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| Ted | Surprise |
A guy dressed like a cowboy walks through the Sunnydale Mall with a pretty girl on his arm. One level up Buffy is discussing an outfit she wants to buy with her mother. Joyce does not want her daughter to have it. She thinks it makes Buffy look like a streetwalker.
“But a thin streetwalker,” says Buffy. “That’s probably not going to be the winning argument, is it?”
“You’re just too young to wear that,” says Joyce.
“Yeah, and I’m going to be too young to wear it until I’m too old to wear it.”
“That’s the idea.” Joyce notices the time. It’s getting close to closing at the mall, and she still has to pick up some flyers from the printer, and an outfit from the tailor’s. She asks Buffy to go to the tailor’s while she goes to the printer. They’ll meet back in the food court for dinner.
Buffy takes the escalator down to the lower level of the mall. She notices the cowboy and his girlfriend on the up escalator. She glances at the mirrored wall beside her and only sees the reflection of the girl. The cowboy is a vampire. Buffy does an immediate about face and runs back up the escalator, annoying several people who were riding down it behind her.
Buffy follows the vampire and his intended victim through the mall, into a closed arcade that the vampire has broken into.
The girl starts to play one of the pinball machines, while the vampire stands behind her. He pulls her hair away from her neck, and his face transforms. “Well, ain’t you just got the prettiest little neck I ever did see.” He moves in to bite her.
“Boy, you guys really never come up with any new lines, do you?” asks Buffy.
Neither the vampire, nor the girl are pleased with the interruption. The girl thinks Buffy’s trying to cut in on her guy.
Buffy doesn’t pay any attention to her. “But you promised you’d never cheat on me again, honey.” she tells the vampire.
The girl decides that maybe this is some sort of lover’s quarrel that she doesn’t want to be in the middle of, and grabs her bag to go.
“But I ain’t done yet,” says the vampire.
The girl turns and sees its vampire face. She gasps in fear and runs from the arcade.
The vampire isn’t too upset by the loss of the meal, he just figures that he’ll be snacking on a different girl tonight, and moves toward Buffy.
The vampire swings a punch at Buffy, and she blocks it. She comes back with a quick series of punches of her own, and knocks the vampire onto one of the pinball machines.
“Well, you’re a rough one, ain’t cha!” it says. “I like that!”
The vampire comes back at Buffy, and they exchange a few more punches. It picks her up and throws her onto the pinball machine, breaking the glass. It grabs Buffy by the straps of the backpack she’s wearing. “You must be that Slayer I’ve been hearing so much about. Lyle Gorch. Pleased to meet cha!”
Buffy kicks it away. “Pleasure’s mine!”
Buffy leaps off the pinball machine at it. Lyle jumps and rolls out of her path. Buffy spins to face him, pulling a stake from her backpack.
Lyle decides that he has had enough of this fight for now. “This ain’t over!” he tells Buffy, and runs from the arcade.
Buffy lets him go. “Oh, sure. They say they’ll call,” she tells herself.
Buffy finds her mother in the food court. Joyce has gotten some food for them, but she wonders where her dress is. Buffy had forgotten all about it.
“Let me guess,” says Joyce, “You were distracted by a boy.”
“Technically.” Buffy starts to get up to go get it, but her mother tells her it’s too late. The tailor shop will be closed by now. Joyce will just have to pick it up herself tomorrow.
“A little responsibility is all I ask,” says Joyce. “Honestly, don’t you ever think about anything besides boys and clothes?”
“Saving the world from vampires?” asks Buffy.
Joyce shakes her head. “I swear, sometimes I don’t know what goes on in your head.”
Xander and Cordelia make out in a darkened utility closet at school. Cordelia is getting worried that they are going to be late for class.
Xander breaks off from kissing her and turns on the light. “You know what? This would work a lot better for me if you didn’t talk.”
“Well, it’d work a lot better for me with the lights off.” Cordelia pulls the chord on the light to turn it off again. She starts to kiss him some more.
After a few seconds Xander breaks off and turns the light back on. “Are you saying that you can’t look at me when we do…whatever it is we do?”
It isn’t that Cordelia can’t look at Xander. It is just that she would prefer not to.
Xander is not impressed. “That’s great! That’s just dandy! We’re repulsed by each other, we hide from our friends. All in all this is not what I’d call a big self-esteem booster.”
Cordelia agrees 100%. She needs this like she needs a hole in her head. They both reach for the closet doorknob at the same time and their hands meet. They instantly grab each other and start kissing again. Cordelia reaches up and turns off the light.
Later that day in teen health class the topic is sex. Mr. Whitmore asks the students to tell him some of its hazards.
“Well, that depends,” says Cordelia. “Are you talking about sex in the car or out of the car? Because I have a friend—not me—that was in a Miata, parked at the top of the hill, and then she kicked the gearshift, and…”
Mr. Whitmore was looking for something a little more common place. Xander raises his hand. He wants to know about the heartbreak of halitosis. Kissing a girl who ignores flossing is a major turnoff. Cordelia comes back by complaining about kissing a guy who is using the Hoover technique.
“What about having to feign interest in her vapid little chit-chat just so you can get some touch?” asks Xander.
Willow looks back and forth between Xander and Cordy as they exchange insults and wonders what’s up with them.
Mr. Whitmore asks if anyone other than Xander and Cordelia wants to contribute a suggestion for a negative consequence of sex.
Willow raises her hand. “How about pregnancy? That would be a major one, right?”
At last someone has given Mr. Whitmore the answer he is looking for. The number one negative consequence of teenage sex is pregnancy, which brings him to the class assignment. He uncovers a tray full of eggs, which are to be the class’s offspring. They are to split up into parenting teams. Each team will take an egg, and care for it for a week. He tells the class to pick their partners and come pick up their children.
Willow instantly starts toward Xander, and is surprised when he turns away from her and heads for Cordelia. Cordy sees Xander coming and quickly intercepts one of the other guys in the class. Xander turns away from Cordy, and hooks up with the first other girl he sees.
Xander and Willow find Buffy looking through a drawer in the card catalogue in the library. Each of them is carrying an egg. Willow asks why Buffy missed class, and Buffy tells her she got held up by vampire issues. She asks if Mr. Whitmore noticed she was tardy.
“Tardy people show,” says Willow. “And, yes, he did notice, so he wanted me to give you this.” She hands Buffy an egg.
Buffy examines the egg carefully. “As far as punishments go this is fairly abstract.”
Xander explains the assignment. The egg is her baby, and she has to take care of it. Keep it safe and teach it Christian values.
“My egg is Jewish,” says Willow.
“Then teach it that Driedel song,” says Xander.
Buffy is not thrilled with this assignment. She can’t take care of things. She killed her Giga Pet. She sets her egg down on top of the card catalogue, surrounded by the chain from her necklace so it can’t roll off. Another dreadful thought occurs to her: who did she get for a partner?
“Well,” says Willow. “There were an uneven number of students, and you didn’t show, so…”
“I’m a single mother?” asks Buffy. “Do you know what this says about me? That I am doomed to lead my mother’s life! How deeply scary is that?”
“How about this,” says Xander. “It says nothing, it means nothing, this whole egg experiment thing is completely pointless!”
Giles calls out success from inside the library cage. He comes out carrying a large volume which he nearly sets down on top of Buffy’s egg on the card catalogue. She rescues it in the nick of time. Giles doesn’t notice. He points to a nineteenth century photograph of a couple of people in the book. “Your playmate is a fellow of repute, it seems. That’s Lyle Gorch, and that one’s his brother, Tector. They’re from Abilene. They made their reputation by massacring an entire Mexican village in 1886.”
“Friendly little demons,” says Buffy.
“That was before they became vampires,” says Giles. The good news is that Lyle and Tector aren’t among the great thinkers of the vampire community. He doubts if they’re in town for any special purpose. They were just drawn there by the evil emanations from the Hellmouth.
“‘Nough said!” says Xander. “I propose Buffy slays ’em. All in favour?” He raises his hand.
Willow raises her hand too. “Aye!”
