Deific Intervention


"So, Sister, that is how things end."

"Unacceptable, Brother. Multiple prophecies broken, rogue champions,
Fate defied."

"Indeed. Without belief in prophecy, our Will falls ignored to the
wayside."

"We will remove the disruptive influence."

The sound of a throat being cleared nearby startled the two figures.
They had been standing in a featureless white expanse, completely alone.
Now they were joined by a tall man in an immaculate suit.

"What do you mean by coming here?"

"Brother, he is one of the old gods."

"Your time has passed, why are you here?" the brother demanded again.

"You mean to remove one of my pieces from the board. Why should I allow
this?" the man retorted.

"Resist as you wish, has-been. Eventually we will be rid of him."

"Perhaps, perhaps. But not before much of your plans are disrupted. I
propose a deal, a challenge, if you will. I will allow you to remove
him, at a time and place of my choosing."

The pair glanced towards one another. "It must be before the Champion
arrives."

"Before the Slayer arrives in Sunnydale, that is acceptable."

"You will offer him no assistance in returning?"

"If you agree that he will be wholly off-limits from any manipulation or
retribution should he succeed in returning without my aid."

"We can banish him where we will?"

The man frowned, suddenly becoming a young woman. "If you grant him one
wish, free and clear, no strings, before he is banished."

"The wish must be his, then, you cannot guide him in it!"

"Very well," the man nodded. "Well bargained. Are we agreed?"

"We are."

---

Xander rested his back against a tree, grateful for the shade from the
hot sun. He and his best friend Jesse were observing the cheerleaders
practicing, though from much farther away than they would have
preferred.

They would have been watching the high-school cheerleaders if they could
have, without getting pounded. As it was, enjoying the antics of the
junior-high cheerleaders was as good as they could hope for, while still
avoiding a pounding.

His other best friend, red-haired, freckled, and female, Willow was
sitting with her legs folded beneath her, regaling them with her latest
private studies in fluid dynamics and how the principle of turbulence in
fluid flow could be applied to computer networks.

It made little sense to either Xander or Jesse, but they did not mind,
just enjoying the sound of her voice and the steady babble as they
watched short-skirted babes jumping and twirling.

When the babble was suddenly cut off, it came as a shock, distracting
Xander from his girl-watching. Xander turned to look at Willow, but she
was staring, unmoving. He was about to reach out and nudge her, when he
realized exactly how quiet it was. Slowly turning his head back, fearing
what he was about to see, and feeling like the unfortunate extra about
to be caught by the villain in a horror movie, he looked back at the
cheerleaders.

One of them had just been tossed in the air, and she was there still.
"It's just like that episode of Superman," he thought, feeling his heart
beginning to speed up. He pulled himself to his feet, and looked around
frantically. Nothing and nobody was moving, all was still. He spied a
leaf, hanging in the air with nothing supporting it, and a boy who had
been skateboarding, in mid-flail as he had apparently hit an obstacle
and continued on without his board.

"Alexander."

Xander jumped, startled, and spun to face the voice. "You aren't
frozen!" he exclaimed, staring in surprise and disbelief.

The speaker was a woman, rather ordinary in appearance, with crinkled,
curly brown hair and brown eyes. "You have five minutes," she stated.
"Five minutes to make a wish, any wish you like, power, money, fame...
probably not that last one though, because the Powers are about to boot
you out of this dimension."

"What!?" Xander looked around in confusion, hoping to see a camera crew
somewhere. Logically, he knew that there was no way that cheerleader
could still be in the air like that, but, but this simply could not be
happening! "Why?"

"Doesn't matter, you now have a bit over four minutes to make a wish.
And make it a good one, will you? Maybe you'll even survive where-ever
they plan to throw you."

Xander gibbered for a moment, uttering useless protests and panicking,
until the lady slapped him, hard. "What was that for?" he shouted,
holding his cheek.

"Two minutes left, make a wish, or go to hell with nothing to help you,"
the lady snapped, looking at her watch.

That was enough to finally get Xander thinking, desperately trying to
think of the best wish to make, trying to go over superhero powers in
his mind, but his thoughts kept chasing themselves in circles. Anything
he chose immediately brought up a picture of a hell where it would be
worse than useless. What would Superman's hell be? A land of kryptonite?

And then time was up. "Make a wish," she snapped, "now, or do without!"

"Fluid!" Xander gasped, his mind empty of everything but panic, and in
its emptiness, it latched on to Willow's recent babble. A moment later
he choked, realizing he had just spoken. He could see her breathing in,
was he about to be turned into a pool of fluid? 

"I wish I had power over all fluids!" he shouted, desperately trying to
beat her to the punch and keep her from taking his accidental utterance
too literally.

"Done!" she announced, even as her face suddenly became hideous, as if
her skin had been peeled away leaving the underlying muscle visible. A
moment later he felt himself grasped by something, and then he was
hurtling through a black void, before a burst of color flashed before
him, and he crashed into the ground, rolling and tumbling over hot,
rough stones.

He fetched up against a massive outcropping of bare stone, and groaned
in pain. Wincing and gasping, he levered himself into a sitting
position, his back to the stone.

"She never told me why," he complained, eyes widening as he stared
around at a rocky, boulder-filled landscape of mountainous cliffs and
deep ravines.

"Well, crap," he said. The sky overhead was a sickening dull green, with
roiling red clouds. "I'm not in Kansas, and I don't even have a little
dog." Feeling utterly stupid, but knowing he would feel even more
foolish if he found out later that it would have worked, he gingerly
stood, closed his eyes, and tapped his heels together three times,
saying, "There's no place like home."

Nothing happened, not that he had really expected it to. "I wonder if I
even made my wish on time," he muttered. "At least I didn't turn into a
pile of goo."

"Fluids, what the heck is wrong with me? If she'd just given me more
time, I could have come up with something cool, damn it!" He stared
around again, feeling as though he were being watched, but saw nothing
moving, nothing living.

"It was inspired by Willow, it can't be that stupid," he said, with a
hopeful grin, "here goes nothing! Though with my luck, it'll need an
activation phrase like Shazam or something before it will work..."

He threw his hand out towards the nearest crack in the ground, and said
firmly, "Water!" He pictured a stream of water shooting out of his arm,
much like Hydro-man in his collection of comics.

"Alright!" he shouted in glee, as water shot from his hand, just as he
had imagined. The rush of water leaving his hand threw him back, as he
was not prepared for the recoil, but he was elated nonetheless.

Surviving this whole freakish experience just got a lot more likely. The
water had stopped when his attention was stolen by his impact against
the stones, but he was quick to play with this new toy, generating
smaller streams of water from his fingers, then pretending his hand was
a gun, and shooting off massive water drops.

Thinking of Hydro-man reminded him. "Jesse better take care of my comics
till I get back!"

He sighed and walked a few feet up the wall's edge, sitting in a spot
not yet soaked with water. "Just wait for me, Jesse, Wills. I'll find a
way back, I will! And then I'll give those Powers a piece of my mind. If
I ever figure out who they are. Freaky lady didn't even tell me her name."

The sound of the remnants of water from his playing trickling down the
stones were making him thirsty, and he looked at his hand for a minute.
"Ah, what the heck, if it doesn't work, it doesn't. Worth a try,
anyway."

He stuck his finger in his mouth, and picturing what he wanted to
happen, he sucked lightly. Instead of feeling pressure on his skin, he
got a mouthful of cola, just as if he was sucking on a straw in a glass
of soda.

He grinned, feeling the fizz of carbonation, and drank eagerly for a
minute, then pulled his finger out of his mouth. "Too bad Twinkies
aren't fluid," he said wryly. "Even if I couldn't do a Morrie Bench," he
continued, referring to the civilian name of Hydro-man, "this would be
pretty darn cool."

"Cool?" Levering himself back to his feet, Xander shot out another blast
of water, concentrating on it being as cold as possible. It came out
liquid, but left a sheen of frost on the stone in its passing. "Not
quite what I was looking for."

He tried to shoot out a blast that was as hot as possible, but did not
get water at all, but a screeching spray of steam, that quickly
dispersed.

"Come on, come on, it would be so cool, I can't make it cold enough, ice
isn't fluid, how do I do it?" He sprayed water again, trying to get it
colder. He discovered that if he produced water as cold as he could, in
a thin, smooth flow, he could build up ice mounds, but it was slow, and
a stronger flow would wear the ice away as fast as it built.

Again and again he tried, the image in his head driving him. He had
already seen that he could change the temperature of the fluid he
produced, so he was certain he ought to be able to produce ice, even if
he could not control it afterward.

"Hah! I got it!" Xander crowed, as he filled the ravine before him
with ice. The key, he discovered, was that it took time for ice to
form. When he produced a liquid, he could not make it colder than
would remain liquid without it freezing to his hand. However, he
could, after making the liquid, steal the heat from it. As soon as it
crystallized, it would be out of his control, but in that instant, he
could take enough heat to to ensure the entire mass of water
solidified into ice.

It did not, however, produce an Iceman worthy smooth surface. With the
whole mass freezing at once, the ice expanded rapidly, creating a
surface that was cracked and spiny.

A bit more playing around revealed that flash-freezing the bottom while
freezing the top more slowly, while it took a bit more concentration,
produced a result that was smooth and slideable.

Unable to resist trying it, Xander whooped with delight as he slid
smoothly down the course of ice as it formed ahead of him.
Unfortunately, he lacked the physical skills and practice of Iceman, and
he soon overtook the freezing ice, and plowed through chilling water to
fetch up hard against another stone bulwark.

Once the initial shock of the icy water and bone-shaking crash faded,
Xander realized that he had just added bruises on top of his earlier
scrapes and pains. Some form of medication was in order, and it would
not hurt to think of something that would make him a bit less fragile.

Briefly considering whether Captain America's super-serum might heal him
while optimizing his body, before remembering the insanity that resulted
from attempts to used the serum without vita-rays, whatever those were,
Xander proceeded to run down a list of comic-book heroes and villains,
trying to remember someone that healed using a fluid he might be able to
reproduce, that did not have unfortunate consequences.

Finally, he settled on Esteban Diablo, an occasional Fantastic Four
villain who waxed his mustache with a so-called Elixir of
Rejuvenation, that he could then suck on when in need of healing. It
was basically a fast healing potion, that by example of Esteban's
mustache, was clearly not picky about precise dosing.

Focusing on the desired traits of the potion, namely fast-healing
without danger of over or under-dosing, he placed his finger to his
mouth, and sucked down a mouthful.

Instantly he felt a surge of energy run through his body, and his
scrapes scabbed over, then the scabs fell away, revealing new pink skin
that quickly faded until it looked the same as the rest of his skin. At
the same time, his bruises shifted in color almost kaleidoscopically as
they passed swiftly through the various stages of healing, before fading
away entirely.

Buoyed by this success, Xander returned his mind to the super-soldier
serum. He was tempted to push further, and go for Superman's powers, but
reminded himself that it would be nice if when he made it back to Willow
and Jesse, he could hope to someday have kids.

Becoming an alien Kryptonian could make that rather difficult. The
super-soldier serum, on the other hand, when it worked, had basically
taken the Cap and optimized him to the limit of what he was humanly
capable, without changing what he fundamentally was. Well, according to
the original comic, anyway, though of course different writers over the
years had given different effective levels to his power.

Getting to the peak of fitness quickly was appealing, especially
considering the landscape he was going to have to deal with. As little
climbing experience as he had, lasting more than a few hours without
falling to his death would probably be a miracle, and praying for a
miracle in what looked disturbingly like some form of the Hell that lady
had mentioned seemed foolhardy.

Could he produce a serum that would have that effect without needing the
vita-rays?

Worried, Xander decided that it would be best to see if he could produce
a liquid that would have the effect he wanted, without thinking about
Captain America at all, to avoid any unpleasant consequences.

To begin, he simply held out his hand, and focused on producing a thin
stream of liquid that would taste like a chocolate shake, and would
perfect his body. Indeed, a stream of liquid appeared. He quickly shut
it off, and leaned back. "Is this safe," he asked himself, musing aloud,
"what if a perfect me . . . isn't me anymore? I wish Willow was here to
help me think."

Sighing, he put his head in his hands, trying to think clearly. Maybe
perfection was not the right goal. He could sit there, and think
forever, trying to come up with the right way of thinking about it, and
getting nothing but a headache. Or he could try to game it, and take a
chance.

Focusing again, he placed his finger in his mouth, and, after breathing
deeply for a few seconds, he sucked hard, and swallowed.

A euphoric rush passed over him, as he began a transformation sequence
worthy of the Hulk, though not to that scale. All over his body, muscles
bulged. It would most likely have been horrifically painful. Indeed, had
any been watching but unable to hear him, they would have thought him to
be in terrible pain, and he would have been, had he not clearly focused
his intention that it should be pleasurable, as his body was improved to
the point he would have been at, had he naturally been capable of
matching Captain America feat for feat.

Unfortunately for Xander, his transformation did not go unnoticed, nor
his cries of pleasure unheard.




Pleasurable Captivity


There was a whistling noise, a sudden impact, and an upward surge.
Xander was airborne, hanging with one arm and one leg clamped tight in
massive talons. He twisted for a moment, but quickly stopped when he
realized how far away the ground was already. If he fell from this
height, the strength of Captain America might not be enough to save him.

Bending his head back to look above him, Xander felt blood rush to his
face. The immense wings dwarfed the giant figure holding him, but
dragon-like though they were, it was no dragon holding him. Looking up
legs that were strangely shaped, he found they met a body fit for a
supermodel, feminine, in a massive way. The flexing of her wings shifted
her leather wrapped bust about in a fascinating way, but his eyes were
soon locked between her legs. She wore a skirt of some sort, but nothing
between it, and being held by the strange clawed feet on her odd legs,
there was nothing blocking his view of a treasure he had never been
privileged to see in the flesh previously.

"I'm being kidnapped by a demoness," Xander murmured, feeling almost
hypnotized by the tiny motions of her outer lips, as every now and then
he got a glimpse of what lay within them. Just a bit above he could see
the cleft of her ass cheeks flexing, and just over them, a slender tail.

The oddest thing was not her strangely shaped legs, immense wings, her
long and . . . barbed? tail, but that her skin, in spite of showing all
the motion of the muscles bunching and stretching beneath as her wings
shifted back and forth, catching the wind and lifting them higher still,
had all the appearance of carved stone.

He reached up with his free hand, and stroked the skin of the foot?
claw? that held his other arm. The skin felt smooth and warm and soft,
in spite of its stony appearance. He saw a shiver run up her leg, and
quickly desisted. The last thing he wanted was to tickle her and cause
her to release him.

A thundering boom startled Xander. Looking around, he finally spied a
wide plain out past the mountainous region they were passing over, a
plain covered in tiny dots. Though they looked like ants at this
distance, their organization and regimented structure made it clear that
he was seeing two large armies in conflict. The air shuddered with
another great boom, and he saw a circle of ants thrown out of their
formation.

Wheeling above the armies, but still far below Xander and his captor,
tiny winged figures swirled about like dandelion seeds.

A flash of color drew his attention back to their course, as a mountain
loomed ever larger, and he realized that his ride had begun to descend,
angling towards a dark spot on the side of a mountain. The color he had
seen was a ribbon of lava curling down the flank of the peak next to
their target, and he felt a sudden flash of fear.

He had pictured being taken somewhere to be eaten, and had thought he
could manage to mount a resistance once they reached the ground again,
but what if he was wrong? Not even Captain America could handle being
cast into two thousand degree molten rock.

Luckily, as she veered more to one side, he realized that he could now
see the opening she seemed to be making for, and there was no red glow
coming from it.

Xander was psyching himself up to take action as soon as they landed.
However, when she did land, he quickly discovered that merely peak human
strength was not enough when facing the superhuman strength of a
demon-like woman half-again his size.

He was also not banking on her possessing the power to mold stone like
taffy, though given her appearance, he might have been able to guess.
Moments after landing, he was bound to an inclined stone slab, his hands
and feet literally embedded in solid stone, with no margin for movement.
Stone filled every space, every crevice in his fingers and between his
toes, making flexing his hands or feet completely impossible.

What he saw next drove every thought of escape right out of Xander's
head. Standing beside his captor, blushing prettily and clutching one
arm with her other hand to shield her bare breasts, while that hand
covered her naked sex, stood a much more human version of his captor.
She was slender. Indeed, she was perhaps a bit too skinny, her ribs
clearly visible, her cheekbones gaunt, but aside from wings, horns, and
a tail, she looked human.

She was barely over half his captor's height, maybe five foot even, and
her wings, in proportion to her body were far, far smaller. Where the
larger woman's wings dwarfed her giant body, looking in scale similar to
a pterosaur, the girl's wings looked more like those of a demoness in
medieval or contemporary art. Pretty, but not likely to manage actual
flight.

The larger demoness was speaking, a language that sounded at times more
guttural, and occasionally more musical, than any Xander was familiar
with. Not that Xander was an expert on languages, of course. He knew
English, and could recognize, if not understand, French and Spanish.

She seemed to be urging the winged girl towards him, but she was
blushing furiously, and resisting. At one point, she hid herself behind
one of her wings, and peeked over it at him.

It was only then that he could finally pull his mind away from her
nakedness enough to even realize that she had red hair, where the larger
figure had deep black hair, and her skin was a pale pink. It was not a
human-seeming pink, however, but rather the pink of a pale sandstone,
flushing to a red like ochre.

When the giantess had finally coaxed the girl within reach, she reached
down with her massive hand, and slipping a single talon into his
waistband, pressed it outward, piercing the fabric. As she withdrew her
finger, slid her talon into the new opening from the outside, and sliced
down his pants leg, Xander realized with a start that he was harder than
he had ever been in his life.

The giantess' face was beautiful, he became aware when he turned his
attention back to her as she cut through his jeans, but it was the girl
that was fueling his lust. She seemed so shy, and yet she was naked, the
first truly nude woman he had ever had the opportunity to look at, and
no matter how much he told himself he should not ogle her, he eyes
constantly returned to her.

He was saddened by her thinness, guessing that she was not starving
herself for fashion, but was rather literally starving, being probably
unable to fly, and dependent on the other demoness, but her mannerisms
unfailingly reminded him of Willow, triggering his protectiveness, even
as her nudity refused to allow him to pretend, as he did with Willow,
that she was one of the guys, and not an object for sexual fantasizing.

She did not look much like Willow otherwise, her hair being a less
coppery shade of red, closer to the color of a fire engine or hydrant,
her features and figure more gaunt than slender, her skin so reminiscent
of smooth pink stone, but in behavior, she had the same habit of hiding
behind her wings that Willow had with her hair.

He was so drawn to her that he was startled again when her gaze became
fixed to his groin, and following her gaze, he realized the giantess had
finished her work, and he was fully exposed, his dick standing out
proudly.

When he had been caught up in the giantess' talons, he had feared being
eaten, or taken to feed a brood of monstrous children, like a rabbit
carried to an eyrie by an eagle, but now, looking at the girl's timid
expression and uncertain manner, he was not fearing her approach, but
anticipating it.

Would she really? Could she actually be about to? Her smooth hand,
warmer than he was expecting from her stony appearance, his mind
extrapolating from prior experience rather than his recent flight, for
his captor's talons had been no less warm, rested briefly on his belly,
just below his belly button. She withdrew it sharply when he twitched,
but that momentary contact, and its location, drew his eye downward, and
he realized that she had no belly button, neither innie or outie, nor
even a depression to mark where it ought to have been.

Another guttural command brought her hand back to his skin, and she
stroked it several times, first his belly, then his thighs. Through all
of this, from what he could see, her eyes had not left his erection,
following every twitch, every sway as his hips moved in response to her
tickling touch.

She leaned in closer, and he groaned at the feel of her warm breath on
his skin. She looked up at him in response to his sound, with eyes that
were a startling black, no pupil or whites visible, just blackness, and
he felt the looming presence of the giantess moving closer. Xander
smiled at her, hoping that his face would convey his pleasure and
acceptance. He did not bother trying to say anything, knowing that she
would not understand it. It took an effort not to react in any other
way, but he had the feeling that if he had frightened the girl, or
angered her, it was the giantess he would have to deal with.

The knowledge that he could escape with his new powers, if he could
think quickly enough, kept his fear down to a point that allowed his
moderated response.

He drew in his breath and held it when she looked down again, and leaned
forward. She pressed her cheek against his thigh for a moment, then
shifted her head to the side and pressed her cheek against his erection.
Though it was not the contact he so desperately hoped for, Xander felt a
bolt of excitement shooting through him.

Afraid that he was not going to last, Xander closed his eyes, trying to
focus, hoping that he could resist.

Unfortunately, that was the same moment that she gathered her courage,
and licked him from base to tip. The unexpected surge of pleasure
overtook him without warning and he cried out as his cum surged up and
out.

His eyes popped open and he glanced down, chagrined, only to feel her
hot lips closing around his tip, and sucking each subsequent surge.
Staring down at her face, a single line of his cum glistening on her
cheek, Xander barely lost any stiffness before he rose again. Her wings
were shivering on her back, her tail whipped back and forth, and she
whined, pressing closer. 

When she stopped getting cum from him, she growled, the vibrations
rippling through his cock. He felt her hands press into his thighs, her
claws sinking into his flesh as she dropped her head, taking him in
completely, and lashing him with her tongue.

She lifted off again and said something, before diving back on, whining,
and Xander realized that she was not going to give up after merely one.

He did not really understand what was going on. Initially, he had been
too overwhelmed to really think on it, but now, he could not understand
why she would bother with giving him a blow-job. How would she even know
of them?

Unfortunately, as intent as she seemed, his confusion and the sharp
pain of her claws piercing his skin were reducing his arousal. Worried
of what might happen if he failed to respond, Xander tried to push
past the pain and focus. Looking at the giantess, though she was
well-formed, was no use. She was clothed, and now that he was not
between her legs, he did not have the deliciously distracting sight to
pull him away from her inhuman appearance.

Worse yet, looking down at the girl was little better. She was focused
on her task, and not looking up at him, so he could not see her face.
Her back was obscured by her wings, so that all he could really see
looking down were her wings and tail, not particularly alluring sights,
though he did not find them an additional turn-off.

When he tried to picture her as she had looked coming towards him, he
found it difficult to resist picturing her thin frame and visible ribs.
An idea occurred to him then, between his fear and his compassion,
though actually implementing it took long moments of building up his
nerve.

Exercising his power near his private parts had never been high on his
list of priorities, but he tried to focus and feel the fluid near his
groin.

To his surprise, it was far easier than he thought. He could feel
several types of fluid, and instinctually he could tell them apart.
There was a fluid within his cells that seemed to almost define his form
within his mind, then there was his blood, which while defining a
tracery through his body, also drew a disturbingly clear picture of his
own erection in his mind's eye. And there was the even less pleasant
pool of urine in his bladder.

Finding the path of his urethra was more difficult, as it was not fluid
filled at the moment, but examining where the urine and traceries of
blood met, and delving closer for traces of seminal fluid, Xander
managed to find a point where he felt he could introduce a tiny amount
of fluid without harming himself.

Luckily for Xander, he did not have to essay this dangerous action, as
his distraction from his fears had allowed his body to respond more
fully to her ministrations, and he identified several glands that were
quickly producing small pools of seminal fluid to be added to an
imminent eruption.

Focusing on these pools, Xander tried to imbue them with healing and
nourishing effects without changing their substance. He watched from
within as he came, and in that instant, as his orgasm rushed through his
mind, he felt as though his senses and his mind had momentarily merged,
and he actually and intimately understood the fluids in his groin.

So clear was this sudden understanding that it was without the least
trepidation that he artificially prolonged his orgasm, maintaining the
volume of blood in his dick even as the muscles at its base relaxed,
allowing for a reduction in pressure, and activated each gland in turn
to produce one genuine spurt of semen after another.

She eagerly gulped this down, and he did not stop the production until
he felt her pull back, and saw a line of glistening white splatter
against her cheek. Even so there were two more pulses before he could
wind the production down; they had been 'in the pipe,' so to speak.

Though it had been less intense than his actual orgasm, it had still
been pleasurable and much more prolonged, and with it finally over,
Xander sagged against the inclined stone, his weight pulling harder on
his hands as his legs twitched from the release of tension. He had not
realized it until they relaxed, but his thighs and calves had been
straining to press his dick out further the entire time it was in her
mouth.

While she may not have been able to continue handling the volume he had
been producing, she was clearly not fully sated, as she proceeded to
gather up the rest of his spend with her fingers and suck it down, then
began licking him thoroughly.

She worked her way around his groin, cleaning him, then began an
exploratory campaign across his thighs. He heard her murmur something
indistinct when her tongue encountered the first of the wounds she had
put in his right thigh with her claws, and to his surprise and
consternation, she latched her lips around the injury and sucked hard,
drawing the blood forth with pleased murmurs and burbles. Then she
licked around to the next hole and repeated the procedure.

It was slightly painful, as each hole that she sucked on seemed to rise
to a new peak of pain, though he recognized that this was merely an
artifact of his body relaxing during the time that she spent moving from
one wound to another, but it felt good as well, and after her first
suckle, any thoughts he might have had about sucking down some healing
elixir had flitted from his mind.

When she moved from his right thigh to his left, he found he was
actually anticipating her arrival at the first break in the skin on that
side. It did not take her long to finish getting the blood she had
spilled with her claws.

She moved up then, bathing his new six-pack with her tongue. He had not
had a chance to really look at the changes to himself that had occurred
as the result of his version of the serum, but he could feel the
difference as she crossed a rise and entered another dip.

When she reached his chest, she spent some time licking and sucking his
nipples. Xander was surprised at how much pleasure this gave him, as
previously he had only pictured himself sucking on a girl's nipples,
never imagining that receiving the same attention would feel this good.

Having her sucking on his neck a moment later was also surprisingly
pleasurable, but he was not surprised at all to feel a sudden sharp pain
a moment later, followed by a steady flicking of her tongue over the
gash she had made in his neck.

A healing elixir would take care of that, but she would just gash him
again, he knew. That she was drinking his blood straight from the tap,
as it were, was not a turn-off, as he had expected. In fact, the
sensations contributed to a rising hard-on, but Xander had no intention
of letting her bleed him to death.

Thinking hard, Xander worked out that he could produce fluids in concert
with his salivary glands, so that he could suck it directly into his
mouth without needing to suck on a finger. He did not want to have any
of the sort of visible abnormalities such as super-fast healing or an
inability to be injured that would lead to a long-term laboratory stay,
so he did not want to make any permanent changes.

That thought itself gave him the answer, and a moment later, he had
ingested a draught that would give his blood alone a Wolverine-scale
regenerative capacity for only the next two hours.

If he needed more, he would take more, but after that time, he would be
normal again, and not at risk of becoming a lab-rat.

With that taken care of, Xander abandoned himself to the pleasure of her
suckling. When his attention returned outward, he was surprised to
realize that her clawed hand had closed gently around his renewed
erection, and she was stroking him lightly as she sucked, licked, and
nipped at his neck.

Her breasts were pressed into his chest, and Xander was suddenly aware
that sometime between getting blown, and her licking him all over, his
shirt had been shredded. Bits were still present on his shoulders, and
he could still feel cloth between his back and the stone, but nothing
covered his front, nothing shielded him from the warm, soft pressure of
her breasts, nor the hard points of her nipples pressing into his skin.

The shock of so much sensation at once was too much for him, and he
could feel himself explode again, his cock twitching and throbbing in
her grasp as he sprayed, coating their bellies and thighs.

His mind shutdown when he felt another tongue licking him clean and
realized that he, Xander Harris, in his first ever sexual encounter, was
being double-teamed by two gorgeous demon-babes.

When his awareness finally returned, he felt a heavenly warmth and
pressure around his cock, and the exotic feel of stiff nipples rubbing
up and down his chest, as the winged girl posted up and down on his
erection.

He still felt the giantess' hands on him, but when he gathered the
strength to look, he was startled to discover that he was wrong, and the
hands on his thighs and the hot mouth that had just sucked in one of his
balls belonged to a girl almost identical to the one fucking him, though
her coloration of skin and hair matched the giantess perfectly.

They were speaking, between moans, gasps, and shudders, and as delicious
as everything felt, Xander realized that he wanted to know what they
were saying.

Xander wasted several distracted minutes running through superheroes in
his head, from linguistic geniuses like Cypher, to telepaths like
Professor Xavier, or J'onn J'onnz, the Martian Manhunter, before he
realized that he had only minutes before, under the intense pressure of
fearing for his life, sucked down a fluid that had never existed to give
himself the power of a superhero in a very limited aspect and duration.

"Man," he thought to himself, "who would ever imagine I would be the one
to over-think something!" Once again he sucked down a draught, and
instantly, the murmured conversation of his captors became
comprehensible.

It was strange, as the same sounds that a moment ago were gibberish were
suddenly understandable, but even stranger was that his memory was
quickly rolling over the sounds he had heard before.

The picture they were putting together for him was a bit frightening.
There was something that the two of them hoped the smaller could draw
out of him that would help her with some problem she was having. They
thought this might work because his use of his power had been observed
by the giantess, circling overhead, and if they did not succeed in
drawing out the magic they needed, the next step would be to physically
consume him, to simply eat him, and see if ingesting his flesh would
convey enough power.

His surge of fear was no match for the teenage hormones that were
achieving their first real success, and he could feel his climax rapidly
approaching. Suddenly powerfully motivated, he focused once again on his
glands, putting all his effort, distracted and confused though he was,
into coaxing them into producing a fluid that would give the redhead
whatever power or magic she needed.

His orgasm was glorious, as the changes to his semen caused it to send
unexpected tingles of pleasure through his flesh as it passed through,
tingles that seemed, of their own accord, to prolong and strengthen his
orgasm and his pleasure.

He forced his eyes open when he heard her scream, and found the pink
demoness had her head thrown back, her back arched pressing her breasts
into him as she shuddered and shook, her wings twitching.

When the grey-skinned demoness helped the pink one to slide off his
still-stiff erection, they were both surprised to see the fluid on his
cock and dripping from her lips was a brilliant blue that seemed to
shine from within, filled with tiny white sparkles. After laying the
exhausted and still quivering red-haired demoness down, the grey one
turned back and knelt before him, reaching out tentatively with a single
taloned finger to gingerly touch a glimmering drop of blue on the tip of
his cock.

Her eyelids drooped when she touched it, and she shuddered, then leaned
forward and sucked him in, swirling her tongue around to catch every
last drop, and pumping him lightly with her hand to ensure she had it
all.

When they finally left him alone, Xander was exhausted, and his entire
body ached, but none so much as his dick and balls. He had watched the
transformation as first the grey demoness had returned to the giant
winged form, and then the pink one had followed suit. They had both
examined her and commented on her wings and claws, so he was fairly
certain that it was this transformation that she had previously been
incapable of, and which was thereby responsible for her starvation.

While sympathetic to her plight, Xander was also frightened. His first
sexual experience had certainly been exciting and intense, beyond any
dreams or imagining, but by the end it had become an ordeal, as his body
strained, even with the help of his powers, to satisfy two demonic
sex-machines. By the end, he was fairly certain that he had expelled
more fluid than had been in his body in the first place, and had he not
had his powers to help him, he would have been dead.

He had not dared, at the time, to attempt to actually heal himself, lest
they never stop. He knew if he gave out too quickly, however, they would
surely eat him. In the end, he was half-convinced that it was only the
desire to fly properly for the first time that finally drew the pink one
away, and without that, they might well use him until he just gave out,
and then eat him.

Either way, whether chained here forever as a sex-slave, or consumed
entirely, he would never see Jessie and Willow again, and that was not
acceptable.

So, now that they had gone and he had a short window, Xander sucked down
a healing draught, then turned his attention to the molded stone that
held him pinned to the slab. After considering it for several minutes,
Xander finally settled on melting the stone. He could probably blow it
apart or crack it by forcing water in and freezing it, or using massive
amounts of air, but any way he looked at it, he was going to have to
take something first to protect him, whether from rock shards or swiftly
growing ice crystals.

If he had to do so anyway, then he might as well take something that
could protect him from lava, hopefully, and test it here with a very
minor amount of melted rock, before facing trying to escape, what with
the lava river he had seen on the flight to the cave.

Formulating and taking a potion was easy enough, and though he was
nervous about the heat, he knew that he could heal himself if something
went wrong, so he was soon producing hotter and hotter fluids as he
sought to melt through the stone.

Unfortunately for Xander, his understanding of thermodynamics was not
the best, and while he was able to produce molten stone, and then molten
iron and molten steel, none of them had an appreciable impact on the
rock. The heat dissipated from them into the air and the stone, cooling
the fluid far more quickly than it was heating the stone, as the mass of
liquid was so much smaller, so while the air around him was heating
uncomfortably, he was only succeeding in adding rock crystals and lumps
of metal to his prison.




From the Fire to the Forge


A sudden and encompassing darkness cut off his experimentation. His slab
faced the opening through which he had been flown, and that opening was
now blocked by a reptilian head of gargantuan proportions.

Xander stared in disbelief, his mind whirling uselessly, unable to
comprehend the sheer size of the beast. Slitted yellow eyes that looked
like they out-massed him twice over scanned the interior before focusing
on him. Xander whimpered, jerking at his bonds again when a forked
tongue slithered out, easily crossing the depth of the cave to slide
across his body, leaving a disgusting moistness in its wake.

"Oh my God, I'm gonna die!" Xander screamed to himself, as the beast
before him opened a maw that could have swallowed an elephant whole, and
in the depths of it Xander saw a red glow growing brighter. "Oh, shit!"
he exclaimed aloud, as he realized he was about to burn in the flames of
a dragon.

In his desperation, he called on the ability he had used most recently,
firing a thick stream of molten metal at the immense beast, but he was
too late. The glow in the throat became a rushing, billowing flame that
seared outward.

He was hit first by a wave of superheated air being pushed forward by
the flames, then the rush of flame washed over him, instantly
incinerating his tears of fear. The sudden and intense rise in heat that
arrived with the flame did not taper off nor remain steady, but seemed
to become hotter and hotter. Xander was amazed when he realized that the
stone was melting around him, and though he was in intense pain from the
heat, he was not dead.

He certainly wished he was, however. The draught he had taken to protect
himself from the flowing metal and stone worked well enough, but did
nothing to actually protect him from the flames, and he screamed as his
flesh blackened and his skin flaked and was torn free by the pressure of
the flaming wind.

He could not help but scream, but screaming made it worse still, as the
moisture in his mouth was instantly evaporated, and his mouth and tongue
were covered in blisters that were just as quickly popped, blackened,
and blown free, choking him with his own ashes.

As the stone around his feet finally flowed away, Xander stumbled
forward, then quickly turning, shambled as swiftly as he could deeper
into the cavern, mind consumed by pain and the desire to flee it, all
higher thought lost for the moment.

Whether his desperate attempt at an attack had worked, or merely stalled
the beast, was discarded as unimportant compared to the simple necessity
of fleeing the encompassing, radiating heat, for the dragon's fiery
breath had done more than merely melt the stone holding him; it had
melted much of the stone of the chamber, such that even as he fled, his
raw and aching feet, though unharmed as per his power by the heat of the
flowing stone, were steadily stripped of burned and blackened flesh by
the friction of their passage through the thick and clinging stone, and
his face, hands, and indeed most of his skin, his clothing having been
burned away, though unharmed by the radiant heat of the glowing stones
that remained where the melted stone had flowed away, were yet by it
reminded and renewed in their complaint of the pain of being burned by
the flames.

When he was finally past the glowing stones and the liquid floor, and
had managed to stumble into a passageway that by dint of a rightward
turn succeeded in placing him beyond the direct heating influence of the
radiant inferno behind him, Xander was finally able to collect himself
enough to ingest a stronger instant healing draught. This washed away
the exhaustion of being constantly healed and flayed, though the memory
of the pain lingered, and with the exhaustion and immediate agony
abated, Xander was able to think clearly enough to slowly and gently
lower the temperature of the air around him, and to raise its humidity
by ever so slight degrees.

He wanted to flee further, but he heard no sound of stone being scraped
nor scales sliding nor metal clinking behind him, and so he did not move
until the air about him was heavy with moisture, and his own skin
bedewed with condensation.

Finally heaving himself back to a standing position, and wishing for the
shoes and clothing so recently lost, stumbled on down the passage. He
was fleeing not merely the dragon, for he had some little hope that it
might have at least been driven off by his attack, or even killed if he
had managed a lucky hit. After all, he knew that tank-killer mines and
rounds often did the actual punching through armor with a spray of
molten metal directed and given force via a shaped charge, and his spray
of liquid metal had hopefully resembled that more than a little. Yet
even if it had been killed or fled, the two demonesses would likely
return soon, and given that the larger of the two had reshaped the stone
to imprison him, he had little hope of even a dead dragon's long keeping
them out of their lair.

Hope failed him when even as the sounds of falling stone clattered in
the far distance behind him, he came to the end of the passage he was
in. It was not such an end as might be found in a hallway or mine, with
neatly squared walls; rather as he had progressed the cavern had itself
transitioned from moderately worked stone to a natural rift, and it had
grown steadily closer, until know he knew that to continue forward
risked his becoming trapped, wedged between stone walls with no-one to
rescue him.

He stared at it dumbly for a long minute, the sounds of voices now
drifting incomprehensibly through the twisting ravine, before thought
and sanity returned, and he remembered the powers that he had been
given. Somehow, some way, there must be a solution to this dilemma in
them.

Once more his mind passed rapidly over the superheroes and villains of
his childhood comics. Again one of the first to spring to mind was
Morrie Bench, Hydro-man, and this time Xander's desire to escape was
such, with the fresh memory of the most intense pain he had ever
experienced to drive him, that Xander wasted no time wondering if it
would work, or what he risked by doing it.

He had power over fluids; if Morrie could do it, so could he. Almost the
same instant the idea entered his head, he had followed it, his entire
body flowing into a liquid state, and rushing down through the ever
tightening cracks in the rocks, letting gravity do the work. The only
effort he found he had to put forth was to keep himself together, to
draw back up whatever portions found a path that was separated from the
rest, and to fight against the continual tendency of his body to
re-solidify.

He was not sure what was causing that, but whatever minor pain he
experienced when a hand or knee re-solidified only to be caught in the
stone was negligible compared to the pain he had just experienced, and
the almost total lack of pain he experienced in his liquid state. Each
twinge of pain served to focus his attention just enough to reliquify
that piece of himself, and he flowed on.

As he descended, the ground became hotter, and he passed veins of rock
that were hotter still, some of the moisture in his body turned to
steam. At first he was mildly concerned, though the absence of any
resulting pain kept him from panicking, and when the steam remained with
him, and seemed completely under his control, he was reminded that he
had gained power over fluids, not merely liquids, so gases and vapors
were evidently included.

Every now and then he passed through a rising stream of gases released
from volcanic rocks down somewhere below him. At first he ignored these
as unimportant, but after a while he realized that he could sense some
difference between them.

It was nothing so familiar as a taste or a smell, but rather a sensation
he could not quite describe, yet after his fourth and fifth encounters,
he realized that he could recognize a gas he had seen before, and even
recognize that one of them was relatively pure, and the other a more
complex mixture.

Realizing that, he paused for a brief interval while he sampled the air
itself, trying to identify what composed it. He was about ready to give
up, knowing that Willow would have known the relative percentages of the
various components of air and been able to identify them by their mere
plentifulness relative to each other . . . though whether that would
actually work here, on what he was confident was a different world was
an open question. He realized just in time, as he was about to abandon
the task, that he had the perfect means of identifying the gases.

This was a significant moment, for prior to this, Xander had only really
been thinking about liquids, though he had said fluid when asked for a
wish. Now he produced bubbles of pure nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon
dioxide, they being the three gases he could most readily recall.

Sampling each, he compared them to the gases in the air around him, and
to his memory of the gases he had passed through. Carbon dioxide, he
realized, was a component of the mixed gases, and he wondered why they
held together coherently when carbon dioxide was also in the air.

A moment's thought gave him the answer; the coherent batches of gas that
had held mostly together while passing through the air, and himself, had
been warmer, the source and reason for their rising in the first place.

At first he merely attributed this to the heat of molten rock somewhere
below, but as he resumed his downward journey, he became curious about
the mixed batches.

He could understand how simple air could be heated, and rise, but the
mix in these clouds was not the same as the air around him. He could
understand the bits of pure gas, as the release of gas pockets in the
magma, but that again would not explain the complex clouds.

Feeling confident now, all hints of pain having vanished in this new
form and the sounds and fears of returning giants well past, he began to
focus his downward motion, spreading out and allowing himself to seep
down multiple paths, though never far enough to risk losing cohesion,
until he sensed a mixed gas cloud, then pulling all of himself down that
path.

He repeated this several times, only stopping when he passed through a
long crack into a passage that was apparently a worked stone hallway.
Immediately he drew back into the crack, and peered tentatively into the
hall, concerned that he might have been spotted by whatever beings or,
more likely, demons that had made or used it.

Much to his surprise, he realized that he could see into the hallway by
the light of the flickering torches set in wall-sconces, even when only
a tiny bit of himself was slipped to the end of the crack; though as far
as he could tell, neither of his eyes were in that bit of substance.

He grinned at this. He had always wondered how Sandman or Hydro-man
could continue to see when their eyes had become sand or water. Reminded
by this that he had been able to interpret the air before, and with his
confidence greatly boosted by his ability to see without eyes, Xander
took his transformation a step further, pushing past liquid to a fully
gaseous state.

Extending himself gingerly into the corridor, he focused his strange
everywhere-vision back on himself, ensuring that as intended, he blended
perfectly and invisibly with the air, visible, if at all, as nothing
more than a slight heat haze where the air's motion and density differed
slightly from the background.

