Going Feet First Ch. 03

"What the fuck?" Michael swore.

"You may wish to run, Michael," Mila said. "A jackalope's bones are stronger than iron. Once it wakes, it will kill you."

The Sergeant rolled his eyes as he brought his rifle around, readying to blow the head off the jackalope before another growl caught his ear.

Slowly looking up at the bush from which the first jackalope had come, three more antlered hares crawled out, their teeth flashing as they readied their stance like a bulls to charge.

"Michael," Mila called, trying to sound as calm as possible. "Run through the bushes. Jackalope are clumsy with their antlers, they will get stuck."

The first jackalope charged, the Sergeant turning on his heel and running full tilt through the bush, saying, "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit," over and over again as an angered trio of carnivorous hares chased after him. He ducked a tree branch and jumped over a rock, running as fast as he could with the demonic bunnies in hot pursuit.

"Shiiittt!!"

................

Giving a full effort not to wince, Michael clenched his teeth as Mila wrapped a wool bandage around a bite mark in his arm. The Neko shook her head as she finished tying the knot of the bandage, ignoring the tooth lodged in the side of his boot and the three dead jackalope on the ground beside them.

"I told you to run," she said.

"Yeah, I know. Fucking jackalope are strong, but still couldn't survive a 7.62 or a knife in the side," he said as he tightened his grip on his rifle.

"No, they could not. I'm sure your victory here will impress Hail very much. He hates jackalope. Now let's gather these bodies and get to finding more game that your thunder has not scared off."

For the next hour, the couple moved silently through the forest, creeping up on anything that may prove edible. Soon two, black squirrels and a three-foot-long snake were claimed, all fat with meat. Twice did Michael spot a deer, but both times the creatures quickly fled when something scared it.

"How long has it been since you last hunted game?" Mila asked from her perch.

"Too long it seems. Used to bag one of these all the time when I was a teen."

"Give it time. As you have said, we have all day."

Sighing and easing off the drawstring of his bow, Michael stopped and grabbed his canteen off his webbing. Seconds after Mila came crawling down the tree, springing off the bark and landing beside him. She stretched her arms and legs, moving up against Michael as he finished taking a drink. When he nearly screwed the lid back onto his canteen, her lips pressed in against his, her hand stealing the metal flask away.

"So where did you go this morning, before I woke?" she asked, fumbling with the container until she managed to remove the lid.

"For a morning walk," he started. "To cool my head off after the huge explosion we heard last night. I don't know why, but I have this feeling that Galen might be in trouble, and I just wanted some air to settle my mind."

"I'm sure he is fine. He felled a troll and has a Tree Elf with him. With your world's weapons, and his skill, only the fools would dare threaten him."

"Yeah. Fools like that... what was his name? Emiel?"

Mila sighed as the name came up, taking a gulp of water and returning the canteen. Michael fit the container back into his webbing and leaned back on his rear foot, one hand firmly grasping his bow while the other gripped the sling of his rifle.

"Mila, who was that son of a bitch?"

The Neko paused a moment, hanging her head down as she shut her eyes. "He has been my hunting partner, and me his tracker, for the past year. We split up that day when your Hercules fell from the sky. He went after several deer that were running from the crash; I stayed behind to watch your metal beast. We were supposed to meet up later but... well, you and Galen happened."

"But why was in your tent, hands on your neck?"

Again, a shamed look came about her. "Because I was not happy with my pairing with him. Never have I been. Our elders paired us because we are both good at our professions, but they refused to accept the dangers of placing a female under the command of one like Emiel. His impulses were so bad I used to leave him during hunts to try to find better areas to hunt or gather. This and I... I often ran when we came across bandits or Ra'zorlichs. I'm good at running, hiding, tracking, but not fighting. I can barely kill deer, for Necela's sake!"

Mila's voice was climbing now, her tone going higher as a tear escaped her eye. "And Emiel wanted me to help him fight when we encountered people with swords! Swords, of all things! The one time I stood and fought, I had nearly lost my head! Had I not gotten a lucky strike in with my claws, I would have been killed!"

"So Emiel is reckless," Michael inferred, patiently crossing his arms while she continued to vent.

