To my one hundred or so regular readers: Thanks for reading, but I would really, really appreciates more comments on what you do and don't like about each chapter. Your feedback is my inducement to keep writing. And the more reviews I get, the more motivated I feel, and the quicker I write new chapters. Sorry for the digression. Now back to the story.
Wesley impresses the Potentials, until Faith shows up and the girls want updates about Lindsey. Buffy and Fred talk about their men and discover, to their mutual horror, how much they have in common. Mal's successors use novel tactics to make mischief back in LA. Angel and Buffy try to explain away the bruises she gave him. And Connor and Dawn find new ways to freak Angel out without even trying.
Back inside the bunker, Wesley tells the Potentials about his adventures in Pylea. Giles, Anya and Willow are having a hard time swallowing Wesley Wyndham the Gunslinging/Swashbuckling Hero, so they try to ignore him. Faith finds it all humorous, both because she knew the old Wes and because this is how the Potentials reacted when she showed up. Seeing the same people twenty four hours-a-day, everyday, for months, the girls have a weakness for novelty. Andrew has a weakness for Wesley. "We're about to assault the enemy's castle at night. They vastly outnumber us, so to have any chance of success, I must set multiple diversions. Meanwhile, inside the citadel is the High Priest, with his finger on the Doomsday Button. If he senses any danger, he will instantly kill every human in the kingdom."
"No he won't!," Anya shouts out. "Those human slaves were that economy's entire store of capital. Destroy them, and the demons would have his head on a platter."
"But if Wesley succeeds, the High Priest loses his head anyway," Andrew argues.
"Which would not overthrow the entire social order," Anya scoffs. "Killing the leader in no way forces the demons to free their human slaves. The demons would form an army – far larger than Wesley's, I'm sure – and crush his little insurrection."
"What if the humans rise up?," Rona asks.
"Interior lines of communication," Anya quickly responds. "That's how slavery always worked. The masters all know each other, but the slaves are isolated. They can't coordinate their actions. To have any chance of success, they'd need a real army to back them up. Not a handful of rag-tag guerillas."
"It's a good thing you weren't there," Willow quips. "The demons may have won after all."
"You're damn right they would have." Everyone stares at her. "Not that I'd want that to be the outcome. I'm sure I would have helped Wesley strategize. And perhaps distracted the enemy with a campaign of disinformation. Demons can be quite gullible."
"Can I continue with my story?"
"Yes Lancelot," Giles drolly comments. "Do get to the part where you meet King Arthur and Guineivere." He finds these allegorical alternate dimensions set in the distant-but-recognizable past to be quite silly. Outside, Xander demonstrates his catapult to Gunn and Fred, who take turns firing on tree stumps, saplings and whatever else is still standing as a possible target. They turned on their cars and put the high beams on to illuminate the firing range.
"Aw yeah!," Gunn exclaims. "I cut that tree in half. Imagine what it could do to a nice, soft demon."
"Or even one that's soft on the inside but hard on the outside," Fred responds. "This thing's definitely got armor-piercing capability inside of one hundred yards."
"Could have been of some use when those Byzantine knights were chasing us." Fred and Gunn look at Xander. "Long, painful, tragic story. For all concerned."
"I especially like the automatic reload mechanism," Fred notes. "You can arm it without even taking your eyes off the bad guys. But I would like to put in an electric motor."
"So would I," Xander concurs. "If I had one."
"Oh I can build one. Just need a magnet and some wiring. Plus a plug-in so that you can recharge it using a regular old gas generator. Only question is how many times could it fire before the battery ran out."
"What about making it smaller, lighter, more portable?" Gunn suggests.
"Everything here could be miniaturized," Xander eagerly agrees. He loves having people around who care about this stuff.
"That would make it a lot easier to improve the aiming mechanism," Fred adds.
"What about a tripod?," Gunn proposes.
"That's just what I had in mind until I realized it was too heavy!," Xander enthuses. "But with a lighter catapult, it's a viable option.
"What about portability?," Fred wonders. "Sure, you can mount it on a truck, swing it around, take out the demons in the streets. But what if they go inside?"
"It would still be too heavy to carry," Gunn concludes.
"What about wheels?" Gunn and Fred like Xander's suggestion.
