Author: Nikkei_Simmer
E-mail:
Rating: M
Classification: Animal/Kimber R
Spoilers: JAG AU, JAGSims, The Sims 3
Summary: Standalone Story; Harm, Mac, Meg, Animal and Kimber are placed in a house together in the middle of a supernatural Sanctuary and are expected to survive with absolutely no help from the military at all. Are they at the mercy of the citizens of the sanctuary or will they become what the military fears most – supernatural themselves.
DISCLAIMER: The characters Harm Rabb, Jr., Sarah "Mac" Mackenzie, Meg Austin, AJ Chegwidden, Bud Roberts, Harriet Sims-Roberts et al. belong (in concept if not name) to CBS/Bellisarius. Animal and all OC charactersare the property of the author. No profit is being made from this story, nor is any infringement intended.
Author's Note: This is one of my JAG/Sims 3 cross-over fics, although none of the EA pre-mades are going to join the “family”.
Chapter One: "Settling In"
Day One - Sunday
The roar of the water going over the precipice could be heard over a mile away. The long meandering river that fed the waterfall made its lazy way along the banks of the town from the headwaters of a spring fed lake. It was a picturesque town with a lot of mountains, yet the mood of the area was rather ominous. It was said by many that the citizens of this quiet little rural community were cursed.
Yet it didn’t appear that way to Admiral Toshio “Animal” Nakamura (retired), United States Navy former naval aviator. He was out of the Navy and wanted a nice quiet place to hole up.
For all it appeared it was quiet. Everybody minded their own business and things went along just fine. If one was ex-military, they didn’t like other getting all up in their business. And frankly, it was a nice enough town that one could settle down. Animal was the first one to the town, the rest would be showing up in a few days. So what he was going to do was go and try to make things comfortable for the rest.
The admiral was a craggy Asian man who looked as though he was built from granite, with a square jaw and taciturn features. He did not look as though he smiled a lot, in fact, he rarely ever did.
The admiral knew that part of living here was to be well aware of the other people in this town. The legend of the curse forefront in his mind and he knew that this home had to be a bastion of safety for him and his friends. For all intents and purposes – he was going to have to turn this property into a fortress. Just as the mountains surrounding this town were a fortress for the occult living here, unnoticed by the non-occult.
What he did realize was that the occult and the non-occult in the town worked together to ensure each other’s safety, with however the exception of the vampires who tended to annoy the hell out of everyone. The creepy undead bloodsuckers mainly eyed other townsfolk as ambulatory American Red Cross blood transfusion services. Animal swore that he would stake the first vampire that came up to him and asked him for a blood sampler. He preferred the option of becoming a werewolf, if becoming an occult were necessary.
He would have pondered a lot longer however he had things to do. His first thing was making sure that they had enough to eat and to develop a food supply that he would be able to nurture. One of the things he loved to do, other than making sure he was healthy and physically fit was that he loved to garden. And the one thing that he was going to do right this instance was to go around the town and harvest the wild plants in the area so that he could use the seeds to plant new crops on his property so that when his friends arrived, they would be well fed. Just that task alone kept him till at least one in the afternoon.
Knowing that he had to keep himself physically fit, Animal decided that he was going to make an appearance at the gym, a little place called Bell’s Barbell House. It was a decent enough place and he set about at the weight machine in order to lift a few weights. Decades of keeping fit to fly fighter jets had made him a formidable physical specimen and he could feel the gaze of the unattached women in the gym watching him. But he wasn't interested. There was one individual in particular in the group of friends who was coming over to live in Moonlight Falls and she was his former squadron-mate.
The problem with weight-lifting was that it wasn’t the exertion that he was experiencing, but the fact that it was a mindless occupation of time. With flying fighter-jets he had both his mind and body occupied, pulling G’s, engaging another aircraft in simulated aerial combat with each person trying to shoot each other down in practice to go to war. He’d done that four times for real, where guns and missiles were hot. Two times over Japan during a trade dispute that ended up leading to armed conflict. And a MiG 29 and an Su-27 over the hot desert sands of Iraq during Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait where the he’d downed the Iraqi Air Force’s top ace. Gaining position over another individual in an aircraft and defeating him was a challenge both physically and mentally, more so than sticking weights on a barbell and lifting or sticking what looked like an Allen key into a round slot and using pulleys and bars to lift those stacked bars of weights.
