Disclaimer: None of the upcoming copyrighted media belongs to me.

ELECTRIC SOUL

The painful, annoying sensation of overly bright morning light was quickly felt by the slumbering form of Xander Harris, causing a groan and a face to be buried in a deep blue pillow. Eyes still closed and now safe from being burned from their sockets, Xander discovered something odd. His head. It was pounding. No, pounding was far too light and frivolous a word to be used. No, it felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to his brain and each beat of his heart caused sharp pains to shoot through his skull. Concentrating, his mind wondered back to his last conscious memory. It only took a moment, but the thought was strange and vaguely worrisome.

Halloween.

He remembered . . . little. No, again that was wrong. He remembered things, but they were foggy. Really foggy. He could barely make out shapes or colors - at the moment - of those memories, so he focused on what led to Halloween. He remembered nearly three weeks prior, the whole "Angel's an inattentive jerk, so I'm going to flirt with frat boys who incidentally worship a giant phallic snake demon" incident with Buffy. He remembered the weeks since then, the vamp attacks and the time spent with his two friends. Even a really slow evening vamp-wise that led to Xander's humiliation at a game of Euchre with Buffy and Willow. He remembered the thirtieth and Buffy's panic-induced whittling of stakes, while Willow went and stocked up on holy water and he just stole a bunch of crosses from local churches.

As far as he was concerned, the thievery was a wash if the theft led to the permanent death of the unholy abominations that Buffy called vampire and he occasionally called 'fanger'. If not, it should be.

Then they'd discovered - via Giles - that Halloween was quiet, as demon and vampire alike found the entire idea of hunting on the night to be cliché and tacky. Buffy then stunned Xander with an offer for the three of them to stay in and watch horror movies, so long as they avoided vampires and The Exorcist. The former for the want to not bring the job home, the latter because just the thought of it gave the blonde Slayer nightmares. Thinking harder, as things were quickly becoming so very blurry, Xander recalled Snyder killing those plans. With children! A strange thought which was banished quickly, then reassessed. Children. Snyder had wanted them to watch children. While they trick-or-treated. The thought process sped up, Xander remembering how Buffy had embarrassed him in front of Larry and how she later had apologized.

Xander stopped all movement then, remembering everything. Buffy had apologized inside Ethan's Costume Shop. She'd bought a incredibly pink noblewoman dress and a wig of brunette hair. Willow had purchased her usual ghost costume, this one complete with a bold-print "BOO!" on the chest. Xander had intended to keep things cheap, since his money was just that - his own. His mother would've ignored the request for costume cash and his dad probably would've called him a retard for dressing up at seventeen. He'd looked for a plastic gun, only to have the last purchased by Harmony Kendall for some completely unknown and potentially terrifying reason. He'd bought . . .

Xander's eyes opened, horror shining through clear as day.

Xander had bought blonde hair bleach, a blue and white striped sweater and a necklace with a gold lightning bolt on the end and decided to call himself Thor, God of Thunder. It'd been weak, but he was out of ideas and speaking in a deep voice, speaking like he was something out of one of Shakespeare's works had been incredibly amusing. The children had thought him strange, but acceptably hilarious, which was all he wanted. Then it'd all gone downhill. He remembered unbearable pain, like his body was being ripped apart - inside and out. He remembered a scorching agony deep in his chest, like something inside him had been lit on fire and then drenched in kerosene. He remembered his screams as it all had ravaged him. Then he remembered a brief sensation of his skin suffering horrible burns, but it only lasted seconds.

At the end of which, he was a girl. Then there was chaos. Halloween night was there, but the only thing that Elle Bishop had done was let loose and got herself plenty of wild, with a side-dish of complete mayhem. She'd shocked the Willow ghost, literally, causing her to phase out of existence for a few seconds. Did it a few more times before Willow got angry and she grew bored of it before abandoning her and Buffy and let herself have some fun. She'd electrocuted countless vampires to the point of dust, country-fried too many demons to count and caused enough property damage that the Mayor of Sunnydale would soon discover and promptly die of a coronary five seconds after discovery. The only relief that could be found in the entirety of the night was that it didn't seem like Elle had killed anyone in a costume. Xander was certain Larry would have some pretty serious electrical burns after groping Elle and that whoever that small blond teenager who dressed as Aquaman was would probably develop a twitch or twelve; but no human lives were taken.

