Angel has some angry words for Giles. Gretchen tries to calm Buffy down, while Dawn wonders why everyone's acting so weird today. Surely they can't be this worried about the upcoming apocalypse in Cleveland. And Gunn uses his connectios to learn what he can about Buffy's and Andrew's numerous legal troubles.

Andrew sits at a table in the center of the interrogation room. Two cops are attempting to interrogate him. "What was your interest in this girl?"

"Was it a crime to talk to her?"

"Who were you planning on knocking out?," the other one asks.

"Is possession of a non-lethal weapon even a felony?"

"We tried to find that Dana girl. We couldn't. She's been missing for more than a month. Can you help us find her?"

"Am I being charged with anything?"

"If you want to say anything about the people you work for, now would be the time. Guy like you, you're replaceable. We want the leader. Give him to us, and you're only looking at a few years. Keep your mouth shut, and you'll get life."

"You know what else I found out about Dana? She's an orphan. Much like Debbie. Is this your M.O.? Take the girls nobody will miss?"

"All you have is her word. And she's lying."

"Who's your accomplice!? We'll find him. And if he wants to talk to save his own skin, you're outta luck." The other cop leaves. Outside, he's handed a folder by an assistant Orange County D.A., who whispers a few things in his ear. He bursts back in, smiling, and drop the folder on the table.

"You've been quite the busy criminal, Andrew. Always taking the fall for someone else. Sacrificial lamb-for-hire. You don't want to take about Dana just yet, that's fine by me. Tell us where we can find Warren Mears and Jonathan Levin." Andrew starts to sweat.

Ten o'clock, Friday morning. Wes, Fred and Gunn sit in the conference room. Angel enters. "Can you imagine finding out part of your memory had been erased?," Fred asks. "That you've completely forgotten about someone who played an important role in your life?"

"And they can't remember you," Wesley adds. "Or any of your friends, because might remind that person of you."

"All cause someone finds the memories too painful," Gunn notes.

"I can't believe he thought he could keep up that level of deception indefinitely, to say nothing of building a business based on it," Fred offers. All this talk about erasing memories is making Angel very nervous.

"Morning. What are you talking about?"

"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," Wesley responds. "Fred and I saw it last night."

"Have you seen it?," Fred asks.

"No." And now that he knew what it was about, he'd make sure he never did. Angel sits down to begin the meeting. Harmony enters. "I told you to hold my calls," Angel barks out.

"It's Rupert Giles. He's demanding to speak with you. Sounds pretty angry."

"Fine. Patch him onto the speaker phone in here." Angel groans. "I wonder what moral failings he's calling to harangue us about today. Rupert. To what do I owe this pleasure?"

"You know damn well what."

"If I did, I wouldn't have asked."

"Was this your idea of revenge? Or did you do it merely because you could?"

"You'll have to be more specific." Angel's getting annoyed with Rupert's holier-than-thou attitude.

"Twelve young women in the hospital. Is that specific enough?" Angel perks up, as do the others. Giles had their undivided attention.

Arthur made it to the empty parking lot, but on his back rims. He only has one spare. The van must be ditched. He puts it in the back corner of the mall's vast lot. Then he collects all the miscellaneous weapons into a duffel bag and hides the bag under a large bush in a nearby gulley. The police will eventually find the vehicle. Hopefully the girls will arrive before them. He can lead them away, then get a rental or call a few taxis to take them back home. The cops hadn't seen him. He doesn't think they saw enough of any of the girls to make an id. The van's all they've got. Thus the ditching. By the time they connected it to him, the Slayers would be out of the country. Arthur hides behind a hedge. If the Slayers arrive, he'll show himself. If the police show up, he'll jump into the storm sewers through a grate he opened in the gulley. The cops get there first. Two of them, in one squad car. Arthur quietly sneaks off and ducks underground.

"You think this was my work!?," an outraged Angel shouts into the speaker.

"Whoever did this took special care to make sure none of these girls was killed. Vampires don't behave like that unless they have a very good reason."

"Why would I send vampires? And why would I leave these girls on the ground? I don't see why I would ever order something like this. I understand why you're looking for someone to blame, but I'm not the guy."

