Successor (BTVS)

[X] Willow seems confident that it's under control, and with her workload growing by the day it might be the only way she ever gets any sleep. After all, Buffy's friends have trusted her to deal with some pretty sketchy situations lately, Willow deserves that trust too.

Buffy would say that she was having a case of the Mondays, but it wasn't like she actually took many full days off anymore, even from non-slaying activities. Regardless, everything on Monday was usually a bit slower and grimmer, and true to form things at City Hall were already tense when she made her way in around noon.

"You have a meeting in the conference room," Cynthia informed her apologetically.

"I don't think that was scheduled?" Buffy asked, not at all sure if that was the case.

"It wasn't, but it's fairly urgent." Cynthia wrung her hands. "It's Wolfram and Hart, they've dug up a legacy issue of ours. You should prepare yourself."

Buffy's tired body was about to kick into overdrive as adrenaline flooded her system, but Cynthia spoke up again before she ran off to fight, "No, you misunderstand. This isn't a direct threat. You just, you should see for yourself. Anya and Ian are already trying to get a handle on what's going on.

Buffy had the sense that by the end of the meeting she would wish this was just a fight. At least it'd woken her up a bit. Still keeping her warhammer in hand, she marched up to face the music. The door to the conference room was shut when she got there, but she heard a creepy susurrus of animal squeaking behind it, and she threw it open worried (and a little hopeful) that Cynthia had been wrong about the fight. The sight that greeted her wasn't one she'd expected.


For a moment, she wasn't even sure what she was looking at; Anya was sitting down at the table, but a … coherent swarm of rats was leaning over it, chittering in her face all together like a bizarre unit. Buffy almost leapt into action, but she quickly noticed Anya only seemed worried, not actually frightened. At her entrance, everyone in the room, including the swarm, turned to look at her with varying degrees of surprise. Ian was with Anya on one side of the table with a weathered looking scroll in front of him, and on the other side a bunch of guys in suits were flanking all the rats.

"What?" Buffy said, a little confused by the surrealism of the situation.

One of the suits was the first to speak, a young looking pretty boy that was vaguely familiar. "I'm Lindsey McDonald. I work for Wolfram and Hart, and we're representing the Rat King in a grievance against your administration." He rose from his seat and offered Buffy a hand to shake.


She regarded him suspiciously, ignoring the hand, and asked, "What grievance? Am I supposed to be fair to the rat citizens of Sunnydale too?" She shifted her gaze back, trying to keep an eye on the 'Rat King', whatever he was. The more she looked at him, the more wrong he seemed, and though he kept squeaking, he wasn't making any overt moves. It felt like one of those Magic Eye illusions, except she didn't know if she was seeing the image or the pattern itself.

"Not at all," Lindsey said, cracking a friendly smile. "The Rat King isn't a native of Sunnydale, or even of this dimension at all. This is just a matter of late payment for services already rendered."

Buffy turned to Ian speculatively, hoping for clarification from a more reliable source. He didn't disappoint. "According to them, and this document, an agreement has been in place between the Rat King and Sunnydale since 1931. In exchange for the use of his spellwork in suppressing magical plagues emanating from the Hellmouth, Mayor Wilkins provided him with a number of compensatory items. It's been amended multiple times, but the next payment was scheduled to be a full Allslyra skeleton, due two weeks ago today." He cringed apologetically. Buffy had worried paying off Rack would come back to bite them, but she hadn't anticipated they were paying him off with a prize already meant to payoff somebody else.

Buffy nodded, appreciating the thorny situation they might be in. Deciding that this might take a while, she moved between Ian and Anya, taking a seat and laying her down hammer on the table, right across from where Lindsey had been sitting. She noticed his eyes flicker to it as he sat back down, and she finally remembered where she'd seen him before.

"So, is this the standard Wolfram and Hart shakedown procedure? Follow me around in secret looking for dirty laundry, then come out in the open to air it once you get a sniff?" Buffy asked dryly.

Lindsey held up his hands, protesting his innocence. "I can assure you that I wasn't stalking you in LA, or even in Caritas on business that night. I certainly remember your … enchanting performance, but it was just a happy coincidence." Rather than focusing on his acting, Buffy scanned his lawyer minions for reactions to his story, but the lot of them were stone-faced. As for the Rat King, he (or maybe they?) had quieted down, but even attempting to read his mood just gave her a headache.

Before revealing any more cards, Buffy wanted to try to verify what was going on. "Anya, were you talking to the Rat King as I came in? Does all this actually check out?"

"I was trying," she said apologetically. "It's mostly impossible to learn Ur-Rat outside of complete immersion in well, rattyness; it's a mostly magical language built on sympathetic concept resonance. And the rat dimension isn't exactly a hot tourist spot. I know a couple distantly related demon languages, but I can barely make out one word in ten. It's like a Skilosh and a Fyarl trying to understand each other."

