August 11: Bigger, Louder, More Teeth [Jurassic World]
Title: Bigger, Louder, More Teeth
Author: Jedi Buttercup
Rating: T/PG-13
Crossover: Jurassic World
Spoilers: Very post-series for B:tVS; set just before the first JW movie; no comics canon
Notes: Follow up to Divide By Dinosaur Error and Some Pretty Unusual Criteria; definitely not the last!
Summary: Whatever some mystical Scythe had had to say about her destiny, Claire had been much happier in operations management than supernatural pest control. 2500 words.
Claire frowned at Owen as he stared through the glass into the Indominus' paddock. He'd been distracted even before she'd picked him up to give it a look over at Masrani's request; he'd let at least three opportunities to make a double entendre pass him by before agreeing to come with her, and hadn't brought up their failed first date even once. As far as she knew-- as far as InGen was required to tell Jurassic World Operations-- his project was proceeding along projected lines, even if he hadn't had a fully successful test yet, so she didn't think it was that. Maybe it was to do with the guests he'd called in to get VIP access for?
Okay, and maybe he wasn't the only one worried about that; she'd seen their pictures when the passes had been printed. Dr. Giles and Ms. Summers probably didn't remember her to pick out of a crowd, but she definitely remembered them. There was a reason she hadn't been back to the States since her sister's kids were small; this was one of the few places in the world where demons didn't go, and whatever some mystical Scythe had had to say about her destiny, she was much happier in operations management than supernatural pest control. She'd taken the minimum of training required to be safe, accepted a specially enchanted amulet to keep herself off the Council's call sheet, thrown herself even harder into her education and internships, and shook the vampire dust from her heels the moment she could.
There was something about the Indominus Rex that had made chills run up her spine from the beginning, though, and she did not like the confluence of events that had brought the oldest living Slayer and the Council's Head Watcher to Isla Nublar just before the hybrid dinosaur was due to be unveiled. Buffy Summers only left her home turf for new Slayers and apocalypses these days, according to the few other Slayers Claire was still in contact with, and Rupert Giles rarely even then. Neither possibility soothed Claire's nerves.
She watched Owen's expression darken as the steer they'd dropped to lure the Indominus Rex out of hiding failed to get a response, and couldn't help but ask. "So what does the Janna Kalderash School for Girls have to do with IBRIS? Or are they more personal visitors? I didn't think you'd ever been to Cleveland." She knew there was some kind of Army operation involved with demons; they'd mentioned it when she did her training. But Owen was never Army; he was Navy, and as far as she knew had never lived in either California or Ohio.
Owen blinked, then threw her a startled look. "You know who they are?"
There wasn't any point in denying it; if he didn't know what the school really was, then her answer wouldn't mean anything to him, and if he did, that was information Claire felt a definite need to know. "Of course; I did a summer program there one year when I was in college," she said, nonchalantly. "How'd you meet them?"
His eyes widened even further, and he did a slow visual sweep down to her shoes. Not an ogling kind of look, though; more an evaluative one that turned wry as he reached her feet. "I ought to have suspected something was up; you're the only person on Earth I've ever seen run in heels like that without breaking something. And Ms. Summers reminded me of you from the moment she opened her mouth."
It was Claire's turn to go wide-eyed with surprise. "Me?" The woman most of Claire's fellow trainees had called the Queen Slayer was only three or four years her elder, but the weight of lived experience in her gaze, the hard lines of her mouth when she'd spoken about the dangers of their Calling and everything she wished she'd been told when she first picked up a stake at fifteen, had made her seem much older to a young Claire. There was no way Claire could be that formidable even if she tried.
Owen grinned, mood finally lightening even if it was at her expense. "Yeah. Like she never met a challenge she wasn't determined to bring to heel. I've never met her before, if that's what you're trying to ask; don't worry, she's not here for the tequila you passed over. More's the pity. What she is here for...." He trailed off there, smile fading again as he gazed back into the paddock. "Where is the Indominus, anyway? The paddock didn't look anywhere near big enough to hide a dinosaur that size."
