“I knew you would come here, Slayer,” the Snyder snake heads say, bobbing up and down on their green scaly necks. “You’re a pathological delinquent. You can’t resist breaking the rules. Trespassing after hours, carrying an obviously stolen weapon, out of dress code. I don’t know whether I would enjoy killing you or expelling you more. Thankfully I have the power to do both.”

The Slayer glances down at herself. Sure, this tank top and jeans isn’t the most stylish outfit she owns. If she’d had more warning that she was going to get punted out of her reality, she might have chosen a more versatile ensemble. Or, at least, sneakers that didn’t show dirt so easily. The dust of at least three collapsed dimensions has turned her shoelaces a dingy gray.

“Out of dress code?” she asks.

“No religious artifacts are permitted on school grounds,” the Snyder snake says. “But you knew that, didn’t you, Slayer?”

The Slayer’s hand reaches up, finding the silver crucifix around her neck. She’s so used to its weight; she barely registers it anymore.

“Wow, someone took the separation of church and state way literally,” she says, walking slowly around Snyder, keeping close to the bookshelves as she follows the staff’s lead past the circulation desk and toward the audiovisual cage. She’s relieved to see the Black Flame flag flickering out of a wall sconce inside. “So, I guess you’ve finally figured out that there are vampires in your town, huh? I gotta tell you, that would make my life so much easier back home. The Principal Snyder in my reality is, like, wholly in denial.” She keeps the Black Flame flag in her peripheral vision as she slides around an empty circulation cart. “It makes sense that once you found out about evil, you decided to join up with it. Did you even want to protect the Hellmouth, or were you just hooked by the idea of being taller? It must have killed you to be so much shorter than most of the student body.”

The snake’s tail smashes a table lamp and topples a chair as it slithers forward, positioning itself for an attack. Stealth has never been Snyder’s forte. The Slayer once saw the principal in her own Sunnydale get his tie stuck in his office door.

“You talk too much, Slayer,” the snake heads hiss. “What? Are you too afraid to fight me, your mortal enemy? Me, your worst nightmare.”

Without warning, one of the snake heads lunges for her. The Slayer flips out of the way and comes up swinging the staff. It cracks into the nearest principal face, knocking his jaw sideways. The other four heads roar in sympathetic pain, pressing themselves against the injured face to push its chin back into place.

“You think you’re my worst nightmare?” The Slayer hiccups a laugh. “I’ve fought puppets more threatening than you, Snyder.”

As the heads rise, preparing for another strike, the Slayer somersaults inside the A/V cage, closing the door behind her with the heel of her sneaker.