Chapter 44

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Guardian Council Academe England;

Another 'Main Event' meeting was taking place in Giles office. At this meeting the SunnyDale slayers weren't required only Buffy, Faith and Willow were there to represent them not that they needed to be represented. This gathering involved some of the people sent by the Powers that be, Jim Ellison, Blair Sandberg, Tru Davies, Melinda Gordon, Jim Clancy, and Queen Mousette. They would need to talk to the others about this situation at a later date.

"So, what's this about Mr. Giles?" Jim Ellison asked Giles.

"Paper trails actually." He replied.

"Has someone found Jim and I?" Blair asked worriedly.

"No, it has nothing to do with that. What I'm referring to is that with all this magically popping from one place to another has left you without a paper trail which has worked to your benefit however, when we all end up in Africa and it is found out that we don't have our passports stamped it will be considered that two hundred of the Guardian Council's people are in the country illegally. I would like to start sending some of our people as well as some of yours to Africa using more traditional means."

"As soon as Jim and I use our passports the military will know where we are." Blair pointed out.

"I can delay any information and or redirect it." Willow explained.

"We just want to know which of you would like to go now." Giles asked.

"Well, Blair and I could go and still use the port keys to come back here and continue to help Oz with any more meet and greets the PTB sends us on." Jim said.

"Yeah, and if the military thinks we're in Africa they won't be looking for us in the United States." Blair said.

"Yes, that is a good point." Giles commented.

"I'd much rather stay here for the time being Jim, Aiden and I can catch a flight at a later time." Melinda announced.

"I want to stay too."Tru announced. "Not that I don't trust you guys to save him but I wish to be there when you save my brother. I predict a major freak out when you transport him and restore his memories."

"Yes, I can see where that would be bad." Willow commented.

"I will go. The sooner I get back to my homeland the sooner we can try to finally cleanse the land of its ever darkening tint." Queen Mousette.

"As I've told you before we will need to look into how best to rectify the situation there." Giles said.

"What are you two talking about?" Jim Clancy asked.

"Qweenie is originally from Africa." Faith began. "She lived through some pretty hard times before she got her letter accepting her to several of the premier magic schools under some sort of good will scholarship." Faith replied.

"I had a choice of several schools." Queen Mousette explained. "One in France called Beauxbatons which I dismissed quickly with disgust. It would do me no good to be surrounded by prissy young girls that didn't know what was going on in the world. I needed a school that would teach defense which I would need in the protection of my home in Africa form merciless military thugs. Hogwarts didn't seem to be too aggressive for my needs so I choose Durmstrangand I was able to live there year around. The headmaster didn't see much potential in me but I graduated top of my class in both magic and physical prowess. When I returned to my homeland after graduation there was little left of my people. What there was had spread to other province's in hope there would be some protection there. But the military's thirst for dominance would and will just keep spreading. I decided to leave Africa for America and I've been looking for allies to help me cleanse the land of their slavery for years. Now that the Guardian Council will be moving there I find I will have allies regardless of your wishing for a nonviolent alternative because at some point you will find yourself in the middle of a war once they see your many beautiful women and all your material resources.

"I'm glad Dawn isn't here to hear this. She doesn't need any more bad news to freak out over." Buffy said to Willow.

"She'd be right to. Africa is not a land of freedom or liberty or justice and if you don't make the first move you will find your new village burned to the ground and yourselves surrendering your people into slavery." Queen Mousette stated.

"Once we're all there I'm sure we will undoubtedly need your guidance. You may find yourself buried in the questions day and night." Buffy assured her.

"I will always make myself available to answer your questions but we will have to take aggressive actions as well to keep what we have." Queen Mousette confirmed.

"So noted, I will make sure we do everything possible to not only keep our people safe but to start a campaign to help free Africa as much as we can." Buffy proclaimed.

Giles was shocked at Buffy's announcement and gave her an evil eye, which Buffy promptly ignored.

"In any case I've never been on a jet or any kind of plane so I think I'll take the trip with the mini slayers as the senior rep. to the G.C." Faith announced out of the blue.

"Good idea and thank you for volunteering." Giles said.

"No problem G. It will give me time to unwind after passing my G.E.D exams."

"Unwind? You do know that Andrew will be on that flight, right?" Willow asked.

"And he will be taking care of all the girls needs as I'm watching the inflight movie. If he bugs me too much he'll be paste." Faith announced.

The scoobies wondered if that might be cruel and unusual punishment but then remembered it was Andrew they were talking about.

"Very well, this is the way I see it playing out." Giles began to explain. "Willow will transport each of you to the Mexican border. You'll get your passports stamped once on the other side. Willow will then transport each of you to the G.C. in Brazil from there it will take a few weeks before you board a chartered flight to the southern tip of Africa. Sorry, but it's been exceedingly difficult to arrange a charter, damned Bureaucracy. After you get your passports stamped you'll then take a large prop plane to the nearest airport to your destination in the Democratic Republic of Congo then stamping your passports again. I'll have Mr. Potter waiting with a portkey to carry everyone to our new home in the D.R.C. Once the slayers are settled Xander can take over command of the ladies while Faith, Mr. Ellison and Mr. Sandberg can portkey back here. We simply need to establish our presence there at this time, nothing more and as the time draws near the sooner we do this the better."

