16. Storyteller

Complete story — includes the ending

Andrew records his own melodramatic documentary of Buffy's fight against evil, interviewing the household and quietly distorting events to flatter himself. At school, Buffy finds chaos, including a fight, a girl turning invisible from unpopularity, and Principal Wood injured by a thrown rock; while bandaging him, she connects the disturbances to the newly uncovered Seal of Danzalthar in the basement, and when Wood gets close to it he is briefly possessed, taunting her over Spike before being pulled free with no memory of it. Back home, Andrew's interviews push Xander and Anya to confront their feelings for each other, before Wood and Buffy recruit him to help close the seal. A forced memory reveals the knife the First had wanted him to use on Jonathan, and the group heads to the rioting school, where Spike and Wood hold the stairs while Buffy and Andrew fight through to the basement. There, Buffy kills the newly self-blinded Bringers, then tells Andrew that his blood is needed to close the seal since he was the one who opened it; as he breaks down confessing his guilt over killing Jonathan, she reveals that it was actually his tears, not blood, that closed the seal, and that she never meant to kill him, leaving his question about whether she would have unanswered. Alone in the bathroom again, a chastened Andrew tells the camera he probably deserves to die, then switches it off.