A Spark of Genius Chapter 36: Siege, a Buffy: The Vampire Slayer + Justice League Crossover fanfic

Spark of Genius

Disclaimer: I don't own Buffy verse, Girl Genius verse, DC comics or any of the other smatterings of pop culture and literary ideas that I refer to in my story, I just tread through a few other sandboxes. Oh, and several names are made up, some are real, but the facts have been changed to protect the corrupt and innocent equally.

AN. Yeah, sorry about that semi-cliffhanger in the last chapter, but it had to end there. Now this next chapter is going to be a doozy, epic in length at approximately 33.5k words and with a lot of stuff happening all at the same relative time; because time moves differently in the different dimensions. All I need to say is, Xander's luck, both the good and the bad, is about to strike again. BWA HA HA HA HA HA…

AN2: This chapter has not been Beta read yet, so there may be mistakes still present. That said, I will be posting the beta version when my beta has a chance to finish editing the 61 pages of this epic length chapter. I didn't want you, the reader, to have to wait too much longer to see what happens next. I hope you enjoy it and give me your thoughts. Cheers!

'Thought'

"Speech"

/foreign language/

Chapter 36: Siege

"They are in front of us, behind us, and we are flanked on both sides by an enemy that outnumbers us 29:1. They can't get away from us now!"
- Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller, USMC

The drums had continued their staccato beat all through the afternoon and into the evening, sometimes rising in intensity, sometimes waning, but never disappearing or stopping and if anything increasing in the number of drums that were joining the call. Through all this, however, Xander ignored the ill-gotten bunch of demon beatniks and their illusive drum circle and rather focused on finally unpacking the shrunken hydroponics/laboratory and other supplies from his saddle bags.

No, this wasn't the same type of hydroponics that would have been more easily recognized in the California where he grew up; home of the hashish and land of the high. Rather the hydroponics set that Xander unshrunk, after taking it out of his pack and finding a large open plot of land, was a three story tall diamond hard glass encased food growing establishment that used a mixture of chemicals and nano-clank technology to speed up and then enlarge produce at an ever increasing rate; it even made different types of meat flavored protein in its laboratory. Frankly Xander was incredibly busy, as not only was he basically setting up a farm from scratch, he was also busy unloading crate after crate of medicine and dried goods. In the boxes were several thousand compound bows that Xander had explained to Hippolyta how to use and then let the Amazon's loose with, along with several million pre-packaged and shrunk arrows. Xander then made sure to unload the real necessities, namely several tons of Twinkies and chocolate. Though the Twinkies were an obvious must for being stuck in a hell dimension, Xander was more thrilled about having all the chocolate. "Why" you may ask? It was simple, you try being stuck in a hell dimension with several thousand women who all have their cycle's synched, you try that and let me know if you don't think having lots of chocolate to pass around isn't the most important thing in your life; Xander may have been more than slightly insane, but he wasn't stupid.

Xander continuously toiled under the hot sun while trying to get unloaded, all while herding cats; aka the recalcitrant Amazons who didn't know whether to act like children who had just had a spanking or whether they should fall back to acting like the prideful female warriors that they had always been.

Still, Xander was able to accomplish his work through modulating the tone of his voice so that he neither came across as kowtowing to the Amazons and their feeling of superiority but nor did he come across as commanding and ruling over them. Slowly, as the afternoon moved towards evening and the suns began to set, The Grey Knight and the Amazons had come to some sort of unspoken agreement to work together for their combined survival. Finally, right about the time that the torches and fires were being lit throughout the city, the last crate had been unloaded and unshrunk in its proper place, and Xander had a chance to finally take off his Grey Knight armor and semi-relax.

Xander had pitched his tent near the front gates of the city, situating himself and his demon slaying gear close to where it would be needed if there was a need for him to sally forth against a demonic foe. Sitting on a crate in only his black nano-clank armor, his Grey Knight armor clam shelled open and resting against a five foot square ammo crate, Xander sat on a chair some unnamed Amazon had given him while he puttered with a screwdriver and his damaged helmet.

"Come on you little bugger, get out of there." Xander groused to himself, biting his tongue as it was hanging out of the side of his mouth as he concentrated on trying to get the optical sensor to dislodge from its location in the eye socket of his skeletal helmet. The composite material of the optical sensors had melted while several of the metal parts in the sensors had outright burned out. The distinct sound of rattling metal could be heard in the sensors, like a burnt out light bulb that tinkled every time Xander's screwdriver slipped and jostled the helmet. To add insult to injury of the blasted screwdriver not getting just the right spot to eject the eye sensor, Xander's sweat from the day's battle and following work of unpacking continued to drip out of his hair and down his forehead, stinging his eyes.

"Crap!" Xander cursed as the sweat again got in his eye, just as the screwdriver slipped and stabbed his hand holding the helmet in place; the screwdriver bent when it impacted the palm of his nano-armored fist.

"Damn it!" Xander cursed again and threw the screwdriver and his helmet down onto the ground in disgust while he mentally ordered his armor to retreat and bare his hands so that he could wipe the sweat and grime out of his eyes.

"Um, Grey Knight." A female voice asked tentatively in slightly accented English.

"What?" Xander spat out without really looking who he was answering while trying to clear the stinging salt from his eyes.

"Oh, uh, sorry to bother you, I'll just leave you alone." The voice said hesitantly with a bit of a hitch in the voice, a second voice growled a bit in the background.

"No wait, sorry." Xander said as he further rescinded his armor so that his forearm was uncovered and he used that to finish wiping his face so he could see who he was talking to. Looking up Xander saw that it was the blonde Amazon whose life he had saved earlier that day, and she was looking hesitantly at him with a tray in her hands. Artemis was standing behind the blonde girl with a bit of a frown on the Shim Tar's face, yet it wasn't the same angry scowl that the Amazon had cast at Xander previously. From the smells wafting towards Xander's sensitive nose, whatever was on the tray smelled delicious.

Xander smiled at the girl, realizing that she must have only been about fourteen years old or there about, on the cusp of womanhood but not quite there yet given the bits of baby fat that still clung to her face. "Sorry about that, I was just frustrated and it has been a long day. What can I do for you…?" Xander drew out the last part of the question, implying that he wanted to know the girl's name.

"Dina." The girl replied with a slight blush to her cheeks while continuing to fight an internal battle between whether she should stare at her feet or actually gaze back at the hero who had saved her life.

Xander's smile grew a bit as he waited for her to add something after stating her name. Finally with a smile and a slight chuckle he decided to be nice so he winked at Artemis and spoke again to the girl, "It's nice to meet you Dina, I am Alexander, but you can call me Xander. What can I do for you?"

Dina looked hesitantly at Artemis, who nodded in encouragement before Dina turned and smiled at The Grey Knight.

"I noticed you have been busy working all day, and haven't had a chance to eat or clean up. All of the baths are full of women at the moment, but I brought you some soup and an aryballos and strigil to cleanse yourself with." Dina said with a smile in slightly accented but perfect English as she pulled back the cloth that covered the tray, exposing a steaming bowl of barley and pork soup, a clamshell decorated round pot, and a weird curved stick or blade made out of bronze. Dina moved forward and put the tray down next to Xander on a crate of arrows that Xander had scattered his tools across the top.

Xander smiled at the young girl, "It smells good, but um, what is the aryballos and stirgil, I think you called it, what are they for?" He questioned as he took another good sniff of the stew and realized how hungry he was.

Dina looked quizzically at Xander, but before she could reply, Artemis answered Xander's question a bit snootily, "Why to clean yourself of course. Does the world of Men not contain the common decency to clean themselves like civilized people?"

Dina frowned, turned and punched Artemis in the shoulder, "Be nice sister. This is the one who saved not only my life, but yours twice, and you dishonor us with your words." Dina said with some heat in her voice. "Now apologize and explain the proper use of the stirgil as the Knight obviously hasn't used one before." Dina demanded as she crossed her arms and glared at her older sister.

Artemis paled for a second, and then blushed at her sister's rebuke before turning to Alexander and giving a slight nod of her head with a bit of anger and humiliation in her eyes, "I apologize." Artemis gritted out, but it was easily recognizable that she didn't really want to apologize.

Dina stomped her sandaled foot and glared at Artemis, and Artemis hurried to her explanation as she looked at Xander and moved towards the aryballos pitcher and stirgil. "The aryballos is a pitcher of perfumed oil which you rub onto your skin." Artemis explained in English as she picked up the little pitcher and poured a small bit of oil into her hand before rubbing the oil up and down her exposed left arm from shoulder to wrist, making sure not to miss the underside.

Xander couldn't help but smile at the play of muscles in Artemis's arm as she oiled herself up, but his smile didn't seem to irk Artemis so much as to cause her to blush a bit as he admired her athletic form.

Quickly continuing the explanation, Artemis followed her earlier statement by picking up the curved bronze stick, "The stirgil," she said as she referenced the dull blade in her hand, "Is then used to scrape off the oil along with any sweat and grime that may have accumulated during your endeavors." She finished the explanation by deftly scraping off the oil and leaving her arm with a slight sheen of oil but otherwise clean and with a healthy glow to the skin of her arm. Finished, she took a step back after setting down the stirgil next to the pitcher and turned to Alexander. "It is proper to clean first before eating, at least while in civilized company." She couldn't help but add a slight underhanded comment at the end. A comment that earned an "ahem!" and glare from her sister Dina.

Xander merely smiled and nodded politely, ignoring the small slight for now, as he pushed his hair back out of his eyes, his hair having grown out a bit since his last haircut and leaving his dark hair touching the back of his neck but not to his shoulders. Standing up, Xander reached for the aryballos pitcher while at the same time mentally calling his armor to shrink into a pair of tight almost boxer-brief type shorts that clung to the muscles of his legs.

Dina eeped, Artemis blushed, and across the courtyard from Xander an Amazon carrying a load of wood walked into a poll and fell over as she was distracted by the sudden exposure of the male Adonis in their midst.

Xander just smirked to himself as his senses took this all in, and he realized that he had an audience as he started to oil up the bulging muscles of his exposed chest and arms before moving to the parts of his shoulders he could reach and then his legs.

"Holly Hera thank you!" Xander's super hearing heard muttered from an Amazon sharpening spears somewhere behind his right shoulder.

Xander tried to hide his smirk but failed to fully keep the blushing Artemis and Dina from seeing the sparkle in his eye. Xander winked at Artemis when he caught her checking him out, and the Shim-Tar blushed scarlet for a second, looked away, before realizing what she was doing and then turning to glare at Xander with her arms crossed before her chest.

Xander just chuckled, which caused Artemis to turn even more red and angry but refuse to look away from Alexander as her pride wouldn't allow her to flee in humiliation from a man… even such a good looking man such as Alexander.

Not so long ago, Xander would have been the one to be bright red with embarrassment just at the idea of oiling himself up half naked in front of several hundred openly staring women, some of them even drooling a little bit. However, after living with Tara and Dora for so many months, and after having sex with the likes of Catwoman, there wasn't much about his body that embarrassed Xander anymore. Gone was the shy boy who drew attention away from his body through the use of baggy clothing with glaring colors that blinded the eye. Here today was a tall hulking figure straight out of the artistic drawings of Greek heroes, but with the impossible muscle mass that only came from the meta-gene or some super athletic strength and ability. Xander's body was that of a god's among mere mortals, and through the use of Science and the innate powers of the primal, Xander's body was a honed statute of handsome beauty and athleticism that Michelangelo couldn't even dream of when sculpting his famous statute of David.

Covered in oil that glistened and shown in the torch light, muscles playing and moving under his skin as he rubbed the oil into his body, well, the Amazons might have disliked men as a whole, but they weren't dead. And now, presented with a male body that could make a lesbian think about maybe batting for the home team, the Amazons stared in silent drooling awe.

Finishing with the oil, Xander first hesitantly, then with a skill as if borne to it, used the stirgil to scrape the oil from his shoulders, chest, arms and then legs, starting at the top and then working his way down. Alexander had to admit that it felt rather refreshing actually, and it was a nice boost to his ego to be able to stun the Amazons after everything they had said to him in the past.

An idea came to Xander, and with a smirk he turned to the Amazon Artemis who was now more staring than glaring at him. Holding up the stirgil and aryballos to the Shim-Tar he asked, "Would you be so kind as to get my back?" he questioned with a twinkle in his eye and his patented lopsided grin.

Artemis's eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open, stunned for a second, before it shut with a 'clack' before dropping open and closing several times as she was caught speechless by the tall heavily muscled man before her, half naked and shining with oil asking her to scrub his back.

Just as Artemis's senses came back to her and she glared as she started to spit out an insult, Xander interrupted, "Or I could ask your little sister." He said, his smirk growing a bit as he looked at Dina who 'Eep'd' again, the young girl almost looking like a tomato or a pomegranate her face was so red. "I mean, it is the least you could do since I saved your life twice." Xander added, knowing he had Artemis caught like a fly in his web.

Artemis looked frantically from her little sister to Alexander, then back again, before glaring at Xander and stating, "Fine! Turn around." The prideful war leader of the Bana-Mighdall Amazons refused to be embarrassed by this fine hunk of a man who looked so amazing in that oil that she could eat him up…

Artemis shook her head to get those thoughts out of her head, and blushed more. Xander's smile grew, almost like he had guessed her thinking. Unwilling to be daunted by a Man, though the thoughts in her head noted that she was no longer referring to him as a 'mere' man, she did a rush job of pouring the oil onto his back and rubbing it in before scraping it off and flinging the stirgil down when she finished.

"There! Done." Artemis said in a huff, swinging around so fast that he braid almost swung up to hit Xander in the face as she marched off in a tizzy, cursing men and her attraction to the annoying pest under her breath but not loud enough for a normal person to hear as she stomped off.

Of course, The Grey Knight wasn't a normal person, a little voice questioned in the back of his mind if he had ever been 'normal,' so he yelled after the departing Shim-Tar, "Thanks Artemis! Appreciate it… oh, and you're not bad looking yourself." He added with a smirk and a wink at the Bana-Mighdall Amazon who had turned to look at him again when he had addressed her.

The look of shock went across her face, before she went red with humiliation and then anger, exclaiming a loud inarticulate growl of "GRRRAAAAH!" as she turned away from the infuriating man and kicked a bucket out of her way as she stormed off.

Xander's smile grew across his face as he turned to Dina and winked, "Was it something I said?" He asked semi-jokingly. Dina just giggled in reply.

Xander just smiled at the girl who was younger than his adopted sister Cassy. With a thought, his armor grew out of its shorts configuration to cover him again from neck to feet while cleaning off his body through their normal systems. Xander had too much fun teasing the Shim Tar, but he did note that the oil cleaning felt good. His nano-clank armor finished rippling and shaping itself into clothing, this time turning into a pair of jeans and a black long sleeved t-shirt as night was settling in and it was starting to grow a bit cold.

Turning and reaching down beside him, Xander retrieved a bundle of firewood that was sitting there, and then with a blur punched the ground with a momentarily armor covered fist before setting up a pyramid of wood and then lighting it on fire with the toastmaster that was sitting on top of the armor crate. Before Dina realized what The Grey Knight was doing, a roaring campfire was already lit before her and she could feel the warmth chasing away the chill that had started to creep in as the suns went down.

Sitting down and pointing to a crate a little to the side of him, Xander politely offered with a smile, "Care to join me as I eat this delicious smelling stew you provided?"

Dina looked at The Grey Knight hesitantly, then back to the direction her sister had disappeared in, then back at Alexander. Before she could say no, Xander sweetened the deal.

"Come on, I won't bite, I promise." He said with a smile as he sat down in his chair and picked up the bowl of soup and set it in his lap. "You can tell me about life growing up in your Amazon tribe, and I can tell you the story about the female warrior who was my hero growing up. And when I finish eating, I'll break out the chocolate and marshmallows and teach you how to make s'mores for dessert." He said with a caring smile.

If the offer of a story about a female warrior who was The Grey Knight's hero wasn't enough, the promise of chocolate and this mysterious s'mores for dessert sealed the deal. Sitting down across from Xander, Dina silently waited for him to start speaking as he took a bite of his stew before swallowing and speaking.

"So let me tell you about the Slayer, one girl chosen in all the world to fight back the powers of evil and to slay the demons and vampires that preyed on human kind." Xander started the story.

Up on the walls and around the courtyard, other Amazons slowed their work to listen, while conversations slowed and stilled so they could hear what this male warrior had to say. Thus one more seed had been planted, and the relationship between The Grey Knight and the Amazon tribes not only started to heal, but also started to grow into something better.

Meanwhile in the darkness of the night outside the walls of Themyscira, the drums continued to play their seemingly random but continuous beat.

The library in Sunnydale High School was quiet even though it wasn't empty like the rest of the school was that time of evening. Though "Sunnydale" syndrome was strong in the population of that southern California town, there was just something that told the natives of the city that it was best to be home and behind closed doors once the sun went down. Normally this was the time when Buffy and the rest of the Scoobies would be getting to be most active, prepping for patrol, researching the next big bad that was due to poke their head out again that night, or just spending time together before they once again entered the trenches in the seemingly never-ending battle with the things that went bump in the night.

Instead, Buffy sat quietly staring off at the shelves of books lost deep in thought while Willow again reread the latest edition of the tales of Xander while in hell. Cordilia had left shortly after the final school bell, having to go to cheerleader practice and then some dinner her parents were dragging her to, while In the background Oz picked softly on his guitar. Oz was deep in thought but allowing his hands to play his unspoken thoughts through his music; which was really the only forum of communication that Oz was ever very expressive with. Jonathan and Andrew were in Giles office discussing Andrew's contacts at Vertigo printing, magic, and how to figure out how come Xander was showing up in a comic book now.

Suddenly, Buffy blinked and broke the semi-silence, "Do you think we failed him Willow?"

Willow had been reading the last part in the latest comic book that they had, the part that spoke about Xander's hero Buffy the Vampire slayer. In turn, Buffy's statement startled Willow, and she set the volume 35 comic book down and blinked before asking, "What? Failed who?"

Buffy turned from staring at the books to scooch up in her seat and look at Willow, "Xander. Do you think we failed him?" Buffy asked, but continued talking before Willow could answer. "I mean, I always looked at him as the normal one, the backup who was good for a joke or to keep our spirits up. Helpful with research sometimes, but more often a distraction… do you think we failed him as a friend, or stopped him from really make a difference like he wanted to?" Buffy asked honestly, doubts and fears of past failures darting through her mind as she remembers how she treated Xander at the Bronze after she returned from the summer with her father in LA. She remembers using Xander to get at Angel, totally ignoring Xander's feelings to get what she wanted and then rubbing it in that she had never thanked him for saving her life.

Buffy stared at the wall and coupled those painful memories with the truth she learned from reading the comic books where Xander told the Amazon's about his life with the Slayer, that it was Xander that had forced Angel to go down into the Master's lair and that it was Xander that had revived her and brought her back to life. It was Xander that had always been there for her, ever since she had arrived in Sunnydale, and if there was one friend who would have fought and died for her, it was Xander. Sure there had been the situation with the Primal, but now Buffy was kicking herself for holding a grudge against Xander for that situation and she was really feeling guilty for holding onto her anger at Xander for dusting Angel. Since Buffy was being honest with herself, she admitted that she hadn't really minded that Xander hadn't been with them ever since Halloween, ignoring the fact that he had saved her from Spike that night. She had more been focusing on the thoughts of Xander as a liability, as a normal person who shouldn't have been stuck in the fray of the battle with the vampires, that he should have stayed normal and left the fighting to people who could actually help out. If she was really honest with herself, then Buffy had to admit that there was a part of her that had been happy that he was able to live a life in another dimension free from the evil that stalked Sunnydale.

