Introduction
Season: First | Second | Third | Fourth | Fifth | Sixth | Seventh
Other Bodies | Episodes | Dramatis Personae
Ramblings | Links | Fanfic

Inca Mummy Girl

Prologue

Buffy and her friends walk up to the front entrance of the Sunnydale Museum. They are there on a school field trip, part of the annual cultural exchange program.

Buffy is dismayed by the prospect. “It’s the uber-suck! Mom could’ve at least warned me. A complete stranger in my house for two weeks. I’m going to be insane! A danger to myself and others within three days, I swear.”

Xander and Willow are much more cheerful. Willow is looking forward to the upcoming cultural exchange dance. She has a great costume prepared for it. Xander thinks the exchange program is cool. “It’s a beautiful melding of two cultures.”

“Have you ever done an exchange program?” asks Buffy.

“My dad tried to sell me to some Armenians once,” says Xander. “Does that count?”

Buffy, Willow and Xander wander through the museum. They pass Cordelia, who’s checking out a book of photos of the arriving exchange students. She’s getting a “lunchable” Swedish boy named Sven. She asks Buffy what hers looks like. Buffy doesn’t know. She figures he’ll look “guy like.”

“You didn’t look at him first?” asks Cordelia. “He could be dogly. You live on the edge.” She walks off with her friends.

“By ‘guy-like’ we are talking big, beefy, guy-like girl, right?” asks Xander.

“I was just told ‘guy.’” says Buffy.

“Hold on a sec,” says Xander. “So, this person who’s living with you for two weeks is a man. With man parts. This is a terrible idea.”

“What about the beautiful melding of two cultures?” asks Willow.

“There’s no melding, okay?” says Xander. “He better keep his parts to himself.” Buffy and Willow exchange a smile.

Buffy spots someone nearby scraping the gold paint off a mask on a display pedestal into a plastic bag. Xander recognises him. Rodney Munson is God’s gift to the bell curve. “What he lacks in smarts makes up in lack of smarts.”

“You just don’t like him ’cause of that time he beat you up every day for five years,” says Willow. Xander is just irrational that way.

While they are watching him another student approaches Rodney. Rodney looks at him and snarls, revealing an array of braces on his teeth. The student backs off.

Whatever Rodney and Xander’s history is, Buffy figures that she should stop what he’s doing. She starts toward him, but Willow stops her. “I got it. The non-violent approach is probably better here.”

Buffy watches Willow approach Rodney. “I wasn’t going to use violence. I don’t always use violence. Do I?”

“The important thing is you believe that,” says Xander.

Willow walks up to Rodney. He starts to growl at her too, until he recognises her. He seems to like Willow. She tells him that scraping on the mask is something he probably shouldn’t be doing. Rodney isn’t concerned. What can they do? Kick him out of school?

Willow asks Rodney if he’s all set for their scheduled chemistry tutorial tomorrow.

“Yeah,” says Rodney. “I think I got almost all fourteen natural elements memorised.”

“There’re a hundred and three,” says Willow. Rodney looks much more daunted.

A museum guide announces the tour of the new Incan Burial Chamber exhibit. “The human sacrifice is about to begin!”

“Typical museum trick,” complains Xander inside the exhibit. “Promise human sacrifice, deliver old pots and pans.”

The exhibit isn’t all pots and pans though. The guide leads them up onto a raised platform supporting a stone sarcophagus. “Five hundred years ago, the Incan people chose a beautiful teenage girl to become their princess.”

“I hope this story ends with, ‘And she lived happily ever after.’” says Willow.

Xander has stopped beside the sarcophagus, and looks into it. “No, I think it ends with, ‘And she became a scary, discoloured, shrivelled mummy.’”

The guide continues with his spiel while Buffy, Willow and Xander look at the mummy. “The Incan people sacrificed their princess to the mountain god Sebancaya, an offering buried alive for eternity in this dark tomb.” He points out a plate grasped in the mummy’s hands. “The princess remained there protected only by a cursed seal placed there as a warning to any who would wake her.”

Xander has heard enough about the mummy. He asks Buffy if she knows anything else about her exchange student. All Buffy knows is his name is Ampata, and he is arriving tomorrow night at the bus station. The guide finishes up his spiel on the mummy, and leads the group on, to the next part of the exhibit.

Rodney Munson comes out of some hiding place after the museum has closed. He enters the burial chamber and goes up to the mummy display. He thinks that the seal might be worth stealing. He reaches into the sarcophagus and tries to pull it from the mummy’s hands. Her grip is surprisingly strong for a dead person’s. He pulls harder and it suddenly comes free. It smashes against the side of the sarcophagus and breaks into several pieces.

