jedibuttercup

T/Gen; B:tVS/Jurassic World; 2500 + 1600 + 700 words. Finishing off the Divide By Dinosaur Error sequence. For

twistedshorts.

In which a new Slayer has turned up on Isla Nublar, and while approaching her has proved to be a difficult proposition, there's a reason she was Called....

Title: Bigger, Louder, More Teeth
Author: Jedi Buttercup
Disclaimer: The words are mine; the worlds are not.
Rating: T/PG-13
Summary: Whatever some mystical Scythe had had to say about her destiny, Claire had been much happier in operations management than supernatural pest control.

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.

Title: No Controlled Circumstances Here
Author: Jedi Buttercup
Disclaimer: The words are mine; the worlds are not.
Rating: T/PG-13
Summary: It turned out the I. Rex did remember what tranq guns were and could get over the forty foot walls if it wanted to, it had just been trying to get them to open the easy route first.

Owen carefully eased the band holding the camera into place on Blue's head, glancing at the light again to make sure it was still fully off. He really didn't need a recording out there of this conversation, but there was no way anyone would authorize her going outside the cage without it.

"Man, I wish we'd had more time to figure out our translation issues," he muttered. He had a resonating chamber model a lot like the one Dr. Grant had written about using on Sorna, but he hadn't thought it was in either his or the girls' best interests to remind people too much of how intelligent the velociraptors were even before Dr. Wu's latest genetic experimentation. A combination of hand gestures, verbal commands, and judicious use of the clicker-- mostly to let Blue know when it was important to look like they were paying attention-- had had to serve instead. He'd picked up some familiarity with their calls in return, mostly while they were small enough to spend a lot of time with without anyone freaking out, but he couldn't call himself fluent, and there wasn't a lot of depth of variation anyway. He figured it was mostly for long-distance alerts; they relied more on other means of communication with each other up close, probably something based on scent or the parts of the visual spectrum humans couldn't see.

He'd never be able to reproduce any of that. But he had a feeling Blue had always understood more than she bothered to react to, like a cat; he'd read a study once that said most housecats 100% knew their own names, they just chose to ignore their owners when it didn't happen to be convenient. He completely believed that. And they were about to find out just how much he was right about Blue.

"Just to recap," he said calmly, adjusting the band until it was snug and wouldn't bind up in the hinge of her jaw. "The creature that's been setting off your instincts-- and Claire's-- got out. The bad thing. It's badly injured; I'll get you a scent sample here in a second. We're going to do Hide and Seek. And afterward... well, I'm not sure what's going to happen, but nothing will be the same, that's for sure. You and me? We'll be spending a lot more time together. So no more need to pretend, okay? It's just us. You good with that?"

Owen usually didn't bother to make dramatic dominance displays with Blue, just acted like he assumed she would obey; forcing a direct challenge hadn't seemed like a good way to keep his alpha status. He didn't now either; just calmly took his hands back and watched as she tilted her head, checking the fit of the camera apparatus and glancing around for observers. Then she fixed one bright, alien eye on Owen and answered with two sharp, echoing calls; first the bark she used for greeting family-- the one that had first alerted him Ms. Summers was a lot more than she appeared-- and then the hunting snarl she made when locked onto a target.

An atavistic shiver ran up his spine; she did understand. Shit. It was completely awesome, and it was going to change his whole life; both their lives, hopefully. But it was also the kind of thing that would make everyone from Hoskins up to Masrani lose their tiny minds. There'd be no controlling Blue after this, even in pretense, only persuading, and human history wasn't exactly full of great examples on dealing with other intelligent beings who didn't happen to look or sound like them and to whom granting rights would damage their bottom line. And where Blue went, so would go her sisters.

