Chapter 206 - Do A Barrel Roll!

Meanwhile, back over in the OP OD zone…

Lucas is power-walking backwards with a taunting grin, kiting his overmedicated opponent in circles.

Miss Masher is off to the side, rummaging around in search of anything that could potentially be useful in breaking the current stalemate. This process may or may not involve forcefully removing semi-damaged bits of terrain and seeing if they seem sturdy enough for her liking.

Everything has failed this check thus far, not that that deters her from continuing her foraging.

‘As much fun as I am havin’ with fuckin’ with him, what the hell should I even do? Even if I land a hit first, he won’t even flinch from it... Do I just risk it and hope I can back off fast enough that he doesn’t get to land a hit on me?’

[Well, as long as he’s focused on you, I doubt you’ll be able to get any good opportunities to strike him in a way that is risk-free. But, you can at least cope better than any of the others if he gets a hand on you, as you’re the only one with any endurance that’s up against him right now.]

‘Hey, he’s gotta be gettin’ tired by now, yeah? Didn’t you say ya don’t expect him to live through the hour?’

[...Do you really want to spend an hour testing that theory? Considering how many unprecedented effects the drugs have had on him, I don’t want to rely on any assumptions. Sure, he’s mindless, but for all we know he may very well be in better health than ever before, and won’t burn out, either. And, if you try to plan on him reaching the critical breaking point of excessive fatigue faster than you do, I can’t guarantee we’ll get a particularly useful rollback if you slip up after finding out he is untiring on top of everything else.]

‘...Well, fuck. Jon said usin’ the knife on him was slow, yeah? So a surprise attack won’t help, he’d just shrug off whoever went at him… Am I the only thing strong enough to restrain him?’

[Most likely, yes. Miss Masher could certainly slow him down, but if the blade is too slow and he gets enraged from the attack, he may very well manage to break free from her, or even counterattack, and she won’t be as fortunate as you were.]

‘...So you’re sayin’ I HAVE to make the first move, AND be the one to hold him down?’

[...To reliably subdue him, yes.]

Lucas clicks his tongue, his previously amused expression changing to one of frustration.

‘I’m blamin’ you if this goes poorly.’

[...]

Maintaining the same pace he’s been using for quite a while now, Lucas continues a few more backwards steps while closely observing the overdosed offender. Unsurprisingly, he is still aggressively crawling after Lucas while occasionally snarling or even shouting inarticulate nonsense up at him.

‘Bah, fuck it. Here goes nothin’.’

After one last backward step, Lucas then suddenly lunges forward, stomping down on the mindless menace’s closest hand, which is his left, coincidentally the same side as his previously assaulted leg.

There’s a wet crunch and a small crater is formed in the tile flooring directly beneath his late hand, some of his blood pooling in the freshly formed reservoir.

Lucas immediately went to kick off of him and jump backward to increase the distance between them, but his doped up opponent had started swiping up at his legs with his right hand as soon as he started coming near him, and successfully manages to grasp Lucas’s left ankle that was supporting his weight pre-hop.

‘Oh fuck. What happened to his slow reaction speed?’

[...Perhaps it isn’t a problem for him when he’s focused on whatever he’s reacting to? ...Most unfortunate.]

His now all-right opponent crushes Lucas’s ankle the moment he has a grip on him and yanks him closer to his sprawled position on the ground.

‘FUCK!’

As Lucas was just launching himself mid-air when he was grabbed, he didn’t have anything to brace against at that key moment, ending up being readily swung over and slammed into the ground face-first, forming his own crater.

While the face full of flooring isn’t particularly enjoyable, Lucas is more concerned with the agonizing pain from his increasingly-moreso-by-the-moment mangled ankle.

While he doesn’t have any sort of battle-honed instincts, Lucas does at least manage to realize in the heat of the moment that simply pushing off the ground won’t do him much good, and he tries to contort himself around to attempt to grapple with his opponent.

Across the room, Miss Masher had gasped the second Lucas was seized. She grabbed the largest hunk of ruined dividing wall rubble that was near her at the time and rushed over to join the melee, readying to slam the improvised weapon down on their opponent’s head to hopefully distract him enough to help Lucas break free.

The chemically-enhanced challenger is rather unwilling to accept Lucas’s sudden attempts at physical intimacy. So, he makes a half-gurgle-half-gibberish-shout of disapproval and then hurls Lucas away before he can successfully manage to grasp him.

Miss Masher turns briefly to watch Lucas fly away, but even still she commits to the attack she was preparing, as she’s already in the best position to strike that she’s been in yet.

She slams the chunk of the unfortunate environmental casualty down onto the head of the excessively drugged dude sprawled across the ground before her, attempting to blind him, even if only for a moment. Before it collides with him, she has already lifted her leg to stomp down on the underside of his right knee as hard as she possibly can.

