[X][Buffy] The information black hole at the police station has gone on long enough. They aren't even making the token effort they used to, much less giving any help with actually dangerous problems, and City Hall has received a number of actual complaints. Buffy's more-or-less official now, and she's going to figure out just what kind of skullduggery is going on there and how to improve the sorry state of the town's patrolmen. Hopefully whatever they're doing instead of working, it isn't too bad.
[X][Willow] Cybermancy, using computer equipment at UC Sunnydale
Previously, on Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
EXT. SCHOOL - DAY
SNYDER: I'm doing everything I can. But you people have to realize that - (as people pass) -- backed up sewer line, this happened in San Diego just last week - (they're gone) -- that we are on a Hellmouth. Sooner or later, people are going to figure that out.
CHIEF MONROE: The city council was told you could handle this job. If you feel you can't... perhaps you'd like to take that up... with the Mayor.
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INT. LIBRARY - NIGHT
COP: Back away from the girl! Put your hands up and back away slowly!
BUFFY: But, I didn't --
INT. HALL - NIGHT
-- a bullet smashing the window in one of the doors, just missing Buffy as she takes off out of the building.
The cop speaks into his walkie as the other takes off after Buffy.
COP: All units, we have a fugitive on foot at the high school, homicide suspect, female, blonde, approximately sixteen years old, suspect is very dangerous --
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INT. GILES' APARTMENT - LIVING ROOM - NIGHT
OZ: By the way, you're not wanted for murder anymore.
BUFFY: Oh, good. That was such a drag.
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EXT. LODGE - DAY
RORY: (Gesticulating angrily) So you can see why I'm a little agitated: the town seems to be going to the wolves, the Mayor's either dead or missing in action, and the police station won't even take our calls! They just told us they don't have time for 'petty vandalism' right now and hung up! What are our property taxes even paying for?
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S3.5E3: Thin Gold Line
"Ms. Summers, I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?" Vanessa had shown up and caught Buffy outside City Hall just as the day was winding down. Long summer hours meant that the sun was still well up in the sky, but City Hall employees old and new were wandering off to experience what little of the Saturday they could. Succession crises didn't take days off.
"I want to preserve the illusion that this was a good day with only good things just a little bit longer. Give me good news," Buffy said.
Vanessa smiled and pulled an open envelope out of her oversized handbag, stuffed with official looking documents. "You've officially been notarized by Sacramento as acting mayor of Sunnydale until the special election, even though the case of Richard's 'disappearance' is still open."
Buffy took the envelope and paged through its mysterious contents, full of dense type and important looking signatures. She supposed her signature was important now too. "I'm not even surprised this happened so fast. I'm more surprised it happened at all. Do they even know I'm 18?"
"Under most circumstances, an 18 year old unilaterally appointed mayor by the sole remaining city counselor would have probably been a little more difficult to get by the censors," Vanessa said. "It isn't about what you do in politics though, it's about who you know, and I happen to know a lot of the right people, even outside this deathtrap of a city." She smiled a savage little old lady smile.
"It's a major burden off my shoulders," Buffy said. "I think I'm going to have enough trouble with demons questioning my legitimacy, at least I won't be dealing with it from humans too."
"We can only hope. That brings me to the bad news though." With that, she pulled an even thicker folder out of the same handbag and gave it to Buffy. "The police are off the reservation, and it's getting worse by the day. That's a folder of complaints just from the past week; letters, transcripts, there's even a photo or two in there. The police aren't just ignoring their jobs anymore, they're an active detriment. The main question left is whether Chief Monroe has lost control of his force or if this is all his doing."
Buffy paged through this too, and it was definitely clear it was bad. There was stuff about spurious tickets, illegal search and seizure, and even people suspicious of worse. Any of the complaints alone could've maybe just been a disgruntled citizen, but the weight of all of them together definitely said troubling things.
Buffy's impulse was to run down and do some policing of her own right away, but Vanessa cautioned her, "Now, as bad as it is, I still don't think you should go off half-cocked. Whatever you are, the police station is still a clubhouse full of self-important men with guns, so a bit of forethought is in order here, I'd say."
"Do you think I should gather a big gang of … investigators?" Buffy winced. "I don't really have much experience in doing things all legally. More like 'you bad', 'I slay!'"
