[X] Vanessa's nephew is probably the best choice. Buffy knows the least about him, but he's likely to be safe enough without getting the cops too demoralized. Plus, anyone Vanessa thinks is good for the job is probably reliable, right?
Previously, on Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
INT. SCHOOL HALL - DAY
BUFFY: So, what's on tap tonight that's so important? Uprising? Prophesied ritual? Preordained death-fest?
XANDER: Ah, the old standards.
GILES: A transport vehicle is delivering a supply of blood to the hospital.
BUFFY: Aha. Vampire meals-on-wheels.
GILES: Well, hopefully not. We should meet in front of the hospital at 8:30 sharp. I'll bring the weaponry.
BUFFY: And I'll bring the party mix.
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INT. BUFFY'S ROOM - AFTERNOON - DAY
JOYCE: How about some soup? Chicken and stars?
BUFFY: Mom. Stop it. Come sit with me.
JOYCE: Well... I've got... laundry...
BUFFY: Why are you...
Buffy gasps.
BUFFY: You had sex with Giles. You had sex with Giles!
Joyce is heading for the door.
JOYCE: It was the candy! We were teenagers!
BUFFY: On the hood of a police car?!
JOYCE: I'll be downstairs! Feel better!
Joyce exits.
BUFFY: (called after) Twice?!
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INT. CITY HALL - UPSTAIRS - DAY
Digby charges in with five minions.
DIGBY: This will never be your town, Slayer!
BUFFY: I like to think of it as our town, really, but we can agree to disagree.
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INT. CITY HALL - CONFERENCE ROOM - DAY
JONATHAN: I've spread the word to all the '99ers that we've taken over the city, and that we need people to help run it. The response has been pretty positive, at least short term, since most people weren't really doing anything this summer.
XANDER: So we'll be able to staff the hotline and the watch network?
PERCY: I got that. Never could trust the cops around here anyway.
VANESSA: (smirking) They've never been a very inspiring police force.
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INT CITY HALL - CLEAN ROOM - DAY
HARMONY: I guess that makes sense. So, now that I'm all muzzled, you said something about a mansion?
BUFFY: Xander wants to make Crawford street into some kind of base, but it could probably use someone to keep the squatters out. Nonlethally. It has all the vampire accommodations one might desire, helpfully set up by its former occupant. (smiles evilly)
WILLOW: Who actually owns that place anyway? (dustbins mirror fragments)
BUFFY: We do. It turns out that when you don't pay property taxes for a bajillion years, your house is not yours anymore.
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INT. POLICE DEPT - HALL - NIGHT
XANDER: You know how much I hate to be a responsible adult, but maybe the best option is to mostly leave things alone? Chief Monroe is a corrupt coward, but he might be your corrupt coward now. Anyone who saw what you did to that dragon would be a little afraid of you.
VANESSA: I might have a middle way. My nephew grew up in Sunnydale, and he's an actually respectable police detective in San Francisco now, as opposed to the scum like Monroe we have here. He isn't terribly experienced with the night life here, but he knows enough to not be surprised, and we could read him in for the job.
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S3.5E4: The Triumvirate
"So you say you had some kind of vision in response to the dragon's charm?" Giles asked. "Was it like a slayer dream?" He twirled his staff and then came at Buffy with a powerful series of overhand swings, following through with the momentum of the staff to make each at a slightly different trajectory.
"Would be the first one I ever had when I was awake," Buffy was limiting herself to pure dodging in this exercise, and managed to waltz through Giles' attacks even while staying in arms reach of him. "Also kind of shorter and creepier than usual." It had been a few days before she'd been able to get a training session in with Giles; between their two busy schedules and the need for a new location things had kept getting delayed.
Despite its many conveniences, City Hall didn't really have an area for proper training, but Xander's renovations at the Crawford Street Mansion had been moving along well and his Sunnydale City Watch (or 'SDCW!', as he would say) now had the building fully occupied. Buffy had even led the new recruits in some exercises here earlier this week, but this was strictly a slayer/watcher session. Buffy had been a little reluctant to discuss the vision with anyone else; they all had enough going on without getting weirded out by her latest freaky thing.
"I can't say I can think of any records of such a thing. You've resisted hypnosis by The Master and Drusilla in the past, did it feel like that?" Giles had switched up his tactics now, and was coming at her with rapid jabs using the end of the staff, as if it was a spear.
"Vendoat was definitely way better than them at it. Like comparing a dancing bear to a scaly ballerina, she had a whole Saturday morning special's worth of Buffy temptations packed in there." Buffy avoided the strikes by strafing around him now, though she had to reverse direction once when he stabbed out with the staff's back end. "Plus, even when … a vampire gets someone with Hypnosis, they just sort of freeze up right? She had the whole mind control dealy going on, it didn't really wear off of the victims until after she was dead."
