Successor (BTVS)

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I'm dropping the vampirism as a medical condition

[X] Buffy decides that they can probably work something out, somehow, and locks Harmony up with some butcher's blood. The gang will try to figure out how reliable she is and what she needs to keep her under control.
-[X] Pavlovian conditioning. Do some pretend magic on her, telling her that it's a curse that would prevent her from drinking human blood, than give her some human blood with a little bit of holy water mixed in. Keep it up to make her like animal blood instead.
--[X] See if there is real magic that can make human blood disgusting for a vampire. Anyanka probably knows all kinds of curses like those.
-[X] Talk to Willow and Giles about the ensouling curse. While it might not work well on Harmony, she could still serve as a trial case. If someone gets turned later, ensouling them before they can do any harm is a better alternative than destroying them.
--[X] See about changing the curse's condition from "moment of true happiness" to something else that's harder to achieve by accident
--[X] Talk to Andrew, Giles and Willow about developing a soul presence indicator that would show if Harmony (or any other future ensouled vampire) loses their soul. ​
 
[X] Buffy decides that they can probably work something out, somehow, and locks Harmony up with some butcher's blood. The gang will try to figure out how reliable she is and what she needs to keep her under control.
-[X] Pavlovian conditioning. Do some pretend magic on her, telling her that it's a curse that would prevent her from drinking human blood, than give her some human blood with a little bit of holy water mixed in. Keep it up to make her like animal blood instead.
--[X] See if there is real magic that can make human blood disgusting for a vampire. Anyanka probably knows all kinds of curses like those.
-[X] Talk to Willow and Giles about the ensouling curse. While it might not work well on Harmony, she could still serve as a trial case. If someone gets turned later, ensouling them before they can do any harm is a better alternative than destroying them.
--[X] See about changing the curse's condition from "moment of true happiness" to something else that's harder to achieve by accident
--[X] Talk to Andrew, Giles and Willow about developing a soul presence indicator that would show if Harmony (or any other future ensouled vampire) loses their soul.
--[X] Discuss using ensouling curse to make "turning into vampire" a legitimate medical procedure, like Ford wanted to do.
 
[x] Buffy lies to Harmony, saying it's all going to be OK, and then stakes her in the back. She owes her that much, at least.
 
kitsune9 said:
I'm dropping the vampirism as a medical condition
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My main reason for adding this is that Buffy knows stuff like that happens. Her friend who had a terminal illness did this, betraying her in the process. And if ensouling ritual works and doesn't have horrific costs, then it suddenly becomes actually viable.
 
Yog said:
My main reason for adding this is that Buffy knows stuff like that happens. Her friend who had a terminal illness did this, betraying her in the process. And if ensouling ritual works and doesn't have horrific costs, then it suddenly becomes actually viable.
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I feel that your going way to transhumanist here. I mean Buffy might be willing to do it on a case by case basis if she cares about someone and doesn't want to kill them like she did with Angel but that was an emotional decision because she didn't want to lose someone she loved. Trying to industrialize it as a medical procedure is really jumping the shark. I mean I could see that being one of the various big bad's season plot.

I think that at this time she would be uncomfortable with killing harmony. She did after all release vampire willow back into the wild in her own dimension and Harmony is at least saying she doesn't want to eat people. She might also consider ensouling her as one of the many options for dealing with her and that might extend to other vampires in a way. I don't think she would like it and she wouldn't consider killing people to raise their corpses as demons even one's possessed by their own soul without some major character development.

I wouldn't accept buffy being willing to talk about turning people into vampires as a medical treatment until after she learns about her moms brain clot and starts to panic and look for any way to save her life. I would also say that if your calling back the soul from the afterlife you should look into putting it into something other then a demon possessed corpse. The Buffy Bot exists or will exist and we just hired one of the three people that helped make it. Magic and mad science have ways of fixing health problems that don't need you to eat people.

As for Vampires, there are other ways to deal with them then ensouling them. The chips and magic are one. I would say that the mayor had to have some way of magically enforcing a contract. After that arrange for those that play along to get things like cable and running water if they act in a way that the town likes. options include Suck houses which exist and don't kill their victims and expired blood from blood donations and pigs blood from the butcher. If it's clear that there are rules and playing by the rules provides safety and you make sure that those that don't play by the rules get staked then you'll find less barbecue fork deaths happening all over town.
 
kitsune9 said:
I feel that your going way to transhumanist here. I mean Buffy might be willing to do it on a case by case basis if she cares about someone and doesn't want to kill them like she did with Angel but that was an emotional decision because she didn't want to lose someone she loved. Trying to industrialize it as a medical procedure is really jumping the shark. I mean I could see that being one of the various big bad's season plot.

