An Adamant Attachment

Part Two

 
     Doctor Drewd’s practice was small. Unlike most revisionists, he limited himself to repairing bodies, claiming not to have the ingenuity for the creation of organs or servants. As a result, his resources were humble. The only display of property he offered to the outside world was an igloo-shaped home in the middle of Uvaagnik’s residential district. Unfortunately, this meant Hiram was forced to remain outside the tiny enclosure as Drewd tended to Shona.
     He’d been waiting for several hours, glaring his way out of conversations with passersby, before Drewd finally emerged. The doctor’s body was like an anthropomorphic vole, one with the same amount and arrangement of limbs as a spider and iridescent compound eyes.
     “I’ve done everything I can think of to help her, but honestly, I think she’ll be dead by the end of the week.”
     “You can’t restore her?”
     “I don’t know how. Her body’s not exactly traditional, and I’m afraid I’ll kill her if I try to peek inside her remaining organs to find out how they work. If we can contact her parent revisionist—”
     “They’re dead.”
     “Then I don’t know what more can be done. I have her in a container well supplied with absorbable food, water, sunlight, but her voice and ability to move are gradually deteriorating, regardless.”
     “… I want you to contact every revisionist you trust and see if they know anything that could be useful. If you don’t find anything in four days, I want you to freeze her. Don’t worry about your payments for the rest of the year, and I’ll pay you on top of that if you can save her,”
     “Yes boss,” Drewd replied, not knowing how much such a phrase hurt Hiram to hear.
     As the doctor retreated into his home, Hiram’s head followed him. He located Shona among the cluttered mess of medical equipment. Her clear body rested in a glass cylinder hooked up to several veins of various substances. Light poured in from the open top of the building and reflected off Shona’s two intact cores.
     Hiram silently gave his goodbyes, one optimistic, the other realistic, and exited Drewd’s home. He was at a loss for what to do now. Should he even bother returning to Azar’s home? Should he assign guards here to protect Shona? That could just draw more attention. Did he need to assign a new second in command? He’d been so detached from the organization recently that he wasn’t even certain who would be a good choice for that.
     However, he was certain about what he wanted to do. He wanted to return home, crawl up in his hall, and sleep until he knew for certain whether Shona would survive or not. He could make calls to his employees from home, he thought. He deserved some rest, after all of this.
     Hiram began to crawl toward his home. The distance wasn’t worth a vein hop. As he went, he thought of what he could have done differently to prevent what happened. He never should have trusted Azar’s intentions. He should’ve beaten his attacker faster, so he could help Shona. He should have taken those bullets for her, blocked those flames, whatever it took. But the reality of the situation was that he only would have done that if he knew the situation prior. None of his decisions were outright terrible. He just wasn’t as capable of saving others as he was at protecting himself.
     Nothing burrowed that point further into his mind than the death of his family. He had been there, killed every attacker; his strength wasn’t enough to supplement their weakness. The lives of those he cared about could bloom as brilliantly in his mind as the sun, but in reality, the weakness of their flesh could extinguish their link in the blink of an eye.
     He didn’t know if Azar had orchestrated the attack today alone or if he was connected to the person behind the massacre that occurred months in the past. Shona and the others doubted there even was such a person. Their protection agency was a rare breed. Establishing peace and order in Uvaagnik produced many allies among those with stationary businesses who no longer had to worry about hunters and mercenaries threatening their lives and profits. Naturally, those who subsisted on killing and chaos despised the restrictions the agency created. Many wanted Hiram dead, but he knew there had to be someone specific who was coordinating these efforts to make his life hell.
     As he reached his home, a great rounded building shaped like a Viking’s mead hall, held up by white ribs and dwarfing every building that surrounded it, a wave of lethargy overtook Hiram’s body. However, his languor didn’t last long. When he saw his front doors, broken and scarred with the signs of a break in, anger flowed through and revitalized every muscle in his body. Someone intruded upon his home, the place where he used to play with his children, further defiling those memories with each step.
     He pried the doors open and forced himself inside. If whoever had entered was still here, they were going to die. He passed rows of broken traps and turrets. The intruder was strong enough to surpass these defenses easily. Even the gang that had burst into Hiram’s home as he slept wasn’t equipped to escape these measures unscathed.
