1. Exodus

DISCLAIMER: All characters presented in this story are the property of Joss Whedon, the WB, Mutant Enemy, et. al. The only part that's mine is the plot.  
  
WARNING: This is a work in progress ... and probably will be for some time. Don't keep reading if you're looking for something finished.  
  
SPOILERS/BACKGROUND: Everything from Season 1 to Season 5 and Angel Season 1 to Season 2; this picks up after S5/S2.  
  
Onward!!  
  
*****  
  
PROLOGUE:  
WHAT DARK FROM YONDER SHADOW BREAKS  
  
It was well past the time when the last bars of Los Angeles were closing, and the last of the after-midnight revelers were fading from the streets. It was Saturday, so the city was going to bed several hours later than normal. That meant nothing to the quintet of figures gathered in the basement of the Pendulum Nightclub, however. There was always rest from pleasure. There was never rest from business, even when business was slow and their fellow creatures of the underworld had largely gone into hiding recently.  
  
"It's just a quiet time, boss," Ctharl, a heavyset blue-scaled brute with heavy-lidded eyes, offered. "Ever since Sunnydale, all the action's takin' to other other parts of the country."  
  
"Then something had better happen to shake things up a bit," the leader, a massive creature, although the most humanoid of the group, snarled in reponse.  
  
There was an uneasy silence as the five all looked at one another. It was against the rules of their order to start turmoil simply for the sake of attracting business, though senior members had sometimes been able to stretch the rules somewhat.  
  
The tension was broken abruptly, however, when Hascinth, a short, brown creature with long, razor-sharp claws at the end of each hand, suddenly perked up his head. The other members looked at him, startled. Hascinth generally said the least of any of them, but none of them ever mistook his silence for ignorance. Aside from the leader, he was the most deadly of the group, and his senses were attuned to things that no earthly predator could perceive.  
  
"What ... is ... that?" he hissed slowly.  
  
There was a tremendous crash on the basement door, hard enough that the floor seemed to shake, as well as the door. The mysterious figures all turned, a light of battle entering most of their eyes. Almost none of them had had a chance to kill of late, and that, more than anything else, was what they lived for.  
  
"Who is it?" the leader called out, his tone completely at odds with the situation. He sounded like he was answering a polite knock, even though his double-edged claymore was already naked in his right hand.  
  
The door could not handle the unannounced visitor's second knock; the second impact splintered it into pieces and left it lying on the floor in a semicircle around the now unbarred portal. The passage beyond was unlit, and a dark, man-sized silhouette was all that could be seen at first. Then the figure strode into the room, and the demons gasped in shock. It was not a man. It was a woman. Well, at least it looked like one. They all knew better, though.  
  
"Well, well, well, here you all are!" Glory's ever-confident voice sang out. "You people are so hard to find. That's why I love you all so much!" Her gaze centered on the leader of the group. "Rhyzor, it's so good to see you again! It's been ... what ...?"  
  
"Two hundred and eighty-seven years, if I haven't lost track," Rhyzor answered. "Didn't expect to see you down here, though."  
  
"Well, I figured, if I can't have Hell, there's always Los Angeles," she quipped. Her smile was a little strained, though, which Rhyzor could would have sworn he had never seen during the brief year he had known her in the eighteenth century.  
  
"I thought you were supposed to have left already ... I even heard that the portal opened up in Sunnydale. Then again, other people are telling me that you died. Looks like humans are as unreliable as ever."  
  
"Actually, they got it just about right," Glory answered. "Except for the part about me dying of course. My other body got killed by some old British guy, or so I heard. This is just my new one. Gods just don't go down that easily."  
  
"Well, new body or old body, we're honored by your presence."  
  
"Well, of course you are!" Glory answered in her customary fashion. "You don't need to tell me that. What you do need to do is pay back an old favor, don't you? You remember what I mean, right?"  
  
"The Order of Turaca never backs down on a debt," Rhyzor answered.  
  
Glory smiled. "Especially not when your life depends on it."  
  
"Naturally," Rhyzor answered with a carnivorous grin. "And believe it or not, you're actually here at a good time. The boys are kinda hungry at the moment. What're you after?"  
  
"Oh, Rhyzie, I thought you'd never ask." Almost instantly, she was across the room and standing right next to the Turacan praetor. "You see," she continued, "this body just isn't really me. I mean it's me, it's just even worse than my last one. I mean like, if I wanted to kill every one of you in here, it would probably take me a minute or two now. I feel so helpless."  
  
"You want another new body?" Ctharl broke the silence of the other members.  
  
"Oh, no, this one's fine. It's got potential, I mean, it is ME after all. I just want to get back to the old me, that's all."  
  
"I see," Rhyzor replied. "So what it it you want from us, then?"  
  
"Well, you see, I have this ritual that will do exactly what I want, but I'm missing something I really need for it."  
  
"And this is?"  
  
"Oh, nothing much. Just the blood of a Slayer."  
  
The Turacans cast furtive glances at one another. They remembered all too well what had happened the last time that they had fought the Slayer of Sunnydale. There had never been an occasion to seek revenge, though some of the Order had wanted to make a special mission out of it with no contract involved. That would have broken every code of the Order, of course, so it was shouted down, but the simple presence of such sentiments was almost unheard-of in the Order. Of course, some of the naysayers were probably motivated more by fear than by caution. Buffy Summers was supposed to be stronger than any Slayer in centuries, an exception to the historical waning of the Slayer's power since the days of the first Slayer. Furthermore, Rhyzor remembered that both Buffy and Glory both lived in Sunnydale. This didn't seem like any reason to call on the Order, whether they owed her a favor or not.  
  
"Your Eminence, the Order will gladly attempt to repay our debt in this fashion, if you so desire, but the Slayer actually lives in Sunnydale as well. I'm sure you already knew that. Why come to us? You could just as easily get it yourself."  
  
"Huh?" Glory replied. "Rhyzie, you're a little bit behind the times, you know? That Buffy girl, she's dead."  
  
The members of the Order of Turaca came to their feet en masse. Words flew from every direction, in five different languages, until Glory shouted for silence.  
  
"So I can't use Buffy's blood, because she already used it to stop me. The little bitch." The vengeful goddess was actually pouting.  
  
"Stop ...?" Rhyzor began. If the Slayer had stopped the Beast, then she deserved her legend, even if it had cost her her life. He was still angry in the back of his mind that the Order's vaunted intelligence had somehow failed to discover the most significant event in supernatural circles in at least a century, especially one that had to have been fairly conspicuous even to a mortal observer.  
  
"So anyway, now I've got a problem," Glory continued, ignoring the Turacan's question. "You see, one of my little peons told me that every time one of those little girls dies, they just go find someone else. But you see, they don't let poor little Glory in on this selection, so I'm just up the creek, see? I have no idea where this new little blood-filled Slayer is hiding on this forsaken-God-forsaken planet!" She smiled and put her arm on Rhyzor's arm. "But ..." she began sweetly.  
  
"That's where we come in," Rhyzor finished. It would be a good idea to learn who and where the next Slayer would be, anyway. He was just about to accept when the ever-silent Hascinth spoke.  
  
"Forget it," he stated flatly.  
  
Rhyzor burst out "What?!" at the same time Glory turned to him and said, "Excuse me?"  
  
"I thought all you wanted was the blood of a Slayer," the little brown demon replied to Glory.  
  
"Yes, I thought that's what we were getting at here!" Glory answered impatiently.  
  
"You know, the new Slayer could be called from anywhere on this entire planet. And we'll have to get inside the Council of Watchers before we can even find her location. Even for us, that will take a long time."  
  
"Oh I think you owe me that," Glory answered.  
  
"I know, but I thought you were in a hurry."  
  
"I can wait an eternity, but not for you to get to the point. What the hell are you saying?"  
  
Hascinth smiled wickedly. "If you want the blood of a Slayer, I know where to find one without going halfway around the world."  
  
***  
  
CHAPTER 1:  
EXODUS  
  
Faith fled through the darkness, though she had no idea what she was running from or where she was going. She just knew that whatever was behind her was terrible, and sought only to swallow her whole. She was screaming, but the darkness was a great velvet blanket, swallowing her screams so quickly that she could not even hear them herself. There were shapes in the darkness, some moving, some standing still, all ominous and threatening. She had no idea how she could tell they were there, since both they and the darkness around them were pitch black. Eventually, one reared up right in front of her, and she was running too fast to stop. She ran into it, and suddenly felt as though she had run into a solid shape of water, because she heard a splash and felt a wet, numbing chill spread across her skin. Then pain lanced through the numbness, and she looked down. The darkness had parted just enough to reveal a knife in her belly, the same that had sheathed itself there on her rooftop back in Sunnydale in what seemed like a distant past life. She felt herself falling again, but there was no truck to break her fall, and she just kept falling and twisting in the darkness. She could feel a rushing sound as though water was following her, almost as if she were being pursued by an angry waterfall. She tried to remove the dagger from her abdomen, but it was as though the knife were made of water as well; it kept slipping from her numb, stiffening fingers.   
  
Then, suddenly, the evasive knife came free and sailed up into the darkness above Faith. Faith suddenly realized she was in the midst of dark stormclouds, and lightning arched and danced around her. Several bolts of it converged on the place where Faith had flung the knife, lighting up the darkness for a brief moment. The fugitive Slayer had a momentary glimpse of a woman's silhouette in the abyss above her, seemingly formed entirely of water or some other undulating liquid, with death in her eyes. Then the lightning struck it, and the woman shattered in a shower of drops and sparks. There was another blinding flash a moment later, accompanied at last by the roar of thunder than banished the silence.  
  
She awoke with a start, her hair matted in front of and around her face. The last lightning and thunder of her dream blended with the flashing and booming of the storm outside her narrow, barred window.  
  
The dreams were becoming more and more common, and had been almost from the end of her first month in prison. There had also been a noticeable spike in them since a volunteer from the local community college had introduced her to a form of kriya yoga, a pastime which she had enthusiastically adopted after a brief period of denying that she liked it and saying that it was hokey and all of that. This dream was different than the others she had experienced, however. It had a sense of personalness, of immediacy, that Faith could not put her finger on. It filled her with a sense of foreboding that lasted well into the morning, and there was nothing to distract her from it until her cell mate awoke.  
  
"Rise and shine, Chica," she said fondly as she heard the slight Mexican girl stirring on the bunk beneath her. Juanita spat an obscenity back in her direction, and Faith's smile only broadened.   
  
Juanita Garrido had been the complete opposite of the stereotypical inmate that she had always worried she was going to end up sharing a room with for a long time. She was even shorter than Faith herself was, and probably only ninety pounds. She didn't have much of a figure, but she was far from ugly, and still managed to have a kind of spark in her eyes after almost three years in prison, though she rarely smiled. Her English was surprisingly good, considering most of the Mexican offenders in the California Institution for Women could barely understand directions in English, much less speak it. Juanita at least had a reasonable grasp of it, especially the profanity. She had quickly grasped on to the concept that "fucking" was an appropriate adjective for just about any purpose, and that "as hell" was appropriate description for just about anything as well. She had ended up in prison more for falling in with the wrong crowd than for any true malice, getting picked up at a gang bust in L.A. three years previously, while engaged in some kind of vandalism; Faith had never been able to drag out of her roommate just exactly how serious that had been, and had taken the point and given it up after a couple of tries. Juanita had only been moved down to maximum security after attacking one of her guards in medium security; had it not been for that incident, the girl might have already been free again.  
  
The official wake-up call came shortly, crackling over the aging P.A. system as the guards lined up to escort the inmates to breakfast. Faith leapt lightly down from her perch atop the bunk bed, narrowly missing Juanita's head as she crawled out from the bottom bunk. That drew a fresh round of obscenities, but they were half-hearted at best; there was really no room for Faith to have landed anywhere else, and they both knew that she could have jumped a lot farther than she had if it weren't for the simple fact that there was a concrete wall there. The cell had originally been meant to house a single person, but the prison was strained to nearly double its intended capacity, and living room was tight, to say the least; the cell hadn't been designed to give even one person much air to breathe.  
  
The shuffling walk to the cafeteria for breakfast was so mindless and routine that Faith practically did it instinctively at this point, barely noticing the armed guards and security cameras. She did notice something different today, however. One of the guards assigned to her cell block was new, a rare event, and one which would probably end up being the subject of conversation at some point during breakfast. New guards were rare, and anything at all could become news in a place so monotonous and isolated from the outside world.  
  
Breakfast was the standard fare of nondescript organic matter that would never be admitted even into a high school cafeteria. There was something that could have been soup; it was liquid, anyway, and it came in a styrofoam dish. There was some form of mystery meat; Faith did her best to avoid thinking about what kind of animal it came from. She piled the items onto her tray wordlessly and headed for an empty space at a nearby table.  
  
Faith had never had a group of friends that she fell in with that she always sat near at meals. When she had first come here, some people had chosen to sit near her for a few days. Then there had been a period where no one wanted to sit next to her, then people would again, and now she was in a state once again when people were giving her a wide berth, and the seats next to her would only fill when all others were taken. Her rises and declines in companionship occurred because of all the strange events that surrounded her; her second wave of popularity had been shortly after she had sent one of the inmates that everyone else despised to the infirmary for the night, but that had been only temporary. The subsequent decline in her clique had no direct cause, just a strange feeling that many of the other prisoners got when they were near her. There was the sense that the guards were somehow treating her differently, watching her differently ... the world itself had an air of unpredictability around her, which made many of her fellow inmates uncomfortable. Faith herself had sensed it on occasion, but even she had never been able to puzzle out anything about it.  
  
Today was no exception. That was one of the characteristics of prison. There were never any exceptions, to anything. Faith remembered watching the Shawshank Redemption years earlier, and how Morgan Freeman had talked about prison life being "routine, and then more routine." She had no idea how correct he was.  
  
Eventually, however, the fact that there was never enough space at the tables to go around forced the stragglers into her area. They tried to take as little notice of her as possible; a scant few gave her a nod or a smile or a muttered "'sup" in greeting, but no more. She returned the greetings of those who offered them, but did not go out of her way to try to spark conversation. For one thing, conversation this morning didn't seem to be incredibly lacking. It was usually like this during storms and other inclement weather conditions; there were always a good number of inmates who felt the urge to talk more than usual to lift the mood. Faith had noticed that the stupidest stuff could become the topic of long conversations in such times; there was simply never much in prison to talk about, and most of the inmates didn't care one way or another about the outside world, so the possible topics of discussion were fairly limited.  
  
"See the new chick?" a tall pimply redhead was asking to a friend as she sat down nearby.  
  
"Hell yeah, bitch," came the affectionate reply her friend, a stocky black woman who somehow managed to keep her head shaved even in prison. "Man, she is fine ... but keep yo' hands t' yo'self, hear? Girl looks like she's mean with a stick, 'f you know what I'm talking 'bout."  
  
The redhead smiled mischievously. "Good thing I don't have one, then," she smirked, and Faith grimaced in a moment of repulsed reflection. It was never the ones you expected. She couldn't help following the redhead's eyes to the newcomer among the guards. She had heard something from Dr. Bronson about there being one coming in, but had never paid much attention to it.  
  
The new guard was definitely a piece of work, Faith admitted. She was tall, six feet if you included her shoes, and had solid definition that showed even beneath her uniform. Her hair was ash blond, but Faith couldn't see any more than that; the woman was on the far side of the room from Faith and was not paying her any attention. Nonetheless, Faith's eyes narrowed as she looked at the new arrival, though for the life of her, she could not discern the reason why.  
  
She didn't pay a whole lot of attention to the newcomer, however, because remembering that Dr. Bronson had mentioned something about this also reminded her that she had a morning appointment with the good doctor today. She groaned. Out of all the things there were to hate about prison, that woman was the worst.  
  
Dr. Bronson was the prison shrink. Not shrink, she reminded herself. Psychiatric social rehabilitation therapist, or some such nonsense. She had required appointments with Faith at least once a week, and had somehow taken a special interest in Faith and often requested to see her at least twice as often. Faith couldn't stand the woman. It wasn't that she was mean; quite the opposite. She was cloying, almost flattering, always emanating a kind of false friendship that was carefully crafted but which Faith saw through like an open window. Faith hated pretenders, and Dr. Bronson not only pretended to be someone she wasn't, she had made a career out of it.  
  
Shortly after breakfast, she was escorted to the shrink's office by the usual trio of guards, just as she always had been whenever she had to be brought outside the thickest of the security web at the heart of the complex; the doctor's office was not at the edge of the compound, but it was just outside the maximum security sector that housed Faith and her fellow "extremely dangerous" inmates. The Three Stooges, she had affectionately nicknamed the trio, based on the fact that they had practically no facial expression at times, and when they did, it was generally to crack jokes that she didn't think were the least bit funny. It was all as routine as breathing.  
  
When she entered the doctor's office, however, her eyes widened immediately. The doctor was not alone. The new guard from breakfast was there as well. Faith gazed at the newcomer quizzically until she realized that it was not polite to stare; then, since she had never been one for manners, she continued to gaze at her anyway. Breaks in routine at prison were rare, and never happened without a purpose of some kind.  
  
Dr. Bronson, a short, plain woman with brown hair and thick, professorial glasses, was seated behind her desk. She was facing sideways as Faith walked in, looking out the window. That, at least, was fairly routine.  
  
"Faith!" she exclaimed excitedly in her bubbling, ever-enthusiastic voice. "Good to see you again! Do come in."  
  
Faith slowly shut the door behind her, leaving the Three Stooges out in the hall.  
  
"Is something ... wrong, doctor?" she asked hesitantly, without moving away from the door.  
  
"What? No, why should there be? Please, have a seat."  
  
The hair on the back of Faith's neck raised at that, though she couldn't put her finger on the exact reason yet. For some reason, however, that inner voice that had kept her alive as an abandoned Slayer was telling her that the woman was lying, or at least, not telling the whole truth. She noticed that Dr. Bronson had not even bothered to introduce the new arrival, despite the fact that it should have been obvious to the doctor that there could be no other reason for Faith to believe anything was out of the ordinary.  
  
"Are we going to have company today?" Faith asked, still not moving toward the chair in front of Dr. Bronson's desk.  
  
"Eh? Oh, yes, how foolish of me. Faith, meet Officer White," Dr. Bronson said, rising to her feet for the moment. "She has ... uh ... experience in dealing with cases similar to yours, so I thought it would be appropriate to include her."  
  
"Please, just call me Crystal," the new guard said, though she did not extend her hand or make any other kind of friendly overture.  
  
Nevertheless, the hair on the back of Faith's neck raised another inch at this latest exchange. Something was out of place. There was something seriously wrong this; guards were practically never on a first name basis with the inmates, especially not in any kind of friendly manner, and never unless both the guard and the inmate in question had been here for years. She focused her gaze temporarily on the new guard, but they were unreadable, though Faith thought she caught a flash of something there for a brief instant. Then it passed. She turned her gaze back to lock the good doctor's, and they were focused and level. For some reason, however, the doctor did not seem as calm as her eyes argued; then, suddenly, Faith put her finger on it, and had to control herself from starting and startling the other two. The temperature in the room was deliberately kept cool, but there were clearly beads of perspiration standing out on Dr. Bronson's forehead.  
  
"Are you going to sit down, or are you just going to stand there all morning?" Officer White asked. Once again, her voice was far too friendly for Faith's comfort.  
  
"Well ..." Faith murmured as she approached the chair before the desk.  
  
"Oh, come on, Faith, sit down, I can't wait all day," Dr. Bronson said. That was another break from routine; Dr. Bronson almost never sounded cross, even when she was. The beads of sweat on her forehead were even larger now than they had been when Faith first noticed them. Something was clearly fraying the good doctor's composure.  
  
"Doctor, what's wrong?" Faith asked, trying to sound as genuinely concerned as possible. She half hoped it was laryngitis.  
  
"Eh? Oh, nothing, my nerves ... oh, it's nothing, just have a seat."  
  
Faith's eyes narrowed. They were awfully insistent on getting her to sit down. Instinctively, she glanced at the seat of the chair, as though it could provide her with any answers. At first, there was nothing out of the ordinary to see, but then she noticed something small and shiny lying on the chair, a tiny metallic speck. She tried to brush it away, and it didn't move. Her eyes widened; both Dr. Bronson and Officer White tensed simultaneously, and Faith felt rather than saw Officer White's hand drift closer to the holster at her right hip.  
  
Convulsively, Faith tore the cushion free of the seat, and gasped, even though she had suspected she might see more than what would normally find under a chair cushion. Wedged into the base of the chair was a syringe, with a dose of some kind of green liquid in it with which Faith would have injected herself had she actually sat down. She had no idea what it was, but she doubted it was a flu shot.  
  
"What the hell is this?" she demanded, alarmed, but she did not expect an answer and was only doing to conceal that she was preparing to fight.  
  
Dr. Bronson's hand instantly lunged for the alarm button beneath her desk, while Officer White's hand darted for the holster at her hip.  
  
The good doctor's hand never reached the button, as Faith, moving as quickly as she ever had, grabbed and hurled the syringe like a dart, embedding the entirety of the needle in the woman's hand. The woman sprang back with a cry, clutching her hand to her breast, though her movement was slower and stiffer than any normal pain reflex, and her eyes were already beginning to take on a distant, glazed look.  
  
Faith was not paying her any attention anymore, however, because as soon as she had let fly the syringe, she had pounced at Officer White in a deperate lunge to keep the woman from bringing her Remington into play. She was half successful. The woman was fast, and strong, and had already gotten the revolver free, but Faith was there in time to slide to the inside of Officer White's body and lock a hand around her wrist, sending the officer's shot flying up and knocking out the hanging overhead lamp. A shower of glass fragments and sparks rained down on them, and surprisingly, Officer White jumped back as if seriously pained.  
  
Faith jumped back as well, but not from the sparks or the glass; she had shrugged off much worse in her day. Officer White's gun had come loose from the impact of the brief struggle ... and had come loose straight through her fingers. The feel of Officer White's flesh, if flesh it could be called, might have been enough in and of itself to have caused Faith's reaction. It had had far too much give, and was far too cold, to be normal human flesh. It had felt like liquid contained by only the thinnest of membranes. And the way she had recoiled from the glass and sparks ...  
  
"What the hell are you?" she asked, inching towards the gun on the floor.  
  
The taller woman did not answer, and realized immediately where Faith was heading, and she dove for the gun. Faith dove at the same instant, but not at the gun. Realizing that Officer White's path to the gun would take her straight under the blown lamp, Faith dove straight at the woman, bracing herself for the cold feel of the woman's skin, wrapping her arms around the woman's waist, and lifting her into the air towards the frayed ends of the wires hanging from the ceiling to where the lamp had been seconds earlier. There were still sparks dancing at the exposed ends.  
  
"No!" the officer shrieked, and Faith's last doubts about the woman's humanity were annulled. The woman twisted, and her flesh blurred and became a liquid metallic silver, flowing downward around Faith's arms; Faith suddenly found that she was trying to hoist a pool of water into the air, though there was something solid within it that brushed against the sleeve of her prison jumpsuit as it rolled down around her, but it felt thin and frail like a wire frame. She jumped back, unwanted visions of "Terminator 2" coming into her mind and fearful that the woman might suddenly re-materialize right around Faith with knives for hands, but that didn't happen, and Faith managed to free herself from the descending blob. It reached the floor, and there it actually did begin to materialize, but Faith was already moving.  
  
As soon as she got her balance set under her again, she sprang onto the doctor's desk, and from there into the air, grabbing the wire dangling from the ceiling several feet above its end. The wire was held to the ceiling only by a few metallic clips, which came free with Faith's weight on them. Faith, the wire held out in front of her, plunged down into the reforming ooze.  
  
There was a loud crackle and a series of popping sounds, and a high-pitched wail echoed from the blob, which had begun to have a recognizable human shape again. However, not only had Faith brought the live wire down with her, but she had also brought all her weight down straight on the frail inner skeleton of whatever kind of creature Officer White was, apparently before it could reform its fluid defenses around itself. There was a loud snap that was distinct from any of the popping sounds caused by the live wire. Faith hurled herself away quickly, as a burning sensation began in her flesh where her exposed hand had touched the skeleton, but she was already reasonably confident that she had struck a fatal blow.  
  
She wheeled around as soon as she thought she had put a yard or two between herself and the creature, however, and froze. She had been right about striking a fatal blow, though the current was not exceptionally powerful and she wished she had something like a high-voltage line at her disposal. What caught her eye, however, were the Three Stooges, standing at the doorway of the doctor's office, having heard the gunshot and the screaming. Their eyes were wide with terror, and Faith felt an irrational pang of sympathy for them. They had probably been watching most of the battle, and now they were watching, transfixed by horror, as a creature that none of them would have believed existed burbled its last ... well, burbles, Faith thought with a start. She had no idea if that thing breathed or not.  
  
Faith's mind raced to think of anything she could say that might stop them from either gunning her down on the spot or sounding the alarm, but a moment later, she settled on saying the first thing that came to her mind. "Run," she said, and then louder, "Run!"  
  
Under normal circumstances, it would have seemed odd for a group of guards to be taking orders from a convict, but after what they had just seen, apparently these were no longer normal circumstances. Two of the officers immediately bolted in fright. The last, an older woman of just over Faith's height, remained frozen in place. Cautiously, Faith inched towards her, waving her hands and trying to get her attention, but was three-quarters of the way to the woman before she got any reaction. The officer suddenly jumped and made a panicked move towards her holster, but Faith was there first, and the woman was shaking so badly that she actually missed her holster altogether, so Faith barely even exerted herself.  
  
"Now look," Faith said, taking the clip out of the gun and tossing it at the woman's feet. "I'm not going to hurt you, but I really need to get out of here."  
  
"You ... not ... need ..."  
  
"Yes, and a few other words in between."  
  
Apparently Faith was not the most qualified of shock therapists, because the woman fainted on the spot. There was a brief moment of truly unnerving silence, as the creature's burbles were getting faint, Dr. Bronson was by now completely unconscious, and there were no sounds of alarms being raised, despite the fact that the other guards had been gone for nearly a minute. Faith harbored no illusions that that would last long, however.  
  
Helping herself to the gun and spare cartridge of her would-be assassin, as well as a ring that looked like it might be worth something that had remained behind as the creature disintegrated, she took off running for the nearest thing she could think of that might be an egress from the California Institution for Women: the sewer tunnels. There was a manhole not far from Dr. Bronson's office, she knew, and she couldn't think of anything else. There would be no Plan B.  
  
The alarm went up before she had gotten fifty meters outside the doctor's office, but she managed to duck the notice of two patrols of guards, both of which seemed to be rather disorganized at the moment; the two guards that had run screaming had probably not been able to give very coherent accounts of what was happening. Faith reached the manhole moments later; it was sealed shut with four thick iron bolts that were kept underneath small locking hatches, but Faith wasn't going for the subtle approach. She had never felt this large an adrenaline rush since she and Buffy had faced Kokistos, and she was more sure of herself now. She locked her fingers into the small air holes, set her legs, and heaved upward with every muscle in her body.  
  
With a scream of tearing metal, the manhole came loose; any guards in the area would have heard it, but Faith didn't care. She jumped down the shaft into the darkness and stench below.  
  
Shouts began to echo down to her moments after she landed, indicating that someone was beginning to realize that there was a breakout in progress, but as soon as they spotted what remained of Officer White in the doctor's office, they'd have a lot more questions than her to worry about. Hopefully the sight of whatever kind of demon's corpse that was would send a few more guards into a panic, and the search for her wouldn't get organized until she was at least beyond the grounds.  
  
The tunnel was pitch black, but Faith had always had extremely good senses of all kinds. She knew to within a few degrees which direction the exterior parking lot was, and she could feel extremely faint drafts, which indicated which passages went anywhere and which didn't. Steeling her nerves--and her nose--she plunged ahead into the tunnels. It took almost twenty minutes, but she eventually managed to slog her way to another manhole. Not knowing what to expect when she surfaced, but knowing that she didn't have the tools to be subtle and had no idea where any other exit from the sewers lay, she popped the manhole free as quietly as she could ... which still made a great deal of racket.  
  
If she had expected a surprise, she got what she expected. The prison, the outer perimeter of which was a short distance behind her, appeared to be in total pandemonium. Whether there were more of the creatures inside, or the guards had simply all gone haywire after seeing what had happened, or perhaps one of the inmates had caught a glimpse of the creature and had started a panicked riot, Faith couldn't say, but it appeared that the search for her hadn't fanned out from the prison much at all. As Faith watched, two state trooper cars and one unmarked black sedan that looked decidedly federal careened down the highway toward the institution, passing out of sight to Faith's left toward the main gate in the perimeter. Reinforcements were going into the prison, not out. The parking lot in which she surfaced, used mainly by civilian personnel of the prison, was nearly deserted.  
  
Without further hesitation, Faith bolted for the woods. There was a lake a short distance from the prison, and Faith wanted to wash the filth of the sewer off her as quickly as possible. In addition, the main part of the town of Corona was on the far side of the lake, and she would have to get there to have any chance of putting real distance between herself and this place. She had to maneuver through a lot of outlying buildings of the compound, but was surprised at how empty everything was. She was three-quarters of the way to the woods when she spotted a pair of helicopters coming in from the north, but she had expected to see that earlier. Then her eyes narrowed. Whatever the reason, the situation inside the walls had to be serious. Those were no ordinary police helicopters approaching. Those were Black Hawks.  
  
She took cover until the choppers had passed over and settled down within the walls, and then made a break for the treeline, not caring if anyone spotted her with a telescope from the walls. She had made it nearly a mile into the woods before she stopped, listening for the sounds of pursuit. Another helicopter was approaching from the north, but to the east, in the direction of the prison, there was still silence.  
  
"Well, you sure know how to stir up a hornet's nest," a woman's voice said from behind her.  
  
Faith wheeled, the sidearm she had taken from Officer White springing into her hands. She relaxed a moment later, however, when she realized that she was not being attacked.  
  
The woman to whom the voice belonged was alone, though she had come upon Faith so quietly that Faith wondered how many more of them might be in hiding. The woman looked human enough, but just enough different as to perk up Faith's senses--senses that had admittedly failed to detect the woman's approach. She looked to be in her late teens or early twenties, strong and athletic, with summery auburn hair and a general sense of vitality radiating from her skin. Her hair and her dress were both adorned with flowers, and even twigs and berries.  
  
"Who are you?" Faith asked, not lowering her gun all the way.  
  
"Call me Sycamore," the woman answered, "Or whatever you want, but listen to me. I'm here to help, but I'm only going to have time to explain this once. Believe however much or little of this that you want. Listening?"  
  
"I'm listening."  
  
"My sisters and I are foiling the pursuit that's on your trail, but we won't be able to keep them at bay forever. A friend of ours told us you might be needing our help. We have a few friends inside the prison, but we never thought you'd actually come to our woods. Now that you're here, you can get to the town and get away. You've been learning the arts of the Ley Lines in there, right?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Yoga, you call it?"  
  
"Oh ... yeah, a little," Faith responded uncertainly, suddenly wondering where all this was going and how the woman knew so much about her. A local community college student had taken on doing volunteer work teaching yoga to the prison inmates once a week; it had taken some wrangling, but eventually the warden had seen that it generally kept a lot of the girls quiet for two hours a week and could be used as an incentive for good behavior as the class became more popular.  
  
The other woman nodded. "Juniper Kent, the girl that teaches it, is a friend of ours. She'll be waiting for you at the boathouse at the far side of the lake by the time you get there. One of my sisters is catching her up on what's happening." Faith wanted to ask how many sisters the woman had, and why no one was catching her up to speed on what was happening, but thought better of it. The woman continued, "you should be able to use her teachings now, however. I'm sure me talking so fast is not helping, but when I'm gone, clear your mind, and you may find that the woods have strength that they can lend you. You look like you might need it. Anyway, Juniper will be able to take you back to her home by Chino Hills Sports Park. It's right by route 71. You can get from there to wherever you need to go, once the heat dies down a little."  
  
By this time, Faith was in the mood for questions. "Now wait a moment, who told you about all this? How do you know so much about me? And ... what are you?"  
  
"I don't have time for that. Like I said, you can believe me or not, it's your choice. Slayers can make their own choices about who to trust. The search parties entered the woods about ten minutes ago. I'll stall them for as long as I can." With that, she flitted behind the tree she had been standing against, but did not come out the other side. Faith looked for her, but she was gone. She looked up in the tree, even climbed up a branch or two, but eventually resigned herself to the fact that the woman would not be coming back to answer more questions. Her eyes narrowed when she looked at the tree a second time, however, and she began to make some foggy conclusions in the back of her mind. She had never been much of a botany student, but that tree could very well have been a sycamore.  
  
Eventually, she decided that she might as well do what the woman recommended, though the thought of doing yoga on bumpy, uneven ground while covered with sewer sludge and with hot pursuit not too long behind her was a little laughable, she didn't intend to rest long. Just enough to recover her breath.  
  
Shortly after she began to run through some of the breathing and focusing exercises that Juniper had taught her over the last year or so, however, she began to sense that the woman, whoever and whatever she was, might have known what she was talking about after all. She felt as though each breath were indeed infusing her with more energy than any breaths she had taken in a long while. In addition, her senses, which had always been sharp, suddenly felt markedly more so. The forest seemed a bit noisier all of a sudden, though she realized that she was just hearing it more clearly. After a few moments, she almost thought she heard whispers in the wind blowing through the branches, and thought she caught the word "Slayer."  
  
At that point, she figured she'd had enough. She had spent a good ten minutes already, which wasn't long for a yoga exercise but was definitely a long time when one was on the run. In addition, by this time, for whatever reason, there was life and energy singing in her blood, so much so that her breath was heaving just to contain it. When she did start moving again, she found herself running as fast as she had ever run before and not growing tired. It was almost, just as the woman had implied, as if the woods were lending her strength. Perhaps it was simply the combination of youth, desperation, and the renewed taste of freedom. Whatever the source, she was grateful for it. In a corner of her mind, she was still suspicious--or at least curious--about Sycamore and her motives, and who else had been keeping an eye on her during her time in prison, but she forced such concerns to the back of her mind for the moment. Getting away from the pursuit that was apparently gathering steam at last was her first priority, and if it turned out that Sycamore was not everything she seemed, she would deal with that when she had to. Leaves and flowers danced in her tailwind as she sped off through the woods.  
  
*****  
  
COMING SOON: Faith returns to Los Angeles; Buffy returns to Earth.  
  
FAIR WARNING: This is a work-in-progress fic and I'm busy with my junior year of college. It could be a while between updates. 


	2. No Answers Here

DISCLAIMER: We both know I don't own Buffy, Faith, or any of the other characters that are making Joss Whedon and his corporate sponsors/affiliates rich. If I did, this whole college tuition thing would be much less of an issue.  
  
Also, this is my first Buffy fanfic, so be nice.  
  
ANTI-DISCLAIMER (would that be just a "claimer?"): Some of these characters ARE my own creation, as well as many elements of the setting. Use your head. If it never appeared in anywhere in the Kenshin series, then it's probably mine. Not that anyone cares but me.  
  
SPOILERS/BACKGROUND: Everything from Season 1 to Season 5 and Angel Season 1 to Season 2; this picks up after S5/S2.  
  
Onward!!  
  
*****  
  
CHAPTER 2:  
NO ANSWERS HERE  
  
Buffy stretched and rubbed her eyes. Her back ached, and she was lying on something hard. There was a muffled rumble of machinery from somewhere nearby. Suddenly, she sat up with a start.  
  
*Where is he?* she wondered. *And ... where am I?*  
  
That didn't take a whole lot of effort to answer, but it did take a bit more to believe. She was lying in a construction yard of some kind, and there didn't appear to be anything particularly ... Hellmouthy ... about it. A lone crane some distance away stretched its spidery arm ponderously above her head. Looking around, all she could see were piles of dirt, gravel, concrete, and pipes, as well as a few trailers of corrguated metal. The sun was just rising over the eastern rim of the yard, and it sounded like there weren't many people at the yard yet. Nevertheless, while it didn't seem like the most dangerous place to be--her most recent memory was certainly of being in a much worse place than this--it was not where she expected to be.  
  
Had she dreamed it all? Cautiously, she put her hand to her throat. Sure enough, her hand came to rest on two large gash marks, red and tender and raw, and she winced. No dream involved there.  
  
She realized that she was just spinning her wheels lying where she was, and lying on a pile of cinder blocks wasn't exactly her idea of a day's rest, either. The sun was coming up, so the vampires would have all gone to their havens again; had she been out all night? Or even longer? She needed answers, and there was only one person she ever turned to for answers to questions about the weird and creepy. Hesitantly, as though fearing that the construction yard might somehow be an illusion and might melt away if she stepped in the wrong spot, Buffy stole out of the lot and out towards the high school in search of a certain librarian.  
  
*****  
  
"All right, now I've been a good girl long enough, you want to tell me what the hell is going on here?" Faith asked as Juniper held the door of her house open for Faith to enter.  
  
"I told you before, I wish I knew," Juniper replied. Juniper was a slender girl very little larger or more defined than Faith's cellmate back at the penitentiary had been--a penitentiary that was still much too close for comfort, Faith reminded herself, though they were a little further away from it now. She lived in a surprisingly well-to-do place in one of those new rabbit-warren housing developments that seemed to have sprung up like weeds during the 90's, decorated on the interior with a lot of floral arrangements and other outdoor-themed decor.  
  
"Not good enough. You've got to know something, or why the hell did you bring me here?"  
  
"Aren't you glad to get away? I'm harboring and aiding an escaped felon here, in case you didn't notice."  
  
"I did, actually. I asked why."  
  
Juniper shrugged. "Sycamore is a friend of mine, and she told me that she had a friend that needed help. Now you're telling me that you've never met her before. So I really have no idea why, even if you were one of my better students."  
  
"Well, that's just great, then," Faith responded. "But at least there's something I can ask you. Who's Sycamore?"  
  
Juniper hesitated again. "I'm not sure, but I trust her."  
  
"You trust awfully easily."  
  
"People have told me that before."  
  
"You ought to listen to them more."  
  
"If I did, you probably wouldn't be standing here, you know. I mean, most people wouldn't invite someone into their house less than a day after finding out she was an escaped con with a nickname 'Slayer.'"  
  
"It's not a nickname, it's ... well, sort of a title ... I mean ... look, never mind that, all right?"  
  
"I'm not trying to, honestly."  
  
"All right, all right."  
  
"OK, my mom and dad get back tomorrow morning ..."  
  
"Your mom and dad? You still live at home?"  
  
"Does you really think teaching yoga pays well enough for this place? Come on. Anyway, they'll be back tomorrow morning or afternoon and they probably wouldn't be as understanding as me about the fact that you're staying here," she continued.  
  
"No problem, I wasn't planning on staying here."  
  
"Really? Well, that's ... I mean, of course. Where are you planning on going?"  
  
Faith looked out the window. The sun was just beginning to set in the west. She turned around and faced Juniper. "I think it's better that I don't tell you actually," she said. "Just get me to the closest truck stop. I'll hitch a ride from there." There was only one place she could go, of course, if she didn't want to be hunted for the rest of her life until one of the assassins finally got her; there was no way they were going to give up on her that easily. She had long ago fallen from grace with the Watcher's Council and there was no way she was heading back to Wolfram & Hart--for all she knew, they had sent the assassin, they obviously weren't above such things--which meant that there was only one place she knew that she could turn for answers. Exhaling a long breath, she prepared herself for another trip to the City of Angels.  
  
*****  
  
COMING SOON: Chapter 3, "The Search for Answers." Buffy's back, but seems to have lost a few years somewhere.  
  
My apologies for the brevity of this chapter; most of mine will be longer. 


	3. The Search for Answers

DISCLAIMER: We both know I don't own Buffy, Faith, or any of the other characters that are making Joss Whedon and his corporate sponsors/affiliates rich. If I did, this whole college tuition thing would be much less of an issue.  
  
Also, this is my first Buffy fanfic, so be nice.  
  
ANTI-DISCLAIMER (would that be just a "claimer?"): Some of these characters ARE my own creation, as well as many elements of the setting. Use your head. If it never appeared in anywhere in the Kenshin series, then it's probably mine. Not that anyone cares but me.  
  
SPOILERS/BACKGROUND: Everything from Season 1 to Season 5 and Angel Season 1 to Season 3; this picks up after S5/S2.  
  
Onward!!  
  
*****  
  
CHAPTER 3:  
THE SEARCH FOR ANSWERS  
  
*Everything looks so different,* Buffy thought to herself, wrestling with her nerves, which stubbornly refused to lie still. Her first thought was that she was trapped inside the dreams of the Anointed again, but that had been a clear and unambiguous nightmare; everything looked normal here, just not the normal that she remembered. If anything, it was her that looked out of place, as she was still wearing her dress and everyone else was dressed normally. There were children heading by her on bikes with bookbags on their backs, the usual slew of gas stations, convenience stores, fast food chains, and so on. All the familiar landmarks she remembered were where she remembered them; the church on Main Street looked the same as it ever did, as did the public library, though she hadn't been there in ... well, OK, she had never been there, but it was the same building where she remembered Willow spending a lot of time.  
  
Suddenly, something occurred to her. It was early morning, so the students with their bookbags ought to be heading towards the high school. Some of them, at least, looked to be of high school age, though none of them were familiar and none of them waved to her. A few did give her strange stares, no doubt at the sight of her evening attire, but at least she knew she wasn't a ghost or otherwise invisible. The kids weren't headed towards the high school, however; they were all headed away from it. Her eyes narrowed. She had skipped school on occasion, but it looked like the whole school had to be playing hookey.  
  
She rounded the last corner to get to the high school, and stopped, putting both hands to her mouth to muffle a squeak of fright.  
  
The high school lay in ruins. Crumbled heaps of concrete and mortar lay everywhere, despite what looked like a rudimentary and halfhearted cleanup effort. Blackened timbers poked skyward from the rubble, but nothin else remained of the upper levels of the school at any place in the structure. There wasn't even police tape or any other kind of barrier around the school, just a crude sign at each corner of the grounds that read "Keep Off," as if even the police had not wanted to touch the scene or stray too far onto it. The block was practically deserted, as though everyone were giving the grounds a wide berth, and she caught a few suspicious looks from people at a distance, apparently wondering why she wasn't doing likewise. They seemed afraid of the ruins, but also rather accustomed to the sight of them, as though they had stood here for a while. For that matter, the ruins looked ... old. Her first instinct was that the dance had been attacked in the night, and possibly a lot of people had been hurt or killed, but from the looks of things, whatever cataclysm had wrought this might have occurred a year ago or more.  
  