"No, no of course not. Xander was our friend, is our friend, he would never have thought that you failed him…" Willow's babbling answer, trying to make Buffy get out of her funk, interrupted Buffy's stream of thoughts.

Buffy just turned to look at Willow and stared for a second as the red headed friend babbled on, filling the silence with words.

"No, I think I did fail him." Buffy slowly stated, "I was so focused on being forced to be the Slayer and not able to live a normal life that I either kind of ignored him or just expected him to do what I wanted or help with what I needed." Buffy said honestly to herself but easily loud enough to where even Oz stopped playing on his guitar to listen.

"No, no that's not true Buffy, you were his friend…" Willow started to intercede, shaking her head in disagreement.

"Was I?" Buffy said looking right at Willow, and stopping the babble before it could start again. "I mean really, I knew he liked me, but then you remember what I did to him at the Bronze, just to get Angel's attention before I just left Xander there. You remember what I did to you too, I knew you liked him." Buffy said before looking to Oz, "That was of course before you Oz, but still I'm sorry."

To which Oz merely nodded his head in understanding without saying a word. Willow was silent, just looking at Buffy as this was the first time Buffy had really acknowledged that she had hurt Willow's feelings with taking Xander away again, especially after Willow had spilled to Buffy how she had a crush on Xander since forever.

Buffy continued on and waved her arms in the air as she spoke, "I mean, he saved my life and all I could do was whine about how Angel this or Angel that, or how hard my life was, never once asking about what his life was like at home and why he was always free no matter what time of night or day. I mean, if I needed his help or for him to just go get donuts for us only because I was having a Slayer craving, he dropped everything and did it." Buffy stated with a sigh as she looked down for a moment before looking back at Willow, "I mean, at least you knew about his family and did something about it. Letting him crash at your place, I never even asked why he could get away so easily without his parents ever saying anything about it… I mean, I at least had to make up excuses or sneak out of my window otherwise my mom would have grounded me." Buffy sighed again.

"I screwed up." Buffy finished before going silent, staring at the books blankly again.

Willow looked at Oz, trying to see if he could add any words that might help in the situation, but Oz just shrugged back in reply. He wasn't the psych type to be able to help Buffy with her emotions, that just wasn't him as he tended to keep everything in except for when talking to Willow in private.

Giles, Andrew and Jonathan walked out of Giles office. Giles cleared his throat, interrupting the conversation as he addressed Buffy, Willow and Oz with a frown on his face, "We just got off the phone with the public relations rep for Vertigo press." He explained as he came in and stood by the table, now having the gang's full attention.

"They were first denying all existence of such a comic book, but then finally admitted that their printing machines had printed off several series of the comic, but that they had no idea how." Giles finished explaining while taking off his glasses to give them a thorough polishing with his handkerchief.

"Yeah." Andrew chimed in excitedly, "They said that the night watch came in and that the printing machines just came to life and started printing out the comic books by themselves! It's so cool! The manufacturing engineers that they keep on staff couldn't get the machines to stop, and even when they took all of the reams of paper away from it, and all the ink, the machines still spit out the comics. It's been happening every night, and some nights multiple different issues are published. It's like the coolest thing to happen in the comic book world since the Death of Superman and Superman Returns!" Andrew said excitedly.

"Indeed." Giles chimed in, his glare at Andrew silencing the lad and causing Andrew to become suddenly interested with his feet. Giles turned to look at Willow and Buffy, "They asked us how we had gotten a hold of the information we had, and if we knew how to stop it from happening. That's when we hung up. We are still no closer to figuring out how these comics are being printed or even why." Giles finished with a sigh of his own as he set his glasses back on his nose and answered hesitantly on their findings.

"Guys, I think I know who is responsible." Oz stated, his voice cutting through the silence after Gile's statement, for when Oz spoke people listened.

Oz picked up the comic book that was sitting in front of him, issue five though it didn't really matter the number. Pointing his figure to what was written right under the issue number, the cover facing the rest of the gang, everybody could read the name of the writers for the comic book:

"Mix & Spitlick," Willow red it out loud before gasping and paling.

It was silent for a second as everybody took in the latest info, but then Buffy broke the silence.

"Isn't that the name of that imperial what's it that is keeping Xander in that other dimension?" Buffy questioned.

Jonathan smirked before quipping, "I think Mister Mxyzptlk is a bit short to be a storm trooper, the word you're looking for is dimensional imp, not imperial."

Buffy's responding glare at being corrected had Jonathan remembering that he may have left something he needed to get in Giles office.

"The will to live is strong with that one." Andrew mumbled to himself, as he watched Levinson escape to Gile's office.

The other's ignored the quip by rather watching the now angry Slayer stomp across the library and punch through one of the wooden training dummies that had been set up.

"GRAAAAH!" Buffy shouted as her fist took off the head of the training dummy in an explosion of sawdust. Turning she started to stalk towards the exit door to the library while muttering, "Just can't get a break, and now that thing that's messing with Xander is screwing with us also. I'm going to go slay something, come on Willow and Oz." Buffy finished as she left, grabbing a battle axe from beside the door as she stormed out to go on patrol.

Willow and Oz just looked at each other, before hurrying to catch up with the irate slayer. Between the introspective thinking, and the imp messing with her friend and now the rest of the Scoobies, Buffy was going to lay some serious ass kicking on any Vampires that were foolish enough to cross her that night.

"GRAAAAH!" Wonder Woman shouted as she punched the head off of a stone golem that had charged her with a spear. Around her, Batman, Superman and the Green Lantern also destroyed the stone Spartoi, the supposed children of Ares, fearsome warriors that supposedly grew from the teeth of the slain dragon that defended Ares' sacred spring. In this case, statutes that lined the halls and the gardens defending this hidden temple on the island of Cyprus had come to life the moment that the Justice League had crossed the threshold into the temple in their search for Circe.

The entrance to the temple had been between the straddled legs of a large marble statute depicting Ares, some twenty feet tall and made from what looked like a single piece of stone, fists planted defiantly on his hips.

All it took was one moment of hyperactivity by Flash, who hadn't headed Diana's warning not to cross the threshold, and then a surprisingly fast stone fist had connected with the speedy runner's head, knocking the Flash unconscious to the ground.

Superman had saved The Flash's life when he had sped forward and caught the giant descending stone foot of the golem shaped like Ares, saving Flash's life but getting a fist to the gut from the giant magical statue. The blow had sent Superman smashing through the wall of the temple. A hole that had Superman fighting a retreating action out of as the stone Spartoi inside the temple came to life and attacked the Man of Steel; forcing him back to the garden.

Bronze javelins were launched through the air at the heroes fought a holding action to protect the downed Flash who was shakily getting back to his feet after Batman administered first aid and one of the Flash's own Sparkbucks medicated caffeine shots. Soon the Flash was back in the fight, and the heroes continued to battle the increasing numbers of stone warriors that poured forth from the hidden temple.

Batman flipped and twisted through the air, launching himself off of the head of two attacking warriors that he kicked off of before landing on the shoulders of the large magical golem of Ares. With a deft flick, Batman's black cape wrapped itself tightly over the head of the giant statute and then he darted away but left the cape behind; jumping of the giant statues shoulders before the magical construct could catch the Dark Knight.

The Green Lantern zipped above, dodging arrows and Javelins thrown at him, every now and then transforming a shield that would block one of the incoming missiles, all while using his ring to form sledge hammers that crushed the attacking golems from above.

"Hold the line, I think I can see the last of them exiting the temple!" John Stewart yelled out to his fellow Justice League members.

The Flash zipped by, tripping several of the Sparoti archers that were lined up together, and making them fall over like a row of dominoes. Superman zipped in and stomped on them, crushing torsos and stone limbs before the constructs could get back up. Superman took a blow to the face from a pack of hoplites, and reeled back, only to charge back in punching, every fist blow shattering and pulverizing the marble statutes while bronze arrows and javelins continued to bounce off his frame. "We can do this, but somebody is going to have to take out the large statute, I can't seem to do it damage. It must be magical!" Kal-El yelled over the sound of the fray, now back to back with Wonder Woman who blocked spears with her bracers before knocking the golems' heads off.

"I've got it." Said the gruff voice of Batman, just as the statute of Ares finished untangling the cape from its head and looked down at the Dark Knight.

Batman glared up at the statute silently and defiantly. The statute pulled its fist back to bury Batman into the ground, only for the Dark Knight to pull out a little black stick with a blinking red button on it, and press the red button.

"KA-BOOM!" The two C4 filled batarangs Batman had planted on the shoulders of the giant statute exploded, shattering the giant golem's torso and causing it to collapse in a pile of rubble, the stone head landing on top of the heap.

Batman turned and dodged a thrusting sword that should have taken out his spine, and then he was once again smashing and bashing his way through the throng of stone ancient Greek warriors, more often times causing the golems to strike each other rather than testing his own fists against their stone bodies.

Finally, after a long grueling thirty minute fight, the last statute fell to the ground and shattered as Wonder Woman's lariat wrapped up the Sparoti's ankles and then pulled its feet out from under it as Wonder Woman gave it a tug; smashing the statute to bits as it hit the hard marble floor.

"Whew, that was a doozy, going to need to top off again." Flash said as he smiled, wiped the sweat from his face and then took another shot of pure Sparkbucks goodness.

The Flash was immediately energized, but it was clear that Batman and the Green Lantern were a bit spent, where as Wonder Woman was breathing a bit heavily and Superman seemed as fresh as ever; the bruise from the magical statute healing rapidly on his cheek.

The Flash did a fast run around the gardens that they were standing in before appearing in a proverbial flash and asking, "So that was easy, what's next?" With a big smile on his lips.

Unfortunately for the Justice League, Murphy was listening, and he didn't like to be taunted.

A rattle and grinding sound ushered up from behind Flash, and he turned slowly around just in time to see the remnants of the large statute of Ares shake, and then jump into the air to reform into a whole golem again. The statue of Ares roared, and suddenly all around the garden the broken Sparoti statues soared back to life, dust and stone debris flying through the air to reform the golem back into whole forms.

Batman growled and turned to The Flash, "I'm blaming you for that one." The Dark Knight stated heatedly.

Wally looked around quickly and then shrugged to Batman, hands held out in chagrin, "Oops, heh my bad." The Flash stated, before disappearing in a blur just in time to miss getting stomped into the ground by the giant warrior golem.

The heroes glared at The Flash, but that was about all they had time for as the fight was back on and more dire than ever as even the remains of the sparoti statutes that the Justice League had been standing on came back to life and tried to stab the heroes while doing so.

Super strength met hard stone, green energy crush smashed or bashed marble, bronze weapons were turned on their owners or diverted to hit the neighboring warriors, and still the battle raged as the Justice League heroes were now totally surrounded and struggling to stand their ground as several of their number tired and ran low on weapons; in the case of Batman.

In short, it wasn't looking good for the good guys.

However the tides of fate have been known to change, and change quickly at that.

With a snap of energy, green colored portals opened up all around the garden disgorging a horde of black armored soldiers with green and red glowing runes covering their armor, the cavalry had arrived.

"Forz Da Leviathan!" The Jägers roared as they spilled forth from the portals, assault rifles firing full automatic and cutting multiple golems in half as the troopers surged through their portals five at a time and then proceeded to cut a swath through the outskirts of the throngs of magical statues.

The Jägers charged headlong into the statues, confident in the strength of their armor as they whooped and roared due to the joy of joining battle and being able to let rip.

A sparoti that had just grabbed hold of Batman and was about to crush the Dark Knight received a gun butt to the back of the head that shattered the marble statues skull, only to have both of its arms chopped off by glowing power claws as a Jäger paused to free the hero of Gotham.

"Tanks for da pepperz for dat pie. It vas delicious!" The Jägerkin paused to thank the Dark Knight and shake Batman's hand vigorously before darting back in the fray, leaving a startled Bruce Wayne to stare for a moment before growling and going back to fighting.

While the majority of the heroes and Jägerkin troopers were fighting the hundreds of rebuilt Sparoti, one Jäger decided to take on the giant statue of Ares.

"Comez onz bigz guy, you'z wantz somes of me?" The Jäger taunted the statute as she charged the giant golem.

"Klang!" The twenty something foot tall statute of Ares backhanded the attacking armored trooper, sending the female Jägermonster flying across the garden to bowl over several stone golems.

"WEEEEEEEEeeeeeeee!" The female Jäger yelled in joy as she flew through the air before crushing several of the sparoti. Hopping up to her feet and shaking her head, she grinned maniacally behind her helmet before charging the statue again. "Letz see ifz yaz can doez thatz again!" She taunted.

Sure enough, the flying figure of an armored Jäger went sailing through the air again as she once again received a backhand from the fast moving statue.

Another green portal opened and Alec Holland and his war mages stepped through, just in time to duck the flying Jägerkin who was laughing like crazy as she flew through the air.

Alec turned to look from where the Jäger landed to back towards what had sent her flying. Seeing the giant golem coming his way, Alec blinked once before his right hand darted down to his side to grab his heavy bolter pistol and bring it to bear on the head of the charging statute.

"Boom Boom Boom Boom…" The pistol chugged out, launching explosive tipped rocket propelled rounds into the face, neck and chest of the statue; blowing off large hunks of the golem's stone figure. Simultaneously, Alec's left hand pointed at the large statue and the vines and bushes scattered around the charging giant golem bloomed and grew in the blink of an eye, covering over and locking onto the limbs of the stone monstrosity and bringing the golem to a halting stop.

Quickly looking around Alec saw Wonder Woman and yelled out to her, "What's the situation?"

Wonder Woman grunted in effort as she tore a bronze shield off of the arm of a sparoti, punched the stone warrior in the chest and shattered it, before launching the shield like a discus to bisect a second golem at the waist.

Taking a brief breather, Diana turned and yelled back to Alec, "We followed a clue to the temple, but the statues keep coming back to life after we crush them." She finished, only to duck a javelin that was meant for her head before giving a yell and flying fist first into the chest of the marble warrior who had thrown the weapon.

Alec twisted to take in the view, blew off the head of another warrior who was just turning to look at him, and then waved to the necromancer who had exited the portal last.

"You! Necromancer, see if you can't suck the life out of these monsters will you." The former Swamp Thing commanded before pointing to the remaining mages, "You, you and you, crush anything that isn't organic." To which the three remaining mages nodded.

Fists of earth shot out of the ground to grab sparoti, pulling them into the ground while invisible sledgehammers of air crushed or slashed through the ancient Greek statues, while the third mage threw his hands out, and from each of his fingers blue arrows of magic flew through the air to twist and turn through the fight until they impacted a statue which promptly disintegrated.

Still, Alec's and the three war mage's efforts were just a distraction for the actions of the necromancer. Calling out in a language that was a mixture of the moans of the dead and sounded like it required the speaker to slit their tongue in order to pronounce it, the Necromancer planted his staff in the earth before his hands started to circle and fingers twitched in some arcane ritual. The sound of the death-mage's voice grew louder as he chanted, and the hair on the back of the necks of the Justice League member's stood on edge. Still the heroes and the soldiers of the Leviathan fought on against the hordes of stone warriors until, with a yell and an out sweeping of his black robed arms, a blast of dark magic shot out in a radial circle from the Necromancer, and where it touched the living shivered, and the stone golems died.

The sound of heavy bronze weapons and armor clattering to the ground was mixed with the sounds of stone crumbling and thumping into the hard packed dirt, the last few gunshots leaving the barrels of the Jägers assault weapons punctuated the sound of the disintegrating sparoti and the end of the large statue of Ares.

The heroes and the platoon of soldiers heaved a short sigh of relief, as they looked at the devastation that they had wrought on the once pristine and green garden. The once straight stone path that had curved through green shrubs and flowers now was pockmarked and covered in loose soil or the remains of shattered golems. To the side several golems were half buried in the ground, only the head sticking up from the dirt where one of the mages had planted them. Additionally, what had once been green in the garden was now brown and withered from the touch of the necromancer's spell. Only Alec's magical nature and the infusion of special nano-clanks from Xander had saved the green growth that made up the former Swamp Thing's body, and Alec took a moment to glare at the Necromancer, who merely shrugged in silent reply.

"Ok, great, now let's go inside." The Flash blurted out, still on a caffeine and adrenaline high from the battle. Turning, he darted towards the temple door, the threshold of which had started the battle in the first place.

Alec frowned and twitched a finger, and a root shot out of the ground, just in time to trip the blur that was the fastest man in the world.

The Flash rolled and tumbled head over heels, finally ending upside down and perched next to the door to the temple. Shaking his head, Wally West rolled over on the ground to look back at the man wearing the officer uniform of the Leviathan. "Hey! What was that for?" The Flash complained.

Alec turned to look at Wonder Woman and gave the warrior princess a slight nod, "I see what you were talking about. He really should wean back on his coffee intake." Alec stated, receiving a slight smile and nod from Diana in reply. Alec ignored the Flash's question and instead turned to his assigned battle mages, "Check the temple for magical traps and clear the path for us, we don't want to trip any other protections of the temple. Jägers breach the door after the mages clear the path." Alec ordered his troops.

"Hey, who said you could order us around?" The Green Lantern demanded with a glare.

Alec merely turned to stare at the Green Lantern for a moment, before ignoring the man and turning back to directing his troops who were clearing the path.

"Hey, I was talking to you…!" John Stewart said and took a threatening step forward, only to be held back by the gentle but unbending hand that Superman raised to hold the Green Lantern back.

"Peace John, we don't know what other magical traps may be present other than the statues." Superman, the last son of Krypton added, holding back the angry Green Lantern. Superman turned to look at Batman, and the Dark Knight nodded in grudging agreement. Neither of them really liked the forceful actions of the Leviathan or his troops, but both were smart enough to realize that one of their major weaknesses and dislikes was magic. In this case, the Leviathan's troops seemed to be the experts on the scene.

The three war mages went towards the door, and one began to chant and wave his hands about, while another began to read from the tomb that was dangling from their side. A few minutes later, a gold sheen flashed over the doorway, before there was a flash of red and then a white lattice work seemed to appear over the doorway before disappearing. The mages turned to Alec and silently nodded, and Alec pointed towards the door while sub-vocalizing commands into his radio system to command the Jägers to clear the temple of any physical traps. The heavily armored soldiers stormed through the door, and the occasional crash or boom could be heard to issue out of the temple.

Finally a large "Thud!" sounded and the ground shook, and the heroes, mages and Alec silently waited. Alec must have received a signal of some sort, because he nodded to himself before turning to the Justice League heroes and ushered his hand towards the door. "After you, you were here first after all." He said with a bit of a smirk; apparently Xander's manners and sense of humor were contagious as Alec's words caused both Batman and the Green Lantern to growl at the smirking Alec as they passed into the temple.

A long hallway was dotted with broken arrows and a crushed axe blade that must of come from a trap in one of the walls. Finally a giant stone block that looked to have once blocked the end of the tunnel came into view, but now the hulking stone block had a hole blown straight through the middle of it and large enough for two people to walk through side by side.

