Ignorant of the latest results of his vampire-destroying spell, Xander Harris was instead magically examining the costume shop across the street. With Sunnydale Syndrome tightly wrapped around himself to keep anybody from noticing there was a barefooted man, in his mid-forties wearing a formal suit that was itself at least that old, standing on the opposite sidewalk, Xander sent a truly baleful look towards the retail building containing the person responsible for all the anarchy that had taken place tonight.
Fighting down the strong urge to just blast the entire block into powder, Ethan Rayne included, Xander inspected his adversary's protections, using Wilkins' memories that had almost subsumed into his own mind. The teenager in the older man's body soon conceded that the English bastard had done some pretty impressive work in raising strong magical wards to keep any potential intruders away. Of course, there were two things about these guardian spells that were currently making Xander experience a warm and fuzzy feeling.
The first thing was that these wards were powered by the personal mystical energies of the mage inside the costume shop, rather than any Chaos magic. Ethan had a substantial level of mojo, Xander admitted to himself, but it didn't match in any way a guy chock-full of Hellmouth energies. Further, as his lips peeled back into a very nasty Hyena grin, the high school student enjoyed a mental image of the Mayor explaining that during his century-long rule of Sunnydale, he'd gone to every building that had been erected in the town, and that sorcerer had then added a single drop of his blood to every construction site. Which meant that under the rules of magic, Wilkins possessed the structure.
The magical wards that Ethan Rayne had set up inside the costume shop would work against anybody but the man now beginning his casual stroll across the street, and as he stepped onto the sidewalk before the building, a Hellmouth spell was selected and cast by him. Xander didn't bother with opening the door to the shop. Instead, the entire storefront disappeared. Not in a thunderous explosion of flying debris as the whole side of the building facing the street was destroyed, but in a much more scary display of absolute power as he subtly used his magic to make tons of brick and steel and plaster evaporate in an instant. The protective wards shielding the interior of the store, cast by a certain Englishman to prevent anyone from disturbing him during the ceremony that had summoned Janus tonight and also after when Chaos ruled in Sunnydale, also popped out of existence like a soap bubble.
Ethan, who'd been standing in front of the shop counter, admiring the bust of his god placed on this flat surface, had good reflexes for a man of his age, almost managing to fully turn around during his hasty spin to see what had occurred behind him a second ago. However, Xander wasn't in the mood for a confrontation with that other mage right now. That would indeed come later between the pair, and Ethan would be extremely unlikely to enjoy the merest moment of that experience.
Instead, Xander hit Ethan with a sleep spell already at hand, immediately rendering that man unconscious, with the inertia of the Briton's turning of his body causing him to twist around while promptly dropping to the shop floor, landing on his right side with a heavy thud. An insensible Ethan then rolled onto his front, a muffled snore coming from the face pressed against the linoleum.
With burning eyes, Xander shot a quick glance at the sleeping man, magically checking on his health, for the teenager newly changed into the Mayor of Sunnydale to then coldly note that Ethan seemed to be uninjured except for some bruising where he'd landed hard on the floor. Like Xander cared the slightest, as he now came to a halt in the middle of the shop, grinding his teeth in absolute rage as that young man contemplated exactly what had happened tonight due to a sick bastard's actions.
That…that thing there had readily sold Halloween costumes to children and other innocent people that would cause them to change into their characters, with Ethan indifferent to what kind of person this new being would be like - good, bad, or other - in contrast to the former host now helplessly controlled by their possessors. Not only had Ethan been supremely unconcerned about what the newly-changed individuals might do to anyone within range, that man had calmly shown the utter lack of any possible scruples over whatever his customers might later feel about how they'd behaved while under the influence of their costumes.
He'd allowed people to purchase costumes of fictional serial killers. Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers - and those had merely been the human monsters, with far worse costumes smilingly sold by Ethan, to then benignly watch those outfits being carried out of his shop in the hands of his customers of all ages.
The only thing that Xander could compare it to, in all its horror, was a lunatic deciding to spike Halloween candy with some hallucinogenic drug such as LSD for his own insane purposes. That nutjob might not actually intend to kill or injure anyone, but what difference would that make to those innocents and their families who suffered from that man's irresponsible actions? However, Ethan Rayne wasn't mentally ill. He'd known exactly what he was doing all along and he'd enjoyed it, which made it even worse, if that was possible.
