Apologies for the delay in getting this out. My computer also crashed halfway through loading this thing for the first time, so grr. Please enjoy!
(Another Grr – another amendment didn't slip in. Apologies, the non-human side Xander can sense is not to Scott but to Pete. I did alter it, but I had a nightmare night with my computer, plus I'm short on sleep.)
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Rumours do not normally spread quickly in the vampire community. This one, however, was a hell of a big one. It started small: "There's a human in Sunnydale who thinks he's a Jedi, can you believe it?" Then it changed to: "There's a human in Sunnydale who thinks he's a Jedi and he's got a broomstick painted blue for a lightsabre!" The next change was to: "There's a guy in Sunnydale who thinks he's a Jedi and he's got a real sharp sword." The last rumour was the final one: "There's a Jedi in Sunnydale."
This one tended to get scoffed at a lot by those who didn't know any better and who didn't go out looking for the Jedi. Which was quite impressive, given the fact that the rumour had been going around for less than a day.
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The lightsabre had been a big success, thought Xander, as he looked down at the device hanging on his belt. And it had been thoroughly tested after he ran into a vampire gang in one of the town's main cemeteries that night. They'd been holding some kind of initiation ceremony for a fledgling. That fledgling hadn't survived the encounter. In fact only two of the gang had survived, after vanishing into the sewer system.
Xander frowned down at the road. The sewers were quite extensive in Sunnydale. Too extensive. Too many manholes. He wondered who had designed it. It seemed a little too convenient for the vampire community. He made a mental note to ask Willow to do some digging into it.
The fact that a few other vampires had then tried to jump him meant that the word was spreading about his new weapon. He had some serious thinking to do about his overall strategy. First things first, he had to talk to Buffy. It was time that she knew about his abilities.
Then he frowned and stared up at the hill. Something was happening there, he could feel it. There was an odd feeling in the force coming from the same direction as the building where Acathla had been. Something felt... stretched, somehow. Twisted, somehow. It felt like something was building there. Acathla... Giles had dumped the demon off the Pacific coastline, locked in a stone casket with a number of sealing spells all over it along with another spell that made the very location massively hard to find. But what about the place where he had been? The spot where a portal had opened to a hell dimension. Oh hell, so to speak.
He turned on his heel and ran for the nearest callbox, where he frantically dialed Giles's number. It rang but no one answered. Cursing he dialed the library instead. After four rings the receiver was picked up and an irritated British voice said: "Yes, can I help you?"
"Giles, it's Xander. I'm getting a big nasty feeling in the force coming from the spot where Angel bit the big one. Are you sure you covered all the bases when you were boarding old stone face up? I mean, is there any chance that something might come through the spot where that portal formed? Something with, oh I don't know, too many limbs for comfort and far too many eyes?"
"Oh dear God. Well, no, I carried out a number of protection spells and made sure that the portal wouldn't open again but... Xander are you sure?"
"Big nasty feeling, Giles. Yuck. Faint sense of a sewer as well, which is disturbing."
There was a confused noise that Xander took to be Giles transferring the phone from one ear to the other whilst doing a number of unseen things like almost dropping it. Then: "Xander, where are you?"
"Corner of Fifth and Grant."
"Very well, I'm on my way to the factory now. Meet me there."
"What about our Slayers?"
"Buffy is patrolling the south side and Faith is looking for a new motel to stay in that is not run by what she described as a 'sleazy dirt bag.'"
"Okay, Giles. See you there."
He replaced the receiver and took off up the street. The feeling was strengthening now. Something was coming.
As he ran he frowned yet again. Buffy was already there, ahead of him, in the building. Wow, okay, that was good. The Slayer was on the case. Then he winced. She would notice his lightsabre, he was sure. Well, she would notice it eventually.
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"Goodbye."
Buffy put the Claddagh ring on the floor slowly and stared down at the brown-red stains. Angel's blood. She had stabbed him through the chest with her sword and then sent him into hell on this very spot. She scrubbed a tear from her eye and turned away. Closure, they called it. Putting something like that behind her with a single word was laughable. But she could start with a few steps down the road.
She turned and left the building, looking ahead of her with a fierce determination. She didn't see the running figure off to her left; neither did she hear the strained sounds of an old car that was being driven to the limit of its straining engine.
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Xander skidded to a halt by the front door and stared over his shoulder in bafflement. Okay, that was odd. She had been there and then she had walked away. Very odd. Admittedly she couldn't sense what he could in the force, but why had she been there at all?
He winced as an engine coughed and rattled to a halt and then looked up. The Watcher was walking quickly towards him clutching a large axe. "Xander," he called out, "What's happening?"
Pulling at the doors with the force he shrugged. "Nothing new." Then he paused and went pale. "Yuck, on second thoughts something is. I feel like a sewer just opened up in my head. Giles, this is nasty. Something is boding. Something feels like the force is having something ripped in it, Giles. There's a hole appearing in there."
They hurried into the building and looked around. Everything seemed normal. It was quiet, even, if rather dusty. But the force was telling him something rather different. Something seemed to be pressing into the hole. He reached down and unclipped his lightsabre. The blue blade hummed into life and he looked around, probing with the force.
Giles was gaping at him with his mouth open and his glasses slightly askew from where he had been adjusting them.
"Good God. Ah. Xander, you, you seem to have finished your lightsabre. Ah. It's very, um, impressive." He came to a halt, started slightly and then looked around keenly, readjusting his glasses again. "Yes, well, let's not get distracted. Where did you say this, this 'hole' was again?"
Xander pointed in the air to a point some ten feet off the ground. Something seemed to be pulsing there, but he wasn't sure if it was visible to Giles. Cracks of what felt like pure evil were now pulsing around it, as if something was pushing through and tearing the space around it. The odd thing was that he could feel something else as well, something that wasn't evil. It was odd.
Something was happening now – a thin beam of white light suddenly burst out downward from the hole, gleaming off a small silver ring that Xander hadn't noticed before, and which was now shaking and almost floating above the floor. Giles swore and moved off to the left while he moved to the right, the lightsabre at the first advanced defensive position, or the 'ready for the mojo' position as he'd renamed it. The light pulsed slightly and then the hole in the force cracked open, forcing him to tighten his grip on the force to quell the horrible feeling he was getting from whatever hell dimension lay beyond it.
More light – he raised his left hand and squinted through the glow that was now lighting up the entire room. And then a naked figure appeared in mid- air and fell heavily to the ground as the light snapped off.
Xander blinked. Whoever he was, he looked human. And he was covered in sweat and trembling like a leaf. Then he did a double take. Whoever it was he had a soul and a demon residing in a dead body. There was only one candidate. Angel.
"Bloody hell," said Giles quietly. The sound of his voice got an instant reaction from the vampire with a soul, who looked up shakily and saw the two of them. He made a noise that sounded like a rusty scream and pushed himself up on his hands and knees, which rapidly gave way beneath him.
Giles looked at Xander quickly. "Xander, is that Angel or Angelus?" His hands were tightening around the handle of the axe and he looked very strained. After all, the last time the two had met Angelus had tortured him mercilessly.
"Angel, Giles, the guy in the white hat. He has a soul." He turned back to Angel, who had hoisted himself back onto his hands and knees again and was hunched back, snarling at them like a dog. "Angel?" he said quietly, doing his best to look into his eyes.
Angel snarled at him again, skidded backwards and then fell over. He was still trembling in every limb. Reaching out with the force Xander looked hard at him. Then he flinched. "Giles this guy's out of it. He's gone feral, I can't feel any real coherent thoughts with the force – he just screams 'welcome to the jungle'. I can't feel anything focused, just lots of jumbled emotions."
Putting his axe down with a sigh, Giles relaxed a little. "Yes, well, we don't know how long he was in there for. As, as you and Buffy experienced, time can run differently in a hell dimension. He might have been in there for years, even decades. Maybe even centuries. It's not surprising that he looks so wild." He winced. "Lets get him somewhere safe. And some clothes for God's sake. And then try to work out what on earth to do with him."
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Basil and Petal Armstrong had been vampires for about 25 years. They'd been sired by an old friend of theirs who had met the wrong kind of people at Woodstock and who had turned up for dinner one night and rocked their world in a new direction. It had certainly taken the conversation away from Petal's new lentil soup recipe. Petal, who had originally been christened Mabel, but who had rebelled right after meeting Bas and getting high for the first time, had had a few difficulties adjusting to the new diet, but after her attempt to get hold of a BloodVine from a separate hell dimension had fallen through, she'd had to finally renounce being a vegetarian.
