Willow's computer beeps.
GILES: I thought those infernal boxes were silent.
WILLOW: I have mail. takes a deep breath It's from Fred. Angel's not back. She wants to know if we know anything.
ANYA: I'd tell her everything. She has a right to know. Since Angel went there on his own free will, fully aware of the risks involved, she can't blame me.
BUFFY: Maybe you should call.
XANDER: Yeah. Yelling "Are you crazy? What the hell are you talking about?" at a computer screen just isn't the same.
ANDREW: How do you tell someone their boss is a god?
DAWN: Is Fred a god? You said Angel told them about his friends. And Connor.
ANYA: She's in there somewhere. I was more interested in finding out what they thought of us.
GILES: How would they fit into the – ahem – system? Buffy's at the center, but at least two of Angel's friends have never even met Buffy.
ANDREW: Is there a dual hierarchy?
ANYA: Depends who you ask. Angel's high priests haven't sorted that one out yet. As for the people, most think only Buffy's world matters. Some think both matter. And a few actually believe only Angel's world matters. I'm not sure why. Theology's never been my thing.
The problem with building an empire based on personality is that people have to see you. When Spike arrived, Thermadonia was 60 miles long and 50 miles wide. Zalpa, the capital city which was 20 miles in from the eastern border and 20 miles down from the northern border, exercised direct control over at most a third of the tiny kingdom. In one week, through inspiration, intimidation and monster-killing, Spike both unified the kingdom and doubled its size, extending it 60 miles further south, all the way to the natural barrier of the mile-wide Araxes river. After spending three days making alliances with the half-dozen coastal cities and tinkering with their governments, he stopped back into Zalpa for a few hours, where he heard about Angel's successes. Knowing Angel's aversion to shedding human blood, he told his advisors not to worry about an attack. Spike then raced southward and westward to visit his new dominions and show himself to his new subjects. Given the distances and the means of transport, Spike spent almost all of the next three days and nights either traveling, addressing his subjects or hearing and redressing their grievances. (This was the part Spike liked least and Angel liked best. Spike preferred to think big.) On the last day, he made alliances with the tribes who lived along his western border. Then he sprinted north, received a hero's welcome in the northwest district where Kreon came from and where Spike first made an impact, and visited Dorin, his wine-growing vassal nation on the western border of Amastria.
Ten miles wide and forty miles long, Dorin is easy for Amastria to attack and hard for Thermadonia to defend. It's capital is 25 miles from Lampedos but more than twice that distance from Zalpa. It didn't even border Thermadonia until Spike seized the southern fifth of Amastria. Spike reassured his nervous ally that Angel would never attack them. Hippolyta had put herself under Angel's protection, and the people of Dorin were worried about the 2000 Amazons in Amastria. He decided to settle this matter with Angel. After spending a day in Dorin, he headed home. The most direct route between Dorin and Zalpa went through Amastria. Never one to avoid a chance to piss people off, Spike traveled through enemy territory, sending a messenger to Lampedos to tell Angel he wanted to meet with him. They got together in Eribo, 15 miles south of Lampedos. After settling affairs north of the border, Angel spent the rest of the week traveling around his kingdom, solving his people's problems, dispensing justice, reforming the government, giving power to the powerless, and basically doing whatever he could to make this world a better place. He also journeyed east to meet with representatives from the coastal cities who wanted to break their alliance with Spike. Angel believed all he had to do was show people that he was the better man/vampire/god. But just in case Spike's violent and unstable followers attacked before Angel's charm offensive bore fruit, he spent the rest of his time arming and training the populace, including the women. Back home, all of Angel's friends occasionally had to fight in order to defend themselves. Amastria was basically Angel Investigations multiplied by ten thousand, which is potentially very frightening. However, Angel kept the militia dispersed in their communities, so they could defend their property without being able to form a massive army. Angel thought that might send the wrong message.
Kreon came up to meet with Spike. Hiero came down with Angel. Both young men were shocked to see each other. Neither had any idea how well-connected their nemesis was. They glared at each other from a distance as Spike and Angel came together to talk.
SPIKE: I came from Dorin. They're scared your people will invade them. I know that's not your style. Care to give me your word?
ANGEL: I'm not going to invade anybody. None of my soldiers will go into Dorin. Too bad I can't say the same thing about your soldiers.