Angrily shrugging his shoulders, Xander sent one last glare at the slumbering man on the shop floor. The only….the truly solitary reason why Ethan was still asleep, instead of being awaken and magically ordered to claw with his fingernails into his stomach to then pull out and devour his intestines, was that Xander might need him alive (for now) to find out how to get things back to normal in Sunnydale tonight.
Lifting his gaze from Ethan to look around the room, the first thing to catch the teenager's eye was that odd little two-headed statue resting on the shop counter. Warily observing that object that seemed to have no good reason for being there, Xander opened his personal shields a fraction while sending through these a magical probe to check on the piece of sculpture. An instant later, Xander screamed, "YAAAHH!" as his head felt like it had just exploded.
Stumbling back in pain as he reflexively slammed shut his shields, Xander blinked away tears, to then wipe the back of his right hand across his face. As he brought down his hand, Xander stared in astonishment at one of the most powerful mystical items that the Mayor had ever encountered. An actual, Janus-charged bust of that very god of beginnings and endings, of the past and the future, of gates, doorways, and bridges. It absolutely had to be what had caused all the trouble tonight.
Wincing as he remembered the agony of even an instant's unprotected exposure to that object of power, Xander felt immense frustration beginning to build up in him. How the hell was he going to be able to do anything? That hunk of rock was so charged up with mojo to the max that Xander didn't think any spell he knew from the Mayor would have the slightest effect on it. Plus, if he made the smallest mistake that weakened his shields, he was going to be a crispy-fried Xander-
*Break the statue.*
"What?" incredulously yelped Xander to the fading voice in his head, with the waning of the thoughts showing that the integration of the Mayor's memories with Xander's own was nearly complete. The young man then impatiently snapped, "You just pointed out that we - I - don't know anything that'll work on it!"
*No magic. Hit it with something or throw it to the floor, hard enough to shatter it.*
Stuttering "Ah…ah…," in utter disbelief, Xander trailed off, to begin again, "It can't be that easy!" Nonetheless, as he started to scan his memories, a thrill of optimism pierced his heart, with the teenager coming across the exact bit of knowledge the Mayor had formerly possessed concerning how to end the effects of Chaos magic. True, it was from past accounts of others' experiences with that type of spellcasting, since Wilkins himself had no personal history of dealing with it. Which among other things, was why the sorcerer had been successfully seized in the first place by the spell that had turned Xander into him.
As he went through the recollections of the Mayor's study of Chaos magic, Xander skipped ahead, as he'd fallen into the habit of doing so, by asking his next question out loud, "What happens when the statue is broken?"
*Everything returns to what it was before.*
A stunned Xander just stood there, as his entire soul seemed to ignite in hope. Quavering, he whispered, "W-W-Wils? Wils will be alive again? Please-"
*If her death was directly due to the Chaos magic that affected her costume. Any other cause of death, mystical or material, will be unchanged.*
Xander scanned that specific information with total absorption, unconsciously nodding as it made sense to him. If one of Ethan's former customers had brought a cowboy costume, complete with a faux pair of six-shooters and when the Chaos magic had swept through Sunnydale to change everyone, including a now-real Western cowhand with a working set of Navy Colt .45's that had been fired off, either at a streetlamp in fun to shatter the bulb, or during a more serious reason against someone else such as another costumed character or a normal Sunnydale human, there would be clear consequences for both events, even if the cowboy later changed back to their original personality. Such as an enduring bullet hole in something or someone.
In any case, it was evident that the statue had to be destroyed at once, if only because it might simply stop working right now out of sheer contrariness. Should that happen, it was quite possible the effects of the Chaos spell would be permanent for anyone already influenced by it. Shuddering at the very idea, Xander impulsively stepped forward to the counter, to then seize the little figurine in both hands, and he quickly lifted up what was in his grip, about to hurl it with all his might to the floor and smash the Janus statue into as many pieces as he could. However, the very instant his hands had brought their burden up to the Sunnydale native's head level, so that the mature man's eyes met the unblinking gaze of one of the double faces of the god of disorder, Xander Harris froze absolutely still, as a horrified realization abruptly burst inside his mind.
If he did it- If he broke the statue- He was going to die.