"We all have to do it sooner or later. Are you sure the rest of you don't want to go now rather than later." Willow asked.

"The others just shook their heads no."

"Okay then. You'll be leaving by the end of the week. I think that's everything. I guess this meeting is at an end. Have a good day." Giles said dismissing everyone.

As everyone filed out Giles asked Buffy to stay behind.

"Buffy's in trouble." Faith and Willow said in a sing song way that children use as they passed her on the way out.

"Oh grow up." she said just before they shut the door. She could hear the giggling on the other side.

"Buffy what were you thinking declaring our resources to the vendetta of that woman. Her vengeance runs deep for her cause. We will only exhaust our much needed resources in the end. You've let her propagandizing get the better of you."

"It' not propaganda, Giles, at least I don't believe so. She isn't the only one I've been speaking to. I've also been listening to Dawn who has been researching Africa and its people and politics. I've also been listening to Xander who has spent a lot of time there and he told me to start listening to the BBC radio and or television news. And I haven't liked what I've been hearing Giles. As a matter of fact it scares the hell out of me. Did Xander tell you that they nearly had a run in with a military convoy last week? What would have happened had they spotted Harry and Xander and stopped to…I don't know, interrogate them, shoot first ask questions later, put them in chains and put them to work in the diamond mines."

"Surely you're exaggerating." Giles said in disbelief.

"No I'm not Giles! Not in the least. Get your head out of those old books and do the research yourself. I'm sure most of Africa is a beautiful place but the place we're moving to is just a different kind of hellmouth only the evil there is the worst kind of humans possible and as strong as they are I fear for my girls. We not only need to be defensive but we also need to be offensive like antibodies in the blood stream and search out and eradicate the opposition."

Giles crooked an eyebrow at her likeness to the human body.

"Sorry, I've been reviewing my old collage anatomy books the past couple of days in case of medical issues during the Main Event." She explained.

Giles smirked as he shook his head. "Buffy I remember a time your vocabulary left much to be desired. It's only a shame you use it only when you argue with me."

"I use it when I need to get a point across and need people to listen to what I'm saying… Which is pretty much the same thing come to think of it… it's just frustrating that you're the one that I mostly need to use it on."

"While I do appreciate the effort, I feel quite put out that I have failed to research that which everyone else seems to have. I shall start to look into the research immediately."

"The BBC TV news is the quickest way to find the most current information."

"I guess I'll have to turn on the idiot box once again."

"Come off it Giles, I know you watch Downton Abbey."

"Tell no one." He deadpanned.

She smiled as she left Giles office to find Faith and Willow looking too casual as they both read their books upside down on purpose and trying not to laugh.

"Listening at the door were we?" Buffy asked.

"Giles watches Downton Abbey? Dawn loves that show." Willow said.

"That's who told me Giles like it. Buffy replied. They sometimes watch it together. Anyway are we set for tonight's rescue?"

"Yeah, I've been meaning to ask you why you guys insist on raiding those food station warehouses and not the other grocery stores?" Faith asked.

"That string of stores cheats the people left, right and center. They add weight to their meat, poultry, fish, fruits, and vegetables. They've been fined and still do it, so I have no problem taking from the crooked and giving to the hungry slayers." Willow announced.

"You know this probably isn't the best place to talk about this. We don't want G. to find out about what you guys have been up to. I think he'll be really disappointed if he found out." Faith said.

"Giles was on the phone when I left. We should be alright for a while. Besides we each have been put in charge of collecting different items and Giles is worried that we're running out of money. The bottom line is we are rescuing the stuff." Buff replied.

"Tonight we should go to Hermione's place of business. The Great Library of England, it will be our first raid outside of the U.S. but those books can't be allowed to perish. Oh and Xander brought up a good point. There may not be much in the way of gasoline after the main event so he suggests raiding some bicycle stores but that doesn't have to be tonight. I'm sure we already have some bikes from J-mart and/or Floor mart." Willow said.

"Wow! That is a good idea. If we have the time and you have the energy I think we should try it." Buffy said

"I can clean out about three warehouses a night. If we did smaller shops I could do more." Willow replied.

"Well, you two have fun. I got to pack for my trip." Faith said.

"Yeah we'll see you later Faith." They said.

/Scene Break/

Africa;

Xander and Harry made their way to the Cape of Good Hope. They were to pick up the trailers that had been shipped via cargo ship from England to here in Africa so that the G.C. would have legitimate looking paperwork should anyone ask for it. The plan was that Xander and Harry would apparate there and planned to transfigure a small vehicle that they would rent for the day to look like a semi-truck. Magic would actually pull the trailers out of the ship yard and once they found a place to stop where they wouldn't be seen by non-magical people, they would make the trailers into a portkey and transport them to their new home back in the Congo. They would then take off the Transfiguration put on the vehicle and take it back to the dealership and then apparate home themselves.

But things seldom go to plan. Before they even went looking for the local dealership Xander suddenly got an unexplainable feeling and told Harry that they should check to see if the ship made it to port and that there trailers were unloaded from the ship. Once they got to the gates of the shipyard they spoke to the man stationed in the guard house. They gave him their I.D.'s and the paperwork for the trailers.