Thankfully-- amazingly-- he had Claire on his side in this, and their other unexpected allies too. He didn't know exactly how much power the Janna Kalderash International School for Girls really had, but just from what he'd seen so far their support wasn't anything to sneeze at, and that was before you even got into Ms. Summers' personal ass-kicking skills. If the Slayer hadn't already been there when ACU had arrived to try to locate the hiding Indominus and tranq it for assessment and transport, he had no doubt that most if not all of the squad would have died; it turned out the I. Rex did remember what tranq guns were and could get over the forty foot walls if it wanted to, it had just been trying to get them to open the easy route first. It could leap almost as well as a velociraptor, a fucking terrifying avalanche of claws and teeth in a fifty-foot part-demon tyrannosaur hybrid, and unlike an actual tyrannosaur those front legs were not vestigial.

One of the ACU guys took a pretty hard fall trying to dive out of the way and would be in the infirmary for a while, but before the Indominus could get its teeth into any of the others, Buffy had leapt into motion to distract it with shots from her crossbow. It had taken two bolts in its shoulder and side before it realized what was happening, howling in a way that sounded disturbingly like his girls when they were angry, then focused entirely on her, chasing her as she dropped the crossbow and took off like a gazelle. It didn't take it long to catch up with her, but by then she'd drawn a strange red and silver weapon from a sheath on her back and cut it deeply right across the snout, nearly gouging out an eye. Then, when it reared back and swiped a claw in her direction, she'd nearly taken that hand off at the wrist. It had screamed again, more scared and hurt than angry this time, then abruptly took off, heading north away from any population on the island.

They'd only spotted it once since. Its tracking implant had gone still after a few minutes, but ACU had been wary enough to try a drone first when he'd suggested it, and sure enough, the Indominus had clawed the thing right out of its hide. It had set another trap; it abruptly dropped its camouflage again to snag the drone out of the sky with its enormous jaws, crunched it to sparking splinters, then took off again while no one had eyes on it, shrieking in anger. Then, nothing. Claire had taken the precaution of telling Lowery to close the northernmost attractions, then disappeared to corral her wayward nephews, but had hastily pressed a kiss to his cheek first, telling him to be careful and that she'd see him for breakfast if not sooner.

Owen was kind of looking forward to that. Make that definitely. But he had to push it to the back burner right now; there were much more urgent things on his plate. They had to find the I. Rex, then call in the chopper-- manned by Masrani's flight instructor, with several ACU aboard with heavy weaponry-- and put it down before it licked its wounds enough to get hungry and start hunting. Non-lethals weren't going to cut it anymore.

Hoskins had leapt on the opportunity, of course, but fortunately Masrani had listened when Owen told him the other velociraptors were most definitely not ready for a hunt. He'd have fought it harder with Blue, too, but something told him there was no successful resolution of this issue without her. And really, if what Buffy and Dr. Giles told him was true, they were going to have to get used to working together like this anyway.

"Good girl, Blue," he praised her with a closed-mouth smile, then drew out the bag with the sample and let her take a good, long sniff. "Scent drill. Attagirl. You got this."

She tossed her head, then ran over to the where he'd parked his motorbike, posing at attention with a lashing tail like they'd done it a thousand times. Hopefully, no one would ask too many questions about that. He'd successfully argued for privacy for the harnessing and set up, and only Barry and a couple of the ACU who'd been there when the I. Rex broke out to accompany them, but from this moment on, he'd have to assume they were always on camera. He hoped Buffy knew what she was talking about when she said she had a plan to get them a little room to maneuver. It had sounded like magic was involved? But he was not even going to think about something as world breaking as that being real yet, not while he had so much else on his plate. He jogged over to the bike, reached out for the button on Blue's camera, then swore reflexively when she took off like a shot the moment it clicked on.

"All right, guys, follow me!" Owen called, hastily starting the bike and accelerating in her wake. "Barry, your guest still with us?" That was code for Buffy; she'd retrieved her crossbow and blade and was riding along, just in case Blue needed backup.

"Yes," Barry radioed back. "She says-- be wary; there would have been test runs before a project this important, whatever that means, and an uninhabited off-limits zone would've been the perfect place to do that."

