Drummer Boy - Back Into Hell Ch. 04

Jason capitalized on that, and eventually his nudging paid off, as he maneuvered them into one of the memorized positions, that being folded up back behind his shoulders.

Jason was sweating from the effort, but effusive. "Yeah! Now we're getting somewhere!" he said.

Jason then shut everything out of his mind except this task, and concentrated on making his wings do some simple tricks. Lift both up high, then back down. Lift one only, then back down. Lift the other, back down. Stretch them out, then back in. Wrap them around his body, and then fold them up back behind him.

After another half hour or so, Jason felt like he had gained some measure of control. He unlocked his arms and let them hang at his side. His wings, folded behind his back, barely moved at all.

"Alright! I think I got this. Now," Jason said, "let's level up."

He flared his wings out wide, and felt them catch the almost imperceptible breeze in the air.

"You've seen 'em do it a thousand times," Jason said. "It's easy. All you gotta do is flap."

Jason flapped his wings.

When Granny flapped her wings, she soared. Purposefully, majestically, and, without fail, in the intended direction. It would have been much too much for Jason to hope that his first attempt at flight would go so well, so he set his expectations much lower than that.

When Earth birds flapped their wings, there was sometimes a bit of a pause before they got truly underway, but it was still an almost magical process, seeing something so clumsy on the ground flit, swoop, or zip away into the air. As a complete novice, Jason accordingly set his expectations even lower still.

Jason set his expectations at "chicken". A bird so unaccustomed to, and so poorly-constructed for actual sustained flight, such that the most accomplished of them, the ones that, if they could wear clothes, would invariably select to wear low-slung tank tops emblazoned with two talons clenched around crumbling cinderblock letters proclaiming "BEAST MODE", or if it could drive, would without question drive a late model Jeep Rubicon with all the windows and doors removed, and further modified to have its radio set to a station that played solely what sounded like, but somehow wasn't quite, Motley Crue, all the time, even when it was sitting in the driveway overnight, annoying all the other animals for several farms in every direction... even that supreme physical pinnacle of chickenhood could, on its best day, scarcely manage more than a couple of awkward seconds of aerial hangtime.

It seemed a reasonable expectation, and Jason utterly failed to meet it.

Instead of seeing the ground retreat smoothly away beneath his feet, Jason was treated to the sight of his remaining sneaker approaching much too close to his face. Then the world turned upside-down, and then upside-down again, and then a few more times for good measure, before he had the good sense to stop flapping his wings. For this, he was rewarded almost immediately with a faceful of gravel, of which he proceeded to unintentionally eat what must have been an unhealthy amount, before coming to rest in a pose that, though incredibly uncomfortable, would have been a godsend for any artist looking for new challenges in anatomical figure studies.

"Okay," Jason growled. He coughed out some gravel. "This ... is gonna take some work."

* * *

Jason paused in his telling. "Not even a giggle?" he said.

"I'm laughin' on the inside," Leanne said.

"I thought it was pretty funny," Jason said. "You know, after the fact. Is it that hard for you guys, when you learn flying?"

"Naw," Leanne said. "We just sort of know. Props for giving it the old college try, though."

"And it totally worked, too!" Jason said. "I took a few more spills, but I figured out how to fly!"

"And I'm guessing that, even though Garanetta told you to stay put," Leanne said, "you couldn't help yourself."

"Well, come on!" Jason said. "I couldn't just stand there with my dick in my hands!"

* * *

"Granny!" Jason yelled. "Yo, hey Granny!"

Granny looked up from the Spine she had just skewered to find Jason flying, albeit clumsily, in her direction. She scowled.

Jason was pretty proud of himself, though. He'd managed to keep himself in the air pretty reliably. Long enough to find Granny amid the dozens of Wings darting around, as well as dodging the occasional bolts of lightning being tossed all over the place.

Somewhere along the line, Granny had gotten hold of a leather helmet to keep her hair in check, so he wasn't able to pick her out at first. What tipped him off was Fuck-Bringer. There were some other Wings using swords, but they were unremarkable. Fuck-Bringer, due to its size, and ornamentation, was pretty distinctive.

Quizzical anger played across Granny's face as she watched Jason's clumsy aerial approach.

