"He doesn't look like much, does he?" Cordelia asked her as they stood around the chair to which Ethan had been tied for the last several hours. Long enough for the L.A. group to have made it down to Sunnydale in Angel's very large shiny black mid-life-crisis mobile. Anya pondered that for a moment, wondering if it meant Angel would only live to be five hundred, then decided it was just another expression that worked as long as you didn't take it literally.

"No, from the way they've all been talking about him, I was expecting slime and scales, possibly a tail. Horns, at the very least." She studied the slender Englishman in the chair critically, then turned around, intending to find Giles and ask if he'd like to kick Ethan again, since he appeared to be waking up from the sleep-spell Willow had put on him to get him to shut up.

Instead, she was face to face with a lopsided smile and a pair of red eyes that matched the small red horns growing from the forehead above them. "I don't think he could pull off the horny look, somehow," the green-skinned demon said with a grin.

Anya blinked for a moment, having been in the back of the shop when the L.A. people had shown up, and been kept back there by Cordelia to catch her up on the latest gossip. The men had been nowhere in sight by the time they came up front. "You're Angel's new boyfriend. I like you. You're cute. And your bright color complements his excessive pallor quite nicely." Which was one of the reasons she'd taken to buying jewel-toned silk shirts for Spike to wear with his never-going-to-give-them-up-woman-you-might-as-well-stake-me black t-shirts.

Cordelia rolled her eyes, for some reason. "Lorn, this is Anya. The artist formerly known as Anyanka, patron saint of scorned women."

"Oh! Charmed to make your acquaintance, Anya," Lorn said, reaching out a hand. She took it, and let him bring it up to kiss the back of her hand. He winked. "But be careful with using the 'b' word -- I don't think Angel's quite up to hearing that, yet."

"You don't have to do that," Cordelia said. "She doesn't have her powers anymore."

Lorn gave her a look, but Anya just smiled. "I like it. I think everyone should treat women that way. Although it makes it more difficult to devise torments for a man who's polite. Not that they were ever polite *while* I was tormenting them, of course."

"Of course," Lorn said, gallantly. Anya further approved -- although she wasn't convinced she understood how Angel had managed to land this one. After listening to Spike rant about it for the last two nights, she didn't think she was the only one who was confused.

"Speaking of men, where are ours? Won't one of them want to kick Ethan again, before we determine what to do with him?" Anya asked, looking around the shop.

"Nope. They wandered off to discuss 'strategy' at Cafe' Borgia." Cordelia rolled her eyes. "AKA shove ice cream down Wes and Giles' throats so they'll stop arguing over the Dracula doll that Wesley insists Giles gave him and Giles insists he only lent him, and to decide who gets to beat up Ethan, first."

Lorn nodded. "Yeah, the testosterone was getting a little thick in there. So I volunteered to run over and ask whom you ladies thought should get first crack at him.

"Duh? *We* do." Cordelia turned her attention to Ethan, who was now looking around and blinking, as if not quite awake.

"Cordelia. You're looking lovely as ever."

"Lovely as *what* ever? I've never been unlucky enough to come face to face with you before, Mr. Slimy."

"Oh, but I've known you since you were sixteen. Such a lovely child. I had the perfect Halloween costume picked out for you. Marie Antoinette."

"Cordelia would have made a horrible Marie Antoinette," Anya observed.

She found Cordelia turning to her with an aggrieved look on her face, and wondered what she'd said *this* time. It was always something. She shrugged. A few days after he'd moved in with Anya and Xander, long before he'd become their lover, Spike had given her the best advice she'd ever received for living as a human: "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke." When she'd pointed out that she hadn't been joking, he'd grinned, and said "Fuck 'em anyway, then. *You* know what you meant."

"You don't think I could pull off playing royalty," Cordelia was asking her.

Ah. That was it. "No, I meant that Marie Antoinette was three inches shorter than you, had buck teeth, and bathed about once every three months."

