He was in an open glade in the forest. There was no summoning circle as he had anticipated, having guessed that he had been summoned, far more quickly than he had ever expected. Nor was there a circle of chanting druids, nor an old man in magisterial robes, nor an ugly hag with a chicken-footed house.
Instead, there was a young child, maybe eleven or twelve, with a bright shock of red hair, wearing sandals over bandaged feet, black leggings under a grey skirt that went below the knees but was divided in front, a sort of tunic-like wrap over the torso, long enough that it ended about mid-thigh, bandage like wrapping about the arms and the torso where it was visible beneath the tunic, and bright green eyes in a youthful, unblemished face.
Xander could not quite tell, given the oddness of the clothing from his perspective, whether he was facing a girl or a boy, and he promptly spun about, looking to see if there was anyone else about. Seeing no-one, he assumed the child must be his summoner, though he had no idea how they had managed it, as stupefied as they appeared.
"You... " the redhead sputtered, staring wide-eyed at him, "You're not a lizard!"
He was certain the child was not speaking demonic, and Xander realized with a bit of dismay that the language draught he had consumed what seemed like ages ago must still be active, just as the healing was. Yet one more thing that would separate him from his friends if he ever made it back. Speaking of which . . . he attempted to form a water portal to his home, then tried to drink a draught that would bring him home. He sighed in resignation when neither worked. He had not really expected them to, knowing he would be bound to fulfill the terms of his summons first.
Focusing his attention on the child, Xander dropped to one knee to be on a level with the child, and grinned. "You're right, I am no lizard. What were you summoning a lizard for?"
The child shook its head furiously, stamping its foot and huffing. "You're supposed to be a lizard," it said dismissively, and made a sudden gesture with its hand. Again Xander felt the rush of blackness, and was back at the covered depression he had claimed.
He briefly considered taking a potion to allow him to take the form of a lizard, but rejected it. After the last several abilities he had given himself turned out to have stuck, Xander had no interest in getting stuck as a half-lizard man or something worse.
The world turned black again a moment later, and Xander again found himself in front of the same child, though the child looked far the worse for wear, pale and exhausted, and staring at him in obvious dismay.
The child collapsed to the ground, and Xander hurried forward, worried, and knelt next to the little redhead. To his great relief, the child was still breathing, and now closer, Xander guessed that she was a girl. He could still be wrong, of course, and he certainly was not going to check any closer.
A bit of a Esteban Diablo's Elixir of Rejuvenation later, and the girl was sitting up and regaining her color. She was glaring at him, her eyes angry but glistening with impending tears, her lower lip white from the grip of her teeth. She was breathing heavily, obviously trying to keep from sobbing, and Xander rocked back on his heels and settled down into a sitting position on the ground, about two feet from her.
"Y-you were supposed to be a lizard!" She said tightly, almost under her breath, and defiantly wiped her eyes.
"Why were you trying to summon a lizard?" Xander asked, in what he hoped was a conversational tone. He was afraid if he sounded too nice or sympathetic he would just set her off.
"Nobody thinks I can be a real ninja," she complained, crossing her arms and scowling furiously. "Stupid idiots. If I could make a new summons contract, that'd show them! Only the strongest ninjas have their own personal summons!"
"But you did summon me," Xander pointed out. He wondered what one of these contracts would entail. Being summoned, dismissed, and summoned again did not match the stories he had heard, so he had a feeling he had been summoned from further away across the dimensions than demons in his personal Hell usually were. Naamahalat and her friends had stories of being summoned by wizards and sorceresses using summoning circles, but he saw no summoning circle, and even if he had, those were one-shot affairs requiring a lot of careful setup, not something one could pull off at a whim.
Sure, doing it twice appeared to have badly exhausted the little girl, but still, she had done it with no summoning circle. However, as far as he could tell, merely by the contrast in how he felt compared to just moments before, at this point, he was not bound. Apparently, she could dismiss him, but as far as he could tell, there was nothing preventing him from leaving, or killing her, and if she kept trying and got anything from his plane other than himself, she would probably either die, or very soon wish she had died.