Alec and the band of heroes exited the shattered blocking stone to see a large white marble stone room that was decorated with a motif of crossed swords, shields and spears. In the middle of the room was a large open pool of bubbling red water that looked as if it was blood. Assumedly it was water tainted by minerals from the deep, but the crimson red color and the bubbles that issued from deep within it made it appear that it was a growing puddle of spilled blood; fitting considering it was a sacred pool for the god of war Ares. A hole in the ceiling of the cavern like temple allowed a light to shine down from above and highlight the bubbling waters, and magically lit torches lined the walls at a height far above a normal human's reach.

Along the walls of the inner temple stood statues depicting the Greek gods. In the center overlooking the pool was a statue of Ares, and to his left and right were Zeus and Hera followed by the female deities on the right side of the temple and the male deities on the left. Sure enough, on the right hand side of the temple was a statue of Hecate, and one of the mages looked at his tome before looking up at Alec and pointing to the statue while shaking his head.

"Shit." Alec cursed and looked down at his feet before back at Wonder Woman and her friends. "She's not here, it was a false positive again."

Wonder Woman and the heroes looked around at the inside of the temple for a moment. Wonder Woman had just turned around to look at Alec Holland when she realized that he was bending down with a vial to grab some of the water from Ares' sacred fountain.

"Don't touch that!" She cried out in alarm, worried that the god of War would smite down the former Swamp Thing for daring to touch his fountain… only nothing happened.

Alec capped the vial of red water, the water seeming to move and bubble on its own inside the vial. Turning to face the stunned Wonder Woman and the other Justice League members, Alec quizzically asked, "Why ever not? Waste not want not after all, and I'm sure the Leviathan would want to get a sample of this if he were here."

"Because if you're not favored by the God of War, then he could have struck you down for daring to touch his sacred fountain." Wonder Woman explained, her eyes darting a look to the statute that seemed to loom over the pool and then back to Alec.

Alec looked at the vial, and then back at Wonder Woman and smirked, "Well then, it appears that the God of War favors the Leviathan and his people. After all, we have won two wars in as many months, and our Grey Knight now brings war to the plains of hell. You best hope that we continue to receive that god's blessing for it should bring the return of your people Princess." Alec said with a smile. Making a little bow to Diana, Alec then gave a jaunty bow to the statute of Ares for it wasn't wise to disrespect the gods.

With that the commander of the First Platoon of The Leviathan's Arcane Soldiers waved his arm, and Alec stepped through the portal that opened. Around the room green portals shot to life and swallowed the soldiers throughout the temple and its grounds.

Behind them they left the Justice League heroes, all of them both hoping and fearing that The Leviathan, and more importantly The Grey Knight, had the favor of Ares the God of War.

The constant sound of compound bow strings twanging and thwipping arrows into targets down range was counterpointed by the constant pounding of the drums in the distance. The drums had continued without cease and without any readably visible drummers whom Xander could shoot to stop the insufferable racket. Even a little clank who had been sent out as a scout couldn't visibly locate the drummers, but echolocation was a different matter. The drums were coming from underneath the surface of the plateau, and several sound bearings had pointed to the fact that there was more than one drummer, many many more in fact. Whatever was playing the drums couldn't be good Xander assumed, and Hippolyta and Artemis agreed. Thus for the last week and a half the Amazons practiced with the new weapons that The Grey Knight had brought with him into the hell dimension.

"Hold." Artemis commanded as she watched a line of one hundred Amazons stand at the firing line with their new compound bows in a resting downward position. Each archer had ten arrows planted in a hay block on the ground at their feet, and their targets were a good thirty yards down range with a further target at sixty yards.

"Archers may nock arrows and loose all ten on initial command. Five front target, five back… FIRE!" Artemis commanded, and like a well oiled military machine the Amazons smoothly swept an arrow from the ground, nocked the arrow and drew back the string to their shoulder before launching the missile down range. A solid barrage of arrows impacted the front targets, rocking the hay bales back with the impact as the compound bows had been tuned to a draw weight between eighty and one hundred pounds depending on the Amazon.

Each archer had five arrows neatly impact the bulleye and inner rings of the front targets before five more arrows were in the air towards the back target; each arrow was followed by another before the first even had time to hit the back target. The Amazons were such incredible markswomen with the bows that Xander had decided to stick with what they knew when he brought the upgraded weaponry for the female warriors. It was one thing to have the heavier firepower of the guns, but arrows were mostly reusable and the Amazons had already been extensively trained in their use such that the addition of cams and wheels didn't really affect their aim.

"You know, the use of the cam system on those compound bows allows you to take more time to aim if you want. Your arms shouldn't get tired because the bow takes the strain rather than your arm when pulling it back." Xander looked up and spoke from where he was working at a bench next to the archery range, working on trying to get the Jarvis AI back into service. Xander had previously used the table to help tune each compound bow to the draw strength that best suited the individual Amazon, but now he was arm deep into the inner workings of the inside of his helmet. Much like his pockets that seemed to hold more than was possible given the outside circumference; Xander had his arm shoved into his helmet up to his armpit.

Artemis turned and scowled at Xander while the other Amazons went to retrieve their arrows. "I don't see you up here, so why don't you let the experts work and just keep playing with your toys?" She snapped back at him.

"Psht, Today in the News" the sound of static was followed by a voice sounding strangely like Walter Cronkite and came from the speakers in the helmet. Xander bit his tongue and twisted his hand in the helmet, "Badee badee badee, that's all folks." The voice changed to that of Porky the Pig. Xander shook his head in frustration and gave it another twist and held his helmet back up to eye level before giving it a swift blow to the side of the helmet with his other hand and the red lights in the visual optics came to life. "Good after noon sir, did I miss anything important?" The polite British voice of Jarvis broadcast out of the helmet, and Xander smiled before replying, "Welcome back Jarvis, it's good to have you back in business. Run your diagnostic and repair subroutines and then go into standby mode please."

"Very good Sir. If that is all I'll take my leave." Jarvis responded before going quiet, and the red lights in the helmet's eyes turned off again.

Xander turned to look back at Artemis and smiled as he responded, "I'm sorry, did you say something? I was a little busy." He watched with a smile as the tall strawberry blonde with the long hair and the skimpy hot weather armor planted her hands on her hips and huffed with annoyance; Xander mentally noted that it did amazing things to her chest.

"I said that you should keep your advice quiet in the face of your betters. I don't see you up here practicing." Artemis stated in challenge with a bit of a glare on her face.

"Reeeaaallly." Xander drew out the word as his smile grew across his face as he got up from his chair, his black t-shirt and jeans seemed to bubble and flow over his body until he was in his fully black nano-clank armored form. "I accept your challenge… how does the song go, oh yeah, now I remember, "Anything you can do I can do better, I can do everything better than you!"" Xander finished in a sing song voice with a large smirk hidden behind his black helmet as he walked up to the line of archers and snagged a bow that was just sitting on one of the spare hay bales that was behind the line of archers.

Snagging a bundle of twenty arrows, Xander walked up to the line of one hundred front targets and one hundred rear and cocked his head to the side while laying his twenty arrows down and waiting for the original one hundred archers to remove their arrows from the target. On the screen in Xander's helmet the wind speeds, gravitational powers of the hell dimension, even the barometric pressure and air currents overlaid themselves across his sight. Xander turned his black faceless helmeted face to look at Artemis and said, "This is how an expert does it."

Calling up not only the systems that made up his body, but also the skills purloined from Cassandra Cain, Xander's hands became a blur. "Thunk thunk thunk thunk thunk thunk thunk thunk thunk thunk" Ten arrows blurred to nock, draw and fire faster than the Amazons could follow, and the thunk of the first ten arrows hitting the bullseyes of ten different targets seemed to come as almost one long repeated sound as they all hit at almost the same time. Before the Amazons could even blink, the second set of ten arrows was flying down range to repeat the process of coring the targets on the rear most range, neatly hitting the bullseyes, one arrow per target, ten targets once again one right after the other.

The archers around Xander were stunned speechless, and Xander just smirked and turned to look at Artemis with his black featureless face turning to look at her expectantly.

"You didn't… but how? Nobody could… GRAAAAHH!" Artemis stuttered at first but then wheeled on Xander and pointed at him in fury, "You Cheated! There is no way you could have done that without your armor and your fancy toys!" She yelled at him, heaving breaths in and out as she panted in anger.

'Will you take a long at that chest. God, I'd say she was trying to smuggle watermelons if I couldn't see the upper slopes of her chest. For all that is sacred, think of the harem man, think of the harem!' The voice of Xander's libido cried out at the visage of the panting Amazon, but Xander just smirked more and then deactivated his armor.

"Cheated did I? There's nothing to it really." Xander said as his armor seemed to roll down his face and body until he was bare from the waste up, his chest and arms fully exposed for all the Amazons to see that his armor was no longer engaged at all and it looked as if he was just in skin tight pants of some sort.

Xander's smirk seemed to only rile up Artemis more, but Xander had to admit to himself that she was damn sexy when she was angry.

"So you think it was my armor do you?" Xander asked as he turned his back to Artemis while he reached for a bundle of ten arrows with his left hand.

"Absolutely, there's no way you could repeat that without…" Artemis started, but her statement was cut off as Xander spun around and flicked his hand.

The arrow that he had passed to his right hand shot out of it like a dart, arrow head pointed first to disappear at speeds only possible due to Xander's ability to tap into the same powers that Superman had.

"Kaboom!" The arrow broke the sound barrier to impact a target at the sixty yard range, causing the hay bale to explode in a puff of scattered hay, right before the next nine targets in a line with it also exploded as nine other sonic booms rocked the Amazon archers onto their heels as Xander palmed and threw the other arrows at different targets.

"Look Ma, no bow!" Artemis barely heard Xander's statement over the ringing in her ears, but there was no mistaking the smirk he turned towards her. Amazons from all over the city left what they were doing to charge towards the archery range to figure out what the tremendously loud sounds were.

Artemis looked at Xander, then at the targets as hay fluttered down out of the air to settle down around where the targets had once been, and then back at Xander.

"Why you, you, you…" Artemis stuttered in anger and exasperation.

"Yessssss?" Xander prompted, crossing his arms across her face with a smug smile that absolutely irritated and got under Artemis's skin in a heartbeat.

"You MAN!" She yelled in utter fury and stomped her foot, making Xander internally laugh as her petulant show of fury just amused him more.

"Why yes I am a man, thanks for noticing." Xander added with a chuckle and a slight wave of his hand that just infuriated Artemis more but also made a bit of blush came to her face as he noted her check out his 'lower reaches' as the black nano-clothing hugged his hips like a second skin and didn't leave much to imagination.

Artemis stared at Xander huffing for a moment, and then let out another scream of rage and marched up to him before pointing at him and pushing her finger into his absolutely unmoving hard muscles, "Graaah! That's it. You and me, right here right now."

Xander's eyebrow crooked upwards and his smirk turned lopsided, "Oook, and what are you wanting to do with me right here right now? I'm likely to accept if the offer is right." He finished with an exaggerated wiggling of his eyebrows and a shrug of his shoulders as he put his arms behind his back in a pseudo innocent pose. Xander hadn't had this much fun since some of the times he had sent Cordelia packing in rage after some of their quip battles.

Artemis's eyes grew suddenly wide as she realized the double entendre in their conversation, her mouth dropped open, only to snap shut and she punched him in the bare chest with all her might.

Xander saw the fist coming towards his chest and flexed his pectoral muscles with a smirk.

"Smack!" The blow sounded off his chest, only it was Artemis who pulled back and started shaking her fist in pain before turning hot angry eyes at him and responding. "You wish. I demand that you fight me, right here right now. You choose your weapon and I will choose mine."

"Why would I do that? I mean come on, what's in it for me? I didn't come all the way to hell to beat up on Amazons, and I wasn't planning on starting now." Xander responded honestly, crossing his arms again and waiting for a reply.

"You want to make a wager, fine, it will only make your humiliation more complete when you have to kiss my feet and declare that women make the better warriors." Artemis said haughtily as she turned and picked up a sword and a dagger that she had set aside while she managed the archery range.

Xander's eyebrows shot up into his hairline as he thought over her comments, then with a shrug he figured he would accept as it would be another chance to knock the Amazon tribes' pride down a notch when he bested the Bana-Mighdall champion. However, mere armed combat seemed to boring to Xander, he was a Spark after all.

Xander's smile grew across his face again and he remained shirtless and caused his armor to turn into just a pair of shorts. The Amazons were known for wearing skimpy armor that hugged their curves so as to distract their male opponents, but two could play that game. Walking past Artemis with a smug lopsided grin on his face Xander moved towards his work bench.

Out of the corner of his eye Xander noticed that Amazons seemed to be pouring into the area to see what was going on, so he figured he might as well give them a show. Xander's smile grew larger, he loved having an audience.

"I accept, and when I win you will have to admit that there is at least one man who is a better warrior than you Amazons, and I'll demand a kiss on my lips rather than my feet." Xander declared, reaching his work table and snatching up his weapons of choice.

With that said, Xander turned to face Artemis… with a screw driver in one hand, and a roll of duct tape in the other.

'Bwa ha ha ha! Fear the duct tape!' Xander's inner voice of insanity cackled before being distracted by an imaginary butterfly that constantly changed colors.

To Artemis it looked like Xander wasn't taking her seriously based on the weapons he had chosen, but the maniacal smile on his face and the gleam in his eye said otherwise.

"Rawr!" Artemis yelled in rage, charging Xander and swinging with an upward slice that could have spilled his guts had he not bent backwards at the waist as if he was doing the limbo, the crazy smile still pasted on his face.

Artemis growled and furiously weaved her sword back down to cut into his legs, only to be surprised with a kick to the face as both of Xander's legs shot off the ground so that Xander was hovering horizontally with the ground.

Xander's feet knocked Artemis stumbling backwards as her blow not only failed to make contact with Xander's bare legs, but she also was hit with the force of a donkey strike to the forehead which caused her vision to shutter and blur for a second.

Artemis regained her balance just in time to see Alexander pivot in the air at the waist, just like it was a fulcrum or axel of some wheel, only to see Xander lightly touch down on the ground and smirk at her.

"I said no cheating!" Artemis raged as she reentered a fighting stance and started to edge back towards the nearly naked Grey Knight.

"Hey babe, that was all me. I don't need to be wearing armor to kick your butt, or your face for that matter." Xander finished with a wink and an innocent looking shrug; only the smirk on his face and the wink were anything but innocent.

"Grrrrr," Artemis growled and lunged forward, sword tip stabbing forward followed by dagger thrusts, only each attack was blocked with the screwdriver easily wielded in one of his hands.

"Ting Ting Ting Ting Ting!" the blows rained down from Artemis, Xander not really bothering to do anything but deflect the blows such that each time Artemis attacked she met the immovable screwdriver blade, or her attacks were pushed back through the use of one of Xander's superior strength; even if he was only using one hand.

Artemis attempted a swipe to take off Xander's head, only for him to disappear in a duck under the swing and then follow it up by pushing the blade from behind with his screwdriver "Swipe twing Thwap!"

Xander smirked as he pushed the Shim-Tar's blow off balance and then followed it up by tearing off a piece of duct tape with his teeth and then thwapping it onto the middle of Artemis's forehead as his hand blurred forward to plant the tape right between her eyes and captured a lock of her bangs in the sticky tape.

Artemis stumbled back, stunned and wide eyed as she hadn't even seen The Grey Knight's hand move before something was stuck to her forehead. Taking a few defensive steps back, the Shim-Tar cleared enough room from Xander to where she felt safe to pull off whatever he had stuck to her face.

"Ahhh!" Artemis cried in sudden pain as she made the mistake of yanking hard on the duct tape, taking the lock of blondish red hair off at the root and leaving a red mark on her forehead where she ripped the tape off.

"Yeah, probably should have warned you about that. Best to take it off slowly and carefully or it takes the hair with it." Xander added helpfully with an innocent shrug. Several Amazons in the crowd couldn't help but laugh at the interaction between the Shim Tar and the Grey Knight, they had to admit that it was funny.

"DIE!" Artemis dropped the dagger and charged Xander with a two hand hold on her sword, the spar forgotten and the urge to kill rising.

Xander turned to the side and used the hand holding the screwdriver to block the flurry of blows while not really watching, ducked under one blow, then jumped over another all while dodging any blows that Artemis attempted to connect with using her feet, knees or elbows. To Xander, Artemis was still moving in slow motion so she really wasn't that much of a challenge no matter how skilled she was. Ultimately Artemis was still restricted by the limitations of a hyper athletic human body and couldn't match the speed of Xander's science improved figure. The combination of super speed, which he was using liberally, super strength, which enabled him to block Artemis's now two handed sword blows with only one hand, and the fighting skills gained from his sister Cassandra made it so the Amazon warrior really didn't stand a chance.

While Artemis tried unsuccessfully to slice and dice her blasé dueling partner into bite sized pieces, Xander bit the loose bit of duct tape and jerked his head back while pulling the duct tape roll away from himself; slowly but surely peeling off a long piece of the duct tape but keeping it connected to the roll.

Finally Xander had unrolled enough of the duct tape to do what he wanted with it.

To the watching Amazons, several hundred who had been attracted by the sonic booms caused by Xander throwing the arrows, it appeared that the tide of the battle changed in the blink of an eye. One second Xander was standing still blocking the darting and swiping Sword while dodging Artemis's flailing limbs, the next instant Xander was on the attack and Artemis didn't know what was happening.

Xander dropped the screwdriver and palm slapped the sword out of Artemis's hands so hard that several spectators had to literally dive out of the way of being skewered by the flying cutlery.

Artemis looked down at her empty hands stunned, then back up at Xander, just in time for her to numbly accept the loose end of duct tape that he handed her without really thinking about it.

"Here, hold this." Xander said with a smile, handing her the still attached but long strip of duct tape that he had loosened with his teeth. Then Xander disappeared, leaving an after image of a blur that seemed to circle Artemis so fast that it created its own little dust devil only to stop as abruptly as he started.

"Ta-Da!" Xander came to a screeching stop standing next to Artemis and threw his arms in the air.

Where a prideful Amazon champion had once stood, now was a mummy made out of duct tape, wrapped from foot to mouth with the silvery grey sticky tape.

Xander smirked and turned in a circle to repeatedly bow to different portions of the ring of several hundred Amazons who had gathered to watch what had turned out to be an embarrassment to their warrior pride. They were stunned and silent as Xander continued to smile and bow to the four compass directions.

"Thank you, Thank you! I appreciate the applause." Xander stated with a smirk on his face to the totally quiet and stunned Amazons.

"Mrrffph! Mrrrrrrrhhhh!" The muffled female voice came from Artemis who was standing behind Xander, who turned to see the Shim-Tar refusing to give up, even though her arms had been taped securely to her side, her mouth was covered with duct tape, and her two legs stuck tightly together.

What Xander saw pulled a startled laugh from him, as the beautiful warrior looked like some sort of demented grey sock puppet that was intent on head butting him. Artemis hopped and wobbled towards Xander who could only laugh as the Shim-Tar made muffled cursing sounds and took three hops towards Xander before toppling over face first when she lunged at Xander but missed as he simply side stepped her.

