Disclaimer in first Chapter
Author's Notes: This takes place after the new JLA start and JSA #4. Some things in the DCU have been altered for my benefit, and how I think it should go.
Xander followed behind Black Canary as she made her ways from the nice, but sparsely decorated hall to the meeting room that had been assigned to them. He walked closely to her, but respected her personal area. The main reason he walked close to her was, perhaps, not obvious. It wasn't to get close to a beautiful woman. He worked shoulder to shoulder with arguably some of the most beautiful women in the world day in and day out. No, he walked close so he wouldn't be concentrating on her legs and ass as she walked down the hall. He didn't need that image in his head during the meeting, or in negotiations.
Upon entering the room, Xander felt a bit odd, but the sensation passed quickly enough. He looked around and saw the long conference table in front of him. Three pitchers of water were spaced evenly down its length along with disposable cups. The room like everything else was spartanly decorated. It was different than he was used to. Most of the Watchers rooms and the other organizations that he had met with or briefed had been old when America was founded, and they had the stuff to convince most people decorating the walls, if the cut stone and old hardwood paneling wasn't enough to support their claims.
The blandness of the conference room was set off by the others in the room. A tall dark haired Amazon, the word was not a description but her lineage, dressed in a red, white and blue outfit topped off with a tiara and metal bracers. Xander often wondered why people insisted on calling them bracelets when the length suggested that they were bracers, but he quickly drove that discussion out of his head. The other woman was a statuesque blond. She was dressed in a white bodysuit with a quite revealing opening exposing her upper chest, a red cape, and blue gloves and boots. The most striking part of her look, Xander instantly decided where her piercing blue eyes. The thought that sprang through his head was they were as light and Cordy's were dark. He sighed as he drove the thought of his ex from his head, along with what he wanted to do to Angel for letting what happened to her.
Xander nodded to the two women that were already in the room and then to Black Canary as he staked a chair at the end of the table, "Ladies, shall we begin?"
He sat, opened his briefcase and then looked over the top of it to the shocked faces in the room. He chalked up a point in his tally and sighed outwardly. "Ladies, I am sure that you didn't intend for this to happen this way, but I am a firm believer in equal rights. I am constantly surrounded by strong beautiful women that could break me in half. Not to mention that when they get bored, they, more times than not, hold 'Let's embarrass Xander' contests. This," Xander motioned around the room and at the three gathered with him, "is a mild normal meeting as to surroundings.
"So, shall we get down to brass tacks? I haven't looked at my watch, but I know you waited until after the time we were supposed to begin. Which noticing the lack perspiration and battle grime, it doesn't seem like you were busy. Another option is that this meeting isn't important to you, so you are just wasting my time as well as yours. A third option is that you were seeing how well I waited." Xander fixed his eye on Black Canary, "That would not have been a wise thing to do. When I wait, I get grumpy. When I get grumpy, I get confrontational, and when that happens, things get broken."
Xander looked around the room again and smiled, "Truthfully it is usually some part of my body, but still, something does get broken. So please, sit, and let us talk."
The stunned women sat down and began to shuffle papers with chagrin. Black Canary finally spoke, "I'd like to go ahead and introduce Wonder Woman and Power Girl."
Xander nodded to Wonder Woman, "Your highness, it is a pleasure to meet you in person. A lot of the girls look up to you."
"Thank you, I will say right away, that I am somewhat dubious of this meeting. The Amazons have had dealings with your council in olden times…"
Xander raised his hand to stop her speaking. The look on her face was one of regal disdain, "Who you dealt with is not my council. Heck, even this isn't my council. I just help make sure people are where they need to be and that they have back up. In case current events are not your forte, the old Watchers Council was blown apart four years ago by agents of someone trying to eliminate the slayer line. No one did anything about it. It is handled now, but do not even think that we are anything like the luddites that you are thinking about. If you even think that I would put one of my girls through the hell and abandonment that the Watchers but their charges through, then we have a problem."
