Westworld theme park, the summer of 1999
Faith arrived at the gun shooting competition with Diana Dormer, quickly signing up at the competition entry booth. A few seconds later, Neaise signed up as well. A few moments later the Gunslinger used a fake name on the signup sheet, while elsewhere Glory found some hot springs in a hidden cave.
Deciding to indulge her whim, the demented hellgod took off her clothes and got into one of the hot springs.
{ Way better than a bubble bath, } Glory sighed, finally getting relaxed. But then - a foolish demon minion appeared and told her the Key wasn't here in the theme park.
"Damn it! I'm gonna enjoy killing you, ya little pervert!" Infuriated, Glory grabbed the demon's neck and then effortlessly broke it. Tossing the dead body at the cave wall, she went back to enjoying the water of the hot springs. "As if telling me that my Key is still missing was worth interrupting my bath time..."
Elsewhere, Buffy watched an old-fashioned puppet show, which was a rather amusing bit of Old West entertainment. The crowd of human guests and robots seemed to like it too. All the same, Buffy couldn't help wishing she had someone to share the experience with... it had been too long since her last boyfriend...
Back at the gun shooting competition, the Gunslinger was the first one up. The cowboy robot opened fire, hitting each target. Next was Faith - she hit five targets head-on, but missed the last few.
The next round was 'shoot an apple off a barrel'. Not an easy target, by any means. Most of the competitors missed and hit the barrels instead, which ended up full of holes.
Eventually, only Faith and the Gunslinger were left. Whoever got the most points by hitting the apples on the barrels was to proceed to the next round. Both of them started shooting...
At the campsite, the Scooby gang – well, Xander, Cordelia, plus the Willow-bot and Oz-bot - were telling scary stories while cooking food over the fire pit.
"This is the best camping trip in, like, years!" Xander said with a grin.
"It's a shame Buffy didn't want to come," Cordy sighed. { Maybe Buffy still hasn't gotten over Angel since he left, } she thought to herself. { I know I wouldn't be able to get over Xander leaving me, if I were in her shoes! }
Elsewhere, Buffy returned to the saloon with a heavy sigh. She hated feeling like the fifth wheel around her friends. { I bet the others are having more fun than I am, } Buffy thought to herself forlornly, entering the dining room for dinner.
Back at the shooting competition, throughout the proceedings the Gunslinger had been scanning Faith, sending the data to Jareth. In his office, the entrepreneurial demon went over the data and grinned.
"Ethan, there's another Slayer in Westworld. So, it would seem that Kendra girl got killed while the rest of her friends are here in my theme park," Jareth laughed darkly.
"Ah, interesting. So are you going to use both Slayers in your master plan?" Ethan asked, thinking on his escape plan just in case all hell broke out with the robots.
"Of course, they'll be replicants..." Jareth was looking forward to seeing how the Slayers dealt with the vampire robots.
A short while later, the shooting competition ended with the final round – namely, a quickdraw competition. Perhaps unsurprisingly Faith won, with the prize being a set of golden guns. Accepting the congratulations from Diana, Faith offered the prize to her Watcher as thanks for bringing her here. Diana declined, though – telling her charge to keep them, she'd earned her prize.
For his part, the Gunslinger didn't care about useless game prizes. The psychotic robotic cowboy was looking forward to taking on one of the Slayers himself, though.
Later that night Willow, Cordy, Xander and Oz retired for the evening inside their tents – while elsewhere, Buffy had fallen asleep in her bed. Elsewhere, Angel found a rundown house outside of town. The place was originally going to be used for a haunted house amusement centre, but it had been abandoned by Jareth and the rest of DELOS before construction could be completed.
Even for demons, financial cutbacks were a major thing.
Angel grimaced as he explored the place - the ghost robots were a big mess of things gone wrong. They failed to pop up to scare the guests. The ghost robots also failed to glow on their own without any input. Now they were used for parts, but some of them had been left behind here in the so-called haunted house.
