Chapter Eleven

06 August 99

Here he was back in California, when O'Malley heard that Xander was going to leave; he talked Xander into couriering some packages for him. Besides being a bartender and owner of the bar and a couple of restaurants in New York, O'Malley runs a thriving business of finding hard to get items for various hunter groups and several secret organizations around the world, his only real problem was shipping the items to his customers, he preferred to use Couriers, it was safer for him and his customers and with some items, safer for the postal and UPS workers if it went by courier. Plus his couriers made pretty good money and to sweeten the job Max had Xander's car looked over and serviced so he didn't have to worry about it breaking down out in the middle of nowhere.

The first package, some dusty books, he delivered, was for a Dr. Jackson in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Xander quietly left the books on the kitchen table at Jackson's apartment; he really didn't want to be answering questions from Jackson or the Air Force.

The second package was for an foul mouthed asshole by the name of Jack Crow who he met at a crappy motel in New Mexico, actually it was a Catholic priest who took and signed for the package, a crate of blessed silver bullets, Jack and the rest of his crew were still drunk from the party they had last night, from the few comments he heard, as the Priest who was with them, signed the form for receiving the package, they had just taken out a Vampire nest in the area and had gotten paid for it. When he got back to Sunnydale he was going to have a long talk with Giles about the fact that the Slayer really didn't have to fight alone, there were quite a few hunters out there, and what he had seen, Blade taking out 30 vampires in less than 5 minutes, and heard from the sheriff of the town that he found Jack Crow in, they were in many ways far better at it than what the Council allowed the Slayers to be and what Buffy never tried to be.

He was to drop off his last package, a heavy crate of dusty old books, at a familiar apartment complex in a suburb of L.A. called Sunnydale.

During his travels from New York to Sunnydale Xander took his time and when he had found a place that was deserted, he experimented on just what his abilities are in his armored form. He found that his need for life or Bio energy and his black fire powers were separate. Like a vampire his need for Bio energy was as fuel for his body, the energy for his black fire came from the environment; his armored body absorbed the kinetic and electromagnetic energies around him to power his energy projection abilities, his body preferred heat. He found that his use of his power the first night was minor, he had plenty of time between usage to recharge and by using the wings to flight he wasn't using the black fire to fly but his own bodies muscles and a version of the ability like the Vampyr vampire's levitated flight abilities to fly. On an impulse Xander tried imitating the mutant known as Cannonball's ability to fly by directing his black fire blasting ability thru his legs and it worked he found that he could fly thru the air like a rocket but he found it drained him fast, he could only keep it up for 15 minutes before his body started to draw energy directly from his body and he would pass out from exhaustion. His top flying speed using his wings was around 150 miles per hour, by blasting; his top speed was around 600 miles per hour. He found that his speed and reaction time on the ground was similar to Spiderman's, he recorded himself doing the kata he learned from Solomon as fast as he could and compared it to what he had seen Spiderman do against a crook shooting at him and the speeds looked about the same. What surprised Xander was his strength in his armored form, from his best estimates his strength was close to the strength demonstrated by the Mutant called Colossus. Xander also found that the bio force he needed in his armored form didn't need to come from just animals or demons but he could get it from plants as well it just didn't "taste" right it tasted alien, but it could sustain him and take away the hunger. He also found that when he was in his human form he couldn't access the pocket dimension that his armored form used to store stuff, after some experimenting he found that by allowing the black oil to cover one of his hands then he could access the dimension and remove or place something in the dimension. One other thing Xander noticed the night he had first armored up, was that when he shifted back to human form all of the injuries that he had got in his fight with the Lycan were gone as if they had never existed, also he saw that all of the scars on his body from fighting vampires and from his parents were also gone, if fact there wasn't a blemish anywhere that he could see on his body, that's when he started to wonder just what had Methuselah's device had done to him.

Giles was waiting for his package of rare books to show up, his contact in L.A. said it should be delivered today, he hoped that these books would give him some answers or point him in the right direction to look for the answers to a fragment of a prophesy he had found as a teenager when he was going to Hogwarts. It had been on a burnt piece of 1500 year old parchment, in Latin, he had found it in an old book he was looking through on a boring afternoon when everybody was away from the school visiting Hogsmead and he was grounded for the prank that he had tried to pull on Ethan, only to have it go off on the Headmaster.

The Prophesy was about the return of the God Ares, a powerful being in black armor with the power of a dragon, the hunger and immortality of a wraith and the soul of a white knight. He hadn't thought much about it for nearly 30 years until about a week ago when the reports told about the horrible "farm" that the feds found in an isolated warehouse found near New York City and all of the powerful people tied to it. What had really got his interest was the dragon emblem burned into the wall in the warehouse and how it was identical to the emblem on the chest of an unknown Vigilante that had saved quite a few people that same night in New York City, a photographer for the Daily Bugle, by the name of Peter Parker, had got a good clear shot of him standing on a roof top, with his wings folded on his back, and there had been a video of him flying over the city. The prophesy had given a good description of the being and its symbol. The prophesy said that Ares would be transformed into a Black Dragon Wraith; the reporters were calling the vigilante the Black Knight. What had interested him as a teenager about what little he could read on the parchment was the people that would be friends and allies with the Black Knight; they were the Immortalis Rutilus Veneficus (Immortal Red Witch), the werewolf musician, the Mage, the oracle and the Immortal Slayer

Xander walked up to Giles' door opened it without knocking and walked in, Giles stopped locking the door after Buffy broke several of the locks he had put on the door. Xander had hoped that one day he was there with a camera when Buffy walked in on Giles when he was entertaining a close friend in a romantic way and they were playing the adult games that lovers played, it was a "eew gross" thought but the look on Buffy's face would be worth it.

"Hey G-man how's your back."

"Don't call me G-man, my back's fine and what are you doing here I thought you were in New York City on your Road trip?" Said a surprised Giles as he came out of his Kitchen.

"A guy I met in New York asked me to deliver some packages to some people as I resumed my Road trip and I got a heavy crate with your name on it and since its old dusty books I was wondering if there is a new Big Bad I should be worrying about?"

"Not that I know of I'm just researching an old obsession I had as a teenage."

"Their called girls G-man."

"Very funny Xander, no it's about this burnt piece of parchment I found as a child and the Vigilante the reports are calling the Black knight."

Giles handed over the piece of parchment that was sealed in cellophane to Xander to read. Xander was glad that Giles wasn't looking at him or he would have been interrogating Xander on what he knew because Xander's face turned white at what he read. In his heart Xander knew that the Mage was Giles and the werewolf musician was Oz, and Buffy was the Immortal Slayer, but who was the oracle and if the red witch was Willow, was she a preimmortal or has she already had her first death and if she had, would she know it? The one thing about the Hellmouth that Solomon had told Xander was the fact that Immortals never went to a Hellmouth willingly, some thing about the energies there made them uncomfortable and if an immortal grew up there and died there they probably never know the difference and Willow has never left Sunnydale. In a way besides living on holy ground Sunnydale was the safest place for an immortal to live if they could withstand being uncomfortable all of the time.