Mikey turned from his friend’s remains and saw Devin picking up Kensey’s lightning pistol, “Hey! Drop it, that light pistol isn’t yours.”
He marched up to the pink-gauntleted man and got into his face. Mikey ignored the intermittent fire that almost picked him off on his way over.
Devin didn’t back down, “The light pistol is not yours either. Get over it, he’s dead, I’m not.”
“Mikey cut the shit, not the time! Kensey’s not using it anymore and Devin needs something at range. Deal with it later.”
Devin chuckled and Mikey stopped looking at Devin and stepped back. He couldn’t keep his cool if he saw a smile on his face. He redirected his glare towards Kala and held it for a few tense seconds. He spit on the ground between them then stalked off.
Shit. She thought that Mikey would be more reasonable. He usually was.
“Idiot get back here!”
He stopped then turned, “I’m not an idiot. You should learn some respect. And you,” he jabbed a finger at Devin, “you better watch your fucking ass you slimy piece of shit.”
He didn’t really like Devin, he hadn’t from the moment he met him. He hadn’t liked Kensey in the beginning either, but that was different and they had grown close.
It was different with Devin, something about him rubbed him the wrong way. That can either lead to you being friends if positive mutual reinforcement appears, or it can lead to bitter enemies if negative proof is found first.
Stealing Kensey’s pistol from him and then acting like a dick about it was the single piece of solid proof he needed to finally turn moderate dislike into a smoldering distaste.
“You both don’t need to make up, but you need to move.” The three trailed off, Kala in the middle and each man on either side. Their moment of calm faded as more and more grotesque hybrids climbed from the Cryo-Pods around them.
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Yuma was just short of the clearing in the middle, trying to stay out of sight, cautiously holding her position.
She needed something to happen, she absolutely wasn’t going to be running in there by herself with Jonah at her side. The tired looking man with her had plugged his portable into another Cryo-Pod near them.
“You better not give away our position like last time.”
“I told you that wasn’t me.”
“So it just randomly tried to laser my head off?”
“Well… yes, probably.”
“If you’re going to do something stupid then do it away from me.”
“It’s not ‘stupid’ and I’m not going to give our position away.”
Yuma had tuned him out. Something was happening.
Tule and the other three were cutting their way through the crabs defensive lines. She aimed. Saw one start swinging towards Korl’s side. Fired. The round blew through the base of the hybrid’s neck. She waited. Another opportunity, this time a crab-man that wasn’t fully killed looked to snap a claw-blade towards the back of Tule’s leg. Another. It dropped. She followed them through the crab-men, occasionally letting free a round off to relieve pressure on the advancing group.
The giant crab was not idle. In the span of a second and a half, it noticed her rounds, traced their predicted angles back to the source, then sent over a burst of laser to hit the edge of the Pod’s metal, right next to her face. She flinched back and became visible to the turret. It quickly charged a shot just strong enough to punch through the Pod and her and not much else. It was now having to operate efficiently.
Jonah burned IQ Allocation and calculated. He jumped in front, holding out the middle finger of his left hand. The laser absorbed into a point at the tip of his finger. It was over for a brief moment before his finger burst apart and he fell to the ground clutching and rolling in pain.
Yuma was shaken. She was too focused, she didn’t even see that coming. She ALWAYS saw it coming, even when she had to take the hit.
She shuffled to the side and looked back towards the center, shielded from the crab's laser cannons this time. She saw Tule shout as he laid a final heavy cut to sever one of the giant legs. The remains of the limb twitched and knocked him in the head. A swarm of crabs jumped on him but he jumped and spun himself violently to throw most off. A few hybrid’s had their claws in Tule and brought him to a rough landing where the trailing group of hybrid’s caught up and swarmed over him. She saw Korl and the two others already on the way towards him.
She saw the other Humans, the Kintu Clan people, launching serious fire-power as they were withdrawing by the numbers away from the limbs they had cut off. She grabbed Jonah and dragged him away from it all.