"Some sort of cart you could place it on so it could be pushed around," Fred brainstorms.
"Given its wide field of fire, once you get it through the door, the room's yours," Gunn adds.
"All we need now is some sort of cheap, standardized ammunition and spring-loaded magazines to automatically reload. Then it can be worked by a single person," Xander predicts. Fred smiles at him. "What?" It almost looks as if she's got a crush on him, which Xander knows can't be the case. Actually, she likes his mind, which doesn't happen much to Xander.
"Ya got the brain of an engineer."
"Well, I always have liked trains. But I don't think that's a real growth market." Fred laughs. Someone finding Xander funny – now that he's used to. Gunn's starting to worry that Fred's taking a bit too much of a shining to the new guy.
"Not that kind of engineer."
"Ohhh," he responds, playfully feigning realization. "You mean the kind of engineer that requires lots of fancy math. Not my brain."
"There's more to it than equations and tolerances. It's about building things, and havin' an instinct for what works. Thomas Edison didn't even know Calculus. Which was why he couldn't understand Alternating Current. But, then again, you're more mech-e than double-e."
"Calling people by their abbreviations. Reminds me of the time I was in the army."
"You're kidding," Gunn responds.
"I wasn't REALLY in the army. I just thought I was, because that was my Halloween costume. That's how I got hold of that rocket launcher."
"Think you can snag me one of those?," Gunn asks jokingly. As the boys chew the fat, Fred notices Buffy standing alone two hundred feet away. She goes over to talk to her.
"Where's Angel?" Buffy pauses to think of an excuse.
"He wanted to see what was left of the mansion he used to live in. You know him. Always caught up on the past."
"You don't have to lie to me. I know what's wrong. I've been in the same situation." Buffy looks at Fred like she's nuts.
"Do try to explain." She can't wait to here how Fred identifies with a Slayer who's on the eve of leading her troops into a battle where the fate of the entire world is in the balance.
"Two guys. Complete opposites. Both crazy for you. You're afraid that decidin' on one will hurt the other. So ya don't."
"What's Angel been telling you? Did Spike say anything!?"
"Didn't need to. Like I said, I've been there. Kinda still am there."
"Oh. Ohh. You and Wesley?"
"No. No And' between us. Not yet," she adds without thinking.
"Charles I can understand. Wesley, that's just, ick."
"Cause he was your Watcher. That's like a professor, and ya don't wanna ever think of any of them in that way. Ah dunno what he was like back then, but he's changed a lot, hasn't he?"
"So everyone keeps telling me." Buffy pauses to think over Fred's analogy. "So you think Angel and Spike are like – "
"Not individually. But to you they're like . . . what those two are to me."
"Except you haven't slept with Wesley."
"You're gettin' a little too literal, Buffy. Ahm jus' tryin' to say I understand your dilemma. Sometimes more can be less."
"Or nothing at all."
"Tell me about it," Fred replies frustratingly. Then she lowers her voice to a whisper. "Ya ever wish you could have 'em both together." Buffy gasps and steps back.
"Fred! My God! I had no idea." Notice how Buffy doesn't give an answer. Fred realizes to her chagrin that she was misunderstood.
"Oh boy. Oh dear. Ah didn't mean for it to come out like that. What ah meant was, they're different. They got completely different strengths. You might say they compliment each other exactly. If one guy had the good qualities of both of them, he'd be perfect."
"Which two guys are we talking about? Yours, or mine?"
"Well, ah don't know Spike, so, mine. But ahm guessing from what you jus' said that I coulda been talkin' 'bout yours as well. Not that I've ever thought of really tryin' to do it in some horrible, Twilight Zone-esque Be Careful What You Wish For' genetic experiment. People are more than the sum of their qualities. What ah meant was, they each appeal to a different part of your personality. So ya want both of em in your life. But then if you get too close to one, you could lose the other."
"Like how you can't have your cake and eat it too."
"It kinda sucks when that's no longer just a hollow cliche."
"Tell me about it." The two frustrated, confused women realize, to their mutual surprise, that they actually are bonding. Buffy's the last person Fred thought she could do that with, and vice-versa. "But, then again, you can't define yourself by your men. Man."
"Yes. Ah mean, no, you can't. Wait, ah mean, you're right."
"Before you find the person you belong with, you have to take time to find yourself."
