Chapter 2
Xander flipped his gauntleted hand over and brought his middle and ring finger to his palm in a familiar movement to Spiderman fans everywhere. A pair of needles trailing thin metal wires shot out and there was a harsh snapping sound as electricity arced between them, a little louder that the twip sound they'd made when launched. He waited for a small green bar on the gauntlet to turn to orange before relaxing his hand to turn off the taser. Holding down a button on the back he pulled back the gauntlet, disengaging the wires and walked over to the fuse box.
"Here goes nothing," he muttered before gingerly laying his palm on it and wincing as he felt the muscles in his arm involuntarily tighten, as a small amount of current leaked through. "God bless inductive current," he said as he watched the power bar slowly increase. He removed the gauntlet and plugged a power cord into it to allow it to recharge normally while he massaged his arm.
There was a loud snapping noise and Xander growled. "Damnit Buffy, I told you I'm not possessed, I don't care what bug has crawled up your ass this time and if you don't pay for the lock and leave I'll call the cops on your ass!"
"Whoa there stud," Faith replied amused.
"Faith?" Xander asked surprised.
"Yeah, it's me. What's up with the hostility?" she asked, trying to ignore the fact that she'd almost choked him to death at one point.
Xander shrugged. "Sorry, thought you were Buffy."
"I thought you guys were tight."
"I thought we were too," Xander replied, "but really she's just interested in having followers and wool makes me itch."
Faith laughed despite herself. "What about Willow?"
"Apparently I never knew her," Xander said sadly. "One of the things I value most is loyalty and Willow has shown that when the chips are down, she's just Harmony with red hair."
"Ouch," Faith hissed, having met Harmony before. "Oz, Giles, Cordelia?"
"Oz… was never really a friend, he never made the effort. Giles is pussy whipped without getting any pussy. How sad is that?"
Faith laughed so hard her sides ached. "And Cordelia?" Faith asked curiously.
"When she was a complete bitch to me I literally dove through fire to save her ass, now I wouldn't cross the street to piss on her if she was on fire. She has the right to be pissed at me and I have a right to be pissed at myself, mainly because I was stupid enough to date her. Is a sane girl with her priorities in order too much to ask for?"
"On the Hellmouth?" she asked.
"You may have a point there," Xander admitted thoughtfully. "Anyway, what brings you by?"
"I work for the mayor now," Faith reminded him.
"Better than the Watcher's Council," he replied, remembering Buffy's crucimentum.
"That's all you have to say?" Faith asked in shock.
"Look at all the wonderful things the Watchers have done for the slayers on the Hellmouth and tell me that working at McDonalds wouldn't offer better benefits and support."
"Wouldn't have to worry about fake managers showing up either," Faith said as she considered it.
"Exactly, plus free food, which the Watchers certainly don't provide unless you're one of the children they kidnap and brainwash."
""Why was I ever with those jerks?" Faith asked herself.
"Because your first Watcher had her priorities in order, you first, everything else second and from what I've seen that's not part of the standard Watcher's training."
"Yeah," Faith said sadly before burying it beneath her bad girl persona once more. "Anyway, the Mayor sent me to keep you out of the way for tonight's events."
Xander blinked. "He coulda sent me a new release from Blockbuster and a large pizza to do that."
"Seriously?" she asked more than a little surprised.
"Yeah, it's all I have planned for tonight anyway and I don't exactly hang out with the gang anymore since their sting operation on you where they showed me exactly how much I mean to them, by leaving me unconscious on the street… at night," Xander said darkly.
"Damn," Faith said with a wince, having figured they'd had someone hiding in the shadows to pick him up and surprised they hadn't. She felt a little better about working with the mayor after hearing that.
"Yeah," Xander agreed, recalling a superior officer and how he'd lied to and killed his own men, including Xander, to keep himself alive. "That was the final straw. If you can't trust the people you risk your life for it's time to move on."
"So what do you want on your pizza?" Faith asked trying to lighten the mood.
"Hawaiian," he replied with a chuckle. "But I was kidding about the movie rental, I've got something better."
Faith pulled out a cellphone and placed the order before asking, "What's better than the latest from Hollywood?"
"The greatest from Hollywierd," Xander replied picking up a TV remote and turning on a large color television before entering a twenty digit number.
Faith watched in confusion as Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers came on, not that she'd ever admit to watching something childish like that, only to find nude transformation sequences, sex violence, and tentacles. Xander handed her a slice of pizza as she'd become so engrossed in the show she'd missed the pizza boy's arrival. "Did I step into the Twilight Zone?" she asked in shock as the credits scrolled and the nightly news came on, openly talking about subjects that would make the FCC nuke them.
"Nah, I just added a tuner so I could pick up bleed over TV signals from other dimensions."
"The Hellmouth?" she guessed.
"Bingo!"
"Cool, well I gotta jet," Faith paused in the doorway. "Xander?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm sorry for trying to strangle you," she said quietly, not looking back.
"You were in a bad place, can't hold that against you," Xander said. "I'm just glad someone's looking out for you now."
"Yeah," Faith said feeling lighter than she had in a while as she vanished into the night.
