I am suddenly in the library, and the others surround me. They don’t seem aware that I have vanished at all, and if it weren’t for my falling onto the ground, they probably wouldn’t know anything was wrong.

Jesse just smiles, “Can take the boy out of the klutz, can’t take the klutz out of the boy.” His smile fades as he notices that I am holding a red dress shoe.

Faith looks under the table, “Um, why are you holding a shoe? And how can a robot be a klutz.” Willow looks up, irritated, “I’ll check, maybe his internal gyros need cleaning or aligning or something,” but I stand quickly and say, “No, I’m fine!” just hastily enough to make Willow narrow her eyes suspiciously, and I know she is already headed for her tool-set, “The klutz thing was a side-effect of the interdimensional teleportation thing.”

Miss Post and Ms Calender simultaneously look out from the office, where we are all going to pretend they weren’t kissing, looking like some sort of three stooges sketch, only with less stooge and more, um, mussed hair. I’m just going to give up on that thought.

“Interdimensional teleportation? Have you been watching Star Trek all night again Xander?” Miss Post says in that smarmy tone she gets when she’s talking to someone that she doesn’t consider real, let alone useful.

I can see Willow looking kinda smug and fiddling with a screwdriver, itching to get my chest open and see what she can ‘fix’ this time. I try to be as subtle as possible as I move counter-clockwise around the table so that Jesse and Faith are between me and the screwdriver. No one is fooled.

“So, what’s up?” Jesse prompts, and I decide to go with the short-short version. “There’s a hell-goddess named Glory holed up across town who wants to rip the Hellmouth wide open and use its power to destroy a bunch of worlds and go home.”

I notice that I am gesturing with the shoe. “And this is her shoe.” I add lamely, while everyone looks at me as if I have three heads. Being the Hellmouth, that actually wouldn’t draw as much of a look. Jonathan snorts, and continues reading his comic book. He hasn’t even looked up. I guess I’d be blasé too if no one could see me acting up…

“Well, something is wrong with it.” Willow says and walks towards me with the screwdriver. I hold up my hands, “Seriously Will, if I were making this up, it would make more sense!” Her eyes darken when I call her ‘Will’ and I realize that I’m not gonna remember what I’d been calling her since we were five when I wake up from our next ‘repair session…’

Ms Calender, bless her heart, walks right up and snatches the screwdriver from Willows hand, using it to gesture, acting 100% innocent of any wrongdoing. Willow just looks at her, but Ms Calender doesn’t give her a breath to get a word in, “Well, Xander, that’s an unusual statement, and since we live in an unusual place, where unusual things are commonplace, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to hear you out. Tell us in detail what you know.”

She hands me the screwdriver, as if surrendering the floor to me, and I’m now standing in the middle of the room with a screwdriver in one hand and a woman’s shoe in the other, while everyone in the room is now giving me their undivided attention. Even Jonathan has looked up, and as Miss Post smacks his feet off the table, for once he’s even sitting attentively. At least Amy is at practice tonight, so not everyone is going to be staring at me while I try to explain this.

Fortunately, I have a lot of experience at looking like a dork, so I’m not really that thrown by this. I explain. Questions are asked. Answers are given. Miss Post doesn’t like them, and goes to ‘look stuff up.’ Apparently actual research is going on, because Ms Calender doesn’t join her, but sits at the table with her laptop, doing other research. Or perhaps they’re having cybersex. Hard to tell with them.

I’ve surrendered the shoe for Jesse to play with, he and Faith are taking turns tossing it into the hoop that they’ve installed (over Miss Posts protests) in the back of the library, trying to see who can get it in from furthest across the room. I’m not allowed to play, since I never miss. When I’m calibrated anyway.

I still have a death-grip on the screwdriver, ‘tho, and Willow has wandered off somewhere, probably to get a power-drill, or bandsaw, or crowbar or some other thing that I equally don’t want used on me.

