Disclaimer: I don't Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Birdy the Mighty. if i did then Birdy would be into its 5th season by now...

"Birdy!" speaking

*what are you doing!* Speaking in head

'i have no idea what i'm doing' thinking

XXXXX

The first thing Xander became aware of, as he regained control of his body, was a flash of blue light that encompassed him for all of a second before fading. The next thing Xander became aware of was that he was currently in a blue space like place, with lines of line going around what were the walls. It almost looked like it was new; no scratches or wear-and-tear's.

Xander held his head with his hand, adamantly ignoring the not-quite-correct shape of his hand resting on his way-too-smooth forehead, as he fought off an incoming headache and sat on the edge of a capsule behind him

Images flashed before his eyes of what had happened the precious night.

Brief flashbacks:

The Scooby gang had been roped in by Principle Snider to take a bunch of annoying, loud kids out, during the night, for Halloween.

At present they had just arrived at the new costume store, Ethan's. It had just opened up only a week ago but was doing fairly well, having a range of different costumes from, and for, all countries.

Xander had been planning on using some old army cloths and a gun he had hoped to get from the store to go as a nameless soldier, but unfortunately he hadn't realised that all the guns were children's toys, barely big enough for a 14 year old to use, much less a young adult. After having his masculinity damaged earlier, Xander didn't want it to suffer another blow.

So he turned around to look for something else that would let him blend in to the background, so as to not draw too much attention to himself. As he turned, he came face to face with the owner of the store, Ethan.

"AHH!"

He yelped, jumping backwards and falling back into the costume rack behind him.

"Hello young man, was there anything you wanted to buy?" He said, smiling creepily as he leaned over and helped Xander up.

Xander, whom was seriously creeped out by the guy, grabbed the nearest thing to him to buy in order to leave as soon as possible, having noticed that his friends had already finished.

"Yeah, just this" he said quickly, holding up a strange bracelet which the shop keeper inspected.

"Ah, that! I believe it comes with... this!" he exclaimed as he reached past Xander to pick up what looked like a strange octopus.

Xander, at that point willing to buy near anything to get out of the shop, hastily bought both items before hightailing it out of there, after Ethan had suggested wearing school cloths to complete the outfit.

Unfortunately, the morning before Halloween, Buffy and Xander had got into another fight about his masculinity, which had somehow turned into an argument about him being on patrols. Long story short, Buffy had banned him from patrolling, and essentially kicked him out of the gang. Giles and Willow, having harboured similar feelings, had gone along with her.

Come Halloween, Xander had got some old school uniform from his uncle, put the octopus on his shoulder and the wrist... thing... on.

Luckily the octopus and bracelet where enough to placate Snider, and he managed to avoid Buffy and co, and then the rest of the night was a blur to him.

End flashback:

Groaning as he came back to the present, Xander could hear what sounded like insistent calls for him. No, not him; someone called Birdy.

"Please respond Birdy" the voice called again

Almost involuntarily Xander looked up to see a small squid like thing hovering in front of him. It was a strange mix of blue and white, four tentacles branching off from it at the base. It was also inanimate only a few hours ago.

Completely involuntarily this time, Xander spoke in a voice that was definitely not his, mainly because it sounded extremely female.

"Hai, hai. I'm fine Tuto. Tsutomu, are you there?"

Xander was now panicking, noticing that even though he was looking through his eyes, he still seemed to be in an orange void.

*What's going on?! Where am I?! Who are you?!* He half yelled, half asked. 'Birdy' yelped in surprise at the new voice, looking around the room quickly to spot the intruder before realizing that his voice had come from where she would have expected Tsutomu's. Tuto, having quickly figured out what was going on, was quick to interject.

"You must be this body's original owner then?" Birdy, having quickly caught on, transformed into what used to have been Tsutomu's body, but had changed to Xander's.

"What's going on? Who are you people?!" He yelled, scrambling back, behind the capsule, as far away from Tuto as possible.

"Hello, my name is Tuto. I know this may seem a bit of a shock but I'm sure we can figure this out calmly" Tuto explained, floating gently a little distance away. While Xander was eyeing Tuto nervously, Birdy spoke up.

