Disclaimers in above chapters (I'm too lazy to do the point and click
thing)
First of all this is going to be a LONG chapter, because of all of the crap I have to cover, so bear with me.
AN: Okay, a few things; first of all, Angel was never invited into Xander's place, so he was standing outside the entire time, and Joyce knew where to find Xander because he mentioned it in passing in the Library to Buffy and Willow – that and he's now, miraculously, in the book.
AN2: My poll worked rather well, and as consensus it seems to be a toss up between Jenny, Faith, Dawnie (when she is legal) and a new girl, but I got only one Willow (reluctantly), an Amy (pre-rat) and even a Marcie, Invisible Girl! I can tell you that Joyce (one or two votes as a change of pace) is out b/c she is the 'mother' figure, as is Jenny (for the time being – that may change later, but for now they are just very good friends), and that the random girl will be seen alive for only a little while in this chapter, possibly to be mentioned in later ones, Marcie is a maybe-to-be-seen later on, but Faith seems to be the frontrunner for now. Other choices submitted were Anya, Cordy, and even Harmony (which was followed by an 'eww', while Anya was a 'yech' – Marcie rated a 'not a bad choice' and Cordy was a 'possible).
AN3: Evolution Of The Zeppo is temporarily on hold because my muse isn't speaking to me about it – I think I insulted one of her ideas because she told me, and I have cleaned this up, "Fine, let's see you do this without me!" Needless to say, I'm stuck – any useful ideas as to where the story should go past a Hyena hunting session / forest run, please send them in.
AN4: Several other stories have come to mind – one of those is a 'What Happened To Marcie' blended with a 'Others Changed By Hell-o-ween 1997' set later in S3 or in S4, another is a BTVS/Diablo 2: Lords of Destruction story with Jenny and Xander being the main characters. Comments anyone?
Now let us get on with the fic, ladies and gentlemen.
Chapter 3 – Can Friendships Survive The Truth And The Consequences?
//About one month later, nothing important has happened: It is the day before Thanksgiving, Los Angeles//
Xander stepped off of the bus from Sunnydale to LA and quickly went over to the terminal to collect his duffle bag, not wanting his stash of weapons inside to be found or stolen; Lex had called him the day before while on his way out of the school and told him to pack up, that he was going to LA for a few days. Seeing as he would be gone, he had informed Joyce of his plans, as she had invited him over for Thanksgiving dinner, and she had told both Buffy and Dawn; Buffy had practically ordered him not to go while Dawn had tried her best to use 'The Eyes' on him, but he held strong with the latter and told the former it wasn't his call or hers – it was an order and it was one he was following. Somehow in the process of packing, though, he had been called by and talked into by Jenny to stop by a boutique to picked up several things for her; he had actually made it to the door when both Cordy and Amy, of all people, had shown up and wished him well on his trip – he wasn't sure how they knew and figured it was Buffy trying to get him to follow her orders, but he let that pass and thanked them for their well wishes. When he was met at the bus station by Giles, though, he was starting to get pissed off and accepted the Watcher's words as they came – to be careful and come back, because he (Giles) didn't want to have to tell Buffy that he (Xander) was either hurt or dead; Xander had to admit that it was funny once one took the time to think about it, so he thanked Giles and got on the bus.
Over the previous few weeks, Xander had been working out the problem with bullets that kill both demons and vampires; sure, tracer ammo was readily available, and he'd even had a fair amount of success with blessed hollow points (obtained after visiting a local church near the University run by an old priest who had seen it all), but something more substantial was necessary and Xander had picked up on a line where he could possibly find someone who could fix his problem. It would not be cheap, but Xander had been hitting nests and lairs as of late (without Buffy's notice, of course) and had picked up a fair amount of cash, jewelry, tomes, items and such – all in all, it came out to be a little more than $75,000 worth of stuff and that had been wisely invested in the markets, which had started to pay off with several major jumps. Basically, he wasn't hurting for cash and could buy most of what he needed right now.
Slipping into the bathroom of the bus station, Xander removed the SOCOM and slipped it into a leather shoulder holster, which sat under his left arm and had ammo pouches, four of them, under his right arm, and secured his pistol, ammo and suppressor before slipping on a long leather duster to cover it; he had found out that many people in Sunnydale tended to forget anyone they saw with long coats on and quickly found that it was the only way he could be out past sundown with all of his kit and not get asked anything by anybody.
With all of this done, Xander shouldered his duffle and walked out of the station and down the street towards Downtown LA, the City of Angels. His instincts as a soldier had him watching left and right, looking for possible traps, ambushes, Charlie coming up on his six and general non- combatants, while his Hyena instincts were seeing everyone as potential prey or enemies, but also sniffing for scents of all things demonic; most of what he got was either human or dead, meaning vampire, but every once in a while he'd pick up a scent that was neither and categorized it as well as he could. It was like this all the way to a cheap motel near the station, where he had been told to stay in a certain room and wait for a contact; the motel itself almost overpowered him with the scents of drugs, pain, anger, sex and hopelessness and it took all of Xander's resolve to walk all the way inside to the front desk.
"I need a room for the night."
"Forty bucks, kid," the woman behind the bulletproof glass said dully, one hand holding a cigarette while the other turned the pages of a magazine; it was like something you saw out of a cheap movie or made-for-television show, but as of late, Xander felt as if his life was the same thing.
He handed over two twenties and took the key she gave him, looking at the number and cringing at what he was – 714, the same number of the room that Faith had stayed in, the had lost his virginity in, and the room he almost got killed in too. Either Lex had a seriously disturbed sense of humor or there was a trend going that he didn't know about, "Thanks, ma'am."
Xander walked to the room and immediately looked it over for bugs, rats, other entrances and found a camera that pointed towards the bed in the first five minutes, the meaning of which disturbed Xander more than he cared to admit, but found nothing else other than a small nest of rats; he took the camera out of the light fixture it was wired into, but not before he gave the camera the bird and cut the cords – whoever was watching would be pissed, but it wasn't as if Xander could force himself to care about it at this point. He stripped off the duster and rooted around inside of the duffle for a second before coming up with the rest of his stash – a Randal knife he'd had blessed by the same priest who did the ammo, several stakes that fit into small sheaths in his duster, a small cross-marked squirt bottle of holy water he'd brought along just in case and another bottle, this one unmarked and also filled with a clear liquid, and then a Zippo lighter that had a monogram on it that made him laugh – 'Heaven Doesn't Want Me And Hell Is Afraid I'll Take Over'. Shrugging on his duster again, he put the items back into their proper places, knife at the small of his back, bottles into either pocket, Zippo into his jeans pocket, a stake into each sleeve in a small loop there, then four more into the front seem of his duster, next to the zipper – the one thing about his stakes is that they were not round, but rather flat, only about five inches long, tapered to a point and meant for being concealed.
When the knock came at his door, it wasn't a big surprise, but he had screwed the suppressor on to this SOCOM just in case it was not who he expected it to be; checking the windows, he walked to the door with his gun out of sight and opened the door, chain-lock in place and only allowing it to crack open an inch. Outside was a young woman, maybe a few years older than he, dressed in a pair of dark jeans, a t-shirt and an old jacket, her skin slightly dusky, as if of either Middle Eastern descent, Latin American or a light-skinned African American, her eyes narrowed slightly and dark brown, her hair long, dark and pulled back behind her head, out of the way. Behind her was a man, about the same age and skin tone, so perhaps her brother, dressed much the same way, but he had a slightly bored expression on his face while her's was one of annoyance, "Yes?"
"You Hyena?" Her voice was pitched low but dripped with honey tainted with venom; whoever she was she was pissed at him, Lex or whoever had set up the meet.
"Possibly. Are you Phoenix?"
She snorted disgustedly while the man behind her chuckled quietly, "I swear I'll kill the guy who made up these names."
"Hold on." He shut the door and took off the chain before opening it op, but didn't invite them in, "Did he sound like James Earl Jones?"
"No, he sounded like Hulk Hogan, vato," the guy said somewhat gaily, trying not to piss off the girl anymore but losing the battle with the chuckles. "I'm 'Hawk', but call me Emilio, and this is 'Phoenix', but call her temperamental*oof!" The guy bent over slightly from the not-so-sweet elbow to the gut that had been preceded by an overly sweet smile from 'Phoenix'.
"Tina. Why'd he send you here to us?" She brazenly looked him over, "Not much to look at, but I can tell you've seen some shit." Her voice was slightly condescending and forced Xander to try his best to speak only in a neutral tone.
"You can say that; I found out about vamps one night and then had to dust my best friend-turned-vamp in less than 48 hours. Besides, I've got it where it counts, mija." He smiled at her and looked the both of them over, "Now, as to why I was sent here, I was told that a) you had a line on some vamp killing ammo and b) there was a big raid that you'd need help on. I use blessed .45 hollow points for this," he held up the SOCOM, which made them both step back slightly in fear and shock, "hand-to-hand, improvised weapons and pure balls to dust my vamps, but I also have access to a suppressed UMP sub-machine gun, but it's a waste of ammo most of the time, so I don't bother with it." He let the information sink in for a second before he went on, his voice having lost the somewhat neutral tone he had been using and let a bit of ice creep in, "Frankly, I don't give a damn what you use, but I'd like to take the vamps out instead of just slowing them down."
Tina and Emilio both looked at each other and he could tell that they could tell they were dealing with someone who didn't care what others thought about him, that he did his job and let the gossip go hang, and they were right. When they looked back at him, he was in the process of putting the SOCOM up and sitting on the edge of the single bed, away from the window but still towards the middle of the room. Both of them held a look of slight respect in their eyes as Emilio reached into his pocket slowly and removed a slip of paper, "First off, nest isn't too far from here – it's an old apartment building people have been trying to tear down for years and is mostly condemned above the third floor."
"Basement and floor plans?"
Tina shook her head, "Useless. One of our people got in there after sunrise one morning and it's been completely changed. We'll hit it about at dawn and them we'll go see the guy who sells the ammo, which is either regular or hollow point and enspelled to do elemental damage – it's random but it always works."
"Which elements?"
"Fire, Ice, Lightning and even an all-around Poison that hurts 99% of all demons," Emilio rattled off with a shrug. "Guy swears he came up with it on his own, but I see the figurines he has and say he stole the idea from some D&D book he read once."
Xander snorted, standing up as he did, "Figures. So, what now?"
"We go our way, you go yours and we'll meet there," Tina pointed at the slip of paper in Xander's hands, "about six am tomorrow. Peace." With that, she and Emilio left, the latter of the two flipping him a jaunty salute before he shut the door.
+++
Xander had passed an hour in the room flipping through the free cable, but found most of it was porn and very bad porn at that, so he pulled on his duster, having never removed his shoulder leathers or knife, and made his way outside to see LA at it's best at night. Here and there you'd see dealers running their smack or weed to some kid stupid enough to use it, a pimp watching over women who called out to passing motorists and pedestrians to sell their 'wares', which were prominently displayed in tight clothes and short skirts (he got more than a few propositions himself, but figured that he was here to work, not risk his life with the next Typhoid Mary), and then even saw a few 'people' dressed in trench coats, scars and fedoras going into what appeared to be an empty lot and ... disappearing?
Xander stepped out of the flow of traffic, making sure that nobody was in the area, and then went to the supposedly empty lot, looking around again and making sure his gun was loose in it's holster before stepping forwards a few paces; he could feel an energy wash over him as he stepped in and kept his cool as a building materialized out of nothing. It took a second to process what had happened and to come to the decision that the spell wasn't offensive in nature, but rather a defensive field that kept the building out of the limelight. Satisfied, he waited for a gap in the human traffic and walked out of the 'empty' lot, flowing with it again until he came outside of a small diner – his stomach chose that point to make it known that he was in need of sustenance in it's disturbingly loud way that turned one or two heads before he walked in.
"You'll have to share," one of the waitresses said as soon as he came in, as the place was fairly packed.
"Thanks," he said back, looking around for a table and found one with a lady in a denim jacket. "Mind if I sit here?" She waved him to sit down and went back to her coffee – she was in her early-to-mid twenties, twenty- seven on the outside, with blonde streaks in her hair, fair skin, a rather beautiful face and blue gray eyes that held a sense of wisdom and just a hint or two of steel.
One of the waitresses walked up and handed him a cup of coffee, "What'll ya have, babe?"
Xander looked at the woman and smiled lightly, "Burger, all the way, fries and whatever she wants." This got a look from the both of them, and he defended himself, "Hey, I'm feeling generous and I can hear your stomach from here."
The woman in denim blushed lightly and ordered the same as him before going back to her coffee, "Thanks, I'm Kate Lockley."
"Xander Harris, and it's a pleasure, Miss Lockley." He added a cream and three sugars to his coffee, stirring it, "Is it always this busy here?"
