Slayer Magic
Chapter Four
by Jared Ornstead
aka Skysaber
aka Perfect Lionheart
OoOoO
I feel I should say a word about the hit the Watcher organization ordered on Xander. People who are not trustworthy do not, in turn, trust others. And a corrupt organization believes that corruption is the norm. They do not have the faith to say things like, "Oh, well he's an angel. Obviously he wouldn't use those powers he got unjustly."
OoOoO
It was a quiet night. A peaceful night. The stars shone down in their tranquility on the scene, for, even in the wake of a major battle with thirty demons and despite rubble from the night before, it was, on average, the most serene night Sunnydale had seen for many a year.
Most of that had to do with the vast majority of the demon population having been roasted only just the night before, of course. Although a little touch-up work was done by the angels as they flew around about their business, pausing to slaughter a demon here or there as they encountered what few survivors had crawled out of hiding to feed.
With a quarter of Xander's house wrecked by the bulldozer, it was obvious he wasn't going to stay there the rest of that night. So they spent some time flying his belongings out of his relatively intact room through the window and over to one of the ivory towers he controlled.
It would have been Willow's place instead, as that trip was much shorter, but her parents were actually home for once, and she didn't want to explain having a boy sleeping over.
Still, the ivory towers were very nice, nor did it take them long to transfer everything.
"And your parents?" Willow asked once the move was done.
Xander was stoic. "I never once imagined they would be targets in this, or else I would have warned them and told them to move. However, they have now gone to their eternal reward - and whether that be good or bad, it is entirely their own doing."
They nodded. Being an angel gave one a unique perspective on death. It wasn't that big a deal, more like what side of a table you sat on during a meal.
"Well, goodnight," Willow waved and flew off back to her family, just as the others had already returned to theirs, leaving Xander on an ivory balcony looking out over Sunnydale alone. Turning, he went inside. It was a nice place, made of real ivory, like someone had carved out living quarters in the middle of a two-hundred foot tall tusk stuck upright in the ground. Loads of unnecessary curves in the architecture, but otherwise it was like a high-rise apartment building merged with a library, designed by someone who couldn't bear to be too far from his books, even in bed or a bath.
He was grateful for that last, as the Roman baths attached to his Libraries of Alexandria, while opulent, offered nothing in the way of privacy. Nor were they even segregated according to gender, and frankly, though he was as much a healthy young boy as anyone, being an angel meant no hanky-panky - or else!
No, it was marriage, or nothing, as far as sex life.
What really complicated things was the fact those magic receipts appeared to be actually binding, so he now had a harem. They'd really have to figure out exactly what that meant, since living up to his commitments was as important to an angelic creature as keeping his promises; and having led those girls to believe, even jokingly, he'd wanted them for his harem, when they signed on as harem members he was obligated to live up to his end of the responsibilities that entailed.
So, if sex was required, there would have to be some marriages coming up soon. And, as far as those were concerned, Willow had first right of refusal on him.
He'd have to ask her later.
OoOoO
Early in the morning, Xander groaned and rolled over in a big, overstuffed bed framed in dark hardwoods that contrasted nicely with the ivory white walls, pulled the quilted wool blankets closer to his cheeks, and nearly shrieked as he shot out of bed in alarm when a bark sounded in his ear.
Floating up near the ceiling, and noting not for the first time that angels had no need to flap their wings in order to fly, or even have those wings present, he looked down towards his attacker and noted only a snowy white owl with a letter clamped in her beak.
"Oh, hi Hedwig," he floated down to the floor, sheepishly. "Sorry if I startled you. I am not used to being woken in such a manner."
The way the bird ruffled her feathers, he could imagine the owl saying, "No, problem. I got it all of the time from Hermione."
Untying the letter, which was from Willow, as it turned out, he read from the thick parchment that his harem, as Willow termed those girls he'd turned into angels last night, would be over shortly to study together, discovering more about their powers before school this morning.
Looking out the window he discovered the police were camped outside his little block of libraries and towers, working themselves up to approach. He was unsurprised to notice that the entire Sunnydale Police Department read as a single one-two black creature. Enough to keep the victims in line, but wholly inadequate to confront a single vampire, even if they wanted to, which, with special abilities like 'conceal vampire crimes', he didn't think they did.
As he looked out the window, the swat teams charged in, his walls flashed, and the whole police department promptly got incinerated down to the last desk jockey back at the office.
