It took Connor many hours. He stayed in the apartment with the man and woman (whose names were Jack and Mandy) and attempted to figure out what was with the odd feeling inside his chest. Apparently, he being around affected them as well, because they both felt weird sensations inside them that wouldn't allow them to fight against Connor.

At first, he couldn't figure it out. There was a nagging voice in his head, other than Illyria, and it was telling him to do something, but he didn't know what. Illyria didn't know what to do. This was something there was very little experience for. What did you do with the person you killed who came back to life? There was some kind of power over these people and Faith, that much Connor/Illyria knew, but what kind of power was it, and how could it be accessed?

It was discovered by accident. Jack and Mandy were pissing him off. There were just standing there idiotically, not trying to help him find out what power he had over them.

"Get out!" Connor/Illyria screeched angrily. He didn't mean it, in the moment, but the anger caused him to say things that weren't necessarily correct.

The two idiots began to walk away.

"Not literally, you fools! Come back here."

They did. And Connor/Illyria realized. They were following the orders.

"Mandy, get me some water," Connor/Illyria tested the theory. She walked over to the cupboard, grabbed a glass, and moved over to the refrigerator. "Stop," Connor/Illyria ordered. She did.

The whole time she was following his orders, she was trying to fight it. It was like her body just couldn't fight whatever this mysterious stranger with ludicrously blue eyes told her to do. She seemed to be taken over, or something, because she wasn't in control when he told her to do something. That scared her so much she found it hard to breathe.

"Jack, lie on the ground."

Immediately he dropped and stayed there. A grin formed on Connor's face. This was great. This was amazing. Fantastic!

Faith. He could control her also, then. And she was an extremely powerful Slayer. That would be extraordinarily useful.

Connor/Illyria tested out the new power even more. As it turned out, Illyria could also think orders and they'd do them. It took a little longer, but with a little more practice surely she could perfect it so it worked all the time.

Harmony, after a while, finally joined everyone in Angel's office. She was wondering what they were doing in there and what they were talking about that she couldn't be included in. Angel didn't want to tell her, really, but all she had to do was ask Drogyn and he spit everything out. Harmony grinned at Angel. Even if he didn't want her to know, she'd find out anyway. She considered herself part of the team, anyway, so why weren't they including her in these meetings?

She was a bit surprised to hear so much had been going on without her knowing. Besides, she couldn't wrap her mind around why they wouldn't tell her. She could be a powerful ally, she thought.

The one good side to everything that she was excluded on was that the Slayer was leaving. It was nothing too personal, Harmony just felt too weak around a Slayer, so Faith leaving wouldn't be too bad. Apparently, they still had a little while before she left, but the clock was ticking down and she'd be gone soon because of Willow's teleportation spell that'd bring her back so she could share what she found out about Angel and everyone else.

The rest of the group was talking about something that, again, excluded Harmony and made her angry. Lucky for her, there was one other person in the room they weren't paying attention to and she wasn't paying attention either. Harmony walked over to Lilah and started venting.

"Ridiculous, right? I mean, could they be any ruder? Who do they think they are? I don't know who you are, but I'm part of this team. But do they include me in any meetings? No. Do they tell me what's going on? No. Not until I'm useful to them in one way or another. Especially Spike, who's just a user, so stay away from him. I feel like none of them appreciate who and what I am to them. They'd be lost without me, I'd guarantee. If I never came in here and-"

"Do you ever shut up?" Lilah asked.

"Wow. Somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed."

"Nope. There are no beds in Hell."

"Hey, watch it with the attitude. Don't make me bite you."

"Go ahead and try, vampire. You won't do anything to me."

"How do you know?" Harmony squealed. Didn't this woman know what a powerful, dangerous creature she was? Didn't she know she could drink every last ounce of delicious blood out of her and kill her?

Lilah reached over with her hand and tried to touch Harmony's. Instead of contact, Lilah's hand fell through her arm. She pulled her arm away. Harmony looked at her with shock.

"Incorporeal form, here," Lilah informed her.

"Then what are you doing here?"

"Just hanging along for the ride, as we former Wolfram & Hart employees do after death."

"Huh. Well, I'm already dead, so I don't think I'll have that problem."