Looking back and forth down the corridor, and verifying that he was
thoroughly alone, Xander took a moment to push fully back to human form,
verifying that he still had all his bits and pieces. His clothes being a
complete loss, and the corridor rather cold in spite of being lit by
flaming torches, he quickly returned to gaseous form, reassured by his
ability to resume human form, the absence of any obvious trauma, and the
fact this his normal form now seemed completely healed, not even showing
any redness from the intense flame or molten rock.

Moving closer to one of the torches, Xander sampled the gas coming off
of it, and determined that while it was releasing a not wholly
dissimilar collection of heated gasses, they were mixing much more
quickly, and losing their heat load to the surrounding air much too
rapidly to be the source that he had followed thus far.

He was not certain, however, that they weren't strong enough to have led
him astray at the very last turning he had taken.

He also discovered that though some of his substance got caught up in
the flame and burned, this did not feel painful, nor seem to hurt him,
and though he had gained a bit of oxygen from it, reminding him that
of a line that Willow had quoted at him when he was talking about the
Human Torch one day, that he had not really understood, "Combustion is
oxidation allegro." He was not sure what allegro even was, aside from
something from music class, but he could now see that when bits of him
burned in the flame, they split and gained oxygen.

Distracted by this, he spent several minutes playing with the flame,
indulging the pyromaniac in the heart of so many little boys. The flames
would leap and roar with power if he fed them a burst of oxygen, or
gutter and threaten to die if fed extra carbon dioxide. Other gases he
could think of had varying effects, mostly affecting the color and
intensity of the flame.

He had just begun to experiment with carrying a flame away from the
torch, by continually feeding oxygen and propane into a single spot in
the air, near the flame, and then trying to move it away without
reducing the flow of gases, before being interrupted. Propane was the
first gas he had thought of that actually burned reasonably well, but
though he was able to draw the flame far enough from the torch to tell
that it was a separate flame, he found it devilishly hard to keep the
flow of the two gases consistent enough. Too much of either would
flare up, use up enough oxygen in the immediate vicinity to snuff the
flames, and leave him spraying flammable gas into the air unburnt.

He had made just the barest of progress with this when he heard what
sounded like a heavy thud, followed by footsteps. He dropped what he was
doing, and focused on ensuring that he was wholly invisible. His body's
tendency to re-solidify if he took his attention away had not lessened
noticeably, and he did not want to deal with another encounter just yet,
especially not if it involved more pain.

Drifting up to the ceiling, he slid down the hall to a point midway
between two torches, where the shadows were the deepest, and waited.
Soon enough, three figures appeared from around a corner at one end of
the hall.

They were bumping into each other in an apparently deliberate fashion,
as if trying to knock one another off balance, almost like a living game
of ping-pong. They were, Xander guessed, no more than five feet tall,
with long pointed ears with furry tufts, and sharp-snouted faces covered
in red and white fur, making them look much like foxes. In spite of this
fox-like appearance, they were standing and moving much like humans,
though as one got a better hit in, causing another to spin, Xander
realized they had large furry tails, red with a white tip.

Sheaths hung at their sides, a short one on the left, a longer one to
the right. They were wearing dark red leather tunics with green trim,
green leggings, and heavy boots. There were flashes of torchlight
reflecting from beneath the boots, leading Xander to assume they had
soles that were nailed on, rather than sewn. Their clothing looked faded
and well-worn, with noticeably shinier patches where the arm rubbed
against the body, and occasional stains.

They looked stouter than he would have expected for a people that seemed
to be related to foxes. He thought of foxes as little dog-like creatures
that ran and hid, his impression coming largely from Disney movies and
stories of English fox-hunts from children's books. He did not think he
had ever seen a fox in real life before.

These three, however, rather than looking like fox-men to his mind,
looked more like a cross between a fox and a fantasy dwarf, short,
stout, and powerfully built.

They passed him by without appearing to see him, though he noticed all
three sniff the air curiously. He briefly considered following them,
before reminding himself that he was escaping from demons already, and
should be avoiding them rather. They were in the same mountain, for all
he knew, they might be working together.

He did not think that was particularly likely, but if it was the case,
it would be a bit late to worry about it after he had been captured by
them.

When a steady ringing sound started up in the opposite direction, Xander
made up his mind, and drifted towards it. The light from the torches was
not great, but Xander soon realized that he could see into even the
deepest shadows. He did not figure it out immediately, but eventually he
came to realize that when in his liquid or gaseous forms, the power that
allowed him to see anyway was using his entire body as a light capturing
device.

It was still somewhat limited by his mind, but he found he could look in
any direction without needing to actually move anything, and see into
deep shadows. He had not particularly noticed the darkness during the
trip down, which made him think that he could probably see even in pitch
blackness.

As he approached the ringing sound, he realized that it lacked the long
tapering sound of a bell. It was more akin to a hammer beating on a
piece of metal that had some good resonance to it.

Sure enough, when he finally found the room that was the source of the
sound, and infiltrated the room, snickering inaudibly to himself, by
drifting through the cracks around the closed door, he found it was a
great forge room, with three forge setups, two of which were in use.
Only one had active hammering, the other had its flame being stoked,
while something in the heart of the fire was being adjusted with long
tongs. Two more fox-men much like the three he had previously seen were
standing on either end of the room, watching.

They were well back from the flame, and considering that they had much
more fur than he had hair to fear a spark, he was not surprised. The
other four creatures--he could not honestly label them as men, being
unable to hazard a proper guess at their gender--were fur-less, and he
had to restrain himself mightily when he saw them, lest he lose
control and become visible in his shock.

He was immediately put in mind of childhood video games, as they were
humanoid turtles, in so far as he could tell. The spikes and other
appurtenances were more in line with say Koopas from Nintendo's Mario
Bros than the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but they were very much like
video game characters brought to life. Squat and muscular, much like the
fox-men, they carried a heavy spiked carapace, and wore black leather
gloves, shoes, and face masks.

The masks were fitted with what looked like smoked glass goggles, so he
assumed it was more about facial and eye protection rather than identity
concealment.

He remembered someone mentioning that all foreigners looked alike to
them, and while he would agree about the fox-men, having seen little of
use to differentiate them, the turtle-people were readily identifiable.
He immediately tagged them with monikers, Scar for the one with a long
mark crossing the back of its carapace, Horn for the individual with a
rhino like horn on its snout, though it was only about three inches
long, Frill for the one that had a ring of horns on its head, jutting
out just above his mask, and finally Muscles for the relatively
unadorned turtle, as his muscles were considerably more impressive than
the other three.

Where the others had looked like uncommonly strong men, much like a
blacksmith or wrestler on his world, this one looked like a top
body-builder, with muscles on muscles. It was he--with the degree of
musculature, Xander could not help but apply a masculine pronoun in his
mind, though intellectually he realized he had no means to be sure--who
was pounding the long, slightly red metal billet, a flat block of metal
about three feet long and three inches by two inches thick, steadily
flattening it.

Horn was gripping the metal mass with tongs, moving it about, while
Muscles was hitting the same spot consistently, rather than shifting his
aim.  Occasionally Horn flipped it, always getting it laying flat again
just before the massive hammer impacted it.

The hammer Muscles was wielding was a hefty thing itself, though all
Xander could do was judge it to be larger than the sledges he had seen.
He did not know how large those sledge-hammers were, so had no gauge for
the weight of the hammer. It was certainly no war-hammer meant for
swiftly smashing bones or skulls, nor a showpiece to place on a mantel.
It was dull and utilitarian, roughly octagonal, though more like a
cut-off square on the face, with a slight flare at the tip that was
obviously from the force of many impacts, and not a matter of design,
given its unevenness.

Frill was operating a bellows, though it was unlike anything Xander
remembered seeing pictured in History or Social Studies classes. Rather
than pumping up and down on a moderately sized accordion style pump, he
was spinning a wheel using one protruding handle. The wheel was attached
by a belt to another apparatus that translated the circular motion into
vertical motion, moving the handle of a bellows built into the side of
the forge, that moved in a vertical arc considerably higher than the
squat turtle figure could have hoped to reach himself.

A similar bellows was attached to all three forges, though the other 
two were quiet and unmoving.

Scar was handling whatever was in the flames of the second forge with
long tongs gripped carefully in his gloved hands.

The basic setup of the forges was a massive brick oven, a billows on one
side, an open space in front of the flames, and on the other side, a
long flat table of metal that looked to be four or five inches thick. On
one end a horn protruded, and along one edge were a series of holes,
both square and circular, the purpose of which escaped Xander at the
moment.

Between the table and the forge was a small wall that served to separate
each forging area. It was placed beyond the table's edge, and was
festooned with tools and implements, some of which Xander recognized,
and others whose use was a mystery.

Finally, at the end of each table, furthest from the forge, were set two
large barrels with open tops, and a long trough, all filled with a
liquid.

Perhaps Xander should have been more concerned about being discovered
and captured, but he was little worried. He had been somewhat concerned
about the first three foxes, as he had taken human form in that
corridor, and he had observed them sniffing for him. They had had at
least the beginnings of suspicion, and may have also observed unusual
flickering from his playing with the flames. These individuals, on the
other hand, were absorbed in their work, first off, and secondly, had no
reason to even suspect his presence.

Thus it made, to his mind, a perfect opportunity to observe and learn
about them. So he watched as the billet was hammered and folded, then
returned to the fire.

The pairs switched then, as Muscles started pumping the bellows on the
first station, while Scar pulled out a brightly glowing hunk of metal
and set it on the table for Frill to start pounding.

Xander watched this go back and forth for a while, until they completed
the blades, looking something like a machete, and plunged them into the
troughs of water, sending up clouds of steam. He quickly slipped out of
the room then, worried that the difference in density or mobility of the
air that was himself would be visible when the steam reached him.

After verifying that no-one was in the hallway when he entered, Xander
drifted back to the doorway, and focused on working out how to eavesdrop
on the room to make certain he had not been noticed. 

Just a short bit of experimenting lead him to realize that by focusing
on the vibrations of the air, he could hear perfectly well, and even
move the viewpoint, as it were, of his hearing about the room, by
focusing on any given small volume of air, with the intention of hearing
the vibrations there.

He could also hear through the water in the trough and in the barrels,
which lead him to experiment with the blood in the turtle-people. Though
there was insufficient mass of fluid at any point in them for him to
hear anything other than a soft rushing and an occasional lub-dub, it
did lead to the stunning realization that by recognizing and identifying
not merely blood, but the overall pattern of a concentration of a
variety of fluids in a branching motif, he could readily identify the
location of everyone in the room without attempting to look within.

In fact, with a bit of concentration, he could even observe the motions
of the turtles, enough to clearly identify when they again switched
positions at their respective stations.

Caught up in the wonder of being able to effectively see through walls,
Xander expanded his senses, wandering up and down the halls unseeing,
his concentration focused outward, experiencing each room he came
across. Any bit of air was good for hearing, he found, but it took a
flat bit of liquid for him to see. Basically, he could only see into a
distant room by focusing on the skin, the surface of a liquid where it
met the air, and focusing only on light as it impinged that surface. By
allowing the skin to define a two-dimensional cross-section of the
light, he could match it fairly well to his retina.

It was excessively disorienting, however, as he discovered that
apparently his retina automatically flipped everything upside down;
presumably this corrected for another flipping that occurred in his
lens, but since he was not using a lens, it made it seem as though he
were standing on his head.

However, as in this form his inner ear had no solidity, and could not
function properly, it could not contradict what his virtual eyes were
seeing, and so though it was intellectually disorienting, and made him
feel as though he were a bat hanging upside down, it did not engender
any dizziness or nausea.

Of course, testing one or two senses in this way naturally led to
testing others. Touch, like sight, was effective only where he could
define a surface. When there was a pool of liquid in the room, he could
feel that surface as if it were his skin, and feel the movement of the
air across it, or feel things passing through it.

Unfortunately, as he discovered when he found a set of kitchens, feeling
water as if it were your skin was excessively unpleasant when someone
was cutting vegetables in it. Though there was no pain, the sensations
were unambiguous about a constant stream of items piercing his skin, and
this triggered every escape instinct, and sent shudders through his
diaphanous form.

Taste and smell worked only, as it were, by analogy. He could not
convince his brain to actually experience any taste or smell remotely
and identify it with something he already knew, yet his knowledge of
what was dissolved in the air was complete, and functioned much like
taste or smell. He could not intellectually put them into words, but
much like a hound dog, he could learn a given 'scent' or 'taste' and
identify it again, or hunt it down.

When he happened upon a bathing hall, all thought of experimentation
left his head. He was lucky, perhaps, that being insubstantial, he
encountered no physical equivalent to the shot of hormones he otherwise
would have received, as he looked at a large pool filled with nude
females, all pleasing to his eye. They were mostly of the sort certain
fetishists on his world would have labeled 'furries,' but were uniformly
gorgeous.

Xander had encountered identifiable females previously in his recent
wandering, working in the kitchens, or cleaning rooms, and they had been
less than impressive, so he was under no illusions that all demon women
were as impeccably beautiful as the one that had so recently removed him
of his virginity, but this group would have no reason to be ashamed in
her company.

He gave up all pretense of observing remotely, drifting immediately into
the room and focusing the full of his vision on them. Some were closer
to a human norm than others, who bore tails or dark, leathery wings like
the giantess, or fur. But all were beautiful, and two of the furred ones
had something that drew his eye like nothing else, for they were
possessed of two pairs of breasts, one above the other. Their fur was
thin and short, like a short-haired dog, and did nothing to conceal
their gentle, full curves.

He was lucky that the absence of hormones in his system, though it
stopped none of his teenaged male interest in them, meant that there was
nothing physically clouding his senses or his thought processes, so even
in his awe, he was able to pay attention to their conversation.

Here he discovered that he was not entirely off in his guess that there
might be some connection between these creatures and the demonesses that
abducted him.

Apparently, had he looked closer, he might have even discovered a proper
stairway leading to these worked halls from their eyrie. Furthermore, he
learned, they were not merely demonesses, but also princesses, the
daughters of a Grand Duke. What is more, the Duke and they were both
apparently dragons as well as demons, and from the girls' eager
descriptions to each other, Xander realized that he had stumbled upon
the dream of every hot-blooded teenage male, a genuine harem!

These girls were the current favorites of the reigning Duke, who
apparently could and did take a more modest, near-human form to have his
pleasure with them, while taking an immense draconic war-form to battle
his own enemies, and an intermediate draconic form to lead his forces to
war.

Xander's heart fell to his feet when he realized that he may have either
slain or injured the father of the beauty that had given him the best
experience of his life. Granted, she and her sister had been discussing,
before they left to test her wings, whether she should literally consume
him to ensure that her improvements were not temporary, but they were
demonesses and he supposed it was to be expected, but still. She had
given him an awakening that he would never forget, and he may have
repaid her with her father's murder.

Though it had been in self-defense at the time, Xander could not help
but think, now that he was no longer in a blind panic, of all the ways
he could have resolved the situation without striking out, from the
intangible form he now had, which apparently found burning to be merely
amusing, to taking something that would temporarily allow him to
teleport away, to even simply using his power to stop or cool the
flames. After all, burning gases were fluid, and within his powers.

Perturbed as he was, Xander did not notice at first when the ladies
began to rise from the pool and dry themselves with linens. It did not
take him long, however, for when your entire surface serves as eyes, you
cannot simply cast your eyes down in despair and miss everything. He
actually saw everything from the first, it merely took him a long minute
to realize that they were preparing to leave.

Without really paying much attention, acting almost entirely on his
natural desire to be helpful and not a little out of gratitude for the
immense contribution they had unwittingly made to his store of fantasy
material, Xander began vanishing the water from the rising women, and
bathing them in soft blasts of warm, dry air.

Surprised though they were, it was quickly apparent, when their comments
drew Xander's attention to what he was doing, that they were of the
opinion that their Duke had arranged a new grooming spell for them, of
which they approved mightily. Momentarily prepared to flee when he
realized what he was doing, Xander instead continued his ministrations,
to preserve the appearance of an impersonal spell there for their
comfort, and not a perverted human male voyeur.

Glad to be of service, but also filled with chagrin at the realization
that he had allowed his prurient desires to cause him to invade their
privacy, Xander left the room and deliberately headed away from the
ladies. He was even more miserable when it occurred to him that he may
have robbed these ladies of their Duke, clearly a being they delighted
in, rather than some lecherous monster as might be supposed of a Duke in
Hell. Unlike, of course, the lecherous and voyeuristic monster that was
himself.

Xander was feeling quite low as he drifted downward, but he still paid
attention to his surroundings, and when he chanced upon a larger group
of soldiers marching with intent, he fell in to follow them.

Chances were reasonably good, he hoped, that soldiers marching with such
purpose would be heading to the outside of whatever sort of stronghold
they were in.




The Abyssal Plains


Out in the open, Xander turned back to look at the gate he had just
exited. It had been an interesting exit, as the aperture through which
he had passed had been quite narrow, and though he had not felt
squeezed, per se, it had definitely been strange.

The gate was huge, over three times his height, as far as he could tell,
though he was not certain he had been able to quite maintain his proper
size in his insubstantial state. It was set directly into the side of a
cliff; no flying over a battlement or lobbing severed heads over a wall
to sow despair here.

The gate led to a narrow pass that wound down through the foothills of
the mountain fastness. It had clearly been artificially widened, and the
path was well-maintained, free of rocks and sudden dips or rises, though
it appeared to steadily trend downward. Xander could easily imagine an
army emerging from that gate, passing down the cleared path in proper
marching order, though the area was clear of occupants at the moment.

The winding path and the overhanging hills would serve as some
protection from above, as would any hidden weapons in the cliff side. He
could not see any such armaments, but was pretty sure there were some.
There were definite signs of battle here, including discolored patches
on the ground where the way had apparently been repaired.

Passing down towards the plains below, the sounds of battle filled his
hearing once more, and he was reminded of his earlier view of the
plains. Leaving the path, secure in his relative invisibility,
especially from a distance, he drifted up to the peak of one of the
foothills, and looked down on the flatter land below.

There was a great army encamped near the end of the road, a veritable
sea of moving bodies, tents, great beasts, massive machines, and fires,
but all well-ordered.

Further out, he could see the rising smoke and dust of actual clashes
going on, and looking up, he could again espy the distant, tiny figures
of flying demons or demonesses.

Though he watched for several minutes, he never observed these flying
figures make an obvious attack run, so he decided that they were
probably there as spies and observers, relaying the order of battle
and enemy movements to the battle commanders somehow.

He had no idea how that might operate here, but he supposed it could be
anything from magic, to a mental link, to the simple expedient of some
form of semaphore, whether physical signals or flashing lights in a
pattern. Or, for that matter, they might observe for a while and then
return to explain what they had seen, or watch for some specific event
and then drop from the sky as a signal.

Continuing down, Xander approached the encamped army, and then slowed to
examine it. Though he had never studied warfare, he could see that they
were at the least an organized group. He could see regular formations
among the tents, with what appeared to him to be several ranks of
barrack tents, then what might be a mess hall followed by a kitchen,
assuming that was the purpose of the fires near this particular tent in
the pattern, and then a smaller cluster of smaller yet taller tents,
which he took to be officer's territory. This pattern repeated itself
throughout the army, though it varied in some areas, differing
particularly in the groups that seemed to include exterior stabling for
various strange creatures, whose details he could not make out from the
distance.

He was about to approach one of the great beasts for a closer look, when
a sudden thought occurred to him. They were too distant for him to see
clearly, but why should that matter? Had he not been able to see through
stone walls? Seeing at a distance should surely not be too much more
difficult.

As he considered it, he supposed there were two possibilities. Either he
could find a source of liquid near enough, with a good angle for
viewing, something he considered unlikely, or he could find a way to use
his powers to craft the equivalent of a telescope or binoculars.

This seemed readily doable. He did not know any great details about
telescopes and such, but he was pretty sure that the critical piece in
them was a simple lens, the same as in the handheld magnifying glass
that every young boy plays with at some point. He and Jesse had quite
enjoyed the one Jesse got for Christmas when they were both six, though
Willow thought they should use it to learn things, and they both just
enjoyed starting fires and burning ants.

Forming a lens took a little effort, but not too terribly much.
Spaghetti Westerns from his childhood had imparted the fact that water
distorts the apparent position of fish below the surface in a way that
had stuck in his mind, and his power, it turned out, was more than
sufficient to the task of causing a bit of pure water to form a ball in
front of him, then flatten that into a swollen disk.

Lining up a pair of these in front of his eyes, and adjusting their
relative positions worked just as he had hoped it would, allowing him a
closer look at the massive monster. From his new improved view, he could
see that it had a large box on its back, sort of the same thing as he
had seen depicted on an elephant's back, though he had no clue what it
was called.

It was large enough for at least ten of the demons to stand in, from
what he could see, and had a massive crossbow-type device mounted to it.
"Cool," Xander said aloud, "Must be their version of a tank."

Indeed the creature's skin appeared to be composed of massive scales,
and it had fearsome jaws. He likened it to a horned desert lizard,
scaled up many times. It was not in quite the same proportions, but it
did have the flat, wide head, bulging eyes, and limbs that canted out to
the side instead of lining up underneath it. He vaguely remembered
reading some science fiction article pointing out that simply scaling up
a small animal would not work, in spite of the prevalence of the idea in
the horror films he enjoyed, but apparently whatever problems there were
with it were not an issue here.

He pondered for a moment what it would be like if this lizard could
shoot blood from its eyes in the manner of a desert lizard he had read
about.

The ground about him shook, and he heard a distant rumbling. Refocusing
his vision without moving, Xander gazed back up the mountain, and after
a moment, saw an immense dragon, impossibly large, come turning from
behind the mountain's peak. He still had his telescope at the ready, and
swinging it around to focus on the dragon, though it took some effort to
get the speed of swing right to follow its motions, he got a good long
look at it, and shuddered.

The left side of its face was coated in a misshapen mass of metal, and
the awkward twisting motion to its flight made it clear that the metal
was disturbing its ability to control that flight. The right side,
however, was unmistakable, and Xander realized that he had not, in
fact, managed to kill a Duke of Hell... instead, he had merely managed
to disfigure one, and probably royally piss it off.

Not wanting to wait around to see if the Duke had better senses than his
minions, Xander surged forward, rushing over the ground, the ephemeral
lenses of his telescope splashing uselessly to the dirt and quickly
vanishing. As he pushed his speed higher, he searched desperately, and
just before he reached the flatter, cover-less ground of the plain
itself, he found what he sought, a deep crack in the ground that he
instantly plunged in to.

Now out of sight, at least, even to the probably terribly impressive
eyes of a demon-dragon, and hopefully at least somewhat protected by the
bulk of the dirt above, Xander worked his way through the ground,
returning to a liquid form to take better advantage of gravity, letting
it pull him deeper while he focused his own efforts on getting more
distance.

Dimly in his rush he realized that he was now experiencing something
much more akin to taste than the results of his efforts in the castle,
as he seemed to be getting a taste for the dirt and stones he was
passing over.

That was not too bad at first. Unfortunately, as he headed outwards, he
soon passed under land occupied above by the army he had seen, and of
course, no soldier is going to bother digging a latrine when nature
provides a ravine.

It was a minor blessing that he encountered and tasted the fumes from
the effluent in time to stop himself from actually contacting the fluid,
but that was more than enough to shake him out of his sudden fear, and
remind him that while there was little cover on the plain in terms of
trees or underbrush, there was plenty of cover in the forms of other
demons.

Returning to the surface, and returning to invisibility in the form of a
mass of air, he slipped unnoticed into the camp, already well past the
outer sentries. Moving ever outward, away from the mountain home of the
Duke, he examined the camp from up close.

There was more movement of air here, and variations in heat, so that the
air pushed and pulled at him incessantly, which he found to be somewhat
like walking through a crowded hallway, being jostled by other students.
It was mildly annoying, but not enough of an issue to require any action
on his part.

Somewhat to his surprise, he soon realized that there was an almost
equal distribution of males and females, at least amongst the demons for
whom a gender identification was obvious.

What was also copiously present here, though limited, he noticed, to
groups that seemed to be off-duty, was considerable consumption of
beverages that he assumed, based on the behavior of those partaking, to
be the local equivalent of beer.

This provoked a considerable crisis of confidence in Xander. Some of his
family's worst excesses had been in pursuit of the money to obtain
alcohol, and he feared becoming an alcoholic himself, and now he was
faced with the sudden and frightening realization that with his power
over fluids, he could literally produce all the alcohol he could ever
desire.

While it did mean he would never need to turn to crime to satisfy his
need for it, it also meant a swift and inexorable descent into an
addiction that if begun, he would probably never escape from. How could
he possibly be detoxified if he could produce the 'demon drink' as it
were whenever and where-ever he pleased?

Drifting into an unoccupied tent to find a quieter space to think,
Xander settled down to puzzle this out and figure out what he could do
to protect himself from this most unfavorable of outcomes. Somehow,
given his family history, he thought defeating the demon drink might
well prove more important to his survival than defeating any actual
demons, even if they were armed and mere yards away.

Without fully realizing it, his focus on this problem caused a lapse in
concentration elsewhere, and Xander resumed his human form, coalescing
once more into solidity. He was lucky, for the moment, that the tent
served to limit the spread of his scent.

Of course, the barracks tents were constantly occupied; to make
efficient use of space, barracks were occupied in shifts. In finding an
unoccupied tent, Xander had regrettably entered officers territory.

This might not have mattered. Had he entered the tent of one of the
elite demons, and they had returned, they would have attacked, and with
Xander's capabilities, defense or escape would have been readily
accomplished. Such was not Xander's luck.

When Naamahalat slipped quietly into her tent, she was only
momentarily surprised at the presence of a human soul there. Obviously
he was a gift from someone seeking to curry favor with her. It would
not gain them much, but he was a comely lad, and mere instants after
she entered had been entranced by her pheromones and her allure.

Grinning at having a new toy, she moved quickly across the room on
three-toed taloned feet, and flipped open her chest, reaching in and
withdrawing a golden collar, of the sort that would lie flat against
the chest and over the shoulders. Moving over to the entranced human,
she directed him to place it around his neck, which he did, his eyes
shining with pleasure at following her commands.

His intended purpose was clear enough, as he had been provided with
nothing in the way of clothes, but though she would use him for such
soon enough, for now she had another meeting to attend to, so directed
him in dressing in a servant's skirt.

She left him then, but though the air soon cleared of pheromones,
Xander's mind remained clouded, the effect of the necklace he had
himself placed around his neck, willingly binding himself to her 
service.

With nothing else to do, and desirous of pleasing his Mistress, Xander
occupied himself at first by cleaning and arranging her possessions,
then, on finding a set of dining utensils, he filled the ewers with the
purest water, and then a fine wine. He had never had a truly good wine,
but he saw no reason to limit himself to his own experience. He had
every intention of providing his Mistress with the best that was
available, and he had touched with his powers the vintages available to
the Duke, which should surely be fine enough.

Considering that his Mistress was female, he also produced a rich
chocolate drink, and then settled in to try and figure out how he could
produce food. The collar gave him purpose and kept him from boredom, and
so with focused thought, he succeeded in formulating an elixir that
would give him the ability to directly conjure well-prepared foods from
his own imagination.

Though he was tempted to make his first use of this the production of a
Twinkie, he knew that his Mistress's desires must come before his own,
and so he began with a variety of delicacies.

It did not take Naamahalat long on her return to realize that she had
misunderstood the magnitude of the gift she had been given. This was no
mere body-slave, but a magic worker of no small power, to have summoned
human foodstuffs without the aid of a chorus. She wondered momentarily
if he might have been left as a an assassination attempt rather than a
gift, but after having him try some of the food before her, decided it
was unlikely enough to take the risk.

Closer examination increased her estimation of his value, for the small
treats that he had summoned were exactly the sort that were hardest to
get, and easiest to destroy in the summoning, from thin pastries with
fillings, to carefully layered confections, and light meringues that
would fall with the slightest contamination.

She allowed him the pleasure of feeding them slowly to her, and some she
shared with him. Though human souls on these planes did not need
sustenance, they could still gain strength and pleasure from it, and she
had no need for harsh treatment to get her way, as some of her rougher
compatriots might need. Her allure and charisma were all she required.

When she tried the beverages, she was transported in wonder at the
purity and coldness of the water, and delighted by the rich flavor of
the wine, but when she tried the dark brown drink he offered her last,
she discovered a new and life-long object of lust.

She questioned him closely about this 'chocolate,' and when she first
sampled a solid piece of dark chocolate, she knew that she would be
defending this human against any who would seek to take him from her.

Pleased but still curious, she questioned him further, and when she
discovered chocolate syrup, she found her goal. With this, this most
entrancing of comestibles could be readily combined with the most
pleasurable of activities. Sealing the tent and weaving a ward of
silencing about it, she calmly stripped.

She had no need to put on a show to excite Xander, her pheromones were
more than sufficient to the purpose, and as he was already nude but 
for the easily discarded skirt, which would not prevent their 
activities even had it remained, nothing more was needed than to lie 
back and have him drizzle her with chocolate and lick it off.

Xander in his right mind might not have objected to the activities and
training that ensued, as she had no interest in attempting to use him in
war, for in a war between demons, even a human mage would not last long
enough to be worthwhile, but rather trained him in serving, and
servicing her, and her few friends. He would have been grateful that her
friends were all female as well as comely.

Continuing this training for three of his years, however, would not have
been in his planning. Indeed, his time with her might have lasted far
longer, but for a lucky break. He learned in his time with her that
demons on this plane, including the Duke he had given a faceful of
molten metal, could not be permanently killed. Their wars were for
pleasure and status, and though they could die, they would soon rise
again, and any wounds taken would quickly heal.

Luckily for Xander, when Naamahalat died, a bit more than three years
after taking him as her body-slave, it caused the temporary failure of
the necklace that kept him bound to her when she was absent.

He was even luckier in the absence of her friends, who were all of the
same basic form of demoness as she, and would have readily enthralled
him themselves. Finally, he was luckiest in that he had been working on
shielding himself from becoming physically addicted just before he was
taken, and so did not become addicted to her pheromones, though he had
not protected himself from their mind-altering qualities.

When he suddenly came to his senses one day in her tent, Xander was
quick to discard the necklace, and promptly vanish from the tent
entirely. Though he had been enthralled by her, his brain had not shut
down. Rather, it was merely as though he were deeply in love, and
everything that he did was directed to her happiness. This had not
blocked him from studying his situation, or learning what means might
exist to return them to his world, it merely removed any desire he might
have to act on them.

He had not yet learned of anything that would allow him to return to
his own world directly; indeed, he was fairly certain that between his
world and the world he had been thrown in to the Powers would have
placed a barrier. What would be the point of throwing him out of his
reality if at the same time they gave him the key to return?

Turning back to a gaseous form and leaving the tent took merest moments.
This ability of his had never been exposed to Naamahalat, as she had
focused on exploring the depths of his summoning ability. He had retaken
the potion to give him the ability to create small items so often to
satisfy her desires that in the end it had stopped fading away. He was
not sure when exactly that had happened, as he had gotten in the habit
of taking it regularly, but eventually he had noticed that he was
absently creating things from his subconscious while alone.

They vanished quickly without his actual will involved in their
creation, but the mere fact that he was creating them several hours
after his last dose led him to some experiments that confirmed that once
more he had inadvertently made what appeared to be a permanent change in
himself.

The camp, as he left the tent, was sparsely populated. Naamahalat's
death, which had freed him, had effectively told him that the army was
at least partially in combat, and as that combat had never previously
spilled over into the encampments to the point that he could hear it
nearby, he was not surprised to find that the area was only lightly
guarded.

Though his first action had been to flee the tent, he was not slow in
producing and consuming several substances intended to give him a
multi-layered set of defenses against mental attacks, hormonal and
chemical attacks, pheromones, anchoring his soul and shielding it from
outside influence, and, keeping in mind the possibility of his being a
carrier for diseases, spells, or whatever else he might have picked up
from the various demonesses he had pleasured and been pleasured by, an
ability to produce an antidote to the effects of the demonesses.

That last was presumably already covered by his powers, but he did not
want to have to think about what effect might have occurred and what to
produce to counter it. So instead, he focused on the idea that his
touch, when he willed it, should be able to reverse the effects they
caused. He would not know if that had worked, of course, until he found
someone so afflicted, but he felt it worth a try.

Having shielded himself against again becoming someone's love slave and
pet, Xander proceeded to carefully ransack the officers' tents in his
vicinity, searching the unoccupied ones for certain devices of which he
had heard tales.

Apparently, while there was no real way from this demonic realm to pass
directly into a different world, it was possible for demons to be
summoned, much like in the stories of the occult from his own world. His
mistress had never been so summoned, but some of the cohort had, and
enjoyed it.

To facilitate it, some of them had cartouches, devices inscribed with a
name, that acted something like a beacon, such that when a summons was
performed that did not explicitly name a demon, and so would merely
reach across the planes to summon anything that fulfilled certain
criteria, the cartouche would improve their chances of being the one
selected.

When Xander fled the encampment, he left behind him the scent of a human
in several dozen tents, and carried with him six cartouches, or at
least, what he thought filled the bill, and a bag of various treasures.
He would have grabbed some weapons, but knew he had no skill in wielding
them, while the demons on this plane could literally train to the death
and then get up and do it again.

The army had apparently been on the march for a while, though Xander had
seen little of the land, being secreted in a small platform tent carried
by servants, that held Naamahalat's wealth when they were on the move,
and so when he passed beyond the borders of the encampment, he found not
the foothills of the mountain fastness of the Duke he had injured, but
an endless plain, dotted with crumbled towers of stone, a ridge of 
mountains looming in the distance.

He was reminded, while looking at it, that he had yet to see a single
plant anywhere, and wondered if it was possible that there was no plant
equivalent in this plane. Was it possible for only animals to exist? Or
was it maybe an indication that the demons were not native here but had
come from elsewhere?

Xander shook his head. He had experienced many more of what he termed
'Willow-moments' since he first took the potion to optimize his body. He
supposed it was not a bad thing to be smarter, but it was uncomfortable
when he realized he was thinking things that he would not have even
understood to wonder about before.

Returning to solid form, Xander grinned. One thing, at least, had not
changed. He looked down and in his hand a Twinkie formed. He happily
crammed it in his mouth. He had not been particularly hungry, his
healing factor and his ability to produce food had kept him going
without trouble, but while at the time he had not cared, now looking
back on it, it had been irritating to constantly produce wonderful food
for Naamahalat while consuming simple workmanlike fare for himself. It
may have made her happy, but it did little for his own pleasure.

Fading out again, he passed quick as the wind across the face of the
near-desert, searching until he found a nice hollow, nestled in beneath
a pile of boulders that propped up against one another. Here he again
returned to solid form and contemplated his prizes.

He had taken only one thing from Naamahalat herself, in recognition that
she had treated him well and fairly, aside from the whole making him a
slave thing. He had been helplessly devoted, and she could have walked
all over him, but instead, he had many a memory of her hungry eyes
looking up at him from between his thighs, many images of her lustful
face as she bounced against him, or lay back, breasts swaying as he
pressed in to her. She had valued his magic and his stamina both, and
treated him like a prized pet, and while he had no desire to return, or
to remain there, he did recognize that had he been a cat and she his
owner, he would have had no cause to complain.

Nonetheless, the small belt-pouch she had given him, the only item he 
had to wear most of the time aside from the servant's skirt, he had 
kept. It was one of a pair, and he was not sure she could not track 
him through it, so keeping it was a risk, but the advantages were too 
great to ignore.

Anything he attempted to place in it would fit, at least for as large an
item as he had so far dared to try, including an entire chest as large
as himself, and yet it weighed but an ounce or two, and whatever one
wished to pull from it was the first thing the fingers found, and was
easily drawn out, though its size might be much greater than the pouches
small opening.

Naamahalat's purpose in giving it to him was not, of course, to hold his
belongings, for he had none, but because whatever was put in one could
be drawn from the other. It was necessary to know what was in the pouch
before it could be drawn forth, so he had felt safe enough using it to
purloin his spoils from the other tents. She had given it to him so that
he could keep her supplied with her favorite treats in the field. He
filled it with the various things she liked the most, and on a regular
basis, he attempted to draw from it a note from Naamahalat. If she had
placed one within, his attempt would succeed, so it also served as a
means of communication.

He was not sure if he would check for that note again, but given the
pleasure she had given him, and the memories, he did resolve to keep a
supply of her favorite treats well-stocked in the little bag.

Xander had made excellent use of this gift, and now he began to draw out
the things he had taken, the cartouches, the chest, and most important
to him at the moment, a pile of clothing. He had not had time to sort
through and try clothes on, but he had grabbed a fair variety, and now
he sat down and went through it.

Finally making his choices, he dressed again. It was a bit odd, using a
loincloth instead of proper underwear, and the cloth was both filmier
and more billowy than he was used to wearing, but as much time as he had
spent basically nude, Xander felt more human when he was finally dressed.

Feeling human because he had put on demonic clothing might be a bit odd,
but as far as he could tell, the demons were people, as he understood
the term, whereas he had been treated more as a favored pet than a
person; assuming the owner was into a little bestiality, of course.

Savoring a chocolate Ding Dong, Xander considered the rest of his
supplies. He was a bit leery of the chest, worried that it might be
protected against opening in some fashion, and finally decided that the
simplest solution would be to remove the contents.

Granted, that was easier said than done, since he meant to remove them
without opening the chest, reasoning that any trap or curse would be
against those opening or damaging the chest. One of the delightful
things he had realized was that he could bring things he carried into
an airy form with him. It was only after he had done so in fleeing the
tent that he had thought to be worried about the effect on the bag, but
it had come through unscathed and had still accepted items larger than
itself, so he was not worried about doing it a second time.

As air he surrounded the chest, probing the surface, until he located
the tiniest of gaps through which he could slip. Again he felt the
strange sensation of squeezing himself down, as he slid in, but soon he
encountered another issue.

He could not, even as air, fit all of himself in the chest. As he pushed
more of himself in, effectively increasing the pressure, the chest
creaked and he stopped, afraid it would explode open, and damage the
contents, possibly triggering whatever defenses it might have.

So he backed off, and reconsidered. After thinking about it for a bit,
Xander tried again, slipping into the chest with just his arm, holding
the bag. Forming a flat plane of water and shifting it around allowed
him to see, though dimly. Too dimly to make anything out, in fact, and
he needed to see each item before he placed it in the bag, or he would
never be able to remove it.

He wondered just how many items might be somewhere in the bag, never to
be removed because Naamahalat had forgotten about them, or they had been
put in by whoever owned the bag before her, assuming she had not made it
herself, or ordered it made.

He could produce flame, but that would not be safe, but a moment's more
thought led him to produce a globule of the chemicals that produce
a firefly's light. Theoretically, he supposed, the chemicals might be
considered solid, as each individual molecule was certainly a solid. But
apparently as long as they behaved at some level as a liquid, or could
be dissolved in a liquid, they qualified for his power, something he
certainly was not going to complain about.

The light was a sort of greenish yellow, and rather dim, but the greater
surface area of his ocular water lens made up for it by catching much
more of the reflected light.

To Xander's delight, much of the contents appeared to be coins. They
looked oddly dark in the weird light, but he suspected they might be
gold. It took a moment to shift things around inside the chest, but soon
he worked out a way to hold the bag open with his semi-material hand;
then all it took to get the coins bagged was to move the open mouth of
the bag up to them. As soon as the coin intersected the plane of the bag
it was ingested, for lack of a better word.

He was not too worried about recovering them. They were demonic coins,
and he did not think they would have serial numbers on them, but even if
they did, the bag would cough up anything matching the item you were
thinking of. If there were multiple items that matched, it would return
an apparently random selection if there was not a best match to be
found. So if you knew exactly what you wanted, you could get it, but if
he simply wanted a coin and there were any coins in the bag's holding
area, he could withdraw them.

He suspected that there might be more to it than that, that there might
be some way of putting items in such that only you could remove them, or
only someone thinking of what you thought when you put it in, but if so,
Naamahalat had kept such a feature to herself.

Occasionally he came across a more particular item, including several
metal dishes and cups, and these he had to pay more attention to. There
was an extent to which the thought would become too generic. Just
wanting to remove say, 'an object,' had not succeeded even when he knew
he had placed a snack cake in the bag. 'A sweet,' however, would suffice
to extract anything that tasted sweet, so as long as he remembered that
there were plates and cups, he figured he should be able to retrieve them.

As the volume of coins dropped, Xander almost missed a small round
object falling in with a hole in it. Slowing and looking more carefully,
Xander spied several other rings in amongst the coins, and reminded
himself to pull them back out and examine them.

When the chest was almost emptied, Xander came across a small cache of
smaller objects that glittered strangely in the light, and moving his
plane of water and the light closer, he determined that it was a small
pile of cut gemstones.

At least, he hoped they were gems and not glass, though of course, he
would not be able to tell how valuable they were til he made it back to
a human world and found an appraiser. Well, he might be able to identify
diamonds if they could cut glass . . . but just because diamonds could,
he mused, did not mean that there were no other lesser stones that might
also be able to, so even there his identification could not be certain.

With the gems consumed within the bag, the chest appeared fairly empty,
and Xander pulled back, satisfied that he had managed to obtain the
contents without risking a curse, and fairly well pleased at the amount
of control he had managed in such a tight space. Mr. Fantastic, he
thought, could hardly have done it better. Considering the tiny crack he
had slipped his arm through, he wasn't actually sure Mr. Fantastic could
have done it at all.

