(I do not own Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Girl Genius.)
Rupert Giles stepped into the living room of his apartment with a tea set and carefully set it out before his guest.
He had been surprised that the man had requested a Russian style tea rather than the style of his own homeland. Still, Giles was nothing if not a gracious host and had quickly managed to get the black tea concentrated down before setting out a small assortment of jams along with some orange zest.
With deft hands his guest made himself a cup with zest, honey and a touch of blackberry jam before adding a small amount of liquid from a silver flask.
Giles almost missed the slight-of-hand that the man used to swap that particular flask for an identical one that he then offered to Giles, who politely declined the offer. Giles made his own cup of tea with far fewer additions before leaning back and staring at the man across from him.
At nearly six and a half feet tall and powerfully built, the man had made an appearance during the climactic showdown with Angelus before the demonic statue, dirty blonde hair was pulled into a ponytail at the back as darker brown patches dotted themselves across his mane giving him a spotted look.
The oddest feature was the man's eyes, golden with a hint of red swirling through them. They held a weight that seemed to be judging and evaluating everything he witnessed.
As he sipped his drink, Giles took note of the pair of long fangs hidden behind the man's upper lip. He had yet to see the man smile, but something told him that such an event would curdle milk and set children to crying for miles around.
He was an oddity to be sure, dressed in an eclectic combination of ancient European styles, but with a certain flair to them that made the ensemble work. Dark pants and heavy, handcrafted boots, his belt was a workman's utility style with a mad collection of items. Covered in a grey, Russian greatcoat and further festooned with an assortment of gadgets, he made for quite a spectacle.
Giles blamed his own loss of blood for the fact that he had overlooked the imposing man several times as he had stood in the center of Angelus' mansion before a polite cough had drawn his attention. The large figure of a man stood before the pile of dust that had once been one of the most feared vampires of all time.
Glancing over at the skull his guest had taken from the Vampire's skeleton, Giles leaned back casually before taking a sip of his own drink. "So Alexander, why don't you tell me what happened," Giles asked.
His guest seemed to get a faraway look as he stroked his hand across the skull for a moment before responding, "I suppose I should start where you last saw me, in the Hyena House back at the zoo." The man spoke with a heavy Eastern European accent in his rumbling voice that he had not had the last time they had spoken. "You may remember me arriving, covered in blood and weak. A vampire had jumped me and my throat had been torn out. In return, the Hyena had ripped the undead apart and eaten it's cold heart before seeking help from the pack. The Alpha had unknowingly completed the blood ritual to turn me into a vampire."
He shrugged, "Two spirits bound to the same body. They would have torn me apart had your banishing spell not hit me first. Neither would submit to being cast out of my body and so they took me along for the ride." Taking another sip of tea, he fought down the grimace he felt at the memory.
"In the void beyond, the two spirits fought for possession of my body, changing it and repairing the damage done. Finally, the vampire won, casting the Hyena spirit into the void. Had I remained, I have no doubt the blood demon would have easily overpowered my own soul and cast me into darkness as well." Taking another sip of tea, Xander shrugged. "But even in the void beyond it seems someone was watching out for me. In a flash of light I found myself in a new hell, submerged in an unholy concoction of acid, lightning and pain. Fortunately, any pain I felt was tenfold worse for the blood demon as the waters I found myself in were holy, of a sort. Despite its strength, the demon was finally sent screaming back to hell even as I was pulled from the waters. My savior would be none other than the devil himself."
A look of anger and loathing crossed the man's face as he continued, "Saturnus Heterodyne had been experimenting in the great movement chamber of the Castle itself when I had appeared. Given my unique new body and the morphic abilities of the Dyne itself, he consoled his disappointment at the experiment's failure with the presence of a new test subject."
"You were tortured?" Giles asked in shock before he was frozen by Xander's look.
"Tortured? No, torture is an act designed to pry information from the reticent lips of another. Saturnus had no desire for such things and I had no inclination to withhold it, had he but asked there would have been no secret I would have kept, no scrap of knowledge I would not have shared."
Xander growled darkly as his anger grew and Giles could almost swear he saw flames dancing in the man's eyes.