"She knew they were coming. Maybe you didn't orchestrate the operation, but someone HAD to supply the intelligence. Who better than your firm?"

"Rupert, I didn't know these Slayers were here until ten minutes ago. I didn't have any warning the last time they were here, either."

"And you wanted to make up for that."

"Let me see if I'm hearing you correctly, Rupert. You think this Slayer works for me, and I didn't want you to take her away. That I knew these Slayers had returned to collect her. And I chose to deal with the matter gangland style? Why wouldn't I sit Andrew down and negotiate? Or, better yet, why wouldn't I go after the Slayers when they were still in Los Angeles? It seems rather counterintuitive that I would wait until they were the maximum distance from me before I took any action. I had absolutely nothing to do with any of this. My firm had absolutely nothing to do with any of this."

"You had nothing to do with this Slayer?"

"You heard me before." Angel's evading the question so as not to lie.

"A Slayer flaunts her power for months, right under your nose, and you know nothing of it?"

"Her flaunting has been somewhat limited," Wesley interjects. "And we became aware of it last week."

"The truth finally starts to come out," Giles responds.

"Last Thursday, a week before she met Andrew, Debbie met us. Spike and I went down to check out the situation. We cornered four vampires who were attacking two humans, and rescued the humans. But Debbie slayed the vampires before we could."

"Four vampires. That's a lot, even for a Slayer."

"She had friends with crossbows. They stayed out of sight. Looked like a very disciplined operation. We talked to her. She was resistant. Two of her snipers put arrows in our chests, inches from our hearts. She said the next shots would hit the mark. We left. I had no choice. There was no evidence she, or any of her friends, had broken any laws. They were doing what they were supposed to do, and they didn't want to be bothered. I respected that. Besides, southern Orange County is well outside my focus area. I have enough trouble in this city. I can't afford to take on the exurbs."

"Then why did you have an extended meeting with her on Monday night?"

Angel's aghast. "Are you spying on me?"

"He was spying on Debbie," Wesley assumes.

"I was reaching out to this girl," Angel explains. "I was beginning to break down the layers of mistrust. Perhaps Rupert, if you had given me another week, she would have voluntarily joined your team. Instead, you send in the storm troopers and scare the Hell out of her."

"We aren't talking about some innocent. We're talking about a Rogue Slayer with her own hit squad of vampires. Don't tell me you were ignorant of this facet."

"Of course I disapprove of that aspect of her behavior. But it's complicated."

"They haven't killed anyone," Wesley reports. "In fact, vampire attacks in Orange County have substantially decreased since they began working for Debbie."

"It's weird. It's even a little bit sick," Angel concedes. "But they stayed well out-of-sight when I was with Debbie. I never had the chance to kill them. I tried to warn Debbie that she's playing with nitroglycerine. But they haven't done anything to make her change her mind."

"It's symbiotic," Wesley argues. "With the profusion of Slayers, vampires face more risks than ever before. By giving up on feeding, they gain the protection of a Slayer. And she gains the security of some extra muscle. It's inherently unstable, but this was her decision, so it's her problem."

"Seems to me the only thing I'm guilty of is not helping you," Angel tells Giles. "Then again, you never asked for my help. But that's the way you like to operate. It preserves your precious illusion of moral purity."

"Now listen here, what the bloody hell are you talking about?," Giles stammers, confused and infuriated by Angel's digressions.

"You would have liked it better if I had never taken over the LA office of Wolfram & Hart."

"I would prefer it you didn't choose to lead evil organizations. I'm not alone in that sentiment, Angel."

Angel rises to his feet in anger. "Then tell me which of your Slayers you'd want to be dead. And while you're thinking about that, tell me who else shouldn't have made it out of Sunnydale. Xander? Dawn? You? Because if I had never taken this job, you could never have closed the Hellmouth. I think we both know how much harder stopping that apocalypse would have been without the assistance of Wolfram & Hart. Talking like a saint while profiting from Faustian bargains is a tad hypocritical, Rupert. So then next time you – or anyone else – thinks of condemning me, decide who should have died. I think half the Slayers and half of Buffy's friends would be a conservative estimate of casualties in a necklace-free battle. I hear the only thing tougher than killing one hundred Turokh-hans is trying to kill another hundred right afterwards. Even Slayers get fatigued. To say nothing about the rest of you. So until you've come up with that list, don't condemn me, or Wesley, or any of my friends. And don't come whining to me about your own goddam failures. It's not my problem you can't find competent people to delegate important tasks to. I have never, in any way, brought harm to any of your new Slayers. In fact, I am the reason some of them are still alive. I'm sorry about what happened. I wish I could have stopped it. If I had known about your plans, I would have. I'm sorry that some wonderful girls you care very much for were hurt because you kept me out of the loop." Giles hangs up. Angel takes his seat again and calms down. "I'm sorry about that," he says to his friends.

