Rupert Giles was brewing tea for his unexpected guest and doing his very best not to stare at the deceptively small kitsune perched squarely on said guest's shoulders.
"Let me see if I have this quite straight. Your Watcher, Christina Alexopulo — of those Alexopouloses — is currently recuperating at the Watchers' retreat in Crowborough. And for precisely that reason, rather than assign you a new Watcher, they instructed you to... travel from the East Coast to the West, clear across the United States, in order to attach yourself to me and Buffy?" His tone was more than a little skeptical.
"Sure, it woulda been logical for Miss Christa to send you a confirming letter, I'll give you that —" and at those words she grabbed the fox spirit by the scruff, making it yip in surprise, and relocated it onto her lap.
Giles tensed so hard he nearly dropped the cup and saucer, but recovered just in time. The new Slayer accepted the tea from his hands with a grateful nod, then held the cup up under the little fox's nose. She snorted, but began to lap.
Giles felt a sudden urge to polish his glasses.
"And why, might one ask, did she not write?" Giles made a conscious effort not to be distracted by the goings-on — deeply curious from the standpoint of supernatural research, admittedly, yet far less pressing than the suspicious origins of the newcomer.
"A few weeks after I got Called, one of the oldest living vampires came after Miss Christa. She held him off as best she could till I caught up. The vamp introduced himself as Kakistos — wheezing, stinking, and seriously bad news, since he didn't go down to ordinary means and figured out real quick he oughta bolt when I unsheathed my katana and set it alight with purifying foxfire. That's how we managed to drive him off and save Miss Christa, but she still broke her leg. Nothing serious, but like it was rightly noted, she's one of those Alexopouloses, so she got evacuated before she could get a word in. Frankly, it's kinda hard to argue when you're out cold from pain shock, wouldn't you say..."
Giles cleared his throat, cutting off the girl who had gotten carried away with her tale, petting the fox and staring off into the distance with the vacant look of someone nursing a quiet, painfully obvious case of PTSD.
"Miss Lehane, are you... quite all right?"
"Hm? Yeah, so anyway, this Kakistos opened hunting season on me once he figured Alexopulo was outta his reach, and while the Council did fork over funding, they... You know how they are: either the infighting kicks off, or they drag it out to the bitter end just for the love of the game."
"Hunting season?" Rupert finally removed his glasses and began polishing them, with a tragic sigh, taking rather more care than strictly necessary not to let his irritation at the Slayer show. "How serious is the problem? And who, precisely, is this Kakistos? The name sounds familiar..."
"The freak got it into his head to hunt me, quite possibly 'cause I carved a chunk outta his sorry backside at the end — dude seriously underestimated my speed. He barely managed to duck having his skull split open, but of course he didn't walk away scot-free."
Faith Lehane looked at Rupert with an open, thoroughly pleased grin, and the nervousness and tension from before evaporated like magic the moment she recalled the fight. Naturally, this unsettled Rupert least of all — Buffy was exactly the same. He even caught himself thinking that these two Slayers ought to find common ground on that basis alone, in which case the entire sorry scenario of Buffy's difficulties with Kendra was unlikely to repeat itself. On the other hand, if both Slayers recklessly hurled themselves into battle and enjoyed it, the headaches would only multiply. That, at least, was what Giles's frequently accurate instinct for impending trouble suggested.
"Anyway, I left an indelible impression on his feeble ancient psyche, and that's why I'm here. No family, so nothing was tying me to Boston. I got means of transportation, but until Kakistos is dealt with, I'll have to hole up close to you and Buffy, I figure."
"Well then... I suppose I shall simply have to make room," Rupert put his glasses back on and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "But until I learn rather more about this Kakistos, I must ask you not to breathe a word of it to Buffy. You don't know her yet, so my request may well seem strange, but..."
Giles broke off, remembering exactly who Faith's previous — and, in fact, still officially active — Watcher happened to be, and elected to go with a half-truth. Giles, too, was a hereditary Watcher, technically speaking, just like Christina Alexopulo; unlike Christina, however, he did not belong to one of the world's oldest magically gifted dynasties, one that had defended its home ground even before joining the Watchers' Council.
