[X] Gather information carefully. Instead of busting in right away, Buffy has the spellcasters try to find out what's going on covertly, without risking anyone underground.
-[1] Have Andrew summon some exotic demon and place it out as bait for the Initiative. Make sure it has good senses so he can summon it back after they take it in.
Ultimately, Buffy had decided they had to back off and learn more. When she was just the Slayer, charging in headfirst was the name of the game. And honestly, most of the time it still was. But there was a lot that could go wrong here, including maybe some things that couldn't be solved with a hammer. Some sneakiness was in order first this time.
She'd briefly talked to Andrew when she'd given out marching orders, and asked if he could get anything inside to look around, summoned demons being way more expendable and deniable than sending actual people into the secret government base. She'd trusted him to set up the details, but after she made sure everyone else had their marching orders, she'd checked back in with him. She didn't think she'd accomplish much cracking a book herself, and after all, she still didn't really know much about how Andrew's summoning worked. It'd be educational.
When he'd said he'd need prep to improvise something appropriate, she'd expected it involved books. Or math. Willow's coven seemed to be doing a lot of math these days. Maybe it would even be math books.
It wasn't.
"Look Nar'fl, I know you have those schizniks to sell and it's a fine deal, but I'm just not convinced one is right for the job. If I was looking to branch out long term into them, sure, they're -"
The giant grasshopper in the circle cut in, "Tullim fellos lak shemtul schiznik doz haff!" It had huge reinforced legs which it was kind of slowly bouncing side to side on, but its arms were long and skinny with tiny claws. It was wearing some kind of toolbelt with a bunch of pouches on it, but otherwise naked. If bugs could count as naked. Were exoskeletons like clothing?
Whether they did or not, Andrew wasn't swayed by whatever it had said. "I told you, I don't care if they're two for one this week! I want something flashy and attention grabbing. I don't even care if it's garbage at actually doing anything, it just needs to make a few rubes go 'Wow'!"
"Haff!" The grasshopper demon gestured with its arms. "Doz trim, ocklot reztul lak calmat." Then it dug a little shiny pyramid out of its belt and spun part of it around. Almost immediately, a huge red demony animal appeared from nowhere, some of its bulky legs sticking all the way out of the circle!
Buffy was in front of Andrew in a split second, reacting before thinking and ready to fight.
"Hok nak!" The grasshopper demon screamed.
"Buffy calm down, it's just a catalog!" Andrew said quickly.
"What?"
"She's never seen one before, scan through it," Andrew said.
The grasshopper grumbled sourly, then spun the pyramid again, flickering the demon into a different demon, this one with three lopsided wings. It wasn't just a cheap fake, but incredibly lifelike; there was motion, sound, she even thought she could maybe smell the sulfur off it. But now that she'd stopped to really look, she noticed her slayer sense wasn't tingling from it at all. Watching a little longer, she saw it kept repeating the same motion, as if it was in a loop.
"Oh, sorry." She felt a little silly and backed off as Andrew and the grasshopper resumed their bilingual negotiations, flickering between different demons every few seconds.
After what seemed like dozens of them, they finally seemed to settle on a rainbow kangaroo. It wasn't really as big as a kangaroo, and had scales instead of fur, but the body type was similar and it had another little head poking up from a pouch. Also unlike a normal kangaroo, it had a bunch of weird spiny sails sticking out from its body, like one of those dinosaurs. Sailosaurus? Colorsaurus? The sails were flashing with wild color like rainbow holograms, anyway. She resisted the urge to go 'Wow'.
"I've got three siamese hot off the presses, what if I give you those for one?" Andrew offered. Buffy frowned. She hadn't known Andrew was trading in kittens.
"Lak nak," The grasshopper didn't seem impressed. Maybe they'd be saved?
"Fine, fine, how about I throw in this six-pack of pez dispensers that just came in? It's a Phantom Menace set," Andrew continued.
"Dek Padme?"
"Yeah duh Padme is in it," Andrew said. "So is it a deal?" The grasshopper nodded. "Cool, I'll get your stuff, one sec." Andrew went out the door, leaving her alone in the clean room with the grasshopper demon.
