Rises in the East, sets in the West. Wherever she was in the world that saying always remained true. To Billie, it seemed, the only thing. With the sun very much in the East, she knew it couldn't be past eight AM yet. She'd only been out for an hour but with previous days catching up to her she was already yearning for a nice hot bath back at the hotel.

The Slayer had been running for almost forty-five minutes without so much as a red light, so now that the Sutherland Hotel could be seen from where she was, she slowed to a brisk jog. Looking around her, Billie couldn't help but smile at the song her earbuds were blasting. "Holiday" by Green Day seemed to sum up her current surroundings. This was her holiday, or what the Watcher's Council called a holiday, to her, it was all a sham. She was atop another Hellmouth and yet she was staying at a five star hotel and taking a nice, early morning run. It was nothing like Sunnydale, And it never will be, she vowed, ripping the earbuds out as she stepped onto the curb of the hotel's block.

Billie had poured over the files the Watcher's Council had sent to her for over three hours after she had gotten herself settled in. All she thought as she read the words of Watchers and Slayers alike, was of her past Hellmouth experiences and my weapon that she's placed under her mattress. As long as she had something to di with it, Cleveland would not become another crater in the United States road map.

Unlike Anson Tea's suggestion when she'd inquired about the files the night before, Billie could not use those files as "bed side reading", it was work. Work that made Billie all too ready to get up and out when the clock turned to six-thirty AM, sounding a few beeps that would barely wake a newborn. But it was good enough for her.

Dressed before the snooze button would've been hit for a second time, Billie left the hotel for her run. It was something she'd done for almost as long as she was the Slayer and even a change of scenery couldn't break the habit. The sun and my run, the only things that remain the same, she thought happily.

Her i-Pod, her key(card), a bottle of water, her phone, and a dagger hidden in her sneaker. It wasn't until she hit her three mile point that she realized there was something she should have had. Something every runner, Billie or other, needed.

Rest.

A combination of lack of sleep, severe physical activity, and jet lag didn't pass over anyone, even a Slayer. Unfortunately, she was a Slayer with the stubbornness to prove it, it would take a lot more than a little sleepiness to break tradition.

Hopefully, after a quick shower, the girl would be able to sneak in a couple of z's before Anson phoned her room and summoned her down.

The automatic doors opened as she reached the front of the hotel. Entering the lobby, Billie could feel the same feelings as the night before. The idea of being put up in such a nice place for being a Slayer made the girl think of Sunnydale and the small house the Potentials had to share with Q.B. and the others. QB, that still gets me. A small smile crept over Billie's face as she made her way to the waiting elevator. Inside, she continued the thought. I've never seen someone hate a nickname so much.

Q.B., Queen Buffy. It was a name some of the Slayers had come up with. After seeing Buffy Summers fight along side her pupils, they knew there was something special about her. She was the Woman among women, she was the Queen of the Slayers. Only she hated it. It was just like her, ever since Billie had known her, the woman was the most self-assured modest person that ever existed. She'd gone so far as forbidding the use of the term "Queen Buffy", but she had said nothing of Q.B..

And still, with a Queen, Billie could only see what they'd been given and compare it with what they had. They started with the potential and ended with the necessities to do good.

All thanks to one Mrs. Sarah Kerad-Daniels.

As her mind drifted toward thoughts of the woman, Billie entered her room. As beautiful as the night before, she decided to take a vacation from her thoughts. Dumping her i-Pod, her keycard, the water bottle,and her phone onto the bed, Billie began to strip off her clothes.

The first to go, her shoes, the sneakers that held the dagger. For Billie, to be rid of that dagger left a feeling of lack of security. She felt bare and vulnerable standing there in only a tee shirt and sweatpants. She was on top of the Hellmouth and she felt defenseless. It wasn't a feeling that she ever wanted to feel again.

Without another thought, the Slayer took my weapon from under the mattress and went into the bathroom. She was going to have that nice warm shower, clear of any thoughts, even if she needed a weapon by her side to do so.

Looking at herself in the mirror, Billie was surprised that she still looked twenty. With all she'd been through in the past four and a half years, she was always amazed that the person looking back at her wasn't worn with age. She wasn't a child anymore but she wasn't worn out out yet, either, she was... she was twenty.

As she pulled a brush through her hair, Billie thought of the picture she'd seen in the folder Anson had been looking at in the elevator. It was of her when she was fifteen years old, a month after she'd become one of the Slayers. Trying to create a new and improved Watcher's Council, Rupert Giles decided that in depth profiles of all the Slayers was exactly what they needed. And personally, Billie couldn't agree more. Billie held the deepest respect for Giles from the moment he met her at baggage claim all those years ago. Not only was he smart and skilled, he was caring. He had even been fired from the Council years earlier for caring too much for his charge, Buffy. That never made sense to any of the new Slayers, Billie wasn't sure it made sense to Giles either.

During her studies, Billie found that all "files" of the past Slayers were written by the Council. The Council, in turn, treated every girl the same. Giles knew that each and every girl was different from the rest and each deserved their story to be told.

He'd sent his starter crew (Watchers-In-Training and Wiccas) to interview and capture each Slayer. Willow had interviewed Billie, so she knew that whatever she'd written in her profile was one hundred percent Billie Edith and not "just another Slayer". after all, when you've slept with one you realized they're not all the same. And that folder Anson held in his hands said it all.

Not only were the words that which, Billie knew, captured her, but so had the picture. At the time, the new Slayer was going through the five stages of the calling: terror, adrenaline, anger, denial, and acceptance. Each of the first four steps could've been seen in that one photograph. The innocent look of her long, dark hair and sad green eyes topping her teenager's athletic body still gave a hint of the darkness that she had seen but it wasn't what she saw in herself at twenty. Billie could only wonder what had been going through her mind at that very moment. She could only be certain that it was neither "Did I pass that test?" or "Does this crossbow match my purse?"

Still peering at herself in the mirror, Billie looked at the differences in her appearance between and now. They were the changes that would occur in any girl at that age, she'd cut her long hair short and added a dash of color to it, her eyes were now outlined in black as one of the Slayers decided all should do every morning, and her body was now that of a highly disciplined warrior.

Okay, that last part may not have been normal among college-aged girls, but the rest seemed to properly fall under the category. And yet Billie was confused. Why did she feel that the girl in the photo and the girl standing before her were two different people?

Just as Billie leaned closer to the mirror, looking for any signs of the fifteen year old she hoped was still there, the room's phone rang. Peering at her watch, she smiled. It was exactly nine o'clock, Anson was testing her.

She sprang from the bathroom to the phone. With a "morning glory" tone in her voice, Billie answered the phone, "Good morning! This is Room 713, how may I help you?"