Jenny Calhoun was idly tossing and catching a ball in the corner she had claimed for herself of the abandoned warehouse when she saw Jack Death finally return, a briefcase in his hand.

    “You’re back late,” she said.  “It’s almost ten o’clock.”

    “I had a lot of thinking to do,” Jack stated.  “Where’s Roy?”

    “He’s in the back with the new girl.”

    “New girl?”

    Jenny nodded.  “Apparently, there’s another one of us.  Some girl from a fantasy story.  She came looking for cloak boy, or so Roy says.”

    “I wonder if it’s that Athena person he mentioned.”

    Jenny shrugged.  “I didn’t catch her name.”

    “Does she have a tail?”

    Jenny shrugged again.  “I didn’t get a close look.  I figure I’ll meet her later.”

    “Mind if I sit?”

    “Knock yourself out.”

    Jack pulled up one of the folding chairs they had acquired to make the space a bit more livable and sat down.

    “You seem more thoughtful than normal,” Jenny said, grabbing a chair and sitting next to him.  “Did you finish off that guy you shot?”

    Jack shook his head.  “He and his fiancee are still alive.  I just wanted to ask them some questions.”

    “Must have been quite the questions,” Jenny said.

    “The answers were very enlightening,” Jack stated.  “Can I ask you a question?”

    Jenny nodded.  “Whatever you want.”

    “This thing Roy is planning to do – do you agree with it?”

    Jenny took a deep breath.  “I guess I do – after what my creator did to me and my world, I think there’s justice in a revolution against them all.  But, it doesn’t matter what I think.  I’m in no matter what.”

    “Why?”

    “Because Roy saved me,” Jenny said.  “The story I was in, it could only end one way – a heroic sacrifice to defeat the biggest bad of them all.  Every time I won against a big bad, there was always a bigger one waiting, and that was always going to be the case.  Roy got me out of that – there are no big bads here.  And then, when all the mental crap hit me once I was safe, Roy held me and comforted me until I felt okay again.  He always listens when I need to get something off my chest, and he is always there for me.  So, I’m at his side until the end.  If he wants a war against all of our creators, I’ll help make it happen.”

    “Because you love him,” Jack said.

    Jenny nodded.  “Hopefully at some point he’ll notice.”

    “But what if he’s wrong?”

    “He’s not.”

    Jenny studied Jack’s face.  Behind the normal reserve was a thoughtfulness she had never seen before.

    “Before I got here,” Jack said, “I only ever made two types of decisions, at least, only two types of important decisions: who to kill, and how to kill them.  And, that’s what I thought was normal – those are the only important decisions that anybody made in the world I’m from.  But since I came here I’ve spent hours watching people in parks and on the street, and I’ve never seen anybody from this world make a decision like that.”

    “It is nicer here than the worlds we came from,” Jenny said.  “Back in my story, the monsters were just there – you fought them or you died.  I haven’t been forced into a single battle since I got here.  Every fight I’ve been in was one I chose.  I’ve never had that before.”

    “Yes, but here’s the point,” Jack began, leaning forward.  “The people here, they live in peace.  They don’t have the constant threat of violence here.  What if they’re right and we’re wrong.  What if the right thing to do when it comes to freeing ourselves from our creators isn’t to kill them, but just to talk to them, and to keep talking to them until they understand?”

    “Why would any of them talk to us?” Jenny asked.  “We’re the puppets they created for their entertainment.  How much hatred must a creator have for their creations to create a world or story like mine?  Or yours?  You talk about making decisions, Jack, but what decisions have we ever made before we got here?  They were all made for us by our creators.  Here in this world is the first time we have ever been able to exercise free will.  Do you really think that the people who created us to suffer for their own amusement would ever let us stay free?”

    Jack shrugged.  “I don’t know.  But I think we have to try.”

    Jenny smiled sadly.  “I envy you, Jack.  I wish I could feel that way again.  I miss it.”

    Jack pulled out one of his guns and a spare magazine.  “You use knives all the time, but do you know how to use one of these?”

    “I can knock bullets out of the air,” Jenny said.  “I’m not worried about guns.”

