Another section, but I'm not sure it goes where I put it. Might be out of order(Not like "This whole country's out of order!" The other kind.) And I've got the hed from when L&0 shuffles off the TV coil. Go me. Anyway...

Because I love The People, but that doesn’t change the fact that individual people can be liars, killers, and just all around wastes of skin. I don’t like to say so(well, actually I do, a good kvetch clears my sinuses) But sometimes it bothered me, living so far from my principles. I have a lot of time to think about that.

As well as other things like “With great power comes great responsibility.” Being a predator was more time-consuming when I did it as a man. Before I fired that shot into what passed for Gordon Pratt’s brain, I spent the previous day and a half cultivating Pratt’s neighbor, Mrs. Bernstein. I still feel guilty about that.. She needed so badly to believe I was a nice Jewish boy who’d made the strange choice to apprehend bad guys. I felt so guilty, I let her hyperactive Jack Russell lick me.(If only that had been the only kiss I had exchanged out of guilt, but you know enough of my long, sad, romantic history for one lifetime.)

I watched and waited. The dog balked at the leash which gave me fifteen minutes, which I used that first day to follow the neighbor out and listen while she ragged about her California son-in-law. A little mamaloschen and she would have trusted me anywhere.(If she had pinched my cheek, I’d have used the Glock on myself.) She felt safe with me around, she said. Which was like a bullet in my own heart.

Then I remembered Kay lying on that dirty floor, still as any other vic, her already pale complexion like typing paper, and it stiffened my spine. And Stanley, who seemed so indestructible. Like a fucking Kodiak or something. In my mind, in the parts that were not sick with rage, anyway, I was just correcting history...making it so I had a few minutes to fire as it happened. But if Pratt had seemed one bit vulnerable or pitiful, or if I’d met the poor deluded wrecks who’d given him birth, I’dve not been able to do it. I don’t know whether to be proud or ashamed of that. So, what finally sealed his fate was being an arrogant dick.

Oh, man, Munch with the self-deconstructing of motivation in the state of undead. I love this take on his killing of Pratt, too. And remembering his passion for both Kay and Stan - still there as a vamp. There's the whole "vestiges" conundrum, and I do so love that.

Hey, there's this girl named Buffy on the show, too, isn't there?

Buffy waited till she got a phone call from Dawn at Janice's house--and she listened to the background sounds to make sure of where Dawn was--then she grabbed a quick snack and headed out into the night. There had been no answer at Willow's room, so she hit the patrol alone.

A sweep of the college showed nothing nasty lurking in the usual places. Maybe the vampirs were all waiting for classes to start too.

She remembered going over the class lists for the fall semester, trying to decide what to take--and whether trying to decide on a major was foolishness for a Slayer. Her mother had been a big help, encouraging her to think of the future. Buffy had stopped mentioning the realities of a Slayer's life, though, when she saw her mother's mouth tighten up in that painful way.

Weirdly enough, Dawn was the easiest one to talk to about fate and destiny and all that. She was still getting used to being barely a year old in real time while still packing a lifetime's worth of memories in her head. Every now and then Dawn would go up to people she was supposed to know, and she'd check to see what memories the monks' magic had given them. So far the magic was holding good. They'd made sure to get copies of all her school transcripts and medical records, just in case things started to fracture.

Nothing moving in Restfield; a couple of slime trails that went nowhere in Peaceful Acres. Over in Southside Memorial Gardens, though, she got the feeling again of being watched. She concentrated for several seconds, but it wasn't a vampire, whatever was out there. So at least it wasn't Spike doing his bizarre love from afar routine. Or Giles keeping an eye on her again. A few weeks after getting back from the convent, Buffy had been following the trail of some migrating Red Hats. There'd been a couple of skirmishes, then one knock down dragout before they decided Sunnydale was no place to put down roots. More than once Buffy had seen a familiar figure in the shadows and bad guys with more damage than she remembered inflicting.

He'd said he still considered himself part of her clean-up crew. She knew she was supposed to be outraged and disgusted. And thinking about it made her head and stomach hurt.

She smelled blood from a nearby grove. When she got there, she found human blood on the ground, vampire dust in the grass, and a crossbow bolt hanging crookedly from a branch halfway up a tree. Dusted vamp, hurt human, no body lying around. Nobody she knew was doing freelance Slayer work. Either the hunter wasn't too badly hurt, or he'd been hauled off by the dusted vampire's friends. She listened again, but there was only the breeze in the leaves.

