Androgyne/Little Things

Little Things
Perspectives: Injuries

High Park, Kings Row. 2010.

"Ready or not, here I come!" yelled the Androgyne as e dove off the side of the Paladin e'd been clinging to the shoulder of in a graceful swan dive, then tucked into a ball as e neared the ground.  Sean Casus was ready and caught em with his energy manipulations, reducing Ani's inertia so e touched down without injury, and e quickly sprang back to eir feet and looked up to reassess the situation from the ground.  E heard the ominous grinding of gears from somewhere within the giant Clockwork construct's shoulder casing, and a second later its massive metal spiked mace appendage began to climb skyward.  No doubt the monstrosity intended to smash him flat, but its tremendous size made predicting its movements very easy.  E started to reach for a thread to pull emself a few yards away to safety, but a shout from behind em caused it to sink in an instant too late that that Paladin's mace was the least of eir worries.

"Ani, geddown!" yelled Sean, manipulating kinetic energy into his shout to actually shove at Ani with the force of his voice.  Ani let the shockwave carry em and threw emself flat, and as e fell felt a terrible sensation when one of the jagged spikes extending from the second Paladin's mace tore through eir flesh from the lower back up to eir shoulder as it swept overhead.  Sean moved towards him, intending to transfer some energy from the first construct into Ani to heal em, but he was forced to leap into the air before he could as it finally brought its own mace down towards him.

Ani shoved up to all fours and threw emself head over heels closer to the first, rolling eir weight over the side of eir back that wasn't hurt, and lashed eir hands out for the prominent threads of the two creaking monsters, easy to find with their closeness and how involved they were with Ani.  E wasn't sure how it was they could have threads given their simplicity, but e figured it was related to the fact that the conscious mind of the Clockwork King guided their actions.  Grasping the threads e pulled with one hand while loosening eir grasp on the other, sliding between them only a step, and instantaneously reversed the damage done to em with the realignment.

Sean descended from his bound on the other side of the first Paladin, having sprung impossibly high over it with his inertia reduced, and as he came down focused energy into his fists to smash through a rusty panel loosened earlier in the fight on the creation's back.  Ani's hands raked through the air and more sparkling black interdimensional detritus, strangely iridescent as it seethed in swirls through the air before dissipating, flowed out of the tattered threads to mire the monsters.  A generator somewhere inside the second Paladin whirred angrily to life, and a burst of electricity blasted out of the murk and lanced from Ani to Sean, but the painful shock left them relatively unscathed, depleted of energy as Sean had left it and the blast further dispersed by the strange particles Ani had released.

Ani snapped one of the threads e held like a whip and shot up through space in a blink to land on the first Paladin's shoulder.  Its head turned in surprise and the visor of the helm that constituted its head creaked down as if it was furrowing its brow in anger.  Ani simply smirked, eir own eyes brightening in intensity, then began to unload powerful bursts of radiation into its face as Sean continued to focus fire on the shattered panel, scream after scream shuddering through the monster as he focused on destroying its inner workings.

Down below, around Sean, Ani could see smaller Clockwork busily gathering and reassembling the broken parts their dedicated assault was shaking loose into new soldiers.  Sean was getting distracted as he took a moment here and there to blast apart one of the improvised reinforcements whenever they got close enough to him to prove a nuisance.  Ani pulled eir own attention away from assaulting the Paladin e was riding and held eir hands together, generating a churning ball of sickly green radiance that e then hurled down to the assemblers' staging ground, annihilating the constructors.

The second Paladin however took advantage of that moment's distraction, and swung its mace in a wide arc onto Ani, one of its long spikes driving through eir midsection and into the first Paladin's shoulder as the weight of the appendage crushed Ani against the other robot.  Ani gasped for breath with which to scream and blood poured out of eir mouth, and e felt horrible wrenching shudders quake through eir body as the Paladins tromped about in circles trying to disengage.  Sean, unable to see from his vantage point what had become of Ani and busy evading the frustrated stomps of the machines, called up to ask if Ani was okay.  Eir hands clawed frantically for the threads of fate, and as e shifted emself temporally to undo the carnage wrought on eir body, e also pulled emself elsewhere spatially to drop down whole onto the arm of the second Paladin's mace.