"Buffy might take it upon herself to go looking for this Kakistos, and you ought not to do anything rash until there is sufficient..."
"Yeah, Mr. J, I got it, I got it." The girl propped her chin on one palm and kept petting the contentedly squinting fox with the other. "Sure, I'm against it on principle, but you know best here, and somethin' tells me you're right, in a way. But keep in mind: the second Miss Christa's able, she's sending over — well, or farming out to somebody — every scrap of intel on this creep. Her family ran a vendetta with him for about two hundred years before he slipped over to the New World, far as I understand it. So the older generation actually heard stories straight from living witnesses of the hunt for that sleazeball. And there are records, too."
"For now, Buffy is better off not knowing," Giles nodded, and his eyes drifted, unbidden, to the fox, which had finally finished her tea and curled up into a supremely smug little ball, one eye half peeking out from beneath her tails. "Faith — Miss Lehane — this... spirit. Does she require something of you?"
"I think she wants, I dunno, friendship?" The girl blinked in bewilderment and turned to look at the fox as well. "Otherwise why would she keep shadowing me everywhere I go? And she helps with cleansing the area. Sure, I try to operate with the tools any regular Council agent gets, so I can keep building my database for the tactical survival of small groups without a Slayer or mages backing them up, but..."
"Faith —" Giles's eyes went wide, and, quite unable to help himself, he cut off the teenager and asked, astonished, "What database, might I ask, are we discussing?"
"Right here — a 3.5 magneto-optical disk." Faith produced, with the flourish of a part-time infomercial magician, something resembling a floppy disk from her leather jacket — a contraption Giles had never once laid eyes on. "You'd have to try to break one of these. My Panasonic's in the car; I'll show you later, once we've sorted how I'm settling in at your place."
At Giles's uncomprehending look, Faith blinked back with every bit as much puzzlement.
"It's a military-spec laptop, Mr. J, weighs a good seven pounds, minimum. You can't just waltz into school with a thing like that in broad daylight — people ask questions. So I decided not to haul it back and forth, seeing as it's gotta end up at your place anyway. So, like, yeah — take the MO disk, mister. My Watcher nearly had an orgasm the first time she clapped eyes on one. Going MO was her idea. You can rewrite 'em any number of times, the disks haven't failed yet, and the internet's unreliable. 'Course I don't send this stuff to London by mail alone, but..."
"You have a direct line to the Council?" Giles kept giving voice to his astonishment, but still took the offered... floppy disk with two fingers, handling it like a rare curio. "I'm afraid I'm not much of a hand with technology... Am I truly expected to master this?"
"Oh, for Christ's sake—" Faith covered her eyes with one palm and pressed the once again adorably yipping vixen to her face with the other, breathed into her fur under Rupert's mounting bewilderment, then drew a deep breath before looking him square in the eye and delivering: "Of course it matters! You're a young guy, not some old geezer in a crypt, Mr. J! Knowing this stuff is what got me — something that woulda been wildly unlikely otherwise — the chance to roll up here in my own Cherokee XJ, with a Kawasaki Super Sherpa and a Panasonic Toughbook in the trunk, instead of riding buses with a refillable water bottle for a pillow. Of course you gotta learn your way around handling nasties without being a Slayer, Mr. Giles! The Council's hit-squad boys — my Watcher's old colleagues — absolutely ate that idea up! I mean, I got this unique opportunity to test damn near anything for the database, right in the field, and still walk away from a situation gone sideways without injuries incompatible with life! On me, I mean."
By the end of that passionate speech, Faith's smile had begun to resemble a grin, and the fox elected to distract her by nibbling at her fingers, but Giles declined to dwell on the girl's smug triumphalism. He mentally filed away her luck — having an Alexopulo among the Watchers from her Potential days had plainly shaped the girl's entire perception of the supernatural.
Giles began to harbour doubts that this girl and Buffy would find common ground after all, rather than coming to blows over their differing approaches.
"If I recall correctly, you've been paired with Alexopulo for nearly three years now?" Giles steered the conversation elsewhere and set the disk on the table, doing his best to banish the looming dread of the new Slayer's highly probable attempts to educate him in matters technological. Something told him this girl would show no patience whatsoever teaching him things that were, to her, blindingly self-evident.
