Title: Xander Harris: Year One (Chapter Ten)

Author: Randall Stone

Disclaimer: All characters are belong to someone else.

Summary: Some are born to destiny. Others make their own.

Notes:
Spoilers: S1-4

Continuity changes: Hopefully everything will be explained in the
text. One note- Veruca tragically stepped in front of a bus the
day before she was going to be turned into a werewolf, so Oz will
be hanging around.

We have now left the Season 4 continuity. Only events described
or referred to directly in this fic should be assumed to have
occurred.

Category: B/X, a little B/R early on
Rating: PG-14- nothing worse than what's on the show.
Feedback: Yes please.

*****

Xander grunted as he finished retaping his ankle. It turned out
that fighting vampires was dangerous work, as the bruises up and
down his torso could attest. Fortunately, this sprain didn't seem
too bad- he'd been able to walk home, and now that it was taped he
could move without much pain.

Xander stood and walked over to his desk, where he had left the
letter that he had retrieved yesterday. On a hunch, he had checked
the tree stump where he had had his run in with Riley. He had found
a message left there for The Shadow, and then a vampire had found
him.

Xander sat down and paged through the letter, reading it in detail
for the first time. His eyes widened as more and more of the
Initiative's secrets were revealed to him.

Riley must have been feeling pretty desperate to take this leap of
faith.

Xander was committing some of the more useful details in the letter
to memory when he was interrupted by the phone ringing.

"Hello?"

"Xander?" It was Willow.

"Yeah."

"We need you here at Giles'. Emergency Scooby meeting." She
sounded serious.

"I'll be right there."

---

Xander walked into Giles' apartment and found a full house. Buffy,
Giles, Willow and Oz were already there. Buffy stood, eager to
share what was going on.

"Guys, we have a problem." Buffy briefly recounted the fight from
earlier in the day. "This guy was big, fast, and tough. He took my
best shots and just shrugged them off."

"Did you recognize the demon?" Giles asked.

"No, but it didn't look like just one demon. It looked like
somebody played mix and match with demon parts. Plus kind of
robot-y."

"You think it might have been... artificial?"

"Yeah, and I think I know who the local mad scientist is. Willow,
could you look into Professor Walsh's background, see if she could
create something like this?"

"Sure. I've got a lot of information bookmarked from when I was
researching for the class. I'll go get it from home."

Willow left with Oz in tow.

"Good. Giles, we need to figure out some way to stop this thing.
Are there any spells you can think of that will help us?"

"Perhaps. I'll need to do some research..." Giles trailed off as
he walked towards his bedroom, where he kept his more powerful spell
books hidden.

This left Buffy and Xander alone in Giles' living room.

"So..." Xander began.

"Xander, I'm going to look through the books to see if I can figure
out what demons this thing is made out of. Maybe I can find a
weakness that way. It could be a while- why don't you go get some
donuts?"

Xander stared at Buffy for a moment before turning and leaving
without a word.

---

Professor Walsh was happy to be finished with another day of
classes. She enjoyed teaching, but dealing with freshmen could be
very tiring. She found working with Adam to be surprisingly
soothing.

She saw as she let herself into the secret room 314 that Adam was
quieter than usual today. Usually he would greet her
enthusiastically while she logged on to the computer where she kept
her journals. Today he was just sitting quietly on his bed.

Room 314 was divided in half by a sturdy barrier composed of three
inch thick steel bars. The gate was similarly reinforced, and kept
locked by an electronic system that would only open to Walsh's
fingerprint. Behind the bars were Adam's bed, table, and a small
library that Walsh had provided for him.

The other half of the room had a table which was cluttered with
various test equipment, and a computer system that Maggie was
currently booting up. While it was loading, she decided to try and
start a conversation with her creation.

"Hello Adam."

"Hello Mother."

"You seem quiet today."

"I have been thinking. I read the books that you left for me."

"Did they prove educational?"

"Yes. Particularly _Paradise Lost_. The thought occurred to me
that, while humans must take the existence of their Creator on
faith, I am able to speak directly to mine. I have... questions."

"What did you want to ask?" Maggie tried to keep her voice level.
She had never in her wildest dreams imagined this level of
introspection, this soon.

"The same questions that have plagued humankind. Why am I here?
Why was I created?"

"Well," Maggie swallowed, "you are a prototype. I knew that
Schultz would never approve my project before hand, so I supplied my
own facilities and... parts. I want to present you to him as a fait
accompli- they'll have to admit that my ideas are militarily
useful."

