Here it is folks. This is the most intricate and long running "Story Arc" of this story. By "Story Arc", i mean a series of events unfolding to give an outcome... The events i am talking about Span from the beginning chapters of Post Grave to now, chapter 40 of War Cries. I believe, that, if you've read this chapter and know what happens, and for some reason you decide to read the story again, you'll pick up on most of the hints. Some of them are so subtle that i've forgotten some of them (due to my long periods of not writing).

I've referenced a LITTLE amount of things, because it's 11:40 at night and i can't be bothered to search through the what must be somewhere like 170,000 words for references to things that have happened in the story.

Chapter 40

Intricate Plotting

Flashback – 9 Days Ago - Timeline of Chapter 33

(Start of section copied and pasted directly from Chapter 33).

Sunnydale Morgue – Sunnydale – California

Amanda couldn't believe how much things had degenerated in so short of a time as they had driven from the warehouse to the morgue. The black hooded figures were running through the streets almost totally unopposed, they had to run over a couple of them just to get here. There was no way that the Coven was on time, they had been too late. They had quickly looked up the records and found their comrades bodies. She had considered staying in the town, but it was only a slight consideration. Currently she knew that they had to return to the Coven and regroup as quickly as possible. They were half way through transporting the body of their second comrade to the van when two things occurred simultaneously. One was that the Crystal hanging around Amanda's neck activated and she heard Samantha's voice in her head.

"Amanda, we need you at the Coven at once. Things are going to get out of hand quickly and we need you. This Crystal will generate a portal which should end up right in the middle of the Covenstead," Samantha's Voice echoed through Amanda's head. The other thing to happen was that the doors burst open and the Slayer Faith came through them.

Faith saw the people moving the dead bodies and recognised them at once. They were the ones who attacked both her and Buffy, and who apparently killed her. She had the feeling that they were up to no good and realised that Cordelia must have sent her here to stop them. Almost as soon as she had come in through the doors, a portal opened in the centre of the room.

"You're dead," one of the two women out of three people said. Faith recognised her as the leader from the last time. From what she knew, she was fast and lethal, and her green eyes sent a chill down her spine.

"Yeah, I was," Faith replied. "I'm Faith version two, improved and more kick ass than the last version," Faith replied sarcastically. Faith saw the woman eyeing the portal in the middle of the room and knew that they were going to make a move for it very soon. As if the woman could read her mind, she and the other two of her team dashed for the portal. Faith ran for them in an effort to stop them, but she was knocked over and forward, and before she knew it, she came to a stop and looked up. The last time she remembered, the ceiling of a morgue wasn't blue sky and trees. She turned and looked to the ground, and found that she was lying on a forest floor. She flipped herself up and looked around to see that she was in the middle of a forest, the woman and the other two members of her team were behind her, and there were a number of other people looking at her.

"Shit," she said.

(End of section taken directly from Chapter 33/Start of Unknown events)

Faith looked around her and there were now people coming, and she could see that at least two of them had a crossbow in their arms. She looked to see that the woman she had been trying to stop in the Morgue was walking over to one of the men and that she had grabbed his crossbow and was now pointing it directly at Faith's head. Faith wasn't going to take any chances with these people, after all they had once killed her (reference to Chapter 29 – Steps towards Evolution), but that had been before she was a hopped up super-slayer. Still, she was pretty sure that she couldn't dodge a crossbow bolt from two metres away.

"Who are you?" Faith asked the woman.

"My name's Amanda, that's all I can let you know for now," the woman replied.

"Why? I think I deserve to know what's going on? You tried, no you DID kill me!" Faith replied looking at her straight in her emerald green eyes which seemed to have a slight animalistic characteristic to them. Faith didn't realise that her concentration had wavered until someone moved, bringing her out of her day-dream. She turned and looked at the people surrounding her. There were the other two members of this Amanda's team, all with the same haunting green eyes and brown hair. There were also four young girls who could only be a few years younger than herself who had obviously been waiting on this side of the protal for Amanda and her team to return. Faith could tell that the girls were fighters and that they were on edge by the way they stood and the way they looked at her. Faith judged that she'd be able to take down three of them before Amanda would be able to get a clear shot at her, but Faith decided to wait it out, as they hadn't killed her, again, yet. She received a poke in her back by the front of the crossbow, instructing her to move forward.