"There are a lot of ways you could approach it. Going with some backup will probably help you push them around, and the more evidence you have to throw in their faces the better. I'll even come along myself when you're ready to go, just to watch Monroe squirm. Just make sure you have all your angles planned out before you get there, he's a slippery pig."
"You're right. I have a pretty speckled past with Sunnydale P.D. on top of all this too." Buffy narrowed her eyes. "If it's thinking to be done though, I know just the girl for the job." Willow had left a few minutes ago, but she was sure she could still catch her if she ran.
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"I figure, when life gives you computers, make computeraide," Willow said. Willow had made a call when Buffy caught her last night, and set up a trip to UC Sunnydale to hack into the police department. Buffy figured that more information before pulling the trigger wasn't a bad way to go.
"My Willow, always an improviser." Oz was driving them out to UC Sunnydale's campus in his van. It wasn't an unwalkable trek, but it would've been a bit of a reach, especially moving at speeds Willow could handle. Buffy wondered if she'd be able to cop rides from people working at City Hall come the fall.
"Really, even without the magic part it's pretty cool," Willow continued. "Neither of you has declared a major yet right? You should both totally give the old Babbage machines a try. They're the wave of the future."
"I'm not sure I'm a good enough academic swimmer for waves Will," Buffy said. "Maybe like, small ripples."
"Hey! Don't be all humble-girl, your SATs totally said different." Willow turned to Buffy now, a scolding expression on her face. "The only reason your grades weren't that great is you needed to spend so much time slaying instead of studying."
"And now I have not only slaying, but mayoring. I'm skeptical of my academic prowess this year." Buffy had been worrying about how she would square the circle of what amounted to three full time occupations come September.
"A lot of people work their way through school, but yeah, it is a bit much." Willow admitted. "Maybe you could talk to the Dean about scaling your credit hours back? Or even some other accommodation? I mean, you are the freaking mayor of his town, I'm sure you can work something out."
"I'm not sure I want to go down Wilkins' path of corruption and favor trading, Will." Buffy did kind of wish all this had somehow happened when Snyder was still her principal though. Being able to make threats to him aside from the pointy ones would've been really satisfying.
"Don't look at it as corruption, look at it as official business," Willow said. "That's how I got the lab time today. No waiting list for an 'official city hall feasibility study'.
"What are we studying the feasibility of?" Oz asked.
"Hacking into the police mainframe of our own city, apparently," Buffy replied.
"I left it vague," Willow said.
Shortly, they arrived and headed into UC Sunnydale's computer building. The open floor was filled with rows of computers for the student body, but they were mostly empty given that it was a summer Sunday. Willow quickly led them to the back, clearly knowing the ins and outs of the place despite having been involved with it for less than a week. There was a stereotypical grad student with glasses and ponytail presumably guarding a closed door, but actually immersed in whatever he was working on with his own computer.
"Hi Max, We're here for the 9 o'clock slot," Willow said. "Willow Rosenberg, Buffy Summers, and Daniel Osbourne." Buffy cringed a bit hearing what time it was, and mourned her precious sleep schedule.
He started, looking up quickly, and then down at a clipboard. "Oh, the official thing. Are you the new mayor's daughter?" he asked Buffy.
Buffy was becoming resigned to permanent and total confusion between her and her mother. "I'm actually the mayor. Acting mayor."
He blanched. "Oh, I'm sorry miss, Ms. mayor I mean." He waved them through. "You don't look a day over twenty-five," he said apologetically.
Buffy had taken half a cue from her dream and dressed a little more professionally, though maybe she'd gone too far. "Thanks? I think."
As they entered the room and Willow sat down in front of a terminal, Buffy commented "I'm not sure what part of that interaction was the most awkward."
"He checked you out at the end too," Oz said.
Buffy just shook her head resignedly and pulled out a seat, while Oz just stood behind her and put his arms over Willow's shoulders. She nestled back into him as she dug a floppy disk out of her backpack. "I put this all together last night to save time today. I just need to run the program on the bigger system here, add magic, and stir."
A black window full of text opened on the screen, and Willow's typing fell into a rhythmic pattern. Lots of nonsense stuff was flying past really fast and Buffy couldn't really see what she was doing, but her face was scrunched up in a serious look, and Buffy's sharp eyes could tell that some of her keypresses were simultaneous, almost as if she was playing a piano instead of a keyboard.
