Period Piece

You are the Warrior.

The pit of your stomach churns with anticipation.

The veil is drawn, the stage is lit.

The Beast is pacing back and forth, snarling fumes of hot rancid breath from its cavernous mouth.

Your body is low.

Your eyes gleam.

And your spear is ready to sing.

From high atop her rocky roost, peering out from behind the cascading torrent of water down into the dew-speckled delta below, Jacqui watched with corked brow as a huddle of hooded heathens robed in black gathered around some kind of huge stone tablet laid flat across four smaller stones serving as table legs. One Hood was assigned to each corner, keeping it steady as one of the four delicately stretched himself out over the table's surface, carefully etching a pattern into its center with a shiny silver chisel and mallet.

The ping ping ping of the chisel echoed timidly through the air, like the sound of a tiny housefly headbutting a glass window, but was just loud enough to hear above the drone of the waterfall and buzz Jacqui's nerves.

"Hey!" she called down, stepping out onto the completely natural staircase of stone slabs that lead up the side of the hill into the cave. "This is my waterfall, go find your own!"

The chiseler nearly lost his balance and momentarily juggled his tools as he scrambled for balance. "Oh, god! Uhm!...oh...you're not...I mean, uh...hi."

"Yeah, hi," Jacqui echoed, ambling her way down toward them step by step as she ignored the gut-shark still swimming about inside her. "Whatcha got there, kids?"

The other three Hoods exchanged looks, but Jacqui wasn't sure which adjective to label those looks with. Beneath their full-body charcoal hooded robes with white trim around the edges lay nothing but a shroud of darkness, leaving little room for interpretive body language. They didn't even have helpful glowing eyes. Just a vague concentration of shadowy mist that may or may not have even been human, except they were human because no vague concentration of shadowy mist would bother being as anxious as the bundle of nerves holding a mallet and chisel before her.

Mallet-man - ...Mallethead? No...mallet-whacker, whacker's a funny word...or how about Mallywhacker? yeah, let's go with that one - blankly regarded his masonic handiwork for a moment, then shrugged back. "...a table?"

"No shit, Palpatine," Jacqui replied, stepping up to examine it in detail. "I'll rephrase. WHY do you have a table?"

Again the figures traded silent looks with one another, offering no visible body language or hushed whispers floated between them for Jacqui to read into. Whatever communication was taking place here was entirely invisible to her.

And again, Mallywhacker was the one to reply: "...I don't know if we're...ALLOWED...to tell you about the table...".

He received an unimpressed, but nonetheless curious, asynchronous blink. "...'allowed'?"

Mallywhacker turned - desperately, she assumed - to his cohorts for help, and was offered only a muted cough from the hood across the table. "...I-I...we, uh, probably shouldn't be talking to you. Or anyone, really. The instructions were to assemble the table, not to give a PR statement...oh, shoot, I probably shouldn't have said THAT, either...".

He shook his head, pulled up his dangling sleeves, and reoccupied himself with chiseling patterns on the surface of the table, probably hoping that ignoring her would somehow dissolve her interest and get her to walk away.

"...whose instructions?" she prodded instead, unfortunately completely interested. "You get this from IKEA or somethin'?"

His face still blankly clouded in black mist, Jacqui decided she'd use her imagination to fill in his expressions for him. She was currently picturing his eyes darting frantically as he bit his lip and tried to suck back in all the sweat his forehead was producing. His actual response was nothing more than hesitant silence as he tried to plot out his next chisel stroke.

"What's this thing made of, anyway?" she continued, undeterred as she ran a finger across its surface. Judging by the other Hoods' faceless but exaggerated reactions, touching the table without wearing the associated Hood was an act of criminal sacrilege. The figure standing next to Mallywhacker drew in what sounded like a very angry breath.

"PLEASE!" Mallywhacker warned sharply before metering off into a mumble and brushing her hand away. "...please don't touch the stone table."

Making physical contact with her hand amused and deterred her even less. "Chill, it's not like I'm gonna break it or nothin'. This ain't mahogany, it looks like just a plain old everyday rock."

