Witchfinder Chapter 3
By Joseph Black
Disclaimer: Red Storm and Tom Clancy own Rainbow and Characters. Joss Whedon owns Buffy and Characters. Anyone you don't recognize belongs to me. I make no profit of the following except to have a little fun.
Spoilers: Buffy to present. Rainbow to Bear and the Dragon.
Authors note 1: This is a continuation of the story started in 'Rainbow Over Sunnydale'. It would be helpful to read that fic first.
Authors note 2: I can't seem to get Fanfic to except my special formatting. So anytime you see this ' anything inside is in a foreign language. And if you see this it's some ones thoughts.
Authors note 3:
Thanks to all that reviewed. Constructive criticisms always welcomed. Flames cheerfully ignored.
Fic Starts Here:The ding of the Buffybot finishing its POST and boot brought Willow out of her reverie. The android opened her eyes and took a quick around the room. Spotting Willow it smiled and said, "Hello Willow, my chronometer indicates that I have been offline for a long time, I will need a complete update."
"I'm sorry Buffybot, but your were damaged last year and we weren't able to afford to fix you," Willow explained as she put a disc into her laptop. Taking a USB cord she plugged one end into her laptop and the other into the Buffybot's chest. "This will bring you up to date on everything that has happened since you went offline."
The Buffybot nodded, then smiled, "Hello Dawn! How have you been?"
"Hi Buffybot!" Dawn said with clear pleasure at seeing the robot Buffy operational again. "I've been fine, how are you feeling?"
"All my systems are nominal, thank you for asking," Buffybot replied, "And Willow is downloading the information of what has changed."
Dawn nodded. Turning to Willow she handed her a notebook, and the books and scrolls that Willow had wanted her opinion on. She frowned and simply said, "You were right."
Down the hall Buffy dreamed. She found herself walking down a woodland path. It was a woodland that mankind had never touched. The trees looked to be some kind of pine tree, but their first branches were higher than even she could jump and the base of their trunks were so huge, she bet if you hollowed one out you would have enough space for a two car garage. She sensed that she wasn't in her own body, and when she tried to stop the dream she no effect, so she just settled down for the ride. The trail went up at a steep angle until it came to a clearing. In the distance she saw a magnificent waterfall, a single stream of water that looked like it fell a thousand feet before she lost sight off it in spray and rainbows. At the back of the clearing there was a cave, man height and deep enough that she couldn't see the back of it, a littering of fresh bones around its mouth said that a predator lived there. The body that Buffy was sharing walked up to the mouth of the cave and heaved a rabbit carcass into it. Buffy saw that the arm was a bronze color, not tanned, but its natural color. There was a red and blue beaded band around its wrist. From inside the cave cracking and chewing noises came, when they finished a voice, a clear tenor that said you shouldn't take life too seriously, asked, "Well?"
"They've started running," the voice of the body replied, Buffy thought she should recognize it, but she couldn't place it.
"Start with the ring then," came the reply.
Buffy awoke. Now what the heck did that mean?
1600 Pennsylvania Av.
Washington D.C.
08Nov2002
08:20 Hours
Jack stood as Dan Murray and Lt. Col Joshua McCloud came into the room. Motioning the two men to the seats in front of his desk he sat and looked at his Director of the FBI expectantly.
"Morning Jack," Dan began.
"Not 'Good' morning?" Jack asked.
"Not with the news I just got," Murray replied. "Willow called in about an hour ago, she finally finished deciphering those books she got for the Witchfinder Case.
"She's convinced we are dealing with an ascension, but she can't narrow it past two types of demon."
"How bad is it?" Jack asked. Willow had gone over the details of her high school graduations when she briefed him and his 'Kitchen Cabinet' when she had been in to check out the White House and everyone had found the concept of someone turning into a sixty-foot snake incredible. He had checked with Colonel McCloud the next day to find out what the Initiative had on the event, only to find out that they had somehow missed the whole thing.
"Both are nasty," Dan said, "Which do you want to hear about first?"
