Introduction
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| Earshot | The Prom |
Faith sits in Mayor Wilkins’ chair with her eyes closed. He sets a gift wrapped box down on his desk in front of her and tells her to open them. The present is a token of his appreciation for an errand he wants her to run at the airport.
“Airport?” asks Faith. “What’s next? Going to want me to help a buddy of yours move a sofa?”
“This isn’t a free ride, young lady,” says the Mayor. “You know, I’m beginning to think that somebody’s getting a little spoiled. Maybe I should take this back.” He reaches toward the box.
Faith pulls her present closer to her. “Sorry…sir.”
The Mayor likes this attitude better, and holds out a plate of chocolate chip cookies to her. Faith takes one, and eats it while the Mayor tells her about the errand. “A package is arriving tomorrow night from Central America. Something—and I can’t stress this enough—something crucially important to my Ascension. Without it…well, what would Toll House Cookies be without the chocolate chips? A pretty darn big disappointment, I can tell you. Open your present.”
Faith opens her present, and is very pleased to find it’s a large ornate knife.1 “This is a thing of beauty, boss.”
“Well, it cost a pretty penny.” 2 says the Mayor. “So, you just take good care of it. And you be careful not to put somebody’s eye out with that thing, until I tell you to.”
“Any particular eyes in mind?” asks Faith.
Buffy and Angel are fighting a couple of vampires in the cemetery.
Buffy kicks one of them, and it falls back against Angel. “Oh! Sorry honey!”
Angel tells Buffy that it’s okay, and they finish off the two vampires quickly. They continue their patrol through the cemetery. Buffy is feeling that her life is in a rut. All she and Angel ever seem to do together is slay vampires. He never takes her anyplace new.
“What about that fire demon nest in the cave by the beach?” asks Angel. “I felt that was a nice change of pace.”
“So this is our future?” asks Buffy. “This is how we’re going to spend our nights when I’m fifty and you’re…the same age you are now.”
They hear a vampire growling from the shadows. “Let’s just get you to fifty,” says Angel.
Buffy is sitting at the kitchen island looking through one of her school books while she has breakfast.
“Buffy? When were you going to tell me?” asks her mother.
“Alright, busted.” Buffy starts to take off her earrings. “I didn’t think you’d miss them.”
Joyce isn’t talking about her earrings. She’s talking about the acceptance letter to Northwestern University she’s found. “Honey, I’m so proud of you! That’s wonderful! I mean, it’s not cheap, but, uh, I know we can make it work if your father pitches in. Not that Northwestern is your only option. It’s a great school, though. I am so proud of you.”
“Mom, you know that I can’t… I-I just can’t decide on a school right now.” Buffy still hasn’t told her mother that with Faith gone bad, she won’t be able to leave Sunnydale. “I mean I want to sleep on it, you know, mull it over. Raise them up my inner flagpole, see which one I salute.”
Joyce understands that. She’s also anxious to call Buffy’s Aunt Arlene in Illinois to tell her the good news. She picks up the phone and starts to dial. Buffy gets up to leave for school. “Oh, Buffy?”
Buffy looks back at her mother. “I know. You’re proud of me.”
“Ah, don’t forget to put my earrings back in my dresser before you go out,” says Joyce.
Principal Snyder is prowling the schoolyard. He sees a guy deliver a brown paper bag to another guy sitting at a table in the quad, and demands to know what’s in it.
“My lunch,” says guy who received the bag.
Snyder takes the bag. “Is that the new drug lingo?”
“No. It’s my lunch,” says the guy.
Snyder looks in the bag, and sees it contains lunch. He hands it back. “Sit up straight,” he tells the other guy at the table, and leaves.
Buffy is sitting at another table across the quad with Willow and Oz. She tells them about her mother’s college hopes for her.
Willow has been accepted just about everywhere, including several European universities such as Oxford. She is excited by the possibilities, but also a little nervous. She doesn’t know how she feels about going to school in a foreign country.
Xander is leaning against a nearby tree. “Everything in life is foreign territory.” He holds up a copy of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. “Kerouac. He’s my teacher. The open road—my school.”
“Making the open dumpster your cafeteria?” asks Buffy.
“Go ahead, mock me,” says Xander. “We Bohemian anti-establishment types have always been persecuted.”
“Well, sure,” says Oz. “You’re all so weird.”
