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Shards of Reality: Sunnydale	By : DevilDuck Category: -Buffy the Vampire Slayer > Threesomes/Moresomes Views: 16807 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy the Vampire Slayer, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 2
- 3
- 4
Making Friends
Thinking about the threats that they were going to face in the future, or had faced the last time around, Xander found the Challenge list reordering itself. He was now presented with the option, in red, to stop some of the big bads, such as the Master and the Mayor, but others, including Angelus and the First, didn’t appear at all. Maybe they weren’t a threat yet so it wouldn’t make sense for him to stop them now, even if they were technically in town. He didn’t know how hard a red challenge would be but maybe he should work his way up to that, start with something green. Wasn’t making friends with Buffy green? He was going do that anyway so he might as well start there.

He should also try to shift the odds as far in his favor as he could. Looking at his starting skills he decided to dump as many points as he could, which turned out to be twenty, into Charm. After that he bought off his Misfit trait, knowing he was going to have to do that again if he moved to another scenario, which only cost ten points leaving him with more than hundred meaning he shouldn’t have a problem buying any traits he might unlock (or boosting a skill he might end up needing).

The last thing he should do is look at rules; maybe there was something he could unlock that would help with Buffy or just girls in general. Hello, in response to something he had thought the rules had shuffled themselves putting Gender Ratio on top. For just one of his four shards he could change this or any other world so that there were two girls for every boy. Or the other way around but why would he want to do that? There’s something really tempt about that, the whole more girls thing, though he already spent his life surrounded by women so he wasn’t sure he would notice.

“So, are you going to explain how you knew where to find the vampires? Or even about them?” They had made it the library while he had been lost in the menus, walking on autopilot, and now Buffy wanted answers. He hadn’t had a chance to think about what he was going to tell her; he could start with truth.

“I’m from the future.” Clearly the Slayer and Watcher weren’t buying it. He would have to take a different tack. “What do you know about vengeance demons?”

“Vengeance demons?” That got Giles’ attention.

“Yeah, I ended up…” almost married to one? No, that won’t work. “taking one to senior prom. Or I will; time-travel’s weird. After some stuff happened she explained how at least some of it works; I’m back here, at this point in my life, and the choices I make will change things. Even if I try to do everything the same the fact that I’m making choices will still change things. Knowing that I thought I might as well save Jesse this time around.”

“Who’s Jesse?” Giles seemed to be understand what he was saying, maybe better than Xander was, and directed that question at Buffy.

“A friend of Willow’s; she had been picked up by vamps as well and he led me to them both.” She? Why is Jesse being called a she? Xander snapped the rules menu open and saw that the gender ratio one was in bold, he must have bought it when Buffy startled him and Jesse got caught up in the switch over.

“So you’re saying that Jesse died in this previous timeline?”

“Yes.”

“And how did that happen?”

“Buffy had me help Willow and Jesse out while she fought the blonde vamp; she wasn’t able to slay her because some big guy, whose name I feel that I should remember, joined the fight. Meanwhile I was outside trying to hold off some lesser vamps but not really knowing what I was doing I couldn’t and they grabbed Jesse again. Later, tomorrow, they turned hi- her and used her as bait.”

“That sounds plausible.”

“Plausible? He’s talking about time travel.”

“That is plausible, if a vengeance demon really is involved. Manipulating time and realty is well within their power. It’s just a matter of framing the wish.”

“Okay,” Buffy turned to Xander, “if you’re really from the future prove it.”

“How? If tonight didn’t do it how will telling you about people you haven’t met or things that won’t happen for years help?” If he could just think of something else that had happened today. “Angel!”

“What?”

“You met a broody guy in an alley right?” He was somewhat worried that Angel might no longer be a ‘guy’ but the way the Slayer’s hand went to the cross hanging from her neck told him he had hit his mark. “He goes by the name Angel now, he’s vampire-”

“A vampire!”

“-who will be in your books under the name Angelus.”

“Why would a vampire help me?” While Giles moved to the cage, likely to consult the chronicles, Buffy continued the interrogation.

“He’s been cursed to feel guilt for what he’d done but it won’t last. In about a year he’ll seduce you, then betray you before trying to destroy the world with some sort of demon statue.”

“A demon statue?”

“Again I don’t remember the name, it’s been a while.”

“How long?”

“‘Angelus, The One with the Angelic Face, The Scourge of Europe, member of the Order of Aurelius’.” Giles interrupted reading from a book he carried out of the cage. “If even half of these rumored crimes are real then he is a true monster.”

