Buffy Summers, her mind still trapped in Andrew’s modified BuffyBot wakes up, tied to a chair. Her attacker is standing over her, but Buffy remembers everything. “Funny,” she says, “You don’t look kidnapped.” Standing at her side is Buffy Summers, the physically real Buffy Summers, whose current personality was, up until recently, that of a perfectly ordinary housewife. Now, she has pink streaks in her hair and a fierce look on her face. “No, ma’am. Feels good to be free,” she chuckles. “Maybe you should try it sometime.”

The BuffyBot looks up, unimpressed. She saw the house, she tells Buffy, and the real deal reacts badly. “You mean that trap you left me in? You really had me thinking I was one of them. The gilded yuppie cage, the fake friends, the whole suburban life – and like everything else with you – it was lies.” She picks a bottle from the nearest workbench and gives Buffy something to drink. The captive Buffy retorts that her attacker seems to know an awful lot about what’s going on – moreso than she does, it seems – but the real Buffy looks down at her defiantly. “Your plans always turn to crap. I don’t care how strong that tin can is, whatever it is you’re powering it with – you’re welcome to it. You don’t deserve to be a Slayer anymore.”

As the real Buffy begins to rant about how Buffy never welcomed the power and treated it like it was nothing, Buffy-in-the-Bot hopes that Andrew didn’t program all of this self-loathing crap. When Buffy tells her that she never cared about the Slayers and was even too scared to arm them, the BuffyBot stops. She’s put it all together: “Oh. And suddenly the wardrobe change and the little magenta streaks bring to mind…”

Simone Dofler enters the room as BuffyBot says her name. She scoffs at her former student, mocking her, telling her that she thought she was in actual danger. Simone tells BuffyBot that she is in danger and points at the real Buffy, now influenced by her control. “This here’s the greatest concentration of Slayer power anywhere. Stronger than the rest of us. But I figured there was no way I could convince Buffy Summers to play on my team.”

She bends closer to the BuffyBot: “And you were nice enough to vacate the premises! And give me a real shot at power.” Simone pokes the BuffyBot’s forehead, roughly. “Whoever’s powering this, you’re welcome to it.” BuffyBot looks up at her and tells her, grin on her face, that as usual, Simone got just enough of the story to confuse herself. Simone tells her to stop lying: she knows that in that body, Buffy isn’t a Slayer. She tells Buffy that through watching her, she’s figured it out: the only thing Buffy Summers has that Simone Dofler doesn’t, is power. And she’s been watching Buffy – she has none. It’s all been robotic. She takes a swig from a bottle nearby.

“If you ever cared you never would’ve given it up for some easy life.” BuffyBot interrupts her, leading Simone to punch her, hard. “Man, that feels good,” she says as she shakes her fist.

Looking up, the BuffyBot looks straight at Buffy. “Whatever is in you, you aren’t the same as Simone. You aren’t like her.” Simone laughs at her attempts to sway herself. “I really can’t tell you how much I’m enjoying this, but look what I found upstairs.” Simone tips an old work box upside down on the work bench. Old sharp tools fall out. She looks at BuffyBot with a wicked glint in her eye. “We have work to do.”

Outside, the sun is starting to shine in the morning sky. Andrew hasn’t found anything, but he jumps out of his skin when Spike‘s voice comes from nowhere. The vampire is tucked away in an old shack, waiting out the sun. But inside the shack he has found something that indicates to him that this is no ordinary kidnapping: a box of rifles. As Andrew asks him what he means, Spike nods for him to turn as someone takes Andrew by surprise from behind.

Outside the bar in San Francisco, Detective Dowling is approached by his superior. As he apologises for the mess, Dowling is surprised as his boss tells him how impressed he is with the way Dowling has handled himself here. He wants to set up a special task force, trained specifically to deal with vampires. And he wants Dowling to lead it. As Dowling reels in shock at the unexpected offer, Dawn unsuccessfully tries Buffy’s phone with Xander, having seen she’s missed a call.

In the workshop, the real Buffy follows Simone’s orders, tying the BuffyBot’s hair back. Simone has a tool in her hands – her intention is to extract the Buffy essence from the BuffyBot. Just before she’s about to begin her work, an alarm pierces the building and Simone races towards the exit, telling the real Buffy not to listen to the Bot.

BuffyBot, seizing the chance, agrees that she should get rid of some parts, removing her arm and breaking free from the chair with a roar. The real Buffy swings around to look at her. “Let me guess,” she says to the Bot. “You just want to talk.” The BuffyBot looks at her. “Not if you don’t,” she replies, before proceeding to charge her almost-identical opponent.

At the outside perimeter, Spike and Andrew burst through a wall, having been found by Spike’s cockroach crew, who have returned to pick the team up. As Spike gathers the bugs together to come up with a plan, gunshots fire from out of nowhere, killing several of the creatures. Simone suddenly leaps from her hiding place, kicking Spike square in the jaw!