Willow is more encouraging. “I think it’s neat, you doing the backpack, trail mix, happy wanderer thing.”
“I’m aware it scores kind of high on the hokey-meter,” says Xander, “but I think it will be good for me. You know, help me to find myself.”
Cordelia walks up between Xander and the others. “And help us to lose you. Everyone’s a winner.”
“Well, look who just popped open a fresh can of venom,” says Xander. “Hey, did you hear about Willow getting into Oxnard?”
“Oxford,” corrects Willow.
“Oxford,” says Xander. “And M.I.T. and Yale and every other college on the face of the planet. As in your face I rub it.”
Cordelia is not impressed. “Oxford? Whoopee! Four years in tea-bag central. Sounds thrilling. And M.I.T. is a Clearasil ad with housing, and Yale is a dumping ground for those who didn’t get into Harvard.”
“I got into Harvard,” says Willow.
Xander wants to know where Cordelia is going to be going to school, just so he can be sure to keep his distance, but Cordelia tells him it is none of his business, “Certainly nowhere near you losers!”
“Okay, you guys, don’t forget to breathe between insults,” says Buffy.
“I’m sorry Buffy,” says Cordelia. “This conversation is reserved for people who actually have a future.” She leaves.
Oz watches Cordelia go. “An angry young woman.”
“Oh Buffy, she was just being Cordelia, only more so,” says Willow. “Don’t pay any attention to her.”
“She’s definitely got a chip going,” says Xander.
“Maybe if you didn’t goad her so much?” suggests Willow.
“I can’t help it,” says Xander. “It’s my nature.”
“Maybe you need a better nature,” says Willow.
Buffy talks to Wesley about the possibility of leaving Sunnydale to go to college.
Wesley will have none of it. “You cannot leave Sunnydale.” He makes some weird signal crossing his fingers over his chest. “By the power invested in me by the Council, I forbid it.”
Buffy rolls her eyes and turns away from him.
Giles is coming out of his office. “Ah yes, that should settle it.” He sips his tea.
Wesley starts pointing out the problems Buffy has to deal with right there in Sunnydale: Faith going bad, and the Mayor’s upcoming Ascension.
Buffy agrees that these need to be dealt with, but what about after? She proposes that they take a more active stance against the Mayor. So far they have just been reacting to whatever he’s been doing. It’s time to take the fight to him.
Wesley doesn’t like that idea. He thinks it’s much to reckless.
Giles agrees with Buffy. He wants to know what her plan is.
“I got to have a plan?” asks Buffy. “Really? I can’t just be proactive with pep?”
“You want to take the fight to them?” asks Giles, “I suggest the first step would be to find out exactly what they’re up to.”
“Oh. I actually knew that,” says Buffy. “I thought you meant a more specific plan, you know, like with maps and stuff. Great. We’ll find out what they’re up to.”
A small plane arrives at Sunnydale airport and a man gets out carrying an ornately carved box. He’s met by one of the Mayor’s vampires with a limo.
The courier is not pleased to be met by a lackey. He expected to see the boss. The lack of service is going to raise his fee. “I don’t like surprises.” His protest is interrupted by an arrow in his back.
Faith is standing with her bow on a nearby rooftop. “Surprise.”
Faith jumps down to the ground with her bow, and walks over to the body. The box is handcuffed to the courier’s wrist. She tells the vampire to find the key. It searches the body’s pockets, but comes up empty. This isn’t a problem for Faith. She pulls out her new knife.
“That won’t cut through steel,” says the vampire.
“No, but it’ll cut through bone.” Faith bends down beside the body.
The vampire drives Faith and the box back to City Hall. He lets her out with the box at the front doors, and drives the limo around to park while Faith carries the box inside. Buffy is watching from the bushes.
Faith delivers the box to the Mayor’s office. He was expecting the courier to be with her, but he’s pleased to learn that she has saved him from paying the courier’s fee. “You are one heck of a girl, you know that? I mean geez, the initiative, the skill!”
“Go on, go on.” Faith takes a seat and puts her feet on his desk.
“I will. You know, I’ll tell you, if Buffy S—” The Mayor notices where Faith’s feet are. “Hey hey hey hey!” Faith quickly takes her feet down. She isn’t looking quite so happy any more. “If Buffy Summers walked in here and said she wanted to switch to our side, I’d say no thanks, sister, I’ve got all the Slayer one man could ever need.” The Mayor notices that Faith’s mood seems to have soured. “What?”
