Wandering Between Two Worlds

by Shadow Master

BtVS/Naruto/Ranma/Sailor Moon In this sequel to 'A Distant Relation' Team Anko is has arrived in Sunnydale and they better get used to the wierdness quick because the Hellmouth isn't going to give them time to ease into things.

2. Old Routines and New Arrivals

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the copyrighted material contained herein. They are the rightful property of their respective creators and associated companies. I make no profit off of this whatsoever. I write only because there are those who like my works and because I find writing fanfic fun. I can assure you that no matter what you get from me it won't even cover a tenth of your lawyer bills.

Somewhere Far Away, Evening

"Is this him?" asked a soft yet intelligent female voice.

It took a few moments of looking at the computer screen but the look that came over the second female's face was all the answer that the genius needed. Immediately she began to download all the information the file contained to her own computer while beginning the process of covering her tracks. Her friend had called in a big favor and even agreed to one in return in order to gain the information on the man whose picture was on the screen at that very moment. She had been wary of agreeing to the request, given the highly illegal nature of it all, but seeing the passion in her friend's eyes she had reluctantly agreed to lend her skills to the effort.

She just hoped that it would all be worth it in the end.

Of course, now that they had the information they sought, the next most logical question came to mind.

"Now that we know who he is and where we can find him, what will you do now?" she asked her friend who fortunately snapped out of her daze.

"Talk to Sensei, of course." Her friend replied with a confident smile.

With that name, she caught an inkling of what her friend intended and momentarily marveled at how much effort the brunette was putting into this venture. It happened before with other men but the amount of work put into it made it appear to be no more than an after school activity.

This… this was something… more.

Only time would tell whether or not it met the potential that existed or lived a short life like always.

The Following Monday, Noon, Sunnydale High School, Willow's POV

"Find anything?" Oz asked as he looked at the dead cat with a certain fascination.

"Not really. There are a lot of different ways of making dead bodies move or give them a kinda unlife, but nothing that really matches this," she said as she closed the book she'd been looking through. "Besides which, who'd want to reanimate a dead cat? It wouldn't really be all that useful."

"Maybe it came back to life on its own." Cordy said offhand as she tried to make sense of the book in front of her.

"Possible, but unlikely. If the Hellmouth could naturally raise the dead, we would have encountered many more instances of by now," Giles said from his place in the stacks. "It is far more likely that a spell or perhaps a demonic ability is responsible. Nevertheless, I agree that this phenomena is proving quite difficult to properly diagnose."

While it was true that they hadn't been researching for very long, Giles having only brought the undead cat in that morning, they were usually able to find something within the first few hours. A place to look was always found relatively quickly thanks to Giles' training as a Watcher and even if he couldn't figure the problem out right away his books quickly helped out.

Still, there's not much else we can do but keep looking. She thought as she grabbed the next book in the stack that had yet to be looked through.

She had barely finished opening it when Xander burst into the room and swiftly leapt over the nearby counter before disappearing from sight. This puzzled her right up until she spotted two all-too-familiar heads of hair race by the entrance to the library. She hadn't been able to get a clear look, given the size and shape of the windows in the doors, but the sheer number of times that the Amazon duo had popped up in the last week alone made it fairly easy for her to identify them. Establishing their identities also helped explain her best friends' actions since he'd taken to evading them whenever possible. Not an easy job, given that both Lotion and Perfume were official students in his class, but it could've been a whole lot worse. The duo had attempted to get Xander assigned as their official guide and helper, playing up the angle that they were new to America, but thankfully Snyder's unjustified dislike of the Scooby gang kept that from happening. Instead of Xander, the two Chinese girls had wound up with Jonathan as their guide but that had lasted all of three days before the warrior women had told the young man to essentially get lost. She sort of felt bad for Jonathan since she knew how it felt to be treated like you were less than dirt, but it wasn't like she could tell them to go back.

Five minutes passed before Xander peaked his head up from behind the counter and warily looked at the door for another two before finally deciding that he really had given Perfume and Lotion the slip.

"Damn, those two are getting persistent!" he exclaimed as he walked over to the only vacant chair next to the table. "What's it going to take to get them to put two and two together and realize that I am NOT going to marry them?!"

"Unless you plan on cross dressing and dating Snyder, I don't think there's anything you can do to stop them." Cordy replied with a bit of snark as she turned a page with a bit too much anger.

Everyone shuddered at the mental picture that that option brought forth in their minds before they banished it.

"First: GAH! And secondly, I'd sooner run through the sewers drenched in barbecue sauce and dare every demon I saw to eat me before I'd do something like that," Xander said, emphatically shooting down the idea before letting out a discouraged sigh. "Still, you're probably right about it taking something like that to get them to back off."

"I'm not sure they'd back off even if you did do something like that," Buffy said from her seat with no book in hand. "If they think you're just doing it to get rid of them, it won't work plus, even if their law is SO a bad example for girls everywhere, it's pretty obvious that they take it seriously. So short of some guy coming along and making them a better offer, I'd say you're stuck with them."

"Buff? Not helping!" Xander said with a bit more sharpness then he'd probably intended.

"Sorry," the Slayer shrugged before looking away from him.

"You should go on a date with them." Oz said simply after finishing his examination of the undead cat.

"WHAT!?"

"Warriors like challenges," Oz explained as he eased himself back into his chair. "The more you fight them, the harder they'll pursue."

"So you're saying that if I give in, they'll lose interest?" Xander asked, sounding a bit skeptical of the idea.

"Yep," Oz replied without elaborating on his idea.

"He might have a point, Xan. For a girl, half the fun of going after a guy she likes is the challenge." Buffy said, putting in her two cents. "Sure, they all dream about getting him on the first try but it wouldn't be nearly as fun."

"But what if they don't lose interest in me?" Xander asked, still not completely convinced. "Worse than that, what if Ayeka and the rest of my team find out? Anko-sensei'll probably get a kick out of the whole mess but the others'll beat the crap out of me for sure!"

"Then date them, too." Oz said as though it was just that easy.

"I'm not dating Anko-sensei because, for one thing, student-teacher relationships are just as frowned upon in Konoha as they are here and because she'd drive me nuts inside a week." Xander said, shaking his head in the negative. "Hana doesn't see me as anything but a teammate and would probably gut me if I asked her out on a date. As for Ayeka, while she'd jump at the chance to go out on a date, she'd be peeved to find out I went out on a date with anyone but her."

To this, all Oz did was shrug and state in body language that he didn't have any more ideas about how to handle the problem.

"As fascinating as Xander's current conundrum is, I would suggest that we focus on the problem at hand," Giles said, sounding like he was uncomfortable with the current conversation. "Now, as you will likely be here until the bell rings for your next class, would you please help with the research, Xander?"

"Sure, G-Man." Xander sounded happy to change topics as well. "What's the what, exactly? Other than the obvious."

"Well, at the moment, the issue is pretty much as you see it. Buffy found a dead cat in her basement yesterday and promptly buried it outside," Giles explained before resetting his glasses. "However this morning when she opened the back door to put the trash out the animal somehow came back to life and ran inside. She then called me to pick it up and since then we've been trying to figure out how this could have occurred."

"Yeah. I'm just lucky Mom was in the bathroom when it all happened," Buffy said, sounding relieved that she'd managed to keep this bit of weirdness away from her mother.

"Gotcha! So, is this going to be a 'Pet Cemetery' thing or are we going to get zombie people, too?" Xander asked after giving the meowing undead cat a once over.

"I don't know. Until we determine the specific manner in which the cat was brought back to life, we can't rule anything out." Giles replied, turning back to the book in his hands. "For obvious reasons, though, I sincerely hope that this is an isolated case. Given the number of cemeteries in Sunnydale, we would be quite overwhelmed if the dead began to rise."

"No kidding!" Xander said, voicing what everyone else was thinking.

Even if they took into account the vampire population, the number of corpses in Sunnydale easily numbered in the hundreds. If all of them clawed their way out of their graves and started shuffling around town, there'd be no way to stop them all before someone got hurt. Limited to only their usual weapons, they'd get dogpiled quickly and, even if the Konoha ninja helped out, they wouldn't be able to do much better. Since they'd arrived in town, they'd been coming along on just about every patrol so she'd been able to get a good idea of just how far they were willing to go with their techniques. From what she'd seen, they'd completely avoided techniques that would draw attention to their presence by being too flashy or leaving too big a mess behind. That meant no element techniques or hand-to-hand combat moves that'd tear up the landscape but that certainly didn't mean she hadn't been impressed with what they did do.

If she thought what Xander'd done against the Taraken assassins had been impressive, the moves he and his teammates had used in the last week had been downright amazing.

It almost made her wish that she hadn't promised not to snoop during their training because she would have loved to be able to do what they could.

Maybe if she could learn from them, she could be something more than just 'research girl'…

The Middle of Sunnydale, That Night, Mid-Evening, Hana's POV

"Hope you like the kitchen, Wannabe!" she said as they arrived at their usual starting point atop one of the taller buildings in town. "'Cause you're going to be cooking there for the next week!"

"Don't count on it, Dog Girl! I don't plan on losing tonight," Xander said with much confidence. "You, on the other hand, are going to scrubbing floors until they sparkle!"

"Hai, hai! I'm glad you're all fired up but let's get the show on the road," Anko-sensei said, interrupting the battle of wills. "The rules are pretty much the same tonight as they've been before except for one thing. Just like before, you're to patrol the town without being spotted by civilians and kill the demons you come across in three moves or less. The difference this time is that you'll be locating and killing them before they can attack anyone, even if they're walking down the street with civilians in view."

"That won't be too much of a challenge, Anko-sensei." Xander said, not really worried about the new wrinkle in their nightly routine. "Unless things've changed quite a bit since I left, the streets are pretty much deserted after nine. Sometimes it's busier on the weekends but not by much."

"Then you shouldn't have any trouble beating Hana and Ayeka." Anko-sensei said, sounding like she believed it'd be harder than Wannabe thought.

"Piece of cake," the head of the Uchiha clan snarked, sounding pretty sure of himself.

"Then it's time to begin. GO!" Anko-sensei as she vigorously chopped the air in front of her.

In a blur of motion, the four members of Team Anko scattered in different directions and used the surrounding environment to their advantage. It'd taken a bit of getting used to at first because she'd been so used to leaping the rooftops without really caring about who might see her down on the streets below. In the shinobi region of the world, people jumping from rooftop to rooftop were as commonplace as walking normally on the sidewalk. It was just another means of getting to where you wanted to go and no one really thought of it as anything more than that. As her Jonin instructor pointed out, though, they weren't in the ninja region anymore and their orders specifically said to keep a low profile, so she'd forced herself to keep her movements swift but obscure. At first this had caused Xander to beat her in the number of demons killed but once they started betting chores on how the patrol went, things got a lot more interesting. The bets mostly happened between her and Wannabe but, every once and a while, the others decided to get in on the action, though they had yet to manage a victory.

Moving from building to building and sometimes using the odd alleyway when she judged the surrounding structures to be too small to be used without being seen, she used her senses to look for any sign of potential targets. Her sense of smell was somewhat impaired by the unnatural stench the town gave off but thankfully the other four made up for it. Nevertheless, it was definitely a good thing at the end of the night when they all went back to their home, since it was far enough from Sunnydale that the stench was barely noticeable. Hagane, Ishina and Seirei likewise looked forward to returning home that might have had more to do with wanting to get the demon gunk out of their fur. While she might not have liked getting demon gunk on her, she figured it was much worse for her partners, given that it got into their fur and was probably a real bitch to get completely out.

No matter what, I won't let myself or my girls turn into Ayeka! She thought as she sifted through the information her senses were imparting to her. There's keeping yourself from looking like gutter trash and there's setting yourself up like a priceless doll. I'm neither and neither are my girls.

For the next hour she and her animal partners combed the town looking for prey and, while they'd managed to take care of two vampires easily enough, she wasn't satisfied. Vamps were nothing, a genin could probably handle them easily, and she wanted a particularly impressive victory to rub in Wannabe's face at the end of the night. She had faith, though, that she'd find something interesting sooner or later but if Xander wound up finding something sooner, it'd be just that much harder to find something to top it. She'd heard some of the stories about what had happened before the Uchiha left for Konoha and, while she was pretty sure some bullshit was mixed in, there was enough truth to get her interested. If the Sunnydale Hellmouth really was ground zero for the weird and the freaky, then she wanted front row seats to whatever came up next.

It was as she hopped from one rooftop to another though that she remembered what Wannabe had said about being careful what you ask for in Sunnydale because that was when she noticed a shambling form making its way slowly down the street beneath her.