"It's demeaning to buy into the notion that, if you're a woman, there's something wrong with you if you're single."
"I have other priorities. Like saving the world."
"Or, saving lives. Guess that's only a matter of degree."
"And if the guys really love you, they'll be willing to wait."
"No they won't."
"What!? Is Angel seeing someone?"
"No. I didn't mean that . . . ah was just talking about my own experience."
"You mean Kelly. To be honest, I never liked her."
"Thanks, but, no need, Buffy. I gave off plenty of signals over a very long period of time to the effect that I didn't see Wesley that way. Can't blame him for not waitin' around for something he didn't think he had a chance of getting."
"But what about Charles? You mean he's also - ?"
"Gwen."
"Gwen . . . electrocuting Gwen!"
"She did actually electrocute him when they first met."
"Guys always go for the girls who can kill them."
"Now she's grounded. Zap-free."
"Really. Has she changed her wardrobe? Because what makes you look like a comic book super-hero when you have special powers makes you look like a hooker when you don't. At least in her case, it would."
"Wow. That's just the sorta thing Cordy woulda said about her."
"Okay . . . " Buffy starts hyperventilating. "Let's not make this conversation a threesome."
"I forgot. You and Cordy had this whole Betty and Veronica thing in high school."
"Huh?"
"You get Scooby Gang, but ya don't get that?" Ironically, this is just what Gwen told Spike.
"Oh. Of course! Now I get it. Betty's the girl who always won whenever they competed for something, right?"
"Yep."
"Cool," Buffy responds with a smile. Then she gets back on topic and looks worried. "You think Angel and Spike will start looking around?"
"Angel's not the type to go out and look. Or, maybe he is, but he's sure not the type to go out, look, then touch. And with this town being deserted and cordoned off by the army, Spike can't find anyone 'till the apocalypse is over."
"So you're saying that there's a down side to defeating the First? I'm kidding, Fred."
"Of course. I knew that. Course, Wesley and Charles didn't start their flings until after our apocalypse was over and Angel got his soul back. A crisis can have a way of freezing everyone's relationships in place, so to speak."
"Really? I though it had a way of bringing people together." Danger has always been the most powerful aphrodisiac in Sunnydale.
"In horror movies, maybe," Fred jokes. "Then again, those couples always get killed right after they hook up. Or during."
"Maybe if you're doing it in public," Buffy jokes back, before recalling some of her trysts with Spike. "If you're at home, the vampires can't get inside you – your house. Inside the building."
"What were we talkin' about again?," Fred asks, considering how they seem to have ventured off on quite a tangent. "That's right. The inherent stalemate of an equilateral love triangle. Too bad that's not a problem I can solve with simple trigonometry. Or even simple Advanced Set Theory."
"Or by killing a big, scary demon," Buffy adds, figuring it would sound witty to highlight her own strengths. "Have you ever thought of combining the two?," Buffy asks jokingly about math and demons.
"Actually, when I was presenting a paper on String Theory, my old professor opened a portal and a tentacled monster tried to pull me into a demon dimension."
"Oh," Buffy comments, not quite sure how to respond to that. She takes a few seconds to mull over the details. "An evil professor tried to kill me at my college, too."
"Interesting. Was your talent a threat to their pride and professional standing?"
"Actually, yes."
"And how did you handle that?"
"Before I had a chance to do anything, she was killed by her demon cyborg."
"Mine didn't have a cyborg," Fred says, not quite knowing how else to reply.
"Nice shot!," they hear Xander yell out.
"Direct hit at two fifty," Gunn announces, referring to yards. Buffy looks in their direction.
"What are they doing?"
"Playin' around with and fine-tunin' Xander's new toy," Fred replies with a smile.
"You mean the gas-powered Bringer mass-murderer? Wouldn't call that a toy. It was fun to watch it in action. Very comforting."
"Weapons can be very comforting sometimes," Fred concurs.
"The last time I had that much fire-power backing me up, well, they were working for the professor who wanted me dead."
"In this business, it can be so hard to find outsiders you can trust." They stand around nervously for a few seconds. "I'm gonna head back inside."
"Good. No, not, good in the sense that your leaving would make me feel better."
"It's okay, Buffy. I know that's not what you meant."
