"Pizza's here!" Oz announced as he stepped back into the room.
"Who ordered pizza?" Giles said.
"I did." Xander turned sideways to ease in through the door, which couldn't open all the way any more due to the number of people now in the radio station broadcast booth. He had a 'Pizza Ogre' cap on. "Ooh, the infamous groupies!" He grinned at each of the three SMACers in turn. "Any of you ladies comedy groupies? I was runner-up for Class Clown of Sunnydale High 1999."
"They're 'British-accented DJ' groupies," Oz said as he pulled the top pizza box from the stack.
"I'm not going to pay for this," Giles insisted.
"S'okay!" Lili pulled a metal box from under the table. "We just got our promo budget for the month."
Xander beamed at her. "Thanks, but not necessary. I convinced my new boss to let me bring a couple of pies over for promotional consideration. Just give us a plug on the air."
"We're public radio, I don't think --" Giles began.
Xander looked at him with puppy dog eyes. "Please, Giles? If Exxon can get public tv promos, you can give 'Pizza Ogre' a mention. If you do a couple, I can even hang out with you guys a bit."
"You've been watching public television?" Giles said with a lift of the eyebrow.
"Just for Sesame Street," Xander insisted. "That's hip."
Lili pulled out a pineapple and ham pizza slice. "These days only dorks watch Sesame Street."
"Cute dorks!" The red-headed groupie gave Xander a sultry smile as she eased a hand into the one pizza box he still carried. "Ow, that's hot!"
"Don't put your hand in there then," Oz advised her. He edged past them to give Giles the duct tape.
The pink groupie wrinkled her nose at him and tipped the lid open to let the box cool. "Just leave it open like that," she told Xander.
"It'll get cold!" Xander protested.
"Don't worry, I'll eat it up before it gets cold," she purred back.
"Is it getting oxygen deprived in here?" Oz wondered. "I'm feeling giddy."
"I told Sam no mushrooms on the pizzas," Xander said. And after a beat, "Mushrooms? Peyote? Giddy? Get it?" He grinned at the red-headed groupie. "I'm Xander."
She giggled. "I'm Blossom. You're funny."
"I love you. Marry me," Xander pleaded.
"I dunno," she said coyly. "What have you got to offer me?"
"Only my beating heart," Xander said.
"Can I get back to you on that?"
Giles turned back to his soundboard and found that the mike switch was open again. He stared at it, scowling, for a moment, then grabbed the microphone just as the Sex Pistols' track was ending. "Whatever you ponces are thinking, get your minds out of the gutter," he growled to the audience at large. "If you're not so pissed that you can't drag them out of the gutter by now. This is Fleetwood Mac's 'Hold Me'. If that doesn't bounce you out, nothing will." He turned the microphone off and pulled off a strip of duct tape to fix the switch in the off position, cutting the tape with his pen knife.
"We got a late start on the evening," the blonde with Giles' record collection said.
"Yeah, and whose fault was that, Bubbles?" Xander's new friend snapped. "One cool outfit in your closet, shouldn't take a brain in your head to decide which one to put on."
Bubbles looked like she was about to cry. She hugged the LP case tight against her stomach. The case creaked alarmingly. "My clothes are all cool!" she protested.
Giles tried to get at the LP case, but she had a death grip on it. "Of course they are," he said in a kindly, soothing fashion.
"Buttercup keeps borrowing all my new stuff!" Bubbles said angrily.
The brunette on the floor with Lili rolled her eyes. "I look better than you do in them," she sniffed. She didn't seem to be in any great hurry to get Lili off of her.
Bubbles hunkered over the case, tears streaming down her face. She wiped at her nose with the trailing end of her blonde ponytail.
Giles sighed. "There there," he said and offered her his handkerchief. "You look very smashing. You wouldn't want to smudge your makeup. Why don't I take that heavy case from you?"
"You do not!" Bubbles screamed at Buttercup, and stamped both her feet hard."
"Oh grow up!" Blossom said loftily from the crook of Xander's arm. "You can be such a child sometimes, Bubbles."