*So no sane person wants to touch this place?* Buffy thought to herself. *Oh well.* She was already heading across the lawn towards the blackened building.  
  
It didn't take her long to discover that a battle of some kind had taken place there; there were even remains of crossbow bolts and other weapons scattered around the facility, with the largest concentration in the courtyard. She wrinkled her nose. There was a distant, lingering smell of charred flesh hanging in the air, somehow even more repulsive than the smell of normal human flesh. It got even stronger when she left the courtyard towards where the libary would have been, and steeled herself again when she came to the hallway that had been just outside the library.  
  
Pieces of flesh dotted the walls, floor, and ceiling; strips of it hung from the jagged edges of timbers and scraps of metal that looked like they used to be lockers. There was no mistaking it for human; something demonic had died here. Something huge. And if the destruction of the demon and the destruction of the high school weren't connected, then she was a boy.  
  
Frightened for a moment, she put a hand to her chest. *Nope, still a girl.* She breathed a sigh of relief.  
  
There were any number of possibilities. It was possible that something had killed the demon, and the demon's death had been so violent that it had destroyed the high school in the process; she had never faced a demon that exploded when it died, but she certainly didn't think it impossible, especially one of this size. Less likely was the thought that the demon had somehow destroyed itself to accomplish something; under normal circumstances, that seemed impossible, but these were anything but normal circumstances. Did this have anything to do with what was happening to her? Had it somehow done something to her before she died? On the whole, though, she wasn't about to believe a demon as powerful as this one had evidently been to be the kind to offer itself for a kamikaze mission. The last alternative was that someone had destroyed the high school in order to destroy the demon.  
  
She felt a sudden, irrational pang of envy and disappointment. *Someone blew up the high school?* she thought. *And I missed it?* That didn't seem like the kind of thing she would have missed. It didn't seem like the kind of thing she could have missed, even had she wanted to.  
  
Her mind jumped back to the remains of the weapons she had found in the courtyard. They were definitely more her type than most weapons that people in the neighborhood might have on hand, but there were far too many of them. Assuming that some weapons had to have been completely destroyed, or carried away by the people that had brought them, there could have easily been dozens of people fighting this thing. Dozens? That seemed impossible. Almost no one she had run into had ever had the guts to stand up to even minor demons. She didn't think the total amount of guts needed to stand up to such things as this existed in the entirety of Sunnydale High--in the entirety of Sunnydale, for that matter. If someone had gotten a large part of the student body together to actually fight back against something like this, whoever it was deserved a medal. More. She could never have done anything like that.  
  
Images suddenly jumped into her mind, like memories from a dream. There was an image of herself in graduation robes and the maroon mortarboard of Sunnydale High. There was one of Angel outside ... only in daylight? Perhaps a severely overcast day? The image didn't look dark enough to be night, but it was so hazy and indistinct that she couldn't be sure. Another image ... a man turning into a giant serpent. She couldn't place any of the images, but she knew for a fact that she hadn't graduated, and that Angel had never been outside with the sun in the sky for centuries; and she was fairly sure that, even with all the strange events she'd seen in her life, she'd remember if a man had ever turned into something that looked like a wingless dragon in front of her. Those weren't the kinds of things you just forgot, though considering that she had no idea how she had gotten to where she had woken up, it wasn't impossible that she was under some kind of spell that was blocking her memory.  
  
Her head was beginning to hurt. Too much thinking on her part, and too much stinking on the part of the demon-flesh. She scurried out of the ruined school, dreading where she figured she had to go next.  
  
She had to go home. There would be no getting around that. Apparently, however it was that she got to that construction site, her purse had not come with her, so she had no money, and her dress was dirty and crinkled after apparently having spent the night on a dirty pile of cinder blocks and picking through the ruined high school. *Ruined high school,* she thought again. If she wasn't dreaming or otherwise hallucinating, that was going to take a while to sink in. However, she was still frightened of what she might find when she got there. Most of the town seemed close to the same as ever, but after seeing what had happened to the high school, she couldn't shake the feeling that she was going to be in for an unpleasant surprise of some kind.  
  
She avoided talking to anyone on her walk across town, both lost in her own thoughts and worried that people would probably look at her like she was crazy, especially going around dressed as she was on what was apparently a school morning. *Hey, waitaminit,* the thought came to her mind as that sunk in. *Isn't it supposed to be Sunday?* On the whole, however, that was obviously not the case. The school could not possibly have been blown up overnight without there being a huge media scene for at least a day. Weeks, more likely. *Weeks?* she thought. *Could it have been weeks? Where the heck have I been?*  
  
She knew that if she didn't get back to her home quickly, she probably would be too scared to do it all day. So she ran, as fast as her shoes would allow her, down the street towards her home, praying that it would still be there, that she wouldn't find that her family had moved. The first thing she saw, at a distance, was her mailbox and her front lawn. That didn't seem abnormal. She slowed her pace somewhat as she came within sight of the house itself. Things didn't look so out of place. There were two cars in the driveway; was that one Willow's? It certainly looked like it. The second, she didn't recognize. Her mother's would probably be in the garage.  
  
She reached the front walk leading up to the porch, and the trepidation that she had been trying to outrun down the street finally caught up with her. Each pavement block suddenly seemed miles long.  
  
Then the front door opened, and a girl came hurrying out.  
  
Buffy didn't recognize her, but she seemed innocuous enough. She was only a few years older than Buffy at most, had short blond hair, and was carrying an armful of what appeared to be textbooks. Her dress was not quite as outlandish as Buffy's at the moment, but was a little more--Renaissancy?--than Buffy would have worn on a normal day. That wasn't quite the word she was looking for (it wasn't even a word), but the only one that came to her head. The girl hadn't seen Buffy yet. Buffy was tempted to call out to her, but something held her back for the moment. She did begin to inch a little forward on the sidewalk, however. Having the girl there to focus her attention on made the paralysis in Buffy's legs recede somewhat.  
  
The girl crossed the grass to the car in the driveway that Buffy hadn't recognized, juggled with her books and keys for a moment, and finally got the driver's side door open. She popped the power locks, apparently intending to put the books down in the back seat, but when she turned towards the rear passenger door, she caught sight of Buffy out of the corner of her eye. Buffy had been approaching the entire time the blond girl had been fidgeting with her keys, and was now only a few strides away.  
  
Buffy stopped and waved at her uncertainly.  
  
With a piercing scream, the girl dropped her books and bolted across the yard. Instinctively, Buffy moved to block her path. Most people didn't know who she was, and of those that did, most of them that reacted like that had reason to want to get away from her. She knew the girl couldn't be a vampire, since the sun was above the horizon by now, but ...  
  
"Apparitus exorcimae!" the girl cried, flinging out a hand at her. There was a burst of verdant green energy from her fingertips, which Buffy only barely managed to twist out of the way of.  
  
*So that's how you want to play, huh,* Buffy thought to herself. *You've got nerve trying this at my own house.*  
  
The girl struck again as Buffy was regaining her balance, having been unprepared for the girl's first attack. With her right hand, she cast what looked to be a handful of dust or seeds from a small pouch at her waist. "Enascoro, circumretio!" she cried as the flecks hit the ground. There was a rustling sound as vines immediately began to spring up around Buffy's feet and attempted to ensnare her ankles. Buffy was faster than that, however. Tearing free of her cumbersome dance shoes, she torpedoed herself into the air and dove at her attacker. The girl was in the middle of her third spell when Buffy crashed into her, leading with her shoulder and sending the girl stumbling, and then sweeping her legs out from under her. A moment later, she had the girl pinned to the ground, a hand clamped over her mouth to prevent any more fancy spellcasting.  
  
"Who are you, and what the hell are you doing at my house?" she demanded, already wondering if it were better to do this inside rather than out on the front lawn in broad daylight.  
  
She never got an answer. A powerful voice from off to her left suddenly shattered the morning calm. "Galadha'belethil govanna!" Buffy had only the briefest of moments to thing that there was something familiar about that voice before there was a brillant flash of light from the direction the voice had come, and she found herself being picked up and thrown away from the girl by some unseen force. Her breath left her for a moment when her back slammed into one of the trees in her yard, and spots clouded her visin. There were suddenly cords, or vines, or brambles of some kind around her wrists, ankles, and waist, pinning her in place. With an adrenal burst, she pulled both her arms free at once, but suddenly the spots cleared from her vision, and she was able to get a look at the owner of the voice that had spoken moments earlier. She gasped. There was a reason that the voice had sounded familiar, but if Sunnydale's most adorable and innocent computer nerd had been capable of things like this last time she and Buffy had met, Buffy had certainly never known it.  
  
"Willow?!" Buffy asked incredulously.  
  
"Buffy?" the redhead was apparently just now getting her first good look at Buffy's face; she would have only seen her from behind, or from the side, beforehand.  
  
"Yes, Buffy," Buffy cried exasperatedly, pulling the bracken from around her waist. Much to her surprise, Willow suddenly raised her hands, and the bracken that she had pulled off moments earlier suddenly leapt up from the ground and pinned her wrists to the tree above her head again.  
  
"Uh, Will?" Buffy asked uncertainly. "You know, much as I might consider this fun some other time, I don't think this is really the time for it ..."  
  
"Shut up," Willow replied, with a colder voice than Buffy had ever heard her use. She did take a sudden look up and down the street, however, as though suddenly realizing what she had just done in public in broad daylight.  
  
"Fine, then you talk," Buffy answered, forcing her breathing to steady, though she kept herself alert. If this was really Willow, then she shouldn't have anything to worry about ... but if not ...  
  
"Willow?" the girl on the ground was slowly getting to her feet again. "Should we maybe ... go inside?"  
  
"I'm not bringing anything inside that looks like Buffy unless it actually IS Buffy." Willow's voice was adamant.  
  
"Hey! Will, I don't know what's happened to you, but I do believe that this is MY house, you know," Buffy answered, though of course, considering that this world was a bit different than the one she knew, anything was possible. Her voice suddenly much more hesitant, she asked, "isn't it?"  
  
Willow shrugged. "Even if you are Buffy, that isn't quite true at the moment, but that's the least of your problems right now."  
  
"Yeah, I was kind of getting that," Buffy answered.  
  
"Good. Now Tara's right, we can't do this out front." She raised her arm and made a sign in the air with her hand, and the coarse cords that were binding Buffy fell to the ground, though Willow still seemed to be expecting Buffy to attack her. When she didn't immediately, the redhead appeared to relax a little more. "So why don't we go around back?"  
  
Buffy shrugged. "OK, sure. But can you introduce me to ... your new friend, first, if she's going to be coming with us?"  
  
Willow and her friend both tensed again. "If you're really Buffy, you ought to know Tara," Willow declared flatly.  
  
"Umm ... sorry, but no," Buffy answered. "And I don't remember you being all big with the witchly stuff, either."  
  
"You ... what?"  
  
"You were the most innocent little computer nerd at Sunnydale High the last time I saw you."  
  
"Umm ... that was a long time ago, you know," Willow said, clearly getting more suspicious by the moment.  
  
Suddenly, the blond girl--Tara, Willow had called her--reached over and tugged on Willow's sleeve. "Will? Is it just me or does she look ... younger?"  
  
Buffy looked down at herself. Younger? She would have thought she would have looked younger when the dress hadn't been so ragged and dirty; at the moment, there didn't seem to be any reason to think that she should look that much younger. She turned back to look at Willow.  
  
Willow's eyes had nearly doubled in size during the time when Buffy had been examining herself, and her mouth had formed a soundless "O" that seemed to imply that Willow's mind was working in overdrive, and Buffy knew that Willow's mind usually never missed the mark even when working in normal drive.  
  
"You want to share whatever revelation you're having?" she prodded.  
  
"Oh God ... that dress ..."  
  
"Yeah, it's a little worse for wear, I know. I don't know how you're getting from this to me looking younger. I can say for a fact that I've looked better, even if I didn't make the cheerleading team."  
  
"You wore that to the dance, didn't you?" Willow asked, her breathing quickening perceptibly.  
  
"Umm ... yeah, what else would I wear something like this for?"  
  
"Tara, get the paper."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Right there." Willow pointed to the morning USA Today lying where it always had at the front of the driveway. "Go on." Nervously, Tara headed out towards the end of the driveway.  
  
"Buffy, what's the last thing you remember?" Willow asked as Buffy walked away.  
  
"I remember ..." Buffy's hand suddenly went to her throat again. The marks. Her mind darted back in time. The sewers, the underground church, the cavern. Shadows everywhere. Huge, knobbed hands suddenly gripping her from behind. A dark, cracking voice gloating in her ear. A sudden, piercing pain at the side of her neck ...  
  
Tara was back from the front of the driveway with the paper. Buffy realized that her flashback must have lasted a minute or so, and Willow had simply stood there, her mind clearly still racing, letting her think. Willow took the paper from Tara almost absentmindedly, still half lost in her own epiphany.  
  
"Willow?" Buffy asked, trying to bring her back to Earth a little.  
  
"Buffy, I need to ask you a few questions. I just need to see something, all right. And come on, let's walk around back, we've stood out here too long. I'll explain everything in a minute ... I think."  
  
"Umm ... OK," Buffy answered.  
  
"Oh, and by the way, this is my girlfriend Tara," Willow said, her voice suddenly brightening so that it sounded mostly like the Willow that Buffy thought she knew.  
  
"Uh ... pleased to meet you," Tara answered uncertainly, still in seeming disbelief that Buffy didn't already know her.  
  
"Your ... girlfriend?" Buffy sputtered.  
  
Willow nodded, suddenly seeming to grow distant again. "Yeah, I think we're on to something here."  
  
"Huh?"  
  
They were heading around the side of Buffy's house. Willow continued asking questions.  
  
"Have you seen Cordelia lately?"  
  
"Cordelia? Heck no! And why on Earth would I ever want to talk to Sunnydale's most pampered princess?"  
  
Willow just nodded again. That was getting annoying. She came up with another question, even more unexpected than the first. "OK, what's the worst thing you've ever done to Angel?" she asked.  
  
Buffy's eyes narrowed. "Well ... when we first met, I sort of swung down from above him and smashed him in the face. And when Darla was in town, I hunted him down and tried to kill him because I thought he hurt my mom." Suddenly, other images came to her mind, more images like those remembered from a dream that had come to her consciousness in the ruined high school. That reminded her, she had to ask about that some time, but these images were somehow even more ... charged ... than the ones that had come to her at the school. There was a brief, foggy flash of her and Angel together, an image that faded just as she began to realize enough of what was going on in the image that her cheeks flushed; then another image with her locked in a swordfighting duel with the vampire that had been her boyfriend, and another one of Angel surrounded by flares and arcs of scarlet energy that suddenly vanished, along with the whole sequence of images.  
  
Willow was already finishing her next question. Buffy hadn't gotten a chance to see if she'd made with the annoying nod again. She guessed that she had. "Sorry, what was that?" she asked.  
  
"I asked if you knew where your mom was."  
  
"Oh ... at the gallery, I guess, if she's already left." Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Tara miss a step, and heard a soft gasp that didn't sound like surprise. More like ... sympathy? Comfort? What the heck was going on?  
  
Willow nodded again--that was really getting annoying by this point--and slumped down on one of the lawn chairs in the backyard, which they had just reached. "I'm really sorry, Buffy. I believe you. I think I know what's going on. But Buffy ... I hate to tell you this, but you've got a lot of catching up to do."  
  
"I've sort of figured that out myself," Buffy pressed, with only the faintest hint of exasperation. "Will, WHY?"  
  
"The last thing you remember is going to fight the Master, right, just before the dance at the end of our freshman year of high school?"  
  
"Right." That seemed so natural to say, but a dark suspicion was growing in the back of her mind, which Willow seemed to be leading towards, and which Tara suddenly seemed to have grasped as well, because she let out an awed "Goddess ..." and would have dropped her books again had anyone remembered to pick them up before they started around back here.  
  
Willow nodded one last time. Buffy rolled her eyes, but the silhouette of Willow's conclusion was beginning to take form in her mind, so she was barely paying attention. Willow already seemed to be taking charge of the situation, however, for which Buffy was welcome; Willow seemed to have some kind of handle on what was going on, and was apparently much more familiar with the supernatural than Buffy remembered. "Tara, get on the phone. Get Giles over here now." Now THAT at least made sense to Buffy. She definitely wanted to talk to Giles. "And call Xander, have him get Dawn out of school and get her down here, too." That made some sense to Buffy; she did want to see Xander again, and thought it would be helpful having him around. But who was Dawn?  
  
Tara was already starting for the back door of the house. "Should I bring back anything to drink?" she asked, pausing by the back door.  
  
"I won't need anything," Willow called after her, "But I'm betting she will."  
  
"Oh, thanks," Buffy remarked.  
  
Willow nodded--again! But the redhead had already started talking, so Buffy didn't have a chance to say what was on her mind. "Listen, Buffy, I know you're strong--you're the strongest girl I've ever met, and I'm not just talking about your muscles--but this is going to be rough. You have no idea how rough."  
  
"Just get to the point, I can't stand waiting any longer."  
  
Willow showed off her nodding skills once again. "All right. Let me know if I start to freak you out too much, and we can stop and give you a chance to rest. Anyway, if I'm guessing right, the very last thing you remember is the Master actually ... well, killing you. The marks on your neck sure look they were made by much more than any ordinary vamp. That dress is the same you wore that night, too. You died that night, Buffy. Xander got to you in time to do CPR, though, and you came back to us."  
  
"I don't remember that," Buffy answered.  
  
Willow held up her hand for patience. And she nodded. Again. Buffy clenched her teeth and let her friend continue. "I know, that's what I'm getting to. You came back, but you also died. You were dead long enough for a new Slayer to be called--there are actually two of you now, believe it or not--and so your spirit had to have made it to the afterlife.  
  
"Fast forward a little while. Not long ago--well, about three months ago now, actually--there was ... a disturbance. A disruption in the barriers between worlds. A portal opened, and for a brief moment, dimensions began to bleed together. I can't even describe what happened there that night, and as you see, I've been studying magic a lot lately. It was ... serious. Really serious. The portal was being opened by a half-crazed goddess from a hell dimension that had been exiled here, and she wasn't about to close the portal behind her or do anything else to keep Earth and a couple hundred other dimensions besides from basically getting mixed together in a giant blender with the cap off. A few things did get through before you closed it.  
  
"We stopped her. You, me, Dawn, Giles, everyone, but mostly just you. You got the portal to close. You. And ... it killed you."  
  
"What, I died? Again?"  
  
Willow grinned, the first time Buffy had seen her smile in some time. It definitely brought back more memories of the old Willow than she had seen in a while. "Yeah, you need to stop doing that, dying too often is really bad for your complexion."  
  
"Hey, it's not like I meant to."  
  
"Well ... actually, that time, you did, but I'll come back to that. That's going to be the hardest part of the story. But anyway, in order to close the portal, you threw yourself into it. Basically, for a brief moment, you were at the center, or at least somewhere, in practically every dimension in existence. For a brief moment, there was a portal that basically went from anywhere, to anywhere. Including, I see now, though I'd never have believed if you weren't sitting right here, the realms of the afterlife."  
  
"So I traded places with the me that died?"  
  
Willow nodded, though this time she was actually answering a question. That was what nodding was supposed to be for. "It's not impossible, once you believe that the portal was powerful enough to reach that far, and if you'd seen it, you could believe it. Everything has a kind of spiritual resonance, Buffy, a pattern that marks it almost like a fingerprint, but also links it with anything else that shares the same feeling. If there was another you floating around in the afterlife somewhere--the one that died that night of the dance, the one that caused the next Slayer to be called--it would have been drawn to the portal like a moth to a flame while you were at the center of it. Who knows, the portal might have even opened right where you happened to be in the afterlife, if the afterlife even works like that; I'm not an authority on the subject, but the portal itself was made with a piece of your essence. That's why your sacrifice was able to close it. The rift might have opened right where your essence in the afterlife was strongest. I have no idea how you managed to become flesh again; I would've thought you might have come back as a spirit or something, but now ..."  
  
"Now you're just guessing, though," Buffy interjected.  
  
Willow looked up again, and miraculously refrained from nodding. A moment later, Buffy discerned mist forming in her eyes, and Willow gave a muffled, choking cough. "Babbling, actually," she said, laughing through her tears. With a cry, she suddenly jumped from her lawn chair to the ground right next to Buffy's, and threw her arms around the startled Slayer. "It is so good to have you back," she cried.  
  
Buffy and Willow hugged for a good, long minute, until Tara came back out of the back door, the cordless in her hands. She started to call out to them, but thought better of it, and instead floated down the steps and across the lawn to them.   
  
As though suddenly embarrassed by the girl's presence--this Tara was still a stranger to Buffy, even though she realized now that the other her had probably known her--Buffy pulled back from Willow's embrace and grinned, half-nervously, half-sheepishly. To break the uncomfortable silence, she asked, "All right, Willow, what's with the newspaper?"  
  
That brought Willow back down to Earth. "Buffy, you've been out of action for a while. I told you that you died again, and you look like you're taking that all in stride, but here's something else to sink in. You don't die easily. After the Master, you faced an awful lot of evil before anything brought you down again. I just wanted the newspaper because I thought it would be the most convincing way to show you." With that, she plopped the USA Today down in Buffy's lap.  
  
The first thing that caught her suddenly widening eyes was the headline about a President Bush and an impending war with Afghanistan. President Bush? Hadn't he gone the way of the dinosaurs in 1992? And hadn't his big deal been Iraq? What was up with Afghanistan? Finally, she made her eyes settle on the date.  
  
Tuesday, October 2nd, 2001.  
  
"Holy sh ..." the words burst from her mouth in a forced whisper.  
  
  
*****  
  
  
COMING SOON: Chapter 4, "Two Alone." Faith discovers Angel half-mad with grief for Buffy and unable to help her, and cannot make herself face Cordelia or Wesley. She ends up homeless for a time, but help comes from an unexpected source. Also, Buffy was not the only familiar face to come back through the portal.  
  
As always, classes are torture, so it may be a long time between updates. I shouldn't be working on this as much as I am ... but it's just so much more fun than schoolwork. 


	4. Two Alone

DISCLAIMER: We both know I don't own Buffy, Faith, or any of the other characters that are making Joss Whedon and his corporate sponsors/affiliates rich. If I did, this whole college tuition thing would be much less of an issue.  
  
Also, this is my first Buffy fanfic, so be nice.  
  
ANTI-DISCLAIMER (would that be just a "claimer?"): Some of these characters ARE my own creation, as well as many elements of the setting. Use your head. If it never appeared in anywhere in the Kenshin series, then it's probably mine. Not that anyone cares but me.  
  
SPOILERS/BACKGROUND: Everything from Season 1 to Season 5 and Angel Season 1 to Season 2; this picks up after S5/S2.  
  
  
*****  
  
CHAPTER 4:  
TWO ALONE  
  
"Los Angeles!" the driver said expansively as he pulled into the gas station just off of I-10. "This where you're getting off?"  
  
"Looks as good as any place," Faith answered. "Thanks for the ride."  
  
"Don't mention it. Not every day I get any company in the cab at all, 'specially not a pretty thing like you."  
  
Faith smiled and shrugged shyly. There was a time when she would have had some fun teasing the poor man before taking off, but a lot had changed since then. She wasn't quite sure how much, but a lot had. So for now, she thanked the driver again and hopped down out of the cab, breathing once again the free--if smoggy--night air of the City of Angels. It was getting on towards four in the morning, but that was as good a time to arrive as any, as far as Faith was concerned. The vampires and other creatures that stalked the streets at night would be heading home, but there was still enough darkness left that she could get to the Hyperion before sunrise. It was almost a mile away, but Faith was in the mood for walking, anyway.  
  
She waved a last fond farewell to the driver as she walked off. Goodness only knew she had traveled with worse company before; the man was already going on about his business, refilling the diesel tank on his truck. There was no pushiness, no attempt to get her to feel any kind of obligation, just a friendly farewell and a thanks for a short time of company on the road. She smiled as she moved out of sight of the gas station; the man had more class than a lot of people she knew that made ten times as much as he probably did.  
  
The streets of L.A. were quiet, but it was definitely a chilly, uncomfortable silence. Things moved in the shadows, some of which were probably simply homeless people or other after-hours wanderers and some of which were almost certainly not. *I guess Angel can't do everything,* she found herself thinking after seeing two or three creatures in a short five-block stretch that she was almost positive weren't of this Earth. He had to have been busy; he hadn't been to see her in just over three months, when before that, he used to come by at least once or twice a month to check in on her. She missed seeing him, hard as that was for the ever-solitary tough girl to admit to herself.  
  
She reached the corner across from the Hyperion and stopped. A frown creased her face. It didn't look abandoned, necessarily, but the place certainly looked a lot worse than it had when Faith had last stayed here. That reminded her of something, and she kicked herself for not thinking of it earlier. The last time she had been free, it was widely known, even if she had never technically been caught there, that she had been hiding out at the Hyperion with Angel before turning herself in. When the search for her got up and running and it became known that she had escaped the immediate area of the prison, this was almost certainly going to be one of the first places the authorities would look. She glanced furtively up and down both streets from the corner as if expecting to see a platoon of police cars and helicopters spring out of hiding bearing down on her, but the street was as still as the rest of the city.  
  
Her attention returned to the former hotel that now served as the base of operations for Angel Investigations. The upper floors in particular looked in disrepair, and what little plant life decorated the exterior of the hotel looked as though it hadn't been kept up all Summer. The lights in the lobby were on, but it looked as though that might be the only lit room in the building.  
  
Until that point, she had planned on going straight in the front doors; she wasn't planning on hiding from Angel, after all, and she doubted she would find any of Angel's gang here at this hour, or if she did, she could get away or defend herself. However, something about both the appearance of the building and the feel of the neighborhood were bringing out her more cautious instincts, instincts that were never far from the surface anyway.  
  
She snuck around the back of the hotel, climbed the fire escape as quietly as she could, and then leapt to a second-floor window that had been left open with the exception of the screen, which she was about to break when she realized it wasn't even locked. She held herself up with a single hand on the windowsill, raising the screen with the other, and then pulled herself into the second-floor room. She stopped to flex her fingers for a moment. For being out of action for more than three months, she realized she was still incredibly spry; she had done all that nearly without thinking about it, despite the fact that she had almost never done anything that demanding outside of combat, when adrenaline took over. She dashed the thought from her mind a moment later, however; self-congratulation had never been part of her style.  
  
She was in a dusty, abandoned bedroom, like most of the bedrooms on the second floor, she guessed. Dust covers covered most of the furnishings, and some cardboard boxes full of miscellaneous junk had been left to gather dust in several corners of the room. The door was closed; Faith listened against it for a moment, and thought she could hear voices, but extremely distant, most likely echoing up from the lobby. She opened the door.  
  
No doubt about it; there were at least two people in the building. The echoes of a conversation drifted along the corridor to her, from the lobby, as she expected. The end of the hall she was in opened up onto the second floor balcony at the head of the stairs. The voices were coming from that direction; she recognized Wesley's British accent and Cordelia's sultry SoCal inflections, but couldn't make out what was being said. In addition, there were other voices there, unfamiliar voices. None of them sounded like Angel.  
  
She crept to the head of the stairs and peered out. Seated on benches in the lobby below was what had to be the entire Angel Investigations team; what they were all doing up at four in the morning, she had no idea, though then again, their lives more than likely revolved around their boss' nocturnal activities, so maybe they had all made a career of night shifts. There were Wesley and Cordelia, as she had heard. There was also a tall black youth and a green demon of some kind, dressed as though he were going to a jazz festival or something. Faith's eyes widened at that, but then again, technically, their boss was a demon, too--just much less obviously than Greenie.  
  
" ... don't think we're going to be able to keep this up much longer," Gunn was saying.  
  
"Well, we've got to," Wesley replied in his typical ask-the-impossible way.  
  
"Wes, we've got enough for another two months, maybe three at most," Cordelia answered, sounding rather subdued.  
  
The black man continued. "People know, Wes. They know Angel's out of it. And, I hate to say this, but, without him, we just don't have the credibility that we need to do this."  
  
"We've been over this before, Gunn. We're still getting work."  
  
"Not like we used to," Gunn answered at the same time Cordy said, "Not enough." Wesley threw up his hands.  
  
"So what? Give up?" Wesley asked incredulously.  
  
"Wes, you know me, I'd never say that," Gunn answered. "I'll fight 'til I die, but that doesn't mean that we can't be realistic here."  
  
"You know there's no way we'll find a place as good as this," Wesley pointed out.  
  
The green demon spoke up for the first time. "Well, of course not, it's not every day you find a haunted property that the owner is absolutely begging to rent out."  
  
"I did!" Cordelia said in a moment of mock-levity.  
  
"Yeah, but your ghost still lives there," Gunn replied.  
  
"Hey, Dennis is a good guy."  
  
"I know, but he's also a dead guy."  
  
"Oh, details."  
  
"Guys, I hate to bring you back down to Earth again, but we're running low on time here," Greenie spoke again. "We need to get Angel out of this somehow, and that's something you should know more about than me. He's more human than demon."  
  
"We know that, Lorne," Gunn answered.  
  
In a surprisingly gentle voice, considering what Faith remembered of Cordelia in high school and during the brief time she had come back to L.A. before, the girl added, "if he wasn't human, he wouldn't be acting the way he is right now. That's the problem."  
  
Wesley, ever the rational one, apparently disagreed. "Look, Cordelia, I know you keep saying to give him time, but three months is a long time to spend grieving for someone ... at least, grieving like that. I think he's come up from the basement maybe twice in ... Cordelia?"  
  
Faith had been listening with increased interest as the conversation had developed, and cursed silently at whatever had interrupted its flow; Angel had been out of action for three months? That would explain why he had suddenly stopped coming to see her, and maybe why the streets were a little more ominous and the Hyperion in a little worse shape, too. For what? Grieving? Over what? Or who?  
  
Faith's eyes widened to the size of saucers as she realized the implication of that last question, and suddenly things started falling into place. *B!* she thought, and she let out a sudden gasp as her throat tightened up, surprising even herself. *It can't be ... it can't be ... but there's no one else it could ... dear God,* she finished. Suddenly, her attention was snapped back to the floor of the lobby below, though she found herself trying to concentrate on two things because the thought of Buffy wouldn't leave her mind. Cordelia appeared to be having some kind of seizure; Wes and Gunn were both doing their best to steady her, leaning her back against the soft cushions of the bench she had been sitting on. A moment later, she stopped shaking and sat up, pushing the two men aside as they tried to steady her.  
  
"Turn on the TV!" she said, in a surprisingly commanding voice. Much to Faith's surprise, no one else asked any questions, indeed, they seemed all too much in a hurry to comply. There was an old black and white set that had to be at least twice as old as Faith herself was that had been set up on the back of one of the benches against the wall, and Lorne, who happened to be the closest, flipped it on. It was nothing more than an early morning weather report coming to a close.  
  
Faith was puzzled, but only for a brief moment, because as soon as the weather report finished, someone handed the anchor a piece of paper from off camera, and Faith suddenly guessed what was coming next.  
  
"And now, to lead off the morning crime report, we have the latest updates on yesterday's inexplicable riots at the California Institution for Women and the bizarre events surrounding it.  
  
"As we reported yesterday, it does appear that there were at least two guards involved in the rioting itself, both of which had to be tranquilized and sent to a nearby psychiatric clinic for treatment; reports on their condition will not be available for some time.  
  
"We have confirmed that there was only one fatality among the guards, Officer Crystal White; however, in another strange twist in this strange saga, her body was taken away before it could be claimed by the coroner, apparently by the "special forces" who arrived shortly after the riot started. The Department of Defense still denies that any military personnel were sent to the prison, saying that only civilian law enforcement agents were present, despite several eyewitness accounts of seeing military-grade helicopters flying towards the prison yesterday morning.  
  
"The number of inmates who died is up to three from two yesterday evening; another died of massive internal bleeding during the night. Still unanswered, however, and completely unaddressed by the prison officials, is the issue of the inmate who apparently died immediately before the riot started, possibly creating and at least adding to the panic; 20-year-old Juanita Garrido was found poisoned in her cell, apparently by a booby trap erected at some point while the prisoners were eating breakfast. Obviously, the prison is extremely reluctant to admit to any possibility of foul play but federal officials announced yesterday evening that they will begin a formal investigation.  
  
Faith quickly covered her mouth with her hands to muffle a strangled cry that burst from her throat before she could think about it. *Juanita!* she cried silently, though there was no doubt in her mind that the trap had not been set for her.  
  
"Also, we have just received breaking news as of only hours ago, at three in the morning, after what was apparently a very sleepless night and a search for which everything seemed to go wrong, the prison officials conceded that one inmate escaped during the riot--one moment while we get her picture on the screen--a dangerous maximum-security serial killer known only as Faith, perhaps not coincidentally Juanita Garrido's cell mate."  
  
"Dear God," murmured Wesley under his breath.  
  
"Hey, is that that psycho-chick that Angel's always going to see, or used to?" Gunn asked.  
  
"Boy, you guessed it," Lorne answered him.  
  
"I thought he said she was on the mend!"  
  
"That was three months ago, Gunn. It looks like something changed."  
  
"Great. You don't suppose she's on her way back here?"  
  
"It wouldn't surprise me at all," Wes answered.  
  
Suddenly, Faith tensed. The combined distractions of thinking about Angel, watching Cordelia's seizure, and watching the TV had been so much that she hadn't senses someone creeping softly up behind her. She spun around, her fist raised, and only barely managed to pull her punch. It was just a girl, and an extremely thin and disheveled one at that, who flinched backwards with a frightened squeak when she saw Faith move, bringing her arms up reflexively to shield her face and opening her palms outward in the classic gesture of "don't hurt me."  
  
"S ... sorry," Faith murmured. From the corner of her awareness, however, she heard the man called Gunn downstairs suddenly hiss, "Did you hear something?" and realized that she needed to either run or show herself quickly.  
  
"Oh, that's awl raight," the girl said in a thick rural accent. "But ah don't think yer really s'posed t' be here ... or are you? I don't know all of Angel's friends." The girl seemed both completely unthreatened and completely unthreatening. Faith was much more nervous about the steps approaching from below. This was not the way she wanted to meet Angel's gang again. Nonetheless, thinking as best she could under the circumstances, she decided that she might as well let them see her; she didn't want to hide from them. On the other hand, she figured that they would probably all feel safer if she were talking to them from a distance.  
  
"Wait!" she cried out back over her shoulder.  
  
The footsteps on the stairs stopped momentarily, but Wesley's voice rang out a moment later. "Wait ... I know that voice."  
  
"Yeah, it's me," Faith said as she walked out onto the balcony. Cordelia, Wesley, and the man named Gunn were only five steps from the top; all of them were carrying weapons. The demon Lorne had remained in the lobby.  
  
"Faith." Wesley's voice was tight with strain, and it was clear that the only thing that was keeping him in place was the fact that he couldn't decide whether or not he wanted to attack her immediately or retreat back down the stairs.  
  
"Wes," Faith deliberately kept her voice level.  
  
"She doesn't look that psycho ..." Gunn said.  
  
Faith actually laughed. If he was willing to say that in front of someone who had just been characterized as a serial killer on local television, then he had to be made of pretty strong stuff. Faith liked that. "Nope, just me," she answered.  
  
"That's pretty psycho, last time I checked," Cordelia pointed out.  
  
The other girl popped her head out of the hallway. "She doesn't look too psycho to me, either ... but then, I guess I wouldn't know."  
  
"Fred?!" Wesley asked, as if surprised to see her. "Have you been talking to her?"  
  
"Well ... not much, you kind of interrupted," the scrawny girl observed.  
  
Wesley appeared to be momentarily at a loss for words, or perhaps thinking about what he would say next. Faith took the opportunity to move a short distance out onto the balcony, past the stairs, putting a little distance between herself and the trio, whose knuckles whitened as she did but otherwise made no move to stop her.  
  
"I hope you didn't come here looking to hide out again, 'cause you know, that's just what we need at the moment."  
  
"I ... had, actually, but I won't stay if you don't want. I didn't know Angel was in such bad shape, I haven't seen him in three months. And I didn't know that B ... that she ... she is, right?" the look in Cordelia's eyes was all the confirmation she needed.  
  
"I'd still like to see him, though," Faith finished.  
  
"I don't think that's really a good idea," Wesley answered.  
  
"I get that, but ... well, there aren't a whole lot of good ideas in my world at the moment."  
  
"Ours, either," Cordelia answered.  
  
"Then let me see him," Faith pleaded.  
  
"Why should we?" Wes butted in again.  
  
"Because ... because I think he'd want to see me," Faith answered honestly.  
  
"He'd want to see a serial killer?" Gunn asked pointedly.  
  
"Hey, EX-serial killer there, EX-serial killer."  
  
"Oh, my bad," Gunn responded. "Been all of what, a year now?"  
  
"Look, if he kicks me out, he kicks me out. Just let me see him."  
  
Wesley drew a stubborn breath. "Faith, let me be very blunt with you. You're an escaped felon, and it was known that you were connected to Angel. I'm betting we're going to get a visit from the police sometime in the next twenty-four hours. I don't need to tell you how bad it would be if you were here ..."  
  
"I wasn't planning on staying," Faith interrupted.  
  
"... but I don't think you understand how bad it could be even if it just comes out that you were here at all, and Angel won't lie. The last thing we need is for the business to get in legal trouble as well as financial trouble--and the longer you stay here, the more likely that becomes."  
  
Faith hadn't thought of that.  
  
"Also, Faith ... the last time you were here was the last time Buffy was here. He's seeing her everywhere he looks already. I don't want to find out what seeing you would do to him."  
  
"How bad is he?" she asked, partially to change the subject and partially to set herself up for an exit. She had already decided that, whatever their answer, she would concede that it was right to give him some more time. She had survived on her own for years once her first Watcher was killed; she could handle herself on the streets of L.A. if she had to.  
  
A pained look passed across Wesley's face, and for the first time, he lowered his guard, though it was clearly out of weariness, not trust. An empathetic look passed between the three people on the stairs.  
  
It was Cordelia that answered. "We've had to stop him from walking into the sunrise four times in the last three months, that's why we're always up at this hour. The first month was the worst, but he hasn't gotten any better in the last two months, either. He'd probably have starved by now if we weren't bringing blood in from the butcher shops for him. He comes out of there maybe once a week, sometimes less. Most of the time he just sits like he's been turned to stone or something, and when he isn't, he's completely out of control. The entire basement is wrecked. I've never seen anything like it."  
  
Faith forced herself to keep her breathing steady as she absorbed all of this.  
  
"All right, I'll give him some time, but I ... I'm going to need to talk to him at some point. Someone tried to kill me. Officer White's body never showed up in the coroner's office because she was a demon. I think that trap that ... that killed Juanita ... was intended for me, too."  
  
Cordelia's eyes were wide, as though she were actually sympathetic; Gunn appeared to be taking everything in stride. Wesley, however, was unmoved. "You have enemies?" he asked pointedly. "What an unexpected surprise."  
  
"Wesley!" even Cordelia seemed to think that he'd gone a bit far with that one.  
  
"All right, all right, I'm leaving!" Faith cried. "If that's all right with you?"  
  
Wordlessly, Wesley backed slowly down the stairs, followed shortly by Cordelia and Gunn. The girl, Faith noticed, hadn't moved to join them, and had simply struck a shy pose by the top of the stairs. Faith moved by her silently and down the stairs toward the front door. She had just reached the door and was about to head out without looking back when Wesley's voice sounded out from behind her.  
  
"There's a homeless shelter, eight blocks south and three blocks west from here," he called. "You should be able to stay there. Tell them ... tell the owner that you're a friend of Angel's." Faith's eyes widened a fraction of an inch; it had to be hard for Wes to say that. The former Watcher continued, "five blocks west from there is an occult shop called the Ancient Eye. They probably have the best resources in the city besides us and Wolfram & Hart, which I hope you're not going back to."  
  
"Hadn't planned on it," Faith responded dryly. "And ... thanks."  
  
"You're welcome."  
  
***  
  
It never occurred to Faith to go anywhere but the shelter that Wesley had mentioned. She didn't think he was the kind to send her into a trap, and he probably hadn't had time to set anything up; the most he could do was call the cops, in which case Faith still gave even odds on her chances of escaping. Faith had lived in some ratty neighborhoods in Boston and elsewhere growing up, so the thought of spending some time in a homeless shelter was not exceptionally daunting to her; she had seen some fairly unsavory places in her day. Nonetheless, the neighborhood she was walking through towards the shelter was still the worst she had been in in a long time, so she was not expecting much more than a little place with four walls and a roof. Because of this, she did a double take when she finally caught sight of the shelter itself.  
  
The South Central Humanitarian Haven was one of the most well-kept buildings on the street, or for that matter, in the entire neighborhood. It had two wings that looked like they had been constructed within the last two years, apparently by buying unused properties on both sides and demolishing whatever rickety structures had stood there previously. It was hardly a luxury estate--the emphasis in its building had obviously been size, not quality--but it was much cleaner and more well-maintained than just about any other building in sight.  
  
Faith approached the doors. A painted seal that spanned both doors showed a picture of a dove carrying an olive branch surrounded by words that read "An island of rest for those tossed by the storm." The inside had clearly been as diligently maintained as the exterior. A little girl, only about fifteen or sixteen years old, looked up from a rickety desk on the left side of the lobby as Faith walked in.  
  
"Lookin' for a bed?" she asked.  
  
"Um, yeah, I guess," Faith asked.  
  
"All right ... uh ... yeah ... OK, I forget what I'm supposed to do now."  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"I'm supposed to work the desk, but I don't know how."  
  
