Jack walked to the right and toward Tule as the world around him descended into chaos.
He called out over the growing noise, “Why?”
“I didn’t have a choice, Jack.”
“There’s always a choice-”
“No, no I didn’t, the compulsion. You don’t understand-”
“You should have killed yourself. You should have done it long ago.”
Some of Tule’s old ‘iron’ returned at that, “I will not kill myself.”
“Well, you could have just let yourself die while we were floating on the crab.”
“Perhap-”
“What a disgusting… thing you’ve become Tule. Was clinging to life like… this worth it?”
Tule stared at him, it lacked conviction, “I will do whatever is necessary to…”
“To what? Protect Yuma? Korl?” Jack laughed but there was no humor, “Can you imagine what they would think of you-”
Tule flashed out with the Toothpick but Jack jumped back. A sudden sneak opener? He practically invented those.
“So there's still some Humanity still left in there after all.” Good, he wasn’t going to have to fight against a cold-blooded Tule. Jack was probing for every weakness he could.
Tule looked tired, “Are you going to talk, or are we going to fight?”
Jack gently sat down Leanne’s body and saw that he had several ManRat escorts flanking behind him. He nodded toward Jonah and Devin’s fight and turned back to Tule as his escorts moved to leave him.
“I was going to kill you for Leanne’s sake and I am, but I’m also going to kill you because I really want to.”
A screech emitted from Jack’s shoulder, “SHUT UP HUMAN TOO MUCH TALKING.” A web of lasers fired from the skull’s eyes and carved superficial wounds into Tule as he danced out of the way of the attack.
Jack nodded, “Yeah, you’re right, talking’s wasted on him. It’s just another crab.”
He pulled his blade and charged after the maneuvering Tule, lasers constantly emitted from the skull aiming for weak points on the hybrid man’s face and joints. Tule caught the lasers on harder points of his chitin while managing to avoid any critical hits.
Tule danced under a stream of laser fire and moved to sweep his blade in a bisecting cut. Jack caught it on his Gauntlet which started to violently ripple. He emitted his energy shield and a discordant note rang out between them and Tule tumbled and was spun backward, trying to maintain his hold on his Toothpick. He stared at Jack’s Gauntlet trepidatiously.
“You can block the Toothpick.”
Jack grinned, clearly Tule didn’t remember back on the beach when he had first taken a swing at Jack but Jack did. He had figured it out after having felt both the feeling of both using and blocking the Toothpick. The Toothpick vibrated to match the frequency of whatever it was cutting through, slipping between atoms, rearranging them. What happened if you suddenly imposed a completely different frequency in the middle of that process?
In the edges of his vision he saw Rattigan and the ‘Master’ throwing each other around. The Master was harder to wound but Rattigan possessed prodigious vitality that easily healed from the wounds. The Master had more weapons, and arms, at his disposal, while strength was mostly matched and Rattigan possessed an edge in speed.
Jonah was dodging around Devin and avoiding being completely overpowered by threatening space with small whips of anti-life.
He turned back to Tule, “I bet you’re not even that good, you just have that cheat sword.”
Tule’s face hardened at that. These crabs were prideful things to be sure.
The former man charged again and Jack thought his eyes were deceiving him before catching Tule’s electrical signature to his left, on the opposite side from his Gauntlet. He kind of guessed that he was going to aim on that side. There’s no way that using an unblockable blade didn’t affect your fighting style. Jack's Gauntlet being able to block it had to have some effect on his psyche.
Jack twisted and moved but still found his skin shallowly separated by the blade. The mind rebelled at the feeling of it and he blocked the next strike with his Gauntlet. After briefly making contact Tule withdrew his strike and they separated.
They traded blows and Jack found himself more and more on the defensive. Jack managed to land a few shallow strikes that cut neatly through Tule’s hardened flesh but that was uncommon and becoming even less so as their combat continued. Tule’s right handed grip on the Toothpick and Jack’s left handed grip on his own sword meant that he had to cross his body with his Gauntlet to be able to block strikes.
Then Tule started to add in feints, almost like he had forgotten the technique but was quickly becoming reacquainted. Jack was feeling pressed and the SI’s interrupting lasers were the only thing that was keeping him in the fight.
Shit maybe he isn’t so bad.
He had to do something different. He pumped electricity to block a strike that he wouldn’t have been able to cover naturally then flared out his shield. Tule pulled the Toothpick back and Jack backhanded him with the still deployed energy shield and caught Tule hard in the jaw with the shield’s edge.
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Tule transferred the hit’s momentum with a spin and into an overarching chop with the Toothpick that Jack reflexively caught with the still-deployed energy shield. The blade stopped momentarily then continued through the pink energy and directly into the Gauntlet. It wouldn’t redeploy the energy shield, at least not before the Toothpick had fully acclimated itself to his Gauntlet which was vibrating in haptic pain as the Toothpick carved hairsbreadth by hairsbreadth deeper into the pink material.
The SI’s lasers shot out and Tule was forced to reposition his feet as his body coiled to provide more downward pressure. The lasers from Jack’s shoulder shot out again and he jacked his foot out and into Tule’s knee, snapping it backwards in a crack and relieving the pressure from the deadly blade. He wanted to push the damaged Tule but he could instinctively tell that his energy shield needed a few more moments to recombine itself.
Tule grabbed a small crab that trailed nearby and ripped off a claw and took a few bites before his knee cracked back into its normal position.
Ship. That wasn’t fair, he was supposed to be the only one who could heal mid-fight. Maybe those ManRat escort fighters would have been useful. Stupid. Arrogant.
The SI knew the score, its voice was subdued, “Filth, can’t you defeat one crab?”
