I don't own the characters in this story, only the arrangement of ideas

Personal Journal of Rupert Giles

August 27th, 1998

As the summer draws to a close, I would like to take a moment to ponder and reflect upon the events that have occurred over the past three months. Life has continued here in Sunnydale, even with the absence of Buffy. The events of last May took a heavy toll upon her, driving her to run and hide from all she knew, and leaving the city undefended. Fortunately, the long summer months in California have equally long days, and vampires are few and scarce, what with an average of fourteen hours of direct sunlight every day keeping them under wraps and laying low. There were a few minor demon incursions, but rumors of Angelus and Acathla have kept most of the supernatural community at bay, though I fear their wariness will soon fade, and we will once again be confronted with demonic activities inspired by the Hellmouth. By then I hope Buffy has returned from her self-imposed exile in Los Angeles, and that she has been able to forgive herself.

It is not of Buffy herself I wish to think, but instead of her companions, whom she colourfully refers to as the Scoobies. This summer has seen a number of startling changes in these youths, many of which fill me with pride, as well as the usual amount of confusion I receive from American teenagers. Shortly after Buffy left, her friends had congregated at my house, and were leading a lively discussion as to what they would do without Buffy, at quite a startling volume, if I recall correctly. As the debate raged back and forth without resolution, Joyce Summers, Buffy's mother, arrived on the scene quite unexpectedly. She managed to silence the cacophony with a glance, and then proceeded to speak some of the most profoundly moving words I have yet had the privilege of hearing.

She expressed first her terror and her pride that a group of young people regularly faced the supernatural menaces to which the general populace of the town remains willfully ignorant. She confided in us that she had been unable to sleep since Buffy had run away, and had been sick with worry, both about where she was and what she had already gone through. Finally, and most surprising to my perspective, she asked what we could do to ensure that the town would remain standing when her daughter returned home, and to support her when she did, specifically including herself in the group. Here was a woman who had just received a series of terrible shocks within two or three days, and rather than fall apart, she instead drew herself together for the sake of her daughter, and started to plan how to better protect her from dangers that, until a few days previous, she had no idea existed.

The five of us sat down and began to create a plan. As we talked, more information was added, until we had quite an overwhelming list of things we needed to do. At this point, Miss Rosenberg took charge and simplified the list down to a much more manageable level.

Pulling some strings with a few contacts I managed to acquire in the American government, young Mr. Harris was allowed to test to see if he qualified as a trained soldier, and thus would be eligible to bypass basic military training and go directly to Camp Pendleton for Corpsman training, despite him not yet being of legal age. Miss Rosenberg spent several hours at her infernal computer to correct that oversight, and between the memories he'd gained from his soldier persona during Ethan's Hallowe'en fiasco, Miss Rosenberg's computer magic, and calling in a few favours owed to me, he was able to not only participate but also pass the US Navy's Medical Corpsman training, which both re-enforced his soldier memories and skills, and also gives us access to a field medic, should we need one.

One issue that I would have completely overlooked had not Mr. Osbourne mentioned it was mental health as well. The Watcher's council has never been overly concerned with the mental well-being of the Slayers they guide, seeing them mostly as disposable weapons in the fight against the supernatural, so I had never familiarized myself with the studies done on soldiers in combat situations. Shell-shock, post-traumatic stress disorder, battle fatigue, regardless of the name used, are catch-all terms for when the stress of killing and coming close to death overwhelm a soldier and pushes him beyond his mental reserves and triggers a break-down, which, for better or for worse, fits the behavior that Buffy had been exhibiting prior to her flight. Soldiers in combat situations also have a level of suicide that ranges from six to fourteen times as high as a soldier at home after as little as a single eight month tour in a war zone. As I researched this topic, I felt a cold weight settle into my stomach, realizing that a seventeen-year old girl, even a supernaturally gifted one, lacked many of the defenses that a trained soldier would possess to combat the problems that would arise from this stress. In the two years since she became active at the Hellmouth, Buffy had been subjected to more horrors than any rational person could believe, and without support from her mother, who had been kept in the dark, it was almost inevitable that she would eventually suffer some sort of mental deterioration. True, she was reinforced by the spirit of the slayer, but even then, she's seen so much death and suffering, some at the hands of her former paramour, that she must have been hanging on by a frayed thread of sanity.

Fortunately, Mr. Osbourne had a solution as well. After he had been bitten by his cousin and become a werewolf, he had begun to look into a method of controlling the change. Certain types of meditation seemed to be most effective, along with a mystical and pharmaceutical regime, and while at the beginning of the summer he had not made any significant progress with control, he now can prevent the change unless he is exposed to the light of the full moon, is injured or smells a significant quantity of blood on the days of the full moon. He spent a great deal of time over the summer meditating, playing music, and talking to both Miss Rosenberg and his cousin, as a type of counseling, and has developed an almost palpable aura of calm around him. Both Mr. Harris and Miss Rosenberg have mentioned that just having him in the room quietly playing music has a calming effect, and he's apparently quite the listener as well, allowing them to unburden themselves to a non-judgmental peer. This is the first step in counseling, and is an adequate stop-gap measure until I can locate a professional psychiatrists who won't be tempted to lock up one of my charges for the stories they tell.