Instead she and Bas had done a deal with Dr Mackenzie in the kids clinic along the road from where they'd finally settled in Sunnydale. The deal was a simple one. She would decorate the kid's waiting room with Disney figures on the walls every year while Bas carved non-threatening mobiles for the babies and they both warned Dr Mackenzie when the local vampires were getting restless. In return they got a number of bags of AB Negative a week, which was money for jam. In the meantime, they could spend all the time they liked meditating, debating their violent impulses, writing poetry to each other and discussing the nature of being whilst smoking the best weed that they could get their hands on.
Over the past two years, however, their idyllic lifestyle had come under a lot of strain. The reappearance of the Master had come as a shock, as every vampire in town had been talking about it, and how he would get the slackers off their butts and up to their necks in blood. What a drag. His death had been a relief, but then Spike and Drusilla had turned up, along with their own unique brand of mayhem which, Bas and Petal knew, would attract the attention of the Slayer. They didn't have a problem with the Slayer, she was living proof of the importance of the balance of life. They just didn't want her to turn up and balance them out of things.
Then Angelus had arrived on the scene and things got even worse. Fortunately he had been defeated by the Slayer. But then, after months of calm, something had happened which had finally persuaded them that living on a Hellmouth was just a bad idea, man, really uncool. They had been wandering around the cemetery on a romantic night out when some guy had run into Kelly's gang as they blooded a new fledgling. Too bad for him. But then this dude had pulled out a little stick that then turned into a lightsabre, a real damn lightsabre, man, and then the limbs had started to fly, followed by the dust.
They had looked at each other and made a mutual decision to get the hell away from Sunnydale. Just go.
So now they were busy packing up their things in the old former school bus, including the lava lamp, the pictures from their holiday to Tibet and the shawl that Petal had knitted herself from the wool they had got from a commune where John Lennon had once stayed.
Bas was walking to the bus with the TV when he kinda stumbled, jerked the TV in the air as he did, leapt forwards and caught it literally an inch from the ground. He was expelling a breath of entirely useless air when he noticed that there was a pair of shoes just off to his right. Or rather boots. Quite like the boots worn by the lightsabre guy.
"Oh wow, bad karma, Petal," he moaned. There was a startled shriek from behind him and then a thump as Petal fainted. This was mondo bad.
Then a female voice said: "Hey. You fangfaces opening a 60's memorabilia shop?" and he looked up to see the Slayer standing over him. He let out a sigh of relief and grinned. "Hey baby, it's okay, it's just the Slayer," he called over his shoulder. Then his brain caught up with what his mouth had just said and he froze.
Tilting her head the Slayer said, in tones of sickly sweetness: "Do you want to rephrase that? You really might want to think about it, before I stake the pair of you, you know that don't you?"
"Um, yes," he mumbled. "Sorry dude, I thought you were the lightsabre guy."
"Lightsabre guy?" she said in disbelieving tones. "What are you on?"
"Oh crap, please just let us go Slayer, I mean it we don't bite, it's bad karma man, totally bad karma. We may be vampires but we don't bite, I swear, we try to lead lives of maximum coolness. We're leaving town, you see, we're skipping town."
The Slayer squatted down and looked at him, tapping a really nasty looking stake on the palm of her hand. "You're leaving Sunnydale?" she asked.
"We are so gone."
"Because of this lightsabre guy?" Disbelief dripped off her voice and effectively dribbled on the floor.
"Yeah. We saw him in the St Andrews Cemetery tonight, and man was he scary."
She stood up. "Go," she said. "Don't ever come back. And I will check." And then she was gone. Bas let out another unnecessary breath and looked back to where a scared Petal was staggering back to her feet.
"Baby, we are so out of here."
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Giles yawned and then chugged a large amount of coffee. It had been a long night. Whilst Xander had held Angel in place with the force, he had returned to the library and picked up some of the chains that Oz had once used to secure himself during his werewolf episodes, chains that had then been used to secure an extremely weak and groggy Angel to one of the walls of the building where he had so unexpectedly dropped in.
Fortunately Oz would not need them for the first of his three nights a month spell as a werewolf, which started today. Instead the laconic werewolf would be locked in the book cage. He looked up at the door as Xander walked in clutching a box of assorted cookies and some muffins. How on earth he managed to stay so fresh still eluded him. It was all something to do with this Jedi business. Giles smiled quietly. When he thought about how much the young man had changed over the past year, it still amazed him. School clown to Jedi Knight, quite a journey.
Xander slid the box onto the table, opened it, grabbed himself some coffee and looked over at him. "Quite a night," he said.
"Yes, indeed," Giles replied. "We need to talk to Buffy as quickly as possible."
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When Buffy entered the library she found Giles and Xander seated at the table with Willow, Oz, Cordelia and Faith. The Watcher was talking in a quiet and very tired voice. "-frankly, we have little choice in the matter, as from what Xander tells me-" he broke off to look at her.
"Ah, Buffy. Good. Yes. Um. I-"
But Buffy broke straight in. "Giles, something way wiggy happened last night."
This seemed to throw the Watcher, because he pulled out his handkerchief and started to polish his glasses, a sign that all was not well in the Land of Giles. "Yes, well, very observant of you Buffy, although I am a little baffled as to how you knew about this-"
"How can I not know that something's off with the vamps of Sunnydale?" She sat down and picked up a cookie from the selection in front of her. "Wow, nice cookie. Giles, can a vampire faint?"
He froze and fixed her with a very odd look. "Vampires lack certain physiological conditions to have the ability to faint, Buffy, but I suppose that if one received a sufficient shock it might, so to speak, fool its body. Why do you ask?"
"Because last night I was making with the whole patrolling thing and I notice this pair of vampires loading up an old school bus that had been painted psychedelic pink, like something out of the summer of love but with less taste, and when I stepped up with my 'hello fiends of darkness' approach one of them almost dropped the TV and the lady vamp fainted, which was odd," she said, seemingly without drawing breath once. "Then he told her that it was okay, it was just the Slayer, before realizing that this was not the best way to get on my warm and cuddly side and then he did some major grovelling. If they made it an Olympic event that guy could have grovelled for America. And he mentioned a 'lightsabre guy' but as he was all duded up, he might have just been high on something."
Giles unfroze and resumed polishing. "Was, was this a school bus with the words 'Groovy Love' painted in green letters along one side?"
"Yup. So, hippy vampire friends of yours?"
A pained expression flitted across his face. "Hardly. I don't think that were much into rock or anything much from the latter half of the 70's. I think they were the Armstrongs. Relatively harmless vampires, but still of the undead."
"That's what I thought. So I let them roll out of town after they crossed their unbeating hearts and hoped to die that I'd never catch them in town again." She looked around. "Hey, cookies, coffee, muffins. This looks like a 'recovering from nasty vampire night' party. How come I wasn't invited? What's up?"
Giles and Xander exchanged a long look, while Willow looked troubled, Oz put on his stoic face and Faith grabbed the last of the blueberry muffins, beating Cordelia by a short head. Then Giles looked back at her.
"Buffy, something very odd happened last night. We don't know how or why, but..."
"But what? Come on, Giles, spill."
"Very well. Last night Angel was thrown back into this world. At the very spot where he left it to be precise."
There was a long pause. Buffy slowly put the remains of the cookie back down on the plate. Her hand was shaking slightly.
"Angel's back?" She was proud of the way that her voice refused to tremble. "Where is he?"
Directing a frown at the floor Giles replaced his handkerchief in his pocket and then leant forwards. "Buffy, he's changed a great deal..."
"Where is he," she repeated. "I want to see him."
"Buffy-"
"Now."
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Seen from the north window the figure was hanging in the chains that were suspended from the wall. It was dressed in a ragged pair of trousers that had been torn along one thigh and at the bottom of one leg and some drops of fresh blood had spattered against the floor. The figure was either asleep or too tired and apathetic to move much beyond an exhausted sway, its feet dragging on the floor.
Buffy stood there in the doorway, her face set like stone. Then she turned like a striking snake. "Why is he in chains?" she hissed at her Watcher, who blinked and took a step back.
"Buffy-"
"I mean his soul is back, that's Angel and not Angelus, how can you do this to him?"
"Buffy-"
"How, Giles, how?" The last words were in a rising wail of noise that reached the chained vampire, because suddenly he was awake and struggling frantically against the chains, pulling in vain against the great bolt that had been driven into the wall above him to secure his fetters. Throwing his head back he let out a rough screech of anger and pain before dropping back to spit and snarl at the figures in front of him like an enraged animal.
