Willow and Xander were in the teachers' lounge, sitting on the back counter next to the microwave. Lena's Russian wolfhounds had followed them in and now sat at their feet, begging processed cheese cubes from Xander.
"I don't know," Willow was saying to Xander as Giles, Lena and Debi entered the room. "I was expecting something more. At least an expresso machine and free sodas or something."
"Hey Giles!" Xander said. "Do you know that the pop machine in the teachers' lounge costs 25 cents more than the one in the cafeteria?"
"I told you to stay in the library and make sure the books were taken proper care of," Giles said.
"We were getting in the way," said Willow, "Mr. Vitali told us to vamoose."
"Giles," Xander motioned him over, and dropped his voice when the Watcher reached them. "The library is filled with vampires and Hollywood people.
Giles looked at him. "Is this the only useful insight you have for me tonight? Did Cordelia manage to contact Faith?"
"Dunno," Xander said around a mouthful of crackers and cheese. "Cordy seemed pretty distracted when we got here. Anyway, I don't think Faith is going to be much help. You know what happened to Buffy last time she tried to take Mr. Vitali's crew on?"
"Buffy tried to stake Rory Vitali?"
"She didn't tell you?" Willow said, with a sideways nudge at Xander.
"I don't blame her." Xander passed Willow a cracker. "It wasn't a pretty sight."
"Yeah, Buffy Zero - Mr. Vitali One Hundred Twenty Five," Willow said, nodding. "Maybe you'd better go along with him, Giles. He'll leave when he's done shooting."
"Rupert dear!" Lena called over to him. "We need you over here now."
"The school secretary has been selling Lena's crew boxes of Band Candy," Giles said. "I want you two to go out and collect as many of the boxes as you can and especially locate the special effects crew and make sure they're not partaking. Particularly this fellow they call the 'pyrotechnician'."
"Pyrotec-whatsis?" Xander blinked.
"Pyro -- as in fire?" Willow said weakly.
"And explosives and smoke, yes."
"What if the pyrotechnician is a vampire?" Willow squeaked.
"No problem then," Giles replied.
They both looked at him in confusion.
"Look," he said in exasperation. "If he's a vampire, he's already eaten for the night. If he's one of Lena's people he more than likely has been eating the Band Candy. Explosives. Teenage boys. Do I have to paint the whole appalling mural for you here?"
Xander winced. "We're going." He and Willow hopped down from the counter. "Um, why are Cordy and you getting attention from the movie's hairdresser?"
The hairdresser in question had snuck up behind Giles, and suddenly now had his jacket in a twist. "Come along peacefully, precious," she hissed at him.
"Ooh, I bet they're going to be extras, like we were last time!" Willow said. "Maybe Xander and I can do a walk-on again?" She looked over at Lena. "Do you need any extras, Ms. Wertheimer?"
"Hmmm?" Lena said. She and Debi were standing by the doorway, studying the back cover of Debi's paperback romance novel. "Oh, no dearest. I only need two for my hot smoochies scene. Go track down Rory. He may need some fleeing students for his knife-wielding psycho in the hallway scene."
"Cool!" said Willow. "I wonder if Oz is done yet with his gig? We could all be background extras."
"You think Mr. Vitali needs a fleeing teacher?" Debi Marble piped up.
"Teachers don't flee; they heroically stand their ground to protect the fleeing students and get mowed down." Lena tucked the paperback into her purse. "Can I return the book to you later, Debi darling?"
"Oh yeah, I've finished it," the secretary said. "Hey did I say that I played understudy to the lead in my high school's production of 'Hello Dolly'?" She hurried out the door after Willow and Xander and the dogs.
"Now let's see what we can do with this," Mae Belle mused as she wound a towel around his neck and scooched her fingers around in Giles' hair. "Oooh."
"Run a comb through it, if you must," Giles said impatiently. "I have to get back and make sure they're not throwing an orgy in my library."
"Nah," said the hairdresser. "We only do that on the final shooting day." She giggled. "Oh wow. Here." She slipped her cigarette holder with its still burning cigarette into his hand. "Hold that a mo'." She giggled again and slapped a hand over her mouth.
"Oh Lord," Giles said in irritation. "What's wrong now?" He stubbed the cigarette out in her open makeup kit, and tried to get up.
"Nothing." Mae Belle grabbed his shoulders and pushed him down into the chair. She snorted and buried her nose in his hair. "Hiccups." She burst into a hail of mad giggles. "Ooh. 'Scuse please." She dashed for the coke machine, looked back over her shoulder, blushed, and started giggling again.