"Good for you. Now, if you don't mind, the conversation can stop."

Harmony was offended again. This woman was so rude! Oh well, she would just have to find someone else to talk to. Everyone else was talking in the big group, though. No one wanted to talk to her now. She was alone. Nobody here cared for her. Nobody here even cared if she was around or not. Harmony had to face the truth. She was useless.

She stormed out of the office, as if anyone would notice anyway. Nobody would look for her anyway. She helped them for so long, pretty much their whole time at Wolfram & Hart, and they didn't appreciate her work or what she did. Why not? Was she really that unbearable?

It was times like this where she missed being human and going to high school and Cordelia. She always had so many friends and people she could talk to. Here, no one wanted to talk to her and she had no one to talk to.

Willow was preparing for the teleportation spell to bring Faith back to Rome. All she had to do was have one of Faith's possessions and basically reverse the original teleportation spell so Faith came back instead of went anywhere else. It would be easy, or hopefully easy enough. It wasn't a particularly difficult spell, so Willow was content doing it for the cause. She was in the living room while the others were gathered elsewhere.

Buffy and Oz were in the kitchen. Buffy was surprised to be approached by Oz and for him to actually tell her he had something he wanted to talk to her about. She wasn't sure about it; the whole thing just didn't seem too Oz-ish. She felt like something was going on, and she wasn't sure of what.

"I've been thinking," Oz started, but paused. Buffy stood there awkwardly and waited for him to continue. "I don't want to go back."

"Excuse me?" she wasn't sure she understood.

"I want to help. Here. With you guys. With all of the Slayers. I want to stay and help in any way that I can."

"Oz, that's sweet, really. We have everything covered, though."

"Oh," Oz broke away from their eye contact. "Yeah, no, I understand."

Buffy felt guilty. That wasn't right. He wanted to stay, wanted to help, and she shouldn't deny him that. How many people would be willing to help with hundreds of overly-powerful girls who killed vampires?

"You know, actually, we can never use too much help," Buffy corrected herself. "And Oz, it'd be great to have you around again. If you want to stay, you're completely welcome."

"Thanks. I still want to make sure it'd be okay with Willow…and Kennedy."

"Well, I'm sure it'll all work out."

Oz agreed, and then he and Buffy separated. She went to go find Dawn, and Oz entered the living room, where Will was still preparing for the spell. She was looking back and forth from the book and the ingredients, double checking that she had everything she needed to have.

In that moment, Oz decided for sure that he wanted to stay. It didn't matter if Willow wanted to be with him or not or whatever. Actually, he was even unsure that he wanted to be with Willow anymore. Did he still love her and care for her? Yeah, but that didn't matter right now, or anytime in the near future that he could see. Right now, he just wanted to stay here, with everybody, with his old friends.

"Sorry, I didn't see you there," Willow spoke, breaking into Oz's thoughts. "Do you need something?"

"No," he shook his head. "Well, what if I stayed? I mean if I didn't go back to Tibet?"

"Oh, Oz, that'd be great! It'd be like part of having the original Scooby gang back. Although, fair warning, Slayer work may not be as fun as it sounds."

He gave a small smiled. "Yeah, powerful girls who could get angry and kill easily doesn't sound like too much fun. I still think I'd like to help, though. I'll talk to Kennedy about it if you'd like."

Willow shook her head. "Oz, you don't have to talk to Kennedy about anything. It's your choice. If you want to stay, please feel free to stay."

"I do. I just figured we'd be able to…clear the air. Make friends, maybe."

"Are we ready?" Buffy asked, walking in from the kitchen. "It's almost time, right?"

"Yeah, almost," Willow said and started preparing to do the spell.

Connor/Illyria was in front of Wolfram & Hart with Jack and Mandy. Mandy held a gun that had been in the apartment while Jack held an ax. Connor/Illyria had a plan for them to go inside Wolfram & Hart and attack the place. He didn't really care what happened to them, seeing as they were just weapons he was utilizing at the moment, but he knew he wasn't going to go inside; he'd control them from out here in order to avoid the risk of getting captured or attacked or anything. He learned that if he concentrated hard enough and closed his eyes, he could just barely see through Jack or Mandy's own eyes.

