S4.0E16: Shaggy Andalite Tail
Buffy wasn't exactly worried as she rode her motorcycle down the clogged streets of LA, experiencing the joys of stop-and-go as Elfangor sat behind in a human morph. True, she didn't have a whole team with her, but Wolfram and Hart didn't strike her as the type of people to invite her in and then try some kind of ambush. And even if they were, the two of her and Elfangor together had enough fighting power that she was confident they'd regret it.
She didn't think they'd be able to trick her with any fancy documents or deals either. She had a sparkly new radio with a camera feature, and CyberWillow was going to look over anything like that before anyone did anything hasty. The AI might not be an accredited lawyer exactly, but she had a thousand different eyes for detail and wouldn't let any scams happen on her watch.
Buffy knew Elfangor was jumpy, and it was theoretically possible he would throw caution to the wind and cause some massive scene. But he'd been willing to play along with her this far. She didn't think he'd go off half-cocked.
But still. This was Wolfram and Hart she was dealing with, evil law firm extraordinaire. All her advisors had warned her about trying this, and not just people like Andrew or Giles. Even Councilor Larry was wary of them. And if they pushed Elfangor too far, there was really no knowing what he might do. Maybe she wasn't precisely worried about the situation, but she was apprehensive.
"Would it not be easier just to walk?" Elfangor could be using his telepathy instead, but he seemed to prefer normal talking when he was morphed human.
"There's nowhere to park my bike, and we're only a couple blocks away," she said.
"Couldn't you just pick it up and carry it?" He asked.
"It'd be just a little bit obvious if I did," she drawled. "I'm not sure LA is ready for their faces to be rubbed in the supernatural quite that hard."
Elfangor didn't have a response to that, and changed the subject, "This city was poorly planned. There are not too many people for the space available, yet the environment is filthy and the logistics are terrible."
"You're sure that you're a war-prince and not a civil engineer?" Buffy asked flippantly.
"It would be well within my capabilities, and there is much in me that wishes I could leave the constant fighting behind," he said.
"There's some kind of duality between your mantle and … the other one, right?" Buffy asked, deciding at the last moment it would be impolitic to mention the Alloran situation directly. "Is yours more peaceful?"
"To you, I suppose almost all other domains seem peaceful," he mused. "But while you are correct, that is not the true reason. The fields of war seem nourishing at first steps, but one's appetite for them soon grows thin."
She wasn't about the Andalite metaphor, but she got the gist, and wasn't sure what to say in reply. Things between them stayed silent for a couple minutes, then they turned the corner and the tall Wolfram and Hart building came into full view.
"So this is not Loren's holding location." Elfangor made the neutral statement.
He knew the basic plan already, so she assumed he just felt like picking at it. "Not yet," she said. "The legal situation's a little fraught, so we want to go to the specialists before we make any moves."
"On Andal, the government would not require the services of a third party to make determinations such as this," He said. "Much less, as some of your subordinates have called it, 'an evil one'."
She gave a little shrug. "Relations with the rest of the government are complicated right now. There's a chance that if I tried to do this myself they'd make it difficult just because it was me."
"And that won't happen in any case?" He wasn't quite openly skeptical.
"Evil or not, these are people that'll get the job done even if it does," Buffy said.
As they finally scooted into the building's front drive, she was a little surprised to see Holland Manners waiting for the two of them outside. He greeted them enthusiastically, looking pleased as punch.
"Mayor Summers! And War-Prince Elfangor, I presume?" He gave both of them handshakes as they dismounted the bike. "And this is quite the beauty. The new Hayabusa, right? I hope you'll trust my valet with it."
"Sure," she said, more wondering if this was some kind of subtle power move then feeling hesitation. Her motorcycle was the first thing she'd really splurged on with Wolfram and Hart's money.
"You have been informed of the particulars of Loren's imprisonment?" Elfangor asked, wanting to get to the point.