SPIKE: They pulled out after two bloody days. Bloodless days. You know what I mean. It's a voluntary alliance.
ANGEL: They have nothing to fear from me.
SPIKE: No, they don't. Not since you started doing in your country what I've already done in my country. Having fun imitating me?
ANGEL: Imitating YOU? No chance of that ever happening. Unless I suffer severe brain damage.
SPIKE: And you call me immature. Can't we just settle this whole mess so you can get back to that son who barely knows you? It would be a real bloody shame if he went through life hating you for all the wrong reasons.
ANGEL: I do want to get home. Unlike you, I have people who miss me.
SPIKE: This is not about the two of us. It's about these people and the future of their bloody society. chuckles You see why I have to leave this place. All this responsibility is changing me. Another fortnight and I'll be as dull as you.
ANGEL: Give back the lands you've seized. Then we can go home.
SPIKE: You ever hear of a little thing called self-determination? The people on that land want to be a part of my nation.
ANGEL: Because you drove off all the people who didn't.
SPIKE: Tell you what. We compromise and split it fifty-fifty.
ANGEL: You can't expect me to take that seriously.
SPIKE: I expect you to do what's best for your subjects. I think they'd like some of their country back. Would your page or squire or Best Boy or whoever that is like to get more than 100,000 acres of his country back? Go ask him.
Hiero's house happens to be on the land Spike is willing to give back. But Hiero would never compromise with the enemy. He'd rather do the honorable thing and fight and defend his country, even if it cost thousands of lives. Angel doesn't have the stomach for such obscene loss of life. Spike's foreign policy is built upon using Angel's decency against him. But while Angel wants to avoid war, he sure and hell won't allow Spike to bully him. He hopes to win the conflict through diplomacy. But that will take time.
ANGEL: You know what he wants? He wants to cut out your heart, chop your head off, and feed your corpse to his dogs. But just like everyone else, he thinks you're invincible. Imagine what would happen if I let everyone know how to kill you. Angel's bullying him right back
SPIKE: Then my people would know how to kill you. What would happen then?
ANGEL: You would leave the dimension with your tail between your legs.
SPIKE: So would you. And then my people would clobber your people.
ANGEL: Because you've turned them into a nation drunken, belligerent, foaming-at-the-mouth soccer hooligans.
SPIKE: It's call defending their freedom. You allow people to be happy, they get a little pissed off when someone tries to take that happiness away. Can't blame you and your happiness-challenged soul for not understanding that.
ANGEL: So what's your excuse? Seems kinda strange. You can have all the happiness you want, and yet you're always so miserable. Is that how unrequited love works? Cause I wouldn't know.
SPIKE: Are you trying to goad me into a fight so I can beat the undead snot out of you, humiliate you right in front of your own people? That would be the quickest way out of this mess.
The two of them stare each other down, their eyes less than a foot apart.
ANGEL: Grow up schoolboy.
Spike takes a step back and starts laughing. After fifteen seconds, he regains his composure.
SPIKE: I'm sorry. I wus just imagining your face at Connor's wedding, when you and Buffy become in-laws. Won't that be a sight. more laughing
ANGEL: Are we having the same conversation, or is there an imaginary friend I can't see? Talk about going mad with power.
SPIKE: Oh, come on. Don't play dumber. I'm sure he told you about Dawn. Your boy's in love. Maybe you've convinced yourself that it'll pass and he'll move on. That's only because you don't know him as well as I do. Connor's loyal, constant. Like his mum.
ANGEL: Did you come here just to waste my time?
SPIKE: I came here to compromise. Apparently you're not in much of a peacemaking mood. See you round, mate.
While Spike and Angel converse, Kreon and Hiero approach each other.
HIERO: So you're with Captain Peroxide. Guess that means you're the best they got down south. Lucky for us.
KREON: Haven't seen you out the last couple nights. Did I scared you away?
HIERO: I had better things to do with my time.
KREON: Like tagging along after the Almighty Forehead?
HIERO: I have to give you credit. You fight good for a commoner. But not so good for a champion.
KREON: That's the problem with you rich boys. You're always giving yourselves stupid titles.
HIERO: When do I get to finish what you started?
KREON: How about right now?
The two young men reach for their swords. But Angel and Spike break off their conversation. Hiero and Kreon have no choice but to break off theirs. Spike and Kreon head south. Angel and Hiero head north.
