[X] Gods tend to have special minions or elite followers that fit their specific themes. It's possible that for Buffy this is somehow linked to the potentials, and maybe the slayer line itself. But that's all worked in a specific way for thousands of years; messing around with it might have some unintended consequences.
S4.0E13: Are You Ready to Be Strong?
"They are in position, attempt to locate them now," CyberWillow said, just from her own single radio.
Buffy concentrated, pushing on her senses. She couldn't quite perceive any of them directly, but she could still hear little sounds, feel tiny shifts in the air. She was pretty sure that wasn't what she was trying to get, but it was hard to ignore. And maybe it was what she wanted, and just way more subtle than she thought?
She'd done some similar blindfold training with Giles last year, but this space was bigger than the library had been. Maybe her hearing and everything was just improving, or maybe these were a bunch of half-hidden signs of the sense she was trying to reach. It was impossible to know, so she just tried to fit together as good a picture as she could, and made some guesses about where everyone was. She pointed with her good hand (Giles wanted her to keep her splint on for another couple days), then again, and again, and finally a fourth time.
"Darn it," Willow said loudly, making herself clearly audible from across the courtyard, about thirty feet away. Buffy could pretty much tell where she was now; she'd pointed at her first.
"Were you the only one I got?" She asked.
"No, you were four for four," Willow said, approaching her position. "You must be hearing us subliminally or something, you even got Anya."
Buffy popped the blindfold off. Willow looked as annoyed as she sounded, Zoe seemed interested, and Rachel was looking slightly bored. Buffy knew the wilder potential was pretty into the project abstractly, but the reality of standing around for weird training exercises just wasn't her thing. She could relate.
"Maybe she's feeling an echo of my old demonic powers," Anya said. "They really were quite potent." She'd been a little disappointed at being the 'control' for the experiment, even though she'd volunteered.
"You come up as human on all the tests we could find," Zoe said.
"Let a girl dream, will you." Anya grumped.
"So what now?" Rachel said.
"Now we go out to the yard," Willow answered. "It's the same as last time, we just need even more space than we thought." They'd started this in the basement training room, but that had been way too small.
The idea was that one way for Buffy to get better in touch with her super-slayer powers would be to get a good feel for an effect the same source left on the world a long time ago: the potentials. She'd been able to feel Faith's slayerness back during the battle, but this was way more faint and she couldn't really be sure what she was feeling and what she was imagining.
Willow's idea today had been to put it to the test with a blindfold. Zoe and Rachel were both potentials, so if she did have some special sense it should be able to locate them and not Willow or Anya. The sense could be for more magical people in general instead, but in that case she should be able to detect Willow and not Anya with it. Zoe being a potential who'd been using magic lately might let them narrow things down further if there were problems.
"What do all your new powers feel like?" Zoe asked. "Is it a temperature? Or like a smell? Magic is kind of synesthesiac for me, when I'm channeling it's like there's this cold wind of fresh air blowing up and around me."
"There's no actual wind," Rachel clarified. "She had me check."
"It could've been real! Maybe." Zoe said.
"I always just get tingly," Willow said. "Like drinking two cups of coffee."
"I don't perceive a qualitative difference in my sensorium, everything's just more binary in the end," CyberWillow added.
"It's sort of like a pressure?" Buffy guessed. "But not really. And sometimes it's like I'm hearing words in a different language and just know what they mean." 'KILL' could mean a lot of things in her head these days, but she probably shouldn't clarify that part.
The two potentials had taken pretty well to all the god stuff revelations; so well that while Travers said he hadn't shared his suspicions with them before now, Buffy had her doubts. Either way though, they were on board with the plan now and that was really what was important. Plus she was pretty much their guardian now, and figured it was probably responsible to include them in some kind of activity.
That pseudo-guardianship had maybe been one of her more impulsive decisions, considering how little she'd had time to do with them since it happened. Hopefully it would cool down for at least a week or two, and they could hang out more. She probably owed them a shopping trip, and she still had to get more than a cursory feel for how much Zoe could do under that channel spell she was casting lately.
The backyard was big, but the reason they hadn't gone there first was that it was occupied. Xander had two squads doing water gun battles in the afternoon sun, but it wasn't nearly as laid back as someone might expect. There were little wooden obstacles set up all through the field and red danger zones roped off everywhere. CyberWillow was officiating, calling out hits and violations, and the pace was obviously grueling for the troops; they'd been at it for hours and were wearing full gear.
