Disclaimer: I own very little within.
Sorry for slow updates.
Pete led the way into the first house they could find. The door was leaning off of its hinges, and the inside smelled like dust and mildew. It seemed like it used to be a nice house, a nice two-story one; the couches had ripped leather and the smashed TV was a plasma screen. "I'll look in the cupboard,"
Andy flicked on a light switch, just out of curiosity, and to his surprise, light flooded the room from the ceiling lights. "Hey! Still works."
"Doesn't make anything look any better…" Patrick murmured.
Pete opened a dusty cupboard and immediately found a plethora of heavy cans. He stumbled past the boiled peanuts and canned green beans in 'liquid' and grabbed a can of condensed milk and another of ravioli.
"Uh, I don't eat meat, remember?" Andy pointed to the ravioli. "We already have like, five cans of that stuff."
"Pfft. How much real meat do you think is in this?"
"There's not a lot of clutter on the floor," Joe pointed out. "What do you think they were thinking when they ransacked this house?"
"Who?" Pete asked.
"Dunno. Whoever ransacked it."
"Probably just to take small valuables and smash any too big for them to carry, like the TV."
"WAIT. What was that?" Patrick said loudly.
"Me," Pete said, plunking another can of something.
"No, voices!"
"…Me."
"No! Just be quiet for a minute!"
They obeyed, listening to the sounds of the normally silent night. But at the moment, voices drifted over to them from outside.
"Wait. I just caught my name!" Patrick whispered.
Andy looked up. "And mine! And Pete's!"
"And mine?" Joe asked, more hope in his voice than curiosity.
"Oh no! The RV! DUH!" Patrick sounded worried. He went over to a wall to lean against it. "I should've gotten it parked somewhere out of view!"
"Man, quit whining and SHUT UP!" Pete strained to hear the voices, but it wasn't as hard anymore, considering that the voices were coming closer (but really, aren't we all ready for some action again?). Pete knew his comment to Patrick was one of the least comforting things he could have said, and all Patrick probably needed for reassurance was one, maybe two "we'll-be-fine"s, but he really didn't have the patience or experience to be giving those out like gift bags full of designer clothing comps.
The next thing to happen was quite the inciting incident. A skinny, good-looking man with a wave of long black hair carefully removed the door from its hinges, making sure to not do so much as brush dust off of it, then gave it a good hard boot, sending it nearly fifteen feet away. He was accompanied by three other men, one with his brunette hair in short spikes, another with black hair almost as long as the first, and the third with a shorter dark cut. They all had identical black outfits and katanas at their side.
Joe gave each a once-over. "Uh, sorry, is this your house?"
The first turned to the last to enter. "Tomo, field this question,"
'Tomo' nodded. "Not our house."
"And there you have it."
"You're weird. Go away." Pete turned back to the cans, not caring that they had swords, or that standard etiquette for people you don't know does not include insults and giving orders.
"And you're Pete, so we won't be going. At least not yet."
"We'll be going in a little while, though," another added.
"And you'll be coming with us, probably unconscious," Tomo chimed in.
"Fun fact: Our fights last an average of 30 seconds."
"It might take less if you spend less time combing your hair first, dude," Pete said to their leader's glossy black locks. Joe and Andy laughed, while Patrick shot Pete 'why-are-you-pissing-off-armed-scary-people?' look, and Pete just rolled his eyes instead of forcing too much emotion in to a single look.
Without warning, the leader drew his sword in a threatening fashion. "Hi, I'm Jared!"
"I'm Shannon!" The second said, also drawing his sword.
"Fun fact: I'm Tomo!" The third added, doing the same.
"I'm Tim!" The fourth.
Pete narrowed his dark eyes. "Why are you just rattling off your names randomly in some kind of organized pattern… that's not entirely organized? What do you think you're doing, a musical number?" Joe and Andy laughed again, and Patrick's finely polished look of distress gained strength.
They ignored the insults. Even though they were obviously there to fight, for some odd reason, Jared looked determined to make pleasant conversation that didn't result in an insult. "Did you know that altogether we have made two hundred and ninety nine poses with these swords?"
"You'd reach the three-hundred mark if you counted shoving them up your asses," Joe pointed out quietly, making Pete, Andy, Patrick, and Tim laugh.
