Author's note: Another oldie, again, circa fourth season. Oh, and I mentioned I've gone through lots of nome de plumes, right? Well, rather than have "Loo" get his own membership, "we've" decided to stick some of "his" oldies right here.

Disclaimer: the characters within are property of

Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and Fox. No money is being

made off of this.

Spoilers: just vague references. shouldn't really

disrupt anyone's buffy watching abilities.

Rating: PG-13, but only for two words.

Summary: Xander has a little late night fun with a

husky and some tofu cheese.... (oo boy but that sounds

a little wrong, doesn't it.)

Superfluxus

by Louis Thompson

Januaries in Southern California can be quite pleasant

at times. The temperature isn't too hot and humid, as

it's likely to be over the summer, and we seldom have

to worry about things such as snow (though that does

have it's exceptions) or freezing temperatures. The

sun is perpetually shining; its enough to set ones

heart all a twitter. Or something like that. Who

ever came up with that phrase, anyway, setting a heart

all a "twitter"? What's a twitter? That never made

any sense to me. Why not just say, "flutter", or even

better, "beating"? Wouldn't that mean the same thing?

English is funny language. No one can ever say what

they really mean, they have to make it sound all nice

first.

I've been informed by my self appointed critic that

I'm babbling again. I do that.

Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yeah,

twittering. No, that's not right, I was talking about

January. In SoCal. I think in any other town around

here, the weather would be the only thing of interest

for someone to talk about, unless they were doing a

documentary on normalness. Sunnydale has never been

normal.

Not that I ever would have realized that, I suppose.

After all, I've lived in Sunnydale all my life. Hadsomeone not pointed out to me that having at least ten

pages in the yearbook set aside for obituaries wasn't

really common practice, I would have just lived

ignorantly. Or more likely died ignorantly. It's

like, if I hadn't always known through Jesse that

parents could be cool, understanding people, I might

never have realized that my family life sucked so

much. I'd have lived, and died, in total ignorance.

I mean, how many parents routinely set fire to the

kitchen for no reason other than it seemed like a good

idea at the time?

The critic is yelling at me again. She says that that

never happened. Of course, she's right. But it

wouldn't surprise me if it did.

But then, who needs parents who set fire to things

when one's parents are just as exciting when they get

totally trashed and end up threatening each other with

a shot gun?

I check that shot gun on a regular basis. It's not

loaded. It never has been. I don't think my dad even

owns any bullets. That's kind of reassuring in a way.

Unless my mom should ever decide to bludgeon my dad

to death with it, they're not likely to kill each

other.

Or me.

That's the demon's job.

The critic is at it again. She's always defending the

demon's rights. "Not all demons are out to kill you!"

She tells me.

Yeah, some of them are out to maim, blind, and

torture.

And whine. That seems to be all the demon living with

me is good for recently. Though the ex- demon is good

for more. Oh yes, she's good for much, much more.

Damn critic just hit me. She says I need to get backto the main topic. Now she's hitting me for writing

down that she's hitting me. Now she's--

Okay, I'm slow, I'll admit it, but eventually I do

figure things out. Like, if your girlfriend is

hitting you for writing that she's hitting you, it's

time to stop writing that she's beating you over the

head repeatedly, shouting obscenities and threatening

to unplug the computer.

But I digress.

It's Giles' own fault, I suppose, for making me write

about what happened. He listens to me talk on a daily

basis. He should know better!

But then, I suppose I'm the best one for the job, as I

am the one who managed to actually SEE what happened.

Never knew there was an advantage to being a pizza

delivery guy aside from tips from drunken co-eds who

can't quite calculate and only have a fifty.

I'm getting off topic again, I suppose. Here's what

happened:

I was at work. I deliver pizzas. It's not really a

career, but hey, the guidance counselors in high

school always said that someone from my generation is

likely to change jobs ten or twelve times before

settling on a field. I've been out of high school for

a little more than six months now. I'm more than

halfway there already.

Anyway, I was at work, and we got a call to deliver on

campus, to one of the rooms that was just a couple of

doors down from Buffy and Willow's. Naturally, I

jumped at the chance. I could deliver the pizza,

swing by and visit my friends, and if the boss

complained about the delay, I'd just tell him I was

having a discussion with a drunken college student

over the fact that a one dollar bill and a ten dollar

bill are not the same thing.

Why is it, my happy plans never quite work out likethey're supposed to?

So I was driving over to campus, when I suddenly had a

flashback to the horrors of the summer, and my

admittedly not entirely young car decided that it had

had quite enough, thank you very much, and committed

suicide right there on the side of the road.

Whoever thought it would be a good idea to put the

most popular pizza place three miles outside of town

was a maniac.

I figured standing by the side of the road wasn't

going to do me any good, and this pineapple and green

pepper pizza (with tofu cheese. That seems to be why

we're so popular with the college crowd) wasn't

getting any fresher, so I decided to hike it over to

the dorms, and thank whatever being it was that

controlled such things that my bosses hadn't ever

decided to adopt the "thirty minutes or less or your

pizza is free" campaign. Funny, that was a fact I had

been cursing only a few weeks ago when I was still

working with the construction company, and my pizza

showed up two hours late.

