The building was immense and broodingly threatening at night, a square block of concrete and brick made more forbidding by the spartan attempts at gothic ornamentation at the edges. It only needed a moat and a gargoyle or two guarding the front entrance to complete the impression of a Medieval castle.

Giles stood at the bottom of the stairs looking up at that entrance and feeling all the angst of the quaking generations who'd passed up to their various uncertain fates.

"Stop it, Giles," he murmured to himself. "You've survived Oxford, been curator at the British Museum, served as Watcher to the Slayer for three years. You've dealt with Snyder for five semesters. You can handle one job interview."

He tugged self-consciously at his black leather jacket, doubting again the impulse that told him to dress in levis, flannel shirt, and leather jacket for this interview. The bulging, anvil-heavy case that he was carrying made his arms ache, and he suddenly felt ridiculous. But his watch said 8:38, and he had only seven minutes in which to find the office he was supposed to present himself at. Too late for anything but to press onward.

He mounted the steps up to the UC Sunnydale Communications Department building and pushed open one of the heavy wooden doors to let himself inside. A number of students milled about the hallway in varying degrees of self- importance or bewilderment. A large group were loudly, almost pugnaciously discussing something at the other end of the corridor. Giles consulted the letter in his hand. 'Room 208, 8:45PM' it said. Second floor, he supposed. Fortunately there was a stairway immediately to his left, he didn't have to go near the increasingly animated discussion at the other end of the building.

He paused at the top of the stairs to get his bearings. Immediately to his left was an open set of doors, and just to the side of that was a big sign painted in 60's day-glo colours: 'KURS FM Public Radio -- Where the Bopped Come to Rock!' and as an afterthought 'Room 207'. He looked across the hall at Rooms 211 and 212. Both were locked, the glass window panes of the doors dark. Room 209, next door, was also dark.

"I suppose this is the place then." Giles poked his head into Room 207. "Hello?"

Fluorescent light beat relentlessly down on a beat-up oak desk, which supported an unfriendly-looking computer, a scattering of copies of the campus newspaper with big holes cut into them, an exacto knife, and clutters of overturned soft drink cans and Little Debi doughnut wrappers. Nobody seemed to be around.

Giles stepped inside for a closer look around. "Hello? Is anybody here?" He rechecked the letter in his hand.

"Hey dude!" A young man poked his frazzled head out from what looked to be a closet in the back. "You here for the interview? Whomping! They're waiting for you." He pointed at a closed doorway to one side, grabbed a backpack off the roller chair by the desk, and made for the exit.

"Just one --" Giles began, but the student only ducked out the door and clattered off down the stairs. Giles turned to look at the door he'd been pointed to. There was a lit sign over it reading 'On the Air'. He checked his watch. '8:48' it read. He waited five minutes, then eased the door open as quietly as he could.

The horribly discordant guitar cords of some modern industrial heavy metal band -- thankfully muted -- assaulted his ears. "Ooh yeah baby," a feminine voice overrode the music. "A slow lick just underneath. Mmmm, you're so good at that, sweetie."

He was starting to back out the door again, when the redhead in the DJ's chair looked up at him over the shoulder of the svelte, dark-haired woman straddling her lap. "Don't you go anywhere," the DJ said sternly.

Giles froze, and the tousled brunette in the redhead's lap turned to look at him. "It's Rupert!" she said, and slid off the DJ. She tugged her blouse back into the waistband of her jeans, eyeing him appreciatively as she did so. "Wow whole different style. You look great!"

"Uhm, how have you been, Lili?" Giles said uncertainly. It had been a while, a year and a half to be precise, since he'd seen the young woman or her redheaded girlfriend. The last time had been at Jenny's funeral, and that whole period was a pain-filled blur in his mind. He remembered them both more vividly from that insane night on the town, the one where they'd first met two years ago, when he had been pursued to LA and back again by an incensed Spike and his minions. Lili went, in his mind, with all-girl country and western bands, cowboy hats, and confusing celebrity pool parties. She also had been a quite wonderful dance partner.

He glanced at her girlfriend, who was studying him as she munched on a carrot stick. "Copper. Do you know that your broadcast microphone is open?"

She reached to flick the mike switch off. "Yup. I've got the station's top-rated show too. You think anybody actually likes the music?"

"Uh, yes, well," Giles said, acutely aware of an incoming blush. He held up his interview letter. "I have an appointment?"

"Oh yeah. Trent told me to interview you for the job." Copper settled her glasses at a professional angle on her freckled nose and reached back to pull a tweed jacket over her 'Cowlicks' t-shirt. "So, let's see what you have."

Giles glanced uneasily at Lili, who was standing close to him, looking up into his eyes with a goofy smile on her face. He eased past her and set his case on the table at the side of the tiny room so he could open it. "I drafted a sample playlist, as requested." He passed it over to the DJ.

"Mmmm," said Copper over a mouthful of cucumber. She skimmed over the playlist with one glittery purple fingernail. "Did'jou bring any of these with you?"

"Y-yes," Giles said, sorting through the various jacketed albums in the case and damning himself for the stammer that was reemerging. "A good part of my collection is on vinyl, I'm afraid --"

She waved her hand dismissively. "Vinyl's cool. There's a turntable on the left there. CD player's next to it. Cassette deck is here." She leaned forward to tap it. "Soundboard's rinky, but at least you don't need a big instruction manual for it." She tugged down a stained, mangled, and heavily annotated sheaf of papers from the top of the cassette deck and pressed it into his hands. "That covers everything. Try to talk to them every twenty minutes. Read 'em Burroughs, or rant at them between songs, or something. Trent should be in at midnight to relieve you."

"What about my interview?" Giles said, beginning to feel alarmed.

She sighed. "All right: Beatmatching? Favorite girl band? Scotch whiskey? MP3s?"

Giles barely restrained himself from shuffling his feet like a stressed schoolboy. "I-I've been practicing. The Bangles. Lamphoraig. And I don't know much about modern firearms, I'm afraid."

"You've got the job. Lili will hang with you a bit until you're up to speed."

Lili bounced. He took a step away from her.

"Lil, you don't mind showing him the ropes?" Copper said.

"Oh no!" Lili grinned. "It'll be fun!"

"Okay then." Copper grabbed some keys off of the soundboard. "Only I don't want to hear you guys snogging up here in the booth. If you've got to do that sort of thing, keep it off the air."

"Hypocrite much?" Lili stuck her tongue out at her girlfriend.

"Just --" Copper shot a look at Giles. "Euwww!" She slammed out the door.

"Don't mind her," Lili told him. "She doesn't get what I see in men. She'll be busy doing other things in an hour."

"Um, yes." Giles was looking about the broadcast booth in a mild panic. Probably he should be more worried about her than he was at the moment, but the clock on the wall read 8:58.

She watched him fumble through his album case. "Hey, this's a fun job. Relax!" She grabbed him by the shoulders and steered him into the DJ's chair, then pulled herself a chair out from one corner, insinuating it flush against his. "You've got a dampening voice and the audience is pretty much dead drunk by now. Let me steer. I'll get you around the corners."

"'Dampening voice'?" Giles said numbly

"You know . . ." She squirmed in her seat and grinned at him lasciviously.

The overhead clock's minute hand hit the 12, and Lili grabbed the microphone. "That song was so freaking -- loud!" she gushed to the Outside. "Wow! I'm juiced! It's 9 o'clock though, and time to put the toys away. This is the Retro 70's Show, and our new DJ Rupert Giles is hot enough to lick butter off of. Say hello to the people out there, Rupert. And remember they're all losers, else they'd be out having fun rather than sitting around on their butts listening to public radio." She shoved the mike at Giles.

"I-I-I," Giles said, and glared at her. "I wasn't exactly -- uh -- prepared to-to --"

"Doesn't he have the dreamiest accent?" Lili said to the mike. "And the more he stutters, the sexier his eyes get. And his mouth has the cutest way of turning up at one corner --"

Giles grabbed the mike from her. "T-this is the Retro 70s Show," he managed, "and this is th-the Rolling Stones, 'Sympathy For the Devil'." He switched on the turntable and fingered the mike off. "What are you doing to me?" he snapped at Lili. "Are you trying to make me appear a complete moron?"

"Don't worry, I know what I'm doing. All the college girls are mad over a British accent. And with a dollop of little boy shyness? They'll start skipping parties Friday nights just so they can hang around their rooms and listen to you."

"I applied for this job because I happen to know a little about 1970's rock and roll, and it looked like it might be fun," Giles told her. "I'm not looking to pick up a following."

Lili leaned towards him, intently looking into his eyes. "This is public radio. Nobody's going to be stalking you to pull your underwear off. Unless you want it pulled off. Would you like me to try?"

He scooted his chair away from her.

"You don't know," she persisted, scooting after him. "You might like it. You've got the greenest eyes."

"They're hazel," he said, and put his glasses on.

Lili stared at him, rapt, and then he remembered about her fetish. He hastily pulled the glasses off again and tucked them into his coat pocket.

"Oh come on!" she pleaded. "Put them on? You look so serious and smart and cute with them on."

"I don't need them," Giles said, turning to squint at the rows of CDs on the shelves behind him.

"Here!" She reached around him to pluck the glasses from his pocket. He snatched at her, knocking the mike over. She slipped them onto her own face. "If you won't put them back on, tell me how I look with them on?"

She looked unutterably cute, if myopic. Giles stared at her, then caught sight of a green light on the soundboard. He slapped at the switch to take the mike off the air again.

"Got to watch that switch," Lili told him solemnly. "It keeps getting turned on at the least little thing."

Giles took his glasses off her face. "Ms. -- uh --"

"Lili," Lili said helpfully.

"I appreciate your staying to show me the ropes. If you'd like to leave now, I think I can wing it for the next three hours."

"Two hours, fifty two minutes," she said. "Your song's over. Dead air's a no-no." She turned on the mike again. "Whee!" she said. "How about that for a quickie, guys? What've you got for the main course now, Rupert?"

Giles snatched the mike from her. "This is my show, and we're going to act like proper rockers here, not like a bunch of tossers."

Lili grinned at him.

"The lot of you out there sit down and listen to Pink Floyd's 'Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2'." Giles turned the mike off. "If this is your idea of helping --"

"Got you pissed off enough to kick some booty, right?" She fluttered her dark lashes at him.

A tap sounded at the door. "Great," he said. "Five minutes into my show and already I'm getting the boot."

"Oh, don't be such a worry wart," Lili tsked him. She rolled her chair about to kick at the door handle with her Adidas. "Com'in!"

The door swung open to reveal Oz and Devon. "Hey, Giles," Oz said and moved on in. Devon followed him, struggling not to drop a large box that was loaded to the brim with CD cases.

"'Lo, man," Devon mumbled to Giles. "'Lo, ma'am," he mumbled to Lili.

"Hi, Oz, Dev!" Lili said brightly. "Gee, not more demos?"

Devon let the box crash down onto the table next to Giles' albums. "Seein' as the Oz-man here knows the new DJ and all, we thought you'd be copacetic enough to put in a good word for the Dingoes on the show, maybe play a track or two."

"I've only been on the air for five minutes," Giles protested.

"Eight minutes," said Lili.

"No rush," said Devon and hopped up on the table. "You can, like, wait until halfway through. Hey, as long as we're here, you can interview us!"

"Or not," Oz said. He'd found Copper's stash of veggies behind the soundboard and popped a radish rose into his mouth.

"This is a retro 70s show," Giles told Devon.

"S'okay," Devon said. He picked up a CD case off the top of the box and showed it to Giles. "Track three, man. 'Breakfast At the Watergate Hotel'. Heavy duty guitar riffs and political protest."

"Devon got miffed in that one," Oz agreed.

"You guys already got Copper to play that one on her industrial heavy metal show," Lili said indignantly.

"That was the extended heavy metal version," Devon insisted. "This one is the acoustical one. Track three."

"It sounds 60's to me," Giles said.

"If you want to get technical, yeah," Devon admitted.

"Oh go away," Lili said. "Can't Rupert and I have a quiet night alone up here without you musicians hounding us all the time? We had some serious sizzlies under way, and then you come in and --"

"I'll try to work you in," Giles said to Devon and Oz.

"We can come back later." Oz passed Lili a cauliflower floweret.

"Dead air, Rupert!" Lili chimed, and bit down on the veggie.

Giles grabbed the microphone. "Pink Floyd's 'Another Brink in the Wall, Part 2'," he snarled into it. "An alienated man's protest against the crushing forces of the educational system obliterating the human psyche. I hope everybody is industriously studying tonight. The studio guests tonight are two slackers who are obviously neither studying or working: the head singer and lead guitarist of 'Dingoes Ate My Baby'."

"Cool, gladtobehere," Devon said.

"Hey," said Oz.

"They were in nappies, possibly, during the very last part of the 1970's, but what the hell." Giles gave the microphone to Devon.

Devon chewed furiously and swallowed the bit of carrot he'd just bitten off. "Like, well, we're inspired by those 70s guys. Elvis, and Presley, and Zappa, and the Pistols, and all those dudes. They're our heroes."

"Hey!" Lili said. "What about the girl bands? You know, it wasn't just the men who rocked hard back then."

Devon smirked at her. "Right! I for one would love to have more ladies rocking, preferably right on top of --"

Giles reached over and plucked the microphone away from the singer.

"You're a pig, you know that?" Lili said to Devon.

Devon snorted at her.

"Guess it's time for some music," Oz said.

Giles turned to flip the CD player on with the Dingoes' cd.

"You're not helping with the promotionals any more, Dev," Oz said.

"They love us like this, don't kid yourself," Devon scoffed. "You don't want us to get a reputation as an art band do you?"

"No danger of that." Giles reached to mute the studio sound. "Sorry, Oz. That particular track --"

"Sucks the big lemon," Oz agreed.