"And that's just where we come in," Lindsey said helpfully. "We at Wolfram and Hart take pride in being accessible to each and every possible client and embrace the multicultural tradition of the greater Cosmos." As if to demonstrate, he turned to the Rat King and made a series of squeaks and clicking noises, punctuating every so often by snapping his fingers. The Rat King made some noises in reply, though it was really impossible to even tell his mood, much less their meaning.

"So you're playing helpful interpreters. Wonderful," Buffy said. She glanced over at the long scroll Ian was checking over; it was split down the middle, half of it written in English with the other half a collection of seemingly meaningless scratches and scribbles. The language divide definitely seemed real enough. Looking back at Anya, she asked, "What about the plagues? Are Hellmouth plagues a thing?"

She winced. "They can be, though they aren't consistent. It isn't like, the black death or anything, but interdimensional radiation isn't good for humans, not long-term. It can make other diseases worse over time, or even sometimes manifest like cancer on its own. I know it wasn't radiating at all last year because I checked as part of my background research, and it could have easily been because of a spell like this."

"There are records of Sunnydale's early history being a bit fraught medically," Ian added. "There were a number of cleanliness and public health ordinances put into place in the '30s, so the timeline would match if it was part of a unified effort by Mayor Wilkins." Buffy knew Wilkins had a thing about germs, and this seemed all too in character. For all she knew Hellmouth radiation was what had killed his wife in the first place and driven him to such extremes.

"So you can see that this isn't some kind of deception on our part," Lindsey said confidently. "The Rat King provides the city of Sunnydale a real and necessary service, and only expects to be paid as was previously agreed."

Buffy didn't like the situation at all, but decided that negotiating with this weird demon was probably better than risking a massive health crisis. "If we didn't have one of those skeletons on hand, I don't suppose you'd take an IOU?"

Lindsey raised his eyebrows at her, but Buffy thought he was just acting surprised. He had another back and forth with the Rat King in the weird squeak language, and then answered her. "I'm afraid that's not in the cards. However, if you'll turn to Clause VII of the contract, you can see that there are already a number of alternate payment options laid out in advance."

Ian shuffled through the scroll and nodded warily. "They are here, but I don't think you'll find them very attractive, Ms. Mayor."

Lindsey held out his hand to one of the other lawyers and received what looked like a photocopy of the scroll. He paged through it to a highlighted section and then started explaining, "The first option you have is the Pact of Passage. For the duration of the agreement, the Rat King and any of his rat nobles would have the right to travel through Sunnydale unmolested, day or night, with diplomatic immunity from any inconvenient local bylaws."

Buffy grimaced. Sunnydalers could ignore a lot, but the bizarre horror of the Rat King would be enough to make one of the uninitiated run screaming. It'd be chaos in the city, not counting whatever trouble they got up to with 'diplomatic immunity', whatever that entailed. "I can't just let monsters run around town killing people!" Buffy said.

"I don't think it would go quite that far, most of the time." Lindsey reassured her. "The cultural differences though… well, you can see for yourself. Some misunderstandings are bound to happen." He smiled. "If that isn't to your taste, the Pact of Warding would involve eight children from the town being sent to the Rat Dimension."

What was it with Wilkins and all his deals giving children to demons? "I'm not going to sacrifice anybody's kids," Buffy said coldly.

"There's also the Pact of Refuge," Lindsey offered, his smile getting even wider. "You would agree to rats migrating from the King's domain to Sunnydale, to ease overcrowding. I think the terms would work out to about forty thousand per year?"

"Is that a lot of rats?" Buffy asked Ian. "It sounds like a lot of rats."

"Most urban areas have about one rat per four people, so Sunnydale currently has a population of roughly ten thousand rodents." Ian answered. Inside a year the town would be overflowing with them. It wasn't as bad as the other options, but it definitely wouldn't be fun.

Without waiting for another response, Lindsey continued, not really able to stop himself from cracking up as he did, "The Pact of Marriage is an option too. Your mother is recently divorced, I believe? Or maybe you've fallen for the Rat King's charms yourself?"

Buffy rolled her eyes. "Fine, I get your point, all these choices suck. So what's your game? What do you want us to do?"

Lindsey shrugged and put his hands on the table. "You probably already know that we at the firm are very interested in the City of Sunnydale, but what I'm here to make clear is that we're also interested in you."

"Interested enough to prop up some prep school pansy to run against her?" Anya snarked.

"Carl Gervais has many qualifications," Lindsey said. "A lot of people in your town think so, anyway, according to some of the firm's internal polls. But ultimately Buffy, you're the type of client we're interested in representing, not Carl. If you agree to cooperate with Wolfram and Hart, we'll withdraw our support from Mr. Gervais' campaign and throw it all behind yours."

Buffy scoffed and gestured. "I think there's a part of this you don't understand. You, evil. Me, not evil. We're on different sides."

"That's what you think now, but is the reality really so black and white?" Lindsey said. "After all, there are a number of vicious rumors circulating about you, Mayor Summers, rumors which I believe are anything but the truth. Can't you give us the same benefit of the doubt?"

"Evil knows evil," Anya said. "I was pretty evil in my day, and word gets around the office."

