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| I Robot—You Jane | Nightmares |
“I will be whole! I will be new!” the demon says to itself as it lurks backstage at rehearsals for the Sunnydale High talent show. It is watching Emily warm up for her dance routine. There are several other students preparing their acts. Marc is out on stage practicing his magic act, and Cordelia is singing Whitney Houston’s The Greatest Love of All1 very badly.
Giles is sitting alone in the auditorium with somewhat glazed eyes. He interrupts Cordelia’s song. He has heard enough.
“But I didn’t do the part with the sparklers!” says Cordy.
Giles thinks they can save that for the dress rehearsal. He calls on the next performer, Lisa, who steps out onto stage with her tuba.
Buffy, Xander and Willow enter the auditorium. They had to see this to believe it. Buffy wonders how on earth Giles managed to finagle himself this primo assignment.
“Our new Fuehrer, Mr. Snyder,” says Giles.
“I think they call them ‘Principals’ now,” says Willow.
Giles doesn’t care what they call them. Principal Snyder informed him that he thought that Giles should have more contact with the students, and gave him the job of producing the talent show. He didn’t care that Giles became a librarian in order to minimize his contact with the students.
“Giles, unto every generation is born one who must run the annual talentless show,” says Buffy. “You cannot escape your destiny.”
Giles thinks that if they had any decency they would be helping him.
“Nyah!” says Buffy, “I think I’ll take on your traditional role, and watch!”
“And mock!” says Xander.
“And laugh!” says Willow.
The three get up to leave, but they run into the new Principal. Principal Snyder is a short, balding man, with prominent ears. He looks something like a Ferengi.2 Principal Snyder is not impressed with their attitudes. He is also not impressed by the fact that the three of them left school property during school hours yesterday. Buffy starts to explain that it was because they were fighting a demon, but thinks better of it.
Snyder has been watching them. He doesn’t like what he’s seen. They always seem to be getting into some sort of trouble. He thinks that it would be a very good idea for them to participate in the talent show themselves. “My predecessor, Mr. Flutie, may have gone in for all that touchy-feely relating nonsense, but he was eaten. You’re in my world now. And Sunnydale has touched and felt for the last time.”
Buffy and her friends really don’t want to be in the talent show. Xander suggests that detention is a time honoured method of punishment. The girls nod agreement.
Snyder isn’t impressed. “I know the three of you will come up with a wonderful act for the school to watch. And mock. And laugh. At.” He walks off toward the stage.
A dejected Buffy sits back down beside Giles as Lisa finishes her tuba performance, and the next act comes out on stage: Morgan, and his ventriloquist’s dummy Sid. Buffy is a little wigged. She doesn’t like dummies. Willow asks for the story behind that, and Buffy tells her there isn’t one. She just doesn’t like dummies.
Morgan begins his act. The talent displayed for the show descends to a new level of badness. His lack of ability as ventriloquist is accentuated by the horribleness of his jokes.
Suddenly the dummy’s voice shifts down a couple of octaves. “Alright, time out! Let’s stop this before someone gets hurt.” The dummy turns and looks at Morgan. “Kid, you are the worst. Even I can see your lips move.”
Morgan looks at the dummy in surprise. “C’mon, Sid. You’re spoiling my act. I worked on these jokes for weeks.”
“You call those jokes?” asks Sid. “My jockey shorts are made out of better material.” That gets a laugh from a few of the other performers who have paused to watch. “And they’re edible!” He wiggles his eyebrows.
Emily changes out of her dance outfit in the locker room. She thinks she’s alone, but she hears something moving. She looks around for the source of the sound, but can’t find anything. Something attacks her from behind. She turns, barely in time to see her assailant, and scream.
“I will be flesh!”
Students continue to rehearse for the talent show. Marc is working on his magic act. He reaches into his hat, and his hand comes out empty. “Has anybody seen a rabbit?”
Buffy, Willow and Xander have decided that a dramatic scene is the simplest way to get through this: it doesn’t really require any talent. Xander thinks they are selling themselves short. They have talent.