Rodney’s disappointment over the breaking of his prize is nothing compared to the surprise he gets when the mummy reaches up and grabs him by the neck.

Act I

Xander watches Buffy work out with Giles in the library after school. She asks Giles for permission to take a night off from Slaying to go to the dance while she kicks and punches at the pad Giles is holding.

Giles doesn’t like the idea. She is the Chosen One. “You have responsibilities that other girls do not.”

“Oh! I know this one!” says Buffy. “Slaying entails certain sacrifices, blah, blah, bitty blah, I’m so stuffy, give me a scone!”

“It’s as if you know me,” sighs Giles. He thinks that Buffy maintaining her secret identity for the two weeks this exchange student is going to be living with her will be hard enough. He staggers back as Buffy hits his pad with a quick series of kicks.

Xander jumps between Buffy and Giles, giving Giles a brief respite from her barrage. “Not with her! In the same house as her. Am I the only one who’s objective enough to make that distinction?”

“So, I think going to the dance like a normal person would be the best way to keep that secret,” says Buffy. “Giles, come on, budge! No one likes a non-budger.” She and Giles stand eying one another for a few seconds, and then Buffy starts to wind up for an especially powerful kick at his pad.

“Fine!” says Giles, and Buffy stops. “Go.”

“Yay! I win,” says Buffy.

Giles leaves to introduce his shoulder to an ice-pack.

Buffy going to the dance is good news to Xander. He can get his mom’s car, so he can be wheel man. Buffy thought that Xander was taking Willow.

“Well, yeah, I’m going to take Willow, but I’m not going to take Willow, in the sense of ‘take me,’” says Xander. “See, with you we’re three and everybody’s safe. Without you, we’re two.”

“Ah, and we enter dateville,” says Buffy. “Romance, flowers…”

“Lips,” says Xander. Willow comes through the library doors behind him. Neither he nor Buffy notices her.

“Oh, come on?” asks Buffy. “In all the years you’ve known Willow, you’ve never thought about her lips?”

“Buffy, I love Willow,” says Xander, which produces a smile on Willow’s lips, “and she’s my best friend. Which makes her not the kind of girl who I think about her lips that much.” Willow’s smile vanishes. “She’s the kind of girl that I’m best friends with.”

“Hey guys,” says Willow.

Xander spins around and tells her the happy news that they are all going to the dance together. It doesn’t get quite the enthusiastic response he was expecting. It isn’t the dance that has Willow worried though, it’s Rodney Munson. He’s vanished. He never came home last night. Giles isn’t greatly surprised. He seems to have had some problems with Mr. Munson in the past. Neither Buffy nor Willow remembers seeing Rodney on the bus back from the field trip.

“I hope he didn’t get in trouble at the museum,” says Willow.

Xander laughs. “Hey, maybe he awakened the mummy!”

That gets a laugh from Willow. “Right, and it rose from its tomb.”

Buffy grins. “And attacked him.”

Suddenly everyone’s smile fades.

It’s after closing time at the museum. Buffy, Willow, Xander and Giles enter the Incan Burial Chamber. Willow still doesn’t like the idea that the mummy may have done something to Rodney. Maybe he just stepped out for a smoke, for the past twenty-one hours. “It’s addictive you know.”

“We’ll deal with that when we’ve ruled out evil curses,” says Giles, as they climb up onto the platform with the sarcophagus.

“One day I’m going to live in a town where evil curses are just generally ruled out without even saying,” says Buffy.

Giles asks where the mummy’s seal was located, Buffy points into the sarcophagus. She sees that the seal is broken. She picks up one of the pieces. Willow asks if that means the mummy is loose.

Buffy points out the mummy in the sarcophagus. “No, comfy as ever.”

Buffy hands the broken piece of the seal to Giles. He starts to examine the pictograms on it.

They are interrupted by a man who yells and charges at them, wielding a knife. He slashes at Xander, who ducks under it, and then at Buffy. He knocks her off the platform. He suddenly stops, looking into the sarcophagus. Xander jumps onto his back, and grabs him around the neck. The man shrugs Xander aside, and runs away.

Everyone freezes for a few seconds, wondering about what just happened. “Okay, I just saved us, right?” asks Xander.

Buffy looks around in confusion. “Something did.”

Giles doesn’t want to worry about what saved them quite yet. He thinks they should just go before the man comes back.

Willow isn’t quite ready to go yet. She’s had a look into the sarcophagus herself now. “Giles, were the Incas very advanced?”

“Yes, yes very,” says Giles. He’s anxious to go.

“Did they have orthodontists?” asks Willow. The mummy in the sarcophagus is wearing braces on its teeth.

