“You look better,” Willow offered. You look younger. Wow, hottie librarian Watcher youkai… bad Willow, you’ve got a boyfriend- “I’ve got to call Oz! Because soldiers, Backer, werewolves-”
“Werewolf, currently locked in the library cage, unable to take phone calls,” Giles reminded her wryly. “He should be fine. We can warn him tomorrow-” His voice trailed off, and he gave her a rueful, fanged smile. “You’re very good at distraction.”
“Oh, good- I mean, I am?” Willow blinked innocently at him.
“But I need to see.” Giles looked down at his hands, flexing the lethal claws. “I need to accept what’s happened. We all do, or we’ll be no help to Buffy. And she’ll need us now more than ever. As if the Slayer and the Hellmouth weren’t demon-magnets enough!”
“The sutra,” Willow realized, and felt like kicking herself. “You think it’s real? But – Buffy didn’t use it to stop Xander!”
“I’m not certain she could. Not then.” One by one, Giles slipped the cuffs back onto a pointed ear; sighed, as skin and bone slipped back to human appearance.
“Huh?” Willow scrunched her eyebrows at him, confused. “But she remade the limiter!”
“Yes, she did. And I imagine her reaction to that may be… extreme.”
“Sanzo?” Willow pointed out, as Giles poured more energy into the healing wound. “Since when is he not extreme?”
Crossover Queen's Creative Chaos 
You look younger. Wow, hottie librarian Watcher youkai… bad Willow, you’ve got a boyfriend
You might be able to blame that on the kappa, Willow.
Then again, nothing wrong with being simply appreciative of someone else’s features even if they aren’t your significant other (I’m sure Oz still notices that other girls are hot).
“Oh, good- I mean, I am?” Willow blinked innocently at him.
I think the first part of your sentence ruined any chance of that innocent look being believed.
Of course, Giles probably won’t believe it anyway. He’s got a pretty good BS detector.
“I’m not certain she could. Not then.”
Since Giles wasn’t privy to the conversations between Kanzeon and Janus, he might be worried about how heavenly powers and the Slayer is interacting. He might not know everything about what makes the Slayer the Slayer but I bet he knows that generally divine power and it don’t play well together usually.
Or some other complication.
Plus the worry about the sutra and/or possibly the knowledge that Sanzo was a reincarnated kami. Which means Buffy is. Demons have been known to want to eat reincarnated kami. We know they have wanted to eat Sanzo in the past for similar reasons.
Man, Buffy (and Sanzo) just cannot catch a break, can they?
“Sanzo?” Willow pointed out, as Giles poured more energy into the healing wound. “Since when is he not extreme?”
Good point.
Buffy has her moments of this too.
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*Nod!* The extreme is part of where the idea came from. 😉
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I see . . . interesting . . . 😉
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Oh crap. I’m seeing Sinbad(do) impressed at the property damage! Giles is praying for Sunnydale to remain relatively intact- no more than three streets gone. Btw what happens to the Hellmouth if the town goes down!?
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Spoilers ahead…
IIRC, Sunnydale is…not a normal California town that happens to have a hellmouth in it by accident. The town was planned around feeding the hellmouth by it’s mayor It’s only Mayor. Richard Wilkins I, II and III. All the same man. (Who didn’t want to be, hence the plan to feed the hellmouth in order to let him become a major demon). I seem to recall the entire town being swallowed by a sinkhole in the end of one of the seasons when the hellmouth got closed. Relationships like that do tend to be symetrical, though the precise effect of that symmetry…well, it could range from ‘also closed’ to ‘torn wide open’.
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It collapses and re-emerges in Cleveland, canon.
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Wait… It reemerges in Cleveland? Wow. I’m almost impressed by the joke they were going for.
…I’m assuming you meant the Hellmouth reemerges in Cleveland, and not Sunnydale itself… somehow.
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Wait, yep. Just reread the initial comment and yours, you were definitely talking about the Hellmouth. Don’t know how I misinterpreted that…
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I thought there was always another one in Cleveland?
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It was referenced in an alternate universe ep, but so far as I know in original Buffy timeline it wasn’t in Cleveland until Sunnydale collapsed.
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Willow just nailed the situation on the head right at the end there. Can’t sum it up any better then that!
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Hmmm…
“I’m not certain she could. Not then.”
There are two ways I can think that Giles Hakkai might mean that.
1) Is the possibility that Buffy Sanzo is… Still adjusting, the way the rest of them are. Finding a physical mid/balance point between being Sanzo and being Slayer. If that’s the case then his later bit about having an extreme reaction is probably a worry about a potential physiological reaction.
Hilariously this is true, but as we know from the Janus Kanzeon conversation it’s not true in the way Giles probably is worried about.
2) The other possibility is that Cho Rupert thinks it was a psychological issue. That Buffy was using some of Sanzo’s instincts, but the stubborn core of Buffy that is both Buffy and Sanzo was refusing to tap into the spiritual abilities from Sanzo’s life, because dammit, Sanzo did that job. It’s over now and Buffy’s got new responsibilities.
In that case that desperate measure, conjuring/reforging Goku’s Limiter by invocation of Divine Power is basically proof that neither Buffy not Sanzo (and Sanzo’s never been as good at lying to himself as Buffy can be) can refute. The job’s still theirs apparently. Good luck.
Yeah… Genjyo Summers is not gonna be super happy to figure that out…
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More like Sanzo Buffy, given Sanzo is a title. 😉
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I was trying to mimic the order I’d seen used elsewhere, so Genjyo Sanzo becomes Buffy Sanzo and Genjyo Summers.
With Hakkai we know his last name is Cho because between Cho Gonou and Cho Hakkai that doesn’t actually change, so Cho Rupert and Hakkai Giles, with the former getting extra irony due to being the third personal name he’s paired with that family name over the course of his lives. Didn’t really get around to that joke for Sha Willow/Gojyo Rosenberg, and since Goku doesn’t have a last name I couldn’t work it in there with…
Crap.
I forgot, technically the family name for Goku is Son, since that’s why in Dragon Ball Z it’s Son Goku, Son Gohan, and Son Goten. Ah well, reminder for next time; Son Xander, or Goku Harris.
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Thanks.
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