Title: Kamen Rider Will-O
Author: JoeHundredaire
Rating: R/FR18
Pairing: Willow Rosenberg/Cordelia Chase
Disclaimer: The entire Kamen Rider property - including but obviously not limited to Kamen Rider Den-O - belongs to Toei. After being passed around a bit, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all related characters and concepts are the property of Warner Brothers. If you don't recognize a Cordette, though, they're probably from the stable of characters that I've developed for my various Cordelia-centric fanfics. Ask if you want to use them. Apart from that, not mine, don't sue.
Summary: The train of time, DenLiner. Will the next station be in the past or the future? Thanks to Ethan, it's making a stop in Sunnydale just in time for Halloween…
Joe's Note: I originally wrote this in 2007 back when Kamen Rider Den-O was first coming out and I made the terminal mistake of trying to guess ahead as to what was coming based on leaks and rumors. When the actual episodes came out, it left me rather trapped because what came out was nothing like what I'd done and so I couldn't easily adapt anything to fit this story. Den-O was also my first Kamen Rider series, meaning I lacked a fundamental grounding in the franchise to convincingly keep making things up as I went along. So I stepped back from the story, and eventually forgot all about it until I was cleaning out a thumb drive and found a copy. While what I'm going to do with it will be by no means as ambitious or sprawling as the original story I had outlined, I hope I can tell a fun little story with this seed. Also, the timeline has obviously been accelerated on the Buffy side; if this was still in 1997, Willow wouldn't be watching Den-O or Kabuto or Boukenger or Gekiranger. I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but I'm equally sure that someone will complain if I don't cop to it out of the gate.
Dedications & Thanks: To Howard, Nicholas, Alonsis2, Cyle, Marika, Tibor, Adrien, Arkantos59, bloodylord, Charles, Crygon20, DireSquirrel, Edward, enygma, Fablesrogue, George, Gerald, Glenn, Joseph, Kentucky Fried Dragon, Koby, MJ, Morgan, mpotato, PbookR, Roofcrawler, Wil, William, Ziryo, Beeknees, Darrell, David, erlking, Haematite, HaunzGruber, TheTenthAncestor, UncreativeName01, Zordmon, Abby, Lookshy, Roman, Warren, and Wesley for sponsoring me on P-treon, and making it easier for me to spend more of my time writing.

Waving goodbye to Buffy and Xander as they turned down West Anapamu Street toward where they could take the 4 bus back to their respective homes, Willow waited a few seconds before turning and doubling back toward Ethan's. As much as she adored Buffy - she was a good friend, possibly even her best friend these days - the blonde was incredibly pushy and opinionated, and her presence had prevented Willow from having a chance to look around the store to her satisfaction and actually pick out a costume for herself. Not that Willow didn't appreciate Buffy's attempts to help her dress up for the night, but they were two very different people. Just because Buffy thought an outfit looked cute and thought the redhead would look good in it didn't mean Willow wanted said outfit on her body for the night.

Slowly wandering through the store, Willow frowned as she took in the options on display. Disney princesses were always a hit - especially with the kids she'd be escorting around town for the night - but not really her style. Faeries seemed to be big this year, judging by the number of pairs of wings for sale, but she wasn't really feeling anything supernatural for Halloween. It felt a bit too much like tempting fate given where she lived. The same was true of witches and, ugh, vampires. Pirates… eh. Most of the pirate wench costumes were designed to show off a treasure chest that she lacked. Cat? The last thing she wanted to do was compete with what Cordelia had loudly announced she was going as for Halloween. There was a reasonably accurate Smallville Supergirl costume on display… which was essentially just street clothes because it was Smallville. Pass.

Trailing one hand along the back wall of the store as she walked, Willow came to a stop as she found herself standing in front of a beaded curtain. She certainly hadn't seen this section during her rushed tour of the store with Buffy earlier. Wasn't that usually the sort of thing that separated the more socially acceptable wares from the… eep… adult ones at certain stores? Looking back and forth furtively, Willow gathered her courage and peeked through the curtain nervously only for her eyes to go wide for an entirely unexpected reason. The contents of the back room weren't adult! They were Japanese! She recognized all this stuff: Zecters, Accellulars, GekiChangers… all sorts of Japanese import toys. "Why is all of this stuff hidden away in the back?"

