"A truck-mounted stake shooter that looks like a Gatling Gun," Xander comments. "You'll have to show me that sometime. I'd be happy to show you my gas-powered catapult, if you're interested."
"Definitely interested. Only problem I have with that is the noise. The engine's gonna give the vamps a big ol' heads-up."
"It was designed as a defensive weapon. To protect against hordes of charging enemies."
"Different toys for different situations. Still pretty tight. How many days you say it took you to build?"
"Four. Five to get the aiming mechanism working."
"Twenty shots a minute?"
"Once you get going, all you have to do is pull the lever with your right hand and squeeze the trigger with your left."
"I wonder if you could put in an electric motor. Ya know, to cut down on noise."
"I suppose. The problem is, right now it's set up so the engine runs all the time. To conserve power, with an electric you'd only want the engine to run when you're actually loading. I think I could retrofit it to do that."
"I'm sure it's light enough to mount on a flatbed. But you'd wanna make the aiming more precise. It's a small target when you're trying to dust vamps."
"That part I spent the least time on. I just slapped together the simplest possible system. But if I had to time to tinker – "
"If we had time." Xander smiles at this proposal.
"Of course. If WE had time."
"Are all Watchers this knowledgeable about advanced theoretical physics?," Fred asks Giles.
"It's certainly not part of the training."
"So you've picked up what you know in your spare time?"
"I've found it has certain practical applications to my work. For instance, about few six years ago, Buffy fought a girl who had become invisible."
"The one nobody paid attention to who took it out on Cordy. She told me 'bout that. It's hard to imagine that Cordelia was once so insensitive to the sufferings of others." Giles fights the urge to laugh.
"It is? How long have you know her?"
"About two years."
"Ah. That would explain it. I suppose." It's still hard for him (or anyone else in Sunnydale) to imagine Cordy growing that much. "Back to the invisible girl. My explanation for how this could happen was based on certain aspects of quantum theory." From across the room, Wesley sees Fred getting friendly with Giles and Gunn pal-ing it up with Xander. Both disturbing developments. Fred a little more-so. Anya, who is talking to Wesley, notices his distraction.
"You love her. Faith noticed. Willow didn't pick up on that. Honestly, I think she kinda held out hope that Fred was on her team. You always like to think the attractive ones swing the same way you do." Willow and Fred? That got Wesley's attention.
"What are you basing that on, other than a fertile, yet slightly rancid, imagination?"
"More than a millennia of people-watching. The same thing that lets me know you are rabidly in love with Fred."
"Can love be rabid?"
"Yes. Sometimes literally. Hopefully not in this case. She's attracted to you, but she sees you as a friend. Probably because you're both bookworms. It's the whole misconception that people should find someone different who compliments them. I don't know how many times I've seen that lead to disaster."
"Is this what you're best at? Pseudo-insight?" Anya recognizes Wesley's gibes are more playful than malicious.
"She'll realize how right you are for her after she's exhausted all other options. That's how these things always work. Also, having suffered the trauma of enslavement, she feels a need to attach herself to men she thinks can protect her. I assume she went through the predictable Angel phase before learning of his particular complications. You're not a protector. You used to be a weenie. Now, you're kind of scary. Either way, you lack the come to daddy' appeal of a square-jawed hero like Angel."
"Come to daddy?"
"I know. It's unsettling. Everyone talks about Oedipal complexes. But women are a lot more likely to sleep with their father than men are with their mother. Metaphorically."
"I should hope so."
"So how do you like working for a bleeding heart?"
"Pardon?"
"Angel's a big, huge bleeding heart. Ironic, considering how his real heart's shriveled and dried-up. He's got a total Bobby Kennedy complex: Most people see the world as it is and ask why. I see the world as it should be and as why not.' I'm guessing he can tell you exactly where he was when he heard Bobby had been shot."
"You see Angel as a Kennedy aficionado? There is the Irish thing."
"Not the whole clan. Angel's just a Bobby worshipper. Angelus probably worships a different Kennedy. Bobby like to use heroic metaphors about slaying dragons and noble quests. Angel would've eaten it up."