Not surprising. A wall of glare was normally a zero-five creature. Not able to do damage, but very hard to destroy, and those were the stats his combo walls used because they were better than the walls of vapor had. But the Fortified Area enchantments he'd cast the other day each added one to the offensive punch of every wall he controlled, leaving it a four-five creature wholly capable of incinerating a master vampire.
And he had four of them, each with special abilities that made them effectively omnipresent, and untouchable in combat. They couldn't attack, but anything that attacked either him, his people, or anything belonging to them, was going to get fried.
The young man turned back inside to get ready for the day.
OoOoO
"So why is everybody avoiding the front doors?" Amy's cat asked, riding in her tote bag as they pulled up in their convertible.
"Already got the scoop on that one," Harmony reported, hopping out over her door without opening it just to glory in how easy it was to move her body around in highly athletic ways. "Sophie got here early, and gave me a call. Apparently, there were all these cops around, investigating the spot where our principal died yesterday, there came a flash, and all that's left of them are piles of ash, a few hats and badges. So the front doors are considered bad luck by the student body until further notice."
"Makes sense," Xander agreed, heading straight for the front doors, his girls giggling as they joined him to the horrified stares of the student body, some of whom actively diverted their gazes so they didn't have to watch the small group come to a grisly and untimely end.
Xander opened the door for his ladies and they all trooped through, nicely avoiding the piles of ash and fallen badges around the poorly cleaned puddle of blood on the floor.
Once inside, Xander caused his home room teacher to nearly faint, and start looking for an apocalypse, when he turned in all of the work that she'd assigned for that semester.
OoOoO
By lunch rumors were everywhere.
No one was going to admit to thinking 'body snatchers', but it was all anyone could talk about that Xander and several other of the not-academically inclined students had done a complete turn around and handed in all of the homework expected of them til Christmas, past due or not yet required, they'd turned it in.
If that was it by itself, it could have been dismissed as a minor ripple. However, all day Cordelia and her little gang of popular girls had been going around offering apologies to all of those they'd wronged, sneered at, or otherwise maligned.
Not even Sunnydale Denial Syndrome was enough to cover for that one.
"Sorry, I'm engaged," Cordelia showed off her gold ring to yet another popular boy who'd caught wind of the personality change and, now certain her acid tongue would not lash him to pieces and make a mockery of him in front of the student body, was daring to ask her out.
What happened next caused jaws to drop, despite it having gone on all day, as Cordelia smoothly rose from her seat, and took that same boy by the arm, leading him off, "But there is a girl I'd like you to meet. She's from our French class, and I think you'll get along fine."
Amy giggled.
Willow didn't stop there, placing her brown bag lunch neatly aside, standing tall, she allowed her own amusement to break out in song, wholly unconcerned with the audience her being in the middle of the quad automatically summoned. "Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match!"
"Find me a find!" Amy rose to join her.
"Catch me a catch!" they sang together.
Willow twirled away, holding out her arm so everyone could focus in on her golden ring. "Bring me a ring for I'm longing to be, the envy of all I see!"
Amy rather forcibly dragged Xander to his feet, which he accepted good-naturedly, as she sang, "For papa, make him a scholar!"
Harmony arrived from across the quad and, dropping a wad of hundred dollar bills in Xander's breast pocket, joined in singing, "For mama make him rich as a king!"
Amy and Willow then leaned together, clasping hands adoringly as they gazed at Xander, which Harmony quickly turned into a trio, "For me, well, I wouldn't holler if he were as handsome as anything!"
Amy now twirled over to hug Xander before he could make an escape. "Matchmaker, matchmaker, I'll bring the veil. You bring the groom, slender and pale."
Willow danced around Xander, twirling as though reading the textbook she held at the end of her arm. "Matchmaker, matchmaker look through your book, and make me a perfect match!"
Suddenly Cordelia and the rest of her Cordettes appeared, dancing in synchrony around Xander. "Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match! Find me a find, catch me a catch! Night after night in the dark I'm alone. So find me a match, of my own!"
Willow approached, demurely but with clear intent, singing to Xander. "Dear Yente, see that he's gentle. Remember, you were also a bride."
"It's not that, she's sentimental," Sophie joked.
"It's just that we're terrified!" Harmony jumped around Xander, hugging him from behind.
