Krixwell Liveblogs

“Want to keep going?” I asked his fallen form, my heart in my throat.  I stood ready to jump and react at a moment’s notice.

“I’ll bite yer legs off!”

“You don’t have a mouth.”

Slowly, he pulled himself to his feet again.  Twice, he used the knife to slash at the silk.  On the second attempt, I hit him with the formation of bugs for an eighth sweep of the silk net, hoping to throw him off-balance enough that he’d stab himself.  No such luck.

It was worth a try.

Standing straight, Mannequin shifted his grip on his knife and then raised one finger.  Wagged it left and right, that same gesture of disapproval, condemnation.

Heh. Back where we began.

And then he collapses one last time?

Then he turned to leave, striding for the door.  I didn’t try to stop him.  I didn’t have it in me.

Or that. Fair enough.

The man hefted the cinder block again, saw Mannequin approaching, and changed his mind.  He dropped the block onto the head and then ran.

Yes, good. I like this guy, I don’t want him to die from having too much bravery and too few survival instincts.

Mannequin didn’t give chase to his attacker.  Instead, he stooped down to pick up his head, then stood straight.  I stopped where I was.

With any luck, he’s got enough in there to at least give him a minor headache.

For long moments, Mannequin held the head at arm’s length.  Then it fell to the ground.

“Ehh, screw it, I don’t need a head. Maybe this way I can at least join the Headless Hunt when I’m dead.”

Seconds stretched on as his arm flopped its way towards him.  My spiders swarmed it, surrounding it in silk.  Only the blade was really allowing it to move, now, the fingers struggling around the silk to move it into position for the next sudden thrust of the blade.

And it’s not like she can silk up the blade, either.

Mannequin turned his attention to his arm, and I set my swarm on it.  A thousand threads of silk, each held by as many flying insects as I could grip it with, all carrying the arm aloft.  I brought it up to the ceiling, and began fixing it in place, building a cocoon around it.

Hah, nice!

My enemy turned his attention to me, his shoulders facing me square-on.  As he no longer had a head, I found his body language doubly hard to read.  Had I irritated him, doing that?

Probably.

He stepped forward, as if to lunge, and the silk that wreathed him hampered his full range of movement.  His leg didn’t move as far as he intended, and his missing arm displaced his sense of balance.  He collapsed.

I think Taylor’s won this. Now it’s just a matter of how much Mannequin can take before he officially gives up.

He stepped forward, and I stepped back.  Behind me, the arm jumped.  Mannequin was using the telescoping blade to help push it in the right direction.  It was trying to take a circuitous route around me.

What, to attempt to slowly stab Taylor in the back? Or is he going for the crowd?

My bugs made their eighth sweep past the headless Mannequin.

He lunged for me once again.  This time, there was no blocking the hit, no letting my armor absorb it.  His movements were ungainly, unbalanced by his lack of an arm, but he stood nine feet tall, usually, and that meant he had reach, no matter the type of weapon he was wielding.

And that’s before you let his arms extend to ridiculous lengths.

I backed off, rapidly stepping away, all too aware that my spiders weren’t working fast enough to stop him before he landed a hit.  I was swiftly running out of room to retreat.

Well, this took a bit of a turn, huh.

Nice last ditch effort, Mannequin. Gonna have to give you that one.

There was a sound, a heavy impact followed by the noise of ringing metal.  Mannequin stopped and whirled on the spot, striding back the way he’d come.

What?

The sound came again.  I chased, trying not to limp, knowing there was little I could do to stop the monster.  I crossed half the factory floor before I saw what had earned Mannequin’s attention.

The man who’d helped me with Mannequin had the concrete block in his hand, and for the third time, be brought it down on Mannequin’s head.

Oh damn. He literally picked up what Skitter was putting down, and now he’s a prime target.

The head came free of the chain and fell to the ground, rolling briefly.

Tonight, heads will roll!

The moment I realized what he was after, I redirected a portion of my web-spinning swarm to the hand.  Then I limped to my left to put myself between him and his target.  My swarm passed over him.  The seventh strafing run.  He slashed at it as it passed in a surprising display of emotion.

