Working Vacation
Xander pulled into the storage place and realized he'd lost the key to the storage locker. "Well, it has been over five years," he muttered before heading for the front desk to borrow a pair of bolt cutters.
Loading everything into the U-Haul took a lot less time than he thought it should, considering how much of his history he was moving. Well, his and...the entire Scooby Gang, really. He'd always hidden things he'd valued, when he was a child, which had caused him trouble when the item in question hadn't been his.
Xander opened an old dusty shoebox that held a yellow crayon and a red-headed Barbie. It seemed silly now, but when he'd been a child and Willow had gotten a special Barbie customized to look like her—just hair and clothes really—he'd hidden it away, believing it was like a voodoo doll, and that as long as he had it, he'd have Willow as his best friend. He stroked the hair gently with his finger before closing the box once more.
He had copies of his and Willow's photo albums updated to about three months before Sunnydale died. He also had a copy of Joyce's updated to when she died. Buffy hadn't kept an album and had shaken her head at his excessive precautions to make sure theirs weren't lost due to fire, flood, or the entire town getting sucked into Hell. Dawn had a small album, as did Giles.
There was also a small backup demonology library—that almost matched Xander's comic collection in size—that Giles had insisted he store, 'just in case.'
Of course, there were also various odds and ends he'd collected and stored for emotional reasons as well as practical ones.
Dawn squealed, drawing everyone at the table's attention.
"What is it?" Buffy asked, setting her glass of orange juice down.
"Xander sent me a copy of my photo album, the one I lost in Sunnydale!"
"How come I didn't get a copy of mine?" Willow asked.
"Did you check the mail?"
Willow went to get the mail while Buffy glared at Dawn. "And why didn't you bring everyone their mail?"
"Because you complain when I do that."
"Only because of the comments you make!"
Giles groaned, "Not at the table, please!"
"Sorry, Giles," the two chorused.
"Looks like Xander sent us all something," Willow said, passing out the packages.
"He thought the whole 'from beneath you, it devours' thing meant the town might be swallowed by the Hellmouth," Willow admitted.
"He's so insightful," Andrew said with a wistful sigh, causing the girls to roll their eyes.
Xander grinned as he felt phantom arms hug him, knowing Willow had just gotten her package.
Returning his attention to the naked blonde in front of him, he carefully soldered a wire into place.
"Master?" she asked.
"It's okay, Botty, I'll have you up and running again in no time."
"Hey, Jose," Sarah said, nodding at her friend. "Any new neighbors?"
"Harris," Jose said, passing her a beer. "Lives about a mile north of me with his girl at Jackson's old place."
"What happened to Jackson?"
"Blew himself up doing something stupid," Jose said, shaking his head. "I think the old fart was attempting to disarm a claymore while blindfolded and drunk."
"That's stupid," she said, shaking her head.
"I did say he was drunk."
"Anything interesting about the two?" she asked.
"The girl is always bright and cheerful, never sweats, and is about ten years younger than him, so he's got to be a literal god in bed, or rich as hell," Jose said thoughtfully.
Sarah laughed. "You know what I mean."
"They have a few guns for home protection but never carry," Jose said. "I've seen him in town and done a little snooping. He seems to be some sort of expert with edged weapons."
"You mean like a knife fighter?" she asked.
"More than that," Jose said. "I think he's a merc who just did a stint in Africa, now he's spending his downtime making medieval weapons and training the girl."
"Medieval?"
"Swords, axes, crossbows, and staffs," he explained. "I set up a camera to catch them training and I was impressed."
"I could use some training," Sarah said, causing Jose to snort.
*knock-knock-knock*
"Good morning. Is there something I could help you with?" the short, blonde girl—who couldn't have been more than eighteen—answered the door with a sunny smile.
"I wanted to meet with Xander Harris and discuss getting some training," Sarah replied. Sarah had her sandy blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail and had worn a tight, white T-shirt to emphasize her curves, skipping anything else, figuring Xander would prefer women who didn't wear a lot of makeup.
"I'll get him," she replied, leaving the door wide open as she disappeared inside.
Sarah figured that was about all the invitation she was going to get and wanted chance to poke around, so she stepped out of the heat and glare of the desert sun and into Xander's place. It looked remarkably neat inside, with freshly painted adobe walls, and the furniture appeared to be expensive, hand-crafted pieces. Decorations seemed to be limited to pictures, mostly of girls, and what appeared to be functional medieval weapons.
"No means no!" a male voice called out.
"I'm not trying to have sex with you, I'm waking you up to let you know we have a visitor," the blonde's voice replied with the same inappropriate amount of cheer.
"Let me find my feet first."
"Okay, I'll start coffee."
"Thanks, Botty."
The sound of coffee percolating came from the open doorway to the left, meaning the kitchen was probably that way, but Botty came from the hall to the rear that lead deeper into the house.
