[X] Buffy kills Maggie on the spot. Stunt how you handle the other two.
[X] Plan: Dismantled Initiative
-[X] Detain the other two.
-[X] Have CyberWillow and Jonathon help a team sneak into the Initiative disguised as Maggie and the others. Take all the data they can, come up with an excuse to drive most of the Initiative out of the base (maybe a paranormal containment breach or the like), then seal off the base. Take some weapons, wreck anything else, break apart the base until it's as useless as they can feasibly make it, then leave.
-[X] Apologize for how things went down with Maggie but point out that she was a serious threat to the safety of the entire city and possibly planet with her schemes and ignorance. And point out that none of this can be proved and the Mayor's office has miles of evidence on their own illegal activities (as well as showing a bit of how bad those plans they uncovered were) if they threaten to bring the military down on the town or anything else foolish. Then let them go.
When Buffy moved, it was almost instantaneous. One moment, Maggie Walsh was walking away from her, back turned, Finn covering her from behind. The next, Finn was on his ass with a broken hand, his battered electrorifle was flying across the room, and Maggie was exploding into a shower of blood and gore.
There were gasps of shock all over, a cry of pain from Finn, and a high wail from somewhere in the back. The blood had splattered all over her and the body was in multiple pieces. She wasn't unused to violence, but the immediacy of this was like being dunked in ice-water. She hadn't hit a normal human at anything like full strength in forever, more than a year. She'd understood what would happen intellectually, but-
KILL
Yeah inner self, she got that part.
Maybe feel guilty about what she'd just done? But even if Maggie had been unaware of the danger and practically helpless, she'd deserved it. Probably. There were a lot of vampires Buffy had killed out of hand that had done less harm and been more penitent about it, or at least acted that way. That made it OK, right?
"Buffy, are you…" Giles was approaching her cautiously, and his voice snapped her out of her daze.
"I'm fine," she said. Her broken arm twinged a little; the superspeed hadn't been good for it. There was a retching noise in the background somewhere.
"I surrender!" Doctor Angleman was down on his knees with his hands over his head. He'd never moved too far away from the tunnel, but hadn't even tried to use it to escape. To be fair, there were some SDCW guards blocking it.
"Should we detain the others?" Giles asked leadingly.
"Yes," Buffy decided on the spot. She wasn't angry anymore, just tired. She should probably say something more, but she had no idea what. Defending her decision in words seemed impossibly difficult.
KILL
Agent Finn was still on the ground, but he'd recovered his senses, and she saw he was going for his sidearm left-handed. She put a stop to that almost automatically, racing over and snatching at his wrist. She was careful this time, and didn't even hear a snap.
"No," she told him. He had to know this was hopeless.
He just stared at her, almost uncomprehending, futilely trying to overpower her grip.
"Maybe I can help a little with that?" Xander held his pair of heavy-duty cuffs in front of him like a talisman, or maybe a cross. He seemed jumpy, and she could guess why. She nodded at him, picking up Finn and forcing his arms behind his back in a way that only slightly wrenched at the hand she'd broken. Xander gracefully took the opportunity to cuff him, and then took him off her hands. She expected Finn to keep trying, but once she let go he just stopped, the fight going out of him.
"We're going to have to do something," Anya said while looking over at Xander. "The Initiative knows they came to us. When they don't come back it won't be hard to guess what happened."
"Is that really what we're doing right now?" Xander said as he finished walking Finn over. He handed him off to the same pair of SDCW who'd taken in Angleman. "Talking about the cover-up?"
"Do you want to talk about something else instead?" Anya said faux-nicely.
"Buffy didn't do anything wrong!" Willow said it sharply, addressing the whole room. Buffy absently noted Tara was kneeling a few feet behind her, recovering from throwing up.
"Of course she didn't!" Harmony said, still with a solid grip on Oscar. "She was totally right!"
"Just because Professor Walsh couldn't fight doesn't mean she wasn't dangerous," Willow continued. "She made Adam. We could've never let her go, or she might've done something like that again. And she didn't even think she was doing anything wrong!"
"Even Ethan Rayne has recognized the threat his past activities presented and made steps towards reform," CyberWillow added.
