AUTHOR: Gileswench
EMAIL: gileswench[at]yahoo.com
RATING: R for seriously twisted violence, character death. If you like
Kennedy, turn back now.
SUMMARY: The title sort of says it all
SPOILERS: Very general mid-S7. If you know who Kennedy is, you're not going to find anything much else to spoil you.
DISCLAIMER: It all belongs to Joss, Mutant Enemy, etc., etc., etc. I just let them have all the fun Joss won't. I own nothing except my twisted mind which you really don't want. Please don't sue.
FEEDBACK: Constructive criticism always welcome. Praise abjectly sought.
DISTRIBUTION: If you've had my permission in the past, you have it now. All others, ask and ye shall receive.
NOTES: This comes to you courtesy of Teija's challenge #296 on You Got The Stones?, which reads as follows: "I want Kennedy dead. In whatever way - I just want her to know that she's an arrogant little pissant with no idea how tough the Slayer life really is. Perhaps she goes out on patrol alone to prove that she's Slayer material. Perhaps she is Firsted. Perhaps... aw, hell, just make her dead. Only req. is that she dies knowing she's an arrogant, annoying little pissant."
WARNING: In case you haven't figured it out, there is character death, mayhem, darkness, and serious Kennedy bashing ahead. I don't want to hear any whining about it. If this is not your cup of tea, I've done everything I can to warn you not to read it.
DEDICATION: To Teija. I really enjoyed writing this. Thanks.

The moon shone bright overhead, the stars were clear in the sky, and Kennedy was out for revenge. Or payback. Or something. Whatever. She needed to prove that she had what it took to be a Slayer. Dammit, she'd been training since she was seven for this role, and at eighteen she might never get the call. It wasn't fair. She was the best prepared, the gutsiest, the smartest, and just plain the best person for the job.

Then, after 'boot camp', Buffy had taken her aside and told her she was doing it all wrong - like Buffy had any business telling anyone anything! She had the nerve to say Kennedy should stop teaching the Potentials to be robotic followers, and encourage creativity in the Maggots. Then Willow - her Willow, who had done a huge power suck on her only a couple weeks before - told her she was being too hard on the Potentials and ought to be giving them jelly donuts and hugs and Rainbow Bright dollies...okay, no actual Rainbow Bright reference, but that was clearly where the lecture was headed.

The Anya, who couldn't do anything and was just in the house to take up bathroom time and cower from the demons D'Hoffryn kept sending to assassinate her, gave her a speech about how difficult a Slayer's life really is. As if she would know anything about that! Anya was never a Slayer. What could she know about being a real, serious ass-kicking amazon?

And Xander was even worse! Where did he get off giving her this whole song and dance about her not listening to Buffy enough? He had no powers, no destiny, and no real training. He was just a carpenter who hung out with Buffy to make himself feel special by being her pet Nice Guy.

As for Andrew and his babble about Anniken Skywalker's hubris...the less said the better.

Even Giles had taken her aside for a cup of tea and a round of telling her she was nothing compared to the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-spiffy Buffy. At least Spike hadn't tried to pretty up his insults in big words nobody understands. But why listen to a vampire? Vampires are for staking, not for teaching Slayers - even potential ones - how to do their jobs.

Dawn was the only one who hadn't spent the day telling Kennedy how useless, unprepared, and stupid she was. Then again, Dawn didn't need to open her mouth. Her eye rolling and brow-raising pretty much said the same thing everyone else was saying with their mouths.

Well, she would show them all.

There were rumors of something killing people in Breaker's Woods. In the mornings, all anybody found were bleached bones and a couple internal organs. Buffy had formed a scouting party to check out the latest remains. Giles, Dawn, and Xander pored over stacks of musty, dusty books, Willow looked up similar phenomena on her laptop, and nobody was doing a damn thing to hunt down and kill this creature. All Spike said was he was going to 'talk to a guy who knows a demon'. As if talking was going to solve things!

She'd told them all. She'd said it over and over.

"The answer isn't in dusty books or computers or chats with 'guys', or post-mortems on bones and bowels. The answer is this."

She'd drawn her crossbow and left the house. They'd all protested, but she was going to be the one to do something. Slayers don't sit on their asses waiting when people are dying. They go out, find the nasties, and kill them.

That's what being the Slayer is all about.

Action.

The hunt.

The kill.

She couldn't wait to bring her trophy back to the house and show them all what a Slayer could do if she just got off her butt and did it.

She'd show them all.

The moon was still full, the stars still bright, when Kennedy reached the woods. The soft crunch of pine needles underfoot was the only sound. Okay, and the occasional hoot of an owl. Kennedy hefted her crossbow more securely in her hands. She had the bolt set up. She was ready to do whatever it took to kill this demon. Whatever it was, all she had to do was find the right spot to hit it, and it would die, just like anything else.

Suddenly, a scream broke the still of the night. Kennedy began to run. If this creature had a victim, she might not have long to save them. The howl sounded fairly far away. She prayed she would make it in time. Then she would have a witness to tell the others that she, and only she, had had the guts and nerve to do what needed to be done.

Watch and learn, Buffy, you little whiner.

You didn't need to know what it was called, or where it was from, or if it brought flowers to its demon mommy; all you needed to know was that it was evil and it needed to die.