"Are you guys done?" Lili said. "Or do you want to debate the role of women in today's music industry, Mr. Devon? Huh? I'm game!"

"Okay," Devon said. "That's a quickie. I can state my case in one word 'blow job'."

"That's two words, you big dummy," Lili said. "Let me sum up my position in zero words." She yanked a baseball bat out from under the table.

"Bloody hell, not in here!" Giles grabbed at her arm as the tip of the bat almost took out a shelf of CDs. "Stop waving that thing around, you're going to whack someone upside the head with it."

"He's sensitive to that sort of thing," Oz said, and plucked the baseball bat from Lili's hands. He set it in a corner, well away from her.

"I wasn't going to use it," she protested.

"Damn!" Giles noticed that the CD track had already played to the end. "What are you plonkers playing these days, haiku?"

"It's okay," Lili reassured him as she plopped back into her chair. "The mike's open, so no dead air."

Oz told Giles, "Devon passed out in front of the QVC one night, and when he woke up he wrote most of the songs on the back of a bounced check."

"It's a conceptual album, man," Devon enthused. "But commercial. Genius, huh?"

Giles shut his eyes and counted to five. "Don't you have anything longer?"

"There's a track where our drummer plays the 'In A Gada Da Vida' riff on Dairy Queen cups," Oz said.

"Which. Track?" Giles said.

Oz held up five fingers, and Giles hit the '5' button on the player.

"Wow," said Devon. "We never conned anyone into playing that one before."

"There goes your reputation," Oz said to Giles.

"All it took was fifteen minutes with you guys," Lily said. "We've played two of your tracks now. Okay?"

"Well . . ." Devon began.

"Enough," Oz said. He stood and reached for the door, but before he could open it, a knock sounded. He completed the action. "Hey." He turned to Lili. "It's the groupie wagon."

"I'm in!" Devon pulled a pair of sunglasses out of his shirt pocket and put them on. Oz shrugged and swung the door open.

* * * * *

Three college-aged women, dressed to kill in brightly coloured silk mini tube dresses, stood in a cluster just outside the door. "Ohmygod," the pink-clad, wild-haired redhead in front said, staring at Giles. "This, like, never happens."

"What what?" A blond head in back bobbed up and down behind her friends' heads.

"You know, the rule that the hotter they sound, the shorter and fatter and balder they are? It just got broken in a big way." The brunette in a green dress and sleek pageboy hair gave Giles a toothy smile. "Hi! We're the Sunnydale Musical Appreciation Coalition."

"Trust fundies," Lili said aside to Giles. "Big yearly checks to the station. Trent says we got to be nice."

"SMAC?" Giles said.

The brunette stepped inside and smacked him hard on the shoulder. "It's, like, our trademark," she said. "Ooh, buff. Is your accent for real? 'Cause me and my friends, we love a guy with an English accent."

Her friend, a pretty young woman with blond ponytailed hair and a slinky blue silk tube dress, skipped in to start poking about the booth with a kittenish excitement. "My last boyfriend had an English accent. He was so hot in bed. Are you hot in bed?"

"Freddy is from Boston, you spaz," her brunette friend said. "And he kisses like a drunken flounder."

"We're musicians," Devon said hopefully.

"Don't get me involved." Oz moved his chair around to sit on the safe side of Giles.

"Oh yeah!" The blue-dressed blonde smiled at him. "You're the Dingoes, right? You were sort of popular with the sorority crowd last year."

"Overkill." The pink-dressed redheaded groupie insinuated herself on top of the desk between Lili and Giles. "You guys gotta play harder to get, not do every gig you're offered. There's such a thing as being too easy, you know?"

"You think?" Lili said, mesmerized by the shapely thigh that shifted inches from her breast.

"Is it getting a tad crowded in here?" Giles commented irritably. The CD player indicated that the track had played out again. He snatched at the microphone, but discovered that it had never been turned off. "This is Rupert Giles and the 70's Tea and Orgy Show," he intoned. "I'm here tonight with Lili, two Dingoes, three tarts, and a partridge in a bloody pear tree."

"Ooh, he's good!" the pink groupie said.

Giles shoved at her hip and skidded her several inches down the table so that he could puts a cassette tape into the player. "In keeping with the theme of the night, The Beatles' 'Happiness Is A Warm Gun'." He made certain that the microphone was turned off this time.

"Classic tune, dude." Devon looked happy now that the blonde blue groupie had gotten pushed almost into his lap.

"Rupert." Lili leaned over the pink groupie's thighs to shove a flashing telephone at him. "Answer!"

"What, now?"

"Studio phone," she explained. "Nobody's in the office this time of night, so the DJ has to take the calls."

He sighed and leaned past the pink groupie's chest to take the phone. The redheaded woman caught his eye. "You do that so well," she gushed.

Giles backed away from her as well as he could and dropped back into his seat. He picked up the receiver. "This is . . ." He studied the telephone and punched the button by the flashing light. "This is KURS, Rupert Giles speaking."

"Giles! What are you doing?!" Willow's voice sounded fuzzy, as if the connection wasn't terribly good. Giles resettled the cord into the receiver, but it didn't help. He held a hand over his other ear and concentrated furiously over the background noise. Willow rattled on obliviously, "Buffy told me to get you! I've been calling your apartment for the last half hour and you really need to get a cell phone if you're going to be Mr. Friday Night Out on the Town. And boy if they hadn't had the radio turned up full blast at the party down the hall, and that was wiggy hearing you cursing over the whole dorm floor --"

"The entire dormitory is listening to my show?" Giles said, not certain whether to be pleased or alarmed.

"Not the whole dorm. Or at least I don't think so. Just the guys holding the hall party on our floor. You've got a really good radio voice, Giles, only maybe you shouldn't talk so loud?"

"Tell them to turn the volume on the radio down," Giles advised her. "What does Buffy want?"

"Oh! Yeah. We were on our way to this party. Not this party, I mean a different party. Okay, not strictly a party, because it's supposed to be a study buddy group, but Parker told us 'BYOB' and the guys we were going along with were hauling along this keg, so I don't think they meant 'Bring Your Own Books'. Besides, who study buddy's on Friday night?"

Giles noticed his track about to end. "Hold that thought." He put Willow on hold, swapped The White Album out for London Calling, and hit the hold button on the telephone again. "You were saying?" he said, plugging one ear so he could hear her over the background babble and music.

"Wha-?" Willow said. "Oh. What was I saying? I like that song! Who --?"

"The Clash."

"Wow, they had some cool music in the 70's! Were they British?"

"Mid to late-1970's, first generation punk, precursors of the 1980's alternative rock renaissance represented by such diverse groups as Husker Du and R.E.M.," Giles said.

"That's good!" Willow told him. "I didn't know you knew that much about -- I mean you have a nice 70's collection, but --"

"I've been doing some catching up," Giles told her. "Actually, I crammed this week for the job interview."

"Maybe you could lend me your books?" Willow said. "'Cause sometimes -- you know I love Oz to pieces, but I don't know what he's talking about? And there's my music ethnology professor. Giles, do you know what 'percussive tympani' is? It's in my readings for Monday, but I can't find it in my Penguin Dictionary of Musical Terms."

Giles handed Oz the telephone receiver and leaned way over to slip his personal copy of The Who's Meaty, Beaty, Big & Bouncy on the turntable on his left. He thumbed the turntable on, set the needle down on "My Generation", tipped his chair forward to turn the cassette player off, and switched the feed to the other machine.

"No baby," Oz was saying into the telephone receiver. "It doesn't mean anything. He made the phrase up." Giles took the receiver back from Oz.

"But -- but -- he's not supposed to make things up!" Willow sounded close to tears. "This is college! Knowledge is sacred!"

"Welcome to the wonderful world of academia, Willow," Giles said gently. "What did Buffy want?"

Willow sniffled. "What?"

"Buffy. She asked you to call me. About --?"

"Oh. There were these demons. These annoying demons. I mean, they were lewd, Giles. They were swaggering around on the commons making really licentious remarks. They were throwing these balloons filled with this stinky stuff at all the girls. They ruined my favorite pair of jeans!"

"Yes, yes, very delinquent demons." Giles fought to untangle the telephone cord from around several pairs of ankles. "What did they look like?"

"If Cordelia had been there, she could have put them in their place! I mean, where did they get their clothes?" Willow laughed derisively and a trifle hysterically. "Fredericks of Hollywood, I guess. Did those guys really think they were hot stuff? I think not!"

"Besides their poor fashion sense, Willow," Giles urged. "Distinguishing characteristics? Horns, fangs, that sort of thing?"

"One of them had a bad perm," Willow said. "Or at least Buffy said it was. That or the latest in East Coast hairdos. Cordelia would know. They were speaking in tongues."

"You said they made lewd remarks."

"They sounded lewd! And kind of Swedish."

Giles sighed.

"Plus they had more than one tongue each. Or maybe they were forked tongues."

"Now we're getting somewhere," Giles said. "Anything else?"

"Forked tongues, Giles! And, oh, one of them called on a master demon -- Pew Ram, Program, something like that -- and shot these cute little balls of blue fire at us. That was after Buffy hit one. I think she broke a finger. She wasn't expecting it to stay standing."

"You're both all right?"

"Yes, pretty much, but --"

Giles put her on hold. "Will somebody please hand me a bloody Eagles disc?" he yelled at the people behind him.

A green-manicured hand appeared over his shoulder and dropped the case into his palm. Giles slipped it onto the second CD player, waited as the track counter on the first flashed 00:00 and shifted the feed over. He picked up the telephone.

"-- there weren't any can openers," Willow was saying.

"Never mind," Giles told her. "I can't get away right now. Go to my flat and pull Von Wilhelm's Gotterdamonrung out of the box beneath my coats in the bedroom closet. I'm sure it has a reference somewhere in the footnotes about how to ward against this type of demon fire."

"Okay," said Willow. "Are you taking requests? Could you play The Partridge Family's 'I Think I Love You'? And dedicate it to Oz? That's a 70's song, isn't it?"

Giles grimaced and looked over at Oz.

"Excuse me," Oz said politely to the blonde who was trying to sample his ear. He leaned towards Giles.

Giles wrapped a hand around the mouthpiece. "She wants me to play and dedicate The Partridge Family's 'I Think I Love You' to you."

For the first time since he'd known the young man, Giles saw a pained look cross Oz's face. "I don't think the station has it?" Oz said hopefully.

Lili propped the CD against the soundboard in front of Giles.

Giles looked at Oz. "It's crowded in here. Would be easy for me to lose a grip on it. It might get trampled."

Oz shook his head. "No. Play it. I'm a martyr for love."

"That's so sweet," the brunette in the green dress cooed.

"I'll play it," Giles said to Willow. "Where's Buffy now?"

"She followed the demons when they ran off across the quad. They were wearing these horribly spiky high heels. Only demons could run in them. Buffy told me to get you while she figures out where they're headed."

Giles frowned. They were definitely going to have to set up some better way of communicating. "Off you go then," he said, noting that the Eagles song had almost played through to the end. "Call me as soon as you've got the book. If you see Buffy, tell her not to fight the demons again until we know more about them. Got to go. Be careful."

He thumbed the microphone on. "And here's one from a lovely girl, Willow, to Oz." Giles turned the microphone off, put Willow's request on the player, plugged in the headphones and pointedly handed them to Oz.

"The things we do for love," Oz said and put the headphones on.

Giles turned to look through his case of albums, only to find the blonde going through them with an intense look on her face. "Excuse me," he said, trying to nudge her aside.

She looked up at him with immense bright blue eyes. "What do you want? I'll get it for you. I always wanted to be a disc jockey. Can I announce the next song?"

"No," said Giles. "I need the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bullocks. The albums are alphabetical, by artist."

"Uhm." The blonde started going through the albums one by one, starting with the 'A's. Giles reached for the case, but she fended him off with a wickedly high-heeled foot. "I can do it!" she said indignantly. She reached the end of the stack and scowled. "You made me lose count," she told Giles, and started again from the beginning.

He tried again to regain his albums, but a hand suddenly became entangled in his hair from above and behind him. "Smells all coconutty," a husky voice purred into his scalp.

Giles tried to twist around to get loose, but the groupie was well-entrenched in his hair. "Do you mind?" He tried to reach her hands. "I've got a radio show to do here."

The pink groupie sat down on the floor and wrapped her arms around his knees. "We're just trying to help," she said reprovingly, looking up at him with big violet eyes from under her frazzly flame-red bangs. "Daddy won't spank us for trying to help?"

"Daddy won't, but Mommy thinks that sounds like a blast." Lili slid down into Giles' lap, put her heel on the pink groupie's bosom and pushed. "Get your own boyfriend for tonight. This one's booked."

"I'm available!" Devon waved at them from the corner of the broadcast booth.

Lili had turned and was struggling to get the brunette groupie disentangled from Giles' hair. It was like having free-for-all'ing bats buzzing around the booth. "Go torment the musicians, will you?" he yelled at them, and finally managed to get free of the groupies' fingers with most of his scalp intact. "Behave like proper groupies?"

"The musicians don't have fuck-me British accents," the blue groupie pouted.

"He's my fuck-me Brit," Lili insisted, clinging to his neck.

"Phone," Oz told him, pointing to the flashing light on the telephone. He'd taken his headphones off. "And the song's done."

Giles despaired of finding a new album and let the CD player go on to the next track on the Partridge Family album. He grabbed the telephone and worked the receiver around to the ear that wasn't Lili-impaired. "Rupert Giles and the Retro 70's show," he said, somewhat breathlessly.

"Giles, what's happening over there?" Willow demanded. "You're supposed to be working, not smooching all over town. What if Buffy comes into ear range?"

