Bleak meter: Nothing explicit, but the vibe is edgy

Timeline: After Season 9/Hunted, and maybe or maybe not after Season 10 as well.

FireCloud3: Thanks! And nope, she does not.

Orchid: Say, out of curiosity, what happened to the hill part of it?
No. No more warm-fuzzies. :[ . . . Okay, maybe just a few.
I worried it would come across like that. :P Didn't they have a dragon in "How to Train Your Dragon" with multiple rows like that? Or maybe it was Temeraire . . .
Picard. 100% Picard. Now he'll have to shave his head.
Thamk. :3
Ohhhhhhh, you might like that one trilogy of fics that's coming up, then . . . :333

JustRandom: If they had fake fireplaces in the First Realm, that meme would 100% be Chew Toy and Redskull. :P
Man, I bet. I'd be swamped as well if I wasn't out sick just now. Going back shortly, though . . .
Dude, dude; the ONE TIME Jayce decided to bring Victor with him to help make his point to the Council about his new policies, and THAT's the time Jinx has to go flatten the place. He's prolly dead. :(
Ah, okay. I sorta had a feeling it was like that, but yeah, it's hard to pin down . . .
Poor Redskull then, he's going to get crossed a lot. :P
Her whole point was to try get Faith in trouble with Redskull. She's a jerk like that sometimes. And yeah, Redskull's a little bit of a Wu clone, although he's a little lighter on the authority and heavier on the personal warmth.
"What am I going to do with you?" -Faith to Jet Jack every day, believe me
Redskull will regulate their frozen waffle consumption, yes. Chew Toy stop trying to fit that entire thing in your mouth at once.
I'd guess he's around 60 to 80. Raising generations of whelps isn't hard, there's a new batch every nine months. :P
He's just kinda reached enlightenment, y'know? Everything that comes at him, he's like, "eh, seen it. Not that big of a deal." And when someone's trying to antagonize him he kind of notes it with detachment, like, "here is one of my children acting aggressive, where is that coming from?" He always stays aware of grand scheme of things instead of getting sucked into the moment.
Hehe, glad to hear it, I always have fun calling her Jackie as well. Although only Chew Toy gets to use that name. All others will be immediately shut down.
BAKING chocolate. The kind that always says "bittersweet" on the label . . .
Faith says no, what are you talking about, she has no feelings. What an idea.
Cool!

The newest plague was ground shrews. Lord knew what hole they'd been multiplying in, but now they were legion and they liked Grain Plant Two. They were nocturnal, also; at night they would come in a rustling, cheeping blanket across the sand, descending on the grain fields and leaving only swatches of shredded straw in their wake.

There was an odd undertone of horror to the proceedings. The surreal squeaking blanket descending in the night, the scurrying, slithering masses that whisked away from any hint of lantern light, with only hints of tan fur flickering over tan sand, and the occasional twinkle of tiny beady eyes. This was not helped by the dragons' opinion of ground shrews, which consisted mostly of: snack. Faith's unsettlement on first seeing the approaching nighttime swarm for herself was only matched by seeing the carnage once the dragons got involved.

It was a nighttime operation, naturally. For a week now they'd been going out in small posses, ringed with bobbing lanterns, and wading through the fields of Grain Plant Two, herding the ground shrews before them, into the waiting jaws of the dragons. They went in rounds so not everyone had to lose sleep every night, but Faith and some of her bravors always came along.

It was starting to take its toll. They'd been going a week now with only half their usual amount of sleep.

"Jet Jack!" said No-Legs sharply, flicking her arm. She had sat down on a stack of crates to listen as Faith laid out the plans for tonight, and when the other bravors drifted onward she had stayed behind, dozing. Now she bolted awake, panting and wide-eyed.

"How long—"

"Just a few seconds," said No-Legs, but his tone was still heavy with significance. Jet Jack swallowed and pulled down her visor to scrape at her eyes, her teeth set.

