A lot of changes occurred over the years among the survivors of Sunnydale, but one thing which never altered was how Xander Harris still looked after his girls even a decade and more later. At that point, this included all the Slayers presently guarding the Cleveland Hellmouth so nobody coming home to the Joyce Summers Memorial House at the end of tonight's cemetery patrol was particularly surprised to see Mr. Harris awake and waiting for them at close to four in the morning.

What was a bit different from all the other times, though, was how Xander was sitting at the entrance hall table, laptop open before him, and staring fixedly at the computer screen without appearing to be aware of the arrival of four young women shrugging out of their jackets by the front door. Puzzled glances were traded among the quartet while they tidily put away their jackets and assorted swords, axes, and other hand weaponry in their proper places inside the hall closet.

Just before Lisa Weil, the patrol leader, opened her mouth to call at Mr. Harris to get his attention, she was peremptorily interrupted in this by an extremely sardonic voice coming from the hall corner.

Holding a steaming cup of coffee, Faith Lehane-Harris in her own armchair told the younger Slayers, "Forget it. Since none of ya look hurt or some vamp got lucky enough in a fight with anybody ta strip 'em starkers, Xan ain't gonna even notice. Just wait 'til it's all over with, an' then ya can give him yer damn report."

After that last sentence, Faith checked the hall's grandfather clock set against the far wall. "Shouldn't be more'n another minute, 'kay?"

"Another minute for what?" a baffled Georgette Kinkaid asked, asserting what everyone else of her friends were also thinking.

Rather than answering, Faith simply rolled her eyes in wifely exasperation. It was at that moment when they all heard coming from Xander's location increasingly deep breaths of eagerness being done by him. The women in the hall now saw beads of sweat appear on a forehead divided diagonally by this man's eyepatch strap, with an actual…lustful…expression now displayed up on Mr. Harris's face while he kept his gaze glued to the laptop monitor hidden from the others' sight.

From the back of their small group, Monika Halstadt muttered under her breath, "What the hell's he watching? Porn?"

Her incredulous question normally wouldn't have been heard by anyone with normal hearing more than a couple of feet away. Unfortunately, Monika realized with sudden horror that Faith was not only another Slayer, that Boston native was one of the two remaining Senior Slayers…and she'd just insulted him in front of somebody responsible for the JSM House training schedule.

An immediate casual sideways shift of their bodies done by the rest of the Slayers left Monika exposed to Faith's cool examination from top to bottom, as if estimating how much punishment that loudmouth could take as the gym's latest punching dummy for the hand-to-hand combat class. A lot, ya betcha.

In the middle of all this, Xander Harris then slowly lifted his right hand, index finger straight and poised, as if waiting for—

The hall grandfather clock struck the first of four gongs, indicating the top of the hour. In a blur of speed, Xander swiftly brought his fingertip down to press the 'Enter' button on his laptop's keyboard. Right after, he thrust both hands clenched in fists towards the ceiling, and screamed with triumph, "YES! YES!"

Next came Xander springing up onto his feet, sending his table chair shooting backwards on the hall floor. He was now in the perfect position to demonstrate to a bunch of gawking women how well he could still do the Snoopy Dance.

A cleared throat from Faith finally stopped her husband's ludicrous gyrations, who only then comprehended the presence of the other Slayers. Obviously regretting how he'd just been observed acting like a complete idiot, Xander tried to regain the merest crumb of dignity. He began with a decisive nod sent towards Lisa continuing to gape at him, along with a firm question of, "How'd your patrol go-?"

Oh, no, he wasn't gonna get off that easy, Faith inwardly smirked. She cut off boytoy's scramble to get his man-cred back with, "Awright, how much of our life savin's did ya dump in the stock market like a ten-ton anvil off a cliff not more'n two seconds ago?"

Xander glowered at Faith, clearly not appreciating that question. He stiffly replied, "It wasn't that much! And it was all my own money, too, buying up those shares! Only a couple…"

Trailing off in the face of Faith's most implacable expression, Xander mumbled weakly, "…thousand."

"Uh-huh," Faith nodded, continuing in her silkiest tone. "A coupla thousand what?! Dollars, or stock shares?"

Studying his toes as if they'd just become the most fascinating things in the world, Xander forced out without daring to lift his remaining eye at where Faith now had her arms crossed across her chest, "Shares."

Faith dropped her hands back down at her sides and huffed an annoyed sigh. "Figures. Guess I gotta be grateful ya didn't embezzle the whole house budget an' bet it on the market."