Buffy went even paler and took a step forward. "Angel?" she called tentatively. He watched her walk closer and then lunged at the full length of the chains, trying to vain to reach her with a grasping hand while he snarled again. She stepped back and he subsided, panting, to hang on his chains again.
"What happened to him," she whispered in a barely audible voice. "Why is he like that?"
Giles moved forwards and placed a consoling hand on her shoulder. "Buffy, we have no idea how long he was in that, that, well wherever he was. As you and Xander both know, time can move differently in a hell dimension. It might have been years, decades, even centuries of torment for Angel. It would take a mind of uncommon strength and resilience to come back from that. He might recover by, by seeing familiar things and places, but I really can't say if he will ever come back." He looked at the swaying figure again. "He's gone feral, Buffy. The fact that he has even survived is a miracle."
She stood there looking at the chained vampire, who was watching the pair of them warily through half-closed eyes. Then she turned away with tears in her eyes and walked out of the building with Giles following silently behind her.
Entering the sunlight she stopped dead. "Giles, what did you mean when you said that Xander and I both knew what it's like to be in a hell dimension? And how did you and Xander know that he had come back at all?"
He groaned. She'd picked up on his little slip of the tongue. "Ah, well..." he grimaced at her raised eyebrow and implacable expression. "I think that you need to talk to Xander as a matter of some urgency, Buffy. If I told you the truth then I don't think that you'd believe me, or at least if he told you then you'd get more in the way of proof, and my grammar seems to have been shot to hell in this sentence."
"Proof of what? Hey, Willow said that I should talk to him the day after I got back, but I never got round to it. Something does seem to be wiggy with him as well." Her voice dropped off as she the last few words and she half- turned to look back at the building with haunted eyes.
"Proof of what happened to him over the summer," he replied and led the Slayer away.
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Xander was practicing some forms with a sword in the library in front of a fascinated Faith, who had taken the news about his abilities with a great deal of calmness. After explaining the events of the last Halloween and his subsequent training the other Slayer had shrugged. "Horry always said that life on a Hellmouth was freaky, said that life could get weird. She said that the Watcher's Council had already had some stories about strange things happening around B and Kendra. I never thought that it would get this weird though. What's that thing with the double slash and swing over again?"
Xander grinned, demonstrated the third advanced offensive position and then came to a halt. Turning he put the sword down on the table, looked up at the stairs that led to the back of the library and waited. After a few moments Buffy and Giles appeared. She looked determined. Giles looked flustered.
"Xander, have you ever been to a hell dimension?" the blonde Slayer asked. "Because according to Mr Cryptic here you have. And what was the deal with leaving Sunnydale for the summer?"
Faith flickered an eyebrow and grinned lazily. "I'm leavin' now before Mount Buffy blows and all the little villagers get torched all crispy. Seeya B, Giles. May the force be with you, Xander!" And she was gone with a chuckle.
"Okay, so even Faith knows this... this... whatever the hell it is?" exploded Buffy. She looked angry now. "What. Is. Going. On?"
He looked at Giles, who nodded. Then he let out a breath. He had felt Buffy approach from some distance away. He had also felt her all tense and part angry. He should have told her when she got back from LA. This was his fault.
"Buffy, I'm a Jedi Knight," he said calmly.
This threw her. "You're a what?" she asked incredulously.
"A Jedi Knight. You remember last Halloween and Ethan Rayne's spell?"
"Of course I remember it, I was reduced to a screaming idiot by it. Wills was a ghost and you..." She paused and stared even harder at him, as if seeing him for the first time. "You were Obi-Wan Kenobi. But that was just a spell. We were all normal afterwards, Xander, nothing lasted!"
He sat down quietly. "No, Buffy. Something remained in my head. Call it memories, vestigial abilities or whatever. Not all of Obi-Wan left me, Buff. I could feel the force afterwards and it freaked me out."
"Xander, that's just a film. Can you hear yourself? The force doesn't exist!"
He looked at her levelly. "Like vampires didn't exist? And demons? And things that go bump in the night?" He reached out with the force to unclip the lightsabre from his belt and then brought it up to hover by his side. She caught sight of it as it moved through the air and a look of incomprehension came over her face. Then Xander triggered the power switch and the blade sprang into life with a buzz.
She was gaping at him now and he reached out to grasp the lightsabre and shut it down. Returning it to his belt he looked up at her. This was a lot to lay on her, but she had to see it. Faith had been able to see him in action, which had convinced her quite quickly, but Buffy still saw her goofy old friend. Regardless of what happened, he would always still be her friend.
"I trained with Giles over the months, Buff. I was afraid of my new powers, I guess. I didn't want to fall to the Dark Side. I didn't want to get tempted by these new abilities. Giles taught me a lot. How to use a sword for a start. I didn't tell anyone else because I was still training. Didn't want people worrying about me, not with what happens on the Hellmouth. That was how I was able to get Giles out when Angelus got him. I would have told you afterwards, but..." He shrugged.
"But I went away to LA," she breathed, sinking down in a chair.
"I know. Or, I knew roughly where you were. You put out a big signal in the force, Buffy, a massive signal. But I couldn't locate you exactly and I needed to train, to get as much out of this Jedi thing as I could. You know what life on the Hellmouth is like, you need a reliable ally here and not a Sith. I needed to train myself, access all the Jedi training memories I have in this head of mine. So I went away to my uncle's place in the desert and I trained. That's where all the muscles came from.
"I bumped into a few demons as well, and a hostage they had, and well, to cut a long story short I ended up in a demon karaoke bar in LA, where this green singing demon told me that you would be in trouble that night. So I made with the frantic running and I arrived just in time to see you fall into that pool of black water. I went in after you, found some slaves, killed some demons and then saw some guy loading a crossbow behind you."
She looked up at that. "You were the guy in the shadows," she breathed. "The guy who threw Birdy and got that demon. But you were so high up... Why didn't you say something?"
"The force," he said quietly, "Guided me. And I couldn't exactly lean over the rail and shout 'Hi there Buffy' while you were fighting for your life, could I? You'd been killed maybe, or have gone looking for me and the whole thing would have been one big fat mess. As it was, we got as many prisoners as possible out of there. I didn't stick around because you'd been through enough for one night.
"And since you got back, there never seemed to be the right moment to tell you, Buffy. I'm sorry. I know I should have told you about it, but, well the right time never seemed to be there."
"Faith-"
"She saw me fight last night. You were busy bashing a vamp about the head with a blunt object."
She was still staring at him, stunned. "You're really a Jedi Knight?"
"I'm really a Jedi Knight."
"This is freaky."
"Tell me about it." He smiled at her and then stood up and pulled his jacket on, transferring his lightsabre from his belt to his pocket. Then he walked off to his history class.
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During the previous school year he'd discovered the side of the west wing of the school. There was a flat veranda over the chemistry lab and, if you ignored the odd smells that whafted up every now and then, it was a great place to sit and think and look over the skyline of Sunnydale.
As he sat there he felt her presence approach. "Hi Buffy."
"That's very creepy. You can tell where I am?" She walked over and sat next to him quietly.
He smiled. "It's like trying to ignore a searchlight. You put up a big signal."
Taking a deep breath she looked out over the town. "Great view. I never knew this place was here."
"I found it last year. New perspectives."
"Yeah." She glanced at him. "I'm sorry Xander, I didn't mean to freak out on you."
"Nah, it's understandable. It isn't every day you find out that a friend's a secret Jedi."
She smiled. "I can get lessons on the whole 'you don't know people as much as you think you do' from my Mom. Secrets 101."
She glanced at him again. "Nothing's the same, Xander. I came back and everything is different. Mom knows that I slay. Willow is much with the levitating pencils. And you're a Jedi. Oh and Angel fell into this world again, all snarley in a non-vampire way. Nothing's the same. Oh." She fumbled behind her and then brought out a sword disguised in a bag. "This must be yours."
He reached down the pushed the cloth away from the hilt to reveal an eagle. Smiling he picked it up. "Aquila."
"Birdy," she said pertly. "Okay, Aquila. Giles told me where you got it from. I think that you own it more than me."
Shaking his head he pushed it back. "No, Buffy. I liked it, yes, but I think that you can use it better. I have my lightsabre now. It was made to fight evil. You use it."
Sighing deeply, and grasping Aquila uncertainly, she changed the subject. "So, how much of Obi-Wan's memories do you have?"
Looking off into the distance he raised his eyebrows and then frowned slightly in thought. "Training. Apprenticeship. The Battle of Naboo. Start of the Clone Wars, on Genosis. Battle of Kamino. A lot of stuff, Buffy, a lot of death. Starships falling to earth, a thousand points of light stilled as the air escaped from holes in their hulls. A lot of heroism as well. The start of the fall of the Republic and Anakin Skywalker with it. To the Empire and Vader. Nothing after that."
