FRED: Hey, here's something. Maybe I can—

(Fred jumps, startled, as a cross-dimensional portal opens up right behind her. Angel arrives, hauling Skip)

FRED: —have an embolism!

WESLEY: What happened?

ANGEL: We had words.

LORNE: Between the pummeling?

ANGEL: Whatever's happened to Cordy, he's a part of it. We need to bind him to this dimension. (pointedly) Before he wakes up would be nice.

(...)

SKIP: (mystically bound) Sand of the red palm. A child's trick.

GUNN: Then why don't you come out and play.

SKIP: In time.

ANGEL: You'll have a lot of that after we make your accommodations a little bit more permanent. Fred?

FRED: Sphere of the Infinite Agonies. Every second a lifetime. Should be able to whip one up in, um... twenty minutes.

ANGEL: Everything you know or she starts whipping.

SKIP: Hey. Whoa. I'm just a merc. I go where the deal is and not getting stuck in one of those? Bargain. (beat) Anybody got a cig?

ANGEL: Cordelia. Where is she?

SKIP: I don't know. This is your dimension, man, you tell me.

ANGEL: The real Cordelia. Not this thing that's been posing as her.

SKIP: How'd I ever get spanked by such a chump nut. That thing which has turned your life into a burning ring of fire? She is the real Cordelia. (beat) Or at least she's in there somewhere. This whole thing...

GUNN: Is it Cordy or not?

SKIP: Oh, it's her. She just ain't driving.

ANGEL: Something took control of her on the higher plane?

SKIP: Drill a little deeper, Hoss. How you think she got there in the first place?

WESLEY: You're saying her ascension was all part of this thing's plan?

SKIP: No, Cordelia was chosen to become a higher being because she's such a pure, radiant saint. (scoffs) Puh-lease.

(...)

SKIP: You really think it matters? I mean, nothing I tell you is gonna change what's gonna happen.

ANGEL: Cut the gloom and doom. What's taken over Cordy?

SKIP: Something beyond your comprehension. To give it voice would rend your feeble brain into a quivering mass of—

ANGEL: Fred, infinite agony.

SKIP: OK, you got me. It doesn't even have a name.

GUNN: Then what do you call it?

SKIP: Oh, Master or Hey.

LORNE: Unspeakable horror for real this time.

ANGEL: Ah, it doesn't make sense. Cordy was made a higher being because she proved herself to the Powers by bearing their visions. This thing couldn't have—

WESLEY: Unless it maneuvered her to inherit the visions in the first place.

SKIP: Uh, oh. Better step on it. The rubes are catching up.

ANGEL: It wasn't just her ascension. Everything that's happened to Cordy in the past few years—all of it—was planned.

SKIP: You really think it stops with her, amigo? You have any concept of how many lines have to intersect in order for a thing like this to play out? How many events have to be nudged in just the right direction? (looks at Lorne) Leaving Pylea. (looks at Gunn) Your sister. (looks at Fred) Opening the wrong book. (looks at Wesley) Sleeping with the enemy. (beat) Gosh, (chuckles) I love a story with scope.

GUNN: No way. We make our own choices.

SKIP: Yeah, sure. Cheese sandwich here, uh, when to floss. But the big stuff, like two vampires squeezing out a kid?

ANGEL: Connor.

WESLEY: An impossible birth to make one possible.

SKIP: That's what the kid was designed for.

LORNE: To sleep with mother love?

ANGEL: To create a vessel.

SKIP: Look out. The monkey's thinking again.

ANGEL: Being inside a human makes it vulnerable, doesn't it? That's why it had to stay hidden. Why it needed to create something stronger to pour itself into.

GUNN: Wait. So the big nasty inside of Cordy is going to give birth... to itself?

SKIP: Circle of life. It's a beautiful thing.

ANGEL: How do we stop it?

SKIP: That's the easy part, slick. All you gotta do is find Cordelia and chop her head off.

ANGEL: Has to be another way.

SKIP: Sure. Stab her in the heart, kidney, couple pokes in the lung—

ANGEL: A way that won't kill Cordy in the process.

SKIP: Takes a whole lot of cramming to get that much sweetness into a human. It's in every hair, every cell, every molecule of Cordelia's body and it ain't letting go 'til it got a brand new bag.

FRED: What happens to Cordy then?

SKIP: Drained of her life force during labor. Those contractions are a real bitch.

ANGEL: It'll kill her?

SKIP: Or she'll end up a head of cabbage.

WESLEY: What do you wanna do?

SKIP: The only thing you can do. Kill the woman he loves to save the world. Times like this? Really gotta suck being you.

ANGEL: How do I find her? (Skip doesn't answer; Angel walks forward intimidatingly) How?

SKIP: Well, I'd go with the Bu'shundi ritual but, uh, you're gonna need a sacred Hutamin paw for that—

LORNE: Got it.

SKIP: (disconcerted) What?

LORNE: Cordy—the real Cordy—kept one in her desk drawer.

SKIP: Probably a knock-off. It's not some trinket you'd throw in a desk drawer—

LORNE: She thought it was a back scratcher.

ANGEL: Get started.

SKIP: Wait, wait. Uh, did I say Bu'shundi ? I meant Ru'shundi . It's—it—whole different— Crap.

• The Beast, the Beast's Master, Jasmine, etc

written by: Steven S. DeKnight; Original transcript by CariCranberry. Edited and formatted for this site by me.. Full transcript at:
http://www.buffyworld.com/angel/season4/transcripts/83_tran.php