A/N: As always I want to thank my Beta reader, Chadmaako, for doing such a wonderful job. (Shameless Advert) Read his work if you haven't. He inspired me to start actually writing Fanfiction.

Plans within Plans

Xander wasn't entirely sure if it was the world or the Watcher that hated him. One had thrown all manner of horrible terrifying things into his life over the years, including the Cordettes. The other seemed to take active malicious joy in the little things he did to bring misery into Xander's life. At the moment he was more willing to blame the Watcher, who had woken him up far too early for Summer vacation, than the world, who had somehow seen fit to get him into a relationship with Cordelia.

Still grumbling inside his head, Xander knocked on the door to the Watchers apartment and plastered a smile on his face. Two boxes of doughnuts were held casually under one arm as he balanced two drink trays worth of coffee in the other. A small smile lit his face as he spotted the scuff marks his foot had made on the door as he 'knocked', considering it a small retaliation for waking up before noon.

The door swung open to Buffy's less than cheerful face. Knowing that at least one other person was grumpy being up so early filled Xander with a sense of united purpose and lifted his spirits slightly. "Mind grabbing... well... anything," he asked his bestest blonde friend.

Buffy took the coffee trays from him and stepped deeper into the apartment, leaving the door open for him to follow in their usual Sunnydale style. Kicking the door shut, he followed her into the living room where the rest of the Scoobies were gathered. He set the boxes of sugary confections on the coffee table and looked around the room, a frown tugging at his lips again. He could hear Giles in his kitchen and Xander assumed he was making himself tea.

"Where's Cordy," he finally asked as his friends dug into the morning snackage he had brought.

Buffy snickered, biting her bottom lip as she shot a glance at Faith. Annalyse covered her mouth with one hand and refused to meet Xander's eyes. When he looked to Willow for an answer she buried her face in Oz's shoulder, hiding from him as her body shook softly. A look to the implacable werewolf netted him no direct answer as he slowly chewed the bite of doughnut he had taken right as the question was asked.

When he swallowed, Oz just shrugged. Realizing no one was about to come forth to give an answer he said, "Bed?"

The one-word answer/question short-circuited Xander's brain for a minute. When he recovered he raised an eyebrow and repeated the answer/question back at Oz in an incredulous tone, "Bed?"

The werewolf nodded as he tried to lean forward with his girlfriend still pressing into his shoulder to get a cup of the coffee Xander had brought.

"So she is in bed or you think she is in bed," Xander finally asked.

"Think." "Know." came the simultaneous answers from Willow and Buffy respectively causing Faith and Annalyse to finally laugh.

Xander looked back and forth between his two best friends in confusion, "So which is it?"

"Know," Faith told him with a smirk. "No way was she not staying there after her little talk with Tweed."

"Conversation, what conversation? Okay, I know it's early but could someone please make some sense," Xander pleaded as he looked between his friends.

"Your other half has a... colorful... vocabulary when she is woke up against her wishes," Annalyse told him.

Buffy and Willow giggled themselves, the redhead burying her face back into Oz's shoulder in an attempt to stifle herself. Faith raised an eyebrow and looked at Annalyse in disbelief, "Colorful? If you call taking two minutes to describe Tweed's ancestry and telling him in detail what he can do with said ancestry colorful, I wanna hear what you call ripping someone a new ass."

All four of the girls started to laugh and even Oz managed a small chuckle. Xander looked at each of them in turn in surprise before a small smile started to form on his lips. "You mean Cordy, my Cordy, got out of a Scooby meeting by telling G-man off?" As each of them nodded he let out a full belly laugh and shook his head. Taking a seat he grabbed a cup of coffee for himself and one of the jelly filled doughnuts. "Now why the hell didn't I think of that," he wondered aloud as he took a bite.

[***]

The good humor from Cordelia telling off of Giles had evaporated some time ago. None of the gathered group looked particularly pleased with the news that had been shared. An ancient and powerful vampire was in the city and was intent on hunting down the Slayer. Add to that bit of information, according to Annalyse and Willow, he was amassing what amounted to an army of the undead to do it and things got rather grim indeed. Even more disturbing was the fact that they were unsure of how much information about them Kakistos had. At the very least he had known that Annalyse and Willow had been eavesdropping. If the attacks against them both the previous night had not been enough, Annalyse's fly over of the warehouse they had found him in originally only confirmed it. The building now sat empty other than the dead bodies of the victims that had served as the vampires' meals.

Oz had been particularly upset for a bit when Annalyse described how she had ordered Willow to separate from her. After she had explained her reasoning and apologized for the tactical error, Oz had readily forgiven the incident. He knew the dangers inherent in what they all did and couldn't find it in himself to hold onto a grudge based on an honest mistake. Willow was alive, if a bit worse for wear.

Now Buffy and Faith had fallen into strategy mode. Xander noted how it was eerie how the two seemed to fall into an almost instant synchronization as they planned, including their counter arguments against Giles and his insistence that they could do nothing without knowing the location of Kakistos' lair and that they had no way to find it.