Giles thinks it would be best if Buffy doesn’t underestimate the Gorches. She might need some help. He finally notices that they are all carrying eggs, and asks why. They ignore the question. Willow suggests that maybe Buffy could get Angel to help her. Giles doesn’t think that’s a bad idea.
“Oh, right,” says Xander. “I see a lot of hunting getting done in that scenario.”
“Please!” says Buffy. “Like Angel and I are just helpless slaves to passion. Grow up!”
Xander was right. Buffy and Angel spend much more time necking than they do hunting.
Buffy breaks away from Angel. “This really isn’t ‘hunting’ in the classical sense. We should get to work.”
Angel agrees with Buffy and they both try too cool their passion. They take a few steps through the cemetery, looking around.
“You see anything?” asks Buffy.
“No,” says Angel.
“Okay. Enough hunting.” Buffy grabs Angel and starts to kiss him again.
Lyle and Tector Gorch are crouched on top of the cemetery wall watching them. “That the Slayer?” asks Tector.
“Yep,” says Lyle.
“Ain’t that Angelus with her?” asks Tector.
“Yep.”
“Well, how come she ain’t slaying?” asks Tector. “And how come he’s about to make me blush?”
“Well, I don’t know, Tector. And how come you’s always asking me so many stupid questions?”
“So, you want to take ’em, or you want me to, Lyle?”
“I say we leave it. Wait ’til she’s alone.”
“Why?” asks Tector. “You scared?”
“Nope,” says Lyle. “I could whip ’em both right now if I wanted to.”
“Then why don’t ya?”
“’Cause I got me a plan,” says Lyle. “I’m the one that does the thinking, remember?”
“Yeah. You do the thinking, Lyle. That is definitely your department. So why don’t you tell me again why we can’t kill ’em now?”
Buffy returns from hunting, puts her egg—which she has named Egbert—to bed in a little padded basket beside her bed, and fills out a diary of her egg tending activities. She gets into bed and turns out the light.
Shortly after two o’clock in the morning, while Buffy sleeps, a hole opens in the egg beside her bed. A tendril emerges from it and moves toward her.
The tendril divides into multiple strands as it crawls across Buffy’s pillow, and attaches itself to her face. One tendril lies on top of each of her eyelids, and others go into her ears.
Lyle and Tector hole up for the day in one of Sunnydale’s nicer sewers. Tector finishes off a rat. He’s tired of eating rats. He wishes that they had checked into a motel—a nice one, with an ice machine—but Lyle plans to lay low until they have taken care of the Slayer.
Tector is also wondering why Angelus is so friendly with this Slayer. Lyle is getting tired of Tector’s questions. He wonders if he is going to keep asking them all day long.
“I just don’t like it here,” says Tector. “Ain’t a decent whore in the whole city limits.”
Lyle thinks that Tector just doesn’t appreciate the way he’s been taking care of him, like he has ever since their mother left them. Tector thinks that maybe Lyle is afraid of this Slayer.
Lyle gets to his feet. “Alright. I’m going to beat you like a redheaded stepchild. Throw your ass out in that sunlight. C’mon.”
“You think you can?” Tector gets to his feet too. He throws a punch, catching Lyle in the face. Lyle punches Tector back. This is their idea of fun. They stand in the sewer trading punches.
Buffy awakens when her alarm goes off. The tendrils have retreated back into their egg, leaving an unbroken surface. She feels like she could use a few more hours of sleep.
Buffy puts her egg in its padded basket on the kitchen counter, takes over her mother’s cup of coffee, and takes a sip from it. Joyce tells her she should eat something, but Buffy isn’t hungry.
“How’s the parenting going?” asks Joyce. “Are you sure your egg is secure in that?”
Buffy doesn’t want any backseat parenting. Joyce thinks she’s a little touchy this morning, and Buffy tells her it’s because she is feeling kind of funky. Joyce feels her forehead. Buffy doesn’t have a fever.
Buffy says she’s fine. She just didn’t sleep well.
“What’s the matter?” asks Joyce. “Your egg keep you up all night?”
“You’re killing me,” says Buffy. “Parenting’s a pain!”
Joyce smiles. “Wait ’til it starts dating.”
