Buffybot's Birthday Adventure
RATING: PG-13 for sex.
FEEDBACK: Yes, please, to [email protected]
PAIRINGS: None.
DISTRIBUTION: Ask me first - but I'm going to say yes.
PROPS: Miss Murchison and Chartophile for the beta. Thanks!
SPOILERS: None. This is set pre-season 6.
DISCLAIMER: These characters are not mine, but I’m just poking fun.
Chapter 14 - She Couldn't Have Been More Excited
Everyone was getting bored waiting for Buffybot. They had eaten breakfast - without pineapple - packed everything into the canoe, and rootled in a desultory fashion through the scruffy pile of alien artefacts. Now they were sitting about and fidgeting.
There was an odd little 'plip' sound behind them, and everyone jumped. Lying on the ground was a peculiar white ceramic object, shining in the sun. It was about four foot long, and curved like a funfair slide, with a spout at one end, and a little grille at the other. They all stared for a moment, waiting for it to sprout legs and run; then Xander-dog approached and began to sniff, tentatively at first, and then subjecting the object to a thorough molecule by molecule examination.
Willow walked over, and ran a curious hand from the spout, down the inside of the slide, ending with a tap of her fingers on the little grille at the bottom. "No idea what this is made of," she said, "or what it's for. What does it smell of, Xander?"
Xander-dog buried his nose against the material, and snuffed, doubtfully. The hackles on the back of his neck rose. "Demons," he growled.
"But what can it be?" asked Tara wonderingly. "It's kinda beautiful, but so strange..."
Anya raised an eyebrow. "It's a demon's convenience."
"A what?" Tara, Willow and Xander-dog looked at her.
She grinned at them. "A convenience. A public convenience. That grille bit fits into the sewage system. The demon sits on the spout end ...."
"Aargh!" Willow dropped the tube, and held her hand out from her side, as though it were infected. The tube landed on Xander-dog's paw and he set up a high pitched yelping, then sat back, and buried his nose into the mud of the river bank, trying to lose the smell from his nostrils.
"Oh, sweetie," Tara took a little step forward, and patted Willow's hand. The clean hand.
"When I find whoever is causing all these temporal slips," Willow said, her voice thick with passion, "putting their hand in a demon's toilet is going to be the least of the things I do to them." And she strode down to the river bank, and plunged her hand into the water, regardless of crocodiles.
After a long scrubbing, her mouth set in a straight line; she finally stood up, and gazed at her watch. "We need to get moving. Where is the Buffybot?"
"I do hope she's okay," said Tara, worried. It wasn't like the Bot to hold everyone up. In fact she was pathologically prompt.
"I suppose she could have got sucked through another temporal slip," said Anya, bored again. "If they're as common as Willow says. Which means she could be anywhere, or anywhen come to that."
"Poor Bottie!" cried Tara.
"Can Xander follow her trail?" asked Willow, "She can't have gone far."
Xander-dog began to sniff around the canoe, then sat down, frustrated. "She doesn't have a trail." His ears drooped.
"Oh!" cried Tara, "I'll try her cell phone again." She looked across at Willow. "That's the one you put in Buffybot's head. I can project into it. It's a kind of variation on telepathy.”
Willow's mouth hung open in surprise. "You're managing to send radio waves? Mentally? To a cell phone in Buffybot's head?"
Tara blushed. "It doesn't work all the time, just when I'm ... well, upset or feeling strongly." She gazed about her at the campsite, and her weary and bedraggled party. "Like now, I guess." She closed her eyes, and a frown of concentration appeared on her face.
..............
Dawn took a deep breath and stepped out of the portal. Here she was. The Key. Entering another world. Protected by a demon slave, bound to her by the deepest and most profound blood magic. It was really kinda cool.
She stepped forward - and cursed. Her gold, strappy, spike-heeled sandals had sunk up to their elegant insteps in the steaming black mud. She dragged her right foot out of the morass with an obscene squelching noise, and then hesitated, standing on one foot. There was nothing for it. She pulled the sandal off, and then stood on her bare right foot in the slimy ooze, and removed the second sandal. Pooh! She wrinkled her nose. The mud stank. So much for a brave new world. She preferred asphalt.
