The Freshman

July 22, 1999 (White)

Written by: Joss Whedon

EXT. GRAVEYARD - NIGHT - (NIGHT ONE)

Amidst the creepy headstones we find Buffy and Willow. Willow sits leaning against a stone, pouring over a UC Sunnydale course book, trying to choose courses for Buffy. Buffy stands, paces a bit, restless and a little unsettled by the thought of college.

Propped up on the headstone are a couple of crossbows. Stakes and crosses also lie about. Just behind Willow is a fresh grave.

She looks out in the night as she says this. From her attitude, she could be talking slaying.

She scurries down next to Willow, looks with her.

ANGLE: FROM JUST ABOVE THE GRAVE

As the girls talk, their backs more or less to us, a HAND shoots out of the grave in foreground.

A vampire starts clawing his way out of the grave. Neither girl sees.

As they continue to talk, the vampire pulls himself out of the grave and stands behind them. He approaches, grinning hideously.

He sees the crossbows and whatnot. Stops, considering whether it's worth the fight. Still neither girl notices.

The vampire has, by this time, wandered off. Buffy looks back at the grave...

BLACK OUT.

EXT. CAMPUS - DAY - (DAY TWO)

CLOSE ON: Buffy. Looking about, her orientation package clutched to her breast. Just a bit overwhelmed.

WIDER ANGLE: As well she might be. THE CAMPUS is a milling cacophony of students, shouting, greeting each other, running around, protesting this, leafleting about that, being college students. In the midst of it all, Buffy looks just about as small as she feels.

The voice of a STUDENT VOLUNTEER rings out to one side - Buffy turns to hear, or mostly hear:

Buffy, having caught most of this over the general noise, looks for her folder. There is a green thing that might be it, but no yellow. She looks about her for some guidance, but there's none, and she finally trudges in the general direction of where the student volunteer pointed.

To the other side, she sees a protest in progress, twenty or so kids and a guy and a girl - both alt-rock hippy types, both pretty pissed off about something. Behind them, an amateurishly painted banner that reads: IT HAS TO STOP! The girl shouts into a megaphone:

Twenty kids respond with twenty different answers, all rendered unintelligible in the din.

Buffy tries to get through the back of the crowd, is suddenly handed a leaflet as she clears. The earnest fellow - dark, wearing a turban - foists it upon her with:

She gets a few more paces and a conservative young woman hands her another leaflet.

She is trying to keep going, but this is getting to be too much. Her third leaflet comes from an exceptionally nonserious guy.

ANGLE: WILLLOW comes bounding down to meet Buffy. Her hand is also full of leaflets and folders, but unlike Buffy, she's in heaven.

They fall into step together.

Buffy hands over all of them, which Willow happily takes.

She refers to OZ, who wanders down to greet them.

Kissage from Will and Oz, not entirely of the G-rating.

Kissage over now.

He turns to Buffy, tries to find common ground.

INT. LIBRARY FOYER/STAIRS/LIBRARY - A BIT LATER (DAY)

The girls enter, looking for:

They walk across the foyer and up the stairs.

They've entered. The library is not exactly like their old high school haunt. It's somewhat more unbelievably gigantoid. Willow is clearly as excited by it as Buffy is unnerved.

Someone shushes them.

She takes off with manic glee, leaving Buffy to look about her with somewhat less.

INT. STUDENT STORE - DAY

Buffy makes her way through the shelves of books, a bunch stacked in her arms. There is chaos here as well - it's thick with students.

Willow joins her with a basket.

Buffy gratefully dumps her books on top of Willow's.

She has found their psych textbooks. They are up high, too high for Willow to reach with her burden.

She stretches...

She grabs the bottom most one - it sticks out - and pulls, causing the whole pile on top to tumble off the shelf and on to the head of a kneeling student.

He stands, shaking his head. RILEY FINN is a junior, tall and good looking, with an open, honest face. He smiles wryly at the diminutive pair.