It wasn't, really. It wasn't that Claire hadn't had the same thought; but really, those sorts of nuts-and-bolts details weren't her business. She'd figured if the situation was really as bad as it looked, one of the many scientists attached to the project would have said something long since-- Masrani had been determined from the start not to underestimate their living attractions the way Hammond had. Claire had sort of the opposite problem; being up close to that many claws and teeth made the Slayer under her skin itch, and her days were challenging enough without adding that kind of tension to them, too. But it had been a while since Masrani had been very hands-on; someone might have thought they could get away with cutting corners.
She frowned, turning to one of the consoles and activating a thermal scan. The paddock had that feature for a reason, not that anyone had been very eager to explain why; she'd figured it must have been more necessary when the Indominus was considerably smaller. "It was just here. You're right, it shouldn't...."
The screen abruptly buzzed, declaring no thermal signatures had been detected, and she felt the blood drain out of her face as the lack of contact set off an alarm. "What? That can't be right."
Nick, the supervisor who'd been stationed in the observation room that day, started punching at his own screens; the alarm began echoing on them as well as he triggered several more scans.
Owen glanced at him, then met Claire's gaze, a grim set to his mouth as he registered what it meant. "Did you know," he said, a false lightness to his tone as he pitched his voice just for her ears, "that Wu's been fucking around with human DNA? Seems he got a little more experimental with Blue's makeup than the official files admit."
"...What?" Claire blinked at him, stunned. Buffy visiting Owen, Blue having human DNA: those facts added up to a sum that just did not want to compute, and it was easier to wonder what the hell that had to do with the Indominus than.... "Oh no," she gasped, belatedly catching on. "You don't think...?"
"Maybe not human, not with this one. But something," he said, grimly. "Blue's been on edge for months. Ms. Summers said that new Slayers these days are usually called in a specific place for a specific reason. And I've been keeping an eye on you since we came in here. You're even more tense than you were when I tried to tease you about the date itinerary, worse than I've ever seen you around the 'assets'. You feel it too, don't you?"
That changed things, if there was something potentially... other... about the Indominus. She'd been ready to bolt, to call for ACU, to start tracking it down before any guests found out; but if there was more to it than a scarier-looking Tyrannosaur? She wasn't about to step one foot out of this building until she knew it wasn't waiting out there to hunt them back. Owen was right; her Slayer sense was screaming, she'd just been ignoring it for so long she'd written it off as nerves. Claire fumbled her phone out of her pocket, hastily dialing Lowery in the main control room. "I think we might have an asset out of containment; there's several alarms going off here. Get me coordinates on the Indominus. Right now."
Lowery muttered something on the other end; she was too busy scanning the inner walls of the enclosure through the window, looking for any sign of what she feared to pay anything that wasn't an answer much attention.
"Oh shoot," Owen said more loudly, pointing at one of the walls. "Were those claw marks always there?"
The Slayer in her was very awake now; Claire took deep breaths through her nose, fishing the amulet out of the neckline of her blouse and yanking it off, letting her instincts have free reign. "I should have been paying more attention," she muttered, furious at herself. "This can't be happening."
Nick strode over the window to stare at the deep scratches marking up several yards of wall. "That's forty feet high. You really think she could have climbed out?"
"I'm sure as hell not going in there to find out," Owen snorted. "Not until we know exactly what she is, and exactly what went into her."
"Wait, what the hell?" Lowery finally spoke up again over the phone. "It's still in the cage, Claire. I thought we worked all the bugs out of the thermal tech-- you think maybe she damaged the paddock sensors?"
Claire swallowed hard, meeting Owen's gaze. "We can hope it's that, and not a glitch with the implant instead. Get ACU down here with twice as much tranq as we'd need for the T-Rex; we're going to have to figure the problem out immediately. She's too dangerous for there to be any uncertainty about where she is."
"Will do. But what do I tell Mr. Masrani?" Lowery wanted to know-- which probably meant her boss was standing right there, damn it.