Bubbles stood up, her eyes flashing dangerously. Giles barely managed to catch his LP case before it crashed to the floor. "You take that back!" she yelled at Blossom.
"Oz, would you put this case somewhere in the next room?" Giles gingerly handed the LP case over to the teen.
"Sure." Oz carefully took it.
"Get Xander to help you."
"I can manage . . ." Oz took in Giles' expression. "Hey Xander, give me a hand with these."
"Hey!" Blossom said, momentarily distracted from her hissy fit as Xander attempted to move away. She clung leech- like to his arm. "Is this how you treat all your dates? Love them and leave them?"
"Date?" Xander looked panicked. "I'm the pizza guy! Pizza guys don't date, they deliver the pizza."
"Oh," said Blossom in a startled voice and let him go.
Xander smiled at her broadly and backed off. "Oz, man?"
"Door's behind you," Oz said, opening it up. The two of them ducked out, carrying the LP case between them.
Bubbles stood center of the room, her small hands balled up into fists, thunderstorms of tears in her eyes.
"Would you like to pick out the next track?" Giles asked her.
The blue groupie looked at him, rage shifting to sniffles again. "Can I? Will you say that I picked it out? Can I put it on the player? Can I wear your headphones?"
Giles forced a smile at her and gestured her to the CD shelves.
"Bubbles always gets special favors," Buttercup complained from the floor. "All she has to do is throw a temper tantrum."
"You were being mean." Bubbles glared at her companion, clutching a CD case in her hands. She turned her immense blue liquidy eyes on Giles and smiled at him gooily. "Dedicate it to 'Bubbles, my love muffin'."
Giles accepted the CD as if it were a decaying octopus.
Bubbles kicked at her fellow groupie. Buttercup rolled away, leaving Lili to take the brunt of the blow.
"Ow!" Lili yelped. "Watch it with those shoes, will you?" Buttercup aimed a vicious kick at Bubbles' ankles. Lili scooted out of the way to take shelter behind Giles' legs, beneath his desk.
Giles grabbed the baseball bat from the corner and slammed it hard against the floor. Several cd cases rattled down from the shelves, one of them bouncing off Buttercup's head. "Stop it!" he yelled at them. "What is this, a bloody nursery?"
Three sets of feminine eyes -- violet, blue, and green -- stared at him, agog.
Giles tore the duct tape off the mike and flipped the switch on. "This is Rupert Giles for the 70's show," he said serenely. "My guest DJ for tonight is Devon from Dingoes Ate My Baby. This next song is for 'Bubbles, her love muffin.'" He shoved the cd at Bubbles and motioned for her to put it on the player. "Ohio Express 'Yummy, Yummy, Yummy'. And Willow, if you're out there listening, bring the bottle of scotch from the liquor cabinet beneath the sink too, there's a luv?"
He started the track, then shoved his chair at Devon. "I'll be back."
"Whoa, cool!" Devon said, and dropped into the chair to spin around. "Hey look at me, I'm the DJ! Do I get your groupies too?"
"Lili, would you come out here with me?" Giles gestured to the door.
Lili smiled out at him from beneath the desk. "You only have to ask, hermosito." She bounced out from her cover and latched onto his arm, slipping one hand down the back of his pants. Giles jumped as she ran a fingernail down the base of his spine. "Stop that!" he told her indignantly and reached back to grab her wrist. "Don't people ever tell you that sort of thing is very off-putting?"
Lili kissed him on the nose.
"Are you even listening to me?"
She threw her arms around his shoulders and tried to wrap her legs up around his.
"Should I hit her?" Bubbles picked up the baseball bat, with a maniacal glint in her eyes.
"Um, no, we're fine." Giles put Lili out of harm's way behind him. She proceeded to climb up on his back. "I'll handle it," he said in a strangled tone.
"But you're famous now, Mr. Giles," Blossom persisted. "You'll need bodyguards to keep the undesirables away. We of SMAC hereby volunteer for that sacred duty."
