Polynya

Tamana’s hand comes up to heal herself and Ryuk takes aim at it. He fires at the back of her hand, just as Zaena uses her ghost limbs to hoist herself onto Tamana’s big arm.

Unable to finish her healing, Tamana tries to swat Zaena off; the Thulean leaps over Tamana’s incoming hand, scurries up the armor covering her upper arm, and arrives at her shoulder.

Meanwhile, Hiccup has taken to beating his spiked club against Tamana’s armored ankle. Hit after hit, he takes big sips from a healing potion to keep himself going.

Ryuk pops his spent mag out, loads another, and continues firing at Tamana’s free hand. In the blink of an eye, Zaena throws two of her blades forward, grabs them with her konoshlo mid-flip, and drives them into the side of Tamana’s thick neck.

-130 HP!

She uses her forward momentum to bring her body even closer to Tamana’s neck, where she stabs her repeatedly with all four blades.

Instakill!

“Fickin’ kill that giant bitch, Liz!”

Tamana drops her ginormous buster sword, which ruins what’s left of the sheep pen. She falls to her knees, her neck bubbling with blood as she sucks in air.

“Everybody out of the way!” Zaena takes a running leap off Tamana and propels herself to a rooftop.

“Fick!” Hiccup shrieks, his little goblin legs carrying him as fast as they can. He gets his leg caught under a piece of fence, flies forward and faceplants hard.

Tamana follows suit, landing with her head on her arm just a few meters shy of Hiccup, who screams, pisses himself, realizes he’s safe, gets to his feet, and runs towards Tamana’s face with his spiked club.

“This ends now!” the Swede bellows.

Ryuk glances right to see a battered and bruised FeeTwix holding a rather large Bowie knife. Tomas comes in for an attack and the knife starts to bubble up FeeTwix’s arm.

His mutant hack!

Symbiose overlaps itself as the mutant hack increases in size, portions of the biomatter lifting off and slapping back onto the outer shell to increase its girth.

A watermelon-sized barrel forms on the other end of the weapon; FeeTwix uses his other hand to hold the bottom of the barrel and takes a step back, waiting for the weapon to charge.

Just as he gets within striking distance, Tomas is met with a blast that tears the top half of his body off.

The blazing, concentrated beam of vibrant green energy keeps spewing out of the weapon long after Tomas has been separated from his body.

As soon as the mutant hack stops firing, the Swede collapses backwards, his chest moving up and down as he sucks in air.

(0)__(x)

“Stop kicking Tamana’s face!” Ryuk is next to FeeTwix now, watching as Zaena comforts her man. Enway stands to their right, ready to heal at a moment’s notice. What’s left of Tomas’ body isn’t too far away either.

“I’ll keep kicking her face until her avatar disappears.” Hiccup produces a healing potion, guzzles it for a minute, burps, beats his chest at the sudden heartburn, and returns to kicking Tamana.

Ryuk looks away. It’s easier to ignore her giant dead avatar than to come to grips with the fact that just a few days ago, everything was normal.  They were friends and there was the hope for something more.

But now …

He swallows hard. Zaena looks at him with her slitted orange eyes and they soften. “I am very glad you have those clear marbles,” she says. “Even if they do things like turn our enemy into a giant.”

“A giant bitch!”

“Goblin, stop harassing the dead or I will see to it that you join her!”

“Fick you, Lizzy!”

“We’re just lucky that it worked the second time,” says Ryuk. “It usually takes a few shots to get it right. Maybe once it levels up, I’ll be able to get it every time.”

“That’d make you god-like,” FeeTwix says, still out of breath. “Which has its advantages.”

Ryuk switches to the messaging system to keep things private.

Ryuk: How many viewers?

FeeTwix: Approaching 3.5 million. Giant warrior women sell, but I need to take a break. I still need to unpack what happened with Tomas. That was hard.

Hiccup: Boo-hoo. Why don’t you get Liz to let you use her pocket spa for a safe space?

FeeTwix: My work here isn’t finished!

FeeTwix equips his mirror and gives it a grin, his teeth a bit bloody. “I’ll heal up after this, guys, don’t worry. Now that all of you are here, I want to say that I’m so very glad for you to be part of what just happened! The intrigue! A giant Tamana! Be sure to share the video with your friends and neighbors and neighbors’ neighbors! And don’t forget to tell them about McStarbucks’ latest offer. You guessed it, the Twonicorn Frappuccinos and Twonicorn Big Mac are back! Holy Howard Schultz in a boner cap with a stick up his ass!”

FeeTwix wipes sweat from his brow.