XANDER HARRIS: THE IRON TAU'RI
By:"Gunsmith3000"
Started 5-19-08
Completed: ?????
Disclaimers: Nothing belongs to me other than this insane idea I have that just won't let go. Iron Man belongs to Marvel, Stargate SG1 belongs to MGM. Buffy belongs to Joss... blah, blah
Summary: Xander goes as one of his favorite marvel comic characters, but gets more than he's bargained for.
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-FIRST CONTACT-
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After Xander got out of the armor, there were a few catcalls when they saw his almost painted-on undersheath/skin suit that showed an impressive amount of wiry muscle that he gained during his adventures in space. The catcalls died and laughter broke out when he began to wear his shirt and pants over it. Silence reigned after that when the undersheath melted into his skin and left him looking like he hadn't seen the sun for a over a few months, which he technically hadn't since he was mostly in armor most of the time or underneath the ocean inside Lilandra. Those times he was unconscious and held captive inside Loki's ship did not count.
"What happened?" Janna asked when they had finally sat down in the large warehouse apartment living room.
With a sigh, Xander told them everything. After three hours of him talking into the wee hours of the morning, they responded to his tale in kind and told him what happened while he was away. He'd have to corroborate with JARVIS in the business end of the news they told him while he stilled the urge to don the armor and knock some sense into a few of his old friends to stop acting like they were four years old.
Fate, it seemed, had idle hands. When no one was looking, it was bored and got creative. It was either that, or something spiked the air in the Hellmouth atmosphere when he was away. There may not be an Avengers team in this universe, but the Stark Gestalt within him felt that he was on-call twenty-four seven. He had half-expected to take a small downtime with his arrival to play catch up, not to dive back into work the moment he set foot back in the Hellmouth.
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It seemed while he had gone AWOL, some of their old "attitude" in regards to the face value of who is who reasserted itself back to type. It was enough for the two Kalderash cousins to recall the LMD double of him and reprogrammed it to stay in the background and just go through the motions of going to school and back as his "friends" had taken to ignoring the damn thing when they knew it really wasn't him.
Except for Faith, that is.
Faith had arrived in Sunnydale with burden she carefully hid from prying eyes. Faced with a new unknown quantity in their midst, their attitudes started to tilt even further. Her arrival, according to Jenny, almost sent their local Slayer on a territorial power slide. Bad enough that Buffy didn't trust "Kassandra" the first time around, Faith popping in all of the sudden dug that sense of distrust even further. Their lone wolf personalities as Alphas clashed horribly. This got worse when the rejection Faith felt from the Scoobies was resolved when the two senior witches and Kassandra took the new wayward Slayer under their wing permanently. She fit in well with Xander's new group, much to the original gang's dismay. It was there that Faith began to trust them enough to explain why she had run to Sunnydale of all places.
During her first few months as the Slayer that replaced Kendra. Like Buffy back in Los Angeles, she had the unfortunate circumstance to run into a master the likes of Lothos: a vampire named Kakistos. Unlike Buffy, however, Kakistos was stronger than Lothos. She witnessed the murder of her Watcher in cold blood in front of her in a surprise attack, as agreed, if things had gone south, she was to run to Sunnydale for help.
With no plan, no clue, and unable to trust anyone, she ran. She had been running all that time as she dodged the steps of the master vampire's footfalls that she knew followed her wherever she went. When she finally got to Sunnydale, what she had found both overjoyed and filled her with fear. The local Slayer had friends and a family, things that had normally been scarce in her life. Fear won the first few months as she had clammed up tighter than an oil drum. It had taken a lot of effort on the former Jamaican Slayer and the two Kalderash witches' part to break into Faith's shell to let her come out of it and let them in.
Xander shook his head in disgust. Only children below the age of reason would get that worked up when someone started playing in their sandbox. From what Janna was able to observe, they also started a variation of the fray adjacent approach to Faith that they subtly did to him after the Halloween incident. While he was slightly out of the loop, they kept Faith in the marginal "loop" only when they needed extra help.
Later on, they grudgingly accepted the new Slayer, but with reservations. At least, Xander thought, they could learn to grow up even though the Alpha personalities of both slayers were sometimes a handful to deal with. It was only through the Kalderash duo that Kendra was able to control and tame her Alpha instinct long before Faith showed up. The former Jamaican Slayer was already used to Buffy and her eccentricities that Faith's appearance didn't affect her as much. During their heart-to-heart, the dark-haired Bostonian Slayer found out the truth about Kassandra's real identity. After that, the women took her under their wing as family, Anna even called in a council vote and inducted Faith into the Kalderash clan. Overwhelmed with emotion that they really did care for her, she welcomed it.
It was only a matter of time and Kakistos finally arrived in Sunnydale. True to form, he started to root around for his prey. Forewarned from Faith's story, they quickly, and personally saw to it that the last thing the cloven-hoofed vampire saw, was Faith's face before she rammed a power gauntlet enhanced fist through the master vampire's thick, bony chest.
Buffy never even got wind of it.
I should have made a detour and gone to the beach, Xander thought after he heard it. I heard Hawaii is nice this time of the year. It looks like too much drama occurred while he was out.
He ran a hand down his tired face as he yawned and announced to his companions. "It's late, so let's all go to bed and get some rest. As for the Scoobies, I'll try to see them when I'm well rested. I like the fact that you're all helping them in spite of your slight differences."
They agreed and left for their respective domiciles inside the huge warehouse-slash-development office-slash-hangar-slash-apartments.
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Xander lay in bed, he thought about his unique position for the millionth time since "the incident". He was beginning to think that fate had somehow hoodwinked him into the permanent role of his alter ego as The Silver Paladin. The Stark gestalt in his mind acknowledged that Iron Man was a being of their creation for a time when ideals almost beyond the point of repair. Xander, along with every Stark version he had crammed into his skull was a different sort of animal whose ideals were his own. Iron Man was good for their respective universes, it would most likely be behind the shadows if he were to use that name here. While not worldly popular like the Superman, Batman, or Spiderman comics, Iron Man was still too recognizable for people to notice. The helmet style, the blatant red and gold paint scheme was too obvious. It seemed that "Somebody" was watching from on high knew that fact and gave him an "out" as it were.
If fate had somehow chose him to become a technological Paladin, a shining example of a new brand of justice and light against the darkness, then so be it. He already looked the part thanks to his error of rushing to Janna's rescue when he first donned the unpainted silver-toned mark zero unit; then he may as well add a few more touches to his new and improved Paladin mode thanks to Lilandra's help in creating him a new set of armor. He could probably add a few more things to it to really differentiate it from Iron Man.
Besides, don't Paladins use swords? Maces? War Hammers? Battle Axes? Xander went to sleep with the idea of cramming the Halcyon storage space with all sorts of melee weapons with a technological twist.
There was also the fact that his new space-age armor was too powerful and needed limitations while inside an atmosphere, as it was, he had the combat capability of a sentient nuclear bomb several times over. Left unchecked, it would become cause for some major concerns. Power like that could be easily abused, in helping them, he could also easily harm them as well..
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"Where the hell is Xander?" Janna screamed in frustration, it was already close to noon. They had been looking for the young man in question when they realized he never exited his room that morning. He had already missed half his school schedule and it looked as if he would not make it for the rest of the day.
After their search topside yielded no results, they tried to enter the lower levels. They were denied key access, when asked why, JARVIS told them to check Xander's room again. They did, and upon further investigation, they all barged in and found a rumpled, slept in bed, same as when they walked in earlier. That was enough for the former computer teacher, hence her scream of frustration.
The others wandered into the room and Anna noticed a blinking green light off to the far wall that wasn't there before. She drew the group's attention there and everyone was surprised to find a private elevator that led into Main Engineering. Without a word, everyone climbed in and barely managed to squeeze into the tight space.
The ride down was slightly uncomfortable with four women holed up like a sardine can, it got worse when they arrived and the lift doors opened to the sound of loud rock music.
"Damn." Faith muttered, slack-jawed at the sci-fi geek environment she landed in when she got out of the lift. "Boy knows his Eddie Van Halen."
A few seconds of walking deeper into Main Engineering, they finally found their errant friend in front of the larger machining rig he had JARVIS build that could help create any weapon he deemed possible for his armor, including more armor as well. The current design he was working on via holographic drafting was a huge representation of an enormous bastard sword. They stopped to stare as it morphed from someone's overactive idea of overcompensation into another large object of equal significance: an ornate War Hammer. A couple of Technites they recognized from his impromptu introduction of them last night who they recognized as Persat and Digit were working on the actual material while Xander made a few more adjustments to the holographic test model.
"Xander!" Janna yelled as she grabbed the younger man's right ear and pulled, despite his protested yelp. "You're supposed to be in school!"