"So." Adam stood, and a note of anger entered his voice. "You
brought me into this world solely to satisfy your curiousity? You
made me this- freak! Just to satiate your ego?"

Adam advanced towards her as he spoke, and Maggie watched in shock as
the gate simply opened before him.

"You-"

"I have a way with electronics." Adam smiled a bitter smile before
grabbing Walsh and throwing her into the cage.

She saw stars when her head hit the far wall, and the last thing she
heard as she drifted out of consciousness was the sound of the gate
being closed behind her.

---

Xander stomped towards Giles' apartment bearing his precious load of
donuts. While he loved consuming the sugary treats, he didn't
appreciate the fact that Buffy only thought of him as useful in a
donut-fetching capacity.

Xander's fuming was briefly interrupted when Giles came bustling out
the door and Xander had to step aside to let him pass. Xander
nodded a greeting, but Giles was too deep in thought to acknowledge
him. Xander was pretty sure that he had muttered something about a
magic gourd as he walked by.

Shaking his head, Xander walked into Giles' apartment through the
still open door. Proceeding into the living room, he walked over to
where Buffy was reading and slammed the donuts down on the table in
front of her.

"Donuts for m'lady."

Buffy looked up.

"Geez Xand, why so pissy?"

"Well, let's review. There's the part where you treated me like
crap, followed up by the other part where you treated me like crap,
then for a finale, you've been treating me like crap."

"I don't think-"

"Come on, Buffy! You've done nothing but try to exclude me ever
since you started college."

"I just want you to be safe." Buffy stood.

"And what, close my eyes and pretend vampires don't exist? Do you
think I'm that kind of coward?"

"There's a difference between being brave-" Buffy took a step
closer to Xander, so that they were almost nose to nose. "- and just
being pig headed."

"You're calling me pig headed? Thank you Miss Pot."

"God, I can't stand you sometimes."

They were silent for a few seconds, as the air seemed to crackle
between them. Suddenly, they were kissing.

Xander wasn't sure who had kissed who. As their tongues dueled for
supremacy he could barely find the self awareness to reflect on his
long cherished fantasies of this moment. Fantasies that were quckly
being obliterated and replaced with memories of the real thing.

After some indeterminate amount of time, Xander remembered that he
was angry at Buffy right now. Apparently Buffy came to the same
realization, as they sprang away from each other at the same time.
Xander recovered first.

"Buffy, what the hell was that?"

"I don't know."

"Seriously Buff, where did that come from?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"We have to talk about it."

"Yeah, but not right away. Demon, remember?"

Xander nodded grudgingly and picked up a book. He sat down across
the room from Buffy and tried to focus on reading. They were still
in the same awkward position when Willow, Oz and Giles arrived back
at the apartment.

---

Maggie groaned as she swam back into consciousness. Her head was
pounding. Gradually, she became aware of her environment. She was
lying on the floor, and she heard the sounds of- typing?

Suddenly the events of the last hour came flooding back to her, and
she jumped to her feet. She discovered that this was a bad idea as
the pounding in her head intensified and she was forced to lean
against the bars in front of her for support.

"Hello Doctor."

"Adam! What are you doing?"

"I'm sorry that I had to hurt you, Mother. I was... upset. I am
better now."

"Adam, let me out now. I'm willing to forget that this ever
happened."

"I'm afraid I can't do that, Mother. I've come to a decision. It's
clear to me that humanity will never accept me as I am.

"I had hoped that you had a plan to deal with that, but it has
become apparent that you neglected to consider this.

"I am faced with two options. Either modify myself to be acceptable
to the people, or modify the people to accept me. The first is
unfortunately impossible. I'm afraid that even California's plastic
surgeons could not do much with me.

"So, humanity is going to have to change." Adam turned back to the
computer. "It's for the best, really."

"Adam, what are you doing?"

"Releasing the demons imprisoned in this facility."

"Why? The soldiers will fight them, it will be a slaughter for both
sides?"

"That's the idea."

---

"So Willow, you're saying that Walsh has the background to make this
kind of thing?"

"Yeah, I didn't realize before that she was also an expert in
physiology. She practically has an M.D. She really is a genius."

"Too bad she's also insane." Buffy turned to Giles. "Do you have
any good news?"

Giles nodded.

"I've found a spell that calls upon the power of the First Slayer
that should be powerful enough to stop the monster you described.
It will require the presence of Willow, Xander, and myself in a
safe place nearby while you fight the demon.

"I have collected all of the necessary ingredients."

Giles gestured at the table in front of him, upon which was, among
other things, a magic gourd.

