All over Sunnydale, various people reacted in their own different ways over hearing that anguished wail from the skies.
Madelaine Giroux jumped in fright while delivering a screech of terror (that lady's twelfth in the last five minutes, as calculated by her truly exasperated companion). As the eighteenth-century noblewoman looked around in dread, she whimpered, "We are lost! The wolf seeking his prey has just found me, as shown by that yell of triumph, and the vile beast shall soon appear and devour all of my virgin body down to the merest scraps!" The Chaos-affected young woman finished off that histrionic declaration with an expert hand-wringing.
Really wanting for her non-corporeal body to be able to actually pick up something big and hard so that she could hit Buffy with it, a ghostly Willow standing next to the brunette girl in the ornate gown irritably snapped, "Will you knock it off! The only wolf around here is in the Sunnydale zoo!"
"Alack! That foul creature has surely escaped from its cage and is hastening here for its next kill! Oh, whoever shall save me?"
A sudden evil gleam appearing in her eyes, Willow then sweetly said, "Well, in that case, don't you think you should start running for shelter? This way," she finished as the Jewish girl helpfully pointed down the street towards Buffy's house on Revello Drive.
Madelaine promptly picked up the skirt of her gown and dashed off, making good time for someone in a corset. As she followed along after, Willow somehow managed an annoyed sigh despite the fact the teenage girl was currently as insubstantial as the very air around herself, all while reflecting that she'd never thought it possible for someone to come along and immediately make the redhead loathe this person even more than that total bitch nicknamed Queen C of Sunnydale High, better known to one and all as Cordelia Chase.
This acknowledged young lady would have ordinarily smirked with pride at the recognition of her status at being the apex of the food chain at that California educational facility, except at this very moment a few streets away, Ms. Chase was running for her life away from something that boorishly wanted to reduce her tonight to something much further down that hierarchy, such as an actual tasty snack.
At her maximum speed, Cordelia was staying just a few steps ahead of her pursuer, some kind of Bigfoot monster or a human/dog crossbreed that had every inch of his exposed skin covered with thick hair, including a furry face that was excitedly slavering down his hirsute chin while flashing white fangs, and reaching out for the long, streaming tresses of the fleeing prey with his clawed hands that had just moments ago nearly managed to catch the girl and had instead reduced her cat costume to tattered shreds.
In the middle of their chase, the young woman and the monster heard the tormented howl coming from above, with both the hunter and the quarry reacting to this. Cordelia quickly glanced over her shoulder in the sudden hope that Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy would be distracted by this, with her eyes widening at seeing something much more advantageous than what she'd been praying for.
The canine creature that had been chasing her had now abruptly halted in his tracks, standing with his legs apart and shaggy arms dangling at this sides, to stare upwards, ears clearly pricked in wary alertness, as the beast's attention was clearly diverted by what he'd just heard. Pulling back his lips in a soundless snarl as he kept his head tilted back to ignore all else in his vicinity, the dogman's eyes narrowed as his jaws opened, about to return a howl of challenge, except what came out of that brute's mouth in the very next moment was something quite different.
In her place, virtually anyone else would have kept on running away, thanking their lucky stars that this potential murderer had unexpectedly lost his interest in killing them. Cordelia Chase wasn't anyone else. Without losing a step, that young woman rapidly curved around to run back at the Chaos-created combination of man and dog, carefully judging her strides, until when she was right in front of him and still rushing headlong at her top speed, Cordelia shoved down hard on her left leg, while at the same time bringing up her right leg with all the strength that years of cheerleading gymnastics had given her, culminating in an immense kick that ended with the top of her right foot smashing squarely into the exact center of that bastard's crotch.
Jo-Jo was actually lifted off his fuzzy feet, at once contorting into a fetal posture while in mid-air and moreover producing a whistling scream of pure male agony. Still occupied by his world of pain, the dogman crashed to the ground, his curled-up body not moving the slightest as he kept holding onto himself, and now also starting to whimper piteously.
Only a few steps away, Cordelia ignored all this, as she hopped up and down on her left leg a few times until the young woman then cautiously put her right foot down on the ground. Cordelia gave a triumphant smile as this action produced only a mild ache in that foot, instead of the stabbing pain signaling a more serious injury, such as a broken bone. But then, her savage kick had been cushioned by various bodily parts of that moaning dweeb sprawled on the ground, who now had those exact male parts lodged somewhere right below his tonsils. Okay then, it was time for the next stage.