"Jason!" Granny shouted. "I instructed you to stay away!"

"You made me into a lady and left me out in an alien desert!" Jason yelled back. "You thought I was just gonna wait around playing with myself?"

"You do not belong here," Granny said.

"You're telling me!" Jason said. "But, as long as I'm here and I got all this," Jason gestured to his new and improved demon form, "there's gotta be some way I can help."

"Are you trained in aerial strike tactics against ground-based energy projectors?"

"Never really tried, but-"

"Do you have combat experience of any sort at all?" Granny said.

Jason thought for a second. "When I was seven I punched out a really mean kid who was hogging the merry-go-round at the park," he said.

"That hardly bears mentioning," Granny said.

"He was ten, though," Jason said. "Come on, G. There's gotta be something I can do!"

"There is not," Granny said. "You will go."

"I'm ain't going anywhere until-"

Granny looked into Jason's eyes, her own black eyes rimmed with electrical fire, and said "Go."

The word sounded heavy and slow to Jason, and felt like it was the roller on a paint brush, painting the inside of his brain, covering all the walls and even going the extra step to carefully detail all the little nooks and crannies of his thoughts.

"Fine, you old bat!" Jason said, steamed. "You wanna play it like that, don't come crying to me when-"

Jason looked around. Granny was gone. The battle was still raging, but it was a couple of miles behind him at this point. He didn't remember doing it, but apparently he'd been flying away for a while.

"Well, okay, then," Jason muttered to himself. "God, I hate this fucking place."

Jason scanned the terrain below for a place to hang out. Around him were moderately-sized hills of varying heights and widths, as well as trench-like ravines that were more that big enough for him to hide in, if he needed to.

"Stay out of sight and stay put," Jason said. "I just need to pick a spot."

He was far enough from the battle that, if any Spines headed his way, he'd be able to see them long before they could do anything to him (or so he hoped), so he figured that anyplace was good.

At first Jason considered sticking himself in one of the ravines for the duration. Then the thought occurred to him that if some retreating or enterprising Spine just happened to be come upon him he'd have no warning. So instead, he found himself a hill with a rocky outcropping on it. That way he could still keep an eye on the main battle from afar, but if he happened to see anyone creeping his direction, he could at least try to hide.

"Cover," Jason said, patting the umber outcropping of rock. "That's what the movie people call it. I've got cover now. And what's the other thing, where you can keep an eye on things and give people a heads-up? Is that 'point'? No it's like watch...face, or something? Hell, Granny's right. I'm not ready for this."

He sat down next to the outcropping, and folded his wings behind him so as to present as small a profile as he could.

"Guess I'm watch-facing, then," he said.

Jason watch-faced for awhile. The battle, at this distance, was pretty boring. He could sometimes see a school of Wings dive-bombing at the Spines, who usually responded with a barrage of lightning, before they all turned into an indistinguishable clutter of carnage. Every now and again, a line of energy would lance out from Pinnacle's Peak itself, like a laser that took a few minutes to recharge between firings.

But although he kept his eyes, as well as his ears, open, he never saw anyone approaching his spot.

"Wonder where the Spines coming from," Jason mused. "If this is so deep into Wing territory, how'd they even get this far up without getting ganked along the way?"

He figured that Granny, being Granny, would enjoy lecturing those answers to him, but it was pretty clear that she was busy having the time of her life. So he settled for taking in his surroundings.

One big advantage of this demon body was the vision. Granny had been right on the money about that. He could see way further than he could as a human.

And besides that, there were just more colors. During the brief time he'd spoken with Granny, he'd noticed that there were previously unseen markings on her crimson skin. Across her face, arms and legs were things that looked like tattoos. The funny thing was, he couldn't really say what color they'd been. They seemed to be, at the same time, a brilliant red, bordering on blazing pink, and also a blue so deep it could almost be said to be glimmeringly black.

The reason that this question posed such interest for him at the moment was that he was confronted with this chromatic conundrum again. The sky, which had previously presented to Jason's human eyes the rather monotonous pinkish color that he'd gotten so used to, was now various intensities of this not-quite color that was and wasn't red or blue.

"So weird," Jason said. "Is it red or blue?"

He examined the sky some more, looking for an answer. The sky didn't give him one.

