September 1st had come and gone; Harry was off to Hogwarts, Pettigrew had been delivered in a hamster ball which had been charmed unbreakable, along with a vial of veritaserum to Madam Bones with the strong suggestion she use it on the animagus after being purchased from Ron Weasley for the princely sum of 10 gold pieces in Diagon Alley.

Rita Skeeter had found herself on the Isle of Dread sans magic, after she had been caught snooping around Harry one too many times while they were in the Alley and general environs.

She joined Lucius Malfoy, Walden MacNair, Dolores Umbridge, Amycus and Alecto Carrow, Barty Crouch Junior and Senior, Yaxley, Crabbe Senior and Goyle Senior, along with Avery Junior and Senior, along with Winky who attacked rather viciously to protect the unrepentant Death Eater.

"And what are we going to do tomorrow night, Brain?" John asked with a grin.

"We're planning on hitting 40k and Fallout next," Charles replied.

"No, no and fuck no! Look over there, it's my the chance I'm fucking going and it's flying off! I wouldn't bet a rat's ass on your chances of getting my to go to either one of those hell holes. Everyone crazy enough to go raise your hand!" John spouted.

Tim raised his hand with a smirk, as did Charles while rolling his eyes.

Xander chuckled, "I'll just hang out with John."

John grinned. "Actually, drop us off in L.A. in the Night of the Comet world."

Xander said, "After the zombies are dead please."

"You guys each have your wizarding tents and other equipment right? I'll leave you the flask of infinite water and my pouch of endless rations." Charles asked, looking between John and Xander.

Xander patted his chest where his mokeskin pouch with undetectable expansion charms rested. "I've got my stuff…"

John nodded. "The place is more like a movie stage where everyone just walked off, leaving all their valuables unattended…."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Tim and Charles were headed for a series of portal jumps the other two wanted no part of, so they left them where they could cheerfully loot LA while camping on an empty previously zombie infested world.

"So, back to D&D first?" Charles asked Tim curiously.

"Why?" Tim asked.

"One, we need to kit you out in some items and I've thought of a few new ones we could use before we head to Fallout or Warhammer 40k," Charles replied.

"Yes…" Tim shrugged.

"Waterdeep okay with you?" Charles asked, thumbing through his bookshelf curiously.

"Sure is," Tim replied. "What is it you have in mind for us to do there?"

"For one thing I've gathered up 640 pounds of pepper, nutmeg and cloves to sell along with 10 pounds of saffron which was all they had in the stores I went to. I've got a big order of saffron that I'm waiting on from Amazon, but that'll take a bit," Charles replied.

"So, you want to continue playing spice trader then?" Tim asked.

"Sure do, it's basically following the rules of supply and demand… Just in a hacked version where we turn a few hundred bucks into a few hundred pounds of gold." Charles grinned. "Though I am VERY glad for this teleportation ability so we don't destabilize the global gold market."

"We should look at some of the Final Fantasy worlds after this, I seem to recall them having some really broken ass magical items that D&D just doesn't have."

"Sounds good, but I'd rather have some better equipment before facing off against Final Fantasy mobs."

"That's why I said after."

Charles nodded and checked his shopping list. "Okay; we need three belts of many pouches, one for you, one for Xander and one for Harry… three rings of rapid regeneration… Also five rings of sustenance. Unless you'd rather have a ring of coolness to keep from getting overheated?"

"Nope, I'd have to be someplace pretty screwed up before I worried about overheating," Tim replied.

"For a total of 195,500 gold pieces. Out of an expected 375,200 gold pieces from my spice importing," Charles continued. "Not a bad profit, that leaves money for a Daern's Instant Fortress if we can find one. Plus whatever other essentials we come across."

Charles punched in the code for Waterdeep and guided the portal to open on the outskirts of the city.

Tim grabbed his arm. "Hey wait a minute. We need to be equipped before we head out."

Charles slapped his forehead. "Okay, what do you want?" he asked as he pulled his guns out of his mokeskin bag and armed himself and threw his trenchcoat on over it. He tapped his shins and made sure he was wearing his bracers of armor +4.

"Something I can point at the monsters and shoot, I'm not picky," Tim replied.

"Long gun or short then?" Charles asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Short, makes it easier."

"Do you want more ammo or more thump power?" Charles continued.

"I'm a decent shot, I'd like what I hit to fall down."

Charles nodded and handed over the .45 acp he'd loaned Xander before. "Okay, there are 14 in the mag, and 1 up the pipe. Safety is here on this model and there are five spare magazines in pouches," he explained as he showed Tim the gun and passed over the gunbelt.

Tim checked the safety. "Okay, got it."

"You have shot one of those before right?" Charles asked curiously just to make sure.

"I'll be handing you the damn gun back to clean, but I'm a decent shot and I've shot a similar model before," Tim replied.

Charles snorted and nodded. "No problem, I have a cleaning kit and it's not too complicated to take apart clean and put back together. We ready now?"

"Yep. Let's go sell overly inflated spices to people with more money than brains."

Charles chortled. "It's all a matter of supply and demand. Spices are expensive because they're hard to get from one place to another in D&Dland."

"Doesn't mean they're worth it," Tim replied flatly.

Charles shrugged nonchalantly. "Nobles with deep pockets man, nobles with deep pockets."

"Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they're that stupid, but at the prices of food and the quality, if I was a noble there, I'd get a ring of sustenance."

"No chance of being poisoned that way either," Charles acknowledged.

"Exactly."

Charles opened the portal and they quickly stepped through, the portal winking shut behind them.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

The two of them were greeted by the sounds of many nearby howls when they stepped through the portal.

Tim groaned, "Crap!" as he clicked the safety off and raised his pistol, being careful not to point it at Charles.

"I like wolves dammit…" Charles muttered as he clicked the safety off and raised his carbine warily. Darting behind a nearby boulder and flipped cinched his headlamp on his forehead and turned it on. "Get back here behind cover."

