Author's Note: Here's the next chapter. Some interesting things develop here.

Thanks for the reviews everyone. It's very much appreciated.

Woohoo! This has breached the 72,000 word barrier (not counting Author's Notes). It's now officially my longest piece of writing yet (The other being Slayers Series; Book 1: New Beginnings, at 71,911 words - which I will be getting back to after I finish this)

Reply to reviews: Don't worry, Anya's got a very important role in this story. It's going to be big. I know that it appears that she's not here, but she is. It just can't be said what she's doing.

I just got a really good idea about what can happen with the whole Spike thing… I'm stealing an idea straight out of Season 7 of Buffy, but I'm putting my own twist on it and am going to change it so it is appropriate to this story. It won't be coming around for the next couple of chapters, maybe even something like 5 or 6 chapters or so, but it's going to reveal a lot of things, and make things a hell of a lot more confusing as well. This thing will have to do with Spike, but it will have an effect on everyone.

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Chapter 22

Catching Up

He'd gotten out of worse situations than this before, plenty of times. He tried to remember some time when he'd been in a worse situation than this, but all the times he could remember he had backup; he had someone else with him, wether it be Druscilla or Buffy. He looked at the strange looking weapon that was pointed straight at his chest. He'd seen these things in action the previous night, and he knew that they were particularly nasty. But Spike knew that it wasn't the weapon that made it dangerous, it was the person behind the weapon. He looked to his side, and he saw another one pointing at his chest. He looked to his other side, saw one pointing at his head, and he guessed that if he looked behind him, he'd see another one being pointed at him from these people on motorbikes. Very slowly, he walked forward until he was just feet away from the person on the motorbike in front of him.

"I said, don't move!" the voice commanded. Spike stopped and looked straight into the visor of the person, hoping that he was looking straight into their eyes. He started slowly walking towards the person on the motorbike, which Spike now knew, was female. He could tell from the voice that spoke to him. He was just inches away now, and he raised his hand up to the weapon. He was going to put his hand on the weapon and lower it slowly and try to reason with these people, but before his hand even touched the weapon, the front of it spun around in quick succession, and Spike felt a blinding pain in his hand. He only had time to look at the crossbow bolt that was sticking right through it before he fell to the ground. Two of the other figures had shot a crossbow bolt into each of his thighs, sending him plummeting to the ground with a scream.

"Skye, we need to take him through the barrier. It's not going to be safe here in a couple of minutes. They know we're here," one of the riders said to another one of them. The last thing Spike saw while he was in Sunnydale was a gloved fist coming towards his face.

The rider who knocked Spike out put her hands on him and a small yellow glow came out of her hands and went around his whole body, and then faded again. Suddenly, the rider's head snapped up.

"They're coming. Let's go, we can't afford to deal with the Syophers today," the first figure who spoke said. "Skye, grab William the Bloody and take him with you," the figure said. The one called Skye easily hoisted Spike over her shoulder, and put him down on the motorbike and got on behind him. With a roar of their engines, the figures on the motorbikes turned and rode through the barrier. They were just in time as five Syophers shimmered into view just one-hundred yards from where the group had just been.

She had walked through the city, seemingly unnoticed by everyone around her. It was eerie how no one noticed her in the middle of the day walking down the sidewalk, so set apart from everyone else. But of course, that was what she wanted to happen. She had just gotten the idea soon after her outburst in the cafe earlier that day. She had re-sculptured the energies around her, so that anyone who looked her way would see her, exactly how she was, but it wouldn't register in their brains that it was a person that they were looking at. If someone asked them about her, only five seconds after she had left their line of sight, they wouldn't remember her. The spell would remain effective as long as she didn't touch someone, only then it would sink into their brains that she was actually there. It was a good spell, and she had made it up entirely by herself. It was now night time, and she didn't know where she was going, or what she was doing. It wasn't until her mother came to her and told her what she needed to do, that she had a sense of purpose again.

"Hello Amy," Catherine Madison said to her.

"Hello… mother," Amy Madison replied, spiteful of what had occurred earlier in Sunnydale (Reference to War Cries - Chapter 9 - Just when things were looking up). "I know you're not her," Amy said before anything else could happen.

"You're right, I'm not," The image of Catherine Madison replied.

