Thrown backwards through the shoved-open warehouse rear exit door, Xander tripped and then the man tumbled head-over-heels down the concrete stairs at the side of the building's loading dock, managing a blistering expletive for every single step he bounced along during his descent towards the hard alley asphalt below. Slamming onto his back at the end of his short but painful journey, an irate Xander snarled a wordless growl upwards into the Phoenix night sky dimly seen through the space above the alley, between the roof edges of the warehouses he currently had on both sides of himself.
Scrambling up onto his feet, a bruised Xander lifted his battleaxe he'd managed to keep from losing or slicing himself to ribbons during his fall, and the man charged forward to the steps, only to skid to an abrupt halt and look down at his lower body. There, his pants and boxers were a total ruin, shredded and torn beyond repair into dangling strips of cloth by the claws of the Kor'zlan demon he'd been fighting a moment ago before a backhand blow had sent him reeling out of the warehouse.
Grimacing his displeasure at having to delay to do this, Xander took his right hand off the haft of his axe to clap these fingers against the waistbands of his lower clothing, gripping, and then yanking as hard as he could, all in one smooth movement that ripped off all the tattered remnants of his jeans and underwear, culminating in him tossing the ruined scraps of his clothes against the warehouse wall on his right, with these then falling to the ground and becoming just more litter added to the other rubbish there in the alley.
An exasperated roll of Xander's remaining eye ended in a quick check of all the exposed flesh between the bottom of his shirt and the tops of his boots. Despite his slashed and discarded garments, there were only a few scratches on his legs, so he could now be sure that nothing would trip him up when a bare-assed Xander rejoined the noisy fight taking place right now in the warehouse he'd just left, among a bunch of demons and the trio of Slayers that were currently in the Watcher's charge.
At times like these, modesty could be ignored, even though the man with the eyepatch glumly knew that Sophia, Marie, and Miri would gleefully spread the story worldwide among the entire Council, including the remaining Scoobies. All it'd take to top things off tonight would be for a cop to materialize in the alley and arrest him for indecent exposure; though, at least since his Slayers were past the legal age, he couldn't be charged with corrupting a minor-
In the narrow passageway behind Xander, somebody politely cleared their throat.
At once spinning around while hurriedly bringing up his axe in a blurring sweep that had it prepared for attack or defense, whichever seemed necessary right now in the coming battle with his newest foe, Xander ended up with his weapon on guard, ready for instant use against….
A soccer mom?
Standing calmly in the middle of the alley a few steps from him, a blonde woman in her late thirties or early forties, dressed in a casual blouse, pants, and tennis shoes, and holding a bundle in her hands, was now gazing over her burden at him, ignoring totally the deadly axe pointed right at her, to instead steadily stare at-
Xander's axe blurred again in an immediate shift of his weapon that ended up this time with his hands grasping the top of the vertical haft, with the horizontal axeblades held directly in front of a certain part of his body a couple of inches below his navel.
At this, the woman's eyebrows faintly lifted in bemusement, but she didn't say a word, with instead that female now giving Xander a very direct mom-look that firmly suggested she would really like some kind of explanation. About everything.
"Ahhhh…," tentatively started Xander, as he desperately tried to think of a fairly believable excuse, to then start the best lie he could actually come up with right at this moment, which was the following: "Me and my friends there in the warehouse, we're, uh, running a totally realistic Dungeons and Dragons game, so, uh, we have to act out our player characters-"
Through the warehouse walls behind both of the two people in the alley, muffled but comprehensible enough, came the sound of a young woman shrieking with absolute rage at the top of her lungs, "YOU DEMON JERK, I'LL NEVER GET THIS STAIN OUT! DIE! DIE! DIE!"
"-and some of us get into it maybe a teensy bit too much," morosely finished Xander, giving his listener a wan smile that literally begged for mercy.
For the first time since she'd appeared in the alley, the woman spoke, uttering an extremely sarcastic, "Whatever." At the same time, she stepped forward and lifted her arms, offering to the man what she'd been carrying. Without thinking about it, a startled Xander took away his left hand from its grip on his axe and took from the woman her cloth bundle, all while still cautiously holding his weapon absolutely immobile in its current position with his other hand. As he looked down at what he was now holding, Xander's jaw dropped open in shock, as he recognized a single set of boxer underwear and a pair of sweatpants in a man's size.
A dazed Xander now glanced up, to see the woman had turned around and was walking away, down the alley to the street beyond. "Hey-!" began the man, only to be shortly interrupted in his call.
Continuing her walk and not looking back, the woman said in a firm voice, "Allison; I've already got a job; plus I have to fix dinner for Joe and the kids; when you're at Pancho's Restaurant, get in the furthest left line at the counter because it'll be the fastest and your Slayers will be really cranky; and yes, you've got enough money for the triple Mucho Grande Taco platter." At those last words, the woman stepped out of the alley and turned right, disappearing past the warehouse corner with a farewell wave of her right hand.
A few moments later, after leaning his axe against the warehouse wall, Xander was frantically hopping around the alley while pulling on his new, perfectly fitting underwear and pants past his footwear and up his legs, urged on by the angry yelling of another young woman somewhere in the warehouse: "SO YOU'RE THE ONE WHO TOOK MY FAVORITE SWORD WITHOUT TELLING ME! GIMME THAT!"
Finally getting dressed and then grabbing his axe, Xander rushed up the steps and threw open the warehouse door, hoping to finish off things before the girls got really mad at each other, which was why when the man dashed into the storage building, he was shouting his latest war cry, "Dinner's on me, ladies!"