Introduction
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| Phases | Passion |
Xander dangles a heart shaped necklace in front of Buffy, and asks for her opinion of it.
Buffy is sitting on a headstone in one of Sunnydale’s cemeteries. She tells Xander it looks nice.
“But do you think Cordelia will like it?”
Buffy takes a closer look at the heart on the necklace. “I don’t know. Does she know what one of these is?”
“Okay, big yuks,” says Xander. “When are you guys going to stop making fun of me for dating Cordelia?”
“I’m sorry,” says Buffy, “But never. I just think you could find somebody more…better.”
“In a parallel universe, maybe,” says Xander. “Here the only other person I’m interested in is, um…unavailable.” He nods at Buffy. She understands what he means.
Xander tells Buffy that things have been going pretty well with Cordelia lately. They haven’t been arguing nearly as much.
Buffy is glad they are getting along, almost really, and she thinks that Cordy will like the gift.
“Well, this is new territory for me,” says Xander. “I mean, my Valentines are usually met with heartfelt restraining orders. I wish dating was like slaying, you know, simple, direct, stake to the heart, no muss, no fuss.”
A vampire erupts from its grave, and knocks Xander to the ground. It starts to close on him, but Buffy intervenes, giving the vampire a quick pummelling, followed by a staking.
Buffy helps Xander get back to his feet. “Sorry to say Xand, slaying is a tad more dangerous than dating.”
“You are obviously not dating Cordelia,” says Xander.
Cordelia arrives at school next morning and starts toward some of her friends. They see her coming and quickly turn the other way. Cordy rushes to catch up with them, they need to talk about what they’re all wearing to the upcoming Valentine’s Day dance. “I’m going to wear red and black,” she tells one of them, “so you need to switch.”
“Red and black?” asks the girl, “Is that what Xander likes?”
“Xander? What does he have to do with this?” asks Cordelia.
“Well, a girl wants to look good for her geek,” says Harmony.
“Xander’s just—”
“When are you two going to start wearing cute little matching outfits?” asks Harmony. “’Cause I’m planning to vomit. Let’s go.” The girls all turn their backs on Cordelia and walk away.
English class ends with Ms. Beakman telling the students to hand in their papers on the way out. Anyone without a paper is going to get a failing grade.
Xander is rather pleased with himself. He has his paper. A single page. “No ‘F’ for Xander today. No, this baby’s my ticket to a sweet ‘D-.’”
As the class breaks up, Willow stops to talk with Amy. Amy wants to know if she’s going to the Valentine’s dance. Willow gets all excited, and looks to Buffy for approval of what she wants to say.
“Go ahead,” says Buffy. “You know you want to say it.”
A big grin spreads across Willow’s face. “My boyfriend’s in the band!”
Amy thinks that’s cool, and asks Buffy if she’s going too.
“Valentine’s Day is just a cheap gimmick to sell cards and chocolate,” says Buffy
Amy understands. “Bad breakup, huh?”
“Believe me when I say, ‘uh, huh.’” says Buffy.
They all file out of the class, handing in their papers as they go. Willow’s is made up of multiple bound pages. Amy is the second last to go. She just stares at the teacher, who suddenly smiles, reaches out, grabs nothing out of thin air, and thanks Amy.
Xander is standing behind Amy, and sees the whole thing. He quickly hands in his paper, and follows Amy out of the class.
Willow asks Buffy about her Valentine’s Day plans. Buffy and her mother are going to be having a pig-out and vid fest. “It’s a time-honoured tradition among the loveless.”
Xander catches up with Buffy and Willow and tells them that he just saw Amy working some magic on Ms. Beakman.
“You mean like witchcraft?” asks Buffy.
“You know, her Mom’s a witch,” says Willow.
“And an amateur psycho,” says Buffy. “Amy’s the last person that should be messing with that stuff.”
Xander thinks maybe he should go have a talk with Amy, but they are interrupted by Giles, who wants to speak with Buffy.
Before he can say any more Jenny Calendar comes out of her classroom and sees them. An awkward silence falls over the group, broken by Miss Calendar telling Giles that she wants to talk to him for a couple of minutes.
Giles tells her it will have to wait, he has something he needs to discuss with Buffy.
Buffy doesn’t even look at Jenny. “Let’s go,” she tells Giles, and walks away toward the library. Giles and Jenny stand looking at each other in silence for a couple of seconds, and then he follows after Buffy.