Animal knew that there were things that he had to do in order to learn how to survive in a place like this so he went over to what locals were calling the Vault of Antiquity to see what sort of knowledge he could glean from whatever sources he could root out.
There wasn’t a whole lot of knowledge that he could glean about this place that was useful to him right at this very point at the level of skill he was at in terms of knowledge of the occult arts, but he needed to be wary and wait until he was reinforced by his friends. There was safety in numbers.
And for now, that meant retreating back to his home for the moment to await daylight and the arrival of at least one of his friends.
His squadron-mate showed up around 8:46PM that night. Animal had already gone to bed for the night but he’d left the door unlocked so that she could gain access. Navy Captain (equivalent to Army/Air Force/Marine Corps Colonel) Kimber “Jugs” Benton was a statuesque redhead. She was drop-dead gorgeous and very few people could believe that she was actually a hot-shot jet jock who could fight with the best of them. She was also a two-time MiG-Killer where she shot down a MiG 29 and a MiG 21 over Serbia in the F-14 Tomcat.
Stalking into his bedroom, Kimber gazed down upon Animal who was happily in bed sawing logs. “Rise n’ shine, Chuckles…I’m here…”
Animal, half mumbled something in his sleep and startled awake, he rose from his bed to see Kimber looking at him with a slight smile on her face as she watched him get out of his bed, realizing that he was just clad in his underwear...briefs.
Kimber embraced him saying, “Good to see you again, Animal...I’m kinda enjoying this view of you more than you in your flight-suit.” she teased him.
“Did you eat on your way in because I’ve got grilled cheese in the fridge, which you can heat back up.” Animal said, reveling in the embrace of his dearest friend and squadron-mate although it was tighter and more intimate than what the Uniform Code of Military Justice would allow, but hang-it-all, they were out of the Navy and were free to do whatever they liked. They’d been through hell together; flak, missiles being shot at them and getting through it all. They were as tight as friends could be and over the coming days, they would grow even closer.
“I’m fine, Animal, I got some Subway on the way in and I’m good-to-go. What I am is tired and well, I think we should get some sleep.” Kimber said meaningfully dropping her gaze lower with a flicker of her eyelashes.
Well, in for a penny, in for a pound.
The night passed in blissful sleep as two friends got reacquainted after their separation from the Naval Service and their future together seemed to be on-track.
Day Two – Monday
Oh four twenty three hours was not a time that Animal had wanted to see again however, his militarily conditioned mind kicked his ass awake at that particular ungodly hour.
Not long after Animal groaned awake, Kimber got herself out of bed. Also equally militarily conditioned, she proceeded to setting the bed aright so that they would have a well-made bed when they returned to it at night.
At four thirty in the morning, not many people were up and around to gasp at Animal’s lack of proper attire as he went out and dealt with planting the apple trees and the one lettuce plant he needed to finish up the row. Frankly, it was better this way. He saved on having to wash clothing often. One got mucky, but he was able to take a shower and get dressed properly in time for breakfast.
On her way into the kitchen, Kimber noted the nice bookcase/display shelf that Animal had in his living room. Like Animal, she was an avid reader and would probably frequent the local bookshop as much as Animal would. Animal and Kimber, unlike most of their former squadron-mates were voracious readers of books and their hope, after years of not having any sort of library, was to fill several bookshelves full of books to read.
Between Animal and Kimber, they’d had at least 55 years of service in the United States Navy. They both had flown high-performance jet fighters; between them, they’d had over 4000 hrs in the F-14A Tomcat which was liberally sprinkled with combat hours considering Animal had seen combat in the Gulf War as well as over Bosnia and the Serbian War. Animal had hours in both the F-14A and the (re-engined with General Electric’s F110-GE400) F-14A+ or B as they would later call it. Kimber had combat experience over Iraq in Operation Deny Flight which was her earliest combat experience, as well as Bosnia and Serbia and then would go on as VF-41 Black Aces squadron commander to gain flight hours over Iraq for a second time during the Second Iraq Conflict from 2003-2011. The Black Aces’d had two deployments to the Persian Gulf under Kimber’s command stint and she was, as Animal had been, promoted to Captain and assigned a CAG (Commander, Air Wing) position commanding the air wing comprising the squadrons that made up the carrier’s offensive punch and supporting aerial units that complemented the carrier to which they were assigned to.