A quick test confirmed that he was able to form a portal home now, though the one he made was so small as to be unnoticeable. Either her first attempt had been her only chance to bind him to a task, and she had discarded that chance by releasing him without charging him with a task, nor providing any compensation; or she had simply lacked the strength the second time to properly complete the summoning.
Xander had expected to be summoned by the sort of person who would be trying to summon a demon, and had not figured it would be difficult to do the traditional demon thing of twisting the wording and meaning of their request around on them. Being summoned by a relative innocent who only wanted to prove herself, and knowing that if he failed to convince her to accept him and she kept trying, she would be doomed to torture and death, Xander was at a loss.
He really did not want to become a lizard, even if it would make her happy. He needed to test his powers first, to figure out why some of his changes were having permanent effects when he had not intended such, and how to avoid it.
"What's so great about lizards, anyway?"
The girl huffed again. "Toads, slugs, snakes, monkeys, and dogs are already taken. I need something that can handle water, so cats are out. Besides, lizards are much cooler! Some of them can run on water, they can climb trees and walk upside down on ceilings like ninja, shoot blood out of their eyes, they scare more people than almost anything but snakes and spiders, and snakes are taken and spiders are icky!"
Xander laughed at that, remembering Willow's similar reaction to spiders and many insects, but quickly quieted when he found himself once more the recipient of a virulent glare.
"Well, I'm no lizard, but I can handle water," Xander said quickly. He was about to continue and mention that he could help her gain respect, but stopped short. What guarantee did he have that anything he gave her would not have side-effects? He certainly did not want to make her inhuman, as he had done to himself. "I don't know about walking on a tree, but I can fly, and walk on water." He had not tried the latter, but he was confident that his powers over fluids would give him some way of accomplishing that.
If he could not risk giving her anything aside from minor healing potions, and did not want to take anything else himself, could he perhaps find something else whose health he did not mind risking? Xander looked around, and then reached out with his power, searching for a small creature. Finding one, he considered what he could do to it. A giant growth potion straight out of fantasy, or even Alice in Wonderland would do, but what about having it obey her? Could he make some kind of loyalty potion?
It was worth a try, since he was pretty confident that if he could not manage the loyalty bit, he would still be able to defend her. After all, he should be able to just give it a dose of reversal or shrinking potion.
Examining his find more closely he realized it was some sort of bug; certainly not the sort of thing she might appreciate. Reaching out with his senses, Xander searched for something a bit bigger. Unfortunately, he realized instead that they were fairly surrounded by man-sized patches of mixed liquids; in other words, there were people hidden in the trees all around.
"Sorry, kid," he said, "You've got visitors. Call me again when you're alone." With that, Xander went gaseous, focusing on being totally transparent, and allowed himself to very slowly drift upward, hoping that whoever or whatever was watching would believe that he had released himself back to his source plane, much as the child had done a moment ago.
A moment later a woman dropped to the ground beside the child, and struck forward into the empty air below him with a blade, about four feet long, mostly straight and single-edged, as far as he could tell.
"Sensei," the child complained, "what did you do that for? Now my summons went away, and I didn't get to make a contract yet."
The lady ignored the child, staring about intently in every direction before sighing, and standing straighter. "Ku-chan, whatever possessed you to try such a thing in the first place? You are far too young to be trying to create a summons. Besides, that is very dangerous! An uncontrolled summons is not much less dangerous than a tailed demon."
Five figures dressed all in black dropped into the clearing from the surrounding trees, and Xander tensed. The woman did not. Indeed, she appeared resigned.
"You are summoned to appear before the Council," one of them said, and in looking at the face when it spoke, Xander realized that they were all wearing stylized masks, exaggerated frowning faces with blood colored tears dripping from the eyes. He found it a little macabre, but followed along as the five masked figures escorted the woman and the little girl out of the forest, and into a walled village.
