Time is a Thief 2 - #418 Arsenal
Title: Time is a Thief
Fandom: BtVS/Teen Titans
Prompt: 418 - Arsenal
Words: 4222
Warnings: Past Character Death
Rating: Teen
Summary: Xander sets up in Jump City
The half full gas tank got Xander to Jump City, which was better mileage than he'd thought he'd get in Giles' rust bucket. The city was perfect for his needs, large enough to be completely anonymous and easy to get lost in, but not as close to Sunnydale as LA. Angelus would never find him here, if he even bothered trying. After having thought all night, Xander decided it was pretty suspicious that a group of vampires known for slaughtering their way across England could 'accidentally' leave someone alive. Death was pretty much their profession, the only way they had left him alive was if they didn't care.
Giles was an active Watcher, with all the knowledge, connections and training inherent in the position. Buffy was the The Slayer, boogey-man to vampires everywhere, her death was a mark of achievement for the Scourge. Willow was a budding witch with an intellect that would get her important places in the future. They were all threats, Xander was just there. A lower-middle class, average intelligence townie who would never have amounted to anything in his whole life if he hadn't met Buffy. He was a deadbeat hanger-on and second hand hero. He was a sidekick. Villains never bothered to kill the sidekick after they beat their nemesis, because what worth did a +1 have without the person holding the invite. It was Angelus' ultimate fuck-you to the teen, denying him even the right to stand and die with his friends.
Knowing Angelus, he expected Xander to crawl home and wait to be hunted down at his whim. It wasn't going to happen. Xander may not have the training and abilities of the rest of the Scoobies but he was a survivor. He had lived all his life under the thumb of a father who liked to belittle and beat him down on an emotional level. Angelus couldn't make him feel worse about himself than he'd been used to feeling all his life. He just had to remember back to the days before yellow crayons and red hair and the safety found in a warm hug, back when he was alone and had no one's support. He wasn't paralyzed with fear, he was galvanized by it, old instincts allowed him to thrive under the pressure of it. The more afraid he felt, the more focused he became.
Finding himself running for his life, alone in the world, with nothing to his name but a stack of supernatural books and an arsenal of medieval weaponry in the trunk made him very afraid. He had never thought more clearly in his life as a calm confidence descended over him, straightening his back with cold steel. It felt as if he was back on that Halloween night a year ago, level-headed assurance in his strategic thinking and military training.
The first thing he did after hitting city limits was immediately set about unloading his ill gotten goods at a halfway decent looking pawn shop. He was surprised how much Giles' turntable and records had sold for. He remembered Oz being impressed with the collection, but didn't have any first hand idea how much it was all worth. Had he made a wild guess, it wouldn't have been even half of what he got for it. The fancy wood and brass mantle clock he had grabbed turned out to be a good choice as well, who knew how expensive custom timepieces could be. He mourned his inability to lift Giles' grandfather clock for a moment, but shook it off and dived right back into haggling with the clerk. Of all his current regrets, that was the most insignificant.
The clerk didn't seem to know anything about computers and wouldn't believe Xander that they were high end so he didn't bother selling them. He couldn't bear to part with Giles' guitar for the measly hundred he was offered. He didn't know why he was so fixated on the guitar, he hadn't even known Giles played. He should have associated the giant stack of vanillin scented books with the Watcher, but those were a sign of his profession, not him as a person. The guitar humanized the librarian and made Xander realize that he was more than a mentor or teacher, he was a full person in his own right and Xander would never know him. Tears burned at his eyes, but he pulled the cold calm around his emotions. He couldn't break down, not yet.
His next stop was to find a storage facility and put up the money to rent a unit for a year while he had the funds on hand. It would give him a guaranteed crash space and he could work his way up from there. He picked an internal unit towards the back of the facility near an outside door and unloaded the weapons and books. There was no way he was going to part with the only things that may help him survive the city's nightlife. He strapped on a few of the knives and cased the neighborhood, finding the nearest soup kitchen, shelter and bus stops.
His next step was selling the car. He didn't shop for a good offer, knowing that he couldn't sell it at all if it actually ran out of gas and stalled on the side of the road. Xander found the dirtiest, shabbiest but still busy mechanic shop he could and asked around for anyone looking to buy cheap and quick. He did his best to look casual and confident, as if he lifted and sold cars for chopping all the time. He had only approached a few customers when a big burly mechanic came out and took it off his hands for 1k in cash if he promised to never come back. He readily agreed and fled with his fistful of cash before the gruff man could change his mind.
