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The Zeppo

Prologue

A mist fills an underground cavern. Buffy, Faith and Giles hunt a female demon through the fog and darkness.

Willow appears holding a candle in her hands. “Obscurate nos non diutius.”¹ She blows out the flame.

A wind blows through the cavern, clearing out the mist. Buffy and Giles jump the demon and force it up against the cavern wall. “Now!” yells Buffy.

Faith rushes forward and impales the demon with a sword.

This was the last of three demons which had been inhabiting the cavern. They are of a breed that none of them recognises. Even Giles is puzzled by them. He rolls the body of the last of the demons over so he can get a better look at it. “Most of my sources have dried up since the, uh, Council has relieved me of my duties. I was aware there was a nest here, but quite frankly, I expected it to be vampires. These, these are new.”

“And improved,” says Buffy.

Giles stands up. “Yes. I’m sorry. I should’ve had you better prepared, and I should never have allowed Willow and, uh…” He looks around. “And, uh…”

A dazed Xander digs his way out from under a pile of garbage. “I’m good. We’re fine. Just a little bit dirty.” He gives the gang a double thumbs up. “Good show, everyone. Just great. I think we have a hit.”

“Xander, one of these days, you’re going to get yourself hurt,” says Buffy.

“Or killed,” says Faith.

“Or both,” says Buffy. “And, you know, with the pain and the death, maybe you shouldn’t be leaping into the fray like that. Maybe you should be, fray-adjacent.”

Xander doesn’t want to hear things like that. He wants be help. Buffy lets it go, and wonders what to do with the demon’s bodies. She suggests burning them.

“I brought marshmallows!” says Willow. Everyone looks at her. “Occasionally, I’m callous and strange.”

Giles says to just leave them. He’s more interested in learning more about these demons, find out if they can expect any more.

Buffy hopes not. These demons are way too fit for her liking. She starts to make her way out of the cavern, with Willow and Faith following along behind.

Xander and Giles bring up the rear. “I say bring them on!” says Xander.

“Uh, Xander,” says Giles. “I think in the future perhaps it would be best if you, you, uh, hung back to the rear of the battle, you know, for your own sake.”

“But gee, Mr. White,” says Xander, “If Clark and Lois get all the good stories, I’ll never be a good reporter.” Giles just looks confused. “Jimmy Olsen joke, sir. Pretty much going to be lost on you, huh?”

“Sorry,” says Giles.

“Hey, it’s okay,” says Xander.

Act I

A couple of guys are tossing a football around in the school quad the next morning. Xander tries to join in. At first they just ignore them, but after a while Doug takes pity on Xander and tosses the ball his way.

“Alright! It’s all me!” Xander runs to catch the ball, but he fumbles it, and it bounces away toward Jack O’Toole, who is sitting nearby eating his lunch. The ball knocks a bag a chips out of Jack’s hands.

Jack picks up the ball and stands up. Xander approaches him cautiously, apologising profusely.

Jack is not amused. “What are you, retarded?”

“No!” says Xander. “No, I had to take that test when I was seven. A little slow in some stuff, mostly math and spatial relations, but certainly not challenged or anything. Can I get you another soda?”

“I ought to cut your face open,” says Jack.

Xander tries to tell Jack to cool down. It was just an accident, but Jack doesn’t want to cool down. He steps toward Xander. “I get my buddies together, we’re going to kick your ass till it’s a brand-new shape.” He toses the ball back to Xander. “Now get out of here.”

Xander retreats away from Jack. Doug calls out for the ball, and Xander throws it back to him. He sees Cordelia watching him, and steps toward her.

“Boy,” says Cordelia, “of all the humiliations you’ve had I’ve witnessed, that was the latest.”

“I could’ve taken him,” says Xander.

“Oh, please.” says Cordy. “O’Toole would macramé your face. He is a psycho. Which is still a lot cooler than being a wuss.”

Xander looks back at Jack. “Why is it that I’ve come face-to-face with vampires, demons, the most hideous creatures Hell ever spit out, and I’m still afraid of a little bully like Jack O’Toole?”

“Because, unlike all those creatures that you’ve come face-to-face with, Jack actually noticed you were there,” says Cordy. “It must be really hard when all your friends have, like, superpowers—Slayer, werewolf, witches, vampires—and you’re, like, this little nothing. You must feel like Jimmy Olsen.”