Giles is returning books to their proper places in the stacks when Buffy, Willow and Xander show up in the library. He’s a little surprised to see them, they are normally in class at this time of day. They tell him they’re there because their teen health class got cancelled. Mr. Whitmore didn’t show up. Giles asks them if they can give him a hand then.
“No,” say Buffy and Willow together, and sit down on the steps. They both look a little under the weather.
“Sure!” says Xander, and bounces up the stairs to join Giles.
Giles asks Buffy for a report on how last night’s patrol went.
“No go,” says Buffy.
Giles wonders just what she means by that.
“No Gorches,” says Buffy.
“Apparently Buffy has decided the problem with the English language is all those pesky words,” says Xander. “You … Angel … big … smoochies?”
“Shut … up,” says Buffy.
Giles thinks that both Buffy and Willow look a little sluggish today. He asks if everything is all right with them.
Willow thinks it might be something they ate.
Xander has another explanation. He thinks the burden of parenthood is getting to them. Both Buffy and Willow clutch at their egg baskets protectively. Xander on the other hand is taking this whole egg thing much less seriously. He pulls his egg out of his shirt pocket and starts tossing it in the air.
Buffy and Willow watch Xander with concerned expressions on their faces. Willow doesn’t think he should be doing that.
Xander keeps tossing his egg. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. You can’t stress over every little thing! A child picks up on that. Which is a one-way ticket to neurotic city.”
He tosses his egg one more time, and misses the catch. The egg falls to the floor, and rolls on the carpet.
“It didn’t break!” Willow frowns at Xander. “How come it didn’t break?”
Xander bends down to pick up his egg. “Which is another secret to conscientious egg care: a pot of scalding water and about eight minutes.”
“You boiled your young?” asks Willow.
“Yeah, I know it sounds cruel,” says Xander, “but sometimes you got to be cruel to be kind! I mean, you can bet that little Xander here is thick skinned now.”
“Technically that would be cheating, yes?” Giles places a book onto a shelf. He doesn’t notice the egg trembling on the shelf behind the books.
“No!” says Xander. “It’s like a short cut. You know, when you run a race?”
“That would also be cheating,” says Buffy. Willow thinks he should be ashamed.
“I suppose there is a sort of…Machiavellian ingenuity to your transgression,” says Giles.
“I resent that!” says Xander. “Or possibly thank you.”
Cordelia enters the library wondering what they are all doing sitting around when there is something going on: Mr. Whitmore is missing, and presumed dead.
“Presumed by whom?” asks Giles.
“Well me!” says Cordy.
Giles thinks they should at least wait a couple hours before giving up on him.
Cordy doesn’t want to wait. She thinks they should be searching the closets for him.
Xander understands what Cordy is getting at. “You’re right. There could be a closet. Let’s go.” He tells Buffy and Willow to check for other clues, and leaves with Cordelia.
“Are they getting weirder?” asks Willow. “Have you noticed the weirdness of them?”
Buffy agrees that they’re weird. She asks Giles if she ought to be more worried about Mr. Whitmore, but Giles thinks she should be saving her strength just now to hunt the Gorches. Buffy thinks she’ll be feeling fine by tonight. Giles still thinks she should be careful, but Buffy isn’t worried.
“And Angel’s helping you, right?” says Willow.
“He does what he can,” says Buffy.
That night Buffy and Angel are not hunting again. It’s getting late, and Buffy tells him that she has to get home. Angel promises to keep hunting without her. It isn’t like he has to get up in the morning. That leaves Buffy free to go home and fill out her egg diary.
“Your what?” asks Angel.
Buffy tells Angel about the faux parenting thing they are doing at school, not that she’s planning to have any kids herself anytime soon.
Children are something Angel doesn’t have any experience with. They are also something he can’t have.
“Oh,” says Buffy. “That’s okay, um…I figured there were all sorts of things vampires couldn’t do. You know, like work for the telephone company, or volunteer for the Red Cross, or…have little vampires.”
“So you don’t think about the future?” asks Angel.
“No.”
“Never?”
“No,” says Buffy.
“You really don’t care what happens a year from now?” asks Angel. “Five years from now?”