His day ended huddled in the storage unit under a musty wool blanket from Giles's trunk, head pillowed on a thick leather bound tome with Buffy's photo placed next to his head. He stared at the picture with the light of an emergency flashlight from the glovebox. The dim light, cold concrete and steel room were the only witnesses as he finally broke down, his tears soaking into the fragile leather cover of the book. Giles would have been furious.
Time flies when your having fun, it crawls when you are scraping the tattered remains of a life together day after day. Either way, it will pass.
Xander felt every moment of the time that crawled past, eroding away the person he used to be, until he was completely different from who he was before. He felt unrecognizable. His whole life could be divided into the Before and the After. Before he was cheerful, friendly and funny, always cracking jokes and playing the fun loving idiot. After he was cold and focused, harsh, pragmatic, standoffish and downright unfriendly. Before he was a hero, or at least hero adjacent, After he was a thief and a criminal and felt no remorse over it.
It started with his need to survive. He was an unfortunate combination of broke and bored when he realized that the storage facility wasn't monitored by cameras and only had the one guard posted at the front gate. He found himself in a thousand unit playground. With nothing to do with himself between meager meals at the shelter and soup kitchen, he taught himself to pick locks for long hours every day. He started with paperclips and the older padlocks, the ones most simple in construction. Once he mastered those he moved to more modern designs, the ones made more theft proof and tracked down some actual tools for his newfound trade. Once he had conquered the entire gamut of key locks he turned to the combination locks, learning to feel out the tumblers with nothing but his fingertips and hearing.
His nights were spent curled up in his nest of stolen bedding and pillows, reading Giles' books on magic and demonology by flashlight. His days involved pawning the things he'd looted from the storage units. A few months into this new business venture, he had to change pawn shops when he caught sight of a cop questioning the clerk with several of his trade-ins spread out over the counter. After that he made sure to spread his misappropriated goods evenly across the city, having long since mastered the bus routes by then.
His break-ins could only go unnoticed for so long and eventually the guard started patrolling, and cameras were put in. His studies in criminology expanded to include evasion, stealth and how to disable cameras. He learned to scale the fence surrounding the facility and how to outrun a pursuer. He even practiced using Willow's computers to hack into and loop the cameras from the control center in the office when the guard was doing his rounds. The storage facility remained his kingdom for a year before the thefts became too much and people stopped entrusting valuable things to the company. He had to take his skills elsewhere for money.
He was confident that pick-pocketing would be just as easily picked up as lock-picking and was proved immediately and disastrously wrong. His first week out, he got caught red handed with his hand in a woman's purse in a crowd at a crosswalk. He was dragged to the nearest police station by a businessman who, from the size of him, did nothing but work out in his free time. He had been a recluse for nearly a year at this point and decided that he hated other people. Humanity as a whole was almost more troublesome than their possessions were worth, he did much better when he was left alone.
No matter what the cops threatened him with he refused to give up his name. They took his prints and a DNA sample, but his parents had never been the type to file a kidnapping kit, so he wasn't on file for anything. The police had never been allies of his, ignoring everything that went on after dark or behind closed doors. Now that he had thrown his lot in on the side of the undesirables they finally chose to be diligent in their work. It figured.
The cops didn’t know what to do with Xander and couldn’t actually charge him as long as they had no idea who they had arrested. It didn’t hurt that he was obviously underage either. They called in Social Services and threatened to put him in a home, not that any home could keep him if he wanted to disappear. He refused to even speak to the social worker. They tried a good cop/bad cop routine with him, but considering the fact that he mistrusted and was quickly coming to downright loathe cops, even Goodie couldn’t get much verbal traction.
He knew it was irrational, since he was in an entirely new jurisdiction, but he was surprised with how deep his hatred for the Police and Social Services ran once he was face to face with them. Where were they when his Dad came home drunk every night and took it out on him? Where were they when good kids like Jessie just disappeared, or when Luke ate half of the Bronze for the Harvest, or when the swim team disappeared, or when a Tarakan assassin dressed as a cop shot up a public hallway? Where were they when Giles and Willow and Buffy were killed in the school library? Cops had never done anything for him and he would give them nothing in return, no matter how much they harassed him.
He didn’t bother asking for a lawyer, because they’d need his name and then what was the point of keeping silent? Xander didn’t know anything about the law but he rotted in a holding cell for what had to be an illegal amount of time. He thought that it should have been limited to 24 hours unless you were charged with something, and without his name they hadn’t been able to do that. Not that anyone cared where he was or would look for him. They could forget about him locked down here and no one would notice until he began to stink.
