Sunnydale, California, Early May 2003 (Minutes Later/Tuesday Fandom Time)
The last thing Kennedy remembered was hearing Faith yell for them to get down, and not in the fun partying way, before flying shrapnel and the searing rush of heat and air knocked her fifty feet and into a pile of concrete rubble.
Picking herself up out of said rubble, hearing weak groans of pain and smelling the sickly tang of blood and scorched flesh, she wanted to take the last 24 hours back. Wincing, she got to her feet and did a quick, unprofessional self-assessment: nothing broken, no apparent concussion symptoms, some scrapes and cuts but nothing too bad.
A glance to one side afforded her a look at lingering patches of fire, a limp hand sticking out from under a pile of concrete and rebar, and the heavier-than-you-might-think realization that she'd been stupidly lucky again. Kennedy coughed, spit out a mouthful of dust and saliva, and strained to listen for any signs of survivors.
There. Voices. She couldn't make out all of them, the way they echoed off the sewer walls, but the high-pitched one yelling "Is anybody else alive?" was definitely Amanda. Trying not to stumble too badly over-- god, she hoped that wasn't someone's leg, she followed the yelling; in her peripheral vision she could see other girls doing the same. Thank god, some of them had survived.
Sort of figured, didn't it, walking right into a trap just like they'd been so mad at Buffy about, after all the planning they'd done? Ugh. No time to think about that now; they had survivors to find, and then they had to get out of here.
"Where's Faith?" she asked as she joined the cluster of Potentials-- Vi and Caridad, along with Amanda, and others coming their way.
Vi, pale and wide-eyed even in the darkness, shook her head. "Don't know."
"Find her," Kennedy said, earning dubious looks from the girls. Couldn't really blame them for being surprised; her blowout with Faith yesterday had been epic, and she already knew some of them suspected her of wanting to take over and call the shots. It wasn't entirely untrue. She had been pushing to get her way; she always did.
Still.
"Maybe we should get the hell out of this place," Caridad protested, as Kennedy stopped to help Yasmina to her feet. "They could be--"
Some Ubervamp gets lucky and takes my head off, maybe you get the mojo and get to play big bad Slayer next.
Kennedy turned and snapped again, "Find her!"
Like hell she wasn't going to get her way on this. She might have a chance at being on deck if Faith died, but it wasn't a gamble she cared to take, and that had nothing to do with how badly she wanted to be a Slayer.
By the time they did find Faith, they were about fifteen strong, the ambulatory among them helping the injured along-- she flat out refused to abandon anyone who was still alive, because she was not losing any more of them-- and nobody was arguing any more about Kennedy being in charge.
The good news: Faith was alive, if soaking wet; they found her lying face down in a pool of water, and Kennedy had the Fandom Magic and Support Reserves to thank for knowing enough to check her vitals. The bad: she was unconscious, which meant Kennedy had to assign a couple of the girls to carry her, which was only going to slow them down more.
Fun situation. If she left anyone behind, they were sure to die. If she brought everyone along, their odds of survival weren't great either. Had anyone else survived? Was the risk of looking for them too high, balanced against the chance to get their current group to safety? That kind of pressure sucked, but the girls were looking to her to call the shots now, and...
It was a glimpse, just a tiny fleeting one, of what the last few months must have been like for Buffy. Years, even. Of why Faith hadn't been chomping at the bit to step up when Buffy walked out.
Maybe Kennedy owed them an apology later. That was a good plan, but first she had to get the Potentials out of here.
The immediacy of that plan got a whole lot more immediate when they heard an Ubervamp growling somewhere nearby.
So they ran, as best they could carrying the wounded and unconscious, Kennedy barking at them to keep going. It was repetitive and maybe unnecessary, sort of like all of Buffy's speeches, and god, she was never complaining about those again. Problem was, now that the sewer tunnels were all blown to hell they had no idea where they were headed.
It did not escape Kennedy's attention that she could very well be leading them blindly into a death trap of her very own. Particularly when their flight led them right up against yet another pile of rubble.
"Cut the chatter, move, move!" she yelled over a chorus of frantic questions, reverting to drill-sergeant voice and shoving aside the whisper of guilt about Chloe. "Up and over, wounded first, let's go!"