Giles catches up with Buffy in the library. She asks him if he’s okay, and he tells her he’s fine. It’s Buffy he is worried about just now. He has been doing some more research on Angel, looking for patterns and such, and what he’s learned has disturbed him. “Around Valentine’s Day, he’s rather prone to, well, brutal displays of, uh… He would think of it as affection, I suppose.”
“Like what?” asks Buffy.
“No, uh, no need to go into details,” says Giles.
“That bad?”
Giles just thinks it would be best if Buffy stayed in the next few nights. He will patrol to keep an eye on things. “Better safe than sorry.”
“It’s a little late for both,” says Buffy.
Drusilla opens the jewelry case containing her Valentine’s Day present from Spike. It’s a diamond necklace. She thinks it’s beautiful. Before she can pick it up Angel plops his present for her down on the table in front of her. It’s a human heart.
“Oh, Angel!” Dru holds her hands over the heart. “It’s still warm!”
“I knew you’d like it,” says Angel. “I found it in a quaint little shopgirl.”
Angel picks the necklace up off the table and looks at it. “Cute,” he says to Spike, and starts to put it around Drusilla’s neck.
Spike rolls forward. “I’ll get it.”
Angel raises his hands away from Dru’s neck. “Done. I know Dru gives you pity access, but you have to admit it’s so much easier when I do things for her.”
Spike thinks that Angel should spend less time worrying about Dru, and more time worrying about that Slayer he’d been tramping around with.
“Dear Buffy,” says Angel. “I’m still trying to decide the best way to send my regards.”
“Why don’t you rip her lungs out?” asks Spike. “It might make an impression.”
“Lacks…poetry,” says Angel.
“It doesn’t have to,” says Spike. “What rhymes with lungs?”
“Don’t worry, Spike,” says Drusilla. “Angel always knows what speaks to a girl’s heart.”
Xander fidgets with the box containing Cordy’s necklace while he sits at a table with Willow in the Bronze. Oz and the rest of Dingos Ate My Baby are up on stage performing. Willow is happy, Oz has switched back to being a redhead. She likes it better than the brown. Xander is anxiously waiting for Cordelia to appear.
Cordy comes into the Bronze. She spots Harmony and her friends, and starts toward them. They see her coming, and instantly turn their backs on her and walk away.
Buffy and her mother eat popcorn while watching a movie on TV. An assortment of junk foods is laid out on the coffee table in front of them. There’s a knock at the front door, and Buffy gets up to answer it. She opens the door, but no one is there.
Buffy returns to the living room, and finds that Joyce has disappeared. She walks through the house looking for her. She finds her mother coming in the back door. Somebody left a black box, with a black bow on it for Buffy.
The box contains a dozen long stemmed red roses, and a card, which says “Soon.”
Joyce is happy that someone is sending Buffy flowers, until she sees Buffy’s reaction to them.
Xander spots Cordelia sitting at another table by herself, and goes over to her. She is surprised by his appearance. He is a lot better dressed than he usually is.
“I let Buffy dress me,” says Xander. “Well, not physically.”
“Perfect,” says Cordy. “You had to make this harder, didn’t you?”
“Okay, clearly the fact that I please you visually has got us off on the wrong foot here.”
“Xander—”
“Let me finish.” Xander interrupts. “I’ve been thinking a lot about us lately, the why and the wherefore. You know, once, twice, a kissy here, a kissy there. And you can chalk it all up to hormones. And maybe that’s all we have here. Tawdry teen lust. But maybe not. Maybe something in you sees something special inside me. And vice versa. I mean, I think I do. See something. So…” He pulls the jewelry box out of his pocket and hands it to her.
Cordelia opens the box. “Xander, thank you.” She holds up the necklace up for a better look at it. “It’s beautiful. I want to break up.”
Xander is dumfounded. “Okay, not quite the reaction I was looking for.”
“I know. I’m sorry,” says Cordelia. “It’s just… Who are we kidding? Even if parts of us do see specialness, we don’t fit.”
“Yeah! Okay!” says Xander. “Do you know what’s a good day to break up with somebody? Any day besides Valentine’s Day! I mean, what, were you running low on dramatic irony?”
“I know. I didn’t mean to do it this way. I—”
“Well, you did,” says Xander.
Next day at school everyone seems to know about Cordy dumping Xander. Everyone seems to be laughing at him.
Xander sees Buffy coming down the hallway and tries to stop her to talk, but she’s in too much of a hurry. “Can’t talk right now. Angel.”