"It's a SLAB," the Hood at Mallywhacker's left corrected her in a constricted, throaty, and decidedly impatient bass voice. He was met with an elbow jab and a harsh command to shut up from his fellow Hood.

Jacqui raised an eyebrow and tried one last time to zoom and enhance on the black misty face of Mister Bass Voice. - ...hm, bass...second bass? Nah...Bassface?...BassHEAD. YES. - Maybe it was just the sunrise behind him playing light tricks, or maybe he was hiding behind some kind of flap inside the hood, but whatever his secret was, there existed only blackness where a face should be. He still looked like some kind of warlock or sorcerer, but Jacqui wouldn't believe it until he summoned flames from the ley-lines on his palms. Wearing a cool hoodie alone does not a black mage make.

"...do you REALLY need to be here right now?" Mallywhacker asked, already exasperated after only two minutes of conversation. "We have a...a job to finish, and you're making things very difficult for us!"

"I told you, I was here first," Jacqui reiterated, encroaching her way into his comfort zone. "And since you didn't bother to ask, you probably didn't know that I ALSO have a job to do. You can finish your little art installation later."

Mallywhacker shook his hood in disdain. "NO, you don't understand...we have explicit orders to...erm, I mean...oh, heck, I probably shouldn't have...ugh, this is so awkward! I REALLY shouldn't be talking to you!"

"Sucks for you then, cause I'm not goin' anywhere," she huffed back, plopping her butt down on the edge of the table, arms folded. "You think this is awkward now, just wait til I start singin' kids' songs. I'd start talkin' if I were you."

Another not-black-mage, the one opposite Mallywhacker, snorted at the suggestion, trying to casually play it off as a sneeze - ...so...Sneezy, then? Sneezer?...Ebeneezer the Wheezer-Sneezer? Nah, better keep it simple...somethin' like...Snorts MacKenzie. Fuck yeah, that's perfect. Mallywhacker shot a glare over at the vaguely-feminine-sounding Snorts MacKenzie - or at least, Jacqui assumed he did, under all that darkness - and sighed absently, reluctantly resuming his chiselwork. Jacqui leaned in to watch.

"...is that you?" she asked, pointing to an intricate piece of linework on the left hemi-slab of the table.

Basshead growled, but in a whisper. Mallywhacker tried to ignore her.

"Oh, sorry, I meant 'is that anime'?" she continued, eyeing her crowd like an amateur stand-up comedian. "Ya gotta help me out here man, I can't draw anything but stick figures, so I don't even have a clue what I'm looking at here."

She paused again to gauge her audience's reactions. Snorts MacKenzie seemed to be enjoying the show from the other end of the table, if the suppressed giggling was any indication. She was either laughing at Jacqui's comedy bit, or, more likely, the way Basshead's hands kept expanding and contracting into tight-knuckled fists with every joke. And of course, Mallywhacker seemed all but swimming in a stew of his own discomfort and frustration as he poured every milliliter of concentration into the curvature of his next chiseled line. And finally, standing aloof against the far corner, firmly holding their end in place and remaining as stoic and composed as the very waterfall behind them, the fourth Hood remained mysteriously silent - ...hmm, silence...Quiet Time Theater?...no...maybe Lip Service?...ew, no, that's just gonna lead to dirty thoughts. Hmm...Hush, then?...Hushpuppy...Hushpuppy, yeah!

And together, one at each corner of the stone slab at the foot of the waterfall, cloaked in darkness and rife with unprofessionalism, they formed...The Four Hoodsmen of The Apocalypse.

...HoodsMEN? Hoodspeople. Hoodfolk. Gender-Unconfirmed-Hood-Bearing-Weirdos. The Hoodsworn.

"...whatcha writin' now?" Jacqui eventually resumed, daring to point directly at the glyph as it was being etched. "Is that Chinese?"

"...NO!" Mallywhacker fumed, swatting her hand away as he pieced his concentration back together. "It's nothing! Please, just go away!"

"Nah, it don't look like nothin'," Jacqui continued, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. "You sure it's not some kinda Asian alphabet? Like, Korean? Japanese? Vietnamese, maybe? Gimme 20 questions, I'll get it eventually."

