[Patrick explains to Willow how he could make daytime vampires. And Anya explains to Xander why he's a total slut.]

Buffy looked up and saw a slightly built young man standing over her. Buffy didn't know he was Patrick Gugan because she had never seen him before. All she knew was that a man was attacking her, presumably so that the two vampires could bite and kill her. When Buffy tried to get up, she was shocked again. Patrick kept his distance, standing fifteen feet away.

"I want to have a calm, non-violent discussion with you, Buffy. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. Promise me you won't hurt Anthony or Joseph and I'll stop the shock treatment." Gugan was holding a taser. Its electrodes had shot out 15 and attached themselves to Buffy's clothes. Gugan knew better than to get within arm's reach of a Slayer.

"Go to hell," Buffy told him. Gugan administered one more powerful shock. Buffy felt severely weakened. She realized that if this continued she'd soon be unconscious. Thus she concluded it was best for her to play along with this maniac, at least for now. "Fine, truce," she conceded. Gugan pulled the electrodes off of her. She stood up.

Gugan looked at the two vampires. "Anthony, Joseph, this was all a big misunderstanding. This woman is the Slayer." A look of awe came over their faces as they gazed at Buffy like she was royalty or something. For Buffy, this was getting way too surreal for comfort.

"Then why did she try to hurt us?," Anthony asked Gugan.

"Because you're vampires, and I'm a vampire Slayer," Buffy answered. It seemed like such a ridiculous question.

"But you told us the Slayer doesn't hurt good vampires," Joseph said to Gugan.

"She didn't know you were good vampires. Can you tell them you're sorry?," he asked her.

"Sorry for what! For doing my job?," she replied scornfully.

"Please, Buffy. It'll make everything copacetic," Gugan pleaded.

Buffy rolled her eyes and groaned. This truly was an opposite sketch. "Okay. I'm sorry I tried to kill you. Happy now?"

Anthony and Joseph looked relieved. "That wasn't so hard, was it?," Gugan said to Buffy. Then he turned to Anthony and Joseph. "How would you guys like to do what we talked about?"

"You mean slaying?," Joseph asked with excitement in his voice. For Buffy, things were just getting weirder and weirder.

"I think you're ready," Gugan responded. "Let's head to that place I mentioned."

"It's about time," Anthony responded. The two of them had gotten bored doing nothing.

"Then let's go," Patrick declared. "Buffy, you should come along. You're in for quite a pleasant surprise." Anthony and Joseph walked off. Gugan and Buffy followed. She still thought these guys were trouble, and she didn't want to let them get away. And of course she didn't trust their extremely creepy human helper. Trying to break through the hostility, Gugan struck up a conversation with Buffy.

"I knew I shouldn't have let them out when I was at work. This is entirely my fault. They needed me there to observe," he told her.

"What the hell is going on?," she asked.

"Did you kill the other three?"

"I'm a Slayer. They were vampires."

"They were vampires with souls," Gugan shot back. "Just like Anthony and Joseph. It's not you're fault. You didn't know any better."

"They were cursed? All of them?" She thought someone from seriously cheapening Angel's predicament.

"No. They never lost theirs to begin with. I'll let you in on a little secret. Vampires don't lose their souls when they're sired. They only lose their souls after they feed off their first human. When they rise, that's their only desire. Instinct overrides conscience. But you capture them right away, fill them up with pig's blood, and in a few days they lose the instinct. Then the soul retakes control. They like people. They dislike vampires who feed on people. They have all this strength, and need something to do with it. So they fight and slay other vampires. That's what you're going to see in a few minutes."

Buffy wasn't in the mood to debate this ridiculous assertion. She had plenty of other questions. "A soul doesn't let them go out in the sunlight."

"No it doesn't. That is my gift to them. A little gene therapy. I'll go into the how of it later on. For now I'll just tell you the why. Since we want them to protect humans, it's best if they can identify with them and not feel alienated. Also, I want them to have as normal a life as possible. They had their humanity stolen from them. I can't give them that back. But that doesn't mean they have to live in the dark."

Buffy thought she had this guy figured out. "Using science to create demons to fight demons. It's been done. And last time it didn't end happily for the scientist."

