Xander was greatly subdued after his little "chat" with Thugs One and Two. He had begun, over the course of the competition, to relax and enjoy himself, getting into the spirit of the massive crossing-over (which always made him feel like cracking a joke about John Edwards), and generally having a good time. He'd managed, however briefly, to even forget about the whole "impending doom" scenario should he get lined up against a bad guy. Thugs One and Two, and, of course, the mysterious "organizers" of the challenge, had put quite a damper on THAT spirit.

They'd held him in that room for quite awhile after making their threat, so he could witness what, exactly, might befall the two captive girls. Thug One, it seemed, preferred to do the majority of his communicating with his fists. And occasionally his feet.

When they were finished with the "demonstration", he'd found himself dizzyingly back in Second Banana Heaven, once more seated next to Chiana, and with a large drink in front of him. He'd gulped it down rather fast, and was currently sitting staring blearily at the table, trying desperately to come up with a plan.

Okay, so drinking the whole pint in one go probably hadn't been terribly conducive to planning. He'd have to work on that.

"Alexander Lavelle Harris!"

His entire back tensed at the sound of his full name. He spun, fists out, ready to at least TRY and take down the Thugs, only to find himself facing the Man.

The Man looked harried. His horn-rimmed, thick glasses were slightly askew, and his pale blonde hair stuck up in tufts. He clutched his clip board to his chest, gasping for breath.

"I've been looking for you everywhere!"

"What is it, Manny?" Xander blinked slowly. He was pretty sure he shouldn't be feeling quite so tipsy on a single pint of beer. He tried to remember the last time he ate. He peered at the Man's murky gray eyes as his brain started to catch up with his ears. "Did you just use a contraction?"

The Man drew himself up, his breathlessness evaporating. "I have no idea what you are talking about. Alexander Lavelle Harris, you go into battle in eight minutes."

Had Xander still been drinking his beer, he would have spit it out. "But you usually give me a twenty minute heads up!"

"Which would be why I have been looking for you everywhere. Your team is awaiting your arrival. You are scheduled to fight--" The Man checked his clipboard. "‘Darien Fawkes of the Invisible Man, you know, the Sci-Fi Channel version. They never should have canceled that show, dammit.'" This was stated blandly, without any hint of actual rancor at those who decided the fates of television shows. "It seems that team ‘The Agency, Yeah' felt the need to be very descriptive when filling out the entry form."

Xander shook his head. "I never watched it."

The Man, if it was possible, looked apologetic. "I am sorry, but knowledge of the fandom from whom your opponent originates is not required in the official Multiverse rules."

Xander continued to stare at him. "You look . . . different. Did you cut your hair?"

The Man checked his watch. "Six minutes and forty-three seconds remain, Alexander Lavelle Harris. You have to hurry."

Xander nodded, lurching to his feet and trying not to sway too much. Dammit, he'd only had one pint of beer! "Lead the way, Manny-the-Man."

"Indeed." The Man strode toward the entrance to Second Banana Heaven, earning himself a sharp salute from TV's Frank. Xander followed with a slightly less stable gait. TV's Frank grinned at him. "Good luck, Xan!"

"Er. Thanks." He grinned sharply at the barkeep, trying not to let his nervousness show. He felt like a man walking to his execution.

Of course, if Thug One and Thug Two had anything to say about it, he was doing exactly that.

He dug his hands into his pockets, and felt his fingers wrap around a warm stone. It was Willow's medallion. He clutched at it.

It no longer surprised Xander that stepping through the doorway of Second Banana Heaven lead him not to the Street, but to the preparation room of the Arena. Time and Space in this particular corner of the creative ether was very flexible. He let his eyes wander over his gathered team, taking in Artie's heroic stance, Rogue's saucy-yet-defiant slouch, and Locke's knowing lean. Shawn stood, taking practice swings of his cricket bat.

"‘Bout time you showed up," the Zombie hunter said "Right then, what's the plan?"

Xander let his eyes drift to the clock. A little more than five minutes left. "I'm going in alone." He held up a hand to ward off protests. "This Fawkes guy is an unknown quantity. I'm not letting him hurt you guys. The rules say I'm the only one who has to fight." He glanced at the trio of geeks. "What do you know about him?"

