StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Okay, thanks to the wonderful Fanfiction.net: The Good Bits thread I have ended up reading a slew of well written Buffyverse fanfics. However, I noticed that so many people use the inevitable "What if Xander wore a different costume for Halloween when everyone turned into their costumes?" plot device, and while some of them are good, you still have to shake your head. So anyway, today I was thinking about what the most ridiculous (read out) costume Xander could transform into and then gain powers from would be until finally I hit upon something that made me say: "Yeah, that would work pretty well".

So enjoy. This will probably just be a single shot, but I might continue on with it after finals.

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There, everything was in place. The table was set, the food was ready, and the guests would arrive shortly. Giles got one day off a year, ONE, and he was going to make the best of it.

“Giles! Giles! Come quick, the town is in chaos!” The voice of Willow Rosenberg sounded outside.

Taking off his glasses, Giles very slowly let his face descend into his hand, saying, “Of course.” Getting up he moves out of his living room while shouting outside, “Do come in Willow and tell me what tonight’s disaster is.”

Of course, when Willow ran through the door, this caused Giles to take a step back and exclaim softly, “Oh dear.”

“GilescomequickeveryonehasturnedintotheirHalloweencostumesandI’maghostandBuffyisuselessandthewholetownisgoingnutsandXander…” Willow says in one long, panicked, incomprehensible utterance before furrowing her eyebrows and asking in a confused voice, “Hey, what’s that on your coffee table over there?”

Summoning the indignation that only a British librarian possesses Giles states, “I’m allowed to have hobbies!” before pausing, taking his glasses off again, pinching the bridge of his nose and saying, “And why are we having a discussion about what I do in my free time in the middle of a crisis? Please Willow, just tell me what happened. Slowly this time.”

Taking a deep breath, Willow starts over, “Okay, it all started when we went to this new costume shop that opened up in town to get these costumes for Halloween because Snyder told us that we had to take these little kids out trick-or-treating, and we were all like ‘Aw man!’ but Snyder…”

“Willow,” Giles quietly says in exasperation.

“Right, so anyway, I go as a ghost like I do every year, Buffy gets this 18th Century dress and Xander finds this big model suit of armour, kinda dorky and tacky but he said it made him feel like the hero for once. So we’re out with the kids, doing the whole candy-thing when suddenly everyone is their costumes! So now all the little kids are witches and demons and mummies and all that, Buffy is scared of her own shadow and Xander…” Willow pauses and then says, “No really, what IS that on your table?”

Clenching his fists in frustration for a moment Giles takes a deep breath to calm down before replying, “This is not the time, but if you really must know it’s a popular pass time amongst the younger Watchers, a way to relax, vent some frustrations at the realities of our jobs, and still keep our minds sharp. Now, back to this whole transformation thing. You mentioned a costume shop.”

Her eyes brightening up Willow continues, “Oh yeah! Well, you see, we met up with Cordelia and she hadn’t turned into a cat because she hadn’t gone to the costume shop. Plus after Xander changed he muttered something about ‘sorcery’ before stomping off in the general direction of the shop, so when we put two plus together.”

Sighing, Giles turns to his study before completing the turn to come back to Willow and asks, “Wait, you said something about Xander?”

“Oh yeah, he turned into some sort of… I don’t know, knight or something, he seemed ready for battle and would have started chopping into transformed little kids if I hadn’t told him to stop. He looked at me funny, considered what was happening, and muttered a few things in what sounded like Latin before leaving,” Willow then pauses, tilts her head and walks over to Giles coffee table, points at an open book and says, “He looks exactly like that.”

Blinking several times, Giles groans slightly before saying, “So what you’re telling me is that Xander, our Xander, is currently transformed into that. And he has all the powers of said form?”

“Probably, whatever they are. I mean, look, ghosty,” Willow says while waving her hand through Giles’ face.

“Stop,” Giles says annoyed before pausing, looking back down at the picture and saying, “Bloody hell.”