I think that at this time she would be uncomfortable with killing harmony. She did after all release vampire willow back into the wild in her own dimension and Harmony is at least saying she doesn't want to eat people. She might also consider ensouling her as one of the many options for dealing with her and that might extend to other vampires in a way. I don't think she would like it and she wouldn't consider killing people to raise their corpses as demons even one's possessed by their own soul without some major character development.

I wouldn't accept buffy being willing to talk about turning people into vampires as a medical treatment until after she learns about her moms brain clot and starts to panic and look for any way to save her life. I would also say that if your calling back the soul from the afterlife you should look into putting it into something other then a demon possessed corpse. The Buffy Bot exists or will exist and we just hired one of the three people that helped make it. Magic and mad science have ways of fixing health problems that don't need you to eat people.

As for Vampires, there are other ways to deal with them then ensouling them. The chips and magic are one. I would say that the mayor had to have some way of magically enforcing a contract. After that arrange for those that play along to get things like cable and running water if they act in a way that the town likes. options include Suck houses which exist and don't kill their victims and expired blood from blood donations and pigs blood from the butcher. If it's clear that there are rules and playing by the rules provides safety and you make sure that those that don't play by the rules get staked then you'll find less barbecue fork deaths happening all over town.
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First of all, I wanted to thank you for a very good rebuttal. It highlighted several issues that I feel I communicated badly.

First of all, on the subject of vampirism as treatment for terminal illnesses, yes, it is a big leap that Buffy wouldn't make on her own. In fact, even with Ford's situation clearly hitting her badly, and her having trauma about it, I agree that, at this moment, she likely still won't consider rolling it out as a procedure available to general population. I do want to put the thought in her mind, or, rather in the mind of one of her helpers (Jonathan, for example), to mull over and work out kinks in their own time.

On the subject of dealing with vampires, I have to disagree however, at least in some cases. Ensouling seems to be the best and most moral solution (barring personal choices of people prior to their deaths) to deal with fledges, where psychological trauma would be minimized. Accepting for a moment the premise that the vampire and the human it is produced from are two completely different persons (and, from a transhumanism perspective this is a dubious premise to say the least), and that the value of the human person is higher than the value of the vampire person, ensouling seems to be the best solution, as chipping / magically binding vampires, while beneficial to society as a whole, does nothing to the human whose body the vampire occupies.

Overall, I completely agree that rather than exterminating vampires, creating a system where vampires are not harmful to society is a better solution. Each vampire that we coopt is a vampire that protects the system we create against "wild" vampires. Each vampire we exterminate is one free slot in the town's ecology that a new vampire from the outside can try to occupy.

In general, I would say the strategy should be:
1) For new fledges - ensoul before they can do anything. It seems vampires do not (always) consider themselves to be different people from humans they were created from. Propaganda to the tune of "you can have your life back, and the Slayer off your back, simply sign up for ensoulment ritual" might be effective

2) For older vampires with a number of kills - case-by-case basis, but probably favoring magic-enhanced behavior modification.
 
Yog said:
First of all, I wanted to thank you for a very good rebuttal. It highlighted several issues that I feel I communicated badly.

First of all, on the subject of vampirism as treatment for terminal illnesses, yes, it is a big leap that Buffy wouldn't make on her own. In fact, even with Ford's situation clearly hitting her badly, and her having trauma about it, I agree that, at this moment, she likely still won't consider rolling it out as a procedure available to general population. I do want to put the thought in her mind, or, rather in the mind of one of her helpers (Jonathan, for example), to mull over and work out kinks in their own time.

On the subject of dealing with vampires, I have to disagree however, at least in some cases. Ensouling seems to be the best and most moral solution (barring personal choices of people prior to their deaths) to deal with fledges, where psychological trauma would be minimized. Accepting for a moment the premise that the vampire and the human it is produced from are two completely different persons (and, from a transhumanism perspective this is a dubious premise to say the least), and that the value of the human person is higher than the value of the vampire person, ensouling seems to be the best solution, as chipping / magically binding vampires, while beneficial to society as a whole, does nothing to the human whose body the vampire occupies.

