It had been a moderately productive beginning to what she suspected was going to be a long day, thought the displaced slayer. Between breakfast at an all-night diner on the edge of the warehouse district, a walk along the beach at dawn, and nursing a cup of coffee at the downtown donut shop, she'd managed to remain inconspicuous until the local shops began to open for the day's business.

And thanks to Xander, she'd at least gotten a good start at blending into the scenery. He'd recently begun insisting they all carry small amounts of gold on trips out of the country, unobtrusively concealed somewhere in their clothing. At the time Buffy had only done it to humour him, having the Council taylor hide several ounces of gold thread, and a small packet of easily disposed of gems in the linings of her boots and favorite leather jacket. But now she wondered if the impulse had come from another source.

She'd been able to exchange a portion of her gems for local currency at a jeweler without much difficulty. It wasn't a lot but it had enabled her to get some very basic transportation, an old motorcycle that brought back memories of her life before Sunnydale. While riding it down to LA had done little to dispel her feelings of being disconnected from reality, it had given her plenty of time to think.

Once there she'd turned over a large portion of her gold thread to a documents specialist, as the woman preferred to be called, in exchange for the several forms of local identification she needed so she wouldn't attract unnecessary attention - a driver's license, passport, and social security number that would fool almost anyone, including the local authorities. She'd kept her own name for simplicity. She didn't think trying to remember a fake name would make things easier.

It was something else she would have to thank Willow for, if she ever made it home. If it weren't for the urban survival classes they'd been holding for the new slayers she'd insisted Buffy sit in on, she wouldn't have known who to approach and how to talk with them in order to get this taken care of so quickly.

On the return trip to Sunnydale, Buffy reviewed her plans for the next few days. Once she'd replenished her wardrobe and purchased the other necessities of modern life that her still unknown mode of multi-dimensional travel had left her without, she hoped there would be enough left over to pay for a month's rent on a small apartment somewhere in Sunnydale and the basics to make it livable. Nothing fancy but hopefully not too dingy.

A sleeping bag, some bean-bag chairs and large pillows would have to do for furniture until she could get a job. Other things, like a television and decorations, could wait. There was no point in spending money on anything she didn't really need.

Nodding to herself as she pulled off the interstate at the Sunnydale exit, Buffy decided that tomorrow she would look for an apartment that fit in her meager budget. A phone, post office box, and anything else she needed would follow, and then she could go job hunting. Her remaining gold wouldn't last the month if she didn't find something quickly. The few gems left over would be saved for an emergency. For now she needed a few hours sleep before she could go looking for the slayer and a hotel room would have to do.

Passing the diner she'd eaten at that morning, Buffy saw an old hotel, like something out of a black and white movie. While it wasn't in the best part of town, stepping into the shabby but clean lobby she could see that it was still better than the small ratty motel rooms she remembered Faith living in when she'd first come to Sunnydale. It would do for a night or two.

If she looked hard enough she was sure she could find a motel like one of the ones Faith had stayed in, but although it might save her money she wasn't a teenage runaway slayer. She wasn't going to be in this town or even universe for more than a couple months, but she couldn't live like she was just passing through. For a few hours each day she needed to feel safe, to have a sense of security while she slept, a place to call home even briefly, something a motel room couldn't give her.

Closing her room door behind her and dropping her few possessions on the floor, Buffy took a minute to check the room before exhaustion caught up with her. Unable to resist the pull of the bed in the center of the room, she just barely managed to remove her clothes before lying down and quickly falling asleep.

She'd never been a fan of early mornings but since becoming a slayer, Dawn had been finding it even harder to get up for school. With her patrolling schedule keeping her out late more often than not, she was rarely able to get more than four uninterrupted hours of sleep a night. Most days she was lucky to get up before her sister left for work. Her Guide said she would get used to it and to not worry about it, but she had learned to take such advice with more than a grain of salt.

Adapting to the schedule wasn't happening yet, even after months of following it. She was beginning to have doubts that it would ever happen as her Guide claimed. After all, it wasn't her Guide who was out so late every night keeping the forces of evil at bay. Most weeks, by Wednesday she was on the edge of total exhaustion, barely making it through her classes the rest of the week without falling asleep.

The weekends were when she attempted to catch up on both her sleep and her schoolwork. And spending some time with her few friends was one of the few things that made her days bearable. But her constant exhaustion from the odd hours had strained her friendships almost to the breaking point. Every weekend she spent a lot of time trying to repair the damage she'd inflicted on her relationships with inattention during the week.

Her sister was oddly sympathetic. Dealing with teenagers on a daily basis as a high school guidance counselor, she'd noticed when Dawn had started having problems getting up in the morning and had taken the time to discuss it with her, instead of getting upset. Her sister had explained it away as just a normal part of growing up. As long as Dawn made it to school in time for her first class of the day her sister left her alone in the mornings. On the days she missed her mother more than normal, on birthdays and family holidays, she liked to imagine that she would have reacted the same way as her sister.

