Its the first day of the new fall semester at Marshall University, and all is as normal as can be. As normal, that is, as any town with a Hellmouth ever gets. For Natalie Osbourne, her first day of class is uneventful, but the night is a different story.

Driven by her Slayer-instincts, Natalie patrols the campus, and encounters a pack of three Vampires who are intent on making a meal of MU employee, Heather Burns. Natalie attacks the Vampires, who didn't count on having to face a Slayer. Soon, one of the Vamps is dust, and the other two have escaped...right into the path of Xander who sends them packing to the AFTER-after-life. Xander makes a hasty introduction, and over a late meal, explains the whole Slayer deal to Natalie, and tells her that he is now her Watcher... a conversation overheard by Ramone, and his new friend Mitran.

The following day, she meets with Xander at the Morrow Library, and he goes over some of the finer points of slayage with her. Soon, Mitran and Ramone arrive and confess that they overheard the conversation about vampires, demons, slayers and hellmouths. Knowing he's busted, Xander fesses up, letting the pair in on the secret.

That night, Natalie, accompanyed by Xander and Heather, goes out on her first official patrol, which finishes up at the Spring Hill cemetery. Soon, the trio runs headfirst into the spazzy Twitch, and Dorian Cray, an event that leads to Xander getting sprayed with Twitch's super-soaker filled with Garlic extract. As the small group bickered, a quartet of vampires appeared almost out of nowhere, and attacked. As the group fended them off, another person appeared, a girl named Beth Riel, who brought the fight to the vampires, and helped even the odds.

Soon, all four vamps were blowing in the wind, and the now far-larger group decided to celebrate at IHOP, where they encountered the rough-looking bounty-hunter, Dwane Stevens, and Mitran expressed a thinly-veiled interest in Xander. Afterwards, the group returned to campus and went their seperate ways for the evening. Once there, Beth returned to Laidley Hall where she noticed 5 very odd individuals heading out into the night. 3 young men, and two young women, all dressed in a similar fashion, all with blue eyes and blonde hair. Beth shrugged it off and went to her room for the night.

Natalie( to a Vamp she has pinned on the floor ): "...why would you go chasing helpless girls around campus when you could meet a nice one at a bar?"

Heather: "Slayer! You're going to need this! ( tosses her a sharpened yardstick )
Natalie: "Huh?"
Heather: "Stab him in the HEART!"
Natalie: "Oh! Okay!" ( stakes vamp )

Natalie: "I let two of them get away...thought it was more important to help Heather here."
Xander: "Well, I took care of them with my trusty axe. Now all they are, is dust in the wind."

Natalie: "Most humans don't like the smell of Garlic either." ( comment made following Xander's description of Vamp vulnerabilities )
Xander: "Except for Italians."
Natalie: "I kinda feel sorry for Italian Vampires then."

( Upon seeing Dwayne and his large handgun, Twitch posits to the group that perhaps he owns a Comic-Shop. )
Mitran: "Yes, you, Filthy Harry. What is the Flash's real name?"
Dwane: "Dwane. My name is Dwane."
Mitran ( to Twitch ): "No, he don't run a Comic-Shop."

Mitran: "I wanted to talk about your Watching."
Xander: "Oh...okay."
Mitran: "Do you like to watch? Have you done it long?"

A regular patrol at the cemetery reveals Dwane to be a Werewolf Hunter. But, before this has time to soak in, the most pathetic vampire to perhaps ever NOT draw breath emerges from his grave, and is immediately hoisted into the air courtesy of Ramone's telekenesis. Natalie decided to play detective and question the vampire about who his sire was, but Twitch offed the sad creature with a crossbow bolt, much to Natalie's annoyance.

Afterwards, the group went to Dwights to eat, where Mitran switched out Twitch's regular coffee with decaf. Soon, Twitch was asleep, and Natalie stashed the insensiate teen in the hummer, while the rest of them went on to have a nice conversation. Later, upon returning to her dorm, Beth again noticed the strange quintet of co-eds marching their blonde heads into the night. The following day saw Ramone use his unique teleketic abilities to assist Natalie in her training, honing her skills against multiple attacks.

A bit later, Beth paid a visit, and told the group about the mysterious co-eds. Curious, Xander sent Beth to go speak to Heather about looking into the quintet's campus activities. Heather easily dug up the dirt on the co-eds, and they found out that each of them hailed from a town with some sort of supernatural connection. What's more, they all took the same classes, and visited the same online chatrooms where the topics were of a mystic bent. This knowledge made Xander even more suspicious, and he called up Giles to help confirm his suspicions.

After a brief conversation, and the revelation to the group that Xander had a pool, Xander told them of a demon called Moloch the Corruptor. Evidently this demon's essence had been freed from the book in which it had been bound for centuries, and set loose in cyberspace. Moloch went on to corrupt several students at Sunnydale High, including Xander's best friend, Willow. Eventually, after downloading his conciousness into a Robot body, Moloch was defeated by Buffy. However, it now looked as if Moloch was making set to return once more. Mitran volunteered to befriend the co-eds if he could, and Xander agreed that the idea was sound. Mitran was successful in gaining their trust, thanks to his occult knowledge, and the quintet invited him along for the final phase of their plans.

Later, as Twitch hammered out a workable plan to ensnare Moloch, the scoobies followed Mitran to St. Cloud Commons, the baseball field on the west side of town, where the co-eds would at last invoke the demon. As the group began their incantations, a dimensional portal opened up, which produced the quintet's insurance policy, a towering Fyarl Demon. As Twitch activated his snare, trapping Moloch in his scratch-built intranet, the scoobies attacked, and finally killed the Fyarl demon, thanks to Ramone's telekenesis, and Dwane's hearty supply of silver bullets. Following the battle, Natalie gently tended to Ramone's bloody nose, while Mitran tried to comfort the shocked group of co-eds, promising them that in the end it would all prove to be for the best.

