May was standing by several smoldering Tweaker Baby corpses, the grotesque things not improved by the fire. She looked frenzied, almost berserk, looking around her with all-too quick head movements… and she was holding the Machete of the Dark. It was glowing brighter than Robin had ever seen it glow, radiating a clean white light.

“May? Are you ...okay?”

A loud crashing behind him made him look back, but they were not close enough to force a reaction, yet. He turned back to May.

“May!”

She looked at him, nodding frantically. He nodded slowly back, looking at the forms darting through the trees around them. The light… they do not like the light. That is good to know.

“I increasedmyspeed, Robin!”, she spat out, the speed and cadence of her words rising and falling as she tried to control her outburst. Robin’s eyes widened.

Oh.

OH!

“That might be the best news I have heard in a while. Are you faster than they are now?”

“Nobutclose!”

A gibbering sounded behind her, and May leapt straight up without a word, swinging the machete downward between her legs as she ascended. The machete cleaved into one of the small grotesqueries that had been leaping at her from the scrub brush. Robin had not seen it until it was already dead.

May did not return to the ground, zipping through the branches upside-down on a web.

“Gameonkid!”

Ugh. Stop calling me kid, Robin thought to himself as he activated the Aspect of the Wasp, turning to move into the trees and further away from the still-smoldering corpses, as well as the fresh one May had just created.

He paused for a split second before leaping to the side, dodging the Tweaker Baby that was dashing at him. It still clipped him in the abdomen with the tip of a claw, but didn’t manage to pierce his armor.

Robin stabbed outwards, cutting the stretched-out humanoid on the shoulder, although it rolled away before he could do any serious damage. Two more came barreling towards him, windmilling their arms in a decidedly childlike fashion. Robin crouched partially, waiting until the last possible moment, and then yanked his left armblade upwards from the ground at his right to just above his stomach, shouting “Shining Swipe!”

The two Tweaker Babies ran onto the silver line, unable to stop at such a short distance. Robin stopped looking before they stopped moving, but he still heard the sound of their death rattles croaking out.

Is there a Resist Guilt skill?

Robin looked around him, moving into the forest in the direction he thought he heard May, and then he saw the long, pale fingers wrap around a tree.

Crap.

It had caught up to him. Robin snapped his arms up defensively, belatedly realizing he was still holding the revolver. The hand uncurled from the tree, a single finger at a time, and then Robin saw the leering face come around the pine.

Something was different, though. It looked… tired. The rubbery face was sagging more than normal, and the small motions it made as a living creature seemed more labored.

I wonder if that is from the Gossamer of Anansi… It makes REGEN impossible while in contact with it, as I recall, at least mostly. They already seemed like they were fairly low in PHYSTAM, so they might be exhausted at the moment. I should attack now!

Robin stuck his tongue out at the Tweaker Mage, and it frowned at him with an open mouth, displaying several jagged brown stumps of teeth stuck into infected-looking gums.

It rushed at him, weaving between the few trees that still stood between them like a soccer player training by running between traffic cones.

Robin raised the arm his arm and slashed, focusing on activating Shining Swipe without having to say the name of the ability. To his immense and immediate relief, the familiar silver energy appeared in the air, a horizontal line tracing the slash of his armblade. Robin hopped backwards as the line finished, just as the Tweaker Mage reached him.

The feeling of insects crawling on his skin intensified, reaching a crescendo as the creature ducked beneath the line, barely stopping in its advance.

Perfect.

Robin fired the handgun below the line, pulling the trigger as fast as he could, cocking the hammer with his other hand. A minor voice in his brain shrieked that he had left it with the hammer cocked all this time, but was drowned out by the detonations of the gun.

The first bullet was a MANA bullet, and caught the creature in the pit of the collar. It detonated, spraying the creature’s oily blood onto the plants littering the forest floor, but it kept coming, taking the second glowing blue bullet to the thigh with the same nonchalance.

The third bullet left a green trail behind, almost like neon gas, but without the containing glass tube. The bullet impacted the hand of the creature as it was reaching for Robin, its elongated taffy-like body almost completely under the obstacle of the silver blade.

The Tweaker Mage jerked the hand back, screeching, a large bloody hole obvious despite its attempts to hold the wound in the other hand. It began screaming and waving the hand, and then began scraping it on a tree, completely ignoring Robin.

Robin winced. It was actually taking the skin off!

Holy Yoshi. This is… this is messed up.

Robin raised his armblade and leapt forward, hoping it might be more quiet than running.

The creature heard him immediately, raising a hand to block his attack. As it did, however, something exploded from the wounded appendage, and the Tweaker Mage moved the other hand down again, reacting to the sheer shock and pain.

Robin’s blade cut into and through the neck of the Tweaker Mage, spilling the oily black blood onto the ground. Robin whipped his armblade in the air a few times to shake the blood off and mentally inspected his skin.

It still feels like there are bugs everywhere, but it is not nearly as bad as it was.

A heavy weight slammed into his back, knocking him to the ground. Robin hit the ground hard, pushing himself to the side as hard as he could. Several more heavy blows rained down where he had been, and Robin was startled to see another Tweaker Baby attacking him in a frenzy, brown spittle flying from its strangely-quiet mouth.

It rushed at him immediately, and Robin thrust an armblade at it to ward it away. He was startled when it ran right onto the blade, and the silent Tweaker Baby took advantage of his hesitation, pulling itself further onto the blade to swipe at his.

Disgusted and horrified, Robin stabbed the creature in the head with his other blade. He shook the limp form off of his blade as quickly as possible, trying to convince himself that he was not feeling ill.

Dropping from the trees like a shadowy bolt of lightning, May thumped into the ground next to to him. Robin winced. That looked like it had hurt.

May looked up at Robin, and he felt his nervousness grow when he saw how unnerved she looked. She took a deep breath and beagan speaking to him slowly, trying to enunciate each word.

“Robin. We. Need. Togo. Big. Thing. Coming.”

Robin interrupted her, quickly describing the white tumbleweed he had seen. He cut himself off when she began nodding.

“Yeah, we have to go. Do you think we have gotten enough of them that we will be able to sneak through their territory?”

May shook her head, her dark hair flying. “No. No. More. Sneaking. We just needtokill everything on the way.”

Robin stared at her, his mouth agape. He was still staring at her in shock, wondering where her newfound reckless attitude had come from when he heard the tumbleweed crashing through the woods, directly at him.

No, he realized, looking at May and her white, shining machete.

That thing is coming for her and her new glowstick.