Don't Be a Brat, Slinky. That's My Profession.

The good: Caleb was dead. Buffy had cut him in half with the shiny new thing she was calling a Scythe, and even though Kennedy wanted to go full-on weapons geek and argue terminology now wasn't the time. She'd also come back from her excursion with two key things: information on the Scythe (forged forever ago by a group of women working separately from the Watchers' Council, made for the Slayer, probably key to everything here, which... okay then) and a giant, gaudy amulet.

The amulet was in Spike's hands now, and Kennedy couldn't help hoping that this meant good things for him. She'd gotten to really like the guy.

...not that she got how the amulet was supposed to help them, exactly, just that Buffy had gotten it from Angel, who wasn't really clear on the translation of what it was supposed to do. (Kennedy was willing to bet Wesley had had a hand in that, but what did she know, really?)

The bad: the biggest fight of their lives was staring them in the face, and the fate of the world might hinge on their success. Really big gamble, based on what little concrete information they had.

( Still. This was it, and everyone was gathered in the living room to hear Buffy speak. )

***

( No one was sleeping tonight, that much was for sure. Nerves, excitement, the desperate urge to puke, whatever; tomorrow morning they'd be taking the fight right to the First. )

[[nfi/nfb, ooc-okay, omg almost done you guys. adapted from and based on btvs 7x22, "chosen." preplay courtesy of my oh-my-god-i-love-every-single-one-of-you epically amazing npc cast: annieadderall as stillbaking, life_inshadow as followshisblood, angelo_wings as neverfaithful, regretiz4suckas as inthekeyofme, needsaparrot as xander and andrew, icecoldfrost as children4cash, wesleynotponcy as notagoodwatcher, and willbedone.]]

There had been some seriously rich irony, or something, in Andrew lecturing all the girls this morning about how dangerous Faith was. Wasn't like he was completely innocent, either... then again, they'd hardly call him dangerous, either. So. Maybe not irony. But something.

Whatever, though; Kennedy was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, and most of the Potentials, even the skittish ones, were at the very least intrigued by the arrival of the mysterious "other" Slayer. More receptive to her attempts to get to know them, anyway, but then Faith wasn't the one who was all doom and destruction and uber-serious business at them 24/7. It was a nice change.

Tonight, though, was a different kind of welcome change. Willow was back from the hospital for one, which would have been more of a celebrate-y thing if not for the girl, Shannon, who'd been thoroughly fucked up by their newest addition to the rogues' gallery and was still in the ICU. Conscious, at least, and able to talk, which was a pretty raw deal since their new creepy preacher friend had used her to send a message to Buffy.

"I have something of yours," the message was. Nice and ominous, right? About par for the course these days. Yay.

( So Buffy and Faith went out on a recon stint... )

***
Whatever it was of hers that Caleb claimed he had when he stuck a knife in Shannon's gut and dumped her on the highway, Buffy was intent on getting it back.

( Now, finally, it looked like Kennedy was going to get in on the action. )

[[nfi/nfb, ooc-okay. part 2 of 5. adapted from btvs 7x18, "dirty girls," and contains violence, creepy rhetoric couched in religious terms, npc character death, and disfigurement. preplay in this bit thoroughly rocked by annieadderall as stillbaking and angelo_wings as neverfaithful.]]

Long day. It had been a long day, filled with training (as usual) and more training and trying to get the girls up to speed on weapons work. This was where things started to get tricky: the Potentials came from such a wide range of previous experience, from girls like Molly and Vi who'd had a few years of it to ones like Caridad and Rona who hadn't known until the Bringers showed up to kill them. Add in language barriers and different personality types, not to mention a few probably inevitable freakouts about actually working with weapons, and trying to get everyone more or less on the same page could be next to impossible. Really, teaching the kids at the youth center in New York had been a hell of a lot easier: they were younger, eager to learn, no apocalyptic pressure on them, and definitely not as set in their ways.

