Willow herself goggled at this, having poked her head into the front inside area of the van just after the sudden stop. As the young woman dressed in a cat costume that was now mostly in shreds ran from the right to the left of the van and then dodged around the left front corner of the van, Willow recognized this girl at once as Cordelia Chase. Her pursuer was a real Larry Talbot wolfman, with a human body and clothing, full facial hair, pointed ears, hairy clawed hands, and fangs. All that creature needed was Maria Ouspenskaya somberly chanting, "Even a man who is pure in heart…."

Just as this werewolf also ran around the left front corner of the van, baying after his prey, Willow bounced to her feet, which had the consequence of poking her ghostly head through the roof to frantically look for Cordelia, who was now rounding the van's right rear corner. Seeing, this, Willow yelled, "Cordy, run around to the driver's seat! We'll open the door for you!" Willow dropped to her knees back inside the van and snapped, "Xander, do it!"

The driver's door instantly swung open under Xander-van's command. Buffy emitted only a moderate scream at seeing Cordelia run past her window and then around the front of the van. The noblewoman's next scream was the equal of any of her previous deafening shrieks as the wolfman, slightly winded (the females never ran this fast in the Universal films), loped past the passenger window and followed the scent of his quarry across the front of the van.

Cordelia dove into the driver's seat, her door slamming shut on its own right after that. Not that she noticed, as she was busy screaming at a decibel level matching the girl in the pink dress on her right, as the wolfman clawed at the driver's window, howling at the top of its lungs in its urge to consume its victim cowering away from it. The other female screeching at the top of her lungs would be a nice snack for later.

Before Willow could suggest something, Xander-van acted on his own. BANG!

The entire van rocked, as all three girls were struck dumb by the driver's door bursting open much faster than before, to smash right into the wolfman's chest, hitting it hard enough to send it flying through the air, to land in a crumpled heap of moaning lupine agony a dozen feet away. Silver might be the only thing capable of killing a werewolf, but a slab of steel from an all-American late-sixties motor vehicle was quite capable of busting anything's chops.

The van then drove off down the street, obediently following the speed limits. There was a short period of silence, as the two currently-breathing females there got themselves under control, until Cordelia said in a tight voice, "Hey, Rosenberg, you got any explanation of why this steering wheel's working by itself and how come this car's driving without me touching the pedals?"

Willow grimaced, and began to explain. "Something weird happened tonight---"

"Well, duh. This is Sunnydale. Weirdness doesn't take the night off."

Willow snapped back at the woman who had interrupted her. "Will you let me finish? We have to call Giles, and see if he can help! Somehow, we all changed into our costumes --- we became whoever we were when we had them on!"

Cordelia cast a cool glance over Willow's racy clothing, and raised a sardonic eyebrow. "You decided to dress up as a hooker this year?"

As Willow's face became a deep red identical to the color of her hair, her ladyship decided to join in. "Verily, no decent woman would dress so as her. I see that thou art another sister of hers, sharing with her the same shameful livelihood."

"WHAT DID YOU SAY!?"

Hastily, Willow tried to clear things up before Cordelia decided to stuff Buffy into the van's glove compartment. "Buffy dressed up as an eighteenth-century noblewoman tonight. Right now, after the change, she's, uh, well, think of every Princess Barbie ever made and all the someday-my-prince-will-come songs deposited into an otherwise completely empty head."

Subsiding back into her seat, Cordelia let a thin smile flicker over her face while she glanced at Buffy's blank expression that showed the blonde girl had totally missed the insults. "You're beginning to show some spunk, Rosenberg. Maybe you should dress like that more often."

Willow's face turned red again, and she quickly held up her ghost costume for Cordelia to see. "I dressed up as a ghost! Watch this---" At that, Willow leaned forward to poke her left arm through the van's metal side, taking a secret satisfaction at how a girl who had tormented her for years turned pale at this.

Cordelia magnificently rallied after a few moments, asking, "So, uh, what about this car? Is it part of the Halloween freakiness tonight?"

Willow momentarily closed her eyes. This was going to be the hard part. She opened her mouth, shut it, and thought before trying again. "Oh, that's right, you never saw Xander's costume. He, well, he dressed up as the Mystery Machine van from the Scooby-Doo cartoons, and when whatever happened a while ago….he changed into this car."

There was a short pause, until from the driver's side came giggling sounds that rapidly increased to loud hysterical laughter, with Cordelia beginning to have tears trickling down her face, as an alarmed Willow watched.

Naturally, since nobody had been talking about her for the last few minutes, a now-bored Lady Buffy said brightly, looking down at her passenger seat, "By my faith, this chair is most marvelous soft!" At that, the girl put a blissful expression on her face, and vigorously wiggled her rear end all over the car seat.

In the street, Xander-van promptly popped into a 45-degree wheelie, and blasted a discordant BEEEEEEEEEEP! that resounded throughout the entire neighborhood, before the front of the van dropped back down, bouncing gently on all four wheels as the car came to a complete stop.

A few moments later, a woman's voice said in a tone of poisonous sweetness, directed towards the steering wheel, "Do you want a cigarette after that, Harris?"

Inside the van, Cordelia blinked to make sure her eyeballs were still in her head, and glared at a cowering Buffy. "Listen, you puffed-up pimple of a princess, you do anything like that again, and I'll build a guillotine especially for you!" The incensed brunette leaned back in her seat and folded her arms, as the van timidly started driving again.

Willow winced at Cordelia's outburst, and also at her own naughty thoughts as she wondered if Xander had left an oil stain behind in the street….