She heard Basshead hiss between clenched teeth as Mallywhacker shot him an armor-piercing glare, demanding he not break the seal of freshness on his bottled outburst.

"...maybe I'm thinking of the wrong continent..." she continued vaguely, watching for his reaction from the corner of her eye. "...are they runes?"

"SIGILS!" Basshead shouted back at her, beating a fist against the table as Snorts MacKenzie and Hushpuppy rushed to stabilize it. "They're fucking SIGILS, dammit!"

"I TOLD you to shut up!" Mallywhacker pleaded, raising that with which he whacked above his head. "We were told VERY CLEARLY not to speak to ANYONE, especially not randos like HER!"

"But there's a fucking difference!" Basshead moaned as Snorts MacKenzie snickered into the sleeve of her robe, shaking her head in defeat. "I'm so fucking tired of that bullshit misconception! People think 'runes' and 'sigils' are interchangeable, but they're NOT! They're fucking NOT! Sigils are words of power, runes are just a fucking alphabet!"

"God, if only I had my phone right now," Snorts MacKenzie managed to giggle in between loud, abrupt snorts. "This is comedy GOLD right here!"

And as much as Jacqui - a fellow aficionado of comedy gold rage rants - agreed with her, it really was time to stop dicking around. There were unfortunately bigger fish to fry, and Jacqui was all out of tartar sauce.

"Sigils, huh?" She focused her attention on Basshead, the most likely of his cohorts to divulge information in blurt form. "So you guys holdin' a seance or somethin', then? Gonna conjure yourselves up a demon?"

"ALL! WE ARE DOING! IS! BUILDING! A TABLE!" Mallywhacker retorted, hammering the chisel with each pause as if pounding nails into a coffin.

"And stop calling it a fucking TABLE!" Basshead roared, flinging his hands up in anguish. "It's an ALTAR! There is a FUCKING! DIFFERENCE!!!"

By now Snorts MacKenzie was in stitches, barely even keeping her end of the table propped up as she collapsed over it. Judging from everyone's reactions, it must have been ages since any of the Four Hoodsmen had interacted with anyone outside their cult clique, and Snorts especially had forgotten the sheer entertainment value in egging on an outspoken comrade. Mallywhacker was clearly having none of it, but seemed too preoccupied with his tinkering task to intervene. The enigmatic Hushpuppy was the only Hoodsman who hadn't yet said a word.

"Oh, now it's an altar, is it?" Jacqui continued, keeping an eye on him. "Someone gettin' sacrificed tonight? ...er, this morning, I guess?"

"WHO TOLD YOU THAT?!" Mallywhacker shrieked, fumbling with the chisel in a panic. "I mean! W-we're not doing anything AT ALL strange or unusual here! NOPE, nothing WEIRD about setting up a STONE TABLE in the middle of the BACKWOODS, AM I RIGHT!?!"

Jacqui sniffed and nodded, waiting for Basshead's next outburst. "Nah, of course not, no, not at all, don't worry about it...but seriously, who's this thing gonna be dedicated to? Satan?"

There was a disapproving snort from the MacKenzie known for it. "Pshh, Satan...as if."

Jacqui eyed her suspiciously. "Okay...then who?"

No response. The invisible face seemed to turn just a few degrees away from her, breaking their invisible eye contact.

"...what, don't like the name Satan?" she offered, eyes shifting from blank black face to blank black face. "How about Lucifer, then? That who this altar is for?...Beelzebub, maybe? Baphomet?"

If the Hoods had eyes, they were definitely all glancing rather desperately over at Hushpuppy for assistance. But if there was one critical, unanticipated side effect of wearing literal darkness over your face, it was that all body language of the facial persuasion from one Hoodsman to another was entirely indiscernible, making silent subtext all but impossible.

"Well?" Jacqui pressed, the clenching period pain now coating her words with venom. "Is it Hades? Osiris? Shinigami? I can sit here naming gods of death and the underworld all fuckin' day if you want me to. I just spent the past goddamn hour stockin' up on names, so if you really want me gone so badly, you'll tell me who the fuck you're building an altar for. RIGHT. NOW."

