Thanks for all your reviews; sorry this update's been so long coming.

Japanese Translations at the bottom of the page.

From now on each chapter will be based on the different sections of 'Art of War.'

Laying Plans

Giles had been through many trials and tribulations in his forty plus years, he'd seen many things that would haunt him forever and done things he'd give anything to forget. He'd always known he'd join the elusive ranks of the Watcher's Council, yet had never expected his life to have turned out the way it had. To him, a position in the Watcher's Council had always represented prestige and academia, along with Cuban cigars and Italian Merlot. His rose-tinted eyes had always skimmed over the less-attractive aspects of the life for which he was pre-destined; the evil, the corruption, the stench of death that surrounded it. Until he'd received his own Slayer, he'd never really taken much notice of the girls he had sometimes seen following their Watchers obediently through the colossal building in London, he'd never realised what the Watcher's Council meant to them. How it changed them forever from innocent teenage girls fretting over highschool dances and spots to hard, wiry killing machines, seemingly devoid of all human emotion, living double lives for fear of rejection.

Buffy was a prime example of the transformation from girl into Slayer. She was one of the few to have ever discovered the origins of the First Slayer, whom had been given the heart of the demon, and it had horrified her. Yet she was still ignorant of what this really meant and Giles didn't have the strength to tell her. He saw it, however, in her hazel eyes, every time she fought. Buffy blamed herself as a person for how she'd changed over the years, blaming circumstances and her own tendency towards superiority. Although that hadn't helped, Giles was desolate with the knowledge that there was nothing she could have done to prevent her transformation from the well-covered, excitable youth into the alarmingly strong and distant woman that she had become. The heart of the demon that had been given to the First Slayer lived on throughout the generations. A so-called defensive and spiritual procedure had resulted in thousands of women being overwhelmed with the demon that lived inside them, which was fully unleashed when they fought. Buffy didn't realise that, as the longest living Slayer, her demonic powers were slowly permeating her other life of seeming normality and Giles mourned for her loss but never could utter the truth when she turned those large trusting eyes towards him.

How could he tell the woman he loved like a daughter what she was becoming? Or how when Spike had pegged her for a demon when he discovered his chip was ineffective on her that the vampire hadn't been as wrong as Tara had claimed? And, lastly and most painfully, how could he have explained during the year Dawn came into existence that Dawn's death wouldn't have only benefited the world, it would have bought Buffy herself more time? For when the monks made the radical decision of creating the Key from Buffy, they had stolen a part of her soul, allowing the demon more access, and sending Buffy reeling into depression. There was more to this adventure through time than Giles had explained to Buffy, and as he watched her stiff back as she rode onwards relentlessly he wondered how he could tell her that he'd only brought her here for her own good? And that she'd never understand how much he cared for her? In all his life Giles didn't think he'd felt such a dilemma as he did right that moment.

'Mr Giles,' came a voice alongside him, breaking the tired Watcher from his thoughts.

'Chief Katsumoto,' Giles replied immediately snapping to attention. The Japanese warrior, for the first time since they'd arrived not surrounded by bodyguards and attendants, had pulled his horse up to ride with Giles in the hope of some conversation that had been plaguing the Buddhist's mind for some time.

'I wish to speak with you,' he said quietly in Japanese.

'How may I be of service?' Giles answered, puzzled.

'It concerns the woman,' Katsumoto nodded his head in Buffy's direction. 'I am still unclear as to what you want from us. I know she to be American, yet neither of you seem from this time.' Giles clenched the horse's reigns tighter. 'I received a vision of the Captain but saw nothing to announce the coming of you or your Slayer, and I am confused by what this means.'

'Let me repeat that we mean you no harm,' Giles began but was interupted.

'I sense no danger from you sir, but your charge is volatile and needs to better control her impulses and powers.'

'That is why I have brought her here,' Giles said and Katsumoto listened intently. 'She is of strong character, which has not always served her well in the past, and although she has prevailed through numerous battles, her leadership was bordering on a dictatorship and she lacks the skills needed. She is still young to the world and does not understand her destiny or what is required of her, and she's growing out of my reach, she doesn't think she need's my guidance anymore.'

'The student always believes that they know more than the teacher,' Katsumoto said wisely. 'I understand your problem. But you have not answered my other question. Where are you from, for you are certainly not natives to this time.' Giles took a deep breath.

'I doubt you will believe me.'

'I endeavour to be open-minded, no one man knows all until they have received divine enlightenment which I have not.'