Overall, I completely agree that rather than exterminating vampires, creating a system where vampires are not harmful to society is a better solution. Each vampire that we coopt is a vampire that protects the system we create against "wild" vampires. Each vampire we exterminate is one free slot in the town's ecology that a new vampire from the outside can try to occupy.

In general, I would say the strategy should be:
1) For new fledges - ensoul before they can do anything. It seems vampires do not (always) consider themselves to be different people from humans they were created from. Propaganda to the tune of "you can have your life back, and the Slayer off your back, simply sign up for ensoulment ritual" might be effective

2) For older vampires with a number of kills - case-by-case basis, but probably favoring magic-enhanced behavior modification.
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Exterminating vampires isn't possible, if it was I would have no problems with doing it but we can't and since we can't we have no chance but to limit damage.

One of my main problems with ensouling large amounts of vampires is that it's really hard to do. The only way to do it is to convince a mystical practitioner to use a rare one use item to rip the soul of a person out of heaven. It really doesn't seem like it could scale well and the effects of being ripped out of heaven were shown in later episodes. I think that even fresh vampires would have problems after getting their souls back. The other problem is that well Angel seemed to lose his soul every other episode and having a large portion of your defenses growing in speed strength and skill only to possibly turn on you without warning sounds like a huge security nightmare.

The other main reason is that it could very well split the Scoobies into factions. Simply mentioning the idea will get reactions from everyone and not all of them good.
Putting forth a radical proposal at a time like this could easily have say Andrew consider it a amazing idea with say some backing from Willow only to run into heavy resistance from Xander and Giles who aren't willing to consider it. Fracturing the council and it's legitimacy during the first part of the new government. The scoobies in the show did after all start to fall apart around now and well hopefully having them all work in the mayors office will stop that it isn't guaranteed. ​
 
kitsune9 said:
Exterminating vampires isn't possible, if it was I would have no problems with doing it but we can't and since we can't we have no chance but to limit damage.

One of my main problems with ensouling large amounts of vampires is that it's really hard to do. The only way to do it is to convince a mystical practitioner to use a rare one use item to rip the soul of a person out of heaven. It really doesn't seem like it could scale well and the effects of being ripped out of heaven were shown in later episodes. I think that even fresh vampires would have problems after getting their souls back. The other problem is that well Angel seemed to lose his soul every other episode and having a large portion of your defenses growing in speed strength and skill only to possibly turn on you without warning sounds like a huge security nightmare.

The other main reason is that it could very well split the Scoobies into factions. Simply mentioning the idea will get reactions from everyone and not all of them good.
Putting forth a radical proposal at a time like this could easily have say Andrew consider it a amazing idea with say some backing from Willow only to run into heavy resistance from Xander and Giles who aren't willing to consider it. Fracturing the council and it's legitimacy during the first part of the new government. The scoobies in the show did after all start to fall apart around now and well hopefully having them all work in the mayors office will stop that it isn't guaranteed. ​
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1) I agree that, at present, exterminating vampires, even within Sunnydale, is likely impossible. In the future it might be doable, assuming several of the ideas I have pan out (such as blessing town's water supply, with this resulting in human blood also getting holy water effect for the residents of the city). For the purposes of minimizing the damage vampires do to the population, however, while maximizing the benefit to society, I believe ensouling to be the best option

2) I don't remember the orb being a one-use-only item, but it was a long time. I certainly do not remember how hard they are to produce. It might not be that hard or expensive to make new ones.

3) We do not know if, and in what form, heaven exists. We certainly don't know if all souls go there after death.

4) Buffy's reaction to being resurrected was atypical, when compared to the reactions of vampires (Angel, Spike) getting their souls back. The vampires do not seem to get memories of afterlives their souls would have. The souls seem to act merely as morality adjustment emotional overlays, and do not bring additional information with them.

5) Certainly, any large scale roll-out of the ensouling ritual, even if economically and logistically feasible, would require a lot of improvements and adjustments beforehand. Stuff like changing the curse's release condition (if it requires one, which is not a given at all), creating soul presence indicators (which can then be linked to self-destruct mechanisms), etc. However, in general, I highly doubt that "perfect moment of happiness" would be simultaneously achievable for a number of people.

