A/N: I do not own Starwars and No Buffy is not a Jedi.
Additionally, I want to thank hmhughes for writing the new summary of the story for me based off my original summary over on AO3. He did a much better job of condensing it down to 255 characters than I did. Thank you!

Chapter 5: Artificial Slayer

Buffy had been at his apartment for three nights now. She had not left and had only barely spoken to her friends when they came by to visit. Giles had noted how she was especially cold towards Xander though he was not sure why. In an effort to get her to at least do something with herself and break out of the depression she was in he had resorted to calling Angel. The ensouled vampire had come by that evening just after sundown and convinced Buffy to go out on patrol with him.

It was nearing on five hours since she had left. Worry ran through Giles spine with every minute that passed though he couldn't say why. He knew that the summer months were unusually quiet around Sunnydale though no one was certain why. Even Angel had only offered the thought that the later times the sunset could be the reason. Still he paced his apartment's small living room with concern. There was no logical reason for it.

When the front door finally opened at just past three in the morning Giles nearly jumped out of his skin. He quickly moved towards the door as he heard Angels frantic voice calling for him.

"Giles, I need you to invite me in. Hurry."

The sight just outside his front door made his blood run cold. Angel was a picture of cuts and bruises that were already well on their way to healing thanks to vampire constitution. Judging by the state of the visible wounds and the amount of blood there seemed to be the cuts had to have been quite deep when he first suffered them.

Then all thoughts of Angels battle wounds fled Giles mind as he realized not all the blood was his. In his arms he held a limp and barely conscious Buffy. Her face was a tapestry of bruises, welts, and cuts. Her top, once green, was now nearly black from the soaked in blood.

"Yes, come in Angel," Giles invited, stepping aside to allow the vampire to carry Buffy to the couch. Giles himself hurried to the bathroom and retrieved the first aid kit he kept there. Kneeling by Buffy he started to gingerly clean Buffy's wounds. They were a multitude of lesser and non-lethal injuries that added up to a rather severe beating she had taken.

It took nearly an hour to finish cleaning the now sleeping girl. As Giles gathered his medical supplies he turned to Angel his voice cold and demanding, "Now what in the bloody hell happened Angel? I trusted her with you tonight and you bring her back nearly dead!"

Angel looked to Buffy and shook his head, "I don't understand it either. There were only three of them. One was good, really good, the other two were middling average. I had my sword with me so I took the better of the three. By the time I was done with him Buffy was on the ground. I had to finish the other two off myself before I could bring her back here."

Angel paused and looked back to Giles, his face impassive and his eyes wrought with concern, "I didn't see her entire fight, only a little bit. At first, she was fine, just like she had been all night. Then... it was like she wasn't the slayer. She slowed down; wasn't hitting as hard. Her skill was still there, but it was like she didn't have the power to back the training up."

A brief flash of concern flashed across Giles face before he could force it back to the mask of terror and concern, "Yes, well we will have to research what happened in the morning. Hopefully her lack of power will not affect her healing and she will be able to answer some questions about what happened to her then." Giles paused for a moment, glancing between Buffy and Angel until making up his mind and placing a friendly hand on the vampire's shoulder. "Thank you," he said, his voice more contrite than at first, "for watching over her tonight."

Angel nodded, sparing one more look at Buffy before turning to head home before the sun rose and trapped him in Giles apartment.

Buffy's eyes fluttered open to find herself laying on the couch in extreme pain. All over her body felt like a thousand tiny blades cutting her none stop. Her first hitching breath reminded her that she had at the very least bruised her ribs. Though she didn't see Giles she could hear someone in the kitchen. Afraid to even sit up she turned her head slightly with a grimace of pain.

Spotting her backpack on the other side of the room she moaned. Resolving herself to answer questions she didn't want asked she called out tentatively, "Giles?"

Her question was met with the sound of a stool clattering to the floor followed by what was likely a teacup shattering on the linoleum. A few moments of muttering later and Giles entered into the room, a grim expression on his face.