"Wow," she said in a small voice. "I guess it's going to be freaky with Lucas making the prequels to the original Trilogy right now."
An amused snort broke free from him. "Well, just as long as they make JarJar less annoying than he was in my memories, I'll be okay with it."
"JarJar?"
"Gungan – an alien. Big ears, silly accent, amazingly unlucky. Made the old me look like George Clooney. But a loyal friend." He shook himself slightly and brought his mind back to the present. "I felt Angel arrive, Buffy. Or rather I felt the start of it and then I saw him fall from the air in a great flash of light."
"Giles told me. Can't help thinking what brought him back."
"I don't know..." he mused as he watched Jonathan scurry away from the school, his bag full of books. "Something powerful though. The dimension felt stinky, but what brought him back didn't, I think. I just got a flash of it. Maybe we aren't alone in this thing, Buffy."
"What makes you think that?" she asked, staring at him.
"He came back as Angel and not Angelus. I could feel his soul." Looking down at his watch he grimaced. "Oz is making with the hair around now and I have to relieve Willow. Same old patrol from that point of view." He frowned down at the street beneath them. Scott Hope was down there talking to Pete and his girlfriend, Debbie Foley. That guy let off an odd vibe in the force, like there were two people living in the same body. It was almost like the swim team, but without the monster. Or rather there was a different monster there. It was odd.
He shrugged and walked off to meet another monster.
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Oz was in his fully hairy mode. He was also spitting, snarling and bouncing on the spot. Willow waved goodbye to him - not that the werewolf noticed, except to note that another potential meal/victim/set of bones to gnaw had passed out of his reach. Xander stepped up to the book cage and looked into it. "Hey, Oz. Just you and me tonight. Mind if I do some meditating? What was that? 'Go right ahead, Xander?' Thanks, Oz, don't mind if I do." He looked around. Ah. The table.
He was busy meditating when it happened. To be more accurate he was balancing upside down on one hand while levitating the heaviest books he could find in the library, along with two chairs, around him, absorbed deeply in the force. Then he felt it, a tiny whisper in his mind. He was so startled that he almost lost control for a second but then he imposed some mental discipline with a frown and lowered everything carefully to the ground. Only then did he get down and walk over to stare into the book cage.
Were-Oz was asleep, his jaws snapping slightly as he chased something – or someone – in his dreams, his hair sticking out all over the place. And he seemed to be using – or trying to use – the force. There was a soft noise from above the werewolf and the window catch came free with a jerk and hung free.
Xander gazed at it. The sleeping werewolf had apparently used the force to open the window. Okay, this was strange. He reached out with his hand and used the force to resecure it again. Then he sat down, crossed his legs and stared into the book cage to study the werewolf. He was fast asleep. What was he dreaming? What had he done to access the force? So far he hadn't met anyone else who could use the force, but... there had been that odd feeling that he had always sensed about Oz, which he had never been able to classify. He had always put it down to the fact that, well, the guy was a werewolf, but what if that had only been part of it?
He fully embraced the force and then looked at Oz. The werewolf was still making little running movements with his feet. Then his ears went up and he stopped dead. With a whine and a jerk he was suddenly awake, looking at Xander with those yellow eyes of his, almost unmoving and unblinking.
Using the force to summon a book over to him Xander held it in the air, making it rotate slowly as he watched the hairy figure intently. Oz tilted his head to one side and whined softly as he watched the book, but the feeling that Xander had detected earlier did not return. He put the book down and Oz, yawning hugely, growled softly and put his head back down before flipping back over with his back to the Jedi, obviously intent on getting some more sleep.
Standing back up again Xander looked at the shelves. Right. Time to do some research. And keep one ear, so to speak, tilted towards the book cage.
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Hot strong coffee was a good way to start the day. Especially when you'd been up for a second night in a row. A short burst of the Jedi healing trance had allowed him to keep the worst of it away, but he was still tired. Books were piled all over the desk, spilling onto the chairs and from there to the floor. Books with titles like "The Werewolf – a study of Lycanthropes", "Baying at the moon with my brother", "The fight against myself" and his personal favourite, "Three nights a month without trousers". You had to love that title.
He stood up and moved his neck around before walking over to the book cage. "Hey," he called, "You awake?"
A groan answered him, and then a human Oz blearily peered around a shelf.
"There's some coffee on, Oz. Get up, we need to talk."
Oz stared at him a moment and then made scrabbling noises as he hunted around for his clothes while Xander, for the sake of decency, turned his back on him.
"Did I do anything last night?" the werewolf asked, his voice muffled as he rammed his t-shirt over his head whilst hopping into his jeans.
Xander grimaced. "Yes and no. Before you say anything else, you stayed in the book cage."
"That's good," said Oz as he pulled his shirt on.
Looking over his shoulder Xander walked over and unlocked the door. "Yeah, but, well, there's a problem."
Frowning Oz walked out and then double-taked at the mound of books on the table. "Interesting," he muttered, raising an eyebrow and strolling over to look at the titles written on the spines. "Why the research? What happened?"
Pausing a second Xander walked over to the desk and sat down. "Oz, what do you remember when you're the wolf?"
The werewolf's face tightened ever so slightly. "Nothing, sometimes. Other times... vague memories, like dreams you try and remember. Jumbled images. Xander, what happened?"
"Last night you opened the window. Thing is, you didn't touch it."
There was a pause. "If I didn't touch it, how could the wolfy version of me open it?"
Xander wagged a finger at him, caught himself, opened his mouth, closed it again and then finally said: "Oz you used the force. Which prompted the reading."
The pause that followed was quite a long one. "Okay," said Oz after a while. "That was unexpected. Frightening as well, but mainly unexpected."
He stood up and paced, something that was very un-Ozlike. Then he looked up. "Tell me you're sure."
"I'm sure."
"Okay." He paced a bit more. Then he sat down again. "I am now officially freaked."
Summoning the force to him Xander stood up and levitated a book or five. "Oz, can you feel anything? Is anything, well, letting off little force- related bells and whistles?"
The other man stared at the slowly revolving book and shook his head slowly. "Nothing." Then he tilted his head. "Hairs on the back of neck stood on end. That mean anything?"
"I don't really know," replied Xander and let the books fall back onto the desk gently. "This is a baffling situation."
"What is?" asked Giles as he came through the door and took in the scene. "Ah, is everything alright?" Then he saw the mound of books. "Oh dear. Did anything happen last night? Oz, you didn't get out, did you?"
Xander and Oz exchanged a long look and then the werewolf shook his head.
"Ah, good," said Giles and wandered over to pour himself a mug of coffee from the carafe on the desk.
"No, he didn't get out," drawled Xander, "But, and this is the surprising thing, he did use the force in his werewolf state."
It was rather unfortunate that Giles was swallowing a mouthful of coffee at that moment, as most of it went all over the floor and just missed a valuable copy of Humptemper's "How to kill insects," volume I.
Choking slightly and applying his handkerchief to the spots on his tie, he looked up. "He did what?"
"He used the force, Giles."
The Watcher slumped back into a seat. "Right," he said after a while. "What a bloody week. A new Slayer in town, followed by an insanely vicious ancient vampire, the only vampire with a soul in the world falls through a dimensional portal on to our laps and goes feral on us and finally I'm told that there's a werewolf in town that can use the force. Just bloody marvellous. What next, a plague of zombies? Oh wait, that was last week." He threw his glasses onto the surface of the desk with a clatter and glared at Xander. "Any more surprises?"
The Jedi mulled things over. "Nope. Oh, but I think that one of the students isn't quite human. Again."
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Arriving in the office was always exciting. So much to do. So much to arrange. Gosh, he enjoyed the mornings. So many people ignored theirs or wasted them. But no, he loved them. Especially when he thought about what lay ahead. Smiling quietly he looked down at his inbox. A large envelope was there, buried about halfway down and he carefully tugged it out. Aha. From Wolfram & Hart. Of course, the Arrangement was up for renegotiation this year. It was a shame that it wouldn't mean a damn thing next year, but that was life. He had to be very careful now.
He had to give the impression that life would continue as normal next year, that all the agreements and deals he'd made over the years would remain intact. The truth would be very different, but if he gave out the wrong signals then, well, someone might go poking under the surface. Placing the envelope on his desk he broadened the smile. Maybe this time Wolfram & Hart would send a decent lawyer. The last one had been, well... quite a disappointment. Too chewy for a start.