"Here, Tanya, I'll handle it. I can't sleep anyway," a soft voice said from a doorway behind the girl. A shadow detached itself from the doorway and formed into the shape of a slender woman of perhaps two or three years older than Faith, thicker than the scrawny girl at Angel Investigation had been and without the athleticism of Faith, but nonetheless with a certain innocent, everyday beauty about her. Tanya, apparently grateful for the relief, flashed a toothy smile at the newcomer and then disappeared into the next room.  
  
"I tell everyone here that they need to do a little bit of volunteer work keeping the place running if they want to stay, but I don't have the heart to enforce it very much," she said as she watched Tanya depart.  
  
"I'm Anne," the girl continued as she sat down in the seat that Tanya had just vacated. "I own this place."  
  
"That's nice," Faith answered. "I'm ..."  
  
"You're Faith, I know."  
  
Faith's eyes widened. "You know ..."  
  
"I keep an odd sleep schedule. I saw your picture on the news this morning. Don't worry, no one here will rat on you. At least, I don't think so."  
  
"So ... uh ... forgive my asking, but how much do you know?  
  
"Angel talked about you from time to time, back when he still talked to anyone. If he trusts you, then so do I. I owe him that much."  
  
Faith actually fought down the urge to blush. Even without ever getting to see Angel, even while he waded through his grief that might last another century or two, he was still helping her. What had she ever done to deserve that? To cover it up, she asked, "why do you owe him so much? How do you know him?"  
  
Anne smiled. "He made this possible," she said, with a gesture around the room. "This place would be a third of this size and would probably be falling apart without his help."  
  
Faith stared incredulously. Angel could barely afford to pay the rent on his own building, but had helped build one of what had to be the largest homeless shelters in the metro area? "You know he may be joining you soon," Faith pointed out, "considering he may be in danger of losing his own home not too long from now."  
  
"I'd heard," Anne answered. "I've never met anyone who gave so much of themselves. I've thought of trying to repay the favor, but we don't have a whole lot of money to spare; it's all tied down. I might be able to buy them some extra time, but it won't do any good if Angel doesn't come back to us soon, and 'soon' may be a relative term in his case."  
  
Faith smiled. "You know, he probably wouldn't even want you to get involved," she answered. "He probably appreciates what you're doing here too much. He'd think you were giving up something for his sake, and he hates it when people do that."  
  
"I know," Anne replied. "But anyway, let's see if we can get you a room. I'm not going to make you sign in the way I do most people, since I'm not going to make you work and I'm not sure I really want your name on the guest list, anyway." A moment later, she added, "and it would probably be better if you slept in my room, with me. I don't believe anyone would say anything about seeing you here, but it can't hurt to be a little careful."  
  
Faith had no problem with that, so she followed Anne back down the hall to her little single room. "You live here?" Faith asked.  
  
"When everyone else is sleeping eight to a room and only half of them have so much as cots, getting one room to myself with a real bed sometimes seems a little much."  
  
"I guess, but still."  
  
"I've gotten used to it by now. It doesn't take that long. If you stay a few days here, you won't even notice after a while."  
  
Anne's room was spartan, and all of the furniture in it looked like it was secondhand, but it was at least large enough for her to have a second mattress brought in and set on the floor at the head of her bed. "Do you mind taking the floor?" Anne asked. "I have trouble enough getting to sleep even with my own bed."  
  
Faith, awake for nearly twenty-four hours running, was already toppling onto the mattress as Anne spoke.  
  
  
*****  
  
  
COMING SOON: Chapter 5, "Guess Who's Back ... Back Again?" Buffy must cope with an incredible amount thrust upon her extremely quickly, and while her friends do her best to help her through it, they realize it will be a long time before she's up to speed. Also, I didn't get to it this chapter, but another old-school face will resurface.  
  
As always, classes are torture, so it may be a long time between updates. I shouldn't be working on this as much as I am ... but it's just so much more fun than schoolwork. As always, feedback is appreciated, the more specific the better! 


	5. Guess Who's Back?

DISCLAIMER: We both know I don't own Buffy, Faith, or any of the other characters that are making Joss Whedon and his corporate sponsors/affiliates rich. If I did, this whole college tuition thing would be much less of an issue.  
  
Also, this is my first Buffy fanfic, so be nice.  
  
ANTI-DISCLAIMER (would that be just a "claimer?"): Some of these characters ARE my own creation, as well as many elements of the setting. Use your head. If it never appeared in anywhere in the Kenshin series, then it's probably mine. Not that anyone cares but me.  
  
SPOILERS/BACKGROUND: Everything from Season 1 to Season 5 and Angel Season 1 to Season 2; this picks up after S5/S2.  
  
  
*****  
  
CHAPTER 5:  
GUESS WHO'S BACK ... BACK AGAIN?  
  
Buffy had just finished getting changed as the guests began to arrive.  
  
*Man, I've got to die more often,* Buffy thought to herself with a smirk as first Giles, then Xander showed up and both buried her in the deepest hugs she ever remembered. There were tears in both of their eyes.  
  
"Miss me?" she asked Giles with her most girlish grin as the venerable Watcher ducked in through the doorway.  
  
He was too choked with emotion to respond, and Xander was just pulling into the drive at that moment, doing close to eighty on the Summers' 25-mile-an-hour street.  
  
Then the surprises started, and if Buffy's mind had been whirling at the ruined high school, the slew of events she had missed only compounded matters. The first big surprise showed up alongside Xander, with a slender girl that looked to be about Buffy's age--well, at least, the age she remembered herself being--with waist-length brown hair. The girl gave a muffled squeak of excitement when she caught sight of Buffy and gave the startled Slayer a hug as crushing as the one Xander had.  
  
"Um ... sorry, but do I ... know you?" Buffy asked.  
  
The girl drew back from the embrace with a surprised and pained expression, but Willow interrupted before the startled girl could say anything. "Yeah, actually, I was just about to get to that."  
  
"Willow, what ...?" the younger girl began, but Willow held up a hand for patience.  
  
"Buffy, this is ... your sister, Dawn."  
  
Buffy's eyes widened. "Uh ... Willow? I don't ..."  
  
"... have a sister, I know. Trust me, you do now, and I mean it. The same blood flows in your veins and everything. It took the old you a while to accept it, too, but it was kind of painful for all of us, so I'm hoping we can skip most of it."  
  
"How the heck do I suddenly have a sister? Did Mom adopt?" Visions flashed into her head again, as though memories of a dream, but these were even more hazy and indistinct than the brief, inexplicable visions at the high school had been, with the exception of one; there was a vision of this girl, standing on a crane at the construction yard where Buffy had just awakened, surrounded by a dreamlike aura of green energy. The vision lasted a moment longer, and the green energy dripped off of her like water, and suddenly there was a blinding flash, so bright that Buffy flinched.  
  
"No ... well, sort of, but not quite ... it's a long story ... Buffy? You all right?"  
  
"Um ... yeah, I think. Just something in my eye."  
  
Giles decided it was his turn to talk. "Dawn, is it all right if I tell her ... everything?"  
  
"Of course," Dawn answered, concernedly.  
  
"Buffy, your sister was created ... yes, created ... by a group of powerful monks with the capability to alter time. I believe that Willow told you there was a disturbance that opened the door between worlds, that you returned through. Contained in Dawn's flesh and blood is the power that opened that door. The monks sent it to you as a sister because they wanted to make sure you protected it. The last enemy you fought captured her, and attempted to use that power for evil. You stopped her, even though it cost you ... the other you ... your life."  
  
Buffy was silent, trying to process all this, using every ounce of steel nerves in her body to prevent herself from completely flipping out. "That ... still doesn't sound like a real sister to me," Buffy answered.  
  
Giles nodded. "And it won't. You were outside time when it happened, outside this world, in a world where the very concept of time is, well, meaningless. But let me tell you this. Everyone else remembers her. There is a doctor in Los Angeles who remembers helping give birth to her. We all remember her moving in with you the very day you came here, we even remember you introducing us to her. There are photo albums with the two of you as children in it. Blood tests and genetics tests would show the two of you as sisters. In fact, it was the fact that the same blood flows in your veins that allowed you to give up your life to close the portal ... rather than having Dawn have to give hers."  
  
Dawn's face was red and her mouth was trembling as Giles repeated all of this, and it was clear that he was not pulling any punches in the story, probably as much for Dawn's ears as for Buffy's. Buffy leaned back and stared at the ceiling. This was going to take a lot of getting used to. Everyone else seemed really attached to Dawn, but there was no way she could digest everything at once. She looked down again, and saw everyone nervously watching her face, trying to gauge her reaction.  
  
"I'm ... I'm sorry, Giles. I believe you, but I ... I can't remember."  
  
"I know, Buffy, I know."  
  
"This is going to take forever," Buffy said suddenly, exasperatedly. "Will, is there anything you can do?"  
  
"Do what?"  
  
"To bring my memories back."  
  
"I don't know ... I think there might be, but I'm not sure ..."  
  
"It could be very dangerous," Giles interjected.  
  
"Oh, and a four-year gap in my memory is perfectly safe," Buffy retorted.  
  
"I'm not talking about the magic," Giles went on. "Willow is ... well, to put it mildly, amazing. She's learned magic faster than she ever learned any school subject, which is saying rather a lot. She's actually starting to get a bit of an international reputation. Even an interdimensional one." Willow ducked her head to hide a bashful grin.  
  
"But anyway, I'm more worried about you, Buffy. Dawn is a big enough surprise to take weeks, or months, to digest, if not more. To be blunt, there are a lot more waiting for you. I'm not sure if you really want them heaped on you all at once. You didn't lead a very quiet or ordinary life, Buffy."  
  
"Why am I not surprised?" it was clearly more statement than question.  
  
"But there is one, and I'm afraid it's the worst of the lot, that we're going to have to tell you about. You'll find out before long, anyway, and it's probably best that you do with all of us here."  
  
"Giles ..." Willow began.  
  
"We can't hide it," Giles answered firmly. "She's just going to have to deal with it."  
  
"Will you stop talking about it and tell me what the hell you're talking about?" Buffy shouted.  
  
"I think it's better that we show you," Giles answered. He was already striding for the door.  
  
"Where are we going?"  
  
"You'll see." For some chilling reason, Giles' face was already full of sympathy. Buffy remembered seeing the same look on Tara's face not too long before, and several of the other members of the group seemed to have already guessed Giles' destination, and their somber faces did little to lift Buffy's spirits.  
  
***  
  
"No," Buffy croaked, unable to force her voice above a whisper.  
  
"I'm so sorry, Buffy," Giles said. There was nothing else he could say. He put his arm around her. Willow came up a moment later and rested one hand on the back of Buffy's shoulder, and Xander clutched her hand in an awkward gesture of support. Dawn simply stood by her awkwardly, unsure if Buffy wanted comfort from a sister that she didn't know she had.  
  
"NO!" Buffy cried again, her grief finally overpowering the constriction in her throat. She collapsed to her knees, shrugging aside the arms of Giles and Xander that tried to steady her; they let her go a second later. A moment later, she buried her face in the turf. When she managed to lift her head again, her tears flushed the dirt from her eyes, only to allow her to see the horrible stone tablet only inches from her eyes, staring at her like an accusation.  
  
JOYCE MARIE SUMMERS  
1962-2001  
  
BELOVED PROTECTOR  
TORN FROM THIS WORLD  
BEFORE HER TIME  
RISE AGAIN IN GRACE  
  
"I can't believe it," she murmured, to no one in particular. She was surprised that she had even said it loud enough for anyone behind her to hear.  
  
"None of us could," Giles said softly.  
  
Buffy was bleeding, she realized. She had torn the skin on her palms with her fingernails, clutching them so hard that her knuckles had become white. With another choked off sob, Buffy struggled forward and threw her arms around the headstone, as though it were somehow the closest she could come to embracing her mother again.  
  
The blood on her palms touched the epitaph.  
  
Things got interesting.  
  
Buffy jumped back, startled, as a golden light suddenly erupted from the front of the headstone. Buffy looked around and was glad to see that she wasn't hallucinating; everyone else had taken a step or two back as well, and an orb of fire suddenly appeared floating just above Willow's upraised palm.  
  
The light subsided from most of the surface of the headstone, leaving only the engraved letters glowing as though Buffy's blood had somehow filled them all with golden lava. Suddenly, a hot wind burst from the stone as well, sending everyone's hair and clothing fluttering behind it and making everyone squint. More letters began to appear on the tombstone, wrought as if with liquid fire, incorporating the epitaph into them.  
  
*There shall come a time  
When the beloved protector  
Shall be torn from this world  
Before her time  
In a dark and watery place;  
Until such a time  
When her beloved protectors  
Shall be at rest in this world  
And open time  
That she may rise again in grace.*  
  
Buffy was gaping like a fish and barely had time to read it all when the trails of fire that formed the letters swirled, and new words burst forth on the stone, now so bright as to be almost white, and nearly too bright to read; the wind died down a moment later, which helped.  
  
*In days long gone in Babylon  
The mighty fell, the weak grew strong.  
The gardens covered what had gone  
In days long gone in Babylon.  
  
But darkness grew again in might.   
The Cainite folk reclaimed their height.  
The last defenders of the light  
Fled to fight another night.  
  
Yet one last seer with the sight  
Waits late for dawn in Babylon.*  
  
The fiery letters faded, and the wind and light subsided completely a moment later. The headstone had been wiped clean. Even her mother's name had vanished. Emotions began to boil in Buffy's chest, so mixed and powerful that she had no idea herself what she was feeling.  
  
"Giles ...?" she asked.  
  
The other Scoobies were still standing where they had been, dumbstruck by what had happened. Eventually, Willow ventured a hesitant opinion. "It looked ... sorta ... like a prophecy." Giles nodded a hesitant agreement a moment later, obviously still trying to work through it.  
  
Buffy wasn't as interested in working through it. *A prophecy. Great.* That had been her first guess, too. A prophecy. Just like the one that said that she was going to die that night at the dance. Some unseen puppetmaster's script for her to follow meekly to whatever end the string-puller so desired. She had had more than enough of prophecy to last a lifetime. Several lifetimes, in fact. She had no idea what the other her had been doing this last four years, but she certainly hoped it wasn't dancing to the tunes of old men and women long since deceased--and if she had, then it was long since time to stop.  
  
She clenched her teeth, and a white rage began to boil up in her. She had accepted her duty, accepted that she would be one lone girl against an entire world of demons and monsters, leading a life that she could never share with anyone. She had fought against overwhelming odds to save people she barely knew, had sacrificed her social life, her normal life, hell, even her *life,* period, and still they--whoever "they" were--wouldn't leave her alone. Now they had desecrated her mother's grave with their arcane telemarketing.  
  
She threw her head back and let off a long, throaty howl into the afternoon air. "Stand back," she commanded, turning to face her friends for a moment. Whatever they saw in her eyes, it was enough; they backed up as though she had suddenly become a live grenade. She turned back to the erased tombstone. *You want to reach me, send me an e-mail,* she screamed into the silence of her mind at whoever had done this. With that, she drove her fist down onto the crown of the stone.  
  
A detonation shook the atmosphere in the graveyard, and the branches on several nearby trees trembled, sending a shower of leaves to the earth. Buffy's eyes widened. She had hoped to just break the stone in half, or knock a fragment loose off the top. Actually, more than anything, the sane part of her mind hoped that that she simply wouldn't break her knuckles in frustration. Instead, the stone had shattered into fragments that scattered out from the impact of Buffy's hand in a shower of gravel and pebbles. Several of the Scoobies behind her cried out in shock and pain as they tried to shield themselves, and it was well that they had backed up a short distance. The base of the tombstone remained intact, but had sunk into the base of a crater in the earth several inches deep that had been excavated by the rock at ground level as it flew outwards. Buffy stepped back, looking at her hands. Had a meteorite the size of her fist struck in that very spot, it could have wrought no greater ruin.  
  
"Buffy ...?" Willow asked hesitantly from behind her.  
  
She turned back to face them. Apparently whatever they had seen in her face that had made them back up before had faded, but was not entirely gone. "Let's go home," she said.  
  
They were halfway home again before anyone spoke. Buffy was riding with Giles and Willow in Giles' car; Dawn, Tara, and Xander were following in Xander's truck. They hadn't said anything on the way to the cars, but Buffy had the feeling that Dawn and Xander would have been uncomfortable riding back with her. Anger and curiosity were still warring within her, but in the end, curiosity won. Partially.  
  
"Giles, did you recognize any of ... that?" she asked, breaking the silence.  
  
Giles' look was distant. "I'm not sure," he answered a minute later. "There was something familiar about it. I'll check as soon as I can get over to the Magic Box."  
  
"The what?"  
  
"Oh, I run a shop now. The temporary high school doesn't have a libary, so everyone has to use the public one, but it meant I was sort of out of a job. And also I think several people suspect that I was the one that blew up the old high school."  
  
"YOU blew up the high school? Man, how did I miss that?"  
  
"Oh, you didn't," Giles said.  
  
"I didn't?" Buffy said in a suprisingly chipper voice.  
  
"Come on, Buffy, would you have really missed something like that?" Willow asked, turning around to look at Buffy, who was riding in the back seat.  
  
Buffy smiled suddenly. "All right!"  
  
Willow smiled back. "Feeling better now?"  
  
"Much, actually."  
  
"It's good to see you smiling again."  
  
"We're here," Giles said as he approached the Summers' driveway.  
  
The sight of the house suddenly brought back bitter memories, however. She still instinctively thought of her mother as living there, so seeing the house made her suddenly remember the graveyard. *The graveyard.* She was still a bit numb, she realized; her outburst at the graveyard had so stunned her that she had surpressed it for a bit. She knew it was going to take a lot longer to sink in.  
  
"Giles ... can we go somewhere else?"  
  
A pained expression crossed Giles face, as if suddenly realizing that coming back here might not have been the best idea in the first place. Willow seemed to become suddenly aware of the same thing. "Magic Box?" she suggested.  
  
"Sure."  
  
"I'll call Tara," she said, leaning back in the seat.  
  
"You have a cell phone now?" Buffy asked.  
  
"No, but she does."  
  
"Uh ..."  
  
"I don't need one," Willow responded, her eyes going distant. Buffy watched, half confused, half amazed, as there was a soft, brief beeping sound from somewhere, and then Willow spoke into thin air.  
  
"Hey, Tara? ... Yeah, we're heading to the Magic Box ... I'm not sure home is really where she wants to be right now ... no, we just had pizza, get something else--hey Buffy, what do you want for dinner?"  
  
Buffy could only gape.  
  
Willow grinned mischievously. "From the looks of things, I'd say fish ... no, honey, I'm kidding--sure, chicken sounds fine. Oh yeah, we may be a while, we'll call you if we're going to be too late, otherwise we'll pick it up on the way back, 'kay? Love you." There was a soft click in the air in front of Willow that sounded exactly like a receiver being hung up.  
  
"Will, that was awesome!" Buffy gasped.  
  
Willow shrugged. "I learn what I can."  
  
Giles' approval seemed a little more cautious. "Willow, you may want to think twice about using magic for such ... spurious ... uses, you know."  
  
"We've been over this," Willow pointed out in a very bored tone. "But we needed to tell the others where we were going and it would have looked really conspicuous if I made smoke signals out of the exhaust."  
  
Giles wrinkled his nose at her.  
  
The Magic Box was a quaint, cheery little shop, with a bright blue awning above the door and front window and what looked to be all manner of occult products inside. Buffy only remembered two other occult shops in Sunnydale from when she was here, but one of them had been very dark and Gothic, and both had been rather small; the Magic Box was clearly a bit bigger a place. There were only two other cars in the lot as Giles pulled in, however. "You own this place?" Buffy asked. Giles nodded.  
  
Two elderly women were leaving the shop just as Buffy, Willow, and Giles entered, one carrying a large bag of--stuff. Buffy didn't want to think what all might be in it. When she got into the store, she realized that the only other car in the lot had to belong to the shop assistant working behind the counter. She had her back turned as the three of them walked in.  
  
"Oh," Giles said as he saw her. "Maybe I ought to go first."  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"She ... knows you."  
  
"Oh."  
  
It was a bit late to think of that, however, as the girl suddenly turned around, apparently copying down something in a thick spiral-bound ledger, when she looked up and saw Buffy. The ledger crashed to the floor, and she put both hands to her face with a startled yelp. There was no other word for it. It was a yelp.  
  
"Anya, calm down," Giles said, "I'll explain."  
  
"Well, I certainly hope so!" the girl replied, her breathing still unsteady. "Because it's going to take a lot of explaining before I'm calm again!"  
  
"All right then, let's see. Buffy, this is Anya. She used to be a demon, by the way."  
  
"Hi!" Buffy said, cheerily, reaching out to shake the startled shop assistant's hand. "I'm Buffy. I used to be dead, by the way."  
  
The girl suddenly caught Buffy's hand and put two fingers against the underside of her wrist; Buffy tensed reflexively, and it took a moment before Buffy realized that the girl was checking for a pulse. She grinned.  
  
"Come on, I don't look THAT dead, do I?"  
  
"No, but neither do vampires."  
  
"The sun's up."  
  
"Oh, I know, but ... how did .."  
  
"We're still not completely sure," Giles interceded.  
  
"And why were you introducing me to her? We sort of know each other."  
  
"Not ... exactly," Giles answered, and he proceeded to explain to Anya what Willow and he had guessed, and admitted that they still had a lot of unanswered questions. He also told Anya about the incident at the graveyard, though he didn't mention the fact that Buffy had destroyed her mother's erased headstone.  
  
"I see. All right then." Anya fixed Buffy with an unreadable look, but it was unthreatening. "I'm happy you're back."  
  
Buffy smiled. "You're taking this a lot better than most of the others."  
  
Anya shrugged. "I try not to be surprised by anything that happens in this town."  
  
Buffy let out a tense breath, and relaxed, even though she hadn't been aware that she had been so tense or holding her breath. "Heh. I see some things haven't changed."  
  
"Still the same old Hellmouth," Willow affirmed.  
  
Giles had climbed a small, steep staircase to a balcony at the back of the store that was roped off at the top. The balcony filled the back part of the store, and all three walls were lined with bookshelves. He rustled around for a minute, while the three girls below waited in uncomfortable silence; Buffy and Willow had so much to talk about that they didn't know how to begin, and Anya continued to try to examine Buffy for signs of her not being what she seemed.  
  
"Here we are," Giles said, backing his way down the stairs with a large, surprising new-looking leather-bound volume in his hands.  
  
Willow was giving Giles an odd look. "Giles ... isn't that sort of a little ... basic?"  
  
"It's not an original," Giles admitted. "But if I'm right, we aren't going to have the original of that prophecy here in the store, or at my place, for that matter."  
  
"Why am I liking the sound of this less and less?" Buffy asked to no one in particular.  
  
"You know not all prophecies are all doom and gloom," Willow noted.  
  
"Most are, though," Anya interjected cheerfully.  
  
"This one's rather a mix," Giles said, opening the book to a page near the end. There, scrawled on the page in an elegant script, were the words to the second block of writing that had appeared at the cemetery.   
  
Buffy looked at it and nodded. "So what's the rest of this prophecy say?" she asked, steeling herself for a rough answer. *I just got back, it can't be time to die again yet.*  
  
"That's just it. No one knows."  
  
"Excuse me?"  
  
"That book is basically a beginner's guide to the prophecies of the ancient world," Giles answered. "There are bits and pieces of a lot of different prophecies in there. That verse is simply the beginning of a huge work called the Babylonian Codex."  
  
"Codex? Is this the same one that said ... that night ..."  
  
"What? Oh, no, that was a much later codex. Much later, much shorter, much more understandable--though hardly plain English."  
  
"So this one ..."  
  
"Is older. Larger. Maybe I need to back up a bit."  
  
"Please."  
  
Giles nodded, and Buffy could see his familiar lecture mode taking over.  
  
"A while ago now, though not so much for you, Buffy, we were in the school library, and I explained that for many years, demons walked the earth; popular lore describing a primordial paradise has been a little dressed up.  
  
"After a while, however, things in the world began to change. The planet became more ... hostile ... for whatever reason, to supernatural creatures. Most of the demons fled to greener pastures, and it was only through one unintended event that any were able to stay in the first place."  
  
"This was the creation of the first vampire, I'm guessing," Buffy injected.  
  
"Yes, though that's not the end of the story, but yes. When the last demon to leave this world fed off the blood of a human, he created ... a crack, I guess. An aberration that allowed a few--just a few--weaker demons to return eventually. Eventually, those few found ways to convince some of their former masters to return, bringing back lore that should have been lost.  
  
"After a generation of this, a seeress arose in one of the early human kingdoms, a woman about whom we know very little other than that she was extraordinarily gifted, and was able to perceive the past, present, and future, not merely the future. The histories are foggy, but it's generally known that she was able to unite the ancient human kingdoms against the demons. For a while, she merely used her knowledge to help the people of the ancient Sumerian chiefdoms defend themselves. Then the Slayer appeared, and the wars began in earnest. There were horrible wars throughout the Middle East, wars that no recorded history has ever spoken of, wars that were allowed to pass out of thought and memory within two or three generations. We know next to nothing from these times; all records of them were destroyed, and the societies that lived in those times passed into the realm of myth, like Atlantis and Camelot and Eden and any number of other legendary places people have heard about today. The Babylonian Codex is one of only two surviving works from the entire period.  
  
"What we do know, obviously, is that in the end, she lost, since, well, demons are still around. However, from the mere fact that the prophecies were written in Babylon, we know that she had to have had a great deal of success."  
  
"Why's that?" asked Buffy.  
  
"Because originally, well before humans lived there for a long time and made the Babylon that you hear about in the history books, the one that was destroyed by the Assyrians, Babylon was the city of the vampires. Nod, they called it, after the land in which the first vampire arose. With the aid of the Slayer, the seeress' forces took the city. The first vampire is said to have died in that battle--along with the Slayer. They killed each other.  
  
"Their celebrations were short-lived. A span of years--at least seven, maybe more--passed, and the vampires regrouped. In the meantime, the new Slayer had been called, but for one reason or another, the seeress could not find her. Her visions were suddenly consumed by the future, over a span of seven years, and that is when the Babylonian Codex was written.  
  
"Her people continued to fight. They had no alternative, but without the Slayer, the tide turned against them. Finally, when all but Babylon itself had been lost, the seeress gathered a group of her wise men together and arranged for them to be hidden, to take shelter, and to dedicate themselves to preserving what records of her prophecies they could gather on their way out, and to finding and preparing the next Slayer to carry on the battle.  
  
"Babylon fell shortly afterward, but the victory was hollow. The seeress allowed the vampires into the city, while as many of the people as she could arrange fled through secret tunnels out of the heart of the keep. Then, when the outer rings of the city were teeming with vampires and demons, the seeress destroyed the city. Completely. We don't know how. Whatever knowledge she used has long since been lost, and the only way we even know this at all is through the captured writings of several ancient demons who survived the battle, who were cautious enough not to want to lead the charge, much as they wanted the seeress' blood themselves. It's fairly obvious that the survivors were in the minority. Most of the greater demons of that age perished that day, and the earth swallowed their ruins. The destruction was more total than anything seen on this planet until Hiroshima, possibly even more than that.  
  
"The city was gone, though a magnificent garden sprang up on the site of the battle, as though the earth were remembering her sacrifice. This was later discovered by the fractured, regrouping humans and was sculpted into the Hanging Gardens by the Babylonians that historians know about."  
  
"For something that you say has been lost to history, you seem to know a lot about it," Willow noted.  
  
"I should. We should, I should say. The wise men that the seeress arranged to escape from the city, to preserve her vision and make sure that the world would never go for years on end without a Slayer, became known as the Watchers."  
  
Buffy had been growing restless, since the story was taking a while and she still hadn't learned a great deal about this so-called Codex, but her eyes widened at that. She had known that the Watchers' Council had been in existence for nearly as long as the Slayer, but it had never occurred to her to wonder how it had all started. That was something to take in.  
  
"Giles, the Codex," Willow asked, suddenly playing the role of the impatient one, as though taking over for Buffy while Buffy digested the news. "What does it say about her?"  
  
"Well, as I said, we don't know. But, from everything we've been able to decipher, we suspect ... everything."  
  
"Everything?" Buffy asked, exasperated me, throwing up her hands. "I wonder, do they have the date and place of my second funeral, too?"  
  
"Third," Anya corrected.  
  
"Buffy, no," Giles said gently. His voice had suddenly grown hushed, almost reverent. "It ends with the end of the war."  
  
"What war?"  
  
"Yours, ours, everyone's. The one that's been raging across every continent and culture for the last several millennia. It ends, Buffy, with the Last Battle ... win or lose."  
  
Buffy gave a thoughtful but nonetheless skeptical look. "And does it say whether or not I win or lose this Last Battle?"  
  
"No," Giles says. "It ends when the battle begins."  
  
"Well that's a help."  
  
"This kinds of things can't be foreseen. Prophecy is an inexact art, to put it mildly, even in the best of circumstances. These kinds of moments are altogether beyond its limits. They're beyond the grip of fate.  
  
Buffy actually smiled. "So there's no guarantee that I'll die this time."  
  
"Or that you'll live," Anya pointed out.  
  
"Thanks," Buffy said pointedly.  
  
"Just keeping things in perspective."  
  
Willow chimed in. "And hey, at least it looks like you'll be living to get to that battle," she pointed out. "That should be worth something."  
  
Buffy thought for a moment, then brightened. "It is, actually."  
  
*****  
  
"Studying hard?" a woman's voice asked.  
  
Faith turned around and looked up to see a woman she had never seen before standing at the entrance to the secluded alcove where Faith had been studying for the last hour. She was roughly Faith's height, with the same raven hair, though slimmer and less of a physical presence than Faith. She was older than Faith, though certainly no more than ten years, probably shy of her thirtieth birthday. At least she didn't seem to be much of a threat, and Faith's sixth sense that told her when she was in danger was silent. She was wearing a small, sterling silver cross on a thin chain around her neck as well, something that Faith doubted very many vampires would do even on the outside of their clothing. Nonetheless, something in the back of Faith's mind told her that this woman was somehow more than the average patron of the Ancient Eye.  
  
"What's it to you?" Faith asked suspiciously.  
  
"Oh, nothing really," the woman answered. "Though don't you think there might be more of a future in studying computers or something?"  
  
Faith gave the woman an icy glare. "Yeah, well, why don't you worry about your future, and let me worry about mine?"  
  
The woman laughed. She had a beautiful smile, Faith admitted. "Hey, hey, I'm in here, too, you know," she answered. "Sometimes I can't get the stuff in these books out of my mind. Computers pay better, but this stuff can be fascinating."  
  
Faith wanted to slap the woman. She hated studying, and a lot of these books were written in Old English. There were even a few written in Gaelic and Latin and other languages that she didn't understand, and she could never shake the feeling that those were the ones that held all the real answers. "I don't think fascinating is how I'd describe it," she answered, trying to remember that she had been working on developing patience before her escape from CIW.  
  
"Give them a while, they grow on you," the woman replied amicably. "Take Chameleous Thanators, for example," she continued, tossing a thick, aged journal down on the table in front of Faith. "I wonder where these ancient writers would get the inspiration to dream up a demonic shapeshifter with a liquid skin."  
  
Faith's eyes snapped to the journal in front of her, and widened. The book was indeed written in a language that she didn't understand, but the pictures were all too clear. The one above the title of the entry clearly showed a creature that could have been the twin of the one that attacked her in prison, and there was an illustration on the following page showing a corpse of the same creature, complete with the liquid skin dissipating off of the body and the thin, flexible bones beneath. After staring at it for a moment, Faith swung her gaze back to the woman on the far side of the table.  
  
"It says that they're assassins by nature," the woman continued, "and that the easiest way to stop them is with an electrical shock. They also tend to favor adopting female forms because they're somehow less threatening." The woman fixed Faith with a piercing stare. "Personally, I don't think they know too much about this reality, though. I know some pretty dangerous women out there."  
  
"Mm, they're out there," Faith replied noncommittally.  
  
The woman smiled and let that pass, though Faith guessed that she knew perfectly well who she was talking to. Which, of course, brought up the fact in Faith's mind that the reverse was not true at all.  
  
"You know, I hate to pry, but who are you?" Faith asked.  
  
"Huh? Oh, I'm sorry," the woman answered, looking genuinely apologetic. "I guess you wouldn't know me. Janna. Janna Kalderesh."  
  
"Faith," the midnight-haired Slayer responded, though she was sure that Janna already knew that. Janna simply nodded.  
  
"Anyway ... ah ... you want a coffee or something?" Janna asked. "I've been here since five in the evening, and all I had for dinner was a bagel from the cafe down the street."  
  
"Umm ... sure, whatever," Faith answered, grateful both for the offer and for the chance to get away from those infernal books for a little while. After all, Janna, whoever she was, had already pointed out exactly what Faith had come there to find in the first place, so there really wasn't much of a reason to stay, especially if she could somehow convince Janna to give her the short version of the story.  
  
The pair ended up at an all-night Italian bistro a block away from the Ancient Eye. They spent a long while there, taking advantage of the quiet, uncrowded atmosphere ... and the bottomless garden salad and breadsticks.  
  
"So how did you find me?" Faith asked, once it became clear that the small talk was about finished.  
  
Janna shrugged. "I heard that you escaped, and that the Order of Turaca had sent a Thanator after you. A couple days later, I heard you were back in L.A. It was pure luck that you happened into that bookstore when I was there, though. I never thought I'd see you there. Slayers aren't known for their study habits."  
  
Faith shrugged that aside. "The Order of What?" she asked.  
  
"Turaca," Janna repeated. "They're some of the highest-priced demonic assassins money or anything else can buy. Usually they ask for more than money, I've heard. I actually haven't known about them that long. That's one of the things I was looking up when you showed up."  
  
Faith simply nodded, then changed the subject when a different thought crossed her mind. "How did you know who I was when I walked in, anyway? I've never seen you before."  
  
"Your picture was all over the news before you turned yourself in," Janna reminded her.  
  
*Oh, duh,* Faith thought to herself. She remembered seeing her face on the evening crime report that evening at Angel's. Still, she had a feeling that Janna was somehow more in on the loop than that. "Did Angel send you?" she asked.  
  
A secretive smile passed across Janna's face. "Not quite," she said with a laugh. "I think he'd be really surprised to see me, actually."  
  
"So you know him?"  
  
"From a few years back," Janna answered. "I haven't seen him in almost four years, and I didn't know him that long. I know a lot about him, though. He's kind of a legend, after all."  
  
Faith nodded. "I guess he is. I guess I really didn't know him that well, either, though. I wish I'd gotten to know him better."  
  
Janna nodded in agreement. "I think you and he have a lot in common, actually. Have you been to see him at all since you got back?"  
  
Faith shook her head. "I tried once, but I never actually got to see him. Since then, I've sort of been too busy hiding. Plus I heard about what happened in Sunnydale. I think he has other things to worry about than me right now, you know?"  
  
"True enough," Janna said, turning an appraising look on the teenage fugitive across from her.  
  
Faith noticed, and gave a questioning eyebrow in response.  
  
"Nothing," Janna answered. "I think you've grown up a lot in the last couple years, though. Everything I've read about you was written before that mess at Sunnydale's graduation a few years back."  
  
Faith shrugged. "A lot has happened since then."  
  
Janna laughed. "I guess it has. Of course, a lot happens every day. Most people just refuse to learn anything from it."  
  
Faith couldn't stifle a small smile. She had had the same thought herself several times during her abridged stay in prison.  
  
"So then, I guess the only thing left is, what do you want from me?" Faith asked at length.  
  
Janna looked hesitant for the first time that evening. "Depends on what you want, I guess. I don't really have any kind of authority, but I doubt that's what you want, anyway. That was the Council's biggest mistake from the beginning."  
  
"The Council?" it had been a while since Faith had heard that name, but it still did not ring any pleasant bells.  
  
Janna finally decided to drop the bomb. "Have you ever thought about having a Watcher again?" she asked.  
  
***  
  
Faith sat alone on the roof of the homeless shelter where she had made her abode since her escape. Her eyes gazed unblinking at the starlit heavens, and she had long since tuned out the din of the soup kitchen below. She barely moved, but her thoughts were racing like wildfire.  
  
*A Watcher.* The thought reverberated endlessly in her mind. Even if Janna was completely unaffiliated with the Council like she said, and Faith believed the woman was telling the truth, the concept had become so alien to her since she and Buffy had first parted company that she had no idea how to react. Obviously, getting up and walking out of the restaurant without saying a word had been her first reaction, but she had no idea how to react after that.  
  
She wished she had at least stayed to learn more. The woman obviously knew a lot, and knew where to get more information, too. That in itself put her a notch above Faith. Janna had seemed fairly open to conversation, too, even if she did seem to be fumbling to find her way at times after she got past the basics. Faith didn't believe the woman was deliberately trying to hide anything. She had the same air of openness and honesty that the Scoobies had had back in Sunnydale.  
  
*Why on Earth would she want to help someone she's never even met?* Faith asked herself. There were any number of answers to that, though. The woman apparently knew Angel from somewhere, and anyone connected to Angel might take an interest in her. Also, she had known Angel several years ago, when he had still been in Sunnydale, so there was a chance she knew some of the others in the Sunnydale gang. Had she been connected to Buffy somehow? It certainly wasn't impossible, if she had been in Sunnydale in the last few years. Then again, why would someone want to help her if they were connected to Buffy? Buffy hated her, though Buffy would never work through someone else when she was alive. She couldn't imagine the sunny-haired Slayer leaving instructions along the lines of 'if anything happens to me, bring Faith down with me.' Then again, there was also the simple fact that Faith was a Slayer. Good or evil, it was generally considered better to be on a Slayer's good side than the reverse. If Janna had enemies among the supernatural lurkers in L.A., having a Slayer in the neigborhood that wanted her alive could be a very good thing, to put it mildly. With a grimace, Faith realized that that Janna had already succeeded in that regard. In the back of her mind, Faith already didn't want to see anything happen to the mysterious woman, especially not before Faith had the chance to learn more from her.  
  
It pained her, but she forced herself to admit that she needed help. If what Wesley and Cordela had told her was true, Angel couldn't help her anymore, not until he was through his grief, which looked like it could easily be years. *In vampire years, too,* she added in the silence of her mind. The only other people who had shown any interest in her had been Wolfram & Hart, and she had a sneaky suspicion that they were the ones who had send that Chameleous Thingamabob after her. She would rather take her chances with a complete stranger than with them again.  
  
Bit by bit, Faith worked up her courage to go see her again. She had no idea where the woman lived, but she had a feeling she knew where to start looking. Hopping down from the roof of the shelter, she turned back towards the Ancient Eye. There was still a long time until they closed; they were open later than most nightclubs. After all, a lot of their clientele didn't wake up until after sunset.  
  
Sure enough, Janna was sitting in the same alcove where Faith had been sitting a few hours earlier. She was transcribing something out of a thick, glossy leather-bound tome into a slim spiral notebook. She looked up and put her pen down immediately after Faith walked in, however. Faith gave her a nod, and Janna answered with a slight smile. Quickly, Janna shut the black book and returned it to its place on the shelf, gathered her things, and joined Faith out on the street.  
  
"You want to talk a little more before you say anything?" Janna asked. The question sounded comical, but it was appropriate.  
  
"Sure," Faith answered.  
  
Janna smiled, and gestured around the side of the building with a flick of her head. "Come on, you can crash at my place tonight. No offense, but you look like you've been staying in a homeless shelter or something."  
  
Faith chuckled wryly. "None taken," she answered.  
  
There was a public parking garage on the far side of the block from the Ancient Eye, and Janna set a direct course for it, through the back alleys. Faith wondered at that; the woman didn't seem to be afraid of much. The back alleys in this part of town were no place for a lone unarmed woman. She decided to let it pass, though; thinking about commenting on someone else's lack of caution almost made her laugh.  
  
For whatever reason, Faith had been expecting to see a beat-up old junker like Giles drove. When the women reached the garage, therefore, she was stunned to see Janna stop beside a sparkling silver 2001 Porsche Boxter, looking like it had been driven straight to the Ancient Eye from the showroom.  
  
"Damn, Janna, why didn't you tell me about this earlier?!" Faith couldn't resist saying with a smile.  
  
"Like it?" Janna asked rhetorically. "I just got it two weeks ago. I got a great deal it, too. The dealers are all trying to make room for the 2002 models."  
  
"Even so, that's gotta be still more than I make in a year," Faith added.  
  
Janna laughed. "Like I said, computers pay better," she said as she unlocked the doors.  
  
"Is that what you do?" Faith asked as she settled into the passenger seat.  
  
Janna smiled and looked Faith in the eyes as she started the ignition. "Just my day job," she answered.  
  
***  
  
Watcher or no Watcher, Council or no Council, Janna's apartment was everything Faith would have expected a Watcher's residence to be. It was a lot like Giles', actually, though it was a little smaller and perhaps a notch classier. Floor-to-ceiling walnut bookshelves lined several walls in more than one room, including all available wall space in Janna's bedroom. Most of them were filled with texts that clearly dealt with the occult, and many of the rest were unmarked and almost certainly dealt with the same. A long, flat worktable next to Janna's computer center in one corner of the living room supported several stacks of notebooks exactly like Janna had been working on at the occult bookstore. An expansive hutch above it housed the only non-occult books Faith could see in the apartment; they were computer programming guides and other technical manuals of some form or another. Faith wondered why the woman ever needed to go to the Ancient Eye. She practically had a full-fledged library of the supernatural within arm's reach.  
  
"Wow, nice setup," Faith said as she doffed her jacket on the sofa in the living room.  
  
"Thanks," Janna replied, helping herself to the plush rolling chair in front of her computer and swiveling it around to face Faith before sitting down. She motioned for Faith to help herself to the couch, which it looked like the homeless Slayer was about to do anyway. Faith crashed to the cushions, kicking off her shoes as she did so.  
  
"Where'd you get all this, anyway?"  
  
"I got a lot of it from my tr ... my family a little while ago. They move around a lot, and a lot of these books were getting really beat up in traveling. They still kept all the really good stuff, though."  
  
"You still keep in touch with your family?" Faith asked, a small, involuntary pang of envy touching the fringes of her thoughts.  
  