"Yes, the effect isn't generally thought of as the same, but it was the best analogy to it that we've faced in the past." Giles paused in his assault. "We really ought to get some real eye protection in case there are any other dragons waiting in the wings for us."
"Already covered," Buffy said. "We returned what was left of the illegally seized evidence to the victims, but some of the hoard was just from old Wilkins stashes the police found. Protective goggles were the first thing on the equipment list we ordered with the proceeds."
"I do hope you didn't sell anything too dangerous." Giles cleaned his glasses worriedly. "I realize the budget is rather strict right now, but-"
Buffy interrupted him, "Don't worry, I don't think all our magic people would let us. You should have seen the way Amy was fawning over some of that stuff the other day. He had some tasty liquid assets too, we spent some of those."
"Yes, of course." Giles went back into a fighting stance. "I should know you have good sense by now. In any case, what were the contents of this protective vision?"
Buffy hesitated. This part definitely made her sound a little psycho-girl, which was part of why she didn't really want to share with the rest of her friends. "I was in this desert, or maybe like a savannah." She couldn't quite manage to tell the whole truth about the next part. "This voice told me to KILL. Definite capital letters, no compromises of any kind." After all, it sort of might not have been her voice anyway.
"Interesting," Giles seemed even more intrigued than he had been before. "The slayer is said to originate from a primal force of some kind, and the records are sparse but it's thought that the first slayer was called in Africa." He noticed her troubled expression. "I wouldn't worry overmuch about the content, Buffy. Such forces often lack subtlety and live in the moment. It's possible that it simply recognized the danger you were in and interceded as best it knew how. It's not as if there were any permanent effects." He started attacking with the staff again, noticing that they'd let their pace lag.
Buffy jumped up in response, landing with a fraction of her weight on the staff to disrupt Giles grip, then flipping over his head and behind him and catch the staff as he fumbled it. He stuttered a bit, surprised, before turning to face her again. "That's the thing, Giles. There kind of were."
She fiddled with the staff for a bit before continuing. "I'm not faster or stronger or tougher or anything. But it's like I know more about the fighty arts now. All my Slayer combat instincts got turned up to 11. All kinds of moves and tricks I've never done in HD-movie clarity."
"You do seem to be in exceptionally good form today," he said. "I suppose this rush of insight assisted you against the dragon? It was already quite large for its age."
"Especially the dragon. The difference isn't as big fighting vampires, and other stuff I'm already used to," she said. She'd managed a few patrols in the past week, and there had actually been a couple fledglings to fight; the summer doldrums hadn't fully set in yet, apparently. "But it was suddenly like I'd already fought lots of dragons before, when I was fighting it." She made a face. "It helped a lot with the gunfire too. I really hope being mayor isn't going to involve me getting shot at all the time."
"I should hope not," Giles replied. "This new chief of police Ms. Waters found seemed agreeable?"
"I'd say he was a little young for the job, but," Buffy gestured at herself. "He didn't dismiss me or the darker side of things in town at least, but we agreed he needed to get the police back in shape for normal police work before graduating to vampires. They'll forward those kinds of things to Xander's SDCW Hotline for now, and plus, we've got these handy walkie talkies now anyways." Buffy took hers off her belt and waved it in example. "You're carrying yours, right Giles?"
Plans for a full merger of supernatural and mundane policing hadn't materialized, but thanks to surplus police radios and a little of Willow's transistor-magic all the friendly forces of the town could at least talk to each other now. There were relays at a bunch of their buildings, like City Hall and Crawford street, and Willow had even said it should be hard to listen in without an authorized radio.
He cringed a bit. "Ah, yes, that device." He eyed his, which apparently he'd left in the corner for the training session. "It always seems to make such a racket at the worst times."
"You know it has channel settings right? You could just leave it quiet except for APBs." Buffy said, with a smile on her face.
Giles blanched, and changed the subject. "Ah. In any case, while changes to your powers are concerning, I don't think we have very much to go on yet, and the nature of them seems far less alien than your experience earlier this year. I'll consult with the appropriate journals and books, of course, in case there's anything that sheds insight, and you should tell me if there are any more waking visions or noticeable effects."
"Thanks, Giles." Buffy said. It felt good to get it off her chest, and she was less worried about it now that she'd told him. "There hasn't been any new weird stuff since Sunday, so I think it's definitely more stable than the psychic Buffy extravaganza was."
They resumed training after that, and Buffy had some fun testing out some acrobatic tricks with the blocky stonework that made up the mansion walls. The floor had been padded, but that was more for others' benefit; she was too tough to bruise or cut just from falling wrong, at least from any reasonable height. She was trying to integrate some of her new knowledge into a more aerial style of combat, and Giles threw tennis balls at her while she dodged, trying to avoid touching the floor.