HIERO: Why didn't you pound him? Spike's evil. I thought you were supposed to fight evil.
ANGEL: It's not enough to prove I'm stronger than him. I have to prove I'm better.
HIERO: You have.
ANGEL: Not just to your people. To everyone.
HIERO: I don't get what they see in him. The way he looks, the way he talks – Spike's a walking joke. How can anyone take him seriously?
SPIKE: Heard about your jousting the other night.
KREON: Can't let those morons get away with violating our territory.
SPIKE: You tried to kill them.
KREON: I took one of them out myself.
SPIKE: That was wrong.
KREON: What! Since when was it wrong to defend my own country?
SPIKE: Only one of them died. The rest got away. That's what was wrong.
KREON: There weren't enough of us to kill all of them. We did the best we could.
SPIKE: I'm not talking about killing. You should have captured them. Then we'd have a bargaining chip.
KREON: Amastria would never surrender to save a few of their men. They're too proud.
SPIKE: Angel would do it. He'll give up anything to save a few human lives. We kill them in battle, he fights back. We make them our prisoners, he gives in.
KREON: Okay. I follow. We go after his weakness. But to capture them, I need more men.
SPIKE: What about more women?
Kreon thinks about it and laughs. He knows Hiero would be humiliated if he were captured by a bunch of girls.
Eric and Rose are in the small sitting room between the kitchen and the living room. He sits in an easy chair. The petite Rose sits on his lap, her legs dangling over the chair's left arm. They've been chatting and flirting for over an hour, getting to know each other as much as is possible without Rose giving away any substantive information about why she's in town.
ERIC: So Counselor Summers lets you come over to her house to party?
ROSE: Private party. Invitation only. smiles at him. he swoons slightly
ERIC: Still. It's kinda weird. Party at the teacher's house.
ROSE: No parents around.
ERIC: True. It's just, you know, weird.
ROSE: Throwing a party where they're aren't any parents to ruin it?
ERIC: No. The whole thing. You girls are like, always together, and you go to school, but you're not taking any classes. And then there are all those weapons.
ROSE: So what?
ERIC: So . . . she nibbles on his right earlobe and kisses his neck. He smiles, lets out a small sigh of contentment and completely forgets what he was talking about. Rose looks at him and runs her left hand through his hair.
ROSE: Does it matter?
ERIC: No. Not really.
Rose grins. Eric smiles and leans in to kiss her.
FRED: It's been almost four hours. That's like a week over there. What's takin' him so long?
GUNN: Ain't got no car. Probably takes a long time to travel over there. He coulda come in a couple hundred miles away from where that Spike guy is.
LORNE: That's a good point. Willow was there for a week, and she never even got close to him.
FRED: Anyone else worried about, you know?
GUNN: Angel can take care of himself.
LORNE: Anya said this place was demon-free. People wouldn't know how to kill him even if they wanted to.
FRED: You're telling me Angel couldn't find an immortal imposter god-king in seven days? How many of them can there be in that dimension? Fred notices she has mail and opens the document. She's silent for fifteen seconds
GUNN: What's wrong? Somethin' happen to Angel?
FRED: You remember what I just asked myself?
LORNE: How many god kings can there be in that dimension?
FRED: According to Willow, at least two.
After talking with Angel, Spike returned to Zalpa just after sunset. He made an obligatory appearance at the start of that night's revelries. The adoring throngs had missed him while he was gone for most of the past week. The screaming girls and adoring women made Spike conclude that there was a fine line between absolute monarch and teen idol, at least in his case. Then he tried out a batch of beer that a few people had spent the last week brewing. It also happens to be the first batch of beer ever brewed in that country. (Spike's trying to introduce a new beverage) He found it way too flat and a little to bitter, but considered it a good start. After that, he spent several tedious hours catching up on government business with his ministers. His overnight emancipation of slaves and serfs has created the need for sweeping economic reforms, lest the kingdom's economy collapse into utter chaos. Not one to think things through in advance, Spike never expected that being a radical revolutionary god-king would entail so much hard work. Finally, shortly before midnight, Spike heads to his palace for some well-deserved rest. He finds Memnon pacing back-and-forth in his megaron.
SPIKE: Is there problem? Have the Amazons attacked the frontier?
MEMNON: No. They're not the problem. I mean, one of them is. For me, anyway. I'm sorry to come into your palace uninvited like this, but I think you're the only one who could understand.