"I'm sorry." The guard said indifferently. "These trailers are among the trailers missing from that side of the yard. They were stolen earlier in the week." He finished seemingly uncaring.

Xander and Harry were socked. "How could this have happened?" Xander asked.

"They call them thieves." The guard said as if talking to small children.

Xander and Harry's faces were ones of rage.

The guard rolled his eyes and sighed. "I suppose you'll want to fill out a report about your stolen goods." He then handed them the forms. "It won't do you any good the company's only concern is money. Since the break in all they have done is repair the chain link fence and added two more guards per shift. Two men won't do them any good. They haven't even launched an investigation and the police are afraid to investigate because they fear it might be one of the Guerilla military units and they don't want to mess with them."

Xander fumed but didn't say a word as he filled out the forms even though he knew the guard was right but Giles would have his head if he didn't go through proper channels. After filling it out they walked away. Xander asked if Harry could help him get inside the ship yard.

"Why? Do you think the trailers are still there?"

"That might be a possibility but I was thinking that maybe there was a clue to who took the stuff." Xander replied.

Harry nodded and tapped him on the head with his wand.

"Wow, Jim was right. This does feel like you broke an egg on my head."

They then walked right by the guard and over to the foreman's office. No one seemed to be there so Xander went right to the filing cabinets and quickly found the shipping manifest to their stolen goods. Xander looked to where they were to be stored and asked Harry to magically copy the forms. They then went to the scene of the crime. The guard was right. It wasn't just their stuff that was taken. That whole side of the yard was stripped of all trailers that were supposed to be there. Xander examined the fence pieces that were still there. Green paint transfer and green strips of canvas told him again that the guard might be right. It looked like military trucks busted through the fence and took every trailer in this section.

"Well what do you think?" Harry asked.

"I think Giles should have sprung for a shipping container rather than a few trailers. Having a box with wheels only made it easier for the military to steal."

"They still won't be able to get into it. Hermione and Willow put spells on it to make sure it couldn't be broken into."

With a sigh Xander said. "I hope one of them is a tracking spell. We need to get out of here and call the G.C. to report this."

Once they were outside of the shipping yard Xander pulled out his cell and called Giles office directly.

Xander turned to Harry and said as the phone rang. "It's time for some payback."

Thousands of miles away Giles was sitting in his office in Cleveland. When the phone rang he looked at the caller I.D. and saw Xander's name. He decided to let the machine get it as he was too busy to cater to Xander's complaints about getting help from some of the SunnyDale slayers. Hell, as far as he knew Xander didn't even have any materials to work with yet and Giles needed every last one of the slayers where they were. Just then the machine started recording Xanders message.

"Hey Giles, I guess that it works out best for me that you didn't answer this call. I just wanted to ask why someone was dumb enough to put on a shipping manifest that the trailer contained 'rare' weapons and 'rare' crystals within, when it was to be shipped to a country with military revolutionaries who use slave labor to mine their diamonds. Weapons and crystals are right up there ally. Oddly enough it looks like your handwriting as well as your signature."

"Insolent whelp." Giles mumbled to an empty office as he listened.

"Well just so you know Harry and I will be unreachable for the next forty eight hours and by the way the trailers were stolen and we don't have the time to investigate it so you might want to send someone down here. Tell everyone I said Hi." Xander said as Giles quickly reached for the phone.

"Now you just wait one moment…" Giles began.

Click!

"Xander?... Xander!"

Back in Africa Harry turned to Xander and said. "You can be really evil."

"Thank you. Well there isn't much else we can do here. Let's go home."

With that Harry grabbed Xander's arm and apparated back within the train station in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

As they walked out of the train station, the girls seemed unusually excited.

"Xander, Harry, we have houses."

"Say what now?" Xander asked bewilderedly.

"Willow sent five modular houses. There in the staging area. One of them doesn't look so good. I didn't know the G.C. had money for that. That will help make this town grow quickly; all we have to do is place them and hook them up with power and such." Nicky said excitedly. "Oh and then this envelope appeared for you."

Xander opened the envelope and pulled out the message. As he read the first line he refolded the letter and told his girls that he had to see a man about a horse and left in the direction of his tent.

"What horse is he talking about?" Harry asked.

"He means he needed to run to the toilet." Nicky giggled. "But it's more likely he needed to read that letter in private."

"Oh." He replied.

Xander got to his tent and unfolded the letter.

Xander;

This is for yours and Harry's eyes only.

This is all the houses we were able to get and I don't believe we will be trying that again. It takes time to get them ready for transport. While Willow and Hermione were charming the structures to be unbreakable we must have come to someone's attention because as we were about to send the houses to you we were surrounded by five local law enforcement vehicles. They had us dead to rights with their guns drawn and ready to fire if we moved the wrong way. When one of them told us to get on our knees Hermione had the brain wave to yell the portkey password and all the houses flew into the air before disappearing. Then while all the cops were gawking at the sky Hermione got us all together to hold the rope portkey allowing us to get away. Boy, Hermione is cool under pressure. In any case if the security around them is this tight then those houses we sent will probably be the only ones we can provide, sorry. We'll be heading out to raid more warehouses later so you might want to get the houses out of the way because I know you're running out of room in your staging area with double wide houses sitting in the way. Hermione says you might want to double check the houses for damage.