Janna gave a sad smile and shook her head. "I honestly got most of this stuff just last month, and before that, I hadn't seen them since the last time I saw Angel. I've been really out of the loop for a few years."  
  
"You're new in town, aren't you?" Faith asked suddenly.  
  
Janna nodded. "Does it show somehow?"  
  
"No, I'm just saying, you've been in this apartment less than a month, you're driving a car that's less than a month old, and you got all these books just a month ago. Did you even have a life before last month?"  
  
Janna laughed mysteriously. "Not really," she admitted. "I think a lot of my family thought I was a ghost or something when they saw me."  
  
Faith shrugged. A lot of her family probably wouldn't even recognize her enough to mistake her for a ghost. At least Janna had screwed up the courage to go see them again, even if all she wanted to do was leech old books off of them.  
  
"So what else did you want to talk about?" Janna asked.  
  
Faith shrugged, and made a noncommittal expression. "Why are you doing all this?"  
  
"Why not?" Jenny answered.  
  
"I asked first."  
  
"OK, OK," Jenny continued. "Because you're going to be needed. And because the Council doesn't want anything more to do with you. And because I think I can help. Because I believe in what Angel started with you, and he's too out of it right now to help you himself." She arched her eyebrows at Faith. "That good enough?"  
  
Faith was silent.  
  
"Faith, I know I sprung this on you kind of fast ..."  
  
"Kind of fast?" Faith burst out. "More like a bullet! I haven't even known you for a day yet, and here you're saying 'hey, let me be your Watcher.' What am I supposed to think?"  
  
"I'm just learning here, too, Faith. I'm sorry," Janna finished.  
  
"Do you know what happened to my last two Watchers?" Faith pressed. "One of them got killed. No, not killed. There isn't even a word for what happened to her. The other one, I practically tortured to death. Why the hell would you want to get mixed up with me?"  
  
"That was all before Angel," Janna reminded her. "I haven't spoken with him, but I know he believes that you want to change. If he believes it, so do I. And, I think, so do you."  
  
Faith was silent again, for a while longer this time, digesting what she had just heard. That sounded a lot like what Anne had told her, and she had lived with Anne for two days now with no evidence that the girl was anything but honest. How many lives had Angel touched, that they were willing to do things for her just for the memory of him, just because he had trusted her? Nothing in Janna's tone or posture had really set off any alarms in the back of Faith's mind; it was more just the preposterousness of the whole situation. Still, she admitted, crazier things had happened. She had been the cause of a few of them herself. She also reminded herself of what she had admitted to herself on the roof of the homeless shelter. She did need help, and if she turned Janna down, she was going to clueless as to where to start looking for it. If Janna had any connections with demonic forces, well, practically everyone Faith knew did as well. She didn't seem like the type to be working for Wolfram & Hart, at least; she was dressed well enough, but she didn't have the blatant ego that seemed to characterize every member of the enigmatic law firm.  
  
"If I do accept," Faith asked at length. "Where do we start?"  
  
"I don't know," Janna admitted. "Are you working at all?"  
  
"What, like a real job?"  
  
"Like a day job."  
  
"Oh, hell no."  
  
Janna shrugged whimsically. "I don't blame you. Day jobs suck."  
  
"Pays for this place, doesn't it?"  
  
"That's why I put up with it."  
  
"So where would we start, then?" Faith asked again.  
  
A slight grin touched Janna's mouth. "How about with a shower, some fresh clothes, and a night's sleep?" she suggested.  
  
Faith looked down at the thrift-store ensemble she was wearing; it was one of only two outfits she had managed to come by since her escape, and both of them had been fairly worse for wear even before Faith had gotten her hands on them. She hadn't showered in almost two days, and even that one had been more of a rinse than a real shower.  
  
"Works for me," she said, the mere mention of sleep seemingly having laden her arms with exhaustion.  
  
Janna nodded towards the bathroom door. "Shower's in there," she said, as though Faith couldn't have figured it out for herself. "I'll go get you a towel and something to sleep in. The couch folds out into a bed, so you can just crash here in the living room."  
  
Faith was already making a beeline for the bathroom door as Janna spoke, shedding the thrift-store rags en route.  
  
After one of the longest showers she had ever taken, a revitalized Faith stepped back out into Janna's living room, clad in a long black nightdress. Janna had already unfolded the couch for her, and the thrift-store rags were nowhere to be seen. Janna herself was still at her computer, apparently doing something on the Internet, but Faith could discern no more than that. Computers had never been her strong suit; she had always considered them too nerdly to get involved with. Her mysterious benefactor had also gotten changed for the night, having donned another nightdress almost identical to Faith's.  
  
Janna slid the keyboard tray under the desk when Faith emerged. "Much better," she complimented the rogue Slayer. "You clean up well."  
  
"Thanks," Faith replied, hopping immediately into the cushions of the fold-out bed. It wasn't a feather mattress, but it was the best Faith had slept on in a long time.  
  
"So now what?" the raven-haired girl asked again, after making herself comfortable under the covers.  
  
"Well, if you're feeling up to it, you can start training tomorrow morning," Janna offered.  
  
"Hey, I'm game," Faith answered. The shower had done wonders for her mood.  
  
"All right, I'll be around at five," Janna said, getting up to head for her room.  
  
Faith sat bolt upright in bed. "FIVE?!" she exploded. Even in prison, she hadn't needed to roust herself until after six.  
  
"You up for it?"  
  
Faith suppressed a glower. She knew there had been a catch in this offer somewhere. Still, there was really nothing to be said against it. For the first time in a while, save for her time in prison, she was actually sleeping at night and getting up during the day. "Five by five," she breathed as she drifted off to sleep.  
  
***  
  
*Five by five, hell,* Faith thought to herself. *Beats working out in a library, though.*  
  
She was on her second tour around the string of Nautilus machines in the basement of Janna's apartment building; the setup was rather modest, but neither Janna nor Faith was comfortable with the idea of training anywhere more conspicuous. The building had a small exercise room in the basement that went unwatched and largely unused, with a small lineup of exercise machines and free weights and a Bowflex machine that the landlord had gotten for the previous Christmas and had already grown tired of. She was glad for the solitude; although she still had quite a few questions that she wanted to ask Janna, she had more than enough to think about by herself. There was also the issue that, had anyone been around to see it, Faith was using weights that would have made many a passerby stop and take notice; she was using more than she had ever known she was capable of, and was barely even working up a sweat. Janna had told her that she wouldn't be back until six, so Faith had a lot of time to work with and didn't really plan on going anywhere else, so there was no sense in overexerting herself early. In addition, she was already using the maximum weight on every weight machine in the room.  
  
After a few hours, she took a break, heading back up to Janna's apartment on the third floor. She had been surprised when Janna had left a key with her; the woman was surprisingly trusting considering they had just met, and Faith was an escaped convict. Then again, when she stopped to think about it, Faith had been equally trusting of Janna, spending the night at her apartment having only met the woman the same day. Nonetheless, the danger sense that had gotten Faith out of a lot of scrapes in the past stayed silent, so she didn't read much into it. She let herself into Janna's apartment and immediately headed for the refrigerator; she hadn't felt that hungry coming up the stairs, but the sight of the refrigerator somehow propelled the thought of food forward in her mind.  
  
As soon as she opened the fridge, her chin dropped in disappointment. Janna hadn't mentioned that she was a vegetarian. There were two separate bowls of salad, several bottles of apparently homemade fruit and vegetable juices as well as water, some kind of casserole, and cornbread. Faith had nothing particularly against vegetarians, but she found herself wishing that there were something a little more substantial available, since she didn't want to risk going out for food. There was also the fact that she was basically dead broke.  
  
Resigning herself to having just a glass of water and a bagel, she collapsed on the couch, which Janna had folded up again that morning. Her eyes wandered, and for no reason that Faith could fathom, settled on the pile of journals next to Janna's computer. She recognized the one on top; it was the one that Janna had been using the previous night at the Ancient Eye, when she talked about the Thanator and the Order of Turaca. Half instinctively, half because she had nothing better to do, she got up to have a look.  
  
The first thing that struck her was the amount of images and diagrams; Janna was apparently a first-rate artist. Janna had also translated a great deal of the Old English and other languages into modern English, making everything a lot easier on Faith's eyes. Faith remembered the one time she had bothered trying to read the journals of her first Watcher, and run headlong into four or five different alphabets and Heaven only knew how many different languages. Janna had left touches of what looked like Gaelic and Latin in some places, which Faith guessed were either incantations or things that simply didn't translate well, but everything else looked remarkably well organized--and often illustrated, which Faith appreciated immensely.  
  
She set the book down after another minute, after locating the pages where Janna had written about the Order of Turaca. There wasn't a whole lot more there than Janna had already told Faith: they were demonic assassins of extremely high caliber, with a wide range of abilities and a price tag that generally involved a good deal of money as well as some things that money couldn't buy. They were known for cunning, patience, and political skill as well as sheer ferocity; there was only one mention of a time when they were forced to negotiate on someone else's terms in all the centuries of their history, and the details of that were apparently kept a jealously guarded secret. The encouraging thing was that they generally contracted by the assassin, or sometimes by the cell, so facing them wasn't necessarily one of those we-hunt-you-'til-you-die kind of deals; of course, that was almost never an issue. Faith noted that Janna had scribbled in the margins, "Buffy survived ... first survivor this century?" Faith had assumed that, having known Angel, Janna would also have known Buffy, but this suggested that Janna might have had more knowledge of Buffy's exploits than Faith had suspected. She skimmed through the rest of the notebooks looking for other mentions of the sunny-haired Slayer's name, but didn't find any, and by the time she was through, she didn't feel like going through any of the other notebooks in the stack.  
  
Instead, she turned her attention to the rest of Janna's apartment. She dared a peek into Janna's bedroom and closets, but didn't find anything particularly out of the ordinary. The floor-to-ceiling bookshelves covering the walls of Janna's room gave the impression of sleeping in a library, but the nightstands and dresser were tastefully decorated with English floral arrangements, as were the available surfaces of the living room and bathroom. Contemporary paintings furnished the living room, apparently all by the same artist, depicting different scenes from the banks of a misty forest river.  
  
She finally turned her attention to the small TV resting on a stand next to Janna's computer. Looking in the cabinet underneath it, she was surprised to find an impressive surround-sound setup connected to small speakers mounted on the walls, so unintrusive that she hadn't noticed them at first. There was a single shelf of videocassettes; apparently Janna wasn't much for TV, since from the looks of things, the sound system had to have cost seven or eight times what the TV itself had. Curiously, she turned on the CD player just to see what Janna listened to, and for some reason was not overly surprised to hear the soft lilt of Enya wafting across the room, though she didn't recognize the song.  
  
The VHS tapes caught her eye a moment later. Most of them were unlabeled, apparently blank. One was clearly a recording, "King Arthur: History Channel Special." The last few tape was a yoga instructional video. Having nothing else to do, she decided to try it out; she needed to clear her head anyway. It didn't take her long to find a comfortable rug rolled up under the couch, a wide, soft green square with a Celtic knotwork circle design embroidered in gold.  
  
She spent about an hour on the mat, though she quickly turned the tape off; the instructor was actually worse than Juniper had been. In addition, though she left the music playing softly in the background, she wanted the relative quiet to concentrate. Doing this had brought her thoughts back to Juniper, and from there to Sycamore, and the strange sensation she had felt when running through the woods away from the prison. She felt seeds of it now, and while it was nothing like she had felt that day after talking to Sycamore, she still felt more refreshed at the end of her session than she was at the beginning, though she was no closer to answers to the hundreds of questions milling in her head. She returned to the basement a few minutes later, making sure to put everything away, noting wryly that she was taking better care of Janna's belongings than she ever had her own.  
  
If anything, the exercise equipment was even more useless than it had been before. She did long sets with the maximum weight on every weight machine, and barely felt any burn in her muscles afterwards. She loaded up as many weights on the end of the barbell as would fit, and found that the barbell itself wasn't as up to the task as she was; she got it off the ground effortlessly, but the strain bent the barbell down the middle. Faith gave a wry smile and whistled nonchalantly as she put the weights back on the rack.  
  
Almost at the stroke of six, Janna's car pulled into the parking lot. Wordlessly, Faith hopped in, and they sped off.  
  
"Well, you look like you enjoyed yourself at least," Janna offered.  
  
"I know, I don't even get it," Faith answered. "I've been like, working out for almost twelve hours, and I'm not even really tired."  
  
"You're getting stronger," Janna observed.  
  
"I guess. I have no idea how, though. It's not like I was really working out that much in prison, you know."  
  
Janna smiled. "Slayers have more sources of power than their muscles, you know."  
  
Faith nodded. She didn't reply, but she had been beginning to see that for some time now.  
  
Janna decided to change the subject before the air got too heavy to breathe. "Feel like a shopping trip? Or are malls too girly for Slayers?"  
  
"Hey, aren't you a little worried that someone will recognize me? Some people have to be thinking I came back to L.A. after I got out. I've been on the news over the last few days, you know."  
  
Janna gave another secretive smile. "I wouldn't worry about it. I wouldn't have left you at the exercise room if I thought anyone would notice, either. People might have noticed the size of the weights you were using, but I'll bet no one even said anything if they did."  
  
"Actually, no one really came close enough to notice, but what are you talking about?"  
  
"There was a little bit of magic involved," Janna admitted. "Does that freak you out at all?" Faith shook her head. Why would it? One of her best friends had been a demonic sorcerer.  
  
"OK, it's called a Faerie Cloak," Janna continued. "It's an old Irish Gypsy spell, from a long time back. Basically, it lets people see you, but it prevents them from realizing who they're seeing."  
  
"So like, everyone won't really see me?"  
  
"No, they'll see you. They just won't think anything of it. They'll see just another girl shopping. They won't connect it to the face they've seen on the news."  
  
Janna smiled and nodded. Faith thought that she felt a slight change in the air, but couldn't tell anything else was different until Janna said, "There we go. Done. Just don't hit anyone or anything, OK?" she added. "It's pretty delicate. If you do anything to really attract attention, it'll break. Got me?"  
  
Faith nodded. It made sense, in an unreal kind of way. Still, she was a little annoyed that she had somehow not noticed whatever spell Janna apparently had cast on her. Instinctive distrust flared up in her mind, that Janna could just as easily cast something else on her without her knowing, but she repressed it. The raven-haired woman had already had more than enough chances to do that.  
  
"So what do you need at the mall?" Faith asked after an awkward silence.  
  
"Me? Nothing. I don't have enough clothes for the two of us forever, though, you know. Besides, I think it's about time you got something you could appear in public in again, don't you?"  
  
***  
  
"Oh my gosh, Janna, I don't care if you're secretly the Wicked Witch of the West, I owe you my life!" Faith joked as she pushed open the door of Janna's apartment with her knee. Neither she nor Janna had any arms free, and it would be at least two more trips to the car before they got everything in the door.  
  
"Don't worry about it," Janna answered demurely. "I'd hate to think the only reason you're sticking around is because I took you shopping, though." Her voice was friendly, though, and Faith simply shrugged it off. She was amazed at how much better at that she had become.  
  
"Well, I'd hate to think you were secretly the Wicked Witch, too, so let's just not let each other down, 'K?" she quipped on her way out to get another load.  
  
She found herself wondering exactly how much Janna's new job paid. She had never concerned herself overmuch with money, though of course, she had never had much of her own. She was not a complete idiot when it came to numbers, though, and even with Janna paying for everything, Faith was still conscious of the amount they had spent today. She had been hoping she could get Janna to maybe shell out for a few clearance-rack items at JC Penney's and maybe something a little looser to fight in. Apparently Janna had other things in mind. The woman had to have put almost two thousand dollars on her credit card that day, if not more, and almost all of it was on clothing and accessories for Faith. Faith doubted she had ever spent that much on herself, barring rent, in a given year. Add that to the fact that Janna had just bought herself a new Porsche and still had to be dealing with whatever expenses were involved in moving into her apartment, and Faith was sure that what she had spent in the last few weeks was more than many people made in a year. Once she started thinking about it, she remembered that even Janna's computer and most of the appliances in her apartment were almost brand new. It was really as though the woman had appeared out of nowhere just a couple months ago.  
  
The more she thought about it, the more Faith's eyes narrowed. That would have been at almost the same time Buffy had died. Faith trusted Janna as much as she had ever trusted anyone she had known for so short a time, but that was not saying much. And all trust aside, Faith had learned a long time ago not to believe in coincidence.  
  
She shrugged out of her reverie and realized that she was just standing by the Boxter, staring at the bags she was supposed to be bringing in. Janna was probably wondering what was keeping her. She gathered up another armload of bags and started up the stairs to the apartment.   
  
She reminded herself that she had never sensed anything dangerous or deceitful about Janna yet, and the woman had tried to be as open as possible with her. That lack of warning in the back of her mind was something she had never experienced even with Mayor Wilkins. If the woman was hiding anything, she was hiding it both deep and well. The thought that she was hiding something, though, wouldn't vanish from Faith's mind. Then again, Faith imagined that she herself was probably hiding some things, even without even knowing or intending to do so.  
  
Janna was clearing out the living room closet when Faith reentered the apartment, making room for Faith's new wardrobe. Janna's own clothes, evicted from the closet, were scattered all over the bed. She gave Faith a warm smile as the rogue Slayer came through the door. "If I'd known I was going to have a guest so soon, I'd have gotten a bigger place," she laughed.  
  
Faith simply smiled wordlessly in response and went out to pick up the last load of clothes from the car.  
  
After everything had been put away, Janna lingered around in the living room. It was plain that she wanted to start talking about something, probably something more serious; she was just unsure of where to begin. Faith sat back on the bed and gave her a questioning look, trying to encourage her not to be nervous; after all, she was definitely interested in whatever the woman had to say, whether or not she was hiding anything and whatever it was that might be.  
  
A few moments later, Janna blew out a tense breath, ruffling her bangs. "You hungry at all?" she asked, apparently not ready to dive right in to whatever it was she wanted to say.  
  
"Sorta," Faith answered. That was a black lie. She was famished. The only thing she had had all day were a bagel and several trips to the water fountain; Janna had not wanted to stop by the food court at the mall, or at any of the restaurants near any of the other shops they had gone to that evening.  
  
"All right," Janna answered, sounding almost relieved. She headed over to the open country-style kitchenette that opened off of the living room. She was back moments later, bearing a large bowl of fresh garden salad, a few plums, and a pitcher of ice water.  
  
"I should have let you stop to eat somewhere," Janna apologized as she set the food down on the coffee table, which had been pushed to one side of the bed when Janna folded out the couch. "I keep forgetting that not everyone's a vegetarian now. If you stick around here for a while, I'll pick up some cold cuts or something next time I'm at the store."  
  
Faith grinned. "It's OK, really, I'll survive," she assured her. Considering what she had been living on for the past year, what Janna had set before her looked like a royal banquet. There had been something in what she said, though, that added to the list in Faith's mind. There had been something in the way her mysterious benefactor had said, 'not everyone's a vegetarian now.'  
  
Faith decided she was going to have to put it on the table sooner or later, so she decided it might as well be sooner.  
  
"Was everyone a vegetarian where you come from or something?" she asked.  
  
Janna looked up, a hint of surprise showing on her face, but no more. Then she sighed. "Betrayed by my food," she sighed. "I need to get the hang of living again."  
  
"What are you talking about?" Faith asked, a touch of frustration entering her voice. She didn't like it when people tried to evade her questions; in addition, while she didn't feel truly threatened, Janna's response had made her more nervous than she had yet felt in the woman's presence.  
  
Janna did not answer immediately. When she did, she apparently changed the subject. "Have you ever felt like someone's given you a fresh chance at life? Maybe one you didn't deserve?"  
  
Faith was still angry that Janna was dodging her question, but that question caught her off guard, and struck dangerously close to her heart. Janna did not appear to be trying to permanently change the subject, however. Slowly, Faith's frustration subsided somewhat.  
  
"Ever since Angel," she answered honestly.  
  
Janna nodded. "I think Angel feels that way himself sometimes, too, or at least he did until about three months ago."  
  
"And you?" Faith pressed. The woman was probably right about Angel, but that was a conversation for another time.  
  
Janna settled into her computer chair. "And me," she answered, in a way that didn't answer anything.  
  
"Only your second chance must've only started about three months ago," Faith prodded.  
  
Janna nodded.  
  
"So what's the deal?" Faith asked, a little of the frustration creeping back into her voice.  
  
Janna stood up. "Maybe I should just show you," she said.  
  
"Hey, hey, nothing witchy now!" Faith answered heatedly.  
  
"No, it's nothing like that," Janna answered. "Though it may freak you out just as much."  
  
"Then why can't you just tell me?" Faith asked.  
  
"Please, just trust me," Janna answered earnestly. "It'll be better this way. I promise. I'll be right back." With that, Janna turned and drifted into the bedroom. Faith followed her as far as the doorway. Janna rustled around under her bed for a moment and pulled out a cardboard box, wrinkled with age. From this, she drew out a thin hardback book, and brought it back out into the living room. Faith drew back onto the foldout bed as Janna approached, and Janna came with her, foregoing her computer chair. She lay back on her back across the head of the bed, and tossed the book in front of Faith, who was sitting Indian-style at the foot.  
  
Faith's eyes widened when she saw it. It wasn't magic, that was for sure. It was a Sunnydale High School yearbook from the year before Faith had enrolled.  
  
"What's this?" Faith asked.  
  
"Look at page twelve," Janna answered.  
  
Puzzled, Faith flipped the book open to that page. It was the first page of the section with pictures of all the faculty. Faith didn't see anything out of the ordinary, until one picture drew her attention. There was a woman staring at her out of the page that could easily be the woman lying on the bed next to her. She held up the picture for Janna to see. "Is this you?" she asked.  
  
Janna didn't even lift her arm from where she had laid it across her eyes, much less lift her head. She just nodded.  
  
Faith took another look at the picture. Janna had aged well, that was for sure. She looked almost exactly like her picture from four years ago. With most people, that would have led Faith to suspect vampirism, but she had been out with Janna since well before sunset, and Janna was far from a crispy critter.  
  
"Now look at the second to last page," Janna said.  
  
Faith did as directed, and her eyes widened in stunned amazement. She catapulted off the bed and across the room with a startled cry, though she somehow managed to keep the book with her. Janna did not even move until Faith landed; then she simply sat up and sat on the bed, waiting for Faith to say something.  
  
Faith, meanwhile, stole another look at the book to make sure she had not misread anything.  
  
The second-last page of the memory book was a two-page spread montage of the woman on the bed across from her. At the top of the first page, in bold calligraphy, were written the words, "IN LOVING MEMORY," and at the bottom of the second, underneath a portrait of the woman, "JENNY CALENDAR."  
  
  
*****  
  
  
COMING SOON: Chapter 6, "Stories of Bygone Days." In subsequent chapters (these may not all fit into one): Janna begins to fill Faith in on what happened to her; the Scoobies continue to fill Buffy in on what she accomplished between her first and second deaths; Glory learns that Faith escaped the Order of Turaca; Willow begins to use magic more assertively, prompting notice from several watchful eyes; and much more!  
  
In case it hasn't shown by now, I'm an addict of the older seasons of Buffy and have been working on a plotline complex enough to bring as many old school characters back as possible. My apologies for the length of this chapter; several sections of it were cut and pasted from scattered works that I've had lying around since early 2001, and I didn't realize how long it was getting and didn't feel like cutting it. Subsequent chapters will almost certainly not be this long, though overall, this story is definitely shaping up to be an epic; whether it will be a good epic or a doggedly boring and long-winded ramble is up for you, dear reader, to decide.  
  
As always, classes are torture, so it may be a long time between updates. I shouldn't be working on this as much as I am ... but it's just so much more fun than schoolwork. As always, feedback is appreciated, the more specific the better! 


	6. Stories of Bygone Days

DISCLAIMER: We both know I don't own Buffy, Faith, or any of the other characters that are making Joss Whedon and his corporate sponsors/affiliates rich. If I did, this whole college tuition thing would be much less of an issue.  
  
Also, this is my first Buffy fanfic, so be nice.  
  
ANTI-DISCLAIMER (would that be just a "claimer?"): Some of these characters ARE my own creation, as well as many elements of the setting. Use your head. If it never appeared in anywhere in the Kenshin series, then it's probably mine. Not that anyone cares but me.  
  
SPOILERS/BACKGROUND: Everything from Season 1 to Season 5 and Angel Season 1 to Season 2; this picks up after S5/S2.  
  
*****  
  
CHAPTER 6:  
  
STORIES OF BYGONE DAYS  
  
An absolutely sickening stench filled the air in the room. Blood of three different colors from four different inhuman creatures was spattered on the walls and collecting in pools and cracks in the floor. The woman standing in the middle of it gave no sign of noticing anything out of the ordinary, however. Indeed, there was a smile on her face. She kicked the lifeless, eight-foot corpse at her feet to make sure it was indeed lifeless; then, as an exclamation point, she stomped her foot down on the massive claymore lying by the massive corpse's side, snapping it in two and leaving a shallow crater in the concrete floor underneath.  
  
"Apology accepted, Rhyzie," she said. Then, a moment later, she realized that she had broken one of her stilettos off in doing so. "Oh, damn," she pouted.  
  
She looked up a moment later, and her condescendingly cheerful composure was restored. "Now then, what am I going to do with you?" she asked, her eyes fixing on a short brown creature with long claws on his hands clenching and unclenching in pain; he was pinned to the wall three feet above the ground by a segment of lead pipe that had been driven through his shoulder like a spear. He was strong enough that he was not crying out in pain, but his teeth were clenched to hold it in and he was not about to give her the satisfaction of an answer, so all he could do was hiss.  
  
"Now, now, Mister, that's no way to talk to a lady. Particularly one that's probably going to kill you in another minute."  
  
Hascinth hissed again.  
  
Suddenly, Glory's form blurred, and she vanished out the door of the basement faster than even Hascinth's eyes could follow. There was sudden petrified squeal, and a moment later, she returned, dragging a man with her, kicking and screaming but completely unable to break the Beast's inhumanly strong grip.  
  
"Hi!" Glory said cheerfully. The man only gibbered more. "You don't look like a demon. But I'll bet you break just as easily."  
  
"No!" the man cried, collapsing to his knees in Glory's grip, which caused his arm to bend backward, eliciting a fresh cry of pain.  
  
"You could delay things a while by telling me why you're here, you know."  
  
"Please!" the man screeched. "I'm ... I'm just a messenger."  
  
"Well then, you might as well give me the message."  
  
"It ... it was for the Order of Turaca."  
  
Suddenly, with a feral snarl, Hascinth finally pulled the pipe loose. He dropped to the floor ungracefully, and dark, smoking blood dribbled from the wound in his shoulder, but he neither ran nor screamed, even though he knew he was powerless against the woman standing in front of him.  
  
"I'm the last member of the Order here," he snarled. "So I'm the cell captain now. State your message. And die quietly."  
  
"No! No, please!" the man screamed. Glory turned an appreciative smile at Hascinth.  
  
"Yes, yes please," Hascinth repeated flatly.  
  
"No!" the man repeated in an even more shrill and despairing cry.  
  
"Haven't you people ever heard of mail?" Glory asked.  
  
Hascinth ignored her. "I remember you," he said. "You're the liason from Sunnydale. I suppose you're here to finally tell us that the Slayer's dead. The news from there seems to be running a little late these days."  
  
The man was shocked out of his fear for a brief moment. "Wha ... no, I was coming to tell you that she was alive."  
  
"What?!" Glory and Hascinth responded in unison.  
  
"And 'the book is open,' whatever that means," he added.  
  
"Wow, that sounds fascinating," said Glory, in a voice that plainly indicated that she had no idea what the man was talking about. "But all this talk is making me hungry." Without another words, she plunged her hands into the man's skull; there was a white flash, and the man collapsed to the ground.  
  
Glory rubbed her stomach wistfully, as though a portion had gone down the wrong way. "I hate cowards," she said, "they taste so greasy and thin. Seems like everything in this world tastes like chicken except chickens. That reminds me, have you eaten?"  
  
"No, why?"  
  
"We've got a trip ahead of us."  
  
***  
  
"OK, you know that part you warned me about where I get creeped out?" Faith asked. "I'd say it's here."  
  
Janna, or Jenny, or whatever her name was, stood up from the bed. "I don't understand it all myself," she answered.  
  
"Well, why don't you start telling me however much you DO understand," Faith retorted, "because right now, I'm not understanding anything."  
  
Janna nodded. "Fair enough," she answered tiredly. She stood up and walked over to where Faith stood. Faith tensed as she approached, but she made herself not back up as the woman came closer. Then, as it turned out, Janna was not really approaching Faith at all. She passed her hands over her computer monitor, and the screen came to life. Janna turned to give Faith a wan smile. "A thousand years of fairy tales, and we've come from magic mirrors to this."  
  
Faith might have laughed at that another time, but she was still tense at the moment. There was also the fact that, while Janna still did not seem overly threatening, she was able to call on supernatural powers with just a gesture. Even the redhead witch back in Sunnydale had needed incantations and ingredients and candles and all kinds of wiccan stuff like that. There were no sounds or lights accompanying Janna's gesture; she simply beckoned, and the monitor obeyed.  
  
Then the images on the monitor caught her eyes, and Faith was drawn the sound of Janna's voice as she began to explain what had happened to her over the last four years.  
  
"Before I went to Sunnydale, I was Janna Kalderesh of the Roma," she explained. Visions of the traveling people straight out of medieval times flashed on the monitor, with Janna among them. The scenes were clearly in modern America, too, except for the people themselves; they were passing a green road sign, and there was an interstate highway some distance in the background. "An entire sect of our clan wandered here to California all the way from Ireland after we cursed Angel. We were supposed to make sure that nothing ever happened to break that curse."  
  
The monitor flickered, and the courtyard of Sunnydale High School appeared, once again with Janna, now known as Jenny Calendar, carrying a pile of books to class. "I was one of the more ... modern ... members of our clan," Janna continued, "and one of the more gifted with the old arts, so I got to play point. I took a job at Sunnydale teaching computer science. That was when everything got complicated."  
  
She passed her hands over the monitor again, and the scene in the courtyard shifted. A familiar blonde was passing through it now, trailed by her faithful friends.  
  
"B!" Faith laughed. "My God, she looks so innocent!"  
  
Janna's expression became suddenly pained, and Faith turned to look at her for a moment, concerned. "Irony can be bitter," Jenny answered the unspoken question cryptically.  
  
Faith understood. "Oh, this is back before ..." she cut off when Jenny nodded sadly.  
  
"Complicated doesn't even begin to describe it," the former Gypsy continued. The monitor flickered again, to a scene of Buffy and Angel locked in each other's arms. "Angel falling in love was something we could barely conceive of. Falling in love with a Slayer was so insane, I had no idea how to react. Especially ..." her voice trailed off again, and she made another pass at the monitor. Jenny appeared on the screen again, wrapped in the arms of ...  
  
"Giles?!" Faith burst out. She had somehow deduced that Janna had to have been connected to the Sunnydale gang somehow, but that was the biggest surprise she had had in weeks. *Giles had had a girlfriend?! Holy shit!* she thought to herself. She kept herself from voicing it aloud, though.  
  
"A vampire in love with the Slayer, and the person supposed to watch the vampire falling in love with the person supposed to watch the Slayer," Janna laughed sadly. "Like I said, complicated."  
  
The picture flashed again, and seemed to grow darker. Faith actually blushed as she realized what Jenny was showing her. "You weren't actually watching this, were you?" she blurted. Janna grinned, almost impishly, and shook her head. Then the momentary levity faded, and the former Gypsy was serious again. "I'll explain later," she said, and the steamy vision on the monitor faded, replaced by another scene in an even deeper darkness. Faith recognized it as Sunnydale High, long after dark. The lights were out. Jenny stood in the hallway, facing the silhouette of Angel with a large cross held out in front of her; Willow was in between them, walking towards Angel. Janna's lips moved, and suddenly, there was sound to go with the picture.  
  
'Willow, get away from him,' Janna said.  
  
'What ...?' the image shifted onto the red-headed girl, who stood between Janna and Angel and had been walking towards the  
  
'Walk to me.'  
  
'What're you talking ab ...' and suddenly, her words were choked off as Angel came up and grabbed her from behind. Janna let the entire fateful scene in the hallway play out--Buffy's arrival, Xander attacking Angel from behind with Janna's cross, the last, spiteful kiss before Angel vanished into the night. Then the picture melted into another, the school library.  
  
'You didn't know he had turned bad?' Janna was asking Buffy.  
  
Willow suddenly straightened, as though a thought had suddenly occurred to her. 'How did you?' she asked. 'You knew. You told me to get away from ...'  
  
The vision blurred suddenly, and suddenly, it wasn't Willow asking the question, it was Buffy; and she had Janna pinned to her desk in front of her entire class.  
  
'What do you know?' she demanded.  
  
'Buffy!' Giles voice suddenly shouted from off the screen.  
  
'Did you do it? Did you change him? Did you know this was going to happen?!' Buffy demanded.  
  
'I didn't know ... exactly,' Janna answered. 'I was told ... I was sent here to watch you. They told me to keep you and Angel apart, they never told me what would happen. Angel was supposed to pay for what he did to my people.'  
  
'And me?' Buffy demanded. 'What was I supposed to be paying for?'  
  
'I didn't know what would happen until after, I swear I would have told you.'  
  
'So it was me. I did it.'  
  
'I think so.'  
  
'I don't understand,' Giles interrupted.  
  
'The curse,' Janna explained. 'If Angel achieved true happiness, even just a moment of ... he would lose his soul.'  
  
'B-but how do you know you were responsible for ...' Giles began, turning to Buffy, when suddenly realization dawned on his face, and he retreated with a muted, 'Oh.'  
  
'If there's anything I can do ...' Janna offered.  
  
'Curse him again.' Buffy's voice was adamant.  
  
'No, I can't,' Janna answered, 'Those magics are long lost, even to my people.'  
  
'You did it once, it might not be too late to save him.'  
  
'It can't be done. I can't help you.'  
  
Janna's gesture has she changed the scene in the monitor that time was much more abrupt, a lot less smooth, and Faith swore she saw a trail of moisture in the Gypsy's eyes. Janna, noticing where Faith was looking, gave a weak smile. "Practically everything you see in this apartment," she said, "began that very moment. I've never felt more useless or powerless in my life. I don't like that feeling."  
  
"I hear that," Faith empathized.  
  
"So I worked. I was always better than most with the old arts, and willing to try new things, but I had never been much of a student. Not much work ethic, I guess. That changed. I put in more late nights than any vampire after that. And I eventually rediscovered the curse. But," she added, with a suddenly sorrowful look, "I was a little late."  
  
The scene shifted back to Sunnydale High, once again after dark, this time in Janna's classroom. Janna was there alone, working on her computer. She worked for a few minutes, then suddenly her face lit up as though she had suddenly received the greatest birthday present of her life. Janna smiled while something was printing, then suddenly became aware that she was not alone.  
  
Angel was in the room, too.  
  
"Do I want to guess how this ends?"  
  
"If I don't have to show it, that would be nice," Janna answered somberly. "It isn't exactly the highlight of my existence."  
  
"I can guess," Faith answered, and Janna nodded gratefully. She waved her hand one last time, and the screen went dark.  
  
"So that's the first half of the story," Faith continued.  
  
"Yes," Janna answered. "Now we're getting into the part that the others in Sunnydale don't know about yet."  
  
"I'm still listening."  
  
"Right," Janna paused and took a breath. "And we're also getting to the part where I have even fewer answers myself. I may die again before I do. Fair warning."  
  
"Keep talking."  
  
Janna took another breath. "I didn't move on to where others go, after Angel killed me, and believe me, no one was more surprised than me. I was only a half-believer in the old myths and legends at best. Anyway, for a long time, I drifted, in some kind of limbo. I might have been what you call a ghost, a spirit of someone who died with a critical task unfinished, but not quite. I have no idea what I was, but I was a spirit somewhere.  
  
"Eventually, I felt a huge power source drawing on me, and I was drawn back into this world for a few brief minutes. I couldn't believe what was going on, but believe me, that little computer hacker at Sunnydale was somehow finishing what I started. When she used my translation of the old texts, she somehow invoked me, too. I'm still not sure if they've figured out that I was there or not. I spoke in the old language, through Willow, and we together we finished the curse. Angel was cured.  
  
"Then I moved on.  
  
"When I awoke next, I didn't know where I was again, but I felt more like ... myself, I guess, though still different. I looked like myself again at least. I had a form again, and all five senses, though they were working differently--like I was more than dreaming, but less than waking, is the only way I can describe it. I was in the middle of a forest, right by a small river, and completely alone. It was, to put it mildly, not quite like I had pictured the afterlife.  
  
"It looked like that," she said, pointing to one of the pictures on the wall. "I painted that shortly after I came back, to help me remember, not that I needed any help."  
  
"Anyway, I need to tell you a legend. More than a legend, I've learned now, but it's practically a myth to my people. The story goes something like this: centuries ago, sometime in the time before Rome came to the British Isles, a tribe of the Roma traveled there and mixed with some of the Celtic people of the Isles. While they were there, one of them, maybe more, took a faerie wife. The faerie blood is supposed to lie dormant in many of their descendants, sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker, but there, giving us some kind of link to the Otherworld.  
  
"Almost no one believed the legends, especially those of us that returned to Rumania after the Romans, and later the Christians, came to the Isles. But it looks like there was more to them than we believed--and it looks like the Old Blood ran a lot stronger in me than any of my tribe knew, since it somehow kept my spirit from going wherever it is that the rest of us go.  
  
"To make a long story short, it wasn't long before a small group of them found me, and they welcomed me like a long-lost sister. They recognized me, somehow. I didn't believe them at first, but it didn't take long for them to convince me, considering that once they realized who I was, they brought me back to the queen on the back of a centaur. I think my reaction to my first sight of Herufel is going to be sung by bards for the next few centuries, but that's beside the point.  
  
"So suddenly, I had gone in a few hours from being the local high school computer science teacher to the guest of honor of Titania at the palace at Llynarian."  
  
"Titania?" Faith asked. It sounded like a cheap comic book superheroine, but she wasn't about to tell Janna that, since it was obvious that Janna held whoever she was in the highest respect.  
  
"The Faerie Queen. And, apparently, my great-great-great-great aunt. With a whole lot more 'greats' thrown in." Faith was listening, but only just, because she had suddenly realized that Janna's mystical video presentation hadn't ended, it had only changed screens. The painting that Janna had pointed to had sprung to life, and suddenly the scene changed, even though it still somehow looked like a painting. It was a high, panoramic overhead view of what could only be described as a fairy palace, a tall, graceful structure rising from a large, flat rocky outcropping that jutted out into a wide silver lake. There were people moving around on the ground, but the view was too far away for her to see if they truly looked human or not. The place was bedecked as though for a festival.  
  
"I ended up as a handmaiden to Titania, and she became my mentor. I have no idea why she took such an interest in me. It's probably because I was the first to cross the border the way I did in centuries, so that made me kind of unique, but I wonder if she somehow read more than that. Titania is a little ... eccentric ... sometimes, as most faerie nobility are, but she always seemed to have a way of not being surprised by anything. I'm wondering if she knew that I wasn't going to be with them that long.  
  
"Anyway, I'll skip most of that, but let's just say I learned a lot over the last four years. I learned a lot more of the old arts that had been forgotten by my tribe, since a lot of them originally came from the Fae kindred, and a lot of the natural powers of the faeries that you might have read about."  
  
"I haven't really read that much," Faith interrupted. "I guess you were right about Slayers and their study habits."  
  
Janna laughed. "That's OK, I was never much of a student at your age, either, remember? Anyway, I'm near the end. About three months ago, some kind of ... ripple in reality, is the best I can describe it ... shot outward from this world. Normally, traveling between the Otherworld and Earth is impossible these days; the more the world becomes a world of cities and technology, the more we fade into the mists of myth. For one brief moment, though, the worlds suddenly jumped closer together. I had no idea how at the time, and I'm still fuzzy on the details, but as you've probably guessed by now, it was the day Buffy died, and the ripple came from Sunnydale."  
  
"And so you suddenly found your way back here," Faith finished.  
  
"Pretty much," Janna said. "I landed in the woods outside Sunnydale. It took me a while to figure out exactly where I was. I didn't know that Buffy had died until I managed to find my way into town just in time for her viewing. None of the others saw me. Then I went around to my tribe and a few other people in the area that I thought might be able to fill me in on what had happened over the last several years. That was when I learned about you. I came here to L.A., looking for Angel, but once I heard the state he was in, I figured that the last thing he needed at that point was to see me. You were still in prison and I didn't feel comfortable approaching you there, but I had a strange feeling that something was going to happen to you there, that Buffy's death was going to mean something for you. So I started putting down roots here, since I figured this was where you'd come if you ever came back, and started having the prison watched."  
  
Faith's mind suddenly made a jump, and she was amazed that she hadn't made it earlier. "Sycamore," she said. "You sent Sycamore there."  
  
Janna suddenly threw back her head and laughed uproariously. "Is that what she called herself? Makes sense, I guess. I didn't send her there, she already lived there. She was the spirit of one of the more ancient trees of the forst. A dryad, you call them. Though my point woman, if you want to call her that, was a lost member of our tribe ... her parents left the Gypsy life behind them several decades ago. She was the only one I was able to get inside the prison."  
  
Faith's eyes widened. "Juniper?"  
  
Janna smiled. "She doesn't look much like a secret agent, does she? She probably seemed really shy to you, but she got a real kick out of it at times."  
  
"My gosh, Juniper," Faith said, reappraising the little community college coed in her mind.  
  
Janna nodded. "I always wished I could have gotten someone ... well, stronger ... on the inside, but I had to make do. Dryads and nymphs can't leave the woods, and the only other eyes I could get inside were animals--hardly a match for the Order of Turaca."  
  
"You can talk to animals?"  
  
"Most of them," Janna admitted with a magnanimous grin. Her head suddenly perked up. "Speak of the devil," she laughed, walking to the window and throwing it open. A pair of sparrows were perched on the windowsill.  
  
They chirped at Janna.  
  
"Thanks!" Janna answered, pulling a few sunflower seeds from her pocket and handing them to the birds before they flew off.  
  
