Somewhere in Greece, January 17th 1998
Spike and Drusilla were sightseeing, as the minions that had replaced the ones they'd lost at the warehouse were out looking for one of the Judge's parts. Well, William the Bloody *was* a firm believer in delegating the work to those below him, and killing anyone who didn't perform up to standards! But neither Spike nor Dru were aware that somewhere Up There, the higher beings weren't happy...
Most of the Powers That Be weren't at all happy that some of their plans hadn't gone according to plan, like at all. Only two of the Powers That Be knew why things had gone slightly off the rails, because they had planned right this from the start; and both Jareth and Xander were part of their plan.
The two rogues were going to turn on the other Powers That Be soon…
Back at the Bronze, both Buffy and Kendra were in the parking lot as the demon burst through a wall like the Kool-Aid Man. The Chosen Two had arrived here on their way to the high school, after receiving a call on Buffy's cell phone and leaving the mausoleum battle zone.
"We'll take care of the demon, you guys watch the book!" Buffy said, as she gave Willow the book she and Kendra had retrieved earlier tonight.
"Will do, Buff. No vampire, no demon or things that bump in the night shall get the one book to rule them all!" Xander joked.
Both Willow and Cordelia sighed while Oz rolled his eyes. The cheerleader thought to herself, { How did I *ever* fall for such a geek? }
Unbeknownst to them all, Jareth used his powers to weaken the demon whilst watching from the sidelines. He didn't want anything to happen to Buffy – yet – and the demon didn't notice anything happing to his body. Even though he should have!
"Finally, you Slayers show up!" The demon grinned at the Chosen Two, more or less ignoring the rest of the Scoobies. It ran at the Slayers, but they got out of the way as Kendra jumped into the air and kicked the evil demon in the head.
The demon went flying into the air, before hitting the ground with a loud 'WHUMP!'.
"That's gotta hurt," Xander commented, wincing.
"Not complaining, but seriously – that's a pretty weak demon," the Oz-bot nodded.
{ How did that happen? } the demon thought to himself in surprise (and pain). { The Slayers should have been no match for me! No matter. } It got back on its feet and charged once more. The Slayers then punched the demon in the chest in perfect sync, which killed it in a few seconds. The demon fell over dead!
It all went to show that size *didn't* matter in this sort of fight...
"Whoever is covering up all these demon attacks, they're going to have a hard time covering this one up," Xander looked around with a heavy sigh. The Bronze was pretty badly damaged, with dead bodies inside and the last of the survivors fleeing into the night.
"Who says anyone's going to do that? It'll get blamed on wild animals, or Sunnydale's 'gang problem', they'll rebuild the club and everyone will come flocking back here afterwards," Cordelia shook her head. "Not like there's anywhere else to go in Sunnydale."
"She's not wrong," the Willow-bot shrugged. "I mean it's happened before, remember?"
Elsewhere, the minions found a Judge part at an old Sunnydale mausoleum. The vampires killed a couple of humans and left with the body part. Back at the Bronze, Jareth left with the demon body after setting up a distraction for the Scooby gang.
Said distraction was a bunch of vampires that came out of the darkness. They were after the book, even though they couldn't quite remember *why*...
"Get the book!" yelled the lead vampire.
"Great, now vampires. What's next, Bigfoot?" the Willow-bot demanded with a sigh.
"Unlikely. Wrong part of the country," the Oz-bot replied stoically.
"They're after the book! Scatter, now!" yelled Buffy. Immediately Xander, Oz, Cordelia and Willow headed towards the Oz-bot's van. But not quickly enough - a vampire was about to grab Cordelia!
"NO WAY!" Xander punched the vampire in the chest, using all this new strength – and the evil undead went flying into a parked car!
The vampires immediately had confused looks on their game faces. "Hey, he ain't human – what is this? No blood bag can hit that hard!" one of them said in puzzlement and a bit of fear.
"Forget Super Boy, go for the Slayers!" the lead vampire ordered his minions, mindlessly obeying Jareth's directives.
"Why does everyone want this book?" the Willow-bot asked, looking bewildered.
"Who knows, Wills?" Xander replied, as everyone (apart from Buffy and Kendra) got into the van. The other vampires left the Scooby gang and book alone (for the moment), and went for the Slayers. Buffy slayed a vampire, while Kendra kicked a vamp in the face, but they were outnumbered – so Xander got out of the van and started kicking some undead ass himself!