Even though Dawn, in true teenager fashion, found it embarrassing for her sister to be on a first name basis with all of her teachers, this was one of those times when she was very grateful for the support her sister gave her. But she still suffered the occasionally twinge of guilt from not being able to be completely truthful with her. She often wished she could explain the reasons behind her problems getting up in the morning, even though she was sure it wouldn't go over well with her normally sympathetic sister.

But this morning was one of the rare ones. She couldn't wait to get to school and talk with Ms. Rosenberg, her Guide and contact with the local coven. The computer teacher at her high school and one of her sister's oldest school friends, Dawn had known her longer than anyone in Sunnydale, except her sister.

They normally met for a few minutes every afternoon after school at the local coven house but she didn't think Ms. Rosenberg would object to an earlier meeting this time. Although the local coven house was their preferred location to discuss Dawn's previous evenings patrol of the local cemeteries and known demon hangouts, this was an emergency. After last night's events, she felt a need to see her Guide before the end of the day.

She could still spend her normal hour or two training at the coven tonight, before heading home for a late dinner with her sister. Fortunately, her sister thought she was taking a self defense class that her friend was teaching. She'd always encouraged Dawn's participation in such activities as long as her grades didn't suffer.

Dawn finally managed to catch up with Ms. Rosenberg just outside her classroom, right before 3rd period. "I need to talk with you!" she breathlessly exclaimed. "Something strange happened last night that I think you need to know about."

Motioning her into the deserted room, Ms. Rosenberg checked her schedule for the day. "I'm not free until lunch. Can it wait another hour?"

"I don't know. I guess it can. But the sooner we can talk the better," Dawn said before rushing off to class.

Third period seemed to take even longer than the normal forever. Dawn managed to escape from her friends at lunch, a not infrequent occurrence. She often wondered how long they would remain her friends. Maintaining friendships was hard to do when she couldn't really include them in the strange twists and turns her life had taken since she became a slayer. She could already sense them drifting away but, even with all of the effort she went to to spend time with them on weekends, she felt powerless to stop it. Losing them seemed inevitable. Ms. Rosenberg's office was in the back of her classroom, in an enclosed space she'd insisted be soundproofed against the noise of twenty computers and assorted other bits of noisy, chattering equipment. Ms. Rosenberg motioned her in when she showed up, lunch bag in hand. It was the perfect place for a private conversation, their conversation masked by the noisy classroom.

"So what happened?" Ms. Rosenberg asked, clearly concerned. "Did your patrol last night go as planned?"

"The patrol went fine. Not a big deal. Only the one vampire you'd warned me about. I was able to get him before he could get all the way out of his grave. The strangeness didn't start until I got home," she said in a rush. Dawn paused briefly to take a breath and a bite of tuna sandwich.

"Okay, so... how did the strangeness start?" Ms. Rosenberg asked, encouragingly.

"There was a woman sitting on the back porch waiting for me. From a distance she looked kind of like my sister but when I got closer she looked much too old to be her," Dawn said. "But it still could have almost been her."

"What'd she look like?"

"Like a skinnier version of Beth, with an extra dose of that end-of-the-world look she had for months after Mom died," Dawn said after thought for a minute. "Oh, and she was dressed all in black and dark green and I think most of her clothes were leather. Very un-Beth-like," she added.

"Well... actually... Beth does leather quite well. Very butch," Ms. Rosenberg murmured under her breath with a slight grin, before taking a vague swipe at her usual lunch salad with her fork.

"Okay, that little facet of my sister's personal life I really did not need to know. Especially from one of her former girlfriends," Dawn said with a grimace.

"Sorry... pretend I didn't say that. Just recalling some fond memories," she said, the grin still visible on her face.

"Whatever..." Dawn grumbled, trying to act like the mature person Ms. Rosenberg preferred to deal with. "She's my sister, and I love her, but I just can't see the two of you together like that. Gives me the wiggins."

"Yes, you've told me. More than once. You don't need to worry. We found out years ago that we make better friends so there won't be a repeat." She shook her head at some unvoiced thought, before viciously stabbing at her salad. "Did this woman say what she wanted?"

"No... she insulted my clothes and asked about something or someone called a watcher. Does that sound familiar to you?" Dawn asked curiously.

"No, I'll have to look it up tonight in the Coven library," she said.

Dawn grimaced, recognizing that familiar gleam at the scent of something new to learn. Research was not her favorite thing, so whenever her Guide would get that look in her eyes, it was time to find an excuse to be elsewhere.

"Did anything else unusual happen?" Ms. Rosenberg asked.

"Oh, yeah, almost forgot," Dawn said, adding, "While I was talking with her, five vampires showed up at the house looking for 'the slayer'. She told them to go away, and when they wouldn't, she killed them! I've never seen anyone human move so fast! None of the past slayers you have taped could move that quickly. It was almost too fast to follow."

"Five? Are you sure?" Ms. Rosenberg asked, looking at her in surprise, a fork full of salad almost to her mouth.

"Well, actually, she let me have one of them," Dawn said, pausing for a minute to take a bite of her own lunch. "But I think she was just trying to figure how well I can fight. I don't think she was too impressed," she grumbled in annoyance.

