Hey, guys! Feeling kinda sick which sucks because being sick sucks. Oh, and it's Valentine's Day. Yay. One of the most annoying days of the year and the reason why so many children are born in September. On a brighter note, we got our class rankings a couple weeks back (not sure if I've said this already) and out of 508 students I got 5th! I freaked out and was sooo happy and it made my day. Yep. There's my little spiel, so hope you enjoy this!

Inspired By: 'Lost Cause' by Imagine Dragons (my favorite band! :D) and the Kickin' It episode Wazombie Warriors (my favorite episode!).If you haven't seen the episode, I strongly suggest you go watch it. It's on Netflix, under season 2 I think. And I didn't know what to call the old guy, so I just named him Marvin.

"Jack? Rudy? Anybody?"

Jack pauses, surprised at the faint sound of his and his sensei's names. He doesn't recognize the girl's voice… then again, the only female voice he's heard for the past couple of months is Lindsay's. Perhaps he's forgotten the voice of any girls he used to know.

It came from the direction of the small plaza. The sound of someone (likely a zompyre) pounding against a metal wall or something had been (and still is) coming from that direction, so Jack had been avoiding it before. But, hearing what is obviously a survivor's voice, Jack starts jogging in that direction.

He's mindful of his injured leg, which had resulted from a zompyre ambush about a week prior. He and Rudy were out patrolling for survivors near the snake pit on the edge of town, and they'd were just suddenly there. One of the monsters had tackled him, sending the both of them tumbling down a small mountain of boulders that came from a cave in. Jack and Rudy had barely managed to escape alive.

"Jerry! What happened, what's going on around here?"

Oh no. Oh, no, no, no. The girl obviously knew Jack before everything went to hell, judging by the fact that she seemed to know Jack, Jerry, and Rudy, but apparently doesn't know that Jerry is a zompyre. Her voice is relieved. Jack figures Jerry's back is turned to her or something, because she doesn't sound panicked, but Jack knows that's going to change soon. If he doesn't get there fast, she's sure to be turned.

With that, he starts running.

He hears his best-friend-turned-zompyre hiss and say "What it do… girl?" arriving just in time to see the girl backed up against the wall. The zompyre burps directly into her face, and Jack sighs. That's it. She's a goner. There's no way she could have avoided that. But then, the amazing happens (or rather, doesn't happen).

The girl doesn't turn.

Instead, she simply gags and makes a comment about Jerry's breath, though her voice is shaky with fear. Jerry seems just as surprised as Jack is to see that the girl doesn't change, but quickly snaps out of it and launches a punch at her head. She ducks out of the way, and Jerry destroys a cinderblock atop a pile behind her.

He punches again and misses, with the girl moving away. She seems shocked, for what reason Jack isn't sure, and seems only to be avoiding the attacks out of instinct or habit. She doesn't attack. It takes Jerry aiming a kick at her stomach (and missing again) for her to snap into action. She shoves Jerry back to give herself some space.

Jack's surprise and shock fades, causing him to realize that he should do something to intervene before the girl gets hurt. He steps into the small destroyed plaza.

"Hey, zompyre!" he calls, to get Jerry's attention. The other turns around, and Jack is momentarily overcome by a wave of hurt at the sight of his ex-best friend's face. The other teen's features are grayed and mottled with disease, with dark raccoon-like coloring around his eyes. Dark splotches that resemble bruises litter his face and what's visible of his chest, with thinner lines snaking away from each (they look like giant, more-than-eight-legged spiders, god Jerry hated spiders). The small hole on his shirt where he'd been shot is surrounded in dried blood. If only Jack had gotten there fast enough that day, if only he hadn't wandered so far away from the Latino, if only he'd reacted the first time Jerry called his name…

Jack aims a flying side kick at Jerry's head, but the other teen catches his foot and pushes him back. Jack temporarily loses his balance. Jerry takes the opportunity to swing a fist at the other teen. Jack ducks just in time, only for Jerry to swing another fist as Jack is standing back up. The fight goes back and forth for a few more seconds, before Jerry kicks Jack's injured leg out from under him and owowowowow, and then Rudy's voice is there getting Jerry's attention and giving Jack a few precious seconds to recover.

The man shoots a falafel ball right into Jerry's mouth, causing the zompyre to groan and run away. Jack sits on the ground for a split second, his leg aching. 'Get up, dammit. Jerry had a broken arm, a broken leg, and had gotten freaking shot by the time you found him, and was still walking! Stop being a wuss 'cause of a little bruise. GET UP!'

He gets up.

'Don't you dare limp.'

He doesn't limp.

"Jack, are you alright?" the girl asks, running over to him. A flare of pain in his leg distracts him for a moment, but then he looks up at her. Her whole form contrasts sharply with the dulled grays and the dirtiness of her surroundings; blonde hair flows smoothly down from her head, her bare arms bare of any scrapes or bruises, and her pink and purple striped tank top is just as unscathed. The one word that comes to mind is clean… but Jack has never seen her before in his life.

"How do you know my name?" he asks, completely confused. Sure, if she'd gone to school with him and Jerry, then she might know their names, but only a small number of his fellow classmates knew about Rudy's existence. She might have been a part of a rival dojo… but why call out for Rudy, Jerry, and Jack? If you were to wake up in a strange place or something, the first people you call out for are your friends or family.

Her expression turns confused and heartbroken, and Jack feels strangely guilty knowing he put it there. There's a brief moment where they're just looking at each other, before Rudy breaks the spell. "Hey, that was my last falafel ball. It's only gonna slow him down for a few minutes. We should get back to the rebel base."

Jack nods. Right. That's logical. He likes logical. Logical saves lives. So they'll just go to the base and—

"I'm not going anywhere until someone tells me what's going on."

Oh, logical. How Jack misses you.

There's a distant roar, followed by a loud scream.

"Or, you know, we can go inside first, I'm flexible." (Yay, logic's back!) Her voice has risen several octaves, Jack notes, probably out of fear. With that, the three of them head towards the base.

"What is going on here?" The girl asks (Jack found out her name is Kim) upon entering the base. Jack walks over and sits down on a two-person-car-seat-turned-couch, desperate to rest his leg because it's on fire. No one else can tell he's in pain, of course. He's amazing at concealing this sorta thing.

