The faint electrical corona she saw didn’t cause any damage as it traveled around and through her surroundings and her rescuer/kidnapper launched himself. She had been surviving in the Labs for a long time now and had seen some things but this was something else.
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It took half a second for the current running through me to reach a fever pitch and I then released a burst of it as I launched myself forwards in a crackling burst of speed. As this happened, a small, cooler part of my mind sat up and took note. I landed in the middle of them, the Zappa squealing as I pumped its current directly into my neck. A Bash, tinged with electricity, fired off at the one on the right and instantly pulped its skull and the crab stuck atop it. It was hilarious and infuriating, how dare it die, it deserved so much more. Dead is dead though, it wasn’t my concern any longer.
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Is he laughing? Only with her enhanced Senses could she have caught all of his movements. She also revised some of her contingency plans in case she needed to run from him. Now they included both “running AND hiding.” He moved towards the crab-men much faster than her 10 Agility could’ve matched. As he landed a second electric corona washed out from his feet, slightly greater than the one before, although neither was quite strong enough to completely incapacitate or kill. It rippled out in a wave and flowed up the legs of the 3 creatures. He snapped his weird pink shield and it pulped the torso and head of the man-crab to his right. The millisecond that it was finished the “Electro-Kill Zappa,” she had since learned the name of since another one was planted in her heart, was drilled right into the center of the crab-guy on the left. She winced as she felt an electric pulse of sympathetic pain.
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The current flowing through the creature’s heart and up my arm felt good, real good. I couldn’t help but smile. I was also enjoying holding the third panicking crab-person by its eye socket. I didn’t need more fingers, just one worked fine. I dug my sole finger deeper into the bone of its eyesocket, after all, I didn’t want it to run away and spoil the fun. Oddly enough, the bone felt more brittle than it should have. The screaming of the crab and the person beneath it was grating on my ears, as it tore and scratched against my brain. I yanked my hand out of the corpse’s blackened chest and left the Zappa inside.
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The scream came from both the man and the crab atop his head in twisted mimicry. There was a third scream that fought with the other two for volume but she wasn’t sure if it was a laugh cry or a crying scream. The man was trying to pull the crab off of its host as both crab and host struggled and clawed weakly to life.
She almost felt bad. His single finger was deep in the man’s eye socket, his other hand was wrapped around the lip of the crab on top and his back muscles were taut with the pressure he was pulling with.
I can’t… get… this…thing… “OFF!” I shouted in a snarl and a glorious wet sucking sound ripped the crab off the man’s head. “Huh.” it even caught me a bit off guard seeing the top of his skull and brain still connected to the crab side. This fucking crab wants to live this bad? I threw it to the ground and stomped it to death with its beloved brain.
It was like playing a game of wishbone at a Thanksgiving so perverse she couldn’t have imagined it if she hadn’t just seen it happen. Instead of the body keeping the brain, the crab won. It didn’t much matter in the end as her companion had repeatedly stomped the head so hard with his sparking foot that it launched a small piece of the smushed brain down the room and onto her face. She grunted in shock and disgust as she looked back at the man. Her heart started to beat overtime and with the charge inside her maxed out by her heart in an instant, she faded like a ghost between the Pods.
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Where’d she go?
“WHERE ARE YOUUU YUUUUU!”
I knew it I KNEW IT. I had a feeling that she was a crab before, I should have listened to it. She WANTED me to come in here and get turned into one of these fucking crab abominations. I knew it. I spit onto the corpse charred black. She was working with the crabs. I fucking knew it.
“WHERE ARE YOU TRAITOR?” I leaped in a random direction and a small corona of lightning rippled out, I’d find her eventually then she can take me to the other ones.
“WHY IS IT SO HOT IN HERE!? I bet you and the crabs did it, DIDN’T YOU?”
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If he caught her, he would kill her, this she knew.
“STUPID STUPID STUPID DON’T YOU KNOW THAT YOU CAN’T PRESERVE BODIES WHEN IT’S THIS HOT? I thought you crabs were smarter than this Yu! It’s time to join your friends!”
She had been keeping her breath through her nose soft to stop it from frosting in the air. He was now breaking and smashing anything that looked like it was part crab or if it had ever been touched by a crab.
Staying alive was the important thing, if you’re a smart mouse for long enough, maybe you’ll get a chance to be the cat, this she knew.
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
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He had continued his rampage for quite a while. At some point, he had stumbled across a group of crabs the size of her fist that was trying to transport one of the dead mutant bodies. He stomped his feet up and down and darted back and forth to stomp them all. Expecting him to continue laughing. instead, she heard sobbing. Eventually, all grew silent.
She flowed from between the Pods and leaped claw-blade flashing towards his neck. She stopped inches from it. She cautiously circled him, claw-blade held out in both hands between them.
