Sand splashed into the air, mixing with the sea of blue above and turning it dark.
Below across the rolling dunes, Jackie ran like his life depended on it. His sword attached to his waist, and his feet digging into the sand. Not having the time to sink before being yanked out to push onward. For behind them came a beast of great size, an armored scorpion that could dwarf a school bus in size.
A death stalker.
It screeched in anger, and scuttled across the sand. Unaffected by the density of the sediment, while Jackie had to put in the leg work.
"Make a kill box they said… we just need some bait, it'd be easy they said…" Jakie grumbled as he heaved, and ran. The death stalker only a couple of arms lengths away.
It was a distance that Jackie was failing to keep with each passing second, but the end was in sight. He could see the drop off up ahead, a cliff that led to an oasis below. Already he could see Sable positioned off to the right, her hammer in its canon form – Summer's Glory. She kept her finger snugly next to the trigger with both eyes fixed on the death stalker.
Next to her was Klyde, her fists ready to punch at a moment's notice. The only person who wasn't present was Cole, but that's because he was down below. Invisible, and lying in wait.
'Almost there' Jackie thought as he neared the cliff edge, when something unusual brought him to a stop.
Silence. The scramble of legs stabbing into the ground, and the lumbering bulk of a giant scorpion trudging across the sand. It was all gone in an instant.
Jackie turned around, and saw that the death stalker had stopped. Its mandible were clacking, and it swayed its tail side to side.
"Uh… Jackie, why did it stop?" asked Sable over the air waves, her words soaring into the sky and becoming clouds in the blank canvas above.
Jackie looked up at the cloudy words and glanced back at the now still death stalker, "Not sure".
"It's not dead is it? Or dying?" Klyde asked, her words taking up residence in the sky next to Sable's.
"I don't think so…" Jackie muttered as he locked eyes with the Grimm, trying to get in its hypothetical head.
The longer he stared into the crimson eyes of the large behemoth, the more its point of view began to make sense. Reason unravelling with a startling conclusion, "Shit, it knows we're baiting it".
"Oh come on" Sable pouted.
"Seriously? This thing's that old?"
"Sure looks like it" Jackie replied to the cloud messages that began to clutter the once pristine sky.
"Well now what?" Sable asked.
"Think you can make the shot from there?"
"Dude, you think if I could do that I wouldn't have already?"
"Fair enough".
Jackie tapped his ear piece and said, "This is Jackie of team Jackal. How much time until evac is complete?"
"We need at least 5 more minutes".
"Duly noted", Jackie only just got off the comms line when the death stalker decided to turn around. Having made up its mind on what to do.
"No, no – Jackie it's turning around!" Sable exclaimed, her words rocketing into the sky as dark clouds. Strangers in a sea of fluffy white.
"Crap, crap, crap…" Jackie muttered as panic set in, kicking his heart into over drive and nearly sending it vaulting out of his chest when an idea popped up. A light bulb flashing into being right above his head.
"Sable I got a plan".
"What's the plan?"
"This!" Jackie exclaimed as he grabbed the light bulb, and proceeded to throw it at the death stalker.
The sound of glass shattering echoed across the entire desert, and absolutely catching the death stalker's attention. Made known by its loud ear piercing shriek as it turned around with fire in its eyes. Flames erupting out of the crimson orbs that lived behind its armored head.
"Come and get me ya stupid arthropod!" Jackie hollered as he pulled out Rebel, and aimed it at the monster. Transforming it with a button press into a shotgun, the hilt swinging down to form a handle, and the curved end moving up to reveal a single barrel.
If the glass shards from the broken light bulb sparked its anger, then the unloading of fire rounds into its head forced it into a rage.
"That's right, focus only on me!"
Once the death stalker began charging, Jackie abandoned his unending barrage before spinning on his heel and running like mad. The clacking sound of pincers getting excruciatingly loud, right as Jackie jumped with the death stalker only inches behind.