“What am I going to do?” asks Buffy. “Slay vampires on stage?”
“Maybe in a funny way!” says Willow.
Xander says they have other talents. Willow can play the piano. Buffy thinks that they might be able to do something with that. Willow can accompany them while they attempt to sing, but there is no way that Willow will even try to play in front of an audience.
“Whatever happened to corporal punishment?” asks Xander.
Their discussion is interrupted by a wolf whistle from Sid the dummy. “Mm, mm, mm. Look at the goodies!” He’s looking at Buffy and Willow.
Willow gets up and goes to talk with Morgan. She thinks he’s getting pretty good. She asks him where he got the voice he uses for Sid. He says it’s an imitation of his dad.
“Sounds real,” says Buffy.
“It is real. I’m the one with the talent here.” Sid the dummy nods toward Morgan. “The kid’s dead weight. How about you and I do a little rehearsing on our own, honey? You know what they say: once you go wood, nothing’s as good!”
“Okay, Morgan. We get the joke,” says Buffy. “Horny dummy, ha, ha! It’s very funny, but you might want to consider getting some new schtick. Unless you want your prop ending up as a duraflame log.”
Morgan and Sid exchange a look.
Snyder and Giles enter the auditorium. “Kids today need discipline,” says Snyder. “That’s an unpopular word these days: ‘discipline.’ I know Principal Flutie would have said, ‘Kids need understanding. Kids are human beings.’ That’s the kind of woolly-headed, liberal thinking that leads to being eaten.”
Giles tells Snyder that there was more to Flutie’s death than that, but Snyder isn’t listening. “This place has quite a reputation. Suicide, missing persons, spontaneous cheerleader combustion. We can’t put up with that. We got to keep an eye on the bad element.” The bad element that Snyder is keeping his eye on at the moment is Buffy, Willow, and Xander. “Kids. I don’t like them. From now on you’re going to see a very different Sunnydale High. Tight ship, clean, orderly, and quiet.”
A girl screams when she finds Emily’s body in the locker room.
Buffy and her friends watch as the police remove the body from the locker room. Giles comes out, and reports to them that the dead girl is Emily. She must have been killed shortly after rehearsals yesterday. She never showed up at a track meet she was supposed to go to.
“Oh, man,” says Xander. “I hate this school.”
Buffy asks if it was a vampire attack, but Giles doesn’t think so. Emily’s heart was removed. Buffy asks if it was a demon of some sort, but Giles doesn’t think that fits either. “There are various demons which feed off human hearts, but…” He looks back to where the police are putting a large, bloody knife into a plastic bag.
“But demons have claws, and teeth,” says Buffy. The use of a weapon indicates to Giles that Emily’s death may be the work of a human murderer.
“Did I mention that I hate this school?” asks Xander.
Buffy isn’t convinced. Her instincts are telling her that this is the work of a demon. Giles would like to agree with her: a demon killer is something simple; human murderers are much more complex.
“The creep factor is also heightened,” says Willow. “It could be anyone. It could be me!” Everyone looks at her. “It’s not, though.”
Giles suggests that they start by talking to the other people in the talent show. See if any of them noticed anything.
Buffy and her friends split up to talk with the various other talent show participants about what they saw of Emily the day before. Buffy talks with Lisa the tuba player, Giles talks with Marc the magician. Willow speaks to a guy with a juggling act. Xander talks to Cordy. They all hear pretty much the same thing, except for Xander. The last time anyone saw Emily, she was with Morgan, and Morgan has been behaving pretty strangely lately. Lots of headaches, acting paranoid, looking around at everyone, and arguing with his dummy.
Xander just hears about how Cordy’s best friend “Emma’s” death has totally upset Cordelia. “All I can think is, it could’ve been me!”
“We can dream,” says Xander.
Buffy enters the auditorium. Sid is sitting on a stool on the stage with his back to her. “Right now you and me got to be on the lookout,” he says. “Figure out who’s going to be next.”
