[X] Buffy and Willow were going to attend the year's first Wicca group meeting at UC Sunnydale tonight and try to do some recruiting. Xander could go with the two potentials in their stead, but it might be kind of awkward. At least the flyer said everyone was welcome.
"Hi, is this the Wicca group?" Xander asked.
The circle of girls they'd approached looked around among themselves, confused, before a mousy brunette spoke up. "We're the Daughters of Gaea," she paused uncertainly. "Are you here for-"
"Ohmigawdess that's Councilor Jenkins!" she was interrupted by an excited redhead who'd just noticed Anya in the group behind him. "I voted for you! Can I have your autograph? My name is Cheryl."
"That's nice, and yes, you may," Anya stepped past him and whipped out one of her little business card things, handing it to the girl. Even though her signature was printed on, that probably wasn't what the redhead had meant, but Anya was already addressing the whole circle now. "We're here to visit your coven today on behalf of your fair city's government!"
The brunette looked wary. "That's, umm, do you all worship Gaia?"
"I actually truck with Freya, mostly, but that's close enough, right?" Anya said. "I guess I've lapsed a little. This is my boyfriend who also runs the City Watch, and these two are from England."
"Not actually British," Rachel said in her obviously American accent.
"We met with the Devon Coven once though," Zoe said.
"Great," she said unenthusiastically. "I'm Nicole. I inherited the coven from Sally last year. It's usually a student thing."
"But we're always glad to accept everyone into our circle!" Cheryl said. "You should all sit down so we can get started. Are you two exchange students? Like those nice people from Tajikistan?"
"Something like that," Zoe said diplomatically.
"Of course, all are welcome," Nicole agreed, only sounding a little reluctant. "So we should talk about fundraising this year. Nobody likes having club fees, and that means-"
"What about the prayer to the goddess?" Someone in the circle asked. There was a murmur of agreement.
"How could I forget," Nicole said. She put both her hands to the side and everyone took that as a signal to join up in a circle. Even Rachel didn't put up a fuss about it, which was encouraging.
"We come together, daughters of Gaia, sisters to the moon, we walk with the darkness, the wolf at our side through the waterfall of power to the blackest heart of eternity." Nicole managed to put some vigor into her possibly dark chant despite her earlier lack of enthusiasm, and he gave Anya a little side eye. She started repeating the chant with everyone else though, so he figured it was fine on the mojo front, and joined in himself. He could live with the 'sisters' thing if it got him another spellcaster or three.
"So, as I was saying before, we should have a bake sale," Nicole continued.
"Oh, can you do the thing with the lemons again?" Another girl asked.
"Yes, but we should try to be a little more restrained about eating up all our profits this time," Nicole had a fake-looking smile.
"Hey, I followed the threefold rule! I made those big pans of brownies."
"The soggy ones? Less than half of those even sold," someone else complained.
"Don't let her spoil your energy, I liked your brownies," a heavyset one said.
"Big surprise," someone whispered.
"I'm sure there will be plenty of interest in all your enhanced baked goods," Anya said authoritatively. Then, lower, "Do we still have some space in this month's Watch budget, Xander?"
"That'd be very generous," Nicole was all smiles now.
"We could probably make some room," Xander said. "But just to make sure we don't have any misunderstandings, these aren't the evil kind of magic cookies right? I don't want to harsh anyone's vibes, but we've had our fair share of unfortunate egg-related incidents."
"We don't make edibles for the bake sale," one of them tried to clarify, then she realized who she was talking to. "Or at all, ever. Because that would be illegal."
"Way to be smooth, Chloe."
Xander wasn't sure if this was some kind of witch-code. "I'll admit I might not know every law squirrely old Wilkins put on the books, but if it's just to help everyone out-"
"She means drugged food, not magic," Rachel sighed.
"Oh, yeah, we wouldn't want to buy those," Xander backpedaled. "But the magic ones, those would still be great."
"What kinds of effects do they have?" Anya asked. "Are we talking your standard health and good fortune, or do you do more specialized ones? I had this blueberry haste thing in 1567 that was just to die for. I think it was in the shape of a star."
