Buffy - Part 3 (you heard correctly!!)

Buffy! Three weekends in a row! I'm not sure whether to enjoy it all or be suspicious of Ragnarok...

Sometime after sunrise, Sascha came home and discovered Arthur had fallen asleep at the kitchen table waiting up for her. She thought it was kinda sweet but weird (Sascha isn’t exactly used to parental types that act parental). She explained what happened and Arthur said that Broom and the rest of his cronies came by and told him what had happened, so he knew she was all right, but probably needed some time to process everything. Sascha, feeling horribly guilty over what happened, admitted to Arthur that she got so angry so quickly with the memories of the other Slayers being slaughtered by this vampire, that (especially as it was preparing to kill Bastion), she couldn’t GUARANTEE she wouldn’t have killed it anyways, even if she KNEW killing it would usher the vampire god into this world. Arthur looked very concerned (Sascha knows her temper is an issue), but gave her a speech about anger being able to be used as a powerful tool….if it is tempered. But then a few more internal thoughts came out when he mentioned with a sigh that with her incomplete physical and emotional training and odd situation, he wasn’t sure she was ready to take on this burden.

Meanwhile the scoobies came back to Pleasant Hills with a plan of sorts. We all split up so the dorks could research what the bull on Ember’s killer’s ring meant, and Cameron went home for his planned meet with Snow.

Further conversation on the topic of Sascha’s readiness to be Pleasant Hills’ Slayer was interrupted by Oscar (the heavy black hacker kid), who came up and started pitching a new training regimen for her (Sascha has been having a definite problem with not being fast or strong enough to take on some of her adversaries. She has the general stats of Kendra, but Faith and Buffy and quite a few of the other Slayers who lived past 15 have better stats). Despite the irony of the fat kid advising her on exercise, his plan sounded pretty good. Sascha still hates being a Slayer, but still wants to become able to do more than survive being thrown through walls and ceilings. Besides….deep down….the memories of the three Slayers who died fighting Kurzan kind of….affected her a bit. They all died bravely, knowing they were probably dead already, but accepting it in order to have a chance to help the world. The vampire Kurzan was a blight on the world, and they knew they had to do everything they could to stop him. She….envied them a bit. At least their calm and lack of fear.

Opal came in and started talking with us about the ring, which Arthur recognized as being a symbol of the Cult of Apis, an ancient Egyptian doomsday cult. If they were sacrificing Ember, and Ember is gaining power from the adoration and virtual worship she gets from being an up-and-coming music legend, then it couldn’t be good. Sascha theorized that Anzo himself may not know what he has and the time bomb Ember is going to be (set to go off that night at her internationally televised concert right there in Pleasant Hills), and said she was going to go talk to him about it and see if he could call off the concert. She left the three of them there to discuss it while she went upstairs to change.

Halfway through changing, she realized someone was on her bed. As she screamed and covered up, Bastion’s large form startled awake. After a very weird conversation (Sascha and Bastion’s thing is that whenever one of them gets open to flirting (which he was in this case), the other one gets all smartarsed and they start fighting like an old married couple again. Ryan think sorta like Straha and Maguna in WTF Comics with more teenaged angst.) Sascha realized that, as Bastion was hurt and couldn’t go to the hospital, that he was going to have to stay with them for awhile. And Arthur just gave him her bed for the duration.

Opal came up to get Sascha and she tried to hide Bastion’s being there, but shouts of “Hey…leave the door open!” kind of revealed his presence. After a very hurredly stammered excuse which Opal didn’t believe, Sascha proved Bastion was hurt….by tossing a small object onto his shins. After his cries of “What’s WRONG with you?? That’s SICK!” faded as the girls walked away, Opal was surprised that Sascha wasn’t happier to see him. “You have a tall dark handsome guy laying in your bed, and the only thing you can think to do is throw things at him?” Sascha admitted she wasn’t COMPLETELY annoyed at his being there, but was unsure enough that she hastily changed the subject, and left in Arthur’s Mini to head to the concert venue to talk to Anzo. For the time being, they made the uneasy decision NOT to tell Cameron about their belief that Anzo may be a patsy in all of this. If it was their father who was behind it, they believed that Snow would be working for him, and Snow can’t discover what Cameron doesn’t know.

Snow showed up and, for the third time in three days, asked him to sign her contract. Then….he took the risk of spilling the beans. He said that what she was offering him (Ember’s contract) wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on. Ember’s BODY was her link to this world, and he had no intention of being tricked into this deal. Snow was sitting on the table in front of the chair he was sitting in, fully close enough to reach him. She tensed up and he was convinced she was about to severely injure areas of his anatomy he’d rather like to keep when he realized as he spoke that she wasn’t angry at HIM. His arguments trailed off and very quietly he said “You didn’t know……..did you?”.