"Ow!" The young genius yelped in pain as he replied and turned down the volume by a sufficient level. "I sent the LMD in my stead. I had an idea last night and I wanted to see if it was possible."
"What could be more important than spending time with your other friends now that you're back?" Anna asked as she studied the changing designs of sword and hammer. "Aren't these weapons a step backwards to your so-called Iron Man motif?"
"As Iron Man, yep, they are. Unfortunately, I realized that he's too damn recognizable." Xander replied. "But as the Silver Paladin, I'd say they're part and parcel of the package. Besides, they're not normal weapons."
"Considering you are who you are, I doubt they'd be anything but." Janna said, intrigued. "So what are they?"
"A nano-molecular composite of Adamantium blended metal." The young engineer replied. "Think Terminator II's liquid metal guy: the base form of the object is a metal rod that's no bigger than the thickest defense baton available in the market. A pre-programmed activation sequence activates the tightly packed micro-blocks inside to change it into large two-handed sword or war hammer depending on the situation. Normally, I wouldn't have been able to do this with what I have and just go straight with making two weapons. But thanks to the Technites' inputs, it was possible."
Anna was impressed. "I take it by those runes you've managed to carve into both sword and hammer forms that you want us to enchant them? Where did you learn runes by the way, they look very complex. True rune weapon forging and empowerment was a secret art thought lost due to the fact that it was very dangerous in the wrong hands. They burned those books and banned them for a reason. Lucky for you, the Kalderash clan managed to hide theirs at great personal risk."
"One of my Stark memories was well versed in magic." Xander explained without going into detail on just which Stark it was. No need to tell them that one of the incarnations of his Stark gestalt was actually Lord Sorcerer Supreme of his universe. He didn't want them to think he had knowledge equivalent to Merlin, the Wizard – not "Merlin", the alien which he found out that both of them was true here. Both lived, both died, both became one person thanks to stories that blurred by word of mouth as time passed. The original one was an actual wizard that Tolkien slyly referenced, as the basis for Gandalf, and the other was Myrddin, the alien Ancient that took a hint and patterned himself after the famed Sorcerer to blend in better with the locals. The myth and legends of two separate "wizards" blended into one figure by accident. Spoken myths and legends passed down via word of mouth rarely stayed in the original context. Only when someone got the smart idea to write it all down did they get the wrong version up, by then it was too late. Of course, no one would believe that the more well known story that Sir Geoffrey of Monmouth published was the one history butchered up, and no one will know the wiser, at least not until they learn to read Alteran script from alien Myrddin's own personal library. A library, which Lilandra somehow managed to acquire in her many travels and dumped the info into Hal's memory banks. Though Xander wanted to set the record straight on some misconstrued mythological truths, the headache news like that would generate made him reconsider.
Maybe when humanity was not as divided and as close-minded as they were today, but for now, ignorance was bliss.
"Considering the situations I inevitably get into, those runes should be enough to make that thing nigh unbreakable and resistant to other types of magic used against it." Xander said as he drew up a closer look at the runes he incorporated into the sword and hammer designs. "If my calculations are right, they could even absorb some of the spells flying around and hopefully turn it back towards the caster. An added plus is that the whole thing can shrink and I can place that into a compartment inside my armor. Without the Technites' help, I would have ended up slinging that thing at full size on my back"
"Uh-huh." Janna replied as she looked over the rune work herself. "This could work. Wait here while we hunt down the ingredients. I assume there's another part of Main Engineering for spellwork and rituals that you haven't told us about?"
At Xander's nod, she shook her head and left to get them. "I don't even want to know how you were able to squirrel that in here, and I thought I'd seen everything in this place. Just what else have you managed to hide down here?"
The only answer she got in reply was an all-knowing smirk as the genius in question turned up volume of the rock music up to where it was before he was – in his opinion - rudely interrupted and went back to work.
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Kendra glanced at Faith and was surprised to see her protégé look a little lost. "Don't worry." She said. "When the boss man gets an idea going, nothing short of a nuclear meltdown – or a naked woman – will drive him out of this room."
"My kind of guy." Faith replied absentmindedly, still nervous at creator of the LMD that she had gotten to know when she first arrived in Sunnydale. "Look I gotta go to the mall, mind if I use the bike?"
"Go ahead." Kendra smiled. "Let me know if there is anything we can do to help. Be careful out there."
