Conquest Undesired


When Xander was finally released from the summoning, he was once again
in Mr. Miller's office, thankfully empty, in which he promptly opened a
portal to his home, and ushered his new acquisitions through. They
barely fit into the room as it was, by virtue of the two young maidens
sitting on the flying horses. Even so, with two horses, a young dragon,
and Xander himself carrying the small cage with two trapped fairies
inside, they took up quite a bit more room than was readily available.

Xander might have been more concerned about restoring the damage done,
particularly the desk which was crumpled into kindling when the dragon
shifted against it to avoid the horses' shuffling as they jockeyed for
room, but seeing the room brought in the memory of being ushered out
with neither money nor an explanation, so he merely chivvied his group
through the portal and left the room in a shambles.

He was rather subdued as he helped the two girls to dismount. He would
feel far better about having rescued them, knowing that whatever demon
Maleficent, as he had learned the green witch's name was, had intended
to summon would have consumed their souls, were it not for the fact that
he could feel and see the chains that bound their souls to his, an
ethereal leash. He suspected it was there as an assurance that the witch
was not smuggling an assassin in her payment, for it ensured that they
could never seek to do him harm, a pertinent point considering one of
them was a fire-breathing dragon.

Unfortunately, it also ensured that they could never deliberately act
against his will, making them effectively his slaves, since he did not
intend to send them to the immediate freedom of soul-death.

Xander led them out of the House onto an open field so that the two
winged horses could graze. The horses were male and female, so Xander
suspected he might have more to deal with eventually. Thankfully, the
dragon was not a pregnant female, but a young male, a 'randy buck,' as
Maleficent had termed him.

She had admitted to him that the dragon was not born as such, but had
been transformed by her, having previously been a very annoying man who
had dropped into the castle unexpectedly, and promptly made a tremendous
nuisance of himself.

So he had to figure out some way of communicating with him. He would
have liked to work out a way of freeing them all, but an attempt to
produce a fluid that would safely release them failed. One that would
release them worked, but given that the other had not, Xander was deeply
afraid it was a poison that would either kill them, or worse.

Once on the lawn, he assisted the two maidens to alight from the horses'
backs. He tried a bit of Jusenkyou water of young man on the dragon, to
no avail. That figured. Fairy tale transformations were generally not so
readily circumvented. Likely the dragon would need to complete some
quest, or learn something about himself, or some such thing, at which
point the transformation would promptly unravel itself.

Xander was nervous about even trying that much. As best he could tell,
he had pleased Maleficent, likely to the point that he could expect to
be summoned again at some point, and in the process, he had learned
several new uses for his power, but he had also gained an awareness of a
lurking danger in summoning.

As a summoned being, his promises were binding, in a way that went
beyond his experience. 

He could do nothing that would harm her without her permission, and if
freeing that dragon would lead to an outcome of her being harmed; which
was possible, given that he was someone she had ensorcelled, who might
wish revenge; his own power would turn against him. Or so she claimed,
and considering the ethereal chains that still bound him, he was not
sure enough to be willing to try too hard to test it. Giving him a
Jusenkyou curse that could be revoked at any time was as far as he was
willing to go, and it seemed to have failed. Xander was not willing to
push it further just yet.

Leaving the horses outside for now, along with the dragon, Xander
gestured at the two girls to follow him. They were unspoiled, according
to Maleficent. Xander was not sure how to take that, did not want to
think about it, about how she could know. She had assured him that they
were not princesses, an odd sort of claim, but a relevant one, he
supposed, in a world where princesses actually could expect a rescue by
Prince Charming. Apparently the same was not true of the average girl.

He led them back inside and found adjoining rooms for them, and
explained to them that they need only ask aloud for food or drink, and
were free to wander, but if a door closed before them, or refused to
open, they should leave it alone.

Then he returned to his sitting chamber, found a seat near a table, and
set the cage on it to have a look at the fairies. As with the others,
they were bound to him. The human girls he could care for, he was sure.
Their needs should be easy enough to handle. Horses likewise, even
flying horses, could graze on their own, and he could readily provide
stabling. The dragon, to hear Maleficent tell it, was an adult male
human before being transformed, though the result was a juvenile dragon,
and so could presumably look after himself for a bit, given that the
plane could provide food and shelter.

The fairies, on the other hand . . . Xander carefully opened the cage
door, and waited. The fairies were clearly nervous, but when they
finally emerged and he got a good look at them, Xander's eyes nearly
popped out of his head. Barely two inches tall, they were perfectly
formed little women with antennae and insectile wings, one
dragonfly-like, the other more like butterfly wings, but in each case
only a single pair in contrast to the normal insectile two pair. That
was not so surprising.

