12Disclaimer: still not mine. Refer first chapter.
A/N: Well, crap. How long did I leave this practically done and gathering dust while doing other stuff? *sigh* Just know that I blame SpaceBattles. Sorry.
Anyway: winding up the prequel to a story I'm probably never going to write, here we go!
The Usual Suspects?
Chapter Thirteen: Calm, Storm, Quiet
—ox-oxo-xo—
The new portal looked very different. Instead of being vaguely rectangular, it was a whirling vortex with a hole in the middle – a lot like what Buffy remembered Acathla's portal looking like. And kinda like the one that Doc had used to craft from Dawn's blood, it was a dazzling electric green.
Then the edges thinned, and the centre first span into black and then into a view of the other side.
Two figures stood there. The first was a girl, about Dawn's age, tall with red hair but a lot of Dawn's features. If she had to guess, that was the Dawn Day that Whistler had mentioned. But the second… no, not Xander, though the dress sense made that kind of mistake understandable. It was… another Whistler?
The other Whistler flipped a two-fingered salute at their Whistler, then vanished. Behind where he was, was a room that looked like the old Sunnydale High library – wait, it was the library! Only, the stacks weren't there, and the walls were lined with men and women in a range of fashion choices from 'morning jog' through 'construction site' to 'combat zone' and with many, many weapons to match. Including some guns! Though they were on a table off to the side, inside a little mesh cage mounted onto a tabletop.
In the centre of the lower floor, there were two concentric ritual circles. In the right and far one was a dark-haired vampire that looked…a bit like Xander; it was kept in the circle with heavy manacles and shackles, hogtied and propped upright on his knees. In the left and near one was…someone with a prosthetic right hand that reminded her of Adam's and a brace on the left leg, the angle let them tell that much.
Actually, a little more than 'that much'. Both of them were topless, inked up for whatever ritual they were preparing. And while the vamp was pale like all vamps, Xander – because that had to be Xander – looked like he'd been blown or cut into pieces and sewn back together. It was really, really creepy – like Adam, only without the demon bits grafted on…
…oh god. Buffy's gut made another try at crawling out of her mouth.
"Well, I guess that explains the Quiet…" Fred murmured. When a couple of the others made questioning noises, she pointed to a very large square banner hanging on the far wall. It was a solid, neutral grey with white, crimson-bordered lettering in capitals and a simple font.
NORTH AMERICAN
COALITION OF THE QUIET
Est. 2003
CENTRAL COMMAND
Est. 1997
"Damn," Angel muttered. "I knew it. He's a Holtz."
"Huh." Spike muttered back, "At least we're all human now. He can't book us on that…"
"What year is it there, I wonder?" That was Wesley.
"Fall, 2005," Whistler told them. "I think they're ready…"
Dawn reappeared, now holding a short, ornate rod. ("That's the Ferula Gemina!" Willow whispered-shouted.) She strode over to a much smaller circle equidistant to the centre of each concentric circle, aimed the rod at the sliver of space where the circles met, spoke a longish sentence in some language Buffy had never heard of, and fired.
Everything flashed.
When the picture cleared up, nothing appeared to have changed other than all three of the ritual's participants being blown off their feet. They each picked themselves up, Xander sitting up while the vampire calmly contorted himself back to his knees. One more change – the ink painting the pair had faded away.
Waitaminute… that vampire was going nuts before. What the…
A woman in her early thirties hurried over to the vampire, requisite and probably stinky herbs in hand. They heard, "Soul is present and whole." Only for a number of crossbow bolts and one handgun to be raised and pointed – at Xander?
A man around Giles' age hurried over to Xander while trying to stay out of the line of fire. More stinky herbs were broken out, used slightly differently. Once more they heard, "Soul is present and whole." And then, "Ritual is a success!"
The weapons lowered, and two burly men came over with keys to unshackle the vampire.
"Smart," Angel noted. "Humans without souls can be just as bad as vampires…"
Once freed, the vampire walked over and reached a hand down to Xander, who reached out and took it with his left. The vampire hauled him to his feet, with a sardonic, "At least the dex bonus is nice. But geez, this body's already hungry."