"If you hadn't said those things, I would have," Wesley offers.

"It's like he burned the bridge and blamed you when he couldn't drive his car across," Gunn comments.

"Willow made Rupert Giles sound intelligent and empathetic," Fred recalls. "What happened?" It was hard to believe that the intolerant spurner of Angel was also the understanding and patient rehabilitator of Willow.

"Power," Angel responds, causing all of them to reflect on whether they have become corrupted. Spike enters.

"Sorry I'm late. Did I miss anything?"

Buffy slams her right fist into the top of a metal file cabinet, leaving a three inch-deep indentation. "How the HELL could this happen?" She's not used to setbacks, especially catastrophic ones that occur on routine missions.

"We sent a man to a state where he was wanted by the authorities," Gretchen notes, diplomatically using we' to spread the blame amongst people who weren't involved in the decision, such as herself. Buffy overlooks the I told you so' implications of Gretchen's remark, since Gretch put it so politely. Also, as the only one who objected to sending Andrew before-the-fact, Gretchen had every right to point out mistakes.

"But how could this girl have known that?"

"She didn't. Ergo the outrageous sex slavery allegations."

"She was ready. She was prepared. Someone had taught her to be very afraid of us."

"Probably those vampires she hangs with." Specifically, the vampire who used to be Gretchen's older brother, until Herman was sired by Buffy's ex-lover. It's good these two have no idea what they have in common.

"Slayers don't call the cops. How did she know they'd be on her side?" After all, they were never on Buffy's.

"All indications were that the authorities were against her. They seemed to view her and her friends as delinquents at best and proto gang members at worst. Remember, she didn't make the call. Still, you're right. None of us saw that coming."

"But she saw us coming."

"Maybe she came up with the plan a long while back and told her friends what to do if a man and a teenage girl ever approached them in a graveyard at night."

"And she had her vampires lying in wait night-after-night, just in case?"

"You're right. The slashed tires and the gun-toting bloodsuckers were too perfect. But how could they know?"

Spike absorbs the news, trying not to appear too proud over his protege's brilliant tactical achievement. "Dev wus always a very clever boy."

"Nothing clever in deploying overwhelming firepower," Wesley counters. "I should have thought of it myself." Wesley's friends worry that his incipient darkness is finally taking over. "Not with live ammunition," he assures them. "Using tranquilizer darts. We had enough men on the scene to disable them all. We could have detained them until they regained consciousness, then sent them on their merry way home. Without Dana."

"Remember when we met Deb, and she said if Buffy tried anything, there'd be Hell to pay?," Spike asks Angel.

"I thought the girl was hopelessly out of her league," Angel recalls.

"She was," Wesley counters. "You just had the wrong girl." Perhaps this was a tad harsh, but Wes had never subscribed to a belief in Buffy's infallibility. Angel doesn't want the conversation to degenerate into shadenfreude and Buffy-bashing.

"Gunn, I want you to find out all you can about their legal troubles. Fred, contact the hospital and get a report on everyone's condition. Find out if there's anything we can do to help. Specialists. Coverage of medical bills. You name it. Wesley, check for leaks."

"Inside Wolfram & Hart?"

"You think this vampire's got spies on the inside?," Gunn asks.

"Definitely Dev's style," Spike comments.

"Though maybe beyond his ability," Fred argues, irking Spike.

"Debbie knew about Dana," Angel explains. "She knew about the Slayer battalion. How? Who told her boyfriend?" Everyone looks at Spike.

"Yes. That was an episode in my life I'd be glad to recount," he quips. "It never came up." Spike looks at Angel. "In case you forgot, Deb mentioned the New Model Army at our first meeting."