"I was an experiment. A bug under glass to be dissected to see what made me tick and put back together at his whim. I was pulled apart and then sewn back up and then left to heal. He discovered and quantified my enhanced strength and healing factors before setting out to increase them, again leaving me a broken shell for days, weeks on end until he came for me again, for times uncounted. My time in the void between caused me to naturally collect Aethartic Energy that built up in my system and he wanted to see if he could replicate the process. When that failed, he attempted to weaponize it; logging, recording and siphoning off the energy for use in his other experiments. My screams went unanswered, my efforts to escape that hell were seen as little more than amusing anecdotes by my captor, but through it all I learned. Russian, Latin, Romanian and a dozen more languages, all of which I used to curse the family Heterodyne."
Realizing his rage, Xander took a moment to calm himself from the old anger. "The only spark of light was the random appearance of the Lady Teodora who would sneak in at times and offer some slight hope in my darkest hours. Never for long and she would always have to return to her 'boys'." Xander took a deep breath and gently stirred the tea for a moment before calmly he clamly stated, "I hated them. I know it's irrational, but they were the reason she couldn't help me anymore than she did. So I hated them for existing."
"And then, one day the door to my hell was opened and it was not Saturnus that entered but the two boys that I hated so very much, Teodora had poisoned the late Lord and the castle had crushed her for it, leaving the castle, it's lands and all of its experiments to Bill and Barry Heterodyne, the sons of the late and unlamented monster. At his passing, they had begun to clear out their fathers more despicable… Undertakings." Taking another sip, Xander sighed, "I wasn't even in the top one hundred most atrocious experiments." Alexander confessed with a shrug before he continued on, "I was, however, the first one that could be saved."
As Xander got lost in thought, Giles reached over and gently took a small scone, giving the man some time to get himself under control.
Taking a deep breath, Xander returned to the present moment, "It took me nearly a year of constant struggle to reach the point where I could reenter the world and when I did, I found a world that was not my own. This particular world was a madman's dream of Victorian-era mad science where the Frankenstein monster would be a normal Tuesday for the Madboy Sparks."
Finishing his tea, Xander poured another cup and added another dose from the flask, "I couldn't stay in Mechanicsburg. The village, the people, the Castle itself where proud of Saturnus, of 'Their Heterodyne'. I couldn't stay, so I gathered some tools and went out in search of a way home."
Taking a deep breath, Xander leaned back in the chair and sighed, "I didn't make it. I searched for more than a decade and never found a way home."
With that Xander went back to his tea, letting Giles collect his thoughts after the story and come up with some questions.
"Very well, you said you naturally collect 'athertic' energy?" Giles tried the word out before Xander leaned back and sighed.
The man enunciated, "Ah-Thar-Tik Energy, is..., the closest term would be 'friction' between dimensions. As they run at different speeds and along different paths they create Aethartic energy, which builds up either within the dimensions themselves causing any number of strange oddities such as; split timelines, wormholes, magic, psychics, gods, madboy sparks or dark matter. If it builds up in the void itself it tends to generate new dimensions themselves… well that or the monstrous outsiders that seek to devour all life."
At this the two men glanced around carefully in case just speaking of them would attract their attention before returning to their conversation "I naturally absorb it and can use it for several effects, however, should it build up too much I will be sucked into the void until I can bleed it off."
After a moment, Xander shrugged beneath his great coat "It is not a pleasant experience."
Having read some of the reports different beings gave to their time between dimensions, Giles could understand the severity of that particular understatement, "Very well, Tell me more about your adventures in this other world then."
Standing before the mirror, Xander looked at himself again, the scars and stitching were as well hidden as could be under the pseudo-Victorian style clothing of this world as he tried to ignore the presence on the far side of the room.
"You don't have to leave, you know."
Turning his red-gold eyes towards the dashing blonde that had saved him, Xander resisted the urge to snarl.
Apparently, he needed some more work on that as Bill flinched slightly and looked away.
"Yeah, sorry, but no. The castle, the town and the people are one thing..." Xander said before trailing off and trying to keep his voice from rising in anger.
Still, Bill was one of the most observant people he had ever met and he leaned back against the wall with a sigh, "But me and Barry." he surmised as Xander flinched and sighed.
"You, your voice, your smell, the way you stand. Hell, even that weird harmonic you make when you're working," Xander snarled before a sharp pain caused him to glance down at the crumpled remains of the iron bed post. He forced himself to let go and take a step back before he continued, "Even that… THAT." he tried to explain, waving vaguely at the aura surrounding the man before he turned back to the mirror and tried to regain his calm focus.