“Angel, when I look into the future, all I see is you!” says Buffy. “All I want is you.”
“I know the feeling.” Angel kisses her.
A security guard patrols the corridors of the school. He hears a noise coming from the basement. He goes down to investigate. He finds a hole has been dug through the basement wall in the boiler room, concealed behind some boxes. He goes over to investigate it. Mr. Whitmore hits him from behind with a pick.
Buffy climbs back in her bedroom window. She notices that her egg is moving, vibrating in its basket. She goes closer to check it out and the egg suddenly cracks open and a creature springs from it at her face. She ducks aside and it goes flying over her shoulder. She whirls around and sees a scorpion like creature go scuttling under her bed.
Buffy pulls an iron out of her laundry basket and looks under her bed, ready to smash the creature. It’s disappeared. She stands and looks around her room. She can’t see it.
The creature drops from the ceiling and lands on Buffy’s shoulder. She drops the iron and grabs at it. She throws it across her room. The creature scuttles away under and behind some furniture. Buffy arms herself again, this time with a large pair of sewing scissors, and resumes her hunt. As she searches around where she last saw it, the creature climbs the wall behind her.
Buffy whirls around, and impales the creature with the scissors. It falls to the floor, and she stomps on it. She stabs it several more times to make sure it’s dead.
Buffy grabs her phone, and calls Willow. She waits for several anxious rings before Willow answers. Buffy tells her to smash her egg right away.
Willow doesn’t understand what Buffy is going on about.
“My egg!” says Buffy. “It went postal on me! The thing hatched, and it sprung this creepy-crawly thing, and it attacked me!”
Willow tells Buffy her egg is perfectly normal. She put it in the fridge. She suggests that maybe Buffy’s egg had been some sort of trap, set by the Gorch brothers.
“Maybe,” says Buffy. “Yeah, uh…I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have woken you. Uh, go back to sleep.”
“You sure?” asks Willow.
“Yeah! Yeah, I’m, I’m better. I’m, I’m fine.”
Willow tells Buffy that she’ll see her tomorrow, and Buffy hangs up her phone. Willow puts her phone down beside her hatched egg. Her face is blank and expressionless.
Joyce comes in to Buffy’s room to see what all the noise was about. Buffy quickly pulls a blanket over the remains of the creature so her mother won’t see it.
Joyce is surprised to find her daughter is fully dressed at 2:45 in the morning and she wants to know who Buffy was talking to on the phone. She doesn’t believe Buffy’s story about calling to check on Willow because she wasn’t feeling well at school that day. She also thinks that Buffy was just getting ready to go out, not that she just got in. She is not amused. Buffy is grounded.
Joyce drives Buffy to school the next day, spelling out the rules of her grounding: no after school socializing, no Bronze, no anything until further notice. When classes are over Buffy is to go to the library and study there until Joyce arrives to pick her up and take her home.
Buffy meets Cordelia in front of the school. She asks Cordy if her egg has been acting strangely.
“It isn’t acting anything. It’s an egg, Buffy, it doesn’t emote.” Cordy is carrying her egg inside her bear backpack. Cordy spots one of her friends nearby and leaves Buffy to go talk to her about her new hairstyle.
Buffy meets Willow while Cordy talks to her friend. She seems to be herself this morning. She asks Buffy if there was any more hatchling activity last night. They are rejoined by Cordelia as Willow asks Buffy if she brought the thing that attacked her into school with her. Buffy has. Giles wants to see it. He’s in full research mode.
Willow tells Buffy to bring it to the science lab. She will go collect Giles and they will examine it there. No one notices the hatchling that is riding on Willow’s back under her shirt.
Xander takes a bite out of a granola bar. He is not impressed. He thinks it tastes like cardboard, and tosses it away. He sits on a low wall outside the school, reaches into his bag and pulls out his egg. “Sorry, Junior, but a man’s got to eat.” He cracks the egg open on the wall, and rolls it under his hand to loosen the shell.
Xander peels off the top part of the shell as some of his friends walk by. They distract him from actually looking at what he’s doing. After they go he raises the egg to his mouth. He glances down at it just before taking a bite and sees the purple thing inside it. He screams, and throws the egg away. It lands by Willow, Buffy, and Cordelia.
