Again, many thanks for the reviews. You guys are awesome! This chapter will form a bridge to the next section of Xander's journey to become a Jedi. Apologies for the delay in getting this part out. I have just spent the past week on a badly-needed holiday, at a place called West Mersea on the coast of Essex. There, the beer was cold, the weather was warm, the sea air was marvellous, the female company was congenial and I read a mound of books & went for 9-mile walks. For some reason this relaxes me. The next chapter will see Xander starting his training and the arrival of a new ally - and new challenges.


Xander was not happy as he looked out of the window of his house. Come to think of it, he hadn't been happy for at least a week - ever since Buffy had vanished.

He blamed himself. He had been so intent on getting Giles to the nearest hospital as quickly as possible - the man had two broken fingers and significant blood loss - that he had presumed that he would have time later to return and console Buffy.

He had been wrong. He felt her presence with the force - lost, lonely, grieving, not broken in spirit but something horribly close to it. When Giles had been patched up they had both left the hospital, over the vehement protests of the nurses there, who had been surprisingly easy to accept their story that Giles had been "mugged", although the chances were that they saw similar things seven days a week from vampire-related events that the police probably misclassified. They had then returned to the factory, to find nothing but a lot of dust, the loading bay doors hanging off their hinges from where Spike had made his escape, and a dormant Acathla. But no Slayer.

Xander could sense where she roughly was but Giles had told him that she probably needed some time to come turns with what had happened. From the splashes of blood on the ground in front of Acathla, it seemed logical that Buffy had deactivated the demon by either killing or stabbing Angel, probably sending him into hell in the process. And Xander was sure that it had been Angel, and not Angelus, which made the irony all the more bitter.

The first realisation that they were wrong about approaching Buffy had come the next day. Xander had been walking down a path next to the school when the reading he was getting from Buffy started to approach and then suddenly began to recede. Startled he had looked around wildly and then ran a short way along the road. Down the hill he could see a Greyhound bus stationary before a stop signal and then as the signal changed it started to accelerate away. And Buffy was on it.

He had run after it as quickly as he could, but even taking all the shortcuts he could remember it was useless - the bus disappeared off into the far distance. And he hadn't even been able to catch a glimpse of its destination.

But the bus station was able to tell him that only one service had left Sunnydale in the last hour or so - the one to Los Angeles. Xander had gaped at the receptionist for a second and then ran as fast as he could back to the library, where he had blurted everything out to a stunned Giles.

"Why... Los Angeles? Finding her there would, would be like looking for a needle in a haystack! You're sure about this?" the deeply shaken Watcher had asked.

Xander had nodded in response. "Giles, she's getting further and further away all the time. I can still feel her, but all I know is that she's in that direction somewhere," he said, pointing somewhere over his shoulder.

"Let me know when she stops moving. I think we have to pray that she does stop in Los Angeles. What can she be thinking?"

"Giles, we have a very lost little slayer here. I'm picking up a lot of loss, a lot of sadness. I don't think that she knows what to do next."

The Watcher nodded and then took his glasses off with a muttered oath. "We should have been there for her, damn it! As her Watcher I, I should have recognised the symptoms and..."

"Done what? Giles, Evil Deadboy did a number on you, you almost passed out twice on the way to the hospital! Don't beat yourself up."

But that was what the Watcher had then proceeded to do for the next week. Buffy, as far as Xander could tell, was somewhere in Los Angeles, and that was the good news, she hadn't moved on. The bad news was that he had no idea where in that huge city she was.

Giles had made two trips there already but had come up blank. At least they were able to tell Joyce Summers about the fact that they knew where she roughly was, something that had comforted her a little. One shock was that she knew about Buffy being the Slayer. Another was that she had found out about it on the night that Buffy had vanished and had made a heat of the moment remark to her about not coming back if she left, or something like that. Which explained, at least in part, Buffy's disappearance. Xander sensed a lot of anger in Mrs Summers, along with grief, self-contempt and frantic worry. She also seemed to blame Giles a lot, which added a new ingredient to the whole messy equation.

