Successor (BTVS)

[X] Xander looks like he has this one under control, Buffy goes to meet the Rat King.

"Buffy! Long time no see." Amy Madison was certainly sounding chipper as Buffy scrambled into the conference room. She wasn't quite late, but it was a near thing. Without the Hayabusa to race up and down the highway with, she'd never be able to cut things so close.

The rest of the attendees acknowledged her too, but their moods were more measured, or in one case, completely opaque. Despite her recent positive interactions with the rat noble Nezumi, his King was just… more, in a way that was hard to quantify or even understand. There was chittering, and she hoped it was good.

"Long time no rest." Buffy laid her hammer down over the big table, as was her habit these days. "I hear you've been in and out of town lately?"

"I never thought I'd find somewhere I feel more at home than Sunnydale, but the Rat dimension is just to die for. The landscapes! The cuisine! The culture! I feel like a girl in a Lifetime movie." Amy pulled a rat out of the Rat King's swarm and started petting it. "He's really swept me off my feet."

"And they say romance is dead," Skip interjected, completely at ease with the situation.

"Quite," Watcher Phillip stated uncertainly. "But perhaps we should get on to business." Buffy had decided the best way to feel out the loyalty of Travers' sketchy minions was to bring them along on this one, so it was only fair to include them in the planning stages. Obviously neither had been fully briefed on Amy and the Rat King; Nigel was a little green at the gills, and even the previously stoic Phillip was decidedly off-balance. The Rat King alone was a lot to take in at first glance, and adding the thing going on with him and Amy, it was a very splashy introduction to Hellmouth politics weirdness.

"We still have a lot of stuff to hash out. This whole timetable has felt a little accelerated." Jonathan Levinson was the last person to round out the meeting, since his illusions were their ticket in. If tickets were invisible. He'd already spent a lot of time with the Rat King and his nobles due to being responsible for the illusions that at least kept them somewhat presentable around town. Considering the mixed response 'Tajikistani visitors' had gotten, she didn't want to even think about how her citizens would've reacted to sentient rats from another dimension.

"I agree that we should make sure to give everything proper consideration," Nigel said. "Fools rush in, and all that." From what she knew about Jonathan, he wasn't exactly afraid, he just liked to be careful. This Nigel Watcher? She'd find out soon enough.

"I know it's stressful, but we've gotta keep moving" Buffy said. "In Mog'tog'og time it's been what? Like a month already? The longer we wait the more likely they figure out what happened and invade us instead." She'd thought things would ease up when the election happened, but it'd been the opposite. There was never enough time.

This brought on some more pronounced noises from the Rat King, and Amy translated it back into English, "So, we don't want to be rude or anything, but what exactly did happen? There are a lot of stories flying around and suddenly we're in an interdimensional war."

Buffy remembered that the whole reason the Rat King had warmed up to them so much was to scare potential rivals away, so this probably had to be handled carefully. She had kind of stumbled into a new bunch of enemies. "You know I'm dating Harmony now, right?"

Amy nodded while chittering, then spoke in English, "I was super surprised when I heard. Not about the vampire thing, I mean, duh, but a girl? Not that there's anything wrong with that! You just always seemed kind of boy-crazy to me. From talking to Willow, at least."

Buffy diplomatically ignored the boy-crazy dig. "Kathy couldn't tolerate the relationship. The whole vampire-human thing, she thought it was dirty and tried to kill Harm over it. I had to stop her."

"Oh, the nerve!" Amy looked back and forth across the room, then scooted her chair and kind of leaned into the swarm that was the Rat King. Buffy didn't really understand why she wasn't falling through it, and looking at it closer made her eyes confused. "We've gotten some dirty looks too, both here and even in his kingdom, but nothing so blatant. People just hate things they don't understand, I guess."

There was a storm of chittering back and forth between them, and two of the rats crawled up onto her head. "Of course, an insult like that should be answered. Though the Mok'tagar, well, they are pretty scary, overall. Acting against them is a big commitment."