Buffy.

P.S.

Great idea about the bikes, by the way. Willow says there should already be some bikes in the J-mart and Floor-Mart trailers you guys can use.

Just as Xander was about to leave the tent Harry came in.

"What did they have to say?"

"Xander handed the letter to Harry saying. "Here read it for yourself and then help us inspect the houses before we move them. Let's just hope the girls don't get into any more trouble tonight."

/Scene Break/

Dr. Daniel Jackson stood with six men from the SGC, two were Marines who acted as security for this op, the rest were archaeologists and researchers who had very little to do at the SGC. This is because the program wasn't sending teams through the star-gate to explore new planets at this time. They had just beamed to a hidden location in the U.K. from one of the orbiting ships above earth. It hadn't been easy to get President Hayes to agree to allow him to rescue the books from the Great Library of England (the biggest library of its kind) but many of the books were just too rare for Daniel to not try his hardest to save them. He wasn't able to convince the President to save them right at this moment but he was allowed to tag the books with low level radio activity that the transporters could lock on to so that they could be beamed up when the upcoming disaster started. This was the same thing they planned to do with warehouses full of goods they would need. However, according to Sam there may be a faction of their government that was doing that right now, targeting everything from grocery stores to home improvement centers.

The twelve Marines that came with him would help make this mission go faster than it would have had it been him alone. They arrived at the library an hour before it was to open and would camp out on it steps until the head Librarian came to open its doors.

Meanwhile

Inside The Great Library of England a multicolored crew of women arrived as if by magic.

"Are you sure you're alright with this. We almost got caught on that last one." The one dressed in yellow known as Buffy asked Willow who was dressed in green.

"I'm Fine Buffy. We all knew it could happen and I've got to get back up on this horse or I'll never ride again, metaphorically speaking. Besides, Hermione gave us all that calming draught, and it's worked wonders. I definitely want to learn how to make that." Willow replied nodding to Hermione dressed in blue.

"Well, you and Dawn are advancing right along. That could be our next potion lesson." Hermione replied.

"Hey guys, I think we should get this show on the road there's daylight coming in through the windows. I'm not sure what time it is here but I think it could be close to opening time." Rona who was dressed in orange said.

"She's right, if we're going to do this we need to do this fast." Vi who was dressed in red announced.

"How is this going to work? The Library doesn't have a loading dock or trailers nearby to load the stuff into." Buffy asked.

"We're going to use Hermione's bottomless beaded bag. Anything too big to fit into its opening will have to be shrunk." Willow replied.

"I used my wand to shut down the internal security systems and then I'll open the cage where the rare books are kept." Hermione said.

"Actually you should take Vi with you to rip the cage door off its hinges. We don't want anybody thinking that this was an inside job by people who had the keys. Your wand might make it seem that way." Buffy said.

"Golly, I hadn't thought of that and a blasting hex could destroy something important." Hermione replied.

Minutes later they all herd the sound of metal bending and then the pinging sound of hinges being ripped apart.

"Well, I guess it's time to begin." Willow announced as Vi and Hermione rejoined the group.

The beaded bag lay open on the floor as Willow released a cleansing breath and began gathering her power beginning the spell. A wind kicked up and Willow began to slightly glow. Then all at once all the books on the shelves began to lift and float. Everything in the library seemed to be caught in a slow moving whirlpool as they circled the entire inside of the place.

Meanwhile

Outside the steps of the library Daniel Jackson noticed movement inside the building. As he got up to get a closer look he became concerned when he saw books being flung across the room at speeds that could damage or completely ruin them. He turned to the other and announced that they were going in as he started to break that glass.

Very quickly the books started moving into the beaded bag. Hermione watched in concern hoping that none of the books would be damaged as they flew past her with the blinding speed of a tornado into the bag that she had made ages ago to have endless storage. Just then they herd the alarms sound

"Hermione, I thought you said you deactivated the security system." Buffy said.

"I did, for the inside anyway. That's the alarm for the outside doors. Someone must be trying to break in." Hermione replied.

Just then seven men started to rush about through the empty book shelves heading in their direction as they followed the direction the books were leading them. The men stopped as they witnessed the tornado of books funneling into a bag that sat upon the floor in front of five colorful females, their unitard bodysuit covering them from head to toe gave no other identifying features than that they were women.

"Halt!" One of the Marines said.

"Not likely!" Buffy replied.

Just then the other Marines took out a zat gun and aimed it at the woman in green who he thought to be controlling whatever was happening to the books as she had her arms spread and was looking upward. The books' flying in front of her was making it hard to target her. He fired just as the last book went into the bag. Willow collapsed like an insect in a bug zapper.

"Will!" Buffy yelled.

The first Marine came at Buffy throwing a left hook at her head. Buffy caught the appendage in an arm lock while punching him in the sternum twice. The first was to knock the wind out of him but the second blow was more of a push as she released the arm lock and sent him flying over the head of the other men.

The second Marine re-aimed his weapon at the only person that seemed to have some sort of weapon and fired at the woman in blue.

