Taking the Initiative

By Rainne

Copyright © 2003

Djgirl1978@bellsouth.net

PART ONE

Frustration was evident on the features of the young woman pacing back and forth in the courtyard of a small group of townhouses. "What do we know, Giles?"

"Unfortunately, not much," the older man replied. He sat on a bench near where the young woman paced, consulting the myriad books which were stacked on the bench next to him. "The Knights of Nho are not very well documented in many texts."

"But ironically, quite well in older British movies. You don't think they'd go away if we gave them a shrubbery, do you?" Xander quipped, grinning in the face of quelling glances from all around him. "Sorry," he added, not sorry at all. "I just can't pass up the Monty. I keep wondering if they're going to want us to chop down a tree with a herring."

"If you know what's good for you, you'll pass it up," Willow responded firmly, reaching for another book.

Xander sighed deeply and turned another page in his elderly volume. "Oh!" he exclaimed. "Knights of Nho! Here we are. Ugly, too." He held up the book to show everyone.

"That's them," Buffy confirmed, her left hand going automatically to her right shoulder, which was still in a sling after having been badly wrenched in a fight against one of these big uglies two nights before. "They're much bigger than the book says," she added.

"Ah," Giles said, taking the book. "I always knew this book would come in handy someday; otherwise I would have let your mothers burn it during that Hansel and Gretel debacle."

Willow rolled her eyes and lowed softly in the manner of a cow. "My mother still has temporary memory lapse when that little incident comes up."

Buffy sighed softly. "Mine always did, too."

Willow reached for her lover, pulling Buffy close to her and holding her tightly. "I miss your mom, too," she whispered. "She was more of a mother to me than mine ever could be." The two women held each other tightly for a long moment as Giles looked through the passage in his book.

"Here we are. The Knights of Nho are the servants of a demon who, appropriately enough, is named Nho. This demon is apparently in the habit of attempting to open various Hellmouths."

"Of course," Buffy stated drolly, rolling her eyes. "And how tired is that? For once, I wish we could get a demon that would try something different."

"Less with the wishes, Buffy," Xander urged. "For all we know, there's a vengeance demon around that likes nothing better than to fulfill idle Slayer wishes."

"Good point," Buffy answered with a grin. Then she raised her voice. "I wish all demons were the happy, friendly kind, that didn't open Hellmouths and that didn't kill people."

Willow snickered and poked her lover in the ribs. "Best of luck with that one."

With a shrug, the Slayer responded, "A girl can try," and leaned in for a kiss from her beloved.

"Yes, well, if we're done being incredibly silly," Giles interrupted in his best stuffy-Watcher voice, "we can get back to the when and how of this little escapade."

Buffy straightened immediately and put on her studious face. "Of course, Mr. Giles, sir. Right away, sir."

Giles groaned, covering his eyes with one hand. "Why do I even try?"

Willow reached over and deftly snagged the book out of Giles's hand. "According to this, the demon Nho is completely invulnerable to attack by any means except when he's opening the Hellmouth. When he's in the process of doing that, he has to focus all of his magickal energy on that task and so leaves himself open. All you have to do is get him while he's opening it."

"Yes, and then close it back again!" Giles added.

"Well, yeah, and then close it back again. But... we can do that." She paused uncertainly. "Can't we?"

"Congratulations, Willow!" Xander chirped. "You're the ninety-sixth caller! As your prize today, you get to do the spell that closes the Hellmouth back again after the Knights Who Say Ni open it and Buffy beats them all to death with a herring."

Giles opened his mouth to say something, most probably to snap at Xander's humor by the expression on his face, and then suddenly he subsided. "In spite of Xander's obvious flippancy," he stated quietly, "that about sums it up."

There was a long moment of silence. Then Buffy spoke, carefully, in the manner of one attempting to avoid starting an avalanche with the sound of her voice. "Did... you just say that... Xander was right?"

Giles blinked. "Yes, I suppose I did."

"Wow," Willow said, blinking. "Go, Xander."

"Hey, score one for me!" Xander exclaimed, his grin widening. "I always knew I'd come in handy someday."

Buffy shook her head. "Okay. So once this thing is opening the Hellmouth, how do I kill it?"

"That's the problem." Giles retrieved the book from Willow and held it out to Buffy, who took it and began to read. Her eyes grew larger with each line of text and when she had finished, she looked up at him with an indescribable expression on her face. "Oh, man, Giles..." she choked out. "Gross."

"So at least we have some time to get ready for this thing," Willow said brightly as she and Buffy entered their home that night.

Buffy sighed. "I'm glad you can be so optimistic, and does it seem like the house is too quiet with everyone gone except for us?"

Willow nodded, glancing into the dark living room. She could just make out the sofa and the coffee table in the dim glow of the outside streetlight which filtered in through the curtains. "Yeah," she said softly. "There's no chatter, no noise, no music, no complaining, nothing... just us."

"Which, admittedly, is nice when I want to do things like ravish you on the sofa," Buffy commented in a low, teasing voice as she wrapped her arms around Willow's waist from behind and nipped at the nape of the witch's neck.

Willow shivered at Buffy's tone, leaning back into her lover's embrace. "Mmm," she groaned, feeling as she always did the wave of deep love that washed over her at Buffy's touch. "Sounds yummy."

Buffy grinned, licking the spot at the juncture of Willow's neck and shoulder that was so sensitive. "Doesn't it, though?" She nuzzled into Willow's neck and sighed in contentment. "Shower first?"

Willow nodded. "Definitely."

They raced one another up the stairs, through the upstairs hall and into their bedroom. There, giggling, they continued their accustomed competition to see who could get stripped and into the shower first. Tonight, Willow won as she so rarely did, thanks to Buffy's zipper getting stuck and the Slayer uncharacteristically losing her balance and falling over onto the bedroom floor. The naked witch leapt over her partner with a taunting "nah-nah-nah-nah-nah" and dashed through the door to claim the shower. She briefly considered locking the door behind her but discarded the idea, knowing that Buffy would join her momentarily and not wanting the Slayer to break the door down. Buffy would be cranky afterward, and that was never fun. Plus there would be the whole awkward explainy-thing when they asked Xander to fix it.

She ran the water, letting steam fill the bathroom from the hot water before adding cold to prevent boiling their skin off their bodies. She set out two large, fluffy bath towels on the counter and was checking the temperature on the water when Buffy joined her. "Mmm, nice and steamy," Buffy commented, nuzzling into the hollow behind Willow's left ear.

Willow giggled. "That tickles." Buffy grinned and licked the sensitive spot, which made the witch jump and let out an "eep!"

They moved into the shower then, letting the warm water run over them. Buffy soaped Willow's hair, gently massaging her scalp in the way the Slayer knew she liked. When she was done, Willow returned the favor. Then they moved on to the loofahs and the body wash, and from there to more intimate touches. Buffy gasped when her back made contact with the chilly tiles on the wall, but became used to the sensation soon enough as she needed the wall to hold her up while Willow's mouth worked magic between her legs. She wound her hand in the wet, dark red strands and encouraged her with moans and whimpers. As Willow's tongue slid up from cleft to clit, Willow's hands gripped the Slayer's waist tightly, holding her steady. Buffy's breath came short, and she found herself unable to say anything besides "Oh, God, Willow... oh, God, Willow..."

Willow, feeling much like a god as she grew lightheaded in her joy of Buffy, licked and nibbled at the Slayer's clit while moving one hand away from Buffy's hip, and felt Buffy's hand tighten in her hair as she stroked gently at the blonde's channel. "You want this, Buffy?" she whispered. "Is this what you want?"

"Oh, God... Willow... yes... please..."

Willow grinned, teasing Buffy's sensitive nub with her tongue. "Tell me."

"Will..." There was a warning tone to Buffy's moan.

"Tell me," Willow repeated firmly.

Buffy groaned, but she knew when Willow took that tone, there was no way around her. It wasn't often that her lover became dominant, and it was always in the subtle ways, like this, but when she did, she was implacable. "I need you inside me," she whispered finally. "Please, Will, I need to feel you inside me."

Willow smiled and slid one finger inside Buffy. "Like this, baby?"

"More..."

Willow added another finger to the first and briefly added her tongue back into the mix. "Better?"

Buffy couldn't respond. Her breath caught in her throat and her body was seizing up beneath her. She held tight to Willow's head as her orgasm flashed through her, and moaned her lover's name. Willow waited a moment, making sure the tremors had passed, then stood slowly and pulled the Slayer into her arms. "I love you, Buffy," she whispered.

"Oh, Willow... I love you, too."

They moved from the shower then and Willow wrapped Buffy in one of the towels and herself in the other. She led the Slayer back into their bedroom and together they sank into the welcoming embrace of their bed, where Buffy returned the favor. Finally, both sated, they snuggled together in anticipation of sleep.

"Buffy?" Willow's sleepy whisper floated up to the Slayer's ear.

"Yeah, baby?"

"We're gonna win this one, aren't we?"

"I'm sure we are. There's almost nothing to killing this thing, once you get... in position." Buffy shuddered.

Willow squeezed her more tightly. "I'm worried about this Hellmouth-closing business."

Buffy stroked the side of Willow's face gently, smoothing her hair back and laying a gentle kiss on her temple. "You'll do fine."

"But, what if –"

"Don't if," Buffy said firmly. "Just don't."

"But –"

"If a bullfrog had wings, he wouldn't bump his ass when he jumped," Buffy replied, drawing the words out in an imitation of Mercedes' Southern accent.

Willow giggled. "You sound just like her," the witch commented.

"Tried hard enough," Buffy replied sleepily. "Ought to."

"But I'm worried."

"Baby, you'll have Giles with you. He'll back you up every step of the way."

"But what about... what about him?"

Buffy blinked, trying to follow the conversation with only half a brain. "Who? Rothschear?"

Willow nodded, burying her head in Buffy's neck, trying to block out the mental image of Faith as a vampire. Faith having to be turned because of her own egotism and her certainty that she could handle anything, that the magicks of an ancient evil sorcerer were mere child's play for the greatest witch who'd ever lived. What cruel, cruel irony.

Buffy blinked the muzziness of sleep away for a few moments more. Willow was more important, and they could always sleep in the next day. "Honey. Rothschear is dead. Nicki killed him. Remember? She pulled him out of you, and she killed him."

"Maybe. Or maybe she just chased him off."

"Well, you'll have Giles. If that's your biggest concern, we'll talk to Giles about it, and we'll have him make a shield or something, to make sure you're not vulnerable to outside attack."

Willow turned this over in her mind for so long that Buffy thought she'd fallen asleep. The Slayer was about to do the same thing when Willow's voice came back out of the dark. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Okay." Buffy smiled and gently kissed Willow's forehead. "Go to sleep, baby."

"Okay."

And before too long, the moon shone through the curtains on the faces of two sleeping lovers.

PART TWO

Dakota was sitting at her desk rubbing her temples. "Nicki... what am I going to do with you?"

Nicki Roland was sitting across the desk from her, slumped in her chair and looking thoroughly abashed. "I –"

Dakota waved her hand. "Don't say anything. Please, Nicki... please don't say anything."

Nicki slumped even farther down in her chair, glanced out the window at some of her fellow Partner trainees, who were outside having an archery lesson, and sighed. I'm in for it this time, she mentally chastised herself. They're gonna send me back for sure now. Back to Council Bluffs. Probably back to the Hendersons. She shuddered.

Dakota sighed as well. "Nicki... do you not like it here?"

Nicki's head shot up. "No, Miss Dakota! I love it here!"

"You don't act like it. Every time I turn around, you're into something that causes incredible havoc. If it wasn't dangerous, I would just put you on kitchen duty like all the other times, and have done with it. But Nicki, you've broken the cardinal rule of the Academy. What am I supposed to do about that?"

