Q flashed into the Alibi Room startling some of the human customers, the demon ones just blinked at Q and went back to their drinks. Q looked down the bar at Xander Harris tossing back shots of whiskey like it was water. Her aura of 'keep a way from me' did not bother Q as he slid on the barstool next to the girl.
"Willie, my good man!" Q said surprising the weasely looking bartender, "I'll have what the young lady is having and bring more for her to if you will." Although Q didn't think the girl needed anymore to drink if the empty shot glasses that lined the bar were anything to go by.
Xander's dark hair looked as if it had been hacked off with a dull blade in a messy, ragged layered bob that barely reached the top of her shoulders matching the last image Q had been shown by the Powers That Be. Xander Harris looked done. As if she was finished with everything. That was not a good look for any Xander Harris, Q thought. He hoped Xander would have enough interest in life to help control what had been unleashed in the reality he was going to put her in.
Q leaned over into Xander's space causing her to glare at him, "I have a deal for you."
Xander gave Q a slow once over from head to foot, taking in the dark leather jacket, t-shirt and jeans with boots. Q thought his dress should match the beings he was with. It always made the lower beings more comfortable just like when he was on the Enterprise he wore the Starfleet uniform.
Xander sighed, "Look you're pretty for an middle-aged dude..."
"Middle-aged!" Q squawked indignantly.
"But I'm not interested in being your mid-life crisis," She muttered as she picked up another shot glass, "Or whatever."
Q rolled his eyes. Why did humans always think it was about sex? Q snapped his fingers and everything in the bar went still and silent. Q watched as Xander blinked then reached out and poked Willie in the forehead with a finger. When the man didn't move or even breath she looked over at Q. He grinned mischievously at Xander and whispered in her ear, "Interested now?"
Xander tapped an empty shot glass on the bar. It had been almost a year since the goddess turn human Glory brought trouble to Xander's doorstep it hadn't been her fault that her old lovers would not take no for answer and the fact that Glory was happy with Ben. The ensuing fight had been brutal and the gods used Dawn's blood to open a way home. It had taken everyone working to together to shove them through the portal without Glory. Spike had jumped through the portal to close it and that only worked because Dawn had been made from both Xander and Spike this time rather than Buffy like in the 'Before'.
Xander leaned over the bar and pulled out an open bottle of Jack Daniels, "Could be," she said as she pour more whiskey in the shot glasses, "Just tell me your not a god."
"Your in luck!" Q said happily, "I'm Q."
Xander frowned, "Is that you're name or what you are?"
"The easy answer is both."
Xander gave Q a long look before sliding a shot glass over to him, "Why do I think the answer is not all that easy?"
Q smiled and point at the T.V. it came on. On the screen two spaceships were engaged in a battle, firing back and forth at each other.
"That a new Sci-fi show?" Xander asked, because it didn't look like one she had ever seen. The ships looked really cool! One was a bronze color with sharp edges to it and the other was sliver that had a large saucer section but still had a sleek, fast look to her.
"The Powers That Be summoned me here. They want me to do something and threaten my son if I didn't do, as they want. Although if they even try to go through with the threat..." Q paused meaningfully, "I'd have to destroy them."
Xander blinked tipsily, "What do they want you to do?"
"They want me to rip you from this reality and put you in another."
Xander glared at Q. It wasn't him she was angry at though. Xander actually wished that she wasn't surprised something like this hadn't happened sooner given all the changes she had help make happen in this timeline. "The Powers wanting rid of me? That's old news."
Xander's mother Jessica marriage to Giles, and Ethan being involved with them. Had gotten he Watcher's Council all up in arms for reasons Xander still didn't understand completely. Buffy getting pregnant with The Destroyer because of an orgy she had with Xander, Spike and Angel. Had messed up a couple of prophecies concerning the souled vampires. Holtz appearing and kidnapping the baby...and the baby returning to them as a teenager, Dawn claimed he was her soulmate.
Faith not going to the darkside this time because of the close friendships she shared with the Scoobies and KARR. Had brought the dark slayer in contact with a pair of hunters who had a lot of problems with Angels and Demons being after them for one reason or another. Cordelia having dated Willow and the ensuing break up with the redhead had sent Willow into studying magic and meeting Tara McClay. Cordelia going all uber-bitch then started dating TJ O'Neill the clone of Xander's Uncle Jack O'Neill. The deaths Xander had stopped and the ones she couldn't in order to keep SunnyDale safe from the things that go bump in the night.
"I just didn't think they were allowed to...you know, THROW ME OUT OF REALITY!" Xander yelled throwing one of the shot glasses at the mirrored wall behind the frozen Willie. She pick up another glass this one full of whiskey glaring at her reflection in the mirror.
