The Thrill Is Gone by ObliqueReference

Summary: Kennedy and Willow deal with the fallout of Willow's doppelganger.

The hotel room walls were washed of their color by the circle of flickering candles. The long shadows of three figures standing in a loose triangle around the circle whipped along the curtains drawn over the balcony window. A low-pitched, monotonous chanted filled the room, made the walls hum with energy, and tickled the throats of the three occupants.

Willow's chanting grew more fevered, her voice resonating as if she was sitting inside an amphitheatre, echoing impossibly in the moderately sized room. The windows rattled and the candles nearly lost their flames. A thin blue haze filled the lower half of the room, a fog that whirled about of it's own volition, the memories of geometric patterns passing through it. The haze resolved itself, codifying into a solid block in the center of the room, unfolding into a map of the greater Los Angeles area.

Willow focused on the essence of Kennedy, an action in and of itself an exercise in abstract thought. To her, Kennedy was jasmine in bloom, hot Bermuda nights, ballerinas with iron whips, and avalanches in the Rockies. She opened her mind to the pattern, imprinting it with the totality of the fiery slayer. The image twisted, spun, and vanished.

The slender witch leapt to her feet, kicking one of the candles across the room. She stormed over to the leather bound book sitting on the coffee table, slamming it shut. Giles winced as the cover banged closed. Andrew had somehow found a way to teleport himself to the point farthest from the incensed spellcaster.

"Something's blocking me," she whispered to herself, "Every stupid locator spell I know has gone all spazzy on me."

"Of course it is," Willow's voice was far snappier than she had meant. She took a moment to collect her thoughts, unconsciously working the hem of her shirt into a fray. "But I figured I could sort of reroute it, like a server? No good. It's a blanket enchantment: covers everything in the area. Kennedy must be right next to it." Willow's eyes burnt in frustration. The helplessness boiled in her gut, seeped through her bones, suffused her. It needed some sort of release: her higher functions realized how close she was to a panic attack. "Damn!" she swore again, slapping the wall beside her. The harsh contact stung and tingled. Willow pulled her hand back gingerly, muttering "ow" as she did.

Giles laid his hand on Willow's shoulder. "We'll find her," he reassured her, "We'll just have to physically get out there and look for her."

Willow leaned into his embrace. Ever since she went away with him to England, Giles sheer presence had been able to remind her to keep in control. Of all the friends she had hurt, it was Giles she had tormented the most. Every time she looked at him, she couldn't help but think of all the terrible things she'd said and done. Now, whenever he was near, she fought that much harder to make amends, tried that much more to be a better person. Guilt could be a powerful motivational tool that way. There was a peculiar meaning to his title, "Watcher." Willow wondered whether the act of watching in and of itself was his primary purpose: the stern parental unit, someone to set boundaries. That's what the old Council wanted anyway: a fascistic Big Brother figure to stare at the slayer. Willow wasn't sure what she wanted from the new Council, but she certainly didn't want them to exploit and abuse the girls the way that Travers and his lot did.

"You know," Willow sighed into her shoulder, "this is a really big city. We'll need to get moving on right quick."

"You'd be surprised," Willow said with no small amount of pride, "She's actually really good with being both sneaky and clever when she has a mind to."

"Um, guys?" Andrew piped up for the first time in hours. Willow had almost forgotten he was there, and Giles had desperately tried to forget him. "Willow's cell phone is vibrating. Should I answer it?"

Willow dashed across the room, snatching the silver box from Andrew. An unfamiliar phone number appeared on her caller I.D. screen, but Willow flipped the receiver down without a moment's hesitation.

There was a moment of silence on the other line, the sounds of a party wafting through the background. The slayer smiled out the side of her mouth, not surprised in the slightest.

"Hey there, Willow." She heard just how much anger was in the witch's voice, so she decided to try to defuse as much of it as possible. "Listen, I'm okay (mostly), I'm here at Caritas, I've found out some things about our little vampire friend and his three buddies, I'm sorry I ran off and can you guys come and get me?"

"I know, I know," Kennedy twirled her hand in the air, reeling in the conversation, "And could we talk about it when you get here?"

"Are you okay?" Willow zipped from anger to concern back to anger and around the cape of disappointment in the short time the words left her mouth.

Kennedy tapped her foot, running her hand through her hair, little shards of glass falling out. "I'm okay. I just really need your help right now, okay? I've got that box, the Or-whooza-mak thingy…"

"Well," Kennedy suddenly felt like the proverbial kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar. "If by 'having it', you mean having it in my sight…"

"That was my original plan, Willow," Kennedy breathed. Why couldn't Willow just trust her to get the job done? So okay, she'd been a little… off recently, but before that, she'd always get done what needed to be done. "He's not going anywhere. I was just gonna kill him and take the box, but that didn't work out so well. I've got that money he wants."

"I'll be better when you get here," she answered truthfully. "Listen Will, I've got to go. Oscar the grouch is getting antsy. Lorne is boozing him up, but he's gonna want to do something soon."

Willow smiled at the thought of their reunion. Kennedy was acting differently, or at least, she sounded different than she had in the past week. Her words were less raw and ragged, her phrasing less accusatory. Whatever happened, Willow knew there was still a lot to talk about. Like what was with her slayer-tude lately? Okay, so yeah, there was that thing with the evil twin. And maybe that fight was the hardest fight Kennedy ever had, but she knew enough about the psychology of combat (at least from years of watching Buffy cope with nightly fisticuffs) to know that the actual fight wasn't really the issue. And what's more, she wasn't totally sold on the idea of Kennedy being afraid of hurting her. Even when the bloodlust was on her, even when she was at that other place, she knew the slayer had recognized her and was calming down. Of course, Giles had to be so typically male and go hit her, but she knew that he was just worried for her safety. He didn't know Kennedy like she did.

Well there was an interesting thought. How much, really, did she know about Kennedy? They'd only been together a few months, and there was something strong between them. It was weird. Willow's perception of relationships had been molded by Oz and Tara, two people who were, if she thought in the abstract, very much alike, spiritually. She rarely clashed with either of them, and when it was, it was always little things. Well, except for that time Willow labeled as My Bad Year (neatly in twelve point font and packed into a crisp cardboard box). But barely a day went by when she and Kennedy didn't clash over something. The hell of it was, the fights were never harsh. Sometimes things got heated, but a compromise was always reached. She never honestly worried that Kennedy would leave her after a fight. There were always the little twinges of her Samsonite level baggage, but Willow knew that she'd still be home (best not to open that can of worms) when she was needed. She was passionate, and that passion invigorated the witch.

Willow looked around the room with a start, getting her bearings. She teetered back and forth, brain caught in a loop somewhere, turning from item to item in the room and almost moving to grab them. Her transmission caught, and she jerked over to pull on her coat. Andrew and Giles watched a bit confounded, trying to anticipate her next move. Their questions were laid to rest by Willow's next pronouncement.

Andrew raced to the elevator, hopping up and down as the car took its sweet time getting to their floor. Willow was on his heels, leaving Giles to secure the tome with all the information on the denizen of the Orignok Configuration. He slid into the elevator, panting from exertion.

"Kennedy is with that vamp from the docks, the one that shot her. He's got the box. She's got that money," Willow explained as her large green eyes narrowed in intense thought.

"Um, I'm not saying anything about Kennedy (even though she, y'know, sort of wants to kill me)," Andrew began fidgeting.

"Andrew, everyone in this elevator has wanted to kill you at some time or another," Giles pointed out.

"Okay, point, but still…where'd she get that money? That was like, buku dinero. Those demon guys didn't just hand it over."

Willow nearly walked into the door she wanted to get to her car so much. "She must have slayed them," she waved dismissively. Okay, so it was only one possibility, and seeing as how the three just shrugged off crossbow bolts, it wasn't the most likely scenario, but there was simply already too much to worry about right now. She hopped into the driver's seat, fiddling with the ignition as a winded Giles and peppy Andrew closed their respective doors. She turned the car over, calmly and carefully backing out, then driving the posted speed limit onto the street.

That lasted a whole of thirty seconds. Willow actually felt how slow thirty-five miles per hour actually was, how she could count the leaves on trees at this speed if she wanted to. The gas pedal found it's own happy measure, accelerating the car until it was speeding twenty miles over the limit. Andrew crushed himself into a corner, keening like a trapped mouse with each corner Willow screeched through. Giles scrutinized the face of the woman he often thought of as part daughter, part protégé. She was a woman who was often caught unawares by her own powerful emotions. Her twelve weeks in England was largely devoted to emotional control. But then, she was so deeply in grieving, so depressed that working out other emotions was almost a lost cause. He saw how she reacted when Kennedy first took her on a date. Not her fault, entirely, but it was still a sign that she had a long way to go.

As the Wiccan grimaced and braced herself for another hairpin turn, Giles recognized more of himself in her. She was furious, the kind of anger that could block out everything. But she wasn't consumed by it. She was using it. He could see how she was figuring out all the possibilities, working all the angles with that magnificent mind of hers. Giles knew what anger was, knew what it was like to revel in destruction, and knew how to harness that darkness for his own ends. Willow was finally letting her heart propel her and her mind guide her. Or, he thought as she skipped a curb, the car is actually propelling them, hopefully not into a telephone pole.

"Heard—oh, dear lord—heard what?" Giles squeezed his eyes shut as they veered within touching distance of a newsstand.

"Orignok!" Andrew continued. "It's Yephonic, an old demonic language from Syria, or somewhere. Lets see, suffix –ok, genitive, hmmm… I think it means something like Key Stone, Key Rock, something like that."

"Are you helping us, Andrew?" Willow spoke through grit teeth. "I need more info on the thing inside the box, it's powers, it's weaknesses, how to kill it."

"Why?" Giles and Andrew asked simultaneously. They had the unfortunate habit of thinking of the same question at the same time recently. It was something Andrew took pride in, and Giles desperately tried to avoid.

"Well, I was thinking, " Willow said, pulling into the parking lot at Caritas, zipping in next to an unfortunately abused Pinto. "What if we just cut through this Gordian Knot? Let the demon out of the bag, or box, and Kennedy can slay it, slay the vamp, and we'll figure out how to slay El Diablos. It'll be a whole slay-centric outing."

Willow knocked on the door, waiting for Steve to unlock the door. Andrew squeezed next to her, pointing to the open book he was carefully balancing in one hand.

"That might not be the best idea. See, once I knew that Keyrock was it's name, I cross referenced it with the Britany area of about that era, and…"

"The point, Andrew," Willow stressed his name, turning it into an epithet. Willow only said his name like that when she was very close to exploding at him.

"I was getting there," he said indignantly. He paused, collecting his thoughts. "This demon," one of the blue-skinned regulars looked his way as he stood in line, "no, not you, some other demon," it shrugged and turned away, "well, he's like really-really powerful. Not like, Q powerful, but still, very, very tough."

Steve opened the door for Willow with his clawed lizard hands, gesturing politely towards the table where Kennedy sat. Willow didn't exchange the pleasantries, and although it was somewhat speciesist of her, fought a chill at the thought of a giant lizard. It was just too close to a giant frog for her liking. She jogged over to the table. Kennedy stood up to greet her, wincing as she gave her best innocent smile.

"You-sit!" Willow commanded, pointing at the chair. Kennedy obeyed instantly, much to her own surprise. Willow scanned the room, searching for the dwarfish little vampire she saw on the docks. The scum was hunched over the bar, the verdant host Lorne handing him another Bloody Bloody Mary and trying to calm his belligerent looks. Willow marched up behind him, grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around to face her. She leaned into his face, her green eyes sparkling an almost hazel as she thrust her finger under his double chin.

"You!" she forcefully yelled into Oscar's quivering face. "You are gonna give us that box, take your money, and get the hell out of here! Got it?" Oscar shook his head, backing into the bar. The box chattered and squeaked in protest. Willow stared at the box, turning the commanding finger on it next. "Shut it, fuzz ball!" The creature complied with a cowed 'mirp.'

Willow turned back to Kennedy, stalking back to her table. Kennedy sat glued to her chair, hands in her lap. She looked up to her lover uncertainly, big brown eyes open and vulnerable. Willow jerked her thumb to the ceiling, and Kennedy stood instantly. The slayer suddenly felt a pair of hands latch onto the sides of her face, pulling her into a ferocious kiss.

Well, she thought, this I could get used to. Willow broke the kiss, eyeballing Kennedy with an expression unchanged from her commands to Oscar. This wasn't even her resolve face: this was in another category.

"I'd take it as a mark of sanity," Giles muttered back. Both men, or, the man and the boy, moved to flank Oscar. Lorne backed off, having seen enough of these types of confrontations to know that he should be nowhere near them.

Oscar stepped away from the bar, calmly picking up the container and dusting off his sleeve. He cracked his neck, sneering at the delicate redhead.

"So this is the girlfriend," he snorted. "Heard so much about you. Mostly 'bout how you was gonna tear me to ittle widdle pieces."

Oscar pulled at the collar of his shirt, looking anywhere but at her. He knew dangerous people. He was a dangerous person. And that dorky little lesbo over there looked like the kind of person who wouldn't stop at anything if you crossed her. He pondered her offer for a moment. Well, he did want the money, he didn't want to be anywhere around the west Coast ever again, and he certainly didn't want to end up as a modern art piece. But he'd been talking to the Squirrel God (as he had taken to calling it), and he seemed like an alright thing. But on the other hand, Oscar never was one to form close bonds with anyone.

"A'ight," he said after a respectable pause. Long enough to let them know he wasn't too interested, but not so long as to be disrespectful. "I'll take the fifty thou, you get Screwy the Squirrel, and I'll get out of town. One condition: you get me to the train station. You don't get the box 'till then."

Kennedy entwined her fingers with Willow's. She smiled sheepishly at her, shrugging. "Sorry. You were sort of my trump card."

"It's okay," she patted her hand, "Just so long as everyone knows the trump card has come up stud. Or, been drawn… I don't know poker. I'm really more of a Monopoly person."

"Trivial Pursuit is good," Andrew chimed in. "Especially the Star Wars edition."

"Children?" Giles pointed at Oscar. "Perhaps we should go. Besides, Kennedy is correct. Risk is the best board game, bar none."

Oscar watched the bizarre exchange, disbelieving gaze raking the group. He began to walk to the door. Kennedy and Willow stepped quickly to intercept him.

"What?" he asked as innocently as he could manage. Kennedy just crossed her arms and smirked. "If you was gonna break out the Candyland, I figured I'd just be on my way to the car."

The group all walked out of Caritas, leaving the odd looks and gaudy decorations behind, the hot, wet L.A. night rushing up to meet them. Oscar was packed between Giles and Kennedy in the back seat, with Andrew happily taking shotgun yet again.

"Listen to this kid," Oscar sneered, "You like gangster movies? Seen Goodfellas, the Godfather? Enforcer. Pshh."

"So what did you do?" Andrew continued to interrogate, slightly meeker in manner.

"Oh," Andrew blinked. Then, his curiosity got the better of him. "Like, how many?"

Without warning, the front end of the car dropped into the asphalt, black pebbles scattering over a wrinkled hood. The rear end of the car lifted into the air, spinning it around to the left nearly ninety degrees until it came crashing back to earth. White steam billowed from the front radiator in a thick spiral as the car spun once, ending up facing straight ahead. A heavy moment of silence lingered over the occupants.