While he was ordering them around, he also wanted to attempt to control Faith. She was up there, and she had died, so Connor/Illyria had to be able to control her.

"Go inside," Connor/Illyria ordered. He began giving them full instructions up to Angel's office. When they left, he closed his eyes and started to concentrate on whatever it'd take to get into Faith's head.

"So this is it?" Angel asked Faith.

"Nah," Faith said casually. "Maybe I'll come back. Red could do another spell and I could help some more. That wouldn't be too bad, would it?"

"Well, whatever you want," Angel told her. "Are you going to tell everyone this whole crazy story?"

"Do you want me to?"

Angel didn't know how to respond. Buffy and them all deserved to know the truth about what was really going on, but it was so complicated and if Faith told them maybe they'd then think that they needed to come down to help, and that was a bit unnecessary. But Faith was, in fact, sent here to find out what was going on, so why shouldn't she report everything back to Buffy and them?

Over near Angel and Faith were Spike, Gunn, and Lorne. They weren't really talking, instead just looking around at the room around them and thinking. What could they say? Nobody really knew what Angel was going to really do, if he was going to kill Connor or try to teach Connor to fight Illyria, or do the insane suggestion about releasing Illyria into someone else so she would get out of Connor and then trying to stop her before she fully rose.

Drogyn was off sitting at the table, alone.

Wes and Fred were talking together. Wes appreciated her staying with him and trusting him. Fred was simply happy that he wanted to be around her again and that he was recovering from the return of memories. She believed that, somehow, the return of all these memories would make their relationship even stronger than before.

Lilah was across the office, somewhat watching Wes and Fred be oh-so happy and lovely together. It was sickening not only in the cheesy way, but in a way that actually made Lilah sadder than before. It was hard for her to explain, but it just felt like her past with Wes was now gone, forgotten forever because of Fred. She didn't know why, but that hurt.

Harmony, after leaving earlier, came back into the office deciding that being here and slightly ignored was better than running off alone. At one point Spike tried to talk to her, but she ushered him away. She didn't want to talk to him because she was still angry. He used her and then threw her away! How could she be so mad at him and still care for him so much? Ugh, she thought to herself, why do I have all these human feelings for him? I shouldn't even care that much. But she did care, and she couldn't deny it.

The calmness was loudly disrupted by a shocking BANG and then the explosion of glass causing everyone to scream and duck. The window broke into a million pieces and as all the glass fell to the floor a woman holding a gun and a man an ax appeared. Angel and Gunn reacted the quickest and jumped forward to fight off the people before they did anymore damage. The man swung the ax at Gunn and he ducked as Angel wrestled the woman for the gun.

Another gunshot went off, this one inside Angel's stomach. He groaned, always having hated the feeling of getting show.

The man was surprisingly good at fighting. Gunn punched him to the ground, expecting him to stay down, but instead he jumped right up and swung again and again, only missing by mere inches at this point.

Faith yelled in pain when it hit her. There was a noise or a movement or something in her head that caused a tremor of pain and she didn't know how to react until she heard the voice.

Kill the blond, the voice said.

The first person Faith saw when she looked up was Spike and his blond hair. He was looking at Angel and Gunn's struggle, ready to jump in just in case they needed any help. She tried to resist it, but Faith felt her own arms reach around and pull her stake out of her back pocket and her feet taking slow steps forward. What am I doing? Faith's own voice in her head questioned. I don't want to kill Spike.

She couldn't resist what the voice told her to do and she was nearing Spike. She wanted to cry out for help, begging for someone to stop her, but no one was looking, all preoccupied with what was happening with Angel and Gunn and she would kill him and she couldn't fight it and no one would understand and then-

The voice was Illyria. It had to be. Who else would it be? And she couldn't fight it.

Harmony was lucky. She turned just for a second to see how everyone was reacting to these crazy people. She saw Faith nearing Spike with a stake and she saw no one was close enough to stop Faith except for her.

"Blondie Bear!" Harmony yelled, unable to stop herself. She ran forward and pushed Spike out of the way just as Faith lifted the stake higher. "Stay away from him!" she yelled and kicked Faith.