"Oh." Cordelia turned back to Ethan. "You thought I'd make a perfect short, ugly, smelly woman with no head?" He blinked, and she leaned in close to him. "Think carefully about your response, because I don't like you much to begin with, mister."

"My lovely woman, what did I ever--" He stopped -- though not, Anya thought, because Buffy laughed.

"You called Wesley's parents," Cordelia told him. Anya wasn't sure that counted as an explanation, even though Xander had told her about the phone call. Perhaps Cordelia was simply going to clarify her explanation as she took her revenge -- a bit cliche, but always effective.

"Er, um," Ethan said.

"And tried to get us kidnapped! And Spike thrown in jail," Willow called out.

But Cordelia just shook her head. "I don't care about that. Willow could have turned everyone into frogs before the cops even showed. But what you did to Wesley...." Ethan tried looking bewildered, then innocent, then repentant. None of them worked. "I should rip your eyeballs out."

"Oh, no, don't do that," Anya interrupted. "If you want to pop them out, use a spoon. If you rip them, they get ooze everywhere and it's very hard to get out of carpeting."

"Hmm. Good point. Got a spoon?" Cordelia asked.

"I've got one," came Tara's piping voice, from behind the counter. She popped around the corner with a large red plastic Dairy Queen spoon in her hand. "Will this do?"

Ethan was looking at Tara with more than a little fear, which Anya thought very wise of him. After almost a month with the two little witches living in their apartment, she thoroughly understood the meaning of 'It's always the quiet ones...' Lorn was edging back out the door, looking at *all* of them with more than a little fear.

"My dear...er...little girl..." Ethan stammered.

Tara toddled over to him, and held the spoon up in the light from the overhead lamp. "You know, Cordelia might not care about us almost being kidnapped, but I do. I don't care if we could've turned them into toads -- I was *scared*. You're mean, and I don't like you."

At which point, of course, there was a red-headed blur rushing across the room to kick Ethan in the shin. "You scared Tara. I *hate* you."

Anya resisted the inexplicable urge she was feeling to tell Willow not to say things like that, because it wasn't nice, no matter how true it was. She also resisted the urge to kick him in the shin herself, for scaring not only the children, but Anya's men, as well. They had delicate, fragile egos, and it often took weeks of buttering and fluffing for them to recover from an experience like that. Luckily, their own quick thinking and inborn parental instincts had left them more proud than embarrassed -- but that was no thanks to this jerk. Anya only resisted kicking him because *she* wasn't four years old. She could think of much more sophisticated things to do to him.

"And you hurt Wesley!" Cordelia was saying; then she stepped forward and kicked Ethan.

"Ow!" Ethan tried to scoot back, but he was rather firmly tied in place. "I was only trying to test the statue," he began.

"Test?" Buffy entered the conversation. Her voice was scary -- her Slayer voice, as Anya thought of it. For a Slayer, it was a nice voice. For a not-scary person, it wasn't nice at all. Anya liked it.

"Should we come back later?" Angel asked. Anya and the other women looked towards the door. The men were standing there, obviously too afraid to interrupt the proceedings. Anya was glad to see such a display of intelligence on the part of the male species.

"Depends. Do any of you want to kick him, too?" Buffy asked, staring at Ethan again.

"Oo! Me, me!" Giles exclaimed happily. "Is this a trick question?"

He ran forward, the others following behind. Anya noted that Spike and Xander still looked like they wanted to kill Ethan a bit -- apparently they'd joined the others for real ice cream, rather than being able to sneak off and get rid of some of their anger. That was fine, Anya could do that for them, later.

"I want to know what he means by testing the statue," Buffy repeated. There were varying degrees of looking put-out, as she disrupted the entertainment of beating up Ethan.

Ethan had gone back to trying to look harmless and innocent. Anya saw Wesley, in Gunn's arms, tug on his boyfriend's shirt and whisper in his ear. Gunn nodded and set Wesley down. The little boy walked over towards Ethan; Buffy and Giles made way for him. Wesley went right up to Ethan, who looked down and started to smile ingratiatingly. Wesley scowled -- and kicked him.

