“Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who ever have been, and ever shall be, animated by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have the same results.” – Machiavelli

Edo, Japan: Genroku Year 4

Takeshi had to see her again. Her face was burned into his mind, haunting him in his dreams and following him during his waking hours. He found it ironic that a woman could so captivate him when he did not even know her name.

The fight three nights ago had been astounding. When he had arrived at the temple after being told of a disturbance, he had found a petite woman, dressed in worn men’s clothes, fighting a whole host of men with nothing but a wooden spike. But had they been men? Their faces had been deformed and hideous, and when Takeshi had joined the fight, they had proven to be incredibly strong.

Most of the girl’s attackers had fled when Takeshi joined the fray, but some dogged ones had remained and fought. Whenever he could distract himself from the fight at hand long enough to glance her way, the number of attackers around the girl had always seemed to lessen, but he saw no bodies on the floor and he hadn’t heard them run away. It was uncanny.

He had grown frustrated when his attacks seemed to have little effect on his opponents other than to enrage them further. That had been confusing as well, because he could see the ragged edges of fabric, stained with blood where his sword had bit deep. Any normal men would have been dead or at least unconscious from blood loss. When one of his opponents attempted to lunge past him and stab the girl in the back as she spun past, Takeshi deflected the blade and took a deep cut across the forearm for his troubles. He snarled in irritation and pain and redoubled his efforts to fend off his strange foes.

Finally, the three facing him had broken and fled into the night. Takeshi had turned to help the strange woman, but instead had found her standing alone, watching him with a mixture of vague curiosity and trepidation. He had never seen a woman so calm and collected in the face of such a battle.

“You are injured,” she had said, voice low and quiet. When he had tried to brush the wound aside as a mere scratch, she had interrupted him. “They sometimes poison their blades. Come. I know someone who can help you.”

He had started to protest, but with the rush from the fight quickly draining away, he started to feel disoriented. Suddenly his vision took on an eerie cast and the sound of his own heartbeat became deafening. The rest of the night was a dark, swirling blur in his memory.

When he had awakened hours later, he found himself on a pallet in what looked for all the world like an old library or records storeroom. A dour faced man had been sitting in the corner, writing on a scroll. Upon seeing Takeshi awake, the man had asked his name and sent for a servant to help the still-weak warrior stand. Takeshi had begged to see the girl who had brought him, but he had been met with blank stares. He had been told that no women meeting his description lived there and that he had wandered to their doorstep, alone and feverish the night before.

Afterwards, Takeshi had been served breakfast and sent on his way. With all his instincts and training as a yoriki screaming the man’s words were lies, he had found it difficult to let the subject of the strange girl pass. That was why he currently found himself climbing the outer wall of the building where he had woken up the morning after the fight and dropping, silent and unseen, into the courtyard below.

A single maple tree stood in the yard, close enough to the building to provide shade to the walkways and small garden. Clothing hung in orderly rows from drying lines, waiting for the sun’s rays. A stone walkway curved around the side of the building and Takeshi chose to follow it.

When he stepped off of the path to look in the still waters of a small, decorative koi pond, an arm that seemed stronger than a band of iron wrapped around his neck and a knife glittered in his vision. He grabbed his attacker’s wrist and twisted deftly out of the hold, drawing his sword as he spun.

It’s her!

The tip of Takeshi’s sword dropped low, leaving him unguarded in the light of his mounting surprise. The girl looked equally shocked.

“What are you doing here?” she hissed.

Takeshi drew up to his full height and closed his gaping mouth in an attempt to regain some of his damaged dignity. “I came here to see you.”

She blinked, as if completely knocked off guard by his response. “Why?”

“I wanted to thank you for your help a few nights ago, but when I woke, your father sent me away.”

A silvery laugh, quickly stifled, broke the silence of the garden. “He’s not my father.” Both Takeshi and the girl whipped around when they heard noises from inside the building. “Come, I know a place where we can speak freely. Follow me.”