Mike shrugged. "Not much, man, sorry. I caught the first ep, but then Mom forgot to pay the cable bill."

Frank merely stared stonily at him.

Desperate times called for desperate measures. Xander turned to Steve. "Steve-o. Hey-Steve. Anything?"

Steve was doing his bouncing ferret thing. "Oh yeah! I totally loved that show!"

"So? What's the deal?"

Steve's pipe appeared as if from nowhere, and the geek took a long hit. "He can turn invisible."

It took most of Xander's beer-infused willpower to remain outwardly calm. "Right. Guessed that when Manny said he was from ‘the Invisible Man'. What else?"

"Well." Steve set down the pipe. His eyes practically glowed. "For one thing, he used to be a thief. But that was mostly a reaction to the success of his older brother as a scientist. He was breaking into this old guy's house, see, and actually gave the dude a heart attack, and then got caught when he stuck around to perform CPR. He was sentenced to life in prison, but his brother had this whole, experimental gland thing and sprung him to use him as a human test subject. Then his brother was killed by terrorists looking to sell the project to the highest evil bidder, and Fawkes was recruited by the Agency to help bring the terrorists in."

"The Agency? This guy's CIA?"

Steve shook his head. "Department of Fish and Game."

"And this explanation will start making sense, soon, right?"

"So, anyway, see, Fawkes is a good guy, right? But he's got this thing against authority. The Agency had to totally manipulate him to get him to work with them. See, dude, this part is great, the gland that let's him turn invisible turns out to be kind of like a narcotic." Steve's hand drifted, seemingly without his knowledge, towards his pipe. Frank quietly picked it up and stuck it in his pocket. Xander gave him a brief, surprised and thankful glance. Frank merely nodded. "After awhile, it makes him go all crazy-like. Turns him into a living Id."

"What, like the creepy Tim Curry character?"

"That's ‘It'." Frank sent Xander a despairing look. Xander just stared back.

"The Id," Picard broke in, "is a psychological concept that was coined by Sigmund Freud. He hypothesized that man's consciousness contained three parts, the Id, the Ego, and the Super Ego."

"Imagine the old scenario of the devil and angel advising a person on what choice to make." Locke gave Xander a squinty-eyed, confident glance.

"Okay, Id equals bad. But I thought you said Fawkes was a good guy?"

"Depends on whether or not he's got his fix." Steve looked forlornly at the spot where his pipe had been. "The Agency developed a counteragent that helped put off the QSM. Um, Quicksilver Madness. That's what they called the Id thing."

"The agency which is part of the Department of Fish and Game."

"Yeah."

Xander shook his head. "So, assuming this Darien guy has gotten his drugs, he'll be open to reasoning?" Maybe he could make this relatively painless.

"And if not, he'll just try to kill you."

"Oh. Good." Xander looked at the clock. Thirty seconds. His hand clenched against the amulet again. "Here goes nothing."

Everyone in the room started talking at once, trying to warn him off. Honeysuckle made as if to follow him out the door, but was restrained by Mehri, who gave him a long, appraising look. Susan held out a perfectly manicured and callus free hand.

"Good luck."

"Um, thanks." Xander ducked out the door and yanked it quickly shut behind him. He hoped his team would understand.

He had something of a plan, and he was just drunk enough to think it might work.

Xander spun wildly in place, jerking this way and that in what he hoped was an entirely unpredictable manner. All around him, the audience shrieked and cheered. The announcer was, for once, actually getting to give commentary on a fight. An invisible and very cold fist slammed into Xander's shoulder, and he took to the dirt.

Darien Fawkes had apparently NOT been given his fix.

Xander winced as a freezing foot caught his ribs. The fight was not going well. Fawkes was almost completely invisible; Xander only occasionally managed to make out a slight outline when the flying dust landed on Fawkes' form. He tried to shut his eyes and listen for his opponent, the way Buffy had said she'd done it when she fought Marcy Ross sophomore year, but the noise of the crowd drowned out any possible sound Fawkes might make.

