Ethan watched the young man shake his head disgustedly as the bottle blonde young woman and her friend gushed over the gown of a noblewoman - knowing what he knew was going to happen, Ethan couldn't help but smile as the young man was right in shaking his head, so he walked up with an idea in mind, "Excuse me, young man, but can I help you with something?"
"Nah, I just need something from the bargain bin to finish off my costume. Call me the two-dollar costume king, man."
Ethan frowned as the young man picked up a toy rifle, "A soldier? Oh, no, that will never do. Come with me, I have something that would fit you much better. He's a scholar, a paleontologist, to be precise, but believe me he's rather … unique."
The young man followed him and Ethan handed over the costume, with the hat, but also saw claw that he'd picked up some time back from a druid in England, shrugged and threw it in for free - the chaos spell would most certainly turn the boy into the character he envisioned, but as he had also pissed off the druid, Ethan wasn't sure how the druid's own magics, if they were in the claw, would effect the spell, but shrugged it off, as it would probably not be anything big.
Alan shook his head and took off his hat - where in the hell was he? He'd just walked into the dig trailer behind Ellie and was about to check on some fossils when he felt nauseous and suddenly was … wherever he was, "Why me? After what Hammond pulled, why me?" It had been a solid month since the whole fiasco on the island and Alan had yet to have more than two nights of dreamless sleep = he still remembered the roar of the Rex and the sounds of the jungle, but what had him most scared was the creature who's claw rested in his pocket.
"Speaking of which." He fished his hand into his pocket and removed the fossilized Velociraptor claw, smiling as it had been one of the few things that, oddly enough, comforted him at time. It was at that point that the claw began to glow, "What the hell?" Instinctively, he dropped the claw.
The claw fell and finally landed on his boot, but the rest of his clothes also in an upright position, which it would have been on a Raptor, and then his boot began to glow, followed it as the pain set in. He let out a scream of agony as the world went dark around him.
Janus looked down upon the town of Sunnydale, which sat upon the Mouth of Hell, and smiled at the sweet chaos that was happening there - whoever had invoked his power would definitely be getting a nice bonus this time around, especially with the amount of pure terror that was being caused.
It was then that he felt it - his own power was coursing through the entire town, along with the energy being put out by the Hellmouth, but also now there was another energy, but this one was far more primal than anything he had ever felt before. It wasn't black magic, nor was it white magic, but it was just … dark in nature, something that made him shiver as his view focused on a young man who began to glow. At first the change was barely there, but then it became more pronounced as his arms shortened and became clawed, a long tail, muscled thickly, sprouted out of the back of his pants, his boots exploded to reveal clawed feet, one claw on each foot that was retractable and positively lethal, and finally the head elongated and the teeth became serrated.
Janus blinked as the power intensified and his mind placed it - Druidic magic was not something to be trifled with under the best of conditions and combined with the effects of the chaos spell that had been used, he knew that something bad was going to happen in the near future. He growled, mentally making a note to fillet the person who invoked his power as the Velociraptor sniffed the air and took off with terrific speed towards some unseen prey.
Spike looked around and smiled at the pure chaos that was being reeked around him and his sire, Drusilla - she had been on and on about some darkness and fun that would be happening that night, which he had completely blown off as the concept of Halloween was just too hokey even for vampire to take a lot of stock in, but now he knew that she was right, "Well shag me stiff, ducks, you were right!"
His Dru smiled and went back to running a knife over the exposed stomach of a pirate who had tried to take her, causing the young man to scream in agony as she spilled his guts, "Miss Edith says that tonight will be a night of pure glee for us, Spike." She dropped the knife then and began to whimper, "But Miss Edith and the stars say that one of us will not come back tonight, Spiky. She and the stars say that my kitten is a lizard now, and he's hunting us."
Spike rolled his eyes - she had been on and on about some kitten of hers, but he hated cats for any reason other than to play poker with, so he ignored her ranting until something struck home, "One of us will not come back, ducks? What's gong to happen?"