Another thing Kennedy had found was that different Watchers had vastly different teaching techniques, and every day lately there had been at least one argument about fighting styles, which, again, was a royal pain in the ass if you had to struggle to convey your meaning. She'd been doing her best to rein it in, but today her frustration had boiled over into yelling at Chloe for being out of sync during a kata-- having Principal Wood drop in to watch them hadn't helped, since his skeptical expression had fueled a desire to really make sure the girls gave a good show, and if they didn't look good how was that going to reflect on her as their drill sergeant? She wasn't particularly inclined to like the guy, either, what with Spike being all broody over his whatever it was the principal had going on with Buffy, so it had all culminated in a supremely cranky incident that Kennedy wasn't particularly proud of.

In retrospect, sure, she could have gone a different route than making Chloe do pushups because she'd gotten too far into the drill sergeant thing. Chloe was struggling to keep up as it was, not as sharp as the other girls, not as quick to catch on, not as able to repress the constant apprehension about the big fight they suspected was coming, even if they didn't know when or how. Actually that wasn't entirely true; Chloe was just easier to read than some of the others. She knew it and they knew it and it was a whole big feedback loop of blown confidence.

Kennedy wasn't doing so great with the repressing either, to be honest; she was hard on the girls in training because of it, because she wasn't going to be responsible for another Annabelle, another girl who ran and got herself killed because she wasn't prepared. So they'd be prepared on her watch, damn it, even if she had to be a little bit of a bad guy to make sure it happened. (And no one had stopped her yet, so hey. Full steam ahead.)

So she was lying on the bed trying to unwind after aforementioned long day, complaining to Willow and Rona about her frustrations with the training sessions, only half listening to Buffy and Dawn giggling outside in the hall.

Until Dawn's laughter turned into a shriek of horror, anyway. ( And it all just went way downhill from there... )

[[nfi/nfb, tl;dr, ooc okay. 1 of 2 today. adapted from btvs 7x15, "everyone makes terrible life choices this week" "get it done," and not preplayed because i love my cast too much to make them all have to hold the idiot ball. this one comes with a serious warning for npc suicide dealt with at some length, some not-well-handled aftermath thereof, and... yeah.]]

Just because the First was still laying low or whatever it was doing was no excuse to sit around and do nothing, and with the Council destroyed, they were short on information. With Fandom still cut off despite her most stubborn attempts to get through, Kennedy-- who kept on trying half so people wouldn't assume the worst-- couldn't leverage what she was sure would be a whole mess of information in the library. That meant research, and a whole lot of it, and also a whole lot of dead ends.

Kennedy was so not a fan of research, but if the younger Potentials were going to do it she might as well be example-y, and at least it kept her busy. Granted, most of the time it was pretty boring stuff, poking at websites (on her phone, so the poking was literal) and leafing through ancient books or the occasional printout, so getting asked to retrieve a CD-R from Willow's desk drawer? Totally welcome change of pace. That, at least, was something she could do with her hands.

Sauntering over to the desk, she pulled open the drawer and started digging through, a slight grin crossing her face at how neatly organized everything was. God, that was cute. The stack of CD-Rs wasn't hard to find, and all of them being labeled and in alphabetical order meant this was a piece of cake. She was about two discs from the one she was looking for when her fingers brushed up against a piece of paper, or something, wedged into the next stack back. And okay, she couldn't help being curious, so she pulled it out.

It was a photograph: that much was obvious from the weight of the paper stock and the glossy surface against her fingertips. But what was it doing back here in the clearly demarcated land of digitally archived data?

Kennedy looked at the back of the picture (Kodak Gold, proclaimed the insignia stamped all over) for a moment before turning it over in her hands to get a good look at--

( Oh, god. )

[[warning for discussion of past character death. ...yeah, i waited until after the bde to pull out the angst. at least it's the only post from me today? thanks to the prodigious needsaparrot for the preplay. and for making me cry. nfi/nfb/ooc is tasty like eggnog.]]

The good part: so far, they hadn't had any more attacks by the First's minions since the night Buffy dusted the Turok-Han in the construction yard.