She gave it a little wave. "So you … deal with Andrew a lot?"
It rolled its eyes at her, and they were giant and multifaceted so it was kind of a sight to see. "Mek nak."
"That's great," she said lamely. She could've asked CyberWillow for a translation, but she thought she got the idea.
Andrew came back quickly, a cardboard box of kittens in both hands and a plastic-wrapped box of pez precariously balanced on a corner of it. The grasshopper made excited clicking sounds like a cicada, and Buffy was very tempted to call the whole thing off. Surely they could do this some other way, three kittens seemed like so many when you could see them right there-
And then the exchange was made. Andrew played a single note on his flute, and the grasshopper demon was gone with a nod, his illicit merchandise securely in claw.
"So that was Nar'fl, how did you like him?" Andrew said, then continued without really waiting for a response. "He's pretty slick, but he's got a soft spot for the merch. Anya's got a good kitten guy but the exchange rate is way better with the Star Wars stuff, plus I get to keep extras."
"Is that guy where all your demons come from?" Buffy really wasn't sure what she'd expected, but not this.
"Yeah, I'm on a monthly deal with him for the flying monkeys, plus the Salamanders and Tajinzas." Andrew took in Buffy's confused look, and elaborated. "The giant scorpions. The caps for usage time and combat losses are pretty high, I've only had to pay overages once."
She almost asked how many kittens overages demanded, but then stopped herself with a breath. Maybe it would be best if she just put this all behind her for now. There was much worse to worry about tonight than spilt kittens. "So we're going to try the kangaroo? What's it's deal?"
"It's a bachinka demon, they aren't as cheap and common as my usual fare but one will be perfect for this mission," he explained. The rainbow sails are hypnotizingly alluring, in person anyway, but just a tiny little bit to humans and most demons. If I have one blunder around near their base it'll get noticed quick and sent right up the chain."
"And you'll be able to use it to see inside the base and find out what's happening?" Buffy confirmed.
"Even better! Jonathan and I were working on that last week and he should be here any minute. I can link him in on the summon and he can show its senses as an illusion, a little like the projector Nar'fl had. It'll be real light and sound too, so we can even record it." Andrew was already erasing the clean chalk lines of Nar'fl's summoning circle and setting up something else on the ground that looked a lot more quick and dirty.
Almost as if he was summoned himself, Jonathan entered the clean room right then, but he wasn't alone, with a cavalcade of people piling in behind him. Andrew had wanted to limit those newly meeting Nar'fl to just Buffy for fear of souring the deal, but Harmony obviously didn't have anywhere else to be and was just waiting upstairs. The potentials were tagging along too; it was starting to look like they weren't going to get a lot of rest before school tomorrow, but that was par for the course. Last but definitely not quietest, Cordelia was here for some reason.
She didn't give an inch to Buffy's raised eyebrow. "I hear there's some new bug in Willow's crazy robo-clone and you think I don't want to see exactly what's going on? If I don't stay on top of this I might end up deleted again."
Buffy could've argued on CyberWillow's behalf, but they'd been over this, and things were hectic enough already. She decided to just ignore her instead and not cause a bigger headache. "All these spectators aren't going to be a problem?"
"It should be fine as long as they aren't afraid of the bachinka," Andrew said. "Jonathan, stick your bone in there," he pointed at an open circle in the new diagram he was making."
Rachel waggled her eyebrows from behind him and silently mouthed his words again to Zoe, who rolled her eyes and gave her a little shove.
"Oh, is there gossip?" Harmony asked Rachel. "Tell me!"
Cordelia scoffed, "Duh, Zoe -"
"Children," Buffy sighed. "Let's all be quiet so we can watch the nice movie and see the terrible new badness." It was probably a mistake not to send everyone out again and have them watch it on video or whatever, but Buffy couldn't quite bring herself to be that much of an adult.
Just moments later, Andrew pulled out his flute again and started playing some of the usual sharp, dissonant, notes. The rainbow kangaroo appeared in the circle when he was done, and it was a little attention grabbing. Maybe? The huge 3D display of what it was seeing that appeared above the circle kind of stole the show though, producing an effect like two mirrors at an angle.
