In the mayor's office, Faith opens a present from Mayor Wilkins.  As she opens it, the mayor reveals an assignment for Faith.  He wants her to pick up a package for him at the airport that is very important to his ascension.  Faith opens the gift to find a beautifully crafted knife inside.  Faith wonders who she's supposed to be knifing, and we cut to Buffy and Angel fighting a couple vamps in the cemetery.  They stake them, and Buffy tells Angel she kind of feels like they're in a rut.  She says he never "takes her anyplace new" anymore, and Angel  wonders about the Fire Demon's nest in the cave on the beach.  "I thought that was a nice change of pace".  Buffy worries that this is going to be their whole future.  They hear a snarl in the distance.  At home, Joyce has discovered that Buffy was accepted to North Western University.  She's really excited that Buffy has so many choices.  At school the next day, Snyder tries to bust a couple kids for drug smuggling, only to discover that it's just their lunch.  Meanwhile, Buffy reflects to Willow and Oz how she can't go away to school anywhere other than in Sunnydale, because her duties are there.  Willow has been accepted to Oxford, among other places, and Xander's gonna be doing the whole "backpacking across America" routine over his summer.  Cordelia comes by to insult him, and insults Buffy too by saying that she has no future other than slaying.  Buffy goes off the deep end, and goes to tell Wesley that she wants to go away to college somewhere that's not on the Hellmouth.  Wesley forbids it, and Buffy comes up with the counter offer of taking the fight to Mayor Wilkins.  She hopes that if she can get him out of the way, stop this whole ascension thing, and capture Faith, that they should have no reason to make her stay when she can just come back over breaks to keep fighting evil (I'm no slayer, but does this sound like a bit much on one person's plate to you?).  Giles agrees with Buffy. That night at the Airport, Faith receives the package from the courier as he gets off the plane.  She then kills him so she won't have to pay him the money for it.  She brings the box back to City Hall, where Buffy watches from the bushes.  In the office, The mayor is pleased that Faith took the initiative at killing the courier, and tells her that even if Buffy Summers walked into the office declaring that she wanted to be on his side, Wilkins wouldn't even think of it, because Faith is more than enough slayer for him.  Faith seems to get a little touchy after he mentions the B-word, and says that she is SO over the whole 'Buffy and Angel' thing.  In reality, we pick up that she's a little sore still that they played her, and that Faith couldn't shake Angel's relationship with Buffy.  Outside, Buffy interrogates the limo driver that dropped Faith off at City Hall.  She goes back to the library and tells the gang that the box is necessary for the mayor's ascension.  That he needs to 'chow down' on what's inside it.  Wesley is peeved when the gang falls into its pattern, making a plan to break into City Hall and steal the box, and don't include him.  He's all whiny because they're not respecting his authority.  They don't care.  As Xander's out getting ingredients for the spell they'll need to use to destroy the box, he passes by a shop where he sees Cordelia inside looking at an expensive dress.  He goes inside to tell her he doesn't think she got accepted to any schools, and Cordelia flaunts several really good ones in his face by showing him the admittance letters.  Xander leaves, and Cordelia looks kind of upset.  That night, the gang implements their plan.  Buffy, Willow and Angel climb the fire escape on the side of the building to reach the top.  Oz and Xander meet up in the library with the ingredients and get to work.  On the roof over the mayor's office, Angel lifts a window in the skylight.  Willow performs a spell and gets rid of the force protecting the box in the room below.  She then heads back down the fire escape and Angel lowers Buffy into the room by way of a pulley system (think Mission Impossible here).  Suspended over the table in the center of the room, she grabs the box and an alarm goes off.  Trying to pull her back up, Angel discovers that the pulley's jammed.  He jumps down into the room when two vamps burst in and see Buffy standing there on top of the table holding the box.  He fights them, and Buffy unhooks herself from the lowering harness.  They all fight for awhile, and Buffy and Angel escape with the box out the door.  They run outside and jump into the bushes.  Wesley and Giles, in a black van, squeal by the front door just as the vamps are coming out, and the vamps chase the van, thinking that it's Angel and Buffy with the box.  Angel and Buffy escape.  Back in the office, the mayor is pissed that they took his box, but feels better when Faith shows up with Willow as a hostage.  Back at the library, the gang realizes the bad guys must have grabbed Willow when she went back down the fire escape.  Buffy proposes that they trade the box for Willow.  Everyone's for it, except for Wesley.  A huge argument ensues, and Oz wordlessly stands up, goes over to the pedestal, and knocks it flying across the room.  In the silence after his action, he looks at Buffy, and she tells Giles to make the call.  Locked in a storage room, Willow tries ineffectually to break out.   Drawn by the noise, the vampire on guard of her room comes in and threatens her.  Just before he's about to bite her, Willow stakes him by floating a pencil up behind him and plunging it into his back.  She runs out of the room, and eventually makes her way to the mayor's office.  Opening up his liquor cabinet, she sees all of the voodoo looking magic stuff, and starts to go through it.  Finding the books of ascension, she forgets all about escape as she reads them.  After some time, Faith comes in and finds her........almost threatening to kill her before the mayor comes in.  