SPIKE: Then this has nothing to do with national security?
MEMNON: No. It's personal.
SPIKE: Maybe tomorrow. I haven't had a decent night's sleep all week.
Spike walks towards his bedroom.
MEMNON: Wait! Please, just listen. Give me a moment to explain.
SPIKE: puts his hand to his tired head and sighs This better be good.
MEMNON: I'm in love with Princess Antiope from the tribe of Thalestris. I love her, and I hate her, and I used to want to kill her. Life was once so simple. Now I don't even have the guts to kill a sworn enemy.
SPIKE: grins Have a seat. Tell me more about you and this princess.
They sit down on adjacent couches and drink wine as Memnon spins his tale.
MEMNON: I'm from Vanoch, way up north, beyond the peninsula. Back home, I was Evich. My father had a small plot of land. Small enough that if he split it up between me and my older brother, we'd both starve. So, when I was twenty, he got the land and I had to go make it on my own. Fighting was the one thing I knew how to do that I could get paid for doing. Headed south where the money was better, changed my name, did real well. Became an officer. When I was 26, the company I led got a job defending a city in the Nemean plateau. That's when I first saw the Amazons.
SPIKE: And then you became obsessed with them? Spike's already trying to relate
MEMNON: Not right away. I'd fought horse archers before. I handled them like I handled the men who fought like they did. Set traps, lured them into ambushes. But they were different. Fiercer. Men try to kill you, but when the odds are against them they ride away on their horses. With an Amazon, when the going gets tough, they get off their horses and fight you to the death. It's like they always have something to prove, on account of being so unnatural.
SPIKE: You think it's not natural for women to fight?
MEMNON: It's unnatural for them to do nothing but fight. My mom was a better shot than I was with the bow or the sling. She could defend her home if someone came looking for a fight. But she didn't travel to other places looking for trouble.
SPIKE: How long have you been away from home?
MEMNON: Twelve years.
SPIKE: That's long enough to learn that not every woman in the world is like dear old mum.
MEMNON: Course not. Otherwise no one would have kids. Who could get it up if every girl made him think of his mother?
SPIKE: So much for Freud.
MEMNON: Huh? Who?
SPIKE: Sorry. Go on.
Here's one big difference between the two of them: Spike's raging Oedipal Complex would be utterly incomprehensible to Memnon.
MEMNON: My men and I killed about ten of them. Then their princess came out with the full levy: my company against hers.
SPIKE: This was Antiope?
MEMNON: No. Diana. I heard from some of the people in town that Amazon royals like to engage in single combat. The men see their commander get slain by a woman, they become instantly demoralized. They give up before the battle's even begun. So I go out and challenge her. She laughs. Apparently she's done this before. She's beaten champions, and I'm just a nobody. It was tough. I got wounded twice. But I did it. Rest of the Amazon's attacked me to reclaim her body. My men rushed to my defense. Girls got routed. They'd never seen their princess lose before. smiles I cut off her head, put it on my spear, and led my men to their camp. They grabbed what they could and escaped. They'll die one-by-one, but they won't let the whole group get slaughtered. Amazons are brave, but they're not fools. We took some of their treasure. Never seen so much gold. That's when I became an Amazon hunter.
SPIKE: You did it for the money.
MEMNON: Why work for a king when you can become as rich as one? Sure, it's dangerous. Within a year, most of the hundred men who were with me that day were in the ground. But with the money I made, I could hire a hundred more. Then a thousand. No shortage of men who'll risk their lives to make a fortune.
SPIKE: So if they were rich men, and not powerfully athletic, strikingly beautiful women, the blokes would still line up to chase them down? Spike's thinking in particular of Panthesilea
MEMNON: Okay, that makes it more exciting. But we wouldn't hunt them if they were poor. I know I wouldn't have. And I was the best. I had a reputation. My men respected me. The Amazons respected me. Some of them even FEARED me. There's not many guys who can say that.
SPIKE: But you didn't fear them. You must have felt bloody invincible.
MEMNON: No. Then I'd be dead. I knew how to pick my fights. A good warrior never gets into anything less than a fair fight. another way he's different from Spike I never got surrounded, never got outnumbered, and I never fought a queen. There just on another level. Maybe not your level. But way above mine.
SPIKE: What makes them so much better than the princesses you fight?
