Successor (BTVS)

[X] These options all sound terrible, and this Scáthach is definitely super evil. Capture her and have the magic department try to exorcize her from Zoe instead.

Buffy knew Rachel was right; the offer to 'teach' something had to be a trap. Sometimes evil could be bargained with, but there was something malicious about Scáthach that set off alarm bells. Still, she had to save Zoe somehow-
KILL
She knew Scáthach knew, her inner voice tipping her off just in time. She had to act fast, so she activated superspeed, backflipped off the table, and swung her hammer at Giles.

Wait, what?
KILL?
She managed to pull almost all of the force of the blow, so it only knocked him into next week instead of into a fine paste. The panicked effort had broken her out of superspeed though, and when she turned back to the table Scáthach was gone.

"Giles!" Buffy worried. It didn't look like anything was (very) broken, but he was unconscious in a heap.

"Buffy, don't make me stop you!" Willow said in a panic, one hand holding her Myco out in front of her and her other sparking with electricity. She clearly didn't realize Buffy had already broken out of the effect, but there was no time to argue.

Anya was already hiding under the table. "I'll take care of him, go!"

Rachel was running for the door already, "She teleported away!"

Buffy started moving again, only to belatedly realize she couldn't track Zoe anymore. Had she gotten all the way out of range?

"Scáthach is on the roof!" CyberWillow announced. Buffy couldn't feel her there, but it was better than nothing.

She'd been going for the door, so she had to pivot hard enough to make a divot in the carpet, launching her back up onto the big table. Then she managed to slip back into superspeed and springboarded up and through the skylight, swiping at it with her hammer to brush the fragile metal and glass out of the way.
KILL
She knew Scáthach would see her coming and was ready for something, but she wasn't ready for that something to be the splint on her left arm spontaneously combusting into fire. It burned and it hurt and she really hated it when they used fire.

She was moving fast enough that maybe she could've just beat it out, but it was easier to just rip it off entirely and throw it at the psycho witch's face; she managed to at least get her hand burnt less than her forearm already was.

The superspeed projectile scored a hit and Buffy was briefly worried for Zoe's health, but Scáthach was made of stern stuff; the impact didn't bother her much, and if her hair was on fire now that didn't seem to bother her either.
KILL
Buffy raced forward, knowing she'd have to play rough to knock her out, but immediately she could tell something was wrong. She didn't bother attacking Scáthach as she reached her and simply ran through, realizing it was an illusion and looking around frantically for where she could've gone. Her potential sense still hadn't activated all this time; either Scáthach was doing all this from super far away, or she was blocking it somehow.

"The front steps!" CyberWillow said from her radio. "Left side, she's moving down into the foot traffic."

She used more superspeed; there was no time for even a flimsy veneer of deniability. She went right off the roof, kicked off the side of the building halfway down, and came down right on top of Scáthach. She hit her for real this time, but she didn't dare use her hammer with so much leverage; she was still too afraid for Zoe. They went down onto the stairs in a tumble, but before they finished rolling Scáthach teleported away again, apparently not only still conscious after the impact but still able to perform her annoyingly fast magic.

The sun was just starting to set and the streets were still pretty full. Buffy could feel the eyes of the gawkers on her and keeping them safe was more important than reassuring them right now.

"Random criminal! Run!" Not her best effort at crowd control, but most of her attention was desperately scanning around, searching for-

"Baker's Thirteen!" CyberWillow called out of the radio at her belt.

She left the spectators eating her dust, across the street in a flash and whipping around the pull-open glass door as she yanked it open. Even as she entered, the inside of the donut shop was turning into a horror show. The store was a chaotic whirlwind of cutlery and appliances with the civilians inside dropping like flies. There was no way she could help them right now though.

Scáthach stood up on the bar in center stage, taunting Buffy with a sick smile as she gestured and the whole cavalcade of random objects sharply stopped in midair and then fired themselves at her. She dodged half of it and tanked the other half, trading a bunch of minor cuts and bruises for a second or two of time. She moved like the wind, but not for the bar.
KILL
The visible Scáthach was obviously an illusion, and Buffy could guess she'd already moved on. She raced out through the backdoor, trying to outguess her, hoping those lightning fast teleports she had weren't limitless. The dirty back alley outside rewarded her with the sight of her enemy's fleeing back, but-
KILL
She jumped straight up as the invisible dumpster filled with flaming trash missed her by inches and obliterated its way through the backdoor behind her. Scáthach was gone around the corner while she was airborne, but she got a hand on the roof, clung, and pushed off.

Her radio started buzzing words out at super-high frequency, "She's reversed direction. She's crossing the street on foot, moving back towards City Hall, three feet to the left of the crosswalk." It was CyberWillow again, her voice artificially accelerated like a video on fast forward, jamming the maximum amount of information into the minimum amount of time.

