Disclaimer: Joss, WB, UPN et al. own Buffy. George Lucas, Lucasfilm, LucasArts and others own Star Wars. Michael A Stackpole owns the X-Wing and I, Jedi novels. I do not.

Title: Sunnydale Jedi: Chapter 9

Author: Paradigm Shifter

Rating: PG-13 again, people.

Pairing: Err… Xander/ Buffy (finally here, folks) it is now…

Feedback: Oh, yeah! Feedback is encouragement. More encouragement = faster writing.

Notes: I've never really seen Lindsey on the screen. Lack of watching TV I suppose. Therefore, if I portray him incorrectly, please don't lynch me.

Dedication: To Amy, for help when it was needed.

Continuity: General season 5 (Dawn)

Crossover: Buffy / Star Wars.

*

READ THIS, PLEASE: I suppose I had better clear something up. Currently, this is set about thirty years before SW: ANH. This means that Anakin has not yet fallen (he will in a matter of years, but not just yet) the clone wars are still on, but are winding to a close. However, I've blurred the lines deliberately and added a few extra events in. If anyone checks in the 'Star Wars Encyclopaedia' you will find 'Ta'ania' listed as Gantoris' mother. Yes, that Gantoris. [Read the 'Jedi Academy' trilogy and 'I, Jedi' if you don't understand who he is] What I have planned would spoil the plot if I told you, but Anakin will still fall. While I have to fiddle with events a bit, (and add my own in of course,) I want to be able to follow the timeline up to 'Vector Prime' to a reasonable degree. Of course, its gonna take a long time to get that far. I hope I can keep all of your attentions…

And now, back to your irregularly scheduled crossover…

*

Xander looked down at the blonde head resting on his shoulder. Sighing, he still couldn't believe it. Buffy was snuggling up to him, of her own accord. Granted, she was currently asleep, and the rest of the house was freezing. He was probably only the snuggle-buddy because of his body warmth. Dawn was hiding in her room, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Her self-imposed imprisonment was part embarrassment and a healthy dose of irritation that she had screwed up.

It was simple really. In trying to find other dimensions, Dawn had located one that was a bit on the chilly side. It wasn't just cold. It was COLD. And Xander had spent nearly all of the past two days re-lagging the merely frozen pipes and replacing the fractured ones. His skills in construction hadn't been used in a long time, but they were still there.

It hadn't only been their house that was affected; the whole block had been frozen solid. But the rest of the block didn't need to know it was the Summers residence that had caused the unseasonably cold snap.

And so, Xander sat on the sofa, with Buffy wrapping herself around him, and trying to watch the TV and think of anything other than Buffy right now. He was failing.

*

Dawn sat in her room, staring angrily at the portal that had caused so much trouble. She had currently focused it on a dimension that she knew no one lived in, and was basically just an empty wasteland.

Suddenly, an object fell through the portal, and thudded to the floor. Dawn stared at it, and hurriedly shut the tear. The glow diminished and finally ended abruptly as the split was sealed. Dawn got to her feet and picked up the object. It was cube shaped, and glowed from some inner power source.

"Pretty…" whispered Dawn, entranced by the sheer beauty of what she was looking at.

Dawn placed it gently on the table nearby and went downstairs for a drink. She would investigate it later. Right now, she was parched…

*

Aruno Baas felt the power echoing from the person who had hold of his corporeal form. The spirit of a Jedi, entrapped in the Crystalline Holocron, lost millennia ago in a Sith raid on the Jedi Temple, wondered how the Key had got to Earth, and how he was here, now.

Then the presence he felt, a power fuller that any Jedi he had ever met, came to his attention. It echoed in the Force like ones who had disappeared generations before he was lost to the void. How had the Arii'Marr found their way here?

*

Crystal was on patrol around Sunnydale. She had gotten over the cave-Buffy attack on her in short order, but was still wary. It was only natural. So when Dawn froze the house, she offered to go on patrol and leave Buffy and Xander to have some 'quality time' together. She wasn't certain how much of it would be 'quality' and how much would just be awkward conversation. After all, Buffy had been in hell, and no matter how much Xander tried to be there for her, he didn't know what that was like.

But then again, did anyone really know what Hell was like?

