Doing it with Willow was scary, but doing it alone is so… weird. Buffy‘s thoughts are trying to work out how she’s feeling, considering she’s flying, naturally, through the air like Superman.

She’s getting better at landings though, she reckons, as she lands, with a thud, super heroically onto the ground outside the monastery. She checks to make sure nobody else is around: she hasn’t told anyone about this new ability of hers yet.

Elsewhere Willow is explaining to Oz that they’ll be leaving soon – as soon as they figure out how to deal with the three goddesses, their wounded, the army’s wounded and how to get their powers back. Somehow… She apologises to him, but he says it’s all okay: so they brought a war to a place of peace – it’s Tibet, these things happen. They’re not the first, he jokes. Willow smiles. “You always know what to say, when you bother to talk.” She asks him if he knows any way to get the magicks back fast, but before he can answer, Willow is pelted from behind by a green blast of energy. It envelops her like thick, soupy fog, and Oz can barely see her as he reaches his hands for her and calls her name. Vaguely, as the smoke clears, he can see her silhouette in the green. Willow is swaying.

“Man,” she says, as she falls to the ground, to her knees, the magickal glow shining off her blindingly. “You don’t kid around.” Oz tells her he had nothing to do with that and Willow smiles and nods. It was some sort of aftershock, she says, a fallout from some sort of cataclysmic event, although she can’t tell what it was – only that it hasn’t happened yet. And she’s all magicked-up. An pre-event aftershock. As Xander and Dawn confirm that other Wiccans have also reacted similarly, Willow asks after the Slayers. Nothing yet. She knows the event is coming soon. Now that’s she’s powered up, she takes to the sky – the goddesses and her are going to have some words…

Inside the make-shift medical bay, awash with casualties from the battle, lies Riley. Buffy is comparing herself to General Custer, if he had long blonde hair. Riley tells her that Custer did. He stops her, with a seriousness in this tone. “Buffy, you fought a brutal campaign. Nobody won, but nobody does. I saw intelligence, courage and compassion. You’re treating the enemy’s wounded. I’m proud of you.”

She stares at him. Finally, she responds: “Did they give you the most morphine?” Riley chuckles. “Plus a few shots of Jack, but I think I’m good to drive.” She tells him to get some sleep (“Sleep, drunkie”) and he obeys, calling her ‘sir’.

In his base, in seclusion, Twilight is standing over his prisoners. He’s talking to them, despite them being unconscious on the ground at his feet. “For a while, they’ll be lost,” he starts. “So much destruction, so many fallen… Factor in the confusion spell my own wiccans tossed into the field and it will be hours before you are missed, days before you are sought. But when Buffy realises what she’s missing, such powerful members in her makeup…” He looks down at them, one at a time, first to Giles. “Her trust.” Then at Faith. “Her guilt.” Then at the bloke who’s name he can’t remember “whose name will come back to me…”

He walks away from them as he finishes his speech: “Yes, things will start to happen very quickly. The truth, at long last, the manifest truth. Buffy will finally see – if she is able to see at all.”

In the monastery, Wiccans are using magic to try and find all of their missing. Xander is starting to get concerned: he hasn’t noticed Giles. Kennedy has also not seen Andrew.

In the sky’s above China, Willow is battling the three goddesses. She’s not doing well and one of them kicks her with it’s foot, sending the witch miles away with one blow. As she recovers, Willow’s aware that she doesn’t stand much of a chance, but she’s determined – they will not reach a populated area. As she surges herself up for another assault, her powers suddenly falter, and she begins to drop out of the sky until she manages to stabilise herself.

In the medical bay, one of the injured army men asks Buffy is she’s a witch. No, she responds. I’m a Vampire Slayer. He asks what that is and she explains it’s exactly as it sounds. It seems the men were warned by their superiors that if they were captured, they would be killed or tortured by Slayers wielding magic powers. Buffy tells him that if they had any power at all, he would be healed by now. He asks if she’s in love, and begins telling her about his missed opportunities and suddenly goes blank, the life gone from his eyes. Buffy closes them, announcing sadly that another bed is free, when Xander creeps up behind her. “How about you? Are you okay? You had us worried.”