Faith nodded and ran for the garage, thankful as always that her new friends really reached to her and made her feel welcome. While the same could not be said to the Sunnydale Slayer and some of her compatriots, at least her Watcher was levelheaded enough not to turn her away, especially now since help was sorely needed with all the demons coming into town lately that wanted a crack at them.
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"Xander?" The intercom buzzed beside him as he went to work on the final touches on the mold for his new weapon.
"What is it?" The young genius barked back as he directed Digit to begin the nano-molecular bonding of the preprogrammed nanites into the alloy inside the enchanted mold.
"I've got a Major Paul Davies on line two." Janna said from her office. "He's been bugging us for over a week with requests from Washington to tour the place for an official government bid."
"I don't make weapons!" He yelled back while he calculated the flow of the bonding.
"Could've fooled me, Xan." She said.
"Well, not for any government, I mean." He clarified. "Iron Tech is a no-no, and you know that. You read the comics as much as I did. I don't need to give them another reason to blow up the planet when they already have enough alien tech in their labs. And by the way, JARVIS, keep me apprised on any new developments in the SGC."
"Aye, sir." JARVIS replied.
"They're asking about more refinements to the OS and want to know if you've made any upgrades to your holocamography for possible reconnaissance drones in the field." Janna explained.
Xander blinked, that was different, THAT he could work with. He could release an earlier version of a bulkier mini holo-camera prototype from stores. It was one of the models he used in the Zero unit upgrades, it was also well within the tolerance of something not too advanced for anyone to think otherwise. "Ok, tell him he can come by next week on Wednesday, I can personally show him around then to feel him out."
The young engineer shut intercom off and looked towards the far wall. A cache of orbital probes he had planned to send into space around Earth lay there, gathering dust. The probes were one of the few things he forgot to send up before he left for space in a rush. They were to be his eyes and ears as stealth satellites to help him protect the Earth for any signs of alien incursions.
Making a mental decision, he thumbed the intercom again. "Janna, hold any calls for me today, will you? There's one thing I forgot to do, and it'll take a few hours at best."
"I'm not some over-glorified secretary, Alexander." Janna's indignant reply was felt through the com line. "You're going out in armor, I take it?"
"Yep." Xander replied as he suited up and ran pre-flight checks for the Halcyon on a remote station that led to the desert launching area. It was time for some rest and relaxation while he went about and dumped some of his own personal probes to help him watch over his home world from any possible threat. If fate had indeed shoehorned him into this job, he might was do it on his own terms.
This is a different kind of funny, he realized in thought to himself as he flew upwards towards space once again under stealth. He used to want to laze about and not do anything at all that before all this. Thanks to his new experiences and to the amalgam of several memories swimming in his head through the Stark gestalt, for some reason, life gave him a rare opportunity to change and really try to make a difference.
He had finished stationing the probes by nightfall, Earth relative, and activated them. He took one look at the clutter of older satellites across the vast expanse that was the terminator between Earth's thinnest atmosphere and the black void of space.
It sure is peaceful up here, he thought. His eyes stretched across the stars to where he believed Lilandra's temporary home world would be. It amazed him that at what he had gone through in his wild sojourn around the universe.
"Space, the final frontier." He started to paraphrase a quote. "These are my voyages. To make sure the Earth doesn't blow itself out of existence before they can really get up here as a whole."
"Sir." JARVIS's voice floated in the com. "That was a very bad mangling of Jim's Kirk's famous opening lines."
"That doesn't make it any less true." He retorted to his smart-ass AI. "Change is coming. I can feel it."
"Indeed." JARVIS replied.
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Somewhere in downtown Los Angeles several hours after nightfall, a portal blasted open in one of the city's abandoned alleys. Over a dozen people rushed out, all clad in rags, covered in dirt and soot. The growing number of people that came from the portal slackened until a surprisingly fit man with almost waist length hair came out. He was pale and covered in non-human blood. A battered sword hung limply by his side as he grunted in pain.
The sword-wielding stranger lifted his head and they could see golden eyes peeked below the obvious-but different-looking ridges as he growled for them to flee. The crowd hesitated, feeling strangely obligated to help the strange vampire because it helped them escape the hell dimension that they had come from.
They changed their minds when they saw one of their giant jailors making a last ditch effort to get back at them coming out of the portal and ran like hell. The vampire saw this and swung his sword and neatly slashed the thing's head off and kicked the rest of its body back into the closing portal.
