Thanks reviewers and readers! Reviews are always appreciated. *** Woo Hoo! Nominated for Best Fluffy Spuffy and Best General Romance at Spuffy Awards. ***
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Disclaimer: Joss owns the characters and the stories, or he sold them to somebody and they own them, but sadly not to me.
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Last week on WWHH? Buffybot had fun at the Doublemeat Palace and made a date. *** Spikebot adjusted his Friend's Folder and possibly the front of his jeans. *** Spike got a cure for his black eye. *** Dr. Ben performed an emergency bone-ectomy.
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Chapter 10 - Wonky Time



Buffy spent most of the morning searching for her Spikebot, with no success. After checking Spike’s crypt, the Fish Tank, Willie’s Alibi Room, the Twilight Bowling Alley and Giles’s apartment, she gave up and went to visit Willow and Tara in their dorm room.

Buffy snuggled deep into the deep blue and paisley covered overstuffed chair. Buffy loved their room, its warm, brown snugness, the strings of twinkling fairy lights, the fat ivory candles flickering in their gleaming brass sticks and the cinnamon smell of incense that smudged the air. She sipped her herbal tea, which tasted like scum scraped off a pond of toxic waste. She planned to tip out contents of her cup into the humongous potted fern next to her chair as soon as Willow and Tara weren’t watching. She hoped the fern would survive, but she didn’t think her Slayer duties included protecting vegetables.

Willow and Tara sat on the end of their bed. Tara nudged Willow with her elbow while looking at Buffy with a placid smile.

“We’re glad you came over,” Willow said. “We can talk, you know, without any talking interruptions.” Willow twisted her fingers together. When Buffy noticed how knotted up her fingers were, she pulled her hands apart and sat on them.

“Non Interrupty Talking is Good,” Buffy said. “I need a favor. I need to do something about the Spikebot. He ran off this morning before I woke up and I haven’t been able to find him. I’m not sure if he needs a spell or a technical looking over.”

“I could check his programming. I’ll make sure he doesn’t wander off, or at least he comes to find you at regular intervals. We could train him with a whistle.”

Buffy placed two fingers in the corners of her mouth and made a blistering shriek. “Like that?”

Tara hooked her eyebrows together and glanced at Willow, which Buffy interpreted as a reminder to Willow she had drifted off some important subject that Willow was supposed to be discussing with Buffy, which Buffy would not want to discuss.

“We need to talk to you about Spike,” Tara said. “What did you decide to do about him?”

“Spike or Spike? I mean Vampire Spike or Spikebot?” Buffy fidgeted in her seat and flicked the tag on her tea bag. Willow and Tara were looking at her in a pointed manner that said they knew all about her and her new toy. But, how could they? Had they come across the Spikebot and he’d given her away? Yes, that was possible. Spikebot would answer any question they asked. He might volunteer info, too, if he misunderstood. She’d witnessed the Buffybot blab her head off to the embarrassment of one and all. Well, Buffy wasn’t about to indulge in any True Confessions of the Girly Kind about her robot. Buffy glanced at a freckle on her bare arm. “Oh, look at the time. I should be going. Evil Dead to hump, I mean, thump.” She looked around for a place to hide her herbal tea which had cooled into a thick brown muck.

Tara took Buffy’s cup and gave Willow another pointed look.

“We wanted to know what you decided to do about real Spike,” Willow said. “About him robbing the Thank Heaven.”

Buffy sank back down into the chair. Whew, they were on a Big Pester about the Real Spike. They hadn’t found out about the Spikebot and what she’d been doing with him -- it. Although, what was the big? Spike banged the Buffybot and nobody but Buffy herself got upset. Why should anyone care if she got some extra use from her robot in its off hours? After all, she was a consenting adult and the Spikebot acted like he consented and the way he ran all over town the minute her back was turned made it seem like he had free will. Did robots have free will? All the robots she had known pretty much did whatever they wanted, so it stood to reason they also would refuse to do what they didn’t want, ergo free will, although she didn’t think robots had souls, because after all, where would a nerd like Warren buy one? Souls R Us?

“What robbing of what Thank Heaven?” Like she didn’t know. Spike must have gone ahead with his dumb plan to get her and Dawn something to eat. It was kind of sweet and explained the mysterious appearance of those blue sno-balls and that uber bag of Cheetos. She liked Cheetos.

“You know,” Tara said. “We told you about it last night when you came over here at three o’clock in the morning and woke us up. You were going to talk to Giles.”