"Then what do you want from me?" Amy demanded of it. She didn't like this thing, it had bled her to raise that, thing, over the Hellmouth. It had manipulated her. She didn't care that it was manipulating her, she cared that she was being manipulated.

"Only what's best for you," the image of Catherine Madison replied.

"What was that energy for? Why did you give that to me today?" Amy demanded. "What does it really do?"

"It does what it did… you were running too hot for too long Amy. You would have died if you kept up the way you were going," Catherine Madison said to her. "I don't want you to die Amy." For a second, Amy wanted to believe that it was her mother in front of her, and that her mother was the kind and nurturing mother that she had always wanted her to be. She wanted to believe that what was being said was true, and whatever this thing was, actually cared for her and wanted her to be alive. But she knew that she couldn't trust these things, and that she was being used.

"What do you want from me?" Amy asked the image of her mother again.

"I want what you want. I want you to do a job for me," Catherine replied. "Willow Rosenburg has gained too much power, and she doesn't know how to use it," Catherine started to explain. As soon as Willow was mentioned, The First had Amy's full attention. "She's dangerous Amy. She almost destroyed the world once, there's nothing stopping her from doing it again."

"And you want me to take on Willow?" Amy asked the image of her mother.

"Yes, I do. But not alone," Catherine replied. "Willow is too strong for you. She is too strong for any single person. It will take a large number of witches to take her down, and that's what I want you to do Amy… Go out, bring others to your cause. Tell them how she abuses magick. Tell them how much power she has. Convince them to join you to take her out. That much power isn't meant to be handled by one person alone. Tell them that she's a threat to the world and make them believe that they are doing the right thing by banding together to fight her, because, after all, they are. Think of what could happen when she loses control again. It's going to be soon, and it's going to happen. You'll be doing the world a favour by bringing Willow down. Think of how you will be seen," The First started to explain. "Amy Madison. The leader of witches who brought down the most dangerous witch in history," Catherine Madison said while grabbing Amy's hand and holding it in her own. "Do you like the sound of that?" Catherine asked her.

"Oh yes," Amy replied.

"Then go," Catherine said, while purple energy started to flow down her arm and up Amy's. Slowly, her eyes and hair started to return to her normal colour, and her veins retreated back to where they were meant to be in her body, not as close to the skin as they had been. Catherine Madison released Amy's hand and gave her a little shove down the street to get her moving. "She's too dangerous Amy. She's a threat to the world. Remember this," Catherine exclaimed after her. When Amy had rounded the corner, and there was no one left on the street, the image of Catherine Madison changed and shifted. It slowly split apart into two, until there stood two versions of Catherine Madison. One of them smiled, before disappearing in a flash of light. The other morphed and changed into that of a Syopher, before it shimmered out of visibility.

She looked at him in pure wonder, trying to come up with reasons that explained why he was here, and why he and the people he was with had rescued them from the vampire attack.

"Oz," Xander said beside her. Oz just nodded in his direction while he was still walking towards them. Willow's eyes were fixed on him as he walked towards her, his eyes fixed on her. She could hear noises around her, but they didn't register in her brain; that was still trying to explain everything. She looked up and saw that it wasn't even a full moon, which meant that Oz had learned to control his change. Thoughts began racing through her mind. She knew at that moment that she still cared about him, and hope came into Willow's mind. Perhaps he could fill the giant emptiness inside her that she had felt ever since Tara's death; even if it was only a little. Beside her, she heard Xander yell something. "Oz, get down!" Xander yelled as he dived onto the road, taking Willow with him. As Willow was going down to the ground, she saw the red hooded figure that had retreated had let off a large magickal blast of energy in their direction. As she hit the ground, she saw the magickal blast hit Oz in the leg and his face twist in agony as he was falling to the ground. Willow heard shouts and noises from behind her, and she didn't know what was going on. Immediately, she scrambled to her feet and went towards Oz. In her shock, he looked up and past her, and he got up on his injured leg which Willow could tell had been burnt badly and raced past her.

