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 9 - This Wasn't Going to End Well
Buffybot put down her load, and gazed around her with great interest. She had jogged back into the forest with the crowd to guide Giles and Spike to the squashed jeep, and had listened eagerly to Giles' explanation of what they were all doing in the jungle. The Sorcerer had gone to school with Giles! And Giles had done him a favour, and then the Sorcerer had done Giles a favour, and then he'd sent a couple of water wraiths to summon Giles (and Spike) to this world and asked for another favour. And Giles had said 'yes', and so they needed an SUV, and they'd done the Summons.... golly, it was very complicated. But it was a Good Cause, of course. Giles wouldn't do it otherwise.
Anyway, they'd reached the road, wading through all the devastation wreaked by the giganotosaurus. And Giles and Spike had stared at the car, then they'd started swearing in British, and stamping about and waving their arms. So all in all, when Tara had asked her to try and gather some things for supper, she'd been happy to go. She'd collected an armful of bananas on her way back to the forest clearing where they had met El Bombero. She had also amassed a pile of the best kind of beetles, and she was wondering if these, or the local giant earthworms or the even more giant centipedes would satisfy Anya's carnivorous side.
While the human party had been gone, the monkeys had helped themselves to a brew from the communal teapot. They were sitting quietly in the clearing, sipping tea and dunking beetles in their mugs. Buffybot looked at the beetle collection in her hand, collected in a palm leaf. The monkeys were likely to appreciate them more than Anya. She approached the group, and opened the leaf, revealing a huge swirling mass of jewel-like beetles, and laid it on the ground. There was a brief surprised silence, and then a general noisy scrum as all the monkeys at once laid claim to her gift. Tea mugs and beetle shells went flying as the scramble became a scuffle, and eventually a melee.
"Children, children!" The Sorcerer spoke reprovingly. "There is no need to pull your neighbour's hair, or black your neighbour's eye every time food appears." A few monkeys at the edges of the scrum paused briefly to flash him a look from beneath their white eyebrows, and then dove back into the food fight, tails swishing.
The Sorcerer sighed, and came to stand next to Buffybot. He smiled at her, and she zinged a smile back. Any friend of Mr Giles was a friend of hers!
"We came to this world for a rest cure, originally," he said, slumping onto a stool beside her. "Which seems rather ironic now. No demons, no traffic, no magic. Perfect. Then the forest folk appeared about six months ago. Pop! There they were. Complete with a large banyan tree." He leant forward on his campstool at looked at the little throng. "At first I just assumed their arrival was an accident. There are little slips between worlds happening all the time. Anyway, they settled in very nicely, and they built some splendid tree houses. And I gave them the ability to speak, to make some company for me - not that they use it much."
Buffybot looked at the moving maul of bodies, tails and hands. She counted silently. Twenty eight. It wasn't a massive number of monkeys, really. Though quite a lot for one banyan tree. The beetles seemed to be gone now, and the dust was settling. But she hadn't offered her host anything, not even one beetle! She quickly picked out a banana from her haul and held it out to the Sorcerer.
El Bombero shook his head at the fruit, and instead took a cigar from his pouch and lit it. "But the slips just got more and more frequent." He sighed, and puffed a perfect smoke ring. "Last week we had a rain of fish on Monday, a new mountain appeared on Tuesday, a coral reef splashed in on Wednesday, and then that accursed dinosaur appeared on Thursday. Something probably showed up on Friday as well, but we were too busy trying to escape the dinosaur to find out."
"So you called Giles to help you!" said Buffybot, enthused. "That was a very good idea. Giles is super smart."
"Well," El Bombero quirked a brow. "After a fashion. I sent my water wraiths to kidnap him, and his vampire servant Spike - and I've promised to send him back, if and when he rids me of this problem." He turned to Buffybot and gave a wide smile. "I prefer to be in a position of strength when I deal with The Ripper."
Buffybot's mouth made a big 'O' with outrage. El Bombero wasn't a nice man, at all. He was a kidnapper. And a blackmailer! She drew away from him, shocked. And to think she'd just offered him one of her bananas!
.............
Anya and Xander had set off into the forest, planning to hunt some 'proper supper'. Giles, Tara and Spike stood looking after them for a moment, then turned aside, and set off again on the slow difficult trek back through the jungle to the clearing.
"That Sorcerer bloke's soft in the head,” said Spike disapprovingly. "Smashing up the jeep to save that moth-eaten mutt, and Sheena, Queen of the Jungle there." He made a disparaging gesture at Xander-dog and Anya, who were moving rapidly ahead of them. "We said we really, really needed the jeep to hunt the dinosaur - and what does he do?"
