Successor (BTVS)

[X] Buffy doesn't trust that even cooperating fully will save Joyce, and even if it does, it'll probably have some other horrible consequences beyond the obvious. She'll try to hunt down Rack and get back Joyce by stealth or brute force.

Giles broke the silence. "I suppose we should be thankful the kidnappers are looking to talk at all. Just what are they trying to extort out of us?"

"Kittens, bones, and money," Buffy said dejectedly.

Giles narrowed his eyes and rubbed his glasses confusedly, but before he could come up with a response, the doorbell rang. Oz went to get it without a word.

"I came as soon as I could," Xander said as he entered. "I had to wrap things up at the hospital first, and wouldn't you know, there's more bad news." Surprisingly, Anya was following him in. Buffy didn't think she'd be one to go in for direct conflict.

"Are you sure it isn't good news instead?" Willow asked, still mostly paying attention to her computer. "We could sure use some good news right now."

"Faith's missing," Xander replied. "We didn't even notice at first, but they must have took her during the raid."

Willow rolled her eyes, "Well, that's not too bad then. I don't think we'll be trading many kittens for her."

"Kittens?" Anya piped in. "So the kidnappers work mostly in demonic exchanges then?"

"You know about the kittens?" Buffy asked.

Anya replied "Xander brought me here because-"

"Set a demon to catch a demon," he interrupted.

"Yes," she said impatiently, "Anyway, kittens form a backbone of the demon economy for a number of reasons. Mostly, there are different religious proscriptions against many various forms of currency. Noninflationary currency, human-made currency, nonliving currency, and so on, but kittens neatly check all the important boxes. What was the ransom demand exactly?"

"Two hundred thousand dollars, plus the 'bones of Eliza' and ten Persians," Buffy said. "The caller was this creep calling himself Rack, based on what Mom said he seems big with the magic."

Upon hearing the full price for the first time, most of the room winced, and Anya's reaction was no different. "Persians, wow, these guys must really know they have you over a barrel. They're like the 24 karat gold of the kitten world."

"You're more worried about a bunch of kittens than two hundred grand?" Xander said.

"If you don't know the right people you can't get black market Persians at all, and they'll cost a pretty penny even relative to that." Anya said, upbraiding him. "Fortunately, I know the right people. I'll need a ride to LA plus costs though."

"Your assistance is appreciated," Giles said. "I imagine the bones Buffy is referring to are those of Allslyra, part of the cache she found earlier this week. They're fairly powerful, but not immediately apocalyptic; they can be used to augment a variety of dimensional portals." He sighed. "I'm sure we all know the money will be painful for the city to lose, but I don't see how we-"

"No," Buffy said, finally having made up her mind. What had it been that Wilkins said, in her dream, about hard choices, and responsibility? He'd be laughing at her now, but she knew he was right about this, if he was ever right about anything. Some things you had to learn by example. "We can't just pay this Rack guy off."

Everyone was looking at Buffy a little strangely, but Giles was the one who risked responding, "Buffy, your mother-"

Buffy didn't let him finish. "I mean, sure, it's the easy choice right? But Willow got kidnapped just last month, and we paid. That was on a mission. Now, the sleazeballs of the town see that they can get what they want by kidnapping, and they snatch my Mom out of our own house. We can't watch all of our people every hour of the day. If we pay again, this is going to just keep happening. At some point, we won't be able to pay, or something else will go wrong, and we'll lose someone. We need to set an example here. Make them understand that this isn't how to deal with us."

She continued, "That doesn't mean we won't be prepared to mess with them. Anya, these kittens are practically resalable right? Go to LA and get them anyway, if we don't end up needing them we can spend them on something else."

Anya nodded.

"Willow,-" Buffy started.

"I'll have the department get the right bones together and all packed up. I think Jonathan was working on inventory anyway, he should be able to do it easy. For my own part I'm going to keep trying to trace Rack. Whatever he was doing mondo confused my wiretap but I did still get some data."