"Michaela!" he exclaimed. Willow turned and watched him as he ran up to a woman who was now lying on the ground, her clothes in tatters and burns all over her stomach. Willow watched as the woman whose name must be Michaela looked up at Oz, and the way that they looked at each other. Immediately, she felt something inside her rip up. She knew that it had been stupid. As soon as she looked at Oz that night, she had gotten her hopes up that something might happen; that something might happen that would make her feel alright. She reminded herself that she was gay now, but another voice inside her head argued back that that didn't stop Oz from being Oz. After a moment, Willow was snapped out of her thoughts as Xander got up beside her and started moving off towards the fallen woman. Instantly, Willow was snapped back to reality.

"In all this crisis, all you can think of is yourself," a voice said inside Willow's head. It sounded like hers, but there was something off about it. She ignored it and went over to the group that had huddled around the woman on the ground.

"What happened?" Xander asked anyone in particular.

"The magician let off two blasts. One hit Oz, the other one hit Michaela before she had time to defend herself," another woman said who had been standing right next to Michaela when it happened.

"Get her and Oz inside, we've got First aid kits," Willow said to them. She watched as a man and the woman who had just spoke bent down and picked Michaela up off the ground. Willow watched as another man knelt down and helped Oz up to walk inside on his now injured leg. Both she and Xander raced ahead and opened the door for the two people carrying the woman. Willow raced inside and grabbed the first aid kit, and she fell over the top of the vampire Faith and one of the Potential Slayers had captured and who was now tied up on the floor. She raced into the kitchen and ducked down to the cupboards and grabbed the two first aid kits they had. Willow went back into the living room and dropped them on the floor next to the woman called Michaela. She went back into the kitchen and filled up a large jug of water and brought it back out to the group. She saw Xander explaining to the Potentials, Giles, Faith, Dawn and Buffy what had happened.

"Nicola, can you do something?" Willow heard Oz ask the woman who had been with Michaela the whole time.

"I can try to," the woman replied. Willow watched as the woman lay her hands just above the severe burns on Michaela's stomach, and a light yellow glow resonated out of them. She watched as the wounds started to slowly heal. "That's all I can do," the woman said. Willow couldn't believe her ears. That was all the woman could do. It wasn't much, but Willow knew that any magick user should be able to do better than that with a healing spell; she knew that she could have done better when she was just starting out with magicks. Immediately, another woman that was with Oz's group started on Michaela with the first aid kit and she started pouring water out of the jug that Willow had brought. Willow moved forward and made room for herself in the group of people who were kneeling around Michaela on the floor, who was now unconscious.

"I can try something," Willow said softly to anyone who was listening. She saw Oz look up at her. She looked straight into his eyes, and he looked back, straight into hers.

"Okay, everyone back off. Let Willow do her work," Oz said to the strangers that were surrounding her. Willow just looked at him, and then at everyone else as they backed off. The woman who had tried to heal Michaela with magick was looking at her very strangely, and Willow couldn't place why. She put her hands above the wounds and closed her eyes. She knew that she had to use extreme concentration for this, and just stick to the basics. She had to maintain her control. That was what she had to speak to Giles about, she knew that she was losing her control. She was going to go off the deep end again, and it was going to be soon. That was why she couldn't do anything in the fight that they had just had, she knew that she would have lost control, and then the vampires would have been the last of everyone's problems.

She opened up her senses, and she was bombarded by a number of things. She could sense the great magickal potential of the girl lying in front of her, and she could sense the extremely strong presence of the girl who had tried to heal her. She could sense this girl's energy reaching out into the world and interacting with it and touching everything around her. She could sense the amount of hostile energy that was in the air all around Sunnydale and she could sense the presence of both the Slayers near her. She could also feel something within her, buried deep and trying to claw it's way to the surface, and what terrified Willow was that it was almost there.

She pushed just a little of her own energy out to her limbs, and pushed it out of her body and ordered it to enter the body of the woman lying in front of her. Willow opened her eyes and saw that the wounds were starting to heal at an accelerated rate and that they would be almost better in an hour or so. She looked around and saw that most of the people in Oz's group were looking at her in thankfulness, but she noticed that the other woman who had tried to heal Michaela had stepped back a far way, and was looking at Willow with wide eyes. In Willow's opinion, she looked like a deer in the headlights of a car. Willow saw the girl regain her composure, but was unsettled when the girl wouldn't stop looking at her. She stepped back from the girl and looked around.

"We'd better start fixing this place up," Xander said out loud to everyone. Willow saw most people nod in agreement.