"How long was I in that hell-hole?" The dirt-covered vampire growled at thin air.
"A millennium, or a moment?" A disembodied voice only he could hear replied. In the vampire's mind's eye, he saw the unrelenting smirk of the being who had introduced himself as Eternity. "I stand outside the rim of time and dwell not in past or future ages; there is only the now, Angel. What matters is this: you are back. Maybe a little further than where you're supposed to be, but congratulations all the same. You're home."
Angel, the hybrid vampire with a permanent soul heaved a heavy sigh of relief. Only to stiffen at the being's next words.
"By the way, never lose your situational awareness in a new area." Eternity said. "I taught you better than that."
The former Aurelian vampire never saw the tranquilizer dart that hit him on the right shoulder.
"Bastard." He muttered as blackness took him while the last thing he saw was a pair of military boots as it made its way warily towards him.
At the same time, a signal thought to be lost started to alert JARVIS of another potential situation.
The vampire with a soul had somehow returned to this reality.
Xander ordered the AI to watch out for further anomalous reading with a "wait and see" approach.
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Roughly one week later, still unconscious due to the drugs, the vampire hybrid's prone form was dumped right back into the alley where they had abducted it.
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Christine Joy was NOT having a good day. She was late for work earlier that day, thanks in part to her busted up alarm clock, and other was the fact that she had thrown out her most recent boyfriend because he couldn't handle her lifestyle as a journalist. To make her day even worse, her boss decided to send her out with a few other journalists from rival papers to the research station situated near a frigging volcano. A supposedly recently active volcano, they said.
"Can we get out of here now?" One of her more nervous colleagues asked for the tenth time. She partly agreed with the whiney man. The whole area was a little warmer than it should be for the current weather, active volcano notwithstanding. Already, she saw that some of the scientists traded worried glances. A few of them even started to pack in some of their more mobile equipment. The earth beneath them suddenly rumbled and the plumes of smoke that came from the volcano got heavier. Instinctively, they KNEW something was about had happened as the far-off black cloud loomed closer and closer.
The signal for bedlam was the fact that one of the scientists was overheard to have said, "This doesn't make any sense, its happening too fast, the seismic readings are off the charts! Walt, tell the others that we have to evacuate!"
What followed was a concerted mad dash for their respective vehicles – cars and helicopter alike. Christine stared at the sky before she got into the large CH-47 Chinook that brought most of them here. The black-gray mass that they thought that was still far away approached them rapidly. It ran over the helicopter as it barely cleared the largest makeshift building on the site and plowed it into the hastily abandoned research station.
The last thing she could remember before she passed out was the suffocating darkness that followed after their screams finally died out.
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She awoke to the muffled sounds of metal banging against metal and she remembered where she was and what had happened. She gathered herself and tried to look around in the pitched darkness, the stale air inside the downed Chinook made it hard to breathe. However, in the darkness, she was able to hear that a few of them also came to as evidenced by the moans and groans of pain that rose steadily inside the craft.
She gave out a sudden yelp as the entire craft itself lurched and let out a loud metallic groan. The entire transport shuddered again as a high-pitched whine filled the air around them, then she felt that the whole transport being slowly lifted upwards!
Christine chose to ignore the panic that grew around her as part of her mind tried to process the unthinkable. She glanced at the cracked, but unbroken window beneath her when the Chinook tipped over on her side when it settled. The dirt and ash fell away from the window as the entire craft continued to lift off the ground. Light started to filter in as more dirt and ash fell from the craft on its way upwards, it was only then that she noticed something strange attached to the left side of her window. It was a silver-like metal head, and it swiveled to stare right back at her.
I'm hallucinating, she thought. I'm still unconscious and probably dying. There was no way outside of her fantasy that a knight in shining armor had just arrived to rescue her. If she was indeed about to go, she was at least thankful that she got to go with a nice childhood fantasy.
If this was a fantasy, the more lucid part of her mind asked, why did she hurt all over?
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Xander had gotten wind of the incident from JARVIS earlier while he was at school and faked an upset stomach to run into the bathroom and sneaked out of the school grounds while his LMD replaced him. He knew it would take several hours, maybe even days, until a well-organized rescue operation could get to those trapped under the eruption. A few moments later, he and his Technites on board the Halcyon, blasted towards the site.
