Title: When Worlds Collide
Author: Rachelle
Posted: 12-10-2004
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Rating: NC-17
Category: BtVS/Dark Angel Crossover
Content: C/A, Max/White… slight B/A, Max/Logan… even Buffy will get a guy!
Summary: This bad boy has been floating in my head for some time now. Wouldn’t it be neat if our fave gal was part of the X-5 Manticore outbreak with Max? This will be set up to BtVS Season 4. Pretty much everything will be the same, but I just have to notch the timeline up to Dark Angel’s 21st century.
Spoilers: BtVS 1-4, Dark Angel 1-2
Disclaimer: The characters in the Angelverse were created by Joss Whedon & David Greenwalt. The characters of Dark Angel is the property of James Cameron, Charles Eglee and Fox. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.
Distribution: Just Fic, AA, The Addiction, Roses & Thorns, GTC/A. Anyone else, just ask.
Notes: AU is fun! Also, Angel & Cordelia did not go to L.A., but rather stayed in Sunnydale. No worries, slight B/A, but they are broken up. I’m even going to be nice to Buffy in this one. Also, I’m going to alternate writing this and CtVS. This should keep me flowing out the stories nicely.
Thanks/Dedication: Sunscorched for helping to fuel the creative fire.
Feedback: You know I need it!
Part 1
Don’t ya hate it when the day comes that everything that you’ve worked so hard to accomplish comes crashing down? Naw. That’s too subtle.
How about ending on an apocalyptic scale? Yeah! That’s what it was like. Apocalyptic. And since I’ve been around the Slayer these past three years, I’ve seen about- three of ‘em!
Trouble was I’d gotten too comfortable in my fairytale life in Sunnydale, California. So comfortable, I almost handed myself to the very people who wanted to place me back in the lab. To be re-indoctrinated. A fate worse than death in the cold walls of Manticore. That hell I escaped from when I was only a kid with a handful of my brothers and sisters.
A child engineered to be the deadliest of weapons.
Sounds pretty cool, huh? It’s not though. And unlike the Slayer, there isn’t a chosen one.
There were many of us. Chosen from the best DNA money could buy.
UC Sunnydale. January 2020
Ten Years After the Pulse
Buffy Summers, the Vampire Slayer, groaned as she slung her book satchel over her shoulder.
Her muscles were screaming out in protest at the extra weight of two mammoth text books buried in the bag. Usually, as the slayer, she could carry that weight with no problem, but she’d just had a run in with a nasty who’d felt it was necessary to slam her into a mausoleum wall.
“And of course it doesn’t help getting jumped the night before by Sunday and Spike,” she grumbled to herself, as she made her way across the grass toward Stevensen Hall. Spike, the vampire grandchilde of her ex-boyfriend, Angel, had finally met a vampire he could spend the rest of eternity with.
Well, since he couldn’t get Drusilla back, she mused. Sunday was a hip, punky, bitch-in-leather who was just perfect for Spike. And a perfect pain in Buffy’s ass.
Letting out a curse as her boot heel caught on a sprinkler head, Buffy nearly threw her satchel down in frustration. The Slayer was too preoccupied with her flaming muscles and whether or not she would still have time to cram for her Sociology test tomorrow, to notice the group men that began to surround her.
Leaning over, Buffy lightly masassed her ankle. “This freaking figures,” Buffy mumbled. Another sore spot to add to the many. Just as she was about to straighten herself and continue on, she was suddenly hauled off the ground.
Ignoring all her previous aliments and frustrations, Buffy tried to shriek in alarm, only to have a heavy hand placed over her mouth. Her assailant wasn’t alone. Trying to kick out with her Slayer strength, her legs were grabbed by two men. She took a quick glance around, and saw that she was surrounded by at least a dozen men in dark military garb.
It wasn’t the Initiative clothing that Riley Finn and his commandoes wore. Oh, this so cannot be good!
Still not giving in an inch, she continued to try and lash out against her attackers. “Whoever you guys are, you’re gonna be real sorry once I get my hands on you!” She mumbled through her assailant’s hand.
Buffy’s attempts were abruptly halted by a tazer shot in her abdomen.