Kill the blond, Connor/Illyria repeated, and Faith saw that Harmony was blond also. She picked herself right back up and jumped forward, stake still firm in her hand.

Faith tackled Harmony to the ground in one swift motion and raised the stake.

"Faith, no!" Spike shouted.

His shouts did nothing. The stake came flying down and hit Harmony right where it was supposed to. Her mouth opened wide, in shock. She didn't know stakes would hurt so much.

Faith dropped to the floor as the vampire turned to dust. Since "the blond," as Connor/Illyria had said, was gone, Faith was in control again and she fully registered what she did. She just killed Angel's secretary. She wasn't a good vampire, really, but she wasn't evil, either, and she didn't deserve to die.

Angel finally managed to knock the woman out and helped Gunn take the ax away from the man and knock him out as well. When they were done, they looked over and saw everyone staring at Faith sitting in a pile of dust. They realized there was one missing vampire from the room.

"No," Spike shook his head. "You bitch Slayer! What'd you do that for?!"

"Look it wasn't-" Faith started to explain but stopped when she felt something else happening to her. It wasn't like when Connor/Illyria spoke to her, instead it felt the same as when she went through the teleportation spell the first time. It was happening again. She was going back to Rome.

"Faith!" Angel tried to call but it was too late. She disappeared and fell into her own darkness as she was being brought back to Rome. Her last view of everybody was them staring at her as Angel ran towards her as if he knew what was happening. In that last line of sight, Faith decided what needed to be done because Connor/Illyria needed to be stopped and Connor didn't deserve to die and Willow might be able to help if they released Illyria, and she hoped Angel realized that too.

Willow finished the spell. She smiled as she did, knowing that it was easy, just as she knew it'd be. Everyone was gathered in the living room at this point, and they were waiting for Faith to arrive. Since she was coming back to Rome, it didn't take her as long as it took to send her to L.A.

Faith was sitting and breathing heavily when she arrived. She had sweat on her forehead and dust on her shirt. She looked like hell.

"Faith, what's going on?" Buffy hurried as she rushed to Faith. She wanted to know what was going on in L.A. and why she looked like she'd been through hell. Were things really that bad over there? "Tell us everything."

Andrew got her a glass of water and she sat for a minute, thinking about what she should actually tell all of them.

"There's kind of an emergency over there," she started to tell them. "Angel's not Angelus or anything like that, but his son is all messed up and it's affecting everyone around them. Look, as much as I'd enjoy explaining everything, there's no time. Willow, you have to send me back and you have to come with me."

"Wh-what?" Will stuttered. "Wh-why me? I mean, what are you talking about?"

"Look, Red, we may need some magic and you're the only one who could help."

"She can't go," Kennedy stepped up. "Not until we know what's going on, anyway."

"Trust me, there's no time," Faith argued. "If we don't go back there's a huge possibility that a bunch of people will die and then be taken over by an extremely powerful demon." They all gave her blank stares. "Okay, like I said, it's all pretty hard to explain. You just have to trust me on this."

"How powerful of magic are we talking here?" Willow posed, thinking about the dark side of her that could come out.

"Pretty powerful, I'm not gonna lie. It could save the world, though."

"Could save the world?" Buffy enunciated. "We can't just send her away on an off chance. Will she or will she not be able to save the world?"

Faith didn't know how to respond. She didn't know if Willow could really save the world because they had no idea if they'd really be able to freeze Illyria inside someone if they released her into another "shell." Also, Faith didn't even know if Angel and his friends expected to go through with that plan, considering how unlikely it seemed. At this point, she truly believed it was the right move, though, especially since she'd just killed Harmony, a vampire who, nonetheless, didn't deserve to die, and that made her realized that Connor didn't deserve to die either just because he was stuck with Illyria.

"We have to try," Faith said, avoiding the question.

"Willow can make her own decisions," Oz stood up for her. "What do you think, Will?"

Willow didn't know what to think. She had no idea what was going on and now Faith wanted her to do some powerful magic. That seemed like a recipe for disaster. What choice did she have, though, if she could try to save the world?

She shook her head, not believing what she was about to say. "I guess we'll just go and see if they do need me."

Faith grinned. "Then get another teleportation spell ready, Red."