"Massacre?" Kennedy asked, alarmed.

"Yeah, massacre," Jonathan said. "Fucking idiots!" he yelled, punching through a cabinet, sending shards of wood flying everywhere. His eyes flashed again.

"What are you talking about?" Kennedy probed, gently.

"The Jefferson Krieger graduation," Jonathan replied. "Any gathering of virgins that large? I know that Cleveland teens make a lot of noise about their sexploits, but trust me, none of them are serious. The vampires will be all over that graduation like flies on shit."

"Why are they having it at night?" Willow asked.

"Because they're fools!" Jonathan burst out. "I talked to the principal. He said that they're tired of restricting themselves just because Cleveland is "special". They want just one night of normalcy. They want it so badly that they're willing to die for it."

"That's…understandable," Kennedy said, empathizing with those involved with the school. Willow nodded. Their time spent camped out with the other Slayers in Buffy's house had caused all concerned to yearn for normality.

"Understandable my ass!" Jonathan yelled. "Okay…okay…" Jonathan began breathing heavily, trying to calm himself down. "All right…I'm calm…I'm not going to kill them for being so stupid…I'm going to save them…"

Willow shot a look at Kennedy. The message was unmistakable. He's crazy.

Jonathan looked up at the duo. "Well…I need to get to work…now. Care to join me? We can discuss the future of your Slayers."

Kennedy nodded. "Yeah, we'll help," she said.

Jonathan was the first to come out of the room into the larger hall. The various members of his group were scattered around the room, playing pool, reading, playing cards, and generally lounging. "Can I have your attention?" Jonathan said, and the room went instantly quiet. "You may already know this, but…the JK graduation is going to go on tomorrow night, as they said they would.

"As you know, it's likely to end up a bloodbath. Which means that we're going to need to be there to stop that from happening. This is going to be big, folks – bigger than we've ever handled ourselves. We're going to need weaponry and we're going to need supplies, and more than anything else, we're going to need balls. Got that? This is as close to hell as you'll ever want to get."

A girl spoke up from the back of the room. "So soon after we lost Mike –" she began, but Jonathan cut her off.

"I know that it's soon," he said, his voice softening ever so slightly. "I understand that you're all still upset. I'm still upset too. But we have to get over it, or else more people are going to die. Got it?"

There was a murmur of assent. Jonathan nodded. "Okay, then," he said. "Let's get to work."

The group broke up and headed in all different directions, with purpose. Jonathan addressed Kennedy. "Come with me, you two. We have some heavy lifting to do."

Jonathan lead Kennedy and Willow outside and around to the back of the building. There sat an old school bus that looked as though it had been abandoned long before any of them had been born. Jonathan opened the back door of the bus, then indicated a locked storage shed. "Some of the bigger weapons are in there," he said. "I need your help to move them."

"Okay," Kennedy said. She followed Jonathan to the shed while Willow watched. Jonathan unlocked the shed and, entering it, heaved a large crate onto his shoulder. He watched as Kennedy effortlessly picked up another crate.

"You know, I could have enjoyed having a Slayer around," Jonathan said.

"We've only run across one other case of a Slayer out of control," Kennedy said as they hauled the crates over to the bus. "It's hard to believe that there would be three more in one place."

"Cleveland is special," Jonathan said, bitterly. "Very special."

"Sounds like you hate it here," Willow said, as the two haulers set down their freight inside the bus.

"Can't say it's my favorite place in the world," Jonathan said. "But then again, I've never been very far away from Cleveland, so I wouldn't know about the rest of the world."

"Why stay?" Kennedy asked. "I mean, you're obviously gifted. What's keeping you here?" They returned to the shed for more crates.

"The group," Jonathan said, simply. "I'm their leader. I can't just abandon them. They trust me. They've trusted me since…" he trailed off and shot Kennedy a furtive look.

"Since…what?" Kennedy asked.

"Oh, nothing," Jonathan said, far too quickly.

"I know there's something; I can hear it in your voice," Kennedy said.

Jonathan regarded Kennedy for a long moment. "Since our parents died," he said.

Kennedy put her box down, intrigued and troubled at the same time. "Your parents died? All your parents died? Is this some sort of orphanage?"

