Zeppo no more.

Xander and Faith crossover

Hi all. This is going to be my second story. It will hopefully live up to the standard expected from me. As always if anyone has any complaints or suggestions please feel free to post a review. I will take any and all under advisement. I need all the help I can get, lol.

Ok as always if you don't know this will be an AU. It takes place after Halloween in the BTVS universe. Xander dressed up as a Spartan from Halo, since I don't know everything about Halo I will only be taking the most basic ideas from the game, everything else I'm either making it up as I go or stealing from other locations.

I will be crossing over with Stargate SG-1 but only to about mid 4th season. Also a few minor crossover bits with Jurassic park but that's going to be very minor compared to the other bits.

Standard Disclaimer: I do not or have I ever owned any of the shows or books or movies involved within this story. I have merely borrowed them for my own enjoyment. Don't bother suing me I don't make enough for it to be worthwhile. Have a nice day and enjoy the story.

Chapter 1.

Alexander 'Xander' Harris was scared out of his mind. He had just regained control of his own body, which he could just say was a freaky experience. To be locked up inside your own mind not being able to do anything as someone else took your body out for a joyride was extremely freaky! Now here he was standing in the middle of Sunnydale's warehouse district with what looked like dozens of little dust piles around him, and he was inside a suit of MJOLNIR armor.

"Ok what the hell is going! Xander yelled out into the night not really expecting an answer but guess what, he got one.

"Well if I would have to guess, you're the real owner of the body that the Master Chief was in possession of and now you've reclaimed it somehow." Replied a voice.

"What, who are you?"

"I am Cortana."

"But you're just a fictional character in a game, how the hell can you be here?"

"During the night I asked that same question of a Miss Rosenburg. She informed me that you dressed up as the Master Chief and were turned into him due to a spell being cast on you. Now since I am an artificial life form, my being here could be because the spell was not designed to create life. Since I am here the suit would need to remain real for me to stay alive, for the suit to remain there would need to be a Spartan. And for you to live when the spell was broken you would need to also remain as a Spartan."

"Wait, your telling me that I'm a Spartan now?"

"Yes."

"Oh, god kill me now. Am I still even human?"

"Spartan's are enhanced humans. You have artificial implants throughout your body, but that does not diminish your humanity if that's what your worried about."

"Well now what do we do."

Cortana thought about this for a few seconds, nearly an eternity to an AI, before replying. "I think we should find a more secure location and then we shall discuss our options."

Xander quickly agreed with that. He slowly moved towards what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse. Once inside and determining that there was no one around he quickly got down to discussing plans with Cortana. Xander learned that night of all the changes done to him by the spell. Thousands of little nanites were inside his body altering his body to the standards of Spartan. Biotech armor incased every one of his bones making them nearly impossible to break by normal human strength, biosensors fitted underneath the skin to increase his awareness of his surroundings. Muscular and tissue enhancement to allow his body to accept said changes, neural feeds to allow for direct interface with his armors computers. Longevity implants to increase his lifespan from one terrain century to nearly six, along with a variety of other implants to increase combat capability. After explaining all of the changes that were happening to him, Cortana asked him what his plans were.

"Well, I can't really go up to Buffy and tell her what's happening. She'll think I'm possessed again and try to do a spell to remove all the implants, which would probably kill me. So I guess I find a nice little base of operations and start hunting on my own. You up for it?"

"You're asking me?" Cortana responded, a little surprised. She had never thought that he would ask her.

Xander responded. "Ya, I can go it alone but I was kinda hoping that you come along and help me."

"Oh, I'm in. I am an UNSC AI I have a duty to protect mankind and I guess hunting demons does fall under that heading."

"Good, now I just gotta find a way to make this suit not stick out like a sore thumb at night. Anyway to make it a different color? Green is not exactly stealthy for hunting at night."

"There is a nanobot-weave designed into the skin of the armor for different environments, it shouldn't take more than a few minutes to switch it over to a all black color. But you have to remember, all of the suits functions are dependant on technology that doesn't exist in this time, we will have to come up with someway of repairing the suit."

"We'll figure that out tomorrow. Right now I just wanna get home and get a good night sleep."

With that Xander began a slow jog through the streets of Sunnydale, taking care to avoid the main streets in an effort not to get seen. It wouldn't do for some passing yokel to put out a picture in the paper of a suit of MJOLNIR armor jogging down main street now would it? After about ten minutes Xander arrived home to find his parents passed out drunk in the living room. He quickly and quietly made his way down to the basement, his parents having decided last month that his room would make a perfect place to store their crap. After stripping off the armor carefully, he then removed the tiny sphere that contained Cortana from her place in the armor.