"Should someone let it out? How is it going to get all the way to campus? Is it gonna hop?" Harmony's questions all were picked up by the demon's senses too and produced a ton of feedback noise in the illusion.
Both Andrew and Jonathan were too distracted by this new problem to answer, so Buffy just decided to open the door and let it out, hoping these questions had been resolved at some point in the planning stages. She figured if she was wrong and it went wild in City Hall it wouldn't be the worst thing to have torn the place up. After it left the room, everyone's attention went back to Jonathan's projected illusion, now showing a view moving down the hall, gently bouncing up and down as it went.
"CyberWillow, you're getting this right?" Buffy asked, looking over her shoulder at the camera. She was supposedly done with her diagnostics now, but she'd been quiet.
"Positive," she answered, echoing from each of the many radios in the room. Buffy noticed Cordelia make a face as CyberWillow continued, "Willow Rosenberg, Xander Harris and several others are watching at Crawford street in real time, albeit in only two dimensions."
"I'd really like her to stop doing that with mine," Cordelia grumped. CyberWillow didn't respond to her.
Suddenly, Oz of all people filled the demon's view, looking totally unconcerned with it wandering about the building. "I'm your ride?"
The view moved up and down more than usual in what was probably a nod, and then it followed Oz outside and into the back of his SDCW-conscripted van. There were four SDCW officers in the back, who all made space for the bachinka with varying degrees of trepidation.
"Are you just going to drive it over and drop it off at the door like a pizza?" Cordelia asked. "Isn't that going to be sort of suspicious?"
"In approximately a quarter mile, take a left turn at Mason avenue," CyberWillow's voice was audible and only through the illusion this time, apparently directing Oz.
"He's going by the backroads," Andrew explained. "We're going to drop it off just outside the circle of exclusion and just have it wander onto campus in plain sight."
"And isn't that going to be sort of suspicious?" Cordelia repeated herself, annoyed.
"I'm not the one who grew up in this town, but are random demons showing up for no reason ever really that suspicious in Sunnydale?" Zoe asked sarcastically. "It seems to happen about three times a patrol." Cordelia rolled her eyes and then was quiet.
The drive didn't take long, and soon Oz was letting it out the back. The view emerged in a ratty looking alleyway and the demon started bouncing its way forward.
"It's pretty well lit," Rachel said. "Maybe we could've picked a darker neighborhood for this?"
"No way. That's pretty dark," Harmony disagreed.
"Demon eyes," Andrew explained. "It sees better than a person in the dark, plus there's a little light off the sails. But probably still worse than a vampire."
"Oh, like nighttime on TV, duh," Harmony said to herself.
Buffy hadn't noticed much of a difference in the image either way. She knew from experience her eyes were somewhere in the middle.
UC Sunnydale had never been the type of campus where hordes of students roamed late at night (for good reason), but it was still a college campus. So as the bachinka hopped into more or less plain view there was definitely a reaction, despite it being nearly midnight. Some of the wiser students ran away, but there were a lot of gawkers too, whose comments from a distance filtered in over the demon's perception.
"Radical, man."
"Shouldn't we call the-"
"It's so pretty!"
"- kangaroos endangered?"
"- Mayor Summers -"
"Obviously harmless! Live and-"
The last comment was interrupted by a loud bolt of electricity whizzing right by, and the curious students scattered in panic. Initiative troops were suddenly visible spilling out from cover, and a variety of other projectiles came at the creature in a barrage. She spotted one of the sticky nets she'd seen before, some kind of gas grenade, and then another electric bolt before the illusion winked out.
"Umm guys, I'm not usually the one saying this, but maybe we should've made a better plan?" Harmony said.
"It's still there, just unconscious," Andrew said reedily, wincing and rubbing his forehead.
Jonathan continued for him, not looking like he was as affected. "Normally he'd just drop it at this point and it would pop back, but instead we're going to wait until it wakes up. Hopefully it'll be interesting enough to attract the attention of whatever the scary new thing in there is."
