Title: The Occult Sentinels – The Rising

Time Frame: Post 7.03 'Same Time, Same Place'.

Summary:When four teenagers mysteriously appear throughout Sunnydale, the Scoobies realise that their defeat of one of their past enemies may have had far-reaching consequences.

Disclaimer:I own none of the characters of 'Buffy TVS'. The rights belong to Joss Whedon. I do not use them for any means of fiscal gain.

A/N: Responses and reviews always welcome.


Prologue

Sunnydale, California 1997

Troy rubbed his eyes as he stared at his computer screen. He'd been working on this essay for three hours already and it still wasn't finished. His hands hovered over the keyboard waiting for the inspiration to hit him. Minutes passed and nothing happened, the cursor winking at him as though taunting him. Blinking to get the sleep out of his eyes he turned to get his books, hoping to find something to help him. He rubbed his eyes again as he felt his eyelids become heavy, however it wasn't long until sleep over came him.

He opened his eyes slowly his head was resting on his textbook and if he wasn't mistaken he had drooled slightly. 'Mr. Giles is going to kill me' was his first thought, he'd heard the stories of how the British librarian reacted if any of his books were damaged in any way. He hastily grabbed a tissue and began to gingerly mop it off the page when he noticed a light flashing out of the corner of his eye. He slowly turned round and looked at his computer.

The screen was sparking and flashing repeatedly, smoke was belching out the back of his hard drive. He cursed, he hadn't saved his work. He tried the age-old method of rapid repair and rapped the monitor firmly on its casing, only to rapidly to draw his hand back when it was hit by a stray spark. He rolled his chair back and knelt down next to its plug socket. What looked like blue lightning was coursing along the wire as well as the phone line.

He quickly stood up again and grabbed the t-shirt he had discarded on his bed and wrapped it around his hand. Tentatively he reached down to the power socket and quickly yanked out the plug, the electricity instantly dissipated and vanished. Breathing a sigh of relief Troy reached towards the phone line, wincing as another jolt of electricity leapt out at his hand. He gritted his teeth as he pulled at the cable; with a bit of work it came loose. He pulled again, wary of getting shocked, and this time the cable came free.

He sank back to sit on the floor and glanced back at his computer. The monitor was dark and silent, tendrils of smoke drifted lazily through the air from his hard drive. He closed his eyes and ran his fingers through his hair in bewilderment, how was he going to explain this to his parents. With his eyes closed he didn't notice the phone socket begin to spark again. Tendrils of blue lightning leapt from the socket towards Troy; there was a blinding flash of white light. When the light cleared, everything was as it had been minutes before but Troy had vanished.