     He systematically checked each of his rooms. All were unoccupied. All his possessions, no matter how vulnerably disorganized, were untouched.
     Eventually, Hiram came upon the final room in his home: the massive cavern in which he slept. Within he saw two figures, one sitting, the other standing. They were talking loudly, arguing about payment from what Hiram could make out. He recognized the standing figure as Azar Minassio, his grotesque mouth undulating with each greedy word. The second intruder was unknown to him.
     She spoke in a blunt tone out of a glistening tendril of red muscle that extended from her shoulder. A pair of rainbow-colored eyes were the only features of her baby-blue head. The rest of her skin shared this color, aside from tawny keratin plates and scutes that sporadically armored her body. The shape and arrangement of her limbs and torso were primarily humanoid, with two notable exceptions. Her legs were digitigrade, ending in long, razor-sharp talons, and a scaled swathe of skin draping from her waist like a dress.
     They both noticed Hiram upon his entrance. Azar scurried toward the backend of the room. The woman stayed seated but swung her legs around to face the newcomer.
     “You’re finally here. Before we begin, I was wondering if you could settle a debate?”, she greeted chipperly.
     “Who are you?” Hiram slithered into the room until he loomed over her.
     “I don’t see why you need to know that now, but since you asked, my name is Jean. Absolute pleasure to meet you, Hiram.” She extended a hand which met nothing but cool air.
     “Did you help him?”, Hiram asked, pointing at Azar with a tentacle.
     “With what?”
     “With BUTCHERING my family!”
     “Nnno, I did not. Did you do that, Minassio?”
     The linguist furiously shook his body in denial, “I had nothing to do with that, Hiram. Their death has made you weak, complacent. If you couldn’t protect them, how are you meant to protect us? This is simply freeing our city from a dying system that drains our options … and our accounts.”
     Hiram threw up his head and released a bitter, echoing cackle. “And what? You think she can succeed where your other two mercenaries failed?”
     Azar began to speak, but Jean cut him off, “Yes he does, and so do I. Which circles back to the debate I wanted you to settle. He wants to pay me twenty thousand arnea for gutting you. I of course, am a nice person, and think you’re worth at least twenty-five, considering his little distraction earlier ended so spectacularly. You agree, right?”
     Hiram was tired of all this nonsense. Azar had to pay and this arrogant, mocking piece of shit needed to be shut up. He swung his wing down at Jean’s head. She made no effort to move, so Hiram expected to feel the warm feeling of blood around his claws as they sunk into flesh. Yet his wing simply stopped mid-swing. He peeked over its membrane to find Jean’s tiny blue fist wrapped around his first claw, holding back the entire weight of his attack.
     She sighed, “Okay, Minassio, I know I just made that look easy, but honestly, if you don’t pay me at least twenty-five, I’m probably just gonna kill you and take it, okay?”
     The linguist nodded profusely. Hiram tried to wrench his claw out of her hand only for Jean to casually twist her wrist and snap the deadly instrument out of its socket. He grimaced in pain and used his tentacles to throw himself to the perimeter of the room, creating some extremely necessary distance between himself and this unknown threat.
     She may have been strong, but her small size compared to his limited the damage she could inflict in a brief span of time. It was best to try and end the fight quickly, bait her attack and take her down, before she could wear him down over a long engagement.
     Jean twirled his severed claw in her hand, positioning it like a dagger before pointing it at Hiram’s chest. “By the way, please don’t run away. This is a duel between warriors. There’s no family for you to fail here.”
     Hiram launching himself forward. He swung his tentacles at her feet. She hopped over them like she was skipping rope. Which made her unable to dodge the subsequent swing of Hiram’s injured wing. While its primary claw was gone, the weight of the wing was still sufficient to throw Jean headfirst into the wall.
     She recovered quickly, hopping from her back to her feet within the second. “You’re better than I thought you’d be.” Hiram started to close in, but Jean wasn’t about to let him be the attacker this time. She sprinted, not at Hiram but along the wall, quickly gathering enough speed to grip the wall itself. At the apex of her momentum, Jean leapt, flapping her scaled dress to increase her propulsion toward Hiram.
