A/N: Some dialogue taken from "School Hard".

Judge, jury, and executioner. Buffy tried not to squirm in her chair. She couldn't get how her two fellow victims could just sit there, as if Snyder's oily smirk didn't matter. Sheila might as well be waiting for her nails to dry, and Akira...

Even with the walls trying to close in around her, Buffy had to take a second look. Akira was still, not calm.

"Tell me," Snyder mused, "who do you think is the most troublesome student in this school?"

Akira's not watching the troll, Buffy realized. He's watching Snyder's shadow.

Which actually might make sense, given what Giles had told them about the Japanese transfer student's apparent previous close encounters with the creepy.

"There isn't a great deal known, so I can sum up," Giles had stated, opening one of his less-dusty tomes to an illustration of paired white and black creatures surrounded by spiky letters. "Light creatures and shadow creatures. Mares and moroi. In Japan, the few who know of them call them hakua and kokuchi. They're rarely seen by normal humans. Which is just as well, because they're normally quite harmless to us."

"Say what?" Xander had jabbed a finger at edged claws. "Somebody crossed the Terminator with a velociraptor, and it's harmless?"

"I sense a but," Buffy smirked.

"Indeed." Giles held up a hand to ward off incoming questions. "Bear in mind that I haven't made an in-depth study of these creatures, or the magic they use. But according to Master Shuichi Wagatsuma, a healing adept of my acquaintance-"

Healing adept? Oh man, she so had to pin Giles down about that later-

"-light and shadow are two essential sides of the same reality. Every creature in the world we live in, the world of light, must have a shadow to support it. And every shadow in the other world must have something of light to serve as a counterpart - to 'cast' it, as it were," Giles stated. "Light and shadow are forever entwined, yet meant to be forever separate, barred from each other by a thin membrane of reality."

"Ooo yeah," Buffy sighed. "Definitely a but."

"Meant to be. You mean, they aren't always?" Willow glanced at the image nervously.

"Apparently not," Giles admitted. "According to Wagatsuma, the evening hours between about 10 PM to 3 AM tend to be times the membrane is weak, and may tear. Something to do with the natural flow of earth's magnetic field, he believes." He gestured toward the open tome. "When a tear occurs, so long as it is small, the kokuchi and hakua gather on either side of it and mend the damage."

Buffy nodded, resigned. "And when it's not small?"

"Then things can become rather sticky," Giles had said dryly. "Some kokuchi will attack humans directly. Others will possess them, and drive them into acting out their darkest desires."

"So." Xander had clapped his hands together. "We'll know one gets Snyder when he tries to burn down the school with us in it."

Giles hadn't laughed. And remembering that now made Buffy glance at Snyder's shadow herself, just in case.

Nope, just Snyder-shadow. If Giles was right about Wagatsuma's theory, and people had to have shadows to exist - um. She almost kind of had to feel sorry for it, being stuck to a troll.

"Well, it's quite a match between you three." Snyder's tone dripped satisfaction, as his fingers tapped on opened folders. "On the one hand, two of you have never stabbed a horticulture teacher with a trowel."

"I didn't stab anyone with a trowel." Sheila eyed her nails. "They were pruning shears."

Snyder snorted. "On the other hand, Sheila has never burned down a school building."

"W-well, that was never proven," Buffy got out before she could think twice. "The Fire Marshal said it could have been mice..."

Wait a minute. Sheila hadn't burned down school buildings? Then, that meant Akira-

"Mice," Snyder said, deadpan. Eyed Akira. "I suppose they were Japanese mice."

"Mice have all kinds of unsavory habits," Akira said levelly. "That's why I like cats."

"So you told the officers, after you assaulted three members of the swim team for allegedly trying to abuse an animal." Snyder glared at the lone boy under his thumb. "As if our dedicated student athletes would ever behave like the hooligans you three are."

"And yet the officer noticed I was the only one without scratches." Akira leaned back in his chair, cool and casual.

