“Damn.”

Figuring that she knew more than him based on her armor and the fact that an uncountable horde of crabs was currently in pursuit of her he quickly turned towards the door across the corridor and gracefully slipped face first to the ground.

“Dammit. Where’d all this fucking slime come from?” A worm of panic started crawling up his spine as he noticed that the layer of slime seemed thicker at the door he was first going to open than the one across the way. The gel-like material kind of reminded him of Medjel that had just come out of the packet if it was both sticky and slimy at the same time. Kind of gross even considering what he’d seen so far.

From his position on the floor, he kicked off the wall and shot towards the opposite door. It was a rough and dirty landing and his shield shook itself after he slammed into the wall but he managed to get his hand up and on the pad. It flashed red.

Slapping his right hand again and again against the pad changed nothing except annoying him when his shield deployed again. He switched hands and looked up as the portal opened. He couldn’t see her but the chittering clacking mass was growing in strength.

He crawled in on hands and knees into the doorway and managed his feet.

He turned and saw her flying through the air towards the other door. He panicked for a second as he thought she was trying to screw him. She landed feet first on the handpad across the hall then she dropped her hips down and bent nearly in half. She then violently extended her legs in a crack as she shot off of the pad and threw herself head first towards his door. She would leap right into him.

As she crossed the hall a crab’s pincer, larger than any he’d seen to this point, slammed her in the back and drove her chest first into the metal floor. The slime and her already ridiculous forward momentum turned her leap into a slide. He had only a fraction of a second to waver between bracing himself and trying to jump over but he was only able to slightly destabilize his own footing before she cut his legs out from underneath him.

Even though she didn’t weigh a lot and a lot of her momentum had been robbed from getting slapped into the ground he still managed to find his face bounced from the ground, again, as she roughly took out his footing. She continued her sliding bounce and pinged and slid around the room until she came to rest underneath the handpad against the wall.

She wasn’t moving.

He barely had time to pick himself off the floor as a mass of crab stormed and flooded down the corridor and past the doorway. The chitin river just beyond his semi-translucent shield was of a chaotic pile of moving legs, claws, and crab that had been suddenly caught off guard and were desperately trying to course correct. His makeshift shield wasn’t able to cover the entire doorway and claws and blades started to leak through, hot and fast, looking for purchase. The recoil from the hits kept the Zappa humming as he yanked out his claw-blade and started to put in work at anything trying to snag him or the edge of the doorway in its attempt to escape the river. He couldn’t scratch the pincers with the claw-blade but the eyes that were just behind them were fair game. The eyes didn’t take them out of the game but it wasn’t hard to hit something deeper and more vital if he swung a little harder than normal. The crabs’ blades he hacked at until he found purchase where their blades met the upper joint. He blocked, he swung, and he pushed forward a few steps until he had secured most of the doorway itself.

The half of a moment he bought himself wasn’t enough for more than a slightly deeper breath. He was under no illusion that he was winning, that faint hope had been mercilessly crushed as the crabs’ attacks had dwindled then started to build back up in furious focus and intensity. Lashing out with the blade in his left hand he felt the pressure increase against his shield. As he planted his feet he felt his hips, legs, and feet coordinate as he pulled stability from the ground to resist the energy pushing him back. The river had faded to a stream and now continued its flooding sweep as it finally redirected itself fully towards the door and him standing in the middle of it. The pressure started coming in spikes as crabs climbed on top of one another and leaped and threw themselves at him.

Somewhere in a distant, removed part of his mind he acknowledged and was grateful for what he was pretty sure was his skill “Me? MOVE?” Even though the Skill was providing solid stability it didn’t suddenly remove the slime that he had been shuffling through for the last half hour. He started to slide backwards inch by inch.

Sparing a glance at the wall panel to his right and taking a shallow blade cut to his arm around the shield for doing so, he knew there was a less than zero chance of him reaching the door pad. She still wasn’t moving. Worse yet, he figured, like the outside pad, he might have to use his left hand to close it and there was no way he would be able to drop his weapon and stop swinging long enough to reach it, much less survive the effort in good enough shape to clear out whatever managed to get through it while this was all happening.

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The pressure kept up with its steady, occasionally-spiking growth. He found himself reaching deep to keep up. He knew any mistakes here could very easily lead to a swift doom cycle of crab-based fatalities.

That conclusion was nice and all but there were still a lot of crabs. Despite his steady efforts he felt it turn from a vengeful striking defense to a slowing shield and huffing strikes as crab blades and pincers started to slip past his defense in greater numbers. These fucking crabs wouldn’t end!

