3Disclaimer: Still not mine – especially not the spiders. Refer first chapter.
Warnings: mild violence & language, moderate (BtVS) spoilers, shameless in-jokes and munchkinry.
Summary: This would never have happened. Ever. Just like the majority of YAHFs!
Pairings: canon for timeframe, otherwise general.
A/N: I do enjoy the occasional game(r)-type crossover with [insert fandom here], if they're well-done. (There are a few, if not that many.) This is how I'd do it – i.e., with game mechanics I actually know.
…And you'll quickly realise why I don't do it. But don't take my word on that – read for yourself!
Too Much Colour:
Omake: …But you Luck out!
(or, Let's Try That Again!)
—ox-oxo-xo—
…
Unbelievably, Willow tells Angel and Cordelia in passing that John is a character from a "computer game", whatever a computer is. She calls it "Exile: escape from the pit", which is apparently the story of what would have happened if John had gone to Exile with the others. (He takes note of the way she says "to Exile" as if it's a place, rather than his punishment.)
The spirit says that it is an "old" game that Zander and someone named Jesse liked, and that Zander told her he picked out the costume because it happened to remind him of what he remembered one of the character "icons" looking like and thought it would be funny, and that her friend told her all that when he repaid her the ten "dollars" he'd borrowed to pay for the costume. All at a very fast pace that leaves the others blinking.
"I should've guessed the loser would go for something lame like that." Cordelia sneers. "Bet you wish you could save, you dweeb."
John stares, his mind still stuck on the spirit's completely ridiculous idea. On the face of it, it sounds utterly impossible. But at this point, what does he have to lose if that's the case?
(Well, apart from his identity?)
Also, the way the scantily-clad girl just said "save", like it meant something different from the way he'd just saved HER…
He blinks, and addresses the spirit.
"Save?" he asks the spirit, pointing a finger at Cordelia.
Willow opens her mouth. Her eyes drop for a second on his wounded shoulder. Willow closes her mouth.
She starts pacing, her shoes clomping on the floor despite their intangibility as she starts muttering to herself. Most of it is too quiet for John to hear, but he does catch something about beginners, an editor, something being too simple, ghostly trumpets, and…alchemy?
"Alchemy?"
"Yeah, that MIGHT work…" she mutters. She clears her throat. "Tell me about the first alchemy potion."
He shrugs and rattles off the basic book description for Weak Poison that the trainer for Alchemy had him learn – its level, what it requires to make it, what it does.
"Next one up?"
He continues with the book-stats for Weak Strength Potion. John might not have been allowed to BREW any of these potions; his school trainers were unwilling to go to that much effort for those who weren't interested in learning it. But any student who'd passed out of the Empire's schooling program could recite this stuff word for word.
"What about the Fireball spell?"
Same deal – just because he didn't undergo the training in handling the volume of magic necessary for casting third-tier mage spells, doesn't mean he can't read the spell description word for word. Including tier level, standardised spell-cost and yardage. He's a little impressed at how much she seems to know about his schooling, but he is getting impatient and so are the others.
"Um, okay. I think you might have the Spell Library in there. And the Alchemy help file. So, um, maybe?"
Everybody stares at her. Mostly because no-one has any idea of what she just said.
"I guess it's worth a try. Repeat after me – "save game," she gestures at him with a waved hand, "Zander – spell that out, just in case…"
"Save game Zee Ay En Dee Eee Arr…"
The spirit twitches and forcibly clamps her mouth shut as he spells out Zander's name. "Full stop, Ess Ay Vee. Then say Okay."
He finishes her instructions, feeling inexplicably better even if nothing appears to happen.
They all wait with bated breath… for all of two seconds before Willow demands, "Did y—"
Deep within the depths of his own head, Xander crowed with pure geekish glee as the Exile Editor's 'Load Game' screen presented itself to him. "Now that's more like it! Oh praise be for Willow, for the nerd is mighty!"