Buffy begins to walk out the room, her friend following her. “I’m tired of seeing this. I’m tired of causing it.” Xander tells her that she didn’t start the war, and Willow has her powers back – all of a sudden. Buffy is concerned about how much power, but Xander assures her that Willow was fine. He is more concerned about Buffy – she clearly needs to rest. He tells her that he’s proud of her and she informs him that that is just what Riley said. Buffy didn’t think he was much of a Riley fan, but Xander rebukes her: “Your only boyfriend who wasn’t a psychotic demon? I was always Team Riley.” She remembers him telling her to run after Riley when he left Sunnydale. Little too late, he comments. Buffy says she’s done it again – she ‘s too late, isn’t she?

Xander asks her what for and she looks at him, straight into his eye. “For you.”

Xander doesn’t know what to say to her. He stammers back “Who to the how to the hammina?”

Buffy brings up Dawn, and Xander braces himself for the conversation. She makes an inappropriate age joke, which Xander balks at, and then she calls him a ‘cradle snatcher’. Xander gets annoyed and she follows him: surely I get one cradle-robber joke? Xander turns to her, mad. “You get to mind your own beeswax.”

Buffy is stunned. “She’s my sister! It is my beeswax,” she says, “and you and I…”

Xander stops walking and turns back to her. “You and I what? What did “too late again” mean?” Buffy tries to shrug it off, but eventually, quietly, she asks him: “What about me?”

Xander looks at her. “You have feelings. At me.”

She looks down, unable to face him. “Is that good?” she asks. Xander places his hand on her cheek. “That would be great. If it was a bunch of years ago and you actually meant it.” She starts to object, but he stops her. He’s not buying it.

Buffy insists that feelings can change and develop, but Xander responds angrily: “And now you like me. I made the list. That’s a big deal! I’m a potential romantic interest. I’m on the list – right after being gay. I rate almost as good as trying to change your sexual orientation. You went – through gay – to me.”

Buffy tells him it was a phase, but Xander finds the timing suspicious: this is because of Dawn. Buffy denies this, telling him that her feelings started before him and Dawn, but he tells her it matters: it matters because if she felt something for him before now, then seeing him happy with someone else should have made it clear that she shouldn’t say anything, regardless.

He stops for a breath and Buffy realises her selfishness. Xander leans towards her. Dawn has crushed on him her whole life. It’s not unweird, knowing her since she was little. And I do feel a tad bit… but she’s grown and shrunk. She’s not the same anymore. I’m kind of in love with her. Sorry.

Buffy apologises, declaring herself the worst person in the universe. Xander agrees to forget their conversation ever happened. They hug and she asks about the cradle-robber joke. Xander taps her shoulder. “You just used up your last.”

Dawn interrupts the moment with an exaggerated cough. Buffy tells her that she approves of the two of them – she’s fine. Dawn says she didn’t ask. She has bigger problems: three of them, all goddess size. Willow cannot contain them alone. Buffy has an idea.

Willow communicates through an astral image to the monastery: her magic is barely slowing them down. Buffy wants her to dig a hole in the Earth. Kennedy asks her what she’s going to do? Cover it with leaves and bait them in? Buffy tells them to just get the hole ready. She’ll do the rest.

As she marches outside, Dawn, Kennedy and Xander follow her, and she tells them that her plan involves her doing something that she was keeping to herself, and it’s freaking her out and she was hoping it would never come up. Dawn asks if it involves sacrificing a key. Xander wants a nuke. Kennedy thinks she’s gay. Buffy tells her them thanks, for the vote of confidence, but she needs them to shut their mouths and look, up into the sky. Here we go then. SuperBuffy. No more grandstanding. Don’t fall and break my face.

She flies straight up into the air, Kennedy finding the sight strangely appealing and Xander and Dawn freaking out. Buffy rises through the air, above the goddesses battling Willow, who’s power is weakening. The hole is in place.

Buffy approaches one goddess, the blue one that dropped her from the sky, and throws her over her shoulder into the pit! Then another one follows, Buffy single-handedly battling them to a stand still, physically, as if they were ordinary sized vampires! Finally, with the third goddess down for the count, Willow uses her magic to seal the hole. With the goddesses dormant, the Slayer powers should return.

Buffy asks about her new abilities: Willow shrugs. She needs more tests done. She also doesn’t think it’s related to the same event that repowered her. Buffy looks down, slightly dejected. She tells Willow that Xander and Dawn are in love.

Her best friend laughs – she thought they would never figure it out!

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