"He'll be up shortly."
"Thank you. I meant to introduce myself earlier, my name is Karen Carpenter."
Botty shook her head. "No it's not. My name is Buffy Bot."
"What?" Sarah asked nervously, her hands casually moving towards several hidden weapons.
"Your eyes glanced up and to the right just before you said your name, a good indicator that you are lying because you actually had to recall what your name was from memory, which you wouldn't need to do with your real name. There are several other possible reasons, with very low possibilities of being true, but if you add that to pupil dilation and voice stress, it's pretty obvious. Would you like some coffee, Karen?"
"I thought you said my name isn't Karen," Sarah said.
"It's not, but if you want to be called that, who am I to argue?" Botty replied, unconcerned.
"Ah," Sarah said, relaxing.
Xander stumbled in a minute later and headed straight for the kitchen, dressed in a black T-shirt and red boxers. Sarah noted the many scars that were scattered about Xander's visible frame as he returned and collapsed on the couch, a large mug of coffee in his hands.
"Not all there before your first mug of coffee?" Sarah asked.
"Or much before noon," Xander agreed. "I work nights."
"Probably a wise idea in the desert," she agreed.
"So, what can I do for you, miss—?"
"Karen, Karen Carpenter," she tried again.
"Not with that load of tells you aren't," Xander disagreed.
Sarah groaned, "What the hell are you two?"
Xander sipped his coffee, amused. "Observant."
"Well, the name I'm going by is 'Karen Carpenter'."
"Nice to meet you, Karen. Name's Xander. Now what can I do for you?" Xander asked.
"No questions about the name?" she asked.
"I don't have a problem with the name, I just hate being lied to. 'Karen' is fine," he assured her.
"Anyway, I'm here to see about getting some training."
"Why?" Xander asked.
Sarah paused and considered what to say. "In the end, I believe that it's up to me to keep me and my son safe, so I try to get as much training as possible."
"Good answer," Xander said. "What do you want to be trained in?"
"What do you know?" she asked intently.
Xander grinned.
"So who is she?" Xander asked after Sarah had departed.
"Sarah Conner," Botty replied, having scanned Sarah's face and matched it to an episode of Unsolved Mysteries she'd seen while Xander was asleep.
"What information do we have on her?"
"Let me show you an episode of Unsolved Mysteries while I call little sister Dawn and have her compile a folder," Botty said.
"How'd it go?" Jose asked.
"It went well," Sarah said. "He agreed to train me."
"Not many men would turn down an offer like that," Jose said, mock leering at her chest.
"He woke up saying 'no means no,' so I'm assuming he has all the women he can handle. Or 'girl,' rather, since she is almost jailbait."
"Jealous?"
"She's not my type," Sarah replied easily.
Jose broke out laughing.
"Anyway, they read me like a novice, but don't care what name I use as long as I don't lie to them directly. He has a wide range of skills in a lot of areas that I don't even need. He's like Indiana Jones, if he were a real person."
"Seriously?"
"He can read and translate half a dozen ancient languages and specialized in weapons that were in use before guns were invented. He just spent a number of years in Africa and he's got a lot of scars."
"I wonder if he found anything, like forgotten temples."
"I'll ask him."
Sarah hit the sand hard, knocking the wind out of her. "I thought I was good at this," she grumbled when she regained her breath.
"There is always someone better," Xander said. "Always assume your opponent is stronger, faster, and more skilled than you."
"Then how do you win?"
"Cheat!" Xander replied with a grin. "Your job is to win at all costs, not to earn a fucking medal for fair play. If he brings a knife, bring a sword. If he brings a gun, you get a bazooka!"
"And in this situation?" Sarah asked, climbing to her feet.
"I have one eye and we're surrounded by sand," he replied. "You should have been trying to blind me. Distract, confuse, outlast...the best way to win is to make sure the other person loses, and you have as many tools as your mind can conceive of for that."
In one smooth motion, Sarah peeled of her shirt, and despite himself, Xander's eye immediately moved to her chest, just in time to get an eye full of sand from the handful she'd scooped up while on the ground. Even blinded, Sarah found Xander a hard nut to crack as he still managed to block the majority of her blows and the ones that did get through didn't seem to faze him. His vision was rapidly clearing and her strikes weren't effective, so she changed her tactics, moving in to grapple.
Later...
The two lay naked, staring up at the moon, with their clothes scattered about and sweat drying on their skin.
"That's one way to outlast me I didn't see coming," Xander admitted.
Sarah laughed ruefully. "Hand-to-hand wasn't working, so I decided to move the battle to one where women have a natural advantage."
"I'm not complaining." Xander said. "It was good strategy, and an enjoyable one, but not one that will help you destroy Cyberdyne Industries."