"But even if parts of our firm's portfolio are less than savory, all we really want is to operate securely and profitably on the Hellmouth," Lindsey argued. "The remarkable initiative and skill you've shown in the past years and months has demonstrated it's well within your power to give us what we want. We can help you too!"

"And I'm sure you have the perfect solution lined up so we don't have to become either a leper colony or the new rat capital of the USA?" Buffy said dryly. "How convenient."

"Now that you mention it, we could get you out of your jam here." Lindsey said. "The firm's archives happen to contain a complete Allslyra skeleton, and if you agree to our terms, we'll give it to you gratis. Everyone gets what they want. You could think of it as a warm welcome from Wolfram and Hart."


Negotiations had stalled from there, and the other side seemed happy to call it a day and let them stew. Buffy, Anya, and Ian were still in the conference room an hour later, and Giles and Andrew eventually joined them for an impromptu research party.

"So this Hellmouth plague thing is really for real Giles?" Buffy asked.

"I'm afraid so," Giles said, cleaning his glasses. "The council has actually postulated that the issue was permanently solved by modern antibiotics, but I think the explanation we have now makes more sense. There hasn't been a fully active Hellmouth besides Sunnydale this century, and now it's clear that the effect has been contained by mystical means for decades."

"Could we just keep the spell going ourselves then?" Buffy wondered. Even as she said it, she knew it was unlikely. Wilkins had contracted it out instead of casting it, and he was more skilled than any of them.

"Well, I'm not the great and powerful Willow," Andrew hedged. "But no, we absolutely couldn't." He gestured to some open books in front of him, leftovers from Wilkins' collection. "The magic the Rat King uses doesn't work very much like that of local practitioners. It has something to do with his weird dimension, the spellwork is totally foreign. I think overall it's not as versatile as our own magic, and I'm sure you could beat the Rat King in a fight, but we can't replicate this effect."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Buffy tapped her hammer and sulked. She sort of missed the days when all her big problems could be solved by just slaying them. "Killing this guy is the last thing we want though, if he's the only one who can cast the spell keeping everyone healthy."

"Maybe we're going about this the wrong way," Ian ventured. "I don't think we can trust Wolfram and Hart to do the talking here. They're probably looking to bully us first and foremost, before even helping their client. If we could just talk to him ourselves, maybe we could work out some kind of mutually beneficial deal."

"Well does anyone but Lindsey actually speak the freaky rat language?" Buffy asked. She'd thought Anya had that base covered; if it was too esoteric even for her she didn't have much hope.

"I could summon a demon to help," Andrew said. "Maybe. If the language is really that rare we might have to pay it off too, with more than just juicy Hellmouth gossip."

"While your skills have availed us in the past, I'm uncertain that your translator would be any more trustworthy than Wolfram and Hart," Giles worried. "For my part, I know that the Watcher's Council would be able to provide a translator, and they'd have no motive to lie, but with how we left things-"

"They could end up putting the squeeze on us just as bad as Wolfram and Hart is now," Buffy said. "I could get used to them just leaving us alone."

"Well, I would hope that they haven't sunk quite that far, but as long as Quentin Travers is in power, the Council is unlikely to see us in a favorable light," Giles said.

Anya spoke up, "There's one other option, but you're all going to be angry at me for saying it." Buffy waved at her to just get on with it, and Anya continued, "Well, don't say I didn't warn you. We could ask Amy Madison to do it."

"A shocking twist!" Andrew exclaimed. "Will the most foul villain redeem herself in the heroes' hour of need, or once again prove her heart is black as pitch?"

Buffy ignored his discount-Xander antics. "How can Amy even speak whatever that is?"

"She can't now," Anya said. "But she has the potential. It's all right here." She gestured to the gnarled book open in front of her, with words written both in English and the strange scribble-scratch text from the contract. "With all the time she spent as a rat, the Ur-Rat language will stick in her brain like toffee. She could cast this spell and be speaking fluently in a day."

Amy's broken jaw had recently finished healing, but she was still locked up in Sunnydale's jail. They weren't totally sure what to do with her and had been stalling on the trial, and for whatever reason Amy wasn't protesting, so the whole thing had been stuck in a holding pattern. Buffy was skeptical that they could get Amy to help and trust her not to betray them again though.

Vote: There will be a lot of research going on with regards to the Rat King no matter what, but getting a new interpreter might be a serious help in resolving the issue. None of the options are perfect; which new one should Buffy choose, if any?

[] Andrew has summoned well under pressure before, hopefully he can find a demon that'll translate accurately for a price that won't be too onerous to pay.

[] Even though the Watcher's Council has been on the outs with the Scooby gang since last year, they're the most reliable resource for this. They'll probably want to exert a measure of control over Sunnydale if you let them back into the fold though.

[] Amy Madison betrayed you before, but she has reason to cooperate now. She can earn her freedom with translation duty. Better to trust the devil you know, after all.

[] All of these options are terrible. Wolfram and Hart is unreliable, but talking directly to the Rat King might not even be that helpful in the first place. Don't bother with an independent translator and just keep working on other ways to solve this.