And then, proving he wasn't just a scarecrow made of a hooded robe hung on a stone pillar, Jacqui heard the silent Hood on the far corner take a deep breath and finally come to life. And, in a voice softer and decidedly more Jewish-Brooklyn than anybody, least of all Jacqui, would have expected, Hushpuppy replied:

"...nah, it's none of those. We serve our own God."

Taking a moment to process his unexpected accent with a good old-fashioned asynchronous blink, Jacqui gave him dismissive shrug. "...yeah, well, who DOESN'T serve their own god around here? Too many cooks make one God taste bad or whatever, right?"

Hushpuppy shook his head. "...nah, it's not like that. The four of us, we still share a God. But we're the First disciples. Our God's probably not gonna be listed in any dumb book, know what I mean? But, uh...now I'm curious. What do you mean by 'too many cooks'?"

Confused, Jacqui gave him a hesitant eyebrow. "...you've never heard that expression?"

Hushpuppy sighed. "In context, ya smartass...".

"Yeah, yeah...I thought you meant you all just kinda serve your own individual gods. Y'know, so you wouldn't have to argue about which god is the REAL god or 'my god can beat up your god', that sort of thing."

"Yeah, I GET that part," Hushpuppy continued, in a voice uncharacteristically calm for his expected stereotypes, Jacqui noticed. "...but as I said, the four of us? We all worship the SAME God. We all KNOW who the real God is."

"Pff," Jacqui rolled her eyes. "There is no REAL god. 'God' is just an idea."

The whole world changed ever so slightly, as if the sounds of four people breathing had just stopped.

Jacqui's eyes shifted tensely back and forth. "...don't look at me like that. I know what's up, I got this all figured out now. 'God' is just a metaphor for whatever's important to you, how you choose to live your life and all that. When you worship or obey your 'god', you're just following your own personal 'code of conduct', and then referring to it like it's a person. So you guys believe in the same code of conduct - religion, you could say - which apparently revolves around building stone altars covered in magic sigils out in the middle of forests just before sunrise."

An uneasy moment of silence emerged between them as all four Hoodsmen seemed to exchange faceless glances.

"...'code of conduct'?" Snorts MacKenzie turned back toward Basshead. "...I thought we were all doing this 'cause God told us to."

Basshead nodded back. "Yeah, heard Him say it myself, just before He left."

"SHE left," Snorts corrected, pointing a finger back at him.

"Fuck off," he countered, pointing a different finger back at her.

"Oh, get a room, you two," Mallywhacker interjected, gently rapping his mallet against the slab like a gavel. "And as for you, Miss Snoopy-pants, yes, our God told us to build THIS exact stone altar, in THIS exact location, with THESE exact sigils, placed at THESE exact intervals, at THIS exact time of morning. We all heard the instructions very clearly, because our God is a very well-spoken and transparent leader. We were ALSO told to finish the job QUICKLY, before our God returned, so! If you don't mind, I hope all this time we've now wasted explaining our entire presence here to you has sated your bottomless curiosity so that we may finish our ordained task before our God comes back and decides to excommunicate or dismember us for being too slow. GOOD DAY TO YOU!"

And with as fancy a flourish as a full-body robe can muster, he turned on his heels back toward the altar, trying hard in spite of his obvious customer service background to pretend that Jacqui wasn't even standing there anymore.

But, to his dismay, curiosity and bullheaded persistence were inseparably married in Jacqui's head, and, seeing as the dream still hadn't ended yet, her interrogation of the poor nervous cultist remained yet unfinished.

"...why do you guys keep saying 'god told us to do this' like you were literally just talking to him a few minutes ago?" she pressed, hands on her hips.

"SHE WAS just here a few minutes ago," Snorts insisted, noticeably upset by the pronoun usage now. "She left to go get something, probably gonna be back any minute."

...ahh, so that's how it is...

Jacqui sighed and shook her head. "Hate to break it to you, muffin, but if that's the case, I'll bet you real dollar bills that you poor suckers have been lied to. Whoever you were talkin' to is probably a con artist or something."

If not for the endless splashing roar of the waterfall behind them, the moment would have been accompanied by comedy's most timeless and inexplicably appropriate sound effect: the record scratch.