Xander chuckles. “I was just talking to…” He realizes what Cordy just implied. “Hey, mind your own business!”

“Ooo, I struck a nerve,” says Cordy. “The boy that had no cool.”

“I happen to be an integral part of that group,” says Xander. “I happen to have a lot to offer.”

“Oh, please.” says Cordelia “‘Integral part of the group?’ Xander, you’re the useless part of the group. You’re the Zeppo.”

Xander and Oz eat lunch together in the cafeteria. Xander is trying to figure out what’s cool, and how can he get some? He’s hoping that Oz can give him some pointers. “What is the essence of cool?”

Oz shrugs. “Not sure.”

“I mean, you yourself, Oz, are considered more or less cool. Why is that?”

“Am I?” Oz pops a french fry into his mouth.

“Is it about the talking?” asks Xander. “You know, the way you tend to express yourself in short, noncommittal phrases?”

“Could be,” says Oz.

Xander has another idea. “I know! You’re in a band! That’s like a business-class ticket to cool with complementary mojo after takeoff! I got to learn an instrument. Is it hard to play guitar?”

“Not the way I play it,” says Oz.

Xander reconsiders. He played the flugelhorn in the eighth grade, and didn’t get any cool points. “The whole instrument thing could be a mislead. But you need a thing, one thing nobody else has. What do I have?”

“An exciting new obsession,” says Oz. “Which I feel makes you very special.”

“Now with the mocking,” says Xander. “Which I can handle because I know I’m right about this. I’m on the track. I just need to find my thing.”

“It seems like you’re over-thinking it,” says Oz. “I mean, you got some identity issues. It’s not…”

“…the end of the world!” says Giles. He has identified the demons that they fought last night. He tells Buffy that they are members of the Sisterhood of Jhe. An apocalypse cult dedicated to the end of the world.

Oz comes into the library and locks himself in the cage. Giles glances at the clock and tells him he’s cutting things a little close.

Buffy asks Giles if he knows why the Sisterhood has come to Sunnydale.

“I think so,” says Giles “Based on some artifacts I found with them, and, um, taking into account the current astral cycle—”

“Giles, I don’t need to see the math,” says Buffy.

“They intend to open the Hellmouth,” says Giles.

“The Hellmouth,” says Buffy “The one that opens…” she looks across the library to a spot on the floor.

“About twenty feet from where you’re standing,” says Giles.

The Ozwolf howls in the cage.

Buffy and Willow walk toward school together next morning. Buffy tells Willow about the Sisterhood, and their plan to open the Hellmouth.

“And if it opens?” asks Willow.

“Do you remember the demon that almost got out the night I died?” asks Buffy.

“Every nightmare I have that doesn’t revolve around academic failure or public nudity is about that thing,” says Willow. “In fact, once I dreamt that it attacked me while I was late for a test and naked.”

Buffy tells Willow that it will be the first demon to come through the Hellmouth. It won’t be the last, or the worst. Giles is trying to figure out when it’s going to happen. “If you’re up for it, we’re heading into deep research mode.”

“I’d be offended if you haven’t already counted me in,” says Willow.

“Thanks, Will. There’s something about this one that… scares me,” she puts her arm around Willow’s shoulder. “I need my Willow.”

“Oh, you don’t have to be afraid…” Willow is startled by a car horn beeping.

Xander has just pulled up behind them in a blue vintage convertible. “You girls need a lift?”

Buffy looks at the car. “What is this?”

“What do you mean, what is it? “ asks Xander. “It’s my thing!”

“Your thing?” asks Willow.

“My thing!”

“Is this a penis metaphor?” asks Buffy.

“It’s my thing that makes me cool,” says Xander. “You know, that makes me unique. I’m Car Guy. Guy with the car.”

Willow asks Xander how he can afford it, and he tells her that he’s renting it from his Uncle Rory, who’s had his license suspended for DUI. Buffy tells him it’s nice. Xander senses a lack of enthusiasm. Buffy says she’s sorry, it’s just that there’s evil afoot.

“Big?” asks Xander.

“Biggest,” says Buffy. “Maybe more than I can handle.”

“Then we’ll handle it together,” says Xander. “You know I’m here for you. Just tell me what I can do.”

Xander picks up a dozen doughnuts at the Espresso Pump.

