Waking up in Verity’s bed, naked and with no memory of the previous night, Buffybot spends the day with the sorceress, slowly recalling the previous night’s drunken debauchery while trying to make sense of what had happened. Buffybot’s thoughts on love are explored deeply, as the confused robot wonders if anyone could ever love her (strangely, she seems not to recall the affection Bruce claimed for her months earlier). With Verity’s help, she comes to understand that it remains her choice in this life what she becomes, and resolves to do just that. To this end, she sneaks back into Angel Investigations, taking her few possessions and leaving a note explaining that she is leaving their company to strike out on her own. Ironically, Angel was just about to offer her a full position on the team.

Wandering the streets of LA, essentially homeless, Buffybot is directed towards a shelter, where she is mistaken for Buffy by the caretaker, Anne. Botty indulges in the mistaken identity until a midnight attack occurs, perpetrated she discovers by a desperate (and lethally outfitted) David Babbit, the software magnate. His fiancé is revealed to have been kidnapped by a vampire cabal, who he has tracked to this area of town. Buffybot tries to help him, eventually rescuing the woman and earning his gratitude. After learning of her situation, Babbit gifts Buffybot with a run-down three-story building in LA he’d acquired and had no use for. An elated Buffybot moves in to her brand new home, but only after telling Anne the truth about her identity, being tired of masquerading as Buffy.

In an epilogue, across town, a flash of light fills a small alley, and a woman falls to the ground. A passerby tries to help, when a steel arm flails out, striking the citizen down. A phosphorescent red light streams out of one of the girl’s eyes, the other one quite human. The cyborg, in all other appearances seeming to be Faith, takes a panicked look at her surrounding, before fleeing into the night.

I have no idea. :) All I do know is that I wanted to do an episode spotlighting Doyle and the role he plays as Buffybot’s guide. It likely also would have involved some unfinished business from his life on Earth, and been told entirely from his perspective. His ex-wife Harry would almost certainly have been involved. Also in this story, it is revealed that Quinn, the Collector, and Lara Markham are behind the appearance of the ‘Faithbot’ from last episode. Their spell to bring her to this dimension misfired, and she is now lost in the City. Quinn dispatches his demon slave Mok to bring her to him, armed with a powerful energy weapon designed to bring her down.

Two stories at once. In the main story, Buffybot appears suddenly in the lobby of the Hyperion Hotel, just as Angel and team, new baby Connor in tow, are returning from the events of DAD. She tells them she needs their help, and possibly to be destroyed. The previous night is a blank in her memory, all she knows is that she rebooted next to the ravaged carcass of a massive demon and his followers, her own clothes shredded. Careful examination reveals that, as a result of her power transfer to robot-Oz in CITY OF STEEL, as well as a careful clause on the time reversion by the demoness Jaqista, Buffybot has become infected with a mechanical version of Lycanthropy, turning into a massive werebot (or botwolf) every full moon. Their attempts to restrain her on the second night are woefully inadequate, and Angel and the team barely manage to subdue her altered form. In a dangerous operation the following day, Fred tracks the infection to one of Buffybot’s processors, soldering it with silver and destroying it. Buffybot’s nanobots are now free to rebuild the processor, infection-free.

In the second story, Faithbot wreaks havoc across the LA nightlife, her mood swinging dangerously, and sometimes out of control. Rumours start to spread about a crazed mechanical woman attacking people in the streets.

Staying with Angel and team for a few days as she recovers, Buffybot helps out as they take on new cases to help pay for Connor’s future. A secretive government organization, seeking control of Connor, sets their one surviving metahuman agent, the invisible girl Marcy, to surveil the hotel. Buffybot spots her immediately with her enhanced senses, however, and Marcy flees.

After receiving a brutal punishment from her sadistic controllers, Marcy returns again with orders to torch the hotel and everyone in it, but she manages to get a desperate plea for help out to Buffybot in time. Botty manages to corner Marcy, who begs the robot to help her escape from the people she is now forced to work for. With Angel’s help, Buffybot manages to take out the last of the thugs in control of Marcy, but the girl herself vanishes (no pun intended) before they can try and help her further.