"Whichever is worse," Jack replied fatalistically.
"Damage wise it would be the Arcrotic demon," Dan said as he passed a drawing over. The demon was vaguely reptilian. It was bipedal with long jaws filled with pointy teeth and a long spiked tail. At the bottom of the paper there were some vegetation drawn. Looking at the drawing for a couple of seconds Jack realized they were supposed to be trees. That made the creature at least three, maybe even four hundred feet tall.
"Damn, that thing is Godzilla scale," Jack commented.
"Yeah, and not the wimpy American one either," Dan agreed, his youngest had dragged him to that movie, and hadn't stop complaining about it for a week afterward.
"Well it won't be hard to miss when it shows up," Jack replied.
"If there is anyone around to see it," replied Dan.
Jack looked up for an explanation to that statement.
"It takes nine witches sacrificed a week apart to complete the ritual to ascend into that type of demon. The last witch sacrificed triggers an earthquake. Depending on the power of the witches it can be anywhere from a six point oh, to a ten point five. The demon draws energy from the earthquake and that determines his size and power."
"10.5?" Jack asked, "Are we talking about Nevada being beachfront property?"
"No. When I saw how big those earthquake this thing triggered could be I called down Palm Key and asked our Presidential Science Advisor what the results would be."
"You briefed Benton into the possible supernatural aspects of this case on the phone?" Jack asked. He had been seriously considering getting Benton up here to be briefed in on the supernatural, but he was in the middle of some important experiments and had asked not to be summoned unless it was a true emergency, of course if this didn't qualify, nothing did.
"No, I phrased it like I'd watched one of the Discovery Channel programs on Mega Disasters and was worried about how right they had gotten it. Turns out the Pacific Plate is pushing under the North American Plate so California is actually raising out of the sea not sinking into it. If that 10.5 goes off the area around San Francisco, the area will raise forty or fifty feet with lesser upheavals up and down the coast. The actual affects will be felt from Seattle to San Diego with significant damage going well inland."
Jack grunted with the scale of the disaster.
"It gets better though," Dan said. If it's a superqake Benton says it could set off any number of the volcanoes in the Cascade Range and it even has a decent chance of waking up the Long Valley Caldera."
"Long Valley?" Jack asked. "I don't think I've heard of that volcano."
" It's a super-volcano located over by Mammoth Mountain," Dan told him, "Though technically I think Mammoth Mountain is part of it."
"How bad would it be if it brewed up?" Jack asked.
Dan shrugged, "The last time it blew it put 150 cubic miles of crap into the air. Benton says that when Tambora put 10 cubic miles into the air it caused the 'Year Without a Summer'.
Jack paled. "If it is this type of demon we have two weeks to find this guy?"
Dan nodded, "Basically, we still have three days this week to find him."
"How long would it take to evacuate the danger area?" Jack asked.
"We looked into evacuating various cities in cases like this," Colonel McCloud said. "In this case do we plan on worst case or best case? Worse case, which would be a 10.5 quake followed by massive volcanic activity we could be looking at having to evacuate everything west of the Mississippi practically. That would say nothing about the real possibility of large number of refugees from northern Mexico and southern Canada. Plus we would have to deal with the creature itself."
"Are we talking about Godzilla?" Jack asked.
"Basically, I doubt it would be quite that tough, but conventional weapons would likely be of limited use, certainly nothing smaller than heavy artillery would have any effect."
"What about the other demon?" Jack asked.
"The other type is called a Maginus Demon," Dan passed over another drawing. This one looked a lot like the Balrog from Lord of the Rings, with fiery wings and rams horns. "If this is the demon then we have three days before it rises. In that case, it's the power level of the last witch sacrificed that determines how far reaching its effects are. Basically every person with any magical aptitude with in a 50 to 200 kilometer radius will spontaneously combust. The person ascending will absorb the energy released by this until they hit critical mass, then they will explode."
"How big?" Jack asked.
