Author's Notes: I apologize for the long delay. Real life and all that. The story is now complete.

I want to give a shout-out and thank you to little bit for some great suggestions and for making my first beta experience on these three chapters relatively painless.

Enjoy!

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Clem held tight to the reins (needless to say, a rather expensive piece of equipment in Precious String City these days) as he skillfully drove the old-fashioned horse and carriage down the narrow roads of the metropolis. Thankfully, none of the roads were purple.

In the back of the carriage, Spikecrow continued possessively clutching Buffy to his side, peering through the window and suspiciously eying every male they passed. "Gratuitous male nudity," he muttered. "Bloody well must not have much of importance to say, if that's the only way they can get attention."

"Aw, Spikey," Buffy soothed, running a finger seductively along his jaw line, "You could get naked, it wouldn't even be gratuitous. It'd be character development, or symbolic or something. If you stopped to think about it. Not that I'd be thinking. . . about. . ." With one of his skilled hands, Spikecrow gently turned Buffy's gaze away from the well-muscled, bikini-clad man on the sidewalk who had captured her attention and back to his own eyes. His other hand was otherwise occupied exploring places you'd never expect straw to be. "Now talk to me about gratuitous," she grinned.

Tin Willow leaned forward past the entwined couple, shaking nervously. "Hey, Clem, I'm kinda getting rusty--did you hear that squeak? I'm really gonna need some oil soon, so, uh, are we there yet?"

"No, my metal friend, we're still not there yet," Clem replied with infinite patience. "Just a few more minutes. Would you like some snacks? I've got some delicious string cheese stowed under the back seat there. And Twizzlers!"

"Furry Xander already found them and ate them all," Tin Willow pouted.

"I'm hungry!" came a strangled wail from the back. Breaking down, Furry Xander whimpered something about "mama" and "zebras" in a muffled sob too quiet for the others to hear.

"Maybe you'd enjoy coloring?" Clem suggested. "I've got crayons!"

"No," Tin Willow sighed, "I found those, too, and they got broken. And y'know, tears aren't good for my rust situation. Oh, and then Furry Xander ate the broken crayons, too. 'Broken ones aren't bad for you,' he said," Tin Willow mocked in a deep false voice. He paused a moment, looking out at the road ahead, but his shaking never ceased. "Hey, Clem, are we there yet? Because I need some oil. Urgently. Why are there no gas stations in this city anyway?"

"This is a magical town," Clem replied amiably, "so we don't use internal combustion engines most of the time, even though they really would be rather helpful." Tin Willow's left eye twitched inexplicably at the mention of magic.

"Are we there yet?"

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Five excruciatingly long minutes later, the carriage pulled up in front of an ordinary-looking, modest townhouse. "Here we are!" Clem announced cheerfully, his patience apparently still unruffled. "Home of the Wizard named Oz." Before Clem could even draw a breath to tell the legend of the Wizard's arrival in Precious String City, all four travelers were on the front step, knocking insistently on the door.

"Oil can! Oil can!"

"I need cock!"

"Sooo huuuunnnnngryyyy!"

"Hello, Mr. Wizard?" Buffy shouted above the din, "My name is Buffy Summers and I really need your help!"

"Buffy, hey!" The door swung open and the entire entourage toppled forward into the house.

Buffy quickly straightened and looked up to see. . . "Oz?"

"Wasn't that part obvious all along?" Oz replied with his standard stoic expression.

"Yeah, but, Oz? You know who I am?"

"Of course. We went to high school together, bit of college, fought evil. Hard to forget." He gestured to the small crowd standing in the front hall. "Come on into the living room, all of you, make yourselves comfortable."

"So you're really really Oz?" Buffy questioned, still slightly incredulous, as she settled into Spikecrow's lap. Oz nodded. "It's just that, I keep running into weird döppelgangers in this dimension. Oh! You haven't been introduced. Oz, this is Spikecrow," she smiled into her consort's gaze, and waved her hand idly at the others. "And Furry Xander, and Tin Willow."

