Author's Note: The below throwaway scene from CrazyDan's 'Flipping channels…' given in Chapter Eight, 'Good Eats and Friends. What more could you want?' inspired me to write the following bit of crack. Permission to quote this on Twisting the Hellmouth was requested from CrazyDan on Twisting the Hellmouth and was granted by that writer, for which I am quite grateful. Enjoy!
Again, the rating for this chapter is a bit higher than the others due to its subject matter.
"That sucks." Jonathan said. "I haven't had much luck in the whole dating thing."
"Well... have you tried dating outside your species? Not all demons want to eat people." Xander asked. "That or you could kidnap Amy from Willow and Buffy's dorm and try to turn her back into a human."
"Amy?" Jonathan asked.
"Amy Madison." Xander said ." Remember her? She turned herself into a rat and got stuck a while back. Something about the goddess Hecate or something." Xander shrugged.
"I've got to go." Jonathan said. "I just remembered something I need to do at the college library."
Xander just shook his head and wished his short friend luck. He was going to need it.
They'd returned to their UC Sunnydale dorm room from morning classes just minutes earlier when there was then a polite knock on the front door. Buffy and Willow glanced at each other with mild surprise; neither were expecting any visitors today. Going over to the door, Buffy checked through the peephole to see who was waiting outside in the dorm corridor.
"Hey, it's Jonathan!" the Slayer exclaimed.
"Really?" Willow perked up. "I knew he was going to college here, too, but I haven't seen him around campus yet."
"Me either," Buffy nodded. Without further ado, she opened the door, and smiled at Jonathan waiting there.
"Hi, Jonathan," Willow said just as cheerfully, coming up behind Buffy and stopping by the blonde's right shoulder.
"Buffy, Willow, good to see you again," a fellow survivor of Sunnydale High's Graduation Day happily responded. He lifted the thick book bound in worn leather cradled in his arms, "I've got something here you might be interested in."
Jonathan stared past Buffy and Willow into the dorm room's kitchen and the pair of doors leading to the young women's separate bedrooms. "Do you still have Amy the rat with you?"
"How'd—" a startled Buffy began before abruptly cutting herself off. She narrowly eyed Jonathan standing there in the noon sunlight shining from the corridor's end windows. Reassured, the Slayer stepped aside, with Willow also moving to maintain her position by Buffy and crooking her fingers in a specific way to stay ready for casting a protective spell, just in case.
Accepting the unspoken invitation, Jonathan strode into the room, with Buffy closing the door after him. When they finally had privacy from anyone walking down the corridor who might be passing by their dorm room and hear things best kept secret among the Scooby Gang and their acquaintances, Buffy started all over again.
"How'd you know about Amy? I don't think I ever mentioned her to you."
Jonathan informed Buffy, "I saw Xander having an early lunch at Frump's Fried Foods and he told me about her. I remembered a magic book I'd found misfiled in the library and checked it again." Jonathan nodded down at the timeworn tome he was holding. "There's a spell here that looks perfect for turning Amy back into a human."
"What?!" Willow blurted out in her sudden shock. With a quick grab, she snatched the book out of Jonathan's grip. Opening the covers, Willow started rapidly skimming through the pages without apparently finding what she wanted.
Trading an amused expression with Buffy, Jonathan told Willow, "It's under the bookmark."
Not even glancing up, Willow turned over all the remaining pages in one go to gain her goal. She intently began reading the mystical instructions set down on the proper attached sheet. After several more moments, the witch groaned under her breath with genuine chagrin.
"Oh, Goddess, it's so simple! I should've thought of that myself!"
"Good news, Wils?" Buffy prompted, wanting to know what the whole deal was anyway.
Sending her best friend a very rueful smile, Willow explained, "From the look of the spell, all that needs to be done is to read it out loud, and it'll work! Actually, we can do it right now!"
She thrust the book back to Jonathan, who took hold of it just in time before Willow spun around and dashed towards her bedroom door. Pulling that open, she moved with matching speed inside to just as quickly reappear, this time with a small wire cage dangling from one hand.
Inside that cage, a just-awoken brown rat blearily regarded the three humans gathered around this animal's cage. The transformed rat allowed herself to be removed from the cage which was set aside onto the kitchen counter, while Willow next knelt down onto the dorm floor and placed Amy onto there, keeping her fingers gently pressing down to make a puzzled Amy stay in place.
Looking upwards from on her knees, Willow urged, "Jonathan, read the spell!"
"Uh, okay," a wide-eyed Jonathan nodded. Taking a deep breath and fixing his gaze upon the correct page, he began to recite from there a long stream of what sounded to Buffy like a whole bunch of nonsense syllables.
