Sunnydale High School, Sunnydale February 26th 1998
Rupert Giles was in his office, trying not think about Jenny Calendar - and that bloody git, Angelus.
Even though since the evil, Irish-born male vampire had killed and turned his girlfriend, that was rather hard to do.
Giles had a Watcher's job to do right now. Namely, trying to analyse a sample of the strange liquid Buffy and Kendra had brought to him, under the microscope. He took down notes as he tried to focus on the task at hand...
One thing for certain, Giles had never seen anything like this. The liquid was biological in nature, it contained oval-shaped cells of some kind. The cells looked – sort of – like blood cells. They weren't human blood cells, though, that was for sure. The Watcher knew he would have to make a report on the liquid and send it to the Council for further assistance, he simply didn't have the facilities here for a more in-depth analysis.
Elsewhere, Buffy was very worried about her mom's well-being. She knew the only way to save her was to take out Angelus. But how to do it without endangering her mother's life, that was another thing.
Vamp Jenny returned to the old mansion and reported in to her sire. Naturally, Angelus wasn't happy to find out that the Scooby Gang were still alive.
"You had one job, Jenny, and you blow it like this? Why do I even keep you around?" Angelus slammed his fist on the table in the bedroom, breaking the table into pieces. Which made her jump.
"It's just a minor setback," the fledgling vampire replied, somewhat belligerently. "I'll kill them next time!"
Angelus glared at Vamp Jenny. "You better!"
Both Dru and Spike were not far away, sitting on the couch and watching TV, and could hear the angry conversation with their enhanced auditory capabilities.
"Daddy isn't too happy," Dru laughed.
Spike sighed and drank from the fresh blood bag, before handing it over to her. "Your sire's angry, luv. Just gotta hope he doesn't do anything stupid, is all." He eyed the minions not far away, who weren't happy that they couldn't feed on the Slayer's mom. "Oy, you lot! What are you just standin' around here for? Go make yerselves useful!"
Shrugging and looking at each other, the soulless vampires went out to hunt for some blood meals, and so not have to deal with a pissed-off Angelus!
Later that night, Xander arrived at the high school library, and Giles asked him to come into his office.
"What's up, Giles?" Xander asked.
"Xander, I...I need your help. Now that Ms. Calendar – err, Jenny – is a vampire, we need to..." Giles couldn't bring himself to say it, that they needed to kill the former computer science teacher.
"I hear ya," He'd known that Giles would ask him to help do this. "But that's not the only thing we have to do, is it?"
"No, uh... Buffy contacted me, and said that Angelus had kidnapped her mother," Giles admitted. "We, we need to save her, as well as end the undead threat."
Together, the two men came up with a plan to save Buffy's mom from Angelus.
DELOS facility, summer of 1999
Jareth began the test to see how the vampire robots would do against a Slayer. To that end, he'd had a robot Buffy made just for this test. The robots were fighting in an open area. Jareth and some demon co-workers watched on the monitors, placing bets on the robots.
The Buffy-bot took out two vampire robots. But the Angelus-bot managed to get behind the Buffy-bot, and then kick her in the head! She went flying through the air, and hit the ground like a ton of bucks. The robot Buffy was pretty much torn apart on impact.
"A bit of overkill right there," one of the demon workers said.
"You lose, now pay up Jax!" the demon named Geki laughed. Grumbling, Jax gave him the money.
"Have the robot repaired," Jareth told the crew over the phone. "Damn it, why can't I get this right?" He hung up, but almost immediately the phone rang again. "What is it?" Jareth demanded. "What? Alright, set up a meeting for two o'clock later today..."
Later, the meeting was held in one of the facility's boardrooms. There were talks about new theme park ideas. "How about a movie theme park?" one of the employees asked.
Jareth was deep in thought. "Yes, an excellent idea! A movie theme park," the demon smiled. "It'll appeal to our key demographic, if nothing else..."
Somewhere in Sunnydale, February 27th 1998
Not long after midnight, while Buffy and Kendra slaying demons on their way to the Crawford Street mansion, Xander found Vamp Jenny feeding off a homeless person in a back alley.
{ Here goes nothing, } Harris thought to himself. { Giles did ask me to help do this. Better get it over with. } He snuck up on his former teacher, then pulled out a stake and stabbed her in the back!
The undead version of Jenny Calendar screamed, and then exploded into dust. Unfortunately, the homeless person bled to death right in front of Xander, who could do nothing to save the guy.
{ Sorry, mister. } Xander left the alley behind him without looking back. There was nothing he could do for the corpse, and his mind was focused on saving Mrs. Summers from a similar gruesome death, after all.
A shadowy hooded figure appeared in the old mansion, and put all the vampires into a deep sleep! The hooded figure then walked towards the sleeping form of Angelus.
"Angelus, you will no longer become Twilight. Another vampire from the wish dimension will have to fulfil that role." With that said, the hooded figure vanished from the old mansion…
By this point, Giles and Xander were talking in his car as the Watcher had picked him up on their way to rendezvous with Buffy and Kendra.
