A/N So for the record Giles is competent in this story, not an evil mastermind. He was compromised by thrall and Magic done on him and is now protected from Magic and vampires are gone. I had him be the evil mastermind in my Twisting Fates stories on my original account and ended up with a lot of angry, nasty PM's and anonymous reviews. I had to block a few people because of the PM's.

I may, in some future story, revisit the idea.

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Willow and Oz made it through their second full moon cycle and their third with no problems, their fourth occured in May, not long before summer vacation. The month of May was going well and everyone was looking forward to summer vacation, although Xander was a little, no a lot nervous, over how well his internship with Chase Holdings would go when Giles discovered a potential problem of his own at the Sunnydale Museum.

Dr. Doug Perren, Rupert Giles' superior at the museum, was observing the work of a technician as she carefully cleaned a large rectangular cut stone piece that had been moved into the room.

"Careful now." He murmured. He pointed to one section. "Concentrate here for a moment." He instructed and the technician gently scrapped the build up before blowing a stream of compressed air through a nozzle attached to a nearby tank. "There you go, good job." He glanced behind him when he heard the door of the room open and saw Rupert Giles enter the room.

"Mr. Giles, thank you for joining us." Dr. Perren grinned cheerfully at the recent hire, the two had quickly become friends as they both had a passion for history. But both also had a fondness for formality. "To think we have one of the best authorities on obscure relics working right here at our little museum. Come take a look at this, Mr. Giles and tell me what you think." He motioned the other man towards the stone monolith.

"Oh, my. It certainly is very different than anything I can remember seeing before." Giles murmured. "And quite unlike any of the known works of indigenous peoples. Stone work tends to be found more in South America than North America."

"And certainly isn't expected to be found where a new housing development is being set up." Dr. Perren agreed, watching as Rupert Giles circled the stone, studying it from different angles.

"Any ideas?" Dr. Perren asked.

"A few, none I'd care to share just yet, not until I can get some verification on my thoughts. Have you carbon dated it yet?"

"The results'll be back in a couple of days. I'll go out on a limb and say old." Dr. Perren grinned, the amount of buildup on the object alone would indicate that, at the very least, it was centuries old.

"Have you tried to open it?" Giles asked, peering closely at an area near the center of the side he was currently studying.

"Open it?" Dr. Perren questioned and Giles pointed to the area he'd been studying, a straight line grove extended both up and down from that point, possibly running the entire length as Giles suggested.

"I hadn't seen that." Dr. Perren admitted. "Do you think it's a stone sarcapagus?"

Giles shuddered, thinking of the last time a sarcapagus had come through the museum and the mummy girl imprisoned in it had arisen and tried to survive by feeding on people, on their life forces. They'd never even found out her real name, poor girl. Sacrificed to a god by her people, an uncomfortable reminder that the Slayer, that Buffy, was an unwilling sacrifice, on behalf of people who didn't want to dirty their hands in the fight against evil themselves.

"Any thought on what might be in there?" Dr. Perren, asked, considering the various possibilities.

"Could you hold off on opening it until I've had a chance to translate this text?" Giles asked. "Some of these symbols remind me of some rare texts I've got at home, I'd like to see if we're going to unleash a curse before we try to open it." He joked, although inwardly he was wondering at the possibility.

"It'll take a few weeks to finish cleaning it anyway, that should give you time to get an idea of what's in there." Dr. Perren agreed. "Sarcaphagus', tombs and curses, it all seems to go together, doesn't it? Even if there actually is a reasonable explanation that doesn't resort to fantasy." He'd made it clear he was a man grounded in science a long time ago and Giles respected that. The supernatural was something that usually needed to be seen to be believed anyway. Unless seeing it drove you insane. He took a rubbing of the text that currently could be seen in the cleaned areas.

"Well, I'm off." He told his boss and friend. "Please see to it that any new text uncovered is sent to me right away."

"Not a problem." Dr. Perren continued to study the groved area. "I'm very curious but I'll wait until you're done "

"Thank you." An uneasy feeling gripped Rupert Giles, something about this sarcapagus seemed familiar, something he'd read at some point? He headed home to begin translating the text on the rubbings.

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A/N Some dialog, modified, taken from the Buffy wiki transcript for Becoming part 1.