Early in the afternoon, Buffy decides to go outside and check for any activity by their enemies. Giles and Xander join her, while Anya, Dawn and Andrew also tag along. Faith is catching up on the sleep she missed last night. Buffy thought it would be safer to leave the Potentials behind, with Spike to watch over them and Faith to back him up if something happened. The six Potentials sit in front of and to the right of the television. Spike sits off to their left. None of them know quite what to talk about with him.
"So. You're, um, you're, ah, how old?," Fadila asks.
"One hundred and twenty three. Give or take a couple months."
"Do you mean from when you were born, or from when you became a vampire?," Ariella follows up.
"From when I was sired," Spike answers, already showing annoyance at the girls' quizzing.
"So when were you born?," Amanda wonders.
"Does it matter?," Spike evasively responds.
"Sounds like someone's sensitive about his age," Rona quips. The girls all giggle. Without warning, Willow enters the living room. She had been in her bedroom meditating and trying to break Nina's spell.
"Where is everyone?," Willow asks. Kennedy gasps and stands up. "You were right. This place is mighty big for a hole in the ground."
"You can see?," Kennedy asks in disbelief.
"Either that, or I've become really good at hallucinating." Kennedy rushes over and hugs her. They start smooching.
"Look at this," Spike announces, paying no attention at all to the happy couple. "Rupert's pet is on the tele." Willow and Kennedy turn to look.
"Is this on of the local stations?," Willow asks.
"No," Amanda responds. "It's CNN."
"She's a star," Kennedy notes with some obvious surprise.
"Does Giles know about this?," Willow asks.
"Probably not," Madari responds. "He hasn't watched much tv."
"Where is he?" After getting her answer, Willow surfaces and gets her first look at what's left. The wave had crushed everything. As the water receded, it scattered and juxtaposed the debris. It's hard to tell what came from where. Just anonymous wooden planks, concrete blocks, bricks and shingles strewn across the ground. Not even a single wall was left standing. With no trees or buildings to block her view, Willow can see farther than ever before. But it's a vista of desolation. Like Mother Nature had decided to wipe the slate clean. Willow makes her way over to the Hellmouth, where she can see a bunch of people she assumes are her friends milling around. The seals are gone, and the actual 'Mouth is a small foxhole three or four feet wide and eight feet deep.
"I don't see any signs of mystical activity," Giles reports to Buffy.
"Have any of those military boys been in town?," Xander asks. He's hunched over, closely inspecting the debris.
"Riley came to visit," Buffy recalls.
"I meant have any of them been here? Right here, where we're standing. What about cleanup crews? Someone's going to have to pick this stuff up. I'm wondering if they've already started."
"Why do you ask?," Giles wonders.
"Because someone has been here. And they've taken most of the building's steel. We're talking tons and tons of metal, gone."
"It could have been carried somewhere else," Giles suggests. "There's a steeple on Vince's ranch. His property was more than a mile from any church."
"The steel was here. And it was taken. Someone hacked off the brick work wherever it surrounded the beams. With axes or cutting implements of some sort. Which is strange. You want to smash up masonry, you use a sledgehammer. But the bricks are intact. Whoever did this broke up the mortar in a clean, straight line. I've never seen anything like it."
"None of us have ever seen anything like this," Andrew reminds him.
"Except for me," Anya adds. "Of course, those towns were all burnt. Which creates a much different look and odor. Not to mention the rotting corpses. Which are completely absent in this case."
"You're not getting it," Xander tells them. "Someone, or a lot of someones, scavenged this site with great care. And they managed to get a couple truck loads of steel out of this town without anyone noticing. We're supposed to be looking for suspicious activity. And if this isn't suspicious, I don't know what is."
"So Dawny, I guess you don't have to worry about not doing your homework," Willow says as she walks up to the destroyed high school. Once they see her, everyone forgets about what Xander was talking about. Including Xander.
"Willow! You, you got your eyes back," Xander exclaims.
"Her sight," Anya corrects him. "Retrieving actual eyeballs is a lot harder."
"How did it happen?," Giles asks, delighted by the good news.
"You were right. Or, Dawn was right." Dawn looks a little uncomfortable, as if she doesn't deserve the credit. "I was trying to overpower our enemies. And I didn't care where some of that power came from. After the thing with Cordy, I forgot that you couldn't beat evil with evil."
"But, in her case, you did beat evil with evil," Anya reminds Willow.
"I know. That was the problem. It worked against her. But not against a bigger, scarier evil thing. Nina can't be brought down with brute force. Her force is always bruter than anything we could whip up. Is bruter a word?"
