BtVS by Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Marvel U by the parent company and its many artists/writers.

Heh, awesome. Years after I first posted these guys, hair apes have made their way into Adventure Time. Completely different critters as, among other things, theirs aren't hungry and are a dust bunny – static electricity based – type. Still... Sweet.

Having frozen a few more of the monkeys into immobility, Tara had time to consider what was going on. "Let me see that," she said, after having stared at her own bag of hair for awhile. Remy shrugged and handed his over. A short spell later and the hair had been rendered into a fine powder suitable for creating short lived dust clouds.

After a bit of planning, Tara passed her fire extinguisher to one of the actors and Myra, who'd made her way to the stage by then, grabbed a third one from the production booth. With Spike wielding his treated broom, Remy and Tara holding their bags of hair and help from the cast, they started herding the monkeys away from the edges of the stage and into the center.

Nodding to Remy, Tara reached in her bag and pulled out a handful of the powdered hair. Standing at one edge of the loose circle of monkeys she blew the hair towards the largest concentration. Remy did the same from the other side, while Spike kept any from fleeing in his direction.

As the powder drifted towards the monkeys they reacted by levitating en masse. In the center of the stage, several feet in the air they held onto each other, forming a tight ball and began to weave themselves into each other.

The monkeys scattered throughout the backstage, including those harassing the staff who'd barricaded themselves into places like the janitor's closet, stopped what they were doing and zoomed towards the stage, reaching it within seconds.

When all the monkeys had connected to each other they resolved into a single giant floating gorilla.

The dust clouds barely had time to thin. The monster's loud bellow blew the clouds out a bit further.

Somewhat unimpressed, Remy held his bag high and made a running leap for the scenery. Scaling it he reached the ropes holding it and launched himself towards the catwalk. Holding onto it with one hand he dumped all of the powdered hair he carried into the air directly above the gorilla.

Dozens of black eyes opened across the gorilla's scalp and the monster freaked, abandoning its flight and trying to form into a squat pancake shape as it dove towards the ground.

"Spike, lighter!" Tara caught the flung tool and flicked it on. Enhancing the small flame into a proper torch she ran through the dust ring right up to the monster and shoved it against its chest.

Caught on all sides, the monster died in a huge billow of smoke and flame.

##

Remy released his hold on the grating high above the stage, fell a bit, grabbed a cable and swung himself, his metal boots passing through the top edge of the cloud he was avoiding being roasted by, towards a fairly solid portion of the backdrop, bounced off the painted surface using his bo staff as a guide for momentum and gracefully landed on the stage floor.

##

There was silence for a few seconds before the audience erupted in applause.

Drawn by the noise, it only took a few moments before most of the cast, including a very confused director with a bandaged hand, were rounded up into a rough line to take their bows.

##

A six year old in the front row, who had taken the opportunity to climb her daddy's shoulders, shouted: "The Wicked Witch was so awesome! I want to be just like her when I grow up."

##

Understandably, this left Tara and Spike with rather odd looks on their faces.

"So you think when the blocks of ice are hit," Myra said as she escorted Tara to the lighting booth. "The monkeys inside will shatter into little cubes?"

"That's the plan, they don't have bones. Clean-up can wait, the ambulance is about to leave and I want to see if Mr. Sanderson's fingertip can be salvaged." Someone elbowed Tara, squeezing past the girls in the narrow hallway. "Hey."

Tara spun in place, wanting to chew the guy out for the rudeness, but something about the back of his head struck her as odd. "Hey, did you see," she said, her words breaking off as she turned to look over her shoulder.

Myra had just opened the door and the inside of the room had been... redecorated by the demon's efforts to rid itself of the small amount of flesh and blood. Each of the hairs that had been stained were thrashing, individually, rolling up the walls and across the ceiling, leaving very faint trails as they tried futilely to get clean.

"Oh. Goddess." Tara muttered a faint prayer. She closed her eyes, gritted her teeth, and opened her eyes again, determined not to let the spectacle get the better of her. "This is going to take awhile."

After hanging around the auditorium doors for awhile, sneaking glances in at the action, Warren and Jonathan decided to leave. They'd just stepped out into the darkness surrounding Grant High when someone came running up behind them. Warren threw out his fist reflexively, hitting him hard on the shoulder, but Andrew was too happy to really mind the pain.

"Wasn't that awesome?" Andrew started bouncing in place like a very small Tigger. "I told you I could pull something spectacular off."

"Yeah," Jonathan allowed. "You did. It was amazing."

"Oh, please." Warren sneered, unwilling to show how impressed he was. "Magic's wild and uncontrolled. Give me science. I've got a robot girlfriend back home who'll do anything I say."

"Really?" Jonathan's brow furrowed. "Can she roleplay? I could write up a character sheet for her and have her try out at the next game-"

"Uncontrolled?" Andrew's face and freshly shaved head were red. He'd been trying to keep his emotions in check, but had failed completely. "I'll have you know I'm the only reason they didn't attack the audience. I'm why nobody got hurt!"

Warren took pity on the geek, inclining his head to show he hadn't meant to hurt his feelings. "So, how'd you get them to follow your orders?"

