Successor (BTVS)

[X] Focus the search around the movie set, trying to find whatever's anchoring the transformation spell.

Buffy sat on the bridge next to Skip-who-was-still-Steel, watching the Sun finish going down on one screen as the scans of the set slowly resolved on another. Painfully slowly.

When she'd decided to put her own transformation concerns aside today to search for whatever was ensnaring the cast, she'd really been expecting it to be a little speedier. Then again, it probably shouldn't have been a surprise that Sunnydale was rotten with old portal locations and other magical noise.

She was talking with the search teams on the ground over the radio. "You're sure the Easley warehouse is empty? It keeps getting more dots on our screen."

"It's not empty-empty," Oz said. "The burnt sage I'm smelling definitely has a hint of being blessed twice."

"Is that a portal thing?" She asked.

"It can be, but it's pretty old, I think whatever this was was something different than we're looking for. Maybe also involving bananas," Oz sounded more confounded about that.

"There are no matches for twice blessed sage and bananas in the ritual database," CyberWillow interjected.

"They might've just warped in and really wanted some bananas," Oz said. "I wouldn't mind a banana myself right now."

The Nezumi beeped at that.

"Wrap the place up then I guess," Buffy said. "We'll call in with the next target."

Buffy would rather be down on the streets herself, but it wouldn't be smart. Even if the crew seemed agreeable now, that could change quick if she wasn't up here to keep them honest. Still, as she fidgeted in the not at all ergonomic chair, she felt like she was forgetting something important. There was definitely a lot going on, but- oh no.

She checked her fancy watch, despite knowing it was way too late already. "I missed class. Mom's gonna freak."

"Class? I thought you were mayor? Why do you need to go to class?" For all that she was supposed to be a different person, Charisma acted a lot like Cordelia. Privately, Buffy thought she kinda lacked range.

"I find myself more surprised that she cares what her mother thinks," Skip said. "Not to impugn your character. It's still hard to disassociate you from Ringer."

"Cynthia Danvers successfully had your lecture recorded," CyberWillow added. "I would've been able to arrange it more efficiently, but she insisted it was her responsibility." It was definitely nice, but it wasn't the same.

"It's complicated," Buffy answered Skip and Cordelia. "She wanted me to go to college, but I really don't have the time. So we compromised. But part of that was making an effort to be at the one class I actually took."

"But if you needed a college degree to be mayor, wouldn't you already not be one?" Cordelia continued.

"It's not like it isn't useful," Buffy defended, despite herself. "I'm learning microeconomics, and Sunnydale definitely needs more economics in its micro. We lose money every month (if you don't count the looting.) It's been very engaging, and illuminating, and other college words too."

She shrugged. "Whatever floats your boat. It's hard to see you as an academic though."

Buffy rolled her eyes. "I'm really nothing like Ringer."

"Keep telling yourself that," Cordelia said, smiling a little.

"Like if I was picking a fake name, Sarah?" Buffy kept talking. "Not even on the list. It would start with a 'J'"

"We should check that building next," Clem suggested, walking in from one of the smaller compartments and pointing at the screen. "What is it?"

It had been picking up more dots lately, but Buffy was dismissive once she recognized the location. It was kind of on the outskirts of the area they were searching, but that wasn't really why she was skeptical. "That's the museum we went to for school. Natural History? Giles has had all the museums in town under his thumb for months though."

"There is good camera coverage in all the public areas," CyberWillow confirmed. "Nothing suspicious is immediately visible."

Figuring it couldn't hurt to be safe, Buffy dialed Giles. "When was the last time you were at the Natural History Museum?"

There was a pause as Giles (unnecessarily) fumbled with his radio, but he was at least confident in its operation at this point. "Do you think it might hold a clue with regards to the owl invasion? I believe one stuffed example is included in a small exhibit, but there was nothing unnatural about it last I checked."

