You know how there are day when you want to find a nice sturdy wall or something similar and bang your head against it, until everything just leaves you alone?
Well, Xander was having such a day just now.
Not bad enough that he had been 'voluntered' for the Halloween escort duties, he was also soley responsibe for the mess of a costume he had to wear now.
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. And Xander had just written down the name of an anime for Jonathan when Snyder had passed the two, snatched his piece of paper and deciding that this was Xander's vote, had put it in the hat. Three guesses which lot had been drawn... yes, his.
And so he had to dress up as someone from 'Slayers'. Even worse, Willow and Buffy had decided that they would organise the costumes for the group. Armed with the measurements of the poor voluntered students, as well as some costume wishes, they had disappeared, to do the shopping thing.
Xander's heart had sunken when he had seen the bag with his costume. He had hoped to go as Gourry Gabriev, sure, the man was notorically thick, but his costume was quite simple and he was a master with the sword. Willow had apologized, but said that the shop didn't had a breatplate and shoulder armor in his size and finally told him to live with the costume she and Buffy had choosen for him. Since her face had rearanged itself into the classic Willow-resolveface, he sighed and went to change into his costume.
The facepaint was itchy and he wanted to do nothing more than rip off the fake rocks that Willow had glued so lovingly to his skin and SCRATCH, but he couldn't... Buffy was glaring at him.
Well, Buffy hadn't stopped glaring at him since he'd laughed at her choice of costume, princes Martina Zoana Mel Navratilova At least she was in the dress Martina had worn in the episode with the village of the women, so she looked halfway decent.
Jonathan, lucky bastard that he was, was wearing the Gourry costume, but well, his shoulders were not as wide as Xander's and he was a bit smaller, too. He sighed and let it go.
His eyes wandered through the room, landing first on Willow, who, suprise suprise, was going as Lina Inverse, then continued wandering to Cordelia, who was bitching about her Sylphiel costume, to Theresa, who looked quite cute in her Amelia costume and then Andrew Welles in the costume of Halciform. He had no idea what kind of costume Giles had been forced to wear, since the watcher/libarian had been forced to watch over the youngest of their charges and was already on the tour with them, he only heard Willow saying that he would knew it when he saw it. Buffy added that Giles, despite his protests, looked quite fetching in the costume they had choosen. Well, he would see it soon enough. The door opened one last time and if his eyebrows hadn't been hidden beneath tons of facepaint, the others would have seen his eyebrows trying to craw of his forehead.
Someone had roped Oz into going as Maryuu-ou Gaav and, despite the fact that the redhead was far to slight for that role and the sword that went with the costume was almost two heads longer than he was tall, he somehow managed to pull it off. Respect.
Willow gave the signal and they left the changing room, each going to the group they had been told to supervise. One hour, Xander thought, one hour and then he would be able to scratch all this itching paint from his face.
It was over, only that is was not. It seemed that the chaos mage had enchanted the costumes specially for them, after Buffy had mentioned Giles name while shopping. So the magic had been a bit different than that in the costumes of the young children.
So he was Xander, Willow was Willow, Buffy was Buffy, yet at the same time they were not. Two sets of memories, two lifes crammed, merged into one body each. Willow was Lina, but far more balanced, not as hot tempered and a lot less self-concious about her chest than Lina had been. Buffy was Martina, but it looked like her Buffyself dominated the newly gained personality traits. And he? He was Xander, yet not. The fake rocks weren't itching anymore and neither were they fake any longer. His other personality had a tendency to bood and a temper that could explode if he didn't kept it tightly reined.
The others were similarly affected and he felt a headache coming as he eyed Halciform/Andrew, Gaav/Oz and Gourry/Jonathan. Now he was happy that he hadn't fit that costume, but couldn't help but feel sorry for Jonathan, Gourry was notoriously thick.
But that wasn't the worst of it all. Not the worst had been saved for his father/mentor figure.
His eyes wandered to Giles. Giles, who was sitting dejectically by the main table, surrounded by books that he would never read again, never see again. Because for Giles to open his eyes was to allow his body to be consumed by the darkest evil entity ever known... all because Buffy and Willow had decided that he would look rather fetching in the red robes of aka houshi Rezo.