An hour later after the house had been fixed as much as they could get it, Oz's group were resting in their vans that they brought along, insisting that they didn't need any beds and that they had everything that they needed in their vans. They had told everyone in Sunnydale that they'd give them all the information about them in the morning, when there was no threat and everyone had had some rest. The Scooby gang was sitting around the lounge room, except for Buffy and Faith. They were in the dining room, having the vampire that they caught tied up to one of the chairs, and they were questioning her.

"You won't get anything out of me. I won't give into your interrogations," the vampire said on the chair, having large bumps and burns all over it's body, and a large number of bruises on it's face.

"Interrogations?" Faith said while standing over the vampire. "Huh. Hey B. This vamp thinks we're interrogating it," Faith said sarcastically and generally sounding like she was amused. She took a step closer to the vampire and looked her straight in the eyes. "We haven't even started yet, we're just having some fun." Faith backed away and looked at Buffy who was standing a fair way away from the vampire.

"I say we start," Buffy said to Faith. "I'll just go and get our, equipment," Buffy added while turning and walking into the kitchen.

"Now we'll see if you're going to talk or not," Faith said to the vampire. The vampire didn't look scared, and Faith didn't expect it to be scared. It would have been obvious to even the most dimwitted vampire that they were just trying to scare her, and Faith was wondering exactly what Buffy was going to bring out with her. Anything that looked lethal and looked like causing a lot of damage would be really good. "You know the best thing about vampires?" Faith asked rhetorically. She left a pause for a while before she continued. "It's really hard to kill you. All we have to do is stay away from the neck and the heart, and we can pretty much do anything we want." It was that moment that Buffy came back into the dining room, carrying a knife and a vile of holy water.

While Buffy and Faith were questioning the vampire, Willow decided that it was her time that she needed to speak with Giles. She had to let him know what was happening with her, and if there was anything she could do to not lose control again. Everyone had enough to worry about; the strange vampires that they had encountered; the open Hellmouth, with a barrier across it; the vampire attack that they had just fought through. They didn't need an out of control witch on their hands. She had pulled Giles into the kitchen, and she noticed the general look of concern on his face.

"Giles, I can't do this any more. I can't do any more magick. It feels as if I'm going to lose control again," Willow said to him. Giles just looked at her, and it was obvious that he was waiting for her to continue. "Earlier today, when the dimensional walls collapsed for only a couple of seconds, I completely lost control. It had felt like I had buried that, darkness deep down within me while we were at the coven, but that brought it back up again," Willow started. Giles just looked at her, nodding. "The Hellmouth is giving off a hell of a lot of power… pardon the pun," Willow said, realising what she had said. "Just being here in Sunnydale is hard. And earlier, when we went to the Hellmouth to get Buffy and Faith, I almost lost control from just being that close to it," Willow said.

"I recommend that you don't even try to use any magick at all, Willow," Giles said. Willow just felt like rolling her eyes and sighing; she knew that, she didn't need Giles telling her things she already knew. "For the time being, it looks as if we have some very capable magick users with us, with Oz and his friends arriving. I saw what they did in the battle, and they look fairly talented," Giles said. "It will be alright, we will get to the bottom of this. It just hit me that we never even began your training; we never accomplished what we set out to accomplish when we went to the coven. You need to learn to use your power, in the proper manner. I'm sure, growing up here on the Hellmouth and having to use magick the way that you were forced to has led to this," Giles explained. Willow couldn't help but notice that there was something very wrong with Giles and that he wasn't acting like himself at all. "For now, I think that we need to have some rest. We'll talk again in the morning," Giles said. Willow just looked at him, and decided to go along with it.

"Okay," she said while moving to leave the kitchen.

Morning had finally come around, and everyone was sitting around in the Summers' Lounge room. They were both waiting for Buffy and Faith, who had stayed up most of the night interrogating the vampire they had captured, as everyone knew from the constant screams that they had heard throughout the night. Those who weren't sitting were standing, and they were in a rough circle. There a couple of sides to this circle. On one side there was Willow, Giles, Dawn, and Xander. On another side there was Oz, Michaela, who was now almost fully healed, Nicola, Brett, Naomi and Daniel. On another side sat the three potentials and Cassia. Everyone was unsure of themselves. The people from Sunnydale didn't know most of these people who were in the location that they probably spent most of their time. The people not from Sunnydale didn't know these people that they had heard stories of from wherever they had come from. Finally, Buffy and Faith entered the room and looked around at everyone, who were looking at them.