"What the hell was that?" Oscar nearly screamed. Willow opened her door, stepping out to survey the damage. Kennedy followed suit, scanning the street for danger. Her slayer senses had been wonky around that box, but even so, she knew that it was an ambush.

"It's an ambush," Willow stated, staring at the chunk of fire escape railing embedded in the grill of her Lexus.

Three large humanoids in black robes walked out of the darkness, side by side and swagger in their step. The center one pulled off his cloak, greenish skin and white and yellow tights marred by the cluster of angry red welts across his chest.

"So," the Diablo announced, ignoring her statement, "You have brought along friends? It won't matter, for we are El Diablos Verdes, and we will kill you all."

"My stuff in the trunk?" Kennedy asked as the trio of massive hooded demons stalked towards them.

"As ever," Willow replied, both women measuring the distance to El Diablos Verdes.

"Andrew, Giles, get the crossbows," Kennedy's voice was filled with confidence: she was in her element. "Willow, go get Betty." The slayer looked over to Oscar, who was scooting himself out of his seat. "Oscar: don't be that guy."

"What guy?" Oscar nearly screamed as he jerked his head toward the hulking demons, back to Kennedy, and then at the demons again.

"The guy who tries to run, and I have to pick him up with a dustpan later," the slayer deadpanned.

Willow popped the trunk, rushing to it and rummaging through the weapons packed there. She handed Giles and Andrew a pair of crossbows and a quiver of bolts each. Her arm disappeared into the depths, pulling out a wide yet thin black leather case. She tossed it over the hood of the car the Kennedy, who began opening the latches, and flipping open the top, streetlight reflecting off of the name "BETTY" emblazoned in silver gothic letters. She slid Betty out of her velvet case, and did a quick inspection.

Betty was Kennedy's pride and joy, her present to herself for surviving her first apocalypse. It was a fifteenth century French crossbow by design, remade using modern carbon rods, titanium string, and high impact plastics. At the butt of the stock was a complex assortment of pulleys attached to a set of hand cranks. The cranks pulled the string back to the ready position: at nearly four hundred pounds, there was no way she could cock the bow by herself. Kennedy dropped the front of the crossbow to the ground, holding it in place with the stirrup at that end. She began turning the crank at cyclist speeds, the string being drawn back with a rapid series of clicks. The three demons stopped their advance, eyeing each other nervously. Kennedy had to keep them talking, give Willow and the others time to set up some sort of defense.

"So," she said, glancing up from her cranking, "are you ready for another shot at me?"

The huge spandex-clad monster crossed his arms over his chest, a throaty bellowing laugh filling the air. "You were no match for my power last time! Do you think your toys will help you against me now?" To emphasize the point, he stomped on the ground, flexing his biceps and snarling like a rabid dog.

Willow jogged up to the furiously cranking Kennedy, touching her shoulder. "Are these guys for real?"

Kennedy nodded with a knowing smile. The string click click clicked its way to the back of Betty, the powerful composite arms groaning as they arched. She scanned her surrounding in the blink of an eye, setting up her bearings for the upcoming fight. Andrew and Giles had moved to opposite sides of the street, crouching behind a fire hydrant and a trashcan, respectively. Each of them cocked and loaded their crossbows, setting the axes they had procured beside them. Andrew mumbled nervously to himself, inventing Dungeons and Dragons stats for the fell beasts before him. He made a mental note to write down his stats, both in second and third edition, which was almost too 'new school' for him, but a lot of people liked it.

Giles pondered how effective he would be in the upcoming fight. His back was hurting, and his left knee had been failing him recently, but even with his glasses he was still a crack shot. He had picked a slender steel-hafted battle-axe as his secondary weapon, hoping that the long backspike could penetrate the creature's hide. He watched as the lead wrestler flexed and strutted about, mentally flipping through his internal Rolodex of demons. There were very few demons that were this anatomically close to humans. Really, if it weren't for their ogre-ish faces (or face, as that he only had the one to judge by), they would pass for exceptionally large, slightly green humans. Something clicked in his brain, the metaphoric tumblers fell into place, the hamster ran its wheel. He knew what they were. And what they were wasn't pretty.

"They're huh?" The latch finally caught the string with a metallic snap. The posing beast froze, grimacing at the watcher. Kennedy raised the crossbow, knocking a bolt the size of an arrow and aiming at the thing's head.

Kennedy steadied her breathing, felt her heartbeat in her fingertips. She slowly began to depress the firing lever, then froze an instant before she shot.

"Good," Kennedy said to herself. The greenish thug stepped into a wide stance, feet far apart and arms out ready to hug someone. The two robed figures behind him slowly and inconspicuously inched out of the way.

The crossbow bucked, the oscillations of the cable warping the air. The demon heard the bolt coming. He was fast, and resilient.

His massive body collapsed with a wet thud to the street, a single fiberglass shaft drawing a perfect line through the center of his forehead, making an exclamation point out of the design on his mask.

Kennedy laid the crossbow on the ground, and began pulling her leather jacket off as she turned to Willow. The older woman stood beside her, peering at the two figures as they walked over to the body of their dead comrade.

The redhead ran to the open trunk and reached into its shambles, grasping the leather hilt of Kennedy's favorite weapon. The straight, double-edged blade was razor-keen, and even in the dark it shone white. She took it over to the slayer, pressing it into her palm. Kennedy twirled the sword once, reacquainting herself with its weight and center of balance, biting her lip as the muscles around her mending rib contracted. Willow furrowed her brow, nervously looking at the two remaining demons as they kneeled next to the corpse. In unison, they stood up, turning to face Kennedy. With a simple shrug of their massive shoulders, the robes fell to the ground. Both wore the traditional wrestler outfit, tights clinging to their muscular legs, simple half-masks covering their faces. They also shared similar designs: a single green stripe running up the inside of each leg, and a stripe down the center of the mask. The behemoth on the right of Kennedy cracked his knuckles, his tights a deep red, while the other began to circle to her left, his uniform a more muted black and green. Willow turned again to Kennedy.

"You're hurt," she said, never taking her eyes off of the seething brutes. Kennedy glanced over to her, and nodded slowly. The slayer put the blade in front of her, pointing it at the throat of the one in black. It was a simple tactic, really. They were planning on attacking from two angles. This meant two things: they had fought together before, and knew how to coordinate their movements, and that she was going to have to fight both of them. Kennedy forced her mind to go to that quiet place, a level just above the fear, where she could watch the events unfold from a distant perspective.

"Get out of the way, Will," Kennedy stated flatly, "I don't want you getting hurt."

"Good," she replied exuberantly, "me neither! I hate pain! I avoid it at any cost!"

"So get to cover," the slayer said through clenched teeth. Willow was doing it again. Didn't Willow realize that she wasn't just putting herself in danger, but Kennedy as well? She couldn't be responsible for watching over her girlfriend if one of those monsters tried to grab her. The image of that tiny, limp body in those enormous hands, bent and broken, made bile rise in her throat. That wouldn't happen, not while she had anything to say about it. Of course, being able to *do* something about it would be that much nicer, but at this point beggars can't be choosers. Black was almost directly to her side, only about fifteen feet away, low and coiled, ready to pounce at some unknown signal.

"Willow," Kennedy tried one last time, "I know you don't feel the same way, and maybe that works for you, but I love you too much to put you in danger. So just piss off, find a hole to crawl into, and leave me alone." With a firm push, she sent Willow reeling a couple steps away, eyes wide with indignant rage. She raised her finger, pointing it at the tan-skinned slayer, with a reply on her lips. She never got a chance to utter it, for Kennedy cut her off with a loud cry.

The two sharpshooters fired their crossbows, high-pitched twangs announcing the duo's presence. The bolts augured towards their targets, Andrew aiming at Black, while Giles fired at Red. The pair of demons was prepared, snatching the bolts from the air with quicksilver speed, then hurling the missiles at Kennedy.

Kennedy launched herself in the air, yanking her legs underneath her, arms out to the side as she flipped over the projectiles, which crossed almost directly where she had been standing. Willow screeched and dropped to the ground as the bolt collided against the building only inches away from her head. The other bolt flew through the car's weakened windshield, jutting through the driver's seat, the point pressing into Oscar's hairy chest.

"Jesus!" he exclaimed, pushing the wooden shaft away. The tiny creature in the box began squeaking and chattering wildly. Oscar leaned over, pressing his ear to it. The mobster had begun to make a certain twisted sense of the creature's nervous ramblings. "You don't say, huh?"

Kennedy landed in a crouch, the tip of the sword pointing away from her, masking its range. This was apparently the cue the two were waiting for. Black came dashing in, following his bolt with a roar. Kennedy was forced to turn to face him, but rather than attempt to collide with him, she spun around, slipping behind him like a running back avoiding a tackle. Her sword swung low, following her momentum into the beast's meaty thigh. Kennedy felt the blade bite, but not deep enough, the solid fibers of its muscle repelling her sword blow.

As Black passed by Kennedy, Red was already almost on top of her, covering the distance with great, leaping steps. She kept the circular movement of her sword going, turning it into a downward swing. At the last second, she slipped the hilt, letting the swing drag the sword almost from her grasp, then clutching the pommel. The sudden change in range caught the demon unawares, the tip of the sword slicing him diagonally across the chest. Again, Kennedy realized that the creature's anatomy was too tough to get a crippling blow with a cut. She needed to change tactics.

Kennedy dropped and rolled, Red's thick arms grasping above her. She popped up, ready to press the attack now that she had the two in a line, when Red threw himself backwards at her, his body nearly horizontal as he thrust an elbow at her. Kennedy backpedaled, nearly lost her footing as she hit the curb, then reversed her grip on the sword. The red and green clad demon landed on his side, loose pebbles skittering past the slayer. She leapt at him, the point of her sword darting towards his exposed throat with all her weight behind it.

Too late she realized that his prone position was a ruse. Black was running straight towards her, even though his friend was blocking the way. Just before he reached his fallen partner, he dove into the air head first, arms extended like a man flying. Red grabbed his wrists, planted his boots in his stomach, and kicked the demon into a flip, the pivot point their clasped hands. Kennedy felt the tremendous impact of Black's calf on her shoulder, catching her in mid-stride and slamming her face into the cement. Her vision exploded in stars, the back of her head tingling coldly.

The monster was on top of her, his friend rolling away and hopping to his feet. Kennedy forced her thoughts to coalesce. She rolled to her back, the beast's boots planted to either side of her head. Just as the black one bent down with both his hands intent on strangling her to death, Kennedy grabbed the blade of the sword with one hand (making sure to grasp the flat of the blade), the hilt with the other, and used it spear-like to drive the point into the inside of Black's knee. The blade punched through the meat of it's joint, bone stronger than steel tuning the blow from a crippling one into a merely extraordinarily painful one. Black staggered forward, giving Kennedy space to kick herself upright with an undulation of her body.

She found herself face to face with Red, jagged teeth bared in a battle-fury snarl. Kennedy choked back a gag as its hot breath swamped her senses. Kennedy danced back, gravely trying to put distance between her and it. It's colossal fist snapped towards her, catching her as she skipped. The impact and the lack of anything to brace herself with sent the slayer sailing through the air, slamming into the hood of the car, rolling backwards and onto the street. She leaned against the tire, silently rebuking herself for getting her stupid rib broken in the first place. Willow was next to her in an instant, her expression mostly unchanged from their previous exchange.

"What the hell do you mean 'maybe that works for you'?" she hissed, her voice modulating wildly with emotion.

"This…really isn't the time," Kennedy gasped out. Her keen ears caught the sound of two pairs of boots walking toward the car. If they found Willow here, she wouldn't be able to get away fast enough. With that in mind, she pushed herself to her feet, darting into the street and away from the car. The mammoth pair of demons were walking side by side, Black limping slightly from his injury.

Kennedy twisted the grip of her weapon, blinking under the sudden realization that her long sword was actually behind the Diablos. She cursed herself for dropping it, posting a mental reminder to make a lanyard for the twentieth time. The Green Devils saw her eye the sword, and made sure they stood between she and it.

"You will not find us as easy to kill as El Puno, la chica pequena," the red-garbed brute said, wiping the rivulets of blood from his chest. Kennedy watched out of the corner of her eye as Giles began to move closer to the fight. The older man was crouching, moving from his trashcan battlement to behind the car.

"Do I get a name to go with your pretty face?" Kennedy asked, stalling for each precious second.

"You will call me El Asesino, and it shall be that last name on your lips!" The demon chewed the scenery, twisting his hands, wringing the life out of an imaginary weasel. Kennedy couldn't help it. She knew that these guys were no joke, that unarmed she had no chance against them, but the sight of this hulking green creature flexing and grimacing, the veins on it's neck popping out, was too much for her.

The giggle started at the back of her throat, and the more she suppressed it, the more powerful it became. Spittle sprayed from between her pursed lips, forcing her to cover her mouth out of some misplaced sense of etiquette, which just made her laugh even harder. Soon, tears were forming in her eyes, and she raised an apologetic hand, shaking her head at the two befuddled demons.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she forced out, her chuckles subsiding, "It's just, god, if only all the things I kill were as colorful as you guys! I mean you have this whole 'big bag wrestler' vibe going, and I have to give it to you, it's a thing. Just…whew! Giles?"

Kennedy extended her arm, the battleaxe Giles had been using landing in her hand with a 'thap'. The axe was moving as soon as she had a grip on it, crescent-bladed head swiping out at El Asesino in tight, violent arcs. He raised his arms the ward off the blows, red lines appearing on his pale green skin as Kennedy remorselessly pressed the attack. She kept her movements fast but rhythmic, the axe whirring about her as the demon staggered back. His friend in the black tights circled around behind her, but couldn't get close due to Kennedy's back swipes.

Just when her opponent though he had timed her attacks right, she flipped the axe head to it's sharp backspike, using all her enhanced strength to change direction. El Asesino raised his arm to intercept the expected strike, ready to trap the weapon and disarm the slayer, but succeeded only in exposing his ribs to Kennedy's strike. The impact ran up her arm, chattering her teeth as the weapon designed to punch through plate mail punctured the creature's heavy ribcage.

The attack didn't go over as well as Kennedy had hoped. She had hoped to stagger the brute, at least to generate a scream of pain. Instead, Kennedy felt a terrible pressure on her wrist as a thick-fingered hand trapped her in place. The slayer bellowed and kicked as the iron grip tightened, pulling her into a lethal bear hug. She slammed her forehead into the creature's face, again and again, until her nose felt puffy and flushed and her neck ached. Willow, she thought through a haze of pain, now would be a good time to ignore me.

The demon smiled as bright red blood ran down its face in thin trickles. Kennedy tried to bring a knee up to get some leverage, maybe to push off or twist, but the devil may as well have been made of steel girders. She heard it yell something a in a lilting, guttural language that she decided really was their language and not Spanish. The world began to spin, El Asesino pivoting on his heel, ballerina-like, once, twice, then flung Kennedy's body straight out. The wind blew her hair out of her eyes, just in time to see the black clad demon's muscular forearm as it clothes lined her across the face.

