Sunnydale, California, Late December 2002 (The Next Morning/Tuesday Fandom Time)
In theory, it was training. In practice it was more like going through the motions of it. It was something to do while Buffy and Xander were out trying to find some new Potential, thanks to a heads-up from the coven in England, and Giles and Anya were out on some mission to another dimension to find something called Beljoxa's Eye. (Kennedy got a little cranky about the other-dimension thing. No fair, when she couldn't even call extradimensionally these days.)
The thing was, the training session wasn't very satisfying. More accurately, it wasn't taking the edge off Kennedy's agitation at all. In between Chloe's tentative approach to everything, Rona's total newbie-ness, and Eve's inability to keep her pessimism to herself, things were getting really annoying really fast down in this basement.
Molly was chattering steadily at Rona in a way that Kennedy had mostly tuned out; trying to get the new girl to feel welcome was a thing, and she got that. Besides, after the welcome-to-Sunnydale that Rona had gotten last night, she could probably use some of Molly's persistent ebullience.
Still. Edgy.
Molly
"Right when you got off the bus, really?" Molly asked in a breathless, curious tone that under any other circumstances ought to have been reserved for recounting some encounter with a cute boy or a juicy tidbit of trivial nonsense about a classmate, but schoolgirl gossip wasn't exactly a thing for them right now, was it?
Rona
"Came right after me while I was heading for the pay phone," Rona confirmed from her spot near the stairs while Eve looked on with a pained expression. "Three of them, and then Buffy, she just..." She waved both arms, miming how Buffy had picked up two of the Bringers and just tossed them like dolls. "How does she do that? She's so tiny."
Eve
Eve snorted. "Don't see anyone here who's a giant, either."
Kennedy
"Don't have to be," Kennedy tossed over her shoulder before refocusing her attention-- oh god, was Molly seriously trying to juggle stakes?-- on the punching bag she was holding for Chloe. "No, square up a little more, put something in it."
She bit back a sigh. As they'd already discovered, Rona hadn't had a clue she was a Potential Slayer until the Bringers had come after her, and she'd only run for Sunnydale because someone from the Council had gotten there in time to tell her she'd be safe here. (Eve, true to form, had been quick to question that.) Chloe, on the other hand, had known for several years exactly what she was, and she was still so timid; the day she arrived, she'd confessed that she'd never wanted any of this, and Kennedy didn't get that. Now that she was here, though...
Well. Kennedy was trying to help her out, but Chloe didn't really seem to be into this; the kids back at the youth center were a piece of cake to work with in comparison.
"C'mon," she told Chloe, impatience bleeding into her voice despite her best efforts. "The punching bag can take it."
Vi
Vi had known what she was for quite a while, too. But her Watcher had been cautious and slow about what she asked Vi to do, figuring they'd have plenty of time for heavier training if she ever got called.
They'd been sort of wrong on that point.
"Can't we run laps or something?" she asked, not really expecting Kennedy to go for it but sick of the whole punching bag in the basement thing. "I'm pretty good at running."
Eve
"What for?" Eve asked in that shriekingly bad thick Southern drawl of hers. It made Kennedy miss Sookie, who'd be a hell of a lot more useful in this situation than Eve had been so far. "For all we know those Bringer things could be lurking in the bushes right outside the house, waiting to tear us apart the second we set one itty-bitty toe out the door."
Rona
Rona snorted. "In broad daylight? Come on, someone would notice."
Eve
Eve leveled a skeptical look at her. "And how many people have kept on not noticing everything weird that goes on around here for two hundred years now, exactly?"
Molly
Before Rona could jump in with another reflexive protest that she wouldn't know, because she hadn't learned anything about this stuff unlike the rest of them, Molly winced and dropped one of the stakes she was juggling. "I hadn't thought about that," she admitted, crestfallen.
