3 True Despair

The shutter clanged shut. What I thought would be the sound of salvation, now had a much more omonis tinge to it.

I was not sure what had just gotten into the store with us, but from the simple fact that my sword seemed to have little to no effect on it, I was not sure if I would have been happier on this side of the metal gate or the other

Turning around I hoped that my premonitions were wrong. I could not see where, whatever it was, had gone when I first looked. I quickly found it by following the horrified gazes of the 3 teens in the back of the store. It was roosted on one of the I-Beems that made up the ceiling.

My gaze landed on what appeared to be a silver statue of a beautiful hawk. It was clearly lacking some of the vital characteristics of the statue however because it refused to remain stationary. Its head kept flipping back and forth between the girls in the back of the store, and the shopkeeper and I in the front.

To me it seems like it's gaze was very arrogant as if it was deciding what tiny mouse that it wanted to eat first. While terror was still my primary emotion this point this arrogant gaze also peaked my anger.

I was a human, the species that had been at the top of the food chain for the last 10,000 years. How dare the single bird think of itself as above me on the food chain just because it has somehow become a being coated in metal.

When I replayed that sentence in my mind I suddenly understood that the undeserved arrogance may be mine. With the realization that I was no longer a member of the species at the top, I resolved myself to use this new world to allow myself to be strong enough that I no longer had to worry for my life when coming in contact with normal wildlife.

While coming to this life-changing resolution the world around me as well as the situation we were in had not change. There was still an imminent threat from metal bird.

While its form change I believe that the birds instincts probably had not. Coming up with a plan to deal with this bird of prey based on instincts as well as its other genetic characteristics was not difficult.

The first aspect that I considered as integral to my plan had been that birds of prey have a very strong orientation towards dynamic vision. Meaning that if something moved it would almost entirely focused on that movement over other visual cues. This has evolved from praying on small animals in fields such as mice and rabbits.

With this in mind I took off at the sprint through the middle of the store incase one of the other residents of the store decided to start running from fear causing the birds instincts to instantly target that terrified person.

I was hoping that my sudden movement would cause it to pursue me, and luckily I was right.

The next aspect of my plan was less reliable considering it was based on normal feathers rather than these metallic feathers.

A birds feather is made up of a shaft which is the long stiff core of feather, off of the shaft there bunch of hair like things called Vanes. These Vanes make up the surface area of the feather, but because they are not strong enough individually to stay stiff yet malleable there are barbs in between each vane that connect them all together as if they were velcroed.

This detailed description of the birds feather may not seem entirely relevant to the topic at hand, but I was using my knowledge of hawks anatomy to give me a leg up when dealing with this dangerous floe.

This said, the barbs that hold these feathers together do not perform their role properly if they get oil on them. Meaning that flight is a much more difficult prospect after oil is introduced to the feathers. The section of the store that I was running towards was the massage section. The shelves were lined with bottle after bottle of massage oil.

I grabbed a bottle and spun around intending to spray as much as I could on the bird as it closed in on me. I turned around when I saw the bird just 10 feet behind me; I came to the realization that my bottle of oil was unnecessary because as the birds pursued me down the aisle it started clipping the inventory in wit the tips of its wings. The wings were slicing directly through the bottles of oil causing oil to spray everywhere.

I had no doubt that this bird had liberally coded itself in oil by this point. I also came to the conclusion that I was in far more danger than I anticipated considering these wings appeared to be razor-sharp. I tried to dive out of the way but one of the wings gouged into my shoulder as it glided by.

It was a clean slice through the shoulder muscle, almost deep enough to reach the bone. I was not sure if it was lucky or not that it had injured the same arm that the cat had made such a mess of. Blood started flowing down my arm at an alarming rate.

And if things were not bad enough, during my dive to the ground the clip for my bike helmet snapped causing my helmet to go bouncing off into an unseen corner of the store.

The hawk on the other hand had little to no impairment to its movement from the oil.