"It's not an easy case," Holland said as he led them through the doors. "The sentence she originally received was exorbitant for a drug offense, especially at the time, but the real problem was the circumstances."
"Phillip Simmons the third," Buffy said grimly. That was the main reason she hadn't trusted herself to be able to bull rush through this on her own.
"Unfortunately, yes," Holland agreed. "The mayor's grandson being found overdosed at your home has a tendency to make judges stiffer with drug sentencing."
"And this Phillip Simmons still bears a grudge?" Elfangor asked.
"One he's still taking out on everyone." Holland said. "LA is the worst place in the country to get tried for drug crimes now, and it's in great part due to his efforts over the past two decades. He'd have probably retired in the '80s without his crusade."
"So the case is pretty bleak?" Buffy confirmed.
"Oh, I wouldn't say that," Holland smiled. "Wolfram and Hart specializes in solving difficult problems like this for our clients, and I have every confidence we can handle this for you." Unlike the last time, he led them into an elevator, and he hit the button for the 24th floor.
"Don't feel the need to be careful here, by the way," he told Elfangor. "Nobody on the upper floors will blink twice at an Andalite."
"Thank you," he said, starting to demorph in the spacious elevator. "I admit I find your culture's insistence on denying reality bizarre."
"It's a specialty of the human race," Holland quipped.
Buffy didn't say anything, but framing it like that did sort of ring true. The government had had a whole project centered specifically on the hellmouth, and even then the people on it had never really accepted how things were.
The Olympics had been a welcome distraction from thinking about what had become of the Initiative. (About Maggie Walsh.) It was a luxury she might not have forever, if the Feds got bold again soon. They still had to do something about Agent Finn.
When they disembarked, there was a suited woman waiting for them, not surprised in the least by Elfangor.
"Lilah Morgan," she introduced herself warmly, and her handshake with Buffy lasted just a little bit longer than was natural. "I'll be taking point on your case."
"Lilah is one of our best, and she knows the ins and outs of the parole system," Holland said.
"A little young to be a bigshot lawyer," Buffy said, wondering if there was something else hiding under her skin. She wasn't sensing anything special with her domain.
"And you're a lot young to be the mayor of a city of forty thousand," Lilah replied, softening the words with a smile. "But if you deserve it, you should take it with both hands, right?"
<You will not be handling this personally?> Elfangor asked Holland suspiciously.
"I'm more of a middle manager than a lawyer these days," he said self-effacingly. "Lilah could run circles around me in a case like this, but don't mistake me: you'll have the resources of the entire firm at your disposal should they be required. I'll leave you in her capable hands for now, but I can be back at a moment's notice if you need me."
He nodded at them both and walked down the hall. Elfangor followed him with a stalk eye, but otherwise turned to Lilah.
"So what's our plan?" Buffy asked.
"First we need to apply pressure to get the parole hearing expedited," Lilah said. "It isn't scheduled for until 2003 under the terms of the initial sentence, but considering her age at the time of the sentence we should be able to take advantage of some bureaucratic wrinkles, at least if we make the right phone calls."
<I am becoming concerned about the number of these wrinkles we're encountering ourselves,> Elfangor commented with a slow tail swish. <I still have only your word that she is even held somewhere within this disorganized city.>
"Well that's something we can change right now!" Lilah amicably switched gears. "Now that I'm her lawyer, we can meet with Ms. Fangor under attorney-client privilege, instead of under normal visiting conditions. We can go over everything there."
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Escaping downtown and driving north to the prison was another exercise in waiting for traffic, but the conditions were much more luxurious than they had been on the way down. Wolfram and Hart had a sort of van/limo hybrid in their expansive garage with tinted windows and a lot of standing room in the back; Elfangor wouldn't even have to go human again until the trip ended. Lilah offered him a mat of bluegrass, but he declined.
Buffy didn't let that stop her from munching on their (probably way overpriced) limo snacks. Elfangor gave her a hard to decipher look as she did so.