After all. If she hadn't managed to split off from Buffy and come home to catch up with him sooner that he thought she would… If she hadn't snuck up and caught him while he was still looking over the first Exile game on Willow's old computer – the one that Ira still used to do his accounts, and either hadn't bothered with deleting or simply didn't know about his daughter's copy of the game… If she hadn't recognised the icon when he was looking at the file with all the party icons – and then remembered the very first game that Xander and Jesse had convinced her to hack for the registration codes… If she hadn't reminisced with him about the good times the boys used to have playing video games with her while her parents were out of town, trying not to cry all over him at the mention of Jesse and only mostly succeeding… If he hadn't gone looking through one of his old save files so that Willow could calm down without being embarrassed, and if she hadn't pointed out a few things she remembered doing with the code and then tried to explain them…
Well. He wouldn't have the slightest clue what he was doing now, would he? It had been two years since they played this one. There were sequels. And then they'd discovered the joys of seeing naked ladies, and Willow had not been so eager to join them then.
But that was okay, Xander magnanimously decided. He'd got used to disappointment long ago. And – Xander winced, looking over John's pitiful Lvl.1 stats as the real world slowed to a crawl – she just might have saved his life.
Or let him save his own life. Or something.
To be honest, he didn't know how useful all this was going to be. Any tinkering would only go into effect if John loaded the changed game file, and Willow didn't think of having him save two games and try to load the earlier one. (It was one of the less obvious ways his Willow acted when she panicked, forgetting important details.) So if Xander couldn't reload from here, wherever here was – and he wasn't going to try that until after he'd adjusted the save file to skew the odds – then the only way reloading was going to happen was if John died.
And John was wearing Xander's body. So Xander was the one who would be dying.
Yeah. All things being equal, Xander would really rather not die.
But in the meantime, and just in case…
'H.P. up to 200 from 20, S.P. from 0 to 99, up Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence to 20 apiece from 7, 6 and 1. …And ain't it a laugh, the way those wacky mages officially got it called Intelligence? Lessee, Edged skill up from 7 to 20, same from zip for Bash, Pole, Archery, Thrown and Defense too. Pity there's no Unarmed skill… All 7 levels for Mage and Priest Spells. Mage Lore and Alchemy to 20 – probably not that useful, but hey, I'm jacking everything else up so why not? Item Lore only goes up to 10, but okay. Disarm Traps, Lockpick, Assassination, Poison and Luck – all maxed out at 20. Spells/Items next…'
There was no handy-dandy option to just learn all spells, so he manually selected all of them one by one. Items was a little trickier, what with not being able to remember what some of them were and there were no descriptions. But after picking out a Magic Sword and having it appear in John's third inventory slot, he did find that he could identify it.
'…Can't discard, though. Curses! All right, ten slots…well, nine now. Heh, at least a Magic Sword doesn't suck…'
He quickly added a Magic Shield, Magic Helm and Magic Leather (it sounded the most comfortable to wear, and he remembered something about having to watch out for Encumbrance). Resurrection Balm just in case it worked on Willow, though maybe it was best not to muck about with that one… 'Meh, get it anyway!' He remembered Ambrosia being total healing and nothing else sounded right, so he got one. Rings of Protection and Regeneration, which turned out to be Gold rings when he went back and checked. Nice!
"2 slots left. What else…?" Xander muttered 'aloud'.
He was… honestly, he was pretty set! Maxed stats and spells, great equipment, healing and something to maybe resurrect Willow if John thought of it. He might've used the EXP-cheat, but that only actually worked after killing the next monster, and John wasn't killing children so there was probably no point.
Although… Giggling evilly, he added two Demonslayer greatswords to the last two slots. Who knew? they might stick around afterwards…
Xander saved and was about to exit when he remembered one more thing he should probably check on.
It turned out that upping HP had healed John, but he selected 'Heal the Party' anyway. Then added 10,000 gold just for the hell of it – as well as 10 food just in case John got hungry and started starving – he couldn't exactly recall how that game mechanic worked.
Right, now he was done. He saved and exited.