(Another Grr – another amendment didn't slip in. Apologies, the non-human side Xander can sense is not to Scott but to Pete. I did alter it, but I had a nightmare night with my computer, plus I'm short on sleep.)
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Rumours do not normally spread quickly in the vampire community. This one, however, was a hell of a big one. It started small: "There's a human in Sunnydale who thinks he's a Jedi, can you believe it?" Then it changed to: "There's a human in Sunnydale who thinks he's a Jedi and he's got a broomstick painted blue for a lightsabre!" The next change was to: "There's a guy in Sunnydale who thinks he's a Jedi and he's got a real sharp sword." The last rumour was the final one: "There's a Jedi in Sunnydale."
This one tended to get scoffed at a lot by those who didn't know any better and who didn't go out looking for the Jedi. Which was quite impressive, given the fact that the rumour had been going around for less than a day.
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The lightsabre had been a big success, thought Xander, as he looked down at the device hanging on his belt. And it had been thoroughly tested after he ran into a vampire gang in one of the town's main cemeteries that night. They'd been holding some kind of initiation ceremony for a fledgling. That fledgling hadn't survived the encounter. In fact only two of the gang had survived, after vanishing into the sewer system.
Xander frowned down at the road. The sewers were quite extensive in Sunnydale. Too extensive. Too many manholes. He wondered who had designed it. It seemed a little too convenient for the vampire community. He made a mental note to ask Willow to do some digging into it.
The fact that a few other vampires had then tried to jump him meant that the word was spreading about his new weapon. He had some serious thinking to do about his overall strategy. First things first, he had to talk to Buffy. It was time that she knew about his abilities.
Then he frowned and stared up at the hill. Something was happening there, he could feel it. There was an odd feeling in the force coming from the same direction as the building where Acathla had been. Something felt... stretched, somehow. Twisted, somehow. It felt like something was building there. Acathla... Giles had dumped the demon off the Pacific coastline, locked in a stone casket with a number of sealing spells all over it along with another spell that made the very location massively hard to find. But what about the place where he had been? The spot where a portal had opened to a hell dimension. Oh hell, so to speak.
He turned on his heel and ran for the nearest callbox, where he frantically dialed Giles's number. It rang but no one answered. Cursing he dialed the library instead. After four rings the receiver was picked up and an irritated British voice said: "Yes, can I help you?"
"Giles, it's Xander. I'm getting a big nasty feeling in the force coming from the spot where Angel bit the big one. Are you sure you covered all the bases when you were boarding old stone face up? I mean, is there any chance that something might come through the spot where that portal formed? Something with, oh I don't know, too many limbs for comfort and far too many eyes?"
"Oh dear God. Well, no, I carried out a number of protection spells and made sure that the portal wouldn't open again but... Xander are you sure?"
"Big nasty feeling, Giles. Yuck. Faint sense of a sewer as well, which is disturbing."
There was a confused noise that Xander took to be Giles transferring the phone from one ear to the other whilst doing a number of unseen things like almost dropping it. Then: "Xander, where are you?"
"Corner of Fifth and Grant."
"Very well, I'm on my way to the factory now. Meet me there."
"What about our Slayers?"
"Buffy is patrolling the south side and Faith is looking for a new motel to stay in that is not run by what she described as a 'sleazy dirt bag.'"
"Okay, Giles. See you there."
He replaced the receiver and took off up the street. The feeling was strengthening now. Something was coming.
As he ran he frowned yet again. Buffy was already there, ahead of him, in the building. Wow, okay, that was good. The Slayer was on the case. Then he winced. She would notice his lightsabre, he was sure. Well, she would notice it eventually.
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"Goodbye."
Buffy put the Claddagh ring on the floor slowly and stared down at the brown-red stains. Angel's blood. She had stabbed him through the chest with her sword and then sent him into hell on this very spot. She scrubbed a tear from her eye and turned away. Closure, they called it. Putting something like that behind her with a single word was laughable. But she could start with a few steps down the road.
She turned and left the building, looking ahead of her with a fierce determination. She didn't see the running figure off to her left; neither did she hear the strained sounds of an old car that was being driven to the limit of its straining engine.
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Xander skidded to a halt by the front door and stared over his shoulder in bafflement. Okay, that was odd. She had been there and then she had walked away. Very odd. Admittedly she couldn't sense what he could in the force, but why had she been there at all?
He winced as an engine coughed and rattled to a halt and then looked up. The Watcher was walking quickly towards him clutching a large axe. "Xander," he called out, "What's happening?"
Pulling at the doors with the force he shrugged. "Nothing new." Then he paused and went pale. "Yuck, on second thoughts something is. I feel like a sewer just opened up in my head. Giles, this is nasty. Something is boding. Something feels like the force is having something ripped in it, Giles. There's a hole appearing in there."
They hurried into the building and looked around. Everything seemed normal. It was quiet, even, if rather dusty. But the force was telling him something rather different. Something seemed to be pressing into the hole. He reached down and unclipped his lightsabre. The blue blade hummed into life and he looked around, probing with the force.
Giles was gaping at him with his mouth open and his glasses slightly askew from where he had been adjusting them.
"Good God. Ah. Xander, you, you seem to have finished your lightsabre. Ah. It's very, um, impressive." He came to a halt, started slightly and then looked around keenly, readjusting his glasses again. "Yes, well, let's not get distracted. Where did you say this, this 'hole' was again?"
Xander pointed in the air to a point some ten feet off the ground. Something seemed to be pulsing there, but he wasn't sure if it was visible to Giles. Cracks of what felt like pure evil were now pulsing around it, as if something was pushing through and tearing the space around it. The odd thing was that he could feel something else as well, something that wasn't evil. It was odd.
Something was happening now – a thin beam of white light suddenly burst out downward from the hole, gleaming off a small silver ring that Xander hadn't noticed before, and which was now shaking and almost floating above the floor. Giles swore and moved off to the left while he moved to the right, the lightsabre at the first advanced defensive position, or the 'ready for the mojo' position as he'd renamed it. The light pulsed slightly and then the hole in the force cracked open, forcing him to tighten his grip on the force to quell the horrible feeling he was getting from whatever hell dimension lay beyond it.
More light – he raised his left hand and squinted through the glow that was now lighting up the entire room. And then a naked figure appeared in mid- air and fell heavily to the ground as the light snapped off.
Xander blinked. Whoever he was, he looked human. And he was covered in sweat and trembling like a leaf. Then he did a double take. Whoever it was he had a soul and a demon residing in a dead body. There was only one candidate. Angel.
"Bloody hell," said Giles quietly. The sound of his voice got an instant reaction from the vampire with a soul, who looked up shakily and saw the two of them. He made a noise that sounded like a rusty scream and pushed himself up on his hands and knees, which rapidly gave way beneath him.
Giles looked at Xander quickly. "Xander, is that Angel or Angelus?" His hands were tightening around the handle of the axe and he looked very strained. After all, the last time the two had met Angelus had tortured him mercilessly.
"Angel, Giles, the guy in the white hat. He has a soul." He turned back to Angel, who had hoisted himself back onto his hands and knees again and was hunched back, snarling at them like a dog. "Angel?" he said quietly, doing his best to look into his eyes.
Angel snarled at him again, skidded backwards and then fell over. He was still trembling in every limb. Reaching out with the force Xander looked hard at him. Then he flinched. "Giles this guy's out of it. He's gone feral, I can't feel any real coherent thoughts with the force – he just screams 'welcome to the jungle'. I can't feel anything focused, just lots of jumbled emotions."
Putting his axe down with a sigh, Giles relaxed a little. "Yes, well, we don't know how long he was in there for. As, as you and Buffy experienced, time can run differently in a hell dimension. He might have been in there for years, even decades. Maybe even centuries. It's not surprising that he looks so wild." He winced. "Lets get him somewhere safe. And some clothes for God's sake. And then try to work out what on earth to do with him."
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Basil and Petal Armstrong had been vampires for about 25 years. They'd been sired by an old friend of theirs who had met the wrong kind of people at Woodstock and who had turned up for dinner one night and rocked their world in a new direction. It had certainly taken the conversation away from Petal's new lentil soup recipe. Petal, who had originally been christened Mabel, but who had rebelled right after meeting Bas and getting high for the first time, had had a few difficulties adjusting to the new diet, but after her attempt to get hold of a BloodVine from a separate hell dimension had fallen through, she'd had to finally renounce being a vegetarian.
