Yes, this will be a crossover… but I’m not telling with who
or what. I’ll let you know at the end of the fic. :)
So, yeah, I’m an evil bastard. Heheh. :) I’m also telling
you there will be a relationship in this fic, between
Xander and someone else. But, once again, I’m not telling. Most people hate
these spoilers, anyway.
Time-line: Buffy is in season 2, right after Halloween.
Part two
It really does look like Sunnydale’s
Vamp Central, Xander thought while
sharpening one of his stakes at the pool table. He had spread out a sheet of
plastic to protect the felt from the pieces of wood coming from the sharpening.
I spent three hours at the cemeteries, and could only find three
bloodsuckers. And they were easy ones, too… Xander looked at his stake, and
pricked the tip into his thumb. Awch! Okay…
this one’s sharp enough. He grimaced as he put the stake with two others on
his right. He grabbed the last stake on his left, and started to work on it.
He sighed as his eyes went over the point of the stake. He
put it down with the sharpened ones, and turned his seat to stare out the
window, over the sleeping city. Or rather, his gaze went over the sleeping street
to the house across from theirs. He was looking but not seeing. His hand
automatically went to the glass of wine that was standing a little away from
his work area so he wouldn’t accidentally knock it over.
He sipped the dark liquid, and reminisced. It was one of
those days. One of those days when you just can’t escape the
dark thoughts. Xander’s mind traveled through space and time, to when
his life turned into a nightmare. First his parents and their
drink… and then the vampires. Jessie, his childhood
friend. Jessie being turned. Jessie being
killed… by Xander, even if it was an accident.
A tear escaped his eye without him knowing. He took another
sip. Then changed his mind and drained half the glass. The alcohol fell to his
stomach, settling into a pleasant warmth. “Mon Dieu, J’aime la
Kirika looked up from her book for the first time since
picking it up, and her gaze settled on his stricken face. She saw him trying to
hide the pain deep within his soul as he usually did, and she saw his attempts
fail miserably. She looked at her half-full glass. “Just a little, thank you,”
she replied. He turned to the kitchen and returned just a little later with a
corked bottle of wine. He pulled the cork, filled his glass, and replenished
Kirika’s.
Xander picked up his glass after putting the bottle down…
not back in the kitchen, but on the pool table. Kirika saw him stare sadly into
his wine, before bringing the glass to his lips and taking another sip. She
could see pain flicker across his dark brown eyes, and his veiled attempts to
hide the pain from her, yet, at the same time, unable to hide them any longer.
“Can you tell me about it?” Kirika asked, not really
believing he would take her up on the offer. They had known each other for
three months now, and ever since that first meeting, Xander had refused to
disclose anything about his past.
Xander let out a dry chuckle as he stared into his wine. He
took another slop drink, and continued to stare out the window. Kirika returned
to the tome she was reading, having accepted the fact that Xander wasn’t going
to talk today either. For a moment, the brunette was glad that her blonde friend
was out of town on an errand for their next job. Mireille probably would have
sensed his vulnerability and tried to pry information out of the boy.
Xander sat silent for five minutes, almost unmoving, just
staring out the window with his glass of wine cradled in his hands. “I was born
in Sunnydale,” he whispered, looking down at his wine, and taking another sip,
as if to drink himself some courage. “To two wonderful parents. I grew up there, and I had two
friends who were as close as siblings to me. Jessie and
Kirika looked up from her book the moment he started
telling. She looked sadly when Xander corrected his tenses. “Everything went
right. Kindergarten, school… until my dad discovered the bottle,” Xander said
bitterly, swigging from his wine. “He became abusive. Mostly
verbal. Then my mom couldn’t take it anymore, and she started drinking
too. Then things got worse. Dad became abusive physically as well. I
became an expert at dodging, a skill that came in handy later on.”
Kirika looked sadly at him, and for the first time noticed
the same thing in him that she noticed about herself when she looked in the
mirror. Xander looked older than he really was. “But, I managed. After all, I
had two great friends who would do anything for me. I started sleeping over at
their house as much as I could… and then the next thing happened. I met her.”
Xander stopped telling, and looked at his glass, lost in his thoughts.
“Her?” Kirika asked gently.
Xander nodded. “Buffy. Buffy Summers.
She’s something called the Slayer. Mystical Chosen One to fight the darkness in
general and vampires in particular. Possesses the strength,
skill, and speed to go up against vampires one-on-one. And believe me,
she does it well. Anyway, I met her. We met her. Will, Jess, and I… we
welcomed her into our little band of social outcasts as school. Even though she
wasn’t an outcast, she still chose to hang with us.” He looked up at Kirika. “I
can’t tell you how good that made us feel that this
popular person chose to hang with us rather than with the school social elite.”
Xander took another sip of wine.
“Then I overheard her with her Watcher. Those guys are
supposed to do research for and help train a Slayer, by the way. Anyway, I
overheard her talking, and figured something wasn’t right. We found out Buffy
was the Slayer, and got involved with the fight.” Xander emptied the bottom of
wine in his glass, and replenished it. “Then, things got out of control. Jess
got turned. I staked him,” Xander said darkly, angrily swallowing half a glass
of wine. “Even if it was an accident, I staked him.” Xander stared at the
floor. “He was my brother, and I staked him… Some guy bumped into him
from behind, driving him on my stake… but it was my stake. I killed him…” Xander
sobbed, barely managing to get his glass on the pool table. “Oh, God, I killed
him,” the boy sobbed, crying into his hands.
Kirika stood up, and without saying a word, guided him to
the couch, where they sat down. They moment they were seated, Xander turned to
her. “I killed him, Kirika! I killed the boy who was my brother in everything
but blood simply because he had been turned!”
The brunette looked sadly at him. She knew exactly how he
felt, and as such knew that no words she could utter would make it better. All
she could do was offer her support, and a listening ear. She shuffled closer to
him, and put one arm around his shoulders as he sat hunched forward, sobbing.
He turned to her, falling onto her shoulder. Kirika soon held him as he cried
on her shoulder, letting out stress that had been building for a long time. He
probably never had the time to grieve… poor boy, she thought as she held
the crying boy.
Finally, he righted himself, and rubbed the tears out of
his red and puffy eyes. “You never had a time to grieve, did you?” she asked,
her voice sounding more like a statement than a question.
“Not really,” Xander whispered sadly. “I’m sorry for… you
know…”
Kirika merely shook her head in reply. Xander smiled a
little gratefully as he sunk back in the couch, looking up at the ceiling. “I
never had much chance to grieve… Buffy’s new world consumed it all… Turns out Sunnydale is built on top of something called the
‘Hellmouth’, one of the largest portals in the world…
but this one happens to lead straight into hell. So, vampires are really
attracted to it. The supernatural soon was everything we were… Me, Buffy, and
“On a school trip to the zoo… I was possessed, along with a
group of others boys from my class. We were possessed by the spirit of the
Hyena. Immediately, we became as strong and as fast as any vampire, and did all
kinds of nasty stuff.” Xander’s face wrinkled. “We ate the school mascot… a pig
named Herbert. Buffy noticed by then that something wasn’t right with me… so
she and I fought. She finally decked me, and locked me in a steel cage.
Meanwhile, the others who had been possessed… were called in to see the
principal. They ate him.”
Kirika’s eyes went wide as only reaction. “Yeah. They ate him,” the boy confirmed. “Anyway, the pack
was looking for me, while I was still locked in that steel cage with
“When you’re exhausted, or in pain…” Kirika whispered.
“Exactly,” Xander answered with a nod. “Things didn’t get
any easier after that… a demon in the Internet tried to kill
Kirika’s eyes widened again. No wonder he’s so pained
inside…
“A vampire attacked the school, an old Incan mummy who was
revived started draining people’s life force, and then an old friend of Buffy’s
Watcher decided to pay us a visit last Halloween. He turned everyone into the
costume they were wearing… unfortunately, I had to
pick a GI Joe uniform, and was turned into a Vietnam Veteran. Still have the
nightmares to prove it… and they’ve been adapting to include the vampires and
demons I know about. So, not only do I have intensely vivid nightmares of being
chased through the Vietnam Jungle with Charlie on my heels, but I have the
dreams with vampires and demons slaughtering my friends as well. That’s when I
ran… the combo was just too much. No sleep, drunk
parents who had nothing better to do then to hit me, and friends who have
problems of their own… so I ran… right into you in LA.” By the time he was
finished, Xander was crying uncontrollably, hunched forward.
Kirika put her arm around his shoulders once again. This
time, Xander remained in his position, and Kirika merely remained there,
offering her silent support as Xander wept, crying for the pain of a stolen
childhood, the deaths of classmates, and the suffering of a war unknown… a war
without victories or glorious battles, only with casualties.
Finally, Xander’s sobs seemed to subside, and Kirika
righted herself. “I’ll be right back,” she whispered sadly, her voice asking
his permission to leave him for a short while. Xander merely nodded.
When Kirika returned with two steaming hot mugs of tea,
Xander had retaken his seat by the pool table so he could watch out the window.
Kirika sat down in the chair she had vacated, and held out one mug to Xander.
“Thank you,” Xander croaked, accepting the mug, and blowing
in it. “For everything… for not judging… for listening…” he looked at her,
tears brimming his eyes once more. “I think it’s the
first time anyone took the effort to really listen…” Fresh tears fell when
Xander realized the truth of that statement. Kirika merely looked sadly at him.
“I’m always here,” she finally replied. Xander gave her a
small yet grateful smile, and returned to his window, cradling the hot mug.
Kirika remained at the pool table, attempting to take up her copy of ‘War and
Peace’ once again, but not finding the mood for it. She kept glancing at Xander
and the same page in the book over and over.
Finally, she stood up and silently closed her book,
returning it to the small cabinet where she and Mireille kept their books. She
sat down in the couch again, holding her half-drunk mug of tea. “I don’t
remember my mother or my father,” she whispered, staring at the brown liquid in
her mug. “My earliest memories were of Althena… Always training me, stating the prophecies and legacies of Noir and
Soldats over and over.”
She sighed, and drank a little of her tea. She felt the
couch shift slightly as Xander sat down next to her. “You don’t have to do
this…”
Kirika looked at her mug. “I do,” she whispered. “I want
you to know… you’re not alone who has done things… horrible things… and has to
live with the darkness that exists.”
Xander put his mug down on the table, and turned to her. “I
know I’m not alone, Kirika. I told you because I wanted to tell you. Tell me
because you want to tell me, not because of some warped sense of honor or of
guilt or whatever.”
“That’s why I’ll tell you,” the brunette said sadly. “Because you aren’t pushing me.” She emptied her tea, and
stared at the bottom of her empty cup. “I was four… when Althena
gave me a gun and my first assignment. A couple had broken their promise to Soldats. I had to kill them.”
Xander’s eyes went wide at that statement. “I had no love
for them before, but now I’m starting to really hate them. Send a four-year-old
girl to kill someone? Just who are those guys?”
Kirika played with her cup. “Soldats…
Soldats was created during the Dark Ages, a thousand
years ago. They saw themselves as the saviors of humanity. During those times,
it really was a dark age, of violence, of murder, brutality, overlords
threatening, pillaging, raping, and murdering innocent people. Soldats was created to protect the innocent people from
those evil people. They had assassins in their service. Two
girls. Noir. From there the legacy stems… Noir
were the best. The meaning was lost, but the name remained, throughout history
assassins have called themselves Noir without knowing the history of the word.”
Xander shook his head. “Soldats
were the good guys?”
Kirika shrugged. “Yes… back then, they were. But, a
thousand years changed the organization. They were there when the mafia
was formed. Their power and their fortunes grew. And they no longer cared about
protecting people, only themselves. Althena wanted to
create a new Noir, to facilitate what she called the ‘Grand Retour’,
the Great Return. She wanted Soldats to be what it
used to be and chose the mansion as her base of operations. Unfortunately, she
was still very much a part of Soldats, and as such,
needed to carry out the orders she had been given. That’s why she sent me after
that Sicilian couple.
“I killed them when I was only four years old…” Kirika
whispered sadly. “All I got from it was a silver watch. It was a musical watch
that played a merry tune when you opened it to look at the time.” She sighed,
and looked at her hands. “I was a child… I didn’t know what I was doing was
wrong. For years I trained at the mansion, growing stronger, better, faster…
sometimes I was in the companionship of a girl named Chloe. She was to be the
second hand of Noir, but she was being trained elsewhere for the most part. Our
reunions were always short, yet deep… we were sisters.”
Kirika took a deep breath, and looked at Xander. “Then they
took my memories, and sent me into the real world. That’s where my name comes
from… Yumura Kirika was the name they gave my
school-going persona. I woke up one day without memories, but with a gun, the
music watch, a school uniform and a student-ID. The watch gave me flash-backs… that’s how I recalled ‘Noir’… and how I knew how to contact
Mireille. I knew the watch was connected to her somehow. Thanks to it, I
managed to team up with her. But only until we figured out the truth.”
“And that’s what we did,” Kirika continued. “We went on a
pilgrimage to the past to figure out what had happened to me. Meanwhile, we
were manipulated by Soldats, which neither of us knew
at the time, into killing many different people. One of those people was a man
named Yuri. He was ex-KGB, and responsible for the destruction of a Siberian
tribe of people. When we found him, Yuri was an elderly man with failing health
who was living in a small shack on the streets of St-Petersburg.” Kirika looked
directly in Xander’s eyes so he could see her sincerity. “He was handing out
food to those even less fortunate than he was, using what little money he managed
to beg and plead together. He gave away everything he had… and in the end, I
was the one to pull the trigger.”
She looked at the floor, her hand shaking. “It was the
first time I realized that killing people was wrong. That man had done horrible
things while in the KGB, yet tried to make up for them by living as a pauper
and giving away his last cent to feed those who were even less fortunate than
he was. And in the end… when I was standing over him with my gun drawn… he did
one last act of compassion.”
Xander placed one hand on the shoulder of the shaking girl.
She didn’t seem to notice. “I… I saw it in his eyes. He forgave me even when I
pulled the trigger.”
Xander didn’t know what to think. One part of him was
horrified by the killing, one part of him said that the guy deserved it, and a
third part just plain felt bad for Kirika. “I’m sorry, Kirika,” he whispered,
squeezing her shoulder gently.
“Soldats went further… they
started by taking out a contract on us. We destroyed the assassins who came
after us. Soldats then rescinded the contract. Then,
the strangest thing happens. While out after a corrupt judge, we run into a
girl who claims her name is Chloe, the True Noir. She seemed to know all about
us, yet refused to give anything else.
“Next we came across an old contract concerning Soldats, yet in exchange for it; we had to go after an
extremely powerful family of the mafia, in fact, with ties leading to
Xander drew in a sharp breath. Kirika went on undisturbed,
or so it seemed. Inside, she was ready to explode as all the stress of those
moments came back. “Intoccabile knew Mireille from
before her parents were killed… She had been terrified ever since. Intoccabile literally had no fear of anything. She was cold
as ice. No emotion whatsoever. It took Mireille all her willpower to overcome
her psychological disadvantage. But she managed. Intoccabile
was no more… yet before she died; she gave us the contract, which led us to
know that Soldats were present at the birth of the
mafia.”
“God…” Xander whispered.
“Back in
Xander squeezed her shoulder again, and Kirika’s fury at
her friend’s death fell. It was probably her only friend outside… Xander
realized, wishing that he knew how to comfort her. He knew she must be dying
inside, yet he had no idea how to help her. Just as helplessly as Kirika had
listened to his story, Xander now listened to hers.
“Things started to escalate when Mireille’s uncle returned
to
Xander swallowed in a dry throat. Poor Mireille… no
wonder she doesn’t trust me. She probably doesn’t trust anyone anymore. I
wouldn’t either, if my only living relative betrayed me and I had to kill him.
“Then, Soldats contacts us, and
gives us a job in
Kirika stood up. “I’ll bring some more tea,” she whispered,
leaving in a sad mood, leaving Xander behind to stare at her. Five minutes
later, they were once again sipping from full mugs of steaming tea.
“Things grow worse… Althena comes
under heavier opposition from Soldats, yet is
relentless in fulfilling the prophecies. She sent a group called the ‘Knights
of Paris’ after us. This place gets trashed… when we return, we’re attacked. We
managed to stave them off, with the help from Chloe, who seemed to be waiting
for us… After we kill the Knights, she gives me ‘the Last Guidance’, and shoots
me, returning my memories. Memories such as me killing
Mireille’s parents.”
Xander gasped. He had suspected something like this, but to
actually hear it being confirmed was another matter. “I run… stumble across
more Soldats… kill them… attracting the attention of
Mireille, saving her from another Soldats goon… and
reminding her about the promise she made when we first met. She’d kill me when
we found out the truth… yet she couldn’t do it, and told me that she’d kill me
next time… I was shattered… didn’t know… what to do… where to go… so I followed
my instincts. I fell unconscious somewhere… and woke up in a small village.
Tristan and his wife Margaret had helped me… gave me some clothes to wear… some
food to eat… and I wandered the village… everyone seemed to be happy there… it
was one of those last forgotten villages, where everyone seemed happy without
too much modern comfort.”
Xander nodded slightly, a dark feeling in the pit of his
stomach rising to his throat.
“When I returned… men in suits were
there. They wanted me. They were
opposed to Althena’s Grand Retour.
I killed them when they threatened Tristan… Tristan and Margaret led me
outside, to confirm what I thought. The entire village was Soldats.
Margaret led me out of the village… when I looked behind us; I could see the
villagers dying to uphold Althena’s beliefs… then
Margaret jumped in front of a bullet for me. That was when I stopped caring. I
had just witnessed the death of an entire village for no other crime than
helping me. I fell into the black hole that had been building since Milosh’s death. I massacred the Soldats
soldiers who had attacked the village. All of them. I
killed them all without a hint of pity or a scrap of mercy. I wanted them dead,
and I would make them dead. Only then did I continue to go back to the
mansion.”
“Chloe and I prepared for the ceremony to become Noir when
Mireille showed up… At that point, I had stopped caring… I was so far gone that
I couldn’t think straight. I attacked Mireille, went after her, trying to kill
her… at the last possible moment, Mireille dropped the watch from her parents.
The tune it played brought me back to my senses. As I broke down, Chloe
appeared, and prepared to kill Mireille. At the last possible moment, I shot
Chloe’s knife to pieces, preventing her from killing Mireille, to which Chloe
gets mad and comes after me… and since I refused to fight back, Chloe threw
herself on Mireille… and I’m forced to kill her… I killed Chloe… who was like a
sister to me…”
Xander hugged her. Broken, Kirika lets herself be pulled
into Xander’s embrace. “Mireille and I… we go after Althena…
I wasn’t going to run anymore. It was time to end it… to end it once and for all…
we load our guns, tend our wounds, and enter the manor. Althena
had gone insane… she tried to shoot Mireille… I took the lethal one to my side…
after which Althena herself is killed… I was fully
prepared to join her, right there and then… but Mireille managed to convince me
to let her help me. After that, we returned to
The next morning, when Mireille returned from her
information gathering, all she wanted was to shed her clothes and get a couple
of hours worth of sleep. She never needed more than four hours of sleep, and
she wouldn’t need more now. She yawned as she turned to walk to the raised
semi-secluded platform where the large double bed was when she noticed that the
couch was empty.
“Strange… Xander’s never up this early,” the blonde
whispered to herself. Frowning at the oddity, she walked to the platform. What
she saw there made her stop, gape in surprise, which quickly replaced itself
with a smile. There, in the large double bed, lay the missing American
teenager, resting comfortable on his side, actually looking peaceful. Mireille
had never seen him sleep peacefully… the boy seemed to have perpetual
nightmares.
Spooned against his back was Kirika, her arms around
Xander’s midsection, her hands locked together, holding him tightly in place
while Xander’s hands were put gently on top of hers.
Kirika too, seemed different. She had lost the eternal sadness that had been a
constant veil on her face, and was now actually smiling in her sleep.
