Sarah passes between the two of them, their gaze following her as the portal closes behind them. They are on a plateau of orange rock, and she continues to a ledge to look out towards the horizon. A ridge line extends to the left of their position and to the right is another cliff face that abuts the ocean. An undulating mass sits between the ridge and the ocean side cliff. Jack and Wolf fixate on it, noticing fires before realizing it’s a gathering of people or creatures.

  “Is this the hag’s doing?” Jack asks.

  “No,” Sarah replies. “This is just a place I know that will provide appropriate experience.”

  “Seriously?” Wolf asks, with widening eyes. “We’re going to go up against an army as training?”

  “No, not all of them,” she says, looking back as if that should be obvious.

  “Ok,” Jack says, raising his hands as if they were scales. “Let’s say you only fight half? How are you only going to fight part of that?”

  “Don’t worry. I have a feeling they’ll come to us.” She looks back at him with a mischievous smile.

  “So this isn’t so blatantly suicide,” Wolf begins. “Do you think we could hop back over to your weird friend’s place and get some more of those rocket launchers? Or do we need to worry about these guys using them too?”

  “I wouldn’t say weird—eccentric, maybe,” Sarah corrects.

  “Please, that girl is buckets of weird. If weird was a flower, she’d have enough stock to run her own shop during lovers’ season.”

  Sarah laughs and shakes her head. “Ok, Pot.”

  Jack chokes on the jerky he had just bitten off. Wolf looks back and forth between the two, confused. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “The pot and the kettle,” Jack replies, smiling. “I actually got that one.”

  “Huh?” Wolf asks, looking around. “What’s any of this got to do with cooking?”

  “Ha!” Jack says, proudly. “Doesn’t feel so good when you’re not in on the joke, does it? She’s basically saying you’re calling someone else a wolf.”

  Sarah shakes her head. “Jack, never explain a joke. If they miss the point, explaining will only circumvent it.”

  “Well, I think I’m going to just call him Pot from now on,” Jack says with a smile. He looks back over to Wolf, who doesn’t respond and seems distant.

  “Sarah?” Wolf asks. “How do you get a name?”

  She looks back at him with narrowing eyes. “I swear, if this ends up being about where babies come from, I’m going to choke you out.”

  Wolf shakes his head, his ears lying flat and his look becoming concerned. “I just want to know how I get a name. Geez.”

  Sarah shrugs. “If you want another name, just pick one. Personally, I think Buttsniffer and Earkicker would be excellent names.”

  “Ugh, Earkicker?”

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  “Yeah. You know, that thing dogs do when they’re scratching their ear with their back leg—Earkicker. But you can pick whatever you want.”

  “I like Groucho McGrouchypants myself,” Jack adds, looking to Sarah and receiving a nod of approval.

  Wolf settles onto his haunches and shakes his head. “I just don’t know.”

  “Well, just think about it and pick something,” Sarah says.

  “I have been thinking about it. That’s why it’s bothering me. How did you guys pick your names?”

  Sarah shakes her head. “We didn’t. They were given to us.”

  “Oh, so maybe I need to be given one too?”

  “Oh no,” Sarah replies. “I’d rather tell you about where babies come from. If you want a name, you’re going to have to come up with something yourself.”

  Jack shrugs. “I still think Pot is a pretty good one.”

  Sarah extends her upturned palm towards Jack while looking at Wolf. “So there’s one option for you to consider.”

  Wolf’s ear twitches, and he turns back to a ledge on the ocean side of their plateau. “There’s fighting down there,” he says and runs to peer over the edge.

  Below, there is a battle on the narrow strip between the ridge and the ocean side cliff. The skirmish seems to wane as a loosely organized group charges at another force that is tucked further back around the plateau’s cliff face, out of sight.

  Corpses in beige uniforms litter the ground as the last living vestiges advance to meet a red cloaked man charging at them. He’s wearing little more than a Speedo and flip-flops as he engages and cuts down everyone that he encounters. When the last of the forces are extinguished, the man collapses to his knees amidst the dead bodies.

  An allied force approaches him from behind. They’re wearing the same attire but also carry round shields with an upside down ‘v’ logo. They grab the man under his arms and drag him back from the front lines.

  Wolf’s eyes move back and forth between the battleground and Sarah, where she finally takes notice of his looks.

  “What?” she asks, irritated.

  Wolf gestures towards the ground with a head bob. “He any relation to you?”

  “Oh, shut it. I’m not that bad. That guy’s just pissed because his son got decapitated in front of him.”

  “Are we supposed to fight the guys in swimsuits too? They seem a little intense.”

  Sarah chuckles. “Oh no. Those are Spartans and we’ll be staying away from that hornet’s nest. We’re just covering their flank for an upcoming sneak attack.”

  Wolf’s eyes narrow. “If it’s a sneak attack… how do you—”

  Jack’s hand interrupts him as it’s placed on his shoulder. “Don’t even go chasing that line of questioning. She’s always put the two of us in places right before things happened. It has something to do with movies or video games, which have nothing to do with you and me. So no point in really asking.”

  Sarah nods. “That’s fair.”

  She pushes away from the edge and walks to the other side of the plateau, then looks back to wave them over. The ground level drops away and descends at a step decline. Shallow ravines along the craggy surface switchback as brush grows up sporadically. She points down to a tree-covered valley at the base of a ridge line across from them.

  “There’s a mountain path there,” she says. “It’s how that larger army is going to get around behind the swimsuit fighters and it’s where we’re going to pick our fight.” She points to a mountain alongside them and gestures to the dip between their plateau and the neighboring peak. “You see how this saddle descends back towards that mountain path? That trail could be wide enough for us to do some fighting there.”

  Wolf looks at the dip, concerned. “How is that a saddle?”

  Sarah rolls her eyes. “Ok, Squirrel. It’s not an actual saddle; it’s named that because of its shape. But if you follow this dip down to the mountain path, it should be wider and easier to fight there.”

  “How do you know all this stuff? I mean, I can get the angry, rebel-girl fighter bit—”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “—but now you’re talking about saddles and troop movements? When did you have time to learn any of this? A rough home life doesn’t necessarily equate to tactical training.”

  Sarah nods. “Sly as ever, Wolf.”

  Jack and Wolf exchange glances, unsure of what to expect.

  “Let’s just say that my upbringing required a lot of downtime, and the ‘regularly scheduled programing’ wasn’t an adequate distraction. So someone told me, ‘You’re a fighter and you always have been’—even though I wasn’t capable of doing any actual fighting.” Her gaze falls then. “So I guess reading and studying all of that stuff helped me cope.”

  Sarah quickly turns, grabs her handgrip and opens a portal just over the cliff face. “Let’s go have a look,” she says, stepping off the plateau and into the portal.