Jack finally managed to find a gap in the machinery and turned the corner to see the middle of a fight. He had a moment to see the back of a RatMan before it slammed into him, he dropped his clawblade and caught them. The impact sent a blast of dark, nearly black blood splashing over his chest.
The Rat whirled in his arms and with manic, bloodshot eyes it ripped its teeth through Jack’s cheek.
Jack grabbed the RatHuman’s wrist as it brought around a wicked-looking dagger that dripped in a foul looking sheen. He squeezed his grip and shattered its wrist.
He didn’t feel anger or hate toward the RatMan, he knew what it was like to be wounded and in pain and surrounded by crabs. It was easy to lash out, it didn’t know that Jack was here to help. He ‘softly’ headbutted the RatMan in his grip and repeated it a little harder until it finally went limp. Jack set it down gently on a piece of machinery. They weren’t at fault here. It was the crabs.
He picked up the clawblade and looked down the aisle. Machinery had been knocked to the side creating a pocket of conflict. There was the crabman that Leanne had made fun of him about, and it was fighting against two RatMen. One wove around it with daggers while another interrupted counter-attacks with careful pike thrusts. The crabman used clawblades that were reversed and came out of the outside of its forearms. It used its Human-like hands to swat away the pike thrusts and the blades to deflect them.
Jack took advantage of the introspective moment he had just had about the rat to observe the fighting for a few seconds. The RatMen were fast, but so was the crab. They looked like they were holding their own, he looked to the side, this Rat guy still got injured when it was 3v1. A small sneaky crab that had been playing dead reached up a pincer and clipped the back of the RatMan’s hind leg and it went down. An opening. The crabman fended off the pike strikes it to its eyes and looked to take advantage of the downed dagger-rat.
Jack released the clawblade as his hand finished sweeping down, it burred between the row of machines in its deadly rotation toward the conflict.
Jack watched the rotating blade and, as it closed the distance, met eyes with the crab who pretended to be a man. The monster’s eyes widened in shock before a familiar crackling energy boosted its speed and it managed to partially deflect the clawblade. The clawbade still briefly, and deeply, sank into the crabman’s shoulder before the residual momentum tore it back out. A spray of blood spilled into the air between Man and mancrab.
The dagger-rat had scrambled away, the pike-rat wove a defensive web with its weapon. It looked uncertain if it would just cover the dagger-rat’s retreat or stay and fight.
“Hey! RatMan!” It jumped back and looked at Jack, “Your friend is here, take him.”
Jack threw a thumb behind him, the Rat’s eyes flashed as they went back to Jack.
“I didn’t kill him. I’m gonna kill this thing.”
It squeaked as it backed slowly away from the crabman, “You Man? You kill Man-Abomination?”
“Yeah, I’m gonna kill it.”
It paused then looked at a faint squeak that sounded out behind Jack, it slung the pike onto its back and carefully skirted around him before picking up its compatriot. Jack wasn’t sure exactly when it left, in fact, he hadn’t even really seen the rat at all. The crab had shoulders that were a little too wide for its frame, its ‘hair’, if it could be called that, consisted of spiky chitin that was segmented into razor-sharp points. It possessed only two Human-like arms and hands. He was staring at familiar eyes.
It chittered out in a familiar tone, “Your name? Give it to me.”
“What use is my name to a dead crab?”
“Please. Your name. I need to know.”
That stopped Jack, it was being… polite?
“Jack… What’s yours.” Communicating any amount with a crab put him on edge. The collar of his tattered remains of his armored jumpsuit was more than damp, it was dripping with sweat that crackled and smoke, creating a haze in front of his eyes. Jack tore it off from around his neck, its valiant struggle to clothe him ended in defeat as Jack dropped the smoking rag to the floor. It was up to Jack’s belts to continue the eternal fight to keep him properly clothed.
“Mine also. Name is Jack.”
Just hearing his name from a crab's mouth was too much. Hearing it say it possessed the same name as him went beyond that. Jack boiled.
At ‘Ja-’ a brilliant blood-red shard of solid heat hovered above the roiling sea. At ‘-ck’, the vile shard of heat plunged downward into the ocean of his mind. The water around the impact point instantly evaporated as a wave of boiling blood spread from the point of impact.
The pressure in my skull was too much. It hurt. It was hot, too hot. I couldn’t help the wincing tears from attempting to drop from the corners of my eyes. It hurt so bad I knew only hurting this… THING could make it stop. I wanted it to stop. I felt the charge inside me accelerate and grow. Good, I needed it.
I felt the roar rip my vocal cords and fill my mouth with blood, “I’m Jack! You’re dead!”
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Leanne felt like she was in a trance, no, a near bliss-state as she wove from group to group and between attacks of crabs. She was finally getting the hang of movement with her missing toes. She drilled shot after shot through exposed areas wherever she found them. The rats seemed to be working with her, or at least not getting in her way, and that was fine too.
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Jonah was bored, he had gathered all the data he needed from the crabs. This had been much more difficult before he had gained these new energy types. He smiled, he couldn’t wait to see what new energies he’d be able to plunder on the way to the bridge.
Tule was miserable and he didn’t know why. That wasn't true though. He did know why but knowing it and accepting it were two entirely different things. I am Human. I am C-. I am Man. I am Human. I am a Man.
