August 3: Divide By Dinosaur Error [Jurassic World]
Title: Divide By Dinosaur Error
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: Doing my usual drive-by-and-drop-a-few-stories this month. Exhausting year, not much time to write, but I've never forgotten where I got my real fanfic start. :)
Summary: A new Slayer turns up on Isla Nublar. Approaching her proves to be a difficult proposition. 1700 words.
Buffy smothered a yawn against the back of her hand, blinking blearily as the pilot's voice announced that they were finally on the ground, approaching the terminal at Juan Santamaría International Airport. Flying commercial was no fun for a Slayer, particularly a Slayer in her mid-thirties with half a lifetime's hard wear and tear behind her, but there was really no other quiet way to get where she was going. She might not have personally had to make with the crowd-blendage much in recent years, but it was still a time-honored hunting tactic.
She heard a series of beeps next to her as a device turned off airplane mode began receiving a string of messages, and turned her head to glance at her Watcher.
"So. What's the what? Is the new Slayer still on the island?" she asked, stretching carefully in her seat. Giles didn't often travel with her these days to find the new girls-- usually, that was Willow, or sometimes Faith or Dawn-- but he could do the heavyweight scholarly credentials thing really, really well, in case they had to talk themselves into some place tourists normally weren't allowed.
"So Willow informs me," he replied, frowning intently at the small, rectangular screen of his smartphone. He still wasn't the biggest fan of technology, but the convenience and utility of Willow's growing collection of technomagic apps had finally convinced him to carry one.
"That's going on eight days now, huh. Either she's on the most expensive vacay ever, which means we're probably getting another Kennedy-type, or...."
"Or she's the daughter of a resident employee; or potentially an intern, any of which conditions might make approaching her a difficult proposition," Giles agreed.
"Kind of like old school for you, then," Buffy teased him, grinning at the dirty look he threw her in response.
How long had it been since a new Potential had turned up anywhere they didn't already have some kind of contact, either through the existing Slayer network or one of the neutral demon communities? The mass Awakening during the fall of Sunnydale had sent shockwaves through the supernatural side of society for several years, but it had finally mostly settled out into a new equilibrium. Now, whenever new Potentials reached puberty and faced some kind of triggering event, they were swiftly found and much more easily brought up to speed than before. A significant percentage of them were even already aware of things that went bump-y in the dark, thanks to the Internet. No lurking in libraries and confronting girls with big scary tomes labeled Vampyr anymore!
Not that she had all that many stones to throw herself, now. Nearly two decades later, a lot closer to the age Giles had been then than the typical new Slayer, Buffy was the authority figure griping about what the young'uns were putting her through. But this was kind of a unique situation.
Jurassic World might have all the size and features of a resort town, but it was 180 miles off the coast of Costa Rica, too sunny and hot for vampires and too humid for a lot of other species, with its own small private army and security cameras everywhere. Plus, it had been built on an archipelago known locally as Las Cinco Muertes-- for good reason. Scrying the islands wasn't easy; Willow had made a joke about 'spooky action at a distance' that had had Dawn in stitches, but had creeped out everyone else. Consensus was that something big slept there that mostly kept other supernatural entities far, far away-- it was only humans and their creations that were dumb enough to ignore the warning. Really, the surprise wasn't that something had gone wrong with the first dinosaur park, it was that something bad hadn't happened to the second one in the decade plus since it had opened.
If the fact that a new Slayer had been called there meant anything, though, that might be about to change. Prophecy had gotten pretty muddled these days-- a wrinkle in the Powers' shorts that Buffy was mostly pretty happy about-- but it still had a way of steering Potentials about to wake into situations where their gifts might make a difference.
"For a definition of 'old school' that includes recreated examples of creatures last seen during the Primordium," Giles replied, dryly. "We should thank our lucky stars, I suppose, that InGen has yet to attempt to sequence demonic DNA."
Buffy had a bad, bad thought, and the hair stood up on the back of her neck as the plane's door opened and a breath of warm, humid air flowed up the aisle. "Never, ever mention that to Illyria. If she thinks she could get her army back that way...."
The reconstituted Old One from Angel's team had mostly reconciled herself to the existence of humanity these days, especially since she had finally gotten her chosen Guide back, but mostly was not completely, and who knew what InGen's geneticists might make out of the remains left behind in her old temple? She wouldn't be surprised to find that they had several Wolfram and Hart refugees on their staff as it was.
