"How do I look?" asked Willow in her muffled voice from under the all-over white sheet she was wearing from head to toe, turning to face towards Buffy gussied up in an 18th century noblewoman's dress.
Silently admitting that for once Xander had a definite point in earlier grumbling that Wils had no idea at all how to have fun on Halloween, Buffy just managed not to roll her eyes at the other girl in the Slayer's bedroom. Instead, she assured a nervous Willow, "Really scary, of course! The 'Boo!' you added on the front is gonna freak out everyone for sure!"
While saying the last, Buffy still had to draw upon every bit of friendship she felt towards Wils to not deliver that remark with the utmost sarcasm it deserved. Well, this seemed to have worked, since Willow only nodded and then went back to studying herself in Buffy's full-length mirror in the bedroom corner.
Shooting an impatient glance at the alarm clock on her bedside table, Buffy got a little worried at what time it currently showed. If Xander stuck to what they'd planned after getting their costumes at the downtown costume shop run by some smarmy English guy who claimed to know Giles, their teenage male friend wouldn't be here for another hour when the trio had to leave for the high school to escort younger trick-or-treaters around Sunnydale this evening.
That wasn't good, no sirree. It had been hard enough to persuade Wils to wear Buffy's sexiest outfit even under the ghost costume. Given a chance to think it over, that red-haired girl would surely change back in hurried relief to the frumpy clothes she'd originally decided for tonight.
Nope, not gonna happen, inwardly vowed Buffy. She tried to think of some distraction to keep Willow from doing that, only to wince at seeing how this other girl then glanced down at the sheet and what was under it, to next stiffen her shoulders as if abruptly resolving something.
However, at the same moment when Willow determinedly spun around to face Buffy again, another thing occurred in the bedroom to distract the pair of young ladies. From where she'd been previously napping inside the walk-in closet while the humans were dressing in their costumes, Miss Kitty Fantastico wandered out from there on all four paws to then adroitly jump up onto Buffy's bed. Curling up there, the cat belonging to the Summers family began to languidly wash herself with a pink tongue.
Quickly seizing the opportunity to override Willow even before she opened her mouth, an excited Buffy shared the inspiration which had just come to the Slayer. "Wils, I've got a great idea! Let's have Miss Kitty Fantastico join in the Halloween festivities! There's even a perfect character for her to be!"
"What're you talking about, Buffy?" a confused Willow wanted to know.
Rather than answering right away, Buffy bent over to grab the hem of her noblewoman's gown and flicked it upwards. With that clear, she next reached for the inner layer of a white petticoat Buffy was wearing underneath which had come along with the main costume. With a ripping sound, a section of this petticoat was yanked off, ending with Buffy straightening up, the gown hem falling back in place, and triumphantly holding in both hands that torn piece of undergarment in both hands.
Tossing the scrap of cloth onto the bed where this landed next to a cat pausing in her tongue bath to disdainfully eye it, Buffy bustled off to the hope chest lying against the room's far wall. Kneeling down to open the lid of the chest, she began rummaging in there for her pinking shears, thread, and a needle, all while sending over her shoulder, "Wils, sit down by Miss Kitty Fantastico and get ready to help me, will you?"
"Uh, sure," Willow managed, uncertain about exactly what Buffy was planning but willing for now to go along. As ordered, she hiked up her ghost costume, revealing bare legs, and took her place on the bed by the cat and gave this animal several gentle pats with her fingers onto Miss Kitty Fantastico's head, producing a loud purr from Buffy's pet. In the middle of that, Willow frowned at where the detached piece of petticoat awaited for the Slayer.
"Buffy, won't you have to pay what's-his-name, that Ethan guy, for damaging your costume?"
Coming over to the bed with her hands full of stuff to change that petticoat into something entirely different for her cat to wear tonight on All Hallow's Eve, Buffy sat down with Miss Kitty Fantastico in between the two girls. Placing down next to the cloth scrap a pair of scissors, Buffy just shrugged while threading a needle.
"I wasn't going to rip up a pillowcase or one of my own bed sheets for this. Tomorrow, when we take back our costumes, I'll tell him, maybe. Depends on whether I think he's skeevy enough to check the underwear right away when I hand in the gown."
Approvingly examining the needle ready for its intended purpose, Buffy poked this pointed sewing item into her bedspread and picked up the scissors and the petticoat scrap. Beginning to snip away excess cloth material with the scissors, she then told Willow, "Grab hold of my cat, okay?"
