Fanfic / Interventions

The Interventions series by Penfold is a crossover between Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Heroes, starting when Peter’s latest prophetic dreams prompt him to take a group of his associates back in time five years to the final battle in Sunnydale (as well as a trip back six years to save Tara), followed by the Council joining forces with the Company in the present to better coordinate their future efforts.

There are also minor crossover elements from Doctor Who and Torchwood, with the Tenth Doctor making a cameo in the first story and UNIT and Torchwood playing an important peripheral role in the second.

Interventions contains examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Bob Bishop gets called out on his treatment of Elle by Xander.
• Adaptational Heroism: In a sense, as the Company is encouraged to adopt a more benevolent approach now that Peter and the others are officially working for them.
• Back from the Dead: The fic opens with Peter using Claire's blood to bring Tara back to life after Willow's gone on her rampage, as history needed Willow to absorb the magic she would use later.
• Bait-and-Switch: To capture the Level Five escapees after they take Dawn as a hostage, the Company sends Buffy, Angel, Spike, Connor, Tara, Vi, and the Haitian, with Tara using a glamour to create the impression that the Haitian is Peter.
• Berserk Button:
  • Peter muses that Caleb killing so many young women just for the sake of it has bypassed Peter’s usual ‘live and let live’ attitude and deserves to die.
  • Maury Parkman’s actions against Molly prompt Matt and Willow to terrify him even before Matt causes him to have a fatal heart attack.
  • After Doyle the puppeteer captures Dawn, the only reason Connor doesn’t kill Doyle is that he recognises that Dawn needs him, and he leaves Doyle for Spike to finish off anyway; Spike later asks Buffy if she seriously didn’t expect Spike to kill someone who had threatened to hurt Dawn like that.
  • Willow basically pushes all of Sylar’s as she prepares to condemn him to a Fate Worse than Death.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Demonstrated by Peter, Matt and Willow in particular, as Peter helps Jessica take Caleb apart while Matt and Willow work together to make sure that Maury will never terrorise Molly ever again. Willow also shows this side of her in a tamer moment when she allows enough of Dark Willow out to inform Elle that there won't be enough left of Elle to bury if the Company agent deliberately hurts Xander.
• Big Damn Heroes: The Scoobies and Potentials are introduced to the Heroes team as this, with Peter, Hiro, Nikki, Claire, Monica and Hana appearing during the fight at the Vineyard to kill Caleb and the Harbringers and help Buffy and Faith retrieve the Scythe.
• Birds of a Feather: In the original timeline (before the Heroes got involved in Sunnydale), Xander reflected that he could trust Peter because, like him, Peter's power comes from the heart.
• The Bus Came Back: From the perspective of the Scoobies, anyway; while the Heroes team returned to the future and then immediately sought out the Sunnydale survivors in their present, Buffy, Angel and their allies had to wait five years and avoid looking up Peter and the rest to avoid attracting the wrong kind of attention to their new allies.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Invoked on various occasions;
  • When Peter meets Xander in the original timeline, Xander is struck by the notion that Peter has no problem with the idea of travelling in time but is put out at the notion of confronting the literal source of all Evil while doing so, Peter just observing that everything's relative.
  • In the timeline created after the heroes assist in Sunnydale, when Spike tells Micah that he met Nikki a few years ago from his perspective and a few months ago from Nikki's, Micah just accepts that it's a time-travel thing while Spike muses that it's still confusing to him when he actually participated in the events.
  • Later on, during Xander's first date with Elle, when Willow suggests that Elle ask Xander about the time he saved the world, Xander has to ask which time that was, affirming Elle's positive opinion of him.
• Canon Welding: It is all but explicitly stated that the First is actually a projection created by the Beast from the Doctor Who episode “The Satan Pit”, the Sunnydale survivors get help from Torchwood to work with UNIT to give themselves official credentials, and Giles’ later research suggests that the posthumans’ abilities come from the Powers That Be.
• Combo Platter Powers: Applies to both Peter and Sylar; they each even both get a similar power boost by going to Level Five.
• Composite Character: The First Evil is revealed to be a manifestation of the Beast, which the Tenth Doctor faced in the future in "The Satan Pit".
• Crossover Couple: Spike/NikkiJessica, Faith/Peter Petrelli, Xander/Elle Bishop, Angela Petrelli/Colonel Mace is hinted at, and lesser examples are shown of Dawn Summers/Connor and Anya/David Nabbit.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Referenced during the final confrontation in Pinehearst, as while some of the posthumans are stronger than the Slayers, the Slayers’ range of other abilities, such as their speed, still gives them an advantage.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Peter Petrelli Versus Caleb amounts to this, as Caleb can do nothing to Peter while Peter can hurt him with relative ease.