Though most of his attention was on following the group without being observed, Xander did notice that while there were powerlines, the houses looked to be made of bamboo and wood with tiled roofs. There were no cars, instead, he saw people walking, riding in horse or people drawn carts, or riding on wagons.
He saw quite a few people moving rapidly across the rooftops, leaping from house to house in a most unexpected fashion. Though some wore boots, he also saw many people wearing sandals and split-toe socks, and quite a few women were wearing long dresses belted around the middle, that looked Japanese to him, though he could not remember for sure what they were called.
That reminded him that the child had mentioned ninja, something that surprised him, for it seemed to mean that the translation effect would use foreign words that were absorbed into English, rather than translating it further.
He met a little resistance when they entered a building, but a quick draught allowed him to pass through whatever was blocking him. Inside he found a very somber group of old geezers, white-beards, white or grey hair, stern faces, and in the middle a fellow with a snow white beard and mustache and very flat, straight white hair, that all flowed down enough to nearly reach the floor. His beard was thin, and trimmed so that it came only from the middle of his face, leaving his cheeks clean shaven.
"Again you find yourself before us," the old guy intoned somberly, "are you not yet tired of this, Princess?"
Another ancient geezer, this one with white hair that was rather bushy, huge eyebrows, but no facial hair, chimed in. "It is most unseemly for the Princess to risk harm to her people. The shieldwatch say you have attempted a summoning without a contract!"
A murmur arose at this, as of consternation, and Xander realized that probably only a few of these old folks actually got reports, so at least some of them were hearing this for the first time.
"It is a good thing she has not the skills to succeed!" One old guy said, sitting bolt upright, "Imagine the destruction had she managed it! This is why we must put a stop to this pretense of being a ninja. It is unbecoming, and now it is becoming hazardous!"
Xander saw the child start to speak, only to be hushed by the lady standing with her.
Several geezers, including an old lady who took a moment to smile at the girl, took umbrage with the interrupting fellow, and the conversation flowed back and forth for a long minute, basically ignoring the girl they were meeting about, before the old guy, rubbing his chin and then sliding his hand down and throwing his beard and mustache to the side, clapped his hands.
Silence fell instantly, and all eyes turned to the old man. "This discussion is premature. We have not heard from her instructor. Let us do so now."
The lady stepped forward and bowed low. "It is true that Kushina attempted a summoning," she admitted. "From what I saw, I believe she succeeded, but it noticed us around her and vanished. Had she been alone, she might possibly have obtained a contract."
A storm of words erupted all around, before finally quieting as one of the old guys demanded a description. When they heard that the summons had looked human, even the old guy turned pale, and Xander wondered if perhaps they had reached as far as the demonic plane before. If their normal summons were animals, why would a human appearing summon frighten them so?
They certainly seemed to be taking it seriously, though, and he heard a number of them murmuring about death. He hoped they were not talking about killing the little girl. He was not about to stand for that, but if she were attacked, she might not be able to keep him connected to this plane.
He discreetly fed her a bit more of the Elixir, which put some more color in her cheeks. He was delighted at the apoplectic expression on the face of the guy who had just denigrated her ability to summon, but kept a careful eye on all of them, especially the five masked individuals, who still stood behind the girl, watching for any sign that they intended harm to the child.
Princess or not, irresponsible or not, they were not going to harm her while he was watching.
Luckily for them, and for him if it turned out they had skills he had not seen, which considering a child could apparently do an unaided summoning, was probably pretty likely, they did not take any physical action against her, only voted to require her to remain under her teacher's direct supervision for the next two weeks.
The girl was clearly depressed when she left the council building with her teacher. The lady guided her to a restaurant, and tried to cheer her up, but with little luck. Xander could understand the girl's frustration better now, as he had seen that her skills were being denigrated by people who apparently wished she would be a nice, pliable princess for them to pull out to placate crowds, and not go running around doing her own thing. Well, she clearly had the skills, given that she had managed to summon him, and he was pretty sure that he needed to get one of these contract things done with her, to avoid the chance that she might try summoning again and end up getting someone else from his current home.