“Yeah,” Willow said, “why exactly did you wake us up at three in the morning? Just cause you’re running around graveyards at all hours, doesn’t mean other people don’t sleep or whatever other people do in the middle of the night when they aren’t sleeping.”

“Did time go wonky? I wasn’t over here last night. And, you didn’t tell me anything about Spike robbing the Thank Heaven. Will, have you been at the Time-Space Continuum Spells again?”

Willow crossed her arms and tossed her head, which in no way deflected Buffy from noticing the way her left eye was twitching. “Just a little one and it had nothing to do with what happened. You were here. Tara saw you, too. We both talked to you.”

Tara nodded.

Great, Willow mucked around with a spell that was so out of her league and Buffy caught hell about it. Just like her. Buffy was in no mood to put up with any Blaming of Others.
“Let’s Cut to the Cordelia. What did Spike do?”

“We saw him at the Thank Heaven last night,” Willow said. “We went to see this really cool movie – Chasing Amy – you know the one where Ben Affleck falls in love with Joey Loren Adams. She’s secretly gay, but they try to work it out anyway, which of course is so lame, cause why would she want to work it out if she’s gay and he’s not? A girl, I mean. Anyway, we ate too much popcorn and we were all with Mouths of Salt, so we dropped by the Thank Heaven to get some ice cream. To counteract the salt with a Major Sucrose Infusion.”

Buffy rolled her head on the cushy back of the chair. Willow could be so long winded she even put Giles to shame. Buffy longed for their high school days when Willow was shy and didn’t talk so much and when she did talk, she didn’t expect anyone to listen. “Spike? Remember him? You were going to tell me about Spike?”

“We saw Spike rob the store,” Tara said. “We heard Wedgy scream and we peaked out from behind the ice cream freezer.” Tara gave Buffy a sympathetic smile as if Buffy should be deeply disappointed or shocked or mortified or something by Spike’s nocturnal activities.

“Is that all?” Buffy said. She took a cherry blowpop, another tasty present from Spike, out of her jacket pocket and sucked on it to kill the taste of herbal tea guck.

“Yeah, I could see him in the shoplifter’s mirror from my superior vantage point on the floor behind the popsicles case,” Willow said. “Funny, he wasn’t wearing his coat.”

“You’d have to perform a leatherectomy on Spike to get him out of that coat. It must have been somebody who looked like Spike.” As if anybody could look remotely as hot as he did, with or without coat.

Tara wasn’t finished. “He vamped out on Wedgy and took all the money in the cash register and ran out. Wedgy regurgitated from fright.”

Buffy stroked her throat to keep from gagging at the thought of witnessing a Frovolax Regurgitation Episode. Controlling her roiling stomach completely distracted her from the niggling doubt she felt that some point of their story was of the wacky. Wonder if Spike grabbed some Twinkies or M&M’s to go with those Cheetos? She could go for a Twinkie.

“What are you going to do about Spike?” Tara asked.

Tara could really be a nag. Why hadn’t she ever noticed before? Tara acted all syrupy and butter-mouthed, but when something happened Tara didn’t approve of, which happened pretty often, she gnawed and gnawed and gnawed until you wanted to screech. Just because she happened to be right, because after all, Spike shouldn’t be robbing Wedgy at the Thank Heaven, especially since Wedgy was Spike’s cousin or something, did that mean Tara got to do the gnawing thing? “Did he hurt anyone?” Yeah, that was the important point. If Spike didn’t hurt anyone, she so didn’t have to deal. She could be all Ignoro Girl.

“Not physically, if you don’t count the regurgitation. I think the regurgitation thing might hurt,” Willow said.

No way an Unplanned Upchuck was going to move Buffy to action. “Wedgy regurgitates all the time. I don’t know what you want me to do. I’m the Slayer, not Spike’s nanny. I can’t dust Spike just because he isn’t an angel all the time. Spike is kinda naughty if you hadn’t noticed.” Not as naughty as the Spikebot. She snorted with pleasure at that thought and reminded herself to find the rubber glove as soon as she got home.

“You ought to talk to him,” Tara said.

Still gnawing. How did Willow put up with it? Buffy wasn’t tolerating any more gnawing. “I could, but talking to Spike about his extra curricular activities puts me in a Bad Moody. I might get pissed off and hit him or something, which would be Wrong.” Buffy entertained a wicked thought. “He likes you, Tara. Maybe you should talk to him. You know, tell him Intention to Commit a Felony with a Scary Face is a bad thing to do, karmically speaking.”