Hermione saw the electrical energy coming at her and waved her wand as she yelled. "Protego!" Not only did the shield charm protect her but it sent the energy back to the Marine who fired it knocking him out.

Seeing a show of strength of this kind and that the other women were getting ready to attack Daniel knew he and his people were in trouble and tried to defuse the situation.

"Please hold it, we don't want to fight. Those two were military the rest of us are just researchers and scientists. Please we mean you no harm."

After this statement the women stood down and began to tend to Willow.

"She'll be alright. She was just stunned." Daniel said even though no one asked him.

Hermione unraveled the portkey rope and the women grabbed hold of it. Buffy grabbed the beaded bag. When Daniel saw the bag in Buffy's possession he tried to gain some rapport with them in hopes to come to some kind of compromise for the books.

"My name is Dr. Daniel Jackson, is there anything I or any of us can do to help you."

There was silence among the women as Vi wrapped some of the rope around Willows hand.

Desperately Daniel continued to speak. "Umm listen; we actually came here for those books."

The yellow one spoke again. "You snooze you lose."

With that Hermione called out the password that activated the portkey. The women began to fly up to the ceiling and then they were gone. Daniel stood there gapping at the ceiling like the rest of his people. It was only when he heard the sirens of the police cars out front that he gained his wits and called the orbiting ship for immediate transport and in a flash of light they were gone too.

/Scene Break/

GC Cleveland teleport room.

Once the colorful raiders landed, Vi went to the wall and spoke into the intercom.

"Medical emergency in the teleport room. Doctor or medwitch to the teleport room. "

Hermione waved her wand and everybody's colorful suit vanished reviling what they had worn underneath.

The security guard came in and asked if there was anything she could do to help as she looked at Willows unconscious form.

"We were told she was only stunned." Buffy said opening the first aid box looking for the smelling salts.

Hermione simply pointed her wand at Willow and said. "Enervate."

Willow woke up with a start.

"Easy there girl. You just took a lightning bolt to the face." Rona said.

"Then why does my boob hurt?" Willow asked.

Face, boob, who cares. Are you alright? Buffy asked.

"Umm yeah, but I'm just kind of concerned about where you all learned your anatomy." Willow said in real concern.

The other women in the room rolled their eyes at her comment. Just then Katie bell walked into the room.

"What happened?" She asked.

Before anyone could speak Buffy took control. "listen, I need everyone's word of honor that everything that has happened in the past ten minutes must be kept off the record and most of all Giles must never hear anything about it."

"Why?" the guard asked.

"We made some big mistake tonight. Nothing life threatening. No one died or got permanently injured but we may have crossed a legal boundary. As long as Giles knows nothing about it he can truthfully deign knowing about it."

"What did you do?" The guard asked.

"We're not telling you for the same reason. Just know that what we did had to be done regardless of the consequences to keep everyone safe." Buffy replied.

The guard stared into Buffy's eyes for a moment and said. "You can count on me miss."

With everyone's agreement the crowd broke up to give Willow some air. Katie Buffy and Hermione were the only ones left to tend to Willow.

"Well, you seem to have been hit with a low level lightning hex but you seem to be fine otherwise."

"It was a stun gun." Buffy announced. "It seemed to have the same effect as one of the Initiative stun weapons had; only this one was small and hand held and more powerful and worked better."

"Well, the military did have a few years to perfect the thing." Willow commented.

"Who or what is the Initiative." Katie asked.

"They were a group within the military who thought that since they were so good at making war that they could be demon hunters, capturing them for study." Buffy explained.

"Yeah, there were two hundred stationed in SunnyDale but by the time we got there to help them we were only able to recue about eighteen men." Willow continued. "Do we know who the guys at the library were?"

"The one man said his name was Dr. Daniel Jackson." Hermione answered.

"Oh wow! That's the name of one of the guys that works in Colorado under Cheyenne Mountain with that space ring thingy Jim and Blair told us about. They must have been there to save the books like we were doing." Willow said.

"I'll take your word for it but for you to call it a 'space ring thingy' might mean you were hit harder than we thought. Maybe you better go to the guest quarters and lay down." Buffy commented.

"Actually, I feel charged. Umm no pun intended and maybe a bit excited, like I had a pot of coffee with a side order of chocolate. But I think that it was more to do with the spell Hermione used to wake me up than that stun weapon. If I could have gotten an absorption shield up, I just know I could have used that energy for some kind of retaliation." Willow said.

"Well, you know how I feel about sentences with the words Woulda, shoulda, or coulda. Anyway I'd like to be a fly on their wall to find out what they make of us."

/Scene Break/

Cheyenne Mountain complex in Colorado:

President Hayes General O'Neill and Colonel Carter entered the conference room to debrief Daniel Jackson and the men that accompanied him the Great Library of England.

"You're telling me that a woman that measured about five foot one and maybe a hundred and forty pounds sent a six foot two Marine of two hundred and twenty pounds sailing over your heads from twenty yards away?" President Hayes inquired incredulously.