…
…
…AAAAAAAARGH!
Load Game. ZANDER . sav is selected. Load…
"—ou feel a…ny… …thing? Er, never mind – obviously you did…" Willow whimpers.
Everyone in the room gapes at John. He doesn't notice, too busy poking at his bandaged shoulder and wondering why it suddenly doesn't hurt any more.
"Where did those big swords come from?" Cordelia asks. Her eyes are practically popping out of their sockets.
John looks. Sure enough, he has a pair of identical two-handed swords wrapped and tied together and lashed to the pack-harness on his back (the one that disappeared when he came here!). Glad he was seated on a stool to dress his wound and therefore doesn't have to wrestle the unwieldy pack out from the furniture's innards, he removes and examines the pack's contents.
The first and most obvious new find is looped through an outer strap on the pack: a glittering shield, with faint runes in the edging he's learned to recognise…though for the life of him he can't recall WHEN he learned it.
The next is, obviously, the identical pair of greatswords. Twin examples of the finest in Empire swordsmithing, with their own identical set of runes etched into each blade. Along with a name in gold wire embedded into each hilt.
"…Demonslayer."
"Hah! It DID work!" the spirit crows. "So, did you load game?" Then she pales. "Oh no, did you DIE? We didn't all die and you came back to try again, did we? What happened? Or will happen? Or might will maybe happen…" She trails into indecipherable babbling in her panic.
Jon helplessly shrugs as he puts aside the greatswords and digs deeper in the pack, finding several smaller items. That relief he felt as he "saved" is back and stronger than before, but apart from that he has no clue what just happened. He does smile, though, when he examines the neatly folded leathers rolled up and shoved in a steel helm – like the new shield and sword, both bear the signs of magic being used to enhance them.
Though it does bug him. How did he suddenly GET all this stuff? Let alone suddenly have the item lore to know what it all is?
…Oh well.
He sets about equipping his new acquisitions – though he leaves the Demonslayers off to the side with his original gear, preferring to keep his capacity to block. In so doing, John notices a muffled clink in the side pockets of his pack and finds two potions he is very happy to see. Though he's not so sure about the Resurrection Balm – after all, even if he does know the spells for raising the dead it isn't like they're in his party, so—
Hang on a minute.
He DOES know the spells for raising the dead.
Come to think of it…
"Bless."
The second-tier priest spell takes hold, leaving a minuscule dent in magic reserves he didn't know he had. He starts giggling.
—ox-oxo-xo—
John stares down at the unconscious pirate with some distant satisfaction and an inexplicable sense of closure.
Though given how right Willow has been about things? (Well, most things – it's not her fault the spell that caused everything to go wrong tonight cut off the "phone lines" she had been counting on to contact their elder compatriot Giles. Plans do go wrong due to unexpected circumstances.) Maybe that inexplicable closure isn't so inexplicable? Maybe it's Zander who appreciates the closure.
John smiles down at Elizabeth as she thanks him profusely. (Yes, she's probably Buffy like Willow keeps saying – but she clearly thinks of herself as Elizabeth, and why set the lady off?) The fight had been anything but; a couple sidesteps and backing up a bit to draw the pirate away from Elizabeth, followed by a parry and swipe with the flat of the blade to put him down. He could have killed him half a dozen times in the barely ten seconds they exchanged blows, but it's best to assume the monsters he meets tonight are normally innocent children until he is told otherwise.
—ox-oxo-xo—
The barricade doesn't last for long. Neither does the fight. The blond vampire "Spike" came prepared, there's no more ground to flee to, and a dozen monsters all at once are simply too much for him and Angel.
Well. They would have been, if not for his second absurdly unlikely turn of good luck. Or maybe third, now that he thinks about it – John does recall Willow wondering if he "died and came back to try again".