This was getting annoying. Time to get the inside information on any new players in town.

Willie handed Buffy a non-alcoholic, non-demonic strawberry daquiri. He glanced nervously at the rest of the barroom, then went back to wiping glasses. "So, what are you looking for tonight, Slayer?"

"Hey, I could just be stopping by for a drink and a visit." She pouted at his disbelieving look. "It could happen!"

"Yeah, sure, kid." He looked at the crowd again. "At least none of the heavy hitters are in tonight. Nobody here wants to have any trouble with the Slayer."

Buffy checked the room in the mirror. Vampires wouldn't show up, of course, but she had ntose handy Slayer senses for them. All she saw were furtive, quiet demons, some of whom were giving her dirty looks, some of whom just looked scared.

"I"m not looking for trouble, honest. I'm just--" She slumped. "I'm the bogeyman. People find out who I am and they're afraid."

Willie pulled up a stool on the other side of the bar. "Well, you are the Slayer, kid. Not likely to be on the side of the demons."

"I'm the Vampire Slayer. Slayer of creatures who want to munch humans. That's a good thing, right?"

He nodded. "I'm for not getting munched."

"I met some Minoto demons a few months ago, they were nice. I know there are others like that. But I never get to meet the nice demons."

"This is the Hellmouth, kid. Definitely the bad side of demon town. In LA and such, now, you get the good places, nightclubs and such, where you don't have to worry about brawls."

She grinned at Willie's wistful look. "Oh, you'd miss it."

"Probably."

"But it does sound nice."

"They don't send Slayers to places like that, though," Willie went on. "You're the cops, and cops only go where there's trouble. But the thing with cops, they deal with troublemakers all the time, and pretty soon that's all they see, troublemakers. You see a demon, you expect him to be up to something, and sometime's he's just out for a latte."

Buffy blinked. "Demons like lattes?"

"Lattes?" said a new voice behind her. "Did you get the cappacino machine fixed, Willie?"

"Sorry, Clem, still down," Willie said.

Buffy turned and stared at the grinning, floppy-eared, floppy-skinned, floppy--well, floppy person. He held out a hand, still grinning.

"Hi, I'm Clem."

She shook his hand carefully. "Hi. I'm Buffy."

Clem hopped onto a stool. "We don't get a lot of humans in here. I just wanted to come up and say Hi."

"How did you know I'm human?"

He nodded at the mirror. "Refleciton, so you're not a vampire. Body temperature is human normal. But if you're not human, that's cool, too."

Willie put a glass of something in front of Clem. "Here ya go. When you expecting the guys in for the game?"

"They should start rolling in any time now."

Willie looked apologetically at Buffy. "Unless you do want some excitement, kid, you might want to be somewhere else when the poker players show up. None of 'em much like Slayers."

Buffy glared at the barkeep as Clem gasped. She'd kind of enjoyed her anonymity.

"You're the Slayer?" Clem whispered. "But you're tiny! The Slayer's this gigantic, super- powered, vamp slaying machine."

She shrugged uncomfortably. "Nope, sorry. It's me."

Clem grinned. "This is so neat! Me, chatting with the Slayer. The guys will plotz."

Buffy blinked. "You're not--scared?"

"Nah, you've got no reason to come after me, I'm not up to anything."

"Except you're a demon."

"So?" He lost some of his mellow look. "Or do the Slayers go after anything that's not human?"

She shrugged. "If they do, I wasn't told. I'm fine."

"Well, if you're fine, I'm fine." He leaned closer. "But Willie's right, some of the guys, not as civilized as some. They wouldn't understand."

"Gotcha. Willie, before I go, is there anybody in town doing the rogue demon hunter bit? Somebody's out there dusting vampires that isn't me."

Willie shrugged. "I ain't heard of nobody."

"Oh, I have!" Clem said. "There's a bunch of guys wandering aorund with crossbows and guns. They don't seem to like much of anybody." He shivered, which did amazing things to various bits of him. "Don't want to deal with a bunch like that again."

Buffy wanted to ask for more information, but Williw was starting to look truly nervous. For a moment she was tempted to see what these tough guy poker players were like, but she didn't want to get into a brawl just now.