"Enough of this!" Out of nowhere, Jared charged Pete with his katana out. He tried to make a side slice, but Pete blocked it with the sole of his sneaker. Jared pushed him against the counter, smashing it in half.
"AH! Hey!" Andrew whipped out both rapiers at the same time. "Get away from us!" He thrusted one rapier forward, and a computerized voice in it added, "You have: 3 new messages." "Stupid rapier."
"Dibs on the swordsman!" Tim pulled out a strange-looking weapon; a long metal rod and then a shorter, thinner one attached parallel to it.
"What kind of sword is that?" Andy asked.
"What kind is yours? Messages? Is it an iSword or a qSaber or something?"
"Can I take this one?" Tomo pointed to Joe.
Shannon, feeling slightly left out by everyone getting their own special opponent, pouted and turned to Patrick. "I guess that leaves you. You're my victim."
Patrick had regained his state of mind, conquering fear, and stood up, brushing house-dust off of his hoodie. "I don't know if I should be freaked by the content of what you said or insulted by the tone."
----------
"Yike!" Pete narrowly avoided getting sliced across the back by a sword, and barely managed to dodge another high slice as he tried to turn around. He was able to dodge every one of his opponent's moves but it was close each time. Pete only had speed to judge, but at the moment, they seemed to be equals.
"Ack!" Pete ducked, and Jared's sword went through a glass front cupboard. Closer to the ground, he kicked Jared's legs out from under him.
Jared brought Pete down fully on the ground with him, and stabbed his katana at Pete's skull. Of course, Pete moved his head in time, but the result of this was that he was pinned to the ground by the hood of his sweatshirt. IT was pretty far down towards the neck, too; too good of a pin to be coincidence. Jared smiled smugly, confirming that pinning Pete was his intent.
"Uh-oh! No! Dammit!" Pete fumbled with the handle, trying not to get his fingertips all diced up. Also, the sword was at an odd angle for his arms, so getting a good grip was difficult. But snapped back to reality and found a loophole in Jared's plan. "Now you don't have a weapon if you have to use this just to hold me down!"
Jared only continued smiling. He pulled out a pair of gloves from what was probably a compartment in the back of his very thin layer of armor. The gloves were tipped with spikes that made a show of being sharp and shiny, making them look like some sort of medieval torture device.
"Nooo… way…" Pete stared at them. He tried to pull harder on his hood to escape the sword. But this was getting hard for him to do, difficulty increasing with every tug. Due to the placement of the sword being so close to the back of the neckline, pulling any more on the purple hoodie would be pressing on his windpipe, and besides, it was a really good hoodie.
"You don't like them? But the claws are all shiny…"
----------
"EEEEYYYYAAAAAAAAHHHH!" Shannon jumped onto a table, and then jumped toward Patrick with his sword above his head. Patrick, surprised, jumped to the side as he pulled out his new stake crossbow.
"Why are you yelling?! And why didn't you just jump at me directly?!"
"I LIKE YELLING AND JUMPING!" Shannon yelled as he jumped at him again. But when he came back down, Patrick gave him a swift kick to the stomach, knocking him back a bit. When he came back up, Patrick had a loaded crossbow an inch from his opponent's nose.
"Wow…" He stared into the point of stake, not fazed by one of the very few things in the world that could kill him. "You are turning out to be a better opponent than I expected."
Patrick's face lit up like a Christmas tree. "Really? Cool!"
"But I've still had better,"
THWICK was the strange, weirdly loud sound of Patrick swiping the tip of the crossbow stake across Shannon's nose.
CRICK was the equally strange, loud sound of Shannon chopping off the pointy tip of the stake with his katana.
When he brought his katana down again, Patrick used the crossbow as a shield, causing a shower of sparks. Shannon swiftly kicked him in the face. Patrick stumbled back, yelping in pain as he grabbed his nose.
"Give up?"
"After one kick? What do you take me for?" Patrick, regaining his balance, was trying to stop the blood flowing out of his nose with his hands, only making them dirty.
The bounty hunter let Patrick straighten himself up only to hold up a small hand grenade.
Patrick gaped. "Wuh… what the…?! WHY A HAND GRENADE?!"
"Why not?"
