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 2 - What on Earth Had Happened?
Kernel panic! Buffybot came round with a start. She'd been powered down... How had that happened? She ran a quick systems check, deleted the corrupted subroutine, blinked at her gyroscope readings for a second. She was upside down. That couldn't be right. Hmm, perhaps she was in Australia?
She looked around her. She was surrounded by crazed glass and buckled metal, which a moment's reflection identified as the interior of the jeep, somewhat bent out of shape. A crash! Oh no, they'd been in a crash. She sure hoped Tara was all right.
She gripped the seat above her head and performed a complicated somersault, easing herself out of her seatbelt and down on to the upturned roof of the jeep. There was some kind of humming noise going on outside, and it felt very warm. She looked around her, reassured to find that the cab was empty. No unconscious bloodstained Tara to be found. Neatly smashing out the glass in one of the crushed windows, she wriggled out into a muddy rutted track in the middle of a lush tropical forest, dragging her backpack behind her. Ooh! thought Buffybot, looking around appreciatively at the moss strewn trees, and dangling vines. I hope there are monkeys!
But still, for now the monkeys would have to wait; for her first duty was to find Tara. She stopped, and gathered her thoughts, then gave a firm nod. Her course was clear. She pulled her axe out of her backpack, and initiated a full 360 degree scan of the area. When she was 85.77 recurring degrees into the scan, she heard a voice.
"Well this is just typical, isn't it?"
The voice was Anya's, coming from the roadside, though she was not visible to Buffybot's searching eyes. Buffybot took a few steps in that direction, and soon saw her friend - lying upside down in a shallow drainage ditch, cut beside the road. She hurried to help, levering Anya up out of the shallow cut. She didn't seem to be hurt, thank goodness, but she was very muddy, and there was green pond scum in her hair. Buffybot looked at the dripping figure in front of her. She wasn't at all sure Anya's pretty white blouse was ever going to be white again.
"Did you fall in?" she asked, interested.
"Yes, I fell in," yelled Anya, "from the sky! I materialised in mid air - and then thump! I landed in that ditch."
"It's a good thing all that mud broke your fall," said Buffybot, looking on the bright side.
Anya gave her a scathing look and limped into the middle of the road. She stared in silence at the jeep, which lay upside down, the back end mashed nearly flat, looking as though it had been stepped on by a gigantic heavy boot. "Wonderful," she said bitterly, "Well that's just wonderful." She looked about her. "Here we are, lost in a huge tropical forest, maybe not even on earth..."
"It's great, isn't it?" said Buffybot eagerly.
Anya rolled her eyes. "We are probably thousands of miles from anywhere," she said, in tone of a woman speaking to idiot. "Our means of transport is destroyed, all our supplies have been squashed flat, and - I think I've broken a nail," she cried, staring in horror at her right hand.
Buffybot gazed at Anya's nail. It was hard to tell under all the mud, but it did have a bent forward look about it. She clucked her tongue sympathetically. She knew Anya took personal grooming very seriously. "Luckily I have a nail file on my twenty one piece Swiss Army penknife. You can borrow that in a minute, Anya." She patted Anya's shoulder. "But first we need to find the others, and protect them. I still have my axe." She waved it.
"Ah, I think I'm safe. Kind of." This time it was Tara's voice. Buffybot looked around, and focussed quickly on a large tree on the other side of the road. She ran across to the base of the trunk.
"Tara," she shouted happily, "you're up a tree!"
Tara's head poked out from between the close canopy of leaves. She seemed to be rather wet. "I am," she said mildly, "though not by choice. I landed here after falling through mid-air."
"Just what happened to me," cried Anya.
"Except you landed in a muddy ditch," said Buffybot helpfully. “With green scum in it,” she added. She looked back up the tree to where Tara was rather shakily attempting to climb down through the branches. "Anya has pond scum in her hair," she called merrily to Tara. "She looks really funny!"
Anya growled, and ran her fingers ineffectually through her bangs, then stared distastefully at her green flecked fingers. "We are marooned in some primitive wilderness," she said, wiping her fingers on her skirt. "There's probably isn't a bathroom for miles. And I'm hungry - I didn't have any breakfast." She scowled. "I was going to stop at the bakery with Xander for Krispy Kremes, once you guys finally got out of our way. In fact I'm starving." Her eyes grew wide. "And whatever godawful wholegrain and tofu things Tara brought are all crushed with the jeep!"
