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 15 - Why Did No One Ever Stay Still?
The crocodile was in a very bad mood. Very bad indeed. After a blameless half century swimming casually up and down the muddy river, snatching unwary fish and the occasional preoccupied forest deer to their watery doom, and growing progressively longer, scaly inch by scaly inch, life had become more exciting. Weird and wonderful alien creatures had appeared in the forest - and he had eaten them. Chattering people and monkeys had appeared, and he had eaten them too. And lately, he had learned that if he rested quietly below the new bird creature's eyrie, sooner or later a tasty morsel would fall from the sky, so he didn't even need to glide up and down the river bank any more. All in all, the crocodile felt, he had it made.
And then. And then, the bird creature had dropped this latest offering, and he had snapped it up, naturally. But the Buffybot was lying very heavy on his stomach, still kicking, and completely failing to be dissolved. The crocodile shifted uncomfortably, and wondered if he shouldn't have tucked her under a sunken tree root to putrefy for a few weeks, after all. But she had seemed so small and tender! Easy meat, literally. Possibly he had become lazy ... The crocodile swished his tail in an irritated sweep across the river bed, and belched, and made a resolution to get out more.
Deep inside his stomach, the Buffybot was exploring. Grey, bulbous and full of mucous and putrefying fish though it was, it was still a crocodile’s stomach, and that was surely worth a look around? She wriggled downwards (causing the crocodile to writhe uncomfortably) and found the valve at the bottom that led into his intestines. Lying in a little hollow beneath the valve was a little collection of pebbles, worn into exotic shapes by the action of the crocodile’s digestion. Buffybot pounced on them with a little ooh of delight. Pebbles! She loved pebbles. She looked up at the valve, calculating. She wondered if there were more pebbles further down?
……………
The jungle expedition paddled vigorously along the river, while their watch-dog searched the trees above for a large nest in the branches, as described by the Buffybot. Willow and Tara had put their heads together, trying to finesse a spell to stun a giant crocodile, while Anya was mentally rehearsing the exact spear throw needed to make a fatal thrust into its throat. They were all ready for action.
“There!” Xander-dog shouted, and he lifted a paw, and pointed his nose into the trees. Everyone looked up. In the tree approaching was an enormous, dishevelled nest of twigs and branches, at least six feet across. The nest, and all the supporting branches, were liberally spattered with guano, and a large reeking pile of stripped white bones and bits of fur and flesh lay on the bank below.
“Oh, charming,” said Willow, wrinkling her nose.
Anya looked disgusted. “A harpy demon,” she said, “and it’s gone native. How revolting. A demon should have higher standards.” She gazed at her neatly manicured nails complacently, and patted her mud-splattered hair.
Willow raised an eyebrow at Tara, then looked around her. “So, now all we have to do is find the crocodile.”
The water erupted in front of them, and a huge reptilian, four times the length of their canoe, leapt out of the water. There was a collective scream from the canoe. The crocodile belly-flopped spectacularly into the river, and then coughed, once, twice, three times, its body convulsing. On the third cough the Buffybot sailed out of its opened jaws in a stream of mucous, river water and putrefied fish. She flew through the air with tremendous force, and struck the canoe amidships with her head. There was an ominous cracking sound, and the canoe began to ship water. The crocodile turned tail, and swam rapidly away, leaving an agitated ‘s’ shaped wake behind him.
Buffybot lay in the bottom of the canoe, plastered with slime, her eyes closed.
“Bottie!” cried Tara. “Are you all right?”
Buffybot’s eyes snapped open. “Hi guys!” she cried merrily. “Did you see me fly? It was super cool!” And then her eyes closed again, and she went limp.
……………
Giles engaged the four-wheel drive, put his foot to the pedal of the tow truck, and began to drive cautiously forwards. The towrope tightened under Acathla’s armpits, and with a huge ugly sucking sound, he began to be dragged up out of the mud.
Dawn clapped her hands. “Go Giles!” she cried, banging the truck’s back panel.
Acathla’s legs came free, and he shot across the muddy surface, landing in a tangle at Dawn’s feet. He stood up, and removed the rope, his expression unreadable.
Giles stopped the vehicle, and stepped out, casting a triumphant look at El Bombero. “Now,” he said, “we only have to find the others, go dinosaur hunting, and sort out all those annoying temporal slips. Child’s play.”
……………
Kernel panic! Buffybot opened her eyes. That sounded familiar. She’d gone off-line again! What had happened? She was lying on her back, on the riverbank, just below the harpy’s nest. He looked up into a circle of anxious faces. Tara and Willow gazed down at her, hair falling forwards around their faces. Xander-dog’s nose was nearly touching her ear, and he was drooling slightly on her neck. How sweet! She reached up to ruffle his ears, and he wiped his wet nose on her chin.