"Um yes sir. That's the other thing. I don't know about any of the other women but that one was abnormally strong and I didn't want to chance any of the rest of the men getting hurt so I tried to tell them that we meant no harm." Daniel pointed out. "Then before we knew what happened they flew up in the air before disappearing. It was the weirdest teleport system I'd ever seen. I just wish I could tell you who they were"

"The North Carolina press is calling them the Rainbow Bandits after they stole five modular homes. Seven police officers said that they had them cornered but the Bandits still seemed to get away with the houses. Although no one said anything about seeing how they did it." Sam announced.

"When did this happen?" Daniel asked.

"Early last night." She replied.

"And then they were in the U.K. to steal some old books?" O'Neill asked incredulously not even surprised by the distance they covered if they were using transporter tech.

Ignoring her superior's obviously rhetorical question, Sam asked Daniel. "Were you able to tag any of the books with the radioactive isotope?"

"No, there was no time. The books were sucked into their little bag before we could get our hands on even one of them."

"Well then tracking them is out. Wait a minute did you say a bag?" O'Neill asked in surprise.

"Yeah, it actually looked like a lady's handbag. Every book in the library got sucked into it and the thing didn't even look partially full in the end."

"Hmm, it was possibly a secondary teleport system, or maybe a space portal of some sort, or maybe something to do with folded space." Sam mumbled to herself.

"I'd like to know why these people have focused on foodstation warehouses. They seem to raid one of their stores every night." O'Neill wondered aloud.

"Besides the fact that they'll need a supply of food in the end it could be because the food station warehouse is known for cheating their customers so badly." Sam announced.

"What do you mean?" President Hayes asked.

"Actually, they have been fined a number of times for it. A bag of shrimp was marked up by fourteen eighty-five. That's not how much the shrimp cost that's how much more that they cost than what they were supposed to cost." She explained.

"Well right or wrong we got to put a stop to this." O'Neill said.

"No we don't." President Hayes retorted.

"Sir?" O'Neill asked.

"It's not our job." Hays announced.

"Since when? With all due respect sir isn't it our job to hunt down people or beings that use alien tech for nefarious purposes."

"Normally yes, but not at this time, it has since become our job to save civilization and all of its greatest achievements thus far. So that we can all live similarly to the way we do now. Or did you people forget were working against the clock. These bandits aren't doing anything we don't plan on doing ourselves when the time comes. So they took the books from the library. All we can do is hope they'll be safe and that we'll hopefully see them at some point after the displacement. We don't need to get ourselves sidetracked when we're this close to our due date. Dr. Jackson, why don't you pick another library? Make it the second biggest library in the world. You have a 'go' when you and your men are ready."

Daniel was a little dejected at not getting the books from the G.L.E. but was placated to be getting the chance to save the book from the second biggest library. If the President was right and the bandits would make the G.L.E. books available then he would be rescuing twice as many books when they got their hands on the books from the library in Chicago.

/Scene Break/

Back in Africa Xander, Harry and the rest of the work crew had just finished giving the modular homes the once over.

Willow and Hermione may have had good intentions but they knew nothing of structural integrity. Every one of the houses had been damaged during transport. The two witches put unbreakable charms in many of the wrong places so that when the long distance ride was finished many of the structural supports were damaged in one way or another. Harry magically repaired what he could but there were things that ultimately needed to be replaced. Still it wasn't too big of a deal as these houses could be repaired instead of having to build them from the ground up. The fifth house however was just too damaged to repair. Xander thought this might have been the last one Willow and Hermione were preparing for transport when they almost got caught and never finished the unbreakable spells before sending them on their way. This house would be used for parts to fix the other houses. The houses were then levitated to their permanent placement upon the landscape of their new town. Now with half the day gone they had their lunch while Harry called Hermione to tell her they were ready for her arrival. Today was going to be the big day even though they had gotten a little sidetracked. The bank was finished at least as far as the crew could go. Hermione needed to come by and help put the real finishing touch on it and even then it was expected to take another day before it could be called really finished. They had just finished eating when Hermione arrived.

"Hello everyone, Harry has told me that you finished your work on the bank." Hermione stated.

"Yeah, we made nearly eighty broom closets on every wall. If what you have planned works, this is going to be something to see." Daisy said.

"I'm sure you'll all be pleased. Harry did you finish the stone?" Hermione asked.

"Actually, Xander asked to do that job since there wasn't any magic involved and I've never done stone work before so I let him do it. I inspected it and it looks alright to me but you might want to give it a once over."

"Alright, where is it?" She asked.

"It's down stairs in the cellar. I figured why not work on it where we need to install it, that way there's less chance of breaking it when we move it." Xander explained.

"And the room?" She inquired.

"Clean and secure. The hole is dug and we have the other materials ready for after the spell is complete." Xander replied.

"Harry, do you think you set the rune up correctly." She asked.

"I was meticulous with every door frame, wall, staircase, and window. I believe I got everything." He replied.

"Well then, lead the way and let's get started." She said.

And so Hermione, Xander, Harry, and all twenty slayers trooped down into the cellar eager to watch the spell.

"Hmm. The cellar is cleaner than I thought it would be." Hermione commented.

"Not when we first got here." Xander announced. This place was full of garbage cobb webs and spider webs with some big creepy spiders still in them."

"Hmm, you could have mailed some of them to Ron."