Kennedy and Chloe
Chloe's next jab at the punching bag was even weaker; Kennedy took that as a sign that Eve was really getting to her, and her annoyance exploded.
"Okay, enough, can we focus here?" she snapped, glaring at Eve, who glared right back, and it was so tempting to show Chloe what she meant by using Eve in lieu of the punching bag, but no. "Maybe we can run laps later. Maybe, assuming someone finally gets that we're not completely helpless."
And weren't they doing a stellar job of proving that right now?
Vi
"It's hard to focus when somebody's yelling at us," Vi muttered. She'd retreated against a wall and was trying to will herself into completely vanishing. She added, in a slightly louder voice, "Chloe, I can take your turn."
She didn't really want to, but she figured she was less likely to cry than Chloe was at this point.
Chloe and Kennedy
Chloe bit her lip and looked like she really wanted to take Vi up on that, but suspected she'd get yelled at some more if she did.
"It's okay, Vi, thanks," she got out weakly.
Kennedy had noticed she was getting to them, but as long as Eve was being Queen of Pessimism (and also not doing anything) over there, it was going to be pretty hard for her to simmer down. She shook her head and went back to bracing the bag, muttering a quieter, "C'mon, you can do it."
Eve
Chloe's next couple of punches were... audible, at least. That was something. Things seemed like they were getting back on track for all of the four seconds before Eve spoke up again.
"What are we all doing here?"
Kennedy
Oh god, had Kennedy ever been that whiny? She didn't even try to hide her eyeroll when she shot Miss Glass-All-Empty a disgusted glare. "It's called training. Didn't your Watcher ever teach you the word?"
Rona
"I never had a Watcher," Rona reminded them again.
Eve
"I mean," Eve interrupted, turning the whine up to 11, "why are we all bothering? It's not like we can make a difference."
Molly
"We've got to try," insisted Molly, who at least had Kennedy's back in this. "We've gotta keep our reflexes sharp."
...and she dropped one of her stakes again.
Kennedy
Before Eve could comment on that Kennedy spoke up, stubbornly. "We have to be ready. If something comes down--"
Chloe
"Something's already come down!" Chloe sounded close to panic.
Eve
"She's right." Great, now Eve had an opportunity to jump in. "And what are we supposed to do about it? I mean, I've never seen a real vampire in my whole life, much less slayed one!"
Vi
"I've seen one," Vi volunteered, happy not to feel so useless.
Then she realized all of the others were looking at her and dropped her gaze.
"I mean ... well, my watcher showed me a photograph of one once." And then, in a smaller voice: "A blurry photograph."
And she was back to wanting to sink into the floor.
Eve
"That's what I'm saying." Eve? Still not doing anything in the general vicinity of helping, although she'd at least moved into the middle of the room, trying to make herself the center of attention. "Not one of us is remotely prepared to be activated as the new Chosen One."
Kennedy
Whatever confidence the other girls had was ebbing so fast that Kennedy could practically see it. She shrugged, putting an extra touch of confidence into her own voice when she replied, "I feel pretty prepared." Duh. No point in breaking out her ass-kicking resumé though, was there? Vi and Chloe looked miserable enough, and Rona and Molly were getting there.
Rona
"Excuse the newness of me, but, uh, just so I understand, if a Slayer dies--" Speaking of Rona.
Eve
"Well, when the Slayer dies," Eve corrected her, and was it really necessary to put that much emphasis on the when, Eve, really? "I mean, nobody lives forever, right?"
Kennedy
"Thanks, Eve, that's deep," Kennedy muttered sarcastically, under her breath.
Rona
"Then one of us..." Rona trailed off, clearly not liking the sound of where this was going.
Eve
"Gets activated." Eve was just a touch too matter-of-fact about that, and nodded. "Uh-huh."
Molly
Not a new concept for Kennedy, who'd been having a conversation about exactly this with Wesley, just weeks ago. The way Molly shifted uncomfortably and frowned, though, suggested that she hadn't put two and two together to add up to a very discomforting four until now. "I prefer 'called,'" she ventured after a brief pause, trying to lighten the mood.
