Two's a Crowd
Xander looked at the preparations to re-ensoul Angelus and shook his head. Despite the fact that they had two Slayers on hand to guard the ritual and it was being done directly over the Hellmouth, to increase the chances of success, he had a bad feeling about this.
"Stop looking all doom and gloom," Willow ordered. "It'll work, you'll see."
He shook his head and rechecked his weapons. "And, if it works you'll have ripped a soul from its final reward and stuffed it into a demonically animated corpse. I wouldn't do that to someone I hated."
Uneasy looks were shared amongst the group.
"If you can't be quiet, go home," Buffy ordered. "We can't afford any distractions right now."
Xander rolled his eyes, but kept silent as everyone finished their preparations and began the spell.
0oOo0oOo00oOo0oOo0
"Ah, my poor kitten," Drusilla moaned, causing Angelus to stop what he was doing and grin.
"Yeah, take it!" he growled.
"Not my kitten, my Kitten," Dru corrected him. "The one who plays with the Slayer."
"Do you have to talk about Xander now?" he asked incredulously as he looked down at her naked body, blood and sweat dripping down her chest.
"But the little witch is going to make a mess and stick not-daddy into Kitten," she complained.
Angelus rolled off Dru and thought about what she'd said. "They tried to re-ensoul me and got Xander instead?"
"There's not enough room," she complained. "And Kitten's going to leave, it's not fair."
Angelus laughed. "It may not be fair, but it sure as hell is funny!"
0oOo0oOo00oOo0oOo0
There was a bright flare of light as the spell was completed and Xander collapsed to the ground. Cordelia rushed over to Xander and checked to make sure he was okay.
"Well, did it work?" Buffy demanded hopefully.
"It worked," Willow said tiredly. "I'm sure of it."
"What's going on?" the dark-haired teen asked as Cordelia managed to rouse him.
"What's the last thing you remember?" Cordelia asked.
He blushed and cleared his throat. "That's a bit private, don't you think?"
"Xander?" Cordelia asked cautiously.
He raised an eyebrow. "Why are you calling me Xander?"
"Angel?" Buffy asked in the silence that had descended on the room.
"Yeah?" Angel replied, getting to his feet and dusting himself off.
"I can fix this!" Willow swore. The small crystal sphere used in the Gypsy ceremony, to hold the soul, chose that moment to roll off the table corner where Willow had set it and shatter on the floor. "As soon as I get another one of those," Willow said.
"Angel!" Buffy said, sweeping him up in a hug, tears of joy in her eyes.
0oOo0oOo00oOo0oOo0
Xander found himself standing over a dark pit lined with countless teeth that slowly ate away at the fabric of the world. If he'd still had a body, he would've pissed himself in fear or puked himself in revulsion, or possibly both. "From beneath you it devours," he muttered, stepping on a bridge of golden light that led upwards, vanishing from all mortal ken.
"Next!" the woman behind the counter called out.
Xander floated forwards with a gentle flap of his wings, the ground beneath his feet made of clouds.
The angel behind the counter looked somewhat amused as she examined the scene she was in. "A heavenly DMV?"
Xander shrugged. "I was issued a robe, harp, halo and wings and told to wait in line, it just seemed to fit."
The angel chuckled and shook her head. "This is all a creation of your imagination to help you adjust. If you were a different person, you'd perceive the whole scene differently."
"So, you really don't look like Loni Anderson?"
She laughed. "Actually, since I'm older, I'd say she looked like me. Now, let's pull up your file. Hmmm, according to this, it isn't your time yet."
"I'm not supposed to be dead?" Xander asked.
"According to your file, you aren't dead. You've just been displaced by a curse. Nasty piece of work that," she said, typing away on a computer below his eye level.
"I told them it was a bad idea," he grumbled.
A printer next to her spit out a ticket and some paperwork. "Well, here is a ticket for your return trip and the authorization. Have a nice life, and I hope not to see you again for at least a century."
"A decade might be pushing it in my case, but I'll try," he promised. He flapped his wings a bit too hard and shot up like a rocket. "Whoa! Jane, how do I stop this crazy thing?" he screamed as he shot up through the clouds like a skydiver in reverse. After a few second, he remembered 'Loni' had told him that the reality he was experiencing was all in his mind, so he should be able to do something about it. Glancing down at his ticket, he concentrated on the symbols he saw, willing himself not to be shooting out of control through the clouds and instead be standing at his gate. After a half second of disorientation, he found himself standing in ranks with a number of other angels, all dressed differently and all holding various objects.
"Alright you bunch of feathered fairies!" an angel dressed as a Marine Drill Sergeant yelled out. "If you have followed directions you should have gifts and raiment. If you are still standing there naked with nothing in your hands, you have screwed up, and I will not have screw-ups in my unit. Is that understood?!"
"Sir, yes, Sir!" everyone chorused.
"Your orders all come with a ticket!" he shouted to the massed wing. "Hold it to your forehead so the symbols match this gate!" He slapped the golden gate in the featureless white wall behind him, and it rang like a bell.
Xander held his ticket to his forehead, not noticing that he had to hold it upside down compared to everyone else to make the symbols match.
"Now, repeat after me," the drill sergeant said as he called out a word that sounded like a fragment of blue light melting on the tongue.
Xander found he could repeat the word, and his paperwork faded away, leaving a set of gold symbols tattooed on his forehead.