"Walk to the path straight ahead," Amanda said to Faith. She did as she was told, but not before resisting a bit and not moving at all.

Five minutes later they had arrived in a large clearing in the forest with a lot of sunlight streaming down from the gap in the canopy above. Faith looked up to the sky to see that the sun was only just rising. Faith knew that it had been just past sunset in Sunnydale, and she figured that they must have lost some time while travelling through the portal. She was nudged from behind by the crossbow, pointing her in the direction of a large wooden cabin in the middle of the clearing. She looked around as she walked, noticing that there were smaller cabins within the tree line, and that there was twenty odd people just milling about the area. Faith heard a loud crack from above, and she looked up only to see a wave of blue energy pass across her vision of the sky.

"Move," Amanda prodded again. Faith stopped looking up at the sky and resumed her movement towards the cabin.

They entered the cabin and Faith saw a large rug in the centre of the floor. A number of strange looking items decorated the tops of side-tables, with some of them seeming to glow a bit. The cabin had electric lamps mounted on the walls, illuminating the insides of it. Faith admitted that it was a large cabin in which at least seventy or more people would be able to fit into. At the far end was a raised section with a table and two chairs, each facing their end of the cabin. Faith could see that there were two older-looking people sitting in the chairs, pointing to something on the table and discussing it with each other. Faith stepped further into the cabin, and saw that her escort remained, minus two of the young girls which had obviously gone off elsewhere. When she heard the door close behind her, the two people at the table looked their way and got up and started to walk over to them. Upon closer inspection, Faith could see that one was an older woman, her posture told Faith that she had great power and authority, or at least completely believed that she did. The older man's image said that he was wise beyond his years, which judging by his appearance, must have made him one of the wisest men on the planet.

"Amanda, it's good to see you return," the old woman said. Faith was startled when the woman spoke, her voice was similar to that of a twenty year old. Faith had expected a crabby, old, croaking voice, not the one of youth, energy and spirit which came out of this woman. "And who's this you've brought with you?"

"This is Faith," Amanda replied.

"Faith the Vampire Slayer?" the older man questioned.

"Yes, this is she," one of Amanda's team mates replied. There was a moment of silence before the older woman spoke again.

"Didn't you say that she was dead?" the woman queried Amanda.

"As far as I knew, she was," Amanda replied.

"How'd she get here?" the older man asked.

"She turned up just as we opened the portal and got in the way. I knocked her through trying to get past her," Amanda replied.

"Hey, hey, standing right here!" Faith commented. At that, everyone fell quiet and looked at her. Faith didn't have a clue who these people were, where they were from, where she was now, or what they wanted. There was a long silence as the pair of older people stood in contemplation.

"Amanda, you and your team need to stay, everyone else may go," the elderly woman said after a while. Faith watched as the younger girls left the building and Amanda's team slowly surrounded Faith. The elderly woman waved her hand, and the team stopped and allowed Faith to move about freely.

"Come Faith, I imagine that you have many questions, and we have much to discuss," the older man said to her while gesturing for her to come forward. Faith looked behind her and saw that Amanda had lowered the crossbow.

"Yeah, that's right, I got a tonne of questions… First of all, who the hell are you people, and where the hell are we?" Faith demanded while stepping forward, almost in the elderly man's face. Faith was surprised that he didn't even flinch, back away, or break eye contact with her. He slowly nodded and continued. "You are in the middle of Exmoor Forrest in England," he started.

"England!" Faith replied, obviously surprised.

"Yes," the elderly woman replied. "We are a Coven of witches, and this is our Covenstead," she continued. Faith didn't know what a Covenstead was, and she guessed that this Elderly woman picked up on it. "It's where we live."

"Oh, forgive our rudeness. I am Montague, and this is Samantha. We are the High Priest and High Priestess of this Coven, in other words, we are the leaders," The elderly man explained to Faith.