“He is, I’ve seen, killing people just to see their loved ones suffer.”

“You say he was made good by a curse, do you know the details?”

“Some, but it’s not reliable. I know, knew, demons, hell I knew a vampire I trusted because they choose to do good for their own reasons; he was never one of them. Listen,” Xander turned back to Buffy, “you don’t have to trust me; let’s just take it one day at a time, Giles can test me, contact the council to see what they say, and if I turn out to be crazy or lying you can deal with me like I was any of the other threats we’ve faced together… Just, could you please not tell Willow about the whole time-travel thing?”

“Why?” Buffy’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“We’ve been friends since we were little, I don’t want her to feel weird around me. She’s going to have enough weirdness to deal with the next couple of days.”

“Oh, yeah. That makes since.”

“So I’ll see you tomorrow in school?” He only got a non-committal ‘mmph’ in response but that was good enough to send him off hoping to get a more positive response later on.

Xander got home near midnight and was focused on getting to his bed unseen so he didn’t notice any changes, though not hearing his parents fight while he was trying to sleep was nice, until morning. The house wasn’t really cleaner but it was less messy; there was less clutter, fewer empty bottles strewn about. Outside there was no sign of his father’s old beater, he hadn’t heard it rattle out and honestly his father never get up that early if he could help it. Thinking back to last night he wasn’t sure he had seen it either.

Closing the door he crept back up the hall where the handful of family portraits, taken every couple of years at a department store in the mall, hung. In them stood only Xander and his mother. There was no sign of his father even in the oldest pictures. Did that there was no Anthony Harris? No, that couldn’t be, if there was no Tony there would be no Xander but he clearly wasn’t part of the family whether that meant his parents had never been married or that his father had run off with one of the new women Xander didn’t know and wasn’t sure how he could find out.

Just how much had been changed by that one rule?

Some of it was visible in the number of girls he saw on the way to school and in the halls but were the girls who never would have giving him a second look doing that just because of the changed balance of things or because he no longer had the misfit label hanging over his head. Maybe he could get a date with someone who didn’t end up trying to kill him this time around.

“Hey, Xander.” Buffy pulled him to the side outside the library before he could work up the nerve to talk to one of the ‘new’ girls. “Giles is in there giving Willow the whole ‘you don’t want this madness in your life’ speech.”

“That’s not going to work.”

“I’d figured that much and I’m glad. This being the Slayer thing, if I’m going to be stuck with it, will be easier with friends, people I can talk to. That’s Willow, and I guess you.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“And you’re right, she doesn’t need to know your deal, she has enough to deal with. So I’m not going to tell her but I’m not going to lie to her either. And neither are you; if she starts asking questions you are going to answer.”

“No problem.” Xander was glad he hadn’t been honest about how much power he had over things. “Have you seen Jesse?”

“No, Wil said she was resting at home.”

“That makes sense.”

“Yeah. After school Giles wants you to stop by so he can run some tests and talk about what’s on the horizon.”

“No problem.”

They exchanged a few more words that didn’t really mean anything before splitting up to head towards their respective classed because real life was never like the movies. His first was one he could have slept through so Xander had the better part of an hour to look at his menus in peace. It seemed like Buffy had decided to trust him, to see him as friend, so that challenge was done and she had been added to his party. These social challenges seemed to be the way to go, they were pretty low risk, and maybe some of could unlock new traits.

There was a ‘Make Friends’ for almost everyone he’d ever met, but only people he had met and he wasn’t sure he wanted to pack his party with band geeks. Amy Madison was on the list, having a witch on the team was tempting and she wasn’t really crazy until the whole rat thing, but if he remembered right it was her mother running around in her body right now which was something they would have to be dealt with first.

If he was to take a run at some of the popular people it looked like he would unlock the ‘Charismatic’ trait which might be useful, whatever it did, especially if he was going to be running through social challenges. None of those were green though; trying to become friends with Cordelia was orange and that might be because only the potentially fatal challenges could be red. Making friends with the Cordettes was only yellow so he would give it a try. It’s not like his relationship with them could get worse.

He had two of the Cordettes in chemistry so he could in theory have this out of the way by lunch. Before he closed the menu though another challenge caught his eye; ‘Start Dating: Blue’, one of the girls he was going to talk to, would add her to his party as his ‘Significant Other: Girlfriend’. That was something he had to dig into until he found out more but his menus didn’t help him any. He was going to have to go back to THE NEXUS.

