Airdate: April 23rd, 2003.

Guest Starring:
Gina Torres
Avery Kidd Waddell
Michah Henson
Jeff Rickets

Written by: Ben Edlun
Directed by: David Straiton

Teaser

Keeping on the heels of the last episode, Connor rats out Angel & Co.’s (Wes, Gunn, Fred and Lorne) location. Angel is quickly trying to convince Connor that Jasmine is controlling him. Connor tells him that he’s wrong about everything, and they’ll tear him up. Angel slams the door as Jasmine followers approach. Angel holds them off while the others flee via the fire escape. Connor is pounding furiously on the door; he’s found a place where he belongs he say. Angel smashes through the door and beats Connor senselessly, as the followers pick up shards of the broken door.

Wes drives Angel’s car to the rear of the building, waiting for him when Connor smashes on the hood, like a bug on a windshield, followed by Angel, who tosses him aside. He climbs in, they back out of the alley as dozens of Jasmine followers pour out, followed by Jasmine herself

ACT I

The AI team, driving away, is listening to the radio as the mayor declares Los Angeles the first Citadel of Jasmine, and the Archdiocese has removed all “false idols” and replaced them with images of “She who walks among us.” This only further depresses the A.I. team, and they have no resources and little gas.

Connor is regaining consciousness in Jasmine’s suite as she eats a few more loyal subjects. She’s indescribable to him. She waves a hand above his bruised and bloodied face and chest, the wounds disappear. She tells him he has nothing to fear from Angel and the gang; her followers are many, while his are alone. She’s growing closer to her followers; feeling what they feel, seeing what they see, they are an extension of her.

Wesley stops the car near a gas station. Several customers are there, but not as many as the last three gas stations they visited. They need gas to get out of the city and escape Jasmine’s sphere of influence, warn people and maybe prepare some form of defence. Angel reminds them that while these people are only under her influence, the group’s survival comes first. Jump to Gunn punching a guy at the pump and Wesley pulling the car in. Angel steps out saying he doesn’t want to hurt anyone. A Jasmine follower, in her voice, says that he is hurting her, just by being there. Angel & Co. fight those who approach them be it homeless man or soccer mom. They can’t outrun her love she says; the city and its tools are hers. They scramble back into the car and speed off, pursued by LAPD cruisers. Jasmine laughs.

A bit later they stop in an alleyway, temporarily having eluded the police, but all its resources are bent on finding them. They go underground, leaving the cops to find an empty vehicle. It won’t take them long to figure out where they went but Angel knows these tunnels better than anyone under her control, so it should buy them some time. But Angel doesn’t have a plan, not against something this size. Fred’s aghast that they forgot about Cordelia, Angel promptly tells her to forget about Cordy, they don’t have a choice. As they keep moving we see they’ve been spotted by…something.

Connor is sitting at Cordy’s bedside when Jasmine comes in. She knows it was them who cut her. She manipulates him further with carefully chosen words, about how they stole her precious blood for their deceitful, cowardly magic. Connor leaves when she wants to be alone with Cordy.

As Angel leads them deeper in the sewer maze he overhears Lorne and Fred’s conversation about him being heartless. “Hearts get in the way,” he says, if they don’t get rid of those kinds of emotions then they’ll lose. They all miss Jasmine, knowing what was right and doing it for her. Fred reminisces on how she chose Jasmine’s name and that sets something off in Wesley: a being as old at her that doesn’t have a name is odd to say the least. Just then the floor collapses under Wesley and Angel, Gunn grabbing hold of Wes before he can fall through. Angel is alive and unhurt on the floor below, and from his point of view we hear rushing and a suddenly he’s staring a long sharp pike held by a kid.

ACT II

The A.I. team is surrounded by a group of rag-tag teens and kids with makeshift weapons. Angel leaps out of the hole and the A.I. team quickly seizes control of the situation. By their lack of fighting coordination, they aren’t under Jasmine’s control. One of the attackers, Randall, recognizes Gunn, he did steal Gunn’s ride a few years back. They hear a deep growl, “It’s back”

At the hotel, Connor returns to Cordy’s room to find Jasmine, alone, the body gone. Cordy’s blood is dangerous to them, Jasmine says, it could spread the hate. Both Connor and Cordy are where Jasmine wants them to be.

The kid gang leads the A.I. team to their hideout, locking the only access point. Angel meanwhile checks the other access points. Randall’s older brother soldiered Gunn’s crew before he split off. The runaways don’t know what’s after them, but it’s like nothing they’ve ever seen before. Two weeks they’ve been down there and a week ago that new creature moved in taking one of their friends. They were going to kill it. Fred says it weird that they ran into each other, they are, were, professional monster killers. Angel says they still are and picks up a machete, it’s time his team got professional.

Back at Jasmine’s suite, she informs Connor that the police can’t find Angel and his team. Connor wants to track Angel; Jasmine says soon, he’ll have all of her strength behind her. She also tells him that the Governor of California is dissolving his cabinet, the State answers to her now. She will free people of their loneliness, the empty horror of their lives. Connor is sure of that. She plans to have them live in a palace built by billons of her love, that will outshine anything ever created, and they’ll be a family again, forever. She finally notices he’s not smiling. He hasn’t surrendered himself completely to her. He wants to. It’s his pain, she deduces, that he hasn’t surrendered. It has been his constant companion. She wants it, everything he is. She digs in the palm of his hand. And removes it, revealing the blood where her nails were on his palm, and on hers, the wounds on her hand healing.

