"You've changed," Cordelia tells him.
"As have you."
"Oh. I guess you heard about all that stuff," Cordelia replies dejectedly. "Figures. I wasn't exactly keeping a low profile."
"I meant you hair. It is darker than I remember. I do like it. Very much."
"Thanks. I see I'm not the only one with a new look." Fred steps into the lobby, gets a glimpse of Groo, takes a second look, shakes her head, and leaves to go get Wes and Gunn.
"How is Angel? I trust the two of you are happy together." Cordy looks pained. There is so much she would rather not tell.
"Angel's not big on the happy. He can't be."
"But the two of you belong together."
"Perhaps. In a perfect world. But certain Higher Forces didn't quite see things that way."
"Is something wrong?"
"Always. Where have you been?," Cordy asks with some forced humor to try to lighten the mood.
"I understand. The ordeal of a Champion is never easy. Where is Angel? Why isn't he here? Has his spawn harmed him horribly?"
"Yes. But that was ages ago."
"The Groosalug?," Wesleys asks Fred.
"Like he had a Mad Max makeover."
"Groo's gone dark?," Gunn asks incredulously.
"Not dark. Just . . . gritty."
"A rogue demon hunter," Wesley declares with a certain amount of pride.
"What's a rogue demon?," Fred asks before slapping the side of her head a few seconds later. "Sorry. Adjective."
"What a rogue demon hunter?," Gunn asks.
"It's exactly what it sounds like," Wes responds, annoyed at their lack of comprehension.
"Sounds to me like a lonely guy with no friends, no home, nothin' to protect," Gunn responds.
"Nothin' to live for," Fred adds forlornly. "Sounds depressing."
"Yet not without a certain romantic, desperado quality," Wesley argues defensively.
"Whadya think he's doing here?," Gunn asks.
"He was talking to Cordy," Fred reports. "Probably catchin' up on what they've been up to." Wesley looks alarmed. A second later, so do Gunn and Fred. They rush out into the lobby, appearing nervous.
"Mister Groosalug. What a pleasure to see you again," Wesley says, shaking Groo's hand and patting him on the shoulder. "What have you been up to, old friend?" Groo and Cordy don't get why Wesley's being so extra-friendly.
"I was just explaining why all the people are here," Cordy replies. Her friends breathe a sigh of relief.
"It sure has been a hectic few days," Fred adds. "We'd be happy to tell you all about it. Maybe over lunch?" Anything to keep him from asking about the more distant past.
"That is very kind of you. But I am only hungry for tales of the great deeds Cordelia has been performing."
"Oh boy," Cordy sighs. "Groo, we need to go upstairs and talk. And you might not like some of the things I have to tell you." She leads a puzzled Groo into the elevator. Cordy's friends don't envy her task.
"Any bets on what'll bother him most?," Fred asks.
"Twenty on Cordelia turning evil," Wesley declares.
"I'd say Cordy getting it on with Connor," Gunn responds.
"The pregnancy," Fred adds. "Come on. Cordy havin' Angel's grandkid?" Lorne walks up to them. He wears sunglasses because he is slightly hungover from his previous two late nights of entertaining. While it gives him a headache, it doesn't impair his ability to sense the mood.
"Why the high anxiety?," he asks them.
"Groo is back," Wesley explains. At first, Lorne is excited.
"At last, a happy surprise. Where is my big 'Lug?"
"Upstairs. Having a chat with Cordelia 'bout what she's been up to," Gunn replies. Lorne takes off of the glasses, looks down at the floor and shakes his head.
"I guess his surprises won't be too happy."
Dawn walks into Buffy's room. "It's 11:30. How come you haven't come out?"
"Out where?"
"The living room. I know it's not exactly going places. But the Potentials are all out there. Most of them, anyway."
"Why? So I can give them another speech?"
"Okay. I get it. No sense in them watching their leader veg out. Better if they know your presence means something important's about to happen. That way, when they see you, they pay attention." Dawn pauses. Buffy doesn't even attempt a brief non-sequitor. "Or, you're depressed. Except, if you were depressed, wouldn't you be off sleeping with Spike?"
Buffy stands up. "Get out." Dawn smiles.