"You should have at least two items in your hands, if you do not have two items in your hands, that will be dealt with later. Hold the items to your shoulders and repeat after me." Once more, he said the word.
Xander repeated the word, and his harp sank into his shoulder, leaving a small silver tattoo of a harp in its place. Raiment, wings, and halo soon followed, leaving everyone but the drill sergeant marked and tattooed.
The drill sergeant marched them through the gate. "Welcome to Boot Camp, or as I like to call it, the Tenth circle of hell," the sergeant called out. "You are guardian angels when I say you are guardian angels, and right now I wouldn't trust you to guard a cup of warm piss!"
"Sir, yes, sir!"
Thanks to the slightly faded memories of one Private Harris from a particularly memorable Halloween, Xander didn't feel like he was being dropped into an alien environment like the rest of the angels, he felt like he was coming home.
0oOo0oOo00oOo0oOo0
Whistler waited at the gate for Xander to show up so he could put him back in his own body and move Liam to where he was supposed to be. After a couple of minutes, he broke out a deck of cards and started playing Solitaire, grateful to be able to relax for a little while.
0oOo0oOo00oOo0oOo0
"What did you do to my boyfriend?!" Cordelia demanded, glaring at Willow.
"I...May have accidentally put Angel in his body," Willow admitted.
"Than where be Xander?" Kendra asked.
"He should still be in there," Willow defended herself.
"Stop kissing my boyfriend," Cordelia yelled, whirling on Angel and Buffy.
"Angel's my boyfriend!" Buffy growled, not letting him go.
"He's in my boyfriend's body," Cordelia reminded her. "Honey, are you in there?"
Angel looked a bit upset as he realized he wasn't in his own body. "I don't think he's in here," he admitted after a moment. "I'm used to having someone else in my head, and I've got nothing here."
"I-I-I..." Willow stuttered nervously, unsure what had happened.
"This will take some research," Giles said.
0oOo0oOo00oOo0oOo0
The first week of training was all about physical conditioning which, as they lacked bodies, was actually just testing their will. Normally, he'd lose maybe a dozen transfers from the choirs as they found they lacked the will needed to go that extra mile, but he'd yet to lose a single angel from this group. It was an anomaly, and probably an indication that someone was dicking around with his wing!
There was a flare of light as a green-eyed angel appeared and immediately dampened his aura of presence. Raguel, the angel sent to stand guard over hell had come. Like most Seraphim, he didn't beat around the bush. "Ed, you yourself were once human, and so is one of your new recruits. You haven't had any drop-outs because none of them are willing to look bad in his eyes."
"Pride?" Ed asked warily, always on guard against that most insidious of sins.
"Not necessarily," Raguel assured him. "He encourages them, and his belief in them when they doubt themselves gives them strength to carry on."
"They also seem to be gaining sexual characteristics that normally take decades to develop."
Raguel turned his eyes towards the barracks and looked through the walls to see the angels within. "I...see."
"Problem?" Ed asked.
"Not exactly," the angel replied. "Young Alexander had surrounded himself with strong women in life and used stories of them to encourage those around him."
"Must be some impressive stories," Ed said dryly, as he watched the sun set over the base.
"He's worked with two Slayers and grew up on the Hellmouth," Raguel replied. "Between that and his love of Norse mythology, I suspect you'll soon have one-hundred and sixty-nine female angels on your hands."
"Joy," Ed said dryly.
"Yes, I imagine giving 'the talk' to that many angels is a bit daunting."
"That's one way of putting it."
"You could always make Alexander do it."
"First good news I've heard all week," Ed said with a grin that would be called evil on anything other than an angel.
0oOo0oOo00oOo0oOo0
Whistler didn't know what was delaying Xander's arrival, but he was enjoying his time off. The area around the gate was technically part of Xander's soul as it intersected the plane of Judgment, the details of which would require a degree in advanced theology to understand and would get you excommunicated for discussing the very theory of. It had started off looking like an airport terminal filled with hard plastic seats and signs denoting what wasn't allowed as carry-on luggage. Whistler had spent the first day altering the seats to make them more comfortable and adding a newsstand that contained the latest novels. By the time a week had passed, Whistler had installed an eighteen hole golf course, a movie theater, and a 50s diner. Whistler was surprised at how little energy it took to make the changes, though he did have to put in a mini-golf course to prevent his full-sized one from turning into one.
"Bless Heavenly bureaucracy," Whistler said as he teed off.
0oOo0oOo00oOo0oOo0
The sub-plane of Heaven where the host trained was shaped by the will and experiences of its inhabitants. Ed, because of his fondness for the movie Full Metal Jacket, usually shaped the plane to fit, as his trainees were angels from the lowest ranks who had just outgrown their choir positions and had knowledge of little else.
However, that was not what he found himself facing as he got up that morning and prepared for sword training. The base still existed, but now the buildings showed Asian influences in their construction, with tile roofs and hanging lanterns. The trainees were now dressed in black two-piece Japanese-style robes that had gone out of style in ages past, and the swords that lined the racks in the dojo weren't remotely Western blades.
Ed sighed and decided to up Xander's training again as this was clearly his influence, and whatever he was being prepared for had to be of major importance for his inclusion into Ed's camp considering the disruption he was causing.
AN: Typing by Lucillia!