Mireille shook her head and chuckled slightly. “Looks like
I’ll be making some coffee,” the woman whispered as she turned to the kitchen,
still shaking her head. She noticed the empty bottle of wine for the first
time, and grasped it en route. “Now I know how they ended up in the same bed
without removing their clothes,” she decided as the kitchen door closed behind
her.
At the same time, Xander let out a grunt. Ever since
training with Kirika at the mansion, his senses seemed so much more acute. “Wha?” he grunted intelligently. “Mireille?”
Kirika grunted, pulled on him. Xander’s eyes opened fully,
and for the first time he realized in what for position he was. “Kirika?”
“Yes?” she asked, voice sounding fully awake even though
her eyes were still closed.
“Eh… can I get up?” he asked sheepishly, squeezing her
hands gently. Kirika let go of him. “Thanks,” he whispered, sitting upright,
and turning so he could look at the brunette, whose eyes had only now opened
and looked back at him. “A-about last night… I… eh… I…” He took a breath, and
looked at the wall. “Thank you… for listening. For being there…”
Kirika sat up right next to him. “Thank you for listening
as well,” the brunette answered. “I never realized how much I needed to talk…”
“And Mireille?” Xander asked, turning to the girl.
“And Buffy? And Willow?” Kirika rebutted. Xander sighed, and nodded.
“Point taken,” he admitted silently. At that moment, they
heard a tinkering of a china cup on a china dish in the kitchen. “We’d better
get up… before Mireille gets any funny ideas.”
Kirika smiled slightly, and got up. Xander looked after her
for a few second, admiring how beautiful she was when she smiled, then jumped
up after her.
“Looks like you two got to know each other pretty well last
night,” Mireille commented the moment they entered the kitchen. Xander
swallowed, and stared at the floor, blushing like there was no tomorrow.
Kirika, on the other hand, just walked to the cabinet on Mireille’s direct
left, and grabbed two sets of china, after which she placed them on the table
for herself and Xander. “We talked, nothing more,” the girl said, sitting down.
Xander just nodded, sitting down on Kirika’s right, still
unable to look Mireille in the eyes, a fact she found very amusing as her
continuous smile revealed.
“Well then… talked about what?” Mireille asked,
voice velvety soft.
“That’s private,” Kirika replied coldly, more coldly than
Xander had ever heard her talk to Mireille. He stared at her, understanding
finally just how vigorously the brunette was willing to protect that which she
found personal, and just how much she trusted him to reveal those secrets to
him.
“I see,” Mireille replied levelly, smile fading slightly
but not disappearing totally. “I can’t say I’m surprised…” she shifted her gaze
to Xander. “And you, Xander? What did you talk about
last night?”
Having that intense blue-eyed stare drilling into his very
soul was not an enjoyable experience for Xander. But he would
not… could not… let Kirika down. “Just… stuff,” he
defended.
“What kind of stuff?” Mireille asked, smiling sweetly.
“Mireille,” Kirika said, tone dropping dangerously. “Privacy.”
“Fine. Be that way. See if I care,” Mireille grunted, getting up
and grabbing the percolated coffee. Sitting back down, she poured them all
cups. She grabbed her cup, and put it to her lips. Kirika and Xander did the
same. To Xander, the tense atmosphere was all around him like a thick smog, constricting his breath. He hated himself for
coming in between two good friends.
Only when he looked, really looked at the two
females did he notice something. Comfort.
Both were entirely comfortable, and Xander finally began to
relax when he figured out that this was probably not the first time that they
had ‘fought’ like this.
“Well,” Mireille said after they finished their coffee.
“We’re going to put your etiquette training through its paces, Xander. We’re
going to the most exclusive country club in
Xander gulped, and stared at her. “Russian?” he asked.
“Yes. Russian. And as soon as
you’ve finished that, we’ll find you some other language to train in,” the
blonde said with an easy smile. “After all, an assassin is a member of planet
earth. He or she needs to talk a multitude of languages, and be at home in many
different cultures. Starting tomorrow, you’ll talk nothing but Russian and hear
nothing but Russian from either of us.”
Xander sighed. “Oh, well. I can only gain from it, I
guess.”
Kirika smiled slightly. Mireille nodded in satisfaction.
“Now, let’s get ourselves ready. You’ll need some clothes.”
“Clothes? What’s wrong with what I have?” Xander asked, voice
rising.
“Nothing. You just don’t have clothes for a country club. First
thing that we’ll be getting you is a decent business suit. Then we’ll see what
else you need,” Mireille said, eyes glancing over his rapidly filling body,
giving Xander the creepy feeling she could look right through his t-shirt and
sweat pants. He sighed deeply, unable to believe he was hearing this.
“A suit!?” he demanded.
“Yes,” Mireille said with a smile. “Something Armani should
do fine… just ideal for this sort of occasion.”
“I thought the whole point of a club was to relax? Why
would businessmen be wearing suits to a relaxing club?” Xander demanded.
“We want you to make a good first impression,” Mireille
returned casually. Xander moaned, dropping his head to the table. Female
logic, there’s no beating it, his poor mind decided. He glanced sideways at
Kirika, who gave him an encouraging look. Xander felt better almost
immediately, that single look seemingly filling him
with enough energy to last through days of shopping with Mireille.
Or so he thought. It would not take long for Xander to
realize that Mireille was a billion times worse than anyone Xander had
ever known could ever be. And he knew Buffy, former cheerleading and spring
dance queen from Hemery High in
Xander sat down in the bar stool, looking over his shoulder
to the table where Mireille had engaged some big shot or other in a very
animated discussion involving the inner workings of the stock market. Kirika,
as usual, just remained quiet, her shy attitude belying the sharp mind that was
probably picking the conversation apart.
“A glass of red wine, please,” he ordered.
“Are you 18?” the bartender asked, looking a little
suspiciously at the teenager. Xander could curse inwardly. Just because Kirika
and Mireille had no problems with him diving into the wine cellar didn’t mean
the rest of
He was just about to make up a story about having forgotten
his wallet when someone sat down next to him, and said, “Give my young friend
here his drink, and give me a double whiskey.”
Xander turned to look at his benefactor, and immediately
gave him the once-over while smiling friendly. The man was about early to
mid-fifties, slightly balding, with gray hair still predominant on his head. He
was also wearing a pair of golden (GOLDEN!) glasses, and was dressed in a suit
that probably cost the same as five of the Armani suits Xander was wearing.
“Of course, sir,” the bartender whispered, humbled by the
appearance. The drinks arrive almost instantly, and Xander took his glass.
“Thank you, Mister…”
The man took his cue, laughed, grabbed his whiskey, and
said, “Mestrot. Bertrand Mestrot. You looked like you could use a drink.”
“I did. Thanks. It seems that my companions have found a
delight in discussing the inner working of the stock market,” Xander replied,
forcing himself to use his etiquette classes. “I’m
Xander Harris, by the way. Pleased to meet you.”
Bertrand’s face grinned at the younger boy. “Boring, isn’t
it?”
“Excuse me?” Xander managed.
“Stocks. So boring. Say, I’ve never seen
you here before. New?” Bertrand asked amicably, turning so his back was facing
the bar and he had an uninterrupted view of the entire bar, and the lavish
gardens that lay behind the huge glass doors.
Xander nodded. “My companions introduced me.”
Bertrand continued to smile. “And let me guess… all
afternoon, they’ve been discussing stocks?”
“Started out as business investments, went to accounting
tricks to skip taxes, and somehow ended up at the stock market,” Xander summed.
“Somehow, I thought businessmen would like to discuss anything but
business at a country club.”
“Not likely,” Bertrand answered him with a laugh, pounding
Xander on the shoulder. “Come, Xander. Finish your drink. I’m going to show you
the real pleasures of a country club.” Xander obediently finished his
red wine, after which Bertrand slammed down his whiskey. The teenager followed
the older man as they left the cafeteria. Just as they left, Xander caught a
glimpse of Mireille and Kirika’s eyes following him. He gave them a small sign
to indicate he was okay before leaving their sights.
“So, you’re from
“There’s no hiding my accent, is there?” Xander asked with
a smile, electing a delightful laugh from Bertrand. Xander couldn’t help but
smile. Bertrand Mestrot seemed to like to laugh all the time. “I was born in
“Except for the accent, your French is pretty good,”
Bertrand said. “I’m a vrai Parisien, a true Parisian. Brought my
company up from scratch. Nothing interesting.
Come, Xander. I’m sure you’ll enjoy this. You like the girls, non?”
“Eh…” Xander whispered. “Eh?” he added a second time when
Bertrand dragged him through a door.
“You haven’t lived until you’ve had a deep tissue massage,”
the older man said in his omnipresent joyful mood. “Mestrot
and guest. Put it on my account,” Bertrand said to the receptionist
sitting at a marble desk in the first room. They never halted as Bertrand
dragged Xander right through to the second area, which appeared to be some kind
of waiting room.
“Won’t be long now,” Bertrand said, conspiringly. “These
girls do wonders…”
At that moment, the door opposite the end they had entered
through opened, and two beautiful pearls from
“This is my new friend, Xander,” Bertrand introduced. “Xander, meet Kim and Ly. They’ve got golden hands.”
“Enchanté,
Mesdemoiselles,” Xander greeted them, also kissing their hands. The girls
smiled, and Xander thanked Mireille’s etiquette courses. Not long after, Xander
and his new friend were laying face-down on a couple of massage tables. Both
men let out groans of contentment as the two Asian beauties tore into
stressed-out muscles.
“I wonder where Xander is,” Mireille grunted, looking at
her watch.
“He left with Monsieur Bertrand,” Kirika reminder her
friend. “He might be gone for a while.”
Mireille snorted. “Really, that Bertrand… sometimes, I
wonder what he’s thinking. He acts like a seventeen-year-old.”
At that moment, Kirika’s eyes opened slightly further, and
a small smile appeared on her features. “Which may be why Xander and him get along so well,” she said causing Mireille to look
over her shoulder at the duo that had just entered the cafeteria. Both were
laughing and chatting amicably. Xander with a glass of red
wine and Bertrand with a glass of whiskey.
The two men sat down at the table of Mireille and Kirika.
“Sorry I’m a little late,” Xander apologized. “But Bertrand has been showing me
around. And I’ve got to say, this country club is growing on me.”
“Was it the massage, the sauna, the pool, or the bar that
did it?” Bertrand asked with a mischievous smirk.
“Well… hard to choose between different levels of
perfection, is it?” the teen asked with a chuckle. Bertrand laughed.
“My thoughts exactly. Xander, my boy, I’ve had a wonderful afternoon. We have
got to do it again some time. How long will you be in
“As long as my hosts put up with me, I think,” Xander said.
Bertrand laughed.
“In that case, let’s meet again. Next week? Let’s say…
nine?”
Xander looked at Mireille, who shrugged. “Gladly,” Xander
answered his friend, extending his hand.
“It’s a deal,” Bertrand grinned in response, grabbing
Xander’s hand in a firm clasp, and shaking it forcefully. He stood up, the rest
of the people at the table following his example. He kissed the hands of Kirika
and Mireille, bid his goodbyes, and left.
“We should get going too,” Mireille grunted, causing the
threesome to make for the car.
As they were walking, Xander reminisced. “Great guy… he
knows all the fun spots. I like him.”
“Some people say he’s got the mind of the average
seventeen-year-old,” Mireille grunted a little more coldly than she intended.
Xander thoughts that over for a few
seconds before answering, “That’s probably why I like him. I *AM* a seventeen-year-old.”
Mireille grunted. Kirika smiled. Xander sunk back in his
thoughts of a fun afternoon.
Xander pushed his hands as deep in the pockets of the
trench coat as he could, pulling in his head at the
same time. The
Xander rubbed his frozen hands as he fell flat on his bed a
few minutes later. Kirika and Mireille were still ‘out’. Xander groaned. He
wished he had more endurance against the cold… he hadn’t wanted to return until
after they got back. Well after they got back … the last thing
Xander wanted was to see them washing off blood, and watch them clean their
guns. Xander’s stomach turned at the thought of what they were doing out there,
in the cold and darkness of the Russian night.
He glanced at the window, where snow was falling in
ever-increasing quantities. He thought back at the planning they had been
doing, the quiet conversations he had done his very best to avoid. Over the
past three days, ever since his arrival, Xander had spent almost as much of his
time inside as outside. He was building up endurance against the cold… it just
wasn’t enough for this dreadful night filled with snow and biting cold winds.
Xander sighed, and rolled over, pointing his back at the
window. The hotel was the most comfortable one they had been able to find in
“Twelve minutes past
The numbness of his emotions remains, however. Xander
wanted to smile, yet found that he couldn’t. Something inside of his was
protesting. This wasn’t right. Xander thought it was the whole ‘job’ thing.
They were out killing someone. It wasn’t right. They shouldn’t be doing this…
even though Xander had heard of the monstrosities this mob boss had done, it still didn’t feel as ‘right’. There were human
laws. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t, but there were laws.
Xander shook his head, and closed his eyes, sinking deeper
into the hot water, to realizing he had forgotten to add soap to it. It was
just that… a tub of hot water, the heat making his face red and sweaty. Xander
didn’t notice. He had become used to extremes. How long had he been with
Mireille and Kirika now? About six months… he had first met them in
November, about a week after the whole Halloween deal that shook his up so
badly. Xander shivered, despite the heat, when he thought of the nearly
continuous nightmares. Mid January he had left for the Mansion with Kirika…
where he had spent the three most glorious months of his life. Sure, he was more dead than alive most of the time, but still, it had
been the best time he had ever had. It was now the end of April. The weather in
He slowly got up from the tub, and slipped into a t-shirt
and a pair of shorts. He crawled into bed with the remote to the TV, and started
clicking through channels. His Russian had developed to the point where he
could now hope to get the gist of it. He could feel his eyes starting to droop,
the emotional numbness in his heart settling along with his fading body
rhythms. Xander sunk into a peaceful slumber.
Suddenly, the door was roughly thrown open, and a fury with
blonde hair and ice-blue eyes stormed into the room, grabbing for her suit
case, and roughly throwing it open. Xander startled awake, jumped, rolled, and
landed in a crouch, scanning for danger. His instincts had been well-honed… he
was ready within two seconds of being awake.
“Mireille? Where’s Kirika?” he demanded when the situation sunk in.
“She was injured. I need more ammo,” the Parisian snarled,
going through her case for more clips and spare bullets. She started ramming
ammo into her spent magazines.
It was as if someone had punched him full power in the
stomach. Xander gasped for breath as he fell on his bed. He could feel himself
growing sick. Pale as a sheet and sweating profusely, Xander tried to come to
terms with the development. Kirika…
Xander screwed his eyes shut. Kirika… his mind
whimpered. He heard her fighting Mireille. He heard her defending him. Her teachings, which had done him so much good in controlling his
possessions. Kirika. The only one who had ever
held full and unconditional confidence in him. His
hands balled into fists. She was there for you! She nursed you back to
health when you were injured! Are you just going to let her be!? Xander
heard a voice shout in his head. The Voice of the Soldier.
Xander’s eyes opened. “No,” he whispered. Mireille glanced briefly at him,
continuing her preparations for her return. “NO!” he shouted, causing her to
finally take a good look at him.
Xander’s eyes were filled with a fury he had never felt
before. The feeling of wrongness within him had vanished. He knew now what it
had meant. The mission itself was wrong… and he was going to right it.
“God-damned mother-fucking son of a bitch!” he snarled in
sheer anger, fury, and… in plain English. Mireille looked up at his as he
jumped over his bed, grabbed Kirika’s suitcase, threw it on her bed, and threw
it open. Mireille started to protest when she saw him go through Kirika’s
things.
“Damned, where is it?” the boy snarled. “Come on, Kirika… I
know you have one somewhere…” Finally, his hand touched something metal. “Yes!”
he cried in victory when he lifted a spare Beretta out of Kirika’s suitcase.
Letting it drop to the bed, Xander then fished some spare ammo from the case.
He loaded the gun, then ran full speed to the
bathroom.
By the time Mireille had loaded her spent magazines, Xander
re-emerged from the bathroom, fully dressed in black. He grabbed the gun,
slammed the clips into his pockets, and went to the door of their luxury suite.
“What are you doing?” Mireille snarled when she left and
Xander followed her.
“Going with you,” Xander grunted as the duo slipped into
the rental car. Xander ignored the bullet holes. “I am not losing her. I lost
too many friends to this god-forsaken world already. I am NOT losing
another.”
“But…”
Xander turned to the woman, and for the first time, she
could appreciate Xander’s look. She had seen a lot of angry looks in her
profession, and she didn’t scare easy. But what she saw in this teenager’s eyes
was impressive. She nodded tersely, jerked the key to start the car, and drove
off.
Xander closed his eyes, and breathed rhythmically. There
may come a time when you need to use these same techniques to drill into your
subconscious that your life means nothing, that you will use your life in
exchange for your goals, he could hear Kirika say before his mind’s ear.
Xander focused deeper. “I will free her. I will free her.” Over and over again
he repeated his mantra. I will free her.
He felt himself fall into the familiar darkness of his own
subconscious. Fear overwhelmed him. Fear of what he was about to do. The jungle
materialized, as did the two familiar figures.
“I need your help,” Xander opened, ruthlessly shoving his
fear out of the way.
He felt the car come to a stop, and Xander mechanically
opened his eyes. They were flat. Cold as ice. As dead as the Russian night around him. Xander grabbed
tighter on Kirika’s spare Beretta. He had confidence in the weapon… he knew
Kirika kept all her guns in top shape. He stepped out of the car.
Mireille also got out of the car, and started running in a
certain direction. Xander followed her, seemingly not running at all, yet still
perfectly capable of matching her speed. In her own state of mind, she failed
to notice the fluidity and ruthlessness that waved off his movements.
She and Xander knelt behind some bushes next to a path
leading to a huge mansion. The blonde motioned that this was the place. Xander
nodded, for the first time since long, he felt peacefully calm. He jumped up,
started running toward the front door, ignoring Mireille’s startled yelp as he
did so. As he ran, something shifted within him.
It was as if the world had suddenly dropped into focus, and
Xander darted to the right, causing a bullet to hit the grit on his left.
Without looking, he aimed, and pulled the trigger. The Beretta bucked in his
hand. A man screamed. Immediately after, Xander dropped to his left, rolled,
came up in a crouch, and aimed, shooting the man hiding behind a huge statue of
a lion. Xander drew air into his nose. He felt there were more of them
out there.
No time, Xander
grunted to himself, jumping up and running to the door, planting his back to
it. He fingered the unfamiliar shape of the Beretta, tracking any movement he
could see in the front yard as Mireille sprinted toward him.
“How…?”
“Later,” the boy whispered darkly, glancing sideways at the
front door. He took two steps back, intending on splintering the door with a single
well-placed kick. Instead, he darted sideways when he felt a bullet wiz past
his back, the sound of the gunshot following it a tenth of a second later.
Xander bared his teeth as he landed on one knee, aimed, and pulled the trigger.
The man on the top of the roof screamed, and fell to the ground. Without
sparing a glance, Xander grabbed the high-powered rifle in his left hand,
putting the smoking Beretta in his pocket. His right hand flew into firing
position on the rifle.
Mireille meanwhile had opened the door, and stormed inside,
gun sweeping from left to right, ready to take on any and all bodyguards the
gang lord might have left. She and Kirika had cleaned house reasonably well in
their initial assault, but there was no telling how many guards the man had
left. She felt rather than heard Xander fall into step behind her, covering her
as she darted forward, and she in turn covered him. Somehow, it was not as hard
as she would have thought, working with the boy.
“We’ll need to cover every floor,” the blonde whispered to
her companion when they reached the huge staircase leading upstairs. “I don’t
know where they’re holding her.”
Xander closed his eyes, and sniffed the air. He
shook his head. “This way,” he whispered, disappearing to the left of the staircase,
through a door leading to a staircase disappearing into the ground. Mireille
stood at indecision for a few moments, before following Xander. Whatever the
outcome, there was something about this Xander. Something
that unnerved her, something telling her to keep him in close sight.