There was nothing to do in the cell, so he spent his time napping. It screwed up his sense of time, but also helped the time pass. A guaranteed three squares and a thin mattress without any effort expended was luxury living as far as he was concerned. Finally, on what he estimated was the fourth morning, he woke up to a severe looking woman with white hair standing outside his cell staring at him. He hadn’t heard her come in and had no idea how long she had been watching him. He amused himself by staring right back, silently challenging her. He had nothing better to do and since they didn’t seem eager to release him, he had lots of time to kill. A staring contest was childish but he managed to take enough amusement from it to make it worth his time.
Their gazes stayed locked for minute after minute as they assessed each other. Neither of them moved. She didn’t so much as shift on her austere heels and despite the vulnerability of being laid out on a low bench in a cage, Xander didn’t bother to sit up. She felt dangerous, like a viper posed to strike, but he didn’t know what she wanted and couldn’t even begin to guess how best to respond and avoid being bitten. He decided to just wing it without a concern for repercussions, like everything else he did these days. He had hit rock bottom and had the sort of fearlessness that came from knowing you had nowhere else to fall. He was done being apologetic for who he was and she could take him as is or walk her stern looking self right out of his face.
“They tell me that you refuse to identify yourself.” When she finally spoke, he couldn’t help but startle slightly, and he could see the triumph in her eyes at his loss of composure. To regain some footing in the conversation he sat upright and slouched back against the wall with deliberate lack of concern. This was the type of woman accustomed to being respected and obeyed. He would rather brave her wrath than play into her sense of entitlement. He pandered to no one, especially someone associated with cops.
“Do they really?” Answering a question with a question was the perfect way to annoy a person. Especially since she hadn’t asked a question, simply stated a fact and expected it to be elaborated upon.
“You are in a dangerous situation. No one cares that you are missing, no one is interested in advocating for you and you are irritating the people who are in a position do whatever they wish to you if you are uncooperative.”
“Pretty sure the law says they can’t touch me.”
“Ah, yes. The law.” Her voice and posture didn’t change a whit but her eyes sharpened and Xander knew this was the reason she was here. “… and do you put your faith in the law to keep you safe- to prevent harm from coming to you?”
Xander scoffed, “Yeah, right. I trust the law to be used against me. I trust it to hurt and hinder me. The law is nothing but a set of arbitrary rules set down by and enforced by whoever holds the most power at the moment. The law has no power in-and-of-itself, no one HAS to follow the law, they just have to be subtle about their disregard or prepared to defend themselves from the consequences if they get caught.”
Her stony expression didn’t change, but she seemed pleased by his words and her response changed his life. “I would like to make you an offer.”
That was how Xander first met Adeline Kane, Headmistress of the HIVE Academy for Extraordinary Young People. The cops thought that she was a part of some outreach pity program for troubled youths and gave her a heads up whenever a difficult case passed over their desks. The word hive invoked in them pleasant mental images of an ordered military school that beat the individuality out of a delinquent, breaking them down into obedient citizens. The reality was quite different. HIVE stood for the Higher Institute of Villainous Education. Kane ran a villain factory. The cops were literally feeding baby criminals into a recidivism machine that polished their skills into true felons. Xander loved the vicious irony of using the system against itself.
He quickly found out through a short debrief in her anonymously boring car that she shopped around the various precincts for the kids who were beyond help. The typical disaffected youth and rebellious teens she left in their cells to wait for Mummy and Daddy to post bail. She only took on the truly hopeless cases, those who had walked on the dark side and liked it. Xander wasn’t sure if he was flattered or ashamed to have been handpicked and judged an appropriate candidate for the school.
What followed were the hardest years of his life. The Headmistress may have come for him personally, but that didn’t mean she felt anything for him. Villains could be trusted to be harsh like that. She dumped him into the basic training program and headed off to her office without looking back. Xander was struck with a harsh reality check when he realized that his place was at the bottom of the pecking order. The supes, or kids with powers, were the darlings of HIVE, individually trained and given the best of everything no matter how soft they were. The norms were there to act as backup and make the supes look good. A willingness to kill and destroy could be taught, super powers could not. Despite his experience and skill navigating the cold, hard world, Xander had no powers and wasn’t expected to become anything better than a HIVE foot soldier. He could expect his future to involve obeying orders from someone with powers and eventually being sacrificed for the cause. They wanted him to aspire to minion-ship and the short, sad life of a red-shirted stormtrooper. He wasn’t having it. He refused to bow and scrape and serve another’s cause.