The four of them return to the library. Willow is wondering what could have mummified Rodney like that. He looked five hundred years old. Xander thinks that maybe the man with the knife could tell them, but he didn’t seem too chatty. Willow doesn’t think so. The man with the knife seemed to be as freaked by what he saw in the sarcophagus as they were.

Giles has kept the piece of the seal, and he wants to get to work translating it. Unfortunately ancient Incan isn’t one of the languages he reads, and he doesn’t have many references on it either.

Buffy suddenly remembers that she was supposed to be picking up Ampata at the bus station.

“Uh, Buffy? Where are your priorities?” asks Xander. “Tracking down a mummifying killer or making time for some Latin lover whose stock in trade is the breakage of hearts?”

“Ampata’s there alone,” says Buffy. “And I don’t know how good his English is. He’s here from South A… South America. Hey, y’know, maybe he could translate the seal.”

“Oh, yeah,” says Xander. “Fall for the old ‘let me translate that ancient seal for ya’ come on. Do you know how many times I’ve used that?”

Ampata gets off the bus, and looks around for someone who looks like maybe they might be there to meet him. He doesn’t see anyone. He hears a girl’s voice whispering his name. It seems to be coming from between some parked buses. He goes to look. He gasps when he sees the mummy lunge out of the shadows at him.

She grabs Ampata by the neck, and pulls him to her. She kisses him on the lips. As she kisses him the life is drained from his body, and it mummifies.

Buffy, Willow and Xander arrive at the bus station forty minutes late. It has closed down for the night, and the waiting room is locked. Buffy calls out for Ampata.

“So, do we have to speak Spanish when we see him?” asks Xander, “’Cause I don’t know anything much besides Doritos and Chihuahua.”

Buffy is still searching for Ampata.

“Here!” calls out a girl’s voice from the shadows between the parked buses. A beautiful teenage girl steps out into the light. “Hello. I am Ampata.” She is wearing the clothes that the real Ampata had been wearing. They look much better on her.

Xander’s jaw drops. “Ay caramba! I can also say that!”

Buffy and Willow are nearly equally shocked to discover that Ampata is a girl. Willow is not pleased with Xander’s reaction.

Act II

Buffy, Willow and Xander show Ampata into Buffy’s kitchen. Willow is still a little surprised that Ampata is a girl, but Xander is pleased by the apparent mixup. He has entered blithering idiot mode, and is talking very slowly to help her understand him. Ampata seems to be amused by Xander’s behaviour. Willow is less taken by it.

Buffy gets everyone something to drink out of the fridge, and asks Ampata if she’s ever been to America before.

“Uh, I have toured,” says Ampata.

“Where…did…you…go?” asks Xander. Buffy and Willow keep exchanging looks at the way he is behaving around her.

“I was taken to Atlanta, Boston, New York.”

“New York!” says Willow, “That’s exciting. What was that like?”

“I did not see so much,” says Ampata.

“Your English is… very bueno,” says Xander.

“I listened much,” says Ampata.

“Well, that works out well,” says Xander. “Because I talk much.” Ampata laughs at his joke.

Later that evening Buffy and Ampata prepare for bed. They have moved a spare bed into Buffy’s room for her to sleep in. Ampata bounces up and down on it a few times; she seems very pleased with it. Buffy apologises for the teeniness of the room, but Ampata tells her that it is much bigger than what she’s used to.

“What’s it like back home?” asks Buffy.

“Cramped, and…very dead,”

“Well, you’ll feel right at home in Sunnydale!”

“Oh, no!” Ampata gets up off her bed, and moves to Buffy’s dresser. “You have so much here!” She picks up a picture of Buffy, Willow and Xander off the dresser and looks at it.

Buffy asks about her friends back home.

“They are…it is just me,” says Ampata.

Buffy understands that feeling, but she promises that Ampata will meet lots of people tomorrow.

“Thank you!” Ampata sits back down on her bed. “You must teach me everything about your life. I want to fit in, Buffy. Just like you. A normal life.”

“One normal life. Coming up.” Buffy smiles at Ampata, thinking about the one thing that she can’t give her. She turns out the light on her bedside table. The man from the museum is watching from the bushes outside the Summers house.

Cordelia talks with her current boyfriend Devon—lead singer of the local band Dingos Ate My Baby—in front of the school. She tells him that she isn’t going to be one of his groupies, standing all doe-eyed at the edge of the stage waiting for him. She’ll meet him after the dance.

“Sure,” says Devon. “Where do you want to meet?”

“I’ll be standing at the edge of the stage,” says Cordy.

Devon wonders if she’ll be standing with “that guy?”

Cordy looks over at Sven, who starts to step toward them. Cordy holds up her hand to stop him. “Sven! Momento! Needa!” She turns back to Devon. “This whole student exchange thing has been a horrible nightmare. They don’t even speak American. So, I’ll see you later?”

