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

She should feel bad. This was bad and she should feel bad. Not because it was Jack. No -- she was leagues beyond that conflict. But because they still had blood on them and in the deepest part of her bones knew that, out there, others were still fighting. It made her reciprocation all the more electric.

Buffy's fingers crept along the back of his neck. Perhaps she could will the interim away and pick back up from where her mind had drifted away -- pre-napping. Cut free all the in-between bits.

The pirate's mind was so far from the battlefield. There was never remorse to be found from pleasure; that was a pact he'd made with himself long ago. Consequences? Yes, there could be consequences, and at times he had to accept them, but guilt for taking what he wanted when he wanted it was not typically something Sparrow felt.

He tried to lift her up against him, enjoying the play of her mouth on his. Consequences later? Maybe, but he wasn't going to dwell on that now.

Even better, she would try to slice all of the last few weeks away -- back to the night she had cooked for him and it had gone so much better than she had expected. Before decisions had been made to put either of them through this strain. When things had looked up and, despite the very odd circumstances involved, she had felt something near normal.

A final brush of lips and she sank her forehead against his shoulder. Breathing in the jungle's night air.

"Better," he whispered as he tightened his hold on her. The darkening jungle was beginning to fill with strange sounds---birds and animals that were celebrating the relief from the day's heat and beginning their nocturnal activities. And there were scents, too, from the flowers that only opened at night.

All of these would serve well to mask the approach of any nearby enemies.

Oh, God. Thoughts spilled into words faster than she could stop them and: "I miss you," she whispered against his shoulder. Pent-up fondness from a heart being fed mostly absence, village-side. Buffy met his tightened hold with a grip of her own as the kiss had devolved steadily into one very steadying hug. Her feet shuffled and disturbed detritus on the forest floor; she filled all the gaps between him and her with more of themselves.

She exhaled loudly. Thoughts of a potential ambush were less in her mind than the guilt of leaving others to fight the fight. If there was a rustling on the far side of the fallen tree, then she attributed it unthinkingly to some form of exotic wildlife.

And his words were quick and soft and measured against her ear. "Aye; I miss you too, slayer, and---" Jack broke off as the rustling began to take on the tone of something that should be considered alarming.

"And I don't think we're alone anymore, my love."

Edited 2011-06-06 03:18 (UTC)

Buffy swore. It was the sort of thing that should not have left her as the last to be clued in. Although vamp-sensing was foremost in a Slayer's sensing repertoire, she should have been more aware. She was getting rusty. Just as she'd feared.

She paused -- stock still -- for a moment, pressed against the pirate. Slowly, her hand relaxed on the back of his neck and she sank down into a crouch. Her scythe wasn't far from reach and she needed only to get a grip on its handle.

For his part, Jack drew his pistol. Buffy hated guns, but this time it wouldn't be pointed her way. From the sound of it, there was more than one enemy beyond the tree. Then a clawed foot appeared on the top of the fallen log, crushing beneath it what remained of the orchids.

For some reason that made Jack irrationally angry. He took careful aim at that foot, but didn't fire---not yet.

She straightened with her weapon in a sure grip. Her free hand slipped against Jack's abdomen and pressed him back. Behind her. She took note of the pistol and decided not to comment; now was not the time. But at least it could perhaps provide some sort of ranged benefit and perhaps then the pirate would not feel too sorely about how her body language so quickly delegated him to the rear of this two-person army.

Damn Shift Hunters. They'd been cropping up all too often. Buffy waited for the first to leap down off the log before stabbing upwards with the staked side of the Slayer scythe, catching the animal just beneath the rib-cage. It torqued the beast out of its dive and it came smashing onto the ground next to her but Buffy knew the damage would be minimal. These things healed fast. Faster than she did.

It was up and snapping in moments.

Jack balanced the barrel of his pistol on his wrist and fired off a shot, burying a bullet in the creature's head. Whether that would end it, he didn't know, but at least it ought to slow the thing down.

Decapitation was the only way and it was a hard thing to achieve with creatures so vicious as this. Earlier in the day, she had tried snapping the neck and it had simply snapped back into place. It needed the blade and the kerf and the elbow grease to see it through past the muscle and the bone.

She was afforded a fluid dodge thanks to Jack's bullet and in the stunned space between it being fired and the animal recovering, Buffy snapped a viciously sharp kick against it's body -- landing her heel hard upon its back and forcing it to crumple to the ground. It scrabbled, slashed and bit. This was where she had lost most of her blood, earlier in the day. The tooth-and-nail struggle just to get into a position to behead the thing.

Hard enough to do without a second showing its jowls over the fallen log; Buffy snapped a glance back over her shoulder to catch the pirate's eyes. Cover me. She fought to get her thumb and other fingers a purchase on the semi-downed hunter's head.

There was another shot with the rifle, which sent the second creature flipping over backward, disappearing over the other side of the giant fallen tree. Jack leapt nimbly up on top, drawing his sword. If Buffy could cut off heads, then he would do his best to do the same.

