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Dead Man’s Party

Prologue

Buffy finishes unpacking her bag, and putting her clothes back in her closet and drawers. She grabs her jacket, and goes in to her mother’s room. Joyce is hanging an African mask on her wall. Buffy’s entrance startles her, and Joyce puts her hammer through the wall.

Joyce shows the mask to Buffy, and tells her it will cheer up the room.

Buffy is dubious. “It’s angry at the room, Mom. It wants the room to suffer.”

Joyce notices that Buffy has her jacket, and asks if she is going out. Buffy tells her that she wants to go find Willow and Xander, if it’s okay with her mother.

“Will you be slaying?” asks Joyce.

“Only if they give me lip,” says Buffy.

Her mother offers to make her a sandwich before she goes, but Buffy is still full from the four course snack Joyce had served her after dinner. Joyce offers to drive. Buffy tells her mother that if she doesn’t want her going out, just say so.

Joyce doesn’t want to say that, so she tells Buffy to go, and have a good time.

Buffy approaches the Bronze. She hears a noise in an alley, and goes to check it out. She sees the back someone walking slowly down the alley. She quietly walks up behind him. When she gets close, she accidentally kicks a can lying on the ground.

Xander yells and spins around. He plunges a stake toward Buffy’s heart. He has a large cross slung around his neck.

Buffy disarms Xander easily. “Didn’t anyone ever warn you about playing with pointy sticks?” She waves the stake at him. “It’s all fun and games until somebody loses an eye.”

Xander stares at Buffy, speechless for a few seconds. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that,” he eventually tells her. “Jeez, Buff—”

Xander’s interrupted by a vampire breaking through a boarded up door in the alleyway. It knocks them both down. It grabs Xander by the lapels of his jacket, and hauls him back to his feet.

Buffy recovers quickly and knocks the vampire into a pile of garbage with a kick to its chest. Before she can do any more to it she is distracted by the sound of Cordelia’s voice. “Come in Nighthawk! Everything okay?” It’s coming from a walkie talkie strapped to Xander’s belt.

“Nighthawk?” asks Buffy.

The vampire attacks them again before Xander can answer. It knocks Xander down, grabs Buffy and throws her against the fence. Xander recovers quickly, and comes back at the vampire. It punches him to the ground. This time Xander stays down.

Buffy and the vampire exchange a few punches, and it backs her up against the fence.

Willow, Cordelia and Oz come running into the alley. Willow and Cordy each grab one of the vampire’s arms, pull it away from Buffy, and push it up against the opposite wall. Buffy is somewhat amazed by this.

Oz moves in to try to stake the vampire, but it kicks him away. Oz lands on the ground beside Xander. The vampire pushes Cordelia across the alley, and throws Willow on top of Oz and Xander.

Cordelia is caught by Buffy. “Hey Buffy!” she says as Buffy pushes her out of the way. Cordelia lands on top of the other three, while Buffy stakes the vampire.

Buffy turns to see her four friends all lying on the ground looking up at her with various expressions of amazement on their faces. “Hey guys!”

Act I

The five of them go to Giles’ apartment. Buffy is a little reluctant, she doesn’t quite feel up to meeting with Giles yet. She pauses outside his door. “What if he’s mad?”

“Mad?” asks Xander. “Just because you ran away and abandoned your post and your friends and your mom and made him lay awake every night worrying about you?” He turns to the others. “Maybe we should wait out here.” Buffy knocks on the door.

Giles opens his door, and sees Buffy standing before him. He stands, speechless.

“Check it out,” says Xander. “The Watcher is back on the clock. And just when you were thinking career change, maybe becoming a looker. Or a seer.”

“Thank you Xander,” says Giles. “Welcome home Buffy.”

They all sit in Giles’ living room, talking. Buffy is a little reluctant to talk about what happened to her while she was away. In the course of the conversation Oz tells her that the murder charges against her have been dropped.

Giles’ tea kettle starts to whistle, and he gets up to deal with it. Alone in the kitchen Giles is nearly overcome by his emotions. He manages to pull himself together while he prepares the tea and returns to the kids in his living room with a tray of tea and cookies. While he pours himself a cup, the kids all grab for cookies.

Xander tries asking Buffy about where she was again, but she deflects his question. Giles senses her reluctance and cooperates with her changing the subject. The topic switches to the Slayerettes’ own efforts at vampire slayage. Xander suggests that Buffy can just leave it to them. Buffy has noticed that they are really getting into it, with the walkie talkies and everything. Cordy thinks that their outfits suck though. She suggests maybe they go for a more sporty wardrobe, maybe Hilfiger.