Without thinking of the possible consequences, Willow did exactly that.
Now in the firm grip of one of the human females, Miss Kitty Fantastico had the sudden feeling something she definitely wouldn't enjoy was just about to transpire. Well, if this cat wasn't going to be happy about it, neither would that young hairless ape presently clutching onto a full-grown Felis catus.
From where they'd been previously concealed within their toe sheaths, all four sets of retractable claws extended themselves.
"Shall we proceed to our doom, ladies?" Xander announced a half-hour later, trying to break the mystifying tension in the air of the Revello Drive house front hallway which had continued throughout his exaggerated compliments about his companions' costumes. Maybe if they finally headed to the high school, he'd find out what was making Wils and the Buffster acting this way towards each other tonight.
"We shall!" chirped Buffy in her own excessively cheerful tone. She cast a wary look at where Willow was standing stock-still at the foot of the stairs that girl completely concealed under a white sheet had stiffly come down several minutes before.
Willow continued to evilly glower through the eye holes of her costume directly towards Buffy for several more moments, before snorting under her breath and striding towards the opened front door. Gladly following along, Buffy ignored the puzzled stare coming her way from Xander who fell in as the last of their small company. Leaving the house, Buffy heard Xan close the door behind himself, but her attention was mostly concentrated on examining the back of Willow's costume.
Good, all the band-aids she'd applied in a hurry before Soldier-Xander had arrived at the Slayer's home were keeping any blood from seeping through the ghost outfit, even those covering the deepest claw marks on Willow's legs.
Selina Kyle, better known to the inhabitants of Gotham City under her criminal identity of Catwoman, was definitely not having a good night.
The squalling ball of fur shooting out from where she'd been hiding under a bed had just undergone an existentialist crisis inside a split second. A mere moment before, a very sexy woman clad in a skin-tight black costume was in the middle of robbing the City Museum of its latest Egyptian acquisition, a jewel-encrusted gold statuette of the cat-goddess Bastet more than two thousand years old.
Perhaps that had something to do with why Selina was now herself an actual cat in an entirely different location, some girl's bedroom.
Even while realizing all this in growing horror, the transformed animal began frantically pawing at what was covering her head. It took far too long to at last tug completely free and leave lying on the middle of the floor for Selina to gawk at, a piece of white fabric crudely shaped and sewn into an amateurish imitation of Catwoman's mask.
Trying the best she could to retain her sanity, Selina then prowled throughout the upper floor of a suburban house deserted of any occupants save for a common housecat. Nothing looked familiar, and she failed to learn of any cause for her current presence. However…
For some reason, whenever Selina faced in a certain direction, she experienced a very odd sensation of being pulled towards that specific bearing. Doing this over and over again several times satisfied Selina that she wasn't making this up; it was undeniably real. That led her to where the stairway of this house led downwards. Selina needed to see if her newest feeling stayed the same on the ground floor. Then, she could think about getting outside the house and traveling towards what was drawing this cat to there.
Making her way cautiously down the stairs, Selina managed to avoid making any misjudgments in placing all of her four paws until she was halfway in her descent. After this point, the transformed woman was painfully educated about falling cats didn't always land on their feet.
It really was a pity that nobody filmed it and that Youtube wouldn't be on the Internet yet for almost a decade in the future. The hilarious headlong tumble would've racked up a record-setting number of hits of that video clip, far exceeding any other cat meme known to humanity.
Taking a few minutes to feel quite sorry for herself, Selina eventually got up from where she'd sprawled out at the foot of the stairs. At least her intense fit of the sulks was partially alleviated by discovering the same sensation as before was just as strong as ever.
Now, all that remained was her subsequent departure from this hovel while finding out who'd dared such an impolite practical joke or attack against Catwoman. If that unknown foe were sufficiently quick in changing her back to normal and returning Selina to Gotham, maybe she wouldn't instantly murder them afterwards. Maiming, though, was still in the cards.
After more searching throughout the house's ground floor, Selina's grumpy mood began to shift into darkly homicidal, though, when she soon realized something of the totally ridiculous. No matter how hard she looked or attempted to get out of the house, Gotham's most skilled cat burglar couldn't do it. All the windows were shut closed. Plus, the doors were locked tight against a thumbless animal fruitlessly jumping up and fumbling with paws onto the deadbolts. There wasn't even a cat flap of any sort in the kitchen's back door.
