Something I'm kinda working on by voracity

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Xander leaned into the Magic Box that night. "Is she done screaming yet?" Buffy shook her head. "Pity. We're on our way to pizza." He walked in with the others. Giles was staring at him. Xander stared back, snapping his fingers a few times. "I got taken by some guy who claimed he was Ba'al and he had small snakey things that tried to infect us but couldn't. Any idea? Because the military came to get him and we had to use Willow to escape. We might have to escape more."

Giles took off his glasses. "You're sure he was Ba'al?"

"He said he was Ba'al. He was dressed like a techno Egyptian version and had gaudy jewelry. His sarcophagus destroyed the snakes we put into it. Including the one that nearly got Xander 2 there." He pointed at him. Then he grinned. "Ba'al was not happy that all the snakes got destroyed and we destroyed his clone too."

"Did he have anything else that could have identified him?" Xander 2 nodded. "What?"

"Big ring thingy. Had hieroglyphs. Looked like it might make a portal of some kind."

"Yes, I know of that thing," he said, moving to look in a book. Then he walked off calling. "Sit down, boys. You can have pizza in a few moments. This could be very bad."

"Is that bad like the messenger lite guy said something about a broken treaty and he had talked to Whistler?" the original Xander called after him.

"Yes, that's a horrible omen and we're all doomed," Giles said, frowning as he dialed. "Marsha, Rupert Giles. My boys ran into a man claiming to be Ba'al who had a snake thing that possessed him and a ring device with hieroglyphs that looked like a portal device." She transferred him over. He closed the office door to talk to that researcher. He opened it. "Xander, come give a report." He came in to do that.

Whistler appeared, looking at the trio of Xanders. "You can't be here. It's dangerous. The thing that makes Xander harder to take out didn't get passed over."

Xander 2 stared at him. "We used his medical thing to check ourselves for bad ideas," he said. "We know very well what got passed over, Whistler. And how he apparently took out some of the mermaid taint."

"It created a bad clone," the balance demon agreed. "You're not safe here."

"We're not safe anywhere since there's military people involved," 4 said.

Three nodded. "Better to be unsafe on ground you know than grounds you don't. Or being on the run from the military. And frankly, you don't speak for us or our language. You're over Buffy, not us." Whistler winced. "Sorry but yay. We'll handle it. We always have and we always will."

Buffy waved a hand. "Why is this a bad thing?"

"The idiot broke a treaty keeping the old demon courts out of humanity."

"But they're mostly dead," 2 said cheerfully. He grinned at her. "They died out about when the snakey things left from the history I glanced at sometime in high school."

"True but they could reform," Whistler said. "Then humanity is screwed."

"We'd work against that," Buffy agreed. "And they're all dead. So why the worry?"

"They could use those three as a sacrifice, slayer. They aren't safe."

"We took out our blood innocence by killing all the snakes on the ship," 4 said. "We let Anya jump us for the virginity problem." She nodded, looking smug. "She helped us do a protection rite so we're not magically innocent either. The only thing they could get is using us to get the original Xander for his hellmouth taint. And this way he's more protected anyway." Whistler winced but nodded once. "Secondly," he said with a smile.

Three waved a hand. "Secondly, the PTB hate us so anything you tell us that comes from them is obviously a trap to kill us or take us from helping Buffy so it's the way it used to be and she's all alone again. So they can suck us. We already heard about the group in England that they prompted to put a price on our heads. And we've heard about the demon that they told about us so we'd be taken as a sacrifice. We stopped that last one on our road trip." He smiled. "Beyond that, I don't care what they want. Do you guys?"

"Nope," the other two said.

The original Xander leaned out with a grin. "Keep it up. Watch me use a poker debt." Whistler shuddered and left. "Thanks!" He smiled and waved at the ceiling. "That demon they told about me was pretty nice to tip my ass when I was at the club. The succuba that used to hang around were really amused but couldn't nibble on me anyway." He slammed the door after a look at his clones. They just grinned back.

"Which demon was this?" Anya demanded.

"Salamat," Four cooed.

Anya blinked a few times. "He'd kill you in bed. His kind are corrosive."

"Well, the PTB hate us," 2 reminded her. "So probably the point, Ahn."

"Good point." She grimaced. "That would've sucked."

"He got three succuba because they volunteered to save the humans," 4 told her.

"Oh, charming!" She walked off calling a demon friend to complain about that and find out what was being said about her pookie.

Buffy looked at the three Xanders. "So, you're all going to stay together?"

"For now. Until we make some choices," 2 agreed. "We haven't made any good plans yet. Right now it's just a need for pizza to start that."

4 nodded. "We thought we'd get the screaming out of the way first." Willow stomped in from the back room. "Are you better yet?"

"Did one of you already get eaten?" she demanded.

