Gargoyles/BtVS crossover – Yet Another Halloween Fanfic

"The Trickster in Me" (tentative title, subject to change, suggestions welcome)

Ethan's Costume Shop, 3:30p.m

Why does God hate me! Xander thought as he strolled through the isles of costumes waiting for something to catch his eye.

The day had started out normally enough with Buffy, Willow and him strolling the halls of Sunnydale high heading to the student lounge for lunch. Then their first bit of bad luck appeared in the form of Snyder 'volunteering' them for chaperon duty of a group of third graders. For two hours he'd be stuck with a group of half-pints who would not only be hyped up on sugar but also given the trend in modern society today probably have serious attitude problems. Still he had looked on the bright side of being able to dress up in a costume and maybe scam some of the candy from the kids before returning them to their parents. Then of course the second bit of bad luck had to show up in the form of Larry the Caveman linebacker asking about how 'fast' Buffy was and him trying to stand up to the bully. He personally hadn't cared whether he managed to make the jock back down or got pummelled a bit by the moron since he'd get credit for standing up to the guy one way or another. That of course was shot to pieces when Buffy intervened and shoved Larry against the soda machine. Now when everyone at school looked at him they'd see a guy so weak he needed a short weak looking little girl to rescue him. The final bit of bad luck came just minutes ago when he had spotted the final component he needed for his soldier costume. However before he came within ten feet of it a snot nosed brat of a kid he recognised, Austin Evinson, grabbed it and ran to the cash register to buy it.

Now here I am with thirty bucks in my pocket that I planned on using to by some used army fatigues from the surplus store and no gun in sight to complete the costume. He thought as he saw a Jedi costume but winced when he saw the price tag, Now I have to find something else and quick or else I'll have Snyder breathing down my neck and probably two weeks of detention.

The clock was ticking and both Buffy as well as Willow had already left with their costumes satisfied with his 'I will catch up' statement. He was just about to give up when he spotted an outfit at the very end of the aisle he was walking down. It looked to him like the manager of the store had put it up in a rush because not only was the mannequin about two sizes to small for the outfit but said outfit was just barely staying on the wooden figure. Deciding that it was interesting enough to warrant a closer look he walked up to it and did his best to arrange it like it was supposed to be. It took him less than a minute to recognise the red medieval shirt, purple toga, white wig and pointy ears of one of his favourite cartoon characters. While the show had technically ended last February he had never really considered the pathetic 'Goliath Chronicles' to be a part of the canon of the show. For one thing a fan of the show need only compare an episode from the 'Chronicles' with say the very interesting world tour arc and the differences in quality could easily be seen. The sound effects, the animation and the cool special effects used to make the magic as well as the glowy gargoyle eyes were all superior pre-Chronicles and sucked bit time after the Hunter's Moon episodes. Plus they put a lot more thought into the plot up until the end of the Hunter's Moon episodes as well.

Well lame ass job aside I think I just found my costume. Xander thought as he quickly began taking the outfit off the mannequin along with all the accessories.

He wasn't sure that he had enough money for it but he figured that given the half-hearted job that the manager had done putting it up that it wouldn't be too expensive. He breathed a sigh of relief as he found that the costume was only $24.95 and quickly doing the math he found that with tax added on he should just have enough. With an armful of cloth, some plastic ears, metal arm braces, a white wig, tights and brown boots he strolled to the cash register a playful and happy grin on his face.

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Sunnydale High School, 3:57p.m

It's times like these I really do wish I could turn him into a monkey. Xander thought as he organized the kids he'd been assigned into a straight line.

He had managed to get into costume, out the front door of his house and over to Buffy's in record time. A good thing in his opinion since he had a good idea what Tony would have both said and done if he had spotted his son's costume. After all it was hardly the sort of outfit a 'manly man' would wear and with a few exceptions only people under the age of twelve would likely recognise who he had dressed up as. When he had shown up at Buffy's so all three of them could walk to the school together the blonde Slayer had looked at him like he'd hit his head or something equally likely to disrupt thought processes. Fortunately Willow had come down a few seconds later and knew he had dressed up as after a single look. She quickly clued Buffy in and while that did get the Slayer to look less confused he knew she was still in the dark concerning who he had dressed up as. Letting it slide, while making a mental note to bring all his taped episodes over next time, they all started walking down the street to their mutually appointed doom at Sunnydale High School.

Sadly less than ten minutes after they arrived at the high school Larry had shown up to bug him and of course happily poked fun at his outfit like he had expected Tony would have had he caught his son sneaking out. Fortunately it seemed a fearful flinch was enough to satisfy the dimwitted dunce and that left him where he was right now which was trying to get a pack of kids to settle down and get organized. Deciding it might be time to get into character a little he closed his eyes for a moment and pulled to the front of his mind everything he remembered about a certain snow haired trickster.