"What?!" Giles looked over at the soundboard. The mike had somehow gotten switched on again. "Shi --" remembering then who was on the other end of the telephone conversation, also that he was broadcasting live to scores of drunken college students. "Shall I turn it off then?" He hit the off switch.

"And is Oz still up there with you? How many bimbos have you guys got up there? I'm coming over!"

"Have you got the book?"

"Book? Oh, yes. Book. I have to get the book first? But, boyfriend! Bimbos! Should I call the police?"

"The bimbos are fine where they are," Giles said. "Get. The. Book."

"But, but, where exactly are the bimbos? My mind's eye is getting strained here!" Willow protested. Giles hung up on her. He knew he'd feel guilty about that later, but at the moment there were more pressing matters. Including the redheaded groupie pressed hard against his legs, her chin now on his knees. She been inching up, encroaching on Lili's stronghold.

Lili turned to watch Giles hang up the telephone, saw the competition, and took alarm. "Back!" she yelled, pushing at the other woman's head. Giles bundled his co-dj up and passed her down to the redheaded groupie, who squealed in surprise and went down with Lili in her arms.

"Yipes!" Lili exclaimed, although from her vantage of lying across the other woman's stomach she looked not altogether unhappy with the arrangement. Giles planted a foot in the small of Lili's back to keep her down so he could lean over and slip the Sex Pistols album out of the case in the blonde groupie's lap. She blinked at him in surprise.

He put the Sex Pistols LP on the turntable and got it spinning as the second track of the Partridge Family album spun to an end. "Everyone good and nauseated now?" he asked his audience. "Hold on, luvs, here comes the antidote." He sent "God Save the Queen" out into the ether and turned the mike off. "Oz!" he yelled at the Slayerette. "Go into the front office and get some duct tape."

Oz saluted and ducked out the door.

"Ooh, kinky!" the brunette groupie purred and tried to take Lili's place in his lap.

"Don't give me ideas," Giles growled at her. He stood, picked her up at the hips and gave her to Devon so that he'd have the floor space to get to the disc library at the front wall of the booth. The narrow shelves, supported by cinderblock bricks, offered a bizarre selection divided about evenly between industrial rock, demos of obscure local groups, golden oldies that looked like they been picked up at garage sales, and Japanese bands that he knew were punk only from the grimacing band shots on the covers. He wondered if he could wheedle some kind of acquisition fund out of the radio station management, whom he had yet to meet.

"Pizza's here!" Oz announced as he stepped back into the room.

* * * * *

"Pizza's here!" Oz announced as he stepped back into the room.

"Who ordered pizza?" Giles said.

"I did." Xander turned sideways to ease in through the door, which couldn't open all the way any more due to the number of people now in the radio station broadcast booth. He had a 'Pizza Ogre' cap on. "Ooh, the infamous groupies!" He grinned at each of the three SMACers in turn. "Any of you ladies comedy groupies? I was runner-up for Class Clown of Sunnydale High 1999."

"They're 'British-accented DJ' groupies," Oz said as he pulled the top pizza box from the stack.

"I'm not going to pay for this," Giles insisted.

"S'okay!" Lili pulled a metal box from under the table. "We just got our promo budget for the month."

Xander beamed at her. "Thanks, but not necessary. I convinced my new boss to let me bring a couple of pies over for promotional consideration. Just give us a plug on the air."

"We're public radio, I don't think --" Giles began.

Xander looked at him with puppy dog eyes. "Please, Giles? If Exxon can get public tv promos, you can give 'Pizza Ogre' a mention. If you do a couple, I can even hang out with you guys a bit."

"You've been watching public television?" Giles said with a lift of the eyebrow.

"Just for Sesame Street," Xander insisted. "That's hip."

Lili pulled out a pineapple and ham pizza slice. "These days only dorks watch Sesame Street."

"Cute dorks!" The red-headed groupie gave Xander a sultry smile as she eased a hand into the one pizza box he still carried. "Ow, that's hot!"

"Don't put your hand in there then," Oz advised her. He edged past them to give Giles the duct tape.

The pink groupie wrinkled her nose at him and tipped the lid open to let the box cool. "Just leave it open like that," she told Xander.

"It'll get cold!" Xander protested.

"Don't worry, I'll eat it up before it gets cold," she purred back.

"Is it getting oxygen deprived in here?" Oz wondered. "I'm feeling giddy."

"I told Sam no mushrooms on the pizzas," Xander said. And after a beat, "Mushrooms? Peyote? Giddy? Get it?" He grinned at the red-headed groupie. "I'm Xander."

She giggled. "I'm Blossom. You're funny."

"I love you. Marry me," Xander pleaded.

"I dunno," she said coyly. "What have you got to offer me?"

"Only my beating heart," Xander said.

"Can I get back to you on that?"

Giles turned back to his soundboard and found that the mike switch was open again. He stared at it, scowling, for a moment, then grabbed the microphone just as the Sex Pistols' track was ending. "Whatever you ponces are thinking, get your minds out of the gutter," he growled to the audience at large. "If you're not so pissed that you can't drag them out of the gutter by now. This is Fleetwood Mac's 'Hold Me'. If that doesn't bounce you out, nothing will." He turned the microphone off and pulled off a strip of duct tape to fix the switch in the off position, cutting the tape with his pen knife.

"We got a late start on the evening," the blonde with Giles' record collection said.

"Yeah, and whose fault was that, Bubbles?" Xander's new friend snapped. "One cool outfit in your closet, shouldn't take a brain in your head to decide which one to put on."

Bubbles looked like she was about to cry. She hugged the LP case tight against her stomach. The case creaked alarmingly. "My clothes are all cool!" she protested.

Giles tried to get at the LP case, but she had a death grip on it. "Of course they are," he said in a kindly, soothing fashion.

"Buttercup keeps borrowing all my new stuff!" Bubbles said angrily.

The brunette on the floor with Lili rolled her eyes. "I look better than you do in them," she sniffed. She didn't seem to be in any great hurry to get Lili off of her.

Bubbles hunkered over the case, tears streaming down her face. She wiped at her nose with the trailing end of her blonde ponytail.

Giles sighed. "There there," he said and offered her his handkerchief. "You look very smashing. You wouldn't want to smudge your makeup. Why don't I take that heavy case from you?"

"You do not!" Bubbles screamed at Buttercup, and stamped both her feet hard."

"Oh grow up!" Blossom said loftily from the crook of Xander's arm. "You can be such a child sometimes, Bubbles."

Bubbles stood up, her eyes flashing dangerously. Giles barely managed to catch his LP case before it crashed to the floor. "You take that back!" she yelled at Blossom.

"Oz, would you put this case somewhere in the next room?" Giles gingerly handed the LP case over to the teen.

"Sure." Oz carefully took it.

"Get Xander to help you."

"I can manage . . ." Oz took in Giles' expression. "Hey Xander, give me a hand with these."

"Hey!" Blossom said, momentarily distracted from her hissy fit as Xander attempted to move away. She clung leech- like to his arm. "Is this how you treat all your dates? Love them and leave them?"

"Date?" Xander looked panicked. "I'm the pizza guy! Pizza guys don't date, they deliver the pizza."

"Oh," said Blossom in a startled voice and let him go.

Xander smiled at her broadly and backed off. "Oz, man?"

"Door's behind you," Oz said, opening it up. The two of them ducked out, carrying the LP case between them.

Bubbles stood center of the room, her small hands balled up into fists, thunderstorms of tears in her eyes.

"Would you like to pick out the next track?" Giles asked her.

The blue groupie looked at him, rage shifting to sniffles again. "Can I? Will you say that I picked it out? Can I put it on the player? Can I wear your headphones?"

Giles forced a smile at her and gestured her to the CD shelves.

"Bubbles always gets special favors," Buttercup complained from the floor. "All she has to do is throw a temper tantrum."

"You were being mean." Bubbles glared at her companion, clutching a CD case in her hands. She turned her immense blue liquidy eyes on Giles and smiled at him gooily. "Dedicate it to 'Bubbles, my love muffin'."

Giles accepted the CD as if it were a decaying octopus.

Bubbles kicked at her fellow groupie. Buttercup rolled away, leaving Lili to take the brunt of the blow.

"Ow!" Lili yelped. "Watch it with those shoes, will you?" Buttercup aimed a vicious kick at Bubbles' ankles. Lili scooted out of the way to take shelter behind Giles' legs, beneath his desk.

Giles grabbed the baseball bat from the corner and slammed it hard against the floor. Several cd cases rattled down from the shelves, one of them bouncing off Buttercup's head. "Stop it!" he yelled at them. "What is this, a bloody nursery?"

Three sets of feminine eyes -- violet, blue, and green -- stared at him, agog.

Giles tore the duct tape off the mike and flipped the switch on. "This is Rupert Giles for the 70's show," he said serenely. "My guest DJ for tonight is Devon from Dingoes Ate My Baby. This next song is for 'Bubbles, her love muffin.'" He shoved the cd at Bubbles and motioned for her to put it on the player. "Ohio Express 'Yummy, Yummy, Yummy'. And Willow, if you're out there listening, bring the bottle of scotch from the liquor cabinet beneath the sink too, there's a luv?"

He started the track, then shoved his chair at Devon. "I'll be back."

"Whoa, cool!" Devon said, and dropped into the chair to spin around. "Hey look at me, I'm the DJ! Do I get your groupies too?"

"Lili, would you come out here with me?" Giles gestured to the door.

Lili smiled out at him from beneath the desk. "You only have to ask, hermosito." She bounced out from her cover and latched onto his arm, slipping one hand down the back of his pants. Giles jumped as she ran a fingernail down the base of his spine. "Stop that!" he told her indignantly and reached back to grab her wrist. "Don't people ever tell you that sort of thing is very off-putting?"

Lili kissed him on the nose.

"Are you even listening to me?"

She threw her arms around his shoulders and tried to wrap her legs up around his.

"Should I hit her?" Bubbles picked up the baseball bat, with a maniacal glint in her eyes.

"Um, no, we're fine." Giles put Lili out of harm's way behind him. She proceeded to climb up on his back. "I'll handle it," he said in a strangled tone.

"But you're famous now, Mr. Giles," Blossom persisted. "You'll need bodyguards to keep the undesirables away. We of SMAC hereby volunteer for that sacred duty."

"Oh boy oh boy!" Buttercup jumped up to her feet. "Do we get 'privileges'?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about, nor do I want to know," Giles said. "If you must guard something, stay here and guard the broadcast booth." He headed for the door, Lili wrapped around him from behind piggyback style.

Xander and Oz were arguing with an obviously agitated Willow out in the studio office. "-- bimbos!" Willow was yelling at them both. "I mean, who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of groupies?"

"The Shadow --" Xander began. Willow glared at him. " -- knows nothing about that, I'm sure. Relax, Will. They're DJ groupies. Well, okay, one of them sort of kind of liked me, I think. She said I was cute."

"And you asked her to marry you! The whole campus heard, Xander. What's Anya going to think? Are you crazy? She's the demonic Patron Saint of Scorned Women!"

"The Ex-demonic Patron Saint of Scorned Women, to you," Xander said. He laughed nervously. "And I was joking! Wasn't that obvious? I don't think Anya has a radio anyway. And I think she probably listens to commercial rock stations. Right Giles?" He turned eyes of desperation on the DJ.

"How on Earth would I know?" Giles said. "The book, Willow?"

"You're the expert on demons," Xander insisted. "And on music. And on women too, from the looks of things."

"Giles," Willow said, looking shocked. "You've got a brunette on your back. A lady brunette."

He sighed. "Yes. I know. You remember Lili? From our night out on the town, your junior year?"

"Hi Willow!" Lili rested her chin on his shoulder. "How's it going? Did you ever work things out with John?"

"John?" Oz said.

"Oh, that." Willow blushed, then looked at Oz. "John! It was nothing! It was before I even knew you, Oz! A night of wild passionate dancing! I mean -- he was a pretty good dancer. I couldn't help myself." Her lower lip began to quiver.

"John?" said Oz, and looked at Xander.

"One night stand," Xander said. "Willow and John Cuzack, me and Amy Yip at a pool party dancing the wild night away. We try not to dwell on the past. The lost opportunities --"

"S'okay," Lili slid down with unnerving sinew down Giles' legs to come to ground with a thistledown plop. "Word is that Amy prefers the chicks."

"What?" Xander's mouth popped open. "Who told you that?"

"She was at that pool party. 'Nuf said."

Willow paled. "But-but I was at that pool party and I --"

Lili arched her eyebrows at the girl.

"You were at that pool party! What are you doing hanging all over Giles then?" Willow demanded.

"Gymnastics? Stretch exercises? A new art form?" Xander suggested, looking at Lili wistfully.

"I like girls and boys." Lili wrapped her arms around from Giles behind. "But I love smart people."

"Willow did you get the book?" Giles persisted as he peeled Lili's arms off. "Or, please god, the scotch?"

"I remember now; you're a glasses slut!" Willow accused Lili.

"Well, yes," the other woman admitted. "But look --" she snatched the glasses from Giles jacket pocket and parked them on his nose. "Doesn't he just make you guys melt when he gives you that professorial behind-the-glasses piercing intense look?"

Giles abruptly left off trying to glare back at her.

"Of course not!" Willow yelped.

"Never!" Xander cringed.

Oz stared. A corner of his mouth ticked up and one eyebrow lifted.

Giles managed to set Lili aside, and he moved to grab at Willow. She whimpered in alarm as he pulled the book bag out from her grasp. No scotch (he gritted his teeth), but he found the book he needed stashed between a paperback copy of the Kama Sutra and a tattered pamphlet entitled Aphrodesia. Willow blushed furiously. "Those are for a class!" she insisted.

"Where's Buffy?" Giles began to leaf through his book.

