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

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.

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.

Edited 2011-06-06 11:47 (UTC)

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.

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."

"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.

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.

"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.

"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.

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."

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.

Edited 2011-06-06 12:40 (UTC)

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.

"Aye. They. Can. Ah."

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.

"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.

"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."

He knew better than to offer her the elixir. She wouldn't want it and possibly would sneer at the gesture. Pride in that healing; and could he blame her? He was too busy blessing it.

In answer he caressed her arm and released it. His shirt needed to be torn into binding strips. Raine and McCoy had both warned him of the dangers of infection in the jungle.

It was the sort of precaution that should have sprung to her mind; bandages. However, Buffy wasn't often the first to realize that other people did get infected. And ill. And that these things needed preventative measures. But once she realized what Jack was doing, she fell back and allowed him the space to do it in. After all, there could be more coming.

Her shift incompatibility, the monsters. Things kept interrupting. Perhaps that was simply karma for wanting an uninterrupted evening with Jack during the draft in the first place.

Not the spell-casting sort, but definitely the bargaining-with-spirits-and-deities sort, Jack Sparrow bound his wounds with strips of linen. He worked quickly; the numbing sensation provided by the balm and the elixir did a lot to help. Finally the pirate stood up and put his pack on over his shoulders. There was a little water left in it, a little food---maybe enough for both of them to have a meal tonight.

"Our choice lies before us, I suppose: remain in these ruins or back through the jungle."

He was uneasy about both options.

"Let's stay put." This decision was made quickly on the basis of Jack's injuries. Had she been alone, she would have been out and taking more of them down. But she wasn't alone. Not even a little bit alone. And she felt no small measure of protectiveness.

Her own pack had a few more things in it -- nothing fancy. Some trail mix and some of Derek's jerky. They would make do.

"Very well."

Ruins and such made Jack highly uneasy at the best of times, even though they also piqued his curiosity. Who knew what treasure could lie inside? So began the war between his sense of self-preservation and his absolute obsession with treasure.

"Anything in there, you think?"

"You mean, besides the inevitable booby traps, spiders, skeletons, and potential for some kind of lung infection?" Buffy swept the mouth of the tunnel one last time with her eyes. She could only imagine how Jack must have been feeling -- already tired before the fight and the run and the more fight.

She turned back to him, shouldering her scythe. "Maybe a mummy. Let's hope it's a no on the mummy. I don't like mummies."

"Might be just the place to find golden things, Annie." He drew himself up, unmindful of the numbed injuries now. "And sparkling ones."

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