X5-571
part 9
Sunnydale Bus terminal
"Have you seen these two people?" a man asked the clerk in the ticket booth, showing him a picture of Max and Xander.
"Nope," he replied, not even looking at the picture. He didn't want to get involved with anything that has to do with Sunnydale. Hell, he didn't even live here. There were too many strange people come and going at night here, not forgetting about all of the buses that just plain disappeared here.
Nope, he didn't want to know who these people were looking for.
"Thanks for your help," they said sarcastically as they walked away.
"Hey, it's not like they would just walk in here," one commented, just as someone walked into him.
"Sorry," the agent said, then looked up right into the face of the man they were looking for.
"No problem, dude."
"Hey!" Both of the agents went for their weapons. Pulling them out, they began yelling, "Stop! You're under arrest!"
"Dude, I just bumped into you!" Faith yelled back at him.
As the two strangers' weapons were coming level with her, Faith moved, faster than she remembered Xander being able to move.
But all her fighting skills were gone! The speed was there at her normal level, and maybe a little more. But the fighting skills were gone! What the hell! She couldn't remember any of it!
It was then that she noticed that all the things that made her the Slayer seemed to be gone. She was just Faith. No, that would never do. She was ...
The first agent hit Faith from behind as she/he paused in surprise, driving her/him to her/his knees. Then the other one knocked her/him out.
"He wasn't so tough."
"He wasn't hitting you. Call the Base have a team come pick him up. Then we start looking for the girl."
ACROSS TOWN
Xander in Faith's body was pacing back and forth, from one wall to the next in the small office in the warehouse they were hiding. The plan had been to hide here until morning and after that Sunnydale would be just something to look at in the rear-view mirror.
"Will you stop that?" Max just about yelled at him... her?
"Faith took my mojo," Xander exclaimed. "Along with the everything else. All I have left is her body and this funky bracelet. And I can't even get close to you."
"Why is that?"
"Hello! Girl here. I mean I don't have a problem getting next to a girl. But I didn't think you swing that way."
"And I don't," Max agreed with him. "But I do love YOU. And I did live with Original Cindy, so the thought of girl on girl doesn't bother me much. Just never would have thought about it without you there."
"And again with the HUH?"
"Just stop the pacing and come here."
Max put her arms around Xander and pulled him into a hug. Which slowly turned into a kiss.
Sunnydale Airport
Two Lear Jets arrived at the same time. Both stopped at Hangers across from each other.
As the passengers disembarked from the planes, they both noticed something 'off' about the other.
Aims White watched as the men from the plane across from him started to pull bags and equipment from the plane.
Those look like weapon cases, he thought to himself. Who are those men?
As he watched, an Inspector walked up to the plane and started to talk. He could not make out what was said, but did note the Diplomatic transport tags on the packages.
Walter Spencer watched as the man from the other plane watched his group unload their equipment and prepare to move. He carried himself very confidently. As though he were someone important. A leader of some significance.
I'll have to keep an eye out for him. He's watching us much too closely, he thought.
Magic box.
"I don't understand this, Giles," Willow said, sitting back and looking a map of Sunnydale with a puzzled expression.
"Don't understand what?" Buffy asked
"Well, Xander is in two places at the same time."
Giles looked up from a book he was looking through.
"Did you do the spell incorrectly?"
"Nope, the spell was right," Willow replied with certainty. "But Xander is definitely in two places. Oooh, could there be another Xander? Like the Vampire me from high school?"
"I don't know. It COULD explain some things," Giles said. "But I don't think that is the correct explanation. If there were two Xanders, both would have shown up here by now. It might be a masking spell of some kind."
Just then, the door of the Magic Box opened and a group of men walked in.
"Mr. Giles? We are from the Council. You will extend all the help we need to find Faith," the leader said.
Initiative
"Agent Finn? I am Aims White. I will be taking over from here on in."
Riley looked at the agent.
"This is a military problem. We'll handle it."
"No, I don't think so. You let two known terrorists escape. One was locked in a cell while we had a place being prepared for her and another just walked in and then walked out with her. That makes it my problem. You will give all the help I need and move aside while I handle it."
"Well, sir, we were...".
"You were nothing. You have civilians walking around here," White said, showing him a picture of Buffy. "For a secret base, it seems as though everyone just can walk in and do what they want."
"Sir, that is not how it was. "
"From the reports, that is just how it was."
