not mine, not mine, not mine -pout

...

Buffy calculated and realized she had been through 237 eggs in her quest to control her strength. She was actually rather proud of herself about that. It had taken over 500 eggs when she had first gotten her powers.

She had gone back to the original lessons that had been taught to her by her first Watcher, Merrick. Giles had been lucky, he'd come in after all of the basics had been pounded into her head, but now she had to return to them. Thus came about her current surroundings. Buffy looked around her, sighing slightly, none of her friends or family would ever believe her when she told them about where she'd ended up. She was officially in the middle of nowhere.

Buffy had thought long and hard about how she was going to have to go about getting control over her powers and she'd only been able to come up with one solution, to get as far away from people as possible. When Merrick had first been teaching Buffy he had set up a training ground in an old abandoned warehouse. There, if she made a lot of noise or broke some stuff, nobody was likely to care or notice. Buffy had actually considered that when she'd started thinking about where to train, but she'd come up with a few problems.

The first problem was that the warehouse district was like demon central in any city. Everything from your common vampire to your high-level, end the world demon, gathered there. Buffy didn't have any problem taking out a few baddies, it was her job, but she didn't want to keep getting interrupted every five minutes either.

The other issue she'd come across had been the shear scale of her strength. Before, as just a regular Slayer, Buffy had been really strong, but she hadn't been like, Superman strong. Now she figured she might be able to give the boy in blue a run for his money. She'd actually experimented on a couple of cars she'd found in a junkyard on the way here. It had been a little disturbing to realize she could do a curl with an F250. There was just no way she could safely experiment with her powers anywhere near people. Humans, homeless and regular union workers, also frequented warehouse districts. If she messed up and threw or punched too hard, she could take someone out.

So with all those things on her mind the only realistic solution she could come up with was to sequester herself in the woods somewhere. She'd walked and hitchhiked way up to Oregon, the only real danger was to anyone who'd tried to mess with her. The Oregon idea had actually come about while she was holed up in the hotel in San Fransisco. She'd watched a lot of TV there and this Oregon travel commercial had kept coming up. Buffy had certainly felt the need to "get away from it all." Besides, it had looked very pretty.

There had been one problem with this grand idea of course; Buffy wasn't exactly a woodsy kinda gal. Her idea of camping out was staying at the Hilton. Now certainly her standards had taken a bit of a beating over the years. During her time as a Slayer she'd ended up in some interesting places. Sewers, graveyards, crypts, even the woods around campus, just to name a few. She'd even slept in a few of those places a couple of times, not to mention the time crammed in her house with all the Potentials. That had been an adventure in and of itself. But the fact of the matter was that at the end of the day there had been access to a fridge or a convenience store, not to mention a shower. Though it wasn't always a hot one, at least around the Potentials.

Fortunately for Buffy, she now had access to the memories of Slayers that had lived in the past. It wasn't conscious access. She couldn't think, "Oh, I need to go to 1812 and live the life of Jane Smith." It was more like, she came across a situation she was unfamiliar with and her subconscious provided her with a solution. Like starting a fire for instance, Buffy had no idea how to build a fire from scratch unless it involved hairspray and a lighter. But by God she had found herself digging in the dirt and gathering stones and wood before she knew it. It had been a little freaky at first to find herself doing things without realizing it, but after a while she'd come think it really cool. Take that Mrs. Carmichael. She'd been Buffy's Girl Scout Leader in her one attempt to explore the great outdoors in her youth. She'd told Buffy if she ever got caught without her cell phone and her credit card she was doomed to die a horrible death. Buffy had quit the next day. The old bat was probably rolling in her grave right now.

So she'd used some of her meager savings to buy some essential supplies, she'd gotten a few looks at the amount of eggs, and had hiked off into the Oregon wilderness. One good thing about her new strength was that she could carry as much as she wanted and not have problem. A suitable amount of distance in, when she didn't feel any more human presence, she'd set up camp next to a lake and got to training.

The eggs had come first. She needed to be able to handle delicate things with no conscious thought. Buffy had started out with just picking eggs up and had eventually graduated to juggling. When she'd been able to absently juggle five eggs at the same time she figured she'd had it down, though she still practiced occasionally. Then she'd moved on to testing her limits.

The fastest human had been clocked at about 38 miles per hour. Buffy had clocked herself once at about 48 when she'd been a normal Slayer. Now she was much faster. Her strength had also improved exponentially. She was picking up and swinging around some of the fallen massive trees that made up the Oregon rainforest. Forget Faith's 6x6 for Kakistos, she was looking for something the size of a tank to stake. She'd destroyed so much rotten timber, she tried to stay away from the live trees, that she figured if the Slaying gig didn't work she could go into the toothpick business. She'd be rich.

Of course, now that she had her strength and speed mastered in basic situations she had to conquer the hard stuff. It was one thing to be able to control her self against a tree and something completely different to control herself during a fight. Under controlled conditions such things were easy, but a Slayers life was anything but controlled. Buffy knew that she had to be able to trust her new powers around the weakest of people. She would never forgive herself if she lost control and hurt someone on accident. She'd seen the trauma Faith had gone through.

So now, six months after she had left the hotel in San Francisco and left her friends and family behind, Buffy was ready to emerge from the wilderness and enact the second phase of her plan. Her time in the woods had been enlightening to say the least and she would never forget it, but Buffy was a city girl. She liked her malls and coffee shops, especially the malls. She was a social girl at heart and six months of isolation from people and normal conversation was driving her bonkers. She'd known it was time to leave when she'd actually caught herself having a conversation about fashion with a squirrel.

...

Author's Note:

As promised, so delivered. Here is the next chapter. I realize it's kind of short but that's because we've gotta' get this story movin'! Buffy's time in the woods, while interesting, is not really that vital to the production of the story. She learns a few thing there, but her strength and speed (though improved) aren't the main focus of the story. Everybody knows Buffy's strong. That's part of the reason we all watched. To see a 5 foot nothing blond girl beat up on a massive demon is really cool. But for this fic it's the other things she has to learn about her powers that is so vital (yes, she's getting some new stuff, not just improvements on the old).

There is also a lot of introspection in this chapter. It kind of has to. There's no one else to talk to but the squirrels!

Finally, this is a shameless plug for my other little oneshot fic, INVITATION. It's this idea that was rattling around in my brain for a while (there's a lot of empty space up there). Funny, funny! Go check it out!

OMAKE

Buffy- So I know that orange isn't really my color, but what do you think about if I just used it as an accent color? I figure if it's just a small amount it wouldn't make my skin look all sallow and stuff like it usually does.

Squirrel- Silence

Buffy- Well fine, if you think it's gonna be that big of a deal just tell me and I won't do it!

Squirrel- Nose twitch

BuffY- Are you even going to voice an opinion on this or are you going to just leave me hanging here!

Squirrel- Scratch

Buffy- sigh- jeez, I'm going crazy here. I'm talking to squirrels about color coordination. Squirrels don't know anything about colors, they see in black and white. What

am I thinking?!

A FEW MOMENTS LATER

Buffy- So what do you think about this year's shoe fashions?

P.S. Thanks for all the continued support!