"Mini wiener?" Oz offered, staring into Tin Willow's eyes as he gestured to the trays of hors'd'oerves on the coffee table (which were disappearing rapidly as Furry Xander was already devouring them). After a moment, Tin Willow broke eye contact, looked down and idly shifted his squeaky right knee. Squeak squeak. "Oh, gosh," he muttered to himself. "Male now, remember, male now."

"So, Oz," Buffy turned back to her old friend, "how in the world did you end up here?"

"Funny story," Oz replied. "I was hiking in Tibet, doing the soul-searching thing. One day I fell through a dimensional portal and ended up here. It was a bit of a shock, but I adjusted."

"And you're a wizard now?"

"Not exactly. The local press were all over it when I arrived. I mentioned I once dated a witch. But you know, small towns and strange rumors."

"Ah," Buffy nodded, understanding. Then her tone turned more urgent. "But you never found a way home again? Because I was kind of hoping to get back home. Not that my Spikey here doesn't please me just as much as my Spikey back home," she backpedaled, smoothing Spikecrow's hair, "and in almost as many ways."

"'Cause I haven't got a cock, y'see," Spikecrow muttered quietly.

Buffy continued, ignoring the interruption. "And it's not like I have anything else to live for. But, I really need to get home because that's the whole premise of the story and it would be incredibly lame to back out now. Plus I'm starting to really miss Giles."

"Everybody misses Giles," Oz agreed. "But about getting home. I've done some research. The only way to get there is to use something called 'The Key.' It's an ancient ball of energy that breaks down walls between dimensions."

"The Key?" Buffy giggled with relief. "No problem. That's just Dawn. I guess it's true what they say, sometimes everything you need is right in your own back yard."

"Dawn?" Oz queried.

"Dawn, my sister. You remember Dawn, don't you? Or didn't the monks make it as far as Tibet with the false memories? You'd think with all you hear about 'Tibetan monks' somebody would delegate the job to a branch office or something. Damn monks and their shoddy half-assed work."

"No, Buffy, I remember Dawn," Oz reassured her. "She's just not here."

"Dawn?" Buffy cried, suddenly alarmed. "Oh, God--"

"Goddess!" Tin Willow interjected, even as he continued staring at his lap and compulsively squeaking his knee.

"We lost our Key?" Furry Xander grinned as he popped the last few appetizers into his mouth. "Okay, let's go through this logically. Does anybody remember where we last saw her? What were we doing?"

Spikecrow smirked at Buffy. "I've got a fair idea what we were--" Buffy decked him and stood up off his lap.

"Glory! Giles said before all this started that a deranged hellgod would seek the Key in another dimension. God--dess," she hastened to add the last syllable, "why can't I remember these important details in the middle of the journey? I've got to do something about this bizarre memory problem. Maybe I should start taking ginkgo. I think ginkgo is the memory one. Unless ginkgo is the one that's supposed to prevent aging. I can never rememb--"

"Is this ginkgo a food? And do we have some?" Furry Xander interrupted, having finally finished eating all of the mini-wieners.

"There's a roast in the kitchen," Oz said. "Help yourself."

"Wizard named Oz, I think I love you!" Furry Xander cried, already through the door.

"About this Glory," Oz brought things back on topic. "I think I know her. Around here she's known as the Wicked Bitch of the West. Very powerful. Lots of warty flying-monkey minions."

"Warty flying monkeys, of course!" Tin Willow jumped up, enthused that he could finally contribute. "I don't remember seeing Dawn since those warty flying monkeys swooped down randomly, then disappeared. They must have taken her!"

"That's it, then. We have to go rescue Dawn from the Wicked Bitch before she can open up the gates of hell again. Oh, goody, I just love pointlessly rehashing old storylines," Buffy concluded sardonically.

"So where do we find the Wicked Bitch?" Tin Willow asked. "What can we do to stop her?"

"She's got a ritzy little castle just outside the city," Oz said.
"I know the way. Let's go." Spikecrow, no longer just sitting there looking pretty but actually helpful in the hour of need, rounded up Furry Xander from the kitchen, roast in hand, while Buffy and Tin Willow got a head start following Oz out the front door.

"Where'd Clem go?" Buffy wondered idly as they hustled down the street. "Funny he brought us here then just disappeared without any kind of explanation."