She took another tense breath, then let it out. "Tell Mr. Grady's here with me, and we're working the issue. Everything will be fine. But if he could have a conversation with Dr. Wu about the Indominus' makeup, that would be really helpful."
"Uh, sure thing, boss," Lowery said, hanging up with a verbal shrug.
"Nick, if you could go out and wait for ACU?" she glanced toward the supervisor. "Let me know when they arrive, then show them where to climb for a good view; we'll stay in here and keep watch."
He nodded to her, visibly relieved not to be asked to do closer investigation himself. "Will do."
The minute the door shut behind him, she took a deep breath, then pulled up the Council message app on her phone. She only ever used it to text the few women she'd kept in touch with from those days, but everyone kept the same gold-starred names in their contacts, just in case.
The message was quick and to the point; Buffy was already on the island, after all. As tightly as Claire's nerves were wound, there was no way she was just going to assume ACU would be able to take care of it. She was not going to have people dying on her watch.
"I don't like this," Owen said tensely, after a few minutes had passed. "I really do not like this; we still can't see it or sense it, but it's probably watching us just fine. Has it ever been tranq'ed before? Even my other girls, not just Blue-- I keep telling Hoskins' guys to stop pointing weapons at them, because the minute the first one fires and they figure out what it is, they'll never stand still to be pointed at ever again."
Claire licked her lips. "Not since it was much smaller, the last time we transferred it. I suppose it depends on how good its memory is."
"I don't suppose you're up on your ranged weapons?" Owen said wryly, eyeing her again. "I saw the kind of things those hands could do."
He somehow managed to make that sound flirtatious; despite everything, Claire felt her cheeks flush as the rest of her instincts started sitting up and taking notice. He really was infuriatingly attractive, despite how much his attitude tended to drive her more control-freak tendencies up the wall. "Not really, no. I mean, the balance and the aim are supposed to be mostly innate? But it's not, you know, really my thing. Hopefully ACU won't get here until after Ms. Summers does, just in case. I don't know where we're going to put it when we do get it down, but we'll figure something out. Did you send her to the main resort hotel?"
"Yeah. But I didn't...."
"Oh, no, I did," Claire waved her phone at him. "I have no idea what I'm going to tell Mr. Masrani later, but on a scale of one to apocalypse, I thought that was an appropriate escalation."
"I think I'm starting to develop a little more appreciation for those organizational skills of yours," he replied, grin widening. "I really didn't get you at all; but you're starting to make more sense now."
"Pity I can't say the same," she replied dryly, suppressing her own smile.
That was, of course, the moment the door opened again, admitting a Buffy Summers dressed for her version of a night out, including a crossbow slung over her back. "Claire. Long time no see," she said, nodding to her. "Mr. Grady. You found the problem?"
"I thought I was making my own fate when I came here," Claire replied, shrugging. "But you did tell us that destiny can be a stalker sometimes. Looks like it finally caught up with me."
Buffy glanced out the window, a shudder passing through her despite the lack of visible threat. "The Powers do like to make sure one of us ends up somewhere important things are happening. It might not just be this thing; it might be only part of it. But wow, yeah, that definitely is a part. What even is that?"
"Twenty-six million dollars' worth of investment," Claire sighed. "I've asked for ACU to bring tranqs so we can get in there and figure out what exactly's going on. Either it's biologically able to evade all our security, or it's figured out how to take the security out physically, and either way we'll have to do something about that. Maybe move it somewhere at least temporarily while we fix things? But I have a bad feeling, and, well...."
"Rule number one," Buffy said, smiling at her.
"Some things you don't forget," Claire agreed. "I thought I might need bigger and badder, so...."
Buffy laughed as Claire gestured between them, then reached out for a quick handclasp. "I'll go join the guys outside, then. We'll talk later?"
"Of course."
"You too, Mister; we'll see tomorrow how she feels when this problem is solved, but we've still got to finish that conversation." She nodded to Owen, then walked back outside.
Claire was inexpressibly relieved to see her go. She had a nagging feeling that they'd just managed to dodge something much, much worse.