There were basically no good outcomes he could see for her if she did manage to get anyone else from there. The stories he had heard of Naamahalat's summonings made it pretty clear that it was considered standard behavior to slaughter out of hand a summoner who did not have a warding circle strong enough to prevent that before a deal could be struck, and that even then the wording of that deal would be twisted as far as possible to the detriment of the summoner, for the amusement of the demons.
So Xander slipped away, back into the forest, and summoned a scroll in a scrollcase as the pig in a pig-in-the-blanket. While he slowly munched on the tasty bread, he drew out the scroll, and producing a wide-nibbed pen, he was just about to start writing out a contract, though he had no idea yet what the terms ought to be, when he groaned aloud. Not only did he not know the terms, he did not even know what language these people used for writing!
Now what?
After considering this for a bit, Xander decided to use the demonic language used in his notes to and from Naamahalat. It was easier to sound portentous and solemn in it, and it might at least be related to the language used by their usual summons. Surely they would not expect a summoned being to understand their writing system to begin with.
Now he realized another benefit of his abilities. Not only could he readily produce a good quality ink that would last without fading, when he made mistakes, or just did not like the look of a character, he could move the ink within the paper, or draw it out completely.
He could also alter the color of the ink even after it had been set down, and after a bit, Xander stopped trying to write with the calligraphic style pen, which he really had no idea how to do anyway, and just tweaked the ink on the paper until it looked the way he recalled calligraphy looking from his childhood - though of course the characters and the language were both quite different.
In the end the contract as he laid it out was pretty simple, stating in the fanciest pseudo-legalese he could conjure up, that the undersigned could call on him for a sacrifice of blood or a sweet, dessert, or favorite food, but whether he then remained and satisfied their request was up to his judgment. Basically it was a 'permission to make a request' form; the sacrifice notation was something Naamahalat's stories made clear was non-negotiable, there simply had to be some sort of sacrifice. But it could be a sacrifice chosen to be appealing to the summoned being--for example, he had learned that some demons were capable of refusing any summons that did not include the blood of a certain number of innocents, or a direct and personal sacrifice from the caster, or a live virgin, and so forth.
The blood was listed sort of pro forma, as from what he understood, there was probably a blood sacrifice of some sort involved in almost any summoning, even if it was just blood added to the chalk or ink used to draw the circles, while the sweet was added because it was what he would actually prefer.
He was not sure what kind of sweets they had here, but everything new he managed to try as a result of this would be fodder for his later food summonings himself, so he was eager to find out.
Satisfied with his scroll, Xander went gaseous again, and drifted off in search of his summoner. As he had anticipated, he was readily able to pick her out of the crowd of fluid signatures, as she was the only one who was tied to him; the summoning had linked them, and it felt almost like a thread that he could pick up and pull on, or follow, to find her.
He came to what appeared to be an apartment, and drifted in through a tiny gap in a window's edging. He found the girl sitting, pouting by herself in a room that was surprisingly free of childish toys. He wondered if it was her room, or a guest room since she had been remanded to the direct supervision of her teacher.
Either way, she was alone at the moment, so Xander drifted down to appear before her, and returned to solidity, bringing his finger up to her mouth before she could exclaim in her surprise. He focused his intent, trying to form a shell of unmoving air around them, that would hold firm against any vibrations from inside, shutting off the sound to the rest of the apartment.
"You didn't go back," she whispered, tears glinting in her eyes. "I thought you left me."
Xander shook his head. "I am not a lizard," he told her, "but I was summoned by you." He held up the scroll, and rolled it out. "If you wish to contract with me, you need to sign this."
She stared at the scroll for a minute, before glaring at him. "I can't read this!" she hissed.
"Of course not," Xander replied. "This is not your language, but the language of the place from which you summoned me. This is what it says." He read her the scroll quietly, translating it into her language.
"Why should I sign this, when I wanted a lizard?" She eyed him, a hint of a smile quirking her lips. He thought she was just testing him, that she actually wanted to sign, just to prove she could be a summoner and a strong ninja, but wanted to make sure he had something to offer first.
