A Fight and a Half


A quick scan of the battle revealed no-one he knew or had previously
encountered, so Xander settled in to watch and learn. 

He was a little surprised to see that there were apparently no flyers in
the area, but then, they did seem to be reserved for strategic uses. He
had not observed any equivalent to an aerial bombardment during his
watching, and he supposed that a flyer who got low enough to target the
enemy was also within range of attack themselves, since he had not seen
any equivalent of a telescope or binoculars in use.

Spinning the glass eye around to check the distance and direction to his
hideout, he both determined that they would, if they did not change
course, pass by without coming close enough to be likely to notice
anything suspicious, and that he was controlling the eye at a fair bit
greater distance than he had done up til now.

Returning to a closer examination of the fighting demons, Xander noted
that they were all wearing similar colors. He was not sure what part of
a demon's outfit indicated their allegiances, or indeed if they had a
concept of a badge or marker of allegiance at all, but it was curious,
and he wondered if the fleeing group were spies that were caught out, or
maybe deserters.

The fleeing group were riding what looked to him like furry dinosaurs.
It was hard to be sure what they were covered in, given the speed of
their movements. The pursuers were riding in open backed chariots,
pulled by creatures that looked almost like horses, except that they had
six limbs instead of four.

If he had to guess, he would say the dinosaurs had the edge in speed,
but it could not have been by much, given the short lead they had.
Focusing on the bright, actinic blue bolts, he managed to track them
back to a smaller demon that was actually riding in some sort of harness
on a larger demon that was driving a chariot.

There were seven chariots chasing three riders, which seemed unfair,
especially since two of the chariot riders were carrying passengers. The
one that was not carrying the mage had an achingly beautiful demoness,
almost perfectly human aside from two curling horns rising through her
flowing blond hair.

So Xander picked two of the other chariots, driven by demons that were
male and otherwise uninteresting, just generic warrior types, intending
to knock them out of the chase. Unfortunately, he soon realized that as
soon as he turned his focus to accomplishing something else, and away
from having his eye keep pace with the swift moving group, he lost sight
of them, making it impossible to accomplish his goal.

He briefly considered making some attempt to give himself a better
ability to multi-task, but he really was not comfortable making
changes to himself, especially after having some of those changes
stick around far longer than he had ever intended.

Maybe the problem was trying to split his attention between two
distant places?

Focusing on the eye and getting it back in line with the chariot's
motion, this time Xander did not try to summon his blades in line with
the axles, wheels, nor the chariot tongue, as he had previously
attempted. Instead, he tried to form a sphere of compressed,
super-heated air below the eye, as if he were standing there and
forming it in his hands.

A moment later he thrust it forward, barely concentrating on holding
it together, and not thinking at all on the path it would take. As he
anticipated, willing it to hold together did not take the same level
of concentration, and even better, it did become visible in his glass
eye, not his normal eyes, so his attempt to form it relative to the
eye succeeded.

The blast when he released the hold he had on the ball's shape was not
particularly impressive; there was a sharp crack of air, which seemed
to startle the animals, but not enough to spook them, and it kicked up
a fair cloud of dust, but it had been off target. His timing and the
speed of the shot had not matched well enough, and the impact had been
behind and to the left of the group.

Kicking the eye back into gear, Xander began to pepper them with
shots, trying to improve his aim, timing, and at the same time
adjusting the mix and pressure on the ball for effect.

After several tries, he discovered he could get a more impressive
explosion by packing the ball with gasoline vapor, in gaseous form
solely due to its heat, but under enough pressure that there was
basically no available oxygen in the sphere to ignite. When the shape
was released as it reached a few feet from the ground - he had to
mentally release the sphere so this part was not terribly precise -
the pressure sent it rushing rapidly outward, mixing with the oxygen,
and since the heat it started with was sufficiently high, it would
auto-ignite once it reached a combustible fuel-air mixture.

The first successful gasoline-air blast finally sent the horse like
creatures rearing and screaming, and due to its greater proximity,
bowled the saurian mounts over completely.

Having achieved his goal of shifting matters from a lengthy chase that
might well escape his range with nothing to show for it to a pitched
battle, though he had not managed to even up the numbers, Xander
settled in to watch.

The magical firing appeared to have taken its toll on the little demon
piggybacking on one of the charioteers, but he had enough left to
shoot a blast that sent the three dino-riders sprawling.

They were quickly back to their feet, and having lost the opportunity
of flight, moved immediately to attack.

Xander rapidly became enthralled. This was miles better than watching
an action movie, given that he could readily shift his eye to any
position to observe the action.

Two of the chariot drivers focused for a bit on examining the skies,
and he presumed they were looking for the source of the explosions
that had brought the chase to a halt, but as he expected, looking for
a tiny glass sphere in the sky was a hopeless proposition, and they
eventually turned their attention back to the ground conflict.

