“Geezer stop running! Urgk-”
Devin screamed as he instinctively brought his pincer up to block. He hadn’t remembered it had been weakened then shattered. It was barely hanging on now, just a vulnerable chunk of meat. It was hard to fight against its instinctual use as a defensive limb. This would have already been over if it weren't for that bitch.
The old man was sweating and huffing. That damned teal energy, the blade of his clawblade could ignore it but he had already had one of his remaining Human fingers turn unresponsive because of it. The numbness was spreading too, though slowly.
They both dodged the maelstrom of Rattigan and the Master’s brawl, giving it a wide berth. They both had seen the violent brain evacuation if you got too close and consideration of that 'instant lose' condition had kept their fight relatively tame. Their crabman and ManRat escorts continued to fight and skirmish around them.
----------------------------------------
Tule was honestly a little surprised that he hadn't managed to kill Jack… yet. What the boy had said had hurt his pride. Mostly because it was true, the Toothpick had spoiled him as a swordsman. How rusty your techniques could become when you never had to make more than one, perhaps two, strikes and they were always unblockable.
He saw a wide, cold Smile spread across Jack’s face. It gave him pause and he stopped his current assault and disengaged backward with a small jump.
“Tule… Why did you stop attacking?” The Smile widened as Jack’s eyes wandered the chaotic battlefield.
“The smell of cut flesh and curdled blood is…” the dead, fish eyes settled back on him, “wonderful. Is it not?”
Tule didn’t know what Jack had done, or was doing, “Is this some sort of act?”
“Life’s a stage and we’re all just play… and blah blah. Sure. If you’d like to think that then be my guest. After all, I may be a monster but I’m not rude.”
Tule warily studied Jack, his scrutiny interrupted by laser fire from the SI that he was forced to dodge around.
Jack seemed comfortable waiting, patiently tapping his foot.
“Are you going to attack me or just dance around? You do know once I get out of here I’m going to torture Korl to death, right?-”
Tule moved in with a probing slash and Jack deflected it with his Gauntlet. Sensing that the electrically boosted quickness wasn't there anymore, Tule reflexively followed it with another strike, this time its speed boosted by manipulating his magnetic tether.
There! This would be it. Fueled by the anger of his words it bit into Jack's side. The Toothpick was moving slower than it should have and then it stopped, stopped by the pink Gauntlet from intruding further into him. Jack’s other hand wrapped around Tule’s wrist and he felt his magnetic tether slip from his distracted focus. Subverting it, strengthening Tule’s attachment to the blade, moving and weaving the connecting point of the tether to Tule’s shoulder. Tule was prepared for most things, but Jack suddenly knowing how to manipulate Magnetic Affinity? That was not one of them. It was hijacked. Tule’s eyes widened as he met Jack’s. The Smile seemed to dominate his vision.
“Got you.”
The next moments went quickly, Tule struggled to withdraw his blade and at the same time was struggling to reassert control of his hijacked magnetic tether. He still wrestled with the thought that Jack didn’t have Magnetic Affinity… until the implication about how he acquired it finally hit. That shouldn’t be possi-
The blade bit further into the Gauntlet, initially untroubled by cutting through flesh, an easy frequency, to the Gauntlet, which possessed a much more complex molecular structure. The pink material was rippling and it started to tear.
Jack released his grip on Tule’s wrist as he deployed his energy shield from the Gauntlet. The Toothpick rebounded out from Jack’s side with incredible speed, Tule’s magnetic tether to the blade didn’t slow it down in the slightest, but it did rip Tule’s arm off as it hadn’t been there at all. The SI used that moment to beam laser fire directly into Tule's remaining good eye, blinding it and only leaving the partially healed one that Leanne herself had wounded earlier.
Jack drove out with his oversized finger in a form-perfect twist, driving from his hips and punching the Gauntlet easily through the chitin and into Tule’s gut. A burst of vicera spurted from his stomach as he sprawled back to give himself space from... whatever this was.