Giles turned to take a look at her cosmetics and hairdressing table. A partially plundered box of Band Candy lay prominently among the combs and clips and curling irons. "Christ," he muttered and stood up to make his escape via the door.
"No no no no no no no!" Mae Belle yelled and darted back across the room to grab his jacket. "I got to coif you. It's my cool job! I'll get fired if you go on set looking like Vidal El Dorko! I'll have to go back to living with my slutty sister and her tubbo hubby! They think Baywatch is High Art! They shop at Walmart and give $15 every year to the Republican Party! Yucky poo! What have I ever done to you? Not counting what I'd like to do to you. Oh shit did I really say that?" She started giggling again. "Okay I really really want to get into your pants. I mean your hair. What's that word for when you mean one word and say another that sounds the same but means something embarrassing?" She dragged him back to the chair, still giggling wildly.
"No razors!" Giles said, grabbing her hands and pulling the straight-edge razor out of them.
"Oh com'on," Mae Belle giggled. "Don't you want to walk the wild side, try something new?"
Giles glared at her.
"Okay just kidding," Mae Belle hiccupped. "About the mohawk anyways. Settle down, will you?" She unscrewed a tube of bright purple gel with lip-licking concentration. "Hey look at this." She squirted a thin line of the gel into her hand and held her gelled palm up. "Do you know some really neat things you can do with this stuff?" She began to giggle again.
Before Giles could bolt from the chair she had her fingers tangled firmly in his hair. "Hold still a mo'! Let me goosh this stuff around a bit. I didn't mean that El Dorko thing -- you got good hair. I'm just gonna spice it up a bit." Regressed teenager or not, the hairdresser still had a keen handle on scalp massage. Despite himself, Giles felt himself going limp under her ministrations.
"Ooooh," Mae Belle cooed. "Maybe a hint of blue."
"No blue," Giles murmured sleepily. He shook himself awake again. "What are you doing?"
Her fingers -- still slightly moist -- had drifted out of his hair down his face. "Your hair," she purred, as her hands moved down to his neck.
"Mae Belle, sweet thing, please finish Rupert now," Lena called from the door.
The hairdresser broke out in hysterical giggles.
"Oh, shit," Lena grumbled. She came in to regard Mae Belle with an irritated air. "Take a Valium dear," she said to the woman. "What have you been doing to this poor child, Rupert?"
"What's she doing to me?" Giles insisted, reaching up to pry the hairdresser's hands from his shoulders.
"Ooglies!" said Mae Belle. She reached for the box of Band Candy.
Giles pulled it away from her and handed it over to Lena. "Will you please get this stuff away from your crew? Somebody with a warped sense of humor has drugged it."
Lena reached into her purse for another cigarette. "You might have said something earlier, darling. It's a bit late now. Well, we'll have to make do. I'm not going back to that horrid man in the City Clerk's Office for an extension on our shooting permit. Mae Belle, put down the scissors there's a doll."
"I'm working," Mae Belle said in a pouting little girl voice. She grabbed a comb from her tray and attacked Giles' hair. He cringed under the snap snap of her scissors, then she tossed them to the tray with a clatter. "Okay. Done with the hair. Just a bit of makeup now." She moved around into his face and grinned. "You've got lips." She began to giggle again.
"Dearest, do not molest the actors," Lena said sternly. "That is my prerogative."
'Bitch,' mouthed the hairdresser. Mae Belle made a pass over Giles' face with several tubes and brushes. "'Kay!" She pulled the towel from around his shoulders, then stepped back to examine her handiwork. "Yowzers man. I do good hair. Smoochie for the hairdresser." She climbed into his lap and threw her arms around his neck.
"No smoochie for the hairdresser, sweet thing," Lena said, hauling the woman out of Giles' lap. "We're saving him for the shoot."
"But he's my creation!" Mae Belle wailed. "I get to keep him!" She burst into tears.
Lena sighed in exasperation. "Have some chocolate dear. Chill out." She pressed the box into the woman's hands. "You did a wonderful job on his hair, now let's share him around shall we?"
"Don't wanna," Mae Belle sniffled. She crawled into her chair, pulled her legs up to her chest and stuffed a candy bar in her mouth. "You get all the hot guys for yourself. It's not fair," she spluttered around a mouthful of chocolate.
Lena drew Giles out of the room with her. "Everybody wants a piece of the star," she said, shaking her head. "Poor Mae Belle though. She's such the cynic usually. She'll be in a foul mood when she recovers from that candy you slipped her. I hope you didn't give her your address. She has lots of sharp things at her disposal."
"The Band Candy was not my doing." Giles looked back down the hallway. "What are all these wires running down the hall here?"