“Nothing,” says Faith.
“Oh, it’s ’cause I used the B-word, huh? Don’t tell me you’re still sore about that whole Angel-Buffy thing?”
“No, I’m over it. She can have him.”
“Better believe she can,” says the Mayor. “She deserves that poor excuse for a creature of the night. You, on the other hand, can do better.”
Faith begins fooling around with the catch on the box. The Mayor notices and quickly claps his hands down on the lid, making sure it can’t open. “Don’t do that.”
The vampire driver waits in the parked limo. It hears a noise and looks around. It doesn’t see anything. The window beside it is suddenly shattered by a fist.
Buffy reaches in, and pulls the vampire most of the way out through the window. “So, what’s in the box?”
Buffy and Xander look over some books in the library. “The Box of Gavrok,” she tells Wesley. “It houses some great demonic energy or something which His Honour needs to chow down on come A-Day.”
Willow and Giles come into the library. Giles is carrying some large sheets of paper.
“What’s that?” asks Wesley.
“Maps, and stuff.” Giles lays the papers out on the table. Willow has been raiding the city computer systems to get the plans for City Hall.
Buffy had persuaded the vampire to tell her that the box would be kept in the top floor conference room before she had to stake it. She and her friends start making plans to break in and steal it. Wesley tries to make some comments on their plan, but everyone just ignores him, and go on making plans for destroying the box once they have it. Xander gets the job of going to collect the ingredients needed for the spell to destroy the box, and starts to leave.
“All right, stop! I demand everyone stop this instant!” says Wesley. Everyone stops and looks at him. “I’m in charge here and I say this is all moving much too fast. We need time to fully analyse the situation and devise a proper and strategic stratagem.”
“Wes, hop on the train or get off the tracks,” says Buffy.
“The Mayor will most assuredly have supernatural safeguards protecting the box,” says Wesley. No one responds. “Oh, we all forgot about that, did we?”
“Looks like a job for Wiccan girl,” says Buffy. “What do you say, Will? Big time danger.”
“Hey, I eat danger for breakfast,” says Willow.
“But oddly enough, she panics in the face of breakfast foods,” says Xander.
“Let’s get to work,” says Buffy, and everyone troops out of the library.
Wesley reluctantly follows them.
Xander spots Cordelia admiring a dress in the dress shop beside the magic shop. He stops in to swap a few more insults with her. He thinks that her earlier snide remarks about Willow’s plethora of college choices were just sour grapes because she didn’t get accepted anywhere. “The grades were there, but ooh, if it weren’t for that pesky interview. Ten minutes with you and the Admissions Department decided that they’d already reached their mean-spirited superficial princess quotas.”
Cordy pulls a bunch of acceptance letters out of her purse. “And once again, the gold medal in the Being Wrong event goes to Xander ‘I’m as stupid as I look’ Harris. Read ’em and weep, creep.” She hands letters to Xander as she tells him where they’re from. “USC, Colorado State, Duke, and Columbia.”
Xander is impressed, but he takes a parting shot. “I’m guessing they must have seen a different side of your father’s money.”
This one seems to sting Cordy more than Xander’s usual shots do. She snatches back the letters and tells him to go away.
This is fine with Xander. He has to go help save some lives. “Carry on. I know that you have some important accessorizing to do.”
Wesley drives Oz’s van up beside City Hall and lets out Buffy, Angel and Willow. Giles and Wesley will wait in the van, prepared to provide a diversion if necessary.
“Let’s synchronise our watches,” says Wesley. “I have 21:4—” He stops as Buffy and Willow hold up their watchless wrists for him to look at. “Yes, typical.”
Buffy, Willow and Angel leave, making their way to the side fire escape ladder. Giles and Wesley wait in the van. Giles has brought a thermos of tea.
Xander and Oz prepare the ingredients needed to destroy the box. The put them into a large ceramic pot set on a pedestal in the library. Willow has left them detailed directions, complete with helpful diagrams. Including stick figure drawings of Oz and Xander. Oz is the one with the guitar.
“Nobody like my Will,” says Oz.
“No sir, there is not,” says Xander.
Angel opens the skylight over the conference room where the Box of Gavrok is being kept. Buffy hands Willow her spell book, and a jar of powder.