She smiled, "No, just on Fridays, when it's free coffee night." She looked around again and then focused her eye on his, reaching into her jacket for something, "So, why do you have a gun under your left arm?"
He looked at her oddly until she flashed him her Detective's badge, then he slowly reached into his hip pocket, "I never go out unarmed, Detective, and as you can see, I have a permit." He passed the card over and she looked at it, scrutinizing it very carefully before passing it back.
"If you're eighteen I'll eat my badge."
He gave her a slightly enigmatic smile, "I'm older than I look, Detective, but thanks for the compliment. I'd ask you your age but I don't feel like getting slapped, so I'll call you at twenty four and leave it at that."
She gave him an odd look before smiling in a friendlier manner, "Twenty six, actually, but thanks. Forty-five?"
He looked at her for a second, and then chuckled, "No, I'm not that old, and yes, a .45 caliber." Any other questions and responses were cut off by the arrival of the food, which both Xander and Kate attacked with gusto – he found the burger slightly over-done, but the fries and coffee more than made up for it.
After they finished their dinners and let out a celebratory, but muffled, burp apiece, they stood and left the booth, Xander dropping the bill and a tip on the table and waved goodbye to the waitress, who smiled and wished him a good evening as both he and Kate left the diner. It was now pushing nine pm and Xander turned to Kate, "So, what is there to do around this city at this time of night?"
She smiled, "For me, work, for you, whatever you want to do that isn't illegal – I'd hate to have to arrest you after buying me dinner."
He grinned, "You know, if it weren't for the fact that I knew you were a cop, I'd say something to the effect of the thought of you, me, that badge and your handcuffs paint a pretty vivid picture in my mind, Kate." This got a hearty laugh out of her and he stuck out a hand, "Glad to meet ya, Kate. Be safe."
"You too, Xander, and extra points for the handcuffs remark," she grinned, walking towards the other side of the street a brisk walk, the grin never leaving her face as he turned and started to walk around with no real destination.
+++
Sooner than he wanted, he was dragged back into his reality by the slightly muffled screams of a woman coming from an alleyway just up the street of a particularly dead neighborhood; he'd hoped not to have to stake any vamps before morning, but it appeared that it was going to happen. He looked around as he made for the alley, making sure there weren't any cops, and then drew his SOCOM and attached the suppressor before going in.
There were three guys surrounding a girl, maybe in her late teens and in an obscenely short skirt on the ground, and none of them were giving off any vamp vibes, so Xander steeled himself, put the gun behind his back and called out, "Excuse me, miss, but do you need help?"
"Help me, please!" "Fuck off, white boy," "Nothing here to see," and "Leave. Now," came back as responses to his question, all of which made him then pull the gun out from behind his back, and that got the attention of the three thugs.
"Step off her, boys." The Laser Aiming Module painted a big red dot on Thug 1's chest, as he was the biggest and the closest. All three guys looked at him and slowly backed off with raised hands, allowing the woman to get up and run towards him, but she was about half-way between the thugs and him when he shifted his aim to her chest and popped three rounds into her heart, one of the Dutch-loaded blessed hollow points or wood-filled rounds doing the job and turning her to dust, which swept past him with the inertia she had built up.
The three thugs crossed themselves quickly and multiple times, mumbling almost-silent prayers as Xander walked towards them, "Now, boys, that was a vampire and had I not stopped you from trying to rape her, you'd all be dead and, if you were really lucky, you'd stay that way. Savvy?"
"Si," came the unified answer, all three staying right where they were as he put away his gun.
"Good, now can you tell me anything about an old apartment building on," he rattled off the street and saw all three of them pale. "More of those things are probably there and I'd like to have all the info I can before we raid it."
All three started singing like canaries for several minutes, giving him bits and pieces about the devils that lived on that street and how nobody went there after dark. When they were finished he moved out of the way and they scooted past him along the way, running out of the alley and down the street as soon as they felt he was a safe distance away.
+++
Morning came all too soon for Xander after saving the lives of the three thugs – first he'd found himself in Chinatown and in the middle of one hell of a wedding reception for three couples, where he'd been asked to join the dancing and festivities, then he had found his back towards his motel, where he was once again propositioned by several young 'ladies of the night', but the capper was when he received a call from Kate at almost four in the morning for an invite to breakfast, as her shift was now over. They talked for almost an hour while gnawing on slightly overdone waffles, good biscuits and even an honest-to-God Denver Omelet while enjoying their coffee; sadly, Kate yawned and Xander smiled sadly, "Go home, Kate. Grated it can't help someone as gorgeous as you, but you need your beauty sleep."
She smiled sleepily at him, the caffeine of her coffee having yet to hit her system, "Keep flirting with me like that and I'll have to take you home with me, but neither of us will be getting any sleep."
He sighed, forcing his mind to stay on business, "God I wish I could, but I have a meeting to get to just after sunrise a few blocks from here," he looked over the buildings and saw the sun just starting to lighten up the sky, "and it's almost sunrise."
She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a card, a number scrawled on the back, "Here, then call me when you get done and we'll have lunch."
He accepted the card and gave her one in return, "Well, I will certain try to call you, but given how tired you look, I think I'll let you sleep and have a little something waiting for you at work tonight." He smiled as she beamed at him, then got up, "Now, unfortunately, I have to go Kate. Be safe."
"See ya," she yawned, even as he paid the tab.
Xander left for the apartment building and scanned the area, knowing that the others were already there and waiting as he walked up; he wasn't wrong because as he stopped in front of the building a van with blacked out windows pulled up to him and the door opened to reveal both Emilio and Tina, dressed in what could passingly be called 'combat clothes' (i.e. what they had worn the day before), holding a pair of Glock 18's with extended magazines and along with them were three other people, each of them trying to look tough but Xander could smell the fear coming off them in waves.
"'Bout time you got here, white bread," Tina snarled at him, to which Xander smirked back as the others tried to load Glock pistols. "What's so funny?"
"Your people don't have the first clue what they're doing and you're worried about my punctuality?" He reached forwards, snagged a Glock from one of the others, who happened to be strapping Irish lad with flaming red hair, pale skin and gray eyes, before dropping the mag, clearing the chamber and disassembling the Glock in about ten seconds, all the while still looking into Tina's eyes, before putting it back together, slapping the mag in and chambering a round. He handed it back to the young man and pointed at the barrel, "Bullet comes out of here very quickly. Make sure whoever you're pointing it at isn't one of us, me especially." That done, Xander reached back into his jacket and, instead of removing the SOCOM as Emilio expected from the look on his face, removed the suppressed UMP that he had picked up just before going to get breakfast with Kate.
"Jesus T. Christ on a crutch," the Irish young man said in a slight accent. "Where in the blurry Hell did you get that?"
"Classified," Xander said with a slight grin on his lips. Chambering a round, he tucked the weapon back into his coat before adjusting the strap to help conceal it, "Anyone else want to go in and dust vamp besides me, Emilio and Tina?"
Tina snarled several vile oaths in Spanish while Emilio reached back into the van and removed a pump-action shotgun, loading it with slugs, "Get this straight, white bread, I don't need you, WE don't need you, and you are here to back us up."
Xander stood his ground and snarled back, "Get this, mija, I am here following orders from someone a LOT higher up the food chain than you; get the fact that I have forgotten more things about Close Quarters Combat and Covert Operations than you will EVER know, and get that I don't care about what you think – I shoot the shit with meaner and tougher people than you at your worst, and they think I am a joke, but they don't know jack about me. So get your head out of your ass, into the game, think about our current objective and direct your anger in a positive direction like those vampires in there." Xander then spun on his heel and began walked around the van towards the apartment building, knowing that whether they wanted to admit it or not, that he was right about the last point he made and would follow.
+++
The clearing of the apartment building was relatively quick but very ugly; corpses of former meals were everywhere and covered in lime to cover the smell, but Xander's mind blocked those out as he shoved a stake into the hears of every one with one of the kids, Robin, covering him. Emilio covered them all at the door with the shotgun; Tina, Eric (the Irish kid) and Bob (both he and Robin, he found out, were kids from their neighborhood) covered the rest of the corpses as Xander worked.
They started at the top floor and had worked their way down silently, Xander using the UMP to blow out the throats of any vamp and the others used the vamp's body to muffle the booms of their pistols; his ammo worked well enough, but after seeing a vamp first burn, then two others shatter from being frozen, one decay from the inside out and a fourth catch on fire from being electrocuted, Xander really wanted to get his hands on that ammo.
Eventually they made it down to the basement and Emilio blew the door open at the lock with one shot from the shotgun; Xander went in fast and hard, tagging four vamps as he went while the rest fired off single shots and killed vampires for good before taking his wounded down.
"Clear! Leave one," he barked out, sweeping the room with the gun and his eyes.
"Why?"
"You can't get answers out of a pile of dust, Eric." Xander said, pulling out his knife and picked away at a grime-covered safe door that had been in the process of being closed, "Emilio, guard the door, Tina, you and Robin count up what's in here, Eric, verify it with a count of your own and then split it up evenly six ways." Before they had a chance to argue, he kicked the mostly-healed vamp in the groin and sent him back down again with a strangled cry of agony, "Shut it, shit face. How many of your kind are here at any given time?" His voice was cold as ice as he removed his SOCOM, suppressor attached, and shot the vamp in the knee when he didn't respond, "Listen, I can keep this up all day long. Tell me what I want to know and we'll release you."
The vamp was silent for a second before muttering out. "Twelve, but Nina went out last night to get us food and hasn't returned."
"Dressed like a hooker, short, kinda school-girl-looking with mousy brown hair and green eyes?" At the vamp's incredulous look, Xander smiled wolfishly ... or like a Hyena, "Killed her trying to trick three gang bangers into raping her so she'd be able to put the whammy on them. She tried to get me with that scheme too, but I've seen it played better by older and more powerful."
"Who?"
"Darla." The vamp's face went white as a sheet and Xander cackled slightly, "Now, anything else you want to tell us?"
"Eat shit, mortal." Xander didn't bother with the pistol this time; he merely reached into his pocket and removed a squeeze bottle marked with a cross before popping the top and shooting a stream of water into the vamp's slightly open mouth – a stream of holy water, that is.
Xander stood up as the vampire thrashed in agony, turning to see all five of the kids staring at him in abject horror at what he had done, but then shook themselves out of it as he removed another bottle and emptied it on the ground leading up to the vamp, getting some of it on the clothes of the now-moaning corpse as he healed, "Again I ask you, is there anything else you want to tell us?"
"Stash of books and items on the second floor," the vampire gasped out as the holy water burns in his mouth healed slowly. "Now let me go!"
Xander flicked out his Zippo and lit it, "I said I'd release you, shit face." Dropping the lighter on the stream of fluid, he watched as the lighter fluid for a barbeque pit caught up and started to roast the vampire, "I never said I'd let you go." Turning around and blocking out the vampires pain-filled screams, Xander went over to Eric, who was furiously counting the money, dividing it up and looking quite sick as well, "Count?"
"Twenty six hundred apiece, man. That was cruel, what you did to him."
There was no humor in Xander's voice when he replied, "Eric, you have no idea how very humane that was for me to kill a vampire - if necessary I can keep them alive for days to get information out of them and then make their deaths slow and even more painful." Grabbing his stack and putting away his UMP, he smiled, "Now if you will excuse me, I have a stash to go and find."
+++
/Sunday after Thanksgiving, Sunnydale/
Xander looked at the small collection of tomes, amulets, rings, and statues that he had gotten from the stash in the old apartment, sighing and trying to think of a way he was going to get Giles to look over them and possibly identify them; Giles probably be very busy over the next few days ... and nights ... since what Jenny had said under her breath when he dropped off her packages from a lingerie shop in LA – Xander didn't WANT to know what she meant by, "Oh, I'm sure he'll like this," but unfortunately his knowledge of future events made him aware of how she was found dead, where she was found and what she was wearing when she died.
Another good thing that he had accomplished was picking up several boxes of .45 caliber ammunition enspelled to do random elemental damage when it hit anything demonic; it had only cost him a Franklin a box, but given what kind of damage they did, it was worth it considering each box had to be enspelled separately and not in batches, like Xander would have done it. He hadn't had the chance to see the results himself, but was fairly sure he'd get the chance to see them in action in a little while when he went on patrol. Looking over at the other things on the table, he saw the card Kate had given him and smiled even wider – he'd kept his promise and brought her a box of assorted pastries that night, finding that her favorite was also his in the form of bear claws; she'd had one last surprise for him in the form of a peck on the cheek in front of her entire squad room (he flushed at the memory of the hoots, hollers, cheers and cat calls that had gotten them) before telling him to caller, she then leaned in and whispered, "After you graduate high school." The tone in her voice broke his heart somewhat – it was slightly resigned, but he knew as well as she did that it wouldn't have worked out even if he were already out of school.