"Toro!" Xander said with an exaggerated step to the side as if he was dodging a bull. This pulled a laugh from several of the watching Amazons as nobody could deny how silly the situation was.

Xander laughed louder as she plummeted past him, but made sure to catch Artemis and flip her so she landed on her back with him straddling her and holding her to the ground.

Artemis looked up at The Grey Knight with angry eyes, defiant to the end, but all he did was smile down at her as she ineffectively tried to squirm loose.

Finally after several seconds of Xander straddling her hips and holding her down by one hand gently but securely on her collarbone he asked, "Are you done yet?"

Artemis looked up at Xander and then exhaled through her nose and looked down with a sigh.

"Murph Murph, Murphle Muff Mudder Murror," She slowly mumbled out from behind her impromptu duct tape gag, refusing to meet his eyes.

Xander continued to smile, but his smile lost that taunting edge and became sincere. His nano-clank clothing rippled and traveled up his body until he was again wearing pants and a long sleeved black t-shirt, only the sleeve continued to make a glove over his right hand.

Laying his gloved hand over her mouth, Artemis's eyes looked up deep into his and she realized that she felt a tickling sensation on her lips for a second, and then the duct tape that was covering her mouth was dissolved.

Xander removed his hand and sat back so he could look down at the still tightly bound but now un-gagged Shim-Tar.

Taking a deep breath she looked up at The Grey Knight and said, "You win, you're the better warrior, now take your kiss and be done with it." She finished by closing her eyes, waiting for the final humiliation as he stole his kiss that he won.

Only the kiss never hit her lips, instead she felt a kiss on her forehead and the bonds of duct tape covering her dissolved around her.

Artemis opened her eyes and saw a silvery liquid metal like tendril just returning to the Grey Knight's clothing. She was startled as The Grey Knight stood up and smiled down at her.

"I've never forced a woman to kiss me or do anything else to me that she didn't want to do, and I really didn't want to fight you in the first place." Xander said kindly to her as he stood up, his nano-clank clothing making sure that he continued to stay dust free.

Artemis pushed herself up onto one elbow and looked up at Alexander as he continued to speak, his voice quiet enough that you could hear the caring in his voice but it was still loud enough that it carried to the Amazons who had witnessed the one sided battle.

"I'll leave the time of your kiss up to Artemis, but I'd rather you see me as a friend and ally then continued antagonist. We have more than enough beings trying to kill us outside those walls, and we don't need to be fighting inside them. Perhaps in time you will realize that I am not a man that you should fear or hate, but a warrior who has honor like you and your sisters, a warrior who just wants to be your friend and help you out." Xander stated seriously, ending his statement by looking up above Artemis's head and catching the eye of Queen Hippolyta who was standing in the crowd.

Xander stared into the Queens eyes, and she stared back. Finally the Queen of the Amazons nodded to Xander in silent agreement with his statement, even though it was addressed to Artemis.

Xander looked down silently and held his hand down to Artemis to help her off the ground.

Artemis looked up at Xander, and made a decision.

She smiled and took his hand; The Grey Knight pulled her to her feet… just as the alarm bell above the front gate started clanging furiously.

The Amazons scattered, running for the walls with Artemis and Queen Hippolyta leading the charge towards the wall above the gate.

Xander on the other hand darted towards his work bench where his helmet lay.

"Jarvis, activate drone module one. Rise above the city but stay below the cloud cover, I don't want you getting eaten by anything that hides in those clouds." Xander addressed his silently sitting helmet before turning and jogging quickly towards the main gates without watching to see if his AI followed his orders.

Behind Xander, the lights on the Grey Knight helmet came alive, a bright crimson light shining from them as small mechanical legs with blade like tips exited the opening and the helmet stood up from the work bench and scurried off the table and scuttled across the ground until it was in an open area. The helmet swiveled to the left and to the right before looking up to make sure that its assent wouldn't be unobstructed. It's little metal insect like legs flexed down before exploding upwards, launching the helmet off the ground where the Nth metal flight control systems in the helmet took control and quickly shot the helmet into the air to the designated elevation. At this point, the helmet began to spin, taking in a complete 360 degree image and sensor read of the area surrounding the city, and it didn't look good.

Xander reached the walls just as Queen Hippolyta was yelling for extra spears and arrows to be distributed around the walls, however it was outside the walls that grabbed Xander's attention.

The hordes of hell had decided to attack Themyscira, and they had come in force.

Tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of the hulking grey skinned demons poured out of holes and newly created tunnels in the rocky bluffs that encircled and faced the city. Everywhere Xander and the Amazon's looked, the rocky cliff seemed to have portions of it crumble away before grey clawed hands pulled and tall demons slunk out of the holes in the ground.

"Hmm, well at least they appear to just be a disorganized mob." Xander said the first thing that came to mind upon seeing the army surrounding the city.

As if Murphy and Lady Luck had heard Xander's statement, thirteen grayish red tinged demons, looking like the other grey demons but each towering in at twenty feet tall moved into sight at the top of the bluff that faced the city gates. Their horns were a good five feet long and curled upwards into ridged spikes, and their bodies seemed to be carved with red glowing runes in some demonic tongue. With Xander's improved vision, he was able to see what appeared to be red veiny growths that pulsed from each rune, coloring the taller demon's grey hide so that it had a red tinge to it when viewed from a distance. Each of the thirteen twenty foot tall demons leapt off of the tall cliff to land among the mob of lesser demons, not caring that they crushed several of the grey monstrosities when they landed on the valley surface below. Soon Xander and the Amazons could see the thirteen larger demons thrash about in the disorganized throngs and started to set out some sort of command structure; namely kicking or beating down the grey demons till they did what the larger demons told them to.

Queen Hippolyta paused in her actions to turn and look at Xander like he was to blame by the sudden change in activity.

"Heh, don't blame me." Xander finished a bit chagrined and shrugged his shoulders with an apologetic grimace on his face before concentrating again on the tides of demons that were spilling from the rocks on the far side of the valley.

Hippolyta just shook her head and went back to ordering her warriors to their places on the walls.

Xander heard her ordering the archers on the walls to be prepared to fire when the demons reached range, but Xander interrupted her.

"Don't worry about this first attack." Alexander interrupted Hippolyta as she was relaying orders to her lieutenants. Hippolyta and the three lieutenants that were there turned to look at Xander right as Artemis was coming up the stairs from the courtyard below.

"And why not Grey Knight? There are thousands upon thousands of them, it makes the best tactical sense to kill them as far away from the wall as possible." Hippolyta questioned.

"Jarvis, transmit numbers and positions data sit rep," Xander commanded as he turned and walked over to her. Holding up his wrist, a three dimensional image miniaturized scale model of the city and the valley around it was holographically projected from the nano-clanks of his armor/clothing so that he could show Hippolyta what he was talking about. In Xander's mind, every memory of fighting the darkness and the demons in Sunnydale was coupled and compared to the strategies of war that had been literally encoded into the DNA of a once young Xander Heterodyne from another universe. It was one thing to gain knowledge and experience from past commanders and to be taught strategy from a teacher, but it was an entirely different thing to have inherited the knowledge of an ancestor that was literally a castle that had fought off countless sieges. In short, thanks to Halloween and the persona of Xander 's inherited experiences and memories from the Girl Genius universe, he had a unique perspective on the siege that was just beginning.

"See here," Xander stated, pointing to the holographic representation of what the real time situation was as it was relayed from Jarvis via the helmet floating above the city. "These are the same type of demon that ambushed you all in the canyon a week and a half ago. Remember back to actual fight, did the demons fight with any sort of teamwork, or did they fight as a bunch of individuals?" Xander asked, knowing the answer but wanting to get his point across.

Hippolyta looked to her lieutenants before turning and answering The Grey Knight, "They fought as individuals, but I don't understand what this has to do with them attacking us in mass. They still threaten to overwhelm us with sheer numbers." She replied, just as her shield barer and two other servants joined them on the wall and started helping affix Hippolyta's golden armor that had been blessed by the Greek Gods, including the belt of strength.

"I'm getting to that." Xander stated as he mentally sent a command to the holographic projectors, and high up in the air the remote controlled helmet zoomed in to focus on one of the random grey skinned demons that was mingling with the rest of the horde that had yet to attack. The image pulled in and focused on the being, pulling in the details of the demon such as its fangs, enlarged canines and a mouth full of sharp teeth, long claw tipped fingers and two foot long horns that made the demon top out at twelve feet if the figures that the scale model was pointing out was anything go to by.

"Look here. This is a demon, and just like the rest of the demons that are down there they care first and foremost about themselves and what they can do to survive and grow stronger. Sure they may work as a group, but like every demon I've ever seen, whether it be a vampire or some other type of demon, the only reason that they are working together now is because they think we are easy pickings." Xander explained, and then the image changed to focus in on one of the larger red tinged demons. The new image showed the twenty foot tall beasts, also walking on two feet with two arms, but whereas the other demons were totally grey, these ones had runes carved into their bodies and impregnated with some substance that made them glow red. "This is why the grey ones are working together, because the red ones are making them. With every type of demon you have the alphas and the beta's, the fledglings and the masters, the full bloods and the half bloods, and they have one thing in common no matter the relationship… They rule by fear." Xander finished.

Just as Xander finished his statement, a roar sounded from the horde of demons, and the thousands upon thousands of demons that surrounded the city turned and sprinted across the valley towards it with a bestial war cry on their demonic tongues.

The sound of the guttural roar caused the hair on the back of Xander's neck to stand on edge, and he hoped the knowledge that his inner voices were feeding him was correct.

Along the walls the Amazons paled but were grim faced, faced with a fight to the death they made sure their bows were properly strung and hefted spears and javelins which they could throw.

"Don't Worry, but still stay on guard." Xander yelled over the sound of the charging demons, the thousands of feet pounding on the earth and kicking up red dust shook the ground and made a constant thudding sound as the demons ran towards the city and their unknowing demise.

"As soon as they hit the devil's garden, the mines will give them something to fear more than their leaders. They may not be the sharpest arrows in the quiver, but their mentality won't let them sacrifice themselves without any personal gain." Xander yelled as he grimly turned to watch the action, the holographic emitter on his wrist zoomed out to show that the tide of demons was pouring forward in a concentric circle in an attempt to hit the city from all sides at the exact same time.

Like waves crashing upon the rocks, the demons hit the mine field, and stopped as the legions of hell were introduced to modern warfare 101, specifically, the problem with the easy way is that it's already been mined.

"KAAABOOOM!" The sound of thousands of anti tank, anti personal, trip mines, pressure mines, bouncing betties and every other assortment of land mine that Xander had planted went off in a torrential explosion of fire and shrapnel that caused the combined forces of Amazons on the walls to flinch and subconsciously duck behind the protective lip of the wall as the first ranks of the charging demons disintegrated.

The charge broke, but did not halt as the second ranks of demons saw their brethren disappear in gouts of fire, blood and body parts but couldn't stop in time before they were pushed from behind as the rear ranks pressured them into the next line of landmines.

It sounded like a torrential downpour of rain on a tin roof, or a thousand gun salute as the middle ranks of demons were pushed onto the landmines and also disappeared as they were torn apart by landmines manufactured from multiple world powers.

By this point, Xander was smiling a blood thirsty smile as he had just wiped out tens of thousands demons in an instant. "God I love the easy way." Xander exclaimed to the wide eyed Amazons.

Hippolyta only nodded in silent agreement, stunned at the destruction she was witness to as the Amazons watched the surviving ranks of the grey demons turn and start fighting those behind them, trying to flee from being pushed into the remains of the landmines.

On the walls behind the demons, the Amazons saw the enemy routed without a single Amazon casualty or without firing a shot, and they cheered.

"Hurray! Huzza! Gods be blessed! Holy Hera Thank You! Praise be to the Grey Knight" The Amazons cried in joy and hugged their sisters momentarily before turning back and smiling as the demon army devolved into a roiling mass of seething contention, demon fighting demon to get away from this unknown attacker. They didn't really understand what had happened, but they understood that any demon that moved towards the wall was doomed.

Demons started retreating, running back towards the rocky crevasses that they had come from, streaming back away from the city while the taller red tinged demons lashed out at their lesser brethren that were retreating against the commands of their elders.

The Amazons cheered and smiled, but while they did so Xander's smile slowly slid off his face and he turned to leave the wall. Before he did though, he turned and looked at Hippolyta and Artemis who was now standing by the Queen's side, both fully armed and armored now in their golden armor.

"This is just the beginning you know. The demons may be ignorant and selfish, but they aren't dumb." Xander warned them seriously, walking up and looking down on the shorter queen and other Amazons that stood still staring out at the retreating demons who even now were disappearing into the caves from which they had arrived.

"Sooner or later they will figure out a way to attack us again, and they will figure out a way around the minefield. You'll want to double the guard both day and night because demons can see in the dark just as easily as during the day. Mark my words, this is just the beginning of the siege." Xander finished ominously as he left to go get his Dreadknight system and Grey Knight armor fully back in order now that Jarvis was back.

On the walls, the Amazons continued to cheer and yell insults at the fleeing demons, but not a one of them truly believed that this siege was anything other than just begun.

Another week passed, and the beating of the drums had returned even though there was no visible signs of the attacking demon army other than the remaining holes in the cliff faces that could be seen from the walls of Themyscira.

The first true warning that the demons were back wasn't the guards on the wall seeing anything moving in the tunnels opening out of the bluffs. No, the first warning wasn't really a warning so much as a direct and unexpected attack, and it came in the middle of the night.

"BZZZZZZ Thuwp!" It sounded like a giant bee or like a swarm of mad hornets as something shot through the darkness only to blast one of the Amazon warriors right off the top of the wall when it impacted. By the time that the Amazon hit the hard ground in the courtyard across from Xander, she was already dead; not surprising really considering the four foot long by one inch wide spiraled spear that was stuck through her chest. Then, before the warning could go out, a flurry of spinning projectiles were raining down on the walls knocking down or outright killing the guards on duty as Amazons screamed in pain and those initial moments of panic settled in as the Amazons were attacked by invaders which they could not see.

Xander woke in a start and jumped to his feet from the sleeping pallet that he had been resting on in his corner of the courtyard. His instincts told him they were under attack, and the self defense measures installed in his nano-clank clothing covered him in his matte black armor in an instant. Xander looked up and saw torches come alight as guards hurried to the wall, only for one of the torch bearers to catch a spear in the shoulder and spun her around, dropping the torch off the wall and onto a pile of threshed wheat that started to burn.

Amazons rushed to put out the fire, but Xander was concentrating on the attack.

"Jarvis, get aloft now!" Xander ordered as he disappeared from the ground to get to the top of the wall. Behind him the helmet shot up into the air where its sensors could read what was going on.

Xander reached the top of the wall just in time to intercept a madly buzzing projectile that was meant for one of the Amazon's holding a torch next to him.

"Get the fuck down!" Xander bellowed, his speakers broadcasting the alert in Ancient Greek loud enough for every Amazon in the city to hear it and immediately obey the vocal Spark power laden command.

"BUUUZZZZZZZ TWANG!" Another projectile shot through the night and impacted off the side of his helmet, causing Xander's head to twitch only slightly due to the strength of the impact, meaning that there had been a great deal of inhuman strength behind the projectile if it could even draw a reaction from him.

Xander swung his head to look out into the night, and his sensors easily picked up what was happening.

There in the darkness outside the minefield were packs of the grey skinned demons, and laying on the ground next to each group were bundles of the long twisted spears. One of the demons noticed the now sole figure standing above the lip of the wall and pointed him out, and Xander was able to pick out the details as several of the demons responded by loading the projectiles onto a long stick before using the long stick as a fulcrum to accelerate the spear towards the top of the wall; an attached string on the tip of the stick imparting the spin as it unwound from the projectile with the force of the throw.

'Atlatl's sir if what we are seeing is correct.' Xander's inner voice of reason stated before going on to briefly and quickly explaining, 'The missile is set into a notch in the tip of the atlatl stick and then the thrower makes an over handed pitching throw which speeds the projectile on the way. If my calculations are correct, then the strength of those demons is allowing them to easily get the distance they need to accurately pick off anything standing on the wall.'

"BZZZZZZZZZZ!" Several projectiles flew right at Xander and he didn't bother to step out of the way, though he did pluck one out of the air before it could hit him in the face. "Tink Tink Tink Tink." The other projectiles bounced off Xander's black armored chest and shoulders harmlessly but with enough force to make him take a single step back while he examined the one he had caught.

Spinning it in his hand he saw that the twisting grooves went the entire length of the projectile, making it look like a drill bit while the sensors on the armor that covered his hands told him that the long thick dart was made out of a solid piece of bone. Based off of the demons that Xander had seen so far on this hell dimension, he guessed that it was likely the thrusting spine from one of the manta ray like flying demons, or perhaps some spiny beast that he had yet to witness. However contemplation was left for another time as his thoughts were interrupted by a report by Jarvis's voice sounding in his helmet.

"Sir, my sensors from the helmet floating above have sighted twenty similar packs of the atlatl bearing demons circling the outskirts of the minefield, while it appears that a party of approximately one hundred demons is attempting to silently traverse the marked safe path towards the front gate." Jarvis reported.

Behind his mask, a gleam came to Xander's eyes, and he growled, his lip curling as if he was bearing his teeth like a predator.

'Hey Primal, how would you like to come out and play for a little bit.' Xander mentally offered with a bloodthirsty look in his eye and a bit of a glow starting to shine through.

'It's about time.' The Primal spirit housed in Xander's mind growled in reply.

"Good, it's time to go hunting." Xander replied aloud, turning to look at the courtyard and raising his hand towards where his gear was stowed.

Across the courtyard Xander noted a group of Amazons crouched over the still living but injured Amazons that had been guarding the walls, a row of clothe-covered dead lined up near the gate while the fire was being extinguished. Xander subconsciously noted that the women hovering over the injured were using some sort of purple ray device on the injured, but his main focus was on the silver metal cylinder that flew through the air and slapped into the palm of his outreached hand.

Xander looked down at the haft of his lightsaber that was now in his hand, smiled, and then his armor seemed to ripple as he disappeared into thin air.

Grishonak towered over the rest of his war band by at least twice their height. He was the Grog-nag, or leader or roughly translated most feared, for this grouping and he looked back over his minions as they silently crept through the nicely marked path through the death field that had destroyed so many of his other minions. It had taken Grishonak and his other elders time to beat the lesser beasts into line, but now they were proceeding once again, and he could smell the succulent flesh of the soft pink creatures up ahead. Grishonak could feel the tasty souls that he could devour, and see the blood beating in the veins that traced under the whitish flesh of the creatures that stood upon the walls above.

A snarl from behind him threatened to give them away. Grishonak wheeled in a blur and silenced the grayling with a rake of his claws across the lesser demon's chest. Grishonak ruled by fear, Grishonak had been christened by their Hell God to lead the devouring of the weak pink creatures who had dared to invade their territory. He would make the pink ones suffer as he ate their liver and dined on their still beating hearts. Drool gathered and dripped from Grishonak's fangs as he slowly and carefully led his minions through the red lined path, discerning that to go outside the lines would mean his death and the end of this sneak attack.

