Run With the Hunted

“Who’s this?” John asked tentatively, looking at his phone to make sure he had indeed called Jenny. Her contact photo showed on the screen, so it had to be her phone.

“You called me!” Grace answered, watching Jenny dodge away from their current target, a large rhinoceros-looking creature. The main difference was the size and color. Its hide was a deep, angry red in place of the usual gray and as it crashed into a tree instead of the bassist, the tree was atomized upon contact with the creature’s horn. “Oh wait, this is Jenny’s phone. Jenny! Phone call!”

“I’m a little busy,” Jenny replied, assaulting the creature with her sound waves. It shrugged them off as it prepared to charge again.

“Oh, so sorry, she’s going to have to call you back,” Grace hung up, peeling a sticker of an amp off her jean jacket, which was lined to the brim with a myriad of stickers and patches of varying objects. Blowing her red-streaked white hair out of her face, she stood next to her teammate and slapped the sticker onto her bass. As it activated, a tattoo of a messy red “A” in a black circle glowed on her chest, which was only slightly obscured by the open jacket and black bra underneath.

The increase in power was immediate. As the Thicket Daemon charged toward them again, Jenny played a riff whose recoil stopped her. Fortunately, that blast was enough to topple the beast on its back. Taking a cartoony sticker of a green vial off her jacket, Grace slapped it onto the head of the beast. The imitation of poison, so close to the creature’s brain, had a near-direct path to its heart.

Groans of issued out of it as it attempted to flip itself while in terrible pain. Its horn dug into the ground causing several explosions which echoed through the forest, the shockwaves pushing the two women back.

“That’s two of three done, yeah?” Grace asked, peeling the sticker off Jenny’s bass. “Your bass gets really powerful when I amp it up. Lucky you’ve got such a useful partner, huh?”

“Yeah, how great for me,” Jenny replied sarcastically. “Who called me?”

“Some guy, sounded concerned that I picked up,” Grace responded, taking Jenny’s phone out of her pocket. “Kept it nice and safe for ya.”

Taking her phone, Jenny noticed she had a couple messages from John.

John: I know whatever you’re doing you’re going to be great at, but I hope you’re being careful
John: Call me when you can, I can’t wait to see you again

“Alright, let’s hurry up. We’ve only got one target left, right?” Jenny asked, putting her phone back into her pocket.

“That’s right!” Grace said, crouching down and cycling between the different viewpoints she had. She had been placing eye stickers on different trees as they made their way through the forest. So far they had been useless, but…

“There! About a kilometer that way, there’s a pack of timberwolves coming toward us. That should wrap it up for us!” Grace cheered. “Good thing it’s a bunch of adds, their den mother is nowhere to be seen. It’ll be nice to avoid that extra effort.”

“Sounds good to me,” Jenny replied, taking a water bottle out of her bass case. Downing half of it, she threw another to Grace. “Thanks for the help against that thing. Couldn’t have done it without you.”

“Aw, someone’s starting to like me,” Grace teased, drinking the water gratefully. “You’re gonna miss me after this, aren’tcha?”

“Don’t push it,” Jenny replied, walking toward her partner, “and do not touch my bass without my permission. Ever.”

“Love you too,” Grace whispered, peeling a wings sticker off her hat and putting it onto one of her shoes. “I’ll race ya to them!”

Even with the wing’s boost to her speed, Grace lagged behind Jenny, who wasn’t even close to full speed. As she ran toward what was assumedly their final goal, Jenny texted back.

Jenny: I’ll be done soon, Johnny. I’m not sure how cut out I am for this stuff.

A pit of unease spawned in her stomach as she put her phone away, beginning to speed herself up with her bass.

She skidded to a stop as she saw a mass of creatures approaching from a distance. As she waited for Grace to catch up, she hummed to herself and put her earbuds in. Alright, after this it’s all over, Jenny thought, the wolves now coming in to clear view.

They were less animal and more plant, their flesh made completely out of wood and glowing green sap forming their eyes. A perplexing combination, the ultimate bottom of the food chain replacing an apex predator.

“Grace, can I have that speaker sticker?” Jenny asked, holding out her hand. With her other she began to strum her bass, the wolves creeping toward her.

“Oh now you want my help. Looks like they’re not all bark and no bite,” Grace sniffled, handing her the sound amplifying sticker. “Better make it quick, that one doesn’t have much juice left.”

“In this life I’ve seen everything I can woman, I’ve seen lovers flying through the air hand-in-hand,” Jenny began narrowing the range of her sound and blasting the lead wolf to smithereens. The rest of the pack pounced, and she loosened the focus, blowing them back. At the same time, wolves began to encircle them.

“Righto, I am not great at direct fighting! Well, these guys are probably small enough for my weaker stickers to work…” Grace said, though Jenny couldn’t even hear her. A wolf leapt at the Brit, and she spun out of the way, placing a heart on its back.

Immediately the creature rolled over, showing her its stomach. “Alright! Protect me from whatever gets by her!” Grace commanded, taking a skull and crossbones sticker off her hat. “Gotta be careful with this one…”

Meanwhile, Jenny was having an easy time dispatching the wolves, merely blowing them back then picking them off one by one. Rinse and repeat. To compensate more and more of the pack began to circle around them, and Jenny leapt into a tree to avoid one that had attempted to get her from the side.

Meanwhile, Grace was having much less trouble. Three more heart stickers saw to it that she had a small **** of the wolves to work for her, though the stickers only lasted for about five minutes.

“Grab my hand!” Jenny said when Grace’s first wolf turned on her. As a result, the other three turned on it before her mini-pack eventually turned into one, which eventually rejoined the main pack. “We’ve gotta have less than half left, right?”

“Looks like it,” Grace replied, taking the water bottle from earlier out of her jacket. After drinking it, she dropped it onto the ground, where it was immediately pounced on by a wolf. Jenny killed the offender, and thought of a plan when she realized what drew it into range.

“I’ve got tons of trash in here! Let’s keep dropping stuff!” Jenny exclaimed, opening her bass case.

“You think they can’t actually see and are only detecting movement?” Grace asked, taking an empty box of tissues and tossing it down.

“I hadn’t thought that deep into it, but probably,” Jenny replied, continuing the process. Down went empty water bottles, chip bags, and cookie wrappers. Each time, a wolf or two leapt onto it, and each time Jenny blasted them away.

“Wow, you do not eat healthy,” Grace commented, which earned her a shove, not quite off the tree.

“It’s not like this is all built up in a week or something, this case has crazy amounts of space. Stuff gets lost in here sometimes,” Jenny explained, noticing she had ran out of trash. “We can probably take care of the last few.”

She sailed down, landing on one of the few stragglers. It went out with a whimper, and two remained. They attacked at once, from the back and front. Jenny blasted the one in front, but didn’t even notice the one in back.

Grace, however, did. She fell onto it from the tree with much less grace than Jenny had on hers, and slapped the crossbones sticker onto it. It crumpled to dust in moments.

Jenny hugged Grace tight, ecstatic to be done hunting; it definitely wasn’t the sort of thing she was into. “Alright! Now all we need to do is make it back to the entry-”

She was cut off by a stream of bubbles cutting through the air toward her, which she dodged. A zapping sound emanated from the tree the bubbles hit, and looking back it was blackened as if it had been struck by lightning.