Speaking of messes... Xander looked down at the suitcase that he had packed and sighed again. He had his own departure to manage. Picking up a rucksack that contained the all-important Jedi book and a few other important items, he slung it over his shoulder and picked up the suitcase. His father was going to give him a lift, once he came back from work. But before that he had to meet the others. He was not looking forwards to their reaction.

Willow was now out of her wheelchair, not that she had needed it that much, but she still tired easily and Oz was being quite protective about her. However, she was implacable on the need to talk to Xander about the events of the previous week, and he had only been able to put her off by promising that he would explain everything soon.

Walking into the library, Xander could see that she, Oz and Cordelia were all sitting at the table while the Watcher was limping out from his office, clumsily stirring his tea with a spoon using fingers that were still bound together.

"I've brought you all here, today," said Xander, with a hint of mischief mixed with pomposity, "to explain how the murder was committed by Miss Scarlet in the Library with the lead pipe. Naah, sorry, always wanted to have that Hercule Poirot moment."

He crossed his arms and sighed at their expressions. This was going to be hard. "Okay, there's no easy way of saying this. I'm leaving Sunnydale for the summer. And before you ask, I have my reasons. Said reasons will be hard to explain, because with the exception of Giles you're all going to think that I've gone whacko and that my marbles have come loose in my brain and are rattling around my skull."

He could see that Willow had her mouth open and was going to ask something and he pre-empted her by holding his hands up.

"Remember Halloween?" The others nodded. Giles drank his tea and made a face, whether at the tea or the memories of that night, Xander wasn't sure.

"Well, you all know that I went as a certain famous Jedi, although I didn't go as far as to grow the beard. The problem is that something wiggy in a night of ultra-wigginess happened and when I woke up the next morning I could remember Jedi-like stuff. Quite a lot of stuff actually. Lots of memories of being Obi-Wan. Lots of stuff about the force. Which I can use now."

Their reaction was roughly what Xander had expected. Cordelia said "Have you gone nuts?" and Willow raised her eyebrows and looked highly doubtful, asking him if he had hit his head recently, because see, once she hit her head and she'd talked all funny the next few hours and once she'd had a dream and confused the dream with the real world because she'd been on cough medicine at the time and...

True to form, Oz just raised an eyebrow, looked impressed and said: "Cool."

Realising that unless unchecked Willow would talk on and on without pausing for much breath, Xander looked over to the desk and spotted a large book at the end. Using the force he raised it from the surface and floated it over to the table, under Willow's eyes, which bugged out. She went silent and then, with shaking hands, picked it out of the air and ran her hands over it.

"Look no hands," smiled Xander. "No wires either."

"How..." breathed the little redhead and Xander looked over at Giles, who was frowning at his tea. The Watcher looked up and cleared his throat. "I'm, I'm not sure how such a thing could happen. It's a mystery, but I suppose that living on a Hellmouth should teach us to expect more odd occurrences occurring like this. The fact that Xander has such detailed memories means that something significant must have happened when Ethan performed the ritual to Janus. More than that..." He shrugged.

"So does this mean that you can go all Jedi-like and run rampant through the Vamps?" asked Cordelia, obviously struggling to come to terms with the change in someone that she had looked down on for years. Xander pulled a face. "Not quite. It means that I have the potential to become a Jedi. I can use the force, but I'm no Obi-Wan. Hell, I'm not even a young Luke Skywalker. I need training. And that's why I'm going away. I'm going to stay at my Uncle's place north of here, on the edge of the desert."

A crestfallen Willow finally rediscovered her voice. "But why do you have to go away? Can't you train here? And do you have to go when we're trying to find Buffy?"

Sighing, Xander slumped into a chair. "Wills, I'm a novice at this whole Jedi thing. I don't know if it will work, I don't know how long it'll take. But I do know that I need to get a grip on this mojo and I need to do it fast. If I'd been better at it... maybe I could have got to Drusilla before Kendra died. Maybe I could have saved Giles from being grabbed by Angelus's boys. Too many maybes here. I have a chance to train somewhere secluded, where there are no people who will wonder why rocks and stuff are floating next to me and where I can work on my sword work. And I need to do this, Wills. There's too much at stake here in Sunnydale for me to ignore this. And I need to get a grip so that there's no chance of my ever going all dark-sidey on you all."