"Not your worry," Lena nudged the library doors open and shoved Giles inside. "They're for the special effects sequence."
"Crap yes." Rory stood just inside, as if he'd been waiting for them. "A hail of bullets ricocheting off the lockers and one grenade explosion. It's going to be bloody great."
"But we've got stunt people for that scene, darling." Lena patted Giles' shoulder soothingly. "So you don't have to worry about it. Yes, Rory?"
"Yeah, well about the fucking stunt men --" Rory said.
Willow and Xander were standing at the eye of a whirlwind of activity and technical equipment. Giles staggered at the chaotic turnover in his domain, which on its best days saw maybe half a dozen visitors.
Willow saw him and waved her arms frantically. "Giles!"
He shoved technicians out of the way to get to the teens. "What now?"
Willow looked taken aback. "You don't have to yell at me."
"Yes I do," he yelled above the din. "No sign of Buffy or Faith?"
"Oh yeah," Xander said. He had several boxes of Band Candy and had succumbed to the urge to dig in. "Buffy finally called your office phone and left a message on the answering machine."
"And?"
"She said things were really quiet on patrol tonight, so she and Faith decided to go to the Bronze to hunt vamps."
Willow begged a bar of Band Candy from Xander. "Should we go over there and get them?" She tore the wrapper off the bar and nibbled nervously at the chocolate.
Giles turned to look again at the mayhem in his library and to count the black-leather clad vampires in Rory's crew. He lost count around fifteen. And staking was not an option with Lena's group. "Damn," he said. "Maybe we should join them at the Bronze and let this lot sort themselves out." He sighed; conscience dictated that he stay here and try to minimize the damage. He was getting weary of his conscience. "Did you locate the special effects crew?"
"Some of them," Xander said. "They're out back hooking something up to the back-up power generator. Somebody said the rest of them were up in the chem lab."
"They had the doors barred," Willow added.
"Christ." Giles headed for the doors. "I'll be lucky if the school's still standing tomorrow."
"No, darling." Lena hooked onto his shoulder and tugged him around. For a such a slender woman, she had an iron grip. "We'll need you here shortly. Go outside and have a smoke if you're restless." She pressed a pack of cigarettes into his hand.
"Forget that." Giles shoved the pack into his jacket pocket, on top of the two packs already there. "The special effects people are holed up in the chemistry lab."
"Of course. They can't very well build their bombs in the cafeteria."
"Those guys are fucking great," Rory said, coming up behind Lena. "I got 'em on loan from Vishinsky. They brought a whole fuckin' water tower down with three yards of det cord and a handful of blasting caps. Bam! Sweet as you please. They aren't always wetting their pants about trying new stuff out."
"They're not a regular part of your crew?" Giles said.
"Soon as I get around to it," Rory replied. "Don't give me that look. With these guys, nobody will know the difference."
"Just great," Giles muttered through clenched teeth. He turned to go, but Lena was still latched onto his arm.
"Rupert," she admonished him. "As the director, I am going to have to insist that you stay with me."
He assessed her for a moment. "All right then," he said. He grabbed her arm, ducked down to catch her over one shoulder and stood up with the director slung over his shoulder. Lena whooped in surprise. Giles staggered then steadied himself, thanking heaven that she was light-weight. Even so, his back protested at the strain. "Willow, you and Xander stay here and keep an eye on things," he told the gawking teens. "I'm going to check on the state of things in the chemistry lab."
"Ms. Wertheimer," said one of the passing grips, eyeing the captive Lena with consternation. "Do you need help?"
"Whatever gives you that idea, Mohammed dear boy?" Lena said cheerfully. "If you need something to do, go help Rory's crew with the hallway set-up. Rupert and I are going to check on the special effects boys."
"They will pay attention to whatever you tell them?" Giles said.
"Yes yes, dearest. Of course. I'm Mother to all my crew, a tender tyrant. Oh wait!" She slapped at his back. "Mohammed, get me a carton of cigarettes from my carryall over by the table?"
"I thought I laid down the 'No Smoking' rule clearly enough," Giles said.
"Plain as night." Rory tossed Lena a pack from his own pocket. "Try these sweetie." He stepped around to grin at Giles and ostentatiously light a cigarette. "But I don't let my actors lead me around by the fucking balls."
"Of course you do, Rory," Lena said. "He just needs to know where to grab them."
Before they could further pursue that discourse -- particularly in front of the teenagers and most particularly in front of Willow who was staring at the adults with a fascinated horror -- Giles headed out the doors. He was beginning to hope that Buffy and Faith wouldn't show up. Buffy already had more than enough blackmail material on him.