A look of pure evil now appeared on Cordelia's beautiful features, as she purred at her vanquished enemy lying at the teenager's feet. "All right, fur-face, you've just been given a Level One punishment for wrecking my thousand-dollar, one-of-a-kind, made-especially-for-me, Halloween costume. Now, we'll start with the Level Two penalty for actually daring to attack me, which means you're really going to start suffering."
As a vengeful Cordelia irately stalked over towards him, her prone assailant then frantically started to wriggle away along the ground, his elbows and knees desperately pushing in a hopeless attempt to escape from the furious girl.
In a nearby park, Angel also heard the scream of suffering coming from on high, though it was a bit muffled and he couldn't see who had done that. Both consequences of this were due to his current location, high up in a mature oak tree, sitting on a thick branch and surrounded by concealing leaves. While he momentarily wondered about what he'd just heard, the attention of the vampire with a soul was diverted by another's call:
"Ruffertooooo, where are youuuuuuu? Here, boy! Come to Daddy!"
Worriedly peering down, Angel then hastily shifted his body to hide behind the trunk of the tree he was occupying, when he saw below, wandering among the other trees of the park, the very strange person the vampire had encountered just a few minutes previously.
Angel had no idea what had happened tonight that had caused the residents of Sunnydale to evidently go insane. He'd looked out from his Crawford Street mansion to witness the pandemonium caused by costumed characters heedlessly doing whatever they wanted, and the anxious vampire had left his dwelling to check on Buffy. As he headed towards her home, Angel had been forced several times to break up fights, assaults, and other violence done by some extremely odd people against normal humans. Not to mention the occasional attacks against the Irishman himself, which had been equally weird.
After a extremely exasperating scuffle against a six-foot white rabbit that continually shoved a full cereal bowl containing luridly-colored bits of breakfast food that didn't look particularly appetizing or healthy right into Angel's face, the vampire had shifted into his demonic form, with the fangs, yellow eyes, and ridged features, and he'd managed to scare off that ridiculous being, with the bizarre animal defiantly shouting, "Trix are for kids!" as it hopped away. Whatever that meant.
Anyway, Angel had stayed in game face for the remainder of his journey, and this had clearly worked in frightening away any possible adversaries. It was only when Angel had been passing by the Sunnydale park that he'd once more been forced to step in on another Halloween character confrontation versus an ordinary human. This latter person had the misfortune to have been heading down the street in their car throughout tonight's chaos, and during his trip, the driver had been forced to suddenly slam on the brakes lest he run down somebody standing in the middle of the avenue. That pedestrian didn't feel grateful for the driver's courtesy at all.
Angel started trotting towards the stopped car, with the driver cowering inside, as the man standing in front of the vehicle bellowed an inarticulate war cry, drew with blinding speed one of the two swords he was carrying, and started maniacally hacking away with this weapon against the forward parts of that automobile. As the sword slashed against the car headlights, it shattered the glass and destroyed the inside bulbs to promptly darken these vehicle accessories.
That had been more than enough for the driver, who now shoved open his door, scrambled out of the car, and made speedy tracks back up the street as fast as he could. For some reason, this made the guy holding his sword really pleased, as he now whooped with triumph while addressing the parked car, "Hah, not so tough are you, you iron dragon? I've blinded you and made you puke up your last meal, and now it's time for you to breathe your last!"
Coming up behind this yelling idiot, Angel shouted at him, "Stop that! Will you just settle down? I need to tell you-"
Spinning around, the guy with the sword then froze for a moment, his eyes widening, as Angel now had a good look at him for the first time. Untidy hair held in place with a corded headband, a slightly goofy face with an enormous misshapen nose that resembled a crushed cucumber, wearing a dingy-yellow belted robe that was cut off at his upper thighs, along with a weapons harness draped diagonally across his chest which currently held a spare sword, and bare legs that ended in leather sandals.
Again with blurring swiftness, the guy drew with his left hand the shorter sword from his weapon harness, now holding in both hands what looked like razor-sharp katanas, and he at once charged right at Angel, all while bellowing, "DIE, DEMON!"
Oh. He was still in his demonic manifestation, Angel reflected, as he got ready to dodge that guy with the swords. Which shouldn't be all that difficult, what with his vampiric speed, right?
