Successor (BTVS)

[X] Buffy took a deep breath, and got herself back under control. She knew that despite everything, she had to be responsible here and just tough out this idiocy.

Did she notice another second of hesitation in Sour's expression? If it was real though, he recovered quickly. As she walked out of the dumb little soundproof room with a shaken-up Nate he got right into his next spiel.

"Your group has done pretty well so far with a total of 450 points; it's enough to have a chance even if you go into the last event with just that, but not a good one. You've got a great opportunity to boost your odds in this next challenge though!" Sour indicated another pit opening in the other side of the cave, but this one was much shallower, less deep than any of them were tall. The floor underneath was smooth rock, and the area was littered with dozens of colorful metal boxes, about four feet to the side. A big red button was also visible off on its own, raised up on the side closest to the audience.

At the same time, the screen lit up with a colored image that seemed like almost like a logo, though it was in a very angular, complicated style. 'YOU BET YOUR SOUL!' was included, as well as a picture of Sour's face and several smaller corporate-looking logos, including Silkworm and Pan-Where. "Your objective is to assemble the puzzle into the picture! I know it seems challenging, but there are all kinds of ways our contestants have solved it in the past, and I'm confident you're all up to the task."

"Of course, I'm sure you wish us nothing but the best," Giles said sarcastically. He looked so worn down that Buffy almost reconsidered smashing Sour's face in. Instead, she ignored Sour's annoying posturing and walked closer to her watcher.

"Giles, I-" she started, half-whispering.

He sighed. "Don't worry on my account. It isn't a chapter of my life I like to revisit, but in a way helping Nathaniel with his own lesser errors may set some of mine back to rest."

She nodded, and got her head back in the game. As she looked over the puzzle pit more closely, she noticed that it wasn't just the top of each box that was covered in a design, but all the visible sides. The boxes were cubes, and it was clear that they'd need to be flipped around as well as moved to solve the puzzle. A trio of the tough-looking demon girls demonstrated for the audience, lifting one up and spinning it around. The cube had five thick faces, but was open on the bottom and had a smaller hollow space within. The girls were straining under the weight, or at least acting like it, so Buffy guessed all that metal was probably pretty heavy.

"Seems kind of lame. I mean, isn't it just a big kid's toy? Where's the danger and excitement?" Harmony said. Her earlier childish enthusiasm had clearly been drained by the last event, though at least she was keeping it together enough to throw some insults around.

"You'll just have to find out!" Sour said. "This event is full of surprises. But the first of them is our prizes, let's all listen in."

"FROM OUR TIMELESS FRIENDS AT LOST HOURS, YOU'LL NEVER MISS AN A MEETING AGAIN WITH A SET OF INTERDIMENSIONAL HORAE WATCHES! CONFIGURABLE TO ALL THE MOST TRAVELLED DIMENSIONS OF THE COSMOS, AND ABLE TO ADAPT EVEN TO THE MOST CHAOTIC DEMIPLANE, THE HORAE WATCH HAS BECOME THE GOLD STANDARD BOTH IN PRECISION AND STYLE." As the announcer was talking, the fourth demon assistant walked past the audience showing off a display box.

Buffy had to admit those things sounded like they could actually be useful; her experience with other dimensions had involved a lot of wacky time hijinx, and it'd be nice to know if she was getting Rip-Van-Winkled. From what she could tell they looked at least a little normal too, which was more than she could say for the weird-yet-comfy outfit she had on.

Was it a reaction on Sour's part to the group's mood? Could he even improvise something like that on the fly? Buffy suspected he'd noticed when she'd almost flipped out, and the rest of the group was in a rebellious mood too, so maybe he was trying to offer a little more carrot to smooth things over. Or lull them into a false sense of security.

"What does the big button do?" Nate hadn't been distracted by the prizes, or by thoughts about their host, and was still studying the enclosure.

"Well, there's a reason that watches were appropriate prizes for this," Sour joked. A timer appeared on the screen below the puzzle solution, set to 10 minutes. "If you complete the puzzle before time runs out, you'll gain 400 points and the watches. If you still aren't done after that, you can keep going, but each extra second you spend will come out of your previous points, and you won't be eligible for our sponsor's prize. You don't have to watch all your hard-earned points tick away though; you can hit the button to give up at any point, but you won't get any of the 400 points or the watches if you do that."