"So we're just going to wait around here all night?" Cordelia said.
"You don't have to, being completely unnecessary for this operation," CyberWillow echoed dryly.
"I can still feel its metabolism and it's healing fast," Andrew said, trying to be conciliatory. "Half an hour. Like an hour tops."
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"I'm just saying, why do they even need to let it wake up? Couldn't they just keep it asleep?" Cordelia echoed.
"They haven't tried to sedate it yet," Andrew replied, a weird look of concentration on his face. "I'm pretty sure at least. I don't think they'd even know what to sedate it with, nothing slightly related to it is common around here."
"Why does it look like a kangaroo then?" Zoe said. "Even down to the little pouch baby. Australia is on Earth. That's not that far."
"It's not a pouch baby, it's just a second head, and it isn't related to kangaroos at all" Andrew corrected her.
"It sees out of all its eyes, that's why the 3D in the illusion is so good," Jonathan added.
Buffy was too hyped up to really take part in the conversation, anxiously spinning her hammer around as she leant against the wall. Part of her felt like she should be researching through dusty books like in the old days, but they already had Giles and Anya doing that at Crawford street, plus CyberWillow collating all possible references on the parts of their collection that had been scanned into her memory. Warren was already prepping tonight's spider demon ritual in the clean room there, and Willow and Tara were probing at the 'CORRUPT' anomaly in various other ways.
So Andrew and Jonathan had to be here at City Hall, and because of that it really did make sense for Buffy to be here too. They weren't exactly an easy target on their own, but she could read the writing on the wall. This thing was a god, or at least god-adjacent, like Dracula or Tapparich, and their surveillance was compromised who knows how badly. Until they knew more about what was happening, big groups were the order of the day.
Andrew continued, "Despite the extra head, it's still pretty dumb in the wild. It uses most of its mental capacity to color the sails. It's even doing that automatically when it's otherwise unconscious, it's like a really complicated reflex."
"That seems kind of useless," Rachel said. "I mean, it's kind of distracting I guess?"
"It's meant to-" Jonathan started to explain.
"They're waking it up!" Andrew interrupted, and Jonathan hurriedly grabbed his bone and started futzing with it. "Something's shaking it."
The illusion blinked back on all of the sudden, the picture fuzzy with blobs.
"Is it broken?" Harmony asked. "It looks like my dad's TV that time I played with the magnet."
Before anyone could answer her, they heard Maggie Walsh's voice, "So this HST just romped onto campus unexpectedly? No rhyme or reason to its actions?"
"We successfully apprehended it before it could cause any harm, Director," Buffy was pretty sure she recognized that voice. Finn maybe? "No civilians injured, minimal property damage."
"It takes it a little while to focus all four eyes, give it a second," Jonathan responded to Harmony.
A third, deeper voice was heard from the illusion. "But were your actions truly successful?" Something about it set Buffy on edge.
KILL
"Unless he wanted the demon to run amok and kill a buncha people, yeah, I'd say he did pretty good." Faith. "Director, you sure Big Green doesn't still have a few screws loose?"
The picture resolved from a fade of blurs to clear all at once, and Maggie, Finn, and Faith were all there as expected, inside one of the glass Initiative cells with their bachinka. It was the visage of the last occupant that rocked Buffy back on her heels though. She'd been expecting ugly, maybe even an ugly abomination, but it was the familiarity that was shocking.
"I guess that answers the question of whose monster this is," Rachel said.
"Frankenstein's," Zoe said glibly.
Maggie answered Faith in the illusion, "I've told you time and time again Faith, you shouldn't jump to conclusions. I am absolutely sure Adam is fully operational. He's simply using the Socratic method."
"Another teacher in the ranks, and here's me without any book-learnin'" Buffy could tell Faith was freaked out. She was trying to cover it up with bad lines as usual, but she was in over her head and she knew it.
Andrew noticed that the rest of the room was speechless. "Guys, it isn't so bad, is it? I mean, it's a robot demon. Or robot demon guy. Sure, that's pretty cool, but-
"Looks like we didn't kill him dead enough," Cordelia said.
"Huh? Was this a campaign I wasn't-" Andrew started.
