4: Plans of Attack

"So... Roger Tribby, giant snake?" said Sam, disbelievingly. Josh shot him a pointed look.

"Is it any weirder than the rest of the stuff we've had to deal with in the last month?"

"Point," Sam conceded. A lot of strange things had been happening to him lately, not least of which had been his becoming a werewolf. Truth be told though, once Oz's advice had helped him get the hang of stopping himself transforming, it had felt rather cool. Under the full moon, it was as if all his geekishness had been stripped away, allowing him to utterly casually do things he would never normally dare.

Like kiss Josh. Which was not one of the cool things, obviously. Which was not to say it was was an un-cool thing, per se. Rather, it was cool in the sense that he'd been utterly casual about it at the time. It had been perfectly innocent and he hadn't been obsessing over how Josh might take it in the slightest.

Nope, no obsessing of that kind whatsoever.

He realised the silence had been stretching out far longer than usual, and coughed hurriedly. "So, um, did they call back yet?"

"From Sunnydale? Nuh-uh. Willow said something about consulting with this Wesley guy."

"Another Watcher?"

"Yeah. Apparently he was there when this Mayor Wilkins guy turned into a snake the first time." Josh looked faintly stricken as he pictured the scene.

"You don't like snakes, do you?" Sam observed. Josh's forehead crinkled.

"What? I'm not afraid of snakes!"

"And yet strangely you're the first one to bring up the word 'afraid'."

"Donna thinks I'm afraid of snakes," Josh confided.

"Well-"

"I'm not," Josh insisted. "Although, you know, sixty-foot snakes... kinda big."

"As snakes go? Well, yeah."

"And, um... sixty foot snakes appearing in the middle of ambassadorial receptions? As a rule, not good."

"From an international relations standpoint? No, probably not."

"So we should probably, um, try to prevent this."

"It's an idea. Any clues on how?"

"I was hoping you could fill in on that bit."

"Well, could we stop Tribby from speaking?"

Toby finally stopped fiddling with his pen and spoke up. "Not much chance of that," he scowled. "Tribby's spoken to the president, who unfortunately agrees with the points he wants to raise. We'd have to come up with a good explanation to get him off the list - and even if we did, he'd still be at the reception."

Josh turned to Sam. "Who are we having this reception for, anyway? Anybody remember?"

"A whole bunch of ambassadors, I think. International relations, or something. There was a memo..."

"I remember Leo frothing at the mouth about Lord Marbury being there," Donna volunteered from the doorway. Josh clutched at his chest.

"Jeez, Donna, sneak up on a guy, why don't you?"

"I don't sneak; you're just completely unobservant. Which is always a good trait when you're supposed to be masterminding a secret plot."

"What? We're not the masterminds. Tribby's the mastermind - we're trying to stop him. We are... the anti-masterminds."

Toby snorted briefly. "You got that right."

Josh frowned, and looked up at Donna. "What did you want, anyway?"

"Willow called back. She's spoken to her contacts, and they've all agreed that they should send some people down to deal with this. Willow says she can't miss college, but she's sending Buffy, Giles, and this Wesley guy."

"These are the guys who fixed it the first time, right?" Sam asked.

Donna pulled a face. "Ish."

Josh gave her a look. "Define 'ish'."

"Yes, they stopped Mayor Wilkins. But 'fixed' is maybe not quite the right word..."

"Why, what happened?" Josh asked, eyebrows raised.

"Well, um, they assembled the entire graduating class into an army, armed them all with crossbows and other deadly weaponry, laced the school grounds with dynamite, and blew it all up in the middle of a huge battle with hundreds of casualities."

There was a brief silence.

"We may need to adapt that plan just a tad for the President's ambassadorial reception," Josh observed.