She was over to the opposite building now, but she immediately reversed course herself, kicking off and landing back on top of Baker's Thirteen. She bolted across the roof and pushed off hard with a bare moment to aim, streaking down at Scáthach like a meteor. The ancient witch somehow noticed, even from behind her, even with Buffy moving who-knew-how-fast, and she jerked one arm just a little bit backwards.

An invisible force brushed Buffy just slightly away, far enough that her desperate tackle would miss. But she'd already seen a man die in the donut shop, a big chopping knife jammed right through his neck. She couldn't afford to be gentle.

She appeared her hammer still in midair, slamming it into Scáthach as she rocketed past.


"You're totally sure she can't teleport in here?" Willow asked. "It wasn't anything I recognized, it might get around specific defenses."

"These are my best dimensional anchors," Andrew said. He was much more curt than usual with her, still inspecting the runes of the clean room in detail and touching them up.

Andrew had arrived at City Hall soon after she'd knocked Scáthach-as-Zoe unconscious, and he'd promptly freaked out. But when he finished freaking, he started frantically making preparations for the exorcism, bringing out all kinds of weird supplies from his stores and spreading them around the room.

"Scáthach is centuries old, are they going to be enough to hold her?" Willow worried.

"I needed to trade a Mos Espa Podracing Lego set as part of the deal for those anchors," Andrew said seriously. "They have to be enough."

"OK, but what if she tries the mind control again?" Willow continued.

"That's what the second circle is for." Andrew said, waving his hand at the elaborate setup that ringed Scáthach, who was additionally wrapped up in heavy steel chains.

"Just let him work!" Rachel snapped from where she was kneeling near her possessed friend, carefully staying outside the circles and not touching anything. "This is his deal. He knows what he's doing."

"I know, I know, sorry," Willow said, before turning to Buffy. "She's going to be OK right? She's only bleeding a little bit."

"I hope so Will," Buffy replied. Scáthach was definitely tough, and the lack of visible damage was encouraging, but she didn't know how that would translate when Zoe was all the way back. She'd asked Andrew about it already though, and he'd said that whatever the medical situation they had to do the exorcism ASAP. Or as he'd put it, 'Before anything starts to stick that way.'

Jenny Calendar had been possessed by Eyghon for a lot longer and she'd come out basically OK, so Buffy was doing her best to be the one staying calm.

Visibly stopping herself from pestering Andrew anymore, Willow turned to her radio, "Status check?"

CyberWillow answered her, "Jonathan Levinson and Tara Maclay are inbound and should arrive in three minutes and forty seconds."

"I'll be ready to go when they're here," Andrew preempted Willow's obvious next question. He was the one that'd be leading the coven for this, but they needed every iota of power they could spare.

CyberWillow continued her report, "Rupert Giles has been diagnosed with some bruising and a minor concussion, and is refusing to rest but generally comfortable at Sunnydale Memorial Hospital. All casualties from Baker's Thirteen have also arrived at Sunnydale Memorial Hospital. I estimate a 99.73% chance there will be no additional deaths among them beyond the first. One ambulance has been held here in case Zoe Benson requires additional attention; the paramedics are waiting on the first floor. The SDCW has taken control of the crime scene and a gas leak and resulting hysteria has been floated as a public explanation for the attack."

It definitely wasn't the first time someone had died on her watch, but this one really hurt. Zoe was only casting that spell in the first place because Buffy had gone over Mary Snow's head and said it was kosher. Sure, Andrew and Willow had signed off on it too, but the buck stopped with her. A guy was dead, and she just hoped Zoe hadn't been consciously awake and riding along Halloween-style to see it.

She'd been making a lot of risky decisions with magic lately, and mostly they'd paid off. The self-inflicted misadventures her friends had had in their earlier years seemed behind them. She'd kind of started thinking all it took was enough experience and good judgment and some rare books too, and then it just kinda went from dangerous to useful. Maybe it wasn't that simple.

But that didn't mean they could back all the way off either. It seemed like everything depended on some kind of magic these days, from Jonathan's special effects magic on movie sets to CyberWillow helping the police solve mundane crimes. They'd gotten burned, but if they turned off the stove they'd all freeze to death. Or something like that.

Then Jonathan popped open the door and jogged in with Tara behind him. She visibly winced when she saw Scáthach.

"Careful! Don't touch anything!" Andrew yelled. The two of them tried to stop suddenly, but Tara was a little too distracted to stop quickly; she ran into Jonathan and they both almost went tumbling into some candles.

Buffy thankfully was paying enough attention beyond her musings to catch each of them with one arm, putting them back upright.