Seeing the girl almost pass out from the electric shot brought another man forward. Buffy tried to focus her heavy lidded eyes on the light-haired man approaching her.
He had pleasant enough face, if it hadn’t been hardened by nearly two decades of personal tragedy and military life. His cold eyes met Buffy’s green. “Don’t worry. You’ll be home soon, soldier.” He allowed his grim mouth to lighten to a slight smile.
Soldier?
Buffy’s muscular activity became violently active again, when she saw him produce a hypodermic needle. Trying in vain to pull away, she hissed in pain as he drove the needle into the side of her neck, injecting it’s contents into her bloodstream. Within moments, she was out cold.
Colonel William Lydecker signaled for his men to move out, with his newly reacquired X-5 solider. This was surely going to be a most gratifying evening.
Sunnydale High School. October 2018
Two Years Earlier
Seventeen-year-old Cordelia Chase was standing immobile outside of the high school library. It was after seven at night, and she knew that Buffy and the gang had already left for that evening’s patrol.
So only Giles should be in there, she reasoned with herself. But she couldn’t suppress the nagging feeling that someone, somewhere would overhear what she was about to reveal to the librarian. Even walls have ears!
Giving her stomach butterflies a mental blast of Raid, Cordelia pushed open the library doors, ready to do something she had never thought possible.
“Hey, Giles,” she hummed out, hoping her voice sounded relatively normal. “Are you in and about?”
Popping his distinguished head out of his office, Rupert Giles blinked in moderate surprise. “Oh, Cordelia, you missed the meeting today. Buffy and the others have already headed out.” Giving his glasses a push up, he stepped out to greet the girl.
“I know,” Cordelia replied. “I was hoping I would be able to speak to you- without the others around.” She brushed her palms nervously against her jeans. “I have something I need to talk to you about. Is that okay?”
“O-oh, certainly,” he nodded his head, stepping to the side, so that she could enter his office.
Once she was settled in a chair opposite his desk, Giles perched himself on the edge of his desk, arms folded across his chest. Cordelia gave a crooked smile at that, “You might want to sit down for this, Giles,” she whispered, her hands fidgeting at buttons of her white sweater.
Giles could clearly see she was anxious about something, and decided to take her advice. It was a rare occasion when Cordelia Chase wore a somber expression on her lovely face. “Alright, Cordelia. What’s going on? And don’t be afraid to tell me.”
Taking in a shaky gulp of much needed air, she closed her eyes in brief preparation. This is it, she told herself one more time, now or never.
Now.
“First of all,” she quietly said, “My real name is not Cordelia. It’s Jondy. I actually have no last name.” Not taking her eyes off his, she continued, “Jondy was the name given to me by my brothers and sisters back at a scientific-military compound called Manticore in Gillette, Wyoming. This was the place were I was engineered and bred to be a soldier. One of the most perfect soldiers ever created.”
Cordelia could tell by the look on his face that he found this both incredulous and fascinating. “I am a genetically enhanced test tube baby, Giles. The only people that know about me are Michael and Catherine Chase. The two people who have been posing as my biological parents since the morning after I escaped from Manticore. And a doctor who is a close and personal friend of my father’s.” Feeling to constricted in her seat, Cordelia rose up to lean against the wall.
“Um, Cordelia,” Giles blinked rapidly as he tried to absorb all the information that she was supplying. “This is all- all rather astounding and hard to believe.” Removing his glasses, he ran a flustered hand through his hair.
“But you believe in demons and such?” Cordelia cocked her head at him. “Or is it too impossible to believe that Cordelia Chase could be anything but demon-bait outside of her cheerleading routines?” That came out a little too bitter, but she couldn’t help it. “I’ve played that part to perfection, Giles, but now I need to come out!”
“I’m sorry, Cordelia, but that’s not what I meant at all.”
“I know,” she mumbled, looking down at her white tennis shoes in shame. “I know it’s hard for you to believe anything that is coming out of my mouth right now, but you know I’ve always laid out the truth no matter what!”
That was an understatment. The brunette cheerleader seemed almost incabable of showing any tact at times.
“It’s just getting so hard to hold this all together. It’s been eight years that I’ve lived with this secret and it’s been taking a near-psycho toll!” The nape of her neck was starting to sting again too, which was pissing her off.
