Xander offers Buffy something to snack on. She’s been out here, sitting cross-legged on… well, thin air, for quite some time. He’s trying to cheer her up – and it’s not working. She is in no mood for jokes right now, not after what Willow has told her: she is taking the power from other Slayers. Xander says that that is not what she is doing – she’s sort of reclaiming it? Buffy tells him he doesn’t understand.

She begins quietly. “You’re not listening. Since we started, we’ve lost two hundred and six girls. That’s over two hundred girls, dead! And now their power, it’s in… it’s in me. But don’t you see what that makes me?” He tells her that she’s not a bad person, but Buffy interrupts him.

“If I’m sucking their power,” she says, tears starting to fall from her eyes. “It makes me a vampire.”

Twilight Headquarters. The villain is asking his three guests, Giles, Faith, or the guy who’s name he can’t remember, who wants to die first. Andrew notices that Twilight has forgotten his name, which means they’ve met. “That’s the second time,” he notices. “Andrew. My name is Andrew.” Giles has a look of absolute horror on his face – “I know that voice,” he whispers, in shock. Faith steps back. Twilight looks straight at Rupert, who is on the floor, looking at him, stunned. “Of course you do, Giles… That’s what happens when you get rid of your resident witch,” he says, referring to Amy. “People start seeing the truth.”

Back in Tibet, Xander is anxiously telling Buffy that she is not a vampire, despite the comparison she’s made. He tells her that she’s the one person in the world who, as always, is capable of anything, truly anything this time, except forgiving herself.

She turns to interrupt, but this time, he powers through her. “And yes, I’ve seen what you can do. Flying, superspeed… I saw you kick that giant boulder over there like a soccer ball. But if the universe is giving you that power, it’s got to be for a reason. That’s why you were chosen in the first place.“

Buffy smiles. Now that was a much better pep talk. He admits it was a quote from a movie, one of the Superman films. Willow interrupts the conversation telepathically – if Xander’s super-speech worked, she’s ready. Time to find the Big Bad…

In Twilight’s lair, Faith loses it, realising who Twilight is, and launches her entire self at him. “You’re dead!” she declares, but Twilight simply grabs her by the throat and tells her that this is not a fair fight. Faith isn’t playing however and strikes again. Twilight doesn’t move. He’s invulnerable all over, he states and throws Faith unconscious to the ground.

Sitting on the floor inside the monastery, Willow and Amy are preparing a spell. Willow plans to undo Amy’s ‘sloppy’ magic that is hiding Twilight’s base. Buffy can feel Faith’s pain where she is. Her powers are reaching out. She can feel the other Slayers out there.

Warren is angry. As far as he’s concerned, he designed and built the base, so it’s his more than Twilight’s. The General tells him to relax: they’ll be back on track soon. Dawn notices his wording and tells Xander. He agrees, but before they deal with them, who he considers problem two, they have to deal with problem one first.

Faith gets herself up off the floor, blood on her face. Twilight stands over her and taunts her, telling her that she’s stronger than this. He calls her name when she doesn’t respond. For a second, Giles notices, Twilight almost sounded concerned about the Slayer. Giles looks at him: you’re invulnerable. Twilight nods. “Yes, and superspeed. Plus strength. Every Watcher wonders if his Slayer might be the girl. And you’ve had more reason than any.”

Faith looks up at her mentor: what is he talking about, she demands, angrily.

Twilight looks at him. “You haven’t even told her yet, have you? And you haven’t told Buffy either. I figured with all your recent jaunts, I thought they all knew what you were looking for. But now, thanks to your silence Giles, she has no idea what she’s become.”

Willow and Amy are powering up, sparking. They have the co-ordinates. They prepare to send Buffy on her way.

Twilight is relishing in his newfound knowledge when he’s hit behind by what he calls a frisbee. It’s Andrew. He’s armed with a replica of Captain America’s shield and Iron Man’s armoured gauntlet. And he knows how to use them!

Buffy launches in the direction of the base, hurtling like a bullet through the sky. As Twilight is about to kill Andrew, the wall to his left starts to give way, and Buffy comes through it, grabbing Twilight in her arms and racing through the opposite wall. She drags him out into the open sky, pounding him as she goes. She ridicules his name, telling him that the movie sucked and that it was totally her actual life before it was a film – and her vampires were actually better!

Twilight chuckles, pulling his mask off. “Yeah…” he says, menacingly. “I missed you too.”

Buffy looks up at his unmasked face. The world seems to stop. She suddenly has no concept of where she is. Up feels like down. Left feels like right. Her eyes cannot take in what they’re seeing, this high up in the sky. Could it be vertigo? An illusion. A glamour. But no, she looks, blinks and looks again. It is. Twilight is him.

Twilight is Angel.

Andrew gets up from where he landed after Buffy trashed the wall. He knows Buffy will win. Giles isn’t too sure. Buffy is battling Angel, which means, in his opinion, that no one is going to win this one.

In the forest, Angel is calling Buffy’s name. She’s kicked him away from her and retreated, but he knows she’s still near. He knows she won’t abandon her friends. He calls out to her, telling her she needs to stop fighting him and listen to him. She needs to stop and think.

Buffy is a slight distance away, but she can hear Angel’s every word. No, it’s not Angel. It can’t be Angel. It’s Angelus. Got to be Angelus. She hears his voice through the trees, seeming to read her thoughts. “And I’m not Angelus either. I’m me and you know it – you can feel it.”

Buffy has ripped up a tree by it’s trunk and yells at him to stop talking. She fashions the trunk into a make-shift – and very large – stake and flies herself at Angel, aloft above her. From Tibet, Xander and Willow hear a sonic boom. Willow thinks they’re fighting.

As Angel avoids every punch and every swing Buffy throws at him, he tells her that she won’t be able to stop him. Not this time. “Your power, like my power, has nothing to do with the other Slayers. What’s happening to you, to us, this is what we’ve been waiting for. What we earned. What we need.”

Buffy slams into him, knocking him through more trees. If everything he wants is so great, then why hide from her? He explains that he had a bad time after LA returned from Hell. But he’s better now. Buffy doesn’t care: why put her through the last year? She’s yelling now, old wounds reopening as they talk.

Angel tells her that she shifted the balance of the universe when she used the Scythe – she shared her power. His mask was there to inspire her to realise what was happening: she is growing in power for a reason. And despite her continuous attempts to, she can’t hit him. He grabs her arm and looks down at it. She is literally glowing. “This isn’t just another fist fight, Buffy.”

In Tibet, with no sonic boom, Willow concludes that they must be talking.

Buffy continues to glow and looks down at her hands, slightly disbelieving. Angel tells her that it’s her joy, her spirit. They don’t, as people, have the best relationship with being happy, but it’s there if they want it. This isn’t about the history of the world. It’s about Buffy and Angel. They’re allowed to be happy too.

“There was a reason I loved you the moment I saw you,” Angel tells her. “There’s a reason we can’t be happy with anyone else.” Her body is glowing because it wants her to be happy. So why doesn’t Buffy just let herself be happy?

She looks up into his face. She floats up slightly, so her eyes match his. She gazes into them. Angel. She kisses him, a kiss that becomes more and more intense.

In Tibet, Satsu and Xander hear another sonic boom. Talking complete, Willow thinks that they just went full-on ‘adult’ entertainment…