Saturday Night


Buffy and Xander were walking home from the Bronze, when she saw him. "Spike,"
she hissed.

He had a girl pinned up against the wall of an alley and was draining her.

Buffy charged at the vampire, pulling him away from the girl. He flashed his fangs
at her and threw her against the opposite wall. She nearly lost consciousness but didn't. When she had shaken off her daze, Xander was kneeling over her. "The girl--"

"She's okay," Xander replied. "Spike ran off, though. I couldn't go after
him while you were--"

"It's okay," Buffy said as she tried to sit up. Xander helped her to her feet,
and she touched the back of her head, gingerly. "Ow."

"Do you need to go to the hospital?" Xander asked, concerned.

"No," she shook her head, but stopped when that made her even dizzier. "I'll
be okay," she said, even though she did let him help her walk. "I just
need to walk slowly. We'll have to warn Giles that Spike is still in town. I _knew_
we shouldn't have assumed he was gone for good."

************

"Giles?" Buffy and Xander arrived at Giles' apartment a few minutes later. She
saw that Giles, Willow, and Oz were doing research, and frowned, "What's up?"

"The Ascension," Willow replied as if that answered Buffy's question.
At Buffy's blank look, she said, "Oh, yeah. You two missed out on the visit by
the demon guy with the bad fashion sense and the cryptic speech."

"Whistler?" Buffy asked.

"I guess," Willow shrugged. "He said 'Ascension' and we started checking on it.
Turns out our Mayor has got big plans for Sunnydale."

"Well, do we deal with _that_ now or Spike?" Buffy asked Giles. "Xander and I ran
into him a little while ago and unfortunately he got away."

"Well, as annoying and generally evil as Spike is, he's the least of our
worries right now," Giles said. "Sit down, you two, we need to get
you up to speed on what we've found out about the Mayor's plans for
Graduation."

"It's only October!" Buffy replied. "Do we really have to worry about this now?"

"Yes," Giles said. "We need to figure out how to stop this, Buffy, and it won't be
easy. It turns out the Mayor is a lot older than forty years of age...."

"Giles, do you have any aspirin, first?" Buffy interrupted. "My head kind of met
a brick wall, at full speed."

"Oh," Giles' expression turned concerned and he rushed into the bathroom to
get Buffy some painkillers.

***********
End six