At a time like it was, it was a perfect time (as it always was, in his mind) for him to utter the immortal words: "Holy shit." Spread before his eyes was proof that the villagers weren't lying when they said they recently started having a Dogoo problem: The fields were filled with small, bouncing, blue, poop-shaped...things, all of which were wearing happy faces and making strange noises. Uni turned to him and raised a brow.
"What? You've never seen this many Dogoos before?" she asked.
"No, I've never seen a Dogoo before, full stop. The fuck are they supposed to be? Badly coloured pieces of dog shit?"
"Nobody knows!" she beamed, before quite casually summoning a large rifle in front of her and nonchalantly putting in a clip. "All I know is that they normally go down in one hit from this rifle, and that's fine by me." She turned to the female villagers standing beside them. "Don't worry, ladies: We'll have this done in a jiffy!" There arose a brief cheer, and Jack watched Uni raise her gun and begin hammering shots away at Dogoos that were on their own. Rather than the loud bangs he had been expecting, there instead came the sound of Generic Laser Noise #108575, and the muzzle came out with a brilliant green energy beam that disintegrated whatever it hit. Jack felt slightly disappointed. He wanted to see her using a .50 caliber rifle against piles of mush. Sighing, he unslung his Mossberg and pulled the pump back a tad: He could see the red shell peeking out, meaning his shots would come in the form of 00 Buckshot: Bigger pellets.
He closed the chamber, took aim at a small cluster of Dogoos on a nearby slope, and pulled the trigger. A loud boom startled everyone nearby, and a wash of flame roared from the end of the shotgun's barrel. The Dogoos almost immediately glowed purple and smashed into data: Either he was overleveled and each individual shotgun pellet could kill a Dogoo, human guns were insanely powerful, or Dogoos were weak as shit. Uni lowered her rifle slightly and looked at Jack as he racked the pump. "What the heck was that?!" she half-cried.
"An instant-fuckin'-kill, that's what it was," he replied smartly, taking aim at another group. "Shame I didn't ask for an AA-12, though: My arm'll have fuckin' fallen off from rackin' the pump by the time I'm done with these wankers." Uni swallowed hard.
'He's got some vocabulary...' she thought in a rather worried manner, returning to her own shooting. The villagers began murmuring in discomfort, interjected by the shatteringly-loud boom of shotgun blasts with a follow-up of the pump clicking loudly. Uni kept her composure, only occasionally giggling upon a Dogoo's defeat and carefully lining up shots.
Ten minutes passed, and the duo had moved forwards through the field, into the thick of the blue creatures. The ground was damp with blue goo, and slowly but surely, the Dogoos had started surrounding them. "Fuckin' hell, how many of these little fuckers are there?!" Jack yelled, shotgun-butting away a Dogoo that had taken a jump at him and turning it into a flash of purple.
"They said they had a Dogoo problem!" Uni cried, jabbing at those who got too close using the end of her gun. She was clearly getting desperate, and so was Jack: Both of them were back to back (or back to lower back, in terms of Uni's height), and only really able to hold the line for a minute more before they were overrun by blue squidgy...things. Jack groaned as he realised that the shotgun wasn't getting much done in terms of crowd control, but continued firing. Each blast wiped out a crowd of Dogoos, but the empty space would be quickly filled by many more. His shots had become a lot more rapid, with him firing off a shot every one or two seconds and shooting from the hip like some eighties action hero. He gave a growl as he realised his weapon's ineffectiveness, reached onto the shell bandolier under his shirt, and grabbed one of the candy-orange tubes, clicking it into the shotgun and racking the pump.
As he prepared to fire, he could feel the small girl behind him, trembling in what seemed to be either fear or panic. "You cold?" Jack asked, looking back. Uni was spattered in turquoise gunk, and looked to be rather frightened of the oncoming hordes. They stretched out as far as he could actually see. Oceans of blue. Uni cast a brief glance back.
"N-No! I just don't like the prospect of what's gonna happen if we're overrun!" she called back over the loud noises that the Dogoos kept making.
"You were shiverin' a second ago, seemed like you were cold!" Jack replied, before holding his shotgun at the hip. "Lemme warm you up!"