"No, but we should probably have that looked at again. Also any rats." She was pretty sure it wouldn't cause an interdimensional incident, but only pretty sure, not completely. "But that's not the big deal. The building's starting to show up on the dimensional whatchamahoozit."

"Dimensional leakage detector," Clem corrected, sounding peeved.

"You believe that could be the source of the transformation spell?" Giles asked.

"Well, it isn't super more likely than the last ten places we tried, but-"

"No, no, I understand," Giles assured her. "I can't rule out any suspicious activity either, the last time I was there was this Monday. Olivia's been rather interested in seeing the sights."

Something about that tickled a nerve. "You brought her to the set too, didn't you?"

"Yes, earlier that day," he said pleasantly. "I know it's surprising to those of us who live here, but Sunnydale's attractions really are quite enchanting to the uninitiated."

"Well, it's not like you let her go wandering around alone in the backrooms, right?" It was probably just a coincidence anyway.

"Well, not as such," he hesitated. "Perhaps for a few minutes. I was showing her through the archives, and I found a number of things dreadfully out of place. I might have been distracted. But there's really no reason to worry, Olivia didn't even believe in the supernatural a month ago, she could hardly manage something so complicated even if she did have nefarious motives."

"But still-"

"We should look into it, of course," Giles agreed hastily, sounding less confident as they went on. "I'll go and find her."

"Probably a good move." Buffy flicked a switch on her radio. "Oz, we're gonna check out the natural history museum next. I'll call-"

"That looks bad," Clem interrupted.

Buffy looked up and saw a new spike on the edge of the sensor screen, falling back off even as she looked. The changing colors weren't quite in the city proper, but over the desert just past the town line. "Define bad."

"Well, I'm only guessing, but my guesses are usually right. We just saw a portal event in real time," he said.

"But there's nothing there," Buffy said.

"Then it's just out in the open," Skip said. He poked at some controls and the viewscreen reoriented as she felt the ship turn and rise under her. It was a little too dark to see clearly now, especially to the North, away from the water, but then it shifted to false color and everything came into view.

"Wow, that's sure a lot of owls," Cordelia said. "Steel, make sure to save a shot of this for the paper!"

"Oz, I think you'll have to manage the search on your own for a while," Buffy said.

"Sounds like a plan," He answered neutrally through the radio. "Good luck with your owls."

"You have weapons on this thing right?" Buffy said.

"I won't say this isn't unusual," Skip stopped, then continued. "Well, even more unusual. But is that sort of response really warranted?"

She hadn't bothered to tell them about the owl crisis yet. "Yes! I mean, they're evil owls."

"Evil Owls." Cordelia said dismissively.

"Yes! Evil owls!" Buffy decided that reasonable explanations weren't really possible right now. "Look, I had to ally with the rats to stop everyone getting magic cancer, but now they pissed off the owls who've come to eat them all. I know it seems ridiculous, but they're dangerous, just shoot them!"

"If they were normal earth animals they probably wouldn't be coming through a gate between dimensions," Clem said reasonably.

"Beep-boop, boopbeep-bit beeree tweet boop buzzitree-beep."

Skip nodded at the Nezumi drones. "Well, I guess that isn't the worst argument I've ever heard, or even the second worst. I'll close into glazer range."

"First we start trusting Ringer, now we're going off to massacre endangered wildlife," Cordelia sighed.

The Nezumi flew over the city, approaching the swarm of owls at an impressive clip. Even in the fading light of the evening, it must have been a more impressive sight than the lazy hovering it'd been doing all day. Buffy didn't doubt their cover story (that the Nezumi was a promotional hologram) would hold with the general populace, but the Initiative had to be freaking out now if they weren't already.

After only a minute or two, they were over the desert and ready to engage. The swarm of owls was flying in loose formation, hundreds or possibly thousands strong. She wasn't sure where they were heading, but their flight looked organized in the same way it had been last night. They definitely had a target picked out.