Grishonak had earned the honor of being the First Elder to lead the charge by besting and eating the heart of Hakor, the former war leader who had planned the first attack on the pink ones. Grishonak had made elder by not only killing off all one hundred of his bond greylings from his younger nestling stage, but also eating the brains of his brood sow bearer who had planted the eggs from which he and his other greylings had issued from. Thus he had grown powerful, thus he had grown to lead, thus he sought to devour more in the pursuit of power.

"Grugg nok slith tar." Grishonak growled quietly, telling his minions to wait until the guards on the walls were distracted by the projectile throwers before they would attack the gate and slaughter the guards so that the other demons could emerge from the rocks and dine on the pink flesh of the inhabitants; apparently it was a compact and complicated language that enabled a few words to pass on a lot of meaning. Either that or it was a simple language spoken by overconfident demons who thought they were very sneaky.

The first buzzing sound passed overhead, quickly followed by several others from other directions, and Grishonak opened his fang filled mouth as he began to pant for the flesh that he would feast on that night.

Waving forward Grishonak slowly moved to continue down the path, mentally mocking the weak pink skinned creatures that had so nicely provided a path for him to traverse the field of death.

The gates of the city grew closer, and Grishonak knew that the blessing of his god had given him the strength to bash through any flimsy material such as what they looked to be made out of, and if that failed he could always climb his way to the top and open the doors from the other side once he slaughtered those in his way.

Only it was not to be, as Grishonak's thoughts were interrupted by a sudden "Snap Hiss" followed by a hum as a beam of bright crimson red light appeared to float in the air blocking the path forward.

Grishonak only had a moment to say, "Gruntag borganot," which roughly translates to "What the hell is that," right before he was answered with an up close and personal introduction to the hovering red light.

Xander ghosted across the top of the walls, padding silently in a fast run as he traversed the lip of the parapet before leaping off of the wall just before the gate and running towards the opening through the path.

'Jarvis, activate Blades,' Xander mentally ordered his nano-clanks. The slight distortion of Xander's camouflage system fluttered but remained hidden in the darkness of the night as blades extended from the forearms of his armor while other sharp spikes and dagger like protrusions erupted from the body of his armor system.

Xander charged forward as he saw the demons were about to breach the safe path through the minefield, the towering lead demon was a good fifteen and a half feet taller than Xander and covered in the strange red glyphs that seemed to cause cracks of glowing energy to cover the demon's skin.

'I Never fought a demon that big before.' Xander thought as he ignited his lightsaber and leapt off the ground with his glowing blade seeming to float up into the air as his armor continued to camouflage the rest of Xander's body.

'Oh well, when in doubt, Decapitate!' Xander thought with a savage grin as he twisted in the air and slashed out with his crimson blade as he ducked into a flip-roll that would take him over the head and horns of the tall red tinged demon.

The sudden wide eyed look of surprise on the demon's face made Xander's smile grow larger and more feral; it reminded Xander of the last time he had seen Deadboy.

'Happy thoughts!' Xander thought with an evil grin as the world slowed down, and part of his mind remembered the look on the former master vampire Angel's face right before the Flaming Marshmallow of Doom had flambéed Deadboy into a nicely toasted pile of matter for the Summer's vacuum to clean up.

To the demons and any outside viewers, the crimson blade left a red after image as it shot forward in a blur and a sonic boom rocked the space around them as Xander attacked at super speed.

"HmmmmMMMMMmmm" The lightsaber's hum briefly increased in a sound that struggled to keep up with the speed of Xander's movement as he whipped his blade through the air and neatly severed the large demon's head from its shoulders.

'Woot! More happy thoughts, BWA HA HA HA HA!' Xander thought as he continued his flip and saw out of the corner of his eye the large demon toppling forward while the head flew off into the minefield where it lit off a mine in an explosion of fire and shrapnel.

The invisible Xander extended out of his tuck and roll and brought his lightsaber down in an overhead chop that neatly bisected the next grey demon into two cauterized halves that Xander charged through.

His next follow up attack however was anything but neat as the blades on his wrists, looking not unlike the blades that extended from the Marvel comic book character Wolverine's wrists, punched through the sternums and inner organs of the next two demons in line only for those blades to neatly core out a hole in their chests and send them twisting to fall in halves as Xander used his forward momentum to summersault and axe kick a third demon hard enough to take the demon's face off with the back of his armored feet.

The world slowed down until it seemed to Xander as if everything around him was barely moving. It was the type of super speed of body and mind that would have allowed Xander to take a nap between the individual flaps of a hummingbird's wings, or perhaps read War and Peace the annotated version before the timer went off on his five minute Ramen. To Xander's eyes he could see each piece of shrapnel as it lazily traced a scorching path through the air and shredded through several demons that were unfortunate enough to be standing close to the blast. Xander walked through the line of demons as if he was a lazy gardener moving through the yard while trimming the verge.

In slow motion, the occasional blast of light highlighted an invisible claw that was briefly covered in blood before the armor absorbed the foreign substance and broke it down into its base atoms. Blood absorbed, the claw or blade would disappear again and the only evidence that Xander was cutting through the hundred some demons was the constant sweeping afterimage of the lightsaber that made the hell dimension's night look like some kind of weird techno rave with meter long glow sticks.

It was a dichotomy of light and dark, flying blood and gore versus cauterized wounds as the neat slashes of the lightsaber traded places with an invisible fist or bladed arm or leg that disintegrated or disemboweled the demon right next to it. Like a strobe light at a dance club, the flashes of the mines exploding brought brief glimpses of the battle as here a severed demonic arm flew into the minefield, or there Xander shoulder checked a demon up into the air and out into the devil's garden. To Xander it was as if a greenish grey mist floated in the air as he walked through the seemingly barely moving demons and left nothing more than a floating rain of blood and liquefied tissues behind him. In tune with his super speed, in tune with the Primal spirit of nature, Xander coupled his and the Primal's hatred of demons and basically flipped the switch on his killing skills to "Puree."

Time returned to normal for Xander as a "Kaboom" sounded as the last of the hundred demons died and fell sidewise into the mine field and disappeared in an explosion as it touched off an Soviet era Russian anti-tank mine. Xander appeared again out of his blur at the opposite end of the safe path through the mine field, the demons between him and the gates raining down in bits and pieces behind him to cover the path. The blackish grey blood allowed his body to be seen for a moment before disappearing like puddles drying in the sun.

Camouflaged by his chameleon system and perfectly blending into the background except for his lightsaber, Xander slowly turned his neck to look behind him and smiled as his neck cracked as he gave it a fast twitch to the side. Smirking to a toothy smile to himself, Xander flicked his lightsaber to the right and down, shaking off the blood that had been dripping off the handle of his lightsaber due to Xander literally going through rather than around the bodies of several the now deceased ten foot tall grey demons. With a final crack of his neck to the other direction and a shiver of his shoulders, Xander tensed his muscles and then exploded into action again as he turned into a blur again; the red light of his crimson energy blade trailing a path behind him as he circled the city.

The atlatl wielding demons didn't know what hit them until the first pack of grey demons tipped sideways as their torso's were suddenly no longer attached to their waists. However before the first pack could die, Xander had already covered the distance to the second group and had sliced through them as well.

Through the night Xander ran around the outside of Themyscira and its protective minefield, using the powers of The Flash stolen by the Amazo-tech to cover the distance faster than the human, or in this case demon eye could follow.

The last attacking demon died to the crimson blade and Xander stopped at his original starting spot before the front gate of the city. Xander paused, and then took a deep breath and a slow exhale as his armor rippled and appeared visible again.

"Status report Jarvis." Xander commanded as he extinguished his blade and looked around, letting the sensors on his helmet see out into the pitch black night.

"Sir, all demons in the immediate area are showing a cooling of body temperature signifying death and blood loss concurrent with a 99.9 percent chance of immediate death… make that 100 percent sir." Jarvis reported based on what the drone helmet was reading of the surroundings.

"Excellent, are we done for tonight then?" Xander questioned as he looked over the scattered remains of the demons that lay covering the path from the city to the outside of the minefield. 'That will have to be cleaned up in the morning and the safe path erased and filled in.' Xander thought as he examined his handiwork with a content smile.

Jarvis responded, pulling Xander away from his thoughts about the cleanup effort, "Yes Sir, all demons are dead and accounted for, wait. Recalculating."

Xander paused, and then quickly panned his head back and forth to try and see what Jarvis was picking up.

"On the bluff sir, straight ahead." Jarvis detailed, and Xander focused in on a section of his visual monitor system that was suddenly highlighted and zoomed in on.

There on the cliffs were eleven of the twenty foot plus tall red tattooed elder demons, and they didn't seem to be happy.

That made Xander smile.

"Rawwrrrrr!" One of the demon elders bellowed and shook its fist angrily at the now visible Xander.

Like a predator accepting the challenge of another that strayed into its territory, Xander's eyes flashed and a grin came to his face. The Primal instincts were clamoring for Xander to issue a return challenging cry, so Xander did.

"Jarvis, maximum volume to speakers." Xander ordered as he was highlighted by the light shining down on the ground below the torch covered walls.

"OH YEAH? Your Momma so ugly even D'Hoffryn wouldn't grant her a wish!" Xander yelled back, broadcasting his challenge loud enough that it boomed across the valley. By the wide eyed, stunned and then furious look on the demon's face the elder demons apparently knew English and had an idea who D'Hoffryn was.

"ROAR!" The demon yelled back, and two of the other elder demons held back the demon that was so furious it appeared to be spitting.

Xander smirked and laughed evilly behind his helmet. 'Who knew reading through all of Giles books would be good fodder for demon insults? I love this eidetic memory sometimes!' Xander thought before he turned around and bent over and patted his butt towards the demons.

Yelling back over his shoulder Xander continued to taunt, "I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a Boil Demon and your Father smelt like kittens!" Xander continued to shout.

Apparently this was the last straw for the enraged red elder demon on the cliff, for it shook off the two demons holding it back and then reached down for something that Xander couldn't see from his angle.

Before Xander knew what was happening, the tall red tattooed demon on the bluff's arm blurred, and Xander was knocked face first into the dirt as something blasted into him right in Xander's armored arse.

Xander tumbled forward and turned it into a roll that had him flip over once before hopping back to his feet and turning to face the now laughing and pointing elder demon that Xander had been taunting.

Xander growled and looked down, saw one of those long drill bit spears and picked it up from the ground. Unlike the other spears that the grey demons had been throwing, this one had the same matching red runes painted on it that matched the tattoos that seemed to cover the larger demons.

"Sir, I'm picking up emanations of magic from the spear and radiating out from those runes." Jarvis announced, but Xander ignored the commentary and instead focused on the laughing demon on the cliff.

"Oh yeah, laugh this up big guy." Xander growled, his eyes flashed, and his arm blurred.

The demon on the hill laughed twice, and then suddenly his head disappeared in a puff of bloody mist.

"Yeah, whose laughing now?" Xander yelled back at the demons as they stared at the body that dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.

The remaining red covered demons looked at each other, looked down at Xander, and then as one turned and ran away to where Xander couldn't see them anymore.

"And Stay out!" Xander yelled as he took a second to shake his fist at the retreating demons before dusting himself off; even though the armor had already automatically done so.

"They're gone sir." Jarvis announced.

"Very well Jarvis." Xander said, and then let out a sigh as the adrenaline rush of battle started to wear off and Xander realized how tired he was.

Rising slowly into the air and heading back towards the top of the wall Xander asked, "How are we on healing the wounded and what are the numbers of casualties?"

"Seventeen dead unfortunately, but all injured have been healed by what my databanks are calling the purple ray technology."Jarvis announced before continuing on as Xander reached the top of the wall and looked out over the court yard that now held seventeen white cloth shrouded forms lying side by side.

"You knew that you wouldn't be able to bring the Lazarus systems with you as the nano-clanks separated from you wouldn't have survived the trip." Jarvis continued, the AI's voice sounding sincere and a bit sorrowful.

Xander looked down at his feet and let out a sigh of disappointment, "I know Jarvis, and it would have been worse to have just used the Lazarus fluid only to have to deal with crazy undead Amazons. If you remember, I was the one who called that shot. It still doesn't make it any easier to see them die." Xander stated, looking up and then walking down the steps as several guards looked at The Grey Knight pass them by talking to himself.

Before he went down the stairs, Xander turned and addressed one of the guards, telling them that the battle was over and that it was safe to peak above the battlements again. He then slowly moved back to his pallet but didn't disengage his armor.

"I'm going back to sleep Jarvis." Xander said, taking another look at the bodies laid out in a row before lying down on his mat.

"Please don't blame yourself Sir. You can't save everybody. That's something that every hero in the DC universe has had to learn." The AI tried to comfort Xander, truly showing that the computer systems that Xander had created transcended the boundaries of artificial intelligence and had reached true sentience.

Xander was quiet as he laid down on the mat in his black armor and replied, "I'm not a hero Jarvis." Xander snapped a bit, but then quietly continued, "Thank you Jarvis, I understand what you are saying, but even though I won the battle I still can't help but feel it was a pyrrhic one." With that, Xander closed his eyes and forced himself to go to sleep.

The Amazons took a day to repair the damage caused by the fire and to prepare for the funerals, however the heat of the hell dimension made it so that the dead had to be buried relatively quickly. Xander didn't see Hippolyta or Artemis at all that next day, but Jarvis's sensors had tracked Hippolyta, Artemis, Princess Donna and Artemis's sister Dina as they exited the palace with the bodies of the dead Amazons. The leaders of the two tribes were heading towards a temple like building that had statuary depicting many of the gods.

While Xander ate his breakfast of fruit from his hydroponics garden along with some of the first batches of laboratory created meat that he had turned into bacon, he questioned Jarvis on what the Amazon leaders were doing. Jarvis had then informed Xander that the Amazon leaders they were bathing the dead and then anointing the bodies with oil.

'It's the prothesis, the first step of the intricate burial practices of the Greeks.' Xander's inner Giles informed Xander while Xander continued to eat next to his cooking fire. Xander tried not to dwell on the deaths of the women the previous night, so instead concentrated on enjoying the meaty goodness that was bacon.

"Mmmm, Bacon." Xander said through a mouth full of said meaty breakfast perfection. In Xander's mind, bacon rated up there with Twinkies, not quiet close to being on the same level but he had to admit that as Chocolate was to women, bacon was to men.

"Good morn to you Grey Knight," Several Amazons greeted him or yelled out a hail as they passed by, and he waved back in greeting as he continued to eat, occasionally giving them a greeting in return around a mouth full of meat.

'The next step will be the ekphora, the procession to the burial site which will take place in the middle of the night. The burial itself will take place right before dawn.' Xander's inner librarian of trivia and all things factual finished up while Xander finished eating his bacon and then broke out several Twinkies from his packs to finish off his breakfast.

A meal wasn't a meal until Xander had his Twinkies.

"What is that?" A voice from above Xander questioned.

Xander leaned back and looked up at the lip of the wall that was behind him. Two of the Amazon warriors on guard duty were looking down at him, one in her Bana-Mighdall brown disk covered armor, and the other in the solid gold breastplate of the Themyscirian Amazons.

Xander smiled at them, and show them the Twinkie which he pulled from the wrapper.

"What this?" Xander said, holding up the cream filled goodness of cakey delight before sniffing it and sighing before inserting the entire Twinkie and chewing it with a moan of delight.

Both Amazon guards turned and looked at each other questioningly before turning back to Xander who was chewing with a smile on his face and with his eyes closed in bliss.

"Yes, what is that which you are eating? From the way you are reacting, it seems to be as good as that chocolate that you carried with you." The first guard stated in English.

"Ah! As good as Chocolate!" Xander looked offended for a moment before wagging a finger at the female warrior in a mock scolding manner, "I'll have you know that not only is it better than chocolate," He took out another Twinkie package and unwrapped it like he was unveiling the crown jewels of England, "This here is a Twinkie. Man made ambrosia of the gods I say!" Xander's eyes took on a gleam as he began to pontificate on the pure excellence that was the holy Twinkie.

"Behold!" Xander shouted as he raised the Twinkie above his head and jumped to his feet. "I give unto you the Twinkie, and I saw that it was good." Xander yelled, holding the cake and cream filled confection above his head with both hands as if worshiping the junk food.

Xander stepped forward, and for some strange and unexplainable reason a soap box was there upon which he could step up so that he towered over the courtyard that was bustling with Amazons doing early morning chores. All around the courtyard the Amazons stopped what they were doing and drew closer to Xander, drew in by the power of his voice and the power that seemed to radiate from him as he started to speak.

"Four score and I don't know how long ago, my forefathers were tired of waiting for their cakes to cook, so brought forth the quick snack food." Xander announced, one hand waving in the air and the other holding the Twinkie high so that the gathering women could see it.

"And my forefathers did say, let us take unto ourselves a golden sponge cake, and fill it with a cream filling, and those who tried it doth said, mmm, that is AMAZING!" Xander shouted, preaching from his soap box about the benefits of the Hostess brand snack cake, his hands waving in the air and pointing to the sky, Twinkie wielded back and forth.

"ohhh, ahhhh." The crowd of Amazons were spell bound, carried away on Xander's words to such an extent that they felt that they could see the creation of the very first Twinkie.

Xander's eyes sparkled and his maniacal grin spread across his face. "Yes, I tell you, this here cake empowered me through many a day when I lived on the very mouth of hell. Yes, I survived living in the darkness and fighting evil, fueled day and night and for every meal on the power of this here cakey perfection." Xander shouted out so the whole crowd could hear him, the power of the Spark drilling his message home into the very souls of the Amazons who listened to him; and by this time the crowd had reached the size of several hundred female warriors.

"How do we get the Twinkie?" A voice yelled from the crowd.

"Yes, Share with us how we too can enjoy in the fullness of stomach of the Twinkie!" An enraptured Amazon shouted in encouragement as the rest of the crowd took up the call.

"Yeah! The Twinkies! Give us the Twinkies! The crowd of women began to chant and call out to Xander, hungering for that which Xander had told them about.

"You think you can handle the power of the Twinkie?" Xander shouted back, holding the Twinkie on high, the crazy gleam in his eye, the power and madness of the Spark truly taking over.

"Yes!" The crowd yelled back.

Xander turned around to the giant shipping crate of shrunken boxes of Twinkies, and then with a wave of his hand commanded the shrinking/enlarging technology held in the nano-clanks in his hand to enlarge multiple boxes of Twinkies.

"Then I shall give unto you the Twinkie!" Xander yelled as he turned to the crowd and threw the boxes out into the audience, much to the delight and shouts of joy of the Amazon warriors.

"Take unto you the communion of the Twinkie! Eat it and enjoy, for it shall make you hyper active with its pure sugar and unknown chemical makeup!" Xander raised his voice over the shouts of joy of the women as he shared his Twinkie supply.

"Praise the Gods for the Twinkie!" One voice yelled out of the crowd before it was changed slightly by another to "Praise be the Twinkie!"

"Now go. Share with your sisters that which I have told you and shared with you." Xander commanded, still caught up in the madness of the Spark, smile planted on his face and insanity shining in his eyes. "Go forth and share the light which shines off the wrapper of the golden snack food perfection, for all shall know that it is good!" He commanded.

And with a mighty cheer, the Amazons that had gathered to listen to Xander charged off throughout Themyscira to share the great news of the Twinkie, and all that was good about the snack food confection.