However, the Slayer soon felt a slight prickling over her skin, indicating that there was real magic taking now place in the room. She warily glanced back and forth from Jonathan to Willow, unsure if this was of the good, only to be reassured when neither the witch nor the warlock seemed to be concerned. Even Amy was behaving like a good little rat—
In a thunderous verbal climax, Jonathan shouted "HEGH OTYO LEWNB!"
From where Willow's fingers had formerly been bearing down upon a small rat, they were promptly shoved apart when the full-sized body of a young human woman inflated with incredible speed in front of Willow, causing the redhead to lose her balance and fall backwards with a loud thump onto her rear. Which in turn gave Willow the perfect chance to stare straight ahead at the completely naked buttocks of Amy Madison…
Both Jonathan Levinson and Buffy Summers were frozen in mutual astonishment as they gawked at where the nude girl was swaying slightly on her bare feet. To be fair, this was the first time in over a year that Catherine Madison's daughter had been in bipedal form, much less lacking a fur coat, a tail, and whiskers. All because of that wonderful guy over there with his magic book!
With a joyous squeal of delight, Amy launched herself at Jonathan, bringing them both crashing down to the floor. The book went flying, not that Jonathan particularly cared, what with a naked Amy pressing her entire unclad body atop him and then grabbing the back of his head with both hands. Yanking this part of his body forward, Amy started continuously kissing him, in between babbling her gratitude.
Jonathan was unable to say anything coherent himself, since his mouth was covered at all times by Amy's lips. There was also the important point of how deeply her tongue was probing into there. Though, he finally managed a startled yelp when Amy's hands moved from the back of his head to elsewhere.
One hand snaked under the bottom of his polo shirt and then glided up to caress his chest, while the other, more lewd, hand tugged open the college freshman's belt and then went to work with the fly button and the lower zipper…
This was in accompaniment to Amy crooning appreciatively downwards into Jonathan's disbelieving expression, "You deserve the absolute best reward I can give, mister, and you're gonna get one, believe it or not! Now, just stay there, and let Mama do all the work!"
Around then, Buffy decided that maybe she should do something about this. Like pulling Amy off Jonathan and sticking her into the nearest cold shower. It couldn't hurt either to give Wils a good whack upside the head to make that other young lady quit watching so closely!
What stopped Buffy from doing any of that was what Jonathan himself next did, showing he was quite willing to go along with what Amy was jubilantly commencing with his lower body. That is, Jonathan's own right hand reached towards his descending pants just in time to remove his wallet from its pocket. A hasty tug with his fingers then produced to the entire room of Sunnydale girls nothing less than what the entire nerd kingdom referred to as the Condom of Optimism.
Rolling her eyes with true exasperation, Buffy sidled past those two idiots to seize Wils' upper arm. A touch of superhuman strength brought the redhead upright from her position on the floor and dragged a protesting Willow along after Buffy marching towards the front door. Not even deigning to glance over her shoulder, Buffy snapped, "We'll be back in an hour, no matter what! So, you better be finished or else! Trust me, you don't want to find out what I mean by or else!"
The door opened and then slammed shut after an extremely cranky Slayer and her now-subdued gal pal trying fruitlessly to have one last peek.
Not that Jonathan and Amy even noticed…
One hour to the minute later, after the entire pastry section of the nearby Espresso Pump had vanished down a Summers' gullet, a dainty fist pounded against the dorm door, along with a bellowed, "Are you decent? Never mind, don't care, we're coming in!"
Jonathan and Amy sitting together on the room couch kept on endearingly holding each others' hand while Buffy stalked into the room with Willow trailing along after. Rather than softening the Slayer's grouchy mood at seeing such a cute couple, Buffy just sniffed once with her heightened senses, shot the pair on the couch a disgusted look, and went over to open the room windows as wide as they could get to banish all the smells of very recent sex.
Willow, though, first beamed at how charming this new boyfriend/girlfriend pair appeared. Unfortunately, her happy grin suddenly congealed at perceiving exactly whose clothes Amy was now wearing.
Indeed, Amy sheepishly confirmed, "I'm sorry, Willow, but I had to borrow your sweats. Buffy's were just too small for me. I'll send them back—
"No, no!" Willow frantically protested. "They're yours forever! Keep them! Please!"
"Can we talk about something more important?" an impatient Buffy interrupted. She glowered at the others. "Considering how often magic goes wonky around Sunnydale, it's kinda suspicious how easy it was for Amy to change back to a human. Are you positive there won't be any weird side effects as a result of this?"