"Maggie Walsh was NOT a scientist. She was a psychology professor. That's a psuedo-science. And building a monster by sewing together body parts from cadavers — so nineteenth century. All that funding and she didn't do a lick of serious research. I hated the Initiative. Not because they were fools, which they were, but because they wanted to destroy every demon fighter who wasn't a fool. They were enemies of competence."

This guy seemed to know way too much. Before Buffy could respond, Gugan told her "I think curtain's about to go up." Anthony and Joseph ran into an abandoned warehouse. Gugan turned to Buffy. "Come on in. It's showtime." He ran into the building. Not wanting to let these suspicious characters get away, Buffy followed.

Gugan climbed up on the catwalk above the floor. Buffy did the same. Buffy saw four vampires on the warehouse floor. She'd killed a nest here the month before, so they had to be new in town. Buffy's instinct was to leap down and slay the vampires. Even if Gugan's boys wanted to kill them, a couple would probably escape. Patrick knew this. He grabbed her right arm. "Hold on. Give my boys a chance." Buffy thought that sounded reasonable. And she wasn't crazy about getting shocked again.

The four vampires saw Anthony and Joseph. "What's this? You two moving in on my territory?," the leader of the four vamps asked Anthony and Joseph.

"No. This place is a bit underfurnished for my tastes." Anthony responded. The head vamp and his buddies were prepared to teach these pushy upstarts a lesson. He grabbed a metal bar, and swung at Anthony. Anthony grabbed the bar, kicked this vampire twice in the stomach, ripped the bar from the head vampire's arms, and knocked him to the ground.

Joseph focused on the other three. He punched one in the face. Another vampire tried to punch him. Joseph grabbed his fist and threw him into the third vampire, knocking them both down. While the head vampire was down, Anthony hit him twice in the head with the metal bar. Then this vampire grabbed hold of the bar and used it to flip Anthony over and send him to the ground. The head vampire got up, ready to turn the tables.

Joseph jumped onto a wooden crate about four feet off the floor. He could see Anthony was in a bit of trouble. So he leaped off the crate and tackled the head vampire from behind. The metal bar fell out of his hands. Anthony got up and grabbed it. With Joseph grappling with the head vampire, Anthony focused on the other three. They scrambled to find weapons of their own. Buffy watches as an informed spectator, interested in seeing how Anthony handled the triple team.

The head vampire threw Joseph off his back and rose to his feet. Like any other dominant male predator, he was adamant about defending his territory. Also, he assumed that his life wasn't in danger. Vampires never fought each other to the death over turf. It just wasn't worth it. A few punches, rough this kid up, and he'll run away with his tail between his legs. That's how it always was.

The head vampire threw a right hook. Joseph blocked the blow with his left arm. Then Joseph thrust his right arm towards the vampire's chest and staked him. This was a stunning turn of events. The head vampire definitely had not anticipated this.

Meanwhile, Anthony took on three vampires. One of them wielded a chain, another a 2x4. The third hadn't found a weapon, so he ran away from Anthony. Joseph, fresh from his kill, ran after this vampire and cornered him. The vampire attacked Joseph.

Anthony faced the vamp with the chain and dropped his metal bar. Anthony's opponent smiled and whipped the chain at him. Anthony grabbed hold of the chain, spun the vampire around, and threw him into a metal column. The other vampire swung at Anthony with his 2x4. Anthony dove to the ground to avoid the blow. He picked his metal bar off the ground and stood up. Then he swung for the vampire's hands and struck him hard on the knuckles. The pain caused the vampire to loosen his grip on the 2x4. Then Anthony hit the 2x4 with his metal bar and knocked it out of the vampire's hands.

He struck the weaponless vampire's head twice with the metal bar. The vampire staggered backward. As Anthony expected, the vampire with the chain was charging him from behind. He listened and waited. At the last minute he turned around and staked the charging vampire in the chest.

In the corner, Joseph battled an unskilled but spirited vampire. Soon he got the upper hand, threw the vampire into the wall, and then staked him. Anthony closed with the one remaining vampire. He struck him in the knee with his metal bar. Then he hit him in the ribs. Then the face. The vampire fell. Joseph went down on top of him and staked him.