*Calm down kid. My name's Birdy, and to be honest we have no clue how we got here, or how you seem to have replaced Tsutomu.* She explained bluntly, but kindly.

Xander looked up as he swept his arms to either side, Tuto looking on from the other side of the room.

"What do you mean 'replaced Tsotumu'? And can you please get out of my head!?" Birdy just smiled softly(which he could somehow see), before telling him to go to the mirror to one side of the "ship".

He cautiously walked to the mirror, ever weary of Tuto. When he got to it and was looking directly at it, Birdy changed back into her.

Xander yelled as he was once again flung into the orange space.

"My name" she said again "is Birdy Cephon Altera, I'm a Federation officer; what you earthlings would call a space cop I guess. About 2 days ago, while hunting down a dangerous criminal, I accidentally killed a boy called Tsutomu. In order to save his life, I absorbed his conscience into my body. Last night, we appeared here, so I quickly took us here, to my ship."

She paused, as if gathering her thoughts. Tuto floated closer, now hovering just to the side.

"Then, an hour later, I was briefly knocked unconscious and when I woke up Tsutomu was gone, and you were here."

This explanation only served to confuse Xander, although it managed to calm him slightly.

Tuto floated towards them, tilting ever so slightly to look at them properly.

"So now you know who we are, who might you be?" He asked, floating around Birdy's head as she transformed back into Xander.

"My name's Xander Harris, and what do you mean 'and then you were here'? What's happened to me?!"

Tuto lifted a calming tentacle, waving it up and down as he spoke,

"Xander, what she means is that you seem to have replaced Tsutomu as the merged conscience." Tuto paused to let that sink in before continuing, "It is also likely you absorbed some of his knowledge in the process, since we have been speaking in Japanese, but the place where we appeared is located in America. This is, of course, assuming that you couldn't already speak Japanese."

Like a switch had been thrown, Xander suddenly noticed how everything said had definitely not been in English, that somehow he had understood all that was said.

"...Then when can we separate?" He finally asked, noticing as he asked how it made them distinctly uncomfortable, "We can separate again, right?!" He asked, once again descending into panic.

"Calm down for a second!" exclaimed Birdy, taking control as she transformed, "No, we're not sure if we can separate again since we don't actually have a body to heal this time"

*What about when you turned into me? Why not use those?*

"Sorry, but those are still MY cells, if we used that, the regrown body will be identical to my body. My FEMALE body"

Tuto decides to interject at this point, "There is some good news though. Usually, in a merge, the original bodies mind will be overtaken and erased by the new mind. However, whatever brought us here seems to have stopped that process."

Birdy seemed to almost visibly brighten up at that. That meant she wouldn't die.

"Does that mean we'll be able to co-exist peacefully?!"

Xander was still understandably confused and vocalised this, where upon Birdy explained what it would mean is mental fusion occurred, and how her body would permanently become his. He was quite relieved that it was averted.

After a moment's silence, he finally asked; *So... Where do we go from here?*

Birdy and Tuto were silent for a minute before Birdy spoke; visibly unsure of her words

"I... I'm not sure. Now that we're here, Tuto and I need to set up our lives again. We tried contacting the Federation but all we got was static."

Xander considered this for a second.

*What did you do before you were transported here?*

Birdy perked up slightly at the less panicked question before deflating again.

"I was a rising Idol in Japan. It's really embarrassing though! I had to do lots of weird stuff! I didn't even know what an Idol was before coming to Earth!"

"It was a necessary disguise Birdy. We needed money to pay for the apartment and food." This came from Tuto whom started to move towards a portal that appeared in the ship. "Come, let's return to discuss what we shall do from here on out. I will join you shortly with my disguise"

Birdy nodded, glancing one last time at the mirror before walking through the portal.

Other side: Place unknown

Birdy stepped through the portal, before leaping onto a nearby roof to survey the area.

It was still night out, but dawn was fast approaching, the sun just beginning to peak on the horizon and sending rays of red light across the sky.