Xander had spent quite a while thinking about this. He had seen a number of things that made him believe that this place had a lot in common with the Orient of his world. He had an idea that he could pass himself off as a sort of spirit of water, a genie of the water instead of a lamp or ring. It fit well with his powers, would hopefully not be too far from their experience, and would explain his more human appearance. But he did not want to come out and say it, lest they not actually have any legends of such. Rather, he intended to simply focus his behavior to match up with such legends, should they happen to have them.
So he held up his hand and formed a sphere of swirling water over it. "I can do many things," he said. Vanishing the sphere, he produced a sugar flower and handed it to her. She took it curiously, and was surprised when a slight pressure to a petal caused it to break.
"What is this?" she asked. "I mean, what is it made of?"
"Taste it," Xander told her. "I bet you'll like it." He grinned as she popped it in her mouth, and smiled a wide smile, before snapping off the rest of the petal and sticking it her mouth as well.
"Wow," she murmured.
"Do you remember how tired you were after summoning me twice in a row?" he asked her.
She looked up at him, sucking her bottom lip in and chewing on it thoughtfully. "You did something," she said, "I remember swallowing something, and then I wasn't so tired."
"That's right," he answered her. "I can heal you, or those you ask me to. I can protect you if you are attacked. I can fly, and take you with me, if you need to travel a great distance swiftly. I can feed you when you are in need, I can provide water in the deepest desert, air to breathe in the depths of the ocean, fire to warm you in the coldest winter, or cold air to cool you on the hottest of days."
Xander was trying to think of other things he could do for her that he could tie in to a genie persona, but was not really sure what she was looking for. Most of all he wanted her to sign, wanted her protected from the risk of summoning a different creature from his plane, and dying in torment.
He did not even know her, but in watching her courage in facing the council, her despair at their treatment of her, and her willingness to take risks in summoning him, he did not want to see harm come to her.
What else could he offer? He did not want to give her any potions aside from healing. His transformative potions had already had mixed results with himself, he had no intention of setting her forever apart from her species.
Her eyes had widened during his little litany, especially when he offered to take her flying, but she had still made no move to sign his contract.
"And . . . and what do you want from me?" she asked, her bottom lip starting to quiver.
"I like to try new things," Xander told her, wondering if they had encountered others from his plane, ones that perhaps made deals for souls or lives. "So I want you to summon me when you go to new places, or taste new foods." He handed her a chocolate kiss. "I like to taste new sweets and good food," he continued, motioning for her to taste it, "for then I can make my own."
She nodded shakily then. "I . . . I will sign," she said. "I want to be a summoner."
He looked around the room, and then moved over to a small writing desk that was sitting against one wall. There was an ink well there, and several sticks that looked rather like paintbrushes. Finding paper sitting under a stone weight, he drew out a sheet, and calling her over, had her write her name on it.
"I have to sign in blood, don't I," she asked, looking up at him. Xander nodded. It did not particularly matter to him, but it might have more force that way, he supposed, and help protect her from the other demons. He had her prick her finger and smear her blood on the paper without trying to write, however, and then simply moved her blood about in the paper to match her signature. Rolling up the scroll and sliding it into the scrollcase, he slipped it into his pouch, enjoying her expression of disbelief, as the foot long scroll case slid into a maybe four-inch deep pouch without any sign of strain.
"Wow," she murmured again. Grinning, Xander released the sound deadening shell.
"Kushina-chan?" A questioning voice sounded from beyond the door, and Xander quickly went transparent and airy. Kushina's eyes popped open, and she jumped up and ran to the door, sliding it open.
"Sorry," she said rapidly, "I wasn't paying attention."
The lady from before was standing there looking down at her with a worried smile. "Come on, Kushina-chan, it is time for training. You'll never become a ninja by skipping training."
The girl frowned. "They'll never pass me anyway, you know that," she grumped, even as she hurried to gather things together. Xander saw her picking up several pointy implements with what looked like rings on the end, and sliding them into slots on a belt she quickly wrapped around her waist, before hurrying out the door.
