The city streets in the dead of night. The rain is pouring. On the slick roads, a car pulls up to a nondescript looking building. On a nearby rooftop is a group of Slayers, following their target.

When the Seed was destroyed, hundreds of Slayers were left without purpose. Hundreds of girls with the strength and skill and power to defeat the forces of darkness, who used to be part of a supernatural army. And now, they’re all part of a world that sort of doesn’t need them anymore. It was inevitable, Buffy Summers supposes, that some of them would try to find a more practical use for their abilities.

She waits patiently. Almost there. On a busy office floor, the usual hustle and bustle of corporate life doesn’t notice Kennedy in the corner, awaiting the elevator. Yes, Buffy thinks, the Slayers she used to give orders to are now giving her orders. She signals receipt of the message in the ear piece. “Copy. I’m in position,” she tells Kennedy and her team. Kennedy took us corporate, Buffy thinks as the lift door opens. She steps off the elevator. She’s wearing a smart black trouser suit, the uniform of the company called DeepScan. A man in a green suit greets her as she exits. “Good evening, Mr. Goldberg,” Buffy says politely with a smile. “I’ll be your bodyguard this evening.”

As Mr. Goldberg collects his belongings in silence, Buffy reels off her sales pitch: “I’ll be in the room next door. If you sense any danger, press the panic button.” Salary, benefits, paid vacation and a 401k. Can you hear the grown-up in my voice? “And I’ll stop whatever’s making you panic.” She gestures down at her beeper. As she goes to exit, Goldberg stops her, slightly nervous. “You sure the company doesn’t have anyone… bigger?” he asks. Buffy says that means it’s more likely that no one will figure out that she’s his bodyguard. Plus, she only comes in Buffy-size. He’s not to worry.

As she leaves, Kennedy comes over the ear piece. “We’ve got suspicious activity on your floor.” Buffy is surprised. “Already? I haven’t even raided the mini bar yet,” she jokes. She sticks her head outside of the room, and sees a demon, “disguised as a bellhop.”

Kennedy tells her that that doesn’t track with her info, but Buffy knows a demon when she sees one and races down the hallway after the creature. She exits into a stairwell, still tracking the demon as he travels down several floors. “Tall, dumb and spiny. What’s not to hate?” Kennedy again tells her through the ear piece that the demon is not their primary concern. In response, and fed up of back-seat slaying, Buffy turns the piece off and proceeds to leap over a railing, falling several floors below and landing heroically. She takes the demon from behind, yelling ‘Gotcha’ in his direction and taking him completely by surprise, knocking him through a closed door.

As Buffy pummels the demon to the ground, she questions how he was going to kill her client and starts rummaging through his pockets for evidence. “Kander poison? N’Lek demon grip?” She finds something in his jacket and pulls out the offending… hotel mints?

Buffy gets up embarrassed. “You really are a bellhop?” she asks the demon. He tells her that since he was cut off from his realm, he has to work three different jobs to survive! Buffy’s beeper starts flashing, almost urgently.

Upstairs, Mr. Goldberg is pressing his panic button frantically as a maid, or at least someone dressed as a maid, holds a gun to his head, telling him to hand over the briefcase.

Buffy makes it into the room and orders the maid to put down her gun, but she’s a fraction too late. The shot is fired and Buffy, with no thought to her own safety, leaps in front of the shot to save Mr. Goldberg. For a minute, she’s prepared to collapse. And then she realises there’s no blood. “Huh?” she states.

The ‘Huh’ look on Buffy’s face is frozen on a larger screen, not long afterwards. “You want to watch it again?” Kennedy asks Buffy, an unhappy look on her face. Buffy gets the point: she left her post because she saw the demon. She made an assumption and screwed up. But did they really have to put blanks in the guns? Kennedy says it proved her point: Goldberg would be dead if the situation had been real and not an exercise in testing Buffy’s reactions. As the actors playing the bellhop and Goldberg, Carl and Tagorak, come forward, Buffy makes the situation worse by misnaming the pair. Kennedy apologises for the test, but explains it was needed. Did she really think Kennedy wouldn’t test her before putting her in the field? Buffy responds by saying that considering how many times she’s saved the world, she’d think Kennedy would give her some slack.