"Enclosed spaces, MAYBE?!" Patrick gestured to the room in general. Everyone else was noisily battling alongside him downstairs, stumbling in and out of the den and attached kitchen and living room.
"Meh."
"'MEHHH'?!"
"Yup, meh."
----------
"RRR!" Joe tackled Tomo to the ground. Simple, yet effective.
"UWAH!" His opponent shouted in surprise.
They both went hurtling backwards, and before they both completely lost their footing, Joe had turned them both to the side just in time for them to crash into a glass-fronted china cabinet.
Somehow over where his fight was, Pete looked over at the crash. He was awkwardly holding Jared's katana (he obviously has no clue how to hold a sword) and held it up, pointed at Jared's jugular. "What was that? Joe?!"
"Oww-ww!" Joe covered his head with his arms and dropped to the floor. They were covered in a long-sleeved navy tee, but that didn't stop all the shards of glass from getting through.
Tomo let out a long groan of pain as he yanked a piece of red rose-patterned teacup out of his skull. "Damn!"
"OUCH! I instantly regret doing that!" Joe lifted himself up. He was a mess; bloody arms with tiny glass-made cuts and blood dripped down the sides of his face from cuts on the side of his forehead. The cuts were small but many and the stinging pain was great, enough so that Joe considered making more general noises of pain, but decided the element of surprise was on his side if he didn't. So he instead opted for trying to tackle Tomo again, but Tomo staggered away from the attack, due to the unrelated cause of pulling pieces of plate out of his knee.
Tomo gawked at Joe staggering past him. "You would try that again after what happened the first time?" He grinned as he removed the last major piece of porcelain from his neck. "You could almost be one of us." He drew his katana, but as soon as he did he seemed to slide into a stupor, lazily waving the katana at Joe and staggering vaguely toward and to the left of him.
"You gotta be kiddin' me," Joe laughed. "Let me guess, brain damage?" Tomo replied with an unfocused grin, but then he dashed forward with a sudden burst of unreal speed, slashing a shallow cut in Joe's side. "CRAP!" Joe grabbed his bleeding side and looked over his shoulder at the vampiric bounty hunter. Tomo still hadn't turned back toward Joe, and was staggering drunkenly again. Suddenly, Tomo shouted and sped backward, flashing his katana back so it would stab Joe in the spine. However, Joe was ready, and he leapt away and kicked Tomo in the head. Tomo fell to one knee, his head down. "Ha!" Joe laughed. "Nice trick, but how long do you expect it to work?"
Tomo looked up at Joe, his eyes not quite focusing and a bit of blood dribbling down his chin. "It works long enough to kill… 77 percent of the time." He dashed forward from his crouching position. Joe jumped back and landed on a card table, but Tomo continued his dash and sliced the front two legs of the table. The table fell forward, and so did Joe… right into Tomo's waiting grip, throat-first. Tomo lifted Joe in a chokehold, and held back his sword. "After you, it'll be 84 percent."
Joe slammed a rib-crushing kick into Tomo's chest, causing the swordsman to stumble back and release him. Joe backflipped and landed on the now-diagonal surface of the card table, pushed off, and leapt toward Tomo in a karate kick just as he began to regain his balance. "Here's a tip… percentages won't get you far in a fight!" Joe slammed his foot into Tomo's face, sending him back into a full-length mirror. Joe regained his footing, not caring whose bad luck it was, and kicked out at Tomo's face again. Tomo grabbed Joe's foot, twisted it, and threw Joe across the room and onto the kitchen counter. "I feel like meat or something and I'm about to go into a stew…"
----------
Andy thrust one rapier toward his opponent; when he dodged, he shot out the other. Neither hit Tim.
Andy decided that the five minutes or so he had taken just general fighting-style milling around was getting boring.
It was time for a hyper-speed mental Q & A. Patrick always told the others that they sometimes have to ask themselves what their abilities limited them to do, what they could do about any current situation, what the outcome would be, and all sorts of other smart-sounding, Patrick-related crap that the other three had usually stopped paying to attention to what he was saying by then anyway.
Question: Why is this taking so long?
Answer: He's good.
Question: So how do we get ourselves out of this stupid fight and win?
Answer: Let's switch opponents with the others! Yeah, that makes sense!
