The Spring of the Drowned Slayer
The dozen teenagers stirred and fidgeted nervously. They were obviously ill at ease in the dank underground cavern.
"What the hell do you want to show us down here?" Larry demanded uncomfortably. The burly football player couldn't hide how much the surroundings disturbed him. "I know we owe you guys and everything, but come on man!"
Their guide, oddly enough wearing a Chinese military type cap with his hawaiian shirt, gestured toward the dark pool of water before them. "Ah, I have very tragic story to tell sirs, ma'ams! This Spring of Drown Slayer! Two year ago, vampire Slayer drown in spring! Now anyone who fall in take body of Slayer! Is very cursed spring!"
The other teenagers stared blankly in response to this, until a smallish dark haired boy spoke up.
"Okay, nice Ranma reference. But can you get serious now and tell us what we're down here for?" Jonathan asked. "This place is really creepy."
Xander took off the hat and dropped his surprisingly good Chinese accent before he answered.
"I actually was being serious. You guys remember last Halloween when lots of people turned into their costumes? I dress as a Jusenkyo guide from Ranma 1/2. When the spell wore off I was sitting down here smoking a pipe."
"What's that got to do with anything? We all did goofy things that night. You didn't have to bring us down here and act it out," Larry complained.
Xander continued his explanation. "Like I was saying, a couple of years ago when this was the Master's lair, Buffy drowned here. A little bit of CPR and she was ready to rumble again, but she really was dead for a while. We don't know if it's because of the Halloween spell or something else, but if you fall into the water here you turn into a Slayer."
Jonathan stared, skepticism warring with hope on his face. "Oh come on, this is a weird town, but it's not anime weird," he protested.
"Don't be so sure," Xander told him. "A couple times, we've come way closer than I like to think about to being in a never-ending tentacle hentai." Xander wished he was kidding about that even a little. Judging by the horrified expressions almost half the group understood the reference.
Legend of the Overfiend strikes again.
Realizing that words were never as effective as a demonstration, Xander scooped up the bucket of water he'd carried down and dumped it over himself.
Even in the dim light of the kerosene lanterns the change was obvious. He lost inches of height and his features visibly grew more refined. The new curves of his(her?) body were undeniably feminine.
Any other crowd of high-schoolers would have been left shocked and/or disbelieving by the sight. The Sunnydale High students took it in stride, checking for exits in case he started growing fangs to go with the breasts.
Xander, now a dark haired girl in a seriously oversized hawaiian shirt, nodded at one of the shadows. Something came streaking at her with a whir of displaced air, only to be caught between her palms inches in front of her face. It was a foot long broad-bladed hunting knife.
"I admit, if I'd really believed in it I would have thought twice about jumping in. It's weird and more than a little uncomfortable at times. But it's turned out to be more of a blessing than a curse."
"I tink so too," Kendra agreed with a smile, stepping out from the shadows.
Xander handed the young Jamaican Slayer her knife back. Xander had noticed that Buffy's successor/contemporary was always more comfortable with her when she wasn't a he. Her Watcher's strictures about talking with boys probably had something to do with it.
"It's a lot easier on you if you're a girl. Or at least a lot less noticeable," Willow added from where she now stood at the back of the crowd. The red haired girl, looking as mousy as ever, suddenly did a triple front flip over her classmates and twisted in mid air to smoothly land next to her oldest friend.
Xander raised an eyebrow in inquiry at Jonathan.
"Okay, you're not joking," the usually timid boy admitted. "This really is a cursed spring. But... why are you telling us about it now?"
As opposed to the moment you found out about it you stingy bastard? was how Xander decoded the look Jonathan was giving her.
"Well the Mayor is planning a surprise for us at Graduation. We thought if we could convince you to take a little dip here, and you could convince the rest of our classmates, we could give him a surprise too."
*Author's Note*
Is Very Cursed Spring isn't going to be so much a multi-chapter story as a series of short story snippets connected by a common plot device. The basic idea (inspired by a weeklong marathon of Ranma 1/2) is "What if a Jusenkyo type cursed spring came into being in a non-Ranma universe?" I prefer a helpful transformation, but it has to be a creature that's powers are inherent to its body and could conceivably have drown in the spring. So no Spring of Drown Vampire or anything like that. Chapters will be added as the mood takes me.
This is pretty much the first idea to occur to me when I started thinking about useful Buffyverse transformations. I guess that's because it's so close to Ranma's curse but with a major difference. I like the image of the Mayor's minions trying to hold back a mob of Slayers. Plus the relative simplicity of it makes radical changes in the balance of power in Sunnydale inevitable. Just seems like a fun idea to me.