A/N Sphygmus, the curse doesn't make sense for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the ones you've listed. But then, Joss only added it as a means of appeasing the audience and the network who wanted Angel and Buffy together. Joss wanted all the vampires seen in the show to always be evil, to have no ambivalence on that matter, which is why originally Angel was either going to be a fallen angel, being guided back onto the path or having been Angelus all along. The soul curse was a way to sort of make it okay for Buffy to fall in love with him, but that's ignoring the fact that Joss stipulated from the very first episode that the vampires in Buffy's world were demons walking around in corpses. Two facts that the audience ignored to get Buffy and Angel and later Buffy and Spike together. It's also a narrative that Joss never changed over the course of the show, the soul didn't change the fact that the vampires in Buffy's world were still dead bodies with a demon in them. Which seriously kills the romance when you think about it for too long. 😵

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"Unless this time change goes all the way back to when Rupert Giles was a teenager himself, I do not see how he could ever have been assigned to guide a Slayer!" Diana exclaimed. "His rebellion and history with Eyghon would make the Council unwilling to ever trust him, which is why he was assigned to monitor a Hellmouth believed to be dormant. It should have been one of the most boring jobs on the planet! How did he get assigned to be this Buffy's Watcher?"

"He never said." Xander answered what he didn't realize was a retorical question. Diana got ahold of herself and asked Xander another question.

"Was he aware of her involvement with this vampire?"

"Yes."

"Did he allow it?!"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Buffy loved Angel, she wanted to be with him."

"That doesn't explain why he allowed it!"

"It made her happy."

"You really don't know what his reasoning was, do you?" Diana realized. "He never explained why he allowed a Slayer to play with dynamite. Whether she loved him or not, it was never going to be a good thing. He was a demon in a dead body. Any religious belief would tell you she was risking her soul being involved with him."

"And it still doesn't explain how Xander knows things he shouldn't know." Mason reminded her. "Psychic ability can only explain so much. He transformed into another version of himself on this Halloween that Janus was invoked on. Private Harris knew everything he remembered in that timeline and is accessible via his subconscious in this timeline. A psychic ability would explain how the him in the other timeline remembers it. And how he can access it in this timeline. It doesn't explain how this Private Harris costume got it in the first place. Where did the knowledge originally come from?"

"What if Private Harris was a real version of Xander from another timeline or reality?" Jesse asked. "And Magic blended them somehow?"

"With the power of a god being invoked it's possible." Diana nodded. "We may never know where it came from originally. Xander, what did some of the other people turn into?"

"Willow was a ghost, she could walk though walls. Buffy was a braindead noble woman, really irritating, she kept screaming and fainting. Cordy was a sexy cat, but she didn't transform, she got her costume somewhere else."

"Did you get your costume from the same place Buffy and Willow did?"

"I made my own costume, I bought a toy gun from the same store Buffy and Willow got their costumes from."

"A toy gun was all it took for him to be affected by this spell?" Mason asked.

"I guess so, if this Ethan Rayne used something to mark everything he sold to draw the Magic to it." Diana speculated.

"Why did this Ethan Rayne do this, transform people into their costumes on Halloween?" Diana resumed questioning Xander.

"Giles said he's a Chaos Mage, he worships Chaos."

"How did Mr. Giles know that?" Diana asked. "Did he question Mr. Rayne?"

"He knew him, they summoned Eyghon together."

"You knew Mr. Giles was involved with Eyghon? Did Mr. Giles tell you that?"

"He had to. Eyghon returned."

"Enough! Xander come out of it." Diana snapped. "I need to report this to the Council. We need to figure out how Eyghon returned and stop it from happening in this timeline. And while they're at it they can find this Ethan Rayne and keep him from causing any mischief."

"Can the Council really do that?" Cordelia asked. "Stopping the demon, yeah I can understand that, but Ethan Rayne's human, right? And all they have is Xander's word, no offense, Doofus."

"None taken. But then I don't know what you're talking about. Did my subconscious find something new to worry about?"

"A few things." Diana admitted. "I'm almost afraid to see what Cordelia might be able to tell us."

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A/N I didn't intend for any future knowledge to come out, but the chapter flowed that way. My bad. 😙