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| The Initiative | Something Blue |
A boy walks through the woods at night. He hears a rustling sound in the bushes, and stops to look around. He doesn’t see anything, and continues on his way. He hears the noise again, and turns around.
Buffy is standing right in front of him. “Looking for me?”
“Holy— What do you want?”
Buffy punches him. When he straightens up his face has transformed. He’s a vampire.
“Look who’s home,” says Buffy.
The two of them fight briefly, and Buffy stakes it. After the vampire has turned to dust, Buffy looks around. She seems to sense that something is watching her, but she can’t see anything. She slowly walks away.
Angel is hiding in the nearby bushes. He watches Buffy leave.1
Buffy, Willow and Anya attend the ground breaking ceremony for UCSunnydale’s new expanded Cultural Partnership Center. Anya is there because Xander is on the construction crew. She wants to watch his muscles ripple while he digs. While waiting for the digging to start she imagines having sex with him.
Dean Guerrero introduces Professor Gerhardt of the Anthropology Department. She starts make a speech in which she says how appropriate it is that they are beginning the construction for the center so close to Thanksgiving, since that is what Thanksgiving is all about. “Contributions from all cultures making our culture stronger.”
“What a load of horse hooey!” exclaims Willow.
“We have a counterpoint?” asks Buffy.
“Yeah! Thanksgiving isn’t about blending of two cultures. Its about one culture wiping out another!” Willow goes on to complain about all the stereotypical Thanksgiving cartoons about the friendly indians with their gifts of maize, which leave out the later bits about the destruction of the bison and Squanto getting a musket ball in his belly.
“Okay now, for some of that you were channeling your mother,” says Buffy.
“Yeah, sort of.” But in this case Willow thinks her mother has a point. The Rosenberg family doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving, or Columbus Day.
Buffy isn’t getting a family Thanksgiving this year either. Her mother is off visiting her sister Darlene.
Anya turns to look at them. “Well I think that’s a shame. I love a ritual sacrifice.”
“It’s not really a one of those,” says Buffy.
“To commemorate a past event, you kill and eat an animal,” says Anya. “It’s a ritual sacrifice. With pie.”
Dr. Gerhardt finishes her speech and takes a shovel for the ceremonial ground breaking. Anya is upset. She came here to watch Xander dig, not an anthropology professor. Dr. Gerhardt doesn’t ripple at all. Fortunately for Anya, Dr. Gerhardt only does one shovel full of digging. With that finished she leaves the site and the construction crew moves in. Xander starts to dig.
Anya sighs with pleasure. “Look at him. Soon he’ll be sweating. I’m imagining having sex with him again.”
“Imaginary Xander is quite the machine,” says Buffy.
Xander doesn’t dig for long. The ground gives way under his feet and he falls through into a buried underground structure. He slowly gets to his feet and looks around while people call down to him to see if he’s okay.
Xander looks up at the hole he fell through. “I’m okay! I’m, uh, I’m okay!” he yells up to the people calling down to check on him. He looks around. “Where am I okay?”
Angel lurks in the bushes outside Buffy’s dorm. Buffy senses that there’s something out there, but she doesn’t see anything when she looks out her window.
Willow is excited by Xander’s discovery. It’s the old Sunnydale Mission, which was thought to have been destroyed by an earthquake in 1812. It turns out that it was just swallowed into the ground and built over top of, like what happened in the 30s with the church the Master was trapped in. She wonders what else might be beneath their feet.
“Mostly, I’ve just found sewers full of demons,” says Buffy.
There is a lot of excitement in the dorm. The students are in their post-midterm frenzy, and most of them are preparing to go home for the Thanksgiving holiday. Buffy is feeling a little left out.
Buffy decides that she can do her own Thanksgiving. She can cook the meal, and have all her friends over. It will be great.
Willow is a little disappointed. She thought that she had Buffy on board with her “Thanksgiving’s a sham” position.
“But it’s a sham with yams,” says Buffy. “It’s a yam sham.”
“You’re not going to jokey rhyme your way out of this one,” says Willow.
“I know, but I want it,” says Buffy. “It’s like Professor Walsh was saying about sense memory. I smell a roasting turkey and I’m eight years old. I liked having that to look forward to. Everything’s different now.”
