madimpossibledreamer

        Wendell Sears shows up, explaining that he’s sick of security guard pay oh and also he’d heard about the Sunnydale Survivor t-shirts and could he please get one?  He is very good at his job and when he and Kate are tag-teaming it’s a really bad time for any of the customers to get grabby.  They become a pretty great team, joking around when it’s appropriate and professional on the job.  He doesn’t go on any of the missions, preferring to ‘protect the fort’, but he’s also on-call for any of the Slayer trainees in the housing.  He also may or may not be training magical sea spiders to protect their island, but Xander has decided that he doesn’t want to know about that.  So if Willow ever asks him if someone’s misbehaving, he doesn’t have to answer honestly.

        Even then, he does go for a tattoo—a spider and a spiderweb, and he’s completely willing to fight with the others for training purposes.  Over the years, smaller spiders appear over his back, sides, shoulders…

        It’s awkward when Heidi Barrie and Billy Crandle join up, because Heidi knows exactly what’s going on with the whole hyena motif.  “Look, being vegan and hurting bad people have nothing to do with each other,” she points out, and they become the feared ashigaru snipers.  They don’t delight in the fighting as the rest of the family does, which also means they get uncannily good at ending it without excess suffering.  They do convert a few of the Slayers to also being vegan, but are generally quiet and friendly (unless they join one of the family’s game nights; then they get competitive).

       They get matching tattoos—some flowers and a weird vine-creature motif.  Most have only seen them once.

          The first thing Xander says when he walks out and sees Aura sitting next to Andrew on his doorstep is “Don’t tell me there’s two ‘a ya now.”
          “All right,” she responds cheerfully and goes back to tapping away on her phone.
          He sighs, sounding upset, and Andrew squirms.
          “Why is there two of you now?” he repeats, frustrated, fiddling with his eyepatch, and Aura looks up again.
          “Cordy didn’t stop worrying about you just because she didn’t feel equipped to handle you,” she explains.  “I on the other hand have spent the last decade or so scheduling all the Cordettes and tackling their issues.  Compared to them, looking out for you should be a breeze.”
          He stares, mutters something about meddlers, goes back inside for a cup of coffee, and rejoins them after a few sips.  “Buffy is in charge.  Don’t get in the way.”
          “Sounds good,” she agrees.

          After talking to Andrew (she refuses to call him Annie-chan even if she thinks it’s funny), Aura goes and gets a tattoo started herself.  She waits, unlike Andrew, until it’s done before she shows it off.  There’s a long silence when she does, and she looks over her shoulder to see him staring, eye wide and shocked.  It had been a gamble showing him, but given that he’s not leering at her, seemingly a good one.  “What the hell,” he eventually mutters.
          “And still the raven remains in my room, no matter how much I implore,” she begins singing, and the look gets even more disturbed.
          “I didn’t know you were such a fan of Poe, or Alan Parsons Project,” he manages eventually, intimidated.
          “It was either that or a bad penny, considering you can’t get rid of me, and I’m not putting a penny on my back,” she tells him cheerfully, and he looks torn between laughing and crying.