deercountry | Catch-all for Maul; Love is not the opposite of hate.

Eye out, yes. Ears, too. Dog ears pick up every crunch and crackle nearby, so it does keep Manabu a bit too on edge -- and he'll be a bit of a static ball, yielding accidental zaps here and there should Maul trudge too closely.

"Was it the same design?" he asks as he swipes giant foliage out of his way. "The board, I mean. Was it kind of brownish-green, with pieces glued to it? Funny gem in the middle?"

Maul get zapped twice by Manabu's static electricity as they walk through the jungle before he puts more distance between himself and the other man. He's never comfortable with any forms of electricity, even small sparks reminding him of horrible times from his childhood.

"Yes, that is the one," Maul says. "How far along were you on the board?"

"Like three-quarters," he replies. "Mako and I were getting hunted down by giant frogs, then got split up, then I found you in the river. So, so once you can get your rolls and get out of here, I gotta go find him, too."

"Good. Then we shall only need to roll once or twice more to be able to leave this Force-forsaken place." Of course, Maul figures those rolls will be just as deadly as the ones that have comes before.

Hopefully, Manabu thinks. He doesn't want to voice pessimism aloud, lest he speak doom to reality. That shouldn't be something he would realistically think, but Trench really has been shifting the way he does anyway.

And truthfully? He's right to think that way: The jungle is obnoxiously dense and inscrutable; were they not to keep the rushing river at their left, they'd surely get turned around and find themselves right back where they started in no time. It makes looking for a little game board pretty rough, that's for certain, and Manabu has a feeling one of them will step on it sooner than see it.

"Anything?" He pants, wiping his brow for the umpteenth time. "'Cause I sure don't..." And he's only got one eye to work with.

When Manabu asks if Maul sees anything, he puts more effort into the task he's only been half-heartedly interested in up until now. A glint of unnatural shiny green catches Maul's eye amidst all the more muted, natural tones of the jungle around them. He stops and tries to pinpoint where it's coming from.

"There's something close by," he tells his companion. "I think I can see it." Maul starts walking towards it. There in the muck, smeared with a thick layer of mud, is the unmistakable gameboard.

"Hoh-! Great!"

Manabu pivots from where he'd been trudging and looks over where Maul's heading and--

"Wait look out!"

There's a very large snake in the muck.

Maul steps on the snake before he can comprehend Manabu's warning. The python rises up from the muck with an angry hiss, wrapping around Maul's legs and torso, trying to squeeze the life out of him. His legs groan a little with a metallic sound as the pressure increases on them while Maul can barely draw in a breath.

"Get him off! Get him off!" He yells to his companion, trying to grab the snake's head with his hands.

"Crap--"

He's already moving in by the time Maul's crying out for help, but Manabu finds that trying to grasp an attacking python is like trying to get the better of raw, perfect muscle. That's what a snake is after all, right?

"Bear with it! I gotta burn!" Burn the damn snake, that is. And Manabu goes straight to where it matters most of all: at the torso. He all but falls into the moment and grasps the snake's length around Maul's midsection, the sparks flickering at his hair popping and racing down his arms as fresh flames ignite and sear the scales under his palms. It does much to cause a relaxing of its chokehold and give Maul a means to pry free.

Maul's got the snake's head in his hands but all that's able to do is keep the snake from advancing further upwards to cutoff Maul's air supply entirely. He's only able to keep it up due to the adrenaline coursing through him. Once that's gone, he'll be done for. The Sith Lord is gasping, trying to get enough into his lungs to keep from suffering.

He barely has time to question how Manabu will create flames before he sees them licking the snake's body. The relaxation of the muscles give Maul a chance to pry himself loose and take a few steps back. As soon as he's able to draw his lightsaber, he ignites one half of it and chops off the snake's head. Its long muscular body writhes for about half a minute before finally ceasing its death throes.

Manabu recoils the moment Maul can ignite the saber, his hands still aflame and poised to grasp again should it be necessary...which it sure isn't, with that head lopped off.

"H-holy crap..." He shakes his hands to snuff the flames, still steaming at the fingertips. "Are you okay?"

Maul checks himself out as he calms back down, the threat dealt with for the moment. "I'll have some bruised ribs later on but I'll live." That's about as good as it's going to get for him right.

"I saw the board around here somewhere...." Maul looks around. "....There!" He says triumphantly, pointing to where it was.

Finally! Some good news. Manabu starts over there before stopping himself from lunging outright.

"...Wait." Wait. He looks around. And then up. "You don't see anything about to get the drop on us, do you?"

Because if not, he'll go grab that bad boy. He just doesn't want to get jumped by a bear or something.

Maul looked around carefully to make sure they weren't about to shot at by the hunter or a herd of water buffalo wasn't about to descend upon them. Really, he'd believe anything was possible at this point. He shook his head. "No. It looks like we are safe."

He stands back and lets Manabu go to get the board.

With that assurance, Manabu commits to approaching and grabbing up the closed-up board, letting out a breath of relief in having it in-hand. He straightens back up, turning back to Maul with a nod.

"Let's find somewhere safer to work with this. Maybe some higher ground...but not a cliff."

"We'll need to trek further on then," Maul said, gesturing to the gently sloping landscape ahead of them. If they kept walking, in a few minutes it would put them at a higher position than the rushing rivers which still threatened to sweep them away.

Once they'd gotten up to a more hilly area, Maul turned back to Manabu. "Alright, let's play and get one step closer to getting out of here."

Manabu can feel his strength starting to reach its limits, legs burning and lungs screaming for want for rest, so when they finally reach some safer heights, he plops down with an exhausted puff, pulling the board out from under his arm and setting it on the ground between them, unfolding it to expose the dice and figures still there.

"Whose...which turn," he pants. "Should we...rapid-fire this? To the end? Or--"

"I believe it is mine," Maul said. He hadn't rolled the flood which had occurred, which meant it had come from someone else. At the speculation of trying to quickly finish the game, he nodded. He eyed how many spots there were until the end of the board for both their pieces. "Let us try. Two or three rolls should get us to the end. Then this will be over."

Manabu wipes his forehead and nods, bracing his hands on his knees as he sits cross-legged.

"Okay. Let's do it."

And they will. They'll roll quickly between each other to try to get ahead of the incoming hazards: a cloud of killer bees, living vines, quicksand, rampaging monkeys...it all burgeons up into one massive wave of jungle hell.

But Maul's piece slides up into the center of the board for the win, and just as the sound of incoming bees and howler monkeys reaches a deafening apex and Manabu feels his body starting to sink:

"SAY IT!"

Maul's senses were all on high alert as they rolled, prepared for anything that might have been coming their way. With his ability to sense the life energies of anything that was around him, he could feel it the minute new dangers began to sprang to life.

The quicksand was the one where he started to panic and only knowing they were so close to the end kept him pressing onward. When Maul's piece slid onto the board, he yelled out the word that would save them. "JUMANJI!" Almost immediately, the two of them were spat back out into the real world with the echoes of the jungle still beating in their ears.

From the raw chaos of those final turns to deafening...quiet...

Manabu gasps, sitting upright, sparking and bristling, still braced for another threat, but...

"It..." He looks around, seeing the familiar, grim rooftops of Trench.

It worked.

He lets himself exhale.

"Holy...holy crap..."

In contrast, Maul just flopped back down onto the ground, feeling absolutely exhausted. That had been a difficult experience to get through but at least they'd both come out of it intact. "I am going to go home and I may stay there until next year rolls around."

Or until the Pthumerians forced him back out, one of the two.

Catch-all for Maul; Love is not the opposite of hate.

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