- Location
- Tarn-Vedra
[X] Buffy deals with the Fyarl. Between Xander, Harmony, and Oz, plus CyberWillow watching everything, there was no way Ethan would escape.
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Successor (BTVS)
- Thread starter DeAnno
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- Mature
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- She/Her
So I'm pretty sure that the movie cast is a lost cause now along with the deaths from the Owl attacks. Also 99% sure that CyberWillow arragened things so that the Nezumi would escape and continue being an AI. I think Buffy needs to feel like she acomplished something active today, more then just saving people already in danger like the owl victims or Giles, and getting Ethan is the only avalible option.
I'm also just not sure I want KILL Buffy to fight GIles.
[X] Buffy's furious at the whole situation, but especially with Ethan. She doesn't know how much of this mess he's actually responsible for, but he's going to make a convenient target for her to work out her anger on.
I'm also just not sure I want KILL Buffy to fight GIles.
[X] Buffy's furious at the whole situation, but especially with Ethan. She doesn't know how much of this mess he's actually responsible for, but he's going to make a convenient target for her to work out her anger on.
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- Internet
[X] Buffy deals with the Fyarl. Between Xander, Harmony, and Oz, plus CyberWillow watching everything, there was no way Ethan would escape.
- Location
- United States
I'm not convinced that the movie cast is a lost cause- they definitely plan to do something at the natural history museum, but I don't think we can be certain it'll be detrimental yet. It's probably not portalling home, since we seem to have dissuaded them. This episode definitely calls for a bit of a post-mortum on what went wrong though.
I feel like we should try to work out what this would be.
[X] Buffy's furious at the whole situation, but especially with Ethan. She doesn't know how much of this mess he's actually responsible for, but he's going to make a convenient target for her to work out her anger on.
No way we're letting Ethan get away with this. Besides, I doubt Harmony, Oz and Xander are really capable of hurting a Fyarl too much, and Giles isn't going to hurt any of them, so we should be fine focusing on Ethan.
No way we're letting Ethan get away with this. Besides, I doubt Harmony, Oz and Xander are really capable of hurting a Fyarl too much, and Giles isn't going to hurt any of them, so we should be fine focusing on Ethan.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X] Buffy's furious at the whole situation, but especially with Ethan. She doesn't know how much of this mess he's actually responsible for, but he's going to make a convenient target for her to work out her anger on.
- Location
- United States
[X] Buffy's furious at the whole situation, but especially with Ethan. She doesn't know how much of this mess he's actually responsible for, but he's going to make a convenient target for her to work out her anger on.
Awesome battle, but I'm kind of amazed at how things just seem to keep going wrong this episode. Was it always supposed to be a clusterfuck or did we just make a lot of poor decisions?
Awesome battle, but I'm kind of amazed at how things just seem to keep going wrong this episode. Was it always supposed to be a clusterfuck or did we just make a lot of poor decisions?
- Location
- United States
I think we pretty clearly should not have waited on forcing a meeting with the Nezumi- CyberWillow was pretty obviously trying to delay us. And we should have gone after the owls when we were searching in the ship- in retrospect, since the ship was geared up for finding portals, the owl portals should have been pretty easy to find.
On the one hand, we almost certainly would have fought a noticeably smaller owl if they were bringing reinforcements through while we looked for Ethan. On the other hand, if we wiped out the entire expeditionary military force the owls have in that fight they might be down to just a garrison back home and the rats might be able to pressure them into giving us things.
- Location
- United States
[X] Buffy deals with the Fyarl. Between Xander, Harmony, and Oz, plus CyberWillow watching everything, there was no way Ethan would escape.
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[X] Buffy's furious at the whole situation, but especially with Ethan. She doesn't know how much of this mess he's actually responsible for, but he's going to make a convenient target for her to work out her anger on.
Seems if this goes wrong, it goes wrong in the most interesting way.
Seems if this goes wrong, it goes wrong in the most interesting way.
- Location
- Germany
[X] Buffy deals with the Fyarl. Between Xander, Harmony, and Oz, plus CyberWillow watching everything, there was no way Ethan would escape.
S4.0E7: Deja Vu in Galactic Standard VIII
DeAnno
Sometimes words have two meanings
[X] Buffy deals with the Fyarl. Between Xander, Harmony, and Oz, plus CyberWillow watching everything, there was no way Ethan would escape.
"Catch him," her order was abrupt, and basically directed to everyone. Dealing with the big dumb Fyarl wasn't what she wanted to do, but it made too much sense. Maybe Harmony could sort of hold her own with it, but there were still civilians here. Too risky.
It still frustrated her, and she worked that out by mauling it over the shoulder before it even knew it was in a fight. Her hammer made a nasty crack as it hit the bone spur there and the Fyarl slammed down into the floor.
The tile underneath it shattered with the impact and the baristas screamed at the sudden violence. The Fyarl flailed weakly on the ground, looking dazed and confused. At least that made two of them.
She swung down again, and this time after it hit the Fyarl was driven down hard enough that there was a little crater in the floor. You couldn't cut a Fyarl's skin without a silvered edge; she'd gotten a refresher on that when she dealt with the ones in Maggie's tender care a month ago. That didn't mean they wouldn't stop if you hit them hard enough, though not many besides her were in a position to take advantage of that.
She'd been expecting some serious defiance, and raised her hammer for another blow, but then she focused on it again and stopped. It wasn't clawing back, kicking out, or even trying to get up. It was just sort of pathetically covering its head with its arms.
Maybe she should've had Harmony deal with it after all. Well, no use crying over spilt Fyarls. She used the opportunity to look around the room more carefully, hoping to catch some clue about Giles.
She didn't see any. There wasn't even any blood at first glance, just some scattered property damage, and no sticky Fyarl mucus to be seen. Now that she thought about it, had anyone fleeing the building even been injured? It was hard to remember. Another look at the two baristas confirmed they weren't hurt, though they did look pretty shellshocked. Maybe she should say something?
"It's fine. You're safe." Buffy glanced away from the baristas for a second; the Fyarl was still cowering, right? Right. "Well, safeish."
"You're the mayor," the taller, blonder one said, looking between her and the Fyarl frantically. The other one was less together than that.
"Yes, that's me. Don't wear it out." That didn't come out right. She wasn't really in her best mayoring form right now. "You should probably go. I need to deal with this. It's my job."
The talker squeaked, and then dragged her friend with her across the room and through the door, both of them hugging the wall as they passed around the downed demon.
A sudden thought popped into her head right after they were gone. "Hey, you didn't see what happened to Giles, did you?" Not that they'd know who he was. They didn't come back in, so hopefully someone was out there to process them or whatever. She really should make sure the Fyarl was under control and not leave it unsupervised.
She turned her full attention back on it, and briefly wondered if it was that same Fyarl she'd freed from the Initiative. What was his name? Drift? Grift? Biff? She wasn't sure, and it wasn't like she could tell the difference by sight, especially after over a month. Either way, this one looked like he (or she?) respected authority, so she supposed she should question it.