  
  
Janna closed the window again. "Well, how are you feeling?"  
  
"Pretty good ... you wanna skip right to the part where you tell me where this is heading?"  
  
"They found the Order of Turaca lair near here. So I was wondering if ..."  
  
"Let's go," Faith said, her eyes suddenly coming alight. She had done more than enough talking and reading and practicing. She wasn't sure how she felt about returning to the Slaying gig, but she was sure there wasn't going to be any better place to start.  
  
"You sure you're up for it?"  
  
"You ought to be asking them that."  
  
Janna laughed. "All right, I guess you'd know better than me."  
  
Faith grinned. Neither one of her former Watchers would *ever* have said that ... about anything. "Maybe I ought to stop by Angel's first," she suggested, "maybe Wes'll loan me a weapon, at least."  
  
Janna's eyes suddenly widened, as though realizing she had forgotten something. "Oh, wait, here, I have one," she said, retreating into the bedroom. "I meant for you to have it, anyway, I just didn't think you'd be heading back into action so soon."  
  
"Yeah, well, you know, I hate waiting. Most of us only get one life to live."  
  
Janna's laugh echoed out through the door. "True." She returned a moment later. There was a short sword in a simple forest green sheath in her hands.  
  
"This is Kalia," she said, handing it to Faith. "An old heirloom of my tribe. Hope you like it. It was a gift to my family a long time ago, but we never even used it. Gypsies aren't really warriors."  
  
Faith took the sword and pulled it partway out of the sheath. For being as old and unused as Janna claimed it was, it was in perfect condition; the edges were bright and sharp, and the leather grip on the hilt was unworn. A slender design of two thorny brambles traced their way a few inches down the blade from the hilt, but it was otherwise unadorned. The hilt was simple and elegant.  
  
"Not bad, Janna," Faith noted approvingly.  
  
"Thanks," she said. She let out a tense breath a moment later. "You ready?"  
  
There was something different in the way she said that than any of her former Watchers would have. "Are you coming along?"  
  
"Do you not think I should?"  
  
"Can you fight?"  
  
"Not really. But I can hide. If I'm going to be a Watcher, I probably ought to Watch."  
  
"Um ... suit yourself, but don't get in the way."  
  
"I certainly won't try."  
  
"All right. Just let me get changed, and we'll get out of here."  
  
The Order of Turaca's lair was the basement of a nightclub called the Pendulum about two miles from Janna's apartment. It was already dark, but it was still a while before the club was opening, and the basement had a separate entrance in an alley in the back. Janna parked the car about a block away, and the two approached the alley.  
  
As they reached the entrance of the alley, Janna suddenly straighened, as though she had seen something, and Faith's hand instinctively darted to the hilt of her new sword, but she couldn't see anything, and the alley was quiet. Then again, Janna apparently had other senses than Faith.  
  
"Something's not right ..." Janna said. "But it doesn't feel like a trap."  
  
Faith was feeling it, too, though how Janna could say that it wasn't a trap, she had no idea. "What is it?" she asked.  
  
"I ... don't know. I'm trying ..." Her words suddenly trailed off, and her face blanched for a moment, though she covered it quickly.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Someone beat us here."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Let's go in. I think the place is empty ... sort of."  
  
"Sort of?"  
  
"There's something there I can't quite make out, but it doesn't feel demonic. Not strong enough."  
  
"I think I'll be a little paranoid just in case."  
  
"Yeah. Me too."  
  
Faith inched her way towards the door that led into the basement, and found that it was hanging open. The lock had been bludgeoned off the door. Her eyes widened. Someone had beaten them here, indeed. She went in, down the stairs, around a corner, and found the remains of a wide double door. They had apparently been barred from the inside, but something had burst through them like a battering ram. One simply had a massive dent in it and the latch was beyond repair; the other had come free of its top hings and lay bent and twisted around the bottom hinge like tinfoil. A sickening stench wafted out of the room to Faith's nostrils as she approached.  
  
There were four demons in the room.  
  
They were all dead.  
  
Faith fought down the urge to retch, and it had been a long time since that she had needed to do that. Someone had made quite a savage art project out of killing them, and it looked like that the demons themselves had had very little say in the matter. It looked more like a massacre than a battle. One had been cloven in half lengthwise; two others were missing limbs. One had been broken in half backwards at the waist. The last, a huge, hulking beast that looked to be at least eight feet long, was reasonably intact, but his skull and several points on his torso were terribly crushed, and his blood had dried in a pool around him, also filling a small crater in the ground next to him. An immense sword lay at his side, having fallen from his grasp, right next to the crater.  
  
Janna emerged from the stairwell a moment later, and her face immediately went white, and she covered her mouth with her hands. With a gesture of her head, she signalled that she would wait outside, and quickly disappeared back through the opening.  
  
Faith took another look around the chamber, and was about to follow Janna, when a faint sound caught her attention, and her hand flew to her sword-hilt. It had come from behind a stack of crates in the far corner of the basement.  
  
"Who's there?" she called.  
  
There was a muffled response, and it sounded almost like a whine, like whoever was there had only half-heard her, though she had called more than loudly enough.  
  
"Hello?" Faith called again, inching towards the crates, circling around so that she would be sure to see whoever or whatever was behind there from a distance, giving herself room to move if necessary. When she finally did come into sight of the source of the sound, however, she relaxed. It was only a man.  
  
"Hey, are you all right? What happened here?"  
  
"Little girls," the man said. "Another little girl. Aren't you a little young? Yes, young. Deliciously young. Like the hills."  
  
Faith's eyes narrowed, but she let it slide. "Come on, let's get out of here." She reached down to help the man to his feet.  
  
"No!" the man squealed suddenly, backing away as far as he could. "You can't take me with you! I'm alive!"  
  
"Yeah, I know, you're lucky. Come on."  
  
"Darkling, fie on your blood and marrow! Get thee from this sacred ground, thou apostate wretch! Thy presence defiles the blessed soil where the Mistress' holy footsteps have trod, and whose offerings have graced the hallowed earth with their nectar! Shameful viper, unfit to cast thine eyes upon one drawn into the Mistress' embrace! Get thee gone!" Suddenly, he jumped to his feet and lunged at Faith.  
  
Faith dodged aside, and the man threw himself headlong into one of the basement's support pillars.  
  
The man rolled over onto his back. "Now what'd'ya go and do that for? What'd I ever do to you?"  
  
"Think on it, it'll come to you," Faith responded, but the man was already unconscious.  
  
Faith took one last halfhearted look around the room; only half her mind was on her search, as she didn't really expect to find anything she hadn't already seen, and her mind was occupied with what the man had said, wondering if there could be any sense in any of it or if, as seemed more likely, he had been completely driven mad by whatever had happened here. Suddenly, her eye did catch something, lying right next to the small pit in the floor that had apparently been crushed by whatever had broken the tall brute's sword. Curiously, she leant down to pick it up.  
  
It was a broken heel from a stiletto-heeled shoe. On an impulse, Faith slipped it into her pocket.  
  
Finding nothing else of any remote interest, she returned outside to the alley. Janna was waiting there.  
  
"Hey," Janna acknowledged her as soon as she emerged from the basement door. "Who were you talking to?"  
  
"There was some guy in the corner there. First he looked scared, then he just suddenly went crazy and attacked me. Knocked himself out against a pillar."  
  
"And you just left him there?"  
  
"Did I mention he attacked me?"  
  
"Still, what if he had information?"  
  
"Did I mention the whole 'crazy' bit?"  
  
"Did he say anything you could understand?"  
  
"Not really. Something about a holy mistress and me defiling the ground she had walked on, I can't remember exactly. Besides he talked like he was out of an ... what's wrong?"  
  
Janna's face had gone as white as it had when she had first walked into the basement. "This could be ... bad."  
  
"What?"  
  
"I have an idea ... but I don't want to believe it."  
  
"About who did this?"  
  
"I'm going back in. Want to come?"  
  
Faith was about to accept, but suddenly thought better of it. "I think I'll wait here. I need some time to think. I'll come get you if anything weird shows up."  
  
"All right. I'll be back in five minutes."  
  
Faith waited outside, trying to make sense of things. The cool night air allowed her to think a little more clearly than she could have in the stench of the basement, but she was still a long way from any answers. This mysterious Mistress that Janna apparently knew a thing or two about. The stiletto heel. Could a single person have done all of that? She doubted even she could have done all of that so graphically, and so apparently effortlessly, unless all of those demons had been a lot weaker than they looked, which she doubted. Then again, there was no reason this Mistress couldn't have brought underlings with her.  
  
She suddenly had a feeling that she was being watched, and turned around to stare down the opposite end of the alley, away from the street, and she thought she saw something that could easily have been a woman's silhouette move there, but it was gone a moment later and did not return.  
  
Janna emerged from the basement a moment later.  
  
"You've got a 'this is bad' face going there," Faith said before Janna could even open her mouth.  
  
Janna grinned. "Do I still get to say it?"  
  
"Just skip to the 'what's bad' part."  
  
"The evil hell-goddess that caused the disturbance that brought me back was here."  
  
Faith's eyes widened. "And I'm gathering that you aren't really keen on meeting her to thank her."  
  
"Not exactly."  
  
Then Faith remembered something. "Wait ... didn't you say that you came back that the day that ...?"  
  
Janna nodded grimly. "Buffy's killer was here."  
  
*****  
  
Buffy crouched forward, staring intently at the tiny target sixty feet away from her.  
  
"Focus," Giles said from behind her, in his usual Watcher voice. "I know you can do it."  
  
"I am focusing," Buffy replied, squinting harder.  
  
"And remember your footwork," Giles added, which earned him a sharp stare in rebuke, as Buffy had been about to start her move.  
  
Buffy shuffled forward three quick steps. A brief rumble echoed through the chamber, and then ...  
  
"And Buffy picks up another spare!" Xander announced with mock pride. "Putting her in third place with 108 with two frames to go, and a good 50 points up on me."  
  
"Aww, don't sound so sad, Xander," Buffy replied, sliding back down on the bench next to him.  
  
"No, don't you see, Buffy? Here I am, an American male, engaging in a classic American male activity, and not only am I in fourth, but I'm not even losing to one single other American male."  
  
"Oh, don't be such a chauvinist," Willow laughed as she darted forward, the ball streaking straight from her fingers like a cannonball, curving ever so slightly to one side at the last instant so as to broadside the ten pins waiting for it at the other end. "I do believe that's 270, right?" she asked.  
  
"Why do I have a sneaky suspicion that all is not what it seems here?" Dawn asked.  
  
"Dawnie!" Willow looked shocked.  
  
"You don't get nine strikes in a row with trigonometry alone," Dawn replied. "Or I'd have gotten at least four or five by now. I'm doing pretty well in trig right now. Not like you, but not bad."  
  
"Ah, well, keep studying," Willow said with a grin as she took a seat next to Tara across from Buffy and Xander.  
  
"Willow, don't you think this is a little ... frivolous?" Giles asked as he got ready for his shot.  
  
"Jealous?"  
  
"Yes, but that's besides the point," he said, as he stepped forward. Giles' shot wasn't as pretty as Willow's, but it got the job done, and he stepped back to record another "X" in his ninth frame. It was his second in a row.  
  
"Figures, he's the jealous one with 190. At least he gets a triple-digit number," Dawn said as she moved forward awkwardly for her own shot. "Do you see me being jealous? Do I look jealous?"  
  
"Not at all," Tara reassured her. "Do I?"  
  
"Of course not."  
  
"Naturally," Giles responded haughtily. "No stress, no success."  
  
"Giles!" Buffy burst out. "I can't believe you just said that."  
  
It had its desired effect on Dawn, however. The slender girl turned around, her eyes suddenly glittering with ice, and launched her best shot of the evening, almost scoring her first strike.  
  
"Seriously, Willow, you need to give this a break at some point."  
  
"It's all right, Giles," Willow answered somberly. "I'll be fine. I need to warm up, actually."  
  
Giles' shoulders sagged resignedly. "You've made up your mind about this, then."  
  
"She has," Willow countered, nodding towards the summer-haired Slayer.  
  
"You shouldn't need me to tell you this anymore, but be careful."  
  
"I will. I promise. And Tara's going to help."  
  
"Tomorrow morning, then?"  
  
Willow nodded. "Sunrise, up at Kingman's Bluff; there won't be room for indoors."  
  
Giles pressed his lips together. "Well, you know how I feel about this."  
  
"I know. But she's strong, and not knowing is going to be as hard on her as knowing."  
  
"Yes, we had this discussion already. So what are you going to do until then."  
  
"Well, the whole idea behind this was to come out and relax for a little bit," Willow answered, suddenly grinning from ear to ear again and standing up. "So I think I'm going to pick up another strike."  
  
"Oh, bloody hell."  
  
***  
  
It was less than fifteen minutes before dawn when Buffy ascended the last slopes to Kingman's Bluff. Willow and Tara were already there and waiting for her, setting up on a broad swath of grass nearly as flat as a table. Tara was marking a wide circle on the ground with a long staff of ash, and sprinkling some form of evergreen needle into the trench behind her as she did. Willow was sitting just to the west of the center of the circle; her eyes were closed, and her chin rested on her chest as though she were sleeping. In front of her sat a large silver-plated candleholder bearing a fat red votive with three wicks. Opposite the candle from Willow lay a long woolen pallet ringed with thin, braided branches of the same evergreen that Tara was sprinkling in the circle.  
  
"Wow, that smells good," Buffy quipped as she approached. She wasn't kidding, actually.  
  
Tara grinned. "It's juniper. Makes a good air freshener most of the time--as well as an ingredient in memory spells."  
  
Buffy let out a tense breath, causing one of her bangs to whip up in the morning air.  
  
"I still can't believe we're doing this."  
  
"Uh ... wasn't it your idea?" Tara asked.  
  
"Hey, don't confuse me!"  
  
"I ... wasn't trying to."  
  
Buffy nodded towards Willow, changing the subject. "What's Will doing?"  
  
"Oh ... clearing her mind, getting ready, I imagine."  
  
"Actually, just listening to you two at this point," Willow suddenly spoke, without moving an inch. "I think I'm as ready as I'll ever be. Sunrise is getting close, anyway."  
  
"So what do I do?" Buffy asked.  
  
"Just lie down on the pallet. Face the sunrise," Willow answered, still not moving. "And don't touch the circle when you cross it."  
  
Buffy did as Willow instructed.  
  
"All right," Willow breathed a moment later. "Here goes nothing."  
  
Buffy tensed, and felt a thin ring of energy force its way past her skin, seeming to come through all her sides at once, as though the branches ringing the pallet had suddenly burst into flame and contracted around her. The energy quickly grew into a coursing wave that flowed up and down her body, and she began to squirm uncontrollably. It tickled.  
  
"Keep control of yourself," Willow instructed. "And close your eyes."  
  
Buffy tried as best she could, though the tickling sensation seemed even more acute when she shut her eyes, forcing her to concentrate on her other senses. Gradually, though, she reasserted control of herself, forcing her muscles to lie still and eventually relaxed. She was concentrating on this so hard that she didn't even realize that Willow had begun to chant.  
  
"... deae cognitis, veni: Athena, mater erudis, in auroris veni. Ex incognitas libero ..."  
  
And so it continued. The waves of power continued to build within Buffy's body, growing and swelling until it felt as though her skin were a failing floodwall trying valiantly to hold back a mounting typhoon. Her head began to pound as the waves began to reach up into her mind, and she began to see things, images like she had occasionally seen since she had returned, but only more vividly. They were no longer like remembered dreams, but nearly living memories.  
  
She awoke in a dark cave with Xander and Angel next to her, knowing that she still had a job to do and suddenly feeling a rush of power sweep through her, like something was sustaining her and telling her what she needed to do.  
  
She was in the high school, fighting off Spike ... Spike? ... that white-haired English vampire who had killed two Slayers in the past century, and something happened to him later but ... there was her mother, suddenly appearing from nowhere, smashing Spike out of the way with a fire axe. The image blurred and was gone.  
  
There she was again, walking through the streets dressed up as a seventeenth-century noble, only perhaps even more so, seemingly lost and afraid.  
  
She had just finished a rather substandard showing against the Judge and was crying in the arms of Angel for comfort, when suddenly something happened, and then more, and she didn't know what she was doing but simply didn't want to stop ...  
  
Then she woke up alone ...  
  
She was fighting Angel, now, not just training with him but really fighting him, in the corridors of Sunnydale High, and then later in an out-of-the-way place in Sunnydale's largest shopping mall.  
  
There she was talking to Jenny Calendar ... Jenny who? ... Jenny Calendar, the old computer science teacher that Angel had killed ... Angel killed? Angel killed someone? ... about what had happened to Angel. In fact, she had Jenny pinned to her desk as she asked her.  
  
The images went on and on and on. There were memories of people she knew were dead, even though she didn't remember them before the image flashed across her mind and hadn't seen them die yet; she could remember how the story ended once she saw them. Her mother. Kendra. Angel ... though he came back. Faith ... though she came back, too. Everything. Almost everything, anyway; she still could not remember anything beyond the images themselves about her supposed sister, or about what it had been like in the afterlife, or about what had happened in the Doppelganger world created by the wish or anything else that had happened in other times or dimensions. But a lot was coming back to her, and come back to her fast.  
  
The waves of energy suddenly swelled to a fever pitch and then subsided, and she heard, as though at a great distance, Willow voice rising in pitch and pace with them. Then she felt the first ray of sunrise upon her face, and the waves subsided, as did the images, and the energy of the ritual. The loudest thing she could hear was her own breathing, or perhaps it was second only to Willow's.  
  
She opened her eyes. "Wow," she said.  
  
Willow was half-slumped over, crouching above her on her hands and knees. The candle had gone out. "Nifty, huh?" she asked, though it was plain that she was making a conscious effort to speak normally.  
  
"Totally," Buffy agreed, "Though I think a lot of it is already fading."  
  
Willow nodded. "It's going to be like that. You're probably going to remember things in stages, with things kind of popping back into your mind as you see other things that remind you of them. There's no way a human brain can handle getting four years of memories back in half an hour. It would be like trying to cram a whole year of school into a day."  
  
Buffy nodded her understanding, though she was a little disappointed. She had already had so much shock in the past twenty-four hours, she would have much rather had everything at once and then hopefully been able to move on. Now it sounded like she was going to be remembering things without warning for months, maybe years. Nonetheless, it was better than not getting back at all, and it was also really something to see Willow at work. She had obviously learned a heck of a lot in four years, though Buffy would not have expected anything less. She just would have thought it would have been more about computers than conjury.  
  
She forced herself a smile, and surprised herself with the fact that it actually didn't take much forcing. "It should make life interesting for a while then, shouldn't it?"  
  
Willow suddenly brightened. "What, did you expect to suddenly wake up and be like 'I know kung fu?'"  
  
*****  
  
COMING SOON: Chapter 7, "Putting the Pieces Together." Buffy and Faith, with the help of their various friends, are both trying to reestablish some feeling of normalcy while struggling with the different mysteries thrown in front of them. Willow's memory spell proves to have some additional side benefits, even if it didn't do everything it was supposed to. One or two more old faces may resurface.  
  
Sorry it's been so long between updates; classes are done for the year now, so hopefully I'll have some more opportunities to sit down and write soon. I start work in just over a week, though, so I may not have much more free time than I did during the school year. I need to get back to writing, though. I've missed this. 


	7. Putting the Pieces Together

      DISCLAIMER:  We both know I don't own Buffy, Faith, or any of the other characters that are making Joss Whedon and his corporate sponsors/affiliates rich.  If I did, this whole college tuition thing would be much less of an issue.

      Also, this is my first Buffy fanfic, so be nice.

      ANTI-DISCLAIMER (would that be just a "claimer?"): Some of these characters ARE my own creation, as well as many elements of the setting.  Use your head.  If it never appeared in anywhere in the Kenshin series, then it's probably mine.  Not that anyone cares but me.

      SPOILERS/BACKGROUND:  Everything from Season 1 to Season 5 and Angel Season 1 to Season 2; this picks up after S5/S2.

            *           *           *           *           *

      CHAPTER 7:

      PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER

      "Wow … Willow, how do you deal with it?" Buffy asked, almost horrorstruck at the thought of what her friend had to be going through.

      "Well, I won't lie, it isn't easy," Willow answered.  "And there's never any end to them; take care of one, and more keep coming, it's just the way of the world."

      "I had no idea you'd been facing this kind of stuff since I was gone."

      "You had to face things like these for a while, too, you know," her redheaded friend reminded her.  "Or at least, the other you did.  Almost ate you out of house and home, but you fought 'em off."

      "See?  Slayers' capabilities really do get better as they age," though the last was distracted a little bit as fragments of memories of dealing with crises like this in the past floated back into her consciousness.

      "It's true," Willow nodded her assent, furrowing her brows at the endless rows of numbers and symbols in front of her.  Eventually, she passed them across to Buffy.  "This one's from the phone company."

      Buffy snatched the bill away from her, scanned it for a moment, then made a mock-disgusted sound as she slid it into a file box.  "You know, I'm still now exactly sure about how I feel about you owning my house, but I'm glad the bills are coming to you now."

      Willow actually looked a little hurt.  "Well, I'd really give it back to you, Buffy, I really would, it's just …"

      "… I'm still officially dead?"

      "Well … yeah, kind of."

      "I wasn't born yesterday, you know."

      "Just reborn."

      "So not the same thing."

      "Nope.  Good thing, too.  I'd hate to have to change your diapers."

      Buffy wrinkled her nose at Willow.  Willow grinned impishly.

      "Still, we can't laugh it off forever," Buffy added, more seriously.

      "I know.  Giles and I are going to work on that.  It probably shouldn't be too hard to get the death certificate invalidated; people that are missing and presumed dead show up again from time to time, so there has to be some provision for it.  Most of the people who were at your funeral already know that you're back."

      "What about the fact that I've been gone for three months?"

      "We're working on that, too.  Giles is suggesting you've been studying in England; I was leaning towards staying with your dad in L.A.; Spike suggested you were kidnapped and held hostage by Bangkok drug lords—and added a few more details that don't bear repeating; Dawn said you should have been on vacation in Florida or traveling around the country; Xander suggested that you had been in an accident and had been comatose like Faith for a few months."

      "I actually kind of like that last one."

      "Yeah, but the question is, where do we say you were?  No hospital is going to have records of anyone taking care of you."

      "Maybe just someone out in the woods somewhere?"

      "A mysterious hermit?"

      "Stranger things have happened in Sunnydale."

      "True, but most people don't know about them and want a nice comfy-cozy explanation for how things 'actually' happened."

      "Well, that would be pretty comfy-cozy considering what _did_ actually happen," Buffy pointed out.

      "True.  We'll work on it some more.  Obviously saying you were studying or traveling would have the same problem; no one would be likely to presume you dead if that were true."

      "Hey, maybe we can go with the kidnapped by Thai mobsters idea, then!"

      Willow shuddered.

            *           *           *           *           *

      Night was falling over Sunnydale as a sleek, dark limousine pulled off the Sunnydale freeway exit.  It ghosted its way to a vacant office building on the west side of town, a dilapidated two-story structure on which a "for rent" sign appeared to have hung undisturbed for months.  There was a parking lot in the back, into which the limousine turned.  It stopped, and the driver got out.  In the shadows of the unlit lot, it would have taken a keen observer to notice that the driver was not human, unless it were a grossly disfigured invalid, which was clearly belied by the power in his movements.  He extended a brown, iron-muscled claw to the passenger door in the rear and pulled it open with as much grace as his gnarled form could muster.  Out stepped a pair of Prada pumps, followed by a pair of legs and the rest of an attractive but somehow simultaneously menacing woman, even though she stood well shy of six feet even with her heels.

      "Well, your Eminence, it may not be up to your standards, but welcome to the headquarters of the Order of Turaca, Sunnydale," the driver announced.

      Glory wrinkled her mouth disdainfully.  "Did I ever tell you that your Order needs style pointers in the worst way?"

      "I'll be sure to tell them," Hascinth responded dryly.

      "Shouldn't they be coming out to meet us?  They could have at least left me a red carpet."

      "They?"

      "Your demony partners in crime at this headquarters?"

      "They're dead.  They were killed by the Slayer and her friends four years ago.  This place has been abandoned since."

      "Hah!  I didn't know you and that little blond brat had a history.  Bet they were some of your 'best,' too!"

      "They were," Hascinth's voice was utterly emotionless, but a flame flickered behind his eyes.  He was far too intelligent to try to make a counterpoint on the fact that the Slayer had also halted the Beast's plan as well.  He and his skin were fond of each other and did not want to be separated.

      "You seem to have a rather dismal record against Slayers recently."

      "Indeed."

      Glory sighed.  "But nonetheless, you're still some of the best, and you still owe me.  Are there going to be more of you coming?"

      Hascinth hesitated a moment, then nodded slowly.  "The Order is small.  We keep it that way.  There aren't many of us left in California, or North America, for that matter, but when word gets out that the Slayer is still alive, those that are out there will come.  Ten, maybe fifteen total."

      Glory gave the slightest nod of her head as she took that in, but her expression was truly pouting.  "That's really not that many, you know."

      "With all due respect, we're a little more … skilled … than your other minions."

      Suddenly, Glory actually laughed uproariously.  "Ah, Hascinth, Hascinth," she said, using his name for the first time.  "Rhyzie was right.  Your Order's intelligence is slipping.  Did you seriously think those little gremlins were my only thralls?  I don't even need magical circles or artifacts to bring them to my side, either."  She suddenly vanished into the distance, her form blurring in the direction of a bus stop on the main street visible between two buildings at the far side of the parking lot.  There was a brief flash, and a figure at the bus stop suddenly collapsed to his hands and knees on the pavement and began fumbling around on the ground as though lost.  Glory reappeared a moment later, crossing the parking lot in moments.  Hascinth's eyes narrowed at the sight, however.  Quick as she was, she was several steps slower than she had been before whatever had happened here three months earlier; he was sure he had seen her stoop and remove something from the body before returning, and she would have been too fast even for his eyes to make out such a small motion of hers at the height of her power.  Then again, she had disemboweled his entire cell in front of his eyes, so he wasn't about to dwell on it.

      She held up the prize that she had taken from the man at the bus stop.  It was a mobile phone.  "All I need is this," she said.  "And every girl should have one anyway."

            *           *           *           *           *

      "I take it you have no idea what this hell-goddess is doing in L.A.?" Faith asked, after an uncomfortably silent walk to a nearby vegan eatery.

      "None," Janna answered, letting out a frustrated breath.  "She was supposed to have died along with Buffy.  I heard that from several credible sources—even Rupert himself, though he didn't know I was listening.  The battle was supposed to have killed both of them."

      "So assuming that that's not the case, why would she come to L.A.?"

      "I can't figure it out, either.  If she had really killed Buffy and survived, she would have wanted to return home.  That was the whole purpose of her opening that portal in Sunnydale.  She wanted to leave."

      "Seriously, that's it?  Why didn't Buffy just let her go?"

      "Because that portal was so powerful that all dimensions were bleeding together.  It was basically a gateway to every level of Hell, and many other dimensions besides, not all of which are the faerie Otherworld."

      "So she was going to just damn this world to Hell on her way out the door?"

      "Or damn Hell to this world, however you want to look at it."

      "OK, I get it, she's a first class bitch."

      "You have no idea."

      "So why is she killing demons?  Any ideas there?"

      "Nothing specific," Janna asked.  "My guess is that they failed her in something.  She was never the most forgiving deity."

      Faith's blood suddenly ran cold, and she could see the same thought had occurred to Janna, too.  "Like … killing me?" Faith suggested.

      "It does seem a bit much to be coincidence, doesn't it?"

      "Coincidence?  No such animal."

      "I've seen a lot of strange animals, too, and I don't remember that being one of them."

      "All right, going on that, why would she want me dead?  I was in prison, never knew any of this was going down, there's no way I could have been a threat to her."

      "I don't know.  Slayers seem to rack up enemies, I guess."

      "True, but usually because we tick them off and don't follow up with the big slay to keep them permanently out of our hair."

      "I'm reaching here, too.  Great Watcher I'm making."

      "Hey, don't sweat it, you're new.  I think you've got potential."

      Janna laughed.  "Thanks for the confidence."

      "But I think we need to go back to Wes for this one."

      "Wes?"

      "Wesley.  Wyndham-Price, I think his last name is, but I just call him Wes."

      "Oh … is that the name of that British man staying with Angel?"

      "Yep, that's the one.  He's an ex-Watcher but he's probably the best idea in town, unless Angel decides to come out of hibernation or Wolfram & Hart decide to switch sides."

      "Not likely on either point."

      "So to Wesley it is, then."

      "Does he know you?"

      "Yep.  Which is why you're the one going."

      "Me?!"  Janna's eyes widened.  "Faith, you do know that Cordelia is there, right?"

      "Yeah, so?"

      "So, she remembers me from Sunnydale."

      "So?  She hangs out with dead people all the time.  She works for one."

      "Hey, keep your voice down," Janna said in a forced whisper.  Faith looked around.  It didn't look like anyone was watching them, and the booth they were in was out of the way, but simply thinking about reminded Faith of something.

      "That reminds me, did you happen to see if anyone else was around at that club?"

      "Just now?"

      "Yes, just now."

      Janna's eyes narrowed and seemed to grow distant, and she leaned back in her chair for a moment.  "Not in the club, no," she said slowly.  "There were some people moving around in the alley outside, but they could have been just ordinary people.  Maybe homeless."

      "I think one of them might have been watching us.  A woman."

      "Maybe …" Janna still seemed a bit inattentive, as though most of her mind were occupied with something else.  Suddenly, her eyes snapped back into focus and locked with Faith's, and Faith tensed.  Janna's eyes had suddenly changed color, to a brilliant, piercing violet.  "But someone outside is suddenly leaving in a big hurry."

      Faith leapt to her feet, ignoring the startled looks of the half-dozen others in the restaurant, and bolted for the front door.  Janna called out for her to wait, but the call was only halfhearted.  Faith reached the curb just in time to see a black late-model Chrysler careen away around the corner at the end of the block.  She was sprinting for the corner before she even realized she had decided to do so, spinning and dodging around passersby as though she had just been caught picking someone's pocket.  She was already to the corner before she remembered  that she wasn't supposed to be attracting attention to herself like that, but she threw the thought aside for the moment.  The car was stopped at a red light at the end of this block.  Faith set off at a run again, her feet barely seeming to touch the ground as she moved; she actually wondered as she ran how fast she was moving, as it felt almost like she was back in the woods outside the California Institution for Women again.  She was almost to the car when the light turned green.  She could see the car clearly now, a Chrysler 300M, and her eyes narrowed.  There was something uncannily familiar about that car.  The driver, alone in the car, was wearing a hooded jacket so that Faith couldn't see anything about his or her features, but somehow it tugged at the edges of Faith's memory anyway.

      Janna had left the restaurant and met Faith at the corner on her way back.

      "I paid," she said.  "We might want to think about leaving."

      "Yeah," Faith agreed, her adrenaline subsiding and her reason taking over again.  She should not have risked attracting attention like that.

      They reached Janna's car in safety, and no sirens—or other alarming noises—disturbed the night air.  As Janna settled into the driver's seat, she asked "Did you get a good look?"

      Faith shrugged uncomfortably.  "No, but something inside me is telling me I've seen her before."

      "Her?  You're sure it's a woman?"

      Faith hadn't even thought of that, but once she did, she was sure.  "Yeah, I am, actually," she said.

      Janna nodded.  "I got the same feeling back in the restaurant, too."

      "Yeah, that reminds me, just what exactly can you do like that?  Oh, hey, go right here, make for Angel's."

      Janna sighed and did as Faith asked.  Then she answered the original question.  "Janna had begun teaching me some of the arts of Seeing before I came back.  I had a knack for it, but I was still only learning when the rift opened."

      "So what exactly can you … See?" Faith asked again.

      "It's hard to describe.  I don't see pictures or hear sounds, it isn't like any of the five senses.  It's more like … intuition, sixth sense, I don't know.  I just … sense things."

      "So you couldn't see who was in that car?"

      "No, sorry.  It doesn't work like that.  At least, not at my level.  Maybe if I'd had more time …"

      "Never mind.  You had to do what you had to do."

      Janna grinned.  "Maybe I'll teach it to you sometime, and you can tell me how it works."

      "I could learn it?"

      "I think so.  Anyone with a sharp sixth sense and ties to the supernatural is usually a good candidate.  And you already have the seed of it in you … that little voice in the back of your head that tells you when you're being watched, or when you're close to something important or dangerous, or what your opponent's next move is going to be.  That's the start of it."

      Faith didn't say anything as she digested that.  "Hey, maybe later, can't hurt.  Right now we need to talk to Wes, though."

      "We're almost there.  You sure you want me to do this?  Why can't you?"

      "Because the last time Wes and I met … well, OK, besides about five minutes yesterday … I tortured him nearly to death.  That five minutes I spent visiting Angel's yesterday kind of told me that he hasn't forgotten."

      Janna's eyes widened.  "Oh."  Then she brightened.  "He might get over it though.  Heck, the last time Angel and I met, he killed me.  I'm not holding any grudges."

      "You know Angel's changed.  I don't think Wes knows that I have."

      "Maybe you need to convince him, then."

      "There isn't time."

      "I think we're both going to have to speak to them eventually, though.  Seriously, Faith, this is your thing.  You go in first.  I'll come in if I have to."

      Faith was going to continue arguing the point, but couldn't find the words, and eventually settled for, "Fine, but you know you're going to have to."

      "We'll see.  We're here."

      Janna pulled the Porsche into the alley behind the Hyperion, just in case any unfriendly eyes should happen to pass by.  Both of them got out; Janna waited by the car, while Faith approached the front door.  She was not about to sneak in the windows this time.  She did gird herself with Kalia, though, just in case either Wes or his new partner were in a shoot-first-and-answer-questions-later mood.

      Cordelia was sitting at the reception desk when Faith walked in the front doors.  The skinny-legged Texan—Fred, had someone called her?—was with her.  Wesley and Gunn were nowhere to be seen.

      Cordelia had been watching the entrance intently, and stood up quickly when she saw Faith in the doorway.  Faith stopped, not wanting to risk antagonizing anyone by coming farther.

      "Hi, Faith," she said.

      "'Hi, Faith?!'" Faith repeated.  That was unexpected.

      "Wes and Gunn will be back any moment."

      "Hey, how'd you know I was looking for them?"

      "I didn't.  I was more saying that to reassure myself just in case you were harboring any more S&M fantasies about me and were thinking this looked like a good time."

      Faith actually grinned.  "Mmmm, tempting," she said, "but actually, I really do need to talk to Wes, and not with him tied to a chair, either."

      "Oh really?"

      "Yes, really.  Look, a lot of stuff is going down and they need to know about it, and I need to know whatever he knows about it."

      "You can start making sense any time now."

      "Buffy's killer is still alive, all right?" Faith blurted.

      _"What?"_

      Well, at least something could penetrate her suspiciousness, Faith thought to herself.  She continued, "Buffy's killer is here, in L.A., or at least was as of yesterday.  She killed the group of the Order of Turaca that tried to kill me in the pen, then took off.  We … I haven't a clue where she went or what she's doing now."

      Cordelia looked at her appraisingly for a moment, then breathed, "you're serious."

      For some reason, that set Faith's teeth on edge.  "Cor, do you really think I'd come back here if it weren't important?"

      "True, but that isn't the only important thing that could be going on, you know."

      Faith nodded.  "You don't know the half of it."

      "Well, why don't you sit … all the way over there … and you can tell Wes and Gunn the rest when they get here.  They're out on patrol … had you noticed the sun was down?  They should be coming back any minute, though.  I called them and told them you were coming."

      "Say _what?_"

      Cordelia smiled secretively.  "I've picked up a few tricks."

      "Well, good for you, then.  I guess you have to in this line of work."

      "It has its ups and downs."

      Faith accepted that silently, taking the seat across the lobby from Cordelia that the older girl had pointed to.

      She had barely sat down when Wesley and Gunn burst into the room at a run; Wesley had a crossbow in his hand and a short sword at his hip, and Gunn was gripping a battle-axe.  Faith immediately raised her left hand in a gesture of parley; her right hand instinctively crept towards Kalia's hilt.  The two newcomers froze at the top of the short flight of stairs down to the main floor of the lobby.

      "Faith."  Wesley's voice was ice.

      "She do anything?" Gunn asked.

      "Not really," Fred answered.

      "I'll handle this," Cordelia told the other girl, then turned back to Gunn and Wes.  "Not really," she said.

      "Really?" Wesley did not even try to hide his skepticism.

      "Wes, there isn't time for this, I need to talk to you," Faith said.

      "To me?  Not to Angel?"

      "I'd talk to Angel if he would listen but he won't, and I need your brain."

      "Well, really, well I hope that doesn't involve removing it from its present location, I rather like it there."

      "It's fine where it is," Faith said, "but I need to know whatever you know about Glory.  She's back."

      Wesley lowered the crossbow.  Gunn looked at him quizzically, then did the same with his axe a moment later.

      "You saw her?"

      "Just her work.  Crazy people, massive carnage wrought by a woman in high-heeled shoes."

      "Where?"

      "The back room of a nightclub called the Pendulum a couple of miles off.  She dissected a group of the Order of Turaca then took off.  I have no idea where she went or what she's doing, hoped you could help."

      "The Order of Turaca?  They're in town, too?" The skepticism had not faded from Wesley's voice.

      "Were," Faith reminded him, "Unless there are more of them somewhere else."

      "And Glory killed them, you say?"

      "Apparently.  I think it was because they tried to kill me on her orders and didn't quite get results."

      "I see."

      "Hey, I hate to call time out here, but just who is this Glory?" Gunn interjected.

      "I'd sort of like to know this, too," Cordy added.

      "Glory is a hell-goddess, confined to this world a long, long time ago.  I forget the details, actually.  She resurfaced last year in Sunnydale intent on getting her hands on Buffy's little sister, Dawn, to use her blood to open a door back to her homeworld and destroy this one in the process.  I heard that she and Buffy killed each other in their final battle.  Now Faith says she's back, or survived somehow."

      "Survived and didn't kill everyone else once Buffy was out of the way?"

      "That's what I came here for," Faith said.  "I don't know what she's doing in L.A.  I'm even more confused now because I didn't know that B's little sis was her big prize the whole time, and she's still in Sunnydale.  I was just coming here to ask why she would want me dead.  And no more wisecracks about me having enemies, Wes, I'm serious."

      "I see," Wesley said, finally moving from where he had stood since coming in the door.  He was drifting over towards the phone on the reception desk.  Everyone was watching him.  He reached for the phone, laid a hand gently on it, but didn't move to pick it up.

      "I'm sorry, but I still have trouble believing you," he said at length.

      "I don't," said a voice from the shadows of the corner where the stairwell to the basement lay.

      "Angel!" Faith's eyes lit up.

      "Angel?" Cordelia, Wesley, and Gunn murmured in unison.

      "You been listening the whole time?" Faith asked.

      "Most of it," Angel replied, coming into the light.  His face was worn and he had the look of someone who hadn't eaten or slept in days.  His eyes were focused, however.  He looked over at Wesley.  "I believe her, Wes," he reiterated.

      "Angel …" Faith began softly, and when Angel turned his eyes just slightly in her direction, her voice dropped a notch again, but she managed, "Thanks."  Angel simply nodded.

      Wesley let out a deep breath.  "I'll get on the line with London," he said.  "The Council is going to want to hear about this."  He picked up the phone.  "And I should probably call Giles, too."

      Angel nodded his agreement, then turned back to Faith.  He sat down on the bench at the center of the lobby nearest Faith, facing her.  Cordelia inched out from behind the reception desk, and Fred came with her.  Gunn went over to the cabinet to put away the weapons he and Wesley had been carrying.

      "I believe your story, Faith," Angel addressed her, "but I don't think you've quite told me everything.  In fact, my gut is telling me that you haven't told us half of it."

      Faith nodded simply.  "True enough.  You've been … occupied.  Where should I start?"

      "Why didn't you come and see me when you first broke out?"

      "I tried."

      Angel shot a disapproving look at Cordelia and Gunn, who were both sporting guilty expressions.

      "All right, we'll deal with that later," Angel continued.  "How did you know it was the Order of Turaca that attacked you in jail?  For that matter, how did you even know about the Order of Turaca?  Buffy never knew about them and she had a Watcher for a lot longer than you, and hers was one of the best."

      Faith suddenly found herself wrestling with herself.  She did not want to reveal Janna when Janna didn't want to be revealed, and she also didn't want to lie to Angel.  "I …" she began, then trailed off.  Then something occurred to her, and she settled on a half-truth.

      "I didn't know about them at the time.  I went to the Ancient Eye to try to get the scoop on whatever it was that attacked me.  It was a Chameleous Thanator, and it was wearing this."  She pulled the ring she had taken from the corpse of Officer White out of her pocket, and tossed it to Angel.  He took a look at it and nodded, but when he responded, he spoke slowly.

      "No one in their right mind would forge one of those, not even Wolfram and Hart," he said, "but something tells me that isn't the whole story."

      "It's … sorry, Angel, I'm not going to make up anything, but that's the most I can tell you."

      "Why?"

      Faith didn't answer, and shifted uncomfortably.

      "You're not lying to me," Angel mused, his voice even slower now.  If he was starting to doubt her, he gave no sign, but Cordelia and Gunn did not appear to be as believing.  "I can tell that.  But you're not telling me everything.  Why not?"

      "I … just can't.  It's complicated.  I promise I'll explain everything, just give me time."

      "We can't all operate on your time," Angel responded, though his voice was calm, and there was no sign of anger in his eyes.

      "It isn't on my time," Faith answered reflexively.

      Angel's eyes widened.  "You're protecting someone."

      Faith nodded.  There was no point in trying to make up any other story on the fly.  Angel seemed to be able to read her like an open book anyway.

      "Did you get that sword from this person, too?"

      Faith nodded again.

      "And the clothes?"  Another nod.

      "You seem to have made quite a friend, or more than one, in a short amount of time."

      "You think I'm back at Wolfram & Hart?" Faith asked.