"I knew I could get a reaction! That was a test. Not a real insult. Just a ploy to trick you into doing something other than mope. I know a thing or two about hiding in your room and sulking, and I thought that maybe I could help." Buffy sits back down of her bed.
"It's sweet of you to try. But this is kind of – "
"A Slayer thing. I understand. I don't know anything about being a Slayer. But I do know something about not getting Chosen. Isn't that why you're upset?" Buffy takes a few seconds to respond. She can't believe she's having this conversation, that Dawny's trying to relate.
"It's not about getting not Chosen. It's about getting un-Chosen."
"For Faith, of all people. That is kind of completely insane. You have this huge resume and she has this tiny one, and most of it's about being evil. The Magic Wood picked the wrong girl to be on its team. It's not the end of the world. No, wait. It might be. But you're still their leader. You're the one who's always saved them before."
"That was then. Now, when they're scared, she's the one they look to for protection."
"You can't limit yourself according to other people's expectations," Dawn says from experience. She doesn't see that this could be a back-handed dig at Buffy's own low expectations of her. Fortunately, Buffy doesn't pick up on it either.
"Thanks for trying to help."
"Shoulda known. You never talked me out of any of my bad moods. Why should it be any different the other way around?"
"I never helped?," Buffy asks, half in genuine disbelief and half in jest.
"I didn't go that far. Talking never fixes anything by itself. There needs to be demons trying to kill us to put things in perspective."
"You almost make them sound like a shortcut."
"Maybe they are. What would we do without them?," Dawn asks her sister.
"I dunno. Live safe, normal lives of quiet desperation?"
"Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn," Giles says to himself at the table out in the living room.
"Either you've grown accustomed to your stake, or you haven't figured out what it says," Xander comments. Willow and Anya are also at the table.
"It wouldn't take me too long to write a computer program to unjumble the words," Willow suggests.
"Many of the symbols have multiple meanings," Anya points out.
"I can factor that in."
"Look at this. Kelly's on the bloody Beeb!," Spike announces from a couch on the other side of the room.
"Wesley's girlfriend?," Willow asks as she gets up and rushes over. Spike didn't know this fact.
"She's dating that ponce?"
"He's not a ponce. Not anymore. And how would you know if we once was? You've never even met him."
"I know his type." Xander and Anya drift over to the television as Dawn comes out of Buffy's room. She goes over to Giles.
"I think Buffy's getting better. Are you still having problems ordering them so it doesn't sound like one long madlib?"
"What if some of the seventy seven characters were noise?," Giles proposes. "Not part of the message of the message at all, but purely intended to frustrate those who might try to break the code."
"Giles!," Willow screams out.
"Oh my God," Xander adds.
"That picture makes you look ten years younger," Anya observes.
"What are you blathering on about?," Giles asks as he turns around to see himself on the screen. He immediately runs over. Dawn sits at the table and picks up the stake.
"Like a really big, skinny dreidel," she comments before trying to spin the weapon on its point.
"I don't understand," a stunned Rupert weakly declares as he tries to remember to breathe.
"Took the words right out of my mouth," Spike concurs, somewhat derisively.
"Are you taping this?," Willow asks.
"Way ahead of you," Andrew assures her. "Why are they calling you a government agent?," he asks Giles.
"The Council has a Royal Charter going back several centuries. That provides us with a tenuous official status. Too tenuous for them ever to lift a finger to help us."
"But strong enough to let them steal your glory," Xander jokes.
"It's not your bloody glory," Spike declares, playing the wet blanket.
"Did they just call you an anti-terrorism specialist?," Kennedy asks, expressing everyone's bafflement.
"Didn't the First set off a bomb in the middle of London that killed a bunch of people?," Ariella recalls.
"The Council's leadership," Giles points out. "What are they congratulating me for doing?"
"Saving Sunnydale," Faith answers. "That's what it sounds like."
"I'd say that's a tad overdue," Xander argues, countering Spike's previous comments. "And when do the rest of us get our fifteen minutes?"
"They're talking about Saturday," Andrew reports. "But you didn't do anything. You were down here with us the whole day."
"I'm well aware of that fact," Giles concedes as he begins to feel deflated.