Jackie glanced back and saw the death stalker falling in behind, his weapon aimed behind the recoil from a blast of fire dust pushed Jackie towards the falling beast. A wicked grin on his face as he hopped off each pincer, ran across the death stalkers back, and leapt towards the edge. Managing to ram Rebel through the cliff face, and hang off it while watching the death stalker hit the ground.
It was alive and intact, until Sable pulled the trigger. Lighting up the death stalker like a Christmas tree.
The sound of Sable cackling like a mad woman, the blue blur that was Klyde as she jumped down with some fire in her step, Cole entering the fray as a spectral assassin. Jackie could feel his heart pounding, and he could not bear it any longer.
The excitement, the thrill, and most of all the cathartic chumminess that could choke out a shark. It pulled Jackie in, and he pushed off the cliff face and joined in on the assault.
But once he hit the ground, Jackie looked around and found that everyone was gone. Dust in the wind leaving Jackie confused, "What the".
The death stalker's shriek came out of left field, and before Jackie could respond. He was met with a pincer to the face.
With a gasp Jackie's crimson eyes darted open as he woke up with a startle, a jolt zipping through his chest. A tiny living space filled his vision, a wooden cabinet beside the door, a mechanized closet that was sealed due to a lingering malfunction, and a bunch of clothes hanging from hangars that were hooked onto a handful of names hammered into the wall.
'Gods damn it…' Jackie thought before rising up, and glancing around. Wiping some beads of sweat off his forehead while his heart rate scaled back down. In a brief of silence, there was only one lingering question that remained 'why now?'
A fleeting thought that scattered into a thousand white petals as Jackie climbed out of bed to seize the day.
Or rather, stew in anxious trepidation.
Ataraxia
Mistral
4 Days Since Jackie's Proposal
Opening the doors to his old haunt, Jackie walked past a flock of dusty men and women arguing over their game of cards. One of them threw a beer bottle which went flying over some guy's head, and past Jackie.
"Hey, watch it" said Hex as she caught the beer bottle with her cyborg hand, and shot a pointed glare at the one who threw the bottle. Which was when she noticed Jackie's approach, and she put the bottle down before giving the man a pleasant smile, "Hey Jackie…"
The smile waned once Jackie sat down at a barstool across from Hex, "Whoa, have a rough night? You look as pale as a sheet".
"Yeah well… I guess the wait's been getting to me" Jackie replied, running a hand through his messy hair.
"How much time do you have left before Lil Miss hauls your ass?"
"A week".
"Ah", Hex sighed as she pulled up a glass and a bottle of scotch to go along with it.
Jackie's eyes watched the dark brown liquid fill the crystal cup, and once he got his hands on it. The stinging smell that burned his nostrils eased his still jumpy soul.
"Consider that one on the house".
"I can't do that to you".
"But I can do that to myself" Hex replied as Jackie took a swig of his drink. The raw burn that spread across his throat as a bolus of fluid slid its way down his gullet, it was satisfying in a somewhat masochistic way.
Another bottle came flying Hex's way and she managed to grab it midflight, "Alright that's it. You two, stop throwing my bottles around". Hex flipped open a gate, and marched over to the angry gamblers. Leaving Jackie to drink in relative silence, swirling the scotch and watching the tiny whirlpool slowly form inside. His thoughts mirroring the liquid twister, and all the questions that were caught in the spiral.
None of them bore any resolution on the why of his latest dream, and if anything, they only served to bring him to the contact list of his scroll. Two names pulled up from the depths of his repository, one a cropped portrait of a blue haired wolf faunus. Fair skin, deep blue eyes, and a toothy cocky grin. Her wolf ears poking out of her hair, darker than the tangle of blue, mirroring her eyes.
Klyde, her number still very much active.
The other, Cole, a green haired guy with a very youthful face. One which allowed him to pass as a teen while pushing mid-20s. In his profile picture, he was struggling to eat a sandwich that was twice his head. A snippet of a memory that brought a smile onto Jackie's face. His number, much like Klyde's was active.
