The Hitchhiker's Guide to Canada
May. 13th, 2017 11:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madimpossibledreamerI got the image and it was hilarious. I didn't expect it to get this dark. (It's not bad, but, er, near death. Again.)
(I'll probably explain this later, but I have yet to, so.) Xander redesigned Star based on an Eclipse Phase concept, where humans were mostly just data and could make bodies as necessary. Alpha forks are basically exact copies of the full consciousness. Hard to make, and problematic, since--which is the real one again? Beta forks are fairly useful but missing some unnecessary memory and skills. Lower than that, down to gamma if I remember correctly, you get less and less of the original to the point it might not even be useful-slash-functioning yet.
~Dreamer~
Main Points:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Iron Man Crossover (Self-Made Hero)
Summary: Xander was blowing off some steam and meeting some Canadian Potentials--er, former Potentials--before he joined everybody in Cleveland.
It didn't quite work like he expected.
Word Count: 1838
Rating: Gen
A car comes into view and speeds up, seemingly to get away from the metal figure propped awkwardly against a tree, hand held up in the universal hitchhiker’s gesture. “This is soooo embarrassing,” a deep voice mutters.
Another voice breaks the silence, a female one. “I warned you that fuel reserves were getting low—”
She’s quickly interrupted. “Don’t speak to me, Star, I hate you right now.”
For a minute, nothing moves. The only sound is a lonely wind that has started up as the clouds begin to blow in. “I take it back. Serenade me with your sweet dulcet tones.”
“And what should I talk about, Entil’Zha?” she asks. She sounds amused.
“Oh, I don’t know, how about what our plan is now?” She’s safe. Only one of her beta programs is at stake here; she doesn’t have to worry about whether she’ll live or die. He’s getting easily annoyed and it’s the Stark in him (which one, he doesn’t know; they clamor a little at the attention but they’re worried and throwing some sort of planning pow-wow in his head and some of them are actively hiding their thoughts from him because they don’t want to make the situation worse).
They’re smart. Talented. Good at turning even the worst of situations to their advantage. They just need to not mass panic.
It helps that at least one of them has gone through something similar before, and it turned out fine. Of course, they were also close to a city at the time.
“Unless you’ve practiced communications spells when I haven’t been looking, we have no way of contacting the others. We should buy a satellite at the next opportunity. Also, next time, you should listen to White Star. I really am trying to help you, you know.”
He nods. He’s barely moving his head, but she’s wired into the suit and notices every little movement he makes, so he’s not worried she didn’t notice.
Besides, he needs to conserve his energy. He’s still not one hundred percent after the thing with his eye.
Of course he hadn’t practiced a little long distance chat. Not when fighting seemed so important and they were all going to be together anyway. He’s still getting used to fighting as a team, not sneaking off and helping out when no one knew about it.
“All sensors indicate a storm is coming. Given the temperature, it’s likely to rain, but it may easily turn to snow.”
That’s just what he needs. He didn’t dress for this. He doesn’t even have the food for this.
“Ranger One?” she asks, warm voice suddenly filled with obvious alarm, and he takes a deep breath. He’d been getting lost in his own thoughts, but between Tony and Star they’ll look out for him, stop him from getting too lost, too deep.
“Yeah, sorry.” It’s the thought of starving that’s one of the worst. He loves food. He’d been without, sometimes, when the parents prioritized booze over their own son, but Willow always gave him a cheese stick or something.
“If you had the energy, walking would conserve the most power, but the suit would freeze somewhere along the way and I’m afraid you don’t have the energy to keep it going.” One of the Tonys is doing the math now. He’s not sharing his conclusions with anyone, jealously hiding the board away, and it’s probably because he’s not liking the answers. It’s a classic max-min scenario from calc, but Xander doesn’t have the energy even to attempt it right now. He’d actually vaguely enjoyed that in school, but it’s a bit different when your life is on the line.
