[X] Buffy brings the ransom alone, and tries to do the trade legit. She can't risk her mom without anything solid, and at least two out of three of the perpetrators will suffer for their crimes.
"Rack's admitted he's betraying Teeth right?" Xander brought up. "Maybe we could get in contact with him, play them off against each other."
"We don't exactly have his phone number," Buffy said. "Though I could probably get it from Willy."
"Even if you could," Giles warned, "It's very likely Rack is watching Teeth's moves with this little time left. Add to that, any violent confrontation between them could be very dangerous for Joyce." The group frowned at that.
"Teeth still wants to take over the whole town too," Oz reminded everyone. "He has less reason to cooperate with us than Rack does. If we warned him he might get rid of Rack and then who knows what he'd do with Buffy's mom."
"We could just escalate more," Willow suggested. "Maybe Anya still has a couple friends in the vengeance business? Rack could totally be a fair target."
"Way too unpredictable," Buffy said.
"Very outside the box though," Oz cut in.
Buffy rolled her eyes. "Just because Anya is on team sane and reasonable now doesn't mean any of her demon friends are. None of us even remember our actual encounter with her vengeancey side, it could easily backfire and make things way worse."
"It was just an idea!" Willow defended, not just getting a skeptical look from Buffy, but from Giles too, who'd been too surprised to even say anything. "You know, brainstorming and all." Oz gave her a pat on the shoulder and she settled down a bit.
Buffy sighed. "Look guys, we tried. But in the end it's only money, and we've got nothing else solid right now. We're just going to have to ramp up security in the future to stop this happening again." Buffy hoped she wasn't making the easy choice instead of the right one.
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There hadn't been much time to prepare, but as Buffy walked up Kingman's Bluff, she felt as ready as she could be to do the deal. She had the money in the same backpack as the bones; the crew at the office had actually spent some time copying serial numbers today, so there was hope they might be able to track down Rack with them later. As for the bones, they'd considered keeping some back, but since they had started with one full 'skeleton' (it wasn't anything like a human one, as far as Buffy could tell) it was deemed to easy to notice something was missing on inspection.
The kittens were in their original baskets, keeping Buffy's hands full, but they were at least fed and watered before the trip, so they were pretty calm. Buffy didn't really feel bad about the bones or the money, but trading kittens to demons was sketchier than the sort of things she'd hoped to be doing as mayor. Nobody had explained to her exactly what happened to the kittens at the end of the line, and she wasn't sure she wanted to know.
Rack hadn't said anything about coming unarmed, and Buffy was also carrying a variety of stakes and throwing knives. A crossbow was too unwieldy considering all of her other baggage, but considering the level of opposition Giles had thought she'd be better off with ranged options than something big and scary in melee. Buffy had really appreciated the knives against the Chupacabra too, and she'd worked in some more training with them in the past week.
Xander had actually brought up the possibility of a gun in case Rack showed his face somewhere, but given Buffy's lack of experience with the weapon and the warlock's penchant for illusions that had been vetoed; the only other person on the bluff it would probably hurt very much was Joyce.
Last but not least, she was wearing a charm necklace under her shirt, the product of Andrew and Jonathan's last ditch efforts with some of their other supplies. It would disrupt magic trying to teleport her, but it had a limited shelf life and a spell too big might burn it out prematurely. Buffy thought she should be fast enough to escape any trap before it could fire a second time though, so that was probably good enough for now.
Finally, she reached the plateau on top. Her attention zeroed in on her mom first, about a hundred feet away; she was tied up and held precariously near the edge of the cliffs by a pair of vampires. Teeth and another couple vampires were standing closer to Buffy, blocking her path, and Rack was nowhere to be seen. Buffy could've easily killed all the demons here, but there was no way she could save her mom in time if a fight broke out.
Teeth made a welcoming gesture with his hands before rubbing them together greedily. "Slayer! I see you've seen some sense. I hope you realize that this wasn't anything personal; I've treated it strictly as a business opportunity, and your mother's been in the best of care."
It irritated Buffy even more that Teeth was still lying to her face, what with his plan to take over Sunnydale and all, but it wasn't safe to show that card yet. Instead, she bit back on a different angle, "The same care that got Faith re-kidnapped right under your big nose?"
Teeth raised his hands resignedly. "Well, I wouldn't actually call that one a kidnapping; it was more a matter of disputed custody, a favor for a friend. Digby might not have… survived his encounter with you, but I know a lot of his pals were fond of your darker half too. She's probably fine."
She wasn't sure if that was good news or not. She just hoped she wouldn't need to deal with a Vampire Faith anytime soon. "Anyways, just bring me my mom."
"Not so fast." Teeth said. "You can see your mother right over there. Show us the goods first."
Buffy scowled, setting down the baskets of kittens in front of her where they were visible. Then she took off her backpack, and opened it up, showing the stacks of cash and carefully padded bones. Snyder's words from a month ago asking why she couldn't just be normal and do drug deals were passing through her head.