"Uh. Weeks and weeks of training," Andrew lied through his teeth. He didn't know how long it'd take him to figure out enough of the parchment's binding spell that he'd be able to weave one of his own and he was afraid his new friends would want another demonstration immediately. "Yeah. Same as what my brother did, except I actually succeeded!"

"Wait, what did Tucker fail at? I thought he was pretty much good at everything," Jonathan said. "Of course, that could just be a side effect of that spell he gave me in college."

"Boring," Warren muttered.

"He sent a pack of hellhounds to tear apart the prom. Sure, one of them escaped and killed a guy in a store." Andrew mimed the rending and clawing of flesh. "But at the actual event the Slayer rendered 'em all impotent! They barely made it in the building! She broke their friggin' necks. My flying monkey demons don't even have bones to break!"

"You mean the guy was actually ripped apart?" Warren's face twisted into a hungry grin. "That is so cool!"

"Wait. That prom? My prom?" Jonathan growled. "What a jerk. I'm never DM-ing for him again."

"Does that mean I get to have his seat at the game?" Andrew's eyes grew really big and hopeful.

"Sure, kid," Warren said, deciding he had earned that much. "Absolutely."

Noticing that several of the bloodstained hairs had fallen to the carpet and were twitching themselves in her direction, Tara upended her bag of powdered hair, sending what little remained drifting towards her feet. Stepping back, she cast a spell meant to create a small windstorm as she slammed the door in front of her. A few muted pops later, she opened the door again and was rewarded by the sight of nothing moving in the room besides a few puffs of smoke descending from the ceiling.

"Okay," she said. "I was wrong, that didn't take any time at all."

##

On her way back to the stage, Tara caught a glimpse of a still-costumed Spike ducking into a dressing room and closing the door quietly.

Her knock received a muttered 'bloody hell.' "Sorry, luv," Spike said as he cracked open the door. "I can't keep up the accent any longer and I'm afraid someone might come in here and knick my stuff. Soon as I'm out of this get-up, I'm gone. Didn't sign up to be part of a cleaning crew either."

"Why'd you do it in the first place?"

"Well, it helped that the trousers and shirt were meant for a guy already, albeit a tight fit." Spike sighed. "Dru sometimes had visions of other worlds. Places where the rules were different and our kind could walk in what passed for daylight. She always wanted to go to one and make herself a princess, usually by killing the competition. Remember Dracula? We'd bought a copy of that, signed by the author, a week or so before we met the great big poof himself. After that, she made it a point of tracking down fiction she wanted to be true. I guess I wanted to recapture some part of the dream."

Having made his speech looking at the floor, he raised his head with a rogueish grin. "Besides, I make this cape look good."

Still smiling under the make-up, he pushed the door shut.

##

A few seconds later, deep in thought, Tara turned away. "Oh, I bumped into the kid whose head you shaved," she said. "Just before I emptied my bag of hair and it didn't look like he had any more to contribute. I guess you left your broom with Remy in case of trouble?"

"Hey," Spike said, his voice somewhat muffled. "I didn't shave anybody. Don't go around accusing people of stuff just because they're trouble. I mean I could accuse your 'brother' of bringing those demons here through a dimensional portal just because he came through one himself."

She blinked. "What?"

"Yeah." Spike sighed. "That's what he told me."

Tara looked at the floor. After a moment, her mouth twitched in a slightly hurt smile. "I heard about the reality hopping that happened around Willow when she was high school. It kind of figures that the next bit would happen to me."

Behind the closed door, Spike leaned back in the dressing room's chair, crossed his legs and stared hard at the ceiling. "It does, doesn't it?"

##

"Well," Remy said bluntly, surprising Tara as she hadn't heard his approach. "It is a bit rude to not be givin' me th' time to come clean on my own, 'specially when the wait would've been so little, no?"

Tara took a few deep breaths to compose herself and turned around, her head raised to meet her brother's eyes. "I guess that portal that took you from your apartment to mom's grave wasn't just across the state?"

"Oh," Remy said, his blood-red eyes blinking in surprise. "No, I live in New York. Of course, that's beside th' point. Yeah, my home's in another reality. Our papa did appear to recognize me though, so I'm assuming there's only one pair of me and you."

"Hold up," Tara said, frowning as she thought over some of the details Willow had relayed to her. "Someone older than you who looks like you brings you back to your family in another reality and you don't get suspicious? It doesn't occur to you that he could have collected you from our home because you look like him? Also, why didn't you mention this earlier?"

A frown flitted across Remy's face as he considered one of his more unusual father figures. It was true that, while he had proven helpful from time to time, the white-haired man wasn't the most stable of characters...

"Don't be griping about me letting the cat out of the bag, either," Spike chimed in. "How was I supposed to know you didn't just nip out the back like I'm about to? Took your sweet time in getting here."

Remy stood his ground. "I don't like the term 'collected' as it might apply to me. It doesn't sound like the guy anyway. Yes, there was a prophecy about someone with our eyes and he might have arranged it so it didn't apply to him, but I like th' guy and I believe that if he'd seen something like that coming his way, he'd have stood his ground and taken it." He noticed that his fists had clenched as he talked, so he forced them to relax. "I was guarding some of the kids as we disposed of the frozen monkeys. The pottery shop has a kiln hot enough to burn hair. Please, chere, I just wanted to have a chance to get to know you, without you being overly suspicious."