Xander finished waving his hands in the air, and shoved the second complete Twinkie into his mouth and then closed his eyes again with an audible "Mmmmmmm, That's so good." He moaned.

When Xander finally finished savoring the chewing of his snack cake, he opened his eyes and realized that he was standing on a soap box by himself in the middle of a large but thoroughly abandoned court yard.

Blinking, he looked around and realized what he had just been saying and that the crowd of Amazons had departed; several of them leaving whatever chore had originally been interrupted lying on the dirt or half finished wherever it was at the time he had started pontificating.

'Hey guys, any chance that what I just did could come back to bite me in the rear?' Xander mentally asked the other voices in his head as he got down from his soap box. Xander looked at the soap box and questioned where it had come from, not remembering packing an old fashioned wooden soap box in his gear for the trip to hell. He shrugged and closed up the packing crate that held his remaining Twinkies.

'Nah, what's the worst that could happen?' The other voices in his head answered.

The funeral that had happened three weeks ago had created goose-bumps on Xander's arms and made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end due to the haunting melodies that had been sung by the tribes of female warriors. Both the Bana-Mighdall and the Themyscirian tribes had a similar foundation in ancient Greece, but due to centuries separated they had slightly different songs and rituals of sending off the dead. Still the songs had stopped and the silent torch lit processional had brought the dead to their resting places in large mausoleums that were then sealed over.

Xander had played his own part in honoring the dead, for as the funerals ended the sounds of bagpipes echoed through the valley as Xander once again brought out his giant instrument and played haunting renditions of "The Last Post," "Sgt. Mackenzie" and finally "Amazing Grace" just as the suns began to rise on the plains of the hell dimension.

The feelings of mourning weren't allowed to last though, as the demons attempted another multi-wave invasion with a large group heading for where they thought the safe path through the minefield was.

The demons were gravely mistaken, as after Xander had laid down to rest for a few hours the night before, he had divested his armor of its nano-clank cloak. While Xander slept the little clanks enlarged themselves back to their normal size and then went and destroy any hint of a safe path through the minefield by shuffling around the mines, and in fact added over a thousand claymore mines on the outskirts of the mine field.

When the demons had come running out of their caves for their third try at taking the city, they had seen the little green things that stood in their path, and it wasn't until it was too late that they realized that maybe it wasn't the size that counted, but how you used it.

Such a simple device with such simple directions of "Front towards enemy," yet what the claymores lacked in size they made up for in ball bearings and explosive force.

The dawn raid by the demons had seemingly melted away with the rising of the sun, just as if they were a dank fog that was burned away by the heat of the sun's light, so did the demons get burned away by the hundreds of thousands of tiny ball bearings that obliterated their ranks.

That had been three weeks ago, and though the demons had been rebuffed they continued to try and probe the outskirts of the mine field looking for a safe path through based on the knowledge that it had existed at one time. The Amazons kept watch, and Xander had joined in sitting watch given that he had grown bored fiddling with his armor and due to the lack of things to invent with; given that he had to carry only necessities with him when he went to hell. Sure Xander had automated the weapons forges for the Amazons, creating trip hammers and pulley driven billows to automate sword, spear and arrow production, but Xander got tired of old fashioned technology very quickly. That's why he tried to befriend the Amazons over the last several weeks.

Queen Hippolyta remained very standoffish, and in following her mother's lead so did Princess Donna. The last time Xander had spoken with the Queen or the Princess was when they had given him a ornamental golden shield as a gift for his saving the Princess's life upon his first arrival. A shy look from Donna and a quick thank you and the girl and her mother were gone again. Xander's only other involvement with the royalty of the Themyscirian Amazons was when he discussed tactical defenses with the Queen's guards and Hippolyta listened in as she sat on her thrown. Though several of the non-royal Themyscirian Amazons had stopped by his camp site requesting more Twinkies, he didn't really have a lot of involvement with the island Amazons. It wasn't surprising that the women were stopping by asking for Twinkies, as Xander didn't know how the Amazons had lived without the snack cakes prior to him introducing them to the perfect food. However what was surprising was the fact that the women warriors were requesting less chocolate and more Twinkies, and that had him a bit worried that perhaps he would run out of that specific necessity of life before they were rescued from the hell dimension.

The Bana-Mighdall Amazons on the other hand were relating to Xander very differently than the Themyscirian warrior women. At the separation of the tribes, the Bana-Mighdall had decided to abandon the Greek Gods as they felt the Olympian deities had abandoned them, thus the desert tribe of Amazons had lost their immortal lives and had been restricted to living out the years of a normal human. This problem mandated that they breed with men in order to reproduce and keep up their numbers. The problem for Xander was that he was the only man to be found on the plains of hell.

Xander had become very deft at dodging pinches for his rear end, and he had to watch out when he joined any Bana-Mighdall for guard duty as the women often tried to tell him that it was a good way to fill the time on guard duty by having sex.

A spark without sex is usually a bad thing, but Xander was really really trying not to get distracted by the tribe of what amounted to super model level beautiful women asking him for no strings sex.

No don't get the wrong impression, the first time that it had been explained to Xander that the Bana-Mighdalls, almost every single one of them, wanted Xander to have sex with them and give them babies, well let's just say the little voice of Xander's libido had broken out the air horns and started bouncing off the mental walls in Xander's head yelling, 'HAREM! HAREM! HAAAAARRREEEEEMMM!'

Frankly, the little voice was beginning to get a bit annoying to Xander and the other voices in his head, which may have been the deciding factor when the voice of insanity joined in voting on the side of rational thought in believing that making the Amazons pregnant while in hell would be a bad idea; the little voice of Xander's libido really shouldn't have forced the voice of insanity into joining in a conga line, insanity only did those things on the Ides of March or perhaps on the 12th of never in the month of what.

Thus Xander decided that he would either share in guard duty with the Themyscirian Amazons, who only wanted to talk with him about Twinkies for some strange reason, or with Artemis or her sister Dina who seemed less focused on anything to do with sex and more on just getting to know more about The Grey Knight. Dina spent the hours wanting to hear more stories from Xander, so he told her about his other life in Sunnyhell, spending countless hours where they both laughed about his ability to attract crazy demon women or some of the activities that the Scoobies got up to. Artemis on the other hand held deep conversations with Xander that ranged in topics from why men did certain things or thought certain ways, to why Alexander the Grey Knight did what he did.

Just the night before the demons had attempted to repeat the trick with the atlatl's and seeing how many guards they could kill. Unfortunately they had killed another ten guards and wounded thirty others in a large coordinated attack. The raid had continued until Xander had his Jarvis controlled helmet remain on constant watch while he went out to kill the skirmishers. Xander still kicked himself a bit for not thinking to have the helmet/drone remain on constant watch, but he knew that it was something he would learn from and tried not to feel too guilty about. Xander was tired after the long night of running outside the walls and killing demons, but he felt somewhat honor bound to do his part in continuing to stand watch; especially since he felt that he could have stopped the deaths from happening in the first place.

Xander watched from the walls as every now and then an enemy demon would test the boundaries of the mine field, and blow up. One more enemy down, but also one more mine gone that had been protecting them from the onslaught of the masses of hulking grey demons that seemed to infinitely spawn in this hell dimension.

'God I hope they get Circe and get us out of here soon. I don't know how many more deaths or injuries the Amazons can take before we are down to only walking wounded.' Xander thought to himself, looking back behind the wall towards the hospital area where stretchers lined the ground with the most dreadfully wounded of the amazons still being treated via purple ray while the cloud of Xander's nano-clanks from his cloak also helped out trying to stave off death from the most severely wounded.

"So what kind of name is Xander?" Artemis asked after the silence had worn on for about fifteen minutes after the end of their last conversation. She continued to watch the horizon, her eyes constantly moving so that she could use the sensitivity of her peripheral vision to better pick up movement from any possible attacking demons.

"It's just a shortening of Alexander. Like I said when I first introduced myself to you all, Alexander Harris is my name, and I have a middle one but refuse to give it even on pain of death." He answered with a bit of a smile as he stayed focusing on the bluffs and the hints of fires where he could see the demon army's caves and pits dug into the face of the rock.

"Alexander…" Artemis tested the name. "It's a good name, protector of man it means in Greek."

Xander smiled a tired smile at her as he turned to look at Artemis. "Yeah, but protector of woman also." He added with a wink.

Artemis huffed in mock anger, "I don't need a protector." She finished glaring at Xander.

Xander waved his hands tiredly in front of him, "Hey, no offense meant, but I don't see a lot of guys here, and I didn't exactly come all this way to protect men, if you know what I mean."

"Well then, why did you come here?" She questioned turning her focus away from the valley below and towards The Grey Knight sitting next to her in his heavy skull and trilobite decorated armor.

Xander gazed off into the gloomy dusty red distance, the heat from the rocky and barren soil baked by the multiple suns rippled the air on the horizon.

"Because it was the right thing to do." Xander responded a bit of thought. "Even when I was just a normal man, or even a boy, I couldn't not fight when I learned about the darkness, about the vampires and demons. I lost my best friend, my brother in all but name to them, and then there was Buffy… Well, it wasn't that I was fighting for Buffy so much as bringing the donuts, but still I was there. Plain old Xander, sometimes Xander the bait, Xander the sidekick, or Xander the research help, but I was always there when there was a fight." He said with a forlorn smile before turning to look at the red headed beauty that was propped up next to him against the wall. Artemis had smudges of red dust trailing down her neck from where the dust had mixed with her sweat, a sweat of battle that a young woman such as her shouldn't have had to fight. Looking at Artemis, Xander realized that this is what Buffy might turn into if she was still fighting by the time she reached eighteen or nineteen; hardened and more blunt, but probably just as beautiful.

"And now I'm here, because this is where the fight is at, and whether or not you all really need a protector. If I can keep even one more of you alive until we get back to our world, then I'll do it." Xander finished before unlatching one of the metal gantlets of the Grey Knight armor he was wearing, and then using his freed hand to wipe his face.

"We don't need protectors. We are Amazons, we are the ones who protect the men." Artemis said haughtily, that bit of Bana-Mighdall Amazon pride shining through.

Xander smirked, "Sure thing Arty, but just don't try to keep me from the front. I'm not the sidekick type anymore."

Artemis glared at Xander and punched him in the shoulder, only to shake her hand after it impacted his Grey Knight armor, "Ow! Don't call me Arty, it makes me sound like a dog." She groused.

A bell sounded in the distance.

Artemis looked at Xander, and nodded to him, "That's the shift bell, my watch is done." She stated clearly, but then a bit of a blush came to the young woman's face and she looked down for a second, before looking back almost defiantly, but with a hint of a smile. "Thanks for sitting my watch with me. I… I enjoyed it." She finished a bit shyly, which was a bit weird for both of them given Artemis's normally hardened warrior disposition.

Xander smiled his patented semi-suave semi-goofy grin and imitated like he was tipping a hat to her, "Any time, I enjoyed it also." He said as he forced himself to his knees and then to a standing position. Brushed his hands off from the dust, reaffixed his gauntlet back onto his hand, and then picked up his power glaive that was resting against an unlit torch on the top of the wall.

Artemis suddenly realized that she was acting a little doe eyed towards Xander, so blustered, "You're not so bad, for a Man." She finished, trying to hide her smile at his actions.

Xander just chuckled, "Yeah yeah, come on mighty Amazon, let's go get some dinner." With that, Xander put his power glaive on his back where it attached itself with a magnetic locking system that would hold it in place.

With that the two finished picking up their gear, just as their relief for watch duty arrived. They nodded to the new guard in passing and went to go get some much needed food.

Xander and Artemis walked down the steps from the portion of the wall they had been watching from, and Xander followed Artemis further into the city. Truthfully he hadn't spent much time touring the city as he had been more focused on what was threatening the city from outside the walls rather than examining all that was to be seen inside the walls. Ultimately that was a shame as Xander noted that it was incredibly beautiful as he followed Artemis through the streets cobbled in marble stones and threaded their way to what had formerly been the city's market place but now served as a common gathering and eating area for the Amazon tribes.

As Xander entered the city square he noted that many of the amazons stopped to watch him enter the heart of their city, but unlike his first involvement with the women warriors, the looks of anger or distrust were no longer there. The Grey Knight had fought for them and suffered with them, and there wasn't a single Amazon that would deny him his due honor now, even if Hippolyta and her daughter were still rather aloof with him.

Artemis led Xander up to a long table covered in food, much of it produce grown from his garden or hunks of beef made in the bottom floor laboratory of the food processing crystal farm that he had brought with him.

The Amazon serving behind the table smiled at Xander and handed him a large wooden plate, "Over here we have the fruits and vegetables, and at the end is the carving station." The cook started to explain.

"And if you look at the end of the line you can see where you can dip out your own flagon of wine…" The Amazon stopped speaking as her eyes went large as she was looking up at Xander as if he had suddenly grown horns or something horrible on his un-helmeted face.

Xander raised an eyebrow at the staring Amazon and asked with a bit of a frown, "What, is there something on my face?"

The Amazon screamed and pointed behind Xander.

Xander turned and looked up, just in time to see the hardened earth packed twelve foot diameter hell bramble falling out of the sky right at him.

"Fuck you Murphy." Was the last thing Xander said with a frown on his face, right before he was smashed into the ground by the falling boulder.

Food went flying as Amazons darted out of the way as Xander disappeared under the flying thorn covered boulder, the hard packed bramble rolled slightly to knock over the table before settling back onto the ground where Xander had just been standing.

"Hera protect us! Save the Grey Knight!" Somebody screamed, and Amazons shook off their stunned looks as they rushed towards the hell brabble that had crushed Alexander… only to see the giant projectile twitch and then roll to the side as Xander sat up unharmed in his Grey Knight armor and his solid black under armor of nano-clanks covering his head while a slightly glowing shield wrapped around his whole armored body.

"Damn, did somebody get the license plate on that bus?" Xander asked as he shook his head while his internal healing and nano system healed the heavy concussion he had just received.

"Are you alright Alexander?" Artemis asked cautiously with a great deal of care as she saw the black armor ripple to uncover Xander's face; a small trickle of blood seeped out of Xander's nose but he quickly wiped it away.

The alarm bells started ringing from the walls just as she asked her question.

Xander frowned at the alarm bell before giving Artemis a lopsided grin, "I'm fine, it will take more than one giant boulder to put me down." He said with mock bravado and a wink.

Just as he said it, somebody in the crowd yelled, "Look out, here comes more of them!"

Sure enough, Xander looked down and saw that his shadow was strangely getting larger. Xander blinked, looked into Artemis's eyes as they suddenly went large as well, and his thoughts caught up with him telling him what was about to happen. With a shove, he sent Artemis flying away from him to roll across the ground, just as a second projectile crushed him into the cobble stoned square once again with a mighty "KaBoom!"

Artemis shook her head to clear the ringing in her ears that had come from being knocked backwards so hard, only to look up and see the second boulder disintegrate as Xander exploded out from underneath the hardened mix of red soil and hell bramble.

Xander shot up into the sky above the city with a yell of anger, only to wheel around when he took stock of the situation and realized that twelve foot wide boulders were plowing into buildings and crushing everything in their path. High on the bluff were ten catapults, weird boney structures that almost looked alive as the giant bones that made up the catapults were wound with red tentacles that from a distance looked more like veins. In the distance scores of the grey skinned demons poured out of caves as the twenty foot tall red elder demons seemed to each lead at least five thousand of their smaller grey minions before them towards the city walls. Not only that, but before the demon army was a large herd of hell-cows that were being driven straight towards the mine field. To top off the trouble, the front gates had already been blasted apart by the catapults and the walls that had stood on the sides of the gates were nothing more than shattered stone and rubble where injured Amazons lay.

That's when Xander saw something that truly made him angry, the waste could not go unpunished, the actions of the demons ensured that they had to die a most horrible and painful death. If not for their killing and injuring the Amazons, then for the personal slight to Xander. No, it wasn't hitting Xander with the projectiles from the catapults twice in a row, no, it was a much worse slight than that.

"You… Killed… My…TWINKIES!" Xander bellowed in rage as he saw that one of the giant projectiles had absolutely crushed the crate containing the remaining snack foody goodness. Xander saw red, and looked up towards the catapults and growled.

Reaching down to his side, Xander unclipped one of his grenades and pressed the button. "Thank you for choosing Leviathan brand super-nova grenades." The polite feminine sounding British voice daintily stated from the grenade. "This device will explode in three seconds." The grenade stated, but Xander was too busy concentrating.

'Wind from the north at fifteen knots, heat thermals rising right before the cliffs and three thousand meters horizontal with a vertical of sixty meters.' Xander thought to himself as he calculated all of the vectors and forces that would affect his throw. Xander bit his tongue and pulled his arm back for the throw.

"Bottom of the nineth, bases loaded and full count, he pulls back, and he throws." Xander monologued as he wound up for the pitch and let fly.

"One, Two... Four, Have a nice dayyyyyyyy" The grenade's countdown faded off into the distance as the explosive was launched by Xander as from a cannon only to impact right in the middle of the half-score of catapults and explode.

As like the last time, the light was the first thing to impact, followed closely after by the massive "KAAABBOOOM!" Fortunately for the Amazons the catapults had been situated further back on the top of the bluff, thus the guards on the walls were only temporarily blinded for a moment due to the distance where as a good portion of the demons had been vaporized, blown over or blinded due to their nearness to the explosive.

Xander blinked to quickly clear the tears and spots from his eyes. As soon as he could see again, he smiled viciously as he noted that there was nothing left of the attacking catapults. Now he just had to deal with the some fifty thousand plus demons charging towards the city that now had a massive hole where once a gate once stood. To make matters worse, the demon army was already too close to use another grenade on, not if he didn't want to vaporize the front portion of the walls and every Amazon standing on it.

Xander scowled and then yelled out, broadcasting on full speakers, "To Arms Amazons! To Arms! This is it, the walls have been breached!" He broadcast, and then disappeared in a blur towards the ground only to appear again standing right in the middle of said breach in the walls as it seemed like the entire army of hell was charging right at him.

"Jarvis, I'm going to need my helmet." Xander quietly commanded patiently as a grim look came across his face. Xander turned to see Amazons running towards him and the walls, but realized that the hell-cows would hit the mine field any second and the demons would be fast upon him before the Amazons were in any shape to repel the attack.

Raising his arm left arm towards the crushed crates and the still standing Dreadknight system, Xander's lightsaber flew through the air and into his outstretched hand just as the Grey Knight's skull helmet landed on his head and attached itself to the rest of the power armor system. Xander activated the red lightsaber beam with one hand while reaching behind and unlimbering the power glaive, at the same time activating the blue glowing sickle blade on its other end.

Xander watched as the demon army came closer, "Shall we get you into your Dreadknight armor or retrieve your personal Toastmaster sir." The Jarvis system asked.

"No Jarvis, there is no time to get the armor and get back in place." Xander answered, just as the hell-cows were herded into the mine field, and the space in front of Xander exploded in fire as the multi-headed cows bellowed in fear and pain as they died.

Xander cracked his neck and commanded Jarvis, "I need some music Jarvis, and I'm feeling like 'Duel of the Fates' seems fitting given that fate and Lady Luck seem against us today."

The orchestral beat sounded out of his speakers, the sound of a thousand voice choir blasting into the air just as the demons poured through the fresh gap in the mine field and came right for Xander.