“This guy is supposed to be the best swordsman in the Labs.”
“Were you lying about the Cryo-SI?”
“No I wasn’t, this was the guy I did it with.”
“Oooooh drama. Juuuuuicy.”
“Shut up, can’t you shoot those lasers more frequently?”
The SI seemed to refocus, at least it wasn’t distracting him during the fight, at least with a crab, “No, not if I want to get beneath its chitin.”
Jack’s mind whirled, it seemed like Tule was toying with him, giving him a moment to collect himself, to strategize, like it wouldn’t matter.
“Vary the strength of them then, don’t always go for a killing blow. I can outlast him if we can stack up damage.”
He heard the doubt from the SI, “You sure about that? Your wounds aren’t healing.”
Jack didn’t need the SI to tell him that, they hurt just as much as they had when he got them. He could heal them but they each would require an outrageous amount of electricity. Too much for the middle of a fight. He thought again that the escorts would have been useful to buy him a few moments of time.
“Just do it.”
“Fiiiiiine fiiiine.”
Tule had apparently decided that he had waited long enough, he darted toward him and Jack started to weave himself back toward the other fights. A weakened laser fired and managed to land on a seemingly sensitive area of his chitin but it didn’t penetrate. Could Tule tell or did they just get unlucky? He couldn’t tell.
Tule cut up and across and Jack moved then Tule carried the blade to disappear behind his shoulder and then swept his hand forward, he wasn’t holding the Toothpick.
He could feel it, barely, Tule’s magnetic tether as the blade whistled well above the original angle he had been expecting. He just had to catch the Toothpick on his Gauntlet then fire his energy shield and he’d launch that thing the hell away from him and this fight, magnetic tether be damned. He caught it and waited a fraction of a second for its frequency to settle, before he could fire it off and launch the blade, his eyes widened, a trap!
Tule’s fist connected with his stomach in a strike that felt like a concrete column had been driven into his gut. He launched up and away briefly before bouncing off the ground in a skipping mess, finally stopped by the crunch of a battling crabman and a ManRats’ body as they both turned into paste underneath him.
He coughed and wasn’t surprised that blood came out. Ship. He cut the electricity that was healing his insides after a second, once he was sure he wouldn’t internally bleed out in the immediate future. He debated giving in to his anger, the hate that had been simmering since he had found Leanne. A cold splash of water in his mind made him realize that without the ability to easily heal from damage in this fight, he would absolutely die if he let loose.
The SI had managed to hang on as it cackled next to his ear, “You can take a fucking hit!”
He saw that Tule was far away and waiting for him to return to the fight. Like he was some petty challenger. Jack grit his teeth and was getting ready to wipe that look off his face before a huge stomping foot smashed a small crab that had been preparing to attack Jack.
Let meee….. He felt a cold brush sweep through him. All he’d need to do is relax, tough enough in his current state as well as with the electricity that was flowing through his body brought its own heat as well.
Well, that venomous snake didn’t want him to die, he was pretty sure of that at least. The memories he had dismissed while grieving for Leanne had told him where the Magnetic Affinity had gone.
Rattigan and the Master were alternating between melee strikes at each other, grappling, and some sort of brain popping attack. It only felt like the slightest tickle to him, like dull-fingernails over his skull but the skulls of hybrids and ManRats alike in their immediate surroundings obviously felt it much more than he had as their burst and scattered brains were testament to.
Rattigan… honestly scared him now, the ManRat was huge. Now taller than Jack by a significant margin and actively growing as he watched. Muscle coiled on top of muscle, new layers stacked on old. Crackling bone as it broke and healed and layered and grew.
The two locked grips and pushed against each other as another frenzied rash of skull-pops set off around them. That Psy-stuff was nasty, he was glad it wasn’t affecting him… for whatever reason. Rattigan had his teeth crunched into the pincer of the Master, locking it from clipping off an arm, while coils of… muscle? While coils of muscle held the clawblade fast inside of the ManRat’s massive shoulder.
He still looked like he was losing and none of the ManRat escorts could approach to help without their heads instantly popping. Jack checked where Tule was, confident and unconcerned and some distance away. Waiting patiently for him. Seeing a reflection of his own, earlier arrogance pissed Jack off.
He had kept a grip on his blade, he noticed it was covered in blood and felt the loss of it, it was mostly his own. Holding your own sword as you pinwheel across the ground was generally considered to be a bad idea.
Rattigan pushed back the Master by a step and the foot landed closer, Jack boosted his sword arm with electricity and slashed out to cut completely through the ankle of the Master’s foot. Jack stopped himself from attacking again as the Master roared and Rattigan threw the monstrous crab hybrid off-balance and finally took advantage with his own roar.
Jack sidestepped and then had to actually dive out of the way of the brutal tumbling fight of the pair.
He turned back just in time as Tule closed the distance in a whipping flash. The SI bought him more time with its lasers that Tule was forced to weave between before slicing at him. Jack caught it and followed Tule’s withdrawing blade with a punch from his Gauntlet. Tule dodged his heavy bladed finger as it carved across his chitined chest and used his tether to redirect and boost the speed of the Toothpick to punish Jack’s overreach. Jack sprawled to the side to avoid it as a heavy gash spurted blood diagonally across his torso. The Toothpick taken the tip off of his blade. That chunk of metal had just saved his life by slowing it down for a fraction of a second.
He scrambled backward to buy space as Tule worked to close the distance.
The normal way wasn’t working. He had been trying to avoid it but… ship, he grimaced. He’d have to take a hit. Worse than that, he’d have to pass the wheel. He felt his body start to heal and turn cold as he burnt through his stores of excess electricity.