Xander dubiously regarded the ramshackle fraternity house before himself. Now that he'd finally been clued as to where he was, somehow inside the late-seventies film comedy known as Animal House, this one-eyed man had no real idea as what to do next. The New Council member obviously hadn't been sent nearly five decades back into the past by one of those interfering Powers That Be just for the sheer fun of it. But, it still didn't make any kind of sense! That motion picture, one of Xander's personal favorites, had been a flat-out farce without any supernatural elements in it at all. On the contrary, the film had involved a bunch of college frat boys in the early sixties defying authority, getting drunk, and basically having a ball while being away from their homes and parental supervision for the first time in their lives.

Well, it was clear he needed more information to help him make a decision. Shrugging, Xander then strode up the concrete walkway, pausing just before he stepped onto the porch. Taking a quick sniff, the expected ammonia reek of urine was overwhelming to the man, making Xander snicker to himself as he reached the front door. Knocking on this, Xander spent the next few moments waiting outside, until he realized that judging from the loud music blasting from the house, nobody had heard him. He tried again, this time pounding hard upon the door.

Bob Hoover, president of Delta House, was at that moment inside by the front door, taking a quick break from his duties of making sure his frat brothers weren't terrorizing too much tonight's potential pledges. Bopping along to the music, Bob took a happy mouthful from his beer bottle. The sudden hammering coming from the door made him choke on his beer, but he still amiably got up from his chair and went over to welcome whoever had just knocked. Pulling open the door, the clean-cut college student immediately recoiled from seeing the stranger standing there.

A very tough-looking older guy (with an actual eyepatch!) was outside on the porch, and giving him a beady stare from his other eye. It was really unnerving, enough to make Bob apprehensively hide his half-empty beer bottle behind his back. Ignoring this to gaze over the younger man's shoulder into the cheerful chaos taking place among the other people dancing, drinking, and necking further back in the building during yet another legendary party, a fascinated expression abruptly developed on the other adult's features, as he shouted over the music, "This is the Delta House, right?"

"Uh, yeah," confirmed Bob, who felt himself relax a little at the wide grin this produced on that guy's face. Reassured that he wasn't some sort of college official or cop coming over to tell everyone to knock it off, the house president then cheerfully said, "Hi, I'm Bob Hoover. C'mon in, and have a drink." At those last words, the younger man turned and reached out to a side table set up in the front hallway, where a battered galvanized iron tub filled with ice and beer bottles rested on top of this piece of furniture.

Internally wincing at this dangerous invitation, Xander still entered the fraternity at the same time the loud music from a nearby record player stopped. That gave him the opportunity to introduce himself, "Thanks, I'm Xander Harris."

Watching how this Bob guy now pulled out a beer bottle from the tub, Xander realized what was about to happen. When the character he'd recognized as being the Delta House president affably offered the bottle of alcohol, the New Council member held up a hand in polite refusal, as he went on, "That's okay; I don't drink."

Nearly dropping both beer bottles in his shock, Bob gawked at hearing this simple declaration which had probably never been spoken before in Delta House's entire existence. Shaking his head, the college student returned the refused beer to the tub, and he then performed a hasty swallow from his own bottle. That bit of Dutch courage resulted in a grave warning from Bob, "Just so you know, if you're really trying to pledge Delta, what you said a second ago isn't exactly gonna help your prospects."

Now it was Xander's turn to be startled. Blinking at being mistaken for a fraternity applicant, he opened his mouth to correct the other's error, only to close it as the older man thought this over. It was clearly evident that Xander's purpose here must have something to do with this specific place and its riotous members, so it only made sense to try to join. If he hadn't already totally screwed up this. Well, he'd cross that bridge when he came to it, so Xander merely said, "I don't mind others drinking, but it's not for me. If that gets anybody's back up, too bad. That's their problem, not mine." Without knowing it, Xander's face turned into iron hardness after delivering those last calm words.