"So when does this start? Any more weird surprises to jerk us around with?" Harmony asked.

"I'm glad you asked! It starts right now!" A cartoonish horn sounded, and the seconds started to tick down. Buffy hopped down first and immediately tested the weight of the box the girls had been showing off. She let her hammer drop, and could lift it two-handed without too much strain, but it was very heavy, more than a ton.

To the side, Harmony was testing herself, and it was clearly too much for her to really get off the ground. "What are these made out of, lead?" she complained. Despite her troubles, some testing showed she could still flip or push it just fine. Even so, Giles and Nate were way weaker even than that and wouldn't be able to accomplish anything.

Giles wasn't letting that stop him though, "Buffy, turn the side facing you up and move that piece to the corner." He'd kept out of the pit and apparently had some idea how to put the puzzle together already.

"Guess I'm the robot in the robo-rally then," Buffy said, grabbing up the piece and slamming it down in a cornerly region. "Harmony, Nate, you two pair up on the other side and we'll meet in the middle."

"Really, with him?" Harmony groaned.

"Ah, I think that one over there is the opposite corner? On the left side?" Nate's tone was hardly encouraging, but Harmony followed him off to work on the other blocks anyway.

Meanwhile, Buffy was making somewhat faster progress with Giles, but she got surprised on her fourth block. As she lifted it up, a nasty monkey-looking thing jumped out at her, screaming and grabbing for her hair.

She grabbed the little demon's neck in midair left handed and snapped it in the same motion. After shaking it a few times to make sure it was dead, she chucked the corpse out of the pit in the direction of the audience. "Not the kind of surprises I wanted, but I guess these are the kind I usually get." The demons in the stands seemed excited enough about the corpse at least; she could hear them fighting over it in the background.

Harmony got accosted next, by some kind of beetle-thing, but it wasn't much of a challenge for her either. She jumped back from the box and fell on her butt at first, but when it landed on her she snapped off one of its pincers and shoved it into its big beady eye. "This beetle blood better come off in the machine!"

Even though Buffy and Harmony could handle themselves, the little monsters were dangerous enough that they were leery of having Giles or Nate come down to get a look at things from inside angles. A lot of boxes ended up getting spun around just so they could see what they were working with from the edges. The boxes occasionally had non-living traps inside too, and Buffy even got slimed once, but it slid off her outfit almost as if there was some kind of magnetism involved.

They steadily made progress, Harmony steadily got more dirty, and the audience steadily accumulated little monster corpses. The important thing was, less than nine of the original ten minutes had passed when they met putting together the remaining side of the puzzle. Just a few blocks were left to slot in.

"No, Buffy, the other way, it's reversed." Buffy narrowed her eyes and looked down at the six clawed logo. Looking up at the screen, she agreed it was reversed, but the problem was worse than Giles thought.

"Giles, the claws are supposed to point left but the thumb is on the bottom. If I reverse it the thumb will be on top." Her complaint was met with silence as Harmony slotted in the piece next to it.

"Maybe one of the other faces?" he said, not at all sure.

Buffy flipped it around just to check, but she knew what the answer would be before she finished. "No, you never get copies of the same thing on the same cube. This one is a dud, it can't fit here."

"Does that mean we have to take all this apart?" Harmony sounded horrified.

"There has been a certain repeating pattern," Giles said. "We could attempt to do some substitutions, possibly with the opposite edge."

"That'll take forever! We only have 50 seconds before we start losing points and watches!" Harmony definitely didn't want her clothes to have gotten all bloody in vain.

"I can reverse it!" Nate said suddenly. "I think. If you leave everything still, I should be able to do a transit. Then it would fit."

"That took like a billion years on your video!" Harmony accused. "We might as well redo the whole puzzle!"

"This is much simpler," He didn't sound very sure either. "It's just iron carvings and paint, and I can see it with my own eyes. I should be able to…" He trailed off uncertainly.

"You'll need at least 400 points to even have a chance to win the last event," Sour taunted. "So that's sort of the point of no return."

The clock ticked down to 40 seconds.

