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 3 - Where Was Everyone?
When Tara said that the others in Sunnydale would be worried, she was absolutely right.
After a flabbergasted moment staring at the empty space where the jeep used to be, Willow had raced indoors, and headed straight for the magic books.
Dawn meanwhile had flipped open her new cell phone, and placed a call to Mr Giles.
"Well, geez," she said petulantly, wandering into the living room where Willow was pulling books off the shelf, glancing at them, and then tossing them on the floor. "Why did he make such a big deal of us all getting these things if he's going to switch his off?" She tossed the phone down on the table and stared at the book pile. "Looking for something?"
Willow rolled her eyes. "No, I just thought I'd while away a little time sorting out Giles' library, while my girlfriend and my best friend get abducted and menaced by some evil demon. Maybe I'll do a little dusting later."
Dawn rolled her eyes in turn. Since she was a teenager she made a much better job of it. "Hey, cut the snark, I'm worried too." Willow didn't reply, too preoccupied with her vandalism of Giles' stacking system.
Dawn stared at Willow's back. She would feel a lot happier if Mr Giles was here to regulate whatever ambitious plan Willow might have for rescuing their fellow Scoobies. Willow was very good at magic, of course. But she was also freaking nuts, in Dawn's opinion. She took a pace or two around the room, gazing at Willow nervously, and then picked up the cell phone again, and pressed redial. She held the phone to her ear, and assumed a terrible English accent, "Now Dawn, please be sure to keep this mobile phone on at all times; it may one day be of vital importance that we are able to contact you, or that you are able to contact us." The phone rang unanswered. "Vital importance, my ass," muttered Dawn, biting anxiously at her fingernails. "Where are you, Giles?"
...............
I am pleased to report that Giles did in fact have his cell phone on, as he had been so concerned to impress upon Dawn and the other Scoobies the importance of doing so. Unfortunately, however, he was not in Sunnydale to hear it ring. Giles and Spike had indeed set off patrolling the previous evening, making their slow and winding way through the many, many cemeteries of Sunnydale in Giles' car. But things had not gone as planned.
Earlier that morning:
Giles and Spike picked their way through the anodyne white markers and brass plaques of the Fairview Garden of Eternal Rest. It was the last cemetery on their rounds, and hardly worthy of their attention, since no vampire of taste would be found attempting to lurk on its open rolling lawns, or flit between its neat white little tablet gravestones. Still, a fledgling vampire could erupt from any grave - even a neat little lawn mowed oblong beside a tarmac path, and so here Giles and Spike roamed in the last hours before daylight. A strained silence stretched between them, that was nonetheless bursting with unspoken words.
"Fairview, my arse," said Spike, kicking moodily at the turf. "This place is about as exciting as a car park." After a few more moments of unenthusiastic surveying, he flung himself down on a tombstone and lit a cigarette. "Anyway, you know what your problem is, Watcher?"
"Spike!" said Giles warningly. "We have agreed to drop the topic."
"I never even mentioned it," said Spike, with a look of wounded virtue. "I was just going to point out to you some of your bigger character flaws. Doing you a favour really."
"Oh nonsense," said Giles. "It's quite obvious that you are constitutionally unable to let a subject drop. No matter how tedious it may be to your companion." He sat down on the gravestone opposite Spike and rubbed his aching forehead. As he did so two shadows detached themselves from behind a tasteful weeping willow tree dotted on the hillside above, and drifted in their direction. "It's one of your major character flaws, in fact, since we are descending to the personal. Along with the killing, and torturing and so on."
"And your problem," said Spike, "is that you just can't admit that you're wrong. Poor show, Watcher, very poor show." He flicked ash from his cigarette on to the white marble beneath him and looked across at Giles. The second shadow drifted silently behind him.
"Bobby Charlton did not play for Preston North End before he moved to Manchester United,” cried Giles, provoked beyond bearing. "It's nonsense!"
"Now who can't let the subject drop?" said Spike, drawing lazily on his cigarette. "And, yes, he did. Man U and Preston North End were his clubs, well known fact."
Giles closed his eyes. The first shadow bent over him. "As I have already explained to you," he said, "though I cannot flatter myself that you were actually listening, Bobby Charlton ended his career at Preston North End, in a management role, though he turned out for them a few times in 1974 - when you were probably ..." His words ended on a muffled shriek as the shadow took him in its clammy grasp and flowed about him, covering him from head to foot.