"It was good talking to you, Fred."
"It was. Ah mean, from my point-of-view as well."
"But right now I'd like to have some alone time to think about tomorrow's no-second-chances, everything-on-the-line battle."
"I would too. Have fun. Or, wisdom. Whatever it is you're plannin' on havin'." They go their separate ways. All this empathizing was getting way too weird for two people who had thought they had absolutely nothing in common. Shortly after Fred returns to the living room, Faith steps out of her bedroom.
"Did I miss anything?," Faith asks the Potentials.
"Not really," Ariella responds.
"Unless you're a fan of Wesley's exciting stories," Amanda reports. The first thing that comes to Faith's mind is when she tortured him.
"There's nothing in those stories about me?," she asks him.
"Nothing bad, if that's what you're worried about."
Where's B?"
"Catchin' up with A," Rona explains. Giles notices they're starting to talk like Faith, creating Faith-esque nicknames that even Faith didn't use.
"Didn't you work with Lindsey before Faith came to town?," Andrew asks.
"He provided financial assistance," Wesley answers haltingly. "But Winifred, Gunn and myself did the actual fighting."
"Did he swoop down from the air in that helicopter?," Madari asks.
"Well, yes, actually," Wesley concedes. "It was a bit much. Didn't you think so, Fred?"
"Like an angel descending to earth," Fadila imagines. Rona, Amanda, Madari, Fadila and Ariella swoon at the thought. So does Fred, alarming Wesley.
"Jus' goin' along with the crowd," she nervously explains to Wes, who's upset by the shift in focus. The girls were supposed to be marvelling at his deeds.
"Were you just talking to Lindsey?," Andrew asks Faith.
"Well, yeah. But nothin' dirty, if that's what some of you are thinking."
"We weren't," Wesley replies, look queasy, as i Giles. "Until you mentioned it."
"How is his trial going?," Amanda wonders. Faith smiles and eagerly goes into the details. Wesley sighs and walks away. Giles goes up to him.
"Fame can be fleeting," Giles comments, gently mocking Wesley's dejection. "By the way, with all of you here, who's guarding the castle back home?"
"The hotel itself is protected by a spell." This gives Rupert uncomfortable memories of how Spike and Angel paid for' the spell. Wesley and his friends are still under the impression that only Angel was involved with the Furies. "And if anything happens in Los Angeles, Lorne knows this number. Except for Nina's brief appearance, the city's been quite quiet during the past week. Touch wood."
Mal's organizing of the city's vampires and his teachings about overgrazing had led to a mass exodus, as most of the town's bloodsuckers set out to colonize other cities. Their sky high morale and excellent tactical coordination made it easy to overpower and exterminate the local vamp population. Thought there were always more locals, they were always dispersed, and hence could be taken in detail. Even when they combined forces to fight the invaders, they lacked leadership, organization and discipline. Mal's logic was simple and compelling: if twenty five colonizers slay seventy five dispersed locals (most of whom won't be very good fighters anyway), and each of them eats twice as much as each of the locals did, this produces only two-thirds the deaths. Since their presence makes the city SAFER, the people don't hunt the invaders. Or if they do, they hunt them with at most as much zeal as they did the old vampires. And if the people couldn't kill those sorry excuses for immortals, how much of a threat would they be to Mal's Picked Warrior Elite? Back in LA, killings as a whole are down because they dust any vampires who don't wear their mark, preventing out-of-towners from capitalizing on the situation.
Lou and Vic still share leadership, and probably will continue to until a crisis or setback causes factionalism and infighting. They've made a point of steering clear of Angel until their vamps have become better fighters. Yet the longer they stay under the radar, the more gleeful they feel about getting away with it, and the greater their desire to taunt the enemy. With this is mind, the two of them lead ten other vampires into the Sears store at the Glendale Galleria, eight miles northwest of the Hyperion. This is close enough so Angel would feel guilty for not stopping it, but far enough away for them to be long gone before Angel could get there. Victor and the five other white vampires enter first and turn left towards men's wear. Ten seconds later, Louis and the five other black vampires enter and turn right towards electronics. Customers and employees immediately notice the half-dozen black men. Three security guards move over towards them, keeping their distance and trying quite ineffectively to be discrete and not get noticed by their targets. The black vampires look over some flat-screen televisions before checking out the stereos, all the while casually talking and carrying on as if they have no idea that everyone within a hundred feet is watching them, and anyone who was closer than that has fled. Meanwhile, the white vampires spread out, two heading to women's wear, two more entering children's wear, one going for the changing rooms. Victor, running the show from the centrally-located jewelry counter, scans his side of the store. No one's watching. He looks at his watch. 8:19:50. He turns around to face the young saleswoman on the other side of the counter.