"Five to twenty kilotons," Dan replied. "And according to Willow, San Francisco has one of the highest per capita populations of people with magical aptitude on the planet. So, the blast will probably be on the larger side.
"I think we need to bring Buffy and Willow in on this one, ASAP."
"Approved," Jack told his friend. "What do we know about this last victim?"
"It's weird, the other victims were all obviously connected with the supernatural some how. Fortunetellers, New Age priestesses, supposed minor witches. This one runs a nightclub. She's a single mother who lives with her two sisters. Her name is Piper Halliwell."
Andrews Air Force Base
Washington D.C.
8Nov2002
09:55 Hours
Captain Thomas Anderson was steamed. He was the Army's foremost expert on Artificial Intelligence, heck he'd bet he was the military's foremost expert, not that those weenies in the Chair Force would give him the time of day. He had been five hours from being able to prove it too. His Gremlin autonomous scout robot had been ready to go. It would be released somewhere within fifty miles of Groom Lake programmed to recon the secret base. They had managed to get every sensor/scout platform that the US Military possessed; from guys on the ground with binoculars and thermal sights right up to a Dark Star UAV covering the approaches to the base, plus the sensors that the base already had installed to keep people away from Area 51. He knew, not thought, but knew, that the Gremlin could beat them. Five hours! Five hours before the exercise was to commence someone had pulled the Dark Star.
He had pointed out to General Miller, the project head, that what they had was a plenty daunting enough for a test, but the General had been adamant, he wanted the Dark Star to be in on it. Without it, he felt that the Air Force would claim that it could have picked up the robot and that would invalidate the test. So, he had postponed, which meant everything they needed would not now be available before summer next year. Tom refrained from punching the wall of the aircraft he was in.
Yesterday, General Miller had approached him about volunteering for a special project to examine a piece of technology that the army had come across. The way he said it implied that it was either this or busy work for the next six or seven months, so Tom had agreed. He had been instructed to be at Andrews Air Force Base at 08:00 the next day in civilian clothes. He was to be packed for at least a two-week deployment and to bring whatever tools he thought he might need. He had gotten up at 05:00 and been to Andrews at 06:30 to make sure his equipment had been packed correctly in the hold of the VC-20 he would be flying in. They had just sealed the doors and started the engines when the engines wound down and the steward came back and explained that they had been put on hold for another passenger. That had been almost two hours ago.
A Chevy Suburban sped onto the tarmac and stopping next to the boarding ramp and a middle age man jumped out of the back seat with a soft-sided suitcase and hurried aboard. Tom was surprised when he realized the man was Daniel Murray, the head of the FBI.
He quickly took his seat and the engines started again as the steward closed the door. Dan smiled at the army officer as he strapped in. He held off on conversation until the VC-20 reached cruising altitude.
"I'm afraid I owe you an apology or two," he began.
Tom was surprised, it wasn't often you had the head of a major organ of government apologizing to anyone, let alone a lowly army captain. Plus he couldn't imagine what the FBI had to apologize to him for. "For what, sir?" Tom respectfully asked.
"First, for making you wait for me today. I'm going to Sunnydale too, and we don't want to have too many planes coming in there. The other thing is that I'm the guy who grabbed that Dark Star you were going to use in your test. I can't tell you what we needed it for yet, but rest assured it was of vital importance that we did."
Tom darkened slightly; did this suit realize exactly what he had screwed up? Tom kept track of the national and international news; he couldn't remember anything going on two weeks ago that would have required a Dark Star. For that matter the Dark Star was strictly a military UAV, okay it didn't mount any weapons, not like some of the predator drones did, but it still should have been out of use for any of the domestic law enforcement or intelligence agencies to use.
On the other hand, when the Director of the FBI offered a lowly army captain an apology, only an idiot would let pride keep him from accepting, "Thank you sir, I hope someday I can learn what exactly screwed up my test."
"I think I can safely say that you will," Dan said.