"Do you want chocolate instead of grass?" She wondered out loud. "Do you like, mash it up or something?" She wasn't totally sure how the eating through hooves thing worked.
<No, the Andalite sense of taste is rather muted compared to most,> he said, not quite explaining. <It would be inadvisable for me to indulge at this time, but perhaps we might celebrate after Loren is rescued.>
Lilah had been making calls in the front over the course of the ride, using an actual cellular phone no less. Buffy knew they existed of course, but she was so used to seeing people use Willow's cybermancy radios that it was weirdly incongruous.
But regardless of her technological aesthetics, she was effective. Instead of lots of waiting and paperwork at the prison, they breezed by security with barely any problem. An annoyed looking guard escorted them to a windowless room with some grimy furniture. The petite blonde woman who was presumably Loren was already there.
Buffy didn't expect her to recognize Elfangor, but her reaction was immediate. Loren startled forward in her chair, then stopped herself and seemed conflicted. In hindsight, it made sense he was using the same human morph he had twenty years ago.
"Loren, I…" he seemed at a loss, then finally lowered his head. "I have no words. I have failed you utterly and completely."
"Alan?" She said uncertainly, rapidly glancing between Buffy and Lilah. "What's going on? Am I dreaming?"
"If only this gulf of time had been a nightmare," he opined. "No. I had no idea you were being held in these conditions, I was only-"
"Don't, just," Loren rushed around the table and hugged him tightly. "You're here now. Can we talk? Is it safe?"
Elfangor responded, "My allies have told me that was the objective, though-"
"We could only hope they're listening illegally, they'd be violating privilege and giving us more ammo," Lilah said.
"They said my lawyer was coming," Loren said, stepping back from Elfangor and giving the two of them another look. "Are you actually a lawyer? Or are you all Andalites? Or both?"
"Lilah Morgan, Wolfram and Hart," Lilah flashed a bright smile and handed Loren a slick business card. "I'm human, but our firm specializes in unusual cases. War-Prince Elfangor is hiring us to overturn your case or expedite your release."
"I guess you got promoted a few times," Loren joked. "Is the war still going on?"
"Yes, but that's not important now," Elfangor replied. "Are you well? Do you need medical attention, or perhaps food?"
"Well, you can see I'm not a teenager anymore, and there are some aches and pains involved with that, but I'm basically fine," Loren said.
It was weird that Loren was almost as old as her mother. She didn't seem like the kind of person who was from another dimension and who'd had adventures with demons.
Loren continued, "And This isn't exactly the Ritz, but they do have to feed people and everything."
"Perhaps the chocolate from before," Elfangor said, still concerned. Then he looked at his pockets. "I should've taken some."
"They let you get into chocolate?" Loren's eyes widened, then she shook her head. "No, no, we have more important stuff we need to talk about. There's something I need to tell you."
Buffy was pretty sure what this was going to be. She'd found out from CyberWillow not long after her first chat with Elfangor, and ultimately she and her people had decided to keep a lid on it until now, if only to make it less likely he'd do something crazy and desperate.
Elfangor had another weird expression pass over his face. He was really hard to read, even as a human. "Loren, if there was another, or is, I abandoned you, you could hardly be blamed-"
"No, no! Elfangor, seriously," Loren looked aggrieved, "I've been in a women's prison for almost the whole time!"
"Oh," Elfangor was just lost now, or seemed that way. "Then, ah?"
"You have a son," she said.
"What?" Elfangor shouted, then turned to Buffy. "Where is he? Surely you would have known this."
She raised her hands apologetically. "He's safe, in a totally normal Earth life." At Elfangor's stare, she continued. "That I super have nothing to do with. His situation was stable, so we wanted to get this handled first before any more complications."
"Complications! You call this deception a complication?" Elfangor hadn't even freaked out this much this first time they'd met in the woods.