Sighing to himself Xander strapped on his thigh holster with the SOCOM in it, grabbed several clips loaded with the new ammunition, and walked out of his condo as the sun fell in Sunnydale. He knew that with the kids coming back from holiday, the vamps would be out that night for a late snack ... and less than five minutes outside of his door he was proven right by a shrill scream and the sounds of a scuffle.
She was tall, maybe five feet seven inches, and had a body that was built like that of a swimmer with what appeared to be a natural light tan, dark hair that had come out of it's holder and fell to the middle of her back, and looked so scared that Xander felt furious at the vamp for playing with his food first. His SOCOM cleared the holster before he knew what happened and a .45 caliber tumbler entered the vamp's chest a fraction of an instant later – the magic kicked in as soon as it entered and froze the vamp solid for a split second before it shattered and then melted out of existence.
He lowered the gun and looked down at her, her wide, full of fear and an interesting purple color that made him think of lilacs for some odd reason, "Are you okay, Miss?"
"I-I think so. W-what was that?"
"A vampire." He saw several pieces click together in her mind and waited for the inevitable – her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she passed out. Not one to leave dinner for a lazy vamp, especially after saving her, Xander walked over and picked both her and her bag up, rather easily since his Hyena strength allowed him to bench about three hundred pounds with ease, and started the trek back to his place.
He returns home and puts her on his couch, sitting across form her in his chair as she starts to come to; she was, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful women he had ever met. Her eyes then chose that moment to open and look around somewhat wildly, seeing only him and an unfamiliar room as she sat up, clutching a pillow to he chest, "Where are we?"
"My place in the condos near the University; are you well? Do you need any water or aspirin, Miss ...?"
She shook her head, "Collins, Brittany Collins and no, just some answers, and thank you." Xander smiled and began to regale her with the real history of the world, about vampires, demons, et al, and all throughout she didn't say a word – her eyes were focused, he could almost see the wheels in her mind clicking along faster and faster until she asked a question, the question, "And how do you fit into al of this?"
Xander was expecting that question, actually, but still didn't have what he called a good answer, "I know that it is out there and I can't turn my back on it now that I know. Another thing that I know is that all vamps gotta die, and I'm going to do my best to do so."
Brittany smiled slightly, "Sounds vaguely like OCD." At his confused look she explained, "Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I'm a psychology major at UCSD." She fired questions at him for several minutes before he could get in a word edge-wise, then he gave answers and then she started asking more questions – it was a cycle that went on for several hours, actually, until she yawned and looked over at a small clock on his wall, "It's three thirty." She looked back over at Xander and growled, "I'm awake at three thirty on a school day with an eight am class!"
"Look at the bright side," he pointed out. "If I hadn't come along tonight, you'd probably be dead right now."
"I have an eight am class tomorrow and I'm sitting here, talking with a cute guy who saved my life at three thirty in the morning!" She pitched a glare at him, "Thanks for the rescue, but I need my beauty sleep."
"At least let me walk you to your place. It's not safe out there."
"I live one floor down and two doors west of you, Xander. I'll be fine." Brittany got up, leaned over to him and kissed him on the cheek, "Thanks for the save hero." With that, she walked out of the door, leaving a slightly stunned Xander in his chair, her scent filling his nostrils.
+++
/Meanwhile, Outside Thirty seconds later/
Brittany Collins was a about ten steps from her door when a soft voice stopped her, "I smell Kitten on you." She spun to see red-rimmed golden eyes and opened her mouth to scream, but couldn't as the shadow's hand snapped out and grabbed her throat, "Hush, little one. Miss Edith says you could be my Kittens undoing."
Brittany tried with all of her might, but the shadow drew her into the shadows, hand still wrapped around her throat, and couldn't even scream as she felt a pair of fangs rip into her throat, feeding from her lifeblood. Her struggles weakened and almost ceased when she vaguely felt something pouring into her mouth and heard the voice again, "What a Childe you shall be." After that, everything went black as death claimed her.
+++
/One week later/
Xander sits in the Library, fuming at the changes that had been the timeline just because he had killed a vamp or two extra – Angelus was now loose because Buffy couldn't keep her legs closed any longer and a full month or so earlier than last time! If he was angry, though, Giles was in what could only be called a towering fury as he stalked back and forth behind where Buffy sat, snarling oath after oath about her stupidity as she sobbed, yet oddly, Xander felt nothing this time around and kept his face in a calm mask.
Xander then looked over at Jenny, whom looked both pale as death and very angry at once; he knew she had the Orb of Thesula ready to give Angelus back his soul, making him Angel again, but just on principals he knew she would not tell about the spell unless absolutely necessary, so he spoke up, "We can re-curse him." Everyone stopped and looked at him, Buffy with her face splitting in a wide smile until he spoke again, "Then we give him a twenty-four hour head start to get the hell out of Sunnydale."
"Why?" Everyone now looked at Buffy, "He hasn't done anything wrong!"
"Yet." Xander, Jenny and Giles snapped at the same time, but only Xander continued, "He's evil Buffy, and normally I would say stake him, but I had a little visit just prior to coming here tonight; it seems that The Powers That Be need him alive, sort of, to complete a destiny as a Champion ... outside of Sunnydale."
Everyone looked shocked and it was Giles that first regained the power of speech, "You spoke with The Powers That Be?"
"One of them; they wanted to give me a heads up because they knew that I am the only one here capable of killing the bastardo bambino di a capra and not lose any sleep over it." He sighed and looked over at Jenny, "Can you do it?"
"Of course she can, Kitten," came a voice from the bookshelves as three figures walked out of them, one being Dru and another being a smirking Angelus, but the third was cloaked in a robe, "but the Dark Gypsy won't."
The Scooby Gang jumped to attention, Xander drawing his SOCOM, sans suppressor, and targeted the robed figure, as Dru was still needed to kill Kendra, "Well, this saves me the trouble of hunting you three down."
"You killed my Spiky, Kitten; you, your musket man and the puppy, such a naughty bunch who shant be getting their treats." The Vampiress smiled insanely, "But I have a treat for you, Kitten. My Childe, show yourself."
The robed vampire, as Drusilla had said Childe, stepped forwards and pulled back their hood, revealing the pale face of Brittany Collins, which had a cruel smile twisting it, "Hello, Alexander."
Xander had to put all of his concentration as to not drop the SOCOM, "Brittany?"
"Yes, it is I. My, what a turn of events, no? You save me from a vampire and in less than six hours I am then turned into one – but not by just any vampire, though, but the vampire who just happened to be the sire of William the Bloody! Remember him, Xander? The vampire you killed on Halloween?"
Everyone looked over at Xander in shock, Angelus included, but Xander kept his flat mask in place as he draw a bead on her chest and drew the hammer back on the SOCOM, "Yes, I remember."
"Well, now they knew that secret, but how about your other secret, Kitten?" Everyone looked at Dru and she continued, "You killed the Chaos Man, not your musket man or even your bad puppy; you fibbed to everyone your hold dear and near to your heart."
"A necessary evil, Dru, and I'm very sure that both you and Deadboy know all about evil."
Angelus took that moment to chuckle in surprise, "Well, well, well, if the hits don't just keep on coming tonight, Xander. I do have to say that while I am not surprised that you killed Spike, but you took a human life and then lied about it? Tisk Tisk, boy; what does that say about your character?"
Xander let out a sharp bark of non-humorous laughter, "I've done worse than lie to people, Angelus, and trust me when I say that murder isn't at the top of that list." This got a look of shock from all present as he continued, "Let me tell you something, Deadboy; you're going to die, and I'm going to be there when it happens, my oath to God." (AN: No, this is not foreshadowing – Xander is not Lex.)
"Ah, well, I would say that sounds like something a White Knight would say, but honestly, would a White Knight murder someone?"
Xander's air shifted from Brittany's chest to Angelus' crotch, "In a heartbeat, Deadboy, if the situation desires it." He sees both Dru and Brittany vanish back into the bookshelves and looks back to see Angelus is now sweating at where the gun was pointed, "You're lucky that I have orders to keep you alive, Deadboy. So start running and pray that I never see you again." That said, Xander puts away the SOCOM and turns to sit down.
Nobody moves as he sits, but then Angelus smirks in a superior manner and then waltzes out of the Library using not the sewer entrance, but rather the door leading to the school. As the door shuts Xander waits for everyone to come back to his or her collective senses and it is Buffy who does so first.
"You lied to us? You killed Ethan Rayne?" She glared at him even harder and Xander was mildly surprised that he wasn't spontaneously combusting, "Give me one reason I shouldn't beat you right now, Xander."
"Alright, Buffy, how about I ask you why I shouldn't kill you for releasing Angelus? I killed Ethan Rayne because I was ordered to – I don't care to explain just whom it was I got my orders from, but needless to say I followed them and now we come back to why I shouldn't kill you, Buffy? You're the Vampire SLAYER, not the Vampire LAYER."
Giles took that moment to chip in, "Yes, be that as it may, I must ask you if this 'Lex' character is the one who ordered your to kill Rayne."
"That's classified, Giles. Next?" He looked over at Jenny, then at Willow and finally Oz, "Anyone else want to ask me or question my morals, because believe me I have some real doozies for answers."
Surprisingly it was Oz who spoke up first, "Dru said your 'bad puppy'. Who is that?"
Xander smiled at that, "Well, Oz, a few weeks after I met Buffy I was possessed and made Alpha by a Hyena spirit." The musician looked surprised and then leaned closer to Willow as if to protect her, which made Xander smile, "Buffy and Willow both thought that Giles exorcised him from my mind, but all they did was shunt him into a dark part of my mind and put me back in control." He looked over at Buffy and felt his eyes flash, making her pale as he spoke again, "Don't bother trying to get either him or the Soldier out of me; they have almost completely merged with and on the off chance that you didn't kill me with the spell, then you'd drive me completely insane."
"Who are you, Alexander Harris?" Willow stood up from the table and took a step back, "What happened to you to turn you into ... this?"
"Life happened, Willow, and while we are on the subject of turning, let me say this to you, Buffy – anyone hear dies because of your stupidity and necrophilia, I'll kill you before their bodies are cold. Let the souls of all that he kills be on your conscience, Slayer, and PRAY that all of this little group stays safe." That said, Xander walked out of the Library, unsure if he would ever be able to call the Scooby Gang his friends ever again. (AN: Willow and Oz hooked up sometime while Xander was in LA – it seemed tedious to write about it, so I didn't. AR.)
+++
/One week later/
It had been a little over a week since the last time that Xander had seen any of the Scoobies, but he also knew that Angelus had not had his soul restored because Jenny was stone-walling them with rather flimsy excuses; frankly, he didn't care. If they couldn't deal with who he really was, then maybe they weren't the good friends he had thought them to be.
Several times he had gone out hunting Angelus, Dru and Brittany, but every time he had come up against them to kill the youngest of the trio, he couldn't seem to bring himself to pull the trigger on her. It was frustrating to say the least, but in the end it knew that she would be dust either by his hand, Buffy's or some lucky hunter's.
His phone chose that moment to ring and he answered it, "Go."
"Library. Now. Kendra is about to die." Lex terminated the call and Xander felt the color drain from his face – he'd been trying to get ready for the event, but frankly he couldn't even though he knew that it was necessary. Quickly grabbing his gear, he raced to the Library, hoping against hope he would get there to save the Slayer's life, so gun drawn, once again without the suppressor, he burst through the door even as Dru fled into the bookshelves and Kendra began to choke on her own blood.
Dropping his gun, he rushed forwards and collected the dark-skinned Slayer as she began to die; her eyes pleaded with him to try and save her, but they also held a resignation to her fate even as the life began to leave her eyes, "Please forgive me, Kendra. I swear to you that there will be vengeance for this."
Xander didn't know how long he sat there with Kendra's cooling body still in his grasp, but it was Giles who found them there on the floor of the Library; Xander had been doing his best to suppress the tears but had lost that battle at some point and could feel them tracing their way down his cheeks even as Giles swore softly as he walked up, "Xander? What happened?"
In a voice that Xander barely recognized as his own, he replied, "Dru killed Kendra, Giles."
The Watcher stepped in front of him and knelt down, looking into his eyes before speaking again, "Were you told of this by Lex?" When Xander nodded Giles swore, "And why didn't you bloody well try and stop it?"
"Orders to keep the balance. Kendra's death shall call a Slayer who is a lynch pin in the balance of Light and Dark – should she fall to the darkness it will cause an untold suffering among the people of the world when a destiny that should not be comes into being." Xander looked up into Giles' eyes and blinked before whispering our hoarsely, "I wish it could have been different, Giles, but these were orders I have fought since the day I got them; Kendra had a great deal of potential as a human being and I wanted a chance to get her to realize that."
"I am sure you did, Xander, but now she is dead and that potential is lost." Giles took the body from Xander's grasp after a little difficulty and then knelt back down in front of him, "What are you going to do now?"
