"I'm thinking a nice salad, just to start everything off. Lots of green, leafy, bunny food. Then, it'll be at least five or six ears of roasted corn on the cob, with plenty of mashed potatoes piled high on another plate and swimming in melted butter. Warm sourdough rolls toasty fresh from the oven, natch. All of it washed down with a gallon of icy cold milk. And for dessert, a manhole-size slab of warmed-up apple pie topped with a dozen scoops of vanilla ice cream on the brown sugar crust. Yummy!"
Carefully gauging any potential reaction, Xander moved in for the kill.
"Oh, yeah, I've just remembered something. Throughout my very first meal to celebrate escaping from here, there ain't gonna be a single piece of…meat! Nope, good ol' Xander Harris, the guy who had his body taken over by you and the others, but mostly you, is declaring here and now his devout conversion to vegetarianism!"
Hmmm, did those glowing yellow eyes flicker just a bit?
Beginning to really get into it, Xander continued taunting Hyena: "No hamburgers, hot dogs, or steaks! No bacon, no sausage, and above all, NO PORK CHOPS!"
This was even more fun than singing "This is the song that never ends" a solid week straight. So far, that'd been the highlight of the stalemate between Xander and Hyena, but this current recitation of what the human was threatening to give up in retaliation for that Primal possession's actions was definitely sweet revenge. Still kinda petty, but sweet, nevertheless.
The standoff between the two beings had promptly started a half-year ago, when Xander fell out of the portal created by the latest would-be Big Bad trying to take over the Cleveland Hellmouth. Just a couple seconds before this, the entire situation seemed to be well in hand. He'd been directing the House Strike Team in cleaning up the usual gang of demonic minions and this idiotic bunch's equally clueless master at their hideout in a foreclosed office building. (It had to be admitted, this was a nice change from the usual decaying warehouse where those supernatural schmucks normally plotted their conquests of the world.)
Anyway, the head demon honcho had been just about to be messily carved into numerous bloody chunks by a multitude of Slayer weapons closing in on that hapless foe. In reaction, Mr. Moron desperately tried to cast a last-second transportation spell to escape certain death. Which hadn't gone all that well for him.
Hey, Xander's people were damned good at their jobs, just as he'd trained them to be. The demon sorcerer's head was expertly hewn off its shoulders by the smooth sword stroke of the nearest Slayer. From what the New Council leader remembered, that'd been the very fine work of a newbie, one Jessica Barnes. If and when Xander ever got back to Cleveland, this young warrior woman was still going to get an "atta girl!" from him, regardless of what'd then happened. After all, it wasn't like Jessica was really to blame for not moving quite fast enough, so that the demon was halfway through the very last syllable of its getaway spell right before becoming decapitated.
Thinking back, Xander couldn't be certain, but he was still convinced that Evil Overdork actually finished the spell in mid-air despite being in two pieces sailing off in opposite directions. This naturally made the just-cast spell fail to function precisely as intended. Except, of course, for causing the maximum possible trouble for its unintended target. Or so thought the man in his mindscape, given how he'd ended getting gobbled up by a blast of white mystical energy inexorably heading in his direction, far too fast for him to dodge or be yanked away by the nearest Slayer.
The really sad part was that'd been only the start of his problems.
Unlike after the Sunnydale zoo visit and when Hyena had first come out to play at the high school, Xander was an utterly helpless bystander in the whole ongoing debacle at his new location. There'd been no chance this time for him to fight off Hyena's possession, not when she so firmly clamped onto his higher consciousness. Making it even more difficult, his other mental guests helped to psychically hold down Xander by their clustering around the magic he'd absorbed at his home dimension.
In the six months since he'd appeared in this low mana world, Xander occasionally wondered why none of the other possessions ever dominated his body instead of Hyena. Either by jumping with both feet into his mind right at the onset to beat out the Primal, or to take over from her in the meantime. All he could come up with was the likely explanation she'd been the earliest and most powerful possession, which let her be the Alpha against Sineya, Soldier-Boy, and Swimmer. In which case, the rest of the unwelcome trespassers in his head were sensibly steering clear of Hyena while waiting for their own chance.