Willow reluctantly agrees. “I mean, we could definitely use a little comfort food.”
Buffy starts planning her guest list. She figures Giles won’t have any plans, and Xander usually tries to avoid all of his family gatherings. Willow gets excited by the prospect of not inviting Anya, but Buffy figures they should include her. Anya and Xander have been getting pretty tight lately. Willow grumbles.
“And look,” says Buffy, “Pilgrims aside, isn’t that the whole point of Thanksgiving? Everybody has a place to go.”
Spike stumbles through the woods, wrapped in a tattered blanket, shivering from the cold. He isn’t alone, he has to keep moving. Riley, Forrest and Graham are out there too, hunting him. Riley wants to recapture Hostile 17 before he heads home for Thanksgiving himself.
Forrest wonders what the big deal is. With the implant in place the vampire can’t hurt anyone. That doesn’t matter to Riley. As long as it’s free, Hostile 17 is a threat to the entire Initiative. “We do this the Professor’s way.”
Forrest coughs. “Momma’s boy!”
“That’s a nasty cough,” says Riley. “You might need to spend the weekend in quarantine.”
“Oh, no,” says Forrest. “I’m done coughing.”
“I just don’t want anyone getting sick.”
Anya arrives at Xander’s. She had stopped by the construction site to watch him dig some more, but he wasn’t there. She finds him sitting on the end of his bed trying to pull on his socks. Xander isn’t looking too good. He’s trying to get ready to go to work, but he isn’t feeling well.
Anya puts her hand on Xander’s forehead. “Your head is moist.” She pulls her hand away in surprise. “Oh! you’re sick!” Anya considers for a moment “Well, you can’t go to work.” She pushes Xander back onto his bed, and pulls off his socks. “You’re pasty and wet and disgusting. They can dig without you.”
Xander struggles to sit back up. “I don’t really feel that bad.”
Anya moves around behind Xander and starts to pull off his shirt. “I inflicted a lot of putrefying diseases on men when I was an avenging demon. You look like you’re getting all of them.”
Xander lets himself fall back onto the bed “Okay, I’ll stay. But you should go. You could catch it.”
“We’ll die together.” Anya starts to undo Xander’s belt. “It’s romantic. Help me get your trousers off.”
“You’re a strange girlfriend,” says Xander.
Anya stops. “I’m a girlfriend?”
“Uh, there’s a chance I’m delirious,” says Xander.
“Ah yes.” Anya resumes removing Xander’s pants. “Well, whatever it is that’s making you sick, so far I like it.”
In the buried remains of the mission, a green mist starts to form. It rises through the boarded up hole overhead.
Dr. Gerhardt talks with a colleague on the phone. She’s excited by the new discovery, but she hopes it won’t delay the construction of her new cultural center too much while they look for a new site for it.
She hangs up the phone, and prepares to add a clay jar to an exhibit. The green mist flows into the room. She sees it coalesce around a stone knife in the display case in front of her, and solidify into the hand of an indian warrior. He grabs her, and slits her throat with the knife.
Buffy and Willow arrive at the scene of Dr. Gerhardt’s death to investigate what happened to her. Willow has already accessed the coroner’s report. After she was killed Dr. Gerhardt’s attacker cut off one of her ears.
Willow has several improbable theories about what might have happened to her. Some witches looking for an ear: there are some great spells that work much better with an ear in the mix, or maybe an ear harvesting demon, building another demon out of ears. “Or, oh, thought! We’re just assuming someone else cut off the ear. What if it was self inflicted, like Van Gogh?”
“So she brutally stabbed herself, dumped the body and then cut off her ear?” asks Buffy.
“No, she cut off her ear, then killed herself, then dumped the body— I’m really off my game, aren’t I?”
Buffy has been examining the display case. She notices that something is missing. There’s a card describing an early nineteenth century Chumash knife, but the knife itself is gone.
Buffy unpacks groceries in Giles’ kitchen while telling him what she and Willow found. He knows that the Chumash Indians were indigenous to the Sunnydale area before the Europeans came. Of course the knife may have just been a weapon of convenience to whoever the killer was.
