This was very cool! I think it was a perfect meeting for them, and I liked how much you fit in, Giles and the alley and Spike and Fred, without it feeling overcrowded. The bleakness was very cool, too, as was the ending. I like that Buffy's thinking about how to take on Illyria's power, and it's a nice perspective on the whole thing, given that she's making assumptions that we know to be (most likely) wrong.