But for coming from a fairy-tale place, they were as far from Disney
fairies as he could imagine. They were both dressed in what looked
like black latex, with thigh-high boots and nearly-shoulder length
gloves, and what in scale looked like four-inch heels. Far from the
innocent beauty of Tinkerbell, these little fairies looked like
miniature dominatrices.

One of them, blonde, with longer antennae and more butterfly-like wings,
was standing with one arm behind her back, her hand holding her other
arm at her side, and one leg cocked behind the other. The brunette,
antennae barely poking out through her thick hair, was standing with her
hands on her hips, feet apart, glaring defiantly up at him.

In spite of her bravado, Xander knew they both had to be feeling some
degree of fear. The bonds prevented either of them from harming him, but
did nothing to protect them from him, and he suspected that they would
have felt some degree of fear facing something so large as him
regardless.

There was simply no way he could communicate reasonably with them with
such a scale difference between them, so Xander decided it was time he
himself experienced a Jusenkyou style transformation.

He did not try to make it specifically a Jusenkyou curse. Instead, he
simply focused on the idea that the water about to touch him would
transform this one body only into a male version of the little
faeries. It landed on his head and he experienced a moment of
distortion, as everything around him suddenly grew, becoming massively
larger, as if he were now in an enourmous cathedral.

Fortunately, using his new wings was easy, especially since he could
move the air itself to correct his missteps, and he was thus able to
loft himself from the floor to the table where he had released them.

The little blonde was staring at him with her mouth open, her cheeks
pink, and her little antennae trembling. The brunette, on the other
hand, had an oddly resigned look, though there was no longer a sense of
fear about her.

"I'm sorry, Pfil," he heard her whisper as he alighted gently on the
table top.

"Hi, I'm Xander," he greeted them. "What are your names, please?"

The brunette stiffened. "I'm Pamela," she said, taking a deep breath,
"and that's Pfil." She slinked forward, her stance and body language
oddly predatory given her earlier apparent resignation. "And I guess I'm
all yours now, Master."

Xander glanced at the blonde, Pfil, and found his eyes immediately drawn
back to Pamela when she arched her back slightly, thrusting out her
impressive breasts and setting them to straining at her latex-like
bodysuit.

Their provocative clothing had Xander thinking on a sexual wavelength
already, and he recognized that she was acting seductive, but he did not
realize why until she moved forward again, resting her glove clad hand
on his chest, and he recognized that she had insinuated herself between
him and the shy-acting blonde. She was sacrificing herself to protect
the blonde, at least for a time, and Xander felt like crying.

She had gone from anticipating being eaten, or used as a potion or
ritual ingredient, to expecting to be raped, and even so was putting
herself forward to draw him away from her friend, and Xander felt a
surge of anger at Maleficent for his inability to free her.

That was unfair though. Maleficent was certainly evil, but in all
likelihood the binding was a requirement of the demon she had previously
summoned. He had realized only after she had displayed her own
impressive ability to shapeshift that she had summoned a demon with a
similar capacity, so as to be able to keep her satisfied, and she had no
idea that he was not in fact the demon with whom she had made her deal.

Someday he would find the key to freeing them, until then, he would have
to protect them all, which again put an urgency to the idea of building
up a staff to manage things. Depending on clones was unsafe. He did not
know if they could last forever, even with the ability to produce more
chakra, nor when some magic or chakra technique used against him might
be capable of disrupting them.

He needed actual protection, actual fighters capable of defending his
dependents, and managers and staff capable of taking care of them if the
worst should happen and his House and Plane clones should be dissipated.

Right now, he had to defuse this situation. 

"Let me be blunt," he said, stepping back. "I don't intend to have sex
with either of you as long as you are bound to obey me. I don't need or
want to force that from anyone. Maleficent had a pre-existing deal, and
I was able to make use of it to free you from her. When I find a way,
I'll free you from myself as well. In the meantime, you will live here."

Pamela got a sudden dark look on her face, and frowned mightily. "So I'm
not pretty enough for you, huh?" She struck a pose. "Or are you just not
man enough?"

"For crying out loud," Xander snapped. "I'm not into rape."

"We were in the room for your little show with Maleficent," Pamela
sneered. "Didn't look to me like there was much you weren't in to."

Pfil had moved forward and grabbed Pamela's arm, trying to distract her,
but she was not to be dissuaded. "You're just waiting for me to be out
of the way, so you can have your way with my poor Pfil!"

Xander shook his head. "That doesn't even make sense. I could order you
right now to strip her for me and you would do it. Why would I?"

