NINETEENTH SHOT

[dog_eat_dog]

Who: Tess and Kate
What: JUNGLE SURVIVIN'
When: Jumanji plot. I'm just making things up.
Where: The... castle... all jungley...
Rating:



Tess has been in the jungle for far too long now, and it hasn't even been all that long.

And frankly, she’s sick of it already –– as much as she enjoys the sights and smells, it’s the kind of place that wreaks havoc on her anxiety, given the close quarters of trees and rock and plant growth. Any turn could have something jumping out at her, and in territory without a lot of potential for improvised weapons, that’s not a very good situation. Without any clear line of sight, every obstacle hides a potential threat, and the fact that the jungle is also technically a castle makes it even harder, as the castle’s stonework is embedded in the jungle floor and walls block off a lot of directions as escape routes.

As such, Tess is clutching her gun very, very tightly as she slips through the trees, so tight that her hand starts cramping a little.

Then she slips on a thin patch of slick mud overtop the cobblestones and right down a set of stairs. Fuck. All she needed on top of this was a bruised tailbone and skinned palms, which is exactly what she winds up with. Her gun clatters out of her hand in the process, and at the bottom she’s more frantic to get her gun back than to assess the damage.

And to her great alarm, she spies her gun at someone else’s feet –– someone who is none other than Kate Beckett. There’s no threat to herself, she knows, but her gun...

“Do not touch that,” she growls as she picks herself up to rush over. It’s low and dangerous.

(It figures she would see Kate in person for the first time since Kate’s return when she’s even scrappier-looking than her usual street-crawling, drug-smuggling average.)

Comments

[themuse]

Kate's own fingers were wrapped around her stick again, not that it was going to do her a hell of a lot of good against a wild animal. Kate just had to hope that Tess was a damn good shot, and cared enough to cover her if push came to shove.

"No." she replied darkly, because the only creatures she had ever killed had been human. "I grew up in the city. The closest I ever came was squashing spiders in the bathtub."

[dog_eat_dog]

"Yeah, well, shooting animals is harder than people. They tend to be faster, their vital points are different, different center of gravity," Tess replies. Not for the first time today, she wishes she had an assault rifle instead of a handgun. "I saw a bear once when camping with my dad. Grizzly, big old thing, hanging out on the side of the road. We spooked it with our car and it covered thirty feet in only a couple leaps."

She pauses to consider what jungle creatures might be afoot.

"How much worse could an elephant be? A gorilla, or a rhino?"

Come to think of it, she's not even sure if rhinos live in the jungle. They sure as fuck weren't in Tarzan that she can remember.

[themuse]

With that description, Kate wishes they both had assault rifles. She still had no idea what she was up against and the stick seemed ever more stupid now, besides being something she could cling to passively as they worked their way through the brush.

"I wouldn't put it passed the castle to drop all three on us at once," Kate mused, because she doubted the castle cared where rhino's lived. It seemed to play by its own rules.

"I take you have experience hunting animals like these?" Kate asked, her tone a little hopeful. It would be great if at least one of them had a general idea of how to bring something down. Kate had heard enough stories about gorillas and chimpanzees to be spooked.

[dog_eat_dog]

Tess pauses, and she glances back at Kate to see her reaction.

"No. Just a couple dogs, the rest people... or former people."

[themuse]

"Former people?"

Kate paused then, catching Tess' eye and frowning.

"Does that mean what I think it means?"

[dog_eat_dog]

"Infected people aren't really people anymore," she says. "It's a fungus called cordyceps. It enters the body, works its way to the brain and hijacks it. Joel and I have to clear 'em out of our tunnels every once in a while. It's not much different from hunting."

[themuse]

"Wow. You weren't exaggerating, were you?"

Kate mostly mutters it to herself, cringing slightly as she thinks about it. It sounds like some kind of crazy theory Castle would come up with for a case, but it's obviously real. For the first time, Kate had no reason or instinct to doubt her.

"Compared to that, my life is a picnic," Kate admitted.

[dog_eat_dog]

"Yeah, well," Tess replies, a little grudging. "Just be glad I'm the one with the gun, then, seeing as you have no experience hunting anything but humans."

Now she's just got to be extra careful with her supply of bullets. She can't afford to waste any on anything small if they need to deal with anything with a thick hide.

"And keep your eyes on the treetops, too. I think leopards can climb trees."

If leopards even live in the jungle. Maybe she's thinking of jaguars. Or lions.

[themuse]

Kate looked up at the trees right away, gritting her teeth together. Leopards could climb trees, as far as she knew, which just made her feel exponentially more fucked than she did thirty seconds ago.

"I was trapped in a room with a tiger once," Kate admitted, continuing to walk ever as her eyes were on the treetops. "I survived that, I'm sure as hell not getting eaten by one here."

[dog_eat_dog]

Tess sets her attention on climbing around a rather large tree root jutting up from the floor, but she does glance at Kate over her shoulder briefly.

"What, cornered him in the questioning room for assault or something?"

[themuse]

Kate actually laughed as she followed Tess around the tree root. It was kind of funny in retrospect - especially since it hadn't resulted in her or Castle being mauled to death - but the image of interrogating a tiger in the box back at the twelfth was a significantly more hilarious image.

"Not exactly," she said, shaking her head but her smile didn't entirely fade. "We were taken hostage by a exotic animal smuggling ring. The tiger broke through the wall." That wasn't exactly the way it went, but Kate wasn't going to go into the complicated details.

[dog_eat_dog]

"That is precisely why I stuck to drugs and guns," Tess replies, equally vague — her own complicated details, and all. Guns and drugs don't mindfully turn on her, after all. "Intentionally taken hostage, or did your boyfriend fuck up?"

[themuse]

Kate pursed her lips together, not surprised at all by Tess' admission. The drugs were more of a surprise than the guns, actually, but either way, Tess lived in a kind of world where that sort of thing was probably the highest commodity.

"It wasn't Castle's fault," she said, smirking. "We were checking out a lead and ended up getting blindsided."

[dog_eat_dog]

Tess gives an amused noise that could just be a sharp exhale.

"Blindsided says it all."

[themuse]

"Hey, getting shot with a tranquilizer gun will take anyone down," Kate responded, but she didn't take the comment personally. There wasn't any point to it and Kate knew they hadn't done anything wrong. She and Castle had been baited and they made it out alive - and caught the bad guys - which was all that counted at the end of the day.

[dog_eat_dog]

Tess imagines that's exactly the kind of thing that any person would consider "being caught off guard", but she has to remind herself again, over and over, that not everyone spends their life on guard for being shot.

"He's lucky he's not dead."

[themuse]

"We're both lucky," Kate admitted, thinking back on the number of brushes with death that they'd had over the years. Her being shot aside, there were plenty of other situation they had been in that should have, by all accounts, resulted in both of their deaths. Somehow, they still managed to make it through.