A communications officer called of to them
"We've got one of them. He just walked into two agents at the bus station."
That didn't sound right to White. The X-5's were better trained than that. But everyone makes mistakes. These X5's made fewer mistakes than normal. But still they make mistakes. But it still did not sound right.
"Agent Finn, get a cell ready for our guest."
Deep under the base
Adam watched what was happening.
"Mother, We need more information. The files state that one of our chips has been installed into a Vampire, Hostile-17. Is he still in the field or has he been terminated?"
"He is in the field as far as we know."
"Good. Start recall program 3 on him."
Walsh went to a terminal and started to work the codes into the local radio network. Most people would not even hear the transmissions and those that did would only think it was background noise. To anyone with a chip, it would be a subliminal message that they would follow without even knowing it.
Walsh had not used it previously to bring 17 before because it would raise too many questions. If she could do that with a chip, what else could she do?.
Magic Box
"Who are you?" Buffy asked.
"My name is Walter Spencer, and I am in charge of this hunt. Mr. Travers and the Council want your complete cooperation at this time."
"Of course they do," Buffy replied.
"Buffy, calm down. They are just trying to help," Giles told his Slayer. "We will help in any way we can."
Willow who had been watching the map used to track Xander noticed that one of the Xander marks was moving toward the college, but decided against saying anything with the Council goons here. The other mark was still stationary.
That's the one, she thought to herself as she recognized the location. He was hiding out in one of the old warehouses. One where his dad had worked at one time. That was he would go, if he needed to hide.
No one had been there in years and from what she remembered, Jesse and Xander had had a Boys Only club there. Someplace where they could look at the stolen playboys they had. She had been welcome to come, but at the time she really didn't want to look at nude women.
My, how times have changed, she reflected to herself.
"Buffy, I'll be back later. I need to pick some stuff up before going home," Willow called as she left the Magic Box.
"Need me to come with you?" Tara knew Willow was up to something but didn't know what.
"Nope sweetie, I got it."
With that, she was headed out the door.
Once she got to the warehouse, Willow looked around. The power was still on. It had been one of her first hacking jobs and Xander had paid her off in work done around her home. She had gotten the power turned back on and her room and bathroom were cleaned for a month. There was only that little problem when Xander had found her Tampons while cleaning said bathroom.
She had had some fast explaining to do when her mother had come upstairs to find out why Xander screaming in the bathroom that he didn't need to know that Willow was a girl. She still didn't know what to make of that. Was she pissed that he didn't think of her as a girl, or was she pissed that looked at her funny for a week after? Or was it that Jesse could not stop laughing for an hour?
Her mother had then taken Xander aside and talked to him, explaining the birds and the Bees in graphic detail. She even pulled out her medical journals with the pictures in them.
That's what drove them to turn the warehouse into a boys only club, a place were things like periods never happened. She was a honorary boy so she was always welcome, but she left them there alone. Guys needed their place, too, and she had her tree house. Not that many girls would come over. She had a few female friends before Buffy, but they just moved on as time went by.
Easing her way up the stairs, she saw that the old can alarm was in place. A few of the steps were loose and some old soda cans were on them. If you stepped on the stair, the cans would fall, alerting anyone inside of your approach.
Xander had to be here. He was the only one besides her that knew all the tricks of this place. Inside the main office, she could see a light on, as she moved up to the door. The glass was so dirty you could not see in, but she could hear.
They can't be doing what I think there doing, she thought as she listened to the sounds coming from within.
Taking a deep breath, she open the door, only to see two bodies on the floor twisted around each other.
Then she started to make out parts.
One breast, two breasts, THREE BREASTS?
Then two heads turned toward her. The first one she didn't know.
The other one, though... FAITH! ... Got to run! NOW!
She started to back out of the door, only to have the first girl move so quickly that she could only see a blur grabbing her and throwing her to the ground. Then both Faith and the other girl were on top of her.
"Oooh, hands in new places!" she exclaimed as she fought them off.
Also, new things in her face with the two nude girls rolled around on top of her.
"Wills, Stop! I'm not who you think I am," Faith was saying to Willow.
"Yeah, anything you say, Miss Slayer No-Pants. Let me go!"
"I can prove it."
"How?"
Faith got up and started the Snoopy dance.
But only Xander can do the Snoopy Dance, Willow thought. But she was seeing it done. Only with Faith's body.