Marvin is in his armchair, reading a copy of Zompyre People ("The power zompyre couple, split up in an argument over who gets to turn the Chuck Norris! More inside" Because apparently, the zompyres had just as much drama as humans did, and decided to utilize a freedom of press.) He looked up upon the entrance of the three, but then went back to reading the magazine. (How did the man even get a copy? All he ever does is sit in his armchair or spend hours in the bathroom.)

On the way to the base, the Rudy and Jack discovered that she had absolutely no idea what was going on. She said she woke up in a movie theater, and came outside and then she saw Jerry and, well, they know the rest. Strangely, it also sounded like she was hiding something, or that she wasn't telling them the full story. Jack and Rudy didn't pry.

"I'll tell you what's going on," Rudy says to Kim. "We're at war with the zompyres. When they first came, we thought there were one or two… three or four, five—"

"Rudy," Jack says, getting the man back on track.

"Right. Well, there were thousands of them. They came crawling up from the sewers below Seaford."

"I was on the toilet when one came up," Marvin adds helpfully. Rudy extends a hand toward the old man, as if to say, 'See?!'

Jack stands up, figuring he should intervene before Rudy gets distracted again. 'Gah, why did I stand up?' "They multiplied by burping into humans' faces. And the worst part? They never say 'excuse me.'" 'Neither did Jerry. Some things never change.'

"Wait a minute. Jerry burped into my face earlier, and this weird green smoke came out of his mouth. I thought it just showed how bad his breath was, but…" Her face is horrified. "Am I going to turn into one of those things?!"

"That's the thing," Jack says, stepping forward, and his leg protests again but what the heck it's never hurt this much before. "You didn't turn into one. The change happens instantly, and yet you were perfectly fine."

Before Jack can say more, a metal clanking denotes Lindsay's arrival. Seconds later, his girlfriend slides down the pole that had been installed into the ex-dojo. Rudy walks over to her, asking of her whereabouts.

"Jack sent me to get supplies."

"Fresh water? Batteries?"

"Hair spray." She tosses the spray bottle to Jack.

Noticing Kim's really? expression, Jack feels the need to defend himself. "The end of the world doesn't have to mean the end of my beautiful, bouncy hair." In truth, Jack didn't really care about his hair these days as much as he used to. It was mostly habit, something he used to frequently get teased by Jerry for. Jack loved his hair, Jerry loved dancing; two traits that defined them.

He uncaps the bottle sprays it over his hair, turning away from them so no one sees the flash of pain on his face.

"I'm Lindsay," Lindsay says, "Jack's girlfriend." Jack honestly doesn't think she'll stay that way much longer. She's a very cruel person, and is entirely too attached to Jack to the point where it's creepy. (He'd caught her waiting outside the bathroom for him once, right before he'd taken a shower. He'd turned on the water, and then came back into his room realizing that he'd forgotten his towel and there she was. Of course, that was when they still had running water.) "Who are you?"

Jack steps forward (pain flaring up again, WTF), and as he does so Kim says something about "hating this world" under her breath. Whatever that means. "Her name's Kim. We found her wandering outside and had to use our last falafel ball to save her. She—"

"You wasted our last ball on her?!" Lindsay crosses her arms. "I don't trust her. Give her… The Test."

Jack rolls his eyes, annoyed at having been cut off (and at Lindsay's immediate dislike of the blonde, what's up with that?), but before he can speak again Rudy is stepping forward and grabbing Kim by the wrist and dragging her to the center of the room. The pain fades slightly. "There's only one person that can give her… The Test." Rudy releases her. "I'll summon the rebel leader." He pauses. "REBEL LEADER!"

The door to Eddie's room opens, and the dark-skinned teen comes out wielding a baseball bat. He taps it into his hand threateningly, slowly walking up to Kim. He peers at the blonde with the one eye that isn't covered by an eyepatch.

"Can we trust you?" he says very seriously. Jack rolls his eyes again. Eddie, Rudy, and Lindsay all took… The Test seriously, but Jack thinks that a zompyre could very easily answer "yes" to that question. But noooone ever listens to Jack, do they? Nope. So… The Test is still in effect.

"Um, yeah?"

All traces of Eddie's somber expression disappear. "She passed. Hey, you play softball? We really need a first baseman."

The beeping that signifies an incoming message rings throughout the room. They had set up a communication system with the Professor and other survivor groups, and it sure came in handy when delivering warnings of incoming zompyre attacks, S.O.S. messages, or to trick someone and their best friend into going to check out a possible food cache at a warehouse not far from their base…

Jack retrieves the plastic cylinder reminiscent of ones that used to be used in banks to get documents to people in their cars outside the building. He pops it open and reads the note inside.

"It's from the Professor," he announces to the others. He quickly scans and summarizes the information written in the Professor's neat, deliberate script. "He wants us to come to his secret lab. He's found a way to turn the zompyres back to humans!"

He grins, feeling almost giddy for the first time in while. Turning zompyres back to humans! He'll have Jerry back!

"This means we'll have something we haven't had in a while," Eddie says sagely.

"Toilet paper?" Marvin asks.

"No. Hope."

"Lemme know when you get toilet paper," the elderly man responds.

"You guys, we can tell the Professor about Kim. A zompyre burped right into her face earlier today and she didn't get turned."

Lindsay immediately moves away from the blonde. "Ew, what if her turn is being delayed or something? Probably by those jeans. Newsflash: skinny jeans are out of season. Since like, forever."

Kim stares at her, her expression practically screaming 'are you stupid?!', and Jack doesn't understand why until she says, "…you're wearing skinny jeans."

Lindsay looks down at her legs, then juts her chin up in an overly superior fashion. "Yeah, but mine actually look good."

"They're the same brand."

"Shut up! You jeans are ugly!" Lindsey huffs and turns away, while Jack and Eddie wisely disguise laughs as coughs. Rudy neglects to do the same. He instead just outright laughs, earning himself a glare from the brunette. "

"You guys, seriously," Jack says. "What if it's like in that one movie, where the one guy is immune to the zombie disease and they use his blood to make a cure?"

"Um, what?" Kim asks.

"Wait, so you're saying that she may be the solution to all of this?" Rudy asks, stepping forward.

"Yeah," Jack says, looking at Kim with a small smile on his face. "She may save us all."

The Professor's lab is… interesting, to say the least. It's nothing like the secret labs that had always been in movies, with bubbling substances of various colors or flashing gizmos that blink ominously. It's simple. There's a few lights on the walls in various shapes, all emitting a soft blue, yellow, or white glow. Soft classical music plays.