-x-
Author: Jedi Buttercup
Rating: T/PG-13
Crossover: Jurassic World
Spoilers: Very post-series for B:tVS; set just before the first JW movie; no comics canon
Notes: Follow up to Divide By Dinosaur Error and Some Pretty Unusual Criteria; definitely not the last!
Summary: Whatever some mystical Scythe had had to say about her destiny, Claire had been much happier in operations management than supernatural pest control. 2500 words.
Claire frowned at Owen as he stared through the glass into the Indominus' paddock. He'd been distracted even before she'd picked him up to give it a look over at Masrani's request; he'd let at least three opportunities to make a double entendre pass him by before agreeing to come with her, and hadn't brought up their failed first date even once. As far as she knew-- as far as InGen was required to tell Jurassic World Operations-- his project was proceeding along projected lines, even if he hadn't had a fully successful test yet, so she didn't think it was that. Maybe it was to do with the guests he'd called in to get VIP access for?
Okay, and maybe he wasn't the only one worried about that; she'd seen their pictures when the passes had been printed. Dr. Giles and Ms. Summers probably didn't remember her to pick out of a crowd, but she definitely remembered them. There was a reason she hadn't been back to the States since her sister's kids were small; this was one of the few places in the world where demons didn't go, and whatever some mystical Scythe had had to say about her destiny, she was much happier in operations management than supernatural pest control. She'd taken the minimum of training required to be safe, accepted a specially enchanted amulet to keep herself off the Council's call sheet, thrown herself even harder into her education and internships, and shook the vampire dust from her heels the moment she could.
There was something about the Indominus Rex that had made chills run up her spine from the beginning, though, and she did not like the confluence of events that had brought the oldest living Slayer and the Council's Head Watcher to Isla Nublar just before the hybrid dinosaur was due to be unveiled. Buffy Summers only left her home turf for new Slayers and apocalypses these days, according to the few other Slayers Claire was still in contact with, and Rupert Giles rarely even then. Neither possibility soothed Claire's nerves.
She watched Owen's expression darken as the steer they'd dropped to lure the Indominus Rex out of hiding failed to get a response, and couldn't help but ask. "So what does the Janna Kalderash School for Girls have to do with IBRIS? Or are they more personal visitors? I didn't think you'd ever been to Cleveland." She knew there was some kind of Army operation involved with demons; they'd mentioned it when she did her training. But Owen was never Army; he was Navy, and as far as she knew had never lived in either California or Ohio.
Owen blinked, then threw her a startled look. "You know who they are?"
There wasn't any point in denying it; if he didn't know what the school really was, then her answer wouldn't mean anything to him, and if he did, that was information Claire felt a definite need to know. "Of course; I did a summer program there one year when I was in college," she said, nonchalantly. "How'd you meet them?"
His eyes widened even further, and he did a slow visual sweep down to her shoes. Not an ogling kind of look, though; more an evaluative one that turned wry as he reached her feet. "I ought to have suspected something was up; you're the only person on Earth I've ever seen run in heels like that without breaking something. And Ms. Summers reminded me of you from the moment she opened her mouth."
It was Claire's turn to go wide-eyed with surprise. "Me?" The woman most of Claire's fellow trainees had called the Queen Slayer was only three or four years her elder, but the weight of lived experience in her gaze, the hard lines of her mouth when she'd spoken about the dangers of their Calling and everything she wished she'd been told when she first picked up a stake at fifteen, had made her seem much older to a young Claire. There was no way Claire could be that formidable even if she tried.
Owen grinned, mood finally lightening even if it was at her expense. "Yeah. Like she never met a challenge she wasn't determined to bring to heel. I've never met her before, if that's what you're trying to ask; don't worry, she's not here for the tequila you passed over. More's the pity. What she is here for...." He trailed off there, smile fading again as he gazed back into the paddock. "Where is the Indominus, anyway? The paddock didn't look anywhere near big enough to hide a dinosaur that size."
