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On the Other End

"You know me, I can't pass up an opportunity to be dramatic." He took the hint and pressed his attack to no avail. The horses, mounted or otherwise, seemed wary to come near him now, and the area was teeming with too many soldiers to give chase. At least he managed to stack his charges quickly, even if half the time was spent parrying and defending himself or Chel. Individually his arms were starting to pay for the back to back battles and heavy swings; he started using both hands to wield his weapon, leaving him a little more slower than before. It still felt good when he finally felled another horse in one blow, though.

"Let me know if you get low," he panted some time later, the sword's runes glowing green. He couldn't tell since she (and now he as well) was covered in all sorts of blood. Jack was tempted to just use the charge on himself, but prioritizing was important. The problem was that he couldn't defend against quicker and lighter weapons like the ones the ghosts were equipped with; he certainly hoped with his and Chel's divided focuses, they could keep the army at bay long enough for the others to join in.

On the Other End

Jack highly doubted it but wasn't going to argue now.
With a hum the weapon suffused him with vine-like tendrils of light, and in seconds he found his second wind. While alert for the others (particularly the sniper whose weapon he was envious of), he did his best to adapt to the dwindling number of targets.

After beheading one and seeing the other ghosts soon follow, Jack stuck his sword in the ground and pressed his for heard to the pommel as he wheezed, caught his breath for a few moments, and assessed himself: minor injuries skipped over (most on the outside of his arms and his legs, like they were literally trying to cut him down to size), he felt a sword wound in his side, several from his back including the old one from before, and what felt like a b***h of a bruise over his chest (courtesy of a rampaging horse) as well as one over his cheek (parried blow gone wrong, hilt strike). His hair was still tied back but that didn't seem to matter now that blood was plastering it every which way, mostly to his face; thank god he hadn't needed to bring his sunglasses. Not bad, he thought tiredly, but not good enough.

Gritting his teeth, he forced himself up, felt something was stuck in his boot, and yanked a broken arrow out of his leg without thinking. "********." Jack let himself fall to the ground and removed his boot so he could add pressure to the wound with the help of bandages. He didn't ask if everyone was alright, but he was listening while he focused on his own injuries.

On the Other End

His face was tight with pain by the time she arrived, eyes narrowed and focused on his work. "What?" he asked distractedly as he wrapped his foot, starting to shiver now that the blood and sweat on him was cooling off. "Oh. They're okay." It wasn't snowing so he hadn't had to worry about snow blindness, and he could have done worse than the sometimes dizzying blur of the ghosts. One had flashed a little like the fake unicorn from before and dazzled him, but otherwise he'd survive.

Once bandaged he rubbed at his eyes gingerly and took another few seconds to breathe; it felt like he had a major stitch in his side. "You?" Jack turned his head to look up at her with one eye.

On the Other End

Teeth grit, he took her hand and with a grunt pulled himself up. "Yeah, some others came at us before we got your message. Never liked horses much anyway." He didn't know if he felt due that gratitude; as much help as he was, it didn't feel like it was enough. Maybe even if he had been standing upright and clean and brimming with energy by the end it still wouldn't have been enough.

He tried putting some weight on the foot and felt a small muscle spasm occur after a few seconds of pressure. Damn it, who got a ******** foot injury on the job of all things? It was so mundane. Although bleeding out from the other smaller probably wasn't helping.

"Let me look at it before we go," Jack insisted as he tore off another strip of bandages and went to inspect Chel's injured shoulder. "Just in case you broke it."

On the Other End

"Break, dislocate, whatever." Wiping his hair out of his eyes, Jack bent over to check her shoulder. It was awkward to favor one foot, so eventually he just sighed, pressed his hand around the affected area to make sure it was in its socket, and then began to quickly and firmly bandage it up.

"You know, that's the second time someone's told me that," he said as he did so. "I know you're joking, but I find it funny anyway. Creedy legitimately thought I could fit in with you boneheads once upon a time." Tucking in the end of the roll, Jack reestablished his balance by gripping her good shoulder again. "How's that feel?"

Walk Back

"He pushed me out of the way," Chel said in a moment of silence. "Shoulda been me under those horse hooves." She frowned, not feeling right about it. "But I'm glad it was him and not me."

She went back to being quiet, trying to figure it out in her head.

Stranger Than Fiction

He'd been doing better, socially speaking, even if "better" was "a more vocal snarky participation in ambient conversations", but he found himself smiling more whether his attempts offended, were received, or fell flat. It was a little like his public imagery with Hanna: a game that was easy to pretend and easy to pick up when he got over his moodiness, regardless of overall success.

At the campfire that night he managed to crack a few crass jokes in between Wren's attempt to garner interest for more of her medical horror series. "Half of that is bullshit and you know it," he stated with a wave of his fork. "They know it. No such thing as a hybrid weapon-hunter experiment frozen in some lab."

"That you know of."

"If you want a real story, I can give you one." His s**t eating grin might have been familiar as he looked to the group. "How many've you actually seen horsemen up close? Not on the big missions they send us on. I'm talking about real up close and personal, only with a handful've people at your back at most if you're lucky or if you're not then just goddamn alone."

Stranger Than Fiction

He barked a laugh. "Every good horror story has a sex scene," Jack countered. Chel had been at the peripheral of one such instance, when it was back and forth texting while V's body alternated between pressed against him and boredly leaning against the wall to stay cool. "But I'll skip it since I'm nice like that. You've heard this story already," he added with a lazy wink, "so don't spoil it for them."