Morgan comes out from behind the curtain and notices Buffy. He tells her that he was just practicing throwing his voice.
Buffy asks Morgan if he noticed anything weird going on with Emily yesterday. He says he didn’t notice anything. He’s suddenly hit with a headache.
Buffy asks if he’s okay, but it’s Sid who answers. “Look, sweetheart! He answered your question. Now leave him alone!”
“Okay, Morgan, how about talking to me yourself now?” asks Buffy.
“He said all he’s going to say,” says Sid.
“It’s okay, Sid. We’re done.” Morgan picks up the dummy and starts to put him into his case.
“I’m sorry,” says Buffy. “Look, I didn’t mean to make you mad.”
“No! I’m— It’s him!” Morgan whispers to Buffy. “He’s—” He looks down at Sid in the open case. “I have to go.” He closes Sid’s case, and leaves.
The gang reconvenes in the library to compare notes. Xander suggests that next time they split up, someone else should talk with Cordelia. “Five more minutes with her and we would’ve had another organ donor.”
Everything they have heard points to Morgan. That doesn’t really mesh with the “It’s a demon” theory though, which Giles really hasn’t had a chance to research yet. He’s been too busy working in show business. Buffy thinks that Giles needs to re-evaluate his priorities.
“Principal Snyder is watching us all very closely,” says Giles. “If he chooses, he can make all our lives extremely difficult. A Slayer cannot afford that! We will find this murderer, but in the mean time… The show must go on.” He suggests that Buffy should keep an eye on Morgan, and check out his locker. Willow goes to get Morgan’s locker number from the school computer.
Buffy goes to Morgan’s locker after school lets out that afternoon. She starts to turn the dial on the combination lock as she looks around to make sure no one is watching, and when she sees the coast is clear, she pulls back and hits the lock with the heal of her hand, knocking it into the locker. She reaches her fingers inside and releases the latch. She opens the door, and starts to look around.
Buffy is startled by Principal Snyder appearing behind her. He wants to know what she’s doing hanging around the school after hours. Buffy says that a friend asked her to get something out of his locker.
“There are things I will not tolerate” says Snyder. “Students loitering on campus after school, horrible murders with hearts being removed. And also smoking.”
“Well, I don’t do any of those things,” says Buffy. “Not ever.”
“There’s something going on with you,” says Snyder. “I’ll figure it out sooner or later. Do you need something here?”
“Oh! Yeah! Right!” Buffy looks into Morgan’s locker. “Um, a friend wanted me to get something…out of his case!” She opens the dummy case, and sees that it’s empty. “He must’ve taken it and just forgotten to tell me.”
Snyder doesn’t believe her, but he doesn’t do anything about it. He tells her to go home.
Sid and Morgan have been watching Buffy and Snyder through the crack in a classroom door across the hall.
Morgan and Sid return to the auditorium.
“No, I can’t do it!” says Morgan.
Sid is sitting on a stool on the stage again. “It’s the only way. She’s the one. You saw what she did, how strong she is.”
“I know,” says Morgan, “but—”
“She’s the last!” says Sid. “Just this one more, and I’ll be free.”
“I won’t,” says Morgan.
“I will!” says Sid.
Buffy’s mother drops into her room for a talk while Buffy is preparing to go to bed. Joyce is wondering how things are going with the talent show. She is looking forward to seeing Buffy’s act. The thought of her mother being there to see her horrifies Buffy.
“But I want to support what you’re doing!” says Joyce.
“Look, Mom, if you really love me, and want to show your support, you’ll stay away,” says Buffy. “Far away.”
Joyce wonders if there is something else bothering Buffy, but Buffy tells her there’s nothing, she just has a lot going on right now.
Joyce tells Buffy to get some sleep, she’ll feel better in the morning. Buffy thinks that’s a good plan. Her mother goes, and Buffy gets into bed and turns out the light on her bedside table. Sid is lurking just outside her window.
Buffy is awakened by a noise. Something is in her room. She hears the sound of small feet running across her floor. They seem to go under her bed. She leans down to look, but sees nothing. She sits up.
