At the Bronze, Xander rehearses asking Buffy out to the prom by trying his speech out on lovesick Willow. Meanwhile, Buffy is having a closer call than usual with her vampire attackers. Giles reads a frightening prophecy about the Master and the Slayer, and an earthquake hits Sunnydale.
Buffy tells Giles about her attack, and lets him know that she's starting to get scared. When Xander finally gets the nerve to ask her out, she turns him down, saying she doesn't think of him "that way" and doesn't want to spoil their friendship. In the library, Giles and Ms. Calendar discuss the prophecy: the earthquake, along with several strange occurrences in Sunnydale, seem to confirm that the apocalypse is near. Buffy overhears Giles telling Angel, "Tomorrow she'll face the Master and she will die." Buffy freaks out and tells Giles she wants to quit. More signs of the end appear: a roomful of students, including Cordelia's new beau, are found dead at school, totally unnerving Willow, who discovers their bodies. Buffy decides that even though she's afraid, only she can try to save the world by facing the Master. She goes out with a crossbow, and the Anointed One leads her to the Master. Meanwhile, Xander enlists Angel's help in trying to protect Buffy.
The Master bites Buffy, and she drops into a puddle. This allows him to break through to the "other side." Xander and Angel find Buffy, and Xander is able to revive her using CPR. Meanwhile, Cordelia, Willow and Ms. Calendar find themselves driving through a sea of vampires in the streets. They try to escape to the library, but the undead follow them. As they try to fight them off, a huge, horrific monster comes up through the floor and attacks them. Buffy makes it back to the school and fights the Master on the roof. She throws him through the roof window and he falls through, getting impaled on the way down. He disintegrates, and the monster and the vampires disappear with him.
"We saved the world. I say we party," exclaims Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
While everything seems to be going according to schedule, it turns out that the zookeeper's plan is to absorb all the hyena’s spirits himself. He does, and grabs Willow in order to perform a predatory act which is part of the ritual. Xander, back to his old self, reacts to seeing his friend in jeopardy and dives on the zookeeper, freeing Willow. When the zookeeper goes after Buffy, she hurls him into the hyena cage, where he is promptly devoured.
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Xander, practicing to ask Buffy to the Spring Fling dance: "Y'know, Buffy, Spring Fling just isn't any dance. It's a time for students to choose, um... a mate and then we can... observe their... mating rituals and tag them before they migrate just kill me!"
Willow: "You think I wanna go to the dance with you and watch you wish you were at the dance with her? You think that's my idea of hijinx? You should know better."
The entire scene in which Buffy reacts to finding out the fatal prophecy, known affectionately to us as the "I Quit" scene, is one of the finest pieces of writing and acting in the entire series, and it ends with perhaps the most heartbreaking line ever: "Giles, I'm sixteen years old. I don't wanna die."
Buffy: "I may be dead, but I'm still pretty. Which is more than I can say for you."
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