One of the books the Council always tried to get her to read was by some stuffy French guy, and the line he was most remembered for was 'hell is being locked in a room forever with your friends…' or something like that. Crystal didn't quite know what to think, but she imagined that hell would be subjective. It was whatever you wanted it to be.

Crystal was snapped out of her reverie when a voice penetrated the darkness. "Well. I did wonder when I would find a Slayer that was as poor as you. I nearly thought that you would hide at home…"

A vampire stepped out of the darkness, and it wore the face of her Watcher. Despite her dislike, Crystal felt almost sorry for the man. To fight a fight for the whole of your life, and then to become what you were fighting. A terrible fate.

"Nothing to say, little girl?" he sneered. "What a shame, it seems that I will have to kill you, though. Can't have you telling the Council one of their own has joined the ranks of the damned…"

Crystal shook herself out of the fog her mind seemed to have buried itself in. "No. You will find me a much harder target than you expect."

"Really?" the scorn dripped like poison from his mouth, lacing Crystal's self-confidence with a hint of fear. She steadied herself and pulled out a stake.

"Really."

With that, she charged forward.

*

Lindsey and Spike stood not far from the fight between vampiric watcher and Slayer. Lindsey seemed almost lethargic, while Spike was chafing at the bit to join in the fight, a sort of belated make up for the interruption by Harris a few days ago.

"You don't want her dead, do you?" asked Spike.

Lindsey seemed to think for a second. "No…" he shook his head, "not really. If she is alive, it will be a much better bait for that… what was his name again? Harris boy."

Spike shook his head. "Right." Sighing, he saw Crystal beating her watcher, but being hit almost as often as she hit him. "You know, the way Harris was the other night, if we piss him off, we'll be scraping our own arses off the pavement."

"Maybe."

Spike snorted. "Great."

*

"You're still green, little girl!"

"So I am. That seems to be a problem with Slayers, doesn't it?" Crystal didn't let her watcher jibes put her off, but he was a technically proficient opponent, unlike the majority of the vampires she had encountered with Xander, and this time, she didn't have backup if he got to be too much. She was having a hard time keeping up with him as it was, a few more hits and she knew she would be in trouble. The blows she managed to land looked as if they hurt, but they did little more than make him take a fraction of a step back.

In comparison, every blow he landed slowed her down, and made her wince in pain as she moved. Crystal was pretty sure that she had broken something in her shoulder the last time she had swung, because a loud crack had resounded in the air.

"You are slowing down, little girl. You were a truly awful Slayer. Never did what you were told. Not at all like the Slayers of old…"

Crystal decided it was final gambit time. Stepping as close in as she could, her good hand drifted down a bit, and her hurt shoulder rolled in private preparation for pain.

"No, I'm not a slayer of old, am I? I'm a teenage girl, who has had a lot of rubbish force-fed her by stuffy idiots in tweed. And it ends NOW!" the last was a shout, as her elbow was brought up violently, into the vampires face, jerking his head back with the force of the blow, and then ramming her shoulder into the wide open chest, Crystal gripped with her good hand, and the vampire let out an unholy shriek of pain.

"Hurts, does it?" asked Crystal rhetorically. She had the vampiric watcher by the crotch, and used her strength to hoist the vampire through the air, over her head and into a nearby gravestone.

As the vampire hit the slab of granite, it broke with a loud crunch noise, and the Watcher collapsed to the dirt, his head mangled beyond easy repair by vampiric powers by the forced meeting of it and six inch thick rock.

"Nice." Said Crystal, and then her eyes rolled up into her head as Spike smashed her over the head with a large rock.

Spike smirked down at the unconscious Slayer. "You thought that was nice? Wait an' see what we 'ave for you where we're goin', honey."

*

End chapter 9. OK. I thought maybe 16 chapters or so, but I've had a new idea, and I can't resist it. Slightly similar to another story I've written (Put Out My Flames With Gasoline) well, ok, it isn't. But it's in LA. Close enough.

Oh, and a further disclaimer: (I didn't want to put it at the top, as it would spoil stuff) Star Wars etc isn't mine, neither is Buffy. But Aruno Baas, (the Holocron) and the concept of the Arii'Marr are mine. Please ask if you want to use them. Don't worry. I'll 99.99999% say yes.