"I don't know," Willow said. "I haven't seen her since she took off after the --" glancing at Lili "-- delinquents."

A frazzly red-haired head poked outside the booth. "The track is almost done, Rupie. I'm going to put on Michael Jackson's 'Thriller', 'kay?"

"Yes, yes," Giles muttered, hunting through the book for the passage that he needed. "Damn. We're going to need another book. Bloody microcephalic cross-referencing ponces, can't they simply put everything in one book?"

"AH!" Willow said. "Uh! Ah-uh-ah!" She pointed at the door to the booth and blurted out, "That's her! One of the demons that Buffy fought. You've got a demon in your broadcast booth, Giles!"

"Yes, yes," Giles agreed, still looking through the book. "I suspected as much when she propositioned Xander."

"Hey!" Xander said indignantly.

"She's not that bad," Lili said, trying to read over Giles' shoulder.

He leaned to keep the book out of her line of sight. "I still have to find out which reference volume of mine contains the banishment spell for this particular race of --" Giles lifted his head. "Michael Jackson?! Damn." He shrugged Lili off and raced back to the booth.

The brunette demon groupie had finished tying an unprotesting Devon to the DJ's chair with a length of AV cord and was now fishing green water balloons out of her cleavage to stack on top of the soundboard. The blonde demon groupie was sitting on the floor, pounding on a Grateful Dead CD case with the head end of an award statuette. The red- headed demon groupie was beginning to spin up the threatened Michael Jackson album.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Giles threw his arms around the redhead before she could flip the sound feed over. He did a whirling two step to put himself between the demon and the turntable. "You are not going to play that song on my beat."

A look of rage darkened Blossom's violet eyes and passed like a scudding cloud. She gave him a sultry smile. "Pretty pretty please? You let Bubbles play what she wanted to."

"Bubbles' choice wasn't calculated to raise the dead," he said, backing her up and away from the soundboard.

"It'll be fun!" she pleaded. "This campus is so boring on Friday nights. Don't you want to liven things up?"

"He does!" Buttercup said, as she made for the soundboard. Giles latched onto Blossom's wrist as he threw an arm around Buttercup's waist and yanked her back.

Blonde Bubbles stood up with a crazed grin and cupped her hands around a ball of air. A fiery blue glow began to build beneath her fingers.

Giles shoved her co-groupies back and glared lightning bolts at the girl. "I'm the DJ here, and I'm the one who decides what does and doesn't get played. If you don't like it, you can all go back to hell." He pulled the book out from under his arm flipped it open with a flash of his wrist and began to read, "'Wir verbannen die Furcht zu den . . .'"

Blossom grabbed his arm and shoved the book shut. "No! We're sorry," she told Giles. "We'll be good. Please don't send us away.

"As if he could with that incantation," Buttercup said, leering at him cheerfully even as she stuffed the water balloons back into her bodice. "But we're your best fans, Mr. Giles. We'll stick with you whatever."

"We'll smite your enemies down!" Bubbles agreed, with a shrill edge to her voice. She bounced her ball of blue fire from one hand to another. "Unless you piss us off," she continued in a little girl whisper.

Lili poked her head into the booth. "Hey!" she yelled at Giles. "Dead air!"

"All bloody right!" Giles yelled at her. He shoved the demonic trio to the back of the booth and grabbed a CD from the shelves. "The Rolling Stones 'Wild Horses'," he announced to the mike. He tossed the disc onto the player and threw the sound feed over. The perky beats of a Hawaiian hula song echoed through the booth speakers.

"Whoa!" Devon said from his AV cord enshrouded chair. A gleam came into his eye.

"You've done it now," Oz said from the doorway.

"What have I done?" Giles said indignantly.

Oz shook his head. "Our next album is going to have a pineapple on the cover."

"Will one of you yummy dudettes untie my right hand and give me some paper and a pen?" Devon pleaded.

"Don't do it!" Oz warned them.

"It's not my fault!" Giles held up the CD case he'd taken the CD from: "The Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers", the cover read.

"That's a new sound for them, isn't it?" Xander said. Willow had trailed him into the booth and was now trying to squeeze her way in between Blossom and Oz.

"Please?" Devon said plaintively. Bubbles scrambled to his side to tug at the AV cord. Her sparky fingers crackled against his shirt sleeve.

The telephone rang and a knock sounded simultaneously at the door.

* * * * *

"Answer the door!" Giles yelled in the direction of the broadcast booth door, since he couldn't see who was next to it anymore. He snatched the telephone out of Bubbles' hands. "Who is the DJ around here?" he glowered at her.

"You!" she said perkily.

"This is the DJ's line. Who gets to answer it?"

She shuffled a foot contritely.

Giles picked the telephone receiver off its hook and hit the line number. "Rupert Giles and the Retro 70's Rock and Roll Show," he announced.

"Forget that, you faggot," a deep Boston-tinged male voice growled. "Put Bubbles on."

A yelling match had erupted at the door. Giles threw the telephone back to Bubbles and got up to curb the disturbance.

Anya was standing in the doorway glaring daggers at Xander, who was struggling to disengage from a Blossomy clinch. The pink demon groupie was making derisive faces at the other girl.

"-- not my fault!" Xander was trying to explain.

Anya was dressed in a 'Sandwich Titan' cap and was carrying several delivery bags. "Did I say you could date other demons?!" she yelled at Xander. A tear rolled unheeded down her cheek.

"Is that free food?" Giles asked the young woman.

Anya looked at him as if he'd just sprouted antlers.

"Blossom, be a luv and find me a good 1970's CD to play? Something by an artist whose surname doesn't begin with 'Jackson'?" Giles prompted the pink groupie.

Her face lit up. "Yes!" She cheerfully propelled Xander into Anya's arms and elbowed her way to the DJ's chair.

"You may regret that," Oz told him.

"I have many regrets." Giles plucked one of the bags from Anya's hands, which were clutched at Xander's back now. "Hula is simply the latest in a line of them. At this point, free food will make me happy."

"Are any of those bags marked prosciutto?" Oz asked.

Since Anya was currently smooching Xander and in an otherwise oblivious state, Giles bent to examine the bags in her hands. He harvested one of the meals and handed it to Oz.

"Chicken salad?" Willow prompted.

Giles sent another bag her way.

Willow reached for it and nearly got Lili's elbow up her nose. "Ow," she complained. "There are too many people -- not to mention demons -- in here."

Giles sighed as he unwrapped his sandwich. "Maybe we should move the show out of the broadcast booth and let the unwashed masses have it."

"Hey!" Bubbles' blonde head popped up from the crush. "I smell tuna."

"Somewhere in that bunch." Willow gestured with sandwich-filled hands at Anya's packages.

"Got an idea," Oz said, and pulled all the paper bags from Anya's hands. "Free food up in the front office!" he shouted above the din of voices and Three Dog Night's "Old Fashioned Love Song", and he made for the door.

Giles and Willow barely got out of the way in time to keep from being trampled. "That worked nicely," Giles commented to Willow as they squooshed against the wall together. "We'd best lock the door, however. Those sandwiches aren't going to last long."

"No lock on the door, Rupert," Lili said. He, Lili, and Willow were the only ones left in the broadcast booth. "Trent made us remove it when one of the student djs decided to protest the cancellation of 'Brimstone' by playing 'The Devil Within' non-stop for 72 hours."

"Well, go out and make sure they stay happy where they are." Giles put down his half-eaten sandwich and shoved both women out the door. "Get on the telephone and order more free food and tell Oz to turn up the sound system."

"Hey!" Willow yelled at him. "Who made you the boss? Talk about letting a little fame go to your he --" He slammed the door in her face, took a deep breath, and turned to the CD shelves. A quick scan of them reinforced his earlier impression that he didn't have much to work with here, and -- damn -- his LP case was out with the crowd. He'd have to brave the ruckus outside to fetch it. Grabbing a copy of Kiss's Hotter Than Hell he jumped to the soundboard just as the track of Three Dog Night was finishing.

The microphone switch was on. Giles glared at it as if that would be sufficient to turn back time and turn it off.

"All right then," he said to whatever audience he still had left. "Obviously this is a plot to turn my well-planned homage to the best of 70's rock and roll into a theatre of the absurd. I can rise above this. This next selection is from some Kiss album -- does it really matter which one -- during which I am going to go kick some asses and retake control of my show." He taped down the microphone switch to off, armed himself with the baseball bat, and headed back out into the fray.

The number of people in the outer office had doubled during his brief absence. Giles blinked, rubbed at his eyes, then fished his glasses out of his coat pocket. They didn't help.

"Hey, G-Man!" Devon, still lashed to his chair, called out cheerfully. "Check it out! Party! This here is my man Joey. Joey and his buds are making a movie here tonight, and they want the Dingoes to do a track for it!"

A skinny young man dressed all in black and sporting a straggly goatee smiled at Giles and thrust his hand out. "Joey Mandecker. I make movies."

"I remember," Giles said, unimpressed.

Joey's face fell. "Super! Yes, you're the Twentieth Century Fox man I met last year at the Mastroianni anniversary party --"

"It was two years ago, at your The Last Reel Cinema film retrospective. And I do not work for Twentieth Century Fox," Giles said. "Would you please get all of these people out of my studio?"

"Oh! Oh!" Joey jabbed a finger at him. "The Last Reel Cinema Film Retrospective! Super! You were there with that lovely art gallery director, yes? Joyce -- Winters? Autumns? Something seasonal, anyway --" he turned to Devon. "You should have seen the reviews I received for that screening. Beyond belief, the reviewers were bowled over."

"Major!" Devon said. "Hey Oz!" he yelled at his fellow musician. "Motion picture gig! Super dooper, huh?"

"Super dooper," Oz agreed. "Devon man, pay attention. What do you think of when I say the word 'pineapple'?"

"Huh?" Devon blinked at him.

"Good enough." Oz started to untie him. "He's got a short attention span," he said to Giles.

"I was not at the film retrospective with Mrs. Summers," Giles insisted. "In point of fact I was there with a well known Italian film director . . ." Nobody, however, was paying any attention to him. He tucked the bat under one arm, drew off a plastic cup of beer from a keg that had been set up on the desk, and went back to his broadcast booth.

During his absence the booth had been reinfested with demon groupies and several film students.

"Wow!" one of the film students was saying as he twiddled with the soundboard controls. Outside the office speakers boomed. "It's like, a movie! 'Play Misty for Me', dude."

"I don't see the soundtrack here, dude," another film student said as he pulled disks from the shelves and heaped them into the potted palm that squatted miserably next to the door. "How about 'Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head'? That's watery."

Giles parked his beer by the door, then grabbed the film student by the scruff of the neck and yanked him out from the disc library. Disc boxes fell about them in a rackety clatter. He booted the boy out the door with a hard kick to the ass, then rounded on the soundboard fiddler with the baseball bat at ready.

"Hey man!" the student protested. "You know you shouldn't pick that thing up when you don't intend to use it."

Giles eyed him up and down, deciding on an appropriate target.

The student hastily backed away. "Hey dude, chill! We're going!" He tangled with his buddy at the doorway, and they fell outside in a heap.

"The G-Man is fun!" Buttercup chirped from her perch atop his desk. She'd torn the duct tape from the microphone and was holding it up the better to catch the proceedings.

"He's no wussy!" Blossom agreed from her seat beside her sister groupie. She applauded wildly.

"You've earned our slavish devotions!" Bubbles chirped and parked herself next to Blossom. "All you have to do, Mr. Giles, is use us."

Giles eyed the three demonesses -- green-clad, emerald- eyed Buttercup with her razor-sharp, dark-as-night pageboy hair; redhead violet-eyed Blossom in sizzling pink; and too- cute-for-words blonde-haired, blue-eyed Bubbles in blue -- and he had a flash of omnipotence. They were powerful, beautiful, devoted, and very naughty. With them behind him, there was nothing he couldn't accomplish, no word of his that would go unheeded.

"Very well," he finally acquiesced, eyeing each of them in turn, measuring them. They squirmed. He took the microphone from Buttercup and flipped it decisively off. "First of all: Don't call me G-Man. Secondly: You can start by breaking up the party out in the office and getting everyone to go home --"

"Oh we can't do that." Blossom was examining her fingernails with a scowl.

"What?" Giles said, startled.

Buttercup grabbed him and scooted him back down into his chair. "Things are just starting to get fun. You stay and do the show, and we'll host." She straddled his lap and threw her arms around his neck.

Out of the corner of his eye, Giles spotted Bubbles snaking a delicate little hand out at his Gotterdamonrung book. "Oh no you don't," he growled and unceremoniously grabbed a handful of frazzly red hair to yank Blossom to one side so he could snatch the book away.

Bubbles glared at him. Blossom squirmed indignantly and bit into his forearm. She didn't break the leather of his jacket, but it hurt like the devil. He latched onto her waist with his free arm and struggled to his feet. "Ouch! Is this the way you treat all your idols?"

"Yep!" Buttercup had grabbed him around the neck and was throttling him in the crook of one elbow as she snatched at the book that he was trying to hold out of her reach.

"Lemme, lemme!" Bubbles was dancing excitedly around them, jumping up to snatch at the book.

He was tall enough to evade her, but that only gave him the advantage for a moment. He felt a sharp pain in one leg as Buttercup tried to climb him for it. "Bloody hell!" he yelled at her.

The door to the broadcast booth swung open. "Rupert, dead air!" Lili shouted.

"I'm indisposed," Giles said. "Would you --?"

"Damn right, I will." She grabbed the baseball bat off the floor.

Bubbles rounded on Lili, sparks fluttering from her eyes, hair and fingertips. "Go 'way!" she screamed.

"Lili, just put a new track on?" Giles pleaded.