Kennedy refuses: “A corporate assassin in a bad French maid’s outfit slipped right past you!” Yes, it was because Buffy saw a demon, but she’s still thinking like a Slayer. “People hire us because we’re strong, smart and good in a fight. Not because they’re scared of refugees from a Hell dimension next door.” She’s in the world of kidnappings, ransoms and assassinations now… so if Buffy wants to qualify for field work, then she needs to pass the test and stop reacting like a Slayer. Kennedy tells Buffy that she’s on security detail for a social-media star the next day – and she would like Buffy to join her.

Walking through Kennedy’s base, Buffy is surprised how many Slayers are present. “There’s not a lot ex-Slayers are suited for in a world that’s minus the magic. Most of us didn’t even finish high school,” Kennedy explains. Buffy says that’s because they were busy saving the world. Kennedy isn’t too sure about the word ‘saved’. Kennedy says she joined the company to give the girls a shot at having a future, including Buffy. As she gets in her car, her warning ringing in Buffy’s ears, Kennedy has one more piece of advice: “And Buffy, this job pays a Hell of a lot more than pouring coffee.”

Later that night in the Slayer base, Buffy finds herself unable to sleep, reaching for a coffee from a vending machine. She’s interrupted by a deep voice which asks her if she can’t sleep. When Buffy asks who’s there, Eldre Koh appears from the shadows, illuminated by one of his light blades. He apologises when he sees Buffy, explaining that Slayers don’t tend to react too well to his presence.

Buffy tells him that he can stand down: his kind are not currently on the Slayer’s Most Wanted List. He reminds her that he is Eldre Koh of the Nitobe, but she says that she hasn’t forgotten him or his help with Severin. Spike also filled her in: she’s surprised – by the way Spike made it sound, Koh was planning on joining the Scoobies. Koh doesn’t know what a ‘Scooby’ is.

Buffy tells him it doesn’t matter. “So now that you’re on a Seed-mandated parole, you’re visiting me in summer camp because…”

Koh looks at her, his golden eyes with red pupils regarding Buffy with stark seriousness. “I searched the realm for the demon responsible for my imprisonment, but I have come up empty. I am loath to ask, since I am indebted to you by the Nitobe code,” he starts. Buffy tells him to ask away.

“I cannot put my life in order until I have vengeance. It is also part of my code. I need your help to find my enemy.”

Buffy asks why her, especially while she’s in the middle of a vacation, specifically away from actual slaying? Koh says it’s because she’s the Slayer, but Buffy doesn’t think Kennedy will thank her for running around with Koh – at the moment, this job means she can actually build a life that revolves around things other than demons.

Koh accuses her of profiting from the world’s magic loss, which gets Buffy riled up, She grabs a hold of Koh by his collar. “Watch it, laser hands!” she rages in anger. “You want to lecture a Slayer on the misuse of power, go find Simone. Me? I’m trying to get my life together.” She gets up and backs away from him, her voice slightly anguished. “Just like you,” she says. Now can someone convince me of what I just said, is the thought that comes to her mind next.

Because getting my life together means figuring out how to work for Kennedy. Which means putting all my Slayer instincts on pause. Trouble is no matter how big the salary, how fringe the benefits, or how cushy the 401k… I can’t find that pause button.

Buffy’s thoughts are interrupted once again, this time by Kennedy who asks her where she’s going. She’s in the dorm having packed up her stuff, stake included. “The wiz kid lands tonight. We leave in five,” Kennedy says, leaning against the door frame. Buffy asks if it’s another training exercise, to which Kennedy shakes her head: this is the real deal. Buffy counters: “That’s what you said about the last one.”

