In the back room of his current shop, Ethan Rayne finished closing the wards of the inner circle of protection. He was in a very good mood. Not only had he sold a lot of costumes, all of which had been spelled to change their wearer during the coming Chaos enchantment, he'd learned of something he'd hardly dared to believe.
The young girl buying a fancy dress from him that was going to turn her into a brainless aristocratic bitch from a time centuries in the past was the Slayer. One of the brightest supporters of the Light, a merciless fighter of demons, a Champion of Order, who in less than an hour was going to be a pathetic girl who would run screaming away from the creatures of the night set free by the man's spell. If she managed to escape at all.
Ethan gave a happy sigh as he reveled in the loveliest detail of it all. The Slayer had accidentally let slip who was now her Watcher. Dear old Rupert Giles. The man who had once been his friend, who years ago had set him on his path into becoming a Chaos mage, all while helping him and other friends live the most decadent life possible, right up to the point when a younger Giles had suddenly developed a conscience, the wanker.
Back then, that man had promptly denounced and abandoned his friends over a little thing like raising a few demons, refused to practice the least bit of magic, joined those bloody boring blokes of the Watchers' Council and basically disappeared.
Now, after years of fruitless searching, Ethan had just learned his former compatriot was now a resident of this dull California town that was going to become a great deal livelier for the next twelve hours. Why, Giles might even have a funeral to look forward to in the morning, when he collected the dead body of his precious Slayer.
"Life is good --- and it's going to get better," crowed Ethan, as he gave his chest a joyous thump. He frowned as he felt paper crinkle in his shirt pocket during the touch, and put in his hand to draw out whatever was in there. It was a few crumpled bills of this country's money. Oh, right, the young bloke I scammed. Come to think of it, he must have actually taken the box, since it was gone when I came back there, him too.
Ethan chuckled as he put the money in his pants pocket. A nice little success, that. Best thing to happen, puts me in the right mood for this. Well, let's get on with it.
The Chaos mage knelt down in the middle of the casting circle and began the preliminary part of the ceremony. His mind now fixed on the details of the incredible feat of magic he was about to perform, Ethan Rayne totally forgot about the boy he'd cheated and the few dollars he'd taken from the teenager.
If he'd been a little more thoughtful, Ethan might have realized two things.
One, when he had appropriated the pathetic amount of money, Ethan had, under the rules of magic, acknowledged that the box full of toy car parts (yes, Ethan had looked and cursed at what seemed to be useless junk) had indeed been owned by the magician, and he had allowed of his own free will the transfer of the box and its entire contents into the possession of that young man who'd just been divested of all his funds. All of which had taken place inside a store imbued with Chaos magic directed into items that were to be sold to customers.
Two, Chaos played by no rules and favored no one.
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The Mystery Machine was a hit.
When Xander, Buffy, and Willow had shown up at the school to meet their charges they were to escort on Halloween night, a sudden rush had been made by every little kid there towards the teen wearing a cartoon van replica. Xander had looked around at a circle of children clustered around him, each of them open-mouthed in awe at something all of the youngsters had promptly recognized, despite being born nearly three decades after the first episode of Scooby-Doo.
Want to know how impressed people were? It wasn't that not a single child had made a grab, a poke, a touch against the fragile cardboard box.
It was the fact that Principal Snyder had uttered only a single half-hearted grunt of disapproval. From anyone else, that would have been enthusiastic applause.
After a few more minutes, all of the children were divided into three groups, with those in Xander's group the most pleased about their luck. Particularly when Xander started delivering an expert commentary on how to get the best and most candy while leading them off.
Willow and Buffy's charges were more troublesome, leading the exasperated girls to glower at each other and send a telepathic message of "It's going to be a long night."
Considering that, in a now-closed costume shop, an extremely dangerous spell was starting to be cast, the high-school students were more right than they knew.