Sid suddenly jumps on Buffy. She screams and jumps out of bed.
Joyce comes running into Buffy’s room, and turns on the light. “Honey, what is it?”
Buffy tells her mother that there was something in her bed. They approach it together, and look through the covers. There is nothing there now. Joyce thinks that Buffy must have had a nightmare.
“No! There’s some… There is…” Buffy pushes her hair back from her face. “Yeah, you’re probably right.” She sighs. “I’m sorry I got you up.”
“Don’t worry about it. I was dreaming about bills.” Joyce kisses Buffy on the forehead, and looks toward the window. “Sweetheart, you shouldn’t go to sleep with the window open.”
“I didn’t,” says Buffy.
Willow and Xander watch Marc try out another trick at the talent show rehearsals the next morning. He hands a girl into a box, latches it shut, and spins the box around. He opens the door. She’s still there. “You were supposed to leave!”
Cordelia is complaining to Giles. He has had to rearrange things after Emily’s death, and now she is appearing after a rock band. She doesn’t like it. “My song is about dignity, and human feelings, and personal…hygiene or something. Anyway, it’s sappy, and no one is going to be feeling sappy after all that Rock and Roll.”
Giles doesn’t say anything. He just looks at her hair, with a perplexed expression on his face.
“What?” asks Cordelia.
“Oh! I’m sorry,” says Giles. “Um, your hair, uh…”
Cordelia’s hand goes up to her hair. “There’s something wrong with my hair?” Giles doesn’t say anything.
“Oh my god!” Cordy runs away.
Giles smiles. “Xander was right. It worked like a charm.”
Buffy has entered the auditorium, and she and Giles go to join Willow and Xander. Giles notices that Buffy doesn’t seem to have slept very well. Buffy wants to know where Morgan is. The others haven’t seen him.
“Did he do something to you?” asks Xander.
“No, it was his— Sid, the dummy,” says Buffy. Everyone looks at her. “Okay, everyone look at me like I’m in a bunny suit, ’cause that’s how stupid I feel saying this. I think Sid was in my room last night.”
“With Morgan?” asks Willow.
“No. He was alone, and alive.” Buffy tells them how something ran across her floor, under her bed, and then pounced on her face.
“Like a cat?” asks Xander.
“Yeah, exactly!” says Buffy. “But when I turned the lights on it was already gone. I think it went out my window.”
“Like a cat,” says Xander again.
“Yeah!” says Buffy. “No! It was Sid, the dummy.”
Giles is dubious. He thinks that it may just have been the nightmare of someone who has dummies on her mind.
“Excuse me?” asks Buffy, “Can I have a little support here, please? I’m not just some crazy person, I’m the Slayer.”
“The Dummy Slayer?” asks Xander. He sees the look Buffy gives him. “There’s nothing funny about that.”
“Well, on the side of the ‘Morgan’s just crazy’ theory there’s, well, Morgan.” Willow looks toward where Morgan has just come into the auditorium, carrying Sid. Buffy tells them she would like to get a chance to talk to Morgan alone, without Sid being there.
Giles changes the subject. He has had a chance to do some researching, and has come up with a demon suspect. There is a brotherhood of demons, the members of which have to harvest human organs every seven years in order to maintain their human appearance. They take hearts and brains. He shows them a picture of the demon in one of his books. It doesn’t seem likely that Morgan could be one of them though, since these demons are all preternaturally strong, and Morgan seems to be getting weaker by the day.
Buffy watches Morgan and Sid in Mrs. Jackson’s history class. Sid watches her back.
Cordelia notices Sid watching Buffy and leans over toward her. “Looks like someone digs you. That’s adorable. You and the dummy could tour in the freak show!”
Sid turns his head back and starts to whisper something in Morgan’s ear, just as the teacher asks Morgan a question. Morgan doesn’t notice, so she asks again.
“Morgan has other things on his mind,” says Sid. The class laughs.
Mrs. Jackson has had enough of Sid. She takes him away from Morgan and sticks him in a cupboard. She tells Morgan he can get Sid back after school.
