Xander didn't hesitate. He immediately put his right hand over Joyce's stomach were the bullet had passed thru her and the other over Cordelia's arm and healed them both. Then he gathered Cordelia into his arms and just shook. Some son of a bitch had nearly killed her.

"Xander, I'm okay. I promise. You healed me. See? I'm fine."

Faith and Buffy came in dragging Warren between them. Xander saw red. Literally. His vision was washed in shades of red. He jumped up and stalked towards Warren.

"You son of a bitch!" And he slammed his fist into Warren's face. He dropped like a sandbag dropped over the side of a building. "Get up, you son of a bitch, I'm going to hit you again!"

Faith grabbed Xander around his arms. "Woah, calm down. He's out cold. Red, call the cops. Joyce, you and Cordelia get cleaned up. We'll tell the cops he was shooting, but missed."

Xander managed to calm down, but only because Cordelia literally sat on him or rather, in his lap and made him hold her.

The cops came and arrested Warren. Xander hoped he never saw him again, he might just kill him if he did. Too bad the cops in Sunnydale are still deeply stupid because Warren and his sycophantic sidekick, Andrew, weren't thoroughly searched and managed to escape. It would be several months before they were seen again.

The Scooby Gang's Junior year in college came to an end a couple of months later. Xander and Cordelia planned to spend the whole summer honeymooning by resuming the road trip they had started on three years before. This one included stopping in Colorado to see their friends.

They were surprised to find Jack wasn't there.

"So where is Jack?" Xander asked.

"He got promoted again. He took over General Hammond's position in D.C. General Hammond retired, he's been having some heart problems." Sam told them. "He wants to spend time with his granddaughters."

"Well, can't blame him for that. So what are you doing back here? I thought you were doing research."

"I was. Then Daniel got himself into trouble and by extension, the rest of us. Sorry, I can't tell you more then that."

"No, we get it. Any word on the collection device?"

"Yes, we got it working. Only problem is, we don't have anything we can use that can handle the energy. We don't know how to make the crystals they used to store the energy."

A thought surfaced in Xander's mind. "They grew them."

"What?" Sam asked, looking surprised.

"They made a mold and grew them. Take a scraping of the Potentia with the contaminated energy. Use it as the starter and grow a new one in a mold."

"That just might work. Xander, thank you. I should have thought of that. We grow crystals, why wouldn't they?"

"Oh and congratulations." Cordelia said.

"Congratulations?" Sam looked startled.

"You think I didn't see the rings on your dog tags? I knew the minute Xander told me, you'd gone to Nevada to do research. The rings just confirmed it."

"Where we that transparent?"

"No." Xander said. "But we're very observant. When we make it to D.C., we'll say hi to Jack and congratulate him too."

Unfortunately, they didn't make it to D.C. a deadly new virus began to sweep across the world and nations went into lockdown as they tried to treat what the SGC would later call the Prior Plague.

Eventually a treatment was distributed and life returned to normal or normal as Sunnydale gets anyway.

Summer came to a close and the Scooby Gang started their Senior year in college. Things were relatively quiet until November when Giles, who had been called to England by the Watchers Council returned, to tell the Gang some devastating news.

"Potentials are being murdered. All over the world. They and their Watchers are being murdered. Several dozen so far. We have no idea who's killing them or why. Or how they are even finding them." He told the stunned group.

"Well, either magically or conventionally. How does the Watchers Council find Potentials, Giles?" Xander asked.

"With a spell that tracks the Seed of the Slayer that is in each of them."

"How accurate is it, given that you missed both Buffy and Faith until after they activated?"

"Approximately 70%."

"It comes back to the Watchers Council, Giles. They're killing the ones you know about, right? So they got the information from the Watchers Council somehow. Hacked it maybe. Magically, since I doubt any of those fossils know how to use a computer."

"That makes sense. Unfortunately, it doesn't do us any good. No matter where we hide them, someone keeps finding them."

"How many are left?"

"There's approximately 800 to 900 more."

"That's a lot to hide."

Then came worse news. The Watchers Council's main headquarters had been bombed. Someone had declared war on the Slayers.