"My kitten-lizard is hunting us, Spike, and he'll chomp us all up, he will." He began to cry and snapped the neck of the pirate before falling to the ground and sobbing her eyes out.
Spike looked around as his nose twitched, smelling something that was off, even for this shit berg, and continued to do so until he saw it - it was about six feet tall and on two legs, watching him from some bushes with beady dark eyes as it's lips curled back to show razor-sharp teeth as it pulled back into the shadows, at which point Dru began to cry even harder, "Ducks, we're leaving."
"It's too late, Spiky, he's already here! My Kitten-Lizard is already here!"
By Dru's warning, though, it was already too late - Spike felt a clawed weight slamming into his back and felt teeth surrounding his head. Maybe his ending would be more or less painless.
Willow was still crying and Buffy was doing her best to console her after Cordy delivered the news - Daniel 'Oz' Osbourne was dead and so was Larry, though by different people as Larry had been cut open by a knife and Oz appeared to have been torn apart by a wild animal, but not a vampire or anything that was normal for them. Xander himself felt more than a little sick as he walked away from the library, digesting what he had been told.
"HARRIS!" Great, just what his day needed, a troll. "My office, NOW!" Xander growled slightly and gripped the claw in his pocket - he didn't remember anything, but something about the claw apparently made him feel better, so he kept it.
The School secretary watched as the young man walked into the Principal's office, shut the door and went back to work, blithely ignoring the sudden flash of light, a deep snarl of pure hate and the tearing of cloth that she heard and the screams of fright from the troll principal. She reached over to the phone and dialed a number as a body slammed into the closed door and fell to the ground, followed by another snarl and a wet tearing sound of flesh being rent from the bones of a person as someone picked up on the other end, "Yes, this is Mary at the High School - Principal Snyder has had a terrible accident and I think he has expired. Please send someone to clean up the mess and select a new principal, preferably one that has a brain. Thank you, Mister Finch."
Xander knocked on the door, dressed as his character from his and Dawn's favorite movie, Doctor Ian Malcolm, and adjusted first his shades and then the necklace of teeth that had come with the costume, which the store owner, Ethan had asked he wear against his skin. Xander didn't remember that from the movie, so he just shrugged and did it anyway.
"Xander!" He instinctively caught the projectile that was Dawn and smiled as she was dressed to kill, literally, in combat fatigues and what he placed as a sniper rifle and a scope, "You're him!"
"Why, yes, I think I am. Thank you for noticing, really, but I must say that, well, you look absolutely marvelous." Xander knew he couldn't get the accent, but he matched the speaking pattern exactly as Dawn blushed and preened, even though she was in full grease paint. "So are we ready to go?"
"Yep!" She took his arm and even as Buffy shouted for them to stop, went about their business to go get their kids to lead about on Halloween.
Ian looked around, obviously not amused even as the heat from his necklace began to get uncomfortable - he had been waiting in Dallas for a flight with John Hammond to some island where he said he had dinosaurs or something, but being ever the cynic, Ian smiled and bore it, "God creates dinosaurs, God destroys dinosaurs, God creates Man, Man destroys God, Man creates Dinosaurs."
"Dinosaurs EAT Man, Woman inherits the earth." He looked over at the grease-paint-covered young child as she smiled even as people around her began to change into horrific creatures.
"That remains to be seen…" Ian couldn't finish his sentence because liquid fire had been poured down his marrow and he was in agony - the last thing he remembered doing was letting his head tilt back and screaming a primal scream even as his clothes began to get very snug in places.
Dawn wasn't sure what was going on, but Xander just screamed and then began to grow to gigantic proportions into something that had haunted her nightmares since she first saw the movie three years before. After a few minutes, her nightmare was a reality - at nearly three stories tall, over twenty feet from nose to tail, and looking seriously pissed off, a nearly full-grown T-Rex was where her Xander-shaped friend had been standing and it then did something that would haunt her dreams for another three years … it opened it's mouth and bellowed it's war-cry so loudly that windows shattered in the houses that were around them.