Nicki felt her eyes sting, threatening to tear. No, wuss, don't cry. Don't you dare cry. She shrugged glumly and looked down at her lap, but not quickly enough for Dakota to miss the sudden shine in her eyes.

"Nicki... do you want me to send you back?"

Nicki's head shot back up again, and now the tears did fall. "Oh, God, Miss Dakota, please, please don't send me back. Please don't. Please. I'll do anything. I swear. Anything. Please don't send me back."

Dakota could see the stark terror on the child's face and wondered what was so bad at the foster home she'd come from. From stories she'd had from other Partner trainees they'd brought in, it could have been anything from having to share a bed with four other foster kids and never having enough to eat all the way up through severe mental, physical and sexual torture. It was a sad fact that the United States foster care system often took children from bad situations and put them in worse. She firmed her own mental conviction that no Partner trainee, no matter how badly behaved, would be returned to the States in the unlikely event of expulsion.

Unlikely. Yeah, right. Tell yourself another one, Walsh. This kid has got to shape up or ship out. You can't keep putting up with this. She's moved from mischievous to dangerous. She shook her head. "I won't, Nicki. I won't send you back. But something's got to happen here. I can't have you breaking the rules like this... I mean, this is flagrant. It's only been a month since the chaos here with Willow and Rothschear. I know you haven't forgotten it; you were instrumental in ending it. But here, just a month later, I walk into the book tower, a place where all students are forbidden to go, and what do I find? You. Nicki, those books are dangerous. And you know that. What possessed you? No, never mind, don't answer that." She bit off the rest of what she had intended to say. "Look, I've got to go talk to Faith. I can't make this decision alone. You stay here. I'll send someone in with some lunch for you, since you missed it."

Nicki nodded miserably and returned her attention to the archery lesson out the window.

A few minutes later, her best friend Nicole Roland slipped into the room, carrying a tray full of lunch for Nicki. "Are they gonna kick you out?" Nicole asked in a whisper.

Nicki shook her head miserably. "I don't think so. I don't know what they're gonna do. But Miss Dakota said she wouldn't make me go back there, so I guess it'll be okay."

Nicole squeezed her friend's shoulder in empathy before slipping back out of the office again, leaving the smaller girl alone with a lunch that she didn't really want.

"We've got to do something, but I don't know what."

"I have an idea."

Dakota raised her eyes. "Really? Please, share."

"Let's ask Giles." Faith grinned. "He knows everything. Hell, maybe we can even con him into taking the little brat for a while."

Dakota laughed. "It's worth a shot. God knows time apart would do wonders for her and Nicole. Nicole needs some time to study without being constantly distracted by Nicki and her 'scathingly brilliant' ideas."

Faith mentally calculated the time difference and decided that it would be all right to go ahead and call; a bit early in California, perhaps, but still within reasonable important-call hours. She lifted the phone and dialed.

"Hi, Giles? Faith... Good, how're you? How's everybody?... Yeah? Nho demon?... Never heard of it. Me and Kotie'll hit the books tonight. Speaking of the books, I gotta ask you a question... Yeah, it's one of the kids. Remember Nicki Roland, the one that broke the spell on Red?... yeah, she's a hella good witch, but she just can't stay out of trouble. Kotie caught her in the book tower this afternoon, couple of hours ago, and we're both at the end of our ropes, but Kotie doesn't wanna send the kid back. Kid begged her not to, it's probably worse back home than most anything we could do to her... Giles, she's done the standard punishment round almost non-stop. Kitchen duty, latrine duty, garden duty, extended overnight sentry duty, we've even, God help us, made her stand in the corner. Nothing works... I need a place to send her. She's gonna be an awesome Partner someday but she doesn't take things seriously... Yeah, I totally dig. Do you guys need any manpower help with that?... Okay. Well, what about afterward?... Really? Giles you are the bomb. You call us when it's done and she'll be on the next plane. You're the best, Giles. I mean that. I better go tell the kid. Good luck."

She hung up and grinned. "Hook, line and sinker. As soon as the current apocalypse is over, he'll take her."

Dakota heaved a great sigh, then stood. Leaning across Faith's desk, she laid a hot kiss across her lover's lips. "Thank you, sweetie. So I imagine we confine Miss Roland to quarters for the duration?"

"Hell, no. Assign her to me. As my personal assistant. Twenty-four hours. We'll stick a little bed in that maid's closet off our bedroom and she can sleep in there, so she'll be constantly under surveillance. She needs to understand that this isn't a field trip, it's a punishment. Giles says it'll be a couple of months before everything goes down over there, something about a solar eclipse, so until then, she's going to find out what restriction means."

He looked at the younger man in complete disbelief. "Vampires that can walk in the day?"

"Yes, sir."

"Soldier, do you think I've lost my mind? Vampires cannot walk in the daylight. They burn up."

"Permission to speak, sir?"

The older man contemplated the younger briefly. "Granted."

"Sir, respectfully offer that I have witnessed the subject change into vampire face myself, sir. She is definitely a vampire, sir. And she without question walks in the daylight."

"You witnessed this yourself, Finn?"

Riley nodded. "Yes, sir. Miller did, too, sir."

The older man eyeballed the other soldier who stood at attention before him. "Miller?"

"Affirmative, Colonel."

"When was this, Miller?"

"Two days ago, sir. Finn and I were in England following up on a report of hostiles in the Newcastle area, and we ran across the vampire in question while tracking one of the hostiles."

"Describe the vampire."

Graham nodded. "She stood around five feet three inches tall, had dark brown hair and dark eyes. After she changed, of course, she had the standard vampire face and the yellow eyes."

"Any intelligence regarding her identity?"

Riley spoke. "She... sir, she looked like Faith."

The colonel eyeballed Riley. "Faith who, soldier?"

"Uh... I don't know her last name, sir. She was an associate of Buffy Summers."

"Ah, yes, the young woman of your acquaintance when you were stationed in Sunnydale. The reason for your defection from the Initiative in the first place, correct?"

"Yes, sir."

"And would Buffy know where Faith was, and whether Faith was a vampire?"

Riley thought. "She might, sir. Faith was a bit crazy, sir, and Buffy would have a reason to want to know where she was. The problem is, sir, that I don't know if she'd tell me."

"Why not, soldier? True love fall kind of flat, did it?"

Riley's jaw clenched. It was the only outward sign of the fact that the colonel's jibe had hit home. "Well, when we parted it wasn't on the best of terms."

"Call her. Ask her about it. Find out whatever you can find out. Report back to me immediately after the conversation."

"Respectfully, sir, I doubt they'll tell me anything over the telephone. Request permission to go to Sunnydale. It'll be easier for me to get information that way."

The colonel thought about this for a moment. "Good idea, Finn. Take care of it. Dismissed."

Riley saluted sharply, turned, and left the room.

The colonel eyeballed Graham. "Keep an eye on him, Miller," the colonel ordered. "If he shows any signs of reverting to his former... attitudes... I want to be alerted immediately. Understood?"

"Understood, sir."

"Dismissed." The colonel watched Miller leave, then sat down in his chair to look thoughtfully at the one-page report lying on his desk. "Vampires that walk in the day. This could be very useful." Briefly, he fingered the silver eagle on his collar. "Hell, this could mean a star."

PART THREE

"Willow!"

The redhead stopped in her tracks and turned slowly to see the young man who was chasing her down the street. "Riley!"

"Hey!" he exclaimed. "How are you?"

"I'm good, how are you? What brings you back to Sunnydale?"

Riley shrugged. "The usual. Hostiles, demons, things like that. Have you got a few minutes?"

"Sure. What's up?"

He took her by the arm and led her into the Espresso Pump, ordering mochas for both of them and offering her his charming smile. "Well, I was wondering if there was anything unusual going on here lately. More unusual than the status quo, I mean. I tried to find Buffy, but..." he trailed off, shrugging charmingly.

"W-Well, we're having an apocalypse, you know, b-but it's just a little one. A-and we already know what we have to do to stop it."

His eyebrows lifted. "Really?"

"Oh, yeah," she confirmed, nodding.

"Tell me about it."

She shrugged. "Not that much to tell, really, I guess. Demon trying to open the Hellmouth. The usual."

"Oh, yeah, sure." He pondered this for a moment, then threw out his bait. "Have you seen Faith lately?"

Willow blinked, blindsided. "Uh, not recently, recently... um... how recently do you mean?"

"Is she out of jail?"

Willow drew in a breath. "How did you know that?"

"I think I saw her. Willow, if she's broken out, you need to tell me. I can get the boys together and we can take her down and put her back where she belongs."

Willow blinked. "Oh, no! No, Faith didn't break out. The Council got her released."

Riley was taken aback. "They did what?"

Willow nodded. "Well, this one Council guy did. And she came here, to mend fences? But it turned out that this Council guy was this demon in disguise, and he wanted to destroy the Council. Well, he did destroy the Council. And he almost destroyed us, too! It was really bad. But Buffy and Faith fought together and they killed him. He almost killed Dakota, too, but she's really resilient, you know, being a vampire and all –"

"A vampire?" Riley leaned forward. "What vampire?"

Willow blinked. "Oh, Dakota was a friend of mine in school, but she got turned into a vampire. But she's got a soul, you know, like Angel. So she's good. And she came back and she was helping us. But then she decided to leave, because Buffy and I couldn't really have a good relationship with her involved, because things were so crazy –"

"Was she coming between your friendship?"

"Oh, no, nothing like that... it's just that... well, when Buffy and I decided to get together, you know, Dakota was there, and we were both attracted to her, and it got kind of... confusing for awhile, which is why Dakota decided to leave –"

"You and Buffy are together?" Riley was genuinely shocked at this news.

"Oh, yeah, we've been together for over two years now. Well, more like two and a half. Gosh, it's been awhile! It doesn't seem like it." Willow paused in mid-babble, musing on that.

Riley turned the conversation carefully backward. "So Dakota left? Tell me about her."

"Oh, she's awesome. She's funny, and sweet... a little psycho, though, sometimes. She and I used to walk up and down the streets all afternoon after I got out of classes, just talking about stuff. She's a really deep thinker. She reminds me a little of Oz that way."

"Before she became a vampire?"

"Oh, no, we were just in high school when she was turned. This was when she was here before."

"So, what, she's immune to sunlight?"

Willow flushed. I shouldn't have told him that.

He didn't need her reply – her flush was enough. She had just realized she'd said too much. He doubted he'd get anything else out of her. But he had to try. He thought very carefully before asking one last question. "So, where is Faith these days? Because I thought I saw her in Johannesburg two weeks ago."

Willow's relief at the conversation leaving Dakota was nearly palpable. "Oh, no, Faith was in England the last time we s- uh, talked to her. She... uh... she travels a lot, I think."

"And where's Dakota?"

But Willow would not budge on the subject of Dakota. "I don't know. I haven't heard from her in awhile."

Her face told him she was lying, but he didn't dare call her on it. She was too valuable as an information source. "That's too bad. Well if Faith is in England, it must not have been her I saw." He glanced casually at his watch. "Oh, man, look at the time. I gotta get back to the boys. I'll be by to see Buffy, okay?"

"Sure." She nodded mechanically, just glad that he was leaving. She was rolling the conversation back in her head and beginning to realize how skillfully she'd been played. Like a freakin' guitar... I'm such an idiot, she berated herself, while making the necessary noises to get him to leave. She waited a moment with her now-cold mocha in front of her, watching him disappear down the street, then shot out of the Espresso Pump as though from a cannon, heading back toward the Magic Box to tell Buffy what had occurred.

"I'm sorry, Buffy," Willow said for about the fifteenth time after relating her tale of her conversation with Riley.

"Will, don't worry about it. He played you. It's not your fault. He's the bad guy here. He's like... He's Fernand. That's what. He's Fernand, and I'm about to be the Count of Monte Crisco over here."

"Cristo."

"Whatever." Buffy turned to Giles. "What time is it in England right now?"