      "I somehow doubt that," Angel answered.  "They might have given you clothes and money, but I doubt they would have told you about the Order.  And I don't think they'd have given you that, either," Angel added, gesturing at Kalia.  "Can I have a look?"

      Without a second thought, Faith slid the Gypsy sword within its forest green sheath off her belt and tossed it to Angel.  He caught it and slid it free of the sheath.  

He made a few slow passes with it in the air, then idled over to his weapons cabinet.  He withdrew a small, round, iron-bound oaken shield from the back, and tossed it into the air.  Suddenly, he tensed, flexed, and lashed out with the blade, once twice, three times, so quickly that Faith could barely follow his movements.  Thin, faint, translucent arcs of energy burst from the blade each time it was just about to touch the shield.  The shield clattered to the floor in six pieces, cloven as smoothly as though cut by a laser.  The arcs of energy lingered a moment as after-images, then dissolved and drifted away like weightless dust in a breeze.

      "You didn't just get this at a pawn shop," he said, sheathing it and handing it back to her.

      "No, I didn't," she admitted, still a little awestruck.  "Though I had no idea it could do that."

      "Faerie swords are few and far between," Angel said.  "I wouldn't think even Wolfram & Hart would have any.  Keep talking Wes, you're still on the phone."  Wesley had suddenly trailed off at the sight of Kalia's pyrotechnics, mild as they were.  Remembering himself, he went back to talking to whatever Watcher was handling calls at whatever time it was in London at the moment.

      "I didn't get it from Wolfram & Hart."

      "I believe you," Angel replied.  "I already said that."  He sighed.  "I see you want to protect your friend or friends' identity.  Fine.  Just answer me this, then, and no runarounds.  Do you believe that, whoever they are, they're serious about stopping Buffy's murderer?"

      "I do," Faith answered at once.  Angel's eyes were intense, and Faith remembered many times both during the time she had spent here before turning herself in, and her time face to face with him across the visitors' window at CIW, that she had been unable to meet his gaze when he looked at her like that.  She held firm now.  She realized it wasn't like her to be trusting someone she hadn't even known for three days yet, but she had been hanging out with Janna for most of the time and the sixth sense that alerted her to trouble, that had actually been growing during her time in prison, had been utterly silent.

      Angel nodded a moment later in acceptance, and Faith could see he believed her.  There was a long silence, eventually broken by the voice of Wesley in the background, who had apparently finished talking to the Watchers' Council and was now greeting Giles.  Angel opened his mouth to break the silence, but another voice beat him to it.

      "Thanks for the vote of confidence, Faith," Janna said from the doorway.  "It means a lot, coming from you."

      Cordelia's hands sprang to her lips to muffle a frightened squeak, and she keeled over on the bench, but no one was looking at her.  This was because Angel had leaped backwards with a startled yelp—there was no other word for it, it was definitely a yelp—and had not only cleared the circular bench in the middle of the lobby but the entire rest of the lobby as well, crashing into the wall at the back.  Faith doubted she could have thrown him that far if she had hit him with all of her strength.  Gunn reacted defensively, grabbing his axe again and taking shelter in the doorway of Wesley's office, expecting to be under attack.  Fred, startled at Angel's reaction, had already ducked behind the reception desk.  Wesley had swung around at the disturbance and was still trying to talk to Giles, and was clearly wondering if it might not be a better decision to hang up and call back later.

      "Is this that hell-goddess woman?!" Gunn called from his hiding place.

      "No, no!" cried Faith, intent on settling everyone down before anyone did anything rash.  "This is Janna, this is who I was … protecting, I guess.  I didn't really think of it like that."

      "It's all right, Faith," Janna breathed.  "You managed to talk to Wesley.  I needed this, too."  She drew in another breath.  "Hi, Angel."

      "Hi, Jenny," Angel began slowly.  He seemed to be deciding if he should reach for a weapon or slap his cheeks to try waking up.

      "It's been a while."

      "It has."

      "You know, I'm not even going to start asking questions.  There's only so many stories I need to hear in a night.  No more surpr …"

      _"WHAT?!"_ Wesley's sudden shout suddenly made everyone in the room jump.  Even when he was angry or excited, he was never the shouting type.  He put his hand over the mouthpiece of the receiver and called to the room, "Buffy's alive!"

      There was a brief silence.  "What I was about to say," Angel said nonchalantly, "was 'no … more … surprises.'"  Suddenly, he collapsed.

      "I didn't know vampires could faint," said Fred.

      "I think Angel just died of a heart attack," Wesley said back into the receiver.  "Yes, apparently vampires can faint.  Fascinating, really.  What … ?  Oh, yes, I imagine he's going to want to come up to Sunnydale as soon as he wakes up, of course."  Janna was inching towards the phone, and Faith noticed a touch, just a touch, of complete impishness in her poise.  With a start, she realized what Janna intended to do, and couldn't figure out if she wanted to simply laugh, cheer her on, or restrain her.  Wesley was continuing, "yes, of course … no, Rupert, I am not joking.  How would you react if someone you loved and thought was dead suddenly turned out to be alive?"

      With a deft flick of her wrist, Janna reached out and plucked the receiver out of Wesley's hands and put it to her lips.  "Hello, Rupert," she said cheerfully.

            *           *           *           *           *

      COMING SOON: Chapter 8, "Reunions."  Word begins to spread that Glory is back in action, as the Council starts sounding the alert and her other servants begin to gather once again.  The AI gang heads south to meet up with the Sunnydale gang, and, as Spike would cheerfully summarize, "wackiness ensues."  The person shadowing Faith and Janna continues to do so.  As always, one or two other characters from [the awe-inspiring] early seasons may resurface.

      I think I was a little better about updating this time around; I'll try to be a little more timely in the future but, as always, no guarantees.  (As my fellow fanfic writers are well aware, this doesn't pay the bills.)  I'm getting towards the part of the story that's more fun for me to write, so that should help things.  Comments, suggestions, and all related reviews are well appreciated (but if you have guesses as to who that mysterious figure trailing Faith and Janna might be, don't give anything away)!


	8. Reunions

      DISCLAIMER:  We both know I don't own Buffy, Faith, or any of the other characters that are making Joss Whedon and his corporate sponsors/affiliates rich.  If I did, this whole college tuition thing would be much less of an issue.

      Also, this is my first Buffy fanfic, so be nice.

      ANTI-DISCLAIMER (would that be just a "claimer?"): Some of these characters ARE my own creation, as well as many elements of the setting.  Use your head.  If it never appeared in anywhere in the Kenshin series, then it's probably mine.  Not that anyone cares but me.

      SPOILERS/BACKGROUND:  Everything from Season 1 to Season 5 and Angel Season 1 to Season 2; this picks up after S5/S2.

            *           *           *           *           *

      CHAPTER 8:

      REUNIONS

      "You know, I thought I had this whole bad streak going, but you are just _mean_," Faith laughed as Janna emerged from the door of the hotel into the garden.  "How'd he react?"

      "Much more … loudly … than Angel," Janna answered with a wry grin.

      "How much more?"

      "You didn't hear him?"

      "I was across the room."

      "I shouldn't have mattered if you were across the country."

      Faith grinned.  "So are you two making plans for when we get back?"

      "We'll see how he reacts to seeing me in the flesh.  I think he might still think that someone is playing a very bad joke on him, but even if not, I'm not sure how he'll react.  We didn't talk very long, actually, Willow and Buffy did most of the talking."

      "So that's why you did it.  You didn't want to surprise him."

      "Unlike Angel, Rupert is actually vulnerable to heart attacks."

      "Man, it is just weird hearing him called Rupert, by the way."

      "Grown-up talk.  You'll understand when you grow up."

      Faith stuck her tongue out at Janna.

      "Anyway, sounds like a big happy family packing for vacation in there," Faith observed.  "Should we be heading back to your apartment to pick up anything?"

      "I was thinking I might do that," Janna answered.  "But do you want to come or do you want to stay here with Angel?"

      Faith thought about that for a moment before answering, "Sure."  There was obviously a lot to catch up on here.  Besides, she wanted to find out what Wes had learned from the Council about Glory, and from Giles about Buffy.  Janna hurried to her car and drove off.  Faith returned to the lobby.

      Angel had only taken a few minutes to recover.  Actually, on second thought, that was not quite the proper term for it.  It had only taken him a few minutes to regain consciousness.  "Recover" was too strong a term for it.  He still looked half-dazed, as if he were walking in two worlds at once and couldn't tell if anything he was seeing were illusion or reality.  Nonetheless, it was obvious that he intended to get to Sunnydale as fast as possible, and that Angel Investigations would simply have to close for a while.

      Gunn and Fred looked like they were already both all packed, even though it had only been fifteen minutes.  Gunn was sitting atop a large tan suitcase that looked as though it had definitely seen better days … better decades, for that matter.  Fred apparently didn't even have that level of traveling luxury, however; she was sitting next to a large lawn garbage bag that looked as though barely half of it were full.  She was also wearing a travel-worn University of Texas backpack.  Wesley, Cordelia, and Angel were nowhere to be seen; Faith could hear at least one of them packing on the second floor, and she imagined Angel was probably down in the basement.

      "Well, you sure pack fast," Faith noted.

      "Hey, never know when you might have to go on the move in a hurry," Gunn answered.

      "Oh, really?" Fred asked in her thick Texan brogue.  Gunn's suave bravado was completely lost on her.  "Me, I really just don't have much."

      Gunn laughed.  "Yeah, but you're not supposed to just _say_ it like that."

      "So what's your story?" Faith asked.

      "Me?  Me and my crew used to hunt vamps on the street, before I fell in with Angel.  My sister got vamped, and I had to do … well, you can guess.  So I do this partly for Angel, partly for revenge, partly for a little bit of spare change … which ain't much, let me tell you."

      "Oh my gosh, I'm sorry."

      Gunn shrugged.  "You learn to bury these things when they happen on the street.  Just the way life is."

      "I'm sorry anyway."

      "Anyway," Gunn seemed anxious to move on, "her, her story's a little more special.  We rescued her from an alien demon-dimension about three months ago—the home place of the green demon you saw when you was here last.  She'd been stuck there for years, never talked to a human the whole time until we showed up.  No way I have time for the whole story, but making it short: we fought our way free, brought her with us, and we've been trying to bring her back to the human world a little bit at a time."

      Fred just smiled, half-knowingly, half-absently.

      "We got back just in time to meet that little redheaded wicca from Sunnydale … you know who I'm talking about?"

      "Willow?" Faith asked, though there could be no one else.

      Gunn nodded.  "Yeah, that was the name.  We got back just in time for her to break the bad news to Angel, and he's been like that—or at least, like he was until yesterday—ever since.  So he hasn't been exactly available to help her, so it's just the rest of us."

      Faith nodded.  "You do anything … special?"

      "What, like burn up in the sun or some such?" Gunn asked with a  grin.  "Nope, just a guy doing what he can.  She ain't exactly a Slayer," he continued, pointing at Fred, "but she's the biggest brain I've ever met."

      Faith looked back at the innocuous woman, who was actually blushing shyly.  "Smarter than Wes?" Faith asked.  "That's saying something."

      "Not like that," Gunn answered.  "I mean in the more … schoolroom sense, I guess.  She could probably catch up with Wes in no time, though.  You should see her room.  Whole thing's covered in physics equations.  Apparently she was working on dimensional physics in grad school when something happened that left her in Pylea, but she still knows her stuff."

      Fred looked like she was about to say something, but then eventually seemed to think better of it and just sat there, smiling again.  Faith was about to prod her to say whatever it was that was on her mind when she was distracted by movement on the stairwell.  Wesley was descending the stairs, balancing a three-bag luggage set and also wearing a large frame backpack in near-mint condition.

      "Wes!" Gunn greeted him with mock magnanimity.  "Good to see that you're prepared just in case we get caught in the Himalayas on the way."

      "The Himalayas aren't on the way to Sunnydale," he replied.

      Gunn buried his head in his hands.  Wesley grinned knowingly a moment later.

      "Gunn, can I get you to help me with the second load?  I'm bringing all the books that might have anything to do with Glory."

      "Yeah, yeah, sure," Gunn said, rousing himself to his feet and following Wes back into his office.

      Faith hesitated on the verge of offering to help as well, but suddenly realized that there was someone else she'd rather be talking to and there probably wouldn't be many chances to catch him alone before they got to Sunnydale, so she left the two men to their work and headed for the basement stairs.

      Angel looked as though he were almost done packing.  Of course, his needs were a little different than the others; he was filling a thermos container with flasks of his favorite drink, and Faith could see a fire blanket folded on his cot.  His back was to her as she descended the stairs, but Faith had no illusions about him being unaware of her presence.

      "How're you feeling?" she asked.

      He did not turn around, and leaned wearily on his suitcase.  "I don't think I've had this many surprises in a day since the day I woke up in a coffin, more than two centuries ago."

      Faith actually grinned.  "Think of it as payback.  I seem to remember you pulled a back-from-the-dead act once, too."

      Angel smiled and managed a weary breath that might have been a laugh had he more energy.  "I know, but that's just it, Faith," he answered.  "Being gone like that … it changed me.  If the same has happened to her …"

      Faith understood, but wasn't going to let that stand.  "…Then she's going to need you," she finished for him.

      Angel nodded, and quickly threw the rest of the things he had laid out, save for the thermos chest, into his suitcase.  He finally turned around to look at her.

      "You packed?" he asked.

      "Janna's taking care of it.  She should be back in half an hour or so.  Not like I really had much of my own, anyway."

      Angel shrugged.  "Don't let it get to you.  Which reminds me, I was going to ask you your own question: how are you feeling?"

      "Physically?  Five by five.  Best I've ever felt, actually.  The rest … I don't know, the last two days have been a bit much to take.  I'll survive, though."

      "I believe you will.  We both will," he said wearily, as though he believed it but knew it wasn't going to be easy.

      "Ah, there's that legendary Angel optimism!" she chided.

      He grinned.  "I wonder if Giles will?" he mused.

      Faith actually laughed.  "I wouldn't worry about him, he's a tough old bastard.  Come on, let's get upstairs."

            *           *           *           *           *

      "Breathe, Giles, breathe!!" Willow was crying.

      "And watch the lamp!" Buffy added.

      Giles was stumbling around the room, ranting and babbling in several different extinct languages, or maybe simply sounds that weren't languages at all, for all Buffy could tell.  His hands were clasped to his head and he was bent over as though a herd of rhinos had decided to run circles around inside his skull.  The receiver still dangled from the phone on the wall, bouncing against the wall.  The former librarian had already bumped into nearly every piece of furniture in the room and Buffy had had to jump in front of some of the more delicate pieces in order to prevent him from breaking anything valuable.

      "Buffy, can you hold him still?!" Willow shouted, reaching for the phone.

      _Oh, yeah, Slayer strength,_ Buffy thought to herself, but she didn't want to use it unless she had to.

      Giles tripped over the coffee table and sent an ornamental vase tumbling off the end table.  Buffy dove and played wide receiver, cradling it and preventing it from breaking, then quickly leapt back to her feet.

      _All right, I guess I have to,_ she thought, diving on Giles before he could get up again and pinning him to the ground.  He didn't struggle.  Instead, he let out a roaring bellow right in Buffy's face.

      "Ms. Calendar?!" Buffy heard Willow's startled voice cry out, and she looked up to see that Willow had picked up the receiver and was now talking to whoever had been on the other end.  Giles seized the opportunity to bellow even louder, this time right in Buffy's ear.

      "Let me answer that bellow with a headbutt," she seethed back at him, doing exactly that.  For some reason, it gave her a faint sense of déjà vu.  She hadn't put a whole lot of force into it, but Giles was stunned momentarily, and Buffy looked over at Willow again.

      "Please don't tell me you're about to start doing the same thing, I can't hold the two of you down at once.  Plus you might blow up the whole house."

      "No, no, I'll be fine," Willow answered, in a voice that implied the exact opposite.

      "Who's that on the phone?  Ms. Calendar?" Buffy asked.

      Willow nodded.

      "Well, so, what did she say?" Buffy asked.  She turned to Giles a moment later without waiting for the answer.  "Stay," she ordered.  For some reason, that seemed to drain the adrenaline or whatever it was out of Giles' system, because he collapsed to the carpet in a faint.  Then she realized that Willow had been saying something to her.  "What was that?" she asked.

      Willow covered the mouthpiece with her hand again.  "Jenny was dead."

      Buffy shrugged, as images of the computer science teacher floated back into her awareness.  Once reminded of it, she did remember that; she hadn't been there, but she remembered attending her funeral.  Still, it was hazy, and it wasn't affecting her the way it did Willow, much less Giles.  In fact, she suddenly grinned impishly.  "So?  Been there.  Done that."

      Willow was saying, "yes, sure, come on back, we'll find room."  Then she caught up with what Buffy had said, and suddenly said, "Here, actually, why don't you dead people catch up?  I think Buffy might be taking this better than me."  She handed the phone to Buffy.  "Here, why don't you take this one."

      Buffy grinned and gave a light shrug as she took the phone from Willow, motioning the redheaded wicca to attend to Giles.

      "Hey, Ms. Calendar," Buffy said.

      "Hello, Buffy," the teacher's voice answered.  "And you can call me Jenny, we're adults now."

      "Not exactly," Buffy corrected her, "but I don't have time to explain it all at the moment.  Anyway, how've you been?"

      "Dead," Jenny answered blandly.

      "Yeah, me too," Buffy answered back.

      "So I've heard.  Good to hear your voice again—though you weren't dead, last I remember, so I guess the shock of your being back is a little lost on me."

      Buffy laughed.  "You weren't dead last I remember, either."  She proceeded to give a quick, completely incomplete explanation of what had happened to her, and how her memories were returning in bits and pieces after Willow's spell.

      "I see," Jenny said when Buffy was finished.  "Well, I guess we're both going to have a lot to catch up on."

      "Looks that way," Buffy answered.  "Where are you?  Are you coming over?"

      "Actually, we're in Los Angeles at the moment, with Angel," Jenny answered, and Buffy's heart skipped a beat.  She had long since remembered all about what had happened between them, as her memories returned as she thought about connected memories, and Angel had been on her mind almost continuously since her return, and even more so since her mother had died.  Nevertheless, at her heart she was still the girl she had been the night of the sophomore dance, and all the additional memories did was make her feel like she had been away from him for years.  Jenny was continuing, "I think from the look of things, though, we should be there later tonight.  Probably sometime after midnight, but I imagine you'll be awake."

      "Slayers don't get much sleep," Buffy agreed.  "I was actually about to leave for a patrol, but I think I'll stick around now."

      "You still have time, if you want," Jenny answered.  "You've got at least three hours."

      "Oh, I know," Buffy answered.  "But I was thinking I might need to stick around just in case Giles has another nervous breakdown and decides that my furniture would look better broken."

      Jenny laughed.  "Ah, sorry about that."

      "Hey, don't worry, it probably would have been worse if you had just shown up here, so thanks for calling."

      "Hey, no problem.  All right, I've got to get packed, since it looks like people are going to want to hit the road ASAP.  We'll catch up in person.  Stay out of trouble and be sure to get your homework done."

      Buffy laughed.  "Yes, Ms. Calendar," she said in her best mock-kindergartener voice.  They exchanged farewells, and Buffy replaced the receiver and returned to Willow and Giles.

      Willow had managed to work the fainted former librarian onto the couch, where he was making soft groaning noises as though he were suffering from severe headaches in his sleep.  He seemed to be halfway back to consciousness, or maybe halfway back to unconsciousness, depending on how one looked at it.  Willow had brewed him a green tea and was doing her best to get him to swallow small sips of it.

      "Well that conversation was heavy on the weirdness," she said, as Buffy took a seat on the coffee table across from the couch.

      "Story of my life," Buffy answered.  "How's he doing?"

      "I think he's going to make it," Willow answered with mock-levity.

      "That's good to hear.  Dying would be horribly inconvenient.  Besides, going from alive to dead seems to be so out of vogue at the moment."

      "I was noticing that, too."

      "Think you can hold down the fort here?"

      "Sure, why, you going out?"

      "I think so, I think I need to clear my head a little.  Besides, they're all on their way and I'm not going to want to go out again when they get here."

      "Clear your head?  You were taking it all really … wait … they're 'all' on their way?" Willow repeated.

      Buffy nodded, and hoped she was managing to hold her breath steady.  "Angel's coming back," she said.  Apparently she wasn't doing as good a job with the whole holding steady thing as she hoped.

      "Roger that.  All right, I'll call up Tara and Anya at the Magic Box.  They don't know Jenny, so if they show up before you get back, they shouldn't freak out as much."

      Buffy nodded.  "I'll stop by the library and pick up Xander and Dawn while I'm out."

      "Sounds good.  Do you think we should go get Spike?"

      Buffy's head ached whenever she thought about Spike.  She hadn't even known him yet when she had died, then he had been her enemy, now he was helping them even though he swore he was still going to kill them if he ever got a chip removed from his head—a chip put in by people she had never known.  It was too confusing and had absolutely no anchor in anything she remembered from life.  "I think we can hold off on that," she said after a moment.

      "All right, your call," Willow nodded after a moment.  "I'll go call the shop."

      Buffy nodded and headed over to the trunk where she kept her weapons, picking up her old friend Mr. Pointy, a few vials of holy water, and a small dagger.  Taking one last look around to see if everything was under control, she headed out into the night.

      She was halfway across town en route to the farthest graveyard—there were seven scattered across Sunnydale, for some odd reason—when she began to have a feeling that she was being watched.  Her eyes narrowed, and she stopped, looking around the street.  It was an old light-industrial zone that had been withering for years, made a brief comeback by capitalizing on the tech bubble, but had been hit hard recently when the bubble had burst, so it was actually suffering the effects of two different business downturns.  The streetlights were far apart, and at least a third of the businesses and faceless office buildings along the street were vacant.  There was a dimly lit bus station in the distance.  There was no one in sight, but the feeling would not go away.

      She continued to work her way carefully down the street, keeping an eye on every shadow until she caught a hint of movement.  There was someone or something watching her from the shadows of an alley.  She lowered herself into a fighting stance, and worked her way towards the shadow.  "Who's there?" she cried out as she got within fifteen feet or so of the entrance.

      A muffled, incoherent chortle was the only response.

      "Come out."

      The chortle only got louder and more incoherent.  Her eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness and she thought she could see a humanoid silhouette moving around in there, but she couldn't tell; the only lights in the alley were dark.

      "I'm warning you," Buffy continued, a little more forcefully.

      "Nobody warned me," a voice responded.  It sounded human, at least, and didn't have a threatening ring to it, but she was not about to take any chances.

      "Who are you?"

      "Heeheeheeheee."

      "And we're back to the chortling," Buffy sighed, blowing out an exasperated breath.

      "Chortling, heeheehee!  She said 'chortling!'"

      Buffy lunged down, grabbed an empty beer bottle off the curb, and launched it into the alley.  Her aim was true.  There was a muffled thud as the bottle struck the figure in the stomach, and the figure folded to the earth and began coughing and making gurgling sounds in his throat.  Buffy wasted no time in darting over to him and leaping on top of him, rolling him over three times out into the light at the far end of the alley, ending by rolling up on top of him and pinning his shoulders to the concrete.

      It was a human, and not just a homeless man, by the looks of things; he was cleaner than most homeless people, and though he was grimy, it all looked fairly recent.  He was dressed in a business suit.

      "Wow, that was fun," he said, giving her a most inappropriate stare, and she realized that she was straddling his waist.  "Do it again!"

      "Oh God," she swore, clambering off him and rising to her feet.  She stayed on her guard, just in case, but it didn't really seem like he was dangerous.

      "Awwww …" he said, and giggled.

      "All right, something's obviously driven you crazy in the fairly recent past, and I have a feeling you're not going to tell me what it is, because that would just be too simple, wouldn't it?"

      "Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful," the man replied.  However, for some reason, it didn't sound like another leering remark in Buffy's direction, and for a split second afterwards, the man's face contorted as though two different personalities were at war within him, and one actually wanted to answer the question.  The other one won, however, and he collapsed to gibbering on the pavement.

      Buffy had seen enough to warrant thinking that there was hope for the man yet, however.  She walked over, crouched down, slung the man's arm over her shoulder, and hoisted him to his feet.  "Come on," she said.  "Let's get you to the hospital.  Not sure what they'll do for you, but it'll be better than here."

      The man made no effort to resist her as she pulled his wallet free of his back pocket.  She gave a low whistle; whoever had done this to him had clearly not had money on their mind.  There was at least two hundred dollars and three credit cards left in the wallet, which confirmed her suspicion that he had not been in this state long; no one who had been out on the street in his condition for long would be carrying that kind of cash around.  His driver's license listed his address as being in one of the nicer parts of town, and his business card listed him as vice president for customer relations at a local financial firm.  He was definitely not homeless.

      "All right, …" she read his name off the card, "Jason, let's get out of here."

      She dragged him out of the alley just in time to catch the bus at the station down the road.  The driver gave them a strange look when they boarded, but didn't give them any more trouble; one got used to odd sights after a few years working in public in Sunnydale.  Buffy paid for both of them, and sat with him near the back of the bus.  She cast one last glance out the window of the bus as it started off and thought she caught sight of another silhouette retreating into the darkness, but she couldn't tell for certain, and it was gone a moment later.  

She stayed silent on the trip to the hospital and hoped that her addled fellow passenger would follow her lead.  He seemed to only really betray his insanity when she talked to him, so keeping mum seemed to be the best policy, and it worked.

      She left him at the hospital and resumed her patrol; she decided not to go back to the scene where she had found him that night, as the diversion had taken a lot of time and she wanted to get back in time for Angel's arrival, and she was not far from the library where Xander had taken Dawn to help her with a research project for history.  She guessed that they had gone there mostly just to hang out and deal with her return, though, as if they were really serious about studying, Willow was right there at Buffy's house and would have been a much better study partner than Xander.  She was only half expecting to find them at the library at all.

      In that much, at least, they surprised her, as the two of them were actually in the library.  They had occupied a small study table in a corner of the library used by groups, where talking was allowed.  A small stack of books lay by them.  They were both poring intently over one of them, so much so that neither one of them realized she was there until she was almost on top of them.

      "Buffy!" Xander said as soon as he laid eyes on her.  A quiet thought tugged at the back of Buffy's mind; there was something about the way he said that.

      "Hey, you remember me!" she answered with an mischievous grin, and settled down sideways in his lap, wrapping her arms flirtatiously about his neck and enjoying his reaction.  "Now then, what are we studying?" she asked, quickly turning around and reaching for whatever book it was that he and Dawn had been reading, and which Dawn was quickly trying to hide, thinking Buffy had been distracted.  It turned out that it wasn't a book, it was a magazine.

      "A bridal magazine?" Buffy's eyes widened.  It wasn't quite what she had been expecting, from the way they were acting about it.  "Is someone here getting married?"

      "Uh, Buffy, that would be me," Xander answered.  "Anya and I are …" he trailed off.

      "Oh, really?" Buffy answered, her mischievous, mock-airhead voice returning.  "I'm sorry, then, I guess it was so _horribly_ inappropriate of me to do this … what _was_ I thinking?" she continued as she got up off of Xander's lap.  "I'll never do it again, I promise."

      "Well …" Xander said nonchalantly.  Buffy grinned.

      "Buffy!" Dawn seemed shocked.

      "Yeah, you're not exactly acting like you … not that I'm really complaining, of course … but what's up?"

      "I'm finding that just smiling at everything is the best way to deal with everything that's different," Buffy answered.  "But, more to the point, I think we're all wanted back at base camp.  Angel's coming back, with his whole group."  Saying that suddenly sent images of Wesley and Cordelia into her mind, and more memories began to crystallize before her eyes.  That was going to take some getting used to.

      "Ah, one big happy family all over again," Xander replied.  Buffy didn't even need Willow's spell to remember that Xander and Angel had not always been the best of friends, to say the least.  Then, a moment later.  "Buffy?  You OK?"

      "Yeah," Buffy said, shaking her head quickly to clear her thoughts.  "Memories."

      "Really?  Well OK then," he said, folding up the magazine and gathering up the other books to take them back.  Buffy was pleased to see that the other books he was gathering actually did have something to do with ancient civilizations.

      "Hey, that reminds me, I can't believe I forgot to ask … Dawn, how are you doing in school?"

      Dawn looked surprised at that.  Then again, Buffy had barely talked to her since coming back, which sunny-haired Slayer guessed would have seemed completely abnormal if they had actually been sisters in everyone else's memory.  It was hard for Buffy to make herself talk to her supposed sister, however.  No matter how hard she thought about the other girl, not a single memory of the other girl resurfaced.  Memories of people she barely knew in high school would come flooding back at a moment's notice, as soon as she thought about them, but there were aggravating—and more than a little disquieting—gaps in her memory wherever anything to do with the brunette next to her would have been, and only in her most recent memories.

"All right, I guess," Dawn had answered, and now she was looking at Buffy strangely as well.  "Buffy?  Are you sure you're OK?"

"I'll be fine," Buffy answered absently.

"All right …" the girl at least sounded concerned.

"Shall we?" Xander motioned towards the door.

Buffy smiled, her humor returning.  "We shall."

They placed their books on ancient Sumeria and modern weddings back on the card to be reshelved and headed for the door.

As soon as they had left the door and were in the parking lot, however, the sensation of being watched, which Buffy had almost forgotten, returned with a vengeance.  The parking lot was absolutely deathly quiet.  It was October, but that meant little in southern California; even if no one was entering or leaving at the moment, there should have been birds, squirrels, something.

"Does … something … feel … wrong …?" Buffy asked as they drew near Xander's car.  Looking at the other two, she could tell that something was making them uneasy, too.

"Do you guys smell something?" Dawn asked.

There was definitely a strong odor in the air, and it was not pleasant.  It took Buffy a moment before she realized that there were actually two odors, one unfamiliar, but one alarmingly familiar.  She reflexively cast a glance at the asphalt, where a trickle of a light liquid trickled darkly from underneath Xander's car.  She threw up her hands to either side to stop the other two from moving any farther forward.

"Gas!" she shouted.

She threw herself backwards, expecting someone to light the fuel once they realized that she wasn't going any closer.  Nothing happened for a moment, then an inhuman voice spoke from nearby.  "Now, now, Slayer," it hissed.  "You didn't really think we'd risk damaging the prize, did you?"

Three half-human figures rose up from where they had lain hidden behind other vehicles in the parking lot.  They walked on two legs, and Buffy could tell that two were supposed to be women and the one that had spoken, a man, but they had serpentine features, red eyes, and scales on their legs and outer arms, and probably other parts of their bodies besides.  Each was at least six feet tall, probably closer to seven.  They wore clothing and jewelry that looked like modern adaptations of ancient Egyptian attire, and each carried an ornamental but very sinister-looking knife.  Buffy cursed herself for not paying more attention; she had Angel on her mind so much that she hadn't even been paying attention to her surroundings.  They had her surrounded.

"I'm not even going to speculate on what you're talking about," Buffy said, "but unless the prize is a quick trip to whatever part of Hell you came from, you came to the wrong place."  Then, under her breath, she murmured to Xander and Dawn, "I'll try to make an opening, you get out of here, don't stop until you're back at the house."

Dawn looked as though she were about to make a retort, or plea, in response to that, but appeared too frightened to put anything into words, which under the circumstances might have been just as well, as she might well have blurted out something loud enough for the encircling demons to hear.  Xander simply nodded nervously.

Buffy acted hesitant for another few moments, then barked, "Now!" and charged at one of the serpent-women.  The woman's eyes widened in momentary shock, but Buffy's body blow failed to knock her off her feet.  The woman staggered back against the minivan she had been hiding behind moments earlier.  Xander dragged Dawn by, and Buffy spared a moment for a silent curse.  That idiot girl was pulling against him, trying to stay, ignoring Xander shouting at her to get out of there.  Judging from her emotional state, the only thing she was going to accomplish if she managed to pull free of him would be to collapse and start sobbing on the pavement, but apparently that's what she had in mind.  Eventually, Xander picked her up bodily and threw her over his shoulder and started hustling away as best he could manage.

The demons closed about Buffy then, hissing arrogantly, and Buffy immediately started thinking about what she could do to buy her friends some more time to escape.  Fortunately, they didn't seem like they were rushing their attack; they seemed to want to take their time, and Buffy was happy to play their game for a bit.  She unsheathed the dagger she had brought with her, and crouched at the ready, daring one of them to try their snake reflexes on her.

                  *           *           *

"Ooh," Giles moaned, reaching up to rub his forehead with a bruised hand.

"Hey, I think he's waking up," Tara's voice sounded from somewhere nearby.

"Hey, Giles."  That was Willow.

"Welcome back," Anya chimed in.

His vision was returning slowly.  _Jenny,_ the thought resounded in his mind.  It was real.  He knew it, somehow, it was real, but at what price?  What had happened?  And Glory … whatever the woman was doing in L.A., it wouldn't be long before she was back up here, if she wasn't already.

"Dawn?" Giles asked into the air, not caring who answered.

"Dawn?  She went to the library with Xander, Buffy's going to pick her up on her way back from patrol," Willow answered.

Giles' thoughts began to crystallize again, as they generally did when he found the opportunity to be critical of something.  "Isn't that a little careless?" he asked.  "Shouldn't we have brought them back here by now?"

"Are they in trouble?"

Had they not been told?  He sat up, ignoring the room spinning around him, forcing his eyes and thoughts to focus.  "Did Wesley not tell you?" he asked.

"Tell us what?  I never talked to Wes, just to … well, you know."

"Never mind that right now," Giles said dismissively, and noted that that really got their attention; whatever was driving Jenny from his mind was worth hearing.

"Giles, what's wrong?" Tara was looking nervous.

Giles took a deep breath.  "Buffy isn't dead.  Jenny isn't dead.  And neither is Glory.  She's back.  She's been seen in L.A. and I'm guessing she's on the way here.  She could be here already, it was days ago in L.A."

Willow's eyes had been growing wider and wider from the moment the word 'Glory' left Giles' lips, and were saucers by the time he finished.  It was Tara that spoke, however.

"Should we go get them?"

"I'll go," Willow answered confidently.  A faint breath of air wafted around the room, rustling the curtains gently.

"I've got the car," Tara pointed out.

"I don't need one," Willow replied, and she didn't wait for an argument.  A ripple passed across her body as though she were nothing more than a watery illusion, and as it passed, she vanished.

There was a brief silence, then Giles, Tara, and Anya let out a collective breath.  The break in the conversation had let the spinning room reassert itself in Giles awareness, and he sank back down onto the couch cushions.  Seeing Willow using magic like that—so powerful, so effortless—made him nervous, but in this case, he wasn't going to say anything.  Not that she was here anymore to listen, of course.  _Good luck, kid,_ he said into the silence of his whirling mind.

                  *           *           *

The creatures continued to circle around Buffy, drawing steadily closer, but slowly.  They seemed to have a lot of patience, which made Buffy definitely wary.  It almost seemed like a dance to them.  There was no haste in their eyes; it didn't even look like their hearts were in the fight at all, even fighting a Slayer.  They had begun to inch closer together, leaving a gap through which Buffy might have been able to spring; she restrained just in case they were waiting for her to turn her flank to them.  She had a feeling they could strike a lot more quickly than they were moving at the moment, if they wanted.  A seed of doubt suddenly sprouted in the back of her mind, and the serpent-man, who seemed to be the leader, confirmed it a few moments later.

"Have fun, ladies," he hissed triumphantly.  The semicircle of them had just danced around to where the three of them were in between Buffy and the route that Dawn and Xander had taken to flee.  They were out of sight now, but had only been so for a minute or so.  The leader turned and darted off in that direction, moving much more quickly now, and occasionally sliding short, quick strides on his belly like a serpent, driving himself forward alternating between walking and slithering with startling agility.

"No!" Buffy screamed, moving to try cutting between the two serpent-women to get to him, but they were ready for her, and their knives flashed.  Buffy parried one on her own dagger and twisted out of the way of the other, forcing the woman back with a kick to her thigh, but her charge was broken and she was forced backwards.  A howl of frustration burst from her lips.  There was no way Xander could escape with that hysterical sack on his shoulders.  She had to get by the two serpent demons now, or they were both going to end up dead or captured.

"You forget, the serpent's strength is cunning," the shorter of the women gloated.

"That's nice.  I like my kind of strength," Buffy answered, gathering herself and springing.  She didn't try to go directly past them this time.  She sprang onto the hood of the nearest car, from there to the roof of a Suburban two cars away, and from there towards an open space in the parking lot past the two women.

Quick as she was, the taller of the women matched her, springing onto the roof of the minivan she had been standing by and from there into the sky to meet Buffy in midair.  Buffy spun, and both of their blades flashed in a whirl of glittering steel.  Buffy got the better of the exchange, scoring a hit with a follow-up jab just below the knuckles of the serpent-woman's knife hand, but the woman was leaping straight into her and delivered a body blow straight into Buffy's side as Buffy came out of her swing.  She was knocked off course and landed with a crash of shattering glass in the windshield of an old pickup, well behind where she would have had to land to be past the demons.  Pain shot across her torso, but she kept her grip on her weapon and forced to the pain to the back of her mind.

"We like ours as well," the taller woman added as she came back into view.  She had landed better than Buffy, but Buffy noticed the woman was using her knife in the other hand now.  Buffy's hit had to have been solid.

Buffy rolled off the hood of the pickup and darted forward, but did not put as much energy into as she acted.  The serpent-woman bit, or tried to, venomous fangs suddenly appearing in her mouth as she coiled herself backwards and lunged forward with the speed of a cobra, but Buffy had already snaked out of the way.  The woman dove headlong into the side-view mirror of the truck, and snarled in pain and anger.

Buffy tried to seize the opportunity to break free and run after the leader, but the other woman, smaller than the first but still at least a head taller than Buffy herself, had wasted no time in getting across the row of cars and now sprung around the corner to join the battle.  Their knives slashed, ricocheted off each other, met with a ring and held, slid off one another, slashed again.  Buffy began to get desperate.  These demon-women were tough, and it was starting to become obvious that she wasn't going to be able to go after the other while the other two were still in fighting condition.

She swung forward, locked her blade on her opponent's, and aimed a kick at the other woman's knees.  The woman's reflexes were like lightning; she lifted her own foot and nearly wrapped Buffy's leg with her own.  The other woman didn't appear to have much martial arts training, but her speed and agility made up for it.

The other woman attempted to snag Buffy's arm while she was unbalanced, and clearly intended to sink her fangs into the Slayer's exposed forearm, but she didn't have her own balance set.  Buffy spun aside, and brought her stake into play with her other hand, nearly managing to gouge it into the serpent-woman's baleful left eye.  As it was, she hit the scales on the woman's left cheek, and while it didn't penetrate the skin, the woman did at least recoil as though stabbed; they were tough, but they weren't invulnerable.  Her stake flew out of her hands at the impact, however, as she hadn't been able to get a perfect grip on it, trying to do too many things at once.

The taller one had mostly recovered from the blow to her jaw, and was coming back at Buffy from her flank.  Buffy decided to see how her last weapon worked on these creatures.  She dove low, her knife held out at an angle that would have slashed the woman's thighs, effectively taking her out of the fight.  The woman blocked it with her own knife, but Buffy had been expecting that and had not put a whole lot of commitment into the strike.  Instead, she flicked out with her other hand, and the other woman could no more change her movement than a serpent alter its direction in mid-strike.  She received a vial of holy water below her chin.

There was a sickly flash of emerald light, and the woman collapsed, screaming, on the pavement.  It was different than the reaction of vampires, as there was no smoke or burning stench, nor any visible mark on her skin, but the way she was writhing on the ground looked as though she had been hit with a clod of napalm.

"One down!" she called to rub into the other's face as she wheeled back to meet the attack of the shorter woman, vaulting up and off the side of the Suburban and landing behind the serpent-woman.  The demon lunged through the space where Buffy had been standing moments earlier.  Buffy dropped immediately to the ground as she landed, reading the woman's reaction, and as the serpent-woman twisted and slashed through where Buffy's chest had been, Buffy swung around on the ground and swept the woman's knees out from under her.

She leapt to her feet, and suddenly became aware of another presence in the parking lot.  Feet were running in her direction.  Suddenly, Willow rounded the corner from the direction of the building at a dead run.

"Buffy!" she shouted.

"Willow, get Dawn and Xander!" Buffy cried, flinging out her hand in the direction Dawn and Xander had gone.  "There's another one after …" her words cut off in a cry of pain, as the knife of the one that she had originally thought down for the count bit into her leg.  The woman couldn't even stand, but had launched the knife at her from where she lay.  Buffy cursed.  The wound wasn't life-threatening, but it was deep enough.

"Buffy!!" Willow cried again, and sparks of energy began to coruscate around her head as she prepared a spell.

"Go!" Buffy roared back.  "Help them!"

Willow nodded, and set off across the parking lot faster than any human could possibly have run.  Buffy made a mental note to ask Willow later how she did that.

The shorter woman had regained her feet, and Buffy now turned back to face her, wounded but now bearing both her own dagger and the knife of the taller woman.  The woman definitely seemed to be getting angrier, and her breathing was coming in long, low hisses.  The fact that Buffy had gotten a friend to send after the other two also seemed to cast some doubt into her mind.

"Ready to end this?" Buffy asked.

"There's no way your friend will get there in time.  Or be able to do anything if she does.  She'll just be dessert for Lord Apepi."

"I take it you don't know her," Buffy answered.

"It doesn't matter."

"OK, done talking," Buffy growled as she whirled back to the attack.  Buffy had confidence in Willow but already felt as though she had been stalled far too long.  In addition, she didn't want to hear the woman saying what she already suspected: Willow would get there too late.

                  *           *           *

"Put me down, put me down!" Dawn screamed.  _God, I feel so useless.  We can't just abandon her!_

"Not until you learn to run _away_ from battles," Xander answered, though his breathing was labored and it was obvious that he was going to have to put her down soon whether he wanted to or not.

"Buffy's in trouble!"

Xander set her down, but held onto her arm.  "And what, exactly, did you think were you going to do to correct that?"

"Shut up!" Dawn screamed back.  "I can't believe you're just going to leave her!"