"After years of ignoring you, when the world finally sings your praises, it's undeserved," Anya comments. "How typical."
"It's deserved," Willow argues. "It's more-than-deserved. Just not for this."
"Now I know how Clapton felt when he won all those Grammies," Giles quips. "Mum? Dad!" Willow and Xander are blown away by this.
"They have mommy and daddy Gileses?," Xander wonders as he watches the two elderly people on the screen talk to a reporter they obviously wished hadn't come over to their house and disturbed their privacy.
"I always knew you had parents," Willow adds. "In theory, at least." The story ends. Giles feels the need to sit down in a chair in the back of the room. Willow, Xander and Anya walk over to him. Anya moves her hand side to side in front of his eyes. He doesn't react.
"Are you okay?," Anya asks. "You blinked. That's good."
"I'm not bloody catatonic," he snaps.
"You're just having a major league wig-out," Willow says. "Which, I guess, I would do too if I saw Willow Rosenberg, this is you life' on the national news."
"International news," Xander corrects her.
"The coverage was very positive," Willow assures him.
"They left out all of your numerous youthful indiscretions," Anya adds. But let's not focus on what they did wrong. Look on the bright side: now you won't be some no-name pretty boy on your girlfriend's arm. You're also famous."
"Pretty boy?," Xander asks.
"I'm trying to make him feel better. And he's a very good catch for a woman her age. Or, for a woman of any age." Xander's getting jealous.
"He said he was proud of me," Giles declares.
"Who he?," Willow asks.
"His father," Xander answers, completely understanding what Giles is going through.
"He never said that to me," Giles adds.
"Really?," Willow wonders. "That's insane."
"No. It's normal." Xander dissents.
"I had no idea you had such deep-seated parental issues," Anya mentions. Spike, hearing the conversation from twenty five feet away, looks to his left at them.
"An Englishman who's daddy didn't shower him with affection. How bloody common." Anya continues.
"We've spent so much time hashing over and rehashing over our own dysfunctional families that we never even bothered to ask about yours."
"Thank heavens for small favors," Giles says as he stands up and walks twenty feet over to the table. He immediately grabs the spinning stake in his right hand. "It's not a toy."
"I know," Dawn testily responds, trying to grab it back with two hands. When he resists, she digs her nails into his skin, causing him to relent.
"That's very childish of you. You're more mature than that."
"Just watch." She spins it. "Counter-clockwise, it spins and spins. It doesn't stop. I had it going for more than a minute before you yanked it away without asking what I was up to. Which, by the way, is childish." He doesn't like her smartass tone. Buffy would probably say Dawn's picking that up from Connor. She grabs the stake. "By when I try to spin it clockwise." She does this. It quickly falls. "Nothing." She tries again. And again. Then she spins it counter-clockwise and lets it remain upright and whirling. "It spins one way, perfectly."
"I'd say better than perfect." It didn't slow down, even though the force Dawn could impart from flicking her wrist should only have kept it up for two or three seconds at most. It was like a perpetual motion machine.
"But the other way, nothing."
"It acts normally."
"Pretty weird, huh?"
"Not weird. Magic." That would be the only way to draw in enough outside energy to make it appear that the stake was violating the second law of thermodynamics. "But we already knew it possessed magical powers."
"Why this one? Seems pretty pointless."
"It could be a mystical watermark to distinguish the genuine article from imitations." Dawn slowly turns the stake around, looking at the writing on the four sides. She looks looks down at it. Five characters on the end of the handle – a big one in the center surrounded by four normal-sized ones. Eighteen more on each side, in eight descending, narrowing rows: 4-3-3-2-2-2-1-1. She turns it around to look at the point. "Ah-hah!" Dawn runs with the stake into the kitchen. Giles follows. She's rifling through drawers.
"Dawn, what is the meaning of this?"
"It's gotta be around here somewhere. I know I saw it." She reaches into the back of a drawer and pulls out a ball of string, looking excited. Giles just rubs his eyes.
"I haven't slept in three nights, so I'm less patient and more cross than usual. But if you have an idea, no matter how daft, please spit it out." She cuts off a length of string and starts wrapping it around the stake, from the point on up, in a counter-clockwise direction.