The presence of potential non-party allies does complicate things. If he could be sure they were all part of his party, he could have just cast Major Blessing as they broke in, followed by Ravage Enemy and Group Fear. But casting spells that affected all non-allied targets like that would not help the others. So instead he casts Protection, wades into the mass of smaller monsters, dodges and blocks in desultory fashion for a while before casting Protection again. Now he is pinned down as they fruitlessly strive to break through his invulnerability, mistakenly believing him to be subdued.
Even now he can strike at this Spike whenever he wishes; the vampire is close enough to cast a Kill spell at him. He holds off only because if Angel – who is also pinned, defeated like John was by the need to avoid slaying their captors – and his sheer speed in combat is anything to go by, he does NOT want to tip off the hostile vampire. Give it enough time to dodge, and it might just retaliate by striking down one of the others before John or Angel can end it.
Spike begins a standard evil monologue as he approaches Elizabeth. That's both getting too close and absorbed enough; John takes a quiet breath.
"Ki—"
…
Xander blinked as he found himself under a pile of small, crying children, his mouth falling silent without the direction that had disappeared with the costume spell's breaking. He wiggled so that he was sitting upright and did his best to calm down the confused kiddies while Buffy left her wig in her attacker's hand and started waling on Spike with unrestrained enthusiasm.
Eventually the humbled bleach-blond annoyance did escape, Angel picked himself up and went to Buffy, and the sickening display of romantic she-human/he-corpsicle relations picked up right where it left off. Xander felt like complaining, but restrained himself on the basis that he could perfectly well do that later – on the other hand, the kids needed to be returned to their parents.
Listening to Cordelia bitch about being ignored, though? That was hilarious.
After a minute or two, he had all the children in lines, ready to be led back to the high school. Xander retrieved and sheathed the Magic Sword with a flourish, repressing the substantial feel of the enhanced blade in his hand as just one more thing to be brought up later.
"Now!" He comically scratched his chin. "Where were we?"
Xander did call a brief stop at a convenience store on the way. The little monsters might have swarmed the unattended store like locusts in their (satisfyingly successful) search for free candy, but somehow he doubted the owners would prosecute. And hopefully the Magic Helm did help with the whole 'hiding his face' issue.
(Bless: higher attack/defence on party-member target. Lv.2 Priest.
Major Blessing: blesses, hastes, mildly poisons weapons of all party members. Lv.7 Mage.
Ravage Enemy: curses (opposite of bless, no holy damage), slows all non-party members in vicinity. Lv.6 Mage.
Group Fear: lowers morale of all non-party members in vicinity, making them more likely to flee. Lv.6 Mage.
Protection: raises magic resistance of all party members, makes one party-member target invulnerable for a short period. Lv.7 Mage.
Kill: heavy magic damage on one target. Lv.6 Mage.)
…And Again?
—ox-oxo-xo—
…AAAAAAAARGH!
Load Game. ZANDER . sav is selected. Load…
…Well, at least he'd got away with the de facto convenience store robbery. That was something. So he made sure to do it again as he escorted the kids back to Sunnydale High and their parents.
Said parents were a little suspicious even with Sunnydale Syndrome stretching their credulous natures to the limit. But that was easy enough to defuse.
"We may have lost our candy-bags in the chaos and mayhem, but never fear!" He stopped and dug out a handful of candy from the long harness-mounted pack that was still mounted on his back (and never mind that he hadn't started the night out with that pack, or that two extremely valuable potions were still sitting in the other side pocket). "Because we did save the candy." He raised his voice. "For the candy!"
The kids cheered and brandished their candy. And so Halloween was saved. Especially for Xander Harris, who avoided detention this time because Snyder had just enough trollish cunning not to blame him in front of so many satisfied parents.
Willow eventually made her way back from the house she'd 'died' in front of, falling in beside Xander as he left the grounds. The silence stretched between them, weighing down on the old friends like a weighty thing of awkwardly weighted heaviness.
Xander really hoped he wouldn't have to get used to this.
"Wanna sleep over tonight?"
"Yeah, sure. The 'rents are three sheets to the wind already. They won't mind."
The silence got heavier.
"How many times?" Willow whispered miserably.