It was almost like Elle heeded Willow's warning, but between the not giving a damn if people were in the buildings she'd scorched and how much trouble she had addressing . . . Harmony dressed as Sarah Connor . . . in anything resembling a sociable manner, it was hard to believe. Xander also remembered other things, but they weren't Halloween havoc or about the fact that for one night only he-had-been-a-she, but about Elle. It shed a lot of light on her behavior and though it was an insight, the memories of countless days spent with a drip shoved into a young girl's arm wouldn't exactly help Xander sleep in the future. It was unsettling to have those memories there, when not two minutes ago Xander could hardly recall anything that'd happened in the past twenty-four hours. He knew it was good to remember, to be prepared for whatever fresh hell he'd encounter when he met up with his friends, with Giles; but there just seemed to be something inherently wrong about knowing another person's life inside and out.

Which he did. He could now recall every moment of Elle's childhood. The house burned down, the unintentional blackout, the shitstorm that were her eighth and ninth years on this planet and living in one small institution that also served as a prison. Every moment of isolation from humanity, every tension-filled moment spent with Bob Bishop and how his own daughter became a tool, a weapon whose minimal feelings - mostly for Commander Dad - were never considered. How she was robbed of the most simple, most important experiences and how they, along with endless experimentations, had formed the deranged, murderous, sociopathic, socially-retarded evolved human that was Eleanor Zoe Bishop. He could also feel the not-too-distant ache from the gunshot wound, the incredibly faint remnants of adrenaline from Elle's brief battle with Sylar. It was unnerving and suddenly, Xander was a lot less comfortable. He couldn't really begin to untangle what was Elle and what was Xander, because he realized that now that he was far more conscious, they weren't just distant memories. They felt like his own memories and while they didn't make him wish for Elle's powers and a living body to torture, they did weigh on him as disturbing. Horrible. Indescribably cruel in a way that he hadn't even witnessed in vampires, which was horrific in its own right.

His left arm ached fiercely and constantly, a steady burn there that could only be contributed to being the victim of a recent gunshot wound. On top of that was a general ache, soreness that spread throughout his entire body - head to toe. Along with that pounding migraine that had assailed him since he had woken up.

So he just sighed and decided he'd spent enough time on this himself. He'd been awake five minutes already and a downed alarm clock told him he still had an hour before school. Usually he'd sleep until he only had ten minutes to arrive one minute before the bell rang, but the not-his memories in his head and his various aches and pains made him decide to debrief with an overly stuffy British guy and his two best friends. Getting out of bed, he stumbled gracelessly and pushed his door open and stood still for a moment. His father's rumbling snores were as loud as ever and that meant his parents were still out cold from their drinking the night before, which he was grateful for, for once. He slowly, blearily and with much in the way of caution walked across the dull gray carpeted floor and stepped into the bathroom, wincing at the abnormally cold tiled floor of the bathroom. He grabbed his toothbrush, looking to the mirror.

While he expected a manly shout, it was not what he got. Not even a manly yelp. But instead, a high-pitched squeak that despite wishing it weren't so, definitely came from him. Or if he was going to be factual about it, came from her. Because staring back were two shocked, cool blue eyes beneath light eyebrows - about fifteen hundred shades lighter than Xander's jet black, as far as he was concerned. A ruler straight, feminine nose above a small mouth with pale pink lips that were they not somehow his own, Xander would've considered enticing, inviting. A strong, feminine chin that although out of place with the otherwise petite, pixie-like features of a fair face that overall, just seemed unnaturally tiny to his eyes. The nearly platinum blonde hair that just barely rested on small shoulders. His mouth opened further and Xander realized that was the wrong personal pronoun, now. No longer could Xander be considered a "he." No, Xander Harris would now correctly be referred to as a "she." Standing in the Harris' only bathroom, there was only one thing to say when staring at the visage of a seventeen year old Elle Bishop.

"Oh, fuck!"

This story is officially cancelled. I haven't worked on it in almost two months and the story became more of a character study than the action-based genderbender I intended it to be. If anyone would like to adopt this story as their own, let me know. The only thing I ask for is credit for the prologue. Otherwise, it's yours.