Spike jumped to his feet with an oath, dropping his cigarette, and the second shadow enveloped him from behind. In a moment man and vampire were misty indistinct shapes, blundering about the hillside and cursing in muffled tones. A moment later they vanished utterly. The Fairview Garden of Eternal Rest was silent once more, the only thing out of place a lit cigarette glowing red in the grass.
.............
“Xander a dog? I really don’t think that’s very likely, Bottie,” said Tara, leaning down to scritch behind the dog’s ears, and check him for a collar. She looked into the dog’s eyes and blinked. “And yet ....” She looked up, “Anya!” she called, "We've found something that might interest you."
Anya stomped over, still clearly in a rage. The dog ran over to greet her, barking and wagging his tail. She bent down and poked him in the ribs with an exploratory finger. "Not much meat on him, but I suppose we could make a stew," she said, looking the beast over critically.
"Anya!" The Buffybot was shocked. "You can't eat Xander just because he's a puppy." Really, she thought, Anya was terribly carnivorous when she was in the wild. Though most demons were carnivorous of course, so it made sense.
Anya looked more closely at the little dog, which whined, and put a paw on her knee, tail thumping furiously. "Xander?” She jumped to her feet, brushing the dog aside. “Is there no end to the indignities being wreaked upon me today? Sucked through a portal by a petty thief, pond scum in my hair, a broken nail and no breakfast. And now. Now, it appears I'm dating a spaniel!"
Buffybot could see that Anya was upset, but she really couldn't let this pass. "I don't think Xander's one special breed of doggie, Anya, so much as lots of kinds - though I'm thinking there's a Cairn terrier involved somewhere, because his eyebrows are all bristly." She leant down and hugged Xander-dog. "Anyway, he's real cute!"
"A mutt," said Anya broodingly. "I might have guessed that if Xander was going to be a dog, he would be a mutt." She stalked away, back towards the car wreck.
"Anya!" cried Xander-dog. "I can talk," he added, in a surprised tone. Tara gave a half embarrassed smile, and a little wave. It was the least she could do.
"What in heck happened?" said Xander-dog, gruffly, tilting his head to look incredulously at his paws, and twisting around to stare at his own tail.
"Ooh!" said Buffybot, delighted to be asked a question. "We've been sucked through a portal into another world. It's very exciting!"
"I meant," said Xander, looking up at her through his very cute bushy eyebrows, "what happened to me?"
"You're a doggie!" said Buffybot.
Xander-dog stared, and then turned his head, distracted by the sight of Anya disappearing around the turn of the path. "Anya!" he cried again, and he took off after her as fast his four little legs could take him.
Buffybot looked at Tara. Her friend seemed worried.
"Are you okay, Tara?" she asked, puzzled. Surely Tara was having fun too?
Tara looked at her, and tried a strained little smile. "I'm okay, Bottie, but I'm worrying about getting us all home. And how to help Xander. And the others will be worried, and they can't cover for all four of us too long. We need to get to them, but the only way I can think of doing it is to find whoever pulled us here - and ask him/her/it nicely to open the portal again and reverse poor Xander's dogginess spell. And it doesn't seem real likely they're going to just apologise for putting us to the inconvenience and click their fingers, whoever they are."
Buffybot nodded solemnly, disappointed though she was. Tara was right of course, however much fun she was having here. And of course her batteries would need recharging eventually, though they ran much longer now she two those extra battery packs in her bottom, next to her heart.
Tara was pacing around, rather agitated. "It's a good thing that Mr Giles and Willow are back in Sunnydale trying to work out how to get us home, and Spike is there to do the patrolling. Anything might happen there without them."
Buffybot looked up at the trees around her, wondering what the quickest way out might be. Her eye was caught by a gleam. “Ooh! Look!” Buffybot pointed up the tree. She clambered into the lower branches, and took hold of something shiny, then clambered down to offer it to Tara, beaming proudly. “I found your sunglasses,” she said, holding them out. “My eyesight is super keen.”
“And they’re only slightly broken,” said Tara, holding up the glasses, which drooped on one side like a bird with a broken wing. She put them on anyway, and pushed them up the bridge of her nose. Who knew? They might stay on. “Well now,” she said, staring about her. “What do we do next?”
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