"Korah! Matah! KORAH! RAHTAHMAH!" The music blasted and Xander charged.

Red eyes glowed from the depth of his helmet as he bellowed in rage, the echo of his voice blending with the sweet strains of music as he brought both lightsaber and glaive swinging forward with fully out swept arms, crossing over and then swinging back again as he relied on his strength and the sharpness of his blades to cut through all opposition before he body checked the one a demon that stood before him and used his momentum to pulp the creature through shear inertia while sending the next ranks of demons stumbling backwards.

The dance of death began as Xander spun, Lightsaber sweeping out above his head to cover as much space as possible, only to duck and continue his spin as he moved forward to spin his glaive humming across his body to cut the demons off at the knees.

Blood flew and the growls and howls of the demons were all that Xander could hear as he was surrounded. Claws bounced off his armored chest before Xander head butted the demon that tried to rake him, the demon quickly to lost its head along with the arm that had tried to eviscerate The Grey Knight. A demon latched its teeth onto Xander's shoulder, only for its teeth to break and Xander to turn his neck to the side and head butt the monster in the face and kick another in the crotch.

It was battle, it was horror as it was Xander versus all the hordes of hell, fully separated from his allies and desperately surrounded as he tried to stem the onrush of demons that attempted to overrun him and enter the gap in the city walls before the defenders could rebut the attack.

The demons seemed to come upon him like a noxious fume that tried to suffocate him, like an ill wind. But there is a saying that "They who sow the wind, shall reap the whirlwind."

Xander growled, and then blurred as he turned into a whirlwind of spinning blades, a tornado of fury as he activated his claws and interchanged his blades from hand to hand as he spun as fast as he could so that the momentum of his blades could chop through everything in his path.

The demons around him disappeared in the tornado that was The Grey Knight. Like a class five twister, everything it touch ceased to be as not only Xander's blades but the very backlash of wind he created tore arms from torsos and legs from pelvises as he slashed through the demons like a god of war.

The music pounded, driving his battle fury onwards as a haze of red covered his eyes and the world slowed down as Xander came out of his spin and stopped facing the remaining demons that still pushed forward. He was covered and dripping with the blackish green blood of his enemy as he smashed the skull of a twitching demon that lay at his feet, already hundreds of bodies lay at his feet even while more demons pushed forward towards Xander.

"Come on!" Xander yelled in challenge to the demons… only for one of the hulking red behemoth's to rush through the crowd and smack Xander upside the head with a right cross almost quicker than Xander could watch.

Xander's head snapped to the left as a fist the size of a watermelon smacked the shit out of his helmeted face and caused his jaw to jiggle inside his helmet, only to catch a left cross that shot his head back the other direction that was then followed by an uppercut that picked him up off his feet and then launched back towards the ground to groggily shake his head.

"Grognoshdila blach bashadgh!" The Elder demon growled with an unholy gleam in his eye.

"Translation sir, "I'll enjoy eating your heart human, I'm sure it tastes good, like chicken. Oh, and Sir, you've sustained significant brain damage sir, which will take your healing factor roughly five seconds to repair." Jarvis helpfully supplied.

"Thanks Jarvis." Xander growled as he shook his head and looked up, just as the twenty foot tall Demon reared back a foot to stomp Xander into the ground.

Only the blow didn't land, as behind Alexander he heard, "AMAZONS! FIRE!"

Thousands of arrows covered the distance between the tops of the walls and the gap behind Xander, and front ranks of demons disappeared under a barrage of fast moving projectiles that turned the tall red demon and every demon that Xander could see into approximations of demonic pincushions.

Xander shook his head again and started to stand up as the Elder demon before him toppled backwards dead.

"Aim! FIRE!" Came the command from behind him again, and Xander recognized the voice as Artemis's voice. Again the sky darkened over Xander's head as the sky was filled with a mass of arrows from thousands of warrior women wielding the bows Xander had provided.

Xander shook his head one more time and turned to look back to where he could see a line of shield bearing Themyscirian Amazons covering the gap with rank upon rank of bow wielding Amazons from both tribes firing for effect.

Xander smiled a bloody grim smile as his nano-clanks healed where he had bitten his tongue and knocked out a tooth due to the super strength of the blows from the demon that had hit him. With a thump of his fist to his chest in salute to the Amazons, Xander started limping back towards the gap in the wall to allow his body to heal while the warrior women took care of the business of slaying demons.

Sure, compared to the demons the Amazons weren't as strong, as large or as daunting, but just as the men of ancient Greece had learned; one did not underestimate an Amazon warrior more than once.

From the city walls thousands upon thousands of arrows rained down on the demons that swelled the gap in the minefield as the Amazons showed the demons why the female warrior tribes were the most feared army of archers in the world.

Then to add insult to injury, Ballista were rolled forward out of warehouses and sheds, and suddenly massive spears as thick around as a woman's wrist were shot into the crowd where they would skewer multiple demons before they stopped their forward momentum.

In the crowd of demons, packs of the grey skinned demons unlimbered atlatl and the buzzing drone of drill bit shaped spears knocked amazons off the walls, only for the grim faced defenders to specifically target any demon that they saw wielding such weapon.

That Amazons held grudges was equivalent to saying the Pope was Catholic or that it's not wise to drop soap in a prison shower. In short, any demon that was wielding an atlatl was quickly marked for payback for past injuries and deaths, and said demon quickly became a pincushion. That said, death rode havoc on both sides as the demons charged forward again to meet with a clash as Amazon shield, sword and spear met demonic claws fangs and bone spears.

Xander found himself back in the fray again, blood flying as he hacked and slashed, using his heavily armored body as a shield for any Amazon that he saw was about to be overwhelmed. Beside him, the Shim-Tar whirled like a dervish, spear stabbing while sword gutted or slashed through the enemies that dared to attack her. Xander and Artemis worked the front lines, moving back and forth like spinning buzz saws that cleared the living demonic debris that threatened to choke out the defenders on the shield wall.

Inevitably Artemis and The Grey Knight found themselves fighting back to back.

Here Xander would block with a claw while Artemis's spear would dart under Xander's arm to pierce through the armpit of a demon and into its heart, only to withdraw as Xander swept the glowing sickle of his blade around to behead a demon that had attempted to stab Artemis in the back.

Whirl and stab, block and skewer, hamstring and spin again. Xander and Artemis were like some deadly ice skating duo where the blades were not on their feet but in their hands. Xander grabbed Artemis by the arm and slung her over his shoulder so she avoided a tackle as he dropped his lightsaber and beheaded the demon with his glaive, only to jump as Artemis darted through his legs and bisected a demon behind him from crotch to crown with her sword. They were panting, but every movement was no less than perfection in their task of killing as many demons as possible.

Still the demons pressed on, and the shield wall covering the gap started to bow in the middle as more and more demons pressed forward, the bodies of the dead tripping defender and attacker alike as the all out war pushed back and forth.

Xander's music had stopped by this point, and all he could hear were the growls of the demons and the screams of the dying or injured, and still he grit his teeth and strove forward. Hacking and slashing. Slashing and hacking. It seemed like the tide of demons would never end.

"Thud." A sound shook the ground as if some deep drum beat from a subwoofer had sounded, and the defenders could feel it in their chests.

"Thud… Thud….. Thud….." The thudding sound increased, several seconds between each sound, but growing louder and heavier.

A shout went out from the demons, and several of the grey skinned monsters looked around in outright fear before they turned away from where they were fighting Amazon and Grey Knight alike, and fled.

Xander stumbled forward as the demon he had been clashing with suddenly wasn't pushing forward any more.

Artemis darted forward and slashed the hamstrings of one of the twenty foot tall elder demons who fell to his knees where Artemis seemed to run up its back and then slide her sword through its ear and out the other side. The Shim-Tar rode the corpse to the ground before looking around for a new enemy to fight.

Xander twisted in a circle, and he noticed that Artemis was doing the same. Everywhere they looked the demons were retreating, running back towards the cliffs, and still the thudding sound increased in volume and now the duration of the pause between each thud was getting slightly less.

"Hurrah!" YAY!" The Amazons on the walls and in the gap started cheering as they watched their demonic enemy flee.

Xander just stared out at the retreating demons, and still the thudding got louder.

Xander had a hard time hearing over the shouts of joy of the Amazons yelling from the walls, so finally he turned to them and broadcast angrily on his speakers at maximum volume.

"Be Quiet! We're not out of this yet. They had no reason to run, and whatever that thudding is, can't be a good thing." Xander yelled with a frown on his face behind his helmet.

Xander turned with his back to the Amazons and tried to use his sensors to pin point where the thudding sound was coming from, as now it was literally shaking the ground as pebbles seemed to dance on the hard packed dirt with each massive Thud.

"Jarvis, get aloft and tell me what you see." Xander commanded as he squinted as his helmet disengaged and took off into the air above the city. Xander took the moment to wipe the sweat off his brow with his metal covered arm, but all he succeeded in doing was smearing black blood and red dirt into his hair and across his forehead.

"What is it Alexander, what is this problem that you tell the women to quiet down?" Artemis commanded as she cleaned her blades on a cloth and walked towards Xander while trying to figure out where the thudding was coming from.

Still in the distance the massive sounds of Thud…Thud…Thud…Thud… sounded.

Xander's answer was to point to the grey demons that were now disappearing into the holes in the rocks. Only the elder demons with their red tattoos could be seen on the tops of the bluffs, and they were all bent over bowing towards something that Xander couldn't see from his vantage point.

"Artemis, if something can scare the shit out of those demons enough to make them run away when they still had thousands more to throw at us, then it's not of the good." Xander answered grimly.

From Xander's armor came the sound of Jarvis's voice as the floating helmet picked up images from beyond the horizon.

"Um, sir, my databases don't have enough information to make a positive ID, but I think we have a problem." Jarvis's voice said, and unfortunately for Xander and the Amazons, the AI's voice sounded worried.

Just then something started to appear over the horizon. First massive brownish red horns the color of old dried blood, followed by rows of short spikes, and then a forehead followed by a face with a skeletal split where a nose should have been but where instead two ventral slits were exposed and green vapors issued out of the slits. To each side of the slits were massive red eyes with fiery orange pupils that seemed focused right in on Xander and the Amazon city. However the worse thing about the situation was that the head was brushing the low hanging clouds.

Xander's eyes went wide as he spat out the first thing that came to mind. "Holy Balrog on Crack Batman, they've got an Old One!"

The new demon, a true Old One or what could be considered a Hell God for this dimension began to seemingly grow as it came closer with every step that shook the earth. Red scaly shoulders appeared under a head that was easily twenty to thirty feet in diameter. The tips of leathery wings could be seen peaking up over the thing's shoulders and disappeared up into the clouds, each wing folded tightly to its back as an armored breastplate of bone seemed to grow out of the things chest as it was just now being exposed with each additional step

Xander had to admit to himself that he was scared silly, but he had never shied away from a fight, never and no matter how dire the threat. He wasn't going to do it now, even while a very small part of him felt like calling out for mommy and hiding under his bed.

Xander gritted his teeth and stared as the Old One came to the edge of the bluff and raised clawed arms outstretched and screamed a cry that literally split the clouds above it with the blast of sound and air that it dispelled. That image would be burned forever into Xander's memory for the rest of his life, no matter how long or short it may be given the facts of the situation he found himself in.

It stood at two hundred feet, bellowing in rage to the sky. Greyish black plates of bone covered where pectorals would be on a human man while solid continuous ridges of bone with spikes formed some perversion of what should have been a six pack over the dirty blood red skin. A tattered and dirty loincloth of some giant flying demon's skin covered its nakedness and bony plates covered thighs and shins until giant claws capped off toes that literally tore the earth beneath it with every step. Its arms were the thickness of tanker trucks, its claws the length of telephone poles and with its wings fully unfurled to completely block out the light from one of the sun's in the sky.

"If we all concentrate really hard, maybe it will turn into the stay puffed marshmallow man, marshmallows are much easier to burn… Nah, that isn't going to work." Xander mumbled to himself loud enough that the Amazons around him could hear him, but none of them answered him as they were all too afraid to even think or move.

Xander looked down to the lightsaber laying on the ground at his side before turning and leaving the gap in the city walls, headed for his gear. "I'm going to need a bigger sword."

Artemis blinked as The Grey Knight's movement broke the Amazons out of their shock. On the cliff some two and a half thousand yards away, the Old One jumped off the cliff to land on the valley floor with an earth shattering BOOM that knocked some staring Amazons off their feet.

Bedlam erupted as Amazons ran about trying to get ready to combat an enemy that they had no real ability to defeat. On the walls Hippolyta yelled out orders to bring up more ballista and to break out oil and torches, hoping somehow that they could take the monster with them or at least save some Amazons before they were all destroyed by this horrible fiend.

Xander marched through the chaos resolutely, heading towards his Dreadknight system, his lightsaber flying through the air to clip itself to his hip without him even realizing he had called it to him.

"Where are you going!" Artemis yelled as she turned wide eyed from staring at the Greater Demon that defied all belief to chase after the Grey Knight.

"To get my bigger sword." Xander answered as he strode at a determined pace towards his Dreadknight system.

"You're going to go out there and fight it? Are you insane?" Artemis screeched as she grabbed Xander's arm and tried to pull him back.

Xander shrugged her off and kept marching forward, his strength easily out surpassing hers.

"I'll do what I must to make sure you survive, even if that means going out there to give you all as much time as possible, I won't let that thing get to you Arty." Xander said as he arrived at his Dreadknight system and did a fast system check to make sure that the ammo was full on the Gatling canons and that the plasma system had a full charge. The giant sword was strapped to its back, sharp and ready to be used.

"Wait, look at me." Artemis commanded, and when Xander didn't stop his check she grabbed him by the head and turned him to look at her. "Look at me Xander!" She yelled.

Xander stopped what he was doing and allowed her to turn his head to look at her.

Artemis looked at Xander, really looked at him and right in the eyes.

Xander stared silently and determinedly at the Shim-Tar as Artemis held his head with her hands on each side of cheeks.

Artemis looked down, and then back at The Grey Knight. Bit her lip, and then a look of determination came across her face right before she leapt upwards so that her head was at Xander's height, and then she kissed him.

Arms wrapped around his neck, she closed her eyes, legs wrapped around the waist of his blood covered armor, both of them dusty, sweaty, grime and blood covered and she kissed him for all that she was worth.

Xander was first surprised, but then reached an arm around behind Artemis to hold her to him as he closed his eyes and kissed her back. Both closed their eyes and it was as if the world faded out around them for a moment… but then the Thud sounded, followed by another.

Xander opened his eyes and pulled away from the kiss as he looked with caring down on the tall but still shorter Shim-Tar. Forcefully but gently he pried Artemis off of him and set her down onto her feet.

Artemis looked up at Xander, and a hint of a tear threatened to leave her eye but she choked it back with determination. The ancient women of Greece, specifically Sparta had a saying, "Come home on with your shield or on it." It was the type of mentality that women throughout the ages had exemplified as their men had gone off to battle and probable death. It's tough to say which is harder, being the one left behind or the one who leaves to go off to battle knowing that you probably won't survive the odds against you. Either way, Artemis was up for the task.

"Come back safely Alexander Harris, Grey Knight. We can talk about more kisses to follow the promise that was found in that last one." Artemis stated her heart in her eyes as she called upon her warrior training to be strong; after all, if Xander died she and the rest of the Amazons would probably do so shortly after and she could join him on the Elysium plains, the area of the afterlife reserved for heroes and those related to the gods.

Xander smiled a true heartfelt smile at the shorter women. "I'll do what I can." Xander answered as his armored hand came up and lightly caressed her cheek, wiping a bit of grime off her cheek carefully.

Then with a deep breath and a stealing of his nerves Xander called to his helmet to come down from the sky and join him as he floated up and twisted to stand inside the armored cradle of the Dreadknight system.

In the distance, the thudding booms of the Old One's footsteps grew louder.

Xander's red eyed skeletal helmet clicked and locked with a whir of bolts and pneumatic locks as it covered his head and sealed into place as the armored clamshell breastplates of the Dreadknight exo-armor clanged together and connecting cables snaked between Grey Knight armor and Dreadknight system to complete Xander's control over the exoskeleton armor. Xander seated his hands in the control gauntlets of his armor and rotated his hands so that the control systems locked together.

The armor came alive with a hum of power and Xander reached behind his back and unsheathed his sword. Then with his sword pointed forward and to the sky, Xander gave one more look down to where Artemis was backing away from his armor, nodded his head in silent goodbye, and then as the power blade came to life with a blue glow the jet thrusters on the back and feet of the Dreadknight system blasted off sending him flying into the air and over the wall to charge the oncoming Hell God.

Xander soared over the heads of the Amazons and the walls as Hippolyta stopped shouting commands to watch the Grey Knight charge the seemingly unbeatable foe. She looked at the man who had risked everything to save her people, the man who had saved her daughter's life, saved the lives of countless Amazons and even fed her people. She watched as that very same man who had risked everything on a wild ride to hell charged off to a fate which she didn't think he could come back from. Something in Hippolyta's heart finally realized that here was a man that could be trusted, not any other man, not even the Leviathan that had sent the Grey Knight. But for one man in the world, she would hold trust in him, Alexander, The Grey Knight, Protector of Men and Women alike.

Hippolyta turned to the Amazons around her who were staring in awe and the bravery of the Grey Knight.

"Sisters!" Hippolyta called out and the Amazons turned to listen to their Queen. "Give a cheer to the hero who sacrifices himself for us, and pray to the Gods for his soul. For there goes a true example of a Man!" She called out before turning and starting to pray to the Greek Gods that The Grey Knight would be looked after when he found his place among the honorable and victorious dead, for she did not think that even if Alexander defeated the Old One that he would survive to see the defeat to completion.

Truth be told, Xander didn't think that he was going to be walking away from this one either, but then again he had never been one for listening to fate or believing that there were things out there that were impossible. In fact, some days Xander did several impossible things before breakfast, and perhaps one or two during lunch if he was feeling bored.

The chunking sounds of Xander's Dreadknight's mechanical feet charging forward were a counterpoint to the heavy thudding of the Old One that was focused on the milling crowd of Amazons on the wall and in the gap into the city.

"Time to get the big guy's attention." Xander announced as he charged forward, mechanical feet eating up the dirt and closing the distance to the Old One very quickly.

"I hope this works." Xander said to himself as he raised the left arm that held that twin Gatling cannons and targeted the face of the two hundred foot tall demon lord.

The gun barrels started spinning as Xander targeted the right eye of the Old One, and then with a phenomenal discharge the guns began to fire.

"WHEEEEEEEE BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG…" Bullets stitched themselves across the cheek and into the red glaring eye that was easily five feet across.

"SREEEEECH!" The Old One twisted its head with a screech of pain as its eye juices splattered across its face and it whipped its arm up to shield its face, and Xander's rounds were intercepted by bone armored plating on the back of the hand that covered the giant demon's face.

"Ah ha! Got ya!" Xander yelled with joy as he continued to race towards the Hell God… only for said monstrously sized demon to lower its hand and show a fully healed eye.

"Bugger." Xander cursed, just as the Old One turned its attention away from the city and towards the nuisance that was the Grey Knight.

