Aug. 31st: Taking Chances, Ch. 7: Lost Girl
Title: Taking Chances, Ch. 7: Lost Girl
Author: 3am_moonlight (MirroredIllusions on TtH)
Crossover: BtVS / NCIS: Los Angeles / minor Stargate SG-1.
Rating: Gen / Teen (Minor Kensi/Deeks and minor Buffy/Daniel).
Word Count: 1,525
Timeline: BtVS: Post-Chosen & NCIS: LA: S10'ish.
Disclaimer: Nothing copyrighted belongs to yours truly.
Summary: Buffy searches for the Slayer Deeks has been looking for.
Author's Note: Written for Day 31 of the 2020 August Fic-A-Day.
A/N: It's a wrap! Thank you to the Mods for running this again this year despite the pandemic, and thank you to all my fellow authors and all those who have taken the time to write reviews. You're all awesome!
Over the next few months, Buffy attempted to find any information in regards to a Potential Slayer named Carol Connelly who had been kidnapped by the Old Council in late 2001. It quickly proved to be easier said than done. Mainly because there was no evidence of any Slayers or Potential Slayers with that name. There had been about half a dozen named Carol, and a couple with the last name Connelly, but none with both names.
She was a busy woman and traveled quite a lot both for professional and personal reasons. It didn't leave her with a lot of time to do research, especially not for something unrelated to her work. She could've asked someone in the IDC to get the information for her, but an unidentified feeling made her do it herself.
The first thing she had done was do some research on Martin Deeks so she could get more information on where the Connelly's had lived. From there she crosschecked that with any Council members who had been in that specific part of Los Angeles in late November and early December of that year. It got her the name of the Watcher, but it was a dead end. The man had only been a go-between and had most likely only taken the girl and then handed her over to someone else within the hour.
The Watcher in question had also been one of those who had been killed by the Bringers in 2003, so there was no chance of asking him any questions. His Watcher's Diaries had burned along with his house, so there was no help there either.
Next on her list was the names and pictures of all the Potentials who had been killed by the Bringers. There were no matches. She got the same result when she searched through all the dead Potentials in the IDC database from the year 2000 and up to the present. No dead Slayers were matching her name or description either.
Which meant this girl might be alive but under a different name. Depending on how she had been trained, they might have simply changed her name and then somehow convinced her that her new name was her real name. It had happened before, especially if the parents or relatives of the girl in question refused to give up searching for the missing girl.
There were about 500 Slayers left worldwide. In 2003 there had been approximately 2,000, but in between demons, vampires, overconfidence, mistakes, and accidents, the number had gone down. New Slayers were activated every year, but the number became lower and lower and it wasn't because of a lack of Potentials.
The balance was righting itself and it was only a matter of time before they were back to the Chosen *One*.
However, if Carol turned 13 in 2007 then she would've received the power, as it didn't begin skipping Potentials until the year after. Or at least, that's when it began as far as they knew. No one had noticed until 2010 when an odd number of girls didn't manifest by the time they were 15.
It wasn't that strange if it skipped a few, on rare occasions they got a false read and a completely normal girl was read into the supernatural world. When it happened she was given a choice on how to move forward and where, and then they went from there.
Still, several thousand photographs were a lot to go through and study when she had so little spare time. It made her annoyed they hadn't invested in face recognition software, but few people saw it as a useful way to spend their money. It didn't help that most of these girls had no interest in finding their biological family, only to tell them they were likely to die soon.
She also wanted to spend time with Daniel when she had some time off. Their relationship had progressed enough that she had met his team, including his best friend, a very sarcastic and laid-back general named Jack. Military people weren't her people, but by the looks of it, these were on the up and up. Still, she was tempted to see if she could get clearance to whatever top-secret program he was working for under the Cheyenne Mountain Complex. Daniel was too tanned and muscular for it to be just translations.
Daniel had been introduced to Dawn and Faith, but no one else. Willow and Xander hadn't been speaking to her much for the last few months and Giles was... Well, she didn't want Giles to try and recruit him. That only left her little sister and her sister-Slayer to meet and give her new man their equivalent of the shovel talk.
As she was once again staring at picture after picture, and occasionally looking closer on some girl's stats to see if they matched, her phone rang. Without looking at the display, she automatically replied with a half-absent, "Summers."
"Hey! Are you busy?" Buffy blinked and moved her phone a little away from her ear so she could glance at the display, it read, as she thought, 'Kensi Blye [NCIS OSP]'.
"Hey. Yes, I'm busy but a break would be of the good right now." She swung her office chair around and closed her eyes. Staring at a screen for hours on end wasn't something she enjoyed doing. And all the girls and women were beginning to look alike.
"Anything you can share or is it super-secret squirrel stuff?" That startled a short laugh out of Buffy before she replied.
"I'm staring at a computer screen trying to figure out if one of them is Carol Connelly or some other girl whose family is missing her."
