Sensation began to return to my plasma burns as my body regenerated.

I summoned another plexus, weaving it into a forcefield, this time with the repelling end pointed toward myself; a wall, to push off of, which I did, flinging myself backwards.

I landed outside the minimart, on my backside, with my tail-body spread out before me. Pushing off the pavement with my good arm, I flipped myself onto my belly, and then pulled my tail forward. I looked back just in time to see the hummingbird throw her spear at me. The weapon's plasma melted a deep groove into the minimart's vinyl floor, narrowly missing my tail.

Without skipping a beat, wings a-buzz, she flew forward out of the minimart, pelting me with more laser bursts from her gun while gravitating her spear back into her hand.

I curled myself inward, exposing my back to her. The plasma bursts seared my back and spiny mane, making me scream. My pain nullification kicked in a moment later, right as I slowed time.

C'mon, I told myself. Think! Think think think!

With my perceptions quickened, I could see her individual wingbeats: up, down; int, out. Her angle of attack constantly shifted as she turned around. The motion was so quick that, even with time slowed, I could still see her moving, swerving around me at a slow, smooth pace.

She was setting herself up to strike me from behind.

I couldn't possibly stay on the ground. I'd be a goner; so I took flight. Thankfully, my right arm had knit enough of itself back together that I was able to push off the ground with both of my arms. Simultaneously, I wove blue and gold threads underneath myself, and willed them to rise up and cocoon me.

They glistened and swirled with latent power, and then sparked as the magic came to life.

I rocketed up off the ground, accelerating time back to only half of its usual speed.

Seeing my tail dangling beneath me, I extended the pataphysics to engulf my whole body while also tensing my body to pull my tail toward me. I had a sinking feeling the hummingbird was going to slice off whatever parts of myself I left behind.

Swimming upward, I crested over the rooftop, only to see that the hummingbird was already darting around in front of me.

"Fudge!" I shouted.

She moved so darn fast!

Twirling around, I dove, swinging my arms, but she zipped down underneath me, out of my claws' reach, and stabbed up at my underbelly. I floated up to dodge her spear's upward thrust, but she revved her wings and shot upward, higher than I had, more quickly than I had. Again, I clawed at her, and again she dodged, swinging to the side.

I breathed out spores in a wide, streaming cone.

She swooped upward, out of its way. I wove a forcefield in her path as she tried to fly over my head, but, again, my forcefield fled from her spear like oil from water.

I wove up several more barriers; she passed through them all, flying directly over my head, all while preparing her next strike.

This was insane. She was insane. Her skills were unreal!

What was the point of being able to think quickly enough to anticipate my opponent's attacks if my opponent still went ahead and did them anyway!

Angel's breath, it was as terrifying as it was beautiful! And her movements were so graceful! If there was any hesitation or fear in her heart, I couldn't see it. The expression on her avian face seemed fixed in stone: a calm, focused anger, as if she was merely watching a fly, waiting for the right moment to reach out and smite me.

Levitating her gun out of her grasp, she fired her rifle at me remotely, grazing my flank with more plasma bursts while she continued to fly around me.

I tried to swat the gun away with a plexus, but then that gauzy energy from before blossomed around it, shielding it from my magic. She even made the freaking gun fly away and dodge one of my spore streams!

Roaring in fear, I decided to copy one of Karl's moves, releasing an expanding spherical shockwave of repelling force. Amazingly, this time, it hit!

My attack sent her tumbling backward.

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"Couldn't dodge that, now, could you?" I yelled.

She did a mid-air somersault, immediately recovering her flight and swerving back toward me. At the same time, she reached in the direction of her gun, to magically pull it back into grasp.

"Oh no, you don't!" I said.

Hovering in places, I stuck out my arms and blasted out another shockwave. My whole body twitched with effort, as if I was a single muscle striking back at the world.

I hit her again, knocking her upward. It took her a little longer to rebound this time.

I saw her cough. For a split second, her whole body went tense.

That was it!

Even if I couldn't beat her (itself a terrifying thought), I could outlast her, and that was all that mattered. She was infected, after all. Time would defeat her, no matter what.

I just hoped I'd be able to make it.

I was already beginning to lose altitude. I didn't know how many of those big shockwave bursts I had left in me, but it wasn't that many, let me tell you!

While my attacker struggled to rebound, I slowed time and lobbed a handful of plexuses at her. It was the psychokinetic equivalent of chucking a couple of boulders at her. But instead of just leaving it at that, I made the invisible energy boulders make evasive maneuvers as they approached her. No matter how nimble she was, my attacks were too big and too closely spaced for her to dodge them all, and as she turned about face, I could tell that she knew it, too.