"Twice now. I'll be saving game again when we get to your place, so ask me again afterwards. Y'know, just in case it still works."
"Do you know what happened?" Her voice is trembling so badly that even his extensive training in Willowbabble almost fails him.
"Well you were right the first time, I died the once. Back at the warehouse. Damn game mechanics – when you're weak, they really do play against you." From previous experience, Xander was pretty sure there was no way to do this gently.
"A-and the sss-sec…" Willow choked up.
Xander sighed ruefully. "A little after Buffy's birthday next year. Hey, you got any idea how to kill a demon that can't be harmed by 'any weapon forged'?" A short pause. "And no, the Demonslayers won't work. We tried that last time – no luck."
He was actually kinda proud for Willow – she got all the way back to her house before breaking down and crying all over him.
—ox-oxo-xo—
By the time Willow recovered enough to think about his question, Xander had jumped onto Ira Rosenberg's computer, opened up a Word document and typed a bunch of notes on the first Exile Editor's mechanics. He also added several important points, and several more questions to ask his friends about the near future, that he thought might be important to remember.
After all, it had happened once – even after the spell was over. What it it happened again? What if it happened years from now? Best to have something to jog his memory, and there was just too much stuff to try explaining things to Willow.
Especially the thing with Angel's soul curse and Ms. Calender being a gypsy. He'd truly like to believe Willow would trust him, but with this much on the line… He could always just explain after trying to save and hold out hope he was worrying about nothing.
Willow sniffled on his lap while the printer hummed and buzzed in the background.
"No weapon forged?"
"Nope. Not even the Demonslayers."
The blotchy-faced redhead frowned, her thought patterns sprinting along paths he could have taken hours to plod down. If he was lucky. Good old Willow. "…Multiverse theory, right?"
Fortunately, he did have that slight run-up. "Comic multiverse theory, right? 'Cause sure, I might've ended up being bearded-lady evil – but! there's no way that any Xander anywhere had any sexual relations of the foursome variety with that vampire of the large forehead, along with his daughter and grandson. Right?"
He cringed for comic effect as Willow gaped at him.
"…Right?" he squeaked.
Willow crammed her face into his shoulder to muffle an attack of the giggles. Meanwhile the printer finished up with a loud grinding noise and fell silent. Grinning at two jobs well done, Xander scooped up the papers and grabbed a paperclip from the desk drawer.
Something else he hoped he wouldn't have to get used to: finding the perfect moment to drop the perfectly mind-boggling line in. But for right now, it was just fine!
(Yes, he knew about multiverse theory – the idea that everything happened somewhere. That both Demonslayers failed to harm the Judge meant that someone, somewhere had forged them. Just because the magical greatswords appeared to come out of nowhere, didn't mean they really did.)
"Hah—heeheehee…" Willow regathered herself and cleared her throat. "How about explosives?"
"Explosives, you say?"
He smiled. Then grinned. Then started cackling maniacally. Then was repeatedly slapped on the shoulder until he stopped.
"So," she eventually asked. "What are you printing anyway?"
"Ask me in a minute," he replied.
"Why."
"Hmm, how to put this? Ooh – stand up first." He led her out into the middle of the room. "How about: save game Ex Ay En Dee Eee Arr One fullstop Ess Ay Vee. Okay."
"Okay. Did it wo—"
…Again-Again?
—ox-oxo-xo—
…AAAAAAAARGH!
Load Game. XANDER1 . sav is selected. Load…
"—rk this ti… all right, this is just getting silly!"
Willow stepped away to wrestle off the heavy pack-harness that had just appeared out of nowhere on her back. Xander burst out laughing, taking off his own suddenly-full pack. He laughed harder after reaching into a pouch on his belt and pulling out dozens of little aspirin-sized pellets of pure gold.
"Heh-heh… Oh Wills, you h-have no idea how right you are-hah-hah…!" he managed to get out between laughs.
