1

Cynthia had chosen this.

She'd had that same thought in the last few minutes more times than she could count, but how could she stop thinking when it was the only thing she could do here? He'd left her alone with her thoughts. And with Ryan, but well, it's not like they had much to talk about either. This situation is fucking bullshit and we survived by the skin of our teeth had lasted them about two minutes. No, not two minutes each, two in total. And then the silence returned to strangle them.

Or at least that's how she felt.

She had chosen this life and now she couldn't even choose to fight and die whenever and wherever it took.

"You know?"Cynthia said. "It might be like a scorpion that could decide at any moment to inject me with its venom, but I was happy with this power. It helped me convince myself that the next time we went out on the battlefield, I would be more useful. I would feel like my presence would matter, beyond being someone to clean up after Sylvester and keep an eye on him. Because he doesn't need anyone's help, you know that, right?"

It was a rhetorical question, so Ryan just nodded, staring at her. He was a good listener. She liked to feel he cared about what she thought, even if he couldn't understand her or help her with her problems.

Who couldn't? Seriously, who wouldn't like that?

"I consider myself cynical, realistic, whatever you want to call it. But I seem to have a tendency to be overly optimistic. This power... it's not bad. But Sylvester is in the big leagues where there is no room for mere mortals. That's why that abomination is the one flying alongside him now."

Surely it was a temporary alliance. It wasn't that she distrusted her boss, nothing like that. She wanted to be there. She wanted to matter.

She wanted to be strong.

That was all.

"If you asked him," Ryan said, "he'd tell you he'd want to be just like you."

"Excuse me?"

"A normal person giving his all even though he could die at any moment. He can survive being ripped in half, Cynthia, like a fucking starfish or something. He's long since forgotten what it means to risk his life."

"And that's what you think he wants? To be weak, vulnerable?"

"To be normal. And have the courage to fight anyway. Someone so powerful doesn't need courage. I haven't talked to him about it, but I'm sure that's what he'd think."

It was an attractive idea.

For that very reason she felt the need to challenge it.

"So how come you're so sure? Huh, tell me?"

"They see him as a monster too. He told me so directly."

Cynthia couldn't protest at that, although she wanted to. After all, he had confessed those kinds of feelings to her, too. The distrust other people had for him, the strange paradox that those who depended on him most were also his biggest detractors, taking every opportunity to whisper behind his back.

So she didn't protest.

She lowered her head, thoughtfully.

"But if he'd been someone normal, by now the Earth would be drowned by the seas and only those too rich to die would have survived, escaping to who knows what planet."

"Yeah. That's life. I like to think that things happen for a reason, that everything has its place. Maybe I need to think about it."

Maybe he was right. For better or worse.

And now... the dice of fate were turning in a place they couldn't see.

That was the realm of the gods, after all.

2

Sylvester changed his trajectory.

"What's going on?" Heather asked.

Not that he had chickened out after seeing the creature up close again, obviously. But her tone sounded like she thought it was something like that.

"I had an idea."

Maybe it was bad, maybe it was good. But it was definitely an idea. Heather had already tried getting up close and slashing at that beast with her sword, which was kind of like trying to contain the ocean in a bucket. Very clever, but he wasn't about to repeat something he'd seen fail miserably.

A new idea was better than that, no matter where it took him.

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That sort of tank the armored giants had brought with them. He intended to take possession of that weapon or die trying.

Sylvester saw it floating above the black water, the only remaining chance of half a dozen of those giants, of the invaders. Plus whoever was inside operating the tank, firing at the creature that was the root of this black sea. They didn't seem to be having much success, but each hit caused an explosion that tore away chunks of the blackness that covered its body and tentacles. That was something, more than they had achieved so far.

Besides, his plan wasn't to shoot.

Sylvester landed on that thing's roof. The shockwave from the impact ripped the giants' feet out of the ground and sent them flying backwards, plunging them into the black sea.

Yes, he could very well have taken them out one by one, but that didn't mean he had to. It was better and safer to act efficiently.

It would be a different story with those inside.

Struggling to keep his balance as the war vehicle continued to be swept along by the current, occasionally bumping into rocks and trees, Sylvester approached the hatch.

He opened it, sliding inside.

Quickly. In the blink of an eye, he severed the head of the one closest to him, sitting in one of the front seats. His head, along with a spray of blood, went flying. It bounced off the metal of the interior and ended up between the seats.

He couldn't do the same with the second one.

Sylvester wasn't as fast, giving him time to fire. What he did have time for was to deflect the rifle, pushing it aside with the blade.

So instead of opening his head, the plasma shot opened a hole in the wall above the control console.