Buffy doesn’t think so. There was a big pair of scissors right there, the knife was picked for a reason. While she talks she has been looking through Giles’ kitchen cupboards. “Do you even own a turkey pan?”
“Tell me again why we aren’t doing this at your house?” asks Giles.
“Giles, if you would like to get by in American society, then you are going to have to follow our traditions. You’re the patriarch. You have to host the festivities, or it’s all meaningless.”
“And this is in no way an elaborate scheme to stick me with the cleanup?”
“How about that ceremonial knife, huh?” asks Buffy. “Pretty juicy piece of clueage, don’t you think?”
“Yes, all right, I’ll look into the Chumash connection and see if there’s any ritual significance to the ear removal.”
Buffy starts to go, but stops. She has that feeling again. She shrugs it off and leaves to do some more grocery shopping.
“So what do you think?” asks Giles.
Angel steps out of the back hall. “She sounds good. Kind of intense about this Thanksgiving thing.”
“I think perhaps she’s a little lonely, but I meant about the murder.”
Angel thinks that whatever killed the woman in the museum is probably the danger Doyle sensed, but Giles isn’t so sure. There are other things going on around the campus. Angel admits he could be wrong, but he has to do something. He can’t just keep watching. That is something else that is bothering Giles. He doesn’t think it’s right for Angel to be lurking around the way he has been. It isn’t fair to Buffy. Angel still doesn’t want Buffy to know he’s there, it will only complicate matters.
Giles assumes that there is some connection between what’s happening and the old mission. Something was disturbed or released when it was opened up. Angel suggests that Giles get in touch with Father Gabriel. He knows a lot about Sunnydale’s history, and his family goes back to mission times. Angel starts to leave.
“Where are you going?” asks Giles.
“To watch her,” says Angel.
“It’s not fair!” says Giles. “You know that’s what she’d say. You can see her, but she can’t see you?”
“Believe me, I’m not getting the good half of this deal,” says Angel. “To be on the outside, looking in at what I can’t— I’d forgotten how bad it feels.”
Spike—still wrapped in his tattered blanket—looks in through a dirty cracked window at a group of vampires as they take turns feeding off a young man.
Buffy and Willow walk past the Espresso Pump. Buffy wants Willow to pick up some whipping cream. Willow is sure that she saw some whipped cream in Giles’ fridge. Buffy tells her that what Giles has is the stuff in a canister. It isn’t right unless you whip it yourself.
“Hey, and then later we can churn our own butter, and make sweaters out of sheep!” says Willow.
Buffy promises that this is the last thing she will ask Willow to do. She’d do it herself, but Giles has set up a meeting for her with Father Gabriel.
Riley spots Buffy and Willow from across the street and two blocks down. He runs over to talk with Buffy. Willow leaves them alone together. She says she’s going to go get herself a coffee. She walks right through the coffee shop, and out the other side. She runs into Angel.
Angel claps his hand over Willow’s mouth to keep her from saying anything. “Evil!” Willow’s voice is muffled by Angel’s hand. “You’re all evil again!”
“I’m not evil!” says Angel. “I’m here to help Buffy. My friend had a vision. Buffy’s in danger.”
Willow immediately starts back to where Buffy is, to warn her, but Angel stops her. He doesn’t want Buffy to know he’s there.
“See, I don’t get that,” says Willow. “All this ‘leaving for her own good’ garbage, because that’s what it is. You can’t just give up because there’s obstacles, you know. What kind of—”
“Willow!”
“Sorry, my stuff.”
“You know how I feel about her,” says Angel. “If there was any way… It’s just, everything’s different now.”
“Hey, is Cordelia really working for you?” asks Willow. “’Cause that’s gotta be a…special experience. Of all the people you could’ve hired—”
Angel stops Willow again. He isn’t there for personal stuff. He’s there to protect Buffy. Willow asks what she can do to help.
Angel looks at Buffy and Riley. “Well, if you could just tell me… Who’s that guy?”
Buffy is telling Riley about her Thanksgiving plans. She invites him to come too, if he doesn’t have anything else to do. Riley is grateful for the offer, but he’s catching a flight back to Iowa later tonight. He’s going to spend Thanksgiving with his family at his grandparent’s house. Buffy wishes for him to have fun at the homestead.