At the bottom of the stairs, Xander halted her. “Two guards
outside her door. Two men inside the room.” He grew
pale. “I am going to rip out his throat,” he growled, actually baring his
teeth. Mireille shuddered when she noticed the growing length of his canines
and the faint amber glow of his chocolate brown eyes. Growling, he jumped up,
throwing the rifle in the direction of the first guard. At the same time, he
drew the Beretta with his free hand, and fired at the second guard.
The first guard instinctively dove out of the way of the
heavy weapon sailing toward him. The moment he recomposed, he felt a bullet
enter his brain. Darkness overcame him.
Kirika blocked the burning pain in her left arm. The bullet
had passed clean through, making her limb quite painful but not in total
danger. She knew enough about wounds to know that, with proper care, all she’d
have left was a scar. She had plenty of scars like these. She jerked the chains
tying her to the bed with her right arm. The chains rattled, but didn’t budge a
millimeter.
She let out her breath, trying to compose herself. She
noted her position, and didn’t like it one bit. Her arms were tied together to
the bar at the head of the bed, while her feet were tied wide apart to the
posts at the end of the bed. Kirika knew that this meant she was in an
extremely vulnerable position… for a woman. She swallowed.
Two huge men entered the room, and Kirika looked t them,
her eyes as deadly as she could make them. For just a moment, both men halted,
stared, and actually widened their eyes. Then, their minds overcame their
instincts and they realized she was tied to the bed with heavy chains. She
wasn’t going to go anywhere.
“Who are you?” the first man barked.
Kirika remained silent.
“Who are you working for?” the second man shouted,
advancing on her.
“Tell us!” the first man screamed, slapping her across the
face, causing her head to snap from right to left with the force. She glared at
him, sucking a little on the small wound her teeth had cut into her cheek. She
spit the blood at him.
“I’ll enjoy breaking you, bitch,” the man growled, wiping
the blood off his face. He grabbed her hair, and roughly pulled her head up by
it. He crushed his lips onto hers. “And I’ll make you scream as every slut
deserves!”
Kirika felt nauseated by his breath, reeking of cheap vodka
and third-rate borsht. She could feel herself getting sick even contemplating
this man being her first. She let out a groan, and struggled against him. Her
powerful body managed to strength to jerk her head away from him.
At that moment, there was a growl from the outside, almost
as if there was a lion loose in the hallways. Both men looked at each other and
cautiously went to the door, guns drawn. Gunshots followed, after which
everything was quiet. Man #1 flanked the door on the right while #2 held the
left side. For a few moments, everything was quiet.
Then, the door was roughly thrown open, hitting man #1 full
in the face. #2 surged forward, turning to aim for whoever was coming through.
As he shot forward, his aim shifted to compensate for the movement of the man.
#2 fell before he realized what had happened. #1 slammed the door shut behind
Xander, holding his broken nose with his other hand.
“You,” Xander stated flatly, pointing the gun at him. “You
I have grievances with.”
The man glanced at the body of his dead comrade. “Him I
couldn’t care less about,” Xander stated flatly, seeing the beginnings of fear
reach his opponent’s eyes. Suddenly, the bear of a man rushed him. Xander
sidestepped, slamming the butt of his Beretta in the man’s neck as he flew
past. The bear landed in a heap on the floor. Xander shot one leg.
“Seems that my aim is off,” he grunted coldly. “That should
have been your knee instead of your shin.”
At that point, Mireille threw the door open once more,
immediately scanning the room. All she saw was Xander, aiming at a man with a
gunshot wound in his leg. “Does he have the keys?” the blonde asked.
Xander glanced at the keys dangling from #1’s belt, and
pulled the trigger. The bullet cleanly penetrated #1’s brain. Xander calmly
reached down, grabbed the keychain, and walked to the bed. He started to unlock
Kirika’s chains.
“Are you alright?” he asked dully, his voice flat, sounding
dead-tired.
“Yeah,” Kirika answered, slowly getting out of the bed,
holding her shot left arm.
“Good,” Xander whispered, sinking into the black hole.
Mireille and Kirika both stared at Xander, who literally
tipped over. The change was so sudden neither of the girls could react. One
moment he was perfectly fine, although acting a little ‘off’, the next he was
on the floor, sinking deeper and deeper into a coma.
Kirika blinked, understanding immediately what had
happened. She rolled out of the bed, landing with a hard thump next to the
fallen boy. “Mireille… please give me some time,” the brunette whispered,
ignoring the pain that stabbed through her arm with the sudden movements.
“We still need to find Andrei,” the blonde replied, even as
she moved to cover the door.
“Xander? Xander can you hear me?” Kirika whispered, bending over
the pale boy. He really looked sick now, and Kirika’s heart clenched. She
slapped him.
“Alexander Harris, you will open your eyes!” she barked,
startling Mireille with the cold intensity of it. She had never heard Kirika
speak like that before. It didn’t appear to affect Xander, however.
“He’s slipping… so fast,” the brunette whispered miserably.
“Xander, listen to me, please!” she begged, voice louder as she grabbed his
shoulders and shook him. She winced as the movement sent jolts of electricity
along her beaten nerves. “You are strong enough to get through this! Your goals
have been reached! The object of your mission was met!” Xander took a deep
breath… and didn’t let it out.
“Oh, no…” Kirika whispered. She took a breath herself, and
slowly let it out. “Xander, listen to my voice, just my voice, and only my
voice. It is your world now. Nothing exists outside my voice. Listen to it. Let
it guide you to the surface. Xander Harris, that is
who you are. Do not lose yourself to the overwhelming darkness. You must fight
it. Let me voice be your guide through the battle, let it show you the way back
to the surface through the maze that is the darkness.” On and on, the girl droned, her voice level and even, hypnotizing.
“Xander Harris, hear me speak your name. Listen to my
voice. Come back, Xander.” Xander let out the breath he had been holding, and
his features seemed to relax. He coughed. Kirika smiled. “You’re almost there,
Xander. Reach out; you can touch the surface. Come back to the light, Xander.”
Somehow, she managed to keep her voice on the hypnotizing tone, even though she
was looking overjoyed. Mireille, at the door, smiled as well.
Xander coughed again, before letting out a moan, and
fluttering his eyes. “Ow…” he grunted in obvious
pain. “What’s the number of that truck?”
“You foolish, foolish boy,” Kirika whispered. “You nearly
died.”
“That wouldn’t have been good,” Xander grunted, sitting up;
wincing in pain as he did so.
“Break it up you two! We still have a job to do, and I
think they’re amassing some kind of army outside!” Mireille grunted urgently.
She looked over her shoulder. “But before we go, let me just remind you that
we’re going to have a nice, long chat tonight. I want to know exactly what
happened.”
Xander groaned, and nodded. He swayed a little on his legs
when he stood up, yet managed to hobble along quite nicely, supported on
Kirika’s good shoulder.
“Here we go,” Mireille said, throwing open the door, and
starting to fire. Kirika had taken the spare gun from the floor where Xander
had dropped it, and wielded it with frightening precision, even after being
shot and with a teenager hanging from the shoulder attached to her shooting
arm. Xander, meanwhile, did his best to mimic Kirika’s movements, as to
minimize the amount of inconvenience he placed on her.
“Get them! It’s only three of them, and two of them are
injured!” a voice barked form around the corner, where the staircase to the
ground floor was located. Mireille’s eyes tensed as she waited for three long
counts, to see if anything were to appear form around the corner.
Two men appeared, cautiously peeking around the wall. Two
bullets immediately finished that, and Mireille broke out in a dead-run,
flashing around the corner to surprise whatever men still remained. Her two
companions only saw her smile slightly before pulling the trigger. A growl came
from the target before a heavy thump indicated the demise of life.
Kirika and Xander rounded the corner, to see what Mireille
had been smiling about. “Andrei,” Kirika whispered. “We got him.”
Mireille nodded tensely. “We need to get out of here. Now.”
It was a scruffy group that stumbled into the hotel room
that night. Mireille immediately grabbed the first aid kit, preparing to dress
Kirika’s nasty looking bullet wound. Xander had just opened his mouth to ask
Kirika how she was feeling when the brunette turned to him, her eyes blazing.
Without any warning, she slapped him.
“Why did you do that? Do you have any idea how close you
came to dying tonight?” she shouted at him. Mireille stopped what she was
doing, staring at the brunette.
“Kirika…”
Xander interrupted her, answering Kirika’s shouted
question. “There may come a time when you need to use these same techniques to
drill into your subconscious that your life means nothing, that you will use
your life in exchange for your goals,” he quoted her teachings.
“WHY?” she asked, voice climbing. “Why would you sacrifice
your life for me? And why did you use that technique without putting in a
return clause? Does your own life mean that little to you that you wanted
to die?”
“Because there was something important enough to do it
for,” Xander whispered in reply as Mireille guided Kirika to a chair, and
started to dress the brunette’s wounds. “Because I didn’t
want to lose you.”
Kirika sagged in the chair as Mireille continued to apply
different solutions to the wound. “You could have just gone with her, Xander…
it was foolish to go this deep.”
Xander sagged, sitting down on the bed. “I just couldn’t… couldn’t face losing you,” he finally admitted.
Mireille’s rhythm interrupted for just a few fractions, at the same time as
Kirika fully tensed up. “You helped me… were there when I needed you…” He
looked up, staring at the table where Mireille was focusing on Kirika’s wounds.
“I did it because I love you, Kirika! And I would do it again, in a heartbeat!
I know how close I came to dying out there, but I just don’t care!”
Kirika stiffened, slowly getting up from the table, backing
away. She turned around. “No… no… you can’t…”
Xander too, stood up from his bed. “And
why not? Why wouldn’t I be able to love you? You’re a great person,
you’re beautiful, and you cared enough to help me when I needed it and nobody
else cared enough to spare even a minute of their time for me.”
“Because,” Kirika just whispered, throwing her arms around
herself as she stared sadly at the window. “Because… I’m just a weapon.”
Xander stood there, looking at the girl for close to five
seconds. Mireille stared from one to the other, helplessly watching and hoping
that things would turn out right. She hated every moment of it… Mireille hated
feeling helpless. And after an emotionally draining evening, she had about as
much as she could have.
Finally, Xander slipped closer to her, gently holding her
shoulder to make sure he didn’t catch her wound by accident, and turned her to
face him. “No… no, you’re not,” he urged her. She averted her face, looking at
the ground. “Who I love is Kirika the person… and yes, that includes Kirika the
assassin. But you know who is also in there?” he demanded angrily, putting a
finger under her chin so she was forced to look at him, “that sweet and caring
person who stood up to her only friend to save a person she had never met
before. The person who cared enough about a lonely, helpless, and seriously
injured person to nurse him back to health. Kirika… yes, you’re an assassin.
But you’re also sweet, and caring, and giving.”
She bent her head, looking at the floor between them. “I–I
don’t know any of this,” she whispered. “I’m a weapon… I always have been… it’s
all I know…”
Xander lifted her face once again, and looked into the deep
saddened red pits that were her eyes. “It’s all they taught you… but you taught
yourself, and you know it,” the boy whispered. “Kirika… I love you.”
She swallowed, seeing the vulnerability in those chocolate
brown eyes of his. “Xander… Xander, I–I…” her voice trailed off as she lost
herself in his eyes. “Xander… oh, Xander…” she sagged forward, into his
embrace. He gladly closed his arms around her. For a moment, he felt the
indecision in her entire body, before her arms lifted, closing around his
midsection. “I love you, too,” she whispered.
Xander lifted his head, and looked at her, tears brimming his eyes and a wide smile on his face. She looked
up at him, smiling as well. He leaned in. She instinctively pushed herself to
the tips of her toes.
Their lips met.
Xander drifted in the comfort zone between awake and sleep,
letting out a small groan as his hand reached around, searching for the woman
he knew should be there. He cranked one eye open, scowling slightly when his
search came up empty.
“Kiri…” he whispered, looking
around the bed, finding himself alone. Not for the first time he appreciated
the stealth with which his girlfriend could move. Girlfriend… Xander’s
mind mulled over at the thought. It has such a nice ring… girlfriend. Grinning
goofily, he slipped out of bed, throwing on a neon-pink bathrobe that hung nearby.
He shook his head. “I’ve got to buy myself a robe… Mireille’s things really
deter from my manhood,” he grunted to himself as he jumped down the small
stairs leading to the lower-level living room. Following his nose, Xander
emerged in the kitchen soon.
“Good morning,” he greeted the two women cheerfully,
bending over to kiss Kirika before she slipped him a nice cup of tea. “Ahh…” he sighed contented as he sniffed the strong tea.
“Before you get too relaxed, come with me,” Mireille said
coolly. Xander gulped. That tone of voice boded nothing well.
He glanced at Kirika, who stared at the floor. Okay, now I’m really scared,
he thought as he dejectedly followed Mireille into the living room. She
motioned for a chair standing around the pool table.
“Wait,” she ordered. The single word caused Xander to fall
into the chair. He carefully put his cup of tea down on the pool table, scared
that the rattling of china might give away his burgeoning fear. Mireille and
Kirika disappeared.
“Okay… what did I do?” Xander whispered, going over the
recent events in his mind, culminating into his ‘escapade’ in
“Close your eyes,” Mireille ordered from the top level.
Xander gulped, closed his eyes, and notified the girls. A few moments later, he
heard them shift around him. The he felt them stand still, flanking him.
“You can open your eyes now,” Mireille said, tone softer.
Xander opened his eyes, staring at two gift-wrapped objects standing in front
of him on the pool table.
“Happy birthday, Xander,” both girls said at the same time,
smiling widely at the boy’s open-mouthed stare, shifting form the boxes to the
girls, and back to the boxes.
“I–I…” Xander stammered. “I forgot…”
“That’s just like you, to forget your own birthday,”
Mireille said with a smile in her voice. Kirika just smiled lovingly at him
from her side.
“Come on, open them!” the brunette urged as Xander just
kept staring in total shock at the gifts.
“It’s been a while since I got a gift…” Xander whispered,
carefully reaching out for the larger of the two boxes, as if he were afraid it
was going to vanish on him. He put it down gently right in front of him, and
carefully started to open the tape used. After prying loose the tape, Xander
carefully unwrapped the hardwood box. Something irked
him about the sigil on the lid. It was an ornate O, straight-sided, with a P
attached to the right of it; the straight side of the O and the leg of the P
were one and the same. He knew it from somewhere, but the reference escaped him
at the moment.
Carefully, he opened the small lock and pushed open the
lid. Xander’s jaw hit the floor. Inside the box lay the most beautiful handgun
Xander had ever seen. Carefully, he let his fingers trail over the smooth
golden finish, savoring the smoothness of the metal. Carefully, he picked the
gun out of its compartment, closely examining some Japanese Kanji signs
engraved into the cherry-wooden handle.
“A
Kirika nodded. “You do insist on going after vampires… we
thought you could use the fire power. Its name is Magan. Demon Gun. That’s what’s inscribed into the handle, by the
way.”
Xander was too shocked for words, and just kept staring at
the gun from each and every angle. Finally, his eyes fell on the same ornate
symbol, grafted into the base of the handle. This time, his brain made the
connection.
“Olivia Person?” he asked, shocked. “This is an
Olivia Person?! But she has a six month waiting list!”
“Being accepted as the best gunsmith in the world will do
that,” Mireille grinned mischievously. “But, as Noir, we’re entitled to
priority.” The blonde assassin shrugged. “As one professional to another, we
understand each other.”
Xander shook his head, and boxed the gun. Also inside the
hardwood box were a cleaning kit, and compartments for the gun’s separate
components. Obviously, it was meant for when the gun was to be transported in
its broken-down state. There were also slots reserved for three magazines.
Xander’s eyes, however, were drawn to the other objects in the case. As
a replacement for the standard 6” barrel, there was the extended 10” version,
very much suited for the huge silver scope that was cased just next to it. Yet
another add-on was the small gold-colored laser targeting system that attached
to the trigger guard. Completely built up, the weapon was one of the most
impressive pieces of ordinance around.
Finally, Xander closed the box, and reached carefully for
the second, smaller, gift. After unwrapping it as carefully as the first one,
he found a second box from the same tropical hardwood, also laid in with the
ornate Olivia Person sigil. He took a breath, and opened it. Inside were two
rows of four magazines, each sporting a unique edge around the base. On the bottom was an Olivia Person sigil.
“That’s your ammo. Kirika provided us with as much
information as she could,” Mireille explained, causing Xander to smile at the
girl, and draw her in a sideways hug. “From left to right: green bands indicate
vampire ammo. Hollow Points filled with Holy Water and garlic extract. Blue bands for lower class demons, Hollow Points with mercury
filling. Red bands for stronger demons, hollow points
with liquid explosive centers. Black bands are Full Metal Jacket armor
piercing explosive-tipped bullets for ripping apart higher demons, blowing
holes in walls, or taking down tanks. Of course, all bullets are made of a
unique silver/titanium alloy, and hold extra powder for just that little extra
kick.”
“Damn,” Xander grunted as he gingerly picked up one of the
green-banded vampire-killing magazines, finding that a second one was hidden
underneath it. He did a quick count, finding four magazines for each type. He
put the magazine back, and closed the lid.
Before Mireille knew what had happened, Xander had drawn
her in for a strong hug. “Thank you,” he whispered. “It’s… it’s been a long
time since anyone did something this nice for me. Thank you.”
Mireille smiled, hugging him back as she did so. “You’re
welcome, Xander. You’re very much welcome.”
Xander released her, and turned to Kirika. Hugging her, and
kissing her enthusiastically on the lips. “Thank you,” he whispered. “It’s so
insufficient, but thank you.”
“A thank you is never insufficient, Xander,” Kirika
whispered in reply. “Besides… you saved my life… it should be me who thanks
you.”
“That reminds me,” Mireille suddenly said from behind him.
Xander curiously released the hold he had on Kirika as he heard he rummage
through the inner pocket of her coat. “Here,” she said, extending a small book
to Xander.
“What’s this?” he asked, accepting the book, and opening
it. He found it contained backing information for one of the aliases Mireille
had established for him. He gasped. “One million, nine hundred and fifty
thousand dollars?” he drooled, eyes open wide, jaw sliding on the ground
“Your cut for the
Xander just stared at the book. “You’re kidding…”
Mireille shook her head. “Asking price for that mission was
six million. After expenses, that leaves us with 5,850,000. Split three ways
even, that’s one million, nine hundred fifty thousand for each.”
“But…” he stammered, his hands
shaking as he held the small bank book. “This… I…”
“You helped us, you’re entitled to an even cut,” Mireille
said calmly. “Remember that, Xander. There is such a thing as loyalty
and honor. You help us out, and you’re entitled to a piece of the action.”
Xander suddenly didn’t feel so
good as he stared at the numbers in the bank book. Suddenly, his vision
blurred, the numbers seemed to dance… mocking him for his weakness, scolding
him for his actions, calling him a murderer… the word reverberated through
Xander’s mind. Murderer… Murderer… Murderer…
He swallowed. “I can’t… accept this…” he whispered. “I
killed… killed someone… it’s not right…”
“Would you rather have not shot those people? Would you
have preferred to do nothing?” Mireille asked, voice
suddenly dropping cold. Xander’s mouth opened, staring at the book again.
“I–I…”
“When you hunt vampires, do you feel bad about them?”
Kirika suddenly asked. “Do you mourn the death of a demon?”
“Of course not!” Xander protested heavily.
“Then don’t feel bad about those men,” the brunette
whispered, putting her hands on top of Xander’s, still holding on to the small
book. Gently, she pushed it to him. “Instead… see this is your payment for a
job well done. You rid the world of one more piece of evil, saving countless of
people who would otherwise have been hurt by those men.”
