Disclaimer: All the characters belong to Joss Whedon. I don't own them, so don't sue me. Also, some of my characters and settings later on will come from the Buffy books "The Gatekeeper Trilogy" by Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder.

Authors note: This chapter is dedicated to the beautiful and talented Angelfan86, who keeps me inspired and motivated. As always, any feedback you have as to whether it's a plot worth pursuing, or ideas about plot would be greatly appreciated and positive comments will probably speed up the time between chapters. Thanks

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She was walking through what seemed to be a long hallway filled with doors. Part of her knew she was dreaming, but the slayer in Buffy knew that she needed to find out what this dream could tell her. She decided to open one of the doors at random, preparing herself for a possible fight. Though the door didn't have a handle of any kind that she could see, it swung open easily at her touch.

Giles and the rest of the gang sat in the library, sharpening stakes for some impending doom. When she tried to enter the room some force kept her in the hallway. She called out, but no one noticed her presence at the door. She stood looking in on her friends for several minutes, unable to decide if she should move on or continue to try and get into the library.

"We're not what you're looking for," Giles said to her. His voice sounded like it came from inside her head instead of from the room before her. "Go."

Before she had time to reply, the door slammed shut in her face and disappeared, along with the hallway and she woke up right where she had started.

Alone.

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Joyce Summers knew that something was wrong. The girls had been encountering things trespassers in their patrols more and more often lately. Lucy Hanover believed that it was probably someone trying to build and hide an army here that could be instantly sprung on the mortal world.

Which meant Buffy was in danger. Joyce knew that Buffy was almost always in trouble of some kind, but rarely did she have the chance to do something about it. But if the danger was here, on the ghost roads, then she believed it was her duty to do all she could to prevent Buffy from being hurt.

So she sent out patrols to monitor the growing army. They were to take extreme caution when approaching the creatures, for if your spirits astral body was killed while on the ghost roads your soul would be killed, would cease to exist. Sure, most of her girls were slayers and would hesitate to die twice for the cause if need be, but if a big fight was coming she would need all the "bodies" she could get. The first groups were supposed to be back today.

A while later Sarah knocked on the door. She was a sweet girl; her sister had been the slayer in the early 90's. She had been killed by a couple of vamps as a way to get to the slayer. She had stuck around the ghost roads to be near her sister, now they both helped the current slayers mother fight the forces of evil.

Joyce looked at the girl. She appeared to be about 12 years old; brown hair, long legs, glasses, and the cutest dimples. She smiled sweetly at Joyce as she came in and told her that one of the teams had returned.

Sarah followed her into the main chamber to hear the report from Alex's team. When Joyce entered the only people she could see was Jenny Calendar talking to Nikki. Neither Natasha nor Alex was present, although Nikki did have a man with her who looked vaguely familiar…