Xander asks if Buffy needs any help, but she tells him she’s all right, and rushes away.
Xander walks past Cordelia, who has rejoined her old clique.
“Gee Xander,” says Harmony. “Maybe you should learn a second language, so even more girls can reject you.”
Xander spots Amy walking through the corridor, and he gets an idea. He grabs her and drags her off into a corner for a quiet chat. “You’re a witch.”
Amy glances around nervously. “No, I’m not. That, that was my mom, remember?”
Xander thinks that it runs in the family. He tells her about seeing her working some mojo on Ms. Beakman the other day. Maybe he should tell someone about that.
“That is so mean!” says Amy.
“Blackmail is such an ugly word.”
“I didn’t say blackmail.”
“Yeah, but I’m about to blackmail you, so I thought I’d bring it up,” says Xander.
“What do you want?” asks Amy.
“What do I want?” asks Xander. “I want some respect around here. I want, for once, to come out ahead. I want the Hellmouth to be working for me. You and me, Amy we’re going to cast a little spell.”
Xander looks down the corridor to where Cordy is sitting with Harmony and the others. Amy follows his gaze.
Amy and Xander move into an empty classroom. He tells her that he wants her to work a love spell for him. He wants Cordelia to fall madly in love with him, so that he can dump her. He wants to put Cordy through what he has been going through.
Amy isn’t sure that’s a good idea. “Intent has to be pure with love spells.”
“Right,” says Xander. “I intend revenge. Pure as the driven snow. Now, are you going to play, or do we need to have another chat about invisible homework?”
Amy agrees to do it. She will need a personal object of Cordelia’s in order to do the spell.
Buffy enters the library and slaps the card she got from Angel down on the page of the book Giles is reading. “‘Soon’ what, Giles? You never held out on me until the big, bad thing in the dark became my ex-honey. Look, this isn’t the time to start becoming Mr. Protective Guy. I can’t just hang around, and I can’t prepare when I don’t know what’s coming.”
Giles tells Buffy she’s right, and asks her to sit down. He heads toward his office to get some books.
Xander intercepts Cordelia in the hallway. He tells her he wants the necklace back.
“What?” asks Cordy. “I thought it was a gift.”
“No, last night it was a gift,” says Xander. “Today it’s scrap metal. Figure I can melt it down and sell it for fillings or something.”
Cordy thinks it’s really pathetic of him to be asking for the gift back. She says it’s in her locker.
Xander looks down the hall to her locker and tells her he can wait.
Cordy goes to her locker, and opens the door. She pretends to look inside it while she hides behind the door, and reaches under her collar to take the necklace off. She hands it to Xander. “Here. It’s a good thing we broke up. Now I don’t have to pretend I like it.”
Xander sits inside a male symbol painted in red on the floor of one of Sunnydale High’s science classrooms. He’s shirtless, has a trident painted on his chest, and is holding a black candle.
Amy holds Cordelia’s necklace over a beaker of boiling liquid and begins the spell.
“Diana, goddess of love and the hunt, I pray to thee.
Let my cries bind the heart of Xander’s beloved.”
Amy lowers the necklace into the liquid, and magical fire rises from the beaker.
“May she neither rest nor sleep until she submits to his will only.”
Amy holds a ball of fire between her hands.
“Diana, bring about this love and bless it.”
The fire retreats into the beaker. “Blow out the candle now!” says Amy.
Xander blows, plunging the lab into darkness.
Next day at school, Xander confidently walks up to Cordelia and her friends—who are sitting at a table in the lounge—and leans against the back of Cordy’s chair, smiling.
Cordelia looks up at Xander. “What?”
Xander says good morning, and asks about the weather.
“What do you want?” asks Cordelia. “You can’t be sniffing around for more jewelry to melt, because all you ever gave me was that Smallmart looking thing.”
“Is this love?” Xander leans closer to her. “’Cause maybe on you it doesn’t look that different.”
“What are you doing?” Cordelia pushes Xander away. “Are you going, like, stalker-boy on me now?”
Xander straightens up, feeling chagrined. “Sorry. My mistake.”
“Yeah, I should say so,” says Cordelia. Xander walks away from them. “What is his deal?” she asks her friends.
Buffy sits at the library table while Giles reads one of his books.
“Here’s another,” says Giles. “Valentine’s Day. Angel nails a puppy to the—”
“Skip it,” says Buffy. Giles starts to object, but she won’t let him. “I don’t want to know. I don’t have a puppy. Skip it.”