“So, the suit’s out of energy, pretty much.” His voice is deceptively calm. It’s quite possibly shock.
“Three percent and falling, yes.” She’s now making the Willow Pouty Face at him. Which is a skill scary enough on Willow. His AI didn’t need it too.
“And I don’t have the mojo to juice it back up. Unless I tap into my life force, and no, I don’t need you to list the reasons why that’s a bad idea.”
“That’s what I said.” She’s more gentle than normal, too, holding back. It’s not the lack of understanding of your average AI, without the processing capacity to determine why exactly that might make one upset, but Star’s natural tendencies based on a Russian heritage.
Does he really sound that fragile?
“What about leaving the suit here?” It’s a horrible idea, he knows. A minute or two after he walks away a supervillain will be driving down the road and they’ll actually stop, and then he’ll have to deal with the Armor Wars, because that’s just how the life of a superhero works. But if it means he’ll live to fight the supervillain at a later date, it’s a tradeoff. He’ll have the others run the calculations, of course, but life is good. Right?
“I can’t access the GPS anymore, unfortunately. I lost the signal. But based on last known location you may well die of exposure first.”
She keeps giving him concrete facts. Not good facts, but things he can work with. But then, of course she knows him well, they practically grew up together.
“Of course, there is one upside in all this.”
He glances up sharper than he intends and feels the strain as he has to fight a little against the metal. “What’s that?” he asks, caught off guard and needing a brief distraction.
“I like to binge-watch survivor shows when I have the time,” she answers, and he gasps in delight.
“You’re kidding.” That’s definitely not something he anticipated, and it’s amazing when she manages to surprise him. Means she’s more human.
He can guess how it started out. Star, looking for ways to better keep him safe, because if there’s a surefire way of finding trouble it’s throwing him in the same room as the trouble and locking the door. But then there was something else, something that kept her going back.
“Are there Canadian episodes?” He shivers. The temperature’s dropped again, and something else has dropped, too—wet raindrops, seeking their way through the seams into the suit. He’s waterproofed the circuits and gizmos. But it’s cold, and it’ll drop his internal temperature, and he’ll probably give way before the suit does.
“Usually, yes. I like the one set in Alaska, which is not inapplicable to our present situation. However…” A note of uncertainty is back, and it makes him nervous. “Many of the techniques of survival require shelter. I detected none in our trajectory in, and I do not believe even with magic that you could manage to create a makeshift protection in time.”
Hey, kid. It’s the Sorceror Supreme. He’s a little nervous, but whatever, it’s not like that’s weird here or anything. I think I’ve got a plan. It’s dangerous and it honestly might not work, but it’s all we’ve got. And I’m not sure we’ve got the time to sit around gossiping like the homeowner’s association.
Okay, let’s hear it, he thinks back, and out loud states, “SS might have something.”
“Good to hear,” she replies and waits patiently.
Part of my training involved going into a trance. You know, the kinda hibernation you saw in The Shadow Magazine.
Ohhh, he thinks back. “SS wants to turn me into a bear and have me hibernate. If I do it wrong…”
“You won’t wake back up,” Star finishes. That’s the most naked emotion he’s ever heard in her voice, and it warms his heart. She really would miss him. But then, she’s already lost a brother. She doesn’t need any more family to die.
“Yeah. Odds?” He already knows them. The others have calculated them and they’re not holding back now because he needs to know, as Prime. But he doesn’t want to do this without her input; wants to give her that, at least.
By the sound of her voice she knows exactly what he’s doing, but she’s going along with it anyway. “Not…good. They improve a bit at the Sorceror Supreme’s knowledge, but still, he’s used to doing it with his own body.”
“This is his body,” he reminds her gently.
“He hasn’t practiced in this body, then.” She’s a little snippy, now, but she’s holding it back. The pause isn’t necessary for her to breathe or anything. The hesitation is all mental. “I…He’s right, it’s dangerous and the odds are not good. But you’re in good hands, and you’ve beaten the odds before, and I don’t see any other way.”