From the view one of his new probes provided him from above, the area around them was almost inaccessible by land vehicles without it being a major undertaking. Soot and ash were still flying around in large quantities, but it was not a problem for him and the Halcyon. A few of his larger Technites came along with him on this mission and some of them separated to broaden the search for survivors whilst Xander's main target was the largest piece of metal easily found: the downed CH-47 Chinook that crashed into the only building for miles around the site.
With the help of the Halcyon's own larger repulsor cannons, he went to work and shifted ash and debris away from the targeted area. The work was grueling because the volcano was still in the process of spewing everything out, and the window of opportunity for those trapped within the buried craft had narrowed down with each passing second. Once Hal was able to clear a sufficient amount of the ash and soot from the wreckage, he went to work on the lava that was on its way down while his creator slowly lifted the badly damaged craft.
The re-modified weapons platform used a variant of the repulsor technology and energy shielding to stave off the flow of lava away from the area while a few Technites gouged a deep trench in order to change its course with the same substance they used to shore up the underground city a few galaxies away. Those with heavier shielding went straight towards the volcano and sought a way to prevent it from further doing damage.
Xander situated himself underneath the tipped end of the damaged craft and slowly lifted it up, wincing all the way at the groans and bangs of the stressed metal. He suddenly felt eyes on him. He turned in the direction he thought it was coming from and saw a female face that peeked out from the cracked window nearest him. He knew that Digit was out there amongst the team in and around the volcano, so he sent a request to Persat to find a way inside the craft and supply much needed oxygen. Judging from the glazed look on the face on the window, air was becoming more than just a problem.
"Sir." JARVIS's voice crackled inside his helmet. "I've intercepted a communiqué that was broadcast blindly that had you as an intended recipient."
"Play it." Xander replied as he gritted his teeth. Even with the enhanced strength the armor provided, the entire weight of the craft he held aloft was astounding when filled with people and whatever else they crammed inside it, he couldn't move faster even if he wanted to, the whole thing might fall apart and kill the survivors inside while en route. As it was, he hoped to manage a top speed of about forty miles per hour as he tore through the ash clouds, in his opinion, at a snail's pace.
"…to the unidentified craft and pilot on site." The voice said over the helmet speakers. "We have alerted and prepared the nearest hospital for your arrival. Rapid response teams have mobilized to assist you in any way we can. The coordinates are…"
Xander scanned it as the onboard companion node AI JARVIS installed in the armor processed the data and plotted its course with ETA. He urged JARVIS to fashion a reasonable, but scrambled reply and concentrated on getting there as fast as he was able without ripping the wreckage apart. When Hal saw that his creator was clear, he let go of the lava that he shielded back to let Xander take off safely and released the cleverly concealed large mechanical Waldo arms to aid his creator in getting the craft safely towards the hospital in the distance. The re-modified smart weapons platform refocused the energy shield he used on the lava and trained it tightly over the damaged Chinook to ensure its survivability along the way.
Both man and machine carefully made their way towards their destination at an agonizingly slow pace.
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Mountain View Stars Hospital was awash with chaos as trauma teams frantically prepared for the worst. Ever since they got the call less than an hour ago, they recalled every available staff they could contact. A few hundred military personal also arrived and helped clear their parking lot to make way for whatever was coming. They were vague about it and even drove off a few of the press that weren't with the group that went to the volcano. A few of the more foolishly determined newshounds with cameras hung back a quarter of a mile out in case anything happened.
Sure enough, some started to notice a speck in the horizon that approached the hospital from the direction of the volcano. The general in charge of the mobilization looked through his binocs and felt his jaw drop, the cigar he'd been chomping on the last fifteen minutes landed on the asphalt.
A hushed silence fell across the hospital grounds when they could now see what he had just seen through the binoculars.
The mirror action of dropped jaws graced every face in and out of the hospital, from military personnel, doctors, and civilian patients who were able to look through the window. More than half, soldiers included, crossed themselves at the sight of a dust covered silver figure and a strange aircraft with robotic arms lift/escort the damaged Chinook to them.
General Landry recovered quickly and noted to his dismay that most of his men were as dumbfounded as he was, and more than a few stayed that way. Decorum people, he thought, we're the goddamned military. He opened up on the radio and ordered them to make way for final approach. As if by magic, the soldiers snapped out of their stunned daze and some of them lit up flares to mark the landing area while the rest stood at the ready with the trauma personnel. The ones that lit the flares brought out strong directional lights and went through the motions to guide the being that held the damaged helicopter aloft in as if it was landing on an aircraft carrier.