Simone lands expertly and then mocks the vampire: “Forgot the Chosen One runs with the fangy crowd, or I’d be packing wood!” she yells as she continues firing, Spike losing more of his crew. He yells at Andrew to go to Buffy and fights his way towards Simone, vampire fangs bared. “I’ve heard of you, dear. Love the look,” he says as one of his crew knocks the firearm out of her hand.

Andrew runs down the nearest corridor desperate for help. He stops when he comes across Buffy and the BuffyBot fighting, neither one gaining or losing ground. He rushes into the fray, grabbing a baseball bat and intending to separate the two Buffys. He yells at the Bot to kick her ass, but the Bot, successfully pinning the real thing to the ground, asks him to consider the consequences of what happens when his baseball bat connects with the real Buffy. He stands down, BuffyBot suggesting that they try to talk to each other and reason with Buffy.

Elsewhere, Simone lays waste to several of Spike’s crew, clearly enjoying massacring them. Spike is angry now, roaring towards her. Simone looks at him with glee: alien cockroaches are fun, but slaying vamps is still the best. Spike tells her that it’s good to respect tradition. He shares one of his: “And I thought I’d killed my last Slayer!” Simone is quicker than him however and evades him. As Spike’s crew yell his name and Simone prepares to strike, Andrew and the Buffys enter the fray, with the real Buffy calling Simone a liar.

Simone realises that she cannot handle all three of them at once and uses the opportunity to flee. She shoots her way through them, the BuffyBot taking the brunt, while the real Buffy saves Andrew. Spike panics about the Bot, but she reassures him with a blunt “I’m a robot.” He’s anxious to chase Simone, but Buffy tells him to leave her go to wherever she’s going. The real Buffy knows however: Simone’s plan involves San Francisco and Buffy.

A plan to tap into power that she needs Buffy for. She also has a back-up plan that she revealed even less about. Buffy and Spike look concerned.

The next day, Dowling’s entrance into the police station is greeted by silence and stares. His boss tells him that he should have taken time off, like he was told, but Dowling couldn’t. He knows why everyone is staring at him – and no matter what his boss says, it’s not because he’s good at dusting vampires. He plans to resign, but his boss asks him to come into his office for a moment. He wants to talk to him about the Slayer.

On the rooftop of her building, Spike is preparing to depart in his ship. Buffy waves goodbye from a doorway as the BuffyBot talks to him. Spike tells her that everything will soon be back to normal: she’ll be back in her body. He still plans to leave – he doesn’t think he’s very good for her. Buffy tells him not to tell her what she needs, but he reminds her of her statement earlier when she asked him to run away. He asks her to come with him now, onto the ship, where no one would know. He tells her that if it’s that easy she would come. What is holding her back? Her coffee job? Xander and Dawn? Buffy realises that she’d completely forgotten that she’d called Dawn.

Spike tells her that he doesn’t want them to go backwards. He doesn’t want to go back to “lurking on the edge of your life. Watching from this far above it all till you’re desperate for someone you can count on.” Buffy looks at him with understanding, and tells him that he could use Simone’s freedom as a reason to stay, and Spike agrees that normally he would. She looks away from him. He looks back at her, and retreats his steps, walking towards her and turning Buffy around to look at him. “I love you. You know this. But I can’t get jerked around no more.” He will always have her back and he’s not blaming her for anything, he tells her. But he’s also not going to stand around and try to convince her. “I believe in you Buffy,” Spike says, taking her hands in his. “I know you’ll do right. That’s how I’ll have your back.” He turns to leave and, before Buffy can say anything, the ship is heading up into the sky, out over the Bay.

Later, Andrew promises he can make the situation right, as he tells the Buffys to lay on the beds. The Buffy inside the BuffyBot suggests they fix the mind-programming inside Buffy and let her live out her life, leaving the work to her, but the real Buffy interrupts, reminding her robotic double that she is awake and in the room. The Bot tells her to shush: “I’m fighting for you here.”

Buffy looks at the Bot carefully. “Buffy,” she says, “Simone brainwashed me, but it wasn’t all lies. That was a fake life. It was nice, it was comfortable for sure with an impeccable sense of style.” Andrew coughs his thanks for the compliment from his bench.

“But I could tell something was wrong. I hadn’t earned it. And I won’t be able to forget that now,” Buffy concludes. Simone wanted her to be a killer, but she couldn’t, because her real drive, her real strength and her real power is inside the robot. She looks at the robot and leans back onto the bed. “I want to get this mind all the way right again. And that means getting all of you back in it.” As Andrew straps the devices on and asks them if they’re ready, the BuffyBot is sad that she won’t ever get a real life, however, Buffy tells her that one day she will. As long as they make it on their own terms.

The next morning, Buffy walks into the coffee shop. Root immediately picks up on the streaks, but Buffy tells him that they’re temporary. He reminds her that disappearing on him is not cool, and her friend Kennedy left a message for her. She takes one look at the note and smiles. Buffy looks up at Root and asks him if she’s scheduled for a shift. When he tells her no, she then shakes his hand and asks him to accept her resignation…