The rubble does have the intended effect, distracting the muddled man for a few moments as he claws away the debris with his right hand, aided by the mangled stump of his left ex-hand.

Miss Masher, however, staggers a bit upon deploying her stomp. She accomplishes her anticipated cavity in the flooring beneath her strike. However, from her target, there was only the sound of her boot colliding with flesh, and his knee didn’t crush anywhere near as much as she expected.

Though, he is by no means uninjured from the strike.

Even though she was befuddled by these unexpected results, she manages to recover quickly enough and backs away before he can retaliate, thanks to the dusty distraction occupying the majority of his attention.

“The fuck, did his endurance somehow increase? What fuckin’ shit is he even on!?” Miss Masher exclaims with dismay, looking in Lucas’s direction once she feels she’s at a sufficiently safe distance away from her opponent.

By this point, Lucas has painstakingly pulled himself out of the oven he was embedded in, having serenaded 427 with a mentally-breathless string of curses in an impressive display of his extensive knowledge regarding profanities.

It is, after all, the only subject he’s oh-so intimately familiar with.

With one hand resting against the creatively re-arranged oven for support, he manages to stand on his one good leg, wincing with gritted teeth.

‘...I can’t bring myself to look at it. The only reason I know it’s still attached is because I can still feel how much it FUCKING HURTS!’

[What still remains is rotated an impressive 107 degrees clockwise. I believe it is safe to say that it is highly inadvisable to attempt to put any weight on it.]

‘Yeah, no fuckin’ shit, sherlock.’

[..?]

Not seeing anything in his immediate vicinity to use as a crutch, he attempts to hop forward a bit and even successfully maintains his balance.

Miss Masher witnessed these actions on his part, and reflexively takes a step towards him, intending to go over to help.

Their opponent is still a bit of a distance away from her, but she has to circle around him to head in the direction of the kitchens that Lucas is currently inhabiting. She warily glances down, decides she’ll be fine, and starts going in Lucas’s direction.

The overmedicated menace is both amused by Lucas’s suffering, gurgling out a laugh, but also irritated by Miss Masher’s very existence. Or, even his mentally handicapped state still understands she’s to blame for the hunk of wall he was just aggressively annoyed by.

Either way, as she’s reaching her closest point to him in her intended path, he does a 540-degree barrel roll, landing on his back just barely within grasping range of her nearest ankle.

Lucas even gets the pleasure of seeing it happen.

“OH FUCK, WATCH OUT!” Not that Lucas’s warning does any good.

While Miss Masher is being tugged backward and then lifted up for a repeat of the man’s most successful attack yet, her assailant makes a childlike laugh.

With her eyes widened in a panic, she curls up into a ball, trying to grasp her attacker’s arm or wrist before he can slam her down into the ground.

‘Oh hell no, I can’t fucking watch this. Fuck this.’

[Wai-]

Not giving 427 a chance to stop him, Lucas claps his hands against his ears at full strength, pancaking his skull and its contents, creating a spray of forcefully expelled blood and brains.

-----

Lucas’s total kills: 8 (+1)

Lucas’s total deaths: 12 (+1)

Lucas’s total assists: 1

Lucas’s current GDV: 17.43 [Recalculating...]

Lucas’s fame level: 6.0* (Local fame is completely maxed, he’s creeping up on minor celebrity status even on a global scale. Thanks, internet.)

Lucas's hero suspicion level: 2.0*

Jonathan’s total kills: 7

Jonathan’s total deaths: 4

Jonathan’s current GDV: 6.10 [Recalculating...]

Jonathan's fame level: 4.0* (Local fame is near-max, but everyone thinks of him via his affiliation with Lucas, and not often just for him, alone.)

Jonathan's hero suspicion level: 2.5*

Willy's fame level: 5.0* (Another round of the latest memes featuring him and Mr. Quacks has bloomed.)

Mr. Quacks’s fame level: 5.5* (Another round of the latest memes featuring him and Willy has bloomed.)

Supervillain social circle size: 15

-----

Little character theater:

Jonathan is caught off-guard by the unexpected rollback, feeling rather disoriented, even though he wasn’t the one that died.

Willy is asleep once more. No, this really doesn’t help figure out where on the timeline they are, does it?

Lucas reflexively curls forward during the brief moment of agonizing pain, completely disoriented.

427, continuing from where he left off pre-rollback: [-t… You should have at least had Jonathan demonstrate the speed of the knife, first.]

Author, casually cleaning an ear with a finger: Nope, I don’t give you guys enough cliffhangers. Have fun guessing, eheheh.

Mr. Quacks and Quackette are looking forward to discovering how many baked goods they’ll get to re-eat, with the previous round of calories not counting against them, as if that is somehow a concern for such flawless rubber ducks: Quack!