"Uh, Giles, I found Ms. Calendar," Xander said with a sad sigh.
"Say no more; I can tell that you, uh, *dealt* with her. Thank you for that, I - well, I-I-I failed her. I should have been there to protect her, before she disappeared," Giles sighed, feeling that he'd let Jenny down.
"Don't blame yourself too much, G-man. If you were there? I figure that Dead Boy mighta turned *you* into a vampire as well!" Xander didn't want to imagine Giles as a vampire.
Sunnydale probably wouldn't survive it.
The Scooby Gang arrived at the old mansion a few minutes later. The plan was that Buffy and Kendra would deal with the Big Bads, while Giles, Xander, Willow and Oz would save Joyce Summers.
But then the group found the vampires in a deep sleep of some kind. Not a single vampire was awake on watch, which was odd to say the least. None of them knew that the vampires are under a sleeping spell, of course.
"Well, this is odd," said the Oz-bot, looking at a sleeping vampire on the couch.
"You're telling me," Xander replied. "Buff, Kendra?"
"We split up, look for my mom," Buffy replied, looking at all the sleeping vampires in concern.
"We should kill all o' de undead while we have de opportunity," Kendra added with a soft growl, likewise looking around at all the minions.
"Yes, um, but the, the priority is rescuing Joyce – uh, Mrs. Summers," Giles told her firmly, as the rest of Team Slayer went their separate ways. "The undead can wait for another time, understand?"
"Very well, Mr. Giles," the Caribbean Slayer nodded unhappily.
Luckily, Xander, the Willow-bot and the Oz-bot soon found the basement area where Mrs. Summers was being held prisoner. After reaching the last step of the stairs, the teenage trio saw the vampires guarding her asleep on the floor as well.
"Who knew vampires like to do sleepovers?" Xander joked. They quickly untied Joyce and hustled her upstairs to meet up with the others. The Scooby Gang then vacated the area, with Kendra still unhappy over missing out on the opportunity to stake Angelus, Spike and Drusilla.
As she should be – had Kendra defied orders and sought out the British vampires and staked them while they were helpless, Spike and Dru would not have killed her later on, during the summer of 1999...
Later at the library, Giles explained everything to Mrs. Summers. That Buffy was a Slayer. That vampires and demons really did exist. Also all the dangers she had faced so far, ever since the two of them had moved to Sunnydale.
"This must be some kind of joke," Joyce shook her head, refusing to believe it, clinging to denial to maintain her sanity. Unfortunately, that didn't last long before displays of supernatural strength by Buffy and Kendra convinced her that she wasn't dreaming and that denying reality wasn't going to change anything.
This was a lot to take in for Buffy's mom. She wanted her daughter to be safe. Unfortunately, 'safe' didn't exist in Sunnydale.
"Buffy, can't you – uh, just – give up being a Slayer?" Joyce asked desperately.
"Doesn't work that way, Mrs. S. Once you become a Slayer, it's a lifetime gig," Xander replied, ignoring the annoyed look Buffy sent his way for his blunt lack of tact.
"But, but -"
"Ya need ta accept it, Mrs. Summers," Kendra cut in, "Because dere's not'ing you can do ta change it."
"Besides, it's not all bad," the Willow-bot said with a nervous smile.
"Yup. Buffy and Kendra have got all of us – and even Cordelia – as backup," the Oz-bot added.
Joyce blinked. "Cordelia? You mean Cordelia Chase? The girl Buffy was constantly complaining about last year?"
"My girlfriend, yup. She couldn't make it tonight," Xander shrugged, glad that his significant other was home asleep right now.
"Well, of course, I-I'm glad you all been looking out for Buffy," Ms. Summers told the Scooby Gang, obviously still trying to cope with all she'd learned. "It, it's good that she's made such great friends to, to help her. But for right now, I, I need to talk to my daughter at home – alone. Buffy, don't be too long, alright? I'll be waiting for you in the car." Mrs. Summers then quickly left the library.
"This... is gonna be painful," Buffy grimaced.
"Well, uh, just be honest," Giles advised her. "There's, um, no point concealing anything from her anymore."
"I wouldn't confess about you dying at the end of sophomore year, though. Your mom's had enough shocks for tonight," Xander shrugged.
"Good point," Buffy nodded, before taking off after her mother. The Scooby Gang then split up as well, heading off home.
Elsewhere, the spell that had been cast on the vampires finally began to wear off. And the minions that were guarding the Slayer's mom began to panic!
"Angelus is going to be ticked off!" said one of the minions.
He wasn't wrong; upstairs, Angelus woke up and immediately headed to the basement to check on things. He wasn't happy to find the Slayer's mom gone; not at all!
"Where is she?!" Angelus growled.
Nobody knew. Not a single vampire knew that they'd been under a sleep spell, let alone know that the Scooby Gang had been there in the mansion.
Too bad for the guards that Angelus wasn't in a very forgiving mood, after learning that his plans had been derailed yet again...
Angelus also didn't like how Spike kept grinning and chortling to himself over this latest fiasco, either.
TBC…