814 Front St.
Sunnydale, CA
8Nov2002
11:00 Hours
A Ford Explorer driven by Cory Unger had met Dan Murray and Captain Thomas Anderson at the airport. Frank Miller had been along as an extra gun incase of trouble. Tom had looked the two over and came to the conclusion that they were both Special Forces. He started thinking of about what they could have found that would require his expertise and came up blank. He knew other nations were working on robots similar to what he was doing, but as far as he knew no one was really close. He was less surprised at the seeming warehouse they pulled into. Frank Miller, the guy riding shotgun, waved him toward the entrance. Inside it still looked like a warehouse, with a couple of SUVs and one sedan parked on the floor. "Captain Anderson? General Clark is waiting for you in his office," Miller told the army officer.
"Ms. Summers is in the gym giving us a work out," Cory Unger told Dan. His tone of voice suggested he wasn't totally heartbroken that he had the duty to pick the Director up at the airport.
Tom followed his guide up a set of wooden steps. At the top Miller knocked on the door and when a 'Come' sounded from within he stuck his head in and said, "Pardon me General, Captain Anderson is here."
"Send him in," a cheerful voice came from inside.
Tom entered the room and stated, "Captain Thomas Anderson, reporting as ordered."
"Have a seat Captain, I have a job I hope you'll be interested in."
As Anderson said, "Thank you General," he checked out the room and its occupants.
His first thought was, If this man is a general I'll eat the Gremlin. Anderson had met more than his share of generals while he had been selling the Gremlin. This man didn't have the vibe that they had, of course the vibe he did have was scary. Anderson realized he was looking him over too. He had the same kind of eyes that a couple of Special Forces soldiers he'd met during his project. Uncomfortable with the scrutiny Tom checked out the other person in the room. She was short blonde and had a slightly vacuous expression on her face. When she realized he was checking her out she smiled at him. What was she doing in classified briefing?
Clark cleared his throat to attract the AI expert's attention. "Captain Anderson, we recently came into possession of piece of equipment with advanced artificial intelligence capabilities. We need someone to figure out its full capabilities, maintain, and repair it."
Great, a grease monkey job, Tom thought to himself. Aloud he said, "General, I'd be happy to look at it and try to figure out what it can do, but I have to warn you, if General Miller manages to get hold of the equipment and personnel to test my current project I'll be recalled. You might want to find someone who doesn't have prior commitments."
"Captain, I asked Tony Brentano for the best, he sent you. Even if I can only have you for a couple of weeks it'll be worth it. Plus, when you see what we've got, you might decide to stay anyway." Clark could see that the young army captain thought that there was nothing out there that would lure him away from the Gremlin.
"Okay sir, then show me what you got."
The General waved at the blonde in the room, "Buffybot? Captain Thomas Anderson will be your system administrator for now."
The blonde turned to him and in a perky voice said, "Please state administrator passwords now."
Captain Thomas Anderson said, "Huh?"
"I'm sorry Captain Thomas Anderson, but that is insufficient for an administrator override, please pick at least seven numbers, or a four word statement."
"Can you cook?" Tom asked, still dazed.
"That is only three words, and I can make pancakes and macaroni and cheese."
"Will you marry me?"
"Administrator password accepted."
Dan followed the Rainbow Trooper into the gym. It looked like almost everyone was here. Most were in the bleachers cheering on the quintet that was on the floor. Ding Chavez was walking around the edge of the circle acting as a referee. In the center was a small blonde haired woman dressed in gray workout clothes and wearing one of those sleep-mask things as a blindfold. Surrounding her was four much larger men wearing sweats. Two were armed with those dueling pikes that they taught hand-to-hand combat with and two had bolos.
"Is that fair?" Dan asked Cory.
"Well the Major is seeing if we can borrow a prisoner transfer belt from the locals to see if we can tie one arm behind her back; but the blindfold is as close as we've come to evening things out so far." Seeing the look on the directors face Cory said, "Just watch Mr. Murray, you'll see."
So Dan watched. The guys with the bolos started swinging them around their heads. One of them stomped the ground, then released the bolo. The other waited about a half second then released his. As soon as he did the two men with the pikes started in.