Xander felt his face twist into a snarl, his vision clouding in a red fog of pure anger, hate and rage, "Kill. Dru has been off limits until now, but not any more." Xander used this rage to pull himself up from the floor and then pick up his SOCOM even as a shoe that neither he nor Giles wore squeaked, causing him to turn and see the rest of the Scooby Gang, plus Cordy and Amy, staring at him, all of them with a look of sorrow on their faces as all of the pieces clicked into place. Ignoring most of them, he looked over at Jenny, "Do the spell and give that bastard his soul back. Now. I've been informed that Whistler will be there to get him the hell out of town and to put him on the path to redemption, so don't bother trying to ever find him again."
He could see Buffy's face split into a huge grin, but he could care less as he brushed past them, but was stopped by Willow's hand on his elbow, "Why didn't you tell us?"
"You can't understand what I'm doing, Willow, not you or anyone else here. Sufficed to say I am forced to do things that none of you can – kill, steal, lie, even let people I know I can save die because the balance must be kept in order for a future nobody wants to come to pass." He pulled his arm out of her grasp and made his way to the door before something finally hits him, making him snarl – Angelus may be getting his soul back, but that didn't mean he couldn't feel a little pain first.
+++ /3rd person POV/
Dressed in black from head to toe, a being who radiated a rage and a want for vengeance, stepped out of the shadows with a weapon in his hand that didn't register until he leveled it at the three minions guarding the door to Angelus' mansion – it was a gun and they all began to laugh as they all knew that bullets didn't kill vampires ... and then the first vampire began to scream in agony a split second after the first shot exited the weapon with a 'chuff' of air, bursting into a ball of flame as the person shifted his aim and shot the other two vampires, one shattering into a million shards of ice that melted as they hit the ground and the other convulsing on the ground as if being electrocuted, then bursting into fire. The figure paid the piles of dust little heed as he swept into the mansion, the red rage feeling coming off of him now turning to ice even as he drew a bead on and fired on vampire after vampire; singles, doubles, even groups of three and four all fell before him as he cut through the ranks of minions as if he were a scythe reaping grain from th field.
The figure changed out magazines as two more vampires stepped out of the shadows, one in a robe and wearing a cruel smile while the other held a doll and was dressed in a classic 18th century dress that, had she been alive at that point, she would have been able to get any guy she wanted into any position she dreamed of. As they were, however, they both began to chuckle as the figure approached them, the one with the doll speaking, "Hello, Kitten. Have you come to play and have tea?"
The figure didn't answer verbally, merely raising his weapon again and putting a trio of shots into the robed figure that had once been Brittany Collins, sending her body to rest and the demon that had inhabited that body screaming to Hell. Had anyone else been there to witness what had just happened, they would have sworn that the one called 'Kitten' was a vampire with the way he had coldly dealt death, but nobody else was so nobody but the woman with the doll saw him remove his finger from the trigger and drop the weapon to the ground, removing a stake from the small of his back, an action that made the woman clap in child-like glee and bounce around.
"Oh, you HAVE come here to play, Kitten."
"No, Drusilla, I haven't." The voice from the figure held a tone of ice that could have been identified by those who had heard it before and lived to desperately try and forget it, "I have not come here to play, Dru; I have come seeking vengeance for one who cannot seek it herself."
"The No-Fun Slayer died in your arms, she did; the stars whisper to me how you grieve for her, Kitten and Mummy wants to send you to death so you can meet her again." She lunged forwards, hands spread out and fingers splayed as claws at the figure, whom merely stood where he was without changing anything but his eye color, which had been a dark brown but now burned a feral yellow green color.
Together they danced the dance of death, striking the other wherever they could whenever they could, before there was a mistake made – to anyone else who would have been watching, it was a slight over-reaching of a quick punch on the part of the woman, but to the man in black, it was an open invitation to end her unlife. He slapped away her arm and drove the wooden stake into the heart of the female vampire, who stood there for a second in abject shock before crumbling into dust without so much as a word or a whimper.
Standing there alone in the hallway of the Mansion, surrounded by dust, was Alexander Harris, a warrior in his own right, an assassin to all things evil, a force of good who walked in the darkness; his face was blank, flat, as if etched in stone, but a single tear rolled down his cheek and fell to the ground as he whispered, "The will of Vengeance be done." Not bothering to collect either the stake or the suppressed weapon, he walked into the courtyard of the Mansion where a figure dressed in pimp's clothing (circa late 1970's) stood over the huddled form of the Master Vampire known as Angelus.
"Kid."
"Whistler."
"He has his soul back."
Xander Harris pulled the un-suppressed SOCOM from his side and, even as the doors of the Mansion flew open to reveal the running forms of Buffy Summers and Rupert Giles, he leveled the weapon at the vampire, "Good for him." He pulled the trigger twelve times; twelve forty-five caliber blessed hollow point rounds screamed through the air and struck the grounded vampire, each hitting into separate, non-lethal, areas of his body and splintering into fragments – each fragment was blessed and caused an excruciating amount of pain to anything undead, but this time the targets chosen (knees, shoulders, stomach, pelvis, lungs, legs and arms – two rounds per area or limb) sent Angel into an almost catatonic state from the pain.
Whistler said nothing, knowing that the kid could have, had he been so inclined, sent every round into the vampire's body in lethal areas; he merely raised an eyebrow as if to say, "Was that really necessary," and watched as Buffy Summers, the Vampire Slayer, rushed forwards the held the screaming form of Angel while glaring up at Xander, who merely shrugged and reloaded his weapon with a practiced ease, but where the magazine before had been marked with a yellow (meaning non-magical) tape, the one he inserted had a red stripe around the bottom and everyone knew what red meant – lethal or dangerous.
Nobody said anything for a few minutes while Angel healed slowly, but as soon as he stopped screaming, Xander looked at Whistler, "You have until daybreak to get him out of town or he joins his Childe and both Grandchildren as dust."
"You got it, kid."
"NO!" Buffy surged to her feet and pointed an accusing finger at Xander, "He's not going any-where and that is final! You did all of this because you're jealous of what he and I have."
"Shut up, Buffy." Three words was all it took to quiet the Slayer, but it wasn't Xander or Whistler who said them. Rupert Giles looked over at Xander, "If he chooses to stay, what are you going to do?"
"Kill him."
"But you were ordered to allow him to live."
"That's why I'm giving him the chance to leave, Giles. If I wanted him dead I would have hit this place with RPG's, .50 caliber rounds and lots of both of them, too; I have followed my orders to the letter so far."
"He's staying." Buffy's words were ignored, so she spoke again, "Don't either one of you have any concern for what I'm saying?"
Xander looked at Buffy with a cold look, "Frankly, Elizabeth, I could care less about anything that comes from your mouth; you are dead to me for releasing the evil known as Angelus, so let the names, faces and last moments of each of his victims keep you awake at night, Slayer."
She gaped at the young man who had been her best guy friend since her first day in Sunnydale, the young man who had promised to interrogate her little sister's first date to the fullest of the law's extent ... the same young man who had, just over a week before threatened to kill her in front of almost everyone she held near and dear to her heart. Tears welled up in her eyes as the meaning of his words sank in and she released the almost-recovered vampire, "You can't mean that."
"Why not? You condemn me for doing my job and then try and forbid me to do it – I don't care what you have to say anymore, Elizabeth, because your feelings aren't a priority to me anymore." He looked over at Whistler, nodded, and then turned on his heel, the flat look vanishing form his face as the Slayer broke into heaving sobs, an anguished one taking it's place even as he passed Rupert Giles, who's face showed that he knew exactly what he had done and what he had just given up to do it as he walked out the door ... and possibly out of the Slayer's life forever.
+++
/Two days later – Daylight Cemetery, graves of Kendra McPhearson and Brittany Collins/
Xander knelt between the two headstones, one carved for each of the girls whom had lost their lives in a senseless war – he hadn't known either one of them for very long, but he liked to fancy the possibility that maybe he could have been their friends, had circumstances been different. He was dressed in black again, instead of black combat gear, this time it was a suit and sunglasses as he laid down a single lily atop each headstone and silently begin to pray, something he hadn't done in years, "Heavenly Father, forgive them their sins and accept them into Your loving Embrace; Kendra was a beautiful woman who was called to destroy the evil soulless ones and Brittany was a lamb, innocent of any true crime save being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I pray You forgive them and I of our transgressions in the name of the Father, The Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen."
"Well spoken, Alexander." The voice was that of Lex, but there was a gather of scents around him that made Xander look behind him to see a small collection of six others, dressed comfortably in robes, gowns, jeans and suits.
"Lex." Xander stood and turned to greet them even as the rush of on-coming feet was heard; he saw Buffy leading the charge of the Scooby Gang, but then turned his attention back to Lex, "What is my next assignment?"
"Your assignment is to travel to Boston, Massachusetts, meet with the newly- Called Slayer Faith Williams and help guide her with the help of her Watcher Lynda Price. Your educational record for the remainder of the year have been ... taken care of, so there is no need to worry about that."
"He's not leaving to anywhere for any reason." Buffy's tone was demanding, as she had no idea whom Xander walk talking to.
"He goes where we order him to go, Slayer Summers," one of the beings, a woman dressed in a gown, said quietly and with an air of wisdom. "He is our ... insurance policy, if you will, and his presence with the new Slayer is necessary."
"Like hell it is," Buffy ground out at the figure.
"Buffy, do you have any idea who these people are?" Giles' worried look at his charge made her slightly curious and he went on, "These are the corporeal forms of The Powers That Be, Buffy. They are, in essence, Xander's bosses."
"Correction, Mister Giles," Lex said. "I alone order Xander; the others are here to explain, in broad terms, what his mission is with us."
"Mister Giles, what in the world is going on here?" Joyce and Dawn Summers stood behind the Scooby Gang, along with Jenny Calendar, Cordelia and Amy, each of them also dressed in the colors of mourning.
Giles sighed and began his 'The world is older than you believe' speech as Buffy started to walk to Xander, "Xander, you can't leave m ... us."
"And the reason for that is precisely what, Buffy?"
She took a breath an let it out slowly, "Look, I'm sorry I reacted like I reacted, and I wish I could take it back, but I can't. I just ... want us to be friends again."
Xander looked at her, unsure for a second before a cold, indifferent mask slipped over his features, "And then what, Slayer? Things go along swimmingly for a few months until you relegate me back into the 'Ignore Him, He's Powerless' category and start screwing another vampire?" He heard a gasp from Joyce at this but plowed on, "Be advised, Summers, you fucked up big time and all you want to do is forget it ever happed, but those two right there," he pointed to the two fresh graves, "are proof of your mistake."
"Brittany's death wasn't my fault!"
"Where were you when she was killed – Sunday after Thanksgiving?"
"At the Bronze ... with ... Angel."
"Precisely." The word was snapped out like a bullet spit out of a gun, "If you had been doing your fucking job then maybe I wouldn't have had to save her, explain to her what was going on and then she would not have been leaving my place where she was captured by Drusilla. Kendra's death is partially my fault – I had the bad judgment to bring you back to life in the Master's Lair in hops that you'd notice me, but seeing as someone would have to be undead to make time with you, it's a lost cause there." Xander's voice was level even as Buffy's tears flooded her cheeks, but inside anyone who was looking at him could tell he was killing himself to say the words, "Now, I have a job to do in Boston. Maybe we'll see each other again, maybe not." He walked off from the crying Slayer, pausing long enough to hug a stunned Willow, Joyce and Dawn, slipping the last of the three a slip of paper, and walked out of the Cemetery even as the Seven Powers That Be stood there, waiting for things to calm down before they began to explain some of what was going on.
OKAY, that's the end of this chapter – I know it seems that Buffy's character has been assassinated to hell and back, but trust me, she'll get over it and be better for it ... eventually.
Xander isn't acting like normal because of both of the spirits, the increased burden of responsibility for a better timeline and, quite frankly, he's tired of wearing the mask of 'The Fool' for everybody.
I know I've introduced character and places from AtS, but some of them will probably come back later if I decide to make a sequel to this story.
The 'Random Elemental' Bullets idea I got from a friend of mine who plays D&D religiously – thanks Mike, The Wandering Monk. They cost so much because each box is enspelled separately – there is a limit to how many bullets you can bless with one spell, so several must be done and the components, apparently, aren't cheap.
OH, and thanks to Seige and 'Fever' for translating "Bas&*^$ son of a goat".
New Poll : WHO SHOULD PLAY LYNDA PRICE, FAITH'S WATCHER: Amanda Tapping (Maj. Sam Carter from Stargate SG-1), Traci Lords (former porn star and author – let me justify this by saying that she's cleaned up rather nicely, so no flames about this, please), Julie Andrews (Mary Friggin' Poppins!), Loretta Switt (Maj. Margarette Houllihan from MASH the series) or Lucy Lawless (if you don't know who she played, GO FORTH FROM THIS PLACE IN SHAME!)