"You know where he is?" Loren asked, a little desperately. "I named him Tobias, but I'm not even sure if they kept it."
"Yes. He's in Oxnard," Buffy said, eager to calm the situation down. "And we waited until now to tell you precisely because of this. If you charged into Oxnard tail blade swinging it'd turn this case with Loren into a disaster."
"Is this all happening through you? Did you just, find everyone somehow? Who are you?" Loren asked her, then seemed to recognize her. "Or have I met you before? You seem familiar."
"Probably as Mayor Summers, but call me Buffy," Sunnydale and TV media didn't get along that well, but she knew her face had been in the papers, plus there was the movie.
"The drug lord?" Loren boggled at her.
"No! Definitely not a drug lord!" Buffy was getting sick of that rumor.
"Sorry! I thought we weren't being listened to," Loren said apologetically.
"I'm really actually not a drug lord," Buffy said, exasperated.
"More of a warlord instead," Elfangor commented.
"I am a mayor," Buffy said with a definite certainty she didn't quite possess. "I happen to be the mayor of the hellmouth, and that involves a lot of things which are not traditionally mayorly, like keeping the world safe from collapsing into other dimensions for example." You'd think people would be more grateful. "But that does not make me a warlord, and I definitely don't deal any drugs."
The two of them gave her skeptical looks, and Lilah was smirking.
"I met Elfangor coincidentally, and when I heard the story about you, I looked into it," she continued.
"I looked into it, actually, if we're being specific," CyberWillow spoke up from the radio. Buffy was pretty sure this was one of her attempts at humor, but you could never quite tell.
Either way, Buffy kept explaining. "CyberWillow is an AI and among her talents are finding a lot of official documents and reading them really quickly. So it was easy to put together all the pieces, and now I'm just trying to make sure this all resolves itself without lots of bloody violence and unfortunate fires."
"And on that note," Lilah rustled through her briefcase for some paperwork, "we should formalize our arrangement." She handed contracts to Elfangor and Loren, then gestured to the table.
Loren's eyes glazed a little paging through it, looking like she still wasn't quite sure if this was a dream. "I need to sign this for you to do lawyer things?"
"There isn't any soul business or anything going on here is there?" Buffy was a little suspicious of the timing.
"Nothing of the sort!" Lilah waved her hands negligently. "Wolfram and Hart prides itself on knowing its clients, and we realize that isn't something you can stand for. We simply want to arrange an equitable trade of favors, with no negative consequences for either party."
"An equitable trade of…" Elfangor had found something new he didn't like, sounding disgusted now, "This is not acceptable. The favor you ask is not mine to give."
"Isn't it though?" Lilah questioned. "What we're asking for was originally a creation of the mantle you currently hold."
"It is a critical Andalite military secret, our dearest advantage!" He said. Turning to Buffy, he continued, "If this was your goal at the start of all this, you could've had the decency to say it upfront."
"Hey!" She said, not sure what this was about. "Rewind. I had nothing to do with this one, what are they even asking for?"
"The morphing," Elfangor said, pointing at the clause. "Two full activations of a morphing cube, ten new non-Andalite morphers. It is impossible, that magic has been proscribed by the Electorate. Sharing it would be treason."
"It's only treason if someone finds out," Lilah said, not perturbed in the least. "You can just recharge the cube yourself, right?"
"Yes, and and I am the only one who can without the aid of the Guide Trees," Elfangor sneered. "I would be the only suspect! But that is beside the point. This would be-"
"So you're saying it'd be tough," Lilah cut off his tirade with a raised hand. "We understand that. But the position Loren's in isn't so easy either. Sure, I know how to pull the right levers to get her out, but it's going to make Mayor Simmons very angry. Not just at me, but at our entire firm. That'll come with real costs to pay and hurdles to endure."
"We'll find another way then. There's always a way," Loren said. "But what happened to me wasn't your fault, Elfangor. I never wanted you to betray your people for me, not then and not now."