Buffy, Cordy and Xander wait for Willow and Giles in the biology lab with the creature Buffy killed, and the one Xander boiled. Willow returns alone. She tells them that Giles said to start without him. He will be along in a few minutes.
Xander picks up a scalpel and hands it to Buffy. “So, okay! Get started, Buffy! Dissect it or something.”
“Me? Why do I have to dissect it?”
“Because you’re the Slayer?” asks Xander.
“And I slayed! My work here is done.” Buffy puts the scalpel down on the table in front of Xander.
“Oh, no, I almost ate one of those things. I think I’ve fulfilled my gross-out quota for the decade.”
“Guys…” Willow picks up the scalpel, and begins the dissection.
The eyes pop out of Cordelia’s bear backpack and a couple of tendrils emerge from them. No one notices, they are too intent on the dissection. Xander now suspects that he knows what happened to Mr. Whitmore.
“He saw this and ran away?” asks Cordelia.
“Try best case scenario,” says Buffy.
“It’s possible that Mr. Whitmore wasn’t harmed,” says Willow. “Maybe the offspring simply used him to return to the Mother Bezoar.”
Cordelia leans over to pick something up while Buffy and Xander turn to Willow in surprise. Cordelia hits Buffy with the metal bar she picked up. Xander spins back to face Cordelia, and Willow picks up a microscope and bashes him on the head with it.
Willow, Cordelia and a couple of other students drag Buffy and Xander into a utility closet, and lock them inside. They proceed to the storage room where all the school’s landscaping tools are kept. They and several other students and teachers each grab a tool—shovels, picks, hoes—head down to the basement, and through the hole dug in the wall.
Joyce arrives in the library looking for Buffy. She finds Giles, but no Buffy. He tells her Buffy hasn’t been in. He has been wanting to talk to her himself.
Joyce is not amused. Giles doesn’t think Buffy meant to do whatever it is Joyce is upset about.
“She never means to, but somehow she always manages to anyway,” says Joyce. “Do you have children, Mr. Giles?”
“Uh, no, I haven’t any children. Although, sometimes I feel as though I do, working here.”
“They can be such a…oh, I don’t want to say ‘burden,’ but… Actually I kind of do want to say ‘burden!’ They’re just so irresponsible.”
“Sometimes,” says Giles.
Joyce notices the books lying out on top of the card catalogue. “Bristow’s Demon Index, Hell’s Offspring?”
Giles picks up the books and moves them into the cage. He tells her they’re a hobby of his, having nothing to do with Buffy in any way. He shifts the conversation back to Buffy. He’s surprised that she hasn’t shown up. He comes back out of the cage and opens one of the card catalogue drawers. “What was that?” He looks toward the library doors.
Joyce turns to look. “Probably the janitor.”
Giles pulls one of the offspring out of the drawer and places it on the back of Joyce’s neck. She screams.
Giles and Joyce join the parade of people heading for the basement.
Buffy turns on the light in the utility closet, and pats Xander on the cheek to wake him up.
Xander moans. “Last time Cordy dragged me in here it was a lot nicer.”
“What?” asks Buffy.
Xander comes more fully awake. “Uh…nothing. Crazy talk. Head trauma.”
Buffy understands that. She’s got a big bump on her head herself.
Xander wonders what made Cordy and Willow do that to them. Are they possessed or something? Buffy figures it has something to do with the hatchlings, and they sure wanted her and Xander out of the way.
“Why not kill us?” asks Xander. “Why drag us in here?”
Buffy spots the pair of eggs lying on the floor. They are starting to rock.
Xander sees them too. “Oh. Bad now.”
Buffy picks up a tool box off a shelf and smashes it down on top of the eggs. Then she kicks the door open.
Buffy and Xander go to the library to look for Giles. He isn’t there.
“He picked a hell of a time to get a life,” says Buffy.
They can’t fight whatever these things are until they learn more about them. Xander remembers that Willow called it something, he tries to remember what it was.