Black Canary cleared her throat to break the hostile silence that had started to settle on the room. "Well, let's start discussing some of the points that we perceive as problems, shall we?"
"Well, I think the main thing that we would like to work out is assistance during Apocalypse season," Xander said nonchalantly.
"Apocalypse season?" questioned Power Girl. "I didn't know that there was a season for it."
Nodding Xander responded, "Pretty much every May since I have known about the supernatural, it is end of the world. Sure sometimes it happens during the other times of the year, but May is busy season. We have started being more proactive than reactive, but it is still a bear. If we knew we could rely on back up from some of you, then that would help a lot."
"Well, I am sure that you have stopped some apocalypses, but, to be honest we do things like that every week, if not day," Black Canary pointed out.
"I don't think that you understand what I mean. I am not talking about someone trying to take over the world. I am not talking about some glorified thief stealing rare gems. Nor am I bringing up aliens wanting to conquer us for whatever reason. I am talking about the forces of whatever hell dimension that gets the shot to open up the gates and let flow the forces of the damned making this a paradise on earth for the hell crowd.
"I thought your circle would know a bit more about this, but I guess I am wrong. Let me bring up with how we start with those not in the know." Xander's voice dropped to a hushed, tutorial tone, "This world is older than any of you know. Contrary to popular mythology, it did not begin as a paradise. For untold eons demons walked the Earth. They made it their home, their Hell. But in time they lost their purchase on this reality. The way was made for mortal animals, for man. All that remains of the old ones are vestiges, certain magicks, and certain creatures. The books tell the last demon to leave this reality fed off a human, mixed their blood. He was a human form possessed, infected by the demon's soul. He bit another, and another, and so they walk the Earth, feeding, killing some, mixing their blood with others to make more of their kind, waiting for the animals to die out, and the old ones to return.
"The reason behind their loss of purchase is the slayer. Wonder Woman probably knows part, or a version of what the slayer is."
Wonder Woman nodded, "She is a chosen of Artemis, goddess of the hunt. She hunts those things that hunt humanity in the dark. They are always young, but fight with a knowledge beyond their age. I have been told it is to see poetry in motion to watch one fight."
"The poetry part is true. To use what was told to us about the slayer when we first found out about the slayer, it goes as, 'In every generation there is a Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer.' That was true till three years ago. The First Evil, well that is what it called itself; decided it was time to end the slayer line. What it truly was is up to debate by people with better brains than mine. It held within its control the Turok-Han, which are an ancient breed of vampires, and the Bringers. Don't ask about the bringers, I still haven't gotten an exact answer to whether they were demons or corrupted humans.
"Anyway, we were at limited resources, outnumbered, outgunned, outmaneuvered, but we always were. So we went to the well again, for all we knew the last time. He had to be stopped, and there was no one else to do it but us. We may not have done the best resolution, but we did the only one that we thought as viable at the time. Using an ancient weapon of the slayer our uberwiccan cast a spell that activated all of the potential slayers in the world. Luckily we had about twenty of them in the pit at the time."
The shock on the women's faces was plain to see. Wonder Woman was the first to respond, "And where were you? What would you have done if the spell didn't work?"
Xander fixed her with a cold stare, "Playing high guard in the building above them in case anything got out, and protecting the sister of the Slayer Prime. As it was, we had our hands full with the bringers. The slayers in the pit had a better loss ratio than we did. My ex-fiancé died protecting her partner, and another one was touch and go for a long while after being gutted.
"We have all lost something in this war. The only thing we have gotten from it is pain and suffering and the promise of total annihilation if we don't win next time. We aren't heroes except to each other. We are warriors and soldiers in a war that can't be won, but must be fought, and when the last of us dies, then humanity loses.
"So what we would like from you and yours is back up when we absolutely need it. The problems might start when you tell me what you want from us. There are some things that are nonnegotiable."