'Wonder where they are now…' Jackie thought as a single thought flashed into his mind, dredged up from the darkest depths of his mind. An ancient, and tempting idea – Jackie's eyes gravitating towards the green glowing "CALL" button.
Like a the scent of sizzling chicken on a hot summer day, Jackie was lured in his index finger moving towards the scroll's touch screen. Only to stop inches away when reality came crashing down like a stack of bricks. Jackie closed his eyes, and nodded dismissively before collapsing his scroll at the push of a button and pocketing it.
Right as Hex returned to her post and flipped close the wooden gate, "I swear, it's like these people just ignore the house rules when it's inconvenient".
"Maybe you should put up a sign".
Hex scoffed, "First Molly and now you. What makes you think these vagabonds would listen to a sign? If not me shooting up my own bar?"
Jackie shrugged, "You could spare your voice the trouble, and just point to it".
"I'm never going to put up a sign".
"Fair enough, but then you can't complain that people forget. Especially not when half of these people are barely cogent enough to walk straight", Jackie gestured his drink over to one particular gentlemen. A long blue haired man in a white cotton short, and dull gray pants. Stumbling forwards like a disoriented chicken missing a leg.
Furthering his point, Jackie called out "hey Kom, what's one plus one?"
Kom raised a hand into the air, and said with unwavering confidence "tax evasion" before lazily limping away.
"See what I mean?"
Hex pursed her lips, forced to confront her signage dilemma as Jackie emptied his glass.
"Mind if I get a refill? I'll pay".
Hex swiped the empty glass from Jackie's hand and refilling it as requested, "No need. Refills on the house".
Jackie happily accepted the glass, and wasted no time drinking from it. Trying to flood the vivid images of his lingering dream from his mind.
"Have you tried giving Gunmetal a visit? Some amount of money's better than nothing".
"It'd only be worth it if Miss Malachite would give me an extension, and that's unlikely given the thin ice I'm currently standing on".
Hex's face ran through a myriad of contorting expressions, her face fighting indecision to either keep or let something out. Before ultimately relaxing once Hex abandoned whatever it was that plagued her mind.
As the clock kept ticking, the drinks kept coming with Jackie's hopes of finding a meaningful distraction slipping between his fingers. Fortunately, Nate came waltzing in. Moving past a table of gamblers that were less rowdy than before, but were still very much squabbling, Nate looked around the bar before locking onto Jackie.
"Yo, Jackie", Nate walked up next to Jackie and planted his palms firmly on the counter. Before flicking his eyes over to the booze binging hunter, and asking "wanna help me hunt some Grimm?"
A grin quickly etched onto Jackie's face and he finished the last of his on-the-house scotch, "You had me at hunt".
Nate blinked, "You stopped paying attention to what I was saying after hunt? What if I'd asked you to help me hunt some children?"
Jackie gave Nate a long hard look, and said "you're a special little snowflake Nate. Never change".
Nate looked thoroughly confused as Jackie got up, and put down his glass before giving the green coat a couple pats on the back. "Now, let's go kill a Grimm…"
Nate brought an index finger in protest.
"…a bunch of Grimm…"
Nate gave Jackie a thumbs up, and the two huntsmen were off.
Hex watching them leave and waving them off, "Happy hunting".
Right as a beer bottle came flying towards her, and thwacked her right on the forehead. A fight broke out between the gamblers, throwing their playing cards into the air as fists began to fly.
"That does it!" Hex exclaimed as she hopped over the counter, and made the tussling hustlers business her business.
Somewhere in the Outskirts of Mistral
Trees as far as the eyes could see, dotted the evergreen lands that lay beyond the sheltered confines of Mistral. Now a tall cavernous spire in the distance, Jackie and Nate embarked by foot once the bullhead they took landed in the nearest town to where they were headed.
