The group met at last light on Thursday at the magic box to welcome, and assess the team which would be taking their places in Sunnydale for however long whatever it was took. There was a knock on the door just as they settled. Giles got up to open the door and lead the tall, greying man to the research table. But fe wasn't going to talk if this other man didn't initiate it. He looked army trained, and maybe he didn't know that there were demons.
The newcomer surveyed the group briskly taking in Spike's possessiveness of Dawn and Willow's hand entwined with Tara's. He nodded in general greeting.
"I'm sorry for your loss," he said, making it sound more than the usual formula. "But I'm here to protect Sunnydale from whatever sort of threat it faces while you're in Washington."
"Who are you?" Willow asked, grinning slightly.
The man blushed slightly. "My name is Simon Donovan. I'm officially employed by the Treasury Department."
"You're with the Secret Service," Willow said, her eyes going wider.
"Bodyguard? Bah," Anya said, thoroughly unimpressed by the well dressed, handsome, muscly man. "Do you know how many women make wishes over bodyguards. All right, unusually someone else's but there was this one time in Prussia…"
"An, honey."
Simon shrugged. "Unofficially I'm part of the Special Special Operations Group, which is itself unofficial."
Willow grinned. She wondered how many secret government organization there were, and whether they knew about each other. Donovan called his men in from the street outside and introduced them to the Scooby gang, who gave their names in turn.
"We'll want to set up our command central at the Slayer's house," Donovan said. "Is there room for the four of us to stay there tonight?"
"If you don't mind sleeping on the floor," Dawn said.
Donovan smiled. "Not at all," he said.
The agents followed everyone else and parked their car outside the inconspicuous suburban house. They mingled uncomfortably in the entrance for a few moments while the others went about their end of day chores. Eventually Willow noticed their stance and started.
"Oh, it's okay, come in," she said, after checking that they were all already inside.
"Nice house," he said, looking around.
"It's repaired on a regular basis," Dawn said.
"I'll give you a quick tour in a moment. Dawn, can you order the pizzas? Are pizzas okay?"
Donovan saw his second in command, Sandra Hall, grin out of the corner of his eye.
"Pizza's fine," he said. He wondered how many of the seven people were actually going to spend the night here.
The house was too busy for all of them, so he let Sandra, Duncan and Ben stay downstairs while he followed Willow upstairs.
She pointed out the main bedroom, Dawn's room and the bathroom. When they came to the third bedroom she pushed open the door and gestured Donovan inside.
At first glance he saw a young woman hooked up to some piece of medical equipment. Then he saw that her eyes were open, and unblinking. And she appeared to be plugged into the machine.
Donovan raised his eyebrows at that, even as he scanned the room for possible entrances, views and hiding places.
Willow unplugged the robot and powered her up. She sat up and looked at Donovan.
"Hello, my name is Buffy Summers, do you know what a vampire Slayer is?"
"Yes, I do," Donovan said, slightly unnerved by the robot's intonation.
"Buffy," Willow said.
"Hello, Willow. Do you know this man?"
"Yes. This is Simon Donovan. He will stay here for a little while. He will help you protect Sunnydale."
"I don't need help, Willow. I am the Slayer. And you and Xander help me because you are my friends."
"We have to go away for a little while. You have to stay here because you have to protect Sunnydale. Dawn, Giles, Xander, Tara, Anya, Spike and I have to go another city. We will come back."
"I'm glad you will come back. I will miss Spike. You have to look after Dawn."
"We will. Until I come back, you answer to Agent Donovan, okay."
"Agent Donovan will be in charge while you are not here," the Buffy-bot said, smiling at Donovan. He tried to smile back.
"Yes. XX123 Willow changed XX123 Agent Donovan. Do you understand that?"
The bot looked up at Donovan.
"When I am injured, you will need to repair me. Willow used to, but you are in charge now."
"Okay. I'll do my best. I would like to talk to Willow outside now."
"Yes, I will wait here."
Willow sighed and followed the Agent into the hallway.
"Are you okay with that?" Willow asked. "Sorry to just do it, but I don't want to try to come to Washington looking for me. April walked across town looking for Warren and you need to able to stop that. She understands most things, and will ask if she doesn't. She knows to go on patrol, but a team should go with her to make sure nothing happens. You just plug her in a night, there's a panel in her stomach, I'm sure you saw it. Just tell her to turn off. To turn her on again, unplug her and there's a switch. If anything goes wrong you can call me, I can probably explain most of it over the phone. Oh, I'll get you the back up disks, hang on a moment."
"Willow," Donovan stopped her. "She's brilliant. I don't know how you did it, but I'm sure we'd like to have one of our own. I'll call you if we encounter any problems but she seems pretty well programmed. I just need to know the override code."
"Right, yes, of course." Willow stopped to slow herself down. "The override code is 'override code Duck Soup,' that will stop her where she is, like she's frozen. I didn't build her. A guy called Warren Meers did. I don't where he is, but he built the first one, April, too. I don't like him, but he seems pretty harmless. He's a techno nerd, I'm sure you could get him to build for one you, but you wouldn't want to tell him who you were."
Willow rushed back into the room to grab the disks and handed them to Donovan.
"You can just plug the power in socket into a USB drive for access to her programming."
"Okay," Donovan said, sensing that the young woman was trying as hard to work out what to do as she was trying to do it properly.
He took her arm and led her downstairs to wait for pizza. They could do a full debrief before they had to leave for Washington.
Although, as it became apparent the following evening, there wasn't much going on. Thanks to the not-really-fortuitous existence of the robot that looked like Buffy Summers the demon population, and indeed that civilian one, believed that she was still alive.
Dawn snuck off upstairs after dinner. Giles, Xander and Anya left to pack and Spike to secure his crypt.
Willow agreed to pack for Tara, and disappeared as well. Tara dug her keys out of her purse and handed them Donovan.
"Here are my keys, they open everything. I don't what we are expecting to come of this trip. But Giles seemed to just assume that it was happening, and I think we all want to do something. Good luck."
"Thank you."
"Tara?" Willow called. "Do you want the white ones or the purple ones?"
"Ah, you choose," she answered.
"We're done then," Willow said.
"Okay. Dawn?" Tara called.
Dawn appeared at the top of the stairs with her suitcase in one hand and a book in the other.
Donovan stayed where he was and Tara climbed the stairs to make sure Dawn had packed everything.
"I'm going to say good bye to Buffy-bot," Dawn announced.
Before Tara could protest Dawn had disappeared into Buffy's room.
"Dawn, we have to leave now," Tara called.
Dawn appeared again and picked up her suitcase. Donovan opened the door and helped them load their stuff into the car. He closed the door as they drove off and turned to find himself face to face with the robot.
"I waited. And I said goodbye to Dawn. But now it time to patrol. There are demons outside, you know?"
"Yes," Donovan said, still unsure of how to treat her.
"But you should meet my friends first. They would like to patrol too."
"Okay," the robot said, smiling brightly.
Donovan wondered if there was anyway of having someone make her less bright and sparkly.