Tara’s eyes went wide and her face burned red. “M – m – me? Ta – talk to Spike? No, I do – don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

Buffy jumped out of the comfy chair before Willow could produce any more Herbal Sludge in a Mug. “Guess you’re right, Tara. I got to be going. I’ve got to find Spikebot. We need to work on our pounding -- our Pounding of Evil.”

Buffy blew a big pink bubble with her blowpop and hurried out of the dorm room before she said anything else amazingly stupid.



After a long day’s work at the Doublemeat, Buffybot went home to Change into Something Else Hot. She didn’t like walking around with a grease stain on her shirt. Also, she wanted to tell Dawn about making lots of money and her new Buffy Summers - Assistant Manager Badge and seeing Spike at the Doublemeat Palace. As she was striding up the sidewalk to 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale, California, United States of America, her house, a car horn honked.

“Buffybot! Hey! Come over here!” Warren called out from his open car window.

Buffybot walked over to the car. “Hello, Warren Mears. Why did you call me Buffybot? I’m Buffy. I don’t think I’m a robot.” Buffybot peered into the car. She saw Jonathan and Whatshisname. She didn’t smile at them. Jonathan and Whatshisname were tards.

“Yeah, Buffy, whatever. Look, I need some information. Do you know anything about a Key – a mystical doohickey – some kind of magic whos-it?”

“I don’t know any Whos-it. My sister, Dawn, is a Green Mystical Key used to open dimension portals, but she doesn’t fit in the door lock. She got locked out of the house before and Xander Harris, Friend of Buffy and Purveyor of Pastries, had to take the door off the hinges.”

Warren snickered. “That’s great, baby. Why don’t you come visit me in the basement sometime? I got a new pad over on Maypole Street. We could have some fun.” Warren squinted at her in a funny way.

Buffybot frowned. Warren was making fun of her. She didn’t like the way he was squinting at her. His face reminded her of the grease spot on her red silk shirt. “You are not on my To Do List.”

Warren drove away and she went into the house and left the wad of money and her new badge on the table in the front hall. “Dawn. I’m at my house. And, I’m rich.”

Dawn looked up from her television show and pulled off her earphones. Her schoolbooks and papers surrounded her and she scribbled in her notebook every time a commercial came on. “Hey, Buffy. Look, I’m doing my homework.”

“That is excellent. Doris Kroger won’t take you away if you do your homework. She said so.”

“Yeah. New leaf here. Uh, Giles called. He wants you to come over to the Magic Box.”

“Oh. I’ll put that on my To Do List. I have to change my shirt. I got Doublemeat grease on it.”

“Ew. What are we having for dinner?”

“I could make more sandwiches. There are two more cans of sardines in mustard sauce and a large quantity of peanut butter.”

Dawn’s eyes rolled around in her head in a manner that made Buffybot wonder if some of her parts were damaged. Maybe they were loose.

“Maybe I’ll just order a pizza,” Dawn said.

Buffybot went up to Buffy’s room and picked up a hot looking purple top from the pile of clothes on the comfy chair and put it on. She threw the red top with the grease stain out the window.

“I want to see Spike. Now that I look hot and no longer greasy, I will go to the Bronze for our date and we will have sex in many positions.”



Doris Kroger glanced down the hall to see if her supervisor was in his office. Bob’s door was shut. Good. Her co-workers, Slug Carla and Fat Hulk David were playing around with the coffee machine and possibly each other. Those two were a wish waiting to happen. Doris opened her internet access and clicked to her favorite site – Demon Chat – and typed in her log-in information.

Blesséd be, the name of D'hoffryn. Let this space be now a gateway to the world of Arash Ma'har, where demons are spawned …

Just as the chat site opened, someone crept behind her chair and leaned into Doris’s face. “Doesn’t the department have rules about this sort of thing? Surfing on government time? Hmmm?”

Doc turned and sat on the edge of Doris’s desktop. He tucked his grey-green tail under her desk so no passing worker could notice his extra appendage.

Doris smiled at David the Hulk as he walked past holding his dumbass yellow smiley mug. “I told you never to come to my office.”

“Not even for good news? My dear, Doris. You need to loosen up. Go with the flow.”

“Spit it out and leave.”

Doc exposed an inch or so of his black, forked tongue. “I don’t really think you want me to do that.” He flicked his tongue at a paper clip sitting on the top of her desktop and sent it flying across the room.