"Dandy!" e shouted down as e ran along the length of the arm to the other Paladin's shoulder, putting the memory of being punctured and crushed out of eir mind and twisting at the waist to hurl bolts of radiation again at the first.  Together they focused their fire on it, throwing wave after wave now into the front of its torso while Sean moved back into position and resumed his assault on its cracked back.  The combined assault worked perfectly, Ani's cascades of radiation embrittling the metal as Sean's screams battered and shook it apart from the other side.  The Paladin was losing its structural integrity, its stomps turning into staggers as it tried to maintain balance on a midsection that was crumbling on both sides.

Realizing an advantage they could capitalize on to make the entire task easier, Ani snapped a thread and dove through space-time back onto the shoulders of the more battered Paladin.  E braced emself against its helm and began to pour out radiation where the other Paladin's mace was still embedded, intensifying and focusing it until the metal began to glow, sweat breaking out across eir brow as e welded the two constructs together.  E wrinkled eir nose at the scent of eir own blood boiling between the mace and shoulder.

The second Paladin lunged for Ani, its great metal gauntlet snapping around em in an attempt to make em stop, but the task was already complete.  It discharged electricity through its fist and Ani cried out as it coursed through em directly, too close to be dispersed by the threadmire.  The second Paladin tried to pull its mace free but was only frustrated by the attempt, a terrible grinding in its shoulder casing suggesting it nearly pulled the appendage out of use in the attempt.  Ani tried to wriggle eir arms free to get enough of a grasp on the threads to pull emself out of its grasp, but the effort was useless until in anger the Paladin that held em threw em on the ground, refusing to be a part of their systemic assault; it tried again to free its mace but only did more damage to the other Paladin and its own arm.

Ani cried out as e slammed into the ground on eir side, and rolled away as the staggering machines stomped erratically around em.  Ani reached for the threads to mend emself as e crawled weakly to eir feet, but a sudden surge of renewal flowed through em as Sean transferred some energy from the first Paladin into Ani.  Instead, Ani immediately joined him again in blasting into the rattling body above them.  Finally, with an ear-raping shriek of twisting metal, its interior structure gave out, the body of the Paladin crumbling in on itself and collapsing to the ground as Ani ducked between its legs to run over to Sean.

The second Paladin's feet skidded into the ground, tearing up chunks of dirt and grass as it tried to keep its balance, but the weight of the other as it collapsed was too much for it.  As the upper body of the first Paladin slammed into the ground, the other was levered by its welded mace into a complete, impossible flip, and came crashing down in a colossal heap head-first among the remains of the other.

Ani slowly grinned as the threads of fate that had connected em to the two monstrosities snapped free of the central mass around em and dissipated into nothingness.  The King was giving up on his destroyed toys and had withdrawn his consciousness, they were nothing but a massive pile of scrap now.  The two High-Park-born Reciprocators whooped and shared an intense high-five over another successful defense of their old stomping grounds from the Clockwork's ravaging.

After they caught their breath, Ani turned to walk back to where e'd left eir overcoat and beret; Ani'd just been wandering through the Row when Sean had broadcast that two of the constructs were tearing through High Park.  E didn't notice the rock jutting up from the ground behind em when e'd turned, and after eir first step the following foot smashed toe-first into it, a long one wedged deeply into the dirt of the park that did not budge in the slightest.  A shrill yelp of pain escaped eir lips and e sprang back, hopping around on one foot as e felt eir big toe begin to swell inside eir boot.  "Oh God, OW!"

Sean, about to take off to continue his patrol, paused and looked back at Ani.  "What'd you do?"

Ani crumpled down to sit on the ground and pulled eir boot off to poke at the swollen toe through the foot of eir Reciprocators unitard, letting out a hiss and a whimper at the pain that shot through it.  E sat there and sulked, rubbing at the base of the toe.  With their enemies defeated, there was nothing near enough to heal emself with a thread adjustment other than Sean, and Ani hadn't been able to see the threads of eir friends for months.  "Stubbed it on a rock -- Jesus, that really hurts!"  E leaned over eir leg and blew on the toe, wincing.  Worriedly, e worked off the other boot and compared the sizes of the toes, then gave another whimper and went back to massaging it.

Sean stared at Ani for a second.  He looked over to the wreckage of the Paladins, at the shoulderplate with the mace stuck to it jutting up out of the wreckage, still coated with baked-on blood, then back to Ani.  He shook his head and leapt away.

Last Updated: 12/27/2010