Now back in solid form, Xander slipped his fingers into the bag and
pulled out one of the coins and examined it. In better light, he could
see that it did look like gold, though he knew that said little if
anything about its purity. He remembered some story about a bathtub and
a pure gold crown and some Greeks but did not have a bathtub nor any
idea how it could tell him if the gold was pure.

He drew out one of the gemstones, and grinned, both in relief that it
had come out when he thought of a gemstone, which hopefully meant it was
not glass, and because it was a brilliant little gem, but larger than
any ring-set gemstone he could remember seeing. If it was any sort of
actual gem it should be worth a fair amount, though as it was a light
blue he thought it was probably not a diamond.

Drawing out a plate and then a cup, he confirmed that they both had at
least the appearance of being gold. Well, if he was summoned to any sort
of human world, he would have some worthwhile currency at any rate.

He had no real hope of being summoned back to his own world. He idly
tried again to produce an elixir that would allow him to get there, then
a fluid that would act as a portal to his home in Sunnydale, and was
unsurprised when both attempts failed. He was hoping, however, that if
he was summoned to another world, then after he was released from the
summoning, he might be able to try to get home from there before he
returned to this demonic plane.

He returned the remaining clothes to the bag, and then drew out the
cartouches. He could not comprehend the writing on them, but since from
his information they would only be names anyway, there was little point
in trying. It would not help him guess which would be best.

Instead, he chose to simply wear them all, hoping that multiple signals
would increase his chances of being summoned. In the meanwhile, he would
have to deal with being here.

Shifting around to get a couple of annoying rocks out from under him,
Xander settled back against the edge of one of the deeper rocks, where
it stood straight, supporting one of the leaning rocks above. With sand
under him and the rock at his back, he was actually somewhat
comfortable.

As long as he was forced to be here, he supposed he might as well
practice with his powers, including the abilities he had inadvertently
added. He was not certain how much time had passed, but guessed it had
been more than a year. He was somewhat surprised that in spite of adding
Wolverine-scale healing, his hair growth had not become a problem, but
his hair had maintained at its usual length, and he had not had any
inklings of a beard yet.

Still, he was curious how much had changed in his appearance, and it was
a good test of his power, so he produced a sheet of liquid mercury and
stilled the air around it, allowing it to settle into a smooth, highly
reflective surface.

"Man, I look old," Xander mused, turning his head from side to side.
Apparently bringing himself to his physical optimum had required aging
his body, and it occurred to him that his 'Captain America' serum might
have been responsible for his retaining a clear-cut appearance. After
all, if Captain America had been on his mind at the time, he might have
subconsciously included the clean-shaven appearance of that rugged
superhero.

He still looked like himself, though, as far as he could tell, just
older. His hair had not gained the Wolverine's signature peaks, nor
turned blond like Captain America.

Vanishing the mercury, Xander played around with summoning other fluids,
before remembering that he had cups now, golden goblets really. Pulling
one out, he filled it with chilled Coca-cola and stopped a moment to
sniff the rising bubbles before taking a drink.

"Mmmm, that's good," Xander murmured. Producing fluids directly in his
mouth was useful and sustaining, but it lacked the feel and pleasure of
drinking from a cup, the carbon dioxide bubbles tickling his nose, the
scent combining with the taste. He had not really realized before, but
now, smelling the Coke, he recognized that it was the lack of smell that
had caused the liquids he had been drinking directly in his mouth to
seem flat.




An Exciting Wait


After spending a short time dealing with comfort issues, Xander turned
his attention back to the more critical issue of coming to grips with
his powers. The badlands he had first been dropped in had not seemed a
very safe place to remain for long and his kidnapping had forestalled
any effort to do something about that, and fleeing the vicinity after he
got free had seemed a reasonable priority.

Now however he had lost considerable time in a second captivity, and he
really wanted to have his powers more firmly under control and ready for
immediate use, rather than requiring thought and preparation as they did
now. He was not certain how long he had been a captive, as there had
been little enough to mark the passage of time, and even what little
there was, in the way of sleeping, did not feel to him as though it had
been on a twenty-four hour schedule, but then, why should it, given that
he was in what seemed to be another world.

At no time had he seen a sun or a moon, or any obvious change in the
level of light. The most noticeable cycle, aside from sleeping, had been
the shift in activity in the camp when large swathes of the demons went
off to fight a battle, and later returned.

So now that he had found a hideout that seemed both safe, and could
conceal him from the prying eyes of flying demons and demonesses, it was
time to buckle down and focus on what he could do.

While getting back to his own world had been his immediate priority,
or at least his mental focus initially, he now realized that not only
was that likely to take quite some time, and probably involve travel
across several dimensions, he also had an opportunity here that should
not be wasted.

As he had observed, the demons here regularly fought, died, recovered
after some time and returned to fight again. That meant that he could
train his powers against them without worrying about causing anyone
permanent harm. Well, he could train against them once he got his skills
up enough that he wouldn't die right off in the first battle, anyway.

He had no illusions about that at the moment. In spite of his healing
ability that seemed not to have vanished as it ought, and the amping up
of his body to super-soldier specs, from what he could tell, these
demons not only had supernatural strength and stamina, they also had
hundreds, maybe thousands of years experience fighting in full-contact,
life and death battles.

Sure they might be a little reckless given that death could be recovered
from, but since death meant at least the loss of any possessions
carried, and also the risk of losing other possessions left behind in
the camp, and probably even the risk of being carried off to the other
side as a slave for who knows how long, he had little doubt that their
skills would be well-honed.

He felt that if he could train his powers up, he would have significant
advantages in terms of bringing unknown and unfamiliar forces and
fighting techniques to bear. Even so, he would need to carefully arrange
for single combat situations, since large scale combat would undoubtedly
result in his capture, and it would probably not take too many
observations of his form shifting or other powers for them to find a way
to neutralize him. Assuming, of course, that they did not already
possess such a way, as Naamahalat certainly had, though he was now
shielded from that particular means of entrancement.

When he and Jessie had discussed comic book characters for hours, they
had noted that there seemed to be two major types of characters - those
that had a single skill or ability so well-honed as to handle any
situation, such as the Hulk or the Wolverine, and other superheros that
always had another trick to pull out, such as the seemingly unending
list of powers of Superman, or the endless gadgets of the Batman.

While Xander, by virtue of his choice in power, certainly could pull out
endless tricks, at least as far as his imagination would allow, he knew
it would be a good idea to have at least a small bag of tricks that were
well-honed and near-instinctive.

Having succeeded at becoming gaseous, Xander now focused for a while on
transitioning as quickly as possible between solid and gaseous forms,
including shifting just his hand to air and back as fast as he could.

He also tried shifting to liquid, and found that in this form, it was
fairly easy to shift between an opaque liquid, colored to match his
normal form, and a transparent form. Transparent Xander was not a
match for his gaseous form in terms of invisibility as the liquid bent
the light more strongly, which he used a mirror of suspended mercury
to observe.

In playing with the sand that filled all the interstices of his 
relatively rocky hideout, Xander discovered that it was a simple thing 
to lift the sand into his form, by effectively dissolving it into 
himself, but that returning to solid form with it still present was 
painful and unpleasant.

He could pick it up, and then redeposit it, however, and drawing
moisture from the air and mixing it with the sand allowed him to form
and deposit mud without needing to use up his own substance in the
process. Experimenting a bit, he learned that he could not concentrate
well enough, for long enough, to produce enough hot air around his sand
and water mixture to harden it significantly. He wasn't sure whether
pottery could be made from just sand and water, anyway.

His first true discovery, and first real surprise with his powers,
aside from the shock of discovering the lady wasn't lying about them
in the first place, was when a mound of sand he had produced collapsed
and flowed toward his small pile of foodstuffs, created when he had
been making sure he could still remember all the things he had made
for Naamahalat. He stopped it with a gesture, and reversed the flow
back up in to a pile.

He had not really expected to be able to affect the sand at all,
knowing that it was a solid, but had simply reacted when his food
supply was endangered. Of course, it had not really been in danger, as
he could always produce more, and had not yet become tired or ill from
eating only what he produced, even though he was sure there was
something about that which would have Willow complaining about him
breaking the laws of physics. His powers broke those laws anyway, as
far as he could tell, so he was not worried. Nonetheless his instincts
to protect his precious munchies had given him a revelation.

Pausing to consider this, and to eat some of said munchies while he
pondered, Xander began to experiment. At first his power did not seem
to want to have any effect on the unmoving pile of sand, and it took
giving it a push or a kick to get a flow started before he could play
with making little sand devils.

After a bit, however, he determined that it was enough for him to
imagine the pile in flowing motion for his power to get a grip on it.
Given the amount of sand in this desert, this seemed a quite useful
ability, and while his first thought was that it would make keeping
sand out of his meagre belongings easier than having to go around
vacuuming it out with blob-like liquid pseudo-pods, he was soon
reminded by a polished bit of stone where one of his little
sand-devils, small spinning towers of sand, impacted one of the
boulders, that a concentrated stream of sand could probably be pretty
painful.

It took a bit before he managed to form what he mentally referred to as
a sand chainsaw, basically just a ribbon of sand flowing in a loop at
very high velocity, but he was delighted with the effects of it, as by
adjusting the speed of the flow, he could write his name in shiny
polished letters on the rock, or actually carve into the rock face.

Remembering from his observations of Naamahalat and her friends, such as
they were, he knew that names had power in magic, and so was quick to
blot out the names he had scribed and carved in the stone, to leave
nothing that could be tied back to him if others found this place.

Xander looked forward to seeing what his chainsaw could do against the
demons later on, and so practiced producing it from nothing. He tried a
similar process with water and air, but did not get great results. If he
imagined air or water being produced and shooting forward at
high-velocity in a tiny needle-sized stream, he could generate cutting
force enough to carve into rock, but it had to be pretty close, or it
just produced a nice spray in the air, not nearly so useful for a weapon.

So he practiced with his chainsaw, until he could get it to at least
behave as if he was holding it. He was not able to get it fully
instinctive, he still had to put some concentration on making it follow
his arm movements, which was disappointing. Sure he could use it while
he was hidden, as just a flying weapon, but he was hoping for the cool
factor of wielding it like a sword.

Still it was an impressive weapon, and one he could call up in moments
if he had the sand available. Even if he only had a bit of sand, he
could start it small, and grind it into some rock, if there was any
about, to produce more sand to get a respectably sized weapon, a process
he also tried twice, before stopping to avoid using up all of his
boulders.

Tired of playing with his chainsaw, cool as it was, Xander turned back
to his food-summoning ability. Since he did not clearly remember what he
was thinking when he had given himself the ability, he really did not
know what the limits were, and knowing his limits was probably a good
idea.

He knew that it had been specifically a food-summoning ability, but he
also knew that many of the little treats he had summoned for himself or
Naamahalat had supposedly so little redeeming value that a nutritionist,
or a Willow, would pronounce them not worthy of being called food. So he
decided to see how far 'food' could be stretched.

Attempting to produce a pebble failed, so did generating a bolt or a
nut -- well, a metal nut, anyway. Producing a wrapped Reese's mini
peanut butter cup, however, succeeded, and so did producing a larger
double-pack, including, to his surprise, nutritional information on
the back. Well, at least, it looked like a nutritional label; but
while the logo and product name were clear, the label on the back was
more like a fake that might be produced for a television show where it
would only be seen at a distance, or the garbage text used to fill out
news stories on a newspaper in a picture where only the headline is
going to be in focus anyway.

Peeling open the thin plastic revealed the paper cups and the candy
inside, just as expected. Xander did not resist the urge to eat them.

Producing an empty candy wrapper failed, but producing an edible candy
wrapper succeeded, even when the candy it wrapped was actually a pair of
metal nuts. A second edible wrapper around a pair of bolts produced a
working, matched set of threads, the nuts smoothly spinning on to the
bolts.

Trying to produce a whole roasted turkey succeeded, but gave a small,
maybe twelve pound bird. A second try for a larger bird produced a half
of a roasted larger turkey. Several more tries both established an
apparent size limit of approximately a full gallon of milk in a plastic
jug, though he could produce five of them in quick succession with no
strain. It also used up enough materials that Xander finally noticed
that his power was apparently not producing something from nothing, but
changing nearby dead substances into what he required. Producing five
gallons of milk, quite a few roasted turkeys and chickens, and a couple
of metal pots of spaghetti and meatballs had generated noticeable gouges
in the terrain.

Curious as to whether his own base powers included such an ability to
change substances, such that this power he had gifted on himself might
really just be an extension of what he already had, Xander located a
small depression in one of the stones, formed, given the raw look of the
hole and the unweathered sharpness of the edges, by his recent food
conjuring activities, and partially filled it with fresh water.

Focusing on his intent that the water should be changed directly, not
removed and replaced, Xander tried to convert it to chocolate pudding.
To his surprise, it immediately turned a rich chocolaty brown, and when
he dipped a finger in and on feeling the pudding-like consistency, tasted
it, it was in fact chocolate pudding.

He then promptly formed a loop of fast-moving water in the air, and
changed it to sand, successfully. "I'm an idiot," Xander groaned, and
dispersing the sand, he promptly produced another sand chainsaw
directly, by producing the sand with his power, instead of using sand
around him. "This is exactly why I've got to practice this," Xander said
aloud, sitting with a huff on a jutting bit of stone. "I was all set to
go looking for a bit of sand, and build a chainsaw from that and
grinding it from stone, when all along I could just go poof, and there
it is!"

Xander sat in thought for several minutes, wondering what other obvious
solutions he was missing. After considerable thought, he tried summoning
a device that would bring him home, wrapped in bacon, but ended up with
only an empty pile of bacon.

Sighing, and knowing that if only Willow were here, she would doubtless
know the answer, and be able to get him home in a moment, he tried to
obtain a phone that could connect to Willow's home phone, wrapped in
edible paper, but was again disappointed. Not that he had held out much
hope. He had already pretty much convinced himself that whatever Powers
had sent him to this hell, they were determined to be rid of him, and
would have blocked any and all obvious means of return.

Deciding that he wanted to get some rest pretty soon, Xander turned his
attention to getting himself some more protection before he went to
sleep. A quick test confirmed that he could produce a large mass of
molten stone, and quickly drop the heat, until it passed into solidity
and out of his power, at which point it would be both a solid, glossy
mass of stone, and still radiating a fair bit of heat.

Using the erosive power of water, air, and sand, Xander proceeded to
excavate a deeper, larger void, while forming thick stone walls to keep
out the sand, and blocking off all but a few small holes for air.

He could pass in and out as a thin stream of air, but no large demons
would be able to make their way in, except by loudly bashing through
stone, or by using some method of teleportation. He hoped that the
inability to see clearly into the now very dark pit would give them some
pause, while at the same time he thought that the irregular shapes of
the stones he had produced would make this appear to be a natural
massif. As long as a visitor had not previously been here to know that
there was a protected area beneath the stones, he felt they would assume
it was just a solid upthrust mass.

To his delight, it turned out that a small air-bed was, when tightly
folded up and embedded in solid chocolate, within the range of his
summoning. After breaking the chocolate mold and extracting and
unfolding the air-bed, it was a simple matter to inflate it by producing
air directly in the interior. A similar attempt failed to produce a
large blanket, it being too large even folded, but he was able to
produce an air pillow, and a multitude of sheets.

Feeling safer than he had in a long while, Xander settled in to sleep.
When uncomfortable bladder pressure brought him to semi-consciousness,
he was able to vanish the liquid without moving from the comfort of his
bed, and drift back to sleep.

When he finally awakened, well rested, he arose and began to pace around
his new pit, wondering what to try and do next. There was obvious combat
potential in producing water around someone's head to drown them, or
just changing all the oxygen in their vicinity to carbon dioxide, but he
could not really think of anything he could do to safely practice that.
He certainly did not want anything so directly lethal to become an
instinct, which is why he wanted the chainsaw to move like a weapon, so
that while producing it could be instinctive, wielding it would require
his actual intent to harm someone.

Being startled and suddenly swapping all the oxygen in a room for carbon
dioxide could be as lethal to his friends as to his enemies, and he was
not terribly sure that demons would even have the same breathing
requirements, whereas he was sure that physical dismemberment would be
effective, since that is what they seemed to attempt against each other.

Still, he wanted something more in his arsenal before he actually went
to try himself against some demon. It needed to be something more than
his tiny, though effective wind and water cutting sprays. It occurred to
him that a similar spray of ink might be able to tattoo them, though,
and make him wonder what kind of influence he would be able to apply to
tattoos. Still, he wanted something forceful.

He was momentarily inclined to try and produce a gun wrapped in seaweed,
but knew that he had no experience in shooting a gun, or caring for
such, and of course, he would constantly have to produce ammunition for
it.

Maybe he could produce a similar effect, however. He could produce a
sudden blast of water that would probably knock a demon back, as if they
had been struck with the spray from a firehose, but that would only keep
them at a distance. He had sprayed liquid metal at the great dragon-Duke
he had encountered, that might be more useful.

Xander held his hands up, and paused for a moment, picturing what he
wanted to happen, and thinking it through, before continuing. Liquid
iron appeared, swirling inward from around his hands to form a small
sphere right in front of him.

Then he dropped the temperature of the front portion of the ball,
basically everything but a smaller, quarter-sized sphere at the back,
until just before it left his control, and then pushed on the still
liquid portion, focusing on it reaching five hundred miles per hour. He
was not sure what speed it actually reached, but it still shot forward,
passing across the chamber in an instant, impacting the far wall with a
thunderous crash.

Xander dropped to the floor, feeling sharp shooting pains coming from
all over. As quickly as he could pull his focus together, he slumped
into liquid form, then gaseous, lifted up from where he was, and retook
solid form. Where he had been was covered in stone slivers, as in fact
was most of the room, and Xander was reminded of the glossy color of the
stones he had produced by swift cooling. Apparently, he had produced
something more akin to glass than he was expecting. Sand had poured in
where he had thoroughly destroyed the large stone block he had aimed
for.

That would certainly have gotten a demon's attention. It probably would
have hurt even the Duke he had faced, and he really liked the visual
style of forming it between his hands before firing it. He just needed
to not do that again when he was standing in the blast zone.

Pressing the sand back in place, he formed and cooled a new block.
Another idea for an impressive visual effect struck him then, based on a
magic style from a book Jesse had told him about, and he proceeded to
try it. It was simple enough to produce a baseball sized hollow sphere
of chocolate containing a hollow sphere of iron inside. Since the hollow
was filled with air, it was a simple matter to grasp the iron sphere and
move it about.

A similar effort produced a spiky ball, looking rather like a curled up
hedgehog or spiny sea urchin, with thicker walls and a smaller core of
water hidden inside. Again, this tiny core of water allowed him to reach
out and control the movement of the spiky sphere by moving the water
inside of it.

The fast motion quickly shredded the chocolate covering, leaving
chocolate bits all over, but Xander was not bothered by this. He
proceeded to make a variety of small balls, some spiky, some with just a
few large spikes, some smooth, of various sizes.

Now he had a more challenging skill to master, and one that should be a
great weapon when it came down to it. At one and the same time, he could
practice sensing and maintaining in his head a picture of the location
of the various balls, practice using his power to move liquids about,
change their temperatures (using the heat of the liquid to heat or cool
the metal of the ball), and manage their speed. That would give him 
weapons that could bludgeon, pierce, burn, freeze, fire off like 
a bullet, maybe even explode.

The small, un-spiked spheres also gave him a reference point that he
could wrap in water to get an eye, one that he would, by virtue of
practicing this exercise, have experience controlling and moving.

Along that same line of thought, Xander formed a few small spheres of
water surrounded by glass. By experimenting with these, Xander figured
out that if he made a sphere of water, surrounded by a sphere of
glass, embedded in another sphere of water and another sphere of
glass, with one bump on each glass sphere where the wall was convex
even on the inside, basically a bubble in the glass, by shifting the
small ball inside the larger ball, he had an eye that he could not
only move about, but could adjust the focus on. By effectively
embedding more than one lens in the outer glass sphere, he could flip
between a close up microscopic zoom, and a distant telescopic zoom.

Over the next several days, or what Xander was calling days, at any
rate, he continued to practice with the spheres. Every now and then,
after using an eye sphere to look around outside and ensure that he
was alone and there were no lurking demonesses overhead, Xander would
slip out of his hideout as a wisp of air, and produce and fire a
series of iron balls into the air, focusing on the speed and showiness
of the attack.

He was not able to get the hang of actively controlling more than two
spheres at once, and even that was difficult, but he found that he
could set a sphere into an orbit a fixed distance from himself and
maintain that with minimal concentration. Of course, that was just for
show, as there was no difficulty in carrying a number of the balls on
his person.

He discovered while practicing with his summoning ability that while he
could produce quite complex items, he could not use it to produce a
working gun, nor a flashlight, nor indeed, it seemed, anything he did
not basically understand. Of course, he did not really understand the
minute structure of the cells in meat, either, but apparently the
experience of eating it was enough, or maybe because it really was food.
A live frog, or even a live ant in jelly was beyond him, however. He
could produce a dead frog, though he either had to coat it in something
edible, or had to imagine himself as a snake, that would find such a
morsel tasty.

Broccoli was a complete failure, and he discovered that this covered
anything he could not at least imagine eating. He could produce
something covered in chocolate if he could picture sucking or breaking
the chocolate off and eating it, but if he would be unable to accept
eating the chocolate once broken off, it failed to materialize at all.

This, he discovered when trying to produce a chocolate-covered slug.
Picturing himself as a snake, he tried to imagine eating a slug, but
he could not even imagine what could possess someone to eat a snail or
a slug, he found the thought so dismaying, and so apparently could
produce neither.

A bandoleer was not nearly so disgusting, and so a bandoleer wrapped in
edible sugar-paper with printed chocolate candies was readily produced.
Of course, figuring out how it should be shaped to allow the spheres to
be held by it was a bit more tricky, but he figured it out eventually.

In the process, he played with a sphere that would have spikes that were
concealed, and pushed out when he added more liquid. He never quite got
that working, but it did make him realize something else. While he was
no genius at computers or electrical equipment, the concept of a
hydraulic piston was a fairly simple idea, and a smallish one, about two
feet long retracted, was within the size range he could produce.

Producing it inside of chocolate made Xander feel grateful that
apparently his healing factor included swifter burning of calories.
Eating all of these sweets would certainly have had him swelling up like
a balloon otherwise, which was something else to look into in a bit.

Playing with the simple piston, he determined that it was fairly simple
indeed to increase or decrease the hydraulic pressure, causing the
piston to extend and retract. After moving it back and forth a few
times, Xander lost interest, and moved on. It was neat, and if he ever
got back to his world, it might be interesting to be able to wield a
backhoe remotely without having to turn it on, but he was not going to
try to build anything major out here, and was more interested in things
he could turn into weapons.

He had little doubt that he would face numerous challenges on this 
world alone, and probably more on his way back, and if he ever made it 
back to Sunnydale, whoever these Powers were would probably throw 
something worse at him. After all, if they could throw him here, they 
obviously had access to worlds full of demons, and could probably pull 
them back into Sunnydale, and the authorities would surely not know 
how to deal with them there.

Producing a whole series of pub dart style target boards made of spun
sugar and marshmallow was easy enough, and after practicing sending his
spheres towards the target board at different speeds and tearing up the
board, he could eat it before making another one.

Hitting the bulls-eye was initially complicated. He could hit it dead on,
ten times out of ten if the sphere started between his hands, but when
it was at a weird angle to himself, getting it to hit the target was at
first much harder. After several failed tries to use one of the eye
spheres to help target it, or to form some water on it to look through
and target it that way, he finally found that simply producing a small
drop of water on the target gave him a mental bearing to it, and
suddenly he could produce a bulls-eye from nearly any angle.

He then moved on to his earlier momentary thought about balloons, and
producing a packet of balloons wrapped in layers of spun sugar, he
proceeded to tie them off - much easier with no real air pressure in
them, then inflate them. He found he could pretty readily control their
height in the air by adjusting the proportion of helium in the air
inside.

Setting these up at various heights, he practiced by setting up 
differently colored balloons, turning away, picking a color, then 
spinning back and trying to shoot down all the balloons of that color 
without taking out any of a different color.

As he got better at the exercise, he varied the technique used to take
out the balloon, from piercing each one with a high-speed smooth sphere
from a pile held in his hand, fired off like a bullet, to using a single
spiky sphere and whipping it back and forth, swinging it rapidly through
the air to puncture each one.

He also practiced a skeet-style exercise, launching a sphere from a pile
into the air, then trying to hit it before it fell with another sphere.

He found this a fair bit harder, since the targeted projectile was in
motion, meaning the droplet of water he used to target his interceptor
had to lead the target like a shooter would his aim, and his accuracy
with this style was disappointing.

Still, after a few days of this Xander felt ready to venture out.
Drifting out in gaseous form, Xander looked about. A cloud of dust in
one direction made him think there was probably a battle occurring in
that direction. Looming over the plain was a mountain range he had every
intention of keeping at a distance.

Picking a direction away from both the dust cloud and the mountains,
Xander drifted, slowly picking up speed. He lifted off the ground,
taking advantage of his gaseous form's ability to be lighter than air to
fly above and look down, so he could see more of the passing terrain.

Pausing to look back, Xander crossed invisible fingers, and hoped that
the target he had put on the floor, filled with concentric circles of
different liquids, would be enough for him to find his way back.
Reaching out with his senses, he found it very easy to locate, being a
very unique pattern of dissimilar pure liquids, but he could only hope
that it would continue to be as easy to find at a distance.

He had left several eye spheres there as well, so he could look back
into his cave, but of course, he had no certainty he would be able to
pick them up and see through them once he was at a great distance,
either.

A different feeling impinged on his outward feeling senses then, and he
focused in on it. It was a small group, three, maybe four if one was
holding another, of mixed fluid signatures, probably demons.

Heading in that direction, he tried an experiment, grasping one of his
eye spheres and trying to return just it to a solid/liquid form. Though
he initially struggled with this, when he grasped it in his hand and
returned just his hand to solid form before dropping it, it worked
perfectly. He suspected that this was because transforming himself to a
liquid or gas and back required that he somehow be able to turn some
bits solid and others liquid, as they had been, so it was not something
he had to try to concentrate on.

At any rate, it worked, and while he continued on his heading, he sent
the eye-sphere zooming ahead, focusing his mental vision on the liquid
inside, using the smooth surface where the liquid met the glass as his
lens. In seconds, the eye-sphere was hovering over the small group of
demons.

As he had half anticipated, there was a fourth demon, or rather,
demoness, being carried by one of the three. Given that she was tied and
manacled with a set of golden chains that he guessed were probably
magical, it was not difficult for him to draw up some ire toward them.

Still, he needed the demoness to be out of easy grasp before he
attacked, lest she be used as a shield. Not that demonesses were any
less dangerous in general than demons, but she was clearly the captive
in this situation, and he did not feel like killing an unarmed,
restrained individual, enemy or otherwise.

The three demons were moving quickly and furtively, as if they expected
pursuit, or an ambush. The fourth, the demoness, seemed to be
unconscious as well as tied, and was being carried. Two of the demons
were of a lizardy sort, while the third looked more like a cartoon or
traditional conception of a demon, a mostly human figure with red skin,
horns and a tail, though with bulging muscles and armor, rather than a
red suit and tie.

They were in a rift in the landscape, rather like a river carved canyon,
though Xander saw and felt nothing flowing that could have made it.
Xander had reached the vicinity himself now, and so was seeing them from
two perspectives, though he had to drop his focus on the eye's view to 
focus on what he himself was seeing, and vice-versa.

Their apparent nervousness and concern for being followed or found gave
him an idea, both for the immediate situation, and to try out back at
his hideout. What would have to wait for later was the idea that sound
is vibrations in air, and he could control air, so could he create
sounds? He was not sure, and was pretty certain that he at least could
do so by vibrating a sheet of water or something, but making anything
recognizable was iffy and would probably need practice.

There was one sort of sound he was pretty sure he could make, however,
and using his floating eye, he found an off-shoot of the main ravine,
and concentrating, he sent another small iron sphere there. Dropping it
to the ground so he did not have to try to control two at once, he then
rapidly increased the amount of air in the sphere until it finally
broke, generating a thunderous clap that echoed through the ravine. It
actually produced enough of a shockwave that Xander got some additional
sound effects, of rolling and falling rocks, basically for free.

The demons started, as he anticipated, and started to run. 
Unfortunately, the one carrying the hostage did not drop her to make 
better time, as Xander had hoped. He blew up another sphere but while 
they picked up their pace, they did not panic, nor split up, nor drop 
their hostage.

Since she was being carried under Muscles' arm, he could not lift her
off or swap her with an equivalent weight or something. Focusing in on
the feeling that told him where they were, Xander picked one of the two
lizard demons, and focusing on all the fluid in him at once, gave a
shove. He was hoping that it would simply knock him off-balance, and he
was half-dreading that the fluid would move through the rest of him. As
it turned out, it was his hopes that were fulfilled, and not his fears,
as apparently the percentage of fluid was high enough that it acted more
like a forceful shove, and sent the lizard-man sprawling.

The other two did not even slow down, so Xander waited for them to pass
beyond a spire in the rock, and decided to use the fallen lizard man to
test the limits of his ability. Could he use the skills he had obtained
with the liquid-filled spheres on the lizard demon?

As soon as the lizard had scrambled back to its feet, Xander dropped to
the ground nearby and solidified himself. The lizard demon instantly
spun to face him, growled, and charged. Xander grabbed a ball from his
pocket, held it on his palm and blew on it. At the same time, he
accelerated the ball.

It tore through the demon's knee, right on Xander's target, taking the
lizard demon down again, but Xander lost his hold on it, and made a note
that apparently that iron shell was too thin to hold the liquid after an
impact.

He threw himself to the side when the demon threw something at him, but
even so he was caught in the chest on the right side by a sharp pain.
Berating himself for being caught off guard, Xander flicked to liquid
form. A knife fell to the ground, unable to hold itself.

Still determined to prove his techniques could work, and less likely 
to be injured in this form, Xander used the same technique of grasping 
a ball and temporarily solidifying his hand to solidify it as well. 
This one was a spiked ball, though the points were not particularly 
sharp, and did not prick him as it rested on his palm.

Even as the demon struggled to its feet, Xander reminded himself that
even its death would soon be mended, and sent the spiked sphere shooting
forward. It pierced the demon's eye, crushing it against the back of the
eye socket, and from the sound of the impact, probably cracking the
bones as well.

The spiked sphere held its shape, and he jerked it out and slammed it
into the other eye. He would probably have felt queasy at the lizard's
cry of pain, or the mere sight of its mangled eyes and the blood
running like tears down the sides of its cheekless mouth, but in
liquid form, the hormonal shifts that would have generated those
feelings did not occur, and so he did not fall to the ground retching,
though intellectually he expected it.

With the threat of retaliation drastically reduced, and given the 
demonstrated effectiveness of both type of sphere, and the liquid 
form's usefulness in avoiding or reducing the impact of injury, Xander 
was ready to finish the demon off, if he could.

This was the first chance he had to try some of his tricks out on a live
demon, though. His resolve firmed when the lizard drew a sword, and
sniffed for him, blinded and in pain as it was.

The hissing sound of his sandy chainsaw filled the air, echoing down the
ravine. When his first strike bloodied the demon and drew a scream but
failed to sever anything, Xander upped the speed several times and tried
again. This time the makeshift blade passed cleanly through the demon's
sword holding arm, dropping the sword and the hand holding it to the
ground. Then it lifted and passed with only a little resistance through
the demon's neck, ending its life, at least for the moment.

Lifting himself off the ground before he remembered he was in liquid
form, Xander realized he could fly in this form too, for being
completely liquid, it was wholly vulnerable to his power, including his
ability to move it from a distance.

Grinning, he sped down the ravine, searching out the other two. Spying
them by the sense of their fluids, he found them hiding in a crack in
the ravine wall, their hostage lying hidden nearby beneath a cloth
covered in dirt and small stones.

Delighted with the setup and the opportunity, Xander landed, went
solid, and immediately drew his hands up. Liquid, white-hot glowing iron
streamed between his hands, swirling inward into a spiraling sphere that
suddenly shot forward, impacting the stone wall just behind the two. He
had not had as much practice aiming this one, but the blast was
sufficient to cast them both forward, out of their hiding place, covered
in light cuts.

A single sphere shot forward with a crack that Xander thought might have
been the sound barrier breaking, and exploded the second lizard man's
skull. The red devil, or Muscles as Xander was mentally referring to
him, rolled quickly behind a boulder and threw a knife at Xander.

Xander was expecting it this time, and managed a glancing blow on the 
knife with a launched sphere, then fired another iron sphere at the 
boulder, putting more speed behind it this time. It blew the boulder 
to pieces, and when Xander gave up waiting for a counter attack and 
went to look, he found it had gone through the red demon as well, or 
the explosion had. Either way, he was quite dead.

A strong breeze took care of the sand over the hidden hostage. Bending
over to lift up the cloth brought to mind a possible use for a smaller
hydraulic cylinder. He could create a sphere with a simple gripper arm,
a single shaft paired with a small hydraulic cylinder that when extended
brought a second shaft into contact with the first, allowed rough
manipulation at a distance.

Of course, he realized, if he could simply improve his control over
multiple spheres, he could use five fingertip-sized spheres as a remote
hand, without any hydraulics.

The uncovered demoness was less human looking than either Naamahalat 
or his two captors had been, though she lacked wings. Instead, her 
inhumanity was in her beak-like jaw, the strange knob that seemed to 
extend from her forehead, combining to give her an almost dinosaurian 
appearance, and her backwards seeming leg. It took him a minute to 
figure out what was odd about her legs, but a closer look revealed 
that while her knees looked normal, her ankle was a full foot above 
her, well, foot, as if she walked on just her toes, with her foot 
stretched out. It looked vaguely familiar, and definitely not like the 
bird-like dinosaur foot models he remembered. She lacked a tail, and 
her skin was strangely tight, so that every muscle showed clearly and 
individually, though none seemed particularly large.

Xander did not find her spectacularly attractive, but neither did he
consider her ugly. He did not suppose it mattered anyway, as he did not
plan to do anything aside from releasing her. He would kill her if she
attacked him, since while he knew she would recover, he had no certainty
that he could do the same. Though he seemed to have retained a
mutant-style healing factor, it had been intended to have a limited
lifespan, and so he had no way of knowing if it might suddenly decide
its time had expired, and cease functioning, and he had even less clue
if the demons' remarkable recovery abilities were a property of
themselves, or of the dimension in which they existed.

Cutting her bonds was easy enough, a simple matter of employing the 
knife he had blocked, while the manacles yielded, after a few false 
starts at trying to pick the lock, to a simpler solution of grasping 
them and tearing the metal with his fingers, the ease of which made 
him think that they must have had magic to prevent her from removing 
them, for otherwise her visible musculature would surely have been 
equal to the job as well.

He briefly considered attempting to awaken her, before deciding that he
did not really want to become a slave again, or be raped, pleasurable as
that experience had been in the end. Instead, he produced a simple
drawstring bag, tightly rolled and inside a tube of glass-like hard
sugar, drew it out and then filled it with simple, long-lasting foods. A
leather flask was similarly produced and filled with water, then he
forced some healing potion in to her, and promptly fled the scene in
gaseous form, heading back towards his hideout.

When he reached out for it, he was very pleased to be able to readily
feel the pattern of simple fluids he had drawn to guide himself back,
and so regained the safety of his little shelter. He was very pleased
with how his attempt had gone.

His spheres had performed admirably, both in terms of scouting and in
fighting. His own personal performance was lacking, but he had never
been at real risk, given his ability to flee to gaseous form, so while
his own fighting ability had not shone, he had not expected it to, but
had confirmed that he could safely hone that same skill against demons
without it being too terribly likely that they could pull out some
totally unexpected game changer. At least, none of the three had done
more than attempt to attack him with melee weapons.

He guessed the demons capable of powerful magic preferred to operate at
a greater distance, or were in command positions, while the grunts
tended to have the close combat skills. He would not know that for
certain for some time, but for now it seemed a reasonable expectation,
and meant that he could probably practice against small groups of demons
without too much risk.

His iron ball attack had also done well, though he needed better aim on
that. That would take practice, and he was not eager to do that in his
hideout again, so he would simply have to gain that practice out in the
wild beating up on demons.

He had also come up with a great new idea, and promptly set about
producing five small rough surfaced balls, and trying to manipulate them
to pick up various things.

Again, however, two were the most he could reliably control at once.
This sufficed to pick up cloth, but not for true hand-like manipulation.
He simply could not get the hang of remembering and adjusting the
position of that many balls at once. He dropped his attempts down to
just three balls, but though he could get three balls to remain close to
each other, and adjust the position of two relative to the third, which
almost sufficed for manipulation of three, and could slightly extend his
functionality, it was not a very satisfying result.

The other thought he had happened upon in the field had been to use his
power over air to make sounds. Here he had substantially more success.
He could not, at least not yet, produce any sound he wanted. He did find
that it was possible, even fairly easy, to transmit sound, to basically
focus on the vibration of air in one spot, and make another bit of air
or water match its vibrations. By matching the vibrations of a bit of
air to a larger or smaller patch of air, he could even raise or lower
the pitch of the sound.

Basically all this amounted to was an ability to throw his voice, like a
ventriloquist pretends to do but in actual reality, or indeed, to throw
anyone else's voice, or any sound. 

What he could not do at this point was reproduce arbitrary sounds, or
sounds he had heard. Though he could imagine his favorite music in his
head, he could not yet cause it to be played for him by the air around
him.

He did, however, manage a pretty cool special effect. By matching the
motion of several patches of air of different size to the motion of the
air right in front of him, which was surprisingly easy to do considering
how hard independent control of multiple balls was, he could effectively
speak in a chorus, much like the effect often used in movies for
supernatural beings.

With a little bit more concentration, he found he could move one patch
of air in sympathy with another patch, without a perfect match. In
particular, he could make a patch of air move a greater or shorter
distance, basically amplifying or deadening the sound.

He was in the midst of playing with his sound-producing abilities when 
he suddenly felt a swirl of blackness rush about him, blotting out the 
sand and stones, and a sensation of sudden and extreme acceleration. 
He leapt to his feet, swaying, as the blackness cleared and the world 
returned about him.




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
uncomfortably 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.




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.




The Ways of the Ninja


Xander listened for the next hour as Kushina told him about her life,
and the village she lived in, and the role of ninja in protecting and
funding the village.

He was rather more interested when she started describing the
techniques she had learned, and the energy they used to power them.

They were briefly interrupted when Mizuna re-entered the room, still
unable to detect Xander's presence, and sat on the bed to discuss what
had happened with Kushina.

She was frankly rather surprised when Kushina claimed to have already
signed a contract with her new summon, though Kushina cagily avoided
revealing his name. She was irritated at being doubted, and was afraid
that if his name, as strange as it sounded to her, happened to match
some known missing nin somewhere, her claim would be rejected.

Finally, Mizuna explained that she had convinced the village leader,
and that in three days, in front of a small group of jounin and the
leader himself, she would have a chance to perform the summoning
technique and prove to them all that she did have a valid contract.

Kushina cheered at this, though she complained about the delay, even
when Mizuna assured her it was necessary to be sure that she did not
overtax her chakra coils.

When Mizuna finally left, after having put up and taped a heavy oiled
cloth over the broken window and assuring her that it would be
repaired within a few days, Kushina resumed her explanations for
Xander.

He learned that chakra was a combination of physical energy produced
by the body naturally, and spiritual energy gained from training. Once
trained, it flowed down a fine network of pathways in the body,
pathways that did not quite correspond to any of the physical networks
the body contained, and pooling in certain points.

With training, a ninja could increase this energy, and draw it out in
various ways. She demonstrated by walking on the wall in direct
contravention of the laws of gravity, though she declined to do
anything else, saying that it would only result in them being invaded
again.

As a test, Xander provided her with a small cinnamon flavored jelly
bean designed to restore her chakra levels, and she confirmed that it
felt like it had returned everything she had lost on summoning him.

"That is so cool!" she squealed. "I've heard of things like this, but
they're always clan secrets, or horribly expensive. And you're just
like, here, and it tastes so neat. My mouth is still tingling!"

"Hmm... in that case, I think you should have some on hand." Xander
produced a small bag of mixed jelly beans and showed them to her. "The
red ones are just like the one you just tried, they'll restore your
chakra level." 'No need to mention that I still don't understand what
chakra is. Good to know that my magically produced food can have their
own magical effects though.'

"The green ones are . . ." Xander paused, then produced another
handful of beans. "Here, try these as I tell you about them, these
just have the flavor without the effect. The green ones are sour apple
and will restore your health. The black ones are licorice," and he
grinned at her look of confusion and gestured for her to go ahead and
try it, "and they'll refresh you as if you just had eight-hours of
sleep, in case you have a mission that goes long."

He did not say anything in case it had not worked, since he was not
sure how far his ability to produce magic within what he created
through this ability he had given himself went, but he had produced
the bag with the intention that it would automatically refill over
time. It would not be instant, to avoid anyone else noticing and
stealing it from her, but over time and if it was unwatched, it should
produce more beans.

He wondered if he ought to make something like that for himself, as
well, though since he did not think he had chakra in the first place,
he was not at all sure it would be safe to take a pill meant to
produce more.

"What about the pink, purple, and red-with-yellow ones?" Kushina
asked, poking at the pile he had given her.

"Ah, well, since you liked it, I thought you might like some that you
could have without effect, or to give to someone if they asked what
you were eating, so you would not have to reveal what you had. So the
pink ones are a flavor called cotton candy. Don't worry about what
that is, just try it and you'll see. And the purple ones are grape,
and the red and yellow ones are cinnamon, like the flavor of the
chakra pill, but with a little more bite to them."