"I'm gonna call it 'redderblue'," Jason said, trying it out. "Redderblue it is, then. Trademark, patent pending."

Whatever color it was, it was brighter in the direction of the fighting, and dimmer in the other direction.

"I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess this has something to do with those antipodes Granny likes to talk about," Jason said. "Look at me, figuring stuff out like I'm a regular brainiac."

A flash of light caught his eye. It was pretty far away, and so brief that he'd almost missed it, but it was definitely something. He trained his new-and-improved vision on it.

With a mixed amount of surprise and alarm, he watched a group of Spines, about twenty or so, emerge out of a glowing portal. Most of them immediately started gathering a short distance away, but one of them, the smallest one, stayed behind. Once the last of the Spines was out, the small one did something, and the portal blinked brightly again, then vanished.

"So that's how they're doing it," Jason mumbled to himself. "They've got a goddamn teleporter. That's gotta be cheating. Maybe I should go tell Granny..."

The Spines all started marching off toward battle, except for the small one. She didn't just hang around, though. She was on the move, but not exactly running. Instead, she was sort of darting across the landscape, dancing and leaping from rock to rock. She moved with purpose, and Jason got the impression that she was trying to stay out of sight, while at the same time keeping an eye on her surroundings.

Jason was in a similar situation, and decided to keep it that way, for now at least. So he waited, and he watched.

The demon covered a lot of ground, and Jason worried that she'd get too far away to keep track of from where he was. But before he had to make a decision of whether he should get closer or risk losing her, she stopped.

There was a flash of light, and a new portal. The demon disappeared into it.

"Alright, Jason," he said, trying to psych himself up, "time to earn your keep. Let's get a leedle bit closer..."

He left his outcropping, and did his level best to get as close as he could to the portal. Danger seemed to have a focusing effect on his flying skills; he had a lot less trouble flying this time than before. He wasn't a master by any means, but he'd definitely give himself a "chicken-plus" rating now.

Once he got close enough to the portal to see it clearly, he looked for a spot to keep an eye on it. He found another outcropping and landed, putting it between him and the portal.

He didn't have to wait long. About a minute later, the demon came back through. Jason was surprised to see that she was not, in fact, a Spine.

"So that's what a Tail looks like," Jason thought.

As promised by the name, she had a tail, in her case a long and black tail, with a kind of fuzzy, brushy end. And, like her other demon cousins, her skin was that same crimson color.

But there were a few contrasts with her other demon tribes. For one, she wasn't particularly huge and muscular like the Spines, nor was she voluptuous like the Wings. Instead, she had about the same height and proportions as a human woman.

Her hair was straight, black, and short, with kind of a pixie cut thing going on. She was wearing a leather vest and what looked like some sort of loose leggings, which, unless he was mistaken, were open in the back, leaving her ass bare to the world. And aside from some sandals, that was it. No sword, no spear, no weapons at all.

She turned to the portal, shouted something in demon language, and then Spines started marching out of it. These Jason was familiar with. Armored and ready for fun with their hammers and their spiked clubs, they chattered at each other, but Jason was too far away to hear anything they said.

"Like it would matter," he muttered to himself. "It's all argy-bargy to me."

Another twenty or so Spines in total exited before the portal closed. Their leader (the barkiest one with the biggest horns), seemed to be going through a check-in process: making sure that they were all accounted for, assigning them roles and strategies and stuff.

She wasn't especially ragey, and neither were the other Spines under her command. They almost seemed chill, and that was something Jason had never seen. Admittedly, he'd only ever seen Spines when they were full-on in the midst of fighting, but from the way Granny always talked about them, she figured they were all barbarian rage monster, all the time. And, unless he was mistaken, some of these Spines even looked kinda hesitant about whatever this operation was.

Their leader shouted some loud commands, and the Spines under her command formed up. Then after what must have been the demon equivalent of "Forward, march!", the group set off running toward the main battle. Not charging and yelling, but just a steady jog behind their boss. In no time at all they were far away, just specks bouncing along the ground.

"And they're off," Jason mumbled. "Give 'em hell, Granny."

Jason heard a noise behind him. He immediately froze in terror, because the noise sounded almost exactly like a washing machine making its most sincere attempt to gargle a full load of rusty nails and wet cement.