“I’m still watching you!” says Sid from inside the cupboard.
Morgan comes back to Mrs. Jackson’s classroom after school. She wants to talk with him. He had been one of her best students, but he’s been pretty distracted lately. She asks if there is anything bothering him. Morgan tells her it’s nothing, and asks for Sid back. Mrs. Jackson opens the cupboard and is surprised to see that Sid is gone.
“Gone?” asks Morgan. “What do you mean, gone? Where could he have gone? He knew to wait for me. He knew I’d be back.”
“What do you mean ‘he’?” asks Mrs. Jackson.
“What did you do with him?” demands Morgan. “Where is he?”
Buffy, Willow and Giles enter the library and find Xander there, with Sid. Buffy is not pleased to see Xander with the puppet, but Xander reminds her that she said that she wanted to talk to Morgan without Sid around. Now’s her chance. He tries out his own ventriloquist’s routine with the dummy. His technique is just as bad as Morgan’s, but his jokes are a little better. It bothers Buffy to see him doing it though, and she asks him to stop.
“What? C’mon,” says Xander. He works the dummy’s mouth. “I’m not real!”
Buffy still wants Xander to quit it.
Xander starts banging Sid’s head against the table. “He’s…not…real!” He accents each word with a knock. “I think our demonstration proves that, uh, Sid is wood. Now, why don’t you go and find Morgan and prove he’s…whatever he is?”
“I’ll go find Morgan.” Buffy starts out of the library. She turns back and looks at Xander. “You watch the dummy.”
“Bye-bye, now,” says Xander, as Sid. “I’m completely inanimate.” He watches Buffy leave the library. “Redrum! Redrum!”
Willow and Giles head off into the stacks to research demons and reanimation theory, leaving Xander alone with Sid. He sits Sid in a chair at the end of the table.
Buffy searches for Morgan in the auditorium. She doesn’t find him out front, so she heads backstage. She doesn’t find him there either. She goes down into the storage area beneath the stage. While looking around she hears something behind her, and spins around. It’s Principal Snyder, standing at the top of the stairs. “Looking for something?” he asks.
Buffy asks Snyder if he’s seen Morgan Shay. He doesn’t answer the question. He just tells her that he doesn’t think it’s too safe for a girl like her to be alone here, with everything that’s going on.
“I know how to take care of myself,” says Buffy.
They stand and stare at each other for a moment. “Alright, then,” says Snyder, and he leaves.
Xander sits at the library table, doing his homework. Every once in a while he glances at the dummy sitting in its chair at the other end of the table.
Willow has found something interesting in the section on toys and magic, which she shows to Giles. “‘On rare occasions inanimate objects of human quality, such as dolls and mannequins, already mystically possessed of consciousness, have acted upon their desire to become human by harvesting organs.’” she reads to him.
“Emily’s heart,” says Giles.
“Morgan’s dummy,” says Willow.
Xander gets up to go look something up in a dictionary. He brings the dictionary back to the table with him and sets it down. He sits down to go back to work. He doesn’t notice right away that Sid is gone.
Giles and Willow hear Xander scream. They come running out of the stacks to find Xander standing on the table.
“He’s gone!” Xander points to the chair the dummy had been in. “Sid’s gone!”
Giles looks down at the chair Sid was in, and sees that it’s empty. He and Willow start looking for something they can stand on too.
Buffy continues to search backstage for Morgan. She nearly trips over his body lying on the floor behind some costume racks. She sees that the top of his head has been cut away. “Demon’s got himself a brain.”
Buffy hears a noise overhead as she backs away from the body. She looks up and sees a heavy chandelier falling toward her.
Buffy is stunned, and pinned beneath the chandelier. She hears the sound of small feet running down from the overhead catwalk. She tries to lift the chandelier off herself, but it has several sharp spikes on its bottom which are embedded into the floor. She doesn’t have room to get her hands into a position which will give her any leverage. The footsteps are approaching rapidly.