The boys had been quite startled to discover that Xander had the ability to 'See' the spark if it was strong enough in a person. Not that he really saw it with his eyes, as he had been able to track them in the dark as well. Had the boys had even an ounce of their father in them they would have had his eyes and frontal lobe in a jar within moments of learning that fact in an attempt to find out how he did it.
Even now, the duo would cast looks his way as they fondled beakers of fluids or odd contraptions.
In the end, Xander had decided to strike out on his own. It would be better for everyone involved if he could quickly find his way back home, it wouldn't even be hard, there was really only one person in the entire pox be damned town that he could care about.
He had slipped out of the town late in the night. The Jagers had watched his passing with keen, cruel eyes as he leapt across the River Dyne with a whisper and disappeared into the dark.
"CRUSH HIM MY GLEEKIN! SHOW HIM THE STRENGTH OF THE GACK!-"
The man's mad cackling was cut off as Xander's hand wrapped around his throat and lifted him into the air. Behind him twenty glowing, prepubescent constructs stitched together from a hundred different children stood awkwardly as their creator dangled from the much larger grip of the man that had let them out of their cages and had introduced them to 'cake.' He had even promised to find them something better called a 'twinkie,' but several of the Gleekin thought he was just making that up as nothing could be better than cake.
On the one hand, their creator had given them an order. On the other, Xander had given them cake.
Glancing at each other, the Gleekin unanimously decided that cake was far superior to any claim the self-described Doctor-King could make on them.
DocKing 'Zumil the Unexpected' turned a very dark shade of purple in the big man's grasp as he scrabbled futilely at the hand that was cutting off his access to oxygen.
One part of the mad spark's mind made a mental note to find some way to bypass such a mundane need as 'breathing.' Maybe with a self-winding pump organ that could act as a bagpipe to help him enthrall children so he wouldn't have to search for them anymore. The rest of his mind seemed to be focused on the bright spots of light that were popping in front of his eyes as he blacked out.
As the madman finally slumped, Xander maintained his hold for several more minutes before dropping the corpse to the ground. Glancing up at the children that had been killed by the monster so he could craft them into their current form, Xander sighed before pasting on a happy smile, "All right Kiddoes, let's get this place burned to the ground and I'll take you all out for a Verdens Beste."
As the child-like constructs cheered and happily set to the task of torching the lab that had created them, Xander whispered a dark prayer to whoever was listening that Zumil would burn in hell next to Saturnus. He had been traveling for a year trying to find a way back home when he had found himself in a city under siege. The mad doctor had built up a type of aversion field around the city of Oslo that had kept the populace within even as he stole their children for his twisted experiments.
He didn't know how long it had been going on, but Xander had refused to let it continue. His little adventure had freed the city and he had taken the child-like constructs with him as he sought his home.
(A/n: 'Verdens Beste' is considered by many to be the 'best cake in the world' and is a point of pride for many Scandinavian countries.)
Taking a sip of tea, Xander settled further into the chair. "Zumi's notes indicated that he planned to use the population of Oslo as breeding stock so that he had a steady supply of 'parts' for his Gleekin for the next decade or two. After that he planned to set out to conquer Europe. After stopping him and finally realizing that I had no way home, I settled the Gleekin in a small glade in southern Italy before setting out again. I had several adventures, heard that the boys were having their own and basically did my best to make the world a little less horrible wherever I could."
Rubbing his eyes at the memories, Xander sighed and shook his head. "I could stop the monsters and mad sparks all day long, but the boys… They could inspire! The stories told about them were the things of cult legends. Everywhere they went, whole regions were changed for the better. They laughed, built and adventured like they were something out of a story. The Heterodynes had a history that would put Hitler to shame, a history that went back more than a thousand years and in less than two decades the boys had changed the perception of the name entirely."
He sighed, "Eventually even I got roped into a couple of their adventures. The Heterodyne Boys and the Question of the Shanghai Mumluk, a rather interesting story that involved the boys, Klaus, me and an aspiring Kingpin of the local Pagebinder Bandits." With a smile, Xander reminisced about his time helping them close the case and keep the lesser floating Greek Island fortress of Anafi from sinking beneath the waves.
"I'd been sending the random monster, construct, sentient clank and lesser madboy back to my little spit of land in Italy, by that point I had, without knowing it, carved out a small enclave or empire in Southern Italy. Once I realized that I had left my people for too long, I settled down and set to the task of administering a small town built around the Gleekin and a couple hundred other constructs, monsters, minions and citizens that I had rescued over the years. The boys, too, settled down. Bill marrying the daughter of the Mongfish family, the Stalin's to the Heterodynes Hitlers, to keep the theme going."