Xander followed along behind, curious about the sort of training a young ninja-to-be would receive. The pair passed quickly through the streets to an area that even Xander could recognize as a training ground, with several different types of targets at one end, and a number of rope wrapped posts, and several posts with perpendicular branches sticking out, that Xander remembered seeing in badly dubbed kung fu flicks in the theater.
There were quite a few children gathering in the largest open area, and several adults standing around. After delivering Kushina, the woman moved to a low wall at one end of the training ground and sat. Xander stuck close to the girl, somewhat surprised that the person he had heard referred to as her teacher was not apparently her instructor for this activity.
That distinction appeared to belong to the guy barking out instructions, lining them up in rows and taking them through a series of activities that looked basically like any martial arts film Xander had seen, with everyone matching his moves.
The biggest difference from the films in Xander's memories was that instead of everyone wearing the same style of clothing, be it a gi or some other form of uniform, everyone was wearing apparently whatever they wanted.
The only consistency was an absence of bulky, heavy clothing. There were some in flowing, robe-like garments, others in billowing pants and tops, others in tighter clothing of various sorts, some in somber single-color schemes, and others wearing bright primary colors.
Xander found this part rather boring, and eventually drifted over to listen to the conversation happening around Kushina's teacher. He finally learned her name when she was greeted as Mizuna by one of the men walking over to join the group clustered by the small wall.
They seemed to be watching and commenting quietly on the performance of the various children, and discussing various rumours about them, including the rumours about Kushina's summoning.
When Mizuna confirmed to them that Kushina had summoned an apparent human, Xander again heard comments about death, and this time about gods as well. Or maybe the two went together, and it was a death god?
Nothing about genies or the like was mentioned, and Xander wondered if he was barking up the wrong tree with that. If the other human-like summoning they had apparently encountered stories of had been from his current home, he could see how it could seem to be an agent or even god of death. Demons, at least the ones he had seen and fought, would keep fighting even with limbs destroyed, and their eyes torn out, so to a people who did not appear to even have guns, he supposed they could kill quite a group before being taken down. If they recovered at the same rate here as they did there, then that would be worse still.
If, as he suspected, their expressed desire for flesh and souls was because they could somehow gain strength or healing from consuming others, then that would make such a summons even more unstoppable, and since summonings here apparently involved no protections until the negotiations were over, and demons preferred to kill their summoner if they could, and then wreak havoc until they were themselves destroyed and thus returned to their plane of origin, such a summons could well have left a fearful legend behind.
The mere fact of her apparent success at getting anything from a summons at all appeared to be garnering Kushina quite a bit more respect from the gathered people, which pleased Xander.
One guy did not seem to be buying the story, however, and was quickly getting on Mizuna's nerves, and even more so on Xander's, with his accusations that Mizuna was making up the story to make her protege seem less of a pampered loser.
Mizuna appeared to be valiantly holding on to her temper, though she was clearly unhappy about it, but Xander had no reason to hold back. Fed up with the garbage spewing out of the unpleasant fellow's mouth, Xander decided he might as well spew something out of a different orifice, he reached out and introduced a fluid directly into the guy's stomach that should give him diarrhea, then, even as the guy stopped mid-word with an alarmed look on his face, Xander decided that was not quite enough punishment.
So he located the urine in the fellow's bladder and changed it to diluted Tabasco sauce. A moment later the guy was running away screaming his head off, Mizuna was grinning and laughing, and Xander was standing there wondering why he had been so focused on superheros and superpowers that he had completely missed the ultimate prank potential his powers had. After all the pranks he and Jesse had pulled on the jocks and other social snobs at school, he could not believe that he had not even thought of the advantages in being able to create an instant oil slick in a school hallway, and vanish it the instant its work was done, or spray someone's locker with skunk juice without needing to be anywhere near the scene of the crime.
Oh, but he was going to have such fun with this if he . . ., no, when he made it back to Sunnydale.