She walks past Kennedy towards the door, jacket on. “There are zompires out there, zompires that need stakes in the chest.”

Kennedy calls after her. “If you walk away from this, consider yourself fired.” Buffy stops. She turns as Kennedy continues. “All the other girls said I shouldn’t hire you. They didn’t want to work with the person who made Slayers obsolete. But I did.”

Buffy scoffs. “Why? Last time we had the big Seed talk, there was lots of blame getting tossed around. Mostly at me. For things like Willow dumping you.” She turns to Kennedy pointedly. Kennedy bites back, telling her that Willow finishing their relationship has been great for her. “It forced me to realise that my old life was over. Slaying wasn’t going to give me any kind of future.”

Buffy raises her stake. “But it’s not over. Zompires are on a siring spree.” Kennedy comes slightly closer to her. “The world embraced vampires with open arms, Buffy. Not it’s got to learn how to deal with them without crying for the nearest Slayer.” Buffy considers Kennedy’s words carefully.

Kennedy insists that Buffy is still the strongest girl she knows. The people who hire them will need her help, even if it’s not from demons with unpronounceable names. Buffy says she can’t shut it off, but Kennedy accuses her of being scared. “That’s why you failed the test. That’s why you’ve convinced yourself the world can’t function without you. You’re scared of being good at something that doesn’t involve some kind of grand destiny. Because face it Buffy,” she concludes, staring at Buffy. “Slaying’s the only thing you’ve ever known.” With this Buffy walks away, leaving Kennedy standing in the door way regretfully.

Back in San Francisco, Buffy is atop a high-rise, perched on a gargoyle, in the rain. Okay, maybe I’m a little scared, she admits to herself. But so are other people and no matter what Kennedy says, I can’t walk away from them. She spots a familiar sight after hearing a familiar sound: a victim, chased into an alley way by a vampire. As she moves quickly towards the danger, she’s not that worried about Kennedy firing her. At least she got here in time to make a difference.

Except, as Buffy looks down into the alleyway, the victim is saved as a police officer comes from nowhere with a stake and dusts the zompire down! Buffy is amazed and stares, mouth open in shock. Or not.

She watches as another police car pulls up as the officer helps the girl. Dowling gets out of the car, ordering his officer to take the victim to the hospital for attention. Buffy comes out from her hiding place when she recognises the familiar face.

“Buffy Summers is chasing me down for a change?” he chuckles at her. She mentions the cop taking her gig from her, to which Dowling tells her that thanks to her and Spike’s training, the cops of San Francisco may start to give her a run for her money.

Buffy looks at him quietly for a moment and places her hand on his arm. She offers her condolences on Miranda Cheung’s death. Dowling thanks her, but it’s her senseless death that has enabled the department to create the new anti-vampire task force. Buffy is surprised that the cops are being trained in Slayer techniques and Dowling tells her that while it hasn’t been easy, it’s getting easier. Buffy smiles and jokes. “So you don’t need me to keep the streets zomp-free?” she asks. Dowling says he’d not sure that they can do it all without her, but she can certainly have a night off every now and then. Buffy looks at him, confusion on her face. “What’s a night off?” she asks with a mischievous smile.

As Kennedy stands on an airfield, looking at a private jet, Buffy’s voice comes from behind her. “This’d be one heck of a pricey training mission.”

Kennedy smiles. “Told you it was real. If you want in, you don’t leave my side. And you’re carrying his luggage.”

Kennedy hands her a file on their client. “His name is Theo Daniels. Founder of a social networking site called TinCan. I hope you left your stakes at home.”

As they both approach Theo, standing on the steps to the plane, he confirms that they’re both Slayers. Kennedy says yes, although she assures Theo that they can deal with anything, not just supernatural threats. Theo surprises both of them by admitting that he specifically hired them for their Slayer skills and experience with supernatural threats. Buffy asks him why.