Xander swallowed again, then
closed his eyes. If I only hadn’t lost it… if only I hadn’t done that… he
whispered to himself. And then what? A
tiny voice deep inside of him asked. Mireille would have gone back by
herself, at great personal risk! She could have been hurt trying to save
Kirika! Or worse! Kirika could have been killed! Or BOTH of them could have
been killed! Is THAT what you want? Xander’s face twitched. “No,” he
whispered. “No, that’s not what I want.” He opened his eyes, and stared at the
book. Silently, he pulled it from Kirika’s grasp, both women staring at him,
misunderstanding his words. Silently, he put the book in his backpack.
Only then did he turn to face the two assassins. “From now
on,” the boy said, deadly calm, “I want to be in on it. Whenever you find some
piece of scum like the last guy, I’ll be in on it!”
Mireille stared at him, not really understanding how he
could change his mind so quickly. Kirika just beamed at him, glad that he
finally accepted that part of him… the same part she was afraid he wouldn’t
have understood in herself. She slipped into his arms. “Welcome to the team,”
she said lovingly, reaching upward to kiss him on the lips, kissing his last
doubts away.
Xander leaned on the balustrade of their
“Tomorrow, we do the job,” he heard Mireille say as she
came up to his back. “Today, we just settle in and do some preparations… we
need to scout out the place, do a final weapons check, and have a good night’s
rest.”
Xander merely nodded, remaining silent. When
he heard Mireille start to turn and leave, he broke his own silence.
“It’s my first… my first real job, I mean… What if I screw up?”
Mireille let out a dry snort of amusement. “I wouldn’t
worry about that… this is just a small job, no real danger.” She turned to
Xander, studying his drooping posture. “Don’t worry, Xander… this is an ideal
job for you to work yourself in. We’ll continue increasing the difficulty when
we thing you’re ready.”
Xander sighed and nodded, returning to his own silence.
Mireille took her cue, and left. In the hallway, she crossed Kirika, just about
to enter the room she was to share with Xander. “He’s worrying too much… try
and calm him down,” Mireille spoke to her friend. Kirika looked her usual sad
self, and simply nodded as she slipped past the blonde assassin like a ghost.
Inside, she saw Xander leaning on the balustrade, watching
the people below. Quietly, she slid over to him, before slipping her arms
around his waist. “Everything will be alright, Xander.”
She felt him stiffen, and responded solely by increasing
the strength in her grip slightly. “I still worry. That’s just who I am…
Worrying Xander,” the boy replied sadly. “What if I screw up? What if I’m not
right for this? I know this guy is scum of the earth, but still…”
“I know, Xander,” Kirika whispered, slipping away from his
back, so he could turn around and look at her. “I grew up with this… I can’t
really imagine what you must be feeling right now… although I have begun to
understand since I met Mireille.” The petite brunette turned to lean on the
balustrade Xander had vacated moments earlier, and watched the traffic and the
scurrying people. She turned her head to look at Xander, her usual sad
expression softened slightly. “You know what the target has done… you have read
our information.”
Xander nodded. “Alexander Thompson,
wanted for three accounts of first degree murder, an account of rape, and an
account of assault and battery with permanent disability as result.”
“That woman will never walk again, Xander… because this
monster exists. It is alright to feel apprehensive about this… but know that what
you are doing is the right thing,” the brunette whispered.
The boy sighed deeply. “And that we found him…”
“We are Noir,” Kirika replied, smiling slightly. “What the
police can’t, we can. That’s why we were hired.”
Xander smiled slightly at that, and joined Kirika at the
balustrade. He leaned softly against her. “Thank you, Mon Coeur.”
“De rien, chérie. De rien,” the girl
replied, leaning into the embrace.
That evening, Xander and Kirika were walking through the
nightly
“Three vampires,” Xander grunted. “In Sunnydale, that would
have been a dozen, at least… I am beginning to see why the Slayer was stationed
there.”
Kirika remained her usual impassive self as she walked next
to Xander to the last graveyard, which was approaching quietly.
“The last one. Think we’ll find anything here?” Xander whispered as he
fingered the stake in his belt. Kirika shrugged, better understanding than
Xander the need for silence. As the couple slipped inside, Xander caught a
glimpse of movement, right before he heard subdued talking. He felt Kirika at
his side, registering the same thing.
The couple slipped closer, finding two large men walking
through the graveyard, on their way to the exit. Remaining behind the nightly
duo, Xander and Kirika trailed the two suspected vampires.
“I wish I were Buffy,” Xander whispered extremely quietly.
“So I could sense whether they’re vampires or not…”
Kirika dipped her head once, her eyes continuing to follow
the two men as they left the graveyard and purposely made their way through the
“Where are they going?” Xander whispered quietly as he
slipped behind Kirika after the two.
“The
“What the…?” Xander grunted, jumping up toward the
offending corner in question, Kirika covering him as she sprinted right behind
him. As the duo rounded the corner, light, smoke, and sound suddenly filled the
room.
Xander relaxed, shaking his head quietly. He put his stake
back in his belt. Kirika looked strangely at him. “It’s a bar,” Xander
explained. “W’ve got one of these in Sunnydale… it’s
a place where vampires and demons come for a quiet drink without bothering
humans, so we generally leave them be… and they’re a good place for
information.”
“Fitting,” Kirika replied, slipping onto a barstool next to
Xander. “Under the
“What’s with this Tower? It’s just another building,”
Xander grunted. The bartender, an amber-skinned demon with deep black glowing
eyes, approached them, his appearance vaguely resembling suspicion.
“New here?” he asked with a Cockney accent.
“Just passing through, not looking for any trouble,” Xander
replied, trying to pass himself off as calm.
The demon-bartender chuckled. “What’ll it be, kid?”
“Red wine,” Xander said. Kirika nodded, indicating she’d
have the same. The bartender shook his head, and trotted off in pursuit of the
drink in question, muttering under his breath something that resembled ‘damn
humans with their exotic orders’.
“So, what’s with the Tower?” Xander asked.
“The
“Oh,” Xander replied, looking up to the ancient stone
ceiling of the room. “I think I can see the irony here.”
“Here,” the bartender interrupted, putting two glasses
down, and filling them with something that was supposed to be red wine. Xander
warily eyed the bartender, and sipped his drink, halfway expecting it to be
blood rather than wine.
It was wine.
“Thanks,” Xander grunted at the demon, which trotted off to
his next costumer, shaking his head.
“It never seizes to amaze me how little you know of these
things,” Kirika said, as if their conversation had never been interrupted.
“Blame years of American public education,” Xander replied
calmly as he sipped his drink. “This isn’t half bad,” he added, commenting on
the wine.
Kirika smiled softly, knowing very well that he was
changing the subject. Or trying to. “Who would have
though a demon bar would have good wine,” she replied. “And maybe I should ask
Mireille to help you with some information… sometimes having historical references
can help you out in this job.”
“Like what?” Xander asked.
Kirika shrugged, and opened her mouth to answer.
“Fresh meat…” a voice drawled from behind the duo,
interrupting Kirika before she could start her reply. Both hunters turned
around, to stare at a black-skinned demon, with fiery red glowing eyes. He was
laughing with exposed razor-sharp canines. The breath of the creature stunk
like rotten fish, immediately lifting the couple’s appetite in the wine.
“Hey, no fighting in the bar!” the bartender shouted. “You
know the rules, Franky!” The black-skinned demon
growled as Xander and Kirika glanced at each other. Franky?
“Out-side, Hu-maan!” the demon
growled, grabbing Xander’s shoulder. A quick glance convinced the hunters that
help shouldn’t be expected from the other patrons. Everyone was sharply
watching the exchange.
Xander grabbed the demon’s paw with both hands, and lifted
it away from his shoulder. “Fine. Outside.”
‘Franky’ growled his
satisfaction, motioning for Xander to go first. “You lose Hu-maan…
and Franky win… with pretty girl.”
Xander swallowed as he halted, feeling a fireball explode
into his stomach as his emotions raged. His fists balled, and Xander could feel
the two spirits inhabiting his body fighting for dominance. He swallowed again,
forcing the fire-hot feeling down with it. “For that, I shall kill you, demon,”
the teenager growled.
‘Franky’ burst out in rolling
laughter, followed by the rest of the patrons. His face coldly neutral, Xander
preceded Franky, Kirika, and the patrons to the large
cobbled square in front of the Tower.
The moment he set foot on the square, Xander felt like a
steam-train had struck him in the back. Letting out a scream of pain and fury,
Xander was blasted clean off his feet, landing a couple of meters further in a
roll, the cobbled doing nothing to soften the impact. Xander could feel his
skin shaving off before he rolled back to his feet, standing up straight.
“I was going to play nice, asshole,” Xander grunted
as he turned to the demon, flipping up his large raincoat as he did so, his
right hand going for the back of his belt.
“Oppo-sed to
what Hu-maan?”
Xander’s face twitched slightly as his right arm blurred
into sight, holding the Magan out and pointed at the demon. Before anyone could
react, the powerful .50 weapon barked fire in the darkness of the
Calmly, he opened his coat, took a clip of low-level demon
killers, slapped it into his golden weapon, and racked the slide to chamber a
round. When eh didn’t hear a thump, Xander looked up from his weapon. Franky was still on his knees, staring at a couple of
bloody spots on his torso. Xander smiled evilly. Taking his weapon into a
two-handed grip, he stared down the barrel.
“Demon,” the young hunter said. Franky
looked up.
“I am going to kill you now.” Franky
grinned in his demonic way, and forced himself to his legs, charging right at
Xander the moment he regained his footing. It was only a couple of meters, and
the demon’s speed surprised Xander totally. He dodged sideways, running in an
attempt to keep away from the demonic trunk-like arms, attached to a 200-kilo
demon with faster speed that Xander thought possible.
Finally, Xander saw an opening, and fired the Magan. The
demon killer round spewed out its mercury filling, ripping a hole
the size of a dollar coin into the demon’s belly, sending black blood spewing
onto the ancient cobbles that had once witnessed the beheading of prominent
political criminals.
Franky let out a keening moan, and Xander could hear the
collected demons hold their breaths as the powerful demon sunk to his knees,
staring in utmost confusion at Xander as he tried in vain to stop the bleeding
from the hole, totally unaware that the filling had blown a larger hole out his
back.
“You threatened someone I care about,” the young hunter
stated coldly. “That is one mistake I can not tolerate.”
Franky opened his mouth, obviously trying to respond, yet failing
to do so. He fell sideways, glowing eyes diminishing
before dying out completely.
The demons stared at Xander in fear and respect as the
young warrior put his gun back where it had come from. He walked to Kirika, and
as they started to re-enter the Tower, the bartender shook from his stupor. “Okay, boys! You know what to do!” he shouted.
The patrons grunted, taking the corpse, seemingly without
effort, and throwing it in the
“You’re going ta have ta say som’ting, kid,” the
bartender drawled. “They’re afraid ta death of ya.”
Xander grunted, looking over his
shoulder at the patrons scattered over the far back seats and tables, as far
away from him as they could. “As I said… we’re not looking for trouble. Leave
us alone, and we’ll leave you alone. But don’t start any trouble… or we’ll end
it.”
The patrons still eyes his suspiciously. Xander sighed.
“Give them all something to drink, put it on my bill,” he grunted to the
bartender. As the demon bartender took orders, the patrons seemed to relax
slightly, and when the drinks arrived, a roar rose up.
“You’re alright for a human, human!” one of the demons
roared.
“What do they call you, anyway?” a second demon asked after
the roar died down.
Xander turned around on his stool, smiling slightly. “Xander. My name’s Xander.”
“Xander,” the demon repeated. “Xander,
the man with the golden gun.”
Xander groaned. A third demon plopped down on the stool on
the other side of Xander. “Ya did alright out there,
Kid. It’s about time someone took care of Franky… he
got into too much trouble for his own good… or for ours. Joe, another one, will ya?”
Joe, the demon bartender, refilled the demon’s glass with
something neither human wanted to ponder too much. “Nice meeting ya, Kid,” the demon said, slapping back his glass, and
leaving the bar.
Xander woke up with the feeling of sunshine playing on his
face. Unable to resist, he smiled at the feeling of warmth as he crossed from
sleep to awake. Stretching lazily, he let out a contented groan before opening
his eyes and scanning the room. As he had come to expect, Kirika was already
up. Slowly, he stepped out of bed and put on a black bathrobe with red borders
he had bought just after the successful completion of the job in
“Kirika? Mireille?” the boy asked as he stepped through the living
room to the kitchen. He heard no response, and frowned slightly as he pushed
open the door leading to the kitchen. The place was deserted, and Xander almost
missed the porcelain teapot sitting on the table. A porcelain cup was standing
right now to it, inviting him to pour it full of the tea.
Xander smiled at the thoughtful gesture. He poured himself
a cup of the tea, while silently thanking Kirika, and counting his blessings to
have found someone like her. Taking his cup with him, Xander walked back into
the living room, sitting down behind Mireille’s laptop. He put the cup down
next to it on the pool table before opening up the device, and starting to type
away at the small keyboard.
Within minutes, Xander had reached a level buried deep
within the Internet, protected by codes, ciphers, and authentication requests.
All of them, he knew how to enter. Mireille had been adamant, and Xander had
seen no other choice but to learn. He grinned to himself when the screen he was
looking for popped up.
Noir745-XA> Triple X, you there?
XXX> I am here.
Noir745-XA> What’s the good
word today?
XXX> The weather is cool and
shadowy.
Noir745-XA> Save for LA and SF.
XXX> Where it’s hot and humid. It’s you.
Noir745-XA> And it’s you, too.
What’s today’s addy?
XXX> Usual access. Follow instructions.
Noir745-XA> Okay.
The modified chat-screen turned black as the laptop
suddenly bleeped. However, Xander wasn’t worried as the screen soon returned,
having changed to a wholly different lay-out: a black background with a simply
12pt purple text. Xander started reading it, scanning the file for any useful
information. When Mireille and Kirika returned from their shopping, they found
Xander looking at a video file.
“Downloading something interesting?” Mireille asked,
casting a glance at the screen.
“Surveillance footage,” Xander answered calmly, frowning
slightly at the screen.
“Oh?” Mireille asked. “Are you having a job without us?”
Xander chuckled at that, shaking his head. “This is
Sunnydale… I couldn’t just leave it. I’ve asked someone to keep an eye on it.”
“Taking care of your friends, even when you’re not there, chéri?” Kirika asked as she quietly shuffled to his
other side, three sets of eyes now locked on the video.
Xander simply shrugged in response. “That’s
“The Slayer, right?” Mireille asked as he identified Buffy. Xander simply
nodded in answer. The video stopped a mere minute later, and Xander
disconnected from the secured server.
Noir745-XA> Payment is underway. See you next time.
XXX> Pleasure doing business with you.
The laptop’s screen went black for a second as the secured
private network tunnel through the internet disengaged. Xander turned to
Kirika. “Thanks for leaving the tea… I swear, I don’t
know what I’ve done to earn someone who takes care of me as well as you do.”
Kirika saw through the easy smile to the sadness that was
in his eyes… he meant those words more than he realized himself. She smiled
gently, kissing him on the lips. “You are who you are, just as I am who I am,”
she philosophized. “That’s enough.”
Xander smiled, chocolate eyes twinkling. She got up form
his lap, pulling him to his feet. “Come, Chéri…”
Xander, curious, allowed himself to be pulled to his feet
by the small brunette’s ever-surprising strength. He followed her to the
elevated bedroom plateau, where she had dropped the bags she and Mireille had
brought home with them.
“Put this on,” the girl instructed, handing him a bag.
Xander curiously looked into it.
“Is this…” he asked, voice trailing off.
“A gi,” Kirika replied.
“In
Xander shrugged; curious as to what she had up her sleeve
this time. He disrobed fully before pulling on the gi,
no longer ashamed to show himself naked in front of her. She had begun to rub
off on her.
“I noticed you were running more than you were fighting,
avoiding the confrontation because of the demon’s larger strength and mass. If
his speed had been just a bit greater, you might have been in serious trouble.”
“Tell me about it,” Xander grunted as he pulled the jacket
closed over his naked upper body. “He nearly tore me in half!”
“I am going to teach you the arts of Aikido,” Kirika said.
“It is a martial art that teaches how to use the force, speed, and strength of
your opponent against him. It is an excellent art when faced with demon twice
your size and ten times your strength. The stronger your opponent, the more
damage you will do by using his own strength.”
Xander smiled. “Cool.”
“Then let’s go,” Kirika said, smiling as she hopped down
the stairs to the lower-level living room. Xander stared after her, a little
unaccustomed to the level of enthusiasm she was putting out. As his eyes
followed her, her came to the realization something wasn’t right in the living
room. Where did all the furniture go to? As he descended the small flight, he
knew where it had all gone: Mireille had pushed them aside to create an open
space large enough to train in.
Xander shook his head, grinning widely at the realization
of just how well these two were played into each other. “First, I’ll teach you
the basics, building on your already existing knowledge of martial arts.”
The boy smiled. “Cool. Let’s go!” he said, grinning widely.
Kirika turned to face him, in what had every appearance of
being a comfortable pose. “Attack me,” she said on that peculiar tone of hers.
Xander felt just a little apprehensive. He knew from
experience that attacking Kirika was a very hurtful exercise in pain
management. He dropped into a Karate pose, and took deep, calming breaths. His
body and heart centered.
“Xander.”
“What?” he asked, still not giving any signs of moving.
“Attack me,” Kirika repeated, not wavering from her
straight-and-comfortable pose. “How can I teach you if you don’t-“
In her mid-speech, Xander lurched forward, striking
at her chest while at the same time preparing to aim a spin-kick to her face if
she intercepted. The young hunter had every hope that she would block him.
Instead, she seemed to fluidly move in the opposite
direction he had thought she would move. She grabbed his wrist in his
mid-swing, and catapulted him further forward as she changed her movement in a
fluidly rotation movement. Instead of releasing him, she held onto his wrist,
and jerked it as his feet left the ground. The world inverted for Xander, who
landed on the ground like a sack of potatoes.
“Oomph!” the boy breathed as he landed flat on the ground. I
just KNEW it!
Kirika stood still, watching her student. Mireille had
taken seat in a chair placed along the wall, a faint smile on her meticulously
red-colored lips. He’s not getting up. Smart move, the blonde approved,
hr smile growing slightly. I never grow tired of seeing Kirika move… it’s
like ballet, the assassin appended, watching in curiosity as her brunette
friend remained in her position, looking at Xander.
“That hurt,” he grunted as he slowly rolled onto his hands
and knees, before going to his feet, back facing her. “I just knew you were
going to do that…”
“Attack me,” Kirika said once more, head cocked slightly.
“It is the only way you can learn… feel what it does, Xander. The movement is
that of air and water… fluid, not earth.”
Xander swallowed calmly, and closed his eyes and he turned
around. Mireille looked on in confusion, not really understanding what Kirika
was saying. Xander, on the other hand, comprehended completely.
He charged, this time going directly with his leg for her
side. Don’t go for the head… head-kicks are too slow. Go for the side. It’s
easier, closer by, and thus more stable a stance. Going for the head with your
feet shows a lack of confidence in your opponent’s abilities, Xander heard
Kirika instruct him in his mind.
Kirika dipped down to her side, arm extending to catch his
leg. Xander changed the movement, going higher than he had originally intended,
trying to go over Kirika’s in-reaching grip. The brunette reached up, grabbing
his ankle, and once again the rotation movement she had displayed. Xander saw
the wall approach. He bounced off it, using both hands to absorb the impact,
his leg snapping out of the girl’s grip with the impact.
He threw a back-handed hit at her head, which she ducked
under, extended her leg, and swept his feet down from under him. He hit the
floor again.
Twenty minutes later, Mireille winced as she saw the boy
hit the ground once more. But, instead of staying down, he immediately sprang
to his feet, and charged at Kirika. Mireille’s blue eyes opened wide, before
she smiled. Kirika… I hope you know what you’re doing. Pushing Xander into
that state where he learns incredibly fast is one thing… doing it while
teaching him martial arts is another entirely!
