4 Parkview Crescent Sunnydale, March 2nd 1998
At the Chase residence, Cordelia had brought Xander over to officially meet her parents. And suffice it to say, David Chase and his wife weren't happy that she was dating Xander Harris of all people.
"So. Just what kind of future do you think you can offer my little girl?" Cordelia's mother looked down her nose at her daughter's boyfriend.
"I'm not sure. All I know right now is, I can help make sure that Cordy actually *has* a future, what with living in this town and all," Xander replied.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Cordelia's father demanded suspiciously.
Xander looked at his girlfriend, who just nodded silently. So Harris took a deep breath, got out a tennis ball and crushed it with his right hand. "Something like that, sir."
Both David and Julia Chase instinctively moved back, fear appearing on their faces almost immediately in the face of the weird and unusual. But Xander soon won over Cordy's parents, after telling them the cold harsh truth about the Hellmouth. They talked nearly all night about all the things that went bump – make that 'chomp' – in the night within Sunnydale, and all the dead and missing people around here as a result.
In the end, the Chase elders made a deal with their daughter. Namely, don't do anything to publicly embarrass them and graduate high school on time, and they'll give her and her boyfriend a fantastic graduation present.
Namely, next summer, Cordelia and Xander would be going to Westworld…
Somewhere in downtown Sunnydale, March 3rd 1998
Anyanka (a.k.a. Anya Jenkins) wasn't very happy living as a human. It'd been over three months since she'd lost her status as a feared vengeance demon after Jareth had destroyed her amulet last November, and she'd pretty much hated every moment of it.
Naturally, she'd begged and pleaded with her boss – former boss – to give her another amulet and make her a demon again. But D'Hoffryn had told her, "No, certainly not. You lost your immortality due to your own mistakes, and I have my own matters to deal with. Live out your life as a human and then die, for all I care."
And with that said, she'd heard nothing from him since.
{ What a dick, } Anya thought to herself angrily. { Well, looks like I have find someone else to help me. Maybe I should pretend to be a student at the high school, and find a spellcaster to fix my amulet? } She couldn't think of anything better, so Anya headed over to Sunnydale High.
Not far away, Amy headed to her first class of the day. Little did she know that she would soon run into a former vengeance demon, which would lead to meeting her twin from another world…
Later that night, Xander was on patrol with Kendra, but they eventually split up to cover more territory. Harris was kinda glad, as that meant he could use the Blade Runner blaster; he wouldn't have to worry about the Jamaican Slayer asking awkward questions about how he got it. And a short while later, Xander used the blaster on an unlucky vampire that was climbing out of its grave.
"Fires like a dream," Xander said to himself happily, as the bloodsucker vaporized into nothing but tiny traces of dust. He then continued the evening patrol, getting a few more vamps before meeting up with Kendra again; and then calling it a night, and going home.
The next morning, Anya finally tracked down the spellcaster she'd been looking for. She'd heard that there was a witch at the high school, from some demons talking at Willie's bar. And if there was one thing the former Anyanka was famous for, it was her tenacity and refusal to give up after she'd set her sights on getting something she wanted...
Elsewhere, Angelus came up with another plan to get Buffy where it hurt. Namely, to grab Giles and lure the Slayer into a trap - since his plan regarding Joyce had failed. Meanwhile, Anya found Amy using her mind-control magic again on one of her classmates – one that was a total bully – given the witch had thought that no one was watching.
{ Hmm, this idiot child might actually be worth my time, } Anya thought to herself appraisingly, withdrawing so as not be noticed. { She seems to have the right attitude towards males, anyway. }
Not far away in the school library, Cordelia told the gathered Scooby gang that she and Xander were going to Westworld next year – as a graduation gift from her parents. The money had already been placed in escrow with DELOS, with the tickets to be delivered by next Halloween...
"Oh, wow! Congratulations," the Willow-bot said, playing its role perfectly.
"Thanks, Will," Xander smiled, curling an arm around his girlfriend. "Wish you guys could come too..."
"Any reason why we couldn't?" the Oz-bot said in its typical laid-back way.
"Hey, yeah! I bet I could totally talk my parents into splurging on something like that, for me and my boyfriend," the robotic redhead said excitedly. "Their practice has been doing well enough lately, they could easily afford it. Oh! Buffy, you should totally come as well!"
Buffy looked shocked at the very suggestion, trading a look with first Giles and then Kendra. The Watcher shook his head meaningfully, while the Caribbean girl simply shrugged disinterestedly. "Uh, I dunno, Willow. I mean, I don't think I can leave town for that long..." the blond Chosen One started to prevaricate.
"Buffy, come on! Pleeeease?" the Willow-bot pleaded as part of its programming.
"We'll see," Buffy said, in a tone that did not invite continued discussion about the subject.
A few hours later, with Anya and Amy...
{ That's the last time I ever do magic at school, } Amy thought to herself grumpily. She couldn't believe that she'd been found out *again*! Only this time, she hadn't been as lucky as she'd been with Xander, with Anya demanding a price for her silence...
They went to an abandoned old house on the outskirts of Sunnydale. Nobody had lived there in years, and it was said to be haunted by ghosts. And after they talked, Amy wasn't sure what to make of Anya's strange request.
"I'm not sure if I can repair it," she told Anya, after inspecting the crushed amulet. "I'm just a beginner where the magic's concerned, you know?"