The demons were more tactical than he had expected, and apparently had
both magic, and magical items in their arsenal. The stunning demoness
had been instantly shielded by two of the larger males, and under
their cover had slipped backwards until she was away from the melee
and could cast into it.

Meanwhile the charioteers had engaged the dino-riders, one of whom
Xander realized was also female, though rather than the gorgeous
flowing locks of the sorceress demon peppering them with bolts of
fire, frost, and sizzling darkness, she had pencil thick tendrils on
her head, looking almost like extruded clay hair from a child's toy.

She was fighting with a pair of blades on short sticks, while her two
male companions were wielding long swords. The charioteers had drawn
similar swords, and one of them was wielding a whip.

The small backpack-demon had given up firing his blue blasts, and was
instead wielding a magical shield, a plane of force that he controlled
with a small wand, both blocking sword blows that came near him, and
using it to bash the opposing fighters about.

To Xander's surprise, it was the little guy who bought the farm first,
in spite of his magical shield. He failed to pay attention when the
female slipped past them in the midst of her fight. Xander barely saw
what happened, and wished at that point for instant replay and a
better camera angle, maybe even a slow-motion replay. He was almost
sure that somehow her hair, if it could be called that, had whipped
out and struck the little demon, and he had slumped over.

Without the protection of his shield, the fighter carrying him was the
next to fall, pierced through by a sword. Unfortunately, extracting
that sword took just too long, and the first of the dino-riders fell,
taking a bolt of darkness from the blonde through the chest, dropping
him instantly.

Xander expected things to rapidly shift against the dino-riders at
this point, but he had not anticipated the intervention of the
dinosaurs themselves. Now that they were stopped and his eye was
closer, he could see that what he thought was fur was in fact short,
downy feathers. They did not have sharp beaks, however, but a jaw of
sharp teeth. Given the sameness of the teeth from front to back, he
thought they looked rather like saws as a second charioteer went down
to their teeth and claws.

The recovery and entry into the melee of the predatory dinosaurs
quickly turned the tide. Much to Xander's surprise, the charioteers
and dinos spent themselves against each other, along with the other
male dino-rider, leaving the sorceress and clay-haired demoness facing
one other.

Xander only really had eyes for the two pairs of heaving breasts at
that point, as they were both exhausted and breathing heavily. His
only regret, as a blast from the blonde disarmed the other, and she
leapt on the blonde, striking with fists and claws, was that he did
not have a videocamera.

When clothing started to get torn, Xander felt himself hardening as he
saw flashes of skin. The two demonesses were rolling on the ground
now, the upper hand changing rapidly. From what he could see, several
hidden knives had already been pulled, and then been disarmed and
flung from the melee without achieving their purpose, and apparently
the blonde's magic was not able to be pulled out in this sort of
melee.

A visible jolt ran through both of the women, and the tone of the
fight immediately changed. It took Xander a moment to realize what had
happened, as it was almost too good to be true.

Just as at any cat-fight once boys had hit puberty, they would
secretly be hoping that it progressed beyond fighting and into sex,
Xander was staring at a teenage boy's wet dream. He guessed that the
drool-inducing blonde was probably the source, probably some form of
lust or sex demon, with an aura much like that of Naamahalat, and in
her extreme provocation, she had released her aura instinctively.

There, in the middle of a blood-soaked battlefield, the two demonesses
were now engaged in a sex-battle, each attempting to dominate the
other, caressing, sucking, nipping, fingering, and more than a bit of
hair-tugging, nipple-twisting, slapping, and Xander was panting,
watching with disbelieving lust.

Though he had so recently experienced what he guessed was more than a
year of devoted slavery, that had not in the least excluded any form
of sexual debauchery he was aware of, he was still a teenager, and
still hit hard by the absolute thrill of watching two hot girls
fucking each other into submission.

Though he was bemoaning the lack of a camera or video-camera, Xander
was enthralled by what he was watching, and was very quickly
exceedingly hard. "Am I in Hell? Or Heaven?" Xander mused to himself.
He was about to disrobe, and start stroking himself, already thinking
about what sort of oil or lubricant he wanted to summon, when an image
of the little ninja girl flitted through his head, throwing a bucket
of cold water on his libido. "Crud, definitely Hell."

He had no idea yet how to resist a summons, or if it was even
possible, and the idea of being summoned in the midst of his
masturbation was horrifying. Unnoticed in the distance the eye fell
from the sky, and the sexual combat vanished from his mind's eye.

"I need something to write on," Xander muttered, looking about his
retreat and thinking. "Oh, right," he said, reaching into his pouch
and pulling out the notebook he had made earlier. Flipping to a new
page, he titled it 'Steps'.

'1. Find a way to control summoning.'

'2. Get there without summoning.'

'3. Find a way home.'

Putting the book away, Xander stared at his hands for a minute, then
reached out and tried to find the glass eye again. To his surprise, he
was not able to locate it, and immediately he recognized this as
worthy of testing.