He pulled the trigger, and an even louder bang echoed around the area. From the end of the barrel flew a huge wash of real flames that ripped over the horde of small, effectively harmless creatures and splashed over them, igniting them. And from there, the Dogoos' innocent groaning noises changed into something much darker: Screaming. Human-like screaming. Hundreds of them were ablaze at excessively high temperatures, and their continued, panicked bouncing amongst their comrades only served to help spread the flames. Uni couldn't tell what was going on from where she was, but the heat radiating from behind her meant she probably wasn't going to like it. Jack wasn't exactly sure what he was meant to be feeling as he watched the monsters burn. Hatred? Sadistic enjoyment? A want for more? Disgust?
He wasn't sure.
Maybe he'd have to do it again to figure out.
He span the shotgun to bear left, racked the pump, and fired again. Once more, blistering heat ripped out of the barrel and tore across rows of Dogoos, setting them all alight and encouraging more to change from groaning noises to terrifying screams. From the corner of her eye, Uni could see what was going on: She squinted under the burning glow of melting Dogoos, and shielded her face from the excessive heat. Yet through the cracks she had formed in her eyelids, she could see a scene that echoed some ring of hell for Dogoos: Hundreds upon hundreds of the small, notably harmless creatures were lit with blistering flames, and as they bounced around screaming, they were constantly bumping into more of their companions and lighting them, setting off a ripple effect. Her jaw fell open slightly at the sight. Trembling, she put her own rifle away and turned to Jack, who was scratching his stubble, shotgun slung over his shoulder, and his eyes were in the usual squint she'd noticed he had. Eventually, realising he was being stared at, he looked at Uni, and neither said anything for a few moments.
"Aye?" he said calmly, raising a brow. Uni clenched her fists, and looked him in the eyes.
"That. Was. Awesome!" she squealed, raising both her hands beneath her chin in a generic 'fangirl' pose. "How did you make all those Dogoos set on fire so fast?"
"Well, I used a Dragon's Breath shotgun shell," he replied, drawing another one of the orange cylinders of hell from his bandolier. "Basically a shotgun shell full of fuckin' Magnesium or some shit, and I don't run out for some reason. I only need to load one shell, and then I can go fuckin' mental with it and not have to reload. Cockin' it just makes a usable copy of the shell fall out, so I literally have an endless supply. Got no idea how it fuckin' works, since the machine guns I brought with me don't run out either and just throw functionin' bullets fuckin' everywhere, but..."
"I don't see you complaining!" Uni beamed, before extending a hand to ask for the shotgun shell. Cautiously, amidst the fire and flames, Jack carried on, placing the shell into Uni's noticeably small hand and watching her study it in amazement.
"You pretty much nailed it on the head, there," he nodded. "If I was guessin', then I'd have probably fired off a few hundred shells by now, and I only packed about sixty. But like you said: I don't give a shit, because who complains about a tactical advantage for themselves? Anyways, yeah, that little thing you're holdin' is able to shoot fire that sticks to shit and burns at...three thousand-somethin' degrees. It's also not allowed to be used in hunting or on livin' things, so I dunno why the government goons let me have a play with it."
"Maybe they just thought that you wouldn't meet any living things?" suggested the girl in front of him, still investigating the shell.
"Maybe, but then why'd they let me bring guns in the first place if they thought I wouldn't meet anythin' that's alive?" Jack asked flatly. "Besides, if they were gonna give me weapons, I'd have expected them to give me somethin' like an M4AK15AR with civilian-seekin' bullets and thermal British soldier lock-on sights or whatever the fuck the Yanks are usin' in the Middle East. It was an American portal I went through, and everyone I'd met before goin' in was American, or a criminal, so I dunno why they let me have whatever the hell I wanted to bring."
"Uh..." Uni put a hand to her chin, leaning forward and slipping the shell back into the bandolier slot, much to Jack's surprise. "Maybe, because they might have known you might not come back, maybe it was a last request?"
"Last request?"
"Yeah. Like, before prisoners are put to death, they're allowed one last meal, and it can be anything they want, no matter how silly. So maybe letting you bring whatever you wanted was the same as a last request!" Jack frowned.
"You think so?" he asked worriedly. "You think they knew I wasn't goin' back?" Now it was Uni's turn to look slightly saddened.
"Uh...maybe?" she said in as reassuring a manner as she could muster. "Besides: You said you had some friends from back home that came through as well, right?"