Kirika dodged, grabbed the boy’s wrist, and took her shot
at throwing him to the floor. Instead of hitting it on his back, Xander landed
on his feet, using her own movement against her to snap his wrist out of her
hand. Immediately, he leapt up, aiming a full 360-degree tornado kick at her
head. Kirika dodged sideways to increase the length of Xander’s swing, buying
her time. Solidly bracing herself, her two hands grabbed his spinning
outstretched leg. Dodging low, Kirika added momentum to the swing, spinning around
her axis before brining her hands down.
Xander hit the ground, immediately spinning up from where
he hit the floor. He was breathing deeply, angrily. He swallowed angrily,
swiping some blood away from his nose.
“Move like air, strike like water,” Kirika spoke for the
first time in over fifteen minutes.
“Move like air, strike like water,” Xander repeated. “Move
like air, strike like water…” he charged at her. She moved to intercept. He
changed at the last moment, avoiding her grip, dodging under it and striking at
her unprotected side.
What? Mireille grunted
at the same time she saw Xander go for Kirika’s open side.
Kirika actually smiled as she jumped back, for the
first time landing in a combat pose. “Well done, Xa-“ she said, breaking off when Xander charged at her anew,
making her dodge a strike before she grabbed him, and launched him against the
wall. Xander made a sickening sound, before sliding down it.
“Aw…”
“You’re learning well, Mon Coeur,” the girl whispered
gently as she helped him up. “Come… enough training for a while. Let’s see
about that bruise on your wrist and your split lip…”
Xander gingerly touched his upper lip. “Hitting a wall full
force does that to you, Chérie,” he grunted.
“Sorry about that…” the brunette apologized.
“I was in that zone again,” Xander grunted. “Don’t worry
about it…”
“It was my fault for pushing too hard,” Kirika said, gently
guiding Xander into a chair and picking up the first aid kit that Mireille had
meticulously placed there before the training session had begun. The young
brunette took out the bottle of antiseptic and dapped at Xander’s lip. After
doing so, she closed the kit again.
“Now that you know the strength of Aikido, we should start
with the forms,” Kirika told Xander, taking his hands and pulling him to his
feet.
By the time night fell, Mireille was watching with open
mouth. Not having been there in the mansion, she had never witnessed a training
session between the two, and the display certainly drove home that she never
was going to end up in the same ring with either of them. For hours,
Kirika drilled Xander in the various forms, alternating theoretical katas with hands-on practice fights.
How Xander was still on his feet by the end of the day
would be anybody’s guess. His eyes were half-open slits, his entire body was
shaking like a leaf and his breath was deep and ragged. Sweat mixed with blood
to create ugly brownish-red streaks as it poured over his skin.
“It was a good lesson,” Kirika then said, bowing. Xander
took a couple of deep breaths and relaxed his stance. He bowed as well, before
stumbling to a chair, and falling into it.
“I’m out of shape,” Xander complained, coughing a couple of
times, and swiping at his split lip. “Where’s the time I could take this
training sessions on a daily basis?”
Kirika smiled gently at him as she sunk to the floor next
to the chair, holding the first aid kit. “We’ll keep it up until you’re good
enough, Mon Coeur.”
Xander nodded tiredly, before letting his head bob sideways.
He didn’t feel Kirika remove his shirt and pants before dressing his wounds and
finally putting him to bed.
“Ten and a half hours of that, and he was still standing. I
don’t know how he did it… some of that stuff looked lethal enough to be
outlawed,” Mireille grunted at her younger companion.
“I have trained him well… both his body and mind are
capable of going very deep,” the brunette replied as she went through the
motions to make some relaxing herbal tea. “Xander’s body, as far as I can tell,
has always had these great depths, able to go through great pain… the
possessions merely brought it out to the surface, enabling his mind to use
that potential.” Kirika closed her eyes at this point. “It’s not fair…”
Mireille waited patiently for Kirika to finish the tea.
When the duo had taken seat at the pool table, Mireille finally asked, “What
isn’t?”
Kirika swallowed slightly, before looking up. “He’s so much
like me… I had my childhood stolen… by Noir… was brought up to fight, to kill, not to have any emotions. I was trained as a weapon…” she
took a breath. “Xander grew up with two abusive parents, abused physically and
emotionally for years on end without relenting. And then his world turned
upside down when he found out about vampires… and as soon as things start to
grow better, he’s done this to!” The brunette’s fiercely angry
red-glowing eyes burned toward Mireille. “He’s possessed not once, but twice.
Turned first into a vicious monster, and then into a cold fighting machine. His
childhood was ripped away from him by abusive parents, vampires, magic, and
evil sorcerers!” Balling her fist, Kirika went on on
a more subdued tone, one that most certainly did not belie the truth of her
statement. “If I ever come across the people who did this, I will kill them.”
Mireille took a sip of her tea, before letting out a
chuckle. “If you still have the chance,” the blonde answered with a slightly
cold edge to her voice. An edge Kirika knew well.
“Mireille…”
“You don’t honestly think you’re the only one who would protect
the boy, would you?” Mireille answered with a smile, before finishing off her
tea, standing up, and disappearing into the bathroom to change for bed.
“Thank you…” Kirika whispered to the closed door, before
quietly making her way to the bedroom she shared with Xander.
“Oh, yeah, that’s the spot!” Xander grunted under the
artful manipulations of Mei, the talented masseuse at the country club. Next to
him, Bertrand Mestrot was undergoing a similar treatment by Mei’s equally
talented colleague Aoi.
“What have you been doing, Xander?” Bertrand asked
with a worried tone. “You didn’t get into a fight, did you?”
Xander chuckled slightly. “No… it’s my girlfriend.”
“Kirika? But I thought you two were getting along so well!” Bertrand
exclaimed. “And just what did she do? A small slip of a girl
like her…”
“Don’t ever underestimate Kirika,” Xander grunted to his
friend. “That ‘small slip of a girl’ holds at least half a dozen black belts…
and that’s by my count. She doesn’t know herself. She grew up in them. And
that’s just the point… she’s been teaching me the martial arts. The hard way…
but I’m learning.”
Bertrand eyed his younger friend. “If you say so…”
“I grew up with abusive parents, Bertrand… I know what it’s
like to be abused… what Kirika’s doing is teaching me,” the boy said on a sad
tone, cursing himself for letting the truth slip.”
“Your spine is out of alignment,” Mei said gently. “I must
right it, Monsieur Alexandre.”
“Sure, go ahead,” Xander grunted. “Right now, I’ll need
every edge I can get.”
Mei nodded, and clambered onto the massage table with
Xander. Crossing one arm across his chest she lifting his
backward, arching his back. Slowly, she felt his spine with her right
hand, before making a fist and pushing it on a certain spot before pulling hard
with her left arm. Xander let out a loud groan before the process was repeated
two more times.
“That looked painful,” Bertrand commented.
“It feels great now,” Xander answered calmly, letting out a
breath. “I feel better than I’ve felt in quite a while, actually. Thanks, Mei.
That really does feel great!”
“Your spine was slightly malformed, Monsieur Alexandre… I
have righted it, and now your chi can flow freely once more,” the
oriental masseuse said.
Xander knew better than to give a typical western answer.
In his short life, he had seen and done things that would be far stranger than
accepting that there were currents of life energy going through one’s body.
Bertrand chuckled. That kind of reaction, Xander
thought silently. “Well, who am I to question the reason when it works,” the
boy replied diplomatically. “Perhaps you should have Aoi-san
do the same to you, Bertrand… I can recommend it!”
The older man lifted an eyebrow at his young companion, as
if to say ‘you’re kidding me, right?’ Xander looked back with all the
innocence of a newly-born angel. Bertrand grunted something unintelligible.
“Fine… if it’ll make you happy. Aoi-san,
how about it?” he asked his masseuse.
Aoi’s hands slid down his spine, feeling the left and right
sides. “It is slightly out of alignment… if Monsieur wishes it, I can rectify
it,” the woman replied gently.
“Fine, fine… do it,” the man grunted.
Three sharp tugs and an equal amount of groans later,
Bertrand released a pained breath. “That really was as painful as it looked…
and it really does feel great.”
“Just as I said,” Xander said with a knowing look on his
face. “Sometimes, you need to hurt before you’ll heal…”
Bertrand could only stare at his friend for uttering those
words of wisdom.
It was now the beginning of August. Xander and Kirika were
returning to the luxurious loft after having spent a very nice couple of hours
at one of
"It feels good, to be able to do that," Xander said, his voice
indicating the state of relaxation he was in. Ever since participating in
missions himself, his voice had taken on a slightly colder tint… a tint that
had totally vanished at the moment.
Kirika nodded, her smile widening slightly. "We should do this more often…
I like picnics."
Xander smiled as well, putting his free arm around her shoulders as they
entered the building. "We'll have a picnic whenever we can," he promised.
The brunette girl smiled in appreciation. Xander felt a warm feeling envelop
his heart at the sight, thoughts darkening momentarily when he realized that
this was probably Kirika's first ever picnic… he shook it off.
By the time he and Kirika entered the loft, his smile was genuine once again.
They found Mireille hunched over the laptop, and immediately, both knew what
was coming. Mireille always sat up prim and proper… to find her sitting with
that small hunch in her back, staring intently at the tiny screen could only
mean one thing.
“Mireille?” Kirika asked. The blonde looked up.
“Good you’re there,” the elder assassin said with that
silken-deadly voice of hers. “I want you two to take a look at something
interesting.”
Xander and Kirika exchanged barely a glance before they
went over to the laptop, strangely curious about what could have piqued
Mireille’s interest like this. They hunched over the blonde’s shoulders.
“As usual, the client remains anonymous,” Mireille said as
the two others scanned the contents of the screen. “But the job itself sounds
really interesting.”
“A Japanese businessman at the top of a bunch of
ultra-hardcore Yakuza members,” Xander read. “Sounds like a standard job to
me…”
Kirika’s eyes narrowed. “Something isn’t right. It doesn’t
feel right.”
“You have it too, huh?” Mireille asked, her slim fingers
racing the keyboard. “I found it strange, too. This is what I found out…” a new
dossier filled the screen.
Xander whistled. Kirika’s eyes went wide open. “He’s buying
lots and lots of companies… and using the profits to build himself a private
army. The Yakuza are merely the beginning,” Xander grunted, sinking to his
knees next to Mireille’s chair. “What the FUCK is going on? This looks like a
frigging fifties B-movie script! Guy gets rich, buys army, wants
to take over the world.”
“We don’t know the last,” Mireille said. “But whatever he
wants that army for; we can be assured it won’t be for the advancement of world
peace.”
“So we’re agreed, then? We’re taking the job?” Mireille
asked. Xander and Kirika nodded simultaneously.
“Good. Then I’m going to track down out client, and
accept,” the blonde said, starting to tap the keyboard. Xander watched in
interest as his teacher hacked through the world’s toughest security systems.
“MI6? As in British Intelligence MI6?”
Xander asked as Mireille confirmed the job… directly to the chief of
operation’s private, not to mention top-secret, e-mail account.
“As I said, we work for everyone who gets us a cool job,”
the blonde said with a devilish grin. Xander smiled widely, shaking his head as
he went off to the kitchen, where Kirika was making tea… and he was in
desperate need of some. He knew that the next week would be hell on his
constitution… it didn’t seem to get any easier going on these jobs, no matter
how many of them he did. Deep inside, Xander hoped that it would never change.
Killing people should never be easy.
Xander walked calmly through the late night cemetery, hands
buried deep in the pockets of his long black coat, senses on ‘ultra-high’, eyes
shifting from left to right, trying to identify vampires. It was his first
night in
So far, he had yet to find any vampires. That didn’t mean
they weren’t there, though, so Xander kept his guard up, that special little
corner of his subconscious that housed the abilities instilled by magical
possessions. Xander leaned against a headstone as he gazed up at the stars for
a moment.
Things had progressed far for him since he had left
Sunnydale, the river that was his life taking on horrid rapids when he had gone
to the mansion with Kirika. And intensely painful voyage of self-discovery that
was for the seventeen-year-old boy… a voyage he had thanked God for he had not
to take alone. She had been with him every step of the way, supporting him, helping
him, showing him that he was not alone in this.
Xander swallowed. The things he had learned at that mansion
still haunted him. The painful truths and realities he had come to face had
practically destroyed him. Only through the grace of God and through the
relentless support of Kirika had he survived. Xander blinked, slipping into the
subconscious meditation mode he had learned, and told his subconscious to boost
his senses once more.
Eyes shifting once again, and with ears peaked, Xander made
his way through the cemetery, almost resigning in the fact that he wasn’t to
meet any vampires this evening. And with it went every hope of fighting himself
into exhaustion. One thing he no longer had problems with was beating the crap
out of some vampires. Suddenly, his body froze in mid-stride and Xander’s head
shifted from left to right, trying to pinpoint the disturbance. It wasn’t
really his senses that warned him… it was more like instinct. A deep and dark
instinct, one that Xander had come to associate with the Hyena. It was
something that disturbed him, and he had tried to suppress it as much as
possible.
His nose twitched as he breathed in. Something wasn’t
right. Closing his eyes, Xander scanned with his hearing alone. He heard
shuffling. Rather far away, too… he heard a startled yelp, coming from what
appeared to be a male throat. Xander’s eyes shot open. Now that he had a
target, he homed in on it like a cruise missile with a horrible attitude
problem. He vaulted over two headstones, landed on the hard ground and pushed
of in a direct line for the next stone. Placing one had on top of the white
marble, Xander pushed himself up, making a full flip in mid air as he landed in
a crouch not far from the disturbance.
Shoving of, Xander rotated and placed his back against the
rock face, right hand instinctively reaching for the stake on his belt. Now
I know why I didn’t detect them… they’re in a cave. Drawing the stake,
Xander closed his eyes and let his reactions take over. He jumped into the
cave, sparse illumination provided by a couple of falling torches. He saw three
vampires, all male and of Japanese origin, attacking a woman of Hispanic origin
and a Caucasian man. The woman appeared to be fighting the vampires, while the
man clung to a package of papers like his life depended on it, pushed against
the wall trying not to be in his companion’s way.
Xander growled as he charged into the cave, drawing the
attention of the fighters. Running straight into the group, stake ready, Xander
was prepared for it when the vampire nearest him turned to him and executed a
charge of his own. Without dropping a beat, Xander fell to his free left hand,
pushing off the ground and sweeping the vampire’s legs from under him. As the
medium-built vampire hit the ground, Xander was already on top of him and
planted his take into the undead creature’s heart.
Xander was already on his feet before the vampire had fully
changed to dust. The two remaining vampires glanced at each other, and charged
the immediate threat, leaving the Hispanic woman to stare in confusion at the
change in her opponents. Xander ducked to his right, evading a swing by the
left vampire, propping his elbow against the wall and using his arm to reverse
his trajectory. The left vampire’s swing had missed by the time Xander
re-appeared in front of his face.
The vampire hit the ground soon after as Xander’s heavy
combat boot hit the vampire’s groan. At the same time, Xander kept on pressing
his back against the left wall to avoid being grabbed by the right vampire.
Jumping over the groaning form on the floor, Xander clocked the vampire across
the face with a reverse punch from his left hand. As the vampire’s face was
turned, Xander pushed his stake into the vampire’s shoulder, making the beast
scream. He withdrew the stake and pushed into the heart. The second vampire
turned to dust.
Suddenly, the Jaws of Life clenched around his torso, and
Xander growled in pain as the third vampire had regained his footing and
clamped his arms around Xander. The hunter was forced to drop his stake as his
hands clawed uselessly at the vicegrip of the undead
beast.
Think, Harris! Xander
shouted to himself, forcing to swallow his panic and ignore the desperate plea
for air from his lungs. Biting his tongue between his teeth, Xander forced
himself back to the present through the blackness of the fog that threatened to
overwhelm him. Snarling like a beast, Xander pushed off with his legs, using
his opponent’s grip against him as Xander’s two legs came high off the ground
before crashing down in the vampire’s feet. Xander heard the viciously snapping
bones as his two heavy heels dug deep into the exposed appendages.
The vampire released him, and Xander fell to the ground,
taking deep long-full deep breaths of tainted cavernous air as if it were the
cleanest mountain air. The vampire groaned, and clambered to his broken feet,
falling toward Xander in an obvious attempt to finish the job. His eyes still
foggy and his brain clouded over, Xander reacted on sheer instinct as he
grabbed Magan, in one motion switching off the safety and clocking the gun to
semi-auto. Without thinking, he emptied an entire clip of vampire killers into
the undead beast, all of them hitting home before it had a chance to dust.
The heavy weapon clattered to the ground as Xander’s
strength gave way in deep gulping breaths of air. Rolling over, the hunter
forced himself to his hands and knees, coughing up blood. The vampire’s grip
had done more damage than Xander had originally thought it had. Suddenly, he
heard a voice say something, and a hand was placed under his armpit.
Still in combat mode, Xander reacted instinctively by
putting distance between himself and the unknown person, grabbing Magan off the
ground as he encountered it, pointing the deadly weapon at the person. Blinking
ferociously, Xander tried to clear his mind. The Hispanic woman was staring at
him incredulously while the young man was hiding behind his companion’s back.
“That weapon isn’t going to help you… it’s
empty,” the woman said with a small smile.
Xander groaned, reached into his pocket, and withdrew a
second clip. Slowly, he reloaded the weapon before stuffing the empty clip into
his caot and putting the weapon into the holster on
his back. “Sorry… he got me harder than I liked,” Xander groaned.
The woman smiled wider, before stepping up to him and
offering him a helping hand. Xander gratefully accepted. “By the way, I’m
Sidney Fox; this is my assistant, Nigel Bailey.”
“I’m Xander… Xander Harris,” Xander groaned as he wobbled
slightly.
“Woa! Looks like that thing really did get you good. What were
they, by the way? You seemed to know them pretty well, seeing how you took
them down,”
“Vampires… they’re vampires…” he stood up, nodding his thanks
to Sidney, making her look at him as he seemed pretty much fine now. “And you
don’t seem surprised. Most people I save are ready to go see a shrink for the
rest of their lives.”
“We’re Relic Hunters,”
“No kidding,” Nigel brought in, British accent thick
through stress.
Xander chuckled. “It’s good to speak English again… it’s
been a while,” he said wistfully. “Relic Hunters, huh?” he then piped up. “Is
that what you were doing in a cemetery, in the middle of the night?”
“Well, officially, we’re not allowed to examine these
grounds…”
“I see,” Xander said with an easy smile. “In that case, I
feel it my obligation to accompany you… I wouldn’t want anything to happen to
you now that I’ve saved you.”
Nigel just stared at him, back to
“So, what are we looking for?” Xander asked a minute or two
later as the small group carefully made their way deeper into the cave.
“There’s a legend stemming back 1500 years,”
“The Lightning Blade,” Nigel picked up. “It is said that
this man united
“And that’s what we’re going after?
“Death shall move on swift wings to he who enters this
grave,”
“Sorry,” he said sheepishly after his two companions fixed
him with a glare. “You’ve got to admit, that doesn’t sound like much of a
curse.”
Xander nodded slightly, able to relate to the better safe
than sorry attitude. The threesome shuffled further, deeper into the cave.
Nigel made a horrid jump soon after as
As the trio shuffled past their unfortunate predecessor,
something flickered beyond the edge of Xander’s vision. His instincts took
over, and he dropped to the ground, grabbing Sidney and Nigel with him as he
did so. They hit the hard rock bottom mere tenths of a second before a HUGE axe
flashed through the air, where their necks had been mere moments earlier.
“Anyone can curse like this,” Xander grunted as he got up
into a crawling position, Sidney and Nigel following him. “What’s the fun in
cursing someone if you’re not using magic?” he debated with himself, half-loud,
causing Nigel and Sidney to exchange strange glances.
“Cursed shall be the soul of the person who disturbs His
eternal rest,”
“I may not be a historian, but weren’t it the Egyptians who
protected their dead with curses?” Xander finally asked.