He stopped, startled, as Pamela reached over and pulled Pfil's top down,
her full breasts springing free as she gave a startled squeak.

"That what you want to see? Or maybe you just like to watch?" Pamela
leaned down and caught one of Pfil's nipples in her teeth and tugged on
it, eliciting squeaks and heavy breathing from Pfil.

Aroused, disturbed, confused, and a little angry, Xander shook his head
and dispersed the water spell making him a fairy, slashed open a portal
to the moon he had used for chakra testing and stalked through, closing
it behind him.

Could they sense his clone in the House? Was that what she was referring
to? It was true, in a sense, that he was observing everything that
occurred in his little world, in the House or out of it, so his stalking
away did not help that much, as every time his thoughts drifted to Pfil
and Pamela, he saw again how far they had gotten.

Either Pamela was putting on a show, or she had gotten genuinely excited
by something in that exchange, because she was playing shy little Pfil
like her personal musical instrument, which was not helping Xander get
his mind off them at all. He had not managed to find out anything about
them or what they would need.

She reminded him a little of Cordelia, though he could not actually
picture Cordelia acting like that . . . or then again, maybe he could.
He pictured Willow in Pfil's place, the shy retiring nerd being ordered
around by the proud, sensual, sure-of-herself drama queen. He pictured
Cordelia pulling Willow's top down, and biting her nipple. "That would
be so freaking hot," he whispered. "Bad thoughts, bad thoughts."

Of course, his mind was still full of his recent activities with
Maleficent, the other reason he had escorted the two human girls to
their rooms and left them there. He did not want to be thinking those
thoughts while trying to decide what to do about them.

He had thought trying to handle the fairy situation would be easier and
less hazardous to his libido. He had not anticipated that they might be
dominatrix fairies.

Trying to push his memories away from the arousing images had a 
strange side-effect. He found himself imagining, indeed, almost 
experiencing, the sensation of eating a Twinky.

He had consumed a number of Twinkies, of course, since gaining the
ability to summon small foodstuffs, but this was oddly real. When he
felt himself swallow, though nothing was in his mouth, Xander focused on
the sensations, trying to figure out what the source was, and realized
that it was the effect of experiencing a memory that was actively being
formed.

Somehow, Xander had tuned in to one of his clones at the moment they
consumed a Twinky. Focusing a bit harder on the clone, Xander
experienced an odd sort of double-image, as he could see at one and the
same time the surreal lunar landscape and the busy streets of an
American city. Los Angeles, his memory supplied a moment later. This was
the clone that had been trying without success to hock the diamonds.

Xander ran back through its memories, and discovered that it had been
shaken down by a street gang. After a considerable period of trying and
failing to sell the diamonds, the clone had taken that as an
opportunity, knocked the gang members out with 'knockout gas' produced
in a cloud around each gang member's head. As they fell to the ground,
they removed their heads from the cloud, so were not at risk of
continued suffocation, and he proceeded to remove all their cash,
swapping it for diamonds.

In addition to eating a Twinky, Xander realized that the clone was
reading something, and focusing on his eyes, saw that he was in a street
cafe, an open box of Twinkies in front of him, reading a comic book.
"For ideas," the clone told him. "A librarian is a good idea and all,
but you need a comic shop too. Comics gave you your best ideas so far,
they should be a good source of ideas. Like this," and he reached out
and tapped a smaller, thick, square book, and focused on it, allowing
Xander to see the cover.

"Roadrunner?" he asked curiously. "I don't remember much in the way of
fluids in there, aside from nitroglycerine."

"Paint, man. Remember Wile E. painting a railroad or highway tunnel, and
the Roadrunner goes right in. Why can't you make magic paint that does
that?"

Xander snorted. "Because I can't draw worth a hoot."

"So? Neither could Wile E. He used a four-inch brush for that, remember?
Just swiped it back and forth. Let the magic paint worry about the
picture."

"Worth a try," Xander agreed. He refocused on his surroundings, and
looked around. As he was on a moon, there was certainly nothing here
worth of painting on. But other Looney Tunes cartoons were floating
through his mind now, including some where Bugs or other toons got the
artist's paintbrush and altered their environment, and not a few where
there was a freestanding door, attached to nothing at all, that could
nonetheless be opened.

A simple horsehair brush with a rock candy handle was readily produced
by his food transmuting ability, then Xander willed magical cartoon
paint that would paint into reality whatever he wanted into a glob in
the air, and dipping the brush into it, swung the brush back and forth
as if painting a door that was already there.

