Halloween evening:

The doorbell at 1630 Revello Drive rang. Joyce Summers finished putting down the tray filled with candy on the hallway table and glanced with surprise at the door. It was just beginning to become dusk, with the sun still on the horizon, a bit early for any trick-or-treaters. Oh, it's probably Xander. She smiled as she moved towards the door, idly curious at what the boy would be wearing as his Halloween costume while he escorted younger children around the town, as ordered by his high-school principal.

The woman frowned as she paused in front of the door. She had discounted most of Buffy's indignation at being dragooned by the official in charge of her daughter's school, but Joyce had to admit this was going a little too far. She was going to a Halloween party for adults herself later in the evening, and maybe she should have a little chat with the other parents there about a certain short, balding man who evidently thought that running a pre-college educational facility made him God.

Snorting at that, Joyce bent to peer through the security peephole and felt her mood lighten. One of her favorite people was standing there on the porch, a wide grin on his face as he waited for the door to open. Joyce reached out with a hand to turn on the porch light, and shifted her head, trying to see what Xander's costume looked like. Unfortunately, he was too close to the door for her to see clearly anything below his chin, though he looked like he was wearing something dark-colored and extremely bulky.

Mildly puzzled, the woman opened the door, to be promptly greeted with an effervescent greeting of, "Hiya, Mrs. S. Buffy and Willow said they'd both be here and ready to go."

"Er--- Hello, Xander." The woman stared at the boy, unable to determine what exactly his costume was. From her point of view, he seemed to be wearing some kind of….box? The front side of whatever he was wearing was oddly lumpy and there were strange….things attached at the corners. What IS that?

The boy chuckled, seeing her confusion, and said, "Just push the door all the way open and back up, will ya? I'll come inside and show all of it to you in the light."

Bemused, the older woman did what Xander asked, and stepped back to watch the boy carefully maneuver his way into the house. His costume was just a bit narrower than the doorway, and he had to be careful not to knock over anything as he shuffled down the narrow hallway. When Xander got out into the foyer, he stopped and turned his whole body to the left, proudly showing off what he was wearing.

Joyce Summers promptly shrieked with laughter, her hilarity ringing throughout the entire house.

"Mom? What's going on?" A young woman's voice came from the upper floor, with this person suddenly appearing at the head of the stairs. Buffy Summers was wearing a magnificent eighteenth-century aristocratic pink gown and her careful descent down the stairs revealed black dancing slippers, pure white hose, and ruffled petticoats below her silk gown.

The girl her age who followed Buffy down the stairs was wearing a ghost costume that in no way matched the Slayer's dress. Willow Rosenberg was clad in a plain white sheet with the word "BOO" scrawled on it by a magic marker, earlier having been talked by Buffy into wearing a racy outfit of sexy boots, a leather mini-skirt, and a skin-tight midriff-baring top under the bedcloth that the redhead was desperately glad no one could see.

The descending girls stopped at the foot of the stairs, bewilderedly looking at the woman wiping tears of laughter from her face, and then their gazes followed where Joyce's waved hand gestured towards the teenager they hadn't yet noticed.

There was an instant as the two girls stared in shock, and then they both erupted with amusement at the top of their lungs. Waves of mirth once again passed through the Summers home, with Joyce happily joining in as they all looked at the grinning boy.

Xander Harris was wearing an exact replica of the Mystery Machine, the 1960's van from the television cartoon series that all five members of the Scooby Gang --- Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, and the talking Great Dane, Scooby-Doo himself --- used to travel throughout the entire country, solving numerous mysteries while running around in decaying mansions, swamps, amusement parks, castles and other places to find out who was performing nefarious deeds, to finally solve the crime and have the police take away the villain, with this person then usually muttering something under their breath.

The three females finally stopped laughing, though their humor continued to show in fits of giggles as they all stepped closer and wonderingly examined every detail. There were a lot of these.

Xander's beaming head protruded from the windshield of the replica due to the model being presented in the vertical position, with the nose of the van pointing straight up and the undercarriage in the 90-degree position. Once they adjusted for the odd position, the women could see how a large cardboard box had been cut, trimmed, and shaped to perfectly imitate the body of a slightly absurd cartoon-style enclosed motor vehicle.

Just as much attention had been devoted to the look of the replica as well as the shape. Three sides of the box had been painted the swirling light blue and lime-green colors of the original cartoon van's sides and roof. Also on the sides, Xander had faithfully drawn and painted the psychedelic flower petals and also the curving letters of the van's name: THE MYSTERY MACHINE.