Giles glanced at the clock and calculated. "Three o'clock tomorrow morning."

Buffy frowned. "Not calling this early. They'll think someone's dead. I'll call them in a few hours. They've got to be warned."

"Quite right, Buffy." He turned to the young woman behind the counter. "Anya. If Riley Finn comes here looking for anyone or anything, he's not to be given any information as regards the whereabouts of any one of us. Clear?"

Anya nodded. "Because he's evil."

"Not evil so much," Willow pointed out. "Just a jerk."

"Got it," Anya stated, then turned to the door as the bell rang to welcome a customer. "Welcome to the Magic Box!"

It was Tara, who had been gone for some months on a study trip from the university. She had a huge smile on her face. "Hi, everyone!" she greeted them.

"Tara!" Buffy and Willow went to hug their friend. "We're glad you're back. How was Europe?"

"Oh, it was awesome!"

"Did you get any actual studying done, or were you busy checking out all the French girls?" Willow teased.

Tara blushed and dug around in her bag to cover her light embarrassment. She had missed her friends, but they did tease her so. She began pulling small boxes out of her bag. "I brought back souvenirs for everyone."

"Oh, you shouldn't have!" Buffy exclaimed, peering close to see if she could figure out which one was hers.

Willow let the excitement of their friend's return wash away her self-recriminations regarding Riley for the time being, but she knew she was still going to feel really bad when they called England later.

Willow volunteered to make the call, but Buffy kissed her and told her not to worry about it. "Go take a shower, babe, I'll take you out tonight."

Willow blinked. "You don't have to try to make me feel better," she said softly, but she was interrupted by a more solid kiss from Buffy.

"I said I'm taking you out. You don't have to do the guilt thing, Will. He pressured you, and you crumbled. It's not your fault. He used to be a friend, and you would've responded to him that way. Don't stress it. At least you realized what was going on, you know? This way we can give them advance warning."

Willow sighed, nodded, and went upstairs to shower.

Buffy lifted the telephone handset and dialed. It was still very early in England, around six-thirty a.m., but it was not so early that she would wake Dakota, who she knew was a very early riser. She waited as the overseas operator made the connections, then listened to the funny English two-tone ring. The phone was snatched up on the second ring, but the voice was young and unfamiliar. "Hello?"

"Uh, Dakota?"

"No, this is Nicki. Hold on. Um, who's calling?"

"Buffy Summers."

"Oh! Hold on, Miss Summers. Miss Dakota!" There was a thump as the phone was dropped on a table, and the sound of the girl who'd answered moving away from the phone. "Miss Dakota! Miss Summers is on the phone."

"Thanks, Nicki. Go ahead and get ready for breakfast, okay?" Dakota's voice came closer to the phone as she spoke, and then she picked up the handset. "Buffy?"

"Dakota, hey. Did I wake you?"

"Naw, you know me, I'm up early. What's up?"

"Remember me telling you about my boyfriend that was in the paramilitary demon-hunting thing?"

Dakota thought. "Yeah. What was his name? Randy?"

"Riley. Riley Finn."

"Oh, yeah. What about him?"

Buffy sighed and plopped down on the sofa. "He showed up here in town today asking questions about Faith, and he got hold of Willow. He knew just how to push her buttons and he got her to spill about you, too."

"Shit." Buffy could hear a thump and a hiss of indrawn breath. "Does he know about the Academy?"

"No, Will realized what he was doing before it got that far. Right after she told him about your little sunlight issue."

"Oh, great." Dakota sighed. "What made him ask about Faith?"

"Claims he thought he saw her in Johannesburg a couple weeks ago. Was she there?"

"No..." She thought for a moment. "Two weeks ago she was in Newcastle picking up Kennedy."

"Kennedy?"

"New Potential. American girl, rich boarding-school type. Pushy, kind of a pain in the ass, but she'll make a good Slayer when she gets there. Hang on." Her voice went away from the phone. "Faith? Honey? Did you do any hunting while you were in Newcastle?"

Faith's voice from a distance. "Uhh... a little bit. Why?"

"'Cause I think you got busted, that's why. Any reason why anyone might have known you were a vampire?"

"Not unless they saw me in the sewers."

Dakota returned to the phone. "Well there you go. She got seen in Newcastle. Which, on the plus side, means she'll be hunted in Newcastle. Which means we've got the edge, for now."

"You got a plan?" Buffy asked, winking at Willow who was coming down the stairs, soaking wet and wrapped in a towel.

"Sure do," Dakota returned. "We'll go on up to Newcastle in a couple of days, find your military boy, and lead him on a little tour of Europe. The farther away he is from the Academy, the happier I and everyone else will be."

"Be careful."

"I will. Hey, guess who's coming next week?"

"Who?"

Dakota's grin could be heard in her voice. "Janna."

"You're kidding! That's great!"

"Yep." Dakota responded. "We're real excited. She's going to train with us for probably six months or so, and then I was kind of hoping to send her and her Partner to you."

Buffy glanced at the calendar. "Well, if we make it through the current apocalypse, that'll work great. We've got this demon thing."

"Yeah, the Nho, Giles told me. We're hitting the books on this side of the pond, too."

Buffy was surprised. "When did you talk to Giles?"

"Couple days ago," Dakota responded. "We've got a little problem that he offered to help us out with."

"Which kid are you farming off on him?"

Dakota laughed. "Nicki Roland. Hang on." There was a brief pause, then Dakota returned and began filling Buffy in on the problems they'd had with Nicki. "And then, to top it all off, she pulls a stunt that we couldn't just laugh off. I caught her up in the book tower, messing around with the magick texts."

"Oh, no."

"Oh, yes. The same ones that gave us scary, veiny Willow. Idiot. I seriously considered expelling her, but she's going to be such a good Partner someday. I figured what she needed was to be in a place where the shit was really going down, so she could have a feel for what she's failing to take seriously."

"Good idea. Lucky Giles."

Dakota laughed. "I figure if anybody can keep her in line, Giles can. He's kept you in line for how many years now?"

"Seven, going on eight, and that's not funny," Buffy said with a laugh. "Well I better go, I promised to take my girl out tonight. Let us know if you find out anything on the demon."

"Will do. Hey, have Will email us a picture of Rusty if you can find one, okay? So we know what we're looking for."

"Riley. Will do. Take care."

"You too."

They both hung up and Buffy turned to Willow, who was dripping on the living room floor. "You look yummy," she teased. "I might change my mind about taking you out and just... eat in."

Willow giggled. "I don't think so, Slayer. You promised."

Buffy sighed dramatically. "So I did. Let's go get dressed, shall we?"

PART FOUR

"Pack a bag, Nicki. You're going with us."

Nicki looked with wide eyes at Faith. "Where are we going?"

"Newcastle, then Glasgow. You'll stay in Glasgow, and we're going on from there."

Nicki came within an inch of a pout. "But I don't want to stay in Glasgow."

"I don't want you digging around in the towers while we're gone," Faith shot back, "so you're going to Glasgow. You're going to stay with someone there who can keep an eye on you until we make it back."

Nicki shook her head. "I mean I want to go with you."

Faith shook her head. "It's too dangerous. We might have to split up, and we're definitely gonna have to move fast. I can't let you do that. Nicki, you're gonna be a real good Partner once you get the bullshit outta your system, and I don't want you in a lot of danger. So you're gonna do this. Got me?"

Nicki nodded and went to pack her bag.

The trip to Newcastle was uneventful and Faith took a hotel room while Dakota and Nicki made the trip further north into Glasgow to meet up with a friend. At a small restaurant off the main drag, they were shown into a private room upstairs and Nicki was confronted with the strangest sight she had ever seen.

The woman was young, probably in her mid-twenties, and she sat behind a desk, her eyes glued to the computer monitor. She was typing madly away in a text-entry program and muttering to herself. That wasn't the weird part, though – what freaked Nicki out completely was the fact that there were at least twenty-five cats and kittens populating the room. There were cats on the floor, cats on the chairs, cats on the bureau, cats, cats, everywhere. Nicki had never seen so many cats in her life.

Dakota stepped toward the desk. "Abbie?"

"Won't be a mo... hold on..." the woman said distractedly. Dakota waited patiently. Nicki sat down and tried to attract one of the kittens. Finally, the woman stopped typing and looked up. "Ah! Dakota!" she exclaimed. She stood and walked around her desk, where she embraced the vampire warmly. "How are you, dear? It's been such a long time."

"Good, Abbie, very good. Listen, I need a favor from you, please, and I haven't got a long time to stay."

"Anything, Dakota. You know that."

Dakota turned and indicated the child, who now had two kittens in her lap and a third on her shoulder. "This is Nicki."

Nicki looked up and smiled. "Hello. They're very nice kittens."

Abbie smiled. "I have a great number of them," she said simply. "They're all very nice. How old are you, Nicki?"

"I'm nearly thirteen," Nicki responded. A fourth cat jumped up onto her other shoulder from behind and she fell over, laughing.

Dakota smiled. "She hasn't had much of a chance to really be a kid," she commented.

"Who does, these days?" Abbie responded sadly. "But no matter. You need me to keep her, I expect?" At Dakota's nod, Abbie continued. "Does she need a new identity?"

Dakota shook her head. "Nope. She just can't be left alone at the school right now. She's in disgrace."

"Oh." Abbie was quiet for a moment. "She's welcome to stay. She'll be fine here. I imagine she's training in magick?"

Dakota nodded. "Yes. She's actually doing fairly well."

"Then that's fine. I'll put her in school and she can go to lessons with the local children, and we'll work on the magicking at night. Might benefit the child to have someone else work with her."

"Might, at that. I've got to run, Abbie – I have to be back in Newcastle soon. Faith and I... well, the usual."

Abbie nodded. "Go. Be careful. The girl will be fine here."

Dakota hugged her friend. "Thanks, Abbie," she said. Then she turned to the child. "Be good, Nicki. I'll be back for you as soon as I can." And then she was gone.

Abbie walked over and sat in the floor next to Nicki. "So. These are my babies. The one in your hands there is Gina, and that one there is Wicked, and that other one over there is Tess... the tabby there on your shoulder is Nemo, this black-and-white one is Frenchie and this one right here" – she leaned over to pick up a cross-eyed Siamese – "This one is Nicodemus. She's a pain in my arse, but I keep her around anyway."

When Dakota arrived back in Newcastle, she found Faith at the keyboard of her laptop, downloading emails from Willow. "Hey, baby," Faith greeted her as she entered the hotel room. "I got pictures of Rory."

"Riley," Dakota said distractedly. "Let's see him."

"Here you go," she said with a flourish, calling the picture up on screen. "Prime USDA choice beefstick."

They both examined the photo for a while. "Hm. Tall, blonde, and stupid. Nice, Buffy. Why am I not surprised. I'm willing to bet he's corn-fed, too," Dakota finally commented disparagingly.

"Can't be too stupid," Faith commented. "Got what he wanted out of Red."

Dakota rolled her eyes. "Willow hasn't changed since the first day I met her. You can get anything you want out of her. All you gotta do is ask enough questions to make her nervous, and she babbles like a happy little brook."

Faith cocked her head to one side. "Ya gotta point." She called up another picture. "Here's his buddy. Name's Graham, like the cracker even."

"No neck." Dakota snickered. "Wide receiver?"

"Fullback," Faith responded. "Also looks like a moron."

"Well, you know the U.S. military. Only the best."

"Whatever." Faith closed the screen on the machine. "Let's hit the sack. Tomorrow we gotta find these boys and get 'em out of England."

Dakota grinned, leaned over, and gently bit the side of Faith's neck. "And I imagine we'll spend the next several nights running for our lives, my love... so why don't we take advantage of the fact that they don't quite yet know where we are?"

Faith liked that suggestion. She stood up and stripped her top off, then helped Dakota out of hers. Latching her lips onto those of her lover, she walked Dakota backwards to the edge of the bed, then pushed her down onto it and crawled on as well, straddling Dakota's hips.