Word gets to Angel and the team about the mysterious metal girl terrorizing LA’s citizenry. They confront Buffybot with this, and she is justifiably hurt by the accusations. After some tense moments, she escapes and heads out to clear her name, tracking the other robot. After a few close misses, Buffybot ends up suddenly face to face with Faithbot. They fight, nearly causing each other considerable damage, when Mok finds them both. In their weakened conditions, he overpowers them both and jolts their systems offline with his weapon, dragging them away.

The still offline Faithbot and Buffybot are brought by Mok into the Collector’s Museum Tesseract sanctuary, where they are secured in restraints awaiting sale to a mysterious client. As Quinn runs tests on the both of them, however, he discovers some disturbing things. Worried that Buffybot’s highly advanced technology may be sufficient for her to free himself upon rebooting, Quinn summons Lara Markham to the Tesseract. Using the Personal Quantum Iteration Engine she created to manifest her other versions (since childhood, Buffybot overhears, Lara Markham has been in telepathic contact with all the other versions of herself in endless parallel dimensions. This omni-consciousness led her to Quinn...who is absolutely unique in the Multiverse, existing only in this reality. Together they are ‘the all and the one’ of an ancient prophecy called the Campeodor Centaurum), Lara hooks Buffybot’s computerized brain directly into one of her own otherdimensional versions, overriding that mind. Buffybot suddenly ‘awakens’ in another version of reality, with her last few memories under suppression. She is back in Sunnydale, surrounded by Dawn, Tara, Giles, Anya and Xander. She is profoundly confused, and the others try and calm her down, filling in the seeming gaps in her memory. It seems that in this reality, Vincent appeared and upgraded Buffybot much earlier, and she survived the assault on Glory, as did Buffy. In fact, everything seems to have worked out better in this reality...Doyle is alive and on honeymoon with Cordelia, Buffy is closer than ever with Angel, Joyce never died. The only dark spot seems to be the early appearance of Willow’s magic addiction...it broke her and Tara up in this dimension as well, only here Willow left for England to study with the coven straightaway. And much to her surprise, it seems that Buffybot in this world is slowly starting a relationship with Tara. Everything seems quite wonderful, but Botty can’t shake the feeling that it’s all wrong somehow...

Back home, an agent of Quinn’s client appears to purchase both robots. Faithbot curses a blue streak, trying to no avail to free herself. She realizes that the Buffybot is likely not her enemy after all, as she hears Quinn tell his client that he won’t sell Faithbot to him, as she is ‘damaged goods’. But the bargaining for Buffybot is all but a done deal.

Buffybot meanwhile, is trying to remember her suppressed files, despite the happy distractions all around her. She manages to get Giles to discover the Campeodor Centaurum prophecy, which roughly translates as One Hundred Champions. It describes a ritual to steal the power of a hundred slain champions, but supposedly can only be carried out by one individual in all reality. Tara, meanwhile, is growing closer to Buffybot, and the robot is finding herself hard pressed to argue, when an angry Willow suddenly appears, challenging Buffybot with her magic. A nasty three-way battle follows, during which Willow manages to accidentally free Buffybot’s mind from the thrall of Lara’s machinations. She remembers who she really is, and together with Tara manages to peacefully subdue Willow. Armed with hew new knowledge, a reluctant Buffybot says goodbye and forces her consciousness out of this world, allowing its native Buffybot to resume control. She snaps back to her own world, incensed at the manipulation. She frees herself and Faithbot, taking a nasty blast from the Collector’s weaponry in the process. Faithbot collects the limp Buffybot and hauls her out of the tesseract to safety.

Buffybot directs Faithbot to her home, where she tries to recover. In the meantime, Faithbot tells her the story of who she is.

In another dimension, the slayer called Buffy never moved to Sunnydale, freeing the Master to take control. Only after growing scarred and distant in Cleveland did Buffy arrive at the urging of Watcher Rupert Giles. Her attempt to take out the Master met with her death, sadly, and his control of Sunnydale continued unabated. The next Slayer, Kendra, was then called, arriving in Sunnydale to try and take charge of the situation. By then, Mayor Richard Wilkins was working towards ascension, bringing him into direct conflict with the Master. The two of them destroyed each other in a massive conflict of egos, leaving Sunnydale free for a short time.