"Yeah, I guess I did," he nodded. "Why, you think they're wanderin' about somewhere?"
"Well, if you're here, I don't see why they wouldn't be," she replied, shrugging slightly before taking a glance around. The screams had died down, at least, and those Dogoos that hadn't been burned alive were visibly bouncing much faster towards their escape. The ones that had been killed had reverted to naught but piles of caramelized blue gunk that littered the field.
Oh, yeah, the field.
It was pretty much ruined until someone could clean up the mess of sticky, lava-like blue paste. Uni felt pretty sorry for whoever had that wonderful job once they'd left. She turned to look back up at Jack again whilst wearing an awkward. "Uh...I think...we won?"
"So I gathered," he said calmly. "I'd be more confused if you told me we'd fuckin' lost. Must've burned about four hundred of the dirty little bastards." He paused to kick at a small pile of Dogoo slime that resided near his foot, and watched it move with the physical qualities of wallpaper paste. "So...are we done here?"
"Yup!" Uni beamed. "Thanks for the help, by the way: I wouldn't have been able to pull this off alone!" Jack dismissed her praise with a hand as they began walking from the field.
"Ah, no worries," he said casually. "It's part of my duty to your sister to look after you, and help you with whatever it is you need doin', so I could get used to helpin' with this sorta thing."
"Well, I could get used to having your help," Uni smiled. "I mean...yeah, your methods are...extreme, shall we say-"
"At least it wasn't White Phosphorous."
"-and you swear quite a lot-"
"Part of growin' up in a fuckin' English society, can't fuckin' change it."
"-but you're more fun than most of the other guys that my sister grabbed to keep an eye on me. With them, they treated me like I was just a kid!"
"I've learned not to do that," Jack said flatly, arching himself backwards to click his back. "From what I've learned, I'm probably taller than absolutely every single other person in this entire world, so I can't exactly treat people different because of their height. Like, holy shit, have you ever fuckin' seen White Heart? She's bloody tiny! And such a tiny woman could honestly be the most foul-mouthed out of anyone I've met here thus far, so I've seriously learned not to judge people by their heights or apparent ages." He looked down at Uni. "How old are you?"
"Uh...I just turned turned seventeen about ten months ago. My birthday's in a few weeks."
"And yet you look..." Jack squinted slightly as he assessed her. "...yeah, I'd guess you look about your age. How old's your sister? Is she like twenty-somethin'?"
"Oh, yeah, she's a few thousand years old."
"Wait, seriously?" Jack nearly spat put his metaphorical coffee. "Holy shit, she looks great for her age!" He couldn't help but think back to her near perfect figure: She had the kind of body most women would commit mass homicides to have.
"Well, duh!" Uni groaned. "She's immortal, she's gonna look good! She always looks good!"
"So she's always gonna look like a supermodel?"
"Yes."
"Huh. Glad I'm not immortal, then. I'd be stuck lookin' like a miserable prick for all eternity."
"Really? You don't seem that miserable to me."
"Ah, well, that's because I grew up being forced to be happy by my family. Always wanted me to do the best I could, y'know? And then one day...somethin' clicked. Dunno what it was."
"What happened?" Uni couldn't help but ask. He seemed so cheerful now...what changed?
"Well, I dunno, that's the thing. I stopped looking at the world in a positive light. Nothin' was good. Everythin' had a catch. Anybody was capable of anythin'. When I realized that, I realized that since everythin' was shit regardless of how you look at it, there wasn't really that much stoppin' me from takin' the piss out of bad stuff. Terror attacks, celebrities gettin' iced, mass murders, plane crashes...they all have some degree of humour to 'em. I can still pull a pretty bloody convincin' smile: Helped me get top grades in my high-school drama lessons. Teacher said I could easily become a famous actor, but look at me now." Uni raised a brow with a genuine sense of confusion as Jack presented himself, arms wide apart as he paused only to stomp a Dogoo that was still partially alive to death.
She could only think of one question.
"...are you OK? Like, 'up there'?"
Several hours later, at the Basilicom...
"...what do you mean, 'PTSD'?" Noire grimaced over the voice on the phone. "They got rid of the Dogoos, correct?" There was a pause. Uni had taken a corner of Noire's office, and was reading a book. Jack was standing outside on the balcony, hands in his pockets and watching Lastation's sunset. "...but...ugh. Yes...yes, I understand. O-OK, thank you for your call. OK. Bye." Noire put the receiver down, exhaled, and fell back into her chair. "What did you two even do?" she groaned, rubbing a hand onto her forehead in exasperation. Jack, not even turning back from his view off the balcony, raised a hand.
