STARRING:
Eliza Dushku as Faith James Marsters as SpikeIyari Limon as Kennedy
Shane West as Robert
And
Michelle Trachtenberg as Dawn
GUEST STARRING:
Tom Lenk as Andrew
Philip Angim as Brother Gabriel
CREATED BY:
Gary Boshears
Based on 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' & 'Angel' created by Joss Whedon
WRITTEN BY:
Gary Boshears
OVERTURE"And, the past few days, we've had an increase in burglaries in quadrant three, so I want everyone working that area to keep a good eye on the residential zones, let's see if we can catch these creeps," Officer Robert Bloodworth made small notes on one of the writing tablets he kept available while Sergeant Myers delivered the shift briefing in the Sunnydale Police Department squad room. Pulling his first late-night shift, on a Saturday night no less, Robert wanted to make sure he had all the information he would need to adequately perform his job.
"Quadrant three?" Faith, pretending to feign an interest in the briefing being handed out by the Sergeant, leaned closer to Robert to listen in his ear. Listening to thirty minutes of police lingo and the Sergeant detailing all the trouble and potential hot spots across town, the Slayer was beginning wonder why she had taken Robert up on his invitation to ride along with him for the evening.
Keeping his pen near the paper and his eyes focused on the Sergeant, Robert leaned towards Faith. "For patrol purposes, the city is divided into five quadrants. A group of officers is assigned to a specific quadrant, lets us learn our areas and the people in them better."
"Hey, maybe we could come up with something like that for slaying?" Faith jested, trying to brighten Robert's attitude which seemed rather grim at the moment. All her joke prompted however was for him to role his eyes at her before returning his attention to the briefing. "Just a thought you know, we could all learn our areas, get to know the vamps in them better."
"Yeah," Robert kept his voice at a whisper, not wanting to draw any attention to their off-topic conversation. "But if we split up like that, you wouldn't have anyone there to watch your back. Who knows what kind of trouble you'd get into then."
"Hey, I didn't always have you and the rest of the gang to keep an eye on me you know," Faith, respectfully, still kept her voice at a whisper, especially after seeing the passing glances they were getting from a few of the officer seated at desks near the one she and Robert were sitting at. "Heck, even before me and B teamed up, I did some solo work."
"And we've all seen how well you turned out after those experiences." Her brow crinkled at Robert's comment. "Now pay attention," he used his pen and pointed to the Sergeant who was concluding his briefing by handing out assignments to several officers who he wanted to attempt warrant service on several subject who had outstanding traffic fines and other minor misdemeanor offenses.
Before returning to listening to the briefing, Faith had to squeeze in the last word. "You know, someday bringing up that whole turning evil bit just isn't going to work anymore." On reflection, Faith thought it was probably a good thing that she was able to laugh about it in the way she did without forgetting the consequences of her choices. Being inside the police station, even as an observer, reminded her of those.
"Above all, everyone just be careful out there," Myers began to conclude his briefing with the normal, motivational speech Faith had been hearing variations of in movies since she was six years old. "Let's go to work." Standing up and collecting their gear, the officer began to file out of the squad room, heading for the parking lot. "Officer Bloodworth," Sergeant Myers caught Robert's attention before he and Faith had managed to slip out with the crowd. With Faith at his side, he walked to the front of the room where the Sergeant was standing in front of a dry erase board.
"Yes sir," Robert's voice was very dry and professional. At first, he expected the shift supervisor to give him some sort of trouble about Faith riding with him, despite the fact that Chief Morgan personally approved it.
"Officer Bloodworth, our shift has been graced with something of a special assignment tonight," from the tone of his voice, it was clear Sergeant Myers did not entirely approve of whatever this special assignment was. "When he hit me with it, Chief Morgan suggested that you might just be the perfect person to take care of it."
Robert's concern lessened but he remained cautious before agreeing, pretending that he might actually have the option to disagree. "What kind of special assignment are we talking about?"
***
Saturday nights. Tom Bellard would have guessed of all the nights of the week, Saturday would be the one night television networks would want to air some decent programming. He supposed that theory was why he wasn't a television executive, not understanding the intricacies of devising a programming schedule. Sitting next to his wife on Karen on their worn out brown couch in the living room of their double wide trailer with the two kids laid out across the floor in front of the TV set, Tom aimlessly scanned through the channels they had available.
At approximately 7:00 in the evening as he scrolled through the channels, he landed on Fox as the always catchy theme song to 'Cops' began to play and their eyes became briefly glued to the set. The first image on the screen as the music began was a shot from a camera in the backseat of a patrol car with a man and a woman in the front seat. It was dark, on a city road with red and blue swirling lights accenting the beaten up red pickup in front of the vehicle. Another police vehicle with its overhead lights running was slightly in front of their car. "Huh, bad boys, watcha gonna, watcha gonna, watcha gonna do?"
Instantly, the pictures on their television shifted. A man in a light blue police uniform with his gun drawn chasing someone who looked like they were wearing a black bath robe with a hood. The officer pursued the suspect across a yard and over a fence while the cameraman struggled to keep up with them. "Watcha gonna do when they come for you?"
The image on the TV again shifted. The Bellard family now watched as several officers, in the same uniform as the first, stood near a run down, old two-story house with spotlights from their vehicles on the building. They all had their guns drawn as several figures, dressed in the same black robes, stormed out the front door and windows of the house, holding various medieval weapons. "Bad boys, bad boys, watcha gonna do? Watcha gonna do when they come for you?"
Next on the screen was a bit of a surprise. Instead of showing more police officers, the screen showed a young woman with long brown hair dressed in a tight blue shirt and black leather pants surrounded by six of the robed figures. More surprisingly, she was fighting them off with a staff, making it look easy as she did so. "Nobody naw give you no break," with a bone snapping sound, she hit one of the figures in the head, for the first time they could see that these weird people seemed to not have eyes, merely weird symbols where their eyes should be.
"Police naw give you no break," in a similar scene, this time one of the police officers was surrounded by a group of the eyeless men in black robes. Reaching to the back of his duty belt, he grabbed and deployed his expandable baton. As they began to charge at them, he easily fought them off with the weapon. "Not even you idren naw give you no break."
As the song began to conclude, the camera followed one of the police officers and the young woman from before as they walked out of a house with one of the robed figures between them, his hands behind his back as each of them held onto an arm. "Bad boys, bad boys, watcha gonna do, watcha gonna do," the figure began to struggle, prompting the officer and the woman to slam him on the hood of the patrol car. "When they come for you?"
The images faded out to the familiar 'Cops' logo, a staple of the Fox network for many years as the also familiar narration voice began speaking. "This special hour long edition of Cops was filmed on location with the men and women of the Sunnydale Police Department. All suspects that survived are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law."
Tom looked around the living room at his wife and kids who kept their eyes on the television set. "So what do you think, we change the channel?"
"Yeah," all three answered in unison.
GO TO ACT ONE