Tim ran for cover.

Soon a group of six nasty looking large wolves with goblins astride their backs appeared running through the forest at them. Charles took careful aim and fired at the first; the only indication he had fired was his shoulder recoiling and the muzzle blast and the immense hole that opened in the warg's chest, sending it tumbling and rolling across the goblin riding it. "Gotta love HP enchanting, a few small runes and no loud noise."

Tim aimed and started shooting at the worgs as fast as he could, the heavy pistol bucking in his hand. "Yeah, hooray for the sounds of fucking silence," he replied conversationally as goblin spears rained down toward their position, mostly bouncing and shattering off the boulders.

The two continued firing; taking out the opposition. After a few moments the only sounds were the whimpers of the dying wolves and the whining and yelling of pinned goblins. Along with Charles' cursing as he realized that one of the goblin spears had torn a gash in his trenchcoat, revealing one of the sewn in lexan plates.

Tim carefully walked over and picked up a goblin spear in his free hand that he used to pin the dying worgs in place so that he could stab them for any magic they had.

"One of those fucking goblins actually managed to loft a spear in over the rocks and mess up my trenchcoat," Charles grumbled as he pulled out his wand and used reparo.

"It's called a natural twenty." Tim sighed. "Either that or random chance."

"Reparo is the singular most broken spell I can think of," Charles replied as he wandered over to loot the goblins. "Not much use in skinning the worgs, I don't recall a bounty on their hides and we pretty much ruined them anyway."

"Reparo on the hides?"

Charles shrugged. "Do you know how to skin?"

"You're the one that scored a stupid high level on the dungeon preparedness test."

Charles chuckled and pulled out a knife. "I do know how to skin, but I'd hoped you did also. No time like the present for you to learn. I've never skinned a wolf before, but it can't be too different to skinning a deer."

"Fuck that, we've got plenty of money and that's messy as hell."

Charles shrugged. "Hey! There's a skinning spell and a tanning spell in the wizard outdoorsmen guide book we bought. I just remembered." Charles dug the book in question out of his mokeskin pouch.

"Ah well, hell if it's that easy we might as well."

"I knew I bought that book for something!" Charles declared enthusiastically and worked at casting the appropriate spells, it took some 20 minutes or so for the two of them to perfect but in the end they were left with 6 pristinely tanned worg hides and 6 mangled goblin hides they'd tested the spell on until they got it right.

"I've got no interest in goblin hides. I vote we vanish them along with the carcasses." Charles motioned to the mess.

"Yeah, because that's just damned creepy, truth be told." Tim asked, "Did we get any loot?"

"A small pouch of gemstones and a few hundred coins in a mix of gold, silver and copper. Most of the coins were copper."

"Apparently their raiding gig paid more than I would have expected. Being an adventurer is rather awesome."

"That's not counting all the random trash the little idiots had and the crappy goblin equipment," Charles continued, "what fucking use could they have had for childrens booties or 2 dozen bags of marbles?"

"The marbles can be used to bet or to screw with people running in a hallway."

"Want some of them then?" Charles waved at the pouches he had set aside full of marbles. "There are half a dozen sets of jacks in there also. They also had a couple of game boards I can't recognize and one had a set of dice with funky goblin symbols on them."

"Sure, they probably make decent sling shot bullets as well. Not that I actually remembered to grab mine."

"If you need a slingshot when you have nearly a hundred rounds of .45 acp then we're in real trouble," Charles replied. "But if you want you can borrow mine; I even have a conversion to fire arrows with it."

"Nah, without getting it enchanted like hell I don't think it would actually be worthwhile in a D&D world."

Charles nodded. "Okay, Waterdeep is this way." Charles turned and headed in the appropriate direction through the forest.

"That should give us enough gold to get to the next destination on our list of places to go."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

The two had spent several days sourcing magical items, not to mention the one completely tedious day they had spent marching around the Trade's Ward selling off a pound or so of spices here and there a bit at the time, as the buyer's gold permitted. They had eventually managed to unload the rest for gemstones by selling them to a dwarven caravan heading home.

Charles and Tim were sitting in an inn sipping a very fine mead in Charles' case and mulled apple cider in Tim's case. "That was more tedious than I thought it would be," Charles mused.

Tim shrugged. "We're probably only going to have to do it a couple of times. Once we get equipped we can go slaughter monsters for coin."

"Yeah, hunting monsters is less tedious than marching all over town to sell stuff here and yonder. Though we did manage to acquire everything we came for; which is a definite plus in my opinion. Even if we did have to spend three days repairing that guy's ship using reparo charms to get him to part with the Instant Fortress for any price," Charles replied.

"Well worth it, even if we did wind up paying roughly 20k more than it's listed for in the books," Tim said.

"Yeah, that thing is gonna make our future expeditions much safer if we have to plant our asses somewhere inhospitable. We'll need to etch HP style runes into it of course to make sure it doesn't get all fucked up and expand the space inside though," Charles said thoughtfully as he drained his mug of mead.

"That should be workable."

"All else fails we'll take it to the bloody adventuring supply store where they sold us the wizarding tents and multicompartment trunks," Charles replied with a grin. "Ready to go?"

Tim whispered, "We've got our magic items, there's really no reason to stick around when we can get some rather broken and amazing items elsewhere a lot easier. Disgaea also has some very nice items and the ability to improve items which could be even more useful with items from other worlds."

"To 40k?" Charles asked a trifle warily as he shrugged on his Displacer Cloak.

"Yep." Tim put his own Displacer cloak on.

A portal opened in the back of the room and both of them stepped out into a blasted battlefield with the sounds of gunfire and artillery loud in the distance.

"I thought you said that this was supposed to be an old battlefield?"

"This is 40k, they're CONSTANTLY at war - the novel this portal connects to has them fighting roughly 30 miles from here. I'm guessing the only reason we can hear it is because that's artillery and missile fire," Charles replied.