"In the office making a report because the idiot broke an ancient treaty with the demon courts," Buffy said. "So...how?" She waved a hand.

"Cloning," 3 said with a nod. "The idiot bad guy was making himself copies for his future hosts. We were apparently going to be a side plot to give him unknown hosts."

"But the snake things hated us," 4 added. "It screamed so pretty when it tried to bite the original one. The one that did get bitten for a few minutes it couldn't do anything with so died."

Willow slumped into a chair. "You're way too calm, Xander. Or whatever."

"No, we're all Xander's." The original came out of the office.

"Frankly, me finding clones was pretty nice after finding myself on a space ship." Willow winced but nodded. "But, hey, the Star Trek stuff came in real handy." He grinned. "We were in space," he told Buffy. "We got to drive the ship to get him away from here before he tried to flirt with you."

"Thanks. I don't need skanky snake holders to flirt with me." She looked at Giles as he came out to reshelve that book. "Are we okay?"

"We're fine, children. The Council is not amused at the Americans at the moment as they brought this problem on all our heads." He looked at the other Xanders. "At least this may solve a few problems for you." They grinned at him. "We'll have to get you all papers." He rubbed his nose then sighed. "What are your current plans?"

"Pizza, making name decisions," the original one said, looking at his others. They nodded. "Maybe they can hire on at the site too." He shrugged and grinned. "We're going for pizza. If Air Force guys show up, they're the ones that thought we should be in custody. We're ignoring it and heading in the other direction." They walked off together, talking about what to get on their pizza. They mostly agreed on things but one wanted to try some weird things to see what they tasted like. They could get him a small order on the side so the rest of them didn't have to eat tofu, oranges, or anchovies.

Buffy looked at the others. "I think it calmed him down. He might be normal now." Willow nodded at that. Giles shot her a dirty look. "Let me go on patrol so I don't have to think about there being four Xanders too hard." She walked off, going to grab Spike on the way. She needed to warn him. She walked him off, looking at him sideways. "You should've come to the meeting, Spike."

"Another huge problem?"

"Slightly. Xander apparently got kidnaped by a guy named Ba'al or something." Spike paused to stare at her. She nodded. "And now there's four of them."

"Excuse me?" he demanded. She nodded quickly, lips pressed together. "Four Xanders?" She nodded again. "Is he the newest apocalypse?"

"He warned us that the Air Force might be looking for him since he ran into them while getting away from the bad guy. Otherwise, no clue. Whistler tried to tell them they had to leave and they told him to suck them." She grimaced. "Which probably won't make the PTB happy but they're right, the PTB hate them." She shrugged. "I don't know what to do but you're the only one that hadn't heard of the group and it might be a really bad thing. I don't know yet. One might be evil. They're deciding on name things tonight to pizza."

Spike just nodded. "Are you sure you're not sick?"

"I wish but no." She pointed. "Pizza place with three of the four."

He looked and groaned, hugging himself. "That's going to be bad." They hiked off again. "Thanks for letting me know."

"I doubt they'd prank you but it's already giving me and Willow a headache. So I'm sharing like they taught us in kindergarten." She grinned at him. "But more help on patrol." He just nodded at that idea. "Really, it could be a good thing. We can give them all chocolate and shove them at the mean demons." Spike burst out laughing, wiping his eyes as he nodded. "So it could be worse."

"I'll warn around, Slayer. You go patrol." He walked off wondering if he had gone as batty as Dru was. If not, would four Nummies do that to him? Probably.

*** (sent to list to here via email)

The original Xander showed up at his work site the next morning, grinning at his boss. "It was important."

"Do you have an excuse?" he demanded impatiently.

"Nope. The Air Force wanted to take us into custody because I found out I'm not the only Xander." He waved and the other three came over. "The Air Force was why I found out about them. And who helped make them." He grinned madly. "We're still deciding which one of us has to go evil."

"You're already evil, Harris." He rubbed his forehead. "So...."

"We wanted to see if we could hire on too," Xander 3 said with a manic grin. "Before we have to go drive a cab or something and so we can avoid Anya wanting all of us at once."

"Yeah, your girl's a bit weird and loud about that stuff," he muttered, rubbing his forehead again. "Um... Can they hammer and stuff?"

"As far as we know. We can test ourselves if you want," original Xander said.

"Do that. Henry, come here please," he called, summoning his job foreman. He had been watching and looking worried anyway.

Xander 4 grinned and waved. "The Air Force did it. But we need a job so we can find a better girlfriend than Anya before she tries to get all of us at once again."

"Test them to make sure they can do the job," the boss said. "Regular Xander, go to your spot." Xander jogged off. The other three got led off to test their skills. They could handle the construction duties so they all had jobs. Everyone else on the site got a headache but they would figure it out later. Along with the paperwork they'd need to do.