Jonathan laughed, hollowly. "That's not how it started, but I suppose that's what it became," he said. "This has only been the "Cleveland Teen Center" for about two years now. Before that, it was Ridley's Charter Club, which was a clever little front for a society of mages.

"Our parents were all members of the society. They went out every night to defend the city from vampires and other demons and to keep our Hellmouth from getting to upset. The society's been around for longer than Cleveland – people have been here a lot longer than the history books would like you to think." Jonathan grinned, lopsidedly, the fire in his eyes ever present. "It's a tradition of sorts, I guess."

"What happened?" Kennedy asked.

"Well, a couple years ago, Cleveland had a little problem with sporzadic demons. Flesh eaters. The society – our parents, who'd never let any of us, save me, out on patrol – went to deal with them…and every single one of them was slaughtered."

"That's awful," Willow said, having joined the conversation moments earlier.

"We were left alone," Jonathan continued. "We had no idea what to do, so we sat here, waiting to see what would happen next. And the demons showed up – in force. There must have been a couple hundred of them, at least. I went out to meet them, to die on my feet, and one of them took a bite out of me." He rolled up his right sleeve, revealing a nasty scar on this shoulder. "He spit it out. Turns out they're allergic to children. Go figure, huh?"

"Yeah…go figure," Kennedy said. "What then?"

"We all met and decided to go on doing what our parents had been doing for years," Jonathan said. "It would only have been another couple years for most of us before we would have joined the society, anyway. We figured that we could handle it a little early."

"Looks like you've handled yourselves pretty good," Willow offered.

"Thanks," Jonathan said. "But things haven't gone smoothly at all. I've lost too many of them…"

"How'd you get to be the leader?" Kennedy asked, shouldering her burden once more.

Jonathan laughed, with mirth this time. "Hahaha…that," he said. "Well, by now you've probably noticed that I'm not entirely human."

Neither Willow nor Kennedy said a word, so Jonathan continued. "That demon bite changed me somehow," he said. "I don't know how. We looked it up and those things have some sort of venom that they use to kill their prey. I guess it's geared for adults, because instead of killing me, it made me…well…stronger and faster, for starters."

"That still doesn't explain how you got be the leader," Willow said.

Jonathan nodded with appreciation. "That was quick," he said. "Well, it just sort of happened naturally, over time. We needed a leader and I filled the role more often than not, so I became the unofficial leader. We don't really have the time for ceremonies usually…the only ceremonies we make time for are burials."

Jonathan's good mood seemed gone. "We need to get this stuff loaded," he said. He and Kennedy returned to the work, in silence now.

Jonathan proved an adept driver. Willow and Kennedy rode near the front with him, as several of his peers sat throughout the back, making sure the crates of weapons didn't jar around too much.

"We can stash the weapons on the football field," Jonathan said. He pulled the bus up alongside the field. "Come on, quick, before it gets too dark."

The teens got to work fast. Before too long, the weapons crates were safely stashed on the outskirts of the football field. Jonathan surveyed the work and muttered to himself, softly. Kennedy, with her enhanced hearing, was the only one to hear him. "I only wish we didn't have to use them," he said.

Silently, she agreed.

Willow and Kennedy got back to their apartment just as darkness was falling. Willow sat down heavily in a chair and breathed long and hard. Kennedy sat more softly on the edge of their bed.

"Yesterday, all we had to do was find a couple, three girls," Willow said. "Now look what we've got ourselves into."

"It's still our job," Kennedy pointed out. "Saving innocents, that is."

"I know that," Willow said. "Still…this doesn't feel right at all. We're rushing things and we're bound to have overlooked something. Something like…"

"How far can we trust this Jonathan Banks?" Kennedy finished.

"Yeah, for starters," Willow said. The ceiling swirled grey, but Willow didn't notice.

"Careful Will," Kennedy said, attempting to be light. "If you're not careful, it's gonna start raining in here."

Willow glanced up but didn't deign to stop her mood magic. Seeing that Willow was in need of cheer Kennedy, a devious grin upon her face, rose from her seat on the bed and pulled Willow back to it, with her…

Soon, the swirling grey was shooting with brighter, sharper, more vibrant colors.

The day came and the day went…and the night began.