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''What?'' Giles asked. ''Oh. Good
morning, Luke.'' Giles switched
the phone to his other ear.
''So,'' Luke asked, ''What is the
world's Number One Watcher up to?
Researching prophecies? Preparing to train the Slayer?''
''Uh, well, actually, he's, uh,
watching Emeril LaGasse,'' Giles
admitted.
''Oh. You mean the guy that goes
'BAM!'?'' Luke asked, doing his
best Emeril impression, including yelling the one-word catchphrase
as
loudly as possible. Giles winced and switched the phone again.
''Luke, please, it's early.''
''It's already eight thirty.''
''Not according to my West Coast-trained body.''
''Oh. Yeah. Speaking of which,
did *Angela* get to school on
time?'' Luke asked, again emphasizing the Port Charles alternate identity.
''Uh, yes, I drove her myself.''
Luke made a sorry-you're-incorrect
buzzer sound. ''Rupert, man, you
don't do that! You don't drive your kid to school on the first day
unless
you wanna singlehandedly label them a geek!''
''Buffy is not here to be popular, she is here to hunt vampires!''
Luke sighed. ''Man, Rupert, you're
still no fun. And don't tell me
about how you're no there to be fun, either.''
**********
Buffy, at the moment, was experiencing
deja vu, as she stooped to
pick up the books she'd dropped and a boy about her age knelt to help
her.
< At least this time, I didn't drop any vamp stuff. >
''Thanks,'' she said as the boy
passed her biology notebook. She
made a face at it. ''I think.''
He laughed. ''I hear ya. Oh, I'm Lucky Spencer.''
''Bu - uh, Angela. Marsters.''
< Angela. I'll kill Luke for this
one. >
''Nice to meet you, Angela,'' Lucky
said, not noticing as Buffy
winced slightly. ''What class do you have next?''
''Huh? Class? Oh, um . . .'' Buffy
located her schedule. ''English,
with Murty.''
''Me, too.'' Lucky smiled. Buffy
smiled back, then something
clicked. ''Wait, Spencer? As in Luke Spencer?''
''How do you know him? He's my
dad,'' Lucky explained. Buffy
suddenly wondered how much, if anything, Lucky knew.
''Oh, he's friends with my, um,
dad.'' < Giles my dad? Luke is
going down. >
''Oh. We better get to class,''
Lucky was saying. ''Murty's pretty
decent, but he can get evil if you're late.''
''What? . . . Oh. Yeah. Evil. Bad.''
Buffy offered a half smile.
''Sorry. I'm not an airhead, it's just, first day in a new school and
all
. . .''
''Yeah. I've had a lot of first days.''
Mr. Murty glanced up as Lucky and Buffy walked through the door.
''Hi,'' he said. ''Who's your friend, Lucky?''
''Oh, she's new here -'' Lucky began.
''Of course,'' Murty interrupted,
talking mostly to himself, ''I
got that memo. Welcome to my class, Angela.''
''*Please* don't call me that!''
Buffy burst out, trying
frantically to think of a nickname for Angela that didn't involve
''Angel.'' ''A . . . An . . . Anne! Call me Anne.''
Murty gave her a curious smile.
''All right. Anne it is.'' Buffy
smiled back. ''Thanks.''
''Great,'' she muttered to Lucky
as they sat down. ''Between
wigging about my name and getting driven to school by my dad, I'm pretty
much the geek of the school now, huh?''
'''Fraid so. Only for a couple
of days, though. Then something
weird will happen and everybody'll forget about it. This is a weird
town,'' Lucky told her.
< Another weird town. Fun. >
At that moment, a couple of girls,
one blonde and one brunette, sat
down and said hi to Lucky.
''Hi. This is Anne Marsters.''
Lucky gestured to Buffy. ''This is
Lizzie and Sarah Webber.'' Buffy looked curiously at Sarah.
''You seem awfully familiar . .
.'' she said before Sarah could ask
why she was staring - which she was.
''Oh,'' Sarah said. ''I don't think
we've met. I'd remember; I have
a good memory for faces.''
''Oh.'' Then Buffy remembered where
she recognized her from; she
looked amazingly like one of the kids who'd been possessed by hyenas
that
time.
''Nice to meet you,'' she whispered
to the Webbers as class
started.
The three strange vampires had long ago given up attempts at initiating
a
conversation, as Spike and Angelus had systematically frozen out each
one,
earning and ignoring sporadic dirty looks. Now, finally, they
were being lead
away into their own room. Both of them groaned inwardly as they
realized the
implication of the two beds - they'd be sharing the room.
Spike, ever mindful of his alleged weakness, made a show of dropping
wearily
onto the nearest bed, letting his steel cane - not wood, for obvious
reasons -
fall to the floor. Angelus walked casually to the other bed,
exhausted but
not inclined to show it.
"When was the last time we shared a room?" he mused, punching his pillow
into
shape and laying down.
"That one-room hovel in England, I think," Spike replied, then, "Oh,
bloody
hell."
"What? Oh." Angelus spotted what Spike had seen - a large
crucifix hanging
at the other end of the room. "Great."
The matter wasn't really pursued; if she wanted a crucifix in their
room, it
was her decision, and there wasn't much they could do about it.
Spike thought absently over the events of the past day or so.
All new
vampires were generally stupid, but this batch! - suddenly something
occurred
to him.
"Angelus."
"Yeah." Angelus had closed his eyes and didn't bother to open
them to answer
Spike.
"Was I *that* bloody stupid when I was young?"
Angelus chuckled. "You were pretty damn full of it sometimes,
but you were
never really stupid. Maybe I'm getting old" - that said with
a sardonic tone
- "but it seems like the young ones are just getting stupider."