Cordelia spots Xander and stops in for some more heckling. “Ooo, is some evil going on? Must be big for them to entrust you with this daredevil mission.”

Xander smiles bitterly at Cordy as he pays for the doughnuts, and tells her to feel free to drop dead as he heads back to his car. He’s kind of busy right now.

“Right,” says Cordelia. “Buffy needs your help. Can you say ‘expendable?’”

Xander tells Cordy that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but Cordy thinks she knows Xander. “What, you got a shiny car, and now you’re someone new? Like anybody even cares about—”

“Is that your car?” a pretty blonde girl asks Xander.

Xander smiles at her. “Why, uh… yes! It is!”

The girl walks around the car, admiring it. “‘57 Chevy Bel Air… 283 CID… Solid lifter… Fuel-injected V-8…” Xander has no idea what she’s talking about. “How does she handle?”

“Like a dream about warm, sticky things,” says Xander. “Would you like to go for a little drive?”

“You busy?”

“Just got to drop this stuff off, and then I would describe myself as…” Xander looks at Cordelia. “…expendable.”

Xander opens the passenger side door of the girl. She gets in and he and climbs into the back seat, and hops across into the driver’s seat. Cordelia huffs as they drive off.

Xander sits with the girl—whose name is Lysette—at a table in the Bronze. She tells him about all her past boyfriend’s cars. It seems that cars are the only thing she can talk about, but she can talk about them for hours.

Xander is so thrilled with this conversation that he’s actually glad when he sees Angel show up. He jumps to his feet. “Angel! Buddy! Friend-buddy. You want to sit and talk?”

Angel says that he’s looking for Buffy, something’s happening. Xander tells him that she’s already working on it with the others in the library.

“I don’t think they know what they’re dealing with,” says Angel.

“Let’s go there… and tell them that,” says Xander.

“No.” Angel waves Xander back to his seat. “It’s best you stay out of harm’s way.” He turns walks away.

“But I can help!” Xander calls after him. Angel keeps going.

“Hey, you want to go for another drive?” asks Lysette.

Xander and Lysette walk back to his car, which is parked outside the Bronze.

“Y’know, it’s not like I haven’t helped before,” says Xander. “Y’know, I’ve done some quality violence for those people.” He opens the driver’s side door, and Lysette gets in, and slides across. “Do they even think about that?” Xander gets in and starts the engine. “I mean they act like I’m, like I’m some sort of klutz.”

Xander’s car starts to move, and bumps into the back of another car. Jack O’Toole gets out of it. He looks pissed.

Act II

The Ozwolf growls in the library cage. He’s unusually restless tonight. Willow and Buffy are sitting at the table, trying to learn more about the Sisterhood of Jhe, but they aren’t having any luck. Buffy’s ready to call it quits with the books, and hit the streets. Check out Willy’s and some of the other demon haunts.

Giles comes out of his office. He has tried phoning the Council, but they aren’t answering his calls. He needs to find out more about what is going on, so he is going to try to contact the Spirit Guides. They exist out of time, and have knowledge of the future. Maybe they can tell him what’s happening. He has a look in the doughnut box, looking for a jelly, but they’re all gone. He suggests they get Xander to make another run.

Buffy refuses. Xander almost got himself killed the other night, she wants to keep him out of this one. “This whole thing will be easier if we know he’s safe.”

Xander gets out of his car and apologises to Jack. He checks the bumpers to see if there’s any damage and offers to pay for it, but Jack isn’t interested in that. He pulls out a Bowie Knife with about a twelve inch blade. “Where do you want it?”

Xander if fairly certain he doesn’t want Jack’s knife anywhere, but thanks him for the offer.

Lysette has gotten out of the car too. “Wow. Cool knife.”

Xander gives Lysette an annoyed look. She goes back to the car. Xander turns his attention back to Jack. “Yeah. Great knife. Although I think, uh, it may technically be a sword.”

“She’s called ‘Katie.’” says Jack.

Xander thinks that it’s very serial killer of Jack to have named his knife. He looks back at Lysette and says they should be going.

Jack hooks Xander’s ear with the knife and pulls his head back around to face him. “You know what the difference between you and me is?”

“Katie’s springing to mind,” says Xander.

“Fear,” says Jack. “Who has the least fear.”