Coming to a stop, she turned around and looked at the oddity, her partners stepping up beside her to look as well. It only took a few minutes for her to decide that it wasn't human because, even allowing for injuries, most people didn't move like that unless they were seriously hurt and those people generally didn't make it more than a few feet from where they were hurt.

That and if the person had the strength to move more than a few feet from where they got hurt, they usually also had the strength to call out for help or scream in pain.

That left some sort of unnatural being of some kind.

Score! She thought as she realized that she had likely come across something that no one else had so far and therefore it'd earn her some real points.

Looking up and down the street, she was glad to see that there was no one within eyesight, so that meant she could cut loose a little with this one. Leaping down from the rooftop to a place right in the unnatural being's path, she turned to face it and recoiled a bit as she got a better look at it. Before she had just thought it to be an ugly demon of some kind but now she could see it was, in fact, a partially decayed human being. Taking a brief sniff, she could immediately tell that this person was dead and had been for quite some time, so that meant it was some sort of zombie. A part of her was a bit bummed by this since it meant there'd be virtually no challenge in beating it, given that its brains had long since turned to mush. Things like it were only dangerous in large numbers, since it allowed them to overwhelm their prey no matter how skilled they were.

Nevertheless, a kill was a kill, so she pulled out two kunai and charged her prey head on at a speed that was just below what could be considered the maximum for a non-ninja human. With her left kunai she cut deep into the neck of corpse, cutting halfway through then, with a one hundred and eighty degree spin, she used the right kunai to finish the decapitation. She could hear when the head hit the ground and, as she turned around, she saw the rest of the body wobble a bit before doing the same thing. A sigh of disappointment escaped her lips, though, since it was hardly a satisfying victory but she'd call it in just the same so it could be added to her score.

Reaching up, she pressed the transmit button on her throat microphone, "This is Hana. One zombie downed on Gellar Avenue."

"Good going, Hana." Anko-sensei said through her earpiece.

"Big deal! I just took down two zombies!" Ayeka declared with smug superiority. "Beat that Dog girl!"

"Um, guys, I think we might have a bit of an epidemic on our hands," came Xander's voice laced with a bit of concern. "I just took care of four zombies."

"What do you mean by 'an epidemic', Xander-kun?" Anko-sensei asked, sounding more serious than before.

"Having one or two of these things popping out of the ground wouldn't be anything too bad but seven at the same time just screams that something more Hellmouthy than usual is going on," Xander replied with the sound of movement in the background. "Maybe someone cast a spell or got their hands on some kind of magical doo-hickey. Whatever's going on, we need to put a stop to it sooner rather than later or we're going to get starring roles in our own personal 'Dawn of the Dead'."

It only took her a minute to understand the last comment.

One of the first things she'd learned when her team had started patrolling Sunnydale was that the town had over ten cemeteries. Even though they varied in size, there were quite a few graves there and, if even half of the corpses dug their way to the surface, things would get nasty. This would especially be the case if everyone the zombies killed joined their ranks but she figured that only a few of the locals would wind up zombified, given what Xander said about Sunnydale at night.

"Didn't all the people that got bit or scratched by the zombies turn into one of them?" Ayeka asked with a bit of concern in her voice. "That's not going to happen to us, is it?"

"I don't know and I sure as hell don't plan on finding out the hard way," Xander said as the sounds of movement stopped coming through her earpiece. "Best keep to mid-range battle for groups and only get in close when fighting one on one."

"Thanks for stating the obvious, Wannabe!" she sniped, a bit annoyed at the Uchiha stating the obvious.

"Whatever! Look, I hopped up to the tallest building close to me and I'm seeing a lot of corpse traffic in the streets," Xander said in a way that she could easily picture the half-roll of his eyes. "I'm at the corner of Malcom and Tam. From what I can see, it looks like they're all heading to the south east corner of the residential area. What about you guys?"

Pushing aside her annoyance, she leapt quickly to the top of the tallest building in the area and looked around to try and learn more. It wasn't long before she spotted more zombies scattered about the various streets within eyesight but the important thing in her mind was that she could tell that they were all heading in the same direction.

They were shambling towards the residential area of Sunnydale.

"Looks like someone's holding a meeting for decaying dead people, Wannabe. I got a bunch in my area and they're going to the same place as your pulse lacking pals," she said before she began roof hopping towards the most likely convergence point.

"Same here. What do you think they could be after?" Ayeka asked, sounding a little reluctant to face such disgusting foes.

"I don't know but I think it's in everyone's best interest to make sure they don't get it," Anko-sensei stated, sounding all business with the way she spoke. "I want everyone to try and get to the ahead of the zombie pack. Get to their destination before they do. Once we know where that is, we'll make our next move."

"Roger!" Wannabe said with prompt professionalism.

"Hai!" came Ayeka's response in almost the same tone.

"See ya there!" she said before turning to her canine partners. "Hagane! Ishina! Seirei! Let's go!"

All three of them barked in acknowledgement as they kept pace behind her and so she kept her eyes focused on the road ahead. Thinking about the battle that was likely to come, she felt a little annoyed when she realized that if they wound up having to deal with the zombies with all the houses around them, then Anko-sensei would be extra critical about how they fought. It was one thing to fight covertly at night, downtown or in the cemeteries where the odds of someone seeing them was limited, but fighting on someone's front lawn was bound to draw people to their windows.

This is going to be a pain in the ass. She thought with a mental groan of annoyance.

Xander's POV, Later

Why am I not surprised!? He thought as his mind informed him of the most likely destination of the zombies.

It had been less than half an hour since he'd taken down his first zombie and since then, he'd been going through in his mind the various possibilities concerning the cause. Some people might think that a town sitting on the mouth to hell would always have zombie issues but the truth was that, unless someone summoned them or some other outside force empowered them, the dead stayed dead. When he'd learned that the other members of his team had also bumped into some as well, he'd known for sure that something had to be up. The big tell, though, was when he got a grasp for where they were all headed, he figured that someone was either calling them or sending them after something. Given the undead cat that Buffy had found, the odds were high that all the zombies were heading for the blonde Slayer's place. So either some new big bad was sending the walking corpses after her or they were being drawn to something that was located in that general area. He hoped that it was the latter since then all he'd have to do was find whatever was drawing in the deadites and then carry it away to someplace more isolated.

Dropping down from the rooftops he'd been hopping from, he went the rest of the way on foot, slicing up any zombies that were in his way. It was a few minutes later when he turned onto Buffy's street and saw her home but he could also see that several zombies were less than two blocks away from it and were getting closer.

"Hana, Ayeka, Anko-sensei! The zombies are trying to get to Buffy's place," he said into his throat mike. "I'll look around for anything that might be causing this. The rest of you should try and keep them away from the house."

"Do you what you gotta do, Xander-kun," Anko-sensei said through his earpiece. "We'll keep the not so departed away."

Nodding, he quickly removed his forehead protector as well as what ninja gear he had before dumping it all beneath some bushes. He didn't like being without any of it but taking it with him would only bring questions from Mrs. S and he didn't have any answers that even a four year old would believe. Slowing to a walk, he calmed his breathing and did his best to put on performance that would hopefully fool Joyce into thinking he was his normal self if she spotted him.

Using all the stealth tricks, he'd picked up he began to look about the Summers property, using the shadows for concealment when and where he could. On the surface he didn't really see anything all that different from what one would expect from a normal suburban home, but that didn't keep him from looking deeper on the second pass. While most of the big bads on the Hellmouth were about as subtle as a brick between the eyes, some of them could be quite clever when they had the right incentive. In the end he could find nothing on the outside of the home that even hinted at being connected to the rising of zombies.

Must be inside somewhere, which means it's something that's alive enough to move or something that someone brought in within the last week or so. He thought as he walked around to the front of the house and walked up to the front door.

"Nothing odd going on outside the house," he whispered through his throat mike. "I'm going inside to try and find the source there."

"Make it quick, Wannabe!" said Hana angrily, followed by sounds consistent with fighting. "Things are getting a little crowded!"

"Right," he said before knocking on the door before him.

It only took a few minutes before someone answered and he was glad to see that it was Buffy because it'd save him the trouble of coming up with a cover story.

"Xander? What are you doing here?" Buffy asked, looking a little surprised.

"You've got some unfriendly visitors incoming," he said while keeping an eye out for Mrs. S.

"Are they sunlight challenged or what?" she asked, instantly catching onto the subtle nature of the conversation.

"More like they're dead on their feet and have mush for brains," he replied while trying to figure out ways to convey what he needed to. "From what I can tell, they seem to think there's something interesting about your place. Don't know why though since everything's pretty normal on the outside. You guys add anything new inside?"

The blonde warrior woman took some time to think about that before the proverbial light bulb lit up in her eyes. "My mom did bring home some pieces from her gallery and hang them up."

"Then let's check them out, quick," he said after hearing what sounded like a soft impact. "My friends from the west are keeping the nobodies busy but it's only a matter of time before one of them gets through."

Buffy nodded and quickly led the way up the stairs.

"Buffy? Who's at the door?" came Mrs. S's voice from the kitchen.

"Just Xander, mom." Buffy replied as they reached the top of the stairs. "He just stopped by to pick up my history notes."

With the excuse put into place he followed the Slayer to the spare bedroom, where past experience told him the motherly matron stored things too big for the closets or too important to stash in the basement. With all due speed the door was opened and, a minute, later the two of them arrived at a large box containing a variety of knickknacks wrapped in newspaper and surrounded by packing peanuts. Being as careful as he could without slowing down, he began unwrapping each piece one by one, examining it for anything that tripped his Hellmouth senses.

"Any idea what we're looking for?" she asked as she helped him go through the box's contents.

"Nope, but something tells me we'll know it when we find it," he replied, laying another figure out of way.

It was about twenty minutes later that they reached the bottom of the box with not a single candidate left for the 'call the zombies to me' contest.

"Are there any others?" he asked, beginning to plan for worst case scenarios in his head.

"I don't kn- there's a mask!" Buffy declared before racing out of the room, "She hung it up in her room to add something new to it."

Following his friend, he quickly entered Mrs. S's room and almost immediately spotted the creepy looking mask hanging on the wall with its eyes glowing bright red.

"I'd say we just hit the jackpot," he said before pressing the transmit button on his neck. "Located the source of the problem. Proceeding with termination."

Buffy got to the mask first and almost immediately tried to use her superhuman strength to snap it in two but, no matter how hard she strained, the evil thing refused to so much as crack. Whether it was because of the material used in its creation or some sort of magical protection, it remained whole and was no doubt doing everything it could to get its minions to hurry up. After two minutes of Buffy trying to break it with brute force, he decided that it was time to try something a little more outside of the box. Reaching out with his right hand he made to take it from her so he could try something of his own but, just as he was about to touch it, he felt something unbelievably wrong coming from it, causing him to recoil out of instinct alone. Just like he'd seen surrounding the Third Hokage back before the Chuunin exams, there was an almost palatable aura of blackness surrounding the mask and, as crazy as it sounded, he could sense a sort of intelligence within it. He sensed it and somehow he felt as though it could perceive him as well to a certain degree.

"Xander? What's wrong?" Buffy asked, clearly having seen his unusual movements.

"N-nothing. The thing just creeps me out a bit," he said, pushing the uncertainty the dark item inspired in him, "I don't think we're going to be able to break it that way, Buff. We're going to need to try something a little different."

"What do you mean?" she asked, ceasing her efforts to snap the thing in two.

Slipping his right hand into his back pocket, he pulled out the only piece of ninja gear that he hadn't ditched beneath the bush: a single explosive note. While a little flashy, he'd made a point of keeping one on him at all times just in case he came up against something a kunai couldn't cut and a fist couldn't pound.

"Slap this on it and then get ready to toss it out the window," he said, passing her the note. "Peel off the back to expose the glue."

With a nod his friend of over two years took the rectangular piece of paper and, after following his instructions, went over to her mother's bedroom window to open it. Observing all this, he knew that he'd likely get a brief lecture about this from Anko-sensei but, hopefully, after having experienced Sunnydale Syndrome, she'd let him off with a slap on the wrist. As he watched the blonde throw the mask out the window as hard as she could, he waited until he figured that it'd reached the apex of the throw before letting out a pulse of chakra. With a bang the sky outside was temporarily lit up with orange light before fading back to the normal level of darkness. Walking up next to Buffy, he looked out the window and smiled as he saw bits of mask fall to the ground for thirty feet in every direction.

"Probable source of situation terminated. What's your guys' status?" he asked, transmitting to the rest of Team Anko.