"Excuse me. I'm looking for a necklace for my girlfriend," he adds bashfully, playing the nervous male customer who's never bought jewelry before.
"Well sir, we have plenty of selections, depending on your price range."
"Price really isn't an object. I'm just looking for something that would look on her neck. What do you think would look good on your neck?" Vic hears screams. Right on schedule. "What was that?," the woman asks nervously. Vic leaps over the counter, pulls her down to the ground where she can't be easily seen, covers the woman's mouth and quickly drains her. Each of the five other vampires also had locked onto their target by the time their synchronized watches read 8:20:00. A boy looks in the mirror at the shirt he's trying on while his mother looks for pants in his size thirty feet away. The boy feels himself being lifted off the ground, which is strange, since no one's behind him. The vampire bites down, and the boy, too frightened to scream, dies while watching himself in the mirror, getting killed by an invisible monster. When his mother returns, the vampire is gone, and her son lies motionless on the floor. She shrieks and cries for help. The shrieking causes security to rush over, and takes the customer's attention off of Lou and his friends, who quickly make their way to the exits. Victor tosses the employee's corpse onto the counter, causing more shrieks. While they're looking at the body, he leaps over the counter on the other side and heads towards the doors. When he turns and looks for his buddies, he's happy to see them all rapidly approaching. Thirty seconds after the start of the attacks, everyone is outside. Their discipline and restraint (leaving so many easy targets unharmed, half the vampires doing no killing at all) make it seem to those present as if the atrocity was committed by ghosts. They quickly disperse to their cars, happy with the success of their lightning surgical strike.
"Did you see how those white people were staring at us?," Lou asks Vic with mock seriousness. Vic shakes his head.
"It's such a shame that in this day and age people still judge a man by the color of his skin. You would think that by now we had moved on to other, more important criteria."
"Like whether or not they have a reflection." The two of them laugh. "Why didn't they notice that about us?"
"Because when you're scared of someone, you look right at them."
"You guys went first. We get to drink at the next hit."
"In Watts," Victor adds. Both of them burst out laughing.
"Whoever thinks racism can't kill is a damn fool," Lou jokes as they laugh some more.
"A damn dead fool."
Angel sees Buffy outside, near the bunker. They stand around, not looking each other in the eyes for about ten seconds. "I think I need someone who lives here to let me in. And, no one else is outside."
"Xander and, umm, Charles aren't still out?"
"Apparently not. They were together?"
"Like instant best friends, from what I saw." Angel's positively mystified. He hopes Buffy's mistaken. If not, then he's disappointed in Gunn. Neither Buffy nor Angel wants to say anything about what happened before Buffy stormed off. They proceed in silence towards the entrance, which Buffy makes pop up by remote. They walk down the stairs and enter the bunker. Spike slouches against the back wall of the living room, twenty feet away, glaring at them. Until he sees Angel's bruises. Finally, some good news. "Hey guys," Buffy says, confused by all the funny looks.
"What happened to your eye?," Wesley asks. Only then does Angel remember the injury, which he had tried very hard to forget about on his meandering way back.
"Oh. That. It's still there?" Angel puts his right hand to his face, pretending he thought it had already healed. "I, we, we were attacked."
"Yes. Attacked. By an uber-vamp," Buffy quickly adds.
"Yeah. It was an uber-vamp. Completely blindsided me. Came out of nowhere. Otherwise it couldn't have done this."
"Don't worry," Buffy assures them. "There weren't any others."
"After it knocked me down, she killed it."
"I'm thinking it was guarding the hill for Nina the other night."
"Like the one I killed?," Spike asks with a smile.
"Uh-huh. It was probably guarding another approach. One that we didn't use. So it just missed us, and by the time it got back to the top, everyone was gone. So it's probably been hiding in some cave during the day and roaming around town at night, looking for someone to attack. That's my theory."