“Right you are. I’ll get another batch.” Giles gets up, and heads into his office for more books.
Xander comes into the library. “I have a plan. We use me as bait.”
“You mean make Angel come after you?” asks Buffy.
“No, I mean chop me into little pieces and stick me on hooks for fish to nibble at ’cause it would be more fun than my life.”
Buffy understands. She’s heard about him and Cordy. She thinks it’s Cordy’s loss. She proposes that maybe they could do something together, just the two of them. They can comfort each other.
“Would lap dancing enter into that scenario at all?” asks Xander, “’Cause I find that very comforting.”
Buffy stands and takes a couple of steps toward Xander. She smiles at him. “Play your cards right.”
Xander is a little confused. Buffy tells him that she was surprised how glad the news about him and Cordy made her. She slides right up against him. “It’s funny, how you can see someone every day but not really see them. You know?”
“Yeah, it’s funny,” says Xander. “And it’s just getting funnier.”
Buffy puts her finger against his lips to shut him up, and moves her mouth toward his.
They are interrupted by Amy. She wants a private word with Xander. He looks back and forth between her and Buffy, and reluctantly agrees. He steps out of the library with her, but keeps glancing back through the window in the door at Buffy, who continues to watch him, and smile.
Amy tells Xander that the spell didn’t work, she wants to try it again.
Xander is unconcerned, he tells Amy not to worry about it. “It was wrong to meddle with the forces of darkness. I see that now.” He starts back into the library.
Amy stops Xander. They don’t have to do any spells, they can just hang out together. She really enjoyed the time they spent together. “Its funny how you can see a person every day and—”
“—not really see them,” finishes Xander. His heart sinks as he looks back into the library at Buffy staring at him, and realizes why she is suddenly so interested in him.
One of Cordy’s friends comes up to them in the hall. She wants Xander to come over to her place so that they can study history together. Amy is not pleased to see her.
Xander tells both of them that he has to go.
Xander retreats to his room at home. He sits on his bed to think about what is happening, and is shocked to discover it’s already occupied. Willow was waiting for him. All she is wearing is one of his shirts.
Xander jumps up off the bed, and backs away from her.
“Sorry,” says Willow. “I wanted to surprise you.”
“Good job!” says Xander. “High marks.”
“Don’t be so jumpy. I’ve been in your bed before.”
“Yeah, but Will, we were both in footy pyjamas.”
“Xand, I’ve been thinking.”
Xander knows what Willow’s been thinking. He tries to tell her that it is all because of the spell he tried to do.
Willow isn’t listening. “How long have we been friends?” she asks.
“A long, long time,” says Xander. “Too long to do anything that might change that now.”
Willow gets out of the bed, and starts toward him. “I want you Xander. To be my first.”
“Baseman!” says Xander. He backs away from her toward his door. “Please tell my we are talking baseball!”
Willow backs Xander up against his door, and puts her hands on his chest. She stands on her tiptoes and starts to nibble on his ear.
“I don’t want to use force!” Xander pushes Willow away.
Willow smiles. “Force is okay!” She goes for his ear again.
Xander pushes Willow away again. “That’s it! This has got to stop. It’s time for me to act like a man.” He opens his door. “And hide.” Xander runs away.
Back at the school all of Cordelia’s friends are snubbing her again.
“What did I do now?” asks Cordelia. “Wear red and purple together?”
“You know what you did,” says Harmony. “Xander is wounded because of you.”
“Are you tripping?” asks Cordy. “I thought you wanted me to break up with him!”
“Only a sick pup would let Xander get away, no matter what her friends said,” says Harmony. She and the others turn and walk away from Cordelia in a huff.
“What does it take to make you people happy?” Cordelia shouts after them.
Xander walks back into the school. All the girls are looking at him adoringly. Xander is not thrilled with the attention. The guys in the school are almost as bad. They are all looking a lot less pleased with him. A lot of them look like they would like to drag him into an alley somewhere.
Xander enters the library to confess to Giles. “See, I found out that Amy’s into witchcraft, and I was hurt, I guess, so I made her put the love whammy on Cordy, but it backfired, and now every woman in Sunnydale wants to make me her cuddle monkey, which may sound swell on paper, but…”
Giles is a little dubious at first, but then Jenny comes into the library. “Nice shirt,” she tells Xander, and rubs her hand along his sleeve. “Look, Rupert, I know that you’re angry at me, and I don’t blame you, but I am not just going to go away.” She continues to rub her hand over Xander’s arm. “I mean, I care far too much about you to…” She turns to Xander. “Have you been working out?”