Buffy hadn't wanted to interrupt, but Xander called a stop to it almost right after she arrived, then came over to check in. Some of the troops relaxed on the obstacles, and others just collapsed where they were standing.
"Hey girls and girls. Any mystical revelations or terrible danger? Or both? I assure you, I'm totally ready for anything right now." The last part was more sarcastic than not, because he'd been running around with them himself. He was huffing and puffing as a result, almost out of breath.
"Only that she's too good at everything for the test," Rachel snarked.
"It might be that I'm still mystically potent!" Anya said. "We haven't found out for sure yet."
"You're very potent, Ahn." Xander said dutifully.
"You don't have to stop everything for us," Buffy said, feeling a little guilty.
Xander looked back, giving the exaggerated appearance of studying his exhausted squads. "I think I can give them a break this time." Then louder, "Alright everyone, let's move out, it's twinkie time." He led them out, but not without Anya giving him a peck on the cheek whispering something obscene in his ear as he went.
As the rest passed by she got a chorus of "Miss Mayor", a bunch of respectful nods, and one slightly confused salute. Things had changed between her and the Watch since Carl's added flux of men had poured in. The '99ers had respected her, liked her, maybe more than she'd understood, until the end. But it was a casual kind of respect; she was the Class Protector, but she was still the girl from 4th period Bio.
With the new hires, it was different. They were deferential to her, even the couple guys who were more than twice as old as she was. More than the police were, even. She'd tried to be personable, and had played up the heroism of what they were doing when she could, but it was hard to know at any given time how much they really agreed with her. How much they might be afraid instead. But it didn't mean they couldn't do the job. It was just something she had to get used to.
But for now, she had to get used to finding potentials blindfolded instead. She went over the middle of the yard and jumped up on top of one of the wooden obstacle structures before slipping her blindfold back on and sitting with her legs hanging off the side.
"Everyone spread out again, and try to be quiet," Willow directed.
"You make the most noise," Rachel said bluntly.
"Well, umm, I'll try too, then," Willow replied, a little embarrassed.
"It helps to look where you put your feet," Anya said helpfully.
They quieted down after that, and there was a lot of space between all of them out here. It didn't feel like it had in the basement or the courtyard; there was a lack of all the tiny cues she'd been sorting through before. Just the wind rustling over her legs and the feel of the sun on her face and the rough wood under her hands.
She decided to trust her instincts, and pointed in four directions, making guesses.
"All incorrect," CyberWillow said. "Each off by at least ten degrees of arc."
"That's progress!" Willow decided, echoed over the radios for convenience. "We're in the range where she's going to have to do something new now. Let's keep trying, everyone move again."
"Or we could've stayed quiet and not moved," Anya commented.
Buffy kept trying, and kept mostly failing. Occasionally she would randomly point close enough to someone that it might be right, but almost never more than to one person at once, and not in a way she could repeat. After making Xander move she really didn't want it to be for nothing though, and Willow would be so disappointed if this didn't come to anything. She kept plugging away, futilely bending her brain back and forth each time.
Inevitably, her thoughts wandered. With every failure, Travers' flippant comment yesterday about miracles rolled in her stomach like a rock. Up to this point, all her weird new stuff had been scary at times, but at least it was easy. Too easy, sometimes. But that was all what she was best at. It hurt to think it, but her inner voice knew. Killing.
Could she even do anything that was actually constructive? If she couldn't, was it because of her power or because of her? She liked to think she hadn't been a bad mayor so far, but how much of that success was just propped up by violence and fear? Was she just the savage warlord Tapparich had thought she was, covered up by a thin veneer of pretty smiles and sarcastic jokes?
She tried to focus. When she'd noticed Faith's power down at the stairway, how had she done it? What had she felt? She'd been reeling from the confusing vision, frustrated with Wilkins' deceptions and lies. She'd been afraid that she was outmaneuvered, and she was trying to hide it, to project confidence in spite of it. She'd been angry at Faith, so so angry. She'd taken the power that was rightfully hers, and she'd used it against her, again and again.