Xander shared a look with Oz. "We'll get the '99ers together and search around the town. Traditional gumshoeing might succeed where science and magic fail." Buffy nodded at them, and they left with Anya, as Willow made another call on her radio.

Giles was looking at Buffy, an unreadable expression on his face. She wasn't sure what to say, but he saved her by speaking first. "I still have some contacts amongst the community of questionable practitioners. It's possible that Rack is known in their circles too, and I might be able to uncover something of use."

All business then. Buffy could deal with that, for now, and hopefully fix it later. "Good. Now that you mention it, I have a contact of my own who I should give a visit."


The hour had gotten late, and the raucous sounds from Willy's Place were loud enough to be heard outside. When Buffy slammed the door open though, a terrified silence quickly fell over the crowd of demons, disrupted only by the quiet shaking of the building.

"Ms. Summers," Willy said in a quiet voice, "I assure you that I absolutely didn't know anything about the raids on the police or the hospital before they happened. I would have made sure you found out."

She stalked forward, not answering until she was right in front of him at the bar. Patrons scurried out of her path. "That's not what I'm here about, though it's good to know. They took my mother, Willy. You're going to tell me everything you know about Digby, and Rack, and that Shark guy."

Willy nodded fearfully. "Teeth." At Buffy's questioning look, he elaborated, "The shark demon, he goes by Teeth. He's sort of a local demon gangster. Was into small time stuff, before now."

"And now?" Buffy motioned for him to go on.

"Well, you know Digby right? He was pretty cheesed at you, but didn't seem to be doing much but gathering minions. Word is now he tipped off Teeth that he was going to attack the station so he could pull off the big hospital thing. People are talking about some kind of Triumvirate, but no one has seen hide or hair of Digby since tonight."

"That's because I killed him," Buffy said, louder, so the whole crowd heard it clearly. "Now what about Rack?"

Willy made a pained expression, and started cleaning a glass. "Rack's bad news. He's sort of a magical drug dealer, a real skeevy character, even compared to the people I know. He took your mom?"

"Yep," Buffy said neutrally.

"It's going to be hard to track him down," Willy said worriedly. "He uses magic to cloak his place and move it around. Usually any enterprising enough witch or demon can find it, but nobody's seen him all week. I've had to kick out some of his strung-out junkies, they're terrible customers."

"Alright, so Rack's playing hide-and-seek. Sure. What about Teeth? Can I find him?" Buffy asked.

"I could tell you where his mansion is on the edge of town," Buffy's eyes lit up, but Willy made a negating gesture before her hopes rose too far, "But I already heard it up and disappeared today."

"Of course. Couldn't be easy," Buffy complained. "Nothing else I should know?"

Willy considered. "This is a little out of character for both of them. Real risky. Digby was the one with a cause, so if he's dead they might be getting cold feet."

She nodded. Their feet would certainly be cold when she was done with them. She took an extra radio off her belt with a little booklet taped to it, and put it down on the bar. "You hear anything else I need to know, call."

Willy winced at what was probably going to be another hit to his credibility with his customers, but it's not like she was going to give him a choice in this mood. "Sure thing."

After reporting the relevant facts over the radio, Buffy prowled the streets herself for a few hours. She didn't find anything much, though she did work out some of her frustrations on a vampire she noticed in passing trying to snack. The town was really rotten with them this summer.

Eventually, she found herself passing by City Hall, and walked in to see how things were going. Though it was usually closed down this late at night, Joyce's kidnapping had all hands on deck, and nobody was complaining about it.

Soon after walking in, she encountered Cynthia with a strangely familiar girl. She was wearing glasses and had dark brown hair, but Buffy was almost sure … "Harmony?"

"Like my disguise?" she replied, twirling. Her outfit had gone from cheerleader to librarian. Slutty librarian, but still. "I figure by now everyone knows I work for you, but most people don't actually know me that well. Being a vampire and all, I should be able to go undercover and find out things people won't tell the good guys."

"It's not bad at all," Buffy commented. "Are you sure it'll fool people though?"

"Well," Harmony started, then she vamped out. "People also aren't used to seeing me like this yet."