"Look. I can guess you probably weren't involved in the planning stages of whatever this was supposed to be, but all I want from you is to know where my watcher is. Middle aged. English. Wears-" Her magnetic boots disappeared into nothing with a pop, and she lost an inch of height, landing on roughly the floor in her regular boots. She lost her sentence as she stumbled for a second.
Did the spell just end? She really hadn't been expecting it to, with the Nezumi racing to the scene and ditching her just minutes ago. The Fyarl was growling now in its weird language, and she was torn with indecision if she should ask CyberWillow to translate or if she should find out what just happened. It was kind of unexpected that she wasn't translating already, really.
"CyberWillow?" She said uncertainly, not even totally sure what to ask in the face of this new sudden development. She was gonna sleep for a week when she finally hit her bed.
The empty pause stretched ominously, and even the Fyarl on the floor was still and quiet, as if afraid to provoke more wrath in this time of troubles.
She ground her teeth a little. She knew that the AI had zillions of bytes to spare, this silent treatment stuff really wasn't acceptable. "CyberWillow! Where-"
"Buffy!" Cordelia's voice shouted from the radio, brimming with that indignation. "Willow's crazy machine tried to kill me!"
"Cordelia? Is that you or Charisma?" She probably could've phrased that better.
"Of course it's me! Can you not tell the difference?" It was pretty hard, to be fair, even when she was feeling a hundred percent. "Whatever, not important. What is important is that The Return of the Sears Catalog wanted me to stay Newspaper Girl forever!"
"This is a significant mischaracterization of the facts," CyberWillow finally inserted herself into the conversation.
"You were getting them to move that statue thing onto the spaceship!" she accused. "Then they could've flown off with it to who knows where!"
"With ample time for study, I hoped we might eventually be able to split-"
Codelia interrupted CyberWillow, still full of righteous anger, "How much time? Weeks? Months? Years? Unlike you, we have lives! If it wasn't for Jonathan smashing that ugly thing, when did you plan on waking me up, 2021?"
Jonathan! Buffy suddenly remembered everything, some barely noticed events of the past hours snapping back into crystal clarity. Jonathan had ridden up the disc with her into the Nezumi. Jonathan had been hit by stray stunner fire in the brief fight, and then his body had laid unconscious and unseen on the floor. Jonathan had been missing from the huge battle they'd just had. Jonathan had been the one thing she couldn't recall all day, no matter how hard she tried.
"The value of the research alone could've paid for a significant trust, I assure you that your time would have been well compensated," CyberWillow's tone was ever so faintly dismissive. "Jonathan Levinson's hasty actions have not only-"
"My life's already been ruined once, and you were what? Just going to ruin it again? That trust better have been in the hundreds of millions! I have a whole acting career ahead of me!" Cordelia had good reason to be angry, but that struck Buffy as a more than slightly optimistic number. She kept ranting after that and didn't stop, not willing to let CyberWillow get any more words in edgewise.
Even the Fyarl on the ground had a long suffering look on his face. The quiet exasperation really didn't fit its demonic countenance, in fact it almost reminded her of-
"Giles!" Buffy exclaimed, interrupting whatever Cordelia had been saying.
"What does Giles have to do about this? This is about me! He wasn't in on the sleeping beauty plan too, was he?" Cordelia said.
"No, Giles is here," Buffy said, failing to explain. "He's the Fyarl."
"What? Buffy, to be honest, you sound pretty distracted, and we really need to talk about this in person anyway. CyberWillow could be twisting my words over this thing! We can't even trust what we hear! I'll see you at City Hall."
Plus Harmony, of course. That was the most important part. Very, very important. She'd usually object to such ridiculous levels of pampering, but she just hadn't felt up to any resistance after the day she'd had.
It was definitely better than sitting around listening to CyberWillow talk one of her ears off with excuses as her brains leaked out of the other. As part of being shuffled into 'recovery', Cynthia had temporarily taken her radio, telling her the world would keep turning for at least a little while. Somehow, it had, and now everyone was gathered for what was destined to be another fun-filled Scooby family meeting.
Cordelia's desire to make her case in person had evolved into a group rehash of the past few days' whirlwind of events in an attempt to make sense of everything and figure out what to do about it. The SDCW had played a big role, necessitating Xander's presence. Willow was between him and herself, half paying attention and half scrolling through incomprehensible lines of code on her laptop, shifting and changing even as she looked at them. Cordelia was the only one of the recently transformed there (the others opted to let her carry their flag) and she was sitting next to Jonathan, whose story she still wanted some explanation about. Giles rounded out the group, and was telling his story first.
He was looking better than he had the last time she'd seen him, though that wasn't so hard, what with being completely de-Fyarled. The rueful expression on his face reminded her of the time Eyghon had come to town, even though this time it was pretty hard to see how any of this was his fault. He'd been as much of a victim as anyone, not just Ethan's but also kind of her own: even through the Fyarl's tough hide, she'd left him with a couple ugly bruises.
His explanation of how Ethan had manipulated him by masquerading as his old flame over the past week and a half was disturbing to hear, and the clinical way Giles was presenting it all was almost worse; Buffy would be totally flipping out.
"And so even though I had every reason to be suspicious, I let myself be drawn into a kiss," he finished grimly. "You were witness to the results."
"Reverse Beauty and the Beast is a heck of a way to go," Xander tried to lighten the mood, but his voice was a little hollow and the joke fell pretty flat. She could tell the whole Ethan and Giles situation was weirding him out. Giles hadn't exactly gone between the lines and read the quiet part out loud, but his history with Ethan kind of spoke for itself at this point.
"We do have him completely locked down, right?" she asked, trying to steer the conversation in another direction. "He can't just kiss the bars and turn them to jello or something?"
Willow looked up from the laptop at that, and explained. "No, he definitely couldn't, what he did was actually pretty impressive. He managed to fast-cast with no obvious components by dismissing his Olivia transformation at the same time and repurposing the energy into the Fyarl spell, somehow reconciling the partially disparate energies. He even had magically conductive lipstick to use as a focus." She read the room's reaction to her intellectual enthusiasm and cringed. "More relevantly, the cell has an alarm rigged on it that'll flare up if he tries any magic inside."
"And on the more mundane side, our good friend Chief Waters is making sure to keep some eyeballs on him, like he did with Amy," Xander added. "He isn't going anywhere."
"And he claims he didn't have anything to do with the Owls?" Buffy had already asked him about that right before the meeting, but it was worth repeating.
"We didn't exactly break out the thumbscrews, but that's what he said," Xander shrugged.
"Why would he go to all this trouble then?" Jonathan asked. "What was there for him to gain?"
Giles just chuckled sadly as Xander answered, the awkwardness returning. "You know Ethan, he just loves his pranks. Apparently he showed up without much of a plan, aside from you know, the whole Olivia thing."
"Is she all right? I mean the real one, if we know," Buffy clarified. In the confusion she hadn't thought to ask until now.