"Buffy, oh I'm so sorry my dear girl. Why are you awake, you need to sleep to get that horrid concoction out of your system. I never believed they would do this I swear to you," he began rambling in a tone of worry almost worthy of Willow.

"Giles," Buffy groaned out, "Giles calm down. Get... get my bag. I need it."

Seemingly not hearing her Giles continued on his rambling, "The test wasn't supposed to be until your eighteenth birthday. Always then they test slayers, or that is what they claimed. Now though I'm beginning to suspect otherwise. Copies of the watchers journals I have have proven they do not always wait. It's rare, but more often that I would expect. Sometimes they give the test early. Occasionally the watcher doesn't even know until after it has happened."

"Giles!" Buffy's shout cut the watcher off as she groaned with the exertion. "Giles," she said more slowly, "I need my backpack. Need to fix this. Give me my bag. Explanations later."

Finally Buffy's insistence soaked through the panic driven concern of the watcher. Blinking owlishly he turned to the backpack in question then back to Buffy. "The backpack? I dare say nothing in there can counter the drugs they gave you, Buffy. I'm not sure what can."

Gritting her teeth in the face of his lack of understanding Buffy just gestured at the backpack again while pushing herself into a sitting position. Relenting Giles fetched the backpack for Buffy and brought it to her. Setting it in her lap she opened it and started to dig around for a few moments. What she withdrew only served to confuse Giles even further.

It was a small thin crescent of metal. Perhaps a quarter of an inch in thickness and four inches across it looked like a gleaming silver model of the moon. Giles was further confused when Buffy reached behind her head and under her hair with one hand and produced a second copy of the crescent. Dropping the one she removed from her head she reached back and pressed the second crescent to the back of her head at the bottom of her skull just above where it and her spine connected.

An audible click and whirr could be heard along with a sigh of relief from Buffy. Closing her eyes she gingerly moved herself to sit cross-legged on the couch as he had tried to teach her to do to meditate. The effect was immediate. Giles watched as Buffy's many wounds, which had not healed at all during her sleep, began to close before his eyes. The worst of the injuries began closing and healing first, then the larger bruises, and last the minor scratches. In under 10 minutes she looked no worse for the wear.

When Buffy's eyes flicked back open they found Giles watching her carefully and cleaning his glasses. The look on his face made it clear he didn't know what to think of what he witnessed her do. It was not an expression she had ever wanted to see on the face of the man who had been more of a father to her than Hank had been.

Sighing sadly she picked up her backpack and moved to go into the kitchen. Giving Giles a glance she motioned to the other room with a nod, "Let me get some food, Giles. Then I'll explain what I can."

Giles nodded and followed after the girl who's safety and welfare had been in his hands for two years. In that two years he had rarely been truly concerned beyond that of an adult to a child in his care. There was the time with the Master and more recently during the affair with Angelus. Now though he felt a knot in his stomach well up that sent a fear through him he had never felt before.

It took only a few minutes of searching for Giles and Buffy to both realize if she wanted to eat breakfast something would have to be cooked. Fearing for the safety and his security deposit, Giles decided he should cook them both breakfast. Twenty minutes later the two sat at the kitchen bar with a plate of scrambled eggs, bacon, and sausage.

Giles watched in fascination at how easily Buffy put away the food before her. In no time at all she had finished a breakfast of four eggs, four sausage links, and a half dozen pieces of bacon. He had barely ate a quarter of his own by the time she was downing the cup of milk she had poured for herself.

"Excuse me," Buffy said as she let out a quiet belch. "The healing takes more energy than anything else and that energy has to come from somewhere." Looking across at Giles she motioned to his plate, "So hurry up and don't let it get cold or I'm apt to steal yours too."

Nodding Giles took another bite of his eggs then looked up at Buffy, "What was that artifact you used on yourself? I've never seen something like that, and there were no runes or inscriptions on it that I could see? What sort of magic is it?"

"It's not magic," Buffy told him as she stood to rinse her plate and put it in the dishwasher. "Well, no more so than what is explained by Clark's law. It's technology. A neural enhancement cybernetic kinetic system to be exact. N.E.C.K. for short. Which is kind of ironic considering where I attach it."