"We don't need you to fight or anything," Buffy said. "Just to help with the whole poison dimension thing."

"We'll help," Amy agreed. Buffy was really noticing the heavy emphasis on the 'we'. "But considering the risks of retaliation or escalation, we do want a share of the loot. Nothing huge, but there's some specific stuff we think they might have."

"Looting?" Buffy asked. She hadn't really considered the looting aspects. "Isn't this Bantha's home? Won't that get him all irascible and surly?"

"It's how these things are done," Skip said. "We aren't really going in a big enough group for full-on pillaging, I doubt he'll object too loudly."

And yet, he wasn't here to confirm or deny. It was kind of worrying. "Where is he anyway? I'd think he'd want to be in on the planning of all this, with like, maps or something?"

Skip grimaced a little, and on his face it was really grimacey. "You know, it's a funny story. He's still sobering up at my safehouse. Wasn't really up for meetings last I checked. Or technically awake at all."

Buffy was floored. "What? We're doing this tomorrow! He isn't in fast time somehow is he?"

"No, no, just the normal sort of time," Skip said. "It's not as bad as it sounds. Mok'tagar regeneration is pretty strong."

"What does it even take to get one drunk?" Jonathan asked.

"I had a little bit of it actually, but I don't recommend you try it," Skip said. "It's a lot like battery acid, but there's this tangy aftertaste to it. I didn't overindulge like he did though."

"Why were you getting him so drunk in the first place?" Amy asked.

"How do you think I got him onboard?" Skip said. "Our interests definitely align, but Mok'tagar are still insular by nature. I had to loosen him up."

"But isn't he supposed to be our way in? With the portal? And knowing the area too?" Jonathan worried. "We won't be able to use Willow and her AI as overwatch on this one, it'll be like flying blind."

"I'll agree, it's not the best," Skip's tone slowly became more serious. "But Buffy's right about the dangers of waiting. If we wait too long and end up walking into an ambush, it'll be worse than some tipsy hijinx from our guide. It's like I said earlier; this isn't an easy thing you guys are proposing. This isn't the last risk you'll have to take to see it done."

This cast a little bit of quiet over the room, which Phillip eventually filled. "From what I've heard from you, and the reports I've been able to read, you've all had a fair amount of good fortune so far." He paused. "Let's hope that it keeps up, yes?"

There were a couple nods. Buffy really hoped this wasn't going to explode into a disaster. It was only happening in the first place because of her. They were right though, nothing for it but to move forward. "So, back to the looting, I guess. What were you and the Rat King looking for?"

Amy dug a list out of her pocket and passed it over. Buffy noticed an Allslyra skeleton was still on it, right at the top, but most of the other stuff was goobledy-gook to her, even if it was in English.

She passed it to Jonathan, and from his expression he was going to have to do some research to be able to identify any of it. Nigel looked over his shoulder though, and suddenly he was in his element.

"Hmm, hmm, yes. Well this appears to all be in order at least. But Violet Adventurines, plural? You do know what those are worth on the market these days?"

"Yeah, yeah," Amy grumbled. "But even one…"

"We should be so lucky," he replied.

"So you'll be able to notice any of this stuff?" Buffy asked.

"Well I imagine in the heat of battle it might be a little harder, but simple reagent identification is the stuff of third level. I know it forwards and backwards," Nigel replied haughtily.

Buffy was just relieved it wouldn't be another distraction for Jonathan. "Good, that's one of your jobs then." She turned back to Amy and the Rat King. (She still had two of the rats on her head, like a weird hat.) "So how are we handling the poison?"

"He thought it over, and he's got two options for you," Amy said. "First, there are these necklaces." She got out a weirdly shaped metal charm on a string of what looked like rat hair. "If you wear one of these, it'll let you breathe normally in spite of the dimensional toxicity by filtering the air intake directly."

"It looks fragile," Buffy said.