Buffybot looked doubtfully at Anya. She seemed to be getting very upset about the food shortage, though the Book of Wilderness Tips was quite specific about the number of days it took to starve to death - and Anya had until Sunday at least. And surely there would be fruit and roots in the forest?" She stood under the tree, ready to break Tara's fall if she slipped. “Are there any monkeys up in the tree?” she asked, hopefully.
Anya stiffened. "Good point," she said. "Tara, if there are any monkeys up there, please wring their necks and bring them down with you. We need supplies."
Buffybot gave a little gasp of shock. Anya couldn't mean to eat monkeys could she? That was almost like eating your relatives. And that was bad. After a swift disbelieving glance behind her at the glowering Anya, she turned back to the tree and as her friend descended a little lower, she took hold of Tara's descending foot, then her waist, and helped her to the ground.
Tara gave a little oof! as she landed. “Thanks, Bottie. No monkeys, Anya - except me. And what was that about the jeep?” She followed Anya's dramatically pointing finger and stared at the crushed wreckage. Her hand went to her face. "Oh my, I knew I should never have borrowed it. And so much for me driving it anywhere." She looked at the wreckage a moment more, in a meditative silence, and then at Anya. "A portal, you think?"
“Well obviously it was a portal," said Anya, biting off each word. She walked over to the wreckage and thumped the nearest jeep wheel disparagingly. It fell off the axle with a sad little thunk, hitting her on the knee. “Ow!”
Buffybot giggled as she watched Anya hopping around and cursing. Anya was so funny! But still, a mystery needed solving. She turned to Tara, standing beside her. “What’s a portal?”
“It’s a kind of energy gate in space and time,” said Tara absently, as she walked to the jeep and around to the slightly less flattened driver's door, and peered in, “and someone’s used a summoning spell to drag us through one.” She paused, “Which was very rude. But also kinda cool.” She straightened up and smiled at Buffybot, who beamed back. She was having a really fun birthday so far.
“It’s sheer gall is what it is,” growled Anya, rubbing her knee. “And some demon is going to get his arrogant overweening bumpy head ripped off his scaly shoulders when I find him, her or it.” She flexed her fingers, and her eyes took on a dangerous glow.
Tara looked musingly at the flattened jeep. “I’ve never thought I’d actually see a spell like this in action. It’s only theoretical magic I read in a textbook.” She took on an abstracted look, her head on one side, as she felt out the faint remaining traces of magic in the air. “I think the spell focus was the jeep, and we got sucked through with it.”
"The jeep!" cried Anya. "You mean we've been carjacked!?" Her nostrils swelled with fury, and she paced away from them, clenching her fists.
Tara turned to Buffybot. "I see Anya, but where’s Xander?" she asked. "He was touching the jeep too, wasn't he? We should all have gotten pulled through by it."
"Ooh!" Buffybot pursed her lips. "He was. We need to hunt for Xander right away." Her eyes lit up with enthusiasm, and she strode off down the track. What a good thing she had read the section on tracking in her Book of Wilderness Tips!
Before she had got 50 yards, a small dark haired dog rushed out of the forest, and began to gambol about their feet. "It's a puppy!" cried Buffybot, delighted. She loved puppies. The dog looked up at her with meltingly beseeching chocolate brown eyes, set below dark expressive eyebrows. She knew that look. “It’s Xander!” cried Buffybot, amazed. “It’s Xander and he’s a doggie. I never knew he could do that.”
Buffybot glowed. She, Anya and Tara, and their faithful Xander-dog, were lost in a mysterious dark forest, stranded maybe thousands of miles from anywhere. She clapped her hands and knelt down to hug Xander-dog. It was just like the pilot episode of some TV series about being lost and stranded. Maybe they’d each be tested in different ways and find out all kinds of interesting things about each other as they worked together to survive and escape ... Ooh! It was just the best birthday treat anyone could have possibly come up with - and it was still only 11am. All sorts of even more exciting things were sure to follow. She gave a happy sigh. She could hardly wait. She got to her feet and looked around eagerly. Where was everyone?
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