Laughing, they all dissolved into puddles of chatter and descended once more upon their food, completely unconcerned with the attention focused on them, so confident and secure in their own happiness the opinions of others could not bother them.
It was safe to say the social scene at Sunnydale High would never be the same.
OoOoO
"The funny thing about Giles is, he's so unconnected, everyone in school can know something, and he'll still be totally oblivious!" Willow announced cheerfully to her friends as they all left the library with armloads of purloined books, and Giles none the wiser. "But give him a dark creature no one has heard of in millennia, and he'll have it identified in moments!"
With Harmony around to copy everything, they'd already returned all of the books they'd gotten yesterday, and Willow was certain it was only a matter of time before they had all of Giles' collection.
In fact, she'd calculated exactly how many days before they did.
The whole group was happily chatting away a mile a minute, unafraid of themselves or their future in a way that no teenage kid had any right to be, when the whole group came to a stop as they ran into someone in the hall blocking their way.
"Hey, tall, dark and shady. What gives?" Xander quipped, eying him up and down, seeing names starting with Liam and Angelus before going off to include dozens of others, plus aliases and nicknames, before listing stats as a four-four master vampire. Black, of course.
"Because of you, Buffy is in the hospital," the vampire with a soul accused, plainly angry. "If not for you flying around I could have helped her, and I'm going to make sure you know how it feels to be helpless in the grip of a monster..."
The vampire lunged forward, only to dust instantly.
Xander tugged his sword free from where it had once more embedded itself in the wall after beheading his attacker. Stepping over the dust that used to be the Scourge of Europe, he quipped, "You know, what can we even call that guy? The word angel is taken, and plainly inappropriate for one of the walking dead anyway."
"I don't think we'll have to worry about it much," Willow beamed up at him, also stepping over the pile of dust as she followed him out.
"Yeah, but Buffy is eventually going to ask," Xander's voice trailed off down the hall.
"Why don't we tell her we're not sure, but he's probably still hanging around somewhere?" Harmony's voice drifted back, as air from the ventilation ducts caused the dust to swirl and eddy. "It's not like the body is much different, the dead parts just stick together less, and the person she thought she was in love with was always a ghost anyway."
Much laughter echoed back through the hall.
The small crowd of friends exited the school on the way to their car when students around them started screaming and running away in any odd direction their fear would take them. Looking up, Xander and his friends saw a small cloud of two-dozen six-armed flying insect demons with their own glowy-tipped alien spears descending upon them.
"It's like we can never get anything done around here without getting interrupted," Xander complained as he drew his sword.
OoOoO
The next two weeks were at a frenzied pace.
The day after the attack by insect demons came one by man-sized demon toads. On the day after that, Xander got struck by more than two dozen lightning bolts out of the clear sky. If not for the four sets of Urza's Armor they were wearing, each reducing all damage he took by a point per source (in this case, each individual lightning bolt, normally doing three points, was reduced by four), that could have really hurt him.
Actually, it would have killed any reasonable beginning mage twice over. But it was not without it's humorous side, as it came in math class just as the teacher had begun a lesson on probabilities, and was trying to show them the odds against something like a person being struck by lightning.
Funny, only now Xander's desk was slag, and he had people trying to enter him in lotteries.
The night after that was about a hundred vampires, which almost came as a relief, because the next day delivered Cthulu-like squid horrors rising up out of the surf and crawling up the beaches. Since each, individually had about the power of a bulldozer or main battle tank, and there came about thirty at a time, easily equaling that first assault of the soldier vamps in power, those really gave the impression someone didn't like him.
His walls had stopped them, of course. And while the walls held them at bay, incinerating some, Xander's angels and treefolk mauled the rest. Only six of the nightmarish monsters managed to struggle back into the sea.
But hey! In their advance, destroying everything before them, the squids cleared up lots of beachfront property! Loads of old, abandoned warehouses would never shelter vampires again.
Harmony bought up that property and made plans to build on it.
It was the night after that that things began to get serious. Just as there was Protection From Black, Protection From White also existed, creatures that could not be blocked or stopped or damaged in any way by anything even partly white.
Both the angels and Xander's walls qualified.
A gang of them came on the seventh night, twenty five black knights riding into town on motorcycles. And, as with the first assassination team, these had been heavily outfitted. They were heavily laden with enchantments and black weapons increasing their power.
Xander's treefolk managed to block and kill four of them, but both his walls and angels were unable to stop them. That's when they found that Xander was somehow both a creature, one of his own defenders at that, and a player at the same time.