Vote: Who does Buffy trust to solve the puzzle, and how much? They have 40 more seconds for free, and lose a point per second after that. They have 450 points now, and solving the challenge is worth 400 points. They only get the watches if they solve it within 40 seconds.

[][WHO] Buffy thinks Giles can figure out a way to exchange just a few pieces and make everything work. She and Harmony will move pieces around at his behest trying to fix it.

[][WHO] Buffy trusts Nate. She tells everyone to keep the pieces still and stay quiet so he can focus and do his transit thingy. If he can reverse the piece with magic it'll slot in perfectly.

[][WHEN] Buffy is sure they can beat this puzzle. She won't hit the red button, and they'll try to solve it until all their points are gone.

[][WHEN] Buffy would rather give up here and have at least a shot at not losing later. She'll hit the red button when they're down to 400 points exactly, giving them 90 seconds max to finish from this point.

A/N: Be sure to vote for both a WHO and a WHEN,

A/N2: I'll be gone for the weekend in a slightly unpredictable way, so assume this vote will lock sometime after 5 PM on Sunday and before 11 PM on Monday (EST)

[X][WHO] Buffy trusts Nate. She tells everyone to keep the pieces still and stay quiet so he can focus and do his transit thingy. If he can reverse the piece with magic it'll slot in perfectly.
[X][WHEN] Buffy is sure they can beat this puzzle. She won't hit the red button, and they'll try to solve it until all their points are gone.

Buffy made a snap decision. She knew it probably wasn't smart, but it felt right. "Everyone, leave it all still and be quiet. Let Nate try."

"But-" Harmony complained. Giles didn't say anything, but he looked a little mutinous too.

"No buts!," Buffy said, waving down their objections. She turned to Nate, who still didn't look sure. There wasn't much time. "Just because your jerk dad doesn't believe in you doesn't mean nobody does. I know you can figure this out." Even the normally obnoxious audience had settled down, the tension bringing them to silence.

Nate's hands were positioned above the top of the cube, still shaking a little in midair. Fifteen seconds left. Acting on impulse again, Buffy gently but firmly grabbed his wrists, holding them still and looking him dead in the eye.

"Buffy!" Giles said.

"What?" she snapped, not looking away.

"It's done!" he elaborated. Buffy looked down and noticed the image was reversed. Nate was as surprised as she was, and the noise of surprise from Harmony meant she definitely hadn't noticed either. Buffy didn't wait any longer though, grabbing the corrected puzzle piece up quickly and jamming it into place.

The clock stopped with three seconds left.

"Now wasn't than an inspiration!" Sour said, filling the cave with a speech before the watching demons could even react. "It's no wonder you got into politics if you could even get something out of Nathaniel here," he joked. Nate didn't really notice the put down though; he seemed like he was still pretty stunned by having actually succeeded.

After getting his lines in, Sour paused to let the roars of the crowd spring up and echo through the chamber. They were loud enough to preclude any real conversation, but Buffy noticed Giles looking sheepish even though Harmony was still rolling her eyes. Well, Buffy wouldn't have expected her to get along with someone of the geekly persuasion anyway.

The watch display popped up on the big screen, and the demon that had been holding it sauntered over to distribute the prizes. By the slight green tinge in her otherwise blue hair Buffy was pretty sure this was the one she'd slimed earlier, but either she didn't hold a grudge or was a consummate actress, handing the watches out with a flourish. They all seemed identical at first rather than being in different sizes, but when Buffy got hers she noticed the band sort of folded up on itself, shrinking down to accommodate her wrist. Though it had looked like a normal Rolex knock-off from a distance, there were quite a lot of dials on it and the clockface had a subdued holographic sheen.

Her inspection was interrupted by Sour, "Our contestants may have got the latest in survival fashion from Lost Hours, but more importantly for our final event, they've achieved a total of 853 points! That's earned them four skeleton keys!" Sour pulled four long iron keys from a pocket inside his suit and handed them to Buffy on a ring. "Without these, you'll never get through the Mysterious Dungeon!" Sour made an expansive gesture at the wall near the tunnel they'd entered from, and a segment of what had seemed to be solid rock shattered and fell to the ground, revealing a door and a transparent glass panel stretching a couple stories high. A ladder was clearly visible going all the way up on the inside and leading to another door, which seemed to continue sideways into the rock.