Dakota grinned and leaned up to bite at Faith's neck. Faith responded by reaching down to unbutton Dakota's pants. Within three minutes, both vampires were naked and wrestling each other for dominance. Dakota won, finally pinning Faith down and drawing one nipple into her mouth. Faith's hand wound itself into Dakota's long hair and held her close.

Dakota slowly began to kiss a wet trail down Faith's torso. She moved down across the older woman's stomach and down one thigh to her knee, then began to gently bite her way back up. When she arrived at Faith's heated core, she didn't waste any time on play but dove right in, licking and sucking at the tender, sensitive flesh.

Faith didn't come until Dakota slid her fingers inside, and then she had almost a chain-reaction string of orgasms that sent her head reeling as her lover gently brought her back down. Dakota snuggled in next to Faith, holding her tight, and waited for her breathing to return to normal.

Breathing. Dakota smiled as she listened to it. It was a human habit, one that was entirely unnecessary for a vampire but one which Faith had retained, Dakota suspected, more so that the girls wouldn't notice so much that she was, in fact, a vampire. Dakota didn't mind. She thought it was rather cute. She herself had given up that particular affectation shortly after escaping Sunnydale.

Faith was relaxing now, reaching for Dakota, intent on providing her with the same pleasure that Dakota had brought to her. But Dakota took her hands, kissed them gently, and wrapped them around her waist, snuggling into her lover's body. "We have to be up so early," she whispered. "Why don't we save that, eh?" She winked at Faith. "Call it on account, so that you owe me. Okay?"

Faith grinned, understanding. They tried to make sure they were never even when going into a situation like this, one which could result in death. Dakota reasoned, not necessarily logically, but reasoned nonetheless, that if one of them owed the other something, they both had a good reason to make it out alive: the one so she could pay up, the other so that she could receive payment. Faith didn't care. If Dakota wanted her little mental tricks, she was welcome to them. She pulled her lover close, breathed in the scent of her hair, and fell asleep.

They ran into Riley almost literally the following afternoon in the sewers. Traveling together, both carrying backpacks which contained the bare necessities that they didn't dare lose, they rounded a corner in a sewer tunnel and came face to face with the beefstick from the pictures. Faith drew up short at the sight. "Rocky!"

Riley started. "Riley," he responded before he thought. Then he clutched his tranquilizer gun. "Faith."

Faith grinned, gamefaced, and bowed mockingly. "Let the hunt begin," she stated in a sarcastic tone, then she and Dakota both spun and pelted away. They could hear Riley chasing them, calling for his backup team. They ducked into a side tunnel and held perfectly still until he had run past them, then Faith pulled Dakota close and whispered in her ear. "Now we split up. You go west, draw that crowd. I'll go east and tag team Ricky. Meet me in Paris tonight. Be there by eleven-thirty. Okay?"

Dakota nodded, and they came together for one last kiss. Then they broke apart, nodded to one another, and took off in opposite directions.

Paris is an ideal city for a vampire to play cat-and-mouse with a human in, for there are catacombs and sewers beyond belief. Dakota led Graham and his half of the retrieval team a merry chase through the streets of Paris while Faith led Riley and his half through the sewers. Faith lost her crew at the north end of the city and Dakota left hers at the south. They met up beneath the Eiffel Tower for another long, passionate kiss, before Faith took over Graham's team, leading them north toward Luxembourg, and Dakota took over Riley's, taking them east and into Berlin.

It was in Berlin that Riley made his biggest mistake. He split his team up, sending them to search different parts of the city, while he himself made his way to the place where he knew Dakota was. He had lost his head during the two-week chase from Newcastle through Paris and into Germany, and he had decided he wanted to make the capture himself. He had even cornered Dakota, backing her into a blind tunnel in the sewers where he knew she had no way out. But then he began to taunt her.

"We've got your girlfriend," he told her mockingly. "Graham busted her on the road. You might as well come on with us. Because if you don't, we're gonna hurt her. We're gonna hurt her real bad, Dakota; the kind of hurt that Dustbuster picks up the remains of. You may be immune to sunlight, but I bet direct exposure to flame will take care of just about anything."

Dakota's world narrowed to the man who was speaking these words and approaching her with a trank gun. "Where is she?"

Riley laughed. "She's on her way to our facility right now, Dakota. You'll be joining her soon enough." He shot a dart at her, which she dodged. "Why are you making this so hard? You can't get out. There's no way out for you. And you can't do anything to me. You've got a soul. Just like Angel." He shot again, and she dodged again.

"Just like Angel?" Dakota laughed. "Who told you I was just like Angel?"

Riley laughed as well. "Willow spills a lot of things if you just ask her right," he said. And then, and he never knew what prompted him to do it, his voice became insinuating. "I found the, uh... the right way to... persuade her. Wasn't hard. Seems like she's been looking for the right kind of man –"

He never got to finish his sentence. Faster than he could have thought possible, Dakota launched herself at him. He found his gun wrenched from his hand and thrown across the tunnel, and he felt cold hands at his neck. "You made a mistake, Riley," Dakota's voice was icy in his ear. "You made a big mistake. And I don't mean fucking with me, or fucking with Faith, or even mind-fucking Willow. Shall I explain it to you?"

He tried to struggle, but she had him in too tight of a grip. He couldn't move. She continued to purr in his ear. "You made an assumption, Riley. And, well, you know what happens when you assume things. You know what that assumption was? You assumed that just because I have a soul, it's the tortured, brooding soul that Angel has – the one that makes him so he doesn't kill. But you see, Angel and I are two different manners of creature. For one thing, Angel's not half psycho. But I am."

The last thing Riley Finn ever felt was Dakota's fangs as they pierced his neck.

Once she was back topside, Dakota fished her cell phone out of her backpack and called Faith. The phone rang five times and kicked over to voice mail. Dakota's eyes narrowed. There were three other men with Riley, men who might know whether Faith had been taken and where she would be taken to. Dakota began to hunt.

The first man had known that Faith was taken, but had not known where. He had then attempted to kill Dakota and she had responded by relieving him first of the blade he would have beheaded her with, and then of rather a lot of blood.

The second man had known where they would take Faith, but had refused to say anything. Dakota hadn't wanted to waste time at this point, and rather than drain him, she simply twisted his head around until his neck broke.

The third man didn't give Dakota a chance to ask any questions. He simply entered into battle with her, and she was forced to turn his own gun on him.

Dakota returned to the Academy immediately, and gathered Maisri and her strongest witchcraft students around her. "I need a locator spell," she said, "And then I need all the activated Slayers."

PART FIVE

"Buffy! Here!"

At Xander's shout, Buffy turned just in time to catch the two-handed broadsword that was flying through the air toward her. Once her had a firm grip on it, she stretched her arms out and pivoted, neatly halving three of the Knights of Nho who had been attacking her. She looked around quickly, trying to gauge any more, but the demon and his remaining minions had disappeared.

Xander walked over and laid a hand on Buffy's shoulder. "Let's get outta here, Buff," he said quietly. "Willow's probably going nuts wondering where we are."

Buffy sighed and nodded. She knelt, wiped the blade clean on the grass, and hoisted it over one shoulder as they started down the sidewalk toward the Magic Box. "So, interesting patrol," Xander commented brightly. "Those are the Knights of Ni, huh?"

Buffy nodded. "And not a herring in sight."

"Ah, well," Xander sighed, and then began to softly sing. "Always look on the bright side of life."

Buffy, having sat through the Monty Python videofest the previous weekend which had included "The Life of Brian," burst out laughing. She shoved him gently. "You dork."

He laughed as well. "I can't help it. It's just too good. The Python is there, I gotta take it."

"You should have to work for your jokes," she teased.

"You know, at least I skipped all the Star Trek red-shirt jokes I could have made at the expense of half of the Slayer Academy," he pointed out.

"Only because we were in the middle of a Willow-centric apocalypse and you didn't have time," she shot back.

"Good point," he conceded. They entered the shop then and continued to tease one another until Giles finally interrupted.

"Yes, thank you, and your information about tonight's patrol has been most valuable," the older man said sarcastically.

"Sorry, Giles," Buffy responded. "Three more Knights down, something like ten left."

"Lovely, thank you. We do need to keep thinning their ranks. The eclipse is next Tuesday and we need to be ready."

"Is everything in place at the high school?" Buffy asked.

"Not quite, but it will be soon," Giles responded. "Are you prepared to do what you'll have to do?"

Buffy gave her Watcher the Look of Shame. "Giles. How many apocalypses have we been through together that you should ask me this?" She faked an Italian accent. "You're breakin' my heart, Giles, you're breakin' my heart."

Giles very nearly rolled his eyes but was fortunately stopped at the last moment by his inherent Britishness. He settled instead for a cold glare and returned to shelving books. "Willow and Tara are in the training room, going over the spells necessary to close the Hellmouth once it's opened."

"She's done it before, right, Giles? With the Sisterhood of Jhe? It's not like it's going to be so different this time. Is it?" Buffy was concerned.

"Not so different," he responded. "Only that Willow's terrified after her experience with Rothschear at the Academy. She is afraid that if she works higher magicks again, Rothschear will return."

"But that's not gonna happen, right?" Xander needed to know. "Rothschear's dead, right?"

"I certainly hope so," was all Giles said. Buffy and Xander exchanged worried glances and moved to the training room to try and offer their support.

Willow was standing in the middle of a light show when they walked into the back room. She was standing near the center of the room, inside a circle which had been drawn on the floor in chalk, and there were what looked to be hundreds of little colored lights flying all around her in the cylinder of air that ran straight up from the outline of the circle. She was smiling. Buffy grinned at the sight an walked over to Tara, who was seated atop the vault horse. "She doing okay?"

Tara nodded. "S-she's d-doing great. We've b-been working for about an hour, a-and she's lost most of her fear. I didn't even shield her on this one."

Willow suddenly said a few words in what sounded like Latin, and all the lights disappeared. She grinned across the room at Buffy. "Check me out, I'm light-show-girl."

Buffy grinned back and went to Willow as she crossed out of the circle. "Yes you are," she affirmed, kissing Willow softly. "You're also looking like no-fear-girl."

"Well, there's fear," Willow said slowly, "there's definitely fear... But I'm facing it." She levitated one of the candles off the floor. "Facing my fear. Hear that, fear? I'm facing you."

Buffy grinned and hugged Willow tightly. "That's my girl," she encouraged gently. "So, Giles said you were working on the close-sesame spell for the Hellmouth."

Willow nodded. "We were doing those earlier. Tara was shielding me."

"You doing okay, Wills?" Xander asked, peering closely at Willow's face for any sign of worry.

Willow nodded at her old friend. "It's gonna be okay, Xander," she said quietly. "I've been working higher-level magicks all night, and nothing happened. It's gonna be okay."

Xander hugged her as well, and then hugged Tara. "You're terrific, Tara," he told her quietly. "You're just what we all need."

Tara blushed and stammered incoherently. Xander smoothly interjected with a suggestion of pre-apocalypse party at the Bronze that night, which was met with great enthusiasm.

Buffy pulled Willow out on the dance floor to dance to the Eurythmics. "I can't believe the Bronze is having an eighties night!" she exclaimed over the loud music. "It's great!"

"The music is terrible!" Willow responded, laughing.

"Yeah but it's so much fun!" Buffy replied, sliding close to Willow and dancing suggestively as the music turned sexier. "I feel like I should be in leather with a whip."

Willow's eyes glazed over. "Oh."

Buffy burst out laughing at the look of undisguised lust that was plastered to Willow's face. "Baby, we've only been here an hour. We can't bail this early."

Willow shook it off. "Oh. Yeah. Sorry."