His creature side was simply unable to act to defend himself as the attackers came for him, and as Amy explained it later, the actual players of a Magic game were helpless. If anything got to them, they could only sit there and take it. They could not defend themselves on any kind of personal scale, it was vast, world-affecting magic, or nothing.
So the black knights stormed his tower practically unopposed, broke into his bedroom, slashed and battered him, beating him like a rented drum before flinging him off his balcony, to leave him bleeding on the ground.
The night after came an attack by a dozen fully adult dragons, which came as a relief by comparison. However, Xander's walls, which they depended on to stop large numbers, could not fly or block flying attackers, so that was another night Xander lay bleeding and torn after the enemy had spent their rage upon his body.
After two weeks of these nightly attacks coming in ever increasing variety, Buffy finally got released from the hospital, and it was a somewhat different town she got released to. The police were dead, which coupled with the end of the nightly attacks on the general public had people making all sorts of odd connections.
Current theory had the police running a white slavery ring, faking deaths of the young and pretty so they could rush off and ship them to some sultan in return for bags of oil money.
In fact, it was so odd an occurrence that the body toll on the general public had just stopped practically the same night the police had died that on Buffy's release, she met up with her friends in a crowd as half the town had gathered to listen to the mayor give a speech on that topic. Although Buffy had to chase off the Cordettes when she arrived, a little envious at how much better they looked than usual. "Hey, guys. What's up?" she asked, once the female predators had departed without incident.
"Buffy!" Willow quickly dispensed a hug. "You're here! When did you get out?"
"Last night." the bleached blonde replied, fighting down a surge of jealously at how good they all looked, and tucking away a lock of her own too-long hair while plotting to get Willow to herself soon to discover what the new makeover secrets everyone was using were. "Mom picked me up. Ugh! Spent too long in the hospital, now I'm badly overdue for an appointment with my hairdresser. Say, I'd like to thank you guys for all the cards and visits."
Buffy felt shocked that this newly beautiful Willow didn't immediately shrink in on herself as she delivered this barb, as there *hadn't* been any cards or visits, either from her friends or from Angel, and it had both confused and hurt the slayer.
"Sorry we didn't get around to it, but it's been apocalypse season out here," Xander told her with a straight face. "We had an attack by adult dragons one day. Did you know there were still some dragons left around in the world?"
"Why didn't anyone tell me?" Buffy felt hurt over being left out.
"We didn't want you to worry," Willow reassured, commencing with another hug.
"But! I'm the Slayer!" she protested.
Indeed, Xander had already noticed her stats. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a two-two white/black creature with the special ability of every time Slayer defeats a vampire with at least her own power and toughness, she gains a +1/+1 counter. So she literally got better by facing strong vampires, but the stronger she got, the nastier those vampires had to be. And, he noted to his amusement, she already had two counters. Probably would have had more, but you lost counters when you died.
He did wonder where the black had come from, since, as far as he knew, while Buffy was selfish and self-centered, she did not actually qualify as evil. But that was something to discuss with his girls later.
If it had been any other color, he might've asked Buffy then. But they had long since agreed that nothing black was to be trusted. So they'd keep this a secret, at least for now.
Conversation would probably have continued, but that was the time the crowd went quiet in expectation as the mayor took the stands. But as he got up to explain the people's fears away as groundless, Xander stiffened.
"What is it?" Cordelia whispered urgently in his ear, having come up on the other side as Willow diverted Buffy away on his first.
"The mayor," He hissed just as urgently back. "Mayor Richard Wilkins the Third, also the First and Second."
"So he's another dark creature?" she did not sound too surprised.
"No," Xander hissed, never taking his eyes off the man as he dismissed and used excuses to confuse the town's fears, in effect telling everyone to stick their heads back in the sand. "He's a player. We've finally found the first of my many opponents that are out there."
OoOoO
At school, Buffy was in for another set of shocks.
Her first thought was they'd simply arrive at the school, then go directly to the library to meet with Giles. Nothing could be further from what happened. They'd no sooner driven her there in their new car and parked than crowds of students were already surrounding them, eager to drag them away, off to hundreds of different invitations from swimming club to practice with the band, or just about everything in between that students could do at school without getting arrested - and even some invitations to do that!
In the face of that eager horde, it was impossible for Buffy to keep her friends by her side. They simply vanished off, dragged every which way in clumps or clusters of students, and even a few teachers, eager to be their friends.