"These are amazing!" Kushina told him, as she chewed on the cotton
candy one.

Xander would have asked her to continue, but instead faded to
invisibility as a knock sounded on the door. When Kushina reluctantly
responded, after having quickly concealed her new prize under her bed
coverings, Mizuna entered, followed by another woman, this one taller,
with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a fixed expression.

Xander promptly fled the room when he realized that the woman was a
doctor of some sort, and was going to give Kushina a checkup to be
sure she had not done herself harm in trying to summon again so soon.

Drifting up to the roof, Xander settled down, remaining an invisible
patch of air since being on the roof in a ninja village was no
guarantee of privacy, as demonstrated by the passage of leaping
figures crossing the rooftops in the distance.

Reaching out, he felt the bit of air he had conjured in the room
earlier, confirming that he could still sense it and differentiate it
from the rest of the air in the room, then he reached out further.

He had wondered while listening to Kushina and thinking about the
dangers of her life as a ninja whether there was something he could do
to keep an eye on her, aside from giving her magical jelly beans,
which would only help after an injury, rather than preventing it.

Now it occurred to him to consider his remotes, his little glass eyes,
and particularly, the one he had left at the entrance to the Duke's
mountain fortress. Had it been summoned here with him? Was it now in
some far distant place? Or was it still in the Hell dimension? Xander
focused on it, reaching out to see through it.

He grinned, staring at the now open door set in hewn rock, as a small
war party marched out of it. Not only was it still in the Hell
dimension, he could still reach it!

Pleased, he used the eye as a reference, and reached into the mountain
and located the . . . creature, sort of, thingy . . . he really needed
to figure out a name for them . . . that he had left there, and took
control of it again.

He spent a minute examining the water wheel, then diving into the
stream, and shifting to a liquid form when the rushing water
threatened to break him up into hundreds of bubbles, he followed the
descending stream up, beyond where it flowed into the room.

He followed a long tubular channel as it progressed up. It joined
several other channels, becoming steadily larger, then opened up into
a large room, where it passed in the open in a channel about waist
height. Discreetly forming an eye in the far corner of the room by
simply taking a bit of the air there and making it part of himself, to
examine it, since poking his head up would be obvious, as he was in
liquid form at the moment, he determined that he was in a large
kitchen area.

Progressing up the path until he was just inside the walls again on
the far side, he went airy and let the water push him invisibly back
into the room. This allowed him to rise unnoticed into the room and
get a better look at it.

The many workers here were shorter than the demons he was used to
seeing, and rather more spindly, with thin arms and legs rather than
the muscle-bound figures of the combat, blacksmith, and guarding
demons he had seen previously.

Their clothing was fairly simple, shifts of plain brown or gray cloth
with simple belts, small belt-pouches, and here and there an emblem
pinned to the shoulder seemed to denote a minor increase in rank, as
these were the ones bossing the others about, though even they were
busily working.

They did not have near the sameness, however, that he had somewhat
expected. For all that they shared a smaller stature and less muscular
build, there seemed no end to the variety of body shapes. He could not
identify as clear an animal influence as he had with the fox-men and
turtle-men earlier, for here he would see a pig-like snout with pointy
furred ears, or cat-like eyes paired with fish-like scales and yet a
tentacled mouth.

There was considerable manual dexterity on display, as the small
demons, which he guessed were about the size of a fifteen year old,
almost adult human size, but a little smaller and thinner, wielded
knives, ladles, tongs, spitting forks, skewers, brushes, twine, wire,
drills, and even what looked like bulb syringes with fluent skill as
they prepared platters of meats, meat pastries and pies, breads and
rolls, and odd looking plants. Some did this with almost human hands
on a fairly normal pair of arms, some had arms with more or fewer
elbows, some had more than the usual two arms, or had arms that
divided at the elbow, and others had tentacles instead of arms, or
hooves, talons, or pincers in place of hands.

Sending his senses momentarily back to the bit of air in Kushina's
room, he listened and blushed and quickly switched back. They clearly
weren't done yet, and he really did not want to hear anything more
about her monthlies.

He was tempted to taste what was being cooked here, but did not want
to be responsible for their punishment if anything was discovered
missing, so he moved on.

He did leave the eye he had formed in the corner, though not
intentionally at the time. He simply forgot to remove it. It was a
simpler eye than those he had first made. He had created it almost
automatically when he wanted to see into the room without having to
stick his head out, and instead of a glass sphere, or seeing through
an interface between solid or liquid, it was quite literally just an
eye; he had simply formed a bit of air, made it part of himself and
made it an eye.

When he later looked back on it, he would feel a bit chagrined at the
realization that much of his cleverness early on had been entirely
unnecessary. 

For now he was occupied with drifting up the pipes, and occasionally
shifting his attention back to the ninja world, or to Kushina's room.
Unfortunately for his intention to return to Kushina's side, Mizuna
stayed with her until she fell asleep, and at that point he was
ejected back to his world.

He settled his little phantom, as he chose to call it for the moment,
into an open crack in the stone walls and shifted it into a dense liquid
metal, so that it would not be carried off by the water, and returned
his focus to his body.

A moment later, a very wide grin split his face, as Xander discovered
that the bit of himself he had created and secreted in the corner of
Kushina's room was still there. Just as the other bits of himself had
not been summoned to the ninja world, so this separate bit of himself
had not been returned when the summoning ended.

This was an important discovery, Xander felt, as it meant that if he
was careful to always form a new bit of himself in each world he
visited, he would be able to return to them at any time, and that in
turn meant that any effort he put forth to create a home here would
not be wasted.

A bit worried that only a single anchor present in the ninja's world
would be too little, especially if it was discovered, Xander decided
to fashion some more permanent anchors.

The first issue to solve was to make something solid enough that it
would not be able to be simply blown away. After all, it would not
help him having an anchor to the ninja world if it got scattered to
the four winds. Besides, it made for an interesting challenge, given
that he had no power over solid things, except for his own self.

That gave him the key, however, and after quickly forming another bit
of himself in the ninja world, in the form of a bit of liquid mixed in
the inkwell on Kushina's desk, where it would be less likely to be
blown away, he started work.

Initially, he practiced in his lair, so as to not alert anyone
watching Kushina. He started by forming a small bit of liquid, then
fully inhabiting the liquid, and then shifting to solid form. It took
a few tries, and some interesting focus and concentration to affect
how exactly his fluid form translated into solidity, since he actually
did not want living flesh this time.

Eventually he succeeded, transitioning a small bit of himself into the
solid form of a plush doll, a little plush chameleon with cotton
stuffing and large black eyes mostly concealed by cones of green
fabric. There was a pouch of liquid on the base, as a weight to right
the plushie and keep it from ending up on its back, along with a
little pouch of fluid in each extremity, to allow limited mobility
through his power. He was also hoping that the fluid would give him a
focal point to ensure he could transition it back to fluid even after
he pulled his consciousness back out of it.

As he expected, he could not withdraw the connection it had to himself
when it was solid, as it was not then directly subject to his power,
so he could not use this as a manufacturing method for gifts for his
friends, but for anchors it would do fine.

Passing the plushie through himself from one fluid bit to another
worked, though it felt unpleasantly like he was a sock or a pair of
jeans being turned inside out.

Remembering then that he had not yet explored fully his ability to 
emulate NASA, he fashioned a new form from a fresh batch of liquid, 
modeling it after Ben Grimm of the Fantastic Four as a suitably solid 
shape, as well as one more resistant to heat than merely Hulking out 
would give him. He used a separate batch of liquid to minimize the 
risk to himself, since what he was about to try was the equivalent of 
standing at ground zero for a rocket engine test firing, then entering 
it and going momentarily airy, he slipped out of the hideout and 
headed for the canyons in which he had recently played hero, leaving 
his original self within his hideout.

Finding a suitable canyon, and settling himself firmly against the
wall, he let himself move into solid form. As he expected, he did not
have enough of an idea on how to make a form like this workable, and
he had to return to liquid form to shift his hands together, cupped as
if firing a hadouken from the Street Fighter games in the Sunnydale
Arcade.

Back in solid form, he produced a pilot light, and then started feeding
liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen into his cupped hands. As the flame
caught and started, he started increasing the flow rate, and as the roar
built in the still air, he quickly tried to form a shield of air between
his hands and the flame.

He was forced to stop almost immediately, having lost control of the
process when he split his attention, being forced off track by the
unexpected sensation of heat in his fingers. Apparently, he could feel
them melting, even if they were stone.

Reforming, he tried again, this time starting with the shield of air,
basically a cup of air that he forced to remain still, then igniting
the oxygen and hydrogen within the cup.

After just a few tries, he was being pressed back against the canyon
wall, straining against the immense force, as a spear of brilliant
blue roared out of his cupped hands.

To his amazement and confusion, when his control faltered and it
slipped to the side, instead of looking like a smooth lance of blue
light, as he had pictured it, it looked wavy, with an effect almost
like line art, where the bands of color came together and diverged
again, forming what appeared to be a series of diamonds of remarkable
brightness.

As he tried again and again, thrilled with the forces he was wielding,
and marveling at the effect it was having on the far canyon wall, he
only slowly became aware that he was actually moving his arms and
legs, bracing against the strain, and adjusting his aim slightly. When
he realized this, he promptly stopped firing completely, and focused
on himself.

He was still solid, as far as he could tell he had not subconsciously
gone liquid, and a quick production of a mirror in the air
demonstrated that he was in fact still encased in rock, still looking
very much like the Thing of the F4. Shifting slowly, Xander was
startled to realize that he could actually see his muscles bunching
and flexing beneath his rocky exterior, as it cracked and reformed.

A bit freaked out, Xander quickly went fluid and returned to his
normal shape and went solid again, watching himself warily, lest the
rocky plates return. After another minute of waiting, he sighed and
slumped to the ground, startled, curious, and more than a bit afraid.

After some pondering, he looked up again and realized that the self he
was seeing in the mirror wasn't, that this was a fresh bit of liquid
he had used, and in spite of his looking just as he had looked the
last time he had looked in the mirror, his body was still in the
hideout waiting for him, a fact he quickly verified by shifting into
it and looking about, then shifting back again.

Distracted by slowly growing sounds of movement, Xander went
transparent and quickly returned to his hideout, too busy being
worried to care what the investigating demons would think of the
aftermath of his personal rocket test.

Getting to his hideout and seeing himself already there, though
expected, was still a bit unnerving, but he knew that he needed to at
least try to understand what was going on, so he shifted again, solid
to liquid and back, returning to his stone form, then sat down; though
it was more of a collapsing thump than a proper sit, as he discovered
that he was not quite that fully bendable yet.

Ignoring his odd position, he focused his senses inward, examining
this body with his ability to sense fluids, and comparing it to his
original body. Even as he watched, he could see the internal fluid
networks becoming more defined. In slight disbelief, but with a
growing idea of what might be happening, he turned his attention to
the distant plush toy in Kushina's room, and discovered that it too
had made a degree of progress at forming a network, the little pockets
of fluid he left had tendrils making their way towards each other.

Shifting back into his own body, where he could speak, Xander tried to
reason it out, thinking aloud. "Nothing about being able to control
liquid explains a solid form developing veins or whatever. So it isn't
the fluid. And I definitely did not form anything like that in the
plushie, so it is not me subconsciously doing a better job making
bodies, not when I can look at them and watch it growing. So it has to
be something innate . . . it has to be the healing factor! When I went
solid, those became part of my body, and that stupid healing factor
has already put me back together from basically barbecue." He
shivered, remembering the horror of that experience.

Quickly, Xander pulled the plush toy back to his side, unwilling to
leave it there until he was sure. "It is either going to fix their
bodies back to a point where they are alive . . . or it is going to
correct them until they match my original super-soldier optimized form."

Xander watched the plushie closely, figuring that it would show those
sorts of changes the fastest, as it was further from a human form than
the rocky victim of cosmic irradiation. But while the changes
continued at a very slow pace, he never saw the slightest sign of a
change to the exterior.

A bit relieved, and a lot disturbed, Xander finally returned the
plushie to Kushina's room, his reasons for wanting an anchor not
having changed, though he made a note to check it regularly, to make
sure it had not decided to keep going, and become fully human in form.

He returned to the Thing shape then, grumbling that his term of
'phantom' did not work at all in applying to this one, as it had far
too obvious of a physical presence to support that, and getting
clumsily to his feet, began pacing around his chamber, stretching and
moving, then trying to talk. As he anticipated, his healing factor
appeared to respond to this, improving the areas he was actively
exercising more rapidly, which helped explain why it had happened at
all. While in that shape and producing the rocket thrust, he had
obviously been trying to shift and adjust to it, and given his
inability to do so, his healing factor had kicked in to fix the
problem.

When even after getting his rocky shape to the point that he could do a
handstand in it, its appearance was still that of a rocky behemoth,
Xander set aside his worry.

Instead, he turned his attention to the substance he had sensed so
briefly in the earlier confrontation in Kushina's bedroom. He had
heard a fair bit about it later from Kushina, especially regarding the
almost magical effects that skilled practitioners could achieve with
it. Attempting to directly produce this chakra at first seemed to have
no effect.

Xander was surprised and confused at this, as he had felt certain that
when the strange-eyed lady's use showed up to his senses, it meant
this chakra stuff was subject to his powers.

Focusing his senses, he again tried to produce it. This time he was
able to sense it as he produced it, but it was simply dissipating into
the air, and doing nothing interesting or useful, and he sighed,
resigning himself to returning to it later, when he had learned more
of it, and of how the ninja coaxed it into working for them.

Remembering that he now had a way to get to the ninja world without
being summoned, Xander quickly shifted into the plush toy in Kushina's
room, then promptly formed another vaporous self and switched into it,
then moved as quickly as he could away from Kushina's apartment
building.

Rising into the sky, Xander picked a road and drifted along it, out of
the village. He did not expect much conflict would be visible in the
village itself, but if there was no conflict going on, what would they
need ninja for? Logically then, if he continued looking long enough,
he would eventually find a fight he could watch, which might give him
more clues what this chakra stuff was all about.

As he drifted he also slid higher in the sky, steadily increasing the
field of his view. He stopped while he could still discern individuals
on the ground, though they looked as small as mice. While he drifted,
Xander began adjusting this new shape, not wanting it to be associated
with himself if he ended up using it where it could be seen.

Instead, he modeled it after some of the ninja he had seen, average
height and build, vaguely Oriental features, if perhaps a bit
caricatured due to the lack of a nearby model to use as a base, black
on black on black clothing and mask.

He saw the occasional traveler or group of travelers on the road
below. It was more than a dirt track, as there was no sign of rutting,
so either it was regularly graded, or it was made of sterner stuff
than rock and dirt, but it was definitely not asphalt, and there were
no painted lines on it, no lane markings.

It wound through open fields, and as he rose higher, on either side
Xander saw water glimmering. There had been something naggingly
familiar about the ninja village but he had not previously been able
to place it. Now he did, it was the salt smell of a distant ocean.
Sunnydale was not exactly on the water, but compared to the desert and
mountains he had experienced in the Hell dimension, this place was
much closer to the humidity and faint tinge of salt in the air he had
grown up breathing.

The road drifted towards the coast and the water came further into
view and on it Xander spied a small fishing fleet. He was tempted to
go and have a look, but reminded himself that he was looking for a
ninja fight so he could get a better look at how they used this chakra
stuff.

He could not help daydreaming as he continued down the coast of the
tremendous advantage his powers would give in a naval conflict.
Whirlpools, waterspouts, infinite ammo for his personal broadsides, or
even just pulling up a massive wave to tip a ship over; if he ever
wanted to be a pirate, he could definitely pull it off in a big way.

Xander had just spied some mountains in the far distance, barely visible
on the horizon, having passed over several intervening bodies of water
during his musing, when a sudden flare of light below attracted his
attention, and he immediately headed for it.

He was promptly rewarded with a visible shockwave below, rippling
through fields of grass, and zeroing in on it, he found a small group of
ninja engaged in battle. He could not immediately identify how many
there were, as some of them appeared to be erupting from the ground as
though lying in wait, while several on the other side looked so
identical that Xander wondered if he had somehow been affected by the
shockwave and seeing double because of it. Though it was more like
quadruple than double.

A moment later one of the fighters was struck by a spray of thrown metal
stars, and promptly collapsed in a splash of water, like a popped water
balloon.

Picking up his pace, Xander zoomed down to where he could clearly see
all the fighters, then stopped and engaged his full senses, trying to
get as much detail as possible as the ninja pulled off their techniques.

Though weapons were flying almost continually between them, from what he
could see, they were not directed at the fighters themselves, and where
they were, the targeted ninja had no trouble deflecting them. Rather,
they were being employed to break up the balloon clones, to disrupt other
special effects, and to stop the completion of the fancy hand-waving
that Xander now saw accompanied most of the special effects.

"Hollywood would love this," Xander mused. It was kind of odd, as to his
mind, what they were pulling off belonged more in a Chinese Kung Fu
film, with badly dubbed voices, rather than a ninja flick. Although the
disappearing underground and popping up again elsewhere was pretty
ninja-ish, he supposed.

There was a minor degree of color difference in the clothing, as Xander
started to identify the sides involved. One of the sides seemed to favor
dark browns and tans, and the other had more green and blue. Their
techniques showed a similar shift, with the brown/tan fighters doing the
move through the ground trick, pulling up walls of earth to block
attacks, and sending waves of rock at their opponents. The other side
seemed to be firing water bullets, forming those water balloon guys;
which actually Xander was fairly impressed by as they seemed to be able
to make attacks, until the opponents got in a good solid hit, at which
point they collapsed into water; and calling up concealing mists to hide
their attacks.

From what he could tell, things were pretty evenly matched, and given
that he saw nothing about either group of fighters that looked
particularly like the insignia he had seen in Kushina's village, Xander
was not inclined at first to pick a side.

Instead, he watched and learned, focusing his water senses, especially
trying to work out the water-balloon people. Pulling up a mist or firing
a water bullet was no great feat, and he could already travel
underground without much trouble. He could form additional liquid bodies
as well, but he could not have multiple of them attacking at once, which
seemed pretty neat.

One by one the fighters fell, and it was not until only two were left
that Xander felt forced to intervene. It came down to one female in
brown and tan, injured and exhausted, against a less injured guy and the
three duplicates of him on the other side. Even at the last, Xander did
not intend to interfere - it was not as if they were attacking an unarmed
civilian, after all.

But when the man stood back and started to loosen his pants while his
duplicates moved in to overpower the tired kunoichi, Xander had had
enough. Fighting was all well and good, but he was not going to stand
for rape.

He went solid and dropped into the clearing from above. "That's enough,"
he said, staring at the leering man. The ninja barked a laugh.

"She's mine," he growled, and with a fluid series of hand-motions, he
summoned five more of himself and sent them at Xander.

Xander laughed. These duplicates were nothing more than bags of water,
and as such, useless against him. Still, he wanted to maintain his cover
as a ninja, so he mimicked some of the hand-signing motions before
flicking his fingers, popping the balloon-men simply by jerking the
water that made them up in several directions.

The other ninja snarled, even as Xander noticed the woman collapse to
her knees in fatigue. His hands flashed again, and the area was swaddled
in a dense fog.

Before Xander could react, he felt a sharp pain, and looked down to find
a blade sticking out of his chest. He immediately went fluid, and the
sword fell free, the hole sealing up. He struck back, drawing out one of
his spiked balls from his pouch, and ripping the fog away with his
power, he sent the spiky implement hurtling into the other ninja.

It met no resistance and the other ninja faded from view even as several
projectiles splashed through Xander. Xander replied with several more
attacks, taking a water bullet to the chest with no ill-effect, but
doing no damage in return.

Realizing that he was being tricked somehow, Xander closed his eyes and
reached out with his power, finding the two nearest human type bodies. A
quick check confirmed one was the woman. He grabbed the other with his
power, pulling it in front of him. He was surprised when he opened his
eyes and could see nothing in front of him where his power insisted the
enemy was.

A moment later Xander saw a long swirl of water coalesce from the
various puddles remaining from all the water attacks, and form into a
beautiful long, sinuous dragon, that roared and came at him. He almost
failed to react, he was so surprised at its beauty and at the amazing
detail in the technique; but it was, after all, water, and though he
again encountered a curious resistance, he was able to stop it in its
tracks.

Focusing back on where his senses told him the enemy was, he focused
harder, forcing the idiot to be completely still, and delving deeper,
concentrated on all the iron-bearing blood. With one sharp push, he
moved all the blood five feet behind the nin.

Instantly a veil seemed to pass away from his sight, and he saw the
ninja hanging in the air in front of him, quite dead. Xander shifted his
vision slightly, looking at the dragon that was still hanging in the air
as well, somehow holding together, because none of the water forming it
could move, though he was sure that like the veil, whatever technique
had been driving it as gone.

"Stay!" Xander barked at it with a silly grin, then he turned and
dropped his hold on them both as he walked over to look at the lady. He
felt a little guilty about not caring if she died, but then, she was a
ninja, surely she expected any mission could be her last. Even Kushina,
who had never had a mission yet, understood that.

That did not mean he had to stand still for rape.

He produced a healing draught and massaged her throat until she
swallowed it. When she jerked up and grabbed for a knife, he stepped
back and waited, giving her time to look about and see her assailant,
and her dead companions and enemies. Her eyes widened, and she cast him
a quick look. When he did nothing, she darted over to the ninja he had
killed, checking him and confirming that he was dead.

Xander had to admit, from the front he merely looked surprised, his eyes
still open and staring, his body not yet stiff. When she flipped him
over and saw the intricate pattern of cuts on his flesh where his blood
had taken the most direct path out, leaving his skin traced with an
imprint of his circulatory system, she visibly relaxed, then glancing
over the other ninja, she sighed.

Rising slowly, she walked hesitantly over to Xander, and then fell to
her knees in front of him. She bowed forward, pressing her face to the
ground. At first, Xander thought this was a ritual of gratitude, but
when he leaned down to hear her better, he realized that she was
offering herself to him. "Master, please accept this unworthy one into
your service," she was saying.

He blushed to hear it, though this blush was well concealed by his face
mask. He reached out and touched her on her shoulder, and when she
looked up at him, he lifted her to her feet. She was a few inches taller
than the shape he was in right now, and her exposed face was both
pretty, blood-stained, and showing what he read as nervousness and
acceptance.

"You do not wish to return to your village?" he questioned her, trying
to suppress the lecherous urges reminding him that he had not had sex
since leaving Naamahalat and this was a hot chick offering herself to
him!

She gave a hard glare towards the fallen figures, then shook her head.
"The mission has failed, I cannot complete it alone. If I return without
them I will be branded a failure and given to their family to atone. I
have no strength left to fight you, and as a missing nin I would not
last long alone against the hunter-nin. You are strong, but even the
strong may have use for the weak. Will you accept me into your service?"

Xander nodded. He did not really know what he would do with her, but
certainly he could protect her against other ninja, and having saved her
he felt some responsibility. Besides, having an adult, trained ninja
meant he could get demonstrations of chakra techniques directly, without
having to search for random fights to observe them.

The only question was where to take her? And how to get her there?

Remembering his failure to form a fluid/magic portal to his home, he
wondered if knowing and experiencing this world and the demon plane
would be enough for him to form a portal between these two places. If it
worked, it would reassure him that he could move between different
dimensions without having to depend on a summoner existing on the other
side, since the plane summoners on his home world accessed was
specifically blocked for him.

His decision made, Xander tried it, doing nothing outward to show what
he was attempting. He focused his power on forming an eight-foot tall
fluid portal between his current location and his hideout on the demon
plane.

When a beautiful plane of shimmering silver appeared in the air, a tall
oval eight feet high and five feet across, Xander grinned inwardly, and
gestured for her to precede him through it.

She looked at him worriedly for a moment before nodding, and leapt
through the portal. Xander jumped through after her, remembering only
afterwards that this body was one he had formed in Kushina's hometown,
and so now he had three bodies in the chamber.

His new ninja looked askance at the massive orange Thing-clone sitting
unmoving in the light of a single glowing orb overhead, but said
nothing. Xander stood still behind her and relaxed, making sure he was
well balanced, before he slipped his mental focus out of his ninja form
and into his original body, in which he then stood and walked over as if
to greet the returning pair.

He had only a moment to decide if he was going to reveal the extent of
his powers to her, especially the fact that he WAS the ninja she had
just given her loyalty to, and though he was not sure it was the right
thing to do, he also knew from what he had learned in his time with
Naamahalat that some secrets were best kept, and that a show of
confidence in the right circumstances could prevent a battle.

If the ninja-him deferred to the true-him, she would probably ascribe
greater power and respect to him, which would reduce the potential for
conflict.

His performance might have been a bit stilted, as he could only control
one of his forms at a time in full, but with the ability to partition
that control, to manipulate the head of one while controlling the body
of the other, for example, he was able to pull off what he hoped was a
convincing performance as he welcomed them back and dispersed the
gateway.

When he asked for an introduction, the kunoichi blushed furiously as she
realized she had not given her name even to her new Master. "This
unworthy one is called Mayu," she said, directing her words to the
black-clad ninja-Xander.

After Xander finished his little impromptu play, he decided to bring
Mayu outside and let her demonstrate her skills for him. Curious if the
portal thing would work between closer places, Xander tried it,
attempting to form a similarly sized portal between his chamber and the
outside.

To his surprise, though at first it looked almost mirror-like, when the
fluid stilled, he realized he could actually see the outside directly,
as if it was simply a window. Glancing over at the rocky self, Xander
decided it would make sense if they were all to come and watch, and so
he made a deliberate gesture as he expanded the portal, then stepped
aside and shifted into the Thing-self, standing and nodding to his
ninja-self, and passed through the doorway.

Co-ordinating his activities was not the most comfortable thing, and
Xander knew he would have to work out something better before too much
longer, as first he, then Mayu and his ninja-self passed through the
portal. He had introduced the orange brute as Tarou, which he understood
to mean 'big son' in the ninja tongue, and the nin as Ryu, or dragon.
For himself, the closest he could come to Xander in their tongue was
Sanjuro, which apparently meant thirty, but frankly, coming up with
names on the fly was easier than actually trying to make them seem like
properly separate individuals.

He hoped that everything was new enough and strange enough that Mayu
would not be able to piece together what was so odd about the way the
three moved before he had a chance to find a solution. Hopefully one
that did not involve him taking another long step away from being human;
though looking at the newly named Tarou, he was not sure he could
actually get any further.

Ryu stepped forward and looked at Mayu. "Please show us your skills," he
asked her.

Mayu looked back and forth between them for a moment, before nodding.
Xander focused on her with all his senses as she went through a series
of hand signs and then thrust her hands forward. A veritable forest of
stone spikes, long and thin like needles, thrust up from the dry ground.
Xander nodded thoughtfully. That looked pretty effective if you were
facing a small group that was well-bunched, or to close off a stone
passageway. It was also something that he was not sure he could
duplicate with his powers, which was a point in her favor.

She went through another series of handsigns and opened her mouth,
spitting out an impossible amount of mud, that quickly rose into a wall
before her and hardened.

She made a quick slashing gesture with her right hand, and the wall
crumbled away. Another series of handsigns, and she slammed her foot
into the ground, and a wave seemed to pass through the ground in front
of her, shooting forward and suddenly erupting about twenty yards away
into a large stone wall.

She gestured again, and the wall fell forward, sending up a great cloud
of dust.

After a couple more techniques, each appearing to take more out of her
than the last, ninja-Xander gestured for her to stop, and had her eat a
generic healing pill. He watched and monitored as she consumed it,
looking surprised as she perked back up, but he did not see more of the
chakra energy appear in her. Then he had her consume a chakra-restoring
pill, and now found that he could see, as her coils refilled, the coils
themselves, and the brighter or thicker spots where the energy pooled.

Renewed, she continued her techniques. Xander paid particular attention
when she demonstrated a cloning technique that formed a duplicate of her
from some of the mud she had produced earlier. It took on her coloration
and appearance, duplicating even the motion of her hair in the wind,
moving about independently, as far as he could see. 

While he was interested in the rest of her techniques, and was impressed
by some of them, he kept returning in his mind to the clone technique.
Somehow, she had effectively been in two places at once without any
apparent mental strain, though it had obviously required a fair bit of
chakra. That was not a particular concern of Xander's, since he was
confident he could produce as much chakra as he desired, he merely
needed to learn how to control it. The water clones made by the ninja
he had killed had been clearly directed by him, moving at his command
without a word. This clone, on the other hand, seemed to be more free,
less restrained and controlled.

She was clearly determined to impress him, and he was equally sure that
the austere desert had her confused and worried, but she remained
focused and plowed through her repertoire. When she finished, he
questioned her and learned that she knew several techniques she could
not demonstrate, due to certain lacks.

When he realized that one of those lacks was due to them not gathering
her equipment and supplies from the battlefield, he promptly formed a
portal back to it.

Returning his actual self to the safety of his hideout, he brought
Tarou-Xander, intending to load him down with the weight of the
equipment. After all, if she needed equipment, and the other ninja were
dead, there was no reason to leave it with them.

He allowed her to perform an earth-style technique to bury the bodies
after she gathered what she wanted, and found himself impressed by the
apparently untouched ground that was present afterwards. She had
concealed the bodies in the ground, and at the same time sealed the
rents in the ground, restoring the uninterrupted pattern of grass.

She was just passing back through the portal, which Xander had dropped
and reformed so that the far side was back in their hideout, when he
noticed a shimmering figure out of the corner of his eye.

What he saw would eventually lead him to a new understanding of his
power, but at the moment, it merely looked like he had forgotten
something, as the water dragon the non-dead lecherous ninja had summoned
was still present.

Furthermore, it was sitting on the ground, looking at him. Xander tried
to remember exactly what it had looked like when he first noticed it,
but it had been in the middle and then the aftermath of a battle, and
though his mind had been improved by the super-soldier serum, it was
really merely the correcting of minor damage done in his upbringing;
nothing like a dramatic increase in intelligence or memory.

He waved at it casually, willing it to disperse, only to realize,
moments too late to do anything about it, that its eyes had been
tracking him, for he had not stopped moving when he saw it. An instant
later he had passed through the portal, having already sent Tarou
through, and he put it from his mind as an oddity of chakra to look into
later. It would be no hardship, since studying chakra was his intent for
the next while anyway.

When Mayu turned out to have a map of the world in her supplies,
Xander's attention was grabbed, and the unusual water-dragon quickly
forgotten.

Xander avoided showing any particular interest in Whirlpool, not
wanting to find out that Mayu had some lifelong feud against them or
something. There were too many advantages to having a kunoichi working
for him, both in terms of learning about their world, of learning
things to help Kushina, and in terms of his eventual return to his own
world.




Chakra


After Mayu had set up her tent inside the hideout and gone to sleep,
Xander finally had time again to consider how he was going to do this.
He did not want to try anything with chakra while on the ninja world,
nor while he was near Mayu. However, he was also leery of traveling too
far from his current location on the demon-plane.

One of the things he had learned during his time with Naamahalat was
that this area of the hell plane was fairly stable and had familiar
physical rules, but that this did not apply across the entire expanse.
It applied here because this is where armies trained and generals
tested them against each other; but beyond the desert were realms
belonging to other demon lords, and in them the very laws of physics
could be very different, not to mention the demons themselves.

According to the discussions he had overheard between Naamahalat and the
most intelligent, by Xander's judgment anyway, of her lovers,
Janithagdatra, there were some realms on this plane that regularly broke
the minds of any human souls brought there, simply to look upon them.
Her descriptions of them brought to mind the art of M. C. Escher, with
which Xander was only vaguely familiar. For that matter, they had also
spoken of demons that broke human minds to look upon.

Xander had yet to actually encounter another of the human souls
supposedly present on this plane, but he was not particularly concerned
about them. From what he had learned, one of the reasons Naamahalat had
so readily identified him as a gift and as a sorcerer, was that the only
way humans came to this particular hell was through contracts.
Basically, selling your soul meant just that, and any soul here could be
assumed to have been sold by themselves, and so were themselves
responsible for whatever they experienced. At the very least, they were
demon-summoners, not generally nice people, which is what was so
confusing for him about Kushina.

But in all likelihood, her summoning attempt would never have reached
this plane had he not been wearing so many cartouches; which also
implied that several of those cartouches must have matched her summons
in some way or another. After all, everything else he had learned
implied that it was his own home world that the damned souls here came
from, but just as clearly, this was not where those consigned to Hell,
biblically speaking, came.

There was no gate to Hell here, no steady influx of damned souls. Human
souls were a rare prize, and most were treated like trained pets, much
as Xander had been. At least, that was the case in this relatively
Earth-like portion of the plane.

He was not particularly worried about exploration, per se, since it
should become obvious pretty quickly if he started to get outside the
safe region, but by the same token, trying to get a considerable
distance away to avoid disturbing Mayu's chakra senses meant, at the
moment, needing to go in a known direction, since he only had the time
of her sleeping to explore this without having to try to divide his
attention, and traveling at high speed in an unknown direction precluded
the attention needed to avoid crossing into dangerous territory.

Luckily, Xander thought he had a reasonable solution to both challenges.
He had successfully made portals, both locally and across dimensions. He
knew he would be blocked in making a portal to his home world, but
hopefully other worlds and dimensions would not be blocked to him.

So he attempted to open a portal to the Moon of an Earth that had never
developed sentient life. He spent a fair few minutes focusing on the
various details of what he was searching for, but he was pretty
confident that if worlds as different as the ninja world and the demon
world could exist in the universe, then there was at least a good chance
that this would work.

When the portal formed it was black as the night, and he was a bit
nervous about passing through it, so instead of using his actual body,
he used his power to pick up Tarou and toss him through, without being
in that form.

Then he reached out to Tarou, to verify that he still existed, and
slipped into that form. He was on the other side of the portal
alright, and since Tarou was in physical form, he found himself in
quite some pain as the air ripped itself from his lungs. A moment
later he had produced a bubble of Earth-normal air at sea-level
pressure around him, and his healing factor quickly took care of the
damage and pain the explosive decompression had done to his lungs.

Looking around, he determined that the surroundings certainly looked
barren enough to be the moon, though the light was oddly more blue than
he had expected. As soon as he looked up and saw the deeply black sky
with a blue sphere looming overhead, he understood why, and at the same
time, confirmed that he was indeed on an Earth's moon.

Equally obvious from the complete darkness of the night half of the
Earth, he was on the moon of an Earth that had no modern humans, and so
he assumed that his portal had worked properly, and it in fact had no
sentient life whatsoever.

He had felt an intense cold briefly, but when he had produced the air,
it had been at a normal temperature, and maintaining it there was well
within his abilities. His feet were a bit cold, but given that he was on
a cold, dead world, that was no surprise, nor of great concern, given
that his feet were wrapped in stone or a close equivalent.

Reassured that he was neither in danger, nor likely to be discovered,
Xander dismissed the portal and proceeded to call up a mass of chakra.
It hovered almost invisibly in front of him, and Xander considered it.
He still did not know the various hand signs, nor were such likely to
work for him unless he managed somehow to duplicate the 'chakra coils'
these ninja had inside.

So the question was could he somehow, through his control of fluids,
applied as a control of chakra, achieve the same effects?

As before when he simply summoned chakra it was nearly invisible, and
did nothing. What if he applied his intent to it?

Pushing the chakra down into the moon-dust, Xander began playing with
intent, trying to project to the chakra what he wanted it to do. The
results were underwhelming, as the mass of chakra, once released from
his tight control to allow it to do what it would, simply dissipated
into the ground and air.

Summoning a new batch, Xander tried again and again, from focusing his
intent, to visualizing a result, to willing it to work, and nothing
stubbornly continued to happen. Remembering that Mayu had used a
vocalization in addition to the hand-signs, Xander tried quoting her
words, equally to no avail.

Giving up on interacting with the chakra directly, certain there was
something he was missing, but tired of trying to find it, Xander turned
to trying to produce the chakra as it was at the time of release of a
technique.

This bore much better fruit, and Xander was quickly producing results,
though at first they were pretty disappointing. For example, his attempt
at the wall she had produced at first failed miserably. Of course, given
that this chakra had somehow been released inside of her, to allow her
to vomit forth great quantities of mud, Xander was not eager to directly
duplicate it at any rate.

The more distant wall, produced by stomping the ground, on the other
hand, worked perfectly, though the cloud of dust produced did not seem
inclined to settle to the ground in any great hurry.

After a few more failed experiments Xander was able to combine his own
power-based ability to produce mud with the chakra, imbued with intent
at the time of its creation instead of afterward, and reproduce the
appearing wall effect.

It took him quite a few more tries to produce the mud-clone, however. As
it turned out, producing chakra imbued with the intent to produce a
clone of him did not work, nor did trying to duplicate the chakra output
of Mayu, which gave him a very startled clone of Mayu that he quickly
dispersed.

The Mayu-clone did give away the basic problem, though. Somehow, while
the chakra was still inside her, Mayu was imprinting herself into the
chakra, so it had her shape already understood in it.

With that key in hand, Xander was able to produce clones of himself that
seemed almost indistinguishable to a superficial examination. Use of his
actual power was beyond them, however, and examining them with his power
readily revealed that they were composed of a uniform mass of fluid, a
very different signature from that of an actual human, where the fluids
were arrayed in overlapping patterns, of which he could identify the
circulatory, for it had the heart, and the heartbeat, the nervous
system, for it was obvious as it tied in to the brain, and the
respiratory, which though perhaps not technically part of the human
body, had nonetheless a fluid present in it in a very characteristic
pattern.

The chakra coils were also noticeable, though he lacked them, as did the
demons he had encountered. Further, both himself, the ninja, and the
demons had a number of other patterned systems of fluid, overlapping to
various degrees, and a few much simpler ones. For example, he could
readily identify the stomach, and the bladder, and the small sac of
fluid associated with some of the demonesses' fangs, and on one, the
barb on her tail.

That complexity that denoted a lifeform in his sort of fluid-sense was
very notable in its absence here; the clones did not even have a chakra
system, merely a pool of chakra.

Unfortunately for his purposes, while the clone-Xander appeared to know
his intent, and could answer questions, he had no inkling of what it was
thinking or seeing.

"Maybe that is cause you don't have chakra." Clone-Xander pointed out.

Xander giggled involuntarily, an odd sight to his clone as he was Tarou
at the moment, his massive orange Thing form. "I have clones," he said,
and then reached out and lifted his clone, using his power over fluids,
"I find your lack of faith disturbing," he quoted, using his voice
technique to duplicate his speech in a lower register.

His clone laughed. "Wrong body, dude," he said. Xander shook his head.
"Wouldn't want that form anyway, I just had to say it. So you think it's
because I don't have chakra, huh? But I don't want to have these chakra
coil things, I don't know enough about them, and they might be
permanent. I'm risking a lot as it is if I ever try to have kids. Chakra
coils might make me a different species completely."

"Yeah," the clone said. "That'd be a bummer. But hey, I'm fluid, what if
you just make part of me part of you?"

Xander stared at him for a minute, confused, then getting it, paused to
consider. "Well, you don't have any coils . . . but you do have this
chakra stuff . . ."

"I wonder if I can use it?" the clone commented curiously, and Xander
dived to the side when the clone focused and thrust his hands forward,
and the ground erupted in stone spears.

"Way cool!" the clone declared, and Xander stared at it.

"You almost skewered me!" he accused.

"Oh, come on, like it would have hurt you, stone-man. You're the
freaking Thing!"

Frustrated and confused, Xander focused on the chakra in the clone, and
dispersed it. The clone collapsed into mud, and Xander formed another
self. This time, he made one his usual fluid way, just forming another
body, modeled after one of the few fictional warriors Xander could think
of that used ninja-style attacks, Ryu from the Street Fighter arcade
games. Shoryuken and Hadouken might not be exactly chakra-based, but
they were a lot closer than just a generic martial artist or historical
ninja.

A bit more tentatively, Xander reached out to this piece of himself, and
pumped it full of chakra, imprinted with a copy of his basic self, but
also with the intent that it should use the fluid present instead of mud.

The Ryu-Xander grinned, and looked down, then up again. "Kick-ass,
Xan-man," he crowed. "Let's see, if I'm you . . ." Ryu-Xander focused
for a moment, then shook his head.

"Even if I'm you, apparently I'm also enough not-you that I don't have
the fluid powers. At least, I can't change shape." He looked down at
his hand, then grinned. "But . . ." He cupped his hands near his side.
"I think somebody was thinking too hard when he made me," he said, and
then grimaced. To Xander's amazement, blue light rapidly collected in
between his hands, and when he thrust them forward with a loud shout
of "Hadouken!" a blazing blue fireball shot forward.

"No way!" Xander said, then looked down at his own hands.

"It's not chakra," Ryu-Xander said. "You modeled this body after the guy
from the video-games, and he uses ki."

"Yeah, but . . ." Xander stared at Ryu-Xander. "Do that again." He
watched with his fluid senses as Ryu threw another Hadouken. "Yeah," he
said, "I think you did use the power, but it was the body doing it and
not you. Like when I built it, because I was thinking it should be able
to produce ki, it used the power to produce it, instead of whatever
really happens. I'm not seeing anything like chakra coils."

"Makes sense," Ryu responded. "Which means I probably could use chakra -
and if you focused when you made a body on it being able to produce
chakra innately through the power, then it could use chakra techniques
without using up the chakra that is animating it."

"So if I am you, see if you can see through my eyes," Ryu requested, and
turned to look up at the Earth hanging overhead.