She wasn't angry at the potentials, not at all, and it was officially ridiculous if that was the problem. She was pretty sure Adam hadn't given a damn either way about Forrest Gates, and that hadn't stopped him from turning him from a random fledgeling into a bargain bin lightning storm. He was literally a monster, and his powers were still friendlier than hers. He was out there making an army and she was sitting here blindfolded in a field like an idiot. It was infuriating.
KILL
Living in the moment, she pointed once, a little to the right and down slightly, to where ground level would be on the other side of the yard. Then again, directly behind her and horizontal. She stopped after that. It felt right.
"Rachel Berenson and Zoe Benson correctly indicated within one degree," CyberWillow narrated.
"I think I got it, both of you move and I'll try again," Buffy said.
Nobody said anything as they relocated, as if they were afraid the magic spell would break. Buffy could feel the both of them now, and it wasn't like Faith. They were little empty places in the world, like bubbles of air underwater. More like an absence than a presence, a shape where maybe power went.
Whether by prior agreement or coincidence they stopped moving at the same time, and she didn't wait to be told to point them out. She did it in the same order, Rachel and Zoe again.
"That's kinda creepy," Zoe said. It was probably meant to be quiet, but CyberWillow echoed it over the radios anyway before talking herself.
"Rachel Berenson and Zoe Benson correctly indicated again within one degree of arc, within one second of their movement ceasing. The combined probability of both events, if random, exceeds one trillion to one by most reasonable priors."
"Go Buffy!" Willow rushed up excited as she removed the blindfold. "Did you finally achieve a meditative state? That was so helpful for me when I was starting."
"Umm, maybe not exactly." She hopped down again, a keen awareness of the two nearby potentials still hovering in the back of her mind. "I got angry at my power, and then it started working?"
She'd been afraid Willow wouldn't believe her, but she got a thoughtful look instead. "Really? That happened for me once too, but I was pretty sure it was a coincidence."
"I'm here!" Andrew announced from the backdoor. "Who's ready to bargain with some demons?"
She glanced down at her fancy Horae watch and saw it was already 5:29; time had really flown. The plan for today was to figure out what the deal was with the Yeerks.
"Ready in a sec!" She shouted, then looked back at Willow, "We should probably get back to this later, but it really helped a lot. Feel like talking to some brain slugs?"
Willow made a face, "There's a reason I leave most of the diplomacy to Andrew. I'll go back to helping Giles look through all those new books Travers had shipped in."
"And that's the part that sends me to the brain slugs," Buffy answered. Willow rolled her eyes at her, and she sauntered off to the backdoor. Meanwhile, the other three had already joined Andrew, talking shop about what they were about to do.
Buffy had skimmed a report on the basics already. The Yeerks' special thing was crawling into demon's heads and controlling them, and they were constantly fighting these other demons called the Andalites, whose special thing was transforming themselves into other demons and even animals. Decades ago both sides had gotten into a blood feud over a bunch of mortal insults and betrayals: it was pretty much standard demon stuff.
Less normally for demons, both sides had some pretty powerful conventional weapons too. The range seemed a lot like what Earth militaries had, but apparently they only worked well in the small subset of dimensions with the right physical laws to allow them. The details were more complicated than that and she didn't completely remember them, but the gist was that there was a big home field advantage in that realm for each side. They ended up mostly fighting each other with guerilla warfare instead, enabled by their respective special powers.
"So how did these Yeerks get their empire? Do they get a foothold infesting just a few local demons and build from there?" Rachel asked the question as Buffy was approaching.
"They didn't just use subterfuge," Andrew said. "They also have really cool biodemonic creations!"
"They're engineering new demons?" Rachel asked, alarmed. "Isn't that sort of like what happened with Adam?"
"They aren't making creatures," Andrew corrected, "They're actually all plants, but like, cool organic technology plants. They have Dracon Beams to shoot, Bug Fighters to fly in, and even Pool Ships to rule the seas! That Portable Yeerk Pool we found them in is the same, it's pretty much a living Kandrona battery wrapped around a barrel of nutrient liquid. But they still have to operate almost all of it with normal hosts, because plants don't have brains."
"Why would they make it that way?" Zoe asked. "Isn't it kind of counterproductive for them not to be able to use it all directly?"
"It's because it's all stolen," Anya said dismissively. "Yeerk demon plants are just Andalite demon plants that they tortured into being powered by Kandrona radiation instead of psychic Mirrorwaves. The Yeerks barely even know how any of it works."
