CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

With Mrs. Post gone we continued our lives in relative peace. Faith was settling in nicely and Joyce was very welcoming, especially since foster care authorities were obliged to inform her of Faith's early years. They weren't nice. Joyce swore to make it up to her. Of course she never said so to Faith or Buffy in order to avoid embarrassing Faith.

Unfortunately Buffy wasn't too happy. Joyce became aware of her meetings with Angel and gave her a major ass chewing and grounded her. She could go out only with me or Faith, and I was told to keep my eye on her and to be uncompromising with her. Joyce had that look on her that made me very nervous so I had to comply.

It wasn't hard to figure out how Joyce discovered what Buffy was up to- Giles was a manipulative English bastard when he wanted to be.

Considering how Faith was suddenly a golden child in the house, Buffy was fuming. She became snarky, often beat me up while we trained (she'd always say she was sorry after making me blue and purplish) and she was also cold with Faith all of a sudden.

Cordelia was the one who made me aware how bad it was.

"She is going to blow up soon Xander. I know I would have if that slut-o-rama suddenly started to live in my house and my parents liked her better."

"Faith is not a slut and you know it Cordy. Why are you so defensive when she is mentioned?" I asked as we were lying together in the bed. Her bed was big and comfy with nice elastic features which were great when we had sex.

She glared at me for a moment. "Are you blind and deaf? She picks a different guy every week! Hello! And she's been making moves on you too!"

I shook my head. "She was just joking, it's not like I'd have gone along with her proposals and she knows it too."

Cordelia huffed showing me how convinced she was. I smiled and grabbed her ass below the blanket. It was time to show her how much I liked her.

Cordelia's words still remained in my memory as I spied Buffy sitting alone in the quad. Her face was miserable and my heart constricted for a moment. Most students made sure to stay away from her, they could feel her bad mood.

"Hey Buffster, how are you?" I greeted her and sat next to her. "Wanna candybar?"
She shook her head at my offer.

"Oh come on, talk to your Xander shaped friend! I am a good listener, you know it." I prodded her, but she remained stubbornly silent and sulking.

I glanced at her and grimaced in sympathy. "It's bad I guess. Your mom doesn't let you see Angel, Faith seems to have taken your spot with her and Giles and with us too, am I right?"

"Sheesh how did you figure that out?" Buffy went sarcastic on me. She could be so bitchy sometimes. Oh yeah, she was a highschool bitchy richy doll once.

"Sorry for that Xan, but I'm really in a bad mood." She said after a second of silence. "Even Willow gives me bad looks sometimes."

Uh-oh, if she didn't have Wills she really was stuck by herself. Amy and Cordy were never buddy -buddy with her like Willow was.

"What did you expect Buffy?" I asked. "Willow almost got killed by him and she's still afraid of him. And she adored Miss Calendar big time."

"I liked Miss Calendar too!" Buffy responded hotly.

"No, you tolerated her for Giles's sake. You were never close to her. But that's fine; no one can like every person they meet."

Buffy seemed to get smaller. "Am I really that shallow?"

"No Buffy, you're just human." I said softly. "Where did you get that notion anyway?"
Buffy looked sad then and I got it. "You had a fight with your mom and some bad words were said, right?"

I couldn't help myself and I laughed.

She punched me lightly on the shoulder. "That's not funny! They, my mom and Giles, made their opinions very clear to me."

"Come on Buff! They were just trying to rattle you up so you would start to take their words seriously. Giles isn't stupid, he must have known about your tete-a-tetes with Angel before I did. He was probably insulted and disappointed so he told your mom. It was obvious you hold her opinion about you in the highest regard."

I sighed then. "Let's be frank, I agree with your mom's reaction. It's only natural that she is acting so strongly, Angel is a vampire and also he is too old for you. I mean even as a soul guy he is over ninety. Cut Joyce some slack will you, it's like seeing a thirty year old dude dating a thirteen year old girl. Picture that please!"

"But it's different for us! I'm not an ordinary girl; I can take care of myself." She protested.

"Sure. I mean, you almost sent him to Hell that day at the mansion-I saw your resolve to do what's right. You had to choose between the world and the eternal damnation of the man you loved. That's why I respect you today. That's why I know it is different for the two of you. That's why I know you won't mess it up ever again."

She shivered at my words. "Thank God you were there Xander. I swear it would have broken my heart, but I was finally ready to kill Angelus. That's why it's so hard to let go."

I hugged her tighter. "I know, I know."

"I'm scared Xander. I don't know what I would do without him."

"I don't know Buff, live? Slay? Make it so that the world keeps turning? Have fun with your pals? Graduate?"