MEMNON: Amazons aren't all alike. Not even close. First off, there's the women who were born into it and the women who volunteer. Only women with Amazon mothers can be leaders of ten. Only daughters of princesses are supposed to be leaders of a hundred. And only daughters of queens are supposed to lead a tribe.
SPIKE: How bloody conservative. I thought their kind of organization would be open to advancement.
MEMNON: It is. Leaders die in battle all the time. They have to be replaced by the people under them. It's a wonderfully effective system. Built last. Always looking to the future. Memnon is beginning to reveal that his familiarity with the Amazons goes beyond trying to kill them. He's become something of a fan. You join up, and if you last five years you're a full member of the tribe. If you've hung around that long, you love what you do. You want your daughter to love it too. And you want her to be even better at it than you were. She's taught since she can walk how to handle weapons. That's why they're such good fighters. Maybe they're not as strong as the men, but they're more experienced, and they got this whole tradition, so they're smarter. Amazons can spot a weakness better than anyone. Then there are the royal daughters. These girls have to earn their keep. When she's six years-old, a princess has to kill a wolf all by herself with just sticks and stones. The queens got it far tougher. On her sixth birthday, the daughter of a queen is stripped naked and sent out into the forest with nothing but a spear. She can't return until she's killed a bear. Not a baby bear. A full-grown one. After she's killed it, she eats the meat, skins the bear, and wears its coat home. That's how she proves she's got what it takes to lead the tribe.
Makes Buffy's 18th birthday seem like a cakewalk. But Spike finds Memnon's story a little too picturesque to be entirely credible.
SPIKE: How do you know this?
MEMNON: We take prisoners and exchange them for men the Amazons are holding captive. Once the fighting's over, they're not so hostile, long as you show them respect and treat them like warriors. Some of the women talk. They're curious about our world and we're curious about theirs.
SPIKE: Funny thing is, no one is close to those birds that you blokes. You spend all your time around each other. You're both living outside normal society. It's only natural for Amazons and mercenaries to fall in love with one another. now Spike's projecting
MEMNON: No it's not. We're enemies. What happened to me, it nearly destroyed my career.
SPIKE: Don't tell me an Amazon has never fallen for a mercenary. People work together, feelings develop, things happen.
MEMNON: Of course there's sex. How could there not be? They have to mate with somebody to produce daughters. They pick the guys they like. smiles Some of them have the guys they like even when they're not mating. But it's just physical. There aren't supposed to be any feelings. Otherwise . . . well, otherwise –
SPIKE: They can't do their job and you can't do yours? Spike is naturally sympathetic to the idea of Amazon-mercenary love. But he also sees the military potential of them joining forces.
MEMNON: Yep. Anyway, my point was that there's talking before and after the mating. You learn stuff about their customs.
SPIKE: You've shagged some?
MEMNON: If you mean did I mate – yeah. They pick the best fighters. I'm pretty popular. I mean I was, until Antiope. Then I became a laughingstock.
Spike decides to skip over the brutal irony of Memnon's claim that the more Amazons you kill, the more eager other Amazons are to sleep with you. Amazons don't sleep with men who have killed women they know. But since there are 3,000 Amazons, it's easy to find some who knows of your reputation but have never seen you take a woman's life. Like in "Five by Five," when Faith – inside Buffy's body – seemed intrigued by the possibility of bedding Spike when she learns he's William the Bloody. She was turned on by his accomplishments and his "celebrity," but didn't know anyone he had killed. However, if Spike had been the one to kill her Watcher, I'm sure Faith wouldn't have been turned on by him.
SPIKE: So tell me what's so special about this Amazon.
MEMNON: I didn't kill her. Our first fight was in the middle of a battle, and we had to break it off to help out the rest of our troops. That was the problem. Something always got in the way before I could put her away. Not that she wasn't good. She had to be to not get killed by me. But that didn't make me like her. Everything changed when she was attacked by that Gorgon in the Tritonic Marshes. I had been tracking her. She was alone. It was my chance. And I saved her. We fought off the monster together. I saved her because I wanted to be the one to kill her. That was the only reason I did it. She didn't understand that. Antiope teased me, said I was obsessed with her. It was all a big joke to her – taking away the manhood of an Amazon killer.
SPIKE: Whadya mean by taking away your . . .