For the next several hours, Xander sent out his glass eyes, dropping
them at different distances, in opposite directions. After dropping
the first two, he turned back and tried to find the first, and
continued in this fashion, switching from one to the other, until he
found the limits of the range at which he could readily re-locate his
eyes. Then he started experimenting on ways to make them more readily
locatable.

After all, he had controlled them at a considerably greater distance
than the more limited range he had for finding them again. Varying the
liquid did not help very much, although using an unusual liquid not
otherwise found in the area did make them easier to pick up.

It was a big difference though - within his range he could find them
almost instantly, as if he could just reach out and touch them, like a
pen he had placed just out of sight, and then grabbed again without
looking. Beyond that range, however, it was like groping blindly in
the darkness, feeling each thing he came across and trying to identify
it. Not only did he have to identify it by feel, he also had to hope
he came across it, since he could not even attempt to identify it
until he could sense it.

Eventually, he discovered that if he himself became fluid, and slipped
just a drop of himself into the sphere, not only did he not notice any
injury or discomfort when he returned to solidity, he could sense the
eye without difficulty as far as he tested it.

He sent one eye all the way to the mountain range, and even after
turning his attention away, he was able to pick it back up instantly,
and effortlessly.

Curious about what other advantages his fluid forms might offer,
Xander went completely liquid, then played with cycling his hand
through different liquids. As he had half expected, while when he went
fully liquid he just sort of turned into a non-descript amorphous
liquid, he was able to change his hand to any sort of liquid he
thought up, and it retained its connection and continuity to himself,
even when he made it half oil and half water.

He tried and succeeded in collapsing into a pool, and then from the 
pool's flat surface, sticking whatever part of himself he wanted up 
and out of it.

Careful observation during this bit of play revealed that much as a
normal person is continually shedding dead skin cells, Xander splashed
when he collapsed into a pool, and while some of the drops were part
of him, and slid back to rejoin, moisture was left behind to dry that
was not part of him, or no longer part of him, he was not quite sure
which.

He also discovered that contrary to his initial expectations, he could
actually pick up solid objects, and not with a blast of high-pressure
water, but simply by holding them in his hands. Poking at one hand
with the other, Xander discovered that depending on his concentration
and intent, he could either touch himself just as if he was wholly
solid, or he could literally join his hands, passing one through the
other as if he were wearing a jacket and had slid both hands into the
opposite sleeves.

This, combined with the fact that he could put part of himself
elsewhere without injury, and his ability to control water, sparked an
idea in his head that might completely obsolete his plans for
hydraulic arms and manipulators for his remote eyes.

Drawing up a smooth sphere of himself and hovering it between his
outstretched hands, Xander watched as it separated completely from
him, flew some distance away, then with a bit of concentration, formed
into a hand.

He had to temporarily drop control of one of his hands to get his mind
to accept the remote hand as a hand, but once he did so, he was able
to use the remote hand to pick things up and throw them, to scrape one
rock against another like a piece of chalk, and then he reabsorbed 
the hand with no trouble.

That left only one significant test left. If he had a remote eye
somewhere, could he somehow, maybe through the bit of him in it and
his mutant regeneration, or through some other means, generate the
fluid to form a hand?

A quick test later, and he discovered that in fact all it took was a
moment's focused concentration to take a bit of water and either join
it to himself, or reject it as part of himself. Once it was a part of
him, he could feel it just he did the bits of himself that he had
placed in all of his eyes by now, and he could readily use it as a
hand.

He could not produce more than two hands. Actually, that was not quite
right, he could produce as many as he liked, but he could only seem to
control two at a time. With a part of himself in the eye, he found
that he could now perform the task he had so recently failed at, of
generating an effect at a distance to the eye without losing control
over it.

This was because instead of focusing and concentrating to see through
a distant eye, there was just a momentary disconnect, where the remote
eye suddenly seemed to become his right or left eye. He found he had
to close his actual eyes first to avoid disorientation, but with that
done, moving and focusing his eye became almost automatic, and much
smoother than it had been before, and controlling two remote water
hands at the same time was equally smooth, and all three required
little enough concentration that he could also focus to perform those
tasks that had previously required enough attention to disable his
eyes.

A brief search, now that he had more functional abilities, located the
battle site, and while the two females were gone, along with the
horse-like creatures, the corpses were still there, and Xander spent
several minutes looting them.

Here he found an even better discovery, practically by accident. He
was in full-fluid form for this, for he found it easier to ignore his
local hands in that shape, since he could remove their structure
completely, sinking into a pool while operating remotely. When picking
up a bag on the belt of one of the demons, a small amount of powder
had leaked out, and he had touched it, and had wondered curiously what
it tasted like.

To his surprise, it tasted much like a hot pepper, and when he
realized that the burning sensation seemed to be felt even back at his
hideout, he solidified to verify it, and sure enough, his tongue was
still burning.