What? What is it going for?

He reached into the hole where his neck and head were supposed to be and withdrew a small knife.

Ohh. A detached weapon, as a last ditch effort.

I adjusted my posture.  He was a tinker, and that knife could be anything.

That is a very good point.

He pressed a switch, and it was soon surrounded with a gray blur.  I recognized it as Armsmaster’s tech.

Well, fuck.

So he ran off with that knife. That’s probably not good.

Oh yeah, he used it to carve his exit, didn’t he.

A weapon with that exact same visual effect had done horrendous damage to Leviathan.

Yep. Your armor’s not going to save you from this one.

“Where?” he asked.  It was a burly bystander with a thick black beard, thick rimmed glasses and a red and black striped t-shirt.  One of my people.

I like this design.

I turned and let go to point.  There was a metal frame that had once stood around some equipment.  Now it stood empty, just a connection of metal bars.

It’s easy to forget abandoned factories are not just open battlefields sometimes.

So is she trying to imprison him by getting his head stuck between the bars, gambling on him not detaching it?

“Stand back,” he said.  I let go and backed off.  Without me in the way, the bystander was able to haul Mannequin another four or five feet towards the frame.  Another haul, and they were close enough to the frame.

Wooo! Nice work!

I hurried forward, gripping the head, and winding it through and beneath the bars, tying it in the crudest of knots and tangling it in the bars in the process.  It dangled, the stump facing the ceiling.

Hey, I guess I was sorta right about his defeat involving getting him tied up with his own chains?

Fifteen feet of chain trailed between it and Mannequin’s body.

Jeez, man, how much neck do you even need.

Honestly, it seems like he should be using his head as another sledgehammer when it’s like this.

Swinging underhand, I brought the two-by-four up toward the widest part of the buzzsaw whirl that was Mannequin.  Through luck as much as intent, I managed a glancing blow on the end of the blade, knocking it up toward the ceiling.  The momentum of his rotation managed the rest.  He tipped and crashed onto his side, literally falling apart in the process.

WOOO!

Lengths of chain connected everything, but nothing was in the right socket.  Some sort of built-in defense mechanism against heavy impacts?

I guess so?

My swarm flooded over him to draw out more lines of silk and to spill glue -both organic glue from my spiders and brand name supplies- where possible.

He’s getting glued to the floor while split into lots of pieces and covered in colors. I love this way to defeat him!

He began to reel the various parts in, slowly.  I hurried in to grab the one arm he’d disconnected from the chain and hurled it away.  Then I seized his head.

Niiice.

I knew he wouldn’t have anything particularly valuable in his head.  It was too obvious a target.  But it was easy to get my hands on, it wasn’t connected to too many other things, and there was a chance he might want to keep it.

Ahaha! I love that last phrase in this context.

“Y’know, maybe he might want to keep his head? Seems kinda greedy if you ask me, but hey, we all have things we feel attached to.”

Some carried the scraps of silk cloth from my work on the costumes: The masks I’d made as trial runs, the belts and straps.  As with the silk that drifted in the air, they were caught by the blades rather than being cut.

Ooh, larger patches to really mess him up!

Mannequin soon had a dark blur whirling around his upper body.

Sweet!

Other bugs packed the remainder of my costume design supplies.  Tubes of paint were rigid enough to be cut by the blades, creating small, wet, colorful explosions.  A large bottle of glue made its way to my hand, and I hurried to tear off the lid before a large group of bugs carted it off to him, holding it upside-down over his head so streams of the stuff could spill onto his head and shoulders.

That’s a really bad shampoo you’re using there, Mannequin!

Man, he’s going to be such a colorful mess once Taylor is done.

Packages of dye were torn in half by his blades, expanding into clouds of black, brown, gray and lavender powder, sticking to any liquid on him, filling every gap to highlight the hidden slots for his weaponry and the seams where everything fit together.

Ooh, that’s helpful too!

Especially if part of the goal is to locate the seams and get something through them.