MEMNON: Love is the ultimate weakness. It destroys you as a fighter. If an Amazon fell in love with me, I would tease her the same way. I was furious. But I knew that if I tried to kill her now, she'd run away and make me chase her so I WOULD look obsessed. I went away. Took on another tribe. But I couldn't get that bitch out of my head. Every Amazon I saw reminded me of her. I had to get out of the game. By then I was pretty well-known, and the King of Sulan hired me to run his army. Great pay. Everyone treated me like a prince. I had made it. This was the sort of job guys fight forty years to get. But all I could think about was Antiope. So I left the island and came back to the mainland to find her and tell her how I felt. She laughed at me. Her women laughed at me. I knew she felt something. She just didn't have the courage to admit it. So you know what I did?
SPIKE: Try to prove how much you love her?
MEMNON: Sort of. I started killing the Amazons under her command. And I told her I'd keep killing them until she admitted that she had feelings for me.
Spike's rather shocked. Even when he was soulless, he never thought that taking out the Scoobies one-by-one would force Buffy to say that she liked him. Memnon's reclined on the couch. Spike lies on an adjacent couch. The top of their heads are two feet apart.
SPIKE: Why did you think that would help?
MEMNON: It would prove my manhood to her. And as the bodies piled up, sooner or later she'd have to give in. For the sake of her women.
It's as if Spike killed Xander, killed Willow, took Dawn hostage, and expected Buffy to sleep with him in exchange for saving Dawn's life. He realizes this guy has some serious problems communicating with women, not to mention controlling his bloodlust. Angel has also been learning the disturbing lesson that sometimes taking a life DOESN'T change people. Without the slippery slope, human life becomes much less precious. Faith's accidental killing of the mayor's aide would have been nothing more than collateral damage in this world. The other members of Willow's community would have helped her tie Warren up and publicly flayed him alive for his crimes. Gunn would have been celebrated for killing the man who had so grievously injured the woman he loved. Furthermore, someone in Buffy's position would have been offing evil humans left-and-right. From a moral stand-point, that would be a hell dimension, at least by Angel's or Giles's or Buffy's lofty standards.
SPIKE: Obviously your strategy didn't work.
MEMNON: It did. A little. She couldn't stop thinking about me.
SPIKE: Because she bloody well hated you.
MEMNON: Then why did she sleep with me?
Spike is extremely startled to hear this. Sure, he understands shagging someone because you hate them. But not sleeping with someone who kills people you care about is a whole different class of kinky.
SPIKE: She did what again?
MEMNON: First she retaliated and went after my men, hoping that this would make me quit. It did hold me back. But it held her back, too. Attacks were too costly on both sides. Now she was ready to fight me one-on-one. That's what I always wanted.
SPIKE: Back when you wanted to kill her. Now things were different.
MEMNON: She still wanted to kill me. Way I saw it, I fight her off, it'll prove I'm too much of a man for her to beat me. Then she'll respect me. The same thing you did with Queen Panthesilea.
SPIKE: I wusn't trying to make her want me. smirks That was an unintended consequence. But we didn't hate each other. It wasn't personal. That changes everything.
MEMNON: It worked just the same. I used her pride against her. Said she fought with weapons because she was too weak to kill a man with her bare hands. So that's what she tried to do. It was after dark. We were both away from our camps. She pounded me. I block most of them, but Asteria can hit. Got my left ear with a right kick – I couldn't hear good out of it for a month. smiles slyly. Spike realizes Memnon got off on the pain When I realized she actually could kill a man with her bare hands, I started hitting her back. She tried to strangle me. I ripped her hands off my neck. Then she started to get tired and realized I was too tough for her to kill without a weapon. That was when she changed her strategy.
SPIKE: You think there was a strategy behind her shagging you?
MEMNON: Of course. Even if she couldn't kill me, she could still prove her dominance. You do it with someone you love, you give yourself over completely. You become weak. If the other person doesn't love you back, they're still strong. She could see and feel how much being with her meant to me. But she knew how little it meant to her. When I was inside her, the only thing I wanted in the entire world was her love. She denied it me, again and again. That's power.
SPIKE: I suppose that would be one interpretation. But she had to feel something. She couldn't . . . all those times without feeling something. Spike's confused about which one of them Memnon's talking about.
