Ironies and Things That go Bump in the Dark
He is One of Us
Riddick glared at John emotionlessly. "Finally found something worse than me, huh?" He asked.
Johns ignored his question and said "So here's the deal. You work without chains, without bit and without shivs. You do what I say when I say it."
"For what?" Riddick asked looking up at Johns. "The honor of going back to some asshole of a cell? Fuck you!" He responded a touch of anger creeping into his voice.
"The truth is I'm tired of chasing you." Johns lied.
"Are you saying you'd cut me loose?" Riddick asked after a few moments of silence.
"I'm thinking you could've died in the crash." Johns said blandly.
"My recommendation: Do me." Riddick said "Don't take the chance that I'll get shiv-happy on your ass."
"Okay." Johns responded.
"Ghost me mother-fucker. That's what I'd do to you." Riddick finished.
Johns whipped his gun up and fired a blast towards Riddick's head. He ducked slightly and the bullet hit the chains.
"I want you to remember this moment." Johns said pointing the gun at Riddick's face. "How this could've gone and didn't." Johns held out Riddick's goggles to him.
Riddick reached out but instead of taking the goggles he snatched Johns gun from his slack grip and pointed it at him. Johns held his hands up taking a cautious step back.
"Take it easy." Johns muttered.
"Fuck you!" Riddick swore moving the gun closer to Johns' face.
"Do we have a deal?" Johns asked his hands still held up in a 'I surrender' gesture.
"I want you to remember this moment." Riddick said harshly before throwing the gun to the ground and taking his googles from Johns hands. And walked out of the hold.
Sakura was showing Jack the handseals needed to move chakra if one didn't have perfect chakra control when the whole group heard a bang.
Sakura turned her head to the side. She didn't smell any blood so no one was injured. She turned back to Jack and quickly corrected her boar handseal which she was holding backwards trying to imitate what Sakura had shown her.
Jack tried to form the seal by herself a few times getting faster each time she did so.
"Practice that seal for a while and I'll show you another when we leave for the settlement." Sakura promised absently moving towards where Riddick had just appeared out of the hold.
The rest of the group was grabbing supplies.
"You guys know I can use a jutsu to carry all of the cells?" Sakura asked. "It would be better just incase something bad pops up, such as those things underground." Sakura finished. Johns immediatly tried to say no but Frye agreed before he could finish the words. Sakura quickly made a sealing scroll and sealed four cells in it. "Do you think four will be enough?" Sakura asked.
"We don't know. It sounds good enough though." Fry said.
Sakura slipped the small scroll into a pouch hiding it completely from view.
They trecked across the dessert like landscape.
Riddick was traveling in the back with everyone else bunched ahead of him. Fry, Owens, Imam, and his kids were traveling in the front. Johns was walking with Shazza who was complaining about Riddick joining the group. Jack asked if she could talk to him now and was quickly refuted. She huffed as she dropped back to walk beside Sakura who was only slightly ahead of Riddick.
"You can talk to him." Sakura granted her permission. "You are my apprentice, thus they have no say over what you can and cannot do." She said loudly enough for Johns and Shazza to hear. Both turned to glare at her but made no other remark.
Paris was just behind Johns and Shazza and dropped a bottle out of his bag. He scrabbled backwards to grab it but just as he reached for it Riddick grabbed it.
"Paris P. Ogilvie. Antiquities dealer, entrepreneur." He introduced
"Richard B. Riddick. Escaped convict, murderer." Riddick answered shaking Paris' hand. Paris uncomfortably withdrew his hand.
Riddick popped the top of the bottle.
"That's - That's a particularly good Shiraz. It's- It's a lovely drop." Paris stuttered nervously.
Riddick brought the bottle to his lips and began to drink it.
"It's-It's very expensive." Paris tried again. "By all means, please help yourself." He said just as Riddick finished the last of it. He hurried away back to the saftey of the front.
Sakura chuckled. Dropping back so both herself and her apprentice were next to Riddick.
Jack chattered excitedly to Riddick and he bore the chatter with the patience of a saint. Apparently he liked kids, who knew. Sakura watched out of the corner of her eye as Riddick and Jack interacted. She knew Jack had a small hero worship for Riddick. And Riddick was allowing her to chatter away without interuption.
The reached the abanddoned settlement around half an hour later. Owens became exausted about halfway there and had to be helped by Frye and Imam.
Imam and his boys immediately went off to fix the water condenser and Owens went to lay down on one of the abanddoned beds. The walk had obviously took a lot out of him and Sakura couldn't help but feel sympathetic to his plight.
The rest of the group gathered around the ship that they were planning to fix up to get off this hell-hole of a planet. 'And to think,' Sakura thought to herself 'I used to hate going to Sunagakure. This place is about twenty times as bad.'
"I mean normally I can appreciate antiques..." Paris was saying. "But this, this is something else." He ended with a snort of mild disgust as he took another drink of his ever present booze.
"It'll work." Johns assured arrogantly.
"It's nothing we can't repair so-long as the electrical adapts." Frye announced as she and Jack came from inside of the ship.
"Well, it's not a star-jumper." Shazza said doubtfully.