A quick scan, and question to Xander confirmed that they were still in Sunnydale.

With Xander's guidance, Birdy was quickly able to get to a hotel to stay in, having just enough money from Xander's pockets to pay the weary clerk.

Once in the fairly nice room Birdy once again created another portal to allow Tuto into the room.

As the portal was created, a short haired man walked out, his face inhumanly blank. Another inhuman thing about him was his hair: it was blue. Xander's first thought was 'I hope Buffy doesn't try and stake him'. His second was 'Oh god! How are they going to react to this?!'

His finally thought was 'wait, why do I care what they think after they kicked me from the group?' He pondered on this for a minute.

While he was thinking, Birdy and Tuto were discussing about what could have caused all this, and what they were going to do.

"Have you managed to contact anyone?" Birdy asked, anxiousty clear in her voice.

"Not as of yet. I have not picked up any familiar signals."

"How's that possible?! There should be at least one Federation signal near this hick planet!"

"I am not sure. Data would suggest we are no longer on earth; however spacial mapping shows that we are still in the 'Sol System'."

Birdy was beginning to panic slightly herself, wondering what could possibly have happened to wipe out all Federation signals AND transport both herself and Tuto half way across the globe, while also replacing Tsutomu with this 'Xander'.

"What about the surrounding area, did you discover anything that could indicate what brought us here"

*yeah, did you?* Xander, whom had just entered the conversation again, was eager to hear the answer.

"Before I continue, may I ask if it was Halloween last night?" Xander nodded, which Birdy then relayed to Tuto.

"By looking through the data of security cameras in the area, it looks like most people seemingly turned into their costume"

Tuto lifted his hand, palm up, as a video popped up above his hand. It showed people and kids walking around normally, before some of them doubled over. When they straightened out again, they were different. Changed. They were their costume.

Birdy blinked as a thought crossed her mind.

"Wait, if people turned into their costume, why did you turn into me?!"

Xander blushed bright red and he waved his hands in front of his face frantically

*NO! No, nothing like that! All I wore was an old school uniform, a weird wrist thing and had a plastic Tuto.*

'Weird wrist thing... Hmmm'

Birdy looked down at her wrist as she brought it up to inspect it.

"You mean this?" She said as she indicated the two triangles on her hand.

*Yeah, that thing* he agreed, nodding his head.

"This is the thing that allows us to change bodies so smoothly." She said, lowering her hand again as she turned to Tuto again.

"My guess is that you were changed into Tsutomu. But since he was merged with Birdy, she was brought along with him" Tuto explained, sitting down in front of a table that he had set out, Japanese style.

Birdy changed into Xander so he could talk with Tuto. He to sat down in front of the table, much the same way that Tuto was doing. It seemed Tsutomu had left more than just language in his head.

"I get all that, but why are you still here? Surely when Tsutomu disappeared, you should of as well"

"It cannot be confirmed yet, but I theorise that it was sue to us being on the ship. Assuming the point of origin was in here, by the time the 'energy' that changed us reached us it was quite weak. By the time it got through our shields and Birdy's bioshields, it was so weak that it could only remove the main object; Tsutomu"

Xander was silent as he tried to understand what had been said. He suddenly sat forward as an idea came to him.

"Can't you somehow remove the 'energy' keeping you here, since you can detect it?"

Tuto only sighed before speaking.

"All energy detected during the change have disappeared, including from me and Birdy. There is no energy keeping us here, and thus, no way to remove us from here."

Birdy decided that now was a good time to try and comfort him.

*Don't worry, it won't be that bad! Once thing settle down a bit, I'm sure we'll be best buddies!*

Xander looked down slightly, thinking of his former so-called buddies.

He raised his head.

"Sure. I'd like that."

(Cue Decode season 2 end theme)

Thats all for now, I'll update slowly (hopefully at all) since i'm writing this on my ipod in my free time when i'm not doing homework or other stuff

-Also, i am in need of a proof reader just to check my work

:warning: you may not get the chapters often or at all since i'm not very good at continuing a story (you have now been warned)