Kennedy was upside down, the momentum of the throw carrying her well past the point of impact. Oddly, the strike didn't hurt that badly, at least in comparison to all the other hurts she was nursing. It occurred to her that almost all of the maneuvers El Diablos Verdes had hit her with looked a lot more dangerous than they actually were. Every punch was telegraphed, hell, most of them sent email before they arrived, and the holds and throws, while painful to the extreme, should have been able to kill her with little effort. As her body spun towards the ground, Kennedy couldn't decide whether that was good news or bad news. She closed her eyes, loosening her muscles in preparation for what looked to be a nasty fall.

The collision never came. Even though she knew what had happened, the bruised and battered slayer cautiously opened first one eye, then the other. She stared down at the flattened cigarette butt that had taken the texture of the cement beneath it through repeated treadings upon. She slowly turned her head to Willow, verifying her first guess.

The witch had one hand extended, palm up, like someone lifting a dandelion into the air, and the other forcefully thrust out, her delicate fingers curled into a claw. Willow's red hair was blown back, her alabaster features taking on a reddish tint as the energy barrier she commanded solidified. The two demons slammed their fists against it, flinching back as crackling bolts of crimson energy singed them.

"Yes, let's hit the impenetrable force field," Willow chided the duo. She looked down at Kennedy, shaking her head at the hovering slayer. She sighed loudly, her eyes sad and tired.

"I said, what do you think they're saying?" Andrew slinked over to the car, making a wide berth for the vampire mumbling to himself in the back seat of the wrecked vehicle.

Giles walked to the back of the car, grabbing two hand crossbows and a collection of melee weapons. He pointed at a stone staircase, walking over to the orange and gray speckled entryway, consciously checking the pair of demons pacing behind the barrier like caged tigers.

Andrew followed him, somehow compressing his body into a vaguely mushroom shaped mass, waddling along the street in an effort to be inconspicuous that left him only more so that. He sat down next to the rugged watcher, perhaps a little too close, and loaded and cocked one of the crossbows.

"I know that," he said, brandishing the crossbow like Han Solo, "but what do you think they're saying to each other?"

Giles raised an eyebrow: "Are you asking me to gossip about their relationship?"

Andrew squirmed in his seat, as if her could wriggle free of the question. He sighed, making a show of putting his hands on his knees, laying the crossbow on them. Giles glared at the locked and loaded weapon pointed directly at him, and Andrew quickly yanked it away, aiming it at the ground.

Giles shook his head sadly. He had hoped for so much for his dear Willow. To be honest, he never really liked Kennedy. The girl had struck him as brash, self-involved, and overly impressed by her own opinion. In short, she was the quintessential American new money. She seemed to be rebelling against her parent's wealth as if that meant something; never realizing that inside every rebel is a stockbroker waiting to come out. She became very attracted to Willow; she convinced Willow to date her. Maybe Willow saw a side of her that he hadn't. But he for one was very cautious about setting up Willow for heartbreak. And watching the two fight, the anger and pain on the wicca's wonderfully expressive face, well, Giles had to seriously restrain his desire to throttle the new slayer.

"I hope they work it out," Andrew fidgeted with the flail at his side. "I mean, I know nobody likes me, I know I used to be a criminal mastermind—"

"Beside the point," Andrew continued unabated, "I just think that those two deserve a shot at being happy. They should get married." He nodded with great gravity.

"I think it may be a bit premature for wedding bells," Giles had to relearn how to be polite after the boy's statement. He rubbed his knee with the heel of his palm, dull waves of pain washing down his calf. Andrew mistook his grimace for a disagreement, or worse still, an invitation to continue.

"They are really a cute couple. And Kennedy just adores Willow. Willow's a little afraid, but that is to be expected, I guess, what with Warren accidentally shooting Tara. It's sort of like Batman, when Joker killed Robin, and Bats pushed everyone away, even the new Robin who really wanted to be his sidekick."

Giles forced his eyes closed, fearing that if he looked at Andrew he would inflict great harm upon him. It wasn't that the boy intentionally said things that were at once truthful and amazingly annoying; Andrew just didn't have any concept of social graces. When he opened them, he saw an oddly pensive Andrew.

"I wish Warren hadn't shot her," his normally wildly lilting voice was subdued, his features quiet and withdrawn. "And not just 'cause Willow tried to eviscerate me with her bare hands, either."

"Ummm, 'cause then Tara'd still be alive, and Warren would still be alive, and y'know, I know he was all evil and stuff, but he was my friend, and then Jonathan would still be here, and so would Anya." Andrew let his head drop, running his hands along his neck. "When did evil stop being fun and start being really, really painful?"

Giles nodded knowingly. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and stared at the humid night sky. Thick muddy clouds blacked out the stars.

Andrew picked at a brown weed that poked through the bricks on the ledge next to him.

"No," Andrew corrected, splitting the weed into strips and wrapping them around his fingers. "I meant the others. Tara, Anya, Jonathan… do you think they're okay? Not, y'know, lonely…or…?"

"Oh." Giles pulled off his glasses, the barrier shifting into a ruby glow to his left, the indistinct shapes of Kennedy and Willow flowing in front of it, their shadows swaying across the hood of the car. "Oh. Yes, I believe so. I think they are in a better place."

"I hope so. I just worry. Anya killed lots of people, and Jonathan summoned some demons, froze some guy…I hope they can get in."

Giles thought about Anya. The ex-demon who always had an opinion about everything that ever existed, and more often than not, it was one of extremes. He had come to trust the budding human, and he knew that the Magic Box was in no better hands than hers. But she had murdered thousands of men, most of whom she tortured first. Giles hoped that whatever forces decided who was worthy of heaven were looking the other way, just so Anya could slip by them.

And somehow the mental image of spry, tenacious Anya getting past the pearly gates triggered another memory, one that seeped into his mind from time to time. The door was brown; the paint chipped off and repainted numerous times, plateaus of enamel in some surreal landscape. The gas can was light, everything was numb, and the only though in his mind was to make Angelus burn the same way he burnt. He would have happily killed him, and hoped to have killed himself. The monster ripped away Jenny, snapped her neck and left her to taunt him. He knew exactly how Willow felt about Tara. The sweet, shy young woman never hurt anyone, indeed, was too much a victim in her own life. The exceptional cruelty of fate was simply driven home when he heard about her death. Fate. Giles used to not believe in it, used to think that everyone had absolute free will, never forced to do anything. But as he grew older, he saw how lives went, and saw just how rarely one has a choice in their lives. During one of those earth-shattering events, you decide, you weigh your options, and you pick what is best for you. You exercise what you think is free will. But afterward, years afterward, you question if you really had any choice at all. If you were in the same situation, the exact same, with the same information, maturity, intelligence and motives, would your decision be any different? No, Giles came to realize, it would not. At every point in your life, you always think you are making the right choice. So do you really have free will? Are you an automaton to the situation, reacting in a predictable yet complex way, the variations in action only dictated by the randomness inherent to the universe? And if you refuse to make a decision, say, using the randomness of the flip of a coin to make your choice, are you not then balking the illusion of determination and handing yourself over wholly to predetermination? Is evil truly evil in that context, since it can do nothing other than what the situation dictates? And if not, then is fighting evil any less necessary, as that it seems the only reasonable choice in a world this arbitrary? Perhaps that is the nature of precognition, simply an ability to take everyone's actions into account, barring random occurrences. Seven years ago, Buffy should have died, but because of a series of chance encounters, she lived. Giles knew he didn't have any answers, all he knew was that even if you truly have no choice, you must continue to treat people as though they do. People must be held accountable for their actions: the alternative was just too improbable. Perhaps destiny is simply the task of letting yourself be who you really are. Perhaps the only great crime in the eyes of the universe was to be disingenuous to yourself. Unfortunately, that made the universe a right mad bastard, filled with pointless suffering and death. Giles put his glasses back on, yawned, and smiled at Andrew. Andrew smiled back, and they both thought about the fallen, both friend and foe.

"I just thought of something," Andrew tapped his chin and puckered his lips in contemplation. "You said those guys in the masks were Jurgan demons?"

"Yes," Giles answered, shunted from his philosophy into more solidly esoteric topics.

"Well, isn't it kind of, oh, insane that a Jurgan demon is dressed like a pro-wrestler?"

Giles's eyebrows shot up to his hairline as he began to concoct an explanation, but the sheer farcical nature of the situation overwhelmed his higher functions, making his brow dive down into a deep furrow. "Well, they, they are… Mexican demons…" He stammered with a snicker.

"Aren't Jurgan demons from Egryhor?" Andrew asked, mostly to himself. "I read about them in the Journals of Solomon Cain. Apparently, armies from the Hyperborean Age would summon them to be like shock troops. Nigh invulnerable, relatively smart, and incredibly strong. It was like the Incredible Hulk let loose on a battlefield."

"That was standard practice then, Andrew. Their behavior is odd, but all things considered, I've seen much stranger activities from demons adapting to the modern age," Giles said, playing devil's advocate more than voicing his opinion.

"Yeah," Andrew's train of thought picked up pace, his hands rubbing together like a child waiting for a birthday prize. "But those are usually pretty low end demons. The big nasties like to keep the old ways alive. And if I can remember correctly, when Cain encountered one in Cleveland back in the seventeen somethings, it's people still followed their code of honor. So for five thousand years, they were keepin' it real."

"So you're telling me that they stick with it for four or five millennia, and then boom, they get cable and it all goes to hell? I think you're having an acid flashback."

"Those are bloody myths," Giles grumbled, "But you're right, theirs does seem to be rather the put-on act. It is possible they are just covering their tracks, throwing off any pursuers?"

"So why toy with Kennedy?" he replied. "Why not just pull her arms off? He had the chance. I'm telling you, Rupert, these guys are under some sort of mind altering spell."

"Don't call me Rupert," Giles warned. "I agree. We'll just have to talk with Willow when she has a free moment."

Kennedy pulled herself upright, brushing her pants off and eying the demons snarling on the other side of the mystical barrier. She turned to Willow, folded her arms across her chest, and put her weight on her rear leg.

Willow copied her girlfriend's posture almost exactly, her heart falling into the pit of her stomach. She tried to calm herself, to take a deep breath and focus her energies, but her breath came in ragged gasps and her energy scattered as her anxiety rose.

Willow sighed, looking away to the smashed-in grill of the car, the wrought-iron railing chunk making a steel clown smile out of the front of the rental. She turned back to Kennedy in exasperation.

Willow raised a hand, scrunching her eyes closed again and grimacing. "Don't play this game with me, Kennedy," she half-commanded, half-pleaded. "Not with me."

The young slayer saw herself as a trapped rat, a lab mouse with no way out. "I'm not the one playing games here, Willow," she spat back, twisting her lover's name until it held a reproachful tone.

"What!" Willow dropped her hands to her side, taking a forceful step towards the brown-eyed woman, her voice angry and rough, "What the hell is your problem? Did the Faith bug bite you today? Are you telling me I'm toying with you? Is that what you think about me?"

"What I think?" Kennedy turned, averting her gaze to hide the burning tears that formed there. "What I think of you? Do you want to know what I think of you? I think you're the most amazing person I've ever met. I think I can't even breathe when you look at me. It feels like I can do anything in the world when you're with me."

Willow hugged herself, her anger wrapping itself into a tight knot at the base of her spine. She stared at the black tarmac, the moisture from a humid night coating everything, making the entire world stick to itself.

Kennedy's back was turned, her muscled arms tensing so hard they shook her whole frame. She heard those cold, ice-cold words the doppelganger spoke what seemed like months ago. When she was so assured that she was righteous, so certain that she was true.

"I think," Kennedy's normally confident voice broke. She steeled herself, her jaw clenched and working, trying to iron the words out so they came plainly.

"I think that you…like what I do for you…and that…I make you feel good…"

"But that's all?" Willow tested, whispering the question to the air. "So you think I'm just what, using you to get off?"

"No," the young woman insisted, "Not like that. You like how I make you feel emotionally. I don't know, I don't know what I'm talking about."

"I think you do. Kennedy," Willow walked around to her front, her green eyes searching for some clue, a smidgen of a hint as to her feelings. "Kennedy, why can't you just tell me what you want?"

Kennedy's lower lip trembled, the sobs fighting their way up her slender throat. "Because," she choked, fighting the gravitational pull of Willow's gaze. "Because I'm afraid you don't want to give it to me. I've never been more scared in my life, Willow, and I don't know what to do if you can't…" Kennedy had to stop, she had to take a breath, to calm the emotions that wracked her soul.

"If you can't love me. And, and, if you can't, I know, I understand, it's my fault, I should be better for you, but I can't be anything else, I'm just me…and I don't think that's good enough for you."

"What makes you think that?" Willow tried to wrap the shirt she wore tighter around herself, the waves of pain from Kennedy washing over her, threatening to pull her down. Kennedy turned violently away, pacing about and gesturing wildly.

"How could I not? I'm not stupid; I know what everyone thinks about me. They think I'm just some…some phase, some prop in your life. They think I'm just a little brat with a stupid crush, that I can't handle you, the real you. That I couldn't ever hope to live up to some sort of mythic standard for your girlfriends."

"Kennedy," Willow gently stated, "I know you better than that. You'd never let other people's opinion dissuade you one way or another. Hell, if all the other slayers jumped off a cliff, you'd be the first person to grab a mocha and call it a day. So, yeah, I know you're not the crowd favorite, but so what? You're my favorite."

Willow felt the anger rise in her, the urge to snap back nearly overwhelming. But then the strangest thing happened. She just stepped back, and stopped listening to what the young woman said, and started listening to how she said it. She watched the way she was over-enunciating every syllable, how her hands drew big pictures in the air, how the tears drew shimmering lines down the sides of her face. She heard the anger in her voice, but below that, in some sub harmonic layer, there was a wealth of information. There, below the front of anger, there was loneliness, and desperation. She felt this strong-willed woman's pain, knew that every minute of every day for the past week she had spent locked in some internal debate, trying to decide if she could risk opening up to the woman she loved. And Kennedy loved her, she had no doubt of that now, she loved her the way she did everything, with absolute abandon. She knew Kennedy wouldn't betray her, no more than she would refuse a challenge. The poor girl, she mused, the poor girl must feel totally alone right now. That was why she kept pushing her away, that was why she was loosing touch with her humanity. It was all a reaction to feeling abandoned, to thinking that for the first time she let her guard down around someone, that person could wound them so badly.

Something else came to her attention: this must be what it felt like to be Tara. She was always in awe of her ability to empathize with the pain of others. She could just walk into a room and everyone would calm down, because everyone could sense that she knew what they needed. It was her more than anybody that helped Dawn through the first month after Buffy died, that first angry month filled with tears and shouting matches. She always used to kid Tara about being the world's greatest mother, and they'd laugh and talk about their future and make love like they were important to the universe. And even though none of the Scoobies ever talked about it, they all felt just how empty the house was without her. And now Willow couldn't help but smile, for she suddenly understood that Tara wasn't gone completely, that she had left something behind in Willow, a gift that just needed to be opened at the right time. When she activated all the slayers, she felt such love and acceptance, the kind she had only felt with her year-dead lover, and never paused to decipher what it meant. But now she knew, or thought she knew. Tara was giving her something, something that Willow could make the world a better place with. That was why the awkward witch chose to stay in Sunnydale in the first place: to make a finer world. She had forgotten that, and Tara was reminding her from somewhere far away.

