Slayers Halloween Drabble-Consternation on costume

"Please tell me you're behind all this."
It wasn't the greeting she usually gave him, the distinct lack of a heavy weapon swinging at his head was mildly disappointing.  If it had ever been possible to catch him off balance, and he would never admit to being caught off balance, he would've been caught off balance solely because his preparations to dodge were for naught.  There was something unfair about her refraining from futile attempts at violence.
"You know, I do believe I have a policy for dealing with requests like that," he mused.  "If this is about him riding down the hill from his school on your rolling chair being pulled by a team of rabid goats while he is in the nude and gleefully yodeling profanities in another language, I may be forced to equivocate myself out of any responsibility or knowledge of that event."
She stared at him, baffled, waves of confusions crashing against one another in a turmoil of befuddlement.  It was delicious.
"I take it that hasn't happened yet," he said, "Well, if this is about the apple bobbing disaster yet again, I will point out that you told me to help him make the caramel dip and you, I may recall, said that it would be more hygienic and less messy to hang the fruit from the rafters rather than leave it floating in a barrel.  It would be such a waste to go around resisting that much temptation and quite against policy."
"I haven't forgotten the apples," she snapped, "And, one way or another, you, or your entire species, will be paying the dental and chiropractic bills for his classmates."
"But your current consternation is not over the apples but rather over some other matter.  If it involves frogs, I did provide a lid for his aquarium and cannot be held fully responsible for what any healthy little boy would decide to do with a personal collection of amphibians.  Whatever he did, it was by his own volition."
"No, it's his costume," said she.  "Wait, what was that about goats and my rolling chair?  And frogs?"
"His costume," Xelloss repeated, lest she start to think too much on other affairs, "No, I cannot say I've had any input on his costume choices or designs.  The last I heard he was either going to dress up as a hyper-intelligent corgi, a mustache, a squashed mosquito, a melting clock, a psychedelic peacock, a question mark, a microscope, fried potatoes, or perhaps as a pirate.  I don't see how you can object to any of those options so fiercely as to assume that I have some nefarious hand in the matter."
"Oh," Filia said, "Oh, no, he hasn't been interested in any of those for at least a week.  Maybe more than that.  No, he's decided to go as a princess."
His eyebrow rose, precise to the skeptical micrometer, a perfect arc of unvoiced inquiry.  What, asked his eyebrow, could she possibly find wrong with princesses?  He could have reservations, but she ought to be all for that particular bit of royalty.
"I do blame you," she added, "Even if you didn't directly influence his choice.  Because you're so, you come around and act so very fluid, yes, fluid about gender and sex."
"How," he asked cooly, "Is it a crime for one such as myself to take a rather flexible view?  Societies rise and fall, norms shift in a hundred years or so, and bodies, why, bodies are merely tools for my ilk."
"Yes, yes," she was frazzled and not listening again, he found that rather irksome.  If he was going to ask questions of her, the least she could do would be listen.  "But all his classmates will all make fun of him!"
"I would hardly think so poorly of all his peers," he smiled, "There's a few of them that aren't little bastards just yet."
"Do you think he's doing this because I used to have him wear a dress until he could keep his tail from tearing up his pants?"
"I thought you had decided it was all due to my influences, what, with a very fluid view on gender and such."
"Yes," she agreed, "Yes, that's right.  Well, don't you think you ought to talk to him?  He's in his room making his outfit right now."
"I would be delighted to talk to him," Xelloss replied, "I think I might begin by congratulating him for his choices."
***
The boy was sitting on the floor, his hair in curlers and his legs in his mother's old nylons.  An old toy hobby-horse, evidently a recent victim of surgery that not only separated the head from the stick but transformed the equine into something more unicorn in nature, sat sadly beside him.
He was so occupied trying to chisel a happy face onto a clam shell that he hardly noticed Xelloss' arrival.
"Your mother says you want to be a princess."
Val looked up, grinning at his favorite fiend.
"Yeah, it was a little hard trying to be pirate-corgi-with-a-mustache-riding-a-microscopic-peacock-that-ate-melting-potatoes," the boy admitted, "I gave up pretty quick on that.  But princesses are pretty cool too."
"I see you didn't feel like dressing up like the local royalty," Xelloss noted.
"Well," Val sighed.  He would have to explain things, wouldn't he?  It was funny how someone as smart as Xelloss always seemed to need to have things explained to him.  "I can't be 'melia, 'cause I know 'melia, and since I know 'melia, if I was 'melia, then I'd have to act like 'melia, and it's hard to act like 'melia unless you are 'melia, and if I dressed up like 'melia and acted like 'melia then 'melia's dad would wanna give me a hug and I don't like his mustache bein' in my face that much.  It's itchy."
"Fair enough," Xelloss conceded, "But why, Val, did you pick Martina?"