Who: Jack and OPEN. Where: The White Wall. What: Jack's had a bad night and takes it out on an unsuspecting chair. When: Monday morning, four or five AM. Rating: PG-13 at least, for Jack's foul mouth. Status: In progress.
Jack had suffered a lot of injuries in her time. Broken bones, stab wounds, impalements, various injuries from Alliance runners, and even a few notable occasions where she was set on fire were all part of her resume. Being shot, though, had to be the most annoying. It was probably because they were the most common. Hell, she was almost used to it, which was a strange thing to think about– who the fuck got used to bullet wounds?– but such was the nature of her rapid healing ability. The problem with bullet wounds was that her body needed time to push the damn thing back out, or she had to do the gruesome thing and pull it out herself. Either way, it stung like a bitch, and it tended to put her in an especially foul mood.
Not that she wasn't always cranky. It was just that tonight, she was liable to punch the next person who talked to her.
It had been a rough night all around. The "routine" mission had gone terribly awry and she'd lost two of her team because of it. One minute, things were fine and the next, shit went FUBAR. Now that Jack was back at the Wall, her clothes and skin stained with blood and dirt, she was beginning to piece together what had happened. They'd been ambushed by a group of runners, caught off guard, and before she knew it she and her squad were locked in a goddamn brawl. Somewhere in the middle of the chaos, a bullet from a sniper rifle had hit her in the right shoulder. That was when she'd ordered the retreat (to her great chagrin– Jack hated running), knowing they were outmatched, but there had been two that couldn't get out in time.
"I need a fucking smoke," Jack grumbled to the empty break room, blinking blearily at the table in front of her before reaching for the pack she kept on hand. "Now where the fuck is my lighter?" She muttered around the cigarette dangling from her lips when she found that it wasn't in her usual pocket. She began frantically patting the pockets of her cargo pants, searching for the familiar weight of the old Zippo, before realizing it was nowhere to be found. She must have dropped it in the scuffle, which meant she was out a lighter until she could get down to the markets to replace it. "Son of a–"
The ensuing stream of profanity and crash of a chair being kicked and splintered into pieces could be heard all the way down the hall.
*title lyrics: beat the devil's tattoo, black rebel motorcycle club