Near the entrance of the room is a big cylinder, with thin metal rods coming off of it and pointing away from the center. On the end of each rod is a glass circle about the size of a plate. The entire structure sits on top of a podium, and Jack wonders if this is what the Professor wanted to show them.

'Speak of the devil,' Jack thinks, as the Professor walks into the room.

"Welcome, rebels, to my secret lab. Thank you for removing your shoes."

The others look pointedly at Jack, who flips off his shoes. They go flying, crashing into a glass thing that hopefully wasn't important.

The professor shakes his head, before smiling. "I give you mankind's salvation." He gestures to the thing on the podium. "The Krupnick Coil! This super powerful refractometer emits light so intense it pierces the zompyres' inner darkness, turning them back into humans."

'Well, this seems easier than making a cure out of Kim's blood,' Jack thinks.

"Yeah," a painfully familiar voice says. "Not gonna happen."

And then Jerry's speeding into the room with seven other zompyres, and he knocks over the refractometer, and he's got that stupidly mischievous grin on his face that he always wore when playing a prank or messing with a teacher, but it's warped and not Jerry but it is Jerry and Jack knows it's Jerry because it's Jack's fault he ended up like this—

"You fiend!" the Professor says, snapping Jack out of the dark path his thoughts were taking. "You just destroyed our only way of survival against the most evil force man has ever known!"

"And he didn't take off his shoes," Eddie growls.

"How did you find the Professor's secret underground lab?" Jack asks, and oh god Jerry is looking at him and the guilt threatens to overwhelm Jack—

"Why don't you ask your girlfriend?" Jerry says, still giving Jack that somehow accusing look but wait, what? Lindsay?

"I did it for us," the brunette says.

'No,' Jack thinks, 'There's no way…'

"I made a deal, Jack." She backs away, moving closer to the zompyres.

'There is a way.'

She smiles, gesturing to Jerry. "The zompyres, they'll spare us. You and I can be together."

Jerry chuckles darkly, as if the situation was a joke that's only half funny. "Yeah… about that deal." The teen speeds over to her and leans into her face. "I lied."

And then he turns her.

"I'm gonna go on record and say she may be the worst girlfriend ever," Kim helpfully interjects, and Jack knows he should defend Lindsay but he actually kinda agrees with the blonde. Though he never took Lindsay to be the type to betray her friends…

'Just like you didn't think you were the type to betray your friends? Shut up I was going to get help I swear JERRY I'M SORRY—'

The sound of Eddie and Rudy crying snaps Jack out of his thoughts again. He realizes that they're all going to be cornered if something isn't done. What can he do?

He glances over at the Professor for a split second and sees the outline of something in the redhead's pocket. He stupidly spends a couple seconds wondering what it is, before he realizes.

It's the remote to the music player.

A memory invades his mind. Jack and Jerry entering the warehouse. Jerry, earbuds in and dancing. Jack telling him to stick close. Jerry nodding and Jack not realizing that the Latino hadn't heard him and is just nodding to the beat of the song as he wanders off…

Jack shoves the memory away, hating the idea and gave him and hating the fact that he has to exploit his friend's weakness hasn't he done enough?! And yet, he still turns towards the music player on the table behind them.

"Jack, what are you doing?" Kim asks him.

"Getting us out of here," Jack responds, internally surprised at how level his voice is what with the amount of emotional suffering he's going through right about now. 'And physical,' his leg seems to remind him, sending a twinge of pain up the limb.

He quickly finds the song library and scrolls down, looking for a tune with a good beat. Classical, classical, classical, oh there's one why does it have to be Jerry's favorite song?! But Jack plays it anyway and turns to observe the results, his heart clenching as he watches Jerry succumb to the urge to dance. Then, all the zompyres (including the newly turned Lindsay) are dancing in tandem alongside Jerry, which is weird because Jack didn't know that all zompyres liked to dance but hey, he'll take what he can get.

The rebels, seeing their opportunity, ran all the way back to their base. Rudy latches the door shut behind them and places a wooden plank through the slot.

Jack plops down on the bench, about ready to pass out from the pain in his leg. Could his leg be broken? No, he's broken a limb before, and that was a sharp stabbing pain. This is more like an ache that flares every time he takes a step.

"How did you know that music would make Jerry dance?" Kim asks, walking over to him. It amazes Jack how oblivious they all are to his pain, but maybe he's just really good at hiding it. A part of him wants to whine that 'God, Kim, I'm about ready to pass out, gimme like two seconds.'

He pauses for two seconds before answering her.

"Well, before he was a zompyre, Jerry was one of us," Jack says. He draws up his non-injured leg and places his foot flat on the bench, before making a loop with his arms and hooking it around his knee. The adjustment removes much of his weight from the leg, and he lets out a small sigh of relief. "Music was his weakness." He pauses. "And girls… and math. And tying shoelaces— he had a lot of weaknesses."

Kim nods, drifting away as the Professor (they learned his name was Milton on the way over) starts talking. Jack takes a moment to compose himself as the pain abates slightly.

When Jack tunes back into the conversation, he notes that Marvin has left the room.

"Is there anything you can do with the crystal diode?" Kim asks.

'Crystal diode?' Then Jack notices the clear tube thing in Milton's hand, and assumes this is the 'diode.'

"Well, there is one prototype coil. But it's in the darkest, scariest, most evil place on Earth.

"The snake cave on the edge of town that goes down to the bowels of the underworld?" Rudy says. 'And the reason my stupid leg is bothering me in the first place?'

"Worse," Milton responds grimly. "School."

"We're going to the zompyres' lair," Eddie says to Phil. "The school." The group (minus Marvin, who was still in the bathroom when they left and probably will be for some time) had headed over to Falafel Phil's to stock up on falafel balls.

Jack would sit down, but all the chairs immediately around him are filled, and he doesn't want to go across the room just to sit down because that would seem strange to the others. So, he stands there, leaning slightly to the side to put most of his weight on his right leg.

The foreign restaurant owner gasps. "Dat place is scarier dan dat snake cave on dee edge of town dat reaches into de bowels of de underworld!" (His accent replaces most 'th' sounds with 'd'.)

"That's why we need all the falafel balls you got," Eddie responds.

Phil smiles. "Happy to help." He picks up a falafel ball. "Five hundred dollars! Each!"

Jack frowns, more than a little ticked off. "But we're trying to save humanity."

"Oh," the man says. "Why didn't you say so?" It seems like he's had a change of heart, until he picks up another falafel ball and says, "One thousand dollars! EACH!"