She scrambles to pick them up. He kneels.

He sticks a few books on a lower shelf.

Before Buffy can work out what went wrong with that sentence, Willow continues.

The three of them start off together.

Riley smiles politely at this lamest of comments. Buffy trails behind the other two, awed by her own ineptitude.

INT. BUFFY'S DORM ROOM/HALL OUTSIDE - DUSK

Buffy makes her way through yet more students to get to hr room. She enters to find her new roomie, KATHY, setting up her side of the room.

As she continues to talk Kathy puts up a Backstreet Boys poster.

INT. BUFFY'S DORM ROOM - NIGHT - (NIGHT TWO)

Lights are out. It's two thirty in the morning. Buffy lies wide awake.

Kathy sleeps soundly, making smacking noises with her lips, plus the occasional snore and mutter. Superfun.

EXT. CAMPUS - DAY - (DAY THREE)

To establish. Students head for classes.

INT. LECTURE HALL - DAY

It's a large classroom. Like huge, and packed with students. Buffy takes a seat near the back as Professor RIEGERT talks. He is a charismatic, eccentric figure with a fairly booming voice.

The students laugh. Buffy turns to the students next to her and whispers:

Buffy stops, looks around her.

Buffy does, meekly.

Some titters.

Buffy leaves, too ashamed and hurt to speak.

INT. HALL/LECTURE HALL - DAY

Buffy glumly makes her way down the hall to her next class. She pauses, not sure where she is, as Riley comes up from nearby.

They walk a bit.

They have entered the class.

She turns to see Willow waving for Buffy to sit with her and Oz. As Buffy takes her seat, Professor MAGGIE WALSH sweeps into the room. She is a down to earth, likable woman in her fifties. As smart as she is strong willed. She peers at her students a moment as they quiet down.

Some laughs. Buffy is too twitchy to laugh herself. She realizes she's in for some tough sledding here.

EXT. PATH IN WOODS ON CAMPUS - NIGHT - (NIGHT THREE)

Buffy walks. She stops, looks around her. The end of a perfect day: she's lost.

Frustrated, she continues. Looking about her for a signpost or anything, she suddenly bumps (MUSICAL STING) into the innocuous figure of EDDIE.

She jumps back, startled, as does he.

She comes next to him and looks at the map.

She points.

They start walking.

They have come to the bike path. They stop and Buffy hands Eddie the map.

They part ways, both somewhat reassured by the encounter. Camera follows Eddie as he walks away, then turns back to look at the departing figure of Buffy. Possible crush formation.

He turns around and bumps into someone else.

She's about the age of a senior, and has been for more than thirty years. Face very white, lips very red, attitude very dangerous. Punked out, schoolgirl style, and flanked by three big vamps. Her name is SUNDAY, and she leers at little Eddie with predatory glee.

As Eddie steps back, terrified...

BLACK OUT.

INT. EDDIE'S DORM ROOM - NIGHT

It's a single, empty and dark. Suddenly the four vampires who were with Sunday SWEEP in, two with boxes. The four of them instantly start packing up the place. Two fill boxes, one throws stuff on the bed, one pulls down the posters. We

TIME CUT to a minute later as they are finishing. The guy who threw the stuff on the bed pulls the blanket up around it and ties it into a bundle. Hoists it as they go.

Poster guy has been scribbling something. He is the last to go, dropping it on the now bare bed as they file out. A note, on a single piece of loose-leaf.

INT. LECTURE HALL - DAY - (DAY FOUR)

The class is filing out. Maggie and Riley confer at her desk as Buffy cranes to find Eddie.

Buffy is distracted as she says it. Where is Eddie?

INT. EDDIE'S DORM ROOM/HALL OUTSIDE - DAY

Buffy is entering Eddie's room as his R.A. talks to her.

He wanders off. Buffy looks about at the empty room, feeling pretty weak herself. She sits on the bed.

Something catches her eye. She leans over to the bedside table, reaches into the drawer.