He thought he would have a clear path to give him the first and last blow after that.

And Sylvester did, but it cost him. He was able to pull the trigger before it killed him and thus opened a hole in his stomach. A sizeable hole. He didn't want to look down, but the feeling was, shall we say, as if he had suddenly lost twenty kilos.

In short, the seats became dark and not only with the blood of those he had killed and the black shit that had managed to seep inside the vehicle.

In short, it was a wound that would be enough to kill even someone like him in time.

But it wouldn't give them time.

He had some experience points in reserve and only one thing to spend them on.

Health: 16

As usual, the wound healed almost instantly. As usual, the remedy was practically worse than the disease. The pain seared his mind, leaving it blank, and for a moment he lost consciousness and the next thing he remembered was being in mid-fall, his head about to hit the controls.

He had no idea what they did. There were too many levers and buttons. So better not to touch it.

At least the essentials were easy. A steering wheel and pedals. Great, why fix what isn't broken? The problem was, of course, that the black sea kept them too far off the ground. There was no way to get traction.

He'd left the hatch open in his haste.

"Heather! Heather! Help me push this! No, wait, never mind."

He had his energy shot still available...and it was still a pretty crappy name. What if he picked it himself? How about [Die Hard Buster]?

Stupid. Very stupid.

But at least it was his, a combination of his favorite Christmas movie and one of the few video games he'd had time to play before he got too busy saving the world. Besides, his life was completely insane, through and through, from head to toe.

He figured the only thing he could do was embrace the madness and laugh.

So he fired his [Die Hard Buster] backwards, steering (it was a more appropriate word than driving, in these circumstances) the tank as it crossed the black sea powered by that energy.

Straight towards the monster and its mouth full of tentacles like the rest of its body.

Straight towards the source of that black sea.

There was still time to back out and suddenly it didn't seem like such a good idea, but well....

What else could he do?

But it was still difficult because he knew that the worst case scenario wasn't dying. The mission description had made it clear to him that, one way or another, he would live to regret it if this turned out to be a mistake.

He didn't know how he would live and he didn't feel like finding out, but....

I will do it. I will.

The black sea tentacled demon swallowed it in one bite, naturally, he was like an ant next to it.

3

Heather witnessed it all.

"Mother of God. This man is out of his fucking mind."

That was all she could say.

She couldn't do much else either, except wish him good luck. For what it was worth.

4

Luck: 4 (-1)

"Fuck. I'm out of fucking my mind."

But ah, ah, it was too late to back out.

Now...

It was going down the creature's throat at a speed like a water park slide. He could feel the "water" hitting the tank, slowly devouring it, starting at the front windows. The cabin, sooner or later, would be filled with that black water. And the darkness was absolute, it had already closed its mouth after all.

"I'm really out of my mind."

Sylvester fumbled at the control console, that excessive amount of buttons and levers, hoping he wouldn't screw up even deeper and trigger the self-destruct sequence or something. He wouldn't even notice until it was too late because the warning wouldn't be in a language he understood.

Fortunately he found what he was looking for, though he couldn't be sure he hadn't activated something like that along the way as well.

Let there be light, he thought.

And the light was made. More specifically, the headlights on this thing came on, providing some illumination at last. He gritted his teeth.

He drove this huge thing as it kept going down, faster and faster, or so it felt, dodging obstacles. Strange protrusions like tumors in the monster's entrails.

And, of course. More tentacles.

Fortunately, the tentacles were blind. The monster sensed his presence in its guts somehow, the tentacles lashing out like whips, hitting the tank and generally getting too close.

But if they could see, they would have already caught him and ripped the tank to shreds, sending it hurtling into the darkness unprotected. This vehicle wasn't going so fast that they couldn't catch him if they could see him without trouble.

The large tunnel in his monstrous throat, apparently composed of most of his body, finally ended. For a moment Sylvester thought he could fly, and he could, but he meant the vehicle.

Then he kept falling. And it crashed in the middle of his guts, of what were perhaps gastric juices or maybe just more of that black sea. Who knows, maybe it had been the former from the start.

He had been very careful dodging the obstacles not only to save his own skin, but for the lights. The last thing he needed was to have his headlights fucked up, leaving him in absolute darkness in the belly of the beast. That's exactly why his heart stopped when he saw the light flicker and go out. And, immediately afterwards, that's why he took a deep breath when he realized that it had only been one.

It was cold comfort, though.

Though not as cold as the innards of this beast. Light or no light, he was still neck-deep in shit. As if it were a living thing, black water slid down the hood of the car and inside through the holes in the glass with painful slowness.

The Defense of Kaleidoscope (3): END