Involuntarily taking a step back from this suddenly-scary stranger, Bob took another quick swallow of his beer. Trying to come up with something to fill in the uncomfortable silence that had abruptly descended between the two males, the younger man blurted out in his unthinking curiosity, "Hey, aren't you a little old to be here, anyway? I mean…" Trailing off in his embarrassment at having said something that was potentially insulting, Bob's face turned bright red.

Taking pity on his discomfited companion, Xander delivered a cheerful explanation that had been instantly created from whole cloth just a moment before, which had the virtue of being pretty much true. "Oh, I couldn't afford college after I got out of high school, so I went into construction work. A few years later, I lost this in an accident-" (at that point in his story, Xander nonchalantly waved a hand at the side of his face covered by a patch) "-and the insurance settlement from that let me knock around for a while. I finally got bored, and decided to give college a try. I'll see how it goes here, but I wouldn't mind joining this fraternity. You guys really seem to know how to have fun, not like those arrogant assholes at the other houses."

Hearing this made Bob beam at the man with one eye, who'd just said what every other member of Delta House fervently believed. Impulsively deciding this visitor was an okay guy who might be a real asset to the frat, a delighted Bob offered, "Let me show you around! You can meet the other brothers and chat with them, to help you and them decide if you can get pledged here. I've gotta say, you've got my vote already. The rest of the guys, they're great and all that, but I think we absolutely need somebody to keep 'em in line. Especially since the Dean really has it in for us. With good cause, I'm afraid, considering what's happened here over the last couple of years."

"Yeah?" asked Xander, the interested look appearing on his face concealing the inner elation of this man, as he followed after Bob beginning to narrate past Delta exploits. It looked like his chances of joining the fraternity had improved considerably, and now one Xander Harris was going to personally encounter the storied Animal House characters!


A couple of hours later, Xander was beginning to doze off in his dorm room. Thankfully, it was a single occupancy, so he didn't have to share it with a roommate. However, this was as far as the Powers That Be had gone in setting him up at a college residence. The space was plainly furnished, with merely a bed which Xander was presently going to sleep, a side table by this, a drawer, a desk with a lamp, and a hard wooden chair in front of this. Poking around in the otherwise empty room, the exasperated one-eyed man had finally found out why he'd been bestowed with so much cash in his wallet when he'd been sent into this movie.

Either by sheer oversight, or more likely due to some deity's mischievous streak, Xander now possessed nothing but the clothes on his back. He didn't have anything else at all at Faber College, which meant over the next few days he'd have to get everything he needed: more clothes, school textbooks, maybe a car or some other means of transportation. Well, at least the two grand he presently had in his wallet meant he could pay for it all with no trouble. In the early sixties, that amount of money represented nearly ten times as much as it would be fifty years from now, like close to twenty thousand dollars. If he was careful, it'd last him for as long as necessary.

Come to think of it, how long would this be, exactly? So far, nothing had occurred to make clear to Xander just why he was here. Turning over in the bed, the man reflected about this. All he'd accomplished tonight was to have a good time, which might or might not have done something to help him in his mysterious task. Still…Xander grinned to himself in the dark, his facial muscles shifting under the gaping hollow where his left eye had once been, before Caleb gouged it out.

All those dudes in Delta that he'd talked to, they'd each and every one of them unabashedly stared at his patch, which was now resting on the bed side table. It'd been the supreme icebreaker, with Xander gleefully coming up with even more absurd explanations on how he'd lost this optical organ. "Mom was right, running with scissors is a bad idea" was the least of his off-the-wall stories. Boon, Otter, D-Day, Bluto, and all the rest, they'd clearly been impressed by meeting Xander, so it looked like he actually had a good chance of getting into Delta House and starting to figure out just why he'd been sent into this movie in the first place.

Speaking of movies… For Xander, the high point of the whole night was finishing it off by finding himself in the fraternity's basement, and casually asking the young woman there behind the bar, "Say, honey, do you have some aunt or older cousin who looks just like you? I have to say, the resemblance is totally amazing."