“Still, we were getting good,” says Willow. “We dusted nine out of ten.” Oz leans over and whispers something in her ear. “Six out of ten.”

Buffy thanks them for the offer, but she wants to get back into her normal routine. School and Slaying. She also wants to spend more time with her friends tomorrow. Xander can’t, he and Cordy have something planned. Willow had something planned too, but she tells Buffy she can change it.

“As for school, Buffy,” says Giles “you know you’ll have to talk to Principal Snyder before—”

“On it,” says Buffy. “Mom is making an appointment with His Ugliness. I know she can break him.”

“Absolutely not! Under no circumstances!” says Principal Snyder. He is in his office talking with Joyce and Buffy. Joyce is incensed. Snyder doesn’t have the right to keep Buffy out of school.

“I have not only the right,” says Snyder, “but also a nearly physical sensation of pleasure at the thought of keeping her out of school. I’d describe myself as tingly.”

“Buffy was cleared of all those charges,” says Joyce.

“Yes,” says Snyder, “And while she may live up to the not-a-murderer requirement for enrollment, she is a troublemaker, destructive to school property and the occasional student. And her grade point average is enough to… I’m sorry. Another tingle moment.”

Snyder has no intention of letting Buffy back into his school, he suggests that maybe she can get a job at Hotdog on a Stick. She would look really cute in that hat.

Buffy tells her mother that they should go.

“This isn’t over.” Joyce tells Snyder on the way out. “If I have to, I’ll go all the way to the Mayor.”

Snyder watches them go and picks up a candy out of a bowl on his desk. “Wouldn’t that be interesting.”

Joyce drops Buffy off in front of the Espresso Pump where she is supposed to meet with Willow. She suggests that if Buffy can’t get back into Sunnydale High they can arrange to get her into a private school.

Buffy is less than thrilled with that idea. “What about home schooling?” she asks. “You know, it’s not just for scary religious people anymore.”

Joyce tells Buffy that they’ll work something out, and leaves. Buffy waits in front of the coffee shop for Willow. She never shows up.

Buffy returns home. As she walks up the front walk of her house she sees a strange woman coming out the front door. The woman introduces herself as Pat. She and Joyce met in their book club, but now Pat is off to her Spanish class. She tells Buffy to go be with her mother. They need to re-bond.

Buffy finds her mother in the kitchen. “Pat wishes us quality time.”

Joyce tells Buffy that Willow phoned. She’d gotten held up. While talking to her Joyce invited Willow and the rest of Buffy’s friends to come over for dinner next evening. She asks Buffy to go get the company plates.

“Mom, Willow and everybody aren’t company-plate people,” says Buffy. “They’re normal-plate people.”

“We never have guests for dinner,” says Joyce. “Indulge your mother?”

Buffy finds a framed photograph of her with Willow and Xander on a shelf in the basement. She pulls it off the shelf and looks at it for a while before replacing it, and then reaches up to the top shelf for the plates. When she pulls on the plates’ box a dead cat falls off the top of it, and lands on the floor.

Buffy digs a hole in the back garden. “Next time I get to pick the mother-daughter bonding activity.”

Joyce picks up the plastic bag containing the dead cat and drops it into the hole. “Do you want to say something?”

“Like what?” asks Buffy. “‘Thanks for stopping by and dying?’”

“How about: ‘Good-bye, stray cat, who lost its way. We hope you find it?’”

Buffy fills in the hole.

That night, after Buffy and Joyce have gone to bed, the eyes of the mask on Joyce’s wall start to glow. The dead cat digs its way out of its grave in their back yard.

Act II

Buffy walks through the deserted hallways of Sunnydale High. She looks in the library, but there’s no one there.

Buffy goes out into the courtyard, and finds Angel waiting for her in the sunlight. “I thought they’d be here.”

“They are,” says Angel. “They’re waiting for you.”

“Am I dreaming?” asks Buffy.

Angel chuckles. “I’m probably the wrong person to ask. You’d better go.”

“I’m afraid,” says Buffy

“You should be.”

The school bell rings.

Buffy’s alarm clock rings, and she wakes up.

Buffy stares into the fridge, looking for something to eat. Her mother tells her that she has an appointment to speak with the Superintendent of Schools that afternoon. “At least he seems more reasonable than that nasty little horrid, bigoted rodent-man.”

