[Seargentbig]

I’ve been reading through my past posts. My writing style seems to have been changing slightly per-post but immensely since the writing of the first chapter. But I still can’t write “since” right without spell check!

I was about to walk into battle before I realized that I had never actually walked into battle before. Most complications I had solved by my wits or stealth, never by my brute strength.
It would be stupid to walk in hoping that it would work. I would have to tip the odds in my favor…
Think, I told myself, I have to increase my chances. I’ve been cursed with intellect, so I should use it. I have; 1 self, 1 web sack, 1 hell of a lot of meat, 0 anything else. The easiest way to kill the sligs is to draw their fire somewhere else, or stop them from noticing me. Both would be good.
Then I thought and realized; No… I have five scrab chicks as well…
I was quite sure that the sligs wouldn’t immediately take a scrab chick away, but how would they act? I decided to test with one of the scrabs. I had to get one out of the sack first. Since they were actually stuck inside it, it meant I had to undo the web. It wasn’t hard; paramites can make their web sticky (but only a little – enough to attach the ends of a web to something) or non-sticky, and their fingers are perfectly designed for handling either type. So I tore a chick out of it’s case, became bitten by it, placed it down, and prodded it with my foot into the slig’s room. I liked the noises I heard.
“It’s a scrab chick! Get it!”
“It’s what?”
“It’s biting your leg is what it is!”
“What the ----? What is that?”
“It’s a baby scrab, genius!”
“It’s pretty stupid. I can’t feel my legs”
“It’s catching on, see? It’s hesitating.”
“Fifteen moolah says that it won’t find flesh”
“Fifteen moolah says it will”
“Do-”
“Ahhhhhhhhhh! My Arm! My Arm! It’s on my arm! Get it off!”
“Ahem…?”
“Oh, fine. Let me get my moolah from my stuff.”
“Help me! Heellllp meeeeeeee!”
“Shut up, it’s only a ch- Arrrrrghhhhhhh! My face! It’s on my face!”
“Stay still! I have a cage! I’ll knock it in!”
Thump. “Owwww! That hurt!”
What a shame. I was beginning to think the chick could handle them by itself. At that point, however, a slig came out to get its moolah. It didn’t notice me. I made sure he didn’t go back.
So. If one chick caused so much havoc, imagine what four could do! Quite the distraction I’d have! And that chick already let me kill one of them.
I let the other chicks out and prepared for battle.
“Look! There’s more of them!”
“Here comes our bonus!”
“Wrong! Here comes my- Ow! It has me! Someone knock it off!”
I decided that that was the time to strike. I moved in.
There were four sligs moving around in here trying to sort out the scrab chicks. They all had rifles. They could all kill me. It’s a good thing I sorted out the distraction. I killed one before the others noticed me.
“----! What is that thing?”
“Who cares! Kill it!”
I ducked behind an outcrop of rock.
“Don’t shoot! You might hit a scrab!”
“What are you, suicidal? Who cares if a bullet hits a scrab? It seems happy behind that rock. We need to kill it. I’m going behind it to kill it.”
“But you don’t know which way it’s facing!”
“That’s where you come in. I need you to go to the left side of the rock and make a racket!”
“But that’s certain death”
“No, that’s uncertain death.” I heard a clicking. “Staying here would be certain death”
In a small voice I heard, “ok”
I heard him walking over to my right side. I had a huge advantage over them; they were underestimating me by assuming I couldn’t understand them. It was a mistake they wouldn’t live to regret.
I turned to my left. I knew when to strike.
I heard gunfire behind me. Any smart animal would turn to look behind it. But I wasn’t smart. I was several steps above smart. That slig would not fire at me in the fear I would become angry and kill him.
After hearing the distraction, the other slig came in front of me. While I was in the middle of a charge right towards him.
“Di- Arrrrrrggggghhhhhhhhhhck”
I drove my right arm right into his body, through his soft inside, then brought him around – still impaled – so he was in-between me and the most cunning of the sligs. I knew he was cunning because he both didn’t bring attention to himself in the argument, won fifteen moolah, and currently had his gun pointed in my direction; he hadn’t trusted the other sligs to be successful. When he saw me, he fired.
This is why I didn’t drop the slig; he was my meat shield. I ran towards the firing slig, blocking his fire with his former comrade, and then stabbed him, too.
A sharp, searing pain on my side! I turned to look. The slig had shot me. He was still shooting!
I brought the slig shield around, but earned about six slugs for my stupidity. I charged at him, fueled by adrenalin and rage, and stabbed him, too.
I’ll now have you know how accurate I am. Every slig I stabbed died within seconds of being stabbed. It would not be nice if they didn’t. Come to think of it, it wasn’t nice period, but it shortened the pain.
Ah, pain. My right side was burning with it! I would need to rest soon. But first I sorted myself out.
First, I put some webbing on the wounds. I didn’t know how I was going to get the bullets out.
Then, I collected the scrab chicks into my sack. I made sure they were secure, and I knew they were well fed.
After that, I pulled the flint lock. It was nice to pull it knowing that all obstacles were out of the way.
There were a lot more sligs then I had thought. I counted five dead in the room, the number I had counted alive. Then I left to find a safe place to rest.
Little did I know, that the sixth slig, knocked out by his companions earlier for being an annoyance, now covered in their blood, woke up to find four of them dead in that room, one dead in the adjacent, and to see a half Scrab half Paramite freak walking out the door.
He fell unconscious again, just because of the shock of it.