"You'd be Wesley, then," the man said, with a sigh that didn't sound at all genuine to Anya. Perhaps they hadn't scared him enough?

"Rupert's right. You are a weaselly little wanker," Wesley said.

"I'm pleased to meet you, as well," Ethan responded. Looking over at Giles, he grinned. "This one's almost more adorable than you are, Ripper."

"Oh, he is not -- just because he's figured out how to dilate his eyes wider than God intended..." Giles grumped. *Somebody* hadn't had his nap today, Anya noted. Or somebody was just a little jealous of the only other cute four-year-old boy in the room...

"So you haven't forgotten your vocabulary, at least. The educated part, as well as the section on gratuitous insults."

Anya was impressed -- Giles managed to kick him in *exactly* the same spot Wesley had. He was going to have a hell of a bruise tomorrow. Assuming he lived that long. Buffy was bearing down on him with that stake-happy look in her eyes.

"Okay, fun as it is, the kicking-period is over. Or at least temporarily suspended. I want some answers from chaos-boy here. What do you mean, you were *testing* the statue? It obviously works. If you were spying on us all along, you would've known that the first time we used it -- without any kidnappings or calls to anybody's mom and dad."

"Well, I...that is, I just -- all right! All right." Ethan glared at Giles, who had moved into shin-kicking position again. Wesley walked over to Cordelia; Anya missed what he did, but somehow he was being picked up and held without even asking by raising his arms. "I wanted to know how much one's intelligence changed after using the statue. What better way than to provide...challenging situations and observe how the 'children' reacted?" Ethan gave them each a hopeful look -- apparently hoping his answer was sufficient to prevent another kicking.

"That's it?" Buffy asked.

"Essentially, yes. It was also fun." Ethan smiled, briefly.

"Fun?" came several voices, all at almost the exact same level of annoyed.

"Er...." Ethan looked around at the people surrounding him. "Well, perhaps not from your point of view, of course. But they weren't intended to be dangerous. Just challenging."

"I think we should draw straws to see who hits him, first," Cordelia said. Then she shook her head. "Forget it. Tara, I want that spoon."

Spike was standing at the back, and Anya noticed that he was very politely raising his hand. It probably meant he was afraid Cordelia would take the spoon to *him* if he pissed her off.

Anya spoke up on his behalf. "Could you hold the eyeballing for a minute, Cordelia? I think Spike has something he wants to say."

All heads turned to Spike, who shuffled a bit and looked down at his boots. "Actually... just wanted to say that I hadn't got my turn to kick him, yet."

Ethan looked up, startled. "You can't kick me-- you have a chip in your head. I know all about you."

Xander moved up to the chair and did an excellent job of towering over the seated man. He looked quite large and menacing for a guy who had watched Looney Toons in his boxers just this morning, with a four-year-old girl on either side of him and Spike on the floor leaning against his shins, happily crunching away on bloody Froot Loops. "I get to be his proxy-kicker," he informed Ethan. "Anyplace you'd like me to start?"

"All right, I think maybe we've threatened him enough for the moment." Astonishingly, the voice came from Giles.

"I *knew* you still cared, old boy," Ethan said smarmily.

"Shut up." Giles kicked him again.

"Does that mean I can kick him?" Xander asked.

"No -- at least, not yet. I want to know *why* you wanted to test the statue." Giles stared at Ethan in a way Anya recognized. Not because he ever looked at *her* that way. That she could recall. But he was often looking at Buffy or Xander or Dawn or Willow that way. It was a look that said 'tell me what I want to know, tell me now, and I shall consider the vaguest possibility that I shall cease being angry with you'.

Ethan was looking bewildered and surprised. Giles turned to Xander. Ethan yelled, "All right! For god's sake, you people are vicious."