She pulls out Eddie's copy of Of Human Bondage. Turns it over in her hand, suspicion growing on her face.

INT. ABANDONED FRAT - DAY

ANGLE: EDDIE

Lies dead in the corner. A vampire passes him, taking us across the room.

The place is somewhat trashed, artsy murals and graffiti on the peeling walls. Piles of stuff taken from years of Freshmen rooms. That rock and roll music the kids are listening to nowadays blasts from a box.

At one end of the great hall sits Sunday, going through Eddie's CD's.

She is answered by DAV, another girl vamp and basic Sunday wannabe, who is trying on one of Eddie's sweaters.

ROOKIE is male, and basically a stoner in vampface. (They are all in vampface except Sunday.) (And just for the record, there's another vamp: Tom. He won't speak.)

Rookie holds a rolled up poster.

He unrolls the poster -- it is indeed the Klimt painting of a kiss.

He crosses to a wall that is plastered with posters -- Klimt kisses on one side, Monet water lilies on the other. In between is a small dry erase message board with totals tallied up.

He sticks up the poster with a staple gun, marks the addition on the board.

She goes Vampface --

Shakes it off.

And as she says it, the camera races back to dead Eddie, as his eyes suddenly snap open.

INT. GILES' APARTMENT - DAY

The door is slightly ajar, so Buffy swings it open, calling:

There is no answer. Music plays, a Van Morrison album that perhaps has drowned her out. She enters, looking up towards the bed area, and so does not notice OLIVIA in the kitchen until she actually speaks.

Buffy turns as Olivia emerges from the kitchen, wedge in hand.

She is fairly striking, black, somewhat younger than Giles but old enough to see Buffy as nothing more than a child. She wears an oxford shirt that may well be Giles', and as far as we can see, nothing else.

The two women regard each other, surprise on both sides.

Olivia smiles at that.

Giles emerges from the back room, wearing a dressing gown over his clothes -- elegant, but decidedly casual.

She exists into the back.

She exits. Giles looks after her, concerned, as Olivia enters the room more fully dressed.

EXT. CAMPUS - NIGHT (NIGHT FOUR)

Buffy is dressed for hunting, but there are quite a few people out. She wanders a bit, brow furrowed.

She stops, sees:

ANGLE: EDDIE

Off in the distance. He seems to spot her --

--and then takes off. Buffy gives chase.

EXT. ANOTHER, MORE SECLUDED PART OF CAMPUS - MOMENTS LATER

Buffy turns a corner, easily catching up with Eddie.

This last because she has spun him around and been confronted by a grinning vampface.

He lunges for her. She easily throws him, whipping out a stake.

He rises slowly, a new appraisal of the girl in his eyes. He charges her again -- she dusts him easily. Buffy looks down at his ashes, alone.

Except for the five vamps who step out of the shadows, surrounding her. Sunday is directly behind, and it is she who guesses first.

Buffy spins.

She just can't keep the boredom out of her voice.

She's putting on an act -- she's actually unnerved by the odds here. And Sunday can smell it.

Buffy looks down at her outfit, genuinely concerned -- and looks back up to Sunday's fist smashing her face.

Buffy flies back, hits the ground. She scrambles back up but Sunday is on her, easily dominating with rain of well placed blows.

A SLAMMING fist to the face --

Buffy comes back, gets a couple of good shots in -- then Sunday grabs her arm and pulls it out, slams her hand on it. We hear something splinter and Buffy SCREAMS. Another blow and she drops to her knees, holding her useless left arm.

Kick to the face. Buffy rolls away, comes up breathing hard. Bloodied and broken.

Sunday is all glee, waiting for Buffy's move.

Buffy turns and runs away.

The other vampires start to give chase, but quit pretty quickly.

ANGLE: ON CAMPUS

Clear of the vampires, Buffy continues running for her life. Terrified, defeated.

ANGLE: SUNDAY

Watches with utter contempt the place where Buffy fled.