'Very well,' said Giles. 'We are from the future.' Katsumoto frowned in bafflement.

'The future?'

'Several hundred years into the future actually, from the 21st Century,' Giles elaborated. 'And you are right Buffy is American from California in the year 2004.'

'This is most uncommon,' Katsumoto said reflectively almost causing Giles to burst out in relieved laughter at the chief's expression. Instead of one of confused rage resulting in a rather unpleasant fight, Katsumoto wore a scholarly expression, thinking of how such an event may have come about.

'Through spiritual means perhaps,' he mused. 'Most interesting, I will have to learn more during your stay with us.'

'Thank you for understanding Chief,' Giles said with a bow of his head. Katsumoto bowed in return and spurred his horse onwards, before hesitating and coming to a halt.

'You said her name was…Buffy?' He asked unsurely.

'Yes,' replied Giles. Katsumoto frowned again.

'What a strange name.'

Katsumoto did not speak again to Giles now that his questions were answered. Instead he began to conjure up a variety of ideas as to how two people from the distant future could return to the time of his people. Our deeds must have been remembered, he thought, or how else could this man have known of us? Our rebellion is definitely going to be successful, this is a sign. Katsumoto was very content to know this, to know that he was helping his former student the divine Emperor of Japan, by retaining Japanese heritage. His thoughts turned to the American Captain who was still semi-unconscious due to his injuries and presenting little problems, at least at this stage. The vision Katsumoto had received of the un-defeatable, determined Tiger became clear the moment he saw the injured American still fighting against impossible odds. The Captain was his enemy; that was certain. He had fiercely murdered Katsumoto's brother-in-law and the chief felt his heart pang at the hurt it was bound to cause his beautiful sister. The Captain, however, was important, otherwise why would he have been granted a divine vision telling him so? It eluded Katsumoto as to why, however, why had this man been sent to them? What was his greater purpose? An aid to their rebellion perhaps? A sudden thought struck him and he took a sharp intake of breath. Were the Slayer and the Captain interlinked in destiny? It was definitely a mystery as to why two strangers, who he deemed both searching for something unknown to them, would cross paths at such a place and time. It was too well planned to simply be labeled a coincidence. What did they seek from Katsumoto, or better yet, what could he endeavour to learn from them? He began to formulate plans in his mind as to what to do with them both.

By this time, his son's village was barely a stone's throw away, and the people were flooding towards the war party with praise and food and ceremony, the children running haphazardly over the green hills to reach the dirt road with their mothers following cautiously behind. Blossoms were thrown in their path and Katsumoto felt profoundly thankful to be home. The company began to dismount, the Slayer and her Watcher standing together instinctively despite her icy bitterness towards him outlined by her posture. The Captain was helped by one of Katsumoto's men to painfully slide from the horse and he fell to his knees outside one of the houses. Katsumoto watched expressionless as Uijo approached him and slowly withdrew his curved sword from its scabbard. Giles was also watching with no expression and Buffy stared in wary confusion. The Samurai shouted out a battle cry and brought his sword down in one swift movement…

Buffy gasped. Giles was motionless. Katsumoto raised an eyebrow.

The sword stopped barely an inch from Nathan's neck and he just looked up at the Japanese man with a dead look in his eyes, he didn't even value his own life anymore to try and move. Buffy let out a measured breath; she was completely out of her depth here.

'This is my son's village,' said Katsumoto to the captain. 'You are trapped here until the snow melts.'

He swept past him and into the house, his son pausing to survey the captain for himself.

'Jolly good,' he said before following his father. The samurai Uijo was the one to approach Buffy and Giles speaking rapidly in Japanese. Giles replied quickly and almost meekly.

'What is going on?' Buffy hissed at him, hating to be out of the loop.

'We are to stay with a widower in his home,' Giles told her. 'And you are to speak in private with the chief in an hour, our host will escort you to the location.'

'Oh goody,' she replied and he winced at her tone, choosing the safer option of not replying as he dislodged their belongings from the horses and followed Uijo to their new residence. Buffy's gaze went to the exhausted man on the ground.

'Giles, you're not seriously going to just leave him here are you?' She cried out in disbelief.

'He's not our concern Buffy,' Giles said, not even glancing back. As she watched, the Japanese surrounded the man and dragged him to his feet and towards another house further down the path, not caring for the obvious pain that they were inflicting on him.

'Hey! Be careful!' She shouted, but it was useless, and Buffy found that she had no other choice but to follow Giles and Uijo up the steady incline towards their new home, but she couldn't resist watching the captain until he had been dragged fully out of sight.