A bit of testing in response to this determined that anything that was
a part of him was connected at some fundamental level, and anything
that he engulfed could actually be passed from one part of himself to
another, without any apparent regard for the distance between them.

This discovery greatly sped up the recovery of the loot from the
field, and soon Xander was looking over his loot. There was not
terribly much, certainly not enough to compete with his haul from the
locked chest, but the ease and manner of its recovery had Xander
considering a career as a thief.

Of course, the knowledge that any particular item he grabbed might
well have some sort of tracking spell on it dampened his enthusiasm
substantially, and in the end, he kept only their weapons and gold.

Afterwards, he returned to experimenting with his abilities. Xander
was no genius, even after his enhancements, and he did not
particularly have any interest in trying to upgrade his intelligence.
He loved Willow, his brainy school-obsessed best female friend, but he
could not personally imagine being that involved in reading or school.

His focus was on cool, and neat, and showy. He worked with his fluid
form's flexible nature, reshaping it into different forms, and
combining it with his ability to move fluids with his mind to
duplicate the appearance of a number of comic-book heroes and
villains. He could not duplicate the actual technology in Iron Man or
Dr. Doom's suits, for example, but he found he could duplicate their
outward appearance pretty easily.

By using his ability to produce fluids, and to connect with them,
making them part of himself, he found he could do a pretty good
impression of Bruce Banner Hulking out.

It was a bit later before the idea occurred to him to try
re-solidifying while transformed. Doing so in an imitation of powered
armor worked, but left him encased in un-moving metal, but doing it
while Hulked out worked great, and he actually felt tremendously
strong.

Exiting what he now, having achieved some quite respectable villainous
forms, redubbed his Evil Lair (TM), Xander hulked out again outside,
where he could run and move without limits.

Though he was sure he remembered Willow complaining that the physics
involved would not allow the Hulk to move as he did, Xander found that
he was able to move quickly, in spite of his mass, and to pick up
boulders that were physically larger than himself, and throw them. He
was not, however, able to make the tremendous leaps that the Hulk was
known for, nor to create a shockwave merely by clapping his hands.

Still, it was definitely food for thought. Heading back to his lair,
Xander resumed his experimentation. Through returning to liquid form
and re-solidifying, Xander determined that he could regain his original
teenage boy appearance, though if he did not concentrate on his form
while liquid, he would resume his new mature form.

The same applied to being Hulked, or otherwise modified - it took a
degree of applied intent to maintain a form while transitioning back
to solidity, and if he relaxed that, he would return to a more normal
shape.

Going from the Hulk to the Wolverine revealed that he while he could
readily, in liquid form, reproduce the claws bursting from the flesh
of his hands, when he returned to solidity, they did not function,
though he could feel them if he probed the flesh of his arm.

Shifting his attention a bit, Xander practiced shifting his appearance
while solid, by turning just a tiny bit of himself into fluid long
enough to reshape it. At first this started small, just lengthening
his canines while smiling, or pointing his ears, but with practice he 
began to manage more complete changes, including sprouting fur like 
the Wolfman, or generating Wolverine style claws while still solid, or 
changing his skin tone on the fly.

He also practiced maintaining complete details while in liquid form,
since without concentration he found that he tended to smooth out over
time. That would be both distracting and less than impressive, 
although he could do a disturbing Faceless impression.

Other touches, like giving himself horns or claws, worked well, but
more complex elements, such as a tail, wings, extra limbs and the
like, tended to fail to work, and to be a bit painful, or to be almost
completely numb to sensation and incapable of movement, hanging off
his form limply when he went solid. The same elements were actually
workable in liquid form, presumably because they did not depend on
muscles, skeletal connections, or nerves to work properly, but if he
did not keep their intended appearance in mind occasionally, they
would slowly lose detail.

They would not stop functioning, but the first time he set something
up and later looked in a hanging mirror and found he looked rather
like the clay animated character Gumby from the children's show, he
was motivated to work to keep his details.

His own appearance was the easiest to maintain in fluid form, but he
discovered that if he focused and trained a particular form, it would
become easier to maintain.

Just for the possibilities it offered for infiltration, Xander spent a
little time trying to duplicate the forms of the demons he had seen.
It did not occur to him immediately, but eventually he went on to
reproduce the form he had the most experience with, Naamahalat. It
felt a little weird, taking on a female form, and he was most hesitant
about going solid. When he did so, he found that he was missing
something, for though he retained the proper experience, his body did
not react to his touch in anything like the fashion that hers had, and
he knew her reactions well. He also determined during this bit of
experimentation that he could produce duplicate clothing, particularly
clothing he was familiar with, quite readily in liquid form, and that
when he returned to solid form, it solidified as well. That was a good
thing, since in fact his original stolen demonic clothing had
unexpectedly transformed to liquid with him, which he had not realized
until he went looking for it.