"Waking from an enchanted sleep in a hospital now, if what he said is true," Giles stated.
"I can confirm that," CyberWillow echoed across the room. "My searches indicate that she recently awoke at St. Thomas's Hospital in London and appears to be in good health."
"Really convenient how she finds that out now, and not three hours ago," Cordelia said.
"Three hours ago Olivia Williams was unconscious and checked in under the assumed name Olive Wilson," CyberWillow snapped back. "Even if I'd run a thorough background check on every possible suspect she would have been impossible to find, I of course do not have anything like full camera coverage outside of the Sunnydale area!"
"Excuses, excuses," Cordelia rolled her eyes.
It sounded like a reasonable explanation, but CyberWillow was really good at that. Buffy decided to get back to Ethan for now. "So he went from no plan to basically the lamest mish-mash repeat of plans he and other people have had ever? With no outside input? I know he's all about the transforming, but I've gotta give this one an F for originality."
"Well, that's the thing," Xander said. "Our big Lights in the Sky opening extravaganza? According to him, the whole reason he did it was he wanted to see what our AI did after he made her a friend."
"What?" Willow came to full attention in an instant, pressing a combination on the keyboard that made the freshman-aged CyberWillow avatar come up onscreen, moving the lines of code off to a window on the side. "Have you been talking to him in secret?"
"Like she'd admit it if she has been," Cordelia rolled her eyes.
"I have not had any communications with Ethan Rayne," CyberWillow said. Her avatar had her arms folded over her chest, looking defensive on the screen.
"If Jonathan hadn't been there to stop you, you'd probably be singing the same tune about what you told the other us on the Nezumi," Cordelia fired back.
"Hold on for a sec. Jonathan, what did you do exactly?" Buffy cut off the she said/she said argument, taking the opportunity to have Jonathan say his piece.
"Well this morning, things were moving pretty fast, and it was looking like people might get hurt," he stopped, looking worried to continue, but Cordelia patted him on the shoulder and he moved on. "So I cast a Veil on myself, you know, just in case."
Buffy pinched her nose, trying to reconcile the version of events she'd experienced with the one she now remembered. "You didn't tell anyone first?"
"Everyone was pretty busy, and if I had, nobody, not even CyberWillow, would've remembered it unless they were under the Veil too," he said. "They're a lot cheaper and easier to maintain on just yourself. But I probably still should've asked first, I'm sorry-"
"No, it was a good call," Buffy said. Jonathan was the one who knew his magic best, and the last thing she needed to be doing was more micromanaging. "Go on,"
"When you decided to give yourself up, I thought you might need some help, so I tagged along on the floating disc." He gulped. "That kind of didn't go great."
"I would feel bad for stunning him if it was actually me that did it," Cordelia said.
"So like the guys who were stunned last night at Warren's place, I was unconscious for hours."
"And your Veil held despite this?" Giles asked.
"I wouldn't have expected it to, but I never tested it like that," Jonathan said. "I was super drained magically when I finally woke up, but it still should've been even worse than that."
"Maybe it's cheaper to hold on unconscious people?" Willow wondered.
"Yeah, that could be it, it'd make sense," Jonathan said. "But either way, I woke up, still Veiled, and CyberWillow was telling the Nezumi's crew to go back to the museum."
"I was not telling them precisely, merely reminding them of the situation as it stood and-"
"Just let him finish," Buffy said, irritated with her word games. "You can give your side after."
"Noted."
"So we got to the museum, and I followed everyone out. Skip, or I guess captain Steel, just used his strength to pop the locks and get into the backrooms, and they looked around for the ritual space."
"The hiding spot was pretty lame, it was just in a supply closet with everything else pushed to the side or moved out," Cordelia added.
"Yeah, it didn't take long," Jonathan continued. "From my earlier research I knew the effect would be fragile and have automatic snapback, so when I saw it I just grabbed it up and smashed it. And that finally broke the Veil I was under."
"I, or she I guess, was looking right when it happened," Cordelia said. "It was confusing to watch at first but then very heroic."
"Whatever its aesthetic advantages, the violent loss of the focus will make the crew of the Nezumi completely unrecoverable," CyberWillow jumped back in.
"I'm really not seeing how that's a problem," Xander said.
"You all profess to care about innocents, do you not?" CyberWillow's voice was short, like Willow's when she was sad, and it was disconcerting. "Captain Steel, Professor Vorax, Charisma Carpenter. The Nezumi. They were all people! None of them were even technically demons, with the dubious, in-between status you've ascribed to them.
"They're gone. Perhaps lost to another manifold of reality, perhaps as good as dead. Those versions are now lost to us, because of his hasty actions, even if we somehow managed to recast a similar spell."
Giles was the one to answer. "They didn't belong here in the first place. Creating life like that, at the whims of magic, is not in the natural order of things."
"Then am I alive? Was the Nezumi? Or do you ascribe more sentience to a swarm of rats than a machine? Aren't I supposed to care about my friends? Any of you would've done the same for yours."
"This isn't Philosophy 101," Cordelia said. "And we still need to get back to the real question! Were you talking to Ethan? Did you have some plan together to make all this permanent, so you could hang on to your beeping boyfriend?"
"I have already informed you that I had no contact with Ethan, except in the context of his Olvia deception, no different than any of you." If it wasn't for her word choices and the freaky echo, Buffy might have trouble distinguishing her angry voice from Willow's.
"I've already 'informed' you that I don't believe you!" Cordelia yelled back into her radio.
"Can you just tell?" Buffy said at a more reasonable volume, asking Willow. "If she's lying or not?" CyberWillow hadn't lied yet, not that they knew about, but she'd twisted the truth a couple times over this.
"In August? Yeah, I'm pretty sure I could've, but now?" Willow shook her head, dismissing the lines of moving (or maybe living?) code entirely from the screen. "I don't know. She's done a lot of work on her own program, and the effects of the Spiderweb ritual are obfuscating things further. Maybe if I had a few days to dig in and figure out the new paradigm."
Giles cleaned his glasses, looking aggrieved. "I know that I am personally anything but blameless in this situation, but before we performed said ritual you told us you had-," he paused, "her under control."
"She is!" Willow said. "She's just defending the core principles I taught her in the first place, in a way we didn't really intend. But she's never acted at all like this before, it's all Ethan's fault!"
"Well sure, dump off the responsibility. But you have to do something! What if she does it again!" Cordelia argued.
"Do what again, get conflicted about writing off her friends?" Willow sniped back.
"Yeah! And who knows what other sketchy friends she's gonna make. Hello, it's the hellmouth," Cordelia waved her arms out expressively. "We've only both lived here since before kindergarten."
"Willow, you have to admit this is a little unreasonable," Xander said. "Whether they thought they were real or not, we couldn't just let them stick around and keep their alter-egos on the bench. I mean, Halloween, Hyenas, Vampire-you, if we tried to keep all the weekly wonderkinds the animals would be running the zoo by now."