Cordelia gives Devon a quick peck on the cheek good-bye, and walks away up, the front steps toward the school. She pauses when she notices that Sven isn’t following. “Sven! Come!”

Devon watches Cordelia depart, and then goes to talk with his friend Oz. He asks Oz what he thinks of her.

Oz glances toward Cordy. “She’s a wonderland tour.” He goes on bundling up the cables for the band’s equipment.

Devon is a little surprised by Oz’s lack of enthusiasm. “What does a girl have to do to impress you?”

“Well, it involves a feathered boa and the theme to A Summer Place,” says Oz. “I can’t discuss it here.”

Devon thinks that Oz is being too picky. He’s lead guitarist in a band. He can have his choice of girls.

“I’m not picky,” says Oz. “You’re just impressed by any pretty girl that can walk and talk.”

“She doesn’t have to talk,” says Devon.

Willow walks across campus with Xander. She is very excited about the costume she has prepared for the dance. Xander still doesn’t have his. He needs something cool. Willow suggests he try something Bavarian.

“Okay, no shirts with ruffles, no hats with feathers and definitely no lederhosen,” says Xander. “They make my calves look fat.”

“Why are you suddenly so worried about looking like an idiot?” asks Willow. “That came out wrong.”

Xander didn’t hear her anyway. He just spotted Buffy arriving with Ampata.

Buffy and Ampata walk up the front steps of the school. Ampata’s nervous. The bustling students around her are more people than she’s seen for a long time. Buffy tells her not to worry: she knows at least one person who is anxious to meet her.

Buffy takes Ampata to the library and introduces her to Giles. He wastes no time, and hands her the piece of the broken seal that they have, and asks her if she can translate it.

Ampata is not happy to see it. She asks Giles why he’s asking her.

“Well, uh, It’s, well, it’s an artefact…from, uh, your region. It’s from the tomb of an Incan mummy, actually. We were trying to translate it, um, as a project for our, um…”

“Our archaeology club,” says Willow. Giles is pleased with her save.

Ampata asks about the other pieces of the seal, and Buffy tells her that’s all they found. Ampata tells them that it is very old and valuable. “You should hide it!” She tries to hand it back to Giles.

“Is there anything you recognise here?” Giles points out one symbol which has attracted his attention. “Um, this chap here with the knife, for instance?”

Ampata tells him she isn’t sure. It could represent a bodyguard. “Legend has it that he guards the mummy against those who would disturb her.”

Giles takes the piece of the seal back from her. He finds her explanation of the symbol very interesting. It provides a good starting point for their research.

Buffy tells Ampata that she has lots of dull work she has to do for the archaeology club, and starts to suggest that Willow can show Ampata around the school, but Xander quickly interrupts and volunteers for that duty himself. He escorts Ampata out of Giles’ office.

Giles starts to hand out research assignments to Buffy and Willow, but Willow isn’t paying any attention to him. She’s watching Xander and Ampata leave the library together. They really seem to be getting along well.

Xander and Ampata sit in the bleachers by the football field and he introduces her to American snack foods. He pulls a Twinkie out of his bag. “It’s a delicious, spongy, golden cake stuffed with a delightful creamy, white substance of goodness. And here’s how you eat it.” He stuffs the entire thing into his mouth.

Ampata laughs. “Oh, but now I cannot try it!”

“That’s why you bring two.” Xander tells her with his mouth still full, and produces a second twinkie from his bag which he hands to her. Ampata tries to repeat his feat. She can’t quite manage to get all of the twinkie into her mouth.

“Good, huh?” asks Xander, “And the exciting part is that they have no ingredients that a human can pronounce. So it doesn’t leave you with that heavy ‘food’ feeling in your stomach.”

Ampata can’t stop giggling. “You are strange.”

“Girls always tell me that. Right before they run away.”

“I like it!” says Ampata.

“I like you like it!” says Xander, producing more laughter from her. “Please, don’t learn from my English.”

Buffy finds something in the book she’s been reading and tries to consult with Willow about it, but Willow’s mind isn’t on research. Buffy tells her that Ampata will only be there for a couple of weeks.

“Yeah, and then Xander can find someone else who’s not me to obsess about,” says Willow, “At least with you I knew he didn’t have a shot. Well, you know, I have a choice: I can spend my life waiting for Xander to go out with every other girl in the world until he notices me, or I can just get on with my life.”

“Good for you,” says Buffy.

“Well, I didn’t choose yet.”

Giles has been checking out what Buffy found. He is most impressed. “It seems Rodney’s killer might be the mummy. It implies that the mummy is capable of feeding on the life force of a person, effectively freeze-drying them, you might say. Extraordinary.”