Connor is back on his feet and in the lobby, hanging out with friends. A black girl he's never seen before walks up to him. "Hey. You're Connor, right?"
"Yeah."
"I'm Lisa. I hear you're Dawn's boyfriend."
"I hope I'm more than that to her."
"So you two are serious?"
"Seems that with me nothing's ever not serious."
"Oh," Lisa replies, a little confused. "I just came over cause I, uh, used to be friends with Dawn. We went to middle school together. But we went to different high schools."
Connor's intrigued. "You were good friends?"
"Yeah. Kind of, like, best friends for a while."
"When?"
"About two years ago."
"Thanks," Connor says, further confusing Lisa. "I know things were tough for her back then." He looks across the lobby at a pretty blonde girl whom he can hear talking about him. "You know who that is?," he asks Lisa. She looks closely.
"Oh my God. Is that Kirstie?"
"Who's Kirstie?"
"It is. She went to school with us. Dawn hated her."
"Why?"
"Kirstie said some really mean stuff. She made Dawn cry." Connor's eyes narrow as he stares at his prey. His blood starts to boil.
"Did Dawn make her pay?"
"Make her pay? What are you talking about?" Lisa doesn't know anything about Connor's life, but it's already clear to her that they live in very different worlds.
"Kirstie hurt Dawn. Did Dawn hurt Kirstie back?"
"No. She just dealed and got on with things."
"Great meeting you, Lisa."
"You too, Connor," a confused Lisa replies with less than full conviction.
"A friend of Dawn's is a friend of mine."
"Okay. Thanks. I guess."
"You ever need any help with anything, just ask."
"Sure," Lisa responds before backing away. She knows Connor is the son of the guy who owns this place. And she knows that he's a mysterious guy. People keep saying the hotel's just a front for Angel. Some of them think he's in with the mob. In Lisa's eyes, Connor didn't do anything to dispel those rumors. All that talk about loyalty and payback. Lisa was observant enough to realize that Connor lived by a different code than almost everyone else.
Connor smiles as he stares at Kirstie and plans he sweet retribution. He slowly limps over to Kirstie and her three female friends. He's managed to mask the limp and make it appear to be a sort of swaggering gait. He fiddles with his hair to make sure it's in place. Time to show that he's inherited Angelus's charm – as well as his finely honed sense of cruelty. "Hi Kirstie," he says when he reaches her. This takes her by surprise.
"How did you know my name?"
"Asked around to find out who the beautiful girl across the room was. I'm Connor."
"I know," Kirstie replies, appreciating his compliment.
"How do YOU know MY name?," he asks with a sly grin.
"You're the guy who's dad owns this place, right?"
"Yeah," Connor responds, worrying that she may actually be more interested in his father. How typical.
"And aren't you, like, seeing someone from Sunnydale?"
"You mean Dawn. We went out a few times."
"You mean you're no longer a couple?," one of Kirstie's friends asks.
"I'm here. She's not. Are you seeing anyone?," Connor asks Kirstie. She's a little taken aback by the sudden come-on.
"Umm, no. Not really."
"Cool," Connor replies with a smile. "Maybe I could show you around this town?"
"Okay," Kirstie replies with a smile. When she thought he was dating Dawn, Kirstie hadn't thought much of Connor. But, now that it was clear he had come to his senses, dumped Dawn and recognized Kirstie's unquestionable superiority, she thought there was hope for this boy yet. Besides, he did have that cute, mysterious, not-boring-like-all-the-high-school-boys thing going for him.
"Great. There's this club a few blocks from here where I sometimes go. I could meet you and your friends there. Say, tenish?"
"Sure. See you then, Connor."
"Looking forward to it, Kirstie." He smiles at her friends, then walks away. After a few steps, he looks back over his shoulder at her and smiles once more. He can hear her whispering excitedly to her friends. Perfect.
Dawn walks down a street, the exposed basement foundations of the destroyed houses flanking her on either side. Buffy comes up to her. "Guess this time we really can't go home again," Buffy weakly jokes.
"We really blew it on the from beneath you' part," Dawn replies. "All this time worrying about the Hellmouth. We completely forgot about the tectonic plates."
"Around here, there's always been something of a connection between the two. Earthquake means an apocalypse is just around the corner."
"Like a warning shot? This was one helluva warning."
"For the Ultimate Evil. Makes sense to me."
"Things around here making sense. That would be a first. Sorry about the pun."
"No. You're right, Dawn. Things don't happen for a reason. Not to us. They just happen. Like, you know, your whole prophecy thing."