Or, simply because she'd always been one hell of a stubborn, unmanageable, pain-in-the-ass bitch.
Xander's irascible belief in the above was comprehensively borne out by the following unpleasant course of events after appearing in the middle of a farmer's field: tearing off his confining clothes, searching for the nearest food at hand, munching away in yet another excruciating repeat of the Herbert incident, and after being disturbed by some yahoo with a gun, getting sent down for the count by a blast of buckshot.
It next got even worse, incredible as that might seem. Hyena was decidedly not happy about waking up inside a police station while wearing handcuffs and more shackles. She made her feelings abundantly clear by trying to tear off her restraints, and when this failed, in still going after every human within range. The only thing which prevented a bloody massacre at that point was a shocking discovery for both entities in one body. In this low mana dimension, Hyena no longer fully enjoyed the Primal magic which made her a match for a Slayer's fighting prowess. Nor did she have the capacity to shrug off the level of physical punishment her host took when the pummeled, furious cops subdued their crazy prisoner, and then played a little catch-up against him with their billy clubs.
Hyena thoroughly sulked right through everything which came after. She didn't allow Xander the least bit of freedom in all the doctors' visits. Not even when they declared him an untreatable mental patient needing to be committed at the nearest insane asylum. Her hatred of humanity grew even more vicious at basically being tossed into a cage and left there to rot for months.
In the meantime, Xander had the futile task of persuading Hyena to just quit already, dammit! It wasn't like he wanted to be imprisoned here the rest of his life, either. Unfortunately, the Primal beast obstinately refused to let go of her control of his body, save for the minor gains in his speech which Xander had managed over time to allow him being able to utter a few hoarse words in the confines of his cell. Not that he'd ever bothered to talk to those fucking orderlies. What was he going to tell them, anyway? "Hey, fellas, I'm not really crazy, okay? I've just got a head stuffed full of other people, including one really nasty critter who wants to rip out each and every one of your throats with her teeth…"
Yeah, right. An increasingly exasperated man remained stuck in the whole stupid mindscape situation. Soon enough, the restrained New Council member in there started verbally goading a mystical creature through anything his truly creative imagination came up with to yell at her.
There were a number of good reasons for Xander thoroughly venting his bad temper at the animal possession while she remained close at hand in their mental abode. For one, it was well worth trying to anger or irritate in turn Hyena on the off chance she'd get pissed enough to make some sort of mistake and enable him to get back in the driver's seat of his consciousness. This obviously hadn't happened yet, but this was still worth a try. Another reason was that it gave Xander the vastly appreciated opportunity to blow off a lot of steam whenever he just couldn't take it any more. Finally, it helped to pass the time.
The last was decidedly important, given it'd been a whole half of a year spent here so far, from what he could estimate. All without any sign of rescue from his friends.
Xander had never thought it'd be so long. Not when Wils and the rest back home would damned well be looking for him, using every bit of their mojo and other supernatural abilities to find out just where that crummy portal had transported a certain one-eyed man. This consideration had gotten him through the first part of his exile, until a stray notion then abruptly plunged Xander into the depths of despair. To be exact, what if they thought he was dead?
The uncomfortable similarities between him getting yanked out of his home dimension and Buffy's own fatal swan dive through Glory's portal were close enough to genuinely worry Xander. Hell, for all he knew, the gang might be thinking that blast of magic energy had destroyed his entire body. Or, if he wanted to take it even further, a copy of his corpse could have been left behind back there in the office building. Per the New Council's guidelines, these remains would've been immediately cremated by his grieving loved ones. In either case, there'd emphatically be no resurrection attempts of any kind for him. Not with all the anguish the last one had caused among the Scoobies.
The man sent to a forbidding insane asylum had nothing else to do in his cell but to extensively brood about this, all while ignoring his mental occupants continuing to detain him in the inner mindscape. He'd done it so thoroughly that in due time, Xander went into the deepest blue funk of his life. However long this lasted he was never sure, but after somehow emerging from that total hopelessness, Xander again resignedly surveyed the quartet of possessions still in their original places around his restrained spirit. At that point, something suddenly occurred to him which he hadn't thought of before, either: why hadn't Hyena tried to completely take over while he'd been feeling so sorry for himself?