In the end his offer was this. He wasn’t going to sign her contract. BUT…..if she REALLY wanted to screw with Anzo and if she felt like helping him recover Ember’s body, he’d still consider employment by her at some point in the future. It’s not like he was going anywhere. And, with a very curt “Let’s go.”, the two of them slipped into her limo and headed towards the Tanaka building.

Once there, they walked straight past the façade into the basement and the Vault. She had the door opened by a very nervous guard and walked in. Thousands of shelves and metal doors lined all the walls, with one crystal ball in the center on a pedestal. Snow walked over to it and used it to find the right door, walked over to it and pulled……and it wouldn’t open. She looked at Cam and said “Nothing in this room is supposed to be locked.” Taking it in stride, Cameron said “Well if it’s mechanical I can try a few things, but if it’s magical….” To which she, without taking her eyes off of him, punched clean through the metal door and pulled it off of its hinges. Inside the door was the body of Ember, wrapped in a translucent blue shroud. She ordered him to pick up the body and follow her. The guard was standing in her way. He said that on Anzo’s orders she was to put the body back and come with him…..

Sascha got in to see Anzo. She began in her usual way…..saying exactly the wrong thing. She said she knew he had been placing her in areas where she’d see the right thing or find the right information to uncover various Tanaka plots lately, but she was confused as to why he was still trying to be nice to her, given how much she had inconvenienced him. His reply was frustrated and a little sad. He said that he had no intentions of manipulating her OR had she inconvenienced him in any way. He wanted to see if a relationship was possible, but she didn’t seem to be able to trust that he was trying to be NICE to her, rather than trying to manipulate her. She refused to trust him and that really frustrated him.

Sascha was taken aback. Here were the exact words she had wanted to hear…..one week ago. Unlike Bastion, Anzo appeared to WANT to be with her….and she was screwing it all up.

She apologized and said it wasn’t fair and that she wasn’t leveling accusations at him, but even if she was wrong about things before she wanted to help him now. She told him about Ember and what they had found, and begged him to call off the concert. He said he couldn’t do that, and seemed to think it was somehow hard to believe, but did say he’d look into it and if he had to, would be able to pull the feed to the TV stations, thereby cutting off most of Ember’s “power” if things got out of hand.

He had to take a phone call then. His brow furrowed for a moment, he said “I see. Shut it down.” And then turned back to her and said he had an issue with a power plant up north that he had to take care of. Sascha said “Thank you for listening to me and trusting me. I’m sorry about earlier. We’ll….talk about the rest after tonight.”. She kissed him on the check (a rare thing for her), and hurried out.

Snow and Cameron were going through quite a bit of trouble getting out of the Tanaka building. It appeared Anzo had called most of the building’s attention to their leaving. Cameron was just thankful Snow seemed angry enough at her brother to not seem to care about the consequences….but Cameron himself realized there were a LOT of cameras on him at that moment. A fact which he knew he’d pay for later, but wasn’t sure of what to do now, so he followed along. 9 guards, one demon chief of security and one barred wall later, Snow and Cam were heading back to her limo and on their way to his house.

Which had Cameron’s parents’ cars in the driveway….. Cursing and thinking quickly, he pulled out his cell and called Opal, who was on her way there and was more than a bit surprised that he actually had the body (remember…Cam was the DISRTACTION so they could work with Anzo to STOP Snow and their father’s schemes). He said she had to grab the body and move it downstairs, and looked at Snow and said “You’re gonna have to stall them for a sec.”. Seeing confusion (thankfully), he pulled her out after him saying “Just play along!”. He headed in and talked to them, introducing Snow as his new girlfriend. They seemed interested enough to talk to her for a bit while he “got her coat downstairs” (after he whispered into Snow’s ear that he knew he was dead but it was almost worth it) and let Opal (now joined by Sascha) into the basement. He heard two heavy thuds, which sent him running back up the stairs.

Cam’s parents were standing back admiring a wall, while Snow stood there with a hammer, and an unnoticed very stressed look in her eyes as Cam’s dad mentioned she seemed to be quite the carpenter with how she got a nail into a tough stud in the wall. Cam smiled and took the hammer from her, saying her coat was in her car. He walked her outside and didn’t get a chance to apologize, as she had his shoulder in a very painful lock, whispering in HIS ear that whatever hell he was going to be in because of this would be nothing compared to what she had planned for him, and not to overestimate his worth to her. He agreed with every word she said until she let go and departed, knowing that Cameron would have no choice once Anzo reviewed those tapes but to seek out Snow’s protection.

Cam headed back downstairs and explained to the two surprised girls what had happened, and who was at fault.

If it had been possible, Sascha actually got paler, as her stomach knotted up….

Laz and Oscar showed up with the power source Cam needed to bring Ember back to life before Sascha could deny and accuse too much, and she just sat down at the back of the room as they worked to hook things up. Less than one hour before the concert, Anzo knew who they were and where they were, and they had a lot of adjustments to make to bring Ember back before she soaked up enough power to become a demigoddess….