This time it took several minutes for the two of them to calm down – Xander from his laughing fit, and Willow from her bout of utter nerdish squeeing over being able to recognise every single item in her inventory. Well, Willow calmed down first. Then she lost patience and threw a Spark at him.
"So," she said when he sat up, "we're your party now?"
"Yup – you, Buff, G-man," he pulled a face, "…and Cordelia."
She stopped. "…Cordelia?"
"Yep. I think it's because she was with us tonight."
"But… Giles? What about Angel?" she protested.
"Hey, Giles was with us – well, he was involved at least. No Angel 'cause… well. At this point in my life I honestly didn't think of him as 'party'. Same with Ms. Calender – they're not really involved with all of us, just with Buffy or Giles," he answered carefully.
She absorbed that statement. "…You died again, didn't you?"
"Twice now, I just used the same save file. Though, thanks for that explosives idea – the pipe-bomb worked a treat. Graduation turned out to be something else needing big booms to fix – that killed me the first time. Second time… well, that's what this," he picked up the paper-clipped pages and waved them at Willow, "was for. Though it turns out, one of the Key Items available in the post-Halloween Editor is almost as good. Just a bit more general, and fewer questions."
Willow stared at him.
"…Oh yeah. I reached my fifties. This is a reminder in case I forgot anything."
"…Oh."
Willow fainted.
Xander stared at his unconscious best friend.
"Well. At least she didn't notice her clothes don't fit any more yet." He thought about that. "Crap. I'd better call Buffy. This might've happened to her, too…"
It had. Turned out, Buffy had been eating not quite enough for a while – all part of the in-vogue diet. Though Angel was there and to all reports was highly appreciative of the slight but noticeable cup-size increase, and telling her he had several pounds of gold to help pay for her replacement clothes did the rest to calm her down.
Cordelia, though? She could go screw herself before he paid for her shopping bill. He had his own shopping to do anyway. He just hoped the gold exchange was open on a Saturday. And that Buffy didn't get too frisky with Angel over the free boob-job…
…
Spike watched on with bewilderment as his minion left with a note clutched in one hand and one of his sire's 'presents' in a big burlap sack slung over one shoulder. Drusilla had made the minion read the note over carefully, to get the instructions just right. Go to such-and-such place, climb to such-and-such window on upper floor, open window with big stick, toss sack onto bed from outside so's it doesn't bounce off – don't get caught or make noise, leave people alone…
He seriously wondered what the bloody hell went through his Dru's mind sometimes.
Not this time, though. Dru had been unusually straightforward about why she was getting the hell out of Sunnydale and taking him with her… at least by her understanding of 'straightforward'. It took one of his newer, younger minions to translate the gist of it for him.
He wasn't one for these new-fangled 'computer games'. Not enough real violence in 'em. But he knew enough to figure out that when one of the Slayer's pals suddenly grew the power to come back in time over and over until he finally succeeded in offing you, it was time to leave and go do something else. Thousand to one chance, sure – but when he had ten thousand free tries lined up no matter what you did? Well sod that.
'Sides, Dru's 'Miss Edith' had also happened to mention there might be another, easier Slayer running round. And who knew, draining a Slayer might do the job and get her back up to strength. Even just good feeding somewhere else would get her there eventually. Maybe South America…
Pity about the Slayer here, but what the hell – they all had death-wishes anyway. It was a matter of time.
By the sixth time Xander had replayed his entire life, pretty much the whole pantheon of Others had got the memo Drusilla had and backed off from the looping realm – their last collective act being to organise the terrible, terrible death of one Jeff Vogel (because they were vindictive little shits like that). It was bad enough when random chaos gave Xander limited access to a life-editor, especially when any chain of reality-altering circumstances that left him powerless automatically triggered his own personal load-realm – no, now he was getting into the supernatural equivalent of programming and no Other-class entity wanted to see what he could do to them with that kind of knowledge.