“So, then we just have to stop the mummy,” says Buffy. “Which leads to the question: how do we, A—find, and B—stop the mummy?”

“Well, the answer to that is somewhere still in here,” says Giles. “Or in the rest of the seal.”

Xander and Ampata are still on the bleachers. They are attacked by the man with the knife. “You stole the seal!” he accuses Xander, as he slashes at him. “Where is it?”

Xander rolls away down the bleachers. The man stabs at him. Xander grabs his arm.

Ampata screams, and the man with the knife turns to look at her. He recognises her, and is stunned into motionlessness. Xander takes advantage of his distraction, and kicks him away down the bleachers. He grabs Ampata, and they run away together.

Giles brings Ampata a cup of tea to calm her down. He doesn’t know why the man with the knife is so interested in the seal, but he thinks they should do something with it.

“Destroy it!” says Ampata. “If you do not, someone could die.”

“I’m afraid someone already has,” says Giles.

“You mean the man with the knife killed someone?” asks Ampata.

“Uh, no!” Buffy sees the way Ampata is looking at her. “Well, not exactly.”

“You are not telling me everything!” says Ampata.

“You’re right, Ampata,” says Xander, “and it’s time we do. We’re not an archaeology club. We’re in, uh…” Giles clears his throat loudly, and Xander sees the way Buffy is glaring at him. “We’re in the crime club. Which is kind of like the chess club, only with crime, and, uh, no chess.”

“Please understand me,” says Ampata. “That seal nearly got us killed. It must be destroyed!” She gets up and runs out of the library. Xander chases after her.

Xander catches up with Ampata in the hallway. He tells her that no one is going to get hurt: he won’t let that happen. She tries to tell him that their investigation into the seal is too dangerous. She doesn’t want that. She just wants a normal life. She leaves him to go over to the water fountain for a drink.

Willow has followed them out into the hallway. “Is she okay?”

“Wigged,” says Xander. “I’m trying to convince her that our lives aren’t just danger and peril around here.”

Willow glances over at Ampata, who is still drinking. “You should take her to the dance.”

“That’s a good idea!” says Xander. “We’ll all go!”

“No, I mean…just you,” says Willow.

“But you were psyched!” says Xander. “And your costume!”

“I’ll see you there.”

“You know what, Willow? You’re my best friend.” Xander leaves her to go talk with Ampata.

Willow stands and watches them together for a bit. “I know.” She walks back toward the library.

Buffy and Giles are still working in the library. She wonders why the bodyguard has such a jones for the seal. Giles suspects that the answer is somewhere in the pieces of the seal they don’t have. They should go back to the museum and try to find them.

Buffy hopes that the bodyguard will show up there again too, and this time she’ll be ready for him. “Hey! Look at us! We came up with a plan. A good plan.”

“All right,” says Giles. “We’ll meet there tonight after it closes.”

“No! Bad plan. I have other plans. Dance plans!” Buffy sees the look Giles is giving her. “Cancelled plans.”

Xander and Ampata walk down the stairs in the school together. “Okay, I have something to tell you. And it’s kind of a secret, and it’s, um, a little bit scary,” he tells her. “I like you. A lot. And I want you to go to with me the dance.”

Ampata laughs. “Why was that so scary?”

“Well, because you never know if a girl’s gonna say ‘yes,’ or if she’s gonna laugh in your face and pull out your still-beating heart and crush it into the ground with her heel.”

“Hm. Then you are very courageous,” says Ampata. She also has a secret she wants to tell Xander. “I like you too.”

“That’s great!” says Xander. “You’re not a praying mantis, are you?” Ampata gives him a confused look. “Sorry, someone else.”

Ampata tells Xander to wait, she’ll be back. Xander wonders where she’s going. She indicates the girls’ washroom door. “Where you cannot follow.”

“I’ll wait outside,” says Xander.

Ampata touches up her lipstick. She notices that she isn’t alone. She sees the bodyguard in the mirror behind her. “I beg you…” She turns around slowly. “…do not kill me!”

He steps toward her. “You are already dead. For five hundred years.”

“But it was not fair! I was innocent!”

“The people you kill now so that you may live, they are innocent.”

“Please!” says Ampata. “I am in love!”

“You are the Chosen One. You must die. You have no choice.”

He brings the knife up, and stabs down at her.

Ampata grabs his arm and twists it, forcing it around behind his back. She puts her hand around his neck, and pulls him in close. “Yes, I do!” She kisses the bodyguard, and sucks the life out of him.

Ampata comes out of the washroom and smiles at Xander. “I have thought. The dance? I will go with you. Gladly!”

Xander smiles back. He takes her hand, and they walk off down the hall together.