"And let these bimbos crawl all over my boyfriend?" Lili bristled. "As if."

"It's time for roast bitch!" Bubbles giggled at her. Dozens of tiny balls of blue fire went spinning from her fingers as she danced around Giles in a mock Indian war dance.

"All I'm asking," Giles said, "is that one time tonight somebody does what I tell him to. Is that bloody too much to ask?"

"Oh all right." Lili swatted at her smoking shirt. "What should I play?"

"Anything that's not Michael Jackson, or hula," he said desperately.

Lili went to the shelves and reached for a disc.

"And no more Dingoes, or The Partridge Family!" Giles stomped on Buttercup's foot, and the demoness let out a squeal. "And bugger all to Ohio Express as well!" He grabbed Blossom and pitched her out the door.

"Girl bands," Lili said with satisfaction and put a CD on the player. She grabbed the microphone. "Hey, Rupert, you've gotta remember to turn the microphone off, okay?" She turned her attention to the audience. "This is the Rupert Giles' Retro '70s Show. I'm Lili, the G-Man's main squeeze, and we're going to have a little girl action here, with The Tom Tom Club's "The Genius of Love", 'cause that's our man, girls. I'll be in his class any day any way." She turned the mike off. "How's that?"

"Who the hell are The Tom Tom Club?" he retorted, holding his book over his head while fending a spitting Bubbles off.

"Oh." Lili looked chagrined. "Wrong decade, I guess. But! They're pan-generational!" She picked up the baseball bat again. "Hey, chiquita, there's room in this class for just one."

Bubbles turned, grinned, and pulled a flashing scimitar from behind her back. "'kay! I'll fight you for him." She slashed at Lili and lopped off the top of the bat.

Lili looked at the truncated bat. "I can share. Where the heck were you keeping that thing?"

Giles yanked the scimitar out of Bubbles' hand. She looked at him with startled rabbity eyes. "No scimitars in the broadcast booth," he said. "Do I have to state the obvious?"

"'kay," said Bubbles in a whispery voice.

"Hey Giles!" Xander opened the door and hit Bubbles in the rump with it. "Oops, sorry!"

"You can run into my rear end any time," Blossom assured him as she came up behind him. Her hair was smoking slightly from some stray blue sparks. Xander stared at her, mesmerized.

"Hey hey hey!" Anya shoved her way inside to latch onto Xander. "Aren't there laws against laying lascivious eyes on somebody else's property? Back in my day you'd get your eyes gouged out with hot --"

"Get a life," Blossom told her. "You has-been. There oughta be laws against women with nothing to do with themselves but hang with their guys."

Anya glared.

"Party's in here, dudes!" Devon yelled over his shoulder as he edged inside.

Giles shoved him back. "No more civilians in the broadcast booth!"

Devon held up a six-pack of bottled lager. Giles yanked him inside. "Oz!" he shouted out the door. A familiar tow- head bobbed briefly over the heads of the taller film students -- and of the heads of a swarm of yuppie-punk types who had invaded the radio station office in his brief absence. The office desk had been shoved to one side of the room, creating an impromptu dance floor. Someone had hung a glitterball from the overhead lights.

Giles grabbed a random CD from the shelves, threw it on the player, then headed out the door.

The dancers yielded with reasonable alacrity to his brandished scimitar. He only had to hit two of them with the flat of the blade to get through to Oz. "I thought you were getting things under control out here!" he yelled at the young musician over The Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive".

Oz shrugged. "Free food," he mouthed back, as if that explained everything. Which, Giles supposed, it did.

A sudden ruckus by the door to the broadcast booth was followed by some bouncing balls of pink fire that ricochetted off the glitterball to bounce against the office walls with spectacular sprays of violet sparks. The dancers stopped in their gyrations to applaud and beat out the odd smoldering fire.

Giles got into Oz's face to insure that the young man heard him straight. "Find Willow and go back to my flat. Get a volume entitled Ausgehen. It's shelved on top of the fridge."

Oz looked dubiously over at Willow, who was sitting on the office desk, which had been pushed to one side. She was munching on popcorn and had the look of horrified fascination of a foreign observer of a native bacchanal.

The disco beat ended, and there was an echoing silence. Everyone in the room turned to look expectantly at Giles.

"Damn!" he muttered, and handed Oz the scimitar. He dashed back to the booth, the crowd parting for him with what would have been gratifying diffidence if he'd been able to stop to savor it. Lili thrust the microphone into his hand as he skidded into the booth.

"This is Rupert Giles and the Retro 70's Rock and Roll Show," he panted into the mike. "And that sound in the background is not a party in progress. Do not come down to the station; there is no free food here. In fact, everyone should mellow out for the night now, don't you think? Let's start with 'Truckin', The Grateful Dead."

"Oops," said Lili. "I don't think you should use the words 'free food' and 'Grateful Dead' in the same sentence."

He looked at her in annoyance. "I did tell them to mellow out."

Lili made a face, then turned thoughtful. She tugged him out of his seat. "The Dead are on. Turn the player to continuous play -- nobody will notice. We can go and smooch somewhere for a while."

Giles dug in his heels. "This is my show, and I will not relinquish control of it to the forces of chaos," he insisted. "For once this year I am going to be master of my fate, the captain of my vessel. Even if the vessel is a fourth-rate public radio station with a music library that looks like it has been plucked straight from the bowels of K- Tel."

"Oh come on! This is radio," Lili said. "It's all entertainment." At his uncomprehending look, she propelled him to the door and opened it to the din without. She got up on tiptoe to yell into his ear. "Talk about control! These guys are having the best fun the entire semester, and all because you've got them rocking around your little finger!"

Giles looked at her, then back out at the ongoing party. Several of the closest dancers had noticed the two djs standing there, and they started pumping their fists and chanting, "G-Man! Lili! G-Man!" He looked over at Willow, who'd been joined on the desk by Xander and Anya. Xander grinned at him, gave him a thumbs up, and joined the chant. Willow and Anya looked at him incredulously, then looked at Giles. Willow gave him a small smile and began to chant too.

Giles steeled himself and walked out to claim his LP case. The crowd made eager way for him. Hands reached out to tug at the sleeves of his jacket. The lovely demon groupies materialized on either side to shove and knee the gropers out of the way. He didn't attempt to dissuade them.

Clutching the case, he turned to glare at the crowd. "All right then!" he yelled at them over the sounds of "Truckin'". "You people listen to me, because I am Master here. First off: Take down that glitterball. What is this, a bloody discotheque?"

Several of the dancers scrambled to obey.

"Second: Kick open those doors and put the speakers out into the hallway. There's not enough room to swing a bat in here."

Several more partiers peeled off to obey.

"Third: We're now officially throwing a party. If anyone breaks anything my girls here have my go-ahead to kick your asses."

The demon groupies beamed. Buttercup cracked her knuckles in a shower of green sparks.

The crowd went wild. "G-Man! G-Man!" they started again.

"Fourth:" Giles yelled, and they all instantly quieted. "Don't call me that!"

"Ah, come on," Lili protested. She clung to his elbow, making faces at the groupie brigade. "It's a great air name."

Xander was grinning at him from his perch on top of the cabinet.

"Damnation," Giles said. The song was in its last seconds. "Don't you think you've had the last word on this!" he yelled at Xander.

He stormed back into the booth, records tucked protectively against his chest. "So they'll play step and fetchit for the G-Man, will they?" he muttered to himself as he slid the case onto the desk, then turned to yank Prince's 1999 from the station's shelves. "Twenty years I'm Rupert Giles, Watcher, sacrifice my life to the Sacred Duty. Get no respect for it, not from my so-called colleagues, not from my family, not even from my Slayer. My life isn't my own, up all hours seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, researching every dusty mouldering nook and cranny of demon lore, and I can't even get them to save me a jelly doughnut. One night spinning the vinyl and suddenly I've got them jumping around like pyrotechnic grasshoppers doing my bidding."

He viciously ripped the duct tape from the microphone. "It's eleven o'clock now, you ponces," he snarled at the world at large. "Are you safe at home where you should be, or are you all staggering about Sunnydale tonight like poster children for Darwinism in action?"

"Darwin! Darwin!" the rowdy crowd outside the broadcast booth chanted.

"You hear that?" Giles held the microphone up briefly towards the open door. "Cold pizza, three keggers of bad American beer, and a glitterball. That's what's called a party these days." He put an acid sneer in his voice. "You Americans can't even put a proper blow out together. Don't come down here, people. You'll only appear more pathetic than you are. As a matter of fact, this next should be right up your various dismal allies."

That said, he flipped Prince's "1999" on.

* * * * *

Buffy dragged herself out of the last thicket of rose bushes, leaving behind shreds of her once frilly blouse as she did so. She was soaking wet from the sprinklers that had activated in the middle of her hunt through the dean's rose garden (rose garden, hah, it was more like the Rose Amazon in here), was stinging from several nasty thorn gashes on her arms and face. The knees and ankles of her best white pants were muddy. Her broken finger hurt like hell. And the 'demons' she was so sure she'd been successfully pursuing through the rows and bushes and quagmires of the garden turned out to be a bunch of frat boys out on a initiation prank.

"I'll prank you," Buffy had yelled at them, and proceeded to snatch up their clothes where they'd left them near a memorial statue of Mayor Wilkins and tossed them high up into the branches of a eucalyptus tree.

The three real demons could be anywhere by now. Buffy paused, looking about the campus commons. Maybe Willow had handled them. But the whole campus was eerily deserted. She checked her watch. Seemed like she'd been in the garden for hours, but it was only 10:45 pm. There should be at least a few people reeling around. She began to hurry up the path towards the dorms. She'd better try to find Willow.

As she neared the area where most of the student housing was, Buffy finally started passing by bunches of students. They were all heading in the same direction, and they all carried radios. The ones Buffy could hear were playing "Layla".

She spotted a familiar face from psychology class and grabbed the guy by the arm. "Hey what's going on?"

He winced at her, and Buffy loosened her grip. "There's this party happening up at the radio station over at the Communications building," the student said. "Free food, bad beer, demons, and a glitterball. Everyone's there."

"A glitterball?" Buffy said in disbelief.

He nodded and broke away, running to catch up with his pals.

Buffy frowned and ran to her dorm. The lights were on in just about every room, doors open everywhere, but the place was deserted except for a few students too inebriated to find their ways out of their rooms and one oblivious kid playing Doom on his Imac.

Willow wasn't in her room, but the radio was on, playing the last strains of "Layla".

"This is way weird," Buffy said through gritted teeth. "What's with the thing for all this old music all of a sudden?"

"Eric Clapton singing 'Layla'. That's a classic you musical illiterates," Giles said.

Buffy wheeled, then blinked in confusion when she found herself alone in the room.

"Am I going to have to be responsible for any shred of musical taste you'll ever retain from your college years?" Giles continued. "Or are you going to continue to massacre your eardrums night after night with rubbish? While we ponder this conundrum, you might as well listen to this one: 'Rough Boys', Pete Townshend, 1972. I pity you people for having to grow up in this era."

The music commenced. Buffy stared at the radio, her mouth open. That sounded like a demonic version of Giles, snarky and sarcastic and arrogant. Kind of like what, in her worst nightmare, she'd imagined a vampire Giles to --

"Oh no!" Buffy scrambled for the Orb of Thessulah that Willow kept in the back of her underwear drawer.

Lili plopped down in the chair next to Giles, a bottle of Lamphoraig scotch in her hand. She was drinking straight from the bottle. "What a mess out there," she exclaimed. "The station hasn't been rocking like this since the last earthquake."

"That's my scotch," Giles said.

"No, Willow just brought this back," Lili assured him. "Oh, she's got that other book you wanted.

He looked at her, then yanked the bottle out of her hands and took a drink. Lili grinned at him. Her hair, as usual, was falling in loose dark curls in her face. She was flushed and bouncing with exuberance. He had a sudden urge to plug into her to share some of that charge.

Before he could remember to be appalled at himself for the crassness of that thought, Lili had leaned forward, grabbed his shoulders, and they were doing the smoochie mambo.

"Euwww!" somebody exclaimed from the open door.

Giles recoiled from his co-dj as if their polarities had reversed. Visions of a horrified Buffy danced in his head.

But the young woman scowling at them from the doorway was a freckled redhead. "You guys ought to put a sign on the door," Copper grumbled at them. "'Breeders rutting' should do it. Goddess, talk about making my weekend start on a freak- out."

Lili offered her girlfriend the bottle of Lamphoraig and smiled. "We didn't expect you back. Forgive?"

Copper eyed the bottle suspiciously.

Giles took it out of Lili's hand and deliberately drank from it, then offered it to the other woman.

She shuddered. "I came back for my veggies," she said, ignoring Giles.

"Uhm, well..." Lili pulled the much-depleted ziploc bag from behind the soundboard. All that was left were a few broccoli flowerettes. Copper looked accusingly at Giles.

"I had nothing to do with the ingesting of your vegetables." Giles was flipping through his case of lps again. He pulled out a George Thorogood and the Destroyers LP and placed it on the turntable.

"So what's with the psycho line-up tonight?" Copper plunked herself down on the desk as George Thorogood started whining about his landlady woes.

Lili smiled up at her. "You were listening to us."

"Hey, G-Man! --" Xander began from the doorway.

Giles turned and threw a green water balloon at him. It exploded messily against the frame of the door. Xander yelped and ducked back out again.

"This is the broadcast booth, not bloody Grand Central Station," Giles growled at Lili's grin.

Oz poked his head tentatively inside. "Permission to enter?" he inquired diffidently.

Giles waved him on in. He scowled at Devon, who wheeled himself in on Oz's heels, and picked up a water balloon. "We never finished our interview, dude!" Devon protested.

"We finished it," Giles said, glaring.

Devon held up a bag of brownies.