John Snyder had seen some fairly odd things since coming to Sunnydale, but the current sight he was seeing took the cake - he was looking at what appeared to be a Tyrannosaurs Rex and it was looking at him like he was an appetizer, "Don't you even think about it, lizard! I have very powerful friends."
The T-Rex merely lowered it's head down to his level, sniffed and then pulled back, only to bellow so loudly that John felt his ear drums burst and blood begin to ooze out of his ears as the world went blessedly silent.
He looked up and saw the Rex pulling back, jaws open and the last thought that went through his mind was 'I bet that bitch Summers has something to do with this'.
Buffy was glad Xander had talked her out of the noblewoman dress for her costume - Willow was wearing it and was totally useless. She sighed and looked around before jumping at the large roar she heard; she turned, looked and saw a frigging T-Rex pull back and bite the principal in half! Externally her features were schooled in a look of shock, but internally she was debating whether to kiss the thing or kill it, "I'm going to need a bigger stake."
As if hearing her, the giant animal turned, roared at her and stomped off even as Willow the Useless Noblewoman fainted at the sight of the still-standing legs of Principal Snyder stay standing.
Ethan was still sore from the bating that Ripper had given him, but would recover quickly.
"Not quickly enough, Ethan." He felt his stomach drop to the basement as the voice registered in his mind as that of Janus and knew that he was buggered. "Sorry, my servant, but thought I am a god, I do not swing that way. You failed me, Ethan, and now you must suffer."
Ethan looked around, expecting fire, snakes, even poison, but found nothing more than a simple vial that said 'drink me', which he did (it wasn't smart to anger a Roman god). Instantly the pain hit him and he felt the change even as he began to shrink, the fur began to sprout and a tail take place.
"Your T-Rex will need some nourishment, after all."
"Are you SURE you feel okay, Xander?" He sighed, it was the fourth time Buffy had asked him that and, though he had showed up at her door with no memory or clothing save his tooth necklace, he was sure that he was fine.
"Yeah, Buff - I feel full and I don't want to know why my breath smells like dog hair, but I'm okay." Word had spread that the troll was dead and the entire school was having a day of jubilation, so neither were worried about going to class, but he was still worried by something that kept playing in the back of his mind.
The roar of the Tyrannosaurus Rex, King of Dinosaurs.
"Are you SURE this isn't going to hurt, Willow?" Xander didn't like it when Willow used him as a guinea pig with her potions - less than a year before he had been turned into a Xander-sized and Xander-shaped Smurf for a whole six hours, but the only up-side to that was that Tara was a Smurf-o-holic and had used him as a cuddle-toy for the entire time.
She looked a little affronted, "Have I ever…" She looked at him as he gave her a look that clearly said 'do you REALLY want me to answer that' and relented, "Yeah, everything is fine, Xander - there's nothing that can possibly go wrong with this potion."
Xander looked at her as Tara sighed and shook her head, "Thanks for jinxing it, Willow - if I turn into a frog, I'll ribbit you into insanity and death." To prove the point, he used his throat and made a 'grr-bit' noise that made the redhead squeal and look around for the amphibian in order to know which way to run away to.
He took the potion from Tara, who smiled, "Don't worry, X-Xander, I'll make sure you don't get hurt."
He smiled and drank the potion, "So what's this thing supposed to do?"
"Transmogrify you into a creature of pure Zen-like nature."
He arched his eyebrow, "You want to turn me into Oz?"
"Jimmy, you're not going to fucking believe this." Michael had been a vampire for nearly a month and knew a good opportunity when he saw one, though this opportunity was nearly a hundred feet tall and the size of a few busses put together, "Get everything and everybody down here to the old school, the Hellmouth, and make sure to get stuff that can hold lots of blood - I found a freaking supermarket on legs here!"