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The teleport had not gone well. He had expected a scattering of forces upon arrival, but this was just ridiculous. At first he had thought he had arrived back on the planet in the midst of a traitor controlled zone, surrounded by daemons, but before he could even draw his sword a strange spirit had called out to him in a language that he had not heard for millennia. Pausing, he realized that this could not be Terra, and that the daemons about him were not daemons at all, their spirits human trapped behind some strange form twisting sorcery.

Moving through the madness of the primitive community with casual ease and indifference, he blasted a few real daemons trying to prey upon the ensorcelled and just plain confused humans. He could feel the source of the sorcery from somewhere nearby, an enchantment dedicated to the ruinous powers of Chaos. Finding the sorcerer, making him reverse what he had done, and then burning him for playing with such corrupt powers topped the list of things he needed to do.

Just as he was reaching the point where the sorcerer was coming from, something caught his eye. Turning, he looked into the front window of a shop. Once he got over what he saw inside, he noticed something rather disconcerting. He was wearing is armour, but he did not see his face reflected back at him. Rather he saw a young adolescent face of significantly lighter skin tone than his own, with short brown hair.

Slicing open the door to the shop with the massive claws on his left gauntlet, he shouldered his way inside and gazed at the terrible wonders about him. He needed to know what was going on, fast, so he simply opened himself up and let the information flow directly into his mind.

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Sitting next to the broken body of Ethan Rayne, Giles idly wipes the sweat induced condensation off his glasses before asking, “What I really want to know is why you rented out that damned suit of armour.”

Coughing weakly, Ethan smiles and says, “Oh, and why does Ripper want to know about that old thing?”

“Just answer the question,” Giles replies coldly.

Laughing, Ethan answers, “Fine, fine. I got it fourth hand from some down on his luck twit back home and figured it would be a laugh to see what would come out of the tacky thing when I cast my spell.”

“Did you even know what it was?” Giles asks coldly.

“Not a bloody clue,” Ethan says with a snicker.

Getting back up, Giles savagely kicks Ethan in the ribs and says, “That’s for ruining my night,” kicks him again, “And that’s for summoning a GOD into the body of a friend of mine. Lord knows what that will do to him. Now tell me how to end the spell before I decide to repeat this process.”

Moaning from broken ribs, Ethan groans out, “Statue of Janus. Break it.”

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His discoveries had been… disconcerting at the least. At the very least the spell had thrown his consciousness back in time tens of thousands of years, worrying to say the least considering the power involved. Of course, the information he had discovered made him wonder if he was real at all. Shaking his head, he dismissed the possibility. This… place… seemed to suffer a closeness with the Immaterium and so perhaps his story had reverberated through time and space into the minds of those who created the books around him.

More troubling than his own existence was what would happen to the boy whose body he currently inhabited. Now that he knew the truth, he could feel the young man’s soul tucked off to the side, lost and confused as if in a dream. The touch of their souls would have unknown consequences for the young man, and considering the world he lived in, any knowledge or power he retained could have grave consequences.

He could feel the sorcerer controlling this foul enchantment weaken, so he presumed that someone from this world was taking care of the problem, so he had little time to finish his gift to the boy whose body he shared, and indeed to this entire world. The technology was primitive, but having already lived through a time like and aided in the technological advancement, he could make do. It was a simple thing really, a short database of some more poignant memories and how to use them. A training aid would only work for the soul of the man bound to him. He could feel the good in the man and knew he would put the tool to good use.

With a flash, the spell ended and the armour became moulded plastic once more and Xander was no longer a living god that walked the earth, but just a normal high school student who knew far too much about the darker aspects of the world around him. However, he clutched a small metal orb that appeared made out of the shredded remains of the shop’s computer. Confused by the strange memories that swirled in his head he stumbles outside and looks up at the sign on the shop.

“Games Workshop?” He reads, no more enlightened as to what had happened than before.

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The Emperor blinks once before he realizes that he is back to where he should be, having just teleported from the surface of Terra to the warship of his traitorous son.