Angel stopped and made a decision, figuring this place will suffice as his lair for now. He found a bedroom that, like the rest of the house, had seen better days. The haunted house was in pretty bad shape, and so Angel figured he didn't have to worry about anyone finding out he was there. Sitting on the bedframe, he tried to figure out what to do next...
The Sunnydale Hellmouth was currently undefended, Angel knew that. Logically speaking, he should have gone up to Buffy straightaway and told her the bad news, that Kendra was dead – and that she had to return home immediately. And yet, he hadn't been able to do it. Maybe it was because he was being manipulated by a higher power, or maybe it was because he didn't want to ruin Buffy's vacation, or maybe it was something else.
Whatever the reason, to his shame, Angel was totally procrastinating – and he didn't know how to stop...
A short while later, Faith and Diana boarded the train again. "I had a total blast, and won me some sweet guns!" Faith smiled with glee.
"I'm glad you had fun, Faith. But it's getting late, and I'm rather tired," Diana yawned as she sat down on the seat, Faith taking a seat across from her Watcher. The Slayer couldn't deny she was pretty tired as well, enhanced stamina or not.
In Buffy's room at the saloon, she had woken up and started reading a book, before deciding to go back to sleep. Outside the saloon, most of the shops had closed up for the night. On the street, a robot couple were heading home from the casino. And then - a vampire robot dressed as a cowboy jumped the cowboy robot, before it had a chance to fire its gun at the vamp-bot!
Fangs in his neck, the robotic cowboy dropped the pistol to the ground. The female robot was about scream as the second vampire robot (who was also dressed as a cowboy) snuck up behind her and bit into her neck. The vamp-bots drained the human-looking robots dry of whatever kind of blood or circulatory fluid they had. Afterwards, the vampire-bots disappeared into the night after dropping their victims to the ground.
It could be argued that the whole thing was a waste of both time and resources, that Jareth was pointlessly reenacting the real world in his theme park this way. But there *was* a method to his madness, there was a reason why he had programmed the machines to act this way...
The next morning, a few people found the dead bodies with bite marks on their necks. They naturally raised a fuss, and before long, a huge throng had gathered to see the robotic corpses. The sheriff and his deputies tried to calm down the crowd of people and told them to move along, that there was nothing to see here. Naturally, all such attempts failed miserably to succeed.
It was at that point that Xander, Cordy and the robotic versions of Oz and Willow returned from their little camping trip. As they walked into town, they heard someone say 'vampire'.
"Oh great, vampires in the Old West!" Xander said in annoyance, looking around. "What, do the owners of this place know about the undead? Or is this just some kinda coincidence, a theme park stunt?"
"Who knows," Cordelia shrugged, looking around as well.
Both the Willow-bot and the Oz-bot shared a look. They knew Jareth must be up to something. Regardless, they followed Xander and Cordy into the saloon to meet up with Buffy. Not far away, Faith and Diana saw the bite marks on the robotic corpses as well.
"Robot vampires. Sounds pretty interesting, huh?" Faith said with a grin on her face.
Her Watcher sighed, before saying, "Before we go looking for clues as to what exactly is going on here, we should get some breakfast." Diana then escorted Faith into the saloon.
Back in his office, Jareth suddenly got bored with the Scooby gang's little vacation. So the Willow and Oz robots got ordered to attack the Scooby gang!
"Will? Oz?" Buffy asked uncertainly, as the two robots took a step back with a look of unholy glee on their faces.
"After all these years, the ruse is over! We've been told to show you human fleshbags what we really are!" they said in unison. Both of the robots then put their hands into their mouths, and they pulled down their faces - showing robotic skulls, just in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. That movie was Jareth's favorite after The Lost Boys, after all.
Buffy, Xander and Cordelia were all in shock, stunned and horrified. They'd had no idea that Oz and Willow were robots! Cordy in particular looked like she was about to be sick. The Scooby gang wondered for a moment where the real Willow and Oz were, before the two robots pulled their faces back into normal.
Before the two 'bots could attack their (former) human friends, Faith burst through the doors, firing her guns at them! The robots almost lost their footing from the impact of the bullets, but didn't fall down.
