Kyle felt a pang of dread as he fell, landing with a crash on the cold metal of the suspended shipping container. The jolt of the impact ran up his legs, even though the fall was only a few meters. He looked to the arm of the crane, where he saw the remaining beetles careen off the edge. They didn’t even try to follow him to the container’s edge, instead falling the full distance to crunch against the ground. He couldn’t see the fly from his angle, but with the other beetles gone Kyle felt confident in his ability to put the creature down.
And a raw, primal instinct inside him was very eager to do just that. First though, he had to figure out how to extricate himself from the container. A fall from this height would still certainly be fatal, and he didn’t relish the idea of trying to climb up the cables attached to the mechanically attached claw. He suspected the fly didn’t have much in the way of ranged combat abilities, but if it was able to do… whatever it had been doing and get him to loosen his grip for even a second it would be fatal. Unfortunately, that didn’t leave him with a lot of options. He frowned as he considered what to do next.
He had to treat his lone adversary as Schrodinger’s bug – it could be escaping, but at the same time it could be waiting for him to reveal himself and put himself in danger. He couldn’t proceed with the former assumption because it was a death sentence, but if he did nothing and it got away, he had neither the means nor the time to track it down. That in and of itself would leave staying put the safest option for him. The part of him that wanted the fly dead would not be satisfied with that outcome.
As he looked at the claws of the crane holding the shipping container steady, he had an idea. It was a very bad idea.
It was an idea that could backfire spectacularly. But as he thought about it, it made more and more sense. Sitting up on this shipping container wasn’t a viable long-term solution. He would have to get down eventually, one way or another. Worst case, if he stayed here too long the fly could convince another group of beetles to follow it and finish the job. Unlikely? Yes. Possible? Also yes. That massive justification in mind, Kyle used his baton as a prybar to disengage the hydraulic mechanisms holding one of the claws in place.
With a loud groan, the claw disengaged, causing the shipping container to lurch violently as it lost support. For his part, Kyle had a strong grip on the newly released handle of the container, barely managing to hold on as it ground to a halt. Kyle had hoped it would swing in a larger arc, bringing him closer to the stairway he’d taken to the control room, but the container had stopped short. Kyle frowned as he considered his next steps, and had almost let go of his firm handhold to begin climbing when he heard another, much more ominous groan accompanied by bursts of hissing sounds.
In the release and movement of the container, something else had been shaken loose. He heard the steel around him groan in stress against the movement. The groaning of the metal ramped into a squealing crescendo, and the entire arm of the crane began to twist and fall.
Almost instinctively, Kyle activated HASTE. The magnified pain of his small injuries caused him to flinch and almost cost his grip, but he managed to hold on. It wasn’t the physical speed Kyle was hoping to tap, but rather the accelerated Perception that came along with the skill. He watched the twisting crane begin to topple the entire structure, starting with the control room. The fall caused the now free-hanging end of the shipping container to swing in an arc, and Kyle watched intently, pushing down the waves of adrenaline pushing him to act.
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He knew he would only have one shot at this, and if his timing was off he’d wind up a pancake on the ground, flattened and crushed under tons of collapsing steel. As the arc of the shipping container reached its zenith, Kyle swung and let go, arms and legs windmilling as he landed hard on the steel platform outside the control room. Even with the enhanced durability of his skin, the broken glass left him with jagged cuts and the impact caused sharp jolts of pain to echo through his body.
HASTE magnified the pain of the injuries even farther, but he knew that he couldn’t afford to deactivate it. Pushing more mana into the skill, he ran as fast as he was able, vaulting down the stairs as the structure continued to twist and collapse. He had almost gotten free when the final snap occurred, and the entire fabricated base fell on its side in a massive explosion of dust and concrete.
The pain was excruciating as he was slammed into the torn cement, one shoulder was almost certainly dislocated and he knew he’d broken a couple of his ribs. His existence was a dull ache with searing daggers punching into him, but he was alive. He was alive. Kyle couldn’t help but smile, despite the pain. He had actually done it. He was a bloody, damaged mess, but he’d managed to pull through in the end. A faint buzzing sound snapped Kyle out of his moment of elation, and he focused on the fly as it slowly descended.
It clearly wasn’t designed for agile aerial maneuvers as it wobbled during its descent. Kyle suspected that similar to the beetles it was leading, the mutated growth prevented it from being able to fly like a normal winged insect would. It was faring much better than its comrades, however, and soon it landed on the ground facing Kyle. Despite clearly not being geared for combat in the same way the beetles were, its sharp mandibles and claw-tipped legs still posed a threat. It looked to be observing him in his pathetic state, two of its legs rubbing together with what Kyle could only describe as a hunger in its red eyes.
Kyle regarded the fly, and the anger inside him flared again. Was it anger? No, it was something similar, but also fundamentally different. As the fly began to crawl towards him, Kyle put that in the back of his mind. He didn’t have the luxury of reflection, he had one more hurdle to overcome. He was shaky, his legs hurt, and his left arm was useless, at least for now. The accumulated aches and damage from the course of the day had caught up with him, and he could barely stand straight.
The fly accelerated, intending to overwhelm Kyle and take him to the ground. Kyle swayed, uneasy on his feet as the fly approached. He was tired, he was in pain, but in that moment, he had a flash of clarity. He would not die here. He heard a roar of defiance escape his lips as he pushed his HASTE skill to its apex, just as the fly lunged at him to take him down. A deep step with his left foot took him out of harm’s way and to the right of the fly’s charge, and with every scrap of energy he had left he twisted his hips and shot his right arm out in a vicious palm strike, hitting the fly with the combined momentum of their charges and the full power of HASTE behind him.
He felt the chitin crack against his palm as the insect was thrown backwards, just as he felt the bones in his right arm crack in synchrony. A blissful numb came over him as he deactivated HASTE, no longer possessing the mana control to maintain the skill. It was all he could do to keep REGENERATION active, but as he regarded the broken form of his adversary he felt an urge far stronger than the one he’d felt atop the crane arm, and he limped towards it one step at a time.
The fly was dead – no two ways about it – but something was changing in the mana that had been glowing in the abdomen. Trails of red energy flowed out of the fly’s body, coalescing into a small, red gem. Kyle lifted his broken arm towards it, enthralled. As his trembling fingers brushed it, it dissolved into a wave of energy that flowed around and into his skin. There was agony like thousands of needles digging into his skin, and then there was only dark.