"Alright boys and girls it's time for you to learn a thing or two about the fun that is trick or treating." Xander said in his best mischief maker voice, "Listen to me kiddies and I promise that in two hours you'll have so much candy and have had so much fun you'll be begging mom and dad to let you stay with little ol' me for a few hours more."

His acting worked like a charm as he saw more than a few proverbial light bulbs light up over their heads as they caught on to who he was dressed up as tonight. With the adoration they had for the character in their heads they became much more manageable and within ten minutes they were off to fill their bags with treats.

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Middle of the Street, Ten Seconds After Ethan Cast His Spell

"Oooooohhhhh! I haven't had a headache this bad since I tried to out drink Coyote." The short white haired man as he floated up into the air while massaging the sides of his head in an effort to relieve some of the pain.

Yeah? Well I'd take a throbbing headache over losing control of my body any day!

This statement from an unknown voice from within his head got rid of the pain in a jiffy but it also left him with a new problem. Searching within him he found that he had one extra mind floating around inside his head and he knew he hadn't created it. It was male, a teenager and at the moment seemed to sway between being pissed and freaking out over the change in circumstances. Reviewing the young one's statement he found much to his surprise that he really was in someone else's body along with his Owen personae.

"Well this is certainly an interesting turn of events." He said like he was talking about a sudden change in the weather, "I know I asked the boss for a change in address but this isn't quite what I had in mind. I don't suppose you know what's going on my unsuspecting host?"

Look all I know was one minute I'm escorting a bunch of kids around for Halloween and the next you're in the driver's seat with everyone else becoming their costumes.

'Everyone else becoming their costumes'? While it was certainly possible that the young man was under some other spell, Oberon knew there were a lot of them out there these days, it was more likely that the boy was under the same spell as everyone else. That would logically mean that for some reason the lad had chosen to dress up as him for Halloween and that was odd since he didn't remember signing any licensing deals.

"Well then my boy, before we go and eventually fix this mess, perhaps you could tell me what gave you the idea to dress up as yours truly." He asked as he tossed a few bolts of energy from his fingers to keep some mini-demons away.

Well I was always a big fan of the cartoon and since I've always liked your sense of humour it seemed like the perfect choice. 'Course if I knew this was going to happen I might've tried to convince Buffy to go as one of the Weird Sisters and Willow as Fox.

"Nah! I wouldn't wish dressing up as one of those old harpies on any mortal." He said making his opinion of the three almost identical triplets known, "However if that scantily clad redhead coming this way is Willow then I completely agree with your choice of costume. She's definitely got Fox's figure!"

Hey! That's my best friend you're leering at!

"For your information I was admiring her not leering." He corrected before he gave the redhead who was currently ghosting through a car's hood another once over, "However now that you mention it she is definitely leer worthy."

I swear if you try to come onto her I will find a way to hurt you!

"You're Puck right? And from the way you're talking Xander's inside you somewhere?" Willow asked having already pieced together what the situation was for her best-friend-since-pre-school.

"If by 'Xander' you mean the young man who apparently hasn't clued in that you are a beautiful young woman then yes he's inside me." Puck replied making Xander go non-verbal with disbelief and Willow tomato red with embarrassment.

"Look we gotta find Buffy and make sure she's okay!" Willow said urgently being the first of the two non-fae to get over their respective emotional overloads.

"Then by all means my fair female fox let's find this 'Buffy' and then we can really have some fun." Puck said as he flew over to Willow's side.

The look on Willow's face thought looked a little bit worried. Perfectly understandable since she had the same amount of knowledge of the cartoon 'Gargoyles' as Xander and knew what Puck considered 'fun'.

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One Month Later, Sunnydale High School, On the Way to Class

That was one serious close call last week. Xander thought to the other tenant in his body.

Hey you were the one who wanted bug flambé. Puck thought back from his position in the metaphorical 'back seat', I still think you should've let me clean up the mess that was left on Mrs. S's dining room floor. Now we won't be able to experience the delectable delight of her chocolate chip cookies!

As much as I miss Joyce's cookies I had a hard enough time as it was explaining to the gang why I can suddenly do magic. Xander thought to the Puck with sympathy, We're just lucky that they bought your 'learned some Earth magic during research' excuse or else I have a feeling I'd be tied to a chair with Giles yelling "evil spirit I cast you out".'

