you're in the jungle, baby / you gonna die

[lucetimods]

Who: All draftees
What: Fighting the Third Party... and perhaps the wildlife.
When: June 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th. (Characters will be pulled out at 11:59 of the 6th.)
Where: An as-yet unmapped by the Malnosso tropical rainforest.
Summary: Here are your details. Try to stay alive, won't you?
Rating: Anywhere from PG to R.

No cut for you. Most of you will know how this works by now; if you don't, follow the lead of the others, or perhaps look to the last draft's fighting post for ideas. Don't forget to use your handy dandy character tags. Go forth and conquer thine enemies!

Comments

[simplestgift]

If he tries. [Kennedy can remember being provoked into that awful, terrifying rage, feeling the rush of catharsis in his onslaught against an enemy he could finally control...then the horror of realization that this existed inside him at all.]

I don't understand it at all.

[consultmybooks]

[Jack just...generally has that effect on people, it seems.]

I don't think anyone does. With the possible exception of Buffy - she must see something in him.

[simplestgift]

[But Archie isn't used to rage like that. Annoyance, certainly. Impotent anger. But not rage like he experienced. Still...it wasn't Jack at all.]

Such anger doesn't frighten you?

[consultmybooks]

Anger on who's part? Yours'? Mine? His?

[simplestgift]

[Just...anger.]

Nothing.

[consultmybooks]

...yes, it does.

Especially in regards to him.

...one of the reasons he and I prefer to avoid one another's company is that I nearly killed him once, Kennedy. During an experiment.

[simplestgift]

[Archie raises his eyes, listening, a silent invitation to continue the story.]

[consultmybooks]

[Giles does, after a second's pause.]

Between Buffy and I...you know what a vampire is back in our world, don't you?

[simplestgift]

A demon in a corpse.

[consultmybooks]

Exactly. A demon possessing all the corpse's memories and even a semblance of their personality, but no capacity for conscience, compassion, or love.

...for a week, that's what I was.

My past experiences with Jack had been less than encouraging. I fished him out of the river when he had just returned for a kidnapping, only for Buffy to warn me later to avoid him and use her name to keep him away if I couldn't.

So the next time we met, it was only fitting that I couldn't talk. He stole my grandmother's pocket watch. Buffy got it back for me later, but it was still a...decidedly humbling and humiliating experience.

Later on I had to listen to her worrying and fretting over the fact that he possibly had feelings for her, how frustrating it was having him in her life, how she didn't know how to deal with him.

All of these things together gave the vampire more than enough incentive.

[simplestgift]

They seem to need little enough as it is.

[consultmybooks]

It's true that most newborn vampires will feed first on the people they knew as humans.

...but Jack was the first one it wanted. Not Buffy, or Andrew, or Xander. Jack.

[simplestgift]

Because he stole your pocket watch.

[consultmybooks]

I'd already gotten my revenge for the pocket watch, actually - I hexed him, and from what I hear it was terribly effective.

No, this was entirely thanks to Buffy's concerns over the last couple of months.

[simplestgift]

Why? It isn't as if he would hurt her.

[consultmybooks]

He had hurt McCoy at some point in the recent past, or so she told me.

And it believed he would hurt her.

[simplestgift]

That was very thoughtful of it.

[consultmybooks]

Yes, wasn't it just?

...I remember what it felt like, that night. Hating him badly enough to want to kill him myself, believing that he didn't matter enough that Buffy would be happy he'd died.

It's not a memory I like having.

[simplestgift]

[Kennedy's lips part, but it takes some time before he says anything.]

Do you think...you could have been angry with someone else?

[consultmybooks]

[Giles considers this carefully before replying.]

It's possible.

[simplestgift]

And you...you felt this when you weren't yourself. It was something else, and you only remember it.

[It was a demon craving murder, not Giles himself.]

[consultmybooks]

It was still my mind, even if it wasn't my soul guiding it.

Memories processed just the same, in the end. Memories of what it did, and thought, and felt. Those were what I was left with, at the end.

[simplestgift]

[Kennedy goes very, very quiet. The same anger he remembers, still bottled up somewhere, dangerous and violent as something that came out of a demon. As if he needed more reason to doubt that he's a good man.]

[consultmybooks]

I was only out for a night.

Then Buffy managed to lock me up for the rest of the week.

[simplestgift]

[Some rapid blinking.] That's good.