"I wonder what was so bloody important, that they couldn't share." Spike complained to Gunn and Lorne as the three of them walked down the hall of the castle together. Even though it was daytime outside you wouldn't have known it as there were know windows along this particular corridor. Originally the hallway would have been lit with real torches, but since Giles didn't think it was a good idea to have real fire in a castle filled with teenage girls they ordered plastic torches from a mail order catalog.

"I still can't figure out how the great poof got invited into the inner sanctum and we didn't." Spike continued. "I get why they wanted Wes, with him being a watcher and all, but Peaches? We know just as much about what went on in hell as those two. I feel down right insulted to be left out. Not like I haven't helped out before. Time was when it would have just been me, red, Giles, and the Slayer in their figuring things out. Now, not only do I get left out, but they left me out for the great poof!" Spike looked clearly upset by the fact that Angel had been invited to the meeting and he hadn't.

"I'm sure they have their reasons for not filling us in on what is going on." Gunn responded sarcastically. "I'm not all that sure I would've wanted to be invited anyway. I'm not sure that we can really trust theses people. Sure, Willow and Faith are here, but still its not like we really know these people, and they sure seemed to make it pretty clear a few months ago that they didn't trust us." Gunn seemed to be thinking out loud rather than talking to anyone in particular. He knew very well why it was that Spike and Angel had trusted these people in the past, but that didn't mean that he had to be happy about it.

"You may not know these people Charlie-boy, but I do. These are the people who took care of me even when I didn't deserve it. Buffy gave me chance after chance, even after everything I did. Hell, they've even managed to forgive peaches, and he tried to suck the entire world into hell amongst other things." Spike suddenly became excited as he started to reminisce about his past experiences in Sunnydale. Whenever Spike got like this Gunn and Lorne knew that they were in for a long winded story about his adventures in Sunnydale. They were just glad that Angel wasn't around to join in. The stoic vampire always seemed to become chatty whenever Spike started in on one of their stories about their history on the hellmouth. "There was this one time when Angel wanted to know how to open the portal with the statue of Acathla, and he sent Dru after the humans while he distracted Buffy. Of course, she fell for it… and Dru bagged a slayer! Best of all she brought back the watcher and Angel tortured him for hours… I had really been hoping that Angel would get to that chainsaw that he kept talking about…"

"Uh Spike?" Lorne said

"Yeah" he responded.

"As much as I'm sure you enjoy reliving your escapades with Angelus, its way more than we need to know right now. As much as I love you guys, I'm still a little touchy on the subject of Angelus, especially after what happened last year." Lorne explained.

"I second that." Added Gunn.

"Wait! What do you mean 'what happened last year'?" Spike asked. He looked as if someone had just given him the best Christmas present ever, and Gunn and Lorne knew that they were going to be in BIG trouble with Angel once the older vampire found out what they had told Spike. "Are you actually saying that peaches went and lost that pesky soul of his a second time? Why didn't I hear about this? What happened? Did Angel finally get it on with someone new? I never thought he'd actually be that stupid! Wait till the slayer hears about this one! I wonder who the broad is that gave him his moment of perfect happiness. Who is this woman?" Just wait till Buffy hears about this! Spike thought to himself. Angel is never going to hear the end of it!

"There is no woman Spike." Gunn said quickly.

"What?! Are you saying that…? Well there was that one time when we… and he… but that was a LONG time ago and we were both evil and really really drunk and we're still not sure what happened and…" Spike seemed to once again have gone into reminiscing mode, and seemed to be talking to himself. Lorne and Gunn suddenly became very uncomfortable with the topic of discussion though and were willing to do whatever was necessary to get Spike to shut up.

"Whoa! That is WAY too much information! I really don't EVER want to hear about ANYTHING like that EVER again! I merely meant that it wasn't a woman that made Angel loose his soul." Spike seemed extremely confused by this bit of information. The only way he knew of that would make Angel loose his soul was if he and Buffy… "We had a shaman come in and magically take it out." Gunn interrupted Spikes thought process. Spike looked at Gunn as if he was crazy. "It was Wes's idea." Gunn added quickly. He didn't know how Spike would feel about his Grandsire loosing his soul, but he did know that he didn't want Spike to get upset with him under any circumstances. "I'm not sure exactly how it worked… but it did." Gunn added.

"What the bloody hell did you go and do THAT for? Are you nuts?!" Spike exploded. "You could've gotten yourselves killed! You could've gotten everyone killed! I didn't go around agreeing to work with the slayer to stop Angelus just to have you wankers turn around and undo all my handiwork. What WERE you thinking?! Does Buffy know about this?" Spike asked.

"No! And we're going to keep it that way!" Gunn said quickly. He knew very well that Angel would be very upset if Buffy ever found out about what had happened last year. That year had been a bad year for all of them, but at leas the rest of them hadn't gone on a killing spree. "For now at least…" Gunn continued. "Willow warned us after she restored Angel's soul that if we liked being alive and not in extreme pain that maybe it would be better if we didn't tell Buffy, and since I like my face the way it is and don't fancy having it rearranged, we're not going to be doing any speaking of any kind about what happened last year. Understood?" Gunn looked at Spike. He knew that he was going to have a hard time convincing Spike to keep this bit of information from the Slayer as it exactly the kind of information Spike just loved to spout off about Angel in order to piss him off. Gunn just hoped that they could get Spike to keep his mouth shut long enough that he could give Angel advanced warning.