Teeth on the other hand, was overjoyed, lowering his sharky snoz to take a big whiff of one of the baskets. "That's the stuff alright. 100% Persian. I don't suppose I could have the name of your dealer?" Without waiting for a answer, he gestured for the backpack. Buffy held it closer to him, and he took a good look inside, even going so far as flipping through one of the stacks of cash.
"Satisfied?" Buffy asked, not letting the backpack go yet.
"Everything I could've dreamed of," he said, and turned back, snapping his fingers at the two thugs with her mom. They dropped her in the dirt on the edge of the cliff and backed away from her, though they were still close enough to be threatening. Buffy didn't play games, and let got of the backpack, booking it to get her.
As Buffy closed the distance the vampires backed off further, clearly afraid of what would happen to them if they were too close once her mom was safe. Her mother's eyes looked worried, and she seemed to be trying to communicate something, but a gag in her mouth made it unintelligible. Buffy ignored the spooked vampires, and once she reached her mom she ripped apart the ropes binding her with her bare hands. Her mom was still struggling to say something though, and Buffy more carefully took the gag off to let her talk.
"It's a trap!" She cried, managing to rub away some loose brush from the ground at the same time. It revealed an arcane pattern hidden on the ground beneath them, and Buffy quickly grabbed her mom to prevent her getting swept away, but after bracing for a moment, nothing seemed to happen. Her necklace didn't even heat up like Andrew had warned her it would, so she knew that wasn't blocking any effects. Not looking the gift horse in the mouth, Buffy hustled herself and her mother away from the cliff and out of the circle's radius before looking around.
The other two vampires had rejoined their leader, and they all were looking at her with confused expressions. She also couldn't see the backpack anywhere, and even as she was looking the last basket of kittens seemed to phase out, disappearing from the ground. It seemed like Rack had decided discretion was the better part of scummy extortion after all, and left his partner hanging in the wind. Buffy was still going to come away a loser today, but she could at least make sure someone else lost even worse.
"Are you OK Mom?" she asked.
"I suppose I'm fine, but that Teeth character was very rude. He even propositioned me!" Joyce complained.
Teeth was just digging a deeper hole. "Stay back here. I have to deal with these losers now." She took a last look around in the starlight to make sure there weren't any vampires or other nasties hiding, and then broke into a run at Teeth and his gang, a stake already in her hand.
The vampires moved forward to meet her charge, but Teeth was hanging back, searching the ground worriedly. She heard him say, "That snake double-crossed us!", and then she was in the thick of combat.
The first vampire she swung at narrowly avoided being dusted, and two others tried to exploit the opening by coming at her high and low. She dodged through the middle, doing a sideflip at hip height to kick one in the stomach savagely, then rolling back off the ground to face them before they could react. The fourth vampire tried to get her from behind, but she flipped him over her shoulder and into one of the two left charging her from the front. The other one met her stake when he was isolated unexpectedly and turned to dust.
She took a second to look back at Teeth, and saw he'd abandoned his search for the loot and taken off down the hill. He'd gotten smart, but it was too late. She whipped a knife down at him and it caught him in the back of the knee, sending him crashing into the dirt and turning his run into a roll. The vampires were back on her then, and even though she judged this was the better class of minion, they were still just minions, and the three of them left weren't nearly enough to trouble her these days.
They worked together well enough on the attack, but she was too strong and too fast. She made a hole in their group by just charging through one of them, and staked another as he tumbled to the ground. The third abandoned the fray and started running back at her mom, but the distance was way too far and she caught him and staked him the back before he'd even gotten halfway.
She noticed the shocked expression on her mother's face (she hadn't seen her really fight very often, and especially not lately), but didn't have time to do anything about it now. She went back to finish the last one, and he made a good try of things for a few seconds but it ended with a punch in his growlies and a stake in his heart.
With his hanger-ons dispatched, Buffy strolled down to find Mr. Teeth struggling to crawl away, the knife still stuck in his leg. The blood was actually a very human-looking red; she'd expected it to look different for some reason. "Honestly, I'm surprised you only brought four. After hearing about the police station, I'd think you'd have known better." Buffy felt a little conversational now. Teeth was so just pathetic that she didn't even feel all pumped-up and fighty anymore.
He sighed, and stopped crawling. "Rack told me that too many vampires might be too many variables. Had to be careful not to foul his net, after all." He chuckled weakly at that.
"That Rack's sure a clever guy," Buffy said regretfully. "I kinda hope he shows his face around here again, but I don't think he's dumb enough to do that. At least I've got you though. We can have all kinds of fun."
Teeth shuddered. "Now, I know that I seem like a real puffer now, but I can be useful to you." He managed to turn himself over to face her, grimacing at what the effort did to his leg. "I know when I'm beat, and you've shown you're the big fish in this pond now. I've got minions, contacts, I know the pulse of this town. It could all be yours. I could even rustle up some kittens, I mean, not Persians, but something to tide you over until I could pay you back." He gulped, taking in Buffy's stony expression. "I will pay you back, and more! Just give me some time."
Vote: What do you do with Teeth, the shark-headed mob boss? Voting is by Plan.
[] Example Plan Name
-[] Do this with Teeth first
-[] Then do this with him
-[] But wait, also do this
EDIT: Added an image of Teeth