Tule knew that Jack had some… personality issues, after all, many people in the Labs had them in one form or another. But this was different. Wrong. Too precise. Too malignant.
“You are not Jack! Who are you?”
Jack’s feet slowly closed the distance as he gently tapped his chin, “You can… call me Jackson. Yes, that's quite good, I like the formality of it. Mr. Jackson if you still have some Humanity left inside that filthy shell of yours. Now… come here Tule!”
He could only see hazy shapes and flashes of ‘lighter’ or ‘darker’ from his other eye. He wrapped a hand around his draining internals, turned, then sprinted away into and through the melee.
“Tule! You mannerless beast! Get back here!”
Jackson thought to pursue, but the Toothpick hadn’t launched out of his side the same way it had come in. The wound was a wide, clean wedge and because of that, it freely slopped blood onto the ground. He stopped and took out some Medjel then expertly applied it to the wound. Still, he felt off balance, the cut had taken too much muscle and organ to 'just Medjel it'. Not if he was expected to do anything afterward, especially considering the arduous healing process with whatever type of wounds the Toothpick left. He wiped it off and sighed.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Several ManRats approached and bowed with electric cables outstretched. Jackson looked at them with disgust then said aloud, seemingly to no one at all, “Remember what you promised.” It hadn’t been a Soul Covenant but he had agreed to help if Jack had agreed to tell Yuma about their prior arrangement so the damned woman wouldn’t immediately electrocute him every time he came out to play.
If Jack hadn't promised that, then he would have just departed, leaving Jonah here. The old man was useful but useful enough to not slow him down? Doubtful. Besides, why remain in this pointless fight a moment longer than it took to find the exit and leave this cursed ship?
He suppressed his Smile from growing wider. So many creatures failed to perceive the bigger picture. First, he’d break that nasty habit Yumata had of immediately electrocuting him, then… Well, patience wasn’t his strong suit, but that was by choice, not because of any particular lack. After all, he knew he didn’t lack in any capacity.
He grabbed the exposed wires and the Smile turned into a pained grit as his awareness faded.
----------------------------------------
Jack looked around and then dropped to a knee. Standing felt… exhausting. There were wounds that hadn’t healed at all as well as the obvious that there was something desperately wrong with the wounds that the Toothpick created. A fundamental gaping emptiness wherever it split something. It’s like his body didn’t know what to put there, and so, put nothing. No, worse. Like his body was telling him that he was fine, even if he was losing shocking quantities of steaming vibrant blood. If a finger had been cut in half, lengthwise, besides the pain, it would have felt like it was always supposed to be like that.
He directed the surrounding battery-ManRats to surround him and directly apply their exposed cables to the wound in his side. He looked into the wound with both normal sight and through his Affinity and directed what cells should replicate and how. It looked… mostly right, but the Rats were out of juice by the time he had rebuilt the damaged organs and most of the muscle. The process added another layer of mental taxation onto him. He swiped Medjel over the rest and over the myriad other slices and cuts around his body. It’d have to do.
He dismissed the attendant Rats and they returned to the edges of the chaotic battle, plunging themselves into it with abandon now that their duty was seemingly over.
Jack felt someone’s attention on him and he locked eyes with the crab hybrid that… looked like him. It was across the room, up on the raised platform in front of the CryoDoor and it had an arm underneath Tule’s one remaining shoulder. Jack started toward them but they disappeared into the crowd before he could finish his first step. He briefly debated chasing them but… to what end?
He looked at the chaos surrounding the cleared area and saw one Tactician being swarmed by a truly horrifying swarm of regular Rats as they plunged into its mouth and cored it out while it let loose an increasingly muffled, chittering screams of terror. He saw another Tactician on the other side clamp through several ManRats then direct a swarm to crash into the side of the rest of the Rats' formation before spiraling fire from other ManRats forced it to withdraw behind yet another swarm of crabs and hybrids. Just in the immediate vicinity were a thousand scenes of cracked chitin and torn rat-flesh. It was impossible to tell which side held advantage but their cleared dueling area was slowly being encroached on as the fight continued to devolve.