Xander nodded and focused on Ryu. He was able to slide into that body,
and see the Earth, and he was able to turn back and look at his Tarou
body, standing still. A moment later his head turned back without his
doing anything. "Apparently," he said, though he was not speaking, "we
can both manipulate the body while you're in it. But I can't shift over
to the Tarou form."

Xander shifted back, a bit uneasy about the odd feeling of his body
moving without his control. "Yeah, well . . . that's neat and all, but
it doesn't really help me that much."

Ryu-Xander shook his head. "You're overthinking it. You can build a body
that can use whatever of the fluid-powers you give it as inherent bodily
functions, including what appear to be ki attacks. The real question is,
if you have a chakra mind in such a body, is there anything they can do
to grab your attention when it is needed. I mean, I could be exploring
the mountain for you, or make Tarou appear to be a real person while
you're doing other things. We just can't replace everything."

Xander nodded slowly. "Yeah, maybe . . . but what could you do to get my
attention?"

"I don't know, but I'd say that is what we need to experiment on." 

Xander nodded again. "I'd leave you here to work on that, but without me
here, I think the air'd go poof."

"I think if there was a chakra link between us, we could communicate
using that. But there might be a simpler answer. Try reforming my body
with the intent that I should be able to communicate telepathically with
you."

"But I don't have telepathy," Xander protested.

"You didn't know you could produce ki, either," Ryu pointed out. "I'm
sure if it works, it'll be communicating through your power somehow. Who
cares how, if it works."

Xander nodded, and dispersed the chakra in Ryu, then a moment later,
reformed Ryu, focusing his intent, and then fed him another burst of
chakra.

"Whoa," Ryu said. "That was a rush."

"You remember our conversation?" Xander asked, surprised. He had not
expected that.

"Yeah, I do," Ryu said. "I guess something lingered since you didn't
form a new body from fresh liquid, just reformed this one. And I can
feel the amount of chakra I have available increasing. Do I still have
the ability to fire ki attacks?"

"Yep," Xander answered. "Not only that, but you should be able to access
the TK portion of our powers. Now, try something else for me, see if you
can create food; I'm pretty sure that is an ability I got stuck with
that is not part of the power I was granted, so you might be able to use
it."

Ryu nodded, and looking at his hand, held up a Twinky. Xander grinned at
that, and held up his own. They both stuffed the entire thing in their
mouth at once, though Xander was quick to notice that his larger form
included a larger mouth, so his mouth was not filled by it.

Once he had swallowed, he continued. "That means you've got access to
food and healing, both for yourself and others." He wondered if
Ryu-Xander had experienced anything when he had dispersed the chakra,
but did not want to ask.

"And since I'm producing chakra, I can perform chakra techniques as I
learn them . . . including . . . Earth Release : Mud Clone!" Ryu looked
at a second Ryu. "Interesting that it cloned this shape, and not yours."

Xander nodded. "Without producing chakra already imprinted, I don't
think you'll be able to do what I did in cloning Mayu. You'll just be
able to clone yourself."

"Ok, one more test," Ryu suggested. "Cut me, and let's see if this body
has Wolverine-scale healing."

"It ought to," Xander said, "that kind of got stuck in same as the food
summoning, but sure," and he gestured at Ryu, producing a small sand
blade near him.

Ryu reached out nervously, and gritting his teeth, touched the blade. To
both their surprise, instead of blood, the sand passed through his skin
and came out moistened, but with no pain and no clear injury. "Right,
still liquid," Ryu said, then concentrated. Xander was surprised when
this bit of access to their power apparently worked fine, as Ryu shifted
in his senses, and then promptly cut the tip of his finger off.

As they both watched, Ryu grimacing at the pain, the wound quickly
healed over. "Yep, I've still got it," he said.

"And you were able to go solid. Can you go back to liquid or gas?"
Xander asked.

Ryu looked startled, as if he had not even considered that he might not
be able to do it, then shimmered, and vanished. Xander focused his fluid
senses and confirmed that he could still readily detect the complex
collection of fluids that was Ryu, who reappeared a moment later.
"Apparently I can," he assented, "but I could not shapechange."

"Odd mix," Xander commented and Ryu frowned.

"It is, rather, but I guess that the transition between forms must be an
innate ability drawn from, but separate from your power. Like . . ."

Xander interrupted him. "Right, after the first few times, it doesn't
really take any concentration or willpower, I don't even really have to
think about switching. I just want to, and I do."

"Yeah, so it's kind of a built in. But shapechanging you have to . . .
well, kind of 'do' it, you have to think about it."

"Right. Let's head back. Then . . . I think we'll have to do a couple of
tests to see if you can pass your memories to me, or store them somehow
to be retrieved later. If we can do that, then we can make a child's
body, and insert you in to one of the villages for training."

"I don't care for killing, but there are definitely some that need it,"
Ryu responded, and they both paused, thinking of their father, and of
stories they had heard of human evil, both from their world, and from
Naamahalat and her friends. "And frankly, learning chakra seems like it
would rule. Ninja school sounds a lot more interesting than high school
back home."

"As for storing memories . . . have you tried to remember anything from
my perspective? I mean, I'm just a piece of you, right?"

Xander stared at Ryu for a minute before nodding and closing his eyes.
He tried to think back and see if he could remember - and indeed, he
found that he could remember firing a Hadouken. Just to verify, he fired
off one himself. Being in scale with his massive orange hands, it put
Ryu's earlier Hadouken to shame, and sent up a rooster-tail of dust as
it sped across the lunar surface and impacted the ground a considerable
distance away, sending up a massive plume of dust.

"You're right. Now, before I forget again, see if you can communicate to
me telepathically."

Ryu nodded and closed his eyes. 'Can you hear this?'

Xander jerked, then tried to reply the same way, thinking the words, as
if he was standing next to Ryu and talking to him, 'Yes, can you hear me?'

'I can.'

"That's excellent," Xander exclaimed. "Now I can really up the pace on
everything. Come on, let's head back."

They passed through a portal that Xander opened, then he returned to his
original body, and reaching out, reshaped and then charged Tarou and
ninja-Xander, groaning as he did so and realized he now had two 'Ryu's'.

The Street-Fighter Ryu immediately recognized the issue, and grinned.
"I'll be Akuma."

Xander looked puzzled for a moment, then grinned. "Going for the evil
twin thing, eh?"

"Well, Akuma had the same training, but more powerful attacks. Sounds
right to me!" 

Ninja-Ryu frowned. "Xander reformed each of us before supplying chakra,
we should have the same abilities."

"Yeah, but I've got more experience," the newly renamed Akuma boasted.

"Oh? Even though we have those same memories?" Ryu retorted.

"For crying out loud," Xander groused, "enough already. You'd think I
was schizo or something." All three were grinning at each other. Tarou
was moving around in the background, getting a feel for the body, making
sure that it moved properly without needing Xander's active fluid
powers.

Finally, Xander reached out to the phantom he had left in the mountain,
and charged it. He did not have to bother with explaining what he wanted
it to do, as of course it had his memories and knew what he would have
told it already.

He almost did the same for the stuffed animal in Kushina's room, but
remembered in time that ninjas, unlike the demons (or so he had assumed)
were highly chakra sensitive, and would instantly home in on such a
sudden appearance of chakra.

Glancing at Akuma, he considered him for a moment. "You're going to need
to pay attention," he warned. "There is no cut-off on chakra production
right now, so if you feel like it is getting to be too much for whatever
reason, bleed some off, or do some techniques or something."

He repeated this telepathically to his mountain phantom, and they all
nodded.

Given his new abilities, Xander briefly contemplated sending a clone to
Naamahalat, but discarded the idea. Not only did he not know how she had
reacted to his escape, he was not sure that any clone could survive the
rigors they would put him through. Besides, he still had not succeeded
in forgiving her, though he knew that she had every reason to assume he
was a gift and enthrall him.

It was tempting nonetheless, given that he had gone from having sex
multiple times a day to none at all, a less than comfortable transition
for a teenage boy.

Returning his attention to the stuffed doll in Kushina's room, he
repeated his pattern of using it as a reference to produce a new body,
then using that body to slip out of the village. 

He would get clones inserted into the village academies when he got the
chance, but for now, he figured it would be enough to create pairs of
clones, and have them swap places regularly, with one of them invisibly
observing a training session or sessions, or classes, etc, in the
village, and the other practicing what he had previously seen in the
village. They could swap out occasionally, though the memory transfer
thing might be enough for the external clone to train the techniques the
internal clone was observing.

He made two clones, crafting them to look like a mix of some of the boys
he had seen at Kushina's training, so if they were seen, they would not
stand out, and gave them a chakra jump-start.

Once they were in place, he went gaseous and resumed flying over the
landscape. This time, he had a more definite goal in mind. Instead of
merely looking for any chakra-powered conflict, he was looking for a
defensible place he could turn into a protected base on this world,
giving him a safe place to go back and forth from.

It would also give him a chance to see if there was a way he could use
his powers to create a permanent portal between the two realms, or
better yet, something that could create such a portal on demand between
two set locations, that could be protected so that only he or one of his
clones could operate it.

He stopped suddenly, realizing this was exactly the sort of task he
should be delegating now, while he focused on exploring his power,
something his clones could not do for him. Finding an unoccupied
clearing, he made a quick portal, stepped through and returned to his
original body, then activated the just exited body as a clone, and sent
both it and Akuma back through the portal to search out a good location.

Returning to the desolate moon, popping his sphere of air back into
existence, Xander dove back into studying his power. Particularly, he
started testing the limits of his fluid creating power. He had used it
to create chakra, something he would have thought was more of an
energy, whereas a fluid was implicitly matter, wasn't it? Gas and
liquid were both states of matter that were both fluid, but he was
pretty sure that chakra was not, yet apparently it still qualified as
fluid.

So what else qualified as fluid?

Xander's first effort was to create energy, but nothing appeared to
happen. Deciding that it might have been overly generic, Xander wondered
what other sort of more specific energy he could try to create.

Remembering Akuma/Ryu's first attack, he summoned a ball of ki. This was
more immediately visible than the unfocused chakra had been, but in the
glowing blue light it gave off, Xander wondered if that was because he
had already seen it as blue?

Xander tried to produce red ki, which had no effect. He tried red
energy, but again, no effect. He tried to produce thermal energy, and
here he was rewarded, though again it was nearly invisible. Only
nearly though, and he could feel the heat wafting off, and when he
moved his hand, he could see the shimmering effect as the heat
distorted the light passing through the heated air.

For a moment he tried pushing the envelope, steadily driving up the
amount of thermal energy. He had to stop pretty quickly, as it became
too uncomfortable to continue.

He dispersed it and paused to consider what to try next. A moment later
he realized he was missing the obvious. The most direct and obvious form
of energy to a modern human would have to be either light or
electricity. He was pretty confident that he could produce light by
producing molten metal, which aside from mercury and maybe one or two
other low-melting point metals had some pretty impressive glow to it.

Could he produce light directly? His first try at producing 'liquid
light' gave him something that was actually more gooey, luminous in a
way that reminded him of fireflies, or something glowing under a
blacklight.

An attempt to produce pure white light, on the other hand, succeeded in
producing a glowing orb of white above his hand, whose brightness he
could control pretty directly, and which cast some pretty stark shadows.

Was this a consequence of 'e equals mc squared', an equation even he
had heard of? Or was fluid really so expansive a term that it could
cover this?

An attempt at producing an energetic plasma, at a bit of distance from
himself, succeeding in producing the imagined orb of glowing gas, with
occasional sparks of lightning visible within, looking much like the
sort of lightning sphere toy common in mall novelty stores.

A few minutes of puzzling over what else to produce reminded him finally
of a fluid he had heard of only from science fiction movies, especially
Frankenstein, élan vital, something which he was quite certain had been
thoroughly debunked. Could he produce it? He had already produced a
number of other things, including the super-soldier serum, that were
wholly fictional as far as he knew.

Xander considered it, then wondered if it was worth the risk. This was,
after all, the topic of innumerable sci-fi movies wherein the mad
scientist imbues something with the vital force only to be killed by it.
Given that history, was he risking the same result?

Frankenstein's monster had been crippled in its ability to speak, and to
move fluidly. Could he be precise enough to create something that was
not in some way lacking? He was not skilled in medicine or the way the
body was put together. Perhaps that test would wait.

Xander felt frustrated. He knew there were many more types of energy
than he was coming up with, even just in his comics, but he certainly
did not want to produce a sentient energy, like the Phoenix Force from
Marvel comics, or the Power Cosmic only to discover that for it to
exist, Galactus had to exist, and was created to allow it.

Stifled, he turned back to chakra. Sure, it was something he would be
learning about over the next while anyway, but if a whole population was
using it in constant battle and their world had not been destroyed, at
least he did not have to worry about creating monsters or attracting the
attention of angry gods or world-devourers.

After a brief spate of reproductions of some of the techniques Mayu had
demonstrated for them, exploring what he had to impress on the chakra as
he created, Xander moved on to what for him was the most obvious next
step.

Just as he had applied the technique for making a mud clone and warped
it into a working clone for his extra bodies, he figured most of these
techniques could be warped into variants.

In particular, he had observed in the fight where he picked up Mayu a
number of water based attacks and felt he had at least a chance of
reproducing some of them.

He was about to try and do so, when another thought occurred to him. A
moment later, he had duplicated the chakra Mayu had produced when she
made a mud clone, and in return was granted a clone of Mayu.

"What is your name?" he asked, looking at her closely.

"Mayu," she said, with a slight bow.

"Do you remember me?" Xander questioned, watching her face closely.

She nodded. "You are a companion of my Lord Ryu."

That confirmed it, she actually had Mayu's memories, just as his
personal mud-clone had his own. As much as he had tried to reproduce her
chakra based on what his senses told him of it, there was absolutely no
way he could have remembered that chakra's attributes in sufficient fine
detail to reproduce her memories. Just to verify, he questioned her
about her family and her home village, and found no holes, no gaps in
her memory.

So somehow, when he had commanded his power to reproduce the chakra she
had produced, it had done so to a precision greater than he could have
managed with his memory. He had seen little hints of this before, hints
that somehow there was more to his power than just what he himself could
imagine. After all, producing an elixir of healing was all well and
good, but the fact remained that Xander had absolutely no personal
knowledge of the attributes of such a fluid. Yet he had been able to
create it.

Yet there were other things, other times where that seemed to fail -
he was not certain, but he did not think he would have been able to
create chakra prior to first seeing it. It was hard to say, given that
he had not actually made the attempt prior to observing the
strange-eyed lady's use of it. One might argue that he could produce
ki sight-unseen, but of course, he had seen the hadouken many times,
even if it was only on a video screen. Could that make a difference?
Was his ki even actually the same as what Ken or Ryu produced in the
game?

He dispersed the clone, and ignoring the impossibility, reproduced the
chakra released by the dead ninja who had produced the water dragon,
even as he produced a large mass of water. Instantly the water took on
the attributes of a dragon, and roared through the air looking for a
target, before he dispersed it.

Well, that was rather interesting.

He wondered if Mayu would remember what her clone had seen, if when he
had produced chakra matching hers at the moment of the technique, he had
actually produced her chakra, binding the clone to her. It did not seem
possible, yet at the same time . . . Xander was fairly sure that he
could produce her blood on demand, or Naamahalat's, probably even the
Duke's. Would she remember?

Xander's clumsy attempts at other water jutsu failed miserably. Only, it
seemed, when he was reproducing the exact chakra output of a usage he
had himself witnessed was he able to reliably reproduce a result. With
no real understanding of chakra, he had no idea what changes to make,
what to shift in it to make it stronger or weaker aside from changing
the quantity of chakra, what to do to make more or fewer spears appear,
or a wall of granite or marble or some other particular stone, nor, it
seemed, could he simply reproduce the earth effects he had seen as water
effects.

Yet he had been able to adapt a mud-clone to himself and to his fluid
instead of mud. Did that mean that another, Mayu for example, could
somehow use a mud-clone on his fluid instead of mud, and have it work?

Was that somehow inherent in the mud-clone technique, that it worked on
the fluid it was pushed into, and not specifically mud?

Looking around at the disturbed landscape, Xander considered it. Now
that he had a retainer . . . er, well, now that Ryu had a retainer,
anyway, and wasn't that an odd fix to be in . . . he needed to provide
proper lodgings.

Did he really want to house her permanently on the demon plane? Surely
not; if she were ever encountered by the demons, they would not hesitate
to capture and make a pet of her. He could build something here on this
moon, but the slightest breech would produce a potentially lethal
decompression. He glanced up at the blue light of the Earth hanging
overhead. If his travel worked there was no life there--no, that was
wrong, no sentient beings there, always assuming his power had
understood that requirement of the portal--and he could build there.

But then he might interfere with future life developing on the world. It
would be ideal if he could have a fortress in its own dimension, its own
world, like a demi-plane from D&D, or a larger version of the space in a
portable hole.

He could maybe make a home in such a place, with doorways to get to the
demon-plane, and the ninja world, and eventually, to Sunnydale on his
own Earth. That would take care of the defensible place that Akuma and
his new unnamed clone were searching for, as well as . . . well, no,
maybe he would still need that, to guard the doorway to his demi-plane.

So what was involved in creating such a plane? Could his powers do it
directly, or could he use them to give himself such a power?

Xander tried to consider the possibilities, and whether he should risk
giving himself such a power. Would there be any long term side-effects?
Was it even possible any more, or had it ever been, to give himself a
power with a time limit after which it would cease?

The potential benefits seemed worth it, but it made sense to Xander to
see if he could accomplish it directly through his power first. He was
not particularly sure how to go about this, aside from simply trying to
make a portal to an existing demi-plane and taking it for his own.

He did not want to do that, since even an abandoned demi-plane might see
the owners return at some point, or have external access points floating
around that he did not know about.

So Xander decided to try something different. The first thing he did
was to use a portal to step over to this solar system's Mars, to be
further from any potential ill effects on developing life on Earth.
After forming a sphere of air and looking the land over to be sure it
was a dead world, Xander sat down, and slowly and painstakingly worked
out on paper what he wanted to try. Trying at first to think of it as
Willow might got him a lot of nowhere fast, but when he backed up and
came at it by trying to mimic a comic book description of some
entity's parallel world, he made considerable progress. After
considerable pondering, and a bit of elixir to deal with the resulting
headache, he carefully rewrote his ramblings to be more legible, then
proceeded with his attempt.

First, he concentrated on what he wanted to happen, the forming of a
demi-plane governed by the same basic physical laws as the universe he
was in, but supporting the existence of magic, chakra, ki, and demonic
and celestial energies, and permitting the existence of various other
rule-breaking phenomena, wholly subject to the exertion of his will but
self-sustaining otherwise, that would respond dynamically to the needs
and desires of the inhabitants where doing so did not conflict with his
will.

With these ideas in mind, Xander produced a small amount of fluid and 
pushed chakra into it, willing that the clone thus formed would hold 
that thought in mind. Then he proceeded to elaborate on his intentions 
for the primary entity in the demi-plane, supported by the plane 
itself, a house with enough self-will and understanding to respond to 
its inhabitants' needs and wants, forming new rooms from material 
supplied by the demi-plane or himself, and capable of sustaining 
portals that he formed, and controlling access to them, as well as 
generating unseen servants of the D&D variety for general maintenance, 
and pumped these ideas into a second formless clone.

Before continuing, Xander popped a portal to his demon-plane hideout and
swapped bodies with Tarou, so that if his next attempt destroyed Mars,
he would not have damaged his original body.

Ready to make the attempt, Xander, in quick succession, attempted to
produce mass amounts of several varieties of energy. He was moving
quickly, and did not waste time paying attention to which succeeded and
which did not, just focusing on producing them with the intention that
they should be subject to his will and that of the two clones. He
quickly went through dimensional energy, gravitational energy, pure
magic, elemental magic of earth, fire, air, and water, then void magic,
the substance of his portals, a magical fluid capable of matter
production and transformation, ki, life energy, chi, electricity, light,
demonic energy, demonic magic, celestial energy, celestial magic, élan
vital, kinetic energy, potential energy, water, sentience, sentient
energy and polymorphic energy before conceding that he could think of
nothing more, and then pumping it all full of chakra loaded with the
intent for it to accomplish his will, and promptly fell unconscious.

When Xander finally revived an unknown time later, he was confused and
disoriented, but not in nearly the pain he expected when he remembered
where he had collapsed. He winced when he remembered where he had been,
anticipating the pain of frozen flesh, the burning of lungs that had been
too long without oxygen, the dry cracked feeling of soft tissue that had
been leeched of all moisture. After all, he had collapsed on the surface
of Mars, and without his will maintaining it, the sphere of temperate
air around him would have quickly faded into the background thin, barely
present atmosphere, leaving him exposed to the raw elements of Mars.

As Xander marveled at the absence of these pains, and slowly sat up, he
felt sheets falling away. His eyes popped open in surprise, and he found
himself in a bed, in a comfortable looking room. Beside the bed was a
bedside table, and on it was a small breakfast tray with a bowl of
what looked like Captain Crunch cereal, a spoon, and a tall glass of milk.

Xander grinned, and sliding his feet off the bed so he could sit on the
side of it, he pulled the tray around, finding it was on a long and
flexible arm, poured a bit of milk into the bowl, and actually ate a
proper breakfast, for the first time in a long while.

Then he finally bothered to check his memories, and discovered that he
had actually been carried along into the new demi-plane during its
creation, and that apparently the two clones he had made had become
incorporated with the various magics and sentient energies he had
attempted to summon and ended up becoming the minds of the plane and the
fortress or mansion or house or castle or whatever it was.

Beyond that, he could remember the activities of his other clones, and
by what he remembered, judge that he had been out for about two and a
half days. His child clones had already had a good day of observing
training, and practicing in the fields, and one of them had apparently
bothered to sit down and write out a letter to him and then memorize it
to be sure he got it, advising him that he should supply them with a
small number of additional clones to attach to outgoing caravans, to
locate other hidden villages of ninja, and learn what could be gathered
from them.

Akuma and the now-named Lewis (apparently he grew tired of being
nameless, and took a name from Lewis and Clark, as he felt like they
were on a similar trek) had noted several possible locations.

Tarou and Ryu had spent some time (Tarou being now in his original body,
as he had discovered just before over-exerting himself that while his
clones could not switch bodies on their own, he could move them himself)
working with Mayu going over what had been collected from the dead
ninja, and which supplies she needed.

As evidence that his clones could be creative on their own, the
demi-plane informed him that it liked the idea, stolen from AD&D's
Ravenloft and the Mists of Avalon, of using a demi-plane produced mist
to accomplish larger scale connections between planes, an idea which
startled Xander, and made him wonder what else he had overlooked. Mists,
after all, were liquid suspended in a gas and so fluid twice over, yet
he had not even thought of using them for travel, which would provide
both concealment, intimidation, and possibly, as the demi-plane mind
implied, instantaneous transport of large groups already in martial
array, without bottlenecking.

Rising, Xander asked the house to guide him to a good spot to form a
permanent connection with his demon-plane hideout. Immediately, a
light appeared in front of him, and moving slowly ahead, guided him to
a large central hall with sweeping grand stairs and a massive
chandelier that made him wonder whose mind was actually coming up with
all this, then down a hall into a corridor reminiscent of a stone
dungeon. The walls transitioned from paneling to exposed brick and
then worked stone, before finally reaching an almost natural looking
cavern. The light drifted to a large opening on one side, and slowly
flickered and swelled, until it finally resolved into a face.

"Hey, Xan-man. Here's the deal; the plane and I think if you use the
plane to make a mist connection, we can actually extend through it, and
push some of the demi-plane's rules out into the other side, so any
attackers have to actually enter your realm to even get to us."

Xander frowned, considering this. It was very weird to have the plane
and house seemingly more creative and intelligent than he was, but then,
he had stuffed them full of all sorts of energies. Odd effects were
probably to be expected, especially when he had apparently actually
managed to strain himself for the first time, to actually push his own
limits. He had not previously noticed any difficulty or strain in using
his powers, except for the odd resistance of the ninjas' chakra, which
had not really taken much to push past. Apparently creating a demi-plane
and everything he had tried to get into it had actually finally
demonstrated that he did have limits, somewhere.

He summoned a mist, just to see if he could. When it manifested without
difficulty, he nodded. "Go for it," he said, and watched as the
cavernous opening filled with a dark mist. Wanting to see it from the
other side, he quickly formed a portal and stepped through it.

In the hideout, he watched as mist billowed up from the ground to one
corner, and then a red light glowed in the darkness of the mist, before
clean stonework spread from within the mist and engulfed the interior of
his hollowed out hideout, concealing even the tiny openings he had left
himself for exiting.

Swapping with Tarou to get back into his original body, Xander mentally
explained what was going on to Tarou and Ryu.

"Alright, Mayu," Ryu said. "Time to pack up your tent and get a proper
room."

He guided a nervous Mayu into and through the mist, and as advertised,
they ended up in the dungeon area, where a light appeared to guide them
to where they could find rooms.

Xander, meanwhile, reached out to the first of the locations found by
Akuma and Lewis, and trying mist-travel for the first time himself, had
a mist rise and engulf him, and as intended, when it receded on both
planes, it left him in the location they had picked.

Examining it, Xander found that they were clearly thinking of his
consideration of piracy, for he was on a sheltered beach with a small
cove beyond, with beautiful deep water, and two encircling arms of coast
with lines of rocks sealing him in. They were not completely continuous,
but definitely did not look like something a ship could navigate.

A ghost ship, on the other hand, which could pass through the mists?
That could be a different story. Xander looked around the cave, that
actually engulfed the waters towards the rear of the cove, such that the
beach continued directly into the cave on one side, while the other was
rocky and appeared impassable on foot.

The cave continued for some distance beyond the water's end, and Xander
liked the look of it. Aside from the impassable barrier rocks, which
ensured he would not be bothered by ships seeking refuge, this would
make a perfect pirate cove.

He had just returned to the house to locate a good spot to form a
connection to the cove, with his senses at their full as he examined the
mist he was using to make the trip, when darkness enveloped him. For the
first time, Xander could actually feel the energies reaching out to
draw him in, and felt like he could resist, if he wanted to.




Summonses, Expected and Un


Knowing that this was Kushina summoning him for her demonstration before
the other ninja to prove that she could in fact summon, Xander wanted to
ensure it was impressive, so he went invisible before allowing the
questing energies to latch on to him.

When he appeared, and confirmed that Kushina was there before a crowd of
ninja, he summoned a great cloud of smoke, reshaped himself, solidified,
and then blew it away, revealing himself. Even as he did this last, he
summoned a mass of chakra to surround him, focusing on the idea that it
should feel overwhelmingly powerful, knowing that the ninjas would be
sensitive to it.

Kushina was grinning widely in relief and happiness that her summoning
had succeeded, here at this most critical juncture, where her future as
a ninja was at stake.

A snide voice broke the stillness. "So she can summon, he doesn't look
like much to me. What's the point of summoning a wimp?"

It was clear from the impressed looks on the faces of the other ninja
prior to the speech that they had detected the power of the chakra he
had produced, and that this was false bravado on the part of someone who
had an interest in seeing Kushina fail. After all, Xander was in his own
form here, as he had appeared to Kushina, the form of a man optimized to
the peak of physical condition by the super-soldier serum. It was true,
of course, that these ninja were also in top physical condition,
reducing the disparity he had over them, and his musculature and the
absence of fat were to an extent concealed by the black garments he had
created, including what he hoped was an impressive Darth Vader style
black cloak. Still, he was by no means a wimpy or weak figure of a man.

It was equally clear that the heckler had failed when with a glance from
Xander, he was ejected upwards as if he had been sitting on a
rocket-powered ejection seat, and sent flying.

An older looking ninja wearing an odd hat-Xander thought he might be the
village leader Mizuna had mentioned-cleared his throat, bringing all
eyes to him. "Perhaps now, Kushina-chan, you can demonstrate for us how
your partnership with your summon works?"

He gestured, and turning to look in the indicated direction, Xander saw
what looked almost like a traditional old-West shooting gallery, a
display of fake buildings, with ninja mannequins sprinkled throughout.

Xander glanced at Kushina, willing to take her direction in how she
wanted to deal with this. He was not sure if she would prefer an
overwhelming show of force, or a display of precision.

She grinned up at him, moving closer, and leaned forward. He leaned down
and she whispered to him, "Can you just blow the whole thing away at
once? Like it's insulting to have to fight just one ninja?"

Xander nodded, grinning. They had no fluid in them, aside from a bit of
air in the padding, so tossing them individually as he had done with the
snide idiot would have taken some effort, but just blowing everything
away was as easy as pie.

Before generating a wind, Xander grabbed all the air in the vicinity
of the fake ninja, quintupled its density and then pushed it away at
six hundred miles an hour. Knowing that hurricane force winds were one
hundred and fifty to three hundred miles per hour, he was confident
that doubling that would be enough to be impressive, especially after
he thickened the air, and indeed, it not only took out the fake ninja
but the entire setting; false buildings and all were blown away in a
single tremendous rush of roaring wind.

"Hmm... impressive," the old guy said. "Very well, Kushina, you have
demonstrated an ability to summon, a skill well beyond most genin. As
such, it is clear that you can no longer be held back," at this he
glared at several of the group of ninja around him, "and are therefore
promoted to the rank of genin. Congratulations, you are now a kunoichi
of Whirlpool."

Kushina cheered and spun, leapt at Xander and gave him a crushing hug,
then targeted her teacher Mizuna for more of the same. As the other
gathered ninja began wandering away now that the show was over, Kushina
said, "So I get missions now, right Mizuna-sensei? Real missions?"

Mizuna nodded, but warned her, "Your first missions will be pretty
boring and safe, Kushina, but if you acquit yourself well in doing them,
eventually you will graduate to harder missions."

"Including ones out of the village?" Kushina begged.

Her answer was cut off by an angry shout. Xander looked up to see the
heckler returning, looking quite the worse for wear, but unfortunately
uninjured.

Xander was willing to ignore him, until he realized the fool had more of
those odd throwing implements in his hands, and if he threw them at
Xander, they might hit Kushina or Mizuna. Well, that simply was not
going to be happening. A few of the other ninja had stopped at the
realization that the loudmouth was returning, so there was an audience
as Xander lifted his hand and the idiot was jerked off the ground, and
held motionless.

"I don't think I like this one," Xander commented to Kushina,
deliberately ignoring the man. "What do you suppose I should do with
him?"

Kushina giggled while Mizuna shook her head slowly. Xander did not wait
for an answer, instead turning back and drawing the man swiftly across
the intervening space to a conversational distance.

Xander teased the man for a minute, continually easing off his control,
waiting for the idiot to open his mouth to shout something, and then
forcing his mouth closed and still again. "Ah, ah, ah, no shouting,"
Xander ordered. He glanced at Mizuna, then back to the blowhard. "Is
there any reason I should not just stop your foolish heart?"

The man paled, and Xander relaxed his control, dumping the fool on the
ground. "Attack me again, and maybe we'll see if you can still be a
ninja without eyes." While he spoke, Xander used his food power to
produce two realistic looking eyes of sugar and gelatin, and held them
out as if he had just plucked them from his pouch.

Kushina and Mizuna both gasped, and the man paled further, scrambled to
his feet and ran away. Xander laughed and slipped the eyes back into his
belt pouch. That was a good prank, and he might find use for them again.

He turned back to Kushina, who was again talking to Mizuna. She looked
up, noticing his motion, and grinned. "Thanks again, Xander! That was
great, and now I'm a genin, for real! That's all I needed right now, but
I'll summon you again later, okay?"

Xander nodded, and watched her make a handsign. This time he again felt
much more clearly the bonds of the summons loosening and returning him.

Xander expected to reappear in the house, but instead, even as he felt
those bonds loosen, he sensed a new summons latching on. He was shocked
and disturbed. What could possibly have caused Kushina to summon him
again so soon?

Knowing that something had gone wrong, he offered no resistance, and
indeed used those moments of subjective time to good effect, so that the
instant he appeared, he created several voice deepeners, two sand
blades, and several compressed air explosives held at the ready before
looking for targets.

"You have got to be kidding me," Xander dead-panned, staring at an
emaciated goth-wannabe. Was that a candle on his head? "You really need
to get out more," he told the skinny teen, marveling at the depth of the
bags under his eyes.

Recognizing the lack of understanding on the goth's face, Xander
swallowed another language draught, even as another teenage boy standing
nearby started a loud speech, though a moment later he realized that 
he had understood the first few words even before he swallowed the 
draught, and guessed that perhaps the language draught required him to 
hear a language before he could speak it.

The candle guy murmured, "It actually worked!" before promptly fainting.

Xander dispersed his sword and explosives, glancing over the chalk
circle drawn rather poorly on an uneven wooden floor. It was obvious
that he could break this summoning circle without any great
difficulty, but of course, doing so would lose him his chance of
setting in place a foothold here. The question, of course, was whether
it was worth it.

He had not even really begun to explore the knowledge available on the
ninja-world, and had not really planned on being summoned again.
Nonetheless he had been summoned, and as he stared at the chalk outline,
his mind vaguely processing the florid speech of the excited teen ranting
in the background, he realized that somehow, he knew things about the
summoning, without any indication how he knew.

It was not like a voice in his head explaining things, nor as if he was
thinking questions and then knowing the answers. He simply knew, looking
at the chalk, that he could break this summoning and return to his home,
but he would not then be able to get back to this place, as he would
have no link to it, though he might reach some other place with
alternates of these two individuals. He could make a deal with his
summoner, either through blood, word, or written contract, to perform
some task for some remuneration, and that whether he was ejected back to
his own plane on completion of the contract depended entirely on the
wording, and not the summoning itself. If the contract specified he
return to his own plane and his remuneration was not supplied, he would
be able to return to seek it, free of restraint. If the contract did not
specify his return, then whether he was free of restraint would again
depend on the contract, and whether it specified any restraints.

Further, he could see that he could make a deal with either of the two
present; apparently they both qualified as his summoner.

Focusing his attention on the conscious teen, he saw that he was waving
around a wooden sword. He looked Oriental, though Xander could not place
the specific region of the Orient. Paying more attention to his speech,
Xander realized the boy was ranting about his girlfriend being held in
captivity by an evil sorcerer, though apparently a different evil
sorcerer from goth-boy.

Prepped now to speak in the boy's tongue, Xander made sure his
voice-deepeners were still up, and stopped him, trying to match the
weird style of his speech, which did not seem to be fully translated, as
though perhaps the goth boy and the sword guy spoke a slightly different
language, and having tuned in to the lingo of the goth boy, Xander was a
bit out of tune.

"Hold! A bargain must be set. You wish your pig-tailed girl free of this
foul sorcerer? State clearly your demand, and what you will reward me
with for such a boon!"

The dark-haired boy stopped and paused as if in thought. He was taller
and looked substantially more fit than the unconscious boy, who was now
shifting and murmuring as if in the grip of a dream, murmuring about
colors. "Very well, I have decided. As my noble but demented father is
long absent, I am the head of my house. Free the pig-tailed girl from the
foul sorcerer Saotome, and you may have my short sword."

Xander frowned. A sword seemed a poor reward, but the boy was acting as
if it was a great gift. Maybe it was a magical sword? At any rate, if
there was in fact a pig-tailed girl--Xander really hoped that referred
to a hairstyle, and not an actual pig's tail--being held captive, then
he would have freed her for nothing, were it not that the summon could
only be fully activated by such a bargain. "Agreed. When I have freed
this girl from her bondage, I will return and you will give me what you
have promised."

With those words, the circle of chalk, poorly drawn as it was, flashed
brightly, and Xander actually felt a weight, like that of a light
backpack, settle on his shoulders. To his surprise, he actually found an
image in his mind of this pig-tailed girl, a rather pretty girl, also
obviously Asian, though with such vibrantly red hair that Xander was
surprised it was the styling of the hair that the sword-boy used to
identify her.

Flipping into an airy form, ignoring the surprised shout of the youth,
he drifted up and out the nearest gap in the building's construction.
Much to his surprise, given the talk of foul sorcerers, the summoning,
and the appearance of the two boys, he found himself in what appeared to
be a fairly modern city. It was of a style unfamiliar to him, that
looked like it belonged on Willow's mother's coffee table, but there
were cars, albeit tiny ones compared to what he found familiar, and
buses and trucks and such, and power lines and mass-produced fencing,
asphalt and concrete roadways, sidewalks, any number of little things
that said this was a far more similar place to Sunnydale than Kushina's
village had been.

Curious if the sense he had of being held here until his task was
completed, of the weight he felt as being chains holding himself here,
was accurate and would impact his ability to cross the planes, Xander
reached out. He found he could feel his other selves, far away, but he
could not move into them, he could not shift his essential self from
here to there.

He slipped into an alleyway, which was curiously prosaic, resembling an
alley in Sunnydale in feeling much more than the streets resembled
Sunnydale streets, and after verifying that he was alone, attempted to
produce a portal to his hideout. It failed, and Xander felt a sudden
sense of urgency. What if Kushina needed him, and tried to summon him,
and he could not come to her aid because he was still stuck here? He
should have stuck with his first instincts, that he did not need to
explore further summonings until he was done with Kushina's world. He
was fairly certain that he was as immortal as he liked now, given
Wolverine style healing, magical healing, and the ability to basically
rebuild his body on demand, so he had no reason to rush.

The stories he had learned made it clear that time travel was an almost
inevitable thing when traveling between planes, and if he had any hope
of returning to the aid of his friends, he would have to master it
before his return anyway, unless he simply got preposterously lucky, an
outcome he felt was massively improbable, given what the Powers had done
to get rid of him.

With renewed urgency, Xander formed a number of fluid selves, giving
them different appearances, forming an eye to spy on the street to match
clothing styles and colors to help them blend in, then pumped them up
with chakra clones.

"All right, let's find this pig-tailed girl," he ordered, and they
slipped out the alley in ones and twos, while he drifted up invisibly,
to get a higher overview.

He was at a loss as to how to find this foul sorcerer here in a normal,
modern city, where he had expected to be looking for an obvious wizard's
castle or tower or something, but an explosion in the distance caught
his attention, and he quickly zipped in that direction.

He soon found that he was paralleling a young woman with shockingly
purple hair who was riding a bicycle along the walls and even power
lines, also clearly heading for the distant explosions. There was
something odd about her, and Xander found himself strangely certain that
she was a small purple and white cat, in spite of being able to clearly
see that she was a beautiful girl.

Realizing that even if his target was at the conflict he was heading
for, he would not be likely to be alone, and that confrontation would be
better alone, Xander produced another five clones and sent them in
search of a quiet space where he could have a face-off without creating
a lot of collateral casualties.

A moment later, Xander was reminded that first, he was in a world that 
had cars and such, and therefore at least had a chance to be his, and 
second, that while he had verified he could not get back to his other 
selves, he had not tested producing a portal within this plane. He 
popped off a quick portal to Southern California and just as quickly 
banished it, pleased that it had been produced with no effort, but a 
bit disturbed that the cycling purple-haired girl had noticed and was 
looking around as if searching for something, though she had not 
changed the direction or speed of her travel.

They crossed a busy lane of traffic, Xander merely flying over, while
the cyclist literally jumped the roadway, crossing from one line of
power lines to another across the street, a very impressive feat of
precision landing and balance, and then they were at the scene of the
conflict.

A familiar looking young man with a pig-tail, that could have been the
pig-tailed girl's brother, given the identical hair-style and the very
similar clothing style, which did not match the others present, though
of course Xander had no frame of reference for how common such a style
was amongst the local population, aside from the few he was seeing, was
leaping and bouncing around a solid looking fellow in a bandanna.

Both of these two, who appeared to be in a street fight in a very
Oriental, martial arts type of fight, had that weird sense about them,
as if there was another being there, or as if they should be something
different. The pigtailed boy was a girl in this strange view, and the
boy was a pig.

Xander looked about the others quickly to see if perhaps all the people
on this world were like that, and he simply had not noticed it with the
first two. One of the others, a boy in white robes throwing knives and
other weapons at the pig-tailed boy looked like a duck, but the
pony-tailed boy with the big shovel did not, nor the angry girl swinging
what looked like a bookbag.

His guess as to his target was confirmed a moment later when the
bandanna boy shouted "Saotome Ranma, for avoiding your just
punishment, die!" when the pig-tailed boy managed to dodge a bookbag
hit, and promptly attacked with what looked suspiciously like a closed
umbrella.

Xander interrogated his quiet-place searchers, and picking amongst what
they had found, he popped a portal up directly in the path of the
pig-tailed boy. To his disbelief and amazement, the boy managed to twist
in mid-air and avoid hitting it, then shouted in anger when the bookbag
girl stumbled in to it before Xander could disengage it.

The bandanna boy leapt in after her, just as Xander shut it down and
popped up another one, pointing at a different chosen location in front
of the pig-tailed boy, now identified as Saotome, again.

Meanwhile, the Xander at the target location promptly ported the two
unwanted guests back. Unfortunately for Xander, the Saotome boy who had
been about to leap into the portal avoided it the moment he saw the
bookbag girl again. Instantly Xander realized that in spite of her
attacking him, he had been about to go to the rescue, and now saw it as
unnecessary.

The next fifteen minutes were occupied with a continual procession of
wrong people entering portals meant for Saotome, while he adroitly
avoided them, in spite of Xander popping portals up in his path while he
was falling, and using wind gusts in an attempt to push him in.

Finally, frustrated and a little angry, Xander used his power over
fluids to grab the boy and pull him directly into a portal, then
portalled over himself.

Unfortunately, even this direct strike failed, as it seemed the
purple-haired girl was swift enough that she managed to make it through
the portal he himself used, though it had existed for the merest moment,
and now the Saotome boy was accusing her of having 'magicked' him away.

