Hunting the Mongolian Death Wyrm (Success!)

[Jacksoπ Flεtchεr]

    Jack hurried up to Nyght and looked her over, checking her for injuries. He gently ran his palms along the lengths of her arms before taking her hands in his, making sure none of the creature's acid mucus had harmed her. He fussed over every bruise, wishing she'd be more careful. Satisfied Nyght was more or less ok, the young man gave her a quick squeeze. "Jeez. You can't just worry me like that, ok?" Jack reached up to brush a bit of sand from her face, his brow creased with concern, before returning his attention to the task at hand.

    The worm's ambush behavior was troubling, but not entirely unexpected. That was their normal hunting pattern, after all. "Even the dumbest animals can be cunning," Jack responded grimly, not really wanting to consider the possibility of an intelligent worm. Already, it fleeing underneath the sand was complicating things for him. Once it was dead they could go home and take a bath, maybe relax for a bit.

    "If the worm is running away, there isn't much we can do about it. If it's hiding, then perhaps it is biding it's time for one last attack. But if it has any sense of self preservation then it won't stick around."

[Nyghtingale]

     Nyght looked down sheepishly, kicking at a small pile of sand that dared to stand slightly taller then the rest around it. Her toe dug beneath it and leveled the objectionable pile to smitherings, leaving it the same height as the sand around it in the immediate foot wide vicinity. She was chastised, and she felt it deeply. Deeper then a knife burrowing and slicing through her flesh would probably feel, and definitely deeper then the painful lashes her father had given her on several occasions.

     "I...I did not mean to frighten you or cause you worry Jack. I would never do that on purpose, and I hope you know that."

      She looked back up at him as he checked her over, finally sweeping a small amount of sand from her face. She almost lost it, and leaned in to kiss him but he moved away and she lost her chance to show him how much she cared that he cared for her. A tear welled in her eye, and she wiped it roughly away knowing that now was not the time for that, because they still had to finish what they had started here.

     "It probably has a sense of self preservation, but we can not let it get away. Especially if it is showing some signs of intelligent like that. It is our duty to make sure nobody else gets hurt by these things so we need to finish them off to lower the population. It could breed, and soon we could have a abundance of smarter Death Wyrms trapping humans and other supernatural creatures to feast upon."

[Jacksoπ Flεtchεr]

    "I know," He sighed, glancing at his feet. "It's just, for a moment, I imagined what it would be like if you were gone and..." Jack trailed off, his face slightly flushed. The young man became acutely aware of how close he stood to Nyght, the feel of her body pressed against his when he'd hugged her just a moment ago. "Well, I'd never forgive myself for bringing you on this mission if you were badly hurt or killed."

    Jack backed off, figuring he'd already fussed over her enough. She was ok for now and would remain so in the foreseeable future, hopefully. The young man shook his head, wondering what was wrong with him. This felt so out of character for him. If they weren't still in the middle of their worm hunt, he might've kissed her. Hell, Jack wanted to do a lot more than that and the strength of his feelings was starting to scare him a little bit. Maybe he needed to take some time off, isolate the part of himself that was making him so different before it became a problem, and suppress it so he could regain his focus.

    "Alright, alright. I know we can't just let it run off. So how do you want to catch this thing?"

[Nyghtingale]

     Nyght looked at Jack, raising both her eyebrows. He would blame himself for inviting her on a hunt where she got hurt? Her lips twitched, and it was all she could do to keep herself from laughing and laughing really hard. She had chosen to come upon all these hunts and missions. Jack had not made her do any of this, it had all been her choosing so would that not make it her own fault because she knew the risks that where involved? What he was saying was absolutely ludicrous. Yet, at the same time it was the sweetest bullshit she had ever heard in her entire life.

     "Thanks Jack, but....you do realize I volunteer for this crap right? So that pretty much like absolves you of all guilt if I get injured or even killed right? Not like anybody would really miss me even if I was or anything." She shrugged her shoulders, before turning to contemplate what was happening.

     They needed to find the last wyrm and finish this off. She honestly had no idea how to find the last wyrm or even how to go about hunting it down. How would one hunt down a rogue, acid drenched, electricity spewing, underground wyrm of death that was injured and pissed off at them now?

     "I...honestly have no idea. How does one go about hunting an underground wyrm of death?" 

[Jacksoπ Flεtchεr]

    "I realize that but still. I invited you and I can't help but feel responsible for your well being since you wouldn't be in harm's way if it weren't for me. Maybe I'm just being silly." When Nyght spoke of no one missing her if she was killed, Jack put his hands on her shoulders and looked her in the eye. "Aurora and Aela would miss you." The young man paused, glancing down briefly as his cheeks flushed from the embarrassment of what he was bout to say. But it needed to be said. He needed to say it. "I would miss you. Don't you know that? Don't you know why?"

    If Nyght continued to insist upon this silliness about no one caring about what happened to her, then Jack feared he may have to do something drastic, though the young man was loathe to even contemplate the idea of stepping outside the boundaries of their friendship.

    Jack raised his hands helplessly. "I honestly have no idea. The spears were supposed to prevent this sort of thing from happening, but I'm afraid I forgot about that particular duty when the truck was flipped and everything afterwards. Sorry."