They wouldn't reach it this time, if Buffy had anything to say about it. In the last moments, they seemed to notice the Nezumi's rapid approach, and the owls reacted quickly, trying to change their formation around. Even so, they didn't have time.

"I'm locking on the center of mass, and firing, now," The glazers lanced out, dull yellow lines that quickly faded out of existence as they shot forward. Their limited range was enough for this job however, as owls burned and disintegrated in their path. Buffy had been pretty sure the Captain Steel persona would hesitate to use terror weapons like those to kill humans, but she was still happy she hadn't had to chance it earlier today.
KILL
Buffy had the terrible feeling their victory would be short lived. "Swerve!"

"What?" Skip said, not swerving at all, and then pinging sounds rained on the ship from above, and there was an ominous crunch of metal. The Nezumi shook under their feet as it started listing downwards, and Skip struggled with the controls, trying to preserve altitude. The viewscreen even dimmed for a moment, before adjusting back to its old intensity.

"What the hell was that?" Cordelia had lost her footing, and was trying to lever herself back up with the back of a chair.

The Nezumi drones started beeping again, and CyberWillow translated, or maybe just summarized, for the benefit of the two humans onboard, "There was a hidden coterie of owls above you; they dropped more of their acorn weapons and now there are trees growing on the roof of the ship."

"The structural damage isn't severe, I just need to compensate with more engine power," Clem said, racing to manipulate one of the consoles.

"How did they hide?" Cordelia said. "This isn't even fair! It's not like there was anything to hide behind!"

"They did seem to come out of nowhere a few times last night," Buffy replied. "I guess they're just really stealthy."

"I'm bringing us around, they won't survive many more passes, even if we're flying like a drunken flork," Skip said grimly.

"HOOT."

The loudness of the call rattled the ship all on its own, all the more eerie because it was the first noise Buffy had heard the owls make. As Skip finished turning, the monster that came up on the screen confirmed her fears.

Instead of a thousand panicking owls, now they were faced with one giant owl and a thinner swarm of organized attendants. It was ludicrously big; bigger than the Nezumi, bigger than a house, probably even bigger than the Mayor had been when he'd gone all snakey. It was like the owlmerge she'd seen in the embassy last night, but probably times fifty.

Skip fired his glazers right into it, either too spooked to target the smaller owls or thinking they would work anyway. A couple owls shot out of the beast's gut, burned and dead, but it was pathetically few, barely a dozen. At the same time, the giant owl soared over and lashed out at the Nezumi with its talons, sending it spinning crazily through the air. More pings hit the roof as they flailed around, and the metallic grinding noise of more trees rooting down above them followed.

The viewscreen dimmed again, and this time it didn't brighten back all the way.

"There's some kind of darkness field coming from the trees," Clem said. "I can only turn the gain up so much, we're going to have to do something about them soon or we'll be blind."

The roof crunched again, more loudly than before, and a few sparks rained down from above, but nothing visibly broke through.

"We're going to be worse than blind if this keeps going on!" Cordelia had her stun rifle pointed up at the roof now, for all the good it would do.

Nezumi beeped and booped, and then a bunch of drones hauled something out of a side compartment. They were weird and she didn't get their purpose at first, but then she realized they almost looked like… shoes?


"The maintenance boots, of course!" Steel did have a tendency to ham it up. "I'll have to go out and clear this parasitic forest myself."

"I'm not going to be able to drive this thing in these conditions!" Cordelia complained.

"I'm way too busy making sure we're even able to keep flying," Clem said.

Vote: 'Captain Steel' can't do two things at once, so if this mission is going to survive Buffy has to do one of them.

[] Buffy's been watching him fly the Nezumi around all day, and driving might sort of be her thing now? It couldn't be that hard to dogfight a giant owl in a spaceship, could it?

[] Those boots look like they're one size fits all. Buffy puts them on and goes to the roof to free the Nezumi from all the ugly new trees growing into it.