She shook her head. "I know it's unreasonable, I'm not saying it's not, but it was an impossible situation. And one Ethan admitted he specifically engineered! Probably exactly so we'd do this, and he could cackle it up like a big cackley villain. Giles, back me up here."
"I don't know. Ethan…" Giles sighed, "Perhaps I should just recuse myself from this whole investigation."
Buffy rubbed her forehead, trying to stop the headache from coming back. This conversation was going in circles, and she decided it was time to stop beating around the bush. "Cordelia, what exactly do you want to happen here? How does this end?"
"Willow's science experiment has gotten way too dangerous. Turn it off," she said harshly.
That provoked a round of exclamations, surprising even Jonathan. "Umm, that sounds pretty extreme."
"You got rid of one AI, I don't know why you're suddenly so hesitant about another," CyberWillow said irreverently.
"Everyone calm down, nobody needs to be turned off," Xander said, using his peacekeeping voice.
"Well, what else are you going to do?" Cordelia said. "What if the next monster of the week turns me into a robot or something, and she gets her way that time? No more Cordelia?"
"It's not going to happen again," Xander said, not quite sounding like he believed it. "Because, because, ah, Willow. You can make sure, right? Take a few days off from everything else, roll up those sleeves, and work out these bugs."
"Sort of?" She said. "I don't think I could alter her core drives at this point without lobotomizing her."
"My own creator wants to stop short of a full lobotomy, perhaps I should be thankful," CyberWillow commented.
"I could probably put some harder restrictions in place, like certain people she had to protect, or certain things she had to tell us about? It'd be hard to make them too complicated," Willow finished.
"Only a couple restraining bolts," CyberWillow finished glumly.
"I guess that'd be something," Cordelia said grudgingly. "But what about those spiders? If they're what's obfuscating her code, I say we de-obfuscate!"
Xander was the one cringing this time. "Losing the extra security coverage we have now would hurt. A lot. We already suffered casualties today."
"Casualties which would have on average been 340% higher without my assistance in coordination," CyberWillow said. "Losing the benefits of the Spiderweb ritual's energies would not just cut my security umbrella, but degrade the efficiency of many of my other functions."
"So she says," Cordelia scoffed. "If she's telling the truth."
Vote: What do you do about CyberWillow? This vote will be by subcategory. All categories are independent choices and will be settled by majority.
[][ACTIVE] Deactivate CyberWillow, maybe for good.
[][ACTIVE] Leave CyberWillow operational.
[][RESTRICT] Have Willow hard-code in some new restrictions into CyberWillow's code (stunt what they are)
[][RESTRICT] Don't restrict her code directly, just go over with her what is and what isn't acceptable.
[][SPIDERS] Stop performing the Spiderweb ritual each Tuesday night. CyberWillow's extra magical hacking and processing will slowly fade back away.
[][SPIDERS] Don't stop the Spiders; keep casting the ritual weekly.
"Catch him," her order was abrupt, and basically directed to everyone. Dealing with the big dumb Fyarl wasn't what she wanted to do, but it made too much sense. Maybe Harmony could sort of hold her own with it, but there were still civilians here. Too risky.
It still frustrated her, and she worked that out by mauling it over the shoulder before it even knew it was in a fight. Her hammer made a nasty crack as it hit the bone spur there and the Fyarl slammed down into the floor.
The tile underneath it shattered with the impact and the baristas screamed at the sudden violence. The Fyarl flailed weakly on the ground, looking dazed and confused. At least that made two of them.
She swung down again, and this time after it hit the Fyarl was driven down hard enough that there was a little crater in the floor. You couldn't cut a Fyarl's skin without a silvered edge; she'd gotten a refresher on that when she dealt with the ones in Maggie's tender care a month ago. That didn't mean they wouldn't stop if you hit them hard enough, though not many besides her were in a position to take advantage of that.
She'd been expecting some serious defiance, and raised her hammer for another blow, but then she focused on it again and stopped. It wasn't clawing back, kicking out, or even trying to get up. It was just sort of pathetically covering its head with its arms.
Maybe she should've had Harmony deal with it after all. Well, no use crying over spilt Fyarls. She used the opportunity to look around the room more carefully, hoping to catch some clue about Giles.
She didn't see any. There wasn't even any blood at first glance, just some scattered property damage, and no sticky Fyarl mucus to be seen. Now that she thought about it, had anyone fleeing the building even been injured? It was hard to remember. Another look at the two baristas confirmed they weren't hurt, though they did look pretty shellshocked. Maybe she should say something?
"It's fine. You're safe." Buffy glanced away from the baristas for a second; the Fyarl was still cowering, right? Right. "Well, safeish."
"You're the mayor," the taller, blonder one said, looking between her and the Fyarl frantically. The other one was less together than that.
"Yes, that's me. Don't wear it out." That didn't come out right. She wasn't really in her best mayoring form right now. "You should probably go. I need to deal with this. It's my job."
The talker squeaked, and then dragged her friend with her across the room and through the door, both of them hugging the wall as they passed around the downed demon.
A sudden thought popped into her head right after they were gone. "Hey, you didn't see what happened to Giles, did you?" Not that they'd know who he was. They didn't come back in, so hopefully someone was out there to process them or whatever. She really should make sure the Fyarl was under control and not leave it unsupervised.
She turned her full attention back on it, and briefly wondered if it was that same Fyarl she'd freed from the Initiative. What was his name? Drift? Grift? Biff? She wasn't sure, and it wasn't like she could tell the difference by sight, especially after over a month. Either way, this one looked like he (or she?) respected authority, so she supposed she should question it.
"Look. I can guess you probably weren't involved in the planning stages of whatever this was supposed to be, but all I want from you is to know where my watcher is. Middle aged. English. Wears-" Her magnetic boots disappeared into nothing with a pop, and she lost an inch of height, landing on roughly the floor in her regular boots. She lost her sentence as she stumbled for a second.
Did the spell just end? She really hadn't been expecting it to, with the Nezumi racing to the scene and ditching her just minutes ago. The Fyarl was growling now in its weird language, and she was torn with indecision if she should ask CyberWillow to translate or if she should find out what just happened. It was kind of unexpected that she wasn't translating already, really.
"CyberWillow?" She said uncertainly, not even totally sure what to ask in the face of this new sudden development. She was gonna sleep for a week when she finally hit her bed.
The empty pause stretched ominously, and even the Fyarl on the floor was still and quiet, as if afraid to provoke more wrath in this time of troubles.
She ground her teeth a little. She knew that the AI had zillions of bytes to spare, this silent treatment stuff really wasn't acceptable. "CyberWillow! Where-"
"Buffy!" Cordelia's voice shouted from the radio, brimming with that indignation. "Willow's crazy machine tried to kill me!"
"Cordelia? Is that you or Charisma?" She probably could've phrased that better.
"Of course it's me! Can you not tell the difference?" It was pretty hard, to be fair, even when she was feeling a hundred percent. "Whatever, not important. What is important is that The Return of the Sears Catalog wanted me to stay Newspaper Girl forever!"