"Fuckin' aced those bastards, is what we did," he replied nonchalantly. "Turns out that burnin' shotgun shells work really fuckin' well against loads of Dogoos." Uni sighed, and didn't look up from her book, although her face did appear troubled.
"He managed to make hundreds of Dogoos start making screaming noises," she explained. "Something about the ammo he was using burning at three thousand or so degrees."
"Fahrenheit?" Noire asked, folding her arms and raising a brow. "That's not that bad. Not even that impressive. So why was that woman complaining that she had trau-?"
"I'd assume Celsius." Uni corrected. Noire nearly screamed.
"WHAT?!"
"Metric beats Imperial, wanker!" Jack cheered back to her, pumping a fist and grinning. "Boo-yah! British temperature unit conversion!"
"You killed Dogoos with bullets that burn at three thousand degrees Celsius?!" Noire didn't relent with her yelling, standing next to Jack and looking up at him with an adorable expression. He stared down at her.
"...you're yellin' at me, aren't you?" he asked genuinely.
"No! No, of course not! That type of ammunition is genius!" squealed the smaller woman in front of him. Uni came up and stood beside her sister, arms wrapped in front of her torso with a book held to her chest. She, too, was smiling, mostly at her sister actually being happy for once. "It's brilliant! We should mass produce it! Sell it in shops for adventurers and hunters! Give it to the army! Anything! How does it work?" Jack was slightly taken aback by the fact Noire was both smiling, and clutching the sides of his arms and staring up into his face with a slightly worrying glint in her eyes.
"Uh..." he murmured. Couldn't exactly scratch his head in this position. "Well...does your army use shotguns? Like, are they common in Gamindustri?"
"My sister has a rifle, if that's anything?" Noire gestured to Uni, who grinned, shut her eyes, and waved.
"Well, a shotgun's different. Instead of shootin' a bullet, they fire lots of tiny bullets at the same time. Like, pellets. Bigger they are, more damage they do. Plus, they're fairly cheap to produce, and do well in huntin' birds, from what I remember. Anyway, the shells can be loaded with pretty much anythin': I watched an internet video where some bloke filled one with hard sweets and blew up a fuckin' melon with it. These ones are loaded with Magnesium, I think," Jack explained, withdrawing the bright orange shell yet again and offering to to Noire to inspect. "The explosion firin' off the shell lights the metal, then it burns at a ridiculously fuckin' high temperature and sticks to whatever it hits. People, birds, the local dog, stray cats, Jehovah's Witnesses, carjackers, the person you're carjackin', robbers, walls, civilians, whatever. Also cooks bacon. Probably." He paused, and looked at the slightly burned barrel of the Mossberg leaning against the balcony rail. "Wouldn't test that one, to be honest."
"It's...genius..." Noire whispered, closely inspecting the round with all the interest of a CSI investigator. Jack continued to stare at her in slight confusion, idly drumming his fingers on the cream-camo ballistic plates adorning his forearms. He'd pretty much gotten used to the weight of the things, plus the ones on his shins, and the body armour on his torso. Few extra kilos here and there, nothing he couldn't handle, but the instructor that had been training him, and the other subjects, for the mission made it very clear that wearing armour often slows you down. He didn't really need to to be told that. Before he was picked, Jack used to sit around, playing video games and living the general life of a young British lad. He was on a day out with his mates when they saw that bloke in the street that was trying to get people to sign up for the 'Extradimensional Discovery Mission' or whatever the fuck it was called at the time. Seeing it as a cause for a laugh later on, Jack, Josh, James, and Luke all just signed right the hell up. Why wouldn't you? Couldn't have been real, could it?
Apparently it was.