BLACK OUT.

INT. BUFFY'S DORM ROOM - NIGHT

Kathy lies sleeping, occasionally snorting and making teethgrindy noises.

Buffy s sitting on her bed, tending her wounds. Her left arm is clearly in a lot of pain -- she flexes it and winces, settling it gently in her lap. She looks out the window, saying nothing.

EXT. CAMPUS - DAY - (DAY FIVE)

Buffy walks slowly. She sees Willow and Oz across the quad. A moment's hesitation. She puts her hand to her bruised cheek.

She takes off, making sure they don't see her.

INT. ABANDONED FRAT - DAY

LAUGHTER fills the hall, as the vampires sit around discussing the fight with Buffy.

INT. BUFFY'S KITCHEN - DAY

Buffy enters through the back.

There is no reply. Buffy moves through the kitchen, looking at everything, taking comfort from home.

INT. UPSTAIRS HALL/BUFFY'S BEDROOM - MOMENTS LATER - DAY

Buffy crests the stairs (despite the lack of a pit) just as Joyce emerges from the bedroom (despite the lack of a bedroom).

She gives a big ol' comforting momhug.

She is at this point looking at her room.

ANGLE: HER ROOM

Is entirely filled with crates, objects d'art, and no small amount of packing straw.

INT. BUFFY'S KITCHEN - DAY

Buffy is leaving, stops to get an apple from the fruit bowl and does not eat it.

The phone rings. Buffy moves to it and picks it up.

Silence.

The person on the other end hangs up. Buffy hangs up herself, and after a moment she exits, depositing the apple back in the bowl.

INT. BUFFY'S DORM ROOM/HALL - AFTERNOON (DAY)

Buffy makes her way down the hall and opens the door to her dorm room. She enters to see her side of the room completely cleared out -- in exactly the same manner Eddie's was.

Kathy is nowhere to be seen. Buffy takes a note off her bed, sits as she reads it. From her face, it's clear it's more or less the same as Eddie's.

ANGLE: THE NOTE

In a fair approximation of Buffy's handwriting, it reads:

"This is all just too much for me. I have decided to take off. Sorry I didn't have time to say goodbye but I need to be by myself. Good luck this year. Buffy."

A little death sentence from Sunday.

INT. BRONZE - NIGHT - (NIGHT FIVE)

A sad, slow, Splendid song is being performed on stage as Buffy walks in.

She makes her way through the crowd, passively seeking a familiar face, or at least a familiar vibe. She takes a seat not far from the stage, looks at the crowd. Suddenly she spots:

ANGLE: ANGEL

In the crowd, turning about almost seeing her.

She starts to rise, emotion blooming on her face, when she realizes it's just:

ANGLE: SOME GUY THAT LOOKS LIKE ANGEL

Buffy settles back, disappointed. Doesn't even notice the guy next to her till he starts talking.

She turns,

She hits him playfully.

She sits again, and he comes around and sits next to her.

Buffy soaks this in, looks at him.

He stands, all momentum.

INT. ADMINISTRATION OFFICE - NIGHT

A portion of the door has been punched out and it is ajar. By the light of a single lamp and a computer screen, Buffy and Xander work. Her at the computer, him at files and newspapers.

Buffy comes to his side, reads:

He pulls a later paper:

Off they go.

EXT. CAMPUS - NIGHT

Buffy and Xander make their way to the outskirts of campus, come to an old boarded up building.

EXT. ROOF OF ABANDONED FRAT - MOMENTS LATER - NIGHT

Buffy and Xander crest the roof. Buffy climbs onto the skylight.

INT. ABANDONED FRAT - NIGHT

FROM BUFFY'S POV. The vampires go over her stuff.

EXT. ROOF OF ABANDONED FRAT - NIGHT

Xander joins her.

He takes off. Buffy continues to watch as

ANGLE: BUFFY'S POV

Sunday pulls a blouse out of a box and starts laughing, showing it to everyone.