"I guess, I never really expected to live this long-that's why I was so hung up on my only chance to have something my own. My love. My only love." Buffy whispered.
I was stunned at those words. Buffy was in serious funk.

"Hey, don't be like that! That's why you have me and the gang. We're here for you, just like you're here for us. I can promise you this-you will not go alone when the time comes.

And it will be spectacular and far, far in the future. You will graduate, you will attend college-Willow won't let you pass it up."

She was crying a little and smiling. "God, you're right. Willow won't let anyone miss the joys of the college education. What was I thinking?"

"You weren't, that's what. Now be cool, show the ropes to Faith and don't blame her for your troubles. You're sisters practically, youu should stick together. She should be your rant buddy whenever something goes wrong for you. That's how Jesse and I were. We shared our dreams and hopes, our good days and bad ones."

"You seem to have done for him what he always wanted." Buffy said in jest.

"Yeah, I did. I'm really great guy, am I?" I grinned.

"Yes you are Xander Harris. I was a bitch lately, right?" Buffy sounded abashed.

"Well," I drawled, "nobody's perfect."

"Oh really? What am I lacking in your so expert opinion?"

"Hmm, not much really. If you had Cordelia's boobs and your mom's ass you'd be perfect."

"What?" Buffy was surprised.

"Hey you asked." I said in my defense.

"I mean my mom's ass? Are you saying my mother has better bottom than I do?" She was pissed.

"Err, maybe?" I guessed.

She grabbed my biceps and squeezed, Slayer hard.

"Come on, I was just joking!" I pleaded.

"Just one thing Xander, an advice from a friend. Never, I mean, never tell a teenage pretty girl that her mom is in any way or shape better. I so have much better ass than my mom!

And don't you dare ask to feel me up-or my mom for that matter, or else…"

I nodded vigorously and she let me go. Man, what would she do if she knew how much of her mom's ass I "felt".

Things got better afterwards. I think Buffy had a long talk with her mom since her curfew disappeared. Giles got the transfer papers for Faith and she had to start going to the school with us. She scared her classmates since she was so pissed off.

Me, I continued hunting when I was able to. One night I was patrolling the docks in the search for nests but I found none. But I wasn't discouraged, Sunnydale marine area was a big place.

It was full moon. Oz was locked up in the cage and Willow was keeping him company. If you can believe it, he liked it when she read him stories. He'd sleep and snore like an old dog.

I felt something and whirled around.

"Shit Deadboy!" I hissed and lowered the stake. "What are you doing here?"

"Buffy asked me to keep an eye on you, just in case." Angel said and crouched by me.

"Really? Well that's nice to hear. Did you happen to notice any nasties?"

"No. But I am impressed by your skills."

"Oh, I am so pleased to hear your compliments." It was obvious that I wasn't.

"You should be." Angel nodded ignoring my sarcasm. "You kill three to four vampires a night, when they are present. That's not a small feat, even for a Slayer. You remind me of Holtz sometimes."

"Who?"

"He used to be a very skilled and determined hunter. He made me and Darla run across the world centuries ago."

"Well, I like him a lot then. So you've been following me for a while."

"Not so much, just a few nights really. I stay away and kill the strays you miss. Luckily you are pretty reasonable when you hunt; you never take on more than two vampires at once. Those eyes of yours, they are powerful." Angel spoke in silent tone. With all that sea close, sounds carried far and well.

"Perhaps, but not as much as they could be." I muttered knowing he would catch it.

"Is that so?" He sounded curious.

"Trust me you don't want to know."

"They look pretty inhuman to me, demonic even." he said and I turned to him. He was staring at me hard, almost accusing.

"Is that so?" I mimicked his earlier phrase of speech. "How would you even know what Sharingan is? It's not even real as far as we know. Just a magicked copy of the fictional thing."

He looked uncomfortable. "There have been cases when humans were in brief contact with demons, with their flesh or blood, or their energy. It is said that sometimes humans developed a copy of the demonic ability. It is usually referred to as 'the aspect of the demon'. Many tales of people with unusual abilities are based on such cases."

I felt uncomfortable. The fact was, the Sharingan was in part demonic since the Six paths Sage was the first jinchuuriki-a human host to the demon called Juubi. Itachi heard this tale from Uchiha Madara's mouth and he had no reason to disbelieve it. Madara was in fact proud to say he was a scion of the Sage, no matter how corrupt his blood was.

Itachi was disgusted to learn of this. But it explained many things about the Mangekyou
Sharingan. God, I hope it wasn't real!

But Angel seemed to hear something. "I hear noise in the distance. I think it's the sound of the car."