“Jonah, what did you do?”
Through grunts of pain he squeezed out, “Each of my fingers is aspected towards a different type of energy. I had one of my fingers aspected as a basic laser. I reversed the polarity and emptied the local battery in my finger. I then used the energetic attraction between the crab’s laser and my finger and was able to absorb most of it.”
Jeez, even writhing in pain he still couldn’t help but over-explain things.
“Well… Thank you Jonah.”
The older man smiled, “Just remember to do the same for me if you get the chance.”
“Deal.”
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Korl didn’t know where anyone beyond his little group was, he could see a lot of others shooting on the far side, he had caught the stream of hard light that came from Kala. Tule managed to cut through the big crab’s leg but it was thick. It took more than one strike and by the time he had cut through it he wasn’t prepared to be knocked back. He was down in a pile of crab-men. Korl panicked for a moment as he raced over before he calmed slightly when he saw Tule’s blade flashing repeatedly out through the pile.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
A crab-man tried to intercept him on a perpendicular path but Korl paused and the crab overshot. He drove his blade through its temple and left it there.
Another crab, he flipped his floating blade and grabbed it with a reverse grip. He moved in close and rammed it down the outside of its neck. It dropped to its knees and gurgled as fluid filled its throat. Korl reached out and pulled at the magnetic tether of either blade. No time, they were both trapped. He pulled out his knife and moved on.
He grabbed and ripped and stabbed as Telane and Cura held the swarming crab-men back. Apparently the SI used all the best crab-men outside, these were noticeably less coherent mixes.
There, he saw Tule, he looked okay.
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Tule was not doing okay. These crabs were weaker than the ones outside but more than made up for it in number. Where did they all come from? There were many more than had originally appeared from the giant crab.
He kept slashing, it was almost a relief. He manipulated his own his own magnetic tether on his Toothpick to help keep his strikes tight and efficient.
There was Korl. Good work Korl.
“About time Korl.”
Korl released his blade and it floated around him. He offered a hand to Tule and pulled him standing.
“You look… worse than I thought.”
“Did I teach you to complain?”
Tule saw Korl’s floating blade block a claw-blade, lock it against the hilt then slice through multiple of the crab’s misshapen eyes. It flinched back and the blade followed, ramming into its mouth and out the back of its neck to the floor.
“Did I teach you that?”
Korl smiled at the compliment but tried to play it cool, “I’ve learned a few things. I wouldn't call myself a BladeMaster but these crabs sure aren't protesting." The crabs were hesitant now to enter the almost guaranteed slaughter that was the four.
They worked with the blade, as partners, no one was a Master of it. This was something Korl would learn in time.
Tule looked around, he couldn’t see his… he couldn’t catch sight of Yuma. Still, he knew. She had been the one covering their approach.
They kept close to the crab, fighting crabs and dodging the occasional shifting leg was much easier than dodging repeated fire traveling at the speed of light.
Still, he had a terrible feeling that this wasn’t as bad as he was expecting, as it should be. This was all the SI had in store? They were trapped here for decades or centuries or maybe longer, no one knew exactly how long Humans had been trapped in here. And for what? This? He felt shame at this, he'd lived decades of hell for this?
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Yuma put a knife through the eye of a recently born crab, these weren’t Cryo-Tubes but she didn’t know what they were. What they did, this she knew.
She and Jonah had watched in morbid fascination as a crab-man had been born in the Pod right in front of them.
She had killed that, then the next one, and the one after that. Jonah finally killed the last one of recent minutes.
“We need to get to Tule or find Jack.”
Jonah looked uncomfortable with both options.
“We don’t have a choice, Jonah, you want to sit around here until that, thing, does whatever it wants to? Or until some mutated crab manages to eat us alive? You heard Jack, it's building to something.”
Now was not the time, why was she feeling the most steady of the two of them? To be fair, she felt steady but her sense of calm could barely be qualified as a thin mask at this point.