A half an hour later, Jackie had his back to a tree while looking around. One hand buried in his coat pocket, and the other messing around with Lock's revolver-sword. Cycling through the different types of dust rounds, and regular rounds that were stored within its chambers, the color on the side display on the cylinder changing from red, purple, and blue.
"Admit it, we're lost" Jackie remarked as he moved his eyes away from his stolen weapon, and over to his compatriot who paced back and forth. His scroll in one hand, and a paper map in the other.
"We're not lost" Nate replied in defiance, locking his eyes over to Jackie for only a second before darting them over to the two different maps he had pulled up.
"You're looking at two maps, and we've come to a full stop. I'd say that's as good a sign as any, that we're lost".
Nate groaned but didn't bother to respond. Instead choosing to bury himself with the geographical data present both physically and electronically.
Jackie sighed as he moved the revolver around, switching it from sword to gun and back again.
"So, you planning on giving that thing a name?"
"Haven't decided if I was going to keep it".
"It's better than trying to fire punch everything you meet. Not to mention all the ranged option's you'll have" Nate replied as he tapped the barrel of the rifle strapped on his back, slung over his shoulder by a leather belt. It was a long barreled weapon with a brown stock.
Jackie scoffed, "This coming from the guy who uses a retrofitted museum piece. I'm surprised that thing still functions, much less is reasonably accurate".
"Hey don't diss the Continental. It's pulled me out of some serious scraps in the past".
"I'll stop dissing it once you manage to hit something past 200 meters".
Nate stopped his pacing and lowered both of his maps, frustration brewing when the sound of a distant growl caught both of their ears.
"Looks like we won't have to waste time trying to find the Grimm" Jackie commented as he slinked his way over to a nearby tree with Nate mirroring his movements. His back behind a bush that stood right next to Jackie's tree.
In the patch of grass in front was the unmistakable sight of a beowolf, a fairly large quadruped, a hybrid between a wolf and a man clad in shadow. The only things standing out being the bony armor covering its upper head, and the red glowing eyes on either side.
The beowolf sniffed around as though it was looking for something.
"You think my annoyance at getting lost drew it here?" Nate whispered as he looked at Jackie.
"So you admit that we were lost".
Nate frowned while Jackie added, "But yeah, most likely".
The two hunters watch the beowolf mill about before Nate asked, "So… ya wanna follow that thing back to its nest?"
"Correction, you are going to follow it back to its nest".
"Oh come on, why me?"
Jackie gave Nate a knowing look, "You know why".
Nate groaned and threw his head back, "Yeah but I hate having to always be relegated to recon… thought I could finally get away from that stigma".
"Yeah well you thought wrong" Jackie said as he reached over, and pat Nate on the shoulder. "Now hop to it recon man".
Nate sighed before activating his semblance with tendrils of shadow trailing off the edges of his frame, before sinking into the ground and becoming a shadow.
Jackie smiled dryly as he watched Nate's shadow form take off, running across the ground as a dark reflection.
The beowolf didn't budge, no doubt anchored to Jackie's position by the lingering bout of negativity that originally drew its attention. So he closed his eyes, and thought happy thoughts. Bringing up images of puppies, chocolate, and communal dinners with family and friends.
The vibrancy of Jackie's mind were a gateway to the past, all that sappiness serving to dredge up memories of a time when Jackie saw himself embarking on perilous adventures, spending cold nights under the stars with a meager campfire lighting up the faces of his team. Laughter mixing into the ambiance as they shared a warm meal, before trekking across the parched landscape.
Jackie's eyes slowly opened and saw that the beowolf was gone along with Nate. Jackie smiled half-heartedly as he put a lid on the flood of positivity from the far recesses of his mind, thinking that enough was enough.
All color left his mind, and Jackie came back to the drab present. The half-smile curling downwards into a flat line.
Jackie glanced at the stolen weapon in his hand, its movements through the air in blade form feeling familiar. Too familiar. A feeling that unnerved him, "Alright, I'm definitely selling this".
Jackie spotted a shadow running towards him across the ground, and glanced up away from the only reward he ever got from his last scornful job.