An hour goes by. Miss Post pokes her head out, scolds Faith and Jesse for playing sports in the library. Faith flips her off without turning to look, pantomiming ‘nag, nag, nag’ to Jesse, who looks innocently at Miss Post until she turns, and then smiles. Once his back is turned, Miss Post somehow, even I don’t know how, walks up quietly behind them both and smacks them both in the back of the head. Jesse misses his shot and Faith nearly takes her Watchers head off, but Miss Post has somehow ducked and is now smiling at Faith. “I would expect it to be harder to sneak up on a Slayer.” Jesse is smirking until she turns, “and a Vampire.” He tries his best to look suitably chastened. She doesn’t fall for it, and confiscates the shoe.

“I have spoken with the Council.” Everyone looks up, including Ms Calender who I’ve just noticed was asleep behind her fancy sunglasses. Busted. “There is a Glorificus, and seers have recorded an apocalypse level threat regarding her. Only it wasn’t supposed to happen here. Not in this town, not at this time, not even in this dimension. From what Xander,” she still says it with a funny emphasis, like a title or something, not a persons name, “here has told us, her power has been fragmented and part of it is here now, attempting to destroy our world, in part of a larger scheme to destroy many others.”

Ms Calender walks up and takes the shoe as Miss Post is talking. I sometimes wonder if they have some sort of telepathy thing going on, because they just do stuff like that. Ms Calender heads back to the office, and I can already here her muttering the words she mutters to focus herself for some sort of spellcasting. Ah yes, the famous ‘locator spell.’ Now I understand why I have a personal item. It would have been a bitch to find her by knocking on every door in Sunnydale…

Ten minutes later, we’re off. Jesse and Faith normally ride their bikes (over Miss Posts protests), while the rest of us pile in Ms Calenders truck (yes, riding in the back is illegal, but Sunnydale PD don’t stop people at night, as a rule). This time, Jesse sees Willow hopping into the back of the truck (she usually sits in the front) and hauls me out and pulls me onto the back of his rice-rocket. They don’t stop people for not wearing helmets either. I mean really, if you’re out at night in Sunnydale, road safety probably isn’t the big concern.

Willow hates when anyone treats me like Xander, and I thank Jesse a lot for the save. I know she was going to tinker with something while we were on route, and the idea of her fussing around with my inner workings in a moving vehicle makes my blood run cold. Or oil, or whatever.

Riding with Jesse is odd. We don’t talk much, ‘cause of the wind. He’s cold, and I’m cold. There’s no heartbeats, no breathing, it’s like there’s no one on this bike, no one real. And then he’ll cuss, or move his elbow and suddenly we’re both real again, and I’m not alone moving through the night on a course I can’t see, or control.

We arrive at the house, some old place outside of town, but nicely maintained. Outside, we see a figure suddenly get up from the bushes and run towards the house, and before I can do more than point, I see Faith lay her bike down and spring into action. Seriously spring. She clears 20 feet easy, and lands on the little guy, who gets all tangled up in his robe and by the time Jesse and I get there, he’s trussed up like a scabby little turkey-demon-dwarf-thing. I know the drill, so I lean down and hold him still while she gets up and stretches. Jesse has to do the concerned boyfriend thing. I’ll handle the light work while they reassure each other that the jump was ‘the coolest thing, ever’ and that she didn’t get hurt. I’ve got my hand over the things mouth, until Miss Post, Ms Calender, Willow and Jonathan get there, and it points out which way to Glory’s house. We kinda already knew that, but it’s always good to get a refresher in case she moved since the spell was cast. Willow leans down and inject the little demon with something that makes it pass out. Whatever it is reacts to her tranq-darts just like a human. Good to know, for later.

We move into the house, Jesse, Faith and I in the lead, Willow and Jon hanging back to protect Ms Calender and Miss Post (over Miss Posts objections. So nu.).

There are more of the little scabby dudes. Jesse and Faith and I all are capable of moving quietly and quickly. They fall down. We end up in a kitchen, where a gorgeous blonde is raiding the fridge. “What the hell?” she says by way of introduction as Faith slams the door on her face, and then rips the door off of its hinges and throws it at Faith, scattering the eggs and salad dressing that was in the door all over the floor. Faith goes down momentarily, but Jesse and I are already in motion, trying to grab her arms and pin her down so that Faith can stake her, or behead her, or whatever it takes.

