Thank god the interview was finally over with, Mayor Dawn Summers thought to herself. Unfortunately, there was one more thing to be done, which she'd been really dreading.
Putting on her best politician's smile, this young teenage woman taking a break from senior year of high school after being elected to head the California town of Sunnydale by incredibly defeating the previous long-standing holder of this office now arose from her chair and leaned slightly forward over her desk, extending a polite hand in farewell.
It was exactly as bad as she'd thought. The handshake Dawn stoically accepted from the older man across the desk somehow managed to be both flabby and damp. Trying to get her mind off all the loathsome comparisons involving a certain imaginary king-size pond animal's fingers, Dawn assured her latest caller, "We'll be interviewing further candidates, sir, but you can be sure your application will be given top priority in our files. Thank you very much for your interest!"
A pleased smirk and an equally happy waddle out of her office was thankfully the last Dawn saw of a man who for some odd reason was quite oblivious of anyone's startled reaction to his truly extreme case of the medical condition known as jaundice which had turned every bit of exposed skin into a bright yellow color.
Once the office door had closed, Dawn frantically yanked open the top desk drawer with her left hand. Her other hand, the one she'd reluctantly allowed to be clasped, was held well away at arm's length all through Dawn grabbing several packets of wet wipes from the drawer crammed full of these and then using her left hand and her teeth to open the first packet.
After scrubbing as hard as possible with the wet wipes without actually taking the skin off, Dawn eventually flexed her cleansed right hand with a great deal of relief. She made a mental note to send a fervently grateful postcard to wherever the former Mayor Wilkins had gone on holiday, expressing her deepest appreciation for all the personal hygiene products he'd left behind in the desk while moving out of City Hall several weeks ago after losing the election.
Tossing the last crumpled wipe into her office wastebasket to join the others, Dawn next took up a pen and gingerly used the end of this pen to shove off the desk her interviewee's resume into what's usually referred to as the circular file, causing that sheet of paper to drop directly into the wastebasket.
Once this was done, Dawn slumped back down into her chair and stared unseeingly into the distance for a while until she finally made up her mind. This was announced by Dawn growling under her breath, "Okay, so you guys want a fight? Try this on for size!"
Buffy Summers, not believing what she'd just heard, repeated in her best shell-shocked tone, "You want me to be the town's new police chief?"
Just barely managing to stifle a snicker at how stunned Buffy appeared, Dawn instead calmly pointed out, "Why not? Didn't your school career seminar last semester say you had the potential for employment in law enforcement?"
In Dawn's City Hall office where a phone call had invited her to drop by after classes today, Buffy glared at her big sister. She snarled sarcastically, "Oh, yeah, that was right before I got shot at by that crazy fake lady cop which pretty much put me off joining the force!"
Dawn winced at the recollection of that scary event back then, how she and Mom had nearly lost their little girl. Sighing, Dawn told Buffy, "Look, I'm really sorry for bringing up the bad memories, but I'm serious. I want to appoint you as a stand-in for Chief Monroe."
"The guy you fired two weeks ago?" asked a puzzled Buffy. She couldn't help giving Dawn a rather admiring look, though.
"That was, you know, pretty cool. It showed you were taking this seriously," Buffy finished with waving a hand around at the Mayor's office they were sharing.
Inwardly pleased at this rare compliment from her little sis, Dawn nonetheless shook her head, telling Buffy, "I had to. Like you just said, he never took me seriously, telling me not to interfere in police business and basically treating me like dirt even though I was his boss. Also, when I demanded to see the department records to check how well they were doing their jobs, he stonewalled this so much that I got suspicious. It finished with me threatening that either he quit or I'd bring in the California Attorney General or even the Department of Justice to audit the whole force. You know how it ended."
"Yeah," Buffy acknowledged. She still had to ask, "What's that got to do with me and your so-called bright idea?"
Dawn rubbed her chin, trying to organize her thoughts to best explain it to Buffy. "It's like this: Monroe left in a real big hurry. I mean, we're talking a vibe of nothing less than rats fighting to be the first off a sinking ship. That means the whole department might be dirty, too, or only part of it. I just can't tell. Fixing it all on my own isn't going to work, either. I need to stall somehow until I get outside help. So, I'm considering appointing you to be the temporary police chief. That'll probably lull any suspicions here, but there's a new complication."
Caught up in the story, Buffy leaned forward expectantly in her chair across Dawn's desk. As for her sibling, Dawn shrugged in genuine exasperation at what she next had to say.
"Sunnydale's got a strong-mayor form of mayor-council government—"
Seeing Buffy's eyes promptly glaze over in her instant boredom, Dawn necessarily shifted it down a few notches, "—short version, the council's getting much too big for its britches. They're trying to grab political power by bringing in their own nominations for the police chief, which they're not supposed to do but are going ahead with anyway. There's also the fact that the assorted guys the council's offering the chief's job to are some of the most idiotic people I've ever had the misfortune to meet. Topping it all off was my latest interviewee today, who's the poster boy for police force incompetence. I mean, compared to him, Barney Fife's the bravest, smartest, most professional cop in the whole world!"
Buffy's eyebrows lifted in disbelief at hearing this. She couldn't help suggesting, "He can't be that bad—"
Dawn interrupted her sister with a terse wave of her hand towards the desk wastebasket containing a discarded sheet of paper, "It's not really a good idea to bring along a job resume with the name of the town where you're running the police force and somehow forget to put down on it which state where you live!"
Giving Dawn that one, Buffy still wanted to know, "Can you even do it in the first place? Making me the police chief, that is, even though I'm a relative who doesn't know anything about the job. What's the word for that...Neapolitian?"
"Nepotism," Dawn had to smile at Buffy's familiar mangling of the English language.
She became a bit more solemn at the admission of, "Actually, yes. Sunnydale's got one way weird city charter that basically gives the mayor just about limitless administrative powers. It's like somebody wrote it during the Gold Rush days and never even bothered to update it for almost all of the next hundred and fifty years!"
For the next few moments, Buffy watched Dawn brood with sheer incredulity about what she'd just said. In the meantime, the younger Summers sister was also thinking that maybe Giles would finally be convinced to let his Slayer tell the town's new Mayor about such things as Hellmouths, vampires, and magic. Not to mention how a 5'2" blonde could tie a crowbar into a square knot without breaking a sweat or — horrors! — chipping a nail.
The argument had been raging among the Scooby Gang for weeks now, after the latest Sunnydale election. Giles, as ever, wanted to keep the secret, while the younger occupants of the high school library thought that it'd be a good idea to get actual help from City Hall to protect their hometown from supernatural menaces after a solid year and more of doing it all on their own.
...and now, Buffy Summers was being offered the chance to make a real dent in the local evil demon population without being hassled by the local cops. 'Cuz she'd be their ball-breaking bitch of a boss who wouldn't take no sass or backtalk from those donut-munching losers!
"Hey, Dawnie," Buffy brightly declared, bringing back her sister's attention to the other female in the office, "sign me up for Ms. Police Chief! Do I get a badge and my own office?"
In response, Mayor Summers sent a very cool look at that all-too-enthusiastic high school junior. "Don't push it, Buffy. I could always call back Chief Wiggum from Springfield at wherever, and tell him he's hired instead."
Author's Note: It's canon that the creators of The Simpsons have always ducked the question of where in the United States those yellow-skinned citizens' hometown of Springfield is specifically located.