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

[herotypical]

"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."

[all7seas]

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.

[herotypical]

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.

[all7seas]

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.

[herotypical]

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."

[all7seas]

"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."

[herotypical]

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.

[all7seas]

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.

[herotypical]

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.

[all7seas]

"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.

[herotypical]

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.

[all7seas]

Sparrow gave the monster a desperate and ferocious kick, trying to dislodge it. Once Buffy had its spine snapped, another shove had the job done. Jack skittered backward on his hands. It was a matter of pushing himself to his feet, now, and taking up guard once more at the entrance to the ruins where he'd dropped his pack. He didn't dare speak or look down at his chest.

[herotypical]

She lingered only long enough to remove the head. She had decapitated so many things in so many odd ways over her short lifetime; none of this felt odd. Nothing in her reflected the horrible vision it became once acted out. Buffy shoved the body aside and, with greedier breathing, she fell back to Jack's side.

"So you're a little worse for wear," she eyed his chest -- unhappy with that sight but ultimately not sickened in the way Jack had been over her injury. "But...that was teamwork and it was good teamwork." It sounded dismissing but it was, in fact, an extremely important distinction for Buffy to make. Fighting alongside your unboosted, garden variety human usually did not involve teamwork.

[all7seas]

The jungle seemed quiet, now. No more howling shift beasts, but no night-sounds, either. Still not looking down, Jack retreated into the tunnel a ways. Now he reached up to touch his chest. Not good.

"Aye. Good teamwork."

[herotypical]

"I'm batting zero on the fancy repair powers," she followed him into the tunnel. "But I've got this...balm, I guess. Possibly with magical properties?" She undid the flap on her satchel and went searching for the balm in question.

[all7seas]

He was kneeling, already mixing some of the powder Raine had given him with the little water left in his canteen. Whatever they had would have to do: they couldn't risk leading enemies back to the hospital camp.

"McCoy suggested I'd never be able to contact the healing spirit."

It was a non sequitur, a continuation of a thought. It was probably the use of filial healing magic in the camp that was attracting so many shift beasts.

[herotypical]

"Apparently, Nala's the easiest." Buffy regurgitated what little information she knew on the spirits. She had certainly never bothered to try contacting them. Magic was never her bag of tricks and she did not want to start now. That stuff could be poisonous and although Luceti's particular brand of mojo had proven not to be the same sort of slippery magic slope as her home world, it made her no less wary of the stuff. She would go to those with it when she needed it but that was the extent of her participation. There was a reason she preferred her healing to be overseen by Bones.

"Is that something you wanna do?" She asked warily as she uncapped the little container of balm.

[all7seas]

"Aye. Kills pain, this--Raine gave it to me." He swallowed it quickly; it had no flavor at all. Perhaps a faint taste of magic, if anything.

[herotypical]

Raine. Raine who definitely could heal a man with a torn chest and whose powers weren't so self-based at all. But a split-second on that thought and Buffy was the first to kick herself over it. The scales, as Faith had once pointed out to her, are in her favour. She shouldn't feel inadequate when it comes to helping. Except...except here, everyone made that incredibly frustrating comment about how she was more blunt instrument and lacked finesse.

Still, she wasn't interested in learning the ways of the Filial spirits. Buffy ignored her own arm and, once she was within reach of Jack, tugged at his shirt. Whatever this sharp-smelling stuff was, it wasn't as though it could hurt. Right? Or...perhaps it would sting. She has no sweet clue.

"Why Nala? I mean...you strike me as a lot of things, Jack. But not the spell-casting kind of thing."

[all7seas]

There were a lot of reasons, primarily centering on his fears for Jilly and Archie and McCoy. If the need ever arose, he would have to do something to help. And fighting or talking his way out of it were becoming slimmer as options, if they existed at all. Healing magic, though, was a kind of defensive magic, and he'd always been better at defense than at offense.

"I'm not a spell-casting sort of thing at all, but it would come in handy now, wouldn't it?"

Jack tore his shirt open the rest of the way before taking another swig of the elixir.

[herotypical]

When Dawn had made shirt-tearing quips in the past about her whatever-this-was with Jack Sparrow, she had probably not been describing anything like this. Buffy pressed a decent dab of the stuff along his wounds. It probably absolutely did sting.

"Not handy at all, considering how those things can sniff it out." Magic was another one of those things that had costs.

[all7seas]

"Aye. They. Can. Ah."

[herotypical]

She looked up. "You okay?" Buffy tried to proceed more carefully. Her injured arm crossed in between them and it was probably too dark to see that despite the blood, the cuts themselves had reduced down to unpleasant-yet-closed lines across her skin.

[all7seas]

"Yes. I am. Are you?" He reached out to take her arm. The initial sting was not a nice one, but it soon faded to numbness. The tears felt deep, but there was no way he'd be able to know until McCoy took a look at them.

[herotypical]

"They're vicious, but they're a bit like fighting a werewolf. Except...except for the part where I don't actually kill werewolves." She left her arm with him and allowed him to see -- or perhaps more accurately feel -- for himself that she was healing up. "On the field, they take the cap off us. I'm regenning at my usual rate, which is twice as fast as in the village."