"Finding one girl shouldn't take this long. A simple search should've given you the answer in seconds or a few hours at the most if it's a large database."
"It should," Buffy sighed. "But I'm lucky I don't have to look through hard copies. The Old Council did not believe in technology. I don't know why, but when I eventually find her I'm going to get our computer people to make a real, functional search engine because the current one isn't doing the job."
Anything new from when they took over was digitized and easily found with a basic search engine, but it didn't include personal files for past or present people, and without knowing what name they had given her it was pointless. They needed a search engine that allowed them to search by including and excluding certain groups. I.e. Slayers, Potential Slayers, Witches, Demons, Vampires, alive, dead, undead, missing, missing presumed dead, D.O.B, date/year of Calling, and so on.
"Have you made any headway at all, or are you searching blind?"
"That's one of the few things they've managed. Dead girls in one place and living ones in another. Unless I've completely managed to not recognize her, it looks like there's a good chance Carol is alive. Don't tell your husband that though, just in case I'm wrong."
"Duly noted. I'll tell him the search is tedious but you're working on it."
Then a ruckus of some kind broke out several rooms down the hallway and she sighed again. Being at their Headquarters in Cleveland was just one problem after another. She honestly had no idea how anyone there got stuff done.
"I appreciate it, but he'll probably just assume it's an excuse. I have to go, but I'll call when I finally have something."
They said their goodbyes and she went to check on the latest problem.
----
It took another month before she finally found the young woman, only to realize that she was one of the two Slayers permanently stationed on a minor Hellmouth in Russia. Then it took another two weeks to get her to L.A. after arranging for someone else to take over her duties, at least temporarily.
Still, she persevered. All they had to do now was wait for Kensi and Deeks to show up, do a cheek swab of Alana so they could confirm she was really who they thought she was, and hopefully she hadn't made a false positive match. Whatever the Council had done to her it had left her with no memory of her life before she came to live with her first Watcher.
If Alana Hill truly was Carol Connelly then her parents would be contacted and the IDC would set up a reunion, but it didn't mean it would be a happy one. Alana, as she insisted they call her, was one of the Slayers who had chosen not to try and get in contact with their family. Instead, she was one of the Slayers who had opted for their family to be contacted after their death.
They were at a beach again, having declined to use what Kensi had referred to as the 'Boatshed', but it was overcast so there were fewer people than normal. It gave them privacy for the upcoming conversation. Buffy was 97% certain she had found the right woman, but in a few days, she would know for certain.
Author: 3am_moonlight (MirroredIllusions on TtH)
Crossover: BtVS / NCIS: Los Angeles / minor Stargate SG-1.
Rating: Gen / Teen (Minor Kensi/Deeks and minor Buffy/Daniel).
Word Count: 1,525
Timeline: BtVS: Post-Chosen & NCIS: LA: S10'ish.
Disclaimer: Nothing copyrighted belongs to yours truly.
Summary: Buffy searches for the Slayer Deeks has been looking for.
Author's Note: Written for Day 31 of the 2020 August Fic-A-Day.
A/N: It's a wrap! Thank you to the Mods for running this again this year despite the pandemic, and thank you to all my fellow authors and all those who have taken the time to write reviews. You're all awesome!
Over the next few months, Buffy attempted to find any information in regards to a Potential Slayer named Carol Connelly who had been kidnapped by the Old Council in late 2001. It quickly proved to be easier said than done. Mainly because there was no evidence of any Slayers or Potential Slayers with that name. There had been about half a dozen named Carol, and a couple with the last name Connelly, but none with both names.
She was a busy woman and traveled quite a lot both for professional and personal reasons. It didn't leave her with a lot of time to do research, especially not for something unrelated to her work. She could've asked someone in the IDC to get the information for her, but an unidentified feeling made her do it herself.
The first thing she had done was do some research on Martin Deeks so she could get more information on where the Connelly's had lived. From there she crosschecked that with any Council members who had been in that specific part of Los Angeles in late November and early December of that year. It got her the name of the Watcher, but it was a dead end. The man had only been a go-between and had most likely only taken the girl and then handed her over to someone else within the hour.
The Watcher in question had also been one of those who had been killed by the Bringers in 2003, so there was no chance of asking him any questions. His Watcher's Diaries had burned along with his house, so there was no help there either.
Next on her list was the names and pictures of all the Potentials who had been killed by the Bringers. There were no matches. She got the same result when she searched through all the dead Potentials in the IDC database from the year 2000 and up to the present. No dead Slayers were matching her name or description either.
Which meant this girl might be alive but under a different name. Depending on how she had been trained, they might have simply changed her name and then somehow convinced her that her new name was her real name. It had happened before, especially if the parents or relatives of the girl in question refused to give up searching for the missing girl.
