Buffy pressed forward relentlessly, twirling her quarterstaff like a baton. Her opponent managed to hold her off for about twenty seconds before she knocked his knees out from under him, sending him sprawling on the library floor. She lowered the quarterstaff, reached out a hand, and helped him back to his feet. "Good work," she said. "I think that was a personal best."

"Tell that to my tailbone," Larry grumbled.

"Maybe next time you'll be able to beat Oz's record," said Buffy.

Larry turned a scowl on Oz, who was sitting with his feet up on the study table, whittling a stake. "Man, how do you keep beating me?"

"Speed trumps muscle," said Oz, not looking up.

"It's true," said Buffy. "Doesn't matter how powerful your strikes are if you can't get them under your enemy's guard."

"Says the girl with superhuman speed and strength," said Larry.

"You asked me for weapons training," Buffy reminded him. "It's not my fault you weren't emotionally prepared to get your ass handed to you over and over by a girl half your size."

"Hey," said Larry, putting a hand to his chest and making a face as though her words had wounded him deeply, "it is an honor to have my ass handed to me by the girl who killed the Master and took this town back, no matter how tiny she is."

Buffy smiled at him. She'd had her reservations at first about working with the White Hats, but Larry and Oz were alright. "Maybe I wasgoing a little hard on you. I've just been under a lot of pressure lately."

"But that'll be over tonight, right?" said Oz.

"Only if I pass," said Buffy, picking at a few split ends in the tail of her long braid. It was still her favorite hairstyle when she was fighting, though her wardrobe had grown a little more colorful in the last few months.

"You'll pass," said Oz.

"Yeah," said Larry, clapping her encouragingly on the shoulder. "What are they supposed to mark you down for? You've only been enrolled here a month and you're already making better grades than me, you passed all their performance tests, they like your apartment, you work okay with Giles, and Sunnydale definitely still needs you around. I mean, unless in the next few hours, they find out that you were shacking up with Angel before they got here—"

"Larry, shut up!" Buffy hissed, looking wildly around to make sure they were still the only ones in the library. They were, but she didn't completely relax.

"Come on, Larry," said Oz, the slightest hint of a smile on his face. "Don't you know the eleventh hour is always when Murphy's Law goes into effect? Don't help it along."

Larry looked at the clock on the wall and frowned. "But it's 3:30, not eleven."

Buffy and Oz exchanged glances, then quickly looked away from each other. "The point," she said, "is that in a few hours, the Council is going to give their verdict. Even if they approve of me and of you guys helping me fight, everything could still change."

"Or maybe they'll leave and you'll be able to spend tonight celebrating with Angel," said Oz.

Buffy smiled, but it was forced. She was too nervous that something would go wrong. As badly as she missed Angel and as happy as she'd be to leave her brightly lit second-floor apartment for his muted basement-level one, she couldn't feel optimistic.

†

Jenny Calendar was having a very different afternoon than she had expected after coming face to face with the most legendary nemesis of her clan. He was certainly dangerous (she had put on a scarf to hide the purple and blue evidence of it), but he didn't seem to mean any harm beyond what it took to defend what was his. She might've thought it was just an act, but that was before doing the spell. She hadn't told Angelus what she'd seen in addition to the image of the two women battling for his soul; she had also seen that soul itself. It was deeply scarred, weary, and in a great deal of pain, but it was still stronger than the demon.

Her whole life, Jenny had been told that Angelus deserved to suffer for what he'd done to her people. She had accepted it without question. But now…now she was less certain things were that simple. It was the soul that was scarred and in pain, not the demon. The demon was merely restrained. Still, even if the curse had been misguided, she was more determined than ever to make sure she achieved her goal. She absolutely did not want to see that demon untethered.

Her troubled thoughts made it difficult to focus during her interview with Principal Snyder about the open position in Computer Science, but apparently teaching applicants at Sunnydale High had been so few and far between in the last two years that he probably would've hired her even if she'd done "Thriller" on top of his desk and thrown his coffee in his face. By the end of the interview, she sort of wished she had.

She walked out of his office grimacing, uncertain she had made a wise choice in seeking employment here. At almost the same moment that Snyder's door closed behind her, a tall piece of ruggedly handsome wrapped in multiple layers of tweed stepped out of the faculty lounge directly across the hall. Jenny raised an eyebrow and looked him up and down. He was halfway through drinking a steaming cup of something when he spotted her, at which point he choked. She grinned, her lower lip between her teeth to keep herself from laughing.

"I'm sorry," he spluttered. "I don't believe we've met. A-are you one of the parents?" Jenny was delighted to note that he had an English accent to go with the glasses and the tweed. He also had just a hint of salt-and-peppery stubble, and though his eyes were blue, there was a patch of brown in the left iris.

"Actually I'm your newest colleague," said Jenny, sticking out her hand. "Jenny Calendar. Computer science."

"It's a pleasure to meet you," said Mr. Ruggedly Handsome, shaking her hand. His was large and warm, with a firm grip.

"I certainly hope so," said Jenny with her eyes locked on his, raising the eyebrow again and not immediately letting go of him.

He went pink, ducked his head, and withdrew his hand. "Er, yes, well. I'm Rupert Giles. Librarian."

Jenny's eyes widened, and flirting suddenly dropped a few rungs on her ladder of priorities. "You're the Watcher," she said. "Angelus told me to come find you."

†

"I know you may have found our inspection onerous," said Quentin Travers, "but we needed to assess not only your situation but the volatility of this Hellmouth. It was open for some time when the Master first rose. The fallout, though extensive, was somehow kept under wraps." He glanced over at Giles. "You still don't know how it closed?"

"I'm afraid not," said Giles. "What little evidence I could find suggested dark magic was involved. I suspect whatever closed it didn't care much for the added competition from the creatures that came out."

"Until we can solve this particular mystery, we would be remiss if we removed you from Sunnydale, Miss Summers," said Travers, looking at Buffy again.

"Yes, sir," said Buffy. She wanted to bite her tongue as she said it, but, like she and Giles had discussed, playing the part of the dutiful soldier would be the best way to earn their trust and get them to go away.

"We've been reasonably impressed by your capabilities. Despite a certain amount of insubordination when you were working under Mr. Wyndam-Pryce in Cleveland, you and Mr. Giles appear to have developed an effective partnership. The Council is still uneasy about the involvement of Messrs Osbourne and Blaisdell in your operation, but the circumstances being what they are, it seems it could hardly have been avoided. Both young men should continue to receive proper training."

"Does that mean Giles is my official Watcher now?"

Travers regarded her with a somewhat stern eye. "Yes. We'll want regular reports from him, of course, both on your progress and the situation at large."

Giles muttered something under his breath that sounded like, "After two years, now you've decided to pay attention to my bloody reports?"

Travers either didn't notice or pretended not to. "You'll continue to patrol here and work on discovering who or what closed the Hellmouth," he said. "If we learn of any serious supernatural threats arising elsewhere, we may send you to attend to them, but this will be your base of operations."

"Sounds great," said Buffy.

Travers glanced down at his watch. "Thank you for your cooperation, Miss Summers, Mr. Giles. Now, the rest of the delegation and I have a plane to catch. Good day to you both."

Jenny's PoV was super fun to write, as was the interplay between Buffy, Oz, and Larry.