"Yeah, but that don't matter here. Soon as she's back on her feet at least a little, she'll send over all her records herself. I'm hoping to get paired back up with her by the end of the year, so I'll do my best not to get you and Buffy killed while I'm around."
The girl rose, set the fox on her shoulder, and carefully placed the porcelain cup on the table next to the disk.
"Faith," Giles rose to his feet as well and looked her squarely in the face. "Miss Lehane, I must ask — please do not tell Buffy about Kakistos until I give the word that I know everything there is to know. You are welcome to come here and help with the search; we need only contrive a plausible reason..."
"Well, objectively speakin', I got zero business at school," she shrugged, impassive, but Giles felt mortifyingly awkward, which plainly showed on his face — and the girl snorted, almost exactly like her little fox spirit, and added, "I had them tack a year onto my Council-fabricated papers, so I passed the Cruciamentum literally a week before Kakistos hit — which is exactly how the bastard managed to stay alive, yeah — but the whole point was so nobody'd ask why I'd already finished high school, and how I live and get around the States and the world all on my own with no official guardians."
"And school?.." Giles began, but Lehane cut him off with a wave of her hand.
They started moving toward the library exit, talking as they went.
"Not forged — I aced the whole thing, fair and square. Alexopulo even wanted to ship me off to your shared Watcher alma mater, Oxford, for obvious reasons, but then I got Called and this whole Kakistos mess happened..."
"So she was training you to become..."
"A mini-her, yeah." Faith shrugged and sighed, glancing at the table with a kind of buried bitterness — or rather, as Giles realized, following her gaze, at the floppy disk. "Which means you're getting your own Panasonic. Mine you're not getting."
"Miss Lehane, I assure you, that is really not at all—" Giles attempted to object, and reached once more for his glasses, but nearly dropped them at the newcomer's sheer pushiness when she closed the distance and jabbed him in the shoulder — not hard, but it stung.
"You're gonna figure out the laptop, because this is pathetic, and you're gonna sign my requisition, 'cause otherwise it's a pricey-ass gift outta my budget instead of a tactically vital asset."
"I beg your pardon!" Giles began verbally backpedalling, but his mind snagged on something rather more pressing than the chain of command. "And what, precisely, do you mean by... an excessively generous gift out of your budget?"
"My setup ran me five grand, Mr. Giles, and you need exactly the same kind, so you don't lose your data by accident — say, 'cause of the flimsiness of that pretty little slim IBM. And I'm not a dollar millionaire yet, handing out gifts like that to uncles I barely know for no reason. I couldn't even pry an auto shop and health insurance outta the Council! Stingy old farts! The auto shop, fine, I admit I overshot. But health insurance? Just 'cause I'm not officially employed and I'm located in the US of A, they, you see, couldn't manage it! Anyway, Mr. Giles, I got savings put away for a very rainy day, but that rainy day has already arrived, 'cause now I gotta settle in here, and that ain't cheap — even at these sweet, sweet real estate prices — seeing as the planned reno involves a structural rebuild and... In short, I already bought a former warehouse nearby, and right this minute they're building me a sort of reinforced loft there at an accelerated pace with every last cent I've saved over the past couple years, Mr. Giles. Clearer now? So no, I can't exactly be showering you with gifts outta my own pocket at these prices — it kills me, my inner hamster just sits there, watching and weeping. Not till payday, I swear on my mom. But the laptop is a must! For you! Even if you're dead set against it, it's a must! Don't fall behind the times!"
"Miss Lehane," Giles had remained silent throughout, digesting the information and allowing the new Slayer to talk herself out, and by degrees it began to sink in. "You receive money from the Council as a salary? And two years of earnings sufficed to purchase a Jeep Cherokee, a motorcycle, and — good Lord — a warehouse to be converted into a..."
"A Slayer Base, yeah — it's got a garage door and space, and if the second level's fitted out as the residential part of the loft, the lower work area counts as residential for vamps too. Same premises, after all. A rather smart buy, actually. In any other city in California, what I just paid would've covered the down payment and nothing more — not an outright purchase, obviously."