“Here!” She suddenly exclaimed, making the Watcher jump. “My barcode is starting to come back.” Cordelia turned around, lifting her dark brown hair so he could see.
Once a month she had to go out of town to have it removed, and it always came back. “It’s my designation barcode from Manticore,” she explained, as she felt Giles delicately touch the area. “The tattoo is part of our genetic coding, so the damn thing’s permanent. In brief, my designation is X-5469. Each one of us had these encoded into our geneic make-up for crappy identification purposes.”
He could definitely see the appearance of barcode lines emerging from her redden flesh. “You can’t have it removed at all?”
Cordelia let a small smile touch her lips. He believes me. This was the proof that Giles needed. “I have it lasered off once a month, but it always comes back. Hurts like hell to have it removed. Dr. Walker removes it for me.” Feeling Giles step back, she turned back around to face him. “Anything to make sure they don’t find me.”
“Who?”
“Manticore. Better yet- Lydecker,” she answered, “He was the one in charge of our unit at Manticore. I know he’s out there, looking for all of us.” She tried to imagine who all had escaped that night- Syl, Krit, Ben. She’d been running with Max, when her sister fell through the ice. Cordelia felt a lump in her throat form a the though of her closest sibling. I’d left her behind.
“I still need to know more about this, Cordelia, but what is that you need from me?”
Cordelia moved in closer, until she was standing right before him. “I need something to fight, Giles. My instincts are still perfect. Courtesy of feline DNA,” she added wryly, nearly laughing at his expression. “But my fighting skills have been on the back burner. I know you have to train Buffy, but I was hoping, that you could try to squeeze me somewhere.”
Cautiously she added, “I was designed to kill for this country. We all were. Not even trying to express my actual physical capabilities all these years has been killing me. “
Keeping up the façade of an ordinary girl, living an ordinary life had begun to exercise its appeal. Sure, she was grateful for the Chases finding her and taking her in, but- she was lying to herself. “I can’t be completely inactive, Giles. Not anymore.”
“And,” she continued, perking herself up a bit; trying to persuade him to her best advantage, “I can secretly help Buffy out with the demon populous. I have in the past, when no one was around of course, but now you’ll know! Think of the possibilities!”
Giles had to smile at the girl. Here she was confessing that she was some genetically bred super-soldier, but she still managed to place in her charm.
“It would prove more profitable if the others knew about this.”
“No,” she vehemently shook her head, “Bad, bad idea! I’m taking a bold risk telling you. I can’t risk them knowing, Giles. Their lives will be placed in danger if they know too much.” Cordelia hopped behind him to sit on his desk. “Manticore is not a place filled with demons and soulless monsters. These are men and women who gunned down nine-year-olds for not following orders! They will not care about a few teenagers in a small California town.”
“You’re right,” he admitted, nodding his head him grim realization. “It would be too much of a gamble. I’ll try and help you as much as I can, Cordelia-” He was cut off by her, as she jumped off the desk to give him a hug. He’d barely saw her move!
“Thank you sooooo much, Giles,” she squealed. “Your intellectual brain is going to have so much fun! Just to let you know, my training is hand to hand combat- straight military. Hope your ready for it.” The grin on her face was infectious.
Placing a fatherly arm around her shoulders, they headed out of the office, into the library. “So, you have feline DNA, eh? What benefits does that give you?”
“Well,” Cordelia began, almost feeling content that Giles agreed to help her, “Exceptional agility and reflexes. Did wonders for gymnastics and cheerleading. Also, nine millimeter pupils when I need ’em.”
“Nine millimeter?!”
“Heck, yeah. Vision of a kitty.” Cordelia grinned. He was going to be even more shocked than that, once he saw the full potential of a Manticore transgenic in action. Not to be all big-headed, but her abilities made Slayer power look like it was for beginners only.
“Oh, did you want me to call you Jondy or Cordelia while we’re away from the others?”
“Cordelia,” she replied softly, “My parents gave me that name when they took me in. Jondy reminds me too much of Manticore.” And it reminded her all too well of Max and the others.
She wondered if she would ever see them again.