"Am I a prisoner here?" Faith asked them. Samantha and Montague looked at each other, and gave it a moment's consideration. To Faith, it seemed as if they were talking to each other without words, which she guessed was probably true, since they were the leaders of a group of Witches. There was something about them that she knew that she should know, but she couldn't put her finger on it at the moment.

"In a sense, yes," Samantha said to her. Faith could feel herself shaking her head slightly.

"You are free to move around the Covenstead, but you can not leave," Montague said.

"Yeah, and who's going to stop me?" Samantha and Montague looked at each other again, as if deciding if they should tell Faith something or not.

"You can leave if you can," Samantha said. "But there's nearly one and a half thousand vampires, bringers and various demons surrounding the perimeter of this place that will stop you," Samantha added. Faith could feel her eyes bulge at the mention of the number.

"One and a half thousand?" Faith questioned them.

"Yes," Montague answered. Faith didn't know what to think at the moment. If there were one and a half thousand vamps, bringer and demons surrounding the place, why wasn't everyone here dead and the place burned to the ground. Immediately, the answer struck her. They were alive because they were on the same side. It made perfect sense. The people who were guarding her had tried, and succeeded in killing her, so this Coven had to be bad news. Faith's stomach almost leapt out of her throat, but she did her best to show that nothing had changed. With one quick swift movement she took three quick steps to her side, punched one of Amanda's team in the midgut, used his body to swing herself around him so that she was behind him and wrapped her elbow around his neck and began to squeeze. She was surprised by the reaction time of the rest of Amanda's team, as they were already in positions that would benefit them the most, Amanda already having the crossbow pointing straight at the only exposed part of her body; her head.

"You know I'm not fast enough to dodge a crossbow bolt. But I am fast enough to shove him in the way of one coming for me," Faith said directly to Amanda. Faith began to back away with the man in her grasp towards the doorway. "Call the vamps and them off and tell them to let me through or I will snap his neck," she commanded.

"We can't do that Faith," Samantha said calmly while slowly approaching Faith. "We're as much of a prisoner here as you are Faith. They've surrounded us to keep us in," Samantha said.

"What?" Faith asked in confusion.

"We have known about The First coming for a long time now, and we've had a plan all along which could very well stop the vampires and bringers under it's control. We tried our hardest to keep it completely secret, but somehow, it found out, and now, it's throwing all it can spare at us," Samantha said slowly so that it would sink into Faith's head (Reference to the first time it's revealed the Coven knows something – POST GRAVE – End of Chapter 14).

"We have a barrier over the surrounding area. It's the most powerful barrier that we've constructed and for now, it's keeping them all at bay," Montague added.

"That's what that was," Faith said, referring to the energy wave that had passed over the sky as she was entering the building. Montague slowly nodded his head.

"That wasn't the barrier itself. The barrier is invisible until something interacts with it. That crack you heard as you arrived was one of our witches repairing the barrier," Montague explained. Faith released her grip on the man in front of her slightly. It made sense, but immediately she tightened her grip on his neck.

"Why'd you send these people to kill me in Sunnydale?" Faith questioned with the same ferocity as before. These were the people responsible for killing her. If it hadn't been for Buffy, and whatever mystical forces that was behind both her and Buffy, 'evolving', she'd be rotting in Hell right now.

"We were meant to bring you back here, alive," Amanda said to her, "but things got out of hand."

"Why were you going to bring me back here?" Faith questioned again.

"You're a part of our plan, Faith," Samantha calmly replied. Suddenly, out of no where, her brain connected the dots. She had heard about Samantha, Montague and this Coven before.

"You're the ones who almost killed Willow! You tried to take her power against her will!" Faith almost screamed (Reference – POST GRAVE – Chapters 1 to 10, all sections dealing with Willow). She now knew how powerful these people could be.

"That was a part of our plan too, however Willow was never meant to be hurt. We needed her power to accomplish our goals," Montague said to Faith.

"Oh yeah! And what are your goals?" Faith questioned them, enforcing her grip on their person.