Act III

Ampata returns to Buffy’s room and finds Buffy looking over her baggage, which has just been delivered from the bus station. Ampata is nearly finished preparing to go to the dance, dressed up as an Incan princess.

Buffy offers to help Ampata unpack, but she tells Buffy to leave it. She’ll take care of it later. She asks Buffy if she can borrow some lipstick. Buffy tells her there should be some on her desk.

Ampata is surprised that Buffy isn’t getting ready for the dance too, but Buffy says that some crime club work has come up, and she can’t go. It’s nothing for Ampata to worry about.

“Oh, I am not worried, thanks to Xander.” Ampata sits down at Buffy’s desk.

“He seems very happy around you,” says Buffy.

“I am happy too.” Ampata selects a lipstick off the desk. “This one?”

“Oh, that clashes,” says Buffy. “There should be a gold one in there.”

“Thank you,” says Ampata, “You are always thinking of others before yourself. You remind me of someone from very long ago: the Incan Princess.”

Buffy thinks that’s cool, and goes over to the pile of Ampata’s luggage. She opens the top bag.

Ampata continues to talk while she searches through Buffy’s desk for the lipstick. “They told her that she was the only on: that only she could defend her people from the nether world.”

Buffy is a little puzzled when she notices that the bag she opened has some guy’s underwear in it.

Ampata hasn’t noticed her: she’s still looking in the desk and talking about the princess. Buffy sees that Ampata’s opening a drawer that contains some of her Slayer supplies. “Out of all the girls in her generation she was the only one—”

Buffy leaves Ampata’s bag and quickly pushes the drawer shut before Ampata looks in it. “Chosen.”

“Do you know the story?” asks Ampata.

Buffy glances at her drawer. “It’s fairly familiar.” She picks up the gold lipstick off her desk and hands it to Ampata.

“She was sixteen, like us,” says Ampata. “She was offered as a sacrifice and went to her death. Who knows what she had to give up to fulfill her duty to others? What chance at love?”

“Who knows?” Buffy returns to Ampata’s luggage. “I’ll just unpack the rest of your stuff for you.” She opens the lid of Ampata’s trunk.

“No, really, let me…” says Ampata. They’re interrupted by the doorbell ringing. Buffy closes the trunk lid again without noticing the mummified body inside, and goes to answer the door.

Ampata locks the trunk shut.

Buffy opens the door and sees Xander standing there. He’s wearing a Clint Eastwood, High Plains Drifter sort of costume. Buffy wonders what culture he’s supposed to represent.

“I’m from the country of Leone. It’s in Italy pretending to be Montana.” Xander notices Buffy’s lack of costume. She’s wearing a T-shirt and denim overalls. “And where are you from? The country of White Trash?”

Buffy tells Xander that there has been a change of plans. He and Willow are taking Ampata to the dance. She and Giles are hunting mummies. She notices that Xander is alone. “Where’s you and Willow?”

“She’s not coming…with us,” says Xander.

“Oh! On a date,” says Buffy. “Romance, lips…” They are interrupted by Ampata coming down the stairs.

Xander pulls off his hat when he sees her. “Ho! Ye I, uh!”

“I can translate American salivating boy talk.” Buffy tells Ampata. “He says you’re beautiful.”

“Yab sib.” Xander tells Buffy.

“You’re welcome,” says Buffy.

Joyce comes out of the kitchen. She tells Ampata she looks beautiful. She wishes she could talk Buffy into going with them.

“I tried, but she is very stubborn,” says Ampata.

“Well, I’m glad someone else sees that,” says Joyce. She and Buffy exchange a look.

Buffy sees Xander and Ampata out. Xander pauses in the doorway, and quietly tells Buffy to be careful.

Buffy says she will. “You look good.”

Xander leaves.

Joyce comes to the door and watches Xander and Ampata go. “Look at that. Two days in America, and Ampata already seems like she belongs here. She’s really fitting in.”

“Yeah,” says Buffy. “How ’bout that?”

Cordelia arrives at the dance wearing a south seas islander costume. Devon, Oz, and the rest of Dingos Ate My Baby are on stage performing. Cordelia spots Willow. “Oh! Near faux pas! I almost wore the same thing.” Willow is dressed in an Eskimo costume, complete with fur parka, and a harpoon.

Cordelia leaves Willow and meets up with her friend Gwen, who’s wearing a Japanese Geisha costume. Gwen wonders where Sven is.

“Oh, I keep trying to ditch him,” says Cordelia. “He’s like one of those dogs that you leave at the Grand Canyon on vacation: it follows you back across four states!” Sven finds them. He is dressed in a Viking costume. “See? My own speechless, human boomerang.”

Gwen thinks Sven is cute, and it might be nice skipping all the small talk.