But the appearance shortly thereafter of Adam and the Initiative ended that. Kendra was killed in battle with Adam, and operative Riley Finn was transformed into a mechanical demon-hybrid to serve alongside his ‘brother’. The new slayer Faith wasted no time taking decisive action against Adam, enrolling the witch Amy Madison and technopagan Jenny Calendar to reprogram Riley Finn back to their side, double teaming Adam and destroying his plans forever.

This would be the last of the good news in Faith’s young life. The appearance of her streetwise little sister Dawn ended up being a precursor to the hellgoddess Glory’s plans to rend all worlds asunder, and return to her native dimension. Complicating matters was the infatuation with Faith of the vampire Drusilla, now rendered harmless against humans by an Initiative microchip. In her madness, Drusilla contracts inventor Warren Meers to create a loyal Faith robot as her plaything.

In the final battle, Faith leads her team (Giles, Dru, Amy, Jenny, Oz, Riley, and a reprogrammed Faithbot) against Glory to free Dawn. But the spell is already begun, and Faith tries to sacrifice herself to save Dawn. Her sister is too quick, however, leaping into the vortex herself to save us all. She dies, and a despondent Faith hurls herself from the tall tower a second later, to lay dying on the ground below. In a desperate attempt to save the ravaged Slayer, Riley takes her body and brings it to the abandoned Initiative facilities, replacing and upgrading with parts from Dru’s Faithbot. The resultant cyborg awakens, half-mad from grief and struggling to work the crude mind-machine interface she now possesses. She takes off, ending up in LA, where that universes Lara Markham finds her, reporting her to her counterpart in Quinn’s world/ They arrange to transport her there, where Quinn’s client is collecting high technology of that stripe.

In a dangerous attempt to fix Faithbot’s glitching mind-machine interface, Buffybot connects her consciousness to Faith’s, entering her mind. Buffybot ends up exploring Faith’s troubled past, her early, happy beginnings that end up going so tragically wrong. It seems that, in her world, it is only the superimposed appearance of little sister Dawn that gives Faith the moral compass to stay on the side of right.

As they take their journey, Faithbot ends up helping Buffybot as well, discovering a door in Botty’s mind. The door is locked tight, and marked with the words ‘I don’t want to talk about it’. Buffybot grows terrified at the sight of it, but enters together with Faithbot. Inside she finds the memories of her last night in Sunnydale, Bruce’s confession and death, and a terrible near-total breakdown Buffybot had shortly afterwards while trying to understand it all. In self-defense, her mind removed those files from her active reach, sealing them off. Faithbot helps her deal with the emotions, freeing the memories once and for all. In the process, however, she catches sight of something that Buffybot had previously kept quiet about. The existence in this world of Dawn.

Escaping from Buffybot’s care, Faithbot races for Sunnydale to reunite with her little sister Dawn. Realizing this, Buffybot steels herself and gives pursuit, returning to her home town. She and Faithbot clash, as Buffybot tries to protect both Dawn, and Faithbot herself. Eventually, however, Faithbot catches sight of Dawn from afar, and along with Buffybot they both just watch. Faithbot marvels at how happy and serene Dawn looks compared to her own sister. Buffybot confesses how much she misses her too, and the only consolation she can offer is to ask Faithbot if she’d like to return to LA with her and help save the world from the Collector. She agrees.

At the Wolfram and Hart offices, same time, Lilah Morgan receives a package containing a letter, and a strange charm.

Using her systems to override Tesseract security locks, Buffybot leads Faithbot inside to try and prevent the 100 Champions spell. The spell is about to get under way, and Lara Markham is making to leave her office when Lilah leads a Wolfram and Hart security team to grab her. The cham is placed on her, cutting off her contact with her other selves. The silence drives her to an immediate panic, and she is dragged off pending ‘punishment’ for her manipulations. It was Quinn who sent the package.

