“Behind you, King!” Xander yelled at Ash across the dark alley.

At the young man’s yell, the scarred S-Mart employee immediately spun, his broadsword cleanly (well, as clean as you can be when you cleave through a body part) cutting through the vampire’s neck, slicing off its head. The body immediately became dust, and Ash turned back to the bloodsucker in front of him. He cut left and right, vampires exploding in clouds of powdery dust.

Across the alley, Xander fought two of the demonic beings, slashing at them with his newly bought katana. While it didn’t have the history of his mentor’s blade, it was a good weapon and did its job well.

“Kid, watch your head!” Shouted Ash loudly when there was a break in his fight. Xander looked up and realized that his next kick, if it had been executed, would have sent his head into a wooden board, and he would have been a goner. He nodded quickly towards his companion, and then set to work moving the fight away from the boards. As soon as he was out of range, he executed his move and the vampire was toast.

The second one was now open, and he quickly dispatched that one as well. However, when Xander saw that three more were coming, he knew he had to find his stake, at
least one of them. He’d brought three of them on this run, but he’d lost the first in a skirmish on the way to this nest, and the other two he’d lost in the fight. And while the katana was nice, it was much easier to use a stake.

Finally, he remembered that board, and returned to it. Snapping off a good-sized piece, he got ready for the three coming at him. The board was good wood, and it
would be serviceable, if not as nice as the aerodynamically shaped ones he’d made at home. But you gotta use what you got.

As for Ash, he’d already dusted five of the creatures, and more were coming. On his hand was a stake attachment that Xander had made for him over two months ago. It had been the first of many the surprisingly handy young man had made for him, and the
most used. They’d been going out on “cleaning” missions, as the two called them, for the past two weeks, at first to test the boy’s training, then later just because it was a way to keep sharp. 

It had taken a lot of effort to get to this point. Xander had come everyday at 5PM, and learned everything Ash had to teach him. It had been tough. He had trained for 4 hours, and then he would work on hand attachments for Ash for an hour after that. Ash
himself had been and still was amazed at the boy’s energy and persistence. He knew that he couldn’t have kept up with it at this pace. In fact, just teaching the kid for that long had tired him out, and he didn’t do half of what the boy was doing.

Besides that, Xander was a very good student. Very good. He learned things with remarkable speed, and more importantly, he built on what he was taught. Ash hadn’t taught him any style of fighting inparticular, because Ash didn’t know one. He had only taught Xander what he knew: how to fight something impossibly strong and quick and win. Xander excelled at it.

In the clerk’s tutelage, he had learned how to use the staff, the spear, the sword, several throwing weapons, and the chainsaw. Ash even got Xander his own chainsaw, a snazzy compact black one, out of his paycheck as a gift for the boy. Xander had been
delighted, like a child with a new toy.

And as Xander grew in skill, he also grew as a person, both physically and mentally. All the training developed his muscles into lean, hard machines, and all the fluid fighting moves he had learned had transformed his step from loud and childlike to mature
and graceful. His personality had changed as well. He was more adult now, with less concern about other’s opinions of him. His joking nature had not changed; it was just more appropriate now. All in all, if you hadn’t watched the gradual change, you wouldn’t have been able to connect the two, except by the raffish smile.

Xander’s relationship with Ash had also grown. The two had become fast friends quickly, and, at this point, Ash was like a father to Xander more than anyone else. Xander had even taken to bunking at Ash’s apartment most nights. His parents didn’t care where he was, so there was no problem. They’d go out and slay vampires by the nest, taking out the bloodsuckers quickly and efficiently. It was great fun. Ash assured him that vampires were a good deal easier to exterminate than Deadites, and Xander was glad.

The fight continued for a little bit, then ended as Xander saw the last vampire, a girl he remembered from his high school, turn to dust before his eyes. As soon as the tiny particles hit the ground, Xander made his way over to his teacher.

“Good run, Kid.” Ash said, pride dripping from his voice.

“Same with you, King…” Xander replied, throwing his arm around the other man’s shoulders. King was Ash’s nickname, one they’d devised to hide their identities in case of trouble. Xander had come up with the idea, and initially, Ash hadn’t liked it. But Ash had a soft spot for Xander and had come around when he saw the practicality of it. Besides, Xander had said, King was a good nickname.

The two walked home to Ash’s apartment, put away their weapons, then promptly fell onto their respective beds. That was one great thing about vampire slaying with Ash. No talks. No discussion. No frumpy British Watcher telling them about stuff. When you
did a good job, you got to go home and sleep.