Vi
"I heard there's more than one," Vi ventured, since it seemed to be time to trade rumors and such. And because anything beat hitting the punching bag again.
"That there's another slayer -- somewhere."
Kennedy
"Well, yeah," Kennedy started to say. "There's Faith--"
Molly
Not that any of the other girls cared how much she knew; they were more interested in jumping on this particular bit of news.
"That doesn't make any sense," objected Molly, frowning.
Eve
"Like any of this does?" Thanks, Eve. Really. Just keep talking. (Although Kennedy had to admit she had a point.) "No matter how many there are, one of us is gonna be the next Slayer, with the weight of the world on her shoulders."
Kennedy
God, could she make that sound any more horribly melodramatic? Kennedy rolled her eyes. "Uh, yeah, that is how the whole thing works, duh." Eve had had a Watcher. She should know this stuff. Though, the 'weight of the world' thing-- that did get to Kennedy a bit; that particular phrase had never been tied to the whole deal in her mind before.
Chloe
As if Chloe needed any more reasons to be nervous. "It won't be me. I mean, not now. I mean, I'm too young," she protested, her voice faltering.
Kennedy
"Doesn't work that way. In fact, the younger, the better," Kennedy pointed out. Then, with a tiny, slightly bitter smile that didn't feel right: "In fact, I'm pretty sure it's getting to be too late for me."
Or had been thinking for quite a while now, even if she wasn't letting that much slip in their hearing. She'd been doing more or less okay with the acceptance of it all so far, and then Eve had started running off at the mouth, and...
Eve
"Never too late." Somehow, from Eve, that wasn't reassuring. "It could be anyone. Especially since there's so few of us left. They'll just run through each one of us, one after the other. Kinda creepy, huh? All we do is wait around for each other to die."
Yeah, that... didn't go over so well with Kennedy. Or any of the girls, if the dejected looks on their faces were any indication. One by one they abandoned their activities and ended up sitting cross-legged in a broken circle on the floor, like a morbid campfire circle without the s'mores and the crackly smoky fun, feeling less and less inclined to argue while Eve kept pushing her case.
She managed, somehow, to hit sore spots for all of them: Rona's complete unfamiliarity with the gig, Kennedy's age (Eve managed to make her feel practically geriatric, and hell if Kennedy could figure out how she accomplished that), things Molly's Watcher never taught her, Chloe's uncertainty, Vi's tendency to freak out. And then she went on for a while about how badly the Turok-Han had beaten Buffy the last time before concluding in that smooth, too-sweet voice of hers, "Just my personal opinion, but I don't think the Slayer can protect us from the First."
None of them knew what to say to that, by then, and they all lapsed into an uncomfortable silence that lasted until the basement door slammed open and Buffy stormed down the stairs with Xander, Willow, Dawn, and Andrew on her heels, yelling at Eve to get away from them.
Because she wasn't Eve. Eve was dead, had been lying dead in a motel room across town for days.
...which meant, and none of them needed or even wanted to spell it out aloud when they realized the deal, that the First had been living with them for... just as many days. (Okay, in retrospect maybe it had been really dumb of them all to assume that Eve never put her sleeping bag away because she was just kind of a jerk that way. And Kennedy was extra sorry she'd never given in to the urge to punch the younger girl the first time she'd pissed them off upon arrival.)
As if that hadn't been bad enough, as if Kennedy and the girls weren't freaked badly, the-First-who-wasn't-Eve let them in on a lovely un-reassuring little secret: it was sending the Ubervamp after them tonight. Right at sundown.
It was a shame that stock in public opinion of Buffy's ability to protect them had just plummeted. Oh, they were so screwed.