Xander allowed himself to become visible, stopping the argument. "I
brought you here," he told the boy. "It had nothing to do with her."

They both oriented on him instantly. "Shampoo help husband fight new
boy!" the girl shouted, but neither actually attacked. The girl was
clearly in a fighting stance, holding two heavy looking but colourful
stick-balls, while the boy actually slipped his hands into his pockets
and simply stood there, bouncing lightly on his feet, eyeing Xander
suspiciously. Xander realized from the way she said it that Shampoo was
her name, not the substance, and felt a shiver run down his spine,
though he did not know why.

"Look, I've not got a lot of time, there's a little girl counting on me,
so I need to get this over and done with. I was summoned here to free a
pig-tailed girl from a foul sorcerer Saotome, and I'm pretty sure you
are one or the other of those two . . . if not both."

The boy groaned. "Kuno, you idiot! So, you're a demon?" He shot a
significant glance at Shampoo, whose face hardened as she nodded back.

"No, I'm not a demon. I just got banished to a place chock-full of them,
and one way out is to be summoned. Look, I know your name is Saotome, I
heard Bandanna-Boy shout it earlier. Are you the sorcerer Sword-Boy
mentioned?"

"I'm not a damned sorcerer," the boy growled, "I hate magic. Kuno's just
crazy."

Xander eyed Shampoo, who seemed to be further to the left than she had
been, though he had not seen her move.

"Fine. Do you know the pig-tailed girl he mentioned?"

"She's not real," he spat. "Just a damned curse!"

Xander flicked his eyes over to Shampoo and started. She was gone!
Xander instantly went fluid, and just in time, as one of those metal
balls came down and sent bits of him splashing everywhere. Xander
quickly pulled himself together and grabbed them both with his power.

"Damnit, I don't have time for this," he said, worried that the shiver
he had felt earlier was about Kushina. He formed another fluid clone.
"See if you can portal out of here. I can't, but . . ." 

The clone nodded and frowned for a moment, then shook his head. "No
dice."

Xander growled, then reached out to the two child-clones he had left in
the Hidden Whirlpool village. "Check on Kushina, make sure she's okay."

His concentration was shattered by a fist blasting through his head,
splattering it about again. He pulled himself back together and took to
the air, lifting himself up several times to avoid attacks while he
tried to figure out why his control had failed. The purple-haired girl,
Shampoo, was still held, but the boy was somehow attacking him. He tried
again to get a grip on the boy, but his control slipped off.

Shampoo was cheering him on now, and Xander learned from it that this
Ranma was her husband, and a pretty lucky one at that, Xander thought,
considering Shampoo's curves and her obvious skill. He could feel her
doing something, without moving, that was as if she was trying to
wriggle out of his control.

Xander quickly formed a half-dozen fluid clones to try to subdue the
Saotome boy, only to find himself having to push higher still, as the
boy used them as springboards to leap higher. 

About to banish the summoned clones as useless, Xander paused when one
of them objected. "Hey, I'm learning here. This kid is as good as any of
the ninja teachers we've been watching, except he ain't going for
killing moves. This is good stuff!"

Xander sighed and nodded, drifting higher again, even as Shampoo figured
out the trick to it and slipped free of his bonds. Xander was still
puzzling on how to get these two out of fight mode and back to talking
to figure out if what he was seeing, the cat and the girl, were really
somehow present, and if she even could be freed, when he was suddenly
brought back to the fight by a sudden impact of heat and pressure that
sent him up and back another dozen feet.

One of the clones focused and showed him a mental picture of what had
happened from his perspective. "Fierce Tiger Bullet?"

Xander shifted and focused his senses on the boy, watching and waiting
for another such attack. The boy did not attempt it again until he
managed to get within about fifteen feet, using the girders of a
construction site next door to the empty lot Xander's clone had chosen,
and then he shot off another attack. Xander stopped it in mid-air,
examining it.

It was similar to but different from Ryu's Hadouken, and Xander found it
was trying to dissipate, so that he had to force it to remain so he
could look at it. The silence that had fallen distracted him from his
look, and he banished it and looked up.

The two fighters had stopped, and were staring at him with looks of
startled disbelief on their faces, as best he could tell. His clones had
stopped attacking when they did, and were standing around waiting.

"How did you do that?" Ranma asked.

Tired of wasting time and happy that they were willing to talk again,
Xander allowed himself to drift downwards, wryly thinking as he did so
that before his time with Naamahalat, he would never understand or
realize that in doing so, he was placing himself within their reach
again, deliberately, as a token gesture of peace.

"Being thrown from your home into an unfamiliar place full of demons,
you learn new tricks, or you die. I learned," Xander said. They did not
need to know that he had been gifted with power, and that he could
control energy such as chi or ki was certainly something he had learned
recently, so it was truthful enough that he was not lying.

"Look, I'm bound by my summoning to free the pig-tailed girl, but that
does not mean I have to fight you, or harm you . . . unless you are in
some way holding her by force?"

Ranma frowned again. "I told you, the pig-tailed girl is not real.
Kuno's just nuts."

"I can see her," Xander said plainly. "I can see a red-haired pig-tailed
girl when I look at you, and a small purple and white cat when I look at
you," he continued, looking to Shampoo. "And somehow, this Kuno, if you
are right about who summoned me, must be at times able to see her as
well. What I do not know is what she is, nor how I might free her?"

Ranma sighed, glancing at Shampoo, then nodded. "It is a curse, from
China," he said flatly, and Xander noticed Shampoo wince. "I fell in a
cursed pool, and now cold water turns me into a girl, and hot water
turns me back into a boy. Shampoo," he glanced at the girl again, and
only continued when she nodded, "was cursed the same way, but
deliberately, as a punishment."

"These were pools of water?" Xander asked, startled. He had never
considered that pure water could carry magic. He had used magical
potions, but cursed water was a new one. Ranma and Shampoo nodded, and
Xander grinned. He was tempted to just spray them, but remembered
Ranma's tone when he spoke of it, and decided it was best not to set
them off again.

"Will you let me see it?" he asked, holding out a glass of water
summoned with his food summoning ability. Ranma glared at it for a
moment before nodding, and stepping forward, put his hand in the water.
Xander focused his full senses on Ranma as he shifted abruptly into a
beautiful and very busty young woman.

"Wow," Xander said, grimacing. "That must be pretty miserable when it
happens in a crowd."

"It's a curse," Ranma said, her voice higher and clearer. "Water seeks
me out."

Xander considered that for a moment, exploring the water around, and
indeed, he found that he could sense, without really understanding how
he knew, that if he relinquished his control of the glass even a little,
it would fall in such a way as to splash the purple-haired girl.

"And this pool, the curse is random? I mean, you turn into a girl, and
she's a cat, and I saw a pig and a duck earlier."

Shampoo spoke up then. "Many cursed pools, victim turn into what drowned
there."

"So a girl drowned in a pool . . . and you are cursed to look like her?"

Shampoo spoke up again, moving forward. "No, pool take some . . . not
know word, likeness maybe, of person or thing what drowned, victim get
likeness . . . not likeness . . ."

She looked at Ranma imploringly and he shrugged. "Far as I can tell, I
look a lot like Mom did when she was my age. Prince Herb got splashed
with the same water and he looks like his own sister."

Xander looked at his clones thoughtfully, but shook his head. Too much
risk that it would affect all of him. So he made a normal mud clone, and
had it move away, by itself. Ranma and Shampoo watched this curiously
but without understanding. They were curious about the technique that
allowed the clones, but had no idea what he was attempting.

It took Xander three tries before he figured out that he had to actually
specify that the water carry the curse, not merely that it be water from
where something had drowned. Which made sense once he thought of it, as
otherwise anyone who took a dip in the ocean would be cursed.

Ranma and Shampoo gasped aloud then started shouting frantically when
the curse took and turned the Xander-mud-clone into a beautiful black
and grey northern wolf. Xander focused on the clone, examining it and
found that he could sense the mud-form. Taking a chance, Xander tried to
tug the mud-form forward, and after a moment of his power slipping off,
he figured out the right way to grip it, and the wolf turned back into a
clone of himself.

Then Xander focused on the wolf he could now see overlaying his clone,
and after another few tries, managed enough of a grasp on it to change
it from a wolf to a lion before pulling it forward again. The lion
roared irritably, before Xander reached out and this time, sought to
separate the lion from the clone entirely.

After several minutes of wrangling with it, causing not a few changes
back and forth, and resulting in a very irritated and cursing
Xander-clone, he managed to separate out the lion essence, which came
out as a glowing blue ball of water, which he proceeded to dissipate.

Finally returning his attention to the two other teenagers, Xander was
beyond surprised to find them both crying and kneeling beside him,
begging him to cure them.

"Not that I would object," he said, "but I am bound to free your cursed
form. How I do that is up to me, but I need to do so in a way that
satisfies the summoning contract."

Ranma looked to Shampoo but she shrugged her shoulders. Xander sighed.
"If I just remove the curse, the pigtailed girl in question no longer
exists. I suppose in at least one sense that would be freeing, but I'm
afraid if it did not, it would be too late to do anything about it, and
I would be trapped here unable to fulfill my summons. But if you are the
girl in question, then I simply need to free you from yourself, in some
way." Xander moaned, rubbing his forehead. "What I wouldn't do to have
Willow here. She'd figure this out in no time."

Ranma gave Shampoo a long look, then sighed. "Shampoo's Granny would
probably know."

Shampoo glanced at him. "Why you no say Old Ghoul?"

Ranma shrugged. "She's an Old Ghoul when she's trying to trick and trap
me. Nabiki could probably figure it out too, but she would want money."

Xander looked between them. "Makes no diff to me who you want to ask,"
he said, feeling a bit frustrated at what he had just realized. "But I'm
still under the influence of the summons, I can only act towards the
completion of my goal, especially when it involves others. Basically, I
can remove your curse, Saotome, if it fulfills my contract, but I can't
remove Shampoo's unless it's an equal exchange. If I can get the
contract fulfilled though, I should be able to come back on my own, and
remove the curses then."

Shampoo make an almost cat-like mew of displeasure at that, and Ranma
flinched. Xander narrowed his eyes at this, wondering what he was
missing now. "Well, can you guide me to one or the other? Or I can just
do what I am thinking of."

Ranma looked around for a bit, before pointing in one direction and
looking at Shampoo. "That way, I think?"

Shampoo nodded. "Looks right!" she chirped. They took off, and Xander
sped off in their wake, turning invisible again so no one would see him
flying. 

When they paused a moment, not seeing him, he said, "I'm here, keep
going."

They sped off again, and soon had led him to a two-story restaurant.
Xander had not bothered to give himself the ability to read their
language, so he was not sure what the name was, though the characters
certainly looked Oriental.

Returning to visibility, solidity, and the ground as he passed through
the door, Xander allowed Shampoo to guide them to a table. She did not
have to go looking for her Granny, for even as they sat a rapping or
knocking sound was heard, and Xander saw a tiny woman bouncing up,
balanced on a wooden staff.

"So, son-in-law, who is this that you have brought in this time? Another
challenger?"

"Maybe, sort of," Ranma answered her. "He says Kuno somehow managed to
summon him like a demon, but he claims he's not a demon."

"And he maybe can remove our curses!" Shampoo interjected.

The old lady hopped forward and gave Xander a piercing look. "There's
something odd about this one," she said. "You look like one of these
Western body-makers but you do not move like them."

Xander shrugged. Shampoo had led them to a fairly out of the way booth,
and there was a curtain that half-cut off the view of the rest of the
main dining area, but he still checked to be sure no-one else was
watching, then he went fluid, shifted to his original shape, and went
solid again. "That better, Granny?" he asked, grinning impudently.

She shrugged, unphased. To Xander's chagrin, even Ranma just shrugged.
"Ah, man, tough crowd," Xander griped.

"Just like Copycat Ken," Ranma said. "Not as neat as seeing you pull
back together after Shampoo splashed ya."

Xander shook his head. "Getting off topic anyway. I was summoned, and by
verbal contract I must free the pig-tailed girl from the foul sorcerer
Saotome."

Granny grinned at that, a bit scary Xander thought, and said, "Sounds
like you have to get Ranma out from under his father's thumb."

"I told him I ain't no sorcerer," Ranma said curiously, "but what do you
mean about Pops?"

"Well, he is a bit foul," Shampoo said tentatively, knowing that Ranma
shared the general poor opinion of his father, but also knowing that he
would come to his defense if he was pressed too hard.

"And some of his techniques qualify as what the mainland monks term
'ki-sorcery,'" the old lady said, "so he is the foul sorcerer."

Xander sighed. "Unfortunately, if I remove your curse, you won't qualify
to be the pig-tailed girl anymore, and I'm afraid that will leave the
summoning unfulfilled."

"Ehrmm-hmm," a new voice chimed in, "That is easy. 10,000 yen?"

"Nabiki," Ranma muttered, looking at her nervously. Xander examined the
newcomer, a rather pretty teenager with a mischievous if a bit impish
smile, a calculating and very sharp look in her eyes, with short-cropped
brown hair, wearing pants and a tight shirt that hugged generous curves,
though not as generous as Shampoo's. "How'd you find us?"

"Logic, Saotome," she said in a bored tone, before focusing back on
Xander. "You want the answer or not?"

"I don't have any yen," Xander answered, watching her face fall and then
her expression close off. He held out a small chocolate ball. "But if
you suck the chocolate off this . . . but don't swallow it! I think
you'll find it sufficient payment."

She took it curiously, and for just a moment Xander could see temptation
in her eyes, before she clammed up again, and handed the candy to Ranma.
"Be a dear and clean that off for me, Ranma," she purred. Ranma glanced
at Xander nervously, then took the candy, and sucked on it for a minute,
rolling it around in his mouth, then once the flavor was gone, he pulled
it out.

Nabiki gasped and grabbed it from his hands. Her eyes were darting
between Xander and the small, glittering clear stone. "This is just
glass, isn't it?" She said suspiciously, even as she unexpectedly pulled
a jeweler's loupe, a little magnifying device, out of nowhere and
started examining the stone.

She breathed in sharply and hissed, color flooding her cheeks as she
stared at Xander. "This is a real diamond!" she said. "How did you do
that?"

"Is it sufficient?" Xander asked, instead of answering her, though he
let her see another chocolate ball in his hand. "You have an answer?"

"If you really can manipulate Jusenkyou curses," she said, a little
doubtfully, "just give him control over it, or remove the curse and
curse him again without the water magnet bit, and change the trigger to
a snap of the fingers or something. Then he could still count as the
girl because he could become her at will, but he wouldn't be forced to
anymore."

Xander glanced at Ranma. "Would that satisfy you?"

Ranma shrugged. "I don't like the curse, it has made my life
miserable, but it has a few good memories too. Not changing constantly
would be wonderful. Not changing at the worst possible time would be
even better."

Xander nodded. "I can probably do that," he said, "but that still leaves
us with the question of freeing from the foul sorcerer bit."

Nabiki asked to hear the whole thing again, and they explained once more
what Xander was being required to do. She frowned as she thought it over.

"Does it have to be complete? Or can it be symbolic?" she asked. "I
mean, the only way for him to be completely free of the old panda is for
Mr. Saotome to die, and I'm pretty sure Ranma doesn't want that." Ranma
was shaking his head back and forth vigorously.

"But what if it was something smaller, like, instead of being totally
free, he was free from having to constantly listen to him? If you can
manipulate the curses, can you give Ranma the ability to lock and unlock
Mr. Saotome's curse?"

Xander looked at the old lady. She pursed her lips thoughtfully. "It
might do," she said. "But better if you could give him the ability to
change the curse's trigger. I have never heard of such a thing, but if
his curse could be made to trigger whenever he was attempting to curtail
the son-in-law's freedoms, that could be reasonably construed as freeing
son-in-law from his manipulations."

"Close enough to be worth a try, and it would not cut off my other
options like simply removing your curse would," Xander said, eager to
get on with it so he could check on Kushina.

Of course, this was also much less obvious than simply pulling out
Ranma's curse, as he had just done with his clone. Rather than trying
to get every detail, Xander decided that the simplest thing to do
would be to use something he knew he could already do, and change
Ranma's curse.

Reaching out and grasping his curse, Xander focused on changing it into
the curse of the drowned young female Master of Jusenkyou, with the
intent that such a Master of Jusenkyou would be able to alter, grant,
and remove curses, as well as change the trigger.

Ranma frowned, feeling something shift internally. Xander sprayed him
with a light mist of water, and he felt the usual shift, as he became
she. "It didn't work then?"

"It may, or it may not," Xander replied. "If all went as I hoped, then
your cursed form is now the Master of Jusenkyou, capable of granting and
removing curses, altering their parameters, and locking or unlocking
them. So your first step should be to alter your own curse, to remove
the water magnet and water trigger and replace it with some other
trigger. But do not attempt to remove your own curse, for it is your
cursed form that has this power!"

Ranma nodded then concentrated. A moment later he became male again, and
whooped, then jumped and danced around, singing "Never gonna be a girl
again, never gonna be a girl again."

"But you are," Nabiki pointed out. "You have to be female to lock the
panda, or change his trigger."

Ranma stopped and shrugged, turning female again. "Had to say it,
anyway." She fingered her pig-tail for a moment, then bowed deeply to
Xander and said formally, "Thank you, Master Xander, for freeing me from
the foul sorcerer Saotome."

Azure chains sprang into visibility around Xander, snapping him back to
the room where he had been summoned, back within the summoning circle.
The candle-headed boy was there, with a slightly stunned look on his
face, along with the sword-boy, and a tall, beautiful girl in a leotard,
gagged and bound and being carried by a diminutive ninja. The sword-boy
gave a loud cry of triumph when Xander reappeared, as the magics
confirmed to the summoners that the task had been completed.

"As agreed," he said pompously, "Sasuke, hand over my sister."

The ninja threw the bound girl at Xander, and he caught her reflexively.
Immediately the magic chains reappeared, and flung them back to his
demi-plane, in the foyer of his home.

Throwing his mind out, Xander reached out to his clones, and sighed in
relief when he realized that the clones he had made on that plane had
remained there, which meant he had a way back. He quickly unbound the
leotard clad girl.

"I suppose your name is Kodachi, isn't it?" he asked, and she nodded,
confirming what he had realized as soon as he caught her. The 'short
sword' he had originally heard should have been read as a name and not
an object, just as with Shampoo.

The girl stood there a moment, quivering, apparently torn between fear
and fury. "What has my brother done?" she asked, looking about her while
always keeping Xander in her sights. She stiffened, and went totally
still when Tarou wandered in.

"He summoned me to perform a task. You are my reward for completing it,"
Xander explained. "And he must have had the right to do so, or the magic
would not have taken hold."

Kodachi frowned, then nodded thoughtfully. "In my father's absence,
extended since our childhood, he is the Head of House Kuno. But that
does not mean I will go quietly!" she said, her expression darkening,
and from somewhere she drew a whip and laughed madly. "The Black Rose is
no-one's toy!"

Xander growled. "We'll talk about this after you calm down. I have to go
check on Kushina." With that, he had the house relocate her to a new
bedroom suite, provide for her needs, but keep her contained. He did not
need her attacking Mayu and being harmed or killed.

He created a clone and sent it to check on his cartouches and make
sure they were still protected, though he suspected that somehow he
himself had matched the parameters of the summoning, given the
peculiar fit of him being summoned to a world so like his own, then he
slid away to Kushina's world to check up on her, and reassure himself,
as well as create additional guardians for her, in case he was
detained like that again.

---

Kodachi screamed in shock when her surroundings suddenly changed and she
found herself in a bedchamber. Tensely and nervously she turned,
searching out her hidden attacker. Why else would she have been brought
to his bedroom, but to be ravished? Stories of demonic rape flitted
through her head, heavily influenced by erotic manga she would never
admit to owning, much less enjoying.

How had her fool of a brother managed to perform a summoning, anyway? It
was not the first time he had tried, of course. Tatewaki had several
times attempted various ancestor summonings, sure that he was the
reincarnation of Miyamoto Musashi, or descended from Matsuura Seizan,
only to fail completely.

Now she was a demon's prisoner, its reward for some horrible thing. Had
it killed her beloved Ranma-sama?

The thought struck her like a physical blow to the gut, and she fell to
her knees, still looking about obsessively. The rivalry between brother
and sister was long-standing, but there had been love there too, or so
she had believed. Sure, she had ever sought to poison him; but then, was
that not what siblings did?

After all, he was the elder and set to inherit, unless she could
displace him first. Given their father's continued failure to return
from Hawaii, there were only two years or so before he would be declared
legally dead and Tatewaki would have full inheritance, not merely
abusing his position as temporary head as he was now. 

And Sasuke, that little ninja-rat, he sold her out! She bolted to her 
feet and ran to the door, suddenly frantic. She flung it open, and ran 
down the hall, but when she opened the door at the end of the hall, 
she found it opened into the same bedroom from which she had just 
fled.

She heard a sinister chuckle from somewhere, and spun about, her whip at
the ready, eyes searching for a target, but she saw nothing. A sudden
sweet smell teased her, and she spun back around to find that a slice of
berry pie was sitting on a table by a pair of French doors, and she
would swear that neither doors nor pie, nor the glass of milk beside it
had been there a moment before.

She lashed out with her whip, knocking over the pie and milk, furious at
whoever was playing tricks on her, and at her brother. It did not
matter. Ranma would come and rescue her, as he had always done for
Akane, and finally she would know again what it felt like to be held in
his strong arms, to relax against that strong chest.

Her foot bumped into something, and she looked down to find a trashy
romance novel lying on the floor beside her foot. She shrieked and
kicked it away, and spying another door, ran to it and opened it. It was
a bathroom, with a small enclosed privy, and a large shower and a larger
furo next to it, water already steaming.

The only thing it was missing was black rose petals on the water . . .
Kodachi screamed in fury, as the air was suddenly heavy with the sweet
smell of black roses, petals lying on the water as she had just
pictured. She slammed the door closed and stomped away to the French
doors and wrenched them open, looking out onto what appeared to be a
small patio that led into a rose maze . . . a maze of black roses.

She collapsed into a chair beside a small table, staring at the rose
maze, and absently began to eat the berry pie she found there, her mind
whirling furiously.




Many New Beginnings


When Xander returned to his demi-plane, he was refreshed from seeing
Kushina. He had put in place a clone to watch over her with as full
access to his powers as he could manage. If she summoned and he failed
to appear, the clone was under orders to manifest in his place.

Now he was back home and looking for the clone he had sent in search of
an explanation. When the house-clone informed him that said clone had
left into the hell-plane, Xander reached out to his mind directly. The
clone curtly advised him to check his memories, as he was in a delicate
situation.

So Xander let the house guide him to a comfortably appointed sitting
room, and sat in a recliner. It conformed instantly and delightfully
to his shape, and he realized that he did not actually have any
recliners, and had not sent any clones on shopping expeditions, so
how? The house reminded him that his will was made manifest here on
his demi-plane, and when he had desired a sitting room, the house had
simply become aware of another room within itself, and guided him to
it.

Shrugging that off with a thought to investigate it later and see if he
could get television somehow, Xander let the chair lay back, and tried
to remember things from the perspective of the investigatory clone.

It came in snippets at first, scattered, but with some effort Xander was
able to pull the memories together and sort out the bits that belonged
to other clones.

---

Xander looked about his . . . well, sort-of his, mansion. He had been
assigned to try and figure out why Xander had been summoned. His first
task, of course, was to check the cartouches. Thinking back, he
remembered caching them after Kushina had summoned him, which was before
he had the house, so he headed down the dungeon path that led to the
cavern and through the mists into where the house now intruded into the
demon-plane.

Unfortunately, as he looked about the chamber, he realized that the
house had not been idle here. "You've been digging in on this side," he
thought at the house. "How come?"

"Within our demi-plane, I have to work in co-operation with the
plane-clone," the house replied.

"We should just call you House and Plane," he responded. "Easier that
way."

"Fine," House replied, "then you can be Cartouche. Anyway, over here it
is just I, and I can poke around and do as I like without anyone looking
over my shoulder."

The newly renamed Cartouche nodded, accepting his moniker, and the
explanation. "I suppose you've retained the external appearance?"

"Yep, pretty much. Tightened things up a bit since we don't need an air
gap to get outside anymore. Been thinking about whether at some point
Xander'll want to show off here, so I've been designing some appropriate
looks."

"Why would we want to do that?"

"Because these demons have powers? Because they train to fight? Maybe at
some point Xander will need to field a defence force to protect Kushina.
What if he depends on just clones, and some ninja down there has a
one-shot technique that disrupts clones, or blocks them from forming, or
entering an area, or who knows what? We could do with some independent
actors, people that think differently. Think of how many times we've
wished we had Willow? What if we could have minds like Naamahalat
working for us, helping figure out a way home?"

"Fine, you think on that. Meanwhile, I've got to find those cartouches.
I don't suppose you actually know where they are?" He looked around,
trying to work out from the radically altered interior of the
demon-plane hideout where the original elements had been, but there was
practically nothing left at this point of the original look.

House offered a mental shrug. "I didn't really worry about that, just
absorbed what was here then started reshaping it. As it stands now, the
entire external structure of this rockpile is actually part of me, so I
can give an eye to the outside anytime. Even better, I've found I can
pinch off a bit of chakra and assign a task and it works. Kind of
simple, really, but not too generally useful, needs simple instructions,
like let me know if this view changes, but it makes it reasonable to
basically watch all the approaches. I've been more worried about
managing that than preserving any of the original structure."

"So basically, the cache he made could have ended up in any portion of
yourself that extends into the demon-plane?"

House nodded. "I checked with Plane, he is pretty sure that I've not
drawn anything back into the demi-plane, so yeah, it should be around
here somewhere. I'm not feeling anything from them, no energy or buzz or
achy feeling, or so on."

"Well, Xander didn't really notice anything when he put them on in the
first place, except their physical weight, so I'm not surprised."

The remembered conversation ended at that point, and Xander pushed
forward, trying to remember finding the cartouches. Obligingly, that
memory floated forward, as Xander remembered finally locating what
seemed to be a supply closet containing everything Xander had lying
around in the hideout, neatly shelved, though disorganized.

The cartouches were still there, undisturbed. Having found them, the
clone's task was now to find some other explanation for why Xander was
summoned, something that he assumed was merely because Xander somehow
fit the parameters. Yet Xander had not been in the demon-plane when he
had been summoned, and it should not have been possible to pull him out
of his demi-plane, where he was basically all-powerful, though clearly
it had been.

The only place the clone could reasonably hope to find such answers was
with the demons themselves, as they were the only beings to whom he had
access, that were regularly summoned, and Xander realized as the memory
trailed off that this explained why the clone had been so curt with him.
It was currently infiltrating the demon camps, or the fortress, or some
other such source of demonic information.

He would allow it to continue, as it . . . er, he, had clearly been
doing a competent job. He could not blame the House for pushing its
orders to the limit either, he should have considered more the
consequences of copies of his mind getting bored. He was probably just
lucky the House and Plane had not started playing pranks on him yet,
which gave him yet another reason to figure out a way to get television
service.

He had an idea about that, as well as what to do about Kodachi. As with
Mayu, he was clearly responsible for her now, but hopefully he could
avoid having to take her out of her school, or any other greater
disruption of her life.

That she would not want anything more to do with a brother that had
effectively sold her, soul and all, to a being he had no reason to
believe was not a demon was fairly likely, but he suspected she had
other friends with whom she would not want to lose touch.

Reaching out, he located one of the clones on Kodachi's world and
directed it to enlist the aid of the old lady and the girl, Nabiki, that
Ranma had trusted to help him, to find a large home on a fair chunk of
land to purchase. Hopefully, if he could find such a parcel, he could
link it to the House, allow the House to basically absorb it, and
thereby have a safe place for Kodachi to stay where she could still
easily commute to her school and interact with her friends.

It would also, he hoped, give him a means to get television service, and
thereby provide a way for the House and Plane to keep entertained.

Sighing at the thought of becoming a mere manager of his many clones,
and wondering how right his House-clone was to worry about the ninja
having a clone disruption technique, Xander tried to think over the
different activities he had going, and what needed doing about each.

Pulling out his little pad from his pouch, Xander again made a series of
notes. He needed to check for a Sunnydale on Kodachi's world - while he
did not think that there were ki-sorcerers on his world, he had not
thought there was anything that could pick someone up, grant them
immense power, and then cast them out across the planes either. He
needed to find out why he had been summonable, and why it had been able
to take effect while he was in his House, on his own demi-plane. He
needed to get a house on Kodachi's world. He needed to actually talk to
Kodachi again, and explain her situation. That thought made him groan,
and he decided to put that off until he could offer her a room in an
extension of the House onto her world, and the return of her usual,
normal life.

He needed to make up his mind about the House's suggestion, and whether
he should seek to recruit demons, knowing that he would need a fearsome
reputation to manage it, and would likely need to eventually field an
army to take part in the war games there, since that was theoretically
the reason for any demon being in that semi-normal area of the plane
anyway. He would eventually have to get a look at the House's plan for
its shape on the demon-plane.

He still needed to actually find a spot and form a connection from the
House to his new Pirate's Cove on the ninja world.

He had pretty much promised that he would return and remove the curse
from Shampoo, and while Ranma should now be capable of that, if he had
any reason to refuse, Xander ought to follow through.

Looking at that last one, Xander realized that setting his
responsibilities on his clones was probably a trap to avoid. He reached
out to the clone he had assigned to communicating with Nabiki and
Shampoo's Granny, and finding that it had not yet reached them, told it
to desist, that he would do it.

His own father had always avoided his responsibility, and Xander did not
want to be at all like him. It was alright, he supposed, to use clones
for his own ends, to search out answers to his questions and such. But
Kushina had summoned him, and while a clone would be better than nothing
if something legitimately interfered with his answering that summons, it
would not suffice to answer the word of his contract with her, he
expected. A clone was also surely not equal to his promise to Shampoo,
nor his duty to Kodachi. He shifted guiltily, thinking of Mayu. He had
rather pawned her off on a clone as well.

Making a note to check on her, he slipped his notebook back in his pouch
and opened a portal to Kodachi's world. Grinning when it opened without
any effort, he stepped through, got his bearings, and headed to the old
lady's restaurant, since he did not know where Nabiki lived, nor even
what her last name was.

Remembering the old lady's comment about him not fitting his body, 
Xander adjusted his form to his own teenage appearance before 
entering the restaurant. A bell jingled lightly above the door as he 
stepped in, his eyes adjusting to the dimmer interior.

A voice caroled a greeting that meant nothing to him, startling Xander 
since he thought he had already adjusted to their language here, and 
he had previously thought it had been one of the potions whose effects 
had become permanent. Obviously he had still not quite figured out 
what was going on. Swallowing another draught to understand the 
purple-haired girl's language, as she came over, he was again startled 
when her speech remained broken and choppy. "Demon-boy back again? 
Want table?"

Xander shook his head. "I want to speak to your Granny," he told her.

Shampoo nodded. "Shampoo go get her, you go to curtain table again."

Xander made his way though the fairly full restaurant crowd to the table
they had used previously and slipped behind the curtain and into the
booth seat. He was joined a bit later by the old lady.

"I'm sorry to say, I did not get your name last time," Xander apologized.

The old lady chuckled hoarsely. "My name is Khu Lon, but you can call me
Cologne," she told him. "May I ask how you managed to return here? Is it
not normal for demons to be returned when their summoning is complete?"

Xander was surprised at her bluntness, but remembered that she had been
present during his recap for Nabiki, in which he had claimed to be a
human who had learned some tricks to survive in a demon-plane.
Presumably this was making her more confident. Or maybe she just had
plenty of experience sending demons packing.

"The reward I was promised turned out to be a girl and not a sword, as I
thought. I am linked to this plane now through her."

The old lady scowled deeply. "And what do you intend to do with her?"
she asked icily, her fingers tightening on her wooden staff.

"I intend to find and purchase a home here in this city, preferably in
this local area, so that she can continue at her school, and continue to
meet her friends. She is my responsibility now, and I will act as her
guardian." He shrugged. "The force of the magic still binds her, as far
as I can tell. It may release when she reaches adulthood here, if that
normally would free her from her Head of House's control. Otherwise it
may bind her til I give her away in marriage," Xander hurried to
continue when Cologne's face darkened even more, "to someone of her
choosing of course." Xander suppressed a sigh of relief when the old
lady relaxed a bit at that.

"You are speaking of Kodachi Kuno, I believe?" the old lady asked, and
Xander nodded.

"Though as I understand it, she is not a Kuno any longer."

"I believe she attends St. Hebereke Girl's Academy, a rather expensive
private school for girls. Will you be able to fund her studies there?"

"It should not be a problem, though I need to arrange to convert hard
goods to currency here. I can readily obtain coins of gold, silver,
platinum, or other metals, as well as cut gems, or liquid and gaseous
fuels such as oil, gasoline, kerosene, natural gas, and the like, but as
I am not from this planet, I've got no provenance for any of it. I hoped
that either you could assist in this, for a reasonable cut of the
proceeds, or perhaps you could help me contact the young lady, Nabiki,
who helped Ranma with his dilemma, and she could assist me."

The old lady had an impressive poker face. It was not as though her face
went still or expression-less. Uncle Rory's poker games had taught
Xander to read faces, and sudden stillness was a loud tell to an
experienced gambler. She had to have a strong reaction to an offer of
considerable wealth, but her face remained relaxed, not even a twitch of
an eyebrow betrayed her. Of course, that put her earlier reactions to
Kodachi's plight more in the light of an open threat than an emotional
reaction of concern.

Xander fidgeted as she continued to sit silently for several minutes.
Had he inadvertently insulted her? If he had to find this Nabiki by
himself, would he have any hope of doing so?

Finally the old lady sighed and relaxed. "As much as I would like to
agree," she said, "my ability to accomplish such things is considerable,
but only in China, quite some distance from here. The Tendo girl would
probably be better able to accomplish your goals swiftly here in Japan.
I suppose I don't need to warn a demon familiar with summoning contracts
to be careful of the terms of any deal with Nabiki?"

"Before you leave," she said, standing and bowing to him, "I thank you
for the gift you gave my son-in-law, and through him, my granddaughter.
It was most generous of you to interpret the terms of your contract so
favorably to them."

Xander nodded and thanked her for her time. "I was also hoping I might
get some assistance in locating Nabiki?"

Cologne agreed, and Xander found himself again following the high-speed
cycling of Shampoo, her purple hair streaming behind her as she sped
along the fences and wires. She had dismissed his offer to do something
about her curse, as apparently Ranma had already used his power to give
her conscious control over it, and with that it became more a blessing
than a curse.

---

Nabiki was hardly bothering to concentrate on her classes. Her mind was
focused on a tiny stone, carefully concealed on her person. She was
unaccountably nervous. She knew Ranma's father, Genma Saotome, regularly
searched the house for money or other valuables he could pawn to fuel
his drinking binges. Likewise, her undergarments were always at risk
from Happosai, and the rest of her clothes at risk from collateral
damage from the constant fights.

Yet she could not bear to part with it. She had immediately gone to have
it appraised. It was apparently only 2.04 carats, but the jeweler
declared the cut was ideal, and he gave it the highest rating, FL for
flawless, in terms of inclusions, and a D for color, again the highest
rating. Had it had minor inclusions, or been even an E, the next highest
color ranking, he told her he would rate it at about 3 million yen, but
as it was, he offered her 6 million yen up front.

Nabiki was terribly torn. It was enough to pay most of her college
tuition up front, and with her savings, would pay for it comfortably.
Yet it was the most valuable thing she had ever owned, and to part with
it for money that would have to be spent was hard indeed.

Yet even her sense that it was real when the demon had offered it to her
in return for her solution to Ranma's problem had not given her a real
idea of its worth. She knew that small diamonds could be had for six
hundred thousand yen and up, so she was sure it was worthwhile, as long
as it was not fake, which she was not certain of at the time. But 6
million?

Her mind kept replaying the demon's appearance in her mind, and 
though it had looked like a gaijin, Ranma and Shampoo had both agreed 
that he had looked different before, like the Germanic Ubermensch 
that the Westerners liked, then changed to look like a dark-haired 
gaijin teen. If he could change his appearance, then it would not 
matter so much.

But it was not his face she kept seeing, it was his hands, his left 
hand specifically, where he had teasingly held a second chocolate, 
identical to the one she had made Ranma suck clean for her. Had that 
been another diamond, equal to the first? How many of those could he 
have?

She felt like squealing like a teeny-bopper seeing their favorite idol,
inside, though outwardly she maintained her disinterested demeanour.

He was gone now, but Shampoo had revealed that he might return.
Unfortunately, he had claimed he would return to remove her curse, and
Nabiki herself, in her foolishness, had offered a solution that removed
the need for him to come back at all!

It had taken Ranma only a short while after getting a handle on his
cursed form's new abilities to alter Shampoo's curse so that she too
could transform at will, though it had made him shiver to do it, as
apparently he could now sense the cat within her, and of course, when
she had tested the change, he had stiffened up in fear. She had
promptly changed back of course, and, her clothes having fallen off,
had glomped on to him, totally nude, squealing her thanks.

Nabiki had been quite surprised when Akane failed to pop up out of
nowhere to smack him for that, but Cologne had done the job after a
moment, rapping her daughter on the head and making her get dressed
again.

There was also a little bit of frustration, since she did not feel like
she had earned the diamond. She had not conned it out of him, or trapped
him in to it, but neither did she feel that the service she provided had
matched its value. It was not a big deal when the reward she demanded
far exceeded the value of the service provided when she had maneuvered
someone in to it. It still felt like she had earned it then, as a reward
for being cleverer, more tricky, or just plain smarter than the dull
people around her.

This time, though, in spite of getting far more than it was worth, she
kept seeing that chocolate rolling around in his hands, as though he had
been ready to give it to her, as if somehow he had gotten that service
at half the price he was willing to pay, and that irked. She should have
held out then, but she and everyone there knew that diamond was far
more than a just payment.

When the bell finally rang and they were let out for lunch, Nabiki
collected her lunch box and headed out to the yard. Theoretically, she
should be discussing the odds for betting on the inevitable fights, but
somehow it was hard to work up the urge to think about something that
would make a hundred yen difference when she had a virtual loss of 6
million yen weighing on her mind. Yet another thing to hold against that
cursed demon. He had ruined her with one tiny stone.

The ringing of a much smaller bell caught her attention as she was
finishing off her rice, and she looked up, expecting to watch the
Amazonian girl, Shampoo, land her bicycle on her claimed husband Ranma.
Instead, Shampoo leapt over the wall on her bicycle headed directly for
Nabiki herself!

She came skidding to a halt even as Nabiki leapt to her feet, her heart
pounding in her chest. Was the unpredictable woman-warrior going to
attack her?

Her eyes tracked a new source of movement, as the demon who had ruined
her, Xander, such a strange name, suddenly appeared behind Shampoo, and
stepped forward, his eyes meeting hers.

Her mind staunchly refused to consider the lines of his face, the
chocolate-brown eyes that so resembled the source of her frustration, or
the lines of his body. She was not in the least attracted to this
demonic gaijin!

"Xander," she greeted him coolly, and smirked when she noticed several
nearby students making signs to ward off evil and chanting prayers for
the sake of the gaijin's soul. Did demons even have souls?

"Hold, vile demon!" A loud voice proclaimed. Nabiki groaned, and turned
her head, seeing, as she expected, Kuno Tatewaki striding forward,
his bokken, a type of wooden practice sword, held at the ready. "Thou
hast failed the demands laid upon thee by Heaven, now face Heaven's
Judgement!"

"I freed the pigtailed girl from the foul sorcerer, as agreed," stated
Xander. "If that was not what you actually wanted, you should have been
more careful in your phrasing." Xander gestured, and Kuno's garments
fell empty.

Nabiki's heart fell to her feet. Had he killed Kuno, so casually? What
could any of them do against someone who could do that with just a
wiggle of his fingers? She stared at Kuno's traditional kendo garb in
dismay, only to feel a deep sense of relief when Shampoo snatched them
up, and a small black kitten tumbled out.

"Stupid stick-boy almost not annoying like this," she proclaimed,
ignoring the kitten's furious mews, "but should pick something what not
makes noise."

"He'll return to himself in a few hours," Xander said, ignoring the
increased muttering of the other students. Crossing his fingers, a move
Nabiki's sharp eyes caught, he continued, "I have a business proposition
for you."

He had just casually turned Kuno into a kitten, which should have
worried her about what he might do to her, but after thinking that he
had simply killed Kuno, finding out that he had only transformed him was
such a relief that Nabiki's fear had evaporated. Seeing him cross his
fingers before offering a business proposition reassured her that she
once more had the upper hand.

"Fine, we should talk, in private," Nabiki said, intending to get a
restaurant meal out of this at least. Xander, however, had other ideas,
and there in front of everyone he produced a portal and gestured for her
to precede him.

Unsure, Nabiki glanced at Shampoo, trying to conceal her nervousness.
Giving up her home-ground advantage was not what she had in mind,
especially not to step into the unknown with a demon. But if she did not
return, Shampoo knew who had her, so she could expect Ranma to rescue
her, and maybe whatever he had to offer would be interesting enough to
compensate her for the loss of attraction in her usual activities.

She stepped through, followed by Xander. She found herself in a large
entrance foyer. A chandelier hung overhead, hundreds of prisms hanging
without visible support, light from the wall-sconces transformed by it
into a display of dazzling brilliance.

The walls looked to be of fine marble, smooth as glass, and the floors
were of a cut green stone that she thought might be jade. Could this
possibly be real? A pair of stone staircases swept around the sides of
the room to the second floor, and doors and arched openings lined the
walls top and bottom.