But Xander couldn’t sleep. He was too busy thinking about how his life had changed. He had Ash now, a friend and father, but as Xander had grown closer to the S-Mart clerk who he deemed as his best friend, he had drifted away from his other friends. He barely ever saw Buffy or Willow outside of class, and he never saw Cordelia outside of the broom closet. But what really bothered him was that they didn’t seem to miss him. They made no attempt to contact him. They were too concerned with their own lives. The closest thing he had seen to worry was his girlfriend’s questions about his new muscles.

All that changed around a month later. Buffy cornered him in an empty classroom.

“Xander?” she asked, closing the door to the room with a rather final sounding click, “Where have you been going after school?”

“To a friend’s…” Xander answered shortly. Ash’s attitude had rubbed off on him a bit, and while some might not have liked it, he’d learned that the only person you have to answer to is yourself.

“What friend?” Buffy asked, giving him the look she usually reserved for Willy at the bar, “Who?”

“You wouldn’t know him…” Xander responded with a smug grin.

“The one you work out with?” Buff ventured. 

“Yeah, you could say that…” Xander answered vaguely.

There was silence for a moment, and then Buffy broke it. She rushed over to him, the interrogator act gone, and hugged him into a wall.

“Xander please!” she cried, “We’re all worried about you! You’ve been gone so much, and you’ve been so different…”

Xander held his tongue as it burned to sarcastically comment about how much they were ‘worried’ about him. 

“And now,” Buffy continued, a bit upset, “there’s these two psychos running around-“

"What?” asked Xander.

“I noticed there were not many vampires around, so I went to Willy to ask about it…” Buffy said, obviously upset, “Then he tells me these two crazy hunters came out of nowhere about a month and a half ago, destroying nests left and right.”

Xander fought bravely against the smile that was forming on his lips and kept it in.

"Do you know who they are?” Xander asked, his face straight.

“No!” Buffy cried, “No one does! Not even the vampires. I met one in the bar, a survivor of one of these lunatic attacks. He just said that they were like the wind, cutting through their ranks like they’ve never seen. And all he heard was the names ‘King’ and ‘Kidd’, he says…”

“Why would a vampire tell you the truth?” Xander asked, trying to dismiss the whole thing, “ I mean, they’re probably starting something deep in the ground and they don’t want you to know about it…”

“No, Xander.” Buffy told him, her eyes somber, “This one was scared. Of me, of them. I threatened to stake him if he was lying, and he said he didn’t care, that he was telling the truth.”

“Damn…” Xander muttered under his breath.

“What?” Buffy asked, wondering what he’d said.

“I said, ‘Damn, that must be serious.’” Xander covered, “But I don’t think you should worry. If they’re fighting vampires, they gotta be on the side of good.”

“I don’t know, Xander.” The Slayer replied, breathing in deeply, “I just don’t want them moving to people.”

“Buffy, I can assure you, they won’t…” Xander said. But the second the words left his lips, he knew he had made a huge mistake.

“How do you know?” Buffy said, trying to push him into the wall. But for some reason, it didn’t work.He stood firm against her. She tried again, this time so that she could leave. But Xander had her arms in a gentle, if firm, hold.

“Trust me…” Xander said, looking at her straight in the eyes. Buffy, having no alternative but to stare back saw something strange in those dark blue orbs. Usually, they would hold a smile, or perhaps fear. Now, Xander’s eyes held a sort of liquid calm, as if he were a rock in the middle of a raging storm. She wanted to say that he had changed, but he really hadn’t. He was the same old Xander; he’d just grown up. She wasn’t thinking about his height, or his size. It was inside. Inside, he had matured into a
different person. The Xander she knew and loved was still there, his smile still on this man’s lips, the shine in his eyes the shine of Xander’s. But this was different.

“I do…” Buffy whispered back, “But please tell me whom you’ve been hanging out with…”

Xander looked deep into her eyes, then turned away. “Not my secret to tell…”

Buffy looked at her friend, who had always been straight with her and helped her out, and knew that it was still him. Even if he wasn’t telling her what he knew, she recognized that he was still helping her out.

“Fine, Xander…” she said with renewed calm, “You don’t have to tell me. And I respect that…but if your secrecy hurts anyone, I will put you through pain…”

With these words, she turned to the door, but Xander, moving quicker than she had ever seen him move, grabbed her wrist once more in that tender, unyielding grasp.

“Already done that, Buffy” he said with no trace of a smile on his lips, “Already done that enough…”

And with that, he let her go and walked out before her, leaving her in the room to ponder just what was going on.

Part 4