Spike agreed
wholeheartedly with that, but said nothing.
Time passed. Spike, half asleep, tried to remember the last time
there had
been so little of the heavy, and - on Angelus's part - sarcastic, tension
between them. It was always there, of course, underlining everything,
but it
hadn't been as sharp since they'd arrived in Port Charles. Something
about
presenting a united front to strangers, he supposed . . . Suddenly,
both
vampires were jolted awake by a knock on the door. Spike fumbled
for his
cane; Angelus got up and answered the door.
She walked in.
"Hello, boys. Have a nice visit with the others?" Angelus
nodded mutely.
Spike contained a smile; it never failed to amuse him, the effect she
had on
his normally unabashable sire.
She smiled. "Lovely. Any questions you need to ask, any
problems to air
out?"
Angelus's glance slid toward the crucifix, but he again remained silent;
everyone knew that the invitation was merely a formality. Her
judgment was
not to be questioned.
Spike spoke up anyway.
"I have a question." She looked at him sharply and seemed to size
him up
before replying,
"Yes, Spike?" Angelus couldn't believe his ears; where was this coming from??
"Why did you specifically request that Drusilla not accompany us to
Port
Charles?" A blatant questioning of her pronouncement! Angelus
waited for her
to order Spike executed, or possibly even do it herself.
She didn't.
Instead, she replied slowly, "Drusilla's presence here would . . . interfere
with the plans." She turned on her heel and walked out.
Angelus was utterly speechless. Spike, amused, watched him struggle
for
words. Finally, he blurted,
"What's with this pet status you have with her?!"
Spike replied matter-of-factly,
"Those of us who kill Slayers instead of bedding them have this irritating
tendency to earn her respect." For once, he could afford to ignore
Angelus's
growl of anger as he returned to bed; as long as Spike was in her favor,
Angelus could do nothing against him.
After about a thousand years, Mr. Murty dismissed the class.
"Break time!" announced Lucky cheerfully. "Anne, you wanna hang with us?"
Buffy smiled. "Sure, I'll be right out, okay?"
"Okay, we'll wait," said Lizzie.
Buffy lingered over packing her things into her backpack until the room
was
empty. Murty had given her several weird looks during class,
and her Slayer-
honed sense of weirdness was screaming in protest.
"Anne," said Murty as Buffy approached his desk. "Uh - you probably
noticed
that I was looking at you rather oddly. I apologize. It's
just that you seem
incredibly familiar, and I can't place it."
"Oh," replied Buffy, slightly taken aback by Murty's bringing it up
first.
"Well - what's your first name?"
"Theodore. I go be Ted, though," he added. Buffy winced.
"What?" he asked.
"The name Ted brings up really bad memories - So, Theodore Murty?
I'll ask
my, um, dad." Buffy ducked quickly out of the room.
**********
Buffy somehow got through the rest of the day without doing anything
too
seriously goofy. Most of the people she met seemed okay, but
she wasn't
fooled. Cruelty in high school after all, is a constant.
She liked Lucky and Lizzie, though. Sarah was a bit vacuous and
overly
perfect for her tastes, but Lucky was genuinely nice, with a
quick sense of
humor; he reminded Buffy ever so slightly of Xander. Lizzie,
though, was
practically the antithesis of Willow; she was friendly, but rather
sarcastic
and a bit cynical, not to mention that her mere presence caused a computer
to
self-destruct. She was actually not entirely unlike Buffy herself.
Lucky was
the computetr expert, as Buffy discovered during the science period
spent in
the computer lab when he easily cleaned up after Lizzie's inadvertent
wave of
destruction.
After school, Buffy slipped out back, just in case Giles decided he
needed to
pick her up, too, and headed for Luke's Club. She was fairly
surprised to
meet up with Lucky there.
"Hey," he said in greeting, also surprised. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm, uh, meeting my dad here," Buffy invented.
"Oh," Lucky said as the door to the club flew open, startling both of them.
"I see you two have met," Luke remarked by way of greeting. "Come
in. How
was your first day, Angela?"
"Call me Anne." Buffy put her backpack on a table. "And it was fine."
"Good. I had a feeling you two would hook up. Cowboy here -"
"*Dad!*" protested Lucky.
"Oops. Embarrassing parental nickname," he explained to Buffy,
who grinned.
"Sorry," he continued. "*Lucky* here has good taste," Luke concluded,
leaving
Buffy to draw her own meaning from that statement while pretendng not
to
notice that Lucky had gone crimson with embarrassment.
:Listen, Anne," Luke said a moment later, "your dad wrote this note
for me,
but, well, you know how his handwriting is." Buffy thought of
Giles's
meticulous handwriting and hid a smile. "Could you come out back
and help me
decipher it?"
"I'll try," Buffy answered, following Luke into his office. He
closed the
door behind her and said,
"I don't want Lucky getting involved in this."
"Neither do I."
"It's just you, me, and Rupert."
"Absolutely," she agreed, thinking of everything Willow, Xander, and
Cordelia
had gone through because they knew she was the Slayer.
"Absolutely what?" asked Giles, walking in.
"We're starting over here," Buffy told him. "I don't want anyone else
getting
stuck in this this time."
"Agreed," Giles said firmly. Buffy turned to leave, but something
occurred to
her.
"Oh, Giles, my English teacher said he though he knew me from someplace,
and I
thought maybe you'd know him," she said.
"Yes? What's his name?"
"Theodore Murty."
Giles started. "*Here?* Ted Murty is here?"
"Apparently you do know him."
"Yes." Giles removed his glasses. "Ted Murty is a retired watcher."