And cut them off she could. She had to kneel heavily on the creature's ribcage to keep her hold on it. Buffy dug her nails hard into the bare skin and forced its head onto the ground. The normally clean slices of the scythe were interrupted by bursts of struggle and wrestling. Barely a few cuts in and the Shift Hunter had already managed to bury its teeth in her forearm. This pulled a grunt of pain out of the Slayer but she did not give up her hold.

A few moments and collateral injuries and a whole lot of blood later, Buffy kicked the head away from the body and scrambled up the side of the tree. It took concentration because her hands were slick. "Jack..."

There were more. She could hear them, now. Clear as day in the night.

The sight of her bleeding beside him froze Jack Sparrow, but he knew she could heal. She was magic, was Annie.

"They can't get to Bones. The creatures. We need to lure them, darling." He forced his eyes away from her bloody arm, focusing on her face. Beautiful green eyes. "Can you run? I've set some traps...can you follow me? Follow my steps exactly?"

"I can do both," she assured him. But she would dip back onto the other side of the tree first to salvage the satchel she had taken with her. There were things in it. Important, survival-aiding things.

Buffy hadn't yet noticed her arm. Pain was something she could feel later. "I'm right behind you."

There was so much blood; so many devilish beasts below them, licking their chops and preparing to spring. The running would have to be NOW.

Sparrow glided down from the log and began a sprint through the jungle. Inwardly, he kept up a strict itinerary: left of the log and right of that big yellow flower and over these rocks and down the side of this slope and over the stream JUST HERE AND NOWHERE ELSE. It was an intricate path he took them on, while behind them came the sounds of beasts being snared.

Jack knew, though, that he couldn't hope to get all of the pursuing creatures. Quite the pack had fallen upon them.

Edited 2011-06-06 04:37 (UTC)

Buffy did not fall behind and while she may not have had the most experience in following, she so-far managed not to trip any of Jack's best laid snare-shaped plans. Or, if she did, she seemed to manage snapping her foot free before anything could catch her. Either way, she was quick and efficient in her pursuit.

There would be some left. She knew this. It was all a case of coiling carefully and focus on running and wait for just the right moment to turn and deal sudden death to the chasers that would remain.

Jack only paused when he reached the opening to some vine-covered ruins that he'd found earlier in the day. The stony lip of the entrance was carved over with strange runes, and the inside was dark. Here, though, they could stand and fight far more effectively than in the open jungle.

"Right---good girl. No snares for you this time, eh, Buffy?"

He was still heartily concerned about her injuries, even if his tone was light-hearted.

She stopped shortly after him and inhaled deeply. The run had spent some of that superfluous adrenaline she had collected in the aftermath of her shift affliction. Aware, but not jittery. Buffy turned to face the direction they has just arrived from. It wouldn't take long. The animals were fast and the survivors of the snares could be heard crashing through the lowest levels of growth.

"Snare-free and ready to..." she caught her breath as she thought she could see shadowy shapes shuddering in the dark. "Rumble."

"Don't rumble the rest of your blood away, my darling one," he said softly as he reloaded his weapons. "Because I need you. And I'd miss you."

This dragged her eyes immediately away from the jungle ahead -- an initial look of reproach on her face. "What?"

And she lifted her arm, appearing as though she might as well have been seeing the torn limb for the first time. "This? It's..." She couldn't exactly say nothing. "It doesn't hurt."

I need him. She took a shuddering breath and returned her sights ahead of her once again.

There wasn't time for more conversation as the remnant of the beasts attacked them. Jack fired off as many rounds as he could at the leaders of the pack, which had been diminished by the snares. His goal was to slow them down and make the task of beheading easier for Buffy.

Once his ammunition was spent, though, Sparrow resorted to sword-work, which was much less to his liking.

Any advantage he could spare her was an advantage she took by the proverbial horns and rode with. Her part of the fight consisted mostly of close-quarters kicking and hacking -- a strategy of downing the beasts long enough to disassociate them from their heads.

One wanna-be-hell-hound was giving her particular pause. She was trying to force its jaws shut when a second Shift Hunter lunged from behind; it was going straight for the bobbing, red wings.

"NO!"

Those same visions from the prior draft swept into the pirate's mind: red wings, torn and bleeding, half-buried in the snow.

Jack had no more ammunition. He only had himself, now, and he was somewhat surprised to find that self being thrown between the girl and the monster. Those claws dug into his chest instead of those wings, and man and best went rolling in a flurry of teeth and claws and sword.

Buffy felt her scythe hit dirt below and knew the job was done. In less than a second, she was off the corpse and turning to evaluate the criss behind her. She had heard Jack's protest and had not had the time to wonder at what had been happening.

When she saw him grappling with this final aggo-happy-puppy, she tried to act quickly. The hack'n'slash would not quite do considering how she did not want to chop any of Jack's bits off in the process. And so the Slayer fell upon the both of them. She would have to buy time -- from the other side of the Shift Hunter she grabbed its head in her hands and twisted, brutally.

There was the sickening crunch as the bone snapped; it would give them much to work with but it should be enough to drag the thing off of the pirate. It would heal soon, though.

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