"Wait, what are you people even talking about?" Nicole said.
"Magic cookies. I thought that was what we were all talking about," Anya said.
"The magic of our bake sale is holistic," Chloe explained. "Our food brings you into harmony with the Earth."
"So you mean it doesn't do anything," Rachel said.
"Rude!"
"Wait." Zoe said. "I think there's been a misunderstanding. Are you actually a coven of witches? With real spells and magic?"
The assembled group mostly looked at them as if they were crazy. "Is this like, some kind of joke," Nicole said, looking at Xander. "Because if it is, it's seriously disempowering. Did you put these girls up to this?"
A blonde girl with big eyes started slowly, "We might want to actually listen to-"
"I'm sure they just wanted to liven up our first meeting!" Cheryl said, cutting her off. "We should play along! Sure our cookies are magic! We deliver them across the land, flying on our magic broomsticks!"
"We didn't mean any harm." Xander waved his hands vaguely, feeling embarrassed and hoping to calm down the situation. "But now that I think about it, we probably should've expected the college wicca group to just be a college wicca group."
"What did you expect us to be instead?" Nicole asked, sounding like she was at her wit's end.
"There are a lot of actual witches in Sunnydale," Anya said less diplomatically. "You girls are failing to measure up."
Nicole rolled her eyes. "If everyone's so magical, why don't you show us some spells?"
The four of them looked at each other, and then Xander spoke. "Well, the thing is, the high fantasy crew was more than a little busy tonight-"
"I bet," one of them said.
"I could maybe try-" the blonde started again.
"Is this some prank? Are we on candid camera?" another one interrupted her.
"Councilor Jenkins would never do anything that mean-spirited," Cheryl said uncertainly. "Would you?"
"Hey," Xander said, pausing the dogpile, "Seems to me like one of your own has an idea what we're talking about. What's your name?"
"Me?" The blonde said nervously. "I'm Tara. I'm new here too. In the club I mean. Not that you were new to Sunnydale."
"That's right," Nicole said. "A real new member, here to bond with the earth and stand for female empowerment. You're not going to help them with their fetishistic clown show, are you?"
"Umm..." she said, trailing off.
"Don't let her boss you around!" Anya said. "Getting all shy with powers when it matters is how lots of witches get burnt at the stake!"
"That's pretty offensive," a girl said.
"How many witch burnings have you been to?" Anya snapped back.
"You don't have to do anything if you aren't comfortable," Xander said, trying to defuse the situation. "But if you want to hear us out, there's a coven we work with that might be a little more your speed."
"I think-", Tara started.
"Who said you were allowed to poach our members!" Nicole said. "This is the student union, not-"
"Not the city union!" one of her friends finished for her.
"Yeah! This isn't the city union!" Nicole continued.
"I guess we'll just take our leave then," Xander said, getting up. "May the goddess be with you?"
"Whatever." Nicole said. "Just go."
The rest of his group followed him, expressions ranging from amused to annoyed.
"Tara?" Xander said, "You can come with, if you want."
She got up quickly and scuttled away from the Wicca group, keeping her eyes low and not saying anything.
"Feel free to come back next week!" Cheryl called as they left.
"Are there laws against this kind of false advertising?" Anya asked. "If there aren't, can we make some?"
"They were calling themselves Wiccans, not witches," Zoe pointed out.
"Wiccans in the blackest heart of eternity," Rachel drolled. "Still not super impressed with your hellmouth."
They exited through the student union doors and Xander took a quick look around. Despite it not being too late into the night yet, there weren't any lurking students, or lurking anything else he could see.
He had a good feeling about Tara, but it was best to be a little careful. "So, Tara, we could meet some of our actual coven of spellcasters now, but there's kind of a thing."
"I understand if you want to test me first. I, I could maybe levitate something?" Tara looked like a puppy worried she might have to go back to the pound.
"No, no, nothing like that," he reassured her. "Though that's a good skill. But can you keep a secret?"
