Part 1

Giles looked around the wreckage of the Magic Box.

"I-is everyone all right?"

Willow finally got her knees to stop shaking and answered from the doorway where she and Anya were huddled, "Yes, we're fine."

"Okay, I'm just going on record saying that I really hate earthquakes." Anya was very pale. She'd experienced little shocks since being stuck in Sunnydale but never a major earthquake.

Buffy patted Dawn on the shoulder, "You okay, Dawnie?"

Dawn nodded, "Yeah and I'm gonna have to agree with Anya on this one. Earthquakes suck."

The electricity was out and Giles carefully made his way to the door to look down the block. Bloody hell, it looked like it was out up and down the whole block. He didn't even want to think about going home and seeing what his apartment looked like.

"I should probably patrol. With the earthquake people might be wandering the streets, which I'm sure the vampires will be taking advantage of."

The Magic Box exploded into sudden brightness.

"Generator's working, Giles." Xander called from the basement.

Spike made his way over fallen debris to the front of the Magic Box and sighed in relief when he saw that Buffy and the Bit were fine. Putting on a mask of indifference he opened the door.

"Thought you might need a hand patrolling, Slayer. Vampires are out looking for easy meals all over Sunnydale."

Buffy grabbed her stake and turned to Dawn, "Stay with Willow. I don't want you home alone tonight."

"I can take care of myself, Buffy. I'm not a kid."

Buffy sighed, she seemed to always say the wrong thing to Dawn any more. "I know you can, Dawn. Just . . .I don't want to worry about you too."

Willow walked over to Dawn and put her arm around her. "Come on, Dawn I could use some help cleaning up the Newt eyes."

"My life is weird." Dawn mumbled as she followed Willow.

"Join the club." Willow looked back over her shoulder at Buffy and winked.

Thank god for Willow, Buffy thought. She seemed to be bridging the ever-widening gap between herself and Dawn.

"Ready, Spike?"

~~~~~

Buffy turned to Spike after she finished staking the last vampire. "Nothing like a natural disaster to bring out the vamps."

"Yeah, sometimes we like the easy pickings. I always preferred the hunt though."

Buffy turned to head back to the Magic Box when she tripped over the uneven ground.

Spike smiled and shook his head, "Another example of Slayer reflexes?"

Buffy smiled wryly up at Spike, "Shut up, Spike." She looked down to see what caused her to trip. There was a deep drop off where the earthquake split the park.

"Do you still have your lighter?"

Spike felt in his duster pockets, "Never leave home without it." He walked up behind where Buffy was crouching. "Find something?"

Spike held the lighter higher so she could see down the small opening.

There was something sticking out of the dirt but Buffy couldn't quite make out what it was.

"Bring your light a little lower, Spike. I can't quite see what it is."

"Let me look."

Spike flicked off the lighter and crouched down beside Buffy. "Looks like ancient writing or something carved into it. I think it's circular but I can't tell."

"Sounds like a Giles thing to me. He can come look at it in the morning. God, I hope it's nothing Hellmouthy."

~~~~~

Buffy sat back on the grass and watched as Willow and Giles carefully dug around the artifact. She might as well catch a few rays while she was here. Not like she could be any help. She had started to dig the dirt away but Giles had started lecturing her on being very careful and that you had to delicately brush the dirt away or you may damage it. She started tuning him out after a few minutes and let Willow take over.

Willow turned to Giles, "The Anthropology Department probably has better equipment and I'm sure volunteer students that could help. Even if it's a demon language they won't know it and I don't sense any magickal qualities to it." Willow paused to ease her aching back, "They could dig it up and you being the resident expert on all things ancient here they'd call you in to look at it anyway."

Giles turned to look at Willow and noticed the exhaustion on her face. She's right. There were better ways to uncover an artifact and he didn't recognize the symbols they had uncovered. He and Willow could try to research what they knew so far and let the students unearth the rest.

"Buffy! Do you have a piece of paper and pencil?"

Buffy's eyes popped open at Giles shouted question. She was just drifting into a nice nap in the sunshine and now she had to work. Crap. Buffy rummaged around in her backpack and pulled out her notebook. She dug further for a pencil and brought them both to Giles.

"Whatcha doing?"

"Willow had an excellent idea to use the Anthropology department to uncover this while we research what we have so far. I'm just going to make some rubbing of these symbols and see if we can find anything on them."

"Go Willow! Good job. Give the grunt work to someone else. We can stop by on our way to class to let the Head of the Department know we found something in the park that they might be interested in."

Giles was barely listening to Buffy as he carefully made a rubbing of the symbols. He had never seen anything like it. They weren't hieroglyphs of any kind that he knew of. There were so many demon languages he could look through but where to start? He looked over at Willow, "Do you think you could scan these into the computer and send them to Angel and Wesley to see if they've seen anything like it?"

Willow smiled at Giles, "Look at you, all computer knowledge guy."

Buffy reached over and gave Willow a pat on the shoulder and wiped a mock tear from her eye, "You're baby bird has finally left the nest and knew a computer term all on his own. He's all grown up now, you must be so proud."

Giles gave them a droll look, "Yes, yes very funny. Just for that I'll have a large stack of books for you to look through when you come by this afternoon. I doubt the computer will be of any use to find these symbols."

"Maybe not but I can do a search to see if there is any prophecy, myth, whatever about a large circular object with symbols carved in it."

"Yea can't wait." Buffy mumbled as she picked up her backpack and followed Willow. "Ya think I can volunteer to dig up whatever this is? Cause I'm thinking we should probably have someone on the inside knowing what's going on."

Willow smiled as she hooked her arm through Buffy's, "You just don't want to spend hours researching."

"Goes without saying."