By the time enemy reinforcements arrived, I'd finished eating and was trying to figure out the weapon he was using. It was tied into his armour, but only lightly, utilising some sort of energy pack that had been around his waist. I'd been able to rip it out and wear it myself, although I had no idea how many shots it had left, or how to properly use it beyond aiming and pulling the obvious trigger.

From the amount I'd regenerated so far, it seemed like it would take a couple of days for me to fully heal. That was annoying, given that I wanted to go straight for the commissioner next, but given the damage I'd taken, I was happy to be alive. I was missing a leg, most of one wing, a little of the other, and a kidney, or at least a chunk of torso where my kidney would have been if peeing was a thing I needed to do. That I was still conscious, not in the process of bleeding to death, and would regenerate in only a couple of days, was already blatantly cheating. There was no need to be greedy for more.

Of course, it did mean that despite finally finding out how mayor tasted, which regrettably was much like any other human, I was still starving. Normally I'd have gone for the meals on wheels that had just arrived at the crash site, but in my crippled state, and with the ridiculous weapons I could see them with, I figured it would be best to find a softer target. One of them had a rocket launcher, for goodness' sake. The same someone who was now walking in my direction, along with a squad a dozen strong. Poo.

There was no way he could see me, at least with his own eyes. He seemed to be checking his phone as he walked. Tracking something? The mayor? I pushed the stripped carcass onto the floor, along with the helmet, in case there was a tracking chip on one of them, then started edging away sideways. The group kept heading towards my previous location. Great, it wasn't me they were tracking. Or the head, which I still wanted to keep even if it would likely have gone off a little by the time I'd recovered enough to use it.

Perhaps I didn't need to forego my food delivery after all? I hid as best as I could, waiting for the group to arrive.

"The hell?" said one of the grunts once they came into view. The mayor's thick armour had been sliced down the torso and limbs and pried open, and the insides were not pretty. Another one of the grunts threw up.

"Stick together," said the leader. "We'll recover what we can, but remember that the monster that did this is still here. Keep eyes in all directions. Shout as..."

His little speech was interrupted by a deafening roar, and eight of the dozen grunts disappeared. Wow, this gun was good. How did I take a shot of this and only lose a couple of limbs? Alas, trying to fire the thing with one foot didn't work too well, and I lost my grip, causing it to fall out of the tree I was hiding in.

"Shit!" yelled the leader. "His disintegrator is missing! The monster is armed!"

Oh, so that's what this is called? Sounds cliched. An accurate description, though. There's not even dust left! Not great for when I'm hungry, but still pretty cool, and even I couldn't eat all of them.

"What? How can a monster use a gun?" one of them shouted while running for his life.

"Whoever is controlling it obviously has a far tighter grip on its reins than the boss can manage," the leader said, dropping his rocket launcher in order to run faster. "Or is here in person and wielding it himself. Either way, we need to assume a fully intelligent and armed enemy," he added, which was a rather hypocritical thing to say when he'd just given me a rocket launcher. Plus, he'd just confirmed that he worked for the mayor, and hence removed the little bit of guilt I felt about killing a bunch of them, and the other little bit of guilt I'd been about to feel from killing the rest.

I dropped to the ground and attempted to aim the rocket launcher with my one good foot. This being crippled business was starting to irritate me, but I managed to point it at one of the vehicles this group had arrived in. I waited for the five runners to get back and then fired. Alas, it would be pretty clear where it had been fired from, so I hopped back behind the treeline without stopping to watch the fireworks.

The explosion behind me was quickly followed by a second, and then a third ten seconds later. There was the sound of gunfire, smaller explosions, and quite a lot of screaming. That had gone well, I think. A thud nearby and an associated shower of splinters suggested they were firing at random in this general direction, but I was too far in for anything to reach me, and it stopped before long. The sound of an engine followed, and then nothing but silence. I risked a peek and saw nothing. Apparently the survivors had fled. Two burned-out vehicles were the likely source of the secondary explosions, and scattered limbs and corpses were a certain source of dessert.

I ate as much as I could before grabbing a body that was still groaning and wiggling, along with the disintegrator, and fleeing the area as best as I was able, returning to the misty woods. An hour later helicopters swarmed the site, spending most of the day flying overhead, presumably searching for me, but none flew far over the woods, leaving me hidden and safe.