Lili and Copper brightened.

"Where is all the food coming from?" Giles grumbled, as the women dove into the chocolate.

"We've reached critical mass," Oz explained. "The party has become a hootenanny. It's a self-sustaining entity now."

Bubbles bounced in. "'My boyfriend's back and you're gonna be in trouble'," she warbled. "I knew I smelled chocolate."

"Hey!" Lili smacked at her hands. "What's the magic word?"

"Uh, 'gimme'?" Bubbles guessed, looking genuinely perplexed. She snatched the bag out of Lili's hand and helped herself to a smooshed-up handful.

"Bubbles!" a deep baritone of a male voice bellowed from the doorway.

The blonde demon groupie paused in mid-chocolately gobble to glare. "You can go now!" she yelled back. Dark brown stains smeared her face.

A hulking figure stood in the broadcast booth's doorway, radiating dissatisfaction. He could only have been mistaken for human if one squinted very hard. "You and me had a date tonight," he snarled in a vaguely Bostonian accent. "I go looking for you and find you hanging out with these beaters." By the glare he leveled at Giles, he made it plain whom he was taking issue with.

"You don't own me," Bubbles scoffed. "I'll give myself to any hunk I like."

Wisps of steam, or perhaps smoke, started coming out of the other demon's gnarly ears. Giles studied him, interested in this display. The only aurally vapouring demons he was aware of didn't have anywhere near the body mass of this one. "I beg your pardon," he said. "But you wouldn't happen to be of the Krybylly race, would you?"

The demon boyfriend bent, grabbed up a crate of Dingoes' cds, and threw them at him.

Bubbles burned the hurtling crate out of midair with a whistling fireball. Fiery sapphire sparks flew every which way, trailing little curls of blue smoke. "Act your age, Freddy!" she yelled at him furiously. "Not your shoe size!"

The boyfriend's shoe size was obviously greatly in excess of his emotional age, but Giles wasn't about to quibble while the pages on the desk in front of him were still smoking. He put his LP case to a safe harbor under the desk, then beat out the smoldering papers with the bottom of the scotch bottle.

"You promised!" Freddy bellowed at his girlfriend.

Bubbles stuck her tongue out at him. "I got better fish to fry tonight, you boring old toad." To make her point, she threw her arms, sticky with chocolate, around Giles' neck and gave him a messy sparkly smooch. Alarmed by this display on several accounts, he attempted to fend her off, but she had the grip of a pro wrestler.

"I'm gonna pound you into smooshed-up stuff!" Freddy yelled at Giles. He then started to bawl, great rivers of smelly blue tears streaming down his nose.

Bubbles leaned over to pick up one of the green water balloons, but Giles thrust her away from them. "Have you no compassion?" he asked her. "The man is obviously very distraught over your treatment of him."

"Nope." She helped herself to more brownies. "I'm tired of little bitty baby boys!" she yelled at Freddy. "I'm only gonna put up with men from now on. She looked at Giles steamily, then crammed a brownie in her mouth.

Freddy slumped against the door frame and howled unhappily. Lili offered him a tissue, and he took it, promptly reducing it to a sodden mess.

Feeling as if he'd taken a wrong turn into some Twilight Zonish Romper Room for demons, Giles reached for the turntable, and discovered that the tape had peeled away from the microphone switch and that the mike was yet again on. "Sod it," he said in defeat. "Here's some Cream to top off the whiskey." He got 'Strange Brew' up to speed and turned back to his Lamphoraig.

Compared to the rest of the dark and silent campus, the Communications Building was lit up like a Christmas tree. A very drunk and rowdy Christmas tree, which by now was spilling light, loud amplified music, and rocking students out onto to the sidewalks all around it. Buffy finally gave up trying to get in through any of the doors, where obnoxious self-appointed bouncers kept shoving her out again for not being dressed 'G' enough (whatever the hell that meant). Not that she would have had an easy time getting through the crowds of students dancing hard to 'Strange Brew' in the hallways.

"This is worse than that 'band candy' thing," Buffy muttered to herself as she climbed up the stoney facade of the Communications Building. She broke a second story window with one whack of the heel of her hand and tumbled into a darkened office, knocking over stacks of papers that had been piled up inside beneath the window. "At least then it was only the old people stuck back in the '70s," she grumbled as she made her way to the door. The frosted glass window in the door blazed with light and shook with the beat of the music from beyond. Buffy took a deep breath and opened the door.

A demon jumped at her through the open doorway. Buffy instantly went into defensive mode, but it was too late. She was mobbed by a swarm of them. They surrounded her, pinning her arms to her sides, stepping on her toes, and spilling beer down the back of her shirt. The first one grabbed her and landed a big sloppy smooch on her lips.

"Euwww!" Buffy said and tried to hit him, but he was gone again, helping one of the other demons to fix strobe lights to the walls of the office. She turned to battle the rest of the mob, but discovered that the demons were actually the minority among the throngs of human students. Tie dye warred with leather which warred with jeans and spandex. Just about everyone wore fresh white t-shirts emblazoned with a fiery red 'KURS of the G-MAN' logo.

"Freaky much?" Buffy muttered to her self. Shoving revelers right and left, she fought her way out into the hallway, where the party was going full blast. The music segued over to "All Right Now" and she took advantage of the momentary lull in decibels to grab the nearest student and shake him until his teeth rattled. "Who's responsible for all this?" she yelled.

The boy looked at her with rabbity eyes. "The G-Man?" he whimpered and pointed up the hall.

"Oh yeah, as if." Buffy threw him to one side. Thinking of her Giles, in some demon's thrall and caught in the middle of this, alarmed her. She fought her way determinedly up the river of dancers.

"Buffy!" She turned and finally saw Willow hopping up and down on top of something and waving a book over her head. Buffy put some muscle into her progress and bullied her way through to the table Willow was perched on top of.

"What's going on?!" she yelled at her friend over the boom of the loudspeakers. Willow was wearing a 'G-Man' t- shirt. She didn't look overly alarmed about the situation, but she did push the book into Buffy's hands and point into the office, mouthing 'Giles'. Buffy raised her eyebrows, hoping for more detail, but Willow only shrugged and hopped down from the table to get herself a beer.

Buffy turned and elbowed her way into the radio station office. Xander and Anya were playing court here from the top of a desk laden with a cornucopia of junk food. Xander was dazedly munching on cheezy chips, and Anya was rocking to the music. The office dancers were a bizarre mix of artsy goths, retropunks, hippy wanna-bes, slumming students, and poorly disguised demons. Buffy was beginning to suspect that this was all some bad dream brought on by too much cheap beer and pepperoni pizza.

"Wake up wake up!" she incanted to herself, and pinched her own arm for good measure, but none of it obliged her by disappearing. "Damn it." She started shoving her way back towards a big red sign lit up to read 'On the Air'.

Buffy only managed to reach the door by dint of her Slayer strength and some strategically placed elbows, knees, and wedgies. She paused to glare up at the forbidding red 'On the Air', then grabbed the door handle and pushed.

The door barely budged. Buffy put more weight into it and it suddenly popped open, tumbling her inside.

* * * * *

The door barely budged. Buffy put more weight into it and it suddenly popped open, tumbling her inside.

A big, rubbery, wet green thing exploded in her face drenching her with something slimily stinky. Somebody tried to kick her in the face with a wickedly-pointed pink shoe. She grabbed the ankle of the owner of that shoe and yanked, rolled as scores of CD cases came clattering down on top of her. She bounced up, her fists and feet flying, found herself grappling with a potted plant. She toppled over again, hugging the plant, into a lap.

The owner of the lap made a muffled exclamation and stood, dumping her onto the floor again. The pink high heels rounded around before her face, and Buffy scrabbled to get her hands under her before the shoes could attack again.

"Stop it," a familiar, very-annoyed voice yelled. A Doc Martin boot kicked the pink high heels soundly in the ankle, and the high heels went squeaking away. Buffy let out a breath of relief and pushed herself out of ankle level.

"You took your time getting here, didn't you?" Giles snapped down at her.

'Uh oh, cranky mode', Buffy thought. Giles didn't seem to be in anybody's thrall; though with his black leather jacket, blue jeans, scruffed hair, he wasn't looking especially in thrall of himself either. Buffy opened her purse and took out a hand mirror to check for his reflection. mirror Giles loomed up at her and then real Giles grabbed the book from under Buffy's other arm.

Buffy sat up and stared at the pile of green water balloons sitting at his elbow. "You hit me," she accused him incredulously, wiping stinky green stuff out of her face.

"For christ's sake, Buffy, when are you going to learn to knock?" he snapped back at her.

The music boomed to an uncomfortable silence, during which Buffy's sniffles drew the stares of everyone in the booth. There were a lot of everyones here, she suddenly realized. Not to mention more than a couple of demons. Not to mention a couple of the demons she'd been chasing all night. She rose, glaring balefully at the blue one on whom she'd broken her finger on earlier. The demoness smirked gleefully and started to wave up billows of turquoise fire.

"Don't even think about it," Giles told the blue demoness.

Her sparks fluttered out, and she meekly sat down at his knees.

"Sit down," Giles said to Buffy, "and behave yourself for two minutes."

Stunned, Buffy dropped back onto the floor.

Giles glared at Buffy, then at the blue demoness, then at the rest of the people in the broadcast booth. Everyone maintained a church-like silence. He picked up the microphone. "Do I have anything left of an air audience, or have you all migrated down here like the mindless lemmings you are?" he said, looking straight at Buffy again. "Just in case, here's some lemming music to complete the job." He put a CD on the player and turned it on.

Buffy perked up at Led Zeppelin's "Going to California". "Hey, I know this one!" she exclaimed, then scowled at the blue demoness, who'd slid up the side of Giles' chair to toy with his hair. "What's going on? Stop that! You're grossing me out."

"If we keep doing it, will you go away?" The pink demoness slithered up to his other side and slipped her arms around his neck. She smirked at Buffy, and slipped her hands under Giles' shirt.

He didn't look terribly put out by them, although he was more absorbed in leafing through the book he'd taken from Buffy. "Don't touch it," he growled at the blue demoness as she moved her hand towards his lap.

She pouted. "At least tell us what's in the book?"

"Ausgehen: Addendum for the Nullification and Banishment of Demons from the Outer Fifth Realm," Giles said, and shut the book with a decisive thump.

"So, say the dumb den already!" Buffy insisted.

"How do you know we're from the Outer Fifth Realm?" the pink demoness said with a scowl. "We might be from the Inner Fifth Realm."

"Euwww," said the blue demoness.

Giles looked up at the pink demoness over the tops of his glasses. She dropped to her knees and nestled her cheek into his jeans. "Freddy's from the Inner Fifth."

The hulking demon, who until that moment had been sitting at the back with a Diet Coke in hand, started violently, then shook his fist at her. "You told! You said you'd never!"

"What?!" the blue demoness squealed. "You said you were from the Second Realm, you big fibber! Euwww! Euwww! I got Inner Fifth Realm cooties!"

"Bubbles, baby, lemmee explain!" Freddy gibbered, waving his Diet Coke can in front of him like a shield.

Bubbles began to sweat a dark blue smoke. She scooped up a handful of scattered CD cases from the floor. They ignited into blue flames as she raised her arm to fling them at him.

Freddy screamed like a girl and scrambled to put Giles between him and the incensed Bubbles.

"Stop it!" Giles grabbed a truncated baseball bat from under the desk and used it to whack the CDs out of Bubbles' hand. "I'm giving you girls two choices. You either learn some civility now, or I'm giving you all the boot."

The three demonesses sat down on the floor in unison, looking angelic. Bubbles stuck her tongue out at Buffy and wrapped her arms around Giles' legs.

Buffy started towards her, already envisioning mayhem.

"Buffy," Giles said. "That includes you."

She stared at him, her mouth open.

"These people are my guests, as long as they're behaving themselves."

Buffy pointed indignantly at Bubbles, who was now sucking on Giles' knee. "You call that behaving? She's deliberately trying to gross me out. And you're doing the gross-out thing by letting her!"

Someone slapped her hard in the back of the head, and Buffy whirled to confront this new threat -- a very annoyed looking, vaguely familiar, petite brunette. "Hey, have some respect for my Gman, lady," the young woman said sternly. "What's wrong with you anyway?"

"Hey, Lili, not everybody gets off on this kind of exhibitionism." A vaguely familiar, freckled redheaded woman came out from the back of the booth to stand next to Buffy. "Do we really have to ask not to have to witness it?"

"Too right," Buffy agreed emphatically. "Are we the only sane people here tonight?"

"Come on." The redhead put a companionable arm around Buffy's shoulders. "I'll get you a beer."

"Think I should remind your girlfriend that Copper's already taken?" Lili said as Copper steered Buffy out the door.

"Is she likely to make a move on Buffy?"

"Probably. She gets into a 'blonde' mood every now and then." Lili leaned over one of the demon groupies to get a slice of the pineapple pizza that was resting on top of the soundboard.

Giles pulled a copy of David Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust from its sleeve and put it on the turntable. "Perhaps she'll get some practice on cluing in," he said without much hope. "And she's not my girlfriend."

"Sure acts like one." Lili wedged her chair past two of the demonessess and sat down next to him. "She's acting like a jealous b-i-t-c-h."

One of the demon groupies giggled wildy. Giles looked back suspiciously, but they all beamed angelically, sitting in identical poses, hands primly clasped in their laps. "What is so amusing?" he asked Bubbles point-blank.

"Nothing!" she assured him, gleeful guilt oozing out of every pore.

"Christ," Giles said, and picked up his book. "Oz, I know I can trust your professionalism to stay within the proper decade after Bowie finishes?"