"But the Yeerk ships look way cooler! And they work, even if they aren't precision-built," Andrew argued. "Yeerk Bug Fighters defeated Andalite Seedships in that battle over the Deep Valley dimension a few months ago!"
"A battle where they outnumbered them two to one," Anya said. "And the Deep Valley dimension has more Kandrona in it than Mirrorwaves too. It doesn't change the obvious fact that the Yeerks are upstarts that got lucky."
"We don't have either of those radiations right?" Buffy cut into the argument to get clarification. "So their fighter jets and stuff don't work here?"
"They can operate off stored reserves," Andrew answered. "But the performance supposedly isn't great for anything big. Something like the portable Yeerk Pool will last a couple weeks, but the fighters are way more power hungry. Especially the big clumsy Andalite ones, probably!"
"Is there some reason you guys are taking sides about this?" Buffy asked, then she feigned suspicion, looking at the two potentials. "Do you think they're an Andalite and a Yeerk in disguise?"
Both of them suddenly looked paranoid, neither getting the joke, and CyberWillow took it seriously too, speaking up from the radios. "I can confirm that both parties have been under my direct observation for over two hours, ruling out the possibility that either is an Andalite in morph. I cannot similarly guarantee the absence of a Yeerk, as over the past three days each has wandered out of my vision for extended intervals. However, I would estimate the likelihood of either or both being infested at only 0.73%."
"I'm not infested, I just think they're cool," Andrew said moodily.
"It's been one of the more interesting wars of the past few decades," Anya said. "The classier sort of demon follows it like humans follow sports teams. They don't have much actual impact on dimensions without Mirrorwaves or Kandrona, which is most of them."
"I was just joking," Buffy said. She needed to work on her delivery. Though 0.73% sounded kind of high, now that she thought about it. "But now that I bring it up, is there a way to check?"
"We could tie them up for three days. It might even be fun," Rachel suggested, playfully giving Zoe a look. The other girl tried not to react.
"First of all, no, I'm way too busy, and I know that's what I'd say if I was infested, but still," Andrew started, completely missing the subtext. "Second of all, not really. Yeerks are naturally difficult to detect with magic. You have to beat them at their own game by finding their pools or catching them in the act!"
"Wonderful," she said. Hopefully interrogating the Yeerks they did have would shed some more light on the situation.
Their ongoing feud definitely wasn't something she was super eager to get involved in, but she wanted to know for sure what the Yeerks had been doing here in the first place, and she wasn't too proud to try to extort some concessions for their return afterward. The plan had been for her to negotiate directly with Anya and Andrew to advise, but-
"Do you two wanna tag along?" She addressed the potentials.
"We really can?" Zoe asked quickly.
"Sure," Buffy said. "I'm not the type of girl to hog all the moral compromises to myself."
"We don't need to compromise," Rachel said. "We kept them away from the government, and now we can find out what they know. Afterwards?" She shrugged. "We can just get rid of them."
"But it'd be such a waste!," Andrew whined. "After blowing up the Mok'tagar and alienating the Iskoort we really could use the type of ally that has lots of cool loot."
"We don't have to decide until after we talk to them," Anya said. "Then we kill them."
On that note, the five of them went back down to the basement, this time to a repurposed closet near the vault. Finley stood nervously outside of it, the relatively new Watch officer looking even more jittery than he normally did.
"So, it's time?" He said.
"You don't have to do it if you don't want to," Buffy said. A volunteer was the easiest way, but they could figure something else out if they needed to.
He paused for a beat before asking, his voice quiet, "But I get a bonus shift for it, right? And it's safe?"
"Yes, a whole shift for probably a couple minutes of work," Anya said. "You should be thrilled!"
"The Yeerk will have to come out eventually, or it'll starve," Andrew answered the other part of the question.
Finley nodded in acceptance, not saying any more. With that confirmed, they opened the closet. Inside was a strange composite contraption; there was a slimy organic looking barrel with thin tubes of liquid going in and out of it, and sitting above it was a boxy fish tank full of the Yeerks, which was additionally plugged into the wall. The Initiative apparently had set it up this way for some reason, and they'd been wary of messing with things until they knew why.