Willow recites a spell and sprinkles the powder through the skylight, dispelling the protection spell on the box. “Oh yeah, I’m bad.”
“Four stars, Will,” says Buffy. “Now get going.”
“I’m gone.” Willow heads back to the fire escape ladder.
Angel lowers Buffy into the conference room using a harness and a block and tackle, but when she grabs the box, an alarm goes off. Angel tries to pull her back up, but the block jams. While he is trying to free it two vampires come into the room.
“I don’t suppose you want to help me to get down?” asks Buffy. The vampires just snarl at her. “I didn’t think so.”
Angel jumps down into the conference room and takes the box from Buffy. He uses it to bash one of the vampires in the head, and blocks the attack of the second vampire with it. Buffy uses the harness to spin herself in a somersault, and kicks a vampire in the head before freeing herself to join the fight.
Angel and Buffy fight the vampires, while tossing the Box of Gavrok back and forth between themselves, and trashing the conference room in the process. They flip the conference table over onto the vamps, and flee through the halls of City Hall with the box. The vampires run after them.
Buffy and Angel run out the front doors of City Hall and dive into the bushes, while Giles and Wesley make a big show of escaping in the van. The vampires chase the van.
Mayor Wilkins surveys his conference room. “Well, this is very unfortunate. I just had this conference room redecorated, for Pete’s sake. At taxpayers’ expense. And, oh yeah,” The cheerful facade drops, and he smashes one of the surviving chairs. “They’ve got my box!”
“Yeah they do, but looky what we got.” Faith is standing in the doorway with her new knife at Willow’s throat.
Everyone is upset to learn that Willow got left behind. Giles and Wesley thought she was with Buffy and Angel.
“Look, it’s nobody’s fault, okay. We just need to focus and deal.” Buffy looks at Oz, sitting silently on the library mezzanine steps. “Oz, I swear I won’t let them hurt her.”
Xander wants to go back. A full on assault to rescue Willow, but Giles vetoes that plan. It will most likely just get Willow killed.
“We’re assuming they haven’t already,” says Wesley.
“No,” says Buffy. “No, they know what she means to us. She’s too valuable as long as we still have…” Her gaze settles on the Box of Gavrok on the library table. “…the box. We trade.”
Wesley doesn’t want to trade the box, but he seems to be alone in that opinion. Xander asks for a volunteer to hit Wesley.
“Damn it, you listen to me!” says Wesley. “This box is the key to the Mayor’s Ascension. Thousands of lives depend on our getting rid of it. Now I want to help Willow as much as the rest of you, but we will find another way.”
“There is no other way,” says Buffy.
“You’re the one who said take the fight to the Mayor,” says Wesley. “You were right. This is the town’s best hope of survival. It’s your chance to get out.”
“You think I care about that? Are you made of human parts?” Buffy is getting close to taking up Xander’s suggestion.
Giles tries to calm things down. “All right! Let’s deal with this rationally.”
It doesn’t work. “Why are you taking his side?” asks Buffy, triggering a babble of conflicting arguments from Giles and Wesley.
Wesley cuts through the babble. “You’d sacrifice thousands of lives? Your families, your friends?”
Oz has been sitting silently listening to the argument boiling around him. He gets to his feet and starts to walk around the table.
“It can all end right here,” says Wesley, “We have the means to destroy this box.”
Oz walks over to the pedestal on which he and Xander had erected the means to destroy the box, picks up the pot, and smashes it, ending the argument.
“Giles, make the phone call,” says Buffy.
Willow is being held in a storage room in City Hall. She tries to open the window, but she can’t. It’s also reinforced with wire mesh, so she can’t break it. She searches for something to help her escape, but all she finds are some pencils.
The vampire standing guard comes in to investigate the noise she’s making. “What are you doing?”
“Oh, uh, I’m looking for a sucking candy,” says Willow, “’cause my mouth gets dry when I’m nervous, or held prisoner against my will.” The vampire slowly walks toward her. “And suddenly I’m thinking ‘sucking’ isn’t a good word to use around vampires. Hey! Did you get permission to eat the hostage? I don’t think so. You’re going to be in some trouble when the Mayor—”
The vampire grabs Willow’s shoulders and pushes her up against the wall. “Just a little taste.” It bares its fangs, and slowly moves them toward her neck. It doesn’t see the pencil floating in the air behind its back.
