[X] Mostly cooperate. Buffy tells them stuff about the summer's events that the average person in her organization would already know, and fills in context where appropriate. Most relevantly, Buffy briefs them on the Mok'tagar situation and her plans for resolving it, hoping they might actually be able to help somehow. However, any mention of Buffy's status as a Successor to an Old One and anything tangentially related to it is avoided, including the Wilkins dreams, the Lachrymal Artifact still unfound beneath City Hall, and the worrying indications of an upcoming dimensional merger.
Everyone was finally arranged in the conference room, and Buffy and her people had been making introductions. The table was crowded enough that it'd needed an impromptu expansion, but she'd felt she needed seven people to their six. It was a little petty, but if she didn't do things like this she was pretty sure the Council would try to walk all over her.
She was more comfortable with the whole roster at hand anyway. Giles, Willow, and Xander had been with her since the start. Anya was obviously too essential to leave out, and including Oz would be useful if things got tense enough to need defusing.
"And then there's Harmony here," Buffy finished. "She's the only one that can keep up with me in the field." There had been a couple ways to play this, but after the disaster with Kathy, Buffy thought it was best to just take the bull by the horns. It's not like she was going back to keeping Harmony as her dirty little secret now.
"Are you a potential too?" Zoe asked. She was the friendly, excitable one of the two the Council brought. Rachel seemed to be friends with her, but was more guarded.
Harmony's eyes lit up mischievously and she put down her lemonade (which was maybe more sugar than lemon, with all that she'd added) "Nah, I already have real powers."
"Are you another witch?" Mary asked. "Or perhaps a half-demon of some kind?"
"Do vampires count as half-demons?" she asked. "They should! I've been hassled enough for it from the other side."
Snow's expression changed from inquisitive to horrified, Zoe shrunk back into her chair, and Rachel got a stake out admirably quickly.
"Surely you jest," Nigel said.
"Recent history suggests otherwise," Phillip said, still reserved.
"Harmony's a special case," Buffy tried to say evenly. "Another special case. She's never so much as hurt a human. Well, at least not after she died at graduation."
"Aphrodesia deserved that black eye and I still won't apologize for it," Harmony said.
"I suppose your witch gave this one a soul too?" Travers said disinterestedly. He barely even looked surprised, much less panicked like some of his associates.
"Trust me, you don't want to go there. With a soul she's worse than this," Willow said.
Mary shook her head. "The situation with Angelus was… understandable. He may as well have been a human in a vampire's body! You can't mean to say you're placing your trust in an actual demon?"
"Half-demon!" Harmony argued, apparently stuck on that idea now.
"Demons can be perfectly trustworthy, if correctly motivated," Anya said. "I know from experience." She gave Buffy a questioning glance.
"No, it has to be a trick," Rachel said. "This is the first thing anyone dealing with vampires learns! That isn't your friend, it's a vampire wearing her face!"
"As weird as it sounds, and believe me, I was the first to disbelieve it, Vampire Harmony is on our side," Xander said. "She died fighting Wilkins and then just crawled right back to Buffy like a lost puppy."
"My own father tried to make me a snack and you're telling me she just wants to be friends and sing Koombayah?" Rachel said.
"Happened to my best friend too," Xander said. "Had to stake him myself. Harmony's the ditzy exception that proves the evil rule."
"Still," Nigel said. "It's common knowledge that fledgeling vampires are only motivated by their most base instincts, outside the control of their sire. What could possibly satisfying the urges of her demon?"
"I'm right here you know! You people don't have to talk about me like I'm Stripey at the zoo," Harmony groused. "And I like fighting stuff. And winning! Buffy's way cooler than some stupid sire. She teaches me moves! And we go on patrols, and missions. And if I'm ever about to lose, she comes in and she's like: whamo (the table creaked a little when she hit it), and turns the thing into paste. And she…" Harmony cut herself off for a second, before changing tack, "It's not like human blood smells that great anyway. Dieting the August before 8th grade was way worse than this."
