AUTSD

Quotes

Stefan: “Can you just promise me that none of you will get killed or seriously maimed anytime soon, cause we are seriously running out of allies here..”

Stefan: “You’re ….you’re gonna send my girlfriend to another time?!?”
Chase: “Oh, no problem! I’ve done that before. It’s not that bad.”

Rachel: “Hey, at least we’ve never killed ourselves. So. Bonus?”

Stefan to Willow: “Glamour me, baby.”

US Army recruiter: “Are you from Texas?”
Stefan (accent hidden): “….yes….I am…….ya’ll…..”

Frank the GI re: Stefan: “Are they always that weird in Texas?”
Chase: “He’s, uh, getting over a cold.”

Stefan: “We’ll try not to let the world end without you, Deaver.”

Stefan frantically dials 911, fearing it might be unsafe to move Deaver himself. With assurances that there's an ambulance on the way, he hangs up and calls Chase, letting her know what's happened. She agrees to round up the troops and meet Deaver and him at the ER.

After a tense wait at the hospital, Owen informs Stefan that Deaver will have to undergo some serious reconstructive surgery, but that he is expected to pull through fine. Intent on the operation, Owen strides away to take care of his patient. As Stefan glowers at the "No Smoking" sign in the waiting area, scoobies quickly assemble.

Chase gets Deaver's personal effects from the hospital staff, and immediately places a call to Giles. He's very concerned to learn of the attack and Deaver's resulting lycanthropy. He tells Chase that he's sending someone to get Deaver and bring him back to England, where they can help him. But the barrier poses an obvious problem. When he's told that Rachel is a witch who helped raise the barrier originally, he claims they should be able to overcome the obstacle temporarily. They arrange to meet up with Giles and his associate at a remote location right at the barrier's edge in approximately 15 hours. Owen emerges from surgery, and Doc is under observation but should be released quickly. Rive stays with him, while the rest of the scoobies go about life as normal, or at least as normal as it gets in a vampire-infested-magical-fishbowl.

The gang assembles at the appointed time and place. On the other side of the barrier, a rental car pulls to a halt and out step Giles and a young redheaded woman. Giles introduces her as Willow, and explains that with Willow on one side of the barrier and Rachel on the other, they can temporarily get past the barrier and pull Willow through - by traveling to a time when it didn't exist. If successful, the spell will take all of them with it. Once Willow is in, they'll eventually bounce back to the present, when they will need to bring Deaver back to the meeting spot and he and Willow will leave much the same way. Willow and Rachel step up to the invisible wall and place their hands at the same level. Willow walks Rachel through the spell (which she hasn't tried before, so she's not sure how this will go), and with blinding white light and a deafening roar bursting out of Willow, she suddenly clasps hands with Rachel and joins the party.

As the blind spots gradually clear, the gang looks around. The road they were standing on, once paved, is now dirt. Discussion kicks up on when they could be and what affect their actions here might have on their own time when the sound of a car engine interrupts them. Everyone scrambles for the bushes and hides just in time to see a classic 1940s sedan come rolling around the bend in the road, windows down and big band blaring. As the car passes them, a flyer escapes through the open window and floats gently down to earth. Chase picks it up and scans it quickly - it's an advertisement to join the armed forces at the newly-opened McKennit recruitment center, which is being graciously housed in the main administrative building on the Phillipi campus. Chase slowly remembers McKennit history, and realizes it must be 1944. On their walk towards town, they figure out that it's May 29, same as it is back in their own time.

