Weirdness

Air Date: 30/10/2000

21 Aug 2000, Monday

Gemma spends time talking to DMS about the past few years. He tells her that he moved in with some gang members, internal politics split the group and he became rather high up in the group he was part of. A few weeks ago his gang ran over the others turf and a gang war ensued, resulting in the drive-by shooting. Two of his best friends were killed so although he wants to get back at some point it is not urgent as there isn’t much for him to go back to. Gemma gets the impression that there’s a little more to the story that DMS doesn’t want to talk about.

Jonathan has got his magic glasses almost working and will need to test them out, probably on Wednesday.

Jonathan does eerie things in the kitchen and Cam gets to write chronology. Jonathan and his parents are going out for dinner at a swanky new eatery. His parents have parked the car and are bickering about exactly who found this place and Jonathan is looking around, bored, waiting for the arguement to stop. Jonathan notices a lady, about 35, in Nike sports ware jog past. She walks out between Jonathan's parents car and the car parked infront of it to cross the clear road. She stops for a short while to change something on her CD player. Jonathan notices a car pull out from where it is parked and start to accelerate. His eyes go wide as he looks back as the lady starts to jog out infront of the car.

Jonathan leaps into action and runs across and dives over the front of his parents car. His belt scratches along the hood as his hands claw out and just manage to grab the belt of the jogger and yank her back from the road. The car shoots past the two of them, unaware of the disaster that has just been averted. Jonathan's head thumps on the hood of the car as his adrenaline starts to fade.

"Are you alright?!?"

"Errr, yes. I.. I think so. Thank you so much. I didn't see that car at all. I... I'm Rose Silverberg."

Jonathan's parents run up and pointlessly as "What happened? Look what you did to the car!"

Rose pulls out a card and starts writing on the back of it. "No, look this was totally my fault. Send me a quote and I'll cover it."

Jonathan slinks into the background as his parents and Rose exchange details and phone numbers. Having chatted for a bit, his parents move off into the restaurant.

Rose walks over to Jonathan, "Look, I can't thank you enough for what you just did. You must let me take you do dinner."

"eryeahwhateverok" Jonathan quickly replies and runs off after his parents.

Glitch is still hesitant to return to the house and has given notice to move out and find a new address. Neo isn’t as paranoid but is staying with Glitch anyway.

Jayde goes shopping for a party frock and then catches up with Conrad to train.

Casey, having been at classes with people, rediscovers a social life. Mary tags along with him.

22 Aug 2000, Tuesday

Most spend the day in classes, except Jayde who is still on the hunt for the frock of all frocks, then running around in circles for Conrad being bored out of her scull.

Casey decides to have people over for games and videos in the evening. People start to get hungry so he and another go off to pick up pizza and drinks.

Gemma hasn’t seen much of Faith around for the past few days so goes to check on her. Her bedroom door is closed and she can hear movement inside. She knocks. No answer but there’s the sound of something being moved. She calls out.

"Faith? Are you OK?"

"I’m fine."

"Do you want a coffee or something?"

No answer.

"Faith?"

Again no answer. Gemma realises that the sound before was the window being opened. She goes in and Faith is nowhere to be seen but there is a pile of things one the bed, all things that the twins had lent to Faith, and an envelope. Gemma opens the envelope. It contains cash and a note – "You’ve been really nice but I think its time I took my chances with Conrad and the watchers. Faith." Gemma heads to the phone to warn Alex and hears a shout from outside that is unmistakably Donnan the gardener. Gemma looks out and sees Faith running along the roof and Donnan pointing up at her.

"It’s a burglar! Call the police, man!"

"Faith!"

Faith looks back at Gemma then jumps down from the roof. Donnan runs toward where she landed.

"Donnan! No!"

Gemma runs downstairs as fast as she can go and heads outside to find Donnan unconscious on the ground and Faith standing a few feet away from him with a lost expression on her face. Gemma checks on Donnan. He’s had a single punch to the temple but he’ll be OK.

"You didn’t have to hit him."

Gemma manages to convince Faith to stay ("how is "someplace else" going to be better than here? At least here you have somewhere to stay…") and Faith tells her that if she is going to stay she needs to talk to Conrad. She needs to know how he deals with having killed people and how he keeps it under control. Gemma agrees to give Faith Conrad’s number and they carry Donnan inside. Faith goes back up to her room and Gemma tends to him.

Mary waits for Casey to get back, getting tenser and tenser as time goes by. About an hour after they were due back, Casey’s friend arrives back at the house with arms laden with food and no Casey. Mary barrages him with questions and he says that they went to the shops next to the park and Casey went to get drinks and dessert and never came back. Mary borrows the car and goes to look for him.

Jonathan stuff? I think? Cam. Rose called and arranged a dinner with the terrorfied Jonathan to thank him for saving her life. Seeing no way to get out of it, Jonathan was forced to agree. Jonathan and Rose arranged to meet and have dinner at a nice little place near the park.

The evening started off quite quietly, with Rose talking about her work in SanFrancisco where she does HR evaluation and training for federal and state governments. Rose intimidates Jonathan quite a bit because she is obviously self assured and outgoing, thus she must be evil (or atleast she is able to terrorify him).