It wasn't, really. It wasn't that Claire hadn't had the same thought; but really, those sorts of nuts-and-bolts details weren't her business. She'd figured if the situation was really as bad as it looked, one of the many scientists attached to the project would have said something long since-- Masrani had been determined from the start not to underestimate their living attractions the way Hammond had. Claire had sort of the opposite problem; being up close to that many claws and teeth made the Slayer under her skin itch, and her days were challenging enough without adding that kind of tension to them, too. But it had been a while since Masrani had been very hands-on; someone might have thought they could get away with cutting corners.
She frowned, turning to one of the consoles and activating a thermal scan. The paddock had that feature for a reason, not that anyone had been very eager to explain why; she'd figured it must have been more necessary when the Indominus was considerably smaller. "It was just here. You're right, it shouldn't...."
The screen abruptly buzzed, declaring no thermal signatures had been detected, and she felt the blood drain out of her face as the lack of contact set off an alarm. "What? That can't be right."
Nick, the supervisor who'd been stationed in the observation room that day, started punching at his own screens; the alarm began echoing on them as well as he triggered several more scans.
Owen glanced at him, then met Claire's gaze, a grim set to his mouth as he registered what it meant. "Did you know," he said, a false lightness to his tone as he pitched his voice just for her ears, "that Wu's been fucking around with human DNA? Seems he got a little more experimental with Blue's makeup than the official files admit."
"...What?" Claire blinked at him, stunned. Buffy visiting Owen, Blue having human DNA: those facts added up to a sum that just did not want to compute, and it was easier to wonder what the hell that had to do with the Indominus than.... "Oh no," she gasped, belatedly catching on. "You don't think...?"
"Maybe not human, not with this one. But something," he said, grimly. "Blue's been on edge for months. Ms. Summers said that new Slayers these days are usually called in a specific place for a specific reason. And I've been keeping an eye on you since we came in here. You're even more tense than you were when I tried to tease you about the date itinerary, worse than I've ever seen you around the 'assets'. You feel it too, don't you?"
That changed things, if there was something potentially... other... about the Indominus. She'd been ready to bolt, to call for ACU, to start tracking it down before any guests found out; but if there was more to it than a scarier-looking Tyrannosaur? She wasn't about to step one foot out of this building until she knew it wasn't waiting out there to hunt them back. Owen was right; her Slayer sense was screaming, she'd just been ignoring it for so long she'd written it off as nerves. Claire fumbled her phone out of her pocket, hastily dialing Lowery in the main control room. "I think we might have an asset out of containment; there's several alarms going off here. Get me coordinates on the Indominus. Right now."
Lowery muttered something on the other end; she was too busy scanning the inner walls of the enclosure through the window, looking for any sign of what she feared to pay anything that wasn't an answer much attention.
"Oh shoot," Owen said more loudly, pointing at one of the walls. "Were those claw marks always there?"
The Slayer in her was very awake now; Claire took deep breaths through her nose, fishing the amulet out of the neckline of her blouse and yanking it off, letting her instincts have free reign. "I should have been paying more attention," she muttered, furious at herself. "This can't be happening."
Nick strode over the window to stare at the deep scratches marking up several yards of wall. "That's forty feet high. You really think she could have climbed out?"
"I'm sure as hell not going in there to find out," Owen snorted. "Not until we know exactly what she is, and exactly what went into her."
"Wait, what the hell?" Lowery finally spoke up again over the phone. "It's still in the cage, Claire. I thought we worked all the bugs out of the thermal tech-- you think maybe she damaged the paddock sensors?"
Claire swallowed hard, meeting Owen's gaze. "We can hope it's that, and not a glitch with the implant instead. Get ACU down here with twice as much tranq as we'd need for the T-Rex; we're going to have to figure the problem out immediately. She's too dangerous for there to be any uncertainty about where she is."
"Will do. But what do I tell Mr. Masrani?" Lowery wanted to know-- which probably meant her boss was standing right there, damn it.