Letting out a tense breath, Mila began to rack her brain for anything she could, rubbing her forehead with her palm. "Emiel is... Oh, what is the word... He cannot control himself when he becomes angry. He was so controlling and demanding of me; his words make your own curses seem kind! Many times he threatened, and even tried to hit me! I always forgave him... but it became so hard to do so. Then, at the end of each day, he would try to mate me! Use soft words and caresses, trying to talk me into joining him so he could 'explore my body.' All after yelling at me for my failings! Like... worse than you when we met..."

Mila stopped for a moment, pressing her hand firmly into her forehead as she tried to compose herself. In some ways, Michael was a lot like Emiel. Foul mouthed, violent, both had at one point threatened her, and both were bloodthirsty and battle-ready. The two men would kill at a moment's notice for any justified reason and would do so without hesitation.

But at the same time, neither of them was alike. Emiel was unstable, a walking disaster that cared only for his own gain and prestige. Michael lived for others, cared for her. Where Emiel had tried to bypass the rituals and ceremonies and tried to mate her so many times, Michael respected her and appeased her wishes the very first time. He showed her a loving heart.

Then there was the Nightwatchers, who had flashed a red negative when Mila had given Emiel a chance at the ritual to sleep together under Necela's moon. It had sent him into a rage, nearly tearing the poor butterfly apart before it managed to flutter away. A complete contrast from Michael, who they had sprinkled the silver dust upon him in approval. That alone had put all of Mila's initial fears to rest, and marked the beginning of a new stage of her life.

As her many thoughts of days yet to come traced her mind, she felt a warm presence move up behind her, hands snaking around her belly as lips pressed into the crook of her neck.

"I hate myself for some of the actions I took then, after I thought Galen had died. But know that from the moment I saw you, I fell for you. And never would I ever have done any harm to you, or let any harm come to you. You can forget about people like Emiel, because as long as I'm breathing, I won't let anyone hurt you."

A hot spring pumped out from her heart at that moment as he smooched up the side of her neck. Arousal stirred within her, heating up her sex until she could almost feel it slicken.

"Come on, let's get moving. We can finish this tonight," he whispered, much to her disappointment.

With one last kiss, Mila took back to the tree tops and Michael brought his rifle to the ready. In a swift manner, they ventured through the forest toward the direction of the crash site and whatever remained of the plane.

Not long after, the smell of burnt oil began sticking to the trees, the smoke still not completely dissipated in places where small birds and animals were found lying dead on the ground reeking of oil. One deciduous tree was impaled by a hunk of aluminum buried several inches into the bark. Steadily, more and more trees were missing leaves, some even missing entire branches.

"One Hell of a blast..." Michael muttered.

Mila crawled down to the ground beside him as the treetops had become too thin to climb through. When the couple laid eyes on the crash site, neither of them could quite fully fathom the destruction around it. The wing that had contained the fuel was gone, a black crater left in its place. The plane itself was missing its top half and now lay rolled over onto its right side, much of its fuselage deformed from the intense heat.

The body of the craft had directed most of the shockwave to the left of the plane, where several trees were leveled or burnt to cinders. All of the crosses Galen had setup were knocked over, though another, more Nekonian body had joined the dead.

"This is the power of your world?" Mila murmured.

Sighing, Michael nodded. "Yeah. But if you think this is bad, you should see an atom bomb. It's half the size of your tent but could do a thousand times more damage than any of this. In fact, it would flatten this entire forest in a flash, kill thousands of people in the blink of an eye... part of the reason I don't want to go back to my world."

"Part of the reason?" the Neko echoed, unable to wrap her mind around such a device.

"Let's get those crosses back up and take a look at the body."

He pressed on toward the graves, ignoring the quizzical look from his companion. One by one he straightened out the crosses and made sure the dog tags were on straight. After packing down the dirt so the markers wouldn't tip over in a stiff breeze, Michael paid his respects and moved on toward the new body lying beside the plane.

Not much was left of the corpse, as it was charred all over and missing an arm. What was left of its mammary glands proved it was a female, and its tail proved it to be a Neko, something that gave Mila a cause of concern. Little else provided any evidence or clues to the woman's identity as nothing remained of her clothes or anything she may have had with her. No affects, no necklaces, rings, anything. She was just a charred mass of fused flesh.

