Fanfic / Confession

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Confession is an installment of Adventures of a Line Hopper Series Fic that crosses over Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Doctor Who. It is opening fic of The Child of Balime season 3 and features Buffy and the Doctor's Fan-Created Offspring Seo. It consists of 15 chapters published from on January 2 to January 19, 2014, preceded by the previous season finale The Making of Bilis Manger and followed by the next season premiere Tattle-Tale. Continuity-wise, this fic is a pseudo-prequel to My Weapon and Something.

Seo and Dawn make a random time travel trip and end up in Jarodin, 39th century, when the war between the future Slayers and the Daleks are still going on. A Dalek attack separates Seo and Dawn, with Dawn getting rescued by Slayer intelligence Deborah Raykins while Seo recognizes the planet as where she secretly hides her greatest regret Drusilla. When the Daleks capture Seo and Drusilla for information, having known Seo's future incarnations, Dawn has to convince Raykins that she and Seo are family of the Slayers' role model "Bunfy Sompters", that they are both the Keys, and that killing Seo to win against the Daleks is something Raykins' hero would never forgive. Further complicating matters is "Sunglasses", a mysterious woman who seems to know a lot about Seo and the war, except she still needs information on the Doctor.

Confession contains examples of:

• And I'm the Queen of Sheba: When Dawn explains that she registers as a Replicant because she is the Key given a human body based on her sister's DNA, Raykins disbelieves it and replies, "Yeah, and I'm Bunfy Sompters, slaying monsters in a graveyard in Somleydaya" (not knowing that said sister is "Bunfy" herself).
• Apocalypse How: It's explained that the Daleks overloading Jarodin's Earthquake Tectonic Defense Systems is intended to cause a surface-Planetary Total Extinction due the tectonic plate activity of the whole planet being made too unstable to support life.
• Appeal to Audacity: After her initial cover story goes unbelieved, Dawn admits to Raykins that she is a time-traveler and a mystical Key who is traveling with her niece who is the time machine's pilot and also a Key. Raykins admits that this at least shows that Dawn is not a Dalek Replicant since no undercover Dalek would think of a nonsensical story like that.
• Back from the Dead: The fic's cliffhanger has Seo getting shot by the Daleks' extermination blast, only to mysteriously come back to life with a Glory-like personality.
• Bookends: The fic opens and ends with Deborah Raykins recording her confession video.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Drusilla secures Seo's safety by telling the Daleks that she is the Key to the multiverse, the only thing they don't have yet, so they choose to keep Seo around until they can use her. Chapter 14 reveals that the Daleks no longer need Seo alive once Dawn is there to activate the Key, but killing Seo proves to be a mistake as the revived Seo embraces her Glory side and kills the Dalek easily.
• Cassandra Truth: When Dawn tells Raykins the truth that she is a time-traveler from 21st century who is traveling with her niece and both of them are the Key, Raykins disbelieves it as nonsense. As Raykins keeps talking with Dawn, however, she realizes that Dawn can't possibly make her stories up, even as Dawn's words prove that the 39th century Slayers' knowledge of Buffy is very imperfect.
• Cliffhanger: Discounting the epilogue (which merely "sets up" previous fics My Weapon and Something using side characters' POVs), the fic ends with Seo using her Glory powers to kill the Daleks and menacingly calls Dawn "Key".
• Curb-Stomp Battle: In chapter 14, when Seo dies but apparently awakens her Glory side, she makes an extremely short work of the previously feared Daleks, absorbing all of their energies in seconds.
• Dead All Along: One of the Daleks' attempts at breaking Seo is to put her in a room of chatty Slayers. Then Jasmine suddenly remembers that the Daleks already killed her, and Dalek weapons appear from inside her. Jasmine proceeds to shoot the entire room except for Seo, only for the others to be revealed to be dead Dalek puppets too.
• Dramatic Irony: Raykins' declaration in her confession that she is going to rescue the cyborg-demon-human creature to prevent it from being weaponized against its will is framed as heroic from her perspective, but readers are aware from Something that she is only going to kickstart the revived Adam's evil plot and gets herself turned into his minion.