"Let's get looting then." Tim looked around with interest trying to figure out what was useable and what wasn't.

Charles walked around the battlefield where assorted Eldar and imperial guard bodies were scattered about along with greenskin corpses. "Orks, Eldar and imperial guard fighting over the same damn mudball. At least we've got a good assortment of gear to pick through."

Tim shrugged. "I'll grab whatever but I'm not all that interested in stabbing things for magic here and most of the really good things require more skills than I have to use properly." He smiled as he saw an interesting pair of swords on the corpse of a dead space elf. "That looks promising."

"An eldar witch blade? Well, it's a very powerful psychic focus which will come in handy if we find anyone willing to do psychic surgery on us later that we can trust," Charles said as he gathered up various models of Imperial Lasguns and bandoleers and such from the guards he was grabbing the gear from.

"We'll go to Athas, everything is for sale."

"But would you trust anyone involved?" Charles asked as he moved on to Eldar weapons; picking up his own set of witch blades and several shuriken catapults and shuriken pistols as well as their ammunition.

"Only if we can get them to sign a magical contract on the deal."

"And where would we get that ability? I'm not sure I want to jump into Scooby Gamers," Charles replied.

"Hell; I would, I mean Dawn and Cordelia… then again Willow might be a little unstable and Shiny scares the hell out of me…" Tim shrugged. "We should get the hell out of here."

The dull crunching sounds of heavy Ork boots and the sound of Orks whining about stoopid 'umies announced they had company and they fell back behind the burning wreckage of an Imperial Guard tank.

"Portal, now… fucking hell!"

Charles opened a portal to what looked like a crashed Federation Shuttle. "Go!"

Tim jumped through the portal, almost any place was better than 40k. Especially with Orks inbound. Charles followed, jumping through and closing the portal behind them.

Charles panted and grinned wickedly at Tim. "That was fun."

"Fucking lunatic... " Tim laughed. "So, where are we?"

"Welcome to Fallout 2; namely a special encounter in Fallout 2 known as the Federation Crash Site. I hope to find a replicator in that downed spacecraft. There also should be a few phazers scattered around here somewhere and some Voyager era medicine," Charles replied, heading over to the shuttle and prying the door open with a pry bar from his mokeskin pouch.

"If we're in the Fallout world, that means that there will be a cyberdoc somewhere right? There was a quest or something for combat implants wasn't there?" Tim asked as he leaned against the shuttle.

"Not if you want to get augmented with good cybernetics from Shadowrun; I wouldn't want to try and mix cybernetics from two different universes," Charles replied from inside the shuttle. "Fuck yes! The replicator is undamaged!"

Tim could hear Charles dancing a jig inside the hull of the downed shuttle. "I wasn't really concerned either way, considering I'm looking at reincarnation via Disgaea hacks or magical abilities collected from monsters."

"And John would never forgive us if we went to Disgaea without him." Charles chortled and Tim could hear him working on removing the replicator from inside the crashed Torres shuttle.

"We can always go two or three times, I want the ability to open item worlds."

"Doesn't everyone?" Charles asked rhetorically as he came out of the ship with his headlamp turned on and brandished the metal case of the replicator happily. "Lookie what I found."

"Dead aliens?" Tim deadpanned with a grin.

"No… a replicator," Charles replied as he stuffed it into his mokeskin bag and headed around to search the three dead people in redshirts on the ground. "They look like they died of dehydration, so I'm guessing the replicator ceased to function when the engines did."

"You might want to hit it with a couple of repair charms before we hook it up to a power supply."

"Oh, I intend to," Charles replied confidently. "I'm just happy the damn thing wasn't shattered beyond all repair by the crash." Charles handed Tim one of the three hand phasers recovered from the dead bodies of the three crew members.

Tim took the phaser to look it over. "Okay, now I just need a lightsaber and my geek collection of idiot weapons will be complete. There were a couple of good lightsaber crystals in the Old Republic that would be interesting. I mean there has to be one where the damned hero got a game over message."

"Geek collection of idiot weapons?" Charles asked curiously as he pulled out a full sized shovel and began digging great swathes of sandy soil up from the ground.
"Yep, phasers and lightsabers, I just started it today." He smiled.

"Well, I grabbed lots of shuriken catapults and pistols as well as lots of lasguns and laspistols from the Imperial Guard so you can have one of those too," Charles replied as his enhanced strength made short work of digging three graves for the poor dead bastards wearing the red shirts.

"Thanks, normally I wouldn't bother but hey, why not? I mean, everyone needs a hobby."

"Plus infinite ammo doesn't suck. The hand phasers I grabbed because they're here, but we couldn't recharge them and have to hope additional batteries are in the replicator program. I also hope the damn replicator can scan stuff and add it to the databanks," Charles continued as he tossed dirt back onto the graves.

"Why didn't you just use your wand or one of the phasers?" Tim asked with a raised eyebrow.

Charles facepalmed. "Because I haven't had access to magic my whole damn life; it'll take more than a few days of having access to HP magic for me to start using it to the fullest extent."

"Okay, I can understand that. Let's hit some of the final fantasy worlds. I've got some ideas." Tim smiled mischievously.

"In a bit; first I want to stock my new Instant Fortress… and offload a whole bunch of guns from 40k," Charles replied as he tossed the cube off to one side away from anything and activated it causing the tower to shoot upward.

"That sounds like a plan, I'd rather not wander around with my witch blades right now."

Charles nodded. "I figure we'll put all that stuff on the weapon racks the guy was nice enough to leave behind. Along with the slugthrower weapons we brought from our Earth and swap to lasguns I looted from the Imperials. They're lighter and we won't have to worry about ammunition other than the power packs; which recharge in sunlight or if you toss them in a fire."

"That should help."

"Plus, no recoil or sound from the damn things." Charles grinned wickedly as he wandered inside and toward the armory where he proceeded to unload dozens of weapons. "Oh, and we got a few frag grenades and a couple of krak grenades out of that trip to boot."