     He raised his wings to shield himself. When Jean collided with them, she grasped one of their fingers with her immense strength and rolled over his body, dragging the wing with her. Once they reached the floor, Jean staked the wing with its own claw. 
     Hiram couldn’t let her immobilize him. He sacrificed his wing’s membrane to wrench it from captivity, resulting in a shower of red blood. Seeing Jean recoil as her sight was obscured, he capitalized on the opportunity. Four tentacles lashed out and wrapped around her limbs. He would have loved to snap their bones, but he could already feel her strength wearing against his own.
     Again, the thought dominated his mind: he had to win this quickly. Hiram opened his long jaws and directed them to snap shut around Jean’s neck. She rewarded his attempt with a vicious headbutt to his snout. The shock allowed her to escape his grasp.
     Jean sprinted out of his range, or at least attempted to. While her back was turned, Hiram ripped his severed claw out of the floor and hurled it at her. The projectile bit into her shoulder. Jean stopped of her own volition, the shock unable to stagger her, removed the claw, and spun around to face her opponent as transparent blood cloaked her side. “You. Are. Amazing. I am so glad you turned out to be worth a damn.”
     Hiram ignored her as he theorized his next move.
     Jean sighed. “The sky won’t fall if you tried to enjoy yourself. Why get so powerful if you aren’t going to have fun fighting?”
     “T-To protect people, to build something more, to solve conflicts through shows of force instead of force itself!”, Hiram exclaimed despite himself.
     “How has that worked out for you? How will your teeth stop a sniper? How will your wings stop poison? How will those tentacles stop a bomb? You’re just a bigger target who gets the people around him killed because they’re dependent on a strength that’s not their own.
     Hiram surged forward. He lifted himself up on his tentacles and fell forward as he did with the axe-wielder. Jean easily dodged out of the way but didn’t take the bait. “Fight because you want to.”
     He thrust a tentacle at her chest. She wrestled it to the ground with her bare hands, pinning it with her knee. “Make friends when you want to.”
     His wings closed in on either side, ready to scissor her in half. Jean crouched and her scale dress flicked up to halt both attacks. “Kill because you want to deny someone those choices or expand your own.”
     She dove backwards off his tentacle, rolling to her feet. When her eyes met Hiram’s once more, he could tell that she was pitying his clumsy, anger-fueled attempts to crush her. Fortunately for Hiram, he lacked the degree of pride that could transform such pity into a further taunt. Jean was right, in some tiny fraction of her words. He should simply give himself over to the thrill of the fight and push his emotions out of mind. Making strategies or arguing against this woman were pointless. One of them would kill the other. That was the only reality that mattered at this stage, and at the center of Hiram’s being, he doubted he even cared if he survived this. He was tired of fighting hopeless battles, of trying to stand against the tide of the world’s anarchy, of waking up each morning wondering if someone he knew was going to die.
     Hiram looked off to the far end of his bedroom, where Azar Minassio hid, shuddering either with fear or pleasure at the battle he was witnessing. “Jean, could you do me a favor?”
     “What kind?”
     “If you kill me, and even if he pays you whatever you want, rip that sniveling bastard in half.”
 Jean put a finger to her chin, closing her eyes in thought. With her other hand, she idly juggled Hiram’s claw. Azar began to creep out of his corner.
     “Sure”
     In a motion so fast that even Hiram struggled to track it, she pirouetted and hurled his claw like a javelin. It became a white comet in the millisecond it took to travel through the air and into Azar’s kneecap. A sickening crunch, a burst of green blood, and a resonating scream told Hiram all he needed to know about the injury’s severity.
     “It’ll probably take around … two hours? To bleed out from that—if he keeps pressure on it. Plenty of time to get to your requested bastard bisection.”
     “Excellent,” Hiram snarled as he watched Azar roll around on his floor, moaning in pain.
     “Shall we get back to it?”
     “Please” Hiram brought his wings close to his sides. He positioned his tentacles, so they trailed behind him.
     “Preparing to charge again?”, Jean questioned in a supremely exasperated tone.
