Of Chainsaws and Shotguns…
By Danii

Fandom: Evil Dead/ Army Of Darkness/Buffy

Note: Hiya, folks! This is my first Evil Dead/ Army Of Darkness fanfic, so be kind to me. It is a crossover, I'll admit. With Buffy the Vampire Slayer, though it focuses on Xander, her
friend.

Summary: As for content, if you watched the movies, you will be fine...

Disclaimer: I have tostate for the legal sticklers that I own no one. NO ONE. And that I
write this stuff for fun and not for profit. I am a poor teenager, not worth the trouble…

Feedback: I hope you enjoy this little fic, which I started the day I saw the movies, and if you do, please tell me cause I don't have a lot of confidence in my writing, and feedback eases the savage critic inside me…

NOT BETA READ!

Of Chainsaws and Shotguns…
By Danii

"The time has come, the young girl typed, to write of many things…
Of shotguns, Necronomicons,
And Ash who coulda been king…
And why the chainsaw never runs out of gas,
And why Deadites get wings…"
*****************

It was a nice day. A nice day in Sunnydale, California. That meant that not only was the weather rather pleasant, but that no species of hell-spawn was on the prowl as well. All in all, a rare and fine day.

And on this very nice day, which lacked rain clouds and demons, Alexander Harris was walking around the newest addition to the particularly small Sunnydale Mall, a large chain store by the name of S-Mart.

He didn't exactly want to be there. There is something in the Y-chromosome that causes all who posses it to loathe any activity that involves trading small green slips of paper for items other than beer and toilet paper. But he was there nonetheless, because the girls had asked him to check out the store and see if there was anything decent there. Xander didn't see the point. No matter what he said, they wouldn't believe him. They'd say he had no clue as to what was a good shopping spot, then go and check it out themselves, completely forgetting that it was their idea to send him there in the first place.

Two words stuck in his mind from that thought. The girls. Buffy. Willow. Cordelia. They seemed to think he was useless, a bother. The first two were so worried about him and how susceptible he was to attack during a fight, and the other, his supposed girl-friend, seemed determined to keep their relationship in the closet, both figuratively and literally. It bugged him to the core.

But what really bugged him was how things had changed. In the beginning, there was Willow, Buffy, Giles, and himself. Two normal people who were out of their minds to be helping a Vampire Slayer and a Watcher, and the said Slayer and Watcher. Now, it seemed, it was a bunch of really kick-ass people fighting evil side by side with the
Slayer…and Xander, that normal guy whose only use was to distract one demon by letting it beat the crap out of him. It bugged the hell out of him.

Xander pulled himself from these gloomy thoughts, and thought of why he was there. He had to admit it was a decent place, clean and well rounded in merchandise. Xander had especially like the sporting goods department. His time as a soldier during the Halloween episode had left him with an amazing amount of skill, knowledge, and a love of guns.

It was then that he realized that he'd been there almost an hour. He felt bad about hanging around so long, so to ease his guilt, he decided to get a pack of gum and a magazine so the trip wouldn't be a total waste of time.

He knew the majority of people manning the registers. Most attended school with him, or rather, in the same school with him. He didn't have many friends apart from those he helped save the world with. However, the man who was at his register was a mystery.

He was tall and broad-shouldered, the parts not covered by his uniform showing him to be exceedingly muscular. He looked to be in his early thirties, his face having slightly heavy classic good looks. But on that face was a multitude of scars. Not the kind that
one would get from major trauma, like that Mel Gibson movie a few years back, but rather several light brown lines across his face and one over his lips. Above that scar-filled face was dark brown, or perhaps black hair, slicked back and looking rather
sharp. However, the thing that truly caught his attention was the metal hand. It looked like something from the Middle Ages; in short, nothing Xander could see modern science thinking up.

"How'd you get that?" The young man asked finally as the S-Mart employee pushed his gum over the scanner.

The mysterious man, whose ID tag read "Ash" looked at him for a moment blankly, then looked down at his own odd appendage. His eyes shone for a moment then, then seemed to dull. "You wouldn't believe me…"

"Why do you say that?" Xander persisted. He'd seen several things that most people wouldn't believe during his time in Sunnydale. This guy couldn't have anything that bizarre, even if the young man was nearly sure that such flexibility in a fake member
hadn't been achieved by modern science to date. "Train wreck? Car crash?"

The clerk chuckled under his breath, his brown eyes sparkling with some secret old joke. "Nope. Not even close. As I said, you wouldn't believe me…"

"And why not?" Xander asked, determined to hear the story.

"Because…" the man at the register answered, "No one has believed. At least not in the last five years…"

"Why?"

The man rolled his eyes with a smile, then looked at the clock which hung from the wall of the store. "Look, tell you what…I get off in five minutes. If you wait for me, I'll tell you all about it, okay?" His voice told Xander that he didn't expect the boy to stay.

"Sure" answer the younger man with a grin. "I'm curious. You look to have had an interesting life. Besides, I've got nothing better to do…"

The man behind the counter looked surprised. He hadn't expected that. And besides, that last bit had sounded a bit bitter. For some reason, this kid and his curiosity made him curious himself. As he put the boy's items in the bag, he wondered what was bugging the
kid this badly. Though he wasn't about to tell the young man, he'd been watching him as he wandered around the store. And for a man to be in a store for that long without a girl
when he wasn't working there, something had to be seriously wrong.