“Who’s ever out there, I’m going to hurt you! Badly!” yells Buffy. “If you just give me a minute,” she adds quietly.
Buffy doesn’t have a minute. She sees a knife—held by Sid—coming down at her head. She manages to twist out of the way just in time, and it sticks into the floor.
Sid raises the knife for another try.
Buffy grabs Sid and tosses him away across the floor. She finally manages to free the chandelier’s spikes from the floor, and starts to slide out from under it as Sid comes back and attacks her again. Buffy hits him with a backhanded punch, and knocks him—and his knife—away against the wall. She finishes freeing herself, grabs Sid and pins him against the wall.
“You win,” says Sid. “Now you can take your heart and your brain and move on.”
“I’m sure they would have made great trophies for your case,” says Buffy.
“That would have been justice.”
“Yeah, except for one thing. You lost, and now you’ll never be human.”
“Yeah, well, neither will you.”
Buffy and Sid both do a double take. “What?” they ask together.
Sid explains what happened to him to a dumfounded Giles, Buffy, and the Slayerettes in the library. “Let’s just say there was me, there was a really mean demon, there was a curse, and the next thing I know I’m not me anymore. I’m sitting on some guy’s knee, with his hand up my shirt.”
Sid has been hunting the demons responsible ever since. There’s only one of the seven left. He thought it was Buffy. “Who can blame me for thinking? Look at you! You’re strong, athletic, limber, nubile…” Sid shakes his head. “I’m back! In any case, now that this demon’s got the heart and brain, he gets to keep the human form he’s in for another seven years.”
Giles gets up to fix some tea. “I must say, it’s a welcome change to have someone else explain all these things.”
Sid is convinced that the last demon is someone in the talent show. As soon as he kills it he will be free of his curse. Buffy figures that whoever it is, now that the demon has his heart and brain it will be skipping town. They may still have time to catch it. They just have to find out who’s missing from the show.
The talk of the show reminds Giles that it’s just about to begin. He’s supposed to be there. He starts to leave. Buffy tells Willow to get the home addresses of everyone in the show. If they find out who’s missing they might be able to catch them at home. Sid tells Giles to gather everyone on stage for a power circle before the show starts, so they can see who’s a no-show.
“Um, uh, the what?” asks Giles.
“The power circle,” says Sid. “You get everyone together, you get ’em, you know, revved up.”
“Right.” Giles hurries out of the library.
Sid looks at the others. “How’d he ever get that gig?”
It’s fifteen minutes to curtain. Giles is backstage, trying to get everyone ready. Cordelia comes up to him. She’s having a panic attack.
Giles tries to calm her down. “Cordelia, there’s, an adage, that, uh, if you’re feeling nervous then you should imagine the entire audience are in their underwear.”
“Eww!” says Cordy. “Even Mrs. Franklin?”
Giles considers that mental image. “Perhaps not.”
Buffy sits with Sid on the catwalk over the stage. Sid wonders what her deal is, he doesn’t figure her for a demon hunter. Buffy tells him she’s a Vampire Slayer.
“You? You’re the Slayer?” Sid is clearly impressed. “Damn! I knew a Slayer in the thirties. Korean chick. Very hot. We’re talking muscle tone. Man, we had some times…” He notices the look Buffy is giving him. “Hey, that was pre-dummy, alright? I was a guy!”
Buffy wonders out loud what will happen once Sid kills the demon, and he is freed from his curse. “You don’t actually turn into a prince, do you? I mean, your body—”
“Is dust and bones,” says Sid. “When I say free—”
“You mean dead,” says Buffy.
“Don’t get sniffly on me, Sis. I’ve lived a lot longer than most demon hunters. Or Slayers, for that matter.” Sid puts his hand onto Buffy’s knee. “Of course, if you want to snuggle up and comfort me…”
Buffy removes Sid’s hand from her knee. “So, that horny dummy thing really isn’t an act, is it?”
“Nope!”