"And she was way too arrogant for that!" Willow said. "Instead of surrendering, or even apologizing, she came in and made a ton of threats. She was going to call the army here and get a ton of people killed. We couldn't let it happen. Buffy just did what had to be done."
"That's rich, coming from you!" Agent Finn spat, suddenly active again. He twisted in his bonds and shook the guy holding onto him. "Professor Walsh was right. You're not some noble group of heroes, you're just a bunch of terrorists justifying your crimes. But take it from me, America won't-"
One of the SDCW officers had taken out his myco and sprayed Finn in the head with it, interrupting his tirade.
"Won't. Wo-wo-wo? Won't Ent?" Finn trailed off in the usual drugged daze, and they'd never hear the end of that sentence.
She recognized the two officers over there now; the one that had taken the shot was Mark, and his friend holding onto Angleman was Finley. They were the first two people Carl had gotten brought in to bolster the ranks.
"The way I see it, she was asking for it," Mark was reholstering his myco. "Coming down to your house, disrespectin' you, saying she'd rat to the Army." He looked over at the Rat King quickly. "Ah, no offense meant. But anyone in business like this has gotta know you can't be doing that shit. That's just the way it goes."
"Just the way it goes," Finley echoed next to him, sounding a little less sure. His head was still swiveling over to peek at Maggie's remains every few seconds. They were going to have to do something about that too. It was probably too much for the room to take care of on its own.
"I totally agree," Anya said. "Maggie earned vengeance. Buffy may have been a little quick with it, but she's got her own style as an artist. I respect that. Still, we really do need to work on that cover-up."
"This is so exciting!" Harmony said. "It'll be just like on TV, except we're going to get away with it. Where should we start?"
"Maybe we could start with the body?" Andrew said, making a concerned glance at Tara, who was still looking woozy. "I don't think anything would go wrong if we threw it in the dimensional rift? Or I could just feed it to something, if we don't want to risk it."
"We shouldn't be hasty," CyberWillow said. "It could have any number of uses in a cover-up, not to mention she was probably carrying identification and other items."
Buffy slowly returned to the throne, letting the uncannily calm conversation about bodies and cover-ups wash over her as she lowered herself back onto it. It was her mess, and she really should help clean it up, but she just felt… wrung out. She needed to process. Preferably before anything else went wrong.
Giles came to her side, his eyes full of concern. He spoke almost in a whisper while most of the others were distracted. "If you feel you need to go and rest, just say the word and-"
"No," she was big with the mono-syllables right now, apparently. "I should stay."
"Convincing yourself that you 'should' have this meeting hardly resulted in anything good," a grimace passed over his face. She could tell he regretted saying that right after he said it.
She felt on the verge of a big spilly discussion, but now wasn't the time, if ever. She swallowed her tongue and turned her attention back to the discussion.
"I could cast a glamer to illusion us with their appearances," Jonathan said, having turned visible again at some point. "Like I was going to do with the Mok'tag'ar the other time. Getting the voices exactly right could be tricker though. People have certain ways of speaking."
"I should be able to imitiate Professor Walsh convincingly," CyberWillow said it from the Willowbot but in Maggie's voice, and it was super-creepy. Then she switched back to her own. "If I do the majority of the talking-"
"That would limit us to exactly you, me, and Jonathan," Willow said. "Unless we want to try to bring a fake Oscar."
Buffy felt like she'd missed some steps. "You want to try to replace them? Aren't there some logistical problems there?"
"Not forever," Willow said. "Just long enough to explain where they're disappearing to and how they definitely didn't all disappear visiting us."
"Buffy has a point," Anya said, misinterpreting her question as an idea. "We need to get rid of the Initiative altogether or this is just going to come back to bite us eventually."
"Maybe they could trigger the self-destruct! It'll be so dramatic!" Harmony said.
"Because having a couple college dorms fall into a big giant hole is a great idea!" Xander jibed.
"We could do it while everyone's in class!" Harmony argued.
"Because everyone knows that's how college schedules work," Willow said sarcastically.
"I am 99.8% certain that the Initiative either never had a self-destruct mechanism or permanently disabled it at some point during September," CyberWillow cut short that tangent.
