The day before Halloween:

Xander Harris shifted the package containing his Halloween costume to his left arm, using his other arm to push open the front door of Ethan's Costume Shop, and stopped short, still holding the door ajar, as the three other teenage boys who had just been about to come in also came to an abrupt halt.

"Hi, guys," said Xander with his normal friendly smile directed at the first two teenagers. His grin faded as he looked at the last of the trio, and the Slayer's friend gave that person a cool nod.

Warren Mears sneered back, and as he eyed the package Xander was holding, the second-smartest student at Sunnydale High derisively snorted, "Hey, Harris, got your kiddie costume ready for Halloween? What're you going as, Scrappy-Doo?"

*Great. Nobody in school can remember they live in a town where vampires and demons roam, but let just one student overhear us calling ourselves the Scooby Gang, and we're stuck with the name for life.*

A glint of battle came into Xander's eyes, as he struck back. "Yo, Mears, considering how that guy's character and appearance exactly fits yours, I thought you'd be getting ready for Halloween by practicing your 'nyuk, nyuk, nyuk!' and going wild with the hair clippers."

As Warren glared at Xander, Jonathan Levinson hastily spoke, "Actually, Xander, we did consider going as the Three Stooges, but after we heard about this place with its great costumes, we decided to dress up as our favorite Star Trek characters instead."

Xander's eyebrows rose in mild interest. "So, who're you gonna be?"

"Guess," smugly said Jonathan, holding up his right hand in a split-fingered Vulcan salute.

"Commander Spock, of course." Xander then looked at the youngest, shortest, and quietest of the trio. "How 'bout you, Andrew?"

"Captain, the engines, they cannae take it much longer!" barked Andrew Wells in a not-bad Scots accent.

"Gotcha. Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott," nodded Xander, who glanced over at Warren, as that teenager impatiently listened to all this and now glowered at Xander's curious look.

Reluctantly, Warren muttered under his breath, "This is only because there's no other way for us to get into Tricia Wallace's Halloween party--"

A surprised Xander interrupted, "Hey, that's a top tier party! Not the really upper level like Queen C's, but pretty high-ranking. How'd you get an invite?"

"Her mom and mine were college buddies," Jonathan told Xander.

"Yeah," haughtily said Warren. "Some decent babes will be there, so that means I'm willing to dress up as my favorite Star Trek character--"

"Good for you, Warren!" beamed Xander. "I always knew you were just made to be a Horta!"

Warren Mears' face now actually turned purple at being compared to a ground-crawling, egg-laying alien creature best described as looking like a large pan pizza, extra cheese. His mood was not improved by his followers' sniggering at this. Warren's features worked, showing something of his true nature he usually concealed from the world, and making Jonathan and Andrew uneasily fall silent, with Xander now becoming still and watchful.

*Jesse said Warren always had the makings of a really first-class creep. I'm beginning to think you were right, bro.*

A rictus of a smile was sent towards Xander by Warren, along with a tight voice, "I was talking about Harcourt Fenton Mudd." Now, an actual trace of amusement appeared on his lips, as Warren saw Xander blink in surprise and look puzzled.

"What, you mean the guy in the episode, uh, called 'Mudd's Women?' Wasn't he a bad guy?"

Warren now gave Xander a superior look. "Harry Mudd took over an entire planet of women. Isn't that what any guy wants?"

Xander opened his mouth to object, only to close it again, feeling a little sheepish as he admitted Warren had a point. Still, the teen needed to be brought down a peg, so Xander snarked, "Well a world of women that was shown by just a couple, which was all that the show's budget could afford."

Warren only snorted at that, which made Jonathan and Andrew produce tentative laughter now that their leader seemed to be in a better mood. Glancing at the pair, Xander thought, *You guys really need to hook up with somebody else.* He reluctantly admitted to himself from personal experience that when you were in the losers' club, you took your friends where you could get them. *I just don't think this guy's safe to be around with anybody.*

Still looking at Jonathan and Andrew while thinking this, Xander blinked at how the duo's expressions suddenly became glazed as they stared past him. An instant later, Xander felt a sharp fingernail poking him in the back, and an imperious female voice commanded, "Make way, you swine! How dare anyone impede the path of Princess Buffy?"

Xander hastily stepped out of the doorway, holding the door open with his right hand, as he cringingly bowed, and kept his gaze fixed to the ground, sniveling, "I am not fit to be in thy presence, oh most radiant and fairest of women." Buffy swept past through the door out of the shop, not deigning to notice the meek attendant.

"The peasant grovels most impressively, my lady," intoned Duchess Willow following her ladyship while also leaving the shop. The redhead gave Xander the disdainful look usually sent towards the mangiest possible mutt attempting to badly perform its newest trick. "Shall he have two lumps of gruel in his bowl tonight, instead of just one?"

Standing on the sidewalk, her back to Xander, Princess Buffy daintily put a hand over her mouth while yawning in absolute boredom, and then languidly waved the same hand. "Oh, I suppose so. But lest that dimwit have ideas beyond his station, tomorrow he shall have twice the usual flogging."

At that, he finally lost it, letting go of his package for it to fall to the ground, while he dropped to his knees and began to beat his head against the sidewalk. Xander, son of Antonio the village idiot and Jessica, drainer of flagons, kept his gaze humbly down and howled, "Oh, I'm the most fortunate lice-infested, plague-bearing, dead-before-thirty commoner that ever lived!"

In the middle of this, a pair of feminine feet stepped forward to come to a halt directly under his face. Xander promptly lunged forward to wrap his entire body around the ankles of this person, and started bestowing numerous slobbering kisses upon the tops of her shoes.

