Shifting Heart

Chapter 07

The graveyard was unusually full that night. Both Xander and Jonno were on patrol. This was fine by Buffy since she was actually quite looking forward to seeing what the mage could do. She already knew, to a degree, what Xander could do after he had blown up her training dummy. He told her the flash was the visual representation of Mangle, and if she had looked closely, she may have seen a cyclone-like effect. Although he wasn't too sure if she had spotted it.

Buffy sent a glance to her dark haired friend. She liked the changes in him to a degree, though she was not too sure about the new confidence levels. He seemed even more confident in himself than Giles at times, and that seemed a little unnatural to the teenager. Considering the way Xander had been before, he no longer seemed to feel the need to fill silences, though he did still do the quip fu thing, for which she was actually grateful. It may drive Giles up the wall, and occasionally annoy even her, but it did help to bolster her. Hell, at times it bolstered them all.

At the moment, he was walking along as if he had not a care in the world, chatting away with Jonno and occasionally darting looks into the night. Buffy wondered if, like her, he knew that they were being stalked. There were quite a few members of the undead population of Sunnydale creeping around in the graveyard that night. Xander turned again, this time catching her eye and winking. Xander knew, she could tell, that now all she had to do was give the word and they would all spring into action. Jonno, to her surprise, also looked back and winked. Apparently - and it made sense - he also could tell there were vampires around as well.

This was crunch time and what they had come to see. Jonno mainly, but also Xander, to see if they could fight and, of course, how they fought. Therefore, she gave Jonno a nod and watched as the short person turned to his taller companion and said a few words to him. For his part, Xander just nodded and said, "Light them up Jonno."

Jonno let out a chuckle and lifted his hand, in which a fireball was already growing with alarming speed. When it was a good size, he hefted it back in a pitchers throw and sent it careening off into the darkness.

Buffy's sharp eyes tracked it through the night, watching as it flew past several shocked vampires and eventually hit a tombstone some feet away. She was quite disappointed that he had missed, until she realised that was not the point of the exercise. Whatever sort of magic the fireball was made out of it continued to burn where it was spread all over the tombstone, lighting up the entire area in its red orange glow.

"Now that's something you can't do in the game," Xander commented wryly.

"I know, cool huh?" Jonno replied as he drew his hands back over his head. The entire area around him was covered in a sheen of ice that somehow did not affect Xander. Then when he had built up a good bolt of ice in his hands, he flung it forward towards one of the approaching vampires. The shot did not kill the vampire, but it did slow it down considerably.

"Show off," Buffy heard Xander whisper to Jonno. The smaller man smirked and, with a quick movement of his hand, the Vampire suddenly lit aflame. It screamed and disappeared into a cloud of dust, nearly taking out a nearby vampire with it.

Meanwhile the remaining vampires had gotten close enough to force a more physical confrontation. However, Jonno did not stop casting his spells even as the vampires converged on his position; instead he half turned to Xander and said, "Tank for me?"

"If you think it'll work." Xander said rearing back, throwing up his hands, which quickly turned into massive paws. His arms shortened slightly and grew radically thicker, a small wind kicked up dust around him, and as he bent forwards to complete his transformation everyone lost sight of him for a moment. Suddenly there was a deafening roar and where Xander had stood there was an enormous bear. It was easily twice the size of a Kodiak bear and looked to be plated with heavy muscle. Much to Xander's surprise his challenging roar actually seemed to work and all the vampires turned on him instead.

One vampire struck out with his claws and scratched over the surface of Xander's fur, actually kicking up sparks where claw hit fur. This was fine by Xander and he felt a red mist descend over his vision as he began to become enraged. A huge paw suddenly struck out in a raking move across the full 180 degrees in front of where Xander was facing leaving a red after image in the air. All of the vampires in its path screamed out in rage and dived at Xander with retribution in their hearts.

Meanwhile Jonno was picking them off methodically with well-placed fireballs, his eyes alight with battle madness and more than a little hyperactive about the entire thing. It was as if the game had come to life for him and he loved every minute of it.

As Jonno and Xander fought the rest of the Scooby gang were rooted to the spot, their eyes wide open and jaws hanging. The sheer brute force the Bear was showing and the force of nature that was Jonno in full flow was making them all more than a little surprised to say the least.

Jonno struck out with another well-placed fireball and then held his arms up to the sky. It was if a huge blizzard had kicked up out of nowhere and large chunks of ice fell from the sky and began impaling vampires left and right. Some dusted straight away, whilst others were merely pinned to the floor. Xander dealt with those in short order, his huge claw raking across the downed vampires and knocking off heads like dandelions before he reared up and, in the reverse of his transformation, he stood before them breathing hard but otherwise seemed un-effected. Around them was a heavy coating of vampire dust and the odd survivor pinned by the large icicles Jonno had summoned.