Exactly as he pictured it, as the brush passed across where the door
wasn't, the bristles were bent as if running over something, and the
paint hung in the air, as if a swath of paint had just been brushed onto
a nice wood paneled door. Grinning, he quickly finished the
brushstrokes, intent on making a door that would open into his home.

When he finished, he dried it by willing the moisture away, then reached
out and turned the painted handle, which felt firm and metallic under
his hand. The door opened as if part of a solid structure, and through
the opening, he saw the sitting room . . . 

He stared at the naked fairies, hearing their frantic cries of passion,
and quickly slammed the door and spun around, leaning against it. Okay,
that was a mistake. It had worked, though, and Xander wondered what else
he could do with it.

He considered trying the Wile. E. Coyote trick directly, but remembered
in time that while it worked for the Roadrunner, it never worked
properly for Wile E., the one who painted it. He did not really feel
like being run over by a truck or a train.

Xander looked down at the dust he had disturbed in opening the door.
What would NASA give, he wondered, to be able to simply open a door onto
the moon. It would not cost them much, he could trade them for one of
their space shuttles, since they wouldn't need them any more. He sighed,
shaking his head. He knew he could not do anything like that, no matter
how appealing the idea. Exposing himself would invite government
attention and scientific experimentation. He thought of government black
ops units having access to demons that could not be permanently killed,
and shuddered.

No, keeping his involvement legitimate and below the government's radar
was definitely for the best. Of course, he had already been exposed, to
a degree, to whoever the tiny old lady, Cologne, was working for. Some
of her comments had made him think that she was an influential political
figure, though other things she had said made him think it was an
insular village, much like the Hidden Villages of the ninja on Kushina's
world.

He portaled back to the House and went in search of another room for
what he had in mind. While the House and Plane's ability to use mist as
a portal was good for large connections, Xander could see advantages as
well in setting up doorways to allow individuals access to the House. In
particular, Nabiki could use such access, at least until they managed to
obtain a house in the area and link it to the House.

He decided that as long as he was going to give Nabiki access, he might as
well give her a suite to give her a secure place to keep her work for
him from being interfered with by martial artists and the like.

So working with the House, he set up a bedroom, bathroom, and an office.
She would have to supply her own computer, and he would have to work out
a way to keep her connected to the phone system in her world, but at the
very least it would give her a private place to store her files.

He painted a door on one wall, with a key already in the lock. He
removed the key and placed it in his pouch. If it had worked properly,
as he intended, then any door opened while the key was in it, would open
into this room, while this room's door, when the key was placed in,
would show a label for the place it would open to. It would be able to
open to any place that the key had been used, and she could switch
between them by turning the key.

To be sure it would work, he went to the front door of the House,
exited, closed it behind him, then slid the key into the lock. "This
might feel a little weird," he warned the House.

"Weirder than having a door painted into you? We'll see," retorted the
House-clone, and Xander turned the key, then grasped the knob and opened
the door. He was looking into Nabiki's new suite, just as he had
intended and hoped. He wondered what it looked like from inside the
House right now, and the House-clone obliged by shifting a glass eye
into position so he could see.

From the inside, the door was closed. Xander formed a quick clone to
check, and determined that the door was locked from the inside.

"That," Xander said to the House, "is bloody peculiar."

"You think so? Why don't you focus on my memory of how that felt to
open, and see how weird it really is."

Xander stepped through the door and closed it behind him. The key was
now residing in the lock of the door in Nabiki's suite, and checking
with the House confirmed that it was no longer present in the House's
front door.

He grasped the key and turned it one quick turn. A small brass nameplate
appeared on the center of the door, like a hotel room number, saying
"Xander's House, front door" in crisp black letters.

He turned the key again, and the nameplate vanished. He twisted the
handle, and found the door would not open, seeming to be locked. Well,
that was good, he supposed. He did not want her to accidentally find out
that opening the door without using the key or having it set to a known
location took one to a fantasy 'Nowhere-land' or something worse.

Happy to have a solution to the communication issue, and hopeful that
Nabiki would accept his offer when he visited her, he stopped in
thought. How much time had passed? Had he missed his appointment with
her?

He quickly formed a portal and stepped through it into Tokyo. Reaching
out with his mind, he found the closest of his clones and checked with
it.

Determining that it was still today, and that judging by the sun it was
heading towards mid-day, Xander went transparent and set about searching
for the school. He had visited it once already, but from a different
path, and he did not want to just portal there, as that might draw
attention. Better to portal to an unoccupied alley, as he had done, then
make his way invisibly to the school. If he could figure out where it
was, of course.