"Xander you'd never go all, all hooo-hooo" protested Willow, doing a very good impression of Darth Vader's breathing.

"You don't know that Willow," said Xander abruptly. "You don't know the force. And it scares me sometimes. The night Kendra died I saw the dark side and the very fact that I could gave me the willies."

Giles looked up from his tea again. "I have to say that Xander and I have discussed this and that I fully concur with his decision. Xander has shown a responsibility and dedication to training that has impressed me. As, however, I am only qualified to train Slayers and not Jedi, I cannot take his training any further. He has told me that he can rely on certain... memories shall we say,? ...to train himself."

Willow went quiet at that and directed a very doleful stare at Xander, who stared back. "And by the way," he said slowly, "I can tell where Buffy is using the force - the general direction that is. That's how we knew that she went to Los Angeles. So, if she does move on, I'll be able to tell."

"Of course, I'll be looking for Buffy as much as I can," added Giles.

Looking up, Willow sighed. "How long will you be gone?" she asked in a small voice. Her oldest friend shrugged. "Wills, I have no idea. Might be two weeks, might be six. It might not even work. I'll do my best to get it done as quickly as I can. It might make it easier to detect Buffy, you never know. But I'll get it done and then get back here to help you with the ceremony of vamp-dusting. And speaking of getting things done, I'd better get going."

There was a high-pitched squeak from Willow that made Oz wince and caused Giles's tea mug to leap almost out of his grasp.

"Today? You're going today? Why today?"

Frowning, Xander looked down at his feet, sketching a little line with the tip of his shoe on the floor. "To tell you the truth Wills, I don't know why it has to be today. I just had this feeling that today was the day that I started to train. Probably one of those Jedi things. Dad's driving me out. In fact..." he looked his watch. "He should be picking me up in a few minutes."

A pouting and rather teary Willow had, of course, insisted on a goodbye hug along with soliciting the promise that he would write/call/telegraph any news, while Oz, being cool, had contented himself with what he called 'a manly grasp of the hand, goodbye thing'. Cordelia had muttered something that sounded awfully like 'good luck' and Giles had smiled and wished him a much louder and more confident "good luck."

The Watcher had also walked him out of the building. As they strolled down the corridor Giles cleared his throat. "Xander, when you first told me about your, your abilities, you asked me how I stayed Rupert and held Ripper at bay. I think I was able to pass on a few, a few hints, but frankly I left the bulk of it to you.

"There was a good reason for that. I don't want to get too pompous, amazing as that would sound to Buffy, but everyone has their own demons to face. At the risk of sounding too Jungian, we all have... well, shadows in our minds, and who we are is determined by how we deal with those shadows. Some of us succumb to them, some battle them, some of us hold them at bay and some of us can conquer them.

"I think that as long as you hold your, your focus and keep working at your training you can beat the dark side. I know that you're afraid of it. I understand that. There, there are times when the dark side of me scares me. There are some memories in my past that I wish I could expunge. But I feel that you have the chance to do something, something unprecedented. Trust yourself."

Xander looked at the Englishman levelly. Then he held his hand out. Giles took it and they shook hands solemnly. "Okay," breathed Xander. "Time to go."

As he walked out of the library he knew, somehow, that he had crossed some kind of Rubicon, some boundary line in his life that marked a new start, for good or bad. Turning, he walked down the corridor and through the doors into the sunshine. His father was just drawing up in the car and Xander realised, with a slight start, that his Dad was wearing a new shirt and was looking a little thinner than he had in the past. It was, perhaps, on the basis of reflected glory. Being able to brag about how well his boy was doing at school, how his grades had improved, was having a good effect on his Dad. On Mom too. A nice benefit.

Getting into the car they pulled away.
His uncle had certainly made a pile of cash out of being the white sheep of the family. His place was rather rambling single storey place on the edge of the desert, with all the mod cons and a garage full of machinery and DIY tools. The nearest neighbour was about five miles away to the south, if you discounted the coyotes, vultures and birds inhabited the area. To the north and east was a large stretch of mostly flat desert, while to the west there were low rolling hills and the occasional rocky mesa outcrop. It was perfect.

It was time to go to work. For real this time.