"Were you a fan of his?"
"No, no, no. I'm the last person who'll fall for idealism."
"Then how come you know so much?"
"I was alive then. And, working in Los Angeles. For Lew Wasserman at MCA."
"Very funny."
"I'm serious. Lew had a deal with DeHofren. The man took payback very seriously. When he told someone you'll never work on this town again,' he wanted to make damn sure that's what happened. I remember Bobby Kennedy because Warren Beatty worshipped him."
"You knew Warren Beatty?"
"Back when he was hot. God, if only someone could have given him eternal youth." She sighs.
"Was he one of your vengeance targets?"
"That's what everybody always assumes. But it's wrong. Warren had a ton of girlfriends. But none of them were ever mad at him after they broke up. His exes had nothing but good things to say about him. Including me."
"You dated?"
"Dated. Slept together. Our relationship was mostly sex. I was working for two very demanding bosses, and I didn't have a lot of free time for boring dinners and pointless small talk."
"Okay. I'll play along."
"You think I'm making this up? Go ask him yourself."
"Did he know you were a Vengeance Demon?"
"Oh Lord no. Which is probably why I haven't kept in touch. How would I explain looking exactly like I did thirty five years ago?"
"Really good plastic surgeon?"
"Wouldn't want to get his hopes up."
"What did he think you were?"
"Vice-President of Marketing, or something like that. He figured I was pretty high up in the organization, considering how much face time I had with Lew. Even ran movie ideas by me. I remember one time when he was all excited about making an homage to the French New Wave. Cutting-edge, avant-garde. The class consciousness of bank robbers during the Depression." Anya sighs and rolls her eyes. "Put someone behind a camera and he thinks he's an artist. I told Warren to forget about all this artsy-fartsy stuff. It never sells. Just make sure it has lots of blood and lots of money. That's what people like."
Wesley thinks about this. "Bonny and Clyde!"
"Oh right. That's what it was."
"You gave him the idea for the groundbreaking graphic violence?"
"Maybe. I'm not sure. But I did nix the love triangle that was in the first draft. Originally, Clyde and his protege fight over Bonnie. There was even a threesome in the script. Who wants to see that? Especially when it's two men. Also, Clyde was impotent. Which was why the younger guy got to get it on with Bonnie. I convinced Warren that the audience would never respect an impotent male lead, even a devastatingly handsome one." For Wesley, the completed the Beatty-Angel cycle in a most unsettling way. Evidently, Anya missed the unintentional meaning of her last sentence.
"So that's Buffy," Fred says to Gunn.
"I thought she'd be taller," he responds.
"She gets that a lot," Willow reports. For Gunn and Fred, Buffy had been a quasi-legendary figure who hovered unseen over Angel, and therefore over them. Her death sent him across the sea for months. Who knows what effect her presence in Los Angeles would have had.
"She's so petite. Yet she's got Angel in the palm of her hand," Fred notes. "Like Alexander the Great in drag." Willow and Xander gulp at this notion.
"What did he look like?," Xander asks.
"I'm not sure," Willow replies. "But I heard on television the other day that Colin Farrell's playing him in the movie."
"Ain't he the guy Angelus beat up because he thought he was copying him?," Gunn asks.
"That's what Cordy said," Fred responds. Xander and Willow are hopelessly confused. "What I meant was that Alexander was only five foot two. About the same height as Buffy. And he was also this super-warrior everyone thought was invincible. That's all I meant."
"Now I have this image in my head of Colin Farrell wearing a blonde wig," Xander sheepishly confesses.
"I can't be held responsible for your twisted mind," Fred jokes.
"You have to be careful with what you tell him," Willow says as an aside to Fred. "He's like a child who bounces off the walls if you feed him too much sugar." They both giggle.
"I think they're having a bad influence on each other," Xander whispers to Gunn.
"Bad things can happen when you get too much brains into too little space," he responds, subconsciously knocking Wesley.