“And it has nothing to do with who has the big, sharp—” Xander stops when Jack slaps the knife into his hand.

Lysette interrupts them. She’s bored. She wants to go for a drive.

Xander looks back at her. “Oh, gee, I’m really sorry my life-and-death situation isn’t exciting enough for you…”

While Xander is distracted by Lysette, Jack takes back his knife, and pushes Xander down on the hood of his car.

A flashlight shines onto Jack. “Hey!” calls out the policeman who’s holding it. Jack makes Katie disappear as the cop comes closer. The cop asks what’s going on.

“Nothing,” says Jack. “Just rasslin’.”

The cop recognises O’Toole, and asks Xander if Jack attacked him.

“No. Just blowing off steam,” says Xander. “Two guys rasslin’. But not in a gay way.”

The cop clearly doesn’t believe either one of them, but he can’t do anything about it. He tells them to take it elsewhere, and goes.

Jack looks at Xander and smiles. “That was alright. Could’ve narc’d on me. Didn’t do it. That’s decent of you. I like you.”

Xander isn’t sure if this is an improvement or not, and Jack asks Lysette if she wants to join them in some fun. Since it will involve driving she’s in.

“What do you have in mind?” asks Xander.

“Well, I was on my way to get the boys. Going to cruise around.” Jack has a look at Xander’s car. “We’ll take your wheels.”

“What about your car?” asks Xander.

“It ain’t mine,” says Jack.

Jack opens the driver’s side door of the car, and slides across to the other side. Lysette follows him and takes the middle seat.

Xander gets in the driver’s seat. “So, where’re the boys?”

Xander and Lysette watch as Jack waves a chicken foot over a grave near the Alpert crypt. “He calls forth the Spirit of Uurthu, the restless. No one shall speak.” He raises his arms over his head. “He shall arise! Hear me! The blood of the Earth shall restore him!”

Jack kneels by the grave, and draws Katie’s blade across the palm of his hand. He sprinkles his blood onto the grave. “And he shall arise.”

Jack steps back as the earth begins to move. “Shall arise!”

A big guy with a rotting face and wearing a maroon and gold Sunnydale High jacket climbs from his grave. He looks at Jack. “Buddy!”

“Bob, you big, hideous corpse!” says Jack. “Come here!”

Bob and Jack embrace like long lost buddies. Lysette screams and runs away.

Bob is really impressed that Jack raised him. He knew that Jack had claimed to be able to do that mojo stuff, but he hadn’t really believed it. “You are the coolest!”

Xander tells them that maybe he should just let them catch up, and starts to go, but Jack calls him back. “Bob, this is Xander. He’s our wheel man.”

Bob slaps Xander on the shoulder almost hard enough to knock him over, and asks Jack where the other guys are. They have to go get them. Jack starts to lead them away though the cemetery.

Xander hangs back. “Are, um… Are all your friends dead?”

Jack looks back at him. “Xander, let’s roll.”

Bob asks how long he’d been dead, and Jack tells him that it’s been eight months. He had to wait for the stars to align.

“Whoa!” says Bob. “Walker, Texas Ranger. You been taping ’em?”

“Every ep,” says Jack.

“Alright,” says Bob. “We’re going to get the guys together, and we’re gonna party, man!” He hits Xander on the shoulder. “It’s going to be a night to remember!”

Xander follows after them. “I’m sensing that.”

The next of Jack’s buddies to be raised is Dickie. He’s even more decayed than Bob.

Giles stands before a crypt in the Restfield cemetery holding a lit candle. There is a glowing mist hanging in the air before him. He speaks to it in Latin. “Do not deny me, Spirit Guide. Let the wisdom of those who have passed be showered upon me.”

A voice booms from the cloud, also in Latin. “These secrets belong to time and the dark regions. To reveal them would bring Chaos down upon the living Earth.”

“The Beast must be fought!” says Giles. “Our only hope lies in finding its weakness!” A wind starts to blow around him.

“Seek not!” says the Spirit Guide. “Disturb us no longer!” The cloud vanishes into the night sky, and Giles’ candle is blown out. He hears someone approaching him, and turns toward the sound

“Giles, hey,” says Xander. “What’s goin’ on?”

Giles tells Xander that he just unsuccessfully tried to get some information out of the Spirit Guides as he kneels on the ground and packs up his things. He wonders what Xander’s doing there.