She stayed long enough to help everyone else over first, all but shoving some of them when she had to, and was just climbing over with Vi and her possibly broken arm when, oh shit, the growling was right at her heels and she half stumbled, half fell into a cluster of panicked, screaming teenagers.
She barely had time to assess their surroundings: mostly trapped, possibly the only way out being the same way they'd come in. Fuck fuck fuck--
"Group together, form a circle!" she ordered, reminding herself very firmly that this wasn't her first fight. She'd always bluffed her way through some bad situations on sheer attitude alone before, and she was falling back on that now; she let a cocky grin cross her face, put some swagger into her posture. Fake it till you make it, right? "Nobody panic! It's all of us, one of him. We can take one of these guys."
She glanced around, and noted that even if the others looked as freaked as she felt, they were balling their fists, getting into game face, squaring up.
That's it. Atta girls.
"Remember the training. Everybody? Get ready!"
She didn't see the second Ubervamp that leaped down on her from somewhere up above, and screaming bloody murder was hardly a badass thing to do, but she'd thank her instincts later for letting her flip the thing over her shoulder on pure terrified adrenaline.
"There's another one!" she heard Amanda yelp, but she was busy herding the girls into a cluster away from their new friend, keeping herself between it and them. Then Amanda grabbed her by the shoulder and yanked her around roughly, pointing. "Not that one. That one!"
The third one, that was, crouched on a pile of rubble and posing melodramatically as the Potentials-- all of them hurt, most of them bleeding, shit, they were practically broadcasting their location even without the noise-- flinched away. Kennedy scooped up a stray poleaxe of some kind, part of the Bringers' decoy arsenal. It was heavy and clumsy and way taller than she was, but it was all she had. Ubervamps dusted the same way regular vampires did, and she had a better chance at decapitating this one than she did of staking it through that industrial-strength sternum anyway.
Shutting out the sound of the other girls' panic, the screaming of one girl who hadn't been lucky enough to get away in time (oh god, no) she tried to watch the Turok-Han, read its movements for a sign... not think about what one of them had done to Buffy.
Finally she thought she saw an opening and swung, but the poleaxe was badly balanced and the Ubervamp was too fast; it batted the weapon from her hands with contemptuous ease.
Almost before she realized it she was struggling for air, feeling a clawed hand crushing her windpipe, seeing spots in her vision as she kicked her feet futilely against nothing.
No, this wasn't supposed to happen, I promised I'd come back!
Dimly she heard a crash, followed up by the pain of getting dropped to the ground, and the next thing she knew, Buffy was standing there over a pile of dust, holding one seriously badass looking weapon in her hands.
"Get the wounded," she told them. "We're leaving."
They didn't argue.
***
With Faith recovering upstairs and most of the Scoobies conferring over the shiny new weapon Buffy had brought home, Kennedy was mostly trying to find a way to keep from being underfoot. At the moment this meant pacing around the dining room, half listening to Amanda and some of the girls who'd been in the sewer explosion as they talked each other through the post-fight freakout.
Amanda was pretty much convinced the explosion was punishment for them siding with Faith instead of Buffy. It was sort of a compelling argument.
Anya
It was entirely possible that Anya and Andrew were terrifying the wounded potentials.
...well, Anya was terrifying, in her 'I only say this because it's true' type-of-way, which the girls should be used to at this point (but weren't), but Andrew probably wasn't helping the situation. Discussing death, dismemberment, and looting probably weren't great morale boosters.
Unless you were Anya. SIGH.
"OK. I'll get Kennedy to watch the girls," she was saying cheerfully as she ignored the growing alarm amongst the potentials. "She's tough. Imminent death won't bother her."
Kennedy
"Wait, what?"
Kennedy, unwittingly echoing the wounded but incredulous girl who'd overheard that last comment of Anya's, stuck her head through the doorway. "What are we volunteering me for, now?"
There was a compliment in there somewhere. Maybe. She never really could tell with this bunch.
Anya
That was totally a compliment! ...or possibly a comment on how dumb humanity tended to be. Take your pick.