Oz saluted and slid into the DJ's chair as Giles vacated it. The groupies stared at him, then looked at Giles. "Oh stay here!" Blossom pleaded, latching onto Giles' elbow. "It's all sweaty and mortal-y out there."

"This's the seat of power," Buttercup added, grabbing at his other arm, the one with the book cradled in it. "You shouldn't give it up."

He evaded her. "I have to use the facilities," he said.

"Me too!" Lili jumped up and latched an arm around his waist, giving the demonesses emphatic bumps away with her hips. At Giles' glare, she added, "Hey, we've been both drinking the same scotch."

"It's only fair," Oz agreed.

"I'm coming!" Bubbles exclaimed.

"Me too!" Buttercup declared.

"Me three!" Blossom jumped to her feet. "Can Xander come too?"

"Wherever Bubbles goes, Freddy goes!" the demon would- be boyfriend said.

"I'm going to the Men's room," Giles said in exasperation. "I'm not enlisting a bloody expedition. Especially not of the female gender."

"Guess that leaves Xander and Freddy, dude," Devon said. "Bummer. I'd rethink that plan if it were mine."

"The groupies belong with the DJ," Giles insisted. "Which will be Oz for the next several tracks. I shall be quite disappointed in all of you if you prove unfaithful."

"He is kinda cute," Bubbles said as she studied Oz thoughtfully. "Can you do a British accent?"

"I used to do a good 'Dead Parrot Sketch'," Oz admitted.

"Oooh," the groupies said and settled around Oz's legs. Oz looked balefully at Giles.

"I've had them for two hours now," Giles said beating back the brush fires of guilt. "I'm confident that you can cope with them for ten minutes." He hurried out the door before Oz's sad stoic-puppy expression could get to him.

Lili was on his heels like chewing gum. Giles turned to look at her. "Hey, we're just going in the same direction, compadre," she said with a sweet smile.

Giles sighed and moved out into the din of the studio office, which was taking on the look of an ungodly fusion of 'Animal House', 'Saturday Night Fever', and 'Babette's Feast', as directed by Hieronymus Bosch. Xander and Anya were currently starring as the reluctant monarchs of the mayhem. Both of them had been corrupted into wearing the now ubiquitous 'KURS of the G-MAN' t-shirts. Giles hesitated, on the verge of going back for the truncated baseball bat and setting off in search of the marauding t-shirt maker. Other concerns took precedence however. He plowed his way through the dancing masses to the hallway, where he found Willow dancing on top of a table go-go girl fashion. He blinked dizzily up at her, then shook himself and peered suspiciously about.

Lili looped an arm through his and bounced up to reach his ear. "What's up?" she yelled into it.

"It's too quiet!" Giles yelled back at her.

She craned up to probe his ear for obstructions.

He shoved her down. "I mean that everything is under control. Everybody is staying put. Buffy is minding her own business. The last five songs I've managed to play were appropriate for the show. Something must be wrong."

"Well yeah," Lili yelled, hopping from foot to foot. "I got to go, and I'll bet they're lined up at the girls' room. Com'on!" She dragged him by the arm down the stairs -- Giles had to wonder if he could be held accountable if one of the drunk dancers on the stairs took a tumble, but miraculously nobody had yet -- and off into a side corridor. As predicted, the ladies washroom was standing room only. Giles shrugged at her and pushed open the door to the men's room.

"I beg your pardon," he said, shocked as Lili trailed him in.

"I'm not going to wait on that line, when there are perfectly good empty stalls in here." She shoved him aside and ducked into one of them. "Don't wait on my account!"

He looked yearningly at the urinal. "I can wait."

"Goddess, Rupert, I can tell that you didn't grow up in a big household." He shifted uncomfortably as he heard her let go. The peer pressure became unbearable. He paused only to find a dry sink to accommodate his book before he hastened to the urinal, trying to mind control her into taking her time.

"Yuck," said Lili, and the toilet flushed. "Watch where you wave it, babe. There are spiders in here."

"What?" Giles jerked his head around to see her emerging from the stall. He hastened to put everything back to rights.

"Actually, it was kind of a pretty thing," she said. "All transparent with legs like silver needles and teeny diamond-y eyes and this glittery rainbow spot in her tummy."

He realized in mid-blush that she was talking about something else. "You're referring to th-the spider."

"Sure, what did you --" She grinned at him then. "Oh, I getcha. I'll rhapsodize for you, just let me get a look."

He fended off her hands. "That's quite all right, I wasn't asking --"

"Oh com'on!" She reached up for his head and pulled it down to hers so that they were nose to nose. "We're alone now. It's a prime snogging opportunity."

She was petite and had to bounce up on tiptoe to get her arms up around his shoulders. She smelled like raspberry ice cream. Perhaps it was the Lamphoraig still warming his blood, or perhaps he was still off-balance from the relative quiet and coolness of the lavatory, but he found himself moving in for another taste. Lili hummed happily and looped one of her legs up behind his. He put a stop to that with a firm hand on her thigh. "Please, Lili. I'm a bit old for..."

"I don't mind," she insisted. "I like older men!"

"That's all very nice, but my back has had enough for one night, thank you."

"Oh," she said with a grin. "Is it up for some horizontal activity then?"

"I-I --" Giles blinked at a glimmering spot of light that flickered before his face, over Lili's shoulder. "What the devil is that?"

Lili turned. "Spider," she declared. "A glittery spider. I told you --"

Another pinkish light sparkled off in one corner near the high lavatory windows. And several more, green-red-blue, across the ceiling. Now that Giles was looking, he could see scores more of the tiny lights. Arachnids with spun glass bodies that glowed with glittering shifting rainbow lights were stringing sugar web lines across the ceiling. They hummed like tiny tuning forks set at the highest ranges of hearing. The melody sounded oddly familiar.

They were singing along with David Bowie on the speakers outside.

"Damn," Giles said. He snatched his book out from under several of the spiders, which were dropping down towards it on razor silk threads like tiny kamikaze paratroopers, and ran for the door.

"But snogs!" Lili protested as he dragged her along. "Com'on Rupert, you're not afraid of a few itty bitty spiders?"

"No, just of the 'Spiders from Mars.'" He stopped at the door. Emberous spiders were working frantically there to bar the way with laser red strands of web. "I knew those girls were up to something dire. Don't touch that."

She'd been reaching for the door handle, which was already shrouded in spider gossamer.

Giles looked around the lavatory, then ducked into one of the stalls and emerged with a large wad of lavatory tissue. He swiped at the cobwebbed door handle and hastily dropped the wad of paper as it began to smoke.

Lili danced back as the paper burst into flame and incinerated itself. "See what you mean. Those are some funky spiders. Do you think they might have gotten into Trent's acid stash?"

"Um, no." Giles looked around for something else he could use on the door handle. "Are your shoes leather?"

"They're Adidas. Duh."

"Give me one."

"Okay, but I got to use you for balance, because I'm not sitting on this floor."

"Very well." Giles reached out to steady her and instead got her full weight wrapped around his waist. "Lili," he said after a full minute of this. "The shoe please?"

"Oh all right." She reached down and pried one off her foot and handed it to him.

Giles gingerly worked the shoe in under the door handle. The smell of scorching leather wafted up. The door resisted. The spiders from Mars had threaded thousands of tiny shimmering strands across its face. He got a better grip on the shoe and wrenched, and the door suddenly gave in with multitudes of tiny angry spider cries. He moved Lili out beneath his arm and ducked out after her as the door drifted shut.

The spiders were setting up house outside the men's room too. The party was continuing full blast, oblivious to the multitudes of spinners that were festooning the ceilings, windows and doors with phosphorescent webs.

Lili was yelling something in his ear. Giles turned to her distractedly. "Shoe?" she reiterated, pointing at his hand.

He handed her the still smoking Adidas and turned to force his way back through the crowd. It had gotten denser during his and Lili's sojourn into the men's room, which was strange, since the spiders were effectively sealing the party in.

The look on his face was apparently grim enough to bring the dancers around him somewhat to their senses. "Make way for the DJ!" a young man shouted, and the cry was promptly taken up by every one else in the vicinity. Giles suddenly had a clear pathway -- albeit one lined with drunken, groping fans -- leading up the staircase towards the second floor. He took the steps two at a time, Lili close behind him.

"Where did Buffy and Copper go?" he demanded as the hit the top of the stairs.

Lili looked up and down the hallway, biting at her lip, then pointed. "Probably down by the kegs."

'Ziggy Stardust' came to an end and time seemed to freeze while everyone waited, straining to hear what would replace it.

Stevie Nicks burst into the strains of "Nightbird", and a flock of midnight black birds swept overhead, flying just below the ceiling. Slivery outraged spider howls twinkled through the music and then shivered away as the spiders disappeared under the birds' sharp beaks.

"Good going, Oz." Giles grabbed Lili's hand, and they both started shoving their way towards the kegs.

"-- unreliable," he heard Buffy's indignant voice rising high above the party din. "You can't trust any of 'em. I mean I -- you go for years thinking you know a guy, you can rely on him to be predictable and then he suddenly starts wearing leather and everyone is fawning all over him and what's so great about putting some old records on a turntable anyway? How does that get all these bimbos slobbering all over him and who do they think they are anyway? He's my Watcher, and I don't want bimbo slobber on him. And besides, euwww!"

Copper and Buffy were sitting opposite each other inside the door frame to an office. Copper had her bare feet parked familiarily on either side of Buffy's hips. Buffy was peering mournfully down into her plastic beer cup while she rolled the Orb of Thessulah about the floor with her free hand.

"Face reality, baby," Copper said cheerfully. "He belongs to everyone listening to the air waves now. That's what happens in this racket. Groupies are a dime a dozen, and DJs are paid in dimes. And you know guys. Better get used to sharing him."

Buffy burst into tears, and the other woman leaned in to embrace her comfortingly.

"Stop it!" Giles yelled at them over the music. The two young women looked up at him. "There's something malevolent going on here. Buffy, if you'd --"

"It's Friday night, Giles," Buffy yelled up at him. "The Slayer is off-duty. They're your groupies, you put them to rights. I'm having another beer."

"I'm sorry if I seemed abrupt earlier --" he attempted.

"Hah!" she said derisively. "Admit it. You've lost control of your show, and now you need me to pull your nuts out of the fire."

Something in Giles bridled. "I have my show under as much control as it needs to be!" he yelled back at her. "It's these bloody demons who are causing the problems. If you were doing your sacred duty, instead of letting them run amok --"

"Nothing I can do. It's the 'KURS of the G-Man'!" Buffy retorted. She grabbed a hold of the door frame and pulled herself to her feet, wobbling as she went. "Where's that t- shirt guy? I want one of those shirts. Go throw a leash on your gropey groupies yourself, Giles. I've been grossed out enough for one night. Want another beer, Copper?"

"You're under age. And supposed to be on duty --" Giles started in.

"Little late to start carding everyone Mr. Responsible." Buffy pointedly looked about at the crowd, then eyed his DJ's garb up and down. "And talk about the kettle calling the pan black anyway."

"Nightbird" came to an end, and they glared at one another through the silence. Giles felt someone tugging at his arm. He turned scowling to find Willow at his side. "You'd better get back to the booth," she whispered urgently. "Oz says the groupies are getting restless."

"Midnight at the Oasis" abruptly cut in about ten seconds into the song. "Damn," Giles said. Oz must have grabbed the first thing to hand. Not a good sign. "Willow, will you please try to talk some sense if not some modicum of responsibility into Buffy? I've got to go."

Willow looked dubiously at the tipsy Buffy, who was hanging on Copper's shoulder, flirting with the guy in charge of the beer kegs. "Buffy? Sense? Me?"

"Good girl." Giles patted her on the shoulder and turned to plow his way through the now-slow dancers towards the studio.

The party was finally beginning to wind down. The introduction of a slow song had prompted all the dancers to semi-collapse against one another. They moved out of his way sluggishly. The camel that had appeared in the hallway just outside the studio doors didn't help his progress any. Giles shoved at the beast ineffectually, until it bellowed and turned its mangy head to take a nip at his arm. Rather than risk his leather jacket again, he took his life in his hands and ducked under its belly and into the studio office.

Silken tent-like draperies spanned the office ceiling. The scents of cinnabar and sandalwood made him sneeze. Ankle-deep white sand spilled into his Doc Martins.

"Giles!" Xander said urgently from on top of his desk refuge. "Are we glad you're back!" He was clad in a flowing sheikh's garb, Anya in a harem girl's outfit. "The groupies are running amok! And Blossom found your Scotch! They were looking for Britney Spears' cds! You've got to do something!"

"Damn right, I will," Giles said. He turned towards the broadcast booth, steeled himself for the worst, then kicked the door open.

* * * * *

Oz and Devon were barricaded behind a small fortress of boxes of Dingoes cds, which they'd pulled about the DJ's desk with its music board command center. They both were clad in foreign legion grab. The three demon groupies, dressed in green, pink, and blue versions of "I Dream of Jeannie" garb, danced back and forth before the fortress, giving a good imitation of barbarians at the gates. The broadcast booth was ankle-deep with white sand, and the parlour palm had metamorphosed into a bedraggled fig tree.

"Right, then," Giles growled and whipped his book out to thumb through it. He attempted a dissipation spell, but it did no good. This magic was firmly locked into place through the music of this world.

"Giles!" Oz yelled, as plaintive as it was possible for Oz to sound. "What should I play next?"

"Damn -- damn -- damn -- damn --" Giles muttered, still leafing through the book. He finally found the footnote he'd needed for the banishment spell -- but he'd forgotten that it referenced yet another footnote in another book, an obscure volume that he was fairly certain currently resided in one of the several scores of boxes sitting in a storage unit at Store-Yer-Stuf, where he'd been keeping the less relevant volumes of his collection.