The skylight collapses.

INT. ABANDONED FRAT - NIGHT

The vamps scatter as Buffy falls right in front of them in a shower of glass and wood. She lands badly on her left arm, pain shooting through her as she looks up helplessly at the five monsters.

BLACK OUT.

INT. ABANDONED FRAT - NIGHT

Buffy rolls over, tries to get up. Her left arm touches the ground and she winces, nearly screaming in agony.

Sunday approaches, flanked by vamps.

She sees it's Buffy.

Buffy scrambles away, backed up against the wall.

She smiles pathetically, looks about for a weapon, anything.

Sunday PUNCHES her in the face.

INT. BUFFY'S DORM ROOM - NIGHT

Kathy is talking with Oz and Willow, as they all puzzle Buffy's empty space.

He comes in, hugs Willow.

He moves from Will to Kathy, hugs her hard, suddenly realizing:

He pulls away.

He turns to Oz.

Xander looks under the bed. Nothing there.

They file out.

INT. HALL OUTSIDE BUFFY'S DORM ROOM - CONTINUOUS (NIGHT)

The three pick up speed.

INT. ABANDONED FRAT - NIGHT

Buffy is slammed to the ground. She sees in front of her:

ANGLE: BUFFY'S WEAPONS TRUNK. Under some of her other stuff. She crawls towards it.

Sunday steps between her and it and picks up something else: Buffy's Class Protector umbrella.

Buffy is getting fed up.

Sunday waits.

And before Sunday can react Buffy decks her, spin kicks -- starts a furious assault on the vampire. One solid kick sends Sunday to the ground. She comes back up in vampface and Buffy hits her again.

Dav attacks Buffy from the rear but Buffy is ready for her, flips her into the corner.

Sunday comes back up but Buffy is a one armed machine, sends her back. Buffy grabs a tennis racket and BREAKS it over the face of Dav, who flees. Buffy now has a stake. Tom, Jerry and Rookie edge towards exits as well.

ANGLE: the entrance.

As the three vamps come toward it, it bursts open. Xander, Willow and Oz rush in and engage Jerry and Rookie. Willow puts a crossbow bolt into Rookie's heart as Xander and Oz take out Jerry. Tom makes it out the door at top speed.

ANGLE: BUFFY

Approaches a shaken Sunday.

Sunday attacks, Buffy parries, Sunday grabs her stake hand -- then viciously squeezes her other arm. Buffy blanches. The stake stops.

She squeezes harder.

And she does, sending Sunday staggering back.

She PUNCHES Sunday with her LEFT ARM, sending Sunday literally across the room.

Sunday lands in a pile of old freshman possessions. She slowly scrambles out.

Buffy turns to her friends as they come from the door. Back to Sunday, she picks up her racket stake.

Sunday rises behind her, several yards away.

Buffy spins the stake in her hand. Backhand HURLS it across the room without even looking at her target.

It hits Sunday in the chest, driving her back into the wall, into dust.

A moment, as the group settles into victory.

INT. CAMPUS OUTSIDE ABANDONED FRAT - NIGHT

The group exit the frat, all laden down with Buffy's stuff.

He runs up to her, out of breath, laden with weapons.

Beat.

They walk on, Giles joining them.

He helps Will with her burden.

EXT. ANOTHER PART OF CAMPUS - NIGHT

Tom, The silent vampire, makes his way through the shadows, afraid for his life. He stops. Hears something. Turns.

A TASER shoots out at him, wires attaching to his body and sending massive jolts of electricity through his body. He collapses to the ground, unable to do anything but look. He sees:

ANGLE: THREE FIGURES

Emerging from the darkness. They are dressed much like commandoes -- camouflage pants, sweaters -- with ski masks and infrared goggles covering their entire faces. The two not carrying the taser carry shiny hightech rifles. They all move silently, gracefully, approaching the fallen vampire.

His paralyzed face. His terrified eyes.

BLACK OUT.