Giles gathers everyone on stage beneath them. Buffy and Sid look them over. Everyone seems to be present or accounted for. After everyone leaves the stage again Buffy jumps down to talk with Giles. It looks like their demon wasn’t in the show after all. Giles tells her to go tell the others. He has to stay there to help with the final preparations.
Giles leaves the stage. Buffy looks up for Sid, but he’s vanished.
Everything is quiet backstage. Giles encounters Principal Snyder, snooping around. They both just look at each other without saying anything, and then Snyder leaves.
Buffy looks for Sid backstage. She notices something dripping onto her from off a shelf. She reaches up to see what it is, and pulls down a brain. She lets out a yelp when she sees what she has in her hands, and drops it onto the floor.
Buffy joins Willow and Xander in the library. She tells them what happened, and how she is never going to stop washing her hands.
“So, the dummy tells us that he’s a demon hunter,” says Xander. “And we’re, like, fine, la la la la. He takes off, and now there’s a brain. Does anybody else feel like they’ve been Keyser Sozed?3”
Buffy doesn’t think so. She still believes Sid. She wonders why the demon rejected the brain though. Morgan was one of the smartest kids in the school.
Willow brings Morgan’s records up on her computer screen. He was at the top of all his classes, but she also notices that he was out sick a lot. She cross-references to the school nurse’s records and finds a notation for his doctor, at the California Institute of Neurosurgery, Cancer Ward. Morgan had brain cancer.
“This means that whatever’s out there still needs a healthy, intelligent brain,” says Buffy.
“In other words, I’m safe!” says Xander.
“And it’s going to be looking for the smartest person around,” says Buffy. She and Xander both look at Willow.
“What?” she asks.
Giles checks out the apparatus for another of Marc’s magic tricks: a guillotine. “Yes, if you, you calibrated the units of weight then you could calculate the specific maximum velocity achieved before the point of impact.”
“Gee, Mr. Giles, you’re really smart!” says Marc. “Could you do me a favour?”
“What could a demon possibly want from me?” asks Willow.
“What’s the square root of eight hundred and fourty-one?” asks Xander.
“Twenty-nine,” says Willow. “Oh. Yeah.”
Buffy tells Willow not to worry. As long as they’re together she’s safe.
Marc demonstrates his guillotine to Giles by slicing a melon in half. He tells Giles that his assistant got sick. Giles won’t really have to do anything, just lie there. Giles wants to know how the trick works.
Marc pulls the guillotine blade back up and ties off the rope holding it up. “A good magician never tells his secrets.” He notices that the skin on the back of his hand is starting to shed, revealing the demon underneath. He shakes his sleave down to cover it.
Buffy realizes that they eliminated the talent show suspects too quickly. Xander still thinks that they eliminated the dummy as a suspect too quickly too, but Buffy is convinced it’s not Sid. She realizes that Giles is with the talent show people, and he doesn’t know.
“Giles can handle himself,” says Xander. “I mean, he is really…” The light bulb goes on in his head. “Smart!”
Buffy sprints out of the library. “Giles!” she yells at the top of her lungs.
Xander and Willow run after her.
Marc straps Giles down onto his guillotine table. Giles notices that the blade seems to be aimed at the top of his head. “Shouldn’t it be aimed at my neck?”
“No. This way your scalp gets sliced off and your brains just come pouring out.” Marc clamps Giles’ head into place, and locks it.
“What exactly is the trick?” asks Giles.
“Trick?” Marc picks up a hatchet and chops at the rope holding up the blade.
Giles begins to struggle against his restraints, but they’re too tight for him to escape.
Marc’s first chop at the rope doesn’t slice right through it. He chops again and again, until the guillotine blade is held up by a single strand of rope. He raises the hatchet for the final slice.
Buffy tackles Marc, and knocks him away from the guillotine. When he tries to get to his feet she knocks him down again with a leg sweep. She kicks Marc in the in the head as he tries to get back to his feet. Buffy’s kick knocks some of the skin off his face, revealing his demon nature.
“Eww!” says Buffy.