• EMP: When the Daleks leave Jarodin, they activate an EM field to ensure that the planet's tectonic stabilizer and any other helpful machines are disabled, forcing the good guys to scramble to find a way to ensure the planet doesn't get destroyed.
• Hand Gagging: Upon meeting the Daleks only for the second time, Seo is unafraid and excitedly tries to talk to them, forcing Dawn to shut her mouth with her hand.
• Last Kiss: Knowing that her usefulness has ran out once she tells the Daleks that Seo is the Key, Drusilla kisses Seo for the last time as the Daleks kill her.
• Last-Name Basis: An interesting case as, although Deborah Raykins is previously called "Deborah" by the narration in Something and is still called "Deb" by her friends, the narration of this fic (which promotes her to a main character status and shows her time as an Agent) pointedly always calls her "Raykins" instead.
• Lie Detector: The Daleks strap Seo to a truth detector that would give her electric shock every time she lies, forcing her to be honest the entire time.
• The Needs of the Many: It is brought up multiple times that maybe Raykins should just kill Seo instead of letting the Daleks get their hands on her in any way given Seo's extreme destructive potential, except Seo is the daughter of the Slayers' idol Buffy which complicates things a lot emotionally. There's also the issue that Dawn's energy would get unleashed and destroy the universe if Seo is killed, which IPSA solves by letting Dawn follow the Seo rescue mission before blowing up the Dalek's Main Experiment Ship while they are both in it, but Raykins is horrified and starts rebelling as a result.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: The epilogue reveals that the real reason Adam is revived and able to weak havoc in Something is because Raykins refuses to allow IPSA to force Adam to serve as their weapon and decides to revive him on her own so he can keep his free will.
• No-Sell: When Seo is suddenly superpowered and Glory-like after reviving herself at the climax, the Daleks find out that the hard way that their energy beam barrage can't hurt her and even make her stronger.
• One-Word Title: Just "Confession", after Deborah Raykins' video confession that book-ended the fic.
• Please, I Will Do Anything!: When the Daleks want to exterminate Drusilla, Seo begs them not to by offering to tell them anything, which is helped by the fact that she is already strapped to a Lie Detector.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Originallly, Raykins tries to use some loopholes to get around IPSA's order so she can rescue Seo from the Dalek's experimentation ship as Dawn wants. When it turns out that the High Command straight up lied to her (they only want to use Raykins to destroy the ship and never intend Raykins to rescue Seo), Raykins declares in the epilogue that she is going to ignore their orders from now on and rescue an experimented cyborg from their clutches as her conscience wants (which would have been truly heroic if Dramatic Irony doesn't already let the readers know that said cyborg is evil).
• Stable Time Loop: When being interrogated by the Daleks, Seo is forced to be honest and recites things that Buffy and the Doctor have told her about the events of My Weapon, realizing too late that these Daleks haven't went through that yet and she is the one who makes them go after the Fountain of Kulkmattoll and Buffy's brain in the first place.
• Suicide Mission: Raykins finds out that the mission to rescue Seo from the Daleks' experimentation ship is a lie and the real mission given to the rest of her team is to disable the ship's shield and teleportation blockers from the inside so IPSA can blow it up and teleport Raykins out in time, with no expectation to bring anyone but Raykins back.
• Taking the Bullet: In chapter 14, Dawn manages to provoke one of the Daleks into shooting her, knowing it would ruin their plan to use the Key, but Seo jumps in the way and temporarily dies, although the person who wakes up worryingly acts more like Glory.
• Time Travel Escape: It's revealed that when vampires are getting wiped out in 2004 (The Bringer of Death), Seo rescues Drusilla from being killed by time-traveling there and spiriting her away somewhere safe.
• Tricked into Escaping: Early on, the Daleks have Seo surrounded, but a distraction allows her to escape. As Dawn and Raykins figure out that the Daleks wouldn't let Seo escape just like that, it's revealed that the Daleks are after something dimensionally-locked on the planet and let Seo go so she would open it while thinking she is safe.
• Your Mom: In chapter 14, one of Dawn's attempts at provoking the Dalek is by insulting their non-existent mother.
  Dawn: Also, your mom was so fat, they named a hippo after her at the zoo.