Xander looked through the bargain bin at Ethan's, determined to find something that would make his own costume unique. At first he had wanted to go as a soldier, but when Warren Meers had gotten the last of the plastic guns just before he had, Xander had been forced to think quickly and come up with something new on the fly.
"Might I suggest a scholar of some kind?" Xander jumped and spun in the air, flatly ignoring the giggles coming from Buffy and Willow, "Sorry, old son. I am Ethan, proprietor of this shop and I have a deal for you as it is closing time." He led Xander back to a set of clothes with a sword, "This is a costume of a Watcher, of sorts, and that of one of their very best and brightest. I am willing to sell it to you because you happen to have the right size and build for it, along with the correct hair color, though I will have to add a temporary tattoo on to your left wrist."
Xander looked at the costume and then heard Buffy's voice, "Yeah, like Xander could ever be a Watcher." These words made him stiffen in both anger and resolve and then look over at Ethan, whom was frowning slightly at the comment, and then nod, "Excellent. Now, let us get that tattoo affixed."
"Xander! Xander! Are you okay?"
He looked around, unsure as to how he had gotten from his flat in Paris to wherever he currently was located. It was rather warm here and there were little … demons … running around, "Hmm, if there are demons here, then I absolutely must be in America." He took a deep breath and then let it out quickly, noting that for the first time in centuries, he wasn't having any sinus trouble.
"Xander!" A woman dressed in what appeared to be a leather catsuit proceeded to wave a slightly ghostly hand in front of him, "Are you okay?"
"I am quite alright, young lady, but I am afraid to inform you that my name is Adam, Adam Pierson." He checked over his body and noted that he wasn't his own body; the body he was in was far less conditioned than the one that was his, had a smaller nose, more hair on the top of his head and was far younger in appearance, "Oh bloody hell. Where am I, who does this body belong to and what's going on?"
"You're in Sunnydale, California, you are in the body of Alexander Lavelle Harris and it seems as if we have been turned into our costumes. I went as a ghost, Buffy went as an eighteenth century noblewoman," the redhead, a pretty one at that, started, but stopped as 'Adam' started to laugh. "What's so funny?"
"Let me guess; she's scared of her own shadow, completely useless and wants a big, strong man to protect her?" At her affirming nod, Adam fell to the ground, howling in laughter, "Gods, I loved terrorizing those bints back then; they were so easy to scare, well, easy in general, actually." Whatever else he might have said was cut off as part of her earlier statement registered in his sober mind, "… and it seems as if we have been turned into our costumes." "Oh hell." He wasn't really here; whoever this Alexander was, he had the unfortunate honor of dressing up as one 'Adam Pierson', also known among the few Immortals who knew as Methos, and now his body was inhabiting the spirit of said Immortal. "Poor kid, I hope he comes out alright from this."
"BUFFY ISN"T EASY!" The redhead looked livid, and were it not for the facts that she was a ghost and he was, if temporarily, Immortal, then her look would have reduced his borrowed body down to atoms, "Anyway, Xander dressed up as you, some kind of Watcher. Now, we need to go find Buffy before she gets hurt."
Before Adam could interrupt her, a scream pierced the night and he sighed, "Well, I think we've found her."
Spike looked at the helpless Slayer, dressed as a noblewoman from, if he remembered correctly, the eighteenth century; it had been a good time for vampires to pick up noble blood from families, as Dru had told him, but he'd never had the chance to find out himself, "Well, well, well, what do we have here, Dru. It's the Slayer, all helpless."
Dru giggled behind him, "She's all scared and unhappy, Spiky; she'll taste so good, she will." Dru started to prance around but then stopped, looking as if she were listening before she began to whimper.
"What is it, luv?"
"Miss Edith and the stars say that he comes upon his pale horse for us, Spiky. He comes from the darkness to show us Death." She started to sway to an unheard tune, sing-songing, "Death, Death, glorious Death."
There were times that Dru almost made sense to Spike, and this just happened to be one of those times she made no sense to nobody, "Whatever. Come on boys, tuck in." He vamped out and made towards the Slayer, who screamed, but stopped when he heard the distinctive sound of a vampire dusting, "What in the bloody hell is going on back there?"
"I think you should listen to your unbalanced friend there, Vampire." The voice, while familiar, was hard as stone and cold as ice as a figure stepped out of the darkness with a sword in his hand and dressed in a rather British way, "I have come for you."
"Look, Spiky, it's he who sits upon a pale horse. It's Death!" Dru rushed up to the man and hugged him, never putting on her game face or dropping her doll, Miss Edith, "Have you come to tell us a story of you and the Horsemen, Death?"
The person smiled sadly, "Perhaps another time, dear." With that, he swept his arm back and then forwards, decapitating his Dru.
"NOOO! DRU!" Spike found himself charging forwards in an unthinking rage before he anyone could stop him, but it was then he realized his mistake as the figure side-stepped and swung his sword. After that all Spike, also known as William the Bloody, knew was the blackness of eternal rest.
"Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust; Life is a party and Beer is a must." Adam wiped his sword clean as the dust of the Billy Idol-wannabe swept past him and through the ghostly girl, slightly saddened that the chap, a fellow Briton, was gone.
He looked over at the Noblewoman and sighed, seeing her gibbering in shock and terror, before looking up at the sky, "Is what I did back then so bad that I get saddled with her?"
As if in answer, Adam felt a wave of pain hit him like a freight train and drive him to his knees, then into the blackness of unconsciousness as the Noblewoman stopped gibbering and the ghostly girl who had been next to him simply vanished.
Xander sat in his chair the next day at school, listening absently as Willow recounted the entire night, but perked up as she brought up Buffy's fear of a car being a demon; he'd get some mileage out of that one, but at a later date.
"So, Xander, what was it like to be your guy? Dru kept calling him Death? What was that all about?" Willow's rapid-fire question shook Xander out of his reverie and made him smile wanly.
"Dru was confusing him with somebody else, Wills. He was a researcher in a Society called The Watchers and was head researcher on a legend called 'Methos', whom was supposedly five thousand years old, give or take a few centuries. He was quite the hell-raiser, figuratively speaking, of course, back in the day," Xander quickly supplied while scratching the new tattoo on the inside of his left wrist.
"Willow tells me he was British. Is that true?" Giles sounded hopeful that there would be something there to make Xander seem less 'American', maybe even British in nature, but Xander had to shoot him down gently.
"Yeah, he was, but aside from the odd want for a pint of stout, a scone and something called a quid, I only have vague impressions of him. Sorry guys." Xander doodled on a sheet of paper absently, unaware that what he was actually writing was the flowing script that had been Persian nearly four thousand years before, and that in it's language he had written, "Death has come for all things evil; cower in fear, for nobody can escape him."