“Always do,” says Riley. “What’s the line? Home’s the place that when you have to go there—”
“They have to take you in,” says Buffy.
“Get out!” yells Harmony.
“But babe! This is where I belong!” says Spike.
“Out! I mean it. I’ve been doing a lot of reading, and I’m in control of my own power now, so we’re through!”
Spike grabs Harmony and pulls her to him. “You don’t mean that.” He nibbles on her shoulder.
“Yes I do. I do.” Harmony seems to be faltering. Spike picks her up and carries her to the bed. “I mean it a lot.”
Spike puts Harmony down on the bed. “See. I knew you would welcome me back with open…” He runs his hand up along her inner thigh. “…arms.”
“No!” Harmony slaps Spike’s hand away. “I’m powerful, and I’m beautiful, and I don’t need you to complete me.” She pushes him away and pulls a stake out from under her pillow and threatens him with it.
Spike recoils away from her. “You had that in our bed? Do you know how dangerous that is?”
Harmony steps toward him. “Let’s find out.”
Spike retreats toward the exit. “All right! All right. I’ll go. Just…”
“What?” asks Harmony.
“Can I have someone to eat?”
Harmony raises her stake and moves toward Spike again. Spike runs.
Buffy arrives at Father Gabriel’s church, but she can’t find him inside. She goes out back searching for him. She finds him there, hanging by the neck, with the Chumash warrior cutting off his ear. Buffy attacks the indian, and pulls him away from the priest.
“You can’t stop me!” says the indian.
“You’re very wrong about that,” says Buffy.
The indian charges at Buffy. She deflects him away, and runs his head into a bell. He recovers quickly, and comes at her again. He grabs her and they fall to the ground together, with him on top and Buffy holding his knife away from her throat.
“I am vengeance,” says the indian. “I am my people’s cry. They call for Hus. For the avenging spirit to carve out justice.”
“They tell you to start an ear collection?” Buffy kicks Hus in the head and knocks him off her, but she keeps hold of his wrist. They roll together on the ground, before getting to their feet again. Buffy slams Hus against a tree, and kicks him in the back of his knee. Hus falls to his knees, with Buffy forcing his knife up against his throat.
“You slaughtered my people,” says Hus. “Now you kill their spirit. This is a great day for you.”
Buffy can’t bring herself to finish Hus off for some reason. She pushes him away. Hus comes to his feet and transforms into a flock of ravens, which fly away.
Buffy puts the turkey into Giles’ oven as she tells him about her fight with Hus.
Giles is peeling potatoes. “It’s clear we’re dealing with a spirit of some kind. It’s very common for indian spirits to change to animal form.”
Buffy doesn’t really understand why she let him go. “It’s plenty uncommon for me to freeze up during a fight. I mean, I had the guy, I was ready for the take-down, and I stopped. And Native American.”
“Sorry?” asks Giles.
“We don’t say ‘indian.’”
“Oh, right. Yes, yes. Um, always behind on the terms. Still trying not to refer to you lot as ‘bloody colonials.’”
“The thing is, I like my evil like I like my men. Evil. You know straight up, black hat, tie you to the train tracks, ‘soon my electro-ray will destroy Metropolis’ bad. Not all mixed up with guilt and the destruction of an indigenous culture.”
Giles understands Buffy’s feelings, but Hus has killed innocent people. He has to be stopped. Buffy switches gears to give him instructions on the next step in the preparation of the mashed potatoes.
“Did you catch the part about the innocent people?” asks Giles.
“Yes!” says Buffy. “And I do want to stop him. I’d just like to find a non-slayey way to do it.”
There’s a knock on the door, and Buffy goes to answer it. It’s Willow, carrying a large stack of books, with a couple of boxes of frozen peas on top. Buffy is not pleased. Willow was supposed to bring fresh peas.
Willow didn’t have time for fresh peas. She was too busy researching all the atrocities carried out against the Chumash Indians over the years. A group of them had been imprisoned in the mission, where they fell prey to various European diseases to which they had no immunity. The ones who tried to rebel were hanged, while others were accused of being cattle thieves, and hunted down and killed, along with their women and children. Ears were collected to take back to the accusers as proof that they had been killed. Hus is recreating all the wrongs done to his people.