The voice that replied was a dull rasp, like his throat was damaged; there was a odd, metallic-sounding echo. "The things we do to find some Quiet, huh?"
"Yeah…"
The ground on the other side of the portal shook a little, enough to knock a couple items off a table. A voice called out, "Paradox reaction is rising, Generals…"
The vampire… The Xander that was a vampire with a soul! Buffy flat-out gaped as that finally sank in. …Vampire-Xander continued, "Well – go see if the deal's solid, would ya? Not like the Powers and everybody else never screwed us…"
Franken-Xander turned around to face the portal.
"The hell is it with his left eye always coppin' it?" Spike asked nobody.
In fact, Franken-Xander had gone bionic with the eye-wear. The metal-and-crystal orb looked disturbingly like a Terminator's. And if anything, the serene little smile on his lips and in his other eye somehow managed to be even creepier.
"Yeah," Buffy heard Angel mutter. "Definitely a Holtz…"
He managed exactly one step before being glomped by a sniffling redhead. Franken-Xander briefly pressed his cheek to the top of Dawn's head. His whisper, amplified slightly by the… voice-box? lodged in the base of his throat, just carried to the portal. "Love you… watch over him till it's done."
The library rumbled again, harder this time. Dawn let go, and he hobbled through the portal without another word.
No sooner had his left foot made footfall with a clunk from the brace's foot-plate, than Whistler was stepping forward, pulling a small scroll and an intricately carved stone from his coat pockets.
"As promised: one device of the agreed type and its instructions," Whistler told him.
Xander stared down at the stone for a moment, his Terminator-eye 'pupil' flashing through several different colours over the space of half a second. Then the scroll was flicked open with one hand and scanned the same way.
That little smile turned feral for a moment. He pulled a drawstring cloth bag out of a pocket, dropped both items into it, and sent it with a backward flick back through the portal, which promptly began to close. The last thing visible was Vampire-Xander catching it with his right hand, waving farewell with his left… and of all things, a chorus of voices from the guards calling, "For one Quiet day!" and some flicker of common movement that might've been a salute.
—ox-oxo-xo—
The dozen recruits regarded the leader that Whistler had chosen for them with a certain professional curiosity. The jigsaw-like pattern of damage didn't look that bad closer up – actually it looked more like someone had gone nuts with skin-grafting experiments. At least all the skin was human, and from Caucasian humans at that; the only sign really betraying the lie was the raised or depressed profile of some of the patches, like they were naturally grown to fit larger or smaller bodies.
Closer up, his face was a mess. Most of the upper left had been plated with angled metal and sprayed with a matte skin-finish, and most of the rest was speckled with powder-burns and the odd scar. Set into the assembly, the cybernetic eye flashed through its colours again as it scanned them all.
The 'pupil' returned to its dull red as he angled his head at Whistler. The voice did sound a little like Xander might have, if not for the throat damage and repair. "Carry-on luggage?"
Whistler said, "The clothes on your backs, and anything you can fit in the pockets."
Xander nodded. Balancing most of his weight on the right leg, he fished a small tub out from a pouch attached to the front of the brace. Opening the tub and holding it along with the lid in the prosthetic hand, he then reached up with the flesh hand and pressed a catch that made the plate adjacent to his left eye pop and swing out. Xander plucked out the bionic and dropped it in the tub with a quiet splut, then closed the tub and hobbled closer, tapping the plate shut as he went.
He stopped in front of Fred and placed the tub in her hand. Then he turned on his right leg and hobbled off a ways.
Fred visibly resisted the temptation to unscrew the lid and peel inside, instead dropping it into her lab-coat pocket. She shrugged to the others. "Hey, it might be useful. I think he was scanning us with it just then."
"So, Holtz." Faith scratched her ribcage. "You meant that demon hunter you tangled with in L.A., Fang? That Holtz?"
Angel nodded. "Holtz was one of my— His victims, back during his Scourge of Europe days. Or rather, his family was. He carried a grudge against the Scourge of Europe for that, but especially against Angelus."