"The hostiles have disappeared where I am. How about the rest of you?" asked Anko-sensei through the throat mike's ear piece.

"Same here," Ayeka replied, sounding happy that the disgusting zombies were finally gone.

"Sounds like vanishing acts all around." Hana said, sounding like she was still keeping her guard up for the time being.

"Mission accomplished, then. Let's head back to HQ. Sound good?"

There were agreements all around, even from Anko-sensei, and so he turned off the communications equipment... just in time too since not one minute later Joyce came into the room looking worried.

"Are you two alright?" she asked with concern in her voice.

"Yeah, we're good, Mrs. S," he replied, keeping his appearance casual for the most part with a bit of surprise mixed in. "I guess someone thought it was a good idea to play with a cherry bomb out there."

"A cherry bomb?" Joyce asked sounding unsure about buying that story.

"Yeah! It think I caught a glimpse of someone running around the corner right after the bang." Buffy replied, backing up his statement. "Didn't get a good look, though."

With two people supporting the same story, Mrs. S finally caved in and accepted it into her mind as being what happened. While he was somewhat unhappy that so many people clung to denial and rationalized away the supernatural, he was grateful for the times that it worked in the Scooby gang's favor. It allowed them to avoid explanations that would not be of the fun to go through and keep a measure of the secrecy they needed in order to do their jobs.

"Well, that person better hope that I never find them because if I do, they're going to get an earful I can promise you that!" Mrs. S declared, sounding annoyed at the irresponsible act.

"I pity the guy already!" he said with a bit of humor in his voice, "Well I'd better get back home. Got some notes to copy and go through."

"Alright then. You have a safe walk home, Xander." Joyce said as she turned around to head back downstairs.

"Will do, Mrs S!" he said even though he very much doubted he'd encounter anything dangerous enough for him to take it seriously.

After all, even with a ban on ninjutsu, that still left genjutsu and taijutsu, as well making him strong enough to handle most demons with ease.

It was at that point that he realized that he'd probably just jinxed them all and caused Fate to nudge towards them a threat powerful enough to give even a trained shinobi trouble.

The Apartment of the Chinese Amazons, Less Than an Hour Later, Lotion's POV

"So, how did you fair tonight, ladies?" asked her mother as she and Perfume entered the apartment.

"Not good, mother. Future husband and teammates defeat zombies before we could make entrance," she replied with a mixture of disappointment and admiration.

While she was disappointed that she hadn't gotten a chance to show her future husband how good a wife she would be, she admired that he had been able to defeat the zombies so soon after they'd first shown up. It made her all the more sure that he would be the perfect husband for her and gave her yet another reason to work as hard as she could to claim him. Perfume no doubt felt the same way and so, as soon as they both had time, she'd work with her fellow amazon to devise a new means of bending the Uchiha to their will.

One of the first things that they'd need to do would be to find a way to pin him down so he could at least hear their arguments. While they had managed to ensure that in class, where they always sat by him, it was outside of the classroom that they'd only sporadically managed to speak with him. Almost every time he saw them coming, he would run and, while pursuit was always attempted, it was difficult to do so without causing a commotion or knocking people over. They tried to corner him outside of the school but he always managed to disappear after the second or third time he succeeded in breaking their line of sight. No doubt he was employing some of his ninja techniques but she already had a plan in mind to counter them. Observation of his actions since returning to Sunnydale had revealed to her that he never used his shinobi techniques when there were strangers around. She didn't know the reason for this restriction but it would provide both her and Perfume with a potent tool to use in their crusade to make him their husband.

All they needed now was to come up with a way to keep him in areas where there were quite a few people around. If they could manage that, he would not be able to use his techniques and whatever he had left would be well within what they could counter without making a spectacle of themselves.

"Well, don't let it bother you," Deo said from her chair on the other side of the room. "I've learned enough about this town to know that there's always something on the horizon. Just keep your eyes open and I'm sure another opportunity will appear."

"Hai!" both she and Perfume said bowing towards the elder Amazon.

"Now you should both turn in for the night," her mother said as she turned the page in the book she was reading. "You have school tomorrow and it wouldn't present a very impressive picture to your future husband if you fell asleep in the middle of class."

"Hai," she said before she headed for the bathroom to take a quick shower.

Once she was inside and the door finished shutting behind her she began to strip out of her clothes while at the same time wondering about the future that lay before her. In her mind there were two paths her life could take and one was infinitely more preferable to other as far as she was concerned.

As she turned on the water and got it to the temperature she liked, she thought on the first path, in which she and Perfume succeeded in their mission to claim the Uchiha as their husband. Thinking about it never failed to put a smile on her face because, unlike most of the men she knew, Xander was far from average. He was a skilled warrior, a Konoha ninja, who had managed to defeat four Amazons without any help at all. True, they had thought him no more than a stranger when they'd fought him all those weeks ago and so had not gone all out, but in her mind it would not have made much difference if they had. She believed this because she was fairly certain that Xander hadn't been giving it his all either, since it did not seem to be in his nature to kill strangers even if those people were trying to kill him.

That, of course, was not taking into account his bloodline limit ability: Sharingan.

While information did not flow freely out of the shinobi region, tales of the famous eyes found only in the Uchiha clan had reached her village nonetheless. Among all the various kekkai genkai, Sharingan was considered to be one of the most powerful and, as of five years ago, the most rare thanks to the decimation of the Uchiha clan. It was with this ability that Xander had been able to defeat the four of them and she was sure he would only become more skilled in its use as he got older. Once he completely mastered it, he would be a force to be reckoned with and, as his wife, she would be the envy of every other Amazon in the village.

Of course she was not blind to the more practical side of things, unlike Perfume, who focused on how much 'fun' there was to be had.

She knew that, given the current state of the Uchiha clan, she would likely play a vital role in repopulating it and that meant probably more than one period of pregnancy. While the act of getting pregnant would no doubt be bliss, she knew that the rest of it would be more difficult than most young ladies realized. Even with Xander-sama helping her out as best he could, it would be an experience filled to the brim with pros and cons that would wear her down. Then, of course, there came the trials of raising the children and she'd seen what could happen when certain brats got out of hand back at the village. Even those who did their best to keep their kids on a short leash had difficulties.

Nevertheless, she knew that, without exception, every parent in her village viewed their children as the most precious things in their lives.

She would be no different.

However, as she got into the shower, she had to consider the second path that existed for her and that was Xander rejecting her and Perfume outright. She didn't want to think about it but she didn't believe in deluding herself and ignoring a possibility just because she didn't like it. All three of them had acknowledged from the beginning that the Uchiha came from a different culture with different rules and beliefs. If the laws of their tribe and his beliefs turned out to be completely incompatible, then no amount of seduction and cunning strategies would bring him around to their point of view. Reason only worked when the other side was open to compromise and possessed flexibility mentally. If Uchiha Alexander remained firm in his opposition to marrying her and Perfume, despite what might happen in the future, their shame would be as great as the joy they might have experienced.

Among the Chinese Amazon tribe, there were few shames greater than being rejected by the man who had defeated you in battle. It was not shameful to lose to a man from outside of the tribe if he proved to be a strong warrior, but it was considered to be terrible indeed to be rejected by that same man. It implied that there was something truly lacking with the Amazon, whether it be in appearance, skill or personality, leading to her reputation taking a serious nosedive. Others would look down on her and it was not unheard of for the Amazon to be reassigned to a less visible role within the tribe in order to hide the shame her failure carried with it. Her friends and family might also be affected by her failure, straining the bonds between them to the breaking point or even cutting them outright.

She would NOT let that happen to her or Perfume! She would work with her fellow Amazon to insure their success and anything or anyone who got in their way would be dealt with swiftly and permanently.

After her shower, she took the time to inspect her appearance in order to make sure everything looked the way it should, put on her robe and began to make her way to her room. As she passed by Perfume's room, she heard a sound that made her stop and pause, since it didn't match the night the two of them had just had. Normally when things went poorly on a mission, the two of them would either swiftly go to sleep or find distractions to take their minds off of their worries. However what she was hearing was not consistent with past experiences so, out of curiosity, she opened the door carefully just a crack while making as little noise as possible. What she saw when she looked through the crack made her eyes widen in surprise for a moment before rolling them at her sister Amazon's eccentric antics.

I should've known she'd do something like this. She thought before resuming her walk to her room. Whenever she gets particularly interested in a guy, she always does this!

It was one of the reasons why most of the other Amazons of their tribe tended to be wary whenever Perfume was around and why she herself kept an eye out for 'The Signs'. Whenever the indicators told her that something particularly potent was about to happen, she made sure to find someplace else to be. It wasn't that Perfume was a bad person, much less a bad Amazon, but it was her little quirks that made people hesitant to get closer.

Like all things, though, quirks could be endured and dealt with in such a manner so as to not destroy a friendship.

Although, just to be on the safe side, I'll take a look through her room when she's out to make sure there's nothing there that could ruin our chances with Xander-sama. She thought, opening the door to her room. You can never be too careful in these situations.

If during the course of the search she found something 'useful' when it came to improving her own mood… well, it went against her mother's own teachings to pass up an opportunity.

Ayeka's POV, Eight Days Later, Late Afternoon, Team Anko HQ

Dammit! Those two bitches are getting a little too close to MY Xander! She thought as she watched Xander walk through the front gate of their home outside of Sunnydale. I have to take control of the situation before they manage to get ahead of me!

While she had managed to spend time with him within their own home and while out on patrol, she hadn't been able to do anything to advance her romantic agenda. There'd been just too much to do in bringing their HQ back up to snuff and keeping the local demons on the defensive for her to plan anything, much less put it into motion. It had been her plan for a while to wait until she could truly devote herself to her dream but, with those Amazon sluts gaining ground, she feared that if she waited any longer it'd be too late. The question was what could she do to gain a respectable lead over her rivals while not scaring her prey away. Her mind entertained images of sneaking into his bed wearing a robe barely big enough to leave things to the imagination but she decided it was too early for that. Perhaps after she'd succeeded in convincing him to make out with her in a serious manner it'd be time for that but not now.

Now was the time for something steamy yet subtle.

In an instant an idea came to her that caused her to grin, then smile and then giggle at how cunning she was. Slipping back into the house, she immediately went to her room and, after locking the door, began to look through her clothes for just the right combination. She needed something that showed off her supreme beauty but wouldn't be so blatantly sexy that Xander-sama would suspect something was up. She immediately discarded skirts or dresses because, while they were feminine, she'd already done them enough that they'd lost their impact. That left pants, so she immediately took out the black leather ones that were laced up on the sides of her legs rather than the usual buttons and zippers. Once she had that done, she had to choose between a shirt that showed off her midriff or something that left her shoulders bare, since doing both would be a bit too sexy. In the end she chose something that left her shoulders bare, since it'd serve the double purpose of also showing off some cleavage and she knew Xander-sama was a boob man. In the time since she'd first met him, she'd been able to tell earlier on that anything below a C-cup would barely get a passing glance, whereas if it ranged between a C-cup and the infamous double Ds, his eyes would linger.

She knew she fell into that category.

Unfortunately so did those Amazon bitches, but she was confident that while they might be similar in size, she had far more experience in how to properly showcase them. Growing up in butch warrior women country all their lives, they probably knew next to nothing about how to get the attention of a real man like Xander-sama. The only point working against her, though, was the fact that they'd exhibited signs of being willing to do anything, at any speed, to get what they wanted. They had little hesitation in raising their game to the next level if the one they were currently on failed to produce the desired results and she was unsure of just where they'd draw the line in their actions. She herself was committed to claiming the head of the Uchiha clan as her husband and was willing to go quite far indeed to make her dream a reality. At the same time, though, there were certain lines she refused to cross as a matter of pride and honor. She would not turn into some sort of sex slave or slut. She would retain her strength both physically and mentally. She would not compromise her dreams and ambitions.

With that in mind she changed into the clothes she selected, slipped on a pair of comfortable shoes and secreted away a few pieces of ninja gear just in case. Looking into the full length mirror, she looked at herself from all angles before strutting towards the door to her room, intent on putting her plan into motion. Walking to the kitchen where she knew her prey would begin, she began to formulate just the right combination of words to get Uchiha Xander to agree to her course of action without tipping him off. Much like some of the riskier missions back home, success often depended on carefully maneuvering the various people involved into just the right position before going into the kill. One mistake, one flaw, and the entire operation could fall apart.

Arriving at her destination, she saw the familiar sight of Xander fixing himself a snack as he always did after school and, with only a single mental breath, began her mission for this evening.