"But don't you care about saving the world?" Kim says, trying to appeal to his moral side (if he has one).

"No, not really. De zompyre apocalypse has been great for de business." He gestures wildly. "No falafel ball for you! Get out!"

The man's goat picks that moment to walk into the room, bleating.

"Tootsie," Phil says, "what's wrong, something seems different about you."

"Is it my demonic red eyes?" —wait, it TALKS?!—"My mouth full of fangs? The fact that I'm talking to you right now?"

Phil adopts a 'thinker'-like pose, his hand hold his chin. "What was the first one again?"

"I'm a zompyre goat, you dimwit!"

"Yes! Dat's it, dat's the one!"

And with that, the goat burps the toxic green gas. Jack starts to think about how ironic it is that the man holds the key weapon to stopping the zompyres, not knowing that he harbors one within his own restaurant (how's that for a twist?) and that it serves him right that he's getting turned into one (one thousand dollars for a falafel ball, who does that?!) but then freaking Eddie is jumping in front of the greedy restaurant owner and gets the gas to the face instead.

"Tootsie!" Phil yells as the goat speed runs into out the doors. Eddie, a newly-turned zompyre, stands up and roars in his face, before speed running out as well.

"Eddie!" Rudy cries.

"Not my Tootsie!" Phil despairs. Rudy glares at him.

"I can't believe we lost Eddie," Kim says softly as they reenter their base, having returned with one less member of their group. (Marvin is unsurprisingly still in the bathroom.) Jack immediately heads to the bench, the same one he sat one when the group got to the base after fleeing from Milton's lab.

"Don't lose hope," Milton says. "It just gives us all the more reason to fight back! We gotta think up a plan to get into the school. Our entrance has gotta be quiet, since we won't have many falafel balls to rely on." (They stole a few from some random person before leaving Phil's restaurant. It's for a good cause.)

"He left his baseball bat by the door," Rudy says softly, sounding near tears. In his hands is Eddie's bat. Jack's heart is pretty much ready to burst by this point, because first Jerry and then his leg and now Eddie (why didn't he pull Eddie back? He was standing right next to him!).

A small part of his mind absently wonders at Eddie's abandonment of his choice weapon. Did the teen do it to return it to them? To sever all ties with human behavior, including the use of weapons? But then why leave it at the base?

A second thought occurs to Jack. Eddie knows where the base is.

Is the bat a warning?

The pain in his leg is, at the moment, a mild fire (if that makes any sense). If he stands up with his right leg and then gingerly places his left on the ground, he runs the risk of losing his balance as he stands up. So, he attempts to prep himself for the hurt he knows is coming.

'Breathe, first off. You can do that much, right? In, out. SLOWER. In… out. Good. On three… one…'

And he pushes himself up on two, trying to surprise himself (as if that world work) but holy effing god he wasn't expecting it to hurt this bad and he stumbles, his body automatically stepping forward to compensate which makes the pain even worse and then Kim is by his side asking what's wrong and it intensifies and he blacks out.

"Maybe he just fell asleep? He hasn't been sleeping well the past few months, ever since Jerry…" is the first thing that Jack registers when he comes back to the land of the living. The second is that he's lying down on something. The third is that someone is SITTING ON HIS MOTHEREFFING LEG—

"MGGGGGGGGHHHH." He had bitten his lip (hard enough to draw blood), unwilling to let the sound come out, and the result is a strange groan/cry that sounds like some monster out of a cheap horror movie. Whoever is sitting on his leg startles and gets up, causing him to groan again (quieter and more human-like) in relief, dropping his head against what he dimly realizes is the armrest of the couch in Eddie's office.

"Jack?! Are you okay?" Crap. Jack forgot there were other people in the room. Now he has to explain this.

"'M fine," Jack says, sitting up. "Just got lightheaded— gah." He had attempted to stand again, to show everyone he's alright, but his leg must have gotten used to the pressure of whoever was sitting on it and the absence of said pressure is now causing his leg to hurt more and why is this his life?

"Why are you on the floor?" Marvin asks, peering down at him curiously over the rim of his glasses. So he finally came out of the bathroom. Who would've thought.

Jack glares at the man for no particular reason. "Because I like it down here," he responds in a slightly snarky tone of voice.

"Someone got off the wrong side of the couch this morning," Rudy says with a grin, and then Jack's heart hurts because that's something he could totally picture Jerry saying. Why does everything have to hurt?

"He's on the ground because his leg gave out on him," Milton says, staring down at Jack disapprovingly. "Rudy, if you could please help him up, and then I'll explain. Try to avoid—"

"GAH!"

"—jarring his left leg," the redhead finishes with a sigh. After Rudy gets Jack situated on the couch, the Professor continues. Blue eyes stare sternly into brown. "You were injured a while back."

It's not even a question. Jack would lie, but he's really uncomfortable with that look Milton's giving him so he's just says, "Yeah."

"How long ago?"

"Eh, about a week."

"Wait," Rudy says. "About a week? Are you telling me this happened whenever we were out patrolling for survivors on the snake pit near the edge of town? You told me you were fine!"

"I am fine—"

"No, you're not fine. Whatever happened a week ago," Milton says, "caused you to get injured with some weird infection." He pauses, probably for dramatic effect. "A zompyre infection."

"What?! Are you telling me I'm turning into one of them? How can this have happened? The freaking zompyre just tackled me, it didn't even burp in my face it didn't even burp at all I can't turn into one of them is this how much pain Jerry was in—"

SMACK.

Right across the face.

Jack's panic-induced rant is effectively cut off he sits there stunned for a moment before looking up at surprise at Kim.

"You wouldn't shut up," she says apologetically.

And then his leg decides to remind him of its presence. Great. Strangely, it's not as bad as it was right before he blacked out.

"You're turning into one of them," Milton says. "You have a bite mark on your leg—" Jack vaguely remembers some psycho zompyre jumping on and chomping down before Rudy dispatched it. "—so I assume that this is where the infection is coming from."

'I'm turning into a zompyre. This is it… I've got to get away from them, what if I turn one of them?'

The Professor gestures to the blonde next to him. "Kim, however, is somehow reversing the process."

"Me?"

"Kim?"

"Her?"

"I'm going back to the bathroom."

"Allow me to expound," Milton says as Marvin leaves the room. "Jack, while you were out, Rudy informed me that you told him that Kim did not turn upon breathing in the zompyre 'burp smoke.'"