Falling asleep out here was basically inviting death. Hunters learned the protocols for sleeping at an early age, without any formal training, without ever really discussing all the rules. There were situations where sleep was permitted, by general understanding: whelps in the nursery, or members of a large hunting party who would have guards stationed overnight. But you never slept alone—not out in public, not in someone else's house, not in the shade by the fields somewhere. Nowhere except in your own house, with a locked door. Otherwise you were basically sending the message that you wanted horrors to be visited upon you before you awoke. If you awoke.

In larger hunting parties the permission to sleep was understood. The guards were as much to protect the Hunters from each other as to watch for outside threats. If you had a quarrel with one of the guards, sleep was not a good idea.

Small groups were the most complicated. Faith had been in multiple half-size hunting parties who simply skipped sleep as long as they were out. Other times Hunters might form a sleep compact; an agreement, usually wordless, to leave each other alone for the night. Usually you only needed a certain combination of glances, a certain pattern of head tilts and length of gaze, and then you all reached an understanding that it either was or wasn't safe to sleep tonight. It would probably seem like telepathy to someone unfamiliar with it, but for Hunters it was fairly simple. Even Faith, who only started needing the system quite late in life, had no problem understanding and picking it up herself.

It was a unique skill of Hunters, though. Back when she'd traveled with the ninja, Faith had been startled by their complete and total obliviousness to this practice. On the first night she had started sending the appropriate signals, and although hers were still a bit clumsy from lack of use they should have been obvious. Instead these maniacs, having known her for all of one day, had completely missed the entire procedure, said goodnight, and conked out. She could have murdered them all at one go.

She'd been heavily tempted, honestly. With a protocol violation this flagrant you basically weren't risking murder or robbery, you were asking for it. It almost felt more wrong not to. In the end, the only thing that had held her back was the thought that they were from a whole different realm, and bizarre as the thought was, perhaps in that other realm they just didn't have the same rules about sleep. Although her palms had itched the first few nights, she left them alone.

Jet Jack had no excuse, though; she would have known better. Even now the only thing that had saved her was the fact that Faith's inner circle had been forging sleep compacts so long that theirs was by now semi-permanent. Otherwise her life limbs and property would have been duly forfeit and nobody would have bothered to wake her.

She was still muttering curses and scraping at her eyes, her head ducked in shame, as she caught up to the rest of the group. Faith didn't look up from sketching a diagram of the fields on a wall with charcoal.

"Go home, Jet Jack."

"I'm awake," said Jet Jack doggedly.

"Go home." Faith's tone was sharper this time. Jet Jack's wings flared out slightly in dismay, but after a moment's struggling for words she only ducked her head again and mumbled "yes ma'am."

"No-Legs, you're filling in for her today," said Faith over her shoulder, and no further discussion was had. Jet Jack left quietly, miserable but too exhausted to put up any further resistance.

She was at least much improved by that evening, when the next rout of the ground shrews was about to begin. She whisked into her spot next to Faith and glanced to her hopefully, asking if she was permitted to be here now. Faith gave her a brisk nod, her eyes not leaving the fields graying in the dusk.

"Sorry," said Jet Jack, atypically subdued. "Seven straight nights was starting to be too much." She looked to Faith. "How are you doing it?"

Faith shrugged. She'd been up all seven as well. She'd been grinding down a lot of Energy Plant, although that had its limits; too much and you started to vomit. In the meantime she stumbled through the days, glassy-eyed and so sleepy that her head spun, but functioning. Sort of.

"It'll be a while before the shrews come," said Jet Jack, glancing over Faith's tired face. "I could stand guard a bit . . . "

Faith shook her head silently.

"I could even run the rout myself tonight," said Jet Jack. "I've seen it done seven times, I think I know what to do."

Faith shook her head again. Jet Jack sighed gustily and ventured a bitter smile, but didn't argue. She understood the message here. One part dedication, one part Faith's stubborn inability to delegate, two parts a quiet power play, asserting who had more endurance. There was plenty of room for the assumption that she didn't trust Jet Jack to run things in her absence, but this was the First Realm. You didn't close your eyes without negotiating for your life; there was no room for taking offense over lack of trust.

Prompt was "Sleep."