"Technology? Where did you acquire such a thing, let alone two of them? Such a device in the medical filed would be amazing if the demonstration of it's healing ability on you is anything to go by."

Sighing Buffy sat back down and brought a small leather bound journal out of her bag. Turning to look at Giles straight in his eyes her face became serious, "Giles, I'll answer that and give you proof if you can do one thing for me. What we talk about, what I tell you, and the proof I give you has to remain between us. Willow, Xander, my mother, and most especially the council can not ever get word of any of this. If you can give me your word this goes no further than you and I, I'll answer your questions."

Giles went rigid. He had never kept secrets from the council. It just was not done. After all any development about the slayer could lend insight to future generations. Granted less than an hour ago he thought the council had drugged his slayer with the intention of performing a deadly test on her without telling him. His reading had shown that the council had done exactly that in the past to remove slayers from the field so they could activate a new slayer. Rarely did the accounts from the watchers explain why this had been done, but done it had been. Now though the thought of intentionally misleading the council or not reporting something as important as this device Buffy had found herself in possession of seemed absurd.

"Buffy, I am honor bound to report on all aspects of the slayers life to the council. If you cannot tell me because of that, then I too have to report that," he said with as much calm as he could muster.

Surprisingly Buffy smiled, "So if anything I tell you has nothing, zero zilch nada to do with the slayer, you can keep it between us right?"

Giles nodded in agreement and Buffy's smile got broader. Curiosity ramped up in Giles as he tried to figure out what was going on. It wasn't until only a few split seconds later that that knot in his stomach ripped back into him and he felt queasy. A small shiver of fear passed through him and he opened his mouth to make conditions.

He didn't get a chance as Buffy dropped the bombshell that he never expected to hear and wasn't quite sure he could believe. Her tone was mild and amused, but serious none the less as she looked him deep into his eyes, past the surface and into the man beneath, "Well that's good, because I'm not the slayer."

Sitting in John F. Kennedy international airport was a man dressed in a brown wrinkled suit and bowler hat. People moved around him and near him, but no one ever paid him any attention. If someone had watched the events transpire they would almost swear that they could not see him. It was obvious they could as no one ever sat on him or when he stood and walked towards the line for boarding no one bumped into him in the busy airport terminal. When he reached the attendant taking passengers tickets he held his out with a smile and she cheerfully checked it and took what she needed before waving him into the plane. So obviously people could see him, yet no one talked to him, people subconsciously got out of his way, and for all the world he was insignificant.

Sitting miles above was a man who made it his mission in life to take note of the insignificant.

"What do you mean you're not the slayer," Giles finally stammered out. His glasses flew from his face and into his hands to be polished so fast that Buffy pondered if it had been a feat of teleportation. "You were confirmed by Merrick to be the slayer. I read his watchers journal about you before you arrived in Sunnydale."

Buffy giggled a little and shook the leather bound journal in her hand, "You mean you read this? Merrick's watchers journal? I don't know how when I've had it since after he died. You're council found the duplicate that he had made. You know, the decoy he kept in case it was ever found by vampires? The one filled with lies and half-truths?"

She sat the journal down on the bar between them and looked at Giles shocked face with a mega-watt smile, "Even then Merrick was watching out for me. He knew within forty-eight hours of meeting me that I wasn't the slayer. It was actually another girl that I went to school with, Cassandra. She was the real slayer and was dead shortly after Lothos hit town. Funny thing is even he never realized that they had killed the slayer. He fixated on me. He was blind to anything other than little old me and that in the end was a huge help in convincing the council I really was the slayer."

"But... but that's impossible. For a vampire, particularly one of Lothos' age and experience, they would know if they had killed a slayer and who she was, or wasn't as the case is," Giles said with a shake of his head.

"Really? Is that your final answer? I mean, it's not like there haven't been hundreds of vampires and four master vampires at that who thought I was the slayer. It's not like I fooled the Master, Spike, Angelus, or Drusilla? I mean Drusilla? She's supposed to be vision girl and even she believes I am the slayer, Giles."