"I should have given her a trinket with a bit of me-juice . . . and boy,
did that sound wrong," Xander said. He pulled up above the buildings to
get a better view and see if he could spy it from the air.

Xander was drifting along, rising slowly higher as he peered about,
occasionally heating an appropriately shaped lens of air to use the
refraction as a magnifying glass, when he felt another summoning
latching on to him.

"Goddamnit!" he shouted, "What the hell is with all the summonings all
of a sudden?" Doing his best to resist the pull, he quickly formed a new
clone and gave it the key, to handle the meeting with Nabiki if he could
not make it back in time.

Then still resisting, he dropped from gas to liquid and pushed his 
fluid shape, changing the skin to scales, adding horns and a shrouding 
cloud of black smoke, laced with lines of floating fire to give it a 
hellish red glow. He bulked up to nine feet, giving himself a 
Hulk-like physique, and long silvery talons.

He wanted wings, but he had not had a chance to get at an anatomy book
to study and practice them to make them work, so he would have to go
without for now. Besides, he was out of time. The summoning had
steadily strengthened, and the moment he could not hold any longer, it
snapped him across the dimensions like a rubber band.

His resistance, particularly the fact that he had resisted until it had
overcome his resistance, had dramatically overpowered the summoning.
Where he would have appeared in a gentle puff of smoke as air was
shifted aside to allow for his presence, now he appeared in a
thunderclap that produced a considerable shockwave.

Even as he arrived, he realized that the summons had failed, the chains
shattering as his appearance had destroyed the chalk and blood circle
meant to hold him, though it was equally apparent that the triumphant
summoner, an older man with graying hair and a trim but six-inch long
beard, garbed in black robes and carrying a ram's skull topped staff,
laughing and capering madly, had not noticed.

Xander, realizing he could not understand the ecstatic man's rejoicing,
swallowed a draught that would allow him to understand the languages
spoken in this castle. For they were on a castle, though not of the sort
he was used to seeing in fantasy.

No simple block walls here, this was a castle wrought from giant 
stones, and they were standing, not on a parapet or the top of a 
tower, but merely atop the castle wall, a ten foot wide space like a 
sidewalk in the air, dropping steeply down to either side, but sloping 
out. This was a castle built to withstand siege weapons, if Xander had 
to guess.

He was no expert on castle construction, but it surely must have taken
great effort to build a wall that he guessed might be twenty feet wide
at the base and ten at the top, rising perhaps eighteen or twenty feet
up. He could imagine great boulders flung by catapults would shatter
against the walls like a ball of dried mud against a brick wall.

When the self-exalting caroling finally quieted, and the summoner turned
to him to give its orders, another sound caught Xander's ear, the sound
of a woman crying. Even as he looked about for the source, distant
shouts and cries of embattled and dying men rang in his ears, as did the
words of the summoner.

"These virgins are yours, great demon lord, and you may have your fill
of the peasants, once you bring me the heart of King Othar and that of
his heirs!"

Xander glanced down again to confirm that his constraining circle had
failed, and he was not bound to make a bargain with this man, then
looked in the direction the man had gestured. He saw a small group of
frightened girls, six or seven of them, all blonde, and probably fairly
pretty when they weren't afraid for their lives, dirty, bruised, with
eyes reddened from crying, clothes hanging in tatters. One only stood
straight, holding the smallest of the others in a comforting grip, her
posture firm and her eyes dry. Even in her eyes though he could see
fear, could see that she was only strong because she had someone to be
strong for.

He sympathized with her, knowing from experience that it was easier to
face up to bullies on behalf of Willow than in defense of himself. He
guessed that the little girl she was holding was maybe ten years old, if
that, and he found that the anger he held towards being summoned was a
candle compared to the bonfire of rage that burst to life in his heart.

It also burst to life in his summoner's heart, rather more literally,
the combustion rapid, forced and fed by his power, as every drop of
blood was instantly converted to flame. The fool managed one brief
scream, quickly cut off as his heart failed and his brain went right
past oxygen debt and into bankruptcy, his skin blackened, cracked, his
bones popped, and a moment later, the wind caught him and blew away a
cloud of ash.

Xander felt a brief moment of illness at the sight and knowledge of what
he had just done, as he turned to face the frightened women, but it
dried up and blew away on the wind, just as the idiot had done, at the
sight of the tiny frightened face of that little ten-year old blond girl.

All of them showed fright, of course, given his horrific visage and what
they had heard the summoner offer him, and it took him a moment to
identify the manacles around their ankles, bound by long chains to a
massive iron ring in the floor as the reason they were not fleeing for
their lives. Two of them were grasping and pulling unavailingly at their
chains, and one of them was murmuring what sounded like prayers, though
the names she was invoking were unfamiliar.