She nodded reassuringly to Willie. "I'll be heading out then, see what's out there." She headed for the door.

Willie nodded. "See ya later, kid. Be careful!"

Clem waved. "Don't be a stranger!"

She waved back.

Demons as normal people. After meeting the Minoto at the convent, that shouldn't be such a surprise. Why hadn't she been told about the good demons? Was it some policy of the Council, that there weren't any good demons? Or had it been simply that there wasn't time, between atrocities being committed by the bad demons. And the bad humans. She didn't have time now to go through the books, learn for herself which ones were the ones to worry about and which ones were just floppy guys who liked lattes.

CLEM!!!!! Oh Connie - how perfect. So, where was he hiding the kittens?

That's great, Connie. Clem's great.

Loving Clem, connie.

erika, more, please. I love this so much.

Plei, I don't know whether I love or hate the letters TBC. I want to scream when I read the next thing and it's TBC. But then--more! TBC! Yay!

Thank you. And Deena, that's the coolest icon..."Our day begins when yours ends!" Hee.

I did write more today...more Munchness.

So, what finally sealed his fate was being an arrogant dick.Courtesy could save your life. Remember that. The part of him I hated most(apart from hurting my friends, which you know I can’t forgive, not that forgiveness is a big part of my tool kit anyway...I’m undead, why bullshit? The only people I would ever forgive were on that floor.)

The part of him I hated most was in me. Not the bigotry. But the whole “hassled by the Man” thing. The ranting...the intellectual pretensions. The mouth that writes checks my ass can’t cash.The slightly...atypical physical appearance. (Ok, he was ugly. But I’m not prepared to admit to that...I’ve admitted to sucking blood...throw me a bone, okay, babe?) Looking at him was like looking into a freaky funhouse mirror.

And I stood outside his door and blew his head off. It was quick if not clean. I didn’t torture him, though I thought about it. Although, remember, Mrs. Bernstein’s terrier only gave me about fifteen minutes. Tortures in that amount of time usually involve partial nudity, in my experience. And that, I wasn’t prepared for. I didn’t leave a trace. And Sheila at dispatch owed me a favor...I’d declined to meet her sister when she was last in town.(Although, people say that enough a guy gets a complex, nu? Even if he isn’t a guy anymore.) It would’ve been funny if I could’ve breathed. Me, a conspiracy nut, starting a conspiracy. But I didn’t breathe deep for a week after Timmy put it up in red. I felt kind of guilty playing the “Don’t you trust me?” card when he was right not to.

(I say a lot of things “Trust me,” “Let’s get married.” “There’s nobody else but you, babe.” But a guy like Timmy never says anything he doesn’t mean...I think that’s how he’s so quiet. A word like trust is forever. I hated to fuck with that. I tease him, but I think he’s lucky. He kept my secret...I think he even convinced himself he believed me. My guess? Not Norman Rockwell at Chateau Bayliss. But we’re all birth survivors, huh(Damn, still got Howard on the brain. But that’s not my worst demonstration of that.)

When I get home from the rooftop, Dru is there. Darla’s not.(Which is another “Be careful what you wish for.” Because when I would hide stuff at the end of my marriages, I used to think that I would do anything to avoid that whole “Where were you?/obnoxious lie” thing. But now, I have the balls to be offended. What? Doesn’t she care?) I am deeply mentally ill.

Speaking of, Drusilla’s face lights up when she sees me, making her green eyes look amazing(although of course I have a soft spot, or maybe a hard spot.. for brown) She’s wearing a filmy white nightgown that lets me know she doesn’t have a shape like Shana. “Hi, honey.” I say.

She starts burbling away about something, not a vision, one of those creepy stories about William Somebody and “Daddy”...and who listens. But I act like I do. “Uh huh”

Then the story runs out of steam and she pecks my cheek. And the next thing I know, I’m kissing her like a man kisses a woman. She tries to,(I’m guessing here) talk dirty to me. But she uses words I’m not familiar with like “honeypot”...although of course, I get the general vicinity.

“Shh, don’t talk.”(She’s not the point, anyway. I hate to say that, but it’s true.) But it’s not really obvious to me until things heat up and I say “Oh, my God! Oh, Kay!”(Told you I was slow.)

JESUS, erika.