Giles wasn't proving as dab a hand at the tennis ball as he was with his staff, so Buffy was feeling more relaxed in this part of the session. "So my watcher, what do you have planned for the night? Books? Museum catalogues?" Buffy struggled to think of a third Gilesy thing, "More books?"
"Oh, I'd thought your mother told you," Giles said casually. "She invited me over for dinner tonight." His next tennis ball beaned Buffy in the forehead, and she clumsily tumbled to the mat.
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Dinner didn't end up being as traumatizing as Buffy had expected. It was worse.
Giles and Mom weren't like … flirty in front of her or anything. But they talked. You'd think they would talk about things they had in common, like ancient artifacts and old bands. Instead, they talked about the other thing they had in common, which was Buffy.
"Wait, that's why her hair was pink for a week? I thought she was just having a phase," Joyce was stifling a laugh, and Buffy just hung her head. The regrettable pixie incident was something she'd wanted to never remember again.
Giles went on, because if he was going to tell the terrible story she knew he'd say the terrible line, "That's why they always said back in the academy: 'Two pixies in hand and your hair is a bush!' I tried to warn her, but you know Buffy, always gallivanting off to the next challenge."
She picked at her meal, trying to drown her sorrows with tasty rice pilaf. But even a dinner that mom had spent actual effort on couldn't save her from this embarrassment singularity.
"Ever since she was tiny!" Joyce agreed. "She would put on this old blanket like a cape and run around screaming 'Power Girl to the rescue!' I was frightened by a mouse once and she beaned it with a pillow!" Giles couldn't stifle a little Englishman giggle at that, and then her mom unleashed the dread weapon. "I even have old pictures! I should get them out after dinner." She was doomed.
He definitely wasn't going to let something like that go. It would dog her forever now. "Well, you have been trying to look a little more professional lately Buffy. Maybe a cape would be-" Buffy got a stay of execution though, when her radio activated. She heard Giles' buzzing over in the next room too.
"Attention all units, this is an emergency, 10-19! Vamps at the police station, there's a whole mob attacking! Request reinforcements from SDCW and other friendlies! Repeat 10-19!" The sound of gunfire and smashing windows was heard in the background before the radio cut off.
With this dire news, Buffy launched into action, thoughts of the embarrassing dinner forgotten. Giles was getting out his keys, and Buffy frowned. "Giles, your car is too slow. Mom, can we borrow yours?"
"Are you sure Buffy?" Joyce hedged, "This sounds so dangerous. I mean, surely the police-"
"Are totally unable to defend themselves, especially since Matt had to fire some of them when he came in." Most of the force had stayed on, but between that and those that left town or went missing right after Wilkins died they were still depleted. And they hadn't been focusing on tooling up to fight vampires yet either.
"She's right." Giles confirmed. "I believe the old mayor's influence kept them insulated from a direct attack of this scale, but clearly things have changed."
Joyce sighed in defeat, knowing her daughter was right, and Buffy snatched the keys out of her hand as soon as they were presented and started shuffling Giles out the door with her. He made a quick stop to get a crossbow out of his trunk, but was confused when he saw Buffy pulling up in the driver's seat of the jeep. "Ah, Buffy, do you even have your driver's license yet?"
"This girl has no time for tests anymore." Buffy shook her head. "But I don't think the police are going to arrest me when I'm on my way to save them, and my reflexes are faster than yours. We need to be there yesterday, get in."
Giles conceded, but made very sure to buckle his seatbelt, a task Buffy hadn't bothered with. She took off before he was done, and they were roaring towards downtown. They'd only gone a couple blocks though, before Buffy's radio came on again. "Umm, is this working? This is Laura Egler, I'm at the hospital and these guys are robbing it."
Buffy grabbed out her radio and started driving one handed, not slowing down in the least. "What guys? Like, guys people or guys vampires?"
"Buffy!" Giles shouted, and Buffy swerved to avoid another driver as she took a corner hard. She went back to her conversation and Giles' grip on his seat tightened.
Laura's voice continued over the radio "I think they're all vampires, and there's this one shark guy. He's got this big speech he's making now but I think they're after all the blood."
"The police station thing must be a diversion," Buffy said. "Attract all our attention to fight there, and then make off with all the blood from the hospital."
"That might still be the most dangerous battle," Giles said, with his attention still half on the road. "They would know the police were at least armed, if not appropriately, so that's likely the larger force."
"If things go wrong at the hospital though…" Buffy trailed off. It could be a massacre with all the invalids there.
Vote:
[] Buffy and Giles handle the hospital to save the patients and the blood supply, letting the rest of the the '99ers converge on the police station to help with the battle there.
[] Buffy and Giles go to the police station to beat back the attack there, redirecting enough other '99ers to prevent a disaster at the hospital.
