Chapter Three

Disclaimer: See Chapter One

It had kept on for some time, and plans were examined in minute detail until finally something of an idea developed as to the overall operation. With the political future of Sunnydale itself at stake, nothing less than exacting care was acceptable. Meanwhile the news reported death after death in the media, the latest being several judges and bankers with ties to Wilkins, and one quite by accident in the case of Interim Police Chief Paul Stein, what with the demise of the actual chief Bob Munroe having been linked to Wilkins. How ironic it was that Stein had met his end in the city morgue, slipping on the floor after it had just been mopped because he had to examine the corpses and the coroner's report on each. It was weird that he would die from an accident after nearly a lifetime investigating homicides, but there it was, and he was gone. Strangely enough, to add to the chaos, there were no lieutenants, captains or sergeants in the Sunnydale PD; everyone answered directly to Stein or Munroe or, in the case of more than half, Mayor Wilkins himself. It did not take an occult specialist to determine what had become of the latter. Wilkins' business partners were bound and hell-bent, if one ignored the reference, on collecting on his debts to them, and they were not being very discriminate in their, quote, end-quote, contract renegotiations. With the Sunnydale police force effectively hamstrung, it would not take long for the crime rate to skyrocket. The good and not-so-good citizens of Sunnydale might have been lulled into a state of denial concerning the supernatural, but the lack of an effective police force coupled with the resulting ongoing increase in criminal activity would not long be ignored.

After the meeting at Buffy's place had ended, Xander walked Willow back to her home, thoughts of the uncertain future on his mind. He had reluctantly accepted that he would have to be the one to take over in City Hall once everyone was in place to execute the operation. It would be the hardest thing they had ever done; they had only just graduated from high school, but already they had assassinated the mayor of their home town.

"Hey, you look lost," said Willow, catching his morose demeanor. He looked her in the eye, the girl who had broken up with Oz because of him, and suppressed all thought of the romantic fallout, focusing instead on the current crisis.

"Just got a lot on my mind," he sighed. "Three years fighting vamps and demons, and we spent those in high school. Now we've killed the Mayor, and I have to be the new one. Happy thoughts…"

Happy thoughts indeed. Just how would the people take it? It was going to be a virtual coup d'etat, a takeover of the kingdom, albeit a semi-peaceful one. Once their hired mage had taken down Wilkins' wards the operation would begin. Buffy would have to take over as Chief of Police and certain others of their group would fill in other positions such as City Manager and Emergency Services, Public Works, Roads and Bridges, and others, and do their respective jobs as though nothing had ever been amiss. At least they were high school graduates now, and no longer underage. To everyone's recollection there was no age restriction on filling individual positions in the municipal government, but then again Wilkins was notorious for hand-picking everyone that ever served in City Hall. It was no mental stretch to say that those selected were bound to his service, for good or ill, for the rest of their lives. And when he died, they died. It was that simple.

It would no longer be so simple. Xander and the other Scoobies would see to that. Happy thoughts, indeed.

"Yeah, happy thoughts," Willow echoed. "But you wanna know something?"

"Huh, what?"

"If anyone can do it, it's you. And here's why; you are strong-willed, intelligent yet unassuming, and normal. You've been tested, tested in ways neither you nor anyone else should have had to go through, and you've come out on top. I mean, you got Angelus to back down, of all people. Anyone else would have been scared stiff."

"Deadboy isn't people, Wills, he's a corpse," Xander responded heatedly.

"You got an undead, demon possessed, reanimated corpse of a Master Vampire, one of the most ferocious, clever, and sinister ones in history, to back off where anyone else would have been too scared to make a move or utter an 'Eep'. You, Xander Harris, are strong; never forget that."

Willow's admonishment, as uncharacteristic as it was, snapped Xander out of his fear and self-doubt for a moment. One moment, but there it was, and in that moment Xander remembered all the life-or-death struggles he and his lifelong friends had been in since Buffy's arrival in Sunnydale three years ago.

