Fighting Titan Ophion 2

The spine hit my forcefield, breaking it. A half second of reprieve. Then it carried onward, thrust up and in from its origin point far below, at a point of ground I couldn't see. Again, that sucking, wet flesh sound.

I screamed.

Pain jumped from the penetration point at my knee to my foot, from the penetration point at my knee to my gut, making my mouth yawn open, my entire body wanting to throw up on reflex and yet too paralyzed to follow through. Freeze-frame trapped in the first moment of the hurling process.

I could feel it slide in, slowly, displacing fluids that came out in gulpy spurts, and I could feel it twisting everything it touched. Flesh mixed up like it was a liquid in a blender, not something solid. Swelling, flowing out of the wound.

My hands pressed hard against the fabric of my pants leg, as if I could muster force field strength and stop it from carrying on any further.

My leg trembled as it kept going, hitting nerves, then touching bone, the point scraping against bone like it could leave a furrow, a permanent etching.

Except I felt my knee and hip swell in reaction instead.

***

I flew and fought my way back and out, and stopped where my bone had corkscrewed around the spine, swelled around the tip, almost bonding with the abrasive exterior.

My efforts to get free told me my leg weighed as much as the rest of me combined. Pulling back and away made primal instincts kick in. I wanted them to be the instincts that let a coyote chew its own leg off when caught in a trap, but they were freeze instincts instead.

I can't bring myself to do this.

I need you to. Fragile one.

Take the reins. Take control, use flight, use forcefield. Do something.

Nothing. My leg kept swelling, the feeling bubbling into my midsection.

Come on!

In the moment, midway through the struggle, I felt my consciousness slip. Darkness taking over for a moment, like a blink that had nothing to do with my eyes.

I wanted to give the Fragile One credit, to think it was her. But it was a guttural cry I'd made, my own fight against pain tolerance.

Maybe the fact I couldn't tell was the best sign it was her. If it was as easy as asking for it, then parahumans all over the place would have managed to get that help from their powers.

The spike came free, and the tip was crusted in irregular shapes of bone, slick with blood. With it gone, and the cessation of the swirling mutation deep inside my leg, I flew. Toward Ophion.

- Infrared 19.6