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The SG-1 team scrambled into the briefing room to watch the wall monitor, they have been waiting for news ever since word came through that someone they met "out" there had somehow managed to be on Earth and started to help the populace out in the open. They had just recently cured Teal'c of Apophis's brainwashing via the combined use of Bratac's ministrations and the new holographic chamber only to come out of it with news from Hammond that their new extraterrestrial friend made very public waves on Earth.
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Xander saw the hospital without his armor's aid clearly now, and noted both military and hospital personnel milling around the cleared parking lot that was large enough to accommodate them. He unnecessarily followed the men waving the beacons towards the ground as he gingerly descended with care. Once down, he flew to where the mangled rotors were and ripped them off to make a large egress. Trauma units moved into place immediately to help the ones still unconscious while some of the military people aided those able to move out on their own.
Xander was about to fly off when he heard a soldier still within the craft emit a loud oath. He landed back down and they made way for him into the damaged craft. He found that the woman who had earlier peeked out of the window couldn't get up because she was trapped between one of the seats that had come loose in the crash and that the space was too small for the rescuers to move out of the way.
He gestured for the soldier to step away and stood in front of the offending piece of debris, he grabbed hold of the wedged end and placed a hand on the stressed bulkhead. With muttered warning, he pushed the arm on the bulkhead outwards and the other that held the wedged seat towards him. They watched in awe as a loud screech of metal reverberated around them as the bulkhead twisted outwards and allowed Xander to free the seat that trapped the reporter within.
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Christine watched in mute disbelief as the hallucination before her tore off the seat that trapped her and held out an armored hand towards her. Going along with it, she accepted and with great difficulty, staggered upwards. The obviously male armored being led her to the closest gurney and lay her down. He went to move away, but stopped when he noticed that she hadn't let go of him.
"You are safe with these people." Her knight said in a strange voice. "They can help you more than I now."
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The young, armored genius spent several quick runs back and forth from the site to the hospital as he ferried several more survivors his Technites were able to find, cocooned in an energy shield of his own creation for safety that dispersed once they landed. So far, only three had turned up missing and neither Xander nor his Technites could find any trace of them.
Xander stayed a little bit more to see if he was needed, once he saw that everything was all right, he moved back to the wreck to move it out of the way but was stopped by a man with a General's rank on his shoulders.
"May I help you, General Landry?" Xander asked as he read off the man's name patch.
"We'd like to thank you for helping out on this disaster." Landry opened, and hated what he was about to say next. "But I've got orders to ask you to come with us for debriefing."
The armored being cocked his head to one side, unsure if he heard right. "I do not serve under your planet's government." He said loudly, shocking those present as he confirmed several outlandish theories they had of him being extraterrestrial.
"Who DO you serve then?" Landry asked, curious in spite of himself.
"You're world." Xander replied, amused at his own answer. That should let them stew over that one.
"I do not understand." The General said. "You said you don't serve the government, and if it's not, and not ours, whose?"
"I do not cater to any one government." Xander said as he lifted off. "I choose to aid your world."
"Wait!" Landry cried, but it was too late as both the armored visitor and his amazing craft flew out of range of anything he could muster.
"Damn it!" He cursed and turned to his 2IC. "Josephs, tell me that our boys with their eyes in the skies can track him."
"No sir, not even a blip." Josephs replied. "Not even our new bird up there can track him. We can see him and talk to him fine, but nada on the tracking once he doesn't want us to track him. Visual tracking is almost useless once he ups his speed beyond the normal range of what our boys could follow by eyeball. It's like as if he's a ghost."
"Ah hell, it was a thought." Landry sighed. It was a long shot anyway. That was one reason why they blindly broadcasted their message to him when they got wind of this mess. "All right, get our boys in there and see if we can salvage the flight data recorder as evidence to those bigwigs back in DC. At least we didn't go back empty handed."
"And the reporters?" Josephs asked and pointed towards the crowd lollygagging outside the established perimeter. Someone had to say it anyway.
"A bit late to think of a gag order when the cat's out of the bag, son." His CO replied. "Let's go."
"Look!" A voice amongst the survivors said as he pointed towards the direction where they had come from.
All eyes turned to see another miracle, the volcano, for lack of a better description, was "capped". The ground beneath them shuddered imperceptibly for a few seconds and was finally still.
"I'll be damned." The General said in admiration. "Not only did he rescue the scientists and the reporters, but he actually found a way to stop an active volcano."