"New Model Army?," Wes asks.

"Dev compared Buffy to Cromwell." Wes, Spike and Angel all shudder.

"Thankfully, I fail to see the resemblance," Wes comments.

"Let's get to work," Angel commands. "I need answers by six o'clock. Roman time."

Giles tries to comfort Buffy, who looks at the weapons on the wall in the training room. Gretchen is with him. "This will blow over. The girls will heal."

"They won't forget."

"All of them have been injured before," Giles responds.

"They've never been defeated. It's going to poison the morale of everyone."

"The only people who know are in this room," Giles reports.

"When they return, word's going to spread. We need to break the news before then."

"It wasn't your fault," Gretchen assures Buffy.

"We got lazy. We dropped our guard."

"Certainly our methods will need to be, revised," Giles proposes. Dawn pops her head in.

"Did someone die?" They turn and see Dawn, whose presence startled them.

"No Dawny."

"You guys have been acting funny all day."

"It's the looming apocalypse," Giles offers as an excuse.

"The first since the First. Still kinda hard to get worked up about," Dawn jokes.

"Don't you have school?," Buffy asks.

"It's four pm. I just got back."

"Then you have homework." Dawn scowls and leaves. She's still never included in anything.

"Change of plans?," Gretchen asks Buffy.

"No. You still leave tomorrow for Cleveland with Rona and Vi." She reaches up to grab the Scythe, which hangs above the common weapons. "And give them this."

Their mission complete, everyone meets at the vampires' apartment to celebrate. DMX is on the stereo. "I still can't believe we really pulled it off," Cynthia says to her best friend.

"Were you scared?," Debbie asks her.

"Were you?"

"A little," the Slayer confesses. "Okay, a lot. Lucky for me, they didn't wanna throw down from the get-go." Dev puts his right arm around Deb's shoulders and drinks the beer he holds in his left hand.

"They still wouldn't have escaped," he assures her. "Even if they left before the cops arrived, the police had the plate number. Thanks to Cynth. And Theo." He finishes the beer, lifts Deb off her feet and spins her around. She screams and laughs. Deb smiles, bites her lip and touches the tip of her nose to his.

"Man, did I luck out when you came my way."

"I lucked out. You deserved a helping hand. I never deserved you."

"Oh stop it," she says before kissing him. When they're done smooching, Melanie hands Debbie a daiquiri. She raises the glass. "To freedom." Everyone cheers and drinks to that. Except Dev, who's empty-handed. He picks up another beer.

"To love," he says to Deb. "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."

"Plagiarist," she kids before clinking glasses with him and finishing her drink.

A few hours later. Devlin looks down at his beautiful, happy sleeping Slayer. He's too wired for shuteye. And he can't help wondering about the driver who got away. With two flats, he couldn't have gotten far. So Devlin gets dressed and returns to the scene of the ambush. He saw the van go south on Park Street. As Dev follows that route, he quickly realizes that he can smell the iron shavings left behind when the van's bald rims contacted the pavement. It smells a little like the blood trail of wounded prey. Pretty soon, Dev finds himself in the mall parking lot. Van's gone. The vampire sleuth reviews his options. No one carries two spares. No nearby auto parts stores were open at the proper time, so no way the guy made it out of town in the van. It had to be towed away. Perhaps to a shop, if the guy could get a tow before the cops found him. Which was possible, since the police didn't know about the vehicle's compromised condition and thus would look for it speeding away on some nearby road. Or the police themselves impounded it. Either way, the guy could still be loose, and on foot. Talk about a sweet catch. His very own prisoner-of-war. The Council's humiliation would be total.

Devlin grins as he sniffs around for a fresh human scent. But he fails to pick up any. Perhaps footprints remained. A man on the run would flee away from the road. He sees some trampled weeds, and follows the faint path to a removed sewer grate. Hiding in the vampires' terrain. This guy had moxie. But right before Devlin leaps down, he sees a brown strap lying on the ground, jutting out from a bush twenty feet in front of him. Dev rushes over, finds a duffel bag, opens it, and is overjoyed. Their weapons cache! A trophy!! Devlin forgets about his prisoner and returns home with the booty. Cornering a desperate and armed man who has nothing to lose can be quite dangerous. Why risk sullying a perfect night?

