*/\*Jack & Karen*/\*
**A few hours later**
"Okay." Jack took a deep breath. "Are you ready?"
"Yeah." Karen replied uneasily. "Why don't you take a couple of practice shots before we go."
"Alright." Jack took an arrow out of the quiver strapped on his back. He notched it into his bow, aimed straight ahead of him, and fired. The arrow sped forward at a tremendously fast speed. When they both noticed it had landed, Jack nudged Karen so she would go get the arrow. Karen began to run to the spot where the arrow had landed, and it was a fair distance away so it took her a few moments to go see if it was lined up exactly from the point where Jack had fired it.
"It's lined up perfectly." Jack heard her yell back. She lightly tugged the arrow out of the ground and walked back to Jack.
When Jack could clearly see her again, he could see that she was twirling the arrow between her fingers. When she got back, he snatched the arrow from her hand.
"Don't play with that!" He had a sort of angry and confused look. "What's wrong with you?"
"I was just bringing the arrow back."
"Well, don't play with it next time. You could get hurt."
"Since when did you care if anyone besides you got hurt?"
"Since—since I-" Jack stopped in mid-sentence.
"Since what?"
"I don't know, just—since."
Karen was extremely mad at Jack for some reason. "Damn it Jack, just tell me."
"No." Jack had a slight grin on his face because he thought she was playing around.
"Tell me!"
Jack looked Karen straight in the eyes and it looked as if they were bottomless black holes. He felt terrified of what she might do to him. "No."
"TELL ME!"
"No! Now leave me alone about it!"
Karen swung her rope at Jack and it hit him so hard in the face it knocked him to his knees. His nose was bleeding and his cheek was beginning to swell.
"That's for not telling me."
After she said that, she suddenly flinched as if she were snapping out of a trance. She looked over at Jack and saw that he was lying on the ground. She hurried to help him up.
"Jack, what happened?"
"What do you mean, "what happened?" You did this." His cheek was purple and his nose had stopped bleeding. He was holding all of his anger back for the time being.
"I don't know. It was like I was here but I wasn't. It was--strange."
"So… you're saying you had sort of an out-of-body experience?"
"I don't know. It was really weird."
"Hmm."
"So, you ready to go?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, so we basically have to go like—half a mile east to the middle to start the fight."
"Alright."
"Are you ready?"
"Yeah."
"Okay. Let's go."
They both started off to the east. They were both scared of what would happen next and in the battle, which side would be victorious.