"Hey Xander-sama! How were your classes today?" she asked, keeping her voice casual for the time being.

"Boring as usual," Xander replied, sounding like he was tolerating school rather than going because he wanted to. "I have a feeling I'd have liked classes at the Konoha Academy better."

"Don't be too sure about that," she said, going to the fridge to get something small to eat. "It wasn't all jutsus and kunai at the Academy. There was plenty of math and history."

"But it all had something to do with becoming a good ninja, right?" he asked, sounding a little uncertain about his position.

"For the most part, yeah, but that didn't make them fun to learn," she replied after finding what she wanted. "So, did you get a lot of homework dumped on you?"

"Nope. For once the teachers cut us some slack," he replied after finishing the assembly of his snack. "Nothing's due until Monday."

"Then you'd be free tonight?" she asked in a way that wouldn't arouse suspicions.

"For the most part, yeah. Why?" he asked after taking a bite of his snack.

"I was wondering if you'd go to the Bronze with me." she asked, keeping the innocent tone in her voice.

This caused him to choke on his second bite and, almost out of reflex, she slapped her hand against his back to knock whatever got caught in his throat loose. It took three before he seemed to recover but then he looked at her with an expression of surprise and wariness before raising an eyebrow inviting her to continue.

"Don't worry, Xander-sama. While I still plan to be your wife, this is going to be training as much as anything else." This was the clever part of her plan.

"What do you mean?" he asked with curiosity and a bit of wariness.

"You've fought ninja's coming at you head on and seen them walking down the street," she explained, phrasing her words just right, "but there's one way you don't have any experience in: ninjas who're in disguise. There'll be times when ninjas will disguise themselves as perfectly ordinary people and they won't show themselves until they're ready to strike."

She could tell he was thinking about it and probably imagining various scenarios that he might experience in the future, so she pushed her luck a little more. "In situations like those, it's vital to be able to figure out who are the normal people and who are the ninja as soon as possible. You do this by being able to spot the little 'tells' in their body language and the odd things about their clothes. That's what we'll be practicing at the Bronze, except instead of looking for hidden ninja we'll be trying to find vampires. Most probably wouldn't know subtle if it bit them in the ass but there's bound to be a handful that know a thing or two about blending in."

"True," he said with a nod. "Alright. I'm game. When you want to leave?"

"How about in an hour?" she asked before waiting for his reply.

"Sounds good. That'll probably be when people will start showing up and we'll have a time to pick out the best spots to keep an eye on everyone," he replied as he finished his snack. "Standard anti-vamp gear gonna be needed?"

"Only what you can conceal in your casual clothes," she replied as she finished her own snack. "Remember, we have orders to keep a low profile while we're here."

"Not a problem. Me and the Scoobies learned pretty quick how to hide stuff on us when we were around other people who weren't in the know."

"Then we'll meet by the front gate in an hour. See ya then, Xander-sama." She waited all of five minutes before breaking out in a victorious smile and chuckling at how things were going to go from there on out. The stage had been set and all she'd have to do was ease him into the right mood after picking out just the right spot in the club in order to achieve the true purpose of their outing.

A make out session that would prove to those Amazon sluts just who was ahead of whom.

The Bronze, Two Hours Later, Buffy's POV

"Xander doesn't have a clue what's heading his way." she whispered as she watched the young man and woman across the room get closer.

"Not a clue." Willow whispered in agreement with a half-smile on her face.

It had only been half an hour or so ago that the two of them had entered The Bronze with the intent of relaxing and dancing for a few hours before she went out on patrol. However it had only taken a few minutes for her to spot Xander and Ayeka sitting in one of the corner booths on the upper level, the ninja girl's intentions clear to her trained feminine eyes. It had only taken a little persuasion after that to convince Willow to find a seat that would allow the two of them to observe the little drama without being immediately spotted. It had become something of a source of amusement for the two of them over the last few weeks to see Xander deal with the advances of not one but three beautiful young women. She enjoyed it a little more than Willow did for reasons that were obvious to anyone that knew her but it was still fun enough that the redhead smile and laughed from time to time due to what she saw.

They even had a betting pool going on in secret among the Scoobies as to how long Xander would hold out and which of the three young women would finally win. Her money was on Ayeka simply because the young blonde ninja was going after Xander for the right reasons using the right methods. The member of Team Anko was acting like a girl in love and was pursuing the man she favored using methods that had been used by women for millennia.

Giles, after much prodding, said that he favored Perfume and Lotion in the battle for Xander's hand in marriage. When asked to elaborate, the Watcher stated that not only did the women from the warrior tribe have superiority in numbers but also that for them marrying the Uchiha was a matter of honor for them. As a result, he believed that they would have more incentive to emerge victorious than a simple teenager would with their ideas of love. That, of course, had gotten him a thorough glaring at from both her and Willow but he never really backed down from his position.

Personally, she thought the Amazons were, at best, deluded fools or, at worst, were people who'd been raised in a way that had probably been started by some woman who'd been abused to the point of being broken. How else could you explain the creation of a law that actually caused them to latch onto whichever man happened to kick their asses? She knew that Giles had explained it as something to do with the whole female warrior society stuff but all she saw was a desire to cling to strength with no consideration for love. After all, what if the person who beat one of the Amazons turned out to be a complete jackass or a criminal? Was the losing warrior woman supposed to just endure being treated like crap just for the sake of her tribe? Whatever the case, it pretty much went against everything she'd ever heard about societies with warrior women. True, her knowledge came from Xena and Hercules but it was still what she believed was the way an Amazon should act. Proud, honorable and determined to prove no matter what that they didn't need a man to survive.

Not at all like Perfume, Deo and Lotion.

Willow hadn't said who she'd put her money on but, every time she was asked, the redhead would smile in a way that someone often did when they knew something that no one else did. The only thing her friend would say was that she was a fan of the underdog and that it'd be fun to see everyone's faces when Xander finally made a choice.

She'd tried to figure it out for almost two days straight before quitting out of frustration.

Looking across the room to see Ayeka finally get into Xander's personal space, she wondered if the girl would manage to move things to the next level tonight. It'd be possible since the two of them had been together for a couple months already and that'd move them past the uncomfortable early stages. Then again, Xander did have a habit of not wanting to change labels on people once he'd given them one, so it'd depend if Ayeka was now just a 'friend' or a 'teammate'. If that happened, Ayeka might fall into the same situation Willow had and then it'd pretty much be all over with unless something was done to obliterate the category she'd been placed in.

Huh? I wonder what's going on? She thought as she noticed both ninja suddenly become all business.

Seeing the duo look in a specific direction, she turned her gaze that way in order to find out what had caught their attention. At first she couldn't see anything other than the usual mix of teens and young adults getting their groove on, dancing in front of the stage. It was a minute later that her instincts caused her to lock onto one couple in particular and, after that, she knew what was off about them. One was obviously a vampire, with its outdated fashion sense and the way he was trying to put the moves on the dark haired girl he was dancing with. As for said girl, she was an obvious wild child who dressed to make guys go into meltdown just by looking at her. Leather pants and a tank top designed to cling to her curves as she swung her body to the beat of the music. The girl probably had no idea she was being scoped out to be the vampire's meal and wouldn't know the truth until it was too late to do anything but scream.

"Looks like I'm going to get some early slayage in tonight," she said as she got out of her seat and began to make her way to the vampire.

With a little bit of luck she'd be able to entice it away from its current prey, get it outside and then dust it when the two of them were far enough away from the club. Looking out of the corner of her eye, she could see that both Xander and Ayeka had spotted her but all it took was a single look from her to convey that she'd take care of this. For a moment it looked like the former would protest but, with a rough nod, he eased back into his seat to await her return. Turning her attention back to the vampire, her concern went up a notch as she saw that the bloodsucker was already leading its prey off of the dance floor and towards one of the side entrances of the club. Picking up the pace, she moved through the crowd of teenagers with a bit more roughness than usual and, once she cleared the obstacle, she moved for the door that her prey was now passing through.

As soon as she was outside, she looked back and forth for any sign that would tell her which direction they'd gone in. The sound of violence to the left told her what she needed to know and she ran flat out towards where she believed the vampire would be. It was a minute later that she turned into an alley and saw something she hadn't been expecting: the girl she'd predicted would be down on the ground begging for her life was in fact fighting the vampire.

The strange girl wasn't having much luck, though, and had probably only lasted this long because the vampire was amused with her efforts. The young woman's fighting style could best be described as barroom brawling as it relied on brute strength and little tricks, but she knew that such moves could only carry someone so far. Sooner or later the very real gap between what the vampire was capable of and what the girl was capable of would cause the battle to end with the death of the latter.

That's not going to happen!

As soon as she got in range, she delivered a kick to the vampire, knocking him away from the girl and then followed up with a combo attack to knock him to the ground. Moving in for the kill, she pulled a stake from inside her jacket and brought it down towards the fang face's chest but the mosquito managed to dodge it at the last second. Delivering a kick of its own, it dazed her long enough to get back to its feet and get into a proper fighting stance. She had to grin at this since staying to fight pretty much labeled this vampire as new to town, since the local bloodsuckers knew what she looked like as well as how a fight with her often ended in death for them.

"I don't know who you are, blondie, but I'm gonna enjoy sucking you dry!" the vampire said angrily, its eyes glowing malevolently yellow.

"Blah, blah, blah! Is that really the best you can come up with?" she asked, sounding thoroughly unimpressed. "Really, if you want to be some badass vampire, you really rehearse your lines better. Too bad you won't get the chance to!"

With that she lunged at him and began to lay down a series of blows that quickly showed where the leech stood when compared to her. Using some of the moves Giles had shown her, she managed to trick the bloodsucker into exposing a vital spot and then, with speed no normal human could follow, much less match, she slammed the wooden stake into the thing's undead heart. With the standard look of shock that all vamps tended to wear moments before they turned to dust, she watched the undead monster go poof before the wind scattered its remains. Turning around, she saw the girl who'd almost become vamp chow getting back to her feet, looking a bit wobbly but that was going away quickly enough.

"You okay?" she asked concerned that she might need to get the girl to a hospital.

"I'm fine! I had that fang-face right where I wanted'em." The girl said, obviously trying to put on a 'tough girl' attitude.

"Oh, yeah! I'm sure it woulda been all too easy to stake him with a concussion and a few broken bones." she said, trying to make the teenager see that she'd been in real danger of dying.

"I was FAKING it! Vamps like him get cocky when they're going in for the kill. Figured when he bent down to bite, I'd be able to slip this right between the ribs," the girl said, pulling out a sharp looking wooden knife. "Not all of us can have the breaks you got, B."

This instantly put her on edge as the statement implied that this girl knew more than a random stranger should.

"Do I know you?" she asked as she tried to place the face of the person before her.

"Nah, not really," the young woman replied casually. "The name's Faith. I'm a potential Slayer."

An Hour Later, Sunnydale High School, The Library, Scooby HQ

Anko's POV

"So what's a potential Slayer?" she asked from her chair as the rest of them looked to Rupert Giles.

"Well, that is to say… at any given time on the planet there are a handful of young women of the appropriate age that could become the next Slayer," replied the Watcher, obviously taking time to censor the information. "The Council employs a considerable amount of resources to locate them and then prepare them for the possibility that they might be Called."

This was not unknown to those back in Konoha and it was one of the reasons why the Konoha hospital performed a series of secret tests on all newborn girls. Part of it was to give the village as much advance warning of the Watchers Council sending a representative so that they could isolate the potential Slayer, thus limiting what the old men could learn from her. The other part was because some of the more militant factions, such as Danzou's group, were very interested in acquiring a Slayer of their own. True, the treaty between the men of the UK and the ninja villages insisted that, should a Slayer be Called from within the shinobi region, that she be handed over immediately but she knew that the document was little more than ink on paper to some. After all, if the stories she'd heard were true, Slayers had certain abilities that would prove invaluable if the young woman could be turned into a ninja.

So far it hadn't happened, though.

"So Faith's one of them?" Xander asked, looking between his Sunnydale mentor and the newcomer.

"Yes. The information she has provided matches that which a potential would have and I knew her Watcher from my academy days," Giles replied with a nod. "I had heard that she had been reassigned to Boston five years ago but I did not know why until now. Has Diana come to Sunnydale with you?"

"Nah. She went off on some Watcher retreat for a few weeks," Faith said, leaning against the library counter. "Didn't feel like sticking around Boston so I hopped on a bus here. D told me some pretty wild stories about you guys, so I thought I'd come see if any of 'em were true."

There it is. She thought immediately reading between the lines to get at the truth.