Buffy really isn’t in the mood to talk about this now, but Joyce has also been talking to the admissions people at Miss Porter’s School for Girls. Buffy likes that idea even less than she likes the idea of a private school in general.

“Buffy, you made some bad choices,” says Joyce. “You just might have to live with some consequences.”

Joyce prepares to take out the kitchen trash while she and Buffy talk. She doesn’t understand why Buffy has to be so secretive about her “special circumstances.” She thinks that maybe they should tell a few people, such as Principal Snyder and the police. She opens the kitchen door, and is shocked when the dead cat comes into their kitchen, snarling at them.

Buffy opens the front door for Giles. “Welcome to the Hellmouth Petting Zoo.”

Giles has brought a cage with him.

They go upstairs to Joyce’s bedroom. Giles pulls the cat out from under her dresser chair, and puts it into the cage. The cat stinks.

“You know, I wanted Forest Pine, or April Fresh,” says Buffy. “But Mom wanted Dead Cat.”

Giles wants to get the cat back to the library, and see if he can figure out what caused it to rise from its grave. He starts to carry the cage toward the door, but he’s struck by the mask that Joyce hung on her wall. He recognises it as Nigerian. Joyce starts to tell him about it, but Buffy interrupts. They have research to do.

Giles suggests that Buffy should stay with her mother. Joyce tells him that she’s fine, Buffy can go with him.

“Actually, she can’t.” Giles turns to Buffy. “You’re not allowed on school property.” He promises to call as soon as he knows something.

Oz examines the cat in its cage in the library. “It looks dead. It smells dead. Yet it’s moving around. That’s interesting.”

Cordelia is less impressed by Giles’ new pet. “Don’t you like anything regular? Golf, USA Today, or anything?”

Giles tells Cordy it is not his pet. He just wants to know how and why it rose from its grave.

Oz thinks they should name the cat Patches.

Willow changes the subject to Buffy’s welcome home dinner. She told Joyce that they would help out and bring stuff.

“I’m the dip!” pipes up Cordelia. The others just look at her.

“You’ve got to admire the purity of it,” says Xander.

What?” asks Cordy. “Onion dip. Stirring, not cooking. It’s what I bring.”

Oz wants to know what sort of party this is. Is it a gathering, a shindig or a hootenanny?

“What’s the difference?” asks Cordelia.

“Well,” says Oz, “a gathering is brie, mellow song stylings; shindig: dip, less mellow song stylings, perhaps a large amount of malt beverage; and hootenanny, well, it’s chock full of hoot, just a little bit of nanny.”

Xander doesn’t like brie. It smells like Giles’ cat. And nobody really wants to talk about what Buffy did that summer. He thinks they should just shut up and dance.

Willow goes along with that. Buffy had said that she wanted to loosen up and have some kid time. She suggests that Oz can bring the rest of the Dingos to play at the party.

Giles doesn’t think that a big party is a good idea, but the others overrule him.

While this conversation has been going on Giles has been leafing through some of his books, not really paying attention to them. He flips right past a picture of Joyce’s mask.

Buffy is setting the dining room table for a quiet little dinner for seven when the doorbell rings. She is surprised to see that it’s Pat. Joyce has invited her to the dinner too.

Pat is followed by Devon. “Hi Buffy. Where do you want the band to set up?”

“The band?” asks Buffy as Devon comes in, followed by a couple of girls carrying parts of a drum kit.

Buffy’s house quickly fills up with strangers. She tries to talk with Willow, who’s in the living room listening to Oz and the Dingos perform, but the music from the band makes it impossible to carry on a conversation.

Buffy takes Willow aside to a quieter corner of the house. “Is everything okay? You seem to be avoiding me, in the one-on-one sense.”

“What?” asks Willow. “This isn’t avoiding. See? Here you are, here I am.”

“So we’re cool?” asks Buffy.

“Way!” says Willow. “That’s why, with the party, ’cause we’re all glad you’re back!”

“Okay.” Buffy isn’t convinced.

“Okay. Good.” Willow heads back to listen to Oz.

The eyes of the mask in Joyce’s bedroom start to glow again. Across town, the dead victim of a traffic accident wakes up in the street.

Buffy passes by Xander and Cordelia necking in the hallway. She tries not to disturb them, but Xander notices her pass, and breaks off to talk with her. “Some kind of party, huh?” he tells her, while Cordelia keeps nibbling on his ear. “I guess a lot of people are glad to have you back.”