He sighs a deep breath out. “Just in case it fails…”
“No,” she says firmly, and he shakes his head. Just enough for her to notice.
“Star, please. If I go, I don’t wanna go quietly.” That’s enough to shut her up. “It’s an honor working with you, and you did the best you could. Seriously, if any of my creations could outlive me, I would be just so grateful if it was you.”
She’s oddly quiet. If she was human, she’d probably be crying.
“I love Willow, and Buffy, and Giles, and Dawn, and Cho. Maybe even Angel, depending on how generous I feel.” He snorts at that one before dropping his voice. He’s getting all emotional. “And I miss the ones who didn’t make it. Jesse and Larry and Joyce and…” He has to force the next word out. “…and Anya. And Cordy, and I’m still mad at Angel for not telling me, and if I don’t make it you can tell him that and make him all guilty.” He pauses. “On second thoughts, don’t do that. If he gets any more broody the world may seriously explode.”
“Yes, sir.” There’s no reason for her vocal circuits to be all glitchy. Maybe she’s picking up more than just being glued to the Idiot Box, as Giles puts it. “We all have to die sometime, Xander, I just. Life isn’t fair, but I would like it if just this once we didn’t lose someone before their time.”
There’s the stoic Star he knows.
He'd reply, but he knows there's nothing he can say to reassure her. Instead, he grins. The fear is disappearing and instead all he can feel is the sense of weightlessness before the fall. “Okay, Wise Master Tony, I’m ready to learn all the ways of the Jedi.”
SS is more serious than he should be all the time, really, but he talks Xander through the motions, breathing deeper, corralling his wildly brilliant but jumpy mind, until at some point everything just goes dark.
Not unlike being unplugged, not unlike going to sleep. Aside from the fact that everyone’s quieter, but he can feel they’re still there, and that’s the only reason he doesn’t panic at the silence. He doesn’t feel the droplets turn to snowflakes and begin to settle.
(I'll probably explain this later, but I have yet to, so.) Xander redesigned Star based on an Eclipse Phase concept, where humans were mostly just data and could make bodies as necessary. Alpha forks are basically exact copies of the full consciousness. Hard to make, and problematic, since--which is the real one again? Beta forks are fairly useful but missing some unnecessary memory and skills. Lower than that, down to gamma if I remember correctly, you get less and less of the original to the point it might not even be useful-slash-functioning yet.
~Dreamer~
Main Points:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Iron Man Crossover (Self-Made Hero)
Summary: Xander was blowing off some steam and meeting some Canadian Potentials--er, former Potentials--before he joined everybody in Cleveland.
It didn't quite work like he expected.
Word Count: 1838
Rating: Gen
A lonely highway stretches far off from view into the trees, its only companion the long, densely crowded forest to either side.
A car comes into view and speeds up, seemingly to get away from the metal figure propped awkwardly against a tree, hand held up in the universal hitchhiker’s gesture. “This is soooo embarrassing,” a deep voice mutters.
Another voice breaks the silence, a female one. “I warned you that fuel reserves were getting low—”
She’s quickly interrupted. “Don’t speak to me, Star, I hate you right now.”
For a minute, nothing moves. The only sound is a lonely wind that has started up as the clouds begin to blow in. “I take it back. Serenade me with your sweet dulcet tones.”
“And what should I talk about, Entil’Zha?” she asks. She sounds amused.
“Oh, I don’t know, how about what our plan is now?” She’s safe. Only one of her beta programs is at stake here; she doesn’t have to worry about whether she’ll live or die. He’s getting easily annoyed and it’s the Stark in him (which one, he doesn’t know; they clamor a little at the attention but they’re worried and throwing some sort of planning pow-wow in his head and some of them are actively hiding their thoughts from him because they don’t want to make the situation worse).
