Xan Ten
Xander smiled as he looked up at the brilliant night sky.
He had made it to Oxnard on his road trip when the Chevy boat his Uncle Rory sold him had crapped out and a rather important chunk of the engine had fallen out.
He had almost chosen to work at Miss Kitties fabulous Ladies NightClub when he had run into a couple of Vampires who seemed to be Hippie rejects from the seventies.
Tie Dye shirts, parachute pants and even a VW Micro bus in near perfect condition. If you ignored the brightly colored flowers all over it
He had almost felt sorry as he shoved the stake into the one with rose colored glasses on, until he saw the corpse of the young girl the vampire hippie had been eating.
He actually kept a good portion of the shirts but most of the rest of the clothes were donated to Goodwill and the vehicle transferred over to him with the help of a rather shady used car dealership.
And now here he was, in northern Oregon staring at the night sky, further from hellmouth weirdness then he had ever been before, life was good.
Of course that's when Murphy decided to stick his nose into matters.
Xander smiled as a rather bright meteor streaked by over head, the smile faded as it changed course and rapidly plummeted towards him before crashing to the ground a few dozen yards away.
"Nothings ever easy, is it?" He grumbled, as he considered not investigating for a moment before struggling out of his sleeping bag. "Probably has some insane super alien that will eat me in my sleep if I just ignore it." He grunted before picking up his camp machete and heading for the crash site.
--
Xander looked over the edge of the crater and stared in shock at the metallic sphere. "Please oh PLEASE just be a satellite and not some evil demonic super-alien earth eating monster." He prayed as he slid down into the still smoking crater and started to look over the extra-terrestrial object.
As he slid down the pit Xander wondered again why he didn't just turn this thing over to the government and be done with it. /Cuz you don't know what the government is going to do with it if it is an evil demonic super-alien earth eating monster./ he complained as he slowly circled the ball, after his fifth orbit of the object he finally fell back on an age old resource for examining an unknown object of potentially deadly origin.
He poked it with a stick.
He nearly jumped out of his skin when the orb split down the middle and peeled itself open like a banana.
Clutching at his chest as he tried calm his heart, Xander stared at the empty section of the ball as he gasped for breath. "That seemed oddly… staged." He grumbled as he looked around to make sure he wasn't being recorded.
After allaying his fears he stepped up to the object and looked in carefully.
"A watch?" he squawked as he stared at the small wristband before looking back at the sky. "YOU COULD HAVE TRIED FED-EX!" he shouted before looking back inside.
He didn't know what drew him to touch it but the next thought he had was reeling back as the watch leapt onto his hand and clasped itself firmly around his wrist.
After several futile minutes of trying to pry the device from his arm he finally noticed the buttons attached around the face of it.
Looking at them for a moment he reached for the first button that caught his eye…
But that's a story for another time.