Puck had nothing to say to that as he turned a corner and saw the entrance to English class and that made it the first time in a month that the trickster had stopped talking or thinking or whatever. After finding Lady Useless a.k.a Buffy Summers the three of them (four if you counted Puck) had headed straight to the Summers home to regroup and try to figure out what was causing the chaos outside. Unfortunately Puck had proven to be more than a little restless being cooped up inside when there were so many 'interesting opportunities' to be had outside. Fortunately rescuing Cordelia and Deadboy's arrival had helped relieve some of the pressure building up in the trickster's 'prank tank' so things didn't get too bizarre. A grin formed on his face when he remembered what the Puck had done to have some fun with Angel and even now the look on Overbite's face afterwards had been priceless. Add to that the pranks and hi-jinks that followed and Xander could distinctly recall the exact moment he had wished that the fun would never end. Someone must have heard him because when the spell ended everyone else went back to normal for the most part with only a few lingering memories or bits of knowledge. He on the other hand just got control of his body back but as he found out when he got home and looked in the bathroom mirror he still had the trickster of Avalon inside of him. After some quick experimentation on his own, with some help from Puck, he found out that he now had a situation similar to the whole Owen Burnett-Puck thing. For the most part he walked around in a Xander shaped body living a Xander shaped life but when he permitted it or Puck wanted it bad enough they switched places. It had actually proved to be quite handy given some of the troubles the Scoobies had faced recently.

A week after Halloween it had helped him to figure out Ford the Fink's plans and after some judicious aging of the concrete around the edges of the bomb shelter door the asshole's plan to lock Buffy in 'til the vamps came fell through big time. Puck had wanted to do more but he didn't want to risk the gang finding out about his inner trickster just yet. He'd been honest to Puck when he described what the gang would do if they found out that the prankster of Avalon was still inside of him. Willow would want the trickster gone because of how the fae could make her blush on command. Buffy would want the child of Oberon gone because she didn't want him to move past the definition she had of him. Giles would simply not trust Puck simply because of his own brush with Eygon and his knowledge of 'A Midsummer's Night Dream'. Puck of course claimed that 'that hack Shakespeare' had gotten that little adventure of his all wrong but truth be told that was as much as the Xan-man wanted to know.

In any case it was only a few days ago that the real problem had happened. Spide and Dru had hired some assassin guild called the Order of Taraka to kill Buffy. Apparently these guys had a serious work ethic because according to Giles they'd just keep coming until the target was eliminated. Puck of course had to make the crack that Demona'd probably fit right in with those guys given her obsession with killing off the human race. He on the other hand had decided to stick by his friend no matter what which of course led to him and Cordy checking out Buffy's place after the blonde Slayer failed to check in. Things had been going fine up until Queen C decided to let her inner shopper come out to play when an assassin came by posing as a cosmetics salesman. When the guy turned out be made out of bugs and attacked them he'd acted on reflex and asked the Puck to fry him. It was only by mere chance that the trickster hadn't transformed right in front of Cordelia but it had left him in the uncomfortable spot of explaining how he did it to the others. Fortunately they'd bought his crap story but the mess the cooked bug assassin left on the floor of the Summers home had put him in the dog house as far as the Summers family was concerned.

Don't worry! They can't stay mad at you forever. Puck thought to him dismissing the severity of the situation, Eventually they'll miss your sense of humour, much improved thanks to my tutoring, and beg you to come back.

Entering the classroom he took his seat a row over from Buffy and Willow before getting out the necessary tools required if you wanted to learn something. When he looked to the front of the classroom though he noted the decided absence of the history teacher Mr. Jones. That was odd considering the man was usually waiting for them when they came in and the blackboard was usually covered with the notes they had to take down. Looking at the teacher's desk he noticed that it was rather bare aside from the stuff that was pretty much standard issue for every teacher hired at Sunnydale High School. Combine the two oddities and it all added up to Mr. Jones being the latest casualty of the demon of the week and that meant the Scoobies would be researching big time this evening.

I think I might actually miss Mr. Jones. Xander thought as he sat back in his seat, I actually liked the old guy's classes. Unlike the rest of the faculty he knew what he was talking about and didn't have rod stuck up his butt.

Two minutes before he and the rest of the class were about to invoke the ten minute rule, which states that if a teacher doesn't show up for class within ten minutes you can leave, Snyder showed up with three teenage girls and a tall thirty-something woman. The three girls were absolute knockouts in his opinion and best of all they were identical triplets and that of course sent his mind to a very happy place. Dressed in clothes that were a cross of Buffy affordability and Cordy sexiness he knew that within a week every guy from jock to geek would be trying to get a date with at least one of them. The thirty-something woman was dressed like your text-book teacher but had looks that could have gotten her on TV if she auditioned. Brown hair, blue eyes and lips that would put Angelina Jolie's to shame made for one helluva package.

I wonder who they are? He thought as he waited for Snyder to give his usual prison warden explanation.

"Listen up! Due to Mr. Jones unexpected resignation two days ago you have a new history teacher." Snyder said making it plain what would happen to the first student who interrupted him, "Her name is Alice Rice and I expect you to treat her with respect because I will hear about it if you don't. Also you have three new classmates who just moved to Sunnydale a week ago. They are Prue, Erika and Serena Sanders. I expect you punks to wait a least a week before trying to get them in the back of your cars."