“This is indeed highly unusual,” Nigel whispered.
“If this goes on, this guy will end up being a mummy,”
Xander grunted. Nigel and Sidney glared at him. “What?” he defended.
“The Japanese didn’t know how to make mummies,” both
answered at him at the same time.
As the trio moved on, Xander couldn’t help but whisper,
“They didn’t protect their dead either.” Silently, he moved further forward,
taking the point position without being asked, or without offering. The
disturbing feeling within was increasing steadily. His skin was tingling, and
that was never a good sign. Suddenly, something snapped within the boy, and he
darted a couple of steps back; just in time to avoid an arrow flying from the
wall. He dove forward, avoiding a second arrow, and drawing Magan in the same
motion. He pushed up, jumping over a third arrow.
All hell broke loose the moment he touched the ground, as
Arrows came flying from all over the place. Xander closed his eyes, forcing
himself to calm down and operate on his instincts rather than his other senses.
He jumped up, shooting a couple of arrow-launching holes behind him. He landed
in a widespread stance, and dodged under an arrow coming from his side. He
aimed and shot an arrow flying to his back. He squeezed the trigger a second
time, firing through the fireball that was the shot arrow and taking out the
launcher behind it.
Sweeping over the ground, Xander held a deadly dance with
the arrows. Less than a minute later, Xander filled a new clip into his gun,
holstering it on the back of his belt. “Clear,” he said. “Interesting
challenge… I can hardly wait for the next one,” he said sarcastically.
Sidney and Nigel kept glancing at Xander as they proceeded,
totally unsure of what to make of the earlier display. Not half an hour ago, he
was on the floor, down by a vampire, and now he was dodging arrows as if born
to it.
“Is it my imagination, or shouldn’t that guy be on the
floor? Seeing how that vampire tackled him earlier,” Nigel finally voiced both
of their concerns.
“I heal fast,” Xander replied from ahead. “Or rather, my
wounds close fast. Thanks to my unusual lifestyle,” he grunted. More like
thanks to an animalistic possession with a species that is a notoriously fast
healer. He snorted silently. Just about the only good thing to come from
it… too bad I can’t use it at full power… Xander shuddered at the memory of
being possessed, of the things he had done under the Hyena Spirit’s influence.
They emerged into a chamber of sort,
“Sid, come look at this,” Nigel whispered as he bent over
the coffin, swiping a millennium and a half of dust away, uncovering what were
once golden lettering carved into the stone.
“Here rests He who should not be disturbed. May curses
befall anyone who disturbs the Eternal Slumber,”
“Told ya this guy would be a
mummy,” Xander said with a devilish grin as the trio gazed upon the mummified
remains of a huge 2 meter tall man, bony fingers clenched around a silvery tube
of ornate design.
“This is the discovery of the century… a real mummy in the
middle of
With a horrid snap, the tube came clear, and Xander barely
had time to note it looked like a sword handle before a horrible groaning noise
made the whole cave shake on its foundations. The moonbeam shifted,
illuminating a section of wall that had remained untouched until now.
Death shall befall those who disturb His Eternal Rest.
The entire wall then fell away, the stray moonbeam fading
into the darkness until the low rumbling noise increased.
“You have got to be shitting me,” Xander grunted as
a huge boulder came rolling down the slope. The trio ran. “Can this get any
more cliché? A beheading axe, a wall of arrows, and now a rolling
boulder?”
“This wasn’t a cliché 1500 years ago,”
Xander looked over his shoulder to the rolling stone. “Good
point,” he conceded, redoubling his efforts, activating just a bit more of the
Hyena within him. He didn’t dare use more… last time it had nearly cost him his
life. As his speed increased, he grabbed Sidney and Nigel and lifted them
effortlessly from the ground, dragging them with him on the mad dash away from
the boulder.
As they ran, the sword-handle dislodged from
“Leave it!”
“Run!” Xander shouted as he dove for the handle. “I am not
leaving here empty-handed!” he grabbed the handle and forced himself to his
legs, just in time to see the boulder practically upon him. Panic welled up
when something deep within him stirred. The handle in his hand moved.
It moved!? Xander’s
startled mind found time to note as his adrenaline slowed down his perception
of time. He clenched harder on the handle when a searing pain and glorious
ecstasy overtook him. Screaming like a madman, he noted the poisonous green
beam of energy shooting fro the handle, extending to about the length of a
decent sword.
Still howling, Xander extended the energy weapon toward the
rock, startling as the boulder melted where the weapon touched. Seemingly on
their own accord, his arm moved, swiping at the rock in strange and unfamiliar
geometrical patterns. Ten seconds later, the beam disengaged from its own
accord, and Xander stared at a small puddle of hardened lava at his feet.
“You have got to be shitting me,” the young hunter
growled as he pocketed the item, and made his way outside to rejoin his two
companions. “I am so going to pay a visit to George Lucas about this,”
he said darkly to himself as he emerged from the cave.
“I will take that,” a cultured voice said, causing Xander
to look up, staring directly into the barrels of fifty M16 rifles, held by
stone-cold looking men. Sidney and Nigel were restrained; mouths taped shut,
stared in pure disbelief at him, not believing he just walked out of that cave
without injuries.
Xander groaned. “Oh cut me a fucking BREAK!” he
snarled as he recognized the man who had spoken. This was the target of Noir…
before him stood the man known as Aoshi Kinamura… the
man who was buying himself an army.
Forcing himself to calmness, the teenager surveyed the
scene. Fifty-two men armed with M-16s. His eyes flicked from left to
right. Once. Twenty-two of them are pointing their
weapons, safeties off, at me. Twenty-five are standing back, in reserve,
weapons shoulders, yet loaded. Five are guarding Sidney and Nigel. Two
captives, tied like hands and feet, unable to move. One evil
overlord. Options?
Xander swallowed, locking his eyes with Aoshi, knowing it
to be an insulting stance to take in Japanese customs. Option #1: draw
Magan, and flow like the wind. Scenes flashed before Xander’s mental eye. Result;
death of Sidney and Nigel, and possible death of Self.
Xander cocked his head. Option #2: go for Sidney and Nigel, and try to
get them away. Would entail a direct dash for the armed men, and results are
death of Sidney, Nigel, and quite possibly, Self. Option #3… Bluff. Use that
fancy Light Saber to scare the bejeezes out of them. Option #4: surrender…
Xander’s fingers
curled around the handle in his pocket. You’d better work… he whispered,
grabbing the weapon and releasing it from his pocket. “This?” he asked in
response to Aoshi’s earlier order. “This is what you want?”
“Exactly, boy,” Aoshi answered with a smile.
Xander answered the smile with a cold smirk of his own as
his second hand joined his first on the hilt. Please work, he prayed
again as his hands locked into place. Xander squeezed the tube. Nothing
happened, and the teenager brought the weapon up to his eye-level, where he
stared directly into the top, as if looking for the blockage. He saw nothing.
“Eh…”
“That weapon won’t work for you, boy!” Aoshi snarled. “It
takes a very special kind of person to make it work, and even then, it requires
extensive training!”
Xander snarled, dropping the silver tube. “Good choice,”
Aoshi said, signaling a couple of his men to scurry forward to fetch the
handle. There’s too many of them…damnit! His arms quivered as his fists
clenched painfully. He wanted to do something. Desperately, he wanted to do
something… anything… to get them out of here. But the numerical
superiority and tactical position were both against him.
Sidney, Nigel, and Xander were pushed head-first into a
well-lit cubic cell. Xander had kept his eyes out the entire time, but bound in
a similar way to Sidney and Nigel, he had been unable to act upon any openings
he might have seen.
“Ow, ow, ow,” Nigel whined as he tried to worm his way into
an upright position. Xander merely scowled, while
“Here, let me help,” a cultured British voice suddenly said
as a friendly face filled Xander’s field of vision. The man looked to be in his
mid to late thirties, with a friendly beard that seemed to scream ‘trust me’ at
the boy. Xander immediately felt weary, but that soon lifted as the man untied
first Sidney and then Xander.
“Thank you, mister…?” Xander asked.
“Bond. James Bond,” the man answered, shaking Xander’s
offered hand. “Run into the wrong person?”
“Didn’t we all?” Xander replied with a smirk. “Me and my two companions were going through an old cave,
looking for an ancient artifact, when this guy shows up, shoves an M-16 under
our nose, and demands the artifact.”
James’ smile lost its splendor, his entire face seeming to
harden. “This artifact… wouldn’t happen to be the Sword of Lightning?”
“Lightning Blade, actually,” Xander answered. “Why? Heard
of it?”
“This is worse than I thought,” the man growled as he made
his way for the massive steel door. “We need to get out of here,” he whispered
as his hands went over the door’s seal, as if trying to feel his way into
opening it.
“I’m an expert in ancient languages. Aoshi brought me here
to translate some documents in ancient Japanese… I had just broken the code
that was worked in the document when Aoshi had me thrown in here,” the man
explained. “No vents, I already checked,” he added when he saw
“When do they come to give us some food?” she suddenly
asked. “Maybe we could…”
“I haven’t been here for that long, but I haven’t received
anything yet,” James answered, way too calm for
Xander had settled in a lotus position, and he had heard
everything. His body, however, remained in the deep meditation-trance as he
tried to regain some strength in his body. The vampire, the traps, and the use
of the Light Saber had severely depleted his reserves, and the boy needed a
recharge before he could attempt anything. Finally, he let his attention
wander, allowing his mind the chance to rest as well. Putting himself down this
deep had advantages and disadvantages, though.
The all-encompassing darkness made for no nightmares, and
an accelerated sleep cycle. The downside was that he was totally cut off from
reality. He might be subjected to the most horrid of tortures without him ever
knowing it. He could simply be killed without ever being able to lift a finger.
Finally, he drifted back to the surface.
“It’s been four hours, and that guy hasn’t budged,” he heard
Nigel whisper. “He takes a breath every once in a while, and that’s it.”
James bent over, and gently put his fingers on Xander’s
jugular. His eyes opened in surprise, a big show of emotion for the classy
Englishman. He glanced at his watch. “His heart… it’s beating twenty-five times
a minute. Interesting.”
Xander chose to remain in meditation as his body told him
that there was still some damage here and there, and slowly he drifted a little
deeper. His thoughts became incoherently sluggish as his breath and heartbeat
relaxed once again.
“We’ve got to do something!”
James, leaning against the door, sighed. He turned, and
started fondling his watch. A thin red laser beam lashed out, striking at the
steel plating.
“What is that?” Nigel demanded as he saw the red
beam starting to cut the steel of the door.
“My watch has a built-in laser scalpel,” James replied
calmly, one hand steadily pressing on the watch’s sides, until the beam
spluttered and died out five minutes later. There was a gash visible, but the
door was still firmly attached to the walls. There was no budging it, and the
small seam of outside light only served to add to the desperation of the
captives.
Well, all of the captives, safe one.
Xander’s mind drifted deep into meditation once more,
finally decided that something needed to be done. Especially now that his body
was as good as he could get it without extended rest. He appeared in a
rectangular room holding a rectangular table. At it were seated six people, and
Xander Prime sat down at the head, making the entire assembly seven in number.
“We all know why I called you here,” Xander Prime opened
up. “What do we do?”
“You could let ME handle it,” Hyena Xander answered.
“I broke the cage at Sunnydale High, and we’re a lot stronger now. What’s one
door?”
“And you’ll take over permanently?” Xander Prime demanded
sarcastically.
“He-he-he’s right. We can’t take that chance,” an overly
emotional Xander whispered, shying away as the other’s attention focused on it.
“We do need to get out of here, though,” A seemingly normal
Xander said. “Or we’ll never see Kirika again… or Mireille, or Buffy, or
“We get the point, Love,” Soldier-Xander grunted. “If Hyena
guarantees no take-over, I’ll vote for using him.”
“We’ve got two for Hyena, Emotion’s with me; Love wants to
do something, anything, as long as it gets us out of here. What do you two
think?” Xander Prime asked the two remaining Xanders.
“Logic dictates that we should wait and see how the
situation develops. If there appears to be no solution evident, then Hyena,
although untrustworthy, should be allowed a chance,” the fifth Xander spoke,
calmly composed.
The last Xander sighed. “We should have simply wiped them
all out, then we wouldn’t have been in this mess.
Right now, I’ll saw, let Hyena-boy do the job, and worry about collateral
damage later. And did everyone forget? That ass has taken Magan. No-one touches
Magan!”
“King Cold over there has a point,” Hyena snarled. “You
should let me get out, and at least retrieve Magan, and maybe even that Fire
Stick Thingy we found in the cave. It’s intriguing!”
“No!” Emotion shouted, immediately cringing under the
attention. “I-I-I mean… what ab-about
“Kirika gave us that gun!” Love snarled. “I don’t know
about you, but that was a priceless gift, and we’ve only ever used it to kill
vampires and demons!”
“Lover Boy is right,” Hyena grunted. “Let me do it!”
Xander Prime grunted. “Okay… show of hands for Hyena’s release?
Just to blast the door and take it from there?”
“Only if the ass agrees not to take over,” Soldier growled
at Hyena, who bared his teeth.
“Fine!” Hyena snarled. “I won’t take over!”
“Show of hands? Hyena, just past the door?”
Xander Prime asked. Soldier, Hyena, Intelligence, Love, and Cold raised their
hands. Emotions shook his head vigorously, as if unable to believe that they
were actually going through with this. Xander Prime sighed, and nodded.
“Show of hands, Hyena, until we’ve
retrieved Magan?” Xander Prime then
asked. Only Hyena, Cold, and Love lifted their hands. Soldier and Emotion were
obviously against the idea, while Intelligence was merely waiting for the
others to make up their mind.
“You’ll get us through the door,” Xander told Hyena,
standing up, causing the others to stand up as well. “Through the door, and not
a bit further, got it!?”
Hyena smirked, and mock-bowed. “As you wish, Oh Fateful Ruler,” he drawled.
“Eh…guys…” Nigel grunted when he saw movement in the body
that had remained perfectly still for hours and hours. He started frantically
tapping
And his eyes were glowing a bright
amber.
Snarling, Hyena threw himself toward the heavy steel door,
moving in mid-run in what appeared to be a martial arts pattern of some sort.
Using Kirika’s teaching to the full of his abilities, hyena maximized the force
of the impact against the steel door, traveling the last meter in full
un-powered flight.
Xander and door exploded into the hallway behind, the door
hitting the wall and Xander hitting the cold, hard floor, screaming in pain
rather than rage this time.
“God-damned mother-fucking son of a
bitch! That’s the last time I’m trying
something like that!” the teenaged assassin snarled as he wrested himself to
his legs.
“Xa… Xander?”
“I am going to put a stop to this, and I’m getting my
birthday gift back!” Xander snarled.
“Just what did you do!?”
The foursome slowly made their way through the maze of
intersecting hallways, letting James take the role of guiding them, as he was
the only one with intimate knowledge of the base. The entire time, Xander
remained at the full rear.
Finally, they had emerged with what looked like a loading
dock of some kind, and James made them crouch down behind some crates. Xander
swallowed; screwing his eyes shut as he did so.
I won’t let you!
Xander screamed inwardly, at the silky amber smoothness of the Hyena spirit. I
shall remain in control, and you will keep your promise!
You will do as he says, boy! The Soldier’s voice whipped at the Hyena. Xander was
grateful for the military’s presence; otherwise it was highly doubtful if he
would still be in full control.
Finally, the feeling of possession seemed to ebb slightly,
and Xander reopened his eyes. I swear, he grows
stronger every time I use him… I’ll have to be very careful. Last thing I want
is to be possessed. Again… Xander swallowed. He
remembered the last time he had been possessed by the Hyena. It wasn’t pretty…
eating Herbert, the pig that was school mascot, was only one of the things…
eating him raw was another.
Xander carefully looked over the crates, immediately
wishing he hadn’t. At the sight of the man in the white business suit, Xander’s
nerves felt like steel, and a raw fire growled in the pit of his stomach,
demanding satisfaction.
Aoshi… Xander, Hyena,
and Soldier growled at the same time.
“Stay down!” James whispered, pulling on Xander’s vest in
an attempt to get the boy to crouch out of sight again. To his utter surprise,
the boy remained where he was, not budging a millimeter under James’ warning
pull.
“James…”
Finally, they focused on the boy’s face, and startled as
conflicting emotions fought for dominance over his features; there was an
almost animalistic rage, a cold murderous look, and an almost panicking
expression; all of them fighting for dominance.
Xander swallowed deeply; harshly, the sound of the gulp
eerily loud in the enforced silence of the four escapees. The three others
glanced toward the bay, finding the source of Xander’s anger standing in the
middle of the cavernous room, talking to a couple of his support people. A
flash of gold drew their attention to his pocket.
Magan! “Magan…” the
teenager whispered. That was a birthday gift! From Mireille and Kirika! Let
me get it! Hyena snarled; his presence strangely strong in Xander’s
consciousness. No… Xander grunted in reply. We will wait! There are
too many people! We’ll wait! Hyena growled in reply.
Xander closed his eyes, forcing his body to relax. Finally,
his dominance over his mind was reaffirmed, and Xander slowly knelt down behind
the crates. His eyes remained closed, yet his mind remained fully active.
Taking one last breath, the boy opened his eyes.
“Not now,” he whispered in answer at the staring question
marks. “After we get out of here,” he added as the looks didn’t quit disappear.
There was a shouted order from behind them, followed by
what appeared to be gunshots. Immediately, Xander’s half-closed yes opened
fully, and it seemed as if liquid fire was pumping through his veins as he
vaulted up, leaping over the crates and landing on the other side. As the trio
scrambled to look over the crates, they hears grunts and shots; this time close
by.
When they made it, all they saw was Xander, sitting on one
knee, holding two guns, smoke rising from the barrels. Next to him lay two dead
bodies, guards he had killed to obtain the weapons from. With
his bare hands, judging by the strange angle of their necks.
James’ eyes went wide at the sight of half a dozen more
guards lying dead, scattered around the cavern. The remaining people, and
Aoshi, had disappeared through the other hallway leading into the loading bay.
The huge loading doors had remained closed.
“Let’s get out of here!”
“You go,” Xander whispered as he stood up, burying his
revulsion for the killings deep inside himself. It never gets easier… and I
hope that it never will, the boy thought silently as he started walking to
the hallway.
“Yeah… Hey! Wait! What do you mean you go!?” Nigel
protested.
“I told you… I’m getting my birthday gift back. One way or
the other,” the young warriors spoke as he coldly grabbed an M-16 off the
ground. James seemed to have no problems with it as he grabbed a discarded colt
handgun off the ground and marched into step behind the boy. Nigel shook his
head at
“One of these days, you need to learn to get out of these
situations as soon as you can,” Nigel protested.
“That man still has the relic,”
They encountered a huge steel door; jarred open from it
usually locked state. Xander readied the M-16 as James fingered the Colt. The
two men nodded, before bursting into the room, tracking targets wherever they
could.
The element of surprise was total as the two men burst into
the control room; the six guards present were incapacitated almost immediately.
This room appeared to be some kind of control room. Some chairs were knocked
over, coffee cups had been spilt. Obviously, the room had been abandoned in
quite a hurry.
Xander sniffed the air anxiously, slamming down on the
headache that was exploding in his head and mind as he started enhancing his
senses. He wasn’t tapping into the Hyena… yet. Dropping his empty rifle, the
boy grabbed a fresh one off the ground before marching out of one of the doors.
James cocked his head, and merely followed. Sidney and Nigel exchanged glances,
yet followed Xander’s lead nonetheless.
As they were about to round a corner, Xander suddenly
jerked his arms horizontally, and pressed against the wall, making the other
three follow his example. Cautiously, Xander peeked from around the wall.
Aoshi looked around like a frightened animal while holding
out Magan and the silver sword-handle for one of his underlings. Xander
focused. The ever-present gunshots seemed to close in. Suddenly, red warning
lights started flashing and sirens were blaring. All of this, he ignored as his
eyes ‘zoomed in’ on the lips of the two men.