Wesley added, "Daniel Holtz formed a large band of hunters, mostly recruiting from victims he had managed to save. That band was reasonably successful, at least until his disappearance – which turned out to be Sahjhan's work." He paused. "More importantly, he was a fanatic who lived solely for vengeance against Angelus and would do almost anything for it, and his followers were fanatics in turn."
Angel was pacing, actually looking nervous Buffy thought. "Before Holtz, I—" He shook his head irritably. "He'd already learned to recognise the… potential, that spark of instability that let people break in that direction with enough…" the ex-vampire grimaced, "incentive. After Holtz almost took him down a couple times, though, he started making sure to either kill or turn them quickly. Too much risk otherwise – as Holtz proved, even ordinary humans can get lucky if they're bloody-minded enough.
"Ever since Xander learned about vampires, he's hated them. He was practically a Holtz already – the boy was just too lazy. That…" Angel paused significantly. "That, and his friends were still around to hold him back from crossing that line. This one obviously doesn't. Though, I guess he already killed his 'Scourge of Europe', so maybe he isn't so bad. Still: tread carefully."
Buffy could see that much, especially with the hate-on for vamps. And if Holtz had the sheer…presence she could feel boiling off this Xander, it was no wonder he picked up groupies! But how did that end up with Xander making a souled-vamp version of himself? Her gut was telling her, it just wasn't that simple.
"I must wonder, though… How exactly did that state of affairs come about?" Giles said.
"Two answers to that, Rip," Whistler interjected, nose buried in papers once more. "On the local front… when the time came, he didn't know where Ratboy lived. It's just that simple – but it's on a little wider scale where the bad's really at.
"Back when there was that rash of dead Slayers Lothos was racking up, the Senior Partners in that realm got 'emselves a brainwave. They got their boys and gals down at Wolfram and Hart to run a series of rituals – and what they did, was… Well, basically they added a little free-running oomph to the entire realm's collective entropy mechanic, trying to speed up their long game. From then on, all those Powers' ground-level players? All the ones with any destiny to 'em? They just…" The balance demon threw out his arms in a bitter shrug, the papers ruffling in his grasp. "They all just started dying off. Fate failed them – pretty much nothing the Powers did turned out right unless it was actually stopping the world from ending, and even then it was a good bet someone important would end up buying the farm doing it.
"That's where Xander and his lack of a destiny comes in – he pretty much flew under the radar, the whole way through. The Powers there haven't touched him either way, because they can't help him – they've worked out that much, they'd doom him if they even tried, so he's got as far as he has by sheer luck… well, that and experience." He sighed. "That and literally dozens of troops throwing themselves on the grenade first. That little package I passed through? That's pretty much the last endgame open to him and his." Whistler glanced over at Xander, stashing the paperwork. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go fix him up."
Xander was now standing on one foot and using the removed brace like a cane – which he obviously needed, because his left 'boot' was still attached to the bottom of the brace and there was no foot coming out of the left pants-leg. The rest of his metallic body-parts (at least the ones that could come off) were in a small pile at his foot, with the prosthetic arm laying on the ground in front of the pile.
"Right, don't bother trying to speak – I can hear you thinking anyway. Nice thought with removing what you could, but…"
Whistler made a negligent pushing gesture with one hand.
Xander practically blew apart like he'd been hit with a Mack truck, pieces of twisted metal ripping away with a shower of gore and flying off to vanish mid-air. Big wet chunks of torso and most of his metal-encrusted spine went with them, along with the entire left side of his head.
As she dry-heaved, Buffy could hear Whistler tell the still-upright body, "…I actually kinda need you dead for this bit."
From there, it was something like what had happened with Riley and Faith – the body was just upright to start with as missing body-parts flashed into existence. Less than five seconds after his death, Xander was awake, standing and glaring at Whistler with his two whole eyes.
Whistler grinned. "You're welcome."
Xander, who looked a lot more Xander-shaped now except for looking more cut due to the lack of body fat, kept right on glaring.
"Hey, at least you got your gonads back."
Xander shifted, and stopped glaring. "…And my gonads thank you."