"I'll just pretend I didn't hear that, shall I," Giles shuddered, then put the phone away and shifted to retrieve his bag. "Speaking of horrifying thoughts. It'll be another hour or more to Puntarenas after we leave the airport, in addition to the ferry ride out to the island; it'll be several hours yet before we have a better idea what we're looking for."
"Cheer up, Giles. We're going to get to see actual dinosaurs! By which I do mean dinosaurs, and not the joke you'll carefully notice I'm not making." Buffy replied with a gentle nudge of her elbow.
"So noted," Giles replied; then finally relented and gave her a fond smile. "It is a rather old school Watcher-Slayer adventure, though, isn't it? Hopefully rather less traumatizing than some of our former encounters with ancient beings."
"Mood," she replied cheekily, then carefully retrieved her own bag and moved to follow the flow of humanity out into the Costa Rican sunshine.
*
Hours later, she turned wide eyes up at her Watcher, and wished they had brought Willow along after all. They'd been forced to improvise to get into a restricted area, and what they'd found there...
Buffy stared out of the brush alongside the access road toward the big, octagonal building with the double-layered gates. "You jinxed us, didn't you. The Raptor Research Arena? Raptor, as in velociraptors? You're sure she's in there."
Giles waved the smartphone again, open to the scrying app. "There's no uncertainty in the results; this close to the source, the spell is able to pierce through the interference enough to get a fix."
"Velociraptors," she objected again. The crash of the first park had been pretty hushed up at the time, and the T-Rex rampaging through San Diego four years later had been just background noise to her first head-on collision with fatal prophecy, but her dad had been fascinated with all the interviews that last summer she'd stayed with him. They were basically the Slayers of the dinosaur world.
She opened her mouth to repeat that out loud-- then paused, struck by another awful thought.
"Giles... do you see any teenagers here at all?" she said, eyeing the figures up on the catwalk. The youngest person she'd seen since they got there was a weedy guy in his twenties, and he was clearly pretty low on the totem pole; everyone else was in their thirties at least. No way could any of them secretly be a brand-new Slayer. "Because if there aren't any tourists, and I kind of doubt OSHA would approve staff bringing their kids around their pet murder-machines...."
"Buffy. You aren't suggesting...." Giles sucked in a sharp breath, staring back toward the paddock.
Buffy furrowed her brow, then closed her eyes and paid closer attention to what she felt; she still made a pretty crappy sensor compared to some of the newer girls, but she was much, much better than she'd been as a raw young Slayer, unable to tell one of her sisters from a demon while standing right in front of her.
There was definitely another Slayer in that building.
InGen famously bred all-female animals, so they could maintain control of each one from the moment it hatched until its death.
According to all the old interviews, raptors were lethal-- AKA adult-- by about eight months.
Coincidentally, the pen looked like it had been there maybe a year?
And finally... InGen basically was Mad Scientist Central these days. What if...?
There'd supposedly never been a totally nonhuman Slayer, but there had been more than a few with demonic ancestry; some Watcher research even suggested all Slayers probably had at least a touch of predator in their background, the better to bond with the Slayer essence. Having met the original Shadow Men, Buffy really wouldn't be surprised if that were true. And if some black-hatted lab geek had decided to stir in some human DNA....
As if in answer to her line of thought, a loud, whistly-screamy sound issued from inside the complex, and a blue-striped form moved to stare back at her through both gates.
"I think I am," Buffy said, breath caught.
How was she supposed to explain Slaying to a velociraptor? Never mind that, how was she supposed to find a Watcher for a velociraptor? Never mind that, what was she supposed to do about the fact that Jurassic World was apparently creating-- and enslaving-- sentient beings now?
"Divide by dinosaur error; can we start today over, please?" she said, plaintively.
"What was that you said earlier about jinxing us?" Giles replied, tone very dry.
Buffy gave him a dirty look, then stepped out onto the road; the way the raptor was staring and yelling, someone was going to come looking for whatever was upsetting her. So if they were going to have to make a 911 call to Willow anyway, better investigate a little more first.
"That we're living in interesting times?" she shrugged.