Xander gives Giles a “See what I mean?” look and shrug.
Giles grabs Jenny and pulls her away from Xander. “I cannot believe that you are fool enough to do something like this!”
“Oh, no,” says Xander, “I’m twice the fool it takes to do something like this.”
Giles asks if Amy has tried to reverse the spell, and Xander tells him that all Amy wants to do is discuss honeymoon plans.
Jenny wants Giles to go so she can talk with Xander alone. She starts to move toward him.
Giles pulls Jenny back. “Do you have any idea how serious this is? People under a love spell, Xander, are deadly. They lose all capacity for reason, and if what you say is true and the entire female population is affected, I… Don’t leave the library. I’ll find Amy and see if we can put a stop to this thing.”
Giles starts to leave the library, which makes Jenny happy, until he comes back, grabs her, and drags her away with him.
Xander rolls the card catalogue up against the library doors to barricade himself inside. He has forgotten that the doors open both ways though.
Buffy pulls the door open and comes into the library. She is wearing a short black raincoat and black high heeled shoes. She does not appear to be wearing anything under the raincoat. “Alone at last!”
Xander’s jaw drops open in shock. “Buff, give me a heart attack!”
Buffy slowly prowls toward him. “Oh, I’m going to give you more than that. “ She starts playing with the belt to her raincoat.
Xander backs away from her. “Buff, for the love of god! don’t open that raincoat!”
“Come on!” says Buffy. “It’s a party! Aren’t you going to open your present?”
Xander keeps backing away from Buffy. “It’s not that I don’t want to. Sometimes the remote impossible possibility that you might like me was all that sustained me. But not now. Not like this.” He reaches the steps up to the library’s mezzanine level, and trips, falling back onto them.
Buffy keeps coming. She puts one foot between his legs, raises the other and puts it on a step beside him.
Xander keeps his eyes on her face. “This isn’t real to you. You’re only here because of a spell. I mean, if I thought you had one clue what it would mean to me… But you don’t. So I can’t.”
Buffy starts to get angry. “So you’re saying this is all a game? You make me feel this way, and then you reject me? What am I, a toy?”
“Buffy, please! calm down!”
“I’ll calm down when you explain yourself!”
“Get away from him!” says Amy. “He’s mine!”
Buffy turns away from Xander to confront her new rival. “Oh, I don’t think so.” She turns back. “Xander, tell her.”
“He doesn’t have to say,” says Amy. “I know what his heart wants.”
“Funny, I know what your face wants.” Buffy punches Amy. She whirls back around to confront Xander. “What is this, you’re two-timing me?” she demands.
Xander is speechless.
Amy gets back to her feet with a bloody nose. Her eyes have turned black.
“Goddess Hecate, work thy will.”
Golden light begins to whirl around Amy.
“Uh-oh!” says Xander.
“Before thee, let the unclean thing crawl!”
Amy flings her arms out toward Buffy. Buffy is engulfed in the light, and vanishes.
A raincoat and a pair of shoes lie on the floor where Buffy stood.
Giles and Jenny run back into the library, attracted by the fireworks. “What just happened?” asks Giles.
Xander points at the raincoat. “Buffy.”
“Where is she?” asks Giles.
Xander just looks at the coat. A rat comes scurrying out of its sleeve.
Amy isn’t happy to see Jenny.
“Can you focus for a minute?” asks Xander. “You just turned Buffy into a rat!”
Amy isn’t worried about Buffy. She can take care of herself.
Buffy scurries away from the pile of clothing, and runs behind some of the library shelves.
Amy is more worried about the new competition for Xander’s affections. She wants to go somewhere private with him.
“I’m not going anywhere until you change her back,” says Xander.
Jenny steps toward Amy. “You heard him. So why don’t you undo your little magic trick and get lost?”
“Who made you Queen of the World?” asks Amy. “Well, you’re old enough to be.”
Jenny grabs Xander by the shirt and pulls him toward her. “What can I say? I guess Xander’s just too much man for the pimple squad.”
Amy pushes Xander out of the way.
“Goddess Hecate, to you I pray—”
She begins gathering the light, and her eyes turn black.
Xander grabs Amy and claps his hand over her mouth. “Quit with the Hecate!”