A young blonde woman walked up, her jaw on the ground as she looked over at him, "Does it eat meat?"
"Nah, I think it's a brachiosaur - a veggie-saurus, if you will." Michael never saw the stake she slammed into his heart, but heard her last words.
"Oh, like a big cow?"
Xander winced at the sight and smell of the jobsite he had been assigned to, which had been a 45% done rebuilding of the High School, but was now nothing more than rubble and, "Now, that is one big pile of shit." He absently scratched his leg where something like an angry hoard of mosquitoes had taken after his legs while he was asleep or something - oddly enough, they had left Tara alone. What she was doing in his bed, though, was an answer he would have liked, but never got as she only had a huge smile on her face and said something to the effect of 'who knew guys were so much fun'. Had they slept together in a sexual way? He hoped not - if they had, he damned well wanted to remember it (she may have been a lesbian and a friend, but damn it, she was hot!).
"Hey, Xand." He looked over at Buffy, who he had gotten a job with him, "Have you seen Tara today?"
Answer truthfully and die or lie your ass off and risk the possibility of getting caught - stick your balls in a bear trap or skip the bear trap and pray for an asteroid to hit you dead-on. Questions of the universe seemed a very relevant subject at that point in time.
"Saw her this morning, Buff, but she had a big smile on her face, so I didn't ask any real questions." He scratched at his ankle again, thinking that the mosquitoes from hell had invaded his apartment and had shown the decency to leave the supple flesh of Tara alone … all of it. Maybe she and Willow were through? "Why?"
"She and Willow had a fight last night, a big one, and I think it's over."
Thank you, God, "I'll ask her after we clean up this … mess."
"Trust me, you didn't want to see the thing that made this mess - it was huge, a dinosaur."
He gave her a look, "Sure, Buff." Maybe the bleach had finally gotten to her brain this time.
Buffy watched as ADAM snapped Riley's neck and began to cry, wondering if she had done the right thing to have them fight the mandemonmachine hybrid outside as Xander had suggested, 'for more room to … stretch our legs', as he had put it. That was when she felt it.
(THUMP) The entire area shook, birds scattered and the insects went deadly quite.
(THUMP) The ground shook even more now as Dawn began to cackle in glee and ADAM looked around in confusion.
"He's he-e-e-e-e-ere." She looked over at Dawn, who's eerie message had her wondering if the girl had finally lost it. Her unasked question, though, was answered with a roar of sound that she instantly placed as the same 'dinosaur'/demon that had taken on the Mayor at Graduation and won, celebrating it's victory by EATING the Mayor, or rather, what had been the mayor.
"What … is that?" ADAM looked up at the large 'lizard' as it eyed him up for a snack.
"A friend of mine, ya bozo!" ADAM and Buffy both looked at Dawn, who was grinning insanely, "and he looks a little hungry."
As if to prove the little butt pain right, the T-Rex bit down on the manmachinedemon and bit him in half, again leaving the legs in a gory reminder of his preferred way of having a snack - leaving it half-finished. "I'm still going to need a bigger stake."
"Don't stake him!" Dawn ran over and grabbed Mister Pointy out of the back of her jeans, taking it and throwing it as far away as she could, "You can't kill him!"
"He's a freaking dinosaur, Dawn! He'll kill us."
"Xander wouldn't do that!" Buffy felt her jaw drop as Dawn's hands went to her mouth, as if she had let out a big secret.
"Xander? Alexander Lavelle Harris? Taller than both of us, filling out nicely from his construction job, dark hair and eyes, Xander Harris?" She looked over at the T-Rex and was surprised to see it was shrinking to something that was approximately human sized and shaped, and watched some more as the leathery hide turned to skin, very nice skin and a lot of it, and then hair grew in at the appropriate spots as she recognized that, yes, her Xander-shaped friend was in fact able to turn into a dinosaur and that the fates had been kind to him below the waist.