She moved next to Kennedy, turning her around with a hand on her shoulder. Kennedy's beautiful brown eyes were bloodshot and swollen, rendered even larger than normal. Her lips quivered pathetically, her throat spasming as she struggled to maintain her discipline. Willow brushed her fingertips along Kennedy's tan cheek, tracing the curve of her face with an unhurried caress. The emotionally spent slayer whimpered and leaned into the touch, not knowing and not caring what it meant. All that mattered to her then was that her lover was touching her. Willow ran her hands around the woman's tensed back, her mystically enhanced muscles twitching like high-tension cables on a bridge. The slayer let out a ragged sigh as Willow enfolded her in her embrace. Kennedy let her head fall to Willow's shoulder, a weeks worth of pent up frustration, fear, and doubt washed out onto the redhead. Willow opened herself to the flood of emotions, accepted them, and sent her own energy to calm the distraught woman in her arms. Kennedy's trembling slowed, until only the occasional aftershocks rattled Willow.

Kennedy pulled her head back, sniffing as she grinned and ran her fingers through her luxurious hair.

"Look at me," she laughed desperately, "falling to pieces all over you while two unkillable super demons and a vampire hitman stare at us."

Kennedy dropped her forehead to meet Willow's, pulling the freckled redhead even closer.

"No," she moaned breathily, "No, it's not. I'm s'posed to be your tether, and here you are keeping me from flying apart. I like it though."

Willow just nodded, running her hands along Kennedy's sweat and grime covered back, her fingernails scraping the backs of her arms. Willow was worried that Kennedy would begin to cry again, she could feel how tenuous a hold she had on her own emotions.

"You know," Willow began after a moment, "this isn't easy for me either." Kennedy tensed again, fear flashing through her. "No, no, *this* is good. I could do this all day. I mean, this, as in you and me, as in together. It's really kind of terrifying."

"I don't want you to be scared," Kennedy tried to sound soothing, but knew that she came out as pleading.

"Sush now," Willow tapped the slayer's back, "not finished. It's scary, because everyone I've ever let get close, everyone I've ever loved…has gone away. And maybe, I'm afraid to let you in, to open up, because I don't want you to go away too. Okay?"

Kennedy pulled back to look into her girlfriend's eyes. She had the most amazing eyes. It was her eyes that made Kennedy fall hard for her. The way she could let you know exactly what was on her mind just by looking in those eyes. When did she stop paying attention to them? Kennedy found herself nodding and sniffling.

"Okay," she bit her lip, not sure how to say what she was thinking. She then remembered who she was, and dove into the words headfirst.

"Willow," Kennedy spoke in her softest tones, tones she usually saved for the bedroom, "I love you. I am in love with you. And I promise, I will never abandon you. I know you don't feel exactly the same way, I mean, how could you? I know you care a lot about me, and I can feel that whenever you touch me, and that's enough for me…for now. But I'm just gonna stick around and keep at you until you do love me, at least a little, or until you ask me to leave. I swear, I am yours, and you can take from me what you want."

"Stupid girl," she joked, "I do love you a little. Even a little more than a little. Maybe not as much as you love me," she admitted with a wry shrug, "but I'm gettin' there. Just be patient with me."

Kennedy laughed with her, catching Willow's face in her palm and drawing their lips together. She lightly brushed her mouth against the witch's, asking permission. Permission was granted; Willow crushing herself against the strong tanned woman, accepting the slayer's oath of fealty. She then let herself be subsumed by passion, gave a bit of her own desire to Kennedy, and let her know that she was not the only source of fire. A kiss can be many things: a promise, a challenge, an invitation, or an affirmation. This was all those, a kiss to mark survival. Kennedy and Willow both exited at the same time, both with soft smiles and loving gazes.

Oscar stood in the middle of the street, cobalt shirt open in the front, baring a matted, hairy chest and a distended beer gut for the world to see. His dark, beady eyes glinted with barely contained mirth, half of his gelatinous face caved in by an exaggerated smirk. He held the Orignok configuration before him, thumbs resting on the twin latches that held the lid on.

"Sorry to interrupt the dyke hug fest," he blustered, "I had this whole speech thing worked out. But, y'know. Screw it."

With a flip of his thumbs, the latches slid open, and the top opened. Intense green light shot laser-straight into the sky, burning a hole through the clouds. The demons held at bay by the barrier stopped they're incessant pacing, and staggered away from the box in terror. The light narrowed, tuning into nothing like a TV's vertical hold. Oscar looked at the box expectantly. Willow's magical sense went off the charts, her skin tingling with huge amounts of power being released. She grabbed onto Kennedy's arm, even as the slayer stepped protectively in front of her. Andrew and Giles stood up from the stoop they rested on, each aiming crossbows at Oscar's back.

"Huh." Oscar blinked in thought, and then twisted the box to shake its contents onto the ground.

"Don't!" Willow warned, stepping alongside Kennedy. She could feel the energy disrupting her barrier, as well as something more subtle change. Like someone, somewhere, was waking up from a dream. No, not a dream, a mind control spell. Great, that thing must have had something under its control. She glanced back at El Diablos. Well, she thought, it would make sense that they were the ones being controlled, but what kind of demon makes it's minions act like WWF rejects? Willow silently kicked herself. She just jinxed it. She knew that she was about to find out what kind of demon.

Oscar dumped the box completely over. A small, brown and gray furred squirrel dropped onto the road. It was fairly unimpressive, as squirrels go, sitting up on it's hind legs and chirping excitedly. That's when it began to change.

The metamorphosis took only a second, it's mass expanding several thousand fold as it grew and shifted. Arms and legs thickened and took humanoid form, matching the pale, dirt streaked torso that evolved. It was a man, or at least, man-like, a fleshy form covered with patches of fur, some gray, brown and reddish islands in a sea of pasty skin. It stood up, massive legs shakily supporting its seven-foot frame.

It seemed almost human, were it not for several disturbing variations. It had a human face, a doughy, wide-eyed and blank-smiled human face, but a human face nonetheless. Its hair was long and wild, several different shades and types of mud caked into it, velvety brown ears, like those of a horse, affixed to the top of its head. The ears twitched back and forth, leading its cow eyes from sound to sound. It's grin stretched even wider, as it spoke, a strident yet droning bellow.

If it was possible for a seven-foot tall, three hundred pound pair of demons to look absolutely embarrassed, then they were at that precise moment. The demon that had taken to calling himself El Asesino looked at the massive, partially furred humanoid that stood dumbly blinking at the play of lights from the barrier spell the witch had cast. This idiot creature was the source of their pain and misery for the last two years? His murder-need rose, arms that had rent a Yymdaal beast limb-from-limb flexed and twisted, preparing to spill sacred blood and read the entrails of his enemies.

Of course, as it had for the past two years, the killing urge expressed itself through a childish display of bravado. He found himself ranting in a language he understood very little of, filled with dramatic gestures and the occasional beating of his chest. By the black testes of Terrok, how he hated when he did that. There was no honor in such thunder. A true dark warrior merely snaps his enemies with no words, laughs at their weak screams, and splits them open to know his fate. This…charade grew more tiresome with each passing day. Ever since his bloodmates and he went and got cable, he could barely muster a decent death-coda to the dark gods without standing on a chair and shouting flaccid threats at anything that so much as moved.

And I got worse: not only did he make a fool of himself, a laughing stock (no doubt) in all if Egryhon, but he found his casualty dances to be…impotent. Why, not but three years past did he best Urod the Fyarl demon in the span of three heartbeats. It was dishonorable to ever hold back for an opponent, no matter how unworthy. To falsify one's ability was disrespectful both to your victim and your house. But now, now a mere Slayer felled one of his own, when she should have been eviscerated and spilled across that blasted hovel. That he and his should be laid so low…

It was that bastard sorcerer's fault, Rayne. He should have vivisected the wheedling little illusionist when he first approached with the box, the Configuration, thrice damned and never to be thought upon, the Orignok. If he were wiser, he would never have even touched it. The fleshling, Rayne, swore that it would give invulnerability to those it favored. And all he wanted was the flesh of a Fyarl demon. As Brood Mother always said, if it sounds too good to be true, kill him and take his stuff. Which, of course, was the advice he didn't follow.

He honestly chalked his failure to obey his hated mother up to a lack of human entrails in his diet. It wasn't completely his fault, of course. He and his brothers had killed every competing demon within fifty kilometers of their hacienda in Cancun. To the human populace, it appeared as a standard drug lord hideout, complete with high fences and armed guards patrolling the grounds. Beneath that mask of mundane villainy, a temple dedicated to all the dark gods of war, pain, and suffering functioned night and day. The agony that the drugs the brothers sold fed the gods, who in turn gave them strength even the most powerful of the Jurgan demons couldn't imagine. Unfortunately, he never counted on driving away all of the worthy opponents. Hence, the lack of disembowelments.

So what if he ignored his mother's advice in taking on the Orignok configuration? What is family, if not something to shred upon the alter of Ares? There was some sort of entity attached to the box, something that blessed one with power should it take a liking to you. The trio quickly learnt of its fickle temperament. The television would be on, and no blade could penetrate your hide. Turn the television off, and a pinprick would render you comatose. In an effort to placate the entity, his brother got cable.

The entity they came to call G'ran'kek (Keyed Rock in their tongue) loved the false battles humans so pathetically showed on television. It had some sort of telepathic abilities, warping one's desire to suit its own. The normally rarely used wide-screen TV now never was turned off. One brother always sat in front of it, Orignok Configuration in his lap, blankly staring at the professional wrestlers as they flipped and stomped about the ring.

It happened so simply: one day, all three brothers simultaneously called all of the wrestling gear supply houses, and ordered several sets of tights and masks. There was no heroic struggle against the mind-control, nor any real disruptions of their business, just the purchase of a collection of embarrassing clothing. They went about their daily routine, save for the three hours a day that had once been used to spar in bloodmatches no being used to practice high flips and suplexes.

And now they were here. The being that they had feared, (for he had to admit a fear when it came to those capable of mentalism) standing before them, simple grin mocking their dishonor, shaggy collie-like tail wagging happily. That one so obviously touched in the mind that he should have been cast into the flames of impurity long ago so easily dominated he and his twisted his guts with rage.

"I KNOW YOU!" it shouted in its tone-deaf and thunderous voice. "WE USED TO WATCH THE FLYING MEN BUT THEN I GOT BORED! YOU CAN STOP PLAYING NOW. I FORGOT YOU WERE DRESSED ALL FUNNY LIKE THAT. "

With that command, he tore the mask off and howled to Ares, god of war and righteous slaughter. His brother too felt the compulsion lifted, his mask on the ground and his scarred and weathered face contorting in distaste. They looked at each other. The G'ran'kek would pay for this debasement. But more importantly, there was a blood debt to settle. This diminutive slayer-wench slew the eldest with much cowardice. It was a matter of family honor that she be flayed alive and her skin eaten at the black tables.

He and his brother threw themselves at the barrier, the painful shocks only fueling their fury. These soft fleshlings would soon know the fury of…okay, it's time to stop thinking like that. As he pounded at the rose barrier, he roared his frustrations.

Kennedy had weird days before. Even before moving to Sunnydale, she was well acquainted with strange things happening all around her. When she was sixteen, a flying Gost demon dropped into her pool, its revenge fantasy nose-dive foiled by a big gust of wind. When she turned eighteen, she had to run from a vampiric dog on the way to get her tongue pierced. It really took a lot to make a day stand out against the normal din of bizarreness.

She glanced behind her, the pair of demons bellowing and attacking Willow's barrier, seemingly oblivious to the lightning bolts that stung their green flesh. Kennedy decided that whatever had been making them behave like the Macho Man Randy Savage was owed a debt of gratitude; the way they were tearing at the barrier was disquieting at best. She really hoped that Willow had a plan, because once the squirrel transforms into a giant retard, she was pretty much at her wit's end.

She turned back to Willow. The witch was cautiously approaching the towering…person-dog-horse-squirrel thing. Kennedy touched Willow's arm, holding her back.

"Will, wait. We don't know what that thing wants. It might, I dunno, eat you or something."

Willow smiled at her lover's concern. "Don't worry, sweetie. I don't think he's here to hurt anyone."

"I don't know about that," Willow pointed at the patchwork creature, "but he is just so cute! I mean, look at those cute little ears! And the tail. The tail just clinches the cute thing."

Kennedy's other eyebrow rose to meet the first. "Okay," she asked, "You do realize you've finally gone off the deep end, right? Do a mind scan or something!"

Willow rolled her eyes. Deep end, indeed. Well, a mind scan couldn't hurt. Willow turned her focus outward, following the threads of magic that weaved throughout the world. The barrier spell was holding, even with the bloodthirsty demons hammering at it. A wave of magic hit her full in the face, like a wet sea spray. The demon, Keyrock, Andrew had called it, was pouring out huge amounts of energy.

"Huh what?" Kennedy looked like she was bordering on freaking out, big, dark eyes furtively glancing from Willow to Keyrock to the demons and back again.

"It's weird. It's like Keyrock here has evil in him, lots of it, he just doesn't use it. Or, you know, can't use it. Or isn't very good at using it. It's all kind of muddy."

The large man-thing's ears went flat, its tail drooped: "KEYROCK IS RIGHT HERE! I CAN HEAR WHAT YOU'RE SAYING! "

Kennedy smiled, holding her hands up with fingers splayed wide. "I'm sorry!" she shouted, sounding out each word. "We just want to know if you're a good guy or a bad guy!"

"Kennedy!" Willow admonished, pointing to the frowning Keyrock. "Ix-nay the aby-bay alk-tay, okay-ay?" She turned back to the bizarre miasma of animal parts, smiling sweetly. "Could you tell us what you want, Keyrock?"

"OKAY!" Keyrock puffed his chest out, crossed his arms and began to grin again. "MY DAD SAID I WAS BORN TO BURN THE WORLD AND I ONCE HAD A PET TURKEY BUT IT DIED AND I WAS SO SAD I MADE A PAIR OF PANTS OUTTA LIVE WEASELS. I LIKE WEASELS. THEY SMELL FUNNY."

Willow shook her head, trying to piece together some coherent statement of intent from the creature's ramblings. She glanced over to Giles and Andrew, the two men alternating pointing their crossbows at Oscar and Keyrock.

Giles gave Willow an imploring look, waiting for her signal. She waved him away, shrugging with half a smile.

"So, Keyrock…what are you doing out of your box?" Kennedy tried her hand at diplomacy, despite her need to constantly check on the demons who had not abated their rage whatsoever.

"BUT I WASN'T ALWAYS A SQUIRREL. ONE TIME I WAS A GOLDFISH, AND I FORGOT I WAS A DEMON AND I STAYED A GOLDFISH FOR A WHOLE YEAR," he paused for a deep breath. "I WAS A SQUIRREL FOR A LONG TIME AND IT WAS DARK. BUT I GOT OUT 'CAUSE I WANT TO GO TO DAIRY QUEEN. DO YOU LIKE DAIRY QUEEN?"

"Actually, yes." Kennedy pulled herself closer to Willow, whispering in her ear. "I don't think he's playing with a full deck."

"I'm gonna have to agree with your 'not so sane' argument," Willow said out of the side of her mouth, smiling broadly at the perplexed Keyrock. "We should get the others."