No flames, please; constructive criticism only. AR.
First of all this is going to be a LONG chapter, because of all of the crap I have to cover, so bear with me.
AN: Okay, a few things; first of all, Angel was never invited into Xander's place, so he was standing outside the entire time, and Joyce knew where to find Xander because he mentioned it in passing in the Library to Buffy and Willow – that and he's now, miraculously, in the book.
AN2: My poll worked rather well, and as consensus it seems to be a toss up between Jenny, Faith, Dawnie (when she is legal) and a new girl, but I got only one Willow (reluctantly), an Amy (pre-rat) and even a Marcie, Invisible Girl! I can tell you that Joyce (one or two votes as a change of pace) is out b/c she is the 'mother' figure, as is Jenny (for the time being – that may change later, but for now they are just very good friends), and that the random girl will be seen alive for only a little while in this chapter, possibly to be mentioned in later ones, Marcie is a maybe-to-be-seen later on, but Faith seems to be the frontrunner for now. Other choices submitted were Anya, Cordy, and even Harmony (which was followed by an 'eww', while Anya was a 'yech' – Marcie rated a 'not a bad choice' and Cordy was a 'possible).
AN3: Evolution Of The Zeppo is temporarily on hold because my muse isn't speaking to me about it – I think I insulted one of her ideas because she told me, and I have cleaned this up, "Fine, let's see you do this without me!" Needless to say, I'm stuck – any useful ideas as to where the story should go past a Hyena hunting session / forest run, please send them in.
AN4: Several other stories have come to mind – one of those is a 'What Happened To Marcie' blended with a 'Others Changed By Hell-o-ween 1997' set later in S3 or in S4, another is a BTVS/Diablo 2: Lords of Destruction story with Jenny and Xander being the main characters. Comments anyone?
Now let us get on with the fic, ladies and gentlemen.
Chapter 3 – Can Friendships Survive The Truth And The Consequences?
//About one month later, nothing important has happened: It is the day before Thanksgiving, Los Angeles//
Xander stepped off of the bus from Sunnydale to LA and quickly went over to the terminal to collect his duffle bag, not wanting his stash of weapons inside to be found or stolen; Lex had called him the day before while on his way out of the school and told him to pack up, that he was going to LA for a few days. Seeing as he would be gone, he had informed Joyce of his plans, as she had invited him over for Thanksgiving dinner, and she had told both Buffy and Dawn; Buffy had practically ordered him not to go while Dawn had tried her best to use 'The Eyes' on him, but he held strong with the latter and told the former it wasn't his call or hers – it was an order and it was one he was following. Somehow in the process of packing, though, he had been called by and talked into by Jenny to stop by a boutique to picked up several things for her; he had actually made it to the door when both Cordy and Amy, of all people, had shown up and wished him well on his trip – he wasn't sure how they knew and figured it was Buffy trying to get him to follow her orders, but he let that pass and thanked them for their well wishes. When he was met at the bus station by Giles, though, he was starting to get pissed off and accepted the Watcher's words as they came – to be careful and come back, because he (Giles) didn't want to have to tell Buffy that he (Xander) was either hurt or dead; Xander had to admit that it was funny once one took the time to think about it, so he thanked Giles and got on the bus.
Over the previous few weeks, Xander had been working out the problem with bullets that kill both demons and vampires; sure, tracer ammo was readily available, and he'd even had a fair amount of success with blessed hollow points (obtained after visiting a local church near the University run by an old priest who had seen it all), but something more substantial was necessary and Xander had picked up on a line where he could possibly find someone who could fix his problem. It would not be cheap, but Xander had been hitting nests and lairs as of late (without Buffy's notice, of course) and had picked up a fair amount of cash, jewelry, tomes, items and such – all in all, it came out to be a little more than $75,000 worth of stuff and that had been wisely invested in the markets, which had started to pay off with several major jumps. Basically, he wasn't hurting for cash and could buy most of what he needed right now.
Slipping into the bathroom of the bus station, Xander removed the SOCOM and slipped it into a leather shoulder holster, which sat under his left arm and had ammo pouches, four of them, under his right arm, and secured his pistol, ammo and suppressor before slipping on a long leather duster to cover it; he had found out that many people in Sunnydale tended to forget anyone they saw with long coats on and quickly found that it was the only way he could be out past sundown with all of his kit and not get asked anything by anybody.
With all of this done, Xander shouldered his duffle and walked out of the station and down the street towards Downtown LA, the City of Angels. His instincts as a soldier had him watching left and right, looking for possible traps, ambushes, Charlie coming up on his six and general non- combatants, while his Hyena instincts were seeing everyone as potential prey or enemies, but also sniffing for scents of all things demonic; most of what he got was either human or dead, meaning vampire, but every once in a while he'd pick up a scent that was neither and categorized it as well as he could. It was like this all the way to a cheap motel near the station, where he had been told to stay in a certain room and wait for a contact; the motel itself almost overpowered him with the scents of drugs, pain, anger, sex and hopelessness and it took all of Xander's resolve to walk all the way inside to the front desk.
"I need a room for the night."
"Forty bucks, kid," the woman behind the bulletproof glass said dully, one hand holding a cigarette while the other turned the pages of a magazine; it was like something you saw out of a cheap movie or made-for-television show, but as of late, Xander felt as if his life was the same thing.
He handed over two twenties and took the key she gave him, looking at the number and cringing at what he was – 714, the same number of the room that Faith had stayed in, the had lost his virginity in, and the room he almost got killed in too. Either Lex had a seriously disturbed sense of humor or there was a trend going that he didn't know about, "Thanks, ma'am."
Xander walked to the room and immediately looked it over for bugs, rats, other entrances and found a camera that pointed towards the bed in the first five minutes, the meaning of which disturbed Xander more than he cared to admit, but found nothing else other than a small nest of rats; he took the camera out of the light fixture it was wired into, but not before he gave the camera the bird and cut the cords – whoever was watching would be pissed, but it wasn't as if Xander could force himself to care about it at this point. He stripped off the duster and rooted around inside of the duffle for a second before coming up with the rest of his stash – a Randal knife he'd had blessed by the same priest who did the ammo, several stakes that fit into small sheaths in his duster, a small cross-marked squirt bottle of holy water he'd brought along just in case and another bottle, this one unmarked and also filled with a clear liquid, and then a Zippo lighter that had a monogram on it that made him laugh – 'Heaven Doesn't Want Me And Hell Is Afraid I'll Take Over'. Shrugging on his duster again, he put the items back into their proper places, knife at the small of his back, bottles into either pocket, Zippo into his jeans pocket, a stake into each sleeve in a small loop there, then four more into the front seem of his duster, next to the zipper – the one thing about his stakes is that they were not round, but rather flat, only about five inches long, tapered to a point and meant for being concealed.
When the knock came at his door, it wasn't a big surprise, but he had screwed the suppressor on to this SOCOM just in case it was not who he expected it to be; checking the windows, he walked to the door with his gun out of sight and opened the door, chain-lock in place and only allowing it to crack open an inch. Outside was a young woman, maybe a few years older than he, dressed in a pair of dark jeans, a t-shirt and an old jacket, her skin slightly dusky, as if of either Middle Eastern descent, Latin American or a light-skinned African American, her eyes narrowed slightly and dark brown, her hair long, dark and pulled back behind her head, out of the way. Behind her was a man, about the same age and skin tone, so perhaps her brother, dressed much the same way, but he had a slightly bored expression on his face while her's was one of annoyance, "Yes?"
"You Hyena?" Her voice was pitched low but dripped with honey tainted with venom; whoever she was she was pissed at him, Lex or whoever had set up the meet.
"Possibly. Are you Phoenix?"
She snorted disgustedly while the man behind her chuckled quietly, "I swear I'll kill the guy who made up these names."
"Hold on." He shut the door and took off the chain before opening it op, but didn't invite them in, "Did he sound like James Earl Jones?"
"No, he sounded like Hulk Hogan, vato," the guy said somewhat gaily, trying not to piss off the girl anymore but losing the battle with the chuckles. "I'm 'Hawk', but call me Emilio, and this is 'Phoenix', but call her temperamental*oof!" The guy bent over slightly from the not-so-sweet elbow to the gut that had been preceded by an overly sweet smile from 'Phoenix'.
"Tina. Why'd he send you here to us?" She brazenly looked him over, "Not much to look at, but I can tell you've seen some shit." Her voice was slightly condescending and forced Xander to try his best to speak only in a neutral tone.
"You can say that; I found out about vamps one night and then had to dust my best friend-turned-vamp in less than 48 hours. Besides, I've got it where it counts, mija." He smiled at her and looked the both of them over, "Now, as to why I was sent here, I was told that a) you had a line on some vamp killing ammo and b) there was a big raid that you'd need help on. I use blessed .45 hollow points for this," he held up the SOCOM, which made them both step back slightly in fear and shock, "hand-to-hand, improvised weapons and pure balls to dust my vamps, but I also have access to a suppressed UMP sub-machine gun, but it's a waste of ammo most of the time, so I don't bother with it." He let the information sink in for a second before he went on, his voice having lost the somewhat neutral tone he had been using and let a bit of ice creep in, "Frankly, I don't give a damn what you use, but I'd like to take the vamps out instead of just slowing them down."
Tina and Emilio both looked at each other and he could tell that they could tell they were dealing with someone who didn't care what others thought about him, that he did his job and let the gossip go hang, and they were right. When they looked back at him, he was in the process of putting the SOCOM up and sitting on the edge of the single bed, away from the window but still towards the middle of the room. Both of them held a look of slight respect in their eyes as Emilio reached into his pocket slowly and removed a slip of paper, "First off, nest isn't too far from here – it's an old apartment building people have been trying to tear down for years and is mostly condemned above the third floor."
"Basement and floor plans?"
Tina shook her head, "Useless. One of our people got in there after sunrise one morning and it's been completely changed. We'll hit it about at dawn and them we'll go see the guy who sells the ammo, which is either regular or hollow point and enspelled to do elemental damage – it's random but it always works."
"Which elements?"
"Fire, Ice, Lightning and even an all-around Poison that hurts 99% of all demons," Emilio rattled off with a shrug. "Guy swears he came up with it on his own, but I see the figurines he has and say he stole the idea from some D&D book he read once."
Xander snorted, standing up as he did, "Figures. So, what now?"
"We go our way, you go yours and we'll meet there," Tina pointed at the slip of paper in Xander's hands, "about six am tomorrow. Peace." With that, she and Emilio left, the latter of the two flipping him a jaunty salute before he shut the door.
+++
Xander had passed an hour in the room flipping through the free cable, but found most of it was porn and very bad porn at that, so he pulled on his duster, having never removed his shoulder leathers or knife, and made his way outside to see LA at it's best at night. Here and there you'd see dealers running their smack or weed to some kid stupid enough to use it, a pimp watching over women who called out to passing motorists and pedestrians to sell their 'wares', which were prominently displayed in tight clothes and short skirts (he got more than a few propositions himself, but figured that he was here to work, not risk his life with the next Typhoid Mary), and then even saw a few 'people' dressed in trench coats, scars and fedoras going into what appeared to be an empty lot and ... disappearing?
Xander stepped out of the flow of traffic, making sure that nobody was in the area, and then went to the supposedly empty lot, looking around again and making sure his gun was loose in it's holster before stepping forwards a few paces; he could feel an energy wash over him as he stepped in and kept his cool as a building materialized out of nothing. It took a second to process what had happened and to come to the decision that the spell wasn't offensive in nature, but rather a defensive field that kept the building out of the limelight. Satisfied, he waited for a gap in the human traffic and walked out of the 'empty' lot, flowing with it again until he came outside of a small diner – his stomach chose that point to make it known that he was in need of sustenance in it's disturbingly loud way that turned one or two heads before he walked in.
"You'll have to share," one of the waitresses said as soon as he came in, as the place was fairly packed.
"Thanks," he said back, looking around for a table and found one with a lady in a denim jacket. "Mind if I sit here?" She waved him to sit down and went back to her coffee – she was in her early-to-mid twenties, twenty- seven on the outside, with blonde streaks in her hair, fair skin, a rather beautiful face and blue gray eyes that held a sense of wisdom and just a hint or two of steel.
One of the waitresses walked up and handed him a cup of coffee, "What'll ya have, babe?"
Xander looked at the woman and smiled lightly, "Burger, all the way, fries and whatever she wants." This got a look from the both of them, and he defended himself, "Hey, I'm feeling generous and I can hear your stomach from here."
The woman in denim blushed lightly and ordered the same as him before going back to her coffee, "Thanks, I'm Kate Lockley."
"Xander Harris, and it's a pleasure, Miss Lockley." He added a cream and three sugars to his coffee, stirring it, "Is it always this busy here?"
She smiled, "No, just on Fridays, when it's free coffee night." She looked around again and then focused her eye on his, reaching into her jacket for something, "So, why do you have a gun under your left arm?"
