A/N: Alright, as (not really) promised, a double update. Yay! And the villagers rejoice...

Thank you to the reviewers, you guys continue to impress.

Beta'd by Greg, a huge thanks to him. You all can mostly thank him for the double update, he pushed very hard for it for you guys, and also partially thank WhisperMaw because I don't want her to fail any tests.

Read.

IV.

There were two people in the 2nd Mass that Jimmy respected above and beyond anyone else, and at the moment, they were both peering at him with dark, narrowed, hawk-eyed stares. Captain Weaver stood at the forefront, hands on his hips and chin tilted down; he swept an inspective gaze over the young boy standing at attention before him.

In the background, Dai had his arms folded across his chest and his mouth pressed into a thin lined frown. He probably wouldn't be contributing much to the conversation that was about to be held, and Jimmy wasn't sure how he felt about that. Sometimes Dai was hard to read. Sometimes, meaning, all the time.

Jimmy's disappointment at learning he wouldn't be playing very large a role in the preparations for the upcoming attack, which probably meant he wouldn't be playing a large role in the attack itself either, was quickly replaced by disconcertment. Nervousness gnawed away in his stomach and, almost subconsciously, he bit into his inner cheek, chewing the usually tender gum there, ragged from so much worrying. He focused on keeping his back straight, his arms like rigid poles at his sides, his chest puffed out, as he waited for whatever new disappointment the captain was about to drop on his head.

"How you been feeling these days, Jimmy?" Weaver spoke, and Jimmy just about bowled over. Seriously, he had to 'stay after class' because Weaver wanted to check up on his well-being?

"I'm…fine, sir," Jimmy said carefully, eying the two men in front of him. Dai had moved to the desk and was shuffling through papers there, mostly maps of the area, a few photographs of the structure Jimmy assumed they were planning to attack. Weaver dropped his eyes to the ground and nodded.

"Good, good," Weaver muttered, and then commented, "Dr. Glass said you healed up pretty nicely from that little warehouse adventure of yours a few weeks back."

Jimmy shifted his weight uncomfortably from foot-to-foot, absently running a hand over his outer right thigh, which sported the most prominent of his injuries from the 'warehouse adventure' Weaver was talking about. In short, Jimmy had blown himself up for reasons, in retrospect, he wasn't entirely clear on – protect the 2nd Mass or protect Ben, he still couldn't decide which had prompted his finger to push that button. Somehow he'd survived to spend two days wandering lost and luckily collapsed before he could get too far for the 2nd Mass search parties to find.

Jimmy had only just had the stitches removed from his leg and shoulder, an unrelated injury exacerbated by the explosion, a week ago, and it still bothered him to stand for too long, though he'd never tell anyone for fear Weaver might decide to lighten his responsibilities as a fighter, or maybe even take him off as a fighter altogether. Just like he didn't tell anyone about his bouts of vertigo, his recent lethargy, the phantom ache in his shoulder and spasms of pain in his back, or that he'd blacked out the other day in one of the showers of the locker rooms that were adjacent to the community center pool. He didn't sleep much and his body had been put through hell even before the aliens attacked, he didn't need a diagnosis from Dr. Glass to figure out what was wrong with him, and he didn't need to be taken off the battlefield because of it.

To the end of the war or until the day he died, Jimmy had vowed to fight; no one and nothing could change that.

"Yes, sir," Jimmy confirmed Weaver's statement.

The doctor had been impressed with how quickly Jimmy managed to heal, commenting on the malleability of youth, but considering he shouldn't have been alive at all, because being trapped in an explosion then crushed under a collapsed building tended to kill, Dr. Glass had decided it wasn't out of line to chock Jimmy's survival and speedy recovery up to a miracle and leave it at that.

"Good, glad to hear it," Weaver said, nodding his head as he spoke, "You're all healed up, your spirits seem high. Your patrols have been good; you and Ben are working together well."

"Yes, we are, sir," Jimmy quietly answered the captain's unasked question, hiding the smile that wanted to form at the other boy's name, as he shrugged and sheepishly explained, "We understand each other."

"I see that," Weaver remarked, smirking, "You two are almost inseparable these days. It's good for him to have a genuine friend, someone he can rely on, someone that trusts him. He's got too many people on him all the time, making things hard, and given everything he's been through and all that he does for the 2nd Mass, he deserves to have at least one person here that appreciates him outside of his brothers."

Jimmy nodded, ducking his head a bit to hide the slight blush creeping across his cheeks. Weaver didn't know exactly how Jimmy showed his appreciation of Ben, and the older man was probably better off for it. He could feel Dai's bemused stare though and fidgeted nervously because of it.