"What about the way she fought?" Ms. Rosenberg asked. "You're usually fairly good at analyzing other people's fighting styles."

"Well, besides moving fast, she didn't seem to have a single recognizable fighting style. It was almost like she made it up as she went along," she said, thinking for a moment. "There were parts of some moves that seemed familiar. I know I've seen them before somewhere, but I don't remember them being used together like that."

"Do you think she's a threat? To you, to the coven, or to future slayers," she asked. "Should we deal with her like any evil that comes to town or leave her alone?" Ms. Rosenberg wondered aloud.

"A threat to us? No, I don't think so. She didn't feel evil but she is dangerous. And fatal to vampires. Those ones last night would have killed me if she hadn't been there," Dawn said, shuddering. "There is no way I could have handled that many vampires at one time, but she cut through them like Justin Timberlake through a crowd of groupies. Awe inspiring but I didn't want to get too close."

"What else? That can't be everything," she said eagerly.

"There was definitely something different about her," Dawn told her. "I felt something strange when I was near her. A sort of tingling on the back of my neck. And I tried that aura trick you showed me a couple weeks ago, but it didn't really work on her. All I got was an impression of emptiness."

"Hmm... every living creature has an aura of some sort. It would take an awful lot of power and skill to hide it. It's possible it was just too faint for someone with your limited training to detect," Ms. Rosenberg said.

"Okay. Is there any chance you could find someone else to check her out? If I meet her again I want to know if I should fight or run away," Dawn told her, before adding in jest, thinking about her resemblance to Beth, "or welcome her to the family."

"I'll see what I can do. If you see her tonight while patrolling give her my phone number and let her know I want to see her," Ms. Rosenberg said. "And try to find out whatever you can when you do talk with her. The more we know the better chance we have if we do need to defend ourselves against her. Tonight at the coven you can show me what you remember seeing her do last night. Knowing how she was able to dust so many vampires so quickly could be useful if they are starting to flood the area."

Nodding, Dawn finished the rest of her sandwich in a few quick bites, and guzzled her almost forgotten soda. Gathering up her trash, she waved goodbye at her Guide who was finishing her own lunch, and left her office. If she hurried she could see her friends for a moment before her next class and make plans for the weekend.

The rest of her day went by quickly. As soon as the bell had rung to signal the end of another school day, Dawn was out the door and headed towards the Sunnydale Coven House, a large, rambling, Victorian mansion on the outskirts of town. It was set back from the road and surrounded by a large, overgrown looking yard and a wrought iron fence. As the local slayer, she had free reign of the public parts of the building, which she'd thought was so cool when she first started.

Wandering into the large kitchen on the ground floor, Dawn grabbed a bottle of water before heading down the hall in search of her Guide. With her enhanced slayer senses, she could just barely hear voices rising and falling in several meetings going on in the meeting rooms set up on the first floor. She wasn't surprised to find Ms. Rosenberg in the extensive occult and demonology library next door to the private training room she used almost daily.

She suspected that her Guide spent more time there than in her own apartment on the second floor. As the local slayer's Guide, Ms. Rosenberg lived in one of several studio apartments in the house. There were two other apartments on the same floor, accessible from within, reserved for visitors and the occasional guest of the coven.

Dawn was glad the coven believed in participating in the community, serving as a focal point for an active wiccan community in the area surrounding Sunnydale. They practiced what they preached, and hadn't attempted to hide who they were from the conservative rural community when they'd arrived over twenty years ago, although the true purpose of the Coven's presence, supporting the local slayer, was known only to a select few, the original coven members who had come to Sunnydale in search of the future slayer, the Slayer's Guide, who was always chosen from the local community, and herself.

And, while her real role in the coven was a secret, she'd felt welcome from the start. Self defense classes that were offered on a regular basis in the training rooms, allowed her to spend time there without anyone taking too much notice.

Seminars, useful to both ordinary people and the magically inclined, were given on a regular basis. Dawn was given the freedom and encouragement of her Guide to attend any she found interesting. Meeting rooms were also made available to community groups on occasion. It was an oasis of calm that many made use of.

"Why don't we start with what you saw last night," Ms. Rosenberg said as a greeting, directing her towards their training room.

After reviewing what she remembered of the mystery woman's moves during the fight with the vampires the night before, and concluding that she was missing some key element that was preventing her from incorporating them into her own style, Dawn spent an hour going through her normal training routine.

"That's enough for tonight," her Guide told her, sitting against the wall. "You're doing great but you should get home before that sister of yours worries."

"Thanks," Dawn said, giving her a quick smile before heading to the small locker room and a hot shower. Her sister was fairly lenient, but she insisted that Dawn eat dinner at home most days no matter how busy she might be.

In a fairly typical end to her school day, after a quiet dinner catching up with her sister, Dawn spent the rest of the evening watching tv with her, before going up to her room to do her homework. Once that was complete, she went to bed, trying to sleep for a hour or two before patrolling.

And as soon as her sister had gone to bed and clearly fallen asleep, Dawn got up, threw on her favorite slaying outfit, grabbed a couple stakes, and snuck out into the night.