Déjà Vu All Over Again…

Chapter 001 – Been There, Done That…

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Xander, instead of going as a soldier, takes a different route. Now, he is trapped, stuck repeating the day over and over again. The day in question; Halloween, the same day the Ethan Rayne comes to Sunnydale. The path in question; Phil Conners, a certain weatherman. Now, watch as Xander tries to fix what has happened, using methods and meeting people good, bad, and funny.

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Xander sighed as he watched Buffy and Willow fawn over an pink, ugly, Victorian-era (somewhere about that era anyway) dress, while the younger of the Summers sisters prowled somewhere else in the store; he had lost sight of her about a minute ago, and hadn't been able to spot her, but since he hadn't heard or seen the door opening, he know she was still inside. As he looked around for the BDU, or Battle Dress Uniform, to with the gun he had to complete his soldier outfit, he accidently bumped into a shelf. This shelf happened to rock just enough to dislodge two stuffed objects on the top shelf, two objects whose shadows happened to appear on the ground in front of him, making him look up just in time to get the stuffed toys in the face.

When he finally got over the shock over getting two kids toys to the face, he bent over to get the two objects, which turned out to be a stuffed beaver-like animal, and a stuffed red bird. While he was getting back up, he saw a man quickly approaching him. When he got over to Xander, he started looking him over.

"Are you alright? My name is Ethan Rayne, the owner and proprietor of this store. I saw something fall from the top and hit you on the head. I don't remember putting those up there…" He mentioned all but the last part to Xander, but he heard him mutter the last part to himself. "Well, I don't know what happened, but payment for what happened, you can have $10.00 off whatever you buy. I would do more, but I want to say in business."

"Well," said Xander, "That sounds like an ok deal. Would you mind if I took these toys for free. These give me an idea, and I saw a costume a few minutes ago that would work out nicely."

"Sure, for what happened, I can throw those in." Ethan told the Scooby. "Just come up to the register when you're done."

A few minutes later, Xander stepped up to the register with the stuffed toys, which he had guessed to be both a phoenix and a groundhog, and the rest of his outfit. Xander internally cackled as he saw what the price would be after the deduction; he was still the $2 King!

After the Scooby walked away with his outfit, Ethan frowned slightly. Not only had he noticed the things had all come out of the miscellaneous bin, which meant the costume could amount to anything once his spell took place, but just as the young man had turned around, the mage had "pinged" with his own magic in the way a bat does echolocation, to figure out the weird feeling he was getting from the boy was. He had been both shocked and disturbed; not only were the two stuffed animals, stuffed animals that he knew he didn't add to the store, saturated in chaos magic in ways and concentrations that he had never seen or even heard of, but the boy…the boy was…something else.

From the boy, he could sense magic's he had never imagined possible, but one of them…one of them was wrong. There are primordial instincts that have been around since the birth of life, the birth of humanity. Of the instincts, there are four which are ingrained within us, which reverberate within our genes; reproduction, Protection of Family, Dominance over Enemies, Reproduction of Species, and, most importantly, the instinct of Self-Preservation. The millisecond that his magic touched the boy's, the instinct of self-preservation started blaring throughout his being, but even as he drew the magic back within his body, he knew his soul was forever maimed.

It was lucky for him that the boy…no, the thing had been the last customer, for that allowed him to only have to wait five seconds for the boy to exit and get out of hearing range to lock the door. It allowed him to only have to wait six seconds before he his sanity shattered into pieces and his mind fractured into shards. If anyone had been within the store, they would have seen him lean against the wall and slide down before beginning to ramble non-stop. "The praxium had been released, and the Pretenders shall fall before him… The Key of the Bleed will support him in his mission… Heaven's Gates shall be torn asunder, and the Forgotten Ones dreaming within the Stygian abyss shall be eradicated… The Old Ones shall be banished to the Outside, as will the Elder Gods… Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn… That is not dead which can Eternal Lie, and with strange Aeons even Death may die… Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn… That is not dead which can Eternal Lie, and with strange Aeons even Death may die… Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn… Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn…"

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Joyce blinked in surprise when she opened the door; it was her daughter's young friend Alexander, but he costumed in was a bit…weird. He was wearing a Tux shirt, with a brownish coat on top of it and a scarf on, but in his pockets, she could see two stuff animals that a kid would carry as a safety shield, a groundhog in his left pocket and a phoenix in the right. He was carrying a reporter's microphone in his left hand, and he was wearing a bald cap/wig that made his hair appear receding with the still-haired parts looking short and curly.

"Xander…what are you dressed as?"

"Well Ms. Summers, I am just a simple weatherman. "Replied the Scooby to the matriarch of the Summers clan. "Oh, meet my two friends." He said, pulling the animals out of his pocket. "These are Fawkes the Phoenix, and Phil Jr. the Groundhog. I myself, well…my name is Phil Conners."

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This is an idea I got while reading Joshua the Evil Guy's Department of Mysteries Day; I had got an idea of that, that idea combined with the strain of ideas known as YAHF (Yet-Another-Halloween-Fic). Dawn is around at this point in time, since in the future when Dawn appears, it changes the past so that she fits in the timeline. Ergo, she would appear in this timeline too. Oh, try and see if you can guess what the stuffed animals are for; the winners shall get a cyber-cookie to end all cookies, over and out.