We lied down on the roof to hide ourselves. Soon, several vehicles rolled on the dock below, one truck and a limousine. I activated my Sharingan to see better and Angel went vamp.

The truck was without any distinct markings, its paint was boring gray and white. The limousine was black, like so many others. I could tell that the drivers of both vehicles were vamps, but the man in the limo was human. Well I think so, but something was off about him.

When I saw who he was I froze. Angel's demonic eyes widened and we exchanged disbelieving stares. It was Richard Wilkins the Third, the mayor of Sunnydale.

Giles wasn't happy in the mansion where we met. It was to be expected, Angel was there. There was an air of hostility around G-man, but he held his composure-we had a bigger problem.

"Xander, are you sure it was the Mayor?" Giles asked me for the God knows how many times. He just wasn't able to accept the fact that our popular politician was such a dark figure. He sure did a superb acting, Oscar worthy.

"Yeah G-man, it was him. My eyes don't lie. And Angel saw him too. So he is a black mage?"

Giles tossed a glass of old scotch to calm himself. "If we're lucky."

"What do you mean?" I frowned.

"That means he is not so powerful." Angel answered form his chair in the far corner of the room. "If he is a sorcerer, he might be untouchable. It is very likely he has made pacts with the denizens of the hell dimensions to gain power and immortality. That's what they always do. I came across such people before, and they are even worse than your average vampire."

"So how do we get him? We call the Council; they must have means to act against him." I said.

"No, that would not work Xander." Giles said bitterly. "I am sure he would know immediately if the Council's wizards were to arrive. And to be frank, we don't have powerful casters among us, not on such scale. In order to get him we have to catch him unawares."

"How? We can't attack him ourselves, he has too many demons on his side and he is magically more powerful than you." Angel noted.

"So what do we do? Send him a letter bomb and hope it kills him?" I said half jokingly.

Giles paused and gave us his best, scariest Ripper smile. "Actually, I was thinking about sending him a book."

"Excuse me?" I said in confusion.

Angel looked intrigued so he explained. "Every magic practitioner tries to get his hands on whatever magic tome or diary he can. It's the base rule that knowledge is power, and in magic circles it is very much so. Every mystical text has its enormous value even if you do not use it-at least you deny its use to others."

"Exactly!" Giles exclaimed. "He won't be able to resist getting his dirty hands on such a thing-only we will put in it as much firepower as we can. Xander's exploding seals will do rather nicely. I doubt he will detect such danger, he has never come across such type of power."

"Wait, you want me to make a whole book of the exploding tags? That will be able to bring the whole building down!"

Giles nodded. "Regretfully so, but that man is too dangerous to go after with half measures."

Angel stared at him. "You do understand that this plan will kill many people besides him. If it works."

"I bloody well do!" Giles growled, "but that man has been in control of the Hellmouth for so long, and the demons are afraid of him. That means trouble on the apocalyptic scale. We can not play soft, not with the whole world at stake."

***

The plan was simple in the end. I started to make those exploding pages in the faux magic tome, pretty thick one if you ask me. I read a rare tome from Giles's stash to copy some texts and gibberish to hide the presence of the seals on the pages.

Angel managed to set up an accidental find of that tome; supposedly it was searched for by Angelus. He planted rumor or two about it and we let the snitches like Willy do the rest.

It took three weeks to do the job. It was Willy who got the reward for finding the 'Tome of Muhr'. I have no idea who or what he was, but supposedly he was a major badass in the ancient times. Giles set it all up. I just did what he said to do.

I put the tracking seal on the book to make sure of it's location. Also I had to tie another seal to Giles's detector rune for dark magic. That way we could tell if it was the Mayor who held the tome.

Angel and I tracked it to the City Hall. It spoke volumes about Mayor's power-he was doing his magic business in the public office. He was sure no one could touch him. Also it led us to believe that all employees in the Hall were under his influence.

The two of us settled on the roof of the building across the City Hall making sure we stayed unseen.

I felt it then. "He has it now."

Angel sighed. "Are you sure?"

I nodded. "There can be no mistake, the seals are functioning."

"Do it."

I closed my eyes and asked God to forgive me. "Katsu."

The sound was terrible, it was as if the world was falling apart and the fireball engulfed the whole top floor of the City Hall and expanded thirty meters above the roof-which, was gone at the time. The shockwave threw us on the roof. Cars and other things on the street were tossed away; the pavement cracked forming rifts to the underground.

The hall was crumbling down fast in fire and smoke, and the pieces of the walls and roof were just coming back down amidst the glass droplets. We had to find cover within our building.

"God Harris how much power did you put in that thing?!" Angel yelled at me.

"Not enough to do this, trust me! There must have been something else in his place to add to the blast, or maybe he was it. How the hell should I know?"

