Successor (BTVS)

[X] No, it's a terrible idea. She should stick to the plan and do it under more controlled circumstances, with Harmony there. If that happened to make it easier to get escape gear for Willow, well, Warren would probably just get himself hurt trying to be a superhero anyway.
-[4-1] Bring up to Warren that there were some things he might be interested in taking a look at in Wilkins leftovers that he might be able to make something out of, or maybe Buffy can find him things that aren't single use ingredients for him to use.

She almost just did it, but she chickened out. She really didn't know Warren that well, and this reveal had to be controlled. Well-planned. Perfect. Who knew what he might do?

But she still felt guilty, so she wracked her brain for something to make it better. "There's no reason this has to go all one way. In fact, I bet I can think of something cool we have on ice that you're just the person to take a gander at."

"Really? I didn't know you'd gotten your hands on any more technical stuff," Warren said, perking up. Behind him, Willow was giving her a confused look. She'd explain later.

"Absolutely," Buffy said, drawing it out for more time to think. "There's this little robo-minotaur we've had on ice for a while. That'd be right up your alley!" Extremely little, but maybe they could undo that shrinky magic somehow.

"Buffy, that was a golem," Willow said. "The animation principle is pretty different from robotics, you need to bind a spirit and it takes all kinds of herbs and chanting."

"Or, umm, there was the maze it came in," Buffy reached. "It triggered when Willow cast a spell and sucked us all into it, that might have to do with dimensional whatever?"

Willow halted, thinking, before saying. "Maybe that could work? I left it alone because of the whole anti-magic trap thing, but Warren could maybe investigate it without that being an issue?"

"It reacted to magic and sucked everyone in? Like, a mini-maze?" He said excitedly.

"Yay big," Buffy confirmed, showing with her hands. "It got everyone in the room when Willow tried to de-rat Amy. And then, we were even littler than the little people."

"This could totally tie into what I was studying with the Temporal Dislocator," Warren said. "I wonder if it uses relativistic scaling or some other mechanism. Where do you have it?"

Well, that was one way to distract a guy. Buffy hoped that by the time he was done with it she'd be able to tell the whole truth.


Buffy took a little bite of her chicken, chewing pensively as she eyed her parents. She probably shouldn't be so concerned; they'd gotten through the demon rally with minimal levels of conflict, so a family dinner ought to be fine.

After taking a week to vacation in Sunnydale for Buffy's election, her dad was heading back to LA tomorrow. Buffy had been even busier this week than she'd originally planned to be though, so they hadn't been able to hang out very much. She'd been sure to be free to spend time with him tonight, but he'd surprised her by proposing they eat with mom instead of going out somewhere. It was doubly surprising when her mom had agreed.

"So how was work today, honey?" Her mom started, in that trying-to-be-inconspicuous way she had. Buffy didn't know what she was up to yet, but she expected to find out soon enough.

Buffy remembered the glorious times when she'd had Saturday off. They were no more. "We're still trying to firm up patrol schedules to keep an eye on anything the Initiative does in town, but it's hard. We're still kind of understrength. College recruiting has been slower than we hoped so far."

"Can't you just use the robot girl to watch everything?" Her dad asked. "Umm, Data-something?"

"CyberWillow can help, but even she doesn't have the attention to watch everything at once all the time," Buffy explained. The ritual with the Box to change that was getting more and more tempting, but Buffy wasn't quite that desperate. Yet. "Xander keeps saying we need more boots on the ground, and he's right, even if it is a cliche."

"Well, being on the City Watch is a dangerous job. You shouldn't be surprised that it's hard to find people who want to do it. Most of them are probably already in the army, like Faith."

Buffy snorted. "I wouldn't exactly call her a soldier. The Initiative is a black op, so she's like, one of those evil movie spies or something."

"She doesn't seem to see it that way," her mom said. Buffy narrowed her eyes at the implication, and then her mom explained, "She was over here today."

"What?" Buffy jumped up from her seat. "Why didn't you call on the radio? Or say something? She's not just one of my friends from school, Mom, she's dangerous!"

"You could say that about a lot of people in the military," her mom responded. "And I agree, she's not trustworthy. But she's not going to just go on a reign of terror either, it wouldn't make any sense."

"Why was she over here then?"

"To apologize, or so she said. Faith doesn't do contrite very well. I think she was more interested in using me to rile you up, which is exactly why I didn't call you."

Buffy made a face, then sat back down and took another bite. "I guess messing with me was always what she was best at."

Her dad had watched the exchange between the two of them with growing concern, and finally said, "Are you sure it's going to pay to be so antagonistic with the government, Buffy? I know it must be a big rush to have won the election, but when locals fight the feds it always ends the same way."

"You don't know what Faith is like," Buffy said. "She worms her way in, and then before you know it, she's corrupting everything from the inside and selling you out for a shiny new weapon. After all this is over they'll probably thank me for warning them."

"Just don't do anything too rash, I guess," he said, backing down.

"I am the picture of mayorly responsibility," Buffy claimed. Her sudden urge to turn Faith's head into a pancake from a few days ago could go unmentioned.

"On a lighter note," her mom said, "I heard from a little bird that you saw Warren again yesterday. Are there going to be any more dates?"