“A Bozo!” says Buffy. “Not a Bozo.”
“A Bezoar,” says Xander.
“That’s it! Okay, so now…we look it up?”
“In what?” asks Xander.
“A book?” Buffy looks around and sees a pile of books out on the library counter. Giles was going to try and find something. The book on the top of the pile is open to a page with a picture of a large tentacled creature on it. “And I’d say he found something.”
Xander steps up to the counter, and crushes some egg shell under his foot. He looks down at it. “I’d say something found him.”
Giles and Joyce join the people who are labouring in a chamber beneath the school. Many of them are working to enlarge a hole in the floor, while others hand eggs up out of the hole to Cordelia. She wipes them with a towel and then passes them on to Mr. Whitmore who carefully places them in a box with hundreds of other eggs. Trapped in the hole is a giant creature with pulsing white flesh.
“‘Pre-pre-historic parasite.’” Buffy reads from the book Giles left open. “‘The mother hibernates underground, laying eggs. The offspring then attach themselves to a host, taking control of their motor functions through neural clamping.’”
“‘Neural clamping.’” says Xander. “That sounds skippable.”
“So, our people are taking orders from the Mama Bezoar,” says Buffy, “Which begs the question…”
“What does mama want?” asks Xander.
They hear a scream coming from outside the library. “Somebody help me! Get this thing off me! Help!”
Buffy and Xander run out of the library and find Jonathan getting back to his feet. Buffy asks him if he’s okay.
“I’m fine,” says Jonathan calmly. “I slipped.” He turns and walks away from them.
“I think I hear mommy calling.” Buffy tells Xander. They follow him.
Buffy and Xander follow Jonathan to the basement boiler room and watch him go through the hole in the wall. “Do we really want to go in there?” asks Xander.
“We really don’t.” Buffy goes through the hole anyway. Xander follows her.
They find all the people working and collecting the eggs. They also get their first look at the Mama Bezoar.
Whatever else happens they can’t let those eggs get distributed. Xander says he’ll take care of that, if Buffy can take care of Mama.
“I’m going to need a weapon.” Buffy takes another look at Mama. “I’m going to need a big weapon.” She heads back out to the boiler room to find herself one.
Xander walks out into the crowd of people working. Most of them just ignore him, except for Giles, who hands him a rock that he has just lifted out of the Bezoar’s hole. Xander drops the rock and keeps moving through the chamber, following Cordelia and another boy who are carrying a box full of eggs out into a sewer tunnel.
Buffy searches the boiler room for a suitable weapon. She finds a piece of metal pipe, about four feet long. Then she notices that she isn’t alone.
“I told you this weren’t over,” says Lyle Gorch.
“She’s so cute,” says Tector. “And little. Think we can keep her?”
Buffy tries to tell them that this really isn’t a good time for this, but Lyle thinks it’s going to be a great time.
Buffy hits Lyle in the face with the pipe, and kicks Tector across the boiler room into some shelves which collapse on top of him. That makes Lyle mad, and he charges at Buffy. He tackles her. They both fall through the hole in the wall.
Lyle looks around as he gets to his feet. “What the hell is this?” he asks.
This time Buffy’s entrance into the chamber hasn’t gone unnoticed. Several of the working people look up toward them, and Buffy notices for the first time that one of them is her mother.
Willow looks up from beside Joyce. “Kill them.”
Buffy and Lyle find themselves under attack from dozens of people. Buffy is hampered by the fact that many of these people are her friends. She doesn’t want to hurt them.
“What the hell is going on?” asks Lyle as he fights off the people attacking him.
“Long story,” says Buffy.
There is a bit of a lull in the attack from the Bezoar slaves, so Lyle looks at Buffy. She shakes her head as if to say. “Oh, no.”
“Oh yes!” nods Lyle. He swings a punch at her. Buffy ducks under it, and punches and kicks Lyle away. Then the Bezoar slaves resume their attack, and Buffy and Lyle have to turn their attention back to them.
Xander catches up with Cordy and the other student carrying the box of eggs through the sewers. He sneaks up behind them, grabs the boy, smashes him against the wall, and knocks him out. Cordelia carefully puts down the box of eggs and attacks him. Xander ducks out of her way.