I was telling the truth. Chakra and magic seemed to react to each other; at least they seemed to do so when Giles and I studied seals and raw magic. Giles was able to make some seals with magic, but not always. I think we will stop experiments, it was obviously too risky.

By the time cops and fire squads arrived we were gone.

The weeks afterwards were hectic. The cleanup continued for days and then there were feds in the town investigating the terrorist activity. FBI, DEA, NSA- name it, it was here. Everyone wanted to know what happened and who did it.

Let's say that the Sunnydale PD got trashed soundly and half of the police force was reassigned to other cities, far, far behind God's ass. They will never be able to work in a decent city. Stein disappeared without trace. He was probably hiding.

The school was put on hold for two long weeks and the students enjoyed their sudden vacation.

The demonic citizens of the Sunnydale became remarkably inconspicuous. There were no strange deaths or disappearances, no weird sightings. They knew the score-if they were seen or heard it would lead to major disaster. They knew it was in their interest to be unknown. So we, the Scoobies also were on the vacation.

Giles and Angel decided to keep this secret so not even Buffy was aware of the truth. I didn't tell Cordy or Joyce. We believed it was better that way in case someone decides to ask around. Plausible denial and all that.

As for Wilkins, well his reign of the Sunnydale ended abruptly and many rich folks and politicians around the States suddenly started to drop. It was not difficult to connect their loses with Wilkins.

And we did manage to discover his plan-his assistant; Mr. Finch wasn't in the building that evening. In fact he was planning his getaway from the city.

Our Mayor was a bad guy, a major bad guy in fact. He built this town as the feeding ground for some powerful demons and in turn they protected him and assisted in the Ascension. Giles nearly had a heart attack when he discovered that.

The Ascension was a process where one could become a pure demon, a demon with capital D. Finch explained how his boss was hoarding necessary ingredients for the ritual that was supposed to culminate at the Graduation of the current senior class, my class.
To fuel his change he was supposed to eat the attendees and devour their souls to ascend to the true demonic existence. He already sold his soul for immortality, so it was one way street for the bastard. He knew he was going to Hell, but he wanted to go there as a badass, not as the bitch.

I had to admire his sheer audacity. That was the man who played for all or nothing. He got nothing but eternal damnation. Hope he gets roasted good.

Finch gave us the books about the Ascension and some other nasty magic never heard from him again.

The Council was never informed of these events by G-man, as they were concerned this was just a mundane act of violence.

I was glad it was over. The only thing I regretted was the killing of the other people in the City Hall-I still believed some were innocent.

I felt a distant chuckle in my mind. I recognized it-Metatron was again in my head.

"What's so funny?" I asked rudely. I wasn't in the sharing mood exactly.

"OH, THE IRONY OF IT ALL. EVEN I DID NOT SEE HOW IT WOULD END FOR WILKINS. AS IT GOES IT IS SO AMUSING. YOU KNOW, HE DIED IN THE SAME MANNER IN THE ORIGINAL TIMELINE. BY YOUR BOMB, AGAIN!"

"Really?" I was shocked.

"YES, IT WAS FATE I WOULD SAY."

"Crap, that's creepy if you ask me."

"PERHAPS. I TAKE IT AS A SIGN FROM OUR LORD THAT HIS WILL CANNOT BE , WILKINS WASN'T THE ONLY ONE TO TRY THIS RITUAL. BUT NONE SUCCEDED."

"Why not?" I was curious.

"THE AGE OF DEMONS IS LONG GONE AND IT SHALL NEVER COME AGAIN. THE FACT IS, EVERY TIME SOMEONE TRIES TO PERFORM SUCH REALITY SHIFTING ACT THE FORCES OF THE BALANCE WILL REACT ACCORDINGLY."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better? I still murdered a lot of ordinary people." I said bitterly. "I tried to think of another way, but I couldn't."

"THAT IS WHAT MEANS TO BE HUMAN XANDER HARRIS. TAKE SOLACE IN THIS-NO ONE WHO DIED THAT DAY WAS INNOCENT. THE LORD MADE IT SO AS A REWARD FOR YOUR COURAGE AND FAITH. YOU PRAYED AND WERE HEARD."

I swallowed my response, I doubt it would have been coherent. There was a sense of relief in my gut.

Metatron faded from my mind and I felt much better about the whole deal. I will never forget how I managed to overcome my misgivings about the bombing for the greater good. Itachi would be proud. It was truly dangerous way of thinking.

A.N. : My thanks goes to Dragonhulk(from Twisting the Hellmouth Fanfiction Archive), he beta-ed this one and I am forever grateful for his help. God bless you man!