"Well yes, because you are Buffy. You are the slayer and claiming not to don't make it true. I understand that you had a rough time of things with Angelus, but you cannot hide from your destiny," Giles told her in a tone that was meant to broke no argument from the girl in front of him. Instead, it only elicited a sigh.

"Look, I have two other pieces of evidence to support me, not counting Merricks real journal," Buffy said as she dug back into her backpack. She pulled several pieces of paper and laid them on the table in front of Giles. "Slayers have had blood work done in the past, right? Merrick said they had nothing to fear from modern medicine since their blood is pure human. The slayer power comes from something mystic, not genetic. So take a look at these blood tests. One done in L.A. after Lothos, another one done in the psychiatric institution my parents locked me up in, and the third from the Sunnydale Hospital. All three say the exact same thing."

Before he could look properly at the papers Buffy set her final piece of evidence on the table between them. It was a silver tube with some form of crystal that appeared to be a deep violet at one end. Around its circumference at various points were rounded glossy black spots that looked like glass or polished plastic. The end without the crystal tapered off giving it a curved hookbill appearance.

"What is this," he asked as he examined it.

"What that is is several million dollars in lawsuits waiting to happen. It's one of the reasons I never used it where people might see it. The other is that people would want me to build them one."

Buffy held her hand out for the cylinder and Giles deposited it into her hand. She stood and stepped back from the bar and took up an en guard position he had taught her for sword fighting. He was beginning to think she looked rather silly when a purple beam of energy erupted from the crystal covered end of the cylinder. A gentle humming buzz sort of sound echoed through the kitchen.

Giles sat in awe of what he was witnessing. A piece of science fiction legend that even he was familiar with come to life before his eyes. He fish mouthed for several moments before his breathing restarted and he could speak again.

"That's a lightsaber!"

"This is a lightsaber," Buffy confirmed before shutting it back down. "And it is fully functional and quite deadly to vampires. Also it's biorhythm locked to me. No one else can turn it on without my fingerprints, my brain waves, and a N.E.C.K. system to broadcast the appropriate signal to shut off the safety. Keeps vampires from getting ahold of it and turning it against me," she said quite proudly.

Giles was still stuck on the fact he had witnessed a live light saber, his eyes never leaving the device in her hand. "Were did you get that, Buffy? The council will want to know so they can procure them. If we managed to outfit their black ops teams with..."

"NO!" The shout stopped Giles dead in his metaphysical tracks. "No, Giles, you promised that if my secrets had nothing to do with the Slayer you would keep quiet. The council never finds out. Period. End. Full Stop."

"Buffy, this has everything to do with the slayer. You are the slayer and where ever you are getting this technology has to be investigated. They might be trying to subvert you for their own purposes. There are many who would want to wrest control of the slayer from the council."

Buffy slammed the inactive lightsaber onto the counter top and glared at Giles. At that moment he knew that if she could kill with but a look like the gorgons of myth he would be so much masonry. "I did not get it from anyone. I built it all. Me. You didn't even look at the blood work did you, Giles? I AM NOT THE SLAYER!"

Giles finally looked down to the papers he had forgotten in the presence of science fiction come to life, "I don't know what this could say that would lead...," Giles voice suddenly went from infuriated to shock. "You to..." he continued as he flipped to the second set of results confirming the first. "Believe..." he finally stuttered to a stop as he looked at the third set of results.

"Right there is the final proof Giles. It's why I know I'm not the Slayer. It's why I can build things intuitively. It's all the evidence the council would need to either destroy me or sell me to the highest bidder. It's why they can never ever know until I can protect myself."

Buffy's voice was thick with fear. Giles could practically hear the terror reverberating through her body. Before today he would have called her crazy. He still was not entirely sure he wasn't.

Giles stared at the results. Research into others with this same result was relatively new. It had been known of, for several decades now, but no one had done much research on it. The only groups he knew actively looking at it were ones that might attempt to weaponize or control people that showed up with the results before him.

"The X-gene, Giles. I'm a mutant."