MEMNON: It was even better than I dreamed it could be. We were incredible. She couldn't hide her delight. Afterwards she claimed it was all about power, that she enjoyed it so much because she enjoyed dominating me and turning me into her slave. I told her it was more than that. She said it could never be more than that. It's been eight months, and every night I go to sleep missing her, wanting to hold her one more time. It can't live like this. Either I make Antiope love me or I die trying.
SPIKE: Have you ever thought that violence might not be the answer to every problem? sits up. looks worried I can't believe believe I just said that. I really am going soft.
MEMNON: I've tried talking to her. It's no use. Asteria communicates with actions, not words. You know what she did to hurt me after that night? Started fooling around with the other women. Much more than she normal did. Made a real show out of it. Put out the word that her night with me had turned her off from all men forever. Asteria wants me to hate her. She wants me out of her life. That's how I know that deep down she loves me.
Spike takes a few seconds to try to make sense of this. He can't.
SPIKE: Now, I'm as big a believer in mixed signals as there is, but what the bloody hell are you talking about?
MEMNON: If I'm around, sooner or later she's going to give in to her feelings. That would ruin her life. Her friends would abandon her. The other Amazons wouldn't respect her.
SPIKE: She's choosing her career over love. That how you see it?
MEMNON: It's not a job. It's who she is. It's what she is. Asteria doesn't know that I would never ask her to change. I love who she is. I'm willing to change for her. I don't want to kill Amazons anymore. The more I think about, the stupider all this fighting seems. They die, and we die, but nobody ever wins. All that death, all that killing, for nothing.
Spike thinks maybe Memnon has seen the light.
SPIKE: You want to end the slaughter?
MEMNON: We should be working together. We have armor, they're fast and light and mobile. Tactically, we would complement each other perfectly. We join forces, we fight together, everyone would be better off. Male warriors control two-thirds of the plateau. They fight like the Amazons. But there's more of them. We join up with the women, they attack these men on their flanks, and we plow right through the middle. Their fire power, our brute strength – no one could stand up to that combination. The Amazons could subjugate the whole plateau. (Okay, so maybe Memnon hasn't seen the light) But their pride keeps them from working with one group of men to defeat another group of men. They don't understand that we're just like them. We won't make them settle down. We have no homes. All we know how to do is fight. Just like them! smiles as he gazes up at the ceiling It's crazy, but it's my dream.
SPIKE: You might say you're a dreamer, but you're not the only one. You hope someday they'll join you, and the world can live as one.
MEMNON: Yes! I knew you'd understand!
SPIKE: You know something? I never liked that song. Until now.
Spike laughs. He gets a thrill out of turning "Imagine" into a hymn about war and conquest.
MEMNON: The idea came to me three months ago. Right away, I knew I needed to make the Amazons understand. So I decided to go to war with them. My men against their women, fighting until one side was destroyed. When the casualties grew into the hundreds, both sides would see how pointless it was to fight each other.
SPIKE: Just once, could you try coming up with a plan to win her love you that doesn't involve killing people?
MEMNON: It wasn't practical. There was no money involved. My men live off what the Amazons plunder. And what they themselves plunder. No Amazons, less plunder. So I came up with a better plan.
SPIKE: One that didn't involve mass slaughter?
MEMNON: Not directly. We hire ourselves out to the cities the Amazons attack. We protect the people. And they don't just pay us normal mercenary wages. Instead, we get half of what the Amazons would have taken. We make our money AND we deny the Amazons their wealth. That would make them realize they'd be much richer if we were on their side.
SPIKE: It's definitely an improvement. But before resorting to large-scale troop movements, I think you should try talking to her. And in the meantime, don't kill her friends. Girls hate that sorta thing.
MEMNON: I'll have to kill them when they attack the kingdom.
SPIKE: They won't. Not while they're around Angel. Right now, he's probably trying to make them change their ways and reform them, turn them into boring, productive, non-lethal members of society. How is the training going?
MEMNON: Excellent. The second division is nearly mobilized. But my men are being stretched thin. We can't build an army and guard a border at the same time.
SPIKE: Then forget about the border. Angel won't attack. He'll let me make the first move. The sooner we make it, the easier it'll be to crush him. gets up and walks toward his bedroom Then I can finally go home.
NEXT: Angel shows the Amazons that not all men are weak and evil. Hiero falls in love. Strife between Angel's and Spike's supporters gets out of control. So Spike and Angel have no choice but to mobilize their forces for a climactic battle.