A short time later, the three friends met again at the same point on one of the town's residential streets. As their charges scattered among the houses with glowing jack-o-lanterns set in the windows or on the front steps of those houses that had porches, Xander, still in his cartoon van costume, walked up to his two buddies standing by one of the houses' mailbox on its post by the curb, asking cheerfully, "Hey, guys, how's it going?"
He was met by looks of death from both, along with Buffy's gritted declaration of, "The day of my eighteenth birthday, I'm going to have my tubes tied! I'm never going to have kids!"
"Meet you there in the doctor's office! Bright and early!" also came from a truly furious Willow as she tried to scrape off a child-sized handprint outlined in chocolate stains from her formerly-white sheet, ineffectually rubbing this item of clothing against the mailbox post. Her sheet began creeping up, showing sexy boots and then trim, uncovered legs.
Xander stared in disbelief as more and more of Willow's bare legs came into view as the sheet of her ghost costume was pulled up by her unsuccessful attempts to clean it off. He croaked out, "Uh, Wils, just what are you wearing under there?"
"Nothing!" squeaked Willow, looking down with horror at what she was showing and hurriedly dropping the sheet.
You….went commando?" asked Xander in total brain overload.
"NO!" shrieked Willow, glaring at the boy, and then switching her infuriated gaze at the suddenly-giggling Buffy. The redhead angrily pointed at the Slayer and snapped, "It's all her fault! She convinced me, just before you got to the house, to wear something I've never put on in my life!"
"What?! WHAT?!" was instantaneously blurted out by the young man.
"I'm not telling you that!" At Xander's sudden stare at her lower body, Willow wrathfully shouted, "I'm not going to show you either! And look me in the eye when I'm yelling at you, you disgusting member of the male species!"
Desperately biting her lips to prevent from exploding with laughter, Buffy managed to clear her throat and tried to make peace between her two friends, one who had his eyes fixed on the rear end of the other who had turned around to glare at the Slayer. "Listen, Willow, it's not so bad and you looked really good in my best leather---"
Across the town, a ceremony came to an end, with the thunderous shout of "….JANUS!"
Willow Rosenberg staggered, a tidal wave of dizziness crashing down into her brain. After a few moments, she once again became aware of her surroundings. Especially the screams.
Looking around disbelievingly, the redhead saw some of the children they had been escorting were now running around in utter terror, in many cases being pursued by otherworldly creatures that Willow recognized with horror had just a few seconds ago had been their charges' friends and fellow students.
Another scream, this much closer, split the air, as the girl jerked her head around to stare at Buffy Summers, who in her career as the Slayer had shown to Willow bravery beyond compare. The young girl who was wearing the magnificent gown the blonde had brought at Ethan's now stood there trembling in absolute fright as she looked around, whimpering, "Where….where am I? What is this place?"
Unthinking of her actions, wanting only to comfort her friend in her sudden dread, Willow stepped forward, only to see Buffy flinch back, the blonde's face turning white and her eyes open to their widest, as the young Summers girl screamed at the top of her lungs and spun around to race off in panic-stricken flight.
Willow wasn't paying all that much attention. Her gaze was now fixed on the half of the mailbox protruding from her chest, when she'd walked into that container stepping towards Buffy. It….doesn't hurt at all, the young girl thought sluggishly. Her right hand came up to wave through the end of the mailbox, her fingers easily passing through the solid object. Willow blinked, noticing how the sheet of her costume also passed through the mailbox, her mind beginning to work again. "….I'm intangible…. like a….ghost?!"
More screams went through the air, including one very familiar one. Willow frantically looked further up the street, to see at the end of the block a blonde in a familiar costume flinch away from a three-foot-tall being dressed all in green and waving a crooked stick at the girl, who turned left and dashed down the side street, passing out of sight.
"XANDER!" Willow shouted, stepping away from the mailbox (It still doesn't hurt) to spin around and continue, "WE HAVE TO GO AFTER…Buffy.…" Her voice trailed off.
Parked on the wrong side of the street, a four-ton, garishly-painted 1968 Chevrolet Sportvan 108 sheepishly blinked its headlights at Willow.