That particular discovery soon forced Selina into the most humiliating experience of her entire life. She was never, ever going to think the same way about a litter box…
Finally, Selina gave up and hid under a couch in the living room, waiting with strained patience for what was sure to happen. Sooner or later, the residents of this house would come home, and in the process, she surely could find a chance to sneak out during this. Closing her eyes, Selina propped her furry chin onto her front paws and fell into a light doze. If there'd actually been anyone around to call it a 'cat nap', she'd have immediately savaged them with fang and claw into a bloody wreck.
At this point, Selina Kyle was getting utterly fed up to her back teeth about the whole feline theme.
The sounds of the front door opening instantly awoke Selina. She watched how four complete strangers arrived inside: a teenage boy in soldier fatigues and a rifle and three girls the same age. Of the young women, one was dressed in a tattered cat costume which made Selina promptly loathe her, another was clad in an ornate gown and seemed clueless about the 20th century, and the most sensible girl was a ghost.
Frankly, Selina had seen weirder. Much weirder.
She impatiently listened to them talking about things and people Catwoman had no interest in, then the ghost girl left by walking through the wall. A few minutes later, an older man compared to the teenagers showed up…and through Selina's animal nose, he smelled exactly like a walking corpse.
That didn't exactly encourage Selina to get out from under the couch, which was wise because of the rumpus which soon occurred. Another monster smashed through the back door, the dead guy fought it, the dimwit girl ran away, and all there chased after her, leaving Selina alone in the house.
Leaving her position where she'd been hiding, Selina scooted around the dissolving body of the creature killed by the putrid guy, and dashed past the remains of the shattered back door. Finally free of that peculiar house, the cat headed unerringly to her destination through the night of a city undergoing a massive Chaos spell.
"What'd you mean, you didn't do anything?!" demanded Xander Harris in the Sunnydale High library the morning after what the city newspaper was calling 'hallucinations and property damage caused by underground fumes during the Halloween holiday.'
Polishing his glasses, Rupert Giles send a rather icy glare towards that impertinent lad. From where they were all gathered around the main library table in the room's center, he stiffly informed the younger Scoobies, "I was still several blocks away from Ethan's costume shop when it all went back to normal. The front door of my former friend's store was locked, but when I went around to the rear entrance, it was wide open, with evidence of a blood trail leading out from there into the alleyway."
"How much blood are we talking here, Giles?" an intent Buffy wanted to know.
Giles shook his head reluctantly. "Not enough, what you may be thinking about. Just a few drops every couple of yards, as if someone had a minor cut or a nosebleed. I followed this into the shop, and found on the floor a shattered stone image of a double-faced Janus statuette. This was probably what Ethan used to cast his Chaos magic."
Uncomfortably shifting in her seat, Willow attired today in an ankle-length dress prompted Giles, "Was there anything else?"
The British librarian shrugged in honest bafflement. "I'm not entirely sure if it's pertinent, but the blood trail started at the exact spot where the statuette was broken. There were more spots of this around there. Also, several costume racks and shelf accessories had been knocked off or pushed over, as if there'd been a fight of some sort. The best explanation I can think of is that another Halloween participant wearing one of Ethan's costumes found him, and in their struggle, the statuette was destroyed and this ended the Chaos effects on everybody. As for Ethan himself, I'm afraid that bugger got away free and clear."
Trading quizzical glances with each other, the younger contingent of the Hellmouth's defenders soon found themselves unable to object to Giles' explanation without any proof otherwise. With that over with, Buffy quickly changed the subject into her most recent grudge against this girl's Watcher:
"Okay then, Giles, maybe you'd like to make it clear to us just why you never mentioned before any of your jolly pals from Tweed-land? Especially those with enough mojo to change us all into our costumes on what was a totally fun-filled night…Not."
Watching how the older man flinched under Buffy's nasty tone was a source of vicious satisfaction for Willow. The malicious smirk she could see on Xander's face showed he was also enjoying how G-man better grovel to the Buffster with maximum consumption of humble pie, or else.
Leaning back in her chair as Buffy got started on a lengthy tongue-lashing of a resigned Watcher, Willow did an absent rub of a particularly itchy band-aid on her lower thigh where Miss Kitty Fantastic had sunk deep a claw last night. Her Slayer friend hadn't yet mentioned anything about that cat this morning.