6) Factionalization is a valid concern, yes, absolutely. However, I do not believe that merely floating the idea, as long as everyone agrees that before it is implemented it would need to be agreed upon, and heavily worked over in order to ensure best possible outcome, would lead to such negative result. If merely presenting a radial idea for consideration fractures the ruling elite, then we have larger problems already. Scoobies, at the moment, are friends who have been through war together. I believe they could speak to each other rationally and productively.
 
kitsune9 said:
I might just be misremembering things I haven't seen the show in years.
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I mean, right now I feel the scoobies are at their best, if we are speaking of internal dynamics of the group. They have just slain the mayor. They didn't drift apart yet. Giles is still the mentor. Willow and Buffy haven't gone to college, Xander hasn't left on his trip. The high school dynamics is still there, the resentment towards each other and their lives has not settled in. The "taking over the town" thing is also likely (in my opinion) to make them closer - it's an enormous job that puts all of them out of their comfort zones but allows them to achieve a lot.

Yeah, I have faith, for now, at least.
 
New
[X] Buffy decides that they can probably work something out, somehow, and locks Harmony up with some butcher's blood. The gang will try to figure out how reliable she is and what she needs to keep her under control.
-[X] Move Harmony into the guest room of the Summers house to keep a closer eye on her.

I think mc2rpg is right. This solves the problem of Joyce having inserted herself into our life and the problem of Harmony needing someone watching her.
 
Harmony has her own parents. She is not an orphan. We do not have evidence that her parents are neglectful or abusive. They are probably worried about her.
 
Lock in about 12.

People shouldn't angst too much about stunts if they find ones that are doing well weird, I can act as a pretty reasonable filter on stunt OOCness when necessary. Some more edge things might be thought up by people other than Buffy or not thought up at all, and other stuff that couldn't work might be brought up by someone and then shut down. The main thing as always is the vote itself.
 
Yog said:
Harmony has her own parents. She is not an orphan. We do not have evidence that her parents are neglectful or abusive. They are probably worried about her.
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Yeah but if we leave her with her parents she won't feel like someone that matters is keeping an eye on her, and there won't be anyone around to give her a punch in the face if she starts getting overly predatory. Meanwhile Joyce has already shown some willingness to use violence, and Harmony knows if she attacks Joyce she will be dead incredibly fast.

Also, Harmony's parents being distracted by their vampire child does not provide as much assistance as Joyce being distracted by a new boarder. Nobody cares if Harmony's parents are too busy to be drunk after all.
 
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mc2rpg said:
Yeah but if we leave her with her parents she won't feel like someone that matters is keeping an eye on her, and there won't be anyone around to give her a punch in the face if she starts getting overly predatory. Meanwhile Joyce has already shown some willingness to use violence, and Harmony knows if she attacks Joyce she will be dead incredibly fast.

Also, Harmony's parents being distracted by their vampire child does not provide as much assistance as Joyce being distracted by a new boarder. Nobody cares if Harmony's parents are too busy to be drunk after all.
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I don't think Joyce will have much time to drink any time soon - together with Giles she's helping us govern, and is starting to organize artifact handling for the town, something which is very important for Sunnydale.

Not to mention that, well, Harmony's parents are likely to make inquiries that we might not be able to easily sidestep.
 
Yog said:
Not to mention that, well, Harmony's parents are likely to make inquiries that we might not be able to easily sidestep.
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Inquiries to who? The cops aren't picking up right now, and once we reach out and force them into line they won't be helping at all. On top of that Harmony is 18, if she wants to move out they really can't stop her.
 
And that's a lock. Looks like Harmony gets to stick around.

