Summary: This Buffyverse is about fifty years or less into the future compared to the norm. Xander is a miner on Mars during the Red Faction rebellion.

Crossover: Red Faction (the PC game), Hellsing (the anime series, also the manga)

Feedback, it makes me write faster. (You know you want to do the feedback thing.)

Pre-Fic Comments:

Does anyone think that Giles would be into Pink Floyd? I'm just thinking of a scene in another fic where Buffy and Willow enter his apartment, he's playing 'One Of These Days' turned up to eleven, they hear the speech in the middle ("One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces!") and Buffy Slays Giles' stereo by accident.

* * *

Xander turned his head slowly, looking around the sewers. Man, they sure looked different from down on the ground. It took him quite a few meters before he got the hang of this slithering thing, and every now and again he screwed up and had to start moving again.

He was pretty sure he was on the right track, though. They'd just gotten past the brick tunnels, and into the natural cave system.

"Master," Alucard said softly, "the Slizath are up ahead."

"Okay," Xander hiss-sighed. "Make with the blindfolding."

He submitted to the bandanna with good grace -- he had no intention of hurting or killing anyone by accident.

"E-Excuse me?," Seras said tentatively to the figures up ahead. "Are you the Priests?"

One of them turned around, tensing before recognising that they were not that psycho slayer. The tallest of them stepped into the tunnel from the chamber containing the Hellmouth.

"Yes," the figure hissed. "Might I ask as to who you are, and what you might want?"

"I'm Eos, he's Alucard, she's Seras, and snakeboy there is Xander," the female ex-miner snapped. "Pleased to meet you. We want to know if you've got a cure for whatever happened to Xander there."

The tall priest lifted two clawed and scaled hands to it's hood, lowering it to reveal an amalgamation of serpentine and humanoid features. "We ourselves are regretfully unable to render assistance to Lord Hellsing--"

"They know about us?," Seras asked.

"--but She will be able to help him in any fashion required once She has regained her former glory. I am Tzath."

Alucard sauntered over to the entrance to the Hellmouth's cavern, looking over the giant circle drawn on the floor. "You're planning a resurrection?"

"Yes."

"Are you waiting for the stars to be right before you can begin your spell?," Seras asked.

"Waiting for mystical forces untold millions of lightyears away to affect the astral leylines, and the Hellmouth? Of course not," Tzath said. "We're waiting for Brother Halth to get back with a Bic lighter. My Zippo ran out."

* * *

Buffy marched into Giles' bookshop, then stopped short when she saw that Giles was the only person actually researching there.

"Where did everybody else go?," the Slayer asked.

"I'm afraid that Xander and his colleagues left to find the cult members themselves, and Willow left for her classes," Giles said, pushing his glasses back up his nose.

"They left?," Buffy asked in disbelief.

"I'm afraid so," Giles said, paging through the book in front of him. "Oh, look at this, apparently--"

"Giles," Buffy interrupted, "what if they're collaboratorying with the snake guys?"

The British ex-librarian looked up in annoyance, his brow furrowed. "Really, Buffy, the Slizath have a long history of helping to exterminate the worser element of--"

"What if they've changed?," Buffy interrupted again. "I mean, Xander had his vampire buddies. We can't trust him."

Giles sighed, taking off his glasses to clean them. "We will have to wait and see, then. If they come marching in through the door in the next minute demanding our blood, then I will admit that an American teenager is right and that centuries of scholarship have proven themselves wrong."

The Englishman looked at the door expectantly. Hordes of homicidal snake people failed to erupt through it in an angry tide, wanting to murder him and his charge.

Buffy blushed. "They could be bad. We don't know."

"I suggest, then, that you attempt to find them and ask them for yourself," Giles said, deciding to pass the buck.

"I'll do that," the Slayer said, grabbing a short sword from under the counter and stomping out of the bookshop.

Giles didn't bother stopping her; with Hellsing's Abomination (as the Council called Alucard) to help him, Xander was in absolutely no danger of being harmed in any way.

* * *

After Eos volunteered her lighter, the priests got to work on their ritual. Tzath lit a taper, which the acolytes lit their tapers from to light the numerous candles placed at intersections of the Great Circle. In the exact center of the cave, right where the Hellmouth was, a peculiar skeleton was arranged on a clean piece of linen cloth. It appeared human, except for the hands and head. Claws were on the tips of the fingers, and small, long spines grew out of the skull where hair would be on a normal human.

"Vlad," Tzath asked Alucard, "would you care to help?"

"Of course," Alucard smirked. "Asiz is an old friend."

* * *

Post-fic Comments:

Buffy at her best, making assumptions.