To be truthful, Willow didn't care. That horrible animal could take care of herself just fine. Most likely, it'd show up outside the newly-repaired back door of Buffy's house sometime today, meowing loudly to demand a tuna fish dinner straight out of the can.
Standing on the edge of the much higher Gotham skyscraper across from the Police Department building, both Batman and Robin stared up at where an image cast by the spotlight over there reflected against the low clouds in tonight's skies.
It was a cat's head instead of the more usual Bat-symbol.
For once prudently staying quiet instead of making a joke about it, Robin glanced over at the tall man with a set lower face revealed by the black cowl Gotham's protector wore in his crime-fighting activities. A second later, Batman launched himself into the air from off the skyscraper edge.
Robin instantly followed after, with both of the costumed heroes acrobatically swinging themselves on ropes over to the lower building from their starting points. Landing soundlessly in unison on the Police Department roof, Batman and Robin examined the woman's back presented to them while she stood in front of the spotlight.
Before they could do anything else, the woman spoke without looking behind herself, "Hello, Mr. Wayne, Mr. Grayson. I thought that'd bring you here in a hurry, and it'd be much politer than dropping in on you at the Batcave without an invitation."
At that point, the woman turned around to grin at where Batman and Robin were motionless in their mutual shock. The pair of stunned males had no trouble recognizing who'd just revealed their secret identities, even how Catwoman was dressed in a long leather coat against the cool evening, ordinary women's slacks, and flats instead of her typical clinging unitard with high-heel boots. Most unusual of all, that villainess wasn't wearing her face mask. Rather, she was presenting her bare visage to anyone who might come along.
Batman recovered first, naturally. He spoke in his usual monotone, "Miss Kyle, you're under arrest for your latest offense of vandalizing police equipment. Not to mention all the other burglary charges against you-"
Selina Kyle, greatly enjoying herself, interrupted, "Oh, you mean each and every item I've stolen in my felonious career?" At the same time she finished the final words of that bizarre declaration, the woman snapped her fingers in a casual gesture.
From out of thin air, innumerable valuables ranging from jewels, artwork, furs, bundles of cash, pearl necklaces, and just about anything else of portable worth appeared in high-piled stacks onto the Police Department roof.
For once in his grim life, Batman's jaw dropped in pure astonishment. Robin did the same.
Rubbing her hands in glee, Selina then told the Detective Duo, "Like I said, that's everything. Of course, you'll need to convince the tightwad insurance companies who've already paid out on my robberies about that. I'm sure the lawyers will be arguing for decades over it."
Not a word was uttered by the heroes. Instead, they continued to gape at Selina, who merrily continued, "There's one more thing, boys." Another snap of her fingers was made by this woman.
A yard in front of Batman's boot tips, about a dozen…dolls?…also materialized from out of nowhere to rest upon their backs on the rooftop. These plush toys were comprised of caricatures of some of Batman's most evil and murderous adversaries. Among them were the Joker, Black Mask, Solomon Grundy, Clayface, Killer Croc, Bane, Ra's al Ghul, and Zsasz.
In a more serious voice, Selina informed the listening heroes, "I know you won't believe it right away, but that's them, those insane bastards who killed without compunction men, women, and children. They're still alive, but they'll stay that way forever, absolutely harmless, no matter who tries to change them back."
For the first time, Robin spoke in a strangled gurgle, "But, but…how?"
"Magic, kiddo," smirked Selina at Batman's sidekick.
Doing a single short, sharp shake of his head, Batman insisted, "Catwoman, I don't know what kind of game-"
"No, no, no!" Selina broken in again, performing her own decisive headshake of negation. "Don't call me that, ever again! I'm really not eager to have anything to do with cats! That included!" She pointed upwards at the nighttime sky.
Automatically following this gesture, Batman and Robin blinked at where the reflected cat's head image cast by the spotlight had in the meantime returned to the normal Bat-symbol it usually made to summon Gotham's guardian. Bringing down their gazes, the two men stared at where Selina was beaming at them both.
"Long story short, I had one unbelievably weird time elsewhere, and it permanently changed me, giving me a huge amount of magic I can use whenever I want. Like I said, I'm over the whole cat thing. Crime, too. Nope, I'm going totally straight. To mark the occasion, I suppose my name should be changed into something more heroic. So, call me…Sorceress."