"What are you doing? She asked.

"Well I thought you might want to plug into the internet. I don't know if you need sleep or recharging so I thought you might want to roam the net while I slept so you don't get bored."

Cortana said "Oh. I guess I could look around, see if I can find some equipment that could assist us in your little crusade against the demons, or in repairing the armor."

Xander took a few moments to figure out how, with Cortana's instruction, to hook her up to the net but once that was he down he said good night and quickly fell asleep. All night long he was plagued by nightmares of John-117's training and flashbacks of missions he had gone on.

While Xander slept, Cortana began to roam far and wide throughout the internet. What she found disappointed her, most of the programs that would lead to the development of the Spartan program didn't even exist. She quickly found and began to raid drug cartel's bank accounts throughout the world, telling herself that the money she took would be used for the betterment of mankind. With these funds she quickly began purchasing equipment and resources that she could use to build a true base of operations for herself and Xander, though it would take time.

In the morning, Xander quietly went upstairs trying to avoid waking his deadbeat parents. Once upstairs he raided the kitchen for something to eat. After eating his fill, he went back downstairs to see what he should be doing today to help get the armor back up to full combat status or to even see if Cortana wanted to do something. Though what an AI could do without a true body stumped him.

"Morning Cortana, did you have a good time out in the net last night?"

"Good morning Xander, and yes I did. Thank you for suggesting it last night. I have procured items and equipment that will be of great use to us."

"Wait a minute, how can you 'procure' anything? You need money to do that and I know for a fact that you don't have any." Xander responded.

"Well, I kinda stole all the money from various drug cartels from around the world."

"What! Are you insane? If they find us, which they probably can cause they can bribe the FBI to track us, I'm a dead man!"

Cortana spoke with a wounded tone. "Hmmph, you really think some 20th century hacker is going to be able to trace me?"

"You mean they can't?"

"Of course not. I am an AI after all. The money was wire transferred through a few thousand banks across the world; it'll take them years to find it. Also I managed to dump every record contained within the cartels computers straight into the DEA's central mainframe. That should put quite a crimp in their operations for quite some time. They'll be too busy to even attempt to come after us. Now hurry up and get dressed in some clean clothes. We got a lot to do today."

Xander stood there quite stunned before turning to do as he was directed. After getting dressed, Cortana told him to head for the industrial park of Sunnydale. It seemed that while she was busy robbing the drug cartels, she had also been busy buying some real estate. She had bought a whole block of abandoned warehouses down near the outskirts of town. Only one of them would actually be used but the rest were bought to hide the fact that he would be using one of the others as a base for his demon hunting.

When he arrived at what was to be his new base, Xander looked at the rundown shell of a building. It would take a lot of work to get this place ready for action. Though it did seem to be the perfect place to build his base camp. The warehouse was about 500 feet long and maybe the same length wide. Standing nearly three stories tall as well. The inside was nearly empty except for some old railway containers, which were falling apart.

Xander nearly yelled. "You want me to live here?"

"Well it could use a little fixing up but yes I do."

"God, this place is falling apart. Hell, my house is in better shape than this place!"

"True, though you do not own your house. You do though own this warehouse. Its registered in your name."

Before Xander could answer there was the sound of a massive truck pulling into the loading dock of the warehouse. Xander went to investigate the sound and found four other trucks pulling into the loading dock. He went over to the first one, since the driver had already gotten out. But before he had a chance to say anything the drive spoke.

"Are you Alex Harris?"

"Um, yes I am." He replied in a confused tone.

"Sign here." With that the driver produced a worn old clipboard with a shipping manifest on it. Xander signed it only to have four other's placed in front of him from the other drivers. Once they were all signed the drivers asked him if he could open up the loading bay doors so that they could start unloading all of his property from their trucks. Even as this was happening other vehicles were pulling up beside the warehouse. Carpenters, plumbers, electricians and even some home decoration guys.

Xander spoke in a low tone so that only Cortana could hear him. "Uh what the hell is going on here?"

"Well I knew that you would complain about the state of the warehouse so I made a few calls to spruce the place up. Its surprising how many people are willing to keep their mouths shut if you say money is no object."

He just stood there stunned. The work crew that apparently Cortana had hired quickly went to work. The warehouse was quickly cleaned top to bottom. Walls were reinforced with concrete, floors laid in the old office areas to make it into a nice 3 apartment inside. The apartment inside took up only a fraction of the warehouse; the rest of the area was quickly filled up with all the equipment that Cortana had ordered over the net. He didn't even know what most of it did, but some of it did resemble the manufacturing line of a car factory, though why he would need that was beyond him for the moment.