A smile broke out on Harry's face as he said. "I did."

"You didn't." She replied in surprise.

"Well to be honest I only sent one. The biggest one we found. It was quite a jumper too." He replied.

"Harry your terrible." Hermione said with a smirk.

Looking around she noticed the antique safe that was left over from when the bank was active. Harry used a repair spell on it and he told her that it works like new. It was six feet tall and had been the kind that was free standing but now it had been secured and cemented into the wall. Hermione thought it was a clever idea. She then noticed another wall had two small brand new apartment sized refrigerators that were a two foot cube which had also been built into the wall and she laughed. 'Now that was bloody brilliant.' She thought.

They got to the room that was newly built. It was fifteen by fifteen feet made of the stone from around the property so they matched the outside walls. Inside, the stone floor had been torn up and a square hole that measured four and a half feet in both directions was dug out in the middle. Alongside the hole was the stone Xander had been working on. Hermione rushed over to inspect it.

"This is incredible work, Xander. It's probably the best work I've ever seen. It's so precise." She said.

"Well I had the advantage of working with power tools. So it was always going to be more precise that the wizarding standard." He replied.

"Still the rune work was well done as well. How much of this did Harry help you with?"

"I didn't." Harry replied. "I told Xander what was needed gave him a book and left him to it."

"Wait, you mean you understood what was in the book and you worked out all the rune work by yourself?" She asked in amazement.

"Well yeah." Xander replied.

"We've had a lot of time on our hand before the slayers and materials showed up Hermione." Harry began. "I let Xander read all my school books that didn't necessarily need magic to make work. He's knows arithmancy, runes, potions, even occlumency."

"Well, in all fairness I did start with occlumency first." Xander explained.

Hermione stared at Xander for a moment before saying. "Perhaps I should study occlumency.

"Why mess with a perfect mind Hermione?" Harry said without realizing what a massive complement he was giving her. When anyone did this Hermione always pretended not to notice and would quickly change the subject but inside her toes were curling and her skin was tingling with electricity. She never felt more alive. But she never realized that it was mostly Harry that complemented her on her mind.

She inspected the massive granite stone in front of her. It resembled a huge Hanukkah Dreidel without the stick on top. Every surface was covered in engraved runes. It took her a half an hour to go through the whole stone and when she was done she was satisfied.

"Good work, Xander, very good work. Harry, we're ready to start."

They both used their wands to levitate the heavy stone into the hole. It stood there balancing on its point because of Harrys and Hermione's magic. The slayers then got to work bringing in bags of sand and filling in the sides of the hole around the stone. Before the last bags went in Hermione told them to stop. An inch and a half of the stone still needed to be covered but this was the point when the spell needed to be cast. Hermione looked to Harry and asked him one final question.

"Did you memorize your part?"

"Every night I would recite it to Xander who checked my work to make sure I got it down pat." He replied.

"Good then let's begin."

As they started to chant, nothing of interest happened for a good ten minutes. Then Xander felt the air pressure change. He felt as if he were being slightly squeezed. This lasted another ten minutes. His ears then popped like he was high in the mountains. The air seemed to be getting thin. He began to find it hard to catch his breath. Lights began to come from the stone. First it was a green color like looking at the sun from the bottom of a pond. It then turned aqua blue before turning sunshine yellow. The shifting of colors took another five minutes before a black light shown throughout the room for just a second and then everything tuned to normal.

"Well that should be it." Hermione announced.

"But nothing happened. Nothing changed." Daisy announced.

"Not in this room. Nothing was supposed to change in this room. But it definitely did work. Harry and I felt it. All we need to do now is check for damages." Hermione replied.

As they exited the room everyone stood in amazement. The dimensions of the outside room were definitely larger even by Hermione's expectations, much larger. Xander turned to his work crew and told them to get to work covering the rest of the stone. More sand had been brought in to cover the stone and then to bring the floor up an inch higher. Then large three quarter inch thick steel plates that were precut to fit the floor were set in place and welded together into one big plate. It was then covered with even more sand before the women got to work laying the stone to make it look like the floor outside the room.

"No one will get at that Dreidel." Xander announced.

"Overprotective much, Xander?" Nicky asked.

"Let's hear you say that when you see the upstairs." Hermione quipped.

As Xander and the rest of his crew that weren't working followed Harry and Hermione to the stairs they passed the safe that was now the size of a vault. Xander went over to inspect it. It was now thirty feet deep and twenty feet long standing twelve feet high. The door was now almost two feet thick.

"Yep, this will be perfect for holding slayer weapons." He commented.

Hermione spotted the refrigerators and gaped at their massiveness. They would now function as a walk in meat freezer and cooler.

When they planned how to set up the city they agreed that whatever they did the city could run on ether magic or electricity so everyone could use what they felt comfortable with and didn't need to have magic to operate anything. They then moved on to the main floor. Again they were gob-smacked at what they found. They never planned for it to be as big as it had gotten. They stood in a cavernous space that was the size of two football fields long and as wide as one. They had built what was an upper walkway that held many broom closets like rooms. They knew that when they expanded the dimensions of the building that those rooms would be small one room apartments but could now be large two room apartments at the very least. They knew this because they had just as many rooms on the main floor that they were now checking out. Maybe they could cut some of the rooms in half to make single room apartments almost doubling the rooms for more people to live in.

