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Alec gets to school a little early the day after the storm. It was on the news out of L.A. - 'freak storm causes damage in Sunnydale'. He's pretty proud of that spell.

He's looking around to see if a certain new student is around. You know, to make sure she knows where to go and everything.

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"Oh, anything! What sorts of things you like aside from magic, favorite classes or books or movies or whatever. Any girlfriend or boyfriend I should know about?"

Ginny smiles innocently. "I figure I should get to know the people I'm in a coven with."

Cue deer in the headlights look.

Boyfriend or girlfriend? Does she know? Is she psychic?

"I'm not seeing anyone," he blurts out. "Uh, I mean, yeah. Not right now. Dating is tricky when your extracurricular activities include ritual magic."

Not psychic! Just open-minded! Also: trying to make sure she's not wasting any of her not inconsiderable flirting skills on a guy who wouldn't be interested in them.

"I guess it would be! I hadn't really thought about that." Ginny looks a little horrified - she hasn't been without a boyfriend for more than a couple months at a time since she was fourteen.

"It's not impossible! It's just tricky. I mean, it takes a special person to get who we really are, and it's not safe or smart to blurt out 'oh, by the way, I caused that storm that gave your car hail damage.' You know? So what usually happens is we just date for fun and not for serious, and you just leave the magic part out."

"Unless the person you're dating already knows, I guess," Ginny points out.

Innocently! So very innocently!

"I'll have to keep it in mind, anyway. I'm sure I'm going to start meeting lots of other people soon."

"Yeah, it's, like, super convenient if they already know."

Aieeee, flail, flail... She will so totally meet other people. More attractive people! More interesting people!

"Um, hey, you wanna go with me for coffee after school? The Espresso Pump has the best coffee in town."

Ginny beams at him.

"I'd love to, but I have soccer try-outs until four-thirty. Can you wait until after that? Or tomorrow?"

"I can wait!"

He is, perhaps, a little too enthusiastic in his response. He tones himself down about ten notches.

"I have a paper to research anyway, so I'll go tothe library. Soccer, huh?"

"Great! I really don't know where anything is in Sunnydale, so it's really sweet of you to show me all the good spots. And, yeah, soccer - I've been playing pretty much as long as I can remember. I really hope I make the team here."

Ginny is actually not very worried - the Sunnydale team is better than her old school's team, but she was one of the best players there, and besides, one of Sunnydale's star strikers graduated last year, and the other died in some sort of horrible gang-related fight over the summer. Ginny's heard the guys were on some sort of drugs or something.

"My dad always hoped I'd get into football, but it's not my thing. I did track last year. I might do it again this year."

Alec can run pretty fast. He grew up in Sunnydale. It's something you learn how to do early.

"And yeah, I can show you all around. Alyce and I are native Sunnydale-ites. Or should that be Sunnydaleans?"

"Really? Indoor or outdoor track? I've thought about doing indoor but I usually like to take the winter off - it's nice to have a few months of sloth. Um, Sunnydalers, maybe?"

"Oh, outdoor, for sure. I like being outside whenever I can."

"Me too!"

Ginny beams at him some more. Magic, sports, outdoors, and coffee - she has dated guys she had a lot less in common with.

And he's cuter.

"We should go hiking or something sometime!" She pauses for a moment, then adds, clearly a little bit reluctantly, "Do Alyce or Tom or Trixi like hiking?"

When he stops laughing, he says, "No, not really. Sometimes we all go to the beach, and I know Tom has a place he likes to retreat to out there when he needs to think. But I can't see him on a hike. Alyce does like to walk; she'll walk all over Sunnydale, so maybe. Trixi tends to stay close to home. We hang out at her house a lot."

"Well, we can just go with Alyce, then! Or even just you and me. My house is pretty much right by San Antonio Canyon."

Ginny makes a very large mental note to talk to Alyce - they've only been friends for a day, but Alyce was her first friend at Sunnydale, and they're both in the coven, and Ginny definitely doesn't want to cause any drama by dating Alec without making sure it's okay with Alyce first.

"Oh, yeah, sure," he says. "You can come with us to the Bronze next time we go, too."

Seeing as Alyce pestered him most of the way home about asking Ginny out, that is not going to be a troublesome conversation!

"The Bronze? What's that?"

They do not have this "Bronze" place in Goleta.

"It's the Bronze!"

Alec is very helpful.

"It's a- not quite a bar, and not quite a night club, and never ever the height of cool. But bands play there, you can dance until curfew, and teenagers get in without fake IDs."

"Sounds like fun! I love dancing. Seriously, Sunnydale is way cooler than home."

Home is really all of fifteen minutes away. But, hey, grass. Greener. Other side.

"I don't know. Goleta sounds nice and quiet. It could be good for a change from Sunnydale craziness."

The way Alec's eyes sparkle when he says this last indicates just how bored he would be without the craziness.

"Things happen in Goleta! Sometimes! Every... now and then."

Ginny should know! There was that whole thing with the demon last year and everything!

"I bet you've never had an apocalypse in Goleta."

Ginny's forehead furrows.

"By definition, wouldn't an apocalypse that happens in one place happen everywhere? I mean, it's not like the world would end in Sunnydale but everything would just keep going on a-okay like normal everywhere else."

He shrugs. "I don't know. They always get stopped before they erupt out of the city limits."

"You know, I remember some pretty strange news out of Sunnydale, now that you mention it."

She leans forward and puts a hand on his arm.

"Were you ever involved in any of the... apocalypses? Apocali?"