Xander chuckled ruefully. "Forgot to have her fix my lock."
*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*
"Xander-" Giles began, when the teen stopped by to drop off a book in the library, which as usual was populated by Buffy and her friends and not much else.
"Only my friends call me Xander," Xander interrupted.
"Mr. Harris," Giles tried again. "I was wondering if you had seen Faith lately."
"My private life is none of your business," he said bluntly.
"She kidnapped Willow!" Buffy exclaimed.
Xander's eyes flickered over to Willow sitting next to Oz.
"We got her back," Buffy said lamely.
"I don't care what you and your groupies do Miss Summers," Xander said formally. "Stay away from me and out of my life."
"Well," said Snyder who'd entered the library unnoticed during the argument conjuring a folder. "I was just about to track you down concerning your grades."
"He's flunking?" Willow asked worriedly, knowing they hadn't studied together in over a month.
"His grades have improved drastically, except for history, which actually dropped. I was concerned that he might be cheating, but I guess he has more time to study, now that he's not hanging out with you delinquents."
"A lot more time," Xander agreed. "With no more distractions I've actually found it a lot easier to get my work done."
"And the history grade?" he asked curiously.
"They're covering the sixties and the seventies, where the long haired hippies started coming out of the woodwork and the government tried to appease them rather than doing the smart thing and calling in the National Guard and have the lot of them put down," Xander said coldly.
"And Woodstock?" Snyder said with a grin.
"Beautiful event, it gathered all of the socialistic bastards in one place with no cover. Imagine calling in an air strike in there," Xander's grin was feral.
Snyder actually sniffed, a tear welling up in his eye.
"The version of history I'm writing makes a lot more sense than the government pandering to a group of commies and hippies."
Snyder nodded and cleared his throat. "You may go Harris, I'll take care of your history grade."
Xander nodded and left.
Snyder wiped his eyes and glared at them daring them to say anything before he left.
"Who else was freaked out by that?" Oz asked raising his hand.
The entire group except Wesley raised their hands.
"He's been possessed by Nixon?" Willow offered.
"Doubtful," Wesley said dryly.
"We gotta do something," Buffy said.
"Like what?" Giles asked dryly, "make him join Young Republicans Anonymous?"
"We could check the bug you left," Cordelia pointed out to Willow.
"Bug?" Giles asked.
Willow blushed under everyone's attention. "I found a spell that would allow me to spy on someone for a couple of days."
"Why a couple of days?" Buffy asked.
"Insects don't live that long," Willow said with a shrug.
"You literally bugged him?" Buffy asked in shock her mouth hanging open.
"Yeah, I just didn't think to check it because what he said made sense, so spying on him would have been wrong."
"That was before Faith got involved," Buffy said. "It's no longer just about him.
"We'll wait until tonight," Giles said. "We don't need students wandering in."
*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*
"You get the crystal, I'll get the scrying bowl," Wesley ordered as they filed into the library.
"I'll get the lights," Giles said.
"You guys know the spell?" Willow asked.
"It's a beginner's spell that most Watchers learn in their teens," Giles replied, remembering how determined he'd been to make it work and what uses most of the teenagers who'd learned it put it to.
Wesley returned with a bowl of black liquid that he carefully placed on the table while Willow used a piece of chalk to draw a circle around it followed by some carefully placed runes.
"We should have brought popcorn," Oz said, earning a chuckle and some smiles.
Angel winced. "Are you going to start making fun of my hair next?"
"Just trying to lighten the mood a bit," Oz said.
"Oh," Angel said, glancing around and noticing how wound up everyone was, as opposed to how things had been when Xander was around to distract everyone.
The lights went out and Giles joined them at the table where Willow had already began her chant, at the crescendo she dropped a small quartz crystal into the bowl and Xander's basement came into focus.
"He's an alien!" Buffy exclaimed as a green skinned Xander was shown working on something and drinking a glass of blue liquid.
Giles reached out and turned the bowl slightly, returning Xander to his natural shade and his milk white once more.
"Oh," Buffy said.
Everyone watched Xander work on a half assembled TV for a couple of minutes before Oz asked, "Is there a fast forward on this thing?"
Willow gestured and Xander's movements sped up till he was a blur.
"He's been working out," Oz said thoughtfully as Xander stopped his work every few hours to exercise a bit, varying between pushups, sit-ups and a jump rope.
"It helps when you spend a lot of time working to get up and exercise every couple of hours to keep the blood flowing," Wesley said.
"It's a good habit to have," Giles agreed.
"Since when does the class clown have any good habits?!" Cordelia exclaimed.
"Since he dropped us like a bad one," Buffy said bitterly.
Xander turned off the lights and left so Willow gestured again and hours flickered past until the lights came back on and they were treated to the sight of Jessica Harris doing the laundry.
Willow gestured again and Jessica vanished and Xander blurred onto the scene. She gestured and the blur came into focus showing rumpled clothes and a box of laundry. She let things play out at five times normal speed.
"Is that a hickey?" Cordelia asked angrily. "And that's lipstick on his collar!"
Wesley and Giles moved a step back from the angry young woman.
"What's he doing?" Angel asked.