It put him in mind of his hair, and made him grateful that he was not
doomed to go bald every time he shifted, due to an inability to form
inorganic matter. He even found that he could remove the clothing he
produced in this fashion, and when zooming in on it, as long as it was
something he was familiar with, like denim or cotton, he could actually
see the weave and stitching. "No more Arabian Nights for me," Xander
crowed. They shifted back with him when he went liquid again, so he
would have to remember to reform them each time, lest he reappear in the
nude, but it felt good to be back in familiar clothes.

However, playing with a feminine form, and testing reproducing the
ninja-style clothing he had only seen but not personally experienced,
brought the little ninja girl to mind again, and his previous reluctance
to attempt to change into a lizard. Knowing now that this liquid
shifting did not appear to have the same permanent consequences, Xander
spent a while practicing a few lizard-based forms for her.

They were still humanoid, of course, but he had seen enough lizard
like demons to develop some looks that would bring lizards readily to
mind.

For a brief moment he wondered what time it was, and how long he had
been practicing, and whether he ought to sleep, or if he would be
summoned soon, but he shrugged it off. He was not tired, there was no
reason to sleep, and he would be summoned when he was needed, he was
sure.

Thinking about how he had dug down and made blocks to hold out the
sand, Xander wondered whether he should build further on his retreat.
If he ever managed to leave this plane, he would not be able to bring
it with him, so he was not sure it was worth the effort, yet for all
he knew he might be here for years before he finally found a way to
move on that would not see him snapped back whenever his summoner's
fuel tank ran dry.

Furthermore, as cool as having his own Fortress of Solitude or Batcave
might be, he was no architect or designer. Sighing he looked around
the large chamber, and shook his head. "Not like I need the space for
anything anyway," he said.

Of course, if he managed to find a way to control his own travel
between the planes and could return here at will, then it might have
more potential.

However, by that same token, if he did manage that travel, it might
make more sense to build a hideout on an unoccupied world, should he
encounter one.

Bored with his practicing, Xander sent up another eye, directing this
one back towards the mountain. Now that he was focused on what it was
seeing instead of testing what he could do with it, and how far he
could push it, he became aware that it was much more comfortable and
natural to control these spheres, now that they had a little of him in
them.

Instead of having to think about rotating it, it was as simple as
mentally turning his head. Zooming in and out still took a bit of
focus, but the finer adjustments to bring a particular item into focus
seemed almost automatic.

He sent the eye far into the sky, getting an overhead view to help him
place his hideout on a mental map relative to the mountains. He also
saw the embattled army his N... that Naamahalat fought in, far below,
and tracing back from them to the mountains, he eventually found the
path that led to the mountain fastness of the dragon Duke.

He could not simply slip his eye inside, since small though it was it
was not capable of slipping through the tiniest cracks as he could
when vaporous.

There was something he could do however, now that he had a better
handle on these abilities. He found a secluded spot to set the eye
down, then formed a large ball of fluid in the air where the eye was
looking.

Finally, he focused and made the fluid a part of himself. Turning it
airy, he slipped it back into the fortress, leaving the eye outside.
Once inside, he explored what it took to control the small bit of
himself, and in the end, he found it was simplest to actually allow it
to form a head and arms.

Legs were pointless given that he was already floating, and though he
could see through any given point when in gaseous form, having a head
with eyes and a neck made focusing on what he saw easier, and gave him
a framework for picking a direction, while forming arms and hands kept
him from zooming off in a dizzying fashion everytime he thought about
grabbing something.

Xander slipped down the hallway and took the first right. He was not
really looking for anything, or doing this with any purpose except
that of satisfying his curiosity and alleviating his boredom. Not
that he could have put it in those words, even after his
self-enhancements.

Unsurprisingly, the first room he reached on this hallway was a small
guardroom. The door was open, and there were five lightly armored,
scaly red demons lounging casually around a table playing some sort of
betting game. There were small piles of coins in front of each of
them, and as he watched, one of them shook a cup and cast the contents
on to the table. As they rattled about, he saw that they were bones
with symbols carved in to them and inked.

They were quite obviously unbalanced and asymmetrical, and he had no
doubt that their outcomes were biased. Of course, if all the players
knew their biases then it would effectively be no less fair than
actual fair dice. He doubted that was the case.

It did bring to mind the thought that he could produce dice that were
in fact fluid, though giving every appearance of solidity, as part of
himself, and as such, could control their fall and movement. Of
course, the point of that was somewhat missing, considering he could
create chocolate-covered diamonds, or pour liquid gold into a form to
cool into gold bars. It was not as though he would ever need to gamble
for money.

Of course, by that same token, that meant that he could gamble freely.
Xander played around for a few minutes, generating tiny shifts in the
air, trying to tilt the dice to a particular outcome. He tired of this
pretty quickly, however, since he had no real stake in the outcome,
nor did he understand their betting well enough to know what impact he
was having.