HIVE was a secret kingdom of Villains and Henchmen, the haves and the have-nots, and Xander was used to being a have-not. It had never stopped him before and it wasn’t going to stop him now. Having no one expecting anything from him was freeing, he had no one to disappoint and felt no shame when he failed. He just got back up and made sure to fail better the next time. He was considered too pathetic to even mock for his failures. The whole school looked down on him or overlooked him entirely and wasn’t that a familiar feeling. He was the Zeppo again, but this time he refused to own the label. Xander had changed and as the cold calm of determination came over him he decided to prove it. He would show HIVE that even starting at the bottom wouldn’t hinder him; he would use the school the way they wanted to use him. He would wring every bit of combat and weaponry training out of them. He was a thief, not a villain, his only priority was himself and he wouldn’t let them change that.
To that effect he looked over his assigned schedule, labeled appropriately with a simple X, as he had still refused to provide his name. Unlike the cops, Headmistress Kane had encouraged it, secret identities and false names were a basic element of villainy and he was meant to be a faceless thug anyways. He immediately crossed out all of the overtly ‘evil’ classes, Hostage Taking, Death Threats and Theory of Mayhem, and decided to double up on Stealth and Evasion, Hacking and Information Gathering and Introduction to Combat. He would have to check out Villainous Ethics: Honor Among Thieves, Heroes: Knowing the Enemy and The Law and You before making final judgment on their usefulness. Xander would bet good money he didn’t have that no one cared enough to notice what classes he attended. He would see how long he could get away with his modified schedule, and if someone took exception to a lowly henchman hand tailoring his own education, he would deal with it when it happened.
Xander trained tirelessly, night and day to be the best in his chosen courses. He had a chip on his shoulder and something to prove. It was easier than he thought to bypass the supes in his combat and stealth classes. They were used to relying on their powers not their bodies and typically those powers were pretty noticeable and blew any attempts at stealth right out of the water. As a result, none of the supes tried very hard in the physical courses, preferring their individualized ability training and showing off on the flashy obstacle course.
Xander was shocked to find himself the favored student of the entire Tactical Education department. He didn’t cheat with magical, genetic or cybernetic strength and reflexes that didn’t respond to physical training. He didn’t skive off and fool around like the magic users and energy projectionists. He had a brain, able body and determination to learn, unlike the typical non-enhanced thugs. In short, he was the perfect student and the faculty descended on him with all the passion of highly paid, incredibly bored and under-appreciated master martial artists, boxers, gymnasts and athletes. He had the full and focused attention of half a dozen frustrated and expert fighters and he certainly felt their enthusiasm down to his bones every night as he collapsed into his bed. It was worth it though, as his physical ability and iron control over his body shot past everyone’s expectations.
He would never be as fast as the Flash or as strong as Mammoth, or as good at electronic engineering and hacking as Gizmo, but he could run circles around Mammoth, out hacked everyone but the techno-supes and could crush Gizmo with one hand tied behind his back. He was never going to be a stand out in any field, but he believed that being the absolute best in only one thing was outweighed every time by a well rounded plethora of skills. Rock may beat scissors may beat paper, but if you could strategize properly and switch between them all based on your opponent, you were set. Life was good and Xander could see himself improving more and more as every month passed, until the day came that he realized that he could probably have taken Buffy in a fight.
She, like many other supes, had suffered from special people syndrome, an ingrained arrogance that, trained or not, powers were better than skills. With the distant perspective of the years since he’d lost her Xander was able to see the flaws in the golden Slayer. She hadn’t been perfect, and neither had Giles or Willow. He loved them, always would, but he could finally take them down off of their pedestals and realize that they had been people with flaws and foibles. It didn’t hurt so much to remember them now, and he wondered what they would think of the new him. Buffy and Willow probably wouldn’t be comfortable with the changes, Buffy's black and white view of the world would classify him as evil and Willow would want to save him from himself. Giles might understand, even if he didn’t agree with his choices.
Xander wasn’t living a life that he’d ever expected or wanted, but he could call himself happy, or at least content. He didn’t have any friends and the entire school ignored or underestimated him, but he was fine with that and even encouraged his untouchable invisible reputation. In a school full of political maneuvering and literal backstabbing it was good to be overlooked and underestimated. No one bothered removing a threat that they didn’t realize was there. True to his initial assessment, no one ever noticed or cared what classes he was taking. He thought his combat Masters probably noticed, he spent double the hours in the gym than everyone else did. They were just so pleased to have extra time to beat on him that they had never said anything to him about it or bothered reporting him for it. The prevailing attitude seemed to be, what others did or didn’t notice was a sad commentary on their own poor observation skills. Lying and subterfuge were a viable and appropriately villainous way of life and they thought it was hilarious that the school was largely unaware of his true worth.
Of course, as Xander was coming to expect from his life, his little bubble of contentment eventually burst in a painful, messy way. On that day, Headmistress Kane hired out her top students, Jinx, Mammoth and Gizmo on a mission against Jump’s very own super hero team, the Teen Titans. It was a humiliating experience for everyone involved.