“Small talk? How about simple instruction?” Cordy turns to Sven. “Get punchy.” He stands speechless, looking at her. “You! Fruit drinky!”

“He can follow me.” Gwen takes Sven’s hand and leads him away.

Willow spots Xander and Ampata coming into the Bronze. When she sees Ampata she wishes she’d chosen a sexier costume. They spot Willow and go to join her. Ampata is impressed by Willow’s outfit. It is very authentic. Xander thinks it looks snug.

Willow looks around. “Where’s Buffy?”

Buffy answers the door, and is surprised to see Giles. She thought they were supposed to meet at the museum to look for the bodyguard. Giles tells her there has been another change in plans. The bodyguard has been found: dead and mummified in the restroom.

“Okay, I don’t get it,” says Buffy. “Why would the mummy kill her own bodyguard?”

“Well, I’ve cross-referenced, and I’ve looked at the pictograms anew. He was a guard all right. But it was his job to insure that the mummy didn’t awaken and escape.”

“So, Ampata translated wrong,” says Buffy.

“Perhaps.”

Buffy is starting to get a little suspicious of Ampata. “She was wiggy about the seal from minute one.” Then she remembers what she saw in Ampata’s luggage. “Her trunks!” She runs upstairs.

“I beg your pardon?” Giles follows her.

Giles looks through the bag with the boy’s underwear, while Buffy breaks the lock off the trunk. Giles is just as puzzled by the contents of the bag as Buffy was.

Buffy lifts the lid on the trunk. “How about this one? What kind of girl travels with a mummified corpse, and doesn’t even pack a lipstick?”

Xander invites Ampata to dance. A dejected Willow watches from the sidelines.

Up on the stage—during an instrumental interlude when Devon isn’t singing—Oz asks him who that girl is.

Devon looks in the direction of Oz’s gaze. “She’s an exchange student. I think she’s from South America.”

“No! Not her! The Eskimo!”

Devon doesn’t know. Oz keeps gazing at Willow as he plays his guitar.

Giles and Buffy “rush” to the Bronze in Giles’ Citroen. “Come on!” says Buffy. “Can’t you put your foot down?”

“It is down,” says Giles.

“One of these days you’re going to have to get a grownup car.”

Xander and Ampata dance together. They gaze into each other’s eyes, neither of them saying a word. As the song ends Xander leans in for a kiss. Just before their lips touch Ampata notices that her hand has started to dry out. She is reverting to her mummy form. She pulls away from Xander and runs off.

“Okay, at least I can rule out something I said,” Xander tells himself.

Ampata moves through the crowd of kids in the Bronze looking for her next victim. She brushes past Willow, and spots a short kid, Jonathan, dressed in a cowboy outfit sitting alone on the stairs leading up to the balcony.

Buffy is upset with herself that she didn’t figure out about Ampata sooner. She was wiggy about the seal from the time she first saw it. First she wanted them to hide it.

“And then she wanted us to destroy it…” says Giles. “Oh wait!”

Giles doesn’t say anything for several seconds. “Uh, waiting…” says Buffy.

“Well, we already know that the seal was used to contain the mummy,” says Giles. “If breaking it freed her…”

“Reassembling it will trap her!” says Buffy.

“I’ll go to the museum,” says Giles. “I’ll drop you off. I’ll try to piece together the fragments there.”

“Okay,” says Buffy. “I’ll still get Xander. Before he gets smoochy with Mummy Dearest.”

Xander searches for Ampata. He asks Willow if she’s seen her, but Willow just shrugs. It really wasn’t very noticeable in her bulky parka though. He asks her what that was.

“I shrugged.”

“Next time you should probably say ‘shrug.’” Xander leaves to look for Ampata.

Willow watches him go. “Sigh.”

Sven and Gwen walk past Willow. “I thought this exchange student thing would be a great deal,” says Sven. “But look what I got stuck with! ‘Momento!’ ‘Punchy fruity drinky!’ Is Cordelia even from this country?”

Ampata has taken Jonathan backstage. She removes his hat, and prepares to kiss him. She runs her hand across his face.

Jonathan thinks her hand feels kind of rough. “Aren’t you with Xander?”

“Does it look like I’m with Xander?” Ampata leans in for the kiss.

Xander calls out for Ampata. Jonathan decides its time for him to go.

Xander finds Ampata after Jonathan has disappeared. He asks why she ran away.

“Because…I do not deserve you,” says Ampata.

“What, you think that you don’t deserve me?” asks Xander. “Man, I love you!” This doesn’t get quite the reaction he was hoping for. Ampata starts to cry. “Are those tears of joy? Pain? Revulsion?” He steps closer.

“I am very happy,” says Ampata. “And very sad.”