The pencil plunges into the vampire’s heart, and it turns to dust.
Willow searches for a way out of City Hall. The main exit is locked. She tries to sneak past the door to the Mayor’s office, but it opens as she gets near. She quickly ducks into another open office door while Faith and Mayor Wilkins come out. Faith isn’t expecting any attempt by Buffy to rescue Willow that night, but the Mayor isn’t so sure.
“Ever had a dog?” asks the Mayor.
Faith is surprised by the non-sequitur. “What?”
“I did. Rusty. Irish setter. A dog’s friendship is stronger than reason, stronger than it’s own sense of self-preservation. Buffy’s like a dog, and hey, before you can say Jack Robinson, you’ll get to see me kill her like one.”
They pass by the office Willow is hiding in, and continue away. Willow comes out and goes into the Mayor’s office. She decides to do some snooping. She finds the Mayor’s liquor cabinet with its collection of occult paraphernalia and the Books of Ascension. She starts skimming through them.
Faith finds Willow sitting on the office floor reading. “Check out the bookworm!”
Willow looks up. “Faith!”
Faith kneels beside Willow. “Anyone with brains, anyone who knew what was going to happen to her, would try to claw her way out of this place.” She takes the book Willow’s been reading out of her hands and looks at the binding. “But you, you just can’t stop Nancy Drewing, can you? Guess now you know too much and that kind of just naturally leads to killing.”
“Faith, wait!” Willow jumps to her feet. “I want to talk to you.”
“Oh yeah?” asks Faith. “Give me the speech again, please. ‘Faith, we’re still your friends. We can help you. It’s not too late.’”
“It’s way too late,” says Willow. “You know, it didn’t have to be this way, but you made your choice. I know you had a tough life. I know that some people think you had a lot of bad breaks. Well, boo hoo! Poor you. You know, you had a lot more in your life than some people. I mean, you had friends like Buffy. Now you have no one. You were a Slayer and now you’re nothing. You’re just a big selfish, worthless waste.”
Faith punches Willow, and she falls to the floor. “You hurt me, I hurt you. I’m just a little more efficient.”
Willow gets back to her feet. “Aw, here I just thought you didn’t have a come-back.”
“You’re begging for some deep pain,” says Faith.
“I’m not afraid of you,” says Willow.
Faith pulls out her knife. “Let’s see what we can do about that.” She rubs it against Willow’s face.
Mayor Wilkins appears in the doorway. “Girls, I hope I don’t have to separate you two. Faith, you can play with your new toy later. Something’s come up.” He walks over to his desk. He looks back to where Faith is still standing with her knife to Willow’s face. “Faith! You know I don’t like repeating myself.”
Faith backs away from Willow. “I got someone. I got him.”
“I just received a heck of an interesting phone call,” says Mayor Wilkins.
Buffy and her friends prepare to exchange the Box of Gavrok for Willow in the Sunnydale High cafeteria. They have locked all the entrances except the front one. Xander is a little worried that they have trapped themselves.
“One way out, means one way in,” says Buffy. “I want to see him coming.”
The lights go out.
“Guess they’re shy,” says Xander.
Angel looks around. “I can see all right.”
The Mayor arrives with Faith, Willow, and a couple of vampires. He doesn’t seem to be in much of a hurry to make the trade. “Well, this is exciting, isn’t it? Clandestine meetings by dark of night. Exchange of prisoners. I just, I, I feel like we should all be wearing trenchcoats.”
He looks Buffy over. This is the first time that he and Buffy have actually met. He doesn’t really understand what Angel sees in her. Why he prefers Buffy to Faith.
“What can I say?” asks Angel. “I like them sane.”
Faith tightens her grip on Willow, and presses her knife against Willow’s throat.
“Angel,” warns Oz.
“Well, I wish you kids the best, I really do,” says the Mayor. “But if you don’t mind a bit of fatherly advice, I just don’t see much of a future for you two. I don’t sense a lasting relationship—and not just because I plan to kill the both of you—you two have a bumpy road ahead.”
“I don’t think we need to talk about this,” says Buffy.
“God, you kids, you know,” says Mayor Wilkins. “You don’t like to think about the future. You don’t like to make plans. Unless you want Faith to gut your friend like a sea bass, show a little respect for your elders.”
