He didn't particularly want to go in there.

Rick Wilkins IV stood uncertainly on the other side of the street from the Sunnydale City Hall, absently shifting from one bare foot to the other, as he eyed the building that the Mayor called his office workplace. In his mind, Rick grumbled to himself that the word 'lair' depicted that structure far better than that politician's misleading description.

Switching his attention back to the building, Rick idly noted that there were only a few lit windows in that darkened place, probably for the cleaning crew busy at their night's work. Nobody else was likely to be in there, considering it was well past the midnight hour. The teenager in the mature man's body thought that over. Maybe he could sneak past-

*Hey!* Rick mentally scolded himself. *You're the Mayor now! You can walk right in there anytime you like without caring about what other people think! Yeah…plus, considering how busy it's been tonight with all the uproar resulting from Ethan's spell, they might actually expect you to be there.*

Brightening up from his glum mood, Rick stepped off the sidewalk and he headed across the street towards his place of power. Halfway across the avenue, the man noticed his bare feet, and with a faint grin on his face at an unexpected spell popping up in his mind, he cast a trifling enchantment to cover those parts of his body with a minor glamour, an illusion that would make anyone else glancing downwards see Mayor Wilkins wearing his normal pair of spit-shined men's business shoes.

Of course, even if he actually encountered them, the cleaning crew was fairly unlikely to have someone belonging to that group as obsessed with footwear as his blonde friend, with Buffy herself having demonstrated often enough her own passion for wearing the most unsuitable high-heeled shoes during her Slayer patrols. No sirree, the people that every night energetically tidied up the main government building for Sunnydale were the most professional, expert, and devoted collectors of organic waste and other discarded materials that the Mayor could find and hire, making them worth every penny the city paid those first-rate ghouls, flesh-eating revenants, and other garbage-consuming demons.

Two seconds later, a pale-faced Rick was back on the other side of the street, breathing hard from his frantic dash back there, and then shuddering from the images he'd just found in his memories, courtesy of Mayor Wilkins.

*Okay, it can wait until Monday. Anything can wait until Monday!*

Well, except for the main reason why Rick had come to City Hall tonight - this morning, rather. He needed a place to stay.

Glowering at the specific dark windows in the building where the Mayor had his own private apartment, Rick tried to think of somewhere else to lay down his weary head to rest. He sure as hell wasn't going back to the Harris house, and dropping in on his friends right now meant the possibility of complications with the geis that Rick had previously cast upon Buffy, Willow, and Giles in the school library. Not to mention that they'd doubtless already dozed off in their beds an hour or so ago, and waking up any of them would result in facing a really cranky member of the Scooby Gang.

Sighing, Rick shifted the keepsakes cradled in his arms into a more comfortable position, which made something in his suit pocket rub against his body. A frowning man looked down at himself, to then break into a sudden grin. Yeah, the summer-jobs money in the envelope - he'd forgotten all about it! That would get him a room at some motel or hotel in Sunnydale, for sure, and there wouldn't even be the normal problems of those public lodging places in this town having almost no protective wards against vampires, now that the only blood-drinking demon remaining in the whole city was probably also fast asleep in his coffin now, dreaming his happy dreams of owning the complete Clairol line of hair products.

Rick snorted to himself, and then he looked around the deserted, dark street, trying to remember if there was a hotel nearby. Another frown passed over his face, when the former high school student suddenly realized a further complication. He'd have to check in and pay for his room - something that Xander Harris had never done before in his whole life - but that wasn't what particularly concerned Rick. No, looking as he did now, the desk clerk of whatever hotel he picked was almost certainly going to recognize Mayor Wilkins taking a room for the next couple of days, and unless the mature man with the receding hairline stayed in his new quarters during all that time and also had his meals sent in, that politician was also going to be noticed by the other guests and the hotel staff, any of who might wonder why the mayor of Sunnydale was residing there instead of in his own home.