"This place is ginormous!" One of the slayers exclaimed.

"Not that I'm complaining but this is about a hundred yards bigger than I was expecting. At least, we shouldn't have any problems with overcrowding." Xander announced.

Hermione turned to Nicky. "Now, just imagine if you had all of your stuff moved into one of these apartments and someone began fiddling with the expansion stone and it turned your apartment back into a broom closet."

Nicky looked at Hermione in shock before saying. "That doesn't sound like a good thing."

"Yeah, provided you weren't crushed you'd become really friendly with all your furniture." Christa announced playfully.

One of the problems they hadn't foreseen was the rubble they left on the floor before the spell; if the pieces weren't larger there was more of it.

"Daisy you better get some of the others to help clean up this mess." Xander commanded.

"Yes sir." she replied.

"Hey what happed over there?" One of the slayers asked.

Over in the corner was a twisted stretched and bulging piece of metal almost unidentifiable to what it had been without knowing what it was.

"Isn't that the spiral staircase we installed?" Another slayer asked.

"Great googly moogly! I think you're right. At least that's where we left it." Xander said.

"This was expected actually. Wrought iron and or pig iron don't work well with enchantments, But Harry and I can fix it." Hermione claimed.

"Hmm. Willow says the same thing about earth magic when dealing with plastic."

"That sounds fascinating. I'll have to ask her about that." Hermione commented.

So, clean up and repair began, followed by planning, furnishing, installing and revision. Yes, there was still a lot of work ahead.

/Scene Break/

GC Cleveland teleport room.

Buffy ran to the teleport room and met Willow just outside.

"What the hell were you thinking? Where have you been?"

"You already know the answer to that question because I told you were I was going before I left, so why ask?" Willow replied.

"We agreed that we weren't raiding anymore places tonight." Buffy complained.

"You and the rest agreed. I told you I had to go get back in the metaphorical saddle again or I wouldn't be able to keep doing this at all." Willow stressed.

"To go without slayer support was crazy." Buffy reprimanded.

"Maybe, maybe not. I think that perhaps doing this all by myself just for this one time helped me get over the fear of getting caught those past two times." Willow suggested.

Buffy sighed as she really couldn't argue with this kind of logic and if it helped her friend get over her fear then so be it but she was still concerned about what could have happened.

"Just promise me you'll take us along next time."

"Sure, I think I'm over my fear for now." Willow reassured her friend.

"Where did you go? What did you raid?" Buffy asked.

"Well, I took the magic bag of holding that Hermione was helping me to make."

"I thought that it wasn't ready yet." Buffy wondered.

"Well, it isn't quit finished yet. It's still bigger on the inside but there are other spells on Hermione's that keeps thing fresh and unbreakable but I didn't need that for what I was planning." Willow explained.

"And what was that pray tell." Buffy wondered.

"I raided the biggest used bookstore in Pennsylvania and because I felt that we neglected Ohio which might make some important people wonder why it was missed I raided the Stables & Gallant book store in the next county to get some of the newest book in print." Willow announced.

"Well I was worried that you might have tried to go after another food station warehouse again. We just heard on the news that they were upping the security there."

"Well, we did hit quite a few of them. If we have any close calls in our next raids maybe we should start hitting the ones up in Canada next." Willow suggested.

"Maybe." Buffy agreed.

"They also have them in the U.K. so we can get some British food that Giles likes." Willow said with a mischievous smile.

Buffy smirked and shook her head. "You're incorrigible." Buffy announced.

"I've also been told I'm quite cuddly." Willow added with an even bigger smile.

Buffy rolled her eyes and walked away.

Willow shrugged and went back to the teleport room and opened the door.

"Okay the coast is clear." She said to the person inside.

A female figure emerged wearing a purple costume. The figure took off the mask revealing Faith who said. "Damn Will, I never thought you would get me back into this outfit. I should have burned it after the parade."

"But then you wouldn't have been able to help me tonight. And you know you liked the excitement. Besides I needed your help. You were the only person I felt comfortable asking for help on this sort of thing. I mean you worked in that store that one time."

"Yeah, yeah I just can't believe it was your idea to raid a sex toy warehouse. What brought that on?" Faith asked.

"I just felt that every girl should have the opportunity to let off some steam once in a while." Willow said innocently.

"Nice analogy but I'm not buying it. That day you found me working at the sex shop you couldn't even look at the merchandise without turning fifty shades of red. So what could get the straight-laced girl next door to come up with, 'hey we should gather lot and lots of sex toys.'"

As intended Willow had become beet red. The truth was she had seen her friend Lara Croft on television the other night and remembered their one night stand together. A night filled with sex and toys. After that night with Lara she realized the importance of sex toys and doubted they would be available in their new surroundings in Africa.

"That Faith, is none of your business." Willow said with a smirk. "Thanks for all your help tonight but now if you'll excuse me I've… got to feed Pyewacket." and then she walked away very quickly.

Faith was very amused and knew she had ammunition for further laughs in future.

A.N. (Reviews can make a story even better and are appreciated.)