Kimber lifted her now warmed grill cheese sandwich to her mouth and appeased her growling stomach. Eventually Animal had finished up with planting apples in the front yard and had come back inside to get his own breakfast which was conveniently the same as hers: grilled cheese.
“We really need a microwave in this place.” Kimber commented, “It’s a bit of an inconvenience to have to warm up food in a frying pan, let alone having to deal with extra washing on top of the dishes that we have to wash.”
“Guess it comes from having people to do those things for us back when we were deployed.” Animal grinned at her.
Kimber sighed, melodramatically, “Well...I guess...so…” her face held an inquisitive look, “What’s on the itinerary today?” she asked.
“Well, I guess we could go out and start scouting this town.” Animal suggested.
“So do you know when Harm and Mac are going to get in?” Kimber knew the second bedroom upstairs was going to be Harm and Mac’s bedroom.
“Wednesday from what I heard.” Animal replied. “I heard he applied for his separation from the Navy about three months ago and he phoned me day before yesterday that he’d received his DD-214 a week ago. And he probably had his piping ashore yesterday, so give or take, he’s gonna be here on Wednesday.”
“When are Meg and Brian going to be here?”
Animal grinned. Brian was his brother. A now retired Marine Lieutenant General, he was the poster-boy for minorities who wanted to join the United States Marine Corps. 6’4” of pure muscle, if anyone thought Animal was built like a brick outhouse...Brian would probably end up causing their heads to combust. Brian was bigger than Animal and a lot more muscular. He was the epitome of a Mustang, starting out in the enlisted ranks, by 21 reaching the rank of E-5 then going to university and going through NROTC (Marine Option) and becoming an 0302 (Marine Corps Infantry Officer). Animal himself held a Navy designator of 1310 (Naval Aviator) as did Kimber. Harm had a designator of 250-somethin’ or other. Mac was a 4402...and well, Meg with her specialization of designing weapons meant to be dropped from military aircraft or fired from surface emplacements was a 150X with X being the unknown; it was all classified, secret hush-hush shit as far as Animal knew. “I think he’ll be here a day after Harm shows up.”
After finishing breakfast, they both took their morning shower and then Animal suggested that they go to the Bell’s Barbell House to work out at least. This would get them ready for the day, from there, they would split up with each having tasks to complete. Animal was going to hunt and Kimber would harvest the wild-plants.
When they got to Bell’s Barbell House, they each took a treadmill for an hour, then while Kimber continued on the treadmill, Animal decided that he was going to go lift some weights. After all, he may not have been flying jet fighters any more, but he wanted to remain fit and muscular.
After they were done exercising to get the blood flowing, they started on their daily tasks, splitting up. For Animal, it was rather surprising that he noticed just how active the community was during the daytime...surprisingly even the vampires were out during the daytime. He had assumed they would just end up sleeping during the day in a windowless crypt and come out during the night time where it was dark and they wouldn’t be able to be seen. However, they must have managed to figure out how to protect themselves from the harmful rays of the sun and be able to be out and about at high-noon. Animal also found out just how much people were concerned with the fact that they may or may not be living around occult. Frankly it was an attitude of they didn’t give one tinker’s dam insofar as their proximity to an occult that may or may not have their best interests in mind.
Kimber spent her time going out to gather harvestables. There were numerous wild plants around the town and frankly there really should have been a community garden, however, at this point, there wasn’t any. So that was all there was in terms of harvesting; running around town and making sure that they had enough plants to make their own personal garden at home to work on. During the course of her running around town, she ran across a patch of mycenas. Considering the fact that the taxonomic family of mycenas mushrooms ranged from edible to downright toxic, it was a risk to try to use them as ingredients for anything to eat.
Since Haruo was done hunting after getting at least a fridge full of steaks, he decided to go fishing instead.
That was the one thing about getting out and doing stuff, it certainly made the time go faster and before Animal knew it, it was nearly 1800hrs (6:00 PM for civilians) and the sun was making its descent towards the horizon. This meant that it was time to head home but he was going to make a quick stop at the elixir shop to get a few books that he had his eye on. While Animal was cooking tri-tip steak, Kimber was reading the cooking skill book in order to make sure that she could cook at least something without setting the house on fire.
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