Moving on, as Xander drifted down the hall, he thought back to his
junior high school days. The lounging guards were not terribly
dissimilar in behavior or demeanor to high-school jocks, clearly
prideful, irritatingly competent to someone who had never experienced
that kind of success, and joking about their prowess with women. Many
of the jokes he would have liked to set up on the jocks at school, but
had not for fear of taking a beating--worth it to defend his friends,
but not for a prank--would be ridiculously easy for him now, a thought
that had occurred to him before. Now he pictured these guards in the
place of those jocks.

He could see them coming rushing out into the hall at the sound of an
alarm, only to slip and slide on an oil-slicked floor, or to shower
after training and discover the shampoo was for hair-removal, bleach,
or dye. Getting glue in place to get them bonded to their seats would
be ridiculously easy now, with no risk of being caught.

For that matter, returning to his junior-high memories, the teachers
that had picked on him throughout his schooling, for his slacker
laziness, his failure to pay attention, his jokes with Jesse, would be
easy targets. He remembered a particular story Jesse had told him,
that he had overheard some high-schoolers talking about, where they
had gone to a rival school and tagged the walls with spray-painted
slogans.

Xander grinned. If he knew who the Duke's biggest rival was, or what
his symbol was, he could tag them right now, with basically no risk to
himself as far as he could see. After all, he could abandon this bit
of fluid if he felt like it, and it would just dissipate into the air,
leaving no possible evidence aside from maybe an unusual odour.

Xander had just found an interesting room containing a large rotating
water wheel driving some sort of piston, when he was overtaken by a
sudden wash of blackness, then a despairing cry.

"It didn't work, I can't . . . I can't have lost it, no, please."

Xander's vision cleared, and he found himself back in his body, which
was transparent and gaseous, so that he could dissolve his head and
arms, to better control the remote ones, and in front of him was a
despairing Kushina.

Quickly he formed himself back up, focusing on simple black cloth pants
and shirt to avoid any chance of his imagination failing and scarring
the little girl for life, and solidified. "You rang?" Xander
asked, deliberately mimicking the sepulchral tones of Lurch from the
Addams Family television show. Not that he expected her to get the
reference of course, but he hoped that the attitude and tone would get
a laugh, and lift her out of her depression.

She did laugh, and looked with delight at him, but he was disturbed to
realize that she was wearing a white bandage wrapped about her head.

"What is this?" he asked. "Were you injured?"

He had enough time to notice her nodding before the sound of a door
opening interrupted her.

"Kushina Uzumaki!" a voice called out in alarm, and he turned to see the
girl's teacher, who he remembered was named Mizuna, though he had not
recognized yet if that was her first or last name.

"You . . . you . . ." She stuttered to a stop, staring with disbelief
at Xander. A moment later she recovered her composure, and her face
went blank. "You were instructed not to attempt summoning again,
Kushina," she said softly. It did not sound like a reprimand to Xander.

"I had to be sure I still could," the ninja girl huffed indignantly,
"besides, they just don't want me to get stronger."

Turning, she looked at Xander, and smiled up at him winningly. He
recognized her expression, just like Willow when she was about to try
to cajole him into something.

"You . . . you said you could heal me, last time?" she asked, widening
her eyes artfully, and twisting one foot against the ground bashfully.

Xander laughed, sending a visible shiver through Mizuna. "Sure thing,"
he said, and handed her a cellophane wrapped butterscotch flavored
hard candy with a liquid center of Esteban's Elixir of Rejuvenation.
He could, of course, have introduced it more directly into her system,
but he was both trying to avoid her having a bad reaction to something
appearing in her mouth while she was fully conscious, avoiding
revealing the complete extent of his abilities, and teasing her pretty
teacher with a scene of her taking candy from strangers.

She grabbed it with delight, and had it unwrapped and in her mouth
before Mizuna could do much more than call out "No!"

Mizuna made an abortive movement towards Kushina, then stopped,
looking between them. It took Xander a moment to realize that she was
genuinely nervous, and he remembered the comments about Death from his
last time here.

He grinned at her unrepentantly, even as Kushina started unwinding her
bandages. "No worries," he told her, "I wouldn't poison my summoner."

He was enjoying being looked at as if he was powerful, maybe even
dangerous, and wondered if his dark clothing was contributing to that.
It was quite a new and intoxicating sensation for one who had been
looked at as a zero, a waste of space in school, both by the cool kids
and by the teachers, useless by his parents, and as a pet by the
demonesses.

His pleasure was cut short as the window burst in, several black
garbed figures appearing in the room, quickly moving to separate him
from Kushina and Mizuna.

He watched Mizuna closely, confirming his suspicion that these were
the same sort of ninja that had appeared the last time he had been
summoned. He had lacked a contract at the time, so had quietly
disappeared until he could get one in place. Now, however, he had a
contract with Kushina, and saw no reason to hide.