It was something that she'd picked up on the moment she'd laid eyes on the girl and twice before it'd spiked while she was watching. She had a hunch as to what was going on but, for the time being, she'd wait to see if the teenager slipped up a little more and provided actual evidence that she could use.

"Really? She's quite fortunate then since the retreat is by invitation only and is considered to be quite the experience." Giles said before muttering, "some people have all the luck."

"So what's with the newbies?" Faith asked, looking at her before turning to Ayeka and Hana. "D said that B only had two or three other people helpin' her."

"Yes, well, there have been some recent developments that you should be aware of," Rupert replied after taking his glasses off to clean them a bit. "Ms. Mitarashi and her students are ninja from the hidden village of Konoha. They've been assigned here by their leader to defend the Hellmouth and report back on local demonic activity."

"So? What's that got to do with me?" Faith asked, sounding uncertain about the point the older man was trying to make.

"The terms of the treaty between their village and the Council state that whomever is the first to assign an agent to a given area grants that party governing control over what goes on there," Giles explained, being quite clear in the way he spoke. "Konoha was the first to place someone in Sunnydale and so they were allowed to dictate which members of the Council were permitted to enter their territory. Their leader specified that only myself and Buffy were to be allowed within Sunnydale city limits and that any attempts to insert others would not be looked kindly upon."

"But no one sent me. I came here on my own." Faith said, sounding like she had a greater understanding of the situation now.

"Perhaps so, but this will still require a measure of consideration on the part of both the organizations involved. Whether or not you'll be allowed to remain here until your Watcher returns from the retreat will depend on them," Rupert stated diplomatically as he put his hands in his pockets. "Still, I suppose this could wait until morning. Do you have a place to stay, Faith?"

"Yeah I got a room at the local motel on the east side of town," Faith replied looking… relieved.

"That would not be a wise place to stay. Since motels and establishments like it are, by definition, temporary residences, they do not offer the same protection as a house or an apartment," said the Watcher as he moved over to the library counter. "I have a guest bedroom at my flat that you can use during your stay here. It's not very large but it should suffice."

"I don't need charity, G. I'll only be here a little while and if some vamps decide to pay me a visit, I'll use what D taught me and dust them." Faith said, sounding resistant at the idea.

"Faith, you've got some moves, I saw that in the alley, but at best you could probably take on one or two newbie vamps. If more than two came at you or if they were a couple years old, you've be vamp chow," Buffy said, lending her opinion to the discussion. "Like you said, I got a couple breaks being the Slayer and one of them is I can take a lot of abuse and be fine the next day. You can't."

"Besides that, this is not charity, Faith. Diana is a dear friend of mine and it simply would not do for me to be rude and allow you to stay at one of those flea-infested motels." Giles said sincerely as he looked at the potential Slayer.

This seemed to reduce Faith's reluctance somewhat, since the older man's actions were now classified as manners rather than some form of charity.

"Well, now that all that is out of the way, would you like to get the nickel and dime tour, Faith?" Xander asked as he stood up and took a few steps towards the girl. "I can promise laughs and fun aplenty, along with some embarrassing stories about Buffy."

"Well, with an offer like that, how can I say no?" Faith said with a fun loving smile. "Lead the way!"

"Xander! You're not telling her anything without my okay first!" Buffy said, getting out of her chair and falling in behind her possible future successor.

Willow and Oz joined the group, causing the group to grow until only she, Giles, Hana and Ms. Calendar were left in the library. She waited until she was certain that the teenagers were outside of hearing range before voicing what she was fairly certain that Hana knew as well.

"She's hiding something."

"Damn right she is. Smelt the lie on her the second she opened her mouth," Hana said in agreement with a bit of a scowl on her face. "Question is, what's she hiding?"

"Don't you think you're being a tad paranoid, Ms. Anko? I will admit that the girl is not the most open of individuals but that does not necessarily mean that she's hiding something important from us." Giles said, sounding like he thought they were overreacting.

"If it was her just putting on the tough girl act, I wouldn't be worried, Mr. Giles," she said as her mind went through the possibilities, "but my years of training and experience tell me it's something else. Something that scares her."

"Yeah. Smelt the fear on her, too," Hana said before rising from her chair. "If I had to guess I think she's running from someone or, given this town, probably something."

"Considering what she's probably seen since she hooked up with her Watcher, it's probably not something we want sneaking up on us," she said before coming to a decision. "Hana, I want you to take your girls and do a sweep of the town. Look for anything that suggests there's someone new in town looking for Faith."

"Consider it done, Anko-sensei!" Hana declared before heading out the back entrance to the library.

While she's doing that, I should probably do some checking myself, she thought, looking over at the phone. See if there've been any waves made that might beheading this way.

The Next Day, Sunnydale High School, Boys Locker Room, Afternoon, Xander's POV

Darkness.

There were a variety of different forms it could take, as well as any number of different flavors, but they all represent something hidden, something not of the light, thus they are not easily perceivable unless you train yourself to see them. When speaking of darkness on the outside, it could mean anything from a dark alley to beings who represent the worst qualities and aspects of the world; criminals, bullies and people who think nothing of ruining the lives of others could be said to represent those qualities.

Then there was the type of darkness that existed within a person and took on the form of their darker emotions, as well as their more traumatic memories. There are people who said that every human ever born has within them an equal amount of good and evil, with free will and circumstances being what determined their future. Some can choose to give into their darker emotions, their baser desires, while others lived lives where those darker emotions were a necessity in order to survive. Others can have evil done unto them that scarred their very souls, injured it, causing them to look at the world as a dark place that would kill them unless they became strong.

Free will and circumstance determined how much free reign darkness was permitted where these two types are concerned.

For the first fourteen years of his life, the darkness was his home and the so-called parents who lived there with him. Both made his life miserable but in different ways. His step-father made his life miserable by beating the crap out of him on a fairly regular basis and by always telling him what a worthless waste of space he was. His mother, on the other hand, made it miserable by being a doormat to his step-father and only offering pathetic half-excuses afterwards. It was often so bad that he found other places to sleep and took any opportunity that came along to stay away from the two of them. Over the years, his friends became his family and a source of light that he used to ward off the darkness and fool himself into believing his life wasn't all that bad. It didn't always work but his resolve to become a better man than his step-father was usually enough to make up the difference.

Since Buffy came to Sunnydale, the darkness took on new shapes in the form of demons and black magic users bent on harming humanity in any number of ways. True, he'd entertained the idea of fighting by her side since to him she was a comic book superhero come to life but it wasn't until he'd lost Jesse that his resolved had become as hard as diamond. From that point on he'd made the choice that he would fight the darkness wherever it showed itself, no matter what the risk to himself.

It was his familiarity with the more human side of darkness that had tipped him off to the truth about Faith and what she was hiding beneath her tough girl attitude. She hadn't given out any obvious tells but he could read between the lines and saw the more subtle clues that likely slipped right past the others. The way she always tried to put out an air of toughness and strength. The way she made it look like nothing fazed her and that everything was just fine with her. More than anything, though, was the flicker of fear he saw in her eyes along with the way she tensed up every single time the conversation starting drifting towards the past, as well as family. Whenever it got a little too close, she always made some offhand comment and changed the topic of conversation to something that had more to do with them than her.

It was at those times that he felt as though he was looking at someone who'd experienced a life similar to his own.

It was this conclusion that put him where he was at the moment and that was thinking up ways to help Faith battle the darkness in whatever form it took. When he was growing up, Jesse and Willow were there to help him but, looking at the girl from Boston, he had a feeling that she didn't have close friends like that. That is what brought him to where he was at the moment: in the locker room getting out of his gym clothes while thinking about how he could make their newest ally a friend. He knew that once her Watcher came back from the retreat, Faith would have to go back to Boston but that didn't mean they couldn't become friends. With tech that existed, there were any number of ways to stay in touch and, with the money he'd come into as the new head of the Uchiha clan, he could make a side trip every once in a while to visit her if he wanted. He might even see if there was any way that Giles could get the Boston duo reassigned to Sunnydale or at least someplace a little closer so that getting together wouldn't be a problem. It probably wouldn't work since decisions like that would have to be made by those old farts in the UK but it wouldn't hurt to give it a shot.

"What happened to you, Harris?" came a voice from behind him as he took off his gym shorts. "You get your ass kicked into a dumpster or something?"

With a sigh he turned to see Larry walking up, some of his jock friends with him and all of them had the classic bully smiles on their face. Had this been a year ago, he'd have been looking for a way to run off or slip away from them but much had changed in his life. He was no longer just a teenager who fought by the side of the Slayer. He was now Uchiha Alexander, head of the Uchiha clan, a Konoha chuunin shinobi assigned to the Hellmouth by the Fifth Hokage herself. Kicking Larry's ass would be all too easy for him and, knowing this, he didn't feel at all threatened by the football player, nor did he really think that the man was worth his attention.

"No, but unless you want to be the one tossed in a dumpster, I suggest you find someone else to pester 'cause I'm really not in the mood for your caveman antics." That said, he turned back to his locker so he could finish getting dressed in his normal clothes.

Feeling a hand clamp down on his bare shoulder, he mentally sighed as he realized that he wouldn't be able to get away that easily.

"Just who do you think you are, Harris?!" Larry asked angrily as he spun his target around. "You trying to start something!?"

"You'd better hope not, Lar, because if I was planning on starting something with you, your football career would be ended by the time I was done," he replied before jerking his shoulder loose from the caveman's grip.

"Pretty big talk from someone who needed Summers to bail him out last Halloween," Larry said, stepping forward until they were nose to nose.

"Things change, Lar. People change. I might have needed her help before but I don't anymore," he said, putting a bit of threat into his voice. "I could take you and your pet thugs down by myself without even breaking a sweat now. So I'm going to give you one last chance: turn around and walk away."

"Why don't you make ME!" Larry said before throwing a punch that was no doubt intended to knock him off his feet.

A step to the side and all it hit was air.

Another punch was thrown but it was no more successful than the last.

This went on for several minutes before Larry's friends got involved and started throwing punches of their own. While this did force him to start blocking a few blows, it wasn't much more of a challenge than before. There was no style, no technique, to the attacks and it looked like most of them had been self-taught, so there were numerous flaws in them. He was quickly getting bored, though, and his next class would be starting soon, so he wanted to tie all this up as quickly as possible. Fortunately one of Larry's goons provided him with another reason to tie this up quickly when they pulled a metal bat from a nearby open locker. Seeing this, he decided that it was time to put the three in their place.

Waiting until the goon with the bat took his first swing, he caught the bat with his right hand before redirecting it towards Larry, hitting the jock in the chest and knocking him back into some lockers. Not wasting time, he executed a quick kick at the wrists of the one holding the bat, forcing the idiot to drop it before turning around to catch a punch thrown by the remaining thug one handed. Applying a little enhanced strength, he couldn't help but smile a bit as the moron began wincing in pain at the pressure that was being exerted on his fist. Giving one final good squeeze, he let the guy go before turning back to Larry with a no nonsense look on his face.

"I trust I've made my point, Larry?" he asked, implying without words that if the football player tried to take things further, it could be dangerous to his health.

"Fine. I'll let you off easy today, Harris." Larry replied, trying to sound like this wasn't a loss for him. "Next time it'll take more than a couple of lucky moves to save your ass!"

"Whatever!" he said turning away from the idiot and back towards his locker.

He was just about to reach for his shirt when an odd sound reached his ears, causing him to freeze in his tracks. Thinking on it for a moment, it'd definitely been electronic in nature but he was unable to precisely place where he'd heard it before. Turning to one of the many air vents on the ceiling, he was fairly certain that the sound had come from there but that didn't really help him figure out the cause of the noise. He'd never heard it before in the locker room but it could just have been the school showing its age. After all, while he might not have known how old the big the vents were, he seriously doubted that anyone could make their way through them without making a fair bit of noise.

With a shrug of indifference, he went back to getting dressed since he had more important things to be concerned about than some odd noise he couldn't put a name to.

That Evening, Sunnydale High School Library, Anko's POV

"So what's the what, G-man? Anko-sensei?" Xander asked from his place in the room. "Why the big Scoobies Assemble call?"

"Ms. Mitarashi and I were a bit… suspicious after hearing Faith's reasons for being here," Mr. Giles replied, sounding troubled as he spoke. "As a result, she, Ms. Inuzuka and I began to investigate the various aspects of what we'd been told. What we discovered is somewhat… disturbing."

"What'd you find out?" Buffy asked, sounding interested in the conversation.