And apparently it meant that they were taken from England and sent to Nevada, where they spent a year or so training under the combined teachings of the SAS, GIGN, Marines, Royal Marines, Green Berets, Rangers, and all those other hardass wankers that could probably re-enact Hotline Miami against a fortified nuclear bunker, using only a baseball bat. Needless to say, Jack's fat dropped off pretty damn fast. He also became quite comfortable in dreadful conditions with bad people, especially considering that he had been sent to Nevada (a massive shithole where literally nothing happens) and trained with criminals (people who did lots of things and had lots of tattoos and were trying to not get executed), military personnel (a few of them were too good to have been not already trained in everything), a police officer (thick-skinned motherfucker), a few of his friends (hardly saw them much), and a few more people his age with his mindset (they tended to go along with whatever the bigger guys said they should do, so they were probably gonna end up in crime anyway). Jack, Josh, James, and Luke were favourites of the trainer, probably because they didn't answer back, slack off, or piss about. For Jack, at least, it was pretty much just a good way to get some exercise done and stop being a fat piece of shit.
He cast a glance down to himself. He wasn't in bad shape. He could probably qualify as an athlete, after all that training. Just then, Noire calmly reached forward, placed the Dragon's Breath shell back into the leather ammo belt over his torso, and then took one of the green flechette rounds from his trouser belt. He didn't exactly mind: Having a pretty woman reach towards his crotch wasn't something he couldn't gloat about, but she could have bloody asked first. She began muttering the words on the side of the shell to herself, and Jack knew exactly what she was thinking. "Flechette," he said flatly. "The equivalent of firing nails at people if the nails went through armour and thick skin." Noire nodded in understanding and continued investigating the shell. There was a pause, before Jack smiled slightly. "Y'know, I didn't take you for the kind of person that'd be into this sorta thing." Noire briefly went wide eyed.
"What do you mean?" she asked quickly.
"Well, you just seemed really keen when Uni mentioned what my gun was capable of."
"Th-That's just because it's interesting!" Noire said defensively, straightening up and putting the shell behind her back and donning a more serious face. There was a noticeable red flush adorning her cheeks. It was cute, Jack had to admit. But if he said that out loud she'd probably smash him in the bollocks with her foot, so he didn't say it because of his lack of testicle protection. "I-I just thought it was...cool, that's all! Tactically effective! Yes! That's it!"
"Sure it was..." Jack whistled, putting his hands in his pockets. "Anyway, how're those negotiations comin' along?" Noire perked up a bit, nonchalantly putting the shotgun shell into her bra for safekeeping. Jack would now envy flechette rounds for several days, and had to fight his instincts so as not to reach in and get it out.
"Well, they're going fine, thanks," she replied sharply, folding her arms and smiling. "The first meeting is being held tomorrow afternoon, in Leanbox's basilicom. That's also the changeover day for you."
"Changeover day?" Uni asked.
"Yes; It's the day that Jack is put into the hands of another kingdom, in this case Leanbox." Uni seemed slightly disheartened by this.
"But I thought he was looking after me?" Uni's eyes pricked with tears.
"He is," Noire said quickly, sensing that she couldn't just guilt-trip the fuck out of Jack so soon. "He's...just...on loan. To everyone."
"I help every kingdom, accordin' to my new job description, and every country I go to has a different side job," he said calmly, before smiling down at Uni, crouching slightly and putting a hand on the smaller girl's shoulder. "But so far, lookin' after you is probably the most fun I've had for a very long time." Uni looked up at him, and smiled.
"Really?"
"Yeah, genuinely. Wasn't expectin' the SASGIGNNATOSWATPOLIZEIRANGERSUSMCSBSSPEHSSMEHRINES trainin' to come into practice when I was watchin' over you, but it did, and I'm glad. Plus, I got to play with fire, and have an interestin' conversation." Noire pouted slightly at his comment.
"How did you pronounce that...?" she muttered quietly, one hand on her hip as she looked down slightly in contemplation.
"That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me!" Uni beamed, before rushing forward and, to the surprise of both Noire and Jack, embraced him in a crushing hug, burying her face into his left shoulder. "Thank you...so much..." she whispered. Over her shoulder, he could see Noire shooting him a very sharp glare.
'Repay the gesture of appreciation. NOW.'
Fuck. Jack, carefully, put his gargantuan arms over Uni's back and carefully patted it with one hand. "Uh...no worries..." he said gently. He noted that she was very small. It was like hugging a small woman, although he assumed Uni's height would be normal for Gamindustri. After another awkward few moments, Uni pulled away, smiling.
"Thanks! I needed that!" she beamed. Jack remained silent.
"Yeah, OK. I don't...get it, but...OK, I suppose?"