Fandom: BtVS/Teen Titans
Prompt: 418 - Arsenal
Words: 4222
Warnings: Past Character Death
Rating: Teen
Summary: Xander sets up in Jump City
The half full gas tank got Xander to Jump City, which was better mileage than he'd thought he'd get in Giles' rust bucket. The city was perfect for his needs, large enough to be completely anonymous and easy to get lost in, but not as close to Sunnydale as LA. Angelus would never find him here, if he even bothered trying. After having thought all night, Xander decided it was pretty suspicious that a group of vampires known for slaughtering their way across England could 'accidentally' leave someone alive. Death was pretty much their profession, the only way they had left him alive was if they didn't care.
Giles was an active Watcher, with all the knowledge, connections and training inherent in the position. Buffy was the The Slayer, boogey-man to vampires everywhere, her death was a mark of achievement for the Scourge. Willow was a budding witch with an intellect that would get her important places in the future. They were all threats, Xander was just there. A lower-middle class, average intelligence townie who would never have amounted to anything in his whole life if he hadn't met Buffy. He was a deadbeat hanger-on and second hand hero. He was a sidekick. Villains never bothered to kill the sidekick after they beat their nemesis, because what worth did a +1 have without the person holding the invite. It was Angelus' ultimate fuck-you to the teen, denying him even the right to stand and die with his friends.
Knowing Angelus, he expected Xander to crawl home and wait to be hunted down at his whim. It wasn't going to happen. Xander may not have the training and abilities of the rest of the Scoobies but he was a survivor. He had lived all his life under the thumb of a father who liked to belittle and beat him down on an emotional level. Angelus couldn't make him feel worse about himself than he'd been used to feeling all his life. He just had to remember back to the days before yellow crayons and red hair and the safety found in a warm hug, back when he was alone and had no one's support. He wasn't paralyzed with fear, he was galvanized by it, old instincts allowed him to thrive under the pressure of it. The more afraid he felt, the more focused he became.
Finding himself running for his life, alone in the world, with nothing to his name but a stack of supernatural books and an arsenal of medieval weaponry in the trunk made him very afraid. He had never thought more clearly in his life as a calm confidence descended over him, straightening his back with cold steel. It felt as if he was back on that Halloween night a year ago, level-headed assurance in his strategic thinking and military training.
The first thing he did after hitting city limits was immediately set about unloading his ill gotten goods at a halfway decent looking pawn shop. He was surprised how much Giles' turntable and records had sold for. He remembered Oz being impressed with the collection, but didn't have any first hand idea how much it was all worth. Had he made a wild guess, it wouldn't have been even half of what he got for it. The fancy wood and brass mantle clock he had grabbed turned out to be a good choice as well, who knew how expensive custom timepieces could be. He mourned his inability to lift Giles' grandfather clock for a moment, but shook it off and dived right back into haggling with the clerk. Of all his current regrets, that was the most insignificant.
The clerk didn't seem to know anything about computers and wouldn't believe Xander that they were high end so he didn't bother selling them. He couldn't bear to part with Giles' guitar for the measly hundred he was offered. He didn't know why he was so fixated on the guitar, he hadn't even known Giles played. He should have associated the giant stack of vanillin scented books with the Watcher, but those were a sign of his profession, not him as a person. The guitar humanized the librarian and made Xander realize that he was more than a mentor or teacher, he was a full person in his own right and Xander would never know him. Tears burned at his eyes, but he pulled the cold calm around his emotions. He couldn't break down, not yet.
His next stop was to find a storage facility and put up the money to rent a unit for a year while he had the funds on hand. It would give him a guaranteed crash space and he could work his way up from there. He picked an internal unit towards the back of the facility near an outside door and unloaded the weapons and books. There was no way he was going to part with the only things that may help him survive the city's nightlife. He strapped on a few of the knives and cased the neighborhood, finding the nearest soup kitchen, shelter and bus stops.
His next step was selling the car. He didn't shop for a good offer, knowing that he couldn't sell it at all if it actually ran out of gas and stalled on the side of the road. Xander found the dirtiest, shabbiest but still busy mechanic shop he could and asked around for anyone looking to buy cheap and quick. He did his best to look casual and confident, as if he lifted and sold cars for chopping all the time. He had only approached a few customers when a big burly mechanic came out and took it off his hands for 1k in cash if he promised to never come back. He readily agreed and fled with his fistful of cash before the gruff man could change his mind.
His day ended huddled in the storage unit under a musty wool blanket from Giles's trunk, head pillowed on a thick leather bound tome with Buffy's photo placed next to his head. He stared at the picture with the light of an emergency flashlight from the glovebox. The dim light, cold concrete and steel room were the only witnesses as he finally broke down, his tears soaking into the fragile leather cover of the book. Giles would have been furious.