Xander continued shooting, stitching his armor piercing rounds down over the neck and then chest of the Old One, but bullet holes healed almost as quickly as they were made and the boney plates didn't even chip where the bullets hit them.

"Ok, that didn't work." As Xander stopped his forward momentum and started running sideways, still spitting out rounds from his cannons at the towering Old One.

The Old One turned to follow the progression of the armored system that was fighting it, towering over the twenty foot tall Dreadknight exo-armor by a factor of ten. The large red and orange eyes traced the path of the attacking nuisance and the Old One pulled its arms inwards and took a long deep inward breath. As the Hell God breathed in, red glowing runes that were five times larger than those tattooed on the smaller elder demons seemed to come to life as if a fire was lit in them. Then with a fast exhale, a red blast of pure demonic power shot out of the Old One's mouth right at Xander.

Xander only had time for his eyes to go large and to think, 'Shit! I've got its attention, now what do I do!' Before he was forced to dive to the side, the Dreadknight skidded sideways across the hard packed red dirt as its shoulder banged against the ground and was also sent into a semi-spin as Xander didn't get out of the path of the demonic blast in time and the left arm of the Dreadknight system was clipped by the attack.

Dust exploded from the ground where the Dreadknight hit and rolled, and a thirty foot long trench was dug through the red soil of the hell dimension as the magical attack destroyed the left arm of Xander's exo-armor and kept going to eat through the earth behind him.

Xander quickly caused the armor to push itself up off the ground and back to its feet.

"Sir, the Gatling guns are no longer functional." Jarvis reported diligently.

"Thanks Jarvis, I figured that out." Xander gritted through his teeth as he saw the twisted wreckage of what used to be the left arm of his exo-armor laying on the ground and starting to melt into a puddle of liquid metal.

Xander looked up and saw that the Old One was no longer focusing on Xander but was back to walking towards Themyscira.

"Oh no you don't." Xander growled, anger painting his face as he caused his armor to pick up his twelve foot long sword where it had fallen on the ground when he tried to dodge the Hell God's attack.

Xander charged forward, quickly covering the distance to the Old One that was fully focused on the city and the women inside.

Aiming at the back of its legs, the back of the knee joints some thirty feet again above the height of Xander's twenty foot tall Dreadknight armor, Xander ignited his jet boosters and launched into the air sword first.

"HAVE AT THEE! BWA HA HA HA HA." Xander yelled with an insane laugh, he couldn't believe he was attacking an Old One with a sword, a big sword and a power sword at that, but still a sword.

Xander neared the back of the Old One's knee caps and the Hell God began to turn to look behind it just as Xander reeled back and swung his sword humming forward and through one side and out the other of first one leg and then the second as his jet powered jump's trajectory brought him right up behind the Old One.

"Bwa ha ha ha ha!" Xander yelled in success as the Old One bellowed in pain and seemed to fall in slow motion.

Unfortunately for Xander, Old Ones, and especially Old Ones who look kind of like Balrogs, are vengeful and like to take down their attackers with them.

The Old One flailed as it attempted to right itself as it's lower legs fell away. Wings unfurling, one of the bony spines that lined the giant wing clipped the back of the still airborne Xander, and suddenly Xander got to experience a roller coaster ride sans roller coaster.

'Mayday! Mayday! We're Going Down! Um, Huston we've got problems!' The voice of warning screamed in Xander's head as suddenly the rocket powered armor was spinning end over end.

Xander saw the earth coming up towards his face very quickly and thought to himself, "Hmmm, this isn't good." Which may have been available for a vote for understatement of the year as he was launched face first into the side of the volcanic cone where he had once saved several Amazons from certain death.

"KA-Booom… thud thud thud thud thud…" Xander hit the lip of the crater and then skipped into the air, rockets still firing and propelling him right back into the ground where he rolled over and over again until he ended up face down in the dirt.

Xander's world was spinning, and he thought he heard several of the voices in his head getting violently ill from motion sickness.

"Um, urp, that didn't work out too well." Xander said as everything in his vision seemed to spin for a bit until it slowed till a standstill; the "urp" was his own successful attempt to keep his breakfast down due to slight motion sickness.

Raising himself up shakily, Xander looked over his right shoulder as he brought his exo-armor up to its knees, just in time to see the now stub-legged Old One push itself up onto its stumps and breathe out right towards Xander; the red glowing runes already fully lit and nowhere for Xander to escape to.

"SHIELDS!" Xander screamed, and the Grey Knight armor raised its force field which immediately severed all connections with the Dreadknight system with a *snap* of power, right before the demonic blast obliterated the Dreadknight system around Xander.

Pain.

Xander's world was pain as he felt like a dump truck had run over his chest while at the same time five sumo wrestlers were getting slap happy with his face and a midget had head-butted him in the crotch… all at the same time.

Xander passed out for a moment or two, and it took a few seconds for the blackness that had swallowed him up to turn grey and finally give him vision of the inside of his helmet.

"Cough, cough, damage, cough report Jarvis." Xander ordered, a trickle of blood coughing out his mouth as he spoke, and he felt wetness in his ears and near his nose as he couldn't hear himself speak.

A muffled sound came to him, then with an audible "Pop" he heard Jarvis reply, "Sorry sir, but your ear drums were burst. Dreadknight system totally destroyed, the shields saved your life and muted the blast but shields have failed due to the magical interference and it was only the nature of the Nth Metal that allowed you to survive, albeit with severe internal injuries."

Xander coughed up a mouthful of blood, and spit it into his helmet which quickly absorbed the fluids and then used them to be put back into Xander's body as the auto-doc program tried to fix up the punctured lungs and broken ribs that Xander had received along with the two broken legs.

Xander struggled to move, and his sensors fed him the sound of screeching bubbling metal as he pushed himself up out of the wreckage of his Dreadknight armor that literally melted away from him. Xander came to his knees and looked out at the plains of hell, but his broken tibias wouldn't let him stand just yet and the aching in his ribs was making it hard for him to even stay upright.

The Hell God was still holding itself up with its clawed arms and stumpy legs, but now it was screeching in rage as apparently Xander had just pissed it off. Already a bubbling stump seemed to be growing out of where Xander had severed the legs, suggesting that the Old One would heal if given the time. Of course the Hell God wasn't going to wait for its legs to heal before it dined on Amazons, as Xander watched as its wings unfurled from its back and started to flap, picking the huge demon up off the ground and starting to rise into the air towards the city in the not so far distance.

Xander looked from the Hell God, to the city of the Amazons, and he thought of Artemis, he thought of Dina and all the other Amazons he had become friends with, and he growled.

Xander's eyes flashed green, and the power of the Primal empowered him and allowed him to stand despite the compound fractures in his legs, heaving breaths that gurgled as his inner nano-clanks hurried to get the blood out of his lungs and ignoring all pain.

"You… will… not… hurt… my PACK!" Xander screamed in rage.

Xander's lightsaber was in his hand and he was blasting through the air faster than a speeding bullet, with more power than a locomotive and quicker than you could blink as a bellow of absolute bestial rage sprang from Xander's throat.

Then Xander was on the flying Old One. Like a sparrow chasing off an eagle, no more like a hummingbird taking on a terradactyl Xander attacked with an all out constant bellow of rage.

Forget flitting like a butterfly and stinging like a bee, Xander was a pissed off Spark with a lightsaber! Xander cut off one of the Old One's wings before slicing off a horn and then dodging around a flailing claw to gouge out an eye.

The Hell God tumbled from the sky and landed in part of the remaining mine field, explosions going off below as Xander continued to fly circles around the furiously flailing Old One.

"How do you like that mother fucker?" Xander yelled angrily, his eyes gleaming and backlit by the pure power of the Primal as the Spark came together with the Alpha Primal Spirit to allow the impossible to happen, a mortal to take on a true Old One in hand to hand combat with nothing but a sword.

Xander sliced right through one of the pectoral bones that protected the creatures hide. "How's them apples Bitch! That's for your toadies smashing my Twinkies." Xander continued to yell and spit profanities as he blurred from place to place, here stabbing, there slashing, and where the lightsaber struck it not only cut but it cauterized the wound behind it so that the Old One struggled to heal the wounds Xander gave it.

"And that's for the Amazons who died!" Xander shouted as he sliced off a pinky finger before running the blade up the giant monster's forearm. "And that's for all the pain and agony your followers caused." Xander continued to yell in fury as he stabbed and cut everything he could while continually dodging ineffective attacks.

"BWA HA HA HA! You may have beaten my machines, you may have beaten my inventions and even broken my bones, but you won't beat my SPARK!" Xander yelled as he charged forward and with a two handed over handed blow drove his lightsaber straight between the Hell God's eyes, probing for grey matter with the full length of the blade.

Xander pushed the blade as far as it would go until the handle touched even with the skin on the bellowing Hell God's forehead.

The two large red eyes went cross-eyed as they focused on Xander floating there.

Xander paused, briefly puzzled that the light saber hadn't melted the monster's brains. This was a huge tactical mistake.

Quicker than you can say, "Oops" the Old One's clawed hand swept forward and grabbed Xander in a crushing grip.

The sound of tortured twisted metal echoed across the valley as the Hell God Bellowed in rage right in Xander's face while slowly crushing his armor around him.

"WARNING, Internal systems failure imminent, SPITZZZ, WARNING, Internal System Failure… imminent system shut dowwwwwnnnnn…" Jarvis's voice came in spits and starts as sparks ignited inside Xander's power armor and helmet, burning his skin and causing Xander to jerk from electrocution as he was slowly crushed to death under the inexorable strength of the Hell God's grip.

"Cough, Must Cough Get loose." Xander struggled to twist and turn, but neither the strength of Superman housed in his Amazo nano-clanks nor the combination with the power of the Primal could free Xander.

"Grahh grah grah grah. GRAH GRAH GRAH GRAH." The Hell God said, and Xander realized that the Old One was laughing at Xander. Xander watched as the visuals on his helmet saw the lightsaber get pushed out of the head of the Hell God as the wound healed.

"GRAH GRAH GRAH GRAH!" The Old One laughed as it crushed the life out of the creature that had dared to challenge it.

Xander had been nearly immobilized by the pain, but when he heard the Hell beast laughing at him, something deep inside of Xander broke loose as a strange sense of distance came to Xander's mind, and he could think easily upon his life.

There was that piece of Xander that was the funny man and had sought to make others laugh, often at his expense. But hidden behind that mask was the true strength that Xander had always had, even before he was gifted or cursed with the Spark. And that strength was the inability for him to accept failure. Prophesy says the Slayer had to die at the hand of the Master, hell no, Xander won't let that happen. Xander's father says Xander won't live up to anything and will end up an alcoholic waste like his dear old dad, Hell No, Xander won't let that happen. Somebody going to hurt his friends? A Hell God going to laugh at Xander as it crushed the life out of Xander? HELL NO, Xander won't let that happen!

A gleam came to Xander's eye, and an evil smile crept across his face.

"Cough, cough, you only think you've won." Xander stated, broadcasting his speech verbally, and the Old One paused to hear what the human had to say as the Hell God believed it would only add to the pleasure of destroying these humans and increase their suffering.

"Cough, Grenade activation code, cough cough, Twinkie Twinkie Fuck You cough." Xander spit out between gasps for breath as the armor crushed in against his chest and it was an incredible struggle even to breath.

"Thank you sir, activation code Twinkie Twinkie Fuck You acknowledged, destruction in t-minus twenty seconds and counting." The polite feminine British voice of the grenades' speakers stated, that is all of the remaining super-nova grenades said the same thing at the same time.

The Old One looked at the armored figure in its hand, not understanding what it was saying, or at least not understanding the words or where these other female voices came from.

"Firewall on!" Xander choked out with a yell, and suddenly gas jets with liquefied fuel for the plasma system vented out of the back of Xander's armor and then ignited until he was covered in a roiling inferno of flesh melting fire.

The Hell God let out a tremendous "SCREEEEEECH!" as the hand crushing Xander was immolated by flames and ceased to exist.

Before Xander could drop out of the air, he swung his hand down to his side, ignoring the pain of the cracks in his armor where the fire was singing away skin and muscle and burning down into Xander's bones.

Grabbing his fireproof grenade belt, Xander chucked the loop of super-nova grades into the open mouth of the bellowing Hell God and dropped towards the ground where he used his last bit of fading consciousness to activate his flight powers and send him soaring towards Themyscira and over the walls to skid off the top of the wall and then tumble across the courtyard.

With his last bit of strength he pushed himself and commanded the Firewall system to turn off. Xander's bulk flipped over onto his back and he felt the armor shift and cut into his body as he was left staring straight up at the sky, and his vision began to fade.

"Cough, How do you like dem twinkies, Bitch…" Xander chuckled to himself, blood now flowing freely out of his lips with ever cough. As Xander shifted, he felt every puncture wound on the armor cut into his flesh and cause more internal bleeding, the Grey Knight armor had punched through his stomach and was cutting through his intestines with every motion or breath that he struggled to take.

Through the encroaching darkness that was swallowing Xander's vision, and the sparks and fizzles that interrupted his visuals of his helmet Xander saw Artemis's face suddenly hovering above him.

Artemis looked down at the crushed and burned remains of the Grey Knight, the smell of burnt hair and flesh wafting up from cracks in the armor. Artemis looked down at the armor in horror and realized that she had to get him free of his armor if she was going to save him.

Frantically, the Shim-Tar grabbed the skeletal helmet of the Grey Knight and wrenched it back and forth, ignoring the fact that the hot metal was burning her hands as she did so. She had to get Xander free!

Around Artemis Amazons ran around bringing ballista to bear on the struggling Old One who was now missing a hand and both legs. But while other Amazons fought to take down the beast, Artemis fought with Xander's armor.

Finally with a click and a hiss the helmet popped off exposing Xander's eyes that blinked almost unseeing before they slowly turned to look at her with a bloody smile.

Xander's lips moved, but no sound came out of them other than bubbles of blood.

"Shhh, don't talk, we need to get you healed." Artemis said as she stared down at him, her hands frantically searching for the clamps that she had watched him use in the past to get in and out of the heavy armor.

"Gods be damned open Damnit! Open up you dumb armor." Artemis cursed the armor as tears began to drip from her eyes to sizzle on the still hot metal.

Her fingers scrabbled on the clasp, but it was smashed shut and nothing she could do would get it off, and all the while Xander just smiled up at her quietly and peacefully.

Xander's soft voice drew her attention away from the clasp she was fighting with.

"No Arty, I don't think I'm going to make it this time, and somehow I always figured I'd die in some back alley after a brawl with a vampire, Cough cough," Xander stated as blood began to spill more quickly from his lips.

Xander turned his head and spat to the side before continuing. "Heh heh, well at least I got the Big Bad, I wonder if Buffy would have approved." Xander's eyes lost focus for a second there before swinging to look right into Artemis's eyes.

Artemis cupped his cheek gently in her hand as tears spilled continuously from her eyes. She had never felt this way about a man before, and now when she figures it out he's dying. In the back of her mind she both cursed the Gods and prayed that they would save him, save him right now and she would worship them again.

"I'm sorry I failed to get you all home." Xander started, his breath halting and wheezing as he struggled to breathe.

Artemis tried to interrupt him, "No, no you didn't fail, we're going to be ok…" Only for Xander to continue talking.

Focusing right on Artemis's face, Xander smiled his patented lopsided grin and raised his right arm slowly, fighting the weight of the heavy armor and the unpowered servos that didn't want to move. Cupping Artemis's face in his hand carefully, his fingers curving to caress her face ever so softly despite his inhuman strength he said, "I always was a sucker for the strong beautiful women, cough cough" and his smile became less of a grin and more of a sincere caring smile, "I think I could have loved you…"

Artemis choked up, eyes going wide at his words, and then before her eyes she saw her Xander's eyes glass over and lose their focus, a sigh escaped his lips, and his hand halted its caress of her cheek, forever frozen as Xander no longer had the life in him with which to force the armor to his will.

"No." Artemis gasped, her hand clasping at Xander's frozen arm to try and get it to respond. "No no no." She cried, tears pouring from the hardened warriors eyes to paint Xander's chest and puddle in the eye sockets of the skull crest in the center of his breastplate. Her hands scrambled towards his face, clutching desperately at the sides of his face to try and force Xander to focus on her, but his skin was already starting to cool to her touch. So focused was she on Alexander in her arms, that she failed to see the brief flash of light that marked the massive destruction of the Old One due to Xander's grenades exploding as one. So focused was she on her love dying in her arms, that she failed to note the brief flicker of black in the sky, then red before bright blue Caribbean sky was overhead with little fluffy white clouds.

"NO!" Artemis cried out in anguish, clutching her face and covering her eyes as she sobbed uncontrollably as she fell off of her knees to land on her butt in the dust and dirt, oblivious to the fact that Themyscira had survived the war in hell and been returned to the world from which it originated.

Then to add insult to injury, Artemis heard a "SNAP!" and she uncovered her eyes just in time to witness a black portal appear and swallow up the body of The Grey Knight before disappearing and leaving her alone in the dirt.

"NOOOOOOOOO!" Artemis screamed and pounced towards where Xander's body had just lain. Pounding the dirt in her sorrow and crying with dust sticking to her tear stained face.

Around her on the walls and on the grounds, the Amazons were a mix of emotions, but none of them cheered. The relief of surviving hell and the invasion of the demons, even the defeat of the Old One was tempered by the loss of the true hero who had given his life for them in the end.

Sister hugged sister silently, and the Amazons turned to see the warrior leader of the Bana-Mighdall sobbing her eyes out and wailing in anguish, and they couldn't help but cry with her. Dina, Artemis's sister, rushed from her place on the walls. Still battered and bruised from the battle Dina ran to her sister's side, clutching Artemis in her arms as Dina too fell to the ground and hugged her sister while both cried together for their loss.

Hippolyta walked forwards from her place where she had been readying the reserve soldiers on the other side of the courtyard, regally, but with tears also wetting her cheek, she carefully and gently laid her hand on Artemis's head and then knelt down to embrace both sisters, as she too mourned the loss of not only a true hero, but the loss of the first man she felt she could trust in almost six hundred years. Hippolyta might not have liked Alexander all that much, as he had constantly shown her disrespect, but then she realized that she was the cause that disrespect in the first place and she owed him all honor and respect.

Looking up at the combined tribes of Amazons that surrounded them, Hippolyta came to the decision that they would rebuild, but for now they would mourn the loss and pay honor to the sisters they had lost, but most of all to the Man who had saved them at the cost of his own life, The Grey Knight.

AN: Ok, don't scream foul, don't go running away from this story as it isn't over by a long shot. This is not the end, this is a DC comics crossover, so figure it out. Damn I cried so much writing this last scene, even though I know what is going to happen next it still made me cry to picture it in my head. I hate sad stories, I read fiction to have the hero win and get the girl in the end, so I'll be damned if I let the story end here! There is just so much else to do, but you'll have to wait until next time. I'd say cheers, but after the last scene I don't feel so cheery, so I'll say please let me know your thoughts and ideas. Honestly though, I don't write for reviews, but it's the only legal tender that we fanfiction authors can receive, and after pouring out so much time and effort on this chapter I really hope you take the time to let me know your thoughts, ideas and whether or not you liked it via a review or small note. Thanks either way, and see you next time, same Spark of Genius channel, Same Spark of Genius time.