“Oh, we were just raising, um…” Xander glances back toward Jack, and his zombie friends. There’s three of them now. “…some heck.”

Jack is getting impatient, and calls for Xander to hurry up.

Xander kneels beside Giles. “Listen, do you guys need any help?”

“Oh, no. Thank you,” says Giles. “Uh, probably best if you, you stay out of trouble.”

“No chance of that,” says Xander.

Giles gets to his feet and looks around. “There’s something different about this menace. Something in the air…the stench of death.”

“Yeah,” says Xander. “I think it’s Bob.”

Giles tells Xander that they may need him when the time comes to fight. Xander asks when that will be, but Giles doesn’t know. “Hopefully, we shall have time to prepare. All we need is a few weeks.”

“Tonight?” asks Buffy. She is in Willy’s. The Sisterhood has been there ahead of her. The place has been trashed.

Willy is lying on the floor behind the bar, with Buffy kneeling beside him. He’s struggling to breathe. “They were looking for Angel. Said they were coming after you, too, and nothing could stand in their way because tonight was the night.” He coughs from the effort to talk.

Buffy tells Willy to take it easy. She’s already called an ambulance for him.

Willy has never seen anything like these demons. “If I were you…I’d go find Angel…go somewhere quiet together. I’d be thinking about how I want to spend my last night on Earth.”

“Let’s get some beers!” yells Bob. He’s standing in the back of Xander’s car as Xander drives through Sunnydale, along with Jack, Dickie, and their third undead buddy Parker. They are trying to figure out what they are going to do.

Parker wants to pick up girls, and hang out at the Taco Bell. He’s the most decayed of them all. Parts of his skull show through his rotting flesh.

Dickie wants to bake a cake.

Parker asks Bob if he was killed by the same gang that did him in, but Bob says they took care of those guys long ago. He was shot by the owner of a liquor store he tried to rob. He thinks they should go kick his ass.

Xander is loving this less and less. He suggests that maybe he can just drop them off somewhere. Jack will have none of that. Xander’s one of them now.

Parker reaches a rotting hand forward from the back seat, and pats Xander’s cheek. “Oh yeah, man, you’re on the team now, baby. Whoo-hoo!”

Bob still wants to know what they’re going to do. Jack thinks they’ve all had good ideas, but he like’s Dickie’s best. They’re going to bake a cake.

Jack tells Xander to stop in front of the hardware store, and to keep the motor running. He and the others get out. Xander looks uncertainly at the front of the store, and tells them that he doesn’t think it’s open. That isn’t a problem. Bob smashes the window.

“But they’re always open for crime.” Xander tells himself as Jack and the others climb through the broken window. “Okay. Now I’m involved in crime. I’m the criminal element. Having a car sure is cool!”

Xander hears Willow’s voice coming from across the street. She’s coming out of the magic shop with a bag of supplies. He hops out of the car, and runs across the street to talk to her. She wonders what he’s doing there.

“Nothing,” says Xander. “Certainly not crime.” He glances back across the street. “What about you?”

Willow needed some supplies for a spell. “Buffy called from Angel’s. It’s happening tonight.”

“And that thing that’s happening would be…?” asks Xander, but Willow says she can’t stay. She has to get this stuff to Buffy. She starts to go.

Willow suddenly turns around and comes back to Xander. She grabs him in a tight embrace. “I love you, Xander.” She lets go just as quickly, and disappears into the night.

“Okay, that’s it.” Xander starts back to his car. “I’m going to…”

Jack stops Xander, and asks him where he thinks he’s going. Xander tries to tell him that something’s come up, but Jack isn’t planning on letting Xander go anywhere. He turns back to the others, who are loading their baking supplies into the back seat of the car. “Xander’s looking to leave.”

None of the others like the sound of that. They need their wheel man. They figure that Xander’s reluctance comes from him not being a proper member of their gang. He needs to be initiated, but Jack isn’t sure Xander’s ready.

Parker puts his arm around Xander’s shoulder. “Oh, I think he’s earned his stripes. I say we let him in, boys. Huh?”

“Great!” says Xander. “I want to be in the gang, sure! What do I got to do?”

Jack pulls out Katie, and holds it up in front of Xander’s face. “You got to die.”

Parker pats Xander on the cheek.

Act III

Xander thinks they should slow down.

