"Xander." Buffy said suspiciously. "We were under the impression that you were at home that night. Were you at home that night?"

"Considering I tried to talk to both you and Giles and neither of you was listening to me? No, I wasn't home. I was stopping Jack O'Toole from setting off a bomb in the High School boiler room, the one in the basement. Under the library, almost directly. I was maybe fifteen feet away from it while it was open. And going to school every day there for nearly four months after I activated, which if I'd died anytime and revived, depending on how severe the injury that caused the death was, or how close I was to the library, I could've set the Hellmouth off at any time."

"And if you'd had a normal quickening, it would have." Cassandra pointed out.

"Why was Jack putting a bomb in the boiler room?" Cordelia asked.

"Jack died in a drive by shooting, so did his little gang. His grandpa is a necromancer. He brought Jack back and Jack wanted to have fun. So he used necromancy to bring his gang back. All four of them were zombies. I dealt with two of them, a Jhe got another one and we never, ever tell Oz that the reason he was oddly full the next day was that he had a Jack burger while he was wolfed out."

"The Jhe thing was the first time I tried to get the others to keep you out of things." Willow said. "You stopped one of the Jhe from hurting Buffy and got knocked down. I thought you were hurt"

"And I didn't have so much as a bruise. In the end it worked out, Willow. But it was never, ever going to be your call. I've resisted your attempts to direct my life for years. You wanted me taking AP sciences courses because as you kept telling me, they'd look better on college applications. But the truth was, science and math aren't my best subjects. If I'd taken those courses, I'd have needed your help to get through, just like with the regular math classes. I didn't need your help with the AP Literature and History, which annoyed you."

"Xander, you took AP courses? But you did bad on your SAT test." Buffy said. "Willow said your combined score resembled her verbal."

"I was joking and no one ever asked me how I did on my SAT test. I'm guessing you and Willow talked among yourselves though and just decided I didn't do good."

Buffy looked thoughtful for a moment and then said. "Yeah, I guess you're right. So how did you do?"

"1400 with a 780 in verbal."

"That's 40 points higher then my verbal, my overall score was higher though, 1540." Willow said.

"Because you're always going to be better at math then me."

"Well, unless you take the quickening from a math genius." Duncan said. "We do gain skills and knowledge when that happens."

"Yeah, not a reason for me to go looking for a fight. Especially since I think the whole thing is a gyp, demons can influence people, we've seen it for ourselves. You think Willow and Buffy's mothers really wanted to burn them at the stake? A fear demon was influencing them. A demon may have gotten the Game started as it's idea of a joke. At any given time there are roughly 10,000 immortals world wide. If even a fraction of those immortals turned their attention to vampire hunting we could destroy their population in months, a few years at most."

"He may be right, I was this generation's champion against Ahriman." Duncan said.

"What's Ahriman?" Buffy asked.

"A Zorastrian demon." Giles said. "It's never permanently defeated. It returns every 1,000 years and a champion is chosen to fight it. And at least the last couple of times, it was an immortal that was chosen. Timothy of Gilliam last time, if I remember correctly."

"You do." Duncan confirmed.

"No Slayer has ever been chosen as the champion, as I understand it." Giles added. "If fact, sometimes normal humans have been chosen. You have to have a very strong mind to defeat Ahriman, it enjoys playing games and even uses images of the dead to taunt the champion."

"It used people I've defeated and I've failed to protect." Duncan confirmed. "Including people I loved. It gets the images from your own mind, which is why a strong mind is necessary, it can be damn tough to see through its illusions and it can use the living as well, very convincingly. It used Richie, a student of mine, just as the real Richie was approaching me. I barely managed to avoid killing the real Richie."

"I imagine killing your student would have weakened you emotionally." Giles said.

"It would have done more that. Immortals can't have children. For most of us, our students are the closest thing to children of our own that we have. We adopt children sometimes, but they're usually mortal and eventually die. Our students can live for centuries."

"I've finally got a dad that gives a damn." Xander summed it up.

A/N Richie didn't die in this au.