Inserted tally
Adhoc vote count started by DeAnno on Feb 26, 2019 at 2:30 PM, finished with 36 posts and 15 votes.
  • [X] Buffy decides that they can probably work something out, somehow, and locks Harmony up with some butcher's blood. The gang will try to figure out how reliable she is and what she needs to keep her under control.
    -[X] Pavlovian conditioning. Do some pretend magic on her, telling her that it's a curse that would prevent her from drinking human blood, than give her some human blood with a little bit of holy water mixed in. Keep it up to make her like animal blood instead.
    --[X] See if there is real magic that can make human blood disgusting for a vampire. Anyanka probably knows all kinds of curses like those.
    -[X] Talk to Willow and Giles about the ensouling curse. While it might not work well on Harmony, she could still serve as a trial case. If someone gets turned later, ensouling them before they can do any harm is a better alternative than destroying them.
    --[X] See about changing the curse's condition from "moment of true happiness" to something else that's harder to achieve by accident
    --[X] Talk to Andrew, Giles and Willow about developing a soul presence indicator that would show if Harmony (or any other future ensouled vampire) loses their soul.
    --[X] Discuss using ensouling curse to make "turning into vampire" a legitimate medical procedure, like Ford wanted to do.
    -[X] Schedule lectures and seminars for your employees where the nature of vampires, werewolves and demons is discussed, to help them understand how Vampire!Harmony and Harmony are different beings.
    [x] Buffy lies to Harmony, saying it's all going to be OK, and then stakes her in the back. She owes her that much, at least.
    -[X] Move Harmony into the guest room of the Summers house to keep a closer eye on her.
    [X] Buffy decides that they can probably work something out, somehow, and locks Harmony up with some butcher's blood. The gang will try to figure out how reliable she is and what she needs to keep her under control.​
    -[X] Pavlovian conditioning. Do some pretend magic on her, telling her that it's a curse that would prevent her from drinking human blood, than give her some human blood with a little bit of holy water mixed in. Keep it up to make her like animal blood instead. ​
    --[X] See if there is real magic that can make human blood disgusting for a vampire. Anyanka probably knows all kinds of curses like those. ​
    -[X] Talk to Willow and Giles about the ensouling curse. While it might not work well on Harmony, she could still serve as a trial case. If someone gets turned later, ensouling them before they can do any harm is a better alternative than destroying them. ​
    --[X] See about changing the curse's condition from "moment of true happiness" to something else that's harder to achieve by accident​
    --[X] Talk to Andrew, Giles and Willow about developing a soul presence indicator that would show if Harmony (or any other future ensouled vampire) loses their soul. ​
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S3.5E2: Spoils III
  • Threadmarks
    • [X] Buffy decides that they can probably work something out, somehow, and locks Harmony up with some butcher's blood. The gang will try to figure out how reliable she is and what she needs to keep her under control.

    "Urgh." Buffy groaned. "I can't do it."

    "Hurray!" Harmony cheered. She followed up with a raspberry up at Xander, still kneeling on the ground and sort of hiding behind Buffy's legs. That Harmony felt the need to hide from an injured Xander Harris said a lot about how dangerous she was.

    "Fine then, I can." Xander awkwardly pulled a stake out of his pocket left-handed and marched around the desk. Harmony pivoted backwards and away, awkwardly landing on her butt.

    "No." Buffy made another pained noise. "Stop, I mean, what if she's telling the truth?"

    "We stake plenty of fledglings coming right out of the coffin," Xander said. "And being our friend before he was turned didn't make Jesse any less of a traitor. Harmony was barely even past being our enemy at the best of times!"

    "It's not my fault your friend was a jerk either!" Harmony retorted. "Though maybe he was justified, if this is how loyal you are. On Tuesday, you came right to me asking for help. Today, you want to stake me. Psycho much?"

    "Harmony, you might be too dumb to understand, but that's not how this works. That's not how any of this works." Xander had abandoned his forward charge and just started monologuing. "You're a demon, and you have Harmony's face, her memories, and apparently her defective brain. But she's dead. You're the spawn of the thing that killed her. I'm not breaking fa-, anything with Harmony by killing you, I'm avenging her death."

    "Why are you calling me by her name then?" Harmony said. Buffy wasn't sure the real Harmony was smart enough to pick up on that, and almost reconsidered her decision, before deciding that wasn't really fair either. "Maybe the difference isn't as clear cut as you think. Maybe the only part of that friend of yours that even liked you in the first place was his soul."

    Xander just resumed his charge after that with murder in his eyes, though what he expected to actually do once he reached Harmony was really anyone's guess. Buffy had had enough of this though (she had been having enough of things way too much lately) and stopped him, stepping in front with a hand on his chest. "No. We don't need to do this now." She then turned around, picked Harmony back up into a standing position by her shoulder, and frogmarched her out of the office. A still irate Xander followed them out, silent for now but brooding up a storm.

    "It's time to go see Willow." Buffy said with determination. "She can get Harmony back what passes for her soul and we can all stop arguing about this. If it goes flying away at the first sign of ponies, apparently Harmony's terrified enough of me to come running right back anyway." Buffy in fact had no idea if Willow would or even could restore Harmony's soul, but it seemed like the kind of thing to say to make everyone be quiet until they got there.

