Title: Oh Hell, You're One of Those

Author: Jedi Buttercup

Disclaimer: The words are mine; the worlds are not. I claim nothing but the plot.

Rating: PG.

Summary: B:tVS, Men in Black. Was that really her dad? The same guy who refused to believe in vampires, covering up evidence of demons? What in the name of shopping malls and ice skates was going on? 1000 words.

Spoilers: Post-series for B:tVS; nonspecific timeline for the MiB-verse

Notes: For the Twistedshorts August Challenge, another random TTHFFA pair; and another idea regarding what actually happened to Hank Summers....

"Now if you'll just look over here," some weathered old suit-wearing guy was saying in front of the shattered shop-front, but Buffy couldn't have cared less what he was trying to sell the rubberneckers.

She'd just seen what looked like her dad-- her dad, the guy who'd supposedly skipped her mom's funeral and abandoned Dawn to sunbathe in Spain with his nubile new girlfriend-- walk by wearing similar bureaucratic copwear, directing the ambulance team coming out of the store with a very misshapen body bag. Buffy tried to edge further out of the probable lead agent's line of sight as she followed the apparition with her eyes. What in the name of shopping malls and ice skates was going on?

"Miss. Miss?" The old guy's hot younger partner-- at least, she assumed he was his partner, the way they were all up in each other's personal space-- cleared his throat, trying to get someone's attention.

Buffy didn't care about that, either. She shook off the hand someone had placed on her elbow and eeled through the crowd. She had to know. If it was him-- if her dad had been in America this whole time, without even the benefit of that thin excuse-- well, she might not be able to slay humans, but the results sure wouldn't be pretty.

"Dad?" she asked in angry disbelief, confronted once more by that unbelievably familiar profile.

"Buffy?" The feeb doffed the glasses, staring back at her in shock. It was him! Hank Summers, consigner of Slayer daughters to the loony bin for even talking about vampires!

"Dad?" she repeated, voice wobbling a little this time with hurt. "What's going on?"

Hank swallowed visibly, then threw a quick glance at the half-shrouded body, and quickly flicked the zipper closed to hide the rest from view. "Princess, what are you doing here?" he asked, blankly.

Buffy pulled her hand out of her pocket by way of answer: the one still wrapped around her stake and covered in violently blue goo. She held it up long enough for him to get a good look, then gave him a thin, unhappy smile. "If you tell me I'm crazy this time, I'm going to have to call bullshit," she said. "Is this what you've been doing since you left Mom? I don't believe you!"

"Ahhhh... Agent H?" The same cranky voice from the front of the store materialized right behind her, interrupting her dad's fumbling attempt to come up with a reply. "Is there a problem, here?"

"Agent H?" Buffy repeated with a snort, then turned to frown at the oldest of the three agents. There was enough aged-cowboy cragginess to his face to give off a certain aura of trustworthy earnestness, but she knew better than to let her guard down around any Initiative-ish types. "I suppose it depends on whether you consider being a deadbeat dad who didn't even show up to the funeral of the mother of his daughters a problem," she said, acidly.

The guy's eyebrows arched up, and he directed a glare over his sunglasses at Hank. "I apologize, ma'am; we at the Department of Fish and Game take pride in fulfilling our responsibilities," he said, in a mild voice completely at odds with his grim expression. Then he lifted what looked like a fat silver pen into her line of sight, the same gizmo she'd seen him hold up earlier in front of the crowd.

He noticed her noticing it-- then made it flash, emitting a brilliant white light that made her squint through after-images. The necklace Willow had given her before her journey flared suddenly hot against her sternum at the exact same instant, and Buffy swore, clapping her hand over the pendant as she focused on the agent again.

"Did you just try to whammy me?" she asked, incredulously.

The agent blinked, his eyebrows arching even higher, then made the pen-thing flash one more time.

Buffy grabbed it out of his hand before the flash had even finished, snapping it in half and dropping it to the floor. "You wanna try that again?" she asked, irritably.

The agent blinked-- at her, at the sparking mess on the floor, at her dad, then back at his partner, who'd dismissed the crowd already and started walking their way-- and sighed. "Oh, hell. You're one of those," he said. "You're not supposed to be our problem."

"And you're one of them," Buffy replied, indignantly.

"Guilty as charged," he replied sourly.

"And you made my dad one! The same guy who refused to believe in vampires, covering up evidence of demons!"

He sighed again, sounding heavily put-upon. "That wasn't a hostile sub-terrestrial; one of those would have been easier to deal with. They're like training wheels for our beat."

"Then what the hell was it?" Training wheels? Surely he wasn't talking about aliens?

"You in the mood to fill out thirty-plus pages of NDA?"

He was. And he was threatening her with paperwork! "You are one of them," Buffy accused.

"Uh, Kay? You want me to try flashy-thinging her?" the agent's partner murmured in tones he probably thought too quiet to overhear.

"Not unless you want to try surgically removing it from your posterior afterward," 'Kay' murmured back. Then he nodded to her. "How about we kick this upstairs to our boss?"

"No flashes? No thingies? And my dad goes with us?" she replied, warily. It might be worth it just to find out who Slayers should be watching for these days, if nothing else.

The three men exchanged glances, then nodded. "Pinky swear," the not-dadlike one drawled. "Long as you tell us how exactly you took that mome rath down-- and, uh. Maybe put that away, first?" He gestured toward her sticky hand.

Hotness, sarcasm, and literary puns, all on the wrong side of the street? It just figured.

"Whatever," Buffy said, shooting another glare at Hank as she wiped the offending hand on her jeans and tucked the stake away. "Lead on."

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