Damn it! Buffy tried to catch his gaze. This is no time for quipping!

"Only a few weeks, and you've managed to tie these two in the class-cutting and fight-starting events," Snyder said dryly. He looked over all three of them again. "You're all neck and neck. It's exciting."

Sheila glanced up from her nails. "What does the winner get?"

"Expelled."

Buffy sucked in a breath, as if she'd been punched in the gut. He couldn't do that. Could he?

"Thursday is Parent-Teacher night," Snyder said with dark relish. "Your parents, assuming you have any-"

Oh man, she could see that hit a nerve with Akira. His knuckles went pale on the chair edge, and gray eyes were as hard as Giles picking up a mace.

"-will meet your teachers, assuming you have any left." Snyder's nose twitched. "You three are going to be in charge of this event. You have three days to prepare refreshments, make banners, and transform the school lounge into a habitable place for adults. This will incur my goodwill."

From the way Akira's lips thinned, Buffy would have bet Twinkies that they shared the same thought. What goodwill?

"Are we clear?"

"I'm clear," Buffy said swiftly. Looked at the others. "Don't you feel clear?"

Sheila stared back, bored. "Hai," Akira said, short and clipped.

Snyder's eyes narrowed. "English, Nikaidou."

"Yes," Akira bit out. "You are clear."

"We're very clear," Buffy said firmly.

Crystal clear. The fate of her continued school career and her mother's hopes that she would behave and graduate high school like a normal kid, all hinged on her, a girl who stabbed teachers with shears, and a guy who still gave her the wiggins every time they were in the same room.

Cheer up, Buffy told herself firmly. It can't get worse.

"I was wrong," Buffy muttered under her breath, as the two of them stood on the school sidewalk and watched Sheila prance off to deep-throat a longhaired blond. "It can get worse."

Akira stared after his fellow miscreant with the kind of sinking feeling he hadn't had since Kengo had demanded to be part of their fight against the kokuchi. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the two teenagers who seemed to be Buffy's friends approaching. Warily. Well, fine; they all had a lot more to worry about than whether he wanted to play nice with the school's computer wallflower and the ultimate non-jock. "We're in trouble."

Xander crossed his arms, trying to look nonchalant. "What's this we, paleface?"

Dark hair, alert dark eyes; didn't move like he'd been trained to fight, Akira judged, but he at least had a good sense of balance. A fight with him would probably take more than one punch, but he was likely to swing wild-

Akira narrowed his eyes a moment, and took a deliberate breath. I do not want to fight. Hear that, Shirogane? "The principal is counting on one of us to screw up. Or all of us. So yes, it's we. At least until this Parent-Teacher night is over."

"Not to rain on the parade of bonding in the face of trolldom, but why do you care?" Buffy said bluntly. "Like you said. One of us. Or all of us. Or maybe just two of us."

"Buffy!" Willow almost wrung her hands, face stricken and bewildered as Shirogane finally realizing he'd made one innuendo too many.

"Heh. Who says I do care?" Akira shrugged, glancing past them to sweep the shadows for anything twitching where it shouldn't be. If a tear was bad enough, kokuchi didn't care about daylight. "My mother probably won't even show up." He looked into green eyes, and wondered why they made hairs prickle on the back of his neck. Aya was a vicious fighter, but even when she pulled her Kuresame, the head of the discipline committee had never made him feel like there was something supernatural right there.

But even a kokuchi-possessed person was still a person in there, so Akira told his nerves to suck it up and deal. He knew what he'd seen in Snyder's office.

"Snyder will throw me out," Akira said casually. "Or he won't. I don't care." He shifted his weight back, noticing how Willow let out her breath in a silent whew as the incipient fight dissolved. "But you care. That means your parents still worry about you. No one should throw that away."

Like I did.

No, not fair. For him, throwing it away had never been an option. Half the time he'd been dodging kokuchi, his mother had been jetting to high-rise penthouses and meetings at company levels so rarified, the average janitor got nosebleeds. He didn't have to try to keep her clueless.