Along with their environment, there was also a bright interior light and a camera for CyberWillow to keep an eye on them. It hadn't seemed like a bunch of waterborne slugs could get up to much trouble, but it paid to be safe.
"These don't jump right?" She asked. After Andrew nodded at her, Buffy turned the little lock holding the top on and then popped the top off the tank, exposing the nearly opaque grey sludge to the open air. Surprisingly, it didn't smell that bad, but she was still hesitant to reach in.
"Someone's going to have to grab one," Zoe said with trepidation.
Andrew wasn't phased though, and flourished with a hand before speaking. "I happen to be an accomplished demon wrangler." Then instead of plunging the hand all the way in, he just held it near the surface, and then tapped it with his index finger, making a tiny ripple. Nothing happened for a stretch, but just before Buffy was going to make a more active attempt one of the Yeerks swam up to the surface, right under Andrew's hand. He moved it down to give it a platform, and it climbed right up into his palm.
It was bigger than the kind of slug you'd find outside, but still really small for a demon, about the size of a hamster. It had slimy green and yellow skin, plus small fins, tentacles, and stalk eyes. Andrew was handling it as if there was nothing special going on, but it was pretty impressively gross overall.
Andrew held it up to Finley as if to hand it off, but Finley just gulped. "Oh man, this is freaky. Just put it in, I don't even want to touch it."
And Andrew did just that, holding the slug up to Finley's ear. It started crawling in impressively quickly and Finley started to go slack; Buffy caught him by the shoulder before he could fall.
She tensed herself for a struggle once the Yeerk got control, but the result was much more anticlimactic. His posture shifted, standing straight again, and he spoke in a way that was both Finley-like and not. "This is unexpected."
"Really now," Buffy said. She didn't let his shoulder go. "So what were you expecting?"
"Dissection by the human faction I now know as the Initiative. Or possibly an Andalite interrogation," he said. "This is remarkably civilized by comparison."
"That's us," Buffy agreed. "Paragons of diplomacy. Let's take this out of the hallway." She led the group to the secure room down the hall, and let controlled-Finley go after gently sitting him down in a seat next to hers.
Anya talked first, "You know what this is, right?"
"I'm quite capable of reading a host's memories," he answered. "It's very clear that none of you are Andalite infiltrators, and the Yeerks under my command are entirely at your mercy, so I'll tell you anything you want to know."
"You should state your name for the record," Andrew said. "That's how all the best interrogation scenes go."
"I am Sub-visser Thirty-seven, in command of our scouting detachment," the Yeerk said. "We were ordered here by the Council of Thirteen to investigate possible Andalite infiltration of the Sunnydale hellmouth, and to either report back or attempt to neutralize it as I saw fit."
"Sub-visser, is that a military rank or just a really weird name?" Buffy asked. "And the Council of Thirteen is?"
"Our ruling body. And my actual name is Irak 497," he answered. "None of my human hosts have had sufficient knowledge to draw a good comparison of rank with your institutions, but I am among the top hundred highest ranking Yeerks."
"Why did they even think Andalites were here?" Anya focused on the other part of his answer. "Earth doesn't have any Mirrorwaves."
"I'm sure someone as old as you would agree that nothing about the situation here looks normal, Anyanka," he said. "At least in interdimensional terms, this place was quiet for centuries, and then suddenly this year there's a new big player on the scene, new magic, tons of aggression. I'll admit that on the surface, none of it looked particularly Andalite to me, but the Thirteen rarely share all their reasons."
"OK, so you were so worried about these Andalites you had to poke your nonexistent noses into my town. Explain exactly what you've been doing since you got here," Buffy said.
"My party arrived by portal a week ago, late Saturday night as you humans would call it. We landed on the UC Sunnydale campus," he started.
"That was the night Adam and the Initiative attacked the computer lab, and Buffy was busy with the other demon," Zoe said. "When exactly?"
"Things were hectic," he said. "Around two in the morning?"
"The confrontation occurred at 2:58 AM," CyberWillow stated. "If it occurred inside Adam's zone of control, it could've easily gone unnoticed by all but him. The Initiative wouldn't have been patrolling, they were completely occupied with their attack."
"Suspicious," Rachel said.
Sub-visser Thirty-seven shrugged, "I didn't choose the timing, the Thirteen did. Maybe they knew something. And it hardly worked out for us anyway."