Giving a wary glance to the older guy standing there, Katy was caught between her mixed feelings of mild annoyance over such a clear attempt at picking her up and of sharply telling the one-eyed man there that she was someone else's girlfriend. However, judging from the gleeful look on that stranger's scarred features, he seemed to be sincerely honest about his question, albeit having a lot of fun about the whole thing. Her mood suddenly shifting as she began to smile back at him, Katy chuckled, "Not that I know about. Why? Who was she, anyway?"

Giving a fresh-faced Karen Allen a wide grin, a very happy Xander told the waiting girl: "Oh, her name was Marion Ravenwood. Great lady, she could hold her liquor, deliver a first-rate punch, and deal with anything that came along her way, no matter how weird things turned out. I'm positive that if the two of you ever met, you'd both get along great!"

In his dorm bed, Xander spent the next few moments giggling to himself. Just being able to do that, it almost made it worthwhile getting yanked out of his home dimension by one of those arrogant PTB's. Suddenly beginning to feel really sleepy now, Xander yawned and closed his remaining eye. Time to get some z's; in the morning, he'd put his sole outfit back on, and go out shopping for some new duds. Once more turning over on the mattress, Xander began to peacefully enter dreamland.

Thirty seconds later, the right eye of the man in the college dorm popped wide open in pure alarm, as he abruptly remembered a specific scene from Animal House.


"This is a very bad idea, D-Day," appealed Bob to the mustached young man walking next to him, as both Delta members advanced down the college dorm corridor while carrying fire extinguishers in their arms. Like the others of their number in the rest of Faber College's dormitories, these two people were about to carry out the next-to-last ceremony tonight of Rush Week.

Glancing at the room numbers on the doors lining the hallway during his search for the correct location, D-Day absently responded, "It's tradition, kiddo, you know that. I went through it, so did you, and all the rest of the brothers, too."

The president of Delta dolefully shook his head, as he tried to persuade the other, "Yeah, but nobody ever like this guy Harris! I'm telling you, bursting in on him in his dorm without warning in the middle of the night and blasting him with these-" (Bob lifted his fire extinguisher and shook this piece of safety equipment for emphasis) "-is nothing but the worst thing to do to him! How about for once, we just knock and tell him the good news through the door?"

"Candy-ass," sneered D-Day, as he swaggered towards their destination just a few doors ahead. "I don't care how tough you think he is, we'll be taking him totally by surprise! Not only is it gonna be hilarious, we'll also see how he reacts to his final test! Now, are you gonna back me up, or do you wanna let me tell the rest of Delta how you showed yourself yellow?"

Bob irately responded, "I never said I wouldn't support a brother! On the other hand, if you're so confident about this, you can go first!"

D-Day just rolled his eyes at that, to then shift his burden to lift a hand in an abrupt gesture for silence, as the pair stopped in front of a certain door. Nodding in satisfaction to Bob, who in turn glumly shrugged back, the young man in his leather biker jacket reached out to carefully test the doorknob. His hand still upon this, a momentarily look of surprise flashed over D-Day's face, as he turned to face Bob and quietly mouthed, "Unlocked."

Now feeling really nervous, Bob watched how his companion gingerly twisted the doorknob all the way open and then just as cautiously pushed the door ajar a fraction of an inch. Once that was done, both of the fraternity members got their fire extinguishers ready. Meeting each other's eyes, Bob and D-Day nodded to each other once, twice, and at the third and last nod, the couple simultaneously rushed the door, which burst open at D-Day's shoving shoulder.

Outside in the corridor, any possible onlooker would have seen only a fully-ajar door slamming open to reveal utter blackness inside the room, into which two young men holding their fire extinguishers promptly disappeared. All that next happened would have been heard instead of being glimpsed, but these sounds would have been more than alarming to any witness. For less than a second, the whooshings of operating fire extinguishers were intermixed with gleeful male whoops of D-Day and Bob shouting at the tops of their lungs. Except right after this, startled yelps of alarm were followed by loud thuds of two bodies heavily dropping onto the room floor, with next to come another thumping noise as another body descended with immense force onto its dazed opponents. Last of all which came from the college dorm was a cackling, animalistic laugh, bearing within this evil mirth a victor's sadistic triumph and desire for feasting upon the flesh of its defeated prey.

