"Girl Talk…"
Disclaimer: If ya are fan-fic writers, where's your disclaimers? Disclaimers? We ain't got no disclaimers...I don' need to show you no stinkin'...No, Joss, no...I make no claims, put that thing down!
It's all yours and ME's... And those guys with the robots...
Spoilers for Angel to the bitter end...Flee at once!...
Summary: The night of the great LA battle two famed ladies have a chat…
***
Los Angeles, 1am…
Outer zone of devastation on the edge of the city…Where, looking further downtown, the view of raging fires, destroyed buildings and vehicles, along with the general cries of rage and agony, coupled to the incessant wail of alarms and sirens, indicated a major disaster of some sort in progress…
"We'll need your clothes, your weapons, and that vehicle…" pink-nailed finger of delicate left hand pointed to a four-wheeled cart where an oxen-like creature in harness sighed…
So much for my hopes for freedom at last…
The two tall fellows seated in the cart now confronted eyed each other…
"Watch that eye stalk, Stanley…" one noted, carefully unraveling the twisted eye stalk…
"Sorry, Ollie…" the other, apologetically…
"Now…" the slight figure confronting Ollie…A now-frowning seven foot creature resembling nothing so much as a tightly closed head of lettuce in formal suit on thick legs with tentacles and rather surprisingly soulful eyes on long stalks…
His stalks, one after the other running up and down the length of the lovely little brunette, apparently human, female standing before him…
Unblinking eyes locked on him…
Hmmn…Doesn't look like much…
On the other hand, her companion…
"Ollie, is that her?..." Stanley pointed a tentacle at the brunette's companion…A slight blonde...
"I think so…I've never seen her undressed…" Ollie stared over at the blonde… "Are you…?"
"Ollie!!..." Stanley cried as Ollie was hurled against the nearest wall by the brunette…
"Are you going to comply?..." the brunette looked at Stanley, a slightly smaller and thinner version of Ollie…"
He nodded… Oh, yes, ma'am… Stripping hastily… "Ollie?..."
"He's all right…" the blonde who'd gone over to take Ollie's clothes patted the now quivering mass of Ollie… "Sorry about that…"
"Don't think these'll fit you, miss…" Stanley said politely, handing his clothes and his battleaxe to the brunette…
"They will do until we meet with others…" she took the clothes in one hand, the axe in the other… "Thank you…You should take your friend and go now…"
"Really sorry…" the other called to them… "My friend Cameron is a little impatient to find her way home to her boyfriend…"
"John is not my boyfriend…" Cameron eyed her companion now trying to find a way to use something from Ollie's clothes…Hmmn, if I wrap this around my bottom and tie it off up here…
"You'd die to protect him, right?...You did die, for a while…"
"That is my mission…I allowed John Henry to have my chip for a time and powered down in order to protect John…That and preventing Skynet's activation…"
"And he came to save you…And you told him…"
"I told him it was foolish for him to risk a temporal leap to save a machine…Particularly a T-888, with potential chip damage and just ending an interaction with an unstable, potentially lethal AI…"
"But you were glad to see him anyway…"
"It vindicates the success of my impersonating a human female…" shy look… "It was nice he came back…"
"You always want to be near him…And you don't like being away from him…"
"I must stay near John to protect him…I can't do that optimally unless I am near him…It creates a conflict…"
"You tell him things about you you'd never tell any one else…"
Cameron, adjusting Stanley's pants about her, frowned… "When it is necessary to the mission…Or he asks…"
"And he does the same…"
"Occasionally…"
"And sometimes you'd like to kill him…"
"Only when my terminate command is restored…Or once when he really…"
"That's love, Cameron…Run an analysis while we see how to make the vehicle go…"
Pause…Both climbed up into the cart…Taking spots on the board that served as a seat…
"There's no key…" the blonde looked round…
"There should be reins to control the animal…" Cameron looked round…
"Ladies…" the oxen-like creature sighed, turning its head back to face them… "I can take you wherever, just let me know…"
"Thank you, Mr. Cow…" the blonde smiled… "Take us to wherever…"
"Ox-calderos demon, ma'am…Cal is fine…But could you be more specific…?"
"She'd like to find the battlesite…" Cameron told him… "Why are you speaking?..."