Oz seemed to fall into the silence easily, and Buffy wanted to fill it with something other than clicking noises but was afraid of disrupting Willow's concentration. The minutes stretched on, and just as Buffy was about to take a risk and say something, Willow's work on the keyboard reached a crescendo and she said "Done!"
"Great!" Buffy said. "So we're in their whatever now and can see all their stuff?"
"No and yes," Willow said confusingly. "The police are actually setup as part of the statewide system, and their security isn't bad. Forcing my way in would take a cracked password or a forced backdoor. But the beauty of having all this computing power available is I don't have to even get in."
She opened up a few windows, covering the screen with maps and databases. "What I did was use the principle of sympathy to create a mirror of it, kind of like scrying. Some of the details can get distorted, and obviously we can't edit anything, but we can't get caught either, and it's sort of technically not even illegal!"
"That's good Will." Buffy was a little worried at how much sense that had made. She might get sucked into a computer class after all. "What do we have on them though?"
"Well, this does seem to corroborate a lot of the complaints," she said. "No call records or investigation backlogs, lots of 'drug busts' recently and nothing logged into actual evidence, and they totally have a ticket scam going. We should make a public announcement quick to send all ticket proceeds to City Hall instead of the police. I'm looking for something new though."
Willow paused for a bit, then put a map alongside one of the spreadsheets. "Hmm. Oz, are you seeing what I'm seeing?"
Oz nodded. "Lots of smoke, no fire."
"I thought this was the police department we were looking at," Buffy joked.
Willow just explained "These maps are supposed to be for analyzing crime patterns, but the hotspots aren't matching up with the crimes recorded in the database. I think they must be using them to track something else."
"You said the spell might distort things. Can we trust the locations on the map?" Buffy asked.
Willow tilted her hand back and forth. "We can trust them enough. Some of them will be right and some might be off by a house or two, but the discrepancy is definitely real."
"Well this was definitely helpful," Buffy said. "Can we print-" she was cut off by the sound of a printer revving up behind her.
"I'll save the essentials of the database mirror too, so we can look at it again from anywhere if we need to," Willow said, making a few clicks, snapping her fingers a couple times, and popping out the floppy again.
Buffy wasn't sure what to do next. At this point, she had plenty of evidence, and could round up a mob of minions to come with her and engage the police department in person. On the other hand, she could try searching some of the locations on the map to find out more, either alone or with backup.
A/N: OK, in the interest of not confusing the vote counter for what is a complicated vote, we're going to try things a little differently. Voting is by task, and stunts will be inside a separate task to keep them contained and not confusing the counts.
Willow is busy for the rest of the day, and if you go to the police station with minions at all, Vanessa Waters and a host of less important extras will come along for free. Choose up to three other named people to be available to accompany Buffy today, or choose to send her alone (alone would need the plurality of all minions votes.)
Both categories have their own votes for minions and stunts, but obviously only one category for Buffy will win, invalidating the other. You can still vote for stuff in the other category even if you don't vote for it.
[][Buffy] Buffy heads to the police station to confront Chief Monroe and his rogue department directly.
[][Buffy] Buffy goes around town investigating interesting locations on the map.
[][MinionsPolice] Buffy goes alone
[][MinionsPolice] Xander
[][MinionsPolice] Oz
[][MinionsPolice] Giles
[][MinionsPolice] Cynthia
[][MinionsPolice] Ian
[][MinionsPolice] Joyce
[][MinionsPolice] Anya
[][MinionsPolice] Jonathan
[][MinionsPolice] Percy
[][MinionsPolice] Andrew
[][StuntPolice] (Write in)
[][MinionsMap] Buffy goes alone
[][MinionsMap] Xander
[][MinionsMap] Oz
[][MinionsMap] Giles
[][MinionsMap] Cynthia
[][MinionsMap] Vanessa
[][MinionsMap] Ian
[][MinionsMap] Joyce
[][MinionsMap] Anya
[][MinionsMap] Jonathan
[][MinionsMap] Percy
[][MinionsMap] Andrew
[][StuntMap] (Write in)