He sliced through another crab, errantly catching the back part of a rat. The growling hunger, the deep sense of wrongness. He pushed it all down. Just keep moving your arm. Just keep moving your arm. Dodge Tule. He couldn’t even trust his instincts at this point, at any level, he had to consciously command his body. His instincts were telling him things that he refused to face, they had been compromised. He refused to accept this, the lifetime of discipline he had worked at day after day for countless cycles was like a block of granite. Still, the tide breaks all.
He couldn’t let himself be carried away in battle then who knew what might happen.
Dodge Tule.
The delay from perceiving the threat, recognizing it was normal. The problem was that he then needed to consciously decide the best course of action then tell his body to move that way.
He tripped over a crab’s separated claw and went down. Both crab and rat decided to attack the stranger, after all, he had killed from the both of them and was a greater threat than either crab or rat.
Ship-damn it.
He held the hilt in his palm and spun his Toothpick, it diced through the crowd, heedless of crab or rat.
He took stock of his wounds.
The crabs had pierced his skin in a few places, those areas were softly leaking blood.
Ch! Bad but nothing vital… not terrible.
The rats had the tips of their teeth covered in some sort of poison that he felt leeching into his blood. They had sharp teeth too, sharp enough to get past his chitin. Skin! Dammit!
He was surprised by the virulence of their toxins. He didn’t think it would have affected a Crab Constitution so strongly.
Well, that made sense then… because he was a Human. So the toxins would affect him strongly, because he wasn’t a crab. If he was a crab then they wouldn’t have.
Echoing through the room and the sound of battle was a roaring scream, “I’m Jack! You’re dead!”
Leanne guessed, correctly, that it was in fact, Jack.
Jonah was feeling the high of scientific discovery, he had learnt some interesting things by experimenting on the crabs. He giggled, he hoped that Jack found more test-subjects for him. Different ones perhaps. Giddiness in the midst of slaughter was a strange sensation for Jonah but not entirely unwelcome.
Tule turned his head after a delay. That way. He was supposed to go that way. It was hard to think about why that made sense. The poison was filling his conscious mind with a buzz making everything… fuzzy. He pushed through it.
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The Tetsudo was holding.
Continual cycled flashes of light burst out of shields all around them; reloading, recharging, and other downtime calls sounded out; Monitors continuously shouted warnings to the Shield Guard in front of them.
Still, they held. Wounds were rare, if the creature's reached you, you were likely gone.
The Clan Head was preparing to ignite his White Sword. Just a little longer. Regardless, this next usage would likely put him out of commission or near enough so without reaching a Terminal shortly after.
The attackers had started to layer their attacks. One would tank and the second would use the bought time to quickly flank pounce. The Guardians on the second line handled those ones with their own flashing shields.
Shield-Guard’s flash was cycling after being used. The Guardian behind them fired off its own flash.
“Another!” The Monitor’s warning came too late. The Shield Guard was still shooting their repeater forward at the two stunned creatures. It was fast, the creatures' speed was insane.
Yuma fired out a light bar from her finger, then another and dropped to a knee as her charge dipped below sustainable. It dodged the first one in midair then the second caught a glancing blow on its hip. The missed light bar carried its illumination off into the distance then popped against something. No one had a chance to notice.
Cura and Telane moved in toward the partially stunned creature, each cutting in from a different angle, Telane’s blade was ahead of Cura’s and clanged off something within the shadow. Cura’s impacted to a screetch and the creature was knocked off to the side ripping her blade from her experienced grip. A Guardian stepped forward and unloaded her repeater into the immobile shadow. It twitched with the impacts, screeched and twisted, before ripping a claw through her thigh. The Guardian's Monitor caught her underarm before she dropped.
The Clan Head saw the process repeat, the creatures were accelerating their tactics. First individual attacks, then twinned, then in threes and now fours. If they stacks their attacks any further it would be impossible.
His sword started to heat.
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Monitor Hendrew felt his light fading, worse yet he had sent his Guardian away to reinforce another part of the formation. His light made the shadows stand out and then, when he flared it, it stripped the Nano-shrouded shadow from them in a blinding beam. Perhaps this was why their side of the formation had been under considerably less pressure. That was then, this was now, and now Hendrew was at his limit. No, his limit had been an hour ago, as best as he could guess. He loved the Clan, it never felt like home, Home was in his memories, but it was close enough.
“In 30 seconds I’m going to light it all up! Use the moment to your advantage!”
His Guardian was already back to his side before he finished his shout, “Hendrew! you’re going to do something stupid aren’t you?”
The fading glow from his hands was wavering, it would slowly dim then fade then come back again with a grunt of effort.
“Shut. up. Alb.”
He started to overclock the Nano inside him, keeping it at the edge of burning out while still whirling and charging as fast as possible.
The glow came through steady in odd patterns, shining through as the sweat poured off of him.
“You’re too hot, what are you doing?”
The sounds of battle sounded muffled to him as he kept overclocking his Nano’s light-gens. Pushing through this much shadow-aspected Nano was difficult it fought his Nano's movements in what seemed to be almost annihilation reactions. He felt his generators burn out one by one, then, in batches, as they continued to dump the light energy into his miniature storage capacitors. The glow from him kept increasing. Under the strain of over-storage his capacitors were starting to crack. Their leaking light burned small dots on the surface of his skin.
The light then faded in an instant as it moved to the capacitors in his hands. His arms were stretched out to either side, he brought them up in a clap.
The fraction of an instant before he slapped his hands together a booming clunk sounded throughout the formation.
Everybody was blinded by the sudden burst of light. Maybe he had overdone it.