"It kind of is," Amy agreed. "And you can't wear it under anything, or around anything but your neck, or it won't work. Has to be exposed to the air, has to attune to your neck chakra. No way around it with this kind of implementation."

It'd be a big vulnerability in a fight. Losing it wouldn't be instant death, but it'd probably be crippling for any long period, or for a big battle. Then again… "Can we just carry extras?"

"Yes, that'd be smart, but even a couple bad lungfuls of the magic in the air are going to take a while to wear off," Amy said. "And you can't wear two at once, the interference would be worse than not having one at all."

"Awkward. But I guess it could work. What's the other way," Buffy asked.

"Popping pills," Amy said, and then put one on the table. It was a little gnarly, but not nearly as weird looking as the necklace. "One of those will protect you from the negative effects for about two hours."

"Seems safer in a fight than the necklace," Buffy said. Even if she was a little leery of taking them, without trusting the Rat King here none of this could work at all.

"There are drawbacks," Amy said. "You can only take one of them every day or so, so once your time's up, thats it. Even worse, you can't combine them with the necklaces at all, they alter the same magical patterns and mess each other up. If you take a pill the necklaces won't work right for a day; if you put on a necklace the pills won't work right for a day. So it's pretty much one or the other."

"We should be in and out in two hours, easy," Buffy said.

"We should," Skip agreed. "Should isn't always how this stuff goes. But it's not my problem, I don't need either."

"Well, I personally favor the necklaces," Nigel said. "Operating under a timer like that, it seems ghastly."

"They aren't that flashy, at least," Phillip said. "But they are uniform. If a savvy opponent recognizes that, it could get us all in a lot of trouble." He looked toward Jonathan, troubled, "I don't suppose you could do something to make them a little less obvious."

"No way, I can't cover those up too, at least not specifically. I'm already going to have my -"

At that point, the radios in the room flared to life, someone saying, "We have contact!" Then there was the sound of fighting and splashing and orders and screams and the sounds of Andrew's weird flute. Before Buffy could ask what was going on, it artificially quieted, and CyberWillow could be heard calmly speaking over it. "Xander Harris' team has encountered the enemy during their investigation of Psi-Theta House."

If Buffy really floored the gas she could be back there in mere minutes. She had her hammer back in her hands and was already getting up as CyberWillow continued. "They have not yet requested reinforcements, and my meta analysis of the audio suggests the situation is under control. From the distinct holy water sizzle, they are fighting all or mostly vampires, and I cannot identify any of the cries or screams indicating injury as SDCW officers. It is less than 1.4% likely you could reach them in time to participate, even if you meet your historical top speed of 215 miles per hour on the road." At the same time, Amy was feverishly translating for the Rat King, in that alien susurrus of squeaks and clicks.

"We trained for this all summer," Jonathan said, his face pinched like he wasn't sure if he should speak up. "And you might think of Xander as someone to keep off the front line, but to us? He knows what he's doing. That soldier stuff is the real deal."

It wasn't like the SDCW hadn't gone after vamp nests before either. They'd even taken on Teeth's gang at the hospital all by themselves, what seemed like a million years ago, with way less experience and equipment. But it was so hard for her to just listen to it. People she knew could get hurt. Xander could get hurt. She still forced herself to sit back down.

What she heard of Xander's orders coming through didn't seem panicked, and the fight was slowly winding down. Suddenly the noise picked back up though, with a couple zapping sounds, renewed scuffling, and a ton of shouting.

"Armed HSTs!"

"Some kind of liquid-based attack!"

"You idiots! She's going to get away!"

"- tased Officer Stone!"

"-DCW, maybe compromised.

Then Xander could be heard again, clearly. "Somehow I'm not surprised to see you in the least. Do you want to call off your dogs or am I going to need to start giving them belly rubs?"

"Don't talk to her! I'm in command!" Buffy didn't think it sounded like Finn.