"Baby-sitting," Anya answered easily, jerking a thumb back towards her now-fretting patients. "I'm taking the monkey and appropriating medical goods from official places for our own use."
Beat.
"Unless you want to come along too, and then we can let Dawnie sit on them, but that usually falls under the 'bad idea' clause."
Kennedy
Kennedy blinked several times while she parsed that, and when it finally sank it it startled a brief laugh out of her.
"Looting the hospital?" If Sunnydale Memorial had followed the trend of every other establishment in town it'd be abandoned, too, so that made sense. She glanced around... every space of everything on the ground floor, actually, occupied by some injured girl or other. "Guess we could kind of use it here, huh? I'm all for it."
Over by the fireplace one of the girls groaned.
"And me without my sexy nurse outfit."
Oh, as if she owned one.
Anya
"Sadly, it is the wrong time of year to find those in stores, but I'll keep my eyes open," Anya deadpanned. "That was possibly more about your sexual activities than was necessary for this conversation, but I appreciate your open-ness and such, or whatever."
See? HELPFUL.
"As well as your tacit approval of Crime." Yes, you could probably hear the capital 'C'. "I do not have a problem with it, but many humans do."
Kennedy
"Oh, like I haven't heard all about the noises coming from the kitchen last night," Kennedy replied, not as smooth as she'd have liked due to trying to choke back a laugh.
She spread her hands. "Hey, whatever works for us right now. Safe to say I'm not exactly friendly with the Sunnydale cops these days and oh, oops, they skipped town anyway."
A beat.
"You sure you wanna take Andrew?"
Anya
"No, but he's the monkey that came up with the idea, and he wants to go and do Good or whatever because he finds my current supplies lacking and tacky, so I'll drive because he's a lightweight," Anya informed Kennedy. "He can't mess up robbing too much, right?"
That was hopeful, Kennedy. Because Anya is rather sure she knows the answer to that.
"Think the liquor store is abandoned, too? He drank our disinfectant."
Kennedy
"He drank your--" Oh. Liquor store. Right.
"Yeah, good luck with that," Kennedy said wryly. "Also, only if you bring some back for the rest of us, 'cause..."
There was no good way to finish that sentence.
Anya
"If you do not participate in the robbing, you do not share the spoils," Anya retorted, shaking her head. "Unless you get stabbed horribly, and then you can have a band-aid we liberated or whatever, because blood is difficult to get out of carpet and couches and such and I'm not the maid."
Kennedy
"Fine, no booze for me." Weirdly, this conversation was cheering her up just enough to try and puppy-face-pout in some bizarre attempt to change Anya's mind, as if that would work. "Which is totally unfair, by the way, if I have to stay and watch people for you."
She wasn't complaining about the watching-people part. Just being denied any liquor-store loot.
...wow, they were all about the moral grey areas today.
Anya
"Ah, bargaining. Excellent. You understand basic capitalist principle and aren't half as dumb as everyone else!" Anya practically squealed. "What is your offer?"
Kennedy
And just like that Kennedy decided that if the world didn't end, she had to find some way to introduce Anya to her father, just because it'd be funny.
"Depends," she replied, letting a little bit of her rich-kid smugness out in her smirk. "Could take an extra shift watching after the girls when you get back-- in which case I'd really need the booze-- or tell Lianne to quit leaving her bunny slippers in the middle of the room all the time."
Anya
"Extra shift with the girls and burn the slippers, and you have a deal," Anya replied instantly. "One type of liquor, your choice, in whatever amount is easily stolen."
Kennedy
"Really good vodka, if it's not locked up," Kennedy decided, then considered that she was assuming someone hadn't already stolen that, like on the way out of town or something.
"...burn them? Kind of extreme, isn't it?"
Anya
"They aren't cute," she answered shortly. "Bunnies are horrible creatures, with hoppy legs and twitchy little noses, and what's with all the carrots? What do they need such good eyesight for anyway? So they can eat us in our sleep?"
"Burn. Or stake, whatever. Just get them gone."
Kennedy
Kennedy's eyebrows had started to creep upward at the beginning of that explanation, and by the time Anya was done she was pretty sure they'd run off to hide somewhere.