Which, he quickly realized, meant that he had taken his eye off the Tail, and now she was behind him.

Jason considered his options: fight, flight, or talk. Fight-wise, he had no idea what Tails were capable of, but he figured that she could dish out more than he could take in that department. For similar reasons, flight was also an iffy proposition.

"Would it help," Jason said, "if I put my hands up and turned around, real slow-like?"

There was a pause.

"It just might at that," the Tail said, a curious tone in her musical voice. "Proceed."

Raising his hands above his head, Jason turned around and found himself face to face with the Tail.

The word that came to Jason's mind was "elegant". She was, he noted, shorter than he was, the first demon he'd ever seen who was. Her hair framed a frankly beautiful face. It was the kind of face that could easily carry a whole franchise of romantic comedies, and probably a few Oscar-nominated dramatic roles, for good measure.

Her figure was certainly womanly, with healthy curves in the places where they should be. But where the Wings tended to have extra in the hips and boobs, and the Spines were all-around muscular, she was sort of a happy medium, a physique that was somewhere between gymnast and Vegas showgirl.

What separated her, however, from nearly all gymnasts, and most Vegas showgirls, were her tail, as well as her twin daggers she held in each hand, poised to strike Jason if he tried anything funny.

"It appears," the Tail said, "that you have lost your way."

With his hands still in the air, Jason sighed. "Yeah," he said, "tell me about it."

The Tail maintained her fighting stance. "It is unusual for Wings to send out a lone reconnaissance unit," she said. "Especially so far out of mindlink range, where one could be quietly murdered. Are you some new kind of unit?"

"Hah, no," Jason said. "I'm just a big, stupid idiot."

Another pause. "Interesting," the Tail said.

"Look," Jason said. "I ain't out here looking for trouble. Just the opposite-"

"That is becoming clear," the Tail said. With a smooth, practiced motion, she slid the daggers into sheaths built into her leather leggings (Is it chaps, Jason thought, Is that what they're called?), and then put her hands on her hips. Her tail gave a little twitch, rustling through gravel on the ground.

"You do understand that I am giving aid to the Spines, don't you?" the Tail said.

"Duh," Jason said, "yeah."

"And further," the Spine continued, "that I have sheathed my weapons?"

"Again, duh," Jason said. "Where's this going? Aren't you gonna take me prisoner or something?"

The Tail's tail swept at the ground, sending a spray of dust and gravel at Jason's face. Momentarily blinded, Jason felt, rather than saw, the sinuous tail wrap around his ankle, and then pull.

The pull spun him in a one-eighty, while at the same time causing him to fall to his hands and knees.

The Tail was immediately on him. She straddled his back, using her thighs to immobilize his wings by clamping them to his body. Her tail whipped out and wrapped around his neck a few times.

"What manner of trick is this?" the Tail said.

Jason found he could still talk, so he did. "Whaddaya mean?!" he said. "There's no trick!"

"No daughter of Electra would be so easily taken!" the Tail said.

That's for damn sure, Jason almost said. But he thought it wiser to clam up.

"Beyond mindlink range, no weapon," the Tail continued. "Your strange garb, and your manner of speech..."

The tail around his neck tightened slightly, just enough to let him know she was still thinking about him. Then, warily, she asked, "From which Aerie do you hail?"

Jason maintained silence. That silence was then intruded upon by the soft but distinct slp of a dagger being drawn. Then his throat was being intruded upon by the edge of that dagger being pressed against it.

"Tell me," the Tail said. "You really should."

"Fist-of-Dark!" Jason said, feeling the sharpness of the blade bite into his neck juuuust a little bit with each syllable. "I'm from Fist-of-Dark, okay!?"

This elicited an amused "hmmph!" from the Tail. "Even were my tribe unable to spot such an obvious falsehood," she said, "I could hardly credit that a front-line Aerie, one we have studied in such great detail, would allow to exist a unit so glaringly ill-equipped as yourself."

God, did they all have to talk like they were born with dictionaries stuck up their asses?

"I don't know what you're talking about," Jason said.

"You are an unknown, and that presents a difficulty," the Tail said. "Perhaps it will be more prudent to study your remains."