Three years of terror and secrets. Three years of barely passing classes, earning a reputation as a slacker, feeling like he had little to nothing to contribute to the fight, yet Xander knew that in the end, the sacrifice of everything he was or could have been was worth it. He and all his friends, his girls, his 'pack', as the Hyena part of his self had labeled them, should have died so many times over, yet they were here, they were alive, and they had won out over the darkness in every engagement. Despite the gang's confidence in him that he could get the job done, Xander couldn't get the thought out of his head that something big was coming down, that somehow the scales didn't balance out. Perhaps some higher power had determined he and his Scoobies were worthy of some actual attention. After all, taking out a man who had just transformed into one of the feared Old Ones was a feat worthy of attention, making it clear to the agents of the underworld that the Scoobies were destined to become major players in the eternal war between the light and the dark. Xander couldn't be sure whether his upcoming role as the new Mayor of Sunnydale was a reward or a sentence.

That question had run through his mind a number of times until finally they reached the front door to Willow's home, and Xander wondered who was snapping their fingers.

"Hey!" shouted Willow.

"Huh?" Xander shook his head to clear his mind, blinking as he did so. Just when his head cleared, his eyes snapped to Willow's and caught a hint of laughter in them.

A vocal hint of laughter escaped her lips as she responded. "You've been standing there for about half a minute now." She stepped aside, looking expectantly at him.

He took the obvious invitation and stepped across the threshold, into darkness. The lights then came on to reveal a living space that, while sumptuously furnished, did not border on the ostentatious. Clearly Willow's parents had made their own fortune; the Rosenbergs, while not having been born into family money like the Chases appeared to have been, had established a legacy of their own that espoused good management and frugality, seemingly the economic hallmarks of Jewish living. Ira Rosenberg had been the model Jewish husband and pater familias, insisting on a Jewish overtone to nearly every room. Xander did not have to look closely to find the menorah and the icon of the Star of David supported by the twin tablets of the Ten Commandments. The numbers were even written in Hebrew. Xander suspected, and he thought Willow possibly knew, that someone so devout would decry a Ten Commandments with Roman numerals; after all, Latin was the language of the latest of the Israelites' ancient oppressors. There might even have been copies of the Torah and the Talmud somewhere in Ira's study somewhere, but for the very few times that Xander had actually set foot in these environs in his childhood, he had never seen them, and likely never would. He was "that Harris kid", after all and, like the Chases, the Rosenbergs turned up their noses at any hint of association with Xander's infamous parents, while their reactions were more subdued.

Yet another fine example of the Sunnydale justice system,, Xander mused as Willow led him through, muttering something he couldn't hear. Yep, Buffy will be a shoo-in as Police Chief; she'll turn the whole corrupt establishment on its ear. Up the stairs they went; Ira seemed intent on brainwashing the whole household into devout Judaism. Everywhere he looked, spread about ten feet apart each but not psycho-ish, there was either a Star of David, a Torah scroll, or a Ten Commandments with Hebrew numerals, all small enough not to terrify. The lone exception was the room of his host, appointed conservatively in pastels and earth tones. She sat down at her desk and then snapped open her laptop, which began to power up almost immediately. The neophyte witch looked over her shoulder to see Xander still standing in the middle of the room.

"Come on," she said, "pull up a chair." Willow watched as Xander cast about until he spotted a bean-bag chair next to the four-poster bed. He reached over and took a good handful of it, then he carried it over to Willow's side, dropped it, and then sat down in it. Willow then turned her attention to her screen, which was now displaying the Windows home screen. She grabbed an unmarked DVD-R from the above shelf, checking it for scratches, then inserted it into the CD-ROM tray and slid it closed. "OK, we're set," she exclaimed, though without the loud cheery voice of the victor; this was the focused, driven voice of the one who had successfully begun her task. She began clicking the mouse and tapping the keyboard like a concert pianist, and soon her hacking program was flooding the targeted site of the City of Sunnydale with spam mail and skipping from one URL to another, installing backdoors and penetrating local access points like a ghost. "Now in a few moments we should get some solid hits on our target," she explained to Xander. "Once I get through the firewall, the program'll let me sift through the online records, and we'll - now, that's weird…"

"What's weird, Wills?" Xander edged closer to her the better to see what had Willow in such a surprised state. She hardly noticed that he had closed the space between them by half; either that or she didn't seem to mind overmuch.

"Well, I'm trying to find records of any City Council meetings, but so far everything's turning up empty. There's not even a mention of any City Council under Wilkins the Third; when I try to access the file all I get is '404: File not found.' It doesn't even go back farther than the year 1950, and before that everything was on paper."

"OK," responded Xander, "let's look at the City Charter. That should be public record, right?"