Cordelia is once again confronted by her ‘friends’ by her locker. “Okay, what now? You don’t like my locker combination?”
“It’s just not right,” says Harmony. “You never loved him. You just used him. You make me sick!”
“Okay, Harmony, if you need to borrow my Midol, just ask.”
Harmony slaps Cordelia.
Cordy is taken totally by surprise. She stares at Harmony in shock for a few seconds, and then turns away, only to find that there’s another girl standing behind her. She grabs Cordy, and pushes her down onto the floor. The other girls close in.
Giles orders Jenny and Amy to sit down and be quiet. He points them toward the library table. “We have to catch the Buffy Rat,” he tells Xander.
Xander spots her crawling behind the magazine rack. He gets down on the floor and tries to coax her out. He notices someone is standing over him, looks up and sees Oz. Oz punches him. The Buffy Rat uses the distraction to run out the door.
Oz shakes his hand. “That kinda hurt.”
Xander rubs his cheek. “Kinda? What was that for?”
“I was on the phone all night, listening to Willow cry about you.” says Oz. “Now, I don’t know exactly what happened, but I was left with a very strong urge to…hit you.” He holds out his hand to help Xander get back to his feet.
“I didn’t touch her. I swear,” says Xander.
Giles doesn’t have time for this. They have to find Buffy.
“Amy turned her into a rat.” Xander tells Oz.
“Oh,” says Oz.
Giles goes back to looking behind the magazine rack for Buffy, but she’s gone. He starts to ask Xander for help, but decides that having him around is just too much of a distraction, and tells him to go home. He asks Oz to search for Buffy, while he will work with Jenny and Amy to reverse the spells.
Xander walks out into the corridor. He hears Cordelia screaming. Half a dozen girls are attacking her. They push her to the floor, and start kicking at her, and pulling on her hair. When they spot Xander, most of them instantly forget about Cordelia, and rush toward him.
Xander rushes into the mob of girls—who try to grab him—and picks up Cordelia. He carries her away with the mob of girls—and the cafeteria lunch lady—in pursuit.
Giles tries to figure out how to reverse the spells. He figures that Amy must have botched the love spell so that Cordelia’s necklace actually protected her from it. He expects that it can be easily reversed. The spell on Buffy is another matter. “Where did you learn animal transformation?”
Amy really isn’t thinking about that. She has been cleaning up her bloody nose, and worrying about Xander. She doesn’t think Giles should have sent him away. “He needs me!”
That gets a snort from Jenny. She knows that Xander loves her. “What we have is real!”
“Instead of making me ill, why doesn’t one of you try to help me?” asks Giles.
“You have no idea what I’m going through,” says Amy.
“I know it’s not love,” says Giles. “It’s obsession. Selfish, banal, obsession. Now, Xander has put himself in very great danger. If you cared at all about him, you’d help me save him, rather than wittering on about your feelings.” He looks around for Jenny, but she has taken the opportunity to leave the library to go after Xander.
Xander and Cordelia run outside. They seem to have evaded the mob of girls after them inside. It doesn’t do them any good, there is a fresh mob out here, led by Willow.
Willow has an axe. “I should’ve known I’d find you with her.”
“Will, come on,” says Xander, “you don’t want to hurt me.”
“Oh, no? You don’t know how hard this is for me. I love you so much! I’d rather see you dead than with that bitch!” Willow raises the axe and comes toward him.
Xander is saved by the re-appearance of the other mob. A melee breaks out between the girls who want to kill Xander, and the ones who want to kiss him. He and Cordy make their escape.
The Buffy Rat makes her way down the stairs into the basement boiler room. Oz is on her trail, armed with a flashlight.
Darkness has fallen. Xander and Cordelia have once again lost the mob of girls chasing them.
Cordelia still doesn’t understand what’s going on. “Who died and made you Elvis?”
Xander just wants to get out of sight. They’ve reached Buffy’s house, and he figures it’ll be a good place to hide. They run up to the door and start knocking.
Joyce lets them in. She’s surprised to see them. She asks where Buffy is, and Xander tells her she’s “around.”
Joyce takes them into the kitchen. She notices that Xander is all scratched up, tells him to sit down, and sends Cordy upstairs to get some bandages from the bathroom.
Xander sits in a chair at the kitchen island.
“Let me get you something to drink,” says Joyce. “You in the mood for cold or hot?”
Xander just shrugs. Joyce walks around behind him. “I think it’s more of a hot night.” She starts to rub his shoulders. “Don’t you?”