“Aw, you want to be part of the gang now, don’t you?” asks Parker.

“Yes, yes,” says Xander, “but I’m not dying to be in the gang, if you get the, um… the pun there.”

“What? You’re too good to be dead?” Bob grabs Xander by the lapels of his jacket. “You got a problem with dead people?”

“What about Jack?” asks Xander. “Jack’s not dead.”

Jack lifts his shirt and reveals a row of bullet holes. “Drive-by three weeks ago. Grandpappy found my body. I wasn’t gone but ten minutes before he raised me. It’s a rush, man.”

Dickie and Parker think killing Xander will be fun, and then he can be a full fledged member of their gang.

“Alright, enough!” says Xander. “You guys have had your fun, but you forgot about one thing!”

Xander makes a break for it. Jack and his buddy’s chase him across the street, into the chained off patio of the Espresso Pump. Xander doubles back to his car. He manages reach it, and guns the still running engine to escape just before they can catch him.

Bob, Parker, and Dickie are upset that Xander got away with their wheels and all their baking supplies, but Jack isn’t worried. There’s plenty more in the store.

Xander thinks that he’s had enough excitement for one evening, but he spots Faith as he is driving by the park.

Faith’s fighting one of the Sisterhood of Jhe demons. The demon grabs Faith and throws her to the ground. She springs back to her feet and kicks the demon in the head. She tries to follow it up with another spinning kick but the demon catches her leg, and throws her against a chain link fence. Faith grabs the fence with both hands over her head and lifts up both legs to kick the demon away from her.

Xander guns his engine, and rams the demon with his car. He knocks it flying, but this demon is tough. It’s back on its feet almost instantly, and coming back for more.

Xander yells for Faith to get in. Faith jumps into the car and Xander speeds off before the demon can get to them. He drives her back to her motel room and they run inside.

Faith takes off her jacket and rubs her shoulder while Xander checks out the window to make sure the demon didn’t follow them.

Faith isn’t worried about that. “The bitch dislocated my shoulder, though.”

Xander steps toward her, and Faith asks him to hold her. Xander isn’t sure what she means, and puts his arms out toward her. Faith takes one of his hands and places it on her upper arm. Xander grips it, and Faith grabs hold of his jacket and yanks her shoulder back into place.

Faith rotates her shoulder around. “That’s better. She got me really wound up.” She looks at Xander. “A fight like that and…no kill. I’m about ready to pop.” She rubs her hand along Xander’s chest.

“Really?” asks Xander. “Pop?”

“You up for it?” Faith runs a hand along the back of Xander’s neck.

“Oh, I’m up,” says Xander as Faith’s other hand goes down to his belt. “I’m suddenly very up. It’s just, um…I’ve never been up with people before.”

Faith gives Xander a kiss. “Just relax, and take your pants off.” She pulls his shirt open.

“Those two concepts are antithetical,” says Xander.

Faith pushes Xander down onto her bed and jumps on top of him. She sits astride his hips and peels off her shirt. “Don’t worry. I’ll steer you around the curves.”

“Did I mention that I’m having a very strange night?” asks Xander.

Faith has sex with Xander, straddling him in her bed.

Xander and Faith lie side by side in her bed. He smiles at her, and brushes his hand along her bare shoulder.

Faith shows Xander to the door. She’s got a sheet wrapped around herself, and he’s just wearing his boxer shorts. She hands Xander his clothes and shoves him out of her room. “That was great. I got to shower.”

The Ozwolf throws himself at the library cage door. Willow has never seen him this agitated.

Giles hands Willow the tranquilizer gun. “It’s the Hellmouth. He can sense it’s going to open. Be ready just in case.”

Willow checks that the tranquilizer gun is ready while Giles goes to the cage door. He tells her not to hesitate if it looks like Oz isn’t going to cooperate. Willow raises the gun to her shoulder, and takes aim. “Do it.”

Giles unlocks the cage door.

The Ozwolf throws himself at the door, and knocks Giles back. Willow shoots him with a tranquilizer dart, but it isn’t enough. The Ozwolf keeps coming at her. Giles grabs him, and tries to slow him down while Willow reloads. She fires another dart into the Ozwolf, and he collapses to the floor.

Willow knees beside the Ozwolf and pets him. Giles tells her that they have to finish getting him moved before he wakes up.