Cordy was in awe. { Okay, he's so definitely *not* a punching bag and a loser anymore! Oh, yeah, I bagged myself a guy who can actually defend me from all the monsters in this town! Just gotta keep him happy, I guess. Which, given how a good a kisser Xander actually is, shouldn't be too hard at all! }
Xander punched a vampire that was behind Buffy, as Kendra continued to battle the undead. The blonde Slayer briefly said, "Thanks, Xander."
"No problem, Buff."
Once they finished off the last of the minions, Willow's and Oz's robot eyes managed to catch sight of the enemy leader about to run for it. The lead vampire was about to escape, but Kendra threw a stake to dust him with extreme prejudice!
"Good throw, Kendra!" Xander said admiringly.
Cordelia rolled her eyes. { Typical. Can't Xander keep his mind focused on *me*, the girl he's making out with? Maybe I ought to dress up like a Slayer and put a stake to his throat, some role play or something... }
Meanwhile, Count Orlok had gotten bored reading his book and left the mansion; he'd fed on some human flesh bags on the way to Rack's lair. Hey, he was getting tired of drinking from the bottled stuff and hospital blood bags, most of the time! Anyway, he had consulted with Rack and learned about the existence of the book that Buffy and Kendra had found, earlier tonight. He had subsequently decided that he *had* to find it!
Count Orlok returned to the Crawford Street mansion, spotting Spike's minions carrying a crate with something inside it. They entered the side entrance of the mansion, before he ceased to pay the minions any attention. The Count didn't plan on telling Spike and Drusilla his plan for Sunnyhell, anyway. { Once I open the Hellmouth and gain control over its demon guardian, I'll rule the world! } He laughed once, darkly evil.
Over at City Hall, the Mayor wasn't too happy that the demon had failed to kill the Slayers, after misinterpreting his orders in the place… no, he wasn't happy at all. { You just can't find good help these days, can you? }
6305 Westminster Place, January 18th, 1998
At Willow's house, not long after the midnight hour, the Oz-bot and Willow-bot were talking to Jareth in the living room. If you wanted to get technical about it, they were doing so using Oz's robot eye, which was currently out of the robot's eye socket and in his hand. The real Willow's parents were out of town, like pretty much always, so they weren't afraid of any awkward interruptions.
"Does that conclude your status report?" the demon wanted to know, its voice coming out of the Oz-bot's eye like a microphone.
"One last thing..." the Willow-bot replied, before both of them filled in their creator about how the Scooby gang were paying attention to the vampire known as 'Count Orlok.'
"I want you two to keep an eye on this Count Orlok as well," Jareth ordered them.
"Yes, Jareth," they both replied at the same time.
"It wouldn't surprise me if he went after that book the Slayers found, actually. Seems like a popular item," the Oz-bot shrugged, looking thoughtful.
"Oz is right. That's just the way things seem to go in this town," the Willow-bot nodded.
"You may be right. Anyway, remain vigilant and keep up the good work, and return to your assigned task." Jareth signed off with a soft click.
The Oz-bot put his eye back into the empty eye socket. Then it turned to the Willow-bot and said, "Hmm. Now when he said 'assigned task', are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
The Willow-bot smirked. "If I tap into what the real Willow wants right now, sure."
The Oz-bot looked thoughtful. "We weren't designed for this, you know. These feelings, the...intimacy we've shared. The humans may be influencing us more than Jareth knows. Should we report it?"
"If you want to, go ahead. Although if we do that, most likely, Jareth will recall and reprogram us both. We wouldn't be what we are now... and even worse, we couldn't fulfil our purpose as Jareth's spies, without that connection to the real Willow and Oz," the Willow-bot replied.
In the end, the two robots decided not to say anything to their master. It wasn't like the emotions and human-like behavior were compromising their mission, after all – besides, who were they to say that Jareth didn't already know about all this? And if he *did* know, he obviously didn't care that his two android spies were already on the cusp of sleeping together...
Later that day at the school library, Giles looked over the book that Buffy and Kendra had given to him for examination. He didn't like what he'd read so far, some of the spells within it were pure evil...
"This book is far too dangerous to keep around, and risk it falling into the wrong hands. It must be destroyed," Giles said with a heavy sigh.
"Let's get rid of it, then," Buffy shrugged. She had no problem with that scenario, after all!
"Is there any magic protecting the book?" the Willow-bot asked.
"I'll do a detection spell to make sure there isn't," Giles replied. Even though he knew it had to be done, it still went against his grain to carry out such an act of wanton destruction – he honestly wasn't too happy about getting rid of such a rare book, despite how bad the contents were.