     “You know it.” Hiram surged forward as promised, but at the apex of his momentum, used his tentacles to twist his body sideways. He was transformed into a wide ram, flying straight toward Jean, whose overconfidence robbed her of the crucial moments required to avoid such an attack. The impact of his body overcame even her strength, sending them both tumbling to the floor.
     Jean tried to chuckle but only ended up coughing through airless lungs. Hiram arose before she did, barely phased by the impact of her miniscule body. When Jean tried to hop to her feet, his jaws were ready. He clamped around her right arm from behind.
     Rather than bite into her flesh, Hiram swung his head upward. He released Jean at the apex of his neck’s height so she would be flung into the air. Then, with a tentacle, he slammed her back into the floor.
     When Hiram attempted to lift his tentacle to expose her to another attack, Jean came with it. Clutching the underside of his appendage, her legs dangled toward the ground. He quickly tried to crush her again, yet without her ability to position herself robbed by the air, Jean halted the blow as soon as her talons reached the floor.
     Her fingers were imbedded into Hiram’s flesh, preventing him from escaping. He could see Jean staring at him with the slightest degree of indignant contempt in her radiant eyes. “You’re pretty weak for someone so big,” she hissed.
     “Are you sure you’re not just freakishly strong?”
     “Who says it can’t be both?”
     Hiram smiled at her insult and decided to test her theory. He placed the tentacle’s adjacent brothers atop it and pressed down with them as well. Jean’s body creaked under the weight, until it suddenly enlarged, her skin growing tighter as her musculature became more pronounced.
     “Ah, so you keep your muscles compressed. I’m surprised someone like you is self-conscious.”
     “Oh ho ho, that is cute. You think you can provoke me.”
     “You’re taking things awfully serious yourself, Jean.”
     “I’m only making observations. And what I’ve observed is a guy who’s grown fat on his local success and can barely use all that strength to drag his ass around.”
     “That’s what you see in me?”, Hiram asked with a sinister grin as he let anger flow through his veins. “Far be it from me to deny that.”
     He added another pair of tentacles to the weight bearing down on Jean. Her muscles unfurled even further to compensate for increased strain. During her transformation, Hiram used his three remaining tentacles and his wings to hoist his torso into the air. Unable to react, Jean was forced to watch as he positioned himself overtop of her and then dropped every pound of himself onto her shoulders.
     She grunted in pain for the first time since their fight began as one of her legs gave out. Brought to her knee, with Hiram happily balled up overtop her, Jean unleashed her full strength. Enough muscles colonized her body to make even the most steroid-riddled bodybuilder blush. She screamed with exertion as she went through the poses of Atlas struggling with the globe, until eventually, Hiram was hoisted solely on the palms of her hands. Unable to sustain the position for long, Jean hurled him away from her.
     He tumbled roughly across the room yet recovered without harm. “So, you are freakishly strong, congratulations.”
     “Do … not … under … estimate … me,” Jean managed to proclaim between heaving pants, bent over with her hands resting on her knees.
     “Do you need to take a break, or—?”
     She launched herself toward Hiram, sprinting as fast as her raptor-like legs would take her. Surprised by her recovery, he recklessly swung his uninjured wing at her, attempting to use its wide membranes to block her advance.
     She channeled her momentum and strength into a blow that shattered the first of Hiram’s fingers at the joint. Her second hand latched onto the lower half of the broken finger to stop his wing from retreating. Hiram roared and targeted her face with his snapping jaws. Jean had to devote the fist that had snapped his bones to holding his teeth away from her eyes. Hiram tried to entrap her legs with his tentacles. He used one pair to occupy her armored dress so their compatriots could squirm past to attack the vulnerable limbs within. Her left leg sidestepped its assailant and stabbed its talons into the vulnerable back of the appendage. Her right leg was not so lucky. Without being able to shift its balance, the limb was easily caught in his grasp.
     Hiram returned the injury Jean had left him in full. He yanked his broken wing and the leg his tentacle had ensnared in opposite directions. A satisfying pop signaled the dislocation of her hip. She bellowed, released his wing, and punched him at the top of his throat with her freed hand as she clutched his lower jaw. 
