"The Sunset Club is perfect for our needs." Xander said. "At least to start with. The dance pit is large enough for training, the antechambers will work to store Giles books and the apartment upstairs will work as a place for meetings."

"Amy and I can put protections on the building." Jenny offered.

"Good, that just leaves actually buying it." Xander said.

"I can take care of that." Giles told him. "I'll purchase it from Billy Fordham's father, as he has control over his son's affairs while the boy is in hospice care. It shouldn't take too long to negotiate a deal."

"Then we can move in and Giles and I can begin training the rest of you." Xander said. "Once we're sure we each can take good care of ourselves and watch each other's back, then we can begin patrolling. I should have a good supply of wood bullets on hand by then."

"In the meantime, what is the next threat we need to deal with?" Willow asked.

"Prehistoric parasite someone dug up in the basement of the school. How the Hell it got missed during construction or how it got dug up at this time, they never did find out."

"Likely someone either knew it was there and dormant," Giles said. "or someone arranged for it to be there. Either way, it screams more manipulation. What kind of parasite?"

"Your books called it a Bezoar. It separates parts of itself and attaches those parts to other life forms via something called neural clamping. The only ones who escaped clamping were other me and Buffy. Other me because he cooked the egg he was given and Buffy because when the thing crawled out of it, she skewered it with a scissors."

A ripple of laughter went through the group at that.

"Egg?" Cordelia asked.

"The biology teacher passed out the eggs as part of an exercise in parenting. Other me volunteered to be Cordy's co-parent, that really should have been a big clue to both his feelings and his intentions."

"You mean that he was thinking long term in regards to them as a couple?" Cordelia asked curiously.

"Exactly, but neither he nor she realized it."

"Of course not, a century ago we'd have been considered old enough to be planning our wedding. Nowadays kids do everything they can to avoid becoming parents at our age. And you and I have only just had our first official date and still no kiss. Kids are a long ways off."

"Oh, trust me, I'm not ready for them either. As I pointed out to Angel, there's a reason why things like consent laws have been enacted. Kids our age just aren't ready to make those kind of decisions. And we have enough to deal with right now with making ourselves ready to fight the Dark and then we'll actually be fighting. Until we're ready to pass the torch."

"We shouldn't have to be the ones fighting." Cordelia said, annoyed. "The adults should be, but the adults in the know, like the Watchers Council, simply don't care. They can claim they do all they want, but the evidence says otherwise."

"As much as I'd like to protest your evaluation of the Watchers Council," Giles stated. "I'd be a hypocrite if I did, as I happen to agree. And unfortunately, I see nothing we can do about them or the monopoly they have on the Potentials or the Slayer. I don't even know the magics they use to find either one. I remain a member only because it's a potential resource we may have need of in the future."

"Tell me, Giles." Xander softly. "Do you know about the Tento di Cruciamentum?"

"The what?" Giles asked, confused. Xander was hit mentally with Giles' confusion. "That translates as Test of Torture."

"That's a good way of describing it." Xander agreed. "It happened a week before Alexander showed up in their reality. Happy birthday to Buffy. As if her seventeenth birthday wasn't bad enough. On orders from the Council, you injected her with a partially organic, partially magical formula after you hypnotized her. It left her at normal human strength for a week. The Council brought a captured vampire, a psycho one with a hate for mothers. He got loose, killed one Watcher, turned another and kidnapped Mrs. Summers. Buffy tricked him and succeeded in destroying him. The Council fired you, they claimed you cared too much for her, which is weird considering you betrayed her on their orders. She forgave you without hesitation when you were fired. She never explained why and no one asked. Other me was rather confused by it all. Especially since a week later, she started pushing him out. During the Cruciamentum, she told you she couldn't be helpless and a week later, she decided he was too helpless, right after he stopped a demon that was sneaking up on her. He wasn't so much as bruised,"

"Why? What purpose could there be in such a test?!" Giles demanded.

"They called it a rite of passage for any Slayer that reaches eighteen. A way of testing a Slayer's resourcefulness."

"Testing?" Giles said grimly. "Like the beings this Whistler supposedly works for. Another manipulation. I see no reason why I would go along with it or why Buffy would forgive me if I did. What possible purpose could any of it serve?"

"A very good question." Xander agreed equally as grimly. "Buffy was even more emotionally dependant on you afterwards. And you ignored Faith even more. She needed you more then Buffy and she was the actual Slayer. And there'd been assassination attempts on Buffy. Someone wanted her dead and the Shadows wanted Faith isolated. I hope the other us figure it out because we'll probably be facing something entirely different, since those doing the manipulating seem to have a different agenda here."