"You should remember that, next time you decide to stir up trouble in Sunnydale...or California...or anywhere in North America," Buffy said.

"I wanted to test the statue before I used it on myself," Ethan said, with a reluctant air.

There was a stunned silence. Then Buffy laughed. "Oh, my god. A four-year old-Ethan! He'd be cuter than Giles!"

"He would *not*!" Giles protested.

"Oh, I would," Ethan said.

"Shut up!" Giles kicked him. Again. Anya was beginning to get a little bored with the repetitiveness. "And why wouldn't he be cuter than Wesley?" Giles demanded, pointing at the diminutive ex-Watcher, still in Cordelia's arms. Anya thought he rather looked like the spoiled heir to the throne -- especially with the thumb in his mouth.

Wesley looked at Buffy, who shook her head. "Nope, not cuter than that. God, Wes, you should have given us those eyes when you first came to Sunnydale. We'd have done anything you asked." She chucked him under the chin, and Giles muttered something under his breath.

"I don't think that kind of demon can do that with its own tail," Anya pointed out.

"I'm sure it would find a way if Wesley looked adorable at it," Giles shot back sarcastically.

"Someone needs a na-ap..." Ethan sang, saving Anya the trouble of pointing *that* out.

"I think Giles is the cutest," she said, instead. What the hell -- she could use a raise. There was a new software company in which she desperately wanted to buy shares, not to mention that they'd probably be needing a bigger place to live, sooner or later. Four bedrooms? Five?

"Thank you, Anya. I think."

"So why does thin, pale, and snarky here want to be a kid again?" Angel's green boyfriend asked, looking Ethan over with narrowed red eyes.

Ethan looked straight back at him. "Do you know what it's like to be a chaos worshipper, when you reach a certain age? All the two-faced gods want are young, bright-eyed boys they can have the pleasure of corrupting." He smiled slyly. "Don't we all, of course. But there's a point, you know, where you've made one too many pacts. Sooner or later, someone's going to decide you're not pretty enough to keep around just for the scenery, and call in the debt."

"You want to use the statue so you can be--" Buffy shook her head. "Tell me he doesn't mean that the way I think he means that."

"He wants to remain in service without paying the price of servitude," Giles explained, with a hint of long-suffering.

"Exactly!" Ethan gave Giles a happy smile. "Granted, I'd rather be a bit older than four, but I'm not picky."

"We can make sure you don't get any older," Cordelia said. Anya decided she needed to spend more time with Cordelia. Girls-only weekends -- they could go shopping and have lunch, and talk about dissecting men.

Ethan appeared a bit disturbed. "That's not exactly the way I meant it."

"Who exactly was going to take care of you, Ethan?" Giles asked. "Or were you going to hire a demon nanny?"

"Well, actually, that seems to be the flaw in my plan. After a week, the emotional maturity of the inflicted seems to regress far past what I need. While your intelligence level appears unchanged, your...ability to use that intelligence is affected." Ethan shook his head, sadly. "It isn't what I'm looking for."

"So sorry to disappoint you," Giles sneered.

Everyone stood around, staring at Ethan, for a moment. Dawn finally broke the silence by asking the obvious next question. "So, what are we going to do with him?"

"Kick him?" Giles suggested.

Anya smiled. Eleven hundred years as a vengeance demon were good for more than just thinking up mutually enjoyable torments for Spike and Xander. "I have a better idea."

*****

"You scare me," Xander was saying to his wife. The scary thing, for Gunn, was that he was saying it the way other men say 'You look like you need to be covered with ice cream and chocolate sauce and chopped nuts and have me licking it off you, slowly.' Anya was looking like that was what she had heard, too.

"Hey, you scare me, too," Spike said, with the biggest display of attempted Wesley-eyes Gunn had seen since Giles had volunteered to be the one to boot Ethan through the portal.