At that point, the onlooker would've been running for dear life away down the corridor, all without seeing how the room's door now silently swung shut, concealing from a grateful world whatever might then horrifically occur in this darkened space.

With the overhead light now turned on, Bob and D-Day were standing against the far wall, having been yanked up and propelled to slam against there. Fearfully pressing themselves back up as far as possible, the two young men gawked at their captor, one Xander Harris. It was difficult to guess which terrified the Delta members more, the bare body of the adult that was covered with innumerable scars from fang and claw and blade, all culminating in the gaping crater on his face - or the tightly-gripped fire axe in this older man's hands, with Xander thumbing the edge of this weapon as he glared at his prisoners.

D-Day was the first to speak, as he gulped, "Mac, what the hell happened to you? Were you some kind of lion tamer or soldier, getting all torn up like that?"

Xander continued to test the sharpness of the fire axe, until he blandly replied, "Well, if you really want to know, I'll tell you - but then I'll have to kill you both."

Watching how his uninvited guests instantly cringed at hearing what he'd just said, Xander let a stern look appear upon his countenance, successfully hiding how he was howling with laughter inside. Judging from their expressions, this had to be the first time in their lives those guys ever heard that exact threat! True, Xander wasn't sure precisely when that phrase came into existence in his home dimension, but he might've just originated it right here and now! Okay, okay, he'd laugh himself sick later, but for now, it was time to get down to business.

Slinging back the fire axe to rest upon his shoulder, Xander just managed to keep a straight face at seeing the immediate looks of relief this were produced by his prisoners due to this action. The older man dressed only in his boxer underwear now cleared his throat, to politely ask, "Do you have an actual reason for bursting here in the middle of the night, something like this place is on fire?"

For the first time, Bob weakly contributed his own comment, "Uh, we, we just wanted to welcome you to Delta." At seeing how Xander's eyebrows rose in bemusement over hearing that, the house president went on in a very subdued voice, "Yeah, you got pledged, but if you've changed your mind, that's all right! Just let us go in one piece, and there won't be any hard feelings-"

"Relax, fellas!" guffawed Xander, grinning at his captives, who were beginning to sense they might survive this after all. A chuckling New Council member affably went on, "Just let me get dressed, and we'll head back to the fraternity. However, before that, there's one teeny little detail I want to arrange between the three of us."

D-Day and Bob stared in sheer puzzlement at their companion, who went on while looking at the latter member of Delta House. "Bob, as president, you normally hand out the pledge names, right? Well, I want to pick my own."

An unthinking D-Day indignantly blurted out, "You can't do that! Only the house can name the pledge-!"

THUNK!

With a downward flick of his arm and hand, Xander had expertly flipped forward the fire axe, causing it to make a half-spin before the keen blade buried itself into the wall at the space between the two heads of Bob and D-Day. Glancing out of the corners of their wide eyes at this still-quivering fire axe affixed to the room wall, the horror-struck Delta members simultaneously chorused through paling lips, "Whatever you want!"


An hour later in the fraternity's basement, after welcoming the new pledges who would forever be called 'Pinto' and 'Flounder', Bob Hoover called over the raucous calls of his fellow Deltas to announce, "And our last pledge - brothers, I want you to welcome Xander Harris, who after careful thought, we've decided to name him…SILVER!"

There was a moment of confused silence in the basement, until Boon gathered his drunken wits to loudly object, "Wait a second! Long John Silver from the book Treasure Island, he had a peg-leg, not an eyepatch!"

Smirking as he stepped forward, Xander growled in suitable fashion at the entire crowd staring back at him, "Aaarrhh, me hearties, 'tis my fate to always be thought of as a pirate, so meself might as well be named after the best known buccaneer that ever sailed the seven seas! An' if ye don't like that, ye can choose your doom of walkin' the plank or bein' keelhauled an' then tossed to the sharks! Now, shut yer gob, an' let's break out the rum!"

With a thunderous cheer, the mob of college students in the Delta basement, lifted high their beer bottles and everyone got down to serious drinking. After thoroughly baptizing Silver with an entire keg, of course.