Whistler continued, "The mind defences were converted to full-mystic, so was the durability. You lost the demonic regen and about half the strength though, so be careful with that."
"Noted," Xander said. He looked over at the others, some of who were still a little pale. His gaze hardened, but not in a hostile way – more like a decision had been reached and the uncertainty was done with. "So, details. Location of arrival – security, environment, provisions?"
"Abandoned cache, outpost and back-up research facility the other side used. It's logged as being recently damaged beyond use due to a few corrupted reports, and is now off the radar." Whistler buffed his nails on his coat lapel, hinting at just how that happened. "Their follow-up sweep is scheduled for 77 days from now, but you have a seer to warn you all if you're about to be busted. Location is ground-side on a distant planet. Base environment is automated human-friendly, the outside is tundra and has high heavy-metal concentrations in the dust, so don't linger. Provisions were dropped off by an unconnected cargo ship and stored by the automated base infrastructure four days ago."
"Food and water? Clothing? Personal items?" Xander glanced at the others, waving his hand in a 'come on' gesture. "Replacement parts and materials for repair? Arms and armour?"
"Provisions are mostly base material for experimental fabricators. There's a few days' worth of food and some uniforms lying round that should fit until you get the fabricators worked out – don't worry though, they do work. Water's condensed and filtrated on base, there's plenty."
"Communications? How about lab equipment?" Fred asked, getting the hint and getting into the spirit.
"Communications are quarantined for now, but the database and fabricators are online – the database will tell you all you need to know for now once you're there. Oh, and the base defences can be turned back on, but make sure they're reprogrammed to recognise you before you do. It's a research facility, so you should be happy with the labs."
"Any local threats?" Riley wondered. "Traps, wildlife… escaped experiments?"
"Just the base defences, no, and no."
"Just how extensive is the database you speak of?" Giles was thoughtful and becoming increasingly excited. "Does it cover the realm's history, its cultures?"
"What of this 'other side's' records, its activities?" Wesley added.
"Is the database protected?" Willow wondered. "Does it need passwords or something? Wait, what's the language like?"
Buffy watched on with awe as the party's mood charged up with anticipation and excitement at the challenge. She could feel it herself, her third wind (or was it fourth? fifth?) rising despite her mostly-boxed-away grief and mental exhaustion and the scope of the task in front of them – the way this all-business Xander had slotted right on in at the head and started taking control… and more importantly, not fumbled the catch. No bitching about why him, no spazzing, no power trips, just 'what do we need to know right now' broken down so everyone could catch on and see what they needed to know right now. Like he was hitting the ground running, and everyone else was following the guy with a clue. …Which, fair enough – it looked like he'd at least got the blurb on the deal before all this.
And knowing what to do was half the battle. She knew that well – in her experience, once she'd thought up or been given an actual, simple plan better than 'charge!' to take out a known enemy, they usually worked. The first Turok'Han beating her to within an inch of her life? Lure it to a known location for Round Two, with back-up to distract it if she needed a breather. Can't take out Caleb? Simple enough, once she'd remembered taking out Caleb wasn't actually the point that time. Know the game. Know the rules. If the rules say you lose, cheat like there's no tomorrow just to make sure there is one. Duh! And, know the difference between when you need all hands on deck and when you really do need to go it alone.
Pity she'd never seemed to realise all that till after they'd lost people.
Buffy had tried for months to be the General. She'd won a couple battles doing it. She'd even pulled off the big one, once she'd realised she could turn her dozens of whining teenage liabilities into combat-ready troopers. But honestly, she'd heard the veiled insult every time her friends or the S.i.T.'s called her 'General Buffy' – and what were they expecting, when half the time she was running off what she could remember back when Riley was around and leading his squads because she had no clue what the hell she was doing?
He'd been called 'General' and no-one had blinked. Just how many people did he lead?
"Told you," Drusilla murmured so quietly that Buffy barely caught it.
'Good point,' she realised. They needed a leader who knew what they were doing, who pulled them all into place. And he seemed to be doing the job so far. The jury was out on how well it'd work, but things were beginning to look promising…
"Forget that," Faith cut across it all. "How much space do we get? And are there beds?"