Joyce now understood why she hadn't recognized it was a car right away, since she'd seen it from the front, and marveled at how Xander had painted black the front side that was the replica's undercarriage and also attached vertical and horizontal steel rods to the front side of the box to copy a motor vehicle's drive train and axles.

Buffy blinked at what was attached to the ends of the axle rods. Putting out a finger and flicking it to make one of the diminutive tires at the corners spin, she delightedly asked, "Xander, are these real?"

"Yep, real kids' pedal-powered toy car tires," chuckled Xander. "But that's not all the toy car stuff! There's fake headlights and rear lights, bumpers, door handles and clear plastic windows for the front and rear doors, windshield wipers, a steering wheel in here---"

An open-mouthed Willow interrupted her voluble friend to demand, "Xander, where'd you get all this?"

"I was at Ethan's---"

Buffy nodded, contributing, "Yeah, we saw you there."

"I saw you there, too. Anyway, I came across this stuff and the box, and I had the idea right away, so I bought 'em, took 'em all to Uncle Rory's garage and got to work. Managed to finish just an hour ago, and came here right away." Xander smiled at all his friends there, assuring himself that he hadn't told a single genuine lie. Just, uh, rearranging the facts. There wasn't any real need to tell them he got conned out of his cash and stuck with useless stuff, right?

Buffy did look a little puzzled, which made Xander a bit nervous. She pointed out, "Xander, it's a costume shop. Why would they have this toy car stuff there?"

"Oh, the guy who sold it to me said it was stuff left over from the last guy who was there," shrugged Xander, making the replica shudder slightly.

Joyce said thoughtfully, "If you mean the shop by Second and Broadway, I do remember a toy store there before it closed a month or so ago."

Buffy and Willow paid only minor attention to this. Both had edged closer to the replica to look at Xander's body inside the box. Peering through the front plastic windshield, the girls saw straps whose ends were attached to the inner front side of the box, that ran over Xander's shoulders, to end up being attached to the rear side of the box behind him. These straps clearly supported the whole weight of the box on the teenager's shoulders, allowing him to walk around while carrying his costume.

Willow asked doubtfully, "Xan, how do you get out of there? You know, to, uh, go to the bathroom…." The girl's face reddened as she trailed off her unfinished question.

Smiling, the teen boy dipped his knees, causing the replica to sink down to the floor to rest on the edges of the bottom flaps that had been shaped into the open rear double doors. Xander kept dropping his body until he was squatting, his head passing down through the circular hole cut in the top of the front plastic windshield, and his knees just touching the inner front of the box, as he pushed the carrying straps over his head, and then he twisted around in the box.

Xander's body blocked what he was doing from the curious trio, until the entire back side of the cardboard box, which was the replica's roof, swung open for Xander to duck-walk out, keeping his head down until he'd passed under the top of the box. Xander bounced to his feet, spinning around in mid-air to land with outspread arms and a proud, "Taaah-daaaah!"

Joyce, Buffy and Willow all had to applaud, with the redhead dashing to Xander to give him a congratulatory hug that was returned in kind. Pulling back from his embrace, Willow studied Xander's familiar boots, jeans and flannel shirt and reached out to the boy's neck to touch something that was strange. Above his shirt collar was a cloth wrapped around his neck. The Jewish girl looked puzzled as she touched the cloth and felt something hard under her fingers. "Xander, what's that on your neck?"

The boy brought up a hand to his neck and used his forefinger to tug down the cloth until all there could see an odd plastic and metal contraption wrapping around Xander's entire neck. He told them, "This is Uncle Rory's old neck brace, from when he got whiplash in a car accident a couple years ago. I don't know why he kept it in his garage, but I'm glad I found it."

Xander pointed at the circular hole in the front windshield at the top of the replica where his head would protrude when he wore his costume. Shaking his head, Xander wryly said, "Think about what would happen if I tripped or fell forward. Oh, I might manage to break my fall with my hands, but I'd still hit my throat against the windshield's edge. Not a good thing to happen, right?"

Female faces paled at this. Xander reassured them, again touching the neck brace he was wearing. "Don't worry, this thing will work, and I'll be careful."

There were some concerned looks, but Joyce, Buffy and Willow accepted this, with Buffy walking forward. The Slayer stepped around the replica resting on the floor, an interested look on her face while asking over her shoulder, "How'd you get it to open to walk out?"

"You can see the inside, right? Look at the edges, where I cut off the whole back side and re-attached it. The right inner edge of the roof has metal hinges attached to the roof and to the top of the right side. The left inner edge of the roof has just a couple of hook-and-eye things glued to the left sides, to keep the roof side closed. It took a little practice, but I can get right in and out, as you saw." Xander watched Buffy lean over to look at this, and then she reached out with her hand to touch the replica. He urgently spoke, "Buffy, careful of your fingers! I painted the roof last, and it's still tacky, hasn't completely dried!"

