[X] 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.
"You two know her best, and I don't trust myself to read her alone," Buffy said.
"I can read her alright," Willow said. "She has 'TRAITOR' written on her forehead in permanent marker."
"While this might not factually be true, I have to kind of agree. Are you sure this is the best way to do this Buffy?" Xander was driving the two of them to the police station in the Firebird that Buffy had repaired with him at the start of Summer. Willow was riding shotgun, having successfully argued the prestige of Buffy's office meant she should be chauffeured in the back. At least there was more space for her hammer.
"I know it seems like a bad idea on the surface, but we have her over a barrel, don't we?" Buffy argued. "And if we want to get the real story of this Rat King without the evil lawyer spin, we need some kind of way to actually talk to him."
"But this was just one of Wilkins' friends right? Rats of a feather do evil stuff together. What if talking to him doesn't even help?" Xander's driving was disappointingly slow, but they had planning to do anyway so Buffy was swallowing her complaints.
"Yeah, I mean, he wants his magic skeleton and we don't have it, seems pretty simple to me," Willow said. "I still say the easiest way to do this would just be to steal it from Wolfram and Hart. I could loop their cameras like nothing, and no way is their security going to stand up to a sneak attack. Plus, evil lawyers, so no bad criminal guilt."
Buffy was tempted. She would've done it two months ago, when she was just a carefree Slayer with a doomed relationship desperately trying to save the world. Now she had to be responsible. "There's just too many ways it could go wrong, and if it did this whole deal probably gets soured and then everyone in Sunnydale could come down with Hellmouth cancer." It wouldn't do much for her election chances if it came out either, but saying that seemed a lot more petty.
"Hellmouth cancer does sound like the fun that isn't," Xander said. "But again, the kidnapping."
"The betrayal," Willow echoed.
"The drug addiction."
"The dark magic."
"The lies."
"I think I covered that with betrayal," Willow commented. "But it probably merits saying again."
"Guys, I get it," Buffy said. "We can't trust Amy. It was my mom. But our only other options are some random demon, or worse, the Watchers' Council."
"Maybe we should let the evil lawyers translate for us after all?" Willow said speculatively.
Buffy was starting to wonder if her two best friends were going to be any more insightful or objective than she was, but she supposed that too much paranoia was better than too little.
Soon enough, they arrived at the station, parking amongst the police cars and walking up to the door. It'd been replaced with something heavier and more reinforced after the Triumvirate attack a month ago, and the downstairs windows were all barred now. It wouldn't be much in the face of a determined attack, but Chief Matt wasn't cutting any corners with his no-nonsense approach, and every little bit counted.
Buffy noticed a wave of tense alertness pass over the room as they swung open the door, but it dissipated just as quickly when they were recognized. The cheerful greetings and respectful nods were a far cry from the welcome she'd have expected at a police station in the past, and Buffy reflected that not all the changes in her life had been bad.
The inside of the station was rearranged from its former state as well, with all the desks positioned so they radiated out from the front door, and most of the windows at least partially obstructed by furniture. The front desk itself was manned by a pair of uniforms and had a pattern of crosses nailed to it, covering the front surface. It was reassuring, in a way. Buffy hoped that the police station wouldn't be assaulted by the supernatural again, but having it set up to be less of a liability would be of the good when it inevitably was.
Tribute was taken from the donuts sitting on the desk to the tune of a few good-natured complaints about teenagers and their appetites, and they spent a few minutes catching up with some acquaintances they'd gotten to know on the force. All three of them knew they were delaying the inevitable though, and soon the treats were finished and they were talking with Chief Matt in his office.
"So," Matt said with a long sigh. "I suppose this means she won't be facing trial?"
"You did say it'd be tricky to pin anything on her," Buffy said dejectedly.
"The version of the story we could give a courtroom isn't the most coherent," Matt said. "Felony murder and aggravated kidnapping make for scary charges, but tying her as a knowing accomplice to the attack would be hard with all the instigators gone or dead. Your mother never saw her, we can't explain how the trap was supposed to work without spinning a ton of lies, and of course there were no drugs we could detect in her system to bear out the junkie element either."
"I may be out of the loop on this," Xander said, "But if it's such an open and shut case, why is Amy sitting in jail letting us stall the trial?"
"Hard to testify with a broken jaw," Willow snarked. "We've been putting the pressure on her too, so she isn't as confident as she should be."
"We?" Xander asked.
"Well, I mean, I've had to consult here, to make sure she doesn't escape somehow, or take over the police station," Willow defended. "She's a dangerous criminal! With magic powers! Who knows what she could get up to with incense and an air mattress?"
"Be that as it may, she's all healed and with optional wire accessories off now right?" Buffy asked.
"As of two days ago, yeah." Matt nodded.
"I really do wish we could get more in the way of justice here," Buffy said. "But that would've been in short supply anyway, and if she doesn't do this job we could have a public health crisis."
"I can't say the force is going to be happy about it, but they understand how things work here," Matt said.
"Let's just get it over with," Willow said. "I know she's going to gloat too."
Sunnydale's police station wasn't really set up to hold inmates long term, but Sunnydale didn't have anything more suitable and Amy was judged too risky to let out of sight. Amy herself hadn't wanted to chance the official prison system with a broken jaw, so the situation had settled into an uneasy agreement with her living in a cell downstairs. The pair of police who had been doing office work while keeping an eye on her made themselves scarce when the four of them showed up.
Amy sat up from her bench-turned-bed and gave them a victorious smirk. "So the chickens have finally come back to roost."
"Don't be so sure, you traitor!" Willow said angrily.