After a good twelve-hour day with workers coming to him for orders, which Cortana whispered into his ear through the neural interface, the building began to look entirely different. It finally did look like a place that he could actually use as a base of operations. Though he did have one small change put in, in a small-reinforced internal garage he had a hydraulic jack system installed that would rotate a platform that a car would sit on. He insisted that if it was good enough for Batman then it was good enough for him too, Cortana called him an idiot for it but eventually gave in and let him have it.

Once all the workers had left for the day, Cortana went to work on interfacing with the equipment and computers to begin reconfiguring the machines into something approaching 24th century technology. While Cortana did this, Xander went back home to get his armor and anything else that he wanted to bring with him. Well actually he was ordered to go get it and stop pestering her.

Xander was enjoying the new car that Cortana had managed to find on of all places, E-bay. She couldn't find or build at this time a warthog so she decided to improvise and bought a civilian model Hummer. She had informed Xander that she would be making a lot of modifications to the Hummer as soon as she could get all of the equipment up to her standards, but until then Xander was blasting through town at nearly 100 miles an hour. After grabbing everything that he needed or wanted from his parent's house he quickly returned to what would be his new home, the warehouse.

Xander was thinking quite hard when walked up to the computer terminal that Cortana was currently interfaced with. "You know we should come up with a cool name for our base, I mean Batman called his the Batcave, maybe we should call ours the Halo House."

Cortana didn't even stop her work as she replied. "That's gotta be one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. Batman is a fictional character in a comic book. We should just call this place home, or if you insist on giving it a 'cool' name we could call it Alpha base.

Xander had looked a little dejected when Cortana replied but rapidly recovered when she suggested her own name for the base. "Alpha base it is, but I guess home has a nice ring to it as well."

"Good, though this isn't going to be our only base. As soon as I can get enough 24th century equipment online I'll start on plans for a more permanent and secure base of operations. This will do until then."

"Ok, I'm going to go hangout with the gang at the library and see if there's anything bad coming up on the horizon for us to watch out for." Xander said this as he quickly grabbed his jacket and began walking out of the warehouse.

"Ok, don't get yourself killed!" Cortana yelled to him as he walked away.

Sunnydale High School Library.

It took Xander all of twenty minutes to make his way to the school after leaving his new home. Once there he could see that Buffy was in another one of her little moods over the fact that Giles was informing her that she had to patrol tonight.

"But Giles! There's a live band playing at the Bronze tonight and I really wanted to go." She pouted hoping it would gain her some points.

It didn't work. Giles spoke in a semi-stern voice. "Buffy, you are the chosen one. You have a scared duty to protect the people of the town. You have to patrol to insure that you are always ready."

"Don't worry Buffy, I'll come with you. Keep all those bad vampires away from you." Her best friend Willow spoke up in an attempt to cheer her up.

"Thanks Willow. C'mon lets get going. Maybe we can catch the end of the band if we hurry." With that both Buffy and Willow grabbed a few stakes and walked out of the library almost running into Xander.

"Oh hey Xander, almost didn't see you there." Willow said.

"Heya Buffster, Wills. Heading out for a night of slayage? I'll join ya."

Buffy said. "Xander that's really not necessary, it's a slow night. You should just stay here and help Giles research. Oh and get donuts, we need donuts for when we get back, ok?"

Before he could even respond to that both of the girls had walked out and away from the library. Xander stuck around for a few hours after they had left, silently reading as many of the research books as he could, scanning them into a small computer core whenever Giles' back was turned. He would have to remember to come back sometime when Giles wasn't there to really get a good scan on the books. After scanning as many as he could Xander left to go back to 'Alpha base' or as it was coming to be known in his head, home.

On the other side of the country Kendra was having an extremely tough time against a vastly more powerful enemy. Every trick she had tried had ended in failure. This new enemy was protected by some sort of magical shield around him that prevented her from just shooting him with a crossbow. She had been on his trail for months, ever since she had heard of his cult following. This 'Seth' cult would brainwash young naïve children to do his bidding and when the authorities over the centuries attempted to stop him he would massacre the children and vanish only to reappear a few years later doing the same thing all over again.

"Die Demon!" Kendra shouted at him.

"Foolish mortal, bow before your god!"

Kendra charged at him, attempting to bowl him over. To her surprise it worked, it seemed his magic shield did not prevent her from getting close. Before he could react she attempted to shove her knife through his heart. Her knife glanced off some sort of armor he was wearing under his robes. As she tried to shift to knife him in the head or neck he grabbed her neck and quickly twisted it at a sharp angle. The last thing Kendra saw was her opponent's eyes glowing a hot demonic white.