"It doesn't need to be." Riddick announced much to the surprise of the rest of the group. "Take a two-seater like this back up to the Sol-Track shipping lanes. Stick out a thumb, bound to get picked up." He had his arms casually clasped behind his back like a innocent child tends to do, only there was nothing innocent about Riddick. "Ain't that right, captain?" He added looking towards Frye for her answer.
"Can I have a little help here?" Frye asked quickly changing the subject.
Riddick approached casually even as Paris tried to pick up one of the power cells that Sakura had unsealed as soon as they got there.
Johns quickly side tracked Riddick ordering him to find something to patch the wings. Of course he worded it a little more innocently than an order. Riddick shrugged walking off to look through the various containers as ordered. If he found a few things he could use later and pocketed them, well no one would know anyway.
Sakura instantly went off on her own to see if she could find any food for the undoubtably long trip ahead of them. Even if no one else realized it, they would need food to survive. Especially because the little ship didn't have cryo.
She managed to find a few cans of vegetables and fruits that weren't out of date or rusted. She also managed to find a hand operated can opener. She also found stuff that had gone bad ages ago, mostly products that had expiration dates. She had carefully sealed the different foods into scrolls when she heard the group calling for her.
"Medic-chick!"
"Sakura!"
"Sakura-sensei!" The last voice was Jack's.
Sakura shushinned to their location and both Johns and Frye looked at her with something akin to distrust. Probabily because she let Jack talk with Riddick earlier and because what she told Frye about being more dangerous than Riddick.
Sakura shrugged, she was used to being viewed with distaste. It had been a common look when the others had seen she was still perfectly healthy after all of the poisons and weapons they tried to throw at her.
She brushed past them and followed her student into one of the abandonned houses. Apparently Imam and his boys had managed to get the water distiller to work. There was a tray full of filled glasses waiting for them. Imam muttered praises for his god.
Jack pulled her googles off of her face and took a glass.
Paris looked at him and then double taked. Johns and Frye also gave her a weird look.
"What?" Jack demanded.
"It's the winner of the look alike contest." He said with a joking grin.
Sakura took a glass and murmered a graceful "Kampai." even if it wasn't an alcoholic drink. The rest looked at her curiously.
"That's Japanese, right?" Owens asked exaustion clear on his features even if he was interested.
"Hai. Yes." Sakura corrected herself as she unconsciously slipped into her native tongue.
"What's it mean?" He followed up.
"Kampai means 'cheers' and hai means 'yes'." Sakura explained even as she unconsciously scanned the room noticing something was missing but she couldn't put her finger on it.
"Who were these people anyway?" Paris asked.
Shazza shrugged. "I dunno. Looks like geologists. You know, an advanced team, moves around from rock to rock looking for ore."
"Nice of them to leave so much stuff here." Frye said. "Why'd they leave their ship?"
"It's not a ship, it's a skift and it's disposable really." Johns corrected.
"Sort of like an emergancy life raft then?" Paris asked.
"Yeah, they probabily had a big drop ship take them off the planet." Shazza tried to comfort both the group and herself.
Sakura, Jack and Riddick snorted.
"These people didn't leave. Come on. Whoever got Zeke got them. They're all dead." Riddick said bluntly. "You don't really think they left with their clothes on the hooks, photos on the shelves."
"Maybe they had weight limits. You don't know." Shazza said contridicting Riddick mostly on principle than any real belief in what she said.
"I know you don't prep your emergancy ship unless there's a fucking emergancy." He countered sharply, without even showing any emotion.
"He's fucking right." Jack said.
"Watch your mouth." Johns ordered.
"He's just saying what we're all thinking." Frye told Johns before turning to Riddick. "So what happened? Where are they?"
Suddenly Sakura realized what had been worrying her. "Where's the littlest one?" She asked just as Imam came in and asked roughly the same question.
"Has anyone checked the coring room?" Riddick's question was answered by nothing but silence.
Almost summoned by the question Ali's terror filled scream broke the silence.
Everyone jumped to their feet as they turned the direction of the scream.
"Ali!" Imam cried out in worry.
Sakura shushinned to the coring room door and quickly shattered the hard metal with a chakra laced punch. It fell with a crash. A bunch of pain filled screechs filled the air as the room was flooded with more sun light. Ali screamed in fear as the creatures grew even more freenzed.
Sakura was knocked on her ass by some of the less intelligent ones. They were quickly dead. Sakura quickly grabbed Ali around the chest throwing him out of the coring room into the bright sunlight. She killed several more of the little creatures before they retreated down the mine shaft into the comfort of darkness.
Imam had managed to wrap Ali in a comforting hug even as the hysteric boy ranted something in Arabic.
Johns ignored both Ali and Imam as he examined the broken door.
"What the Hell are you?" He accused Sakura harshly.
The rest of the group turned to look at her as well. But only Johns had a condeming look, the rest were just curious.
"What am I?" Sakura repeated softly. "Well I guess I should tell you. I'm..."
A/N: I know, I know. I am completely evil. And I'm holding the next chapter for ransom (as soon as I write it). jk jk. I'll get the next chapter out as soon as possible. Please review. Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, PLEASE?"