Takeshi wasn’t sure what he had expected in coming here tonight, but this slender girl with all of her straightforward manners and warrior’s reflexes was certainly not it. “Wait Miss. I don’t even know your name.”

“It’s Maruyama Kaede,” she replied as she slid her dagger into her wide obi next to what looked like a wooden stake. “And who are you?”

“Sato Takeshi.”

“Well Takeshi, there’s a small grove of trees on the other side of that wall where we won’t wake the entire household.”

“How will we get to it?”

Her impish smile returned. “The same way you got in.” With that, she disappeared in a flurry of white and black fabric up the maple tree and down one of its branches where it hung over the tall wooden wall.

Takeshi shook his head in confusion. He half believed that he had fallen into the company of a forest nymph, because the girl certainly didn’t act like any of the women he had ever met. She was exciting, a complete mystery to the young yoriki. What else could he do?

He followed her over the wall.

*****

Sunnydale, California: 1999

Spike’s nose twitched. The reeking herbs that Willow had given him seemed to be working, no one had noticed the vampire and slayer walking through campus with swords in hand, but the scent bothered his sensitive nose. The fact that something about the area seemed familiar did little to calm him either. He hadn’t taken time to stop and take note of his surroundings during his jail break, but his instincts hummed in warning.

“This is it,” Buffy whispered at his side.

“You sure ‘bout that?”

She nodded. “Riley lives in there. So do the other guys he always hangs out with. It’s gotta be like their barracks or something.”

“Lead the way, slayer.”

The two crept into the fraternity house, taking extra care to avoid bumping into the few people they saw along the way. Willow’s spell made them invisible to human eyes and technology, but they were still solid and a careless stumble could blow their cover. Spike snarled under his breath, trying to quell the rising fear that had settled into his gut. It was an emotion he was unaccustomed to, and it angered him that he could be so humbled. Buffy sent him a warning glance so he subsided into silence again.

In the end, it really was too easy. One of the men from the grocery store walked past the alcove they had been using to spy and stopped in front of a mirror. A green light appeared from behind the glass, scanning the man’s face before disappearing again. The glass slid away to reveal what looked like an elevator. Slayer and vampire shared a surprised glance. Buffy shrugged and gestured towards the elevator with her head.

Silent as ghosts, the two slipped into the white room before the door closed again. The man, who’s name was apparently Graham Miller if his voice activation code was to be believed, seemed to sense something because he kept shifting his weight with nervous energy and glancing around the elevator. Buffy and Spike stayed pressed against the far wall with their swords pulled tight against their chests, one completely silent, one trying to not even breathe, on the ride down. Spike was surprised that the soldier across from them couldn’t hear the sound of the slayer’s heart pounding. To him, it was nearly deafening. Finally the door slid open again and Graham stepped out with a shake of his head and a shrug.

Spike and Buffy followed on his heels, twin sighs of relief waiting until the soldier had disappeared from sight into another door. Spike took the moment to glance around their new surroundings. He had never seen this part of the facility. They were standing on one side of a room that was easily the size of a large airline hanger. Even he, who had been a prisoner in this very facility, was taken aback at the sheer scale of the operation. If Buffy’s eyes were a good indication, she was similarly shocked. The whir of machinery more than covered the sound of their steps as the two slipped along one wall and behind a stack of plastic barrels.

“So, fearless leader, where to now?” Spike whispered.

Buffy glanced around nervously. “I didn’t expect this place to be so… big.”

“Well, for starters, I’d say that looks promisin’ for Red’s little present,” he indicated a wall of monitors where two soldiers were relaxing with coffee. “Security?”

“Looks like.” Buffy glanced at the two men watching the screens with a worried expression. “Can you go over there,” she indicated the stacks of boxes near the wall of computers, “and make some noise or something. Nothing big, I just don’t want them looking when I put the disc in.”

Spike nodded. He gave himself a liberal head start, skirting the edges of the room and checking over his shoulder often to make sure that Buffy was following. Despite the danger surrounding him, Spike couldn’t help but contemplate his current situation. This little alliance had gone far beyond what he had originally anticipated. One year’s worth of memories should have been like a drop in the bucket for a being well over a century old, but Takeshi’s experiences had made more of an impression than Spike would have ever expected.