"That's not a bad idea," Willow smiled. Then a soft chuckle made its way out of her as she continued typing. Xander couldn't help but smile and be content with that beautiful sound from his bestest bud, but still curiosity got the better of him and he asked, "What's with the chuckle?"

Willow lowered her hands to her lap, her mind having taken a detour down Memory Lane. "I was just remembering the stuff we did in Kindergarten," she answered. "And you know what struck me as weird, now that we're looking back on it?"

"I think it was founding the We Hate Cordelia Chase club," Xander mused. "You were Treasurer, remember?"

"And you were President and CEO," she filled in. "But I was going along a different, um, thing, uh…not vein, cuz that's a vamp thing, and ewww…"

"Sidetracked?" Xander's smile when she met his gaze snapped her back into focus and calmed her by degrees.

"It was one of those things the teacher had us do then. 'What I Want to Be When I Grow Up' or something like that. I thing Reagan was still President then, and when we saw the Berlin Wall come down on live television, you, me, and Jessie, then I swore to myself that I was gonna be President and do something great for the world like that. You remember that, Xan?"

"Yeah, you, me, and Jesse. Hell, everyone wanted to be President and stomp all over the big bad Commies," Xander laughed. "Then when Daddy Bush got elected and that whole thing kicked off in Kuwait? You know, Desert Shield and Desert Storm? Haha, Jesse wanted to be Stormin' Norman and put a hurting on ole Saddam's ass. Ah, it's a shame, cuz I wish he were here now."

Xander's eyes had begun to mist over, so Willow took his hand in both of hers. "I think he'd be proud of what we've done, Xander," she said softly, reassuring him, but Xander shook his head in fear.

"I don't wanna do this, Wills. I don't want to be the mayor of the Hellmouth," he replied, his voice naught but a whisper.

In moments like this, Xander was glad that Willow had the ability to shuffle off her mousy façade and act as his conscience or his counselor. She only ever did that with him; it was part and parcel of being bestest buds in the whole wide world. He was able to calm her down, and she was able to buttress him when the need arose.

"No-one ever wants to be Mayor or Sheriff, or any of those jobs; they all want the big ones. Governor, Senator, President, Pope. The fact is that they all started somewhere, and that's just what you're doing, Xander; you're making that start towards something great and wonderful. Just think of it like this," Willow explained. "All these years of being the donut boy at our research parties are finally going to pay off in dividends."

Xander's resultant laughter mirrored her own. Satisfied that she had banished his fear, Willow turned back to her laptop screen just to see something unusual.

"Wait a minute, this can't be right…"

Xander's expression picked up her sudden perplexment. "What's up?"

Willow looked over her shoulder to see him leaning over her to get a look for himself. A little more comfortable now, she turned her gaze back to the screen. "Well, I'm in the city website, and I've got other programs doing searches, but so far there's not a single reference to a Sunnydale City Charter that I've come across."

"Are you sure? Maybe you typed it in wrong."

She shook her head. "No, I'm sure. All the search parameters are correct. There's just…nothing."

"No Council, no City Charter, no elected officials either, am I right?" A suspicious look soon creased Xander's brow. "Except for the Mayor, of course, but then we know what he was all about. Knowing him, I suppose this really shouldn't be any surprise since the man was a powerful warlock. I just never figured on him pulling a Palpatine on the whole town. Get me, Wills?"

"And he did it well enough for a hundred years that nobody was any wiser." Sighing, she added, "So either all the records are on paper or they don't exist anymore—"

"Or they never existed in the first place. That just leaves one thing," Xander concluded.

"The city budget," Willow filled in the blank for him. "With no online records, it's doubtful we'll find any reference to the city budget from here. And that leaves…"

"City Hall itself. God damn it, we're not ready for this, Wills…" Xander shook his head slowly in fear.

"Xander," she chided him, "nobody's ready for this. We're basically announcing to the people of Sunnydale that hello, we're taking over, and we're crazy underqualified to run a city government - now if it were the school," and she began to rant and babble, "I'd say yeah, bring it on, let's do this, but no we blew up the School so that's not viable and…."

Xander laid a gentle hand on her shoulder when she began to turn red in the face. "Breathe, Willow, it's okay. " After a few deep breaths she nodded her thanks, then he added, "Look, I agree, nobody's ready for this, but you and Giles are right. There's no one else. Nothing like a little on-the-job training, right?"

"Right."

"Then we go tomorrow to Giles and we give him this. Hopefully he's found us our mage…"