The council representatives looked surprised enough at that speech that it'd probably have passed muster, but Buffy knew Harmony well enough to know what she'd censored. It might be more convenient that way, but it wouldn't last, and she'd learned secret relationships were the gateway to badness and interdimensional incidents.
"Because we're doing the full disclosure, there's one more thing you should know," Buffy said. "Harmony and I are dating."
There were some eeps from the girls, and an annoyed sigh from Travers. Mary looked like she swallowed a lemon, but kept her mouth shut.
"Hardly very professional," Phillip said.
"Nothing she hasn't done before," Nigel replied
"You're one to talk," Giles said. "Need we bring up-"
"Gentlemen. And ladies. Please," Travers interrupted. "Let us bypass all the unnecessary dramas and reach the point of the matter. "Do you have reliable means of verifying the vampire's behavior?"
Of course Travers would deflect from his people's own scandals and put things back on Harmony. She was about to bring up their initial trick with the Holy Water, but then she remembered something useful from the otherwise disastrous coming out night. "CyberWillow, can you do that probability thing for Harmony?"
The Watchers looked to actual Willow for a moment, but then the AI's neutral-but-Willowy voice echoed from all the radios in the room. "I can confirm there has been no evidence of rule-breaking by Harmony over the course of several hundred hours of direct and indirect surveillance. Taking into account the size of my sample and several projected psychological models I estimate a probability of no more than 0.3% that she has killed a human or 2.3% that she has illicitly harmed one."
The room erupted into pandemonium, and then Buffy realized they hadn't introduced CyberWillow yet.
"Was that a computer?"
"What is this stunt?"
"Is using all of the speakers at once completely necessary?"
"It improves audio quality markedly," CyberWillow answered Phillip.
"I trust we are about to be treated to another wearying explanation," Travers said.
"CyberWillow is a weakly general artificial intelligence I made from, well, me," Willow said. "She's been an invaluable research tool."
"And also, a great DJ for long car trips," Oz added.
"Is she a person or a computer?" Mary asked, sounding very confused.
"I think kind of both?" Zoe said.
"She's a computer that can think like a person!" Willow said. "It's really neat. She's probably the most sophisticated Artificial Intelligence on the planet. Way better than anything you could make without Cybermancy."
"The products of untested disciplines are often unpredictable themselves," Nigel said warily.
"Hey! My discipline is very much tested! I've built it from the subroutines on up," Willow said.
"Diagramming the sympathetic underpinnings of a completely novel field take decades, the literature is very clear," he argued. "For you to have made progress this quickly you must be just throwing together whatever happens to work!"
"Not even close! I have four and a half whole lexicons programmed into my database," Willow said. "Maybe it takes years if you have to cross reference everything a million times, but we're on the edge of the 21st Century now. Get with the times, watcher-guy."
Nigel was unmoved. "You don't understand the gravity of the situation. The breadth of harms that might be caused by rushing-"
Buffy was getting fed up with this already. "Look, slow and steady might win the race back in watcher country, but here on the hellmouth we have actual monsters to kill and bills to pay. Willow's new magic is getting the job done, that's what matters."
Nigel looked rebellious, but Travers spoke up again. "Very well. Now that we've met all of your lovely… people, we should get to the heart of the matter. How did you come to take power here?"
Whatever had motivated Wilkins' emergency plans for Vanessa and Faith was probably too close to newly uncomfortable truths about herself, so Buffy would paper over that little detail. "Wilkins had his fingers in everything behind the scenes, including some holes in the dam keeping Sunnydale in one piece. After he died, demons immediately attacked City Hall. I did my job, and then got a new bonus job to go with it."
"So they made you the new mayor after saving their lives? I have to admit that's cool. I wish I got prizes like that." Rachel still had her stake on the table from before and was playing with it now. Buffy supposed she was teaching by example.
"It's highly irregular," Phillip commented. "You didn't coerce them in any way?"
"The mechanisms that run this city were already well used to having a supernatural power in command," Giles said. "It was rather the opposite, in fact."
"If it hadn't been Buffy, it would've been Rack and his two pet idiots," Anya said.
