He was lying on his back, his shoulders rubbing against hard concrete, and Xander's head felt like Buffy had been enthusiastically practicing her Slayer kicks upon that aching part of his body, sending it bouncing around the part of the library where she and Giles did their training. Gingerly, the man in the blue suit lifted his right hand, and still keeping his eyes closed, he cautiously patted the top of his skull several times. Despite the constant throbbing of his head in time with his heartbeat, it seemed to be intact, from what he could feel under his cropped hair-

Instantly freezing in horror, Xander mentally screamed to himself, *What the hell happened to my hair?*

The teenager's eyes now opened wide in pure panic, as his fingers frantically felt for his normal haircut to no avail, with only the grim discovery of that he'd evidently just been attacked by a mad barber obsessed with giving his victims a receding hairstyle. Uttering a despairing groan, Xander now miserably wiped his hand down his features, and he once more became absolutely still, as the high school student experienced an even bigger shock.

His whole face felt wrong.

Jerking away his hand from his countenance, Xander stared in utter disbelief at what was at the end of his arm. Those fingers….weren't his, being longer and thicker, with a minor scar or two, and most worryingly of all, his fingernails were neatly trimmed and manicured instead of being casually pared by whatever was on hand - a kitchen knife, the library scissors, a pen nib - as normally done by that teenager.

Xander cautiously lifted his hand back to his face, to explore equally carefully what was there instead of what should have been there. Finally, a truly gloomy announcement of "Oh, fuck" was now made, with Xander's spirits plummeting even further at the manifestly different sound of his voice. Not entirely sure if it was worth it, Xander rolled over onto his side and then he charily got to his feet.

Still looking down at his maybe-a-size-bigger shoes, Xander despondently noted that the ground seemed to be a few more inches further away than before, until the teenager at last straightened up and glanced around. There was nobody else in the vicinity of the man in the blue suit standing on the sidewalk, but there was a car parked at the side of the street just a few steps away. A very doleful Scooby Gang member slowly slouched over and peered at his reflection in the car windshield, with there being enough illumination from a nearby streetlight to show that Xander Harris now perfectly resembled Richard Wilkins III.

Just before he could fully express his opinion and maybe a few tears about once more being the Hellmouth's number one butt-monkey on this Halloween night, Xander's attention was abruptly diverted by something else that was equally normal for that teenager currently in someone else's body.

From a clump of bushes at the side lawn of the house he was standing before on the front sidewalk, a squat green demon wrapped in fur rags burst from its hiding place, howling its war-cry as the scaled monster rushed right at its prey, taloned hands clutching while held in readiness to rip and tear tonight's victim. It covered half the distance between itself and Xander in a single instant, and in the very next moment, it surely would have been upon that teenager, instead of running head-first into the car, producing a deep dent in that automobile's side, and rocking the entire vehicle on its tires.

That ridiculous occurrence was due to Xander instantly reacting to being attacked, as his legs suddenly flexed into a backwards hop that carried him away from the car ten yards further down the sidewalk, lightly landing upon his feet as he crouched down, eyes glowing green/yellow, as Xander then wrathfully pointed an index finger at the demon staggering away from the dented car. A glowing white ball of energy the size of a marble emerged from this fingertip, shooting away from Xander right towards the demon, with the ball expanding itself along its journey so that when the spell struck the demon, it was big enough to completely engulf that dark creature, making a happy sizzling sound as the demon inside the energy sphere convulsed and then went limp, floating in the air even as it was now completely unconscious and contained by the spell.

There was a pause, as Xander slowly straightened up and then he lifted this index finger, tentatively holding it at eye level as he incredulously regarded it, all while making damn sure he didn't point this finger at himself. As something else abruptly called for Xander's attention, he now suddenly looked down at his feet, and just as quickly he directed his gaze at the point where he'd been standing just a second ago, before he'd made a standing broad jump that was flatly impossible for any normal human, even one who was an Olympic athlete, to perform.

*Buffy could have done it, just like I could have, back when-* Xander now found his voice, uttering an horrified, "Oh, shiiiiit!" He hastily closed his eyes and went to a specific place in his mind. Frantically peering around a barren mental landscape, Xander now found out the really bad news. Hyena was gone, with no sign whatsoever of that animal spirit, or the cage Xander had managed to create inside his head to imprison her in a successful attempt to keep that Primal creature from taking over his body. Unfortunately, the disappearance of both meant that Hyena was at this moment undoubtedly free again and eager to once more wear Xander Harris like a second skin as she roamed around Sunnydale.

His terrified eyes wide open, a man in his blue suit standing on the sidewalk made jerkily shifting movements with his body, as if he were trying to jump away from himself in his alarm. Xander's growing panic was suddenly snuffed by an odd thought that seemed to come from nowhere. *Wait a sec. Hyena took over right away when she wanted the first time. Why the hell hasn't she done it again?*

Xander then once more suspiciously examined his finger that had fired the spell, which continued to float by the car, with the demon inside the glowing sphere still peacefully dozing away. *Plus, she never showed any signs of being able to do that before. What's going on?*

Frowning thoughtfully, Xander returned to his mindscape, only to discover something he'd been too apprehensive to notice a few moments ago. During all his previous visits to check that Hyena was still in her cage, he'd come to take for granted the faint tickle in the back of his mind that was Hyena's awareness, a mental signal that she was still safely confined in his head while her Primal spark glowed in confirmation of her existence. It didn't hurt or feel bad, and Xander had become used enough to this so that he eventually stopped paying attention to it. Now that he had calmed down sufficiently to concentrate, Xander felt the absence of this mental signal, and he disbelievingly drew the correct conclusion.

*She's…gone?*

Shaking his head skeptically, Xander noted to himself, *Well, if that happened-* (he felt an odd pang of loss) *-why'd I still manifest her? Not to mention that magic trick-* As he continued thinking his questions, Xander absently reached out with his mind, searching for any trace of Hyena left in his brain as automatically as his tongue would have examined a sudden cavity forming at the side of a tooth in his mouth, and a totally unexpected event occurred, entirely unsolicited as in both cases, and resulting in a serious shock to that human.

He became Hyena. Not the Primal, the animal spirit herself, the bloody-tooth-and-claw female personality that was obsessed with Pack and territory.

Instead, Xander took into himself Hyena's powers and memories, effortlessly slipping these on as his senses abruptly expanded for him to smell, see, and hear far better than before, and the rest of his body started to feel lighter than a feather as his nerves, muscles, and bones magically shifted into readiness for particularly intense levels of activity. There was no overwhelming rush of sensations as had happened the first time Xander had been possessed by Hyena. Wonderingly, the teenager thought, *It's like…it's normal. I'm me, not her…but it feels like I'm being fed nonstop instructions on how to control and use all this. I don't need to think about it, I can just do it without having to train.*

The man with glowing green/yellow eyes stared around the neighborhood, seeing everything in his gaze both with his mystical and material sight, as Xander continued to examine the newfound abilities bestowed upon himself. After several more moments, a sudden grimace appeared on Xander's face, showing he'd just come across Hyena's memories. It was like watching all at once an Animal Planet documentary that covered each and every possible incidents in the existence of a magical African mammal. The only thing keeping Xander from promptly losing his lunch was that sense of detachment provided by the documentary feel of Hyena's life. It wasn't happening to him, he was just an observer during all that animal spirit experienced in her mystical lifespan: creation, learning, possessing, hunting, stalking, killing, eating, roaming, fighting…dying?

Shocked, Xander watched in his mind's eye how Hyena had battled to the death with Richard Wilkins III.