"Hey Giles! Andrew!" she yelled, causing Willow to wince and cover her ear. "C'mere! Group huddle!"

"Not such a fan of the deafness, Kenn," Willow rubbed the side of her head, elbowing the slayer.

Giles and Andrew jogged across the street, both standing next to Kennedy. Andrew jumped and yelped as one of the demons pressed its face against the searing force field, hissing at the boy as he passed by. Andrew yelped again when he saw the tall Keyrock, happily wagging tail and all. Giles peered at the gregarious demon, blinking in wonder as he realized that it looked almost exactly like its picture, and that he had no idea what it was. Shapeshifters were uncommon as it was, but this one seemed to have picked up several animal traits as it leapt from form to form.

Willow raised a finger to Keyrock: "We'll be just one minute." She turned to pull the other three tightly together, making sure that she kept El Diablos in her field of view. She hoped the pair were doing more damage to themselves than to her barrier, but knew that sooner rather than later, they would break through. Willow wished she had implanted a mental compulsion: those tend to last longer than any gross physical spell, but these reflexive things were, well, reflexive.

"Okay, here's the thing," Willow looked around the huddle. "I have no idea what to do with this guy."

"Mm-mm," Willow shook her head, "I checked on that already. He's native to this plane. That, and I'm not sure I could give him the boot if I wanted to."

"Just look at him," she gestured towards the childish creature, "could you see him surviving in some demon dimension."

"Actually, yes," Giles adjusted his glasses, "I did some reading on this Keyrock. He terrorized the British Isle for a hundred years before the Hermetic Order finally contained him."

"Um, Giles," Willow interjected, "They trapped him in a box. As a squirrel. We're not exactly talking about 'big bad' level evil here. I mean, you didn't see anyone waiting around for the Mayor with a lunch pail going, 'okay, when he goes snake, you shove him in this bucket'."

"Well, that was plan b," Giles admitted, "I now have a mental image of a bunch of pretentious men in robes chasing a squirrel through the forest with a box."

"He doesn't look dangerous," Andrew glanced at Keyrock, who was busy picking up random rocks from the ground, inspecting them, and putting them down the same place he found them. "Maybe we can just let him go?"

"KEYROCK IS GOING TO DAIRY QUEEN!" The big man-thing suddenly turned around and began walking down the road.

"Whoa there, big guy," Kennedy ran in front of Keyrock, arms outstretched as if to push him back. He kept walking, making contact with the slayer, and plowing right through her like she wasn't even there. Kennedy's feet refused to find traction, and despite the whole of her strength and weight pressed against the demon, she continued to slide backwards with each of its steps. Keyrock didn't seem to notice the tiny Latino woman pressing her back to him and digging her heels into the ground; he just kept walking.

"There's a Dairy Queen the other way," Kennedy grunted between moments of exertion. Why did everything have to be bigger and stronger than she was today? And she was the Slayer, or more accurately, a slayer. Did the demon underworld start passing around steroids all of a sudden?

Keyrock continued on his path, shaking his muddy mane. "THAT'S NOT THE RIGHT DAIRY QUEEN. I NEED THE DAIRY QUEEN WITH THE FROGS IN THEIR BLIZZARDS. IT'S A LOOOOOONG WAY AWAY."

Kennedy rolled off of Keyrock, biting her lip as she briefly considered tripping him with something. She glanced back to the group gathered next to the barrier. The demons were punching the force wall, their fists sending concentric shockwaves across the crimson surface.

"Barrier failing?" she asked as she slid next to the witch. Willow nodded, inspecting her magical handiwork. "Okay," the slayer said, sizing up the enraged demons for the hundredth time today, "How long do we got?"

"Not long," Willow said, "Keyrock's compulsion spell must have really done a number on these guys. They have a direct link to the demon dimensions, and I'm pretty sure they're drawing energy from it now that they're not, y'know, idiots."

"Wonderful. So they're even stronger. I should have figured." The slayer chuckled suddenly.

"Oh, sorry," she snickered, "I was just thinking: he was a squirrel, right? Him and Amy should hook up."

"Muskrat love?" Willow queried, bursting out in laughter. She realized how long it had been since she had laughed in the face of mortal danger. Well, she was never really the one to laugh in the face of peril, that was more of Buffy's thing. She mostly panicked and found a place to hide. Her situational awareness grabbed her by the throat, reminding her just why she shouldn't be laughing.

"Ladies?" Giles asked as he walked to the trunk of the car, pointing at the rapidly weakening force field. "Get ready."

Kennedy caught the sword tossed at her, and motioned for Andrew to join Giles. The boy nodded in agreement, waiting patiently for someone to tell him what to do. Well, at least he'll be the perfect watcher, Kennedy thought. She turned to Willow.

"And I want you safe," she pointed out, "So I guess we should just stick together."

Kennedy beamed. "These guys are nasty, Will. You sure you want to go toe-to-toe with them?"

"Oh, that's just to cover up the, uh, fear." Willow took a step back as the barrier crackled, shimmering from the impact of a devastating punch. "Is running an option?" she whimpered.

Kennedy shook her head, wrapping the lanyard on this sword around her wrist. "Not unless you can fly us all out of here. They'd catch us."

"Sodding brilliant," Giles muttered under his breath, aiming the crossbow at one of the demons. "You win a few games of Risk and you think you're General bloody Patton."

The green-skinned monsters struck the barrier again, their burnt and smoking bodies drawing upon every bit of strength they had, the dark magics of their homeland saturating their frame. The crimson wall disintegrated from their point of impact outward, edges smoldering like burning paper. They saw the slayer, their highly attuned body language communicating their desire for vengeance with on another. The one who had called himself El Asesino, but who now knew his name to be Gor of the Blackhand tribe, stepped past the barrier and towards his foe. There would be blood: blood demanded blood.

There was no time to think. The lead demon barreled down on Kennedy and Willow, spittle flying as it shrieked and pulled back it's fist. Kennedy rolled to her left, barely avoiding the punch that crushed the hood of the wrecked car. The car slid backwards, tires grinding, Giles disappearing under with a soft 'thump'.

The beast backhanded Willow, sending the woman rolling across the cement. With an insensate shriek, Kennedy charged the monster, sword raised for a killing blow to its thick neck. She leapt into the air, knees to her chest and blade whistling its path towards his head.

The monster spun, a long leg kicking Kennedy onto a tangent. She landed in a roll, sword clattering around her, held fast to her wrist by the lanyard. She kept the momentum of the roll, moving away from the demon for a brief moment, and towards the brick wall against which Willow was collapsed.

The lead demon stalked towards the fallen witch, steel muscles twitching in anticipation. A crossbow bolt slammed into the side of its neck, the creature grunting in irritation. The missile shattered, hundreds of wooden splinters showering the fallen Willow. It turned to glare at the firer, huffing like a bull preparing for a charge when it saw the prone Giles, aiming a second crossbow from underneath the back of the car.

Kennedy ran along the side of the wall, centrifugal force conjoining her footfalls to the bricks. She kicked off, twisting her trajectory in mid-air as the demon swung around with a backfist that shattered stone instead of bone. Kennedy let the steel guide her, wide-bladed sword drawing a thin line across it's torso, making an 'x' out of the previous injury.

The blow drew a hiss out of the demon, the beast moving towards her faster than she had thought possible by something so large. It reached out to her, a big swatting grasp, like a person trying to pick up a cat by the scruff of its neck. Kennedy dodged to the inside, directly into the kick he delivered. The wind rushed from her lungs, phlegm exploding from her lips as she dropped to her knees.

The demon wiped its pug nose on the back of its hand, red-rimmed green eyes glowing with the murder-urge. Kennedy tried to stand, all the strength in her body ebbing with each breath. She raised her head, black locks matted to her face with sweat, a thin line of snot running from her nose. Her vision filled with a green fist, the demon uppercutting her and roaring.

The slayer arced limply backwards, body hitting the street with a moist thud. Gor of the Blackhand tribe was next to her even as she landed, massive booted foot raised, ready to crush the woman's head into oblivion. It staggered back, coiled leg dropping to the ground to catch its balance as it clutched its face with a howl. A bolt oscillated in the air in front of Gor, suspended momentarily before it fell back to earth.

Andrew pumped his fist in victory, enthusiasm dimming as he realized that the he had just gotten the demon's attention. The beast pulled its hands away from its face, a red dot above its pig-like eye marking the bolt's target. The demon stepped over the unconscious slayer, bellowing more and more loudly with each step.

Andrew scampered back, fumbling with the crossbow's latch and calling "can only be hit by magic weapons, can only be hit by magic weapons!" over and over again. The demon stalked ever closer, eyes wide and nostrils flared.

Giles squinted through his glasses, the pain in his knee nearly blinding him. The joint was most likely torn, the collision with the car just the straw that broke the camel's back, or the Watcher's knee. As far as he could tell, the second demon was simply standing where the barrier fell, somberly watching the battle. Giles couldn't worry about him right now: Willow, the one person here who could end the fight, was unconscious, Kennedy was badly beaten and precious seconds away from her second wind, and Andrew was dangerously close to being an ex-watcher in training.

The old man steadied his aim, waiting for the right moment. It came as the demon raised both fists in the air, preparing to smash the whimpering boy into a fine mist. Giles said a silent prayer to whatever gods were listening.

The missile found the hole started by Kennedy's battle-axe, and finished the job. Gor slapped his hand to the new injury, the narrow steel head of the bolt lodging between his massive ribs, sending waves of fresh agony through his bulk. He twisted to see the stone-faced marksman calmly loading another projectile. He growled in pain as he grasped the shaft, ripping it from his body and sending a thin stream of potent blood to paint the black cement. His ire rose ever higher as he snapped the offending weapon in half, discarding it with a huff.

The world regained some of its focus. Kennedy felt something loosen in her mouth. She rolled to the side, spitting out a molar and wondering if slayer healing would regrow it. Her stomach cramped painfully as she sat up, still fuzzy on her role in recent memory. Logic dictated that she was fighting the Devils, or whatever they were calling themselves now. She scanned the area, her slayer senses quickly restoring her focus. She almost wished they hadn't.

She was aware of the demon striding for the fallen Giles, of Andrew making that nasal whine and clumsily reloading his weapon, and of the demon cohort's statue-like vigil over the battle. But these she only noticed on the periphery; it was the still form of her lover that nailed her attention. Kennedy's heart stopped beating for too long, starting in hiccups when her eagle eye saw the steady cadence of Willow's breath. She remembered then: that bastard hit Willow.

"Hey!" Kennedy yelled as she pulled herself upright, swinging the dangling sword into her hands. The demon jerked its head toward her, body following in a serpentine undulation.

Gor, known to the Dukesh tribes as The Plague, cared nothing for the banter of the weak. He exploded into movement, barreling down on the defiant woman, bringing all of his impressive speed and strength to bear. His mighty arms trailed behind him, ready to swipe out and catch the nimble human. She would not escape his retribution so easily.

Kennedy accepted the charge, stared it in the face, and stood unflinching. In the blink of an eye, an instant before the beast crushed her with his momentum, she dropped to her back, planting her feet in Gor's stomach, kicking him over her head with all of her enhanced strength. So fast were her movements, so flawless her execution that the enraged demon assumed he had trampled the bothersome creature underfoot, not immediately realizing that he was twisting through the air.

Kennedy spun her legs around like a break-dancer, her body at once both rotating and righting itself. The demon landed twenty paces away on its broad back, then rolled into a crouch, legs wide and hand planted like a linebacker. The slayer's blood boiled, hatred and murderous intent apparent in her dark eyes. She would kill this evil freak. The purity of her motives lent her a surety that few would ever experience. But there was other business to attend to.

"Willow!" she called, her gaze still locked on the brilliant green eyes of her enemy. The witch groaned, shifting with a dry leaf rustle. "Willow!" she yelled again, "Get up! There's no sleeping on the job!" She didn't wait for a reply, but instead turned her full attention the more immediate threat.

Kennedy grew tired of her defensive posture. Without a sound she sprinted forward, shining chrome sword a dragon's tail behind her. She threw herself bodily at the mountain of a beast, leg pistoning out in a powerful kick that caught Gor in his face. Kennedy grinned internally at the wet crack of the monster's flat nose breaking. The sword flashed down towards the demon, bouncing off its shoulder, leaving a wedge shaped gash as a parting gift. Kennedy adjusted her hips, whipping the blade in a flat arc, intent on removing the beast's head.

The pain of the sword blow redoubled Gor's efforts. He grabbed the slayer's wrists in one grotesque paw, hoisting her of the ground. She brought her feet up to kick at him, but his rage was a storm, and she was only a droplet.

Gor's keen ears caught the whistle of another bolt incoming. He simply twisted his waist, the slayer's body following like a writhing streamer. The slayer saw the missile spinning towards her, and for the first time she realized how grim her situation was. She was used to losing a fight, to being in mortal danger, but this was something else entirely. She never was any real threat to this demon, it was never afraid of her. It was going to kill her. It would not stop until she breathed her last, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. In that split second, that miniscule eternity, Kennedy prayed that Willow would be okay without her.

Kennedy screamed hoarsely as the bolt buried itself in her upper back. Somewhere behind her she heard Andrew apologizing profusely. The beast yanked the bolt out roughly, eliciting another moan from the injured slayer. He dropped the bloodied bolt, balling up his fist and punching her in the ribs. She gasped and kicked ineffectually at his stomach, her eyes dull with pain. Gor pounded at her ribs twice, thrice, four times, each blow snapping ribs and bringing another cry of agony.

He pulled back for another punch, the slayer's legs limply swaying pendulums. Something stung the back of his throat, wind turning the woman's hair into ebony tendrils that snapped at the powerful arm that held her aloft. She looked up at him, a shark's smile across scarlet teeth.

Gor turned his head, blinking into the wrathful hurricane he seemed to be in the center of. Magenta bolts of lightning danced along the ground, arcing to the open palms of the witch. Her red hair thrashed around her, a vicious russet halo. Her head was bowed, soft round features drawn in concentration. She lifted off the ground as if drawn from above, her palms turning to the sky, the energy warping the air above her. Gor dropped the broken slayer, the bottoms of his feet itching as the electric hum traveled through the soles of his boots. He took a threatening step towards the witch, hands still moist with the mixed blood of himself and the fallen warrior.

Willow's head snapped up to halt his advance. Her eyes popped open, solid red orbs glowing as if fresh from a blacksmith's forge. Her gaze narrowed, normally placid visage warping into a grimace of fury.

Giles lay there, doggedly pulling himself into a better position, ruined knee dragging behind him. He turned to bring his weapon on target just in time to see a white wave of flame blast the demon in the chest, forcing him off his feet, and slamming him into the brick building, chunks of rock exploding around him. The flames surceased, dropping the creature to his knees, black smoke wrapping around his back as he struggled to stand.

He then saw Willow, and the only thing in his mind was the look on her face when she pulled the magick from him and left him for dead. He knew it unfair, and selfish, but God save him, he couldn't help it.

Willow glided over to the crumpled body of her lover. She dropped to a knee beside her, brushing a strand of hair out of the woman's mouth. Kennedy looked up at the glowing witch above her, a weak smile gracing her strong features.

Kennedy looked down at herself, entire body feeling like a jangled collection of broken bones. She raised an eyebrow, but found the expression too much work, and simply favored darkness instead.