'Probably has to do with how quickly Buffy defended Faith against any and all comers when Giles told us what he had found out from the Watchers council,' he realized.

When the Watcher had let it spill that he knew that Faith's Watcher was not at a retreat and started demanding answers, answers that the Watcher already knew it turned out, Buffy had jumped down his throat.

"I don't give a damn what she did and didn't tell us," Buffy insisted. "She's a Slayer and you know how the council pounds into a Slayers' head that they are alone. How long did you try putting that in my head, Giles? How long are you going to, because you still do it! Whatever happened, she's scared. If you cannot see that, then I don't get how the hell you can call yourself a Watcher."

Annalyse had wrapped Faith up in her arms tightly. Xander knew that it was to offer the dark slayer comfort, but he was equally sure it was just as much to make sure she didn't storm out of the apartment.

When Willow had tried to say that scared or not, Faith should have trusted them, Buffy gave Willow a pointed look and raised an eyebrow. Looking around the room at the original Scoobies the message was loud and clear, 'we have secrets we haven't trusted them with.' Xander had almost thought that Buffy was going to come out with the whole truth about herself and Willow right then and there, but Faith inadvertently put a stop to that by sharing her own past.

As the Scoobies learned how she had been forced to watch Kakistos and his minions' torture Diana Dormer, her Watcher, in front of her, they shuddered. Faith wasn't kind or gentle in her descriptions either. She didn't go into explicit detail, but what she did say led Willow to run to the bathroom during the story. In the end, Faith watched as her Watcher was drained dry and her mutilated body desecrated in the vilest of fashions before she managed to escape, scarring Kakistos in the process.

The moral of the entire story was two-fold. Kakistos was there for Faith, and any and all of them should be afraid of what would happen if he captured them.

"We think we've got a plan," Buffy finally said as she and Faith stood up from where they had been huddled together. "It might not be the best, but we think it is our best shot at getting to Kakistos before he can get to us."

Xander noticed that Faith moved back across the room to sit next to Annalyse. He had not missed that the nervous tension he had first spotted when her past with Kakistos was revealed had eased considerably. She still looked like she was strung tighter than a cat among rocking chairs, but it was more of a battle ready tension that was starting to flow through all of them.

"Annalyse, this whole thing is going to ride on you. We need you to do a fly over of the warehouse district. Use your x-ray vision to find where they are holed up. I know you did a quick look-see at their old warehouse, but there are dozens if not hundreds of the things in Sunnydale. Check them all and find us a target."

Annalyse nodded in agreement and after a moment of thought spoke up, "I'll use my ring to stay invisible. As long as I stay high enough I should be able to avoid alerting the vamps to my presence and stay unnoticed by civilians."

Buffy smiled and continued, "Good. Once we have a target, if it is still daytime we are going to strike then. Faith has some ideas for improvised incendiary devices for that."

"They're called Molotov cocktails, B," Faith said, cutting in with a grin.

Buffy stuck her tongue out at the Slayer before pressing on, "Willow and Giles will be topside for that. They'll get things started by lighting up our target while Faith and I are in the sewers. If, and by if I mean when, the vamps realize what's going on and run for them we'll be waiting for them. They'll be stuck between Slayers and a hot place," she finished with a quirk of her lips.

"Yes, well... I seem to see a flaw in your plan, Buffy. Setting a vampire's lair on fire was all well and good back in the dark ages when buildings were well and far apart. However, doing so in Sunnydale could easily result in an out of control blaze," Giles said in rebuttal of their plan.

Faith grinned and pointed at Annalyse, "That's what Flygirl is here for." She continued on over top of Annalyse's indignant shout at the impromptu nickname, "Notice B didn't include her in the ambush? She's going to be flying overwatch. Any vamps try to run out into the sun but manage to not get dusty get to meet her. Plus she can use that super blow action of hers to keep the fire from getting out of control,"

As Faith finished explaining Giles nodded in appreciation that the girls had thought far enough ahead for this possibility. Annalyse for her part had turned red in embarrassment and looked only seconds from demonstrating how hot her heat vision could get with Faith as the target dummy.

"What about us?" Xander asked, indicating himself and Oz.

"Oz is going to be wheelman. He's going to be parked well out of the way of the fire to pick up Willow and Giles once we know the blaze is going good and strong. You'll act as his look out," Buffy told him.

Xander frowned hearing his role and shook his head, "No way, I wanna see those suckers burn. I'll go with them to set the fire," he insisted.

"No way, Xander. Willow can protect herself and Giles has his training to fall back on if it comes to it. You do not have either. I'm not taking the risk that you'll get hurt. You stay with Oz and make sure you two don't get caught by surprise by something," Buffy told him in no uncertain terms.

"What could happen to me during the day?" Xander demanded to know.

Buffy ignored him and glanced over at Willow, "Willow, get your laptop set up. We'll need the plans for the sewers by the time Annalyse gets us a location. Then we'll figure out the details, load up, and go in. It's 9:32 am right now. The sun sets at 9:36 pm and I'd like to get a mani-pedi after this is all over."