“Then it is up to us to stop him,” says Giles.
“Yes, but after dinner, right?” asks Buffy.
“Are you sure we shouldn’t be helping him?” asks Willow.
A coyote is sitting on the lawn outside Giles’ apartment, looking in at them.
“No,” says Giles. “I think perhaps we won’t help the angry spirit with his rape and pillage and murder.”
Willow and Giles start to argue about what should be done about Hus. Willow wants to find a way to redress the wrongs done to his tribe, but Giles doesn’t think that’s possible. Hus has gone a long way past the point where they can talk to him. As the argument escalates, Buffy gets more and more upset. She retreats into the kitchen to baste the turkey.
After Buffy leaves Giles quietly tells Willow that he has reason to believe that Buffy herself may be in more danger from this threat than usual.
“You mean Angel?” Willow whispers back to him. “I saw him too.”
“That’s not terribly stealthy of him,” says Giles.
“I think he’s lost his edge.”
“This is why I think we should all keep a level head in this.”
“And I happen to think mine is the level head,” says Willow, “and yours is the one things would roll off of.”
They are interrupted by a knock at the door. Buffy comes running out of the kitchen to answer it. She opens the door, and sees Xander and Anya. Xander is looking even worse. He looks like he would fall over if Anya wasn’t holding him up.
“You look like death,” says Giles.
“Are you okay?” asks Willow.
“You didn’t bring rolls?” asks Buffy.
Hus has returned to the Cultural Partnership Center. He breaks into a case displaying a variety of Chumash weapons, and gathers them up.
Xander lies on Giles’ couch, while Anya wipes his brow with moist cloth. “The doctor couldn’t figure out what was up with me,” he tells them. “He said I had a lot of symptoms which didn’t connect.”
Buffy is sitting by his feet, stirring a bowl of pie filling. “I think they do connect. Will, didn’t you say the Chumash got all diseased when they were holed up in the mission?”
Willow flips to one of her books and starts to tell them about the various diseases that the Chumash suffered from. Xander gets a little upset at the word “various” and Willow stops, but it’s too late to save his feelings. He wants to know about the various. Willow tells him that they primarily suffered from malaria, smallpox, and syphilis. Anya thought she recognised the smallpox. The disease which has Xander most upset though is the syphilis.
Willow thinks that Xander’s symptoms are probably mystical in origin, not the actual diseases, so they should all go away, as soon as…
“As soon as what?” asks Buffy. “We still don’t know what we are going to do.”
“Let’s give him some land,” suggests Giles. “I’m sure that will clear everything right up.”
“Sarcasm accomplishes nothing Giles,” says Buffy.
“It’s sort of an end in itself,” says Giles.
Xander wants to bring the conversation back to the syphilis.
“It’ll make you blind and insane, but it won’t kill you,” says Anya cheerfully. “The smallpox will.”
Willow thinks maybe there might be a Wiccan cure for what Xander is suffering from. She remembers seeing something in one of the books. She quickly flips pages and finds a card, and starts reading from it. “Sage, salt…onion?”
“That’s the stuffing,” says Buffy.
Anya takes the book which describes the diseases and starts telling Xander about the pustules he is going to get.
“I hate this guy,” says Xander.
“He’s just doing what was done to him,” says Willow.
“What, so he rises up and infects the first guy he sees? That’s no fair!” Xander thinks it is time for Buffy to start slaying.
Buffy isn’t so sure. She still feels a little sorry for Hus. She stirs her bowl more vigorously.
“He’s a vengeance demon,” says Xander. “You don’t talk to vengeance demons. You kill them!”
Anya—the former vengeance demon—is not pleased to hear this from her boyfriend. Xander starts telling her that he didn’t mean it to apply to her, while Willow and Giles restart their argument about the proper way to deal with Hus. The two arguments escalate.
Buffy jumps to her feet. “This is no good!” Everyone stops and looks at her. “It needs more condensed milk.” She takes her bowl to the kitchen.
Giles follows her. “Buffy, Xander is in real danger. Are you sure the solution is pie?”
“Over bickering and confusion, I’ll take pie.” Buffy adds some condensed milk to her pie mix. She will stop Hus, and they will have dinner. “I am going to have Thanksgiving, and it is going to be perfect!”