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Jack’s arm rested against a pylon for a moment, when he pulled away his arm left a streak of sweat behind. He wiped his eyes, his hands took away some of the intruding liquid and then deposited more of their own. He stumbled on.
A second snake had hit him a few moments before. Now with the second inside, their rotational speed was becoming an issue, it pulled him off physically off balance. He stumbled like a drunk, one foot after the other.
The balancing act of preventing the snake’s condensed energies from running rampant through him required him to keep moving. He stepped on a piece of jagged metal and stumbled to fall face first into a pillar. Another snake jumped into his back. He screamed.
Somehow, it felt better than before, the three snakes were balancing themselves now. He wasn’t off-balance anymore. Pain, yes. Stumbling like a drunk? Also yes but much less than before.
He bit his lip and he tasted metallic ozone before the wound resealed itself shut.
He was still looking for a group of unpowered Pods, there weren’t any.
There. He saw it, an opening. With deliberate and delicate effort he managed to throw one foot after the other as he redirected his path towards it. He ignored the deactivated Pod to his right. Two snakes was much worse than three.
He reached the giant cycling battery in the center and stopped. He was here. What the hell had he been doing? He looked over the scene to refresh his memory.
His Affinity was going out of control. His vision highlighted everything with varying quantities of yellow-white sparking grains. He couldn't sense anything he couldn't see.
The fight looked passive, the faint shimmering profiles of the hybrid man-crabs were starting to circle back together around the center light. He saw the legs of the rotating suns, were some missing? There should be three more than there were. He saw a large group, organized. Jack couldn’t tell any more than that; he pushed himself off of a knocked over Cryo-Pod and continued to pull his feet forwards. Left, right, left, right.
Couldn’t see Yuma, he thought he saw Tule and Korl finish off their fights. It was hard to tell, he tried to wipe the sweat out of his eyes but found none, his hand was smoking. His sweat was turning to wisping vapor.
He managed his way closer to the biggest glowing thing. He felt a tugging from his chest towards it. It wanted to join. At his current pace it would take long minutes for him to arrive at the leg’s base.
The electric snakes inside him started to revolt as he drew closer. They wanted to join their brothers, or sisters, he was past the point of caring about semi-sapient energy. He needed to get them out.
Jack’s vision was full now with golden-sparking grains. He stopped moving. No closer. No, he had to get them out.
It was a crab not a spinning sun, he remembered now. It was full of golden flowing energy, it wanted to join. There, he saw a dark flicker near its bottom, that’s where he would send it.
He remembered seeing Korl control his floating blade. He tried to recreate it, creating a path towards the belly of the crab. He tried to make his Nano leave his body. It refused. He stretched his hand out further.
He coughed and dropped to a knee as he spit out a chunk of blood and other. He didn’t study it, he dragged himself to his feet and looked at his chest to rearrange the snakes paths, he extended and reinforced the pathways down his left arm. The snakes helped him by causing excrusiating internal burns whenever he rearranged the path incorrectly.
He stretched out towards the dark point again. Perhaps boosted by the snakes coiling furiously inside of him or the rearranged pathways in his arm he was able to connect to it. It was faint, but as best as he could tell some circuit on the giant thing had been damaged or malformed. It wasn't clear.
In his shock he nearly lost control, the snakes tried to rip through his Affinity and join their brethren inside the giant electro-crab.
He released his hand from his chest and started to breathe again. Keeping the snakes burning tight loops inside his chest he tried to recall the feeling. It wasn’t stretching his Nano, he was jumping into the connection between the mass of snakes and those inside him.
He reached out with both hands in an attempt to maintain and strengthen a circuit between himself and the distant dark-sparking point. He tried to guide the electricity inside him towards it, more blinding feedback seared through his nerves.
If he couldn’t push towards it he would pull it to him. He clenched his fingers and yanked his arm back. He pulled.