Buffy pulled Willow into her arms as the music changed, becoming a slow tune, and the dancers on the floor coupled off. Out of the corner of her eye, Buffy could see Xander and Anya dancing close together, and farther behind them she could see Tara and Giles at the table engaging in an animated conversation. "I'm glad Giles came with us tonight," she murmured in Willow's ear.

"Me, too," Willow replied. "He never does stuff with us. It's like he's still got that teacher complex. We should get him to do more stuff with us. Since he's not our teacher any more. He's our friend."

Buffy thought about that. "Maybe he doesn't know we think that. Maybe he thinks we still think of him as… as a grown-up. Substitute dad. We should say something about that."

Willow nodded. "We should. And we will. As soon as this song is over."

Buffy smiled and pulled her lover close, swaying slightly as the words washed over them.

The two young women were as good as their word. As soon as the song ended and they managed with much sighing and many meaningful looks to pry themselves apart, they made a beeline for the table and sat down, one on each side of Giles. "We need to talk," Willow said promptly.

Giles blinked. "Y-yes?"

"You never hang out with us," Buffy stated. "We don't like that."

He blinked, wondering briefly if he'd wandered into a movie spoof of his own life. "Y-yes, well, Buffy, it wouldn't be –"

"Appropriate?" Buffy cut him off. "Why not? We're all happy individuals between twenty-one and forty-one years of age, except for Anya who's way much older than that."

Willow laid a gentle hand on Giles's arm. "We're not kids anymore, Giles. We don't need a teacher-slash-father-figure any more. We need a friend."

Giles blinked, looking around at the earnest faces of the children – no, Giles, young adults – surrounding him. Anya and Xander had come back from the dance floor and were both nodding emphatically. "They're right, Giles," Xander said softly. "Besides, having a bunch of people depending on you to be their dad all the time isn't healthy. For you or for us."

Giles blinked. Xander had called him Giles. "Xander. You didn't call me one of your appalling nicknames."

Xander grinned. "I figure it's time for us to grow up. All of us."

Giles smiled at his friends. "I suppose you're right."

Buffy grinned. "Of course we are." Then she paused. "Of course, as our older friend who knows everything, we're still gonna come to you from time to time for advice and things like that."

Giles rolled his eyes. "Of course."

"But in the meantime…" Buffy grabbed his arm. "Let's all dance!"

The group dragged Giles out onto the dance floor as George Michael began to sing about freedom, and began to bond as friends. Of course, it helped that Giles was a fantastic dancer, but somehow none of them were surprised.

PART SIX

Dakota had decided, after quite a bit of hard thinking, to leave the new Slayers at the Academy as a line of defense just in case something was to happen there. She got a locator spell from Maisri and it led her to a secluded, secure compound in a heavily-wooded area several miles north of Ramstein Air Base. Dakota set about scouting the two-acre lot and was almost disappointed at the lack of challenge. Apparently these Initiative people thought a lot of their secrecy. They had a total of six sentries patrolling the perimeter, and they didn't even look up into the trees as she passed over their heads toward the fence.

The compound was tiny and consisted of several Quonset huts; two large, open tents that served as barracks and mess hall; an unguarded armory tent; and a three-story building at the far end of the compound that was built of steel and concrete and had a sign next to the heavily-guarded front door that read "Containment Unit." A wide dirt strip ran from the gate of the compound directly to the front door of the Containment Unit and, nearby, several large trucks were parked. She sat in the tree, watching, examining the area, and was rewarded for her patience by a disturbance at the door of the Containment Unit. A prisoner was being brought out.

The prisoner was surrounded by armed guards and wore a feature-hiding hood, but Dakota would have known Faith anywhere. She struggled with her captors when she realized that she was outside, but her hands and feet were shackled and one of the guards had what appeared to be a cattle prod, which he used on her until she stopped fighting. Dakota hissed, feeling her features slide into gameface. She studied that guard carefully, memorizing his features. He had just signed his own death warrant.

The men – one of whom she recognized as Graham Miller – led Faith into a Quonset hut close to the fence. Dakota took a careful look around, extending all of her senses, and found none of the sentries near enough to her. She edged out on her branch, jumped, tucked, landed on the other side of the fence, and rolled behind the first hut. She stood, shook her head to clear it, and slid over behind the hut they had led Faith into. She blinked at the window nearest her and shook her head slightly. What is this, a MacGuyver episode? The back window of the hut was wide open, and inside she could see a man in fatigues sitting behind a desk. She edged up to the window, listening.

"Take that hood off her." A whisper of cloth. "Your vampire face doesn't frighten me, Hostile 45. I've seen them before." The creak of wood as he leaned back in his chair. "Where is your friend, the other daywalker?"

Faith cheerfully suggested that he retire to his quarters and perform several illegal – and possibly anatomically impossible – sexual acts upon himself. Dakota had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. Her lover was in fine spirits.

"Fascinating. Nelson?" There was the sound of the cattle prod again, and a choked gasp from Faith. Dakota ground her teeth. Then she turned to face the wall and very carefully edged one eye toward the side of the window, praying they wouldn't notice her. They obviously weren't expecting a frontal assault on this secluded place. She looked around the room carefully and counted men. There were eight of them, including the man in charge. She dropped back to the ground again, thinking. She couldn't take them all. She needed something.

Armory. She blinked, then crawled back to the place where she'd landed after jumping out of the tree. From there, she lay flat on the ground and elbow-crawled her way to the front of the building, peeking out. The armory was on the other side of the dirt drive, and she would never get there unseen. She retraced her route back to the fence, scaled it as noiselessly as possible, and dropped to the ground on the other side. From there, she returned to the trees and circumnavigated the compound until she was behind the armory, then repeated her flying leap and landed behind the building. Here her luck ran out. The window in the side which was away from the guards at the front of the Containment Unit was locked tight, and the door was on the open front. She chewed her lip, thinking, then pulled her knife out of her boot and dug at the wood casing of the window. To her surprise, it was rotten. She almost laughed out loud again, and began digging at the wood in earnest. In just a few minutes, thanks to her vampiric strength, she was able to get her fingers around the edge of the window. She braced her feet against the wall and pulled. With a crack, the window came out of its frame.

She froze. Had anyone heard that? It had sounded to her as loud as a thunderclap. But the guards were at the other end of the two-acre lot. They hadn't heard a thing. She dropped the window on the ground and clambered in through the window.

Tasers, guns, electrical-pulse weapons, she wouldn't have been surprised to find tachyon disrupters. What she was looking for was in a crate at the back of the building. Tear gas. A huge crate full of small canisters of tear gas. She jammed as many in her deep pockets as would fit, and turned to leave. A gun caught her eye and she briefly considered it, then decided not to. She'd probably only shoot herself in the foot. She climbed back out the window and back over the fence, wincing as the barbed wire cut into her hands.

She almost got caught returning to her previous place, but she was lucky enough to see the sentry before he saw her. Before he had a chance to speak, she had her teeth in his throat. Then she removed his weapon from his hands and checked it over. It was some kind of electrical thing, she realized. It didn't shoot bullets, it shot current. She smiled, but it was a smile that would have caused anyone seeing it to lose all bladder control in total fear. She had plans for cattle-prod boy.

Back behind the hut where Faith was apparently now taking punches to the gut, Dakota forced herself to remain calm as she listened to her lover hiss in pain, refusing to scream. She pulled all the teargas canisters out of her pockets and pulled the tabs out of all of them. When the gas had begun to come out of the canisters, she began lobbing them in through the open window. The little hut was almost immediately full of smoke, and Dakota came in through the window, gamefaced and in kill mode. She got the man in charge first, wrapping her hand around his throat and twisting his head, snapping his neck. Dropping him, she heard a hum of electricity behind her and narrowly dodged cattle-prod boy. She lifted her weapon and fired an electrical pulse at him. He screamed and fell to the floor. The other soldiers were in chaos, trying to find her. She shot another with her weapon before she could get to Faith, but she got there and broke the chains with her hands.

Faith, now mobile though still with chains hanging from each limb, joined the fray. She sunk her teeth into Graham Miller from behind while Dakota took out another of the soldiers before one intelligent one found his way to the door and burst out into the street, screaming for help. At that, the two vampires made their way to the window in the back. Dakota paused to pick up the boy with the cattle prod and sling him over her shoulder.

"What have you got him for?" Faith shouted.

"Hostage if we need him," Dakota replied breathlessly as they pelted toward the front fence. "Payback if we don't."

Faith hit the fence and scrambled to the top. "Here." She held out her hands and Dakota handed up the unconscious soldier, then scrambled up herself. She dropped to the ground and caught the boy as Faith tossed him to her, then Faith came down as well and the two of them sped as fast as their legs could carry them past the confused sentries, who had apparently just found their fallen member and were in disarray. They went to ground about half a mile east of the Initiative compound in a very convenient cave. Dakota pulled out her pocketknife and began trying to pick the locks on Faith's shackles, but had to stop when it became obvious her hands were shaking too badly to perform the delicate maneuvers necessary to the task.

Faith reached down and took Dakota's shaking hands, pulling her lover close to her and holding her tightly while Dakota sobbed. "I thought… never see you again… maybe kill you… Riley said… set you on fire… heard them hurt you…"

"Shh. I'm okay now. You got me. We're here. We're free. They won't find us. And tonight we'll go back and kill them all."

Dakota looked up at Faith. "Yeah?"

"They'll never leave us alone if we don't." She shrugged. "There's not that many of them, and they'll be in complete confusion. You killed their commander. There's only about fifteen guys left there. And believe it or not, I was the only thing they had locked up in that big old building. It got kind of lonely." She squeezed Dakota. "I'm so glad you came – but why on earth didn't you bring backup?"

"The girls are too green, and Buffy's got an apocalypse of her own going down tomorrow. The eclipse, the Noh demon, all that."

Faith nodded, remembering, then looked sharply at their captive soldier, who was beginning to moan his way to consciousness. She stood, walked over to him, and kicked him sharply in the kidney to help him on his way to wakefulness. "Hey, Shock Boy," she purred when he opened his eyes. "Remember me?"

"Ho-Ho-Hostile 45," she stuttered.

"The name is Faith," Faith responded. "I want you to know that. Because you should always know the name of the person who teaches you. And you're about to learn a little lesson in pain."

"You- you- you can't!" he gasped. "Lieutenant Finn said – soul – can't hurt people."

Dakota moved to the other side of the boy and dropped to one knee. "Lieutenant Finn didn't know what the hell he was talking about," she replied pleasantly. "Faithy here was a murderer in life before she became a vampire. Me, I've always been a little psycho. And you got a little too handy with that cattle prod for me to bother with you. I doubt you'll even nudge at my conscience once." She reached down and picked up his hand, gently stroking his index finger. "You have very nice hands," she commented. "What's your name?"

"B-B-Brian Palmer," he stuttered.

Dakota smiled, and Brian felt his blood freeze in his veins. "Nice to meet you, Brian Palmer," she purred. Then she broke his finger.

He screamed, and Faith clucked. "Can't have that. Someone might hear." She tore the sleeve off his shirt, rolled it up, and stuck it in his mouth. "Now, then. About that cattle prod."

By the time they were finished playing with him, he was begging them to kill him.

As night fell, the sentries rotated shifts. They spoke quietly in a group and then spread themselves along the perimeter of the compound, eyes trained on the forest, night-vision goggles in place. Most of them didn't even know what was going on before they felt fangs on their necks. Faith and Dakota met up at the main gate. "Six down," Faith announced. "Nine to go."

They turned toward the gates and pushed them open, walking brazenly into the lighted compound. They looked around before anyone registered their presence. Four men were in the barracks tent, apparently asleep. Three more were in the mess tent cooking something to eat, and two more were playing cards in the mess tent as well. Faith gestured to Dakota and they moved behind the armory, stealthily approaching the barracks tent.

The four sleeping men never stood a chance.

They moved back into the shadows of the barracks tent, and there was a sudden gleam in Faith's eye. "You look so sexy with the blood on your face," she whispered to Dakota, leaning forward and kissing her hard. "I love you."