"I was wondering when you were going to bring that up."
"I have been kind of busy. Which, I guess, was the problem. I'm sorry I haven't there for you."
"Why? It's not like you haven't had other important stuff to deal with. Like fighting the First, and keeping all of us alive. And what does that have to do with the visions?"
"Nothing. Not directly," Buffy responds. She still thinks the Connor thing wouldn't have happened if Dawn hadn't felt neglected and ignored. "But I think, if we had been closer, you might have mentioned something so major. Then again, in the past I haven't been too open with you about my relationships."
"So that's what bothers you? Not that I have this strange power, but that Connor's the one who gave it to me?"
"No. Absolutely not. That has nothing to do with it. Giles said that this sort of power isn't something humans are meant to have. It hurts them. And, eventually, kills them. Do you know that?"
"I know it doesn't hurt. Okay, maybe a tiny bit. But not the way it's supposed to with other people. That's why I have it. Because I can take it."
"For now. What about five years from now?"
"Five years ago, I wasn't even a person. We can't predict the future. We can't predict what things will be like next week."
"But we can hope there is a future. One where you go to college and leave all this insanity behind and become an amazing, incredible woman who can go anywhere and do anything she wants. I don't see where phoning in tips to Angel fits into that."
"Who said the tips were for Angel?" This causes Buffy to pause.
"Well, everyone."
"And who said I'd be phoning them in?"
"Oh no," Buffy says, putting her right hand to her forehead in distress. "This is what I was afraid of."
Connor, Kit and Elijah are sitting on a couch, hanging out in Kit's room.
"You sure?," Eli asks Connor.
"Go ahead."
"In the face?"
"Why not?" Elijah balls up his right fist. He hesitates for a few seconds, then tries to punch Connor on the stomach. He can't. Kit and Eli are both shocked. "Told you."
"I don't believe it," Kit declares before reaches across Elijah's body and trying to slap Connor in the face. "How did this happen?"
"Don't know. It's been like this the last two weeks."
"You mean since your dad got his soul back?," Elijah asks.
"Yeah," Connor replies. He hadn't made that connection. It started the night after Angel returned.
"Did you just hear yourself?," Kit asks her boyfriend. "Since your dad got his soul back? You said that the way someone says since your dad got his new golf clubs." Connor laughs. "Yeah, are lives are pretty screwed up," Kit confesses. She and Elijah also laugh. But that's not why Connor was laughing. He pulls up his shirt to show them a puncture wound on his stomach.
"You see this? Golf club. This vampire broke it in half and ran me through with the shaft." Connor enjoys a few more chuckles. His friends stop laughing. They don't find stab wounds quite as hilarious.
"When did this happen?," Elijah asks.
"Thursday."
"Oh," Kit responds. "You killed him, right?"
"Yeah."
"Good," Eli adds. Connor's friends sigh and try to put this little exchange behind them. "So. Connor. What else have you been up to?"
They were alone because Kit's father was downstairs, snooping around. He saw Wesley leave the office and return a few minutes later carrying a large, leather-bound book. No sooner had Wesley sat back down at the desk than Kit's father entered, spooking Wesley. "Can I help you?"
"No." He has a look around, further creeping Wesley out.
"Are you looking for something?"
"Are you?"
"This is a private office," Wes informs the familiar-looking stranger. "Have we met?"
"I was the first one here. And I swear that I had nothing to do with everyone who followed in my wake."
"You're Connor's friend's father."
"Christopher Holburn. Kit's my daughter." He walks over and holds out his right hand. Wes stands up and shakes it.
"Wesley Wyndham-Price." Wes looks down at his open book, and quickly closes it.
"Varro," Kit's dad comments. "A decent spell book. Very popular. Though I've always preferred Atticus." Now Wesley was worried. The only thing worse than a curious guest who was unaware of mystical forces was a curious guest who was quite familiar with them. Mister Holburn opens the book to the page Wesley had bookmarked with a red ribbon. "Take this locator spell, for instance. It calls for cypress oil. You should use juniper instead."
"Juniper is a type of cypress."
"But a far more useful one than the others. More expensive as well. But well worth the cost."
"You believe this spell won't work? I beg to differ."
"It will work. You'll find what you're looking for. But you'll also find ten other things. And you won't know which one's the real McCoy. That's a lot of wasted time try to discover which X really marks the spot. The question is, how much do you value your time?"
Wesley thinks about this. "Would I use the same volume as the generic cypress?"
