Fanfic / 88719

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88719 is an installment of Adventures of a Line Hopper Series Fic that crosses over Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Doctor Who. It is part of The Child of Balime season 1, starring Buffy and the Doctor's Fan-Created Offspring Seo. It consists of 9 chapters, published from May 2 to May 10, 2013, preceded by The Most Dangerous Alien You'll Ever Meet and followed by Prey.

Seo has a request for her mom: she wants to go to school, specifically Chelsea Downs where her only friend Alison is studying. Buffy figures out that something wrong is going to happen at any high school Seo is enrolling, but two months later, nothing alien-y or demon-y has happened. The only weird thing is the fact that Seo's grade is failing and her test answers are too advanced for her grade. Buffy gets Tosh to tutor Seo, only for it to come out that Seo's test answers are Torchwood-related information and Seo's answers when interrogated are more vague than usual.

88719 contains examples of:

• Big "WHAT?!": Gwen opens a scene in chapter 7 by shouting "What?!" in surprise and protest after being informed by Jack that the Vvaptroshurn want their help to launch a bomb for destroying the alien's own planet.
• Brutal Honesty: Before operating on Seo to remove the neural implant in her head, Owen decides not to mince words about whether it would hurt.
  Owen: Yes, it's going to kill. When we're getting that implant out, it's going to activate, stimulating every nerve center inside your head. You're going to scream, in pain and agony, beg me for death a thousand times. And when you're done, all you'll have to show for it is a really nasty scar across the top of your head and a headache the size of London. That make you feel any better?
  Alison: You haven't performed surgery on a lot of live aliens, have you?
  Owen: She wants a bloody brilliant doctor, she gets to put up with the bedside manner.
• Continuity Nod: One of the answers Seo writes for exams is about "sentient gas that fed off orgasmic energy".
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: The two Vvaptroshurn justify their actions and plan to destroy their own planet by reminding themselves that they are brutal victims of a civil war. Gwen doesn't think it's a good enough excuse to blow up a planet full of people, however, while Buffy considers any of their explanations invalid the moment they torture her innocent daughter Seo, the one person who may sympathize with them the most.
• Honesty Is the Best Policy: After capturing Ianto, Tpytere decides that, instead of killing him to cover things up like Wtarfich suggests, they should just tell him the truth and release him so he can tell the rest of Torchwood that their planet-destroying bomb is for blowing up their own planet rather than Earth, and they only want to fix their propulsion system to get out now.
• Ignored Epiphany: After realizing that Seo is not the 88719 agent they have been warned about, Wtarfich and Tpytere have a moment of realization that their obsession with getting revenge on their people has turned them into monsters who tortured an innocent girl. Then Tpytere reminds Wtarfich of what their people did to them and both decide that their people have it coming and they need to kill Buffy since she wouldn't hear them out.
• Ironic Echo Cut: The two final scenes are bridged with a dramatic version this cut. The penultimate scene ends with Jack guessing that Seo helped the Vvaptroshurn because she didn't know that Vvaptroshurn's bomb wouldn't work. The scene cuts to two weeks earlier where Seo is thinking about how she knows that Vvaptroshurn's bomb wouldn't work.
• Mistaken Identity: The aliens kidnap and torture Seo because they mistake her for an 88719 agent, and the photo of the agent that they have is actually a photo of her mother Buffy, who also isn't the 88719 agent chasing them (Saxon has been feeding the aliens lies).
• Off with His Head!: Tpytere gets killed in the final fight by Buffy severing her head with a surprise sword thrust.
• Offhand Backhand: During the final fight, dirsarmed Wtarfich tries to tackle Buffy from behind, but Buffy throws his own gun at over her shoulder without turning, knocking him out when the gun hits his temple.
• Percussive Prevention: In chapter 8, Seo wants to turn herself over to the Vvaptroshurn as they demand, but Jack doesn't want her to suffer from them again, so he triggers chronon particles on her to knock her out.
• Person as Verb: Buffy describes Seo's potential of breezing through academic tests with her super-intelligence as "Willow"-ing her way through them.
• Pistol-Whipping: In the final fight, as Buffy keeps fighting them from up-close, both Wtarfich and Tpytere try to hit her with the butt of their guns instead. It doesn't do much good, and Wtarfich ends up being the one who gets briefly knocked out when Buffy throws his own gun at his head, hitting him with the butt.
• Planet Destroyer: The Vvaptroshurn's plan turns out to be building a bomb that would destroy their own planet, with the added vengeful bonus of making sure everyone on it are killed first. However, they don't realize that their bomb, given by Harold Saxon, is designed not to work.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: When insisting that she wants to go to the expensive Chelsea Downs, Seo gives a hurt, pleading look with puppy-dog eyes to Buffy.
• Separated by a Common Language: One of Buffy's difficulties when trying to enroll Seo into a British school is adapting to how the Brits use the term "public school" differently from Americans.
  Giles: No, 'public school' doesn't necessarily mean public school. See? These are all called 'public schools', yet they are actually what you'd consider to be private schools.
  Buffy: Huh?
• Shout-Out: When Jack orders Ianto to check whether the school's food is drugged, Alison sarcastically thanks him as "Mr. Sherlock Holmes".
• Stepping Out for a Quick Cup of Coffee: When Seo starts screaming in her cell at the end of chapter 4, Alison wants to check, but Jack orders Tosh to keep Alison in the hub as he goes down. After Jack leaves, Tosh asks Alison, "Aren't you going to sneak off to see your friend, while I'm not looking?" while deliberately focusing on looking at a computer screen; Alison gets the hint and follows Jack.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: Up until everyone realizes the truth, Seo just goes along with whatever explanation the others have about her poor grades and her writing Torchwood secrets, rather than admitting that there are gaps in her memories, which are casued by her taking Retcons in secret.
• Taking the Bullet: In the final chapter, Jack notices a beam is being shot at Buffy while she is busy talking and pushes her out of the way. Jack dies but to no one's surprise except the Vvaptroshurn's, he comes back to live as usual.
• Tall Poppy Syndrome: When Owen suggests that maybe Seo is crying to Buffy on the phone because she doesn't fit in with the crowd, Tosh cringes because she didn't fit in either at school due to being a little too smarter. Seo's problem turns out to be different, however, and Alison implies that she actually comes off as dumb at school due to being different.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Buffy kills Wtarfich by throwing her swords at his head, accurately making it avoid Jack's head between them and sending it through Wtarfich's.
• Title by Number: The fic is mysteriously titled a string of numbers (88719) before it's revealed to be the name of the space police force after the Vvaptroshurn.
• Troubled Fetal Position: When Buffy and Alison get confused about why is Seo writing completely unrelated equations for her math exams, Seo curls up and buries her face on her knees, asking them to just move past it.
• Villain Opening Scene: The fic starts with a man and a woman discussing their plan to end the world. Later scenes explain who they are and confirm that they are the villains of the week.