"He puts me in his debt, probably into the next life and beyond," said Giles bitterly. He watched Xander and Anya disappear into the twisted mass of branches and hanging moss ahead of them. "I only hope they don't meet the wild pigs," he said, staring after their receding backs. He turned to Tara, "If you run after them waving a stick and yelling, 'Hello, here's breakfast, and a bit fresher than I'm used to these days!' they are rather inclined to turn round on a pinhead and charge straight at you, tusks lowered - aren't they Spike?" A brief flicker of annoyance crossed Spike's face.
"Anyway," Giles shrugged, and ran a weary hand across his sweating scalp, "I'm sure they'll be fine, and Xander can always sniff his way back to the clearing if they get lost. Let's get back to base and see if there's any tea on the go."
.................
Dawn stared at the crucible. It was bubbling crazily, and rocking on its base. It was going to spill over any minute.
Willow threw out her arm in a dramatic gesture. A huge swirling black void materialised in the air in front of them, and freezing air streamed through it, with a great roar, and struck them both in the face. Dawn’s eyes snapped shut reflexively, and then abruptly opened again when her brain registered what a bad idea that was. The void seemed to be closing upon her, and she back pedalled frantically. She could vaguely hear Willow chanting, the Latin words flowing into each other as she gabbled as fast as she could, trying to hold back the oncoming darkness. Dawn stumbled further backwards, overturning the crucible, caught her cool stiletto heeled sandals in the pile of mystical tomes that lay scattered on the floor, and fell heavily, landing ass first on the carpet, just outside the pentacle.
Oh Boy, now she knew that was bad. Willow and Tara were always going on about that. Whatever, you do, don’t break the wards! Well, she’d broken the wards all right. She got shakily to her feet, and rubbed the back of her jeans. And she had a chalk smear on her butt to prove it.
The roaring had stopped. She blinked, and looked at the empty chalk outline, now surrounding nothing more than an untidy pile of books and a glass coffee table covered with a mess of tumbled crucibles and other paraphernalia, and a creepy puddle of unwholesome-looking goop. The swirling hole was gone.
And so was Willow.
.................
Buffybot leapt to her feet with a glad cry of welcome. It was her friends!
El Bombero had continued to sit and smoke his cigar beside her, quite unembarrassed by the revelation of his perfidy, and apparently not even noticing the frigid silence she had imposed on their conversation. And frigid silence was hard! She really, really wanted to ask him more about the monkeys, and the mountain and the coral reef, and the giganotosaurus. But Buffybots did not make small talk with evil villains, and that was that.
Now though, he had gone off, followed by an excited troupe of monkeys, to check his scrying bowl for more unexpected arrivals, and Buffybot was sitting alone with her bananas. As her friends crossed the clearing, she ran forward and wrapped Giles in a strong hug, full of compassion. Giles winced. "Um, I'm glad to see you again too," he said, patting Buffybot awkwardly on the back.
"Giles!" cried Buffybot. "Mr El Bombero Told Me All!" She released him, and took an agitated turn around the forest floor. Giles felt his sore ribs, trying to work out if she'd actually cracked anything.
"Um. About?"
Buffybot threw out her arms dramatically. "About how he kidnapped you - and now he won't let you home 'til you stop mountains and reefs hitting things, and get rid of his giganotosaurus for him! He's so mean!"
"Ah. Ah." Giles stopped feeling his ribs for a moment. "Yes, I can see how things might appear that way, put so baldly. And that Arturo might well appear .... er mean. Though there is some history to all this."
"Giles used to be a bad boy," said Spike, raising a scarred eyebrow. "Hard though it is to imagine. Probably started with flouting the local littering law, then moved on to stealing bubble gum in his local corner shop, and finally ended up summoning trans-dimensional soul-eating demons. It's a sad and all too common tale."
Giles gave him an annoyed look. "Be that as it may," he said stiffly, "I have owed Arturo favours in the past, and earned some favours from him in return. So if I'd managed to track down the source of these temporal shifts, and suggested a way to end them, Spike and I could have gone home - or even better I could have gone home and sent Spike somewhere else entirely - and I'd have had a useful favour from a powerful world-hopping sorcerer in the bank. As it is, he saved all your lives, which as I was saying earlier means I will probably still owe him favours into the next life."
"Is there a formula?" asked Tara, interested. She reached in her pocket for her little notebook, and then remembered it was in her knapsack, crushed in the back of the jeep. Together with just about everything else useful.
"Well, it's all rather interesting and complex," began Giles, brightening a little now the conversation had turned to matters academic. "And, of course, there are a great many important magical precedents and traditions, which need to be taken into account before you start. For example ..."
"One life equals one favour, said Spike laconically. He sank down on to a campstool, and counted off on his fingers. "So one wishy-washy witch, one Boudicanya; and one smelly mutt boy equals three favours."
"And one sweet and shiny metal girl," added Tara, smiling a little sadly at Buffybot. "Four favours. Oh dear, Giles."
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