He looked at her oddly until she flashed him her Detective's badge, then he slowly reached into his hip pocket, "I never go out unarmed, Detective, and as you can see, I have a permit." He passed the card over and she looked at it, scrutinizing it very carefully before passing it back.
"If you're eighteen I'll eat my badge."
He gave her a slightly enigmatic smile, "I'm older than I look, Detective, but thanks for the compliment. I'd ask you your age but I don't feel like getting slapped, so I'll call you at twenty four and leave it at that."
She gave him an odd look before smiling in a friendlier manner, "Twenty six, actually, but thanks. Forty-five?"
He looked at her for a second, and then chuckled, "No, I'm not that old, and yes, a .45 caliber." Any other questions and responses were cut off by the arrival of the food, which both Xander and Kate attacked with gusto – he found the burger slightly over-done, but the fries and coffee more than made up for it.
After they finished their dinners and let out a celebratory, but muffled, burp apiece, they stood and left the booth, Xander dropping the bill and a tip on the table and waved goodbye to the waitress, who smiled and wished him a good evening as both he and Kate left the diner. It was now pushing nine pm and Xander turned to Kate, "So, what is there to do around this city at this time of night?"
She smiled, "For me, work, for you, whatever you want to do that isn't illegal – I'd hate to have to arrest you after buying me dinner."
He grinned, "You know, if it weren't for the fact that I knew you were a cop, I'd say something to the effect of the thought of you, me, that badge and your handcuffs paint a pretty vivid picture in my mind, Kate." This got a hearty laugh out of her and he stuck out a hand, "Glad to meet ya, Kate. Be safe."
"You too, Xander, and extra points for the handcuffs remark," she grinned, walking towards the other side of the street a brisk walk, the grin never leaving her face as he turned and started to walk around with no real destination.
+++
Sooner than he wanted, he was dragged back into his reality by the slightly muffled screams of a woman coming from an alleyway just up the street of a particularly dead neighborhood; he'd hoped not to have to stake any vamps before morning, but it appeared that it was going to happen. He looked around as he made for the alley, making sure there weren't any cops, and then drew his SOCOM and attached the suppressor before going in.
There were three guys surrounding a girl, maybe in her late teens and in an obscenely short skirt on the ground, and none of them were giving off any vamp vibes, so Xander steeled himself, put the gun behind his back and called out, "Excuse me, miss, but do you need help?"
"Help me, please!" "Fuck off, white boy," "Nothing here to see," and "Leave. Now," came back as responses to his question, all of which made him then pull the gun out from behind his back, and that got the attention of the three thugs.
"Step off her, boys." The Laser Aiming Module painted a big red dot on Thug 1's chest, as he was the biggest and the closest. All three guys looked at him and slowly backed off with raised hands, allowing the woman to get up and run towards him, but she was about half-way between the thugs and him when he shifted his aim to her chest and popped three rounds into her heart, one of the Dutch-loaded blessed hollow points or wood-filled rounds doing the job and turning her to dust, which swept past him with the inertia she had built up.
The three thugs crossed themselves quickly and multiple times, mumbling almost-silent prayers as Xander walked towards them, "Now, boys, that was a vampire and had I not stopped you from trying to rape her, you'd all be dead and, if you were really lucky, you'd stay that way. Savvy?"
"Si," came the unified answer, all three staying right where they were as he put away his gun.
"Good, now can you tell me anything about an old apartment building on," he rattled off the street and saw all three of them pale. "More of those things are probably there and I'd like to have all the info I can before we raid it."
All three started singing like canaries for several minutes, giving him bits and pieces about the devils that lived on that street and how nobody went there after dark. When they were finished he moved out of the way and they scooted past him along the way, running out of the alley and down the street as soon as they felt he was a safe distance away.
+++
Morning came all too soon for Xander after saving the lives of the three thugs – first he'd found himself in Chinatown and in the middle of one hell of a wedding reception for three couples, where he'd been asked to join the dancing and festivities, then he had found his back towards his motel, where he was once again propositioned by several young 'ladies of the night', but the capper was when he received a call from Kate at almost four in the morning for an invite to breakfast, as her shift was now over. They talked for almost an hour while gnawing on slightly overdone waffles, good biscuits and even an honest-to-God Denver Omelet while enjoying their coffee; sadly, Kate yawned and Xander smiled sadly, "Go home, Kate. Grated it can't help someone as gorgeous as you, but you need your beauty sleep."
She smiled sleepily at him, the caffeine of her coffee having yet to hit her system, "Keep flirting with me like that and I'll have to take you home with me, but neither of us will be getting any sleep."
He sighed, forcing his mind to stay on business, "God I wish I could, but I have a meeting to get to just after sunrise a few blocks from here," he looked over the buildings and saw the sun just starting to lighten up the sky, "and it's almost sunrise."
She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a card, a number scrawled on the back, "Here, then call me when you get done and we'll have lunch."
He accepted the card and gave her one in return, "Well, I will certain try to call you, but given how tired you look, I think I'll let you sleep and have a little something waiting for you at work tonight." He smiled as she beamed at him, then got up, "Now, unfortunately, I have to go Kate. Be safe."
"See ya," she yawned, even as he paid the tab.
Xander left for the apartment building and scanned the area, knowing that the others were already there and waiting as he walked up; he wasn't wrong because as he stopped in front of the building a van with blacked out windows pulled up to him and the door opened to reveal both Emilio and Tina, dressed in what could passingly be called 'combat clothes' (i.e. what they had worn the day before), holding a pair of Glock 18's with extended magazines and along with them were three other people, each of them trying to look tough but Xander could smell the fear coming off them in waves.
"'Bout time you got here, white bread," Tina snarled at him, to which Xander smirked back as the others tried to load Glock pistols. "What's so funny?"
"Your people don't have the first clue what they're doing and you're worried about my punctuality?" He reached forwards, snagged a Glock from one of the others, who happened to be strapping Irish lad with flaming red hair, pale skin and gray eyes, before dropping the mag, clearing the chamber and disassembling the Glock in about ten seconds, all the while still looking into Tina's eyes, before putting it back together, slapping the mag in and chambering a round. He handed it back to the young man and pointed at the barrel, "Bullet comes out of here very quickly. Make sure whoever you're pointing it at isn't one of us, me especially." That done, Xander reached back into his jacket and, instead of removing the SOCOM as Emilio expected from the look on his face, removed the suppressed UMP that he had picked up just before going to get breakfast with Kate.
"Jesus T. Christ on a crutch," the Irish young man said in a slight accent. "Where in the blurry Hell did you get that?"
"Classified," Xander said with a slight grin on his lips. Chambering a round, he tucked the weapon back into his coat before adjusting the strap to help conceal it, "Anyone else want to go in and dust vamp besides me, Emilio and Tina?"
Tina snarled several vile oaths in Spanish while Emilio reached back into the van and removed a pump-action shotgun, loading it with slugs, "Get this straight, white bread, I don't need you, WE don't need you, and you are here to back us up."
Xander stood his ground and snarled back, "Get this, mija, I am here following orders from someone a LOT higher up the food chain than you; get the fact that I have forgotten more things about Close Quarters Combat and Covert Operations than you will EVER know, and get that I don't care about what you think – I shoot the shit with meaner and tougher people than you at your worst, and they think I am a joke, but they don't know jack about me. So get your head out of your ass, into the game, think about our current objective and direct your anger in a positive direction like those vampires in there." Xander then spun on his heel and began walked around the van towards the apartment building, knowing that whether they wanted to admit it or not, that he was right about the last point he made and would follow.
+++
The clearing of the apartment building was relatively quick but very ugly; corpses of former meals were everywhere and covered in lime to cover the smell, but Xander's mind blocked those out as he shoved a stake into the hears of every one with one of the kids, Robin, covering him. Emilio covered them all at the door with the shotgun; Tina, Eric (the Irish kid) and Bob (both he and Robin, he found out, were kids from their neighborhood) covered the rest of the corpses as Xander worked.
They started at the top floor and had worked their way down silently, Xander using the UMP to blow out the throats of any vamp and the others used the vamp's body to muffle the booms of their pistols; his ammo worked well enough, but after seeing a vamp first burn, then two others shatter from being frozen, one decay from the inside out and a fourth catch on fire from being electrocuted, Xander really wanted to get his hands on that ammo.
Eventually they made it down to the basement and Emilio blew the door open at the lock with one shot from the shotgun; Xander went in fast and hard, tagging four vamps as he went while the rest fired off single shots and killed vampires for good before taking his wounded down.
"Clear! Leave one," he barked out, sweeping the room with the gun and his eyes.
"Why?"
"You can't get answers out of a pile of dust, Eric." Xander said, pulling out his knife and picked away at a grime-covered safe door that had been in the process of being closed, "Emilio, guard the door, Tina, you and Robin count up what's in here, Eric, verify it with a count of your own and then split it up evenly six ways." Before they had a chance to argue, he kicked the mostly-healed vamp in the groin and sent him back down again with a strangled cry of agony, "Shut it, shit face. How many of your kind are here at any given time?" His voice was cold as ice as he removed his SOCOM, suppressor attached, and shot the vamp in the knee when he didn't respond, "Listen, I can keep this up all day long. Tell me what I want to know and we'll release you."
The vamp was silent for a second before muttering out. "Twelve, but Nina went out last night to get us food and hasn't returned."
"Dressed like a hooker, short, kinda school-girl-looking with mousy brown hair and green eyes?" At the vamp's incredulous look, Xander smiled wolfishly ... or like a Hyena, "Killed her trying to trick three gang bangers into raping her so she'd be able to put the whammy on them. She tried to get me with that scheme too, but I've seen it played better by older and more powerful."
"Who?"
"Darla." The vamp's face went white as a sheet and Xander cackled slightly, "Now, anything else you want to tell us?"
"Eat shit, mortal." Xander didn't bother with the pistol this time; he merely reached into his pocket and removed a squeeze bottle marked with a cross before popping the top and shooting a stream of water into the vamp's slightly open mouth – a stream of holy water, that is.
Xander stood up as the vampire thrashed in agony, turning to see all five of the kids staring at him in abject horror at what he had done, but then shook themselves out of it as he removed another bottle and emptied it on the ground leading up to the vamp, getting some of it on the clothes of the now-moaning corpse as he healed, "Again I ask you, is there anything else you want to tell us?"
"Stash of books and items on the second floor," the vampire gasped out as the holy water burns in his mouth healed slowly. "Now let me go!"
Xander flicked out his Zippo and lit it, "I said I'd release you, shit face." Dropping the lighter on the stream of fluid, he watched as the lighter fluid for a barbeque pit caught up and started to roast the vampire, "I never said I'd let you go." Turning around and blocking out the vampires pain-filled screams, Xander went over to Eric, who was furiously counting the money, dividing it up and looking quite sick as well, "Count?"
"Twenty six hundred apiece, man. That was cruel, what you did to him."
There was no humor in Xander's voice when he replied, "Eric, you have no idea how very humane that was for me to kill a vampire - if necessary I can keep them alive for days to get information out of them and then make their deaths slow and even more painful." Grabbing his stack and putting away his UMP, he smiled, "Now if you will excuse me, I have a stash to go and find."
+++
/Sunday after Thanksgiving, Sunnydale/
Xander looked at the small collection of tomes, amulets, rings, and statues that he had gotten from the stash in the old apartment, sighing and trying to think of a way he was going to get Giles to look over them and possibly identify them; Giles probably be very busy over the next few days ... and nights ... since what Jenny had said under her breath when he dropped off her packages from a lingerie shop in LA – Xander didn't WANT to know what she meant by, "Oh, I'm sure he'll like this," but unfortunately his knowledge of future events made him aware of how she was found dead, where she was found and what she was wearing when she died.
Another good thing that he had accomplished was picking up several boxes of .45 caliber ammunition enspelled to do random elemental damage when it hit anything demonic; it had only cost him a Franklin a box, but given what kind of damage they did, it was worth it considering each box had to be enspelled separately and not in batches, like Xander would have done it. He hadn't had the chance to see the results himself, but was fairly sure he'd get the chance to see them in action in a little while when he went on patrol. Looking over at the other things on the table, he saw the card Kate had given him and smiled even wider – he'd kept his promise and brought her a box of assorted pastries that night, finding that her favorite was also his in the form of bear claws; she'd had one last surprise for him in the form of a peck on the cheek in front of her entire squad room (he flushed at the memory of the hoots, hollers, cheers and cat calls that had gotten them) before telling him to caller, she then leaned in and whispered, "After you graduate high school." The tone in her voice broke his heart somewhat – it was slightly resigned, but he knew as well as she did that it wouldn't have worked out even if he were already out of school.