Karma's a bitch sometimes.

After promising the irony gods that I'd never curse

the late pizza guy again, and stop stinging on their

tips, if only they'd send a car by that was heading

for campus, and hadn't even gotten to the part about

it being filled with buxom blondes and brunettes when

just such a thing arrived, pulled over to the side of

the road, and spit out one of the most gorgeous

creatures I'd ever seen.

If I'd ever had a thing for dogs, I would have been in

love on the spot.

As it was, the woman following the giant blue eyed

husky was perfectly willing to fill that need for me.

Once she'd pulled her canine away from my precious

pizza, that is.

"Hey." She said.

"Well hello there." I replied.

The critic is complaining again. Something about me

never having been that suave. I tell her that it's

only an approximation. I've never understood those

writers that seem to be able to remember absolutely

everything that was said word for word.

Things progressed as they tend to in such situations,

and the next thing I knew, my pizza and I were

squeezed in between the woman's too sisters. The dog

got the passenger seat.

I'm fairly certain I told them that I needed a ride to

the campus. I think they thought I meant a different

campus.

We ended up on the old football field near the middle

school. I wondered if I hadn't charmed these three

ladies (and their dog) a little too well, (the critic

is at it again. I'd ignore her, but then she'd get

REALLY mad....) but the instant I saw the symbols

someone had painted onto the grass, I knew that my

strange ability to attract those with a love of the

occult (Willow's spell notwithstanding) was at work

again. And the pizza was getting cold.

And cold tofu cheese is not a happy thing.

I turned to leave when the husky stood up on it's hind

legs, placed its front paws on my shoulders, and

lunged at my face. Naturally, I leaned backwards,

only to discover myself staring in the face of a

rather cheerful looking old guy with bad breath and

blue eyes.

Giles told me later that the man must have been a

Phouka. Fat lot of good that did me then.

The three girls had moved in behind me, and were also

laughing, and starting to chant. They were dragging

me towards an enormous bonfire towards the center of

the field when I saw my friends (all but Buffy, in

fact. I think she was out patrolling, or doingsomething equally foolish at the time) tied, gagged,

and blindfolded next to the fire.

I took one look at the situation and knew exactly what

to do. Unfortunately, with the death grip that the

four nasties had on my shoulders, running away

screaming until I found help didn't seem to be a

viable option. I was at a loss for another solution.

No one seems to believe me when I tell them what

happened next. You'd think that people who'd spent as

long as we had fighting off legions of the undead in

ways that would do Bruce Campbell proud would have

learned not to doubt certain things, as implausible as

they sound.

And besides, it seems to me that the instant we decide

something could be caused by something so tame and

mundane as a coincidence, the world decides to up and

try and end on us. Again.

So I don't think it should come as any surprise to

anyone that the solution to the problem turned out to

lie in the fact that phoukas hate tofu.

They have remarkable taste that way.

The critic just hit me again.

In my struggles to escape my captors, the pizza, which

I had still been carrying in its handy- dandy package

thingy, shifted to one side, and before I could catch

it (its amazing how quickly you settle into a pattern

of saving the pizza first and you own ass later), it

slid out of the package completely and coated the old

guy in a gooey, pineapple-y mess.

There was a long pause. I think we were all waiting

to see if the guy would melt or something. No such

luck. Instead he just started howling, and in trying

to scrape the cheese off his face, managed to smear it

all over the girls, who also got very upset.

Apparently, as the brunette had shrieked multiple

times directly into my ear, she had just bought that

shirt.

Thus distracted, it was a simple task to untie my

friends and disrupt the ritual. The cheese coating,

it seemed, was enough to put the girls off of magic

for a while, they were all gone when we turned back

around. All that was left was a messy box, and an

unhappy old guy whimpering into the ground. Even as

we cleaned up the mess from the ritual, I was trying

to figure out where else I could apply for a job. I

mean, there's late, cold pizzas, and then there's

late, cold, pizzas that smell like dog breath and have

phouka hair in the cheese.

Giles still says that there must have been something

else that I did and wasn't aware of. I think he's

upset that a pizza could hold such power. It's too

American, or something to that effect. He's probably

hoping that in making me write the story down, he's

going to get me to tell him what I REALLY did to get

away from the evil old guy and his bimbo-ettes. (The

critic informs me that since "bimbo" is a female term

anyway, the "ettes" is some weird, longish word that

starts with an "s". Super flowing. Superfluxus. Or

something. I tell her "bimbo-ettes" sounds better,

and she wanders off grumbling. Least now I wont get

hit.)

In fact, all he's done is make me get bruised. And I

hate it when someone reads over my shoulder. Uh oh,

gotta run, the critic is coming back--

The End