The A.I team and the runaways are tracking the creature, Angel just wants to strike back, at anything. They get to the spot where the last person was taken, and Randall is grabbed up a shaft. Angel jumps after him, Randall falls on the ground. We hear fighting and Angel drops in front of Matthew, vamped out. Matthew runs, Gunn and Fred go after him. The creature has taken Wes, in the confusion. He’s thrown on a wall by this quadrupod (humanoid torso with big spider like leg-claws and claws) demon. The quadrupod says they loved her first.

ACT III

Angel is read to fund this thing alone which seems to know these tunnels better than he does, but the other point their spears and pike at him.

Wesley is trying to appease the creature until he realizes that “she” refers to Jasmine. That gets the creature’s attention, he calls her the devourer, the song, the piece, the whole. He drops piece of flesh and goes back to his grotesque Shrine of Flesh: they define love in sacrifice.

Gunn and Fred are looking for Matthew, Gunn generally feeling sorry for himself, and hopes they get the kid before he reaches topside. Fred tells him it’s not enough to survive, they have to fight for more than an uncaring world full of empty shells. Gunn blurts out that it was easy for her to turn off her feelings when they killed a man. She did what she had to then, but she feels every moment of it, it still eats her up and she’d rather take that than being an empty shell. They go back looking for the kid.

The rest of the runaways don’t want to hear what Angel and Lorne have to say. Angel won’t justify his existence to them, he wouldn’t be able to. He doesn’t blame them for feeling what they feel. But he could easily disarm them without breaking a sweat. They hesitate.

Fred and Gunn reach the surface to a vacant field reach the empty street and keep looking.

While the creature is working on its shrine, Wesley starts asking questions; the creature is from another, older, world. Wes is looking at the creature’s key (a crystal ball with metallic covering), but the demon world’s air would burn his lungs. He’s preparing a spell, flesh magic, older than words. The demon tells him there’s only one word she cares about, Wesley presses on: what word? The creature remains silent and resumes work on his flesh spell, which includes a vamp. The creature is perplexed at why the vamp won’t die; the vamp is so disgusted he just wants to be staked. The creature tears out the vamp’s tongue and pitches it to Wes. Wes tells him that he can’t kill a vampire that way, the creature makes the connection: it’s the same kind of demon that hurt him in the tunnels earlier. Wes tells it that vamp’s name is Angel. The creature surmises that that’s why they are so weak: too many know their names. Wesley understands: that’s what Jasmine gives importance to, the beast scuttles to Wesley repeating to “Shut!”

Gunn and Fred find Matthew in an alley, they don’t want to hurt him. He’s in shock; he didn’t know the sun came back out. They try telling him that Angel is a good guy, Matthew won’t listen, he starts screaming, and Gunn knocks him unconscious. Fred’s appalled.

Wesley’s connecting the dots while the creature refuses to listen. Her name has power over her, it prevents her from choosing one of her own; someone had to give it for her. The demon hits Wesley. It answers that the High Priest keeps the name he’s just the messenger from the ones who truly loved her. He’s about to kill Wesley when Angel shows up, and attacks the Messenger.

Lorne is demonstrating the pain of harsh words when Gunn and Fred return carrying Matthew. Randall doesn’t like what he sees, Gunn sidesteps on what happened to the boy. Gunn finally shoots that there’s a whole new world of bad topside that they don’t know about, they did what they had to. Matthew wakes up, laughing, laughing in Jasmine’s voice: “I see you.” She teases the runaways, saying that they hit the boy again and again. Fred, Gunn and Lorne sprint out as Jasmine-voice asks Randall if he would like to kill Gunn and the others. He does. The trio meanwhile walk away with a purpose when several flashlights shine on them: National Guardsmen, led by Connor, and in Jasmine’s voice mocks them.

ACT IV

Angel is fighting the Messenger, thrown about, impaled on the big creature’s claws. He slides off, brakes piece of the claw, and the machete is thrown away. Wesley hits it with a pipe and is knocked aside. Angel stabs its neck with the broken claw, the Messenger falls. Wesley brings Angel the key, where they can reach the world where Jasmine was worshiped for millennia. It’s their first big break. Meanwhile Gunn, Fred and Lore are running from the Guardsmen. Wes is trying to figure out how the key works, since there’s no mechanism or inscriptions on it. Angel feels Connor’s presence nearby, Connor and Jasmine feels his.

The trio find Angel and Wes, they lock the door behind them, barricading it with their weight. Wes goes on a hunch, not word but flesh, and daps some forehead sweat on the key, it lights up, and opens a vortex. Angel is the only one who can go, who won’t be affected by that world’s atmosphere. Wes adds his weight to the door. Angel can’t leave but is reminded by Fred that: “hearts get in the way.” Wes tosses him the key and Angel steps through the vortex, it vanishes after him. They back away from the door as Connor kicks it down. They fight Connor and the Guardsmen with blunt objects, but the AI team is hopelessly outnumbered. Jasmine, at the hotel, feels every blow, every cut, and they heal instantly. She laughs maniacally.

Angel portals in on a cliff in an alien landscape. There’s an odd hue to the air, jagged cliffs and bridges in the horizon. He’s approached by many creatures like the messengers. “Oh hell.”

Summary by Dannyboy