Instead she and Bas had done a deal with Dr Mackenzie in the kids clinic along the road from where they'd finally settled in Sunnydale. The deal was a simple one. She would decorate the kid's waiting room with Disney figures on the walls every year while Bas carved non-threatening mobiles for the babies and they both warned Dr Mackenzie when the local vampires were getting restless. In return they got a number of bags of AB Negative a week, which was money for jam. In the meantime, they could spend all the time they liked meditating, debating their violent impulses, writing poetry to each other and discussing the nature of being whilst smoking the best weed that they could get their hands on.
Over the past two years, however, their idyllic lifestyle had come under a lot of strain. The reappearance of the Master had come as a shock, as every vampire in town had been talking about it, and how he would get the slackers off their butts and up to their necks in blood. What a drag. His death had been a relief, but then Spike and Drusilla had turned up, along with their own unique brand of mayhem which, Bas and Petal knew, would attract the attention of the Slayer. They didn't have a problem with the Slayer, she was living proof of the importance of the balance of life. They just didn't want her to turn up and balance them out of things.
Then Angelus had arrived on the scene and things got even worse. Fortunately he had been defeated by the Slayer. But then, after months of calm, something had happened which had finally persuaded them that living on a Hellmouth was just a bad idea, man, really uncool. They had been wandering around the cemetery on a romantic night out when some guy had run into Kelly's gang as they blooded a new fledgling. Too bad for him. But then this dude had pulled out a little stick that then turned into a lightsabre, a real damn lightsabre, man, and then the limbs had started to fly, followed by the dust.
They had looked at each other and made a mutual decision to get the hell away from Sunnydale. Just go.
So now they were busy packing up their things in the old former school bus, including the lava lamp, the pictures from their holiday to Tibet and the shawl that Petal had knitted herself from the wool they had got from a commune where John Lennon had once stayed.
Bas was walking to the bus with the TV when he kinda stumbled, jerked the TV in the air as he did, leapt forwards and caught it literally an inch from the ground. He was expelling a breath of entirely useless air when he noticed that there was a pair of shoes just off to his right. Or rather boots. Quite like the boots worn by the lightsabre guy.
"Oh wow, bad karma, Petal," he moaned. There was a startled shriek from behind him and then a thump as Petal fainted. This was mondo bad.
Then a female voice said: "Hey. You fangfaces opening a 60's memorabilia shop?" and he looked up to see the Slayer standing over him. He let out a sigh of relief and grinned. "Hey baby, it's okay, it's just the Slayer," he called over his shoulder. Then his brain caught up with what his mouth had just said and he froze.
Tilting her head the Slayer said, in tones of sickly sweetness: "Do you want to rephrase that? You really might want to think about it, before I stake the pair of you, you know that don't you?"
"Um, yes," he mumbled. "Sorry dude, I thought you were the lightsabre guy."
"Lightsabre guy?" she said in disbelieving tones. "What are you on?"
"Oh crap, please just let us go Slayer, I mean it we don't bite, it's bad karma man, totally bad karma. We may be vampires but we don't bite, I swear, we try to lead lives of maximum coolness. We're leaving town, you see, we're skipping town."
The Slayer squatted down and looked at him, tapping a really nasty looking stake on the palm of her hand. "You're leaving Sunnydale?" she asked.
"We are so gone."
"Because of this lightsabre guy?" Disbelief dripped off her voice and effectively dribbled on the floor.
"Yeah. We saw him in the St Andrews Cemetery tonight, and man was he scary."
She stood up. "Go," she said. "Don't ever come back. And I will check." And then she was gone. Bas let out another unnecessary breath and looked back to where a scared Petal was staggering back to her feet.
"Baby, we are so out of here."
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Giles yawned and then chugged a large amount of coffee. It had been a long night. Whilst Xander had held Angel in place with the force, he had returned to the library and picked up some of the chains that Oz had once used to secure himself during his werewolf episodes, chains that had then been used to secure an extremely weak and groggy Angel to one of the walls of the building where he had so unexpectedly dropped in.
Fortunately Oz would not need them for the first of his three nights a month spell as a werewolf, which started today. Instead the laconic werewolf would be locked in the book cage. He looked up at the door as Xander walked in clutching a box of assorted cookies and some muffins. How on earth he managed to stay so fresh still eluded him. It was all something to do with this Jedi business. Giles smiled quietly. When he thought about how much the young man had changed over the past year, it still amazed him. School clown to Jedi Knight, quite a journey.
Xander slid the box onto the table, opened it, grabbed himself some coffee and looked over at him. "Quite a night," he said.
"Yes, indeed," Giles replied. "We need to talk to Buffy as quickly as possible."
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When Buffy entered the library she found Giles and Xander seated at the table with Willow, Oz, Cordelia and Faith. The Watcher was talking in a quiet and very tired voice. "-frankly, we have little choice in the matter, as from what Xander tells me-" he broke off to look at her.
"Ah, Buffy. Good. Yes. Um. I-"
But Buffy broke straight in. "Giles, something way wiggy happened last night."
This seemed to throw the Watcher, because he pulled out his handkerchief and started to polish his glasses, a sign that all was not well in the Land of Giles. "Yes, well, very observant of you Buffy, although I am a little baffled as to how you knew about this-"
"How can I not know that something's off with the vamps of Sunnydale?" She sat down and picked up a cookie from the selection in front of her. "Wow, nice cookie. Giles, can a vampire faint?"
He froze and fixed her with a very odd look. "Vampires lack certain physiological conditions to have the ability to faint, Buffy, but I suppose that if one received a sufficient shock it might, so to speak, fool its body. Why do you ask?"
"Because last night I was making with the whole patrolling thing and I notice this pair of vampires loading up an old school bus that had been painted psychedelic pink, like something out of the summer of love but with less taste, and when I stepped up with my 'hello fiends of darkness' approach one of them almost dropped the TV and the lady vamp fainted, which was odd," she said, seemingly without drawing breath once. "Then he told her that it was okay, it was just the Slayer, before realizing that this was not the best way to get on my warm and cuddly side and then he did some major grovelling. If they made it an Olympic event that guy could have grovelled for America. And he mentioned a 'lightsabre guy' but as he was all duded up, he might have just been high on something."
Giles unfroze and resumed polishing. "Was, was this a school bus with the words 'Groovy Love' painted in green letters along one side?"
"Yup. So, hippy vampire friends of yours?"
A pained expression flitted across his face. "Hardly. I don't think that were much into rock or anything much from the latter half of the 70's. I think they were the Armstrongs. Relatively harmless vampires, but still of the undead."
"That's what I thought. So I let them roll out of town after they crossed their unbeating hearts and hoped to die that I'd never catch them in town again." She looked around. "Hey, cookies, coffee, muffins. This looks like a 'recovering from nasty vampire night' party. How come I wasn't invited? What's up?"
Giles and Xander exchanged a long look, while Willow looked troubled, Oz put on his stoic face and Faith grabbed the last of the blueberry muffins, beating Cordelia by a short head. Then Giles looked back at her.
"Buffy, something very odd happened last night. We don't know how or why, but..."
"But what? Come on, Giles, spill."
"Very well. Last night Angel was thrown back into this world. At the very spot where he left it to be precise."
There was a long pause. Buffy slowly put the remains of the cookie back down on the plate. Her hand was shaking slightly.
"Angel's back?" She was proud of the way that her voice refused to tremble. "Where is he?"
Directing a frown at the floor Giles replaced his handkerchief in his pocket and then leant forwards. "Buffy, he's changed a great deal..."
"Where is he," she repeated. "I want to see him."
"Buffy-"
"Now."
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Seen from the north window the figure was hanging in the chains that were suspended from the wall. It was dressed in a ragged pair of trousers that had been torn along one thigh and at the bottom of one leg and some drops of fresh blood had spattered against the floor. The figure was either asleep or too tired and apathetic to move much beyond an exhausted sway, its feet dragging on the floor.
Buffy stood there in the doorway, her face set like stone. Then she turned like a striking snake. "Why is he in chains?" she hissed at her Watcher, who blinked and took a step back.
"Buffy-"
"I mean his soul is back, that's Angel and not Angelus, how can you do this to him?"
"Buffy-"
"How, Giles, how?" The last words were in a rising wail of noise that reached the chained vampire, because suddenly he was awake and struggling frantically against the chains, pulling in vain against the great bolt that had been driven into the wall above him to secure his fetters. Throwing his head back he let out a rough screech of anger and pain before dropping back to spit and snarl at the figures in front of him like an enraged animal.