Xander took his things, then walked out the automatic door. When he was out, he took a post near the door with his back to the wall and waited. As promised, the S-Mart employee walked out five minutes later. The older man looked pleasantly surprised when
he saw the boy, but Xander could tell that the man had had a feeling he'd be there.

"You waited…" the man said. It was more of a statement than anything.

"Yeah?" Xander said, "I said I would, didn't I?"

"Yeah…" the clerk answered in an oddly good-natured voice, "You did, didn't you…"

Xander looked at him strangely, then went right to the point. "So?"

The tall man looked at him with an amused annoyance. "Kid, this ain't the kind of story you tell out in the open. Besides, I want to sit down and have some food before we talk."

"Okay" Xander sounded a bit disappointed.

"I may be new, but I found a little diner near here. Just a block or two. Good food, day or night… Let's get some food in our stomachs, then we'll talk."

"Okay…"

So both of them walked the one block to the diner in silence. It wasn't exactly comfortable silence, but there was no animosity in it. The two were strangers, but they could each feel themselves clicking with the others in the quiet walk to the diner. When they got there, the clerk quickly got them a table, and they sat down.

"So? Tell me…" Xander began as they looked through the menus at the diner.

"Lemme order…" the clerk said in a slightly irritated tone.

Xander shut up and poured through the menu himself, finally settling on a good-looking hamburger meal. In a minute or two, the waitress came, took their order and their menus, then left. The second she was out of earshot, Xander asked again.

The older man looked at the younger. He obviously wasn't one for patience. Then again, the man grinned to himself, neither am I…He had to admit he liked this boy. He reminded him in so many ways of himself, curious to a fault and cynical. The man wondered what had happened to make the boy that cynical that early. He'd had to
chainsaw his girlfriend. What had happened to this boy?

The boy wanted to know, he observed. The clerk played with the idea of refusing now, but quickly banished it. The kid had gone to a lot of effort to find out his story. It wouldn't be right to deny him now. Besides, it would be nice if the kid believed him. No one had since that incident in housewares back at his first store. Then again, that time, he'd had a Deadite corpse as evidence.

"It all started with a trip. A trip with my girlfriend. Linda and I were head to her uncle's house in Tennessee, but we stopped at this old cabin. It seems that an archeologist had come to that remote little place to translate and study his latest find: Necronomicon Ex
Mortis, the Book of the Dead…"

*********************

"And I said, `Gimme some sugar, baby…'"

"You know you're damned lucky you were in medieval Europe at the time. Any girl in this day and age woulda kneed you for that macho crap…"

"Look, kid. When you have dealt with all the crap I had to deal with, then you can say macho crap. It's your damned right to say macho crap. I've earned the right to be the designated macho crap-spewing guy!"

"Okay…"

*********************

"And I never wanted to see that place again. So, as soon as I heard about the Sunnydale stores need for veteran workers, I asked for the transfer. Sunnydale sounded friendly and
danger-free. I found an apartment on Cross St., settled in, then I met you today. That's pretty much it… So, what do you think, kid?"

Xander just looked at him.

"Do you believe me? Talk!"

The boy's blue eyes twinkled, and his lips curved into a smile.

"Neat."

"Neat?!" Ash quoted in surprise. He'd heard every reaction to his story he'd ever thought he could get, including one with language he didn't even feel comfortable repeating in his head, however `neat'had not been one of the possible answers. At least not to his mind.

"Yeah…neat." Xander repeated, " You're like a Slayer or something, like my friend Buffy!"

"Slayer?" Asked Ash, even more confused. What was the boy talking about? And what did he have a feeling it wasn't going to make his life happier?

Xander smiled, then said "Remember how you said you thought Sunnydale was friendly and danger-free?"

"Yeah…"

"You are so wrong it's almost funny…" Xander exclaimed, "This town has the highest missing persons rate on the planet, truly if not on the records, and most classes in my high school lose at least one student a month…"

"Are you telling me that this town is like Deadite central?" Ash asked, a large gaping pit beginning to form in his stomach. He prayed to every god there was that his life couldn't
suck this much. That he had gotten away from the evil and that the boy was going to tell him he was just kidding.

"No, never seen any Deadites…" Xander admitted, "However, we've got a lovely selection of vampires, hell-beasts, ghouls, demons, and creatures etc… for every
occasion…"

Ash's metal hand slammed into the table, denting it badly. "God-dammit!" he cried, "This was an iron-clad transfer!"

"What?" asked Xander, perplexed.

"The transfer here is iron-clad. They really need veteran workers here, so they made any transfer here iron-clad. Meaning I can't leave this hellhole!"

"Hellmouth…"

"Whatever!"

"Well then," Xander said with a glimmer to his eyes, "you had better gas up that chainsaw, cause you're gonna need it in this town, Mr…"

"Williams. Ashley J. Williams. But call me Ash…"

"Okay, Ash. By the way, my name's Xander… Xander Harris."

"Pleased to meet you…" Ash grumbled, angry at the world in general.

Both were silent for a moment, then Ash spoke.

"So, Sunnydale's a dangerous place?"

"Yeah…"

"How'd you find out about all this? Or is it common knowledge, and you people just stick around to laugh at the poor dumbasses who move here…"

"Well, I've lived here all my life, but I didn't discover the whole Hellmouth thing till I met this new girl named Buffy Summers. I bumped into her, and a stake dropped out of
her bag. I found it an returned it, my best friend Willow in tow, and then my world flipped upside down and got the shaking of a lifetime…"

END PART 1
to be continued