"Huh, yeah," Buffy knew how much Harmony cared about her hair, and was strangely touched. "Why are you here though?"

"Are you kidding?" Harmony said. "City Hall has the best bathrooms. Wilkins really blinged them out. Plus, Cynthia's great at cosmetics." She gave Cynthia a friendly hug, to punctuate the statement.

Cynthia just took the hug stoically. "He was very particular about the state of all cleaning facilities."

"Would be nice to use those if I ever had time to relax," Buffy said. "Anyways, Cynthia, can you get the money together?"

She nodded. "It won't be the first suitcase full of cash I've prepared this year. Do try to bring it back if you can though, the budget will thank us all."

"We'll see how things go," Buffy said, before turning down the stairs to go investigate the magic department. In the past few days it had mostly moved into the basement, both for better access to storage and to be close to the clean room. Willow was still hacking at her house, but some of the others would be down there.

She ran into Jonathan first, noticing him going through the crates of bones in a storeroom. "You're getting all the bones sorted out in there?" she asked.

He jumped skittishly. "Oh, hi Buffy. Yeah, some of the stuff got kind of mixed up in transport, but I'm getting it all set up. I should be able to fit them into a backpack, along with good shock protection." He gestured to an open bag of packing peanuts. "You'd be surprised how many of these bags we have down here."

"Wilkins loved to be prepared, I guess," she said.

Just as she was about to turn to look elsewhere, Andrew bumped into her from behind, his head in a freaky-looking book. "Sorry Buffy!" he said. "I'm going through some of the Mayor's old information brokers."

"In a book?" she asked.

"Well, I mean, they're demons," he explained. "You have to call them up and stuff." At her raised eyebrow, he defended himself, "Hey! Don't worry, I got this. If you do it the right way it's not too hard to just talk to a demon, and I'm not going to contact any of the really terrible ones anyway. Plus, a lot has been happening on the Hellmouth lately, so they'll be eager to get the dirt and won't want to spoil the deal. Won't even cost us anything."

Buffy would have probably vetoed the idea under better circumstances, but she decided she would choose her battles for now. "Just don't bite off more than you can chew, OK?" He seemed so young to her now, but it wasn't like she hadn't already been doing riskier things two years ago.

Andrew nodded seriously, and went back to reading and walking. At least he seemed to be doing the research before casting the spells.

"Jonathan, have you seen Amy?" Buffy asked. "Willow said she might be able to do something to track Rack."

"She was here earlier, and I think she tried something in the clean room," Jonathan said. "A bust, apparently, so she was going to look through some of her mom's old stuff at home before trying again." He paused for a second before continuing. "She seemed really tired. I don't know if she's all the way recovered yet, from you know."

"Being all ratty," Buffy said. "I was a rat for like thirty minutes and it was seriously gross, I really can't imagine how it felt for her to be stuck that way for months."

"At least she was able to make things good with her dad," Jonathan said. "I'm not sure what's she's going to do about High School though. She can't exactly take summer classes now. At least not in Sunnydale."

"If she can find my mom, I'll just have Vanessa buy her a diploma from one of her skeevy politicians," Buffy said.

Everyone seemed to be trying hard, but she was worried that it wouldn't be enough, or that Rack would find out and do something extreme. She'd made her choice though, and she just had to hope her friends could help her see it through.

Metavote: Lots of characters are exerting themselves with Joyce missing, but their tasks are difficult, and success won't be easy. Of the twelve choices, vote for TWO to be exceptionally productive, skillful, or even just lucky.

Their courses if they win the vote are mostly predetermined (you have at least some idea what a lot of them are, though there are a few wildcards in here), but stunting might slightly alter or add to their results. Also, some level of lesser success might be expected for some of them even without winning a vote. As always, approval voting is active.

[] Xander Harris
[] Willow Rosenberg
[] Daniel Osbourne
[] Rupert Giles
[] Ian Banks
[] Anya Jenkins
[] Jonathan Levinson
[] Harmony Kendall
[] Andrew Wells
[] Amy Madison
[] Matt Waters
[] Willy the Snitch