The clearing was closer than Kennedy had thought. In the middle of it, a nest of at least twenty demons huddled around a campfire. They were huge. At least nine feet tall, except for two or three little ones who might be juveniles. Even they were taller than her. Their green scales made them difficult to really see clearly in the night. Even with the moonlight, they completely faded into the trees.

A plaintive moan reminded Kennedy of what she was there to do. She just wondered how. She only had three bolts. It had never occurred to her that there might be more than one demon.

Maybe there was some, small reason to research.

Still, people were going to die if she didn't act immediately.

"I'm hungry," one of the small ones whined. "When are we gonna eat?"

"As soon as we find a meal, Slovinge. You know that. Bersag, make the call again."

"In a minute. You have to space it out; give it enough time to be answered. Besides, the barbecue sauce isn't quite ready."

"It will be by the time we have a roast to put it on. Make the call."

Bersag lifted his scaly hands to his gaping maw and yowled. It was the sound Kennedy had heard before.

So that meant they hadn't found a victim yet. Good. She wasn't going to give them a chance to find one. She let a crossbow bolt fly. It hit Bersag in the throat. He turned.

"Ow," he said plaintively. "That wasn't very nice."

All the adult demons stood and turned on Kennedy. As they got closer, she discovered there were more demons than she'd realized. There were only had two bolts left and about eighteen adult demons to slay, as well as the two kids.

Maybe this hadn't been the best idea, after all.

Still, there was no going back. She wasn't going to run and hide from the bad things. That might be what Buffy recommended, but Kennedy wasn't in the habit of backing down from a fight.

"Can we eat her?" Slovinge piped up. "She looks like she'd taste good."

Kennedy struggled with suddenly nerveless fingers to reload her crossbow. She was beginning to see what Buffy and Giles both liked so much about swords: no reloading, good kill ratio, keeps nasties at arms' length. Maybe she should have paid more attention when Giles lectured about picking the correct tool for the job.

Bolt finally in place, she let fly. Her hands were shaking so badly that it bounced harmlessly at little Slovinge's feet.

"She tried to kill me, Mommy!" the demon boy pouted.

With that, the entire demon clan gave a roar of rage and surged forward. Kennedy never got a chance to load her final bolt. The crossbow was knocked savagely from her hands before she could even grasp the last missile.

Demon fists and feet pummeled her mercilessly. Her clothing was ripped away violently. She struggled, but to no avail. At last, the demons beat her into submission and brought her to the campfire.

"You know," Bersag said as he tied her to the spit, "your problem is you didn't come prepared. You had no idea what you were going to be fighting. Not that I'm complaining, and not that it will do you any good to know this for the future, since you don't exactly have one, but it was really stupid to come out here on your own with no clue what you needed to get the job done. Do you even know what species we are?"

Kennedy just shook her head and struggled futilely as a female began painting barbecue sauce on her.

"See," Bersag continued. "No preparation. That's sloppy. If you'd done your homework, you'd know what to do."

The female popped an apple into Kennedy's mouth. Bersag hoisted the spit over the flames.

"But why should I tell you how to kill my kind?" he asked. "I mean, it won't do any good for you, and it's not fun for me to think about dying. I just came out here for a nice picnic with the family. Still, I'm betting you think you're a Slayer, don't you?"

She couldn't talk, so she shook her head as much as she could. The flames were beginning to lick her back, and she longed to scream in agony.

"Yes, you do. You think you're the Slayer. You're not. You're just a stupid, arrogant kid who thinks she knows it all. And that's why you'll be dead in a minute. And that's why your friends will never know what happened to you."

Tears leaked from Kennedy's eyes. She knew the demon was right. If she'd been a little less busy trying to prove she was all that, and a little more busy listening to anyone else, maybe she wouldn't be here now, covered in barbecue sauce, hung over an open flame to roast with an apple in her mouth. But it was too late to worry about that. The female was turning the spit.

*****

Buffy and her army arrived at the clearing just as Slovinge licked the last bit of sauce off his webbed fingers. He never felt the iron spike that impaled him. In a matter of minutes, the clearing was littered with dead demons.

"Okay, who's on burial detail?" Xander called. "Get your shovels here!"

Three Potentials stepped forward and exchanged their spikes for digging implements. Buffy, Giles and Willow stared grimly at the remains of the picnic. A few bones, a spleen, a liver, the core of an apple, and a bowl of leftover barbecue sauce.

"Too late," Buffy said tightly. "Again."

"We needed to know what we were up against," Giles reminded her. "If we'd got ourselves killed, it wouldn't have helped anyone."

"Now at least they won't kill anybody else," Willow said. "There's a bright side, really."

Buffy nodded, but her chin remained jutted stubbornly out. The others knew she couldn't completely agree, no matter how right they were. All she could accept was that she hadn't gotten the job done in time to save another person.

"Let's get this place cleaned up," she said at last.

She took another shovel from Xander and began to dig along with the others. A moment later, Amanda stopped digging and stared at something.

"What's that?" she asked.

"What's what?" Willow chimed in.

"Over there."

Giles was the first to reach the pile of clothing.

"Oh dear lord," he breathed.

Willow stared in shock.

"K-Kennedy...?"