The memories were vague, but he had forced himself to remember what he had learned that night, and the mistakes he would make in the coming minutes. Pausing, he mental checks himself and growls, “Horus is no son of mine.”

You may laugh and think this is a parody, but there's actually a SERIOUS story about this on SB.com.

And he gets to keep his powers too.

Darksider wrote:You may laugh and think this is a parody, but there's actually a SERIOUS story about this on SB.com.

And he gets to keep his powers too.

...


...

Please tell me he at least does a good job. Honestly, I mean, how does one even attempt something so ridiculous without doing parody or a far above standard job. I mean, you have to know just how silly this idea is, right?

....

Right?

The God Emperor of Man? Wow. More please.

Nice story, but already done on SB.com -> Emperor Xander (http://forum.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=84922).

Academia Nut wrote:[

Please tell me he at least does a good job. Honestly, I mean, how does one even attempt something so ridiculous without doing parody or a far above standard job. I mean, you have to know just how silly this idea is, right?

....

Right?

I don't know. I read the first chapter and ran away screaming, because I found out the author crosses it over with James Bond, Stargate SG-1, the X-files, 24, and other series as well.

Apparently "Emperor Xander" calls everyone from all the aformentiond series plus some others I forgot together, in order to form an alliance against evil.

The mere premise made me run like a little girl before I got two chapters in

I'm reading through it now... it's not bad... it's just not particularly good, either.

Oh, I had no pretensions of it being great Singular Quartet, it was merely a compulsive need to get it written out of annoyance for the over use of a plot device in certain fanfictions. I wrote it in less than two hours. But I'm sure the other authors can tell you about how they sometimes just get an itch they have to scratch.

Darksider wrote:I don't know. I read the first chapter and ran away screaming, because I found out the author crosses it over with James Bond, Stargate SG-1, the X-files, 24, and other series as well.

Sigh... if this site and the anime club I attend hadn't already made me renounce all faith in humanity, that would have done it. Which incidentally brings up another point. If you're doing a Buffyverse crossover, don't do SG-1 unless you know you can do it really fucking well, cause that's about as lazy as the Xander-costume plot device. We get it already, the Initiative was a branch of the NID. Yeesh.

Who cares. I haven't read the "other story" mentioned and think this is great.... Get back to writing already, damnit!

*claps* Yay this is going to be great.... but that was plastic

Sigh... yeah, I know my characters are kind of plastic, its somewhat endemic to my writing. I'm really good at setting atmosphere when I put my mind to it, and I think my strongest point in literary terms is world creation, but when it comes to actually animating the world and the characters in it? Not so good. Oh well, since I seem to have some fans who can stand my style and want more, might as well continue on with this little joke.

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Xander was not what one would call “energetic”, and in fact even “lethargic” implied that he had reserves of power he chose not to use. No ever since that Halloween night he had lost all of his characteristic Xander charm and had instead merely been able to drag his exhausted from one point to another and fell into deep, dreamless sleeps often. Snyder had tried to get him thrown out of school for “drug use” but the school nurse had shot that down by pointing out that Xander seemed to be suffering from narcolepsy.

Of course, Xander knew better. He was tired all the time because he had way too much knowledge crammed into his head and it was causing him enormous headaches that made anything more than exhaustion induced napping impossible. The worst bit was that trying to figure out just who he had been that night was impossible. It was like being stuck in an enormous library where none of the books have labels, their ordering is dubious at best, and you do not know language.

Giles seemed to know some of what had happened, but he was keeping eerily silent about the matter. He had given Xander a few encouraging words and taken the small orb he had crafted while in his form, saying that he wanted to look over it to see if there was anything they should worry about. Giles had yet to get back to him on the evil-or-not status of the device, so Xander just had to hope that it would help him work out the mess in his head.

Taking advantage of a free period to snooze in the library, Xander falls into a deep, restless dream. He is outside himself, in a dark, angry place where parallel lines like to cross over one another with disconcerting frequency. Things exist in this nightmare, flitting in and out of Xander’s vision, their malevolence pressing in on him but meeting an invisible wall somewhere.