"The first thing we found out was that Faith's Watcher isn't away at a retreat," she replied in a tone normally used for serious mission briefings. "She's dead."

"WHAT!?" exclaimed those who weren't involved in the investigation.

"I understand your surprise. I felt something similar when I found out," Mr. Giles said, sounding like he'd be knocking back a couple of stiff drinks when it was all over with. "According to the Council, she was killed almost a week ago in Boston by a rather old vampire known as Kakistos, which roughly translated means 'worst of the worst'. Apparently the monster has a taste for breaking Slayers, whether they've been Called or not and, once he learned of Faith, arranged a trap for her.

"I will not tell you the details of what the police found upon arriving at the location of the trap but, suffice it to say, more than a few seasoned officers got ill within seconds of seeing Watcher Dormer's remains." Giles explained with some emotion in his voice.

"Then what's Faith doing here?" Willow asked, sounding agitated by the news.

"Based on the news some informants gave me, she left Boston the same night as her Watcher's death and more or less headed straight here. Somehow she must have escaped Kakistos and ran to the only place of safety she could think of." she replied, remembering some of the things she'd been told.

"Sunnydale? Safe?" asked Oz, sounding as stoic as always.

"I think it's more likely that she sought the safety of Buffy and myself. Watcher Dormer and I frequently exchanged letters, as well as phone calls, concerning what was going on in our lives." Giles said, pushing his glasses up higher on his nose. "Faith likely had been told a great many stories about Buffy and her adventures. That part of her story is likely true."

"Yeah, well, if the rest of what my informants told me is true, Kakistos has followed her and is most likely already in town," she said as she recalled the incidents matching the old vampire's M.O that her informants had told her about.

Not a second after she finished speaking she hear the sound of surprise and movement from the entrance to the library. Those with the ears to hear turned their heads towards the doors but all they could catch a glimpse of was a mass of dark hair running away from the door. Xander and Hana were the first to the door to see if they could find out who had been spying on them but, watching as the door opened fully for a brief moment, she could already tell that the spy was no longer within a line of sight.

Fortunately, with Hana and her partners around, line of sight wasn't necessary for identification.

"It was Faith." Hana said after taking a couple of sniffs of the air just outside the door. "Judging by the strength of the scent, she probably heard everything."

"We need to go after her! If Kakistos really is in town looking for her then she'll be easy pickings on her own." Xander said, making it clear he wanted to go after her.

"Then we better make sure that she's not on her own for long." She got to her feet, "Split up and find her. Bring her back here."

"On it," Xander said before disappearing from sight, Hana soon following.

"We'll go, too," Buffy said, heading for the weapons cabinet. "The more people we have out searching, the quicker we'll find her."

Willow and Oz followed the blonde's example, leaving the library with her to find the potential Slayer. That left only her, Rupert Giles and Ms. Calendar behind in the library but that was probably for the best. There was an off chance that the girl might come back on her own and so it was best to have someone here waiting for her. There was also a chance she'd bring trouble with her and that was why she was staying here rather than joining in the search with the rest of her team. While neither of the other two adults were without skill, the information she'd gained on Kakistos indicated he always had quite a few soldiers on hand. If they chased Faith back there, Calendar and Giles would be overwhelmed by numbers alone. At least with her there she could buy time until the others returned and, if the ANBU assigned to monitor her team was also nearby, then hopefully he would jump in to lend a hand as well.

She had caught glimpse of Hisoka every step of the way during their trip to Sunnydale, as well as in the days after their arrival, but not once had he tried to meet with her or the others. She could only presume that he'd been ordered not to interact with them outside of his capacity as an observer and, as such, would only appear if a member of Team Anko broke one of the terms of their assignment. So far they hadn't done anything of the sort and, hopefully, it would stay that way until the time came to return to Konoha in the summer. Then she could petition Hokage-sama to remove the ANBU and allow them to handle things on their own without unwanted observation. The old fossils and maybe even that war hawk Danzo would oppose this, of course, but even they had limits as to how far they could go in influencing Tsunade-sama's actions. If the student of the Third Hokage made her choice and stuck with it, the most those old farts would be able to do would be to whine and try to intimidate her into changing her mind.

No matter what else those old geezers might think, Tsunade is Hokage and her power is greater than what they possess, she thought with her anger rising up at the mere thought of the three movers and shakers of Konoha. Won't stop them from trying to prove otherwise, though.

Nevertheless, so long as there were those that believed in the Hokage of the past and what they stood for, she knew that the warmongers of Konoha would never have their way.

No one who knew the pain of the past wars would ever condone actions that would lead to another one and she had no doubt that if the policies of those three fools were implemented, that that is exactly what would happen. To believe anything else was nothing more than a delusion by those who thought themselves smarter than those around them.

The Rooftops of Sunnydale, Hana's POV

Dammit! Where the hell is that Boston bitch?! she thought as she continued to search for the potential Slayer.

She'd hooked up with her partners the second she'd left the school and they'd done their best to follow the scent of the eavesdropping teenager, however they'd lost it after the four blocks. It had pissed her off to no end because she hadn't been able to think of a single way that could've happened that made sense. Sure back in the ninja region of the world, the other villages had numerous ways to confuse an enemy who tracked by scent but none of those people were in Sunnydale, or at least they shouldn't have been. She knew she hadn't done anything to let the world know that a couple of Konoha ninja were in town and she was fairly sure none of the other members of Team Anko had, either.

Something magic or demon related?

Maybe, but why would they want to keep us from tracking Faith? She thought as she signaled her partners to spread out more in an effort to find a scent they could follow.

The obvious answer was Kakistos' people but, if what Anko-sensei said was true, then it didn't seem possible they could have gotten into town, learned about the team and then come up with counter moves so quickly. That meant that something else was going on and someone was just taking advantage of the situation. Growling at the idea of some behind-the-curtain enemy playing around with them, she made sure to keep her eyes peeled for anything strange. She didn't know what that strange something would be but she knew that she'd know it when she saw it.

It was only a few minutes later that she spotted a sight that caught her attention. Moving quickly down the street was a group of eight people clad in clothes that were distinctly not current, with swords strapped to their waists. It wasn't until she was halfway to them that her eyes were able to pick out the enlarged foreheads and glowing yellow eyes that identified them as vampires.

I bet good money these guys are with Kakistos, she thought as she picked up the pace. That means I can't let them find Faith. Fortunately, I know just the way to make sure of that.

Putting on one final burst of speed, she leapt from the rooftops, with her three partners right behind her, and landed in the path of the eight vampires.

"Sorry, fang faces, but this street is closed," she said, her girls growling to back her up. "In fact, you dead heads should consider this entire town off limits. So pack your bags and get out of town."

The eight bloodsuckers looked at her, looked at each other, and then did the thing she'd been hoping that they'd do from the beginning: they attacked her.

"FOR KAKISTOS WE LIVE AND FOR KAKISTOS WE WILL DIE!"

"You got the last part right, at least!" she said with a feral smile on her face as she pulled a kunai from her equipment pouch. "Let's tear'em up, girls!"

With that the fight was on and she loved every single minute of it!

It was like a well-choreographed fight for her because, as fast and as skilled as the vamps were with their swords, they had nothing on her. It got to the point that, by the time she'd lobotomize the second one, she'd decided to make things more interesting by targeting harder to get to spots or by attacking only from a certain angle. It definitely upped the difficulty level, especially when the vamps discovered the limitations she was putting on herself, but she was the only one left standing when the last of the dust hit the ground.

"Not bad for a bunch of walking corpses," she said out loud as she looked about to see if there were any more, "but it'll take more than a bunch of brainwashed fang boys to put me in the ground."

Seeing no more opponents, she sighed with disappointment since she'd now have to resume trying to find that lost girl and that would be boring. Preparing to leap back to the rooftops, she was interrupted as the front of one of the nearby building exploded like someone had used an explosive tag, causing her to reflexively leap back a couple of feet. When the dust cleared, she saw something decidedly more impressive than a bunch of vampires: a bipedal demonic rhino. Clad in primitive armor and wielding a spike mace, it looked like it could actually cause her quite a bit of pain if she got careless.

"Where comrades? Where vam-pires with swords?" asked the demon in a voice that did not imply that a great deal of intelligence resided in its head.

"They're over there, horn head," she said, jerking a thumb in the direction of the swords littering the street amidst the piles of dust. "What's left of them, anyway."

The demon rhino looked in the direction she indicated and, for two solid minutes, it looked at the remains of its comrades before turning back to her. With a tensing of muscles, it let out a bellow that she was pretty sure could be heard for blocks around before grabbing a hold of its weapon with both hands and charged her. Its speed wasn't anything too impressive and so she started to dance around it like she had the vampires, but after a near miss of the thing's mace, she decided to take things a bit more seriously. While stupider than any person she'd ever met, the demon's instincts weren't all that bad and it was actually managing to get pretty close with each swing of its mace. Still, for all its efforts, the only thing it was managing to do was leave craters in the street and turn a couple of nearby cars into so much scrap metal. If she let things go on too long, it'd cause quite the commotion come morning and that'd mean a lecture from Anko-sensei for not ending the fight sooner.

"It's been a blast, horn head, but I've got better things to do then go fifty rounds with you," she said as she set the demon up. "Time to die!"

With that she flipped over its head and, while still in the air, threw a trio of kunai at its exposed back, her targets being where vital spots would be on a human. She didn't know if its insides were anything like her insides but she was confident enough that there'd be enough similarity that the blades would at least slow it down by half.

Or at least that's would've happened if her throwing blades hadn't bounced off the demons back and fallen to the ground.

Now that she hadn't been expecting.

Looking at the places where her weapons hit as she touched down, she could barely see any damage at all, which meant that its hide was tougher than traditional flesh. While she hadn't thrown the three kunai with all the strength she possessed, there'd been enough power behind them that they should have penetrated the monster's hide. Watching as the rhino man turned around to face her, she wondered what else she could do to bring this fight to a satisfactory conclusion. The smart move would be to just leave but she somehow doubted that the thing would cool down even if she pulled a vanishing act. As simple minded and pissed as it was, it would probably smash up the entire area before calming down enough to crawl back under its proverbial rock. Explosive tags might do the trick but, since they'd been patrolling the town with an emphasis on stealth, she hadn't bothered to bring any with her.

Explosions weren't exactly subtle, after all.

Guess there's only one thing left then, she thought, taking a quick look around. No one's around, so as long as I make this quick, that ANBU shouldn't have anything to gripe about.

Hopping back a couple of feet, she used hand signals to tell Hagane, Ishina and Seirei to regroup around her before deciding to put an end to all this.

"Alright girls, you know what to do!" she said as she dropped to all fours. "JUJIN BUNSHIN!"

Her partners transformed into half-beast, half-human copies of her while she used her chakra to enhance her bestial qualities, causing her nails to grow into claws. This unusual occurrence served its purpose of momentarily surprising the demon into motionlessness, so she moved onto the finishing move.

"NIJUU GATSUGA!"

With all four of them spinning so fast so as to be like unto drills, they shot forward and impacted on the thing's chest one after another. The first blow staggered it, the second almost caused it to lose its footing, the third knocked it off its feet and the fourth slammed into it hard enough to daze it.

"NOW! ALL AT ONCE GIRLS!" she yelled as she came out of her spin just long enough to change directions back towards the demon.

With the force of four Gatsuga's all at once they struck the demon, resulting in not only the demon dying but also for spider web cracks to form all around it. Pushing off the demon and landing on her feet, she took a moment to examine her work and make sure that the demon was very dead. Peripherally she was aware of her girls doing the same and, when no further movement or signs of life popped up, she allowed herself a feral smile of satisfaction at a job well done.

"If this is the best the Hellmouth can throw at us, this is going to be easier than I thought." she said to herself before letting her body slip back into its default state.

Leaping back to the rooftops, she resumed her search for that Faith girl so she could drag the idiot back to the library for some explaining.

The Rooftops Heading to the Northern Part of Town, Xander's POV

I just hope that my bet pays off or else things are going to take a turn for the worse. He thought as he continued to move for the place that he believed Faith would go.

Unlike the others, who could only looked at things from the perspective of people with loving families, he had the unique position of being able to see things from the other side of the coin. He knew what it was like to live with parents who did not act at all like the caring parents. This allowed him to get inside Faith's head since he'd bet a month of Twinkies that she'd had as crappy a childhood as him.

Perhaps even something worse, though he prayed to whatever benevolent deity was listening that that wasn't the case.

The first thing he knew was that she wouldn't be hanging out any place where the people traffic would be high. The reason for this was directly related to why the potential Slayer had come to Sunnydale in the first place: to run and to hide from a terrifying pursuer. If she stayed in one of the more common hotels in town, the number of people coming and going would make it difficult to see the ones you were watching out for. That meant that she'd be staying at a motel that wasn't very popular and was rarely half full most of the year.

That cut down on the possibilities by half.

The second thing he knew was that, when you hid from someone dangerous, you never let yourself get backed into a corner. You always have an escape route thought out, sometimes more than one, so that if you had to you could escape your pursuer in order to find a new hiding spot. In his mind that meant that the motel that Faith would be staying at would be someplace near the bus terminal or the warehouse district, since she could sneak on one of the large transport trucks. He didn't think she'd choose anyplace near the warehouses since those were favored places for demons and vamps to set up shop. That was why he was currently heading for motel closest to the bus terminal, hoping that he'd be able to catch her before she hopped on the first Greyhound out of town.

He knew with a fair amount of certainty that now that her lie had been exposed, Faith was going to make a run for it. This was even more certain if she overheard that Kakistos was indeed in Sunnydale and, while he could understand her impulse to bolt, running wasn't going to do anything for her troubles. Her best shot for dealing with Kakistos was in Sunnydale and running away would only make her an easier kill when the ancient vampire finally caught up with her. He had to get to her and convince her of that, which was why he'd sent Ava on ahead to scope out the motel he'd pegged as his number one place to look.

Anything worth reporting?

Feelings of alertness but no feelings of danger were conveyed to him as snapshots of the motel entered his mind through his link with the eagle hawk. None of them showed signs of vamps in the immediate area but one of the rooms had its lights on and one of the pics showed a female figure close to the window. Still, with confirmation that Faith was in her room, he doubled his pace to get there before she escaped him.

Only a few minutes passed before he arrived at the motel and perched atop a telephone pole, allowing him to take in the surrounding area with his own eyes instead of through Ava's. Much like the last snapshot, there were no signs that Kakistos had arrived yet with his minions. The lights were also still on in the room he believed Faith was in, so she hadn't left yet and he could see the occasional shape walk by the window, so she was likely pacing. With her enemy, the one she feared, so close she was probably trying to think up the safest way of getting the hell out of Sunnydale. The problem arose if she had let her fear take control of her mind because, when a person was afraid, thinking straight isn't easy and they usually choose quickest solution rather than the right one.

Hopefully now that he was there, he could keep things from going completely down the crapper.

Leaping down from the top of the telephone pole, he landed on the sidewalk without making any noise and proceeded to advance on Faith's room. He didn't have a real plan when it came to what he'd do when he finally looked her in the eyes beyond trying to get her to understand that she could count on the Scoobies to help but he was sure he'd come up with something. If worse came to worse and he couldn't convince her to stay in Sunnydale, he could at the very least help her escape. Then he'd go on the hunt and try to take down as many of Kakistos' minions as he could, maybe even the big bad himself. If he took out the master vampire, he'd have taken away at least half of Faith's fear and then time would take care of the rest as she got over her watcher's death. With his resolve formed, he began to climb the steps that would lead to the second level of the motel and let his feelings guide him the rest of the way.

He was just placing his right foot on the final step when a sound that didn't belong caused him to sharply turn his head to the right and what he saw caused him to go from a brisk walk to a sprint.

Kakistos had arrived with his right hand man and no less than twenty flunkies.

Racing to the room that held Faith, he didn't even bother knocking as he kicked the door open and located a frazzled Faith looking like she was caught between fighting and making a run for it.

"I know what you're thinking and let me save time by making the decision for you: we're definitely running!" he said as he quickly grabbed her by the hand and pulled her to the window leading away from the direction Kakistos was coming from.

Throwing it open, he quickly hopped out and then helped her do the same before pulling her down the alley behind the motel as quickly as she could manage. He knew he could go faster and if he picked her up in his arms they could very well escape the vampires, but that would raise questions he'd rather not have to answer unless he had to. They almost made it to the streets when three vamps popped out of nowhere, blocking that avenue of escape and forced him to turn left down another alleyway, hoping to find another escape route.

Twice more a group of vampires popped up just as they were about to break away from the narrow corridors that the alleys represented and that was enough for him to draw a conclusion: they were being herded somewhere.

Not good! I knew that they start looking for Faith the second they arrived in town but I didn't think they'd be able to put together a plan so quickly. He thought as he continued to work through possible scenarios.

Unfortunately Lady Luck wasn't inclined to give him the time to come up with a plan that'd work and, after one final turn, the two of them wound up in some sort of storage warehouse filled with dusty tables and boxes. Almost immediately he turned around, hoping that he could backtrack enough to go someplace else, but as the sound of quite a lot of feet approaching roasted those nuts quite thoroughly.

"Well this is a fuck-tastic crap-fest! What the hell're we going to do now!?" she exclaimed, half afraid as well as half angry.

"I guess we fight," he said with a sigh as he realized he was going to have to expose some of his true self in the next few minutes.

"Are you fuckin' crazy!?" she asked at the top of her lungs, "There are at least ten vamps out there and last time I checked, neither of us had the chops to take on even one of them!"

"Then we're just going to have to fight smart." He broke a leg off of one of the tables, "Besides, I've got some moves you haven't even seen yet."

Yeah, he knew that it was such a 'guy' line that he'd just delivered but it was the truth and it was too late to go back and try something a little less pick up line related.

"Fuck you! I'm not getting killed 'cause you're thinkin' with your cock instead of your head!" she said as she immediately began to make her way for the back of the warehouse.

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that, Faith," came a voice that was heavy on the malice with only a light coating of politeness. "It won't be the boy's foolishness that kills you tonight. No… that's a pleasure I will allow no one to have but me."

"Sorry, goat boy, but the only way you'll get to Faith is if you go through me," he said as he took up a defensive position in front of the potential Slayer.

"Hmmm… a little fun with a mouse might just the thing to get me ready for the main course," Kakistos said with a bit of cruel playfulness in his voice. "Mr. Trick? Select three to take first crack at this human."

"Only three?" asked a black vampire who presumably was Mr. Trick, "Why not more?"

"Because it wouldn't be very sporting to deprive him of a fighting chance at victory," Kakistos replied with a fang filled smile. "Besides I don't want my opening act to end too soon."

Mr. Trick picked three vampires from the large group behind the leader and made it clear with a gesture what he wanted them to do. From there, like most vamps, the trio approached him like a couple of pros about to school a rookie in the art of kicking ass, not considering for a second that there might be more to him than they could see.

He had to grin a bit at how surprised they'd be in a minute or two.

Assuming they actually managed to last that long.

Faith's POV

I'm gonna die! I'm gonna die! Was all that kept repeating in her mind as she watched the three vampires advance on B's friend, the killer intent clear on their faces.

It was a sentiment that had hardened in the core of her mind the moment Kakistos had begun tearing into D right in front of her. When she'd escaped and gained some distance on the focus of her nightmares, she'd been able to forget for an hour here and there but whenever she thought of the past or tried to plan for the future, the fear returned. Nevertheless, she'd continued across the country, looking over her shoulder whenever she could, in the hopes that when she reached Sunnydale she'd finally find safety with the Slayer that lived there. After all, Slayers were supposed to be these badass bitches that made demons shit their pants, so she'd clung to the hope that maybe the one in California could save her from Kakistos.

When she'd arrived and met B for the first time, she'd seen how far above her a Called Slayer was in terms of fighting ability and she could almost picture what it'd be like if she ever got the nod for the Slayer gig. However, her admiration for the Slayer took a bit of a nosedive when she learned that not only did the bottle blonde not fit her mental picture of an Amazon warrior, but she had friends as well. It went against everything D had ever taught her about how a Slayer was supposed to live once the higher power tapped them. They were supposed to be lone warriors who had only their Watchers for backup and spent their off hours learning new ways to fillet demons. They weren't supposed to be going to school unless it was undercover to beat some big bad. They weren't supposed to have friends because norms were just liabilities in the big fight or future hostages. Their families, if they had any, were supposed to be kept in the dark, assuming that they were allowed to retain any connections with them at all.

The contradiction of it all had left her thrown for bit but she was tough and recovered quickly enough.

For a time she enjoyed their company but, when she stumbled onto them learning the truth about why she'd come to Sunnydale, she knew it was time to bolt. They'd be steamed that she'd lied to them from the beginning and, while she didn't think they'd throw her to the wolves, they wouldn't be so keen on going all out for her either. Add that to Kakistos being in town and she'd decided to do the only smart thing possible: get the hell outta dodge and hope that B could slow pursuit down a bit.

She'd raced back to her hotel and immediately began packing her stuff as quickly as she could. It wasn't until she was done though that she realized getting out of Sunnydale wouldn't be as easy as she thought it'd be. Kakistos wasn't as dumb as the majority of vamps in the world and his number two guy, , was pretty sharp as well, so it wouldn't be that impossible for them to have the buses watched. She thought there was a chance that she could slip onto a truck heading out of town but she didn't have a clue where to find one and running around town looking for one would just make catching her easier. So she'd spent the next twenty minutes trying to think up another escape plan but still had zip to show for it when Xander showed up.

From there it'd been a frantic run to escape and now they were backed into a room with no way out and X was about to get torn apart.

At least that's what she had thought would happen.

Her opinion quickly changed when, instead of being killed by the first few blows, the goofy guy he instead began dodging and weaving the vamp attacks like a martial arts master. Most of the time he'd just lean or step to the side to avoid a blow but every so often he'd actually counter attack with a move good enough to daze the vampire it hit. It didn't make any sense! She knew that norm guys and gals had some different equipment that could make one stronger than another genetically, but not even a Mr. Universe winner could match a vamp in strength. So how the hell was Xander managing this?

"Stay still, blood bag!" one of the vamps growled as another of his punches missed the mark by half a foot.

"Hmmm… stay still and get pummeled by three vamps or keep dodging and remain pain free…" X said with fake seriousness before grinning at his foes. "Nah! Letting yourself get hit is never a good idea. Wanna know why?"

Before any reply could be given B's buddy kicked his body into overdrive and with, four moves she had trouble following, he managed to dust the vamps attacking him. For a moment she zoned out and images from various Hollywood kung-fu films flitted through her mind, where the heavy duty master took out a group of baddies before someone's cigar hit the floor. That's what Xander reminded her of and, even with all the freak-tastic things she'd learned about since D started taking care of her, this still stunned her.

Was he some kinda guy Slayer or was he just the manliest looking girl she'd ever seen in her life?

"That is why," Xander said before bringing his improvised stake into an offensive position. "Now, here's another question for ya: who's NEXT!?"

"KILL HIM!" yelled Kakistos after overcoming his initial shock. "Kill him and bring Faith to me alive!"

Every vamp except the demon of her nightmares and his second in command charged them, causing her fear to spike as she looked about for something she could use as a weapon. Seeing a lead pipe sitting on a table, she grabbed it and held it like a baseball bat before marshaling what courage she had left for the battle ahead.

Just as she thought the first few vamps would make it past X to grab her, though, the California teenager did something she hadn't been expecting. He broke his foot long stake in half then, like a one man army, he began dusting vamps left and right, not letting one get past him. By the time the fang faces got a clue and backed off to rethink their charging strategy, their numbers had gone from twenty-something to about fifteen, not including the two top dogs.

"What the hell are you?!" asked Kakistos, who sounded confident as ever but with hesitation in his movements if you looked close enough.

"Someone whose gonna see you and your posse fill a helluva lot of buckets before the night is out," X replied, sounding like losing wasn't a possibility for him.

"Not if we kill you first," Kakistos growled with anger and a bit of seriousness. "Hydra formation, losers!"

This was something she'd never seen the goat man do before.

Vamps, as a rule, were loners and the few times they got together in groups like this, they were still one on one fighters who couldn't co-ordinate with each other very well. What she was seeing now was something she'd expect from a team that'd done this sort of thing fairly often before, or at least had been trained so they could do it. Dividing into groups of five, the minion vamps lined up, with the rearmost fang faces close together while the ones in the front spread out so that one was to the left, one was in the middle and one was on the right side of the room. At first she didn't think it was all that smart having them line up like that but then she realized that by spreading them out like that, it'd be impossible for X to stop all of them. Some would eventually get through to her and it'd be over, since it was a given that they'd pull the whole 'surrender or she dies' schtick. Xander must've come to the same conclusion because, with two hops, he was right in front of her looking as determined as ever not to lose this fight.

"Oh, look! They know how to place nice with each other," Xander said with fake praise and quite a bit of sarcasm. "I wonder if it's going to do them any good."