[Nyghtingale]

     Nyght looked at Jack, eyes wide and eyebrows raised. He was acting so weird. Especially after saying that the kiss meant nothing and that he did not want to ruin their friendship earlier before the fight. So what exactly was he going on about. Sure, Aurora would miss her a little but Nyght had a feeling her Akhult would easily leave and reintegrate in to an Akhult pack. With her powers and strength it would not be hard for the female to easily take over a pack of the mythical creatures. She wondered idly whether or not Aela would miss her to terribly much. She was very busy with her military stuff, and Nyght had a feeling that she would be to busy to truly miss her. Sure, Aela would miss her some, but not as much as Jack was thinking because her mind would probably be preoccupied with military and stuff.

     Nyght had to pause and contemplate for moment. Jack had asked a question, and she had every intention of answer it. Jack had stated that he would miss her, and asked if she knew why. The answer was obvious...she did not know why. At least she thought that answer was obvious. She supposed she would need to explain it better to Jack. She she opened her mouth to do so but was abruptly, rudely, and violently cut off.

     Suddenly the sand exploded beneath them both, sending them both hurtling in to the air (though Jack could probably teleport). Nyght went up and smashed in to the sand heavily, the sand scraping her left arm. Then something sharp pierced her boot and pierced in to her flesh. She yelled, rolling over and thrashing to find the wyrm latched on to her calf. She kicked out at it with her other foot, trying to knock the blasted thing away as it began to drag her through the sand. She yelled loudly, knowing she had to do something quickly. She summoned a piece of broken metal from the truck that had been flipped over. Grasping it in her hands, ignoring the sharp pain as the metal cut her flesh she jabbed it in to the wyrm. She then used her powers to shove it completely in to the wyrm, she yelled at the top of her lungs as she caused the metal shard to begin spinning inside the wyrm, shredding the wyrm from the inside out. It quickly released her, howling in pain and spewing out blood and guts from it's mouth.

[Jacksoπ Flεtchεr]

    Nyght was looking at him strangely, her eyes wide and confused looking, maybe. She seemed to be thinking and, while Jack realized it hadn't been very long, the wait seemed to last forever to him. Unfortunately, the answer never came because they were rudely interrupted by the very annoying, very inconsiderate Mongolian Death Worm who seemed to almost take some sort of sick joy in pissing him off. Well, it wasn't going to get away this time. Jack would see to that.

    So, naturally his danger sense went off shortly before the attack. But he didn't have much time to do anything so, again, he found himself flying into the year. Not for long, though. So that was nice. Jack teleported soon after and hit the sand a ways away, considerably more softly than he might've otherwise. The young man scrambled to his feet and immediately ran toward the situation where, not all that far away, the worm was latched on to Nyght's leg.

    Jack called his sword back to him and he began hacking at the worm, even after it had already let go of Nyght as a result of being blendered or whatever on the inside. Repeated waves of water slammed into the worm, pushing it back, timed with strikes from his sword.

[Nyghtingale]

     Nyght scrambled to her feet, limping just slightly from the damn bite she had just gotten. Jack was there as well, helping her now. She lost her balance on her injured leg, falling back on her butt in the sand again but she was not worried about it. The wyrm was all but dead now. Having it's inside's shredded, then Jack hacking at it and blasting it with water again the wyrm was quickly dying as it regurgitated it's own pureed innards and ooze from hacks and bullet holes all over it's body. With a final wheezing breath, the wyrm collapsed upon the sand, and Nyght groaned. That had been close, and she had to think of something fast to get herself away from the situation.

     She laid back upon the sand, and began laughing softly to herself for apparently no reason at all. Her laughter grew, until it was almost hysterical. Perhaps she had fallen off the deep end for some reason, and Jack was losing her? She suddenly pushed herself up away from the sand, leaning up on her arms and looking at Jack. She struggled to her feet, then limped over to Jack slowly. Her leg hurt, but it was not to bad. The teeth had barely managed to penetrate her thick leather shoes, and she just had a series of annoying shallow puncture wounds. She was much more interested in something else.

     "Now....you where asked a question....I was about to answer....the answer was NO. No I do not know why. Are you going to show me?"

[Jacksoπ Flεtchεr]

    With the worm dead, Jack tossed his sword aside, panting slightly from his exertions. Catching his breath, the young man made his way over to Nyght and helped her. She fell on her butt in the sand and Jack sat down, a slight ways away from her. When Nyght laid back on the sand and started laughing, he turned to her, a slightly bemused expression on his face. She looked a little a crazy just then.

    "What's so funny?" Jack asked, smiling, as he glanced at the worm they'd just killed.

    Jack remained sitting in the sand, looking over at the dead worm and too preoccupied to hear her response to his earlier question. Inspiration struck and a lightbulb turned on in his head. "Hold on," The young man began, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "I have an idea."

    Jack made his way over to one of the relatively intact worms. The young man summoned his sword and several spears to himself and was careful to wash everything away with water so he didn't burn himself with acid. Then, he slit the worm open with his sword and, working the acid resistant metal of the spears into smaller implements that were easier to manage the job before him, he began to strip the worm's flesh away. When he was done, the skin was relatively intact and Jack was sure to wash away any leftover acid residue. He then repeated the same process with another worm.

    "The worms weren't harmed by their own acid, so I figure if we make these into some armor it should provide some decent protection, right? We've got the skin, but it'll probably be best if we take them to a professional to get the armor done."