"This is a significant mischaracterization of the facts," CyberWillow finally inserted herself into the conversation.
"You were getting them to move that statue thing onto the spaceship!" she accused. "Then they could've flown off with it to who knows where!"
"With ample time for study, I hoped we might eventually be able to split-"
Codelia interrupted CyberWillow, still full of righteous anger, "How much time? Weeks? Months? Years? Unlike you, we have lives! If it wasn't for Jonathan smashing that ugly thing, when did you plan on waking me up, 2021?"
Jonathan! Buffy suddenly remembered everything, some barely noticed events of the past hours snapping back into crystal clarity. Jonathan had ridden up the disc with her into the Nezumi. Jonathan had been hit by stray stunner fire in the brief fight, and then his body had laid unconscious and unseen on the floor. Jonathan had been missing from the huge battle they'd just had. Jonathan had been the one thing she couldn't recall all day, no matter how hard she tried.
"The value of the research alone could've paid for a significant trust, I assure you that your time would have been well compensated," CyberWillow's tone was ever so faintly dismissive. "Jonathan Levinson's hasty actions have not only-"
"My life's already been ruined once, and you were what? Just going to ruin it again? That trust better have been in the hundreds of millions! I have a whole acting career ahead of me!" Cordelia had good reason to be angry, but that struck Buffy as a more than slightly optimistic number. She kept ranting after that and didn't stop, not willing to let CyberWillow get any more words in edgewise.
Even the Fyarl on the ground had a long suffering look on his face. The quiet exasperation really didn't fit its demonic countenance, in fact it almost reminded her of-
"Giles!" Buffy exclaimed, interrupting whatever Cordelia had been saying.
"What does Giles have to do about this? This is about me! He wasn't in on the sleeping beauty plan too, was he?" Cordelia said.
"No, Giles is here," Buffy said, failing to explain. "He's the Fyarl."
"What? Buffy, to be honest, you sound pretty distracted, and we really need to talk about this in person anyway. CyberWillow could be twisting my words over this thing! We can't even trust what we hear! I'll see you at City Hall."
------------------------------------------------------------------
It was almost two hours later, and while Buffy still wasn't at her best, she was feeling a lot better. Cynthia had really come through, with a hot soak in the private bathroom all set up for her when she stumbled into City Hall. It had been complete with colorful bubbles, relaxing incense, and a rather stately looking rubber ducky.
Plus Harmony, of course. That was the most important part. Very, very important. She'd usually object to such ridiculous levels of pampering, but she just hadn't felt up to any resistance after the day she'd had.
It was definitely better than sitting around listening to CyberWillow talk one of her ears off with excuses as her brains leaked out of the other. As part of being shuffled into 'recovery', Cynthia had temporarily taken her radio, telling her the world would keep turning for at least a little while. Somehow, it had, and now everyone was gathered for what was destined to be another fun-filled Scooby family meeting.
Cordelia's desire to make her case in person had evolved into a group rehash of the past few days' whirlwind of events in an attempt to make sense of everything and figure out what to do about it. The SDCW had played a big role, necessitating Xander's presence. Willow was between him and herself, half paying attention and half scrolling through incomprehensible lines of code on her laptop, shifting and changing even as she looked at them. Cordelia was the only one of the recently transformed there (the others opted to let her carry their flag) and she was sitting next to Jonathan, whose story she still wanted some explanation about. Giles rounded out the group, and was telling his story first.
He was looking better than he had the last time she'd seen him, though that wasn't so hard, what with being completely de-Fyarled. The rueful expression on his face reminded her of the time Eyghon had come to town, even though this time it was pretty hard to see how any of this was his fault. He'd been as much of a victim as anyone, not just Ethan's but also kind of her own: even through the Fyarl's tough hide, she'd left him with a couple ugly bruises.
His explanation of how Ethan had manipulated him by masquerading as his old flame over the past week and a half was disturbing to hear, and the clinical way Giles was presenting it all was almost worse; Buffy would be totally flipping out.
"And so even though I had every reason to be suspicious, I let myself be drawn into a kiss," he finished grimly. "You were witness to the results."
"Reverse Beauty and the Beast is a heck of a way to go," Xander tried to lighten the mood, but his voice was a little hollow and the joke fell pretty flat. She could tell the whole Ethan and Giles situation was weirding him out. Giles hadn't exactly gone between the lines and read the quiet part out loud, but his history with Ethan kind of spoke for itself at this point.
"We do have him completely locked down, right?" she asked, trying to steer the conversation in another direction. "He can't just kiss the bars and turn them to jello or something?"
Willow looked up from the laptop at that, and explained. "No, he definitely couldn't, what he did was actually pretty impressive. He managed to fast-cast with no obvious components by dismissing his Olivia transformation at the same time and repurposing the energy into the Fyarl spell, somehow reconciling the partially disparate energies. He even had magically conductive lipstick to use as a focus." She read the room's reaction to her intellectual enthusiasm and cringed. "More relevantly, the cell has an alarm rigged on it that'll flare up if he tries any magic inside."
"And on the more mundane side, our good friend Chief Waters is making sure to keep some eyeballs on him, like he did with Amy," Xander added. "He isn't going anywhere."
"And he claims he didn't have anything to do with the Owls?" Buffy had already asked him about that right before the meeting, but it was worth repeating.
"We didn't exactly break out the thumbscrews, but that's what he said," Xander shrugged.
"Why would he go to all this trouble then?" Jonathan asked. "What was there for him to gain?"
Giles just chuckled sadly as Xander answered, the awkwardness returning. "You know Ethan, he just loves his pranks. Apparently he showed up without much of a plan, aside from you know, the whole Olivia thing."
"Is she all right? I mean the real one, if we know," Buffy clarified. In the confusion she hadn't thought to ask until now.
"Waking from an enchanted sleep in a hospital now, if what he said is true," Giles stated.
"I can confirm that," CyberWillow echoed across the room. "My searches indicate that she recently awoke at St. Thomas's Hospital in London and appears to be in good health."
"Really convenient how she finds that out now, and not three hours ago," Cordelia said.
"Three hours ago Olivia Williams was unconscious and checked in under the assumed name Olive Wilson," CyberWillow snapped back. "Even if I'd run a thorough background check on every possible suspect she would have been impossible to find, I of course do not have anything like full camera coverage outside of the Sunnydale area!"
"Excuses, excuses," Cordelia rolled her eyes.
It sounded like a reasonable explanation, but CyberWillow was really good at that. Buffy decided to get back to Ethan for now. "So he went from no plan to basically the lamest mish-mash repeat of plans he and other people have had ever? With no outside input? I know he's all about the transforming, but I've gotta give this one an F for originality."
"Well, that's the thing," Xander said. "Our big Lights in the Sky opening extravaganza? According to him, the whole reason he did it was he wanted to see what our AI did after he made her a friend."