"Why are you?...You're not human either…" Cal noted… "It's this way…" he pulled against the harness…"
"He's very clever…" the blonde eyed Cal's large head…
"I did tell him once I loved him… But that was a ruse when my termination override was faulty and I intended to kill him…" Cameron said, suddenly…Eyeing her blonde seatmate…
"We all do sometimes…After I was left in the dumpster at Sunnydale and Schmirk the Hideous found my head and torso and used it to decorate his lair and I powered up and found him kicking me around, screaming 'I vanquished the Slayer! I vanquished the Slayer!...' I was really a bit pissed with William for abandoning me…"
"My analysis is complete… Buffy?..." Cameron stared unblinkingly at the blonde…
"Is 'could be' a proper answer?...I think my enhancement from John Henry is affecting the outcome…"
"He sounded really smart, too…" "Buffy" nodded…
"His platform was somewhat primitive but his programming was far superior to mine…Andy Goode, who created the original Skynet program in our original timeline, set up his software on a platform called the Turk…He's dead…"
"The Turk…?...Was he nice?…I don't like it when nice people die…"
"The Turk is destroyed…Or will be…Andy is dead…John's uncle shot his alternate self…He thought it was necessary to stop Skynet from being created…So did I…But Sarah wouldn't let me shoot him…Andy was very nice…His new Turk became John Henry, not Skynet so Sarah was right not to shoot him…"
"Oh…" "Buffy" nodded… "That sounds like when my counterpart had to send her old boyfriend Angel to Hell…He's pointy-haired and bloody stupid…But he came back, so Buffy was probably right too…"
"Humans are very lucky sometimes when they guess…" Cameron noted… "I'm detecting very high metabolic rates all around…Are they demonic?..."
"Hmmn…Yeah…" "Buffy" nodded… "Demons and vampires…"
"That's illogical…Demons and vampires are mythical creatures…"
"In your dimension, on your Earth…"
Hmmn…Point there…Established beyond all relevant doubt by stellar and subquantum analysis…Cameron nodded…
Hmmn…Human interaction program suggests frustration response appropriate at this junction…
"That terminator-bitch Weaver and her time travel system…"
"Weaver is the T-1001 liquid metal terminator-bitch you told me about?..." "Buffy" asked…
"Her name probably wasn't always Weaver…I think there's a 78% possibility she killed the real Catherine Weaver along with her husband to secure an industrial base at Zeira Corporation in present John's time on our Earth…I hope John doesn't trust her too far…"
"He loves you…He came back…Forward…For you…"
"Yes…He did…" Cameron nodded…"Nothing in my existence ever pleased me so much as that he came back…"
Faint ghost of smile…
"Savannah's going to kill her anyway now that she's grown…"
"She's the little girl Weaver didn't kill…?"
"The real Weaver's little girl…The T-1001 Weaver kept her for cover… She did take her for counseling when she had problems accepting her as her mother…"
"Counseling is always wise in dealing with emotional or psychological problems in humans…" "Buffy" nodded… "It was nice of the T-1001 after murdering her mother…"
"Innocent until proven guilty is written into the penal code in the State of California…And likewise the United States of America's federal penal code…" Cameron noted… "There is a 22% possibility she didn't kill the mother…"
"Then the counseling would be even nicer…"
"Yes…And very efficient for maintaining her cover as human Weaver…"
"Did you ever go to counseling?..."
"Yes, with Sarah and John…We requested family therapy from Savannah's therapist because he was on the list left by the dying resistance fighter in blood in our basement…He died later, but not because of Skynet…"
"Oh…I'm sorry…"
"Yes…Everyone has agreed he was very nice…His professional credentials were excellent and while the school he attended for his doctorate was not listed among the top ten departments in the US, it had an innovative approach to counseling that has proven to be a model…"
"I'm sorry he died…"
"John Henry felt badly once he understood…He shut down several internal building systems during a power outage…The heat in the basement lab was beyond tolerable for human survival…"
"Humans should not get too hot…It's bad for demons too…Especially hybrid human-vampire demons…So would counseling be good for me and William?..."
"William is not human?...But has a human soul?..."
"Yes…I confirmed from Council records on the Internet what Schmirk said to my head and torso one night when he was drunk and ranting…It was just after I completed my audio system repairs so I heard him…"
"Ladies…" Cal called… "You may want to keep a close eye up here…We're approaching the rear guard…Mostly non-sentinent…They'll eat anything, including each other…"
"Thank you, Cal…" "Buffy" called… "I'm maintaining a tracking sweep…"
"My infra-red and radar scans are continuing as well…" Cameron said…
"Great…Please remember I've been cooperating…I'd prefer not to be roasting on a spit…" Cal noted…
"We'll protect you, Cal…Cameron and I are pretty strong…Do you think counseling is a good thing, Cal?..."