Dai had glimpsed at least one kiss between Jimmy and Ben, Jimmy knew because the young man had made mention of it in the form of warning, keep out of the storage rooms, Cheryl's been doing random checks.

Cheryl was a middle-aged, busy-bodied civilian woman that usually organized civilian responsibilities around camp, but she had also, at some point, designated herself chief of the morality police. Because they lived in such chaotic times, complete societal collapse coupled with the abundance of unsupervised children, holding on to whatever civilities they could seemed important to the older generations, and Cheryl took it upon herself to ensure that the children were straddled with at least some puritanical decency.

Needless to say, many of the things Jimmy and Ben had done in those storage closets didn't exactly fall under the definition of puritanical, but after much practice, they were definitely becoming decent at it.

"I know you're disappointed you won't be going with him out there," Weaver said. Nail-on-the-head. It seemed Jimmy's impeccable ability to read the old man went both ways.

"Whatever's best for the 2nd Mass, sir," Jimmy murmured, half-heartedly.

"I thought you might say that," Weaver replied, "That's one of the things that makes you such a good fighter, Jimmy, always willing to sacrifice selfish desires for the good of the group."

Jimmy scowled, it was begrudging at times, but yes, he would always make the choices he knew benefited the 2nd Mass first and foremost. No matter how much it hurt to know that this was how highly the captain had come to think of him, that he wasn't good enough to go with Ben, or even with Maggie. He was just like every other shit-fighter that had yet to prove their salt, and it just figured, his whole life he'd been told he was worthless, and now, more so than ever, that statement seemed to be holding true.

"If I'm needed on patrols," Jimmy began glumly, "Then I guess that's where I have to be…"

"That's why I wanted to talk to you, son," Weaver interjected, "I don't need you on patrols."

Jimmy felt like someone had reached in his chest and ripped out his heart, he couldn't bring himself to look up at the captain, it hurt too much. The captain and Dai, the two men whose opinions of him he held in the highest esteem, didn't even want him out on patrols, a job that's only real requirement was being able to stay awake.

"I have a different job for you," Weaver declared.

Jimmy's brow quirked, tentatively, he glanced up at the old man through strands of brown hair falling into his downcast face. Weaver was smirking down at him, there was an odd expression in those weathered line, something like pride, and for the first time in a long time, Jimmy wasn't entirely certain how to interpret the old man.

"Dai and I have been throwing around a lot of ideas lately, talking about the future of the 2nd Mass...if we can even be so bold as to believe we've got much of a future," Weaver said, and Jimmy watched him as he paced a few times, talking in a low and haggard voice, "Well, we keep coming back to this one idea which, for the most part, seems too crazy, but sometimes crazy works, if you understand my meaning."

"Not even remotely, sir."

Captain Weaver cracked a smile and Jimmy smirked faintly in return, feeling a little lost and slightly frustrated. Not only did it seem he wouldn't be playing any real role in the upcoming mission, it was starting to sound like he would also be serving as a guinea pig of some sort. This had to be a cruel joke, any moment now the other fighters would all burst out and scream 'surprise', but then again, he was still waiting for the whole alien invasion thing to be revealed as nothing more than an elaborate reality TV show prank, so either way he wasn't holding his breath, instead he just hoped for the captain to get to a point and soon.

"I'll make this quick, so here's the rundown. For a while now, some of the kids that had been unharnessed have expressed interests in becoming fighters. Problem is I haven't had anyone that could train them; shooting, tactics, battle strategy, you know, the basics. Hal was more than happy to teach Ben, but…well, he's got other concerns," Weaver started pacing again as he spoke, and Jimmy recognized the movement in the other man, it was the way he got when he felt anxious about something, but his voice was all passion, "Understandably, I don't have any other fighters willing to do it…most fighters aren't thrilled about Ben being out there as it is."

"Understandably," Jimmy scoffed. There was nothing 'understandable' about it, as far as he was concerned. Ben had proven himself thrice over, how many more times did he have to save the 2nd Mass before they all got it through their thick-heads he wasn't an alien double-agent?

"I know your feelings on the subject, Jimmy, so let's just skip that unnecessary debate, alright?" Weaver muttered wearily and Jimmy nodded, glancing Dai to gauge the young man's reactions to what the captain was saying, but there were none evident so Jimmy chewed his inner cheek and let the captain continue explanations, "I got four kids eager to pick up guns and start blowing the heads off Skitters, and no one to teach them how to properly pull the trigger. Not to mention, we've seen too many hard battles lately, lost a lot of good fighters out there."