"Good Morning everyone," Buffy said. "Nice to see that everyone's up."

"Like sleep was so easy with the constant screaming coming from down here," Xander said, then realising that his comment was a bit harsher than he had meant it to be. "Sorry. That came out wrong."

"Don't worry about it," Faith said to him. There was a slight pause before Buffy began.

"Okay, what we found out from the vampire," she begun. "Vamps all over town are banding together under the leadership of this red cloaked person that we saw last night, and this red cloaked person wants all of us, dead, surprise, surprise," Buffy started. Willow saw everyone looking at Buffy, not too surprised. She saw that Xander was about to say something, but Buffy continued on talking. "The way that this person, whatever it is, gets the vamps in line is that he shows them what's what. Those big dark hooded things that I told you all that I saw a while back, those things that were terrifying, literally terrifying and that cut through all the vamps…" Buffy started but was interrupted (Reference to Post Grave - Chapter 15).

"Syophers," Willow heard the girl called Naomi, one of Oz's friends, say. Everyone looked at her questioningly, everyone except those people from Oz's group.

"Syophers. They're called Syophers, those dark hooded things," Oz said. Everyone looked at him, not knowing what he was saying. Willow saw him look around at everyone, and she knew that he knew that none of them knew what he was saying. "Don't worry. Keep going. Tell us about this, and then we'll tell you what we know," Oz said. There was a pause, as Buffy remembered what bit she was up to.

"Okay, so this person in red, shows the vampires what these things, Seeofers, can do."

"Syophers," Oz corrected.

"Syophers. Right," Buffy replied.

"And then, the red cloaked person says that these Syophers will protect the vampires, from whatever they may need protecting from, as long as they form up on his side and agree to help kill us all," Faith explained.

"But it's kind of a no-refusal deal, because if the vamps refuse, these Syopher things, they kill them all," Buffy added. Willow knew that there was something off here, and she decided she was going to voice her opinion.

"That doesn't make sense," she said out loud. Everyone turned and looked at her. "If the red person can control these Syophers, or they work for him or whatever, and if they are the same things me and Giles saw at the Watchers Council, why do they need to control vampires to do their job. These Syophers are more than capable at doing the job, much better than vampires," Willow said (Reference to War Cries - Chapter 12 - Watchers, Slayers and Scoobies). Just then, the girl that had tried to heal Michaela the night before almost jumped out of her seat and looked around at everyone, her eyes wide.

"Something's coming!" She exclaimed. Everyone, except Oz's group, looked at the girl weirdly, very weirdly.

"What's coming Nicola?" Brett asked.

"I don't know, but it's powerful, whatever it is," Nicola replied, having regained some of her composure. She sat back down on her seat and closed her eyes.

"Nicola has a remarkable psychic ability and she's able to feel the energies of things around her," Michaela said out loud. Willow just looked at her and watched as her breathing slowed and she knew that her heart rate also slowed.

"Is it dangerous?" Oz asked. There seemed to be no reaction from Nicola as a complete silence encompassed the whole living room. After about a minute, the silence was shattered as Nicola replied. "No, but it's extremely powerful, and it's right outside," she replied. Suddenly, Willow and everyone else was startled by a knock on the door. Buffy was the one closest to the door, and trusting Nicola's word that it wasn't dangerous, she went to open it. Willow watched as Buffy stopped in mid motion as she pulled the door open, and she froze, instantly. Her mouth was half hanging open. Willow could also feel something now, even though she was trying to stop her magickal abilities, she could feel something outside, and she could feel something familiar. Willow was the first one to react, she got up and started to walk over to the open door which Buffy seemed frozen at. She looked out the doorway to the group of people standing before them, and that's when the world stood still.

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There's chapter 22. Reviews would be much appreciated.

Next chapter coming up - Chapter 23 - Shock of a Lifetime.

Things will be revealed to the Scooby Gang next chapter, and we'll find out more about Oz's group and what they've been doing. Things with Darla, Dru and Angelus will also be revealed too. Should be coming very soon.