"So are you the one who taught Wesley how to fight?," Xander asks Gunn, delighting Charles. "When he worked here, Wesley put the nancy in nancy boy."
"I'm not sure how he learned to fight. Ain't like I trained him or nothing."
"Maybe you just taught by example." Gunn thinks he's made a new friend.
In order to take their minds off each other, Angel and Buffy briefly split up. Angel walks slowly by Spike, whose glaring eyes follow him. They say nothing to each other. Spike's mostly kept to himself. Now that Wesley and Gunn are through getting quizzed by the Potentials, Angel decides to take a shot with them. Buffy walks over to Fred and Gunn. "So. How do you like our little town? It's too bad I couldn't show you it back when it actually existed."
"It's a lovely spot," Fred offers. "If it wasn't for the Hellmouth, of course."
"There had to something to make people move here in spite of the demons."
"Well, there's you," Gunn comments, making Buffy happy. "I know what can happen to a neighborhood when the vamps get the upper hand."
"It's not me. It's the power," she modestly insists. "Take that away, and I'd be running to you for protection."
"You used to live in LA, right?," Gunn asks.
"Sherman Oaks, actually."
"The suburbs. They got any vamps out there?"
"Oh yeah. That's where I started slaying. Until I was expelled for burning down the gym because it was full of vampires." Gunn smiles. He didn't take Buffy for a delinquent. This was a pleasant surprise.
"Wish I had a chance to do that. Better than just dropping out." Having bonded with Gunn, Buffy tries to win over Fred.
"I came back to LA for the next two summers. The last time I lived there, I was sucked into a demon dimension and turned into a slave."
"You were?," Fred asks, excited by the news. "For how long?"
"One night and one day. Of course, it felt a lot longer." Fred's excitement turned to outrage.
"One day. One measly day. You poor baby. How did you ever survive? A whole day. That must have changed the course of your life forever." Actually, it had. "I'm sorry. I don't mean nothin' by it, but . . . one day!! One day? Do you know how many days I was a slave cow? Neither do I. I stopped counting after one thousand."
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you."
"Upset me? Please. Five years in a demon dimension. Now that upset me." Fred takes a few seconds to calm down. "I apologize. It's like, it's like, how would you feel if I told you that I understood what it was like to be dead and buried because I was unconscious for a couple hours?" Buffy gets it. Fred had belittled her suffering, her "trip to Hell," and she had a point.
"I understand where you're coming from. Guess there are some things where you shouldn't try to relate."
"I didn't mean to blow up. It's still kind of a raw subject with me."
"Of course it is. If had gone what you've gone through, I probably would have punched me out for what I said."
"That's okay," Fred responds with a smile.
"I didn't mean it as a suggestion," Buffy jokes.
"I don't get why they'd set up the spell so it could be broken," Amanda says to Angel. "Couldn't they have done it so you'd never be happy, no matter what you did?"
"That seems fairer," Rona adds.
"I think it would be a lot worse," Fadila argues. "You do things that should make you happy, but they don't. Like being able to eat ice cream but not taste its sweetness. Except much worse, I imagine. I wouldn't know. But wouldn't miserable sex be worse than no sex at all? Especially if you love the person."
"Think of the guilt," Ariella comments.
"The Gypsies are from up north," Madari mentions. "I've always heard the people in the south had greater magical powers. Of course, that's where I'm from."
"Whereabouts?," Angel asks.
"Madras."
"Are you Tamil? You're name sounds Tamil."
"Yes. I am." She's impressed by Angel's worldly knowledge. "I'm just wondering if the Gypsies are really, how you say, all that? They impress Europeans, but in Europe everyone's forgotten the old ways. It's like being the best cricket player in America. Zora told us about these Berber curses they'd give to vampires, and they were so much worse." Angel blanches.
"Yeah. I'm familiar with Berber anti-vampire spells. Which is why I steered clear of them; they were uniformly hostile. But the Rumanian Gypsies were different. Certain vampires have lived among them for centuries."
"They were probably pretty wimpy vampires," Rona assumes. "You, they noticed. You, they had to stop."
