Leaning back against the wall, her arms crossed, Buffy fingered the point of her stake through the thin material of her sleeve. It was just another Saturday at the Bronze she thought, scrunching her nose at the combined sour smells of spilled beer and vomit.

Environmental nastiness aside, it'd been a quiet night so far. In fact, the pickings for the last week had been unusually slim, even for late summer, as students and other short term residents trickled back into Sunnydale right before the start of the Fall semester. There'd been dry spells before but usually only to this extent right after an apocalypse and that'd happened months ago, not right before a prime hunting season.

Something or someone was either killing or scaring away the demons, vampires, and other creatures normally attracted to the Hellmouth at this time of year. It wasn't that she had a problem with not having to fight for her life every night, but the decrease in the demon population was setting off all sorts of alarms in her head.

Buffy really hoped it wasn't being caused by another master vampire, or new demon clan attracted to the burst of dark power Willow'd let loose during her brief meltdown after Tara's death. Not that she was really concerned, she decided, her eyes roaming across the packed dance floor. She'd survived Lothos, the Master, Angelus, Spike, and Dracula. To say nothing of the Mayor and Glory. She'd already slayed half a dozen master vampire wanna-bees since the beginning of the summer. A true master vampire would be a challenge but not an impossible one.

She also hoped it wasn't being caused by some well meaning demon hunter looking to make a name for themselves against the rumored new dark power in Sunnydale. Buffy couldn't begin to imagine how much worse it could have been if she hadn't dropped in at several hunter hangouts to warn them away from Sunnydale, following Giles' suggestion before he'd taken Willow away.

She'd only had to beat up a couple of them to get the point through their dense chauvinistic brains that she was serious about them staying off her turf. Even then she'd still chased a number of them away from Sunnydale and was more than ready to stop being the designated Hellmouth tour guide for every Tom, Dean, or Yohko passing through.

At least when it came to costumed heroes she had no worries that they would interfere. The Council had spread the word that she'd taken care of things, and to remind them that Sunnydale fell within her purview. She'd actually been surprised by that the last time she talked with him. Giles had explained the role the Council had played in calming things down after Willow's little escapade set off apocalypse detectors all over the world. Quentin Travers hadn't seemed like someone to care about peaceful cooperation between the assorted evil fighting vigilante groups. She might have to revise her opinion of him, though she was no hurry to lead any parades in his honor.

So, it probably wasn't one of those. She either had an independent evil fighter wandering around Sunnydale, or something evil had moved in right under her nose and was disposing of the competition before she could catch them.

The driving beat of the music wasn't helping her figure it out. Time to take the show on the road, she decided, pushing herself away from the wall.

Buffy felt it less than a block from Restfield, on her way home from her last planned stop of the night, visiting Tara's grave. The cemetery wasn't on her patrol schedule for the night. She'd cleaned out the latest vampire nest there less than a month ago and it would be another month or so before something dared to move into one of the empty crypts they all seemed to gravitate towards.

She suspected it was some kind of slayer scent or aura she left behind after a fight that kept them away for that long but hadn't felt it was something she could ask Giles about. He would probably blush and rub his glasses into non-existence at such a personal seaming question.

Whatever the feeling was, it wasn't anything she was familiar with. Demons left a faint but distinctly smokey flavor in the back of her throat but she had to be almost on top of them to notice. And vampires, those supernatural cockroaches that were the bane of her existence, left her feeling crampy, but only when she was close enough to almost touch them. This was something else with enough power to attract even her attention from a distance.

Somewhere in Restfield was something potentially more dangerous than the average supernatural Sunnydale pest. It took her less than a moment to decide to investigate. It wasn't like she had a reason to hurry home with Dawn visiting their father for the rest of the summer.

Avoiding the main gate glowing in the moonlight, Buffy carefully circled around to a side entrance out of sight of the road. Slowly opening the much smaller gate, she cautiously entered the cemetery and looked around. Restfield wasn't the largest cemetery in Sunnydale but there were a number of large mausoleums that prevented her from seeing across the entire cemetery, even with her enhanced night vision.

The power pulled at her, guiding her towards the center of the cemetery. The closer she got, the stronger the feeling got, but still not familiar. Standing in the shadow of the last mausoleum between her and her target, Buffy leaned cautiously forward to get an unobstructed look.

Standing on top of a mausoleum was a faintly glowing figure holding a small device in front of her face. Obviously, someone hadn't gotten the Council's message that the apocalypse was long over, Buffy thought, her jaw dropping in amazement at the unexpected sight of a woman dressed in a costume that she was sure belonged on a comic book character.

Her eyes adjusting to the faint glow, Buffy's first impression was of a woman, around her own age or slightly younger, dressed in a short blue skirt, a form fitting white top, blue boots, and white gloves. Her lower legs were protected by her boots and her gloves seemed to end at her elbows in some kind of protective armor.

She had to force her eyes away from that short, short skirt. She wondered what kind of magic or super heroine fashion high tech allowed the woman to wear such a short skirt without her butt showing. Maybe it was that large blue bow she could see the edges of?

Sure, she'd fought vampires in a short skirt when she'd first become the slayer, but not that short and being able to turn your foes to dust tended to limit the length of the potential embarrassment. Maybe she was one of those hero types who never actually had to fight their foes up close and personal? She didn't seem to be armed but didn't superheroes have special powers, Buffy wondered, stepping forward silently, hoping to get a closer look before she was noticed.

The stylized sailor collar lent a sailor suit look to her costume, though Buffy couldn't remember hearing about any superhero who dressed like a Japanese school girl. Her eyes were shielded by a tinted visor, preventing Buffy from seeing what color they were. A gold tiara with a blue gem at its center was barely visible from Buffy's position. The blue choker with a gold star below her chin would have looked childish worn by anyone else. Her sailor collar ended in a light blue bow with a blue heart just above her chest.