Abruptly Xander returned to wakefulness by Buffy’s voice crying out in terror, “Xander!”

Opening his eyes, Xander found that the table he had been sleeping on had hoar frost covering it and that due to frozen drool his face had become stuck to the table. With his mouth partially frozen, he can only let out a confused and scared noise.

Coming out of his office, Giles is about to say something before he looks at the situation and replies, “Oh dear.”

A few minutes later the California air and some warm tap water has freed a visibly shaken Xander, who sits in Giles office wrapped in a blanket holding a cup of tea made by Giles and flanked on either side by the equally worried Willow and Buffy. He is too terrified to make any jokes about the tea or the closeness and attention of his female friends.

Returning with an armload of books, Giles drops them on the desk and before he can say anything all three of the teenagers say in chorus, “Research.”

“Ah, not exactly this time,” Giles says with a hum and a haw, “Because this time we know exactly what we’re dealing with.”

Picking up one of the books, Buffy notes several rather obvious facts, “Hey, this book isn’t several hundred years old and it has guys with machine guns on the front cover!”

Looking sideways at Willow, who is giving him the world’s greatest busted look, Giles explains, “That would be because these books are not ancient treatises on demons. They come from a science fiction series.”

“Don’t forget to mention the little model guys,” Willow pipes up.

“Little model guys?” Buffy asks incredulously.

“Alright!” Giles cries out in exasperation. “So I play with little plastic and pewter figurines. It’s not a crime, and besides, when you’re a Watcher the desire to be able to blow away demonic entities with advanced future tech weaponry rates high up there on the list of fantasies. Now if you all just get over the fact that Giles, ‘Mr. Tweed, tea, and British accent’ has a life outside aiding the Slayer in killing all things undead and demonic, we have other issues at hand.”

“Whoa, cool the rant there G-Man, its just… unexpected, that’s all,” Xander says softly, trying to calm down the adult figure in their group.

Recovering his immaculate British calm like he had never lost it, Giles runs a hand idly through his hair and says, “Sorry, the last few days have been stressful, for you see, my hobby means that I know exactly who and what Xander transformed into.”

Picking up one of the books, Giles flips it open to a page showing a man in the same armour that Xander wore, his tanned face showing lines of unimaginable experience and his eyes awesome wisdom, while a halo of light backlights him.

“The Immortal God Emperor of Mankind?” Xander asks incredulously and with a tremor of worry in his voice after reading the caption.

“Quite. He is the founder of the Imperium of Man, a corrupt and ruthless interstellar empire established thousands of years from now on the bodies of hundreds of billions of dead men, women and children, their burning forms crushed beneath the might of his armies,” Giles explains.

“Sounds like he would fit in around here,” Buffy notes sarcastically.

His mouth agape, Xander asks, “So this was the guy I transformed into last week?”

Nodding, Giles continues, “And I fear that Xander’s problems don’t end with the Emperor’s pleasant views of the value of life. Buffy, you mentioned that you not only remember being the woman you transformed into, but her life before that?”

Scrunching up her face, Buffy says, “Yeah, its weird but now I know all this stuff about 17th Century etiquette and tea and china and stuff like that. At least my mom appreciates my newfound knowledge.”

“Quite. Well, the man that inhabited Xander’s body had significantly more knowledge than that, for you see he did not get the ‘Immortal God’ part of his name just by making his people worship him, in fact if I think he disliked it when people did that. No, he got his name because of his immense psychic abilities and his age. If I remember correctly he was around forty thousand years old when he wore that armour,” Giles explains to his shocked audience.

Willow breaks the silence by asking, “When you say ‘powerful psychic’…”

Picking up a somewhat tattered magazine, Giles opens it up and then shows a two page spread of men running in terror through a the halls of a spaceship being torn apart by swirling energies, the words, “The Storm of the Emperor’s Wrath” written across the entire scene.