Buffy was heading into the library when I went out. And Giles said students helped him.

And the way Willow and Xander stood, angled so their lines of sight at least partially covered Buffy's blind spots - Akira thought he might have a good guess who those students were.

So here he was in yet another school turned supernatural ground zero, with a classmate trying to keep Evil from taking over the world and still be an average high school student, while parents gave her disappointed looks and a goblin of a principal was rubbing his hands just waiting to expel her. Ouch. At least he'd never really wanted to be normal.

Heh. So instead of being a shin almost turned into the rei King, I get headaches and the chance to dodge fangs. I guess it's close enough to weird.

Though there was a more serious threat than vampires here. If he did pitch in and help Buffy survive this, he'd be threatening his newly-made reputation as an aloof loner. In a school where mob violence wouldn't just include the average stone-brained jock and malicious bully, but body-snatching mad scientists and who knew what else. All of whom probably had very personal grudges against a girl who'd helped stop them.

...Damn it.

Shirogane was wrong. He had to be. Akira didn't want to fight.

But Buffy had helped save someone's life the other night, and that... that deserved more from him than just a shrug and not my problem.

I don't want to fight. Doesn't mean I won't.

Deliberately meeting green eyes, Akira smirked. "Snyder's a goblin. Don't you want to see his face when he realizes we beat him? It should be worth every minute of the work." He swept a glance over all three of them again, and tilted his head. "Lunch. Banners, and we talk about refreshments, you said?"

"Okay, that's it. I'm putting a collar with a little bell on that guy." Xander folded his arms, as if the California night had spawned a chill breeze with Angel's disappearance. "Maybe on both of them. Japanese guy's already got the collar."

Buffy tugged her gaze away from the library doors, wishing she could tug back her heart with it. Seriously, if Angel had only planned to show up for a minute of enigmatic name-dropping, couldn't he have done it at the Bronze instead? They could have danced. Maybe. Or had coffee.

"Akira has a name," Willow protested.

"And Name-guy gives Buffy a wiggins," Xander shrugged. "Wills, he showed up on time to do slave labor for Snyder. No human guy does that. We have to go with the wiggins."

"Wiggins?" Ms. Calendar raised dark eyebrows, and gave Giles a surprised look. "Okay, what don't I know about our new transfer student? Besides the fact that he's managed not to break any computers yet and my runes say he's wearing a pretty unusual protective amulet."

"An amulet?" Giles started. "In truth, I should say that doesn't surprise me. Wagatsuma is a responsible healer. If anyone under his care was still less than well when they had to leave him behind, he'd certainly take measures to see that his patient was protected."

Protective amulets. Oh, peachy. "Is this going to be another of those doesn't work for the Slayer, might work for everybody else things?" Buffy put in. Nicely. She was trying for nicely, anyway. Maybe she could get points for effort?

"No, probably not." Ms. Calendar shrugged, a half-smile on her face. "Making amulets that work besides just a psychological placebo effect is a pretty skilled subset of magical crafting. A good amulet has to resonate with the maker and the user. Your Watcher would probably have more luck writing abracadabras-"

Giles almost winced. "Please, must you?"

"Acrostic diminishing charms?" The technopagan's smile was cat-snarfed-the-cream. "Honestly, if I were you, I'd try an abecedarius. You have to go with your strengths. And a poem would fit everyone here a lot better than the mathemagical concept of weakening a malevolent force by whittling away at its name."

Buffy traded a look with Xander. We're going to hate asking, aren't we?

Yep, Xander's wince agreed. "What's an ABC... whatever?"

"Abecedarius," Giles rolled out, with the confidence of a guy who ate demon names for breakfast with a spot of tea on the side. "A rather old-fashioned form of poem. You can find it in some of the Psalms in the original Hebrew. Simply put, each line of the poem begins with a letter of the alphabet, in order."

"And this is magic," Buffy said skeptically.