“Sorry.” Willow tells the Ozwolf. “I hope you’re not mad at me in the morning.”

Xander gets dressed and returns to his car. He notices the baking supplies in the back seat: kerosene, black powder, wires, batteries and other stuff. “Hey! They’re not baking any cake!”

Xander pulls to a stop in front of the hardware store, and looks around. There’s no sign of Jack and the others. “Long gone. Probably loaded with supplies. Got to think.” Xander tries to think, but he’s got something else on his mind. “I can’t believe I had sex! Okay, bombs. Already dead guys with bombs. Oh, man, I’m out of my league! Buffy’ll know what to do.”

“I don’t know what to do!” says Buffy.

Angel has a plan, but Buffy thinks the risk to him is too great. “I can’t watch you die again.”

Angel rests his hand on Buffy’s cheek. “I love you.”

Buffy takes his hand in hers. “I love you.”

“Nothing can change that,” says Angel. “Not even death.”

Buffy jerks away from him. “Don’t talk to me like that! You may be ready to go, but I am not ready to lose you. Okay, this is my fight, and if you won’t do it my way, then you’re—”

Buffy is interrupted by the sound of Xander clearing his throat behind her. She and Angel turn and stare at him.

“Hey. I’ve got this, um…” says Xander. “There’s this, uh…” Buffy and Angel just keep staring at him. Xander notices the expressions on their faces. “It’s probably a bad time.”

Xander turns and starts to go, but he turns back toward them when he reaches the garden door. “Can I help?”

Buffy and Angel just shake their heads.

“Okay.” Xander exits through the garden doors, and walks up the back steps out of the garden. “I just got to figure out what they’d be likely to bomb,” he tells himself.

Giles prepares for the binding spell in the library. Willow returns from moving Oz, and puts the tranquilizer gun down on the library counter. She hopes Oz will be safe where she left him.

“Anywhere is safer than here,” says Giles. He puts her to work lighting candles.

Jack and his buddies finish preparing their ‘cake’ in the boiler room in the basement of the school. They start the timer running. One hour to go.

Act IV

Xander drives through town. “Giles will know what to do,” he tells himself. “He’s way more calm than Buffy.” He spots Jack and his friends walking along the street.

Xander gets an idea. He drives up behind the zombies and slows down. When they see their ride returning they part, and let Xander drive between them. As soon as Parker gets close enough Xander grabs him by the arm, and speeds off, dragging him along.

Xander drags Parker down the street, weaving a bit as he tries to control both Parker and his car. He asks Parker where the bomb is. Parker tells him that it’s in the school boiler room.

“Alright. says Xander. “Now I’m going to ask you this once, and you better pray you get the answer right.”

“Okay! Okay!” says Parker.

“How do I defuse—” Parker’s head gets knocked off by a mailbox that Xander swerved a little too close to. Xander lets go of Parker’s arm, and his body falls onto the road. “I probably should’ve left out that whole middle part.”

Xander heads for the school with Jack, Bob and Dickie running after him.

Xander reaches the door which leads down to the basement boiler room, but it’s locked. Jack and his friends arrive, and Xander runs. “Where’s a Slayer when you need one?”

Buffy and Faith are in the library, along with Willow, Giles, Angel and the Hellmouth guardian demon. Its many hydra like heads loom over them.

“My god,” says Giles. “It’s grown.”

Xander runs past the doors to the library, without pausing to notice what’s going on inside it. Bob and Jack run after him.

Dickie pauses to look in through the library door windows. “Wow!”

Xander manages to elude his pursuers, so they split up to search for him.

Bob arms himself with a fire axe. He catches up with Xander in the student lounge. He swings the axe at Xander, but he dodges it.

Xander falls across one of the tables. Bob swings the axe again, and Xander rolls away just in time. Bob’s axe gets stuck in the table. Xander springs back to his feet and punches Bob to the floor. Xander picks up the axe. He uses it as a lever to push over the soft drink machine. It lands on Bob’s head and crushes it.

Dickie comes into the lounge, sees Bob’s body on the floor, and Xander holding the axe.

“Should’ve learned by now,” says Xander in his best Clint Eastwood voice. “If you’re going to play with fire, you got to expect sooner or later—”

Dickie turns and runs.

“I wasn’t finished!” yells Xander. “Note to self: less talk.” He runs after Dickie.