She shifted her bag in order to find a more comfortable position on her shoulder and trudged after Giles and the Samurai who she'd learnt was named Uijo. The surroundings and the village itself, as much as she hated to admit it, were exquisite. The ancient wooden buildings, which looked ready to tumble at the same time as appearing invincible to the elements, were so unlike anything she'd ever seen in California. The fresh mountainous scenery also was certainly a different backdrop to the skyscrapers of Los Angeles; it was blanketed with a serene calmness, seemingly unfazed by the outside world. In this mountain pass, she knew the Samurai were completely isolated. Uijo slowed infront of a medium sized dwelling that was the last in a row of many, where an elderly man stood proudly waiting for them. Both he and Uijo bowed to each other, before the unyielding Samurai turned and abandoned them before their host.

'Hajimemashite,' Giles said in Japanese. Buffy rolled her eyes and began to inspect her fingernails.

'Greetings to you too stranger,' the man replied easily in English. Buffy's head snapped up, her attention regained.

'You speak English?' She demanded as she crossed the dirt path and bounded up the three or so steps to reach his veranda. He bowed again, and rose with a smile upon his heavily lined, worn face and nodded. 'Oh thank God!' She exclaimed. 'You have no idea how glad I am right now to meet you!'

'Kochira koso,' he replied, his brown eyes twinkling. Buffy frowned.

'Say what?'

'Never mind young one,' the man said with a laugh, turning to shake Giles's hand warmly.

'Katsumoto has informed you of the situation then?' Giles inquired.

'A message was sent to me during your journey,' the man explained. 'Please, come in and take a cup of tea.' Giles's face instantly brightened and Buffy watched the two men walk ahead of her, shaking her head in amazement.

'Un-freekin' believable!'

The hour passed much quicker than anticipated and Buffy had barely had time to unpack what little belongings Giles had brought for her (packed, she seethed at the knowledge, with Dawn's assistance), when their host was bundling her out of his home and up another, steeper hill to meet Katsumoto. Their host's name, they had discovered, was Aziz, and his wife had been dead for a month to the day. Buffy would have expected him to have been subdued, yet he told her that he did not fear separation by death and neither had his wife.

'We will be together again, in Nirvana,' he'd said in his melodious voice. 'When it is my time to leave this mortal plane and join her.'

He was also, astoundingly, Katsumoto's former teacher and tutor, having been best friends with Katsumoto's late father. This man certainly didn't look his years, especially as he climbed up the incline nimbly and without a fuss when Buffy, even with her Slayer abilities, was starting to feel the beginnings of a cramp. Man, she really needed to sleep!

'Would you like to rest for a moment Buffy?' Aziz inquired in a mildly polite voice, stopping a few paces ahead and looking back at the short blonde woman behind him. Buffy slipped on her own version of Willow's 'resolve face.'

'No I'm fine thanks, we're actually walking a little too slow for my liking.' The man bowed his head, concealing a smirk.

'As you wish,' and he was off, practically running up the hill before Buffy even realised it.

'Oh crap,' she muttered as she set off at the alarmingly fast pace up the hill after the deceptively spry old man.

They emerged at last into a beautiful blossom tree glade in the shadow of a wooden Buddhist temple, which was centuries old yet filled with spiritual beauty. Unfortunately, Buffy didn't take in any of her surroundings, instead choosing to collapse ungainly on the wooden veranda of the temple.

'Oh air is good,' she murmured, her heart rate gradually returning to normal. When she'd said she wanted to speed up, she had no idea Aziz would take her that seriously! And how was he not dying after he'd practically done a marathon sprint up one of the steepest hills in history? Instead he was sitting cross-legged next to her, his eyes closed in a blissful calm.

'First lesson,' came the bemused voice of Katsumoto a few feet away as he got up from his own meditation to great her. 'A good leader is never afraid to admit to human weaknesses for their own well-being.'

'Yeah, think I got the memo here,' Buffy replied moodily, and a tad embarrassed, as she slowly got to her feet to face the Chief.

'Memo?' He asked curiously, tilting his head to one side to examine her, a gesture that made Buffy feel incredibly uncomfortable.

'It's just a saying,' she said, shuffling under his gaze.

'There are many 'sayings' in English which I do not understand,' he said thoughtfully. 'You will have to teach them to me.'

'Hey,' she interupted. 'Aren't you meant to be the one teaching me useless crap which I already know? Not the other way round.'

'You are the Slayer,' he confirmed, ignoring her outburst. Buffy rolled her eyes.