“Hus won’t stop,” says Giles. “Vengeance is never sated Buffy. Hatred is a cycle. All he will do is kill!”
There’s a knock on the door. Buffy is surprised by it. Everyone she’s expecting is there. She goes to the door and opens it. She doesn’t see anyone. Buffy steps out to take a look around.
Spike steps out of the shadows beside the door, and grabs Buffy by the arms. “Help me!”
Buffy gives Spike a shove out into the sunlight.
Spike covers himself with his blanket as best he can before he bursts into flames. “What part of ‘help me’ do you not understand?”
“The part where I help you,” says Buffy.
Spike pleads with Buffy to invite him in before he roasts. Giles steps up behind her and hands her a stake. Buffy offers to finish Spike off quickly.
“Invite me in!” Spike pleads.
“No,” says Buffy.
“It’s fairly unlikely,” says Giles.
Spike tries to come in anyway, but bounces of the invisible barrier at Giles’ door. He staggers back and crouches in the shadows close to the door. “Look, I’m safe. I can’t bite anyone. Willow, tell ’em what I did.”
“You said you were going to kill me, and then Buffy,” says Willow.
“Yes, bad,” says Spike. “Let’s skip that part and get to the part where I couldn’t bite you.”
“It’s true,” says Willow. “He had trouble performing.”
“Yeah, well, it looks like they’ve done me for good,” says Spike.
“What are you saying?” asks Giles.
“I’m saying that Spike had a little trip to the vet, and now he doesn’t chase the other puppies anymore. I can’t bite anything. I can’t even hit people.”
“So you haven’t murdered anybody lately?” asks Buffy. “Let’s be best pals!”
“I’ve got information,” offers Spike. “About the soldier boys you were fighting. I’ve got the inside scoop. Come on, what have you got to be afraid of?”
Hus lays the weapons he has gathered on the ground in the ruined mission. He calls on the spirits of his people, and he calls on the spirits from bellow, the creatures of the night to come and aid him. More green mist gathers and coalesces into half a dozen more Chumash warriors.
Buffy ties Spike into a chair. Spike isn’t happy with the way he is being treated. He came to Buffy in friendship—all right, seething hatred—but he has valuable information for her, and he thinks she is mistreating him.
“So tell me everything you know,” says Buffy.
“I’m too hungry to remember everything,” says Spike.
“Then sit.” Buffy slaps Spike on the back of his head, and gives Anya some instructions on the preparation of a sauce. It needs a quarter cup of brandy. Giles points out the brandy bottle on the bookcase. Spike thinks he could use some brandy too.
Giles is trying to figure out what sort of people Hus is going after. Aside from Xander both his other victims were some sort of authority figure. He wonders who might be next. Buffy figures that Dean Guerrero is a likely candidate. He’s the head of the university, and he was at the ceremony. Giles thinks that he should be warned.
Buffy asks Willow if she has found some way to stop the spirit. Some nice non-judgmental way to kill him.
Willow is not on board with this. “This isn’t a western. We’re not at Fort Giles with the cavalry coming to save us. It’s one lonely guy.”
Buffy tells Willow that she feels badly about it—pausing to give Anya instructions on what to do with the brandy—but they have to stop Hus from killing any more people. “I, personally would be ready to apologise, but I—”
“Oh, someone put a stake in me!” says Spike.
“You got a lot of volunteers in here,” says Xander from the couch.
“I just can’t stand all this mamby-pamby boo-hooing about the bloody indians!” says Spike. “You won. All right? You came in, and you killed them, and you took their land. That’s what conquering nations do. That’s what Caesar did, and he’s not going around saying ‘I came, I conquered, I felt really bad about it.’ The history of the world is not people making friends. You had better weapons and you massacred them. End of story.”
“Well I think that the Spaniards actually did a lot of—” Buffy stops. “Not that I don’t like Spaniards.”
“Listen to you!” says Spike. “How are you going to fight anyone with that attitude?”
“We don’t want to fight anyone,” says Willow.
“I just want to have Thanksgiving,” says Buffy.
Spike laughs. “Yeah. Good luck.”