Tim followed him in and did much the same. "That should be useful."

"Since we're in Fallout we should grab some practice shooting at random crap until we're used to firing lasers instead of bullets." Charles finished, checking out the many different patterns of laser weapons available before making his selections and taking several power packs to go with them. "I'm taking a bullpup Accatran Pattern Mark IV lasgun and an Accatran Pattern Mark III Laspistol."

"I'll take one of the pistol looking things…" Tim shrugged. "Slavers or scorpions?"

"Whichever we run into first?" Charles replied as he passed Tim a standard Imperial Guard issue laspistol and four spare power packs on a belt.

"That works for me." He put the power packs away and clipped the pistol on where he wouldn't be shooting himself in the foot with it.

They'd actually wound up spending a few hours shooting at a whole lot of nothing; mainly cactus and rocks before returning to where they'd left John and Xander.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Charles looked around the area, Xander's tent was set up but he didn't see John or Xander anywhere around "Hellooo the tent!"

"There's a note attached to the frame," Tim pointed at the tent's doorway.

Charles wandered over and yanked it off the duct tape which was securing it there. "Gone looting; be back when we are out of carrying capacity, John and Xander."

"Okay, the two of them are obviously occupied. I hope Xander keeps etch a sketch for brains out of trouble and remembers where they left their tent." Charles muttered.

Tim shrugged. "Either way, I'm fairly sure that we could find them by using an air horn or something of that nature."

"Or the point me spell," Charles said with a grin.

"What the hell type of cheating is that?" Tim said with a smirk as he had used the same spell in a number of fics.

"The kind that saves lots of time and effort."

"Okay, I guess we can try that or we could just go toward the explosions."

*Boom!*Boom!*Boom!*

Tim muttered, "Fucking children and high explosion devices." as they headed toward their compatriots.

Tim laughed as they got to the bank where the almost continuous shouting of 'reducto' could be heard. "Yeah, okay we're going to have practice that spell until we can do it silently and without a damned wand."

Charles nodded. "Sounds like a plan to me."

Tim used sonorous and called at the bank, "Come out with your hands up."

"You'll never take us alive coppers!" John shouted back at them.

Charles wandered in and looked the two dust covered figures over and turned to the one who was smoking. "Did you search the manager's office for the combination first at least? It's probably taped to the bottom of his desk or in a drawer."

"Of course not that's not the purpose of this exercise." John said with a grin.

Charles shrugged. "What is the purpose of this exercise? Other than making a lot of racket?"

"Learning big bada boom!" John exclaimed, "Cast it enough and we'll be able to do it wandlessly not to mention with more force."

Charles shrugged. "Tom the toothless bartender at the Leaky Cauldron can use wandless magic all the time in canon, so I see no reason why we can't with the magic of three death eaters each."

Tim shrugged, "So, how much gold did you steal? I mean find."

"All of it!" John replied cheerfully.

Charles raised an eyebrow. "Somehow I doubt that. Anyway, do you two monkeys want to go with us somewhere more amusing?" Charles asked them curiously as he leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette.

Tim gave the cigarette a glance then took a side step before ignoring it. "I suggest Disgaea or perhaps Final Fantasy."

"As soon as we get into this thing because we've been reductoing the fuck out of it for hours," Xander said.

Charles sighed and shrugged, pulling out a krak grenade. "Okay monkeys back up."

"No, you have to use reducto it's an exercise." John said and Charles sighed and put the grenade back in a pouch.

Tim pulled out his wand and started using reducto on the giant hinges which they had obviously ignored for some reason. Charles joined him; not really having any interest in staying there for a week casting the same damn spell at a hardened steel and reinforced concrete bank vault.

Eventually the huge door fell to the floor with a massive clang. "Okay, let's see what there is to see." Charles said when the dust settled.

Inside were massive stacks of 80s era banknotes in racks. "Okay, that should still be useful." Tim noted.

John looked around in dismay, "Where are all the damn boxes?"

"Boxes?" Xander asked curiously.

"Safety deposit boxes!" John exclaimed.

"They don't keep those in the vault," Charles replied dryly while wiping dust off his face.

"Well where the hell should I have checked for them? Should I have checked the damn lady's room first?" John yelled.

Tim sighed. "Nah, that would be where they would stick them in a bad spy movie."

Xander spoke up as he walked off, "I'll be right back."

John called out, "We're not in a bad spy movie!"

"No, we're in a bad zombie movie!" he called back as he headed toward the lady's restroom.

"Touche," John muttered.

Charles just walked into the manager's office and checked the security system before heading to a steel door off to the left hand side of the corridor and used Alohomora on the door before twisting the knob and opening it. "Here are all your damn boxes." He grinned at John wickedly as he waved his hand toward row after row of security deposit boxes.

John blew a raspberry at him and quickly entered the room using his short handled sledge hammer and a chisel to pop open a box that he pulled from its drawer. Opening it up he pulled out an envelope and opened it.

"Dear Janice, if you are reading this I am dead and I just want to say I have never loved you, and your sister was better in bed, Love Craig," John read aloud. "OK, not that one." Pulling another box out he again pried it open only to find a Captain Crunch whistle and a 3.5 inch floppy disk. "What the fuck?"

"Why not just use the unlocking charm?" Charles asked curiously.

"I haven't practiced that spell," John admitted.

Pulling another box out and popping the lock he pulled out a stack of cash and several different IDs with the same picture. "Hah, bad spy movie it is!"

Charles wandered into the vault and joined Xander in packing up the stacks of 80's currency; it would spend perfectly well on whichever world they went to that was a "modern earth"; like Sunnydale for example.

Tim pulled out his wand, wandered over to the safety deposit boxes and started practicing his unlocking spell.