Xander drops his head onto the counter top. “Whatever!” He waves his hands in resignation.
Joyce rubs Xander’s shoulders. “Ooo, you are so tense.” She leans down and starts to nuzzle at his neck.
Cordelia comes back with the bandages, and spots them. “What are you doing? Make me yack!”
Joyce tells Cordelia to go back upstairs, but Cordy has no intention of doing that. She grabs Joyce, shoves her out the back door, and locks it.
“And keep your mom aged mitts off my boyfriend! Former!” Cordy shouts through the door.
Cordelia turns to Xander. “Why has everyone gone insane?”
“Insane?” asks Xander. “Is it so impossible for you to believe that other women find me attractive?”
“The only way you could get girls to want you would be witchcraft!”
“That is such a— Well yeah, okay, good point.”
Joyce breaks the window in the door and reaches in to unlock it.
Xander and Cordelia retreat upstairs to Buffy’s room. Xander checks out the window. “Good. The mob still hasn’t found us. We should be safer up here.”
Angel reaches in through the window and grabs Xander. “Works in theory!”
The Buffy Rat scurries around in the basement. She finds a rat trap with some cheese in it.
Angel throws Xander off the roof into the yard, and jumps down after him. He grabs Xander by the shirt and picks him up. “Perfect. I wanted to do something special for Buffy, actually to Buffy, but this is so much better!”
Xander knees Angel in the gut, but Angel barely notices. He flips Xander to the ground, grabs him by the hair and lifts him up again. He twists Xander’s head around, exposing his neck.
Someone grabs Angel, pulls him away, and throws him against a tree. At first Xander thinks it’s Buffy who saved him, but it’s not.
“Don’t fret kitten, Mommy’s here,” says Drusilla
“I don’t know what you’re up to, Dru, but it doesn’t amuse!” says Angel.
Drusilla snarls at Angel. “If you harm one hair on this boy’s head…” She strokes Xander’s hair.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” says Angel, “Him?”
Dru turns Xander around to face her. “Just because I finally found a real man.”
Angel backs away. “I guess I really did drive you crazy.”
Drusilla rubs her hands over Xander’s face. “Your face is a poem. I can read it.”
“Really?” asks Xander. “It doesn’t say ‘spare me’ by any chance?”
“Shhh.” Dru kisses Xander. “How do you feel about eternal life?”
“We couldn’t just start with a coffee?” asks Xander. “A movie, maybe?”
Drusilla grabs Xander’s hair, and pulls his neck toward her teeth.
Xander is saved by the arrival of the mob again. They are still divided about just what they want to do with him, and now that they have caught up with him, they go back to fighting among themselves as much as trying to kill or kiss him. This gives Cordy an opening to rescue Xander, and she pulls him back inside the house. They lock the door on the mob.
It isn’t going to do them any good. Drusilla knocks down the back door, but she finds she can’t get into the house. She hasn’t been invited. That doesn’t stop a bunch of the other girls though.
Xander and Cordelia turn away from the front door and see Joyce standing in front of them with a knife.
“It’s never going to work for us Xander,” says Joyce. “We have to end it!”
The girls who came in through the back door start running into the front foyer. Xander and Cordy run. They make it through the basement door—where it all started—and lock it behind them.
Oz searches the boiler room for the Buffy Rat, while Giles and Amy complete the preparations for their counter spells. Giles tells Amy to go first.
Xander nails some boards over the basement door to reinforce it.
“If we die in here I’m going to kick your ass!” says Cordy. “I mean it!”
Xander continues to hammer. “None of this would’ve happened if you hadn’t broken up with me. But no, you’re so desperate to be popular!”
“Me? I’m not the one who embraced the black arts just to get the girls to like me. Well, congratulations, it worked!”
“Would’ve worked fine, except your hide’s so thick, not even magic can penetrate it!”
Cordelia is surprised by that. “You mean the spell was for me?”
They’re interrupted by a knife coming through the door. They retreat down the stairs into the basement. More girls outside break the basement window and start to reach in through it.
Amy casts her de-ratting spell as the Buffy Rat sniffs at the cheese in the rat trap in the basement.
“Goddess of creatures great and small,
I conjure thee to withdraw.
Hecate, I hereby license thee to depart.”
Giles sprinkles some powder into the beaker of boiling liquid, and sparks flash.
Oz sees a bright flash of light coming from behind a stack of crates in the boiler room. “Buffy?”