Put these in the safe!
Aoshi said to his underling.
At once, sir! The man
replied, snapping at attention and running off. Directly in
their direction. Xander’s head disappeared behind the wall again, and an
evil smile spread on his features. Sidney and Nigel look at him, while James
merely waited. The first man who rounded the corner ran straight into Xander’s
waiting hands.
The teenaged assassin felt Kirika drill termination
sequences into him. He reached out on automatic, grabbing the man by the collar
while at the same time planting his feet wide apart. Using the running man’s
momentum, to which he added his own strength; Xander used his spread feet as
rotation point. The man’s head connected to the wall with a sickening crunch.
Before he hit the ground, Xander had caught him, grabbing
his neck in a vicious-looking hold. The neck snapped at the same time as the
rest of his body hit the concrete floor.
Almost reverently, the boy took Magan, and checked its
clip. Still loaded with the demon killers, he decided. Slowly, his hands
went over the rest of the man’s body. One by one, he withdrew the silver
sword-handle and the two golden spare clips he had been carrying.
“Now can we get out of here!?” Nigel demanded.
Xander looked up at him, looking almost normal now. He was
still pale, and sweat and blood was coated on his figure, but the animalistic
drive that had been there earlier was gone. “Sure,” the boy said, actually
smiling. “Fastest way is that way,” he said, pointing in the same direction
Aoshi had disappeared in.
“Unless you’ve been here before, how can you know that?”
Xander smiled. “Bad Guys will always leave their underlings
to do the dirty work…and they always run in the fastest and safest way out.”
“Excellent piece of deduction, Xander,” James complimented
the boy. “Let’s go, then?” he added, motioning in the direction. Xander dipped
his head, and took the lead once more.
Not thirty seconds later, they emerged into what appeared
to be a room the size of the earlier loading bay… only this one didn’t have the
loading pads, and appeared to be stacked with computer equipment along the
sides, but with an open cavernous center. Ventilation purposes, Xander
decided, putting some of Mireille’s technology lessons to good use.
On the other side, a group of men appeared to be on the
retreat; walking backward and firing in the direction of the hallway they were
backing out of. Their backs were pointed directly at Xander and his group.
As the two dozen men entered the computer cavern, they
started spreading out in an attempt to gain a tactical advantage.
Xander was transfixed as he stared at the odd display, something
deep within him stirring. Hyena…
Smoke filled the hallway. “They’re dead!” one man shouted,
still not noticing the small band hiding behind their backs. “No-one could have
survived that!”
“Do you really think so?” a French-accented voice asked as
two flashes appeared from the smoke, dropping two of the men instantly.
The guards had obviously not received decent training as
they feel into disarray, panicking and turning to run toward the small band of
runaways. Xander coldly opened fire with the M-16, inwardly screaming at each
body that hit the ground. About a dozen men remained, standing in the middle of
the room, staring at both Xander and the mist of the hallways.
The smoke cleared, revealing two silhouettes.
“Kirika…” Xander whispered as the smallest silhouette
became visible from the smoke.
“Xander…” Kirika whispered as she caught his eyes from
across the room.
Neither could hear the other. Nor could they read each
other’s lips. What they couldn’t convey normally, their souls brought across.
His chocolate eyes reached her
The guards, driven to the center, decided to make one last
stand. Dropping to their knees, they propped up their M-16s, and opened fire.
Mireille ducked. So did James, Sidney, and Nigel.
Xander and Kirika just looked at each other as bullets flew
through the room. They started running toward each other.
She wanted to get to him.
He wanted to get to her.
Without thinking, their bodies reacted, dodging bullets and
reacting by sheer instinct. On one side the guards found a possessed madman as
the Hyena spirit within Xander snarled and came to the surface.
On the other side, they found Death in Silence as Kirika,
deadliest assassin, Noir, rained down destruction.
As Xander dodged, and his last sidearm clicked on empty, he
snarled. Something in his pocket shook.
“It moved!?” he snarled out loud, doing so
unwittingly as his right hand grabbed the silver handle. As he drew it out, a
beam of bright blue energy shot out. Kirika jumped back from her opponent,
staring at Xander as he waved the blue-bladed weapon around.
Green last time… now it’s blue, Xander had time to think before his mind exploded in
images so powerful they were literally burning along his neural connections.
His entire brain felt as if it were burning from the inside out. Unseeing eyes
flashed across the battlefield as unhearing ears focused.
Every sense he had become overloaded by the blast of the
sword. Xander screamed the scream of the damned as his feet shoved of on their own accord, and his entire body moved without being
told to.
“KIRIKA!!!!” Her name lay as a war-cry on his lips as he charged
forward, directly toward her. Xander reached the first man in his mad dash, his
arms and hands moving still on their own accord. The Light Saber flashed up
vertically, splitting the man in half. Cleanly.
Xander dove round the still falling corpse, taking off the
legs of the second man at the knees. As the man fell down screaming, Xander
came up and beheaded him. The third man aimed his M-16, but never had time to
fire it as the Light Saber cut through the metal as if their hot butter. The
blade returned, stabbing through the man’s heart.
No. 4 attempted to sneak up on the crazed teen, but Xander
somehow detected his presence, reversing the Saber and stabbing the man in a
reversed stab next to his own body. The heat and energy of the Saber penetrated
through Xander’s clothes, making him feel the devastating power contained in
it.
Kirika raised her gun, picking off those men not directly
in between herself and Xander. She held absolute confidence in Xander as he was
now… she knew how he felt as her name came across his lips as a cry of war.
Finally, they were face to face.
The Saber stopped on its own accord.
The handle clattered to the ground as Xander’s fingers lost
all strength. As a puppet whose strings had been cut, he tumbled forward,
directly into her embrace, where she held him.
“Whatever that is… it’s dangerous,” the girl whispered.
“Once this… is over… I’m going to… talk to someone…” Xander
panted, forcing his head to look up from her shoulder, so he could meet her
eyes. “Kirika…”
She smiled at him. “It’s okay.”
Xander closed his eyes, tapping into his reserves, forcing
himself to his legs. He could crash later. “Aoshi…”
“He got away,” James said from behind them, just the
tiniest amounts of shock coming through in the man’s cultured British voice.
“But I have a pretty good idea where he went.”
“Then by all means, lead the way,” Xander said, smiling as
he motioned. Sometimes, he even astonished himself with his rate of
regeneration… even if it’s only a self-induced lie to his body. Kirika had
taught him just how many IOU’s he could take on his body. “By the way, James,
Sidney, Nigel, meet Kirika and Mireille,” he introduced as the entire group
started moving. The various people merely nodded to each other in their mad
dash after James.
They emerged into a garage not fifteen seconds later, just
in time to see the garage door slam shut. “He left my car,” James said as he
opened the door to an Aston Martin DB7 Vantage. He jumped behind the wheel,
ready to pursue, when the passenger door was ripped open and Mireille and
Kirika jumped into the back seat. Xander dumped himself into the front seat.
“This is personal,” he grunted to the man, who shrugged,
and surprised his passengers by opening a panel in his armrest, and tapping a
key. A missile shot from the front grille, taking out the recently closed
garage door.
“You’re not just an expert in ancient languages, are you?”
Xander asked with what he hoped was a reasonably flat voice.
“Just like you’re not just a teenager?” James answered.
“Point taken,” Xander said with a grin as the enormously
powerful car accelerated away. Xander saw James push on another button in his
armrest compartment, and the navigation system changed into a radar layout. A
red dot blinked, the radar image superimposed over a road map of the vicinity.
Xander kept silent, exchanging a glance with his two female
companions on the back seat. Mireille was looking just about as shocked as he
himself felt, while Kirika merely took everything in stride.
The teenager grabbed onto his armrest as James threw the
car around an impossible corner at an impossible speed. “Jesus,
man! What do you have in this car!?” Xander screamed as he held on for
dear life.
“I had a few extras installed,” James replied neutrally,
actually looking as if he were enjoying himself. He glanced at the radar-navigation
system. “I’m glad I had the foresight to attach a tracker to his car before I
was captured.”
James took a fast left, followed immediately by an even faster right, putting them on one of the
larger highways, about half a kilometer behind Aoshi, if the radar tracker was
right. It was then that the three passengers got the scare of a lifetime. James
actually said ‘hang on’.
Barely had they grabbed an armrest, or James opened a
protective cap on one of his buttons, and pushed it. It was as if the car fell
to the ground, its suspension lowering to an almost impossible level. A dull
roar came from the back, before G-forces literally fused Xander to his chair.
Gasping for breath like a fish out of water, he saw the road and the
surroundings flash by, James masterfully waving through the Japanese traffic as
if born to it. The man didn’t seem affected by the high G’s at all.
Finally, he released the button and the car decelerated
back to something vaguely resembling ‘normal’ as James put it right behind a dark-purple
Lamborghini Diablo.
“FUCK!!!” Xander screamed as he finally got some air into
his lungs.
“Rocket booster,” James said casually as he fumbled with
his radio after pressing a couple of keys. Targeting crosshairs appeared on his
windshield, attempting to track the waving purple Diablo, Aoshi doing his very
best to shake them off.
“He’s driving a faster car!” Xander screamed, immediately
regretting his outburst as the rocket part came back to his mind. “Under normal
conditions, I mean…” the teen attempted to save face. James grinned, forcing
his Vantage behind the Diablo as it waved through traffic, which was thankfully
very light at this time of day.
As the crosshairs waved from left to right on the
windshield HUD, giving Xander headaches just from trying to keep up, James did
his best to stay behind the Italian sports car Aoshi drove. Xander had been
right about the car’s performance, and Aoshi little by little pulled away.
James grabbed for one of the keys in his armrest, causing the three passengers
once more to dive for the armrests, clinging to them as if their lives depended
on it.
James merely shook his head, and pressed the Nitrous
release, triggering a burst of speed of shorter duration and of less severity
than the rocket booster. Once more, the Aston Martin caught up to the Diablo,
the targeting computer finally getting a lock. With a gleam in his eyes, James
pressed the trigger. To Xander’s surprise, machine guns started spewing death
and destruction at the Diablo, making Swiss cheese out of the boot, scattering
purple pieces of bodywork around, ripping the back tires to shreds, and
throwing up pieces of road surface.
The Diablo, completely loosing its grip without rear tires,
skidded to the left, which Aoshi overcompensated to the right, making the car
go crosswise, literally catapulting it into the air. It flipped three times
before it once more touched ground, the bodywork scattering on impact, yet
doing nothing to make it slow down. The car flipped over a couple more times
before finally slowing to a stop… on what was supposed to be its roof. As the
passengers of the Aston Martin raced toward it, the car exploded.
“
“I think we’d better get out of here,” Xander said, looking
worriedly at the sky, where the sound of an approaching helicopter was audible.
“Unless we want the cops involved?” he asked, fixing a look on James. The man
smiled slightly, never seeming fazed.
Instead of answering, James took his cell. “M? Double-o Seven. I have apprehended Aoshi… yes sir… you can
pick him up in the middle of Highway North out of
“007!!” They heard shouted from the phone, after which
James smiled, closed the phone, and switched it off.
“Okay, so just who are you?” Xander grunted as they were in
the Aston Martin, driving back to Aoshi’s base for
Nigel and Sidney.
“You have your secrets, and I have mine,” James answered
fluidly. “Shall we cross over equally?”
“Fine,” Xander grunted with a deep sigh after sharing a
penetrating look with Mireille and Kirika. “It’s like this…”
“So let me get this straight,” Nigel grunted, rubbing his
forehead at the dinner table a couple of hours later. They were seated in a
secluded section of a luxurious restaurant, not far from the stylish hotel
where James had arranged rooms for himself, as well as Sidney and Nigel. Rooms
which were located down the same hall where Kirika, Mireille, and Xander had
originally had their base of operations. “You are a demon hunter?” he asked,
pointing at Xander.
“Yep,” the teenager replied with a grin, taking a sip from
the sake he had in front of him. The clear rice-wine made a pleasant burning
sensation down his throat on its way down.
“And you two are assassins for hire, taking out the guys
the crime laws can’t touch?” he went on, pointing to Kirika and Mireille. The
blonde remained stoic, while Kirika nodded once.
“Yes,” the brunette said quietly.
“And you… you are a secret agent working for
“Yes,” the gentleman answered.
“How come this always happens to us, Sid? Can’t we ever
meet any normal people?” Nigel whined to his female companion, who simply
grinned, and seemed to enjoy the strange company.
“By the way, I think this is yours,” Xander said, extending
the sword handle to
“Keep it,”
“Cool!” Xander exclaimed, pocketing the device before
anyone could object.
“
“Somehow, I think that it’s best to let Xander have it… if
we kept it, it’d disappear in some cabinet, locked away. If Xander has it, at
least it’ll do some good in the world.”
“All I can say is ‘thank you’, Dr. Fox. I swear, it won’t
go to waste,” Xander cut in, effectively silencing Nigel’s further comments.
“And I know just the guy to help me figure that out.”
“Really? Who?”
“Let’s say that I have a pretty good idea,” Xander replied
secretly. “James… a question. How difficult would it
be to have someone transported into the
“I think that can be easily arranged,” James answered
calmly. “What do you have in mind, Xander?”
Xander smiled. “You see…”
The next morning, Xander awoke to the warm feeling of
Kirika, snuggled close to him. Tightening his hold he had on the girl, Xander
closed his eyes, and wished to go back to sleep. For close to ten minutes, he
stayed that way, basking in the warmth of having someone this close to him.
Finally, he admitted defeat, and slowly disentangled himself from Kirika and
made his way to the bathroom.
Five minutes later, Kirika joined him under the shower.
Laughter accompanied the sudden flooding of the bathroom as the couple played
under the hot streaming water. It took half an hour for them to finally get
dressed and make their way out of the room.
They emerged into the red-carpeted lavishly decorated
hallway of the posh hotel, at the exact same time the door next to their suite
opened, and James and Mireille exited from her room. Kirika merely smiled
slightly, while Xander fixed the duo with a knowing look.
James remained calm, not seeming to mind one bit. Mireille
blushed slightly, made no comments, and merely regained her composure. Not a
word was spoken before they hit the breakfast table.
Xander opened his mouth.
“No comment,” Mireille cut in.
Xander closed his mouth. He opened it again. “I wasn’t
going to,” he defended weakly.
Kirika smiled, offering no comment of her own except for a
barely suppressed chuckle.
“Gee… how nice to have a supportive girlfriend,” Xander
said with obvious sarcasm and a smile to the brunette, who smiled wider.
Finally, she snuggled close to his side, and Xander wrapped one arm around her
shoulders.
“You all seem to be in a good mood,”
“The job’s over, the contract’s
finished, what’s not to like?” Xander asked with a broad smile. “Finally some
time to relax…”
“Not for very long, if you want to catch that plane to the
States,” James said with an easy sounding voice. “It leaves in…” he glanced at
his watch, “about four hours.”
“Cool,” Xander said, still smiling.
George Lucas sat up with a start in his bed. Something had
scared him out of his sleep.
“Hello, Mr. Lucas… I highly doubt you know me, but I think
you know my… companion,” Xander said, stepping out of the shadow and into the
moonlight as he drew the handle of the Light Saber, holding it out to shine in
the moonlight.
George rubbed the sleep form his eyes, staring at the
handle. “That… now that I didn’t
suspect,” the man grunted.
“I don’t suppose you know how this got here?” Xander asked.
“That, my boy… that is a long story. But first, why don’t you say how you got in here, and why
security isn’t holding you down right now?”
Xander smiled easily. “I work with the best,” he answered
calmly. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Alexander LaVelle…
and this is my companion, Kirika,” he introduced, making an arm-motion for the
girl who remained in the shadows. It sent creeps up George’s spine to see the
silhouette remaining in the shadows.
“Now… how did this get here?” the boy asked the man,
holding out the Light Saber. “Because last time I checked, this isn’t standard equipment.”
George Lucas sighed, getting up from the bed, his eyes
drilling into Xander’s. “Tell me… since you look like you’re pretty sure that
what you’re holding is the real deal, did you activate it?”
“Twice. Scared the crap out of me each time,” Xander replied
calmly, not knowing where he found to the emotional strength to be level with a
man such as Lucas in front of him.
The man’s face betrayed the shock that rippled through him.
“TWICE?”
“Why?” Xander asked, frowning in confusion.
“My dear boy… it took decades to learn to activate it even once, and most never managed more than that! That you,
without training, managed to activate it not once but twice is simply… impossible.”
Xander shook his head. “I can’t do it on command, or I’d
prove it to you.”
George started chuckling, which soon evolved into a full
fledged laughter. Only when he noticed Xander’s slowly emerging anger did he
manage to contain himself. There was something about the boy… something that
set George’s teeth on edge. “I’d guess not!” the man said, still sniggering.
“Listen, how about I tell you what that is, what it really is, and you decide for yourself
afterward?”
Xander dipped his head. “Sure.”
“Fine, then… follow me,” George said, leading them out of the
bedroom.
Five minutes of hallways later, the trio emerged into a
lavish living room, where George opened a safe. Inside of it was a second safe,
followed by a third. Finally, after opening the fourth safe, the man took out a
metallic rectangular box, about the size of a jewelry box. He placed it on the
living room table, and indicated to Xander and Kirika to sit down. He took the
seat opposite them, fingering the box.
“What you have… and what this is… are the last vestiges of
an ancient civilization,” George said. “Thirteen million years ago, in a galaxy
approximately one hundred million light-years away, existed a civilization. The Republic. But, their galaxy was about to collide with a
second galaxy, and they knew that it was highly doubtful that their
civilization would survive.
“In crash tempo, they started pouring their resources into
developing something… anything to
help their civilization survive. They developed what they called, the ark. One hundred Arks were built,
equipped with a semi-sentient piloting system, and loaded with equipment
resembling their society. Also on each
“As the Arks were never stopped or halted, I can only
surmise that the Republic didn’t make it… but I digress. One of those Arks
entered the Milky Way Galaxy, its sensors tracking a small planet called Earth,
where compatible life existed. However, the Navigator of the ship made a fatal
mistake in its descent, and the ship disintegrated upon reentry. Most of the
“Thirty years ago, I found this small box at a yard sale.
No-one ever knew what it was, having passed from hand to hand and from owner to
owner through the centuries. I bought it, finding it intriguing… and I managed
to find the knowledge it contained. However, the database, too, was damaged… it
managed to imprint upon me the knowledge of the Republic, its society, its
people, and its structure, as well as certain key events. Most of the
scientific background was too degraded to be useful. Upon what it conveyed, I
built the movies you know so well… and until an hour ago, I thought this to be
the sole survivor of Ark 436.”
“So… this is thirteen million years old?” Xander asked, voice in awe as he looked at the silver cylindrically
shaped handle. “Cool!”
“Cool!?” George and Kirika asked at the same time.
“Yeah! Cool!” Xander exclaimed, grinning broadly. “Think about
it! It survived a huge journey, crashed on our planet, and it still works!
Those guys sure knew how to build something sturdy!”
George shook his head. “The Jedi Light Saber was the most
potent weapon of the Republic. The database should have contained a full
schematic… unfortunately, the only non-degraded knowledge it held featured a
couple of external drawings, and a small movie clip. The background on it was
detailed, though. The Light Saber is what was called a ‘Soul Weapon’, basically
a catalyst for the soul, drawing upon the metaphysical power of the soul.
“Under normal practice, a Padawan would have to train for a
decade before he or she first manages to activate the Light Saber. Being able
to focus the Soul into the Saber takes tremendous control over the emotions. A
Padawan would be trained in what we would call meditation and would worship
Inner Peace. Only then, at the zenith of these two abilities, would a Padawan
be able to activate the weapon.
“Now, from what I understood, this first experience was
most often disastrous for the concentration of the Padawan, and it was not
uncommon to take two or three years before a Padawan was able to activate a
Saber a second time. From there on, it usually went smoothly. A Jedi Master
would be able to train a Padawan after twenty years of experience with the
Saber.”