There were about 500 Slayers left worldwide. In 2003 there had been approximately 2,000, but in between demons, vampires, overconfidence, mistakes, and accidents, the number had gone down. New Slayers were activated every year, but the number became lower and lower and it wasn't because of a lack of Potentials.
The balance was righting itself and it was only a matter of time before they were back to the Chosen *One*.
However, if Carol turned 13 in 2007 then she would've received the power, as it didn't begin skipping Potentials until the year after. Or at least, that's when it began as far as they knew. No one had noticed until 2010 when an odd number of girls didn't manifest by the time they were 15.
It wasn't that strange if it skipped a few, on rare occasions they got a false read and a completely normal girl was read into the supernatural world. When it happened she was given a choice on how to move forward and where, and then they went from there.
Still, several thousand photographs were a lot to go through and study when she had so little spare time. It made her annoyed they hadn't invested in face recognition software, but few people saw it as a useful way to spend their money. It didn't help that most of these girls had no interest in finding their biological family, only to tell them they were likely to die soon.
She also wanted to spend time with Daniel when she had some time off. Their relationship had progressed enough that she had met his team, including his best friend, a very sarcastic and laid-back general named Jack. Military people weren't her people, but by the looks of it, these were on the up and up. Still, she was tempted to see if she could get clearance to whatever top-secret program he was working for under the Cheyenne Mountain Complex. Daniel was too tanned and muscular for it to be just translations.
Daniel had been introduced to Dawn and Faith, but no one else. Willow and Xander hadn't been speaking to her much for the last few months and Giles was... Well, she didn't want Giles to try and recruit him. That only left her little sister and her sister-Slayer to meet and give her new man their equivalent of the shovel talk.
As she was once again staring at picture after picture, and occasionally looking closer on some girl's stats to see if they matched, her phone rang. Without looking at the display, she automatically replied with a half-absent, "Summers."
"Hey! Are you busy?" Buffy blinked and moved her phone a little away from her ear so she could glance at the display, it read, as she thought, 'Kensi Blye [NCIS OSP]'.
"Hey. Yes, I'm busy but a break would be of the good right now." She swung her office chair around and closed her eyes. Staring at a screen for hours on end wasn't something she enjoyed doing. And all the girls and women were beginning to look alike.
"Anything you can share or is it super-secret squirrel stuff?" That startled a short laugh out of Buffy before she replied.
"I'm staring at a computer screen trying to figure out if one of them is Carol Connelly or some other girl whose family is missing her."
"Finding one girl shouldn't take this long. A simple search should've given you the answer in seconds or a few hours at the most if it's a large database."
"It should," Buffy sighed. "But I'm lucky I don't have to look through hard copies. The Old Council did not believe in technology. I don't know why, but when I eventually find her I'm going to get our computer people to make a real, functional search engine because the current one isn't doing the job."
Anything new from when they took over was digitized and easily found with a basic search engine, but it didn't include personal files for past or present people, and without knowing what name they had given her it was pointless. They needed a search engine that allowed them to search by including and excluding certain groups. I.e. Slayers, Potential Slayers, Witches, Demons, Vampires, alive, dead, undead, missing, missing presumed dead, D.O.B, date/year of Calling, and so on.
"Have you made any headway at all, or are you searching blind?"
"That's one of the few things they've managed. Dead girls in one place and living ones in another. Unless I've completely managed to not recognize her, it looks like there's a good chance Carol is alive. Don't tell your husband that though, just in case I'm wrong."
"Duly noted. I'll tell him the search is tedious but you're working on it."
Then a ruckus of some kind broke out several rooms down the hallway and she sighed again. Being at their Headquarters in Cleveland was just one problem after another. She honestly had no idea how anyone there got stuff done.
"I appreciate it, but he'll probably just assume it's an excuse. I have to go, but I'll call when I finally have something."
They said their goodbyes and she went to check on the latest problem.
----
It took another month before she finally found the young woman, only to realize that she was one of the two Slayers permanently stationed on a minor Hellmouth in Russia. Then it took another two weeks to get her to L.A. after arranging for someone else to take over her duties, at least temporarily.
Still, she persevered. All they had to do now was wait for Kensi and Deeks to show up, do a cheek swab of Alana so they could confirm she was really who they thought she was, and hopefully she hadn't made a false positive match. Whatever the Council had done to her it had left her with no memory of her life before she came to live with her first Watcher.
If Alana Hill truly was Carol Connelly then her parents would be contacted and the IDC would set up a reunion, but it didn't mean it would be a happy one. Alana, as she insisted they call her, was one of the Slayers who had chosen not to try and get in contact with their family. Instead, she was one of the Slayers who had opted for their family to be contacted after their death.
They were at a beach again, having declined to use what Kensi had referred to as the 'Boatshed', but it was overcast so there were fewer people than normal. It gave them privacy for the upcoming conversation. Buffy was 97% certain she had found the right woman, but in a few days, she would know for certain.