"Hey!" Xander indignantly began. "I wouldn't do that! It was just for fun—"

He stopped short over seeing then how one side of Faith's mouth was quirking into an upwards delighted grin at the success of her recent teasing. A slow smile began to develop upon Xander's own scarred visage, particularly when Faith advanced towards him.

Bending halfway down to put her left shoulder against Xander's lower stomach, Faith embraced his thighs with both arms and straightened up to carry him without any trouble whatsoever a 180-pound man lying on that shoulder. She next began to stride towards the main staircase leading to the staff apartments on the upper floors of the JSM House.

Calling out to the four younger Slayers who'd watched and listened in stunned astonishment to everything in the past few minutes, Xander told their leader, "Lisa, turn in your report to me later in the morning- OW!"

Xander's abrupt pained yelp was the result of Faith's left thumb and forefinger giving him an unexpected tweak on his butt. He started over again, "After lunch, I mean!"

Faith's approving grunt about that was the last thing Lisa and the others heard them before Mr. and Mrs. Harris vanished up the staircase. Assorted blushes were shared among the four girls about what was surely about to become another New Council legend regarding two of Sunnydale's finest.

Though, there were still several questions bothering the Slayer group. Georgette couldn't help wondering out loud, "Why would Mr. Harris be online trading at four o'clock in the morning? I didn't even know you could do that!"

The last of their company, Susan Michealson, spoke for the first time. "My uncle's a stockbroker in New York City. The main stock exchange there, along with Nasdaq, opens for pre-market trading from 4 to 9:30 a.m."

Susan began to eye curiously Xander's laptop still on the hall table, left behind by him when he and Faith had gone back to bed (but definitely not to fall asleep there right away). She commented, "I have to say, I've never heard from anyone else here why he'd be so excited about investing his money in some stocks."

Without another word being spoken, the four girls began to nonchalantly drift towards the hall table. Hey, it was along their way to these Slayer's rooms, so nobody could blame them if they accidentally-on-purpose checked out what was displayed on Mr. Harris's computer…

"Oh," came in a mutual chorus of understanding moments later.

The Slayers there – including the entire New Council around the world – all knew about Xander Harris's utter devotion to a certain snack cake. A devotion which had been sorely tested over the past years when the food company making that small crème-filled yellow cake went into bankruptcy and stopped making Twinkies for a short time. Now, as shown upon the laptop screen, Hostess Brands was putting Xander's favorite dessert on supermarket shelves once more. But, that wasn't all.

As of this morning, Hostess Brands was again a public company, and it was offering stock shares to interested investors. Of which Alexander LaVelle Harris was proudly among these individuals, demonstrated by his recent actions in online trading with Nasdaq under the name for an absolutely perfect ticker symbol:

TWNK

Author's Note: Yep, it'll happen next Monday, November 7, 2016. See the following article in Nasdaq dot com 'hostess-returns-to-wall-street':

If you're curious about the title for this chapter, the below song explains everything. All rights to Stock Market Blues belong to Hank Williams Jr. and Bocephus Records/Blaster from the album Old School New Rules.

Hey Charlie Snob could you make me some investments

I wanna get the hell out of here

I've ordered my Mercedes I wanna meet some classy ladies

And start drinking champagne instead of beer

Now I don't have much money but we could work out somethin'

I could send you twenty bucks a week

He said that's not how it works and just what is your net worth

I said my net worth is what I got on me

So I called up my mother-in-law told her about the ad I saw

Guaranteeing a fortune to be made

I said I need a hundred thou cause we have got to jump in now

Well make a bunch and split it up two ways

So I met her down at the bank grabbed a check and then I ran

As fast as I could to their store

Now here's all the money so pick some winners sonny

And call me up when we make the big score

Well I saw it on the evening news stock market really had the blues

And when it closed it set an all time low

I wondered where did I go wrong why did this happen to me Lord

I've got to get that money back ya know

Well I just sat there and wondered why I was gonna buy low and sell it high

But things sure didn't work out that way

I don't know what I'm gonna do and to tell y'all the truth

I think I've lost my assets today

Hey broker man please don't make no more investments

'Cause I would like to keep my shirt and pants

Cancel that Mercedes I'm going back to the old lady

In Little Rock instead of Paris, France

No I'll never play that game again I think y'all saw me comin' friend

And I jumped right in like a big fool

Oh I thought I'd make some money but it's really kind of funny

'Cause I borrowed all of it from you know who

Oh I thought I'd make some money but it's really kind of funny