"That's great G-Man. If only we knew where he is." Xander was not
as upbeat as normal.

"That is the puzzle. And don't-"

Giles was interrupted by the sound of Buffy's beeper going off.

Buffy quickly pulled the beeper from her pocket. Her eyes widened when
she saw the emergency code on display.

"Guys, I think we just found him."

---

Hans and Miguel nervously watched the door ahead of them. It was
shaking under numerous heavy impacts, and didn't look like it would
stand for much longer.

"Miguel, I have been thinking."

"Don't hurt yourself. We're going to need you in a minute."

Hans nodded, acknowledging the joke, then continued, in his heavily
accented English.

"Does it not seem strange that Adam warned us before releasing the
prisoners. If they were to take us by surprise we would have been
killed easily."

"He said he wanted a fight. I figure we'll give him one."

The demons captured by the Initiative had been imprisoned in four
separate wings. Each wing had an independent path to the central
command room. The cells had been designed in this way to reduce
the possibility of a demon riot.

Though the individual demon cells were electronically controlled,
each wing was sealed off by a solid steel door that could only be
unlocked from the outside. Miguel, Hans, and Chris Petersen were
currently watching the door to wing A. Chris had been brought into
the unit to fill Forrest's slot when Forrest was promoted to
commander after Riley left.

The three of them were located at the choke point that had been
built into the complex. At the choke point the corridor narrowed
and turned sharply left. The plan was to have the three of them
slow the demons down as much as possible, and then retreat and
attempt to hold them at the choke point. Graham and Forrest were
positioned to provide covering fire once they had retreated around
the bend.

Schultz had dipped into the Initiative's heavy armaments to outfit
the troops for this battle. All of the men had been issued M1-A5
assault rifles, set to burst mode. In addition, Chris was manning a
tripod mounted 7.62 millimeter machine gun. As a last ditch effort
in case the fighting got close, all of the men also had standard
issue sabres, on which they had been trained in preparation for this
kind of emergency.

Hans wasn't sure if all of these armaments would enable them to hold
out until reinforcements arrived. One of the drawbacks to being a
super secret military organization was that when you had to ask for
help from the regulars, they tended to dismiss you as a crank. Hans
was sure that Schultz would raise hell until everything was
straightened out, but they didn't have much time to spare.

Hans' fears were underscored as the heavily armored door ahead of
them fell to the floor with a crash.

The first one out the door was a Fyarl demon. Big, strong, and not
too bright, he paused for a moment to bask in the pride of having
knocked down the door. His pride was short lived as Chris fired his
machine gun with a roar that was deafening in the enclosed space.
The bullets traced up the chest of the demon, staggering him.
When they reached its neck Chris began to trace them along
horizontally until the demon's head was finally separated from its
body.

There was a moment of silence, and the three Initiative soldiers
waited anxiously. They had taken down one demon, but they knew
there were at least twenty more to go.

The silence was broken with a roar as the demons all seemed to erupt
from the prison wing at once. Vampires, chaos demons, Polgara
demons, Hans could hardly keep track of them all. He was firing
almost continuously- the way the demons were filling the hall it was
almost impossible to miss.

They were inflicting terrible damage to the demons, but they kept
coming. Hans could see the wounds being torn by his bullets, but it
hardly seemed to faze them. Some of the demons fell, but there were
others coming up to take their place. And they were closing in on
the soldier's position.

Hans' clip ran dry just as the first demon reached them. He watched
helplessly as the Polgara demon swatted away Miguel's rifle and
skewered him through the stomach.

A primal cry was torn from Hans lips as he ripped his sword from his
belt and struck at the Polgara demon, severing its head in one blow.
Attempting to clear some space, Hans charged wildly. He managed to
strike the head off of a vampire and impale a chaos demon through
the heart. But as he was trying to free his sword from the demon's
body he was blindsided.

Hans felt the claws enter his body as the demon struck him low on
his right side, and then ripped upwards. He toppled backwards and
looked down to see his life blood flowing from his side. In front
of him Miguel lay dying, but his eyes were open. Hans smiled.

"It was good to be alive, wasn't it?"

---

The Scoobies were on alert as they walked into Lowell house, which
seemed disturbingly empty. Buffy was in the lead, armed with a
short sword. Oz followed behind her, carrying a blaster that Riley
had liberated from the Initiative shortly before his reassignment.
Willow and Giles were behind them, carrying spell components.
Xander brought up the rear, also armed with a sword, which Giles
was eyeing with some trepidation.

"You're quite certain you know how to use that thing?"