"Uh, yeah. I thought it meant she was immune, and I was going to tell you so that maybe you could like make a cure out of her blood or something like they do in movies, but then you sent the message about your light refractometer and I forgot about it."

Milton nods. "I have a theory that her 'immunity' projects outside her body as well, to a certain degree."

"Uh, what?" Rudy asks.

"When you passed out, your pant leg rode up a little bit. Enough so that the state of your leg was slightly revealed… it didn't look too good."

Jack had looked at it this morning. His whole shin was grotesquely discolored, blues and purples and blacks against a gray backdrop. He was hoping it would clear up soon, but it only seemed to be getting worse day by day.

"But Kim came over naturally, was concerned, and when she touched your leg I noticed something… strange."

"That birthmark has always been there. I know, it looks like a wrecking ball, please don't make any Miley Cyrus jokes."

"What? No, why would I—"

"You have a birthmark that looks like a wrecking ball?" Kim says, an amused smile on her face.

Rudy laughs. "Heh heh, has Miley come in and swang on it?"

"Case in point," Jack deadpans.

"Wait, is it swang or swung?" Rudy asks.

"Anyway," Milton continues, while Rudy continues to puzzle over the past tense of 'swing' ("swinged? Swunged?") "she touched it and the bruising and discoloration cleared up just the tiniest bit. I doubt Kim noticed it, it was so slight, but it made me wonder… and then we brought you in here and Rudy told me about her not turning, and I pondered what prolonged contact would do, so—" Milton shrugs. "—I had her sit on it."

"Wait, you told me it was because we needed to keep his leg warm and butt-warming was the only way."

"And you actually believed that?" Jack says with a smile that disappears when Kim glares at him.

"Sweeeeeenged? Sweng?"

"Well, my little experiment proved fruitful," Milton responds. He nods towards Jack's leg. "Pull up your pants."

"Never thought I'd hear that from someone that wasn't my mom," Jack teased lightly, but he pulls up his pant leg anyway… and stares. And stares. And then stares some more.

"Woah," Kim breathes, eloquently describing the sight.

The discoloration is barely there.

The skin of his shin, which had up until that morning been so gray with darker spots of discoloration everywhere, is now only slightly darker than his normal skin tone. It looks almost healed. Against the newly lightened skin, Jack can clearly see the small markings that teeth tend to make, near his ankle.

"I did that?" Kim asks, seeming dazed.

Milton nods. "And good thing, too. The coloration was almost exactly like that of a zompyre. The infection had almost reached its peak." The slight smile on his face vanishes, his expression turning somber. "And at its peak, it would then proceed to quickly spread to the rest of your body, turning you into a zompyre."

Jack feels himself pale. So he was almost a zompyre and didn't even know…

"Kim? Could you do something for me?" Milton asks.

"I'm not butt-warming anything."

"You don't have to. Just walk to the other side of the room."

She does so, and the pain in Jack's leg fades a little bit.

"Now come back."

She walks back. The pain returns slightly.

Milton has her do this a few more times before Jack finally gets it.

"Wait… it's hurting more when she's around?"

Milton smiles sagely. "Yep! And why do you think that is?"

Jack frowns, thinking. "Uh… I dunno…."

Milton sighs. "Ah, well. I wanted to give you an opportunity to feel smart, seeing as that probably doesn't happen very often. Anyway—"

"Wait, what?"

"—the answer is simple. Sorta like a fight or flight instinct."

"Did you just say I'm stu—"

"Basically, the bad bacteria sort of sense their impending doom when Kim is near. So, they fight harder in your body; destroy more of the good bacteria, destroy them faster, so they can stay alive. They calm down when she's farther away. So, as you may have noticed, it hurts more when she's around then when she's not around."

Jack frowns. He decides to let the fact that Milton may have just called him stupid go.

"Now, here's the problem. The quickest ways to get rid of the infection, or 'cure' you, are to get some sort of organic matter from her—" He points at Kim. "—into you," He points at Jack. "or to use the light refractometer Krupnick coil at the school. For the first option, your body would recognize the cells as friendly and most likely begin reproducing them, and the new 'immunity' cells would destroy whatever was left of the infection in your system.

"The most ideal way to do that would be to simply inject some of her blood into you. But, there's chance that you guys have incompatible blood types, which would cause agglutination of the blood causing it to clog up your arteries and then you die. So, we can rule that option out.

"Ingesting any part of her is probably not the best idea—" The three teens make a simultaneous face of disgust at that. "—so that option's out. Oh! You can…" Milton's face had brightened at whatever idea he just had, but then it turned reeeeeeally red, and Jack wonders what's going on in the genius's head.

"We can what?" Kim asks.

"Nothing," Milton says, a little quickly. He clears his throat. "Or, we could sneak into the school and a) draw a vial or two of Kim's blood using supplies from the medical lab and then b) sneak into the chemistry lab and have me make a cure, one that could probably be put in a spray bottle and sprayed into the zompyres faces."

"The problem with this is that it could take a few hours. The infection in Jack's leg has temporarily regressed, but I don't know for how long. It could come back faster than it appeared. The light refractometer option is simple: go into the multipurpose room and find my prototype refractometer, activate it, and cure everyone; the zompyres and Jack. And yet, this plan is flawed because since they know that the refractometer is what can turn them back into humans, chances are they've destroyed the prototype. It would be stupid not to have, if I were them."

Milton shrugs. "So which flawed plan do we chose?"

The three teens fall into a contemplative silence. The lull in conversation causes Rudy (who had been quietly muttering to himself this entire conversation)'s voice to be heard clearly. "Hola? Gutentag? Jambo? Konichiwa?—"

"Rudy, you're not even speaking English anymore," Jack says in half amusement, half confusion.

Rudy stops. "Huh. You're right." He looks at the three teens. "What were we talking about again?"

In the end, they decided to go with going to the school and making the cure. Going and repairing the prototype coil may have been safer, but the chance that the zompyres had destroyed it is too great.

Jack is the first to walk into the school, and his heart leaps into his throat when he sees a zompyre right next to the freaking entrance. Then he realizes that it's just sleeping, and he wills his heart to calm the heck down. He looks around, and sees more of them sleeping, everywhere; hanging upside down from the ceiling, in lockers, leaning against a wall next to the stairs…

"Do you really dink dis is going to work, Jack?" Phil asks. He had willingly come to the rebels armed with a 'Falafel Flinger' (as he calls it). He apparently had a change of heart after watching his evil goat run away from him. ("I just want Tootsie back!" he had wailed. Jack thinks that Tootsie would have run away eventually, zompyre or not.)