Well, except the First Evil. Considering it had equivalent aspects in every single reality among that section of the multiverse, and adding in the fact that it learned everything Xander knew every time he died…
Hey, reputations for omniscience had to come from somewhere. Why not crib a big bunch of dry-runs to feed the legend? True, Xander managed to block the First from his life-experiences after the seventy-fifth time or so and erase it out of the entire realm by his three-hundredth. But that was still an epic amount of knowledge…
Besides, he'd be getting his come-uppance in due course.
"Yggdrasil, you say? Well, I was getting kinda bored – all right, you got my attention. Tell me more!"
A/N: That's right, I went there.
(Spark: the weakest offence mage spell, does mild magical damage to one target. Lv.1 Mage.)
Omake: "You want the truth?"
Summary… and disclaimer: Quote is the property of whoever had Jack Nicholson say it and then filmed him saying it. Big enough clue for you?
—ox-oxo-xo—
Xander sighed with exasperation at his friends' array of expectant faces. "Look guys. I know you wanna know a bunch of cool future stuff, but the truth is…actually, I got an idea." He stood up. "Wills, stand over there. Giles over there, Cordy over here, Jenny just here, Buffy in Giles' office, and Angel in the stacks."
He waited until everyone had gone where he directed them. Then he raised his voice.
"Now I'm going to walk over to each of you, and while I'm there I'm going to tell you one thing that happened to one of the others. There won't be any context to let you work out how it happened, though – just that it did happen. And please, please keep in mind that there is no guarantee it will happen this time. In fact, I'm going all out to prevent some of it.
"You're going to look me in the eyes when I tell you, so you can see if you really think I'm lying. And after I'm done telling you, I want you to think about what I told you and ask yourself three things." The de facto time-traveller held up a hand, counting off on his fingers. "One: Do you really want to know how it happened? Two: What do you think the reaction will be if you tell them? And three: If I've got that kind of dirt on them, what do you think I've got on you?"
Xander was gratified to see some increasingly nervous faces. "Now…"
First was Angel. "Buffy boinked Spike. Repeatedly." Who gagged audibly at the mental imagery.
Next was Buffy. "Willow boinked a girl in college. And loved it. And decided she was a lesbian from that day forth. And never touched a man again." Who stared bug-eyed at him as he walked off.
Next was Willow. "Giles boinked Mrs. Summers. On the back of a patrol car. Twice. There was mention of handcuffs being involved…" Who crammed both hands over her mouth and started vibrating in place.
Next was Giles. "…You know, I'm telling the others about one of them boinking someone horribly embarrassing? Well I can't do that for Ms. Calender – because a vampire killed her and left her in your bed right at the point where she would've boinked you." Who staggered back into his chair, face paler than Angel's.
Next was Ms. Calender. "So, Angel had a prophesy child. Cordelia changed that baby boy's nappies. And then boinked him not even a year later. And got pregnant." Whose eyebrow raised as high as it could go.
And finally, Cordelia. "So, Angel's sire Darla got resurrected and turned again. Then Angel boinked her. And got her pregnant." Who looked at him like he had gone mad.
Xander walked back to the table in the middle of the room and sat down. He raised his voice again. "Oh, and in case you were wondering who I boinked? St. Anyanka, the thousand-plus year-old vengeance demon, patron of scorned women. Only, I didn't just boink her – we got engaged, I left her at the altar, and then I boinked her again."
Cordelia snickered as the six people came back to the table.
"An interesting thing about that prophecy that the Master was going to kill Buffy? It was self-fulfilling – and so's a lot of what I just told you. So now I ask you all: do you really want me to start hauling skeletons out of the closet, when their original owners haven't even vacated them yet?"
Six people shook their heads.
"Smart move. And now for your collective peace of mind, the Cliff Notes on that context…" He pointed at Angel. "Massive emotional trauma," then at Buffy, "sexual repression that's grown out of," at Willow, "drugged chocolate," at Giles, "Angelus," at Ms. Calender as he watched her flinch, "possession," at Cordelia, "absolute despair," and finally at himself, "and a vision of me murdering her with a frying pan by one of her old victims."