"My wife and I tried it years ago…" Cal replied… "It's always good to have someone listen to your problems…"
"If William has a human soul, human counseling might be useful…" Cameron agreed…
"I think…" she paused… "I think Sarah would prefer John get counseling to avoid a relationship with me…"
"Mothers-in-law…" "Buffy" sighed… "They're usually a problem…Or Evil…"
"Sarah's not evil…But she has high standards for John…And an understandable aversion to terminator cyborgs…She wouldn't kiss me…"
"When I left for school in the morning with John…" she explained… "I was pretending to be John's sister…She'd kiss John every morning…Never me…"
"I'm sorry…" "Buffy" shook her head…
"She didn't encourage his relationship with Riley, the human from the future very much though…I think for a while she wouldn't have minded that much if I'd killed her…Do you think she would have liked me better if I'd killed Riley then?..."
"Mothers-in-law are among the most difficult humans to understand and anticipate…Did she like killing people?..."
"No…She preferred to avoid it when possible…And ordered me not to a number of times even when it endangered John as well as herself…"
"Did she kill Riley?..."
"No, another future human traveler did…Riley's companion on the journey…"
"Then probably not…You did the right thing not killing Riley…"
"Your central processor is rather primitive but your programming is very detailed…" Cameron noted… "Thank you…"
"Thanks…Warren had limited technology compared to Skynet…But he was a demonically inspired human genius…"
"Did you know him?...Was he nice like Andy Goode?..."
"Only for a few days after activation…I don't think so, according to a Council report he became very Evil and killed Tara, my best friend Willow Rosenberg's lesbian lover, and Willow flayed and burned him alive…He buried a command in my service files to destroy Spike after 1000 days service but Willow found it and deleted it…"
"My termination command can't be fully deleted…" Cameron looked out past Cal's head… "One day I may terminate John…"
"I may have to stake William some day, if he asks me to…" "Buffy" noted kindly… "Probably because he's losing his soul again or something…Maybe you'll terminate John when he wants you to 'cause he's hurt or sick…Or when he gets very old…William still has Spike urging him to kill…All humans and free souls are capable of Evil if they choose it…Life is a test, a book I uploaded into my memory says…And the outcome cannot be known until the end comes…Perhaps not killing John until he wants you to is your test, Cameron…"
"Defeating Skynet would be more productive…Do humans here regenerate?..."
"Only a few with demonic powers…Why?..."
"Burning Warren after flaying him alive was inefficient unless Willow was afraid he'd regenerate…Or did she think someone would clone his remains?..."
"I don't know her motives with regard to cloning, though I don't believe humans have that level of cloning technology at present…He hasn't ever regenerated that I know of…"
"You are sure he was human, not a T-888 who required complete exoskeletal destruction?..."
"Pretty sure…" "Buffy" nodded…Pardon me, but we're talking…She politely noted to a ravening fiend…Six green feet of ghoulish ravening fiend…Charging at their cart from the side…She snapping its neck as Cameron kicked its arm back…
"This is a very strong body…" "Buffy" noted, pleased…
"It's fortunate the T-888 that attacked me and diverted my jump wasn't so damaged on the surface that it couldn't go through the time portal with me…" Cameron eyed her companion…Scarred but regenerating head and shoulders of Buffy Summers on a T-888 flesh-encased exoskeleton…Some slight discoloration where the artificial skin of the original Buffy- bot met the T-888's authentic flesh…
"It would have been a little difficult to get here without a complete body frame…Robotists of Warren's skill level are hard to find here…I was going to mail myself to Japan before you found me crawling through LA after I escaped from Schmirk…" "Buffy" nodded… "I might not have made it back here in time…I'm very grateful, Cameron…As soon as we save William, we'll seize one of the Partners and make him send you home via their portal…"
"I'm sorry we couldn't complete your skin grafting on your upper body before we came…Is William much into the physical appearance thing?..."
"He's grown, I think…But please tell him that we can complete my repair later…" "Buffy", slight plea in tone…
"Of course…"
"But he could have had me after Buffy died…Before he got the soul, when he still had a lot of Evil in him and was good at deception…He rejected the option of deceiving the guys and keeping me for a sex robot when I wasn't impersonating dead Buffy…My analysis suggests he therefore wanted more than the physical…"
"That's a logical conclusion…" Cameron agreed… "He did that before acquiring a soul?...He must be a very good man…"
"That's my conclusion…" "Buffy" nodded, pleased… "But…" Slight sigh, downcast look…
"You're here…She's not…" Cameron eyed her…Encouraging tone…
***