He tells them about Giles's call, proposing a trade.  In the school cafeteria, the gang realizes that the mayor's coming when the power's cut and the lights go out.  The mayor, Faith, Willow and some vamps come in, and the mayor gets a look at Buffy for the first time.  He goads Angel and Buffy with the reality of their relationship together, saying that it can never go anywhere.  He plays heavily on Angel's morality, reminding him of his immortality, and the fact that Buffy will grow old and die.  How Angel could never join Buffy in the light, so he'd have to keep her in the shadows too, and asks him if that's fair to Buffy.   He asks him if that's what Angel came back from Hell for; if that was his greater purpose? He then tells them to make the trade, which they do.  Everything goes fine until Principal Snyder and some cops show up, thinking that this is a drug smuggle or something.  Snyder realizes that the mayor is there, and starts to apologize until one of the cops manages to open the box out of curiosity, and is attacked by a black spider looking thing from inside.  It sucks his face (Aliens, anyone?) and kills him.  It then attacks the mayor, but Faith grabs it off of him and throws it into the corner.  By the dead cop, another spider crawls out of the partially open box.  Buffy closes it just as another one starts to emerge.  One of the free ones lands on her back, and she squishes it by landing on it on the ground.  Angel helps her up as the mayor's face heals from the wounds inflicted from the spider.  The second spider crawls up the wall behind Wesley, and Faith throws her new knife at it, impaling it to the wall.  The mayor commands Faith to come with him, and she leaves after looking longingly at her knife in the wall.  A dazed Snyder asks them why they couldn't just be doing drugs, like normal people, and he also leaves.  Buffy retrieves Faith's knife.  Back at the library, Giles is astounded to learn that Willow had her hands on the Books of Ascension, and is disappointed that she wasn't able to make any more out of what she saw than a few lines.....until she produces several pages that she ripped out of the books.  Giles, looking like he just got his best Christmas present ever, runs into his office with them.  Wesley snidely remarks that he hopes there's SOMETHING useful on the pages, as they are now back where they started.  Outside later, Buffy tells Willow that she's never gonna get out of Sunnydale because there's always going to be SOME crisis.  Willow informs Buffy that she's also going to be going to college in Sunnydale, and Buffy is ecstatic, even though she doesn't want Willow to stay just because of her.  Willow says it's not just because of her....Willow realizes now that this is what she wants to do.....fight evil, and help people.  She also says there's not many better places to learn more about her Wiccan possibilities than a Hellmouth.  Cut to the dress shop, where Cordelia is once again admiring the expensive silvery gray dress.  She's interrupted by her boss, who tells her that her break is over, and she needs to go sweep out the storage room.  Apparently, she works there.  In the cemetery that night, Buffy and Angel sit on a blanket against a headstone and Buffy talks with a lighter heart about her future.  She then says that the Mayor didn't know what he was talking about when it came to Buffy and Angel.  They tell each other that they'll be okay, but they both look like they're thinking about the truth of what he said.  FLAWS:     When Faith kills the guy with the box at the airport, the vampire driver looks a little squeamish.  Even more so when Faith starts to cut through the guy's hand to get the box un-handcuffed from him.  What vampire do YOU know that's all squeamish at the sight of violence and blood? Also, the skylight in the roof of City Hall looks a LOT like the one in the roof over the library that we saw when Buffy and the Master were fighting in "Prophecy Girl".  Recycle sets much, Joss? THOUGHTS ON THE EPISODE:            Not a bad episode.  Faith is definitely on the Mayor's side by this time, and everyone knows it.  Cordelia and Xander pretty much exist just to hate each other again, and we learn that for some reason, Cordelia is actually working.  The mayor brings up some very heavy truths about Buffy and Angel's relationship, laying the groundwork for "The Prom".   One thing that occurred to me here, when watching the scene where the mayor calls Angel selfish for holding Buffy back from her life:  In this, and from my own life, I know that when love is involved, you're willing to make a lot of sacrifices.  Things that you would normally consider a big deal, and suddenly mean nothing if it means that your love will endure without it.  I think Buffy and Angel could have made it work.  More than that, I think that Buffy and Angel were destined to be together.  But because of the things that they could have otherwise lived without, they're now doomed to break up.  I hate that.  No other point, just that I hate it.  I did love Buffy telling Wesley that she wanted to go to school somewhere else.  Giles almost started to just side with Wesley, then when Buffy tells him that she got into North Western you can see his whole demeanor change.  It becomes much less Watcher, and more fatherly pride as he congratulates her.  BEST LINE:   Buffy, after hearing that Willow has a chance to go to Oxford, says:  "That's where they make Giles's!" Also when Xander and Oz are in the library about to throw the ingredients together for the box-destroying spell, Xander wonders how they're gonna know what they're doing.  Oz tells him that Willow laid it out for them pretty well: Xander:  "Wow, she even made a helpful diagram! There's the pedestal." Oz:  "Yeah, and the ingredients.  And us.  See there's you, and there's me." Xander:  "Well how do you know which one's which?  I mean they both look kind of look stick figurey to me." Oz:  "Well this one's me.....see the little guitar?"

:"Choices"