"Jim dandy, Will." She opened her eyes, squinting as she inspected the witch. She raised her hand, pointing at her own eyes with two fingers. "You're red, Red."

Willow smiled gently. "I can't move you, you could have internal bleeding. I'm gonna go take out the garbage, and I'll be right back, okay?"

Kennedy almost nodded, suddenly dizzy as a wave of heat washed across her face. Willow was standing now, nimbus of red energy blazing against the night. She stepped off, her booted toes pointing to the earth above which she hovered. The demon braced himself along the wall, heaving breaths as his chest smoldered, scorched black with red canyons. He looked over to his compatriot, the facially scarred demon no longer stoically monitoring the battle, but standing on the balls of his feet, either ready to bolt or fight. Willow shot him a searing look.

"Not yet," she commanded, her voice like a hammer blow. She fixed her gaze on Andrew, the boy's eyes wide and filled with abject terror. He saw her turn her attention towards him, and threw his crossbow to the ground, dropping to his knees in supplication.

"Oh, god, oh god I'm sorry, I'm sorry about Warren, and Jonathan, and Tara and…and," he sniffled loudly," I didn't mean to hit Kennedy but it was an accident and oh, goooood…"

"Andrew!" she shouted over his blubbering. The boy silenced himself, averting his gaze like a medieval monk in the presence of the divine. "I need you to go help Giles. Can you do that?" Andrew nodded his head rapidly, scurrying off towards his awestruck elder.

Willow looked back at the demon, disgust writ large across her face. The demon mirrored the look, thin lips parting across its needle-sharp teeth. It stood tall, ignoring the pain in it's ruined torso. Willow's red eyes flashed a brighter ruby.

Gor flexed his charred frame, fluids dripping through the blackened flesh as it cracked. There was no yielding. To his people, those that left their enemies alive were flayed upon the Black Tables in their stead. There were only two options: victory or death.

A guttural roar broke the silence of the street turned battlefield. Gor bellowed his family lineage, a hundred generation back, each permutation reflected in a change in timbre. He charged the floating witch, slavering mouth open, teeth gnashing as he bounded the short distance, fists ready to destroy the slight woman.

There was no sound, no 'pop' or 'bamf', no lightshow: he was there one second, and gone the next. Willow exhaled slowly, the tight, controlled breath that flowed into the night sky and lit it with a dull rose haze.

"Holy shit," the demon said, thumbs nervously working over its knuckles, feet shifting.

Giles allowed Andrew to pull him to his feet, the odd angle of his lower leg confirming his previous assumption: dodgy old man knees. He wiped the dirt off of his glasses, thankful for no less than the thousandth time that he invested in shatterproof lenses. His skull had been cracked more times than his glasses. And a good thing, too: the Council had bollocks for optical insurance.

The regret over doubting his friend's control hit him immediately. The streetlights flickered out, leaving only the pulsing orange and red glow of Willow's aura made manifest to light the street. Fat black shadows laid low, creeping along the ground with serpentine languidity. Willow hovered a foot above the tall demon, her aura enveloping him, fiery tentacles caressing his frame. Giles gasped in amazement. Even after going for decades without touching the black arts, he could still feel the siren's song of power calling to him whenever he was in its presence. He felt no such call, only a warmth that could burn to a cinder if underestimated.

The demon, who was named Murga the Wretched, weighed his options carefully. He was a rarity amongst the Jurgans: he was old. He had won many battles, so many that the tales of his rapes alone took a fortnight to tell, and knew how to change the field of combat to his advantage. Murga knew this witch would destroy him with a mere thought. He saw the crushed slayer breathing shallowly on the ground, knew that it was her place to by ground to dust, and was greatly offended by Gor's inane toying with the injured. Truly there was only one option, that being death, for if he ran his fellows would hunt him down to the ends of every demon dimension and extract the honor from his hide, and if he fought, the Witch would simply wish his death, and it would be so. Well, he shrugged, he may as well go out with a fight. He tossed his head back, guttural staccato yelps echoing off the city streets sweating with humidity.

"I was hoping you'd say something like that," Willow allowed herself a slight half-smile. She called out to his essence; her own finding its pattern and fitting it like a key to a lock. Willow effortlessly turned that key, unraveling Murga's aura, and with it, his form. Like his brother, he ceased to be. The fire had purged even their residue from the Earth.

Willow felt the fabric of reality bulge once again as she pulled her will back into herself. The witch could feel her flaming halo dim, retract, and fold back into her heart. She stepped forward, questioning when exactly she had stopped levitating. This was a new experience for her, this measured rage. Her mind began cataloguing all the factors leading up to it, quantifying her emotional states with a Willow-unique unit of emotional measurement: the WillBurgian. She had invented it years ago when learning to control the movement of a pencil, and it served as a watermark to her emotional intensity. The calmer the moment, the fewer WillBurgians.

Willow dashed over to Kennedy, the fallen slayer laying on her back and breathing shallowly. The WillBurgian could wait; Kennedy needed help. Willow knew her anatomy, just like she knew her math, and chemistry, and biology, and computers. She spared a glance back to Giles and Andrew, the watcher using his complaining trainee as a makeshift crutch. Her original thoughts were confirmed with him: he tore the ligaments in his left knee. It was painful, but not inoperable. She went back to her lover's body, Kennedy rousing slightly as Willow gently ran her fingers across her belly.

"S'not a good time for me, Willow," Kennedy tried to pout flirtatiously, but the pain overcame her again.

Willow smiled despite her inspection. "Kennedy the Vampire Slayer not in the mood?" she asked rhetorically, "You must be dying." Willow didn't feel any hardness in Kennedy's abdomen, and she wasn't breathing blood, so she ruled out her two biggest worries: internal bleeding or a punctured lung. She ran her hands up to Kennedy's purple and swollen wrist, pulling away swiftly as the slayer winced. Her wrist was broken. That wasn't a big deal, and her ribs were badly broken, which was a big deal: those would need to be set. Willow's hand came away bloody as she brushed her shoulders.

"Sweetie?" she said in a smooth, calming voice. "I need you to sit up. I need to see that owwie." Kennedy complied, clutching Willow's shoulder for support. The hole was only as thick as a pencil, but a puncture wound could be dangerously deep. Willow remembered a spell used for just such an occasion, and was not in the least bit surprised when she didn't even have to speak it for the spell to take effect. She clairvoyantly and painlessly probed the wound, sighing in relief.

"It's not too deep. It looks like your shoulder blade took most of the oomph out of it."

"Yay for my skeleton," Kennedy quietly quipped. She let Willow guide her back down.

Willow reached up, interlacing their fingers. "You stop that right this instant, missy," she kissed Kennedy's fingertips. "You saved everyone here. You so didn't fail."

"How would you know?" the slayer squeezed Willow's hand, the image of her limp body still fresh in her mind. "You were all knocked out."

"Because that's what you do," Willow state pointedly. "You're always trying to protect people. You kept everyone here alive, even though you could have been killed. And you did it without thinking about yourself. Which, honestly, I sort of wish you did, 'cause, y'know, it really upsets me to see you like this. Not that it's your fault, but still—Kennedy in pain, not my favorite thing."

Kennedy tried to sit up, grunting and groaning as she did. Willow was surprised at how easy it was to press the woman back to the ground. Kennedy gave up all pretensions of a fight.

"I guess we should call an ambulance," she admitted ruefully. "We can say it's a car crash."

"Yeah," Willow pulled out her cell phone, dialing 911 and relaying the story of a freak car accident.

Kennedy craned her head around, looking over to Giles and Andrew. "Anyone see where Keyrock went?"

The pair twisted their heads to and fro, alternating to that both of them resembled a pair of lawn sprinklers for a span of several moments.

"He left," Willow relayed to the incapacitated brunette. "But don't worry, I'm sure I can do a locating spell, or something. And, it's not like he was really mean or anything. So we'll catch up with him later."

"Wonderful," Kennedy grumbled. "I am so gonna stake that little dwarf for letting him out." Kennedy pursed her lips in thought, tried clicking her stud against her teeth, but found that the reverberations made her head hurt. "Oscar?" she asked of no one in particular.

"Um…" Willow showed her teeth with a crooked smile, "I think he hopped the night train."

"More bad news, I'm afraid," Giles called from the car. "He managed to acquire the money, as well."

"More damn," the slayer almost whined. "I've really got to go get that asshair."

"After you heal," Willow asserted. "There will be no getting of anybody 'till then."

Kennedy heard the sirens warble from a mile and a half away. She looked up to Willow, the compassion the witch felt for her filling her with warmth. She smiled at the witch, consciously trying to allay the fear that nestled on Willow's brow.

"We should get this place cleaned up," she whispered, running her thumb in tiny circles around Willow's knuckle. "I don't want to explain the Braveheart gear all over."

Willow nodded. She suddenly felt very tired, the emotional toll of the past week crushing her, flattening her chest. She let the tears come, silently rolling down her cheeks and dangling precariously from her chin. Kennedy ran her finger across the track of the tear, traced it's route through the ugly bruise on her cheekbone, down to the woman's trembling lower lip.

"I'm totally making this up to you," Kennedy continued, cupping her lover's face in her hand, the pain in her body very far away. "I'd." she choked back the yelp that came as her ribs shifted. "I'd very much like to take you on a real date."

"A real date?" Willow wiped the salty trails from her face with the back of her wrist, sniffing happily. Kennedy nearly melted; the action was just so adorable.

Kennedy checked herself out in the mirror for the fiftieth time. Her dark hair was pulled back into a loose bun, curling tresses framing her face. She went easy on the make up: a little eye shadow to draw attention, a little lip-gloss to keep it. A thin silver pendant wrapped its arms around her slender throat. She pushed one of the rebel locks over her ear, and then bit her knuckle lightly.

She unbuttoned the top button of her blouse, a stark white affair with wide pointed lapels and sleek crisp lines, not enough to show her cleavage, but enough to promise it. The young woman pulled her black suspenders over her shoulders, running her thumbs down them to straighten any twists. Her pants were black as well, the wide billowing style favored by zoot-suiters of the fifties, but with lines economical enough to pass for modern. She pulled the simple coat on, flipping the lapels of the shirt over the edges of the coat. With a steadying breath, she appraised herself in the mirror. Not a bad effect, she decided with a congratulatory smile. Her look was decidedly casual, with just enough elegance to bring a modicum of grace to her normally pragmatic form, and the barest hint of sensuality and severity, which would only enhance her already copious abilities there.

The slayer smiled at her reflection. It had seemed a long time since she could do that, a long time since her reflection didn't seem to threaten to leap out at her and destroy everything she loved. Not literally, in the strictest Willow and her double sense, but there was still an unspoken violence in her eyes. And she liked her eyes, like the way they could be so expressive, and liked the way Willow could look into them and calm herself. She wondered then when it was that she started avoiding her eyes in the mirror, wandered if it was that night she staggered into the bathroom and peeled the clothes off her body without a word to the woman who tried so desperately to take the emotional burden on herself.

That wasn't it, that wasn't when at all. She had stared hard in the mirror for almost an hour after her shower, trying to will her dark side into the real world where it might be punished and driven off. Alas, she demurely refused, and Kennedy began to feel a creeping sickness in her heart. Not began to feel, really, but began to understand. She knew just how tenuous her grasp on sanity truly was, how hollow her bravery felt.

She wished she could blame the words of Willow's doppelganger, the words she spoke as a last, cruel stab at her vanquisher's ego: "She doesn't love you."

The words had been rattling around inside her head like a hitman's bullet for the better part of a week. Despite her bluster and sturm, Kennedy felt somehow unworthy of Willow's love and genuine affection. It wasn't simple to explain, and was something she had never felt before: every other girlfriend she had should have thanked their lucky stars for a girl like her.

Looking at Willow, though, made all her insecurities surface, especially as she scrutinized herself for signs of Willow's disaffection. She was cruel, arrogant, elitist at times, superficial, and generally ill-equipped to share a bed with someone like Willow. Not that she put the woman on a pedestal per se, but she did feel it necessary to measure herself to the witch's stature. Here was a woman who had suffered heartbreak that could have killed her, bore guilt that could sink the Titanic, and had enough suppressed rage at the world that she could rip it asunder. And somehow, within all that, there was this infinitely loving, brilliant, tenacious creature who would find a way out, one way or another.

Kennedy first felt it her duty to bring this woman out, to bring forth the beauty that Kennedy sensed was wrapped within that frail and sallow shell. It wasn't always easy, but the slayer was a woman accustomed to fighting for what she wanted. Somehow, through some magical means, Willow began to peek her head out from under the covers, and took her first tenuous looks at the world. And she was beautiful.

When Kennedy found herself pounding the face of the double, her lover's face, something nestled deep in her heart told her that this was all there was to her. All she was was violence and destruction. How could Willow love something that would remind her of her darkest times. Each punch she threw since then was simply a distillation of this truth. Every drop of blood made the doppelganger's words more true. Self-fulfilling prophecy, in a way: as Willow recoiled at the violence of her actions, Kennedy felt ever more disconnected and committed ever more severe acts.

The worst part was that she knew that Willow cared about her, and was worried about her. But Kennedy was just too concerned that Willow would see the real her, would see that when you strip away the pretensions of honor, and justice, there was just a hurt, self-involved girl who liked to destroy things. And that was when she stopped looking in the mirror. Because the mirror looked back, and her gaze was harsh judgment.

Willow worked her magic yet again. As she stumbled and lashed out, Kennedy knew that her strength and power was pointless. She had become the tornado, a simple force of destruction, alone and powerful. But she didn't know what to do with herself. Even when her lover (god, how good that felt to say, lover) took her head in her hands and forgave her for the darkness, knew better than anyone how it could eat at your edges and hound your flanks, even then she did not fully believe herself worthwhile.

No, it wasn't until she saw Willow fall, saw her friends threatened, that she knew her purpose, knew what her strength was there for: to defend those who couldn't defend themselves. She fought with all her heart, all her strength, fought to save the life of the woman she loved. She fought and lost.

Kennedy wiggled her back a little, testing her knit ribs for any sign of soreness. None: slayer healing having done it's job wonderfully. Five broken ribs, two missing teeth, a cracked sternum and a fractured wrist all healed within a week. Her teeth did grow back, much to her joy, filling in like they had never left.

Getting one's ass thoroughly kicked can be an enlightening experience, she chuckled. She had always assumed that any problem could be solved with a good plan, the right equipment, and solid training. A remainder from her Watcher, she supposed. But sometimes a really big sword just couldn't solve every problem. Most problems, but not every.

This, this date here, this was one of those non-violence type solutions. This was a watermark, a proof to her and Willow. It was also something she'd never gotten to do. There was the First, and Warren, and everything else that conspired to remove normality from Kennedy's life. Well, there would be none of that tonight. Tonight, everything would go perfectly.

Oh, God. Kennedy smacked her head, chastising herself for jinxing it. She wasn't sure about the legality of thinking a jinx, they may need to be said, Willow was never specific, but it was better safe then sorry.

Kennedy adjusted her collar, aligning the points carefully in the mirror with all the attention to detail of a surgeon. She sucked in a breath to calm the butterflies in her stomach, dropped her posture from nervous to seductive, rolled a shoulder back and shifted her hips. Okay, this was no big thing, right? Just a date. Kennedy had been on lots of dates.