One of the issues raised by Mr. Harris was that all of the slaying equipment I had been providing Buffy with was more appropriate for the time of Queen Victoria than modern day use. I am, of course, paraphrasing one of his baffling pop culture references. I retorted that firearms were useless when it comes to killing vampires, to which he replied that they had worked quite well against the Judge. I relented, and he began to outline his ideas. Modern body armor is lightweight and low-profile, allowing one to wear it under normal, if slightly large, clothing without garnering too much attention. Demolitions and fire are also effective against a wide range of vampires and demons, if both noisy and potentially dangerous. Noise-suppressed, low-caliber pistols are not quite as quiet as films would have you believe, but are not significantly louder than a serious altercation, and while they won't kill a vampire, they can slow them down. A shotgun is not a subtle weapon, but is able to remove a person's head, and likely that of a vampire as well. His masterstroke was using a toy, a compressed-air gun used by teenagers to play something called paintball. He suggested replacing the paint with holy water and garlic, an expensive proposition, but one that could potentially mow down ranks of vampires in seconds. Miss Rosenberg added that personal radios or mobile telephones would also be effective for coordinating actions. Of course, all of this would cost money that the council had no interest in sending me, believing that if something has worked for the last two hundred years, there's no need to change it now.

Joyce asked young Mr. Harris what the cost would be, and paled visibly when she was told that the body armor alone would be some fifty thousand dollars if it was to be at all effective against the sort of threats my charges were wont to fight. Eventually we agreed to start up a fund, based on our own resources, and see about investing it with the eventual goal of purchasing the equipment we desired. Joyce and I each donated twenty thousand dollars, more than we could truly afford, but the idea of having a budget for things such as this and more relevant research tomes was very tempting. Mr. Harris surprised us by adding in several thousand dollars after mumbling something about a "travel fund". Joyce and Miss Rosenberg managed the fund, but were unable to obtain significant growth after several weeks. Help here came from an unexpected quarter, when Miss Chase noticed what was going on, criticized it severely, and returned with a cheque for one hundred thousand dollars, an investment portfolio, and a warning that she would be withdrawing her capital investment upon graduation from high school, and talking half of the interest it had garnered as well. Joyce turned the project over to the two girls, who managed to double the money between then and now, with a combination of Miss Rosenberg's intelligence and Miss Chase's investment knowledge, knowledge she no doubt garnered from her father.

Miss Chase was also helpful in another unexpected manner, as she was the one who found Buffy. Not directly, but she did circulate her picture among her society friends and ask them to keep an eye out for her, but not to approach. As a result, we knew Buffy was working as a waitress named Anne in Los Angeles by mid-June. This information led to another debate, thankfully free of Mr. Harris' interjections since he was at Pendleton at that point, as to if we should retrieve Buffy. In this case, Mr. Osbourne had the surprising last word, saying that we knew where she was if we needed her, and that she deserved a chance to get away from this life at least for a short while. We found it impossible to debate this logic, though Joyce glances at the diner every time she goes up there for business.

There were also a number of developments during the summer that I have found less than ideal. While we did manage to get all charges against Buffy dismissed, she is still expelled, and Snyder has made himself unavailable during the summer. When I do manage to corner him like the rat he is, he will pass an agreement to allow her back in school, even if I must rip it from him.

Mr. Osbourne has also managed to find a way for both he and Mr. Harris to become temporarily super-human, based upon their past experiences. By practicing a type of meditation, combined with some mystical help, the two young men are able to channel a part of the beast that lies inside of them, the wolf for Mr. Osbourne and the hyena for Mr. Harris. While they become stronger, faster and tougher than a normal human in this state, they still fall short of vampires, demons and slayers, though the experiences they've gained in these past two years do help to close that gap. My real worry about this technique is both the limited duration that the state can be attained for, as neither of them have managed to hold on to the enhancement for more than five minutes when sparring with each other, though Mr. Osbourne did manage to bench press over three hundred pounds for the span of half an hour once, and also the dangers of losing themselves in their beasts. There have been times in the testing that both of them have had feral outbursts of anger, before falling out of the state entirely in a daze. I worry that the stress of combat could awaken these beasts beyond their means to control, and rather than providing assistance, they would then become a hindrance, if not an outright danger.

My last true worry is that Miss Rosenberg has been assisting these two with the magical aspects of the transformations. She did all the research on her own, and cast the initial spells on them after consulting with me to ensure her work was correct, and when I agreed it was she proceeded despite my reservations. I know all too well the price that magic can exact, and I have tried to instruct her to be cautious with magic, and to use it with great care. I doubt that my teachings have given her much insight into the workings of magic, but she has approached it with more caution, which is at least a partial victory.

I also grow concerned with the council of Watchers. They were initially pleased with Buffy's tenure as slayer, but her eighteenth birthday is in less than a year, and they will insist on the cruciamentum being performed. I not only disagree with this barbaric ritual, but I don't believe that I have the will to carry it out on her now. Despite the council's teaching of staying detached from the slayer, I find that the remarkable strength of character my young charge has shown combined with her ingenuity and her stubbornness has grown on me, and she is becoming almost as a daughter to me. I must tread carefully here, both to avoid breaking the bond of trust we have, and also to avoid upsetting the council enough for them to see us as more trouble than we are worth. I have begun to accidentally leave books describing the cruciamentum around when Miss Rosenberg is doing research, but I don't believe she has noticed yet. If she doesn't read them soon, I may be forced to take more direct methods, potentially endangering us all.

Concerns aside, I believe we have done well this summer. Buffy is taking a much needed break from the Hellmouth, and hopefully she will return shortly, to resume her duties as a slayer, to return and finish her high-school education, and most importantly, to be around those whom she loves and cares for. We have accomplished a great deal this summer. Hopefully we'll be alive to celebrate the next one.

AN: I've had this in my mind for a few days, so I wanted to get it out. If people like it, I may continue it. If someone else REALLY likes it, they can adopt it.