Xander looked around, seemingly quite impressed and then with an almost flex like movement of his hands speared each vampire with a bolt from the heavens with what could only be described as moonbeams. Whatever the actual content of the spell, it worked well enough to Buffy's eyes, as each vampire was quickly dispatched to the afterlife. Jonno followed Xander's example and used a flame strike spell to cleanse the ground of the remaining vampires in a wholesale manner.

After only a few short minutes, there was only the occasional waft of vampire dust to prove that anything had happened.

"Bloody hell," Giles breathed.

"And that's all she wrote," Jonno said, although his voice was a good octave higher than normal due to the pure adrenaline shooting through his system. "That was freaking cool, man!" He added to Xander who was shooting him an amused look.

Xander had to agree that it was. The vampires had been dumb enough to concentrate on Xander when the real threat to their continued existence had been the much squishier Mage, almost like the NPC's (Non-Player Characters) in the game. Xander was not quite sure why they had reacted that way, but he was glad they had. It meant that he could protect the others by 'tanking' for them while they dealt with the various denizens of Sunnydale's nightlife from behind. It was unlikely that there was much that could really hurt him badly in normal patrols and if Harmony agreed to come along for the more dangerous missions, he would be well covered there as well. However, the thought that he could, someday, trust Harmony with his very life was still a little strange to him to say the least.

"That was amazing," Willow commented, looking at the destruction the short man had created around them. There was a little property damage around the place and there was a coating of not only dust but also ice on the ground, but overall it had been very impressive to watch.

"It was," Buffy agreed, "but we need to work out what you can do to fit into a team. With us, I mean. I don't want to accidentally get in the way of one of those fireballs and be toasted. Are there other things you can do that aren't quite so - big bang?"

"That's a good point Buffy, but did you not notice that the ice failed to have any effect on Xander?" Giles put forth.

"I had noticed that, yeah, but I thought that was because Xan could ignore it because of what he is." Buffy told her mentor.

"I can't." Xander inserted, "It's something from the game, unless you're dueling he, or rather we, shouldn't affect those in our party, or, in other words those of you who are working with us at the time."

"Can we test that without getting burnt?" Buffy said curiously.

"I'm not sure," Xander admitted looking around and scooping up some ice. It did not even feel cold to him as he passed it to Buffy. "What do you feel?"

Buffy looked bemusedly at the snow in her hands. "Nothing, it's like it's not there."

"That answers that then." Jonno said with a smile, still a little hyped up on the events of the evening.

"Now, not so fast Jonno." Xander said cautiously. "Just because the spells themselves may not hurt anyone we're allied with, the after-effects of the spells might."

Jonno looked at him curiously so Xander continued. "I noticed earlier one of your fireballs missed slightly. It took out a vamp but the majority of the 'ball' itself hit the ground and kicked up a lot of dirt and stuff. If that got in Buffy's eyes when she was fighting, for instance, bad things could happen. On the other hand, if you iced some metal and it broke up it could shatter and the shards could hurt people. That's why we have to be careful."

Jonno nodded, seeing the truth of what Xander was saying. He was eager and was far from stupid. These sorts of concerns just were not a bother in the game, but the game was not real life and, as he was beginning to realize, you had to be more careful in real life. It sucked, but given the joy of battle itself and finally being so powerful - a dream come true for him - he could take a little sense if it meant he had these wicked powers. It was as Spiderman used to say, 'With great power, comes great responsibility'. Well he could live with that, just as long as he was allowed a little fun at the same time, and flaming vampires was definitely fun.

"Other than that though, I think we did well. We just have to plan how we can fit together as a team. The way I see it, Buffy is a warrior, and raid leader. Willow could be considered another caster class, though at the moment low level. Then Giles is like tactics and another melee fighter. Angel when he's around is yet another melee fighter and one that is a bit like a rogue, I suppose, with his stealth abilities." Xander mused. "Then you have me, the tank." He said with a smirk. "The one that takes the knocking and keeps the bad guys' attention so everyone else can poke away at them with their own abilities."

Jonno looked seriously at Xander for a long moment. "A tank is virtually useless without a good healer."

"For anything serious I'd have agree. But I have enough 'life' that this wasn't all that much of a problem."