"So you're telling me you're the one responsible for letting the fangy dropout queen escape? Do you guys have badge numbers, because I'm really thinking someone needs to be screamed at about this."

"She was dancing around like a master vamp," Faith said. "You and the stooge patrol would've never caught her in a million years."

"I guess we'll never know, will we, because you tased the guys pinning her in. Did you give the boys a personal lesson in friendly fire? I know you have trouble with this concept, but it's something to avoid." Xander was seriously bitter, but from the sounds of what happened Buffy was pissed too. She had half a mind to speak up herself, but it'd probably undermine him. She'd trusted him to handle a fight, she could trust him to handle this.

"Maybe I'm not feeling that friendly at the moment," Faith replied.

"I guess you always did run hot and cold."

That got a growl out of Faith. "Screw these civvies, let's bail."

The theoretically-commanding Initiative soldier followed her lead, saying. "We're done. Move out."

"And you'd better be ready for those medical bills! We know your home address and we're not afraid to use it!" She could tell it was just Xander giving a parting shot, but she hoped whoever got tased wasn't actually seriously hurt.

After giving it about a minute, she spoke into the radio. "That sounded like fun."

"I'd claim the total commonality between Faith and fun is 'things that begin in F'" Xander said.

She was almost afraid to ask. She didn't know what she'd have to do if the answer was bad. "Is everyone OK?"

"Did she have to kill my scorpion? I have such a headache now," Andrew complained.

"I remember them saying the amperage has a limiter, you know, when we met them before," On better terms went unsaid. "Brent's unconscious, and Officer Stone too. Their vitals check out fine though. We'll get them down to the hospital just in case."

"And they let one of the vamps get away?"

"From us, yes. From the '80s? Never. She got into a sewer access, we won't be able to catch her from here."

"But you got the rest right?"

"All four. She was the leader though, had the whole evil smack talk thing going on."

Another problem, all hers thanks to Faith and the Initiative. "You did the best you could."

"That's not always good enough," he sighed. "Talk to ya later." The line clicked off.

Amy had been chittering explanations back and forth with the Rat King the whole time, but the watchers had been quiet until now. "So. There she is." Phillip's words sounded weighty.

"You can tell her charming personality wasn't affected by all that time horizontal," Buffy said. She managed to stop herself from finishing the dig. Faith had lots of experience with being horizontal.

"The situation is totally unacceptable," Nigel agreed. "Hopefully Quentin's efforts will bear fruit soon."

"You guys could probably spend all day talking about how much you hate Faith, but we do have some more topics to cover," Amy reminded them.

"Yeah, you're right," Buffy said. "So, the big game's tomorrow, and we need to finalize this roster. That depends on you Jonathan. What have you got for me?"

"So, first I wanted to use a Veil," he said.

"With a group this big? For that length of time? In unfamiliar terrain" Nigel was shocked. "That's impossible."

"I can do it," Jonathan said. "It's just difficult, not impossible."

"How does a Veil work exactly?" Buffy asked.

"It's sort of like being invisible, except it's more about being really difficult to notice. The problem is that Veils are expensive and finicky."

"Dollar expensive? Not so big a big now." Buffy asked. They'd had to spend ten grand on Skip's retainer already, and that was the friendly rate. She'd gotten used to the idea that what before would seem like huge amounts of money to her were necessary to do things right sometimes.

"That too, but more importantly, energy expensive," Jonathan said. "I don't know exactly how long I could make it last. The dimensional compactifications would all be different than I'm used to here. And also, I couldn't stretch it to more than seven people. They'd all have to stay close, and any active magic or violence would pop it. No summoning or slaying or anything like that underneath it."

"You could unpop it though, right?"

"Surely not, if he can even raise it in the first place," Nigel said.

"Maybe," Jonathan disagreed. "Probably at least once."

"So just seven," Buffy said. Her, Jonathan, Skip, Bantha, Nigel, Phillip. That was already six. It'd be tight.