Well, no one ever promised life as a Slayer would be boring.
-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: Doing my usual drive-by-and-drop-a-few-stories this month. Exhausting year, not much time to write, but I've never forgotten where I got my real fanfic start. :)
Summary: A new Slayer turns up on Isla Nublar. Approaching her proves to be a difficult proposition. 1700 words.
Buffy smothered a yawn against the back of her hand, blinking blearily as the pilot's voice announced that they were finally on the ground, approaching the terminal at Juan Santamaría International Airport. Flying commercial was no fun for a Slayer, particularly a Slayer in her mid-thirties with half a lifetime's hard wear and tear behind her, but there was really no other quiet way to get where she was going. She might not have personally had to make with the crowd-blendage much in recent years, but it was still a time-honored hunting tactic.
She heard a series of beeps next to her as a device turned off airplane mode began receiving a string of messages, and turned her head to glance at her Watcher.
"So. What's the what? Is the new Slayer still on the island?" she asked, stretching carefully in her seat. Giles didn't often travel with her these days to find the new girls-- usually, that was Willow, or sometimes Faith or Dawn-- but he could do the heavyweight scholarly credentials thing really, really well, in case they had to talk themselves into some place tourists normally weren't allowed.
"So Willow informs me," he replied, frowning intently at the small, rectangular screen of his smartphone. He still wasn't the biggest fan of technology, but the convenience and utility of Willow's growing collection of technomagic apps had finally convinced him to carry one.
"That's going on eight days now, huh. Either she's on the most expensive vacay ever, which means we're probably getting another Kennedy-type, or...."
"Or she's the daughter of a resident employee; or potentially an intern, any of which conditions might make approaching her a difficult proposition," Giles agreed.
"Kind of like old school for you, then," Buffy teased him, grinning at the dirty look he threw her in response.
How long had it been since a new Potential had turned up anywhere they didn't already have some kind of contact, either through the existing Slayer network or one of the neutral demon communities? The mass Awakening during the fall of Sunnydale had sent shockwaves through the supernatural side of society for several years, but it had finally mostly settled out into a new equilibrium. Now, whenever new Potentials reached puberty and faced some kind of triggering event, they were swiftly found and much more easily brought up to speed than before. A significant percentage of them were even already aware of things that went bump-y in the dark, thanks to the Internet. No lurking in libraries and confronting girls with big scary tomes labeled Vampyr anymore!
Not that she had all that many stones to throw herself, now. Nearly two decades later, a lot closer to the age Giles had been then than the typical new Slayer, Buffy was the authority figure griping about what the young'uns were putting her through. But this was kind of a unique situation.
Jurassic World might have all the size and features of a resort town, but it was 180 miles off the coast of Costa Rica, too sunny and hot for vampires and too humid for a lot of other species, with its own small private army and security cameras everywhere. Plus, it had been built on an archipelago known locally as Las Cinco Muertes-- for good reason. Scrying the islands wasn't easy; Willow had made a joke about 'spooky action at a distance' that had had Dawn in stitches, but had creeped out everyone else. Consensus was that something big slept there that mostly kept other supernatural entities far, far away-- it was only humans and their creations that were dumb enough to ignore the warning. Really, the surprise wasn't that something had gone wrong with the first dinosaur park, it was that something bad hadn't happened to the second one in the decade plus since it had opened.
If the fact that a new Slayer had been called there meant anything, though, that might be about to change. Prophecy had gotten pretty muddled these days-- a wrinkle in the Powers' shorts that Buffy was mostly pretty happy about-- but it still had a way of steering Potentials about to wake into situations where their gifts might make a difference.
"For a definition of 'old school' that includes recreated examples of creatures last seen during the Primordium," Giles replied, dryly. "We should thank our lucky stars, I suppose, that InGen has yet to attempt to sequence demonic DNA."
Buffy had a bad, bad thought, and the hair stood up on the back of her neck as the plane's door opened and a breath of warm, humid air flowed up the aisle. "Never, ever mention that to Illyria. If she thinks she could get her army back that way...."
The reconstituted Old One from Angel's team had mostly reconciled herself to the existence of humanity these days, especially since she had finally gotten her chosen Guide back, but mostly was not completely, and who knew what InGen's geneticists might make out of the remains left behind in her old temple? She wouldn't be surprised to find that they had several Wolfram and Hart refugees on their staff as it was.
