This time, the delay was due to a combination of work, my continued obsession with getting caught up with Bones (only four episodes to go now, incidentally), and the rather time-consuming business of moving fifteen hundred miles back to school for the new semester. (Which means that, along with a few less exciting classes, I get to start Japanese and Archery in a few days! Nerd heaven. Seriously. Cannot wait. *happy giggle*) Anyway, for anyone who freaked out last chapter because Angel let Faith go, please relax. He knows what he's doing.

As well-meaning as her plan to bring a few of Faith's belongings to the mansion had been, once she was actually at the hotel room, Buffy realized that Faith didn't really have much in the way of belongings. No books, no games…it was pretty much just clothes and weapons. Bringing weapons to a volatile, unpredictable Slayer would be completely counterproductive, but clothes wouldn't really prove that they were on her side the way Buffy wanted to prove it either. Feeling both annoyed and foolish, she left the hotel again, trying to think of a good Plan B.

By the time she reached the mansion again, she still hadn't thought of anything, but was hopeful that Angel might be able to help her out with that. To her surprise, she found him leaning casually against the mansion's outer wall, apparently waiting for her.

"Uh, so, what's going on with Faith?" she asked with raised eyebrows.

"She left," he said.

Buffy gaped at him for several seconds before finding her voice. "She what?" she asked.

"She left," he repeated.

"Wha—but—how?" Buffy spluttered.

"I let her go," he said.

"Why would you do that? Two hours ago, she tried to kill my best friend, and she's spent the intermittent time between then and when she committed manslaughter framing me and threatening to sic the Watchers' Council on you!"

"Do you really think that keeping her chained up is going to earn us back her trust and allegiance?" he asked patiently. "I had to let her go before she could escape on her own. I told her what she needed to hear. She listened. I let her go. Now it's up to her to prove that wasn't a mistake."

"And you really think she will?" asked Buffy, less indignant now but still very skeptical.

"I do. This isn't something we can force. We have to give her the opportunity to choose right on her own. Personally, I think there's a good chance she'll come through."

"So you're just going to let her run off and do whatever?" asked Buffy, her skepticism more audible than ever.

"Of course not. I'm going to follow her. I just thought it would be good to tell you instead of letting you come back to an empty mansion to draw the worst conclusion."

At these words, Buffy was instantly visited by the thought of what would have happened had he not shown such foresight, and she had found the place deserted. She would have thought something horrible had happened; that Faith had broken free and attacked Angel, perhaps, or that she had already contacted the Council and they had taken him away. Her throat suddenly felt very tight, and she moved forward and hugged him, burying her face in his chest. "Thanks."

"You're welcome," he replied, holding her close. They stayed that way for a few seconds, then pulled back a few inches. "I think Faith'll be okay on her own for now," he said in a low, comforting voice. "In the meantime, we should go to Willy's and see if he's heard anything about the investigation on the deputy mayor's death."

[o]

Willy's bar was mostly deserted when they arrived, something for which Buffy was grateful. When she and Angel entered together and made directly for the oily little snitch of a barman, he recoiled and then became intensely interested in the glass he was cleaning.

"How's it going, Willy?" asked Buffy with just the slightest undercurrent of menace beneath her polite, cheery tone.

"Oh, you know, I'm getting by. You two, uh, sure you want to be coming here right now?" His gaze flickered nervously between Buffy and Angel.

"What do you mean?" asked Angel, narrowing his eyes suspiciously.

Willy's regret at letting slip that hint was displayed clearly on his face, but it was too late to take it back now. "Well, it's just that there's, uh, a whole gang of vamps on a Slayer hunt right now. Some of them are my patrons."

"What?" Angel growled.

"Hey, hey, it wasn't my idea!" Willy protested hastily. "It's, uh, it's the mayor. He put a hit out on you," he said, his eyes on Buffy, "and that other Slayer in town."

Buffy's eyes widened, and she looked at Angel. "He knows what happened," she said.

"Faith," said Angel. Without so much as a backward glance at Willy, they left the bar.

[o]

"Where would she go?" asked Angel as they half walked, half jogged down one street after the next, searching fruitlessly. They had already been to her hotel room, only to find it just as empty as it had been an hour earlier when Buffy stopped by.

"I don't know," said Buffy. "You don't think she left town, do you?"

"No," he said firmly, "I don't."

"She might be at one of the cemeteries, or maybe at the Bronze. One way or another, she probably wants to blow off some of the steam that's been building up over the last few days."

They passed two cemeteries on their way to the Bronze, with no sign of Faith at either, but their luck changed upon reaching the club. They entered the alley behind it and found Faith fighting for her life against the same vampire she and Buffy had seen with the mayor at City Hall, as well as about five others. She was fighting with everything in her, but was still barely keeping them at bay, and her strength appeared to be waning. Buffy and Angel wasted no time leaping into the fray to help her.

The vampires hadn't expected their opponent to gain allies, and so adapted poorly to the changing odds. Three of them went down within moments, during which Buffy and Angel lost track of each other and Faith. After her vampire was dust, Buffy looked around. To her left, Angel was fighting two at once, but to her right, Faith was facing the leader—the mayor's friend. In the second Buffy watched, frozen, the vampire threw his own necktie around Faith's throat and pulled it tight like a noose, then used it to throw her around like a piñata on its string. The next second, Buffy was running, faster even than she had run the night Kendra died, towards her fellow Slayer. She was not going to let this happen again.