He was just slumped there, in the middle of the walkway on his knees in front of what appeared to be a too-young Human. Slumped down, his chin rested on his chest. His hands lay loose on the ground next to him.
She tapped him with the dull side of the blade. Nothing. She thought for a moment then quickly shook his shoulder, but nothing again. Then she grabbed his shoulder and shook it roughly, still nothing. While she pulled away her hand she saw an electric charge from her overcharged Electric Constitution arc out into him. His head snapped up and he thirstily gasped for air.
His head felt like mush. Looking blankly around he saw Yuma standing some feet back with the claw-blade pointed at him. Why was she pointing that at him?
“Why are you pointing that at me?”
Her disbelieving stare and the memories of the last hour swept into him. Half his head felt like a defrosted chicken and the other half felt like a charred piece of meat.
“Yeah that sometimes happens and, I don’t know, everything gets so damn Hot of a sudden and it’s hard to tell who’s who. Probably best to stay away from me for a bit when it happens. Thanks for the charge.”
She didn’t know how true that was, he seemed to be able to tell who she was when he was yelling her name and looking to play wishbone with her skull. Looking at the side of the face of the exhausted man, she settled on deciding to keep an eye out. She also wondered about him thanking her “for the charge,” maybe her electricity could heal people! She felt a small trill of excitement at how useful that would be when she got back to her Humans.
He pulled himself to his feet and they reformed their search around the room, this time she tracked right behind him. He might have an AI but she’d only benefit from that if he didn’t kill her first. She’d keep an eye on him.
He paused in front of the door the man-crabs had come through. If they had to guess it was the room where most of the surgeries had been performed. His face was pale as he turned away and continued the search.
“Do you think the crabs are still in the corridor?” He suddenly asked as he paused in front of a locker. Now with his mental state feeling more balanced and his IQ at 10 he remembered the locker in starting room. In all that he’d been dealing with, he had completely forgotten about it.
She rocked her hand side to side and shrugged.
“Wanna give it a shot? I think I might know a place with some weapons.”
At that Jack saw her eyes cautiously light up. They played one sided charades for a bit. So she remembered the bend and knew they probably were close but did not remember the door on the right as she was running.
With her Senses and ability to relatively place herself and his IQ being enough to roughly calculate the distance they’ve traveled so far they, fortunately, did not have to enter the man-crabs’ surgical suite.
The next room was perfectly still. Old sofas that cracked and sunk as you sat into them, unable to recover from the pressure of their age. There were a couple of chairs and a sink that somehow still pumped out a fresh, if a bit rusty, stream of water. Jack immediately pushed Yuma out of the way and started scrubbing his hands viciously together under the flow of water. She watched him work his way up his arms scrubbing well beyond any remaining blood and ichor. He took extra time touching his face; with her direct attention and 10 Allocation Senses, she caught the flash of surprise as if it was the first time he had any idea what he looked like. Even though she noticed it, she couldn’t quite place it herself.
After pushing and zapping him away and a quick scrub using what remained of her uniform’s midriff; Yuma quickly found two Nano-cups that felt of either soft metal or hard plastic. As soon as she picked them identical copies started to form from their spots.
She then filled both with water and set the second one on the counter. She walked over to the man sitting on the couch and tapped at her lips and arched an eyebrow. She held her right hand out to help him up.
In an odd reflex he reached out with his right and exchanged a poor forearm grip with her as she discreetly struggled to lift him.
“Only way to get that off is by slicing your lips off, I’ll do it if you want.”
She released her grip and lost his with a quick slither of her arm. He fell back into his seat and, after a suspended moment, the integrity of the couch collapsed completely and threw him to the floor.
He looked up with a scowl as he dusted the remains of the couch off of him, she had her arms crossed and was staring daggers at him. Through some godlike roll of the dice, it clicked.
“Fine fine, not funny I get it, but I wasn’t really joking either. My shoulder is still pretty locked up and that was a while ago. Look, we’ll figure something else out, I promise.”
She held her hand out again, this time her left; he grabbed it and pulled himself up. Despite her more openly struggling the second time around she had a cool smile. Jack, his Senses and EQ as they were, missed it completely.
“Make sure you don’t re-injure your mouth or the Medjel will just keep growing,” then he paused at the apex of her lift, “Thanks, my name’s Jack.” She noticed the gentleness of his smile.
She gave him another indecipherable look. He didn’t even know where to start unpacking it.
He gulped down his water and as she gently placed herself on the decaying furniture he said, “Ok enough resting it’s time to go.” She rolled her eyes, finished her water, and languidly stood.
The next door opened to the corridor. The familiar harsh, dim blue illumination hit their eyes.
Looking left and right down the corridor the 30-foot visibility now caused a slight claustrophobia to make the back of his head buzz with a tight, dull tingle.
“Left, right?”
She gave him a bit of a look that he again missed, as if she wasn’t sure if it was a joke or not, then nodded. He managed to catch the nod.