From Zanma’s perspective, Shellhead seemed frozen for a moment, transfixed by the Wurger, as if he were looking at an optical illusion. Zanma wasn’t just doing nothing for no particular reason; at this point, he could only move the Wurger, and to a basic standard at that. He’d rushed it up the stairs just to put the piece on the board, to shift the perceived balance of power in his favour. Once more, it was a matter of his lessened state; were he at his full capability, he could have had the Wurger up and running full output within ten seconds tops. After a few moments of consideration as to what he ought to do, how best to buy time, Zanma decided to open up with an attempt at a backstab from the Swordsman — only for Shellhead to grab the puppet by the wrist before it could even move. In one motion, with a flash of reflected light from his pincers and a strange resonant sound, he cut the Swordsman clean in half. Three more such flashes followed, severing both of the puppet’s arms and its head. It was only thanks to Zanma’s quick reaction that the spider, hidden inside the Swordsman’s torso, survived mostly unscathed. The enormous man didn’t even grace the Gunners with a real attack, merely tossing the Swordsman’s arm, sword and all, towards them. It went spinning through the air like a buzzsaw, and Zanma barely managed to divert it from its course using the thread attached to the sword, dragging it off-course. The sword struck the deck and embedded into it.
While Zanma was preoccupied with this, Shellhead reached down with his left hand and drew a gun from inside his leg, a plate having swung open to reveal the compartment. There was no space inside, just a pitch-black hole into nothingness from whence he pulled the weapon. In a flash of cybernetic steel, he swung his aim over to the two Gunners; with two pulls of the trigger, he sent swarms of glittering death screaming towards each of their rifles. The rifles’ ruptured power source units did the rest of his work; at first smoke erupted from the holes in the weapons’ chassis, followed by flame. The metapolymer bulged out, and a moment later, fwoom. Both Gunners were consumed in fireballs of seething plasma, only spared from melting into slag by the shockwaves that threw them overboard. Anger sparked inside Zanma; partly at himself for not being fast enough to move the Gunners out of harm’s way, and partly at Shellhead, for destroying them.
Shellhead held up his right arm at a chest-height, an angular guard, wielding the pincer as a shield and melee threat in one, while his left hand pivoted up and his entire forearm unfolded, revealing sub-limbs. All this, to reload the particle smasher one-handed. Zanma took a few pot shots, as did the Captain. The Captain’s gun could embed into the shell, perhaps break it up after a while, but Zanma’s handgun had no such luck. It was, after all, just a Type-1. The iridescent particle cluster just ricocheted and went careening into the waves. A straight-on shot did little, if not no damage; not enough to see from this distance at least. Perhaps most discouraging of all, Shellhead was equally aware of the weaknesses in his own armor and skilled in making sure they didn’t get hit. Three shots. All aimed at different weak points, stabilized through the Puppet Body Art; in each case, Shellhead “just so happened” to shift his body such that the shot landed on hard chitin and bounced off or splattered altogether. It was truly remarkable how good he was at making it look coincidental. That second pair of eyes on stalks really wasn’t just for show, they were so blank and featureless that there was no telling where they were looking besides the general direction.
Zanma had to be honest with himself; he couldn’t see any openings. Castigating the old pirate might work by virtue of the gap in evolutionary weight class, but the effect would be vastly reduced against him. At best, such a major move would disable Shellhead for a few seconds, it was a losing proposition unless Zanma could guarantee a follow-up.
That old crab’s double-barreled smasher gun couldn’t reach him, sure. But both barrels up close would wreck the Wurger. And the Wurger, well, the Wurger was the only thing preventing Shellhead from closing the distance to turn Zanma into a greasy smear or scythe him apart. Shellhead seemed to be about to go for it, leaning forward to charge, only for a rain of bullets to smash down onto him from the Captain. The numerous bullets now embedded in his pincer came together; Zanma suddenly recognized them as a completed constellation, but he couldn’t recall which constellation, only that it was once used as a symbol for one of the long-extinct forces involved in the War for Axis Fulcrum. Shellhead further proved his supreme bodily sense by freezing and giving the Captain a hard, hateful stare.
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Any moment now.
Shellhead finished reloading his gun and began circling the Wurger, slowly approaching, his real focus on keeping his right arm angled just right so that the Captain’s gunfire bounced off. He was somehow predicting the trajectories based on body language and weapon angle. Zanma could do that, sure, but it was expected of him. This level of visual calculus was just not normal. His mental estimate of the power disparity was rapidly tilting towards equilibrium, even with the Captain’s supporting fire. Nevermind the sailors, Shellhead’s mere presence cowed them, though Zanma couldn’t tell if it was genuine intimidation, the miasmic stench, or Shellhead’s abundantly overflowing bioenergy. Perhaps the stench was a direct result of the bioenergy. Zanma matched his movements, having the Wurger amble in the opposing direction with its arms hanging down.
Glancing between the Wurger and Zanma, it seemed as if Shellhead was about to call a perceived bluff. It was just in time that Zanma finished threading the last thread through its rightful pathway.
He waited. And waited. And waited. Shellhead wasn’t stupid, he knew well enough that he would have to fight tooth and nail or pay with flesh and blood for another opportunity like this. The Captain’s fingers were fast, his pockets deep and stuffed full of cartridges; under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t even draw on his rifle’s magazine, loading each round directly into the chamber.
Shellhead took his chance, exploding forward with unreasonable speed for his size, jets of steam erupting from his back. He was a wrecking train on legs. That was when Zanma made his move, that was what he had been waiting for, for Shellhead to hand him an opening on a silver platter. The truth was, he had gained full control of the Wurger just before the Captain had unleashed his salvo. Since then, he had been waiting for a good moment to lay his cards on the table. There was no reason to reveal your hand the moment you drew a winning hand, let the opponent think you’re struggling, that you’re bluffing. All the better to let him skewer himself on your sword.
Zanma allowed himself to slump backwards, pushing off the railing to remove himself from direct sight, his focus entirely on the Wurger. For the time being, at his stage, this was the only way he could operate the Wurger correctly, to treat it as “the main body.” A crippling weakness, but it was the price to be paid for what he demanded of the puppet.
The Wurger was long gone by the time Shellhead closed even half the gap. Leaving no image besides a trail of red from the “ponytail” of its kinetic battery, the puppet tore across the ship’s deck in an abnormal zigzagging pattern. Circling. Circling. Spiraling in. Shellhead’s eyestalks and human eyes both darted left and right in the futile effort to track it.
Only when it got close in did it slow down, and even then, its movement was nothing like that of a man. Shellhead fired both barrels, he unleashed an inferno of glittering murder, only to realize the Wurger had bent over backwards to evade. He moved to stomp it, only for it to scuttle out of the way on all fours.
Before he knew it, a thunderclap sounded and searing pain shot through his side, and once more, before he could react, the Wurger had already repositioned. Barely, he managed to whip around to intercept its attempt to strike his other side; triumph, he’d gotten it in his blades! Only… They couldn’t close. They caught on those thorny protuberances that jutted from the damnable thing every-which-way. He settled for using the state of having it bound in his pincers to toss it overboard before it could smash a pilebunker into the body of his pincer, god forbid.
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