"And we're starting to run low," Jimmy solemnly filled in the sentiment Weaver was languidly tip-toeing around.

"Yes," Weaver murmured agreement.

They fell reverently silent a moment, reflecting on the lost. Dai perked a brow at Jimmy, studying the younger boy a moment, as though assessing him, and Jimmy squirmed slightly. Then Dai dropped his attentions back to the paperwork on the table and Weaver resumed speaking.

"To be honest, on the surface, a lot of the fighters' attitudes seem unjust. Most of the un-harnessed kids, well, they haven't really displayed any of Ben's or Rick's…unique…abilities. Hell, those spikes of theirs fell out, and scabbed over months ago. I guess that's the sad thing about prejudices, they don't have to have reason."

Jimmy nodded distantly, frowning at the ground, as his thoughts wandered to other things altogether. It didn't seem fair that Ben's spikes had remained where the other kids lost theirs.

On sight, Jimmy couldn't pick one of the other unharnessed kids out of the crowd. Without those spikes they were able to slip into anonymity and, for the most part, escape the jeers and dark looks that accompanied being a 'razorback'. Ben couldn't escape, he couldn't pretend he had never worn the harness, one look at him and it was known, whether he was personally recognized or not, because of that awful brand down his spine. Jimmy balled his hands into fists and bit hard into his inner cheek, God, he hated the Skitters.

"Now I'm about to let you in on a secret that I can't have spreading around camp, alright? Those kids are getting it bad enough as it is."

Jimmy perked curiously, his eyes meeting Captain Weaver's, "Sir?"

"Some of them have shown abilities like Ben and Rick, to a lesser extent, yes, but its undoubted they've been affected by the harness. Dr. Glass theorizes – you know how she can be with her theories, almost as bad as Tom, I swear – she thinks that all the kids are showing greater symptoms, but that they're hiding them. They don't have any one that they think they can talk to about it, too scared to show that they might be different, and given certain attitudes in this camp, can you really blame them?"

Jimmy furrowed his brow. This was news to him. He'd written off the unharnessed kids months ago as more faceless civilians, more mouths in the group to feed, more lives to protect because they didn't have the guts or ability to protect themselves. Weaver paused in his pacing suddenly and fixed Jimmy with a hard glare.

"I'm not going to keep things modest; it's just us in here. Me and Dai seem to agree, a rutting miracle that, but we both think that you are one of our best fighters," Weaver said matter-of-factly, and Jimmy's heart skipped a few beats, he found he suddenly couldn't breathe, "You've come a long ways from being that scrawny foul-mouthed runt we picked up in Dorchester."

Jimmy winced, shrugging sheepishly, and the two older men smiled slightly, fondly at him. Their praise warmed through him, and he was sure this would stick with him for the rest of his life as one of his happiest moments, paramount to the first kiss Ben had ever given him; drunken, sloppy, but earth-shattering nonetheless.

"Now I ain't gonna flower this next one up," Weaver sighed, "Your best friend used to be harnessed."

Jimmy flinched, chewing his inner cheek again. Right, there was that. He was starting to see how the pieces of this conversation were fitting together and he wasn't entirely sure he liked the looks of the fully formed image.

"If those kids are going to be trained by anyone, it might as well be one of the best," Weaver said and then dropping his voice low, "And if they're going to open up to anyone, show someone what they're really capable of…well…it's going to be someone who's already proven that he can be trusted with 'one of their own', forgive the phrasing."

Jimmy bit into his cheek a little too hard, blood spilling into his mouth, the familiar metallic taste a strange comfort on his tongue.

"You want me to train the unharnessed kids," he realized.

Weaver put his hands on his hips, tipped his chin down, keeping his eyes locked on Jimmy. Dai glanced up once, features blank and unreadable, and then shifted some of the papers around the desk, writing on the map with a sharpened yellow pencil he had plucked off the desktop.

"Only if you want to," Weaver gently affirmed.

Jimmy wasn't sure how to feel in that moment. Weaver had referred to him as 'one of the best', and that compliment swelled triumphantly through him. No one had actually trained Jimmy to be a fighter, not in any official capacity the way other fighters were trained in the resistance. He'd had to work for all the knowledge he had, following around different fighters and gleaming information off them through careful observation and annoyingly persistent questions.

There were times when fighters had snapped on him because of his pestering, lashing out either verbally or physically, but sometimes eventually, he could wear down some of the fighters with his constant shadowing and pleading, to formally show him something like how to properly fire a gun, fighters like Dai and Anthony, and especially Tom Mason – who never actually took much more than an innocent request, and was already in the midst of training his eldest son Hal at the time, so it wasn't a far cry for him to take two youngsters to the shooting range instead of one.