Gugan walked down to the floor. Buffy jumped down twenty fee. "Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!" Patrick enthused to Anthony and Joseph. Then he turned to Buffy. "Wouldn't you say so Buffy, in your expert opinion?"

Buffy had been mildly impressed. The teamwork. The clever tactics. But their opponents hadn't worked together, and weren't very tough for vampires. "Not bad. For beginners," she conceded.

Gugan went up to Anthony and Joseph. "Great job guys. You guys go home now. There's some stuff in the fridge. I'll be back in a bit to fill you in on what's coming up." They left. Gugan walked over to Buffy.

"Just so you know, they won't be getting in your way by doing any more slaying around here. With you around, what would be the point of that? They'll go where they're needed."

"You seem to have an explanation for everything," Buffy told Gugan. "I don't like that. And, if I may ask, where the hell does cloning fit into all this? You got an explanation for that?"

"That was gratuitous. I admit that. Maybe I did it just to see if I could do it. Thing was, the vamps needed a leader, and that kid's genetic code, it's something special."

"How did you get his genetic code?"

"You'd be surprised how easy it is to get a person's DNA." [Connor was at the movie theater, watching — of all things — "Attack of the Clones." Gugan sat behind him and quickly stuck him in the neck with a needle. Connor barely noticed it. It felt like a mosquito bite. Since Connor didn't know, Patrick rather insensitively saw it as an instance of "no harm, no foul.]

Buffy looked worried. Gugan tried to assuage her fears. "Don't worry, I don't have your DNA. I have no interest in it. I only do demon genomics."

"But Connor's not a demon. I mean, he isn't right?," Buffy asked. Part of her thought he might be. It would explain a lot.

"Biologically, he's all human. Genetically, he's far more. Vampires contain both human and demon genes. When a person is sired and drinks the vampire's blood, the sire's demon genes splice themselves onto the person's chromosomes. That's what turns them. Being the child of two vampires, Connor inherited both human and demon DNA from his parents. Since Connor's physiologically human, almost all of his demon genes are inactive. They simply don't know what to do inside living human cells. However, a small number of vampire genes are able to be active within human cells. Hence, his uncanny physical abilities.

"But it's more than that. Vampires only have one sire, so they only get one set of demon genes. Connor has demon genes from two vampires. That's never happened before. On top of that, his parents come from a very distinguished lineage (he was referring to the Master). Connor's a thoroughbred." This was an interesting choice of word since when Darla told the Master that Angel was her "stallion." Gugan continued. "I guess I wanted to create the most powerful demon fighter I could."

"I don' know a much about cloning, but I know you can't clone an adult overnight. I'm may regret asking this, but -"

"How did I do it?," Gugan interrupted. "You're right. But what I did was splicing, not cloning. All vampires are products of genetic engineering, so their DNA is easier to manipulate. One of the vampires I captured happened to be Connor's height and build. I kept him from feeding off humans so he kept his soul, like the other ones. But I injected him with a virus containing copies of Connor's DNA. I assumed this would only replace the vampire's demon DNA, effectively re-siring' the vampire. But, unfortunately, it also replaced the human genes. As you know, vampires have very plastic faces and extremely malleable faces. which enables them to change their appearance. That's the only way I can explain the fact that he looked like Connor. The vampire himself didn't notice. It's not like he could look in the mirror. A similar thing happened with the larynx, which he did notice, but assumed it was part of the general vampire transformation. The whole thing upset me. I was just trying to make him extra-strong. The kid wasn't supposed to lose his identity like that. He kept all his old memories, and he should have kept his old appearance. In terms of thoughts and feelings and personality, he wasn't Connor at all."

"Then why'd he go ga-ga for my sister?"

"He did what?"

"When I killed him, he was in my sister's bedroom. She dated Connor before he left town. She thought it was him."

"Whoa. I don't know what to tell you. I'm really sorry about that. I can't imagine how awful that was for her, thinking her boyfriend's become a vampire. I should have known better than to let any of them wander outside without supervision. By the way, where did you kill Robert and Lewis, the other two vampires?"

