"It's time to begin patrols." Xander announced at a meeting two weeks later. "We've been training for three months, United States military basic training is two and half months. An Anla'shok's training is a couple of years. Military training is on going, we won't stop training, but we are at a point where we can start working. To that point, Giles has drawn up patrol schedules for all those who've agreed to participate with patrolling."
"We think we're ready too." Tor assured him.
"Before Giles passes out your assigned routes, I'm going to remind you of the rules. Teams stay together, no one goes off alone. No one goes out without their protections in place and armed. If you identify a nest, you mark it, you do not take on a nest by yourselves. No matter how many vampires you think might be in there. Nest raiding requires more protections and greater numbers to take out. You keep your phones on vibrate, double check before you leave. They may be your lifeline in the event of injury and will save time if you encounter an unknown demon and need to identify its weaknesses. And remember Giles' lectures, not every demon is out to get humans, but every vampire is a soulless, demon animated dead body. In all of recorded history, we've only known of one souled vampire and he was under a curse. As a result of the curse, the soul was suffering for the crimes of the demon. Dusting him freed the soul and destroyed the demon."
"How many teams will be going out?" Heidi asked.
"Five total for now, two people to a team. Willow and Oz both choose to remain in house doing research. Giles teaches and Jenny and Amy choose to direct their energy to learning the magics that can help with protecting everyone. Neither of them want to learn either combat magics or blacks magics. And given how dangerous those magics are, not to mention corruptive, that's probably for the best. We have fighters already and in time, we will have more."
"And don't forget, someone hired those demons a couple of months ago." Cordelia reminded them. "A vampire, Xander shared the image he got from the demon's mind. If you encounter that vampire, it's been decided, you dust him. Trying to capture him to ask questions is too dangerous. Unless we encounter him in a nest and have strength of numbers, then we capture and can interrogate. We will be taking enough calculated risks as it is, we do not take unnecessary ones."
"And remember, it is most likely a human who intended to sacrifice babies to Lurconis." Giles told them. "There are only two reason to do that, worship of the demon in question or in exchange for power. Either way, there's a dangerous human out there that is willing to sacrifice their own kind to demons. Which means once again, a human is the danger we must face. That is the hardest part of what we're doing. Accepting that the humans we are trying to protect from demons that would feed on, torture and out right kill them are capable of working with the very creatures that prey on us. Our stance on these humans is, if it's possible for human law to deal with them, than we will endeavor to find proof that the law can use. If we can not find such proof or find proof that, that human is harming humans in pursuit of their goal that can't be turned over to the law or if they are caught actively hurting humans, than we put the humans who are in harm's way, first."
"Like the zookeeper." Tor reminded the group. "He wanted power and we got caught up in what he was doing by accident. Heidi, Xander and I have to live with the after effects of his insanity. If we could have been saved from that by someone -." Heidi put her hand over his.
"Or my mother." Amy said softly.
"We are not the law." Xander stated. "And what we're doing isn't sanctioned by the law, but that's because the law doesn't know any of this is happening. We act to protect, that is all. So we have to be sure of why we are acting against a human. We need proof before going after a human. In both the case of the zookeeper and Amy's mother, they were immediate threats to a human, Willow and Buffy respectively."
"The difference with regards to the humans who were trying to sacrifice me and Buffy to Machida is that those humans gave up as soon as Machida was dead, they didn't continue trying to hurt us." Cordelia said. "If they had, than Buffy would have had to kill them too. Or I and the other girl they were trying to sacrifice would have had to protect ourselves and than we'd have been the ones who killed them and that would have been self defense."
"Bottom line, if the human is an immediate threat or we're unable to get any kind of proof that the law could use, but proof of them hurting humans, we have to protect the greater number of humans." Giles said. "We are not vigilantes and we have to keep that in mind at all times. We are not hunting humans, we are hunting vampires and hostile demons. Humans that work with demons willingly are fortunately rare, but they do happen. And that is a fact that we must accept."