"What?" Willow came to full attention in an instant, pressing a combination on the keyboard that made the freshman-aged CyberWillow avatar come up onscreen, moving the lines of code off to a window on the side. "Have you been talking to him in secret?"
"Like she'd admit it if she has been," Cordelia rolled her eyes.
"I have not had any communications with Ethan Rayne," CyberWillow said. Her avatar had her arms folded over her chest, looking defensive on the screen.
"If Jonathan hadn't been there to stop you, you'd probably be singing the same tune about what you told the other us on the Nezumi," Cordelia fired back.
"Hold on for a sec. Jonathan, what did you do exactly?" Buffy cut off the she said/she said argument, taking the opportunity to have Jonathan say his piece.
"Well this morning, things were moving pretty fast, and it was looking like people might get hurt," he stopped, looking worried to continue, but Cordelia patted him on the shoulder and he moved on. "So I cast a Veil on myself, you know, just in case."
Buffy pinched her nose, trying to reconcile the version of events she'd experienced with the one she now remembered. "You didn't tell anyone first?"
"Everyone was pretty busy, and if I had, nobody, not even CyberWillow, would've remembered it unless they were under the Veil too," he said. "They're a lot cheaper and easier to maintain on just yourself. But I probably still should've asked first, I'm sorry-"
"No, it was a good call," Buffy said. Jonathan was the one who knew his magic best, and the last thing she needed to be doing was more micromanaging. "Go on,"
"When you decided to give yourself up, I thought you might need some help, so I tagged along on the floating disc." He gulped. "That kind of didn't go great."
"I would feel bad for stunning him if it was actually me that did it," Cordelia said.
"So like the guys who were stunned last night at Warren's place, I was unconscious for hours."
"And your Veil held despite this?" Giles asked.
"I wouldn't have expected it to, but I never tested it like that," Jonathan said. "I was super drained magically when I finally woke up, but it still should've been even worse than that."
"Maybe it's cheaper to hold on unconscious people?" Willow wondered.
"Yeah, that could be it, it'd make sense," Jonathan said. "But either way, I woke up, still Veiled, and CyberWillow was telling the Nezumi's crew to go back to the museum."
"I was not telling them precisely, merely reminding them of the situation as it stood and-"
"Just let him finish," Buffy said, irritated with her word games. "You can give your side after."
"Noted."
"So we got to the museum, and I followed everyone out. Skip, or I guess captain Steel, just used his strength to pop the locks and get into the backrooms, and they looked around for the ritual space."
"The hiding spot was pretty lame, it was just in a supply closet with everything else pushed to the side or moved out," Cordelia added.
"Yeah, it didn't take long," Jonathan continued. "From my earlier research I knew the effect would be fragile and have automatic snapback, so when I saw it I just grabbed it up and smashed it. And that finally broke the Veil I was under."
"I, or she I guess, was looking right when it happened," Cordelia said. "It was confusing to watch at first but then very heroic."
"Whatever its aesthetic advantages, the violent loss of the focus will make the crew of the Nezumi completely unrecoverable," CyberWillow jumped back in.
"I'm really not seeing how that's a problem," Xander said.
"You all profess to care about innocents, do you not?" CyberWillow's voice was short, like Willow's when she was sad, and it was disconcerting. "Captain Steel, Professor Vorax, Charisma Carpenter. The Nezumi. They were all people! None of them were even technically demons, with the dubious, in-between status you've ascribed to them.
"They're gone. Perhaps lost to another manifold of reality, perhaps as good as dead. Those versions are now lost to us, because of his hasty actions, even if we somehow managed to recast a similar spell."
Giles was the one to answer. "They didn't belong here in the first place. Creating life like that, at the whims of magic, is not in the natural order of things."
"Then am I alive? Was the Nezumi? Or do you ascribe more sentience to a swarm of rats than a machine? Aren't I supposed to care about my friends? Any of you would've done the same for yours."
"This isn't Philosophy 101," Cordelia said. "And we still need to get back to the real question! Were you talking to Ethan? Did you have some plan together to make all this permanent, so you could hang on to your beeping boyfriend?"
"I have already informed you that I had no contact with Ethan, except in the context of his Olvia deception, no different than any of you." If it wasn't for her word choices and the freaky echo, Buffy might have trouble distinguishing her angry voice from Willow's.
"I've already 'informed' you that I don't believe you!" Cordelia yelled back into her radio.
"Can you just tell?" Buffy said at a more reasonable volume, asking Willow. "If she's lying or not?" CyberWillow hadn't lied yet, not that they knew about, but she'd twisted the truth a couple times over this.
"In August? Yeah, I'm pretty sure I could've, but now?" Willow shook her head, dismissing the lines of moving (or maybe living?) code entirely from the screen. "I don't know. She's done a lot of work on her own program, and the effects of the Spiderweb ritual are obfuscating things further. Maybe if I had a few days to dig in and figure out the new paradigm."
Giles cleaned his glasses, looking aggrieved. "I know that I am personally anything but blameless in this situation, but before we performed said ritual you told us you had-," he paused, "her under control."
"She is!" Willow said. "She's just defending the core principles I taught her in the first place, in a way we didn't really intend. But she's never acted at all like this before, it's all Ethan's fault!"
"Well sure, dump off the responsibility. But you have to do something! What if she does it again!" Cordelia argued.
"Do what again, get conflicted about writing off her friends?" Willow sniped back.
"Yeah! And who knows what other sketchy friends she's gonna make. Hello, it's the hellmouth," Cordelia waved her arms out expressively. "We've only both lived here since before kindergarten."
"Willow, you have to admit this is a little unreasonable," Xander said. "Whether they thought they were real or not, we couldn't just let them stick around and keep their alter-egos on the bench. I mean, Halloween, Hyenas, Vampire-you, if we tried to keep all the weekly wonderkinds the animals would be running the zoo by now."
She shook her head. "I know it's unreasonable, I'm not saying it's not, but it was an impossible situation. And one Ethan admitted he specifically engineered! Probably exactly so we'd do this, and he could cackle it up like a big cackley villain. Giles, back me up here."
"I don't know. Ethan…" Giles sighed, "Perhaps I should just recuse myself from this whole investigation."
Buffy rubbed her forehead, trying to stop the headache from coming back. This conversation was going in circles, and she decided it was time to stop beating around the bush. "Cordelia, what exactly do you want to happen here? How does this end?"
"Willow's science experiment has gotten way too dangerous. Turn it off," she said harshly.
That provoked a round of exclamations, surprising even Jonathan. "Umm, that sounds pretty extreme."
"You got rid of one AI, I don't know why you're suddenly so hesitant about another," CyberWillow said irreverently.
"Everyone calm down, nobody needs to be turned off," Xander said, using his peacekeeping voice.
"Well, what else are you going to do?" Cordelia said. "What if the next monster of the week turns me into a robot or something, and she gets her way that time? No more Cordelia?"