In the tesseract, Buffybot and Faithbot square off with Mok in the main hall. He is tremendously powerful, a revived demon corpse animated by the Collector’s necromancy. Quinn taunts them over a com system, explaining why it was he never sold Faithbot. Her damage wasn’t the mind-machine interface at all...her home universe was fading away, ceasing to exist. Lara had already lost contact with her iteration from there. Really, Faithbot shouldn’t be here at all, and it was only a matter of time before she twinkled into nothingness. Spurred by this, Faithbot launches herself into a suicidal attack on Mok, finally stopping him but fatally damaging her own systems. Faithbot shares a final moment with Buffybot, thanking her for her friendship, and asking her to remember. Buffybot creates a special file containing all that was Faithbot, before her friend flickers offline, her body vanishing as if it had never existed.

Breaking into the Collector’s deep dimension bunker, Buffybot finds where the remains of the 100 Champions are stored. The collector is in the center, protected by a mystic aura, and drawing off the necromantic energy created by the objects (an item associated with the death of a champion...Buffybot’s torso, for instance). He begins the spell, and ghostly manifestations of the 100 champions appear, and begin to attack Buffybot. She tries to defend herself, but it seems hopeless, and before long their collective power will flow into the Collector, making him invincible. Doyle is summoned, and points out a small utility room where Buffybot seeks temporary refuge. In it, she discovers Lara Markham’s Quantum Iteration Engine. It has a highly limited power source, she notes. Desperately, she plugs it into her Mystic Fusion Generator on full, and switches it on.

When she reopens the door, 100 Buffybots from 100 dimensions charge out, tackling the reanimated champions in unison. The battle is huge, but the Buffybot Brigade soon gains the upper hand...real champions, it turns out, are more potent than ghostly ones. The last manifestation to fall is the Buffybot herself, and when she goes, the spell seems to turn on Quinn, and he simply vanishes in an explosion of magic.

Before setting the tesseract to implode upon itself, Buffybot takes some time to talk with her other selves...including the one whose body she inhabited during HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY. She encourages Botty to date her own Tara, though other Buffybots similarly urge her to date Wesley, Xander, Angel, Doyle, Willow, Lorne, Oz, Buffy, Anya, Giles, Dawn, etc. Buffybot starts to see the rather limitless potential her life could have, and sends the Buffybots back home.

Emerging from the tesseract several days later (time flows at an accelerated rate in the Collector’s deep dimension bunker), Buffybot copies her Faithbot files onto disc and buries it by the seaside before returning to her home. There she is visited by Fred, who asks her if she has any idea where Angel or Cordelia are. When Botty suggests Fred try contacting Sunnydale, Fred sadly informs Botty she’s already done so. She learned on that call that Tara has been killed by Warren. Buffybot is distraught, convinced it is all her fault (she had thought Warren had been permanently scared straight following CREATOR, and chastises herself mercilessly for her mistake). She sets out again for Sunnydale.

Once there, Buffybot observes Tara’s funeral from afar, her little robot heart breaking at not being able to join her friends (though she wondered why Willow was not present). Later that night, she sneaks back to the cemetery to say her own goodbye, when someone else approaches her at the grave. She turns, and is decidedly surprised to see Buffy staring back at her in equal shock.

After a few short-lived tense moments, Buffybot reveals herself to Buffy...and tells her everything, the whole story. Buffy ends up explaining why she came back to mourn privately, since she couldn’t do that before while watching over Dawn. Buffybot holds her namesake as she cries for Tara, for the both of them.

After a long talk, each of them ending up laughing at the other for their continual insistence that it was MY fault, not yours, Buffy finally thanks Buffybot for watching over Dawn and her friends while she was dead. She asks the robot to come home with her, but Buffybot declines, insisting that she really must learn to stand on her own. She promises, however, that she will one day take Buffy up on her offer. Buffy argues, hating that Botty will be all alone out there. Buffybot just turns, seeing the ghostly presence of Doyle not far off, and smiles.

“I’m not alone.”

Season Three caps coming soon...but for a slight teaser...