They’re smart. Talented. Good at turning even the worst of situations to their advantage. They just need to not mass panic.
It helps that at least one of them has gone through something similar before, and it turned out fine. Of course, they were also close to a city at the time.
“Unless you’ve practiced communications spells when I haven’t been looking, we have no way of contacting the others. We should buy a satellite at the next opportunity. Also, next time, you should listen to White Star. I really am trying to help you, you know.”
He nods. He’s barely moving his head, but she’s wired into the suit and notices every little movement he makes, so he’s not worried she didn’t notice.
Besides, he needs to conserve his energy. He’s still not one hundred percent after the thing with his eye.
Of course he hadn’t practiced a little long distance chat. Not when fighting seemed so important and they were all going to be together anyway. He’s still getting used to fighting as a team, not sneaking off and helping out when no one knew about it.
“All sensors indicate a storm is coming. Given the temperature, it’s likely to rain, but it may easily turn to snow.”
That’s just what he needs. He didn’t dress for this. He doesn’t even have the food for this.
“Ranger One?” she asks, warm voice suddenly filled with obvious alarm, and he takes a deep breath. He’d been getting lost in his own thoughts, but between Tony and Star they’ll look out for him, stop him from getting too lost, too deep.
“Yeah, sorry.” It’s the thought of starving that’s one of the worst. He loves food. He’d been without, sometimes, when the parents prioritized booze over their own son, but Willow always gave him a cheese stick or something.
“If you had the energy, walking would conserve the most power, but the suit would freeze somewhere along the way and I’m afraid you don’t have the energy to keep it going.” One of the Tonys is doing the math now. He’s not sharing his conclusions with anyone, jealously hiding the board away, and it’s probably because he’s not liking the answers. It’s a classic max-min scenario from calc, but Xander doesn’t have the energy even to attempt it right now. He’d actually vaguely enjoyed that in school, but it’s a bit different when your life is on the line.
“So, the suit’s out of energy, pretty much.” His voice is deceptively calm. It’s quite possibly shock.
“Three percent and falling, yes.” She’s now making the Willow Pouty Face at him. Which is a skill scary enough on Willow. His AI didn’t need it too.
“And I don’t have the mojo to juice it back up. Unless I tap into my life force, and no, I don’t need you to list the reasons why that’s a bad idea.”
“That’s what I said.” She’s more gentle than normal, too, holding back. It’s not the lack of understanding of your average AI, without the processing capacity to determine why exactly that might make one upset, but Star’s natural tendencies based on a Russian heritage.
Does he really sound that fragile?
“What about leaving the suit here?” It’s a horrible idea, he knows. A minute or two after he walks away a supervillain will be driving down the road and they’ll actually stop, and then he’ll have to deal with the Armor Wars, because that’s just how the life of a superhero works. But if it means he’ll live to fight the supervillain at a later date, it’s a tradeoff. He’ll have the others run the calculations, of course, but life is good. Right?
“I can’t access the GPS anymore, unfortunately. I lost the signal. But based on last known location you may well die of exposure first.”
She keeps giving him concrete facts. Not good facts, but things he can work with. But then, of course she knows him well, they practically grew up together.
“Of course, there is one upside in all this.”
He glances up sharper than he intends and feels the strain as he has to fight a little against the metal. “What’s that?” he asks, caught off guard and needing a brief distraction.
“I like to binge-watch survivor shows when I have the time,” she answers, and he gasps in delight.
“You’re kidding.” That’s definitely not something he anticipated, and it’s amazing when she manages to surprise him. Means she’s more human.
He can guess how it started out. Star, looking for ways to better keep him safe, because if there’s a surefire way of finding trouble it’s throwing him in the same room as the trouble and locking the door. But then there was something else, something that kept her going back.
“Are there Canadian episodes?” He shivers. The temperature’s dropped again, and something else has dropped, too—wet raindrops, seeking their way through the seams into the suit. He’s waterproofed the circuits and gizmos. But it’s cold, and it’ll drop his internal temperature, and he’ll probably give way before the suit does.