“It seems like people I didn’t even know missed me,” says Buffy. She asks if Xander knows if Giles is coming. He tells her that Giles was busy in the library when last he saw him, but that he was planning to come.

Xander and Cordy go back to sucking face, so Buffy leaves.

The mask’s eyes glow again.

The doctors and nurses give up hope of reviving a burn victim in an emergency room at Sunnydale Hospital. His heart monitor has flatlined. They turn away from the body just before it wakes up. His heart still isn’t beating as the man gets up off the emergency room table and attacks them.

Buffy picks up some empty plastic cups that had been left on the coffee table. A guy nearby shoves a handful of popcorn into his mouth, dumping half of it onto the floor. She decides that any effort to clean up at this point will be futile, and starts to leave. She overhears a couple of guys talking. They have no idea what the party is for, but one of them has heard that it is for some chick who has just gotten out of rehab. He takes a puff from his cigarette.¹

Joyce and Pat have found a quiet spot in the kitchen. Joyce pours each of them a glass of schnaps.

“Now, how you holding up, Joyce?” asks Pat. “Really.”

“Really?” says Joyce. “I don’t know. While Buffy was gone, all I could think about was getting her home. I just knew that if I could put my arms around her and tell her how much I loved her, everything would be okay.”

“But?” asks Pat, as Buffy arrives outside the kitchen door.

“Having Buffy home, I thought it was going to make it all better, but in some ways, it’s almost worse,” says Joyce.

Buffy has had enough of this. She heads upstairs to her room, and starts to pack her bag again.

The mask’s eyes are glowing constantly now. Around town Sunnydale’s dead are rising from their graves. They are all heading toward the Summers’ house.

Act III

Giles discovers the picture of the mask that he had skipped over before. He now knows what’s going on. He tries to phone Buffy to warn her.

Giles’ call is answered by the guy who thought Buffy had just gotten out of rehab. Between the noise of the party and the band, he can’t really hear what Giles is trying to tell him. He thinks Giles is trying to reach someone named “Buddy.” When no one around answers to that name he hangs up on him.

Willow comes upstairs to talk to Buffy. She’s not pleased to find her packing. “You’re leaving again? What, you just stopped by for your lint brush and now you’re ready to go?”

“It’s not like anyone will mind,” says Buffy

“Oh, no,” says Willow, “Have a good time. Oh, and don’t forget to not write!”

Buffy doesn’t understand why Willow is attacking her, she’s trying, but Willow doesn’t see it that way. It looks to her like Buffy is giving up.

“I’m just trying to make things easier,” says Buffy.

“For who?” asks Willow.

“You guys were doing just fine without me.”

“We were doing the best we could!” says Willow. “It’s not like we had a lot of choice in the matter.”

Buffy says she’s sorry she had to leave before, but Willow wouldn’t understand what she was going through.

“Well, maybe I don’t need to understand,” says Willow. “Maybe I just need you to talk to me.”

“How can I talk to you when you’re avoiding me?” asks Buffy.

It isn’t easy for Willow, but she has been going through a lot of stuff lately that she needs to have someone to talk to about. She’s been studying witchcraft, she’s dating a werewolf, and she has been killing vampires. And she hasn’t had anyone she could talk to about all this stuff. And her best friend just up and left without saying a word to her.

Giles drives toward Buffy’s house, muttering to himself. “Unbelievable. ‘Do you like my mask? Isn’t it pretty? It raises the dead!’ Americans!” He doesn’t see the man step out in the street in front of his car. Giles hits him.

Giles stops and gets out of his car to check on the man he hit. It isn’t a man though, it’s a zombie. It reaches up and grabs at Giles. More zombies step out into the street.

Buffy tries telling Willow that she had wanted to call, every day, but that isn’t good enough for Willow. Buffy didn’t call.

Joyce comes in, and sees Buffy’s bag. “What is this? Is this some sort of a joke?”

Buffy doesn’t know what to say to that, but Joyce still wants an explanation.

“She was running away again,” says Willow.

“No, I wasn’t,” says Buffy. “I’m not sure.”

“Well, you better get sure and explain yourself right away!” says Joyce. “If you think you can just take off any time you feel like—”

“Stop it! Please!” says Buffy. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Buffy doesn’t know how to deal with this. She runs from her room, and back downstairs, heading for the door, with her mother and Willow in pursuit. The exit through the front door is blocked by Xander and Cordy, who are still necking. Buffy turns aside and goes into the living room.