"You're not the boss of me! I'll tell whomever I want to tell! Lucky for you this is the kind of information that I'm going to put away for a rainy day. You never know when you're going to need information liked this to get the slayer really ticked off at Angel." Spike explained, as he opened the tall oak double doors to the mess hall.

The mess hall was a large room in the middle of the castle that had either once been a meeting hall or a church. No one from Sunnydale really knew for sure which. It had the stain glass windows of a church, however there were know other signs that it had been used as one. It was a large room with a tall vaulted ceiling held up by flying buttresses. The walls were all made of stone and the only windows in the room were high up and were covered with stained glass. Fortunately for Spike there weren't very many crosses on the windows and the stained glass did a good job of blocking out the sun. The large room was filled with dozens of large wooden tables that looked like really big picnic benches. Dawn, Robyn, Andrew, and Xander were already in the mess hall seated together at one of the tables in the front center of the room. Spike went right over to them and sat down next to Dawn. He wasn't particularly fond of Robyn or Xander, but he had a lot of catching up to do with the slayer's sister. He had heard some rumor that she had been a giant for a few weeks and he was wondering whether or not that was actually true. He also wanted to fill her in on his adventures at Wolfram and Hart. He had a feeling that she would enjoy some of the stories that he could tell, particularly one about a certain vampire turning into a 'wee little puppet man'.

After Spike went over to the table and sat down next to Dawn. Lorne and Gunn stood near the door to the mess hall awkwardly, feeling really out of place before Spike told them to sit down next to him. They did as he told them too. Spike quickly introduced the two men to the others at the table, and explained to everyone that Lorne was a good demon who can read your aura if you sing. Almost immediately Andrew asked if he could sing for Lorne and Lorne was about to explain that they might want to wait until later when Connor, Nina, and Gwen walked into the room.

The three of them came into the room walking sided by side. They seemed inseparable from one another as if using each other for protection from everyone else in the castle. This seemed odd to everyone except Spike, who knew just how hard it had been for the three of them in hell and how they had very much depended on one another for survival. Robyn, Andrew, Xander, Gunn and Lorne all eyed the three suspiciously as they walked across the room to the table next to where everyone else was seated. Dawn looked at Connor as if Orlando Bloom had just walked into the room. Spike however was the only one to notice this as everyone else's attentions were fixed on Connor, Gwen and Nina. Oh no! thought Spike, as he watched Dawn's reaction to Angel's son. The slayer is not going to be happy about this! He quickly tried to regain her attention by continuing his story about his adventures with Angel, but she seemed more interested in watching Connor. Gwen and Nina had seated themselves next to Connor at the table next to the table where the others were seated. They seemed to be whispering to one another about something, and Xander and Robyn quickly launched into defensive mode. Neither of them knew what but there was something about those three that really irked them.

Little did they know, but Gwen, Connor, and Nina were just as suspicious of the others as the others were of them. Gwen and Nina kept asking what they were doing here and why they should trust these people. Connor didn't really have a good answer for them. He just knew that it really wasn't safe for them to be on their own when Wolfram and Hart might still be after them. He also knew that these people had saved them from Hell, and in his book that put them in the good column, at least temporarily. He knew that he had met two of them women that had found them in Los Angeles before in his previous life with Angel, but those memories were all muddled up with the fake ones and he wasn't sure exactly how or why he knew those women could be trusted, he just knew.

Xander, who had become fed up at this point with the suspicious behavior of the three people seated at the other table was about to make a comment about how they were whispering to one another when Giles, Wesley, Willow, Faith, Buffy, and Angel all walked into the room. Spike, who knew Xander fairly well and knew that he was about to make an inappropriate remark had been preparing to diffuse the situation when he saw the others walk in. Instead of sitting down at one of the tables like the others in the room the six newest arrivals remained standing at the front. It was as if they were all back in school and the teachers had just arrived to take them back to their classrooms.

"Okay" said Giles. "I believe we have some things that we need to discuss. Is everyone here?" He asked looking around the room.

"Illyria and that guy with the weird blue eyes aren't here yet." Spike told them.

"We're right here!" Groo said happily as he waved and smiled at everyone and made his way across the room with a very grouchy looking Illyria. "I apologize if we have offended anyone with our tardiness, but the torches with flame that does not burn were quite interesting. Neither I nor Illyria could figure out how they worked. It seems as if they were created by some magic." Everyone from Los Angeles who had known these two just rolled their eyes, while a few of the people from Sunnydale snickered. Illyria looked as if she was about to make a comment along the lines of "How dare you accuse me of being late! I am always on time as things start the moment I arrive!" Wesley noticed that she seemed irate and walked over to her bringing her back towards him and they stood next to each by the others. This seemed to soften Illyria and the others from Wolfram and Hart relaxed once they discovered that there wasn't going to be another outburst.

"Alright" said Giles in an authoritative manner. "Let's start by having everyone introduce themselves and tell us who they are, what they are doing here, and most importantly explain any sort of supernatural powers they posses that might be useful in the coming battle."

"Oooh! I'll start!" said Andrew raising his hand. Everyone in the room either rolled their eyes or glared at him.

"Go ahead." Giles said exasperatedly.

"Okay, so my name is Andrew….."