Oh no, not here too. "It wasn't like that!" Buffy said defensively. "All business." Her organization seriously leaked like a sieve.

"That's too bad," she responded. "He's been such a positive influence around town. Did you know he gave Mr. Tanner from down the block his job back? Supposedly it's the first time he's worked since Calax closed all those years ago."

"Is it someone else then?" Her dad asked, a little mischievously. "Maybe that Nate kid you were getting all googly-eyed with on video?"

"You saw that?" Buffy asked, totally caught off guard.

"Well, you did say it wasn't a normal game show, and I've had some extra time on my hands here," he said. Buffy cringed, and he quickly continued, "Not that you should feel guilty! It's good that you're taking things seriously. But anyway, some of the guys at your Watch House played it for me the other day. It was a real eye opener."

"Nate's just a friend," Buffy said definitively. "I haven't even seen him since the show. Which is fine. Because he's probably really busy too, with all his … sorcery, or whatever."

"If you say so," he replied. "But just in case, he should know that if he steps out of line a little magic and a lot of money won't scare me." Buffy mock glared. "Fine, fine, I'll leave you alone. But about the show, there was another thing."

"Yeah?" Buffy asked warily.

"You know we're always looking for new angles at the firm. I don't suppose you could get me in contact with this Sour guy, could you? Between what I saw and what your friend Ms. Jenkins said, I have a feeling there could be a big unrealized market out there."

Buffy was poleaxed. Her dad worked for LA-AD, a big advertising company, but they were as normal as normal got. "You're kidding right? He's a demon. He markets to demons. In demon dimensions. Possibly on demon TVs, with demon VCRs."

"But they have money, right? And if I'm guessing, they have lots of it. The production values must have been enormous, I've never seen anything like it!"

"That's because it was real!" she said. "People die on that show!"

"But aren't they all mostly consenting?" he asked. "It didn't look like you were exactly forced to do any of that stuff. Maybe Nate was, but he kind of made his own bed, and he seemed happy enough to try anyway."

"Let me get this straight," her mom cut in, looking annoyed. "You saw Buffy fight a four-armed purple monster to the death on television, and your reaction was: 'Let's get that ad revenue?'"

He turned to her, exasperated, "Look, Joyce, I'm not saying I love that Buffy fights for her life every night, but she seems pretty used to it by now, and the kids I saw the show with at the Watch House thought the big demon never stood a chance. It didn't, right honey?"

Buffy wasn't sure what to say. On the one hand, it felt a little icky legitimizing Sour's bloodsport. On the other, if she said it'd actually been dangerous her parents would freak. "It wasn't dangerous. For me. But all kinds of unprepared people probably had to fight it before!"

"The door to its enclosure looked pretty solid," he said. "Couldn't they have just hid back there if they didn't want to chance it?"

"And then they lose their soul," Buffy said.

"What does that mean exactly, anyway?" he asked. "Someone said that happened to vampires, but Harmony was perfectly nice."

Going into the details of Harmony now was probably not the best idea. "It's complicated. But it's definitely not something I want you trying! Or anyone!"

"OK, OK," He smiled, waving her objections down. "I definitely won't do anything like that. But all this is happening already, and it's not bad enough that you're putting a stop to it?"

"Buffy can't be the world police," Joyce complained.

"That's not what I meant," he said. "I was going to say that if I could get some deals done with him, I could at least keep an eye on him. And money talks, maybe he'd oblige if I could find clients that wanted things a little less lethal."

"I still don't understand how this is supposed to work," Buffy said. "None of the people you work with even know demons exist. Why would they want to advertise on a demon show?"

"Well, that was true, as far as I knew," he said. "But Ms. Jenkins actually got me in contact with another one of your friends today, I think it was Ms. Newman?"

"Kathy?" Buffy asked, even more wary.

"That was it, Kathy Newman. The two of them got to talking, and knowing about all this stuff is apparently more widespread than you would think. Did you know Kero Cola is demon owned? We did a huge deal for them last year."

Buffy's mouth opened, and then shut. She regathered herself and said, "They aren't connected with Wolfram and Hart are they?" A demon owned company based in LA seemed right up their alley.

He paused. "I don't know. I could look into it, if it'd make you feel better. But didn't you have a big peace settlement with them? You were telling me how you couldn't visit me in the city anymore-"

"I wasn't thrilled to do it," Buffy said. "But like mom said, I can't really be world police. Sunnydale is too big a deal on its own. That doesn't mean they aren't bad news to get mixed up with."

"I never thought I'd see the day when my daughter was protecting me from bad business deals," he joked.

"We'd all probably be better off if she'd started with that sooner," her mom said.

"Look, I said I'd be careful, didn't I?" he said, ignoring her jab. "This isn't about me wanting to deal with the evil lawyers. I just want to make a connection with a foreign game show. You can help your dad out, can't you?"

Vote: Does Buffy trust Sour enough to to introduce him to her dad? Does Buffy trust her dad enough to introduce him to Sour?

[] She's already gotten herself dirty enough this summer that she doesn't really have a leg to stand on. Andrew should be able to summon Sour up and her dad can sell the demon soda on the game show if that's really what he wants to do.

[] Mixing family and business can go too far. Buffy stands firm on the issue and tells her dad he'll have to make a profit some other way.