“Don’t you leave this house young lady!” Joyce grabs Buffy’s arm and spins her around. “You know that’s it! You and I are going to have a talk!”

The party stops around them as everyone stops what they were doing to watch the scene being played out before them. Buffy does not want to do this in such a public way, but Joyce is beyond caring about that.

“You know what?” asks Joyce. “I don’t care. I don’t care what your friends think of me, or you for that matter, because you put me through the wringer, Buffy. I mean it. And I’ve had schnaps!”

Buffy’s friends start to gather around, while some of the other partiers start to get uncomfortable and leave.

“You can’t imagine months of not knowing,” says Joyce. “Not knowing whether you’re lying dead in a ditch somewhere or, I don’t know, living it up—”

“But you told me!” says Buffy. “You’re the one who said I should go. You said if I leave this house, don’t come back. You found out who I really was, and you couldn’t deal. Don’t you remember?”

“Buffy, you didn’t give me time. You just dumped this thing on me and you expected me to get it. Well, guess what? Mom’s not perfect, okay? I handled it badly. But that doesn’t give you the right to punish me by running away.”

“Punish you?” asks Buffy. “I didn’t do this to punish you!”

“Well, you did,” says Xander. “You should’ve seen what you put her through.”

Buffy does not appreciate Xander entering the conversation. “Great. Thanks. Anybody else want to weigh in here?” She looks around and spots Jonathan. “How about you by the dip?”

Jonathan freezes, with the dip covered chip he’s holding floating in front of his mouth. “No, thanks. I’m good.”

“You know, maybe you don’t want to hear it, Buffy, but taking off like you did was incredibly selfish and stupid,” says Xander.

“Okay. I screwed up. I know this,” says Buffy, “But you have no idea! You have no idea what happened to me, or what I was feeling!”

“Did you even try talking to anybody?” asks Xander.

“There was nothing that anybody could do,” says Buffy. “I just had to deal with this on my own.”

“Yeah, and you see how well that one worked out,” says Xander. “You can’t just bury stuff, Buffy. It’ll come right back up to get you.”

Giles fights off the zombie that attacked him, and makes his way into his car as more zombies surround it. He checks the ignition and his pockets for his keys, but they aren’t there. He sees them lying in the street in front of the car. “Oh, good show Giles!”

Giles reaches under his dashboard and pulls out the wires. He hot wires his car as one of the zombies breaks through his window. “Like riding a bloody bicycle!”

The engine starts, and Giles drives away.

The argument continues in Buffy’s living room. The crowd has thinned out considerably.

“As if I even could’ve gone to you, Xander,” says Buffy. “You made your feelings about Angel and I perfectly clear.”

“Look,” says Xander. “I’m sorry that your honey was a demon, but most girls don’t hop a Greyhound over boy troubles.”

“Time out, Xander,” says Cordy. “Put yourself in Buffy’s shoes for just a minute. Okay? I’m Buffy, freak of nature, right? Naturally I pick a freak for a boyfriend, and then he turns into Mr. Killing Spree, which is pretty much my fault—”

“Cordy, get out of my shoes!” says Buffy. Cordy says she was just trying to help.

“Buffy, you never—”

“Willow please,” says Buffy. “I can’t take this from you too.”

“Let her finish!” shouts Xander. “You at least owe her that!”

“God Xander!” says Buffy, “Do you think you could at least stick to annoying me on your own behalf?”

“Fine!” says Xander. “You stop acting like an idiot, I’ll stop annoying you!”

Up to now Buffy has been upset. Now she’s starting to get angry. “Oh, you want to talk acting like an idiot? ‘Nighthawk?’”

Oz steps between Buffy and Xander. “Okay. I’m going to step in now, being Referee Guy.”

“No, let them go, Oz,” says Willow. “Talking about it isn’t helping. We might as well try some violence.”

A zombie breaks in through the living room window.

“I was being sarcastic!” says Willow.

More zombies follow the first one. The partiers who hadn’t left already start to run for the doors. One of the zombies grabs the guy who was smoking earlier, and snaps his neck.²

Zombies are breaking in through all the windows now, and the kitchen door. Xander manages to grab one of the zombies and toss it back out through the shattered living room window. Some of the remaining partiers pick up the coffee table and use it to block the window, while more try to hold the front door against the zombies trying to break in through it.