(***)

It had taken less time than Buffy had thought possible to find the warehouse Kakistos had his burgeoning vampire army stashed in. Once Annalyse had returned with the information, having spent a total of thirty minutes away, it took the group another hour to track down any and all possible underground entrances. She had hoped for only a single entrance but the building they were holed up in had both an exit into the sewer system and a second that dropped lower and into the natural cave system that ran beneath Sunnydale. That complicated matters slightly.

They had two choices for dealing with that second tunnel; the first option was to split the ambush. Faith would take one tunnel and Buffy the other. That way they could cover both. However, after the fights Annalyse and Willow had both undergone alone it was less than optimal, particularly once Kakistos made his appearance. The second option was to block one of the exits. The exit into the natural caves would be the easiest to collapse. It wasn't reinforced the same way the sewer system was. Lack of explosives to do the demo work would have made that plan b, though. Then Annalyse fessed up to being able to rig something up to do the work with supplies they could pick up from the local garden supply shop and a hardware store. It wouldn't be clean or pretty, but it would do the job.

With the option of using explosives opened up to them, the only other matter of concern was setting and detonating the explosives. Buffy had wanted to use remote detonators, but when Willow started going on about how powerful of a transmitter would be needed to penetrate not only several tens of feet of soil and concrete but the sewer system as well that dream had been laid to rest. Yes, Willow could rig up something to detonate by remote, but nothing that would be both wireless and have the range and penetration to do the job they needed. That left putting one of their teammates into the caves alone to set and detonate the explosives manually or to set them on a timer and pray everything went to plan.

The final decision was taken out of Buffy's hands. Willow was the brains of their group and could defend herself if need be. She wasn't up to one hundred percent after the damage she took the night before but she was still a fair bit better off than any of the guys solo. The real downside for Buffy was that meant Xander got his wish. They had to move him up from playing lookout for Oz to helping Giles firebomb the building.

The look of smug satisfaction on his face when he was told about the change in plans scared Buffy. She understood needing to help and choosing to fight. She had done the same thing herself so long ago it almost seemed like another lifetime. She had the power to make a difference, though. How could she not put herself on the front lines when she was so much more prepared than those around her? Willow and Annalyse had made the same choice as she had. They had the power so they had to help fight right out there on the front lines.

Yet Buffy knew that Willow wished more than anything that she could still just be research-girl. As much as she wanted to help she hated the fighting. Buffy saw it on the redhead's face the first night they had patrolled together. She rode the thrill during the moment but afterward she looked haunted. Now with Oz and Giles' report on what happened the night before, the possibility her power was the source of Willows rush during the fight each and every time was a reality. It wasn't the redhead, but her power that enjoyed the fight.

Xander had no such reasons for wanting to be on the front line. He didn't have the inherent mutant powers that she and Willow had. He wasn't an alien from another planet or dimension like Annalyse. He most assuredly wasn't a Slayer unless there was something serious he had never shared with anyone. He didn't have the natural ability to protect himself out in the open like the rest of them. He didn't even have Oz's werewolf instincts or Giles' training to help him.

As far as Buffy could tell, he wasn't interested in changing that either. He had sat through several of her training sessions and always passed when Giles asked him to step in and work with her. He always said that he wouldn't be any help since he didn't know how to fight and just kept watching or reading a comic. The latter more often than the former, in fact.

Buffy knew that Giles hadn't needed the breaks he had claimed he needed when he asked Xander to step in. Her Watcher had been trying to train Xander without making an obvious offer to do so. She wasn't sure if Xander had simply been oblivious to the roundabout offers or if he had just been too lazy to accept the training.

His reaction to seeing her armory had her leaning more towards the second one. The thought of a way to quickly and effortlessly put himself on the same level as her had instantly appealed to him. She hadn't said as much, but that was another reason she hadn't been willing to outfit him with her tech, addiction side effects notwithstanding. She wasn't sure he was willing to go all the way to prepare himself to use it.

'At least being out in the daylight he'll be safe,' she thought as she and Faith made their way into the sewers.

The plan they had settled on was to put Willow into position to blow the homemade demolition charges once she had signs of vampires moving into the escape tunnel. Once she took care of any that managed to make it through before the tunnel collapsed she was supposed to join Giles and Xander on the surface to ensure containment from that angle as well. Faith and Buffy had the task of taking out any and all comers that came into the sewers. The narrow space was anathema to Buffy's generally flashy and mobile fighting style but it would allow them to maximize the damage her various and sundry toys of mass undeath extermination could cause as well as take numbers out of the fight. It wasn't perfect, but it couldn't get much better without dropping the ceiling on the sewer tunnel as well and trapping the vampires in the burning warehouse. They just didn't have enough time to make that many explosives.

'Well, like Xander said, what can happen to him in broad daylight?' Buffy asked herself then winced realizing what she had done.

Somewhere on another plane of existence, a man named Murphy looked up from his glass of beer and smiled. A quick glance at the bartender had another pitcher on it's way over to him in a hurry. When the waitress arrived she smiled and asked Murphy what had suddenly made the usually morose man so happy.

He answered, "Just realized I got someone thinking of me," his smile slowly growing into a full-fledged grin.