"As long as we're not dealing with the vanguard of an army of demons that's burst out a little early to take us completely by surprise," Anya jokes in her inimitable way. Angel scans the room.
"Has Connor come back?"
"In much better shape that you," Spike replies. "And a lot happier-looking, I might add." Perhaps his time with Buffy didn't go as well as Spike had feared. The two lovebirds are by themselves in the kitchen. Now that she's around everyone else again, Dawn has on her long-sleeved light gray t-shirt. Connor's scooping up with his right hand the chocolate on the bottom of the bowl Andrew used to stir the brownie mix.
"We do have real food. If you're hungry," Dawn suggests.
"That's okay. I'm not," he responds before stuffing another hunk of fudge in his mouth. Connor looks at her. "Something wrong?"
"No. I liked to lick the spoon and eat the stuff at the bottom of the bowl, too. When I was nine." Then she remembers why she can't do jokes about being immature. "I mean, when I thought I was, or, I think I did when I when I thought I was." Connor stops eating.
"It's okay, Dawn. It doesn't matter anymore. Because this is real." He leans in and kisses her for a few seconds before she pulls away and licks her lips.
"Sweet."
"Thanks," Connor replies with a grin.
"I meant the chocolate." Dawn scoops some up on her right index finger and sticks it into Connor's mouth. When she pulls it out, he leans his head forward, as if wanting more. Dawn smiles coyly. But when he reaches for her waist, she jumps back onto the counter that runs through the middle of the room.
"Never seen you play the tease before," he says before reaching for her legs. Dawn grabs his wrists and pushes him back.
"I'm not playing. Wash you hands." Connor looks at his hands and remembers that they're covered in sticky chocolate.
"Afraid I'll get some on you? Don't worry. I'll just lick it right off." Dawn wasn't ready for that response. Apparently, absence doesn't just make the heart grow fonder. It also makes the mind grow sicker. When he reaches for her again, she puts her feet on his chest and pushes Connor away, pinning his back to the edge of the sink. Unfortunately, this was also a turn-on for Connor. Right then, Angel enters the kitchen in order to get a glass of blood.
"Hands off," Dawn tells Connor. "Don't make me break out the handcuffs."
"Sounds like fun," Connor replies with a smile. Angel barely gets two steps into the room before turning around and leaving. He hadn't known they were in the kitchen. He had been afraid to inquire where they were, assuming Connor was in her bedroom, which was something he didn't want to hear, especially with Anya around to make inappropriate comments. Now he realizes that asking would have been more than worth the risk.
Meanwhile, Dawn is beginning to get annoyed by her horndog of a boyfriend. "Is there anything I can say or do that won't turn you on?," she asks as she removes her feet from his chest.
Connor takes his time seriously pondering this question. "No."
"Kicking you in the groin?"
Connor winces and closes his legs, traumatized by the memory of what Nina did to him. "That's an option?"
Dawn gets down off the counter. "Guess that's up to you." She means it as a joke. But Connor takes it quite seriously, spinning around and turning on the water.
"Soap?"
"Yes. It is," Dawn jokes. "How come you're not laughing?"
"Should I be?"
Dawn realizes she scared her mood-swinging boyfriend. "It was an Airplane' joke. Guess you haven't seen it."
"I've seen airplanes," Connor replies, fearing that she's condescending and making fun of his lack of familiarity with this world.
Dawn wraps her arms around his waist, hugs him tight from behind and rests her chin on his right shoulder. "It's a movie, silly. And it's also a silly movie, actually." Connor smiles. Dawn kisses his right cheek. He holds up his palms.
"Is this clean enough?" Dawn sighs and shakes her head. From rogue lechery to nervous quiescence in the blink of an eye. Emotional fragility on top of physical invincibility. Boyfriends didn't come any more paradoxical that Connor. But she liked the challenge of making sure the roller-coaster didn't fly off the tracks. Dawn kisses his neck. Connor takes that as a yes. While he's drying his hands, Dawn steps back and looks glum. "What now?," Connor asks, putting his left hand on her right cheek and rubbing her left shoulder with his right hand. Dawn looks him in the eye.
"If only I could make you not worry so much about tomorrow." Alas, all powers have their limits.