Suddenly, she recoiled with a frightened squeak, and put a hand to her cheek.  He had slapped her!  "Don't you _ever_ say that to me again," he snapped, and Dawn cringed at the emotion in his voice.  "If I could do something—_anything—_to help her in a fight, I'd do it.  But right now, the only thing I can do for her is to keep you _away_ from those things."

Dawn had been looking backwards as she had been trying to break free and run back, and as she raised her eyes again, she suddenly froze in terror.  "Nice job," she said.

Xander followed her eyes, and instantly saw what she had seen.  The leader of the serpent demons had come after them.

Suddenly, a sinking feeling cut through Dawn's stomach.  She remembered the last time a serpentine demon had come hunting her.  They could see her for what she really was, what she so often forgot, and tried to forget.  "They're still after me," she cried softly.  Her knees gave way, and Xander's frantic attempt to pull her to her feet and steady her might as well have been an attempt to stand a wet towel on its end.

"Come on, Dawn, run!" Xander shouted.

_What's the use?_ Dawn sobbed to herself as she collapsed again.  The snake-creature was almost upon them.  There was no way they were going to outrun it.  She tilted her head back and let out a high-pitching scream.  "Buffy!"

But Buffy was still off fighting the two servants of the serpent-man, and no one was listening.  The demon had reached them, and made a lunge for Dawn.

Xander ploughed into her so hard that he sent her sprawling, trying to throw her out of the path of the demon.  For some reason, that jarred her a little, and she began to labor to get back to her feet, though her knees were still weak and her breathing was terrified and unsteady.

Suddenly, something slashed across her leg, and she collapsed back to the asphalt.  The demon had turned and thrown its knife spinning through the air until it slashed across her left hamstring.  She clutched her leg uselessly, as though covering the cut would somehow allow her to stand.  The cut felt … strange … somehow, less painful than she would have expected, but it was still not allowing her to get up.

"S-s-stick around," the serpent-man hissed gleefully at her as it turned to deal with Xander.

"No!" she screamed.

"Oh, yes," the serpent hissed mockingly.

_No,_ Dawn wanted to scream again, but she was too frightened and drained to make the effort.  _Xander!_

A jolt suddenly shook her body; she could feel the cut under her hand suddenly start to pulse somehow, as though someone had turned on a low electric current beneath it.  She was so surprised that for a moment she forgot her fear, and pulled her hand away.

There was blood on her hands.  But there was more than that.  A hazy aura was emanating from her palm, as though she were holding a handful of pure green light.  The cut on her leg looked the same way; there was normal blood on her jeans, which normally would have made her nauseated, but at the moment she was completely focused on the green light that seemed to be covering the surface of the cut, and wafting off it like a light mist.

_What's going on?_ Dawn wondered frantically.  _Is that … me?  Is that what I really am?  Am I coming apart?  What's happening?_  The serpent had apparently seen it, too, or at least saw something, because he suddenly turned back to her, a wary and uncertain expression wiping the self-confidence off his face in an instant.

She raised herself backwards onto her knees, and held her arms up to the heavens.  "Help me!" she screamed one last despairing time into the unhearing night sky.

The burst of power that erupted from the aura on her left hand was so unexpected and so potent that it actually rolled her across the pavement.  She felt bruised all over, in addition to cut, now, but she realized the roll might actually have saved her, as the serpent-man had lunged for her as the light had begun sweeping outward from her hands.

The ball of green energy that had burst from her hands was now a free-floating nimbus, more than twice as tall as Dawn herself and almost twenty feet across.  It was rotating, and pulses of brighter energy were flaring within it, like a blazing thunderstorm beneath a thin layer of cloud.  The detonation as it had blazed into existence had knocked the demon off his feet and stunned him momentarily, but Dawn could no longer move, wounded and battered as she was.

      The cloud began to shrink and grow brighter, and Dawn suddenly saw the outlines of what looked like a man beginning to appear within it, like a silhouette of light instead of shadow.  Her sight was failing her and her thoughts were still refusing her commands to organize, but it looked as though it were a bit large to be a man, but that might have been simply the way things looked from the ground.  He was also holding something large, though Dawn couldn't see what it was.

      Suddenly, almost everything that was left of the cloud collapsed inwards, leaving only a faint green aura around the man that stepped out of the vanishing energy.  Dawn's eyes widened.  It was a man, but unlike any she had ever seen, which she guessed was a good thing, because she wasn't sure how she felt about many men like this running around.  He was easily six and a half feet tall, probably closer to seven.  He wore thick armor on his torso and legs.  He had black hair, and a well-groomed but full beard, and burnished skin that looked vaguely Middle Eastern or central Asian.  His arms, bare except for thick, ornate gold bracelets, were thicker than the legs of any of the football players at Sunnydale High, and his legs looked as though they might have supported a building as well as any pillar.  As though his appearance were not unrealistic enough already, there were two small monkeys perched on his left shoulder.  And in his hands he carried the most enormous axe that Dawn had ever seen, or even heard tell of.  It was easily four times the size of an executioner's axe, though he held it as though it were no more than a walking stick.

      He looked a little startled at his new surroundings, though nowhere near as started as Dawn was to see him.  Then his eyes fell on the serpent-man in front of him.

      "Muzh-gidim," he spat.  Even though Dawn had absolutely no idea what he was saying or even what language he was speaking, there was power in his voice.

      "G …" the answer, or question, or whatever it might have been that the serpent-man was trying to say was abruptly cut off, along with his head.  The man spun in a full circle and swung his axe as though it were nearly weightless in his hands.  He moved with devastating speed for someone so large, encumbered by such armor and such an enormous weapon.

      The monkeys cheered.

      The aura around him was beginning to grow faint, and as it did, so did the man himself, growing transparent and walking away at the same time, giving Dawn no notice whatsoever and Xander merely a passing glance.

      Once the man mystery man had vanished completely, all the adrenaline that had been keeping Dawn on her hands and knees and keeping the pain at bay vanished.  She collapsed with a loud groan onto the pavement.  She realized that he had just saved her life, so she allowed herself to revise her earlier thought about her not wanting more of them around.  Nonetheless, she was still battered and bleeding, and her vision was almost as dark with her eyes open as shut.

      "Xander … ?" she asked hesitantly.

      "Y … yeah, Dawn, I'm here."  His voice was weak, but just hearing it was a relief.

      "Don't tell … don't tell …"

      "I think it may be a little late for that."

      Dawn forced her eyes open again and forced her head to lift off the ground.  The effort made her head swim, and she could feel herself losing consciousness.  However, before the darkness at the edge of her vision swept across her eyes entirely, she had enough time to see Willow … where had she come from?! … looking down at her, eyes wide in an expression of complete astonishment.

            *           *           *           *           *

      The din of car doors and trunks opening and shutting was beginning to subside somewhat as the group of figures clustered outside Angel Investigations finished packing.  Cordelia's last suitcase … she had packed four … was the last to go in the trunk of Gunn's car.

"Are we all set?" Cordelia asked.

"As soon as Lorne gets here," Wesley replied.  "He's going to look after the place while we're away."

"And heck no I'm not OK!" Gunn barked.  "We've got to fit five people in my car while the dead woman and the serial killer get to ride in that!"

Faith, who was leaning against the side of Janna's Porsche, gave him her cutest grin and a mock-sympathetic, "Aww," before turning to glance as another pair of headlights came into view around the corner.  "There's Lorne," she said.  She turned back to try to get a view through the garden back into the hotel.  "What are those two doing?" she asked, partly to herself.

      Jenny and Angel were the only two still inside the hotel, apparently arguing about something.  Faith actually took that as a good sign; it meant that Angel had managed to recover from getting spooked by the Gypsy woman's reappearance.  Then again, who knew better that death was not absolute than him?  Nonetheless, she was eager to get going, and she hurried back into the hotel, hoping to convince them to drop whatever it was they were talking about until later.

      "… going to have to come back eventually," Janna was saying as she walked in the door.  Angel was leaning on the reception desk, not meeting Janna's gaze.  "You might want this place to still be here when that happens."

      "We don't need money, Jenny, I'm serious."

      "You're lying to me, Angel, and this crazy martyr act of yours is not helping here.  I'm trying to help."  Faith tensed.  She had never seen Janna … Jenny … really annoyed before.

      Angel bristled.  "I'll manage.  I managed for two centuries with a lot less stuff than this."

      "And far less responsibilities."

      "Faith!" Angel said, suddenly all smiles, but conspicuously changing the subject.  "Are we all set to go?"

      "As soon as you two lovebirds get over your little spat, I think so.  Lorne just pulled up."

      "Excellent!  Splendid!  Shall we?"  Without really waiting for an answer, he turned and strode out the front door.

      Janna gave Faith an exasperated look.  Faith met her gaze for a moment, then simply smiled and shook her head.  "Man, and here I thought you were having a serious argument," she said.

      The Gypsy woman let out a frustrated breath.  "This place has made almost nothing since Buffy died.  That man will never admit that he needs help.  They'll never get another place this good if they lose this lease."

      Faith laughed.  "Man, check you out.  First you bail me out, now you want to bail out Angel."

      The anger left Janna's face, replaced with a look that was more simply tired.  Then she fixed Faith with a pointed stare.  "I owe him at least that much for helping to bring you back," she said.

      "Oh, don't," Faith started.  She wasn't in the mood for sentimentality right now.

      "Fine," Janna answered.  "But I'd rather not have the authorities come evict Lorne while we're gone.  It might raise some embarrassing questions."

      "Guess he just doesn't like charity," Faith admitted, remembering her conversation with Anne.  On a whim, she quipped, "you could always try hiring him."

      Janna thought on that for a moment, then suddenly smiled.  "You know, I hadn't even thought of that.  Maybe he'll do a little freelance work in Sunnydale."

      Faith grinned.  "And if he won't, Wes or Cordy will.  They have a little more business sense than him."

      The Gypsy woman laughed, and agreed, "I thought about going straight to Cordy and bypassing Angel entirely, but that just felt wrong.  Probably would have made it a lot easier, though."

      "If your goal is to give away money?  I'd say."

      Janna laughed again.  "You wouldn't think it would be this hard, would it?"

      "Sure wouldn't be if I was the one getting the offer."

      Janna gave her a lighthearted reproaching look at the hidden suggestion in that, and Faith grinned sheepishly.

      "Anyway," Faith continued, "I think they're waiting for us.  You ready to hit the road?"

      Janna nodded firmly.  "Absolutely," she said, though there was a barely noticeable tremor in her voice that suggested that she might not be quite as ready to meet Giles again as she was trying to seem.

      They met with the rest of the group out by the cars; Angel was just finishing giving some quick instructions to Lorne on how to run the place.  If they had said anything about money, neither one gave any sign.  Janna let the matter rest, and she and Faith bid the others farewell, climbed into the Boxter, and headed for the freeway.  They had agreed that there was little chance of them being able to stick together all the way to Sunnydale, and there were people in each car that knew the way to Buffy's house, so they all agreed to meet there when they reached Sunnydale.

      Janna set the cruise at a leisurely pace once they were on the freeway, so the others had a chance to catch up with them if they weren't long behind.  It was a perfect night for driving; the sky was cloudless, the roads were dry but not overly dusty, and the moon, one day from full, showered the landscape with silver light.

      "Man, Janna, you realize it's a crime to be driving this slow in a piece like this?"

      "I didn't, actually," Janna answered pointedly.

      "Well, it should be," Faith retorted resolutely.

      They made small talk, or what counted for small talk between a faerie enchantress back from the dead and an ex-rogue Slayer escaped from twenty-five to life, about the things they intended to do when they got back to Sunnydale, and where they were going to find a place to sleep if there wasn't room to crash at the Summers' residence, until about fifteen minutes after they had left the Los Angeles city limits.  Gradually, however, as the conversation got more and more mundane, Faith became aware that the voice in the back of her head was trying to tell her something, and she cast a thoughtful glance backward out the rear window.

      She immediately let out a furious curse.  "Dammit, what was I thinking?!" she spat.  "That car from earlier is behind us."

      Janna threw a quick glance in the rearview, and said something in a language that Faith didn't recognize, but it sounded decidedly unpleasant.

      "All right, Faith," she asked suddenly, an unfamiliarly cunning grin splitting her face.  "Feel like a rest stop?"

      Faith's eyes narrowed.  She didn't need to ask where this was going.  "Absolutely," she said flatly.

      The next rest area was on a few miles farther, and the mysterious black car behind them made no threatening moves toward them.  In fact, it did not even follow them into the rest stop; it slowed down behind them as they pulled in and seemed to linger for a moment on the freeway behind them, but then it sped up again and continued onward.

      Janna made no pretense at parking the car.  She proceeded straight to the on-ramp to get back on the freeway, and idled the car in a small space right by the ramp to give the driver of the other car a little time to get onward.

      "She knew we had spotted her," Faith stated.  It was not a guess.

      "Looks that way," Janna agreed.

      "Is there another road to get to Sunnydale?" Faith asked.

      "Not that I know of," Janna answered.  "Not in this dimension, anyway."

      "I was generally thinking in those terms, yeah," Faith drawled.

      "Well, let's go see if she's found some way to wait for us."  Janna started the car back onto the freeway.

      They drove largely in silence for the rest of the way, keeping all the attention they could spare devoted to looking for any sign of the mystery car.  They saw nothing for a vast majority of the way.  As they were drawing closer to Sunnydale, however, Janna's eyes began to perk up and change to the same brilliant violet that Faith had seen in the store.

      "You seeing anything?" Faith asked.

      "Yeah, but … it's not her, it's something else.  Almost familiar, I thought I recognized it, like the essence of someone or something I once knew.  Whatever it was was pretty strong, or I'd never have felt it at this distance; it's about a mile to our right, heading towards Sunnydale."

      "Glory?" Faith asked, dreading the answer.

      "No, no, this feels like something more … natural … part natural, part not.  I can't describe it, really.  A lot like a werewolf, but the other, normal animals out there don't feel frightened enough."

      Faith cast a glance at the sky.  She had forgotten the significance of the fact that the moon was one day from the full, and had also forgotten Janna's powers to commune with nature.  She suddenly realized that living in the city had to be an alien experience for her; the faerie woman was probably a lot more comfortable out here, surrounded by her element.

      Janna followed her gaze, and agreed with the implicit remark.  "If it were really a werewolf, there wouldn't be a normal animal anywhere near it."

      Faith nodded, but nonetheless kept an extremely close watch on the right side of the road for the next several miles.  Nothing happened, however, and they reached the Sunnydale exit without any further incident.

      They were less than a hundred yards from the freeway, however, when a familiar vehicle pulled out of the parking lot of a gas station that occupied the corner where the exit ramp turned onto Sunnydale's main street.  The driver was being careful, waiting until Janna's Porsche had passed and moved on nearly a block, but Faith recognized it immediately.  Her senses were a lot sharper when she was concentrating on using them.

      "Dammit!  It's her again,!" Faith swore.

      Janna cast a glance in the rearview.  "She must have suspected we were coming here."

      "Just great," Faith seethed.

      "You want me to try to lose her?" Janna asked.

      Faith thought about that for a second, then answered slowly.  "No … actually …" she drew in a breath, "I want to have a little talk with her."

      Janna looked at her.  "You sure you're up for it?  She might be a little more than just a good detective."

      For some reason, that set off alarm bells throughout Faith's head, and made her even more frustrated that she couldn't lock her mind on where she had seen that car or its driver before.  "I'm sure," she grated, trying to hide the headache.  "Turn right up here.  I'm getting out."

      They were approaching a corner on which sat a high, square building that pressed almost right up against the sidewalk.  The moment they were around it, and the trailing Chrysler disappeared from view for a split second, Faith flung open the door and sprang to the curb, swinging the door shut behind her on the way out with an acrobatic twist.  She dove immediately for the closest cover she could find, a loading dock set in the side of the building.  She quickly sprang up onto a raised platform used for the unloading of large trucks, and crouched down, out of sight from road level, waiting.

      Only a moment later, the black car behind them came into view.  Faith wrinkled her nose; the moonlight was so bright that it was actually causing glare off the windshield, preventing her from getting a good look at whoever was inside.  She was planning on getting closer anyway, however.

      Faith waited until the last possible moment, eased up into a sprinter's position, then sprang.  Her timing was true.  She sailed out into the air and landed right on the hood of the car, her face only inches from the windshield.  She was staring the other woman in the face; their previous suspicions were confirmed, it was indeed a woman.  Faith's eyes widened in surprise, before a modest smile passed across her face.  She understood now why Janna's implication that she might be more than just a good detective had sounded alarms in her mind.

      "Hey, Kate, how's it going?" she cheeked.

            *           *           *           *           *

      Buffy looked around at her house—her former house, she guess she thought she should say, though she still thought of it as her own, listening to the low drone of Willow and Tara chanting elsewhere upstairs, and the soft tap-tap of Xander playing handyman as he installed energy crystals in strategic points in the frame of the house.  She couldn't believe that she had lived here for five years, apparently, without ever looking into having some kind of magical protections erected around the house.  Of course, that would have been hard to do during her lifetime, as she had always tried to conceal from her mother what she really was, but she knew now that her mother had ultimately discovered her true nature, so that excuse should have been gone.  Still, better late than never, she supposed.  This was not how she had originally planned on spending tonight, but it was not the first time business had gotten in the line of pleasure.

      Of course, it was not like she was doing much to help.  Her leg was wounded, and though the bleeding had stopped, she really didn't know a whole lot about magic, and so it had fallen to her to look after the mysterious girl that everyone else knew as her sister.  Dawn was in far worse shape than Buffy; the girl propped up on her bed looked as though she had been caught in a landslide.  Buffy had been sitting here for almost an hour, and had no idea what to say to her, and the other seemed to feel likewise.

      "How're you feeling?" she asked.

      "Beat up," Dawn answered candidly.

      Buffy actually laughed.  "Don't worry, you get over that in time.  Take it from someone who knows."

      "Not all of us heal like Slayers."

      "Not all of us get beat up as much as I do."

      "You really haven't been here for a while."

      Buffy frowned.  Her memories were still returning, but she was beginning to feel a lot more like the old her, at least.  Still, it might be better not to go talking about it, or Giles would probably want progress reports every morning and evening until he was sure she remembered everything that had happened between her deaths.  "I guess not," she admitted.

      "Being a friend of yours isn't easy, never mind a relative."

      Buffy made a face.  "Oh, thanks."

      "Hey, no problem."

      Buffy let out an exasperated sigh.  She certainly acted like a sister.  Buffy didn't remember only childhood having such appeal.  Still, it was the first time she had seen a hint of a smile across the girl's face, so she hoped it meant she was starting to relax enough to ask questions.

      "So you want to tell me what happened?  Willow's not much with the talking."

      "I …" Dawn trailed off.  "I don't know what happened," she admitted quietly.  "I haven't a damn clue."

      Buffy gave an understanding half-smile.  "I know that feeling," she empathized.  "But something had to have guillotined lizard-boy, and I'm getting the feeling it wasn't you or Will."

      Dawn shrugged morosely.  "Someone showed up out of thin air, cut the thing's head off with an axe, then vanished."

      Buffy's grin brightened.  "See?  Why didn't you just say so?"  It might have sounded unbelievable in a normal world, which meant it was probably absolutely correct in Sunnydale.  Then her expression sobered.  "Dawn, we're going to have to start trusting each other sometime."

      Dawn's shoulders sagged.  "I think my blood might have summoned him."

      Buffy's eyes widened.  So that was why she didn't want to talk about it.  Nothing abnormal for Sunnydale, but definitely not what one wanted to believe about themselves.  She got up and sat down by Dawn on the bed, put her arms around the younger girl's shoulders, and looked into her eyes.

      "Maybe it did, maybe it didn't," she said.  Dawn's expression looked as though it might burst into tears at any time.  "But listen to me.  Look at me.  In this house are some of the smartest, kindest, all-around best people in this world—or any other, for that matter.  If this is something you can learn to control, Willow and Giles will help.  If this is something we can get rid of, and you want to, we will find a way to do it.  If something or someone appears that wants to hurt you, we'll deal with it together.  But … listen to me, I know I'm lecturing … you _cannot_ do this alone.  You can't just withdraw and hide yourself away, you can't run from it.  If it's your destiny, you can't run from it anyway, and if it's not, then the best way to defeat it is here, in this house, with smart and powerful friends.  And me."

      "I'm … I'm just so scared … you can't understand …"

      "Scared?  Scared that something might happen to you, that people might hate you or use you for what you are, or that bad things might happen to your family because of you?  Dawn, I've lived with that every day since I became a Slayer.  But Dawn, if you run, if you push us away, those things that you could have stopped are going to happen.  The only way bad things in this world get stopped are if good people stop them.  It doesn't matter if it's a doctor fighting a disease, or a fireman trying to save someone from a burning building, or a Slayer trying to stop the world from getting sucked into Hell, it never matters.  The disease, the fire, the world going to Hell, whatever, will win automatically if you don't fight back, so even if you fail, you've got to fight.  Never give up.  Never, never, never, never give in."

      Dawn looked up with a wan smile that almost reached her eyes.  It was amazing how much less serious a simple smile could make her injuries appear.  "That was Churchill."

      Buffy smiled.  "See?  I wasn't a complete idiot in history."

      "Really?"

      "Want a good sisterly smack in the face?"

      "Nah," Dawn shrugged.  She held up her empty teacup.  "But I could use a refill on the chai."

      Buffy let out an amused breath and rolled off the bed.  "Oh fine, you little pampered princess."

      "Thanks," Dawn said with a light grin that looked much more normal for her age as she wriggled back down comfortably within the covers.

            *           *           *           *           *

      Faith and Kate looked at each other through the windshield for a few tense moments, Kate's eyes growing steadily wider.  Then things got really interesting.

      There was a rough crackle in the air, and something lifted Faith up and threw her off the car.  Kate had hit the brakes, but there had definitely been something more than inertia at work there.  Faith landed about ten feet in front of the car, dazed for a moment.  Just a moment.  She leapt to her feet a moment later.

      Her eyes suddenly widened.  "Holy shit!" she gasped and reflexively swept Kalia from its sheath.  She caught the lightning bolt that was heading for her face on the flat of the blade, and fortunately, the mystical Gypsy sword was up to the task; the stream of energy bounced off the sword and set an innocent dumpster ablaze.

      Kate had gotten out of the car, and was taking cover behind the driver's-side door.  There was a weapon in her hands that looked like a small M-16, only it had fired that stream of electricity at her.

      "Kate, what the hell?" Faith barked.

      Kate looked as though she were about to fire again, but restrained herself at the last second.  She nonetheless let out a firm command, "Don't come any closer."

      "All right, all right!" Faith answered, actually backing away a few steps.

      "Get down on the ground."

      "What is this, an arrest?  You're not a cop anymore, you know."

      "No," she repeated dangerously, "I'm not.  But you're still an escaped murderer on the run."

      "Oh, come on, Kate, you know I'm not like that anymore."

      "You mind telling me _how _I know that?"

      Faith was momentarily at a loss.  After a moment, she said, "because you know what I'm up against.  And Angel believes in me, just like he was the one who still believed in you after no one else did."

      "Don't even mention him."

      "What?  I thought you were friends!"

      "Are you crazy?  Wait, that's right, you are.  Well, just for the record, getting involved with him ruined my life."

      Faith had been keeping her cool before that, but she now felt some heat building behind her eyes.  "Getting involved with him _opened your eyes,_" she said.

      "Like I said.  It ruined my life.  Now drop the sword and get down."

      "What do you want?"

      "I already told you.  I want you to drop the weapon and get on the ground."

      "You've got no authority here."

      "I'm holding the gun here."

      "So what do you want to do?  Take me hostage?  Take me back for the reward money?  Or just shoot me in the back while I'm on the ground?"

      "For the moment, I just want to get you off the streets."

      "She can't do that, detective," a familiar voice said from behind Kate.

      Kate swung around, and Faith moved over to look.  Janna was emerging from the pitch-black shadow beside the warehouse, fifty feet from where Kate stood, one hand raised, palm outward, in front of her.  Kate wasted no words, thinking she was under attack, and leveled a burst of energy at the unarmed woman.

      The bolt struck the Gypsy in the chest, and she collapsed lifelessly to the pavement.  Kate immediately swung back to the horrorstruck Faith.

      "What the …?" Faith was at a momentary loss for words.  "What the hell, you psychotic bitch, she was unarmed!"

      "It's only a stunner, she'll wake up in a few minutes."

      "Somehow I'm having trouble believing that."

      "Well, gee, it looks like there just isn't much trust either way here, doesn't it?"

      The back of Faith's eyes had been burning for some time now.  Suddenly, she felt the burning spread out and down her body, a surge of power flowing through her.  She relaxed her mind, remembering what Janna had told her about using her emotions, not fighting them.  When the burning spread down to her hands, she felt something pass into the sword.  Her eyes widened, and she realized that what she was feeling might be more than just anger.

      Faith looked back up at the other woman.  The world suddenly seemed a lot more in focus.  "I'm coming over there," she grated.  Kate tensed and raised the blaster to her eyes.  Faith ignored it.  "I'm going to take that out of your hands.  Then we're going to go check on my friend.  If you're lying to me, you end up like her.  If not, we can go our own ways.  Understand?"

      "I said don't come any closer."

      "And I'm past caring what you say," Faith retorted, and she lunged.

      A burst of energy surged towards her.  Faith spun as she leaned forward into her charge, and the burst passed behind her shoulder.  Another one came, and she swatted it aside with the flat of her blade, this time right back at Kate's face.  The woman ducked convulsively, but before she could recover, Faith was upon her, wrestling her to the ground.  The blaster went flying from her hands.  Kate rolled, and she was strong—much stronger than a mortal woman, actually—Faith noted, but Faith was still stronger.  She seized a pair of strange-looking manacles that had been hanging at Kate's waist and clapped them around the woman's wrists, pinning them behind her back.  She made a quick slicing motion with Kalia and sliced the former detective's belt off; there was a whole array of tools and whatzits of some kind on her belt, and she was not in the mood to take time to examine them one by one.

      Kate was strangely silent as Faith pulled her to her feet, whether stunned because she had lost or planning something else, Faith had no idea.

      Janna was alive.  Faith could tell that as soon as the prone form of the woman came into view behind the car which she had fallen behind.  The woman was already awake, and struggling to raise herself to her hands and knees.

      "All right," Faith admitted.  "I didn't believe you when you said it was a stunner."

      Kate stayed silent.

      Once awake, Janna seemed to regain control of herself fairly quickly.  She was on her feet a minute later, though she still didn't look up for a footrace.  She cast a curious eye up and down the woman Faith had captured.

      She came over and walked around the woman, and paused when she saw the manacles holding Kate's wrists together.  She came back around to the front and gave a knowing look into the other woman's eyes.

      "Dragon's scale cuffs," she observed.  "They suppress magical powers and release at the will of the owner.  You could have gotten out of them at any time."

      Naked surprise painted Kate's face at that, and as if in answer, the cuffs clicked open and fell to the pavement.  Kate and Faith backed away from each other uncertainly, and Faith's hand drifted to the hilt of her sword.  She suspected Kate had a hidden weapon on her somewhere; she had not given the woman a full search because of her haste to check on Janna.

      Janna bent and picked up the manacles.  Then, before anyone could predict what she was going to do, she had fastened them on her own wrists.

      "There.  Now will you listen to us?" she asked the blonde woman.

      Kate was clearly taken aback.  Nonetheless, her defiance returned quickly.  "I'd rather see them on her," she said.

      Janna looked at Faith, and Faith wrestled within herself.  Her first thought for a response was, _Go to Hell.  _She thought about simply offering to leave, but she didn't want to leave Janna alone and helpless with this woman.  She looked at the former detective.  The Slayer had always had a voice in the back of her mind that was a good judge of character, even if she had ignored it for most of the time since her first Watcher had been murdered, and Kate did not seem like the kind of person who would have so easily sold out to any force of darkness, even after being expelled from the LAPD.

      Eventually, forcing herself against all her mistrusting instincts, she breathed, "Fine.  As long as she doesn't go back for any more weapons."

      Janna looked back at Kate.  "Is that OK?" she asked.

      Kate seemed to struggle within herself for a moment just as Faith had, then, as if in answer, the cuffs released themselves from Janna's arms and clattered to the ground.  Kate moved as if to get them, but Janna reached down and picked them up first.

      Faith held her arms out in front of her, and the Gypsy woman slowly fastened the dragon scale cuffs around her wrists.  Faith let out a long, heavy gasp as the second cuff clicked closed.  The fire that had been burning in her veins suddenly subsided, retreating into a dull ember just below her breast.  Janna cast a reassuring glance into her eyes that Kate couldn't see, and Faith slowly forced her breathing to steady.

      Janna turned back to the detective.  "All right," she said.  "Now please listen to our story."

      Janna proceeded to explain everything that had happened since she had met Faith in Los Angeles, though she left out the part about herself becoming one of the Fae, up to where the two of them and Angel's crew had left AI for Sunnydale.  Faith described the attack on her in the California Institution for Women, then her escape, and her return to Los Angeles.

      "It's a believable story," Kate said slowly when they were all finished.  "But I can't believe it yet."

      Faith was going to say something in protest, but Janna signaled for her two stay quiet.  "What did we not explain?"

      Kate stood up from the hood of the car where she'd been sitting.  "I guess I'm not going to believe this until I get a chance to speak with the others at Miss Summers' home.  If their story backs yours, I'll believe you.  Is that fair?"

      "Certainly," Janna answered.

      "In the meantime, I'm going to have to ask both of you to come with me … just so I can tell you can't communicate with them while I get over there."

      Janna laughed.  "And also to give you directions?"

      Kate shrugged.

      Janna sighed.  "Miss Lockley, I've been nothing but honest with you up until now, and I'll be nothing but honest with you now.  I can communicate over incredible distances if I need to.  I could tell Willow everything she would need to know before we got to the end of the block.  However, I promise you that I will not.  I will wear another pair of cuffs, if you have one and want me to."

      Kate looked at her appraisingly.  "That's all right," she said.  "I have ways of detecting magic being used in the car."

      Janna looked impressed at this, and answered simply, "very well."

      Faith spoke up.  "Janna, what about your car?"

      Janna replied, "Don't worry about it, I parked it in a 24-hour garage."

      Faith nodded.  However, her mind raced, and as much as she racked her brain for all her memories of this part of Sunnydale, and she had been here for more than a year, she couldn't remember any 24-hour garage in the area that she could have gotten to and back from that quickly.

      "All right then, ladies," Kate replied.  "Let's go talk to Buffy."

      "Um … can we maybe take these things off me?" Faith asked, holding up her shackled wrists.

      "When we get there," Kate answered.

      Janna moved over and put her hands around Faith's, her fingertips just touching the manacles.  "Don't worry, it'll be OK," she said quietly, and her voice was comforting.  Faith sighed.  This was too much like being back in police custody for her comfort, but she felt like she could deal with it with Janna with her.  Janna unhooked the sheath of Kalia from Faith's belt and handed it to Kate, who took it wordlessly.

      They seated themselves in the back of Kate's car, and Faith gave out a low whistle.  The interior looked more like the cockpit of a fighter plane—or a spaceship—than a normal car.  The back doors had originally had latches on the inside, but they had been removed.  A glass plate separated the front and back seats, but images and diagrams glowed within the glass and Faith could see that it was actually a clear monitor as well as a window.

      "Wow, Kate, I didn't know you'd gone all James Bond," Faith grinned as she settled in.

      Kate gave a nonchalant shrug.  "A few lucky connections paid off."

      Janna looked impressed as well, but her voice was as normal as if they were talking over tea.  "So anyway, Faith, you might want to tell us where we're going.  I've never been to Buffy's, either."

      Faith hadn't even thought of that, but answered quickly a moment later, "1630 Revello Drive.  Northwest side."

      Kate nodded, typing something into a keyboard that had been mounted just below the air conditioner.  A map of Sunnydale flashed on a small monitor just to the right of the steering wheel a moment later.  "All right, got it," she answered.

      They were a little more than halfway there when something started flashing on the dashboard in front of Kate.  Janna and Faith both saw it; Janna was the first to guess what it was.

      "Something's following us," she surmised.

      "Just something supernatural in the area," Kate answered.  "I doubt they're following us."

      Janna's eyes had turned violet.  "Maybe," she answered, in a slightly lower voice.  "But I have a feeling we're going to have to deal with them anyway."

      Faith tensed, and for the first time, being in the cuffs really started to make her nervous.  She might still have been able to handle Kate while in them, but she didn't want to be caught this way by anything more dangerous.  "What are you seeing?" Faith asked.

      "Not seeing.  Just … sensing danger.  Can't you?"

      Faith went silent for a moment, then nodded.

      "I don't know what you're talking about," Kate replied dismissively.  "It's not getting any clo … wait a minute …" then she and Janna both said simultaneously "… there's more of them."

      "Great," Faith muttered at the same time as Janna added, "They're coming closer.  They've blocked the road ahead."

      Kate nodded, as though what she were seeing confirmed that.  "Well, there's no use taking another way, all we'd be doing is going into a rabbit warren," she said.  That much was true; they were just getting into a residential area, and there wouldn't be many through roads.

      "Please," Janna asked.  "Unlock Faith."

      Kate's lips compressed dismissively.  "I said …" her voice trailed off as several figures came into view some distance in front of them "… when we get there."

      "Oh come …" Faith began, but Janna raised a finger to her lips for silence.

      "Recognize them?" Janna asked.

      "Demons," Kate asked.

      "Mohra demons," Janna clarified.  "And it looks like a whole squad of them.  There will be more nearby."

      "Then maybe we'd better just bust through here right now," Kate answered, and she gunned the motor.

      "No, wait!" Janna cried.

      There were a half dozen Mohra demons in the road ahead of them, wearing armor that looked almost like feudal Japanese make, but with many more monstrous elements.  Some carried swords, others one-handed axes, and all had round shields.

      At the last second, several concealed hatches on the hood and sides of Janna's car opened, and Faith saw a few more objects that looked a lot like the blaster she had been holding emerged.  The bolts these things fired weren't like the electrical bursts that Kate's gun had fired, however; they were smaller and brighter, almost like tiny comets that left rippling wakes in the air behind them.  They also had a much more devastating effect than the hand blaster, shredding through shield and armor alike.  All six of the demons fell to the earth and Kate simply plowed them out of the way as she went by; the bodies seemed to bounce away from the car, and Faith remembered the invisible force that had thrown her from the hood.

      Faith's eyes widened, and she let herself be impressed.  "Wow, Kate, what was that?"

      "Rail guns," Kate answered tersely.  "The … people I got this stuff from were just finishing working on them when their project was terminated."

      Janna interrupted here.  "Nice, but those things regenerate."

      "Eh?" Kate stole a glance in the rearview.

      "And there's going to be a cap …"

      Faith suddenly felt a shift in the air above them, and cried a desperate warning, but it was too late.  The front glass shattered, and a shaft of some kind burst through it, driving into Kate's right leg like a spear, accompanied by the heavy thud of metal boots landing on the roof.  Kate screamed, and the car spun and screeched to a halt.  Faith, unable to balance herself, was thrown bodily against the inside of the door.  The force that had been surrounding the car threw the thing away a moment later, but the damage had been done, and the force actually backfired, as the blade was wrenched free of Kate's leg by the force of the impact, and she screamed again.

      "Let her out!" Janna cried.

      Faith could feel Kate's eyes turning around to look at her, though she wasn't watching; she was looking out the side window to see what had landed on them and then been thrown off.  It was another demon, and it looked a lot like the other Mohra demons, but it was larger, and had reddish hide instead of the greenish tint of the lesser ones.  Its armor was more ornate, and instead of a shield, it carried a two-handed poleaxe with a spearlike tip that gleamed black in the dim light with Kate's blood on it.

      Faith suddenly felt the cuffs unlatch, and the rear doors both sprang open.  She instantly leapt out of the car and pulled the passenger door open, retrieving Kalia from the front seat.  It was only then that she realized Janna had actually come out the passenger side door with her rather than using her own.

      "It's a Mohra Lord," Janna hissed in her ear.  "Breaking the gem on its forehead will kill it, but will summon more.  Just buy us some time if you can."

      Faith pushed Janna backward, as the Mohra Lord was rushing them.  "Watch," she barked.

            *           *           *           *           *

      "I think the guests have started to arrive," Xander called excitedly from the front window.

      A long, sporty two-door crammed with people had pulled into the driveway.

      Buffy descended the staircase in two long bounds.  Anya emerged from the kitchen.  Dawn was still upstairs, and Willow, Tara, and Giles were still working their protective spells on the house.  Fortunately, whatever they had set up so far had not bothered the new arrivals on their way in.  Buffy cast a sheepish look at Anya and Xander.  "I guess we're the welcoming party."

      Anya shrugged.  Xander was still at the window, watching the five people get out of the car.  "There's Angel," he said emotionlessly.  "Faith and Ms. Calendar aren't with them."

      "Well, come on anyway," Buffy said, opening the door and jogging out onto the lawn to meet them.  One of them, anyway.

      Angel's reaction when she suddenly dashed into his arms was priceless, and earned him a lighthearted but bitterly cruel jibe, "Wow, lover, I'm going to have to die more often."  Angel looked mortified, and she repented of it immediately.  "Oh, come on," she said.  "Where's your world-famous sense of humor?"

      "It's … well, uh, I guess …"

      "Hmm, garbled somewhere," she observed clinically.  "Well, that's OK, we'll have plenty of time to cure you of that later."

      "Well, you certainly look well," Wesley said from the far side of the car.

      Buffy finally spared a glance for the others.  There were Wesley and Cordelia, and two people she didn't recognize.  "You as well, Wes," she said.  "Better than I remember, actually."

      "You don't look half bad for a dead person, yourself," Cordelia offered in her classic Cordelia style.

      "Ooh, thanks," Buffy answered, sidling up to Angel and turning him around so they faced the others as though posing for a picture.  "Hear that, Angel?  Your position as the cutest dead person on Planet Earth is in danger."

      "Hey!" Angel reacted in spite of himself.

      "Excellent!  He's getting better already," Buffy answered, turning to face the others again.

      "Not at introductions, he ain't," the black man who had been driving the car interrupted.  He walked forward and offered his hand for Buffy to shake.  "Charles Gunn.  Just call me Gunn."

      "Gunn," Buffy repeated, turning the name over in her mouth.  "Buffy Summers.  Just call me Buffy."

      "Oh yes, and that's Fred," Angel said, taking his cue, as well as an excuse to talk about anything else.  Fred simply waved at Buffy shyly.

      "Right.  My turn now, I guess," Buffy answered.  "Guys, this is Xander, one of my best friends, and Anya, ex-vengeance demon extraordinaire."

      "'Ex' vengeance demon?" Cordelia asked.

      "Ex." Buffy repeated.  "Giles, Willow, Tara, and Dawn are inside, working some protective mojo on the house; a lot has come up in the last few days, or we'd all be out here to meet you.  Sorry about the hospitality."

      "Hey, I ain't complaining," Gunn asked, looking around.  "Nice crib you've got here."

      "For the moment," Buffy answered somberly, "but we can talk about that some other time.  Come on, let's go meet the others."

      "The others," Angel started suddenly as though his memory had suddenly been jogged.  "Are Faith and Jenny here?"

      "By the looks of the whole not seeing that sweet ride of hers in the drive, I say no," Gunn offered.

      "No, not yet," Buffy admitted.  "Why?"

      "They were ahead of us, is all." Angel answered, a worried look on his face.

      Buffy's lips compressed.  It was hardly as though a safe arrival were anything but guaranteed in this town, especially after what she had been through tonight.  "I'll ask Willow to scry for them as soon as she gets to a stopping point," she answered.

      Angel nodded, thankful for the offer, and it seemed to be genuinely good enough for him, since the lines of worry faded from his face, and he looked at Buffy as though suddenly seeing her for the first time.

      Before she could react, she was suddenly being crushed in his arms, and she could feel her feet leaving the ground as he drew her deeper to his chest.  However hard the years had been on his mind, they had certainly done nothing to his muscles.  Not caring who was looking, Buffy braced her thighs on the sides of his to support her lower body.  She grinned and closed her eyes as Angel whispered into her ears.  "You have no idea how much I've missed you."  Buffy simply breathed deeply and murmured something into his ear about telling her later.  She had not come back to life.  This was not Earth.  This was Heaven.

            *           *           *           *           *

      COMING SOON: Chapter 9, "The Welcome Party."  Faith, Kate, and Janna's first meeting with the rest of the gang is short-lived; the Mohra demons haven't given up yet; the Order of Turaca begins to assemble in Sunnydale; more hints of a new power in town emerge; Willow and others continue to build up the Summers' house's defenses; Buffy and Angel get a little bit of time to talk by themselves.

      I realize this chapter was definitely on the long side even for me.  Are they too long and cumbersome to read?

      As always, I always appreciate feedback, about anything—plot, style, character, length, anything.


	9. The Welcome Party

      DISCLAIMER:  We both know I don't own Buffy, Faith, or any of the other characters that are making Joss Whedon and his corporate sponsors/affiliates rich.  If I did, this whole college tuition thing would be much less of an issue.

      Also, this is my first Buffy fanfic, so be nice.

      ANTI-DISCLAIMER (would that be just a "claimer?"): Some of these characters ARE my own creation, as well as many elements of the setting.  Use your head.  If it never appeared in anywhere in the Kenshin series, then it's probably mine.  Not that anyone cares but me.

      SPOILERS/BACKGROUND:  Everything from Season 1 to Season 5 and Angel Season 1 to Season 2; this picks up after S5/S2.

            *           *           *           *           *

      CHAPTER 9:

      THE WELCOME PARTY

      The air rang with the brazen clash of steel on steel as Faith turned the Mohra Lord's lunge aside into the rear end of the car.  She had been hoping the shock would throw the weapon from its hands, but his grip was strong.  Nevertheless, the shock as the repelling field around Kate's car threw the weapon out of position was enough for Faith to press her advantage.  She scored two cuts in quick succession before he could recover his balance, which reassured Faith for a moment that they were vulnerable, but no more.  The creature did not appear to even feel it.