Andy, satisfied with the good idea, caught sight of the nearest small battle: Joe's.
He jumped to Tim's side and tried to slice him with the fastest blows he could give, forcing his opponent to back up just to dodge. Finally, when he had him at a precise spot, he kicked him and Tim went falling backwards into Joe. They both stumbled onto a dusty end table and white linen-shaded lamp, breaking them both.
"Uhn!" Joe grunted. "ANDY!" he managed to yell under Tim's weight, without having once seen Andy. With that, he kicked Tim in the side, who rolled away from Joe.
Tim gave Joe a dirty look. "Don't KICK-" (kick to Joe's leg) "-me! It's his fault!" He pointed at Andy.
Andy sliced off the tip of his finger with the rapier in his right hand.
"AAAAAGH!" He waved his finger, accompanied by a rush of blood, around as if he won a prize in a spelling bee (but with a look of pain instead of triumph).
A few dark droplets landed on Tomo's face. "HEY! Why'd you do that? Do you KNOW how many Americans have an STD transferable through body fluids?!"
"AAAGH YES I DO!"
Joe's tone was quieter when he got up and faced Andy (despite the fact that he was a few inches taller). "Dude, what are you doing?! My guy is tough!"
"So? Mine is, too!"
"So WHY are you making him fight ME, TOO?! It still doesn't make any sense!"
"Wait- I have a plan. Watch this." Andy tossed one of his rapiers across the room, nearly grazing Patrick's fighter and embedding the sword into some sort of wood beam attached to the ceiling and floor (it snapped in half despite being ten inches thick, probably weakened from the old, moldy house). Shannon turned and stared at it, as if wondering if his hand grenades suddenly had rapiers attached to them.
Patrick turned. "Andy!" he mouthed silently.
"I have a plan! Keep fighting! Attract Pete's attention!" Andy imitated his mouthing, pointing at Pete for the last part. Jared had somehow shoved Pete into the refrigerator and was trying to shut it on him (with Pete, not an easy task).
Patrick stood with a blank look on his face. He wasn't that good at reading lips and Andy spoke fast. I gave flan? Beep… something that starts with an 'f'? Erect Pete's detention?
But Patrick didn't need to figure it out. Jared had realized that everyone was fighting with everyone else except him. And that was enough to get him to abandon Pete for the sake of being involved. Jared jumped off the kitchen counter and directly on to Patrick, bringing them both immediately to the floor.
"What ARE you DOING?!" Pete shouted. He swiftly darted over the counter and yanked Jared off Patrick by grabbing his shoulders.
"What are you doing? Stop groping him!" Shannon lunged for Pete and had him against the wall in an instant. He threw him against the wall with enough force that he broke another wooden beam like the one Andy's rapier broke, but that one was nearly in the center of the room.
"I wasn't groping him, GET OFF OF ME!"
Joe looked over at the fight, increasing in noise level, and noticed Patrick lifting himself up, dazed after being attacked out of the blue and then ignored. He also noticed Pete, who was pinned with his flailing arms against the wall and Jared lunging towards him, sword out.
"Hey!" Joe jumped over the destroyed table from his scuffle with Tomo and tripped Jared, who landed on Shannon, freeing Pete. "No two-against-ones!"
Tim threw an empty, heavy, wooden laundry basket at Joe, who kicked it to knock it away. It went flying across the room into yet another old, ugly, weak wood beam. It snapped (it was a bad day for wooden beams). "Two against one is only as bad as tripping someone after attacking them from behind!"
"You just did the same!" Andy shouted at him.
"HE WAS WATCHING ME!"
"NO, HE WASN'T!" Pete jumped over Jared and Shannon, who were getting into an argument of their own.
"Why did you fall on to me? I had him pinned! You could've knocked him out!" Shannon said.
"How I was supposed to know that some guy would just come and stick his foot out in front of me?!" Jared shouted.
For some reason of his own, in a quick movement, Andy shoved Tim (still bleeding from his finger) into Jared and Shannon. Tim broke up their little argument, only to get himself hit in the head by Shannon.
While they yelled at each other, Pete suddenly reached across and pointed at Jared's neck. "Hey, sorry for interrupting. What's that?" It was a small glass vial full of what looked like blood.
