BtVS by Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Discworld and denizens by their author, Sir Terry Pratchett.
Thanks to reviewer Kiwikatipo who, among other things, pointed out how Faith would take one of Xander's lines.
Faith Lehane:
##
"Hey, company approaches," I said, pointing out Xander and a wintry blond girl with a black streak in her hair as they emerged from the night.
Giles and I were sitting on the front step of his house, talking after a late patrol. Things had started seeming better since Christmas. I was relaxed in a way I hadn't been in a long time.
Giles looked up. "Seems so. I don't recognize the young woman but then Xander does tend to attract things that are at least female in shape."
I laughed, having heard some of the horror stories. As they came closer, my eyes kept straying to her hair. There weren't a lot of people who could pull off the reverse Bride of Frankenstein look and, thanks to my already crappy tv having giving up the ghost, I'd been reading a lot about one in particular lately.
Apparently in response to my gaze, the mass of hair on top of her head began to reshape itself into a more contemporary look...
"Hey guys, I stopped some bad guys from destroying the world and accidentally summoned her," Xander said in a rush. "Susan, this is Giles the Watcher-trained Librarian and Faith the Accomplice Slayer."
My fist clenched in response, despite my attention being elsewhere. I'm a Slayer in my own right, thank you very much.
"Guys, this is the mysterious-" Xander turned to face her and trailed off, his jaw dropping in shock.
Speechless, we watched the last strands of Susan's hair finish braiding themselves. Signs were definitely pointing to this being her, but I still wasn't exactly convinced. She could still have been some obscure legend from our world that Pratchett based his work on, which meant her personality and powers could be completely different...
Following our looks, she reached back to feel the new style and grimaced, apparently ashamed at the lack of control. "Thanks for showing me your friends, Xander. We can come back later, research, but I really don't have time for this now..."
She put her fingers to her mouth and blew a pure, clear sound. The tone wasn't exactly something easily made by flesh, seeming more in keeping with whistles made from ivory white bone.
A horse stepped down from the sky behind the house and walked to the sidewalk in front of us, a trail of fire burning in the air, each hoof-print an inferno.
##
It was a skeleton, filled with orange lava, its eyes pure heat. The vapor jetting from its nostrils was not steam but pure bone-chilling mist.
"Oh, poor Binky, what have they done to you?" Susan asked, petting the head of the monster. Despite myself, I felt my face split in a wide grin. Suspicions pretty much confirmed.
"The demon horse of Azrael, Angel of Death, is named Binky?" Giles asked, astounded, having apparently recognized the shape of the beast. He thought about this a second, then continued angrily: "Listen, girl, this isn't the Discworld! Just because you read about something in a novel doesn't mean you can act that way around the real thing and expect it to act..."
Catching the real joy on my face from the corner of his eye, the Watcher trailed off and turned to face me. Knowing that I'd been reading the books more recently than him, he looked down in deep thought. Looking up again, he met the gaze of Susan Sto-Helit. "Oh... My... Lord... I'm from the same country as your, uh, author and I'd be honored if I could have your autograph-"
"Oh, wow! It's you," I shouted. "The real you. You're one of my heroes. The way you knew that the stick wouldn't kill your grandfather, but pass right through him..."
"What?" I asked, catching Xander's surprise. "Dragons, werewolves, witches, War... A Death who speaks in capital letters and whose adopted granddaughter is standing right in front of us? Reading takes me out of where I'm at... It's not like watching static's fun..."
Xander waved his hands. "No, surprised more at her being from a book than finding out anything about you. Not like you had any choice but to pack light." Catching my slight wince, he hastily continued. "Uh, so she's dead by heredity - I mean, death runs in her family... Oh, whatever! Look, the cultists were attempting to summon Mr. Wraithy No-Pants from the Harry Potter books so another genre really isn't any more far fetched," he hedged. "Can't say I've heard of Descending-World myself, but..."
"Ahem, Xander," Giles coughed. "Think about the fantasy book you 'borrowed' from my collection and tried to pass off as a 'Demon Reference Manual' when I found you hiding in the back stacks. The one with the humorous cover?"
Xander squinched up his face in thought. "Oh, yeah. Definitely not a night I was eager to get home to the Harris family and all its chaos. Sorry, it's, y'know, a British print, chock full of single quotes surrounding lines of dialog instead of good ol' double quotes. Gave it about thirty pages before deciding it really wasn't- Um, Xander shutting up now. Though he wouldn't mind a brief refresher."
Giles sighed, brushing his hand against his forehead.
I began to describe the Discworld magic and cosmology but, when I got to the Disc being carried on the back of the four elephants standing on the shell of the Great Turtle A'Tuin as it swam through space, Xander choked back a laugh.