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Zoe had been interested in the specifics of Anya's job, so she was showing the potentials her office while Xander dropped Tara off in the basement. Instead of a nearly full coven in the study room though, he'd just found an exhausted looking Willow scribbling some terror math on a sheet as the Rat King (maybe?) looked on.
"Hi, Tara, I'm Willow. So Xander decided to just grab you straight off of campus and throw you into our secret research meeting to save the mayor of Sunnydale from an exploding volcano?" Well, when she put it like that, it sounded like a worse idea.
"Umm, I, yes?" Tara said fearfully.
"That's stellar," Willow said. "And I mean that. We're pretty busy, we could use the help."
"You and the ... Rat King?" Being fair, Xander could guess Tara's fear wasn't all or even mostly from Willow's frazzled appearance and sarcastic greeting, but from the brain-melting and nigh incomprehensible form of the Rat King swarming around in the room. He'd warned Tara about him, but some things you had to see to really understand.
"I think most of the others are sleeping," Willow replied. "Definitely Giles and Amy. Andrew might be doing his gossiping spymaster thing, I guess. We don't need much more from him for a while."
"Speaking of, when was the last time you slept, Will?" Xander said.
"Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies," she said.
"Willow Rosenberg has been awake for 36 hours, 23 minutes, and 13 seconds," CyberWillow commented. Xander almost thought he could hear disapproval.
"Traitor," Willow grumbled.
"Wow! Was that your AI?" Tara asked.
"Yeah, Xander told you about it? CyberWillow's been getting naggy today." she said.
"I want Buffy back as much as anyone, but are you really going to marathon through this whole thing?" Xander was concerned.
"No, I'm just on the verge of a breakthrough. I need to finish this one thing," she said.
"Finish what exactly?" Xander asked.
Willow got a gleam in her eye. "Tara, you don't have any experience in teaching aliens calculus, do you? Amy sucks at math, she gave up on translating for me a few hours ago."
Tara's eyes seemed to get even wider than they already were. "It's not exactly my specialty? I got a B+ last year."
"Darn. Well, anyway, do you think that's supposed to be a sine wave?" Willow pointed at a squiggly scratch in the paper she was using. "If it is, we're in luck, but I'm afraid it might just be a rat tail instead."
"I'm really not sure," she said. "Is there anything else I can do to help?"
"How are you at Latin?" Willow asked. "Everyone but Giles is pretty terrible at Latin."
"My mom taught me," Tara said. "It's really important not to mess up when you're doing an invocation."
"That's a relief," Willow said. "Can you look through that pile of books for references to time dilation across interdimensional portals? It probably isn't phrased exactly like that." The pile of old tomes Willow pointed at was more of a demented looking nest at this point, with some of the Rat King rats running in and out of it.
"I'll do my best," she said uncertainly.
Xander was about to step out, but Willow interrupted him. "Wait, Xander, I just remembered. I called Warren earlier to get some of his relativistic portal data."
"He had the answer everyone's looking for?" Xander asked.
"Not really, since a lot of what he did was just black-box applications, but he narrowed it down a little. But that's not what I wanted to tell you; he just finished building some new technogadget and wanted me to look."
"You seem like you have enough on your plate already," he said.
She shook her head. "I'm not even praying to the coffee gods that hard. But why don't you go and check it out? If he wants to field test it now's the perfect time."
Xander hesitated. Warren had made some adventurous noises over the last month, but he'd been hesitant to get him too involved with the darker side of things due to the whole Harmony situation. That said, they were really strapped for manpower right now, and short Buffy on top of that. "Does he know about Harmony and Buffy yet?"
"I mean, he might. I don't know for a fact that he doesn't," she said.
"This town gives me the darnedest jobs," Xander said. "I suppose I should call him up and see if he'll come out tonight."
"It may interest you to know that Warren fell asleep at his workbench 83 minutes ago," CyberWillow interjected. "It is unlikely he would be ready to patrol at maximum capacity."
"What a convenient excuse to wait until tomorrow," he said.
"He really tries," Willow said. "I feel kind of bad for him."
