Replacing the Zippo

You decided to spend the summer looking into Sunnydale's supernatural community. You knew it had to exist. There was Willy's Bar, for one, and the magic shop that you knew was heavily frequented. The only question was how to get in on that. You ended up bouncing ideas about where to look for people who knew the truth about Sunnydale with Marcie. You would have liked to do it with Willow, but you knew that she wouldn't be happy about you poking your nose into things while Buffy was out of town.

You ended up starting with Willy's Bar as a place that you knew you could visit relatively safely and find others in. The magic shop would be safer, but figuring out who was in the know and who wasn't would be a lot trickier. You looked around, noting the various beings populating the bar. You quickly hit a second realization: you had no idea how to tell who was safe to approach and who wasn't. You knew that demons that were relatively peaceful existed. You just didn't know how to identify them. You just kept on running into problems. It felt like things were going against you.

This was only the start of summer though, you weren't going to turn around and give up this fast.

[ ]Focus on magic users
[ ]Try to borrow books from Giles to identify demon species
[ ]Try to just strike up conversation
[ ]Write-in

You headed into the library. It felt so weird entering school during the summer. Like you were breaking some kind of taboo and there would be terrible consequences. You did your best not to think about how likely something like that was in Sunnydale and looked around for Giles. Lucky for you, he was there, going through his books.

"Hey G-man!"

"Goodness! Xander, what brings you here?" Giles looked at you in confusion.

"Thought I'd ask if I could borrow some of your books. Catch up on my demons." You finger gunned at him. "I'm not great at research, so I thought I'd try and get it in ahead of time."

"While I appreciate the academic interest, this isn't a game."

"I thought I proved I was serious about this?"

Giles took off his glasses and cleaned them. "Yes, but you are neither the Slayer, nor a Watcher. Enough to stay safe is all you require."

"I'm not going to stay safe, Giles." You stared at him determinedly. "Remember Marcie? Jesse? Sunnydale isn't safe, and I'm not going to stand back. Not even if...not even if it goes wrong." You swallowed silently. Yeah, you weren't going to walk away from the dangers.

Giles studied you carefully. "Hm. Well, you have been helpful in sorting through the books, and Buffy is away for now."

You pumped a fist. "Summer studies, got it! Thanks G-man." You beelined over to the books and started to dig through them.

You didn't really have a clue where to start, but you weren't going to let that stop you. You had to admit to being rather surprised when you found out that incubi and succubi did not, in fact, have to kill in order to feed, and could have symbiotic relationships, though there was a warning that more ambitious and powerful ones found power in killing as they fed. A cuclidus demon was an interesting one, it presented itself as a child and fed off the affection its hypnotized parental figures gave it. The real problem was it would only take a single target at a time, and they would exhaust themselves to death caring for it. Brachen demons were mentioned in the books, though you didn't think you had seen any at Willy's bar.

Armed with new knowledge you felt much more confident about picking out who to hang out with at Willy's.

[ ]Ask Willow to help you befriend people at Willy's. She is likely to balk, but Buffy's not here, so she'll give in
[ ]Ask Marcie to come along. You still want to include her, and invisible back up is useful
[ ]Go by yourself to see the demons. You feel better doing this on your own
[ ]Write-in