"Just keep going for now," Buffy said. "What happened next?"
"Originally, we had Hork-Bajir hosts, which we used to take a number of students unaware-"
"You infested innocent people?" Rachel snapped.
"None of them were harmed, at least not by us," he said evenly. "I have no idea what's become of any of them now, but I can provide a list of names."
"Now," Buffy ordered. "Just give them out loud."
He did, and CyberWillow cross referenced them. None were officially missing, and most had been seen on camera somewhere recently, though a couple had left Sunnydale and were in the process of withdrawing from school.
"You aren't trying to sneak anything past us, are you," Anya drawled. "One of them still infested, carrying another pool… "
"We only had the one," he said.
"Don't try to lie," Andrew said. "We have our ways of knowing."
At a minimum, all the students still here were going to have to be interviewed, and the others over the phone if possible. Buffy filed that away in her head for later.
"I have no doubt you do. Indeed, my current host is totally convinced of the efficacy of your," the sub-visser paused, "I believe your culture would call them 'Orwellian' surveillance measures, and I can find no reason to doubt him. I can hardly imagine a more obnoxious polity for us to take by subterfuge, which gives me even more reason to cooperate with you now. Should I go on, or would you all like to continue badgering me with needless imprecations and threats?"
KILL
This wasn't the time for that. "Keep going then. But don't push your luck," she let a little something nasty into her tone.
He continued, acting blasé, but she thought she could see more of Finley's jitters in him now, "After we secured local hosts, our Hork-Bajir were of course a liability to operational security and had to be disposed of." Reading the room, he changed course, "It was of course a regrettable loss, but nothing else was even slightly practical. We kept the portable pool in one of the hosts' closets, and distributed the Dracon Beams we had among ourselves."
"Those work here?" Buffy asked.
"They'd only be good for a couple shots, but unarmed humans make for poor fighters," he replied. "They're also relatively easy to conceal. But they did us no good in the end."
"No Dracon Beam weapons were recovered from the Initiative," CyberWillow interjected. "It's likely they were being kept either in the armory, or else in some lab which we did not have the opportunity to secure."
"In truth, we had little time to learn anything but what was already in our hosts' memories before the Initiative struck hard, led by their Adam construct. They moved against us in squads barely a day after arrival, starting Sunday night. Some of us were caught unawares while sleeping, and then the rest during the next day, as we separated for morning classes. It had been a great mystery how we were so thoroughly rooted out, but in the light of this hosts' knowledge it makes much more sense.
"Neither the Initiative nor any of the variously rogue elements within it ever attempted negotiation with us; we were individually coerced into their sequestered pool after cursory questioning and left to ponder our fates. Until now."
"Just so we're completely clear," Buffy said. "You're telling me there are no more Yeerks on Earth but you?"
"Not everyone appeared in their pool with us after we were captured, but it's been far too long, and Earth has no native Kandrona. They must have either already been killed or else fled and starved," he said. "I have no personal knowledge of any other Yeerk Pools in this dimension, permanent or temporary, nor does it seem likely to me that any exist. Only the Thirteen could confirm that part with certainty."
"Assuming this all checks out, it doesn't look like they did anything too bad," Andrew said.
"That's just because they didn't have a chance," Rachel argued. "If they hadn't been caught right away, they would've probably infested more and more people for this 'scouting detachment' of theirs." She made air quotes. "If they ever were going to leave at all, do you think those students were just getting dropped off at the cafeteria when they were done? Not likely."
"Yeerks always want more hosts, and it cost them the Hork-Bajir to come here in the first place," Anya said. "There's no way they wouldn't have taken as many home as slaves as they could."
"But we didn't," the Sub-visser said. "And I can't stress enough that that was never our goal. We wanted to find out if Andalites were here. I'm now convinced that there aren't, and if we can just return home and report, as far as I'm concerned, this mission was a success."
"Punishing them for things they didn't do doesn't seem very fair," Zoe said. Rachel glared at her, and she made a regretful face.
"How were you supposed to get back in the first place?" Buffy asked, choosing to ignore the moral debate for now and concentrate on the facts for as long as she could. "Is one of you a spellcaster?"
"No, such abilities are extremely rare among our kind, and wouldn't be risked on a dangerous mission like this," the Yeerk replied. "Our original pool contains a one-use beacon which would be activated to request a recall portal. It's accessible by Yeerks inside the pool and requires the correct code to elicit a response."
