BtVS by Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Animaniacs & Pinky and the Brain by Spielberg and the WB. Fire hydrant on loan from Diane Duane's "So you want to be a Wizard"

They materialized on a fire-hydrant-occupied Sunnydale street corner.

"There it is, Pinky," laughed Brain. "The place which houses the decaffeinated treasures we now seek."

"Um, Brain, I'm worried." Pinky scratched his head. "Should our portal machine really be left on this long?"

"Don't worry, Pinky," the large-headed mouse replied, comfortingly. "Yes, the dimensional breach should have brought us directly to this version of California... Only the presence of multiple Hellmouths left us stranded in Ohio..."

He continued, frowning. "Nonetheless, it's a finely calibrated piece of equipment. Besides... It performed well in the test run... Maybe a bit too well..."

"But Brain," countered Pinky. "What if it, Poit, begins to absorb mystical energies from the Hellmouth... Goes Woo-hoo, Woo-hoo... And threatens to destroy multiple realities? Narf."

"Nonsense, Pinky," Brain replied, bending over and drawing several shapes in the cement sidewalk with his vengeance-demon enhanced strength. "There are safeguards in place."

Shivering, Brain rose to his feet and dusted himself off. "Besides, if you look here, you'll clearly see that if anything was going to go wrong with it, we'd all be dead by now."

He suddenly realized that he was alone on the corner.

He turned around, searching the sidewalk...

No, his fellow mouse wasn't racing for coffee...

"Pinky, Pinky? Where did you-?" he broke off, hearing a strange sound.

He spun to face the fire hydrant.

A small pink thing was running itself around the rim of the hydrant.

Then the lid flipped open completely.

Brain only had time for a short 'No-', before a giant tongue shot out from the hydrant, grabbing the stunned mouse.

The possessed hydrant happily reeled in its easy meal and the lid clanged shut, covering the gaping maw of the life-saving device.

After a self-satisfied burp, the corner was once again silent.

##

Buffy and Oz walked by, talking.

They crossed the street and entered the coffee shop.

It was quiet outside.

##

Little pink things extended from the rim of the hydrant, just before the metallic top was nearly completely ripped away.

Brain reached back, grabbed Pinky's hand and pulled them both out of the predator's maw.

After they'd jumped down to the sidewalk, Brain turned around and kicked the thing, yelling: "Bad, bad demon hydrant!"

It yelped in pain and confusion, then scuttled away, down the street.

"That's funny, Brain," the lanky mouse stated, wiping himself clean of the digestive juices. "The things back home usually won't swallow us because we're genetically-modified."

"Well, apparently they're more GM-tolerant in this version of California," Brain replied. "Come, Pinky. To coffee!"

Having nothing better to do, Spike returned to his crypt and picked up Buffy and the wolf's trail.

It left him standing at a somewhat unpopular coffee shop. They'd picked a place where the wolf's ex-girlfriend was unlikely to find them.

Breezing into the place, he interrupted Oz's conversation with the Slayer and dropped the amulet onto the small table just as their iced mocha and green tea frappuccino arrived.

Seeing the confusion on their faces, he explained: "I picked this up for you, Buffy. I hope you like it."

Buffy picked it up, then handed it to Oz.

He took it, sniffed it and passed it back to her.

As she held it up to the light, she told Spike, in no uncertain terms, that she didn't want it.

Ignoring her, Spike asked: "Hello, werewolf, still barking up all the wrong trees for happiness?"

"Hello vampire, still madly in lust for Buffy?" Oz said, then grinned at their shocked expressions, tapping the side of his nose.

"We broke up," Buffy stated, blushing. Then she got angry. "If you tell Xander anything about that, I'll track down the members of your band and torture them with Hanson records."

Oz shrugged nonchalantly and sipped his drink.

Buffy looked again at the amulet in her hand, then glared up at Spike. "Where'd you get the hairclip?"

"Metaphorical steal at the Magic Box. Full permission of the owner, by the way."

Frowning at her disgusted expression, he moved to take it. "If don't want it, then give it back."

Fortunately, she pulled it out of reach before his hand could make contact.

"No. It's probably got some twisted enchantment or love spell on it."

"You hand it to him," she continued saying as she dropped it on the smooth table and pushed it back in the direction of Oz.

Oz picked it up and held it out for the vampire.

Completely disgusted by her distrust, Spike grabbed the amulet and stormed out of the cafe.

When Buffy was finished glaring after her most recent undead ex-lover, she examined Oz carefully. "Well, are you madly in love with Spike?"

"Nope," he replied calmly and returned to sipping his drink.

"So... Tell me more about Cleveland. If it's an American Hellmouth, I better know all about it."

He opened his mouth to speak, but a sudden tingling sensation threw him into a state of near panic.

Well-hewn instinct had him pushing his chair back, covering his face with his hands and shoving his head below table-level.

If his eyes had been open, he'd be staring directly into the stunned faces of Pinky and the Brain, but his eyes were squinched shut...

When the unexpected transformation had finished he, with a muttered apology, hands still protecting his disfigured face from view, ran from the coffee shop.

Running along the side of the building, he threw open the bathroom door and slammed it shut behind him.

The bathrooms being on the outside were another reason the 'Daley Sun' was less popular than the 'Espresso Pump'.

##

Pinky had actually been paying attention to what was going on but, before he could mention the amulet's antics to Brain, Buffy stood up.

"Quiet Pinky," Brain whispered, throwing one arm around the taller mouse and the other arm around a table leg. "This is our chance."

Brain concentrated. His stolen powers, free from Anya's greater mass, easily whisked the mice and the small table away.