"Sure. Pointy end out, right?" Xander grinned at Giles'
discomfort. "Relax, I'm fine. I've seen _The Princess Bride_ at
least ten times."

"The what?"

"The movie. It must have been after your time- it's a talkie."

"Xander, I-"

Giles was interrupted by Buffy making a shushing motion when they
reached the hidden elevator. She stepped in front of the mirror
and held still as a green light scanned over her body.

"Retinal scan accepted." The computer voice announced, and the
mirror slid back to reveal the elevator that led to the Initiative.

Once they had all piled in to the elevator, Buffy leaned over to
speak into the microphone.

"Hello?"

"Vocal code match complete. Auxiliary agent Summers, Elizabeth.
Identity number 75350.

"Other occupants, please state your names."

"Um, they're with me."

"Sorry. Summers, Elizabeth is not authorized to bring guests into
this facility. Countermeasures will be engaged in twenty seconds."

While Buffy was attempting to reason with the computer, Xander
pushed past Oz and opened a panel to the right of the elevator
doors. Inside was a keypad. He knelt to look at the pad for a
second, then entered a code. When he was finished, the computer
spoke again.

"Override code accepted."

Buffy turned to look at Xander.

"How did you do that?"

"I saw the panel, and then I just pushed the buttons that had
fingerprints on them. I saw it on MacGyver once."

"Xander, how did you know the order in which to push the buttons?"
Giles asked.

"I figured we were due for some good luck." Xander shrugged.

Giles' response was forestalled by the elevator opening onto a scene
of chaos. Three large demons were rampaging through the control
center. As they watched, horrified, one of the demons snapped the
neck of the last living human in the room.

Buffy immediately launched herself at the two demons in the left
half of the room, while Xander engaged the other demon to keep it
from piling on.

Xander found himself facing a raging Polgara demon with only his
sword and his memories from Kendo instruction to defend himself. He
kept the sword centered in front of his center of mass with the tip
at about head height. The demon had a substantial height, weight
and speed advantage, so Xander was just hoping to hold it off until
Buffy could finish off the two demons that she was fighting.

The demon attempted to punch him with its left hand, which Xander
was able to dodge. He blocked the follow up right with his sword,
catching the demon's arm with the edge. It would have been a
serious injury to a human opponent, but it only seemed to piss the
demon off.

Roaring, the demon charged at him. Xander sidestepped to the left,
slashing the demon across its side as he did so. Again, this seemed
to do little more than enrage the demon. Fortunately for Xander,
the demon's positioning allowed Oz to finally get a clear shot with
the blaster, and he nailed the demon with a bolt of electricity.

The Polgara was tougher than the average vampire. The blast only
stunned it momentarily, rather than knocking it out completely. The
momentary opening was all that Xander needed as he brought his sword
down across the creature's neck, severing its head and finally
killing it.

Xander looked around to see that the other two demons were backing
Buffy into a corner. She had seriously wounded one, but it was
still able to back up the other in advancing on Buffy. She didn't
have enough room to get in a killing blow to one demon without
exposing herself to a free shot from the other.

Xander caught Oz's eye, and gestured towards the wounded demon. Oz
nodded, and fired his blaster at the injured demon at the same time
that Xander sank his sword into the back of the unhurt demon. The
demons both turned to face these new threats, momentarily forgetting
about the Slayer.

Which was their final mistake, as Buffy promptly sliced their heads
off.

The demons' bodies had hardly hit the ground when they heard a groan
coming from the Commander's office. Buffy, Willow and Giles quickly
headed towards the sound to see if they could save the man. Oz
walked over to the main entrance to the room, keeping watch with
his blaster. Xander drifted to the computer to see if he could
figure out what was going on.

---

When Buffy, Willow and Giles entered the room it became clear that
there would be little that they could do to help the man inside.
Schultz sat in the chair behind his desk. He was bleeding
profusely from the chest. He had wadded up his shirt and was using
both hands to attempt to stem the flow.

"Commander Schultz?" Buffy spoke gently, amazed that he was still
alive at all.

"Buffy?" Schultz opened his eyes with some difficulty. "Good.
Maybe you can stop him."

"Who?"

"Adam. Walsh's-" Schultz coughed, spitting out some blood.
"Walsh's monster.

"He's in 314... beneath all of the containment areas. He-" Schultz
coughed again. "He let them all out."

Buffy's eyes widened as she realized where all of the Initiative
troops were.