"You know," Sarah said quietly.
"I know you're going about it the wrong way," Xander replied.
"If you know what I'm doing, you must know why I'm doing it."
"Yeah," Xander agreed. "And that's why I agreed to help you."
"You believe?" she asked incredulously.
"The video footage from the police station, along with various other sources, is pretty compelling." Xander said. "Time travel complicates things because the nature of time itself means we not only have to stop Cyberdyne, but we have to reduce the probability of Skynet occurring, which is a whole 'nother matter."
"What?"
"Cyberdyne is just one link in the chain that leads to Skynet, but it's a replaceable one, because if Cyberdyne doesn't develop the technology, someone else will, having bought the data on it from Cyberdyne."
"So it's hopeless?" she demanded.
"No, not even remotely," he assured her. "We shut Cyberdyne down, we alter the creation of Skynet. Let's call the second corp 'Diamond.' Diamond buys up the pieces of Cyberdyne and continues their work, but the focus is different and they don't pump as much money into it, so it takes longer."
"But Skynet still happens."
"Yes, but the probability is reduced, making it harder for Skynet to influence its own creation. And once we take down Diamond, the probability of Skynet occurring becomes remote enough that Skynet can no longer contact this timeline, effectively removing it from our future," Xander explained.
"This timeline? Our future? You talk like it'll still exist."
"It will," Xander said. "Just like your son exists, because no matter what happens, Kyle Reese exists in that future. We can alter our timeline to avoid that future, but it still exists, it's just no longer possible to travel between here and there without the expenditure of nearly infinite amounts of energy."
"How do you know all this?" she demanded.
"I've got friends, some of which make me look about as smart as a severely concussed puppy, and they've gotten really good at explaining things to me."
"Will they help us?"
"Only if we need it," Xander replied. "I'm on vacation from my normal job, so I have time to deal with this."
"Let me get this straight, the people you work with don't consider Skynet a big enough danger to put more than you on it?" she asked in shock.
"It's not an immediate threat compared to the things we normally deal with and we have plenty of time to deal with it."
"What do you normally deal with?"
"Let's take care of Skynet first," Xander said. "Then I'll show you things that make it seem tame."
"I find that hard to believe," she said, shaking her head before she got up and dusted herself off. "How do we kill Cyberdyne?"
Xander climbed to his feet and stretched. "Well, what you were doing cost them money but gave them free publicity that brought in even more money."
"You've got to be shitting me!" she groaned.
"People started investing in Cyberdyne, just because they don't like terrorists," Xander explained. "No, to kill Cyberdyne, we have to poison it."
"Poison a company?" Sarah asked, getting dressed.
"Yes," he agreed, shaking sand out of his clothes as he collected them. "Subtle things that make them look bad and cost them money. 'Nibbled to death by ducks' is how it's been described, and all it takes is access and creativity."
"Access may be a problem," Sarah said as Xander dressed. "They've tightened up security a lot since I started my campaign against them."
"There are ways around that," Xander promised as they walked back to the house.
Entering the living room, they found Botty playing cards with John—who had a huge smile on his face and most of Botty's clothes.
"Botty, why are you naked with the under-aged boy?" Xander asked.
"He's older than me," Botty replied. "And despite probability, he's won every hand so far."
"John," Sarah began, then paused in thought before saying, "If you win every hand, it becomes apparent you're cheating a lot sooner than otherwise."
"You were cheating?" Botty asked, surprised.
"Yeah, well..." John blushed at getting caught.
"Can you teach me?" she asked cheerfully.
"Will you be naked?" he asked hopefully.
"Subtle, you ain't," Xander groaned. "Botty, get dressed."
"I'm fourteen, sue me," John said.
Suddenly, Botty dropped and footswept the three, dropping them to the floor as the front window exploded. "We have a sniper," Botty announced cheerfully, ignoring the cussing from the three.
"Human?" Xander asked.
"Reflexes better than a human's," Botty replied. "The last several bullets actually followed John down."
"Panic room it is," Xander decided.
"We'll be sitting ducks," Sarah complained.
"It's got a back exit and lots of weapons," Xander replied.
"Does it have a bathroom?" John asked. "'Cause I think I just pissed myself."
Xander laughed. "Just follow me." He started down the hall.
The terminator ran, calculating an eighty-five percent chance that his primary targets were uninjured and attempting escape. A burst of gunfire into the garage as waist level reduced the chances of them escaping by vehicle as there was a seventy-nine percent chance he'd damaged or disabled their primary mode of transportation. He wasn't programmed to feel emotions, but if he had been, the fact that they'd detected and dodged an attack that had a ninety-eight percent probability of instant termination through unknown means would have caused some concern. Instead, it simply raised several flags in his CPU, requiring investigation after his primary objective had been achieved.
T/N: Punctuation by Howard Russell.