Dakota kissed her back. "I love you, too," she replied fiercely. "Let's get those other guys. We've got a school full of girls to get back to."

Faith's face took on a worried cast. "Kotie?"

"Yeah, baby?"

"I… I don't think we should tell the girls about this."

Dakota shook her head. "Definitely not." She peeked out of the tent to peer at the men in the mess tent.

"Does… does this make us evil?"

Dakota turned toward Faith and saw the fear on her lover's face. "Oh, no, baby," she rushed to assure her. "No. Look, just the fact that you can ask that question makes you not evil. This isn't evil. It's not even payback. These guys, they're the evil ones. They're the ones who have been kidnapping and harming innocent people just because they happen to be demons. You and I both know that not all demons are evil. Just think about Clem." She smoothed Faith's hair back and kissed her forehead. "Think of it as taking out the trash."

Faith sighed and nodded. "All right," she said, visibly steeling herself. "Let's do this."

They came out of the barracks tent and moved quietly toward the mess. They slipped between two buildings as they heard one of the men say, "Hey, Jack, I'm gonna go take a leak." They heard the sound of a chair moving, and a man's footsteps growing closer. They dragged him between the buildings and Faith snapped his neck.

"Four," Dakota whispered. "I'm gonna see if any of them are armed." She leaned around the building carefully and looked, then pulled back. "Morons!"

"Unarmed?"

"All four of them!" Dakota spat. "Jesus Christ, this is the crème de la crème of the United States Military?"

They attacked. Dakota knocked one out with a well-placed kick to the head, then snapped the neck of a second, while Faith took the third down with a knee to the groin and knocked several teeth out of the fourth. He fell, howling, clutching at his jaw, and Dakota was right there to rip his throat out. Faith knelt next to the one she'd kneed and broke his neck before he had a chance to get his breath back, and Dakota did the same with the one she'd knocked unconscious.

They stood alone in the midst of the compound and listened carefully for any movement that would indicate the presence of a human being. There was nothing. They glanced at one another, then began a systematic search of the tents and huts, looking for humans and trashing any computer equipment that they came across. When these all turned up empty of human habitation, they took the Containment Unit together. It, too, proved empty. Dakota paused as they exited the huge building and then strode over to the commander's office. She walked inside and found a cellular phone lying on his desk. She picked it up and hit last-number-redial.

A man answered the phone in a voice that was eerily familiar to Dakota. "What is it, Colonel Brock?"

"This isn't Colonel Brock," Dakota replied, wondering where she knew that voice from. "I just thought you might like to know that your compound up here at Ramstein is empty. Your men are all dead. It's time for the Initiative to be buried, sir, permanently."

"Who are you?"

Dakota smirked. "Let's just say I'm an interested party. A friend, if you will."

"A friend?" The voice was incredulous.

"That's right, Senator," Dakota purred, having finally recognized the voice. She'd heard it enough on campaign advertisements before she left the States – she ought to know it. "A friend."

He spluttered for a moment, then finally said the only thing he could think of to say. "What if I don't want your friendship?"

She laughed, a frighteningly low sound. "I didn't say I was yours, Senator. Shut down the Initiative. It's all over." She hung up the phone, then wiped it carefully with her shirt to take the fingerprints off and dropped it back on the desk. She looked up then at Faith and smiled. "C'mon, baby," she said, holding out her hand. "Let's get the fuck out of here."

PART SEVEN

The moon was high in the midday sky as the Scooby gang piled into Giles and Xander's cars for the trip up to the site of the burned-out ruin of Sunnydale High School. The trunks of both cars were full to bursting with various types of weaponry for the fighters to wield against the demon's minions. Buffy sat in the front seat of Giles's car, playing idly with a silver-bladed dagger. He looked over at her when they paused at a traffic light. "Are you all right?" he asked quietly.

She looked up at him. "Huh?" He repeated the question and she shrugged. "I'm all right. Just thinking. Kinda nervous."

"It's understandable," he assured her. "What you're about to do... it's bigger than your ordinary vampire staking."

She laughed. "I guess so. You'd think it wouldn't be anything compared to the Mayor, though."

He shook his head. "You didn't have to get quite so... up close and personal with the Mayor."

She blinked, then laughed again. "No, I didn't." She returned then to her morose contemplation of the dagger.

Giles moved his gaze to the reflection in his rear view mirror. "Willow? How are you holding up?"

"Oh, peachy," she responded in a voice several octaves higher than her normal voice. "Nothing wrong here. Nope. Not with me."

"You'll do fine, Willow," he assured her quietly. "You'll have both Tara and myself backing you up."

She sighed, deflating slightly. "I'm just scared."

Buffy put one arm over the back of the seat, reaching for Willow's hand. Willow took Buffy's hand in her own and they smiled at one another softly. "It's gonna be okay, Will," Buffy said softly. "I promise."

Willow smiled weakly. Silence then reigned supreme in the car for a long moment. When they turned up the street toward the now-visible remains of the school, Buffy began to sing softly under her breath, and her song was somehow both amusing and comforting to Willow. "I'm an axe grinder, pile driver, mother says that I never never mind her; got no brains, I'm insane, teacher says that I'm one big pain."

Willow laughed and joined Buffy's song. "I'm like a laser, six-string razor, I got a mouth like an alligator; I want it louder, more power; I'm gonna rock you till it strikes the hour."

And then, to both of their surprise, Giles joined them on the chorus as they pulled into the old teacher parking lot. "Bang your head! Metal health'll drive you mad! Bang your head! Metal health'll drive you mad!"

They spilled out of the little red tramp, laughing at one another, their earlier nerves nearly forgotten. Xander pulled up behind them a moment later, Anya and Tara in the car along with him, and they smiled to see that their erstwhile heroes seemed to be in such a good mood about the coming apocalypse. As they all climbed out of his car, Xander glanced up at the sky. "We'd better hurry," he commented, pointing upward.

All eyes in the group followed his gaze, and the laughter stopped. The right side of the sun was beginning to disappear behind the moon's implacable forward movement. "It's time," Buffy snapped. "Let's move, people."

The Scoobies all armed themselves from the trunks of the cars, all but Buffy, who simply strapped her dagger into a sheath which was bound around her right calf. They moved quickly into the ruins of the school, heading with unerring accuracy of memory toward the place where the library had been. They were nearly there when Willow kicked something. "Oh."

The small group drew to a halt when the redhead stopped to pick up the item she'd found. It was a trophy. Buffy drew closer to look, and then suddenly began to laugh. "Well, if that's not a good sign, I don't know what is." She took the trophy from her lover and turned it so that Giles and Xander could see it. It bore the tiny gilded image of a cheerleader, and the still-legible name on the tiny plaque read "Catherine Madison."

Giles and Buffy looked at one another and smiled. "That was the first time you ever saved my life," she said to him softly. He nodded, not trusting his voice. After a moment, Buffy turned and placed the trophy on the floor against the wall. She made a mental note to retrieve the thing when they were done. They all moved then as a group once more toward the library.

They were about ten feet from the place where the doors had been when they heard the chanting. The demon had begun his ritual. A careful peek around some standing debris showed Buffy that he was standing near where the research table had once been. His three remaining minions were ranged behind him where the checkout counter had been with their backs toward the Scoobies. She ducked back behind the debris again and reported this to Xander, Anya and Giles, who would be directed to engage and - hopefully without getting killed - distract the minions long enough for Buffy to get into position. Only after Buffy was where she needed to be would Willow, with Tara's backup, begin the spell to close the Hellmouth.

"Are we all ready?" she asked, looking around at her friends. Xander and Anya simply nodded. Willow clutched her spellbook, gulped, and smiled weakly at her. Tara patted Willow's shoulder and nodded. Giles looked at all of them. "I may never have said this before," he said suddenly, "but you are all a very remarkable and brave group of individuals and it has been my pleasure to know you all."

All of them reacted with a certain amount of surprise at Giles's unexpected outpouring of emotion, then suddenly Buffy reached out and whacked him gently on the shoulder. "We love you, too, Giles, but less with the 'we who are about to die salute you,' okay?"

He smiled slightly at her. "Well, shall we?"

She nodded. "Let's shall."

Xander, Anya and Giles gripped their weapons and came around the debris with loud yells, immediately garnering the attention of the minions nearby. Buffy waited until she thought they seemed thoroughly engaged, then suddenly grabbed Willow and kissed her hard. "I love you," she whispered, and then she was gone, sprinting across the library and leaping onto the demon.

Willow and Tara leaned around the fallen debris and got their first look at the demon in the flesh. "Oh, ew," Tara breathed.

The demon Nho was huge, possibly seven feet long, and looked, as Xander would later describe him, "like a big green and blue slimy Jabba the Hutt." It had tentacles rather than arms, and there were eight of these. Its three eyes protruded from the front of its head area on long stalks. All in all, Willow decided, it looked like something really scary from outer space. And Buffy was clinging to its head.

Tara was dividing her attention between the demon and its minions, which was a good thing, because she saw when Xander went down under one of them. "Repulse!" she shouted, throwing out one hand, and the minion went flying back, giving the young man time to recover his footing before it came back at him. He was holding his own, as were Anya and Giles, and she nodded, turning back to Buffy just in time to watch the demon get a tentacle securely wrapped around the Slayer's waist and snatch her off its head, holding her upside down in front of its three eyes, which waved at her in a nauseating manner as it pulled her closer and closer to its face.

Willow had gone completely pale and forgotten to breathe until Tara reminded her. And then the ground began to shake as the demon finished its incantation. The Hellmouth was open for business. The red-haired witch pulled open her spellbook and began to recite the words in front of her, but she didn't get past the first line before the demon's huge mouth opened wide and it shoved Buffy inside.

"Willow! The spell! The spell!" Tara exclaimed.

"Buffy! It ate her! It ate Buffy!" Willow was nearly hysterical.

Tara turned the younger witch by the shoulders and smacked her hard across the face. "Calm down! You knew this was going to happen! She's fine! Do the spell! NOW!"

Willow stared at Tara for a second longer, then suddenly dropped her eyes to her book and began to chant. "Ich ersuche um die Elemente des Universums, um zu meinem Willen zu verbiegen. Das Portal zur Hölle ist gegen alle Gesetze des Dämons und des Mannes geöffnet. Ich ersuche die Masse, die Luft, das Feuer und um das Wasser, um zusammen zu kommen und diesen Platz zu reinigen. Ich ersuche um die Wächter des Nordens, des Ostens, des Südens und des Westens, um in diesen Platz zusammen zu kommen. Lassen Sie das Portal an meinem Befehl geschlossen sein. JETZT!"

It was as though the entire world went silent. There was no sound of fighting from the minions and the Scoobies, there was no sound from the demons inside the Hellmouth struggling to come out, or from the demon Nho. There was dead silence for a long moment, perhaps four seconds, and then suddenly a rush of wind swept through the room, bringing with it a fierce rain shower. Lightning struck somewhere back in the stacks, and then again in the spot that had once been Giles's office. The earth itself began to shudder.

And then the demon Nho began to scream in pain.

When the demon's tentacle wrapped around her, pulling her off its head, Buffy had to fight down panic and revulsion at what she was about to do. It pulled her close to her face and she thought to herself that if one of those wriggling eyeballs touched her, she was going to lose her mind. But they didn't. She simply hung there, listening to the demon finish its incantation, before it brought its attention back to her. As its mouth began to gape open, she had time to think gratefully, Well, at least it doesn't have teeth, before she was thrown into its mouth and swallowed whole.