Seeing him working on it, John shrugged and copied him, having little success and eventually resorting to artfully used reductos, barely whispered, to destroy the locks. "And we have… a mint condition Han Solo in a plastic package from 1972! Woot!"

"Huh, to each their own," Tim said.

"I'm pretty sure I can buy Andrew and Jonathan's soul with this," John pointed out, before going back to playing safety deposit box roulette. Five pairs of used panties, three 'I'm dead and never loved you letters', and 2 CIA drop boxes later…. "I expected more," John admitted.

"Who'd want either of their souls?" Xander called from within the vault, but John didn't answer.

Tim pulled out a small bag of gems. "You know, a jewelry store would probably give us things to trade that are far better than looking through this crap."

Charles and Xander were playing poker for candy while waiting on the two of them rather boredly. "You know, I wonder how long those two can entertain themselves with this?"

Xander shrugged. "Who knows? I was entertaining myself by listening to John and throwing reducto spells at a hardened steel vault door."

Tim pocketed the gems. "Let's go, we can always come back later when we have a reason to want cash. I mean seriously the safest place to keep our money is a bank on a dead world."

Charles chuckled, calling into the safety deposit box room. "I like just keeping my stuff in my Instant Fortress which I keep in my mokeskin bag."

"So grab a couple more stacks of cash and we'll be good to go," Tim said.

"Suits," John agreed. "I was expecting something more interesting from those boxes. Oh well."

Xander laughed. "I already have a million or so stashed in my mokeskin bag; I'm with Charles on carrying my valuables with me. In a pouch no one else can access or even see."

"Non sequential small and big bills, what's not to love," Charles said rhetorically.

Tim wandered back over to the vault and grabbed a couple of hundred thousand while he was thinking about it. "Good point."

John nodded. "I got stacks of cash that may or may not be marked by the CIA, I'm good."

"If we really want money from a dead world, we hit Vegas not a bank." Charles noted, "Casinos take in millions a day in small bills and have their own vaults."

Tim shrugged. "So what's next on the list of worlds to loot?"

"The Painting of Dorian Grey," John suggested.

Tim nodded. "I'm good with that, then we can bury it in concrete in our original world."

Charles pulled up the book electronically, looking through it. "You want to get self portraits painted by Basil Hallward?"

"Yep."

"Okay, sounds good to me. Immortality via fine art. We know where and when Basil Hallward is."

Xander snorted. "You guys might want to get elixirs of youth before you get these paintings done unless you want to live forever in whatever state you're in right now. I'm happy with myself, but I'm in my teens and great shape."

"I'm okay with that, I'm only in my thirties… though I could stand to lose a couple of years and an inch or two off my gut." Tim replied.

John yelped, "Hey! I'm dead sexy," then he ran his fingers through his hair thoughtfully, "but I could stand to lose a few years and some pounds."

"Then let's grab some elixirs of youth and have fun."

"Okay, then it's time to return to our original time and world and pick up another load of spices. We'll go to the original world we traded in and have that girl find us the potions," Charles said.

Tim shook his head. "Fuck that, we've got money and in Harry Potter's world they have spices and they're probably cheaper because it's not 2014. That and just in case the money is flagged. I'd rather be able to not have a record. You don't shit where you live."

"Yes you do! That's what bathrooms are for," John interjected.

Tim muttered, "Outside of that."

Charles chuckled, "Alright, lets go get whoever's tent is set up and then head back to HP land. I've marked this world in my bracer. Besides we can use a communications mirror and see how Harry is doing while we're there."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Charles had packaged Harry's magical items and shipped them off to him to be delivered along with a selection of books from Flourish and Blotts. Then they had gotten into contact with Horace Slughorn and offered him a 5lb gold ingot to make them a cauldron of liquid luck potion to be delivered when it was finished.

"It takes six months to prepare a batch," the Master Potioneer explained while shaking his head.

"Not a chance, I don't have that sort of time. How much do you have and how many are willing to sell?" Tim asked.

Slughorn got a greedy look in his eyes. "In that case…" he launched a long winded explanation of the costs and time required.

Eventually Tim snapped, "Fine, screw this haggling for money shit! We need the luck potion; you're getting old, we know how to get potions of youth, the real deal. I'm sure you could make a fair trade for a decent chunk of your stock for something like that. Hell, we can probably relocate you to a place that Voldemold wouldn't ever find you in addition, as we don't want him getting wind we have anything like that."

Slughorn looked shocked. "The real deal... Ever?" he asked intently, youth falling to second in his priorities over actually living to see a few more years.

"Exactly."

"In that case, we can make a deal. However I'm going to want some assurances that you're telling the truth."

Tim asked, "Truth potion?"

"I'll get the Veritaserum." He reached into his robes and pulled out a vial. "I always keep some on hand."

Tim glanced at the vial then at Charles then back at the vial as if to ask, is it actually a truth potion.

Charles held out his hand. "If I may examine the potion first, please?"

Slughorn handed the potion over though he looked a trifle offended when Charles merely glanced at it and uncorked it. "It's the real deal. Stick out your tongue."

Tim scowled. "I hate you." He stuck out his tongue.

Charles administered three drops of the solution then carefully corked it and handed it back to Slughorn. "I'd like to purchase a decent amount of that if you have it to sell as well."

Slughorn nodded. "Of course!" he replied cheerfully then proceeded to ask several careful questions as to the locale and area they intended to relocate him to as well as their capabilities in doing so.

Tim answered the questions which caused Slughorn's eyes to widen as he realized that there was actually a good chance that he could be free of Voldemort and make a hell of a lot of cash off people in a new section of the world.

"Are you satisfied as to our ability to provide the agreed upon items?" Charles asked after the subtle inquisition was over.

"Indeed," Slughorn declared smarmily, "and relocation as well?"

Tim said, "I vote America, I can't see them putting up with dark lords, they'd find their followers if nothing else, stuff truth potion down their throats, get the confessions, take their bribes then kill them with a slow acting poison. Either that or they'd just loot the criminals' vaults."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Everyone stared at Tim in utter disbelief.