Then Xander stopped, and raised a finger.
"Oh, and also? Ravage Spirit!"
At which point Skip phased into view and started screaming blue murder in the corner. A short bit of work involving a Demonslayer-wielding Buffy and three more Ravage Spirits, and a big sticky mess was the unsurprising result.
(Ravage Spirit: does massive damage to one demonic target. Lv.7 Priest.)
Omake: A Different Kind Of G.I.F.T.…
Summary: Hey, just be glad I didn't go for the hot-springs trope.
—ox-oxo-xo—
"Sorry for the delay, Dawn," Xander said, casually kicking Doc off the platform on his way past. Ravage Spirit was just that useful, in a world where almost everything supernatural was at least technically demonic. "Hang on a tick…"
Dawn looked over at the slowly expanding portal behind her while Xander cut her loose with a Magic Sword. "Um, really wanna hear good things about shutting that thing Xan…"
"Yeah, no sweat," he assured her, putting away his blade and handing her a dishcloth. They carefully walked back to the other end of the platform. "Wipe up some blood and hand it back?"
He took the bloody cloth and handed her a familiar corked bottle.
"It's Ambrosia, so drink up. That portal stays open till the blood stops flowing, so I'll just toss this through after you're healed up and we'll be done. Well, except for…" Xander stopped and stared at the portal.
More specifically, he stared at the several dozen dog-sized spiders that were jumping out of it and scuttling onto the platform with high-pitched 'whee!' noises. They all ran over to the top level of the tower where Xander and Dawn were standing, leaping about and babbling away to each other in excited tones.
He got scared.
Then he shook himself and walked out to the end of the platform. In the meantime, he looked down at where Buffy and Glory were beating the crap out of each other. "HEY, GLORIFICUS!"
"Can't you see I'm busy you little monkey, WHAT?" her voice drifted up.
"YOU KNOW THOSE TWO DEMON LORDS THAT KICKED YOU OUT?"
Glory punched Buffy into a wall, then turned around and looked up at him. "YEAH? Hey wait a minute, where's my K—"
"…DID ONE OF THEM HAPPEN TO BE CALLED GRAH-HOTH?"
Glory stomped her foot and roared back, "DON'T YOU DARE SPEAK THAT ACCURSED BETRAYER'S NAME TO M—" At which point Buffy interrupted her by shoving her favourite Demonslayer through the back of Glory's head and decapitating the hell-goddess with a wrenching twist of the blade.
"…Huh." Xander tossed the rag into the portal, which promptly closed. He turned around and walked back across to where Dawn was trying not to freak out at the Giant Intelligent Friendly Talking Spider who was telling her she was cute. "…Whatever. All right – Dawn, and everyone whose name is 'spider', follow me!"
The G.I.F.T. spiders (who were indeed all named 'spider') saw no reason not to follow him and Dawn down to the ground level, where Glory's minions and fifty-odd mentally scrambled people awaited them. And there was much kicking of shins.
And also much rejoicing.
"Yay!"
Most of it by the spiders.
Xander looked around at the scene, as Buffy and Dawn embraced each other with complete disregard for the blood they were covered with (they were both fully healed and their clothes were ruined anyway), as Giles and Mrs. Giles ambled over with Jonathan and Amy to where Willow was fawning over Tara, who was bemusedly scratching the top of a cooing spider's head as they thronged around her. They really seemed to like Tara for some reason.
Yup, he was still scared.
"Damn you, Jeff Vogel," he muttered, almost in tears. "Damn you to G.I.F.T. Spider Hell."
(Grah-Hoth: a major antagonist of Exile I and III, a demon prince and normally a resident of Exile's hell dimension.
Giant Intelligent Friendly Talking Spiders: a friendly if childishly annoying race of monsters in all three Exile games. Apparently Jeff Vogel likes inflicting them on players in his table-top games, too. Bastard.)
Ending A/N: …And now I'm leaving off, because at this point I may as well just grab a Kleenex and some baby lotion instead of more whiskey.