The argument was silenced. Jared held it up for Pete to see closer. "It's virgin blood. How awesome is that?"
Pete smirked. "It really is awesome," Patrick was whispering something to Andy while pointing to Tim. Pete waved to get his attention. "Hey, 'Trick!"
"What?" Besides the talking, an eerie quiet hung over the room.
"He has a necklace full of VIRGIN BLOOD!"
Patrick knit his thin eyebrows in confusion for a quick second, wondering what this had to do with him. But then it was as if someone had plugged in a light bulb behind his eyes. "Ohhh. Cool. About how much does he have, out of curiosity?"
Jared answered without missing a beat. "I would say anywhere between fifty to seventy-five milliliters."
"Okay…" Pete stood, still. Then lunged forward and yanked the necklace off of Jared's neck, knowing enough to run across the living room afterwards.
"HEY!" Jared accidentally hit Tim in the eye as he got up.
"ACK! JARED!" He punched Jared in the stomach, knocking him to the side.
Tomo finally stepped in. "Uh, guys?! Forgetting something?!" He was referring to the mission.
A brawl that may as well have been in a bar broke out between the bounty hunters. Pete watched, off to the side, clutching an ingredient to his dear cure. He was smiling, showing just a bit of fang, at the whole scene. Andy and Joe walked over to Pete just as Patrick crawled out from the other side of the tussle and stumbled over to Andy and Joe.
Joe's mouth dropped. "What the hell were you DOING? Are you crazy?!"
Just as Patrick opened his mouth to answer, putting something in his pocket, a thunder-loud creak erupted in the whole house. Pete, Patrick, Joe, and Andy froze and looked up at the ceiling with curious looks, but Jared, Shannon, Tomo, and Tim were too busy throwing punches to even notice.
"Uh…" Patrick looked up at the ceiling as a stream of dust leaked down.
"Now would be a good time to leave!" Joe ran out, and the others followed.
------
Andy was speechless as they watched the house collapse on the bounty hunters. He hadn't realized TRULY how dusty it was until the cloud that seemed to come up from the ruin was gray. He saw this a few seconds late, though, as he shielded his glasses from the dirt. Upon taking his hand away, he looked at Pete (the only one next to him) and saw that he wasn't even blinking much, hands on his hips as if waiting for the house to fall was making him late for some sort of important appointment.
Immediately after it cleared, Pete turned on his heels. "Let's get going," The others followed without protest.
After walking for only about ten seconds, Patrick stopped short and hit his forehead with his palm, knocking his navy cap back a bit. "UGH! The food! I totally forgot!"
"Don't fret; I've got it!" Andy was smiling, and, Patrick realized for he first time, had his hands full of a can-filled plastic bag. The weight of the cans was stretching the bag, and it looked near ripping.
Patrick smiled back, almost at a loss for words. "… oh my GOD! You ARE fast! How the hell did you…?!"
Andy shrugged. "Didn't take that long,"
"And look!" Pete held up the glass, blood-filled, robbed pendant. "I got the virgin blood for the cure!"
"Great!" Andy showed enthusiasm.
Patrick nodded, and it came as a small surprise to Andy that he didn't then rattle off the other ingredients they still needed. He probably didn't remember. But that was okay; Andy liked the occasional reminder that Patrick didn't know everything. "And I got this," Patrick held up a small test tube also full of blood. "The only other thing I remembered from the list that we didn't have was the blood of five vampires. I also remembered that we predicted that you and the Dark Priest wouldn't count, since you're taking the cure, so we decided to get five other vampires' blood." His eager grin faded. "But this is the only one we have. We need more. And fast."
Joe ignored the last part of what he said. "So, that's what you were doing at the bottom of that dog pile. Getting blood!"
Patrick nodded again. "Maybe next time we tussle with those VFBI – if there is a next time – we can get some from them."
"Yeah!" Joe paused. "Hey, wait. Andy rescued food…"
Andy wiggled the bag.
"Patrick got vampire blood…"
Patrick raised an eyebrow, wondering where Joe was going with this.
"And Pete got the virgin blood…"
"What's your point?" Pete crossed his arms.
"What can I do to help us out?!" Joe stomped his foot in frustration.
"You can shave your beard next time we get to town. There's something nesting in it."