This Glorificus is faster than any vampire I’ve ever fought, and she tosses Jesse through the wall and then swings me at Faith like a club. Faith manages to avoid me, using the refrigerator door like a shield to block my flying body. At some point my arm came off in her hands, and now she’s just holding it and looking confused. “They’re robots?” she says as Faith destroys what’s left of the refrigerator door by smashing it over her head. I see my arm fall to the floor discarded, and make a note to get that later.

At this point, Jesse flies out of the wall with a roar and slams into Faith, as Glory ducks beneath him. They go down in a tangle of limbs, and Glory moves in for the kill, only to recoil as three crossbow bolts impact on her skin, shattering without penetrating, and leaving a smear of tranquilizer soaking into her flimsy nightgown. She looks up at Willow, who’s eyes grow wide and is hastily reloading her crossbow with something bigger, and promptly falls flat on her ass. I see the hazy outline of Jonathan behind her, having looped an extension cord around her foot and pulled her off balance. His smile is short-lived as she reaches back and grabs his leg, pulling him down to the floor with her.

“I didn’t see you there, cutie,” she says as we all begin moving at once. She throws us all aside like we are children, and holds Jon in front of her like a shield. Her smile is cold as she says, “But really, there’s nothing to see here, is there?” Her hand plunges into Jon’s head, and I feel sick for a second, thinking that she has pierced his skull. But whatever she’s doing is magical, he isn’t bleeding, just twitching. I see Jesse pulling on her arm, to no effect, trying to pull her hand away from Jon, and Faith has rammed a stake into Glory’s back so hard that it shatters in her fist. Jon drops to the ground as if she’s ripped his entire skeleton out, just soft. I throw the nearest thing I can find at her head as hard as I can. She moves ever so slightly and the wall next to her now has a pan-sized hole next to the Jesse-sized hole. I see Jonathan’s body just dissolve into nothingness, as if she’s sucked out every part of him, everything that made him real.

The fight goes on, and I don’t even know what happens at the end. I know Ms Calender did something, some white powder made Glory freeze for a second, just as she was about to crush Jesse’s head between her palms, and Faith somehow managed to break one of her arms, so that Jesse fell free. I brought her to the ground before she snapped out of it, and Willow darted forward and shoved something on her back. I was stuck there beneath Glory as the magnesium flare began to go off, unable to get any leverage with my good arm, and I thought that was it, but Faith flipped her off of me and pulled me to safety as we watched her body burn.

At some point in the fight, Ms Calender got hit in the head with, of all things, a colander, and we had to take her to the hospital. Jesse was also badly hurt, his jaw broken, skull fractured, a few ribs broken and his arm dislocated. Faith took him home, since they don’t have doctors that specialize in vampires. Me and Jesse were the only ones who remembered Jon at all, and Jesse couldn’t talk for a couple days, looking more like a mummy than a vampire, arm and face all wrapped in white gauze. Miss Post said that everyone forgot that Jonathan Levinson even existed, and that made him invisible (she was real careful about always saying his full name, as if she wanted to make sure that she remembered it right). She said that Glory must have made him forget that he existed, and that made him gone, forever, like he never was. We had a memorial for him, and his parents didn’t know, and his friends didn’t know, and his teachers didn’t know. But we remember him, even if his mom wondered if that Levinson boy in the obituaries was related to her family somehow.

Willow buckled down and re-attached my arm. She said she was going to turn me off to work on me, but we stopped her. I asked her not to, and said that if she kept taking things away from me, things that made me who I am, that she was destroying every bit of Xander left in the world. If she kept deleting my memories, my feelings, Xander would be just as gone and forgotten as Jonathan Levinson.

I told her that I’d watched enough Star Trek to know that machines don’t hurt when their friends hurt because that’s the way they are programmed. That I hurt when she hurt because that’s the way Xander was programmed, not as a machine, but as a man.

I don’t know if she believed me. I don’t even know if I believed me, but Jesse did, and Faith, and Ms Calender, and even Miss Post hemmed and hawed about the Toth stick and ‘residual essence transposition’ or something. I know I didn’t believe Miss Post, but I did believe that spending time in the hospital waiting for Jenny to wake up made her see some stuff differently than before, about what we have, and how quickly we can lose it.

[Author's note. This ending rots. It's supposed to be elegant. And poignant. And angstarrific. Instead its sucktacular. I'm gonna rewrite it, someday...]