The whole ordeal of becoming a full-fledged fighter had been a trying process, and even in that moment, as he stood before Weaver and Dai, Jimmy found it hard to believe how far he had come, when it had only been a handful of months ago that he couldn't even so much as line up a shot and pull the trigger when confronted with a Skitter.

Maybe that was why he couldn't shake the nagging doubt that Weaver's praising words weren't the actual truth, and that somehow Weaver was trying to manipulate him, by toying with his emotions.

Jimmy got along with Ben and that seemed to be the more important, and less debatable, of Weaver's admissions. Ben was like a super soldier because of what the harness did to him, and his abilities were a huge benefit to the 2nd Mass. He could do the job of ten fighters, for all the gratitude it got him.

From what Weaver was saying it seemed Weaver wanted Jimmy training the other unharnessed kids in hopes that they would see him as trustworthy because of his close relationship with Ben, another unharnessed kid, and that in that trust reveal themselves to also be super soldiers.

Jimmy didn't want to think that Weaver and Dai were capable of such unscrupulous plotting, but the prospect of it churned sickness in his stomach. He wasn't entirely accustomed to believing good in the motives of others, no matter how highly he regarded and respected them. He had been kicked to the ground too many times to count by those that claimed to care about him to know better than fully investing his trust in another human being.

Jimmy's silence as he mulled over the offer seemed to unnerve Weaver a bit, and the old man took up his pacing again.

"I won't lie to you, Jimmy," Captain Weaver mumbled, "I have high hopes for these kids. Ben is a big help to our cause, his abilities let him get into places and do things that others can't. But I don't want to repeat the tower. Me and Hal fought about it pretty hard before I even asked Ben if he was up for it, and I'll tell you what, if Tom were here he'd pop me one for sending Ben out there alone on a mission like that."

The tower had been a parallel mission to Jimmy's warehouse. Both buildings were in opposite directions from a stretch of road the 2nd Mass needed to get by, and served as waypoints for alien troops. Captain Weaver had come up with a plan that involved taking down both buildings with explosives. Several teams were sent to the warehouse because it was so heavily guarded. Ben went alone to the tower, because he was so…incredibly…stealthy?

At least, that was the lame excuse Jimmy had imagined for the captain as to why Ben was selected to head into an enemy base without so much as a sniper watching his back. Jimmy had been just as furious at the plan as Hal, and part of him wanted to pop Captain Weaver himself.

"If just one of those unharnessed kids can keep up with Ben," Captain Weaver elucidated, and Jimmy felt a strange heaviness drop in the pit of his stomach, "Well, then, we won't have to send him anywhere alone again."

"He doesn't have to go alone now…" Jimmy murmured, but the protest wasn't loud enough for the captain to hear, because honestly, Jimmy knew how pathetic he looked standing next to Ben; the super soldier versus the cadet still stumbling out the academy.

So there it all was, laid out in plain terms. Ben went on the dangerous missions, and Jimmy gained the trust of the other 'razorback freaks' that would go on the dangerous missions with him and when they came back from saving the day, they could all be treated like shit together and Jimmy would be the hero, because that was the best option for the 2nd Mass. And Jimmy always made the choices that best benefitted the 2nd Mass. That's what made him a good fighter, right? Always sacrificing himself.

"Okay," Jimmy whispered. He swallowed down hard the blood spilling into his mouth, sighed and cleared his throat, then lifted his eyes to meet the captain's, "I'll do it."

.

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A/N: Okay, must hurry because I'm getting ice cream shortly. Yup, so...what do you all think of Jimmy's new assignment? Intriguing? Lame? Let me know!

Reviewers: DancerIntheDark101, an awesome first review, thank you for stopping by! I'm glad you like the development of their relationship. A couple 'Guests' stopped by, the first one kind of sounded like Haley, but I don't know. Thanks to the both of you! JDMlvr1, yeah, I try to hate the little bugger but I knew it was my own fault he chewed through the wire, he wanted to go downstairs and I was trying to post, so he got mad...you know. Stupid cat...but I love him. Facepalmer123, as you wish! IcicleLilly, he certainly is, and Jimmy would flip, but he doesn't have to. TyphoonBoom08, I'll try not to disapoint. WhisperMaw, thank you for the rundown, I'll see what I can do about using it in the story, but it might not happen. We'll see. Heracratzarism, they do make a great team don't they?

Thank you everybody! I have to run because my family is annoying. See you all Sunday!