But this was a Willow Date, and what's more, a Real Willow Date. Kennedy spent the whole day planning this out, avoiding Willow. Admittedly, something of a silly tactic, getting your girlfriend all lonely before you sweep her off her feet, but Willow deserved a good sweeping, especially after how she'd treated her like a child. Willow wasn't a child, she was the most powerful thing on the planet. Kennedy had never felt more in love the woman of her dreams than when she literally unwrote those ugly freaks. Willow tried explaining it to her, talking about something called Schrodinger's Cat, adjusting quantum states, superstring theory, and the like, but what it boiled down to, in Kennedy's eyes at least, was that Willow let herself know the demons, and instead of actively fighting them, she simply turned them off. Even then, it distilled further into a general sense of "my girlfriend kicked demon ass" when the slayer thought about it.

So Willow deserved a nice night out. A nice night out which was never going to happen if Kennedy couldn't stop fidgeting with her hair and actually go to the woman. Kennedy fiddled with a stray thread on her coat, flicking it to the side, and strutting determinedly towards the bathroom door. She snapped her hand up to knock on it, realized that she would likely knock the door off it's hinges, and instead lightly rapped.

Kennedy nearly leapt away from the door as it opened inward. She swallowed thickly: Willow was... wow.

The petite redhead's dress was the color of leaves in the autumn, hints of green and blue teasing the material that flowed around her like a pair of folded wings. The shawl she wore draped off of one shoulder was a translucent red, the diaphanous cloth dripping like an upside down candle flame. The dress was held up by two spaghetti straps, accentuating the graceful curve of her alabaster neck. She wore makeup, just a dash of green eye shadow and rouge, and that was yet another first in a week of firsts for Kennedy.

"Willow, you look..." Kennedy shook her head in amazement. She almost said 'like a major hottie', and that was the first thing on her mind, but such a phrase was unworthy to touch her ears on this night.

Much better. She wasn't sure where the words came from, but by the demure smile on Willow's face she knew she had hit the mark.

"And Kennedy," Willow gestured towards the woman, sweeping her down with an imaginary brush, "you're all suity."

"You don't like it?" Kennedy's mind began tumbling out her mouth. "It's too butch, right? I'll change! We can both go in dresses, I'll be right back!"

Willow raised a hand to her mouth, covering the giggle. "No, no sweetie. You look great, all...sexy and in charge."

Sexy. Willow just said she looked sexy. Kennedy beamed, her self-consciousness evaporating.

"Oh? Was it too forward? I…" Willow sliced the air with her hands, "I take it back."

"No!" Kennedy stepped towards the witch, making plaintive grasping motions. "No taking back. I am sexy, and, and so are you. And that is we, and there's no takebacks tonight."

Willow grinned, her smile devoid of the guard that she had up for the past year. It was a Willow-smile, the corners of her mouth forming sharp points and her eyes wide and accepting. Kennedy lost herself in that smile. She took another step towards the slight woman, running her fingernails down her pale arms. Their lips brushed, the electricity arcing between them in humming blue sparks. Kennedy crushed her libido into a tight ball of energy, packing it away for later.

"We should go," she whispered into Willow's ear, still enjoying the raw tactile pleasure of her lover's skin.

"We'll be late for dinner," Willow chirped, deftly wrapping her arm around Kennedy's elbow, her smugness almost a palpable thing.

"I'll have the porterhouse steak, the pheasant, the rice pilaf, and a sweet tea, please."

The waiter looked at Kennedy, desperately wondering how all that food was going to fit in that little girl. He nodded smartly, tucking the menus under his arm and quick stepping back towards the kitchen of the dimly lit restaurant. Kennedy smiled until he went away, very glad that she remembered to bring her dad's credit card. Willow was laughing silently, green eyes sparkling mischievously.

Kennedy moved back, the playful mood infective. "Well, we should go then. I thought you were buying."

They both laughed at that, the sort of idle joke that neither had been able to tell in far too long. Willow shifted, looking uncomfortable for a moment, then cleared her throat.

"No, silly. Giles isn't a demon. He was a hell-raiser in his day, but no demon, at least...not in the literal sense," she placed the white linen napkin in her lap. "Keyrock, you know, big silly non-dead demon. Anyway, I've been tracking his movements with a souped up locator spell. Sort of a scrying thing. He's been zig-zagging all over the place, but I think he's heading southeast. I bet he's—I've lost you, haven't I?"

Kennedy placed her hand firmly on her lover's, trying to lock her in place with her chocolate eyes.

"Willow, what did we agree on?" she calmly asked. "No shop talk tonight. No demons, no spells, just a regular old date. Okay?"

Willow nodded solemnly, the urge to kiss her very much in the forefront of her mind. The hell with it, she eschewed the rules that society had placed on her, and she lent her lips to the surprised woman across from her. The kiss was hardly more than a touch, the lightest of caresses, but it was enough to catch the normally lusty Kennedy off guard. Kennedy pulled back after a second too short, and glanced around at the rest of the restaurant, thankful that every table held its own couple, family, or executives enraptured in their own candlelit world.

"That was a thank you," Willow's eyes had risen a shade lighter. "Thank you for taking me out tonight, and…I honestly don't know what to talk about."

"Oh." The compact brunette pondered for a second. This was a very odd situation. They had been having regular and very nice sex for several weeks now, and in all that time, they never did the getting to know you games that most people do on their first dates. "Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. It's like I know you, but..."

"You don't know about me," Willow concluded. "That's okay with me; there really isn't that much to know."

"I don't buy that for a second," she replied. "But if it makes you feel better, we can talk about me. I'm always ready to talk about me."

Willow liked when her girlfriend made fun of herself by overdoing her less savory personality traits. Most of the time people around her didn't even know she did it: after all, her self-effacing humor and her regular persona were often very close together.

"Okay," Willow took the bait, "Let's play a game. Truth or dare, except, y'know, with just the truth part."

"Exactly. Okay…" She strummed her fingers across the table, tiny vibrations making the candle flame dance. "What…um…how did…so…" Willow silenced her strumming, as if that was the source of her nervousness. "When did you know?"

"That you," she tilted her head to the side, rattling the words loose. "That you loved me."

"That's easy," Kennedy ran her index finger along the edge of the napkin, her leg reaching under the table to make contact with Willow's. She ran her calf along the other woman's, the sleek material of her pants rising and falling in tides as her leg moved in slow circles.

"It was right after our First Date." The day had gained capitalization status for its sheer dichotomous insanity: both the best and worst date Kennedy had ever been on. "You were asleep in bed, no one was in the house, and I just couldn't stop checking up on you. It'd be like I'd turn around to check the time, and I'd panic, 'cause you weren't there. That's when I knew I was hooked." Kennedy glanced at the redhead through full lashes. "That answer your question?"

Willow nodded vigorously. That was what she wanted to know all along. The game was a front, and a poor front at that.

"No. Not until I run out of questions. That's the rule…that I just now made up. So my next question is… what is my next question?"

"Okay." Willow had hoped for just such an opening. Now to set her up for the kill. "When was your first time?"

"Wow. Let's see… I was fifteen, and I was at that guy, what was his name?…Chuck Astor's party. I was with this girl I was sort of seeing, Stacy Collins. She was a year older than me. So we got into the scotch cabinet, and we both get a little tipsy. And we start making out, and we go up to the master bedroom, and on Councilman Astor's king-sized, I am deflowered." Kennedy ended the story with a wistful sigh. "It's weird. Last I heard of her, she got knocked up by Derek (Chuck's little brother) and was getting married. I'm telling you, Will, I have a lethal talent for picking out the straight ones."

"It could be worse," Willow quipped, not sure where the joke came from, "you could have my history."

Kennedy opened her mouth to respond, but realized that anything she said could blow up in her face like a roman candle doused in gasoline. She opted for clapping her lips closed, and smiling prettily.

Willow dropped her head on the table. "Willow Rosenberg, Queen Mistress of the Non-Sequitur, at your service." She looked up, the waiter walking towards her table with an armful of food. He carefully arranged Kennedy's banquet on the table before setting Willow's chicken breast with lemon zest down. He stayed just long enough to make sure that everything was okay, and turned on a heel to leave.

"New game," Kennedy said between mouthfuls of food, her Watcher's etiquette lessons preventing her from totally gorging herself during a conversation.

"Yes," Willow swallowed, "New game. A better game than the 'Willow inserts foot in mouth' game. I like it already."

"Don't you get your hopes up," Kennedy pointed her fork at the witch, "You haven't heard what the game is."

"It's called, um, Best and Worst. You tell me something you like best about me, and then something you like worst about me, and then I go."

"I'm not sure if that's a good first date game, " Willow hesitantly replied. She slipped her shoe off, letting it silently drop under the table. Her foot dexterously slid under Kennedy's loose pants leg, nudging the material up her toned, smooth calf.

Kennedy had to agree, her skin flushing unconsciously. "Yeah, you're probably right. You want to stick with Truth Or?"

"Or we could just talk like grown ups?" Willow cut a thin slice of chicken, folding it into her mouth. She looked at Kennedy expectantly. The younger woman smoothly reached across the table, her thumb grazing the full lower lip of her lover. Willow's heartbeat quickened as she felt hands that had killed deliver the most feathering of touches. Kennedy drew her hand back, deep brown gaze supporting the redhead as she took the thumb to her lips, anointing herself with the barest hint of her lover. Her lips smiled amorously, the brunette's hand returning to draw light circles over the pale veined flesh of the back of Willow's hand.

She expected Willow's eyes to open wide and that wonderful blush to drift over her face, but the redhead just lowered her eyelids sensuously, poking that pink kitten tongue of hers slightly between her parted lips. Kennedy nearly swooned.

"I think we can be adults," Kennedy breathed. She struggled to find something to keep the conversation going, her mind going fuzzy around the edges. "So what's your favorite movie?"

Willow rested her chin on the back of her wrist, idly stirring her Coke with her straw. Her eyes never left Kennedy's, luxuriating in the way the slayer's pupils dilated, making her dark eyes even more shadowed. "Oh, that's not a fair question. I mean, there are movies I like, and some movies I love, but it's just not fair to the movies I love to pick one as my favorite ."

"Okay," Kennedy traced the valleys of Willow's fingers with a cartographer's precision, memorizing each dip and ridge. "What's the best sexy movie you ever seen?"

"Right," Willow nodded, her smile becoming predatory. She wrapped her fingers around Kennedy's, entangling them as her thumb made tracings of the lines of her palm. The sensation tickled along Kennedy's spine, somehow making her scalp tingle the exact same way. "Well, let's see… have you ever seen Gia?"

"Oh, god yes," the woman turned her face to the ceiling, mock panting. "Angelina Jolie. That woman got me through more lonely nights…" She tossed a self-aware smirk at Willow.

"I somehow don't think you'd have too many lonely nights," the honey poured thickly from the witch's tongue.

"You'd be surprised," she replied with a hint of sadness. She interlaced their fingers again, drawing them apart, then sliding them together again, the rhythm matched by the tender circles their legs made beneath the table. Kennedy grew serious, her voice dropping an octave: "I don't want to have any more lonely nights."

Willow gently pulled Kennedy's hand to her lips, kissing the back of her hand, tongue giving the tiniest visitation as she turned the hand over, her lips grazing the vulnerable tan skin of Kennedy's wrist. Her teeth pinched a morsel of flesh, lips soothing as she nibbled lightly. Kennedy suddenly found breathing a difficult thing, her mental image of Willow wavering like a desert mirage. She briefly wondered whether her Willow was replaced by some sort of evil double. Another nip forced her to focus all of her sensations on the feel of those soft, cool hands as they rolled her hand so agonizingly slowly back and forth.

Kennedy slid her chair across the tightly woven carpet, stopping just as she was alongside the petite redhead. The redhead smiled wickedly as she guided Kennedy's trapped hand to her hip, letting it rest there as she nonchalantly rolled her tongue out to place another thin slice of chicken breast upon it, humming in pleasure as she let it dissolve in her mouth. Kennedy ran her hand along the woman's sheer dress, feeling nothing but warm, inviting Willow beneath it. She felt her head lighten as she leaned to whisper in her ear: "I want you."

Kennedy blanched. Her body responded to the witch's caresses, desperately swimming to the surface and grabbing hold of each dancing nerve ending like a drowning man to a life preserver, but her mind, clouded as it was by pleasure, scrambled about in search of the meaning behind those words.

Willow's luminous eyes flashed dangerously, her lower lip jutting forward, and Kennedy thought she looked like nothing so much as a lioness preparing to pounce. Somewhere in the still rational parts of her mind, she told herself that her Willow was quiet, and demure, and never, ever would be this sexual in public, but that voice had no strength. Willow cupped the slayer's face in her palm, her fingernails curling to brush her cheek.

Kennedy could only nod dumbly, her powers of speech robbed by the look in Willow's eye. She moved to stand up, heart pounding in her throat, and-

-The bedroom door slammed open, Kennedy backpedaling furiously, Willow, tiny, reserved Willow pressing her bodily against the cool wall, dragging the coat off her muscular shoulders with surprising haste.

Willows lips were on hers, hungrily devouring, prying apart Kennedy's defenses before she had a chance to respond. Willow's deft hands ripped open Kennedy's shirt, her body far too gone to care. The slayer felt her arms pressed above her head, the wall biting into her with miniscule teeth, her lips and thighs warmly buzzing with bloodflow.

"Door," she managed to whisper between kisses, eyes tightly closed, afraid that should she open them, this lust-filled dream would come to an end.

Willow didn't look back, she just waved a hand dismissively behind her, the door swinging shut and banging loudly. The witch pulled away from her kisses, her hips pinning Kennedy in place. Willow's and Kennedy's fingers intertwined, the redhead almost growling as she pressed a leg into Kennedy's groin. Kennedy gasped at the firm pressure, her head bouncing off the wall as she arched her back in need. Willow's lips found that most sensitive spot beneath her ear, nuzzling and nipping at her earlobe, sending electric waves throughout the slayer's body. Her mind reeled as her senses gave up their hold on reality, turning inward, amplifying each sensation until it filled the entirety of her being. If she were only to receive this pleasure, this feel of a smooth, lithe body pressed against her bare breasts, her arms held immobile while her lover lavished attention on her neck and collar bone, this would be enough for her.

Her body shuddered and a low moan emanated from her chest as something cool and wet drew across her nipple, her arms pulled down and out to her sides, Willow's fingernails scratching their way along the insides of her arms, down her flanks. The witch worked her magic on the slayer's breasts, teeth brushing against raised flesh, lips circling the dark brown center, alternating gently suckling with more forceful lashes of her tongue. Kennedy felt a rising heat and pressure between her legs, her sex pulsing with each ministration of Willow's talented lips and tongue. The slayer's hands grasped helplessly at the wall, toes curling in the soft, firm carpet, her whole body trembling.

Willow sensed the trembling, felt it through her hands and lips, and she left the woman's nipple, smiling as her lover whimpered at the sudden coolness on her breast. The redhead kissed a path along her tawny flesh, her lips paving a trail to the other, hitherto neglected breast. The lover brought her hand to play on the abandoned nipple, fingers pinching and stroking as her lips went to work, yet another rapacious growl vibrating through Kennedy's body.

