Xander was cursing under his breath as he looked at the few choices that had remained for him.
'Why, oh why for Gods sake did Snyder have to make it theme costumes?' He asked the heavens, but he recieved no answer.
Snyder, in his 'great' wisdom, had decided, that all the students, he had voluntered for the guardian duty, had to dress up in a theme. 'Graceful' as he was, he had let the students decide which theme via the old trusted method of drawing a lot out of a hat. Unfortunately Jonathon was in his Rurouni Kenshin phase and it had been his lot, that Snyder had drawn.
So now, here he was, after he had plundered his hidden stash of money, to get the costume of a halfway decent character of the Kenshin crew, only to find out that his first preference, Sanosuke Sagara had already been chosen by someone else, as was his second choice, Shinomori Aoshi, leader of the Oniwa Banshuu.
His shoulders were too broad for the Saitou costume and the Enishi one was too small. Actually most of the costumes had been made for smaller, or slimmer persons. Unfortunately, that left him with a brunch of more or less stupid enemies of Kenshin or... this. A darkblue gi top, pants, boots and wristbracers. That was ok, as well as the sword, that went with the costume. But the last item, the most obvious of the entire costume was so... so stupid! A mantle, white with red trimmings and a rather dracula-like top, that was the trademark of the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu masters and in this special case, of Seijuro Hiko the 13th.
Sure, Seijuro Hiko the 13th was not bad a character, sarcastic and skilled. As Kenshins teacher he was in possesion of the most dangerous sword technices of entire Japan, he could kick Kenshin around and humilitae him with childhood stories if he wanted to. If only the mantle didn't look like a bad dracula reject!
But on the other side, he didn't want to run around as one of the bad guys, so the stupid mantle it would be. He took the costume to the front, where the British guy, Ethan something or other, had just announced a fiften percent discount on all costumes. Xander smiled as he watched him ring up his purcase. Fiften percent would mean several packs of twinkies. If he had to walk around like and idiot, he would at least have some twinkies to soothe his stung pride.
Xander looked at the rest of the group before they went out to collect their number of brats for the evening. He had to admit that the idea with the theme costumes didn't look so stupid now. They looked good. Willow had put black dye into her hair, but the removable kind, and along with the simple Japanese clothing and hte wooden bokken, she made a good Kaoru. Next to her stood Daniel Osborne, called Oz, who Snyder had roped into this task as well, he was going as Kenshin.
Buffy wore ninja clothing and a long black wig braided into a tail, she was Misao. Xander laughed when he saw the one who had been forced into Aoshi's costume, Giles was grumbleing something about an adult supervisor and that Buffy had choosen his costume for him, but he had to admit that, personality wise, Giles was perfect for Aoshi.
Robert Tassle, a senior he didn't knew much about, was wearing the Sanosuke costume and ruefully Xander had to admit that he filled the costume better than he ever could. There was none Yahiko, but he had expected as much... who would want to dress up as a kid student when there were more interesting costumes around?
He couldn't put a name to the guy in the Saitou costume and he had to look twice before he recognized Jonathon, who was dressed up as Chou the Swordhunter. It seemed that no one had wanted to go as Enishi.
The white cape with the red trimmings still looked a bit out of place, but not as stupid as he had thought it would. He smirked a bit as he waved Willow goodbye, Willow who was very obvious to the looks Oz was sneaking at her. It looked like someone had a little crush on someone else... good.
He rubbed the bridge of his nose, iritated by the fact that he didn't need to wear his glases anymore.
Helloween had been... different.
He couldn't say that it was a desaster, for he hated lying to himself, but he wasn't sure how to classify it correctly.
Being turned into someone else was not a experience he would want to suffer through again, yet he couldn't say that he hadn't benefit from it.
When the spell had been brocken, everyone had reverted back to their normal forms, except for those, whos bodies had a very high concentration of foccused ki. The spiritual energy had interfered with the spell, and the possesing spirits had more or less merged with their hosts, changing mind and body and also allowing them to keep their possesions they had carried with them.
He was Rupert Giles, watcher, but at the same time he also was Shinomori Aoshi, leader of the Oniwa Banshuu... and very happy that Buffy had reverted back to herself, he wouldn't have been able to deal with an amorous Buffy/Misao mix.
Michael Long Fei had combined with Saitou, with Michael being the more dominant personality.
Robert was Robert, Sanosukes ki hadn't been strong enough to merge and Willow and Johnaton were similarly unaffected.
The biggest changes had been wrought in Xander and Oz. Aoshi/Giles watched amused as Xander bopped Oz in the head with his sheated sword, yelling at him for letting the school die by not teaching the art to a worthy deshi and he smiled as he heard the faint 'oro' of protest.
And Giles/Aoshi thought about the hellsmouth and the fact that there were now four master swordsmen living in Sunnydale, two of them masters of the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu and his smile grew bigger.
The poor vampires wouldn't know what had hit them.
"Baka deshi!" a voice bellowed in the background.
The Aoshi part settled back and watched... he felt at home already.