Her hair was short, with a faint blue cast to it that looked almost familiar, though she couldn't remember where she'd seen that color before. She would bet her favorite stake that the woman was human but the overall effect was of a beautiful, almost unearthly being.

Buffy froze, as the woman finally noticed she wasn't alone and with a frown pointed the device in her direction, looking her straight in the eyes.

Looking across the quiet cemetery, Mercury suppressed a sigh of frustration. She'd jumped at the opportunity to experience American medicine after finishing her internship in Tokyo, looking forward to two years away from the soap opera that surrounded the other Senshi. The adventure of experiencing a different culture from the inside had been irresistible.

But there was an alienness to America that she was still getting used to. When her memories of her life in the Silver Millennium had begun to return years ago, they'd seemed to fit in with her current life. She'd never really thought too deeply about why her Princess and the Senshi were reincarnated where they were. Until now.

Between settling into her new position at the hospital and the interference from the unexpected energy nexus centered in the new high school, it'd taken her a month to complete her planned survey of Sunnydale.

Occasionally she'd encountered creatures imbued with the same nexus energy but the few who'd attacked her had been easily dealt with, though she suspected it had been mostly because she'd surprised them. She'd mapped out the locations of pockets of nexus energy, mostly centered around the cemeteries but also in a surprising number of abandoned houses and other buildings scattered around the small city and nearby university campus.

But what she wasn't seeing was the beacon of Dark Kingdom energy that had originally attracted her attention to Sunnydale. Something was shielding it from her. She hoped she had time to find it before someone else with less noble motives did.

A flashing alarm in a corner of her goggles drew her attention back to the center of cemetery. Something was watching her. It was a creature that had a faint energy signature that carried an echo of the now familiar nexus energy. Quickly running through a scan of her immediate vicinity with her computer, she pinpointed it coming from a slight figure watching her from the shadow of a nearby mausoleum.

Slowly turning, Mercury found herself looking at the familiar face of her patient from the previous day. She hoped she'd hidden her surprise, she thought when their eyes met. Before she could say anything, a rapidly approaching thing with a human-like face appeared, radiating so much nexus energy it overwhelmed her goggles for a moment, almost blinding her.

Before she finished resetting her goggles, she heard the sounds she associated with fighting. Shoes scuffing the ground. Flesh hitting flesh. Grunts and growls piercing the quiet cemetery. When she could see again, Buffy was gone and the sounds had receded.

Muttering some choice curses she'd learned from Mars, Mercury attempted to follow, using the nexus energy as a beacon, leaping from the top of one crypt to another until she was on the edge of the cemetery. The nexus energy was still setting off an alarm in her display, but Buffy was alone.

Mercury hopped down from the crypt and cautiously approached her. She detected a slight tenseness but otherwise Buffy ignored her as she brushed dust from her clothes. Looking around, she adjusted the magnification on her goggles. Her eyes landed on an object sticking out of the side of a small marble obelisk.

"What is that?" she asked, turning to Buffy, who'd managed to get close without her noticing. At Buffy's confused look she realized she'd been speaking Lunarian. At least she hadn't slipped into Japanese, she thought with relief. Switching to English, she asked again.

"Vamp tried to gut me with it," Buffy said with a grimace. "Must be special. Most knives bend or shatter when they get jammed into solid stone like that."

"Vamp?" Mercury asked, as she started scanning the knife. Other than containing a large amount of the local nexus energy, it registered as a knife with an unusual silver and iron blade. "Silver?" she murmured under her breath.

"Why would a vampire have a silver knife," Buffy said to herself.

"That was a vampire? Like Dracula?" Mercury asked in surprise. She'd always thought vampires were just legends. The Senshi had run into a number of strange creatures over the years but nothing like a classical movie vampire.

"More or less. Dracula wasn't a normal vampire," Buffy said. "Most other vampires don't like to play with their food. They just kill you."

"Oh," Mercury said. Her computer beeped to tell her it was finished. Frowning at it, she wondered what caused it to contain so much energy.

"No, don't touch it!" she blurted out the order when she saw Buffy's hand reaching for the hilt.

"Why not?" Buffy asked.

"It's dangerous! It contains an unknown kind of energy," she said.

"Energy? Like what?"

"I don't know for sure," Mercury told her. "I haven't finished analyzing it."

"Who are you?" Buffy asked abruptly.

"I am sorry," Mercury said, embarrassed at forgetting that Buffy wouldn't recognize her in her Senshi form. "My name is Sailor Mercury," she said, bowing slightly.

"Just passing through?" Buffy asked, pulling a scrap of material out of a pocket and using it to grasp the hilt.

"What is that?" Mercury asked, ignoring her question, starting as the nexus energy seemed to disappear from her goggle's sensors.

"It's neutered?" Buffy said, frowning as she tugged on the hilt.

"Neutered?" One of them didn't know what that word meant, Mercury guessed, because her explanation didn't make complete sense to her.

"Yeah, magic can't pass through it," Buffy told her, stepping back and triumphantly holding up the knife. "Sunnydale is littered with junk someone used in some spell or did something to with magic. If you're going to be in town long you'll need to learn to recognize it." She paused, looking at Mercury inquiringly.

Mercury nodded. If this nexus energy was caused by magic it was certainly not magic she was familiar with. Frowning, she changed a setting in her goggles and adjusted a parameter in her computer's scanner.

"Ahem..."

Mercury looked up from her computer to see Buffy looking at her impatiently. She sighed, coming to a decision. She was going to have to give her some reasonable explanation for her presence in Sunnydale if she didn't want to antagonize one of the town's apparent protectors.