"I found the nest. It's in some cave" Nate said after his head popped out from the ground.
"Great" Jackie said as he spun the revolver in his hand before shoving it into his coat pocket, "Let's go kill some Grimm".
Nate grinned, "You really should keep that thing. You're already a natural at using it, so might as well".
Jackie flinched at Nate's words, a detail that Nate caught.
"Something wrong?"
Jackie waved his hand dismissively, "It's nothing. Let's just get this assignment over with".
Nate nodded before slinking back into his shadow form, and leading the way.
The cave in question was behind several sporadically placed trees, and it was patrolled by a few beowolves scattered about.
"Alright, so how do you want to take this?" Nate asked, his head popping out of a tree branch where his shadow form resided.
Jackie grinned as he cracked his knuckles, "How do you think?"
Nate sighed and rolled his eyes, "Ever the predictable".
Rays of light streaked through the dark confines of the cave where the beowolves resided. A churning mass of black filled with ivory canine skulls, and piercing red eyes.
The abyssal ocean swirled around an island of shrubbery that loved the dark, small ferns which loathed the light.
The air was calm, and still. The mess of fangs and claws shifting about driven by instinct to loaf around, and latch onto smells, shifty sights, and the guttural howls of their fellow soulless beasts.
The dark peace held for a minute longer, until a lone crimson crystal went flying through the mouth of the cave. Clinking against the ground, and rolling over to one curious beowolf. The canid monster lowering its head to sniff the crystal, when a bullet tore a path through the air and struck the scarlet mineral.
It reacted violently, and exploded in a flash sending fire in all directions and lighting the beowolf up. A slew of snarls, and growls filled the cave as the sea of darkness turned violent.
The source of the gunshot, Nate, hanging upside down from the cave's ceiling. The rest of his body in its shadow form, lying on the absolute edge of daylight that dared wander in. Pulled back the slide of his rifle, and loaded another round into the barrel.
Some of the beowolves noticed Nate, but were helplessly to do anything before a fiery punch struck one square in the face.
"Suck it Grimm!" Jackie howled as the beowolf stumbled back as two lunged at him from either side. Ducking swiftly Jackie let the two beasts slam their heads together before grabbing one by the neck and swinging it into the air, before bringing the monster down on its fellow Grimm.
Two more came charging, but were swiftly put down by Nate. A bullet for each one. The sounds of fists colliding, and beowolves dying filled the air. Stirring the calmness into a frenetic, and exciting chaos.
Jackie wore a smile the whole way through, unleashing infernal punches at beowolves left and right. In the back of his mind, he recalled the way Klyde threw her punches. Mirroring those movements exactly as he landed a haymaker into a beowolves face. Driving the bright red fist into the bone covered face, sending cracks and waves of fire that seeped through the blackened flesh and incinerated it.
The numbers started to die down in record time with Nate dropping beowolves from the ceiling like a sniper, and Jackie burning through the Grimm like a superheated harbinger.
"This is for yanking my bounty after damn nearly crashing an airship!" Jackie growled as he drove his brown leather boot into a beowolves groin, the beast yelping in pain as a searing sensation ripped throughout its body.
"And this is for not getting back to me yet on my lucrative job offer!" Jackie screamed to the ignorant heavens as he grabbed the beowolf's shoulders, and set it up for a strong knee to the underside of its muzzle.
The sound of bone, and flesh breaking bounced across the caves walls as the beowolf fell to the ground.
Four more fell as they tried to charge at Jackie, Nate picking them off in rapid succession. A fifth one managed to get close while Nate reloaded, but Jackie stepped back to avoid the claw swipe before grabbing one of its arms and pulling it in close.
Jackie's hand firmly planted on the beowolf's nose, Jackie cranked up the heat of his hand and quickly melted through the beasts hide. Its agonizing howl being muffled by Jackie's hand. After letting go of the monster, Jackie followed up the scorching grasp with a strong right hook. Lighting up his fist right before, and burning a hole right through the beowolf's head.