All three magic-users shook their heads in unison. It was Willow who explained to Buffy, "If there were, they would've already happened. But no, I don't think so."
"Yeah," Amy agreed. She looked down at her borrowed clothing with more than a trace of glumness. "What's really bothering me is how I'm supposed to account for disappearing from here last year and then just showing up again out of thin air. Where was I the whole time? What happened to me?"
Jonathan tried to cheer up his girlfriend with, "Look, like I said when we go see my mom and dad, just tell them you had amnesia or joined a cult. Then, you got better and we met each other, so until you get back on your feet, you can stay at our house."
Amy dubiously eyed Jonathan. "You really think they'll believe that?"
"This is Sunnydale," Buffy sighed. "What's not to believe?"
Once again, Willow, Amy, and Jonathan solemnly nodded in concert.
At that exact point, Murphy showed up. Hey, it was Sunnydale, after all.
From outside the room, terrified feminine screams resounded unexpectedly throughout the college dorm. Whirling around, Buffy ran to the door and peered through the peephole, trying to see what'd just created the panic they'd all just heard.
Not observing anything actually threatening out there, Buffy yanked open the door and swept her predator's gaze up and down the corridor. The only incongruous things she saw were how other dorm doors were also open and their occupants standing at the thresholds were viewing downwards with genuine horror—
Imitating at least the floor gaze, Buffy blinked. Then, she looked once more, only to say in a quite strangled tone, "Amy, I think it's for you."
Buffy kept on staring, even when the others came up behind her and uttered their own smothered gasps. They definitely had a good reason for this.
After all, it's not every day that the Sunnydale residents came across dozens, hundreds of rats and mice covering the entire corridor floor in a hairy layer of rodents, side-by-side and nose-tip to tail-end, with all of them motionless without even a single flick of a whisker. Moreover, each and every one of the furry creatures were staring fixedly upwards in a clear display of…worship.
Buffy slowly followed the line of sight from the multitude of gleaming eyes to, surprise, surprise, right at Amy Madison gaping back at her adoring throng.
In a voice now possessing a certain maniac joviality, Buffy announced, "Well, it's been fun, Jonathan, Amy. Be seeing you around the quad, guys. You can leave now."
"But you—" Amy tried to say, only to be interrupted by Buffy's most savage snarl.
"But what? I'm the vampire slayer, right? Not the rat slayer, not the mouse slayer. Even if you've just been picked as the latest version of the Pied Piper or whatever other ridiculous reason for this, how is it in any way my problem?"
The very moment Buffy stopped speaking, the soft noise of innumerable paws padding onto the corridor floor drifted through the air. The Slayer and her friends watched how with worrying discipline, the rodent horde turned around and once more froze motionless save for several dozen mice leaping onto the backs of an equal number of rats who didn't seem to be bothered the slightest by their new burdens. Instead, the rats moved sideways, leaving a clear space sufficient for two people in front of Buffy's dorm room.
Jonathan and Amy then watched Buffy calmly step aside and fold her arms across her chest while she glared at them both. Glancing at each other, the witch and the warlock grimaced unhappily and then walked out of the apartment. Pausing in the clear space, Jonathan and Amy took a tentative step ahead together.
Almost as if there'd been an unheard command of "FORWARD, MARCH!", the rodent army advanced in perfect order. Buffy poked her head out past the doorway to watch all of them leave, the rats and mice with Jonathan and Amy in the center. They turned the corner out of sight, with Buffy musing on how they'd handle the stairs.
Again, not her problem.
On the contrary, perceiving the completely incredulous expression of her dorm neighbor across the corridor, Buffy merely shrugged and tossed off to that other young woman, "What's the matter, you've never seen a Rat Queen before?"
That got her a fearful look and a slammed door. Buffy just closed her own door, leaned her forehead against this panel, and groaned, "Guess what, Wils? We just cemented our reputation as the creepiest girls in the whole dorm."
No answer.
Frowning, Buffy straightened up and turned around. She saw the open door for Willow's bedroom, with faint thumping noises coming from there. Trying to figure out what was going on now, Buffy went over to the door, to witness how Willow had just torn off the pillows, bedsheets, and comforter from her bed, and was now struggling with the mattress itself, attempting to shift it off the bedframe.
Caught in the act, Willow appealed to Buffy, "Can you put this—"
"—in the dumpster, sure," Buffy wearily finished. Easily picking up the whole thing, Buffy just had to take a moment to tell Willow her latest opinion.
"Silly me. Here I was thinking that after the whole outlandish Sunnydale High situations, that college would be, I don't know, more sensible."