"Xander!"
Where he'd been standing several prudent steps away and definitely upwind while displaying a very disgusted grimace and also briskly fanning with one hand the air in front of his nose, a startled Xander Harris snapped his head around from glaring at the massive, unconscious body lying face-down in front of him. That young woman's voice suddenly calling his name tonight had come about fifty feet or so further on, somewhere ahead in the Maine forest with its trees and thick bushes blocking any chance of Xander seeing who'd just done this even if it wasn't already fully dark several hours after another summer sunset.
There were the additional points that not only didn't Xander recognize who'd just yelled for him, but nobody from the New Council knew that he was here, in this specific spot. Oh, sure, like everyone else belonging to this supernatural organization on their annual vacations, this one-eyed man could be contacted in emergencies by Willow's magic or a more prosaic call on the cell phone in his jeans pocket to find him on a camping trip in upper Maine a few miles from the Canada border. However, in the middle of this relaxing break from his usual New Council troubleshooting duties, Xander had stumbled across a possible demon sighting which he needed to investigate right away.
Shooting an irritated glance at the out-cold creature in front of him, Xander mentally changed the word 'possible' to 'certain' for that smelly nuisance resembling a cross between Bigfoot and an enormous fanged rabbit which he'd beaned with a thrown rock just seconds earlier. Still regarding with total exasperation the latest reason for cutting short his vacation, Xander muttered under his breath, "How the hell did a skunk ape get this far north?"
There was good cause for Xander's growing annoyance, besides having to get back to work again when he'd been having a nice rest from the usual supernatural stuff making up his normal life. Skunk apes, as Xander had been told years before, were typically limited to the American South, mostly in Florida, North Carolina, and Arkansas. To be exact, those furry half-man/half-beast demons hid in remote swamps and woods while scavenging for food.
They preferred to stay far away from both humans and other demons, which as Spike the vampire then mentioned in their idle conversation one night in Sunnydale shortly after the whole Initiative episode when they'd been too bored to do anything else, "A damn good thing, see? Yeah, they can talk and understand people, but those sods stink so bloody much nobody else wants them around. Never heard of any of my kind, not even the hungriest or most bonkers, trying for a quick nibble on their necks. It'd be like shoving your face right into a cowpat. Not likely they'll ever show up here on the Hellmouth, but if they do, there's an easy way to get rid of them."
Xander was abruptly distracted from his decades-old memories by a slight change in direction of the nighttime breeze which now wafted towards him the intense stench roiling off the skunk ape, causing this man's remaining eye to heavily water. Wiping at the brimming tears, Xander froze at once again hearing his name being shouted by that female stranger. This time, though, it was much louder which meant this girl was coming nearer-
"Oh, crap," he groaned.
Whoever this might be, she had to be from the nearby Maine summer camp which was named in the first place for the same long-lived skunk ape that had been locally lurking in the wooded area ever since the nineteenth century. The summer camp even had in its roadside sign an imaginative artistic design representing the native legend, making Xander instantly hit the brakes of his rental Jeep when he'd caught sight of this while driving by.
Well, despite how everyone else here considered it to be nothing more than a tall tale to scare the camp kids huddling around the fireside while they gobbled up enough s'mores to make themselves sick, Xander had just proved them to be totally wrong. Not that he was really eager to show off an actual demon to anybody dropping by. The whole point of the New Council was that they protected the world from what prowled in the night without letting out the big secret to those who didn't actually need to know about magic, vampires, demons, and every other oogly-boogly.
If it wound up with Xander accidentally blowing not only the New Council's cover but the very existence of the supernatural itself to a bunch of innocent campers, Giles was going to be pissed.
Okay, so how to avoid that? Thinking it over, Xander's ears pricked up at how there were now several voices coming from ahead. Great, even more witnesses… Hold it, they were staying over there while they argued about something.
Moving like a ghost, Xander sneaked up to the voices. With a great deal of care, he pulled aside a bush's leaves to peer through the greenery at a small clearing. There, this open space was filled with slightly over a half-dozen people of all ages and ethnicities, though they were in the main much younger than Xander himself.
*Let's see now,* Xander mused while still staying concealed from this crowd of people he'd never met before who clearly had no idea someone else was around watching them. *The oldest four kids must be camp counselors and the others are the campers-*
"Xander," a blonde girl reproved the teenage boy there, missing how a bush at the clearing's edge abruptly quivered in surprise, "We can't stay here! The Kikiwaka might be around!"
*Well, that explains it. Just another guy with my name. I like him already.*
Another, even-blonder, girl grabbed the boy's arm, draped this over her shoulders, and snuggled up to the guy staring down at her in obvious bafflement. She next smirked at the lesser blonde glowering at her, "If you want, Emma, you can take these pests back to the cabins. I'll be just fine with Xander protecting me. Right, darling?"
*Oooo, obsessive much? Dude, you better learn fast what I should've paid attention to myself a long time ago: never date crazy.*
Xander next watched in growing amusement how the kids then all started bickering with each other. However, this was soon cut short by every child in the clearing pausing to sniff at the air, before they eyed with evident revulsion the youngest boy there, to then yell at him in a loud chorus of, "JORGE!"
Inhaling with the judgment of a connoisseur savoring an unique delight, that chubby-cheeked kid protested in a Hispanic accent, "Hey, this time it wasn't me! It came from over there!" He pointed across the clearing…directly at Xander's bush.
Gagging at the odor now clinging to him, Xander winced at how the breeze had changed once more to reveal the skunk ape's presence back there not just to him but to the kids now advancing in unison towards their hidden observer.
*Uh-huh, not gonna happen.*
Grabbing hold of the bush, Xander started vigorously shaking this while at the same time uttering guttural roars of animalistic fury and stomping his feet hard onto the ground. This provided exactly the reaction Xander wanted.
With panicky yells of "The Kikiwaka!", everybody in the clearing spun around and immediately ran for their very lives from the mythical monster which had to be behind that bush, seemingly thirsting for their blood. In mere seconds, the clearing was empty, and there was the sound of fading footsteps in the direction of Camp Kikiwaka.
That left Xander Harris bent over while he tried not to collapse with laughter. It was a losing struggle, with Xander landing onto his right side on the ground and curling up in continuous giggles. The best part for him was the sight of seeing those two blondes racing away side by side, with Miss Blonder trying at every other step to trip up Miss Less-Blonde and leave her rival helpless for the Kikiwaka.
Finally recovering, Xander got back up on his feet. He wandered over to a nearby tree to yank off a long branch from there. Gauging his new stick, Xander nodded in satisfaction and headed back to where the skunk ape still hadn't woken up. Being poked a lot by the stick would take care of this, and then Xander and that demon would have a little…chat.
Either the Kikiwaka would agree to keep staying out of sight and not bother anybody like it'd evidently been doing for at least a hundred years, or the New Council would deal with this demon for once and all. Strolling along the forest path towards his destination, Xander grinned at what Spike had told him back in Sunnydale.
Apparently, skunk apes didn't merely cultivate their incredible reek at part of their survival strategy; it was a natural consequence of these demons' biology and mating process. If somehow a skunk ape's smell was reduced or altered due to any number of factors, it resulted in what was for them nothing less than what castration would be for a male human.
Dipping into a jeans pocket to pull out his cell phone from there, Xander hit the correct button to put him in touch with Willow. It was going to be really hilarious, explaining to her that he'd like his bestest bud otherwise known as the most powerful witch on Earth to do her mojo in teleporting on a second's notice at a point maybe ten feet high and a couple yards in front of Xander a bathtub-full of Chanel No. 5 perfume.