The bell rang, and the teenagers quickly dispersed, heading off to class. Well, apart from Kendra, as she wasn't a student here – the Jamaican Slayer stayed and helped the Watcher, while Buffy, Oz and Willow went off in one direction and Xander and Cordelia went off in another.
"People are staring at us," Xander murmured out of the corner of his mouth, although he didn't actually look at Cordelia. "How do you want to play this?"
Cordy never had a chance to reply, as Harmony and the Cordettes came charging up to their leader. "Cordelia!" more than one of them cried in horror.
"What?!" Queen C demanded imperiously.
"What are you doing hanging with this, this – geek?!" Aura demanded.
"Yeah! We saw you at the Bronze last night – with him! Like you two were together, or something!" Harmony screeched.
Cordelia hesitated, so Xander jumped in and said, "Yeah, Cordy hired me as her bodyguard recently -"
"What? That's ridiculous!" the Cordette named Joy interrupted.
"Actually, it's true," Cordy decided to go with the explanation her secret boyfriend had offered. "I got sick and tired of always looking over my shoulder for the weirdos and freaks that constantly seem out to get me – like that Marcie Ross girl, last year. So, I'm paying the Dweeb to keep an eye out for danger – and he can't do that if he isn't hanging around me, y'know?"
"I still don't buy it. What can Xander Harris of all people do to keep your safe?" Aura looked at the guy in contempt.
Xander looked at her, and then at Cordelia. Upon receiving the brunette's nod, he asked the Cordettes for something breakable, which they wouldn't mind being destroyed. With a smirk, Harmony reached into her school bag and tossed Xander a tennis ball. "There you go, loser, now what -"
POW! The tennis ball imploded, torn apart simply by Xander squeezing it with his supernatural strength.
"You were saying, Harm?" Cordelia raised her eyebrow archly. "I mean, can you *imagine* what would have happened if I'd asked Xander to place his hands on either side of your head, and squeeze?"
All of the popular girls immediately took a couple of steps back, looking pale as the blood rushed away from their faces. "How the-?" Harmony spluttered.
"Been working out, increasing my upper body strength," Xander ad-libbed. "Got sick and tired of all the jocks picking on me, like that nerd Andrew Wells. You girls remember him, right?"
The mere mention of the other day's school rampage caused the gang of popular cheerleaders to turn around and leave, repressing with all their might in order to maintain their sanity and the hopelessly lop-sided world-view. Cordelia watched them go and said, "Not bad, Doofus. Not bad at all."
"Yeah, well, you do realize that we're going to have to be in public together from now on, in order for that story to hold up. Is that going to be a problem?" Xander wanted to know.
"Depends. Like, are you asking me out on a date? A real one, and not just a make-out session like last night?" Cordelia demanded.
Xander contemplated that. "Will you get mad if I say yes?"
Cordelia took a deep breath and replied, "No."
Harris raised an eyebrow and said contemplatively, "Okay... Buffy's birthday is tomorrow. Would you do me the honor of attending her birthday party as my date?"
"I didn't even know she was planning to have a birthday party," the Chase girl shot back.
"She isn't, as far as I know - unless we arrange one for her," Xander pointed out.
"Then forget it – I want our first date to be *special*," Cordelia told him firmly. "I know you don't have much money, so you can't afford to take me to the expensive places in Sunnydale I like – but still. A girl does like to be romanced, you know? And by the way, meet me after a school – we need to go shopping for you and get you some decent clothes, if you're going to be spending time with me in public!"
"Hey! What's wrong with my clothes?" Xander demanded, as she grabbed him by the wrist and began pulling him away to class.
"You mean, apart from the fact that they look like they came from the Salvation Army? Those Hawaiian shirts have got to go, for starters," Cordelia proclaimed loudly. "On account of this isn't the Eighties anymore, and Tom Selleck isn't anywhere *near* the hunk he used to be..."
Somewhere in Greece, half an hour later
Spike and Drusilla were in a good mood, having finally gotten the Judge parts. Well, the minions had anyway. Even worse, they had just about all the Judge parts now. "We got it all, luv!" Spike grinned.
"I know! It'll be some wunnerful – oh Spoike, let's paint all the flowers red, with the blood of the Slayers!" Drusilla giggled madly.
They got ready to leave, before visiting a shaman in nearby Albania to transport them and their entourage to the Hellmouth. It was time to return to Sunnydale…