She took another tense breath, then let it out. "Tell Mr. Grady's here with me, and we're working the issue. Everything will be fine. But if he could have a conversation with Dr. Wu about the Indominus' makeup, that would be really helpful."
"Uh, sure thing, boss," Lowery said, hanging up with a verbal shrug.
"Nick, if you could go out and wait for ACU?" she glanced toward the supervisor. "Let me know when they arrive, then show them where to climb for a good view; we'll stay in here and keep watch."
He nodded to her, visibly relieved not to be asked to do closer investigation himself. "Will do."
The minute the door shut behind him, she took a deep breath, then pulled up the Council message app on her phone. She only ever used it to text the few women she'd kept in touch with from those days, but everyone kept the same gold-starred names in their contacts, just in case.
The message was quick and to the point; Buffy was already on the island, after all. As tightly as Claire's nerves were wound, there was no way she was just going to assume ACU would be able to take care of it. She was not going to have people dying on her watch.
"I don't like this," Owen said tensely, after a few minutes had passed. "I really do not like this; we still can't see it or sense it, but it's probably watching us just fine. Has it ever been tranq'ed before? Even my other girls, not just Blue-- I keep telling Hoskins' guys to stop pointing weapons at them, because the minute the first one fires and they figure out what it is, they'll never stand still to be pointed at ever again."
Claire licked her lips. "Not since it was much smaller, the last time we transferred it. I suppose it depends on how good its memory is."
"I don't suppose you're up on your ranged weapons?" Owen said wryly, eyeing her again. "I saw the kind of things those hands could do."
He somehow managed to make that sound flirtatious; despite everything, Claire felt her cheeks flush as the rest of her instincts started sitting up and taking notice. He really was infuriatingly attractive, despite how much his attitude tended to drive her more control-freak tendencies up the wall. "Not really, no. I mean, the balance and the aim are supposed to be mostly innate? But it's not, you know, really my thing. Hopefully ACU won't get here until after Ms. Summers does, just in case. I don't know where we're going to put it when we do get it down, but we'll figure something out. Did you send her to the main resort hotel?"
"Yeah. But I didn't...."
"Oh, no, I did," Claire waved her phone at him. "I have no idea what I'm going to tell Mr. Masrani later, but on a scale of one to apocalypse, I thought that was an appropriate escalation."
"I think I'm starting to develop a little more appreciation for those organizational skills of yours," he replied, grin widening. "I really didn't get you at all; but you're starting to make more sense now."
"Pity I can't say the same," she replied dryly, suppressing her own smile.
That was, of course, the moment the door opened again, admitting a Buffy Summers dressed for her version of a night out, including a crossbow slung over her back. "Claire. Long time no see," she said, nodding to her. "Mr. Grady. You found the problem?"
"I thought I was making my own fate when I came here," Claire replied, shrugging. "But you did tell us that destiny can be a stalker sometimes. Looks like it finally caught up with me."
Buffy glanced out the window, a shudder passing through her despite the lack of visible threat. "The Powers do like to make sure one of us ends up somewhere important things are happening. It might not just be this thing; it might be only part of it. But wow, yeah, that definitely is a part. What even is that?"
"Twenty-six million dollars' worth of investment," Claire sighed. "I've asked for ACU to bring tranqs so we can get in there and figure out what exactly's going on. Either it's biologically able to evade all our security, or it's figured out how to take the security out physically, and either way we'll have to do something about that. Maybe move it somewhere at least temporarily while we fix things? But I have a bad feeling, and, well...."
"Rule number one," Buffy said, smiling at her.
"Some things you don't forget," Claire agreed. "I thought I might need bigger and badder, so...."
Buffy laughed as Claire gestured between them, then reached out for a quick handclasp. "I'll go join the guys outside, then. We'll talk later?"
"Of course."
"You too, Mister; we'll see tomorrow how she feels when this problem is solved, but we've still got to finish that conversation." She nodded to Owen, then walked back outside.
Claire was inexpressibly relieved to see her go. She had a nagging feeling that they'd just managed to dodge something much, much worse.
-x-