"I'm not... Are we quite certain we work for the same people, Faith?"
Something began to sink in for Faith as well, once she got an eyeful of Giles's expression.
"Wait — you're telling me you haven't squeezed every last penny out of them with itemized requests and email bombardment? Until they just started handing over whatever you ask for and being grateful for the results?"
Giles said nothing, but inwardly he prayed with some fervour that the bell would ring at last, and that some random agency would deliver him from such questions.
"You mean you just let a bunch of clerks hopped up on barbiturates decide how much you and your Slayer get paid? Giles... Miss Christa taught me to run it that way even before the Calling, back when she figured she was training me up as a future field agent with no special powers to speak of..."
The kitsune called attention to herself with a yip, making Faith abort whatever she'd been lobbing at Giles... something not entirely pleasant, judging by the feel of it.
After a series of snorts and foxlike whines, Faith nodded to her, and the fox, flicking her three tails and licking the Slayer's palm, elected to slip out through the nearest open window vent.
"She got bored. She'll be back," Faith translated these doings for Giles as a matter of course, but he decided that, with the object of interest now out of earshot, he might ask about the nature of her relationship with the fox spirit.
"This would be an Asian fox spirit? A kitsune, or... How on earth did she come to be with you at all? And how did Miss Alexopulo..."
"Yes, Mr. Giles, she's a kitsune, her name's Tomiko. She understands everything, so don't you go treating her like an animal. And she's a good friend. But honestly? Her tail had no business anywhere near that Hellmouth — spirits of our world steer clear of that abomination. At least, that's what she says, so you're unlikely to see another of her kind in this town. She's here only because of me. And Miss Christa's a practical woman, so, honest to God, she couldn't give a rat's ass where from and why."
"I find that rather difficult to believe," Giles said doubtfully, narrowing his eyes. "Christina Alexopulo is a legend of the field service — every Watcher even minimally invested in controlling the spread of the supernatural knew of her. Which is to say..."
"Which is to say, you figure she wouldn't have given a rat's ass where I get my cleansing fire — kitsunebi — so every jab from me vaporizes vamps and stings most demons? Without Slayer powers it made damn good protection, and she took me along on cleanups plenty in her second year in Boston, once she'd drilled into me everything any other trainee of their hit-squad outfit oughta know. Now? After my powers came in and got road-tested over these last few months on the road from Boston here? Pro tip from me to you, Mr. Giles: read the MO disk, and you'll understand why both the Council and Miss Christa meet me halfway."
She fell silent for a couple of seconds, and then, at long last, the saving bell rang.
"Bottom line, Mr. Giles, get the fax ready. In the next few days we'll shake Council funding loose for you, if only for a reader adapter, if they won't spring for the laptop outright. You're too cheap to buy one yourself, but you need it, whatever you tell yourself, Mr. J..."
"Well, to tell the truth, I spend nearly the entire allotted budget, and my own... er, requisitions... on the library. One never knows," Giles elected to confess, if only to excuse himself from the dubious pleasure of wheedling the Council for things via the internet with unprecedented yet enviable audacity.
He made to carry on the conversation, but Faith abruptly lost interest: her gaze went unfocused, and her breath caught for an instant so sharply that a ragged little sound became audible. She slowly turned her head toward the door and looked at it expectantly, wearing a very strange, startled-bewildered expression. Giles frowned and looked to the exit as well.
The door swung open, and Buffy and her friends came into the library, but Giles noticed that Faith's strange fixation had not lifted — it had intensified. Her face grew even more bewildered, even faintly frightened, and her eyes began flickering rapidly, as though of their own accord.
Her gaze kept tracking Buffy as the others drew nearer. They had, naturally, already clocked Giles's guest and her decidedly un-school look — courtesy of the motorcycle jacket far too heavy for the local weather.
"Oh, fuck..." she muttered under her breath, but Giles, standing right beside her, heard it, of course.
It even occurred to Giles that this was a perfectly legible reaction to Xander's lighting-up eyes — objectively speaking, Faith was a rather beautiful girl for her age, so the boy's reaction was obvious, and just as obviously unwelcome.