Buffy's mouth was left hanging open.
She made the trip to the library in more or less total solitude and silence, having been stripped of her friendly escort long before they'd even reached the front door! "Giles?" she poked her head tentatively around the jam, concerned that she'd find the library filled with people and that he'd suddenly become Mr. Popular, too.
"Ah, Buffy. Good to see you back," the man poked out of his stacks to smile at her, and approach holding at least two books in his hands, shifting them to his left to greet her. "I can't tell you how much you have been missed."
"You could have told me in person," she somewhat spitefully replied, and was glad when the barb struck home and he winced.
"Yes, well, sorry about that, but I'm afraid something of an emergency has come up in your absence." The Watcher laid his books aside and began polishing his glasses.
"Yeah, I heard. A little old dragon," Buffy sighed.
Giles speared her with a stare. "Not 'A' dragon, Buffy. There were thirty of them, and they were not little, and fortunately not old. But I can name you kingdoms that were destroyed by a single dragon of that size. For that matter, England today would probably fall to an attack by five, and we had thirty. I can hope that gives you a sense of the scale involved."
Buffy emerged from her own angst over lack of attention focused on her to ask, "So, big dragons?"
"Your home would probably fit in a single footprint," Giles answered seriously.
"Ah," Buffy suddenly got a sense of the scale of the disaster he'd been trying to convey.
Giles resumed shuffling books. "Yes, quite."
"So, how am I going to fight dragons?" the Slayer perked, sure he had an answer.
"Haven't the foggiest," Giles replied, retrieving his stack of books to go sort more among the stacks. "For all you are The Slayer, you wouldn't make a mouthful to an adult dragon. Fortunately, they did not stick around, or else we wouldn't have a town, or probably even a place called California, anymore. But that was only one of the many attacks we've suffered. Every day it is something different."
"So why aren't Willow and Xander helping?" Buffy ran a finger down the spine of a dusty old book, with absolutely no interest in reading it.
"They are." Giles' voice was somewhat admiring. "Tremendously useful. Right now we are deeply involved in research into a new threat to the world the council has warned me about, and they are being a great help, checking out a stack new books every day." Giles poked his head back out of the stacks and confided, "I even confirmed, several times with Xander, they were reading them, having effectively given a pop quiz or two on their contents, and they passed with flying colors."
Buffy nodded, feeling remote and out of touch. Still, the research angle was being solidly covered. That was all to the good.
"Do you know anything else going on with them?" she asked, not thinking he would have noticed, but wanting to be sure.
"Willow told me they'd found some self-help books that were enormously beneficial in helping them overcome some confidence issues, and that was helping them in their school and social lives." Giles voice floated back, unconcerned. "And I say that's all to the good. It has certainly improved their study habits. Perhaps they'd let you borrow a copy."
"Thanks anyway," Buffy rolled her eyes and walked out toward class.
OoOoO
Buffy's feeling of being disconnected continued well on into the school day, as none of her usual friends had any time for her.
Still, it didn't take her too long to overhear some gossip.
An instant after plugging into the grapevine after so long, Buffy learned that Xander and Willow were friends with Cordelia! What's more, Xander and his Xander-ettes, as people had begun to call them, were easily the most popular students at school! And they hadn't gotten that way using Cordelia's old methods.
No, if anything , they were doing the opposite. After hooking up with Willow and Xander, Cordelia and her former Cordettes had become the kindest, sweetest, gentlest people around (obviously Willow's influence) but these girls were not only turning down dates from every popular boy in school, claiming to be engaged (and how likely was that, anyway?), they had been actively pairing up the students who hit on them with less popular girls, and quite successfully, leading to an explosion of couples.
And paradoxically, this was making them even more desirable in the eyes of many.
It wasn't just that they were more beautiful than even Cordelia and her popular crew could ever have aspired to, more beautiful even than girls straight out of the pages of magazines (who typically have all enjoyed hours of professional makeup, and all too often the help of touch-up artists using photoshop, on top of normal beauty - setting a ridiculous standard for real life girls to compete with).
But where any normal person with those kind of looks would probably become arrogant, stuck up, or inconsiderate towards others (and Cordelia and her crew had already achieved that before looking this good), instead they were the opposite, the very reverse of what Cordelia and her popular crew had been before. They were kind and approachable. People had even discovered they had an ability to simply stand quietly in the background and just glow with happiness over their friends succeeding at something. There could be nothing more beautiful than to behold someone incandescent with joy over seeing someone they cared for doing well. There was something holy about it.