That was what I got for not considering whether these modified feathers that appeared almost as if they were made out of steel would be affected in the same way at normal bird feathers.

The Hawk circled around for another attempt on my life. I was feeling far less confident about my chances of survival than I thought at the start of the confrontation. How should you deal with a fast flying animal that just needs to touch you to seriously injure you?

I decided that if I survived this fight for my life I would always pack a sheet because cloth is the key to any fight. It saved my life once, and probably could have done the same in this situation. Who knew the weapon needed to win any of combat was the same weapon as fashion designers?

I glanced at the 4 other occupants of the store, 3 terrified teenagers, and one surprisingly unworried shopkeeper. All of them looked at me with hope of salvation from a predator that had never before been see on earth. This was a threat that none of them appeared to be able to stand up to in their current state.

When such a weight of expectations was put on my shoulders I had no hope of prioritizing self-preservation. My moral code was too strong to allow me to abandon the hopes of other people. It had caused me sorrow and pain on a number of occasions in my life, but my own personal code allowed me to never have a crisis of conscience.

If I was not being the best person I could be, I was at least being the best person that I could think of being. I learned long ago that there was a quiet confidence that grows in yourself if you feel like your existence is a benefit to the overall positivity of the world.

It is because of this moral obligation that I decided on my next plan of action. A commonly known rule in aerospace engineering is that to get something flying it is always easier when you make it lighter.

This concept had been embraced by evolution millions of years ago. This is why unlike many land animals birds have hollow bones. This allows them to be drastically lighter.

Now these bones were not necessarily weak in most cases but the lattice structure of these bones only what grown with the purpose of maintaining structural integrity when used for normal bird activities. This meant that exterior forces applied from nonstandard angles were much more likely to crush these bird bones.

The hawk was flying at me, but I just stood there and presented myself as a target. As it got closer and closer the adrenaline in my body was trying to force me to take action. But I stayed motionless waiting for my opportunity. Finally when it was only feet away it started flapping its wings upwards and extending its talons.

These razor-sharp claws were coming straight for my face and I only had less than a second to react. I kept my eyes open out of sheer force of will, and dropped my legs out from under me in attempt to save my eyes from being skewered. I raised my arms above my head and while still tracking the clause with my eyes try to catch these extended legs with my hands in the instant that the bird was above me.

How does one judge success. If it is just simply a question of whether one achieves the desired outcome. I was successful in catching the birds leg in my uninjured right arm.

However the talon still Manage to scour a burning line of flesh from my scalp. My injured and less responsive left arm simply managed to throw my hand in the path of the talons causing them to puncture through the palm of my hand.

While I screamed in pain from this great success of mine I forced my right hand to remain closed around the leg of this bird. I was yanked backwards from the momentum. Unfortunately it did not slam into the ground along with me as I had hoped. It just started beating its wings frantically and attempts to escape from my grasp.

While this action might be startling from a normal bird. It was truly horrendous when dealing with this predator because it's razor like feathers could sliced through most things that they touched. Its wings were landing on my arms as well as most of my upper body.

While I endured what felt like my skin was being flayed off my body I quickly pulled the bird to my chest and squeezed it between my arms until I started hearing the shattering of its bones beneath the pressure.

It finally stopped struggling, and I was just glad that it was over. I let my arms drop to my side as I lay on my back with a crushed hawk resting on my chest. I was starting to get dizzy from the blood loss and suddenly an immense hunger overtook me.

I pulled myself up and stumbled to my backpack. I was groggy and unfocused but I only had one mission, and that was to get as much food into me as I could. I did not care that the blood from my face and hands covered every single bite I took. I just needed the calories, and I did not care what else I ingested to get them.

In most cases I did not even bother unwrapping the snacks before stuffing them into my mouth. I just had one goal and that was to fill that gluttonous monster that my stomach had just become.

While still in the process of eating my vision went black and I fell to the floor.