Their boss decided to do some morning drinking. Four Xanders was enough to kill his mind. Especially since they were all so...happy. Way too happy.

***

Xander 2 looked up from getting milk for dinner cereal when a guy stopped next to him. "Hi, how're you?" he asked with a grin. He walked off, sending a mental bat signal to the others that the Air Force had found them.

"Sir, the general would like to talk to you," the MP said.

Xander looked at him. "Sucks but I'm all out of fucks to give for that stuff and I'm not in the military. So sorry you came all this way. Have a great night and watch your neck." He checked out and went home to feed themselves. Not like there weren't already people watching their apartment. Then they went on patrol that night together. It was a bad night for patrol but oh well. Now there were four of them. Three got injured and Four nearly got bitten to death but they handled it and got the vampy vamps down for a dirt nap forever. Then they bandaged things and moved on. The MP that was trying to follow them got attacked too. Buffy saved him and sent him flying for that general to hide behind. The four shrugged at her. "Air Force," Two said with a grin.

"Are they going to cause us problems?" Buffy demanded.

"No clue," Three said. "If so we'll run from them some more and go find evil things."

Buffy sighed, walking off shaking her head. "Great. Just what we need, more evil geeks."

"But we're good at it," Xander quipped. "We could date evil girls and all sorts of things."

"You're already doing that," Buffy quipped. "And she's loud too." They followed her onto the rest of the patrol for the night. If the Air Force guys were watching, pity. If more of them got eaten it wasn't their fault. They should've retreated when the first one got eaten. Buffy finally sighed and turned to look at the not at all stealthy soldiers. "Guys, clearly you're too dumb for self preservation. They're going to eat you.

"Every single one of the vampires in town will eat you and then smile as they walk off leaving your body there to rot. That's why we're on patrol. You guys aren't good at stealth stuff. You're not good at saving your own butts. You can't stake or behead. So run back to Mommy and you can stalk the evil quad in the morning!" She pointed and glared for their attention. Then Spike got there in game face so they ran off from him because he looked happy at the walking happy meals.

Xander One looked at them then at Spike. "You need a bath. You clearly stink."

"You need to make them go away before they get mad that they're dying here while trying to figure out your weirdness," Buffy complained. "Talk to them before they send more people."

"Tomorrow," Original Xander agreed.

"Fine." She huffed off. The five guys followed to handle things that she ignored thanks to wanting a workout to flip, flop, and stake at. The military people did give up for the night.

***

Original Xander showed up at work first, nodding at the female colonel he had met before. "Colonel." He signed in and the others trailed in over the next ten minutes, doing the same nod at her. Then they all went to work and ignored her completely.

The colonel pulled one of them out of work about a half hour later to talk to him. "What was that last night?" she asked quietly, staring at him.

Three shrugged. "It was a pretty normal patrol for us. Your people just make themselves juicy targets to become walking happy meals." She glared. He stared back. "What did you want us to do? Let them go? We're doing good keeping down the eaten people rate to under ten percent most months, Colonel. That's what we do around here." He went back to work.

She sent that back to the general, who showed up at lunchtime to talk to the four of them. Though, that caused a problem because some demons showed up to attack the general and colonel for being military and in town. They didn't want a repeat so they were going to stop it sooner this time.

Xander came out and cleared his throat. "Guys, that's O'Neill," he called with a wave. "He does insane shit like our team does with a techno ring thingy." The demons stopped and stared at him then at O'Neill, who nodded. "If they were restarting that program I would've already shot them for you. Not like we want them to come back. Even if Buffy won't let me kill Finn yet, the rest of them are in danger from us." The demons fled.

"Thanks for the help, guys," he called after them, waving a bit. "It's great when you help us protect you guys." He looked at the general, shrugging some. "I doubt most of the beings in this town will ever like military people and the only one that's not being attacked on sight is Finn, because Buffy's protecting her boyfriend, and a few kids who went military after surviving high school." He went back to work. "Have fun, General and Colonel."

"Harris," O'Neill said. "Get back here." Sam Carter went to get him and the others for him. "You could've stopped them sooner."

Xander stared at him. "You really should've taken the hint to look into that program before you showed up," Two said. "You didn't gather intelligence at all."

"I didn't think this was going to be a skirmish," Jack complained. All the Xanders shrugged. "Even after last night."

"Your guys kinda sucked at the stealthy thing," Three said dryly. "That's why Buffy made them flee before we had to stake them too." A demon screamed. "Hey, not them," he yelled back in a local language. "These guys weren't part of that and they're here about how we got cloned."

"We've let them know and we're letting them try to fix themselves." The demon moaned but ran the other way. Original Xander grinned at him. "They won't ever let any military personnel here. They drove off the reserve base too since it looked like a lot of them were involved or at least ignoring it."