Xander ( Watching the hapless, bouncing Vamp ): "Anyone else have the urge to start singing to some non-existent lyrics?"

Dwane ( Speaking about his silver-bullets ): "I make them myself."
Twitch: "So you're like the Lone Ranger? Do you leave a silver-bullet with the townspeople when you've driven off the bad guys?"
Dwane: "Um, sometimes."
Mitran: "Do you ride Tonto off into the sunset?"

Twitch: "...so, this place is built on an optical hub! So, so, what we do..."
Mitran: "What? We give all the undead DSL?"

Teddy - OOC: "Twitch introduces a new ritual: Tantric Cyber-Sex."
Bryan - OOC: "I can keep typing for DAYS."

Ramone, who has worked hard to further hone his abilities as a warlock, unveils his new training program for the Slayer: the Supernatural Magically Augmented Reactive Training Autonomous Slayer Spirit, or S.M.A.R.T.A.S.S for short (Or, simply ASS to be even more brief). Ramone explains that these ominous-looking training aids are actually spirit manifestations, held to a humanoid shape via the one-piece black bodysuits he has altered, and are capable of giving the Slayer a real workout. In short order, Natalie finds a single ASS to be a formidable sparring partner, even when Mitran decides to fight at her side.

As the training session winds down, Xander browses the Herald Dispatch police-blotter, as he often does, and discovers that a Marshall-student had gone missing the night before. Soon, Heather catches word on the radio that the student's body had been found, and pokes around in the school's records to get more info on the unfortunate boy. Later, at Xander's suggestion Natalie and Heather go to the city morgue to both check the body for signs of vampirism, and to ID his corpse as well. The scoobies hope that if, as they suspect, the dead boy will rise as a vampire, they can track him back to his sire, and perhaps greatly lessen the local vampire population.

Later that night, the group decides split their usual patrol. Xander, Dwane, and crew watch the Spring Hill Cemetery, as Heather and Natalie stake-out the morgue. As all of this unfolds, Ramone remains at the Library to prep a newly-researched vampire locator spell.

Sure enough, the dead student rises as a vampire, and shuffles his way out of the morgue, where Natalie silently trails him back towards town. Soon, Ramone's successfully casts the locator-spell, and he quickly notifies the rest of the gang that the results indicate a sizable nest of Vamps in the old, Steel-Mill near campus. Xander and the others gather him on their way to the abandoned Mill.

There, they meet up with Natalie and Heather, who inform them that the newly-risen student has indeed gone inside the mill, where a group of Vampires were waiting. Working quickly, they formulate a plan to fight the vamps. They hurry back to the Library, where they gather most of Xander's stakes, and affix them to the front of Dwane's hummer (Can you hear the A-Team theme music?). They return to the Steel Mill, where Natalie nails one of the Vamps with a well-placed arrow, dusting him in an instant. Then, the rest of the scoobies charge in, dusting another of the shocked vamps with the stakes on the hummer.

The gang piles out and the battle is joined. Xander himself beheading one vamp with a single swipe of his axe, while other vamps fall victim to the surprise ambush. A pair of the vamps, who had been cowering behind some equipment, manage to escape, and Natalie and Mitran pursue them across the parking lot, past the bank, and towards the parking building. Beth and Twitch corner the last vamp in the Steel Mill, and Twitch is astounded when Beth pins the wounded vamp to the concrete floor with a single thrust of her sword.

Duane, with Ramone in tow, roars out of the Mill, and drives up onto the fleeing vamps, knocking one to the ground. Ramone chants, and tosses his backpack ahead of the fleeing Vamp. The undead creature freezes in shock and terror when 3 of the ASSes rise to their full height in front of him, in full kill-mode. The ASSes proceed to tear him apart, and as Mitran and Natalie catch up, they kill the second.

The group returns to the Mill, where they interrogate the remaining vampire until they are satisfied he's honest about the fact that they have already slain the vamps responsible for most of the recent sirings. That done, they quickly dust the whistle-blower. Soon, Twitch is rambling on about Beth possibly being a slayer as well, which Xander immediately refutes. Ramone uses his sharpened senses and detects that Beth has no heartbeat, and her body is the same temperature as the surrounding air. This sends Twitch into a panic, and Xander tells Beth that she should probably tell them the truth about herself. Beth relents, and spills the beans about her undead origins.

Feeling that the time for secrets was past, Dwane revealed his werewolf form to the startled Scoobies, which causes Twitch to collapse, held in the grip of a psychotic episode brought about due to his paranoia. As they worked to calm Twitch, the scoobies each pondered on how best to handle these shocking revelations, and the changes they would almost certainly bring.

Twitch ( Watching as Natalie and Mitran spar ): "Wow. She floats like a butterfly, stings like a truck!"

Ramone: "Meet the Supernatural Magically Augmented Reactive Training Autonomous Slayer Spirit, or S.M.A.R.T.A.S.S for short."
Mitran: "So, who gets to fight your Ass?"

Twitch ( To a rushing Vamp ): "Suck ASH, purveyor of...STUFF!"

Mitran ( Pondering the Slayage ): "Demons sure are easier to kill than Vampires. With Vampires, you have to stake and hang em, and dance naked with garlic in your mouth."

Xander ( Runs up to the Hummer, huffing and puffing, now noticing the ASSes have slain the escaped vamps ): "Well... I'm here now. And I can see... that I could have stayed where I was."