"Yeah!" Buffy blurted. How had she forgotten? 'Promising' was one thing, but there were priorities! "Finally getting some privacy would be great. Tell me we get it!"
"The database, you'll find out about when you get there. Same language, and yes, there's plenty of space – and privacy," Whistler told them. He muttered, "You damn horndogs…"
Buffy blushed, and she was far from the only one – though Faith just cackled.
A studiously blank-faced Xander said, "Allies?" When the others turned to look at him, he elaborated, "You're barred from that realm. You have to be. Too much interference otherwise – so you've got other people in there, organising stuff for you, or even just fighting the same enemy. Will they be open to alliance?"
Whistler smiled and clapped. "Yes! There is already an entrenched organisation resisting your targets and their masters. They'll be cautious about accepting allies, but you can and must make contact and team up with them in order to succeed at this mission. The job's just too big for you otherwise, no matter how many Potentials you track down and Slayerise."
"And Seers?" Xander asked.
"Yeah, good point Droopy…" Spike paused, "…and remind me to come up with another good insultin' nick for you, even I can feel that one hittin' a little close to home," he muttered with a wince that was matched by most of the males among them. "We're getting a seer – what about the other side?"
"Fortunately, no." Whistler shrugged. "Seers being seers, the only one reliable enough to see youse guys coming was…well, let's just say she can see the writing on the wall. She's the one who had everything set up for you realm-side – my counterpart couldn't interfere directly, but he could inspire her to do that much before you arrived."
"And one more thing," Jenny asked. "If the Powers can't interfere directly – how do we get our rewards?"
"Pull the mission off, and you'll find out," Whistler told them. He clapped his hands to bring things to a close.
"All right, then – time to get this show on the road!"
And with no further warning, the whole world warped around them as Whistler disappeared.
Ending A/N: And the 'prequel' (read, the actual written story) is done. As previously stated, I currently have no interest in writing the actual crossover part, let alone any intention of doing so. As with just about all of my Divergence stories (even though this isn't one), TUS is essentially a stubfic. If you want to develop the crossover, feel free. If you want to write it with a different setup for a different future or to cut out the gratuitous Xander and/or other characters, then that's even better! I'd love to read something like this done seriously… which, make no mistake, this isn't. If it was, I would have gone to much greater effort closing off some of those minor canon-gaps for the AR's (obvious instance: RJ in the Tara arc).
That said, a possible ending to the hypothetical crossover will probably end up following anyway – just to close a few loose ends and answer outstanding questions about Powers and their boons.
(I'll add this now, though, for those curious: Lone-Wolf!HHHard!Xander as a leader would indeed have been ridiculous - which is why I didn't do it. Holtz-esque!Xander as a leader...is almost as ridiculous, and actually I didn't go with that either. But that's 3rd-person close-POV for you - sometimes people are just gonna jump to the conclusion that seems right but only mostly is. Simply put, I went with this Xander because (a) he's led and liaised with large groups, including military and militias, and done it well (like the 2nd Xander), (b) he's really not going to be able to think of these new doppelganger!compatriots as friends for a long time if ever (unlike the 2nd Xander), and (c) another reason (the main one, in fact) which ties into the whole 'Powers and their boons' thing.)
Also, I may well end up fleshing out and/or revising some of the AR's and using them for proper Divergence fics. Something like AtS S5:Ep18(?) "Origin", where Angel gets the memory of this Wesley's arc pre-reality shift and Wesley gets both during the Connor vs. Sahjhan fight (probably a oneshot, I'll grant). Or Buffy having to fit into a new paradigm after nearly a decade stuck in the portal out of the hell sub-dimension, in a world where Faith pretty much took her destined place and now there's hundreds of Slayers running around and most of the people she knew are dead.
…Probably not the Drusilla one, though. That's another one I'd love to see someone else do justice to, speaking as someone who knows I wouldn't.
In any case: thanks for taking the time to read this, especial thanks to those who took the extra effort to review/fave/follow, and I hope you enjoyed it. Till next time...