I could see it in her eyes: a slight widening of fearful recognition.

Balling her scale-backed hand into a fist, she stuck one of her arms straight up and screamed some kind of battle cry. Her entire body quivered with an all-consuming rage, feathers bristling in barbarian fury.

She spread her arms, floating her spear and gun off to either side while weaving blue and gold around her hands, even as my plexus-meshed boulders hurtled toward her.

She stared me dead in the eye, beak pointed right at me. Her plexuses made swirling gauntlets around her hands. Not only did she not even try to dodge, she flew straight at my boulder blasts.

Had she lost her mind?

Then, reaching out, she grabbed my boulder blasts and spun around. My plexuses spun with her, and then, Sword stab me, she hurled my attack right back at me!

"What!?" I yelled.

Flibbertigibbet! Wasn't this against the rules, or something?

I sent out threads of power to grab my attacks and re-redirect them, but more of that dense, fuzzy weave appeared in front of me, blocking my threads' advance. Flying forward, I forced myself through them and my own pataphysics to boot. I fell as I hit the gauze-plexuses, as if my engine had suddenly stalled. The drop lasted for only a moment before my powers returned, but, by then, it was already too late: I flew head-first into my redirected attacks. They struck me like sledgehammers. The first one knocked me down several feet. The second kicked me down onto the ground. And the third—

—A searing brightness exploded right in front of me, burning the entire left side of my body. I screamed.

I could barely move.

I looked up just in time to see glowing motes dissolve into the air. Bits of debris snowed onto the pavement.

She'd just used one of my attacks to detonate her own plasma rifle!

By the Godhead!

This really was a fight to the death, wasn't it?

As if on cue, the hummingbird barreled toward me from above in a flurry of wings. Her shining spear's tip cut through the air like the rays of noon. But then her wings sputtered, and she fell, crashing onto the pavement. Her plasma spear fell out of her grasp, clattered to the ground and disappeared, leaving asphalt smoking and bubbling in the grooves the weapon had melted into the pavement.

Beast's teeth, that was a pungent stink!

She coughed terribly, hacking up black ooze. Even so, she didn't give in, eyes quivering with fury as she rose to her feet.

My body had begun to regenerate. Scales crawled back in place. Muscles restitched themselves beneath my closing wounds.

But, man, it did not feel good.

Desperate, I stuck out my hands in a defensive gesture. I made an X with my arms, waving this way and that.

"No fighting!" I yelled, hoping she'd understand. "No fighting! I don't want to—"

—With a trilling shriek and a wave of her hand, she spirited the glass shards from the minimart's broken doors up off the ground and melted them into white-hot orbs that quivered in her magic's grip. She launched the searing bullets at my face. One hit me in the eye. I flinched and recoiled; my vision sizzled and burned.

Through my one remaining human eye, I saw her rip a unit off her armor and dash then use a plexus to dash it to pieces on the ground. The technology crackled and sparked, releasing wisps of plasma that she wove into daggers.

Her wings sputtered into motion. Then she charged at me and swung.

"Stop!" I begged, guarding my face with crossed arms, feeling flesh crawl as it remade my eye. "Stop!" I cried. "I don't want to fight! I don't want to fight!"

Apparently, she hadn't gotten the memo. She attacked me, cutting into me with a thousand searing slices so rapid and merciless that I couldn't heal quickly enough to counteract the damage.

Shielding myself from the pain made most of the ventral side of my body go numb. From within the sensory haze, I wondered: would it have made a difference if I hadn't been defending myself from the get-go?

I tried protecting myself with some forcefields, but she just cut through them with her incorporeal gauze.

"Stop!" I yelled. "I need your help! We need to stop—"

—But she didn't stop. She cut into my arms, squawking and chirping like a flute in a woodchipper. Her blades tore through my fungal ligaments. She cut through one of my hands and lopped off a finger. She sliced at my underbelly so many times, the flesh beneath my macerated scutes was starting to open up like a widening accordion.

But still, I pleaded with her. "Stop! Stop!! Sto—"

—Then a lone gunshot went off, and the hummingbird toppled onto me, slid back, and slumped onto the ground, her magicked weapons vanishing like sparks. Blood as red as any a human being had ever shed dripped off my underbelly and spilled out from the fresh bullet wound in the hummingbird's head. Either way, the blood ended up pooling on the asphalt, drenching the fragments of her brain and skull.

I turned to look, and I saw my wife standing off to the side, with her skirt taut against her spread legs, and a handgun in her hands, smoke still pluming off its barrel.

Jules and Rayph ran up behind their mother just in time to catch her as she dropped to her knees.

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