She turned around. Acathla had stepped out of the portal behind her, and was in an even worse state, buried up to his knees, and sinking fast. He sighed. "I humbly beg that you rescue your devoted servant Acathla, oh Goddess," he intoned, a total lack of conviction in his tone.
"Perhaps I can assist, Your Divineness?"
Dawn turned again. Standing a few feet away was a Sorcerer. Tall, dark and mysterious, with glowing red eyes set beneath the shadow of his turban, and a magic wand clasped in his hand.
She inclined her head, graciously. "Well, that would be very kind of you, ye ..."
"No!" It was Giles. A red faced and panting Giles, struggling up beside the Sorcerer, shirt flapping, and glasses askew.
A faint ripple of annoyance crossed the Sorcerer's face, and the wand in his hand twitched.
"Dawn!" cried Giles, "What are you ...? Never mind, just remember, whatever you do, don't accept any favours from this man." He pointed at the Sorcerer, and then paused, and swung back to face the figure behind her. "Is that ..? Good Lord, it's Acathla. What's he doing here?"
"Sinking in the mud," said Acathla, pointedly. He was up to his elbows now.
Giles looked at Dawn. "Well, from the fact that he hasn't ripped your heart out, or dragged us all into a hell dimension, I imagine he must be constrained in some fashion." He stared at Acathla. "This is really jolly interesting, and possibly unprecedented," he murmured absently, "I can't recall any comparable instances, anyway."
"Giles!" Dawn spoke sharply. "How are we going to get him out? He weighs tons."
"I could of course assist, young lady." It was the Sorcerer again.
Giles flashed him an irritated glance, then turned back to Acathla, who was sinking rapidly. He gestured to the narrowing swirl of blackness behind Acathla's head. "Could you bring something else through that portal?"
.............
Buffybot looked around the inside of the crocodile with her excellent night vision. It was a little bit disappointing, if she was honest. She'd been hoping for enormous shiny organs, all pulsing away, and blood coursing around everywhere in huge transparent arteries. Instead of which everything was grey, and bulbous, and there was a lot of mucus, slithering over everything and making it terribly difficult to move around. And dead fish. Lots of dead fish.
So all in all, when her cell phone rang, she was grateful for the distraction.
"Hi Tara!"
"Bottie!" Buffybot winced, and turned down the volume a tiny bit. Tara was shouting, she must be excited about something.
"Bottie, I'm so glad you're safe!" cried Tara, her voice echoing strangely inside the crocodile's stomach. "But where are you? We've been looking for you everywhere."
Golly. Buffybot squirmed with remorse. She'd been having such an adventure, she hadn't even thought about how worried everyone would be about her disappearing.
"Don't worry about me, Tara," she said. "I'm perfectly safe here in this crocodile."
There was a pause on the other end of the line, and some muttered conversation heard from a distance. "I'm sorry," said Tara, after a moment. "I thought for a moment there you said you were in a crocodile."
"Yes, I am!" said Buffybot. "It's a very big crocodile, luckily," she added, in case Tara was worrying about her being squashed.
Tara drew a deep breath. "Whereabouts are you? We saw a crocodile just a minute ago. Anya hit it with a tin of pineapple."
Buffybot's eyes widened. Anya was getting ever so ambitious with her hunting skills, wasn't she? "Ooh! it couldn't be that one," she said, "This crocodile is way downstream from you guys. It swallowed me after the flying demon kidnapped me and flew me to his nest. He hung me upside down and tried to get me to tell him about El Bombero, and then he dropped me in the river," she added, feeling rather indignant, now she thought about it.
She heard a sharp intake of breath on the line, and then Tara's voice boomed in her ear. "The big bully. We're coming to rescue you, Bottie, don't you worry. You just hang right in there. We're on our way!"
Postscript
After Tara's disturbing conversation with Buffybot, the Scoobies had piled aboard their canoe, and after a bit of milling around, and some arguing about seats, they were gone, pulling away from the shore as fast as they could paddle. As the splash of paddles faded into the distance, there was another faint 'plip' in their old campsite, and a kitchen drawer appeared on the bank, full of cutlery, potato peelers, spatulas and wooden spoons, skewers and paring knives, and - shining in the tropical sun - a large silver can opener.
An expectant silence filled the air, and then a faint, almost inaudible sigh. They'd gone. Why did no one ever stay still?
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