Buffybot in Tabula Rasa
PAIRING: None
RATING: PG-13
FEEDBACK: Very welcome, to [email protected]
BETA: Miss Murchison - thanks!
SETTING: This fic is set during the events of 'Tabula Rasa' in BtVS Series 6, when the Scoobies temporarily lose their memories. I've twiddled with the time sequence in the episode a tiny bit, but just call it artistic licence.
DISCLAIMER: The characters belong to Joss. I’m borrowing, and I promise to put them all back in reasonably good condition, and only slightly used.
NOTE: This story is a sequel to Buffybot Behind Bars!, but it can perfectly well be read as a stand-alone.
SCENE: A house in Sunnydale
Chapter Two
In which our brave little Bot gets to the door of the Magic Box.
Buffybot accelerated down the road - she was really getting into her stride now! Her visual field seemed to be swaying a bit more than usual, but it was easy to compensate. She scanned the streets of Sunnydale eagerly, looking for signs of evildoing and criminality. But the scene was picture perfect - the sun was all shiny, and the sky was bright blue. There were birds cheeping in the trees, and not a single dismembered person in sight.
“It’s four of the clock, and all’s well!” she carolled happily, lustily ringing an imaginary bell, and adjusting her imaginary Town Crier’s robes. Tara had pointed her at the Bartleby.com website, where thousands of novels were available for free. Buffybot had speed-read all the way to ‘R’ before her demon-related accident. Historical fiction was great!
Jonathan stumbled behind her, a stitch in his side. Thank heavens this was suburbia - there was almost no one in sight to witness the Buffybot’s Frankenstein lurching, mystery gibberings, and strange involuntary hand movements, and the few people out clipping their hedges, or parking their cars, were studiously affecting not to notice her.
Oh no! Buffybot had reached Revello Drive. A horrible, terrible fate awaited him as soon as she found Willow, opened her pretty treacherous mouth, and Told All. Should he run? Should he hide? Or should he try and bluff his way through? Tell them all he had fixed up the Bot as his part in the fight against evil? He sagged against a mail box, his chest on fire. He was sure he was developing hypertension.
Buffybot reached the front door of the Summers house - deserted of course. She tried the doorknob nonetheless - and it was open. She frowned. How strange! Surely Buffy wouldn’t go to England and leave her door unlocked? Buffybot switched her senses to high alert. She stepped away from the door, and picked up a handy flowerpot, then crept stealthily back, and pushed the door ajar, ready for a savage demon attack. Nothing happened. She straightened, puzzled. Of course she knew that Buffy did leave her door unlocked a lot. Giles was always going on about it. She straightened, and stepped purposefully inside, prepared for anything.
And frowned again. There was a fire nearly out in the fireplace. A charred branch had fallen out into the hearth and sat there in a little pile of ash. Buffybot tsked. There could have been a nasty accident - whoever was living in Buffy’s house while she was away sure was careless! She crossed to the fireplace, picked up the little dustpan and brush, swept the ash up neatly, and tipped it back into the fire, where it flared feebly for a moment, and then dissolved.
Buffybot moved on into the kitchen - there were dishes in the sink! Lots of dishes. She very nearly pulled on her rubber gloves right then and there and got to work - she was great at washing dirty dishes! And making sandwiches!
But no, she said sternly to herself - duty before pleasure. I should check things out, and find out who these messy, careless people are. She headed for the stairs. It was rather harder climbing them than she remembered - perhaps there was some fine tuning needed on her new leg after all - but once she was on the landing, it was all easy. Feeling a strange little frisson, she turned the door knob to her room - Buffy’s room now of course. She looked around her. There, where a Jennifer Crusie novel lay, was where she used to keep her jump leads, and there, in the little dresser now covered in a confused tangle of lacy shirts, she had kept her spare eyeballs, and eighteen-piece right angled set of wrenches (handy for those hard to get to places!). She wondered where all her things were now.
Jonathan lurked under a tree, standing in a scuffed patch littered with cigarette ends. He just couldn’t decide whether to run, and experience the gut wrenching terror of pursuit by an angry Slayer, or stay, and possibly disgrace himself in the Summers kitchen. He moaned. The suspense was killing him.
Buffybot made her careful way down the stairs, sword and crossbow in hand. That crisis in England must have been Super Urgent - Buffy had left her lip gloss, and Dawn had left her hair conditioner. Gosh - things must be serious!
Night had fallen while Buffybot searched through the house, but as she came out in to the garden, her night vision detected a dark figure lurking under a nearby tree. She brightened. Lurking! She quickly scanned her ‘Sunnnydale Denizens Behavior Fact File’, and nodded, satisfied. Lurking was typical behaviour of evil creatures of the night. She gripped her sword firmly, crept up to the tree, and kicked the figure there with her left-right foot.
“Die, evil creature of the night!” she yelled, flashing the sword downward.
Jonathan woke from his uneasy doze to see an onrushing sword filling his field of vision.
“Aargh!” He scrambled desperately backward, hitting his head on the tree trunk, and then gazed, bulging-eyed at the sword tip resting on the button-down pocket of his favourite brown check shirt.
Buffybot tilted her head. “Hello again, funny Jonathan!” she said. “Why are you lurking in typical-evil-denizen-of-Sunnydale fashion behind this tree? You’re lucky I’m all super reflexive and stuff, or I might have accidentally skewered you to this tree trunk!”
Jonathan lay trembling on the ground. Bitter thoughts of Warren and Willow filled his mind. Had they never read Isaac Asimov? Did they not know the three basic laws of Robotics, and most particularly the first and second laws? (First:‘A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm’, second: ‘A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.’) And yet here was the Buffybot, taking years off his life, and laughing when he said she was his slave bot! I am giving up evil, he swore to himself. Forever. Right now. He shuffled awkwardly backwards on his bottom, getting his chest away from the uncomfortable prick of the sword point.
“I was napping,” he said, “not lurking.”
Buffybot stared down at him. Humans did nap a lot, she knew. Hours and hours sometimes. But really - and she didn’t like to criticize or anything, but still - she felt Jonathan was being a bit lax, napping while the streets went unpatrolled and evil roamed unchecked. Clearly she needed to motivate him a little more. She reached into her back pocket and pulled out a handy little throwing axe.
“You can borrow this,” she said kindly. “It’s really good for dismembering things!”
Jonathan scrambled to his feet, and then staggered, as Buffybot slapped the axe heartily against his chest. He grasped it reflexively, and with a little satisfied nod, Buffybot turned and began lurching down the street.
Jonathan stared at her back longingly, the axe twitching in his hand. Buffy and her gang must be out at the moment, so his scheme was still undiscovered. He could try hacking the Bot down in some quiet cemetery somewhere, and rendering her into spare parts again ... He looked at the axe in his hand, and shook his head - odds were it would hardly dent her. Instead, he dragged himself wearily down the street in her wake, cursing the day that he and Warren had seen Weird Science on cable.
Buffybot motored down the high street, heading for the Sunny Fields Eternal Rest Memorial Garden - that was always buzzing on a weekday! But as she neared the intersection, a distant scream, seemingly ripped from a dozen throats, sang through the air. She broke into a run.
As Buffybot rounded the corner, she stiffened like a gun dog spotting a pheasant. Vampires! A whole bunch of vampires, standing around the broken window of the Magic Box, and Clearly Up To No Good. Well! thought Buffybot indignantly, as soon as poor Giles and Anya have to rush off to combat the Fearsome Oxford Vindaloo Monster, there are blood sucking fiends trespassing and vandalising! She put on an extra burst of speed, drawing her sword as she ran.
Feedback is very welcome!
Return to Keswindhover's home page