"They won't be awake for hours and if they do wake up, this makeup will help us blend in." He's really hoping on that second part, but he'd found out that zompyres sleep for a good portion of the day, after he'd followed Jerry back here one day. He'd wanted to see if his old friend was alright as a zompyre, if he had a place to live. Granted, it's not like he could have offered a home to the other teen if he didn't have a place to live, but it still made Jack feel better that Jerry had… companions.

Jerry really hated being alone.

"I'm sorry for yelling at you to do my makeup, Kim," Jack hears Rudy's voice say as he enters the school. "but as the new rebel leader it wouldn't look right it I had to do my own."

Rudy turns around and his facial make up isn't that of a zompyre, but that of a panda (a pretty adorable one, too, but you didn't hear that from Jack).

"No I get it," Kim says, a deviously satisfied smile on her face. "Happy to help."

"Okay, you guys, stick to the plan," Milton says.

"Right. Let's head to the medical lab."

They make it to the medical lab without a hitch. Milton draws a couple vials of Kim's blood while marveling over the equipment ("Amazing! This place could be an actual little mini-hospital!").

It's on the way to the chemistry lab that they run into trouble.

They have to go past the area near the entrance again to get to the chemistry lab, seeing as it's all the way on the other side of the school. It's a separate building, in fact. But, as they're passing right by the entrance, someone's phone goes off.

"Seriously?" Rudy says. "Who's the jerk? First time in an evil zompyre's— oh, wait, that's me." Jack resists the urge to bang his head against a wall as the sensei takes out his phone and silences it. "Sorry, that's just poor planning."

The lockers near them suddenly open, and out step six or seven zompyres.

"Oh no, you woke up Joan! Queen of the Zompyres!" Milton says.

"Oh, lookie what we have here," a zompyre in a flowing all-black dress with a security badge on her chest says. "A cute little panda boy and his friends?"

"I'm not a panda," Rudy says as more zompyres surround them. "Kim, why does she think I'm a panda— oh, you panda'd me, didn't you?!"

"Heh, a lil' bit," Kim says with a satisfied-but-guilty smile on her face. Meanwhile, Jack is trying not to panic and instead wondering how the heck they're going to get out of this situation and to the chem lab with all of these zompyres around. Oh, gosh, is Jerry here? A quick glance around confirms negative, leaving Jack both disappointed and relieved.

"How dare you dress up and sneak into my lair?" The Zompyre Queen demands. Jack notes that bad guys ask that question pretty often; "how dare you?" As if they didn't expect the protagonist to break in and save the day.

Joan speeds over to Rudy and burps into his face, then carts off the stunned and groaning man to god-knows-where. "Pandas," she chuckles as she walks away and god, Jack wants to go after her and smash her face in and take Rudy back but with so many zompyres around that would be suicide.

He looks around searching for an escape route. There's a small hole in the group of zompyres, and beyond is exactly where they need to go!

"Phil, cover us!" Jack says, and runs through the gap, hoping that Kim and Milton know to follow him. (They do).

"Okay, Jack, I'll hold them back!" Phil responds. As Jack, Kim, and Milton turn the corner, they hear the Falafel Flinger shoot one, two, three, four times, and then Phil yells, "Ah! Is that all you got, zompyres?! You think you're all that?! You're not so tough, huh?!" Jack wants to yell at the man to shoot and stop being an idiot, but then "Whoa, okay, I didn't see that coming. Wait, wait, I was just kidding! Go back to bed!" and then Phil is desperately singing a lullaby and the zompyres are growling and then Jack can't hear Phil anymore.

Jack curses to himself. He left Jerry behind, and now he's left Rudy and Phil behind. He really hopes they're going to be okay but deep down he knows they won't, they won't ever be unless you can get Milton to the lab to make this cure.

They've finally made it to the garage of the school, but they're being pursued by at least four zompyres ('Led by Jerry' Jack's brain reminds him helpfully). As if to make matters worse, Jack's leg is starting to hurt pretty bad again. Just great.

"Quick, open the garage door!" Milton says, running to it and hopping up and down anxiously. Jack presses the button, and it begins to open. Milton is out before it's even halfway open, and Kim starts to follow.

'Someone has to close the door,' Jack realizes. Otherwise, the zompyres will just follow them through. Why not stall them for a few more precious seconds?

What does he have to lose?

The infection is spreading faster than before, Jack can feel it. It's gone past his shin and taken over his entire leg; every step is agony, especially with Kim so close. He knows he doesn't have the few hours that Milton will need to make the cure.

He might as well stay here, put up a helluva fight, and buy the redhead as much time as possible.

"Jack, aren't you coming?" Kim asks, standing by the open garage door and Jack goes to push a cabinet up against the entrance to the door they'd come in through.

He hesitates before speaking. "Kim… I'm not going to make it a few hours."

"W-what?"

He turns to her. The zompyres haven't found them yet, but they will soon enough. He just hopes that Milton went on to the lab instead of trying to wait for them. "The zompyre infection… I can feel it. It's spreading faster than before, it's in my whole entire leg now. And someone needs to close this garage door."

"Jack, just press it and run, you can make the distance!"

"And then what happens, huh?!" Jack says, not meaning to snap at her or for it to come out so harsh but he needs her to understand. "Milton said he needs a few hours to make the cure. I. Don't. Have. Hours. I have minutes."

The garage door is all the way open by this point, and starts to close again. He realizes he still has his hand on the button, and releases it.

The door starts going back up.

Jack frowns, placing his hand on the button again. The garage starts going down. He removes it. It goes back up. He realizes this means he has to keep his hand on the button in order for it to close.

Meanwhile, Kim is begging him to come with her. "Please, Jack, we'll figure something out, I swear. Heck, we can hole ourselves up in the science building and fortify there! There's plenty of stuff that blows up; we can launch something at the zompyres when they get too close, keep the lights on at night to warn them away—"

Lights. Electricity.

The school no longer has electricity.

HOW IS MILTON GOING TO MAKE THE CURE WITHOUT ELECTRICITY?!

"Kim, Kim listen," he says, running over to her. She stops talking, her hopeful expression doing something really unpleasant to his heart. "The school doesn't have electricity." He pauses, watching as horrified realization spreads across her face as well.