"Why did you go with a nude painting?" Xander finally asked.

"I'm not completely nude, I'm wearing rings. Besides, I wanted to actually be able to change my clothes. While I admit that it would be nice having indestructible clothes, the fashions of the day are bound to change eventually. That and it's just amusing and disturbing."

"I'll go with disturbing," Charles agreed before sticking the painting in the thankfully black vacuum bag and sucking the air out of it before sealing it in its custom made inch thick lexan box. "So, where do you want to store your immortality?" he asked, looking at Tim with a raised eyebrow.

"I've got a room where I can stick it, I'll bury it later."

Charles handed Tim the cased painting. "Then it's all ready to go and we just have to test it to be sure."

Tim frowned as he realized that Charles' warped sense of humor was probably a bad thing in this particular case. "No shooting me to test it please."

Xander raised an eyebrow at Tim. "Just take off your ring of regeneration, and cut yourself or something."

Tim slipped the ring off and cut himself with a knife that wasn't his switchblade. "Huh, that didn't hurt nearly as much as I thought it would… and hey look it's healed."

Xander snorted. "If you expected it not to work then what was the point of taking Liquid Luck and doing it?"

"The potions of youth. I'm not going to just assume it worked. That's something Buffy would do."

Xander could be heard muttering, "Yeah, like going down into the Master's lair…"

"Or taking a long cold one," Charles said matter of factly, causing Xander to shoot beer out his nose. "I see you caught that reference."

"So are we still no on the shooting?" John asked, gun in hand and a disappointed look on his face.

Tim slipped his ring of regeneration back then accepted the gun and shot himself in the leg. "FUCK! Fuck... fuck Dorian Grey and his pain tolerance, that fucking hurt!"

"Pain is just weakness leaving the body." John replied with a grin, "or in your case, paint leaving the body."

"Now that I've got my immortality, we should probably have fun and get you to a cyber meat shop, I mean cyber doc in Shadowrun. Either that or we go to John's world and stab a clone of Xander." Tim said.

"I object to stabbing Xanders on general principle," Xander stated firmly.

"No the guy has the ability to create short duration clones and has the powers of Lobo and a Bizarro clone, stabbing him wouldn't be a big deal," Tim explained.

"No situation is improved by increasing the number of Lobo's involved," John said resolutely.

Tim shrugged. "It would probably end badly anyways. So cyber doc or Final Fantasy for magical items."

Xander blinked.. "Wait, there's a world where I got Superman's powers?"

"Yeah, there's a couple of worlds like that but the world he's talking about is a world where you got the powers of a bizzaro clone of Connor Kent and Lobo combined," John interjected.

"But on the upside even though you got kicked out of your universe you got to see Hippolyta and Raven topless not to mention Hippolyta's man-hating spawn," Charles continued with a grin at Xander's shell shocked look.

Tim shook his head. "I was fairly sure she wasn't related… never mind. That still leaves us with trying to figure out where we're going next."

"I figure we should head to Shadowrun and get the bioware mods cultured; it'll take time and while they're growing we can go off and do other things." Charles replied, "Are you going to try going in for anything?" he asked looking at Tim curiously.

"Nah, I figured I was fine which is why I volunteered to try the whole painting immortality thing first to test it." Tim replied.

Xander raised his hand. "I wouldn't mind something and while we were jawing I worked up a list."

Charles snorted, "We always figured you'd be in on the deal."

"I'm looking forward to seeing how the bioware performs on the hellmouth." Tim said.

Charles shrugged. "Like it was designed to do everywhere else would be my guess. Of course I wouldn't recommend going to a doctor in Sunnydale after it's installed..."

"That's what my ring of regeneration is for." Xander replied firmly.

John snorted. "So, armor up and head to Shadowrun?"

"That works for me. I'd like smartlink visor and possibly a communication set in it."

Charles handed out class IIIa concealable bullet proof vests and kevlar lined trenchcoats with lexan inserts to everyone. "Best I could do with what I had."

Tim laughed as he put his new trench coat on, "It works."

"Plus these…" Charles chuckled and gave John and Xander their Displacer Cloaks. "Only put those on in combat though, Displacer Cloaks would attract way too much attention.

"I wonder if we can still buy the old fashioned headsets for cyber decks."

Charles shrugged. "Perhaps, we can check the pawn shops."

"That could work."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Xander warily looked around the dreary Seattle skies. "I forgot that this place was originally a rainforest when we decided to come here." he said as he tucked his trenchcoat more firmly closed around his torso.

Tim snorted, "Seattle gets less rain than most other places in Washington, I've looked it up…" He frowned, "well at least on the western side and I don't really count the eastern side most of the time."

"It's still cold and wet." Xander replied.

"Look alive people, we're headed through gang turf…" Charles muttered softly as an assortment of orks and a couple of trolls and dwarves appeared from the shadows and alleyways on either side of the street both ahead of them and behind. They were all wearing black synthleather with red accents and many of them sported red bandannas tied around their forearms. "And on cue the Ragers show up."

Tim frowned, "I'd ask if they were the welcoming committee but what's the point?"

"Listen at these fools, walking through Rager turf after dark." One of the orks said as he bounced a steel pipe between his two meaty fists.

"One would assume you gentlemen have something you want to say?" Charles asked with a raised eyebrow, his hand dropping inside his partially opened trenchcoat.

"My friend likes shooting people; I don't suppose we can just skip the bloody mess and everyone gets to walk away intact?" Tim asked as his hand went to his laser pistol.

"Get them boys! Time to teach these humans a lesson!"

Tim opened fire before the guy actually finished his sentence, bright red beams of energy flying from the barrel of the Imperial Guard issued laser toward the mouthy ganger and burning holes straight through his pleather armor.

Xander briefly gaped before whipping out the .45 Charles had loaned him before and fired for effect.