At Giles' flinch, Xander nodded, "Bill and Klaus had vied for her hand for a number of years, but finally Bill won and Klaus fled in shame. I couldn't make the wedding, but my Gleekin worked for weeks to craft a special type of near frictionless gear lube that could also act as a dessert topping. Barry sent me a strongly worded letter of reprimand for the perversion of the gift. Lucrezia sent me her thanks and an invitation to their child's christening,"
Smiling at Giles' snort, Xander pressed on, "The boys settled down for a bit, Bill's son 'Klaus Barry' was born almost exactly nine months after their wedding and for the first time there was peace in Europa."
"Am I to assume that it didn't last," Giles asked and took Xander's nod as confirmation that no matter the world, the story seemed to always repeat itself.
"The Boys had set off to battle some sentient vegetable army or other that had gotten away from a Spark. Castle Heterodyne was blown up, Klaus Barry was killed and Lucrezia was kidnapped. It was the first attack of a madman known only as 'The Other.' A madman that seemed hell-bent on destroying the world. Sparks were bombed into dust and towns and cities were depopulated by bug monsters. The warrior breed was bad enough, like the creatures in the movie, Starship Troopers. But the horror was in the Slaver Wasps that came with the warrior bugs. Small, fast bastards that if they stung a human could convert them into revenants, shambling zombies that would turn on their own friends in a matter of minutes. Massive swaths of Europe were emptied, there wasn't any cure that we could find."
Setting his cup to the side, Xander leaned forward slightly. "I did the best I could to help, when and where I could. Even in the darkest hours the stories would tell of heroes standing up; lesser Sparks, monsters, constructs as well as normal men and women making final stands to try and stop the seemingly unstoppable. And everywhere the Boys would show up, shatter some stronghold or ignite a new uprising before they ran off to another fight. They weren't the happy, jolly boys that they had been before the attack, but they were still in the fight. And then, it was over."
Blinking at the sudden end, Giles blinked and leaned forward, his tea forgotten on the table, "Over?"
"No more attacks, no swarms, no slavers. The revenants stumbled about mindlessly as if whatever had been compelling them had been cut off. The Other was simply gone and with them the Boys as well. I got a letter a couple months after from Barry stating that they had a lead on the Other and were hoping to end the threat once and for all, but after that, nothing. I tried to search for them, but with the collapse of so many of the Sparks around Europe, the entire region was in a mad dash towards their first world war."
"Into this stepped the returning Klaus Wulfenbach, and he single handedly forged an empire the likes of which the world had never seen. The Pax Transylvania lived by the single idiom of 'Don't make me come over there!' If there was chaos, he moved in and brought peace, at any cost. Any further disruption of the peace after that would be 'Frowned upon.' As he once said, he preferred, 'Frowned Upon' as it was far less inflammatory a sentence than anything that resembled 'Bootheels on the necks of the idiots!' He didn't like it, but he damn well did it. And he damn well did it well."
"You respected him," Giles stated as Xander nodded again.
"Enough so that I willingly relinquished the Glade, my own micro-empire to Baron Wulfenbach, giving up all claim and going back to what I was good at. Sixteen years later and the Baron's Peace reached from Constantinople to Paris and I was the preeminent monster hunter and general problem solver for Klaus. He never forgave me for being able to give up ruling while he was stuck herding cats all day. As such he tended to send me after the most annoying headaches he had to deal with and let me settle them in his stead."
Grimacing as he swallowed a mouthful of cold tea, Giles wiped his mouth on a napkin before he commented on the story, "Sounds like you had some measure of authority."
"I was… seventh highest ranked member of the Empire, third in a crisis situation. Klaus trusted me with power because he damn well knew I wouldn't keep it, no matter how much he begged. Eventually, though we had what we had been dreaming of, what we had worked for, poured blood, sweat, and tears into. Peace in our Time. A world where normal people could live without fear that some mad boy was going to snap and send cannibal meat pies at them during the night."
Xander smiled at the memory before shaking his head "And then it all went wrong again."
(A/n: Thanks for reading, this is dedicated to the legendary fic 'A Spark of Genius' from michaelsuave, Yes Xander has had upgrades, he has paid for those upgrades and no, he isn't the strongest thing to ever exist in ever, many things in the Girl Genius universe are stronger than him, but his very presence will be changing things.)