"Sorry," Jonathan said. For her part, Tara looked mortified beyond words.

"It doesn't matter, let's go, let's go," Andrew gestured the coven into position and Rachel hurriedly backed up out of the way. "I've just got to charge the circle now," he lit a match, and set the outermost ring on fire. The white powder that made it up quickly started to burn, but the flames stayed controlled and weak, only rising a few inches above the floor.

Scáthach jerked in her chains, waking up immediately. She tried to say something, but she was gagged too, and it just came out as a malicious mumbling sound.

"You that have come here, your time is done," Andrew intoned the line.

"You that have come here, your time is done," Willow, Jonathan, and Tara repeated it in a chorus, with CyberWillow echoing the same all around them.

Scáthach's struggles intensified, and Buffy could tell she was putting her all into it. Whatever she'd done before to obscure Zoe from her special sense, it started fading, and Buffy could notice her there again as a potential.

"Your battle is lost, our battle is won," Andrew continued.

"Your battle is lost, our battle is won," the rest followed him.

The fire around Zoe turned white like the powder it burned from, and grew higher, up and up, from inches to feet.

"We curse your existence, we blacken your name."

"We curse your existence, we blacken your name."

And somehow, only in Buffy's potential sense, the white fire curled inwards and inwards too, closing around Zoe's spiky energy bubble and broiling it from the outside.

Scáthach bit down on the gag hard then, snapping the ties and spitting the rest out. "Oathbreakers all! We will have our due!"

"We banish you Scathach, back whence you came!"

"We banish you Scathach, back whence you came!"

And then Buffy felt something big shoot out through one of the bubble spikes and out into nowhere at a million miles per hour. Scáthach started visibly turning back into Zoe, and she hoped the damage wasn't too bad.

"Zoe, Zoe, speak to me!" Andrew was at her side first, running through the white flames almost before they'd totally extinguished themselves.

"Ugh," Zoe groaned, then in a tiny voice, "Hurts. But not like I'm dying or anything."

"That's really good," Andrew said awkwardly. "The not dying part. Not the hurts part. Because it's bad that you're hurt, but good that you're not dying."

"Thanks," Zoe whispered. "Maybe we can talk more about how not dying I am later."

"Sure, of course. Whatever you want," he said.

Was there something there? Was Buffy obligated to care about it in some responsible way? She shoved the thought aside.

"That settled," Zoe said, "Did I get hit by a bus?"

"The paramedics are ready if you require them," CyberWillow stated.

"No, it's not that bad. Just Ow," she clarified. "And these are pretty heavy, it's not helping."

"Sorry! I'll get these off of you," Buffy occupied herself with the chains, retrieving the key from her pocket, opening the lock, and then trying to gently unspool them.

"Zoe…" Rachel started, clearly worried. "How much do you remember?"

Zoe was still whispering instead of talking, "It was the wrong Scáthach, and she wanted to make a deal. Buffy, you got what you needed?"

It hadn't been at the forefront of her mind, but she was pretty sure she had. "I learned all about how potentials are made and how you put stuff into them. Turns out that storks aren't involved."

"Good. The terms sounded pretty nasty though, I guess you must have said no to her after?"

"You don't remember?" Andrew asked.

"No?" Zoe didn't sound sure.

"Not that you have to remember. You could just rest, if you wanted," he continued.

She didn't pay him any heed. "I was in the conference room? And now down here, and my ribs are a little broken, aren't they? Last time I try that spell," Then her eyes flickered around, picking up on the looks everyone had. "What happened? Was it bad? It was bad."

"It was bad," Rachel confirmed without elaborating.

Buffy finished unchaining her, and carefully put her down in an empty section of floor.

"You had to take me down?" Zoe asked her.

"It wasn't you," Buffy said. "At all. You even disappeared from the slay-dar."

"And will you tell me what it was that I didn't do?" Zoe asked. Her whisper was frustrated.

Buffy knew this had to be phrased carefully. It was good that Zoe didn't remember it from the driver's seat, or even the passenger's seat, but she was going to find out Scáthach killed someone eventually. It just had to be in the right way.

Then before Buffy could finish thinking of just exactly what that right way was, CyberWillow answered the question, "Scáthach used a combination of teleportation, mental domination, pyrokinesis, and telekinesis to escape from City Hall and then quickly engage in a terror attack on the Baker's Thirteen donut shop. She caused roughly $12,000 in property damage, sixteen injuries of widely varying severity, and one death, before being subdued by Mayor Summers."

"Oh."