It had seemed like a minor concession to the Snake but it left a bad feeling in his mouth and a worse feeling in the pit of his stomach. Like speeding down the opposite lane through a blind turn. Sure, it might be clear but it might also end in horror. That wasn’t the exact analogy that Jack had, but it encapsulated his turbulent feelings on the matter accurately enough.
“Doesn’t matter doesn’t matter.”
No thanks? No appreciation?
“T…thanks.”
He felt a wash of cold. Catching Tule off guard had been the only way that would have worked. It wouldn’t work again. He'd either have to learn to fight better or... come up with new tricks, maybe both.
“You’re welcome!” He had forgotten about the SI next to him, it turned to look at Jack's face, “Oh you’re boring again.”
Jack glared at it and easily found the fight between the Master and Rattigan. They both looked to be in terrible condition but still continued to trade vicious, heavy strikes.
Jonah and Devin were still playing their game of cat and mouse and mouse and cat. He was reminded of the cagey play-fight he had seen between Jonah and the SI. The old man fighting style was definitely not suited for this. The smiled stayed on his face, at least Jack would get to kill one.
He picked up his blade and walked over at an angle, looking to keep Devin and his small cohort’s backs to him. He cut through the skull of a crabman and withdrew his blade as he approached the next one. The second got the severed point of his blade driven through the base of its skull. The third saw him but was dropped by a ManRat’s shot. The fourth kill proceeded much as the first before both Devin and Jonah stopped to catch their breaths and eye each other.
Jack slowly padded behind Devin and grabbed the base of his clawblade and followed it immediately with a vicious rip. It came free in a scream as Devin turned and lashed out with his pincer. Jack tried to catch it but ended up plunging his hand into the meat, even better. Devin’s remaining Human hand lashed out with a sword, fingers still growing more and more numb from the touch of anti-life. Jack batted it out of his hands with the Gauntlet.
His voice was cold and still as a Nano-lake, “Hello Devin.”
Devin screamed and Jack continued to punch him with his Gauntlet, alternating between the gauntlet’s punchblade and then driving his extended middle finger through the punchblade opened gaps in the chitin.
His screams eventually cut off and Jack tried to brush the ichor and blood off of him. It just smeared the two fluids together.
“Jack…?”
“Yeah, it’s me.” He had remembered what the snake had done to Devin before and now that the kid was a crab, it seemed fair game to lean into that a bit further.
He was caught in a brief lurch, expecting it to taste bitter sweet and a little dark. But it didn’t. It felt kind of good, more than ‘kind of good’, it felt great. Thoughts of a slippery slope flashed through his mind and soured the experience, unsurprisingly that thought was quickly compartmentalized. Finally that was working again.
Jonah was eyeing him, “Well I would have had it... but I am grateful for the assistance regardless.”
Jack gave him an odd smile, “Yeah you’re welcome.” He waved off Jonah’s escort and they joined the surrounding melee. “Are you ready to get the hell out of here?”
A screech in his ear made him wince, “There’s still a fight you cow-” Jack grabbed the skull, rocked back, and threw it off into the distance. He could hear it laughing, ‘get some get some’ as lasers streamed and whipped from its eye sockets and carved into Rat and Crab alike.
“Jack, I think the SI was our key to getting out of here.”
Jack froze, “Ship. You’re right. What now?”
Jonah shrugged, “Keep fighting until we find it?”
He sighed, “Yeah that sounds fine-” he looked toward Rattigan’s fight which too looked to be wrapping up. Jack sawed off Devin’s head and held it in his grip, “Let’s watch this first.”
“Why don’t we just get out of here?”
“We gotta know what type of screwed we’re going to be, super suicide rat screwed or giant shelled freak screwed.”
“Maybe it will…” At Jack’s sidelong glare Jonah stopped himself from saying, ‘work out’.