"You can get away with half." He looks at the page. "It calls for three others to complete the circle. You're not thinking of using Angel? Vampires have a way of distorting the energy fields, causing spells to malfunction. On account of them being dead and all."
"How did you know Angel was a vampire?"
"I could sense it when I saw him."
"You never met him." Wes thinks he's caught this suspicious fellow in a lie.
"When I walked into the lobby, he was sitting right here. Along with someone else. I'm guessing that was Connor. The check-in desk is less than twenty feet from here. And drywall doesn't do much to shield auras. Thick masonry, or reinforced concrete, that's another matter entirely."
Wesley stands up, comes out from behind the desk, cleans his glasses, and puts them back on. "I should have suspected as much. You bring together several hundred Sunnydale residents, a few of them are bound to know something of the mystical realm."
"I never did any magic in Sunnydale. That place corrupts those who try to use their power."
"When and where did you use magic?"
Christopher sits down on the couch and decides to throw Wes a bone. "I know many of your secrets. I suppose it's only fair to tell you one or two of mine."
Over the next few hours, the gang trickles back home. First Anya and Andrew. Then Willow and Dawn. And finally, more than three hours after leaving, Xander, Giles and Buffy. By then, Faith's woken up. "What kept you three?," she asks them. "Anything I should know about?"
"No sign of our enemies," Giles reports. "Just a few missing building materials." Xander objects to his dismissive tone.
"Someone's stripped the school of all its structural steel."
"I doubt it was doing the smashed building much good," Spike quips. Giles is mildly disconcerted that Spike's in agreement with him.
"It would take a crew of fifty men a week to break apart and cart off that much metal. The First did it in less than a day."
"The Bringers never struck me as the good-with-tools types," Buffy comments.
"And I don't think Nina's into doing manual labor," Anya adds.
"The metal's gone," Xander reiterates. "Probably taken through the Hellmouth."
"Why?," Dawn asks. She has more faith in Xander's intuition than the others, and hopes he has an explanation.
"With that much high-grade steel, they could build thousands of hand-held weapons. Or, one giant weapon."
"What if they want to give hundreds of Bringers body armor?," Andrew theorizes. "Or armor-plated uber-vamps, impervious to staking and neck-chopping?"
Even Xander finds Andrew's ideas to be dubious. "They're not Orks," he tells Andrew. "And this isn't Middle Earth."
"Was there anything of note on the news?," Giles asks, trying to bring everyone back to reality.
"Just your girlfriend," Amanda reports.
"Do you think I should have gone with make-up?," Angel asks Cordy and Fred. "I'm afraid I looked a little pasty on camera."
"I'm sure you looked fine," Fred assures him.
"Was it wrong to wear all black? I wouldn't want to come across as dour."
"How can someone who can't see himself in the mirror be so vain?," Cordy jokes.
"Are we sure it's not on at eleven?," Fred asks.
"They said six," Angel responds. "Relax. It's only five minutes into the show." Right now, they're doing a story on Sunnydale. Suddenly, Wesley's jaw drops. Kelly's on the screen.
"There's someone who doesn't need makeup to look good on the small screen," Lorne comments.
"So that's Kelly," Cordy realizes. She looks at Wesley, and sees how enraptured he is. "Down boy. I guess fame really is the ultimate aphrodisiac."
"I thought it was power?," Lorne asks.
"Yeah. It's power," Connor responds, referring to his own personal observations.
"You're wrong," Wesley intones, still entranced by Kelly's presence on the screen. "It's both." He sighs happily, then gets alarmed when they go back to the anchors. "That's all?"
"Relax Wes. We're taping it," Fred assures him. For the moment, she's somewhat jealous of Kelly. She had taken Wesley's ardent affections for granted, and missed them when they were redirected at another woman.
"So you can save your drooling for later," Cordy adds.
"I'm not drooling." Then he puts his right hand to the right corner of his mouth.
"Quiet," Lorne requests. "They're introducing our story."
After the sun set, Spike surfaces for the first time since the earthquake. After walking around for a half-hour, he decides that when you've seen one pile of rubble, you've seen them all. Back inside, Giles gets off the phone with Wesley. He looks slightly concerned.
"What's wrong?," Buffy asks him.
"Nothing, really. Just that, well, you see – Dawn, how come you never mentioned that Kit's father was a warlock?"
"Your friend's dad is evil?," Willow asks Dawn.
"He is not evil! Why would you even say that?"
"Well, just cause, you know, I've never known of a good' warlock."
"So what? There's probably tons of people who've never met a good witch. You're just being sexist."
"Not entirely," Anya argues. "Warlocks are somewhat more prone than witches to embrace evil. And, around here, everyone's prone to embrace evil. Especially people with power."