“Usually, yes. I like the one set in Alaska, which is not inapplicable to our present situation. However…” A note of uncertainty is back, and it makes him nervous. “Many of the techniques of survival require shelter. I detected none in our trajectory in, and I do not believe even with magic that you could manage to create a makeshift protection in time.”
Hey, kid. It’s the Sorceror Supreme. He’s a little nervous, but whatever, it’s not like that’s weird here or anything. I think I’ve got a plan. It’s dangerous and it honestly might not work, but it’s all we’ve got. And I’m not sure we’ve got the time to sit around gossiping like the homeowner’s association.
Okay, let’s hear it, he thinks back, and out loud states, “SS might have something.”
“Good to hear,” she replies and waits patiently.
Part of my training involved going into a trance. You know, the kinda hibernation you saw in The Shadow Magazine.
Ohhh, he thinks back. “SS wants to turn me into a bear and have me hibernate. If I do it wrong…”
“You won’t wake back up,” Star finishes. That’s the most naked emotion he’s ever heard in her voice, and it warms his heart. She really would miss him. But then, she’s already lost a brother. She doesn’t need any more family to die.
“Yeah. Odds?” He already knows them. The others have calculated them and they’re not holding back now because he needs to know, as Prime. But he doesn’t want to do this without her input; wants to give her that, at least.
By the sound of her voice she knows exactly what he’s doing, but she’s going along with it anyway. “Not…good. They improve a bit at the Sorceror Supreme’s knowledge, but still, he’s used to doing it with his own body.”
“This is his body,” he reminds her gently.
“He hasn’t practiced in this body, then.” She’s a little snippy, now, but she’s holding it back. The pause isn’t necessary for her to breathe or anything. The hesitation is all mental. “I…He’s right, it’s dangerous and the odds are not good. But you’re in good hands, and you’ve beaten the odds before, and I don’t see any other way.”
He sighs a deep breath out. “Just in case it fails…”
“No,” she says firmly, and he shakes his head. Just enough for her to notice.
“Star, please. If I go, I don’t wanna go quietly.” That’s enough to shut her up. “It’s an honor working with you, and you did the best you could. Seriously, if any of my creations could outlive me, I would be just so grateful if it was you.”
She’s oddly quiet. If she was human, she’d probably be crying.
“I love Willow, and Buffy, and Giles, and Dawn, and Cho. Maybe even Angel, depending on how generous I feel.” He snorts at that one before dropping his voice. He’s getting all emotional. “And I miss the ones who didn’t make it. Jesse and Larry and Joyce and…” He has to force the next word out. “…and Anya. And Cordy, and I’m still mad at Angel for not telling me, and if I don’t make it you can tell him that and make him all guilty.” He pauses. “On second thoughts, don’t do that. If he gets any more broody the world may seriously explode.”
“Yes, sir.” There’s no reason for her vocal circuits to be all glitchy. Maybe she’s picking up more than just being glued to the Idiot Box, as Giles puts it. “We all have to die sometime, Xander, I just. Life isn’t fair, but I would like it if just this once we didn’t lose someone before their time.”
There’s the stoic Star he knows.
He'd reply, but he knows there's nothing he can say to reassure her. Instead, he grins. The fear is disappearing and instead all he can feel is the sense of weightlessness before the fall. “Okay, Wise Master Tony, I’m ready to learn all the ways of the Jedi.”
SS is more serious than he should be all the time, really, but he talks Xander through the motions, breathing deeper, corralling his wildly brilliant but jumpy mind, until at some point everything just goes dark.
Not unlike being unplugged, not unlike going to sleep. Aside from the fact that everyone’s quieter, but he can feel they’re still there, and that’s the only reason he doesn’t panic at the silence. He doesn’t feel the droplets turn to snowflakes and begin to settle.