Time flies when your having fun, it crawls when you are scraping the tattered remains of a life together day after day. Either way, it will pass.
Xander felt every moment of the time that crawled past, eroding away the person he used to be, until he was completely different from who he was before. He felt unrecognizable. His whole life could be divided into the Before and the After. Before he was cheerful, friendly and funny, always cracking jokes and playing the fun loving idiot. After he was cold and focused, harsh, pragmatic, standoffish and downright unfriendly. Before he was a hero, or at least hero adjacent, After he was a thief and a criminal and felt no remorse over it.
It started with his need to survive. He was an unfortunate combination of broke and bored when he realized that the storage facility wasn't monitored by cameras and only had the one guard posted at the front gate. He found himself in a thousand unit playground. With nothing to do with himself between meager meals at the shelter and soup kitchen, he taught himself to pick locks for long hours every day. He started with paperclips and the older padlocks, the ones most simple in construction. Once he mastered those he moved to more modern designs, the ones made more theft proof and tracked down some actual tools for his newfound trade. Once he had conquered the entire gamut of key locks he turned to the combination locks, learning to feel out the tumblers with nothing but his fingertips and hearing.
His nights were spent curled up in his nest of stolen bedding and pillows, reading Giles' books on magic and demonology by flashlight. His days involved pawning the things he'd looted from the storage units. A few months into this new business venture, he had to change pawn shops when he caught sight of a cop questioning the clerk with several of his trade-ins spread out over the counter. After that he made sure to spread his misappropriated goods evenly across the city, having long since mastered the bus routes by then.
His break-ins could only go unnoticed for so long and eventually the guard started patrolling, and cameras were put in. His studies in criminology expanded to include evasion, stealth and how to disable cameras. He learned to scale the fence surrounding the facility and how to outrun a pursuer. He even practiced using Willow's computers to hack into and loop the cameras from the control center in the office when the guard was doing his rounds. The storage facility remained his kingdom for a year before the thefts became too much and people stopped entrusting valuable things to the company. He had to take his skills elsewhere for money.
He was confident that pick-pocketing would be just as easily picked up as lock-picking and was proved immediately and disastrously wrong. His first week out, he got caught red handed with his hand in a woman's purse in a crowd at a crosswalk. He was dragged to the nearest police station by a businessman who, from the size of him, did nothing but work out in his free time. He had been a recluse for nearly a year at this point and decided that he hated other people. Humanity as a whole was almost more troublesome than their possessions were worth, he did much better when he was left alone.
No matter what the cops threatened him with he refused to give up his name. They took his prints and a DNA sample, but his parents had never been the type to file a kidnapping kit, so he wasn't on file for anything. The police had never been allies of his, ignoring everything that went on after dark or behind closed doors. Now that he had thrown his lot in on the side of the undesirables they finally chose to be diligent in their work. It figured.
The cops didn’t know what to do with Xander and couldn’t actually charge him as long as they had no idea who they had arrested. It didn’t hurt that he was obviously underage either. They called in Social Services and threatened to put him in a home, not that any home could keep him if he wanted to disappear. He refused to even speak to the social worker. They tried a good cop/bad cop routine with him, but considering the fact that he mistrusted and was quickly coming to downright loathe cops, even Goodie couldn’t get much verbal traction.
He knew it was irrational, since he was in an entirely new jurisdiction, but he was surprised with how deep his hatred for the Police and Social Services ran once he was face to face with them. Where were they when his Dad came home drunk every night and took it out on him? Where were they when good kids like Jessie just disappeared, or when Luke ate half of the Bronze for the Harvest, or when the swim team disappeared, or when a Tarakan assassin dressed as a cop shot up a public hallway? Where were they when Giles and Willow and Buffy were killed in the school library? Cops had never done anything for him and he would give them nothing in return, no matter how much they harassed him.
He didn’t bother asking for a lawyer, because they’d need his name and then what was the point of keeping silent? Xander didn’t know anything about the law but he rotted in a holding cell for what had to be an illegal amount of time. He thought that it should have been limited to 24 hours unless you were charged with something, and without his name they hadn’t been able to do that. Not that anyone cared where he was or would look for him. They could forget about him locked down here and no one would notice until he began to stink.