"I'll just pretend I didn't hear that, shall I," Giles shuddered, then put the phone away and shifted to retrieve his bag. "Speaking of horrifying thoughts. It'll be another hour or more to Puntarenas after we leave the airport, in addition to the ferry ride out to the island; it'll be several hours yet before we have a better idea what we're looking for."
"Cheer up, Giles. We're going to get to see actual dinosaurs! By which I do mean dinosaurs, and not the joke you'll carefully notice I'm not making." Buffy replied with a gentle nudge of her elbow.
"So noted," Giles replied; then finally relented and gave her a fond smile. "It is a rather old school Watcher-Slayer adventure, though, isn't it? Hopefully rather less traumatizing than some of our former encounters with ancient beings."
"Mood," she replied cheekily, then carefully retrieved her own bag and moved to follow the flow of humanity out into the Costa Rican sunshine.
*
Hours later, she turned wide eyes up at her Watcher, and wished they had brought Willow along after all. They'd been forced to improvise to get into a restricted area, and what they'd found there...
Buffy stared out of the brush alongside the access road toward the big, octagonal building with the double-layered gates. "You jinxed us, didn't you. The Raptor Research Arena? Raptor, as in velociraptors? You're sure she's in there."
Giles waved the smartphone again, open to the scrying app. "There's no uncertainty in the results; this close to the source, the spell is able to pierce through the interference enough to get a fix."
"Velociraptors," she objected again. The crash of the first park had been pretty hushed up at the time, and the T-Rex rampaging through San Diego four years later had been just background noise to her first head-on collision with fatal prophecy, but her dad had been fascinated with all the interviews that last summer she'd stayed with him. They were basically the Slayers of the dinosaur world.
She opened her mouth to repeat that out loud-- then paused, struck by another awful thought.
"Giles... do you see any teenagers here at all?" she said, eyeing the figures up on the catwalk. The youngest person she'd seen since they got there was a weedy guy in his twenties, and he was clearly pretty low on the totem pole; everyone else was in their thirties at least. No way could any of them secretly be a brand-new Slayer. "Because if there aren't any tourists, and I kind of doubt OSHA would approve staff bringing their kids around their pet murder-machines...."
"Buffy. You aren't suggesting...." Giles sucked in a sharp breath, staring back toward the paddock.
Buffy furrowed her brow, then closed her eyes and paid closer attention to what she felt; she still made a pretty crappy sensor compared to some of the newer girls, but she was much, much better than she'd been as a raw young Slayer, unable to tell one of her sisters from a demon while standing right in front of her.
There was definitely another Slayer in that building.
InGen famously bred all-female animals, so they could maintain control of each one from the moment it hatched until its death.
According to all the old interviews, raptors were lethal-- AKA adult-- by about eight months.
Coincidentally, the pen looked like it had been there maybe a year?
And finally... InGen basically was Mad Scientist Central these days. What if...?
There'd supposedly never been a totally nonhuman Slayer, but there had been more than a few with demonic ancestry; some Watcher research even suggested all Slayers probably had at least a touch of predator in their background, the better to bond with the Slayer essence. Having met the original Shadow Men, Buffy really wouldn't be surprised if that were true. And if some black-hatted lab geek had decided to stir in some human DNA....
As if in answer to her line of thought, a loud, whistly-screamy sound issued from inside the complex, and a blue-striped form moved to stare back at her through both gates.
"I think I am," Buffy said, breath caught.
How was she supposed to explain Slaying to a velociraptor? Never mind that, how was she supposed to find a Watcher for a velociraptor? Never mind that, what was she supposed to do about the fact that Jurassic World was apparently creating-- and enslaving-- sentient beings now?
"Divide by dinosaur error; can we start today over, please?" she said, plaintively.
"What was that you said earlier about jinxing us?" Giles replied, tone very dry.
Buffy gave him a dirty look, then stepped out onto the road; the way the raptor was staring and yelling, someone was going to come looking for whatever was upsetting her. So if they were going to have to make a 911 call to Willow anyway, better investigate a little more first.
"That we're living in interesting times?" she shrugged.
Well, no one ever promised life as a Slayer would be boring.
-x-