"Wow, remind me never to let you meet my pet rabbit, then."
Was there somewhere in the house she could just hide those slippers? Staking someone's footwear seemed harsh.
Anya
Right, now Anya was backing away from Kennedy with an expression of horror on her face. "You keep one as a pet?" she asked, appalled. "Why?"
Kennedy
"Because he was really cute, and I couldn't resist?" Not helping, Kennedy. Not even if you looked genuinely perplexed. "A bunch of them just started appearing in the magic shop in Fandom one day and I decided I wanted to keep one!"
REALLY NOT HELPING.
Anya
"YOU DID WHAT TO MY STORE?" So what if it was in Fandom and not Sunnydale, the Magic Box was hers, dammit. "RODENTS, Kennedy. Not. Cute. Small, floppy creatures of mass destruction."
Kennedy
"What, do you own the Magic Box, too?" Yes, good, Kennedy, let's confuse things further. Or just give Anya more leverage. "And hey, don't talk about Bailey that way! He doesn't chew things up."
Pause.
"Much..."
Okay, so he did seem to have a taste for old mystical tomes, but hey, look where he came from!
...so yeah, that conversation clearly went well. Better than most of the research on the Scythe seemed to have gone, anyway, since whenever Kennedy checked in on Willow upstairs she looked frustrated. It was late in the evening by the time Buffy headed out of the house with the Scythe in hand and a purposeful expression on her face, by which point Anya and Andrew were back carrying pillow cases full of medical supplies. Which was a relief-- Kennedy, Amanda, and everyone she'd recruited to help with medical detail had done what they could, but there was only so far even the hideously tacky floral bedsheets would go, and having actual painkillers and ointments just meant there was more scotch left over.
Andrew had also picked up a new tendency to glance Anya's way and occasionally look like he was about to tear up, but if anyone asked, neither of them would explain why.
People kept asking, though. Until Buffy got back, they could use the diversion.
[[nfi/nfb, ooc-okay, yeah, we know by now, shanie. part 2 of 4. based on btvs 7x21, "end of days," and the second part preplayed with the exquisite icecoldfrost as children4cash.
this post contains mention of multiple npc deaths and a fair bit of violence. also threatened violence to bunny slippers.]]
Picking herself up out of said rubble, hearing weak groans of pain and smelling the sickly tang of blood and scorched flesh, she wanted to take the last 24 hours back. Wincing, she got to her feet and did a quick, unprofessional self-assessment: nothing broken, no apparent concussion symptoms, some scrapes and cuts but nothing too bad.
A glance to one side afforded her a look at lingering patches of fire, a limp hand sticking out from under a pile of concrete and rebar, and the heavier-than-you-might-think realization that she'd been stupidly lucky again. Kennedy coughed, spit out a mouthful of dust and saliva, and strained to listen for any signs of survivors.
There. Voices. She couldn't make out all of them, the way they echoed off the sewer walls, but the high-pitched one yelling "Is anybody else alive?" was definitely Amanda. Trying not to stumble too badly over-- god, she hoped that wasn't someone's leg, she followed the yelling; in her peripheral vision she could see other girls doing the same. Thank god, some of them had survived.
Sort of figured, didn't it, walking right into a trap just like they'd been so mad at Buffy about, after all the planning they'd done? Ugh. No time to think about that now; they had survivors to find, and then they had to get out of here.
"Where's Faith?" she asked as she joined the cluster of Potentials-- Vi and Caridad, along with Amanda, and others coming their way.
Vi, pale and wide-eyed even in the darkness, shook her head. "Don't know."
"Find her," Kennedy said, earning dubious looks from the girls. Couldn't really blame them for being surprised; her blowout with Faith yesterday had been epic, and she already knew some of them suspected her of wanting to take over and call the shots. It wasn't entirely untrue. She had been pushing to get her way; she always did.
Still.
"Maybe we should get the hell out of this place," Caridad protested, as Kennedy stopped to help Yasmina to her feet. "They could be--"
Some Ubervamp gets lucky and takes my head off, maybe you get the mojo and get to play big bad Slayer next.
Kennedy turned and snapped again, "Find her!"