There was nothing to do in the cell, so he spent his time napping. It screwed up his sense of time, but also helped the time pass. A guaranteed three squares and a thin mattress without any effort expended was luxury living as far as he was concerned. Finally, on what he estimated was the fourth morning, he woke up to a severe looking woman with white hair standing outside his cell staring at him. He hadn’t heard her come in and had no idea how long she had been watching him. He amused himself by staring right back, silently challenging her. He had nothing better to do and since they didn’t seem eager to release him, he had lots of time to kill. A staring contest was childish but he managed to take enough amusement from it to make it worth his time.
Their gazes stayed locked for minute after minute as they assessed each other. Neither of them moved. She didn’t so much as shift on her austere heels and despite the vulnerability of being laid out on a low bench in a cage, Xander didn’t bother to sit up. She felt dangerous, like a viper posed to strike, but he didn’t know what she wanted and couldn’t even begin to guess how best to respond and avoid being bitten. He decided to just wing it without a concern for repercussions, like everything else he did these days. He had hit rock bottom and had the sort of fearlessness that came from knowing you had nowhere else to fall. He was done being apologetic for who he was and she could take him as is or walk her stern looking self right out of his face.
“They tell me that you refuse to identify yourself.” When she finally spoke, he couldn’t help but startle slightly, and he could see the triumph in her eyes at his loss of composure. To regain some footing in the conversation he sat upright and slouched back against the wall with deliberate lack of concern. This was the type of woman accustomed to being respected and obeyed. He would rather brave her wrath than play into her sense of entitlement. He pandered to no one, especially someone associated with cops.
“Do they really?” Answering a question with a question was the perfect way to annoy a person. Especially since she hadn’t asked a question, simply stated a fact and expected it to be elaborated upon.
“You are in a dangerous situation. No one cares that you are missing, no one is interested in advocating for you and you are irritating the people who are in a position do whatever they wish to you if you are uncooperative.”
“Pretty sure the law says they can’t touch me.”
“Ah, yes. The law.” Her voice and posture didn’t change a whit but her eyes sharpened and Xander knew this was the reason she was here. “… and do you put your faith in the law to keep you safe- to prevent harm from coming to you?”
Xander scoffed, “Yeah, right. I trust the law to be used against me. I trust it to hurt and hinder me. The law is nothing but a set of arbitrary rules set down by and enforced by whoever holds the most power at the moment. The law has no power in-and-of-itself, no one HAS to follow the law, they just have to be subtle about their disregard or prepared to defend themselves from the consequences if they get caught.”
Her stony expression didn’t change, but she seemed pleased by his words and her response changed his life. “I would like to make you an offer.”
That was how Xander first met Adeline Kane, Headmistress of the HIVE Academy for Extraordinary Young People. The cops thought that she was a part of some outreach pity program for troubled youths and gave her a heads up whenever a difficult case passed over their desks. The word hive invoked in them pleasant mental images of an ordered military school that beat the individuality out of a delinquent, breaking them down into obedient citizens. The reality was quite different. HIVE stood for the Higher Institute of Villainous Education. Kane ran a villain factory. The cops were literally feeding baby criminals into a recidivism machine that polished their skills into true felons. Xander loved the vicious irony of using the system against itself.
He quickly found out through a short debrief in her anonymously boring car that she shopped around the various precincts for the kids who were beyond help. The typical disaffected youth and rebellious teens she left in their cells to wait for Mummy and Daddy to post bail. She only took on the truly hopeless cases, those who had walked on the dark side and liked it. Xander wasn’t sure if he was flattered or ashamed to have been handpicked and judged an appropriate candidate for the school.
What followed were the hardest years of his life. The Headmistress may have come for him personally, but that didn’t mean she felt anything for him. Villains could be trusted to be harsh like that. She dumped him into the basic training program and headed off to her office without looking back. Xander was struck with a harsh reality check when he realized that his place was at the bottom of the pecking order. The supes, or kids with powers, were the darlings of HIVE, individually trained and given the best of everything no matter how soft they were. The norms were there to act as backup and make the supes look good. A willingness to kill and destroy could be taught, super powers could not. Despite his experience and skill navigating the cold, hard world, Xander had no powers and wasn’t expected to become anything better than a HIVE foot soldier. He could expect his future to involve obeying orders from someone with powers and eventually being sacrificed for the cause. They wanted him to aspire to minion-ship and the short, sad life of a red-shirted stormtrooper. He wasn’t having it. He refused to bow and scrape and serve another’s cause.
HIVE was a secret kingdom of Villains and Henchmen, the haves and the have-nots, and Xander was used to being a have-not. It had never stopped him before and it wasn’t going to stop him now. Having no one expecting anything from him was freeing, he had no one to disappoint and felt no shame when he failed. He just got back up and made sure to fail better the next time. He was considered too pathetic to even mock for his failures. The whole school looked down on him or overlooked him entirely and wasn’t that a familiar feeling. He was the Zeppo again, but this time he refused to own the label. Xander had changed and as the cold calm of determination came over him he decided to prove it. He would show HIVE that even starting at the bottom wouldn’t hinder him; he would use the school the way they wanted to use him. He would wring every bit of combat and weaponry training out of them. He was a thief, not a villain, his only priority was himself and he wouldn’t let them change that.