“If we could talk to him,” says Willow.
“You exterminated his race!” says Spike. “What could you possibly say to him that would make him feel better? It’s kill or be killed here. Take your bloody pick!”
“Maybe it’s the syphilis talking,” says Xander, “but some of that made sense.”
“I made these points earlier,” says Giles. “But fine, no one listens to me.”
Spike may have made some points, but someone still has to go warn the Dean. Willow volunteers to do it. Buffy doesn’t want her to go alone, so Anya and Xander volunteer to go along.
“Oh, leave that one.” Spike nods toward Xander. “He looks like he’s ready to drop any minute, and I think I could eat someone if he’s already dead.”
Xander suddenly starts to feel better. He gets up off the sofa and follows Willow and Anya toward the door.
Buffy tells them to be careful, and to hurry. “Dinner’s in an hour!”
Buffy sets the table while Giles studies. Spike wants to know when he’ll get fed. “Do you know what happens to vampires who don’t get to feed?”
“I always wondered that actually,” says Giles.
“Living skeletons, mate,” says Spike. “Like famine pictures from those dusty countries. Only not half as funny.”
Buffy is laying out the silverware on the table. “Do I have to gag you? Because I am not going to listen to you whine all the way through my dinner. It is going to be a nice, quiet, civilized—” She is interrupted by an arrow hitting the Pilgrim centerpiece on the table. She looks up and sees Hus standing in Giles’ upstairs window, drawing another arrow from his quiver.
Buffy starts trying to tell Hus how terrible they all feel about what happened to his people, but he isn’t listening. More warriors start to break Giles’ windows, and to fire more arrows. Buffy and Giles duck for cover behind the couch.
Spike gets left out in the open, tied up in his chair as more arrows fly through the room. An arrow hits him in the chest. “Hey! Watch the heart!”
Willow, Anya and Xander leave Dean Guerrero’s house. He hasn’t taken their warning too seriously, but they did get some pie from his wife. They run into Angel. It’s the first time Anya has really met him. “So this is Angel. He is large and glowery, isn’t he?” 2
“He’s evil again!” says Xander.
“I’m not evil again!” says Angel. “Why does everyone think that? I haven’t been evil for a long time.” Willow confirms that Angel’s in town to protect Buffy.
Angel has discovered the missing weapons from the cultural center. He wonders what they are doing here. Willow explains that they think that Hus may be going after authority figures and leaders.
“He’s a warrior,” says Angel. “To a warrior a leader means the strongest fighter.” Hus is going to be going after Buffy. Angel tells them to hurry back to Giles’ and he breaks the locks on some nearby bicycles to give them some faster transportation. He’ll phone ahead to warn Buffy, and follow them.
Giles gets Angel’s phone call, and lets him know that the warning is a little late. He and Buffy are hiding behind bits of Giles’ furniture while arrows whiz around them.
“Who was that?” asks Buffy.
“A— someone. We need a plan.”
“Yes, let’s talk about it some more,” says Spike. He has collected a couple more arrows.
Buffy asks where Giles’ weapons chest is. He points to it, across several feet of open room. She tries to get to it, but gets hit in the arm by an arrow. She ducks back under cover.
While Giles helps Buffy remove the arrow from her arm, Spike decides that talking might not be such a bad idea. It’s time to try the apologise thing. It doesn’t do him any good.
Buffy and Giles assess their situation. It isn’t good. They need help.
Willow, Xander and Anya peddle their stolen bikes across the campus.
Buffy and Giles move some furniture to let them get to his weapons trunk while still under some cover. They get out a couple of crossbows, and try shooting Hus, and one of the other warriors. They dodge the crossbow bolts easily.
Xander, Willow and Anya arrive outside. Xander grabs a flower pot and breaks it over the head of the warrior by Giles’ front door. He goes down. Hus orders one of his other warriors to stop them, and the warrior attacks Willow and Anya. They grab a couple of shovels from Giles’ garden and start beating him with them.
Hus has run out of arrows, so he enters Giles’ apartment and attacks Buffy directly. Two more warriors follow him and attack Giles, who has armed himself with a mace. One more warrior fires an arrow from a window, which catches Spike in the leg. “Ow! Bloody hell!”