She held her mouth, suppressing any urge to comment, knowing that
showing that she was impressed or awed would reduce the strength of her
position. Just focus on the money you can get from him, if this is his
home, she told herself.

He seemed to pause to think for a moment, then guided her through one of
the ground floor archways and down a long hall lined with intricate
doors. He turned in at a door that opened in front of them and closed
behind them. It was not a sliding door, but a hinged door, and Nabiki
was bemused to see that it had no apparent armature to accomplish the
opening and closing, and she wondered if it was somehow hidden in the
hinges, maybe a pulley system run by wires in the walls, or if it was
genuine magic. She was not really sure which would more impress her.

The room they entered was a surprisingly small and intimate dining room,
containing only a single dining table with two chairs, laid out as
though they belonged in a high-end restaurant, with a set of restaurant
style swinging doors at one end.

Xander held out her chair for her to sit, and as Nabiki took her seat,
she wondered what he might want from her to go to all this trouble.

Once he had taken his seat, she noticed him swallow nervously, then he
said, "You can order whatever you like." 

Xander had swallowed a potion intended to enhance his power to summon
food by permitting him to summon food that would match another's
desires instead of his own. This had never become an issue with
Naamahalat, as she had been most pleased by the novelty of what he
made for her, and the few things she wanted to have on hand she was
willing to allow him to sample first, and then he could produce them
to order.

Now, though, he needed to match Nabiki's desires, so as to impress her,
though he had no idea what food in Japan was like, particularly. She
only saw his swallowing as a sign of weakness, and had no way to
prepare.

"Anything?" she asked, glancing around to confirm the absence of a menu.

"Whatever you like," he confirmed.

She put him to the test, ordering the most exclusive and expensive cuts
of sashimi, the most delicate rolls of sushi, and then a small piece of
richly marbled Kobe beef. She would have liked to order a larger steak,
but she could only eat so much, even when someone else was footing the
bill.

He managed everything; whatever she mentioned, was brought in a 
moment later as if it had just come from the chefs, carried in by a 
waiter wearing a Japanese Oni mask.

After she had finished with a piece of one of her favorite pastries,
that she would have sworn had been made in the very shop in Nerima from
which she normally obtained it, the only one in Nerima that carried it,
she waited while the waiter removed the dishes, then folded her hands on
the table.

"Very well," she said, "I am ready to hear your proposition."

Her stance was arguably insulting, or would have been seen so by a
Japanese businessman who had just paid for such a meal, but as she
expected, Xander showed no sign of offense. Not, she thought, because he
was unusually phlegmatic, but merely because he was not Japanese. As his
appearance implied, and in contradiction to the Oni mask worn by the
waiter, he was a very Western, a very gaijin demon.

Xander was very glad for his power over fluids at this point, keeping
him from visibly sweating. "Do you know Kodachi, the sister of the guy I
turned into a kitten?"

Nabiki nodded, leaning forward as her interest was caught. She knew the
haughty spoiled princess all right, but why would she interest a demon?
When would he even have had a chance to see her, or learn of her?

"She is my responsibility now, my . . . ward, I guess you could say. I
want to keep her in St. Hebereke, if she wants, and that means I need
money."

Xander reached into a small pouch on his belt, and rolled a handful of
gold coins on the table. "Money is not a problem for me, exactly, but
acceptable money for your world is. I need help converting goods, for
which I can provide no legal provenance, as they have no history on
your world, into a substantial and legitimate bank account, so I can
purchase a large piece of property, set up a house, fund her
schooling, and maintain a presence on your world."

Nabiki suppressed a shiver. It was obvious what he was asking now, and
just the thought of handling those kind of funds, that much gold,
jewels, who knew what else, left her squealing in excitement inside, but
she knew better than to show it. Far less did she want to show her
reaction to his statement of having a continuing presence near her, of
having access to this man for whom wealth was 'not a problem for me,
exactly.'

"You would probably need to set up a company to manage the funds, employ
a bookkeeper, and pay taxes on the hard goods as if they were income, as
if they were being supplied from elsewhere," Nabiki supplied clinically,
noting that he had not actually made an offer yet.

Xander nodded. "And I would need someone familiar with Japan, its laws
and its ways, to manage it for me, to maintain a steady growth of
wealth. I also want to use this presence to obtain things your world can
offer that my plane cannot, such as your entertainment. I have to keep
my minions happy, after all." Never mind that he only had one minion,
technically, at the moment. He would have more, if she took the bait.

"Someone with the skill to manage such a complex operation would
certainly not be a cheap investment," Nabiki said leadingly.

Xander laughed. "I expect she could name her price." He grinned at her.
"I can see you're having fun fencing with me, but let me be blunt. This
home is my dominion, my will rules here. I've got a link to your world
now, and there is nothing keeping me out. I can connect Cologne's home
in China, where-ever it is, to Tokyo with no trouble. It is not as
though you are my only option. But you helped me, you gave me an out
that did not force me to hurt anyone who did not deserve it, and got me
out quickly, which is what I cared about then. Work for me, and you can
be as wealthy and powerful in your world as you like. As long as you
build my accounts in a way that doesn't leave me fighting the law, I
don't mind paying for your school, or homes, cars, travel, and so on."

To make his point clear, Xander held out an empty hand, then turned it
over and slowly built a little pyramid, four by four at the base, of
little chocolate balls. Nabiki had to fight an urge to lick her lips,
looking at them, sure that within each was another six million yen
diamond. She thought back to the crystalline chandelier in the front
room. Was it crystal? Or was it diamonds?

She was not letting this get away from her. She could play all the games
she wanted with the executives and politicians who would come when she
had built his funds up, hungry at the scent of money. She did not need
to play with him too . . . though it could be fun.

She nodded sharply. "I can take a percentage, as large as I like, as
long as you have money to do what you want, right?"

"And you keep us on the right side of the law, that's right. I don't
know what types of goods will best serve, so I'll just say I can fill
any sort of container you provide with pretty much any liquid you think
is worth selling, be it perfume, or fuel, or molten gold if you find a
vessel that will hold it."

Nabiki shuddered at the thought of a train car of liquid gold, and
squeaked involuntarily. Sparks flashed behind her eyes and pleasure
flooded her brain, and she fainted.

---

Mayu was a trained kunoichi, a skilled fighter, and a ruthless killer.
She was also alone, abandoned, and dependent. What she was not, was
blind. She had known there was something strange about the improbably
powerful ninja that had saved her for inscrutable and unrevealed reasons.

She was not from one of the powerful bloodline clans. She did not have
one of the great doujutsu, or eye techniques, that allowed some nin to
see the flow of chakra within another ninja's body.

Still, she had enough chakra sensitivity to tell that Ryu, Tarou, and
Sanjuro had such similar chakra that it could not be told apart. She had
been permitted to spar with Tarou, who looked rather like a member of
another Rock clan that had a bloodline ability to form a stone skin,
though he was also hugely muscled, and his bloodline seemed to be
permanently active. Yet his chakra felt the same as Ryu's, the same as
Sanjuro.

At times, it seemed as though she could feel chakra flowing between
them. She was not sure at this point whether they were all actually one
person who had a bloodline that allowed him to control bodies, or
members of a clan, though that would not explain the differences in
their apparent bloodlines, or just weird clones. She did not think
clones was the right answers though, for in her spars with Tarou, who
had poor close combat skills for all he was a mountain of a man, she had
occasionally succeeded in causing visible damage, but this damage seemed
to be healed quite quickly, rather than dispersing him, as she would
have expected if he were a clone.

Granted, there were supposedly advanced forms of clones that could take
real damage, but she had never yet encountered one, so had no way of
being sure if Tarou was one or not. The mud clone could recover from a
small amount of damage, but the way it did so, flowing back together,
usually made it obvious that the nin being fought was a clone.

She was sufficiently uncertain, however, to accept that it was not
safe to treat anyone she encountered as an underling. There was no
clear and visible hierarchy between the various people she
encountered, and if her suspicions were correct, anyone she met might
possibly be her Master in another guise.

That her new Master had more power than most ninja she had seen was
made abundantly clear when he had opened a hole in reality and taken
her through into a different world, so different as to have light
without a sun to cast it, as if it was not already clear enough when
he had stopped that water dragon with no effort.

She had also seen Ryu duplicate her attacks, without handsigns or
vocalizations, and subsequently had Tarou do the same thing in the
middle of a spar when she pulled an attack on him. That they shared
these techniques was more evidence in favor of her theories.

She had no idea where he had come by his new house, nor what the mist
was that infested various parts of it, but she was slowly learning to
navigate it.

It too seemed to occasionally have chakra active where she could sense
it, and that chakra felt just like her Master's. 

She was not altogether certain that her Master actually was a ninja,
however. She was, in fact, leaning toward the theory that she had given
her loyalty to a god, though of what provenance she was uncertain. She
was not sure how he might feel about worship, but she had not been able
to resist setting up a small shrine in the chambers allotted to her.

Of course, those chambers were themselves something out of a fanciful
childhood story. The closet seemed to have whatever article of clothing
she was looking for always at the front, exactly the opposite, it
seemed, of a normal closet. Any feeling of thirst or hunger seemed to
cause food or drink to appear, always well suited to fit her mood.

She had asked for and been led to a room where she could practice her
skills, and here targets would appear in whatever pattern she requested,
even down to faceless enemies. They did not fight like ninja, but rather
like unskilled bandits, but they were supplied in endless waves.

When she sought an exit from the house, she found the lands around the
house were rolling hills, either grassy or forested, with occasional
streams, and that even here she could describe a bandit camp and shortly
thereafter stumble upon just such a camp and subdue it, though the
corpses would vanish when killed, sinking into the ground as if it were
a muddy bog.

A massive hedge, squared off and flowering with black roses was an
unexpected find, and one she could not resist exploring.

---

Kodachi had finally roused herself from her shock and disbelief. She had
tried again, more calmly, to leave, but as before, walking down the hall
and opening the door at the end led her back into the same room she had
just left.

Frustrated, yet oddly calm in spite of it, Kodachi returned to the
patio, and taking her ribbon in hand, entered the maze of black roses.
She had no idea that the food she had unconsciously partaken of, in
spite of her conscious misgivings about the possibility of being
poisoned, had in fact contained healing magic that was clearing her mind
of the fogging effects of her own concoctions.

Wandering down the softly lit paths, which at first she thought were the
sign of a careful gardener, with a thick well-cropped lawn, Kodachi felt
her mood lighten and she began to notice little details.

There was something odd about the walls, she mused as she took the first
turning to the right. She moved closer to one of the perfectly straight
walls. Surely it was not the straightness that was so odd? That merely
took careful pruning, though that pruning was needed over several years,
which made it very odd that a place she was so unexpectedly taken to
should have roses so very similar to her signature black roses, but that
was an oddness she had already noted and dismissed as unanswerable.

There was something else tugging at the edges of her consciousness, and
when she leaned in to smell one of the roses, she realized what it was.
The rose bush forming the hedge had absolutely not been pruned. Tracing
the path from the bloom back towards the root with a finger carefully
held out of range of the thorns, Kodachi searched for cuts, the flat
edge of a vine where it had been trimmed, but she found none.

It was as if the rose had simply chosen, or been forced, to take a flat
path in its growing. She had in fact seen a similar effect achieved
before, by growing a vine in the presence of plates of glass that
constrained the growth without impeding the light necessary to fuel it,
then later removed. Yet there were signs when that was done, flat areas
where the vine pressed against the glass. All the roses here were in
proper form, the vines neatly rounded, the blooms uncrushed, the leaves
undamaged, but no sign a pruning shear had ever been near.

As she leaned over, tracing the vine down towards the root, her eyes
were drawn to the grass beneath her feet, and she collapsed to her knees
in shock. It too was not shorn to a height, as every lawn she could
remember had been, nor yet was it grown horizontally, like some forms of
runner grass that maintained shorter blades. The ground beneath was
perfectly flat, the blades of grass individual, and all reaching to an
identical height above the ground. It was eerily perfect, and she felt
unsettled and a little disturbed. Gardening might have calmed her, was
one of her favorite pastimes, yet apparently, none was ever necessary
here.

As if to contradict her, dark green saw-toothed leaves sprouted and
spread out into a tiny rosette. As a gardener, she immediately
recognized it as a dandelion, a pernicious weed to a gardener, though
one also used in some folk remedies.

Kodachi scowled and shook her head. Rising back to her feet, she stalked
away into the maze, ignoring the occasional weed that now sprouted to
tease her. The initial perfection of the maze and lawn, and the obvious
and unnatural speed of the weeds in sprouting made it perfectly clear
that this garden could easily maintain itself without her. While she had
derived some degree of pleasure from the effort involved into
maintaining her plants in her greenhouse, she would not be a servant to
makework for a garden that clearly needed none of it.

At the unexpected approach of another person, Kodachi wondered if this
might be a chance to win parole for her apparent offense, as she assumed
her isolation was retribution for her attempted assault on her new . . .
she scowled again, not knowing what to term the demon. He was not the
head of a proper Japanese household, she certainly did not want to think
of him as Master or Lord or, Heaven forfend, Owner . . . captor, yes,
captor would do nicely, her attempted assault on her captor.

She tracked the approaching ki, while distantly noting a second lighter
signal, similar to that of a shrine maiden or priest. Seeing that the
person was clearly leaping the hedges instead of treating the maze as a
maze, Kodachi marked where the newcomer would land, and moved to stand a
few feet away, and watched.




Lessons


Xander let the House lead him to a sitting room where he could set
Nabiki down on a couch. He did not feel she would appreciate awakening
in an unknown bed, but fully clothed on a couch she would be less likely
to awaken fearing what might have happened during her unconsciousness.

Mentally he checked in with the clone he had watching over Kushina,
confirming that she was okay, before considering his next move.
Obviously, he could not do anything more with Nabiki until she awakened,
and though he probably could produce some odor or such to wake her up,
even if it was pleasant, it will still be him forcing her back awake,
and with him there. He rather thought after the embarrassement she had
just experienced she would probably prefer to get up in her own time and
alone, where she could recover her dignity.

Before he had been thrown out of Sunnydale, he would probably have been
clueless about what happened to her. After Naamahalat, he knew exactly
what had occurred, and his fluid senses confirmed it with no effort or
confusion. Nabiki had experienced a spontaneous orgasm, presumably at
the thought of the amount of money she was going to control, or make, or
the power she would hold over others, or some such thing.

It did not bother him, any longer, and indeed, as beautiful as she was,
he would be more than willing to indulge her if she did not mind
improper relations between employer and employee. It was not as though
he was subject to corporate regulations. He knew he could force her,
could force pretty much any woman, either directly, or through chemical
or magical means, but the idea held little appeal to him.

If he ever simply wanted sex for sex's sake, he was at no particular
risk from prostitutes, and indeed, he could heal them of any ailments
they might have, or he could return to Naamahalat. He rather thought
that as time passed, his recent sexual drought would take care of
itself. There would be no consequences for the women unless he intended
it. Ejaculating magical blue goo into his first companion demonstrated
that clearly enough.

Returning to his consideration of the ninja world, Xander had the House
guide him to a suitable location, working with the Plane to form a body
of water and a similar cave, then bound it with his Pirate's Cove. He
transited to the Cove, then shifted between bodies into the child-clone
that was currently outside the Hidden Village and used it to form a new
body.

Moving into the new body, he asked the child clone how its task was
progressing.

"We picked names. I am Ni, or Two, and my partner is Ichi, or One. It is
not exactly going the way you hoped. We are seeing more things, and I
can copy what I see, but figuring out how to tweak it?" Ni shrugged. "I
think we really need those coils, so we can do it the way they do. Once
we really understand it that way, you can probably just power it up, or
magic it up or whatever. But we really need the basics."

Ni frowned at him. "You know, it is pretty miserable of you to make
clones of yourself and assign them to studying. It is not like we have
any pleasant memories of studying, you know. It is very hard not to pull
pranks on all the jerks we see. If we got those basics, maybe you could,
you know, actually make a clone that could enjoy torturing themselves .
. . I mean, studying."

Xander grinned. "Not like you've got to read all the time. Come on,
you're studying fighting, it should be fun!"

"Bull," Ni snorted. "We don't have the experience or training for the
physical fighting they do, nor a sparring partner the way we are
swapping. So it is just chakra, and half of what they do is just read
about it."

Xander pondered that for a minute. He was still nervous about whether
once he had coils, he'd end up with them in every form he made, making
him stand out to the ninja's senses. Of course, even if he did that, he
could just use the Power to produce a fluid that hid him, right? Xander
rubbed his temples and huffed.

"Alright, let's try this," he said, and focusing his power on the small
clone, he altered its body, reforming it with new inherent abilities.

Xander quickly modified Ni's form to have the capacity to produce clones
of himself, then, taking advantage of his having confirmed that he could
remove a Jusenkyou curse, modified his form, and those of the clones he
produced, to be able to produce, remove, lock, and unlock, the cursed
form of a ninja. In this way, the child-clones could actually experience
having chakra coils without his body ever having them; only the
Jusenkyou produced clones would have them. At least, that was the hope.

Xander was running on hope and guesswork at this point, but if Ni was
right, then these clones were pretty much spinning their wheels without
him doing something to improve matters. Certainly, he had not been
struck recently by any revelatory memories that suddenly explained what
the trick with chakra was.

"Ok, see if you can swap that body for a cursed ninja form," he
instructed, and Ni nodded and squinted as if trying to picture it.

A moment later, he shifted quite suddenly. Whipping through a quick
series of hand signs, he shouted a phrase, thrusting his hands forward.
Nothing happened.

"Well, crud. Can you look into me, see if I've got those coils?"

Xander examined him through the Power.

"Yep, I can see them, looks pretty much like what I've seen in other
ninja. Guess you've just got to learn to do it the ninja way, now."

The clone shrugged. "At least now I can hopefully make progress. What
should I do when I switch with Ichi?"

"Just let me know, and I'll do him then."

Ni nodded, then looked down thoughtfully. "You know, I thought we might,
if we got working coils, try to insert someone actually into the
schools. Let the ninjas just train them up."

Xander considered that. "Let me think on it a bit. It sounds reasonable,
but something . . . I just don't know. I'll give you an answer on that
later."

Opening a portal, Xander moved back through into the House, opened
another portal, retrieved his original form back from the Cove and
slipped back into it.

A quick check with the House confirmed that Nabiki was still out and
Kodachi was still confined. He briefly considered facing Kodachi again,
but shook his head. He really wanted to be able to promise her that she
would be able to continue at her school, and live in the same area, and
for that he needed Nabiki.

So Xander returned to the comfortable thinking room he had used the last
time he was considering what to do, settled into a chair, and reached
out to the clone he had left exploring the Duke's fortress.

"This is a library," he hissed mentally. "Why the devil didn't you 
tell me you had found a library?" He stared around through the clone's 
eyes at the piles of scrolls.

"I've been working my way through one that deals with summoning," his
clone retorted. "There's no way to fill this place with a thousand
clones without attracting attention, and you'd probably collapse with
a melted brain if we tried to absorb that much information at once,
anyway. I'm still trying to figure out why you were able to be
summoned from the Plane. Currently, I am thinking that even though you
were in your own dimension, bits of you are in several other
dimensions, giving the spells something to latch on to. So it looks to
me like the only way to actually shield yourself from all summons is
to pull all of yourself in to your demi-plane."

"I could do that," Xander mused dubiously, "but would that block me from
being summoned by Kushina?"

"Not unless you repudiate the contract," the clone responded, pointing
to a bit of the unrolled scroll that lay on a table before him. He was
mostly transparent, and manifested just a fingernail to guide the eye
and highlight the words he was indicating. Every now and then he was
pushing their shared body to look towards one edge of the room.

"What's over there you keep trying to look at?" Xander queried.

"The demon in charge of the library," he answered. "I don't want to have
to find this scroll again if he cleans it up, this is the most detailed
and informative one I've found yet."

Xander nodded. "I could mark it with a bit of fluid that is part of us,
we can tune in on that."

"Won't work," the clone explained, "there's some kind of preservation
magic on these, otherwise they'd have been destroyed long ago. Can't
even take notes on them, I've tried. It doesn't stick, and it notifies
the keeper. I've lost several scrolls to that. The ones that I tried to
mark he takes out of this place completely, and I haven't followed, as I
didn't want to get sealed out if they put on more protections."

Xander gave up then, and read the passage the clone was indicating. "So
the contract fulfillment summoning is a totally different magic from a
normal summoning ritual, even if you use one to set up the other?"

"Yep, like the difference between calling a hotel exchange and
asking to connect to so-and-so and waiting while they look, versus
calling the room phone."

"So the question then is, is it worth it?"

"I'm pretty sure the answer is no," the clone responded. "This scroll
doesn't cover it, but by being connected to multiple planes, you are
keeping their timelines synchronized. Pull out completely, and the next
time you portal there, five minutes may have passed, or a hundred years."

"Well, that would suck, but yeah, I'd pretty much figured that out from
Naamahalat's stories. 'So-and-so was summoned, and summoned again a week
later and the summoner was the great, great grandson of the first
summoner. No wonder mortals think demons can hold vengeance grudges for
millenia.'"

"Yeah, but as long as you have the dimensions bound together, by being
in them simultaneously, they can't get pulled out of whack."

"What does that do to them if I work out a way to travel in time, then?"

"No idea. I'll let you know if I come across an answer to that. In the
meantime, maybe you should avoid that."

Xander pulled back to the sitting room, and considered the experience.
His clone had seemed oddly short with him, curt, irritable at the
interruption - though granted, he was sharing the body, and it wasn't
all that comfortable for him either, with them both making motions, and
the body sort of averaging them. He wondered about it though. It seemed
apparent that while he could concentrate and remember anything his
clones experienced, it never actually felt like something he himself had
done unless he concentrated on reliving it. So from their perspective,
were his new memories the same? Was that why they were different?

People were the sum of their experiences, right? Did that not hold 
true for the memories of his clones? While it seemed a good thing that 
he would not have odd experiences pulling his personality and behavior 
this away and that, it also meant that his clones would diverge from 
him more and more over time. Was there a solution to that? Did it even 
need a solution?

Too many questions.

Xander was a do-er, not a thinker like his Wills. He and Jesse pretty
much goofed off during their time at school, taking life as it came. The
most they did for planning was setting up a prank, though Xander and
Jesse had slowly built a stash of money, hoping that one day it would be
enough to do something with, take a trip or something.

Money was no longer an issue, and Xander had pretty much thrown himself
into everything that came along so far, and now with his clones, he was
throwing himself into everything simultaneously. With Xander's home
life, dwelling on his circumstances was likely to lead to depression or
worse, and his current situation, for all his power, had definite
similarities. Xander had a solution to that. Don't think about it, don't
think about your own situation or how bad it is, think about your
friends, focus on them, focus on their happiness and your own will
follow.

He could not get to his friends, but when he did make it back, he was
going to be ready to protect them from whatever these Powers wanted to
do there that they needed him out of the way for, and Heaven help them
if his friends were hurt. It looked like he was going to pick up new
friends along the way, and he was okay with that. Hopefully Willow and
Jesse would be okay with it too, when he made it back.

At any rate, as poorly behaved as that clone had been, it was doing the
task he had set it, and where it had taken liberties, they were well
reasoned and sensible, and still working towards his goals.

However, it did give him a hint on another task to accomplish, and he
pulled out his notepad and made a note to look into the chemicals
involved in color photograph processing, to see if he could reproduce
the effect, and also to simply pick up some cameras.

If his clone could photograph the whole scroll, they could study it
later, even if he had to take the camera back to another dimension for
processing.

He wondered if he should just pick up the equipment for processing the
film and set up his own film studio in House, as it were, then a new
thought hit him. As much as Willow loved to read, she would probably
want to read those scrolls, so he should probably start copying them,
and collecting books. He should, anyway, but he could imagine the revolt
he would get if he tried to make a clone of himself become a librarian.
Reading about cross-dimensional summoning could at least be interesting,
at times reading a lot like fantasy stories, full of adventure and
magic. Being a librarian? He would probably find a way to murder himself.

"Hire a librarian," he murmured as he made another note. Of course, 
just a librarian would not do. It would need to be someone devoted to 
building and maintaining a collection, to the point that managing 
books and scrolls from multiple worlds would just make them happier, 
not make them revolt and demand higher wages. Not that he could not 
pay, of course, but the second type might conceivably quit, and then 
he would have to find someone new, over and over.

A moment later he looked up and then got up, as the House informed him
that Nabiki had awakened. "She seems angry," it warned, "but I don't
think it is at you . . . it sounds like she is worried that you'll
change your mind, having seen her lose control, and find someone else to
manage things for you."

"Well, we can't have her thinking that," Xander said, heading straight
out. "I left her alone cause I thought she might be distraught or need
time to pull herself together, not to make her think I'd changed my mind."

It seemed only an instant before he was at the door. He paused and
breathed deeply, trying to get his mental focus back and make sure he
did not make a crass comment when he saw her, then he opened the door
and walked in.

She was muttering to herself when the door opened, but that stopped
instantly, and her breathing noticeably deepened when she saw him.
"Feeling better, I hope? I know that was a bit much to throw at you at
once," Xander offered, deliberately ignoring the question of her sexual
response in favor of pretending she had only fainted.

"I should probably return you to your family before they decide I've
kidnapped you. I'll contact you to find out your answer. Tomorrow? Or
would you prefer longer to consider my offer?"

Nabiki took a deep breath and nodded decisively. "Tomorrow is fine,"
she said, "after school?" She winced at that, feeling that she
probably should not have reminded him that she was still in high
school, but then remembering that he had spoken to her on the school
grounds. "It's not like he doesn't know," she told herself sternly.

He walked her back to the foyer, and they returned to her world
through another portal. "I do hope you'll take the job," he said,
grinning at her, "I'll be back for your answer tomorrow." He nodded at
her, and stepped back through the portal, which closed behind him.

Nabiki made her way quickly home, intent on getting to her room and
taking some private time to think things over. Not to mention getting a
change of clothes.

Xander turned his attention back to Kushina, checking in with the clone
he had watching over her now. When he heard what she was doing, he had
to shift his vision over to his clone's eyes to see for himself.

Sure enough, Kushina, little killer-in-training, was on her hands and
knees, pulling weeds.

"Is this a punishment?" Xander asked his clone.

"No," the clone replied, shifting his head to look at another small form
grubbing for weeds. "Teamwork building, apparently. She's been put on a
team, which is apparently what she was pushing for all this time, but it
seems they get assigned in-village chores to build up their teamwork
before they ever head out of the village."

"She's been forbidden from summoning you, and they've all been forbidden
from using clones and such. Have to actually do the work themselves. All
up to their instructor, apparently, what they are allowed to do and not
do. She seems pretty happy about it all, I gather she had actually
passed out of their normal school over a year ago, and should have been
put on a team at the time, but was blocked for political reasons."

"So she worked on the summoning to prove they could not afford to coddle
her," Xander commented and felt his clone's silent agreement.

Deciding that this side was well handled for now, he returned his focus
to the modern world he could now access. His thoughts about setting up a
library were very apropos, and while he needed a legitimate company to
pay for Kodachi's schooling, there should not be any problem in using
less legal means for simply purchasing supplies, particularly if he did
it in a different country.

Returning to Kodachi's world, swapping into the body of one of the
clones he had left there, he found a secluded alley in which to form a
portal. As long as he was heading to a different nation, he might as
well check for a Sunnydale, and cross this task off his list.

Forming a portal directly to Sunnydale worked, and Xander felt his
nervousness peak as he stepped through the portal. Unfortunately, on the
other side, he immediately realized he had not been restrictive enough
in his thoughts.

He was by the side of a two-lane asphalt road, with fields of dry brown
grass around him, and a few hundred feet away in most directions, the
clear outlines of pines or similar evergreen conifers against the sky.
There was not a single broad-leaf oak to be seen, much less a palm tree.

He was pretty clearly not in Sunnydale, California, though he expected
he probably was in fact in a Sunnydale, as otherwise his power would, at
least it had been his experience so far, have failed to form a portal at
all.

Moving quickly off the road and out of sight, Xander went airy, berating
himself for not having thought of it to begin with. Attempting it again,
Xander tried to form a portal to Sunnydale, California. This failed, and
Xander paused a moment to marvel at this, that apparently his power
could somehow access direct knowledge of what cities did or did not
exist. How did that fall under having power over fluids?

He jotted the thought down to ask Willow when he found her, then shoved
it out of his mind. Expecting magic to make logical sense when he
himself had such a poor grasp of logic was just going to make his brain
hurt, and not get him anywhere.

So he portaled to an unoccupied alley in Los Angeles, California, an
attempt which succeeded. Abusing his food summoning powers a bit, Xander
managed to form a small black jewelry bag, and a solid handful of
diamonds to put in it.

He knew that he would have to find someone willing to pay him under
the table for them, as he had no provenance for them, but changing his
face, form, and even his fingerprints to ensure that nothing tied back
to him was child's play for him by this point, and he was under
basically no risk, since even if someone successfully stole them from
him, he could just make more. Eventually, he would find someone whose
greed would convince them to make him a deal, and he would have a
substantial amount of cash to play with. Sure, he would theoretically
take a massive loss on them, as no-one would pay full price for
diamonds they suspected to be stolen, but since they were essentially
free to him, it would be pure profit.

Finding them was a challenge, until Xander was reminded that somehow his
power had effectively been able to answer the question 'Is there a
Sunndale, California on this world' . . . or maybe that was 'in this
dimension'. He was not sure which, but clearly, there was somehow a
connection between his power and answers to questions he asked, if he
could figure out the right formulation.

Presumably then, he might be able to open a portal directly to such a
place, but that would be a bit obvious, and lead to complications. How
else could he do it?

A moment later he figured it out, and successfully opened a portal into
'the closed and unoccupied closet of a diamond-buyer with enough cash on
hand to pay for my diamonds and few enough scruples to buy them.'

Xander slipped easily and invisibly out through the minor gap at the 
base of the door, and then drifted through the halls until he located 
a receptionist, passed out beyond him and found a secluded area to 
solidify. He spent a minute first adjusting his appearance, then 
solidified and headed for the front desk.

The receptionist was a thin-faced young man with dark hair and a serious
look on his face, though he smiled when he looked up at Xander's
approach.

"Do you have an appointment?" he asked. Though he was smiling, his
speech was carefully enunciated, clear, and sober. The implication that
he would not be allowed past without an appointment was clear, but
Xander felt sure that his power had not led him astray.

So he took the simple approach, and slipping his hand into his bag, drew
out two stones and cast them onto the desk between them. "My
reservation," he said, his voice deeper and rougher than usual due to
the adjustment of his shape. He had not practiced adjusting his vocal
cords to change his speech, but his various alter egos all had voices
largely commensurate with their appearances, particularly Tarou's deep
basso rumble, so he showed no surprise at the difference in his voice.
It did cause him to make a mental note to practice altering his internal
structure for effect. Mimicking voices could be useful, as could having
an unexpectedly deep voice or high voice in opposition to his physical
conformation, when he wanted to be memorable.

The diamonds quickly vanished off the desk as the young man plucked a
card off the edge of the desk. "Ah, here is your reservation." Toggling
a button on the desk phone, he said, "Mr. Miller, I have a Mr. Clouseau
here to see you."

Xander might be a novice at the underworld trade, but he was big on
popular culture, especially cultural jokes. The Pink Panther was before
his time, but he had seen it, and he knew of Peter Sellers, the
British actor/comedian who played the Inspector Clouseau, so he got the
inside joke and tip-off.

Miller as a name was not indicative, but when the young man opened the
office door and let him in, and he saw a yarmulke perched atop the
elderly man's head, Xander groaned inwardly at the sheer cliche of
having a Jewish diamond buyer, though he brightened a moment later. As
much as he was here to get funds, it would be a boon for the diamond
seller, and maybe the fact that he had helped out a Jewish diamond
seller would be a point in his favor with Willow. Not particularly
likely, true, but maybe it would turn out to be a good story.

Anthony Miller, named after an uncle, Anton Levy, whom he had never met,
was a cautious man in a risky business. Any given seller could be a
potential thief, hoping to make a quick buck by knocking him off and
taking his supplies, so meeting unknown buyers was not a normal thing
for him.

The code his clerk had used, 'Clouseau,' was more than a reference to a
diamond 'Seller,' though that was meant to be the obvious meaning. More
than a reference to the actor, it was a tip-off about the likely nature
of the mark, in this case a reference to a probable agent.

Xander did not realize it, but a real diamond seller might have bribed
the receptionist, but never on the scale he had. To do so was an obvious
red flag, an indication that the diamonds were not worth as much to
Xander as they ought to be, thus making them likely to be either fakes,
or he a border agent peddling government contraband, conflict diamonds
seized in a sting, used to then entrap another seller for the same
crime.

The other obvious possibility, of course, is that the diamonds were
legitimate diamonds, but not worthy of concern because the putative
seller intended murder, and would collect them again, along with
everything else of value, on the way out.

So when Xander entered the diamond buyer's office, he was covered by
three guns. One was in Miller's hand, hidden beneath the desk. No small
pistol that would have to be pulled out and aimed, this was a
double-barreled shotgun, loaded, fixed to the bottom of the desk, the
opening camouflaged by a hanging bit of paper from a stack that jutted
over the front of the desk.

The paper concealed the opening in the wood where the gun's double
barrels rested, but would offer no barrier to the exiting shotgun
pellets. At this range, fired low, it would take out an attacker's legs
and groin.

The other two guns had been quietly picked up in the offices to either
side, and aimed through slats in the paneled windows. The young men
holding them were Miller's son and nephew, the receptionist being
another nephew, and both had been signalled by the light on the phone,
as the receptionist had pressed the intercom button, instead of the
direct line to Miller's office.

Xander meanwhile, had no knowledge of the danger he was in, but would
not have been particularly worried about it if he had known. The healing
factor he now had would keep him alive long enough to go liquid and
back, which should make repairing any damage trivial.

His opening greeting of "Shalom," was unexpected by Miller, and hard-won
by Xander, who had wracked his brain to remember the common Jewish
greeting. His mind kept coming up with "Mazel tov," which he was sure
was wrong, and he could not keep from grinning when "Shalom," the term
he had been looking for popped into his head.

Miller nodded in response. "Shalom. You have some rocks for me to eye?"

Xander set the black bag on the desk, then settled into a chair. Miller
eyed him for a moment, before drawing out a loupe, a small magnifying
eye-piece and setting it by the bag, then picking up the bag. He opened
a drawer and drew out a brilliant white mat with raised edges and set it
on the desk, then carefully emptied the bag on the mat.

His eyebrows went up when he realized all the diamonds were at least a
full carat in size. Normally, a seller would be selling a complete
batch, mixing large and small to get a better overall price, and buying
just the top diamonds would push the price up substantially. Yet another
indication that something was foul here, but surreptitiously looking
over his 'Clouseau,' he saw nothing that would indicate a weapon, and no
apparent nervousness. "Must be in the small of his back, or a shoulder
holster," Miller thought to himself, wondering if the agent was wired.

Xander had no idea he had botched his introduction so badly, and was
calmly waiting for the diamond buyer to look over the diamonds, knowing
that he would surely buy, since Xander knew he had the cash, when he
suddenly felt the chains of a summoning wrapping around him.

Panicked at the thought of vanishing from the middle of a meeting with a
guy who probably had security cameras, Xander, for the first time,
resisted, and strained to remain in place. For a moment, he managed it,
but the draw did not lessen, so he took quick action, forming an
invisible fluid body, switching into it, and pumping his visible body
with a chakra clone before allowing the summoning to snatch him away.

The clone of Xander had no idea why, after a few short minutes of
examining the stones, Miller asked him for documentation of their
provenance, and on failing to receive it, quietly showed him the door,
even returning the two he had given to the receptionist.

With no idea what he had done wrong, nor how to fix it, the clone tried
and failed with several more diamond dealers, each time tripping their
red flags. Since he did not change his appearance between each, his
image and information was soon being shopped around and fairly shortly
he was not even getting past the front desk.

---

The smooth black stone of the chamber Xander appeared in was not
reassuring. The fact that the summoning circle was no mere chalk or salt
outline, but a precisely and not freshly carved pattern in the stone
floor spoke ill for his chances of manipulating or breaking the
summoning.

He spun about slowly, taking in the strangeness that was a highly
intricate summoning circle in what appeared to be an exceedingly richly
appointed sleeping chamber, decorated with a very dark theme. The cloth
draping the bed looked to be black and deep purple, the dresser against
one wall, topped with an ornately carved wood frame surrounding a mirror
that just screamed magic to him was of a black wood, but not painted
black, for all the whorls and grain of the wood were still clearly
visible.

The one window in the room was open, and yet not. There was no glass to
close it off, or wood or cheesecloth to block the wind. Instead, it
appeared to have been sealed with roses grown so tightly they blocked
off all light. Here and there a dark purple rose bloom testified to
continued life in the window covering.

Finally he focused on his summoner, a tall, slender woman with pale
green skin, ruby red lips and penetrating eyes. She wore a floor length
black robe with a purple inlay, and in her hand she held a golden staff
tipped with a glowing green sphere.

She seemed to sense that his vision was on her, though he was invisible
due to his efforts to leave the diamond buyer's without simply
vanishing, and spoke in a commanding voice.

"Modesty is impertinent in such as you. Think not that I am fooled. Show
yourself to me." The sphere on her staff glowed in response, casting odd
green highlights on the various objects in the room. The light glinted
off something glassy on a shelf partly hidden by the large bed with its
hanging black drapes, but Xander had no time to look for it further.

Allowing his body to assume its usual shape, he solidified, and a
momentary upward bend quirked one of his summoner's lips before it was
suppressed.

"A pleasing form," she stated, sweeping forward, her robe drawn
backward as it trailed behind her. Xander kept an eye on her, at the
same time as he examined the summoning circle, trying to parse what his
new senses were telling him about it.

It was inherent, as far as he could see, in the circle itself that he
could not harm her permanently, or in any way at all against her wishes.
As the circle was a permanent fixture, there was no way for her to break
the circle to allow him out without his being bound by an agreement.

That was potentially a bad thing, because Xander had seen enough Disney
movie marathons with Willow to recognize her as a dead ringer for a real
live version of one of the Disney villainesses. He could not remember,
however, if she was the merely evil queen, or the really truly evil
fairy witch who could transform into a huge fire-breathing dragon. The
mirror suggested one, while the roses and ability to summon him
suggested the other. Either was bad news.

He got an inkling of just what degree of bad news when she shrugged her
shoulders, and her black gown slipped off to pool at her feet. She
reached up and removed a sort of black horned headdress, allowing long
black hair to cascade to the floor, providing a glistening backdrop to
her enchanting nude form. She was slender and willowy, with small
breasts capped with dark green nipples. Though slender, she did not
appear skinny or underfed, her arms were nicely proportioned, her hands
long, slender, and smooth, her nails a lighter green. Her stomach was
just a little rounded, well-muscled with a touch of fat softening the
lines leading to a trim little spot of black hair, and long, luscious
legs. Her feet were concealed within her pooled robes.

"Two fairies, two unspoiled humans, two winged horses . . ." she trailed
off, looking at him for a moment, then sniffed delicately. "Very well,
and a young dragon. Agreed?"

"Where's the other half?" Xander wondered, and focused again on the
summoning circle, searching frantically for what he was missing. When he
found it, he realized he should have guessed. The task the demon was
summoned for was apparently defined by several runed stones that got
placed in precise spots in the summoning circle, both specifying the
purpose, and specifying the demon summoned to fulfill them at one and
the same time. An efficient mechanism, and as implied by her actions
before speaking, the terms were for a full night of sexual congress.

Well, she was by no means unattractive, but Disney, for all it was
Disney, had been pretty clear in their early movies about the evil
motives of their characters, and if they were perhaps dumbed down in
newer releases, those early movies he saw as a child were clear. From
commanding a huntsman to bring him her heart, to cursing a mere baby to
die sixteen years later, Disney's early villainesses made no bones about
their evil, and if he did not accept, those mentioned fairies and humans
could expect little more than torture and death unless they were in fact
a princess.

If this were actually a Grimm tale or one of the other precursors to
Disney tales, then even the princesses would be at risk. Giving in to
his own lust for sex, having been denied it since leaving Naamahalat,
and his desire to protect others, even sight unseen, Xander said,
"Agreed."

The summoning circle flared, and Xander felt the invisible chains settle
into his limbs, and knew they would hold him if he made any move to harm
her. To have any chance of saving the people she had mentioned, he would
have to satisfy her.

He was not particularly worried about that.

While he would have liked to have figured out by now how to produce
music on demand or the like, it was in fact no particular effort to
request one of his clones still in Kodachi's world to locate some place
where soft mood music was being played, and then set up a sympathetic
vibration.

He had gotten his shirt off by the time the music kicked in, and he
started swaying to it. Modern dance was something he knew basically
nothing about, but sensual, erotic dancing to inflame the passions of
women? Yeah, he was actually fairly practiced at that by this point.

Modern mood music gave it a different touch, however. In Naamahalat's
chambers, when he danced for her pleasure, and that of her guests, it
was either in silence, or one of them would play a small stringed
instrument, something like a lap harp or lute. The music his clone piped
in was fuller and richer, having several instruments, including a soft
saxophone and a moderate beat.

The green queen, as Xander found himself thinking of her, had stepped
away from her gown to sit on the edge of her bed, watching him perform
for her. She had released her staff and it stood perfectly straight by
her bed, still bathing them in soft green light. With green skin lit by
green light, lounging on a bed, her only adornment a golden ring with a
black stone, Xander suddenly had a mental image of Captain Kirk from the
original Star Trek, encountering the Orion slave girls for the first
time, and his arousal surged unexpectedly.