Ahead of them-- much too soon-- Blue screamed out a hunting call.

As if they didn't already have enough on their plates. "This just gets better and better," Owen muttered, then accelerated harder. His rifle might get a workout after all.

"Here we go!"

Title: The First Rule
Author: Jedi Buttercup
Disclaimer: The words are mine; the worlds are not.
Rating: T/PG-13
Summary: "See?" Buffy grinned, meeting Owen's gaze. "Told you I had an idea."

"Are you sure it'll work, Wills?" Buffy said into the phone.

"One hundred percent," Willow replied, voice amplified by the speaker. "Well, more like ninety-eight; but the failure conditions would be like, volcanic eruption level obvious, so probably nothing to worry about. The implosion at InGen definitely helped; that Hoskins guy was the main one pushing for IBRIS to go from research to live applications. And since it was one of his guys who vanished with Dr. Wu and half his samples and research-- Giles got a close enough look when he was snooping in the labs to identify him even though the security video mysteriously went missing-- Masrani made sure he got pulled, and there's no replacement yet."

"That's an apocalypse pending if I ever heard of one," Buffy wrinkled her nose. "You tracking them down?"

"What do you take me for?" Willow replied, feigning an offended sniff. "Anyway, that'll make it much easier for the notice-me-not to take hold. Give it a week or two and our new Slayer and her Watcher-in-training will have free run of the restricted zone. The only time anyone consciously remembers the raptors are there will be if Mr. Grady reminds them himself. That'll give us time to work on something more permanent."

"Claire and his friend Barry excepted, right?" Buffy clarified, just to be sure. Claire was both the senior Slayer on site and seemed to have staked a claim on Owen as well, and Barry had been very solid support during their takedown of the demon rex for a guy not already clued in. It had been a close thing, but they'd managed to keep any of the park guests from becoming collateral damage, and that was a miracle worth rewarding.

"Right," Willow agreed. "Well, and us; it'll take time to filter a few more people into Claire's staff, but we'll get there. Even after the aberrations are taken care of; I don't like the aetheric tone of the place. It took the added shroud okay, probably because it's so hard to scry anything there already, but whatever's sleeping under the islands definitely took notice of demon dino's rampage. Or prompted it; I'm not completely sure which."

"Great," Buffy said dryly. "Thanks, I'll pass it on."

"Sure thing. See you this weekend!" Willow replied cheerily, then hung up.

"See?" Buffy grinned, meeting Owen's gaze. "Told you I had an idea."

"Magic," he replied, shaking his head. "I'll believe it when I see it. But if we can't get Blue somewhere else safer yet, it's a good start."

A long scab crossed his cheek, and she knew there were other stitched-up gashes under his shirt where the flock of 'aberrations' they'd run into had clawed him. Owen had said they had probably started out as compies, but their demon DNA had been a lot more prominent than the Indominus Rex's. He'd been lucky to come out of that fight in one piece.

At least he knew when to yield the field to someone better equipped for the fight; when they'd finally run into the I. Rex, he'd let Blue take point. Buffy had helped, and the chopper had finished it off, but Blue had been the one shrieking over the body afterward, looking to Owen for approval. Quite a start to his career as the first dinosaur Slayer's Watcher. Which was a super weird thing to be able to say, but also amazing to a girl who'd grown up on those cheesy Land Before Time cartoons; not at all what she'd expected when they'd flown out.

"Yep," she replied. "I can't stick around, but Claire can fill you in on the basics. And you're off to a good start. Slayers used to have to fight alone-- but I survived because of my friends, and Blue has you. It'll be all right."

"At least until the apocalypse arrives," he replied, dryly.

"And maybe even until you learn the plural of the word," Buffy teased. "Just don't forget-- the first rule is, don't die."

"I think I can handle that," Owen said, then reached out to shake her hand. "Thanks for everything."

And if he couldn't, Buffy had no doubt Blue would. "No problem."

(x-posted at

twistedshorts and on AO3)