"Tell Milton… solar panels! Oh, god, yes, the solar panels. Tell Milton that there are a couple of solar panels in room 402, from some green energy campaign the school had going on for a while. If he can find the manual that went with it, great. And when you get back to base, there's a rebel group that has a generator—"

"You're still not coming with us?!" Kim exclaims, and why can't she get over that already. "Jack—"

"Kim, shut up and l-listen to me." His voice cracked, dammit. He's trying not to show how terrified he is, because everything inside him is screaming for him to go with her but he can't, he has to be here to slow the zompyres down, he has to be here to close the garage. "I'm a lost cause, so stop trying to think you can save me. I have one leg in the grave already, quite literally. There's a rebel group that has a generator. Go back to the base and contact… wait, don't! Eddie knows where the base is, he may have told the other zompyres. Okay… okay…" He struggles to think, think think of a place they could go.

And then he does.

And he despises himself for thinking it. But they're the closest rebel group to the school…

THEY'RE THE REASON JERRY'S A ZOMPYRE.

But even they have to want a cure, so they'll help. They have to.

"Kim. Do you know where the old Black Dragons dojo is?"

The shadow that darkens her expressions says yes, she knows where it is, and she knows who they are. That makes convincing her to go a lot harder.

"I'm not going there."

"Kim, I know, they're horrible people, but—"

"They tried to break your leg in that one competition! And you're telling me to trust them?!"

Jack blinks. "How did you know about that?"

"What?"

"The competition."

"Oh, I… uh…"

"Nevermind. Go there. Tell Milton to get all the equipment he needs and put it into one of the computer carts, and go there. You guys can contact the rebel group with a generator from there and then…"

He trails off as Kim stares at him. Jack thinks it's finally sunk it that he's not going to come with her. Just as he is about to tell her goodbye and run back to the gate button, she kisses him.

Flash.

They're on the Hollywood sign — wait, what? — and Kim says, "Look, Jack… I want you to know that I think you're amazing," and then they're leaning in.

Flash.

Jack is taking Kim's hands and saying "Remember what Rudy said. No matter where we go, we'll always be connected." And then their lips are meeting for a short but sweet goodbye kiss.

Flash.

"My flight's been cancelled! I'm not leaving until tomorrow!" And she hugs him and pulls back and then they kiss again.

Flash.

And Jack is back in the present. And he doesn't know what the heck just happened. But he's kissing Kim back. He doesn't know why, because they've only known each other for less than a day, but something is telling him that's a lie, that they've known each other for a long time.

So he kisses Kim back, snaking his arms behind her back and pulling her as close as possible, and she's got her hands tangled in his hair and tugging gently, and then she deepens the kiss and Jack really just wants to stay here forever—

—until the banging at the door reminds him where he is.

He pulls away from her, and she quietly says "That was what Milton was going to suggest" earlier, by the way, back at the base" and Jack says "Okay, that makes sense why he didn't want to say it then," and Kim kisses him again, but Jack gently pushes her away (God, don't make that face Kim, I don't want to hurt you) and tells her to "GO!" and she's going.

He stares after her retreating form for a few moments, before running over to the gate button and holding it down until the garage closes. The zompyres haven't gotten in yet, so he piles more and more of the stuff in the garage at the door to prevent them from getting in longer, to give Kim and Milton more time.

And when he's run out of stuff, he walks over to the middle of the room and shifts into a defensive stance. This is it. 'The final showdown,' if you will. He wonders if he's going to die here, or turn into a zompyre and join their ranks. Well, no, Kim did kiss, him so (his cheeks burn as he thinks of this) the "organic matter" that Milton said has pretty much been covered. Is the infection being reversed? He thinks his leg is starting to feel better.

After about ten minutes, the pounding at the door stops. There's no pain in his leg.

After another twenty more minutes, Jack wonders if they're gone.

After another twenty minutes, Jack realizes they have to be gone, which means they've gone after Kim and Milton crapcrapcrapcrap and then he throwing stuff away from the door in his haste to get out—

—and when he opens the door Jerry is there.

Jerry, who grins that mischievous little grin.

Jerry, who punches him in the gut, and then kicks him in the side of the head when he doubles over.

Jerry, who pins him up against the wall by his throat.

"It's just a matter of time, Jack," Jerry says, smirking. Jack claws at the Latino's hand, desperate for air. "My buddy told me he saw another buddy bite you— it's just a matter of time. We discovered this recently, see. A friend of mine's really liked this girl for a while now. But he's a zompyre, see, and she was (WAS) a human. He captured her one day and kinda asked her out and she said 'Bite me.'" Jerry grins again. "So he did. And about a week later, she turned into a zompyre."

Jerry's grins suddenly fades as he sniffs the air. He sniffs again, then leans in uncomfortably close to Jack and inhales, before stepping back (dropping Jack) and growling. "You don't smell like zompyre anymore. WHY?!"

Jack doesn't answer, not wanting the zompyres to have any more reason to go after Kim and Milton. It's not like he can answer, anyway, because he's taking huge gulps of precious air. Is this how strong zompyres are normally? His throat was practically crushed in Jerry's grip.

"You found a cure, didn't you?!" Jerry hisses furiously, somehow reading Jack's thoughts anyway. "No! NO!"

He picks Jack up by the front of his shirt, their faces inches apart. "That's not fair. That's not fair!" He punches Jack in the stomach and the teen drops to the ground, groaning. "YOU did this to me! Turned me into this! It's only fair that you get turned, too!"

"Jerry— sorry—" Jack gasps. 'Jerry does blame me, god, man I'm so sorry.'

"You left me with them to die!"

"Went to— get help—"

Jerry crouches down next to Jack and hisses darkly into his face. "You and I both know that's a LIE!"

"Told you— to stick close—"

"I had earbuds in! And you know I was grooving to my tunes! Why didn't you come when I first called for help?!"

"Thought you needed…" Jack coughs, taking a deep breath and releasing it. He's finally got his breath back, though his neck is sore. "Thought you needed help moving something…"

"Oh, right, sure," Jerry says sarcastically. "That's why I sounded terrified. This huge crate was so intimidating."

"Didn't realize something was wrong—"

"Until I screamed?" Jerry scoffs.

"…yeah." Jack responds. "And I ran as fast as I could to get to you, I swear—"

"You know, I'm pretty sure Kai was just waving that gun around to scare us," Jerry interruts. "I don't even think he meant to shoot. But you startled him when you burst in and the gun went off."

"Jerry—"

"And then what do you do? You run. Leaving a bunch of zompyres to come and get me, because the Black Dragons left, too." Jerry cocks his head to the side in a mock thoughtful way. "You know, them turning me probably saved my life. As a human, I most likely would have died. Plus, my arm and my leg are as good as new."