The bad part: it made their training patrols with Buffy feel a bit anticlimactic. Sure, training with Spike was more of a challenge and they'd gotten the chance to stake a few more vamps of their own on some of those patrols, and that had a good effect on the girls' confidence levels, but that didn't stop the nagging feeling that the other shoe was just waiting to drop.

Stupid hypothetical ninja footwear.

Unfortunately (or fortunately according to a highly localized perspective) that meant finding distractions from said nagging feeling, and while most of the girls opted for calling home or indulging in more gossip or driving Anya and Dawn to despair with their constant raiding of the kitchen for snacks, Kennedy fell back on an old familiar pastime.

Namely, flirting with Willow, all systems go. In her defense (or so she'd claim) the way Willow got all blushy and stammery when she did just made it more fun, and okay, it was completely adorable. That really didn't give Kennedy much incentive to stop. Even if it did threaten to bring out the secret sap in her, it felt like an accomplishment to get Willow to smile.

( And oh, hey, another opportunity to do that had just presented itself. )

[[1 of 2, nfi/nfb/ooc-okay, same ol' same ol' drill. takes place after 7x12, "potential," but before 7x13, "the killer in me." preplayed with the spectacular willbedone and the stupendous needsaparrot. i maybe downloaded a thesaurus app for my ooc notes. shush.]]

It was, if Kennedy wanted to be sardonic about it, probably a good thing that Eve had turned out to be the First Evil in disguise; her constant pessimism had been getting on Kennedy's last nerve to the point where telling herself it would be a Bad Idea to punch the girl in the face hadn't been so convincing any more.

Well. It was a moot point if the face-punching turned out to be impossible, wasn't it?

Anyway, being sardonic about it wasn't making her feel any better, and the damage was done-- all of them were freaked out now and knowing the super-strong-even-by-supernatural-standards Neander-vampire was coming for them tonight? Not helping. Annabelle's death at that thing's hands was still pretty raw a couple of weeks after the fact, even before anyone factored in Buffy's inability to defeat it. Not that anyone was in a hurry to bring that up; the last few times they had, they'd gotten a killer glare from Dawn, or a stern word from Xander, or an unhelpful rant from Anya, though in Kennedy's case it had been the quiet, pleading look from Willow that had shut her up.

Little scary how fast that crush was snowballing; Kennedy hadn't realized it until she'd leapt unthinkingly to Willow's defense during the conference-turned-awkward-argument in the dining room earlier and gotten a few raised eyebrows for it.

( But now? Time to gear up for battle. )

***

( Willow? Nervous? Of course not. )

( Here they all were, standing in the foyer with weapons while a bunch of Bringers and that Ubervamp thing worked on breaking down the front door. )

[[3 of 3, done for the week, yay. preplayed with thanks to my cast: annieadderall as stillbaking, needsaparrot as xander and andrew, willbedone, life_inshadow as cutestripeyhat, and regretiz4suckas as inthekeyofme. adapted, riffed on, folded, spindled, and mutilated from btvs 7x11, "showtime." nfi/nfb/ooc-okay/blahblahdeeblah et cetera.]]

It was just the sun going down. It shouldn't be a big deal except for how it totally was with the crazy vampire from before the dawn of time, the one that hadn't dusted after Buffy staked it which was not how these things were supposed to go, out there. Not to mention Giles constantly counting down the minutes to sunset, and Xander nailing sheets of plywood over every window in the place. That last detail should have been reassuring except that Kennedy could only think of the last time she'd been in a house with the windows boarded up. That had felt like being under siege too, and that had... not gone well.

It didn't help much either that Molly was practically vibrating with nerves and Annabelle wouldn't put that stupid notebook down; Kennedy was pretty sure she'd taken notes on Anya's throwaway comments about the plumbing in the upstairs bathroom.

It was a whole ton of extra not-helping that while all of this prep work was going on, the three of them were just sitting there, on the couch, watching.

And waiting. Again. Not being treated like competent equals, not part of the gang, just like helpless charges who needed to be protected.

Hello, resentment. This really, really wasn't what Kennedy thought she'd signed on for.