"Or Wolfram and Hart," Willow said.
"Possibly Dracula, by now," Giles added.
"Wait, Dracula was here?" Zoe asked.
"Or maybe the dragon would've been in charge," Oz said. "Kind of surprising that people mostly forget there was a dragon."
"It's been a busy summer," Buffy said. "Wilkins was keeping a lot of riff raff at bay. There were even gnomes."
"'Little Men', technically," Willow said. "Most gnome-like subspecies are less murderous."
"We weren't trying to say that the Council condemns your actions," Mary said. "Surely, any of those others you mention could've done terrible damage. It was just surprising, given your age."
"The Council has been forced to interfere in the outcomes of its fair share of elections before," Phillip added. "Of course, it would've been better had the proper permissions been officially granted first, but given the breakdown in communications-"
"Hey, we didn't rig the election!" Anya complained, realizing the implication. "We won fair and square."
"You mean to claim an eighteen year old girl fresh off her A-levels was actually elected mayor in a city of thirty-nine thousand?" Nigel said disbelievingly.
"We totally claim that," Xander said. "There was much campaigning and schmoozing. And many, many flyers."
"My flyers were amazing," Anya said. "That art class I took in the 1800s really paid off."
"Again, we don't mean to impugn, but you even have that magical computer. Couldn't it just, well..." Mary waved her fingers around vaguely.
"I was instructed to help safeguard the electoral process," CyberWillow volunteered. "While I informed the officials on scene of nine independent regulatory errors, they were deemed minor, and I am 99.97% certain they had no appreciable effect on the outcome, and that the result was legitimate."
"Well, your voters are Americans," Travers mused. "Perhaps it's not entirely unbelievable. We should circle back to Wolfram and Hart's involvement."
"Are we really going to ignore Dracula?" Zoe whispered to Rachel, barely loud enough for Buffy to hear.
"There are reports on the other incursions you can peruse later," Buffy said. "Xander's been so good about reports."
"They make the wheels of bureaucracy turn, turn, turn," he agreed.
"But yeah, Wolfram and Hart. They were the biggest deal. They propped up the other candidate and were causing some trouble. Naughty stuff like trying to give the whole city magical cancer, you know the drill. Eventually when assassinations started to be a thing on their table, we decided enough was enough."
"Buffy's really amazing when she gets angry," Harmony said.
"We drove down to LA and did some pointy stick diplomacy," Buffy hesitated for a second, still feeling a little guilty about taking the payout. But it'd been the sensible decision at the time, and she wouldn't hide from it. "After we killed a couple dozen of their assassins in their own homes, they paid us to stop."
"You let them bribe you?" Mary said.
"We can't be the world police. Without the money I got out of them, we probably couldn't even afford to be paying our own cops right now." Buffy said. "The fact is, until they poked their noses in here, we didn't even know what they were doing in LA. Whatever it is they get up to, it probably won't end the world, and there are other people checking them in LA now, limiting their damage. It sucks that it has to be this way, but I'm not the one in charge of a world-spanning organization honed over the centuries for the nominal purposes of fighting evil and drinking tea."
"Despite what you, and even some of our own tend to believe," Travers looked at Mary stodgily, "The Watchers Council also lacks the boon of infinite resources. To assure that we remain fully effective into the future, we must limit our activities to focus on the slayer."
"Must be real expensive doing that, with a grand total of zero slayers to focus on," Xander said.
"Which is exactly why we're here." Mary said. "With Faith missing and no new slayer called, it's inexcusable for the Council to sit idly by and twiddle its thumbs."
Buffy could've tried to extract more out of that, but sinking to the level of manipulative Council secrecy shenanigans wasn't what this was about. She figured it was time for the real bombshell. "Faith isn't missing anymore."
"You might have mentioned that sooner," Travers said. "We should secure her immediately."
"The Feds have other ideas," Xander said. "She's working for Uncle Sam now."
"What?" Mary was a little panicked. "Do they know she's the Slayer?"
"They know just enough to be a significant danger to themselves and others," Giles said.