He scoffed at that, temporarily abandoning the other argument, "More mine than yours, I'd wager. These wild tales of dangerous human intoxicants and arcane legal monstrosities paint a far uglier picture of Earth than I ever suspected. I should never have brought you here."
Buffy was still processing the ramifications of morphing being sharable. She'd thought it was strictly an Andalite thing. Or Andalite-body thing, in the case of Esplin 9466. But right now, she had to try to cool this down, before Elfangor declared a blood feud against Earth or something.
She asked, "Loren, can you explain the circumstances of what happened exactly? The stuff that made it into the court papers doesn't exactly paint the numbers your way."
She took a deep breath before starting. "The Oxnard house was nice. But even with that, it was hard to find and keep a job there. I still didn't really understand Earth customs then, and after the first few months I was showing-"
"My fault again," Elfangor interjected.
Loren didn't look like she wanted to blame him, but just kept going, "Well, I needed money somehow, and with the baby I knew I was going to need more. So I let a friend stay, and she helped out. It wasn't a good decision."
"They weren't even your drugs?" Buffy asked.
"No," Loren shook her head. "But there was a party, with people from LA, and a guy overdosed. My place, my problem."
"Mayor Simmons got involved with the investigation and made sure an example was made of everyone involved," Lilah finished for her.
"I acknowledge the situation is unfortunate," Elfangor said. "But I was given to understand that the humans of Earth, at least away from the hellmouth, have not become particularly more formidable in the past few years. Sure, this Simmons shares the same title with Mayor Summers, but what is he, truly? Some upjumped functionary?
"And neither is this place itself all so intimidating," he waved his arms at the space around them in a kind of exaggerated way, maybe not quite used to them. "Loren is here, right in front of my face. Security would be inadequate to stop our escape."
"Just like the old days," Loren gave a sneaky grin.
"That would cause a lot of problems," Buffy said, trying to sound firm while not setting anything off. "I can't order the guards to stand down, so they could get hurt. And even if you avoided that, people know I'm here, making this visit. It'd be a massive scandal, and I'd be held accountable. We can't just come in here to talk and then suddenly go guns blazing."
"So what you're saying but not quite saying is that you won't let me escape with her," Elfangor replied. "Fair enough. But neither should you let this paper-pusher extort us so exorbitantly. I could pay with my personal wealth, certainly, in various currencies, or trade goods, or even gold."
"But is any of that going to be as useful to you as a bunch of morphers of your own?" Lilah asked Buffy.
"Huh?" Buffy said, confused. She'd thought this was all about Wolfram and Hart getting morphing.
"Right here," Lilah took the contract and pointed to a paragraph below where Elfangor had indicated. "One full activation reserved for Wolfram and Hart, one for the Sunnydale civil government. Five morphers each."
"What's the catch?" Buffy asked.
"No catch," Lilah said. "Have your AI scan it over if you don't believe me. But we at Wolfram and Hart take care of our important clients, and while you might not be exactly that, we'd still like to have that sort of relationship with you. The service you're doing for Elfangor is literally irreplaceable to him, you shouldn't let him pay you off with some shiny baubles and empty promises."
"The promise of my debt was anything but empty," Elfangor said. "But you cannot ask me to fulfill my word to you by breaking the word I gave to my people.
"From where I'm sitting, it really looks like she can," Lilah smiled.
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Vote: What's Buffy's position on this?
[] Take a hard line, and side with Lilah. Buffy has Elfangor over a barrel and on unfamiliar turf, so he doesn't have any real recourse. It's not a nice thing to do, but nice isn't going to keep Sunnydale safe.
[] Take Elfangor's side, and try to negotiate some other payment. Buffy will try to broker a deal where Elfangor pays both you and Wolfram and Hart with more conventional stuff, or some kind of other favor trading happens that isn't so radioactive.
Which only works out when you're the protagonist... bad news for him.