The vampire was just leaning in for the bite when Buffy reached them and plunged Mr. Pointy violently through his back.

"Thanks…B.," Faith croaked after the vampire had turned to dust.

"I've still got your back," said Buffy with an anxiety-strained smile, holding out her hand. Faith took it and let Buffy help her up.

[o]

"With resources to send an assassination team after Buffy and Faith, the mayor is obviously a greater threat than we initially supposed," said Wesley grimly. He, Buffy, Angel, Faith, Giles, Xander, Willow, and Oz were all gathered in the library.

"No kidding, Captain Obvious," said Xander.

Giles shot him a reproving glare. "He's right," he said. "I feel it would be very foolish to leave Mayor Wilkins to his own devices under these circumstances."

"What do you mean?" asked Willow.

"That we need to find out more about what he's up to," said Angel. "Firsthand, if possible."

Giles nodded, then looked at Willow. "But I do want you to keep, erm, harking—"

"Hacking," Oz corrected.

"Yes, hacking into the mayor's files," Giles went on with dignity while Buffy and Willow exchanged amused glances, "but it couldn't hurt to have a less, erm, virtual window into the nefarious goings-on of City Hall as well."

"What would that entail, exactly?" asked Wesley.

"Well, ideally, a spy," said Giles. "A double-agent, if you will."

"Harris. Xander Harris," said Xander in his best imitation of Sean Connery's voice.

"Not you, Xander," said Giles flatly.

"What?" asked Xander resentfully. "I can be Secret Agent Guy. Can't be much different from Soldier Guy. I don't think it's too much to ask for a little confidence, you guys."

"Yes, I'm sure you'd be a right Eddie Chapman," said Giles dryly, "but there are the small problems of you having school and no enhanced abilities the mayor would want on his side."

"That leaves me," said Angel, before Xander could fling an angry retort at the ex-Watcher.

"No!" said Buffy at once, seizing him by the arm. Why was he always the first to suggest something that put himself at risk? Hadn't he been through enough already?

"You're not the only one not in school," said Faith a little hoarsely. Everyone stared at her. She scowled and avoided their gazes.

"Oh, yeah, that's genius," said Xander, whose neck bruises were quite as bad as hers, but more obvious because he didn't have long hair to hide them behind. "We send the girl who killed the bad guy's second-in-command and almost killed me into the belly of the beast to work for him. It's not like that plan could backfire in any way. And, by the way, why is she not locked up?"

With the exception of Faith, who continued to scowl at the floor, they all glared at Xander.

"I don't—," began Willow uncertainly, but she was interrupted by Wesley.

"I think it's brilliant," he said unexpectedly.

"Huh?" asked Buffy, surprised. She wasn't the only one.

"Well," said Wesley, "I think it very unlikely that the mayor would buy that someone like Angel would want to work for him, considering his relationship with Buffy."

"U-unless he pretended to be A-Angelus?" said Willow, sounding terrified by her own suggestion.

"That would be a bluff easily called," said Wesley. "Suppose the mayor ordered him to kill or turn Buffy?" Angel's eyes closed and fists half clenched at these words. Wesley didn't add that nowhere in his research of Angelus had he found the slightest indication that the infamous vampire was the type to be someone else's minion. Even from his days as a fledgling, Angelus had behaved as almost an equal to his sire—and, still more unheard of, had been openly defiant of her sire. He took orders from no one. "No, in this situation, Angel is ill-suited to be a long-term spy." Angel nodded stiffly in agreement. "On the other hand, it is unlikely that the mayor knows very much about Faith except for what he may have gathered from recent, er, events. He would have much less reason to question her intentions than Angel's."

"Faith," said Giles in a tone that was both serious and kind. "This is a rather large responsibility. Are you quite certain you're up to it?"

Faith shot a fleeting glance at Angel, who gave the tiniest nod of encouragement, before looking up at Giles. "Yeah. I'll be five by five." She looked at Buffy and felt a sudden rush of gloating pleasure that here, at last, was a task for her alone—a task for which none of the credit and praise would go to Buffy.

[o]

Faith walked alone to City Hall. After all, it wouldn't do to be seen with the people she was supposed to be betraying, would it? There were no guards. Probably because they were now dust mingled with the other grime covering the floor of the alley behind the Bronze, she thought with a smirk. She didn't feel nervous. She felt purposeful and as reckless as ever. She was, as Xander had pointed out, about to enter the belly of the beast.

She made it all the way to the door to the office of the mayor himself without incident, but it opened from the inside before she could knock, and then she found herself looking up into the deceptively benign features of Mayor Richard Wilkins III.

"You sent your boy to kill me," she said with contempt.

"That's right, I did," he acknowledged blandly.

"He's dust," Faith informed him.

"I thought he might be, what with you standing here and all."

"So," she said as she took a brazen step forward, "I guess that means you have a job opening."

His interest obviously piqued, the mayor stepped back to allow her entrance and closed the door behind her.

Okay, the things I liked best about this one were Buffy using Mr. Pointy to save Kendra's successor from Mr. Trick, minimal canon-lifting, finding a place for Faith to say "five by five", getting to write Willy again, and Oz correcting Giles's computer-speak fail. Also, fun ensemble moment. And have I mentioned the minimal amount of canon-lifting? Because that makes me SO HAPPY.