To that effect he looked over his assigned schedule, labeled appropriately with a simple X, as he had still refused to provide his name. Unlike the cops, Headmistress Kane had encouraged it, secret identities and false names were a basic element of villainy and he was meant to be a faceless thug anyways. He immediately crossed out all of the overtly ‘evil’ classes, Hostage Taking, Death Threats and Theory of Mayhem, and decided to double up on Stealth and Evasion, Hacking and Information Gathering and Introduction to Combat. He would have to check out Villainous Ethics: Honor Among Thieves, Heroes: Knowing the Enemy and The Law and You before making final judgment on their usefulness. Xander would bet good money he didn’t have that no one cared enough to notice what classes he attended. He would see how long he could get away with his modified schedule, and if someone took exception to a lowly henchman hand tailoring his own education, he would deal with it when it happened.
Xander trained tirelessly, night and day to be the best in his chosen courses. He had a chip on his shoulder and something to prove. It was easier than he thought to bypass the supes in his combat and stealth classes. They were used to relying on their powers not their bodies and typically those powers were pretty noticeable and blew any attempts at stealth right out of the water. As a result, none of the supes tried very hard in the physical courses, preferring their individualized ability training and showing off on the flashy obstacle course.
Xander was shocked to find himself the favored student of the entire Tactical Education department. He didn’t cheat with magical, genetic or cybernetic strength and reflexes that didn’t respond to physical training. He didn’t skive off and fool around like the magic users and energy projectionists. He had a brain, able body and determination to learn, unlike the typical non-enhanced thugs. In short, he was the perfect student and the faculty descended on him with all the passion of highly paid, incredibly bored and under-appreciated master martial artists, boxers, gymnasts and athletes. He had the full and focused attention of half a dozen frustrated and expert fighters and he certainly felt their enthusiasm down to his bones every night as he collapsed into his bed. It was worth it though, as his physical ability and iron control over his body shot past everyone’s expectations.
He would never be as fast as the Flash or as strong as Mammoth, or as good at electronic engineering and hacking as Gizmo, but he could run circles around Mammoth, out hacked everyone but the techno-supes and could crush Gizmo with one hand tied behind his back. He was never going to be a stand out in any field, but he believed that being the absolute best in only one thing was outweighed every time by a well rounded plethora of skills. Rock may beat scissors may beat paper, but if you could strategize properly and switch between them all based on your opponent, you were set. Life was good and Xander could see himself improving more and more as every month passed, until the day came that he realized that he could probably have taken Buffy in a fight.
She, like many other supes, had suffered from special people syndrome, an ingrained arrogance that, trained or not, powers were better than skills. With the distant perspective of the years since he’d lost her Xander was able to see the flaws in the golden Slayer. She hadn’t been perfect, and neither had Giles or Willow. He loved them, always would, but he could finally take them down off of their pedestals and realize that they had been people with flaws and foibles. It didn’t hurt so much to remember them now, and he wondered what they would think of the new him. Buffy and Willow probably wouldn’t be comfortable with the changes, Buffy's black and white view of the world would classify him as evil and Willow would want to save him from himself. Giles might understand, even if he didn’t agree with his choices.
Xander wasn’t living a life that he’d ever expected or wanted, but he could call himself happy, or at least content. He didn’t have any friends and the entire school ignored or underestimated him, but he was fine with that and even encouraged his untouchable invisible reputation. In a school full of political maneuvering and literal backstabbing it was good to be overlooked and underestimated. No one bothered removing a threat that they didn’t realize was there. True to his initial assessment, no one ever noticed or cared what classes he was taking. He thought his combat Masters probably noticed, he spent double the hours in the gym than everyone else did. They were just so pleased to have extra time to beat on him that they had never said anything to him about it or bothered reporting him for it. The prevailing attitude seemed to be, what others did or didn’t notice was a sad commentary on their own poor observation skills. Lying and subterfuge were a viable and appropriately villainous way of life and they thought it was hilarious that the school was largely unaware of his true worth.
Of course, as Xander was coming to expect from his life, his little bubble of contentment eventually burst in a painful, messy way. On that day, Headmistress Kane hired out her top students, Jinx, Mammoth and Gizmo on a mission against Jump’s very own super hero team, the Teen Titans. It was a humiliating experience for everyone involved.