Like hell she wasn't going to get her way on this. She might have a chance at being on deck if Faith died, but it wasn't a gamble she cared to take, and that had nothing to do with how badly she wanted to be a Slayer.
By the time they did find Faith, they were about fifteen strong, the ambulatory among them helping the injured along-- she flat out refused to abandon anyone who was still alive, because she was not losing any more of them-- and nobody was arguing any more about Kennedy being in charge.
The good news: Faith was alive, if soaking wet; they found her lying face down in a pool of water, and Kennedy had the Fandom Magic and Support Reserves to thank for knowing enough to check her vitals. The bad: she was unconscious, which meant Kennedy had to assign a couple of the girls to carry her, which was only going to slow them down more.
Fun situation. If she left anyone behind, they were sure to die. If she brought everyone along, their odds of survival weren't great either. Had anyone else survived? Was the risk of looking for them too high, balanced against the chance to get their current group to safety? That kind of pressure sucked, but the girls were looking to her to call the shots now, and...
It was a glimpse, just a tiny fleeting one, of what the last few months must have been like for Buffy. Years, even. Of why Faith hadn't been chomping at the bit to step up when Buffy walked out.
Maybe Kennedy owed them an apology later. That was a good plan, but first she had to get the Potentials out of here.
The immediacy of that plan got a whole lot more immediate when they heard an Ubervamp growling somewhere nearby.
So they ran, as best they could carrying the wounded and unconscious, Kennedy barking at them to keep going. It was repetitive and maybe unnecessary, sort of like all of Buffy's speeches, and god, she was never complaining about those again. Problem was, now that the sewer tunnels were all blown to hell they had no idea where they were headed.
It did not escape Kennedy's attention that she could very well be leading them blindly into a death trap of her very own. Particularly when their flight led them right up against yet another pile of rubble.
"Cut the chatter, move, move!" she yelled over a chorus of frantic questions, reverting to drill-sergeant voice and shoving aside the whisper of guilt about Chloe. "Up and over, wounded first, let's go!"
She stayed long enough to help everyone else over first, all but shoving some of them when she had to, and was just climbing over with Vi and her possibly broken arm when, oh shit, the growling was right at her heels and she half stumbled, half fell into a cluster of panicked, screaming teenagers.
She barely had time to assess their surroundings: mostly trapped, possibly the only way out being the same way they'd come in. Fuck fuck fuck--
"Group together, form a circle!" she ordered, reminding herself very firmly that this wasn't her first fight. She'd always bluffed her way through some bad situations on sheer attitude alone before, and she was falling back on that now; she let a cocky grin cross her face, put some swagger into her posture. Fake it till you make it, right? "Nobody panic! It's all of us, one of him. We can take one of these guys."
She glanced around, and noted that even if the others looked as freaked as she felt, they were balling their fists, getting into game face, squaring up.
That's it. Atta girls.
"Remember the training. Everybody? Get ready!"
She didn't see the second Ubervamp that leaped down on her from somewhere up above, and screaming bloody murder was hardly a badass thing to do, but she'd thank her instincts later for letting her flip the thing over her shoulder on pure terrified adrenaline.
"There's another one!" she heard Amanda yelp, but she was busy herding the girls into a cluster away from their new friend, keeping herself between it and them. Then Amanda grabbed her by the shoulder and yanked her around roughly, pointing. "Not that one. That one!"
The third one, that was, crouched on a pile of rubble and posing melodramatically as the Potentials-- all of them hurt, most of them bleeding, shit, they were practically broadcasting their location even without the noise-- flinched away. Kennedy scooped up a stray poleaxe of some kind, part of the Bringers' decoy arsenal. It was heavy and clumsy and way taller than she was, but it was all she had. Ubervamps dusted the same way regular vampires did, and she had a better chance at decapitating this one than she did of staking it through that industrial-strength sternum anyway.
Shutting out the sound of the other girls' panic, the screaming of one girl who hadn't been lucky enough to get away in time (oh god, no) she tried to watch the Turok-Han, read its movements for a sign... not think about what one of them had done to Buffy.
Finally she thought she saw an opening and swung, but the poleaxe was badly balanced and the Ubervamp was too fast; it batted the weapon from her hands with contemptuous ease.