“You’re not my elder,” says Angel. “I’ve got a lot of years on you.”
“Yeah,” says the Mayor, “and that’s just one of the things you’re going to have to deal with. You’re immortal, she’s not. It’s not easy. I married my Edna May in ought-three and I was with her right until the end. Not a pretty picture. Wrinkled and senile and cursing me for my youth. Wasn’t our happiest time. And let’s not forget the fact that any moment of true happiness will turn you evil. I mean, come on. What kind of a life can you offer her?”
The Mayor walks toward Angel. “I don’t see a lot of Sunday picnics in the offing. I see skulking in the shadows, hiding from the sun. She’s a blossoming young girl and you want to keep her from the life she should have until it has passed her by. My god, I think that’s a little selfish. Is that what you came back from Hell for? Is that your greater purpose?”
The Mayor and Angel stand staring at one another for a moment.
The Mayor shakes his head. “Make the trade.”
Angel steps out into the center of the room, holding the Box of Gavrok. Faith steps forward with Willow. She shoves her aside, sticks her knife back into her belt and takes the box.
The Mayor is pleased. “Well that went smooth—”
“Nobody moves!” Snyder comes into the cafeteria with a couple of security guards. The Mayor tries to fade back into the shadows as one of the guards locks the door to make sure no one escapes. Giles and Xander surreptitiously lower the weapons they’re holding and hide them behind their backs.
Snyder takes the box from Faith and hands it off to the other guard. He thinks the box contains drugs. Faith draws her knife.
“Wait!” says Buffy.
The Mayor decides that he isn’t going to get out of this one unseen, so he steps back out of the shadows. “Principal Snyder. I think we have a problem.”
Snyder whirls around, dismayed by the voice he recognises. Then he sees Faith’s knife. He isn’t sure which worries him more. The Mayor, or Faith’s knife. His eyes keep shifting back and forth between them. He starts to apologise.
“No, it’s I who should apologise,” says the Mayor. “Coming down here at night. What must you be thinking? But you see, I just needed to—” He sees that the guard with the box has started to open it. “No! Don’t do that!”
It’s too late. The guard lifts the lid and looks inside. A giant bug, with a leg span of about a foot, jumps from the box and attaches itself to the guard’s face. He drops the box, and clutches at the bug.3
The guard falls to the ground screaming while the bug eats his face. After killing the guard it scuttles off into the shadows. Everyone is stunned for a few moments.
“Where’d it go?” asks Xander. The bug has disappeared.
Snyder orders the surviving guard to get the door opened and the guard starts fumbling with the keys. Giles tries to countermand the order, they can’t let the bug escape, but the guard ignores him. Fortunately he is so scared he drops the keys.
They search around for the bug. Buffy hears a noise overhead, and everyone looks up. The bug drops down onto the Mayor’s face. He falls back onto one of the cafeteria tables, while a second bug crawls from the still open box.
Faith grabs the bug, pulls it from the Mayor’s face and throws it away into a corner. It rolls to its feet and scuttles away again.
The Mayor sits up, and the wounds on his face heal quickly, to Snyder’s amazement. Giles and Xander climb onto chairs, and keep looking around for the bugs.
“I wouldn’t leave that open,” says the Mayor. Buffy quickly runs over to the box and slams the lid shut, breaking off the front legs of the third bug which was climbing out of it.
One of the bugs drops from the ceiling onto Buffy’s back. She instantly drops to the floor. She lands on her back and crushes the bug with her body.
Angel helps Buffy back to her feet, and everyone starts looking around for the surviving bug. Snyder picks up a chair, and clutches it to his chest as a shield.
Faith spots the bug climbing the wall behind Wesley. She raises her knife to throw it.
Wesley thinks Faith’s aiming at him. “No!” He ducks.
Faith’s knife impales the bug, fixing it to the wall, where its legs continue to quiver.
The Mayor picks up the box. The surviving guard has finally managed to recover his keys, and goes to unlock the door.
“Is that all of them?” asks Oz.
“Not really,” says the Mayor. “There are about fifty…billion of these happy little critters in here. Would you like to see?” He raises the lid of the box a bit. “Raise your hand if you’re invulnerable.”
The guard finally manages to open the door, and he runs from the cafeteria, followed by the two vampires who had come in with the Mayor.