The last strand of the rope holding up the guillotine blade snaps, and Giles sees the blade start to descend toward his scalp. He closes his eyes.
Xander grabs the rope in the nick of time, and pulls the blade back up.
Willow unstraps Giles while Buffy fights with the demon, and Xander holds up the blade, but Giles’ head is still clamped in place in the guillotine. He can’t get out. Xander kicks the hatchet across the floor to Willow and she picks it up and starts to chop at the lock.
Buffy kicks Marc into his disappearing girl magic box and shuts the door. She starts looking for a way to lock it. A lock wouldn’t do her any good. The demon—which has now totally shed its human skin—smashes its way out of the box, and attacks her. Giles doesn’t like not being able to see what’s going on from his position on the table.
The demon pushes Buffy up against the wall, with its hands around her neck. Sid suddenly reappears. He jumps onto the demon’s back, and stabs at it with his knife. “I found you!”
Willow chops the lock off the guillotine’s head clamp, and Giles sits up. He quickly frees his legs, which are still strapped to the table. As soon as Giles is clear, Buffy kicks the demon onto the table into the position he had formerly occupied. Xander lets go of the rope, and the blade descends. The demon’s head is chopped off.
Everyone pauses to catch their breath.
Giles feels the top of his head, reassuring himself that it is still in place. “I must say, all of you. Your timing is impeccable.”
Sid climbs up on top of the demon with his knife, and places its tip against the demon’s chest.
“What are you doing?” asks Buffy.
“It’s not enough,” says Sid. “He’ll come back. You have to get the heart. Then all of this’ll be over.”
Buffy holds out her hand. “Let me.”
“I got it. Thanks.” Sid pushes the knife into the demon’s chest, and collapses on top of the demon’s body.
Buffy picks up Sid’s lifeless body, and looks around at her friends. “It’s over.”
The stage curtains open, and they all look out into the full auditorium. The audience looks back at them. Willow holding the hatchet, Buffy with Sid in her arms, the headless demon lying on the guillotine table with a knife sticking out of its chest, and its head on the floor.
“I don’t get it,” says Principal Snyder. “What is it? Avant-garde?”
Giles sits in the audience beside Principal Snyder while Buffy, Willow and Xander perform their dramatic presentation. A scene from Oedipus Rex. It is one of the worst performances ever witnessed by man or demon.
“Oh ruler of my country Oedipus, you see our company around the Altar, and I, the priest of Zeus!” says Willow. She’s terrified to be out on stage. She was less frightened by the demon.
“Ha, ha!” says Xander, trying to compensate for Willow’s stiff performance by overplaying his to the hilt. “They prophesied that I should kill my father. But he is dead, and hidden deep in the soil!” He bends down and picks up an imaginary handful of dirt. “But surely I must fear my mother’s bed!”
Buffy walks up beside Xander and pats him on the shoulder. “Oh, Oedipus, Oedipus, unhappy Oedipus.” She seems bored. “That is all I can call you, and all that I ever shall call you.” She walks back to where she started, but now she’s facing away from the audience. She notices, and turns around.
“Darkness!” says Xander. “And horror of darkness. Unfolding, restless, visited, sped by an ill wind in haste. Madness, and… Madness and… stabbing pain, and, and, uh…oh…oh…memory of, uh, ill deeds I have done!”
The next line is Willow’s, but she stands frozen with stage fright. Buffy gives her a nudge, but she can’t go on. After a couple more seconds she can’t stand it any more, and runs from the stage. Buffy and Xander are at a loss for what to do next. They shuffle together to cover up the gap left by Willow’s departure.
| Who or What | Where | How |
|---|---|---|
| Emily | Sunnydale High locker room | Heart cut out by the demon Marc |
| Morgan Shay | Sunnydale High, backstage | Brain cut out by the demon Marc |
| The demon Marc | Sunnydale High, on stage. | Crap kicked out of it by Buffy, decapitated by Xander, and a knife through the heart by Sid the Dummy |
| Sid the Dummy | Sunnydale High, on stage | Died on the death of the demon that cursed him |