Sighing to himself Xander strapped on his thigh holster with the SOCOM in it, grabbed several clips loaded with the new ammunition, and walked out of his condo as the sun fell in Sunnydale. He knew that with the kids coming back from holiday, the vamps would be out that night for a late snack ... and less than five minutes outside of his door he was proven right by a shrill scream and the sounds of a scuffle.
She was tall, maybe five feet seven inches, and had a body that was built like that of a swimmer with what appeared to be a natural light tan, dark hair that had come out of it's holder and fell to the middle of her back, and looked so scared that Xander felt furious at the vamp for playing with his food first. His SOCOM cleared the holster before he knew what happened and a .45 caliber tumbler entered the vamp's chest a fraction of an instant later – the magic kicked in as soon as it entered and froze the vamp solid for a split second before it shattered and then melted out of existence.
He lowered the gun and looked down at her, her wide, full of fear and an interesting purple color that made him think of lilacs for some odd reason, "Are you okay, Miss?"
"I-I think so. W-what was that?"
"A vampire." He saw several pieces click together in her mind and waited for the inevitable – her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she passed out. Not one to leave dinner for a lazy vamp, especially after saving her, Xander walked over and picked both her and her bag up, rather easily since his Hyena strength allowed him to bench about three hundred pounds with ease, and started the trek back to his place.
He returns home and puts her on his couch, sitting across form her in his chair as she starts to come to; she was, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful women he had ever met. Her eyes then chose that moment to open and look around somewhat wildly, seeing only him and an unfamiliar room as she sat up, clutching a pillow to he chest, "Where are we?"
"My place in the condos near the University; are you well? Do you need any water or aspirin, Miss ...?"
She shook her head, "Collins, Brittany Collins and no, just some answers, and thank you." Xander smiled and began to regale her with the real history of the world, about vampires, demons, et al, and all throughout she didn't say a word – her eyes were focused, he could almost see the wheels in her mind clicking along faster and faster until she asked a question, the question, "And how do you fit into al of this?"
Xander was expecting that question, actually, but still didn't have what he called a good answer, "I know that it is out there and I can't turn my back on it now that I know. Another thing that I know is that all vamps gotta die, and I'm going to do my best to do so."
Brittany smiled slightly, "Sounds vaguely like OCD." At his confused look she explained, "Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I'm a psychology major at UCSD." She fired questions at him for several minutes before he could get in a word edge-wise, then he gave answers and then she started asking more questions – it was a cycle that went on for several hours, actually, until she yawned and looked over at a small clock on his wall, "It's three thirty." She looked back over at Xander and growled, "I'm awake at three thirty on a school day with an eight am class!"
"Look at the bright side," he pointed out. "If I hadn't come along tonight, you'd probably be dead right now."
"I have an eight am class tomorrow and I'm sitting here, talking with a cute guy who saved my life at three thirty in the morning!" She pitched a glare at him, "Thanks for the rescue, but I need my beauty sleep."
"At least let me walk you to your place. It's not safe out there."
"I live one floor down and two doors west of you, Xander. I'll be fine." Brittany got up, leaned over to him and kissed him on the cheek, "Thanks for the save hero." With that, she walked out of the door, leaving a slightly stunned Xander in his chair, her scent filling his nostrils.
+++
/Meanwhile, Outside Thirty seconds later/
Brittany Collins was a about ten steps from her door when a soft voice stopped her, "I smell Kitten on you." She spun to see red-rimmed golden eyes and opened her mouth to scream, but couldn't as the shadow's hand snapped out and grabbed her throat, "Hush, little one. Miss Edith says you could be my Kittens undoing."
Brittany tried with all of her might, but the shadow drew her into the shadows, hand still wrapped around her throat, and couldn't even scream as she felt a pair of fangs rip into her throat, feeding from her lifeblood. Her struggles weakened and almost ceased when she vaguely felt something pouring into her mouth and heard the voice again, "What a Childe you shall be." After that, everything went black as death claimed her.
+++
/One week later/
Xander sits in the Library, fuming at the changes that had been the timeline just because he had killed a vamp or two extra – Angelus was now loose because Buffy couldn't keep her legs closed any longer and a full month or so earlier than last time! If he was angry, though, Giles was in what could only be called a towering fury as he stalked back and forth behind where Buffy sat, snarling oath after oath about her stupidity as she sobbed, yet oddly, Xander felt nothing this time around and kept his face in a calm mask.
Xander then looked over at Jenny, whom looked both pale as death and very angry at once; he knew she had the Orb of Thesula ready to give Angelus back his soul, making him Angel again, but just on principals he knew she would not tell about the spell unless absolutely necessary, so he spoke up, "We can re-curse him." Everyone stopped and looked at him, Buffy with her face splitting in a wide smile until he spoke again, "Then we give him a twenty-four hour head start to get the hell out of Sunnydale."
"Why?" Everyone now looked at Buffy, "He hasn't done anything wrong!"
"Yet." Xander, Jenny and Giles snapped at the same time, but only Xander continued, "He's evil Buffy, and normally I would say stake him, but I had a little visit just prior to coming here tonight; it seems that The Powers That Be need him alive, sort of, to complete a destiny as a Champion ... outside of Sunnydale."
Everyone looked shocked and it was Giles that first regained the power of speech, "You spoke with The Powers That Be?"
"One of them; they wanted to give me a heads up because they knew that I am the only one here capable of killing the bastardo bambino di a capra and not lose any sleep over it." He sighed and looked over at Jenny, "Can you do it?"
"Of course she can, Kitten," came a voice from the bookshelves as three figures walked out of them, one being Dru and another being a smirking Angelus, but the third was cloaked in a robe, "but the Dark Gypsy won't."
The Scooby Gang jumped to attention, Xander drawing his SOCOM, sans suppressor, and targeted the robed figure, as Dru was still needed to kill Kendra, "Well, this saves me the trouble of hunting you three down."
"You killed my Spiky, Kitten; you, your musket man and the puppy, such a naughty bunch who shant be getting their treats." The Vampiress smiled insanely, "But I have a treat for you, Kitten. My Childe, show yourself."
The robed vampire, as Drusilla had said Childe, stepped forwards and pulled back their hood, revealing the pale face of Brittany Collins, which had a cruel smile twisting it, "Hello, Alexander."
Xander had to put all of his concentration as to not drop the SOCOM, "Brittany?"
"Yes, it is I. My, what a turn of events, no? You save me from a vampire and in less than six hours I am then turned into one – but not by just any vampire, though, but the vampire who just happened to be the sire of William the Bloody! Remember him, Xander? The vampire you killed on Halloween?"
Everyone looked over at Xander in shock, Angelus included, but Xander kept his flat mask in place as he draw a bead on her chest and drew the hammer back on the SOCOM, "Yes, I remember."
"Well, now they knew that secret, but how about your other secret, Kitten?" Everyone looked at Dru and she continued, "You killed the Chaos Man, not your musket man or even your bad puppy; you fibbed to everyone your hold dear and near to your heart."
"A necessary evil, Dru, and I'm very sure that both you and Deadboy know all about evil."
Angelus took that moment to chuckle in surprise, "Well, well, well, if the hits don't just keep on coming tonight, Xander. I do have to say that while I am not surprised that you killed Spike, but you took a human life and then lied about it? Tisk Tisk, boy; what does that say about your character?"
Xander let out a sharp bark of non-humorous laughter, "I've done worse than lie to people, Angelus, and trust me when I say that murder isn't at the top of that list." This got a look of shock from all present as he continued, "Let me tell you something, Deadboy; you're going to die, and I'm going to be there when it happens, my oath to God." (AN: No, this is not foreshadowing – Xander is not Lex.)
"Ah, well, I would say that sounds like something a White Knight would say, but honestly, would a White Knight murder someone?"
Xander's air shifted from Brittany's chest to Angelus' crotch, "In a heartbeat, Deadboy, if the situation desires it." He sees both Dru and Brittany vanish back into the bookshelves and looks back to see Angelus is now sweating at where the gun was pointed, "You're lucky that I have orders to keep you alive, Deadboy. So start running and pray that I never see you again." That said, Xander puts away the SOCOM and turns to sit down.
Nobody moves as he sits, but then Angelus smirks in a superior manner and then waltzes out of the Library using not the sewer entrance, but rather the door leading to the school. As the door shuts Xander waits for everyone to come back to his or her collective senses and it is Buffy who does so first.
"You lied to us? You killed Ethan Rayne?" She glared at him even harder and Xander was mildly surprised that he wasn't spontaneously combusting, "Give me one reason I shouldn't beat you right now, Xander."
"Alright, Buffy, how about I ask you why I shouldn't kill you for releasing Angelus? I killed Ethan Rayne because I was ordered to – I don't care to explain just whom it was I got my orders from, but needless to say I followed them and now we come back to why I shouldn't kill you, Buffy? You're the Vampire SLAYER, not the Vampire LAYER."
Giles took that moment to chip in, "Yes, be that as it may, I must ask you if this 'Lex' character is the one who ordered your to kill Rayne."
"That's classified, Giles. Next?" He looked over at Jenny, then at Willow and finally Oz, "Anyone else want to ask me or question my morals, because believe me I have some real doozies for answers."
Surprisingly it was Oz who spoke up first, "Dru said your 'bad puppy'. Who is that?"
Xander smiled at that, "Well, Oz, a few weeks after I met Buffy I was possessed and made Alpha by a Hyena spirit." The musician looked surprised and then leaned closer to Willow as if to protect her, which made Xander smile, "Buffy and Willow both thought that Giles exorcised him from my mind, but all they did was shunt him into a dark part of my mind and put me back in control." He looked over at Buffy and felt his eyes flash, making her pale as he spoke again, "Don't bother trying to get either him or the Soldier out of me; they have almost completely merged with and on the off chance that you didn't kill me with the spell, then you'd drive me completely insane."
"Who are you, Alexander Harris?" Willow stood up from the table and took a step back, "What happened to you to turn you into ... this?"
"Life happened, Willow, and while we are on the subject of turning, let me say this to you, Buffy – anyone hear dies because of your stupidity and necrophilia, I'll kill you before their bodies are cold. Let the souls of all that he kills be on your conscience, Slayer, and PRAY that all of this little group stays safe." That said, Xander walked out of the Library, unsure if he would ever be able to call the Scooby Gang his friends ever again. (AN: Willow and Oz hooked up sometime while Xander was in LA – it seemed tedious to write about it, so I didn't. AR.)
+++
/One week later/
It had been a little over a week since the last time that Xander had seen any of the Scoobies, but he also knew that Angelus had not had his soul restored because Jenny was stone-walling them with rather flimsy excuses; frankly, he didn't care. If they couldn't deal with who he really was, then maybe they weren't the good friends he had thought them to be.
Several times he had gone out hunting Angelus, Dru and Brittany, but every time he had come up against them to kill the youngest of the trio, he couldn't seem to bring himself to pull the trigger on her. It was frustrating to say the least, but in the end it knew that she would be dust either by his hand, Buffy's or some lucky hunter's.
His phone chose that moment to ring and he answered it, "Go."
"Library. Now. Kendra is about to die." Lex terminated the call and Xander felt the color drain from his face – he'd been trying to get ready for the event, but frankly he couldn't even though he knew that it was necessary. Quickly grabbing his gear, he raced to the Library, hoping against hope he would get there to save the Slayer's life, so gun drawn, once again without the suppressor, he burst through the door even as Dru fled into the bookshelves and Kendra began to choke on her own blood.
Dropping his gun, he rushed forwards and collected the dark-skinned Slayer as she began to die; her eyes pleaded with him to try and save her, but they also held a resignation to her fate even as the life began to leave her eyes, "Please forgive me, Kendra. I swear to you that there will be vengeance for this."
Xander didn't know how long he sat there with Kendra's cooling body still in his grasp, but it was Giles who found them there on the floor of the Library; Xander had been doing his best to suppress the tears but had lost that battle at some point and could feel them tracing their way down his cheeks even as Giles swore softly as he walked up, "Xander? What happened?"
In a voice that Xander barely recognized as his own, he replied, "Dru killed Kendra, Giles."
The Watcher stepped in front of him and knelt down, looking into his eyes before speaking again, "Were you told of this by Lex?" When Xander nodded Giles swore, "And why didn't you bloody well try and stop it?"
"Orders to keep the balance. Kendra's death shall call a Slayer who is a lynch pin in the balance of Light and Dark – should she fall to the darkness it will cause an untold suffering among the people of the world when a destiny that should not be comes into being." Xander looked up into Giles' eyes and blinked before whispering our hoarsely, "I wish it could have been different, Giles, but these were orders I have fought since the day I got them; Kendra had a great deal of potential as a human being and I wanted a chance to get her to realize that."
"I am sure you did, Xander, but now she is dead and that potential is lost." Giles took the body from Xander's grasp after a little difficulty and then knelt back down in front of him, "What are you going to do now?"