"But on a less mass murdery note, I think I can see how this could actually work," Xander said. "Never let it be said my imaginary time spent in the army went to waste."
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Buffy was worried, and she was tired. She wanted to be down where the action was, but she also wanted to roll up into a ball and go to sleep. 3 PM was so far past her bedtime that she should be having lunch by now. She settled for angstily leaning into the corner of the van they were riding around in, listening instead of participating.
"Just look at these radiation levels, and tell me if you think we're safe!" CyberWillow-as-Maggie could be heard haranguing Initiative personnel over the radio.
Xander's plan relied on a key fact about the military, and one that hadn't been quite as obvious to the rest of them: more than anything else, they followed orders. The best way for fake Maggie to explain why she was going somewhere else was to say that everyone had to be somewhere else, as fast as possible.
The cover story was a mix of lies and truth. They went in with 'proof' that Adam had defected and sabotaged the base, as well as speculation that soon part of the disaster would leak into the public eye. 'Orders' had come down from above that Initiative complex was to be abandoned and the personnel temporarily reassigned to limit their exposure.
"Of course you don't understand how it works. This is paraphysical spectroscopy we're talking about, not junior high algebra. But did you at least show up in med school on the day they said 'radiation bad'? That's all you need to understand." Willow definitely had Angleman's arrogance down.
The 'orders' were easy enough to fake, considering the codes they'd already stolen from the Pentagon and their total control of all the lines going in and out of town. The Initiative was being dispersed to the winds, and the hope was that by the time they figured out something was wrong nobody would be quite sure what had even happened.
It would've never worked for a normal base, but the Initiative was a shadowy project, mostly-off-the-books and its existence wasn't known to many. The curtain of secrecy that allowed it to exist in the first place would make it easier to confuse this way.
"You don't need to take that! I mean, there's no time for it, so just leave it. We're moving out of here doubletime." Jonathan-as-Agent-Finn sort of declared. Even over the radio you could tell he didn't quite sound commanding.
"He should be louder," Xander said regretfully. "I told him to be loud."
"Jonathan's not great at loud," Andrew said. "He rolled a bard once and we all ended up dying when Amy ruled he wasn't actually inspiring courage."
The three of them were the core of the rapid reaction team ready to plunge into the Initiative and rescue the infiltrators if anything or everything went wrong. The Willowbot was expendable, Jonathan was great at hiding himself, and Willow still had Warren's Temporal Dislocator for a pinch. There was every reason to think they'd be there in time, and it didn't reassure her at all.
While things had gone pretty swimmingly in the early stages, the plan was far from perfect. Jonathan's glamer was tricky to maintain if not overly tiring, and they knew it'd fall apart if either of the others got out of line of sight. This meant instead of moving around naturally in their roles, they'd have to stick together, and it could get suspicious.
"Agent Miller, can you-" Jonathan stumbled over his non-order, "make sure the South wing is clear, take Edelman, Glenn, and Watson with you."
"Yes sir."
"He's learning," Buffy tried to be optimistic.
"Trying to learn," Xander half-agreed. "He's pretty good leading a patrol, the whole army thing just has him off-balance."
"I don't think he got much more sleep than I did," Buffy said. "Unless he was getting cozy with the rattlers out in the desert."
"Not likely," Xander said. "But it's like I said before, soldiers don't really question first, second, or third. At least not out loud. He's doing well enough to get through the mission. Probably."
The other main problem is they weren't sure what demons were even inside the Initiative right now, and having any left to fend for themselves on the premises would be a difficult sell. From the Initiative's perspective, the logical thing was to either take them with the evacuation or eliminate the evidence on the spot. For animalistic monsters and bloodthirsty vampires this wasn't an issue, but if any other mostly innocent demons were trapped inside they'd make things difficult. Rescuing them had to be a priority.
Jonathan thought he might be able to manage a couple static illusions, and of course Willow could play with any records inside that were still computerized. But still, the base was crawling with soldiers. It'd be hard.
"Octavian the Carnyss demon is confirmed dead," CyberWillow told them in her own voice, effortlessly holding conversations in parallel. "Professor Walsh had been taking muscle biopsies for months, and he was completely dissected three weeks ago in service of a detailed examination of his heart. Fortunately, the research was well organized and I've secured it in my personal effects."