    Despite being the nominal mayor, Buffy did not in fact use the mayor's old office. Willow had gone in there to mess with all his old stuff and sort of set up camp after they took over the building yesterday, and it had become her office by default. She didn't really care though, especially because it would probably just remind her of Wilkins anyway. She didn't even know how Willow could stand it herself, but then again the library at Sunnydale High hadn't exactly been a place of happy memories either.

    The three of them burst into the room, stumbling upon a scene nobody had expected. The room was darkened with lowered shades, and a ritual pentagram was represented in the middle of the floor with old bones and elaborate candles. Willow was pacing around it, throwing herbs and chanting in Latin, and sitting inside was the open habitrail of Amy the rat. Apparently Willow had taken the general directive to recruit '99ers to greater extremes than Buffy predicted.

    Before any of them could interrupt, Andrew shushed them from the side, quickly scrambling to close the door to the room and herd them into a corner. Once they were contained away from the ritual, he whispered "Willow Rosenberg, powerful Wicca, looks to restore Amy Madison to the form of a fair maiden. It has been a harrowing day of exacting preparations for us, but we're finally about to see the fruit of our endeavors."

    The office definitely looked pretty harrowed. A lot of the mayor's magical possessions were scattered around the room, with his old desk covered in open books and random trinkets sitting in piles in the other corners. Buffy spied a fancy silver hourglass, an ornate spice rack of magical supplies, an elaborate model maze, and a clouded crystal ball among them. He'd definitely kept a lot of his old junk in here, that was for sure.

    Just as Buffy was about to ask Andrew how much longer Willow's fruit would take, her chanting grew in volume and changed to English. Apparently it was time for the show.

    "Banish Hecate from this place,
    Her eyes to wander, Her focus slip.
    Banish Hecate from this time,
    Her hands to release, her grip to slack.
    Beautiful Circe I implore,
    Unbind the maiden, undo the spell.
    Beautiful Circe I request,
    Banish Hecate, unwork her will!"

    There was a sense of heaviness in the air as Willow echoed her last line, and an iridescence seemed to shimmer around Amy's rodent form. Before it could continue though, there was a sound of shattering glass and the energy exploded outwards, covering the room and blinding them all temporarily.

    Buffy rubbed at her eyes, and as her vision cleared, the first thing she saw was Mayor Wilkins, smiling his evil smile in full human form again. In no mood for these shenanigans, she attacked immediately and tried to take his head off with a full power spin kick. Unfortunately, she went right through his flickering form, though she still managed to land on her feet behind it.

    The Mayor took no notice of her attack, and taking another second to scan her surroundings, she saw she and her friends (and Harmony) were facing off with the apparition in a wooden corridor with an open roof. She didn't have time to look more closely though, as Wilkins chose that moment to start one of his patented annoying lectures.

    "Well now, whoever you are, you've been quite the busy bee. Trying to cast a big ol' spell right in the middle of my own office, and without asking me for permission first!" Wilkins wagged his finger in the air at the group of confused people in front of him. "I have to admit, I'm amused by the gumption, and I guess in a way this is its reward, quite a marvel of engineering to witness if I do say so myself. My trap can sit passively without the slightest bit of magical radiation to alert mischief-makers like you, and then use your own spell's energy to go off. I'd say it was a little bit of karmic justice, if I believed in karma."

    "You'll wander around in my maze until I come back to deal with you. You have to admit, this was pretty naughty, and I figure this should give you some time to think about what you've done." Wilkins' face took a nastier cast after that, and his voice dropped from amused to murderous. "Don't let your thoughts distract you too much though, or you might not survive that long." With that, he winked out.

    "How many dead people are going to insult me today?" Xander asked the room. Is my great aunt Priscilla going to show up next telling me how disappointed she is in my GPA?"

    "We do it because it's so fun, Xander." Harmony's little feud with him was apparently still going on, but they had bigger problems to deal with, apparently.

    Willow ignored the byplay, analyzing the situation, "Darn it! I think he set it up to detect in the Astral plane. With it rooted in a separate object instead of the building in general I missed it when I scanned for wards. I feel so inept, I managed to lose to him even after we blew him up. Stupid taunty recording."