Xander felt his face twist into a snarl, his vision clouding in a red fog of pure anger, hate and rage, "Kill. Dru has been off limits until now, but not any more." Xander used this rage to pull himself up from the floor and then pick up his SOCOM even as a shoe that neither he nor Giles wore squeaked, causing him to turn and see the rest of the Scooby Gang, plus Cordy and Amy, staring at him, all of them with a look of sorrow on their faces as all of the pieces clicked into place. Ignoring most of them, he looked over at Jenny, "Do the spell and give that bastard his soul back. Now. I've been informed that Whistler will be there to get him the hell out of town and to put him on the path to redemption, so don't bother trying to ever find him again."
He could see Buffy's face split into a huge grin, but he could care less as he brushed past them, but was stopped by Willow's hand on his elbow, "Why didn't you tell us?"
"You can't understand what I'm doing, Willow, not you or anyone else here. Sufficed to say I am forced to do things that none of you can – kill, steal, lie, even let people I know I can save die because the balance must be kept in order for a future nobody wants to come to pass." He pulled his arm out of her grasp and made his way to the door before something finally hits him, making him snarl – Angelus may be getting his soul back, but that didn't mean he couldn't feel a little pain first.
+++ /3rd person POV/
Dressed in black from head to toe, a being who radiated a rage and a want for vengeance, stepped out of the shadows with a weapon in his hand that didn't register until he leveled it at the three minions guarding the door to Angelus' mansion – it was a gun and they all began to laugh as they all knew that bullets didn't kill vampires ... and then the first vampire began to scream in agony a split second after the first shot exited the weapon with a 'chuff' of air, bursting into a ball of flame as the person shifted his aim and shot the other two vampires, one shattering into a million shards of ice that melted as they hit the ground and the other convulsing on the ground as if being electrocuted, then bursting into fire. The figure paid the piles of dust little heed as he swept into the mansion, the red rage feeling coming off of him now turning to ice even as he drew a bead on and fired on vampire after vampire; singles, doubles, even groups of three and four all fell before him as he cut through the ranks of minions as if he were a scythe reaping grain from th field.
The figure changed out magazines as two more vampires stepped out of the shadows, one in a robe and wearing a cruel smile while the other held a doll and was dressed in a classic 18th century dress that, had she been alive at that point, she would have been able to get any guy she wanted into any position she dreamed of. As they were, however, they both began to chuckle as the figure approached them, the one with the doll speaking, "Hello, Kitten. Have you come to play and have tea?"
The figure didn't answer verbally, merely raising his weapon again and putting a trio of shots into the robed figure that had once been Brittany Collins, sending her body to rest and the demon that had inhabited that body screaming to Hell. Had anyone else been there to witness what had just happened, they would have sworn that the one called 'Kitten' was a vampire with the way he had coldly dealt death, but nobody else was so nobody but the woman with the doll saw him remove his finger from the trigger and drop the weapon to the ground, removing a stake from the small of his back, an action that made the woman clap in child-like glee and bounce around.
"Oh, you HAVE come here to play, Kitten."
"No, Drusilla, I haven't." The voice from the figure held a tone of ice that could have been identified by those who had heard it before and lived to desperately try and forget it, "I have not come here to play, Dru; I have come seeking vengeance for one who cannot seek it herself."
"The No-Fun Slayer died in your arms, she did; the stars whisper to me how you grieve for her, Kitten and Mummy wants to send you to death so you can meet her again." She lunged forwards, hands spread out and fingers splayed as claws at the figure, whom merely stood where he was without changing anything but his eye color, which had been a dark brown but now burned a feral yellow green color.
Together they danced the dance of death, striking the other wherever they could whenever they could, before there was a mistake made – to anyone else who would have been watching, it was a slight over-reaching of a quick punch on the part of the woman, but to the man in black, it was an open invitation to end her unlife. He slapped away her arm and drove the wooden stake into the heart of the female vampire, who stood there for a second in abject shock before crumbling into dust without so much as a word or a whimper.
Standing there alone in the hallway of the Mansion, surrounded by dust, was Alexander Harris, a warrior in his own right, an assassin to all things evil, a force of good who walked in the darkness; his face was blank, flat, as if etched in stone, but a single tear rolled down his cheek and fell to the ground as he whispered, "The will of Vengeance be done." Not bothering to collect either the stake or the suppressed weapon, he walked into the courtyard of the Mansion where a figure dressed in pimp's clothing (circa late 1970's) stood over the huddled form of the Master Vampire known as Angelus.
"Kid."
"Whistler."
"He has his soul back."
Xander Harris pulled the un-suppressed SOCOM from his side and, even as the doors of the Mansion flew open to reveal the running forms of Buffy Summers and Rupert Giles, he leveled the weapon at the vampire, "Good for him." He pulled the trigger twelve times; twelve forty-five caliber blessed hollow point rounds screamed through the air and struck the grounded vampire, each hitting into separate, non-lethal, areas of his body and splintering into fragments – each fragment was blessed and caused an excruciating amount of pain to anything undead, but this time the targets chosen (knees, shoulders, stomach, pelvis, lungs, legs and arms – two rounds per area or limb) sent Angel into an almost catatonic state from the pain.
Whistler said nothing, knowing that the kid could have, had he been so inclined, sent every round into the vampire's body in lethal areas; he merely raised an eyebrow as if to say, "Was that really necessary," and watched as Buffy Summers, the Vampire Slayer, rushed forwards the held the screaming form of Angel while glaring up at Xander, who merely shrugged and reloaded his weapon with a practiced ease, but where the magazine before had been marked with a yellow (meaning non-magical) tape, the one he inserted had a red stripe around the bottom and everyone knew what red meant – lethal or dangerous.
Nobody said anything for a few minutes while Angel healed slowly, but as soon as he stopped screaming, Xander looked at Whistler, "You have until daybreak to get him out of town or he joins his Childe and both Grandchildren as dust."
"You got it, kid."
"NO!" Buffy surged to her feet and pointed an accusing finger at Xander, "He's not going any-where and that is final! You did all of this because you're jealous of what he and I have."
"Shut up, Buffy." Three words was all it took to quiet the Slayer, but it wasn't Xander or Whistler who said them. Rupert Giles looked over at Xander, "If he chooses to stay, what are you going to do?"
"Kill him."
"But you were ordered to allow him to live."
"That's why I'm giving him the chance to leave, Giles. If I wanted him dead I would have hit this place with RPG's, .50 caliber rounds and lots of both of them, too; I have followed my orders to the letter so far."
"He's staying." Buffy's words were ignored, so she spoke again, "Don't either one of you have any concern for what I'm saying?"
Xander looked at Buffy with a cold look, "Frankly, Elizabeth, I could care less about anything that comes from your mouth; you are dead to me for releasing the evil known as Angelus, so let the names, faces and last moments of each of his victims keep you awake at night, Slayer."
She gaped at the young man who had been her best guy friend since her first day in Sunnydale, the young man who had promised to interrogate her little sister's first date to the fullest of the law's extent ... the same young man who had, just over a week before threatened to kill her in front of almost everyone she held near and dear to her heart. Tears welled up in her eyes as the meaning of his words sank in and she released the almost-recovered vampire, "You can't mean that."
"Why not? You condemn me for doing my job and then try and forbid me to do it – I don't care what you have to say anymore, Elizabeth, because your feelings aren't a priority to me anymore." He looked over at Whistler, nodded, and then turned on his heel, the flat look vanishing form his face as the Slayer broke into heaving sobs, an anguished one taking it's place even as he passed Rupert Giles, who's face showed that he knew exactly what he had done and what he had just given up to do it as he walked out the door ... and possibly out of the Slayer's life forever.
+++
/Two days later – Daylight Cemetery, graves of Kendra McPhearson and Brittany Collins/
Xander knelt between the two headstones, one carved for each of the girls whom had lost their lives in a senseless war – he hadn't known either one of them for very long, but he liked to fancy the possibility that maybe he could have been their friends, had circumstances been different. He was dressed in black again, instead of black combat gear, this time it was a suit and sunglasses as he laid down a single lily atop each headstone and silently begin to pray, something he hadn't done in years, "Heavenly Father, forgive them their sins and accept them into Your loving Embrace; Kendra was a beautiful woman who was called to destroy the evil soulless ones and Brittany was a lamb, innocent of any true crime save being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I pray You forgive them and I of our transgressions in the name of the Father, The Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen."
"Well spoken, Alexander." The voice was that of Lex, but there was a gather of scents around him that made Xander look behind him to see a small collection of six others, dressed comfortably in robes, gowns, jeans and suits.
"Lex." Xander stood and turned to greet them even as the rush of on-coming feet was heard; he saw Buffy leading the charge of the Scooby Gang, but then turned his attention back to Lex, "What is my next assignment?"
"Your assignment is to travel to Boston, Massachusetts, meet with the newly- Called Slayer Faith Williams and help guide her with the help of her Watcher Lynda Price. Your educational record for the remainder of the year have been ... taken care of, so there is no need to worry about that."
"He's not leaving to anywhere for any reason." Buffy's tone was demanding, as she had no idea whom Xander walk talking to.
"He goes where we order him to go, Slayer Summers," one of the beings, a woman dressed in a gown, said quietly and with an air of wisdom. "He is our ... insurance policy, if you will, and his presence with the new Slayer is necessary."
"Like hell it is," Buffy ground out at the figure.
"Buffy, do you have any idea who these people are?" Giles' worried look at his charge made her slightly curious and he went on, "These are the corporeal forms of The Powers That Be, Buffy. They are, in essence, Xander's bosses."
"Correction, Mister Giles," Lex said. "I alone order Xander; the others are here to explain, in broad terms, what his mission is with us."
"Mister Giles, what in the world is going on here?" Joyce and Dawn Summers stood behind the Scooby Gang, along with Jenny Calendar, Cordelia and Amy, each of them also dressed in the colors of mourning.
Giles sighed and began his 'The world is older than you believe' speech as Buffy started to walk to Xander, "Xander, you can't leave m ... us."
"And the reason for that is precisely what, Buffy?"
She took a breath an let it out slowly, "Look, I'm sorry I reacted like I reacted, and I wish I could take it back, but I can't. I just ... want us to be friends again."
Xander looked at her, unsure for a second before a cold, indifferent mask slipped over his features, "And then what, Slayer? Things go along swimmingly for a few months until you relegate me back into the 'Ignore Him, He's Powerless' category and start screwing another vampire?" He heard a gasp from Joyce at this but plowed on, "Be advised, Summers, you fucked up big time and all you want to do is forget it ever happed, but those two right there," he pointed to the two fresh graves, "are proof of your mistake."
"Brittany's death wasn't my fault!"
"Where were you when she was killed – Sunday after Thanksgiving?"
"At the Bronze ... with ... Angel."
"Precisely." The word was snapped out like a bullet spit out of a gun, "If you had been doing your fucking job then maybe I wouldn't have had to save her, explain to her what was going on and then she would not have been leaving my place where she was captured by Drusilla. Kendra's death is partially my fault – I had the bad judgment to bring you back to life in the Master's Lair in hops that you'd notice me, but seeing as someone would have to be undead to make time with you, it's a lost cause there." Xander's voice was level even as Buffy's tears flooded her cheeks, but inside anyone who was looking at him could tell he was killing himself to say the words, "Now, I have a job to do in Boston. Maybe we'll see each other again, maybe not." He walked off from the crying Slayer, pausing long enough to hug a stunned Willow, Joyce and Dawn, slipping the last of the three a slip of paper, and walked out of the Cemetery even as the Seven Powers That Be stood there, waiting for things to calm down before they began to explain some of what was going on.
OKAY, that's the end of this chapter – I know it seems that Buffy's character has been assassinated to hell and back, but trust me, she'll get over it and be better for it ... eventually.
Xander isn't acting like normal because of both of the spirits, the increased burden of responsibility for a better timeline and, quite frankly, he's tired of wearing the mask of 'The Fool' for everybody.
I know I've introduced character and places from AtS, but some of them will probably come back later if I decide to make a sequel to this story.
The 'Random Elemental' Bullets idea I got from a friend of mine who plays D&D religiously – thanks Mike, The Wandering Monk. They cost so much because each box is enspelled separately – there is a limit to how many bullets you can bless with one spell, so several must be done and the components, apparently, aren't cheap.
OH, and thanks to Seige and 'Fever' for translating "Bas&*^$ son of a goat".
New Poll : WHO SHOULD PLAY LYNDA PRICE, FAITH'S WATCHER: Amanda Tapping (Maj. Sam Carter from Stargate SG-1), Traci Lords (former porn star and author – let me justify this by saying that she's cleaned up rather nicely, so no flames about this, please), Julie Andrews (Mary Friggin' Poppins!), Loretta Switt (Maj. Margarette Houllihan from MASH the series) or Lucy Lawless (if you don't know who she played, GO FORTH FROM THIS PLACE IN SHAME!)
No flames, please; constructive criticism only. AR.