Buffy tosses Xander the fireplace poker and sends him to the kitchen to hold it, while she fights with the traffic victim zombie. It seem impervious to her attacks.

Joyce picks up a flower pot and bashes the zombie in the head with it. That seems to do some good, and the zombie staggers. Buffy kicks its legs out from underneath him.

“Are these vampires?” asks Joyce.

“I don’t think so,” says Buffy.

Willow tosses Buffy a piece of broken window frame and she stakes the zombie with it. The zombie is unaffected by it. “No, not vampires.”

Xander wails away with his fireplace poker on the burn victim zombie in the kitchen, but it has little effect. Cordy grabs a kitchen knife and stabs it with the same result. Xander uses his poker to knock the feet out from under the zombie.

Pat watches in horror. She starts to back away from the fight in the kitchen. She backs right into another zombie, who grabs her and drags her away.

Joyce pounds on the car crash zombie while Oz and Devon hold onto it. Jonathan stands nearby brandishing a guitar. They drag the zombie to the door, and when Buffy opens it they toss it out. Buffy slams the door again before it can get back in.

Xander and Cordy have their zombie pinned down on the kitchen floor and they are trying to tie it up. They have this one under control now, so Xander sends Cordy back to the front of the house to help there, while he finishes tieing up his zombie.

Xander arrives at the front door just as one of the zombies breaks through it and grabs Oz. The barricades on the other windows around the house start to collapse, and the house starts to fill with zombies again.

Buffy, Willow, Joyce and Xander run upstairs and head for Joyce’s bedroom. They see Pat lying in the hallway, pick her up and carry her in with them.

Oz and Cordy try to follow them up the stairs, but one of the zombies grabs Oz and pulls him back down. Cordy comes back to help him. Devon and Jonathan make a break for the back door. They seem to be the last of the party guests to leave. Cordelia pulls Oz away from the zombie, and they follow Devon and Jonathan.

Joyce and Willow lie Pat in a chair while Buffy and Xander try to hold the door against the zombies. Willow checks Pat’s neck for a pulse. There isn’t one. Pat’s dead.

Xander gets knocked away from the door, against the wall with the mask on it. The mask falls to the floor. Joyce and Willow go to the door to help Buffy hold it, and Xander rejoins them.

“What do we do if they get in?” asks Joyce.

“I kind of think we die,” says Xander.

The mask’s eyes start to glow again. Pat’s eyes open.

Act IV

Oz and Cordelia peek out of the kitchen closet they’ve been hiding in. All the zombies seem to have left the downstairs, but they can hear the sounds of the struggle going on upstairs. They arm themselves with a couple of ski poles Cordy found in the closet.

They come upon Giles as they make their way quietly through the house. Cordelia backs him up against the wall with the point of her ski poll at his throat.

“Cordelia, it’s me! It’s me!”

“How do we know it’s really you and not zombie Giles?” asks Cordy.

“Cordelia, do stop being tiresome,” says Giles.

Cordy looks at Oz. “It’s him.”

The three of them make their way toward the base of the stairs. “I think the Dead Man’s Party’s moved upstairs,” says Oz.

“That makes sense,” says Giles. “It’s the mask in Joyce’s bedroom they’re after.”

“Mask?” asks Cordy.

“The mask holds the power of a zombie demon, called Ovu Mobani—Evil Eye,” says Giles.

“What happens if they get the mask?” asks Oz.

“If one of them puts it on, they become the demon incarnate,” says Giles.

“Worse than a zombie,” says Cordy.

“Yes, worse,” says Giles.

The zombie at Joyce’s bedroom door manages to push it open as zombie Pat gets to her feet. The zombie who came in the door knocks Buffy aside, and then Xander. Pat moves toward the mask.

Joyce sees her friend up and moving again, and goes to her, relieved that she isn’t dead. The relief is short lived, as Pat grabs Joyce, and tosses her onto the bed. She rolls off onto the other side, beside Xander.

Pat reaches down and picks up the mask. She puts it on. The mask’s eyes flash brilliantly, as it wraps itself around Pat’s face, and she transforms into Ovu Mobani.

The door zombie had been attacking Willow, but it suddenly stops, cowering away from Ovu Mobani and bowing before it.

“Generally speaking, when scary things get scared,” Xander tells Joyce, “not good.”

Ovu Mobani turns its attention to Willow. “I live, you die!”