The former demon sighs and rolls her eyes in disgust. "Well, give it a try, then!" she ordered Amy.
Amy began to cast her magic - but instead of fixing Anya's amulet, a portal opened up in the Wish world, and pulled Amy's doppelgänger away just in time before she got killed by the vampire named Luke!
As the portal closed in the Wish world, Luke slammed his fist into a wall in anger. "The Master is *not* going to like this!" he hissed to himself.
The portal opened in the original pre-Wish Sunnydale, and out came tumbling the other Amy Madison. "What the-?" She got up and looked around in disbelief, seeing buildings still standing and not in ruins. "What's going on here?"
The scene made no sense to her eyes. There were no vampires or even demons out walking around town and killing people, left and right – just like it had been, once, long ago...
The alien Amy had almost forgotten what Sunnydale used to look like, before the Master took over. It didn't take long for her to figure out the situation, either – the recent tale the alien Harmony Kendall had told the white hats in her world was still fresh in Amy's mind, after all.
Could she risk going home in this different version of Sunnydale and run into her double? Before she could even make a choice, though, out of nowhere - Angelus showed up! With a sadistic cackle of glee, the soulless vampire quickly attached his fangs onto Amy's neck and he fed gleefully – and even worse, poor old Amy was turned by him a few moments later.
Back at the abandoned old house, nothing seemed to have happened – and so, Anya grabbed her crushed amulet and left Amy behind after quite a few choice curse words. For her part, the young witch simply shrugged and decided to go home.
At Oz's home, the robot versions of Oz and Willow were talking to Jareth via the male robot's eye, in their standard way. They gave him their report and then waited for the demon to reply. As expected, it didn't take long for him to do so.
"So Angelus hasn't been slayed by Buffy yet?" Jareth asked.
"No, he's still around. And actually, it's getting pretty dangerous around here," the Willow-bot sighed. "Because that vampire is getting worse and worse, the more often the Slayer foils his evil plans... we might end up getting exposed by Angelus, y'know, if he decides to target us as Buffy's friends."
The Oz-bot didn't add anything to that, although his silence was tacit agreement with the redhead's words and the demon was smart enough to pick up on that.
"Protect yourselves as necessary, then, and have a plan in place to flee Sunnydale if you *are* exposed. Have there been any other robots in that town since Ted showed up?" Jareth asked, as he didn't want anything to mess with his plan.
"Not a single one," said the Oz robot.
"Well, you two get back to work, and don't let me down." Jareth shut off the link at his end, before the Oz-bot put his eye back into the empty eye socket.
"This sucks, Oz. We have to scan like maybe every human, vampire and demon in this town?" The Willow robot wasn't happy with their latest orders. Her boyfriend didn't like them at all, either.
At a house not all that far away from the Osborne residence, was a ventriloquist dummy that could walk and talk on its own – just like another dummy named Sid, during the previous year. This ventriloquist's dummy, though, wasn't a cursed demon hunter – no, he was once a student at Sunnydale High. His name was Johnny West...
He'd gone as Slappy from the 'Goosebumps' book series and TV show the previous Halloween, but he hadn't changed back afterwards like his friends did. He remembered what Slappy had done during that All Hallow's Eve, like playing cruel pranks on trick or treaters - and even non-trick or treaters. Johnny also retained of some of Slappy's mind manipulation power, which the dummy had used on people in cursed costumes to help him cause trouble.
Having Slappy's powers was cool and all, but Johnny hadn't wanted to spend the rest of his days as a walking puppet. So he'd decided to move into a new body, after finally getting his hands on a Draconian Katra device. Ironically enough, he'd found it with the aid of a map he'd bought at the Magicks Through The Ages store...
"Boss, what are we going to do about these dummies on the couch?" one of the henchmen asked.
"The family may be useful for something," Johnny laughed, staring at the wooden dummies that would soon become his latest batch of lackeys.
The Scooby gang had no idea what they'd soon be up against, once they met Slappy the Dummy...
Abandoned mansion on Crawford Street, March 5th 1998
As the clock ticked past midnight, Spike was sitting on the couch watching TV – again – while not far away, Angelus tried to come up with ideas for the plan to lure Buffy to her death using a kidnapped Giles. Unfortunately, he couldn't do it.
"Damn it! I can't think of a way to make the plan fool-proof, thanks to Buffy and her annoying friends," Angelus growled heavily, trying to keep his cool.
Dru entered the room with a smile. "I'm sure you'll think of something, Daddy!" She grinned while walking towards him. Well, naturally, that got Angelus all distracted, and soon he and Drusilla were fornicating like crazy...
They weren't exactly quiet either, which only made William the Bloody even more enraged. Still, Spike had his own plan for the Slayers in mind, which he was keeping to himself for the time being.
And at that moment, the undead version of Amy Madison woke up. "What-?! Oh. I'm a vampire now..."
"Yeah, that you are, whatever yer name is," Spike growled at her, as Vamp Amy got up off the floor where her corpse had been dumped.
The female vampire grinned at him. "Hi! I'm Amy. Amy Madison."
"Spike. So, you're Angelus's latest creation, then? Can't wait to see how that turns out – yer predecessor, older bird named Jenny Calendar, she didn't last long," Spike suddenly smirked at Vamp Amy.
"Well, but I'm guessing she didn't have you as an ally, though – am I right? So, then, Spike...call me crazy, but I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship..." Vamp Amy purred sexily.
TBC…