Doris folded her hands on her desk and waited. There was no point in hurrying Doc. He’d only make a scene. As long as no one saw his tail, they’d think he was some kindly old man come by to check about his grandchild. Doris had seen Doc’s grandchildren before he’d sold the hatchlings on e-Bay. The ones he didn’t eat himself. Enough to make even Doris shudder. “What is it?”

“I’m glad you asked, Ms. Kroger. I’ve located the Key.”

Doris grabbed his hand. “Do you mean it? You’ve found it? Where?”

Doc extricated his hand and extracted a white cotton handkerchief from his inside jacket pocket. He wiped his hand where Doris touched him. “You know how I feel about being touched.”

“I’ll touch the side of your head with my stapler, if you don’t get on with it,” Doris said. She struggled to keep her face mild and pleasant as Bob the Supervisor strolled past her desk and down the hall to the lunch room.

“You’re acquainted with her. Miss Dawn Summers. I think it would be an excellent idea if you had her transferred to my care. Her dear sister is quite overwhelmed with her responsibilities as the Slayer. Dawn would be much safer with an older, settled gentleman like myself while we wait for the final day.”

“Dawn is the Key and that blithering idiot Buffy Summers is the Slayer? Impossible.”

“Not even improbable, my dear. We must obtain the Key and secure it in a safe location. Within a matter of hours, Glorificus will be prepared to receive the Key and open the dimensions. Then, the real partying will begin.”

“I don’t think opening the dimensions is such a good idea. I’m happy with the way things are. I’ve got my job. I’ve got my mission. Things are good.”

“Oh, yes, your precious mission, running errands for that insufferable goat, D’Hoffryn. I suppose you’ve forgotten that Halfrek received a promotion this year. And, what was your reward? A bad performance appraisal and assignment to this backwater government agency. Even the Terminator got the Governor’s mansion. No, Doris. These piffling vengeance tasks are good enough for Halfrek and that silly Anyanka, but you should be setting your sights higher.”

Doris seethed. Halfrek pulled one seedy little vengeance trick on D’Hoffryn’s ex-wife by wiping her out in a surgical six-car crash in which the ex-wife was the only victim. D’Hoffryn’s attorneys collected a million dollars in a personal injury lawsuit for the grieving husband and D’Hoffryn promoted Halfrek to Justice Supervisor, with a raise, a new apartment, a company car and unlimited personal teleportations. Doris got a performance appraisal that stated she wasn’t meeting company goals, had a bad attitude to her co-workers and wasn’t a team player.

Doris didn’t like Doc knowing she had the slightest interest in Halfrek or was in any way unhappy about her position with Arash Ma'har, Incorporated. After all, how many justice companies were there in this dimension? Besides, the benefits were excellent. She assumed an air of disinterest. “I’ve got all the vengeance I can consume.”

“Vengeance. A paltry emotion compared to sheer terror, overwhelming fear, screaming, crying, blood and boiling torment and unspeakable panic as the human races barbeque on the spits of hell for unending centuries, while we feast on their charred flesh, their lacerated souls and their pickled hearts. Oh, and their bones.” Doc wiped away a strand of drool with his handkerchief.

Doris sighed. Doc sure could make the grass look greener on the other side of the hell dimension. Besides, the taste of vengeance had faded. Ripping a parent’s heart out, literally or figuratively, for failing to show up for visitation on time or missing child support payments, just didn’t have the same zing it once had. “What do I have to do?”

“Simple. Get the Key away from her sister, The Slayer. I don’t care where you put her as long as she’s handy and separated from her friends.”

“Did you tell Glorificus?”

Doc stood up. “No, no, no. That wouldn’t do at all. Glorificus has an unpleasant tendency to forget about her devoted friends. I’ll wait for the appropriate moment to spring my little surprise.”

After Doc left, Doris checked her messages on D’Hoffryn’s activities board. Three parents who didn’t pay child support, one workaholic mom named Sheila Rosenberg, and two rich mothers who packed their darlings off to childcare while they dawdled about the golf club with the tennis pro. Oh dear. The same tennis pro. And, Mrs. Rosenberg recently signed up for tennis lessons, too. It was a shame Anyanka was in bad favor with D’Hoffryn. Doris could use some help with Mr. Tennis Pro.

“Dull, dull, dull.” She printed off her list of tasks and signed off.

Where to put Dawn where she’d be safe? She had no intention of turning the Key over to Doc. Maybe she’d keep Dawn herself and present her to Glorificus. Doris sipped her tea and smiled. She pulled a form up on her computer screen and typed in Dawn’s name and the particulars.