A sudden spate of synchronized shivers were experienced in his home dimension, but the coincidence went unnoticed and unremarked.
Xander turned his attention back to the field of students just in time to see a smirking boy toss a handful of what looked like corn or some other hard seed at the ground beneath Kushina's feet as she was performing a kick.
Xander sent a quick, strong ground-level breeze to sweep the kernels out of her path. The two boys behind her went down, and a jerk on the fluids in the smirking boy's supporting leg took him tumbling down with them.
The smirking boy angrily denounced Kushina as the cause, even though she was a row ahead of them and had not even been looking at them at the time, but Xander had discovered that there was enough fluid in the little seeds for him to get a grip on them, he had slipped several of them back into the smirking boy's pocket just in time for the exasperated teacher to force them to all turn out their pockets.
Xander was smiling uncontrollably as he watched the bully sent to sit out the next exercises. How often in school had he wished the bullies would get their comeuppance, and now he could engineer just that. Life, Xander decided, was good.
Unfortunately for Xander, his cheerful gloating distracted him from the bully at just the wrong moment, for the angered young man had picked up a rock, and with considerable skill, had flung it into the crowd and caught Kushina right on the skull with it. While his punishment was swift, her sudden loss of consciousness found Xander dumped back into his little hideout in hell.
Sucking down the soul of your summoner could let a demon free to wander a mortal plane until it was defeated, but without that or some other anchor, taking out the summoner was a viable way of taking out the summoned demon as well.
Xander had no idea what had happened, of course, and supposed that Kushina had simply released him. He knew she would summon him again when she had a need, and since he was confident that the contract would hold and allow her to reach him, he removed and cached his cartouches. If he knew which particular one had made him seem like a lizard to her summons, he would keep it on, but he did not, so he removed them all.
He would be interested in being summoned to other worlds eventually, but for the moment, he wanted to focus on improving his skills, and learning about this new summons world.
He had not managed to get anything new to eat, but he was looking forward to learning what sort of sweets and treats they had on this world. That reminded him of his bag, and he checked it. Most of the treats were still there, but two of Naamahalat's favorites were gone. As he refilled the pouch, he thought of the mirror he had seen in Kushina's room.
The demons were still using polished brass, and he wondered what Naamahalat would have thought of such a mirror. A small smile ran across his lips, and Xander nodded. A moment later, he had a small hand mirror of silvered glass in a gold frame with a nicely polished wooden handle, wrapped, of course, in sugar-paper. After quickly unwrapping it, he slid it into the pouch, then wrote out a quick note to Naamahalat and slid it in.
He still was not ready emotionally to face whatever she might have written him, so he very deliberately did not check for a note from her.
Instead, he turned his attention to playing more with his ability to affect the air. He had used a cannonball, effectively, to create a distraction, as well as over-pressuring his spheres until they exploded, but did he really need that?
Creating complex sounds was hard, but shockwaves should be easy enough. Focusing on a spot in the air, he doubled the quantity of air in that spot, holding it in place, then released it. It produced a loud whoosh as the air quickly expanded, but it was quieter, and faded more quickly than he expected.
He tried again, steadily increasing the pressure with each try, but continued to fail to get the results he wanted. Finally, he switched his technique, and took a large sphere and vanished all the air in it, while preventing air from entering it. When he removed his control, he got a very satisfying crack. Trying several different styles, he found that a long slender shaft of air produced a sharper crack, and if he made more of a cone, so that the air filled the space faster towards one end than the other, he got a rolling crack more akin to the sound of thunder.
In fact, when he thought about it, he wondered if perhaps that was exactly the sound he was making? Perhaps thunder was the air collapsing back into the space where the lightning had forced it out?
He promptly produced a small spiral bound notebook and a nice roller ball pen, and removing the edible wrapper, turned to the first page. "Questions for Willow," he wrote as the title, then below that wrote down his musing on the cause of thunder, then slipped the book and pen into his pouch.