"And that's… well, that's for just being a bunch of stuck up jack asses holed up inside a flying city".
The beowolf lay on the ground, spending the last moments of its mental clarity writhing in pain. Processing the full spectrum of pain that burned through what was left of its brain.
Jackie watched the monster of darkness die, its movements slowing before stopping entirely. The beowolf's body beginning to decay, its skin flaking off into the air like dust in the wind.
His heart raced, and adrenaline coursed through his veins. Jackie could hear the heaving of his lungs, excitement pumping each one. "Oh yeah" Jackie muttered as he threw his head back, and let out a loud "whooo boy, I absolutely needed that".
"Needed what?" Nate asked as he surveyed the landscape before hopping down to ground level, once making sure that there were no more beowolves to execute.
"Catharsis" Jackie replied as Nate pulled out the cartridge of his rifle, and swapped it with a new one from the fanny pack that he carried snugly around his waist.
"And you didn't even use that revolver you got" Nate bemoaned as he walked up to Jackie.
"I intend to sell the damn thing. Don't want to mess it up, and lower its value".
"Like a couple thousand lien's gonna bail you from Miss Malachite's web".
Jackie shrugged, "Any money's better than no money".
"You sound like Hex".
"Hence why I needed this…" Jackie said as he gestured to the beowolf who turned to dust right before them.
"Well, you're welcome. Now let's go collect our reward".
Nate led the way out of the cave with Jackie trailing behind, his hands buried in his duster as he said "you know what? So what if those Atlas snoots don't come back to Scratch about my job offer. I'll just… pack my things and leave Mistral…"
Jackie nodded, finding comfort in his plan to become a runaway, "Yeah… I could just leave. Use my share of the profits from this job to buy a one way ticket out of this place and disappear".
"That's your plan? Run away from Miss Malachite? You do know she runs an information network right? She's got spies everywhere".
"I doubt she's got spies in the shadow lands".
Nate laughed, "I knew you were desperate, but man I didn't know you were that desperate".
"Look at me Nate, I am the definition of desperate".
Nate sighed as he and Jackie reached the mouth of the cave, "Well, if you survive going up there – send me a picture, or it didn't happen".
Jackie smirked slightly as he looked at Nate, "Oh you know I will".
Suddenly, the ground trembled slightly. A minor vibration rippling out across the ground, one that Jackie felt.
"What was that?" Jackie asked as he looked around.
"What was what?"
A louder more noticeable tremor echoed across the ground.
"That" Jackie said as Nate glanced around.
"It came from…" Nate began as he turned to face the cave's interior alongside Jackie, right as the tremors grew in size and frequency. Were it not for the light that bled into the cave, they might've assumed it was a freak earthquake. But they knew that it was anything but, for the simple fact that the patch of different looking ground that never once crossed their mind as out of the ordinary, with bushes dotting its surface, started to shake vigorously. Kicking up dirt and dust into the air.
The two hunters watched everything rumbled with rocks falling from the ceiling as a giant tail erupted out of the ground, daylight glinting off of its golden stinger.
"Oh you've got to be kidding me…" Jackie muttered as Nate looked mortified.
The whole cave looked like it was about to crumble, cracks running up either side as a pair of crimson eyes popped out of the ground. The small patch of shrubbery rising up in tandem to reveal it to be the body of something much, much larger.
"Uh… Jackie…"
"Yeah?"
"I think now's a good time to get our reward…"
Jackie nodded, "Yup".
And just like that, they spun on their heels and ran like the wind. Darting out of the cave as an explosion of dust, and rocks erupted out of it. The mouth sealing up with small boulders, before a large scorpion charged out of it. Sending rocks flying in all directions as an ear piercing shriek ripped through the air, the war cry of a death stalker emerging from its slumber and now on the prowl.
It's target? The two huntsmen who had the ill fortune of running across it while taking a dirt nap.