"So you were very good at being evil," Amanda concludes. Angel would rather talk about his experiences as a champion.
"I try to be the best at everything I do. Just like when I'm fighting demons and rescuing people."
"I'm sure ya got some great stories, but we'd rather not talk about fighting demons," Rona informs him.
"Of course not. After all, you spend so much time fighting them. So, Madari, you're from Madras, and Amanda, you're from right here in Sunnydale. Judging by your accents, I'm guessing Rona's from Atlanta, Fadila's from Michigan, probably Dearborn, and Ariella's from Israel." They're mildly impressed by his accuracy. "Now Fadila, I'm guessing your family's from the Levant. Are they Palestinian? Which would be just what Buffy needs: her very own mini-Middle East peace process."
"It's like those movies where all the races and religions come together to fight the alien invasion," Fadila explains.
"They fight shoulder-to-shoulder, but you know they're arguing off-camera," Ariella jokes.
"Buffy at first was totally freaked."
"But once she realized it wasn't personal, she stopped worrying. To be honest, I don't think she understood what we were debating." Ella and Fadila both chuckle.
"But she has better things to worry about than politics," Fadila offers in Buffy's defense.
"How come you haven't asked us about her and Spike?," Amanda asks. "They've both trained us, so we've seen a lot of them together. Aren't you curious?"
"Actually, Buffy trained us," Rona clarifies. "Spike was always her assistant. She'd order him around. Beat him up every now and then. He never complained."
"Didn't Spike used to work with you a long time ago, back when you both were evil?," Amanda asks.
"He tagged along."
"What was your relationship?," Fadila asks.
"Relationship? There wasn't any. He did look up to me, learn from me, copy me."
"You two are vampires," Madari begins. "Vampires are predators. Why haven't you tried to established yourself as the dominant male?"
"I'm sorry. Establish myself as what?"
"Because here, men aren't dominant," Fadila reminds Madari.
With Fred and Gunn talking to others, Connor sits down with Dawn on the couch. She sits to his right. He puts his right arm around her shoulders, and his right leg becomes entangled with her left leg. He leans in and they start gently smooching. "I've missed these lips," Dawn says to him.
"You keep stealing my lines," he jokes before kissing her again. She puts her right hand under his shirt and against his chest. Twenty feet away, Fred and Gunn catch sight of them.
"Someone didn't waste any time," he says to her. Connor hears him in his left ear and moves his eyes to see them. He pulls away from Dawn and she also notices Fred and Gunn approaching.
"Hey guys," he says to Fred and Gunn. "There's someone I want you to meet." Dawn and Connor stand up. "This is Dawn."
"You must be Winifred and Gunn," she says while shaking their hands. "Connor's told me a lot about you."
"What a coincidence," Fred responds, referring to how much they've been forced t hear about her. "So you're the girl who put the whammy on Connor."
"I guess," she responds equivocally, not quite sure how to interpret that. Gunn and Fred don't know where to take the conversation. It's normal to talk about your respective pasts. But "What's it like to have fake memories and nearly get sacrificed and destroy the universe?" seems somehow inappropriate. "I think you two have really inspired Connor," Dawn offers, shocking Fred and Gunn, as well as Connor. "He got in a big argument with Buffy about, well, tactics." Actually it was about Dawn, but this way it sounds more abstract and technical. "Connor told her that having the people without super powers rely on those with super powers to protect them was a waste of resources, because you didn't need super powers to fight and kill demons. He didn't mention you two by name to Buffy. But, later on, he told me Fred and Gunn slay vampires. The can handle themselves in a fight.' So, I guess, you two were his proof."
This is surprising to them. They had no idea that Connor held them in any regard. They wonder if Dawn embellished to make her boyfriend look better. If so, she did a good job. "You really said that about us?," Gunn asks Connor.
"Guess so," he responds. "I don't remember everything I've ever said. But if Dawn remembers, then I must've." He had only mentioned Cordy by name, and greatly appreciates Dawn's improvisation. He gives her a little smile to show his thanks.