He turned to the CD shelves, grabbed an album and tossed it over the groupies' heads to Oz. "Track four," he yelled. Oz caught it neatly, flipped the case open, and put the CD onto the player.

Giles put his glasses on and pulled his leather jacket up around his face, as the opening stanza of Kansas' "Dust in the Wind" rolled from the speakers. Those unblessed with faulty vision were hit with an eye-stinging blast of a wind that whipped the white sands up from the floor. Giles footed it past the cowering groupies and vaulted over the Dingo's crates and into the DJ's trench, where the wind faded to a fluttering breeze.

"Good call," said Oz.

"Hey dudes, check it out. I'm Gunga Din," Devon said happily, waving his rifle about. "Somebody put something radically trippy in the nacho chips. This gun feels real!"

Giles yanked it out of his hands. "Yes, let's not get carried away. I've got a show to do." He slid his LP collection out from under the desk, sheltering it from the stray grain of sand with his back. He turned the case so that he could read the playlists on the backs of the albums and thumbed through them. "No -- no -- good heavens... no --I suppose I should purchase some New Age music."

"70's rock and roll not being conducive to mellowing the crowd out," Oz guessed.

"Not the music I listened to," Giles said.

"Peek-a-boo I see you!" Buttercup popped up next to Giles in the DJ's trench. She'd thrown several layers of diaphanous green veil over her face, which proved proof enough against the blowing sand. She had the Michael Jackson Thriller album in one hand.

Giles slapped her away from the CD player. A shower of green sparks nipped at his fingers. Buttercup grinned maniacally at him. "Electric!" she said.

He made a decision, shut the feed off from the CD player and turned the microphone on. "All right, babies," he said in a low voice to his audience at large. "It's time for some seriously rocking. He plopped one of his vinyls onto the turntable, set the needle on the proper track and let Jagger and Bowie's rendition of "Dancing in the Streets" out onto the unsuspecting audience.

Everyone outside the DJ's pit, demons included, instantly went into dancing overdrive.

"Good call yet again," Oz approved.

"Fun!" Buttercup clapped her hands. "But let's play "Thriller" next, 'kay? Then we'll put on 70's Disco Jukebox Inferno." She held up a clunky CD set.

"I'm not going to 'Red Shoes' my audience to death," Giles said. "My numbers are going to be low enough as it is. And in any case, to the devil with disco."

"That's sort of the point," she pouted. "'Specially if you let me play "Thriller". Oh, com'on! You know you want to."

"Michael Jackson? I know no such thing."

"Uhm, 'kay then." She slipped another CD from her cleavage. "How about this one?"

Oz shoved her hands down. "Don't give into the temptation, Giles."

Giles looked at him in annoyance. "As if I would for an American band. This is the album with the original cut of 'The End', yes? I've still got --" he checked the clock on the wall "-- fifteen minutes left to my show. They're mine and I am going to use them." He nevertheless took the CD from Buttercup and flipped it over to ponder the playlist.

"'Baby Light My Fire'?" Buttercup said hopefully.

Oz held up a CD. "Not that I necessarily recommend this..."

"This is supposed to be the 70's; and what the world needs now is not love," Giles retorted. "We'd probably end up with an orgy."

"They'd all be on the floor." Oz nevertheless put the CD down.

Giles fixed a stern no-nonsense look on Buttercup. "How long will the realization effect last?"

She pursed her lips and studied her long green fingernails. "Not gonna say," she said petulantly, "unless you say pretty please. And give me a tongue kiss."

"I can cope with this without you," he told her.

"Hah! Gonna be fun seeing you try."

"Dancing in the Streets" boomed to an end, and the crowd fell exhausted to the floor like string-cut puppets.

"Makes you all warm and fuzzy inside, doesn't it?" the green demoness said as she surveyed the gasping dancers with a dreamy smile.

Near their bunker, a prostate Blossom, collapsed over the stomach of a prone Anya, twitched. "I'm so going to get you, Butt."

Buttercup glared at her over a bunkered chair. "This was your idea, Miss Bossy. And don't call me that."

"What are you doing?" Xander protested from his sprawl by the door. "You're letting the demons call the shots, G- Man?"

Giles and Buttercup exchanged looks. She handed him the 'Disco Inferno' three pack, and he took one of the CDs out of the case.

"No-no-no-no!" Xander yelled even as he staggered to his feet along with the rest of the crowd to the opening strains of 'Boogy Woogy Dancing Shoes'. "Giles, we'll be good."

"Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," Oz said as he popped a broccoli floweret into his mouth.

"Nonsense." Giles sat back to enjoy the show. "I'm simply ensuring my audience gets sufficient exercise to make up for all the junk food they've consumed tonight."

"Looks like fun!" Devon enthused. He'd retained his French foreign legion garb and looked dashingly Beau Gestic as he jumped over the barricade to join the dancing crowd.

"Dang," said Buttercup. "There goes the third cutest guy in the pit, and the only one in uniform. I had plans."

Giles and Oz exchanged looks. "You could join him," Oz suggested.

"You'd make a very picturesque couple," Giles agreed. "Sprung from the tales of Sir Richard Burton."

"Do I look like a young 'Liz Taylor?" She fluttered her dark eyelashes at them.

They assured her that this was indeed the case.

Buttercup stuck her tongue out at them. "'Cept I'm not a dancing maniac. Good try, guys, but I like being at the seat of power."

"Behind every despot is a woman who wants to sit on his lap," Oz continued with the quotage.

"When did you become so loquacious?" Giles said irritably, and pulled his LP case up into his lap. Buttercup glowered at it.

"There's Buffy," Oz nodded at the door to the broadcast booth. "She's dancing and she looks mad. That's all I'm saying."

"Better put on 'Disco Demon'," Buttercup said. "You're complicated now, whether you like it or not, Rupie. Look how she's glaring at you."

"Your sister demons look no more enchanted with the situation," Giles pointed out. "We have the tigers by the proverbial tails, I fear. Time to start sending everyone home."

The green demon groupie shook her silky head. "Can't. The realization spell is a super solipsism. The whole party is like a self-contained universe now."

He considered this. "No one can leave then? Even if they want to? Even if I tell them to?"

She blew a big green bubble gum bubble, then sucked it in again and tucked it back under her tongue. "Yep. Nope. Nope. We're in party limbo."

Buffy had danced her way grimly halfway to the DJ's pit. Giles sighed. "This may be a mistake, but these are times of . . ." He put The Doors album on the CD player.

"'quiet desperation'?" Oz said loudly.

"Are you mad?" Giles shouted back, and synched to "Break on Through".

Buttercup and Oz ducked under the DJ's table as the crowd, en masse, threw themselves at every potential exit. The building shook. Giles hastily passed his LP case down to the musician and groupie, then joined them under the table. "I hope that the University is up to date on their earthquake insurance."

The building shook again. Buttercup threw her arms around them. "In case we don't make it," she declared, and gave Giles a tonsil-tickling kiss. Oz fended her off when she turned to him. "Sorry. Taken."

Giles managed to stem a fit of coughing. Being kissed by a demon with a long forked tongue wasn't as much fun as he would have guessed it might be. Plus she'd been chewing on eucalyptus leaves or something similarly vile.

Jim Morrison sang 'break on through to the other side' for the fifth time and the sound of breaking glass coincided with the definite sensation of something dropping away around them. The lights flickered and turned a sallow pink, and the volume of the music became at the same time louder and more distant, as if racing from them.

"That's done it, I think," Giles said. He poked his head out from under the desk for a look around. The crowd continued to dance frenziedly.

"One might ask about the quality of 'it'," Oz said, staying put.

"Kewl," said Buttercup. "But can't you play a song about annoying, overly violent blonde bimbos dropping dead?"

A worse-for-the-wear Buffy loomed, or rather danced and loomed, up to the DJ's bunker. Gritting her teeth with a scary determination, she executed a stylish high disco hop and landed in their midst. "Are you possessed?" She shook Giles until his glasses rattled, then turned to shake Oz. "Well, is he?"

"It's Friday night," Oz said, not resisting.

Buffy stared at him, while Oz smiled serenely back. "You guys," she said disgustedly. She snaked out a hand to nab Buttercup, who was about to scamper over the barrier. "I don't know whose fault all this is, chickie, but I'd rather pummel you anyway."

"Hey, I'm just a girl!" Buttercup yelled. "Yeah okay, I'm a demon too. But a girly demon. And we girls just wanna have --"

Buffy caught Oz's movement out of the corner of one eye. "No!" She lunged for him. Unfortunately that meant turning her back on Giles, who grabbed her from behind and pitched her back over the makeshift barrier. With a small assist from Oz, Buttercup went tumbling after the Slayer.

"Cyndi Lauper is not 70's," Giles told Oz.

"Sorry. The power of suggestion," Oz said. "I don't think we're in Kansas any more." He sniffed the air. "Maybe a brimstony version of Topeka."

Giles sorted frantically through his record collection. "We've broken through to the other side. The dimension the demon girls come from, I suspect. I need something that will get us back home." He looked up at Oz. "Kansas?"

"You've already played 'Dust in the Wind'."

"No, damnit, the quote." Giles yanked an album from the case. "You've given me an idea. I just hope we don't end up in some bizarre demonic version of L Frank Baum's home town. Or, worse, the MGM equivalent."

Oz craned over to examine the record on the turntable. "That has to be a bootleg."

"No, there was a very small press. I prefer this version to the Tim Curry movie rendition." Giles settled back to watch the girls bopping with frantic glee about the broadcast booth, the males in the booth barely managing to keep to their feet and thereby untrampled. Buffy looked torn between exhaustion and murder. Poor girl. She'd had a long night, and her broken hand had to hurt.

The last bopple of "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" had no sooner played, when Giles cut straight to the 1990 Rocky Horror Show London Stage version of "Going Home".

Every person in the building seemed to stagger to a standstill simultaneously. Several of the woman fell to the floor. Buffy kept to her feet, but only by hanging onto Blossom, who in turn was draped around Xander's neck.

Giles picked up his microphone and keyed it on. "It is time, you pathetic children. Go home. This is a radio station, not a rave."

Like somnambulistic three-year olds, the students, punks, hippies, film makers, and demons stumbled out towards the exits, some of rubbing at their eyes, some of them bawling. The three demon groupies vanished with pink, green, and blue poofs! as the building returned to its plane of reality and they to theirs.

"Cool," Oz said admiringly.

"Yeah," gasped Xander, and collapsed against the Dingoes crates barrier, Anya swooning in his arms. "Right, Really cool. Don't do any more of that, okay?"

"It worked," Giles said. "For the large part. Why are you still here?"

"Possibly because my wonderful little bachelor pad isn't very homey?" Xander guessed, with the air of one not caring much. "Oh my god, what have you done to Anya?"

The ex-demoness stirred groggily in his arms.

"She's perhaps a little fagged out from the penultimate track," Giles suggested. "I wouldn't have thought that you'd object to the teddy, feather boa, and fish nets."

"Well, not as such --" Xander began, then Anya sat up. "Xander, what did they do to you?" she exclaimed.

Xander sat up, got a good look at his own state of dishabile and blushed violently. "Excuse me," he said, and bolted for the door, red feather stole fluttering in his wake.

Anya staggered to her feet, wobbling violently on her new spiked heels. She had an even lustier gleam than usual in her eyes. "Xander! Wait for me!" She fell flat on her face on her rush out the door, but was instantly up and away again.

"Guess Anya's home is where her heart is." Oz smiled at Willow as she wobbled through the door on her own unfamiliar spiked heels. "Excuse me. I have a date with a redhead and a feather boa."

"Go. Leave me in peace," Giles said. He surveyed the broadcast booth, which was adrift in white sand, figs, feathers, and Dingoes cds. "Oz . . ."

Oz looked back, as gathered Willow against his side.

"Thank you for helping out tonight."

Oz smiled and ushered Willow out the door.

"Okay, that was fun," Lili hauled herself half over the crate barrier. She was dressed in a black teddy, Cyndi Lauper glad-rag skirt, and a harem girls veils. "You sure put on a hell of a radio show, Rupert, but how are you going to top it?"

"Didn't you want to go home now?" Giles asked curiously.

"Oh, well --" she huffed as she dragged herself over the barrier and fell into the co-dj's seat. "I got evicted from my apartment last week, and I've been sort've camping here at the station until I find new digs." She looked up at the clock over the door. "Your first show is almost done. Congrats." Lili offered him a black-lace gloved hand. He accepted it with a strange but real feeling of having earned her congratulations. She leaned in towards him then and smiled flirtatiously. "One for the road, partner."

"What the hell," he said, and leaned in to return the kiss.

"NO SMOOCHIES!" a voice interrupted them. Giles and Lili looked at a sadly tattered and drooping Buffy as she crawled across the floor towards them. An almost demonic gleam flashed in her eye as she fixed a Slayer's glare on Lili.

"She's very monogamous, isn't she?" Lili sighed.

"She's not my girlfriend," Giles said.

"Well, geez, in that case she's just being territorial. Not to mention unenvironmental."

Giles turned to put a final album on the turntable. "Unenvironmental?"

"Why keep a good hottie out of circulation if you're not going to take advantage of him?"

Buffy mustered a supernatural burst of energy and hauled herself back over the barrier to collapse in a feathery puddle at Giles' feet. "You guys are so dead." She managed to lift her head to glare at the turntable overhead. "What is that? Giles, you've been playin' wiggiest music."

"'Mr. Sandman'," Giles said. "It should put everyone to sleep until the spell has run down."

"Won' work on me," Buffy said crossly. "I've reached sanctuary now." And she lay her head on her arms and promptly fell asleep.

"She's exhausted, poor thing," Giles explained to Lili. "I'd best take her back to her dormitory."

Lili pulled Giles' scotch out from under