“Plunging an entire star system into a Hell dimension is within the Emperor’s abilities, although at the higher end of what he can do. Turning people inside out without looking at them, setting entire armies on fire with a gaze, and generally fulfilling all the classic requirements of ‘God’ are easily within his abilities,” Giles details with classic British dryness about impending doom.

“So… so… I…” Xander gasps in abject horror.

“Fortunately no,” Giles says, and the Scoobies let out a breath they did not know they were holding, until of course Giles adds on, “At least not yet. The incident with the ice just now makes me suspect that we may have a problem brewing.”

“But you just said…” Xander asks hopelessly.

Shaking his head sadly, Giles says, “With the spell broken, there is nothing to sustain such powers. However, since a great deal of the Emperor’s memories would revolve around how to use his abilities and with the proximity of the Hellmouth…” Giles trails off and then gives a small shrug.

“Okay, so don’t fall asleep in the library, got that?” Xander says enthusiastically before falling unconscious.

Waking up on the floor with all his friends peering down at him with concerned looks on their faces, he asks, “What happened?”

“The good news is that you didn’t cause the apocalypse. The bad news…” Willow says before trailing off to let the distant voice of Principal Snyder be heard crying out, “The bees!” Picking back up where she let off, “…is that Giles is fairly certain he can cure Snyder.”

Rubbing his aching head, Xander asks, “I did that?”

Pointing to the melting hoar frost around him, Willow says, “Probably.”

Coming back into the office with a musty tome of magic in hand, Giles says idly while flipping through, “Okay, new rule. Xander is not allowed directly over the Hellmouth unless he has control of his new powers.”

“Yeah, but how do I learn to control them?” Xander asks desperately.

Pausing for a second, Giles absentmindedly reaches into his desk and pulls out the metal orb the Emperor constructed and says, “Well, I don’t think this is a weapon and the Emperor did want you to have it. While I highly doubt he was that nice of a person, the destruction of humanity seems to run counter to his agenda. Just, ah, promise not to use it to conquer the planet.”

Smiling weakly, Xander says, “Scout’s honour.”

“You were never a scout,” Willow points out with a smile.

“Well if I was a scout, I would definitely pledge on my honour as a scout not to conquer the planet,” Xander says with a grin.

“Besides, if he tried we’d have to kick his ass, right Willow?” Buffy says while giving Xander a light push with her fist.

Grinning broadly, “Yeah, no global, or galactic domination for you mister.”

Smiling along with them, Xander says jokingly, “Aw come on, if I conquered the planet you I’d have you two at my side, bolters in hand showing those who resist the light of the New Order…” Xander then trails off into an awkward silence that lasts for a few seconds before he says, “Giles, give me that orb now before I do something really crazy without realizing it.”

With a slight look of apprehension, Giles gingerly and somewhat reluctantly places the orb in Xander’s outstretched hand.

The moment it makes contact with Xander’s hand the orb springs open along its equator. With a flash of light the imposing figure of the Emperor towers behind Giles, looking down imperiously at a slack jawed and terrified Xander.

“Xander, what happened?” Giles asks while the Emperor raises his flaming sword over his head.

Important thing: pick a tense. Most people go with past tense (was, were, had). You're slipping between past tense and present tense (is, are, have, has)

Otherwise, the last bit is a little confusing, but that relates to the whole tense thing, also.

Ugh... dear Emperor I hate that. It's this weird problem I have that has annoyed more than one person (to quote: "You keep going between past and present tense, and I think you even did future tense here!"). I want to make it past tense but for some bizarre reason I keep slipping into different tenses. It's almost like it is a part of my thought processes because when I go back over these things I rarely pick up on the way I change tenses like that. Sorry about that.

In other news my last final is tomorrow so I should have a little more time... until I have to get a job for the summer anyway.

Dont be to concerned with the tense as long as the story is good we'll forgive you to a small extent. And this one is much better than the other God Emperor crossovers I've seen.

Here's an idea to help you with the tenses problem. After you write it, read it aloud to yourself. If it sounds like it doesn't make sense tense wise when you speak it, then it probably doesn't make sense. This also works for working out dialogue too.