The sensation of being swallowed was one that Buffy prayed she would never have to experience again. It was indescribably disgusting, sliding down the tube of the demon's gullet and into its stomach. She was pleasantly surprised - if anything about the experience could have been pleasant - that the demon's stomach wasn't full of gastric juices. In fact, it seemed strangely dry. She paused, crouching, to unsheathe the dagger at her shin, and then listened for any sounds from outside. It seemed forever that she stood there, breathing the stale air inside the demon's body, but suddenly she recognized Willow's voice, muffled, screaming out her spell in German. She had heard Willow practice this spell enough times that when she heard the final, shouted word, she was ready. As soon as that word was spoken, she began to slice her way out of the demon's stomach.

She heard the demon's screams of pain all around her. It was eerily like being inside a stereo speaker. She couldn't see anything, but she knew she had to cut out the demon's heart in order to kill it, so she simply set about cutting up everything she could get her hands on until its screams finally ended. She was thrown down as the demon collapsed, dead, and she heard the screams of its minions as, with their master's death, the magicks that sustained them were cut off and they collapsed and died as well. Catching her breath, Buffy turned the knife to the nearest inner wall of demon that she could find and began to slice her way out of the carcass.

The sight that greeted the Slayer upon her egress from the demon was beautiful. Battered but unbowed, her Scoobies were ranged in front of her, some battered and some pale and shaking, but all alive and well and grinning at her as she fought her way out of the disgusting shell. Once out, she looked down at herself. She was covered in Nho-goo. "Oh, man," she said shakily. "I need a shower in the worst way."

She did remember to grab the trophy on her way out, and when they arrived at the parking lot, Giles pulled a dark blue bedsheet out of his trunk. "I... rather thought this might be needed," he suggested gently, eyeballing her demon-covered clothing.

She blinked at him and then sighed. "Thank you."

Xander, Anya and Tara piled back into Xander's car. "Casa de Summers?" Xander asked, and Buffy nodded. They pulled away and Giles moved to sit in the car while Willow held up the sheet to protect Buffy's modesty while the blonde stripped out of her goo-covered clothing. The sheet was then wrapped carefully around the Slayer, leaving her looking rather like an Indian woman in her sari. Willow gathered the icky clothing up and stuffed them into a trash bag which Giles had also brought, and then the two girls climbed into the car for the short trip back to the home Buffy and Willow shared.

Once there, Buffy made a beeline up the stairs and into the shower, while Willow moved into the kitchen to make tea and sandwiches. Tara came to help her and they worked in companionable silence for a few minutes before Willow stopped and turned to her friend. "Thank you."

"For what?"

"For waking me up back there. I lost it. I knew it was coming, but knowing something's gonna happen in your mind and seeing it happen in front of your eyes are two different things."

Tara nodded. "It's okay. It happens. but, hey! You didn't go all scary."

Willow grinned. "I didn't, did I?"

"Nope. Not even so much as a tiny little 'eep'."

"Well, that's a plus."

PART EIGHT

When Dakota and Faith walked up to the doorway of Abbie's inner sanctum, they were greeted by quite possibly the strangest thing either of them had seen – and that was saying a lot. Nicki was standing in the center of the room, literally surrounded by a cloud of cats. All of Abbie's cats and kittens were hovering in the air around the youngster, who was laughing and coaxing the animals to walk about on the air.

"Come here, Meka, here kitty kitty," Nicki was saying. "Look, Little E, here's a toy."

They stepped through the door, not wanting to startle the child into dropping the animals, but she surprised them by turning to see them and slowly lowering the cats all to the floor, where they immediately scattered like a flock of seagulls in a parking lot when cruel children drive cars into their midst. "Hey! Miss Faith! Miss Dakota! You're back!" She launched herself at them, hugging them both. "I'm so glad. How was Germany? You were gone for so long! Miss Faith, did they hurt you?"

"Easy, child, let them breathe," came Abbie's voice from the doorway. She entered with a smile and a hug for Dakota, and offered her hand to Faith. "I've not met you," she said casually. "I'm Abbie."

"Faith," Faith replied. "I, uh... I run the school with Dakota."

"You're Dakota's lover," Abbie corrected gently. "I know, dear. Don't be shy." She turned back toward the door as another figure filled the entry, this one a blonde girl with a mischievous face and bleached-blonde hair. She was wearing a white tee shirt, red kilt, and black knee-high lace-up combat boots. "This one's mine," Abbie said, gesturing. "This is Meghan. Baby, these are the vampires I told you about – Dakota and Faith."

"Hey, cool!" Meghan exclaimed. "Nice to meet you."

"So you've come to spirit our young scamp away from us, have you?" Abbie asked. "These last couple of months have been lovely – we'll miss her."

"Gotta do it," Faith said. "She's on her way to the States."

"Well, send us a postcard once in a while, dear," Abbie said, hugging the girl.

"I will," Nicki replied.

"Nicki, go pack, hon. We've got to get out of here pretty quick," Dakota said. After she was gone, the vampire continued. "We've been gone for over two months. The school's probably in a shambles – Maisri can't really control the kids all that well."

"Oh, I understand, sweetie," Abbie assured her. "You do what you have to do."

Nicki was back before long, her knapsack and another bag full to bursting. Faith blinked at her. "Did you have all that stuff when you got here?"

Nicki shook her head. "Meghan took me shopping," she said.

"Good Lord," Faith groaned.

"Don't worry about it," Meghan said, grinning. "Just get on back to school."

And so they went.

"What all did you get, Nick?" Dakota asked as they got on the road heading south.

"Well, I got school uniforms for the girls' school here, where Abbie sent me. And when I told Meghan I was going to Sunnydale, she said I couldn't wear just my uniforms there and so she bought me some regular clothes, too."

"It'll be useful," Faith commented. "That was really nice of her."

They played road games as they drove along, memory games and I-Spy, and even a form of slug-bug adapted to more of a slug-ford-prefect, to keep themselves occupied on the long drive back. The sun was coming up when they were challenged on the road into the Academy.

Faith was behind the wheel and puttering down the dirt road when she rounded a bend and saw two mounted girls blocking the road. She drew up to a stop in front of them. One girl walked her horse up to the front bumper of the car; the other walked hers around to the driver's side and dismounted, leaning down. "State your business –" she began, and then stopped. "Faith?"

Faith blinked. "Janna?"

Dakota raised her head from the opposite window. "Huh? What?"

"Wake up baby – it's Janna. We're home."

The two vampires got out of the car to hug Janna and her gleeful Partner, Dawn Summers. "Boy, are we ever glad to see you!" Dawn exclaimed. "Buffy called three days ago to say they'd saved the world again over there and wanted to know if you were back yet, but nobody on campus had heard from you in two months and we didn't even know where you took Nicki."

"Well, here we are," Dakota said, sighing and leaning back against the hood of the car. "It's been... insane."

"I bet!" Janna exclaimed. "If the state of the Academy when I got here is anything like what you two have been going through, I don't envy you in the least!"

Faith groaned. "Everything's fallen apart, hasn't it?"

"Nope," Janna exclaimed, grinning. "In fact, everything here's shipshape. Come on up to the school and we'll tell ya all about it."

Everything at the Academy was in fact shipshape – in better condition than it had been before the whole sorry mess began, in fact. When Janna had arrived at the school, only a week after Faith and Dakota had headed north to Newcastle with Nicki in tow, the place had begun to unravel. Miss Maisri, the magick teacher, was unsuited to manage the entire compound by herself, and some of the more rambunctious of the youngsters were beginning to take advantage of that fact.

"So I called a Slayer meeting," Janna explained. "We met with Maisri in the book tower because we didn't want any of the kids knowing what we were up to... and Maisri set up really strong wards after Nicki's little stunt. So we put our heads together and decided that if somebody was gonna run the place, then somebody had best get about the business of runnin' it."

Kerry, Maria, Callie, Janna and Siobhan had forced Maisri to sit and make several executive decisions with them in order to keep the place running smoothly. Siobhan, who had raised four younger siblings, had been given the job of handling discipline problems among the Potentials, and been given a fairly free hand to take care of things the way she'd seen fit. Callie had taken over the responsibility of teaching mathematics and English classes to all the students. Maria had taken over teaching science and history classes, and had built an entire curriculum for her students which merged Council history with the history taught to public school students by the Crown. Janna, who had trained with a Watcher for longer than any of the other active girls, had taken over the martial training of all the girls. Kerry, who had a good head for business, had taken over the day-to-day running of the Academy.

They had also chosen permanent Partners. Deciding that, as active Slayers and as placed in positions of authority over the other students, they needed to act the part, they had worked carefully together over a week's time, comparing and contrasting personality traits and abilities, working as a group to choose the best Partner for each Slayer. Janna had paired up with Dawn, as Dakota had foreseen; Kerry with Kate Miglione; Callie with Tiffany Moore; Maria with Virginia Marcos and Siobhan with Ebony Brooks.

"Unfortunately," Janna commented as they sat around a table in the Great Hall, the other young Slayers coming to join them, "that left us with a little bit of a Partner shortage for the other kids. Fortunately, a couple of Dakota's Child Services contacts were willing to deal with Kerry."

Kerry had gotten on the international phone lines and called every single contact that Dakota had in Child Welfare, seeking students of the proper age and mindset who were currently without permanent foster placement. She had gotten more than she bargained for. "So, I'm making calls, right? And the next thing I know, I've got twenty-three girls between the ages of eight and thirteen on planes into Heathrow. Now I need Potentials!" the young blonde laughed.

"Twenty-three girls?" Faith exclaimed.

Kerry nodded. "So we're going crazy with cleaning out the south tower to make more dorm rooms, trying to figure out what the hell we're going to do about teaching these kids because they're younger than anyone else we have. So we decided to advertise for teachers. Wouldn't you know it – the first person to answer our ad is from a cadet branch of one of the old Watcher families! She's an elementary-level language arts teacher, and she said she knew just where she could find exactly what we needed. She shows up a week later with an entire elementary education department behind her."

"But now we need Potentials!" Callie took up the thread of the conversation. "So Maisri straps her mojo on and starts doing the locator spells, focusing on younger girls to match the new ones. She found 'em. The last of them arrived two days ago. We have a precise balance between Potentials and Partners for the first time since the Academy was begun."

Faith and Dakota were shaking their heads. "You guys are amazing."

Maria blushed. "We want to do our best for you, si?"

"You did, Maria," Dakota assured her. "You all did wonderfully."

Janna giggled. "Callie wanted to break the girls up into Houses, like we were Hogwarts or something, and have a House Cup and everything, but we haven't had time to work out the logistics of that yet."

"No Quidditch yet, though," Callie mused. "I haven't been able to find any spells to make the brooms fly."

Faith shuddered. "No Quidditch, please. Kotie made me watch that movie. I'd be afraid someone would fall off and break their neck."

Callie sighed. "Fine."

Dakota glanced up at the clock. "You all need your sleep. Tomorrow morning we'll reconvene and you girls can take us all over the various changes you've implemented, but I really like the sound of everything. You've done fabulous jobs."

"Thanks, Miss Dakota!" the girls all chorused, and the merry group broke up as each girl headed for her bed. The two vampires headed for their own as well. Dakota peeked into the maids-closet to make sure Nicki was where she was supposed to be and then turned to find Faith kneeling on the bed facing her, grinning wickedly and very naked.

Dakota grinned back and made short work of her own clothing, then came to the bed with Faith. "Well, now," she purred. "Seems like maybe we've got an account to settle."

Faith grinned, reaching for Dakota's hands. "I believe you may be right." She pulled her lover onto the bed and laid her down. "You just relax and let me do my job here, okay?"

"Yes, ma'am," Dakota replied with a chuckle that turned into a gasp when Faith's mouth descended upon her left nipple. "Oh, baby," she whispered. "Yeah..."

Faith grinned and grazed the nipple with her teeth, then moved over to the other while working the first one with her fingers. She licked and sucked at the nipples until Dakota was moaning beneath her, then slowly licked and kissed a trail down Dakota's torso to her stomach, which she lavished with little nips and kisses in a spiral that centered at Dakota's navel. Faith slid her tongue into her lover's nipple and was rewarded with a squeak and a gasp. "Baby... please..."