All he did was think about it on the right menu and in a blink he was standing in the void. “Ah, Anyanka?”

“Yes?” Another blink and the vengeance demon was standing in front of him wearing a very fuzzy sweater. “You didn’t die or blow up the world so what are you doing back here?”

“I had a question I was hoping you could answer.”

“Well, I might as well since you seem to be able to summon me.” He could summon her? Could he summon her inside a scenario? If he did would it be this Anyanka or that just that world’s version of her? Wait, stay on target.

“I ran into a new term, a ‘significant other’, could you explain it to me?”

“You don’t know what a significant other is?”

“I do just not in this system.”

“Basically you can only ever have one significant other but they don’t count against your party limit.”

“Basically? If I can only have one SO why did the challenge I looked at specified that she would be my girlfriend?”

“Relationship can progress.” She shrugged. “And you can always change the rules; maybe you want everyone to have a wife and a girlfriend. Or maybe you can unlock a trait that will make it okay just for you. There’s a lot overlap between some of the rules and traits.” Twenty-four hours in the body of a horny teenager made the idea of two girlfriends really attractive. “Anything else or do you want to get back before too much time passes.”

“You mean time passes in Sunnydale while I’m here?”

“Why wouldn’t it?”

“You said there was no time here.”

“Yeah, and?”

“Damnit.” Reentering Sunnydale Xander found himself sitting at the back of his chemistry class. Whatever autopilot controlled him when he was in THE NEXUS got him there and even started taking notes, or drawing stick figures at least. At the side of the room Aura and Blue, the Cordettes he was planning to approach, sat together too far away for him to talk to. He had wanted to sit behind them, there was an empty chair there, and have a full hour to try to win them over but he was sure someone would notice him changing seats. No, he was going to have to wait until after class and make his case during passing.

“Hey Aura.” Xander had let them get ahead of him so he had to catch up.

“What do you want Harris?” Where Cordelia could have turned his name into an insult Aura just sounded bored.

“I heard about what happened yesterday, the you know in your locker, and thought that I’d make myself available if you needed someone to talk to.”

“She has friends.” Blue sounded suspicious, not bored.

“Hey I love Cordy, well not love but I recognize her strengths and a supportive shoulder isn’t among them.”

“Cordy?” In a moment Blue switched from suspicion to amusement when hearing the nickname.

“So you’re suggestion I talk to about my feelings?” Aura stayed focused on what he had to say. “What are you, a therapist?”

“I’m someone you can talk to without worrying about what I think and who’s not going to be spreading any rumors. If you let Cordelia know for even a moment that you were freaked out by finding a corpse you know she would use it against you.” He could see that they were both starting to see the attraction but he needed to do something push it over the top. “And it wouldn’t hurt if you could include Buffy, the new girl, in some of your activities.”

“Ah, there it is.” Making it transactional, making it clear what he was getting out of the deal made it much easier for them to accept his friendship. “He wants his girlfriend to be in the in-crowd.”

“She’s not my girlfriend.” Though maybe she could be, he had more going for him this time and he might have poisoned things for Angel. “She’s just, she likes Willow and she shouldn’t be punished just because she’s nicer than Cordy.”

“I can see that.”

“Blue?”

“Come on, Harris isn’t that bad looking, he might be able to get Willow to help us with our homework, and it might be fun to have this Buffy chick around on the off chance she stands up to Cordelia.”

“You’re the one that told me she got kicked out of her old school.”

“Would it help if I told you why she got kicked out?” They both looked at him but only Blue could arch her eyebrow. “She burned down the gym. Thinking about all the laps Ms. Litto made you run could you blame her?”

“No.”

“Not one bit.”

“So what do say? Do we have a deal?”

“Yeah, you help us out, we’ll help Buffy.”

That may not have met everyone’s definition of friendship but it seemed to fulfill the challenge letting him buy the Charismatic trait during his next class. It had gone more or less smoothly making him think he might be able to knock another one out before he had to talk to Giles. The question would be which one.

Footnotes:
Alexander Lavelle Harris
105/145 Points Available    3 Shards
Athletics 5%        Charm 25%        Crime 5%
Knowledge 5%    Notice 5%        Repair 5%
Traits:
Charismatic - Xander has a demonstrated ability to make friends and talk his way out of things (increasing his odds of succeeding at both).
Weirdness Magnet - Increased chance that Xander will be the subject of random magical events.
Party Members:
Buffy
Jesse
Willow

Gender Ratio (2-1)
- 2
- 3
- 4
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Shards of Reality: Sunnydale