"Michael," Mila called.

"Yes?"

He turned to see Mila standing over an emptied satchel near the tree line. The seared leather bag looked as though someone had already torn it open, pulling out the contents then casting it aside like garbage. A dozen papers, possibly from that same satchel, had been scattered about the brush, some burnt from the heat of the blast. In fact, as Michael figured, they had to have been in the satchel or they would have been incinerated when the plane went up.

"Come look at this," his Tracker called.

Wasting no time, Michael stepped over the charred corpse and walked over to the edge of the clearing to where Mila stood by the brush line. Right away she handed him a piece of paper while going over the rest of the Nekonian-script documents. When the Sergeant looked at the paper he had been given, his heart jumped. In his hands he held a near-perfect charcoal drawing of Galen's face, complete with a picture of his rifle and the eagle patch on his shoulder.

Whoever had drawn this had to have remarkable memory, and a Hell of an eye for detail, the soldier thought.

The only detail about the picture that worried Michael was the red claw painted in the corner of the page, the same symbol of the tribe to the south.

"What are these?" he asked, folding the picture and stuffing in the breast pocket of his uniform.

"Assassin documents. Detailing Galen's face, body, many things written here are about him and in great detail. Look, here it talks of a wounded friend with the black hedge hair that also must die."

"Me," Michael said, grinning.

"Yes. That body must be their assassin. I suppose the second must have been burned to ash in your trap."

"What makes you think there was two?" Michael asked as she went over the papers.

"It says here both assassins must be able to prove the death of both targets," Mila answered, showing him a document he couldn't read. "And here there is one body. Had the second survived, it would be trying to kill us."

"And if you have not encountered her, then it is as I have feared," a third, disheartened voice declared.

Both Michael and Mila spun around, the Neko readying her claws as Michael drew his sidearm. The couple froze as they faced a familiar, intimidating Neko male standing with his arms crossed over the polished plates of his armor. A shift in his stance reflected a beam of sunlight off the silver bands of his spaulders and cast a glow off his brilliant, golden-blonde fur and brushed-back hair.

The black lines of fur running down under his eyes came over his neutral face as he sighed, shoulders dropping a bit. His saddened, orange eyes stared at the corpse by the plane, then at the plane itself before they closed for second as he gave another sigh. When his eyes reopened, they were fixed upon Michael.

"Lower your weapon, human. I am not here for a fight."

"You're that bastard I saw facing down Galen," Michael stated, "The razor-lick."

"My name is Farok, human, and it is pronounced Rah-zhor-lick. Ra'zorlich. Do not insult my clan with an incompetent tongue."

"I don't care how to say your name. You tried to kill us," Michael growled.

"For invading our lands, human. But we are not in my territory anymore; there is no fight to make here. So lower your weapon."

The Sergeant eyed the sword on Farok's hip, the red claw painted on his breast plate. He thought back to when he first woke up in this world, stuck in his parachute as it was caught in the forest canopy. There had been a Ra'zorlich warrior waiting below him, blade at the ready as he spoke aloud of all the malicious things he was going to do to the paratrooper.

Then Michael recalled the viciousness with which Farok had pursued him with as Mila had carried him out of the Ra'zorlich's territory on her back. How close he came to ending their lives.

There was not a chance in Hell the Sergeant was going to trust a single member of the Ra'zorlich tribe. His finger remained wrapped around the trigger, his thumb reaching up to cock the pistol as he kept the barrel aimed directly at Farok's head.

The Neko sighed, lowering his hands to his sides, "Fine. So be it."

A split second was all it took for the warrior to act. A pellet flew from Farok's hands and exploded in Michael's face as a round fired from his pistol. Excess powder from the pellet splashed into Mila's eyes, causing her to cry out in pain and reel back, trying to rub the powder out. At the same time, the Sergeant was knocked off his feet in a blinded daze, Farok stumbling back from the force of the bullet striking his breastplate.

When Mila cleared enough of the stinging substance from her eyes, enough to reopen them once more, the Ra'zorlich had already regained his footing. Just as her claws came back out, he pulled his blade from his sheath and swung it around, the tip stopping a hair's width from her throat.