She talks for most of the time and Jonathan is happy to listen. By the time they get to desert and coffee, she turns to asking Jonathan about what he does. Hoping not to attract any attention to himself from the scary lady, he replies in as few words as possible, muttering something about media studies.

Rose then starts asking him more and more interesting questions about what his study involves and soon Jonathan is off talking at 1000 miles an hour about photography and other such obsessions. Rose turns out to be quite interested in photography, as she laments her lack of creative abilty. It seems that she has many creative ideas but lacks the ability to turn her ideas into reality. Jonathan's obsessive ranting about photography seems to catch her imagination and the two of them talk late into the evening.

Eventually the waiter's impatient hovering around Jonathan and Rose passes the idea on and the two of them leave the restaurant. Rose has a hand full of napkins with scrawled lists of photography equipment and recommended brands and models and Jonathan is feeling somewhat relieved and relaxed at how the evening has passed.

As they leave, Jonathan looks across into the park and sees Casey, carrying what looks like a petrol can. Figuring something is up, he excuses him self and says good night to Rose and runs over to catch up to Casey.

Jayde is patrolling the park with Conrad in tow, constantly critiquing her on her slaying skills. She’s less than thrilled to have him there. It’s not even like he’s a good conversationalist. She spots a very worried looking Mary hurrying around in the park, looking for something, and goes up to say hello. Mary tells her about the case of the missing Casey and Jayde is very keen to help, if only to get away from Conrad for a bit.

(Kate does phonecally things and Cam takes chronology)

Casey mentions that he saw Jonathan and a woman leaving a restaurant. Jayde realises that if she isn’t back soon that Conrad will be cranky so heads off to continue being a young girl jogging alone in a park at night. Mary gives Casey the 20 questions treatment and he tells her that he was going to get dessert and took a short cut through the park and must have just gotten distracted somehow.

As they exit the park Mary and Casey spot two cops walking along the path on the road opposite. The direction they are heading in will bring them right near where Mary and Casey will have to cross. Mary gets paranoid and gets out her student card in case they get stopped for ID. Casey just crosses the street. Mary follows after, the cops pass them and completely ignore them and wander on along to where a mohawked man is sitting off to one side of the path. They watch as the cops talk to the guy, one pulls out a notepad and the guy reaches into his pocket and starts going through his wallet. Casey comments on how the guys was doing nothing and the cops are just hassling him and how cops totally give him the shits. Mary tells him that they are just doing their job. The guys pulls a card out of his wallet and the cops move on, glancing back occasionally. Mary and Casey head back to their video night.

23 Aug 2000, Wednesday

Mary arrives at uni and spots Faith leaving the psych building. She also spot two university police cars parked a little way off and the police standing outside them. Mary takes a closer look with the zoom on her digital camera but they seem to be just chatting and not paying any attention to either her or to Faith.

Inside at the Scooby meeting, Mary mentions the cop cars and both Gemma and Jayde get very defensive about what good jobs the police do. Mary asks Jonathan about his date, Jayde looks very dubious and Gemma spits orange juice out of her nose. Jonathan tries to change the topic by telling everyone he thought he saw Casey carrying a petrol can in the park last night but the others are more interested in the girl he was with and what she was doing with him. Eventually he tells them he saved her life and they move on to other things. There’s been nothing more on the group of vampires or the file and everyone wants to know from Conrad how Faith is coping. He says that she’s frantically searching for an easy answer or a new belief system to replace her current one but he thinks she’s go back to killing again and soon. He thinks we should consider having her terminated, especially if she leaves this city. There is discussion on removing her power (Jayde points out that we’d be removing the one thing that Faith feels she’s ever been good at and she’d be likely to kill herself), getting her back into slaying to release her tensions on the bad guys (but maybe giver her the taste for killing again?) or putting her back in jail. Nothing is concluded other than getting Angel to talk to her as she trusts him. Jonathan shows off his new gismo – glasses that superimpose a heat-sensitive camera image where vampires show up bluer than regular people over one eye – and everyone agrees to come along patrolling tonight to test them out.

Gemma, Mary and Casey go back to class (the police cars are not there on the way out) then off to the beach in the afternoon.

Jayde whittles her choices down to 5 possible dresses then sits out on the front porch and whittles a stake.

Gemma and Mary drop Casey at the sharehouse then join Jonathan, Jayde, Alex and Conrad at the office for patrol. Jonathan and Mary each wear a pair of camera-glasses and the group starts patrolling parks. Wandering down an alleyway behind telegraph road they approach a T-intersection and 20 or so people go running along the cross street in front of them. None of them have body heat. They all looked like students and looked like they had a particular destination in mind. One had a baseball bat, another a stereo. The group heads up to the end of the alley after them and they are nowhere to be seen. There are a couple of people out on the street and none of them have the kind of looks on their faces to indicate a large group of people running by. All of these people do have body heat. Mary goes up and asks someone if they saw a group of people and they have no idea what she’s talking about. A police car pulls up alongside Mary and she gets very paranoid. They ask her about her glowing eye and she tells them its something a friend of hers made at uni. Gemma comes up and chats freely and warmly with them about how their night has been. No riots or anything? No, its been very quiet, mostly just traffic incidents.

Lawyers take note: Buffy, the Vampire Slayer and Angel and all characters related belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy and fox.