##

Buffy had risen to her feet when Oz made his escape, but she quickly shook her head and sat back down at her chair, convinced she knew what was happening.

She reached for her cold drink, but -

##

Her drink, and Oz's drink, not to mention the entire table, had simply disappeared.

##

She stood up abruptly enough to send her chair clattering to the white tile floor.

Several heads turned to look at her.

She shrugged, embarrassed, then picked up both chairs and hid them against another table.

Emotion. Am awake. No longer mind captivity. Hunger for blood. Blood flows within me. I giggle in delight.

Oz's beast, for its part, was quite happy with the change. It was still trapped within the young man's flesh, but the combination of new vampiric powers and his living host was making it quite drunk.

##

Oz stood at the bathroom mirror blinking. Yep, he definitely wasn't invisible. His reflection was just gone.

He checked his pulse. Still a surprised, but steady, beat.

He felt his head, but instead of the familiar hairiness of his half-wolf-face he found the ridged brow and, yep, pointy fangs, of a vampire's game face.

This was unexpected. It wasn't good.

Then again, he still had his heightened senses, he had gained the enhanced agility of the vampire package, plus, hey, he'd kept his pulse.

"Okay, I admit I kind of had the shaft as far as useful powers went, but you didn't have to go to this extent," he muttered to the empty room.

He shifted back and forth between vamp and normal face a bit, listening to the noise it made.

He considered working the sound into some audio playback, but dismissed it as a bad idea.

Rubbing his human features, he left the room.

"What's up?" asked a concerned Buffy. She had been waiting outside the shop.

"It's strange, but my inner demon just mutated..." he said, before frowning, sniffing the air, and looking up. "Why did you set our coffee table up on the roof?"

"I'm blaming it either on the normal demons, those weird cartoons you brought with you, or Spike."

"Ah."

##

Pinky jumped down from his perch on the straw, then ran over and threw his arms about Brain. "Oh, no, Brain. Narf! We've been spotted."

"Hush," Brain muttered, then teleported the two of them downward. He had them appear inside the food display case.

They walked around for several seconds before picking out a large banana nut muffin.

Brain shoved a hand through the thin crust and grabbed Pinky's arm in an attempt to teleport them to a dark place just outside the building, where they could eat in peace.

##

They emerged in a much darker place than he'd expected.

They looked around at the bleak blackness and the ebony wall of the 'Memory Soak'.

"Oh, no," Brain groaned. "Not again."

"Troz!" Pinky agreed.

Revello Drive

Just outside of the Summers' home, his destination at the time, Spike suddenly froze in his steps and began muttering to himself. He looked rather out of sorts.

"Great, just bloomin' terrific. You're curious all of a sudden? You stay quiet for a century or two and then out of the blue you want to come out and play? No you bloody well can't. You're my bloodthirsty soulless inner demon, not some puppy. It's just those cartoons rubbing off on you. I'm not going to turn into a bleedin' cartoon, so shut up. Blasted Hellmouth."

Shaking it off, Spike entered the house and walked directly into the dining room where the laptop had been set up on the large table.

Tara and Willow - well, mainly Willow - were there, hard at work hacking into the recently discovered video feed.

"So," Spike said, announcing his presence. "This'd be the spying that got the Slayer's knickers in a twist."

"Yep," Willow confirmed, typing away.

"Hey, Red," he said, pleasantly enough, as he tapped Willow on the shoulder and pressed the amulet into her surprised palm. "Don't say I never got you anything."

She turned it over, examining the detail, then handed it over to Tara.

Her fellow Wiccan stated that it was pretty, then shrugged and set it down on the table.

"Thanks, but, this is a job that requires enormous concentration and snack foods. I'm about to finally get the hidden address of the Trio, but..." Willow trailed off, frowning, her fingers hovering above the keyboard. "They've spotted me, they're trying to kill my tracer program and, by the Goddess... I've forgotten what to do!"

"Here let me try," Spike offered, hovering over the frustrated witch's shoulder. "Something about that... routing code... seems familiar."

Willow stood up abruptly, spun around and shoved the surprised vampire across the room.

"Get out!" she panted angrily. She grabbed the amulet, from where Tara had set it on the table, and flung it directly at his chest. "And take your stupid and distracting piece of jewelry with you!"

Spike caught it and frowned, trying to put on his vamp-face. He was too annoyed at her to notice that his features didn't transform.

He turned on his heel, leather jacket spreading out, and left the room and the house in a huff.

His muttered words trailed behind him: "Try to do a woman a favor..."

##

Willow took several breaths to calm herself, then raised an eyebrow at Tara's offer to take her place at the computer.

"Go ahead," Willow nodded, embarrassed by her sudden inability to think in binary.

Tara sat down, grinning, and entered into a fierce coding battle with the hackers hidden inside the Trio's lair.

Willow gasped, amazed at the brilliancy of the final strokes...

Tara laughed and leaned back in the chair, triumphant.

"I did it, Willow! I tracked the Trio to their Secret Lair! That's the address!"

"Tara! I can't believe it! Your hacking skills! They're on a par with... Oz!"

##

Willow froze at the words coming out of her mouth. She blushed at the reference to her ex-boyfriend.

The one that had nearly bitten her current girlfriend.

Tara, however, seemed to take the awkwardly given praise in a good way...

She even tilted her head back and let loose a glorious howl.

Willow gawked at this, amused and slightly worried, but then her eyes widened in fear.

Hairs dark and canine had begun to crawl up her lover's face...

...START...BrainAnya...BuffyOzBuffy...SpikeOz...SpozWillow...WozTara...

Current: Branya, Anyain, Spillow, Oke, Taroz, Willra.