"He was the eyeball-muncher right?" Xander asked.
"Affirmative, though I believe it was only two, and not a habitual practice," CyberWillow clarified.
"My heart weeps," Buffy snarked.
"Not as much as his did," Andrew added.
Securing research and materiel was another goal they had, if a less urgent one. The Initiative had boxed a lot of their desktop-style computers, but still used a lot of esoteric technology. Willow had foiled the retinal scanner on the way in, and they'd been thinking of digging it out of the elevator and adding it as an extra security measure in the Crawford Street vault.
"Isn't there anything more important for you to be doing than carting away everyday surgical equipment?" Willow half-growled at someone, still living in her Angleman persona.
"These are your diamond drills sir," her target responded.
"Ah then, well, carry on," she managed to keep the disappointment out of her voice, but Buffy could almost hear Willow saying 'phooey' in her head.
"Francis!" A new voice could be heard, sounding worried. "I've heard that the personnel are being shuffled to several bases in the interim!"
"From your tone I'm going to assume that you've come to me with a problem you're not smart enough to solve yourself," Willow said dryly.
"But-" he lowered his voice, "The treatments. If any of the subjects misses a dose they could go into withdrawal. The physical effects alone could be severe, not to mention the alchemical ones."
"That's the voice of the Warlock Gerald Drake, Jack Weatherby's brother-in-law," CyberWillow reminded them of his connection to the sketchy bartender. "Dr. Angleman already briefed us that he was assisting with their performance enhancement program."
"Keep your voice down about that!" Willow scolded him. "But it's all under control. Just go with your section and keep processing your component of the serum. It'll be shipped to the subjects mixed with their anti-radiation meds. Obviously."
"Of course, of course, sorry man," the Warlock replied.
"Is the real Angleman even that mean?" Xander asked.
"Who knows," Buffy said. "He was still kind of terrified when we interrogated him."
"I like the progress I'm seeing here," CyberWillow declared as Professor Walsh. "Let's check the armory and make sure everything's moving smoothly." This was part of the plan; hopefully Jonathan could use the opportunity to secure some of the Initiative's specialty weapons.
"Director, what should be done with the yeerks?" Another new voice asked.
"What's a yeerk?" Xander wondered. "It sounds like a hybrid utensil"
"Remind me of how many we have exactly?" CyberWillow asked, covering that she probably hadn't even known there were yeerks in the base until just now.
"Yeerks are a type of parasitic slug demon that infests brains through the ear canal," Andrew explained. "They can only stay in a host for a couple days but they have absolute control when they're there and access to all the memories."
"Thirteen are still in stable condition in the artificial environment we set up," the new scientist told the fake Maggie, audible over the radio. "We lost the fourteenth nine days ago, but I'm pretty sure we have all the requirements pinned down now. The whole setup's very compact, I think we could ship it anywhere in the country and plug it back in before we lose any more."
"Wait, are they like the eggs monster?" Buffy asked. Then she realized Andrew wouldn't know what she was talking about. "I think it was a bizarre demon?"
"You mean compared to the Bezoar you battled? They're more individualistic and intelligent, also not related at all," Andrew said.
"More importantly, are they evil?" Xander asked.
"Kind of?" Andrew said. "They are sorta obligate slavers, but a lot of the demons they infest are either evil, violent, or pretty dumb. They have a small empire, it's like their home dimension and a couple pretty weak subject dimensions. If you make deals with them they won't backstab you any more than usual."
"We could interfere with the yeerk environment being secured and capture them for ourselves," CyberWillow said. "But doing so would mean we'd lose the opportunity at the armory."
Vote: What does Buffy order CyberWillow to do here?
[] Go with the original plan and visit the armory, letting Jonathan work his magic and conceal a bunch of weapons. They expect to get some electrorifles, net guns, and maybe other stuff. The yeerks seem evil enough that you won't shed any tears over losing them to whatever fate the government has in store.
[] Save the yeerks instead. They have useful abilities if you can get any of them to work with you, and failing that you might be able to sell them back to their empire for a cash ransom or diplomatic considerations.