Rick sighed again. It looked like Rupert Giles was going to acquire an unexpected guest for the weekend. As he headed off towards that Englishman's apartment, his bare feet padding against the sidewalk, Rick dryly noted to himself that a certain pair of eyeglass lenses were going to be polished to within an inch of their lives. It might also be a good idea not to ask for breakfast in bed-

*Heeeey.*

Coming to an abrupt halt as he remembered something, Rick slowly lifted up his right leg, holding it out straight until this limb was perfectly parallel with the ground, and examining with fascination the glamour there that he'd put on his foot just moments before. It still seemed as if he was wearing a shiny black business shoe, despite the fact that he could feel the cool night air brushing against his exposed skin. Beginning to grin, Rick now vigorously wiggled his toes inside his non-existent shoe, watching how this made that phantom footwear flex.

Absently putting his leg back down, the man standing on the sidewalk now bent down to place onto there his grocery bag filled with Xander's treasured mementoes, and he then straightened up, divested of his burden, to look thoughtful for a few moments, until after Rick was sure he knew the spell, the teenager waved a negligent hand in front of himself. Appearing out of thin air, a rectangular sheet of mirrored glass the length and width of his body hung there, remaining absolutely motionless as this mirror now showed an approving Rick his reflection as Mayor Wilkins. *Lessee, start with something easy-*

An eye-blink later, Rupert Giles stood there, an unique expression of an ear-to-ear grin on that Briton's face, as he scrutinized with absolute delight the glamour that Rick had just cast over his entire body to make him perfectly resemble this librarian, down to the sparkling-clean glasses resting on his nose. Unable to pass up the chance, Rick both crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue at the mirror, to then roar with laughter at someone's absurd facial contortions that he'd never otherwise have had the chance to witness. Still giggling, Rick now brought up his right hand, to take off Giles' glasses and start seeing how well he could imitate that man's nervous habit of polishing them.

"OW!"

He'd just poked himself in the eye. Staring in astonishment at the mirror while gingerly rubbing his aching orb, Rick was nonplussed by seeing how a flummoxed Giles' fingers massaging his face were passing right through his glasses to touch his skin. Thinking aloud, Rick muttered to himself, "So, I can make things appear to be on someone, but they're not really real or there. Kinda like the holodeck on Star Trek: The Next Generation…" Trailing off, Rupert Giles now had in the mirror an absolutely maniacal smile on his face, as he gleefully whispered, "Oh, yeah!"

In the next second, Jean-Luc Picard stood there on the Sunnydale sidewalk, a truly immature snicker coming from that starship captain as he rubbed his bald head while being reflected in the magic mirror, but with Rick actually feeling his close-cropped hair there. Next came the rest of the casts of all incarnations of that science fiction show, including the television and movie versions.

Then, the entire company of the Star Wars series.

Then, every single comic book character that Rick could imagine.

Then, after a quick, furtive look around the deserted street and a last double-check of the Sunnydale Syndrome wrapped around him that concealed his presence, some of the more pneumatic ladies from Xander's porn stash. Rick really regretted his glamour spell's limitations at that point. Still, there were compensations, as proved by the result of immediately starting a very energetic set of jumping jacks.

Eventually, an exhausted Rick came to a stop (and a few moments later, so did the rest of him), reluctantly waving his dainty hand to change himself back to his original appearance of Mayor Wilkins. Sighing in momentary bliss to his once more male reflection in the mirror, Rick then sternly told himself that enough was enough, and he ihad/i to go to a hotel, now that he'd figured out how to do so anonymously. Or, at least as some actor well down in the credits of the most obscure movie or television show that Rick could bring to mind. He really didn't think it would be a good idea to sign autographs.

Nodding sadly to himself, Rick now waved his hand once more, causing the magic mirror to disappear from existence, and in his sweaty clothes, the man went to pick up his grocery bag and then find a hotel and take a long, long shower. As he straightened up with his mementoes, a stray thought flashed through his mind, causing Rick to stiffen in shock, and then to groan to himself, "Oh, man, why didn't you think of that before? It took you long enough to come up with that, wasting all this time. You're really gonna have to dig deeper in your memories, no matter if you've got all that stuff as Xander and Ethan and Hyena, and especially Mayor Dick!"

Shaking his head in disgust, Rick Wilkins IV now vanished into thin air.