Q shrugged carelessly, "Just this one. How ungrateful of them. After all you've done to keep this plain of existence still... existing." He told Xander watching as she tossed back another shot of whiskey.
"Spike was right!" Xander exclaimed waving her glass around, "No good deed goes unpunished!"
"Spike?" Q inquired.
"Spike's dead." Xander snarled in to her glass, "The moron." Xander had not taken Spike's death well. If she wasn't here at Willie's, she had been working out her issues the way most of those in her family did...with a vampire at the end of a stake or some demon on her claws. Lately Xander hadn't been all that picky, she reached over the bar again she almost howled in pain when she moved wrong pulling on her ribs. The vampire she had picked a fight with earlier in the mall parking lot had gotten in a few lucky shots before she dusted it.
Q snapped his fingers, and the blonde vampire appeared looking around the bar confused, Q noticed the blonde and frowned he hadn't met to do that the Hellmouth caused unforeseen interference with Q's powers if he wasn't extra watchful with them. With a snap of his fingers again he sent Spike back where he came from. Having the vampire back would make things more complicated than it need to be right now. Luckily Xander seemed distracted because she hadn't notice the vampire. "Yeah, he is in many realities." Q agreed as he told her, " In some they even like to kill him off as many times as possible."
Xander ignored that statement from Q."If you *can * destroy the Powers That Be," and Xander didn't really believe he could and that reflected in her voice, "why are you to doing this?" Xander asked suddenly, "You don't seem the lapdog type."
Q sighed explaining, "It's all about rank in the higher realms. Over everything you have the Great Creator the one who made everything, you, me, the Multi-verse. Then you have the Petty Gods, beings with all the powers of the Great Creator but cursed with humanlike emotions.
You would not believe the trouble they caused HER.
As for the Q, most of us don't really understand most species so we test them to see how much like us they are and if they have the ability to become like us. Most of you don't, by the way." That earned Q another glare and as a shot was pushed in front of him. Which he tossed back with a grin at Xander. "The Powers That Be, the First Evil and the Old Ones are next. The Angels and Fallen follow with the Supernatural such a lower demons, vampires, werewolves and Magic Users and the like and at the very bottom of all of that? You have Humans...and I had to dumb that down so your small primitive human mind could understand it."
Xander turned glowing demonic green eyes on Q. When she spoke in was intoned with two different voices, Xander's regular one and a deeper, rougher, raspy one, "Would throwing you through a wall *prove * just how primitive I am?"
"How rude you are Shakarri!" Q exclaimed delighted by the goddess's appearance in Xander. "You are a Primal Goddess, you know The Powers That Be have oversight in many of the other realities of the Multi-verse. Just not in mine. That means they can harm me or mine. That I will *not * allow even if it means removing you from this reality for them. I don't like it...but the Continuum is too weak from civil war to really fight them on this."
Shakarri hadn't had many dealings with Q; they had mostly stayed in the Continuum and away from the politics of other realities if they could help it. It surprised her to hear of a war between Q. The few she had met had struck her unemotional and disinterested in other beings but Q or others with powers similar to the Q like the Petty Gods. Or so she had whispered in Xander's mind.
"That...makes no sense!" Xander all but yelled at Shakarri's thoughts and what Q had said. Xander wondered what she had done in a past life that was so bad as to deserve all the crazy that happened to her.
Q set his shot glass down without drinking from it, "I'm going to give you something most Xander's in the mutli-verse don't get."
"What's that?"
"A choice," Then Q explained about the promise the Powers That Be gave to Q about Xander's family. Q saw the rebellious look cross Xander's face and told her, "If you refuse? If you fight this, do not think for one moment that the Powers would not retaliate. Because it would *not * be *you * they retaliated against."
"My family?"
"All those you love." Q said softly, "Never let it be said the Powers That Be don't know what can hurt their pawns the most."
Xander looked back up at the TV the scene had changed to a man with brownish-blond hair and eyes that might even be bluer than Spike's had been. There was something...that made Xander sit up and take notice of him. It wasn't that he was...well pretty, he was it was something more. He also kind of resembled the actor that played in the new Jack Ryan movie. He was being pinned to a wall by a snarling...VAMPIRE?!.
What the hell? Why? Why was there VAMPIRES IN SPACE? The scenes on the TV screen flashed by quickly of other people being savagely attacked by vampires and the humans fighting back as well as they could.
"They don't know how..." Q said. Xander looked away from the T.V. at him." They don't know how to fight them or kill them. Not like you do."
Damn Q *now * he had her attention. If the Powers kept their word then Xander's family would know a mostly normal and happy life. "Will the Powers keep their promise?"
"I'll make sure of it." Q swore quietly.
Xander tossed back one more shot then turned to Q, "You had me at spaceships..."