"This, my dear, is how I keep myself in fine clothing and expensive tea." Eep! Response to a rhetorical question! Willow whirled around to find Ethan, the nice British gentleman who had sold Buffy her dress, standing behind her with a bemused smile on his face. "I may be new to Sunnydale, but I'm no Spirit Halloween, luv. This is going to be my home for the foreseeable future, not just a storefront that I inhabit and abandon when the season is over. Mainly because I simply can't get enough people through these doors and served to make enough money in one month that I can survive on it for the entire year. Or, well, I might be able to if I was willing to live a more meretricious life… but I'd rather not. This month is reasonably lucrative for me, of course, but for the rest of the year? I'm the preferred vendor for several talented seamstresses who do high-quality period replica outfits, along with Japanese imports, and shall we say… special… adult costumes."

Willow's first instinct was to ask if the last one was high end cosplay, and then her mind traveled back to her initial thought about what was normally behind beaded curtains and she blushed bright red. Ducking her head, she turned her attention back to the toys to hide her reaction. "So, um, is this stuff still for sale during October? Or is this just a stock room?"

Ethan chuckled and the curtain clinked softly as he swept it aside and gestured for her to enter. "Why, it's still for sale of course. I just relocate it to a back corner because I realize that most of my space is better spent catering to the whims of your more simplistic peers, who we both know wouldn't appreciate things such as these. As I wander the store, I do my best to listen for people discussing certain things and then direct them back here accordingly. If I'd known you were interested in something like this, I would have steered you in here earlier, while you were looking around with your friends."

Nodding, Willow ran her fingers over a few of the boxes on the shelves before stopping at one. A large silver and black belt, with a familiar logo on the box. Den-O! This was perfect! It was part of her and Xander's normal Thursday night; he'd come over and she'd download the latest episodes of his favorite programs and they'd watch them. Buffy wanted to be an eighteenth century woman to get Angel's attention, and now Willow knew exactly how to get Xander's. After all, what better way to remind Xander she was there and she was a girl than to remind him of the times they spent curled up on her couch watching television?

"I take it you're interested in the Terminal Buckle, miss?" Willow grabbed one off the shelf and turned to Ethan, nodding. "Outstanding. The real question is... do you know what one of these is?"

Reaching past her, Ethan plucked the companion Climax Cellphone K-Taros off the shelf and held it up inquiringly. Willow nodded eagerly, reaching out to take it from him. "The K-Taros. It's how Ryotaro accesses his super form in the show. Episode Twenty-Eight."

Ethan just shrugged in response. "I haven't been keeping up with the show that closely. So much to watch, so little time, and a business to run on top of that. All I know is that I've sold three of the belt and none of the phone. If what you're telling me is true, they go together... and the odds of me selling them go down with each customer who walks out of here with one and not the other. So if you're interested, I'll throw it in for the same sixty dollars as the belt itself just to get it out of here. And I could throw in a box of hair dye for another… shall we say, ten? Bit more expensive than the drug store brand, but undoubtedly better for your hair. All natural and organic."

Before she could answer, Ethan was already taking the Terminal Buckle from her and adding it to the red… whatever… that he was carrying as he exited the back room. Hair dye? That was an unexpected suggestion. Willow reached up to pat her head a few times. She didn't dye her hair. It's not like she had red hair with brown roots or something that he'd think she needed to touch up. Which reminded her, she needed to find a tactful way of reminding Buffy it was that time again. "Why do I need hair dye?"

Reaching the front, Ethan placed her soon to be purchases on the counter and perused a display behind the register for a moment before setting down a nondescript brown box with the words 'medium brown' scribbled on the front in handwriting that she could barely make out. "Like I said, I do watch these shows when I can so that I'm not completely ignorant when my customers come in and attempt to discuss them with me. The hero chap... he's a brunette, is he not?"

"Oh. Yeah. You think I should dye my hair?" Willow reached up to run her fingers through her red locks. She'd never even considered that in the twenty or thirty seconds she'd spent working on her cunning, cunning plan. "Well… do you have stuff that's not permanent? So I can wash it out after a few days?"

Huffing, Ethan began to ring up her purchase. "Of course; that's what kind I gave you. I didn't think you'd want to turn such glorious red hair that color permanently. Seventy dollars plus tax comes to… seventy-five dollars and forty-two cents."

Willow swung her backpack off her shoulder and dug out her wallet, very glad that she carried a debit card that was linked to her parents' account for situations like this. Her parents wouldn't even blink an eye at such a small transaction… and maybe a few others. After all, she was supposed to be coming as she wasn't for the night. While she wasn't quite on board with Buffy's declaration that she go 'wild and crazy', nothing in her wardrobe really worked for Ryotaro's basic look much less any of his possessed forms. Which meant… as much as she dreaded it… shopping time.

"So you're trying to be… a Japanese guy for the night?" Buffy looked Willow up and down and gave the former redhead an uncertain look. "I'm not sure what to say there. Because if I tell you that you did good, that means you look manly and that's not a compliment. Except you're definitely wearing a push-up bra, which is giving you a very not-a-guy effect there. I'm confused."