Heh... as if I don't speak to myself enough. But yeah, I'll try to work on both, but the biggest problem I have is that my brain tends to work faster than my fingers and I get ahead of myself, which means that I tend to pause and think to figure out exactly what I was writing, which often includes vocalizing or subvocalizing what I'm trying to say (and as a note I've just given myself the willies by actually pausing and subvocalizing that last sentence and realizing that I've done it. It's like thinking about how you move your leg exactly). Basically here's what happens:

Brain- He did Action A
Fingers- He did Action A
Brain- He did Action B, followed by Action C, followed by Action D, followed by... uh... where was I again. Oh yeah, he's doing Action B.
Fingers- He does Action B.
Brain- ...and then swing into Action 77-G/X34... uh... hurry up damnit, he still has to do Action C!
Fingers- He will do Action C

But yeah, I'm trying to work on that, but it's hard and I haven't had proper feedback in uh... ever really so I'm trying to undo some entrenched (like the fucking Grand Canyon) bad habits.

Anyway, thank you all for replying and giving feedback. Even a "You suck!" warms the heart by telling me that someone cares enough to tell me I need to do better.

Okay, now that finals are over I have a little time so here's the next chapter. This new chapter should help you understand how I want to go about the long term development of Xander's new memories and abilities and contains what I think is the single most important line with regards to how the entire situation should be handled. See if you can find it. Who knows, you might even find a better one.

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His sword raised high above his head the Emperor gazed down upon Xander with impossibly old eyes and says, “I am the Emperor of Man.”

After a short silent pause where Xander sits on the floor with a gaping jaw pointing at the golden armoured god standing behind them while everyone else looks about the office in confusion, the Emperor says again, “I am the Emperor of Man.”

Opening and shutting his mouth several times Xander finally shrugs and says, “Uh, yes you are the Emperor, and that’s a very nice sword you have there.” This of course causes everyone to start asking questions, but Xander has all his attention focused upon the avatar of death and destruction before him.

Sheathing his sword, the Emperor lets a look best described as cold amusement cross his weathered face before saying, “And you have a serious problem.” The Emperor then steps through Giles like a ghost.

“Whoa, um… what’s going on here?” Xander asks in a small, confused voice.

“You tell us,” Buffy, Giles, and Willow ask in chorus.

“I don’t know,” Xander replies weakly while still tracking the Emperor with his entire body.

Taking on Giles’ desk and looking just as regal as if he were seated upon a throne, the Emperor replies, “Perhaps saying I am the Emperor is a mistake, for my true name is actually Alexander. Alexander Harris.”

“What?” Xander exclaims in utter shock and amazement.

Bemusement wrought on his face, the Emperor points a massive talon-like claw at the orb in Xander’s hands and says, “You see that orb in your hands? It is a holographic memory sequencer.”

“A what-now?” Xander asks while looking extraordinarily confused.

“The fact that I know means you already know what I say, even if you don’t know it yet,” the Emperor explains, eliciting an even more pained look of confusion from Xander. The smug ‘I know way more than you’ smile never leaving his face, the Emperor says patronizingly, “It takes memories from your mind, sorts them out and then projects them back in as a telepathic hologram. Think of it as a sort of librarian for your brain.”

His mind having cracked a little from the strain of extended exhaustion and multiple massive shocks in less than an hour, Xander says, “Oh,” blinks twice before turning to Giles and saying, “I have an imaginary Emperor who lives in my head and wants your job Giles.”

His eyes blinking multiple times behind his glasses, Giles opens his mouth to say something, pauses, thinks better of it, picks something new to say, discards that to, and then finally says, “Oh dear.”

Watching this exchange, the Emperor throws his head back while roaring with laughter. It is a strange sound, eminently human but yet not human at all. The sound carries the wealth of experience of an old man who has seen it all and is amused by the bumbling of those who have succeeded him, yet it is also the young man roaring his head off at the bordello humour of a peer. His laugh is the harsh bark of soldier who laughs at every morbid joke, yet it is also the tender chuckle of a doting father. It carries the cold ruthlessness of a king in a steel castle savouring his foes downfall while having the smoky flavour of someone who lives in a mud hut and knows nothing of metal. The sound is the sum total of humanity, making it utterly alien, for no human could have the wealth of experiences required to forge such a laugh.