Hastily getting her mind out of the gutter (I KNEW I should have never left Buffy talk me into wearing her most indecent outfit!), Willow frowned, and asked a grumpy Cordelia, "Wait a second. Why didn't you turn into your costume?"

Cordelia looked down at her shredded clothes and let out a screech of pure rage. "That hairy moron! He wrecked what I went all the way to Los Angeles for!"

"You didn't buy that costume here, in Sunnydale?"

The head cheerleader of Sunnydale High cast a frigid glance at Willow for asking that, sniffing, "You actually think I'd shop here, in this one-Starbucks town? No, I went to Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, where all the right people go."

Ignoring the new-money upper-class snobbery, Willow said thoughtfully, "We, that is, Buffy and I got our costumes at the new store here, Ethan's….and….Xander said he brought his toy car parts that were part of his costume from there!"

Now it was Cordelia's turn to become thoughtful. "The Cordettes got their costumes here, I think. Harmony got her costume at….Ethan's, you say? Audra went to Costume Town and got a sexy nurse outfit, but….I don't think anything happened to her, though I got chased by that overgrown dog right after that."

"What'd Harmony dress as?"

A strange expression came over Cordelia's face at that point, a mixture of glee and wonder. "Well, just for laughs, she decided to go as, um, a….nun."

There was now total silence among the women in the van, interrupted only by a burble of sound from the van's engine, that if it had come from a flesh-and-blood teenage boy instead of a chunk of Detroit steel, it would have suspiciously resembled a snigger.

"A most proper attire," grandly announced Lady Buffy. "I trow that fine lady hath lived a truly pure and chaste life to perfectly match her garments."

Willow and Cordelia looked at each other and simultaneously rolled their eyes.

The brunette pensively said, "The really odd thing was….well, after IT happened, two guys came up with lumpy faces, yellow eyes, and fangs. Harmony just pointed at them, chanted out loud for a few seconds in….Latin, I think, and….the guys right then and there poofed into dust and ashes!"

That little bit of news caused the passengers in the van to remain quiet for the rest of the drive to Buffy's house. As the van stopped at the curb in front of the house, Willow promptly walked through the side of the van, smirking at the stifled yelp by Cordelia, who nevertheless had the confident look always maintained by Queen C in the halls of the town's high school, when she walked around the front of the van to join Willow.

Lady Buffy peered nervously from the passenger seat, her door invitingly opened by Xander-van waiting for her to get out. She muttered, "Must we dwell in that hovel? A palace is far more fitting for such as I."

"Oh, you're so lucky your m--- Lady Joyce didn't hear you say that! You'd have wished for a good dose of the plague instead, you miserable excuse for a Slayer! Move your butt, or instead of a pea in your mattress, I'll put a bear trap in there!" yelled Willow, finally and totally losing her patience and her temper.

Her Blondness descended to the ground, stalking past the fuming redhead and the snickering brunette, her nose held high in the air as she refused to acknowledge the uncouth peasantry.

Willow and Cordelia were suddenly startled by the passenger door slamming shut and vigorous beeping from Xander-van.

BEEP! BEEP-BEEP-BEEP! BEEP-BEEP! BEEPITY-BEEP! BEEEEEEP!

"Okay, Xander, but be careful out there." After saying that, Willow turned to the house, seeing Cordelia's look of disbelief. "What?!"

The head cheerleader's eyes narrowed, and she slowly said, "If he'd turned into a border collie and he'd scratched his paw once against the ground, would you have known that he meant 'Little Timmy's fallen down the well, Farmer Johnson's barn is on fire, and I've solved Fermat's Last Theorem?'"

"Don't be ridiculous! Xander's worst subject is math." At Cordelia's gimlet stare, Willow threw up her hands and said in exasperation, "Look, he's Xander! No matter who--- what he is, he'll go help!" Looking around and not seeing Buffy, Willow snarled, "Where'd Her Idiocy go?"

Cordelia pointed down the side passage to the back yard. Willow rushed after, calling over her shoulder, "Will you come on? I'll show you where the spare key is, but we have to call Giles!"

Shaking her head, Cordelia took a step towards the Summers house, and then she stopped and turned around to stare at Xander-van still parking at the curb, his motor running. She opened her mouth, paused, and sighed. "Harris, this could only happen to you."

Xander-van's right headlight flickered off for a fraction of a second. It could, under the current conditions, be described as a wink.

Cordelia turned around to walk towards the house, hearing behind her Xander-van rumble off down the street in a smooth rush of horsepower. There was a faint smile on her face, as the cheerleader went to find the other two girls. That was easy enough, as all she had to do was to follow the yelling.

"Stop calling me the Whore of Babylon, you blonde airhead whose roof doesn't match the basement!"

Cordelia's smile widened into an evil grin, as she mused, "It might be worth hanging around with these dweebs just for the prime blackmail material alone."

***************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Besides the usual Sunnydale Syndrome of ignoring, explaining away, and refusing to believe what they had seen and experienced of the unearthly events that occurred in their hometown, the city's residents also had one single particular reason for never talking about the events of Halloween Night after that holiday.

Witnessing a 1960's cartoon van, that every single person there had at one time or other watched on the television screen, which was now driverlessly racing up and down the streets of their home on Halloween, charging at monsters and driving away these fiends attacking people, all while emitting cheerful beeping honks, ultimately convinced the entire town to just shut up about it before they were all committed to a psychiatric facility with lots of pills, straitjackets, and padded walls.