The wall shuddered briefly, and Xander strode to the side and looked
down. There was a wide ditch surrounding the castle, filled with
something dark that had small pools of flame floating on the surface
here and there.

There was a massive drawbridge, currently raised, and arrayed on the
other side of the moat was an army. Xander saw three large wooden
contraptions that a bit of mental rotation determined to be catapults,
an ordered array of tents in the back, more ordered arrays of men
further forward digging trenches, others operating the catapults, and
off to one side, a group of mounted men with plumed helms and spears.

A great cry went up when he was seen, and Xander wondered if the king
the summoner had mentioned was out there in this armed force, or if the
king was back in some other place, and his death would see the army
recalled.

A flight of arrows was launched from a group of crouching men Xander had
missed previously, and Xander noted with irritation, as he threw a mass
of air at them with a wave of his arm to send them off course, that they
would have hit the sacrifices the summoner had prepared for him.

What was the old idiot thinking, performing a summons out in the open in
the middle of a siege?

Xander glanced at the women, still staring at him with fearful gazes,
and tugging on their chains. He was about to shift his form into
something more human, when with a rush of clattering metal, several
armor clad men bounded up an inner stair and onto the wall from within
the castle.

They paled at the sight of him, he noticed, and he saw one of them
nudge the other and point to the fallen ram's head staff. He bared his
teeth threateningly at them, and watched bemused as one of them jabbed
the other in the shoulder. His improved hearing easily caught the
words as one hissed to the other, "What do we do now? King Higlath is
dead, Eglad is dead, and the demon is loosed?"

"What else can we do?" The lead man stated, then stepped forward and
fell heavily to one knee. "Long live the King!" he shouted. The other
men followed suit, and Xander groaned inwardly. This was the last thing
he needed.

Xander glanced back at the women, and found that they too had fallen to
their knees; both knees in this case.

For a brief instant, Xander considered ordering the soldiers to free the
women, but realized in time that this was an opportunity to impress on
them his power, to avoid having to argue later. Reaching out his hand in
what he hoped was an appropriately dramatic fashion, he placed a barrier
of cold air between the women and the iron ring, then formed a hand of
molten iron and having it simply mimic directly the motions of his own
fist, grasped the iron and with a momentary spike of heat to ensure the
iron ring was softened, tore it in half.

The women drew their chains to themselves as much as they could. They 
had to stop before reaching the end, as the chains had picked up some 
of that immense heat, though they were not glowing red hot as the torn 
iron ring was, but they did not flee, nor rise from their knees.

He lifted the man who had spoken to his feet with his power, to give him
a direct and personal demonstration of that power, then gestured beyond
the wall. "Whose army besieges this castle, and to what end?"

"'Tis the army of Othar, King of the Danes, Great Lord, and they seek the
tribute that King Higlaf was wont to pay when he lived, before the
Sorcerer Eglad took the castle."

Xander turned and strode back to the wall, even as another great stone
shattered against it. He looked down at the army, marveling as he
realized how great the power differential was between he and they.
Staring out at them, he thought of several different ways he could kill
them all. It would be all too easy, but they were only doing as their
king had commanded, and besides, they might all have wives and children
back home.

He did not want to have to kill them all, but he certainly did not want
to sit through a siege. Not that it would be any great hardship, as he
could easily bypass it with his portals, and produce food and water in
quantities to outlast any siege, but it would require attention to
ensure the castle was not overrun. Theoretically, he owed nothing to
these men, but they had offered their allegiance, and he had been
considering trying to get people to manage his home in case problems
cropped up with his current considerable dependence on fluid-clones.

Hopefully he would be able to see the attackers sent off with a few
demonstrations of might, without having to kill every one of them. 

Another flight of arrows lifted from the concealed archers, and he threw
them back with a wave of his hand.

He targeted each of the large siege engines, coating their lower
surfaces, where the closest people were at least five feet away, with
burning jellied gasoline, lighting them up along enough surface that
putting them out should be impossible in the time available, without
the risk from producing an explosion or such.

Black smoke soon began to rise from the engines, and he could see men
milling about, trying to douse the flames with sand and water. That gave
him an idea on how to drive them off without killing most of them as an
example to the others. He raised his massive arms dramatically, and sent
a screaming rush of wind against them, then added sand, mimicking a
desert storm.