[[part 2 of 3! warning for reference to off-screen npc death. adapted, expanded on, and slightly mangled from btvs 7x11, "showtime." preplayed with thanks to the inimitable life_inshadow as cutestripeyhat, and me as all the other potentials. one more tonight, nfi/nfb/ooc-okay, tip your waiter, etc.]]
The thing was, the training session wasn't very satisfying. More accurately, it wasn't taking the edge off Kennedy's agitation at all. In between Chloe's tentative approach to everything, Rona's total newbie-ness, and Eve's inability to keep her pessimism to herself, things were getting really annoying really fast down in this basement.
Molly was chattering steadily at Rona in a way that Kennedy had mostly tuned out; trying to get the new girl to feel welcome was a thing, and she got that. Besides, after the welcome-to-Sunnydale that Rona had gotten last night, she could probably use some of Molly's persistent ebullience.
Still. Edgy.
Molly
"Right when you got off the bus, really?" Molly asked in a breathless, curious tone that under any other circumstances ought to have been reserved for recounting some encounter with a cute boy or a juicy tidbit of trivial nonsense about a classmate, but schoolgirl gossip wasn't exactly a thing for them right now, was it?
Rona
"Came right after me while I was heading for the pay phone," Rona confirmed from her spot near the stairs while Eve looked on with a pained expression. "Three of them, and then Buffy, she just..." She waved both arms, miming how Buffy had picked up two of the Bringers and just tossed them like dolls. "How does she do that? She's so tiny."
Eve
Eve snorted. "Don't see anyone here who's a giant, either."
Kennedy
"Don't have to be," Kennedy tossed over her shoulder before refocusing her attention-- oh god, was Molly seriously trying to juggle stakes?-- on the punching bag she was holding for Chloe. "No, square up a little more, put something in it."
She bit back a sigh. As they'd already discovered, Rona hadn't had a clue she was a Potential Slayer until the Bringers had come after her, and she'd only run for Sunnydale because someone from the Council had gotten there in time to tell her she'd be safe here. (Eve, true to form, had been quick to question that.) Chloe, on the other hand, had known for several years exactly what she was, and she was still so timid; the day she arrived, she'd confessed that she'd never wanted any of this, and Kennedy didn't get that. Now that she was here, though...
Well. Kennedy was trying to help her out, but Chloe didn't really seem to be into this; the kids back at the youth center were a piece of cake to work with in comparison.
"C'mon," she told Chloe, impatience bleeding into her voice despite her best efforts. "The punching bag can take it."
Vi
Vi had known what she was for quite a while, too. But her Watcher had been cautious and slow about what she asked Vi to do, figuring they'd have plenty of time for heavier training if she ever got called.
They'd been sort of wrong on that point.
"Can't we run laps or something?" she asked, not really expecting Kennedy to go for it but sick of the whole punching bag in the basement thing. "I'm pretty good at running."
Eve
"What for?" Eve asked in that shriekingly bad thick Southern drawl of hers. It made Kennedy miss Sookie, who'd be a hell of a lot more useful in this situation than Eve had been so far. "For all we know those Bringer things could be lurking in the bushes right outside the house, waiting to tear us apart the second we set one itty-bitty toe out the door."
Rona
Rona snorted. "In broad daylight? Come on, someone would notice."
Eve
Eve leveled a skeptical look at her. "And how many people have kept on not noticing everything weird that goes on around here for two hundred years now, exactly?"
Molly
Before Rona could jump in with another reflexive protest that she wouldn't know, because she hadn't learned anything about this stuff unlike the rest of them, Molly winced and dropped one of the stakes she was juggling. "I hadn't thought about that," she admitted, crestfallen.
Kennedy and Chloe
Chloe's next jab at the punching bag was even weaker; Kennedy took that as a sign that Eve was really getting to her, and her annoyance exploded.
"Okay, enough, can we focus here?" she snapped, glaring at Eve, who glared right back, and it was so tempting to show Chloe what she meant by using Eve in lieu of the punching bag, but no. "Maybe we can run laps later. Maybe, assuming someone finally gets that we're not completely helpless."