    “You can hit somebody from much farther away with a bullet than you can with a knife,” Jack said.  “And if the other side has soldiers, you’re going to be fighting against lots of people with guns.  Just take this for my piece of mind, okay?  I’d rather you have the ability to shoot back if you need to.”

    Jenny looked at him and then nodded.  “You okay, Jack?”

    “Like I said, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.”

    “Okay,” Jenny said.  “Show me how to use this.”

    After Jack gave her a rundown of the gun, he stood up, stretched, and picked up the briefcase.  “I need to talk to Roy.”

    “Good luck,” Jenny said, feeling the weight of the pistol in her hand, and then putting it and the spare magazine into her bag.  She watched Jack walk towards the space The Destroyer had set up for himself in the back, where he was meeting with the new girl.  A couple of minutes after he had disappeared behind the makeshift privacy curtain that she had helped The Destroyer set up, she shrugged and got up.  Neither Jack nor The Destroyer would likely mind if she listened in.

    She pulled aside the curtain and looked in.  Jack was handing the suitcase to The Destroyer.

    “Everything you need about Samurai Filmworks is in here,” Jack stated.  “Building layouts, security codes, everything.  The guard I consulted proved very amenable to persuasion.  I’ve marked the main working areas of the creative staff on the layouts.”

    “Thank you,” The Destroyer said.  “We would not be able to begin our campaign of liberation without this.”

    As Jenny watched, Jack took a deep breath.  “Roy, I think we forget about the entire thing.”

    “I don’t understand.”

    “We’re wrong about these people,” Jack said.  “Some of them are cruel, yes, but they’re the exception to the rule.  The rest of the people of this world, our creators, care about and help each other.  They sacrifice themselves for each other.  If they’re unkind to us, it’s because they don’t know any better yet.  They hurt us because they don’t understand that what they do hurts us.”

    The Destroyer stiffened.

    “If we launch this attack, we will be crossing a line that can never be uncrossed,” Jack pressed on.  “We will be starting a war we do not need to fight.  All we have to do is talk to them, and make them understand that we are people, just as they are.  We don’t need to kill anybody else.  All we need to do is talk.”

    “Are you questioning the judgement of a higher being?” The Destroyer asked.

    “I’m saying that judgement is wrong,” Jack declared.  “Roy, I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I can’t let us go through with this attack.  If you don’t agree to call it off, I’m going to take this case and destroy what’s in it.  We’ll find another way to liberate everybody as you want.”

    Jack gasped as a spike of masonry impaled him, throwing him against and pinning him to the wall behind him.  Jenny gasped with him, her eyes wide.  Jack’s body quivered and was still.

    “There will be no treason within our ranks,” The Destroyer stated, picking up the briefcase where Jack had dropped it.  Then he looked at Jenny.  “Are you okay?” he asked.

    Jenny took a deep breath and nodded.

    “Good,” The Destroyer said.  “I’m sorry you had to see that.  Jack is right – there are lines that once crossed, cannot be uncrossed.  I wish he had not crossed this one.”

    “What now, Roy?” Jenny asked.

    “We continue as planned.  We attack in the mid-morning, when everybody will be at the office, and liberate my world.  And then, we’ll liberate yours.”

    “I want to talk to my creator before she dies,” Jenny said.  “I have questions I need answered.”

    “I would never deny you that.”

    Jenny stepped over to Jack’s body, shook her head, and then closed his eyelids.  “Poor Jack,” she whispered.  “You really did lose your way, didn’t you?”  She turned back to The Destroyer.  “We’re now a man down.  Will this be a problem for tomorrow morning?”

    The Destroyer smiled and shook his head.  He turned to the shadows and said something in Japanese.  A tall, statuesque woman in leather armour stepped out.

    “We have a new recruit from the world of Daiki Yamato,” he said.  “She is quite happy to join our cause and liberate her world from the cruel yoke of her creator.  Her name is Saline.”

    The woman gave Jenny a charming smile and a theatrical bow.

    “She prefers to use knives too,” The Destroyer said.

    Jenny nodded.  It was all happening as planned, then.  Tomorrow morning, everybody at Samurai Filmworks would die.

NEXT: “Respite”