"They're calling themselves the Initiative, and they carved out a base under UC Sunnydale," Buffy summarized. "Their whole deal is they like to experiment on demons, so they were sending out soldier boys with oversized tasers to play Sunnydale Safari."
"And where does Faith figure in?" Phillip asked.
"They have their shiny guns but they suck at fighting compared to us," Harmony said.
"Enter Faith as their really slutty version of Captain America," Willow finished. A couple of the Scoobies eyed her at the analogy, and Willow defended herself. "I've been spending a lot of time with Andrew and Jonathan OK?"
"They secured her directly from the hospital?" Travers asked.
"No, that was definitely Teeth," Buffy said. "He's on display at the Sunnydale Lodge now, if you want to see him. Xander's uncle did a great job with the taxidermy."
"Is displaying their kills a slayer thing?" Zoe asked.
"I kind of hope so," said Rachel.
"After his little rebellion collapsed, Faith disappeared," Buffy continued. "The Initiative must've grabbed her then, still all sleepy and comatose."
"That was months ago!" Nigel said. "How long has this been going on?"
"They've been really sneaky," Willow said grumpily. "We don't think they were very active until August, but they must have sent a couple early feelers out then when we were more distracted."
Phillip tapped his fingers on the table. "She's entirely recovered, I take it? Has she shown any remorse for her actions, a willingness to make amends?"
"She's fit as a fiddle," Buffy said. "Like, one of those devil fiddles. The military's protecting her from consequences, she knows it, and she's all for rubbing it in everyone's face."
"That's unfortunate," Phillip said.
"This Initiative, are they willing to talk?" Mary asked. "Maybe if we just explain everything she's done-"
"We tried the talking, and didn't even find out about Faith until a couple days in," Buffy said. "They aren't exactly upfront types."
"Do they know she's pretty much an insane murderer?" Zoe wondered.
"Do they ever," Buffy shook her head. "I made my displeasure known, but there's only so much we could really do. I'm the mayor, not the president."
"International diplomacy is hardly a young woman's game," Travers said. "I will apply pressure through the appropriate diplomatic channels."
"Are these the kind of channels that are going to work, or the kind where the Americans throw your tea into the harbor again?" Anya asked.
"Only time will tell," Giles said, a little amusement in his voice.
"Well, this wasn't the best news, but we're very glad to know about it," Mary said. "Are there any other ongoing concerns? Areas where we might provide assistance?"
The hidden artifact under City Hall was an ugly stain on the outfit that was Sunnydale, but it wasn't something that was safe to bring up. The Watcher's Council wasn't likely to react to stuff involving an Old One swimming around in Buffy's head very well at all. There was the other big thing though.
"We've had an … incident with some ugly demons from the speedy dimension. Mok'tagar."
"Feudal traders, specializing in portal magicks," Nigel explained. "Their impressive regeneration leaves them almost impervious to physical harm."
"That's them," Buffy said. It was hard to frame this in a way that didn't put some egg on their faces, but big girls owned up to their mistakes. "One of them was going to college here, and got involved with our administration in an advisory capacity."
"You've been surrounding yourself with rather a lot of demons, haven't you?" Travers said.
Buffy tilted her head. "My mom's always saying I have to try to be fair to all my constituents. But this one didn't work out very well."
"She was super bitchy and mean and then she tried to kill me so Buffy shish-kabobbed her brain," Harmony said exuberantly.
Travers nodded consideringly. "Well, that's one way to end an unsatisfactory business relationship. I don't see where the problem lies. Even if you are trying to 'be fair', as you put it, it's within the purview of the Slayer to kill demons, especially those that step out of line."
"She was a Great One's daughter, and when he finds out he's going to be really pissed off," Anya said.
"The Great Ones are the leaders of the individual Mok'tagar clans, each ruling from their own separate city," Nigel continued. "They each possess an inheritable mantle that gives them a wider breadth of magical powers, and are quite formidable in combat."
"So you're afraid he'll come to take revenge?" Mary asked.