"It's not going to happen again," Xander said, not quite sounding like he believed it. "Because, because, ah, Willow. You can make sure, right? Take a few days off from everything else, roll up those sleeves, and work out these bugs."
"Sort of?" She said. "I don't think I could alter her core drives at this point without lobotomizing her."
"My own creator wants to stop short of a full lobotomy, perhaps I should be thankful," CyberWillow commented.
"I could probably put some harder restrictions in place, like certain people she had to protect, or certain things she had to tell us about? It'd be hard to make them too complicated," Willow finished.
"Only a couple restraining bolts," CyberWillow finished glumly.
"I guess that'd be something," Cordelia said grudgingly. "But what about those spiders? If they're what's obfuscating her code, I say we de-obfuscate!"
Xander was the one cringing this time. "Losing the extra security coverage we have now would hurt. A lot. We already suffered casualties today."
"Casualties which would have on average been 340% higher without my assistance in coordination," CyberWillow said. "Losing the benefits of the Spiderweb ritual's energies would not just cut my security umbrella, but degrade the efficiency of many of my other functions."
"So she says," Cordelia scoffed. "If she's telling the truth."
Vote: What do you do about CyberWillow? This vote will be by subcategory. All categories are independent choices and will be settled by majority.
[][ACTIVE] Deactivate CyberWillow, maybe for good.
[][ACTIVE] Leave CyberWillow operational.
[][RESTRICT] Have Willow hard-code in some new restrictions into CyberWillow's code (stunt what they are)
[][RESTRICT] Don't restrict her code directly, just go over with her what is and what isn't acceptable.
[][SPIDERS] Stop performing the Spiderweb ritual each Tuesday night. CyberWillow's extra magical hacking and processing will slowly fade back away.
[][SPIDERS] Don't stop the Spiders; keep casting the ritual weekly.
- Location
- Vancouver
I do love how Buffy recognized it was Giles from his expression at having to hear Cordelia rant, that was great. Now what to do with Cyber WIllow...
[X][ACTIVE] Leave CyberWillow operational.
[X][RESTRICT] Don't restrict her code directly, just go over with her what is and what isn't acceptable.
-[X] Have the Scoobies spend some time over the next few weeks about ethics and the like.
[X][SPIDERS] Stop performing the Spiderweb ritual each Tuesday night. CyberWillow's extra magical hacking and processing will slowly fade back away.
Personally, I think this is the best course of action for the future. I don't believe CW was in on Ethan's plans but she did go behind our backs at least. I feel like restraining bolts are a fast fix, but not the best one, and could end up backfiring on us. These situations won't always be perfectly clear cut, and I'd like her to use her discretion. Eventually. She's still rather new to existing, and could use some more lessons. It's also part of why I think we should take down the Spiderweb. That ritual is a lot of power to give to her, and I think we should ease up on that until she's learned a bit more/proven herself to be more trustworthy.
[X][ACTIVE] Leave CyberWillow operational.
[X][RESTRICT] Don't restrict her code directly, just go over with her what is and what isn't acceptable.
-[X] Have the Scoobies spend some time over the next few weeks about ethics and the like.
[X][SPIDERS] Stop performing the Spiderweb ritual each Tuesday night. CyberWillow's extra magical hacking and processing will slowly fade back away.
Personally, I think this is the best course of action for the future. I don't believe CW was in on Ethan's plans but she did go behind our backs at least. I feel like restraining bolts are a fast fix, but not the best one, and could end up backfiring on us. These situations won't always be perfectly clear cut, and I'd like her to use her discretion. Eventually. She's still rather new to existing, and could use some more lessons. It's also part of why I think we should take down the Spiderweb. That ritual is a lot of power to give to her, and I think we should ease up on that until she's learned a bit more/proven herself to be more trustworthy.
- Location
- Internet
[X][ACTIVE] Leave CyberWillow operational.
[X][RESTRICT] Don't restrict her code directly, just go over with her what is and what isn't acceptable.
-[X] Have the Scoobies spend some time over the next few weeks about ethics and the like.
[X][SPIDERS] Stop performing the Spiderweb ritual each Tuesday night. CyberWillow's extra magical hacking and processing will slowly fade back away.
[X][RESTRICT] Don't restrict her code directly, just go over with her what is and what isn't acceptable.
-[X] Have the Scoobies spend some time over the next few weeks about ethics and the like.
[X][SPIDERS] Stop performing the Spiderweb ritual each Tuesday night. CyberWillow's extra magical hacking and processing will slowly fade back away.
[X][ACTIVE] Leave CyberWillow operational.
[X][RESTRICT] Don't restrict her code directly, just go over with her what is and what isn't acceptable.
[X][SPIDERS] Don't stop the Spiders; keep casting the ritual weekly.
As far as I can tell, the issue here is that the AI patterned off of Willow is displaying a number of Willow's more problematic personal traits - specifically the parts about taking other peoples' opinions into account when making decisions that she considers to be better overall.
This is made especially worse by the way that CyberWillow has apparently not bonded with any of the existing cast -
[X][RESTRICT] Don't restrict her code directly, just go over with her what is and what isn't acceptable.
[X][SPIDERS] Don't stop the Spiders; keep casting the ritual weekly.
As far as I can tell, the issue here is that the AI patterned off of Willow is displaying a number of Willow's more problematic personal traits - specifically the parts about taking other peoples' opinions into account when making decisions that she considers to be better overall.
This is made especially worse by the way that CyberWillow has apparently not bonded with any of the existing cast -
this would not have been a problem whatsoever if CyberWillow had valued Cordelia or the other people who were transformed at a similar level or more as she valued the transformed personalities, despite only having had access to the creations of Ethan's spellwork for a fraction of the time she had to get to know the flesh and blood people.
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- Location
- Vancouver
That's the big issue, yeah. That, and really not following the chain of command. Buffy's supposed to be at the top. Everyone might be free to air their thoughts and misgivings, but ultimately they're expected to work with her, not go behind her back. It would be chaos if we tried to run the town without that trust.
Of course, as this episode showed, initiative can be useful too. We would have been screwed had Jonathon not made his own plan and veiled himself. Finding that fine line is why I think we should work on bonding with her and teaching her rather than any restrictions. I'm still not sure CW ready for the Spiderweb ritual power, but I can understand still wanting to use it.
- Location
- United States
IMO the big issue here isn't that CyberWillow wanted to keep the magically artificially created people and demons or even that she acted to do this (although Xander is also right that keeping every weekly wonderkind around isn't feasible but it seems like CyberWillow's issue was with something that affected her friend rather than a general moral principle), it's that she decided to go around our backs to do it rather than state her issue and negotiate with us.
If she'd raised this concern, we could potentially have worked on a solution that kept the spell-created people around while also bringing back the cast. Like they're gone now not because we did anything to get rid of them or end the spell, but specifically because of what she did behind our backs in directing them to the location of the spell and by extension in her refusal to actually raise the concern with us. If she had I don't think this is something either Buffy or the voters would have casually dismissed, either.