And weren't they doing a stellar job of proving that right now?
Vi
"It's hard to focus when somebody's yelling at us," Vi muttered. She'd retreated against a wall and was trying to will herself into completely vanishing. She added, in a slightly louder voice, "Chloe, I can take your turn."
She didn't really want to, but she figured she was less likely to cry than Chloe was at this point.
Chloe and Kennedy
Chloe bit her lip and looked like she really wanted to take Vi up on that, but suspected she'd get yelled at some more if she did.
"It's okay, Vi, thanks," she got out weakly.
Kennedy had noticed she was getting to them, but as long as Eve was being Queen of Pessimism (and also not doing anything) over there, it was going to be pretty hard for her to simmer down. She shook her head and went back to bracing the bag, muttering a quieter, "C'mon, you can do it."
Eve
Chloe's next couple of punches were... audible, at least. That was something. Things seemed like they were getting back on track for all of the four seconds before Eve spoke up again.
"What are we all doing here?"
Kennedy
Oh god, had Kennedy ever been that whiny? She didn't even try to hide her eyeroll when she shot Miss Glass-All-Empty a disgusted glare. "It's called training. Didn't your Watcher ever teach you the word?"
Rona
"I never had a Watcher," Rona reminded them again.
Eve
"I mean," Eve interrupted, turning the whine up to 11, "why are we all bothering? It's not like we can make a difference."
Molly
"We've got to try," insisted Molly, who at least had Kennedy's back in this. "We've gotta keep our reflexes sharp."
...and she dropped one of her stakes again.
Kennedy
Before Eve could comment on that Kennedy spoke up, stubbornly. "We have to be ready. If something comes down--"
Chloe
"Something's already come down!" Chloe sounded close to panic.
Eve
"She's right." Great, now Eve had an opportunity to jump in. "And what are we supposed to do about it? I mean, I've never seen a real vampire in my whole life, much less slayed one!"
Vi
"I've seen one," Vi volunteered, happy not to feel so useless.
Then she realized all of the others were looking at her and dropped her gaze.
"I mean ... well, my watcher showed me a photograph of one once." And then, in a smaller voice: "A blurry photograph."
And she was back to wanting to sink into the floor.
Eve
"That's what I'm saying." Eve? Still not doing anything in the general vicinity of helping, although she'd at least moved into the middle of the room, trying to make herself the center of attention. "Not one of us is remotely prepared to be activated as the new Chosen One."
Kennedy
Whatever confidence the other girls had was ebbing so fast that Kennedy could practically see it. She shrugged, putting an extra touch of confidence into her own voice when she replied, "I feel pretty prepared." Duh. No point in breaking out her ass-kicking resumé though, was there? Vi and Chloe looked miserable enough, and Rona and Molly were getting there.
Rona
"Excuse the newness of me, but, uh, just so I understand, if a Slayer dies--" Speaking of Rona.
Eve
"Well, when the Slayer dies," Eve corrected her, and was it really necessary to put that much emphasis on the when, Eve, really? "I mean, nobody lives forever, right?"
Kennedy
"Thanks, Eve, that's deep," Kennedy muttered sarcastically, under her breath.
Rona
"Then one of us..." Rona trailed off, clearly not liking the sound of where this was going.
Eve
"Gets activated." Eve was just a touch too matter-of-fact about that, and nodded. "Uh-huh."
Molly
Not a new concept for Kennedy, who'd been having a conversation about exactly this with Wesley, just weeks ago. The way Molly shifted uncomfortably and frowned, though, suggested that she hadn't put two and two together to add up to a very discomforting four until now. "I prefer 'called,'" she ventured after a brief pause, trying to lighten the mood.
Vi
"I heard there's more than one," Vi ventured, since it seemed to be time to trade rumors and such. And because anything beat hitting the punching bag again.