The moment also would have been hilarious in a grim, macabre kind of way, if four faceless cultists in black hoods surrounding a stone altar all staring blankly back at you wasn't a pants-pissingly terrifying position to experience firsthand. Her instinct was to gulp, but in the interest of calling their bluff with faked courage, she let her mind do the gulping for her, and instead focused on rallying her fingers into fist formation.

"...that's some pretty bold words coming from a filthy infidel," Basshead warned in his most menacing bass croon.

"Yes, why don't you take a moment to explain yourself…" Mallywhacker agreed, hands wrapped tightly around his tools, "...to the hooded believer with a chisel in his hands and four years of art school under his belt."

Jacqui scoffed at the suggestion, brain already preemptively mapping his possible attacks and plotting her own counterattacks. "Look, all I'm sayin' is - as I just explained - 'god' is an idea, not a person, right? So whoever commanded you to build this altar was probably just another human wackjob, probably fishing for a new batch of fresh meat to swindle."

"Bullshit," Snorts challenged, arms crossed defiantly. "She's not just some plain old normie, she is a GOD. You should SEE the kind of mind-blowing shit she can do."

"All smoke and mirrors, and maybe an app or two," Jacqui waved it off. "I've seen shit like this on the subway twice a week, trust me. She'll wow you with glitz and glitter, get you to believe she's a miracle-worker, then she's got you eating out of the palm of her hand. Tale as old as balls."

"But WHY?" Basshead growled, steam pouring from his empty hood. "What's the point? Why would HE try to trick us?"

"Did 'God' ask you for money yet?" Jacqui asked dryly.

"No," all four Hoodsmen replied in unison.

"...oh." The response left her genuinely stunned for a moment. Thought I had 'em there... "Well...just, uh...keep your eyes peeled, then."

"Maybe..." replied Hushpuppy, gesturing vaguely to the forest behind her, "...YOU oughtta be the one to keep your eyes open, sweetheart."

"...why?"

"OH MY GOD!" Mallywhacker gasped, turning to face whatever was behind her. "...sorry, y-you frightened me! I-I didn't even hear you approach!"

A cool, pleasant voice from over Jacqui's shoulder replied, "I expected just as much. After all, only the vigilant will know to expect my return."

Warily, Jacqui turned to take a glimpse as well, and found herself facing head on into the thick black shadow face of a fifth Hoodsman. This newcomer bore a robe lined with a subtle aquamarine trim instead of white, and the hood was imprinted with extra linework along the top, neatly arranged in tight columns and precise rows of straight lines, like cross-hatching. The hood itself also seemed a bit larger and roomier than the other Hoodsmen's, in an oversized, almost silly way.

And, god or otherwise, despite nothing but the thick black void of darkness inside that hood, Jacqui could just FEEL this enigmatic Fifth Hoodsman staring directly back at her.

"I-I'm sorry, God," Mallywhacker apologized again, this time with a deep and penitent bow. "...but look, we've, uh...we've finished assembling the altar, j-just as you asked us to!"

"Indeed you have," the Fifth agreed, gaze still locked on Jacqui's. "...but more importantly, I see you've made a friend in the process."

Something felt wrong. And by wrong, Jacqui meant something about this felt familiar. Nothing about this SHOULD have felt familiar though, and that's what made it wrong.

"Puh, I'd hardly call her a friend!" Basshead scoffed with the demeanor of someone undecided over whether or not he should be punching Jacqui in the stomach in front of his god. "She's done nothing but interrogate and impugn our religious ceremonies since she poked her head out from behind that waterfall!"

"Oh, THAT'S what she's been doing here?" the Fifth mused, rubbing the bottom of the hood like it was a chin. Snorts MacKenzie might have been right, that voice did have an undeniably feminine tone to it...

And yet...

"She said you're trying to trick us," Snorts spoke up before Jacqui could. "Says you're not really our God and that you want our money or something. Frankly, I think SHE'S the one trying to trick US, siren harpy that she is."

"Oh my, such serious allegations," the Fifth said, still calm and still focused on Jacqui. "Especially coming from someone on the outside looking in. So, as someone who's clearly only learned of our cult's existence mere minutes ago, please, infidel, indulge me with the good reason you have for this unprovoked hostility...lest you provoke some hostility of our own."