He could heal from any damage their blades could do, but he discreetly
shifted to a fluid-form, maintaining his full details, just in case.
In this form, he felt he could weather almost any attack without even
taking any damage to need healing, and that quiet confidence was
apparent in his body language, increasing the uncertainty and
confusion of the watching ninja.

It helped that he knew that with his contract, he could appear next to
Kushina no matter where they tried to take her, so the only thing he
really had to worry about was them attacking her, and given Mizuna's
reaction, he did not think that was on the menu.

Just to be sure, Xander put a bit of himself into a pocket of air in
the corner of the room, watching for any reaction. When they failed to
notice or react, Xander relaxed completely. If they could not detect
when he used his powers, then that drastically reduced the likelihood
that even as people knowledgeable about summoning they would have any
means of restraining him.

"Hah," Kushina said, speaking up from where she was being hidden
behind one of the masked ninja. "Told you I would become a summoner! I
won't let any of you stop me from becoming a kunoichi!"

"Silence!" One of the ninja snarled, and Xander frowned.

"Identify yourself!" Another barked, staring tensely at Xander. Xander
grinned, remembering that he was in fluid form. That meant that
reshaping himself was easy.

He was about to form a sign behind and above him, with large words
saying 'Summons' and an arrow pointing to him, when he remembered that
he did not know how to write in their language. Deciding it was still
funny and worth it, he did it anyway, though he used the demonic script.

Kushina recognized the word, repeated as it had been in the contract,
and fell over laughing, startling the ninja.

One of them overreacted in his surprise, and threw an odd pyramidal
knife thing at Xander. Since he was in fluid form, and was not
purposefully maintaining an impenetrable exterior, it splashed into
him and out the back, sticking into the wall behind him, with bits of
Xander-juice dripping off the cord-wrapped handle.

"Hold it," another masked doofus shouted, grabbing the overreacting
ninja by the arm, "before you get us all killed!"

The others were staring at Xander and his manic grin in disbelief. He
laughed. Xander took the opportunity to set up a large number of
audio-repeater air-spots, most set to drop his tone substantially, but
a few going up, and spoke in impossible harmony. "I'm a summon," he
told them, grinning wider as they gasped at the sound of the demonic
language as the volume shook the room, and the deeper notes vibrated
through their bones.

That apparently broke the nerve of another ninja, and he rushed
forward screaming. Xander barely managed to resist flinching, but
focused on holding his grin, even as the ninja's sword blade sliced
through him from the right shoulder to the left hip. His substance
rejoined instantly as the blade passed through, so though the blade
sent a small spray of fluid onto the floor, Xander was unaffected.

"He's a summons," Mizuna cried, "Don't make him angry!"

Disinclined to allow his attacker to continue to strike at him, Xander
let a puff of knockout gas appear directly in the ninja's lungs. There
was a strange feeling when he did this, almost as though he had to
push past some resistance to accomplish this, but the ninja dropped
unconscious to the ground a moment later, and Xander shook off the odd
feeling.

"Did you witness the summoning?" asked the apparent leader sharply,
looking intently at Mizuna, over the sound of Kushina's continuing
laughter.

"No, I heard her call out the summoning technique, and hurried to the
room, afraid Kushina would overstrain her chakra coils with so great a
flow so soon."

Xander perked up at hearing a word that had not translated; it sounded
vaguely familiar, so perhaps it was being translated into English, but
was a word he simply did not know?

The four standing masked figures glared at Xander suspiciously. "He
could be an enemy nin, and have teleported into the room, timing it to
appear to be the result of her summons."

The ninja the speaker was holding back spoke up then, sneering,
"Besides, there is no way the little princess has enough chakra, much
less the skills to perform a summoning."

Kushina sat up at this, her laughter ceasing. "Just cause you can't do
it, doesn't mean I can't," she shouted, standing back up. Again the
masked ninja positioned themselves between her and Xander, as if they
could protect her from him.

The door behind Mizuna burst open, and she twisted to the side, barely
avoiding it, as three more figures, one man and two women, all
wielding more of the triangular blades, which Xander now noticed had a
metal loop at one end, as if to be hung on a hook, or tied on a rope,
burst into the room shouting.

Kushina growled again. "I've read the rules," she said loudly, barely
below a shout, "you can't interfere between a kunoichi and her summons!"

"We can if it is not a summons," the sneering ninja retorted.

Four of the ninja in the room, including Mizuna, all turned as one to
look at one of the new-comers, and Xander looked at her as well,
curious.

She was a little shorter than Mizuna, maybe six or seven inches over
five feet by Xander's estimation, where he would put Mizuna at nine or
ten over. Her clothing was much more appealing to him than the bland
black on black of the masked ninjas. The flowing garments were almost
a dress, but the legs were separated, and the top was likewise
divided, and the tight white top she wore underneath showed the lines
of cloth wrapped around her chest, drawing Xander's eye.