"I could get in contact with the Yeerks pretty easily anyway," Andrew said.
"If we care about getting in contact at all," Anya said. "Let's stop beating around the bush. We could either send you home or just kill you all. Tell us why we shouldn't pick the killing one."
"I'm confident that at the very least the Council of Thirteen could be persuaded to agree to a non-aggression pact of whatever duration you propose," the Yeerk said. "In addition, we would recognize your personal authority over this entire dimension, despite the obvious legal contradictions involved."
Most demons from other dimensions didn't know enough about Earth to realize that being the mayor of a small city wasn't very prestigious in the scheme of things, or that the people actually in charge knew little or nothing about the hellmouth, and that was definitely the way Buffy wanted to keep it. The government had shown it couldn't be trusted with anything.
"Everyone who matters already recognizes her authority here," Anya said. "It's already de facto law if not de jure. And you already have one blood feud to deal with, you'd have no reason to pick another fight with anything but an easy target. Both concessions are meaningless."
"Earth's a big place," they Yeerk countered. "Humans are good hosts. Not strong, but fast and dexterous. Your world's actual leaders are hopelessly ignorant, and incompetent besides. It may be easiest to portal into Sunnydale, but it's not impossible to bypass by any means. Sunnydale isn't an easy target, but Earth is. You can't say you wouldn't be sleeping easier this way."
KILL
Buffy slammed her fist down on the table in front of Finley and it cracked open like paper mache. The Yeerk jumped back in fear, falling backwards out of his seat and landing on the floor.
"Try again," she growled. "Without the slavery."
"You wouldn't like her when she's angry," Andrew said.
"Of course, we could also offer some form of ransom," Sub-visser Thirty-seven said from his position on the floor, deciding not to get back up. "The Yeerk Empire obviously does not deal in Earth currency, but we have some stock of precious metals, which I know you find easier to deal in than kittens."
"First he threatens to enslave us, then when he's afraid he offers us money. What swell demons to deal with," Rachel said.
"We could also offer services," he continued, ignoring her. "Your military and magical might is undeniable, but Yeerks have natural abilities you can't replicate. Your Initiative prisoners for example, that you're still debating whether and how to release? A Yeerk could reveal any secrets they might still have, and check their future intentions in just a few minutes. I can even offer that to you right now."
"But wait, there's more!" Andrew said.
"There is?" The Yeerk asked.
"There'd better be," Zoe got Andrew's meaning and backed him up.
Sub-visser Thirty-seven boggled for a second as the room seemed to turn against him, then his eyes landed on Buffy's watch. He shouted, "Luxury goods! Our practical equipment barely works here, but I could acquire any manner of wonder unavailable on this primitive planet. Fine nanofiber silks, durable and self-cleaning. Fine alcohol, fermented in specially engineered living stills. Exotic pets from remote locales!
"Please! I understand your distaste. I apologize for my presumption in negotiation. But I am a powerful Yeerk, in possession of valuable information. Surely, we can work out some kind of mutually beneficial deal."
Vote: Do you ransom back the Yeerks? If you do, for how much and what? And do you use them to interrogate Riley, Angleman, and Oscar from the Initiative? Voting for this one will be by category.
[][KILL?] Ransom the Yeerks back.
[][KILL?] Kill the Yeerks.
[][KILL?] Say you'll ransom the Yeerks, use them to interrogate the prisoners (if that vote wins), and then kill them afterwards without contacting their empire.
After choosing your main vote, choose one vote for each of the following categories. Some categories might end up not mattering depending on which of the previous votes win.
[][Interrogate] Use the Yeerks to interrogate the Initiative prisoners.
[][Interrogate] Process the Initiative prisoners as you planned before, without using Yeerks.
[][Ransom] Ransom the Yeerks for as much gold as you can get. Anya and Andrew expect you can extract a couple hundred thousand dollars worth.
[][Ransom] Try to mix some luxuries in with the gold. Optionally stunt what sort of luxuries you want, not necessarily limited to those above.
[][NAP] Agree to a Non Aggression Pact between Earth and the Yeerk Empire for a period of one year. Optionally stunt a different desired length.
[][NAP] Don't agree to any political deals.