"That there's another slayer -- somewhere."
Kennedy
"Well, yeah," Kennedy started to say. "There's Faith--"
Molly
Not that any of the other girls cared how much she knew; they were more interested in jumping on this particular bit of news.
"That doesn't make any sense," objected Molly, frowning.
Eve
"Like any of this does?" Thanks, Eve. Really. Just keep talking. (Although Kennedy had to admit she had a point.) "No matter how many there are, one of us is gonna be the next Slayer, with the weight of the world on her shoulders."
Kennedy
God, could she make that sound any more horribly melodramatic? Kennedy rolled her eyes. "Uh, yeah, that is how the whole thing works, duh." Eve had had a Watcher. She should know this stuff. Though, the 'weight of the world' thing-- that did get to Kennedy a bit; that particular phrase had never been tied to the whole deal in her mind before.
Chloe
As if Chloe needed any more reasons to be nervous. "It won't be me. I mean, not now. I mean, I'm too young," she protested, her voice faltering.
Kennedy
"Doesn't work that way. In fact, the younger, the better," Kennedy pointed out. Then, with a tiny, slightly bitter smile that didn't feel right: "In fact, I'm pretty sure it's getting to be too late for me."
Or had been thinking for quite a while now, even if she wasn't letting that much slip in their hearing. She'd been doing more or less okay with the acceptance of it all so far, and then Eve had started running off at the mouth, and...
Eve
"Never too late." Somehow, from Eve, that wasn't reassuring. "It could be anyone. Especially since there's so few of us left. They'll just run through each one of us, one after the other. Kinda creepy, huh? All we do is wait around for each other to die."
Yeah, that... didn't go over so well with Kennedy. Or any of the girls, if the dejected looks on their faces were any indication. One by one they abandoned their activities and ended up sitting cross-legged in a broken circle on the floor, like a morbid campfire circle without the s'mores and the crackly smoky fun, feeling less and less inclined to argue while Eve kept pushing her case.
She managed, somehow, to hit sore spots for all of them: Rona's complete unfamiliarity with the gig, Kennedy's age (Eve managed to make her feel practically geriatric, and hell if Kennedy could figure out how she accomplished that), things Molly's Watcher never taught her, Chloe's uncertainty, Vi's tendency to freak out. And then she went on for a while about how badly the Turok-Han had beaten Buffy the last time before concluding in that smooth, too-sweet voice of hers, "Just my personal opinion, but I don't think the Slayer can protect us from the First."
None of them knew what to say to that, by then, and they all lapsed into an uncomfortable silence that lasted until the basement door slammed open and Buffy stormed down the stairs with Xander, Willow, Dawn, and Andrew on her heels, yelling at Eve to get away from them.
Because she wasn't Eve. Eve was dead, had been lying dead in a motel room across town for days.
...which meant, and none of them needed or even wanted to spell it out aloud when they realized the deal, that the First had been living with them for... just as many days. (Okay, in retrospect maybe it had been really dumb of them all to assume that Eve never put her sleeping bag away because she was just kind of a jerk that way. And Kennedy was extra sorry she'd never given in to the urge to punch the younger girl the first time she'd pissed them off upon arrival.)
As if that hadn't been bad enough, as if Kennedy and the girls weren't freaked badly, the-First-who-wasn't-Eve let them in on a lovely un-reassuring little secret: it was sending the Ubervamp after them tonight. Right at sundown.
It was a shame that stock in public opinion of Buffy's ability to protect them had just plummeted. Oh, they were so screwed.
[[part 2 of 3! warning for reference to off-screen npc death. adapted, expanded on, and slightly mangled from btvs 7x11, "showtime." preplayed with thanks to the inimitable life_inshadow as cutestripeyhat, and me as all the other potentials. one more tonight, nfi/nfb/ooc-okay, tip your waiter, etc.]]