“Wow,” Xander whispered. “I can see your point about that
impossible thing now…” he looked up and grinned. “I’ve always been a special kinda guy, I guess.” Kirika smiled and shook her head
affectionately. “What I don’t understand, though… if these guys were all so
‘inner peace’ and all… why did they fight?”
George shook his head. “They didn’t… well, normally,
anyway. They were like the Shaolin Monks. They only
fought when no other choice existed. And, as I said, the Light Saber was the
most potent weapon of the Republic. That part of the database was degraded, so
I don’t know why. All I know is this quote, which miraculously survived in
tact:
The Light Saber in
the hands of the Jedi Master is a force of nature: neutral, calm, yet utterly
destructive and totally unstoppable. When faced with this force, one should
make haste to prepare for the Afterlife, as there is no stopping, nor halting,
the Jedi.”
“Wow,” Xander breathed after a ten second silence. “That…
like…”
Kirika put her hand on his leg. “I know… the Saber… it
brings out the full force of the Soul. What I saw when it activated last… the
Force of Nature. I can’t describe it better.”
“Kirika…” Xander whispered.
“It is glorious,” the brunette whispered, looking at him,
ignoring George Lucas’ stunned look for a moment. “What I saw, when you used
that weapon… it was glorious. It was the culmination of your power and
training. I saw you… felt you… use
who and what you are and what you know to its fullest.”
“Wow,” Xander said again, grinning like a fool. “I guess
I’ll have to work on getting this thing to work, then,” he added, still
grinning and looking at the deactivated Light Saber.
They didn’t keep George Lucas much longer after that. Now
that the mast important parts had been said, the two teenagers decided it was
best o head back to
After a long journey back to
The next morning, Kirika woke him early. “We need to do
some more training,” the brunette urged him on as he protested his lack of
sleep. “If you’re planning on using the Light Saber, you’ll need to learn how
to use a sword, Chéri.”
Xander sighed as he got out of bed, and patted after the
brunette to the living room. Which, now he paid attention to
it, seemed to be laid out permanently as training area. “We’ll start
with an unfair advantage while you get used to the sword,” Kirika said,
extending a sword. “I will be unarmed during those stages.”
Xander took the heavy weapon from her, and stared at it for
a few seconds. On the blade, intricate designs seemed to be etched, and the
entire thing seemed to have the ‘ancient’ feel, look, and smell to it.
“That is one of the Blades of Noir, used during the
ceremony,” Kirika said. “That weapon is 1000 years old; yet still as sharp as
the day it was created.”
Xander practically dropped it. “What…but…old…?” he asked,
stuttering in French for the first time since long.
Kirika just dipped her head. “Try and cut me while I try to
disarm you… it will provide you with the knowledge on how to handle a sword.”
Xander held on to the sword as if it were his last
life-line, and took a very slow swing at his girlfriend. Almost looking annoyed
at him, she planted her hands in her sides.
“Take a real swing,
Xander. And don’t worry about breaking it. That weapon has survived enough
battles for me to know it won’t break so easily.”
And so they began…
James Bond awoke to curious sounds coming from the living
room. After having been invited to
stay at the
Curious to the origin of the sound, he crept out of bed and
slowly made his way to the living room. What he saw there fully opened his
eyes, a look of surprise etching on his face for the first time since long.
Xander, panting and sweating, took a swing at Kirika with
such force that there was no doubt that the petite girl would be cut in halt if
it hit. Instead of connecting, the girl ducked under the swing, and rushed
forward, trying to reach Xander’s hands clasping on the sword’s hilt. Having expected it, the man reached up, putting his grip out of
Kirika’s reach, and reversing for a devastating blow from above.
Kirika rolled to the right, kicking out to Xander’s side,
causing him to jump away. The fight went on, in practically total silence as
the two warriors circled around each other, testing, trying,…
fighting. Finally, Kirika got within reach, and landed a devastating combo of
punches against Xander’s chest, causing him to lose the grip on his sword, and
catapulting him backward.
James was about to rush forward when he saw the boy got up
with an almost deadly glare in his eyes. The teen grabbed the sword from the
floor in mid-charge without losing speed. Kirika calmly awaited him, actually
smiling. This was the point where she had been waiting for: the point where
Xander would evolve at tremendous speeds.
James watched in stunned silence as the boy literally
seemed to get better with each swing he took from the large weapon, up to the
point where Kirika reached and grabbed for her own weapon and charged in once
again.
“Incredible, isn’t it?” Mireille asked, suddenly appearing
behind him. He hadn’t even heard her… to himself, he
claimed that he had been too engrossed in the spectacle to notice her. In reality… Mireille was Noir. She could sneak up upon just
about anybody.
“Indeed it is,” he agreed with her. “But I still don’t
understand how this is possible…”
“Those aren’t my secrets to tell,” Mireille replied,
quickly turning to the scene in the living room, where Xander dropped had his
sword, and was now on his ass, staring up at Kirika holding a sword to his
neck. His breathing was quick and shallow, and a shiny layer of sweat glistened
on his skin. His clothes were drenched in sweat.
“Good,” they heard Kirika say, helping him up and kissing
him. “You did well, Cheri.”
“Thank you, Mon
Coeur,” the boy replied, panting, as he fell into a seat. “That…certainly
was… exhausting.”
“You haven’t fully recovered yet,” Kirika whispered as she
sat down next to him. Instantly, she looked at the ground. “I’m sorry…”
“No,” Xander interrupted. “No, you’re not.”
Kirika looked at him, not understanding.
“If I want to get good, this is what I need,” he grunted
through his panting, trying to get his breath under control. “I need to be
pushed hard and long… and I can’t do it myself. I’m too lazy… I need someone
like you to push me.” He snuggled to her. “Thank you for pushing me, Ma Chérie,” he whispered.
“You’re welcome, My Love,” the girl replied, hugging him as
he sags into the embrace. “We both need a shower,” she notes levelly,
immediately after.
Xander sighed. “Just give me five more minutes…” he begged.
“We should do it now, Xander… Mireille won’t appreciate us
dirtying these designer fauteuils.”
“Slave-driver,” Xander accused with a chuckle.
“And you love me for it,” Kirika answered with a smug grin
as she helped him to his feet. They nodded a good morning to Mireille and James
as they passed them on the way to the shower.
Xander and Kirika stood a little bit back as Mireille
hugged James goodbye. “Back to
James turned, and started walking to the car. One didn’t
become successful in James’ line of business without developing a sixth sense
and James’ told him the look on Xander’s face. A small smile decorated James’
lips. Halfway down the small path leading up to the apartment building, the spy
turned and threw his car keys to Xander.
“After all, you did save my life in that cave,” the man
said.
Xander stared at the keys, to James, to the Aston Martin,
and back to the keys. “This…that… you’re… joking, right?
Because if you are, it ain’t funny… you know how much I like cars… and after
finding out what that particular car
can do…”
James shook his head. “I’m not joking. Keep it… I’ll just
tell M and Q that I wrecked it. Again.”
“You’re… not joking?” Xander asked,
his mind incapable of wrapping itself around the ignition keys in his hand.
“Not in the least,” the man assured.
“Cool!” Xander screamed, flashing down the path, grabbing James in mid-flight, spinning him
around as he hugged the older man, screaming “Thank you!” over and over. After
completing a full spin, Xander detached, his feet leaving the ground on his
dash down the path to the powerful automobile. Faster than James had though
possible, the boy had deactivated the security system, opened the front door,
and fallen behind the steering wheel.
The spy had a kind of stunned look on his face after being
spun around by the screaming youth. He opened the passenger door, and put his
head inside to talk to Xander. Mireille and Kirika were there at practically
the same time.
“There are two
conditions, though…” James said to the widely grinning Xander.
“Anything, man! Anything!” Xander promised,
before realizing that it was not a good thing to say something like that… not
to a spy, anyway.
“First… you and the car come to
“I…” he whispered, still looking at the brunette, who was
nodding encouragingly at Xander.
“Kirika can come too,” James said with an easy smile. “You
three can make a holiday out of it.”
“Cool!” Xander screamed,
enthusiasm back to full force. “Not only a car like
this, but free driving lessons from the master himself! This must be my lucky day!!” Immediately upon
that, he sobered once again. “Eh… what the second condition?”
“A lift to the airport. I’ve got a flight to catch,” James said with a smile.
Xander grinned widely as he turned the key and pressed the starter button,
making the powerful modified engine roar into life.
It was mid-august by the time the trio returned to
“I really missed this place,” Xander whispered, turning to
look at the huge trunk located directly behind the bench. His fingers trailed
an engraving. Next to him, Kirika gave an affirmative nod.
“I know, Mon Coeur,” she whispered, settling against his side.
“But I am still worried.”
Xander nodded. “I know. So am I… but I think the Light
Saber will come when it’s ready, Chérie.”
“It’s not normal… it should have activated by now,” the
brunette whispered sadly.
“That’s why I am not going to depend on it. I still have
Magan, and I have yet to meet a demon capable of taking the highest level demon
killers. They can take out a tank if needed.” With a grin, he added, “And
they’re good for showing up James Bond, too.”
Kirika chuckled slightly. “His face was priceless when you showed his precious Q that his armor could
be penetrated by a handgun bullet.”
Xander chuckled along with her. “I wouldn’t worry too much…
The Saber will come when it wants to. You heard George… the weapon is
practically sentient in its requirements for operation.”
Kirika sighed sadly, once more leaning into, Xander’s side.
He put a protective arm around her shoulders, and brought her in for a kiss,
brining a smile to her beautiful face. Happy at seeing her smile replace her
usual sad demeanor, Xander’s insides lit up. They spent an hour that seemed to
flash by in seconds under that tree before finally deciding to return to the
loft and see what came out of Mireille’s emails.
“Nothing but junk mail this time,” the blonde replied when
they asked for the information. Xander shrugged while Kirika gave no reaction
whatsoever.
“Mind if I check up on Sunnydale?” Xander asked Mireille,
who stood up and made an inviting motion to the laptop. Xander smiled, and
nodded his thanks even as his fingers started rattling on the small portable’s
keys.
Within minutes, he had established the encrypted Virtual
Private Network tunnel through the internet to the computer of his contact,
XXX.
XXX> There you are. I’ve been waiting for you.
Noir745-XA> Business trip. Why? What’s the Big News?
XXX> Last time, I was too late, but they weren’t big
ones anyway. This time, the commotion was huge… but it’ll cost you.
Noir745-XA> What are you
talking about, X?
XXX> Fine. I’ll say two things: One, Teraka. Two,
one million extra.
Noir745-XA> Teraka? What’s a Ter-
Kirika halted his typing. Curious, Xander looked at her,
and wished he hadn’t. All emotion seemed to have drained from her face. In her
eyes stood the same cold infliction that Xander knew from past experiences,
when Kirika reverted to the ‘True Noir’ persona. It was a side of his
girlfriend he had learned to accept and respect… even if it still scared the living daylights out of
him.
Deftly, she turned to portable so she could type.
Noir745-KY> You will tell now. Who. What. How much. Where. And when. Then we will think
about paying you, and not tracking you down. Capish?
She had hit ‘send’ before Xander had managed to break from
his shock and stop her. “Kirika! What if he breaks the
connection? What’s Teraka? Why are they so dangerous?
XXX> You can’t touch me over
the net…
Noir745-KY> We can and will. We
are Noir. Now tell.
Xander stared at the screen, unable to believe the utter
coldness that radiated from Kirika’s words, even if they were mere letters on a
TFT screen.
XXX> Okay! Fine! What I know is that a guy, a real bigshot called The Wizard, just ‘The Wizard’, nothing else,
put out ten million to have Sunnydale cleared of Slayer and allies as soon as
possible!
Noir745-KY> Thank you. Payment as usual.
<<<Connection terminated by Noir745-KY>>>
“Kirika…”
“Mireille… can I use your cellphone?”
Kirika asked, voice a deadly quiet, a cold and calculating infliction of death
and destruction. The blonde passed her phone, which Kirika started ramming numbers
into. She put the phone on speaker, and put in down on the pool table.
“What?” a deadly voice asked.
“This is Noir. The contract in Sunnydale?
Cancel it.”
“Noir?” the voice asked, chuckling. “That is a good one…
and who says we have a contract in Sunnydale? And why would we, the Assassin’s
Guild, cancel it? We have existed for thousands of years and killed millions.
Teraka has never lost a contract!”
Kirika’s eyes narrowed further, if that was even possible. “By the contract of Soldats
and Teraka, You will heed my call. Or we shall wage the war of old, and destroy
your pitiful organization!” she snarled, voice heated and angry, something
Xander had never heard her use before.
The voice was actually quiet for a good ten seconds, before
answering, a whole let steady. “We can not cancel a contract, and you know it,
Black Hand that Protects the Peace of the Newly Born.”
Kirika swallowed. “Sunnydale is under our protection, Teraka’s Order of Assassins. We can not let this pass…
Under the Contract of Allegiance, you are ordered to abort the contract.”
“So are you,” Teraka answered. “We agreed not to interfere
into each other’s affairs. You do not have a contract there. Therefore, we are
not interfering.”
“The contract you serve targets family,” Kirika answered
coldly. “Refrain.”
“We can not,” Teraka answered calmly. “However, in spirit
of the last thousand years of mutual respect between our two sides, We shall give you two weeks. Starting September First, Teraka’s contract goes into full power.”
“We will defend our family, Teraka’s
Order.”
“And we will do our best to fulfill the contract, Black
Hand. May the best side reap the fruits of the contract.”
“Do your best, Teraka. We shall bury you all.”
The phone call ended. Kirika hunched forward, and Xander
actually thought she was crying, before he touched her shoulder, and she fell
against him. “I…I’m sorry, Xander… I was merely able to buy time…”
“What happened, Kirika? Who is this Teraka? And what’s with
this strange name he called you?” Xander asked gently, supporting her as he
brought a glass of water to her lips, letting her drink greedily.
“Teraka is what is sounds… they are a Guild of Assassins,
ranging back thousands of years. They are considered the best money can buy…
but only if you can’t get Noir. Soldats… ancient Soldats… made a contract with them. We wouldn’t interfere
with one another, the earlier contract taking precedence and the newer contract
would be aborted. We have never interfered, and that clause of abortion was
never used. Today… today I tried to use it to stop Teraka from going to
Sunnydale. All I got was time.” She looked at Xander, her eyes looking
heartbroken. “You have until the First of September to protect your friends…
After that, Teraka will come, and they will keep coming until the money of the
guy who took out the contract runs out.”
“What do you mean, ‘I’ ?” Xander asked. “Surely, you’re coming with me? You and Mireille? After all, you are Noir… I am just the
under-trained, inexperienced trainee…”
Kirika exchanged a glance with Mireille. The blonde dipped
her head without Xander noticing. “We’ll come as soon as we can, Xander… but
we… Mireille and I… we’re going to put the pressure down on Teraka. I…Althena… she showed me… where Teraka’s
Headquarters is. We’ll be paying them a visit.”
Xander sighed deeply. “And I can’t come with you… I need to
protect my friends… in Sunnydale… for if Teraka breaks its word…”
“When,” Kirika
corrected with a sad tone in her voice. “Not openly… but expect one or two of
them already there.”
Xander nodded. “I understand,” he whispered sadly. “But I…I
don’t want to leave you…”
She put a brave finger against his trembling lips. “This is
one of those times we must be brave, have confidence in each other’s abilities,
and do what we must,” the girl whispered, her voice trembling as well.
“Don’t worry, Xander. James showed me a couple of extra
tricks. There won’t be a problem with anything during the trip… paperwork,
tickets, shipping of the car and your weapons, everything. I’ll set you up with
a first class cover for when you get back. All you’ll need to do is get
yourself a decent house. With the funds you earned from your working with us,
you’ll be able to afford quite a big place.” Mireille focused on the portable’s
screen, fingers racing the keyboard, trying to camouflage the trembling in her
voice and the suspicious moisture in her eyes.
Xander smiled a sad smile at his
two teachers… the two people who had become closer than family to him. He
picked up his suitcase, threw his old backpack over one shoulder, and turned
for the door. As he did so, a pair of strong arms encased his waist, and he
could feel Kirika’s forehead rest against his back, somewhat in the middle of
his shoulders.
“Xander …” he heard her whisper,
her voice sadder than he had ever heard it. It was joined by a couple of sobs.
Slowly, Xander sighed, hanging
his head as he slowly put his suitcase down, and let the pack slide off his
shoulder. He turned around in her embrace, wrapping his arms around her as soon
as he could. He lifted her so they were at the same height. “Kirika… I have to
go…” he whispered sadly, kissing her. “You could always come with me,” he
offered once again. “Come with me to Sunnydale, help out my friends. Side by side.”
Kirika sadly shook her head as
she looked up at him. “We need to do this… Mireille can’t take Teraka alone,”
she sobbed. She threw her head back to him, sobbing against his chest. For the
first time since he met her, Kirika cried. Really cried, tears streaming over
her cheeks as the hard layer built around her heart over the years finally
collapsed.
He held her tightly, his strong
arms around her frail-looking body. He looked up at Mireille, finding her
staring sadly at them. “Mireille trained my mind and body,” he whispered to his
girl. “And for that, I can never repay her. But Kirika…” he gently pushed her
away so he could look her in the eyes, “you… you not only trained my heart and
soul, but healed them at the same time.” He grabbed her right hand, putting it
over his beating heart. “When I first met you, I was empty… a shell devoid of
existence. I was broken, looking for a place to die. And you… you taught me how
to live again, gave me a soul, a cause to fight for. You hold my heart, ma chérie, and you always will. Please
remember that.”
Kirika was crying at his words,
feeling the heartbeat under her hand. “I won’t forget,” she promised. “You hold
my heart, too…” Slowly, she leaned forward into his embrace again. “I never
want to lose you, Xander. I can’t…I can’t lose anyone else… I’ve lost so many…
I can't lose you as well,” she whispered, desperately not wanting him to leave,
yet, at the same time, realizing that his loyalty for his friends was one of
the most beautiful qualities he possessed. She knew he had to leave… a fact
that made her usual masterful control over her emotions waver. For the first
time in a long time, Kirika was fighting for her emotional control.
Xander sighed sadly, his hand
reaching up, grabbing hold of the necklace he had cherished since childhood.
When they finally separated, Xander lifted the necklace from under his
clothing, and slowly slipped it over his head. “I told you what this necklace
means to me,” he whispered, holding up her right hand. He dropped the item into
it, and closed her fingers over it. “And now I want you to hold it, as a bond,
Kirika. I promise I will never leave you. I may be halfway across the
globe, but know that my heart is right here, with you, wherever you go,” he vowed
with conviction, voice and facial expressions straining to remain normal
against the turmoil inside. He wanted to stay… to stay here, with her… but his
friends needed him. And as much as he wanted to, Xander couldn’t abandon them.
They had hurt him deeply, but for Xander, that still wasn’t a reason to abandon
them now that they needed him.
Xander swallowed. He would go,
go and protect his friends. And after all of this was cleared up, he would be
reunited with Kirika, for there was no doubt in his mind that they would
be reunited. They just had to be.
Kirika stared at her closed
hand, before slowly moving it to her heart, holding it there. “I will never let
it go,” she whispered, looking up at him. “Never,” she said with pure
conviction. Xander leaned forward, kissing her one final time. Kirika closed
her eyes as she let herself drown in that kiss. She was still standing there,
with eyes closed and head tilted slightly upward, long after Xander had left
the loft.
When she finally had the courage
to open her eyes and face the empty loft, Kirika made a promise; a promise to
herself, to the necklace that was Xander’s last vestige of a long lost
childhood, to Xander himself, and to the universe in general.
I will make them pay… pay dearly for this. And after I
have, we will be reunited, Mon Coeur… for ever. After this final trial, I will
never allow us to be separated ever again.
End of part two.