Xander wants Ampata to tell him what’s wrong, but she refuses. “Hey, I know why you can’t tell me. It’s a secret, right?” asks Xander. “And if you told me, you’d have to kill me.”

This joke really doesn’t get the response Xander was hoping for. Ampata starts to cry some more.

“Oh! That was a bad joke, and the delivery was off, too. I’m sorry.” Xander brushes a tear away from Ampata’s cheek. “I’m sorry.” They kiss. Tentatively at first, but then Ampata latches on.

Act IV

Ampata breaks off the kiss. Xander collapses to the floor.

“I can’t!” Ampata kneels down beside him. “Xander, I’m so sorry.” She pulls his head into her lap.

Giles has found the rest of the pieces of the seal in the museum. He sits with a jar of glue, trying to piece them back together.

Ampata senses that something is happening. “The seal!” She drops Xander and runs out.

Buffy finds Willow in the Bronze. She asks where Xander is, and Willow tells her he’s looking for Ampata.

“We need to find him,” says Buffy. “Ampata’s the mummy.”

“Oh.” Willow smiles. “Good.” Then she realizes what that means. “Xander!”

Buffy asks where they went, and Willow says that she thinks they’re backstage.

Buffy and Willow rush off to look, just as Oz comes up behind Willow to try and talk with her. He stands watching them go. “Who is that girl?”

Buffy and Willow find Xander backstage. He’s managed to get himself sitting up. “Boy that was some kiss!”

Xander has no idea what nearly happened to him. Buffy asks where Ampata is and Xander tells her that she said something about the seal and left. Buffy realizes she’s headed for the museum, and Giles. She and Willow help Xander to his feet.

Giles has nearly completed reassembling the seal. He has just one piece left. Ampata grabs him, pulls the seal away, and smashes it into a thousand pieces. She grabs Giles by the neck and pulls him in for a kiss.

“I’ll say one thing for you Incan Mummies,” says Buffy. “You don’t kiss and tell.” She jumps up onto the platform with Giles and Ampata.

“Looks like you’ve been keeping secrets from me!” Ampata pushes Giles into the sarcophagus. “You’re not a normal girl.”

“And you are?” Buffy delivers a kick to Ampata’s head.

Buffy and Ampata fight, but Ampata is surprisingly strong. She grabs Buffy and tries to kiss her. Buffy knocks her away with a head butt.

Buffy tries to kick Ampata in the head again, but she ducks under it. Ampata grabs Buffy’s arm as she tries to punch her, and flips Buffy into the sarcophagus with Giles. Ampata pushes the heavy stone lid closed on top of them.

Ampata runs out of the Incan Burial Chamber. She runs into Willow, who’s running in. She grabs Willow by the throat and pulls her in close. “This won’t hurt!”

“Let her go!” yells Xander. “If you’re going to kiss anybody, it should be me.”

“Xander, we can be together,” says Ampata. “Just let me have this one.”

“That’s never going to happen.”

“I must do it. I must do it now, or it is the end for me, and for us!” The mummification process is continuing up Ampata’s arms, and into her neck.

“No!” Xander pulls Willow away from Ampata. “You want life? You’re going to have to take mine. Can you do that?”

Ampata has to think about that for a bit, but she comes to a decision. “Yes!” She grabs onto Xander.

Buffy manages to lift the lid off of the sarcophagus while Xander struggles to hold off Ampata. Ampata’s face and body shrivel before his eyes. Buffy rushes to Xander’s aid and pulls Ampata away from him. Ampata’s arms separate from her body, still grasping onto Xander’s shoulders. The rest of Ampata’s body comes apart in Buffy’s hands, and she drops it to the floor, where it shatters.

Xander crouches down on the floor, looking at Ampata’s remains. Willow silently kneels beside him, and puts her hand on his shoulder. No one says anything. Willow and Xander stand up and they all walk out of the museum together.

Epilogue

Buffy and Xander walk together through the courtyard at school. Xander says he really isn’t in a talking mood. Buffy understands.

Xander does want to talk though. “I just—present company excluded—I have the worst taste in women of anyone in the world, ever.”

“Ampata wasn’t evil,” says Buffy. “At least not to begin with, and I do think she cared about you.”

“Yeah, but I think that whole sucking the life out of people thing would have been a strain on the relationship.”

“She was gypped,” says Buffy. “She was just a girl, and she had her life taken away from her. I remember how I felt when I heard the prophecy that I was going to die. I wasn’t exactly obsessed with doing the right thing.”

“Yeah, but you did,” says Xander. “You gave up your life.”

Buffy smiles at him. “I had you to bring me back.”

Characters Introduced

• Devon
• Oz
• Jonathan

Death Toll