Xan," she had said while smiling that endearingly beatific smile that reminded them all the world was worth saving, "neither side ever wins when you do that. You just keep fighting forever. You know, until the show gets canceled." Xander had waved off her concerns with a nonchalant chopstick and delved further into his chow mein.
"Well that's cuz it's all TV. We'd do it right." As the conversation moved away towards what Harmony was probably doing right then, Willow and Giles' eyes met across the room, and a flickering of mad imagination sparked between them.
From there it had been a lot of hard work and research to organize the Scoobies, the remaining Council members, and their allies into a multinational nonprofit organization. To the world they were a relief organization comparable to the Red Cross, providing relief for natural disasters. It wasn't far from the truth, the only difference being that they tended to focus their efforts on natural disasters that were more "super." The council funds provided the seed money, and the finance department kept it going by managing donations, investments, and random lucrative treasures that they stumbled across in their work. Most of the slayers and associated witches chose to work as independent contractors rather than employees, going about their regular lives but putting out fires when they arose in geographic proximity. Willow and the original Scoobies had regulars salaries, however, as well as total control of the organization.
At first it had been exciting; a new challenge that required Willow's books smarts instead of her magic skills. It was fun. But now that it was all set up and running more or less smoothly, she was bored. Take this most recent crisis. Once the seers started going nuts, her phone started blowing up with panicked messages. But it had only taken a few hours to develop a protocol, and now everyone was managing things pretty well on their own. Unfortunately, Willow still had to call everyone back and go over the same information, over and over again. It got so ridiculous that she eventually turned off her phone just to get a break. No one was in any danger, and they all had her email. She shuddered to think of her voicemail. When she had complained to Giles he had suggested she hire an assistant. It made sense, but Willow had hesitated. Hiring an assistant would make her position permanent, a commitment she wasn't ready to make. She missed studying magic, and she really wanted to get back into teaching. But she felt like she was the only one who could shoulder the responsibility.
She looked at her phone, lying innocuously next to her laptop on the scarred coffeehouse table, and grimaced. There was another reason she didn't want to turn on her phone. It wasn't just psychics and slayers who she was avoiding. Willow let her mind wander back to the terrible, awful first date she had had last weekend. It had been in a cafe much like the one in which she currently sat-slightly more bohemian to attract the young college kids, with twinkle lights and eclectic pictures of random nonsense on the walls.
The date had been with a young medium named Lynn. She was small, and had a shy smile and soft brown hair. She was full figured and voluptuous, so when she had randomly approached Willow after her lecture on "Protection Against the Unhappy Dead," Willow had agreed to the woman's invitation for coffee and conversation. Boy had that been a mistake. It had started out innocently enough, and Willow had been fairly charmed by her sweetness, but after they had sat down with their drinks, things had taken an uncomfortable turn.
"So, I just have to ask," the girl had said coyly, her beautiful slender fingers fiddling with the empty remains of her sugar packet in a maddeningly distracting way that had Willow's mind wandering, "Did you really kill a God?" Willow had blinked back to reality at that question.
"Wha-?" she asked, thrown off guard.
"I mean, all those stories about you. Are they true? How you started out with no powers, defeated a god, spiraled downward into addiction and then found redemption through the power of friendship to become the most powerful witch in the world and defeat the first evil?!" As Lynn had been talking her voice got more and more excited and she leaned farther and farther towards Willow who found herself leaning unconsciously away. When she finished her diatribe Lynn was panting and staring at Willow with giant eyes filled with wonder and raw, naked hunger.
"Oh dear sweet Goddess," Willow had thought with the desperation of a trapped animal. "She's a fan girl."
Willow had managed to extricate herself by faking an emergency, but since then the girl hadn't taken a hint. She had even showed up at Willow's office once. Willow had never been so glad to have teleportation powers. She frowned and sipped her caffeinated beverage. She couldn't really blame Lynn. Nothing she'd said was untrue. Willow's legend among those in the magical community was pretty...legendary. It was an awkward hurdle when she tried to date people who knew that she was a recovering addict who once brain-raped her girlfriend and tried to destroy the world. It was an even more awkward hurdle to date people who knew nothing of the supernatural, mostly because the small talk was by turns impossible and insincere.
Willow sighed again, receiving a nasty glare from a hipster across the way. She could only assume the weather was to blame for the direction of her melancholy thoughts. Talking to Xander had helped a little, and it was good to know that even if he wasn't completely alright, he was coping. That was pretty much all that could be said for the Scoobies nowadays.
She stared challengingly at her phone, knowing that she would have to turn it on eventually. She was saved as her laptop lit up suddenly with an urgent new message from Giles. She clicked on the message, and her eyes grew wide with awe, and then crossed with confusion.
"Wait, what?"