"YEOW!"

A yelping Xander was yanked to his feet, uncurling from around the legs of his adoration and hastily standing up, helped along by the firm two-finger pinching grip at the top of his right ear.

The young woman's painful hold on his ear ended only when he was all standing straight, looking into the stern features of Harmony Kendall, who then swept her right hand down the side of Xander's face to grab his chin and hold him into position, as she declaimed, "You filthy cur! How dare you get the merest drop of saliva upon my footwear, which is a hundred -- nay, a thousand times the worth of your hovel! For that, you shall be punished by using your mouth to express the most proper apology!"

At the end of that threat, she pulled Xander's face right into hers for a passionate kiss.

Watching all this in fascination, Duchess Willow reeled back towards Princess Buffy's side, with the redhead holding up the back of her wrist in front of her eyes to shield herself from this horrid sight. As she stood by the blonde aristocrat, the head of Sunnydale High's computer club moaned, "Ah, my lady, I cannot bear this spectacle! I fear I shall swoon!"

The noblewoman of the highest rank, standing with her back to the pair trying to remove each other's tonsils with their tongues, sniffed and said, "It's about time. A proper female member of the upper classes should faint at least half-a-dozen times before the noon hour, and you haven't been doing your share." At that, she turned away from her audience, ignoring the trio of awed teenage boys all with open mouths, to look at what Duchess Harmony and Xander the Simple were doing.

Now it was the turn of Princess Buffy to imitate Duchess Willow's posture to bring up her arm, to hold the back of her wrist in front of her face to shield her gaze from the revolting scene. Just to be sure, the blonde standing by the redhead firmly squeezed her eyes shut while holding forth, "Duchess Harmony! Halt this at once! 'Tis the first sign of the end of days, when pigs fly, cats speak, and Alexander LaVelle Harris gets to kiss a pretty girl!"

A good ten seconds later, Buffy lowered her arm to cautiously peek over this limb at where Xander and Harmony were still going at it. The smaller blonde dropped her arm, straightened up from her mock-alarmed posture, and exasperatedly asked, "How come she always breaks character at this point? Hi, guys."

The latter greeting jerked the attention of Jonathan, Andrew, and Warren away from the pair still kissing. The three young men dazedly looked at where Buffy and Willow were smiling at them, with the trio hastily trying to appear cool.

Warren cleared his throat, "Uh, what was all that about?"

Buffy snickered, and said, "We were just playing off what I got for my costume here. I'm going on Halloween as a seventeenth-century noblewoman in a formal gown. Wils here, on the other hand, has no imagination--"

Willow indignantly interrupted Buffy, "I like my ghost costume! It's what I've always worn!"

Rolling her eyes, the blonde girl turned back to look at the three guys, and asked curiously, "Are you here for costumes, too? What're you going as?"

Jonathan managed to beat out Warren with his hasty answer, "We're gonna go as Star Trek people. I'm gonna be Spock, and Andrew's gonna be Scotty."

At that, a nervous Andrew risked a short, "Aye, lassie," directly at Willow, and he was rewarded with a friendly smile that made him blush brick-red.

Giving Jonathan and Andrew a glare for daring to talk without permission, Warren smoothed his face before looking at the two girls. "Yeah. Say, are you doing anything on Halloween--"

He was interrupted by Buffy shaking her head and grimacing. "We got volunteered--" (the last word was delivered sourly) "--by Snyder into escorting trick-or-treaters around town. We have to show up at school after class tomorrow or that little tyrant's going to bust us back to grade school."

For a few moments, all of the teenagers there were united in thinking dark thoughts about a certain bald principal. This ended when Buffy looked at Xander and Harmony still locked together and breaking the world record for going without oxygen. Now reaching the end of her patience, Buffy scolded, "Hey, you two, I know where I can get my hands on a crowbar, and I'm not afraid to use it! Will you knock it off, and come on?"

After a few more seconds of kissing, Xander and Harmony finally disengaged, with both looking contented, and after Xander picked up his package, they stepped forward to join the others. Buffy nodded to the three guys, "Maybe we'll see you on Halloween. We'll keep an eye out, okay?" Friendly nods and waves were given to the trio of young men as the Scooby Gang left.

Standing there in front of Ethan's Costume Shop for a few moments, the silence was broken among the three teenagers by Jonathan's awed, "Wow…."

"Yeah!" commented Andrew, breaking out of his usual shyness. "I heard he fought off a dozen muggers last month--"

"Oh, shut up about Harris!" snapped Warren. "He isn't that tough! He probably got hurt tripping over his own feet and made up something about it!"

Jonathan's eyebrows rose, and he felt bold enough to say, "He didn't make up Harmony Kendall. Felt her up, maybe--" breaking off to snicker over this with Andrew in a perfect Beavis/Butthead imitation.

Warren's face went totally flat, as pure jealousy crashed into his mind. *How come that jerk gets a total babe like her, and I can't get any girl to look at me?* A little more of Warren Mears' personality crumbled, and his voice was now truly dangerous, as he gritted, "Are we gonna do what we came here for, or not? Come ON!" That teen now bulled ahead to grab and yank open the door to the costume shop so hard it slammed against the front of the building with a crash, ignored by the fuming boy as he went inside.

Andrew and Jonathan looked at each other with alarm, and hesitantly followed, with the youngest member of the trio pulling the door closed after him.


The next night, Commander Spock looked around, arched an eyebrow, and commented, "Fascinating."