Angel sits behind his desk. Spike sits on the couch. "You're proud of the little bastard," Angel declares.

"Proud of what? His proficiency at hurting Slayers? I can't get the image of those gunned-down girls out of my bloody head."

"What about on a purely tactical level?"

"Sounds like I'm not the one who's impressed."

"Using the police was a nice touch," Angel concedes. "Never would have occurred to me. If I were evil."

"Because it's cheating." In an odd reversal, Angel's complimenting Devlin, while his sire is seeking to minimize his achievements.

"Same thing with the guns."

"He didn't have a bloody choice. Four vampires against twelve Slayers. What would you have done?" Now the dynamic's back to normal.

"Try to scatter them. Maybe take one or two hostage. Why are we talking about this?" Angel doesn't like even pretending to be evil.

"Look on the bright side," Spike offers. "Your choice to leave the boy and his pet alone looks very smart right about now."

"I'm not scared of this punk. I could take him out in a second. Which is why he'd probably hide and send Debbie's human friends out to kill me, knowing that I'd feel bad about hurting them."

"No bloody way you could take him."

"You think HE could kill ME?"

"Wouldn't go that far. But Dev's a fine fighter. He knows how to win when he can. And he knows how not to lose when he can't."

"So he'd run before I had a chance to stake him."

"Underestimate this boy at you own bloody cost, Angel. I think today's news should have taught you at least that." Fred, Wes and Gunn file in. Charles looks especially thrown. The other two sit down, but he remains standing.

"Quite a hornet's nest they whacked last night," Gunn begins.

"Is Buffy in any legal danger?," Angel asks.

"Not right now. Andrew Wells isn't so lucky. Turns out he's wanted for attempted armed robbery in Santa Barbara County."

"Santa Barbara. That's near Sunnydale," Angel recalls.

"Along with two other young men, he assaulted two security guards and tried to rob an armored car in the town of Sunnydale on May 6, 2002. Mister Wells was arrested along with Jonathan Levin. They escaped from lockup the following night."

"Rupert hired a wanted criminal and known fugitive?," Wesley asks.

"Buffy believes in redemption," Angel replies, giving Spike a withering glance. He doesn't know that was also the night Spike tried to rape Buffy, since he doesn't know that such an attempted rape even took place.

Gunn continues. "I talked to the D.A. up there. They got two eyewitnesses, plus he was arrested at the scene. Pretty close to a slam-dunk."

"He's looking at jail time," Spike infers.

"Five to ten years if he says nothing. Three to five if he gives them one of his accomplices. One to three if he gives them both."

Spike chuckles. "They're both dead. Andrew killed Jonathan himself."

"He's a murderer!," Fred exclaims. "Does Buffy know?"

"It's what got him a seat on the Scooby bus," Spike reports. "Andrew uncovered a very nasty seal atop the Hellmouth and tried to raise an uber-vamp by soaking it in his best friend's blood. But since his best friend didn't have enough, the First's minions kidnapped and bled me instead. I spent the next few days getting tortured by that bat-faced bugger." This elicits a sympathetic glance from Fred.

Wesley's beside himself. "You're telling me that Rupert Giles put Slayers in the custody of a known killer and wanted felon who clearly possesses no special powers that could compensate for such gross moral deficiencies?"

"There's a real Watcher shortage," Spike quips.

"And he dares to claim the moral high ground against us," Wesley fumes.

"If only that were the worst of it," Gunn warns. "I haven't even gotten to the part where the F.B.I. got involved."

"Andrew's in trouble with the Feds?," Angel asks.

"No. But Buffy may be. And Rupert Giles."

"For what!?," Angel demands to know.

"This is where it gets unreal . . . "

NEXT: The Justice Department starts to wonder what Giles is doing with all those underage girls. Buffy calls to speak with Angel. But first, Harmony takes the opportunity to gloat. Meanwhile, a guilty Debbie pays a visit to the injured girls to apologize and try to explain herself. And Arthur shows up at Angel's door, begging for sanctuary. Turns out Wesley knows Arthur from his Rogue Demon Hunter days. Oh, and Buffy discovers that the police investigation is preventing her from preventing the apocalypse.