As he danced, Xander realized that, well, things started to move that he didn't have move before. And Willow was watching those things more closely than she did when he did it in his old body.
Xander looked between Max and Willow. Both were watching him very closely.
Now I know what strippers feel like, he thought.
"Will, stop drooling. I'm already taken," Xander told his childhood friend.
"Yep. He's all mine. No matter what body he is in."
Willow looked closer into Faith's eyes and gasped. There was a spark of Xander in there.
"Xander... Who... What... HOW?"
"You forgot when," Max said from behind her.
"What? Have you been like this for a while?"
"No, just tonight. But you did forget to ask when."
"What happened? I mean, Buffy saw you at the base, breaking someone free."
Willow slowly looked at Max. "You made him kill those people!"
"No, Wills, I did that on my own."
Willow gasped upon hearing Xander say that and looked back to him sharply.
"I mean, what would you do if someone was hurting your wife and unborn child?"
"Your what and what? Mister, you better start from the beginning!"
Max just sat back watching and thinking about what she could remember from Xander's memories. This redhead was his sister, just like her dorm mates at Manticore had been hers. Not blood, but still a sister.
Well might as well get dressed. No more fun for the night, Max sighed.
As she started to dress, Xander started to dress, also. He was not going stay nude in front of his Will. Picking up the bra, he started to put it on.
How come this came off so easy? And it wont go back on right..
"Here, let me help you," Max said. "Guys are just so helpless," she said over her shoulder to willow.
"Hey! Right here," Xander said.
"So, what happened?"
"Well, it started with a beer or twelve.."
Magic Box
"Well, that obviously didn't work correctly," Spencer said, looking down at a map of Sunnydale.
It was showing that Faith was in two places at the same time, something that could not happen. Someone must be blocking her presence, he decided.
He noticed Buffy look at the map, then looked closer at it. Then she looked over at some paper on another table.
Standing up and stretching, he looked down at the paper and saw that it was another map of Sunnydale, with similar marks at the same place that Faith was at on his map.
"Giles, what is the meaning of this?" Spencer asked.
"What do you mean?"
"These marks are at the same place as the marks I get for Faith. Please explain this."
"I don't know. We were trying to find someone earlier this afternoon, and that was what happened then, too. It must be something to do with the Hellmouth."
Looking back at his men, Spencer said, "Send a team to both locations."
The men looked at each other, then left, each heading their own way.
The Initiative
Faith awoke to find herself in a cell.
It was a simple cell, not much more than a box with a bed against one wall. A man was sitting outside the cell watching her closely. Seeing she was awake, the agent pulled out a small phone.
"Sir, he's awake."
A short while later Agent White walked in.
"So, 471, we meet again. This time, no running out."
"Sorry, dude. Never met ya. My name's Fa…Xander. Xander Harris."
"471, stop with the games. Where is 475?"
Who? What the hell had X done? faith wondered silently upon hearing the question.
"471, why did you allow yourself to be picked up?"
Allow? Xander couldn't do anything, he wasn't a fighter. He was barely a walker.
Seeing the blank look on the prisoner's face, White pulled out a remote and aimed at a TV that was across the hall. The set turned on, and on the screen it showed a lab, and on a bed there was a nude woman and a nude Xander.
What the hell? Is Xander doing porn?
As she watched, an unidentified man started hitting Xander and knocking him to the floor, while the brunet did nothing. After several minutes of beatings, as the unknown mans turned and was about to start on the woman, Xander's eyes glowed green and then he took the guy apart.
What the hell was Xander into?
"So, you see 471, we know what happen. We just want to know how. And who are you working for?"
What the FUCK did Xander get into while I was out of the game? faith asked herself as she stared at the stranger outside her cell.
Upstairs
Riley was watching the interrogation and looking at the file before him on the table. Xander's file.
His first kill on record was at the age of 12? How could he do that and still be here at the same time?
Riley was surprised to read that Xander had been part of an assassination team assigned to take out three high ranking people all over the world.
This Guy is a stone cold killer. How did he hook up with the Buffy?
How did they have these detailed files on someone who was a terrorist? Just who is Xander Harris really?
Riley looked around, then sent a copy of the file to his own laptop in his room. Then he got up and left.
Next stop, Buffy.
Maybe she can explain this whole situation to me, he hoped.