Almost before she realized it she was struggling for air, feeling a clawed hand crushing her windpipe, seeing spots in her vision as she kicked her feet futilely against nothing.
No, this wasn't supposed to happen, I promised I'd come back!
Dimly she heard a crash, followed up by the pain of getting dropped to the ground, and the next thing she knew, Buffy was standing there over a pile of dust, holding one seriously badass looking weapon in her hands.
"Get the wounded," she told them. "We're leaving."
They didn't argue.
***
With Faith recovering upstairs and most of the Scoobies conferring over the shiny new weapon Buffy had brought home, Kennedy was mostly trying to find a way to keep from being underfoot. At the moment this meant pacing around the dining room, half listening to Amanda and some of the girls who'd been in the sewer explosion as they talked each other through the post-fight freakout.
Amanda was pretty much convinced the explosion was punishment for them siding with Faith instead of Buffy. It was sort of a compelling argument.
Anya
It was entirely possible that Anya and Andrew were terrifying the wounded potentials.
...well, Anya was terrifying, in her 'I only say this because it's true' type-of-way, which the girls should be used to at this point (but weren't), but Andrew probably wasn't helping the situation. Discussing death, dismemberment, and looting probably weren't great morale boosters.
Unless you were Anya. SIGH.
"OK. I'll get Kennedy to watch the girls," she was saying cheerfully as she ignored the growing alarm amongst the potentials. "She's tough. Imminent death won't bother her."
Kennedy
"Wait, what?"
Kennedy, unwittingly echoing the wounded but incredulous girl who'd overheard that last comment of Anya's, stuck her head through the doorway. "What are we volunteering me for, now?"
There was a compliment in there somewhere. Maybe. She never really could tell with this bunch.
Anya
That was totally a compliment! ...or possibly a comment on how dumb humanity tended to be. Take your pick.
"Baby-sitting," Anya answered easily, jerking a thumb back towards her now-fretting patients. "I'm taking the monkey and appropriating medical goods from official places for our own use."
Beat.
"Unless you want to come along too, and then we can let Dawnie sit on them, but that usually falls under the 'bad idea' clause."
Kennedy
Kennedy blinked several times while she parsed that, and when it finally sank it it startled a brief laugh out of her.
"Looting the hospital?" If Sunnydale Memorial had followed the trend of every other establishment in town it'd be abandoned, too, so that made sense. She glanced around... every space of everything on the ground floor, actually, occupied by some injured girl or other. "Guess we could kind of use it here, huh? I'm all for it."
Over by the fireplace one of the girls groaned.
"And me without my sexy nurse outfit."
Oh, as if she owned one.
Anya
"Sadly, it is the wrong time of year to find those in stores, but I'll keep my eyes open," Anya deadpanned. "That was possibly more about your sexual activities than was necessary for this conversation, but I appreciate your open-ness and such, or whatever."
See? HELPFUL.
"As well as your tacit approval of Crime." Yes, you could probably hear the capital 'C'. "I do not have a problem with it, but many humans do."
Kennedy
"Oh, like I haven't heard all about the noises coming from the kitchen last night," Kennedy replied, not as smooth as she'd have liked due to trying to choke back a laugh.
She spread her hands. "Hey, whatever works for us right now. Safe to say I'm not exactly friendly with the Sunnydale cops these days and oh, oops, they skipped town anyway."
A beat.
"You sure you wanna take Andrew?"
Anya
"No, but he's the monkey that came up with the idea, and he wants to go and do Good or whatever because he finds my current supplies lacking and tacky, so I'll drive because he's a lightweight," Anya informed Kennedy. "He can't mess up robbing too much, right?"
That was hopeful, Kennedy. Because Anya is rather sure she knows the answer to that.
"Think the liquor store is abandoned, too? He drank our disinfectant."
Kennedy
"He drank your--" Oh. Liquor store. Right.
"Yeah, good luck with that," Kennedy said wryly. "Also, only if you bring some back for the rest of us, 'cause..."
There was no good way to finish that sentence.