Gunn had shaken his head at the time. Can't beat the real thing, baby, as the Coca-Cola people knew damn well. Wes had given Cordelia and Angel one flash of those sad, pathetic, 'but he called my parents and now I'm going to be traumatized for the rest of my life' eyes, and that was that. Giles had to share the booting privileges.

Well, okay, Wesley had given the eyes to Gunn as well, but it wasn't like he *had* to. Gunn had been planning on doing the booting *for* him, until he'd indicated that he'd rather do it himself.

"I can't believe he blubbered so much!" Wesley was crowing, now. "What a pansy-arse!"

"Wesley, you shouldn't be mean about it," Cordelia scolded. When Wesley -- and Giles, and Buffy, and pretty much everyone including Gunn gave her a dumbfounded look, she said, "Not when he isn't here to hear you."

"He won't be back, though, will he?" Tara asked quietly. She was sitting with Willow in a chair, trying not to drink the cup of tea Spike had brought her. Gunn didn't know what was in it, wasn't sure he *wanted* to know.

"Actually, he probably will," Giles said. *He* was drinking chocolate milk through one of those plastic swirly straws with the loops in them, and getting such a kick out of it that he'd obviously never go back to plain old bendy straws again. Angel had bought it for him at the Cafe Borgia, which had meant that Wes had to have *his* own personal swirly straw too. Giles slurped his milk for a second, then continued. "The World Without Chaos is not a world without magic. It's just a place where the force of order is so strong that any disruptive actions, from mischievous to diabolical, get squashed flat by the universe. It will take him some time, and he'll be driven mad in the meantime, but he probably will find a way back."

Gunn thought it a little odd that Giles didn't seem to mind. He even seemed to be smiling, a little. What was weirder, though, was that Wes didn't seem upset by the news. "A few years of order and neatness will do him good," Wesley stated.

Giles snorted. "Hardly. It will make drive him right around the bend."

Wesley grinned. "Well, then, it shall do *me* some good." He looked around, and spotted Gunn. Brightening, he came over and climbed into the chair beside Gunn. "I want tacos," he said in that 'do for me' tone that Gunn wasn't going to tell him was a waste of energy.

He was glad Wesley had got over his reluctance to indulge himself in being a kid, and if this were gonna last any longer than one more week, Gunn would have some serious problems on his hands. But when Wesley was all grown up again, he'd offer an apology for his outrageous behavior and Gunn would say 'if you wanna make it up to me' -- then hopefully they could stay in bed for three days and let Angel and Cordelia handle the agency and the Fight For All That Is Right.

"Oh, Angel'll go get tacos," Cordelia piped up.

"I..." Angel looked around, desperately trying to avoid Wesley's gaze, Gunn noted with suppressed laughter. "Sunnydale doesn't *have* an all-night taco place, does it?"

Buffy blinked at him. "You lived here *how* long and you never heard the expression 'run for the border' ?"

"You want me to go to *Mexico* for tacos?" Then he stopped, considering it. "Hmm. Maybe I should. They'd make the most authentic ones there, right?"

"The Mexican border is six hours away, Angel. Buffy means Taco Bell, which is open 'til one in the morning," Wesley informed him haughtily.

"And you know this how, Mister 'I wouldn't be caught undead in a fast food taco place before I turned into a kid' ?" Cordy asked.

"I looked up all the taco places in Los Angeles, to see which ones I could send Angel out to in the middle of the night!" Wesley looked *way* too proud of himself as the rest of the group laughed, and Gunn was glad again that his boyfriend would be an adult within the week. Not just because the kid-Wesley was three times as evil as the adult one, but because Gunn missed seeing that smile on the adult Wesley's face, just before he kissed it off.

"You want to come with me, Wes?" Angel asked, sounding guileless. "You can help me carry the bags."

Wesley opened his mouth, then stopped. He looked up at Angel, doubtfully, and Gunn had to fight not to laugh. Angel probably *wasn't* planning anything. But Wesley didn't know that, and wouldn't believe it if he did.