Jack nodded once. "I can see why they would. I did look into that program, what isn't sealed. The president was mad it was being unhidden."

The four Xanders smiled at him. "Oh well," they agreed together. "The more who know, the less likely it'll happen again."

"True," Sam Carter agreed. "Still, we have to talk about your unique condition."

Four looked at her then snorted, shaking his head. "There's been magical cloning for centuries, Colonel. Just because the military is now finding out about it doesn't make it unique. And really, most of the town agrees that whoever cloned us was evil so they're making sure which of us becomes the evil twin." Original Xander cackled a bit, grinning at them. "I think it's his turn today."

"If they're that cranky about the town, we can sink it," Original Xander quipped. "The former Mayor's self destruct is still around. We can turn it back on." Jack glared at them. They all grinned sweetly back. "Better to give people a safe place to hide that's slightly contained instead of letting it flow all over, guys." They walked off. "We've got to get back to work. Gotta pay the bills and for Anya's prezzies somehow."

"Anya really does need to quit wanting presents," Two said. "She's getting greedy."

"She didn't even want just one of us," Four complained. "I think we ruined her for lesser mortals."

"Could be," Original Xander agreed. "That's going to suck if we're too tired from the next thing to get it up for a few days." They all nodded at that. "So we'll have to see if we can cure her addiction problem."

"Boys," Jack O'Neill said. "Get back here. We're not done yet."

"And we still need paid so we can pay our rent," Four quipped, turning to look at him. "We have a few hours after work and before patrol. You can come talk to us then, General." He turned back around and went back to the stuff he was doing today with Three. They were really handy with bricking things. Two was laying pipes. One was working on framing today.

The head of the site looked at them. "They really do need to get back to work before I have to fire them for slacking, General." He stared at him. "Thank you for visiting our site today."

"Fine, we'll wait until they're done," Colonel Carter said. "Don't let them leave when they clock out early."

"They don't get to clock out early. My boys work a full day or they don't work." He walked off to talk to them.

Carter looked at O'Neill. "I'm going to take a few guys and strip that base of any intel," she said quietly. "So we can make sure they're gone for good."

"Fine, Carter. Find out about those ones at the college?"

"I have and I have a headache, sir." She walked off, signaling a few of their people to go with her. She ran into a demon guarding the base. "I'm Colonel Samantha Carter."

The demon guard stared at her. "I would normally not care but we have heard of you. Why are you here?"

"We were informed of this base's problems. I'm downloading their full files so I can make sure they're not in my military." The guard smiled at that. "May we enter?"

"Fine. Why are the rest of you in town, Colonel?"

"They wanted to talk to Harris earlier," another demon said. "He stopped us from attacking them."

She looked at that one. "We understood why. I wouldn't let people like that in my town either." They smirked at her. "We stopped beings like that before. Looks like it's a bit closer to home this time."

They nodded and let her into the base, leading her to the main area they had found. She found their data servers and downloaded them then wiped everything clean. She'd sink the base but it'd bring down part of the college. Then she called her father. Who was a general in the Air Force. He wasn't happy she had heard about a closed, sanitized program. Then she told him why. He was livid and went to talk to the Joint Chief of the Army about his failures in uniform.

He found out where most of them were so they could be removed from public before they caused more harm. Samantha Carter was not going to let humans who did worse things than the gou'alds or ori or wraith exist in her military. She was muttering about introducing them to the wraith and a few of the demons moaned and stared at her. She smirked and nodded. "Yeah, we found the city." One started to cry. "You knew about it?"

"It is one of our holy relics to be worshiped for what it has done, both evil and good," another said. "His people hold it as holy."

"Our people there are good people and Sheppard will protect her as much as he can," she told them.

"We will tell others quietly so it does not get into general knowledge," the crying one said. "My grandmother saw it leave our worlds." He went to call her to talk to her.

Carter smiled at them. "I didn't know any beings were that old."

The demon guard still with them shrugged. "Some are very long lived. Some shorter. Some make their own fates by their bad habits." She nodded she understood that. They finished stripping the base and got her father to order that base sealed off and filled with concrete so it couldn't be reused. The demons got happier with that. They even showed them the other exit. The military guards were sneering about frat boys but that was them being guys.

Jack O'Neill got a call from a DC number that came up Private Number. He answered it. "Yes, sir?" he said, mentally swearing. "Yes, sir, I know of Jacob Carter and his daughter. His daughter is under my command. No I will not make her stop things, sir. I'll be damned if my military does genocide. Any other commands, sir? Sure, you remove me, General. You have fun with the SGC."

He hung up and called his direct general, who told him they'd calm down the idiot for him but to solve the current problem. When he told him what it was, that got a groan. And an agreement that things had to be handled. They could take one of the clones into the SGC if they had to ensure cooperation. It was a last ditch effort though.

***

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