Yokai of the Water II

Kai kept his arms raised in a guard and his stare set dead straight on the creature, his black, human eyes meeting slanted, hungry yellow tiger eyes. There was a tense moment of silence as they stared off, and in it, he could hear his heart beating so loudly, so strongly that he thought it might just leap out of his mouth.

His ears rang. He tasted iron from blood in his mouth. He felt little chunks of his own torn flesh sticking to his body in warm spots. He felt his breathing grow faster and faster – he was nervous. He had to think of a way to beat the seemingly insurmountable wall in front of him.

The creature was covered in thick green scales that might as well have been a suit of indestructible armor to him.

It was faster than him.

Stronger than him

Had longer claws than him.

Sharper teeth than him.

In every raw, physical way, he was inferior.

But he knew that. He had known that his whole life. Until recently, he was never the one to play sports or get into fights or settle things with muscle. He had always thought his problems through. Always used his mind to get ahead in life.

Nothing changed now.

He needed to beat the creature in front of him, and to do so, he needed to hit the only real soft part of its body – the head.

But the creature was faster. To get to the head, he had to immobilize it.

Now, how to do that?

He remembered the brutal tumble he had just gone through with the creature. How on the ground, grappling with each other tooth and fang, speed became far less of a factor.

But the creature was stronger, too.

In a grappling match like that, it was only a matter of time before the monster with its longer claws and tougher muscles gave him a wound that would knock him out – and that was game over.

He needed to kill the creature quickly. In an instant. But how?

Even if he knew the creature would pounce at him, send them both to the dirt, if he tried any attack, it would just sway back and dodge from him like it had done before, and at that point, it was only a matter of wearing Kai out with consecutive pounces before his healing ran out or he got fatigued.

The creature continued to circle Kai.

Judging by how its legs were lowering as it arched its back down bit by bit, its muscles tensing up more and more, he knew it was going to pounce soon. He remembered its words. Its threats. All of them fixated on his throat.

He knew where it would strike him. He remembered how it had taken a few seconds for the creature's teeth to break through his kappa shell plating.

He had an idea of what to do.

His arms shook as he mentally prepared himself. He knew what he wanted to do, but his body knew the huge risk it was taking, and it was like it was trying to stop him, to keep him from lowering his guard.

Was there any better way to do this?

Any way where he would not have to risk dying?

No. He tasted blood in his mouth and clenched his jaw. No, there was not. Maybe, just maybe, there was a better way, but nothing that would not involve him risking his life.

He took off the plating around his arms and lowered them slightly. Enough to give the creature an opening.

The creature's feral feline eyes lit up in twin flashes of hungry yellow before it leaped up, its leg muscles contracting and rippling in sinewy, power packed cords as it hurtled towards him in a compact ball of clawed death.

The pounce was both faster and stronger than last time, and Kai had less time to brace for impact than he thought.

One moment, he was looking at the monster's eyes, and the next, he was sprawled on the ground, most of the wind knocked out of him as he dealt with claws digging into his body and jaws aiming at his throat.

He had no time to reconsider anything. All he could do now was to trust in himself.

He put his hands against the creature's shoulders, applying pushing force, but it was not enough to pull the creature off. The monster smiled as it pushed through, snapping its jaws right onto his neck. The next instant, however, its yellow eyes widened, the slitted black pupil narrowing to a thin line of surprise.

He had never intended to stop the creature, just slow it down enough to apply a layer of kappa shell plating around his neck. Plating he could use now that he had taken it off from his arms. The creature's teeth cracked into the shell, and he knew this was the absolute most critical moment.

The creature was faster than he was, but it was not faster than his thoughts, and all it took was a thought to manifest his system's abilities. He grew another layer of shell while the creature's teeth were embedded in the first one.

The result was that the creature was trapped with its jaws around Kai's throat, the teeth encased in a rapidly grown layer of plating like an arm stuck in freshly dried concrete.

It tried to break free, arching its back and using its limbs to try and leverage off of his body to push its head free, but it could not do that immediately, and one single moment – one single second where the creature's head was immobilized – was enough.

The creature's face, buried into Kai's throat as it was, meant that he could not easily target its eyes. Instead, he jammed his clawed thumbs into its ears. They sunk in with a squelching impact, and it was now that the hooked nature of the kappa's claws made for climbing came into use.

He used the four other fingers of his hand to wrap around the back of the creature's head, digging into it to prevent it from escaping and to get a better, more solid hold.

The creature loosed out a muffled but deep snarl, deeper than any it had loosed before as it sensed its life in danger, and it thrashed like mad, using its legs and arms to claw into Kai's body, trying to gut him or tear his arms apart.

Kai did not look down. He knew that the claws were making an utter butchered mess of him.

He willed himself to heal and to heal and to heal, but he would not be surprised to have seen his guts spilling out even through the healing.

Even now, he could feel patters of blood hitting his eyeballs from down below, but his eyes did not close even as specks of red hit their whites.

They were open wide, not looking down in panic at his grievous wounds, but being utterly focused on the creature's head, into the target he had to kill.

He willed himself to jam his thumbs in further, beyond the ear canals, into the monster's brain. It was hard, and it felt like it took eternities for his digits to sink in even an inch further, and as they got deeper and deeper inside, the creature struggled even more ferociously.

It started to bite down harder, into Kai's throat, and though the plating kept it from tearing into him, it did not stop the force from blocking his breathing, his blood flow.

How many seconds did it take for someone to pass out again in a choke hold again? Kai had read about it somewhere, in a place and time that seemed so very far away.

Five seconds? Ten?

He did not know. Something like that. Did not matter in the end anyway. Either he killed this monster, or it killed him, whichever came first.

The monster's face started to blur. Kai's senses started to fade, the sounds of the monster's snarls and the claws ripping through his flesh and the breath and bloody spittle frothing out of Kai's lips all meshing into one nigh incoherent medley of brutality.

Then, he felt twinges of pain, barely perceivable through the hazy mess his mind was, from his thumbs.

They were broken. Still stuck inside the monster's head, but broken. He could not press them in further.

The realization came to him slowly, if at all. It was like he was underwater, deep, deep underwater, and his thoughts were at the water's surface, light reflections and echoes that vaguely meant something he could not fully grasp.

He did not feel any pain anymore. He felt strangely warm. He almost wanted to stay here, wrapped up in this nothingness. He wondered why he had ever resisted it in the first place.

A chill struck him. In the water, he saw a thin, fragile body pale and cold, white and dead, but the red, the blood, so very warm and so very bright. Trickling, pooling. A wide-open mouth, a wide open stare.

His mother.

He felt the world of water around him fade away, the sight of the monster's head at his throat coming into blurry focus again, and he grit his teeth so hard they chipped, willing his thumbs to heal one last time before making a final push.

He thought he heard a crack from within the monster's head as he pushed his thumbs in fully, but by now, the sounds and sights and smells were all in a wild mess, and he had long lost sensation in his body from both adrenaline and a lack of blood flow.

The creature stiffened suddenly, like a puppet with its strings snipped, its arms and legs seizing up and stopping movement. It froze atop Kai, and he knew he had won. But in one final realization, he saw that the creature did not let go of his throat.

It had died seized up with its jaw still biting down on him.

Kai passed out.