"Found them at the shopping mall."

"Figures. They missed being around people. DId they cause any trouble before you attacked them?"

"Not that I saw."

"And they didn't try to fight back, at first. When you wanted to fight them, they ran away, right?"

"Ran like cowards."

"That's good. Not the coward part. They're not cowards. They just hate to make a scene and draw attention to themselves. Look, Buffy, I understand why you are suspicious of me. You have every right to be. I was secretive. I mix science and demons. But it's not like I could have come clean beforehand and told you what I was going to do. You would have thought I was insane. It would have been like you going up to a complete stranger and telling them you're the Slayer. What you and I do is something that has to be seen to be believed. And now you've seen. Now you should know we're on the same side. We're fighting the same enemy, each in the best way we know how."

"I know what I saw," Buffy replied. "I just don't think you know what you're messing with. These things have a way of backfiring horribly. And when it blows up in your face, I'm gonna be the one who has to clean up the mess."

"Yeah. Well, discovery always entails risks. Better to take the risks than live in the dark."

Buffy met up with Anya, Xander, Willow and Dawn at the Magic Box and explained what the vampires were and what Patrick claimed to be doing. "So he's obviously dangerous," Anya concluded. "Another geek gone bad."

"It's not that simple. I wanted it to be that simple, but it's not," Buffy responded. "Everything he said makes sense. The vampires didn't attack me. And they killed vampires. Don't get me wrong. I don't trust the guy. He scares me. But I can't file him under villain just yet."

"So what do we do now?," Xander asked. "Research or fighting?" After all, that was how they always reacted to a new development.

"For now, neither," Buffy told him. "I don't think our books cover what he's up to. Willow, you're the one who knows him best. Maybe you can talk to him, get a better sense of what his deal is. He sounded like he wants us to know what he's up to. Try to find out what you can. I've had a really long, strange day. I just wanna go home and crash. Dawn, you wanna come?" She did. Buffy had said nothing about the Connor clone, and Dawn wanted some answers.

Anya and Xander were left in the shop with nothing to do. "So everything's fine, we don't have to fight for our lives, and the world's not going to end. Why do I find that so disappointing?," Xander asked Anya.

"No closure," she told him. "We always get closure. This was all buildup, but no climax. Strangely unsatisfying."

"You didn't say anything in there about, well, you know," Dawn said to Buffy in the car.

"I thought that should stay between us," Buffy told Dawn. The guy said it was some sort of clone. He claims he wanted to give Connor's powers to a vampire. The vampire wasn't supposed to look like him, but that accidentally happened on its own."

Dawn was trying to process this. "So that wasn't my Steven. Just a vampire who looked and sounded exactly like him. A vampire with a soul?"

"Apparently," Buffy replied. "I know, it's weird, even by our standards. But it wasn't him. It was something else that just happened to look like him."

"So I kissed another guy? Does that mean I cheated on Steven?"

If I kiss a vampire clone of my boyfriend, does that count as cheating? Even Buffy had trouble coming up with an answer to that whopper of a question. But she did her best. "No, I'm pretty sure it doesn't. You thought it was him. You had every reason to think it was him. Just put it behind you, Dawn. It wasn't your fault. You didn't do anything wrong." They arrived at home.

After they got inside, Buffy went to work. "What's all this talk about cheating? Did you two agree not to date when he went back home?"

Dawn wondered why everyone asked if she and Connor made "agreements," as if fidelity to the one you love required a written contract. "We didn't have time to discuss that. We really didn't even have time to say goodbye. Remember?"

"I only asked because you've seemed kind of lonely recently. Just because HE chose to leave doesn't mean you have to choose to be lonely. I know from experience that you shouldn't spend all your time alone in some tower waiting for Prince Charming to return. Have a life. Make friends. Have a good time. There's no harm in that." Then Buffy tried a bit of flattery. "I mean, it's not like Steven is the only cute boy who's ever shown an interest in you, right?"

"Willow? You mean the Rosenberg girl? I would never have suspected she had it in her," Catherine told Amy.

"Wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see her in action myself," Amy replied. "The way she toyed with dimensions and primal forces, I had trouble keeping up. We'd go out and do these tricks and conjurings, and she just kept pushing the limits further than I even thought possible."

Catherine looked upset. "You and Willow did spells in public, in front of people?"

"In front of people. To people. That was half the fun."

"You go around town advertising your powers? Hey everyone, look at me. I'm a witch.' How could you be so stupid?"

Amy realized she was being scolded. "I don't understand. Are you saying I shouldn't use my powers?"

"I'm saying you shouldn't squander your powers by showing off. Magic is about altering the world without letting the world know it's been altered. If everyone knows about your power, then you're powerless. I catch you flaunting your stuff again, so help me - "

"I'm sorry mom. I won't let it happen again. Don't be mad at me."

"Come here," Catherine said reassuringly. She hugged Amy and looked her in the eyes. "I'm not mad at you. You're my baby. It's my fault you didn't know any better. I never taught you. All that worthless cheerleading. All those wasted hours when I should have been teaching you what mattered. But you were smarter than me. You figured out what mattered on your own. I just hope you can forgive me for being so blind."

"It doesn't matter now, mom. We're starting fresh. Clean slate." Amy was overjoyed because she was no longer alone and her mother was finally proud of her. Everything was changing for the better.

Catherine lied down on the couch and sighed. "Oh, yeah. You can't imagine how good it feels to lie down after standing up for, well, how long was I in there?"

"Six Years."

"Six Years!!! My God!" She ran over to the mirror, checked her face closely. "Haven't aged a day, thank goodness. But you, Amy. You've really grown. You're a woman. I look at you and I realize all I've missed. I'm sorry I couldn't be there for you. Six years gone — I've got a lot of catching up to do. By the way, is that Buffy girl still around?"

Willow knocked on Gugan's apartment door. "Come in Willow," he told her. He had been expecting her. Willow entered. "Guess it's time for me to come clean. I've been looking forward to this moment. No more hiding. No more secrets. There's so much I want to tell you. What is it you want to know?"

"Why do you doing this? I mean, what's your damage? What's your motivation? And if you're on our side, why the cryptic riddles and paranoid secrecy?"

"I'll take the second one first," Gugan began. "I like to think I was more prudent than paranoid. If I told you the truth after you found that demon locked in my closet, you wouldn't have believed me. I had to have tangible proof of my good intentions before coming forward. I didn't have that proof until today. As for the first question, it's not what you think. Lust for power? No. I don't want power. Too much responsibility. Not worth the hassle. Is it a personal crusade? Did I lose someone I love to vampires? No. I'm a lot more boring than that. The reason I do what I do is simple and unglamorous — curiosity. And ego. Every scientist wants to be the first to discover something. I'm the first to discover quite a few somethings. I'm a biologist. I investigate and try to explain the world around me. You live in this town, you see things on a pretty regular basis which appear to defy the laws of science. But that's not possible. Everything we observe can be explained scientifically. They have to be. If things exist in our world which cannot be explained rationally, then they're not real. And then we're not real."

"Maybe we're just figments of someone's overworked imagination. That would explain an awful lot," Willow joked, referring to Buffy's "delusion" that she was in a mental hospital.

Patrick did Willow's whimsical sarcasm one better. "You're right. We could be nothing more than characters in someone's head. One of God's daydreams, or something like that. But if some Higher Being went to the trouble of creating this complex world, making everything fit right down to the last detail, they'd want it to make sense. Way I figure, even if this isn't reality, it's still rational. So it can still be explained."

"But you're not just explaining. You're manipulating. You're building daytime vampires and who knows what else." (She didn't know about the Connor clone.) "You're way beyond curiosity, Patrick. You're messing with powers - "

"I don't understand? I do understand them. I had to understand them in order to mess with them. For instance, to understand vampires, I had to understand blood. Why do vampires live off blood, and only blood? What does blood have a lot of? Iron. Iron in the form of hemoglobin molecules. It's well-known that the hemoglobin molecule happens to be nearly identical in structure to the chlorophyll molecule. The only significant difference is that chlorophyll has magnesium in the center, while hemoglobin has iron. Plants use chlorophyll to make food. Vampires use hemoglobin to make food."