Anya
"If you do not participate in the robbing, you do not share the spoils," Anya retorted, shaking her head. "Unless you get stabbed horribly, and then you can have a band-aid we liberated or whatever, because blood is difficult to get out of carpet and couches and such and I'm not the maid."
Kennedy
"Fine, no booze for me." Weirdly, this conversation was cheering her up just enough to try and puppy-face-pout in some bizarre attempt to change Anya's mind, as if that would work. "Which is totally unfair, by the way, if I have to stay and watch people for you."
She wasn't complaining about the watching-people part. Just being denied any liquor-store loot.
...wow, they were all about the moral grey areas today.
Anya
"Ah, bargaining. Excellent. You understand basic capitalist principle and aren't half as dumb as everyone else!" Anya practically squealed. "What is your offer?"
Kennedy
And just like that Kennedy decided that if the world didn't end, she had to find some way to introduce Anya to her father, just because it'd be funny.
"Depends," she replied, letting a little bit of her rich-kid smugness out in her smirk. "Could take an extra shift watching after the girls when you get back-- in which case I'd really need the booze-- or tell Lianne to quit leaving her bunny slippers in the middle of the room all the time."
Anya
"Extra shift with the girls and burn the slippers, and you have a deal," Anya replied instantly. "One type of liquor, your choice, in whatever amount is easily stolen."
Kennedy
"Really good vodka, if it's not locked up," Kennedy decided, then considered that she was assuming someone hadn't already stolen that, like on the way out of town or something.
"...burn them? Kind of extreme, isn't it?"
Anya
"They aren't cute," she answered shortly. "Bunnies are horrible creatures, with hoppy legs and twitchy little noses, and what's with all the carrots? What do they need such good eyesight for anyway? So they can eat us in our sleep?"
"Burn. Or stake, whatever. Just get them gone."
Kennedy
Kennedy's eyebrows had started to creep upward at the beginning of that explanation, and by the time Anya was done she was pretty sure they'd run off to hide somewhere.
"Wow, remind me never to let you meet my pet rabbit, then."
Was there somewhere in the house she could just hide those slippers? Staking someone's footwear seemed harsh.
Anya
Right, now Anya was backing away from Kennedy with an expression of horror on her face. "You keep one as a pet?" she asked, appalled. "Why?"
Kennedy
"Because he was really cute, and I couldn't resist?" Not helping, Kennedy. Not even if you looked genuinely perplexed. "A bunch of them just started appearing in the magic shop in Fandom one day and I decided I wanted to keep one!"
REALLY NOT HELPING.
Anya
"YOU DID WHAT TO MY STORE?" So what if it was in Fandom and not Sunnydale, the Magic Box was hers, dammit. "RODENTS, Kennedy. Not. Cute. Small, floppy creatures of mass destruction."
Kennedy
"What, do you own the Magic Box, too?" Yes, good, Kennedy, let's confuse things further. Or just give Anya more leverage. "And hey, don't talk about Bailey that way! He doesn't chew things up."
Pause.
"Much..."
Okay, so he did seem to have a taste for old mystical tomes, but hey, look where he came from!
...so yeah, that conversation clearly went well. Better than most of the research on the Scythe seemed to have gone, anyway, since whenever Kennedy checked in on Willow upstairs she looked frustrated. It was late in the evening by the time Buffy headed out of the house with the Scythe in hand and a purposeful expression on her face, by which point Anya and Andrew were back carrying pillow cases full of medical supplies. Which was a relief-- Kennedy, Amanda, and everyone she'd recruited to help with medical detail had done what they could, but there was only so far even the hideously tacky floral bedsheets would go, and having actual painkillers and ointments just meant there was more scotch left over.
Andrew had also picked up a new tendency to glance Anya's way and occasionally look like he was about to tear up, but if anyone asked, neither of them would explain why.
People kept asking, though. Until Buffy got back, they could use the diversion.
[[nfi/nfb, ooc-okay, yeah, we know by now, shanie. part 2 of 4. based on btvs 7x21, "end of days," and the second part preplayed with the exquisite icecoldfrost as children4cash.
this post contains mention of multiple npc deaths and a fair bit of violence. also threatened violence to bunny slippers.]]