"You bet your cloak-and-dagger ass I got a good reason," Jacqui replied automatically, swallowing back the creeping dread that the Fifth seemed to be sending down her spine. "I'm here to file a noise complaint against you Hoodlums."

Heh, 'Hoodlums'...I'm proud of that one.

"...noise?" The Fifth finally broke eye contact with Jacqui to glance over at the Hoodlum posse in question, naturally going for Hushpuppy first. "Are you certain it was THIS cult making all the noise you allegedly heard? As you no doubt can surmise from this fine upstanding model cultist's behavior, we're quite good at being quite quiet."

"Don't jerk me around," Jacqui warned, casting a finger up in the Fifth's not-face. "I'm talkin' about chisel boy over here, bangin' his tools at the crack of dawn like he was a goddamn dulcimer orchestra. I was here first, and I can't do my morning meditations with all this racket goin' on outside my cave. So I'm gonna need you to pack up your little god scam you got goin' here and get the fuck off my mountain."

Before the Fifth could even turn to reply, Jacqui found herself face to steaming nostrils with Basshead, as he stepped in to - quite possibly - die for his beliefs. "Let me be your instrument of justice, my God! Just say the word, and I shall be the arrow in your quiver, and soon, the arrow in her HEART!"

"Bring it, fucktruck!" Jacqui challenged, beating a fist against her chest. "I've taken shits bigger than you!"

"Now I REALLY wish I had my phone," Snorts MacKenzie piped up, leaning on the altar excitedly to watch.

"PLEASE don't lean on the table," Mallywhacker pleaded, doing his tender best to keep his entire side of it balanced while Basshead cracked his knuckles.

...but the Fifth put a hand on his shoulder, gently pulling him away from the confrontation. "Now, now, there's no need for that, Mark. We hardly have time for a dramatic showdown as it is, and we certainly don't want to see bloodshed on YOUR part."

"Damn fuckin' straight," Jacqui added, spitting on the ground. "Glad to see somebody around here recognizes the food chain. Your so-called 'God' is right, you ever wanna see some bloodshed, you just TRY fuckin' with the sparring champ when she's on her period. You'd better HOPE the only blood you get on your shirt is your own, if ya know what I mean!"

Basshead - or "Mark", apparently - seemed to calculate the result in his head while Snorts MacKenzie was way ahead of him, chuckling out loud to herself as Mallywhacker just sighed and hung his head. And in her mind, Jacqui painted a stupid grin on Hushpuppy's blank shadow face to complete the picture. After all, there was nothing better than a joke well received to stoke the flames of confidence.

And if Mark's actions told her anything, she'd need all the confidence she could stoke. The air smelled like angry sweat and baby powder, and her muscles were wound up tighter than a pair of handcuffs in a sex dungeon, which could only mean the inevitable upcoming battle was brewing strong.

Weird, she thought, taking her stance. I would've guessed this Fifth guy was gonna be the star of the fight, but apparently Mark's the unlucky bastard with a chip on his shoulder. An overzealous newbie bent on strict adherence to the rules, and I'm breakin' every last one. Heh...but there's still one thing I don't get...

...if not money, then what game IS this Fifth Hoodsman playing at?

"Please return to your waterfall cave," that Fifth Hoodsman said directly to her, still cool and calm as ever. "We will stay here and complete our sacrifice and then move right along to our next order of business. Once we leave, you can take all the eternity you want to meditate, if that's what you so badly want."

"Uh huh, sure," Jacqui nodded sarcastically, rooting herself in place. "I'll just waltz right back up to my little cave, close my eyes, and strike up another AUM, then before you know it, BAM! I get clocked in the back of the head with a baseball bat and wake up naked on the sacrificial altar, right? What'd you think, I was born yesterday or somethin'? I'm on to your bullshit, and I'm not takin' a lick of it."

"Please don't argue," the Fifth replied with a sigh, a tiny crack in the voice of patience suddenly peeping through. "After all, it's not YOU we intend to sacrifice...".