"Well, maybe?" Willow was bouncing on her toes, like this was some of the best math ever. "These days everybody thinks you can describe the world with enough numbers. Only back a few centuries, not so much with the numbers. Everything was words. And words are all letters. So if you can get all the letters in - bam! You've got something for everything... or maybe I'm totally wrong..."

"Not at all." Giles brightened, giving her an appreciative nod. "There are various other aspects to the theory behind an abecedarius charm, but that is essentially it. To name a thing is to have power over it; and if your charm potentially contains the name of what seeks to harm you, it may be weakened." He cleared his throat, and fiddled with one ear of his glasses. "Unfortunately, it does take some measure of poetic skill to craft an effective charm. And as a poet - well, I fear I'm an effective bricklayer."

"I can probably whip up something herb and earth based," Ms. Calendar winked at him. "It won't have a lot of oomph, but it's the best I can do. Whoever gave Akira what he's got, knows him better than any of us do and has access to a lot more magic than I can get without a full circle online." She gave Giles a stare.

Buffy tried not to bristle. My Watcher, I'm the one who gets to poke him for not saying stuff. "Wagatsuma's like a doctor, right? Doesn't that mean there's some kind of healer-patient privilege, or something?"

"I would certainly treat it as such," Giles said gravely. "Nevertheless," he glanced at the technopagan, "you are correct in implying that whoever had the power to craft such an amulet likely was not entirely human. Master Wagatsuma has mentioned in the past that he is more skilled at healing some supernatural creatures than he is humans, so it's very likely one of them owed him a favor. To be honest, that skill is why I make certain I always have his current number." He nodded at Buffy. "He resides in Japan, which puts him several hours away at best... but if by some mischance you were gravely injured and we had those hours, I would call him. He has far more experience than any mundane physician in what to treat, and what to leave alone, when his patient has enhanced healing."

Something in her chest seemed to seize up at that. She'd died - actually, really died - at the Master's hands. Just for a minute. But she'd been gone, and Xander had brought her back, and she really didn't want to think about getting hurt that badly again. Just because Spike believed he could do it didn't mean he was right. She'd beaten the Master. Spike was just another slayee in the making, right?

"Whoa, whoa." Xander did a time-out T with his hands. "There's someone out there who fixes the creepies and the crawlies? Somebody human? And you trust him?"

"That may sound hard to believe, Xander, but you must remember Sunnydale is a Hellmouth." Giles pointed down at the floor. "The arcane energies it emits draws the evil, the demonic, and the insane. Most harmless or neutral creatures, and there are in fact quite a few of those, would avoid Sunnydale like the plague. I've focused on teaching you about the predators, the parasites. Possibly I should have taught you about the others, but damn it all, I've been trying to keep you alive!"

Xander swayed back, alarmed. Willow gulped. Even Ms. Calendar looked taken aback.

Buffy grabbed that mental image of the leering master vampire and jammed it into a bunny-suit. There. No more Mr. Nightmares for a while. "This Master Wagatsuma really means a lot to you."

Giles took off his glasses and looked down, light glinting off lenses as he gave them an almost-casual shrug. "When I was much younger, and in a bit of a supernatural sticky wicket, Shuichi was one of those who helped pull me out. If it weren't for people like him making alliances with those supernatural creatures who do not hate humans, the world would be a far darker place. Knowing he's out there lets me sleep some nights." He sighed. "Though not tonight. I'm not familiar with any recorded vampire known as Spike, but if Angel knows him that may at least help us narrow our search. Xander, could you hand me volume ten?"

And we're being avoidy about the whole shadow-light mess again, Buffy reflected. Which on the one hand argh, she wanted answers now-

On the other, wanna-be Big Bad out to slaughter people on Saturday night, and Snyder-disaster to avoid on Thursday. They were kind of booked.

Akira said his mom won't even show. Will he?

She kind of hoped yes. She needed help on the lounge, still.

And the look on Xander's face would be priceless.