Kennedy's vision filled with fireworks, her skin tingling as she lost control of her will, the miasma of carefully tuned sensations sending her over the edge. Her throat found a high, keening groan of pleasure, some vestige of her mind unable to believe that she came from just her breasts being loved. Her hips bucked, her back ground against the stony barrier, her breath huffed between clenched teeth.

Willow's spare hand found Kennedy's center, her palm pressing into Kennedy's sex as she rode out her orgasm. She didn't wait for the tremors to stop; her tongue teased a trail to the insensate woman's waistband. She eased the button open, peeling the sleek fabric down the brunette's hips dangerously slow. The scent of Kennedy's desire filled Willow's nostrils, made her mouth water, and her own sex throb in anticipation. Willow was lost in her moment, her own meticulous mind folded in on itself as her raw need for this woman took over her form, guided her actions. There was method in this madness, though, a method which she was asserting with every manipulation of the stricken woman's supple body.

Kennedy found her voice as she was teased open, hot breath washing over her pleasure, and she found herself begging, whimpering as her Willow traced a slow line along the depths of her. Willow's delicate movements were tortuously slow, each cycle more forceful than the last, building in intensity, then easing back down. The witch scratched red lines along her lover's back as her mouth dove deeper, meeting each gyration of Kennedy's hips.

Willow found her lover's pearl, teased it , nibbling, then devouring with sweet kisses as she brought her hands into play. She pressed the faltering slayer harder against the wall, supporting her weight, lent strength by her lust. She felt the beginnings of another climax, Willow's small fingers pressing into her lover, each movement holding Kennedy over the edge of a precipice, drawing her back in, then holding her out again. With a grunt of pleasure, she gave a final push, a furious ravishing that sent Kennedy far off the edge of that cliff.

Kennedy called her lover's name, her soul whirling in a maelstrom of need, love and satisfaction. She slumped against the wall, slick and cool, Willow gently guiding her to the floor, Kennedy kissing herself off the flushed lips that greeted her. The witch cuddled beside her, arms wrapping around the slayer's waist, one hand lazily drawing on her belly. Kennedy caught her breath, and said the only thing that came to her mind.

Willow smiled into the woman's tan shoulder, playfully biting the sweat sheened skin. "I know," she answered. "I want you to know something," she whispered.

"Don't keep things from me. I'm a big girl: I can handle it. I'm not going to freak out, well, anymore so than I normally do, which is a bit, but still, not 'freak out', freak out." Willow regained a bit of her bearing. "If you can't tell me things, things about us, then I can't trust you. And if you keep the bad stuff from me, then I'll have to leave you."

Kennedy stiffened, her heart racing. Somehow, she found some last reserve of energy. "I..I'm sorry I kept things from you. I was just, I dunno, afraid?"

Willow kissed the nape of her neck lightly. "I know, sweetie. I just don't have time to play games. Life can be really short. Especially in our line of work."

"I know, Willow," Kennedy turned around to face the gentle yet stern face of her lover. "I promise I won't do you wrong again."

"Yes you will," Willow's smile was hot chocolate on a cold day, "that's what couples do. You're gonna screw-up, I'm gonna screw-up, it's a whole screw-fest." Kennedy giggled at the double-entendre. "But we have to be honest about our mistakes, and even our not mistakes. Otherwise, we won't stand a chance."

"Chance?" Kennedy yawned against her will, the carpet of the hotel floor somehow much more comfortable than it should have been.

"Yeah. A chance at lasting. 'Cause this may have escaped your super-duper slayer senses, but I don't do short-term. And I think I've got a keeper on my hands."

Kennedy rested her head on Willow's shoulder, her smile content and finally at ease. Her soul rested. She did have a question, though.

"Willow?" she nipped at the pale woman's freckled arm. "Whatever happened to Oscar?"

"And the 'ruin the moment' award goes to…" Willow teased, slapping her lover's rear with the tips of her fingers. The cradled creature yelped in surprise, then wriggled closer to the witch with a purr.

"Sorry," Kennedy pouted playfully, "I just can't rest with that scumbag out there."

"You're a good slayer, honey," Willow reassured with a cool hand. "Don't worry about him. I made some phone calls."

"Okay," Kennedy accepted with a yawn. "Let's go to bed. It's right…" she pointed blindly behind her, "there."

The two crawled into the soft sheets of the bed, curling into one another. They didn't speak, they didn't need words. Theirs was a love of differing types, but equal intensities. Kennedy loved the same way she fought, with every ounce of her being. She had once had many lovers, and in truth, each one she loved a bit, but she had never felt anything like this, never met anyone who was this much a challenge, who made her yearn to be more. She loved Willow. Willow accepted this love, and in her own way, returned it. She knew Willow's love for her was different, that it was somehow both more immediate and intense, and that it had changed. It wasn't the love of a broken woman hoping for some semblance of life, it was the love of a woman who had been through the fires, and been tempered to steel hardness by them. She loved because she knew that she could die at any moment, and that every moment of life should be worth living. Kennedy's heart swelled with the realization: Willow loved her because she made life interesting. With that in mind, she closed her eyes, listened to the heartbeat of her lover, and fell asleep.

Moments before her mind succumbed, she heard the faintest whisper against the back of her neck.

Oscar was not a train person. Technically, he was not a person, but that was beside the point. He had no real reason to dislike trains, but there was something about their total lack of control that made him feel, well, railroaded to use the obvious pun. When the doors shut and the conductor or whoever started the train actually started the train, he just knew that it was gonna jump track or explode and he would have absolutely nothing to do about it. And so, he hated trains.

Oscar was not a particularly happy vampire at the moment. The past night had gone horribly, monumentally wrong, the kind of wrong that got movies made out of them, the kind of wrong that made the O.J. trial look like a fair proceeding. Oscar was unsure of who to blame, and not because of any great altruism towards those that wronged him, but because he found the magnitude of his blame almost too big to wrap his narrow mind around. He did find a happy medium as he sprinted through the sewer system, the stench of offal and stagnant water oddly comforting to his vampiric senses. He would just hate everyone.

Oscar wished he had a chance to bathe. The Amtrak station was open all night, as was standard, and the more filthy residents of the greater metropolitan area found it a useful place to gather. Even so, he definitely stuck out as one of the filthier of the filthy, khaki trousers soaked with some liquids better left not thought upon, leaving little puddles on the stained linoleum floor. The fluorescent light turned the contrast up in the train station, the brown and greens of a bum's beard almost levitating above his navy blue jumper. Oscar stepped over the passed out man, something thick and gray plopping onto the bum's lap as his foot passed over. Oscar clutched the torn and scuffed leather satchel even tighter as he waddled up to the ticket counter.

Oscar finally had a break: the next train to the East Coast was leaving in five minutes. If the thought didn't cause a wave of nausea, he would have fallen on his knees and given thanks to whatever twisted deity was watching him from above. The woman on the other side of the Plexiglass screen just popped her gum and rolled her eyes, bored beyond tears until he opened the satchel, wonderful green dollar bills riveting the young lass's attention. Oscar slipped her two hundred bucks, likely more than she made in a week, and bluntly told her that he was never here.

Oscar didn't stop to think until he was on the train, in his cabin, with the blinds pulled down and locked tight. Trains were the way to go for the traveling vampire. They were relatively anonymous, had private cabins, and stopped often enough to feed on one of the exiting suckers and not have anyone wonder what happened to them. Oscar leaned his back into the genuine imitation leather bench, stuffing smooshed flat from thousands of fat asses sweating their way through some banal journey. He rested his head against the aluminum wall, letting out a pointless sigh as the train rolled lazily down the tracks.

He kicked his soaked shoes and socks off, resting his weary feet on the opposite bench, flexing his toes. Someone had written 'Fred Loves Charles' in black sharpie on the red cushion next to his foot.

"Goddamn queers," Oscar muttered to himself. But it was starting to be okay. He had his money, the thief was long dead, and he was headed back to the Jersey. The train rattled loudly, the brown leather bag rocking happily to and fro as Oscar grit his teeth. His mind's eye played a train derailing, trapping him under the wreckage until the sun reduced him to ash. Okay, barring that nastiness, things were looking not so bleak.

It wasn't until he hit Nevada that he allowed himself to stop waiting for the crazy redhead and her psycho carpet munchin' girlfriend to walk through the door. That was a pair he never, ever wanted to go near again. He considered finding a magic dealer to get some sort of charm to warn him when they came close. He had no idea how much something like that would cost, but it couldn't possibly be more than fifty thousand dollars.

What a sweet phrase: 'fifty- *thousand* dollars.' Just thinking about all that money was enough to make Oscar nearly vamp out. The things he could do with that cash. Sure, there were the Jersey bosses to worry about, but it's not like he couldn't bring their little pissant operation down around their ears with just a few well placed hits. And what was to stop him now? He was creature of the freakin' night, a drinker of blood, and as far as he knew, little old bullets sure weren't gonna kill him. Oh, he couldn't wait to see the look on their faces when he capped their stupid asses. It would be priceless. And Oscar would finally get what he was owed: power. All he had to do was lay low.

This was the plan the entire time, really. Right up until that stupid squirrel thing started talking to him. He wasn't sure, but he somehow knew that it was the reason he didn't just kill the slayer on the docks with a bullet to the head. Something it did was protecting him, and it would keep doing so as long as he had kept the box safe. But the little guy in the box wasn't happy there. The chirps and whistles eventually started to make sense, like when you watch an Italian movie and the phrases end up clicking in your brain. Keyrock needed to get out of the box; he was really serious about that.

Oscar was not smart, but he sure as hell wasn't an idiot either. It is never a good idea to do whatever a demon tells you to do. They didn't get the rep for being backstabbing bastards for nothing, after all. So Oscar waited. It was pretty easy to see that Keyrock could put compulsions in some types of critters: the attack kamikaze squirrels were enough. Hell, he even seemed to be able to sense what they knew if he focused. After all, the little monsters did steer Oscar towards the docks, and cripple the demon's boat out at sea. Why anything would do that was just beyond him. Unless…

Unless the squirrel guy had taken a liking to him. That would make sense, Oscar thought as he tossed the crummy blanket over the shuttered window for added protection. Well, that Keyrock guy wasn't all bad, just not all there. Like when he started babbling about 'The Special Dairy Queen' in squirrelese. That went on for about an hour. What he literally meant was up in the air, but Oscar began to feel what he wanted, in his gut. And the thing of it was, it was what Oscar wanted, too.

He wasn't aware that he wanted it, not until he got out of Missouri, dumping the body of a teenage college student in a passing ditch, but he felt it as surely as he felt his bloodlust. South, south it called him, an itch at the back of his throat that he just couldn't scratch, no matter how much he coughed it up. Keyrock felt it, as surely as Oscar felt it, and that must have driven the demon spawn to engineer his release. But the creature was weak in the head, and the call must have been irresistible.

Oscar scratched his chin as he crossed the Pennsylvania boarder, the crew having long learned to avoid his cramped cabin. Oscar was actually thankful for the three and a half day trip across country. He was never a traveling man, and the difficulties of undead travel made such a change unlikely now, but this instance of transcontinental movement was a welcome change of pace. I gave him time to get his head together. He needed to forget about what happened in L.A., and the sooner he got his act together, the better. The call at the back of his mind wasn't terribly insistent, it was more of a request, and Oscar was never one to volunteer for anything, especially when he had no earthly or unearthly idea what he was volunteering for. He just knew that after the first five hours, the tingling subsided. It was still there, but he could ignore it.

Oscar stepped off the train in the Newark terminal, his legs aching from the past days confinement. Home. At last. He popped his back, sliding on the dress shirt he stole from his victim in Idaho and making a beeline for his old house. The cab ride was short and sweet, and Oscar was in such a good mood that he tipped the driver fifty bucks. He practically skipped up the cement steps to his front door, the tiny one bedroom house paid for with the blood of nearly seventy human beings.

The next days were spent calling old associates, most of them he'd known for years. Just about everyone in Jersey assumed he was dead, and a good seventy percent of them didn't believe him when he told them he was. The remaining thirty percent ended up at his house, crashing in his living room, impressed by his new vampire status. One night, after three bottles of vodka, he actually let Sammy the Fish (he once got away from the cops by diving into the ocean and out-swimming everyone there) shoot him in the chest. It hurt like a sonuvabitch, and Sammy nearly pissed himself after he did it, but when Oscar shook it off and showed off the bullet hole, everyone was really impressed. They all wanted to get turned too. Well, it took a try to get it right, but by the fifth night he was home, Oscar had himself five honest to God minions. Oscar had never been in charge of anything. It was really cool.

Oscar popped open another beer and set his feet on the table. The boys were in the living room, watching The Sopranos reruns on TV. The sounds of facsimile violence trickling into his bedroom. He had the whole thing planned out: just like he imagined, there would be no big apocalypses, no plots to dominate the world, it would just be mob business as usual. Of course, they were all the blood drinking undead, but that was actually not so far removed from the normal gangster anyway, and he doubted anyone would notice. That was the beauty of his plan: if he played his cards right, he could be rich and never have to worry about some slayer showing up and dusting him.

Oscar was unaware of the 'jinx' rule. He leapt out of his lazy boy recliner as the window exploded in big triangular shards of glass. His superhuman hearing caught the sound of the front windows breaking simultaneously, the boys shouting and reaching for weapons. He grabbed his .45 from the arm of the chair, chambering a round. A spherical iron ball landed in the center of the floor, bounced once, and exploded in a deafening roar and blinding light.

Oscar was without sight or sound for far too long. His ears rang, and black spots obscured his vision as he swung his pistol back and forth like a blind man's cane. The ringing in his ears merged with the buzzing in his head, intensifying it until he could make out the message clearly for the first time. He knew why Keyrock needed to get south, he knew what was waiting for them there. She was calling her children to her, and he was needed.

Oscar was terribly surprised when the motes and swirls vanished from his eyes, and a tall, wide-shouldered man dressed from head to toe in black slid into his room with a speed and momentum that spoke of years of training. More alarming that his masked face and impressive physique was the shotgun that he pressed to his shoulder. The muzzle was pointed low, snapping up to aim at the center of Oscar's chest. Oscar raised his pistol to fire, his reactions sluggish from the flashbang grenade he had just suffered through. Not that it would matter: the shotgun would hurt, probably even drop him, but whoever it was was getting a slug for his troubles. The man squeezed the trigger the instant his weapon was brought to bear.

The shell exploded, two dozen toothpick-sized wooden fin-stabilized flechettes sliding out the barrel at tremendous speeds. They spread only to the size of a palm, resin-impregnated fibers slicing through the air. They penetrated Oscar's heart, the wooden stakes severed the mystical ties that gave the demon a home in the corpse, and the process of decay started with a vengeance.

The man stepped away from the disintegrating vampire, sweeping the area with his weapon, then yelling "clear!" to the rest of his unit. His radio responded.

"All clear," he replied, pulling his balaclava off his head, revealing strong, all-American features and head full of brown hair. He touched the throat microphone with two fingers.

"HQ, this is 4^th platoon C.O., all Victors down. Thank the brains for me; these new Carpe Noctum shells work wonders. And send Red Witch One a gift basket for dropping this in our laps. Tell my wife that I'll pick up the milk on the way to the extraction point. This is 2^nd Lieutenant Finn, over and out."

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The Thrill Is Gone

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