"It's a clue. Give me a second." She tries a couple more times, then sits down at the kitchen table. "I can't touch them all on the wraparound. Unless, unless." She cuts off another length of string. "Can you help me?"
"I thought you were trying to help me."
"I am. But I can help you faster if you help, too." He sits down next to her. "Hold this end. Tight." He puts his left thumb on the string when it's at the point of the stake. Dawn winds it up until the string spirals round the handle. "Hold this end, too. It has to stay tight." He puts his right thumb on the center of the flat bottom end of the handle. "Good. Now keep it up in the air like that." The point is six inches above the table. Dawn starts winding the second string, putting her left thumb next to Giles's. When she makes it to the top of the handle, she holds that end down with her right thumb and lets out a brief scream than almost makes Giles let go. "No. No. Not now. Just hold on. It worked. I think it worked!"
Rupert can ascertain what Dawn hadn't bothered to explain. "You think it's arranged in a double helix?"
"I thought it was just one long spiral. Guess I was wrong. But not too wrong to still be right. I hope." She pauses for a few seconds as they sit there holding the strings to the stake.
"Now all we have to do is bring this to the other room without letting go," Giles suggests.
"Makes sense." They stand up and slowly start inching towards the door, which suddenly opens. It's Buffy.
"I heard screaming. Is everything okay?"
"Quite okay," Giles responds.
"What's going on?"
"We're trying to transport the stake."
"Since when was that a two person job?"
"I think we broke the code."
"Ahem," a peeved Dawn responds.
"Dawn may have figured out the sequencing. Could you please step out of the way?"
"Andrew showed me that tape of you on the news," Buffy reports as they walk by. "Rupert Giles, International Man of Mystery," she kids.
"What Andy Warhol didn't know was that you spend most of your fifteen minutes listening to your friends make fun of your fame," Giles quips as he and Dawn snake around the dining room table.
"You want tape to hold the string down?," Buffy suggests. "How bout some glue?"
"Thank you for the offer," Giles responds, "but that would make our jobs needlessly convenient and comfortable." They enter the living room. "Willow, the table," Giles orders. "Get out the characters." Giles and Dawn pivot around so they can sit down. On the table are little pieces of paper with each character drawn on one side and its probable translation on the other side. "Place them in the order I say and see if it makes any sense."
"It makes no sense," Groo tells Cordelia. "How could such things be true?" She rubs his back to comfort him.
"You're asking the wrong person. I don't know how. I just know that they did."
"It's because I left."
"Groo, you had nothing to do with any of this."
"I stay, you are not alone. You don't take that drive. Angel stays home. No one disappears. Things would have been different."
"That night, perhaps. But the Powers would have found me. And Connor would have gotten to Angel. It was only a matter of time. Groo, you're the last person whose fault it was."
"The Gods in this world are cruel. They sustain themselves by feeding off the pain they cause."
"That would explain a lot." Cordy jokes. The more she thinks about it, the more Groo's morbid fatalism makes sense. "I mean that. It really would. Groo? Honey?" He just sits on the edge of the bed and stares straight ahead. Cordy walks out into the hallway, where Wes, Gunn, Fred and Lorne are.
"How's he handling the truth?," Lorne asks. "From your look, I'd say he was fumbling it."
"See for yourself." She opens the door so they can look in.
"She made sex with the demon spawn," Groo says to himself. Wes and Fred each hand Gunn a $20 bill. Cordy turns to look at them.
"What's going on?"
"Nothing at all," Wesley responds nervously. They feel guilty for making sport of Groo's pain.
"Well, obviously somethin'," Fred adds. "But nothin' bad."
"Last week I let them borrow a few bucks," Gunn explains.
"Looks to me like your reality has passed right by the big 'Lug's ability to make heads or tails of it," Lorne offers.
"Meaning what?," Cordy asks.
"Meaning your upgrade may have crashed his operating system."
"Maybe I should have left a few details out."
"No. You did the right thing," Lorne assures her. "He had to know why you weren't with Angel and why you couldn't be with him. Otherwise it woulda looked like you were flat-out rejecting him. And for a fella, especially one as well put together as Groo, nothing's worse than rejection."
"I know rejection, and this looks worse," Wesley disagrees.