KILL
"Olvikan." Buffy said.
This 'Adam' was definitely a Frankenstein, part-robot and part-human in addition to the demony parts, but those demon parts visible as his nose and mouth had a certain look that was very distinctive. Dull green-white scales in a sort of swirling pattern. A flattened nose seemingly half-made of bony spurs. Long conical teeth, almost seeming to be articulate on their own. There was even a set of little scars around the outside of his narrow lips where she could imagine the extra teeth that just hung around outside the mouth itself had been cut off.
She'd seen the swirling scale pattern again once after Olvikan, in the Oz dream, on Wilkins' suit when he was cosplaying as the Old One. It was a riot of meaningful color in Oz and only looked wrong and sickly in real life, but it was definitely the same. The little KILL voice in her head was even in agreement, in its own single-minded way.
Illusion Finn said. "You're saying we failed the mission somehow? Why didn't you say if it did something before we got there?"
"Not before," Adam responded, tilting his head as he smiled almost merrily with all those ugly teeth. He wasn't impossibly tall, but he did kind of tower over the other three, even Finn.
Everything made a terrible kind of sense. Maggie's cageyness about what she'd been doing all summer. Her interest in demon research, hell, maybe her interest in Buffy herself. Wilkins' troubling silence in her dreams, not appearing for almost two whole months. Was it how she'd framed Faith that had turned him against her? Or had he just been planning this all along?
"Do you think it's still Wilkins on the inside?" Jonathan asked, mirroring her thoughts even though he didn't know about her dreams. "The human parts definitely aren't the same."
"I think she called him Adam, didn't she?" Zoe said. "That wasn't his name, was it? Like, any of them?"
"Just Richard, Richard, Richard," Buffy answered the less relevant question. "Not a very original kinda guy." In the moment she wasn't sure if she thought this was Wilkins or not, she wasn't even sure what she could say about it. There were all the layers of hidden information, the half-truths and lies about her powers, her 'Successor' status.
Dracula thought she was a goddess, and most of the people she trusted to know about that kind of thing hadn't called him wrong. Things had been too busy to fully process that. No, that was a lie. She hadn't wanted to fully process that. It was too crazy, too big, too insane. Those unrealistically ambitious little girls want to grow up to be astronauts, or presidents, or even superheroes (like she had, once upon a time), not, not…
"It doesn't matter who it is," Harmony said looking at her with concern, "Buffy's got this, either way." She knew about the Wilkins dreams, unlike the rest of the room.
Back in the projected illusion, Finn had taken a while to think about his answer, with both Maggie and Adam looking on expectantly like some kind of psycho's version of proper parental figures.
Faith stood to the side, trying to seem unassuming against the clear wall of the cell. But now that she was paying attention to her, Buffy could see she was looking directly at Adam, and she had one hand on something in a BDU pocket. Probably a weapon.
Finn finally spoke, "You think it wanted to get in the base? Is it some kind of contamination risk? Maybe even a mimetic vector?" He took Maggie gently by the shoulder, pulling her back toward the door. "Director, you should-"
"It's fine, Agent," she dismissed his concern. "If Adam noticed danger he wouldn't have allowed us to enter the enclosure."
"But then why?" He asked, looking poleaxed.
Adam stepped forward. "Just as I felt the spiderweb's influence cast over our headquarters, I can sense a little thread leading back from this unassuming creature."
"It's a spy?" Maggie asked sharply. "From the city government?"
"It was not obvious to me until I could see how it reacted to novel stimuli, but I am most certain now," Adam confirmed.
"Well that sucks," Faith said. "Guess our big secret is out then huh?"
"Within every obstacle is an opportunity," Adam said mysteriously, laying the more demony of his two hands on the bachinka.
"For what?" Finn asked.
"Sending a message," Adam said. Then the illusion flickered wildly and disappeared.
CORRUPT
"Ah!" Andrew had his eyes closed and was rubbing his head. "Ow. Ow. Ow."
Then Jonathan was suddenly holding out a writhing three-foot snake instead of his magic bone. No, it was a writhing three-foot mini-Olvikan!