"Why not, am I not good enough for ya?" is what she wanted to say, but a mental gear that hadn't been turning since this conversation started suddenly clicked into position and began spinning. "...oh...well, if not ME...then who drew the short straw?"

"Not important," the Fifth dismissed with a wave. "Now please, return to your cave. We have very important and time-sensitive business to complete."

Jacqui raised an eyebrow. "And I can't stay and watch because...?"

"Trade secrets, I'm afraid. Off with you, now."

"What's your hurry all of a sudden?" Jacqui chided, trying to picture whether or not the Fifth had started to sweat like Mallywhacker under that hood.

"I have no time nor desire to explain my process," the Fifth replied flatly. "Mark, please see this woman back to her place."

...bad choice of words, buddy.

"My 'PLACE'?" Jacqui replied, enunciating the word with scalpel sharpness. "The fuck is THAT supposed to mean?"

"Yeah, your place," Hushpuppy repeated, softly. "We kinda need you up there in that cave, it's, uh, an important part of the ritual."

"John, please!" The Fifth snapped curtly. "Trade secrets!"

"...sorry, God," Hush--er...John? - answered, head bowed respectfully. "I spoke outta turn, didn't I? Went and pulled a Mark, if you will."

Mark scoffed. "Better than being a pansy-ass Matthew…".

"Hey, I work just as hard as any of you do!" Mally...no, Matthew retorted.

"Not me," Snorts interjected, with, you guessed it, a snort. "And just so I'm not the odd one out here, I guess I'll suddenly drop my name for the new girl to memorize, too. I'm Luke."

"...Luke?" Jacqui asked before remembering she'd met a girl named Charlie mere hours ago. "What's that, short for Lucy or something?"

"Yep."

"...huh. Cool."

Taking a deep breath, the Fifth finally spoke up again. "Alright, that's more time wasted than we had to spare. Mark, please escort our intrepid interloper back up to her position NOW, so that the ritual can finally commence before everything falls too far out of alignment."

"My honor to serve you, my God." Mark cracked his neck and took a step toward her.

"What alignment?" Jacqui persisted, daring him to take another. "Just what kinda ritual are trying to hide from me? And why the goddamn FUCK are you trying to stuff me back in that cave all of a sudden?"

"I thought you WANTED to be in the cave," the Fifth half-offered, half-commanded.

"Well it sounds an awful lot like YOU want me in the cave now," Jacqui countered, mentally plotting out a dash to the left and a sweep kick with her right. "And now I wanna know why. What exactly is so special about it? Why is that 'my place'?"

"THE WATERFALL!" Mark shouted back at her, as if it were completely and utterly obvious.

She had just enough time for a split-second's glance back at it, its clear, foamy waters still gushing and churning proudly as ever. "...what about it?"

"It's the wrong fucking color!"

Asynchronous blink. "...what color is it SUPPOSED to be?"

"Mark!" the Fifth barked loudly in an attempt to cut the answer short, but the words had already blurted their way out from between Mark's lips.

"What color do you THINK the Waterfall of Blood is supposed to be?!"

Click.

A moment passed as Jacqui's brain loaded, buffered, and processed the information.

Two and two formed four, and the rest of the equation solved itself.

Cave. Waterfall. Blood. Jacqui.

...ew.

She said so out loud.

"I"m afraid I didn't write the official handbook on blood sacrifices," the Fifth shrugged, hurrying Mark along. "Rules are rules, and such."

"...no, hang on, wait just one more goddamn second..." Jacqui paused, blocking Mark's hand reflexively as one brain-gear continued to spin louder than all the rest, threatening to spin right off its axle at this rate. "...if that's been your plan all along, to get me and my bleeding vagina to somehow stain the entire waterfall red...then that would mean you ALREADY KNEW, ahead of time, that I was on my--".

...the goddamn second was up.

Her eyes narrowed.

Her fists clenched.

And she exhaled deeply. "...and here I was wondering when your misty-shadow ass was gonna show up again."

A familiar iridescent gleam shot forth from the shadows inhabiting the Fifth's hood as they elegantly pulled the entire thing back, revealing...well, nothing but more shadow, only now it had a visible derby atop it, and you could at least tell this shadow was grinning.

