"Giles, another note showed up." Xander announced two weeks later at the next Scooby meeting. "We've got an apocalypse we're trying to stop and apparently an annoyance as well."
"I'm aware of the apocalypse, Xander. We were just discussing it after all. The Sisterhood of the Jhe wish to open the Hellmouth. Your plan to have everyone suited up and patrolling and destroying every Jhe you encounter while Anna and I shield the library and subsequently the Hellmouth, is a good one. What's the annoyance?"
"Jack O'Toole, three time repeater of a grade, is apparently a zombie, raised by his necromancer grandfather. He wants to voodoo his buddies back from the dead as zombies as well and then put a bomb in the boiler room. The one under our feet."
"That's more then an annoyance, Xander. If it goes off it could set off the Hellmouth. We're trying to stop that from happening!"
"I say annoyance because it means I have to take my lunch period and drag his sorry ass out of the school so I can chop his head off. I hate missing lunch. It makes me hangry."
"What does hangry mean?" Giles asked.
"Contraction of hungry and angry. I'm a teenage boy, Giles. I know Buffy thinks you're old, but you do remember what a teenager boy's stomach is like, right?"
"You are correct, I have not forgotten. You have third period free. I will have a couple of sandwiches ready for you."
"Thanks, Giles. I appreciate it. See you later."
"He's getting rather casual about channeling those notes." Giles observed to himself, as the rest of the Scoobies scattered for class.
"Giles, another note showed up." Xander announced a week later. "Fake Watcher bitch incoming."
"A fake Watcher?"
"Someone named Gwendolyn Post. She's going to claim to be Faith's Watcher but it's a fake out. She's after something called the Glove of Mineghan."
"I'll contact the Watchers Council and confirm." Which is why there was a Watcher retrieval team waiting to arrest Gwendolyn Post when she arrived and took her back to England with them.
"Damn, she thought she could get away with pretending to be my Watcher?" Faith asked.
"Yes, it seems she was fired a few years ago for misuse of Magic." Giles confirmed. "She wanted to separate you from us and use you to find this Glove of Mineghan. Xander's note indicated where it is. The Council has taken it with them. If they can't destroy it, they'll place it in a magically secured vault. Hopefully it never becomes a problem."
"I've got a new note, Giles. And this is definitely not something I'm going to joke about." Xander said soon after.
"What's the concern, Xander?"
"According to the note, Faith and Buffy will be patrolling tonight when they'll run into a mess a vamps loyal to a demon named Balthazar, who's apparently not dead nor is his cult extinct. A human will walk right into the middle of the battle. Buffy will think it's a vampire and throw him at Faith. She won't realize it's a human until she's staked him. For some reason, the note says you won't support Faith at all and she'll go off the deep and think it makes her evil. We need to stop it from happening."
"Why would I not support Faith? Accidents like that happen. It's tragic, but it does happen. My apparent reaction doesn't make any sense. How can we ensure this doesn't happen?"
"We all patrol in a group. We watch each other's back, we deal with the vamps when they show up and we keep an eye out for the human."
"That sounds like the best way to handle it." Giles agreed. "It troubles me that whatever is causing these notes thinks I wouldn't support Faith. She's my charge too. Of course I would support her, as well as Buffy."
"Maybe this demon these vamps the note mentioned working for, knows something about Magic and influences you somehow." Xander suggested.
"That sounds plausible. I will talk to Anna. We should take the precaution of having Wards applied, just in case the demon does try something."
Before Anna could place any Wards, the Scoobies, patrolling together, ran into the vampires that served Balthazar. Together the group dusted them all fairly quickly. Just as they were finishing up a human appeared in the alleyway. Having been warned a human would wander into their battle, the group had kept an eye out for him, so they weren't surprised when they saw him. They were surprised when he introduced himself though.
"I'm Deputy Mayor Alan Finch. I need to talk to you about something very important. You need to stop him."
"Stop who?" Buffy asked.
"Stop Mayor Wilkins. He's spent the last century preparing for his Ascension. On the day you graduate, he's going to turn himself into an Old One."
"What's an Old One?" Faith asked. "That sounds familiar."
"The demons that ruled Earth before humans." Finch answered. "Dinosaur sized demons."
"He wants to be one?" Xander questioned.
"Yes and he's nearly ready. It won't be long before he's invulnerable to harm and then on your graduation day, he'll transform. You must stop him before he kills us all."
"So Mayor Wilkins is behind the cover up of all the dead and people who disappear in Sunnydale?" Willow asked.
"Yes. He's been doing it for a long time." The Deputy Mayor confirmed.
"How?" Cordelia asked.
"He sold his soul over a century ago and sacrifices humans to demons." Was the astonishing answer.
"Okay, we're going to take you to our Watcher, Rupert Giles." Buffy said. "You can tell us everything you know and then we'll see about taking care of the Mayor before he becomes a dinosaur sized problem."