"Still " Jonno trailed off, his meaning obvious. It would help if they could get Harmony involved properly; there were not many healers that could compete with a priest at full power and at the top of their game.

Xander just nodded to show he knew what Jonno was leading up to; neither had to say it. They were both aware of what needed to be done, but Harmony had shown very little interest in becoming involved with the nightly fights. It would interrupt her dating schedule and hanging out with her friends, if they could truly be called that. That said, however, both Jonno and Xander had noticed that she was loosening up in that regard of late.

"So what's next?" Jonno asked, changing the subject.

Giles smiled. "This is usually where Buffy et al go to the Bronze."

~#~ Harmony raised an elegant eyebrow as she watched the loser squad enter the Bronze. She was there with her date for the evening, some jock from Sunnydale High who was failing to impress her with his usual sure-fire ways of getting into her panties. She was not sure why it was not working exactly because up to a few weeks ago it would actually have done. She was not easy by any stretch of the imagination, but then she was not that hard to get into bed either. She quite enjoyed the whole dating thing if she was honest with herself, but it was starting to lose its shine for her. The jock only wanted her for her status and her looks. He was not the least bit interested in her personality or mind, let alone her friendship. He had one thing in mind, and for some reason that was bothering her.

Almost immediately she zeroed in on Jonno who was doing fine, full health mana stores already growing. Obviously, they had done the show and tell that evening, she was glad that he was not hurt. Then she flicked over the others, who also seemed to be fine and then finally, almost as if she knew what she would fine, she locked on to Xander Harris.

It wasn't life threatening and he was already building his own magical and health stores automatically, but he had obviously been hurt. It almost amused her to notice that no one had bothered to say anything. Jonno was not looking at Xander with any concern or anything like that and while Harmony was certain her life sense was better than the Mage, he would be able to tell that Xander had been hurt.

The problem was she wanted to go over there and heal him right up. To do that she would have to somehow get away from her date and then get Xander away from the loser squad. Tricky, to say the least on both counts. Something in her made her want to help him and she was not entirely sure what it was. Perhaps it was the 'healer' in her now, or just that she did not like to have one of the two people that had helped her hurt in any way.

"Hey Mike, I need to go powder my nose," she said cutting off what the jock was saying to her, what it was she had no idea. She had long ago tuned out what he was saying. Jocks, she was finding, talked mostly about themselves. Geeks on the other hand could actually talk about diverse topics. Admittedly, sometimes those topics included comic books and computers, but she had found that it was not all the time. A line from a movie came to mind, from Porkies or something about geeks and sex, and she was starting to wonder if it was actually true. Light alone knew, she had not had a good sexual encounter in a long time.

"Okay Babe," Mike said waiving her off and wandering off to find his teammates.

Harmony rolled her eyes and walked off into the club, heading towards Xander and his motley crew. As she passed she made a motion with her eyes for him to follow her, which Xander did with very little fuss, and she led him out of the club into a back alley.

"We must stop meeting like this," Xander commented wryly as they arrived in the less than salubrious locale.

"Uh huh, what have you been doing now?" Harmony harped as she began casting one of the many healing spells in her arsenal. As Xander and Jonno taught her, she only cast what she figured she would need to get the job done, rather than wasting her mana with a higher-level spell that would be a case of overkill.

Xander smiled as the spell washed over him, refreshing every part of his body all at the same time. "Oh god, that's good," he grinned.

"Why didn't you heal yourself?" Harmony wanted to know. Druids were the ultimate jack-of-all-trades after all.

"I want to keep that to myself for the time being," Xander told her seriously.

"So you came here thinking I'd do it?" she asked archly.

"Actually, no. I figured it'd come up in time by itself." Xander replied, then smirked, "Though you couldn't resist it could you?"

Harmony glowered at him for a moment before smiling slightly, "You two are turning me into a geek."

"Only in that we geeks actually care about each other," Xander replied carefully.

"You don't think the popular crowd cares about each other?"

"Not in the least bit, no." Xander admitted with a shrug.

Harmony frowned at that, but couldn't really correct him. "Some of us do," she rejoined weakly.

"Of course, but most of you don't. We 'geeks' do, because we have to look out for each other when the jocks are always picking on us, and generally making our lives more difficult than they have to be during high school. Which, let's face it, is a counter productive thing to do. For one there are always more geeks in a school than the social elite, and secondly High School only lasts a few years, so why make it more difficult than it has to be." He flashed a smile, "Thanks for the heal though Harm; it was good of you."

"Anytime, but - just - try not to get hurt."

Xander flashed a smile and walked back into the club, leaving her to ponder his words.