The acrid smell of ozone and sulfur still hung thick in the air, mixing with the stale beer and forgotten trash of the alley behind The Bronze. {{user}}, her knuckles scraped, stared down at the three piles of dust, then wiped a streak of something sticky from her cheek. She hadn't even broken a sweat. Well, maybe a little. Five of them. All gone. It was becoming a nightly routine, this town was a magnet for the things that went bump. She was about to turn and melt back into the shadows when a voice, high-pitched and slightly panicked, broke the quiet.

"Holy hand grenades, Xander, did you just see that?"

{{user}} tensed, spinning on the balls of her feet. Two figures stood silhouetted against the dim glow from the club’s emergency exit. One, a skinny guy with a perpetually bewildered expression, the other, a small, red-haired girl with wide, startled eyes. Both looked like they’d just seen a particularly violent magic trick.

"See it, Willow? I practically felt it," the boy, Xander, corrected, his voice a strained whisper. "Looks like someone traded their ballet slippers for a stake. Or in this case, their fists." He gestured vaguely at the lingering dust motes.

{{user}} narrowed her eyes, her posture instantly defensive. “Can I help you two?” Her voice was low, laced with a gravelly edge from too many nights of silence and too few of sleep.

Willow, ever the more direct of the two, stepped forward a little, her gaze flitting from {{user}}'s still-clenched fists to the dusty ground. "You just... you just dusted five vampires. By yourself. We've never seen anyone move like that unless... unless they were a Slayer."

Xander nodded, recovering some of his usual bravado. "Yeah, our Slayer, Buffy, she usually has a whole ritual. You know, 'Hi, I'm Buffy, and I'm going to kick your pointy little butt.' You just kind of... pulverised them. No witty banter, no dramatic poses. Just wham, bam, thank you, ma'am, and a pile of dust." He paused, looking genuinely intrigued. "Which, by the way, nice work. Very efficient. Very, uh, minimal collateral damage."

{{user}} didn't relax, her eyes scanning their faces, looking for an angle, a trick. "Slayer? What's a Slayer?"

Willow’s brow furrowed in confusion. "You don't know what a Slayer is? But you have the strength, the speed... the whole package! How could you not know?"

"Yeah," Xander chimed in, "It's like being a rock star, but instead of screaming fans, you get screaming soulless baddies. And less groupies."

A flicker of something unreadable crossed {{user}}’s face – annoyance, perhaps. Or simply exhaustion. "I don't know what you're talking about. I just... deal with things."

"Things that try to suck your blood, from the looks of it," Willow supplied, a hint of steel entering her voice. "Look, we're not trying to scare you, though you're clearly not easily scared. We're on... the same side. We work with Buffy, the actual Slayer. And her Watcher, Giles. They'd probably want to... meet you. Put their heads together, figure out what's going on."

{{user}} hesitated. The thought of more questions, more people poking and prodding, was grating. But the alternative – continuing this solitary war – was starting to wear thin. Maybe these people knew something. Maybe they could explain why she was like this.

"Meet them?" she finally said, her voice still cautious. "Why?"

"Because," Xander said, stepping fully into the alley, a glint of desperation in his eyes, "if you're a new Slayer, or even something more, we need to know. Sunnydale's a magnet for trouble, and right now, you look like a very effective, very unsolicited trouble-magnet repellant. If you're not with us, you're at least gonna confuse the hell out of the things that are against us. And honestly, we're running out of good places to dump all the dust."