I'm worried about Buffy; Angel and she had decided to go on a recon mission into Drusilla and Spike's lair, and they haven't reported back.
What was to be a night of frivolity and revels has turned into quite the nightmare instead. It's Buffy's birthday today. She's turning seventeen, and since so few Slayers are often graced with a seventeenth birthday, I was determined to throw a bash for her. The plan had been to gather in the Bronze and hide away. Jenny would tell Buffy that I wanted to meet with her on an urgent matter, and then drive her here, where we'd all jump out—and hopefully not get staked in the process—and shout celebratory birthday statements at her. Willow decided party hats and noisemakers were necessary. I insisted on cake. We'd even all bought her presents. I purchased a leather sling for her to place stakes, holy water, and other such items within the slots and carry around easily. Willow intimated that she bought Buffy some fancy shirt or other. She'll like my present the most, obviously.
These plans were rather ruined when we discovered that a vampire group Buffy had dispatched before the party was carrying a coffin. Inside the coffin was a severed arm that attacked Buffy. Angel realized what it was immediately—The Judge. Upon hearing the name, I recalled the horror stories associated with the Judge. A demon of the highest caliber, he was brought forth to the earth to separate the righteous from the wicked, and slaughter the righteous. A sort of reverse on The Rapture ideology. Legend has it that the Judge could not be killed, and so his body parts were removed one-by-one and separated to all corners of the world. It took armies and armies to do this. All of them fell before the Judge, who supposedly burned the humanity right out of them, until the body parts were separated.
Buffy has been having prophetic dreams, a figure prominent in them being Drusilla. It has become clear that we did not destroy her as we had hoped. It is she whom has been collecting the Judge's body parts and bringing them together in Sunnydale. In true hellmouth fashion, it would seem that we once more find ourselves in dire straits. We are unsure as of yet, how many parts Drusilla has acquired. Which is precisely why Buffy and Angel have decided to sneak into their lair and see for themselves. I find myself in the library now, with Willow, Xander, Cordelia and Jenny, and we are currently searching through ship logs and airplane shipments to determine if any of the packages brought here could contain parts of the Judge. If we can discover them, we can send out a task force to pick them up before the vampires arrive.
Yet, Buffy and Angel have not yet returned. Jenny has attempted to coax me, reminding me that if something had happened to Buffy, I'd have likely known about it by now. Spike and Drusilla are not ones to gloat privately. More than that, I'd just . . . know . . . if something happened to Buffy. I'd feel it.
But dear lord, what's keeping them?
-Rupert Giles
1998