'Well yeah, I thought we'd been over that part.'

'The longest living Slayer in history?'

'I suppose so.'

'Then why are you so reluctant to accept your duty after so many years performing it?'

'Why should I tell you?' She retorted angrily at his probing question. Katsumoto gave no outward sign of offence at her tone yet automatically at the sound of a raised voice, three armed Samurai appeared out of thin air to come to their Chief's defence. He waved a hand, not taking his gaze from Buffy, and they stepped back into the shadows, their swords sheathed.

'Because,' he continued, ignoring their interruption. 'If I am to help you embrace your destiny as your Watcher insists, I must know your feelings on the matter.'

'My feelings?' She repeated incredulously. 'My feelings? About what exactly sir? About being unceremoniously dumped in Japan two hundred years ago by someone I trust? Or that I'm stuck here learning what I probably already know for six months without my friends or family? Or perhaps you mean my feelings on loosing the man I loved and a close friend of mine in a life-changing battle, when I thought this would all be over, after seven exhausting years of fighting? Is that what you mean?' Her voice was high, her cheeks flushed, her eyes glistening with passionate tears, enraged by Katsumoto's unchanging stoic expression. 'Maybe that's why I don't want to 'accept' my duty, I'm sick of it, I just want to have a normal life, watch my sister grow up into a healthy adjusted woman, get an average job, hell even get married and have kids!'

'All reasonable things to want in life,' Katsumoto said with an approving nod of his head, his calmness frustrating her even more if that was possible.

'You think so? Well so do I,' she carried on. 'I never got to be a normal teenage girl, I was too busy dying and saving the world every night when I should have been in my room listening to preppy music and worrying about midterms. I thought when the potentials became Slayers that this would all be over, and that I'd finally have a chance at the life I missed out on, but hell no, can't let Buffy rest, can we? No, Giles just has to interfere and shove me through a portal, feeding me some bullshit about having to learn how to lead! I know how to lead! I got my girls through a battle, I've been leading my friends into a war every night so what, Chief, could you possibly have to teach me?' Buffy finished, inwardly pleading with him to give her some sort of reassurance that she was in the right, and that Giles owed her an apology and to take her home. The silence that stretched between them became stifling for the Slayer and painfully she approached the unyielding, imposing man and said in a pathetic voice so unlike her own.

'Please?'

Katsumoto still did not say anything but instead his face broke into a smile of all things, and he quickly crossed over to the woven mat where he had been meditating and retrieved a large, leather-bound book, the pages well-thumbed.

'Here,' he said, presenting it to her gallantly. Buffy took it gingerly; it was heavy. She glared at him once again.

'This is what you've got to teach me? Giles could have found this…well whatever the hell this is back home!'

'This is 'The Art of War' by Sun Tzu,' he explained. 'Originally written in Chinese, yet here it is translated into Japanese, and here,' he opened the cover for her and she saw a thick wad of parchment written in grammatically incorrect English. 'I have begun to translate it into English for my own pleasure, Mr Giles should be able to finish the rest of the translation.'

'That's a lie, war isn't an art. It's all about death, plain and simple.'

'No,' he said, giving her a look that plainly said he thought her comment was ignorant. 'War is so much more than that, a good leader would know this.'

She rolled her eyes.

'You will study this book in detail,' he informed her and she suddenly felt like she was back at Sunnydale High. 'It won't harm you to learn some Japanese either,' he added. 'As I have other texts that I wish to show you that are not translated. Aziz will help you with this.'

'I suck at languages,' she muttered mutinously and he pretended not to hear her.

'Each Chapter contains an important new lesson that I expect you to consider without complaint, and once every two weeks you will see me in this temple for private tuition, on the book and other matters on destiny and Nirvana.'

Finished with her he smiled and motioned for Aziz to come forwards as he turned back to his meditation.

'And what am I supposed to do in the meantime?' She demanded, wholly unsatisfied.

'Train with my warriors, learn our language, help amongst our people,' he said flippantly.

'Are you done with me or something?' She asked.

'This has been a good conversation,' he said before he shut his eyes, firmly ignoring her. Aziz stepped forward and took the annoyed woman by the arm.

'Come Buffy, it is time to leave.'

Buffy, resigned, allowed the old man to lead her from the temple, and through the blossom glades as she read the first chapter's title on the translated parchment.

'Laying plans,' she snorted. 'What a joke.'

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Japanese:
Hajimemashite How do you do?
Kochira koso The pleasure is mine