"I'm sure the nifty spy gadgets he gave you have nothing to do with that," Xander cracked.
"My sympathy is maybe a little bit bribable," Willow admitted.
"Can I bribe you to go to sleep?" he tried.
"Soon! Just let me be, I'm sure I'll get through to the Rat King within an hour," she said.
"Well I'll leave you two to it then!" Xander said cheerily. Then he faux-whispered to Tara, "Try to make sure she goes to bed eventually."
Despite how loud he was, Willow already had her attention back to the paper and didn't even notice, but Tara gave him a little nod. He got the impression that the Rat King did too, but that was confusing for lots of reasons and he tried to ignore it.
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Despite Xander's worries, Saturday had ended up being a quiet night. Faith hadn't gone on another rampage, none of the city's hotspots were attacked, and there hadn't been any flare-ups of inconveniently true rumors about Buffy. At least none that he knew about.
Of course, that didn't mean he didn't have to handle an entirely different inconveniently true Buffy rumor right now.
"Ta-da!" Warren said, making a dramatic flair and pulling the sheet off of a familiar robotic looking minotaur. It was seriously huge, at least nine feet tall counting the horns. Even more fearsomely, it looked battered by war and was covered in resoldered scars, plus it carried a long club that was made out of bent pieces of rebar.
"Does a robot really need horns?" Rachel asked skeptically.
"They're pretty decent weapons," Warren said defensively. "But even if they weren't, this one does. I think all the metal in the golem was enchanted as one piece, so leaving any part of the design out leaves it a lot weaker. Believe me, I tried."
He could tell Warren and Rachel's personalities weren't exactly meshing, but that was the least of his problems now.
"The magic and tech were mixy? And not in a way where it'll go crazy and murder us?" Xander remembered the thing being pretty homicidal in Wilkins' maze trap months ago. He felt wary.
"Yeah, the enchantments used to make it a really good golem are general enough that they also work to make the chassis a really good robot," Warren said, not addressing the murder possibility. "A lot of the scaling problems and dexterity issues just melted away. It's too bad you don't have more of these things for me to refurbish, I could make a whole army!"
"Because what So-Cal city doesn't want a mad scientist's robot army?" Rachel said.
"I'm going to take 'mad scientist' as a compliment," Warren replied, striking a little pose as he talked. "So Buffy finally wants me on the front lines? When do we start?"
Willow hadn't even told him she was gone? Well, he definitely needed to know now. "Buffy's not available, which is the problem. The whole magic department is trying to get her back from another dimension right now."
"What? That was what Willow needed the data for? Do they need my help? I can-"
"Willow seemed to think she had that side of things under control," Xander tried to calm him down. "But the Watch is fresh out of problem solvers and heavy hitters right now, and the diplomatic situation with the Initiative hasn't gotten any better in the last week."
"Well, if she's sure," Warren said uncertainly. "This isn't about the whole date thing is it? I swear I don't hold it against her or anything. I even implemented LGBT awareness for Mears Research and Development."
Xander took a second to process that, and then another second. "You already knew about Harmony?"
"Harris, Harris," Warren said shaking his head. "I'm not some stuck-up CEO with my head in the clouds. I know my workers, I go to clubs, I'm plugged into the rumor mill of this city. I might've known before you did!"
Xander doubted that, but if it made him happy he'd let him believe it. "And you're not … disappointed?"
"I was relieved actually," he said. "I mean, she barely gave me the time of day for a month, I thought it was me. But she was just a lesbian all along. I can't even fault her, I mean seriously, have you seen Harmony?"
"I went to school with her for thirteen years," Xander said.
Aha, he continued, then pointed both fingers to his head. "Maybe she doesn't have a lot up here, but down here?" He pointed to his chest. "She's delectable."
"Don't be gross," Rachel said.
"Are you here for a reason, or did you just come to make snarky comments?" Warren said.
"Now let's not say anything we'll regret," Xander began, but then his radio rang at him. Conversation paused as he picked it up.
The Police Chief's voice came out. "Xander. It's Matt. It's looking like we might have your kind of problem."
