Part One - Decaf Vandalism

Somewhere, in a cozy small business office situated snugly inside the old Hyperion Hotel, a man and a young woman argued, bickering most professionally as they waited for their employer to wake up and put them back to work.

"Wesley, it was your turn to buy the coffee!" Cordelia Chase snapped furiously, brown eyes bright and snappy with imminent frustration, "Instead, you choose to spend most of the night with a dusty old tome, and then, even when you do decide to go out and get coffee at the last minute, you picked up a blend that I know for a fact Angel won't like!"

"Since when did a vampire have a favorite coffee blend!?" Wesley protested. Wesley Wyndam-Pryce was a young English man who had worked among the supernatural as a Watcher until the Council sacked him because of his "incompetence".

"Since that vampire spent the whole damn night prowling the streets of L.A. doing his job and then spent half of the day sleeping it off!" Cordelia shot back violently, tossing her long brown hair for emphasis. She was a real California beauty: slim, trim, tanned, with thick, wavy, long hair and hypnotic, dark brown eyes.

"And besides," she continued shortly, "I don't even like the coffee."

Wesley looked insulted.

"Well, at least I tried," he defended himself. While the man looked a bit bookish, Wesley wasn't a half-bad looking character, if you liked your men skinny, klutzy, and near-sighted. One of Cordelia's friends had once described him as "cute", until, when showing off, Wesley had thunked his brand new battle ax into the wall of the office on accident, leaving a hole the size of a golf ball that still had yet to be repaired.

Cordelia made a spiteful noise and rolled her eyes in disdain.

"Are you sure Angel is going to be as understanding as I am?" she challenged.

"Understanding!?" Wesley parroted incredulously, "Oh, there's a laugh! You're practically ripping me to pieces!"

"Exactly my point," Cordelia replied smartly, unphased by Wesley's outburst, "If I were Angel after tasting that sludge, I'd go all vampy and really rip you to pieces."

"Who am I ripping to pieces?" asked a quiet, calm voice from the direct vicinity of the old-fashioned elevator that led up from Angel's historical relic-ridden apartment up to the office where most of what went on in Angel Investigations, the private investigating business at which all three of them worked, took place, startling both Wesley and Cordelia. The humans muttered, "Good morning," as Angel "Jones", formerly known as the ruthless vampire Angelus, pushed aside the collapsible gate and stepped out into the office, replying, "Hey guys. Coffee made yet?"

Cordelia nodded carefully, and Wesley watched nervously as Angel smiled and quickly made his way to the almost completely full pot of coffee on a small, wooden corner table. As the vampire sniffed the air curiously, he grimaced, causing the poor ex-Watcher to eye the window-shaded outside door longingly, clearly calculating how long he could outrun an outraged and coffee-fueled vampire. Despite the gypsy curse that had long ago endowed the vampire with a soul, Angel was known to have had his occasional "off" moments, one of which Wesley had experienced first-hand and did not intend to revisit. However, Cordelia felt confident in the knowledge that true happiness was the only way to break the spell, and ingesting bad coffee was, in her opinion, the farthest one could get from that little spell-breaker.

Angel poured himself a cup of coffee and quaffed the contents of the white styrofoam cup without hesitation. Wesley had just began to relax, thinking that Angel wouldn't mind his mistake at all, when –

Hack! Cough! Spit!

Wesley looked absolutely terrified as Angel choked on his favorite morning beverage. Cordelia, eyes wide with sudden alarm, ducked behind the computer behind which she slumped into a comfortable black swivel chair.

"Yelch!" the vampire grimaced, leaning on the coffee table and setting down the cup as a wave of nausea struck him in the gut after just one sip of the stuff, "What the hell is this gunk? Blekh!"

"Um..." Wesley replied after a slight hesitation, "Coffee?"

"Oh, no," Angel denied, holding the cup out at arms length as though it were some new kind of poisonous demon blood that would blow up in your face while masquerading as a cup of the most offensive coffee in existence, "This...is not coffee. This is a perversion of a clone of a copy of an excuse for the elixir of life most commonly known as coffee!"

Wesley winced under every epithet.

"Yup," Cordelia remarked dryly, "Leave it to Wesley to go out for coffee and come back with some kind of highly radioactive volatile material in a tin can labeled clearly on the very front with the mysterious words, 'naturally decaffeinated'."

"Hey!" Wesley protested, "It's not like it had a big name tag that said, 'Hello, my name is disgusting excuse for coffee that will drive any vampire up the wall, to Hell, and beyond'! At least I tried! Last time Cordelia didn't even – "

"Excuse me if I sound a little behind the times," Angel spoke up with a suspicious glance at Wesley and Cordelia, sarcastically pensive, "But how do you 'naturally decaffeinate' a coffee bean?"

"Oh, wow," Cordelia said with a smirk, "That would call in for some major genetic tampering of the coffee plant. We must look into this."

"Ah, yes," said Angel with a rare, boyish grin across his pale face, "Those poor coffee plants! Hey, which reminds me – "

Suddenly Cordelia cried out and fell out of the chair behind the computer. Angel's dark eyes immediately followed her descent and he lunged forward to catch her before she hit the floor. Cordelia was having a vision – her body's jerky movements and her cry of pain was enough to tell that to Angel. Wesley watched with growing concern until finally Cordelia snapped out of it and looked up at Angel.

"Cordelia," he asked, "What did you see?"

"I ..." Cordelia tried to convince herself that she had not just seen the man she thought she'd seen. It didn't make sense. He was dead...wasn't he?

"I'm not sure I know," she answered finally, "It doesn't make sense..."

"What's that?" Wesley asked suddenly.

Angel and Cordelia stood up and looked out the window of the office to see a blinding light coming toward the door. Angel had to look away; his eyes weren't used to that much light. Wesley was already to get a bad feeling about the whole thing when Cordelia cried out, "That's what I saw in my vision! That and...and...I think it was D – "

Suddenly everything went completely blank, like an empty slate. There was no light or darkness. Just nothingness, that went on and on and on and on and on and on without end....

Then –