Emitting a panicked yelp, Buffy hopped a good yard away, looking at her fingers with horror and then frantically examining every inch of the front of her dress. She heaved a sigh of relief at finding nothing wrong, and then she glared at her smirking friend. "You could have told me that before I almost lost my costume deposit!" screeched the young woman.

"Now, Buffy," Joyce Summers reproved firmly. "Don't yell at Xander. He did warn you." At that, she looked past her fuming daughter towards a window, and continued. "It's almost dark, which means it's time for you to go to the school to meet your charges. Get ready to go, but just before you leave, I want to take some pictures of all of you together in your costumes. I'm going to get my camera." At that, the older woman walked out of the room, leaving behind her a young girl in a splendid aristocratic dress sticking out her tongue at a sniggering Xander and a giggling Willow.

The young man turned to share the happy mood with his bestest bud, only to be met with the most frightening, daunting, chilling, terrifying, and intimidating sight to be found in Sunnydale this Halloween night: Willow Rosenberg's Resolve Face. Gulping, Xander could only stand there and take the redhead's badgering tone, as she firmly said, "Alexander LaVelle Harris, why didn't you tell me earlier about what kind of costume you were going to make? I could have dressed up as Velma Dinkley!"

Xander sheepishly hung his head and mumbled, "Hey, Wils, I only thought of it when I was at the costume store. Once I got the stuff, I knew I had to start making the van right away, and I just got too involved in it to think of you…." At that, Xander closed his eyes to avoid seeing the glare he knew he was getting from Willow as he dug himself deeper in trouble. Only a miracle could save him now.

A miracle came to pass. Buffy's amused voice spoke, "Willow, even if he did remember to tell you what he was doing, I don't really think you could have gotten in time an orange turtleneck sweater, orange calf-high socks, a darker brownish-orange skirt, ugly glasses, and sensible shoes."

Willow shrugged, "Oh, I've got all that in my clothes closet."

Xander nodded his head. "Yeah, she does."

There was a short pause, until Buffy finally spoke again in a somewhat uneasy voice. "Okay, I don't know what's more disturbing, either her---" a blonde head dipped towards a blushing Willow "---having that exact outfit, or him---" this time towards a beet-red Xander "---knowing you have that."

There was quiet in the room, until a smirking Buffy brought her hands down to the sides of her upper-class costume, lifted the skirt, and swept around the room in a triumphant dance, watched by two subdued Sunnydale natives.

Xander soon regained his good humor at seeing how happy Buffy was. The Slayer needed a lift for her spirits, considering how stressful her life had been lately. So, he was perfectly willing to give his opinion when Buffy finished a twirl that flared the wide skirts of her gown, and her eyes gleaming, asked, "Hey, Xander, do you think this dress is pretty?"

"You betcha, Buffster." Xander had been around women long enough to know exactly how to answer that, even if the dress in question otherwise resembled something that had been run over by a train and then munched upon by a sudden infestation of locusts. Still, in this case, the teen could truthfully say her costume was nice.

"Good," said Buffy, peering at herself in the hallway mirror. "I hope Angel likes it." She continued looking at her reflection, with the position of the mirror leaving her unable to see how fast Xander's face turned sour.

Just as the teenager opened his mouth to deliver a nasty remark about Mr. Oh-My-Hair's-So-Great-Plus-I-Have-The-Brooding-Thing-Perfected-And-Have-You-Noticed-My-Hair?, he was distracted by a sudden poke in his ribs from the red-haired girl there, shying away from Willow as she also demanded, "Xander, what about my costume?"

"Um…." Xander tried to think of something to say about the ghost costume Willow had worn every Halloween since practically forever. "That's a nice….BOO you've got there."

Willow looked exasperated and shot a glare at a snickering Buffy. At that point, Joyce Summers came back into the room, carrying her camera and calling out, "Xander, would you please get back into your costume? Girls, both of you stand between him and get ready to smile."

A minute later, all three of the teenagers were blinking away the after-images of the numerous camera flashes of Mrs. Summers' dozen photos of the trio. A smiling woman watched them leave, with Xander once again carefully getting through the front door, calling after the young people, "Have fun and be careful! Don't stay out too long!" Joyce then closed the front door.

Despite smiling wryly at her mother having no idea what her daughter's usual night activities were like, Buffy was touched at hearing her mom's gentle concern. It was a rare moment of ordinary life in a truly strange existence for the Slayer, making her literally skip along for a few steps as she walked down the sidewalk with her friends.