“Faith, let’s go.” The Mayor starts for the door.
Faith hangs behind, looking at her knife still stuck in the bug in the wall.
“Faith!” calls out the Mayor.
Faith takes one last look at her knife, and follows the Mayor out.
Snyder is still clutching his chair.
“Snyder, you alive in there?” asks Buffy.
“You— All of you! Why couldn’t you be dealing drugs like normal people?” Snyder walks out the door, carrying the chair with him.
Buffy retrieves Faith’s knife.
“Well, that went swimmingly!” says Wesley.
Willow sits on the book checkout counter in the library. “So Faith was like: ‘I’m going to beat you up’ and I’m all: ‘I’m not afraid of you’ and then she had the knife which was less fun and then— Oh! I told her: ‘you made your choice, Buffy was your friend—’”
Giles thinks that’s all fascinating, but he wants Willow to get back to the point. “You actually had your hands on the Books of Ascension?”
“Volumes One through Five,” says Willow.
Giles asks if there’s anything she remembers about them.
“Well, I was in a hurry,” says Willow, “and what I did read was kind of involved. If you ask me, way over-written. Actually, there were a few pages that looked kind of interesting but I didn’t have a chance to read them fully.”
Giles starts to turn away in disappointment as Willow reaches into her pocket. She pulls out several folded sheets of paper, and holds them out to him. “See what you can make of them.”
Giles takes the pages from Willow with delight. Buffy congratulates Willow on her suaveness.
Wesley is less delighted. “Well, let’s hope there is something useful in those pages. The Mayor has the Box of Gavrok. As of now, we are right back where we started. Wouldn’t you say?”
Buffy and Willow talk outside the school. Buffy is resigned to her fate. She will never be getting out of Sunnydale. Even if she stops the Mayor there will always be something to keep her there.
“Must be tough,” says Willow. “I mean, here I am, I can do anything I want. I can go to any college in the country. Four or five in Europe if I want.”
“Please tell me you’re going somewhere with this?”
“No.” Willow hands Buffy a letter. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Buffy looks at the letter. “UC Sunnydale?”
“I will be matriculating with Class of 2003.”
Buffy squeals with delight, and grabs Willow in a hug that pulls both of them to the ground. Then she reconsiders. She doesn’t want Willow holding herself back. There are better schools Willow can go to. There are a lot safer schools to go to. There are safer prisons.
Willow doesn’t want to hear it. It’s her decision, not Buffy’s. She wants to stay in Sunnydale and help Buffy fight evil. “I think it’s worth doing. And I don’t think you do it because you have to. It’s a good fight Buffy, and I want in.” She also wants to keep studying magic, and Sunnydale is the place to be to do that.
Buffy and Willow head off to pick up some mochas for themselves. “It’s weird,” says Buffy. “You look at something and you think you know exactly what you’re seeing, and then you find out it’s something else entirely.”
“Neat, huh?” asks Willow.
“Sometimes it is.”
Cordelia is admiring the dress in the shop again when the store manager tells her to get back to work. She has floors to sweep, and shelves to stock.
Cordelia puts the dress back on its hanger, and goes back to work.
Buffy and Angel have a midnight picnic in the cemetery. She tells him about her and Willow’s plans to check out the UC Sunnydale campus tomorrow. She’s hoping that her mother will let her live there instead of at home. Living on campus is much cooler, and it isn’t far from his place. She suddenly shifts topics. “I don’t know what the Mayor was talking about. How could he know anything about us?”
“Well, he’s evil,” says Angel.
“Big time,” says Buffy. “He doesn’t even know what a lasting relationship is.”
“No,” says Angel.
“Probably the only lasting relationship he’s ever had is…with evil.”
“Yeah.”
“Big, stupid, evil guy. We’ll be okay.”
“We will,” says Angel.
Neither of them seems to be convinced.
| Who or What | Where | How |
|---|---|---|
| Vampire 1 | The cemetery | Staked by Buffy |
| Vampire 2 | The cemetery | Staked by Angel |
| Courier | Sunnydale Airport | Shot in the back with an arrow by Faith |
| Limo driver vampire | Outside City Hall | Staked by Buffy |
| Vampire 4 | City Hall | Staked with a flying pencil by Willow |
| Security guard | Sunnydale High cafeteria | Face eaten by a giant bug from the Box of Gavrok |