As he moved and fought and bled he felt it. The temperature of the room spiked, no, he was getting Hot as the waves of pain radiating from his fresh wounds deposited a growing heat in the middle of his head. He tried to fight it off and as he bled and fought and lost more and more blood; a terrible cold caused the hair on his arm and the back of his neck to stand straight up. Caught in a perfect balance of anger and hate at the crabs and the cold, machinelike cold from his loss of blood, he had small epiphany. He knew that the bloodthirsty Hot would mean his death and he knew that he was unsure if the arrogant Cold would leave her alive, if he even survived. He drew his brain’s focus towards the zapps coursing through him at an increasing rate and directed his mind’s attention towards the task in front of him. If either of those Skills popped here would he kill her too? Would he launch himself into the mass of crabs on a suicide mission? These were questions that didn’t take him long to answer.

He was trapped in the doorway; his mind was trapped in a slowly intensifying state of heat and lack, his attention split between the detached focus on the Zappa’s shocks and the attention that the fight in front of him required. He felt his mind being stretched and pulled apart as it balanced like a top on the edges of four abysses. The equilibrium, despite its constant wobbling instability, managed to somehow maintain its balance. The efforts of his splitting mind in so many different directions and the fight for his life brought him outside of his own body as he observed himself from just above his brow and atop his head. The growing, tearing pain in his skull followed him out. His Body fought the crabs and he fought himself. Just keep it spinning.

His blocks were cold and mechanical, the crabs’ were less successful at breaching his defense. His shield would block an attack, then punch out to interrupt another. The cold violence and efficiency of his shield-work was a thing of clean, efficient beauty. He wove a tapestry of pain for his crab friends. With it, he would hurt them for their insolence and show them proper applications of the beauty of pain. Despite his efforts to teach the crabs his art, they were unappreciative and no matter how efficient he was, strikes still got through. Enough mass will beat any technique. His bladed left hand was pure power and fury. In and out. Rip, tear. Pincers ripped out his weapon. He grabbed another at the base and tore it off. Next. In and out. Another. Hacking and bleeding and power and pain and anger fed the engine of hate that kept his arm stabbing and moving.

He’d bash his shield against the crabs, mid-attack, interrupting them and sending them back precious inches. After he bashed and maneuvered the current crop the next grains of wheat pushed and chittered and clawed against him with even greater weight than before. His arm continued to scythe and butcher.

The tip of the claw-blade had a forward curve to it and his face lit up in cold appreciation of the crab’s generous loan to aid his efforts. It easily slid into eyes, joints, and mouths filled with precious, delicate internals. His streaming blood started to unbalance the cold as it leaked into the left side of his body. He would just have to keep ripping, stabbing, and hacking until he worked his way through all of them. He heard a gasp and a large intake of air that pierced his new harvest. His external sight turned towards the woman and saw her eyes filled wide with fear. She threw herself up the wall and slapped her hand on the pad above her. She then vomited and collapsed. He knew it was a mistake to take his tearing mind off of maintaining the balance. Thankfully the door slammed closed faster than it opened and the heat, with no fuel to stoke it, started to drain. His attention turned towards both of the injured crabs that had ended up on this side of the door. Injured, they both fell quickly. He could not help the small grin, enjoying the bit of nostalgia as he left the last crab pinned to the ground through its mouth.

Beautiful. Now this, this was art.

Warm nostalgia quickly faded into the background as his warmth continued to leak out of his body. He stared at the door. He hadn’t been imagining it, there was a crab that was walking on two human-like legs. That was not even the most intriguing part, it still had the same number of total legs, or arms, he supposed. His next masterpiece perhaps. He warily looked at the door and he could faintly make out the crabs trying to breach it. He looked around at the room. Perhaps another time then.

Across from the door that the woman had just closed was another, slightly larger door. The room was roughly 6 feet from wall to wall and about 8 feet door to door. The muffled clangs were quieter than when he ambushed the three crabs and the third one had tried clawing its way back in. This door should hold them back for a while at least.

Did that crab bring back its friends? Did he cause this whole thing by letting it escape?

“No good deed goes unpunished after all,” he sighed melodramatically.

He looked her over. She was face up on the ground and unconscious. Her black hair was loose and in sweaty waves as it plastered messily to her face, wrapped in the facial wound and blood that still flowed freely. That was definitely facial bone. She also had some sort of slingshot attached to her belt loop, on the mirror side of the loop was what looked like a magazine that was also attached to her belt. Stepping closer he saw that she was wearing crab braces on either forearm. This room was terribly cold now. It changed his evaluation of her chances of survival. That was probably a good thing with how injured she was. He was also almost completely positive that that part of her chest was not supposed to move paradoxically to the rest of it.

Well, no good deed after all.