The two bolos came in, the first came in just off of the floor, the second about two feet above it. They obviously expected to Buffy to leap over the first and the second to catch her ankles as she was in air. Buffy fooled them, she didn't leap over the first, she skipped over it like she was jumping rope. She then crouched down and caught the second around her waist, using her hands to catch the weights at the end of cords. She then reached backwards and grabbed that man's dueling pike and giving a deceptively easy yank pulled it right out of his hands, at the same time giving him a kick in the solar plexus that sent him flying. She blocked the blow from man in front of her and then did a leg sweep on him. She turned with the lance so the two bolo-men, now holding a couple of zip-ties with the pike in a guard position.
"Okay, call!" Ding Chavez yelled from the sidelines.
Dan could only stare; there was no way he just saw what he thought he saw.
Tom shook himself. He turned back to the General and saw the smile on his face. "Sorry sir, I just never thought anything like this was possible yet."
"That's okay Captain, I was surprised myself how life-like she is." It didn't seem right somehow to call the robot an it.
"If I may ask, where did we come across her?" Anderson asked.
"You may, though there is more to the story than I'm going to give you here. We are in contact with some locals who acquired the 'bot from it's owner. It was damaged and though one of them knew how to fix it they lacked the funding. We offered pay for its repairs in return for its use."
"Can I meet the person who repaired her?" Anderson requested.
"Yes, she's downstairs right now. You'll have to hurry though, she'll be leaving with Dan Murray."
"Do you know if she knows the designer?"
"Yes," Clark replied. Then in a serious tone went on, "You are however, not to question her about him. He's dead, and he killed her girlfriend, so there is no reason to bring up the subject."
Anderson recognized an order when he heard one. He'd have to look to see if there was some other way to get this information. Tom knew he was one of the top robotics people in the world, and whoever had built the Buffybot blew him away.
Turning to the andriod Anderson said, "Buffybot, I want you to patrol the building. If you find anything of interest find me and bring it to my attention."
The Buffy-bot nodded and said, "Okey-doke." she then stood and went out the door.
"I need to see how it interprets instructions," Anderson explained to the general.
Down in the gym Willow noticed Dan's arrival. Climbing down from where she was sitting she said, "Dan, glad to see you again."
Dan nodded and held out his hand, "Wish it was under better circumstances."
Willow nodded and looked back out on the floor where Buffy was going over in slow motion the move she had used to disarm Sergeant Major Benton, who was standing there rubbing his stomach.
Dan was watching to and though no expert on hand-to-hand combat, he could see that the British soldier was no slouch. "Has Buffy been kicking them around a lot?" He asked.
Willow nodded, "She says that right now she's showing them that they are the underdogs out there. She's afraid that with the training and experience they got they will get themselves into a serious problem by unconsciously thinking they are dealing with humans."
Ding noticed Dan for the first time and tapping Buffy on the back he nodded his way. Buffy waved and headed for a door on the far wall that Dan assumed lead to the showers.
Soon after he disappeared John and Tom Anderson entered the gym. Walking up to them John greeted Dan and turning to Willow said, "Willow this is Captain Thomas Anderson US Army. He's going to be looking after the Buffybot for us. Captain Anderson? This is Willow Rosenberg."
Tom couldn't believe how young Willow was. Okay she wasn't the designer, but if she fixed it she most understand a lot that went into it. "Miss Rosenberg," he began, "That is an amazing piece of technology."
'Isn't she though?" Willow agreed.
"If I may ask, where did you acquire her from?"
Willow was about to answer when Tom noticed the Buffybot coming across the gym floor toward them. For some reason during it's patrol it must of decided that it needed to change clothes and take a shower judging by it's slightly damp hair. As it walked up to them he asked, "Yes Buffybot? What did you find?"
Clark cleared his voice, "Ah Buffy, this is Captain Anderson. He's going to be looking after BB for us."
Buffy turned to the army captain and in a cold voice said, "If you are going to be here for any length of time, you had better figure out someway to tell us apart."