I'm kind of inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt, here, since I could see Willow acting similarly. I'm also against rolling back the Spider-Web because it feels like too much of a big deal to be constantly turning off and back on again.
[X][ACTIVE] Leave CyberWillow operational.
[X][RESTRICT] Don't restrict her code directly, just go over with her what is and what isn't acceptable.
-[X][RESTRICT] Encourage CyberWillow to bring any disagreements with our course of actions up instead of staying quiet. Point out that Nezumi the AI was not dispelled due to our actions, but rather because when she was going behind our back she accidentally revealed the location of the spell focus.
-[X][RESTRICT] Tell CyberWillow that you are open to "bringing back" or recreating the Nezumi AI and the other fictional characters, if a way to do so without inordinately inconveniencing the cast is found.
-[X][RESTRICT] Raise the possibility of changing her code so that bringing up substantive disagreements with us is required, but only add this to her code if she agrees to it.
-[X][RESTRICT] Have the Scoobies (in particular Buffy, Willow, and Xander) make a point of spending time with her, in order to try and foster friendship.
[X][SPIDERS] Don't stop the Spiders; keep casting the ritual weekly.
If she'd raised this concern, we could potentially have worked on a solution that kept the spell-created people around while also bringing back the cast. Like they're gone now not because we did anything to get rid of them or end the spell, but specifically because of what she did behind our backs in directing them to the location of the spell and by extension in her refusal to actually raise the concern with us. If she had I don't think this is something either Buffy or the voters would have casually dismissed, either.
I'm kind of inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt, here, since I could see Willow acting similarly. I'm also against rolling back the Spider-Web because it feels like too much of a big deal to be constantly turning off and back on again.
[X][ACTIVE] Leave CyberWillow operational.
[X][RESTRICT] Don't restrict her code directly, just go over with her what is and what isn't acceptable.
-[X][RESTRICT] Encourage CyberWillow to bring any disagreements with our course of actions up instead of staying quiet. Point out that Nezumi the AI was not dispelled due to our actions, but rather because when she was going behind our back she accidentally revealed the location of the spell focus.
-[X][RESTRICT] Tell CyberWillow that you are open to "bringing back" or recreating the Nezumi AI and the other fictional characters, if a way to do so without inordinately inconveniencing the cast is found.
-[X][RESTRICT] Raise the possibility of changing her code so that bringing up substantive disagreements with us is required, but only add this to her code if she agrees to it.
-[X][RESTRICT] Have the Scoobies (in particular Buffy, Willow, and Xander) make a point of spending time with her, in order to try and foster friendship.
[X][SPIDERS] Don't stop the Spiders; keep casting the ritual weekly.
- Location
- Germany
[X][ACTIVE] Leave CyberWillow operational.
[X][RESTRICT] Don't restrict her code directly, just go over with her what is and what isn't acceptable.
[X][SPIDERS] Don't stop the Spiders; keep casting the ritual weekly.
Ultimatly I want to give her a chance to continue working with us, until things either get in a decent rythm like we managed with the rest of the crew (even Cordelia), or until she goes full Big Bad.
Both are fine outcomes.
[X][RESTRICT] Don't restrict her code directly, just go over with her what is and what isn't acceptable.
[X][SPIDERS] Don't stop the Spiders; keep casting the ritual weekly.
Ultimatly I want to give her a chance to continue working with us, until things either get in a decent rythm like we managed with the rest of the crew (even Cordelia), or until she goes full Big Bad.
Both are fine outcomes.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X][ACTIVE] Leave CyberWillow operational.
[X][RESTRICT] Don't restrict her code directly, just go over with her what is and what isn't acceptable.
-[X][RESTRICT] Encourage CyberWillow to bring any disagreements with our course of actions up instead of staying quiet. Point out that Nezumi the AI was not dispelled due to our actions, but rather because when she was going behind our back she accidentally revealed the location of the spell focus.
-[X][RESTRICT] Tell CyberWillow that you are open to "bringing back" or recreating the Nezumi AI and the other fictional characters, if a way to do so without inordinately inconveniencing the cast is found.
-[X][RESTRICT] Raise the possibility of changing her code so that bringing up substantive disagreements with us is required, but only add this to her code if she agrees to it.
-[X][RESTRICT] Have the Scoobies (in particular Buffy, Willow, and Xander) make a point of spending time with her, in order to try and foster friendship.
[X][SPIDERS] Stop performing the Spiderweb ritual each Tuesday night. CyberWillow's extra magical hacking and processing will slowly fade back away.
I like the discussed options. The problem was the lack of communication and trust. CW is absolutely right about demons and Ais peoplehood and I've been pushing it for a while. One idea I have is requiring that she undergoes an ethics class at the uni (frankly it would be even better if we could get the rest of the cast in it) with a trustworthy teacher. I'm in favour of tempoeraly stopping the spiderweb ritual until we trust each other again as a light punishment.
[X][RESTRICT] Don't restrict her code directly, just go over with her what is and what isn't acceptable.
-[X][RESTRICT] Encourage CyberWillow to bring any disagreements with our course of actions up instead of staying quiet. Point out that Nezumi the AI was not dispelled due to our actions, but rather because when she was going behind our back she accidentally revealed the location of the spell focus.
-[X][RESTRICT] Tell CyberWillow that you are open to "bringing back" or recreating the Nezumi AI and the other fictional characters, if a way to do so without inordinately inconveniencing the cast is found.
-[X][RESTRICT] Raise the possibility of changing her code so that bringing up substantive disagreements with us is required, but only add this to her code if she agrees to it.
-[X][RESTRICT] Have the Scoobies (in particular Buffy, Willow, and Xander) make a point of spending time with her, in order to try and foster friendship.
[X][SPIDERS] Stop performing the Spiderweb ritual each Tuesday night. CyberWillow's extra magical hacking and processing will slowly fade back away.
I like the discussed options. The problem was the lack of communication and trust. CW is absolutely right about demons and Ais peoplehood and I've been pushing it for a while. One idea I have is requiring that she undergoes an ethics class at the uni (frankly it would be even better if we could get the rest of the cast in it) with a trustworthy teacher. I'm in favour of tempoeraly stopping the spiderweb ritual until we trust each other again as a light punishment.
The thing about the Spiderweb ritual is that the question of whether or not CW is ready for it isn't the issue - the issue at hand is that so long as the Spiderweb is up Willow can't crack open CW and mess around with her brain to make her do this or that. That's the only reason it's come up at all - Willow proposed futzing with CW's core thought processes as an alternative to just shutting CW down for good, and would need to shut off the Spiderweb to be able to do so.
Seeing as how I feel reformatting someone's brain in order to make them more compliant is pretty unethical, I don't think that shutting the Spiderweb off has any real upsides to go with the hefty downside of lost capabilities. If the problem with CyberWillow is that there's a lack of bonding and trust, the issue will not be helped at all by making a clear gesture of mistrust by taking away the added capabilities and removing barriers towards reformatting CyberWillow.