"To defeat The First Evil," Montague replied.

"How!" Faith barked back.

"By creating an army of Vampire Slayers," Montague answered to Faith. Faith didn't know what to think, a Vampire Slayer army. She didn't know how such a thing was possible.

"And that's what you've done here? Those girls? They were Slayers?" Faith questioned.

"Yes, they are. They all are," Samantha answered. "We are on your side Faith, we will not hurt you."

"Oh yeah, then why the armed escort?" Faith questioned again.

"Because we believe that you would hurt us, given your perspective," Montague said. Faith knew that her mind was beginning to believe it, but there was still one little detail that she needed to know.

"How?" Faith questioned. "How would you make a Slayer Army, and why was I needed?" Faith saw both Samantha and Montague look at each other again, before they started to explain.

"The original plan was to get you to come here, and to magickally make your body and mind believe that it was dead, and therefore transfer the Slayer power, but you wouldn't be dead, your body would only think that it was. We would then essentially revive you, and then go onto the next Slayer. We distributed our people throughout the world, posing as agents of The Watchers Council to get Potential Slayers to come to our location, because if you have a lot of Potential Slayers in one location, it would be much quicker to go through the process of making them all Slayers," Samantha began to explain (Reference – WAR CRIES – Chapter 13: Never Underestimate Potential, Chapter 13: Unlocking Potential, Chapter 14: Coming Home, Chapter 16: Showdown, Chapter 20:The Beginning of the End) (Shows path that "Skye and Rhonda" took to get from their home to The Coven, and everything else to do that I can find (there is more) to do with The Coven creating Their Slayer Army. Haven't even looked in Post Grave, but there's a lot there))).

"We had to keep everything as secret as possible. That's why we only used our people, such as Amanda and her team here. We couldn't tell the Watchers' Council, we couldn't tell anyone what was going on, because if someone else knew, then the probability of The First, or anything else for that matter learning of our plan would dramatically increase," Montague added for Samantha.

"However, not everything went according to plan. In order to trick the body and mind to believe that it is dead, a lot of power is needed. We needed the power that Willow possessed, but we didn't get it. Some of it was originally ours, and some was hers and other people's that she had absorbed. We tried to coax it out of her, but she wouldn't give it up, so finally we tried to take it out of her, but it didn't work. You see, if this procedure is performed without a large amount of power and control, the subject has a much higher risk of actually dying, and we couldn't have four out of every five girls we did the procedure to, die. We were going to get you here, do the procedure on you, and then let you go. Then, we would repeat it on the next Slayer, and the next Slayer, until we had an army of Slayers," Montague said. Faith took a long moment to absorb it all. She slowly and purposefully connected the dots in her head. They needed her, for the Slayer Power to be passed onto one of the girls that they had here, who they could control. Since she died anyway, they didn't need her any longer.

"You didn't get Willow's power? So how'd you do this?" Faith queried. There was a long moment before Samantha finally broke the silence.

"You have to understand that we are on a deadline. If we didn't get enough Slayers by a certain time, The First would have too many resources around the world, and all this would have been to waste. We had to get the Slayers activated and trained as soon as possible," Samantha said.

"How?" Faith demanded.

"We had to use a combination of science and technology to stop the girls' hearts for at least seven minutes before reviving them," Samantha said. "That's the required time for a Slayer to be dead before her powers are passed on." Faith couldn't believe what she was hearing. They had killed every one of the girls in the camp and brought them back to life in order to create the Slayer army. Sure, the end justifies the means, Faith thought, but not if the end was an army of seriously emotionally scarred Slayers. She knew that if they were the good people that they were, that they would have done it that way first, if it was totally safe, instead of trying to take the power from Willow. The fact that they hadn't tried that method first led Faith to the conclusion that it wasn't safe at all.

"How many didn't come back?"

"Ten, out of thirty," Montague said after a long moment's silence.

"You sick bastards. You murdered ten innocent girls," Faith said.

