During his last check before actually putting on the costume laid out on the small table that took up most of the storage closet, Xander looked up at hearing noises coming from the main library room beyond the door of the tiny cubicle. Stepping over in just his boxers and his socks to this door, Xander cautiously opened it a crack and peeked through the space, to suddenly allow a wide grin to appear on his face, as he pulled open the door a little bit wider, permitting his head to poke out while keeping the rest of his body hidden behind the door.
"Hail, Duchess Buffy, the most fairest of them all!" whooped Xander at the dark-haired teenage girl standing there in her ornate, old-fashioned, noblewoman's red gown, who reacted only by turning her head to smile at her friend giving the Slayer an admiring look. But then, with her heightened senses, Buffy had already heard Xander's breathing even before she'd entered the library.
Willow, on the other hand, had jumped in startlement at the voice coming from behind her, to spin around in time to receive Xander's resigned comment, "Oh, Wils, not the ghost costume again?"
Pulling back the hood of her white sheet that had the word 'BOO!' written upon this, an annoyed young redhead snapped to the oddly-acting teenager behind his door, "You know I wear it every Halloween! Anyway, how come you didn't show up at Buffy's house, like we planned? Her mom told us you'd be here."
Xander's head bobbed, with his friends realizing he'd shrugged his shoulders concealed by the closet door. "I had to sneak in here to change, since I didn't want Snyder to see me and my costume before it was ready. By the way, is he out there?"
Buffy and Willow glanced at each other in perplexity, with the latter girl also starting to develop a worried look, as Buffy answered, "Yeah, mister high-and-mighty's strutting around like usual, bothering everyone. Why do-"
Cutting into the Slayer's reply, Willow groaned, "Xan, please tell me you're not gonna do something stupid."
From where she'd been staring at the smartest student in Sunnydale High now having her eyes closed in real pain, Buffy turned her head to examine Xander, as that boy then allowed a truly fiendish grin to slowly break free on his face, as he pulled his own head back behind the door, followed by him giving a spine-chilling cackle: "Heh, heh, heh…"
A very taken-aback Buffy once more looked at Willow, who still had her eyes squeezed shut, before the Slayer ventured, "He's gonna do something stupid, right?"
Willow simply nodded in resignation.
Inside the storage closet, Xander quickly dressed, once more delighting in the fact that evidently he and Grandpa Harris had been exactly the same size, with his new clothes fitting perfectly, if a bit oddly, since he certainly never wore anything like this all the time. The teenager gave a wary sniff, to then feel relieved at learning the few hours' airing his outfit had been given had managed to disperse most of the overpowering smell of mothballs that had been clinging to the garments when Xander had first pulled them out of his ancestor's storage chest. Wiggling his toes in the strange footwear that had also been in this rectangular metal box, Xander finished with the last of his family attire, jauntily tilting forward the blue headgear he now placed upon his cranium.
Now, for the final part of his costume. Xander picked up from the table the strip of white cloth he'd bought at that stuck-up Englishman's Halloween shop. However, since then, the boy had stapled together the ends of this strip, making it into a long loop of fabric, and then on the front of this loop, he'd also stapled several capital letters that had been patiently cut out by scissors from a large, black sheet of thick paper lifted from the art supply room. It looked really professional, proudly noted the young man, as he slipped the wide ribbon over his head and then adjusted the band of cloth that was now draped over his right shoulder and across the chest, diagonally down to his left hip.
"Okay, guys, here I come!" Hearing their friend call out that alert, Buffy and Willow expected what happened next, as the closet door suddenly swung completely ajar. What wasn't expected was exactly what now stood in the doorway for the two girls to gawk at.
Xander Harris, in all his shown glory, including every tooth gleaming in the biggest grin of that young man's life, was wearing a boxy, blue suit cut in a style that had to be at least several decades old, a skinny blue tie from the same era, a crisp white shirt, good pants, shiny black wingtips, and a formal men's hat of the kind last seen during the early Kennedy administration. However, the strangest thing of all was what now looped diagonally down the teenager's torso. From his shoulder to his hip, a band of white cloth hung there, with black letters attached to this strip that spelled out: MAYOR.
Just barely registering how Willow slowly sank into a nearby library chair, to start rocking back and forth while holding her ribs and screaming with laughter, a wide-eyed Buffy nervously watched as this bizarre creature bounded towards her, his hand held out along the way so that when he stopped, this parody of a politician grabbed her own limp hand to then start zealously giving her a vigorous pump-handle handshake, all while declaiming an enthusiastic oration.
"Good golly gosh! It's a tremendous honor for me to welcome the Slayer to our fair town of Sunnydale, the best little city in California! Without a doubt, our fellow citizens that I strive my utmost to assist in their daily labors must be truly thankful to have such a charming and beauteous maiden to firmly reprove those vile miscreants that dare to disturb the tranquility of our bucolic community!"
At no point, during that stream of words that Buffy was numbly listening to, did Xander pause for breath, close his lips that still showed off all his shiny teeth, or stop shaking her hand so hard she was beginning to bounce up and down in her dancing slippers.
Finally starting to regain her senses, the girl in the brown wig easily snatched her hand from Xander's grip, and shooting a sideways glare at a red-faced Willow in her chair beginning to have actual tears of mirth trickling down her cheeks, Buffy then shifted her annoyed gaze back at the grinning comedian across from her, opening her mouth to start yelling at him to find out just what the hell was going on.
Before she could utter a single syllable, Xander had thrust his right hand into the inner jacket pocket of his suit, and the young man then pulled out something that was proudly held up right in front of the astonished Slayer's face, who now stared at a small, somewhat worn and dog-eared card, with the following lines printed upon this white slip of paper:
MAYOR OF SUNNYDALE
A Nice Place To Live!
At the very bottom of the card, just below a last line of a person's printed name, there had been written in now-faded ink a single sentence and a signature:
Study hard, young man, and you'll become a success later on in life!
Richard Wilkins, III