Shivers running up and down his spine, Xander meekly says, “You said something about a problem earlier?”

Smiling happily, the Emperor exhales before taking on a more serious face to tell Xander, “Yes, you do. The problem is that I know everything the Emperor knew before coming here.”

Furrowing his eyes in confusion, Xander says, “But… I thought you said that I…”

Cutting him off, the Emperor replies, “Yes, whatever I know you know, but that’s sort of like saying that whatever the Internet knows you know, only with less bullshit and factual error. If you had a few thousand years you could probably sort out all the memories, but as it stands right now you have a few decades to try and figure things out. The orb acts as a focusing lens of sorts, generating a sort of mental aide that can sort through the Emperor’s memories with the same skill he could.”

Nodding with some look of understanding, Xander says, “So you can explain all the stuff in my head.”

The holographic Emperor gives Xander a withering glare that fortunately does not cause actual withering before saying, “That would almost literally be like trying to explain the concepts behind faster than light travel in detail to a caveman. No offence, but you just don’t have the mental capacity now to handle everything the Emperor knows. This is where your problem comes in. You have all the Emperor’s memories and a tiny fraction of his power still within you, but that is where the similarities end. You are not the Emperor.” The projection states each word individually to drive home the point.

Smiling weakly, Xander says, “Well, from what I’ve heard of him I think I can agree to that point.”

The hologram’s face does neutral for a moment before looking at Xander in the most eerie manner Xander had ever seen. Then, for the briefest moment Xander glimpses a glimmer of what it is like to live in the Emperor’s universe and it nearly breaks him. Flashes of scenes too horrific for any sane man to dream up and a sense of monumental responsibility crushing upon his shoulders cause him to recoil in horror and cry out for some nameless entity for some measure of succour.

Once the moment passes the holographic Emperor says, “Be glad of that fact.”

After giving Xander a moment to gather his wits the illusionary Emperor says, “Now, if you want to survive the week, you need to learn to clamp down on your newfound abilities before you attract a daemon that you cannot handle. Right now your Warp presence is burning like a supernova and it is attracting unwanted attention. The Emperor’s knowledge of such things has allowed you to unconsciously construct a set of barriers against daemonic attack, but the effort is burning through your energy reserves at an alarming rate. If you do not gain control quickly your mind will implode and your body will become a gateway for daemonic invasion into this world.”

Eyes wide with fear, Xander squeaks, “No, don’t want that.”

“Good. The number of people who actually ask for such a fate would amaze you. Now, I want you to close your eyes.”

Xander thinks about asking why, but one look at the imposing figure tells him to shut up, be like Nike, and “Just Do It”. Closing his eyes, he waits for further instruction.

“Good. Now this will be hard to describe to you, but imagine that you cannot look up or down, that your vision is restricted to just panning left and right. Now imagine you have a third eye on the top of your head that allows you to look up. Can you see it?” The Emperor instructs.

His eyes still firmly shut, Xander looks puzzled for a few moments before a frown crosses his face and he says, “Uh… actually, yes I can see it. It’s… weird.”

“Excellent. Now, with this third eye, you can now see the world at a right angle to what your normal eyes can see. Now let that eye move from the top of your head to the inside of your head. It is still looking at ninety degrees to your eyes. Well let it look at the other views at right angles to your normal vision,” the Emperor details out slowly and calmly.

Sweat breaking out over his face, Xander tries to understand the instructions for several long moments until he finds what the Emperor was trying to tell him. Uncharacteristic swearing escapes his lips, the sum of what he sees wrapped up as, “Holy fucking shit.”

