Disclaimer: I do not own anything, it all belongs to other people, but I can still dream, can I?

A 36th drabble in my Halloween Short Story Collection. Different answers to the challenge: 'what if Xander dressed as something different for Halloween'.

Authors Note: Behold, the dreaded UnDead Bunny. Even worse than the energizer bunny. It rises again and again and again and...

Of Omens, Good and Bad

Simone of the Zordiak

It had looked like a good idea at the time. That was all Xander could say as an explanation. A fun idea for a Halloween costume. And now it was a disaster.

--

Everything had started after the thing with the Master. Prophecy thwarted, Hellmouth closed again and Apocalypse avoided, Buffy had left for L.A., leaving Xander and Giles behind for the summer (Willow had been dragged along with her parents to visit some far-flung relatives of her in Maine). And Xander had been bored. So he had regularly visited Giles to share his boredom with the librarian. Well, at least until Giles got him hooked onto this British fantasy author, then he had started visiting him to read some more of the fun books.

Then Buffy had returned, school had started again and everything had fallen into its boring old pattern, except for the books he was loaning from Giles now and then.

And then Snyder had ordered them to do the kiddie-thing for Halloween and he had found the most fitting costume in the newly opened shop. It was a cheap black leather jacket (the rest of the adventurer set had been damaged so he'd gotten it rather cheap), a pair of black sunglasses from the bargain bin and a set of contact lenses from the theatre section of the shop.

He had added his best pair of black jeans, a black shirt and shoes and had spent more time in front of the bathroom mirror than he normally would, to force his hair into submission.

Yes, he had done rather well, had earned himself some salivating looks form some of the cheerleading squad and it had felt really good to be looked at as something more than just Buffy's devote little follower.

Of course it was then, that Ethan Rayne's spell had hit him like an entire sack of sledgehammers and where Xander went crashing down to the ground, it was someone else that stood up and brushed the dirt from his clothing.

And of course this someone had noticed that something wasn't right, had found the magically suppressed Xander in the back of his mind and had learned the entire truth. It was also quite easy to understand that upon learning that he was a fictional being in this universe Crowley had decided to do anything and everything he could to remain here. He had no desire to dissolve into nothingness with the end of the spell.

It was quite simple for him to follow the trail of black magic to its point of origin and he was not sorry for the heart attack he caused in the shopkeeper by bursting into his quaint little shop in full-fledged demonic form. It was so easy to warp the spell and he had cheerfully drained the lesser God Janus of all of his powers to re-establish his own. The last thing he did was merging himself with the owner of his new body, to make sure that he was fully anchored into this reality.

That was about the moment when the Xander-part of him woke up and panicked.

--

Oh yes, it had looked like a good idea at the time. A fun idea for a Halloween costume. And now it was a disaster. As Giles explained and the Crowley-part of him cheerfully admitted, being a Fallen Angel in the Book world was one thing, but here, in this reality it meant something completely different. He was thousand times stronger than a mere demon, even a pure-breed helldemon was nothing against him. As a true Fallen Angel he was counted among the highest dark powers of this world and Crowley liked that a lot. No more stupid bosses with their stupid ideas of temptation and causing Armageddon. And he was pretty sure that his other half would accept his mischievous temptations of other human beings in exchange for his help in eradicating the lesser creatures that were infesting this plane.

Behind dark sunglasses, yellow snake eyes were glinting with mirth. He would miss the Angel, for a while, but he knew which spell the little chaos mage had used and as soon as he could find a decent focus, he would bring his friend to this interesting place. And… he eyed the librarian carefully, measuring him up against his Angel-friend, he already had the perfect body for him to inhabit.

End