Several minutes later, still in his tree and hiding from that guy below who was now peeking under every bush in the vicinity while continuing to call for his pet, Angel shuddered at how close he'd come to death again, this time with the whole abrupt change from a solid, sentient body into a couple of pounds of ashes. Unhappily fingering the sword slashes in his leather coat, Angel shook his head in utter disbelief over his recent encounter with that other guy who'd done the utterly impossible.
Look, it went all the way back to the very first person the man in the oak tree had been, from Angel to Angelus to Liam, the drunken Irishman who'd accosted a pretty woman and then saw the flashing fangs of a female monster that had been the last living memory of a member of the upper classes. (Hey, his family had been out of commerce for two generations now, and they didn't speak about their horsetrader grandfather, no matter how rich he'd become. They were part of the aristocracy, damn your eyes.)
Anyway, Liam ihad/i been raised as a gentleman (even if it never quite took), which meant he'd been trained in swordfighting. After all, a properly cultured chap settled his disputes with other members of his social class with the proper weapon, or to be more exact, they fought duels with swords. Pistols were the lesser choice for Irish duelists at the time (a minor sword scar on the face was infinitely more fashionable, plus it really made the lasses randy). So, Liam did know which part of a sword to use, and he could hold his own in a fight with those weapons, even if he cowardly made sure to avoid this as much as he could.
Even when he'd become a vampire, and then got his soul back, Angel had occasionally used a sword, and he'd also seen others battle with those bladed weapons, with these combatants ranging in ability from average (and shortly dead) to very expert. The man that Angel had just faced on the Sunnydale street had been far beyond being skilled with edged steel than anyone the vampire had witnessed, heard of, or even believed possible.
What made it even stranger that the swordsman in his dirty robe hadn't just been the fastest human fighter Angel had ever seen, with those sword strokes, slashes, and thrusts dealt out as quick as lightning. Angel had barely dodged all the attempts made by his opponent to stick several feet of sharpened metal into the vampire. No, what had nearly ended that Irishman's unlife several times had been the supremely foolhardy fighting style used by the swordsman. 'Brawling' didn't even begin to cover it; that pugnacious man would and did do anything at all with his swords, no matter how stupid it was as long as it had a chance of working.
As he touched the shallow cut on his neck, Angel sitting on his tree branch had to admit there might have been an actual method in that man's madness. At the end, the vampire had been reduced to simple guessing, and he'd almost picked the wrong direction to duck. That had been enough for Angel; at the first opportunity after nearly losing his head, he'd jumped back, spun around, and desperately ran for his existence, with the sound of his pursuing enemy's swords swishing through the air uncomfortably close to the back of his neck putting an extra spring in Angel's step. That had probably saved the vampire. He'd managed to outrun the guy chasing him, getting ahead far enough to duck out of sight behind a tree in the park, and then jumping straight up to hide himself behind the leaves of this tree.
Carefully listening, Angel heard with relief the voice of his former opponent now coming from the opposite side of the park. Once the vampire had successfully hidden himself, that guy had seemingly lost interest, to instead start searching for his dog or cat or whatever. Good, he could now get out of this tree and continue to Buffy's house. Dropping from branch to branch, Angel at last landed on the ground, and standing before his tree, the demon with a soul instantly decided this minor situation wouldn't ever be shared with the Slayer, just as he'd never bothered to tell Buffy what rat blood tasted like, or come right out and confessed he hadn't been the one to give that young woman the kiss of life in the Master's cave. What Buffy didn't know wouldn't hurt her, and if the topic ever came up, well, Liam-that-was, like every son of the auld sod ever born, could effortlessly lie the truth out of Ireland.
Jogging down the street towards Revello Drive, Angel passed by the spot where his absurd meeting with that swordsman had taken place, and the vampire took a sniff of the air to make sure he'd recognize the scent of his adversary if there was ever the possibility of encountering him again. A few steps further on, Angel's face suddenly twisted in confusion, as he thought to himself, *Why do I smell cheese dip?*
In their locations among the streets of Sunnydale, Willow Rosenberg, Madelaine Giroux/Buffy Summers, Cordelia Chase, and Angel the vampire at that exact moment all had ringside seats for what an enraged Xander Harris, floating several thousand feet in the air above the city, now began to carry out.