"Please, your role as my jumped-up warden is over, or else boss lady Slayer wouldn't be down here with the constipated face." Amy chucked the paperback she'd been reading into the pile she had in the corner of her otherwise spartan cell. "So, what is it you need me for? Some big spell that's too frustratingly analog for little miss perfect to figure out?"
"Are you sure you don't want to break her jaw again?" Xander commented to Buffy.
Buffy rolled her eyes, and rubbed her head to put off the impending migraine. "We need you to translate for us."
"Really now, nobody in your obedient cabal of minions took French?" Amy said.
"No such luck. We need you to speak Rat," Buffy answered.
"You're joking right?" Amy laughed. "That's not even a thing!"
"Shows what you know," Willow said. "It's a magical language, you can only learn it if you're all ratty inside. You're the only person in town who fits the bill."
"Huh," Amy said, ignoring Willow's insult. "I guess you really do need me then. I've had so little to do in here this whole time that I actually planned my list of demands. First-"
"Get real, Amy," Buffy said, cutting her off. "You helped Rack kidnap my mom, and he was involved in the attacks on the police station and the hospital. You're in a Space Mountain's worth of trouble. If this works out, we'll drop the criminal charges, and we'll let you leave town. That's the deal."
"I barely even knew Rack, and you can't prove anything!" Amy claimed mulishly. She was trying to project confidence, but Buffy could sense the waver in her voice. "You can't just threaten me into doing stuff without paying, that's slavery!"
"You're cooperating with another investigation to get off on charges, that happens all the time," Xander said dismissively. After a pause, he asked Chief Matt "I'm right, right? That is how it works?"
"That's right," he said dryly. Turning to Amy, "I do recommend you take this deal Miss. There may not be a preponderance of evidence, but you'll find that juries aren't very sympathetic in cases involving dead cops."
"Fine, fine, maybe we can compromise," Amy said. "But there are two things I'm not willing to bend on. First of all, you have to agree to all this even if I try and everything goes wrong somehow. Knowing your half-baked schemes the language might not even actually exist or whatever demon I'm talking to could just decide to eat all of us instead of negotiating."
"As if!" Willow said, grabbing onto the cell's bars angrily. "You'd just sabotage the whole thing to spite us."
Amy continued on, ignoring her, "Second, I'm pretty sure exile isn't in the penal code. My college situation is all sorts of screwed now, and my dad lives here. I have nowhere else to go, and no job skills but magic, which won't be in nearly as much demand off the Hellmouth. No kicking me out or harassing me after we do this. And that way if you need my services again, you'll be able to buy them like anyone else."
"I don't know, Buffy," Xander said. "She could just cause more trouble if she sticks around, there aren't many people in town that could beat her mano a mano aside from you."
"I've had enough of cages for a lifetime," Amy said. "I won't cause any trouble, I just want to be left to live and work in peace."
"We definitely can't trust her," Willow said. "Just look at her!" She pointed accusingly, and Amy was kind of smirking, but to be fair she hadn't been until Willow antagonized her again.
"What do you think Xander?" Buffy asked, looking for a slightly less rabid opinion.
"Well," he said reluctantly. "If we need to talk to the Rat King again at some point it would be pretty awkward if she was off in Winnebago. I don't think she's lying, but she fooled us all once already. It's a hard call."
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Vote: Amy has two big demands that she doesn't seem to want to budge on. Buffy needs to decide which of them, if any, she'll give into. If Amy doesn't get enough of what she wants, she might refuse to cooperate, but if you give her too much, she could end up using it against you.
Voting is by PLAN.
Plans should all at least address Amy's two principle demands (getting off on her crimes even if the adventure fails, and not being exiled from Sunnydale.) Plans can also include other negotiating tactics, enticements, conditions, or ways to further extort Amy's cooperation. That being said, you don't have any ways of magical compulsion or truth-telling in your back pocket that Willow doesn't think Amy could get around, so don't think you can bind her up in a geas or something like that.
Example:
[] Plan All or Nothing
-[] Amy goes back to jail if you can't reach an acceptable deal with the Rat King
-[] Amy will get to stay in Sunnydale
Voting for this update has been revised after some issues at the ballot box, summarized
here. Voting is now by Task, as follows:
[][AMY] Amy is too unreliable, annoying, and difficult to deal with. Leave her to rot in jail for now, abandon the idea of diplomacy, and attempt to steal the Allslyra skeleton from Wolfram and Hart.
[][AMY] Despite Willow's protests, Buffy still wants to deal with Amy and use her to talk to the Rat King. Diplomacy's worth a chance.
[][TRY] As long as Amy seems to put some effort into making the plan work, she won't be sent back to jail even if diplomacy goes nowhere. All kinds of things could go wrong outside her control, and making her more angry with you won't do any good.
[][TRY] Amy will go back to jail unless negotiations with the Rat King are productive. She's too likely to coast by or even actively sabotage things if she doesn't have a strong incentive to make it work.
[][EXILE] Amy represents too much of a threat to the city of Sunnydale, and will be exiled at the conclusion of the adventure even if she meets whatever expectations Buffy has set up for her.
[][EXILE] While she's dangerous, having Amy around is also useful, as proven by this very situation. She's talking a big game now but Buffy thinks she can keep her under control, and if she's allowed to stay she might cooperate more helpfully.
[][APPROACH] Amy is selfish and basically unredeemable, but she can be motivated by threats of violence and consequences. Buffy will be confrontational in negotiations and play on Amy's fears to get her to do what she wants.
[][APPROACH] Amy can be redeemed, and she cares about her father. Buffy will calm the angry influence of some of her friends and appeal to Amy's hopes and emotions, looking to smooth over their differences and approach things professionally.