His plan was for shit. He was so going to die.

Steve said Fawkes had a problem with authority. Said he'd been manipulated. When in doubt, Xander really only had one thing to fall back on in a fight.

His mouth.

"You don't want to do this."

"Oh, don't I?" Fawkes' disembodied voice was as cold as his invisible feet as they continued to strike him.

"No," Xander coughed roughly into the dirt. "You don't."

"Why not?"

Fist to the jaw. The dust around Xander's head took on a sparkle.

"They're using you! Don't you get it? This is all some kind of game to them!"

"Yeah." Hands around his throat. "But I kinda like this game."

Xander pressed his fingers up against seemingly solid air. A human shape exploded into being, silvery and rather T-1000-esque. The silver compound scattered out into the air, and Xander found himself staring up into the face of his attacker.

More specifically, into Fawkes' horrible, heavily blood-shot eyes. He tried to force words out around the hands at his throat, but couldn't make a sound.

Dammit, he HATED being strangled.

The amulet in his pocket started to hum and heat up. Fawkes backed off slightly, glancing down at Xander's pants.

"Gosh, I didn't realize I was THAT pretty."

"You're . . . not . . . ."

Fawkes backed up a little more, still not removing his hands from Xander's neck, but giving him enough room to breath. "Then what's that?"

"That's . . ." Xander grinned. "That's the cavalry."

A primal war cry split the air of the stadium, and Honeysuckle slammed into Fawkes from the side.

Xander stayed on the ground, clutching his ribs, and stared.

A My Little Pony in a berserker rage was not, after all, something one saw everyday.

"That's my--" Honeysuckle stomped at Fawkes' head, missing by inches as the man shimmered back out of sight. Honeysuckle did not seem deterred. She altered her aim, and was rewarded with a sharp cry. "FRIEND. You don't hurt--" She took to the air, scanning the arena. Fawkes must have slipped out from under her. "MY FRIENDS!!!"

"Honeysuckle!" Xander rolled to his knees. "Chill! We want a forfeit, not a death!"

Honeysuckle's head twisted to face him. One of her large, pink eyes was narrowed into a slit. A muscle in her pony cheek twitched. "He hurt you."

"He's not exactly himself right now." Xander tried to smile, but his face hurt.

"Stop struggling, invisible fiend!"

Honeysuckle and Xander both turned to where Artie stood, wrestling with something they couldn't see. Shawn stood off to one side, wielding his cricket bat threateningly. Rogue and Picard both stood poised to act at a moment's notice, while Locke approached holding a syringe filled with a strange blue liquid. All of them wore thermal-imaging goggles. Locke stuck the syringe into the air at about Fawkes' neck, and they all watched in silence as the quicksilver fell away and dissolved, leaving a passive, thoroughly shaken looking Darien behind.

". . . forfeit. . . ." He said, before passing out.

The crowd stared at them all silently for a long moment. Then it erupted into boos.

Susan gazed at Xander with a look of approval mixed with a healthy dose of shock. "I cannot believe you pulled that off."

Xander relaxed backwards against the white wall of the victor's room. "I get by with a little help from my friends."

Willow leaned against him, blushing. "Awwww. It was your plan."

"But it was your amulet. Without you? I'd'a been on the first, very painful bus back to the very painful bus."

"That's true." Willow nodded once, and then settled back against the wall again. "I rule."

"I admit," Mehri turned one of the pairs of thermal imaging goggles in her hands. "When you first said you were going in alone, I thought you were dead, for sure." She gave Xander a sharp look. "You couldn't have spared a moment to let us in on the plot?"

"Not enough time." Xander turned to Weiss, who slouched in the opposite corner, looking exhausted yet victorious. "So you didn't have too much trouble with the Thugs?"

Weiss grinned. "Between me, your witch, and the Harry Potter knock off? They didn't stand a chance."

Xander winced. "Tim Hunter came first, actually. ‘Books of Magic'. He could probably kick Harry's scrawny little butt."

"I don't know about that," Susan set about cleaning up the equipment. "You haven't read the sixth book." She glanced at Weiss. "How'd you guys find the place the girls were being held?"