Faith slowly began moving closer, dropping kisses all the way down to the thatch of pubic hair. She settled herself between Dakota's thighs and went to work with her mouth, licking and sucking at every available inch of flesh. She brought her lover to climax rapidly, doing all the little tricks she knew would make Dakota come the fastest. As Dakota panted, slowly coming down from her orgasm, Faith fished around in the bedside table until she found their favorite toy – a strap-on they'd nicknamed Moby Dick. She donned the equipment rapidly, applied some lubricant and slid up Dakota's body to kiss her, then slowly began to slide the dildo into Dakota's aching entrance.

Dakota moaned and clutched at Faith's back, digging her fingernails in as the sensation of penetration pressed deeper into her body. When Faith began to slowly thrust with her hips, Dakota raised her legs and wrapped them around Faith's waist, letting her reach even deeper. She began to gasp, and then to quietly moan Faith's name over and over. "Oh, yeah, Faith, baby, yeah, Faith, make me come for you baby, make me come for you... oh, fuck, baby, I'm gonna come... I'm coming!"

At the height of Dakota's orgasm, Faith leaned forward and bit her lover's neck, adding suction at the jugular to the surges below. Dakota grabbed Faith's wrist and bit into it as well, and as she came explosively under Faith, she shared that orgasm with her even as they both shared their blood.

When it was over and they lay together, exhausted and on the verge of sleep, Dakota murmured into Faith's neck. "I love you, Faith."

Faith pulled Dakota closer and nuzzled into her hair. "I love you, too, Kotie. I really do."

PART NINE

"So, what exactly are we supposed to do with this kid?" Buffy asked Giles as they stood in the airport waiting for Nicki's plane to arrive.

"Hopefully, settle her down a little bit; impress upon her the seriousness of the vocation she's chosen."

"Hmm." Buffy was silent for a long time. She turned to Giles. "Do you like kids, Giles?"

He blinked. "Kids? I like you all just fine," he said slowly, wondering where this conversation was going.

"I know you like us, Giles, otherwise you'd be in Bath or at the Academy or something. I mean kids. Like, babies and little kids."

He thought about it. "I... honestly, Buffy, I've never really been around many small children. Not, at least, since I was one. I've always found them to be rather noisy and generally uncontrolled."

The look on her face told him that wasn't the answer she'd wanted, but no matter how he probed, she would say no more on the subject. He finally asked one too many times and she stood and walked away, saying she needed to use the restroom. When she came out a few moments later, her eyes were slightly red, as though she'd been crying, but he knew better than to ask anything else and pretended not to notice, focusing instead on discussing the girl whose plane could now be seen taxiing to the gate.

A few minutes later, the passengers of the plane began to disembark, and young Nicki Roland came out of the doorway, dressed still in her Academy uniform of khaki pants and blue Oxford shirt. Buffy waved at her. "Nicki!"

The girl turned and grinned at the Slayer and the Watcher who were waiting for her. She began dodging people and made it over to them as quickly as she could, slinging her carryon duffel over her shoulder as she came. "Hey! I'm here! Oh, my God, that was such a long flight! I'm so tired! But I'm so excited about being here! Hi, Miss Buffy! Hi, Mr. Giles!"

Buffy grinned at the girl's enthusiasm. "Just Buffy, Nicki, please."

"Oh, okay. I gotta get my bags. Do you know where the baggage claim is?"

They led her downstairs to the baggage claim and retrieved her suitcases, carrying them outside into the California sunshine and loading them into the trunk of Giles's little red tramp. "Am I staying with you, Buffy?" Nicki asked as they climbed into the car.

Buffy shook her head. "No. You're staying with Giles. The polite fiction we've established is that he's your uncle. You'll go to school here at Sunnydale Junior High and you'll work with one of us after school."

"Okay." She nodded. "Will... um... I know you have a whole gang... Miss Dakota calls it the Scooby Gang. Will I get to meet any of them?"

Buffy grinned and Giles nodded. "They're very anxious to meet you, as a matter of fact," he told her. "You'll work with almost all of them at some point."

"We need to lay some ground rules first off," Buffy said, looking to Giles for approval. At his slight nod, she continued. "First of all, the books are off limits to you. Period. Unless someone specifically hands you a book and tells you to either use or study it, the magic texts are absolutely off limits. Second, the thing you need to understand is that this is not the safe place that the Academy is where you can goof around without really having to worry about consequences. This is a Hellmouth. It's a war zone, and we're fighting on the front lines of that war. Screwing around in Sunnydale can get you killed quick. Never leave the house without a stake, a cross and a bottle of holy water. Ever."

Giles nodded. "And keep in mind that just because something looks human, it doesn't follow that it is human. Never verbally invite anyone in; open the door and step back."

"Oh, and don't say 'I wish' about anything. We tend to get vengeance demons around here. They thrive on that kind of thing," Buffy admonished.

Nicki's head was spinning. "Wow, there's a lot of stuff to remember!"

Buffy grinned. "Don't worry. If you forget, one of us will yell at you, or Giles will glare."

"I can deal with that," Nicki said, grinning.

"So we got her settled in and she'll start school on Monday," Buffy finished telling Willow as they dried the dinner dishes.

"Okay. So what aren't you telling me?"

Buffy blinked and tried to look innocent. "What are you talking about?"

Willow gave her the Look of Shame. "Do you really think you can hide it from me? You're about to cry about something. What happened?"

"Well, I asked Giles what he thought about... about kids... and... he... he doesn't like kids."

Willow sighed. "Oh, sweetie. Did you specifically ask him, or...?"

Buffy shook her head. "I asked him if he liked kids. He said they were noisy and uncontrolled."

Willow sighed. "Honey... just... don't worry about it right now, okay?" She pulled Buffy to her and hugged the tiny Slayer. "Look, it doesn't have to be him, you know?"

"I know," Buffy replied miserably.

"But you really want it to be. And that's okay. We'll talk to him about it. We'll be specific. And we'll see what he says. Okay?"

"Okay." Buffy nodded.

"Good. Let's go to bed."

The gang convened in the Magic Box on Monday afternoon, discussing Nicki before she arrived. Buffy and Giles filled them in on the troubles Dakota and Faith had related to them and laid out the ground rules. "As much as possible I want her to be a normal girl and have a normal life," Giles said with a sidelong glance of amusement at his Slayer. "However, she's training to be a Partner and that training is far more important than most of the things she'll likely want to do. She'll work here in the shop in the afternoons after school, studying or training, and she'll patrol a few times a week with Buffy. Willow, Tara and I will be keeping up her magick training. Anya, she's not to have access to anything over a beginner's level magick book unless it's specifically assigned to her. I'll trust you to choose appropriate books for her to study if she needs material, but most of the time I'll try to have something specific assigned for her. Xander, I'll ask you to help me train her in research. You know the books almost as well as I do and your help will be invaluable."

The bell above the door jangled and Nicki came into the shop. This was the first time any of them had seen her out of her Academy uniform and they were surprised at how much younger she seemed in jeans and a tee-shirt. She walked in, smiling, and gave a sort of half-wave. "Hi," she said tentatively. "I'm Nicki."

The Scoobies went around the table greeting her and introducing themselves, and then the meeting began to break up. Anya went to help a customer, Xander needed to get back to the construction site, Tara had schoolwork to do. Giles suggested to Buffy that a spot of training might be just the thing for a Monday afternoon and she grinned, going to change into her workout clothes.

Willow turned to Nicki. "Remember me?" she asked. "Evil, dark, veiny, scary witch?"

Nicki blinked and nodded, swallowing nervously.

"Good," Willow said. "You need to remember. Because if you forget and start messing around again, you might turn into me. And I don't think you'd want that."

Nicki nodded. Giles stood as Buffy emerged from the restroom in her workout gear. "Shall we retire to the training room?" He nodded at Willow and Nicki to follow.

Nicki sat on the couch with Willow and watched as Buffy did her stretches and a quick gymnastic routine on some of the equipment. She blinked when Giles walked to the display of knives on the wall and began taking them down. Her jaw dropped when he spun suddenly and hurled one at the Slayer. She nearly fell off the couch when Buffy caught it. "Holy crap!" she breathed.

Willow heard the exclamation and grinned. "It gets better."

They sat through the knife-tossing exercise and sparring with quarterstaves, and then Giles moved to the side of the room behind Buffy and Willow stood. Giles said a few words in what sounded to Nicki's half-trained ear like Sumerian, and Willow responded with a few more. Buffy watched the redhead warily, and Nicki nearly came out of her skin when Willow conjured a ball of blue fire and hurled it at Buffy.

The sight of Buffy dodging those balls of fire was almost like moving poetry, Nicki decided later. She used everything around her to her advantage, whether it meant jumping on top of a piece of equipment or vaulting over one, and managed to avoid almost all the fireballs. They had been flying at her for what seemed like forever but was probably only around eight minutes when Buffy fell for a feint and took a fireball to the stomach.

She hit the mat hard and lay there, dazed, for a long moment. Giles dropped the maigckal barrier he'd erected to absorb the fireballs and he and Willow went to kneel next to Buffy. "Are you all right?" he asked her quietly.

"Yeah," she wheezed. "I'm good. Peachy, even, with a side of keen."

He gave her a half-smile. "When you make silly statements I know you're fine," he teased gently as he and Willow helped her up off the floor. He turned and looked at Nicki. "Go and do your schoolwork at the big table," he instructed her. "When you've finished, ask Anya for Volume One of the Black Chronicles, and study that until I come and get you."

She nodded and left the room.

Witch and Watcher helped the Slayer over to the couch. Willow lifted Buffy's tank top to examine the spot where she'd taken the fireball to the gut. It was coming up a livid purple. "Ouch," Willow hissed in sympathy.

Buffy nodded, finally catching her breath again. "Hurts like a bitch," she agreed. "Like a brick. Pretty, though," she added with a grin.

"More for effect," Willow responded cheekily. "Made an impression on our little scamp."

"And on my stomach," Buffy jibed. She laid her head on Willow's shoulder. "Ouch."

Giles went to the mini-fridge and came back with a bottle of water, which Buffy accepted gratefully. "You are a god."

He laughed. "Hardly," he replied.

Willow looked at Buffy and quirked an eyebrow in silent question. Buffy looked from her lover to her Watcher and back again, shrugging. Willow took a deep breath and looked up at the Englishman. "Giles?"

"Hmm?"

"Sit down? We... we want to ask you something." She took a deep breath. I will not babble. I will not babble. "We... we've been thinking about something. And, you know, we've been together for a couple of years and stuff, and how we're practically married except that we can't, really, and you know sometimes when people get married, they have stuff happen and it's really a good thing, but we can't necessarily do certain things without help, and –"

Buffy laid a finger across Willow's lips, silencing the babble. "We're thinking about having kids," she said softly, without looking at Giles.

"Ah," he said softly. "So this is what Friday was about."

She nodded, looking at the floor. "We... we really want to, Giles, but, um... there's kind of a little obstacle." He raised an eyebrow, not following, and she gave him a look of disgust. "It's that whole lack of sperm thing," she said dryly.

He blinked and removed his glasses to clean them. "Of... of course," he stammered. "That could certainly pose difficulty. Ah..." he paused, uncertain. "What, exactly, do you..." He stopped when Buffy's eyes came up to his face, his own eyes widening. "Oh. Oh, my."

Buffy nodded. "We want you to be the father. If... if you'd be... willing?"

He looked at Willow, who nodded enthusiastically in agreement. "Really, we do," she said. "We'd really like you to do this for us."

His eyes filled with tears and he leaned forward to embrace his Slayer and her lover. "I... I don't know what to say," he finally choked out. "I would be... honored."

Buffy clutched at him, hugging him tightly. "I love you, Giles," she whispered to him. "You're the best Watcher I could have ever asked for... and an even better friend."