An explosion blows Buffy out through the library doors. Several Hellmouth demon tentacles follow her out.

Buffy springs to her feet and run back toward the library. “Faith! Go for the heart!”

Xander chases Dickie around a corner. After a moment Xander and Dickie come running back, being chased by three of the Sisterhood of Jhe demons.

Xander and Dickie split in different directions outside the nurse’s office. Dickie tries to hide inside it, but the demons follow him in and kill him.

Xander starts to make his way back to the boiler room, but his route is blocked when one of the Hellmouth demon tentacles smashes through the wall in front of him. He decides to take the other way to the boiler room.

Xander uses the axe to smash though the locked basement door and enters the boiler room. He finds the bomb. Less than two minutes remain on the timer. “Dumb guy. Little bomb. How hard can it be?” he asks himself.

Jack grabs Xander from behind and throws him across the boiler room. “It just got harder.”

Jack pulls out Katie and pushes Xander up against the wall. “I’m going to carve you up and serve you with gravy. You piss me off, boy. Now you pay the price. First the eyes, then the tongue. I’m going to break every one of your fingers.”

“You going to do all that in forty-nine seconds?” asks Xander.

Jack looks back at the bomb. Xander uses his distraction to break free. Jack tries to head for the door, but Xander blocks his path.

“I know what you’re thinking,” says Xander. “Can I get by him? Get up the stairs, out of the building, seconds ticking away. I don’t love your chances.”

“Then you’ll die, too,” says Jack.

“Yeah, looks like. So I guess the question really is: who has less fear?”

“I’m not afraid to die,” says Jack. “I’m already dead.”

“Yeah, but this is different.” Xander waves his finger at Jack. “Being blowed up isn’t walking around and drinking with your buddies dead. It’s little bits being swept up by a janitor dead, and I don’t think you’re ready for that.”

Jack tries to dodge around Xander to get to the door, but Xander moves quickly to keep him blocked.

“Are you?” asks Jack.

Xander looks at the bomb, and smiles. “I like the quiet.”

It is far from quiet in the library. There is a pitched battle going on between Buffy and her friends, the Hellmouth demon and the Sisterhood of Jhe.

Giles finishes reciting a spell. “Omnia…vasa…veritatis!² Now, Buffy!”

Buffy swings her axe at the demon.

The timer ticks down while Xander and Jack watch it silently. Jack chickens out at two seconds, and pulls the wire that disarms it.

“Good boy!” Xander starts to breathe again. “I don’t think I want to be seeing you on campus anymore, Jack.” Xander leaves through the door he came in.

Jack heads for the other door out of the boiler room. “I’m not going anywhere, Harris,” he says to himself. “The first time you turn your back—” He opens the door, and the Ozwolf leaps out at him. Jack screams as he gets mauled.

Epilogue

“Even after the Hellmouth was closed, you could still hear it screaming,” says Willow. She’s sitting at a picnic table outside the school with Oz, Buffy and Giles. Buffy’s arm is in a sling, and Willow and Giles have multiple scrapes and contusions.

Oz asks Buffy is Angel is going to be okay.

“He was only out for a few minutes” says Buffy. “Longest of my life.”

Willow shakes her head. “I will never forget that thing’s face. Its real face, I mean.”

Buffy looks at Giles. “I don’t know how you managed. It was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Giles smiles. “Stupidest.” He looks around. “But the world continues to turn.”

“No one will ever know how close it came to stopping,” says Willow. “Never know what we did.”

Xander walks across the school yard and joins them. Willow looks up at him. “Boy, you’re lucky you weren’t at school last night. It was crazed.”

Xander shrugs. “Well, give me the quiet life.” He tells his friends that he’s going for a snack and asks if anyone else wants one. They all decline. Oz is feeling oddly full today.

Cordelia spots Xander walking away from his friends and stops to harass him some more. “Ooo, look, it’s Mr. Excitement. On another life-or-death doughnut mission, or are we just cruising for bimbos again? Giving them lessons in lack of cool?”

Xander doesn’t say anything. He just smiles at Cordy.

“What?” asks Cordelia. Xander keeps smiling and starts to walk away from her. “What?” she asks. “What?”

Death Toll

Notes

1. Translation: Do not conceal any longer.
2. Translation: All things the vessel of truth!