---

Xander was coming to a bleak realization in regards to the current
situation. Of the four cell blocks, three had been breached, while
the other would go soon. The more recent breakouts were still being
contested by Initiative troops, but they were sorely overmatched.
They were at least selling their lives dearly- the three demons in
the control room had been the only survivors from the first
breakout.

Xander considered the chaos, and then looked at the table where
Giles and Willow had left their spell components behind. Scores of
demons and some kind of super monster were ranged against their...
magic gourd.

Xander came to a decision, and sat down to type at the keyboard.

---

Buffy stood, ready to rush out and take Adam on.

"Wait!" Schultz called as strongly as he could. "Buffy... if
you see Finn again... tell him... he was right. He was..."

Schultz trailed off as the blood loss finally became too much
and he passed out, never to wake.

Buffy turned to face Willow and Giles.

"We have to stop Adam. Let's go."

They followed her back out into the main room.

"I have bad news, guys." Buffy started.

"I think this is worse." Xander interrupted, pointing to a
small monitor off to the side. The monitor was noteworthy in
that it had the words "SELF DESTRUCT" in red across the top of
the screen. Underneath it was a countdown timer that was at
about fifteen minutes.

They all stared at the timer for a few seconds. Willow was the
first to speak.

"The commander! He must have rigged up a dead man's switch.
Shoot. Giles-"

"We won't be able to defeat Adam and escape in time. The spell
alone would take too long."

"There are still men down there. I saw them on the monitors.
We have to get as many of them out as we can." Xander insisted.
"If Adam gets blown up with everything else, great. If not, we
can kill him some other time.

"Willow, you should go alert the troops in Section B. The
demons haven't broken out from there yet. Buffy, you and Oz go
to Section A. They're in the heaviest firefight. I'll go fetch
as many people as I can from Section D. Everybody from Section
C is already dead. G-man, you stay here as backup."

Everybody was staring at Xander. Giles was too shocked by his
sudden commanding presence to even reprimand Xander for his
language.

"What? Maybe there's a bit of soldier guy left after all. Does
anybody have a better plan?" Xander paused, and received no
response. "Then let's go before more people die."

---

Xander ran as he approached the backup position of the troops in
Section D. He could hear the sounds of a hand to hand struggle
in addition to occasional bursts of gunfire.

Xander rounded the corner to see a vampire begin to drain a
badly battered Initiative agent. Xander charged in recklessly
with his sword drawn. The vampire had its back to him, and
Xander struck quickly, knowing he had little time to waste.
Fortunately his sword decapitated the vampire without harming
the soldier, who looked at him gratefully before slumping down
to the ground, unconscious.

Xander sized up the situation. In addition to the unconscious
man at his feet, there was a dead body a few feet away. There
were demon bodies scattered around him, and the sounds of
gunfire still came from down the corridor. Apparently these
demons had managed to slip by the troops up ahead without
killing them.

Xander bent over and cut off the dead man's grenade belt, then
walked forward to examine the situation ahead. Before he was
halfway to the corner he heard a sickening crunch, and the
gunfire stopped. Reacting quickly, Xander pulled the pin on the
middle grenade and threw the belt so that it would bounce around
the corner.

Xander ran back down the hall and threw himself to the ground as the
resulting explosion seemed to rock the entire wing. Standing, he
surveyed the damage and smiled grimly. No demons would be following
him back up.

Xander bent and picked up the unconscious soldier in a fireman's
carry and headed back to the main room.

---

"Impressive." Adam watched on the video screen as the group of
intruders reassembled, and then exited the Initiative with nine
conscious soldiers and one unconscious one.

"Still..." Adam cycled through the video cameras available on his
monitor, reveling in the slaughter.

Adam had complete access to the main network. Unfortunately for
him, the self destruct system was kept entirely separate.

"This should be quite sufficient to create my siblings. There will
be more bountiful... harvests in the future."

Walsh was slumped down on the bed in a state of shock. She mumbled,
almost to herself.

"Mad, you've gone absolutely mad."

"Hardly, Mother. As your favorite saying goes: you can't make an
omelette without breaking a few eggs."

Maggie stared at Adam in shock.

"I am my Mother's child." He grinned. "Now-"

Adam turned back to the computer system, but was interrupted when
the sprinkler system activated.

"Strange, there has been no fire."

Adam sniffed the air, and immediately identified the distinctive
smell of gasoline. His mind quickly realized the implications of
this. His enemies had been more resourceful than he thought. He
was able to turn and speak one final time before the igniting
charges went off.

"Goodbye, Mother."

*****

So ends the thrilling conclusion of... Xander: Year One. Well,
except for the epilogue.

--Randy