"Isn't Connor a sweetie?," Dawn asks rhetorically, putting her arms around his chest. He leans his head to the right and gazes at her.
"I suppose," Fred replies unconvincingly. "Among other things." Gunn and Fred glance at each other, not quite sure what to make of docile, teddy bear Connor, or of the girl who domesticated the Destroyer. Dawn lets go of Connor and tries to think of things to talk about. She can tell Gunn and Fred are uneasy.
"So . . . how are you guys dealing with having half of Sunnydale High at your hotel which wasn't really supposed to be a hotel in the first place?"
"Kinda crazy the first couple days," Gunn responds. "But once you get used to the crowds and the noise, it's not too bad. We've been through worse."
"Maybe we'll feel a little different if they're still around in a month," Fred adds.
"Except for my friends, right?," Connor asks.
"Of course," Fred quickly responds, knowing Connor asked the question in order to coax one answer.
"Goes without saying," Gunn assures him.
"Dawn, that reminds me," Fred begins, "we met your friend Eli a couple weeks back. When he came to LA to check out Cal Tech. He seems like a cool kid. Cool in the sense that he's a nerd. Like me."
"Elijah and me aren't really that close," she replies tentatively. "He's a nice guy, but I only know him because he's dating my best friend. Have you met Kit?"
"Of course," Fred answers, still trying to put a face to the name.
"She was the one of first ones in," Gunn recalls. "Her dad talked to Wesley." Now Fred remembers. To her, Kit's the scary goth girl with the warlock dad. And Fred was already feeling uneasy about Dawn. So much for Connor's friends making him more normal. He just seems to accentuate their abnormal aspects.
"It was nice meeting you, Dawn," Fred says before glancing over her shoulder and seeing Spike leaning against the wall. "Oh look, Charles. There's Spike. Have you met him yet?" The turn around and walk away. "I don't know what Angel was thinking. He doesn't look at all like Justin Timberlake," Fred whispers into Gunn's right ear.
"But Cordy's Billy Idol remark was right on the money," he whispers back.
"Except he's better looking."
"Billy Idol?"
"No." It takes a second for Gunn to get what Fred's saying, and then he looks alarmed. Does Fred think Spike's hot?"
"I don't think they like me," Dawn says to Connor. He puts his arms around her waist and pulls her close.
"Not liking you. That's possible?" Dawn just smiles, leans back against Connor's chest and sighs happily. Damn it was good to be with him again.
"You must be Spike," Gunn says.
"I'd look pretty bloody ridiculous trying to play anyone else."
"Nice coat," Fred offers. "How come you're wearing it indoors?"
"It has sentimental value."
"How so?," Fred wonders.
"Took it off a Slayer I killed." This puts Fred and Gunn on edge.
"Doesn't that make you feel guilty, now that you've got a soul?," she asks.
"I already have plenty to feel guilty for."
"But why wear reminder of what you once were?," Gunn asks. "Why not give yourself a fresh start?"
"I did that at first. New clothes. New attitude. Didn't work. Buffy said the new me wusn't a good enough fighter. She wanted the old me back."
"She actually said that?," an astonished Fred asks.
"Not in those words."
"Didn't think so," Gunn adds.
"Her exact words were I want the Spike who tried to kill me.' Otherwise I wasn't being the best warrior I could be." Gunn and Fred don't know quite how to react. Fred's completely blown away. Gunn tries to make sense of it.
"Your dark side fueled your intensity," he theorizes, working from his own experience. "It made you a better killer. More creative. A tougher soldier."
"Now you're gettin' it."
"And the coat brings that all out. Like a good luck charm."
"Let me ask you two something. How does it make you feel to work for someone who's dumber than you?" They ponder this, not sure if there's a good answer.
"Was that your way of calling us smart?," Fred asks.
"Or just your way of callin' Angel stupid?," Gunn follows up.
"Can't it be both?"
NEXT: The Scoobies find out about Mal. And Buffy and Angel get some alone time.