He shrugged and led his 2IC off to the side for a more private chat, on his way out, he overheard one of the rescued scientists comment to his colleague.
"Damn, Virgil." The Asian scientist said to his friend as they gazed in the direction the black plume of smoke that was once the sign of an active volcano. "When that thing clears up, cleaning that site's gonna be a bitch when we're able to get back. And to think, that guy's probably the same guy who rescued your dad about a week ago."
Landry almost paused in mid-step, a thoughtful look on his face. He whispered to his second in command as they drew further away from earshot. "See what you can come up with the Tracy family while you're at it."
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Xander flew over the destroyed area on the Halcyon and picked up the rest of his Technites as they finished "capping" – for lack of a better term – the volcano. He surveyed the damage and whistled inside his helmet. "Don't know what else you guys did down there, but it worked. Thanks a lot guys."
His new companions replied with a chorus of "Aaaaw Shucks" in thanks, even though most of them were covered in soot, ash, and half-encrusted in drying volcanic lava, they were happy and content at being acknowledged.
Digit couldn't help it and added something. "This comes out of our danger pay too, right?"
"What?" Xander joked as they left the area after one more look-see. "Like free cleaning, lube, and the chance to kick the bad guys in the ass not enough?"
"We know where you stash your hidden supply of Twinkies." Bitz replied.
"Point." Xander conceded to the blackmail joke. "But the next time I see your brother dry hump the toaster when he gets drunk from a recharge, all bets are off."
"It was only ONCE!" Wetz protested from his place on the Halcyon while the rest of the Technites present made disgusted noises. Like it was his fault his "AC" wasn't compatible with the power charger's "DC" and turned him into a technologically stoned hippie. "It was an accident I tell you, it won't happen again!"
Xander shuddered at the memory when he walked into the kitchen that mormning and found a highly "intoxicated" Technite as it attempted to seduce the toaster he had modified months prior before he left for space. Never again will he look at household appliances in the same way he did before.
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Once the latest news broadcast ended in regards to their mysterious ally, the premier SG team looked at each other with worry written on their face. With every news broadcast, their friend seemed very determined to make his presence known to the world.
"Word is out." Hammond said as he put the red phone down in the briefing room's own private line. "The President and the Join Chiefs want you to try to establish contact with our armored visitor in the hopes he would join us, even if it means going public as a last resort."
"What?!" Sam asked, aghast. "Why?"
"There's too many witnesses to the bank hostage situation to effectively cover it up." Hammond said, face pale at the implications of what his commander in chief had told him. "That rescue out in space was also verified and broadcast all over the globe."
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Back in Sunnydale, a certain figure sat behind a large desk in contemplation as he watched the fires of yet another television blown via fireball die down. His plans had been spiraling out of control ever since that bastard chaos mage unknowingly brought some stupid superhero to life over a year ago. Good clean fun, he said. Only one night of revelry and unmitigated chaos, he promised.
Didn't the idiot mage know that too much chaos on top of a Hellmouth was like seducing Murphy with a large sweet lollipop?
Now he had to deal with this, he shook his head in disgust. He had thought that the silver idiot had gone the way of the dodo during the Angelus incident, but no, it seemed he was back. The time he had been building up for the last few centuries was close to fruition and no way in the ninth circle of hell was he going to stop now. No leftover Halloween possessed buffoon was going to interfere with him either.
The door to his office suddenly burst open as two vampires hurried in as they carried in a battered body and dumped him onto the floor.
"Well now." He said jovially towards the sprawled figure. "I think its time we had that talk. You don't call, you don't write, you even run when you of all people should know when I summon. Why, I think you're trying to avoid coming back to Sunnydale no matter what I do. And I even asked nicely."
The figure lying on the floor only mumbled in pain.
"Tut-tut. Come now Ethan such language coming from a fine British gentleman." Richard Wilkins said as he knelt down as he whispered into the chaos mage's ear. "Did your mother know you kissed her with a foul mouth? So tell me, who and what was the Halloween persona that was powerful enough to cause this much chaos in my darling little town? As far as I knew, I never saw anything resembling a Paladin on display in your former shop. Either you were hiding it from me, or it was something else entirely."
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-TBC-
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A/N: This is largely unbeta'd. Any errors will be fixed as always, when I have time. I have no net connection at the moment and am using the library PC to upload this while I wait to watch the new Star Trek movie. I figure i should at least treat myself to a movie after another month of non-stop work and rarely enough free time.