He learned many things from his encounter inside of the sword, like the true nature of love and sacrifice. He knew his feelings for Dru to be real, but the memories of Kaede and Takeshi’s relationship made him question the validity of the vampiress’ feelings over the past hundred years. The thoughts hurt, but perhaps less than they should have.

Another revelation was that this little jaunt back into Spike’s personal hell had long since stopped having much to do with revenge and more to do with the petite blonde making her way stealthily behind him. Spike just hoped he wasn’t setting himself up for another impressive emotional nosedive. Takeshi’s assertion that the slayer cared for him did very little to soothe the turmoil in Spike’s mind. He had spent the entire day following the incident doing some pretty serious soul-searching, or whatever it is that soulless beings do when faced with such a quandary.

In the end, he had found no real closure. There was only one thing he knew to be true. Buffy was more than just the slayer to him, and he was more than just a vampire to her. He just didn’t know what that meant.

*****

For an elite military unit, or perhaps because of that fact, the soldiers running security were laughably predictable. When he saw the slayer near their desks, Spike shoved over a tall stack of boxes and shrank back into the shadows. As expected, the two came to investigate, side-arms drawn. The vampire slipped right past them as they poked around in the cardboard, oblivious to his presence.

Thinking that he might just make it through this ordeal alive, Spike rounded the edge of the security monitors just in time to see Buffy remove Willow’s disc from one of the computers. With a grin of triumph, she stuck the disc back into its carrier and tucked it in the back of her pants. The vampire returned the grin, finally allowing himself to loosen up and enjoy the fact that he was sticking it to the people who had crippled him.

The two ran, covering the sound of their actions by following a jogging troupe of soldiers around a sunken work-floor in the center of the room. As they passed, Spike glanced into the hole and nearly stumbled to a halt when he saw what was going on there.

Rows of gurneys, each holding a different demon, filled what looked like a laboratory floor. Men and women in lab coats were working on the various creatures, cutting things out of or putting things into their unconscious “patients.” When Buffy grabbed his arm to keep him going, he heard her gasp when she caught a glimpse of what he was seeing. Despite her own shock, she managed to pull him into a staggering jog again.

Spike ran, immersed in dark thoughts. It wasn’t until the group they were following passed a trio of soldiers escorting a tall polgara demon that he snapped out of his preoccupation. The polgara was looking straight at him. Not through or by or around, but at.

Shit!

He grabbed the slayer’s arm and spun them both around and into the shadows next to what looked like an armory. At her confused look, Spike held up a hand, listening hard to make sure that no one was around before he spoke.

“Problem, pet. Demons can see us.”

“But Willow’s spell…”

“I think Red’s spell only hides us from humans.”

“Crud,” Buffy’s face twisted into a pout. Despite the seriousness of their situation, Spike smirked. She was cute when she was frustrated. “And it looks like the machines are starting to go on the fritz.” She indicated the flickering lights above some of the doors around the room. “We need to pick up the pace and then scoot on outta here.” At the vampire’s quizzical look, she pulled out the gold amulet that had been hidden in the sword box. Spike’s eyes widened as he heard the slayer whisper something under her breath. He heard the words “Orochi” and “Amaterasu,” but little else he recognized. When the little pendant started to glow and tug away from Buffy’s hand, his eyebrows rose with surprise.

“Didn’t know you knew any magic,” he whispered.

She smiled slightly and tapped her temple with a finger. “I don’t, and that’s the only spell Kaede knew. It was a gift from the priestess who made this spiffy piece of jewelry.”

“Ai?”

“Yeah, how did you…?” she paused. “She’s the one that gave Takeshi the potions wasn’t she?” When Spike nodded, Buffy continued. “At some point we need to compare notes about our upgrades.”

“Sounds like mine’ll be less excitin’ than yours.”

“We’ll see. Now c’mon.” The two froze for a moment when the first security alarm rang through the huge room. “I think things are about to get really interesting.”