Costume-Shop Guy had been a little creepy, but he'd had the stuff Xander needed - and more importantly, he'd been willing to sell it off cheap, so at the time he'd waved off his concerns as overactive Hellmouth paranoia.
It hadn't been as elaborate a costume as some, but it still took a little preparation; bleaching and dying his hair yellow and painting all his exposed skin with food colouring had been the longest part, though making the stencils for the decals on his surplus steel helmet, old olive-drab bookbag and the costume-shop space-rifle had been more painstaking. He'd had the upward-arrow national-allegiance badge in a drawer, left over from a set of five he and Jesse had had made up for ten bucks back when they still collected the comics.
What he hadn't counted on was 'Ethan' being some kind of Mojo Jojo who'd put a whammy on everything he'd sold that week. Okay, so butt-stroking Larry the Pirate out of his way had been gratifying and decapitating Spike with the bang-stick attached to Eight-Ball like a bayonet had felt righteous. Okay, so he now had genetically-engineered senses, reflexes and instincts, a head full of imprinted training and combat experience on the battlefields of Nu Earth, and was effectively immune to any aerosol chemical or biological weapon. But he was left with a number of other problems the next morning....
"*This* is gonna be weird," Xander muttered, holding up one hand to consider his now permanently blue skin and the blond hairs thereon.
{ "You're telling *me*?"} Lucky asked from his place in the frame of the backpack sitting against Xander's dresser. { "Hey, you're not the one who just got dragged all the way across the galaxy and a few centuries into the past, pal!"}
{ "It could be worse, Lucky,"} Top said philosophically. The yellow '1' stencilled on his biochip's surface formed the 'I' of the word 'FRIDAY' hand-painted across the helmet's front in red.
{ "Oh, yeah? How?"}
{ "At least Fri- er, *Xander* managed to convince that Willow girl to babysit Eight-Ball."}
{ "Maybe, but what's she gonna do when she has to leave the house? You *know* how much of a fruit-loop he is - d'you *really* want her leaving him at home?"}
"And what the hell else can she do? Willow carrying an assault-rifle around *WILL* get noticed, even in *this* town! And God only knows what we're gonna do about bringing him to school...." Xander observed sourly, his left hand massaging the biochip in the nape of his neck even as he silently cursed the luck. Things could have been *so* much easier from here on out if he'd gotten the dull but stable Gunnar as his third biochip companion, but no! Hellmouth luck struck again, and he needed a babysitter for his *rifle* - who just *happened* to be a trigger-happy nutcase with a raging Oedipus fixation on a mother he never had! _But hey, Hellmouth - gonna fit right in around here!_
_I just hope Will remembers to sing him a lullaby before she comes over...._