"Oh boy oh boy!" Buttercup jumped up to her feet. "Do we get 'privileges'?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about, nor do I want to know," Giles said. "If you must guard something, stay here and guard the broadcast booth." He headed for the door, Lili wrapped around him from behind piggyback style.
Xander and Oz were arguing with an obviously agitated Willow out in the studio office. "-- bimbos!" Willow was yelling at them both. "I mean, who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of groupies?"
"The Shadow --" Xander began. Willow glared at him. " -- knows nothing about that, I'm sure. Relax, Will. They're DJ groupies. Well, okay, one of them sort of kind of liked me, I think. She said I was cute."
"And you asked her to marry you! The whole campus heard, Xander. What's Anya going to think? Are you crazy? She's the demonic Patron Saint of Scorned Women!"
"The Ex-demonic Patron Saint of Scorned Women, to you," Xander said. He laughed nervously. "And I was joking! Wasn't that obvious? I don't think Anya has a radio anyway. And I think she probably listens to commercial rock stations. Right Giles?" He turned eyes of desperation on the DJ.
"How on Earth would I know?" Giles said. "The book, Willow?"
"You're the expert on demons," Xander insisted. "And on music. And on women too, from the looks of things."
"Giles," Willow said, looking shocked. "You've got a brunette on your back. A lady brunette."
He sighed. "Yes. I know. You remember Lili? From our night out on the town, your junior year?"
"Hi Willow!" Lili rested her chin on his shoulder. "How's it going? Did you ever work things out with John?"
"John?" Oz said.
"Oh, that." Willow blushed, then looked at Oz. "John! It was nothing! It was before I even knew you, Oz! A night of wild passionate dancing! I mean -- he was a pretty good dancer. I couldn't help myself." Her lower lip began to quiver.
"John?" said Oz, and looked at Xander.
"One night stand," Xander said. "Willow and John Cuzack, me and Amy Yip at a pool party dancing the wild night away. We try not to dwell on the past. The lost opportunities --"
"S'okay," Lili slid down with unnerving sinew down Giles' legs to come to ground with a thistledown plop. "Word is that Amy prefers the chicks."
"What?" Xander's mouth popped open. "Who told you that?"
"She was at that pool party. 'Nuf said."
Willow paled. "But-but I was at that pool party and I --"
Lili arched her eyebrows at the girl.
"You were at that pool party! What are you doing hanging all over Giles then?" Willow demanded.
"Gymnastics? Stretch exercises? A new art form?" Xander suggested, looking at Lili wistfully.
"I like girls and boys." Lili wrapped her arms around from Giles behind. "But I love smart people."
"Willow did you get the book?" Giles persisted as he peeled Lili's arms off. "Or, please god, the scotch?"
"I remember now; you're a glasses slut!" Willow accused Lili.
"Well, yes," the other woman admitted. "But look --" she snatched the glasses from Giles jacket pocket and parked them on his nose. "Doesn't he just make you guys melt when he gives you that professorial behind-the-glasses piercing intense look?"
Giles abruptly left off trying to glare back at her.
"Of course not!" Willow yelped.
"Never!" Xander cringed.
Oz stared. A corner of his mouth ticked up and one eyebrow lifted.
Giles managed to set Lili aside, and he moved to grab at Willow. She whimpered in alarm as he pulled the book bag out from her grasp. No scotch (he gritted his teeth), but he found the book he needed stashed between a paperback copy of the Kama Sutra and a tattered pamphlet entitled Aphrodesia. Willow blushed furiously. "Those are for a class!" she insisted.
"Where's Buffy?" Giles began to leaf through his book.
"I don't know," Willow said. "I haven't seen her since she took off after the --" glancing at Lili "-- delinquents."
A frazzly red-haired head poked outside the booth. "The track is almost done, Rupie. I'm going to put on Michael Jackson's 'Thriller', 'kay?"
"Yes, yes," Giles muttered, hunting through the book for the passage that he needed. "Damn. We're going to need another book. Bloody microcephalic cross-referencing ponces, can't they simply put everything in one book?"