"Oh, hey, so you must be the new Slayer!" the Willow-bot said cheerfully, with a demented-looking grin.
The Scooby gang sent each other questionable looks, before Buffy said with a horrified expression, "Kendra must've been killed!"
The Oz-bot raised his shotgun and was about to open fire, but Buffy instinctively kicked it out of his hands. Moving quickly, quicker than a normal human, Xander grabbed the shotgun before it could hit the floor - and then he pulled the trigger, unloading directly into the Oz-bot's face.
The loud "BOOM!" thundered throughout the saloon as Xander thought to himself, { Dammit, Willow and Oz were robots the whole time? Have I been totally blind or what? } He tried to ignore the sickening feeling that he had just shot a friend – his best friend's boyfriend, at that.
A moment later, the Oz-bot's head was blown up into pieces. The headless body fell to the floor and started to twist and spark madly.
Screeching incoherently, the Willow-bot went into rage mode. Pushing them out of the way, and then busting through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man, the female robot ran away from her former human friends.
A few seconds later, the Willow-bot dropped out of rage mode behind a building. The Gunslinger spotted her, and then opened fire with his gun. A bullet went right into the Willow-bot's head! Like the Oz-bot before her, she fell to the ground, twitching and sparking madly.
{ Foolish spy failed to follow simple orders. } The Gunslinger holstered his gun and then walked away, transmitting to Jareth what had happened.
Not far away, Jareth wasn't too happy that his robot spies had failed him! He slammed his fist hard on his desk, which broke in half! Everything lay broken into pieces on the floor that was once on the desk. It was too bad for him he was so angry, he didn't give any consideration to what this would mean for the captive Willow and Oz...
Back in the saloon, Buffy, Xander and Cordy were taken to meet the new Slayer's Watcher. If they were to go after the Willow-bot, Faith figured they would need Diana's wisdom and guidance.
Both Slayers and the Watcher talked among themselves, as Cordelia drew her boyfriend off to the side. "You okay?" she asked.
Xander shook his head slowly. "No, not at all."
"Yeah. Jeez, I can't believe that Willow and Oz were robots this whole time," Cordelia sighed. A noise and a provocative gesture from Faith made the Sunnydale girl decide to keep an eye on the new Chosen One, to make sure the Slayer kept her mitts off her boyfriend!
Ignorant of Cordy's feelings, Xander still couldn't believe that his best friend was a damn robot. "When?"
"Huh?"
"When did the real Will and Oz get switched with those – things?" Xander asked her, his eyes full of pain.
"I don't know," Cordelia shook her head. "Probably around the time Willow started to grow a spine, after Buffy showed up in Sunnydale?"
"Yeah. Maybe," Xander said contemplatively.
Not far away, Faith told Buffy about the two robots with bite marks. The blonde Slayer blinked, before the Summers girl summoned her two Sunnydale friends to join them. "Did you guys know about this?" Buffy demanded.
"The robots who looked like they were fed on by vampires? Yeah," Cordy shrugged.
"We need to further investigate this," Professor Dormer said authoritatively, looking at the newcomers.
"Great, chasing bloodsucking vamp-bots of the night!" Xander rolled his eyes.
"Yeah, I can think of more fun ways to spend my summer vacation," Faith said in a sultry tone, eyeing Xander appreciatively – and not seeming to care about the stormy look that appeared on Cordelia's face, who didn't like her territory being infringed upon.
For his part, Xander acknowledged that Faith was pretty good-looking. But in his somewhat biased view, his girlfriend was far more beautiful – and Xander knew he would never hurt Cordy that way. So he grabbed hold of Cordy's hand, and squeezed softly – causing the Chase girl's scowl to vanish, as a toothpaste commercial-quality smile quickly appeared on Cordelia's face. { Yeah, that's my girl! }
For her part, this was all too much to take in for Buffy right now. And she wanted nothing more than to find these vampire robots and slay them. { I wonder if they'll explode into dust if I stake 'em? Nah, they can't be THAT realistic... }
TBC...