"Since when do you care how authentic tacos are?" Spike asked. Angel looked sheepish, and Spike's eyes went wide. "Oh for fuck's sake!" Spike yelled. Then he glanced at the not-kids standing next to him, and muttered, apparently reflexively, "Pardon my language..." in an accent that frightened Gunn, and made him understand why Angel had thought Spike could have pulled off the phone-prank, if he'd wanted to. Then he turned back to yell at Angel again. "First you marry me off, then you start eating food. Dammit, Angel, you're turning into a...a...a...."

Everyone looked at Spike and waited patiently.

Spike just looked frustrated, then said, "A goob." Angel blinked at him. "That's a technical term," he added with a sneer.

"A technical term for 'Spike's daddy is a push-over for a pretty face'?" Xander asked.

"*Grand*-sire," Spike corrected, while Angel protested in more incoherent terms.

Gunn grinned, glancing down at Wesley. He was sitting back in his chair watching the by-play, with his feet sticking out in front of him, barely dangling off the edge of the chair. He was sucking his thumb, and Gunn wasn't sure it was because he needed comforting, or if it was becoming habit. Another reason to want him old, again. If he was developing an oral-fixation....

He seemed to be calming down, finally, which was a good thing. Ever since Anya had first suggested sending Ethan to the World Without Chaos, Wesley had been bouncing off the walls with enthusiasm. Gunn got the impression Ethan was even a little taken aback at how blood-thirsty Wes had gotten. Gunn didn't point out that Wesley had had a three-scoop sundae, at the ice cream shop.

Wesley was now leaning to one side, a little, resting his head against the back of the chair. Spike -- whether he was looking for a way out of having to admit to thinking of Angel as 'dad' even now that he wasn't a fake kid anymore, or just trying to cause trouble -- had backed towards Wesley's chair. Now he reached over and pulled Wesley's thumb out of his mouth with a little popping sound. "You'll ruin your teeth."

The only thing funnier than Wesley's affronted look, and "Not in a week, bell-end," before popping his thumb back in, was the look on Spike's face when he realized what he'd done.

Or possibly the look on Angel's face. "Gee, Spike... you appear to be turning into a..."

Spike whirled on him with a nasty little growl. "Yes?"

"Daddy?"

Spike picked Tara up without even pausing in his glare-fest towards Angel. "Yes, luv, what?"

"Does this mean Angel is my grandpa?"

Spike looked down at her, then around at the grins on all the faces surrounding him. Except for Angel, who was back to panic-stricken, do not pass Go, do not collect 200 packets of taco sauce. Spike grinned widely -- and possibly more evilly than anything Gunn had ever seen. It would be fun to have a contest between Spike, Angel, and four-year-old Wesley, Gunn decided, as long as he got to judge, and not be the victim of the evil.

"Yes. Yes, it does. Although he doesn't like it when people call him that. He likes to be called Poof Daddy." Then Spike was saying "Ow! Ow! Ow!" and trying to kick Angel without setting Tara down. Angel let go of Spike's hair, or ear, or whatever it was he'd grabbed and twisted, and turned to Anya.

"He deserved that," he said, no doubt covering his butt in case she was annoyed with his intrusion on her territory.

But Anya just nodded. "He usually does."

"Hey!" Spike objected, then thought twice about to whom he was objecting, and to *what* he was objecting. "Er, right. I do. Someone should take me home and--" He stopped, and looked down at the four-year-old in his arms. "Take me out for ice cream."

"Actually, that's raised a good question," Xander said. "We've vanquished the disturbingly-lamer-every-time-we-meet-him Chaos Wizard, and you four have a week left of kiddie-hood. What do we do next?"

At least seven people shouted, "Disneyland!"

"Awesome! But... first, could you all stand together a bit more?" Dawn asked, holding her camera.

At least three people tried to give Angel rabbit-ears, but Gunn was proud to note that Wesley, once again in his arms, was the one who made it there first.

THE END