In his cell for the first week of his stay there, Xander contemplated that for a while. He tried to remember all the information about possessions he'd surreptitiously learned in private from Giles' books at the Sunnydale High library after surviving his original encounter with Hyena. Back then, the teenager wasn't tempted to discuss it with that Englishman and the girls. The horrified realization of almost doing the unforgivable to Buffy prevented this, especially since she'd also never fully revealed the particulars of their savage fight to the others. Later on, when Soldier-Boy, Swimmer, and Sineya were added to his mental tab, Xander had even more incentive to discreetly find out all he could as to why his awareness was still his own, despite all he'd gone through in his hometown.
In the mindscape then, Xander thoughtfully glanced down at his magically glowing representation of a Sunnydale native's body. This was the first time ever he'd actually managed to confirm the theory a high school student had come up with back when there'd been an intact California Hellmouth instead of just a big hole in the ground years later.
Having been born and next living all his life over the Boca del Infierno, this achievement produced in due course some rather weird effects upon Xander's basic nature. An example of this was that any spell or enchantment cast upon him, either willingly or under loud protest, had a persistent tendency to result in magic going remarkably wonky for Xander. Not that this was all bad. Among other things, it'd probably been the reason he survived Darth Willow when she'd lashed out at him with her maximum mojo on Kingman's Bluff.
Xander easily called up from his recollections the exact page he'd found in one of Giles' dustiest tomes almost a decade ago. There, some mage centuries before put down the possibility that a soul could be so imbued with magical energy as to give it some innate protection from immaterial supernatural dominances. This protection would only, to all intents and purposes, shelter the soul and keep it intact unless that specific person desired otherwise. In the meantime, while the possession couldn't absorb the soul until then, this mental intruder did have the power to influence or even fully control the body and mind of its human host.
That was as far as it'd gone in the volume from G-man's treasured collection in which Xander had sneaked a quick peek sometime between the usual Sunnydale apocalypses. Even though he'd tried to find out more, nothing else ever turned up to suggest this had indeed happened to the man banished into a low mana dimension. At least, until now.
It just had to be yet another oddball occurrence for a long-suffering Mr. Harris. Apparently he'd in fact remained nobody other than himself because his fundamental gonzo magical nature had always fended off the brain invaders. But, since they were all stuck here together in this place without any more mojo than him close at hand, the Fearsome Foursome wouldn't let go of their sole sustenance.
Great, a real Mexican standoff. Was it any wonder Xander had spent most of the last six months after figuring this out in either lipping off to Hyena or going through his picture-perfect memories?
Lying on his back while glowering up at the implacable predator stare of the Primal beast just an arm's length away maintaining her unwavering gaze, Xander halfheartedly shrugged his shoulders against the imaginary ground of the mindscape. As a matter of fact, that little trick he'd learned in this damn place probably kept him from going actually bonkers sooner or later.
Whenever he wanted, the man could withdraw into any personal memory he choose. There, he'd live his life once more in real time and experience everything again with full sensory impact. Xander had taken full advantage of this as soon as he'd felt sure those four pains in the cranium couldn't lay a finger or claw or suchlike on him. Let 'em stand there until hell froze over if they wanted. He got to be with Jesse and Willow when they were kids, or maybe another trip to the supply closet with Cordy, or how about watching sophomore Buffy do her Slaying duty in those really tight pants at one of Sunnydale's graveyards after midnight? Yeah, that sounded good. It never got stale, the times when it was just 'see vampire, stake vampire, celebrate at the Bronze-'
Without any warning at all, Hyena launched herself in a soaring jump forward. The leaping animal went completely over Xander's supine body to land on all fours next to Sineya, who snapped her own head around to stare in clear astonishment at the African beast passing by. Ignoring both the Slayer and the rest of the mindscape's inhabitants she was rapidly leaving behind, the Primal creature sprinted at her fastest speed directly away from their small group.