"Wish I could say long time no see, Specter..." Jacqui continued, "...but unfortunately it wasn't that long ago, and I'd rather not be seeing you anyway."

"As always, your poisonous hospitality is music to my heart," Specter replied, basking in the reverent bows of the other Four Hoodsmen as they beheld the face of their glorious god, in all its dark, invisible, formless splendor. "But I'm afraid I have no time now for our usual niceties. The Waterfall of Blood is a non-negotiable part of this covenant, and you are needed at your post. Mark, if you please."

Jacqui again swatted Mark's hand away and spun him around, pulling the other behind his back in a lock. "But you still haven't explained why! This is obviously a big deal for you, and you still haven't given me a smug monologue about how amazing you are for thinking of it? C'mon, that ain't the Specter I know and hate."

Specter replied with a resigned sigh, motioning for Matthew to join in. "I may possess - as I know I've so flawlessly elucidated earlier - 'the devil's own luck'...but luck doesn't exactly breed friends, does it?"

Spinning on her heels, Jacqui flipped herself around and kicked Mark forward, throwing him headlong into Matthew and snatching the mallet and chisel out of the air as they flew from his hands. "...what about these jokers?"

Specter shrugged. "Every good business person needs underlings to execute their plans. So I formed a cult. I am a god in this universe, am I not?"

"Hmph, self-conceited little bitch...". Matthew's weapons in hand, she taunted the rather hesitant Luke, motioning for her to attack. When she didn't comply, Jacqui shrugged and tossed the chisel her way. And as Luke reached out to grab it, fumbling it between her fingers, the mallet came down with a loud crack on the top of her head, followed by a hearty kick to the stomach to put her out of commission.

"You have to admit, it was quite an effective strategy," Specter noted, glancing expectantly to the final remaining underling, John. "My thralls have already arranged everything I'll need for the ritual: the sunrise, the altar, the sigils...all I need now is for YOU to provide the Waterfall of Blood, so I can finally plunge the knife and be done with it."

Seeing Jacqui approach, John simply put up his palms in surrender, nodded solemnly, and took a seat on the ground before falling limp on his side. Truly, the brains of the operation. Jacqui turned back to Specter. "...you still haven't told me who it is you're murdering."

"...ah, so I haven't," came the reply as Specter glanced unamused from fallen minion to fallen minion. "We certainly can't have a sacrifice without the sacrificee, now can we? Who do YOU think it is?"

Jacqui didn't reply, partly because she genuinely didn't know, and partly because she'd be damned if she was going to endure even one more goddamn riddle tonight.

"...hmm, I suppose we really DON'T have any more time for guessing games now, do we?" Specter said with a tsk and slow shake of the head. "Well then, I suppose all I'll say is...just as I am YOUR troublemaker, I seem to have encountered another in this world who is MY troublemaker. And I want them dead."

And with a predictable, unnecessary flourish, Specter held up their right hand and slowly removed the glove to reveal only the vague outline of a hand, cut from the same black fog that shrouded their face. Taking a moment to flex each finger in turn, Specter thrust the hand out to its side, fingers appearing to make contact with an invisible wall, then slowly brought the hand down, tracing a narrow line of darkness in the air like a crack in the universe.

And, reaching through the crack with the other, gloved hand, Specter pulled out a jet black briefcase, lined and rimmed with some kind of aquamarine gemstone along the edges and over the strange ornate lock in the center.

Jacqui watched in suspicious fascination as her brain shuffled through a list of suspects. The sacrificee had to be someone she knew. Someone Specter wanted dead. Someone whose very existence threatened to undo all of the trouble Specter could make. Someone, apparently, small enough to carry around in a briefcase...

...oh...

The locks on the briefcase clicked loudly.

"...oh my GOD...".

And there, clutched tightly between Specter's void-black hands, a true sight for eyes sore from reading about beings just like her, sat the only supernatural ally Jacqui would probably ever make.

Pupils still adjusting to her new surroundings, Heqet blinked a few times, then finally locked eyes with her young charge, and her face lit up with the hundred-watt familiarity of what could only be referred to, unmistakably, as love.

"Hi Jacqui!!!"