"He's… making jewelry with ROM chips embedded in them," Willow replied.
"Rom chips?" Angel asked woodenly, thinking of the gypsies.
"Read Only Memory," Willow explained before gesturing and speeding Xander up once more.
"He's very handy with a soldering gun," Wesley said as Xander vanished and the lights went out once more. "He's always been good with his hands," Willow replied as hours flew past.
"Wait!" Giles ordered, causing Willow to gesture and the scene to freeze.
"What the hell is that?" Cordelia demanded as a tiny greenish grey figure that couldn't have been more than a foot high climbed onto the table and started messing with Xander's gauntlet.
"Gremlin," all the males in the room chorused, much to their surprise.
"What?" Buffy asked, eying them all strangely.
"During World War II I saw a lot of them," Angel explained. "They tended to infest the bases where the new planes and ships where designed and built."
"I-" Giles and Wesley chorused and stopped, Giles gesturing for Wesley to continue.
"Gremlins are formed from the energy released in the act of creation and are attracted to intensely complex items being creatures of chaos themselves. They like to alter and experiment with those items, sometimes with fortuitous results but not often."
Buffy raised an eyebrow, wondering what the hell he'd just said.
"They like to play with geek toys and usually screw them up," Oz translated.
"Have you read the entry in Raven's Compendium on them?" Giles asked curiously.
"Keep finding them nesting in the amps," Oz replied. "Gremlins seemed to fit."
Willow gestured and the scene moved ahead showing the tiny manlike figure playing with Xander's things until it raised its head like it'd heard a noise and it leapt off the table and scampered off. Xander entered the scene and started working on his gauntlet again, stopping to exercise every couple of hours as had become his habit. Willow gestured and things sped up again until Xander put on his gauntlet and she slowed down to normal speed allowing them to actually see what was going on. Xander's mumbling under his breath wasn't exactly intelligible. She was about to fast forward again when Xander used his gauntlet to taser the wall as a test.
"It's a weapon?" Wesley asked.
"Defensive weapon," Oz noted.
"What's he doing now?" Giles asked as they watched Xander lay his gauntlet on the fuse box.
"Recharging it using inductive current," Willow said in shock.
"Is that hard to do?" Giles asked.
"I've never heard of anyone actually doing it," Willow admitted. "It's all theory."
"So that's alien invader stuff, right?" Buffy asked.
Willow shrugged and everyone was distracted by Faith's appearance.
They watched intently until Faith left and a few seconds later it all went black.
"You left him on the street?" Willow asked quietly.
"I pulled my punch so he wouldn't be out too long," Angel defended himself, "and I figured it was safer than what Faith would have done if she'd figured out I was playing her, it was a lose lose situation."
"He is not actively an enemy," Wesley said, "at least not yet. How much does he know about everyone and is he a threat?"
The girls started arguing while Oz and Angel exchanged uneasy glances.
Giles whistled loudly distracting the girls from their argument. "One at a time, please."
"He knows just about everything about us," Willow said. "Until recently he was one of us."
"So he is a threat?" Wesley asked.
"No," the girls chorused.
"Yes," came the male response.
"He knows everyone here personally, our habits, our hobbies, how we are likely to react in any given situation and where we live," Giles said cleaning his glasses furiously. "From a tactical standpoint he is a threat."
"He'd never hurt us!" Willow protested.
"Unless possessed he's pretty harmless," Buffy backed her up.
"Just ask the Judge," Oz deadpanned causing a pregnant silence.
"He has a criminal record?" Wesley asked.
"Big Blue guy," Buffy said absently distracted by trying to evaluate Xander and his actions rather than just shoving then into the box labeled 'normal guy'.
"I thought Miss Summers destroyed him," Wesley said.
"She did, but the plan and the equipment were Xander's," Oz said. "He let Buffy use the rocket launcher, but he could have easily done everything himself."
"You're claiming a teenage boy was really responsible for destroying a millennium old unkillable demon?" Wesley asked in disbelief.
"Pretty much," Willow confirmed.
"But you ladies say he's harmless?" Wesley asked.
"We aren't unkillable demons," Cordelia said as if it explained everything.
"What?" he asked confused.
Buffy rolled her eyes. "Before Xander convinced Larry to come out of the closet, Larry was a huge bully that picked on Xander for years. Xander can take out fledges without too much trouble, but he never so much as bruised Larry."
"So he won't hurt humans?" Wesley asked making sure he had it right.
"No… he won't hurt people who aren't a threat to anyone he cares about," Willow explained.
"And if he comes to care about Miss Lehane?"
"I…don't know," Willow admitted chewing on her bottom lip.
"So, is he someone we need to worry about or not?" Wesley asked.
"Someone to keep an eye on," Giles said, "But I would suggest avoiding provoking him. Not to mention targeting someone because they may become a threat is morally questionable at best."
Wesley nodded. "I can see your point. He could become a threat, but its best not to make him one ourselves."
"Exactly."
*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*
The Mayor watched the meeting break up via the camera he'd had installed in the Sunnydale High library and tapped his chin thoughtfully.
Typing by: The Last Primarch!