It was her eyes he noticed next, however, for after nodding sharply,
and putting her fingers to her forehead, they began to glow a soft
green as she returned his stare.

She nodded sharply. "To my senses, he appears to be a summons. I
cannot be certain it could not be duplicated, but I can see a
connection between him and little Kushina."

Xander focused his senses on her the moment her fingers began to glow.
To his surprise, he found he could feel some fluid coursing to both
her fingers and her eyes, yet it was obvious to his eyes that it was a
glowing energy, and nothing physical that was moving. Surely energy
was not subject to his abilities?

Unfortunately, Xander could not think of anything that would break the
tension here. He was used to cracking jokes, but that was not likely
to be effective when you were the object of fear and uncertainty; they
would probably just see it as mocking them. He was surprised that
no-one seemed particularly mollified by the glowing-eye lady's words.

Bored and irritated that neither them attacking him and failing, nor
the confirmation of the the teacher, Kushina herself, or the glowing
eyed lady was enough to convince them, Xander considered just
disappearing again, but remembered in time that if the lady had been
able to see a connection between Kushina and himself, she might still
be able to see it if he vanished, and then he would have revealed his
abilities for nothing.

So instead, he consumed a potion with the intent that it should allow
him to perfectly hide himself from the senses of any target group at
will, then promptly applied that ability to everyone present except
Kushina and himself.

Kushina was startled when all the ninja jumped, and started looking
around and waving their blades around, as if to find someone who had
disappeared, while Xander calmly walked between them and came to sit
on the bed next to where she was standing.

She did notice that the bed did not sink under him, but she could not
figure out why everyone suddenly could not tell where he was. He put
his finger on her mouth when she was about to speak, and she just
stared in disbelief as a moment later she was lectured by one after
another of the stupid overprotective, overbearing idiots, and finally
by her own teacher, Mizuna, after the others finally left.

A moment later Xander grinned at her, as Mizuna walked out of the
door. "You can talk now," he told her, "they won't be able to hear
us."

"How did you do that?" Kushina asked, awed. "It was like you were
invisible or something, but if you turned invisible, how come I could
still see you? Is it cause I summoned you?"

Xander nodded, not seeing any need to explain in more detail. "They
were boring anyway," he said dismissively, making her giggle. She sat
on the bed next to him, and pulled up her legs, tucking them under
herself.

Leaning forward, Xander helped her finish removing her bandages, and
checked to make sure her head was completely healed.

He sat back and regarded her. "So why is it they don't seem to want to
let you be a summoner," he asked her. "You're obviously skilled and
strong enough."

She blushed and her smile widened. "I am!" she declared, "I summoned
you, after all, and I've never heard of a summons that can do so many
things. I think some of the toads can make oil or something, and I was
hoping that the lizards might be able to do some cool stuff, but
setting up an ambush so you can't be seen is nothing to just vanishing
right in front of all those jounin!"

Xander again took note of a word that seemed incompletely translated,
but did not ask about it. "You didn't answer my question," he pointed
out. "Why are they against it?"

She huffed and pouted. "I'm in the line for the succession," she said;
well, more like whined, Xander thought, "so they don't think I should
be risked, but it's stupid. It's not like I'm the ruler's daughter, or
something. I'm like fourteenth or something! And my mom was a
kunoichi! Yeah, so she was not in the line, but still, if mom was, why
can't I be?"

"And what has summoning got to do with it?" Xander questioned.

"It shows I'm strong!" she said, standing up and pointing her finger
in the air. "Stronger than all those dweebs in training right now!
None of them can summon! I can do all the basic techniques just fine,
but they keep blocking Mizuna from teaching me anything stronger. I
don't need it, they say, I'm never going to go out on missions anyway.

"But if I'm a summoner, then they can't ignore that. Summoners are
powerful, and summons make a big difference on the battlefield!"

Xander frowned. "Are you at war?" he asked, wondering about the
reference to a battlefield.

Kushina shook her head, "Not right now, but a lot of people say it is
just a matter of time. Rock won't ignore us forever. I heard they want 
Whirlpool to declare war on the Leaf, to split their focus, and they've
threatened war otherwise."

"So there is war between the Leaf and the Rock?" Xander asked,
confused, but assuming they must be the names of other cities or states.

"Well, not open I don't think, but everybody whispers about it. And
anyway, there's always missing nin or teams from other villages when
you're out of the village on a mission."

'Village?' Xander thought to himself. He considered what he had seen
during his earlier brief sojourn with Kushina; he would have called it
a town at the least, if not a small city. There were multi-story
buildings, electrical lines, considerable traffic on the roads -
though granted it had been foot traffic and carts, he had not seen any
automobiles, nor even bicycles.

"Tell me about your village," Xander requested, handing her a glass of
coke to try.