Chapter Sixty-Six – Impaled… Again

Chapter Sixty-Six – Impaled… Again

“There has never been a problem that can’t be solved with enough high explosive ordnance.”

–BoomBox, to the Gun Nut Association of America, June 2041

***

I’d been hurt before. Plenty of times, even.

Losing an arm had been pretty rough, so was the whole ordeal with my eye melting in my face and my entire right side getting toasted. But that had been years ago, the day I became an orphan even.

That particular pain was a forgotten one, or at least a pain so far back that the memories had dulled a bit. I knew, intellectually, that I’d been hurt, but that was it. Just like I could recall a first day at a new school, or the day I met Lucy, or a bunch of other memories. Even the most vivid of them still faded.

Having my face meet the ground while something hot shoved its way through my left thigh was a brand new sort of pain. Much fresher, much more… in the moment.

It kind of reminded me of having a pole shoved into my gut, actually.

I gave it point five gut-poles out of 5.

I gasped, the stinging in my nose that was making my eyes water quickly fading from my attention as I rolled over and stared down at my leg.

There was a nice bit of quill sticking into and out of it, a sharpened black spine with two points and probably all sorts of other interesting features that I couldn’t make out because it was currently impaling me.

“Fuck,” I managed to whimper.

“Stray Cat?!” Gommorah screamed. She moved over to my side in a flurry of black robes, stared at the wound in my leg, then unfroze. The next thing I knew she was spraying a forest fire’s worth of napalm all across the street, creating a wall between us and the nasties. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“Fuck no,” I said.

Dumbass the First skittered by my side, wiggled to and fro a bit, then settled down.

The quill missed the bone. Not only that, its payload failed to inject itself. You’re rather lucky.

“What?” I asked. I touched the quill, some vague memory about putting pressure on wounds coming up to the surface.

That memory could get fucked, touching the hole hurt like an entire bag full of bitches.

You’re going to need to push the quill out from the entry wound. I would advise against pulling it out the other end until at least half of it is out and you can avoid touching the point.

“Are you fucking serious?” I asked. “What about the blood loss?”

You have a few minutes. It’s hardly as if this is your first time being impaled today.

I wished that Myalis had some sort of physical avatar I could direct a well-deserved glare at. There was no way she wasn’t saying that on purpose. “Gomorrah,” I said. “You need to push it out!”

The nun laid down another line or fire across the street, the asphalt around us ticking and steaming up. I didn’t know if it would hold back the more adventurous plants, but it was something.

She crouched onto one knee next to me, and I heard a sharp intake of breath as she looked at my leg. “I need to push it out?” she asked.

“That’s the idea,” I said. I wrapped my hands around my thigh, ignoring the warm blood seeping around my hands and running off of my jacket. At least the jacket seemed hydrophobic, which was neat.

“You should be wearing armour,” the nun said as she gingerly began to poke the back end of the quill.

I gasped as the entire thing moved and she instantly stopped. “S-sorry,” I said. “No one’s ever been that deep in me before.”

“A-ah,” she said, a sort of confused sound choked off halfway. When she pushed next it was with a lot more force. Was she being vindictive because I poked at her prudishness?

The quill’s middle was a lot thicker than the tip. I felt like I could maybe sympathize with women giving birth naturally as everything around the exit wound stretched and pulled. And then it was out and the quill clattered to the ground with a glass-like tinkle.

“Oh, fuck,” I breathed.