Willow sat up, visibly switching into lecture-mode. "Hermione figured it out, actually. Time and space are only very loosely defined in this universe. All we had to do was focus very hard on where we wanted to be, in this case, in the room where the girls were being held, and we went there. She says it's like apparating. Apparently, whoever set up the rule that we couldn't travel out of the bounds of this universe, forgot to limit our travel WITHIN it. Anyone can do it--it doesn't even require any magical power."

Susan's eyes glazed over slightly. Either she was lost in the explanation, or, Xander suspected, taking mental notes. "Uh huh. And who brought Marshall in?"

"Team ‘Geeks'r'hot'. And I, for one, am not complaining." Weiss nodded to his friend, who was deep in conversation with Picard and Mike. "Without him, Willow, or Steve, we'd never have gotten that counteragent figured out."

Xander glanced around the room. "And the girls?"

"Are tucked safely back in their homes in RL." Willow patted Xander on the knee. "You done good."

"WE done good."

"Who were they, anyway?" Rogue raised an eyebrow. "How'd the bastards get their hands on them?"

"We, um," Willow shot a glance at Mehri and Susan, who Xander noticed had tensed at the question. "We don't know." She exchanged glances with Weiss, who nodded.

"Never mind that," Weiss stood, his eyes lighting up. "We have a victory party to attend at the Amp and Pick. I hear Drive Shaft is planning to play a twelve minute version of ‘We All Everybody'."

Mehri winced and shot a glance at Susan. "I think we'll pass. I have a hard enough time getting that song out of my head as it is."

Weiss shrugged. "Your loss. That Charlie guy isn't so bad, once he stops staring at you like you're a ghost. And asking about giant metal security systems on tropical islands--" Weiss' eyes, Xander noticed, never left Mehri and Susan even as he started to ramble on about Charlie. "--or dumb pilots who steer their planes off course before crashing, or the various merits of living drug free with a beautiful Aussie girl and her son, Turnip Head, versus the warm glow of a good heroin high, or--thank god," He broke off with a sigh as soon as Mehri and Susan had closed the door behind them. "I thought they'd never leave."

Xander let his eye drift from Weiss, to Willow, and then back. Willow was looking sadly at Honeysuckle, who was standing guard over a still unconscious Darien Fawkes. Weiss was back in "agent mode". "What's going on?"

"The girls." Willow's expression took a turn for the sad-but-hopeful. "We know who they are."

Team SMG Teacozy watched her in silence. Finally, Xander spoke.

"And . . . ?"

"Their names are Celia and Leigh." Weiss shot a glance at Honeysuckle, who'd stiffened.

Rogue was similarly tense, and had moved to stand guard at the door. "Why didn't y'all tell us that when Susan and Mehri were here?"

Xander blinked. For some reason, it sounded odd to hear team Paradise Estate referred to as "Susan and Mehri" and not "Mehri and Susan".

Willow leaned forward. "Honeysuckle?"

The Flutterpony had closed her eyes. "They were my friends. But they lied to me. But they got hurt?"

Xander raised a hand. "Someone wanna explain for us confused people?"

Weiss scowled. "Celia and Leigh were the original members of team Paradise Estate. Apparently, Thug One and Thug Two grabbed them just after your ‘battle' with Honeysuckle."

"Wait a minute." Shawn crossed his arms. "I thought Mehri and Susan were team Paradise Estate."

Xander continued to watch Honeysuckle. Large, glistening tears were forming in her eyes. "Honeysuckle, why didn't you tell me?"

"You-you said. . . ." Honeysuckle let out a sniff that shook the walls of the room. "You said that if I joined your team, I'd make new friends. I thought Mehri and Susan were new friends."

Steve widened not-quite-as-stoned eyes. "They LIED to us!"

Frank smiled slightly. The light glinted off his glasses.

"Okay." Xander stood and started to pace. "So if Celia and Leigh were Paradise Estate, then who the hell are Mehri and Susan?"

The group in the victor's room exchanged glances. No one seemed to have a theory.