Buffy triggered her superspeed and flew across the room, throwing her hammer backwards like a spear as she went. It beat her there, the spike stabbing right through the head of the monster and ripping it out of Jonathan's grip. The head of the hammer flew right past Jonathan's nose at roughly a million miles per hour, missing by an inch.
It flew on to nail it into the wall, the shaft sticking a foot deep, the mini-Olvikan pinned like a butterfly in one of those creepy collector books.
Everyone was screaming.
The serpent was still moving, despite having the shaft of her hammer fully impaling its head. She raced up to it and kicked it hard, putting another crack in the wall and almost ripping it in half. She dropped back out of superspeed just as she was finishing that task with her hands, and green blood sprayed wildly all over the room from both halves.
There wasn't much fight in it after that, though the still-impaled part kept moving until she fully crushed the head with a couple more kicks.
"Is everyone alright?" she asked.
Jonathan was still kind of staring, gaze shifting between the snake-pieces and his still-upraised hand. Cordelia approached him quietly and took the hand, pulling it back down to his side.
"I have a nosebleed," Andrew said. "I think he snatched the summon, I've read there are ways it can happen and the books say it's supposed to suck. I guess they were right."
"So we came, we saw, we got our stuff turned into snakes," Cordelia said. "Now what?"
It seemed to snap Jonathan out of his shock. "We still have to do the spider ritual tonight. Probably."
"He said he could feel the spiderweb or whatever," Zoe reminded everyone. "What if that's just powering him up? Or if he can, umm-"
"Do that," Rachel said, pointing at the messy demon pieces.
Wilkins had eaten the same demon spiders from the Box of Gavrok before becoming Olvikan, so it wasn't crazy. Buffy tried to remember if he'd ever said anything in a dream about the Spiderweb ritual. Had he been trying to encourage her to do it?
"The current plan is for the coven to discuss the problem tonight," CyberWillow echoed. "If this reconnaissance project is done, the relevant parties should assemble at Crawford street."
As it was, Willow was the only person in the coven who even knew the full story with Wilkins dreams and Buffy's own … situation. Giles would be there and he knew, and of course CyberWillow did too, but it was still a mess. Andrew, Jonathan, Tara, even Warren were all in the dark.
Keeping the circle of people who knew everything small had felt good, in an avoidy way. Buffy hadn't wanted to think about Wilkins poking around in her head, about her not-so-tenuous connection to an Old One of her very own, and definitely not about turning into a goddess out of some greek myth or something. Or maybe worse.
But there was a lot that a lot of people didn't know and it was snowballing. What Dracula had showed her, the Oz dream, the Lachrymal artifact under City Hall that they still hadn't found, all of it was just swirling around like that ugly pattern on Olvikan's skin. Maybe she needed to just girl up and get it out there.
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Vote: There's already going to be a meeting at Crawford Street to discuss what you've found out about Adam and how it could impact the Spiderweb ritual's weekly refill. How much extra does Buffy want to say, and who does she want to say it to? By default, Giles, Anya, Xander, Willow, Andrew, Jonathan, Tara, and even Warren are going to be there. Plus obviously CyberWillow.
Voting is by plan. In the plan, describe any extra people who should be there, and what Buffy spills of the currently secret information (mostly referenced above.) Buffy is allowed to tell half-truths or even outright lies, but remember there will be some people at the meeting who already know everything. For reference, the people who have been more or less fully briefed on god stuff since S3.5E14 are Willow, Xander, Giles, Oz, Anya, and Harmony. Plus Angel, though he didn't get anything extra after that episode. And of course CyberWillow practically knows everything there is to know.
Plans also might want to describe the attitude Buffy takes at the meeting, how she's going to lay this all out. Does she want to make it into a big speech? Is she apologetic about concealing it for so long? Does she put more emphasis on some things and try to undersell others?
Example:
[] Drusilla's Plan
-[] Extra People: Drusilla, Vanessa. All boys excluded.
-[] Information: Everything. Emphasis on Buffy's sex life, everything else isn't as important for now.
-[] Style: Gossip session. Everyone has to dish.