"Wait, so this is really just a dungeon after all?" Buffy asked, wondering if there was another shoe to drop.

"The Mysterious Dungeon is the final challenge on our show," Sour explained. "It consists of seven rooms, each of which you'll need a key to escape. There's a key hidden somewhere in each room to unlock the door, but there's a catch, some of the keys are…" he paused for the audience.

"FAKE!" they mostly answered, though some of them said dust and a couple were just chanting for blood.

"That's right!" Sour continued. "Two of the keys in the dungeon aren't real, and will turn to dust when you grab them; you'll definitely need to use two of the skeleton keys in those rooms. Where you use the others is up to you, but be careful; you won't know if a room has a fake key or not until you have it in your hand!"

"Don't we have to get them all anyway then?" Harmony asked.

"Well, since we have four, we could skip two rooms," Nate said. "We could even maybe skip a third or a fourth, but then we could risk getting a bad key later."

"Nathaniel gets the idea!" Sour said. "And you will want to skip some of these rooms, because you don't have much time. Just fifteen minutes, plus 53 extra seconds for your 53 leftover points." Buffy's watch gave out a little buzz; it had '15:53' displayed on it digitally now, behind the hands which showed local time. "I took the liberty of synchronizing your watches." She noticed Giles was fumbling around with his, probably confused by the gadget already somehow.

"Is this it then?" he asked, turning his attention from the shiny device. "Or must we be subjected to more indignity for the amusement of the masses after?"

The loud announcer answered instead of Sour, "IF OUR CONTESTANTS FINISH THE MYSTERIOUS DUNGEON IN TIME, THE CROWN OF THE FIRST SORCERER KING IS THEIRS!" The gaudy crown was once again lit up in its display, and was even featured on the projector screen for a moment. "IF THEY DON'T, THEN …"

Again, the crowd answered, "SUDDEN DEATH!" They were definitely more unified and excited this time.

"And we'll find out about that when and if the time comes," Sour finished.

As they approached the door, Buffy considered her warhammer. It'd be a little unwieldy on a tall ladder, but she was warming to the possibility of just busting through all the doors. Sour seemed to notice her expression though, and he said, "While you can smash the place up as much as you want, you won't actually win unless you physically unlock all seven doors. It's in terms and conditions."

"Spoil all my fun why don't you," she complained. She'd bring it along anyway; a claw grip letting her grab a rung and her hammer at the same time would serve well enough. It made her wish a little that she had some kind of harness for it, but it was really too big for that to even be practical.

Soon enough, they'd reached the door and were all getting ready. Harmony was brushing some of the mess off her clothes, Giles was adjusting his glasses, and Nate was just staring at the tall ladder behind the glass. "Should we do this in a specific order?" he wondered.

That wasn't a bad idea. "I'll go first, in case there's trouble," Buffy said. "You next, then Giles. Harmony, I want you in the back because you might be able to catch someone if they fall."

"Ugh, as if; that's so ..." Buffy gave her a stare. "... such a good idea," Harmony finished.

"On your marks! Get set! Go!" Sour flourished theatrically with both hands as their watches beeped, the timer started, and the door popped open. Buffy hit the ladder and started moving up, easily getting ahead of the others despite one hand being mostly full. The tunnel was brightly lit by the glass wall, but rock outcroppings on the sides made it pretty cramped. She had to make sure to avoid knocking any of it loose by accident, and hoped Giles would be able to squeeze his way through; he was a head taller than any of them.

She quickly reached the landing on top, grabbed for the door… and found it locked. Somehow this had seemed more like an entryway than a room, but it did make sense in hindsight, especially with Sour trying to be tricky. "Anybody see any keys yet?" she yelled.

This prompted some confusion below her, but after a few moments Giles spoke up. "The rungs pivot a piece of the back wall if you push up on them. There are little cabinets behind these two, but they seem to be empty.

Buffy left her hammer on the landing and started checking the rungs near the top, but after looking at one the hinge reminded her of the clockwork she'd seen at CRD. "Guys, watch out, they could be-"

A sprang interrupted her, followed by an "OW! What the heck!" from Harmony.

