Summary: Giles gets a clue at the start, and trains Xander and Willow somewhat.

Crossover: At the moment, none.

Disclaimer: I own naught but debt.

Feedback: Why not?

Pre-fic Comments:

No one seems to care about the music comments, so I won't bother with 'em. Where on earth did Americans come up with their 'football'? It's one of the stupidest sports I've ever seen. At least with rugby, the guys aren't dressed in wussy armour clothing stuff.

Took someone's advice (think it was Jens Pfaffman, with a bit of influence from steveshawler) and have moved forwards a few eps after setting the stage in parts 1 and 2.

* * *

Giles closed his eyes. He didn't like this, but there was no way around it. The Council Of Watchers had decreed that it would be so, and he had no way of squirelling out of it. He'd prefer to do this on his own terms, but he'd been forced to do battle with this new paradigm.

He clicked on 'New Message' on the computer that Willow Rosenberg had forced him to accept from Principal Flutie. She'd mentioned something about information on an interweb, but Giles hadn't really understood. There was no way in Hell Giles would let that Calendar woman attach one of those Skimmers to the machine after that unpleasant business with Moloch, however.

He began to tap out a message to the Council, outlining his initial contact with Slayer Summers her recalcitrant attitude, and her flippant attitude towards her duties. This took a long time to type, using his 'hunt and peck' keyboard style. Giles added a note at the end about Willow Rosenberg and Xander Harris, making sure to state that he'd done his best to convince them not to help and was only letting Harris assist Slayer Summers after a great deal of physical training.

Xander Harris had gotten surprisingly good at assisting Slayer Summers, Giles added. Billy Kane had come with Giles' old fighting manuals a week ago, and had been very complimentary about Xander's abilities. Giles was not going to tell the Council Kane's exact terms, as he was sure that they would think he was backsliding into his old ways if they knew who Kane was. After thinking about it, the Watcher decided to simply put 'an old acquaintance' instead of 'Billy Kane', or 'Kane'. He was sure he'd draw enough fire from Travers and his ilk about training non-Slayers.

Clicking 'send', he got up from the computer, and went to the stacks to find some books he was after.

* * *

Xander wandered along the hallway, ducking into a closet when he saw the PE coach moving towards him. Six months ago, the man hadn't looked at him except to yell at him to 'stop slacking and get moving, dammit!' Now, after Giles had been training him, he kept getting cornered by the guy to try and get him into the interschool fighting team or, failing that, the football team.

The Xanman had about as much intention of joining /any/ sports teams as he had of going to Disneyworld and working as one of those guys in the walking costumes. Being anywhere near the same social circles as the likes of Larry had all the appeal of sweaty gym socks.

He breathed a sigh of relief. The PE coach seemed to have lost him. The sigh rapidly grew up into a fullblown yawn. Xander had been assisting the Slayer all night, and had gotten right back up at six. Xander was caught between his innate sense of slackness, and his innate sense of justice and his conscience.

One real perk of training with the G-man was meeting all his old friends, however. Billy Kane was cool -- he had given Xander a bandanna with the Union Jack on it.

School didn't get any better than it had gotten that day. In class, Queen C dressed down a fellow student for daring to block her light with a school paper while she attempted, despite all those who would obstruct her, to check her makeup.

"Hello?," Cordelia snapped at Wendell. "Doofus! You're in my light!"

"Wendell, what is wrong with you?," Xander sarcasmed. "Don't you know that she is the centre of the universe, and that all we mere mortals revolve around her?"

"Why don't you revolve yourself out of my light?," the Queen of Sunnydale High retorted, showing either a very subtle sense directed towards herself or a blunt sense of annoyance. Xander couldn't decide which.

And the day didn't get much better from there on in. After a couple of minutes, Xander settled in for a good few periods of actively listening to himself snoring. Gently, so as not to disturb the teacher.

Not that this was to be. Half an hour into class, he was woken up by Wendell shrieking when a few spiders began trekking over the unfortunate boy.

* * *

The next day found Willow in a less than charitable mood towards spiders as well.

"Xander! Xander!," Willow yelled.

"Willow! Willow!," Xander joked. "How are you?"

"A huge, horrible spider crawled over my face last night," the redhead complained. "Do you think there's some spider monster telling them all to crawl over people? Where's Buffy?"

The two soon found the blonde Slayer.

"Oh, Buffy," Willow yelled out. "We've been looking for you!"

"We have?," Xander asked. "Oh yeah, Willow got some spider crawlage in last night. Not a pub crawl either, as we are unfortunately underage."

"I don't like spiders, okay?," Willow complained, continueing the complaint from earlier. "Their furry bodies, and their sticky webs, and what do they need all those extra legs for, anyway? I'll tell you -- for crawling over your face in the middle of the night. Ewww! How can they not ruffle you?"

"I'm sorry!," Xander said. "I'm unruffled by spiders. Spiders eat flies and bugs, and are therefore good. Now, if a bunch of Nazi's crawled over my face..."

"Mmm," Buffy agreed diplomatically. It was hard to tell which person she was agreeing with. "It was pretty intense."

"Thank you," Willow said, thinking that Buffy was agreeing with her.

"Well, the Hellmouth, the center of mystical convergence, supernatural monsters," the Xanman said, trying to keep their spirits buoyant. "Been there."

"Little blase' there, aren't you?," Buffy pointed out.

"I'm not worried," Xander said. "If there's something bad out there, we find, we slay, we party!"

"Thanks for the confidence vote," Buffy said dryly.

They universally decided to head for the Library to see if their resident Watcher had anything for them.

* * *

Post-fic Comments:

Xander falling asleep in class? Well, Ranma falls asleep in class due to Genma making him get up to start training. I figured the phenomenon was probably not unique to Japanese teenagers.

I'm guessing re drinking age. In NZ, it's 18.