( Giles? Was pacing. And keeping up the whole counting-down-the-minutes thing. )

[[and thus concludes my post spam for this week! again, adapted and tweaked from btvs 7x10, "bring on the night." thanks again to wesleynotponcy/notagoodwatcher, needsaparrot, annieadderall/stillbaking, and willbedone for the preplay on this part. new post tag is dontvotemeout's fault. tune in next week. nfi/nfb/ooc-ok, tip your waiter, yadda yadda.]]

So just because the big explanation thing was out of the way, it didn't mean 1630 Revello Drive was suddenly excitement-free. Figuring out where to put everyone was shaping up to be a pretty big project, not to mention feeding people, and there was a whole big logistical... thing. Also there was still a nerd tied to a chair.

If this was going to be the new standard for normal, at least life wasn't going to be boring. Assuming they kept surviving and all which, with this many people in the house, might not be a sure thing.

Great way to welcome Giles back to town. ( Anya and Dawn did so in their own special ways, anyway. )

After the sun went down and Buffy took Giles out with her on patrol, the logistical battle at the Summers household wore on. Kennedy didn't exactly have a lot of unpacking to do, but she needed a distraction, and well-- two of Buffy's friends were familiar faces. Sort of. Not exactly, but close enough. ( Hi, Xander. Oh, hi, Willow. )

Then again, not everyone coped by flirting, Kennedy. Food was a perfectly valid option, too, even if food supplies might be a little touch and go. ( Cookies were being hoarded already. She knew how Slayers ate. Dawn could only guess what small degree less that would apply to Potential Slayers. )

[[part 2 of 3. thanks again to my rocking cast. featured in this bit: wesleynotponcy as notagoodwatcher, icecoldfrost as children4cash, needsaparrot as xander and andrew, willbedone, and regretiz4suckas as inthekeyofme, all of whom made this more awesome than i hoped for. i keep typing this out because these usernames bring me joy. again spindled, folded, and slightly mutilated from btvs 7x10, "bring on the night," nfi, nfb, ooc okay.]]

Portalocity had definitely added a whole new level of spoiled to Kennedy's outlook on life; by the time they got off the plane she was twitching with restlessness (the frayed nerves didn't help). From what she'd seen through the plane window on their descent, too, the town she'd been keeping tabs on for years was somehow... not what she'd expected, either. For a town that was supposed to be crawling with demons and vampires and untold ancient evil it was way less gothic (she'd pictured it like Fandom only with palm trees) and way more, well, wholesome-looking than she had thought. Logically that made sense and she knew it, but Kennedy couldn't help being disappointed.

She was only halfway listening to what Giles had to say while they walked; the rest of her brainpower was taken up with trying to process everything Giles had filled her in on during the flight. That wasn’t working so well.

( Talking to people who, taking into account how much they were listening, might as well have been thin air, was one of those quintessential Sunnydale experiences that Giles had rather lost the hang of. )

( Buffy hadn't developed any psychic knocking powers or anything... )

[[look, it's canon proper now! preplayed with thanks to the awesome wesleynotponcy as notagoodwatcher, annieadderall as stillbaking, icecoldfrost as children4cash, regretiz4suckas as inthekeyofme, willbedone as, well, willow, and needsaparrot doing double duty as xander and andrew. adapted and riffed on a little from btvs 7x10, "bring on the night." nfi, nfb, ooc okay, to be continued.]]

Fresh air was a good thing sometimes; fresh air was, in Kennedy's opinion, occasionally severely underrated. So when the opportunity came up to sneak away from the dance for a little bit? That was an opportunity to snag in a two-handed grasp like it was the last Cabbage Patch Kid in the toy store on Christmas Eve in 1983... or, okay, it wasn't really that extreme, but still, she'd take it.

For perfectly innocent reasons, thank you, even if she was heading out of the building with Tara.

Because, as above, fresh air was a good thing. Plus, the space dolphins were kind of tripping her out.

[[up early for sp, for people who know who they are. >.>]]