They walk into town as evening falls, to the alien sight of a rapidly darkening New England town in wartime. Knowing that they'll eventually land back in the present, they start working their way slowly towards the hospital (where Deaver will eventually be), trying to remain unseen since their clothes stand out quite a bit. As they pass innumerable jeeps and aircraft, Stefan's spidey sense tingles. He sees a group of GIs casually walking and talking in the deep twilight. Two linger towards the back of the knot, and Stefan is pretty sure they're vampires. As he watches them stroll, Geoff and Chase (who are being all cute and friendly again) decide to continue on to the hospital to find some "camouflage" so they can walk around without drawing too much attention. They take off to find clothes for the group, and the others linger. The GIs round a corner, and just as Stefan decides to act, the group hears a scream. Stefan, Rachel, and Nathaniel run around the corner the GIs just passed. Their too late to save the soldiers, but they quickly dust the vampires responsible for the attack. Dragging the bodies out of sight, Nathaniel and Stefan borrow their uniforms and take the case cuffed to one of them. Opening the case reveals a sheaf of photos and documents, all labeled "TOP SECRET: Advanced Unconventional Technology and Soldier Development." The photos are easily recognizable as artifacts and books from Bannon's library. It looks like the military is cataloging the contents of the ENITRE room, page-by-page, piece-by-piece. Memos indicate that the military intends to use the information to aid their research on using supernatural methods to create a "supersoldier."

They all meet up again outside the hospital, Geoff and Chase now sporting immaculate hospital personnel duds and bringing enough spares for those without period clothing. Everyone gets updated on the contents of the case, and Willow is appalled to learn that her last brush with the whole "supersoldier" idiocy wasn't the government's first attempt.

Worried that the motley assortment of GIs, nurses, candy stripers and doctors might still attract unwanted attention, the gang uses the tunnels beneath the town to make their way to Bannon's library to investigate. On the way, the factoid that's been tickling Chase's brain finally makes it to the forefront. If today is May 29, then the recruitment office closes tomorrow. She remembers reading an article about it closing abruptly, no notice, no explanation. Willow can't help wondering aloud if they caused it?

The scooies quietly let themselves into the darkened library. They hear gentle snoring, and peek out of the stacks to see a single soldier, a colonel judging by the uniform, passed out cold with his face in a book. Rachel reads the half-finished letter in the typewriter next to him, and realized that Bannon is directly involved with the top secret operations here and intends to set a trap for these men to get them out of his library and his town. The groups retreats to the tunnel to discuss, only to find themselves eavesdropping when with a loud "TEN-HUT!" the guards enter the room with a general. He shoos the colonel out and dismisses the guard. There's brief silence, and then the familiar voice of Dr. Bannon. They discuss their agreement that Bannon's men will "train" the new special division recruits. There will be fifty of them total, and the general guarantees that they'll have that number by the end of the week - they only need seven more.

Sneaking back out, it's obvious to the heroes that Bannon intends to turn these poor boys. So they decide that since the army only needs seven more recruits and there are six of them, they should infiltrate the last few spots. Willow glamours up the girls to look like all-american male types and they descend on the recruitment office just as it opens with the dawn. The recruiter is elated to have six of them all at once, and sets them to paperwork. He decides they're all bright enough do officer training. He gets them processed and leads them to the barracks, which are housed in one of the campus dorms.

They dawdle some time away before the whole dorm heads down to watch a movie in the common area - one of the ways they're keeping the recruits occupied during their long wait for training to begin.

Once there, they settle in amongst the recruits and watch the flick. As the lights come back on, the general enters the room with Bannon and three vampires. The general announces that their long-awaited training is about to begin, and introduces Dr. Bannon. Bannon explains to the bright-eyed boys that his men will be directing the program, and he leaves the room. Nathaniel notices a gesture he makes at one of his henchmen and as the door closes. The door is barred from the outside with a faint sound as Nathaniel draws and throws an axe at the vampire, who has gone game-faced and is about to attack the general. A fight erupts. Amid the chaos, the scoobies overhear the general muttering with shock that HE wasn't supposed to be a target. The gang dispatches of the three vamps and Stefan takes the general out of the room to have a serious "talk" with him. Luckily for the general, the room starts to warp and fade as bodies around them begin to fast forward through time.

They run for the hospital at full sprint, and arrive just as the present snaps back completely. Owen is out of surgery, and tells them Deaver is doing well. He's comfortable releasing the professor to Geoff's and Chase's care. They wheel the doctor out, explaining where he's going before he slips back into sleep.

Giles is waiting for them at the barrier. Willow, having completed the spell once and having a better understanding of the barrier, takes it down briefly by herself as she slips through with Dr. Deaver. Giles assures them that the professor will be fine, and that he will be coming back to them before the ? the end of all of this. From inside their invisible cage, the gang watches them go.