He'd known in his gut something would come, but in the middle of the afternoon? "Lay it on me."
"A big sinkhole just opened up and cut a hole in University Drive, over by Dunwirth. Back in San Fran I'd just be blaming it on all the new construction nearby, but-"
It was close enough to one of the new buildings that merely mundane shoddy architecture could still be it, but Xander wasn't holding out much hope. "Yeah, that could be bad, I'll get down there right away. Try to keep a perimeter but you don't need to be heroes."
Xander called what was available of the Watch for reinforcements, but he knew that whatever this was, it might be something that called for heavy artillery. "Is your robot up for a field test?"
"Is it ever!" he said. "Beastman, register these two as friendlies and then follow me." It nodded rigidly, and started to move with them to the building's exit, making heavy steps that were quick but noisy.
"That thing must weigh more than your car, Xander, how are we even going to get it anywhere?" Rachel said.
"I've got a solution ready for just this situation," Warren said as they walked outside. Instead of heading to his convertible, he opened up the door to a pickup truck. "Beastman, get in the back. One of you might have to ride back there too, unless you want to get cozy."
"I'll just get Rachel in my car, we'll want the siren for this anyway," Xander said. "Just stay on my tail."
Xander drove aggressively, and MRD wasn't that far from UC Sunnydale in the first place, so they were the first Watch members on the scene. Xander wasn't sure what he'd expected, but this was way bigger. The giant hole in the road seemed to lead down to a half-collapsed tunnel going crosswise to it, going further underground and towards the college campus. Despite all the wreckage everywhere, there was a fairly clear path in, and he could tell it wasn't natural; the walls were way too clean in some places.
Two cop cars were already blocking off the road on each side of the sinkhole, and as luck would have it their side was manned by Bernie and Jack.
"Funny seeing you guys here," Bernie said. "This town, huh?"
"I'm happy someone thinks this is funny," he responded. "Anya's going to freak at the repair costs for this."
"Come to the hellmouth, fear the detours and construction bills," Rachel said.
"Woah, what's that?" The normally quiet Jack had caught sight of Warren's Beastman robot as it was stomping over to them.
"Meet the Beastman mark 1. The cavalry's here, boys," Warren said. Then turning back. "Register the policemen as friendlies."
"When exactly did this open up?" Xander asked. He popped the trunk of his Firebird and started handing out weapons. Unfortunately he didn't have an AK handy, but there was still a good selection of holy water, crossbows, and axes for close-in work. He'd long since started wearing a Glock everywhere too.
"It was still fallin' in when we drove up," Bernie said. "Can't have been fifteen minutes since then, you're on top of it today."
It was lucky, because Xander had a feeling time was of the essence when giant pits started to open up, but at the same time jumping underground headfirst gave him a bad feeling. He got out his radio. "Andrew, you got an ETA? We could maybe use some scouting here."
"I'm just getting out of my weekly with Zezzlenar," he said. "Cleanup for it isn't the kind of thing you should really cut too short, there are some pretty unsavory characters living where he comes from. I think I can be out there in maybe half an hour? Twenty five minutes if I speed?"
"Don't speed. You'll get here when you do," Xander said. Andrew getting into an accident with his new driver's license was the last thing they all needed right now. It put Xander in a tough position though.
Maybe another idea then. "CyberWillow, do we have anything on a tunnel crossing the road in the underground here? Like on a map maybe?"
"This tunnel is on no maps that I have in my possession. It could either be new, unexplored, or just poorly documented. I will inform you if in the course of your explorations you come near underground features which are better known." It said a lot about his life that the AI assumed he was going to rush headlong into the mysterious pit.
Vote: Now or later?
[] Xander's group goes down into the pit to explore immediately, with Warren's Beastman robot leading the way. It could be dangerous, but letting whatever's going on fester could be worse.
[] Discretion is the better part of valor. Xander will wait for more reinforcements, most specifically Andrew. The scouting capabilities his on-the-spot demon summoning gives are too valuable to go without here.