  • Another example is witnessed during the final confrontation in Pinehearst, when Micah is able to dismantle Pineheart’s computer security systems in a few seconds, while the combined forces of the Watcher’s Council and the Company tear through Pinehearst’s forces without the enemy able to offer a true challenge to the range of powers available to the other posthumans and the Slayers' natural edge in hand-to-hand combat.
• Cute and Psycho: Elle has traits of this, but Willow in particular notes that she isn’t psycho enough to be dangerous when encouraging Xander to ask her out.
• Demoted to Extra: Arthur Petrelli is reduced to this, with Illyria literally tearing out his spine while he’s still confined to his hospital bed.
• The Dreaded: Sylar comes across as this; just hearing that the Slayers have discovered one of their number killed with her brain exposed sends Nikki into a panic at the idea that Sylar is hunting the Slayers.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Referenced, the other Level Five escapees are uncomfortable with Doyle’s plans for Dawn, but although he creeps them out, each decide that they can’t actually do anything against him given his powers.
• Eye Scream: Spike recalls how Jessica took out Caleb's eyes with her fingers to get a better grip of his head as she took him apart.
• Fate Worse than Death: Willow does this to Sylar in the end, erasing all conscious memory of his abilities and his actions and leaving him essentially reverted back to his original identity of Gabriel Grey, socially isolated and terrified of life as a whole while lacking the nerve to actually do anything about it like try to connect with people or kill himself.
• Fix Fic: A literal example in the first story, as Peter takes his team back in time specifically to change events and give the Scoobies some warning of what’s to come.
• Framing the Guilty Party: Steps are taken at the conclusion to frame Eric Doyle for Sylar’s crimes, allowing all concerned parties to avoid closer investigation of Sylar now that he’s essentially been brainwashed into a powerless state.
• Healing Factor: Claire and Peter, with Claire’s blood not only bringing Tara back from the dead, but also restoring Spike and Angel to a form of life.
• Identity Amnesia: To a degree; Willow deals with Sylar by stripping his memory of his crimes and reducing him to Gabriel Grey, too scared to connect to anyone and condemned to never be anything special to anyone.
• Ignorant of Their Own Ignorance: Sylar and Pinehearst are subject to this in the second story, as they are unaware of the existence of the supernatural and assume that the Slayers are all posthumans with the same powers.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • Despite the changes in the final battle in Sunnydale, Spike is still sent to Los Angeles to work alongside Angel and Fred is still transformed into Illyria, although the Slayers amend their wider approach to rebuilding the Council to avoid being branded a terrorist organisation as they were in the comics.
  • Although most of Heroes Season Three storyline is changed, Ando is still shown to have acquired powers from the serum.
• Lingerie Scene: Tara basically has this when she and Xander go to confront Willow; she was brought to the hill wearing the clothes she was shot in, so Xander suggests she remove the shirt so Willow can clearly see Tara's OK rather than start freaking out about Tara having a massive bloodstain over her heart. As they go to confront Willow, Xander jokingly wonders if anyone's ever saved the world in their underwear before.
• Kid Hero: Micah, as in canon.
• Mama Bear:
  • Nikki/Jessica, as always, with Spike musing that’s actually one of the things he likes about her.
  • Willow specifically muses that Matt Parkman will go ‘mama bear’ on anyone who hurts Molly, and later follows his example in a final confrontation with Maury after the man starts tormenting Molly again.
• Mind Rape: Willow initially gets angry at Matt in the belief that he would do this to others after he uses his powers to stop the Slayers attacking him (they thought he was Sylar before Hiro and Vi explained the truth), but he cites the example set by his father to affirm that he would never cross the same line as Maury.
• Ominous Message from the Future: The Heroes characters essentially deliver this in the first story, although Peter is the only one who explicitly tells Buffy that they are from the future and only does that after the First has been defeated.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: When Xander notes that he appreciates that Buffy doesn't keep him "fray-adjacent" any more, Buffy protests that she said that one time and has since admitted that she was wrong.
• Orcus on His Throne: Arthur Petrelli attempts to be this, but gets swiftly taken down by Illyria.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Angel and Spike become even more different as the result of being injected with Claire’s blood, as they become biologically alive with permanent souls and immune to sunlight and holy relics while retaining their strength and ‘vamp faces’.