Buffy had a lot of responsibilities, but Zoe was one of them. And she was definitely one that she didn't think she should be neglecting right now. So when the EMTs thought that she needed to get checked out at the hospital, Buffy had ridden along as moral support. Rachel had decided to come too. Andrew was even going to come himself, but Zoe had put her foot down and said if literally everyone came to the hospital with her nothing would ever get done.

So Andrew was digging up all the dirt he could on the two Scáthaches back at City Hall, and the three of them were sitting in a hospital room waiting on Zoe's X-Rays. The mood was pretty dour.

"I don't even know his name," Zoe said. "I should know his name."

"Zoe, this wasn't your fault, it-" Buffy started.

"I did some magic and he died," Zoe said, her voice still a whisper. "CyberWillow, will you tell me?"

"Ernest Peters," she responded over the radio.

"How old was he?"

"Zoe," Rachel said helplessly.

"Forty-seven."

"Was he married? Did he have kids?"

"Zoe!" Rachel tried again.

"Divorced, with a 15 year old daughter in San Francisco named Sarah."

Buffy hadn't had the heart to interrupt this, and was regretting it.

"Oh my god," Zoe said.

"She's the beneficiary of his life insurance policy," CyberWillow continued. "However, the specific circumstances of his death might make the payout questionable."

"Have the police report fudged," Buffy said. "Or fudged more. Just make sure it happens. And let's stop with the 411 for now."

"As you say," CyberWillow confirmed, then was quiet.

"You couldn't have known," Rachel said. "It was the perfect bad situation. A bunch of circumstances you never could've predicted."

"Watcher Snow knew," Zoe said bitterly. "She told me it was dark and I didn't listen."

"Snow thought everything was dark," Rachel said. "She warned us about Nigel, because he 'might be a little dark,'" she finished in a mockery of the watcher's classy English accent.

Zoe chuckled a little, almost against her will, wincing after she did.

Buffy decided to take the opening. "You can't always make the right call. And it wasn't just on you. The coven cleared it. I cleared it."

That threw Zoe off a little, "This isn't your fault. If it wasn't for you stopping me-"

"It's not your fault either," Buffy didn't want to let her get going again. "It was Scáthach. Both of them. It's their fault for their shitty two woman con."

The fight went out of Zoe and her shoulders slumped. "So do we just accept it? I mean, I know people die here every week. I see the statistics. But even if it wasn't my fault, it was my mistake."

"Maybe it wasn't a mistake," Rachel said. At their shocked looks, she kept talking. "OK, so maybe a couple weeks of being a little tougher on patrol, that didn't accomplish that much, not enough to make up for this. But tonight? Buffy, you said you figured it out, when you watched the spell. Even Scáthach thought so. You can make another slayer now. That has to be worth it."

"Rachel's right," Buffy took the chance to stop Zoe beating herself up. "I saw a lot, really detailed, and way more than I could've figured out by myself. Without something like that, I could've been grasping at straws forever."

"Then let's do it," Zoe said. "Right now. Make it matter."

"That's kinda my line." Rachel was a little taken aback.

"You can make slayers now right? Make her a slayer." Zoe was suddenly determined.

"I- in the hospital room?" Buffy said. What if someone walked in on them?

"Why not?" Zoe argued. "This is your power, right? It's not something you're calling and bargaining with. And the longer we wait, the more likely something else goes wrong. We can't let it. An extra slayer? Maybe forever? It's too huge."

"I know we kinda thought it was gonna be me, but Zoe, are you sure you just want to, like, hand it off?" Rachel asked.

"It should be you. You're the best fighter. I tried to be a good fighter, and well, look what happens," Zoe said.

"That's totally not fair," Rachel said.

"I'm still not quite past doing this in the hospital room," Buffy said.

"Buffy, you've got oodles of power right?" Zoe was on a roll now, "After it works with Rachel, maybe we can get me after. Or maybe not. But if there's anything I've learned, the hellmouth, it's random and dangerous. We shouldn't waste this big chance dithering."

CyberWillow spoke again through the radios, "Zoe's X-Rays have been processed, and are indicative of small fractures of the 8th and 9th rib. They necessitate no further intervention, and I can easily take this room out of circulation on the medical roster if you require its private use."

"Well, it's not my call, but I guess I won't argue," Rachel said. "If you want to do it now Buffy, lay it on me."

Vote: Zoe thinks Buffy should try to slayerize Rachel now. Buffy thinks she has a pretty good idea what she's doing. But messing with power this primal and permanent is a very risky business. Does Buffy try it here and now, or wait?

[] Try to slayerize Rachel. If successful, roughly 35% of her available Lachryma will be spent. Buffy and Rachel will both have to roll d20s with uncertain outcomes; Buffy will get a +1 bonus to her roll because the necessary information is fresh in her head.

[] Buffy won't make any hasty moves yet. Zoe might be disappointed though.