As their new attitudes had become apparent a large number of the jocks and other boys at school had tried earnestly, every method they could think of, to get those girls to reconsider their engagements.
Buffy sat by herself in the quad at lunchtime, feeling very out of touch and alone as students literally swarmed around Xander and his new crowd of friends.
Everyone wanted to hang out with them.
"Oh, this is the good part," a mousy, brown-haired girl with glasses settled into the seat beside Buffy. At her questioning look, the girl nerd replied, "Oh, they're going to sing! They have voices like angels."
At the comment the Slayer no longer had the girl's attention, as the mousy girl was plainly settling in, attention all forward, like a devoted music lover about to get her fix, which she was. Somewhat ironic, too, as ask her two weeks ago and she would have been a country fan, not the classic stuff these types tended to do.
"Do you know them?" Buffy could not resist asking.
"Cordette watching has always been something of a hobby," the mousy girl confided. "It's been really amusing to me how before this they had this theme going where each girl was named after a virtue they *don't* have. Or didn't use to, anyway."
Seeing Buffy's puzzled look, she leaned closer and expounded, "Cordelia, whose name can mean 'heart' was heartless, Harmony promoted discord, Sofia, whose name means wisdom, was naive and trusted her friends way too easily. She's bottom of the totem pole and from time to time they used to play mean pranks on her, tricking her to do stupid things. She wouldn't even be a Cordette save for the fact her father owns the jewelry store where they all do their shopping, plus she knows her jewelry and is probably richer than any of them. Hope was like, her polar opposite, and the most bitter and cynical teenager I've ever seen, while Charity was a greedy bitch. All they needed was a girl named Faith who didn't trust anyone or anything and they'd have a complete set!"
At that moment, in Boston, a girl living on the streets sneezed.
"I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name," Buffy finally focused in on the mousy girl, who smiled.
"My name's Verity, which means truth. I suppose if I lied all of the time and was rich, I'd have made a good Cordette."
Verity sighed, obviously star-struck. "But they're all *really* different now! It's beautiful! Since falling in with Xander, he made them promise to be nice, and it really shows. They can make anyone feel like they are on top of the world, and like anything is possible."
"Yeah. Great." Buffy pouted.
OoOoO
Author's Notes:
Credit where it is due, the idea of the Cordettes all being named after virtues they DON'T have was given to me by a reviewer by the name of arapto.
By the way, two of my brothers have coauthored a book. Adam and Enoch Ornstead wrote a book about environmentalists colonizing space, called The War of The Tree.
For those who are interested, it is available for download from Amazon, Lulu, and Apple's iBookStore (via Lulu).
At amazon dot com, put this after the slash /dp/B0071TJO2I
Core Cast
Primary Angel Group
Xander, Willow, Amy and Harmony
White Knight, Prodigal Sorcerer, Serra Angel combos with Artifact Ward and level ups from reading Book of Exalted Deeds and Libram of Silver Magic
5/5 white angel wizard knights with special abilities of flying, first strike, vigilance (does not tap to attack), deal 2 damage to any target without tapping once a turn, protection from artifacts and protection from black.
Secondary Angel Group
Cordelia, Sophie, Hope and Charity
Indomitable Archangel with level up from reading Book of Exalted Deeds
5/5 white angels with special abilities of flying and vigilance (does not tap to attack), also all artifacts Xander controls cannot be targeted by spells or abilities.
Primary Wall Group
4 Wall of Glare, Wall of Vapor combos, boosted by Fortified Area enchantments
4/5 white walls with special abilities of: can block any number of creatures, and damage done by creatures it blocks is reduced to 0. Also gained Banding, which allows controller to decide which of his creatures get hurt in combat, and how much.
Others
Buffy, 2/2, White/Black, every time she defeats a vampire with at least her own power and toughness, she gains a +1/+1 counter (has collected 2 so far: random fledgling and The Master, lost the ones she'd collected before she died).
Watcher, 1/1, Blue/Black, while in play prevent one damage to target slayer, tap to give slayer first strike, sacrifice Watcher to give Slayer +2/+2 til end of turn.
Ethan Rayne, 1/1 Red, not even sure how to put his special ability into words.