"Not so much just him," Buffy said. "I could take him. But his army is in the hundreds, and if they all invaded Sunnydale at once there would be serious casualties. It's unacceptable."
"So did you have a plan to address the issue, before we arrived?" Travers asked.
"The best defense is a good offense," Buffy said. "I'm putting together a strike team. We'll attack him where he lives and take him out of the picture."
"Bold," Phillip commented.
"I'm not sure I can support this course of action," Nigel warned. "While it might seem expedient, their dimension itself will present numerous difficulties, and one can hardly be flippant about fighting a demon of that order in his own stronghold."
"I'm handling the difficulties. I can get a fix for the poison air, one of our spellcasters is an illusionist who can sneak us in, and I have a mercenary who's used to this kind of work." Buffy said. She wondered if what seemed like the magic word would mean as much to the watchers. "He found an uncle."
There was a flurry of accepting nods among them, even including Zoe.
"What?" Rachel asked. "An uncle?"
"If you're going to invade somewhere and make it stick you need an actual claimant," Zoe said quietly. "You should read some of the journals from the 18th century, the Council had some colonial ambitions then."
"Some of us could come to help you," Mary said excitedly. "It's been a few years since I've been in the field, but I was a potential myself once you know. I like to think I've still got it."
"I specialize in martial arts and covert operations," Phillip said. "The proper application of pressure points is often a weakness of regenerators."
Nigel looked a little poleaxed. "I admit to fluency in the language, and I have some familiarity with their magical tradition. But really, are we sure this is a good idea?"
"Don't be a wuss," Rachel said. "I want to go too!"
"Rachel, this is far too dangerous for someone your age." Mary looked like she'd had this argument before.
"I'm old enough that I could've been called years ago, would it be too dangerous then?"
"That's different and you know it. You don't have the experience for this. Imagine how I would feel if something happened to you? How your mother would feel?"
"Because coming to the hellmouth wasn't dangerous in the first place," she groused.
"The slayer clearly has the situation here well in hand," Mary looked around the room, seemingly searching for help. "Xander, Rachel and Zoe are the same age as most of the people on your City Watch, aren't they? Maybe they could help with that."
"We have been pretty shorthanded with Percy and his guys gone for the fall," he said. "You two are welcome to join up if you want, but you should know I'm running a shipshape operation. There are patrols, training exercises, movie nights. It's all very serious."
"That sounds great," Zoe said. "Doesn't it sound great Rachel?"
Rachel sighed. "All that is great, but I'm sick of being on the kid squad. I'm probably never going to get to be the slayer, but I want everything I've done the past few years to still mean something. I want to be where the action is."
"Wasn't this mission supposed to be small and stealthy?" Willow snarked. "It's starting to feel like everyone's going to go but me, and I'm not sure how many dozens of people Jonathan can keep invisible at once."
"That's what you get for specializing in nerd magic," Harmony said.
"You'd think this was a happening party at a frat instead of an incredibly dangerous mission to another dimension," Oz said.
"There's less difference than you'd expect," Giles said.
Buffy had only had a vague idea of the roster so far; she knew that Jonathan, Skip, and of course the uncle would be absolutely necessary. With herself, that already made four. Then there were Harmony, Andrew, and Giles, who'd all been on the last big mission (though Giles had gotten himself hurt that time. He could maybe take a little break.) It might even make sense to bring Xander or Oz along. She wasn't sure.
Loading herself up on too many watchers might be like getting stuffed on empty calories, but some of them might have skills some of her people lacked. And then there was Rachel. She wouldn't have been very confident going on interdimensional adventures herself before she had her powers, but she could kind of sympathize? It'd been terrible to feel so useless during the Cruciamentum, and from what Rachel sounded like, she kind of felt that way all the time.
Vote: Who among the new arrivals is Buffy going to try to work into the mission? You'll finalize the entire roster later, but you should be confident anyone who Buffy picks now is coming along.
[][Mary] Yes
[][Mary] No
[][Phillip] Yes
[][Phillip] No
[][Nigel] Yes
[][Nigel] No
[][Rachel] Yes
[][Rachel] No