He had never personally experienced such a storm, but he had heard
stories, and of course, he knew personally from visiting the beach how
miserable it could be when sand was everywhere and in everything. He
added a boost of heat to the wind. Not enough to melt the sand, but
enough to ensure that the men below would be sweating, to increase their
discomfort.

At any rate, it should be sufficent to deter an attack if it was
maintained, and a clone could maintain it for him. This constant
summoning had to be stopped, and he could not work on figuring it out
while he was here. He promptly formed an invisible body, put a chakra
clone into his semi-draconic form, and shifted over into the invisible
body.

He drifted quickly off the wall, leaving the clone to handle setting up
as a new ruler here. Passing through actively used chambers, Xander
located an out-of-the-way and, judging by the dust, much less frequently
used corridor, and filling the end of it with mist, joined it to his
house.

As before, the House quickly reached out, invisibly consuming the stone
and wood of the structure as it became one with the castle. Xander
engaged his fluid-sense, paying closer attention to what was actually
going on.

There was a surprisingly large and important difference between this
merger, and the previous interaction with his demon-plane hideout. That
hideout had not been used prior to his presence, and everything of
significance that had happened there he had been present for. This
building, on the other hand, had a long history of its own, and to his
amazement, he discovered that as the House, which he now realized was a
part of him to a degree he had not previously been aware of, above and
beyond the mere connection that it was inhabited by a clone of his,
merged with the substance of the castle, he was actually absorbing
memories of the events the castle had witnessed.

As the substance raced through the castle, some of that experience
culminated in a few individuals bursting into spontaneous flames and
dying a fiery death, as he witnessed them committing rape or murder in
the castle walls.

Shaking off the strangeness of it, though knowing that he would need to
set aside some time to absorb the knowledge this event had given him,
Xander strode quickly through the mist and into the House on his
demi-plane.

He pushed on quickly through the halls, ignoring the view as he rushed
to the connection ot the demon-plane. He understood now, why he was
being so continually and indiscriminately summoned. The House was part
of him, and that meant that the cartouches, carefully secured within his
demon-plane hideout, might as well be still hanging around his neck.

House had clearly picked up on his thoughts, and when he arrived in 
the hideout, the cartouches were exposed, the closet door opened and 
the closet clearly lit, waiting for him to grab them up. He quickly 
collected them and when the House made an opening in itself to expose 
the raw stone below, he fashioned a hole and dropped them in it, 
allowing the House to close over them. They were protected by the 
House still, but were no longer in contact, and with any luck, that 
would eliminate, or at least reduce, the continuing flood of 
summonings.

Sighing in relief, Xander considered what he had seen as the House
merged into the castle. Presumably due to his using chakra in its
initial construction, the spreading House-stuff had included a chakra
network, as well as what looked like a network of ropes of magic,
multiple flavors wound about and through each other like braided rope,
but branching about.

Curious and wanting to see what the effects and implications were,
Xander formed a new body, one that matched the House in substance,
including the multiple interwoven networks of stuff. He would need to
pick up his original body again later, but for the time being it would
be interesting to explore this.

---

Nabiki had rushed home the night before, intently focused on getting
home and getting changed before any of the numerous martial artists or
worse, the animal-cursed martial artists, got close enough to smell her.
She had wished as she was walking briskly, vibrantly aware of the
tightness of her nipples even now, and the moistness in her panties,
that she had managed the presence of mind to ask to use the shower at
Xander's . . . assuming, of course, that an inter-dimensional demon had
such things. To do that, however, would have required actually
acknowledging what had happened, and though she was sure the demon knew,
she had grasped tightly to the proffered fiction of her merely being
overwhelmed.

There was no decision to be made though, as far as she was concerned.
She had never been too concerned with ideas of good and evil, and
Xander's behavior had confirmed her feelings on that, as if a supposed
summoned demon could be so helpful and supportive, then demons obviously
were not evil incarnate, any more than there was an incarnate good.

She had faced several close calls, from spotting the black and white fur
of Genma's panda form only just in time to duck down a different street,
to seeing, through the crack of her door, Ranma pause and sniff the air
as he left his room, and lick his lips.

She made it though, and quickly changed. She could only hope that
Happosai, the lecherous panty-thief gnome of a martial arts master that
had trained Genma and her father, did not pick tonight to raid their
laundry.

Getting to sleep that night had been tough, not from pondering whether
to take the deal, she had already decided that there was no way she
could pass it up, but simply with imagining what she could do with those
kind of resources.

It was a bit odd that a demon would be willing to do so much for Kodachi
Kuno, someone that Nabiki was certain belonged in a psychiatric
hospital, and probably would be in one were it not for her being a
member of a family rich and powerful enough that their foibles were mere
eccentricities in the eyes of the authorities. Except that she was not a
Kuno any longer, and no longer protected.