The answer that came was not from the vamps, nor from X, but from the wall on the left side of the room. It sounded like someone was hitting the other side of the wall with a nail gun on full auto but then, as quickly as it had begun, it stopped, leaving a silence in the air. The silence only lasted two seconds before the wall blew inwards, knocking over the left line up of vamps and throwing dust into the air. When the air did clear, the people who stood just outside the hole in the wall were not at all what she'd expected to see.

If it'd been some random demon crashing the party she wouldn't have been surprised. If it'd been B and her Watcher, she wouldn't have been surprised.

Seeing two busty babes looking like they should be workin' for the Triad standing there ready to kick some ass was definitely surprising.

"Xander-sama! We here to help!" spoke the brunette with a great rack.

"Time to kick ass!" said the babe with the black hair and toned body.

That's a good thing, right? She thought a bit unsure of the answer.

Lotion's POV

YES! Finally a chance to show my future husband what a wonderful wife I can be! she thought as she charged the vampires head on.

With her nunchaku twirling, she managed to fracture the skulls of three vampires before they recovered from the shock of the dramatic entrance she and Pu Fium had carried out. From there things got a little more difficult, but not by much. Vampires were nothing special to the people of her tribe and were often used as tests to see if young warriors had learned their lessons well. As she broke the arm of a vampire after evading a punch executed by the same arm, though, she was forced to admit by the follow up attack by the other arm that the corpse could fight through pain well enough. Thrusting her knee into the offending vampire's chest, however, quickly surpassed what the demon could safely work through. Normally, if this had been a test back in her village, she'd have ended the confrontation by staking the vampire but, at the moment, that wasn't an option. What the undead cannon fodder lacked in skill they made up for in numbers, forcing her to deal with the next threat immediately after defeating the previous one.

She wasn't worried, though.

While vampires could heal if they drank enough blood, it still took quite a bit of time, especially if the injuries were severe. In the case of broken bones, it'd take the animated corpses on the ground at least a couple of days to recover, which it wouldn't be given since, once this fight was over with, she'd dust each of them herself.

As she entered a momentary lull in attackers, she looked about to see how the others were doing with their battles. Her future husband was sticking close to a teenage girl, whom she presumed was the reason why Xander and his allies were searching the city tonight. None of the enemies had managed to get past his guard but then she didn't think they would anyway. He was, after all, not only the man who'd bested her in combat but also a chuunin of Konoha, so the idea of a vampire defeating him was as laughable as a child defeating a seasoned warrior of the tribe.

Pu Pium was using her sai with surgical precision, aiming for major arteries as well as other points that would dispatch her foes swiftly. By aiming for major arteries, she'd force the corpse to bleed out quicker, sapping the fang face's strength. By aiming for the eyes, joints and major muscle groups, her sister amazon she severely reduced her adversary's threat level, making the final blow with the pommel of a sai shattering a skull.

Seeing movement out of the corner of her eye, she managed to move in time to evade an amateurish club swing aimed at her head. With her weapon she shattered the chair leg that was being used and, with a foot, she made sure that the arm that had swung it wouldn't be able to lift anything in the immediate future.

Kinda hard to do so when all of the bones in the shoulder required for such action had been broken in multiple places.

She was about to turn and focus on mopping up the last of the minions when, out of nowhere, something clamped down on her shoulder. She was about to use one of the many techniques she'd been taught to break such a grip but, before she could put thought to action, she was thrown out of the warehouse with surprising speed. So fast was she travelling through the air that she was unable to right herself before hitting the hard brick wall that rudely refused to let her pass without harassment. The impact was painful and it did knock the wind out of her but her mother raised her well. Forcing her body to obey her will, she quickly got the oxygen she needed and commanded her body to do as she willed rather than what it wanted to do. Getting back to her feet, she turned her attention back to the warehouse with the intent of finding the one who'd thrown her out of it.

What she saw did not bode well for anyone other than the vampires.

The old vampire with goat hands and feet was now in the fight directly rather than sitting on the sidelines. Unlike the others whom she could dispatch without trouble, this one with the scarred face was on a whole other level. In terms of speed and strength, he made his minions look like they were fresh from the ground. As a result, both Xander and Pu Fium were forced to take him on together, allowing the few remaining minions to focus on acquiring the unknown girl. Taking a moment to debate the various choices she could make, she chose to go to the aid of the teenager her future husband desired to keep safe. Once she dispatched the minions, she could then join the others in their efforts to finish off the leader of this group of undead.

She was about halfway to the innocent when all of a sudden her path was blocked by an African American vampire in an expensive looking suit who did not seem inclined to let her pass.

"Sorry, babe, but the boss wouldn't want you interferin' right now," the vampire said with total arrogance. "Gonna have to get past me first."

"Babe!? You dare call Lu Xion BABE!?" she exclaimed with fury at this… thing… referring to her in such a manner. "I kill you slowly for that!"

With that she began to teach the foolish vampire why it was not a wise decision to anger a warrior of her tribe.

She was certain that it'd be a lesson he'd never forget.

You can't forget something if you were reduced to a pile of ashes.

Xander's POV

How can there be such a difference?! He thought as he tried once more to turn the tide against Kakistos, only to find out his efforts weren't quite good enough. How can this guy be this much stronger than the vamps I've dusted so far!?

Oh, he knew the logic behind it because Giles had explained it to them often enough in the beginning for even someone as academically challenged as him to absorb it. The older a vampire became, the stronger and faster they became, with some of them acquiring unique powers that set them apart from the crowd. He'd seen enough of a difference between newbie vamps and Deadboy to see how a few centuries could make a vamp more powerful than one fresh from the ground. He'd even heard from Buffy how impressively strong the Master had been when she'd first fought him, so he had thought up until now that he had a decent grasp of their growth rate.

This was something much different.

When he'd first engaged the vampires he'd only tapped into about a third of the natural strength and speed his body possessed without using chakra to enhance his abilities. This had been enough for him to match the minions physically and his skills as a ninja had allowed him to see through their attacks without too much trouble. Indeed it had gotten to the point where he'd believed he could wrap up this entire little escapade without showing his true nature to Faith.

Now, though… now he was beginning to think that the only way they'd make it out of this with a minimum of bruising was to tap into the abilities he'd gained since last Halloween.

The moment he had a second where he wasn't busy blocking or evading, he channeled chakra to his eyes and activated the power that resided only with members of his clan: Sharingan.

He'd been practicing with it since they got back and was beginning to understand how it worked and the uses that it had on the battlefield. According to what he'd learned since he'd first arrived in Konoha, the bloodline limit of his clan had several notable abilities that allowed a bearer to be more powerful than the average ninja. The first was referred to as 'Eye of Insight', which allowed the user to see the flow of chakra in a living thing allowing them to learn quite a bit. For one thing, it'd let him know if one of his teammates was under the influence of an enemy's jutsu based on the flow of the energy within them.

In this particular instance, though, he'd be using the kekkai genkai's ability to follow the movements of fast moving objects and its predictive abilities to see what Kakistos was going to do a few seconds before the vamp actually did it. If he'd been a normal human with this ability, it wouldn't have worked out nearly as well since he wouldn't have been fast enough to evade what he could see. However, thanks to his training, evading the vampire's attacks was easy, the demon's movements being painted in such broad strokes in his eyes. With this being the case, he began to try and manipulate Kakistos' movements to create an opening for a kill shot with the improvised stakes in his hands. It wasn't easy because, aside from enhanced physical abilities, age also brought with it fighting experience and that meant that simple ploys or feints wouldn't work. Fortunately, though, there was one battle that the ancient vampire forfeited first and that was the battle of patience. No doubt it was because the vamp was pissed that two 'meat bags' were causing him such difficulty when it should've been as easy as swatting a fly for him.

With this loss of patience came an opening in the master vampire's defenses that he exploited instantly by bringing the stake in his right hand down hard on the fiend's chest. The plan, though, hit a snag when he was forced to watch as his wooden weapon fail to achieve the desired penetration, even with one third of his total strength behind it.

"Is that your best, human? Let's see how you like mine!" Kakistos yelled as he grabbed the offending right arm in a vise like grip.

Dammit! He thought as he realized that his moment of shock had caused him to get captured. Got sloppy!

As the vampire pulled him into the air and grabbed his right leg at the same time, it didn't take much thought to figure out what was coming, so with a mental sigh of regret, he executed a technique he had hoped he would not have to use.

Kawarimi no jutsu!

With that and a puff of smoke, he extricated himself from the vamp's grasp, leaving the blood drinker with only a wooden chair in his grasp. Landing on the ground a short distance away, he knew the time for hiding what he was had ended because, if Kakistos didn't figure out the truth immediately, he would soon enough. The smart thing to do would be to use a fire type ninjutsu and just fry the murderer but that was dismissed when his eyes fell upon Faith, who managed on her own to finish off the minions that had made it to her position. This impressed him because, while she might have received some training from her Watcher, he hadn't thought her physically capable of defeating more than one vamp on her own. Either the vamps had gotten careless when attacking her or she had good fighting instincts that had allowed her to overcome the odds. That wasn't to say that she was in great shape but it wasn't anything that would require more than a first aid kit from what he could see. It was the look he could see in her eyes that prompted him to step back from finishing off the vampire himself and choose a different course of action.

Surging forward with his chakra enhanced speed, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out the ninja gloves he'd stuffed into it. By the time he stood in front of Kakistos, both were on so, just as he'd done many times before, he thrust his hands forward and released a pulse of chakra. With twin puffs of smoke, explosive tags appeared and, with a minimal effort, he directed them to the limbs of his target. It wasn't quite like using the chakra strings that pajama-wearing Sand ninja did to control his puppets but it served its purpose and that was good enough for him.

"Pu Fium! Get clear!" he declared as he leapt away from the clueless vampire.

As soon as he was sure that all of the people he cared about were the right distance away, he sent out another pulse of chakra, triggering the tags to explode violently. Unlike the ones he'd used in the past that possessed concussive force enough to daze and disorient his target, these ones possessed power enough to break down a wooden door if needed. A single explosive tag of this variety would be enough to lead a melon-sized hole in a door. With two attached to each of the master vampire's limbs, the bloodsucker was reduced to a torso with a head in the blink of an eye. Bellows of pain and anger erupted from Kakistos' mouth as the crimson liquid the undead valued so much flowed from the monster's stumps.

What I wouldn't give for one of those explosive tags that exploded when you tried to remove them from whatever they'd been attached to. he thought as he looked about the room, settling on something. Guess I'll just have to make do with what's available.

Walking over to the red case that was leaning up against the left wall, he opened it up and, much like he'd expected, there was a fire axe inside that looked to still be in decent enough condition. Yanking it out, he turned his head to see Lotion finish off the last vampire leaving only allies and the pitiful mess that was Kakistos in the room. Going over to where Faith was leaning against a dusty dresser, he held out the axe, looked her in the eye and then turned to look at the source of her fear. While tired and banged up, she understood what he was offering within seconds and immediately took the implement of death from his hand.

Watching her walk towards the thing that had hurt her so much, he was only peripherally aware of Perfume and Lotion taking up positions on either side of him. They said nothing, so he assumed that they knew what was going to happen and would not try and stop it.

Watching as the potential Slayer stood over the monster that had killed her Watcher and haunted her nightmares for the last few weeks, he wondered if she would be able to muster the strength to strike the final blow. It was one thing to have the chance to confront one's inner demons. It was quite another to push through your fear, to seize the chance and then use it to dispel the dark memories once and for all.

Faith, however, proved to have strength he'd come to expect from Slayers.

"AAAGGGGHHH!" Faith yelled as she brought the axe over her head and then chopped it down right on Kakistos' neck.

In one fell swoop the head of one of the oldest vampires on the planet was separated from his body, causing the dead flesh to turn to dust and leaving only a deformed skeleton behind. This was not the end of the potential Slayer's assault because, immediately after the first chop, she brought the axe back up before hammering it down on the bones lying at her feet. Again and again and again she brought the blade down on the bones until there wasn't a single piece larger than a fingernail. With this much damage done, not even the ritual that was meant to revive the Master would work and so Faith would finally be able to leave her past behind.

Walking up to her, he placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, since he knew that she'd be coming down off of an emotional high would probably need some support until she got it all out of her system. He wasn't wrong when the sounds of fury changed to sobs of grief and sadness, followed by her throwing herself into his arms before crying into his chest.

"Easy…easy…it's over. Let it all out," he whispered as he wrapped a comforting arm around her.

It was a good twenty minutes before they left the building leaving nothing but piles of ash and a demolished skeleton behind to show what happened.