"He doesn't even do spells. Not since Kit's mom died."
"Did he play a part in that?," Willow wonders. Dawn groans.
"Yes. In the sense that he tried to save her. Kit's mom was a witch. I guess she was really powerful, and eventually became addicted. When Kit was seven, her dad gave her mom an ultimatum: us, or the magic. She left. A couple months later, she was found dead. Let's just say Kit's not a big fan of witchcraft."
"That's very wise and mature of her," Giles comments. "Much more than I was at her age."
"Her dad's had a lot to do with that. He's always forbidden her to do spells."
"From both sides of the family," Willow marvels. "Think of all that innate power." The other can't quite figure out why Willow, of all people, doesn't get it.
"That's what scares her," Dawn responds.
"But she still uses it," Buffy argues. "How else did she know to leave the school last Monday, before anything even happened?"
"She can sense forces," Dawn explains. "And auras. Passive stuff like that. But she doesn't do anything with it. Not on purpose. Sometimes stuff happens accidentally. Like when Kit got suspended from school in seventh grade. She was scared her dad would be mad at her. So she became invisible to everyone for, like, three days. She couldn't undo it."
"Because she didn't know how," Willow counters. "If she knew how to control her power, she wouldn't have to worry about those kinds of accidents. I could help her with that. Give her the benefit of my experience."
"Kit's afraid of you. She knows what you did. And what you tried to do."
"You told her?"
"Kit knew about you long before she met me. She could feel what you were doing. So could her father. Even though they were a thousand miles away. It's like you were broadcasting."
"So it wasn't just Giles's friends?," Willow asks meekly. "I freaked out the entire wiccan community? Gosh. I didn't know I was so infamous."
"Her dad didn't even want Kit to come over to our house. Because he knew you lived there. He worried that you would be a bad influence."
"That's unfair. I stopped being a bad influence before you ever met her. And it's easy to nitpick when you're just standing on the sidelines not doing anything."
"I wouldn't be too hard of him. He's the one who figured out how Nina made you blind."
"You were at her house Friday afternoon," Buffy realizes. "Why did you lie to us?"
"Sneaking out to do research behind our backs," Xander says, shaking his head in mock disapproval. "Kids these days."
"He's out of the business, so to speak," Dawn explains. "And he doesn't want to be brought back in."
"Like John Wayne in The Quiet Man'," Xander notes.
"Sounds to me like he's afraid," Willow responds. "No guts, no glory. I mean, he could help people, but he chooses not to."
"He's not a doctor," Giles argues. "There's no Hippocratic Oath for magicians. No obligation to use his skills to help those he knows are in need."
"I wasn't arguing that there should be," Willow replies. "I understand if he wants to protect his family. And I respect that. But it's a waste of power. In case you haven't noticed, in this world the forces of good need all the help they can get."
When Spike returns to the bunker, he sees a car driving towards him. Suspicious of who's inside, he rushes down to tell the others.
"We have company."
"What kind?," Giles asks.
"Don't know. They were in a car. Non-military."
"Maybe it's Stella."
"Didn't look like hers." Giles pulls down the periscope and takes a look for himself.
"There is a vehicle parked outside. My hunch is that agents of the First wouldn't be so bloody obvious."
"Anyone else know that we're here?," Buffy asks Giles.
"I'm not sure." Giles walks towards the door.
"Shouldn't you take weapons, just in case?," Xander suggests.
"I'm going with you," Buffy adds. Giles takes an ax, Buffy and Faith a sword. The three of them head back out with Spike. They see a blonde woman in her early thirties who's a few inches taller than Buffy. She wears jeans, a white tank top and a light blue shirt.
"That was quick," she comments on their coming out to see her before she let them know she was there. "I didn't even call ahead." She looks at their weaponry. "Were you expecting something else?"
"Kate," Giles says, dropping his ax. "What a pleasant surprise." He walks up and kisses her on the cheek. Faith, Buffy and Spike are bewildered.
"Two-timing at a time like this," Spike jokes. "Gotta hand it to you, Rupert."
"This is Kate Lockley. She's with the State Police." Faith gets nervous, turns around and heads back inside.
"It's nothing," she tells them. "Just one of Giles's lady friends."
"The mayor?," Andrew asks.
"No. Some blonde cop." They've never heard of such a friend. Intrigued, Xander, Willow, Kennedy, Anya and Andrew head outside to meet this new stranger.
"Have we met?," Kate asks Buffy.
"No. I don't this so. How do you know Giles?"