What would Xander do, she wondered, if Kodachi was taken from him and
committed. She would need to head off that possibility, lest it give him
reason enough to cut his ties to this dimension. 

Of course, there was much more than merely the money to be made. Xander
was apparently quite powerful with magic, considering how he had bent
the magic of Jusenkyou to his will in giving Ranma control over it. Who
knew what else he could do.

Magic was not something Tendo Nabiki had ever had much time for.
Ranma's appearance and the demonstration of his curse had been an
eye-opener, to be sure, but since then, all the magic that Ranma had
encountered, at least that she had managed to observe, had been pretty
chaotic and uncontrollable, with unpredictable and often frightening
consequences, bar one, the little packets of dried Jusenkyou powder.
Xander's magic had been much more controlled, from his casual use of
inter-dimensional portals, to producing chocolate-covered diamonds, to
giving Ranma control over the curses, his magic seemed to do what he
wanted it to do.

She did not have any concrete ideas yet as to what she might want from
him aside from money and the prestige of running a large corporation,
but she was sure she could come up with some good ones given time.

Not the least was the possibility inherent in what he had done for
Ranma. She did not have any real interest in being a man, but it could
have advantages for certain sorts of negotiations, giving her an in that
other female executives would not have. Being a cat, like Shampoo, if
controlled and not subject to random changes, would be excellent for
infiltrating competitors and listening in unnoticed on their
negotiations or planning.

She was not at all sure she was ready to try any such thing, but the
mere ideas it spawned gave her sufficient reason to feel that she would
come up with situations where access to controlled and reliable magic
would be a significant advantage.

"I need to find out if he has any computers," she noted. If he did not,
it was not of great concern, as she would readily be able to purchase
them with the sort of funds she would have available. If he did, on the
other hand . . . she wondered just what sort of computing power he might
have, gathered perhaps, from some other dimension. Would they be more,
or less advanced than their own? If more, then getting a sample to a
company here in Tokyo might produce some patents, the sort of resource
she would need to play in the big leagues.

She was distracted with these and similar thoughts throughout the
morning and into the afternoon, though she was disciplined enough that
her teachers did not notice it. The girls in her group, the friends who
helped her run her bets and other money-making ventures, they noticed,
but they were familiar enough with her to recognize that she was brewing
up a big plot, the sort that usually benefited them all monetarily, so
they kept their cool and did not bug her.

She had not had much trouble explaining her absence from her afternoon
classes the day before, though she might have some difficulty later from
having both missed them and from not having been able to pay proper
attention in todays afternoon classes, but she was not particularly
worried about it. Xander had not asked for qualifications, or a college
degree, but he had said that she could take as much profit as she liked
as long as his needs were met.

Enough money would open any university's doors, she was sure. Finally
the last bell rang, freeing the students from their classes, and Nabiki
walked briskly through the halls, the students parting before her,
unwilling to face her retribution if they were to impede her.

A surge of both relief that she had not lost her chance, and unexpected
sexual arousal, went through her when she saw the form of the demon
standing by the door. Perhaps she was making a deal with the devil,
Nabiki mused, but afterall, that was only what everyone expected of her
anyway, right?

She remembered Ranma, her dark-haired jock of a little sister's 
fiance, mentioning that he had claimed not to be a demon, but merely 
someone thrown into the company of demons and forced to learn their 
tricks, and she had heard him spin the same tale at the Nekohanten, 
but she was not ready to buy into that. Lying was the province of 
demons, right? And Ranma was hopelessly easy to manipulate, another 
thing demons were supposed to be skilled at.

Xander opened a portal as she reached him, and once again she was
treated to an excellent meal, served with whatever she asked for, before
he got down to brass tacks.

The negotiations did not take long, especially when he provided her with
a significant pile of American dollars to get things rolling. He was
already offering her more than she could get anywhere else, so there was
no incentive for her to risk her plum job by pushing for more, assuming
she could have even thought of what that more could have been.

When he showed her the suite he had set up for her, gave her the key,
and explained how to use it, she discovered what that more was. He had
just handed her instantaneous travel to pretty nearly anywhere she
wanted to go, if she could make the trip the normal way the first time. 

It had not taken her more than a moment to grasp his explanation and
realize that the rooms he had given her were effectively a way station
between any two points on her world, perhaps even on other worlds. As
long as she could find a door that she could get to without it seeming
odd or attracting attention, she would only need to deal with public
transportation for getting to new places, or for going out with people
that could not be permitted to know about the demon and his magic.