Buffy went even paler and took a step forward. "Angel?" she called tentatively. He watched her walk closer and then lunged at the full length of the chains, trying to vain to reach her with a grasping hand while he snarled again. She stepped back and he subsided, panting, to hang on his chains again.
"What happened to him," she whispered in a barely audible voice. "Why is he like that?"
Giles moved forwards and placed a consoling hand on her shoulder. "Buffy, we have no idea how long he was in that, that, well wherever he was. As you and Xander both know, time can move differently in a hell dimension. It might have been years, decades, even centuries of torment for Angel. It would take a mind of uncommon strength and resilience to come back from that. He might recover by, by seeing familiar things and places, but I really can't say if he will ever come back." He looked at the swaying figure again. "He's gone feral, Buffy. The fact that he has even survived is a miracle."
She stood there looking at the chained vampire, who was watching the pair of them warily through half-closed eyes. Then she turned away with tears in her eyes and walked out of the building with Giles following silently behind her.
Entering the sunlight she stopped dead. "Giles, what did you mean when you said that Xander and I both knew what it's like to be in a hell dimension? And how did you and Xander know that he had come back at all?"
He groaned. She'd picked up on his little slip of the tongue. "Ah, well..." he grimaced at her raised eyebrow and implacable expression. "I think that you need to talk to Xander as a matter of some urgency, Buffy. If I told you the truth then I don't think that you'd believe me, or at least if he told you then you'd get more in the way of proof, and my grammar seems to have been shot to hell in this sentence."
"Proof of what? Hey, Willow said that I should talk to him the day after I got back, but I never got round to it. Something does seem to be wiggy with him as well." Her voice dropped off as she the last few words and she half- turned to look back at the building with haunted eyes.
"Proof of what happened to him over the summer," he replied and led the Slayer away.
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Xander was practicing some forms with a sword in the library in front of a fascinated Faith, who had taken the news about his abilities with a great deal of calmness. After explaining the events of the last Halloween and his subsequent training the other Slayer had shrugged. "Horry always said that life on a Hellmouth was freaky, said that life could get weird. She said that the Watcher's Council had already had some stories about strange things happening around B and Kendra. I never thought that it would get this weird though. What's that thing with the double slash and swing over again?"
Xander grinned, demonstrated the third advanced offensive position and then came to a halt. Turning he put the sword down on the table, looked up at the stairs that led to the back of the library and waited. After a few moments Buffy and Giles appeared. She looked determined. Giles looked flustered.
"Xander, have you ever been to a hell dimension?" the blonde Slayer asked. "Because according to Mr Cryptic here you have. And what was the deal with leaving Sunnydale for the summer?"
Faith flickered an eyebrow and grinned lazily. "I'm leavin' now before Mount Buffy blows and all the little villagers get torched all crispy. Seeya B, Giles. May the force be with you, Xander!" And she was gone with a chuckle.
"Okay, so even Faith knows this... this... whatever the hell it is?" exploded Buffy. She looked angry now. "What. Is. Going. On?"
He looked at Giles, who nodded. Then he let out a breath. He had felt Buffy approach from some distance away. He had also felt her all tense and part angry. He should have told her when she got back from LA. This was his fault.
"Buffy, I'm a Jedi Knight," he said calmly.
This threw her. "You're a what?" she asked incredulously.
"A Jedi Knight. You remember last Halloween and Ethan Rayne's spell?"
"Of course I remember it, I was reduced to a screaming idiot by it. Wills was a ghost and you..." She paused and stared even harder at him, as if seeing him for the first time. "You were Obi-Wan Kenobi. But that was just a spell. We were all normal afterwards, Xander, nothing lasted!"
He sat down quietly. "No, Buffy. Something remained in my head. Call it memories, vestigial abilities or whatever. Not all of Obi-Wan left me, Buff. I could feel the force afterwards and it freaked me out."
"Xander, that's just a film. Can you hear yourself? The force doesn't exist!"
He looked at her levelly. "Like vampires didn't exist? And demons? And things that go bump in the night?" He reached out with the force to unclip the lightsabre from his belt and then brought it up to hover by his side. She caught sight of it as it moved through the air and a look of incomprehension came over her face. Then Xander triggered the power switch and the blade sprang into life with a buzz.
She was gaping at him now and he reached out to grasp the lightsabre and shut it down. Returning it to his belt he looked up at her. This was a lot to lay on her, but she had to see it. Faith had been able to see him in action, which had convinced her quite quickly, but Buffy still saw her goofy old friend. Regardless of what happened, he would always still be her friend.
"I trained with Giles over the months, Buff. I was afraid of my new powers, I guess. I didn't want to fall to the Dark Side. I didn't want to get tempted by these new abilities. Giles taught me a lot. How to use a sword for a start. I didn't tell anyone else because I was still training. Didn't want people worrying about me, not with what happens on the Hellmouth. That was how I was able to get Giles out when Angelus got him. I would have told you afterwards, but..." He shrugged.
"But I went away to LA," she breathed, sinking down in a chair.
"I know. Or, I knew roughly where you were. You put out a big signal in the force, Buffy, a massive signal. But I couldn't locate you exactly and I needed to train, to get as much out of this Jedi thing as I could. You know what life on the Hellmouth is like, you need a reliable ally here and not a Sith. I needed to train myself, access all the Jedi training memories I have in this head of mine. So I went away to my uncle's place in the desert and I trained. That's where all the muscles came from.
"I bumped into a few demons as well, and a hostage they had, and well, to cut a long story short I ended up in a demon karaoke bar in LA, where this green singing demon told me that you would be in trouble that night. So I made with the frantic running and I arrived just in time to see you fall into that pool of black water. I went in after you, found some slaves, killed some demons and then saw some guy loading a crossbow behind you."
She looked up at that. "You were the guy in the shadows," she breathed. "The guy who threw Birdy and got that demon. But you were so high up... Why didn't you say something?"
"The force," he said quietly, "Guided me. And I couldn't exactly lean over the rail and shout 'Hi there Buffy' while you were fighting for your life, could I? You'd been killed maybe, or have gone looking for me and the whole thing would have been one big fat mess. As it was, we got as many prisoners as possible out of there. I didn't stick around because you'd been through enough for one night.
"And since you got back, there never seemed to be the right moment to tell you, Buffy. I'm sorry. I know I should have told you about it, but, well the right time never seemed to be there."
"Faith-"
"She saw me fight last night. You were busy bashing a vamp about the head with a blunt object."
She was still staring at him, stunned. "You're really a Jedi Knight?"
"I'm really a Jedi Knight."
"This is freaky."
"Tell me about it." He smiled at her and then stood up and pulled his jacket on, transferring his lightsabre from his belt to his pocket. Then he walked off to his history class.
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During the previous school year he'd discovered the side of the west wing of the school. There was a flat veranda over the chemistry lab and, if you ignored the odd smells that whafted up every now and then, it was a great place to sit and think and look over the skyline of Sunnydale.
As he sat there he felt her presence approach. "Hi Buffy."
"That's very creepy. You can tell where I am?" She walked over and sat next to him quietly.
He smiled. "It's like trying to ignore a searchlight. You put up a big signal."
Taking a deep breath she looked out over the town. "Great view. I never knew this place was here."
"I found it last year. New perspectives."
"Yeah." She glanced at him. "I'm sorry Xander, I didn't mean to freak out on you."
"Nah, it's understandable. It isn't every day you find out that a friend's a secret Jedi."
She smiled. "I can get lessons on the whole 'you don't know people as much as you think you do' from my Mom. Secrets 101."
She glanced at him again. "Nothing's the same, Xander. I came back and everything is different. Mom knows that I slay. Willow is much with the levitating pencils. And you're a Jedi. Oh and Angel fell into this world again, all snarley in a non-vampire way. Nothing's the same. Oh." She fumbled behind her and then brought out a sword disguised in a bag. "This must be yours."
He reached down the pushed the cloth away from the hilt to reveal an eagle. Smiling he picked it up. "Aquila."
"Birdy," she said pertly. "Okay, Aquila. Giles told me where you got it from. I think that you own it more than me."
Shaking his head he pushed it back. "No, Buffy. I liked it, yes, but I think that you can use it better. I have my lightsabre now. It was made to fight evil. You use it."
Sighing deeply, and grasping Aquila uncertainly, she changed the subject. "So, how much of Obi-Wan's memories do you have?"
Looking off into the distance he raised his eyebrows and then frowned slightly in thought. "Training. Apprenticeship. The Battle of Naboo. Start of the Clone Wars, on Genosis. Battle of Kamino. A lot of stuff, Buffy, a lot of death. Starships falling to earth, a thousand points of light stilled as the air escaped from holes in their hulls. A lot of heroism as well. The start of the fall of the Republic and Anakin Skywalker with it. To the Empire and Vader. Nothing after that."