He began of course with the basics: Eight of them set out back in late June to look into a Famine nest for eradication. Jack described them each by name and brief summaries, even attempted to affect their demeanor for the same of making them more real: Alicia Benson, leader and Sun specialist in martial arts, a real hard a**; Fred Ashton, also a Sun, nicknamed Fred Weasley for his fiery hair and gryphon based sword, who seemed to literally s**t sunshine and glitter; Eric Yao, the third and final Sun, Fred's boyfriend (and not his usual choice word of f**) and a ******** statue in personality; Carla Nuñez, a Moon that should've been too flighty to be allowed to wield a shotgun but who had good aim; Tyler McQueen the other Moon, who basically could be summed up as a chill Black Santa; Valerie Reznikov, otherwise known as V, Death sneaker, gossip, and halfway decent lay if you closed your eyes; and finally Heidi Blanc, who was one classy Mist even if she was a bit high maintenance.

On the way to the nest, they stopped at a base that had suddenly gone dark, mostly at the behest of a few of them who had had friends stationed there—not to mention it would be a break from the god damn desert sun. Jack did his best to set the mood of an eerily quiet yet apparently undisturbed base, where sand shifting could have been the wind or one of the local reptiles winding its way through, or worse, where the dry heat permeated the air so thickly that even moving an arm felt like too much effort or breathing too difficult, where dark halls and lost power made it seem like the set up of a low budget horror film but the inability to understand what happened lingered like a true ghost, where for a moment they could treat the base like a break from the reality of their mission even though it was the source of anxiety for some. Jack had displayed dramatic tendencies, but it was important for him to establish each scene clearly to them. Especially because he knew tomorrow they wouldn't give a rat's a**. Maybe they wouldn't not even ten minutes after he told it.

(Ian and Leslie had gotten a raw if fragmented version of the story. Chel got the theatrical debut of a distorted truth, at least for now. He would realize later what it said about him, that he didn't give a s**t how they reacted but cared enough about what she thought that he couldn't even directly talk to her about it. Then again, their best conversations always seemed to be fueled by some disconnect from the actual topic or between themselves, whether it was through an elaborate story or through eye contact with the wall.)

He told them that one day they were quite simply ambushed. It was their fault of course: in spite of setting up perimeter watches, the group as a whole had relaxed a little too much once power had been restored to the base. No-one had found the hole the horsemen crawled out of; no-one had expected an attack from inside, or more specifically from underground. It was almost a full fledged herd, Jack described, a motley of desiccated corpses half on horseback and half charging from the ground, along with scattered additions of students in their ranks. Yes, he said as Wren's brow furrowed, students. Halloweeners who had aligned themselves with the ******** ponies. His group didn't stand a chance.

Three of them were captured in the chaos: himself, Fred, and Heidi.

The details grew hazier, his face more gaunt as he gazed at them. He told them he didn't know how long he stayed down there with them. A good while. It was impossible to tell between the lack of light and the starvation going on, but he couldn't guesstimate days based on his sleep impulses because they were experimented on at the most random of times, s**t he doesn't feel like filling their nightmares with when there's still more to go. (Don't look at the light—) They were new pets, but Halloween species, the undeadish ones at least for sure, they don't have to eat or sleep to survive, they don't understand what a diet consists of or how long rest should be. (He laughs again and it's humorless, a black joke with no set up or punchline.) What meager food and water the prisoners were given had to be split between them, and it wasn't rocket science: they knew it wouldn't be enough to sustain all three of them.

Fred, of course, he was so damn sure they'd be found. That's what teams are about, counting on and helping each other to complete the mission. Until the others came, they could put their heads together and figure a way out. Don't give up. That sort of s**t. But eventually it starts sounding as hollow as your stomach. (He slips into the present tense, half in his story and half in reality, with memories that weren't quite rooted in either.)

Heidi cracks first. One night he's trying to fall into what passes for sleep now (lukewarm metal too hard to ever get comfortable on, bright flashes popping into vision long after he closes his eyes, less a body than it was a weight to carry), and he hears it.

(He's been passing glances around the group individually as he speaks, trying to draw them in, and when it comes Chel's turn one could hear him say again, Don't spoil it.)

He hears Fred's groggy protests as he's dragged to one side of the cage. He hears nothing from Heidi except ragged breathing and crack after crack after crack after crack of their food bowl over his head, his head against the wall, the floor. Shields are a joke; the need to survive is not. She does not beg for more food, she simply eliminates the problem that's in her reach. There is one dead, he tells the group quietly, but more importantly there is fresh meat. He hears her feast and can't sleep for the rest of the night in fear of being next, instead falling into a haze punctuated by wet chewing and the thick smell of blood, caught between the crisis of faking ignorance or joining in to survive.

But he doesn't have to make that choice. The next morning Heidi is taken away for her disobedience (as murder of one's pet is), and he never sees her again.

There is a long pause as Jack drains his water bottle, seeming more pale in the firelight. When he licks his lips of stray droplets, he adds abruptly, far too conversationally, that Fred had in the end been right; his team stormed in and snatched him out of the horsemen's clutches. But he still hasn't been able to look at meat quite the same since, he adds, as if everything had been lesson up to this one supposedly funny line.