"Eyes up top, bottle blonde! You had your shot." She looked over at Dawn, who's eyes were glued to Xander's body as he stalked away in search of clothing, "Besides, he's my future husband."
"Says who?"
"Me!" Thus began the great war of who had ownership of the body of Alexander Harris - the older, supposedly wiser and more powerful Buffy Summers or the younger, cuter-in-a-child-like-way and craftier Dawn Summers. There was much shouting, screaming and name-calling, but neither realized that the ownership was a moot point, as neither saw him go up to the dark-haired Slayer, Faith Williams, and kiss her soundly on the lips before they went off to … entertain each other.
"Oh please, do you REALLY think you can stop me? I'm a Hell Goddess for Pete's sake!" Glory was really starting to get on his nerves and when that happened, the getting on of the nerves thing, thing generally got more than a little out of control.
Xander had since learned just how to control his transformations and while it wouldn't necessarily kill Glory to be hit by a dinosaur, it would so seriously screw up her dress, so he merely smiled and put his hand into his pocket, grabbing the triggering talisman he'd gotten from Ethan all those years ago, "Yeah, well, you don't impress the hell out of me, Glory Hole Goddess." Anya snickered off to one side, as did her boyfriend, Andrew Wells, and he could feel Willow blushing along side of her girlfriend, Tara, behind him even as he felt the change begin, "But you see, that doesn't matter - you want to hurt my Dawn Patrol and I can't allow that to happen."
"And what are you going to do, mortal? Yak my ear off?"
He grinned even as he felt his clothes begin to give way and his body shift, "No, I'll split you up the middle."
"And he's equipped to do it too, girl. My boytoy is all man and ten yards long." Faith was so kind to him, she really was, but he was still having to fight off an amorous Anya Jenkins-Wells, as she wanted threesomes and orgies with herself, him, Faith and Andrew and, well, Xander didn't trust Andrew at all and, the whole another guy thing was eww!
Xander was all-out pissed when he finished transforming, and it showed with the way he ducked his head, opened his jaws and hissed menacingly; the first time she'd seen that was when B's jerk-off boyfriend with those military GI-Jokes had tried to take her for testing and he'd transformed in front of her for the first time. She'd been a little freaked about it, but they'd fleshed it out that they both had secrets early in their relationship back in high school, so it was all good once she found out the whole story.
Glory looked like she was about to give birth to full grown cats, no, fuck that, mountain lions, but didn't have too much time to react as she had a pissed off Velociraptor on her hands, tearing away at her body and dress even as B, Tiger and Red began to nuke the minions left, right and center. Faith herself found that she and Baby D got along well, as she had been assigned to be her babysitter since Glory had shown up - D had a mouth on her at time that reminded Faith of herself, but since finding out about who and what she really was, she'd been a little more distant than normal.
"STOP IT!" Faith's mind snapped back to reality as Glory flung a snarling Raptor-X back into a wall, but he landed alright and began to click his claws against the ground in a classic dirge as the Hell Bitch snarled, "I'll make a handbag out of you, you lizard." She started forwards and then froze, a look of horror on her face as her body began to twist and contort, "NO! Not … now!"
Faith watched in mute fascination, as did the others she was sure, as Glory changed into a guy, Ben something-or-other, and he stood there in the shredded red dress that Glory had been wearing, "What's going on?"
Those were his last words ever as Raptor-X launched himself at Ben and tore him apart in a bloody display of anger.
Xander opened his eyes and immediately hated what he saw - Faith was over him, looking very worried and he hated it when she looked worried, so he just weakly smiled and sat up a little, "Glory?"
"Toast. How do you feel?"
He frowned for a second and then summed up his feeling, "Oddly full. Last time I felt like this I … oh hell." He looked over and saw the remains of the remains of what had been Glory and sighed, "Well, I guess red meat is off of the menu tonight."
Faith smiled and sat in his lap, "Don't worry, stud - we'll find something you like to eat at the house."
Of that, Xander had no doubt.