"Right now it might. But it's easier in the long run. He knows the matter was always out of his hands."
"Looks like they're on a tight schedule," Xander comments as he drives towards the Hellmouth with Buffy, Faith and Anya. The top of the steel frame for the dome has been completed, the twenty four beams running up to a steel circle that leaves a twelve foot-wide whole in the dome's top. The bottom twenty feet of the brickwork has gone up on all sides, leaving as entrances four three feet-wide, seven foot-high openings, one on each cardinal point. Around each doorway are three stone slabs arranged to form a lintel. What's more, forty feet out from the edge of the round building is a v-shaped ditch sixteen feet wide and eight feet deep, with a five foot-high earthen rampart on the inner side. They get out of the truck.
"Someone doesn't want us snoopin' round their fort," Faith concludes.
"No one goes to this much trouble if unless they have something they need to hide," Buffy adds.
"It certainly is well-defended," Anya offers, following Buffy's and Faith's lead by stating the obvious. "Even if you could force your way in, it wouldn't be worth the cost."
"Let's have look around before we give up," Xander suggests. They've only seen this side of the building, and don't know yet if the entrance they're looking at is the only one. The four of them split up. The area looks deserted. Xander creeps up to the outer edge of the ditch. A Bringer leaps out of the bottom of the ditch, causing Xander to gasp and jump back. The Bringer then falls back into the trench and disappears. A similar thing happens to Anya. When Buffy and Faith take a look to see how many enemies are hiding down there, three Bringers attack each of them. Once they retreat, the Bringers retreat. Then the four remaining Reapers show their faces, one standing in each doorway with its weapons brandished across its chest. The group rushes back to Xander's truck to regroup. "Okay, so they're defending in depth," Xander comments, trying to employ understatement to lighten the mood. Buffy looks at the building a hundred feet away.
"They won't let us get close. Which is exactly why we have to get in before it's too late."
"How many we's' are ya talking about?," Faith asks.
"They brought their army. We'll have to bring ours."
"And lose how many of them?"
"If we do nothing – all of them."
"I remember Riley promising heavy artillery if we wanted it," Anya recalls. "I think he was joking, but if he wasn't, now might be the time to call that favor in."
"They fight by building. We have to do the same," Xander argues. "They move earth. We move it back." Buffy, Faith and Anya don't quite see where he's going. So Xander breaks it down for them. "I fill a dump truck with dirt, back it up to the trench, and fill it in. Then you can run across."
"That would be a good start," Buffy replies. "If we had the heavy machinery."
"You leave that part to me," Xander promises.
"And what about the God-knows-how-many demons waiting for them on the other side?," Anya asks.
"Tell Andrew to take out the catapult."
"What catapult?," Buffy wonders.
"You'll see," Xander says as he drives away. A few seconds later, he puts the truck in reverse and comes back. "Sorry to spoil a good exit, but do you need a ride back?"
Angel walks into Connor's room. He's sitting on the edge of his bed, playing Resident Evil 2. "Since when did you have video games?"
"Eli let me borrow his."
"You're killing monsters. Isn't that a little too realistic to be fun?"
"I'm shooting them. That's completely different."
"When was the last time you opened a book?" Connor pauses the game.
"Cut me some slack. I almost got killed yesterday."
"I let you get away with that excuse, you'll never do your chores."
"What chores?"
"You know, for instance, when you have to . . . I'll think of some when I get a chance."
"And how many times do I get my ass kicked as bad as yesterday?," Connor asks before slowly rising to his feet.
"Are you any better, Connor?"
"Yeah. But my back still hurts. On the plus side, one came back down. You?"
"Same," Angel sheepishly responds, wishing Connor hadn't reminded him of that particular injury. "I bet the others are worrying about how we are."
"You mean how YOU are."
"There care about both of us."
"Maybe," Connor concedes. "But only cause they know you're safer when I'm around."
"That wasn't always the case." Connor smirks. They take the elevator downstairs, where Fred, Gunn and Wes are glad to see them up and about.
"You finally decided to drop on by," Fred notes, causing Angel and Connor to wince. "How ya doin'?"
"Better," Angel assures her. "Anything happen while I was asleep?"
"The Groosalug stopped by," Wesley reports, causing Angel considerable shock.