Then again, a lot of her other options were problematic. Harmony wouldn't have to worry about the atmosphere, but she wasn't quite fully recovered yet from what happened with Kathy. Bringing her might be a bad idea anyway. Andrew had powerful magic, but if he couldn't use it under the Veil, he could get in the way a little bit. Giles and Xander were more reliable than these sketchy new watchers, but this was going to be really dangerous. They didn't have powers of their own. A selfish part of her wanted to keep them out of the fray.

"Just seven," Jonathan said. "And I can already see the mission is getting pretty big, so there's something else I could do that's a little easier. I could project a glamer to fool the special Mok'tagar spirit sense. They'd all see us as more of them."

"I really do have to speak up, glamering a sense one does not even have would not remotely qualify as easy or reliable," Nigel said.

"Look, I know what I'm doing OK?" Jonathan said. "I've been studying Wilkins' old books on this stuff all summer."

"He's been studying all summer, what could go wrong?" Nigel said. "You can barely even identify basic ingredients!"

"But that has nothing to do with any of this!" Jonathan argued. He was starting to lose his cool.

"Nigel? Can it," Buffy ordered. Her hand gripped her hammer's shaft, but she knew that even the gesture was probably excessive. She let it go again. "If you want to be constructive? Great. But if Jonathan says he can do it, he can. I've trusted him before, he's been doing field magic all summer. Now let him finish explaining."

Nigel looked rebellious, but he didn't say anything more. Phillip was quietly concerned, and as they had been all meeting, Amy and the Rat King were quietly Rat-talking at each other incomprehensibly.

"So the glamer wouldn't be nearly perfect for other senses, but Mok'tagar really over-rely on that one. Like humans with vision or dogs with smell. It'd be good enough. If anything that wasn't a Mok'tagar really got an up close look though, maybe it wouldn't be so good."

"So the idea is we'd bluff our way in?" Buffy asked.

"Yeah, we would have three people who speak the language, right?" Jonathan asked.

"Call it two and three-quarters," Skip said.

"Well, the rest of us could just stay quiet," Jonathan said. "And this would be more durable. I could expand it to any number of people and it'd only lose strength proportionally, I don't think it'd run out of juice, and I wouldn't lose the spell unless I got knocked out or something."

"But you said earlier, it wouldn't cover up the necklaces, if we went with those?" Buffy clarified.

"Amy, those aren't specifically glamer-friendly, are they?" She shook her head. Jonathan shrugged. "I don't think the magic would agree that well, we'd just look like Mok'tagar wearing weird necklaces."

"They kind of go with the aesthetic?" Amy said. She wasn't totally wrong.

"So basically, either we sneak in for real, but that's hard, or we kind of bluff our way in, but that involves bluffing," Buffy summarized.

"I should hope our native guide would be competent enough for that," Phillip said. It went unsaid that they'd all just found out he was coming off a massive bender.

"I wish I could do more, but I'm really at my limit with this," Jonathan said.

"Don't get down," Buffy said. "This is great stuff, really. We've got illusions, we've got people, we've even got the good-old poison cures. We just have to stick 'em all together. Like baking a cake. A cake of assassinations and looting." They had a lot of pieces to work with here, surely they could work it out.


Plan Vote: Voting by plan here for how you want to do the mission. Plans should include the full roster, the concealment method, the poison control method, and any additional plan-adjacent stuff. Nigel and Phillip expect to be along for this one but you could theoretically chuck them back out, whereas the other four (Buffy, Jonathan, Skip, Bantha) are all more strictly necessary.

Example:

[] Drusilla's Plan
-[] Party: Angel, Darla, Drusilla, Spike, Harmony
-[] Concealment method: None, just murder everyone
-[] Poison control: None, they're all vampires
-[] Additional notes: Burn the whole city to the ground

Note: Plan votes can be complicated. Since we have some new readers, I'll restate that everyone is invited to join the Discord for Successor.