Buffy, Willow, and Xander greeted Giles and, naturally, started showering her with questions — mostly Willow and Xander. Buffy was slightly tired and pensive, and so kept quiet — the reason was plain enough, since she'd had to make up every last missed topic to be readmitted to school, and had only finished the lot today.
Giles, deep down, resolved not to interfere just yet, and looking at Faith's awkward expression — still lost, still adrift — realized: here it was, his retribution for the previous half hour of mortification and provocation.
"Come join us at the Bronze tonight," Xander offered eagerly, smiling at Faith and quite visibly, quite interestedly, attempting to catch her gaze with his own.
Faith stubbornly let her eyes slide off toward Buffy — and Giles suddenly grasped that Faith had almost certainly concluded she couldn't discuss anything Supernatural with Buffy in front of these kids, and elected to intervene after all.
"Everyone — this is Faith Lehane. She is the next Slayer, and her Watcher has broken her leg, so Faith has decided to join us for the time being, so as to avoid being reassigned to a new Watcher."
"Mr. J, there's one Slayer around here — so what, they take part too?" Faith arched an eyebrow, finally stopped drilling Buffy with her stare, and folded her arms across her chest. "And how, if I may ask, exactly?"
"It rather... happened on its own," Giles nearly slid into defending himself, but pulled himself up short and continued. "Let us draw up a schedule and get you acquainted with the patrol map."
"So what about the Bronze? It's a club, in case you're new in town — yes! Buffy and Willow and her boyfriend'll be there too, so..." Xander pressed on, as if entirely deaf to Giles's attempt to change the subject.
"Cordelia will be there too! Your! Girlfriend!" Willow smacked her friend on the elbow, but still stared at Faith, waiting for an answer.
"Yeah, come with us," Buffy finally spoke up and smiled. "I just finished digging myself out from under my backlog, and I want to unwind, so there's definitely no full patrol tonight."
"Back where I'm from, any trip to a nightclub counts as a full patrol," Faith snorted, finally quit playing the awkward one, smirked back at Buffy, and turned her face to the Watcher. "Mr. J, I'll swing by tomorrow with my stuff, yeah?"
"You're going to live at Giles's?" Willow very nearly lost the power of speech, her jaw having dropped that far at this piece of information. "Wow! Bold!"
Rupert winced at the approaching migraine and sighed heavily. It occurred to him, apparently, that the Kakistos secret hadn't long for this world either.
"It's temporary." Faith paid no attention to Giles's grimaces, though he was trying his very level best to convey his displeasure, and pressed on, "Won't even offer a ride — the car's packed to the roof, and the trunk's fully laid out so my Kawasaki fits without a hitch. And I couldn't ride it right now anyway. I only got in today: the oil's not in, the mirrors aren't bolted on, and the bars need tightening. So..."
"Wow, you know your way around engines! Me too!" Xander exclaimed, cutting Faith off mid-sentence, and Giles noted the girl was on the verge of not merely clenching her fist, but putting it to its intended use.
"Congrats on that. Coulda kept the announcement to yourself, though," Faith snorted, unclenching her fingers, and, almost at the door, turned to the Watcher once more. "Thanks for the tea, Mr. J. Next time I'll bring my favorite honey, deal?"
"Tea?" Willow asked for clarification. "You? You like tea?"
"What, my accent not a dead giveaway? We're wicked fond of our tea parties, didn't ya know?" Faith snorted and finally vanished from sight without so much as a proper goodbye.
"I don't get it," Xander muttered, scratching the back of his head. "What's her accent got to do with anything?"
"It's Bostonian." Willow covered her face with her hands and glanced sideways at Giles. "Xander, do not finish that thought. You'll prove something that would've been better left unproven..."
Buffy was also looking at Willow in bewilderment, but that much was clear without questions — Buffy's schooling had always been a sore subject, especially given her nightly patrols, so Giles had expected little.
Only — this meeting with another Slayer? It cast his entire method of handling his charge into doubt.
After all, he strongly doubted the girl had learned any of it on her own.