Buffy rushes forward to help Willow. Ovu Mobani turns and looks at her, and its eyes flash. Buffy freezes in her tracks. The demon hits Buffy and knocks her across the room.

Willow starts to back away from the demon.

“Willow! Don’t look!” calls Buffy, but it is too late. Ovu Mobani’s eyes flash at Willow, and she stops, frozen. The demon reaches out and drags Willow closer to her. It grabs Willow’s head, preparing to break her neck.

Buffy tackles the demon, knocking it across the room. Both of them crash through the window, and down into the back yard.

Giles, Oz and Cordy have moved cautiously half way up the stairs when the hear Buffy and the demon go crashing out the back window. They turn around, and start to head back down, but their route is blocked by another zombie. It grabs Giles by the throat.

Buffy retreats away from Ovu Mobani, being careful not to look it in the eye.

Joyce, Willow and Xander fight with the zombie still in her bedroom. Joyce has armed herself with a baseball bat, and beats continually on it.

Ovu Mobani catches up with Buffy and knocks her to the ground. Buffy rolls over on her back, shielding her eyes as the demon tries to stun her again, and kicks Ovu Mobani away from her.

Oz uses his ski pole to push the zombie off Giles.

Giles takes Oz’s pole. “Tell Buffy Mobani’s power lies in his eyes!”

Oz gives the zombie a couple of last kicks, and then jumps over the stairway railing.

“She has to go for the eyes to defeat him!” Giles shouts after Oz as he heads for the back door.

Buffy grabs the shovel lying on the ground beside her, and rolls to face the demon. She forgets to shield her eyes this time. Ovu Mobani’s eyes flash and she freezes.

Oz runs out the back door. “Buffy!”

Ovu Mobani turns and freezes Oz too.

Buffy recovers, and gets to her feet, holding the shovel ready. “Hey Pat!”

The demon turns back toward Buffy. Buffy stabs the shovel into its eyes. “Made you look!”

Ovu Mobani vanishes in a flash of light. So do the rest of the demons still inside the Summers house.

“Never mind!” says Oz.

They all gather together in the living room.

Joyce goes to Buffy and gives her a hug. “So, is this a typical day at the office?” She looks around at the wreckage of her home.

“No,” says Buffy. “This was nothing.”

“Nice moves.” Xander tells Buffy.

“You too,” says Buffy. She goes to Willow and gives her a hug.

Epilogue

Giles enters Snyder’s office. He wants to have a word with him.

“If that word is ‘Buffy,’” says Snyder, “then I have two words for you. ‘Good’ and ‘riddance.’”

Giles tells Snyder that he has no grounds for keeping Buffy out of school.

“I have grounds, I have precedent, and a tingly kind of feeling,” says Snyder. If Giles doesn’t like it, he can take it up with the city council.

Giles plans to go higher than that. He’s thinking of taking it up with the state supreme court. “You’re powerful in local circles, but I believe I can make life very difficult for you, professionally speaking. And Buffy will be allowed back in.”

“Sorry,” says Snyder. “I’m not convinced.”

Giles grabs Snyder by the collar, and pushes him up against a filing cabinet. He smiles. “Would you like me to convince you?”

Buffy and Willow meet at the Espresso Pump. Willow tells Buffy about her experiments with witchcraft. So far she has just been doing small stuff mostly. Blessings, and glamours. Her one attempt to contact the spirit world blew the power for her entire block.

“I wish I could have been there for you,” says Buffy.

“Me too,” says Willow. “I really freaked out.” She tells Buffy that she understands that Buffy had to leave. Buffy was going through a lot, and Willow has to be grown up about it.

Buffy smiles. “You’re really enjoying this whole moral superiority thing, aren’t you?”

“It’s like a drug!” says Willow.

“Fine! Okay,” says Buffy. “I’m the bad. I can take my lumps…for a while.”

“All right. I’ll stop giving you a hard time.” Willow pauses for a couple of seconds. “Runaway.”

“Will!”

“I’m sorry!” Willow laughs. “Quitter.”

“Whiner.” Buffy fires back.

“Bailer,” says Willow.

“Harpy.”

“Delinquent.”

“Tramp.”

“Bad seed.”

“Witch.”

“Freak.”

Death Toll

Notes

1. Smoking is pretty much the kiss of death in any Buffy episode. Anyone seen smoking is either a bad guy, or a future victim.
2. Told you!