"Wow," she said in a small voice. "I guess it's going to be freaky with Lucas making the prequels to the original Trilogy right now."
An amused snort broke free from him. "Well, just as long as they make JarJar less annoying than he was in my memories, I'll be okay with it."
"JarJar?"
"Gungan – an alien. Big ears, silly accent, amazingly unlucky. Made the old me look like George Clooney. But a loyal friend." He shook himself slightly and brought his mind back to the present. "I felt Angel arrive, Buffy. Or rather I felt the start of it and then I saw him fall from the air in a great flash of light."
"Giles told me. Can't help thinking what brought him back."
"I don't know..." he mused as he watched Jonathan scurry away from the school, his bag full of books. "Something powerful though. The dimension felt stinky, but what brought him back didn't, I think. I just got a flash of it. Maybe we aren't alone in this thing, Buffy."
"What makes you think that?" she asked, staring at him.
"He came back as Angel and not Angelus. I could feel his soul." Looking down at his watch he grimaced. "Oz is making with the hair around now and I have to relieve Willow. Same old patrol from that point of view." He frowned down at the street beneath them. Scott Hope was down there talking to Pete and his girlfriend, Debbie Foley. That guy let off an odd vibe in the force, like there were two people living in the same body. It was almost like the swim team, but without the monster. Or rather there was a different monster there. It was odd.
He shrugged and walked off to meet another monster.
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Oz was in his fully hairy mode. He was also spitting, snarling and bouncing on the spot. Willow waved goodbye to him - not that the werewolf noticed, except to note that another potential meal/victim/set of bones to gnaw had passed out of his reach. Xander stepped up to the book cage and looked into it. "Hey, Oz. Just you and me tonight. Mind if I do some meditating? What was that? 'Go right ahead, Xander?' Thanks, Oz, don't mind if I do." He looked around. Ah. The table.
He was busy meditating when it happened. To be more accurate he was balancing upside down on one hand while levitating the heaviest books he could find in the library, along with two chairs, around him, absorbed deeply in the force. Then he felt it, a tiny whisper in his mind. He was so startled that he almost lost control for a second but then he imposed some mental discipline with a frown and lowered everything carefully to the ground. Only then did he get down and walk over to stare into the book cage.
Were-Oz was asleep, his jaws snapping slightly as he chased something – or someone – in his dreams, his hair sticking out all over the place. And he seemed to be using – or trying to use – the force. There was a soft noise from above the werewolf and the window catch came free with a jerk and hung free.
Xander gazed at it. The sleeping werewolf had apparently used the force to open the window. Okay, this was strange. He reached out with his hand and used the force to resecure it again. Then he sat down, crossed his legs and stared into the book cage to study the werewolf. He was fast asleep. What was he dreaming? What had he done to access the force? So far he hadn't met anyone else who could use the force, but... there had been that odd feeling that he had always sensed about Oz, which he had never been able to classify. He had always put it down to the fact that, well, the guy was a werewolf, but what if that had only been part of it?
He fully embraced the force and then looked at Oz. The werewolf was still making little running movements with his feet. Then his ears went up and he stopped dead. With a whine and a jerk he was suddenly awake, looking at Xander with those yellow eyes of his, almost unmoving and unblinking.
Using the force to summon a book over to him Xander held it in the air, making it rotate slowly as he watched the hairy figure intently. Oz tilted his head to one side and whined softly as he watched the book, but the feeling that Xander had detected earlier did not return. He put the book down and Oz, yawning hugely, growled softly and put his head back down before flipping back over with his back to the Jedi, obviously intent on getting some more sleep.
Standing back up again Xander looked at the shelves. Right. Time to do some research. And keep one ear, so to speak, tilted towards the book cage.
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Hot strong coffee was a good way to start the day. Especially when you'd been up for a second night in a row. A short burst of the Jedi healing trance had allowed him to keep the worst of it away, but he was still tired. Books were piled all over the desk, spilling onto the chairs and from there to the floor. Books with titles like "The Werewolf – a study of Lycanthropes", "Baying at the moon with my brother", "The fight against myself" and his personal favourite, "Three nights a month without trousers". You had to love that title.
He stood up and moved his neck around before walking over to the book cage. "Hey," he called, "You awake?"
A groan answered him, and then a human Oz blearily peered around a shelf.
"There's some coffee on, Oz. Get up, we need to talk."
Oz stared at him a moment and then made scrabbling noises as he hunted around for his clothes while Xander, for the sake of decency, turned his back on him.
"Did I do anything last night?" the werewolf asked, his voice muffled as he rammed his t-shirt over his head whilst hopping into his jeans.
Xander grimaced. "Yes and no. Before you say anything else, you stayed in the book cage."
"That's good," said Oz as he pulled his shirt on.
Looking over his shoulder Xander walked over and unlocked the door. "Yeah, but, well, there's a problem."
Frowning Oz walked out and then double-taked at the mound of books on the table. "Interesting," he muttered, raising an eyebrow and strolling over to look at the titles written on the spines. "Why the research? What happened?"
Pausing a second Xander walked over to the desk and sat down. "Oz, what do you remember when you're the wolf?"
The werewolf's face tightened ever so slightly. "Nothing, sometimes. Other times... vague memories, like dreams you try and remember. Jumbled images. Xander, what happened?"
"Last night you opened the window. Thing is, you didn't touch it."
There was a pause. "If I didn't touch it, how could the wolfy version of me open it?"
Xander wagged a finger at him, caught himself, opened his mouth, closed it again and then finally said: "Oz you used the force. Which prompted the reading."
The pause that followed was quite a long one. "Okay," said Oz after a while. "That was unexpected. Frightening as well, but mainly unexpected."
He stood up and paced, something that was very un-Ozlike. Then he looked up. "Tell me you're sure."
"I'm sure."
"Okay." He paced a bit more. Then he sat down again. "I am now officially freaked."
Summoning the force to him Xander stood up and levitated a book or five. "Oz, can you feel anything? Is anything, well, letting off little force- related bells and whistles?"
The other man stared at the slowly revolving book and shook his head slowly. "Nothing." Then he tilted his head. "Hairs on the back of neck stood on end. That mean anything?"
"I don't really know," replied Xander and let the books fall back onto the desk gently. "This is a baffling situation."
"What is?" asked Giles as he came through the door and took in the scene. "Ah, is everything alright?" Then he saw the mound of books. "Oh dear. Did anything happen last night? Oz, you didn't get out, did you?"
Xander and Oz exchanged a long look and then the werewolf shook his head.
"Ah, good," said Giles and wandered over to pour himself a mug of coffee from the carafe on the desk.
"No, he didn't get out," drawled Xander, "But, and this is the surprising thing, he did use the force in his werewolf state."
It was rather unfortunate that Giles was swallowing a mouthful of coffee at that moment, as most of it went all over the floor and just missed a valuable copy of Humptemper's "How to kill insects," volume I.
Choking slightly and applying his handkerchief to the spots on his tie, he looked up. "He did what?"
"He used the force, Giles."
The Watcher slumped back into a seat. "Right," he said after a while. "What a bloody week. A new Slayer in town, followed by an insanely vicious ancient vampire, the only vampire with a soul in the world falls through a dimensional portal on to our laps and goes feral on us and finally I'm told that there's a werewolf in town that can use the force. Just bloody marvellous. What next, a plague of zombies? Oh wait, that was last week." He threw his glasses onto the surface of the desk with a clatter and glared at Xander. "Any more surprises?"
The Jedi mulled things over. "Nope. Oh, but I think that one of the students isn't quite human. Again."
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Arriving in the office was always exciting. So much to do. So much to arrange. Gosh, he enjoyed the mornings. So many people ignored theirs or wasted them. But no, he loved them. Especially when he thought about what lay ahead. Smiling quietly he looked down at his inbox. A large envelope was there, buried about halfway down and he carefully tugged it out. Aha. From Wolfram & Hart. Of course, the Arrangement was up for renegotiation this year. It was a shame that it wouldn't mean a damn thing next year, but that was life. He had to be very careful now.
He had to give the impression that life would continue as normal next year, that all the agreements and deals he'd made over the years would remain intact. The truth would be very different, but if he gave out the wrong signals then, well, someone might go poking under the surface. Placing the envelope on his desk he broadened the smile. Maybe this time Wolfram & Hart would send a decent lawyer. The last one had been, well... quite a disappointment. Too chewy for a start.