    Buffy felt like lashing out, but knew it wouldn't do any good. "You couldn't have known Will. It made sense to try to help Amy as soon as you could." She made a face, "She's been a rat for months now, I can only imagine what's going through her head."

    "I think maybe this was a reverse summon?" Andrew speculated. "A dastardly maneuver, but to be sure-"

    "Quiet dweeb. Does anyone else hear that?" Harmony asked. "Sounds like some kind of scratching." Focusing more on listening to her new senses than anything else, she vamped out into game face again, spooking Willow and Andrew.

    "Hey! Vampire! Did everyone else know Harmony was a vampire? You aren't all vampires now, are you?" Willow backed towards the wall as she looked around, suspicious and worried.

    "That would almost be a more sensible explanation," Xander complained, "but no, apparently Harmony is a friendly vampire, and we're all going to ignore common sense and just let her join the squad and eat people on the side."

    "Still haven't eaten anyone!" Harmony shouted. "You're really tempting me though." She shook her head and went back to trying to listen.

    Willow looked at Buffy, starting to sense the tense mood among her friends. "Does she have a soul or something? I know-"

    "What is it with you people and souls? What are they even supposed to do?" Harmony sniped at Willow now, increasingly irritated. "I don't have a soul, I just have common sense. You guys are clearly the winning team, I don't want to be traded to the Cubs now."

    Willow wasn't sure what to say to that, and Andrew was clearly out of his depth. Xander was about to pick up the argument again, but Buffy stopped him "I hear it too now. It's like a metal scraping noise, but it's far away, down there somewhere." She pointed down the corridor, which ended in a slanted T junction about 50 feet away.

    "Maybe we should go the other way then?" Andrew said. "For he that fights and runs away, may live to fight another day."

    "Wilkins' did say this place was dangerous," Xander said. "But maybe we should deal with it now, instead of running around and letting it chase us forever? How long is it going to be before we can get out of here anyways?"

    "Guess I should work on that. Harmony, give me a boost." Buffy said. Harmony looked at her confused until Buffy mimed a cheerleading move, and then Harmony understood and clasped her hands together for Buffy. She jumped into her hands and was launched up towards the open roof of the maze, twenty feet up or so. When she got to the top though, she couldn't grab over the wall; there was an invisible barrier her hands bounced off, and she would've tumbled back down if not for a quick push to readjust her course for a better landing.

    "I wonder if I can still do cheerleading?" Harmony said, a little distracted by seeing her own strength for what might've been the first time.

    Andrew was more concerned with the immediate situation. "We can't escape a foul trap like this from the inside. If it's a reverse summoning like I predicted, we're all trapped miniaturized inside the enchanted model until someone opens it from the outside."

    "Wait, so we're stuck tiny forever?" Buffy said. "I mean, I was short before, but this is ridiculous."

    "No, fearless leader. Once somebody opens it up, the spell will be broken utterly, and we'll pop out back to where we were, full sized." Andrew's constant drama was yet another source of irritation, but at least he seemed to know what was going on. Or think he did.

    "It could be hours before someone finds us in here," Willow said.

    "I don't think it'll be hours before scrapey metal noise finds us." Buffy said. She looked around at everybody, sizing the situation up. Xander was still injured, Willow seemed a little worn out from her spell attempt earlier, and Andrew was a total noncombatant. On the other hand, Harmony was a vampire, even if she was kind of incompetent. She didn't think it was a good idea to split the group up in a maze, but should they try to track down whatever monster was in here and fight it, or just keep away from it until help arrived?

    Vote:

    [] Buffy and her friends decide they should fight the unknown scraping monster. Buffy's the slayer, she should be able to tip any battle.

    [] Too many of these people aren't ready to fight right now, and if Buffy gets distracted or looks like she's losing, Harmony might still stab them in the back. Better to keep away from it and just move through the maze until they get rescued.
     
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    • [X] Buffy and her friends decide they should fight the unknown scraping monster. Buffy's the slayer, she should be able to tip any battle.
     
    [x] Too many of these people aren't ready to fight right now, and if Buffy gets distracted or looks like she's losing, Harmony might still stab them in the back. Better to keep away from it and just move through the maze until they get rescued.
     
    [x] Too many of these people aren't ready to fight right now, and if Buffy gets distracted or looks like she's losing, Harmony might still stab them in the back. Better to keep away from it and just move through the maze until they get rescued.
     
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