• Parental Substitute: Spike and Willow all but explicitly become this for Micah and Molly respectively; Spike swiftly bonds with Micah after he returns to Nikki’s life and Willow confronts Maury Parkman to save Molly in a dream, appearing to Molly as a ‘mother Earth’ figure where Maury sees her as a dark figure of vengeance, Molly referring to Willow as her third hero after Matt and Mohinder.
• Power Incontinence: Disregarded for Peter, who shows a neat combination of his acquired powers during the story, ranging from mixing intangibility with superstrength to stop Caleb to generating a nuclear blast to destroy Sunnydale and then flying to safety.
• Power Nullifier: The Haitian, although his powers only work on evolved humans while Slayers and other supernatural entities remain at full capacity in his presence.
• A Rare Sentence: From Faith’s perspective, anyway, in the epilogue of the first story while she’s being tortured by a demon;
  “Just realised I’m gonna say somethin' I would’ve sworn blind would never pass my lips… My boyfriend is so gonna kick your ass.”
• Ret-Gone: No reference is made to Tracy, Nikki’s unknown (as of the end of Season Two) sister.
• Signature Move: The Slayers and Willow have no idea what could take off the top of someone’s head without removing or even damaging the brain, but Nikki has no trouble identifying the perpetrator as soon as Spike mentions that detail.
• Shipping Torpedo: Although she survives Sunnydale, Anya doesn't get back together with Xander, eventually moving on to David Nabbit after he becomes one of the Slayer army's new financial backers.
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • Indirectly; Tara still died as in canon, but this time around Peter went back in time to bring her back to life with a sample of Claire’s blood after Willow absorbed the magics.
  • While Hana Gitelman is ‘dead’ in the spin-off comics, here she is still alive and part of Peter’s team in Sunnydale (albeit due to her training rather than her powers).
  • Nikki survives what would have been her death thanks to Peter showing up to save her, but curing her of the Shanti virus also restores her ‘Jessica’ personality.
  • Stephen Canfield is given a chance to redeem himself by joining the Watcher’s Council, rather than being driven to suicide.
  • Elle Bishop is never targeted by Sylar, and is last shown dating Xander.
• Split Personality: Jessica is restored, but she and Nikki manage to reconcile and even find common ground in their mutual attraction to Spike.
• Stunned Silence: Andrew is left staring in silent awe after Peter not only destroys Sunnydale, but flies out of the remains and lands neatly alongside them.
• Taught by Television: Referenced when Kennedy compares Monica’s combat skills to Bruce Lee, suggesting that Monica learnt how to fight from watching at least one of Lee’s films.
• Technopath: Micah, who is so skilled that Spike acknowledges that he’s even better with computers than Willow, and takes down Pinehearst’s entire computer system in a few seconds in the final battle.
• Time Master: Peter explains that while he and Hiro can travel in time and space, they can only go to certain points in history based on what they apparently ‘need’ to do, Peter noting that he can’t (for example) go back in time by a week to win the lottery.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • Xander is given the injection to turn him into a posthuman, which gives him the power to be immutable; he will still eventually die of old age, and his hair and nails can be cut, but otherwise it is impossible to cause him physical harm in any way.
  • Buffy volunteers to give Claire additional training to regain her sense of personal strength after Sylar takes her powers.
• Trojan Horse: Used to kill Arthur Petrelli; Illyria (in her disguise as Fred) comes to the Company claiming to be an evolved human whose abilities recently restored her ability to walk, but once in the same room as Arthur so that he can take her power to restore himself, she kills his guard, assumes her true appearance, and rips out Arthur’s spine.
• True Love is Exceptional: It may or may not be ‘true’ love, but Spike certainly forms a strong bond with Nikki/Jessica, serving as the perfect combination of what each of them want in a partner (Nikki wanting someone who can be a good father figure to Micah while Jessica wants a ‘bad boy’).
• Unstoppable Force Meets Immovable Object: The final battle between Sylar and Xander is essentially this, as Sylar’s powers are no good against Xander’s new power of immutability; Sylar can knock Xander down and destroy his clothes, but he can hit Xander with everything from telekinetic force to poisonous gas and it won’t actually stop him.
• World's Best Warrior: Nikki at one point explicitly states that Sylar is possibly even more powerful than Peter.
• Your Magic's No Good Here: Goes back and forth; Sylar cannot copy Slayers the way he would posthumans as their powers defy his analysis, and the Haitian apparently can’t shut down the abilities of the Slayers or Connor, but Claire’s blood not only brings Tara back from the dead, but also restores Angel and Spike to biological life while leaving them with their vampire powers as it cured them scientifically rather than through magic.