Buffy’s head pops up from behind the crates.
The mob breaks open the basement door and starts down the stairs. They are led by Willow, with Jenny, Joyce, and the others close behind. Willow still has her axe.
Xander picks up a pipe wrench to defend himself and Cordelia. More of the mob follows Willow down the stairs, and they all seem to be armed with something. Joyce has her knife, and the lunch lady has a rolling pin.
Giles begins the anti-love spell. He sprinkles more ingredients into the bubbling beaker on the lab bench.
“Diana, goddess of love, be gone.
Hear no more thy siren’s song.”
The mob closes in on Xander and Cordy. They are knocked to the floor as the mob all try to get at them.
Giles waves Cordelia’s necklace over the beaker and drops it in. Light flairs and swirls around him and Amy, and is sucked into the beaker.
The girls all stop trying to get at Xander and Cordelia. They slowly back away and look around the basement feeling dazed and confused. Most of them have no idea where they are. Xander gets up, and helps Cordelia to her feet.
Buffy stands up behind some boxes, and Oz swings his flashlight around toward her. She isn’t wearing any clothes. Oz quickly averts his flashlight.
“Hi Oz.” Buffy holds her arms across her chest. “I seem to be having a slight case of nudity here.”
“But you’re not a rat,” says Oz, “so call it an upside.”
“You think maybe you could get me some clothing?” asks Buffy.
“Yes, I can. Just, don’t go anywhere.” Oz turns around and goes back up the stairs.
Buffy looks down at herself. “Really not an issue.”
Everyone in Buffy’s basement is still confused.
“Boy,” says Cordelia. “That was the best scavenger hunt ever!”
Buffy walks down a school corridor with Xander. “Scavenger hunt?” she asks.
“Your mom seemed to buy it.”
“So she says,” says Buffy. “I think she’s just so wigged at hitting on one of my friends that she’s repressing. She’s getting pretty good at that. I should probably start worrying.”
Xander is back to being incredibly unpopular, which for the most part is better than everyone trying to kill him, but Willow still isn’t talking to him.
Buffy figures that it’s going to take Xander at least a month of grovelling to make up with her. “This is worse for her than anyone. She loved you before you invoked the great roofie spirit. The rest of us…”
“You remember, huh?” asks Xander.
“Oh, yeah!” says Buffy. “I remember coming on to you. I remember begging you to undress me. And then a sudden need for cheese. I also remember that you didn’t.”
“Need cheese?”
“Undress me. It meant a lot to me, what you said.”
“C’mon, Buffy, I couldn’t take advantage of you like that. Okay, for a minute, it was touch and go there.”
Buffy smiles. “You came through. There might just be hope for you yet.”
“Well, tell that to Cordelia,” says Xander.
“You’re on your own there.” Buffy leaves Xander on his own.
Cordy walks along the courtyard concourse with Harmony and the rest of her crowd. Harmony is all excited because she has become the third alternate choice for Cody Wienberg to take to the pledge dance. Cody has a 350SL.
Harmony runs into Xander, who has just come down the stairs. She pauses long enough to insult Xander’s clothes, and then turns back to her friends to start talking about Jennifer’s backpack as Xander walks away from them.
“Harmony, shut up!” says Cordelia.
Xander stops and looks back toward them.
“Do you know what you are, Harmony?” asks Cordy. “You’re a sheep.”
“I’m not a sheep!” says Harmony.
“You’re a sheep,” says Cordy. “All you ever do is what everyone else does just so you can say you did it first. And here I am, scrambling for your approval, when I’m way cooler than you are ’cause I’m not a sheep. I do what I want to do, and I wear what I want to wear. And you know what? I’ll date whoever the hell I want to date.”
Xander smiles as he overhears this.
“No matter how lame he is,” says Cordy.
Xander’s smile fades, but it comes back when Cordy turns away from Harmony and the others and walks toward him. She takes Xander’s arm, and they walk off around the corner together.
As soon as they’re out of the sight of Harmony and her friends, Cordy starts having second thoughts. “Oh, god, what have I done? They’re never going to speak to me again!”
“Oh, sure, they are,” says Xander. “If it helps, whenever we’re around them you and I can fight a lot.”
“You promise?” asks Cordy.
Xander pats her hand. “You can pretty much count on it.”
| Who or What | Where | How |
|---|---|---|
| A vampire | The cemetery | Staked by Buffy |
| A quaint little shop girl | Heart ripped out by Angel |