"What brings Groo by?," Angel asks.
"Cordy," Gunn responds. "Guess he was in the area and wanted to catch up with his old girl."
"Oh no."
"He looked about ten times as shocked as you do right now," Fred comments.
"Groo, are you okay?," Cordy asks. He's in the bathroom, standing at the sink, staring into the mirror.
"I do not belong in this world."
"You're writing off the entire planet because of what happened to me? That sort of thing is very, very rare around here. I promise you that nothing like that will happen to your next girlfriend. Or the one after that. Or to anyone else on this planet. My ordeal was freakish even by my friends' super-freaky standards."
"If only that were all. But it's not. Cordelia, you were the one thing in this world that made sense to me. Now I must say goodbye to you. And to this realm."
"Groo, listen to me. I know that you're feeling confused. But please, please don't do anything drastic."
"I was a fool to think I could adapt. I have no choice."
Cordelia opens the door. In the mirror, she can see that Groo has the blade of a large dagger to his throat. "Groo! No!!!" She grabs his right wrist with both hands. Tears are in her eyes. "You don't want to do this. There are people who love you. For God sakes, but the knife down. Groo, I'm begging you." He drops it to the floor. Cordy hugs him, still sobbing. "You have so much to live for."
Groo is mystified by her theatrics. "I don't understand you." She looks at him and wipes away tears from her eyes.
"You will. I'll make sure of that."
"You like my look?"
"Excuse me?"
"I did not know how passionate you were about the new Groosalug." Cordy's still in suicide watch mode.
"Of course. I love the new Groo. And the old Groo. I love whichever Groo you want to be." He bends down and picks up the knife. She leans down to stop him. "I can't let you do that."
"You can't let me shave?"
"Come again?"
"What did you think I was doing?"
"What did I think? Groo, you had a knife to your throat."
"Cordelia, my princess, that is how men shave," he explains condescendingly, to her chagrin. He stands up, puts the blade to his neck and moves it upward, shaving off the stubble. Then he does the same to his face.
"I guess that didn't have shaving cream in your world." He finishes, splashes his face with water, and lets his hair down.
"Ohhh. You're going home, and so you're returning to your old look."
"That is what I was trying to tell you."
"What a relief. For a moment there I thought you were suicidal. Wow, am I ever glad to be wrong." The two of them walk back into her bedroom.
"Thank you, Cordelia, for showing me my true path."
"That's what I'm here for," she jokes. He hugs her. Angel and Connor enter. Connor still can't remember who this "Groo" character is. Obviously, he was close to Cordelia. Groo lets go when he sees the visitors.
"Angel!" He gives Angel a friendly embrace. Perhaps a little too friendly, considering that Angel's still healing.
"Good to see you too, big fella. By the way, I don't hug other men." Groo stops crushing Angel's bones.
"I apologize, friend and fellow Champion." By now, Connor's had a few seconds to look at Groo.
"You threw a sword at me." Groo looks down at Connor, not quite sure how to react. His memories of adult Connor aren't exactly fond, and now he knows what Connor did to Angel last summer.
"I hope you do not hold that against me." Connor strikes him as the vengeful type.
"Please," Connor replies dismissively, as if Groo's not mighty enough for Connor to care about. "We're cool. You know Cordy?"
This is uncomfortable for Groo, seeing how Connor slept with her. "She was, and is, my one and only love." Connor smiles.
"One and only? Glad to hear that." He puts his right hand on Groo's left shoulder. Groo doesn't know what to make of friendly Connor. "I always thought she deserved a guy like that. Someone whose affections weren't, divided." Connor glances at Angel. Groo doesn't know about Buffy, hence he can't understand Connor's insinuation. Angel begins to get nervous. "A guy who doesn't get her impaled."
Groo gasps. "I thought that wound was made by a Polgara demon."
"Let's go somewhere to talk," Connor suggests, leading Groo out of Cordy's room and towards his own. Angel and Cordy don't know what to do, so they just stand there and let Connor take Groo away.
"Should we let him be alone with Connor?," Angel asks. "He could tell Groo some upsetting truths about certain other men."
"You mean Xander?"
"That's right. Xander. Never mind."