First Summons


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.