      They circled, hacked, parried, and dodged for several minutes, and Faith felt the fire that had burned in her when she had believed Janna had been hurt returning, only burning whiter, cleaner, this time.  Her blows were getting stronger and stronger, she realized, even though her body felt like it was getting tired.  It was like there was no connection between how she was feeling and how she was fighting.  She had vaulted over the thing's head three times already, once without even using anything else as a platform first, and was driving him here and there at will.  Her lips compressed as she watched his cuts heal; she remembered Janna saying that they regenerated, and apparently the Lord regenerated faster.  Then again, had it not been for that power, she would have left pieces of him flopping on the pavement well before now.  As it was, he didn't seem to be getting tired earlier.  It occurred to her that if adrenaline or whatever it was wasn't sustaining her, he might have left little pieces of her flopping on the pavement as well.

      The sound of Kate's car engine revving to life again reached Faith's ears, but she had no attention to spare, and neither did her opponent.  This turned out to be a good thing for Faith, as the Mohra Lord suddenly fell to one side as the car backed into him, throwing him to the pavement.  Kalia whirled and sparked, and for the first time, Faith saw the energy arc out behind her swing that the blade had done for Angel back in Los Angeles.  The Mohra Lord's head rolled away and nearly rolled down a storm drain.

      "Faith!  Get in!"  Janna's voice suddenly reached Faith's ears.

      Faith turned.  Janna was driving Kate's car.  She had eased the wounded Kate over to the passenger seat.  Faith grimaced.  That meant she was getting the back.  Well, there was no help for it.  At least Janna was in the driver's seat now.  She climbed in and shut the door behind her.

      "Don't wipe off Kalia!" Janna said just as Faith was about to start wiping the blade clean of the greenish-yellow blood on it.  It didn't seem to be damaging the blade any more than normal blood, but she wasn't about to take chances.

      "Not on my seats!" Kate groaned, though a lot of the fire seemed out of her.

      Janna grinned.  "Here, pass it around through here."  She indicated a narrow space between the side of the glass divider and the wall of the car.

      Puzzled, Faith handed the weapon up to Janna, hilt first, and she strained her arm around to clasp it.  After drawing it through, she held it in one hand as she drove.  "And a piece of your shirt, too, if you could."

      "Say _what?_"

      "Please, just trust me."

      _Oh, what the hell,_ Faith thought.  Janna had bought the shirt for her anyway.  She tore off her right sleeve and handed it up to Janna.

      Janna immediately began wiping a little bit of blood off the blade, just as she had told Faith not to do.  Faith said as much, and Kate added in as strong a voice as she could muster, "I'd like to know … what you're doing … too."

      Janna's lips compressed.  "You're losing a lot of blood.  There's no time to get you to a hospital, and even if we could, that leg would never be right again."  She was moving her hand with the bloodied sleeve towards Kate's cut and bleeding leg.  Kate shied away.

      "Please," Janna tried to placate her.  "We trusted you when we were in your care.  Try to trust us, too.  We're on the same side."

      Kate's hand was moving towards the door latch.

      "If you do that," Janna said sternly, "I'll stop this car and we'll do this in the street.  Those things are still out there, and I'm not going to let you die."

      Kate clearly had forgotten about the demons out there, which showed how afraid of the blood she truly was.  Janna pointed to the red light on the dash that indicated the presence of the supernatural nearby to emphasize her point.  Eventually, Kate simply closed her eyes.

      Janna put the cloth with the blood against Kate's leg, taking advantage of a red light to give it all her attention for a moment.  She wrapped it once around and knotted it loosely, making sure as much of the blood as possible touched Kate's wound.  Kate gasped as Janna worked, and Faith leaned forward to watch.

      The cut began to contract immediately.  It was almost like watching her get wounded in reverse.  Kate felt it for a moment, then opened her eyes in vivid surprise.

      "Leave it on for a few minutes," Janna cautioned as they started to move again.  "Make sure it gets all the way to the bone."

      "That … blood will fix this?" Kate's voice was steadier already, and it was clear that she was not feeling any more than a fraction of the pain that she had a moment ago.

      Janna actually laughed.  "Mohra Lord blood?  If you know what you're doing with it, you can repair anything with it.  Watch."  She held up Kalia, and a sudden surge of power coursed down the blade.  Janna's eyes blazed, and the air in the car rippled.  Faith and Kate both closed their eyes.  When they opened them again, the formerly shattered front windshield looked brand new, and there wasn't a drop of blood anywhere on the front seat.

      "Wow."  It was the only thing Faith could think of to say.  

Janna grinned.  "Not really my specialty, but it gets easier with something like that."  She passed Kalia back to Faith.  There was not a drop of blood on it.

      "Ugh," Kate said.  "You realized you just wasted something that could heal fatal wounds on my windshield?"

      Faith shrugged impishly.  "That's all right.  We need more, I can always go get some."

      Kate actually smiled wanly, and shook her head, but Janna actually took the remark more seriously.

      "That's actually true," the Gypsy woman said.  "His knights will reattach his head shortly.  They probably already have."

      "All right, Frankenstein-ish much," Faith grimaced.

      "It's OK.  If you'd really killed it, more would have come."

      "Yeah, I heard that part.  So is there any way to kill them without tripping that little catch?"

      "Several, sort of.  The only permanent one is to keep them away from salt until they starve; they need a lot of it to survive.  That can be done, but it isn't easy around here, so near the coast.  They've probably got a lot stored around the city, too, if they plan on staying a while."

      "Wonderful."

      "Should be elementary for you, right?" Janna grinned.

      "Right."

      "Faith," Kate interrupted suddenly, turning back and meeting Faith's eyes with something other than suspicion for the first time.

      "Yeah?"

      "I'm sorry."

      Faith was silent for a moment, then a smile spread across her face.  "Me, too."

            *           *           *           *           *

      "Drakon, good to see you again!" Glory greeted the new arrival cheerfully, though of course she could have cared less whether he was alive or dead.

      "Great One, it has been some time.  Centuries."  The speaker was a tall batlike creature with dark brown and grey hide.

      "Is that all of you, then?" Glory asked.

      "More than likely," Hascinth answered quickly, surveying the demons assembled in the room.  There were nine of them altogether.  "Maybe a few stragglers will come in from other parts of the continent in a while."

      "Akhen-apep is dead," Drakon hissed.  "I saw him and his servants in a ditch on the way in."

      "Figures," Glory pouted.  "Oh well.  It was only an avatar, so there will be another before long."

      "And something else," Drakon added.  "There are Mohra demons in town.  A revenge squad."

      "Really?" Glory seemed genuinely interested.  "I might actually want to talk with them.  Or kill them.  Their blood could be helpful."

      "Dangerous game," one of the other demons, a doglike mass of black fur and fangs, snarled.

      "Really?" Glory repeated, though with far less interest.  Suddenly, she was standing behind the other creature, and he froze in fright, sure he had made a fatal mistake.  Glory simply walked two fingers up the side of his face, however.  "I'm dangerous, too, you know."

      "Of course, Your Eminence," the other demurred.  Glory was instantly back where she had been a moment earlier.

      "Could you see where they were staying?  Or going?" she asked.

      "They looked like they might have been going toward the Slayer's place."

      Glory threw up her hands.  "Why am I not surprised?  Man, that little blond bitch just gets on everyone's nerves, doesn't she?"

      "That little redheaded witch is living there now, too," another offered.  "Word is that she might be capable of taking out a Mohra or two."

      "Or ten," Glory corrected him with a shrug.  She went to the window, and looked out in the direction of the Summers home.  "Psion, what have you got for me"

      Another demon stepped forward from the crowd.  He was humanoid, but had metallic silver-blue skin and several crests of metallic flesh folding around his skull.  "I've only been here for three hours, Your Eminence," he said, "but I've already felt more power than I felt in three decades in Cleveland.  The air is alive with it."

      "Right.  How about the more specific version?"

      Psion stiffened momentarily, then visibly forced himself to relax again.  "Four major power surges since entering town," he said, "I could feel them with no help at all.  There's the power at the Slayer's house, which has Willow Rosenberg all over it.  She's a lot more powerful now than she was even at the time of the Slayer's supposed death.  Then there was one in the swanky area on the waterfront, I have no idea what that one was about.  The most recent was a little way from the Summers' house, in that neighborhood.  Maybe something to do with Drakon's Mohras.  Not as strong as the others.  The last was a summoning spell of some kind I've never seen or heard tell of before, at the library a little while before that."

      "What?" Glory said suddenly, clearly startled, and everyone in the room jumped back a step.

      "That was where I saw Apep," Drakon hissed.

      "Yes," Glory murmured, turning to look at the window.  "And he was going to get my Key."

      Psion suddenly seemed to understand what she was getting at; he was the most learned of the group, though none of them were ignorant.  "Your Eminence?  Are you suggesting … the Key is becoming self-aware?"

      "That's not possible," Glory said, wheeling around, though even those in the room who had no idea what she was talking about could tell that that Psion had guessed precisely what she was thinking.  "The Key can't think.  It's a tool.  A _thing._  It doesn't matter what it looks like.  All it is a little green ball of energy.  That bleeds and whines a lot, now, but nothing more."

      "Maybe I should have a closer look into whatever spell those monks used to give it form," Psion said.

      "No maybe.  Do it," Glory said.  Psion bowed and left the room.

      "All right, gentlemen, time to get to work," Glory said cheerfully.  "You two, go find out about whatever it was he was talking about near the shore.  You two, take the disturbance near the Summers' house.  You three, find those Mohras and let them know I'd like to have a little chat with them, and maybe eat one or two of them for dinner.  I'll take the library myself.  Hascinth?"

      "Yes?" he asked, inserting as an afterthought, "Your Eminence?"

      "Stay here and hold down the fort.  I'm expecting someone, so I'd like someone to be here to meet him.  But if you have time, there's a little convenience store on the corner and we're out of coffee."

      Hascinth seethed.  "Yes, Your Eminence," he grated, obviously feeling rather humiliated for an elite assassin.

      Glory's face became even more ditzy, if that were possible, but her words carried a deadly serious message behind them.  "Just keep in mind that you failed me once," she reminded him.

            *           *           *           *           *

      "This is taking too long," Angel breathed restlessly.

      "Don't worry about it, these things take time," Buffy reassured him.

      "Uh … actually, he may have a point," Tara interjected hesitantly.  "It never usually takes this long for Willow to find someone, particularly someone she knows, especially if they're powerful."

      "See?"

      "OK, new girl, not helping here."

      Tara lowered her eyes.  "Sorry."

      "I think we should go out and look for her."

      Buffy threw up her hands.  "And where would you start?"

      Angel shrugged.  "Just back along the path we took from the freeway to here."

      "That may not be such a good idea, you know," Tara answered.  "You know, if Glory's minions are still out there …"

      "… Then we need to make sure Faith and Jenny get here before Glory comes up from L.A.," Angel finished.

      Tara sighed, and shook her head nervously.

      The sound of Willow's bedroom door opening upstairs diverted their attention.  One look at Willow's expression told them that not all had gone as planned.

      "I don't understand it.  I can't find them anywhere."

      "Could that mean they're …?"  Angel left the question hanging in the air; there was no need to finish it.

      Willow shook her head.  "I think I'd have felt it if something like that happened.  There are power surges all over Sunnydale right now, though, I haven't ever felt anything like it—which is saying something in this town.  It's … I guess it's like it's interfering with the reception."

      "I'm going," Angel said flatly, grabbing his coat from the couch.

      "Wait, all right, fine, then I'm coming with you," Buffy called.

      "Buffy, someone needs to stay here and protect the others."  There was no doubt that he was referring to one specific other in particular.

      Buffy eased over to him slowly as though acquiescing.  Suddenly, she twisted, and before Angel knew what had hit him, he was on his knees with an arm pinned behind his back, and Buffy's other arm around his neck.

      "All right listen, you brooding hero," she grated into his ear.  "If those two really have run into something that a Slayer really can't handle by herself, just what exactly did you plan on doing without me?"

      The others in the room had all taken a few steps back, and half were looking at her with stunned faces, but Buffy noticed, to her surprise, a veiled spark of approval in the eyes of group that had come up with Angel, even from Cordelia.

      "All right, fine, I don't have time to argue, let's just go," Angel resigned.

      "If you'd continued arguing, you'd have ended up having to make time," Buffy answered, releasing him.

      "I'd come, but Giles and Wesley should be all set up for the next protection ritual by now," Willow added.

      "No, Will, it's fine, keep it up … unless you're getting burned, in which case, don't kill yourself.  Keep an eye on Dawn.  She'll probably need another cup of chai here in a few minutes."

      Willow grinned.  "I'll take care of it.  Go get Jenny."

            *           *           *           *           *

      "Are you sure they aren't tracking us?" Kate asked.

      "I can't feel anything.  I think they've fallen back for the moment.  The captain will need time to get back to full strength.  I think."

      "You think?"

      Janna pointed at the magic-detector on Kate's dashboard.  "There's so much power in the air right now, it's hard to make heads or tails of what's going on.  Of course, they'll be having the same trouble."

      "They're not on us," Faith reaffirmed.  "I think my spider-sense works differently.  At least, I don't feel out of whack, anyway."

      "I believe you," Janna agreed.

      "What about tracking us … some other way?" Kate's implication was fairly clear.

      Janna shook her head.  "I cloaked the car.  Add that to all the other things going on around here, and it would take an oracle to find us that way right now."

      "Then why is the reading getting stronger?"

      "Eh?"

      "That," she said, pointing at a blue gauge on the dash.

      Janna's brow furrowed as she looked at it.  "It does look like something's getting closer, doesn't it?"

      Faith's hand tightened around the hilt of Kalia.

      "I'm going to pull over," Janna said.  "Miss Lockley, can you drive?"

      "I … sure," Kate answered.

      "I'm going to need to concentrate.  I'll take the back.  Faith, you look like you're a little antsy being back there, you take the front."

      Kate looked a little antsy herself at that, but made no objection.  They did a Chinese fire drill and took their new seats.  Faith turned around to watch Janna, whose eyes were growing distant.  Kate already had the map to the Summers' house on the monitor, and was only too glad to accept when Janna asked that they proceed a little more slowly for a few minutes.

      "I'll take the side streets in," she said.  "We'll get there from the other side."  She clearly wanted attention to spare for her own equipment in the front seat.  She was apparently not completely ready to trust the Gypsy woman or the Slayer yet.

      They did not speak to each other for another few minutes.  Faith fidgeted with the hilt of her sword.  Janna was concentrating inward, and Kate's eyes were alternately on the road or on the indecipherable array of lights and gauges on the dashboard.  The neighborhood looked quiet, but Faith had been through too many quiet neighborhoods to mistake that for safety.  It had never ceased to amaze her how gifted people were at ignoring what was right under their noses.

      "Is it still coming closer?" Faith asked.

      "Yeah … not so fast now as it was out on the main road, like it slowed up when we did, or …"

      "Or it isn't moving at all, and we're just coming up on it," Janna said suddenly, with a light laugh.  "Come on, let's just get there.  It's at the house.  Willow at work."

      Faith let out a relieved breath.  She was not in the mood for another fight before she got there.  That wasn't to say she wasn't in the mood for another fight, but she wanted to meet everyone first.  There would be time for more hunting later.

      "You sure it's her?" Faith asked, just to cover it.

      "Positive.  I'd know her magic anywhere."  She gave a pointed look at Faith, and Faith remembered that Janna and Willow's spirits had actually merged when they restored Angel's soul, before Faith had come to Sunnydale.  Janna did add in a lower, almost wondering voice, however, "God, that's girl's grown."

      "Yeah, Angel was telling me she was getting stronger."

      "He wasn't kidding."

      "I hate to butt in," Kate interrupted, "but _why_ exactly is this friend … I assume she's your friend … having to use so much magic right now?"

      "I have no idea," Janna answered.  "But she wasn't under attack or anything.  This was too steady to be a battle."

      Kate nodded.  "Good enough."

      It was only a few more blocks to the Summers' house, and they rode the rest of the way in silence.  Faith felt her spirits lifting every block.  She hadn't realized how much she had wanted to see the whole group together again.

      "That's the one," she pointed as they turned onto Revello Drive.  The Summers' home was a typical two-story suburban home, with a spacious front porch, white walls, and a manicured lawn.  Several cars were parked outside; Faith recognized Giles' and Willow's.  Despite the time of night, most of the lights in the house were on, and there were clearly people moving around inside, though Gunn's car was not there, so it looked as though the others hadn't arrived yet.  There was also something else in the air around this place, and Faith wondered if she might not be sensing some of what Janna was sensing; the air seemed to resonate with the feel of … something.  Faith could not put her finger on it well enough to describe it, but for some reason it definitely reminded her of Willow.

      There was one space left in the driveway.  Kate drove up to it.

      "Wait … please … just park by the curb," Janna suddenly said softly.

      "Janna?  You all right?" Faith asked.

      "Please!"  Her voice was much more insistent.

      Kate stopped just as she was about to pull into the driveway, and turned to give a long, questioning look at the Gypsy woman.  Eventually, she shrugged and backed up, parking at the curb.  The doors opened, and the three women disembarked onto the sidewalk.

      Kate and Faith immediately began up the front walk, but Janna stayed behind.  Faith stopped, and a moment later, so did Kate; apparently, she did not want to be the first one to ring the doorbell.  She was carrying the strange gun that she had fired at Faith at their first meeting, and Faith was carrying Kalia.

      "You know, we probably don't want to be standing out here like this," Kate rasped impatiently.

      "Janna?" Faith asked slowly.

      "Why … can't I … see …?"  The faerie woman's eyes were still tinted with violet, and she was staring off into space.

      "Janna?!" Faith asked again, more insistently.

Her attention was distracted at that point, however, by the sound of the front door opening.  A whole throng of figures were coming out onto the lawn.  Faith turned and saw Cordelia, Gunn, and Fred there, so she suddenly realized that Angel must have arrived already as well.  There was no sign of either him or Buffy, though.  Or of Giles, for that matter.  The blond girl that Faith had met while borrowing—well, OK, borrowing with the intent to keep—Buffy's body was there, as were Xander and his girlfriend; Faith couldn't remember her name, if she had ever heard it at all.

"Hey everyone!" Faith called.

"Hello again!" Gunn's greeting rang out above the general tumult; everyone was trying to talk at once.

"Kate?!" Cordelia's eyes were wide.  "Just when did you join this little party?"

"And hey, Jenny, where'd your ride go?" Gunn called out to the Gypsy woman, still at the end of the walk.  Then, in response to Cordelia's outburst, his eyes focused on Kate.  "And good question, who's the woman with the phasor-gun?"

Faith tried to think of a place to begin, and came up completely blank.  "I think we've got a lot of catching up to do," she said.  "Where'd B and Angel go?"

      "Uh … they went out to look for you, about ten minutes ago," Xander said.  "You didn't pass them?"

      "No, we took the back roads in, after the Mohras." Faith answered.

      "The what?"

      "We were attacked."

      That started everyone talking at once again.  Faith held up a hand to try quieting them down, without much success.  "We need to talk to Giles.  Is he here?"

      "He and Willow and Wesley are down in the basement," Tara answered.  "They've been working protective magics over the house ever since you called."

      "And one of them is keeping me out," Janna called.

      "What?" Faith and several others said simultaneously as they turned to face her.

      As if to emphasize her point, Janna stretched her arm out in front of her.  A ripple formed around and in front of her hand, as though she were pressing against an invisible, unbreakable bubble.  She flinched and withdrew her hand a moment later.  "Strong, whatever it is.  She did this all herself?"

      "Most of it," Tara answered.  Then her voice steadied.  "Why … are you not human?"

      Janna shrugged.  The question clearly made her uneasy.  She let her silence stand as a confirmation.

      "The wards are designed to keep out and weaken supernatural creatures," Tara explained.

      Janna nodded.  "Which means I won't have my powers even if I cross the threshold."  She took a deep breath.  "Anything else?"

      "I … don't think so, not unless she added something else.  They're working on an earth-hardening spell right now to keep anything from digging under the house, so I doubt that will bother you.  I don't think she knew."

      "I didn't have time to tell her," Janna agreed.  "But it won't attack me if I get across?"

      "It shouldn't … but we were probably going to add that tomorrow," Tara admitted.

      "Right," Janna mused.

      "Miss Calendar, what happened to you?" Xander asked.

      Janna laughed.  "A lot."

      "It's all right, really, Willow can make an exception for you," Tara added.  "She already made one for Dawn and Angel."

      "How long will that take?"

      "Only an hour or two, once she gets done with whatever she's doing now."

      "Fair enough," Janna answered.  "I'll go try and find the others in the meantime.  Did they say where they were going?"

      "Back towards the highway, figuring they'd meet you along the way," Xander answered.

      Faith suddenly clapped her hand to her forehead.  "Shit, they're going to run right into those things!"

      Janna's violet eyes widened as well, and she was clearly furious with herself that she hadn't realized that earlier.  "All right, hang on, I'll see if I can reach them."  She turned and cast her gaze in the general direction of the highway.

      "Uhh … what exactly is she doing?" Xander asked.

      "Hell if I know," Faith answered honestly.  "But she always seems to be right, so I let her work."

      "She gets visions?" Cordelia asked.

      "Something like that."

      "Do they hurt like hell?"

      "Not that I can tell."

      "Man, I'm going to have to ask her how she does that."

      Faith laughed.  "Do yours hurt?"  That would explain why she had looked rather subdued when Faith showed up at Angel Investigations.

      "No, I didn't say they hurt, I said they hurt like hell."

      "Gotcha."

      Janna suddenly turned around, a look of alarm on her face.  "I think they found them."

                        *           *           *

      "How much of a head start did they have on you?" Buffy asked as they pulled out onto the main street that ran through Buffy's neighborhood.

      "At least twenty minutes," Angel answered.  "Cordelia didn't seem to understand the meaning of the word 'hurry.'  And I would swear we never passed them, unless they stopped at a rest stop somewhere, or something else happened to them."

      "Or something else," Buffy repeated gloomily.

      "I'm sure they're all right," Angel said.  "Faith can take care of herself, and Jenny … well, she …"

      "… can always come back from the dead?"

      "Maybe," Angel said.  "You know, I never asked her how she did that."

      "You haven't even asked me how _I_ did that," Buffy observed pointedly.

      "I … well, I know, I just … well, I thought you might be a little uncomfortable talking about it."

      Buffy grinned.  "Hmm, it sounds like it might actually be you a little uncomfortable hearing about it."

      "I'm content to just accept it as a miracle and let it go at that."

      "Works for me," Buffy said.  "Except for the whole memory issue."

      "Memory issue?"

      "Miss Calendar didn't tell you?" Buffy asked.

      "We … sort of left in a hurry, I guess, after we heard you were … well, here."

      "Understandable," Buffy said.  "But listen, you need to hear this.  I'm … younger.  My last real memory is fighting the Master in the underground church at the end of my sophomore year."

      Angel's eyes widened.  "So you don't remember …?"

      "I'm starting to," Buffy answered.  "Willow worked some magic to make it so I can remember things when I think about them.  In another couple of months, I'll probably be back to normal.  Mostly."  The last was an addition as she thought about the complete memory blank surrounding Dawn, and the fogginess around all the events since Dawn had come into her former life, no matter how hard she thought about them.

      "So do you remember …?"

      "What we did together?  What I did to you at the end of junior year?  Yeah," Buffy added, and for the first time, she was the one who sounded uncomfortable.  "I remember you, Angel.  I remember almost everything about you.  In fact, you're the main reason my memories are coming back so quickly.  I think even Willow was surprised.  But I can't stop thinking about you, and when one memory comes back, the others around it come back, too.  I remember my junior and senior years of high school much better than my freshman year of college, because you weren't there.  Same to that one day in L.A."

      "That … what?"

      "The one day in L.A. when you became human."

      Naked shock was painted across Angel's face.  "You … remember that?"

      "Yes, Angel, I remember that," she said, a dreamy look entering her eyes.  "It was kind of hard to forget."

      She gave a throaty chuckle as it became obvious that Angel would have been blushing furiously if there were any blood in his cheeks at all.  Angel sputtered to cover his embarrassment, "but it never actually happened!"

      "It happened, Angel.  You remember it.  I remember it."

      "The Powers That Be shifted the entire history of this world back a day just to get rid of that day!"

      "I wasn't in this world at that time," Buffy pointed out.  "That's why I can't remember Dawn.  Nothing that happened from people messing with time in this world affected me after I … well, wasn't in this world anymore."

      "You remember," Angel said, an almost wondering expression in his eyes.

      Suddenly, his hands tensed on the steering wheel.  "Oh, crap … I think they remember, too."

      Buffy turned to look, and her knuckles suddenly bleached on the grip of her dagger.  There was a group of demons on the sidewalk ahead; they had apparently been heading away from the direction of her house, but having seen them, had turned to fight.  "You've gotta be kidding!" she grated.

      "Hang on!" Angel called, wrenching the steering wheel around.  The car spun and skidded, and nearly made a full U-turn in the middle of the empty street.  Unfortunately, as in so many other things, nearly wasn't quite good enough.

      The rear wheels were spinning wildly on the pavement as one of the demons dove and slashed the tire with his knife; his arm got crushed in the process, but the tire was completely gone.  Buffy and Angel heard the screech of metal on asphalt as the hubcap dipped onto the road.  The car swerved into the curb and dislodged a fire hydrant.  A geyser of water leapt into the air next to the battered front right corner of the car, and the car ground to a halt.

      "Plan B!" Angel called, and he and Buffy leapt from the car.  The other Mohra demons had been slower to react than their comrade, as several of them seemed to have been tending to wounds, but they had finally realized who they were dealing with.

      "It's him!  It's him!" they cried as they surged forward.

      "What are they talking about?" Buffy cried.

      "They're after me!" Angel hissed.  "I killed one of them, remember?"

      "Great," Buffy shouted back as she dodged the first blow leveled at her.  "And here I am with just a dagger."

      Angel wasn't in a position to answer.  There were ten of them, and only three were coming after her.  Six of the others were chasing Angel.  The last, larger than the others, stayed hidden in the shadows; he looked different somehow than the others, but Buffy had no attention to spare to give him a good look.  One of these things had been enough to give her a good fight in Los Angeles.

      "Don't break their gems!" was the last thing Buffy heard Angel shout before he was driven down a side alley, the Mohra demons in hot pursuit.

      "Right," Buffy answered, ducking the swing of the next Mohra's sword and turning aside the blade of the third on her dagger.  The force behind the blow staggered her backwards.

      "All right, I think we're going to need a bigger blade," Buffy thought aloud.  She twisted in under the thrust of the next one and delivered a stunning elbow blow to his exposed armpit.  A moment later, she had the demon's katana in her hand.

      "Much better," she observed.

      Even with the better blade, fighting three of them at once was a challenge, and there was no way she was going to be able to make a break to chase after the ones who had gone after Angel.  The Mohras were outstanding fighters, though they seemed to be a little slower than she remembered the one in Los Angeles being, as though they were still recovering from something.  Buffy noticed that there were holes in places on their armor.

      Suddenly, a shadow detached itself from the shadow of a streetlight and emerged into the light not twenty feet from where Buffy was fighting.  Buffy's eyes widened.  It was Jenny!

      "Miss Calendar!  Get out of here!"

      One of the Mohra demons had also seen her, however, and before Buffy could break away to get in between herself and the teacher, it had lunged over and swept his sword through the unarmed woman's neck.

      It passed through her as though she were only an illusion.

      It cost the Mohra his head, however, as Buffy swung free of the other two, momentarily tangling the morning star of one around the sword of the other.  She continued her spin and brought her blade crushing down on the back of the Mohra's neck.  His was not as immaterial as Miss Calendar's.  Buffy had put such force behind the blow that her spin barely slowed, and she carried her momentum around to swing back to facing the other two.

      "I'll ask later," she said to the older woman as she dove back to the attack.

      "I'm not really here," the woman answered.  "We're at your house.  We're on our way, just hang on!"

      "I'll meet you in the middle!" Buffy shouted as the woman's image faded.  She hoped the other woman had heard.  It was amazing how much fighting clarified her thinking; she probably would have just stood there and stammered embarrassingly if her old computer science teacher had done that in front of her normally, but in the heat of battle, especially in Sunnydale, you learned to just absorb those things as they came and keep on fighting, if you were interested in surviving.

      A commotion further up the street diverted Buffy's attention for a moment.  Angel had made his way back to the street; the demons were still chasing him.

      "Angel!  Back to base!  They made it!" she cried.

      "Right," he answered breathlessly.  Well, she supposed, everything he did was technically breathless, but this actually sounded like it.

      The battle raged on for another few minutes before Buffy was able to pick off another of the demons, thrusting her katana through a hole in the breastplate of the demon's armor.  Yellow-green blood spurted from the wound, and Buffy barely managed to pull her blade free as the demon collapsed.  The third tried to use the delay to bring his own sword swinging down on her from above, but she blocked it by getting her left arm on his wrist as he brought the blade down.  A moment later, her own was free again.

      "Two down," she grinned wickedly at the survivor.

      "They shall return," the other barked.

      "What a shame."

      "Unlike you," the demon spat as he lunged again.  Buffy turned the thrust aside, spun inside the attack, and the demon gave a snarl of pain as his arm and he were parted.  A moment later, he fell to the ground.

      "Why not?  Already done it twice," she smirked.

      A staggering blow suddenly crashed into her back and lifted her into the air, and she flew more than ten feet out into the street before she landed.  Stars swam in front of her eyes, and she had to drive the point of her katana into the street just to leverage herself to a sitting position.  There was a loud metallic clanging and rolling sound as the fire hydrant rolled away further down the street.  The last of the demons had detached itself from the shadows and had decided to join the fight—and was apparently strong enough to use fire hydrants as dodgeballs.

      The thing closed on her quickly, and she didn't have time to get all the way to her feet; she was off balance as the demon, which she could now see looked like the others only larger and with a reddish tint to its skin, brought its pole-axe down on her sword.  She had to roll out of the way of its next blow, and the axe chipped fragments of the street away where she had been lying a split-second earlier.  She tried to get to her feet before he could raise the weapon again, but her legs were not obeying her commands and her spine was in agony.  The demon didn't bother to raise the axe again.  It leveled a kick into her abdomen as she got back to her hands and knees, and she skidded and rolled across the pavement, only barely stopping herself from sliding right into the side of Gunn's car.

      She tried to wrestle herself to her feet, but neither her arms nor her legs were reacting anymore.  All she managed to do was roll over onto her back.  The demons' leader was standing over her, raising its pole-axe above and behind its head for one final executioner's blow.

      "You'd better hope I don't come back," she spat.  Her voice was ragged, however, despite the emotion behind it.

      The demon only grinned and let his axe descend.

      A red blur shot through the air right through the demon's hands on the way down, and the demon let out a startled cry of pain and rage.  His axe flew out of his hands, and he stepped back and swung around, gripping his left hand painfully.  There was a familiar metallic rolling sound as the same fire hydrant that had rolled away down the street rolled away in the other direction, stained with the iridescent blood of the demon from where it had crushed the skin and bone of the thing's hands on its way by.

      Buffy arched her back to look in the direction from which the hydrant had come.  It meant that she was looking upside down, but it was the best she could do.

      A green spur of metal flashed by her eyes just as she was turning her head, and she flinched, though it was heading in the direction of the demon, who was too surprised to react.  It caught him right in the chest, and he screamed in a harsh, inhuman cry, blood spurting from both his chest and back where the spur of metal had passed straight through him.  He toppled backwards, the top end of a stop sign still protruding from his chest.

      A feminine figure was approaching her from up the street, a woman seemingly made entirely of argent light, though Buffy was upside down and her vision was still dazed and unfocused.  She looked familiar somehow, even though only her shining silhouette was visible.  As the woman came nearer, she could see that a slender sword was clasped in the woman's right hand, and that she was not actually made of light, but just surrounded by an aura of some kind, as though her skin were just a clear cover over a vessel of stars.  The light faded as the woman approached even closer and seemed to realize that the demon was not getting up, and Buffy recognized her.

      "Faith!" she breathed, though it was a bit hoarse to be actually called breathing.

      "Oh God, B!" the younger woman breathed, kneeling over her and running her hands over her to see if she could find anything broken.  "Man, you look like hell."

      "Thanks," Buffy answered.  Then something else came to her mind, and she suddenly struggled to get to a sitting position.  "Wait … Angel!"

      "Hey, wait a minute, you're in no position to be playing heroine right now, all right?" Faith said, helping the sunny-haired Slayer to a sitting position but not letting her get any further.

      "There's six of those things after him," Buffy breathed.  The effort of trying to talk straight and hide how weak she was was only weakening her further, but she was determined to push herself to the limit.

      "I know, we saw them on the way in."

      "Is he all right?  Did he get away?"

      "He'll be fine," Faith reassured her.  "Come on, let's get you patched up."

      Buffy laughed haggardly.  "Easier said than done, I think."

      Faith gave a mock-knowledgeable look.  "Tsk, tsk.  Nonsense, nonsense.  We've got a Mohra Lord here, after all."

      "A what?  You know this thing?"

      "Of course," Faith answered casually, getting to her feet and leaving Buffy to fend for her own devices for a moment.  Buffy tried to prop herself up on her hands to watch the other Slayer, but had taxed herself too much already and simply fell to the street again and watched from a prone position.  Faith had her sword out again, and was walking up to the Mohra Lord, who was still conscious and trying to remove the stop sign from his chest with his crushed hands.

      Faith stood over him and smiled, tapping her sword on her shoulder thoughtfully.

      The demon looked up at her and recognized her.  "Oh, not ag …" the last word was cut off as the demon's head went flying from its neck for the second time that night.

      "Faith … what are you …?" Buffy asked weakly.  She was fading quickly, and as well as she had hid it a moment ago, she was worried that she wasn't going to wake up if she blacked out now … or at least, she was worried about ending up in a coma.

      Faith seemed to sense the weakness in her voice at this point, because a look of alarm spread across her face.  "No, you don't!" she said, in an unfamiliar note of command, leaping over and propping Buffy up into a sitting position against the side of the car.  "Stay awake, just a few minutes, all right?  Focus!  Listen to me!  Keep fighting, just a moment!"

      Faith's intensity, as well as the fact that she had said almost the same thing earlier to Dawn, reached Buffy.  She concentrated on her breathing, and did her best to focus her eyes in front of her.

      "All right," Faith said a moment later, and turned around back to the demon's corpse.

      Suddenly, to Buffy's total surprise, the dark-haired Slayer peeled off her shirt.

      "Faith?!" Buffy asked nervously.  The shock had wiped out the brief period of focus.

      "Stay with me," Faith answered as she began soaking her shirt in the iridescent blood of the Mohra Lord.

      Buffy suddenly understood, the memories of that day forgotten by everyone else coming back to her.  "Of course … its blood heals …"

      "You know your demons," Faith confirmed, returning to kneel by the injured Slayer with her shirt gleaming with the yellow-green blood of the Mohra Lord.  She lifted up Buffy's shirt and began to wrap her own gently around the sunny-haired Slayer's torso.  "You're lucky, it looks like that hydrant got more ribs than spine," Faith added.

      Buffy accepted this wordlessly, marveling at the feel of the makeshift bandage.  The blood felt coarse and slimy on her skin, but there was no denying the way it felt throughout her body.  She could literally feel her ribs, at least four of which had to have been broken, repairing themselves with each breath she took.  Her breathing became heavier as the tingling spread throughout her body, but it also became more even and wasn't hurting as much.

      "Wow," she breathed as soon as she had a breath to spare.

      Faith smiled, and a tension seemed to fade from her shoulders that Buffy hadn't even noticed was there.  With a start, a mischievous smile spread across Buffy's face.  "You were really worried about me, weren't you?"

      "Don't make me re-hurt you."

      Buffy donned her most adorable pouting expression.  "I just wanted to give you a compliment on your wonderful nursely abilities.  You're such a wonderfully caring person."

      "All right, I can deal with blood, but you're going to make me throw up here in a sec."

      "First you show up all glowy, then you're working miracle cures, you're just a regular guardian angel."

      "Yeah, whatever … glowy?"

      "Yeah … weren't you?"

      "I don't seem to remember glowing."

      "When you first showed up?"

      "Hmm."  Faith fell strangely silent for a moment, and her eyes grew distant.  She came out of it a moment later, though.  "I've been feeling something different under my skin when I've been fighting lately.  Maybe it's more than just more adrenaline."

      Buffy shrugged.  "Or maybe I was just seeing things, being only, you know, half-conscious?  Anyway, we can ask Giles about it in the morning.  It was really cool, by the way."

      "Aww, don't make me blush."

      "You're sitting in the middle of Main Street without a shirt on, and _I'm_ the one making you blush?"

      "I've got a sports bra," she said with exaggerated modesty.  Then she grinned wickedly.  "And hey, if they were brave enough to stick around through that whole show, they deserve a good view."

      "Brave enough?  Or stupid enough, you mean?"

      "Men, stupid?  You _must_ be kidding," Faith said, a carefree gleam entering her smile.

      Buffy laughed.  "Touché."

      A car turned the corner off a cross street several blocks further up and came in their direction.  It was the first Buffy had seen since the fight began.  She let out a low whistle.  It was a sporty, silver Porsche, and the engine seemed to purr with power, though it was going well below the speed limit.  "I think you're attracting attention," she observed.

      "What?  Oh, that's my Watcher," Faith said with a grin.

      "Your _what?_"

      "That's Janna."

      "Miss Calendar?" Buffy said wonderingly.  "Where the heck did she get a hold of that?  And she's your Watcher?"

      "I haven't a clue, and yeah, as close as I've got," Faith admitted as the silver coupe pulled alongside them.  The door opened, and Janna leaned out with a playful grin.

      "Getting reacquainted, I see?" the Gypsy woman asked mischievously.

      Buffy flushed a furious shade of scarlet, but Faith only laughed.  "We really missed each other."  The color in Buffy's cheeks only deepened.

      "Anyway, Angel's fine, Kate's got him, they're heading back to the house."

      "Awesome," Faith answered.  Then she gave another look at Janna's coupe.  "You know, you might have wanted to send Kate for us, her car can hold more than two people."

      "Not sure she'd have been ready for that."

      "Good point."

      "It's only ten minutes back to the house, is it all right if you share?" Janna asked.

      Faith gave Buffy a roguish grin.  "Whattaya say, B?  You gonna make me walk?"

      Buffy groaned exasperatedly and rolled her eyes at the sky.  "Much as it would be funny to see you walk all the way back like that, I'm not quite that cruel.  Most days out of the month, anyway."

      "Excellent!" Faith answered.  She reached around and draped one of Buffy's arms over her shoulder, using that to help leverage the other Slayer to her feet.

      "Here, I've got spare clothes in the trunk, we never unpacked," Janna said, moving to get out of the car.

      "Forget it," Buffy said surprisingly, her voice steady again.

      "Oh?" Janna said with a questioning look.

      "Let's get out of here before the rest of them come back.  If Angel's gone, they're going to come after us."

      Janna actually looked worried at that, and cast a glance in her rearview.  Eventually, she shrugged, and her shoulders sagged.  "Good point.  Come on, let's get out of here."

      "You look disappointed," Faith observed.

      Janna gestured towards the headless Mohra Lord corpse as Faith helped Buffy around the front of the car to the passenger side door.  "I was planning on collecting some of that blood for later," the Gypsy woman admitted.  "It's priceless."

      Faith was about to tell her to go for it, but her danger sense was beginning to pick up again, and Janna also looked a little nervous.  "Might be worth a lot, but it isn't worth hanging out here over.  Come on, let's scram."

      Janna nodded.  Faith and Buffy tried to struggle into the passenger seat side by side, and while neither one of them was sporting any excess calories, it was still too narrow for the two of them.  Eventually, Buffy, as the shorter of the two, ended up sitting as awkwardly and unobtrusively as she could on Faith's lap.

      "All right, let's get out of here," Faith said before they were even fully situated.

      Janna had been growing more apprehensive in just the last few moments, and mouthed simply, "Gladly," as she turned the car and headed back towards the Summers' house.  Buffy kept one eye out the back windshield as they left the scene, and would have sworn she saw three additional inhuman shadows emerge from the alleys just as the Mohra Lord's corpse was about to fade from view.

            *           *           *           *           *

      The night was dragging onward, and the stars of the east were beginning to fade as the first shades of dawn began to lighten the eastern sky above the distant Sierra Nevadas, when the agents of the Order of Turaca began to trickle back into the deserted office building.  Glory had been back for some time; apparently, it had not taken her long to find everything she needed at the site of the duel by the library.

      "You wanted to see the Mohras, Your Eminence?" asked one of the trio who were the first to return.

      "Good memory, Adrazor."

      "This should bring them eventually.  They may be in a foul temper, but they usually are."  With that, he motioned to the other two, and they came forward and deposited a body wrapped in a blanket on the floor.  One of them pulled the cover back, revealing the decapitated body of the Mohra Lord.

      Glory grinned.  "Good work."

      "One more thing, Your Eminence.  He was beheaded by Faith.  She's in town, and wielding a faerie blade."

      "Is she really?" Glory asked, characteristically dismissive.

      Adrazor nodded and backed away, just as two others returned.

      "Don't tell me," Glory called as they entered without even turning to look at them.  "You found the site of a battle between the Slayers and those freak ninjas."

      "Pretty much," one of them answered.  "Though there seemed to be something else than Slayers involved.  Advanced technology of some kind, I think.  There was Mohra blood around but no humans, so I assume those 'freak ninjas' didn't perform so well."

      "Hmm, what a surprise," Glory answered contemptuously.

      "What now, Your Eminence?" Hascinth asked.

      "Pack it in and get some sleep, boys.  I'm expecting one more little friend to join us, he should get here by tomorrow evening.  If he does … tomorrow at sundown, we go to war.  It's time to get my Key."

      The light of battle entered the assembled eyes of the Turacans.  "And the Slayer," one of them hissed.  The light in the others' eyes only brightened.  There would be revenge at last.

            *           *           *           *           *

      COMING SOON: Chapter 10, "Of Gods and Men."  Glory has never been one for the exceptionally subtle approach.  A few more new arrivals return (from earlier seasons), and the battle is joined.

      **Warning!!**  Character death next episode!!


End file.