Then he returned to his experimentation. Producing a cloud of super-heated hydrogen was good for a bang that hurt his ears to the point he could feel blood flowing from them, though thankfully his healing quickly restored his hearing.
Remembering the testing he had done on the torches, ages ago now it seemed, Xander tried to produce a Zippo in a chocolate box, but found it was a bit too complex, or he did not understand it completely, because while it looked perfect, the top simply would not open at all.
Giving up on that, he tried to directly produce a flame. When that failed, he shifted his intent to burning mix of oxygen and acetylene. This actually worked, producing a long tongue of flame in the air in front of him. As he had seen his uncle do, when working on cars, he adjusted the balance of oxygen and acetylene, moving back and forth from a slow, orange flame that produced a fair bit of smoke, to a bright blue flame with the characteristic sound of rushing air.
Moments later he released the flame, and promptly focused on cooling the air. Being inside with little air movement, it had quickly become uncomfortable hot when he increased the size of the flame by doubling the gas output without adjusting the mix. Fortunately, his power was well able to cool the chamber again.
He wanted to go out of the chamber and play with a larger supply of gas, as he had suddenly remembered watching on television as the Space Shuttle launched itself skyward. It had been propelled, as far as he could remember, by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Oh, well, he had paid enough attention, as most American boys did at some point in their childhoods if they grew up while the Shuttles were flying, that the two white rockets were Solid-Rocket-Boosters, and he had no idea what was in them, but he was pretty sure that the main engine was hydrogen and oxygen.
And he could produce both, where-ever he wanted, in massive quantities, on fire. Unless he was very much mistaken, that meant that he could basically do the equivalent of picking up the shuttle, pointing it at a target, and firing it like a gun . . . and from what he remembered of watching the shuttle launches, that was one heck of a blast.
He could be Rocketman, if he wanted to be.
Xander spent nearly half an hour after that, perfecting the amount of butane, which he finally recalled was the fuel used in a Zippo, he needed to release to 'flick' his thumb like a lighter. Yeah, that was definitely cool. He could readily picture the jealousy on Jesse's face when he saw that move.
Much cooler than playing the flugelhorn.
Propane and natural gas both produced a familiar flame, like that of a gas stove. Gasoline, on the other hand, reminded him that fluids had an advantage that gases did not. You could readily soak someone in gasoline, for example, and then set it on fire afterward, or threaten them with fire.
Of course, threats would only work if they knew it was gasoline, so it was not a lot of use against the demons, since he did not really have the stomach to watch a demon burn to death.
Still, it could be very threatening, and when he realized that he could easily produce the jellied gasoline his uncle told war stories off, he knew that he could duplicate the effects of a WWII flamethrower, without either the weight of the backpack, or the risk of an explosion. While he did not think he could actually use such a weapon on demons, it could certainly be used to attack their morale.
Xander did only a quick test of this, verifying that a stream of burning jellied gasoline could not only shoot a great distance, but would rebound off of stone, and leave a burning pool on the ground and a small burning patch on the stone it hit. Banishing the gasoline and recooling the air, Xander found himself grinning uncontrollably.
He had never been a vandal, nor an arsonist, but he had held a fascination with fire even since he first got to see a fire truck, when Willow set the neighbors' house on fire for him. Well, that is what he believed at the time, anyway.
A brief experiment with forming a chainsaw of jellied gasoline was quickly abandoned. It was simply too confusing trying to determine the right amount of gasoline to feed in, as it was used up.
Several experiments later, a sound that had been slowly getting louder finally reached the point where Xander actually noticed it. He promptly sent up an eye to have a look.
There was a considerable cloud of dust rising at a moderate distance, and as he shifted his eye across the intervening gap, Xander shifted lenses and adjusted the gap to zoom in on the base of the cloud.
Interestingly, the cloud was apparently caused by something of a running battle. He had understood most battles here to be stand-up affairs, where the two groups would line up, then slam into each other. This one, however, was more of a chase and apparently involved at least one magic user, for he could see bright bolts of light that were sending up great gouts of flame and smoke, and contributing to the kicking up of dust.