John was putting a double tap in each of his foes from his pistol and muttering darkly under his breath.

Charles had turned to cover the enemies to the rear, beams lancing out from his laser rifle and dropping a ganger with each shot as he ignored the bullets that impacted his armored torso save for grunting and dropping to one knee as he continued to turn metahumans into cooked meat.

It certainly seemed like hours had past when the combat was over, but in reality it had only taken seconds. Charles was wiping blood out of his eyes from a head wound that had cut a raw red line through his hairline. "Everyone okay?"

Xander panted and rubbed his chest. "One of them got in a lucky shot or two and I think it cracked a rib even through the armor."

John shrugged. "I'm fine I think they decided they wanted to mostly focus on you folks with the lasers… Speaking of which, why didn't you share?"

Tim shrugged. "I'm good, a couple of shots to my armor, nothing to worry about."

"Thank all the gods that you grabbed me a ring of rapid regeneration." Xander said looking down at his chest where his trenchcoat was torn all to hell in a large pattern, "I think that otherwise I'd damn sure need a hospital. The once or twice that I got shot was with a shotgun."

"At least they didn't use fire." Tim walked around collecting weapons and anything that might be a credit stick or data storage device.

Charles shrugged and vanished the blood on his trenchcoat, inserting a fresh power pack in his lasrifle before tucking it back under the concealing coat. "Right… now for some repair charms," he said as he cast them on everyone's gear.

"How much do you think we can sell this crap for?"

"Hmmm, after it's repaired maybe 40 to 50% of it's face value at a pawn shop." Charles shrugged as he knelt to loot the goons behind them.

"Highway robbery but not worse than I was expecting. Did you have plan for finding the cyborg doctor?"

"Sure do, we're going to Travis Memorial Hospital in Everett where we'll speak with Doctor Emmanuel Johnson. He's both a practicing mage and one of the best surgeons around; word is he takes lots of clients under the table and doesn't let anyone know about it." Charles replied.

"You find his name in a book?" Xander asked curiously.

"Nope, I found him in a SR fanfic. Trying to get good information out of the damn game manuals for Shadowrun is a bitch and a half; most of it is left up to the GM to determine," Charles replied.

"In other words as long as we pay him he's honest?"

"Yep, and since I've seen his character sheet I know he's a drek hot surgeon and can get us what we want fast tracked through the system. He's also unhappy about red tape in general." Charles chuckled and used one of the ganger's commlinks and called a cab.

Soon enough they were outside the very well maintained and nicely set up hospital, the cabby had been paid with a ganger's credstick and they were walking into the waiting room. Charles walked confidently up to the reception desk and smiled at the pretty elf girl in scrubs who was working there on a data terminal. "We have an appointment to see Doctor Emmanuel Johnson."

"Oh?" She looked up and smiled brightly, revealing a toothpaste commercial quality smile.

Charles nodded, discretely dropping a credstick onto the counter while acting like he was reaching for one of the complimentary mints sitting in a bowl there.

She grinned and quickly gave them directions to the Doctor's office and after a brief and entirely pro-forma interview with three made up names being given and false SINs inserted into the system the Doctor was handed several gold bars and told them that their bioware would be available for installation in 5 weeks after everything was cultured.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

"Now what?" Xander asked once they were safely back in the deserted environs of the park in the Night of the Comet universe and comfortably seated in magically repaired furniture they'd scrounged and moved in from the empty world around them.

"Now we go into a chapter of the story that's further along in the timeline and pick up our kit," Charles replied, pulling a beer out of the cooler at his feet that was packed in dry ice.

"That's just cheating," John grumbled good naturedly.

Tim laughed. "Nah cheating would be to write a story and give the guy the ability to create Pheonix level bioware… yeah I don't foresee that going over well."

Charles shook his head. "Deltaware cybernetics and anything over cultured bioware is personal property of whatever megacorp or government. It's not worth the hassle of trying to even acquire it."

Xander blinked. "What the fuck is Phoenix level bioware?" he asked as he grabbed the SR3 book and the Man and Machine book.

Tim shrugged. "Stuff that gives you mutant powers or things that are typically reserved for hacked pet GM characters, also known as Jean Grey level bioware." He smirked.

Xander snorted. "In other words it doesn't exist."

"Exactly."

"Then, well… We jump back, have the operations… Go to the underground area and get in contact with some people who routinely find things that fall off the back of trucks and buy some things and come back and either go to Star Wars or Final Fantasy land," Charles said and took a drink of his beer. "I have a damn Star Trek replicator I still need to install a power source for, because let me tell you, even 440 ain't going to cut it."

"I'm good with either of those, there are a couple of special game crystals that would be neat for a lightsaber that I wouldn't mind playing with. I mean we've got a replicator. Which means that all we need is to find a world where the hero died," Tim said.

"Easy to find in fanfiction; but Revan is goddamn hard to kill in reality. Much as I'd love to add HK-47 to our merry band I think no good would come of it." Charles continued, "Other than grabbing him I don't see a problem with grabbing Star Wars technology."

"Either way let's get going," Tim said.

"Not so fast padawan… We need to be outfitted first," Charles replied and headed into his armory where they had deposited all the weapons. "Streetsweeper pistol shotgun; a real wristbreaker, but it definitely gets rid of that pesky Jedi/Sith 'I parry your laser weapon with my lightsaber' deal they have going for them." Charles tossed the two they had from the gangers they met in SR to Tim and John. "Here, you two prefer pistols."

Xander blinked. "What about me?"

"We're going in more heavily armed than they are," Charles replied with a wicked grin, pulling out a pair of multi-barreled weapons with two magazines.

"What the hell is that?" Xander asked looking at it.