"Jerry, I'm sorry."

"Oh, yeah," the zompyre says with his twisted grin as more zompyres stalk into the room and surround them. "You will be."

The rebel group with the generator turned out to be a group of dancers from some TV show named 'Shake It Up Chicago,' who were visiting Seaford on a tour before the apocalypse hit. The Black Dragons were surprisingly helpful (though Kai seemed confused as to why Kim was so hostile) and escorted Milton and the blonde to the dance-studio-turned-hideout that the dancers had set up.

A friendly redhead, upon discovering Milton's intentions, lead him straight to the generator, where he hooked up the microscopes and PCR chambers he needed to make the cure.

Exactly two hours, fourteen minutes, and thirty six seconds later, the cure was done. Milton reproduced it to the point where everyone in both groups (twenty one people total, twenty three including Kim and Milton) had two four-ounce spray bottles.

Kim ventured outside the base with the redhead (CeCe) from the dancers group and Kai from the Black Dragons. Together, they detained a zompyre (one that CeCe said was her best friend) that was wandering around and brought it back to the base. They sprayed it in the face and waited.

Thirty minutes later, the zompyre was unconscious, but human.

Milton took a couple small blood samples from her and found no trace of the disease. He watched her overnight to make sure the cure worked and that she wouldn't turn back into a zompyre. He fell asleep at one point, and the girl woke up the next morning and wandered into the main room of the dance studio.

She asked why everybody looked so dirty, and then looked down at herself and noticed with surprise she looked dirty, too, and then found herself being tackled in a hug by CeCe. She apparently had no memory of her time as a zompyre.

Milton wanted to keep an eye on her for the day, just to be absolutely certain. When the day passed with no suspicious occurrences, he took a few more small samples of blood, found no trace of the disease, and declared her officially cured of the zompyre virus.

The next day, (after everyone had been sprayed and become immune) they stormed the zompyre lair. One spray to the face was all it took for a zompyre to collapse and be back to full human status thirty minutes later. The Zompyre Queen, on the other hand, melted into a small puddle upon being sprayed. The rebels gave the puddle a wide berth after this happened.

They had the lair cleared and zompyre-free by noon.

All the ex-zompyres in the lair were brought back to the dance studio over the course of the rest of the day, but there were so many of them that some had to be brought back to the Black Dragons dojo. The rebels sadly didn't have enough beds to accommodate the sheer number of them, so they did their best with blankets and makeshift pillows.

Since then, Milton has made a whole bunch of the cure, and the two rebel groups have helped distribute them to groups in the surrounding area. They're well on the way to wiping out all zompyres and turning them back into humans.

Kim at times wonders if she'll ever get back to her own world, the one where zompyres are from a stupid horror movie. She wonders what transported her here, or maybe even who, and if she even wants to leave when she's helping so much here. She hasn't told the others about where she came from, and they haven't asked. She's slipped up a couple times, by knowing things that someone who didn't hang out with them regularly before the apocalypse should know, but no one seems suspicious.

There's nothing Kim enjoys more than seeing a person being united with a newly-human friend or family member. They had all lost people, even Milton (who kissed his girlfriend Julie full on the mouth when she woke up). Eddie, Rudy, and Phil were found also. The latter refused to cooperate with anything anyone said until they found his goat.

The hunt for Tootsie is… interesting, to say the least. The animal was more elusive than any zompyre they'd cured, and constantly taunted the rebels and seemed especially fond of certain four-letter words that Kim is surprised the goat even knew.

Though Tootsie is creative, Kim'll give the goat that. For example, Milton made up some speech to convince the goat to come back, and when he was done the goat replied "Is your ass jealous of the amount of s**t that just came out of your mouth?"

Or, the time when it had been cornered, when a freaking air conditioner had fallen out of the sky and busted a hole in a nearby wall, effectively cutting off any way of the rebels getting to it while at the same time giving it an escape route. After a few second of a surprised pause, it made up a little song: "I don't know what the f**k just happened, but I don't really care, Imma get the f**k up outta here, f**k this s**t, I'm out."

And then it left.

As of yet, months after the invasion of the zompyre lair, they haven't found that stupid goat.

'And we haven't found Jack either,' Kim thinks sadly, walking into the garage on her fourth search of the school since they took the old learning institution back. Jack had just gone off the grid. There were a few streaks of blood on the floor and walls that weren't there before she left to join Milton that day, as well as a long streak that went from about the middle of the room to the door… as if someone's bloody body was dragged out of the room. Kim's mind always goes to the worst when she thinks about what happened.

Jerry hasn't yielded many answers, either. Most people didn't remember their time as a zompyre at all, but a few have some vague memories. Jerry said he recalled cornering Jack in the garage, and he remembered feeling absolutely furious with the longer-haired male, but then nothing after that. A search everywhere in and around the school revealed nothing; the state of the garage revealed the most clues.

Almost everything that wasn't bolted down in the garage was found near the door. Milton and Kim guessed that this meant that Jack had barricaded the door. But then, some stuff was obviously moved away from the door. Kim first thought that the zompyres eventually forced their way in, but Milton said that it couldn't have been true because of the fact that no items were on their side or broken. It looked more like the ones out of the way of the door had just been moved out of the way, which means that Jack barricaded the door and then opened it again.

He either let the zompyres in willingly, or he thought they were gone. Either way, he let the zompyres in, intentionally or not. And they attacked him. And now he's missing. And the zompyres who did it are human, so they have no idea where he is.

'We'll find him eventually' Kim thinks as she exits the garage. 'We have to.'

He watches in the shadows as the blonde girl leaves the room. It took everything he had not to jump her and devour every last morsel of flesh from her bones. They're so naive. They think that they've gotten rid of all the zompyres. They probably have.

The group of zompyres that tortured him burped in his face so many times that he doesn't know what he is. He's not human. He's not zompyre. He's some strange in between. All he knows is that when he woke up they were gone, and he was hungry. For humans. So sure, let them think that they've defeated the enemy, because he's not their enemy.

He's their worst nightmare.

This took sooo much longer than I expected it to and turned out a lot longer than I expected, but whatever. Hope you guys enjoy. Please leave a review, they make me happy. :)

Until next time,

~BH

(2/15/15 Edit: This is a oneshot, btw. If you're interested in continuing or basing anything off of it, be my guest. Just make sure to PM me first. :D)