“Cordelia! I don’t want to hurt you. Some of the time.” Xander leans down to pick up the box.
Cordelia swings another punch at Xander. This time she connects, and knocks him down. Xander springs back to his feet. “That’s my bump!” he yells at her, and swings back. His punch connects too, and knocks her out.
Tector enters the Bezoar’s chamber ready to join the fight. He sees the Mother Bezoar. “Well, looky there!” He bends over her pit.
The Bezoar opens her single eye and looks up at Tector.
Tector smiles. “Well, hello!”
A tentacle whips out of the pit, wraps around Tector’s neck, and pulls him in.
“Tector!” yells Lyle “Tector!” There is a rumbling sound from the pit, and then it goes quiet again. Lyle turns to Buffy. “This is all your fault!”
“How?” asks Buffy.
Lyle grabs Buffy and throws her to the ground beside the pit. Before Buffy can get to her feet again Joyce takes a swing at her with a pick. Buffy manages to dodge out of the way and the pick embeds itself in the floor where her head had been.
One of the Bezoar’s tentacles comes out of the pit and wraps itself around Buffy’s legs. It drags her into the pit. Buffy grabs the handle of the pick as she slides by it and takes it with her.
All work stops as the sound of rumbling, and the noise of a pick hitting flesh comes from the pit. Then the Bezoar screams, and all the offspring start falling off people’s backs. The Bezoar’s slaves all collapse to the floor.
Lyle is the only one left standing. He cautiously approaches the lip of the pit and looks down into it. The pick comes flying up out of it and lands on the ground beside him. Lyle steps back as Buffy climbs out of the pit. She is covered from head to toe with the Bezoar’s purple blood. She stands and looks at Lyle Gorch.
“Alright!” Lyle tips his hat to Buffy. “It’s over!” He turns and runs away.
Dirty and disheveled teachers and students come staggering out of the school.
“Yes, yes, it was a gas leak, everyone.” Giles is telling people. “Just, uh, get some air, and a good night’s rest, you know, uh, you’ll be fine. These gas things will happen.” He turns to Xander. “What was it really?”
“Stick with the gas thing,” says Xander. “I’ll fill you in tomorrow.”
Xander goes to check on how Willow and Cordelia are doing. Willow wants to know if she really hit him.
“You knocked me out,” says Xander.
“Did I hit you?” asks Cordelia.
“Yes, everyone hit me,” says Xander.
“Good,” says Cordy. “Well, I don’t mean ‘good’ because I hit you, but I didn’t want to be left out.”
Buffy returns from taking a shower and changing her clothes to look for her mother. Joyce is upset that Buffy wasn’t in the library where she was supposed to be when she came looking for her earlier. Buffy tries telling her that she was in the gym, but Joyce isn’t interested in hearing any excuses. “I thought I made it pretty clear that you weren’t to leave the library ’til I came.”
“The other side of that is there was a gas leak,” says Buffy, “and—”
“I’m not really interested in the other side right now,” says Joyce. “Young lady, you have to learn some responsibility, okay? Once and for all.”
“I’m grounded?” asks Buffy.
“You’re already grounded,” says Joyce.
“Oh, yeah,” says Buffy.
“Until further notice you are confined to your room,” says Joyce. “You will not leave your room at any time except to go to school or the bathroom. Am I making myself clear?”
“You’re clear,” says Buffy. “I won’t leave my room.”
“You’re damn right, you won’t.”
Buffy and Angel kiss. Angel is a little worried that Buffy might get in trouble for this, but Buffy doesn’t care. “Hey, I earned this.” She kisses him again. “Besides, I’m not breaking any rules.” She is standing at the window to her room, and Angel is on the rooftop outside.
Joyce calls to Buffy to ask if she’s going to bed soon. Buffy tells her she will in a minute, and goes back to kissing Angel.
| Who or What | Where | How |
|---|---|---|
| The vampire Tector Gorch | Under Sunnydale High | Eaten by the Mother Bezoar |
| The Mother Bezoar | Under Sunnydale High | Killed by Buffy. |