"AH!" Willow said. "Uh! Ah-uh-ah!" She pointed at the door to the booth and blurted out, "That's her! One of the demons that Buffy fought. You've got a demon in your broadcast booth, Giles!"
"Yes, yes," Giles agreed, still looking through the book. "I suspected as much when she propositioned Xander."
"Hey!" Xander said indignantly.
"She's not that bad," Lili said, trying to read over Giles' shoulder.
He leaned to keep the book out of her line of sight. "I still have to find out which reference volume of mine contains the banishment spell for this particular race of --" Giles lifted his head. "Michael Jackson?! Damn." He shrugged Lili off and raced back to the booth.
The brunette demon groupie had finished tying an unprotesting Devon to the DJ's chair with a length of AV cord and was now fishing green water balloons out of her cleavage to stack on top of the soundboard. The blonde demon groupie was sitting on the floor, pounding on a Grateful Dead CD case with the head end of an award statuette. The red- headed demon groupie was beginning to spin up the threatened Michael Jackson album.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Giles threw his arms around the redhead before she could flip the sound feed over. He did a whirling two step to put himself between the demon and the turntable. "You are not going to play that song on my beat."
A look of rage darkened Blossom's violet eyes and passed like a scudding cloud. She gave him a sultry smile. "Pretty pretty please? You let Bubbles play what she wanted to."
"Bubbles' choice wasn't calculated to raise the dead," he said, backing her up and away from the soundboard.
"It'll be fun!" she pleaded. "This campus is so boring on Friday nights. Don't you want to liven things up?"
"He does!" Buttercup said, as she made for the soundboard. Giles latched onto Blossom's wrist as he threw an arm around Buttercup's waist and yanked her back.
Blonde Bubbles stood up with a crazed grin and cupped her hands around a ball of air. A fiery blue glow began to build beneath her fingers.
Giles shoved her co-groupies back and glared lightning bolts at the girl. "I'm the DJ here, and I'm the one who decides what does and doesn't get played. If you don't like it, you can all go back to hell." He pulled the book out from under his arm flipped it open with a flash of his wrist and began to read, "'Wir verbannen die Furcht zu den . . .'"
Blossom grabbed his arm and shoved the book shut. "No! We're sorry," she told Giles. "We'll be good. Please don't send us away.
"As if he could with that incantation," Buttercup said, leering at him cheerfully even as she stuffed the water balloons back into her bodice. "But we're your best fans, Mr. Giles. We'll stick with you whatever."
"We'll smite your enemies down!" Bubbles agreed, with a shrill edge to her voice. She bounced her ball of blue fire from one hand to another. "Unless you piss us off," she continued in a little girl whisper.
Lili poked her head into the booth. "Hey!" she yelled at Giles. "Dead air!"
"All bloody right!" Giles yelled at her. He shoved the demonic trio to the back of the booth and grabbed a CD from the shelves. "The Rolling Stones 'Wild Horses'," he announced to the mike. He tossed the disc onto the player and threw the sound feed over. The perky beats of a Hawaiian hula song echoed through the booth speakers.
"Whoa!" Devon said from his AV cord enshrouded chair. A gleam came into his eye.
"You've done it now," Oz said from the doorway.
"What have I done?" Giles said indignantly.
Oz shook his head. "Our next album is going to have a pineapple on the cover."
"Will one of you yummy dudettes untie my right hand and give me some paper and a pen?" Devon pleaded.
"Don't do it!" Oz warned them.
"It's not my fault!" Giles held up the CD case he'd taken the CD from: "The Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers", the cover read.
"That's a new sound for them, isn't it?" Xander said. Willow had trailed him into the booth and was now trying to squeeze her way in between Blossom and Oz.
"Please?" Devon said plaintively. Bubbles scrambled to his side to tug at the AV cord. Her sparky fingers crackled against his shirt sleeve.
The telephone rang and a knock sounded simultaneously at the door.