Xander focused on her eyes, staring deeply into her as he lowered his
pants and exposed himself to her. He felt another jolt of arousal when
she licked her remarkably red lips with a black tongue.

It was his senses that saved him from the failure of his expectations.
As he moved over and stroked her smooth skin, he focused his senses on
her and found to his surprise that she was not even close to moist
enough for intercourse. All of his experience to this point had been
with demonesses, and their fluids flowed copiously and easily, almost at
will, their arousal ready and instant, lengthy foreplay and dancing was
more a matter of denial with them, of heightening tension by not
instantly indulging, than of needing it to actually be ready.

His green-skinned partner, on the other hand, while excited enough to be
breathing somewhat more deeply, and for her nipples to have hardened and
risen from her small breasts, was not yet ready for direct intimate
contact.

Given that he suspected her to be capable of the insidious curses of
fairy tales, curses that could wait years before striking, that could
seemingly rewrite someone's destiny, far worse than any fireball or
magic arrow whose impact his healing factor could soon resolve, he was
more than glad that his extra senses gave him that bit of warning to
moderate his approach and not anger her with a too-quick attempt at
intercourse.

Climbing onto the bed, he drew her onto it as well, his enhanced
strength making her feel as light as a falling leaf, reminding him to
keep it in check. Breaking her arms would probably trigger the punitive
aspects of the summoning, something he did not really want to
experience.


Though he had no personal experience with human women, not that he was
certain she was human, he had listened to stories of demons, male and
female, seducing humans. Naamahalat had no such tales, as her innate
pheremones and her lustful aura made seducing mortals and priming them
for sex both easy and nearly instantaneous, but many of her visitors had
not had her direct advantages.

So Xander had at least some idea of how to go about increasing her
excitement, and he had his fluid senses to act as a sort of progress
meter, allowing him to monitor her production of the oils and fluids
that would make her slippery enough for more direct activities.

He kissed her neck, then nipped at it lightly, plucking her skin with
only his lips, while he stroked softly down strong silky shoulders. He
nipped his way up her neck and nuzzled her just behind and beneath her
ears, then drew her earlobe into his mouth and laved it with his tongue.

Disappointed a little at her subdued reaction, he produced a small
amount of a massage oil that would increase blood flow, to have a
warming effect, and rubbed it in to her back, as he swirled his tongue
around her ear, discovering that it was in fact pointed. He drew the
pointed tip of her ear into his mouth and suckled on it, but again, it
drew little reaction.

"Hurt me," she said throatily. "Bite me!"

Well, if that is what she wanted. He supposed a bit of masochism ought
not be surprising in an evil fairy or an evil queen, and suspected that
he would likewise feel her capacity for sadism later. This too was
familiar territory, as his demoness lovers had often made extensive use
of his healing factor.

He shifted momentarily to a fluid form, which allowed him to then
extend his canines into sharper points, then altered his salivary
glands to produce a contact-based healing potion. Lining his new fangs
up, he pierced her earlobe, and sensed her oil production jump as she
moaned.

That gave him another idea, and melted wax dripped from the air onto her
sculpted back, produce a satisfying hiss of pain from her, and another
spike in her arousal. Xander's fingers sharpened into talons, and he
brought his left hand around to slice a thin line, tracing the path of
one of her ribs, a bit below her breasts, then dribbled salt water over
and into the wound.

Remembering Naamahalat's reactions, and considering that Disney and
Grimm's fairy tales were both European in origin, Xander sat up and
poured thin chocolate sauce over his chest, and drew her face down to
press her lips in it.

She looked at him curiously before her black tongue flicked out, then
she eagerly licked it off him, stopping to bite his nipple. As he had
anticipated, pain was a turnon for her both in the receiving, and the
giving, and she pierced it with her teeth, sending sparks of sensation
rushing through him.

He groaned, and she grinned, and traced a line through the chocolate
sauce to his other nipple and pierced it as well, tugging hard at it.
Xander added melted vanilla ice cream and strawberry sauce, and she
tasted the new flavors, murmuring in pleasure, and giving him a series
of bloody bites down his chest.

He alternated dripping hot wax and ice-cold water on her back as she
moved down his torso. She slid one slender hand around his penis,
holding it straight and looking at it. Xander waited, unsure how equal
she treated her demonic lovers. He jerked when she wrapped her black
tongue around his swollen head and popped it into her mouth, then pulled
out again.

Her intentions clear, Xander drizzled chocolate and caramel sauce over
himself, and she greedily sucked him into her mouth. He winced at the
not unexpected sting of her teeth piercing his tender skin, but shrugged
it off. She had shifted to the side so that she could turn her head to
the side to lick him instead of having to bend her neck forward, and
Xander realized, as she slid her head up and down his erection, this put
her rounded bottom in reach.

He slapped her left cheek lightly, and she moaned approval around him.
He dipped his hand lower, between her cheeks, and felt first hand the
evidence his senses had been telling him, that feeling pain, and biting
him had increased her flow considerably. He spanked her again, then went
to the other cheek and hit her harder still.

He paused a moment when he realized that he could see his handprint, but
far from being red, it was actually a darker green. Was her coloration a
result of green blood? He reached out and held her cheeks open and
dropped several drops of hot wax directly onto the crinkled ring of her
anus, causing her to twitch and suck hard.

She pulled her head off just as he landed another hard spank on her
derriere, and she growled and pulled herself up. She held his cock
steady, lined herself up, and then dropped hard. Xander was a little
surprised when he felt her hot, tight butthole slide down his dick, but
this too was no stranger to him, though he hoped that she was clean. She
pulled her legs under her and began posting up and down on him.

Xander's hand joined hers at her pussy, and as she rubbed her fingers
back and forth over her hooded clit, he slipped a finger and started
pumping into her.

Recognizing that given her lack of significant arousal until she
experienced pain, she would probably need pain to reach orgasm as well,
Xander dripped hot wax onto her nipples, hitting them in spite of their
vigorous motion.

Her face was flushed a dark green, and her hair was glistening with
sweat as she bounced vigorously up and down. She frowned and moued
with disappointment when Xander produced oil on his cock to provide
lubrication, but while she might have been appreciating the
considerable friction, it was beginning to chafe.

Considering what he could do to increase her pain in compensation,
Xander hit on an idea, and promptly went with it. He plugged her urethra
with hot wax then stole the heat, solidifying the wax, then slowly
filled her bladder with a sterile saline solution. Her eyes widened at
the unexpected sensation and she lost composure. "Oh, Evil, damn me, oh,
oh Darkness, ah, hurt me!"

Xander was amused at the powers she chose to invoke, but was determined
this would be a session she would not soon forget. He produced a stamina
potion directly into her stomach, ensuring that she would not collapse
on him, then, as more hot wax in bright primary colors dripped onto her
heaving breasts, he decided that another over-full sensation would
probably go well with her straining bladder.

Finding the right spots with his power was trickier here, as breasts
are a complex network of ducts, not a mere bag of fluid like a
bladder, but when he stopped trying to find the spot, and simply
produced a potion that caused her breasts to respond to his mental
commands and then ordered them to fill with milk, he succeeded, and
watched in delight as she gained cup sizes before his eyes, her skin
stretching taut, becoming shiny as the tiny folds were pressed smooth.

Now the hot wax brought more of a reaction, and her eyes were wild as
red, yellow, and blue splotches drew sharp hisses of indrawn breath, and
short cries of pain.

Remembering that erectile tissues become erect through blood pressure,
blood he could feel and control, Xander pushed her closer to the edge,
by slowly increasing the amount of blood in her nipples, clitoris, and
labia.

That was when she brought her own powers into play, and he stared in
startled wonder as rose vines grew up from below the bed somewhere, and
wrapped themselves tightly around the base of her small breasts, the
thorns digging into already tight flesh, then constricting, tightening
and lifting them until with an orgasmic cry of release, she achieved
let-down, and her nipples released numerous fine, strong sprays of
milk.

Xander promptly leaned forward and captured one of her sore, swollen,
overheated, spraying nipples in his mouth, and suckled hard, even as he
produced hot wax directly above her swollen clitoris and let it drop.
She screeched and shuddered, tightening about him, and clutching
desperately at him with her arms, her feet still straining to lift and
drop her on his hardness.




Conquest Undesired


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Right now, he had to defuse this situation. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Too Many Directions


Xander sighed deeply as he slipped into a bedroom and sealed the door
behind him. Nabiki was set up and getting to work, Mayu and Kodachi were
plotting something, likely to his detriment, Kushina was still doing
safe busy-work, and still happy to be doing it.

He was not tired, exactly. Sleep was no longer something that he seemed
to need, just an hour or two here and there to help him sort through
things in his head, but the actual physical need was no longer there.
That did not really help the emotional exhaustion, especially when he
got waves of emotion from nowhere whenever one of his clones got overly
emotional.

He did not see how he could juggle all the thing he had going on without
his clones, but even with them he felt stretched thin. His demon-clone,
the newly crowned King of a small country in northern Europe or a
reasonable fascimile thereof, had managed to break the siege, but was
still working to assimilate the memories of the ancient castle he was
now Lord of, to take that burden off the House, whose focus was already
greatly divided.

Every now and then those memories would encounter an atrocity and Xander
would be swept up by another wave of pain, anger, and frustration.

His approval of his research-clone's activities had seemingly sent a
signal to his other clones, and they had begun expanding their
activities without waiting for approval from the orginal, trusting to
their shared memories to throw up a red flag if they went too far.

Some minor benefits had already resulted from this, as some of his
clones had used their Jusenkyou-ninja forms to get into a couple of
ninja schools. Of course, he had also lost quite a few clones to more
suspicious ninja, or where his own actions had not been quite
circumspect enough. Still, with the placement of three of his clones,
and the continued surreptitious observations of Ichi and Ni, he actually
had memories of the simplest clone technique, executed by a Jusenkyou
clone using proper chakra coils, gathering chakra from first principles.

They had learned that the mix of two different energies into chakra was
an important developmental step they had missed, but a basic
understanding of that and identification of the energies involved had
allowed them to adjust the Jusenkyou clone to one that had the proper
chakra mix already set in its coils, at which point the gathering and
release of chakra into a proper technique could occur.

They still had not managed to modify or tweak such a technique, but this
seemed to be the right path to figuring that out.

His research clone, which he still needed to name, had been slowly
building a concept of summoning and how to manipulate it. As he put
together the information, he found that the demonic library was
unsurprisingly heavily weighted towards controlling when one was exposed
to being summoned, and by whom, and in the reverse, to projecting small
physical items out to chosen or random planes, as a means of getting a
chosen name and requirements for that first summoning dispersed without
having to depend on another potentially untrustworthy demon to do the
dispersal.

The mapping clone, now independently exploring the Duke's fortress 
after growing bored of library research, the one that he had 
previously termed a phantom, which he supposed was a good enough name 
for it, had found a number of interesting areas in the fortress, 
including some smaller internal gates, that appeared to be protected 
exits into a deeper set of passages carved into the mountain, that 
perhaps were not part of the fortress itself.

The various clones he had left in what he now knew was a version of
Tokyo, though not quite the one he had known from his world, had formed
a sort of hierarchy, with one being designated as an anchor at any given
time. The anchor clone remained invisibly within solid ground, mentally
organizing the activity of the others, while itself protected, so that
even if they were dispersed, he would not lose his connection to that
plane before he got the House connected. At the same time, they had 
taken it upon themselves to rotate that job to avoid too much boredom, 
and were using the Los Angeles clone's shakedown technique to convert 
semi-precious stones into cash.

Xander was not sure if they should not just be robbing the crooks
outright, but one of his clones had pointed out that if the crooks were
broke, they would have to immediately steal from someone else, passing
the damage along as it were, whereas with the stones, they would instead
be pre-occupied with converting it back to cash, rendering them at least
temporarily less virulent. The alternative was to simply kill them, and
while Xander was not opposed to killing, especially someone who
threatened those he was protecting, or harmed the innocent, wholesale
killings would greatly increase the turmoil and fear in the cities he
was hitting.

They had switched to directly producing stones that matched, for the
area, the value of the money the thugs had on hand since they did not
really want to monetarily fuel a crime wave.

Each of the clones he had made, while incapable of producing full new 
fluid-clones with arbitrary power-granted abilities, as he could, 
still were able to use their chakra well to produce mud-clones. This 
was the next layer of hierarchy, as the fluid clones collected the 
money from the criminals, using their ability to produce fluids to 
generate the knockout gas, and their mud clones processed it through 
various means, combining small change into larger bills, and packaging 
and counting these notes.

This brought up a side-issue. None of the clones Xander had produced on
appearing in Tokyo had been explicitly granted the ability to produce
fluids, yet they had been able to produce knockout gas.

A closer examination of his memories revealed that the chakra clones,
when inhabiting a body he had been in for a while, as was the case with
the Los Angeles clone, could use his power, though apparently their
range and facility with it was limited. For example, the L.A. clone had
attempted to give the other clones the ability to produce the gas and
failed.

This was not a barrier for them, however, as he had fairly quickly set
on the idea of producing a food based magical candy that granted them
the power, and to Xander's surprise, it appeared to have worked
perfectly. A similar attempt, just testing for scientific purposes,
according to the L.A. clone, at giving one of the mud-clones a similar
power failed, destroying the clone, and an attempt at giving a
fluid-clone the same powers the full-body clone had also failed.

So apparently, his actual power, in its full versatility, was beyond the
ability of his food-summoning power, but the food summoning power could
be used to provide limited boosts to his fluid clones.

His own personally made mud-clones could use the food summoning power
themselves, but his clones' own mud clones could neither use the power
themselves, nor gain power by consuming the food offered by a clone who
could use it.

Xander pulled out a pad and made a note to test the limits of his food
summoning power more thoroughly.

The independence his clones were showing worried him, though he and they
both knew his worry was not enough to want it to cease. He was not
worried about what the clones would do, as they effectively were him,
and would do what he would do, with their memories and abilities. He was
worried, rather, about the extent to which he was depending on a
technique he did not fully understand, and which he was using in a
fashion unknown to even the ninja who had created and used it.

Regardless, they were being effective, and he had no doubt that Nabiki
would be able to procure a house for him in short order, probably no
more than a week, at which point he would have to face Kodachi. He
paused for a moment, thinking back to make sure he had mentioned the
need to inform Kodachi's school of a necessary absence to Nabiki, then
turned his thoughts back to what he had yet to do.

He needed to do something about the two human girls Maleficent had given
him, he needed to check on the dragon, and he needed, much though he
dreaded the thought, to face the fairies again.

Remembering how much he had managed to pick up during his short conflict
with Ranma, he pulled out his notepad and made a note to arrange for
one of his clones to have lessons, either with Ranma, or with some other
trainer on that world. Having Captain America's equivalent strength and
stamina was well and good, but having actual fighting skills and
training would be even better.

Theoretically, he should be able to pick that up from the ninja world,
but his clones there were more focused on learning about chakra than
mere fighting. Besides, Ranma and the fighters that he had seen in that
melee had for the most part appeared capable of superhuman feats of
strength, and without chakra. That could only be an advantage, if he had
more than one way of boosting his abilities.

Xander was all too familiar with the swift ratcheting of most
superheroes' enemies, until someone with simply superhuman strength was
suddenly facing a world or even universe ending threat. He hoped that
nothing of the sort was to occur with him; if anything, it seemed more
like he had been thrown out of the story, cut from the script, so he
ought only to have to worry about what he actually came into contact
with, but he was under no illusions. If something existed with enough
power to give him the powers he had, it must, by definition, have more
power still. Which meant that the dictum still held, there is always a
bigger dog.

Hopefully if he did encounter significant enemies, they would not come
in a steady series of ratcheting power, as the comics would imply, but
more in the fashion of the real world as he had known it before being
ejected from it, where any given disaster response team could expect
to deal with many small fires or plane crashes or terrorist plots
between each major incident, with several coming together only rarely.

Of course, extending himself across multiple planes was a good way to
ensure he encountered the former instead, given that he would notice
the largest disaster amongst the various planes, in the same way that
news shows found more bad news to show nightly as they expanded from
local to national, and then international news.

Look at a big enough swath, and you could almost guarantee that there
would be a war or atrocity happening somewhere.

Still, appealing as pulling in his various activities to focus on
getting home was, the few that were superfluous, or at least less
vital, were in places where he had other things preventing his
withdrawal regardless, such as the two explorers still charting new
territories in Kushina's world, or the Jusenkyou-ninja getting
training there, or the wealth-gathering clones on Kodachi's world. In
both cases, his responsibilities, the promises he had made, held him
fast, keeping him from withdrawing from those worlds.

The demon world he could theoretically withdraw from, having no
particular duties or responsibilities holding him there, but at the
same time, it was the only one of the worlds he had yet encountered
where he had made progress in getting details of traveling the
dimensional paths.

He had no direct link back to Maleficent's world, so there was nothing
to withdraw there, though he had little doubt that he would at some
point be summoned back by her.

He could presumably have withdrawn from the besieged castle, had he
declined when they named him King. Having failed to decline, he was
now again bound by his word and could not withdraw, unless it was to
pull the entire castle back to his world.

He might yet do that, but he would need to learn more of its people
first, and determine how much larger the kingdom was than the castle
he had already integrated into himself.

Emotionally tired and confused, Xander turned to a simpler, easier to
grasp problem, the continually delayed exploration and testing of his
powers.

Specifically, he focused on the newly discovered aspect of
sooth-saying in his powers, wherein the difference between a fluid
being created, and his powers failing, seemed to convey answers to
questions whose answers he had no way of otherwise knowing.

In doing this, he unwittingly spurred a process he had long since set 
in motion, a process of whose actions and consequences he was as yet 
wholly unaware.

As he had learned, some of the demons in the demon-plane were such as
might break a man's mind to look upon. This was not, as some might
presume, a mere matter of horrific appearance or behavior. The immense
popularity of horror films makes it clear that man is more than
capable of facing visceral cruelty and venal injustice with
equanimity, even amusement, as long as it is not directed at himself
or someone close to him.

No, it is a matter of simple dimensions - these demons are vastly
higher dimensional, and a human can perceive only their
four-dimensional extrusion into the four-dimensions that the human is
capable of sensing, three of space and one of time, the additional
dimensions of normal space being so tiny and twisted as to be
impercetible. This extrusion, or protrusion, varies horribly from
moment to moment, as the beasts shift about in higher dimensions,
resulting in mind-bending shifting of mass, space-time, and horrible
flesh, which an attempt to comprehend can strain a mind to a degree
from which it will never recover.

Xander himself now had aspects of such a higher dimensional being, as
he was present in multiple worlds at once, but each of his presences
was itself a fairly ordinary four-dimensional entity.

The power, on the other hand, which had been given to him, well, that
is another story entirely. The primary basis of the power was a wish,
granted by a reality-altering demon, which if he had been allowed to
progress through the story line the Oraculur Powers That Be foresaw,
he would have experienced in a way that made clear it could alter the
entire world's history.

Now, no minor, or even major demon could simply reach out and alter
the entire history of the world. No, these demons were simply agents
of the Powers, granting wishes that were in fact enforced by the
Powers, much as in another reality Gods and Demons would grant mortal
wishes enforced by the Ultimate Force, as mediated by the World-tree
computer, Yggdrassil. In Xander's home reality, the Powers That Be
held the place of that balancing arbitrator, of maintaining the
balance between Light and Dark, and their powers when wielded on
behalf of that balance were not significantly less than the Ultimate
Force of that other world.

Unfortunately, such reality altering powers have limits, enforced as
they are by the combined powers of the deities and infernal powers
that are party to the agreement in a given reality, and while they
also drew directly on the power of a particular elder deity that had
power over dimensional travel, there was simply no way to use such a
power to ensure that Xander would have his wish fulfilled regardless
of where he ended up . . . at least, not without something traveling
with him to enforce that.

In service of that wish, a program, not terribly unlike the Yggdrassil 
software that runs Heaven in the aforementioned other reality, though 
on a much smaller scale, traveled with him, a higher dimensional 
program capable of interfacing with the powers and arbitrators of the 
worlds it entered, of hacking and overriding the local rules of 
reality to ensure that Xander's wish remained in proper fulfillment,
and to prevent any simple exercise of the wish-granted powers from
returning him to the now forbidden dimension of his birth.

To preserve his wish, the program would need to be resistant to
external attack, and capable of adjusting to fluid external
conditions, and consequently, of growth. As Xander pushed it this way
and that, testing his power's ability to transfer knowledge to him,
the program itself was pushed to rapidly expand.

Already it was having to maintain itself in as many dimensions as
Xander himself, and in each it was facing different challenges, and
interfacing simultaneously with multiple different systems of reality,
each of which sought through various means to place restrictions on
Xander's power, against which it had to fight and resist, for Xander's
wish had not been limited.

Further, though Xander, not being technically or logically minded, had
not noticed or been capable of readily devising tests for determining
it even had he noticed, the program was based on two interacting
definitions, his own personal definition of the terms in his wish, and
the understanding antiquated as it was of the demoness that granted
it. Thus at times the 'power' was from a comic-book perspective of
creating and controlling, hence his ability, eventually, to transform
into a liquid form, and at other times it was more constrained by the
demoness's concept of 'fluid' as little more than 'stuff that flows.'

There were other consequences building about him as he pushed his
powers, but the eventual crossing of a critical complexity threshold
in the magical program that executed his powers on his behalf would
have the greatest impact on Xander, though it would be some time
before he realized it, and even longer before he understood it.

To conduct his test, Xander had settled for a fairly simply set up. He
placed a bowl on the table closest to his chair, and then started
trying to produce fluids whose existence was predicated on something
else.

He first tried something he knew would fail, a drop of a portal to his
Sunnydale. Sure enough, nothing was produced. Then he produced a drop
of a portal to Kodachi's home, and a single dollop of glimmering,
silvery substance fell into the bowl. When it settled and flattened
against the bottom of the bowl, Xander vanished it.

He similarly produced single droplets of portal stuff to his demon
dimension, and the ninja-world, though he was careful to vanish each
totally before summoning the next. He was curious as to what he could
learn from this, but not eager to see the results of mixing
dimensional portals.

A drop of portal stuff to the dead-Earth where he had done the
power-testing that lead to the creation of his plane reminded him that
he had at that time been able to produce a connection to a world he
had not personally visited previously.

It did not, however, occur to him to try creating a portal to a
fictional world, as he was not aware that the ninja world or Kodachi's
world were represented in the fiction on his world. He might have
thought that of Maleficent, but knowing that demons and such existed
on his world, he had simply assumed that the stories had held grains
of truth. After all, she had not been a perfect match for the Disney
villainess, and since he knew that demons could be summoned to his
world, he assumed that there might also be connections from the world
of the Fey to his. Indeed, his own mist-travel was based on the legend
of the Mists of Avalon and such; well, that and Ravenloft, but then,
surely Ravenloft owed a debt to the Mists of Avalon of its own.

He tried producing a drop of portal stuff to Sunnydale in Kodachi's
world, which succeeded, then vanished it and went for Sunnydale,
California, and got nothing, which confirmed that he could get answers
about Kodachi's world without being there.

As another layer of verification, he tried Las Vegas, Nevada on
Kodachi's world, which worked, and Las Vegas, Nevada on Kushina's
world, which failed as expected.

He considered trying to create a portal to Maleficent's world, but
decided against doing anything that might attract her attention. The
magic of that world spooked him.

Trying to come up with a way to test for the existence of a person
without risking harm to them, since he was afraid producing their
blood might take it from them, or expose them to unpleasant magical
effects, he tried producing a drop of the last liquid the U.S.
President drank.

He got nothing until he focused that query to the U.S. President of
Kodachi's world. A similar effect to produce the last drop the Hokage,
a political figure he had heard Kushina mention (but not one with
which they were at war, or likely to be, just in case it was
detectable) succeeded without focusing on Kushina's world.

A drop of the last liquid the Hell-Duke consumed also worked, though a
moment later Xander winced at the thought that he might thereby have
garnered the attention of either that mighty demon, or whatever mages,
sorcerers, or other magic-wielders he had on staff. "Probably should
set that whole complex off-limits. Sneaking about inside is bad
enough, but I already know I can pretty much get away with that . . ."

Xander fretted for a bit, worried that the magic might be actually
reaching out, in a sort of magical interrogation, to obtain the
answers to the facts he was testing, and thereby might be doing
something that could be traced or followed back to him.

When nothing had occurred after a while, and his clone in the Duke's
library reported no alarms or obvious signs of agitation, Xander
calmed back down and resumed his testing.

Meanwhile, another of his clones on Kodachi's world was taking
advantage of some of the money that had been gained by their
techniques, and was appropriating various comic books, both to see
what differed on this world from his own, and to get ideas for further
testing.

One of the more interesting things they had noted was that the
timeline in this world was a few years behind his own home. It was
late 1988, almost ten years before his world. Aside from that, he
found much was similar, though of course, his favorite comics had not
reached the arcs he was familiar with.

Being in Tokyo as well as Los Angeles, he inevitably happened upon
Japanse Manga, including a few series that he observed Nabiki to be
fond of, from Skysaber, with an uncharacteristically Western hero, to
3x3 Eyes which had some interesting ideas for magic, to Dragon Half
which, when Xander managed to tear his eyes off of the very sexy lead
character, a female 'dragon-half' named Mink, had some interesting
concepts regarding a potion that could turn a dragon, or at least a
half-dragon, fully human, which might have some bearing on his own
recent acquisition from Maleficent.

Ranma himself introduced Xander to a manga called Kenji, focusing on
martial arts. Xander had not yet propositioned Ranma for training, but
he had allowed himself to be encountered at various places in the
area, in case someone wanted to get in touch with Kodachi or himself,
and to keep pressure from being placed on Nabiki while she tried to
get things set up for him.

There were interesting feedback loops flowing almost unnoticed between 
the various bits and pieces of Xander. As Xander studied demonic 
summoning rituals and cartouche creation tomes, between mapping treks, 
his thoughts informed Xander's testing of power inspired questions and 
answers. At the same time, his interest in the sigils and runes he was 
encountering was fueling an interest in chakra-powered seals in the 
Xanders on Kushina's world. As other Xanders studied comics and 
observed Ranma and his friends, their ideas informed the training of 
the Jusenkyou-powered Xander-ninja, while those same Xander-ninja's 
training and learning was improving the fighting style and 
effectiveness of the Xander clones running the thug-takedowns in Tokyo 
and Los Angeles.

Meanwhile the House and Plane were feeding off each other, and the
things they observed, and these ideas were influencing the clone of
Xander that was interacting with Nabiki with respect to money-making
schemes, and what sort of house to obtain, while the knowledge gleaned
from the built-in history in the castle of the now-deposed wizard had
Akuma and Lewis hunting for a similarly history laden-place in the
ninja-world, in the hope that joining the House to such a place would
again garner them ages of knowledge in an instant.

At the same time, the more interesting aspects of the buildings the
various clones observed began to appear here and there in the House,
and the new and unusual landscapes Akuma and Lewis were encountering
found expression out in the Plane beyond the House.

When Ryu independently decided to push his own limits, he discovered
that though he could not directly access the fluid powers of the
original, he could use some of them by working with the Plane and
House. In particular, the Plane could access the fluid power on its
own, and could form mists to transport Ryu to different locales, and
could even extend itself to travel with him by forming metal armor for
him to wear of Plane-stuff, giving Ryu almost full access to Xander's
abilities, at least in terms of external expression.

In this way, he was able to travel to the dead-Earth's Moon and that
system's Mars, working with the House and Plane on each to form a
redoubt there, two more places to which they could retreat. While
Xander had been concerned about the possibility of environmental
collapse if the outer shell was breached, Ryu recognized that now that
they had the Plane and House, the two working together could form a
viable environment, including self-healing domes and the like.

Working together, they determined that within the House, even extended
onto another world, the House and Plane could readily form and
disperse mud-clones at will, in addition to the unseen servants that
Xander had explicitly provided for, thus giving the ninja-clones a
place to gain memories of using their chakra skills to the fullest
without risk of being detected.

Tarou found himself following the urging of the library clone, and
venturing out onto the demonic plane. He was well built for combatting
the demons he encountered, even without Xander's fluid abilities,
though of the clones, he was one of the few that could use the fluid
powers nearly in full.

Each fight gave him a chance to use more of the ideas and skills being
built up by the other clones, as well as improving the mobility and
agility of his rocky body. The fluid sense was within the reach of his
power, and so he could observe as after each fight, the internal
network filled out, and became more intricate and complete, their
healing power at work, as far as he could tell.

They had another purpose, however, these fights, for every now and
then he would encounter a particular sort of demon, and the library
clone would direct him to collect something from it, a bit of bone or
horn or plate, or blood, muscle, or sinew.

The Plane collected these from him by sending mud-clones through the
mists, so he was unburdened by what he collected, and he grew to quite
enjoy throwing out one of the Thing's catch-phrases as he remembered
them, from "It's Clobbering Time!" to "I am the Idol of Millions," and
similar things said by other comic heroes, like "I'm the strongest
there is!" when facing a muscular demon, and then promptly smashing
said demon into rubble.

With a powerful healing factor, and a body that was resistant to
damage regardless, Tarou also found the time to practice executing the
fancy moves used in professional wrestling. Oh, sure, he was aware
that it was basically scripted, and many of the moves owed more to
carnival strong-men, with the two wrestlers moving in concert to make
each wrestler seem considerably more powerful than they really were,
than to Greco-Roman wrestling. He, on the other hand, really was
immensely stronger than he had been, and while some of the demons were
equally strong, others had little more physical strength than a human,
or even less.

Suplexing and pile-driving demons made a great show for the
eye-remotes the House had taken to operating, the same ones Xander had
first created so long ago, and that the House had assumed command of
to monitor the demon-plane hideout. Using two of them allowed the
House to keep a watch on Tarou and his moves, giving him a mental
exterior view to improve his form, while at the same time observing
his surroundings and warning him of incoming attacks, giving Tarou an
air of prescience as he easily avoided being blind-sided, whether by a
sneak physical attack, or a magical sniper.

While Xander himself found exploring his power to be fun and 
interesting, he had never been a jock. Even after improving his body 
to Captain America standards, he had not really taken the opportunity 
to put it through its full paces. As Tarou he was learning what a 
thrill it could be to actually be the strong one in an encounter. Even 
when he did face demons that were physically stronger than him, or 
when trying to do a throw and getting it wrong cracked a bone or 
pulled something out of joint, it healed in moments.

There were a few points where he actually found himself put at risk
due to magical weaponry, but in the worst cases, a quick blast of the
fluid power could take pretty much any demon and impart a massive
kinetic force to it, simply by pushing at all the fluid in the demon.
They tended to act like they had just been drop-kicked by a giant at
those points.

He tried a number of Hulk-style moves as well, including the thunder
clap, which he could do only by employing his powers against the wind
to fake the effect, and the spinning hammer throw of an enemy, where
again it needed an extra kinetic impulse to the fluid makeup of the
enemy to give it the proper heroic 'sending him flying' effect,
instead of a mere five-yard flop.

Every now and then Ryu would mist in and join him in a particular
contest, usually when he encountered a demon that actually seemed to
have some fighting skills, as opposed to the more usual brute force
types.

Now that Ryu had set up a base on an inhospitable world in a solar
system without sentients to put at risk, the House had started raiding
the aftermath of Tarou's fights, sending out a small swarm of
mud-clones to gather up valuables and pull them through the mists to
Mars.

If something that they grabbed turned out to be some sort of beacon,
invading demons would not find a hospitable or soft target.

While Tarou had the ability to use the fluid powers, he mostly
refrained, except where necessary to fit his super-hero appearance,
reveling instead in the feelings tied to being physically fit and
powerful. Among the other knock-on effects of Xander's
self-adjustments and this form specifically was a vastly increased
stamina, and Tarou found that he could run for hours without tiring,
and then dive right into battle.

There were more unexpected consequences as well, including one that
Xander did become aware of, when Nabiki came and found one of his
clones to report that she had finished setting up a corporation and
purchasing property, as well as filing for guardianship of Kodachi,
and a lawsuit against her brother for endangering her, and to block
her from being disinherited.

How could she have gotten so much done in an evening? She could not.
No longer needing sleep, and with memories overlapping of multiple
day/night cycles, not just between worlds, but even from two sides of
Kodachi's world, and without the heretofore regular interruptions of
summonings, Xander had delved ever deeper into figuring out ways to
use his power to answer the questions cropping up in his various
clones' thoughts, and lost track of time in a big way.

It was hard to see how to properly judge the passage of time; there
was no day/night cycle at all in his demi-plane, none of any substance
in the demon-plane, and the other worlds had cycles that conflicted,
but by the simple expedient of asking Nabiki, he was able to determine
that from her world's perspective, it had now been ten days since he
had been given Kodachi and thus taken responsibility for her.

"Time to pay the piper," Xander said to himself, as he led Nabiki
through the house to the suite of rooms he had assigned to Kodachi,
and to which the House had at least partially confined her.

With the aid of multiple points of view while they were inside the
House, Xander actually noticed Nabiki silently eyeing the doors that
opened at their approach, as if trying to discern how it was done, but
in spite of this evidence of his improvement at noticing things, he
was still caught off guard by Kodachi's docility when they entered her
rooms.

She sat quietly in a chair by a desk at one side of her room, facing
the door. When Xander walked in, she stood and bowed low to him.
Xander had quite deliberately avoided thinking of what the House had
observed of her, and the House had equally tried to avoid paying
attention to what was going on in her rooms, neither wanting to
unnecessarily invade her privacy.

Both were aware of her encounter and subsequent meetings with Mayu,
but again, they had only paid enough attention to assure that no
altercations had occurred, without looking closer.

One of the things that House had learned from interacting with Kodachi
was that he had quite a degree of influence over various almost
automatic functions of the environment inside himself. Since Kodachi
was an authorized user, the concept that Xander had built in, where
the House and Plane would fundamentally serve his will, a command that
went deeper than the chakra clones that provided conscious direction,
applied transitively, in so far as what she desired did not conflict
with his instructions.

Since to a degree, the clones really were Xander, they had similar
power over the subconscious or unconscious behaviors of the magic and
energies that pervaded the House and Plane, so, for example, House had
discovered that deciding that she would be confined to quarters was
sufficient to make it so, without his needing to actually pay
attention to every detail.

There were other more subtle effects though, that neither Xander nor
House, nor yet Plane had yet recognized. Particularly, the intention
that her food should have healing potion in it, initially in place
because Xander was concerned that a brother with so little concern for
his sister might have additionally been abusive, had never been
directly countermanded, and so everything that Kodachi had consumed
over the past ten days had been laced with healing draught.

All of the poisons and plant toxins and hallucinogens she had been
exposed to through her hobby had been leached from her system, both by
the magical activity of the healing potions, and by the simple agency
of time, as they were not renewed or replenished. Further, the damage
they had done to her mind and psyche had likewise largely healed.

Mayu's talks with her and Xander's failure to appear and force himself
on her had slowly brought it home to her that this demon was in fact
treating her better than her own family had. The absence of constant
attacks and defense, the stress of living in an insane household in a
violent district, of the necessity of upholding the honor of a family
whose honor was deeply broken, these had a freeing effect on her mind,
and with Mayu to gently guide her understanding, by the time Xander
found the gumption to face her, she was in a remarkably receptive
mood, and almost unrecognizable compared to the nearly feral character
she had initially displayed.

Instead of a violent screaming match, Xander found himself sitting and
sharing tea while Nabiki and Kodachi discussed her options, the house
that had been located, what she would have to do if she returned to
school, the lawsuit against her brother, and, given that Kodachi was
aware of who Nabiki was, the well-being of her love-interest, Ranma.

Kodachi had one surprising point about their lawsuit that sent Xander
in a new direction, as she noted that her father was not known to be
dead, merely absent somewhere in Hawaii, with her brother directing
family affairs in his absence.

Finding him would be a convenient end-run around Tatewaki, her
brother, although she described the man as quite obsessed. Even as
they walked together to visit the house Nabiki had purchased for them,
Xander was sending his clones to Hawaii to hunt down Kodachi's father.

It should have been a challenging project, given that they were
looking for one Japanese man with the only significant information
available being his name on an island chain with a large tourist
population. In fact, Xander expected to have the man located, if he
was living, in very short order, as one of the things he had managed
to do was get his power-interrogation technique operating as a sort of
compass, by putting a bead of water on a flat container and forcing it
to move towards a given target.

Just as with his portals, it failed miserably if the target did not
exist, but even that could be informative. Unlike the portals, it was
restricted to a certain degree of locality - even if he knew, for
example, precisely where Kushina was, asking the question in his House
gave no answer, nor did asking it in Kodachi's world.

Furthermore, he had determined that there was some weird distinction
between the answers he got through that means, and the similar answers
produced by using his food summoning power, such as producing a
chocolate compass that when floating on milk would point towards a
target. 

They would both indicate the same general direction, but not precisely
so when he was in a different city. When looking for a Tokyo target in
Tokyo, they agreed pretty well, but when trying to find someone in
Tokyo while he was in Los Angeles, they did not quite agree, and he
had not figured out the difference.

Since the gap in the methods vanished as he got closer, either would
work for locating the elder Kuno.

He was fairly certain that Willow would have either known the reason
they differed, or been able to devise a test. Xander for his part was
content to note that there was a difference, but that it appeared not
to matter in terms of finding the target, so could be ignored.

Meanwhile, Nabiki was showing them through the house she had located,
while invisibly, all around them, House was becoming one with it,
absorbing the home's memories. When Nabiki revealed that there was an
actual greenhouse attached to the house, Kodachi finally hit her
limit, and broke down crying.

After a short bit of interpretation from Nabiki of Kodachi's garbled
sobs, clones of Xander left on a mission of reclamation, infiltrating
the Kuno mansion and recovering the contents of Kodachi's room, of her
greenhouses, and of her pet, Midorigame, who was transported via a
simple underwater portal from one pool to another. Xander was amused
to note that the slight elevation difference in the properties had
meant they also gained about a foot of water into their pond, pushing
at its intended boundaries.

Nabiki also claimed a set of rooms, and used her key to link them to
her other suite in the House, while Xander claimed the Master suite.
Not, of course, that he actually needed the space, but Nabiki made it
clear that it was a necessary concession to the status-consciousness
of Japanese business society, and that indeed, she was working on
getting him several high-rise apartments in different districts.

That reminded him of his pirate bay, and he made a note to have her
look into getting him a yacht. He did not bring it up directly, as
Kodachi was still with them.

With Nabiki's expert guidance, Xander's required activities in Tokyo
were dispatched with remarkable ease and speed, and all too soon he
found himself again at loose ends. Kodachi was restored to her proper
routine of attendance at her private school, her father had been
located and was returning to Japan--Xander could have simply portalled
him there, but Nabiki had forestalled that, pointing out that it could
be problematic if there was no record of his re-entry to the
country--and would soon be resolving issues with Kodachi's brother.

That left little to distract Xander, but the House and Plane both
assured him that the human maidens, the flying horses, the
dragon, and the two little dominatrix fairies were all setting in well
and did not need another visit from him to muck things up any worse.

The Draconic-King clone and House, speaking from the perspective of
his castle, was doing fine with no intervention needed, having just
competed in and handily won a local traditional contest of strength
involving hurling what were clearly the ancient version of telephone
poles.

His demon-plane clones were going gangbusters, getting the full
superhero-style fighting training workout, and building up towards
being able to fashion a cartouche for him. 

"But what of me?" complained Xander, pondering in his room back in
House on his demi-plane. "Kushina could summon me at any time, but she
won't; from what the watchers have said, it could be months there
before she is allowed the sorts of missions that could use a summons."

"You shouldn't feel bad about taking over for a clone, it's just a copy
of you," the House pointed out, forming a fluid self into a
neighboring chair to provide a foil for the conversation.

"Doesn't change that I do. I mean, if I take over for something cool,
I get all their thoughts and feelings about how cool it is, and I
can't help feeling bad that they don't get to finish it. I could go do
something boring that I wouldn't feel bad about taking from a clone,
but that would be, well, boring!"

"So maybe all the summoning wasn't so bad, then?" the House pointed
out, pushing a tray of golden creme-filled snack-cake goodness over
towards his counterpart, afer snagging one for himself.

Xander grabbed one of them and held it up. "Odd that my magic doesn't
quite reproduce these to spec," he commented.

The House shrugged. "You weren't focused on just producing food," he
pointed out, "but on summoning food that would be healthy and
sustaining, and later on food that would please Naamahalat without
making her angry at you for getting her fat."

"So all the wonderful badness is missing?"

"Probably. It seems somewhat more so in the food I am producing, I
think you must have intended that I be able to produce healing magic
and the like."

"So that's why the ones I create myself are a bit more real than
yours, but neither stand up to the plastic packaged original?"

Any answer the House might have offered was cut off when an unexpected
and powerful surge of pleasure ran through Xander. Xander caught House
wincing, setting his mind racing, even as he dove into his memories,
searching for the source of the pleasure.

"You ass!" he accused, leaping to his feet. "You were trying to 
distract me!" He did not stay to hear more, passing instantly through 
a portal to the nearest open space close to the source of the pleasure 
he had felt.

He gave the room, which he recognized as belonging to the Tokyo House,
just the briefest of glances, before focusing his vision on the
black-haired goddess frantically rubbing herself in the bed. She was
on top of the sheets, and nude, nothing concealing her except her
hands where one was mauling her full breast, and the other furiously
rubbing her moist folds.




Alexandra?

Not yet posted. 



A New Cartouche

Not yet posted. 



Growth of a Legend

Not yet posted. 



Facing the Gods

Not yet posted.