“Perfect. What you see is the Warp, a realm of pure energy and emotion. In this tainted place it swims with daemons hungry for the souls of their unwary. And right now you are a knight in shining armour with sword raised standing at the gates of hell, and you don’t know what you are doing. Now that you can see the Warp, you need to learn to manipulate it. Amongst the horrors swim about you, you should see the barriers you have erected against them. Reach out for the furthest one first and gently contract it about you. You do not require the same space as the Emperor,” the distant voice instructs the awestruck Xander.

Probing out with fingers of thought, Xander tenderly feels the hard panels of armour erected about his mind until he finds the one exposed directly to the swirling maelstrom of the Warp. It feels like a solid block of ice that numbs Xander to the core and memories from Xander’s life flash through his eyes. Memories of the dread of the days leading up to Christmas and the inevitable family arguments that entailed. Memories of his first encounter with a vampire. Memories of the Master. Memories of Buffy lying still on the ground, drowned and dead just like the prophecy said. This is his fear. He contracts it down until it is a frigid, iron hard shell about his soul.

The next panel is slick and oily to the touch, and brings bile to his gorge along with the memories to his mind. Memories of Angel and Buffy staring at each other all goo-goo eyed. His father. Cordelia. Jesse and what he became. With a burst of insight, Xander realizes that this part of his mental armour is composed of his hatred. For a moment he feels sick at the thickness of this component of his being before a part of him brutally clamps down on the emotion and he forces himself to draw the panel in, making it denser and thicker until it is a ball of impenetrable black tar.

The third segment burns like molten lava, a wash of fiery pain through Xander’s mind. Cordelia being a bitch. Willow always doing better than him in school. Buffy always having to save his pathetic ass when out on patrol. The fact that demons have invaded his life. His brain burn, he knows that this is his anger, the accumulated fury from a thousands slights, injustices, and outright intolerable blows to his pride. Compressing it into a glowing white-hot ball of granite that surrounds his mind, Xander then reaches for the last layer with trepidation. So far he has not enjoyed the revelations of his character.

The last layer takes Xander by complete surprise. The others all hurt to touch, but this layer merely… tickled. The sun shining on his face. Ice cream in the summer. Willow, Buffy, Giles, Jesse, his parents, and yes, even Cordelia. This was the ultimate part of the armour. Daemons could breach through the ugly walls of negative emotion he had thrown up, even feed on them, but it was all a lie wrapped around truth. Once the demons dug their way to the centre, there was only a core of love, fiercely burning in the darkness. It was simple and pure and true and completely anathema to the daemon.

More than that, the love served as the superstructure behind the other three walls. He felt fear for those he loved, but instead of freezing him it motivated him to find a way out of that fear. He hated those who threatened and destroyed the things he loved, and he wanted them to suffer like they made him suffer. He had a great lake of fury held behind a dam of humour and slacking, fury against all the things that he feared and hated because of the damage they did to those he loved.

Within his tiny little shell, Xander’s love shone like a star, but to the outside Warp he is just a tiny speck of fear, dull and stupid like almost all other humans in the world. For a time the daemons search for where the delicious mortal foolish enough to challenge them went, but by then Xander had pulled his power back to almost entirely within his own mind and they would not have been able to distinguish him from any other human short of actually breaking into a mind, which was impossible with non-psykers.

Opening his eyes and exhaling Xander sees something even more incredible than the horrors of the Warp. The Emperor is smiling proudly. Smiling proudly at Xander! His jaw dropping for perhaps the twentieth time that hour, Xander just gaped when the Emperor said, “Couldn’t have done it better myself. Although you might want to tell your friends exactly what just happened.”

Then, with a metallic snap the metallic orb in Xander’s hand closes, leaving Xander to explain exactly why the exorcism ceremony being prepared around him was completely unnecessary.

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Hours later, after Xander has fallen into a deep but natural sleep, the orb snaps open again and the invisible form of the Emperor appears next to the only person who can see him. Kneeling down next to Xander’s ear, he whispers, so not to rouse Xander from his slumber, “We have much work to do.”

*chortle*

Where is the update? I want more...