     Hiram’s windpipe collapsed under the force as a shower of blood burst from his mouth, vessels rupturing from the pressure. Yet even through his choking gasps as he worked to force his trachea open, he did not relent in his assault on her legs. In fact, the capitulation of one limb led to the other being open to invasion. Hiram used two tentacles to twist her left leg against itself, slowly but surely breaking it against the grain of her strength. Jean, seeing how quickly her situation was deteriorating, concluded she had to deliver a decisive blow. She grabbed his top jaw and began to twist it and its lower component in opposite directions.
     Both fighters were on the verge of losing something vital. The gradual creaking and snapping of their bones were only drowned out by the chorus of Minassio’s screams. However, the injury that threatened Hiram was far more severe. A broken jaw would remove his most deadly weapon and leave his defenseless skull in her clutches.  Two impaired legs would be a death sentence for a normal bipedal fighter, but there was no telling if Jean’s strength could truly be disarmed through such a disability.
     He kept one tentacle wrapped around her leg, sent two to grapple against her arms, and sent the last of his attackers to wrap around Jean’s tendril. Jean’s eyes widened momentarily at the sudden cessation of airflow, but her assault on Hiram’s mouth continued in silence. She had to relent soon though. Even her strength couldn’t quickly overcome the combination of Hiram’s bite force and tentacles. Her muscles began to unfurl, yet her progress accelerated negligibly. Several minutes passed of the two grapplers tightening their vices, staring into each other’s eyes with equal parts homicidal intent and growing respect.
     Hiram’s pain heightened, his cartilage tore, but so did Jean’s tendril wriggle in desperation and her chest spasm in torment. She had to free herself soon. Her muscles would weaken with the loss of oxygen; if she fainted, he would be triumphant. Hiram dared her with his eye to release him, yet Jean couldn’t relent. Instead, as their visions were locked together, the tentacle Hiram had around her exterior throat suddenly felt the tension of her attempts to escape cease. He glanced over her shoulder, only to witness in horror that the tendril was still in his clutches, limp and bloody as it was detached from her shoulder. The hole where it was once attached to was happily gulping down air, a ring of fleshy divots around it signaling how Jean had willfully shed her appendage through autotomy.
     He plugged the hole with his tentacle, but it was too late. She was revitalized by a flood of oxygen. Her final layer of muscle unfurled, and Jean tore Hiram’s jaw halfway from his face. His red blood doused her. Perhaps her eyes were obscured, or maybe she was simply too enamored with what she’d just done, but Jean did not react as Hiram released his tentacles, wrapped them around her remaining leg, and snapped it in half. They both released a guttural shriek of pain, distorted into demonic roars by the respective disfigurements of their mouths.
     Hiram thrust his body into Jean, attempting to free his head from her grasp. They both tumbled across the floor, desperately raining each other with aimless blows until they separated and found themselves each splayed out on the floor, heaving with exhaustion.
     Hiram rolled over to keep blood from pooling in his throat. He watched Jean hoist herself on her burly arms, dragging her limp legs behind her as she crawled toward him. Her smooth blue skin was dappled with glistening red ichor. Her eyes glowed with the entirety of the visible spectrum, as if they could absorb every aspect of his being and reduce him to hues. The muscles that were so integral to the shape of her flesh emanated a strength that he could not overcome, one that wholly belonged to her, with no reliance on others, with no care for what they thought of her. For a single, fleeting, pivotal moment, Hiram truly found Jean beautiful.
     She reached him, but he didn’t shift from his prone position. With one hand, Jean balanced herself. The other she nocked over her shoulder, preparing to punch through Hiram’s giant eye and into his precious brain.
     “I know it’s not a good time,” he attempted to say, positioning his detached jaw against the floor. Jean stopped the windup of her fist. “But can I buy you a drink?”
     Jean froze like a statue. Her arms began to shake, and Hiram prepared to suck down his final breath. But then she rolled over onto her back, filling the air with uncontrollable giggling. Her head lay next to his. She responded with a raised thumb between the ecstatic shuddering of her injured body. Jean turned her face and the two of them silently admired the injuries they’d delivered to each other as Azar Minassio whimpered in the background. 

「This is a work of fiction. Any references to real places, real people, or historical events are used fictitiously. Other characters, names, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places, or people, living or deceased, is purely coincidental.」

Copyright © 2021 Matthew Cammarano
All rights reserved.