“Hi guys,” she said brightly, sitting up and rubbing her head. Whoa! Her gyroscopes were still a bit wobbly. She took Tara’s steadying hand, and stumbled to her feet. “That was great!” she said. “I’ve never flown before, or been in a crocodile’s stomach.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve ever wrecked a canoe by ramming it with your head before, either,” said Anya.
Buffybot swung round, and looked out over the river. The two split halves of the canoe were floating, belly up, and low in the water. Oops! She felt her forehead. It seemed a bit flatter than usual. But still, she could always make another canoe, and Willow could knock out the ding in her forehead from the inside, during her next service. She brought her mind back to essentials, and held out her hand. “Look, I found some cute shaped pebbles in the crocodile. You can all have one.”
Everyone looked at the collection of stones in her hand.
“That one looks a bit like a donut,” said Xander-dog, sniffing at a grey stone with a hole worn right through it.
Willow plucked a swirly green stone out of the collection. “And this one looks like a gemstone.” She took it from Buffybot’s palm and turned it over. “Serpentine, maybe.”
As she held it up in the light, the stone seemed to stir in her hand, and the swirls shifted, subtly at first, and then with greater and greater speed, like a storm moving across the ocean.
“And it has a spell in it,” said Tara. “Why am I not surprised?”
…………
Giles drove the tow truck summoned through the portal by Acathla along the forest path, Dawn beside him. Acathla was sitting uncomfortably on the open bed on the truck, legs hanging over the tailgate, having proved too large to squeeze into the cab. El Bombero sat beside him, uninvited. As Giles listened to Dawn’s colourful account of Willow’s latest experiments with magic, he shook his head.
“What on earth she thought she was doing using your blood for any kind of ritual ... You’re the Key, for goodness sake. Brains do not equal common sense for that young lady, do they?” He patted Dawn’s hand. “Still, you’ve done jolly well, and Acathla is going to prove very useful - until he breaks the bonds of his captivity, of course. When I expect he will try to rip our still beating hearts from our writhing bodies, and eat them whole.”
Dawn shivered, and Giles patted her hand. “Never a dull moment is there?” he asked cheerfully, then he accelerated the truck, causing Acathla and El Bombero to grab convulsively for a handhold. Giles looked into the rearview mirror and grinned, and took the next bend with a flourish.
…………
The Scoobies stood around the swirling green gemstone, watching it rock from side to side. Its outlines were beginning to blur.
“Why don’t you Wonder Witches stop it?” said Anya. “I’m sure someone stuck whatever it is in there for a reason.”
“Can’t,” said Willow tersely. “The sunlight’s released it.”
“Well in that case,” said Anya, as the stone grew to the size a small green dumpling, and then a basketball, “I suggest we run!” And she set off for the nearest thicket of trees, closely followed by Xander-dog.
Willow and Tara looked at each other, and at Buffybot, who was staring entranced at the whirling green ball, which was growing by the second, and spinning faster and faster until it was a mere blur.
“There’s a lot of kinetic energy in that,” said Tara.
“Which has to be released,” added Willow
They looked at one another. “Run!” they both said simultaneously, and they sprinted away after Anya and Xander-dog.
Buffybot took a few steps after them, and then stopped and turned, fascinated. The whirling green ball was nearly six feet tall now, and it was making a high keening noise as it spun.
“Bottie!” It was Tara’s voice in her head, sounding both exasperated and scared. Buffybot jumped, and began to run. As she took the first few steps, the world exploded around her, and a blast of energy knocked her off her feet. She slid a few feet further on her stomach, and then came to a halt covered in mud and leaves. After a moment, she felt a hand fall on her shoulder and jolly British voice boomed in her ear.
“Hello, hello. Did I knock you over, little person? I’m most terribly sorry!”
She was hauled effortlessly to her feet, and found herself looking into a large red face, in which was set a pair of extraordinary serpentine green eyes, the irises still full of swirling storm and tempest. The face was attached to a large head, set on an equally large, and very definitely female, body, and dressed in a large hooded robe.
“Wow!” Buffybot said. “You have really funny swivelly eyes. How do you make them do that?”
End of chapter
*you may be thinking that crocodiles are not really much given to introspection, but I remind you this is an alien crocodile, on an alien world - and if I told you he loved his mummy, and painted pictures of puppies and kittens peeping out of Christmas stockings in his spare time, you would be obliged to believe me.**
** I assure you he did not do this.
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