"A combi-weapon mating a Imperial Guard bullpup lasgun with an auto-shotgun. I found five of the damn things so evidently the drop troops I found them on liked having some versatility," Charles replied, handing him a bandoleer to go with it. "Five power packs, each with 50 shots before necessitating a recharge and five magazines of 10 rounds each for the shotgun. I don't have much ammo for the shotguns and our replicator isn't online so use it vs Sith only and just use the damn laser vs everything else."

Xander's smile lit his face up much the same way as Buffy's did when she was presented with something shiny and sharp. "This should make hunting vampires and demons a lot easier."

Tim looked at the weapons. "I'd say you were compensating for something but knowing our luck we'll probably be fighting Sith."

Charles shrugged, "I go armed for bear," and swapped out his regular bullpup laser for the model with the shotgun underneath and put five spare magazines of his own into his belt of many pouches, before pausing in thought and giving both Xander and John a laspistol as well. "What all are we going after on this trip?"

Tim said, "Final fantasy, I want a helmet with an auto-scan feature and some items that give me immunity or better against some of the element types."

"I meant to Star Wars," Charles replied and passed John and Tim a bandolier of individual shotgun shells to use in the room sweeper shotguns. "These are regular 12 gauge shells, but thankfully the SR shotguns can use them."

"Ah right, sorry. I was thinking about magical items that would let us ignore lightsabers. Let's see, selling lightsabers to nerds is probably asking for trouble. They've got some decent power generation; other than that, we can probably get better armor in Final Fantasy or Disgaea. Actually scratch that, we should pick up some armor there just so we can jump into it if we get access to item worlds through Disgaea."

"I had planned on picking up some Echani Fiber Armor while we were in Star Wars as well as some stealth field generator devices… Any other wishes on the list? We'll wind up getting a few blasters and some armor we can hit with repair charms from the Sith idiots I'm sure. It's also where we'll likely get some lightsabers," Charles continued thoughtfully, counting off points on his fingers.

"Sith Happens," John interjected with an air of wisdom.

"That works for me, having some armor would help keep everyone from thinking that shooting me is a good idea," Tim said thoughtfully.

Xander considered that for a moment before saying, "You're immortal, maybe them shooting at you instead of us is actually a good idea."

Tim frowned. "How the hell did he get called the White Knight?"

"Angelus was a fucktard who liked pushing people's buttons," Xander replied dryly.

"I never really found Angel much better in the series, he comes off as a creepy stalker but hey, you probably knew him a lot better than the stories. Are we ready?"

Xander threw his arms up as if he had just scored a touchdown. "Finally somebody else fucking understands that a 26 year old guy turned into a vampire 200 some odd years ago stalking a teenage girl is creepy besides me!"

Charles chuckled. "I doubt Giles was thrilled about it either."

"Probably not." Tim decided that explaining that Willow had probably been pro Buffy and Angel just to keep him for herself would be a bad idea; the guy needed a win. John would have said something similar but kept his mouth shut because Xander had demonstrated he was a lot more defensive than his usual canon self on the topic of Willow.

Charles shrugged and grabbed a sleek silver and black pistol and cursed softly when he found he only had two magazines for it before reluctantly putting it back. "Ah well, I wanted to play with my new toy but I suppose I'm ready. I'll just have to put them on my shopping list next time we're in SR."

"Same thing with the damned smartlink visor," Tim said.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Tim shook his head as he watched Charles buy several suits of armor, a few strange weapons and some weird electronic items. "One stop shopping in Star Wars, who would have guessed."

Charles snorted in amused fashion. "What else would you expect in a megamall type place?"

"A bunch of different clerks next to each other? Hell if I know, I've never actually been here before."

Charles chuckled and walked out with the case containing his purchases, stuffing them into the bag of holding once the group was out of sight and sighing when he noticed a group of silver armored goons with black face masks moved to shadow them. "Denebian slime devils at 8 o'clock." he muttered and continued leading the group out of the area they were in to an unoccupied area and swore darkly under his breath when he noted several black robed figures with silver armor atop them moving to match the speed of the goons.

Xander palmed the grip of his combi-weapon and shook his head.

Tim sighed. "Seriously what the fuck is wrong with this world? Did we pick up a damned 'Live in interesting times' flaw?"

John chuckled. "Probably."

Eventually they were in a deserted parking lot between a number of warehouses. "Here seems good enough to me," Charles said, moving to put a parked speeder in between them and where the Sith troopers would most likely be appearing.

Tim asked the Sith troopers, "Is there something we can do for you?"

"Present your papers," The bald figure with black veins standing out around his eyes spoke up, stepping forward to get in front of the group of Sith Troopers.

"Seriously? You took us to a Sith world?" Tim sighed.

"Darth Malak is attacking the Republic right now, not exactly much I can do about that," Charles replied.

The Sith commander frowned and ignited his lightsaber, and then Xander yelled from behind the group of Sith as he lowered his stealth field, "Get down!" just as a pair of grenades rolled in amongst the Sith and went off in a conflagration of fire and shrapnel amongst the group of soldiers and their Sith masters.

Tim sighed as he pulled out his wand and started using reductos on the scattered and disorganized troops.

Charles flipped the switch on his combi-weapon and hosed the four very unhappy Sith with buckshot. John meanwhile was calmly shooting crippled Sith soldiers with a three round burst of laser fire each.

Tim muttered, "You know, if we weren't concerned about the inbuilt shitty biofeedback loop, the force powers are probably some form of magic."

Charles gave Xander a big thumbs up as he swapped magazines for his shotgun. "Good call on the grenades, definitely made dealing with them easier."

"I figured that the workers who are watching us out the windows back there didn't need Sith shooting up all their stuff… Or them, the troopers in this game are actually fairly accurate but not that accurate," Xander replied.

Charles chuckled and the two of them began stripping the gear off the bodies and hitting the items with cleaning and repair charms and stuffing them into the bag of holding.

Tim smirked as he selected a pair of lightsabers for his growing weapons collection.

"On that note lets get the fuck out of here," John said firmly as he scanned for more hostiles.