Later that Day

Faith walked through the grounds of the Covenstead. She looked at the girls who were sitting by a fire, and some girls who were sitting on the front steps of one of the caverns. She thought about what she knew was happening in the world. She knew that most of them would live to see the ones around them die before they died themselves, because they were special. They were "Chosen". They had the strength to stand before the forces of darkness. It made Faith sick to think of what means that Samantha and Montague had gone to to create this army, and at the moment, they didn't look too much like an army at all, just a bunch of sad, frightened little girls. Faith was going to do everything that she could to stand up and protect these girls. They didn't deserve this. They didn't' deserve to become A Slayer, just because they were 'needed' for a cause which may be hopeless, according to Samantha and Montague.

Faith had an idea to get things started in the right direction, and get some influence from outside the Coven into these girls. She needed to know if Samantha and Montague's people could do it or not. She headed into the cabin and confronted Samantha and Montague head on.

"Can you divide up the area that the barrier is over into sections, by using magick or what-not?" Faith asked them, interrupting their conversation.

"Yes, we can. Why?" Montague asked.

"Because I know how we can get out of here," Faith replied.

"Where would we go then. More will come after us," Samantha stated.

"We go to Sunnydale, where these girls are needed the most. Usually that's the place where everything goes down. And these girls are Slayers now, and there's nothing I can do about it, and there's nothing that I can do about how they became Slayers. We're Slayers, We're needed," Faith said, knowing that it was a long shot at best.

"How do you propose we get out of this mess first?" Samantha asked.

"We all get together in one group. You split the space underneath the barrier up into a heap of sections, with littler barriers. Then, all we do is let them come, turn on the barrier, and then there's sections of them trapped. We can go and take out a section at a time with all our numbers until there's none left," Faith suggested. She was extremely surprised by her thoughts, and she had no idea where they had come from. Back in the day, she would have never thought of something like that, she would have preferred to go down fighting, taking as many of them with her as possible. She was still planning on doing that, without the 'going down' part. Deep down, Faith knew that she wasn't "back in the day", and that a lot had happened to her since that time, including the destruction, resurrection, and improvement of her body, mind and spirit.

Present Day – 11:00 A.M. – Base Camp Meeting Point – Sunnydale – California.

Faith could see a death glare emanating from a certain red head. She was lucky that it wasn't going towards her, because she would be slightly scared. She had heard about what Willow could do, and seen some of it first hand, and Faith was praying now that she wasn't either Samantha or Montague, at which Willow's anger was directed. Faith looked to Giles, who had been there as well, and she was sure that she didn't want to get on his wrong side, ever again by the look on his face. He looked as if he was going to go "ripper" on their asses. She had heard from Xander what Ripper was like. Faith smiled at the idea of Ripper, she always knew that Giles had to have a bad side. Faith looked to Cassia, who she remembered used to be a resident at the Covenstead, and she just saw pure and utter disgust on her face.

"Due to these amulets around our Slayers' necks, The First can't detect them, or anyone wearing one. Therefore, The First has no idea of the number of Slayers that we have, or no idea of where we are at the moment. If what you say is true, and we have to go to the Hellmouth at least in the next two hours, The First will be surprised by our numbers, that much I can guarantee," Samantha said to everyone.

TWO HOURS UNTIL "IT HAPPENS"

Anyway,that is the "conclusion" of this arc, however the events that have led upto this point will continue to have an effect on characters in the story...

and, you can use your own imagination to fill in the blanks of how The Coven, The Slayers and Faith got to sunnydale. It's a big fight, sectioning off large groups of vamps and bringers in order to take out a smaller numebr, and then doing so again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and you get the point.

Ie, think of the Future timeline, where both Buffy and Faith seem to Command different groups of warriors (many of Faith's include Slayers, one of which is Skye). That's eventually where this "Story Arc" is now headed, although not very important to the story (Faith's determination to protect these new Slayers).

Next Chapter- Chapter 41

It might be a while for Chapter 41 to come up, as 'It happens' in this chapter, and i am going to try and make it better than EVERY other chapter i've done (Yes, that includes 'Renasence" and "The Beginning of The End").

5 Days maximum!