![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Main Points:
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure/Buffy the Vampire Slayer AU
Chapter Summary: Buffy deals with the next trap.
Word Count: 1044
Rating: Teen (Buffy|Jojo's level violence)
Note: HERE THERE PROBABLY BE BUFFY/JJBA SPOILERS
Buffy finds out that it is, in fact, something new, the instant the lasers fizzle into existence. Andrew would be all over this; he’s already pouted enough because they wouldn’t let him have a physics lab in the middle of Slayer HQ. Buffy is utterly disturbed by the idea that she’d somewhere along the line become the responsible one, because while she’d been excited by the prospect of shiny laser weapons she had been forced to come to the conclusion that having that in the middle of a bunch of Slayer Trainees would end up with someone needing first aid or blinded—and no, just because they could fix a lot of those wounds through the witches doesn’t mean they should—you never knew when a wound, like Xander’s eye, would just stick and stubbornly refuse to heal.
The angry lasers hiss slightly, like a malfunctioning hot stove, and there’s also a buzzing sort of noise, too. It’s fortunate that she’d kept up her gymnastics routines even when she wasn’t in cheerleading anymore because it just might save her life. They’re not all parallel; some are at odd angles, including a couple projecting from the cobbles of the alleyway, which is an interesting thing to note because it means that Evil Lawyer Lady, or her Stand rather, can’t fix the traps in the air, or it would have done so already and aimed one straight at her. And they have to set the traps off somehow; it wasn’t able to just turn on a moat of sharks by itself, for instance. Just like demons, Stands have rules, and the quicker she can find those rules to defeat the enemy the faster they’ll get through this.
It smells of ozone, metallic but also clean somehow, and she briefly wonders what the energy source even would be for something like that before discarding the thought. It doesn’t matter. They’re red and bright and would almost look like a bunch of evil lightsabers but for the sparks coming off the opposite walls and for the fact that it looks like not only are the disks projecting the lasers made out of folded paper but if she’s not mistaken it looks like there’s a very small, long cylinder of rolled paper in the center of each one. The lasers are actually cutting through the brick, which does not lead to things of the good happening to her actual body in her imagination should they actually touch her.
While she’s got time, she stuffs the sword back in the bag and takes that off her back, because the last thing she needs is for it to flop around and get melted or something. She needs as much control over the thing as she can get.
She barely finishes that before the lasers start to move toward her, slowly at first, and that’s another unpleasant surprise—first of all that the traps can move, though this might be an unusual one for all she knows, and second that that also means they can move in all sorts of nasty patterns that make the act of the living a lot harder.
They split up mostly by speed, the front group of which there are barely any just picking up speed faster and faster until they’re barreling toward her. Fortunately a step forward combined with a sidestep makes that group a piece of deadly cutting radiation cake, and the next one a simple cartwheel does the trick, though she barely manages to squeeze into the gap. If not for Slayer instincts and abilities on top of her cheerleading experience, she would never have made it. The next group—she doesn’t even consciously register where all the lasers are, where they’re moving, and more importantly where the gaps are in her mind’s eye. Buffy just trusts herself and moves instinctively, throwing herself headfirst through what turns out to be a gap and somehow doesn’t get touched once. It’s weird that something without a face can look like it’s got an expression, but if she’s not mistaken it looks like it’s frowning. Its eyes are wide under the goggles. She can make that much out, even if the whites of the eyes aren’t actually white and there’s less of a contrast than normal.
Buffy hears just a hint of that ozone hum and turns just in time to see and react to the lasers coming back, facing them and doing a forward roll then flattening herself on the ground. She smells the burning, which is odd and unpleasant (though she doesn’t think she’s ever smelled burning brick before, that’s a new one, but it’s mixed with a more cloth-y style stench which she is infinitely infinite more familiar with) and fingers the hole in her shirt and the tender skin beneath. She’s not bleeding, but it sure feels like a few skin layers were removed. There’s also a precise notch in the bag strap where she’d failed to properly keep it all contained, but really, it could have been worse—and oh no she just jinxed herself. She can almost hear Dawn telling her “you’ve only got yourself to blame for this” in a fake sympathetic tone designed specifically to drive her up the wall. As annoying as it is to smell that awful smell that no one else can tell is even there or to hear something annoying that won’t go away and won’t let her sleep or concentrate, that’s one in a long line of points given to her Slayer Senses, on account of saving her life for the nth time.
The Slayer scrambles to her feet, ready for the next surprise, and the generally otherwise unblinking unmoving Stand that’s more statue-like and less life-like than some of the statues she’s dealt with lately reaches into its pouch and pulls out another piece of paper with the good arm that’s not barely hanging on. Seriously, the drops of oil-blood it’s bleeding are livelier and move more than the supposedly quasi-living creature they come from. It tosses the paper at her like a challenge, keeping an unblinking gaze directed at her. Which probably is being defiant, which she can respect even as she stomps that respect into the Stand’s face on the ground.