"Vampires are plants?," Willow interrupted. She found that quite disgusting. After all, Buffy had slept with two of them.

"They're demons. Demons are animals. Animals with very novel ways of producing and using energy. That's what makes them so different. That's what gives them special powers. After the vampire drinks the blood, it migrates out to the muscles via the blood vessels, through adhesion and capillary action. Much like how plants move material. When it gets near the skin, it works its magic. The hemoglobin absorbs light through the skin. With this energy, and with the help of more than a dozen enzymes no non-demonic animal possesses, it makes glucose from the water in the blood plasma and from carbon dioxide absorbed through the skin's pores. Vampires do breathe. Through their skin. CO2 in, O2 out.

"It's a very efficient system. Produces enormous amounts of glucose. All that energy's what gives them their power, their superhuman strength, and their ability to rapidly regenerate injured tissue. Problem is, it's too efficient for its own good. Chlorophyll's green, so it absorbs low-energy red and orange light. Hemoglobin's red, so it absorbs high-energy blue and violet light. Expose a vampire to direct sunlight, and it makes and uses so much fuel that it overheats, burns itself up. That's why they can't go out during the day. They get more than enough light for their energy needs from moonlight, starlight and artificial light. You put a vampire next to a 150-watt bulb, and you're actually recharging it!" Patrick laughed. Willow didn't. She was too shocked to laugh.

Gugan continued. "The photosynthetic process cannot occur without the presence of a certain initiator enzyme which is transcribed and translated from a small section of the vampire's genetic code. I created a short genetic sequence which acts as a circuit-breaker on the transcription of this enzyme, thereby preventing the runaway absorption of dangerously high amounts of photo-energy. After the vampire gets enough energy for its immediate needs, it shuts down. Make sense? I mean, from a scientific, microbiological standpoint."

Even from a purely technical angle, Willow was still mystified. "Gene therapy? On that scale? To all the cells in the body? That's just not possible, at least not with any vectors I'm aware of."

"In humans, it's nearly impossible. But vampires are different. Their genetic code is astonishingly malleable. When a person is transformed into a vampire, the demon genes from their sire invade most of their cells — like an incredibly prolific virus — and splice themselves onto the existing human genome. That means the demon part of the vampire genome contains its own vector. I copied that vector. So the very mechanism which sires a vampire can easily be exploited to genetically alter that vampire.

"But, honestly, I don't want to bore you with these arcane details. Here's some research I think you'll be much more interested in." Patrick threw two bound reports onto the couch Willow was sitting on. "This isn't my work. It was written well before my time by some researchers who have recently become friends of mine. They're the pioneers, the ones who got the ball rolling. I'm sure you'll find it extraordinarily provocative."

Xander and Anya were getting something to drink at the Bronze. "So, I take it things have been pretty boring for you this last week, without, you know?" Xander asked.

"Without Sterling. Yeah, it's been lonely. I really miss the sex. But you've probably felt the same, without, what's her name?"

"Elise. I do miss her. Can't say I miss the sex cause, we haven't yet."

"Really? That's surprising."

"We just met. We've only been on two dates."

"Yes, but Xander, you're easy. That's what attracted me to you in the first place. You're a total slut."

Xander took umbrage at this remark. "I am not a slut! Whoa. Did I really just say that? In public!" Looks around to see if anyone heard it and was looking at him funny.

"Elise probably doesn't know how easily she could have had you. Or she's not interested. But if she wasn't interested, she wouldn't have gone out on the second date. That's the only reason any self-respecting woman would go out on a second date. I mean, why waste all that time if you're not going to get any action? We're women — we have needs."

"Anya, does this seem at all odd to you? Us, hanging out, talking, about this, after all we've been through? I mean, after all I put you through? It doesn't seem normal, or even proper"

"Xander, nothing about our relationship has ever been normal. Or proper. Thank God for that. After all, we met because you got a woman impaled."

"And that didn't bother you?"

"Xander, you have to put things in perspective. As a Vengeance Demon, every man I had ever met for more than eleven centuries was some sort of lying, cheating scum-of-the-earth dirtbag. I was grading on a curve."