Willow sighed as she stood in front of the mirror, trying to fluff her dyed brown hair into a style that looked messy without LOOKING like it was supposed to look messy. "No, I'm not trying to be a guy. I'm trying to be a character from a Japanese TV show who happens to be a guy. When you cosplay, it's okay to be a character that's the opposite gender. Well, if you're a guy trying to be Sailor Moon things can get kinda icky-looking, but for girls it's really not that weird. It's called crossplay. Or Rule 63."

There was a long slow blink from Buffy before the blonde shook her head. "I'm going to nod and smile like that made some kind of sense, and then I'm going to go over here and get my wig, kay?"

"It's really not that… oh, whatever." Willow sighed and went back to messing with her hair. Why did it bother her? She was probably going to spend most of the night explaining who she was to the kids… so why did Buffy being, well, Buffy-like bother her? Probably because her prepared excuse for the kids - comparing it to Power Rangers - would have gotten her an even weirder look and so she had nothing to work with?

Sighing again, Willow looked herself up and down in the mirror. She wasn't used to seeing herself with brown hair, for one. While it was a nice change of pace, she was really hoping the brown temporary dye actually did come out after a week's worth of washing and was glad she had talked herself out of cutting it to actually look like Ryotaro's. She was okay with a bit of change, but that would have been a little much for her brain to process in one day. Apart from that, the only visibly different thing was the clunky Terminal Buckle belt around her waist and the black Rider Pass that was peeking out of the undersized pocket on her new jeans.

Well, actually she was different from head to toe. Hair, dyed. A tight-fitting new t-shirt and equally snug jeans, courtesy of a stop at Old Navy. And, as Buffy had pointed out, a push-up bra. Willow couldn't even think about the underwear she had on without blushing. Victoria's secret probably had something to do with how she got women to pay so much money for such tiny underwear. She wiggled her hips a bit. Were thongs supposed to feel like that, or was she just not used to them yet?

Sadly, they were the first clothes she had ever bought for herself. Cordelia's teasing about her mom shopping for her came back to her and Willow scowled. It wasn't that she couldn't shop for herself, it was her mom who kept ordering stuff from catalogs while on the road. Willow just didn't have the heart to try and send them back, or leave them in the delivery boxes while spending more of her parents' money to get new clothes.

The doorbell rang and Willow gave the ghost costume a fleeting look. She'd dug it out of the attic from last year just in case - she was a firm believer in waste not, want not - but she wasn't going to wear it again. She had a perfectly good costume that she was comfortable in, so why not wear it? Giving her hair one final fluff as Buffy pushed past her to head for the stairs, Willow straightened up and smiled. Show time.

Standing near the top of the stairs, Willow waited and fidgeted nervously as she listened to Xander compliment Buffy. He really liked her costume… even though he knew who she was wearing it for. Well that wasn't fair. He was supposed to be irritated that she was dressing up for Angel, not drooling over it!

Willow rounded the corner and stomped down the stairs. Even with her deliberately heavy footfalls, Xander didn't look up from his appreciation of Buffy until after Willow had reached the bottom of the stairs. "Hey Will. Thought Halloween was about dressing up? Although hey, you dyed your hair. Looks… different."

"…you don't know who I'm dressed up as?" Willow looked down and then made a show of smoothing her t-shirt down to make sure it was behind the belt and not obstructing it, not to mention bringing attention to the Terminal Buckle itself. Xander still looked a bit confused. "I'm Den-O! From Kamen Rider Den-O! Remember? You make me download it every week from TV-Nihon and burn it to a DVD so we can watch it?"

There was a moment of silence pondering and then Xander frowned. "Uh, I hope I'm not the first to tell you this, but you're a girl. Ryotaro is a boy. Unless something Hellmouthy is going on and you have a secret you need to tell me."

Willow scowled at her best, albeit quite dense, friend before pushing past him and heading for the door. So what, crossplay was only cool in his books when it was a girl doing a skanky version of whatever the character was? "Don't we need to go pick up some kids?"

The spell was cast, and a pulse of magic rocketed outward from the back room of Ethan's. All across the Hellmouth, the power of Janus fed upon the small bursts of magic that Ethan had imbued in all the costumes and accessories he had sold.

Soldiers. Criminals. Demons. Angels. Aliens. Janus was just as imaginative as those who had dressed up, seizing upon every opportunity to inflict as much chaos as possible. The residents of Sunnydale suddenly found themselves at ground zero for rematches of everything from the Revolutionary War to classic comic book battles to the supreme war between good and evil.

Ethan Rayne smiled. "Show time."