Buffy grabs the carving knife off the table while she fights Hus. She throws him onto the couch, and stabs him in the chest. It doesn’t seem to affect him. “Giles, these guys— they don’t die.” Hus slashes her arm with his knife.
Xander picks up another shovel, and goes to help Willow and Anya.
The warrior Xander had brained earlier gets back to his feet. He attacks Xander from behind, and takes his shovel from him. Xander turns to fight him. The warrior tosses Xander through Giles’ front door, and attacks him with a knife.
Angel arrives and finds Willow and Anya still beating on their warrior with shovels. “Why … won’t … you … die?” Willow is asking, punctuating each word with a blow. Angel comes up behind the warrior, grabs him by the head, and gives it a sharp twist, breaking his neck. He shoves the body aside.
“What’s he like when he is evil?” asks Anya.
Angel looks in through the window and sees Buffy busy fighting Hus. One of the other warriors is coming up behind her with a knife. Angel picks up a knife that had been dropped by an indian in the garden, and throws it, stabbing the warrior through the chest.
The warrior whose neck Angel had broken gets back to his feet and attacks him from behind. Angel sends Willow and Anya inside to help the others while he deals with this one again.
Willow and Anya take their shovels, and run into the apartment. They attack the warrior that’s trying to kill Xander.
Buffy flips Hus over onto the floor, and he drops his knife. He snatches up the carving knife that Buffy had been using earlier, and Buffy grabs his knife.
Buffy slashes Hus’s arm with his knife. This time it draws blood. Buffy looks at the cut on Hus’s arm, and the knife in her hand. “Your knife can kill you.”
Hus starts to look worried. He steps away from Buffy and transforms into a bear.
Spike is not happy with this turn of events. “A bear! You made a bear!”
“I didn’t mean to!” says Buffy.
“Undo it!” yells Spike. He frantically tries to move his chair away from the bear, and falls over.
The bear attacks Buffy, and swats her aside. It starts to move toward her.
“Hey! Gentle Ben! Over here!” Xander grabs a potato off the counter and throws it at the bear. “That’s for giving me syphilis!” The bear turns toward Xander.
Buffy gets back to her feet. She stabs the bear with the Chumash knife.
The bear roars, and disappears into wisps of green mist. So do the other Chumash warriors.
Angel looks in at Buffy and her friends gathered in Giles’ home for a moment. He turns and walks away. Buffy senses his presence, but when she looks out the window he’s already gone.
“What happened?” asks Spike from the floor. “Did we win?”
Buffy, her friends and Spike are all seated around the table, finishing off their Thanksgiving dinner. Spike is still tied up. The Pilgrim center piece still has an arrow sticking out of it. Willow feels lousy.
“Well the turkey came out rather splendidly,” says Giles.
“It was yummy,” says Willow. “But did you see me? Two seconds of conflict with an indigenous person and I turned into General Custer.”
“Violence does that,” says Giles. “Instinct takes over.”
“Yeah,” says Spike, “that’s the fun.”
“Nobody asked you,” says Xander. He’s feeling much better now.
“Oh, lay off,” grumbles Spike. “You all had a fine meal. But me? An entire siege. You’d think one of you would bleed a little.”
Giles congratulates Buffy on the way the battle, and the meal turned out. Buffy isn’t convinced. It wasn’t the perfect Thanksgiving she had in mind.
Xander’s happy with it. “A bunch of anticipation, a big fight, and now we’re all sleepy.”
“And we did all survive,” says Giles.
“Well, maybe we started a new tradition this year,” says Willow. She sees the look Buffy is giving her. “Or maybe not. But at least we all worked together. It was like old times.”
“Yeah,” says Xander. “Especially with Angel being here and everything.”
Everyone looks down the table at Buffy to see how she is going to react to that bit of news.
“Oops,” says Xander.
| Who or What | Where | How |
|---|---|---|
| A vampire | The woods | Staked by Buffy |
| Dr. Gerhardt | UCSunnydale Cultural Center | Throat slit by Hus |
| A man | Some vampires’ Thanksgiving feast | |
| Father Gabriel | Behind his church | Hung by Hus |
| The vengeance spirit Hus | Giles’ apartment | Knifed by Buffy |