Something's fishy about this. Xander thought as he tried to figure out what was setting off his Spidey sense, Mr. Jones wasn't acting like he wanted to quit last week.

Given what goes on in this crazy town at night I'm surprised there's anyone still here! Puck thought at him with a tone that said he was puzzled as well, You're right that there's something fishy about these newbies. There's almost something familiar…

"They're all yours Ms. Rice. Feel free to give out detention slips as often as you want." Snyder said before leaving the room to terrorize some other students.

Surprisingly Ms. Rice and the Sanders triplets looked just as happy as the rest of the class that Herr Snyder was gone. Once everyone was certain that the impotent Nazi was long gone the new teacher turned to face the class but for some reason it felt like she was looking directly at him.

"Well class, contrary to what Mr. Snyder would have you believe, I hope to make this class as enjoyable as I can and still get you to learn something." Ms. Rice said in a voice that caused the alarms in Xander to go from fire alarm loud to red alert loud, "Prue, Erika, Serena? Please take a seat so we may get started."

The triplets nodded and began walking around the class apparently looking for a place where they could sit close together. Unfortunately for him his reputation as a geek and a freak had long ago made everyone want to keep at least one desk away from him in all directions. Which meant that in less than a minute he had three hot young ladies sitting within arm's reach with one on either side as well as one directly behind him. While the proximity to such prime candidates for the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue was definitely nice the looks they were giving him now and again were starting to make him nervous.

"After taking a look at Mr. Jones' lesson plan I see you've just finished chapter six so to start things off today you'll be taking a surprise quiz so I can see what you've learned." Ms. Rice said, much to the class' dismay, as she began going up and down the rows of students handing out the one page quiz.

The new teacher was about halfway through the class before she got to him but when she did Ms. Rice did something kind of weird. Instead of putting the quiz face down like everyone else's copy she had it face up on his desk and even stranger was what was written on it. It was a message of some kind but it was in a language he'd never seen before either in class or during research parties at the library. Picking up the sheet of paper he tried to get a closer look at it but the moment focused on it he felt Puck suddenly seize control of his body and look intensely at Ms. Rice. The teacher noticed this and seemed to give a friendly formal smile but there was a flicker in her eyes that said otherwise.

Puck? What's going on? You're scaring the Xan-man. Xander thought at his magical tenant as the trickster turned his head to look at Prue Sanders the same way he'd looked at the new history teacher.

When Prue Sanders gave him the same sort of 'friendly-but-not-quite' smile followed by Serena Sanders on his left his Sunnydale paranoia began to tip him off that maybe the prankster might be onto something. After examining the teacher and two of the three Sanders sisters Puck had apparently seen enough to confirm whatever hunch had set him off in the first place. Whatever it was had the fae distinctly worried but at the same time somewhat happy like some relatives he hadn't seen in awhile had… shown…

Puck! Tell me I'm not seeing what I think I'm seeing! Xander thought at Puck as he did a slightly more covert examination of the newcomers.

Sorry amigo! Our worst fears have come true. Puck thought at him in a tone that stated he had a bad feeling about something, The three harpies of Avalon and the wife of Big Daddy Oberon have come to Sunnydale!

But they're fictional characters! Xander thought loudly as he tried to comprehend who had him boxed in and had served him with a surprise quiz.

Hey! So was I until a month ago buddy! Puck thought at him clearly offended at being called fictional, Still if they're from the cartoon like me then Titania should be able to keep the three harpies from frying either of us. She always liked me.

And if they aren't? Xander thought at Puck inquiringly as he picked up a pencil and made it look like he was doing the quiz.

Then I hope you've got a plan for dealing with them because I'm sure drawing a blank! Puck thought at him not liking their chances one bit.

Great! Xander thought at Puck crabbily as he had been hoping that the trickster would have some clue as to how to escape the wrath of the Weird Sisters and Titnaia, Hopefully I'll at least get a date out of those three before they start with the torture and pain. At least then I'd be going out with a happy!

You can't be serious! Puck thought at him shocked that someone would actually want to date his three harpy-like sisters.

Hey! Can I help it if they're hot? Xander thought at Puck as he covertly did some appraising of the teenage forms of the Weird Sisters, Besides if they're going to kill me I should at least get something out of the deal!

Those are my sisters you're talking about! Puck thought extra loud at him as he obviously did not like the thoughts bouncing around Xander's head concerning his sisters.

Exactly! Your sisters, not mine. Xander thought at Puck as he enjoyed being able to get a rise out of the trickster for a change, If you don't like what you're seeing in there then just find a corner of my mind and lock yourself inside. I'll knock when it's safe to come out.

The sound of the door slamming in his mind came through loud and clear.