Susan spun to face him, a dark look in her eyes. "Bad idea. I get that this place is different from my world, but don't laugh about the Turtle, or dismiss such beings off-hand." She paused, then intoned in an altogether different sort of voice: "I HAVE SEEN THE SAND IN THE TURTLE'S LIFETIMER AND I KNOW IT MOVES."
Her using her voice and some fraction of her look sent shivers down my spine. The expression on Xander's face was priceless.
"This is simply incredible," Giles exclaimed. He peered closely at Susan's face, apparently trying to follow the three lines that were going to be hard to find now that she was calm. The marks her grandfather had left on her father when he'd dared to make away with Death's adopted daughter. Yeah, I thought. This world just got a lot more awesome.
"You're the librarian," Susan admonished as she climbed onto the skeletal horse and, much to Xander's apparent surprise, pulled him up to sit behind her. "You really should take a closer look at how deep books go."
##
As Susan and company ascended into the air, a fiery streak marking their departure, I knew I'd be too excited to get much sleep that night...
Xander Harris:
##
As we headed to a place where Death apparently lived, I leaned into Susan, trying not to think about where we were.
I really did not want to fall off the horse. It was a long way down and we were traveling at speeds that meant the wind would've been whipping at my eyes if physics had been paying attention to us.
The fiery creature was, paradoxically, ice cold to the touch.
The emptiness of space when the chairs are picked up and the lights are turned out and the world is done.
After a good amount of silence, Susan spoke up. "I gather that this world runs differently than mine. What is it called? Didn't seem the time to ask before."
"The place we just came from is Sunnydale, California and right now we're following the curve of Earth. I would like to point out that it's January, nineteen ninety-nine A.D., " I answered, covering all the bases. "Just in case time travel's involved."
As she turned her head to look at me out of the corner of her eye, I caught a glimpse of her smirk. She gave a date within what she called 'The Century of the Fruitbat,' and waited for me to continue.
I was still explaining portions of my grasp of physics and astronomy, or the basic equivalent, when we reached a point above part of the Atlantic where the sun was beginning to rise.
Susan shuddered visibly as the first rays of light hit her and illuminated the ocean deep below. "I know that light is slowed by the Disc's magical field, especially in concentrated regions, but this is the first time I actually understand what that means. When I first heard about the Omnian heliocentric fallacy it took me a long time to work out how anyone could actually believe it. I've always had a good grasp of distance. When we get to my grandfather's house, what you might see as small rooms connected by doorways, I'll see as lone rectangles of carpet and tile in the centers of empty theaters worth of space. And that sun is very very far away."
In hopes of comforting her, I reached up and patted her shoulder.
"This world feels strange," she said, coming back to herself. "If you don't mind, when we get back to Sunnydale, I'll set up a few temporary internal barriers until I get a better bearing on this world. Right now, I think we need to turn... Here."
##
There was a solid swirl and then we were dismounting in an entirely new place.
There was no way we could tell whether the place was real and in that condition because it had always been that way, or because it was based on images from Susan's head that she had expected to see, changed to reflect my dimension's reality.
The sky was black; the mountains in the distance were outlined in chalk. The house was squat, barely more than a shack, and it had a bite taken out of it.
A large one.
Most of the roof and a fair amount of the rooms had been unevenly severed from the base of the house and presumably lifted into the queerly heavy sky.
"No!" Susan yelled, racing around behind the house.
Of course I ran after her. I didn't wanting to be left alone in the empty place.
The horse of the Angel of Death followed us, crying sulfuric tears.
##
By the time I reached her, she'd finished feeling the bark of a tall tree and was sinking to the ground in hysterical laughter. "Thank... the... gods..."
Skeleton fish floated belly up in a nearby pond as I waited for her to calm down.
"I'm sorry, I'm just relieved," she said, wiping her face of nervous tears. "My grandfather made a swing for me and the board was as long as this trunk. He tied one rope to this branch here and the other rope to this one on the other side of the tree..."
"He then sawed clear through the tree, right about here," she said, standing on tiptoes to touch the spot. "Then he cut it through here, by the ground, leaving only a stump, because it was the best way to get the largest and safest swing through the tree... Only the best for his little girl."
"Because, you see, he didn't quite understand life or physics and because this was his world, the top of the tree just floated here, the ropes tied to the branches, the swing going back and forth underneath it, and the tree bore fruit every year." She paused, then continued in a happier voice. "But! This tree is intact, not a scratch on it, so this isn't his world, or mine... Although the leaves are wilted... and the house..."
"Oh, hell," Susan whispered quietly to herself as something made itself known in the silence.
I looked at her, compassionately. Whatever had been in this house was ages gone.
"My... Your version of grandfather," Susan stammered, feeling the event and the pain that had happened here, millennia ago. "This Death, was eaten."
##
In this place, where no-one had ever lived... Susan leaned into me and cried.