Swallowing hard, the Willher kept as still as possible with the steel tip of the sword chilling the skin over her jugular. Her eyes drifted to the new dent in Farok's polished armor, holding her breath as she then fearfully looked up to meet his emotionless gaze.

"I did not come for blood this day, Willher, I came for answers. Answers which you have granted. Your human will recover in a few zets, by which time I will be on my way back to my lands. You will not follow; you will turn back and remember what we do to trespassers, and you will be grateful that I do not take your lives today."

Growling by the end of his speech, Farok pulled his blade back, flourishing it around and returning it to its sheath. Passing one last glance at the corpse and the piles of ashes around the plane, Farok turned away to begin the long walk back to his clan's territory.

Mila released her breath, panting heavily as she tried to calm her heavy lungs. Her vision blurred with the initial drops of tears as the armored warrior disappeared into the mutilated swath of trees without even looking back behind him.

When Mila's breathing settle, her ears caught Michael's groaning at her feet.

"Michael!" she squeaked, mentally chastising herself for her delay as she dashed to his side, brushing the last traces of the pellet's powder off his face. A sense of relief surged over her as his eyes reopened, the lack of redness showing that the powder had gone inert.

"What the fuck..." he grumbled as his muscles regained their strength.

"Shock powder. It freezes the body and dazes the mind for a short time. It loses its effect not long after being broken from its pellet, so you will be all fine in a few zets," she assured.

"I meant, what the fuck just happened with that Ra'zorlich?"

"I don't know," Mila answered, taking Michael's hand. "But we are alive and unharmed. And right now, that is what matters."

"Yeah... Fucker was quick, I never saw that thing leave his hand," Michael grumbled as she pulled him up to his feet.

"It happened, but it does not matter." She leaned in, wrapping her arms around him while planting a kiss on his lips. "He did not kill us."

Michael warmly returned her embrace as he looked off in Farok's direction. He couldn't help but dwell on that short meeting. Why had he spared him? Michael was one of the specific targets ordered for the Ra'zorlich assassins to kill. Both him and Mila were vulnerable, there would have been no difficulty in snuffing out their lives, yet Farok spared them.

A thousand questions floated about Michael's mind, as well as the note that pistol rounds couldn't punch through Ra'zorlich armor like a rifle could. A mistake the Sergeant didn't intend to make twice. After all, it almost cost him something too important to lose.

Pulling her tight against his chest, mouth against one of the feline ears atop her head, he whispered, "You weren't hurt. To me, that's the most important thing."

...........................

There was a lack of feeling in Galen's body as he numbly marched along the river bank, the sweat dampening the back of his T-shirt in the relentless late-morning sun. The elixir he had been given had cut off all feeling in his body, and the supernatural tingle that had been coursing through his veins had vanished. Fatigue didn't plague him and pain couldn't cripple him, as the elixir had shut down the nerves that helped him sense either impairment. Whether those changes were permanent he could not yet tell.

A rope was tied around the Private's neck and fed to the belt of the man in front of him while another leash was held by the one marching behind him. Any attempt to speed up or slowdown was met by an abrupt jerk of the collar by either man to adjust his pace.

Since control was restored to his body after the elixir petrified him, Galen never took his eyes off Celia or the leash around her neck. Every second passing by, he held onto the image of ripping that bind from her body, embracing her in his arms as Pretayus swung from a tree, hanging until the buzzards picked his bones clean.

If his hands weren't tied together, he might've drawn the pistol on his hip and gunned them all down right there. Blown their brains out before they could draw their swords. But his sidearm was the one ace left up his sleeve, and he wasn't about to lay it on the table until he knew it would do him good.

For now, he had to wait until his chance came. Not that he didn't get his kicks in, of course. Blood stained his elbow from when he shattered the nose of the slaver behind him. His helmet had been confiscated after he had delivered a head-butt to Pretayus and left a dark purple mark on his brow. Then they had gagged him after he spat in the Lycan's eye when they had stopped to get a drink.

Only when Celia's well-being was directly threatened did he quit wreaking havoc upon his captors, finding a bit of joy in their restrained anger. At this point, he only counted down the time until they left him alone for the two seconds he needed to get his gun out. The thoughts of plugging Pretayus full of lead went rampant in the Private's mind, keeping him calm until the time he could carry them out.