"-trapped. Are you OK down there?"

"I'll live, but I don't think the blouse will at this point." She'd been hit with a couple darts in the chest, but was picking them out without many problems. Buffy wondered if they'd been poisoned and how badly, but there was no time to figure it out; they'd just have to be careful.

Progress with the rungs was a bit slower after that, but there weren't too many to check and soon they were done. Unfortunately, there was no key.

"Maybe one of us missed it?" Nate said. "I was trying to be careful, but-"

"I think not," Giles interrupted. "This is just the sort of misdirection I'd expect."

Buffy thought about using one of the skeleton keys, but they'd already spent time here and it seemed like a waste. Her wandering eye landed on her hammer though and she got an idea. "Everyone, get up to the landing above me, I'm going to cause some damage."

They scrambled past her, and once they were clear she went to town on the rock outcroppings that had been crowding the ladder. Sure enough, they were hollow and crumpled easily to the hammer blows. She kept her eye out for anything that looked different and saw a silvery object fall amidst the rubble after a little ways back down the ladder. Changing hands on the rungs quickly, she managed to snag it before it fell, and scampered back up to the top.

"Only twelve and a half minutes left." Nate worried. They'd have to hurry it up.

"Here we go then," she said, unlocking the door with a click. As she did, they heard another shower of collapsing rock, this time from outside their little dungeon. A new glass window had opened up in the cave wall, exposing the new room to the audience's view too. It made sense; Sour would hardly want his spectacle hidden away.

This room seemed small at first; the door to the next one was right across from them, on the other side of a pool that was about 3 feet to the side. There weren't many places to hide the key except for in there, but the pool looked deep and murky.

"It probably goes all the way back down," Giles guessed.

Buffy nodded, preparing to dive in for it, but Harmony put her hand on her shoulder. "I've got it this time. Being dead has its perks, plus my family has a pool." Not needing to breathe would probably help with deep water. She took a deep breath and got ready to dive in.

Buffy stopped her and Harmony was confused until she spoke, "Harmony, it'd probably be easier if you exhale first?"

"Oh, right." She breathed her air all the way back out, and then dove.

They all soon lost sight of her in the cloudy water, though by the reactions of the crowd they could see her more easily, with the window following the pool down. As they waited, Buffy indulged in a bit of contained destruction of the walls and the other two poked through the rubble, but no hidden key was found in the rock this time.

After a little while there was a big laugh and some taunts from the audience. "Probably one of the forgeries," Giles said. "A vampire was too suited for this challenge for it to be real."

Buffy shook her head. "It could have been a double-bluff, and at least it didn't take much time." Even as Harmony surfaced grousing about how she'd gotten soaked for a fake key, Buffy had the first skeleton key out and jammed it in, letting them into the third room with the cracking of another opening side-window.

The next room reminded Buffy of a post office, being full of tiny boxes on every non-glass wall. This room was much larger horizontally than the last had been, extending for yards to each side, with the metal door to the fourth room standing locked across from them. The floor was covered in paper scraps up to their ankles.

Buffy opened a box, only to find another box with a door that opened the other way, and found the inside to be empty. "Are they all weird like this?"

Giles was looking through a few himself, and had similar results, with little extra doors opening in all directions inside. "They're not exactly the same, but there seems to be a recurring theme."

"Ugh, there have to be hundreds of these stupid boxes," Harmony said, looking through a couple while still dripping wet. One of them had some papers stuffed in it, but her frantic examination just revealed them to just be more scrap.

"Maybe it's somewhere else in the room again?" Nate wondered, trying to sift through all the paper on the floor.

All the paper everywhere reminded Buffy of being told to budget her time on the SATs, and this room could eat a lot of it up if they kept searching.

Vote: This is the third room, and there is 10:47 (647 seconds) left on the clock. They have three skeleton keys remaining, and they know exactly one of the remaining five rooms (#3-7) has a fake key (it will need a skeleton key to pass.)

How many more seconds do they spend searching this room before Buffy spends a skeleton key to skip it? Vote for a number; the median number voted will win ('0' is an immediate skip, right now.)

Examples:
[] 0 seconds
[] 35 seconds
[] 137 seconds