Diamond Bright

Emma froze for only an instant before grabbing his wrist to haul him along. "Run!"

They were only twenty feet from the entrance to the salle and range; fleeing was the better option than trying to take the freakish gremlin on bare-handed.

From:

Jack let himself be hauled, heart thudding as he dove for the building. He was rather desperately grateful Emma was wearing shoes she could run in. There was some part of him that was spoiling for the fight, but a larger part cried out to defend Emma, whether she needed it or not.

He thought, They come first -- and now he had Rose's voice in his head.

He groped for the door handle and yanked it open.

From:

Emma dashed toward safety, not stopping to look back. If she looked to see how close it was, she'd probably panic, and they couldn't afford the delay.

She darted through the doorway once Jack got it open, immediately moving to the side to get behind the door so they could shove it shut quickly and lock their tormentor outside.

...with all the other students. Which Emma didn't really care about at the moment, save in an abstract manner. Most of her friends could take care of themselves.

"Get in here, Jack!"

From:

The gremlins were very happy as they got in there, even if the one outside was being rudely shut out of the feast.

Very, very happy.

The ones hidden under counters and behind furnishings in the building were hungry, and leapt toward the pair as the door slammed shut.

From:

One attached itself to Jack's trouser leg. He flailed and kicked hard, smashing it into a table leg in some bizarre parody of a dance.

"Weapons, Emma."

From:

"Thank you, Jack," she snapped, trying to stomp on the head of another one. Thank goodness she'd worn trainers and jeans today; nothing she wasn't willing to burn later. "I'd completely forgotten why we'd gone for a walk today."

She grabbed a few pairs of ear-protection from where they were hanging on the wall and started chucking them at the creatures as she tried to get to where her sword was kept. Without degenerating into hysterics as another one tried to bite through her pants. "Where is your gun?"

From:

Well, blondie was just going to have to deal with them dodging the thrown headsets. The gremlins hissed at them, laughing maliciously at the stupid humans that walked right into their den. Another one tried to drop on the girl's head as two more rushed at the boy.

They wanted to greet their guests properly, for being so nice as to bring delivery for dinner.

From:

Jack would have snapped out the weapon's precise placement if a gremlin hadn't been trying to feast on Emma's brains.

... or whatever gremlins do. He didn't know. He grabbed a practice foil and slashed at the gremlins in a scattershot manner, trying to scare them away more than anything else. One was sinking its claws into his legs, but he'd worry about that when they were safe again.

Edited Date: 2010-01-23 09:47 pm (UTC)

From:

Which might have been well and good, if the gremlin attached to Jack's pants didn't have severe issues dating back to childhood about being ignored. It hissed and sank every pointed thing it had more deeply into Jack's muscles, just as one of its brethren bit at Jack's boot.

The dual attack, when combined with the fact Jack was already off-balance hacking at things, made Jack's feet tangle in each other. He went down to the ground, hitting his head on that table along the way.

And then he was very still.

From:

Emma shrieked and reached up to fling the one hanging off her neck to the floor, stomping on it's ribs for good measure. She'd just reached the locker with her sword when she heard the crash, and spun around to see a scarily-motionless figure on the floor. "JACK!"

The room was suddenly bathed in a bright surge as her powers reacted, and when the initial light cleared, Emma had her hand around the grip of her sword, eyes completely white and haloed in a faint pink haze.

Her blade flashed up to skewer one through an eye. "Get the fuck away from him. Now."

From:

The gremlin screamed in pain and grasped at the blade, while its nestmates quietly left the room. They could find easier prey elsewhere.

From:

Meanwhile, Jack slowly opened his eyes, pain still slamming through his body.

"Zkurvysyn."

It would be a while before he was sat up, and quite possibly longer before he was back to English, but the meaining was more or less clear from his tone.

From:

Emma was already shaking as she pulled the sword free and stumbled towards Jack, her skull pounding; part power-overload, part bleed-through from Jack's pain.

"Hey," she sad, kneeling beside him. "Are you okay?"

From:

Jack opened his eyes and looked at her. "Love," he breathed -- well, he found his English.

For all of one word.

"No sé donde estoy. Soy mareado." And then back to Czech for //What happened?//

Edited Date: 2010-01-24 01:15 am (UTC)

From:

She had absolutely no idea what he was saying, but Emma knew it wasn't good.

"No, Jack, I need you to focus, please?" she urged, brushing her fingers over his head gently to see if he was bleeding. "Ah, ingles, sí?"

From:

A large span of skin on Jack's temple was already going green-purple and swollen with a bruise, and a think trickle of blood came from a scrape at the center where he'd made impact with the table.

"Ingles?" he repeated sleepily. "No habla ... oh. English."

He pushed himself to a sitting position, gasping at the effort of it. "I'm hurt." He sounded utterly confused at this fact.

From:

"I think you fell down, darling," she soothed, quickly putting a supportive hand against his back so he couldn't topple backwards. "You've got a nasty bump on your head, does it hurt anywhere else?"

That bruise was making Emma very, very nervous.

From:

It did -- his hips where he'd hit the ground, his ankle from twisting it, and his stomach from nausea.

"I don't know," he said, because there was too much pain to catalogue, and lost focus again. "Usted es un ángel bonita. Did I ever say....?"

Oh, this was excruciatingly helpful.

From:

No, no it was not helpful, because Emma did know what 'ángel' meant.

"You must have scrambled your tricksy little brain when you fell, if you're confusing me for an 'ángel,' Mr. Priest," she deflected. "Do you think you can stand up?"

From:

"Not confused," he said, looking straight into her eyes, and he meant that even though he'd deny it to his last breath when his head was unscrambled. "I think ..."

He leveraged himself with one hand on the tabletop and rose with an enormous groan. "Why are we here?"

Edited Date: 2010-01-24 02:12 am (UTC)

From:

In her opinion, his brain was definately scrambled if he thought she was an angel.

"You don't remember?" Oh, so not good. "There were the gremlin-creatures, and you insisted on coming out here with me, so you could get your pistol while I picked up my sword. I think one of them tripped you."

From:

"I fell down?" Jack was as broken and vulnerable as he got, and his natural accent was fading in and out of his voice. "I remember ... I woke up at the dorms. Gremlins. I found you and -- that's right. We went to the salle. I know we left the building. Not much else."

He didn't need to know more details to realize this could be very, very bad.

From:

"It's okay, darling," she lied, leaning in to press a kiss against his cheek. "You've got a nasty bump, I'd be surprised if you weren't a little dazed. We'll get you to the clinic, and everything will be fine once you've had a nap and something to drink."

Which still posed the problem of how Emma was going to get him down to town, on her own, without him passing out.

From:

"Right. Of course." Jack nodded dumbly and lurched away from Emma and toward the door, completely forgetting about any danger.

Shepherding him to the clinic without letting him get eaten might be a challenge.

From: