Sometimes life gave you an unfair hand or advantage. Something that was just good enough.

And sometimes life gave you a two, a king, a seven and some used chewing gum while the other guy had all the cards.

It was a give and take that I often found myself on the receiving end of, often even on the advantaged side.

Most of the time.

This was so far to the other side that that I had no idea what the fuck to do.

So I just did. I had been in my fair share of cluster fucks and this was not exception.

Even if I didn’t know how to manage kill twelve armed men in a dug out with more people in it than a coffin.

Then the grenade went off and it become exponentially more confusing.

The blast kicked shrapnel out towards us, about a third slamming into cover, a third going above us, and a third came towards us.

The grenade was blessedly less devastating than the ones I had stolen and I had a wall of armored people between me and the blast.

I quickly let my living backpack down and she let out a little, “Ooh,” as she did. Pinky’s ‘Ooh,’ was an immense reassurance that she was fine. She literally took a shot for me and I wasn’t going to let her get ripped to shreds. I covered my face as best I could but most of it was dust. The shrapnel got caught on the armor of the well armored men.

A few let out shouts along the lines of, “Fuck!” and it luckily distracted them long enough to get in fighting shape.

Or at least get the sword ready.

Mostly the sword.

I got the heavy blade up, moving some three feet towards the first goon that had taken the shot and was the most staggered of the lot.

I lined up my strike and brought the blade up then down, quickly hewing into the weak jointed area at the base of the neck.

The man moved, but the blade, either by its edge, or sheer weight didn’t care as he put a bit of armour between the blade and his vulnerable insides. It sheered through a bit of his armour, paring it enough that it still tore down into him.

It stopped on the chest plate, curving around and up parting his spine like I was preparing fish.

The man was dead, though his head still had thoughts, and his heart still beat, pumping its vital fluids up into the two thirds of his neck that no longer was connected. The gore slicked the blades exit toward me, and I put my back into it, spinning it around into a cluster of two of them. It tore through the first one, the blade sheering through the base of the helmet and neck and through into the second man where it slammed into his shoulder.

The armor he wore did sheer a little, but it didn’t get through.

What did get through was the force, and I heard the mans shout above the noise of a broken limb.

I pulled back, hoping he was thoroughly disarmed for the moment, and unable to shoot right with his wound I pulled my weapon back, and made myself ready to fight just a little too slow.

The man furthest from me, all the way down the line, steadying himself fired a shot and missed, firing into his friend as I pulled away.

The bolt of light sprayed off the reflective armor like a mirror, shining off behind me in three equidistant bands of off red light.

The surface grew rapidly red-orange. And there was a noise of cracking glass and a second scream from the poor fucker as some portion of the laser seared flesh, sending the smell of cooked meat in the air.

“I could use some help, Pink!” I shouted at her, rapidly letting the blade trail behind me and firing a shot off towards the man with Lefty.

They were more test shots than lethal wounds, but they fired out normally anyways, burying them into the armor.

The furthest man took the two shots, and it tore through his armor, doing its job against whatever material the lower layer consisted of.

I felt almost good about the shots too, until pink let out two shots that obliterated two of the men like they were cardboard cut outs. Their limbs and head fell free of their nonexistent torso. The light still set my skin to writhing, a tingly sensation on my arms and the back of my neck.

Hairs I did not normally have standing on end.

I blinked, stunned by the casual power as too did most of the functioning troops around us.

4 us. 6 if you counted wounded.

Unluckily there were still six of the armored fuckers and they were now focused on me and Pink.

I snaped off an additional shot into the mans heart, considering he was at the right range, if barely, to let the armor penetrating core of the bullet just slip out of the plastic case.

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I quickly holstered it moving the sword back into my hand as the plucky, now six man team, started to raise their weapons.

I slung the sword up, but barely managed to interpose it between myself and a shot, which luckily bounced off the blade, and right back at the guy hitting the helmet on this head before scattering off of him, four beams this time each arching off of him like ablative material spraying off of him.

There was no break, no instant crack, but it was good enough to scare the shit out of him.

Down side was that it drew the others fire.

Three shots cracked off towards me, on hit my leg… again, the other singing through my coat and burning my flabby arm. The third hit armor, and blissfully didn’t hurt anymore that the two shots together.

I flinched but grit my teeth, and though my arms felt week, I managed to put some weight into it, slamming blade first into the chest plates, and breaking the front half of the two laser guns.

One of them, the genius, didn’t shoot me, but instead grabbed me and pulled. The blades weight pulled my arms, the wound screaming in my fucking arm and in a moment of weakness, I let go of it.

I was pulled back, an arm slipping around my neck and the man tried to choak me out.

I did my best to clock him in the side of the head, but in a contest between my elbow and his helmet one was going to give, and it wasn’t his helmet.

I let out a hiss of pain and heard him call out to one of the two I had slammed fruitlessly about, my brain running to fast to pay attention too what he said. Instead, I saw haltingly as I flailed to get a point of leverage, the goon furthest from me with a broken gun level his weapon at me. The one closer looked at his broken gun and then made to stop the guy next to him.

His buddy shot too fast.

His gun started to fire, a shot hitting a glassy lens bit that rapidly overheated. It rapidly cracked before exploding into thousands of tiny shards of sand.

The lens must have focused the shots, because they were hot when they washed over me, my eyes closed tight saw only red light shine through them, before I heard a noise, and cracked open one eye.

The gun was smoking. Tiny tubes glowed red and the man was trying to slam the guns breach open. He slammed it once, twice, and as he hit it and the second guy held the gun trying to stop him it pinged open with a grinding shattering noise.

Fire exploded up and onto the two men, liquid fire.

I say liquid fire because whatever that fluid was immediately covered the two and combusted and they started to scream.

It was horrifying, they two’s screams shrill and terrible and nigh unlike that of a person. They began to writhe and shake, tried to dive to the ground and roll to put it out.

I doubted it would do any work. It was a flaming liquid, and it lit with no fire. That kind of thing didn’t go off.

My foot found the top of a plate by his knee and I pressed with my one good leg, my other kicking and screaming as it flailed.

Using his body against itself I forced his leg down, sudden force causing him to loose some balance, and arm going out to catch himself and an arm coming free enough that I could fight back.

Grabbing him in a very tricky maneuver as we fell, I managed to turn toward him and we landed on my back. Griping behind his back with a leg I gave a twist and flipped us around.

I lay atop him, my good leg pined beneath hard armor, and it fucking hurt no matter how much adrenaline I had.

I could practically hear my heart as it pounded blood in my ear.

I was in a tunnel and he was the only one in sight, and I was going to take my fucking due on him.

I grabbed his helmet and tore it off of him, only a grime covered face beneath.

I lifted myself up and took lefty out leveling it with his eye and saw the mans life flash before his eyes as I put a round into his head.

He jerked as he did, but he was in to position to fight back as I got up off him and left him to die and holstered lefty.

I looked up just in time to see the two screaming men run off flailing and Pinky light up again, blasting the remaining goons with her pink particle gobbly gook that converted people into pasta sauce.

I looked over at her, panting. My leg wanting to give out under me as the man started to seize. My arm not much better as it screamed in agony.

I could fell myself clenching my teeth as I breathed.

Pinky smiled a silly little smile, until she looked at me shocked and said, “Oh no, you’re all hurt.” As if getting shot was the same level of danger as scraping my knee.

“Yeh,” I said on an exhale, “What about it? Are you going to kiss my boo boo’s better?”

She pouted and then pointed at my pack.

“I gave you your medicine. If you give someone bandages you expect them to be used.”

I thought about the upsides and downsides of using them and said quietly as if muttering, “Lilly, should I risk it?”

“I could counter balance some of it once I’ve isolated why it makes you loopy, at least probably. Your wounds got better last time because I could separate the burn damage when you transformed, but unless you want to drop a transformation now and burn a bunch more energy… It would take me quite some time to heal the wounds using only your current biology to do it.”

“Damn,” I muttered.

I sighed and took a look at Pinky.

“Do I have to use my boo boo bitch stickers? I swear I’m good to go still,” I lied to her, hoping I could get her to not get her insistence.

She looked at me like she knew I was lying, which she might, and she shook her head no.

I put up my hands in surrender and got down before a shot took my head off right next to the man having a seizure.

He was dying hard, the tough bastard. I noticed a tiny bit of a tattoo on his neck and reached over to try and make sense of it, but it was some mark I didn’t know. It looked like a military or paramilitary tattoo, they had a rigidity to them that a lot of other types didn’t, but I had never seen this one before.

I shrugged and settled down, pulling out the stim from the pack.

It was a needle, with a little ampule inside, filled with whatever concoction pink produced so prodigiously.

It looked a little silly, with an orange tip like a pretend gun but I reached over and pulled the cap off, a tiny, iddy biddy needle just barely peeked out.

Carefully I pressed it up against the skin, lining it up next to a vane before pressing it into my skin. I pressed the cap flat and pressed until I heard a pop.

A tingle ran down into my arm, and scrunched my face up as the medicine enter my blood and get to doing whatever it did.

I waited to feel a rush, a kick of whatever made pinky so loopy.

And I waited.

I waited until I felt the wounds start to tingle before I opened my eyes and looked at her. She casually lying down in the dug out populated with 12… No 13, because there was one guy pressed into the corner with a carbonized face, the snipers hard work presumably, like she was laying down on a couch.

“When is the loopy medicine going to kick in? Because if I’m high I need a bit to acclimatize.”

“Loopy? No, no. It doesn’t have side effects. It’s just a strong regenerator, makes your stem cells go coo-coo and divide like crazy for a bit.”

I looked at her and my mouth said, “Huh… I thought you were high.”

She looked at me shocked.

“What? What makes you think I’m high?”

Oh dear lord. She was being serious.

She was just always like this.

I sighed and looked at her with grimace and said, “You know pink. I don’t know. But I suppose it might be just how energetic you are. I suppose your just a morning person.”

My grimace was a mad and painful smile at the end but I got it out.

“Of course, I am. The morning is the best time of the day, you get to eat the best food, and you feel all rested and stuff. Why wouldn’t I be a morning person?” she asked honestly.

Just fucking kill me now.