1:12

Better to start with the least pleasant job and work backwards, you decide. You have no idea if those unwieldy gauntlets even work properly, but you’re damn sure you’d rather face them head on than feel them closing around the back of your neck.

Well, go on. What are you waiting for? You’ve got your knuckles. You’ve got a lungful of recycled air. Death or glory, kid.

You’re a lot of things, but you’re not a pugilist. You’re not a professor of the sweet science. You aren’t getting into a game of fisticuffs here.

You charge.

Well, what else are you gonna do? Stare them to death?

You cover the space quickly, maybe quicker than Claws is expecting. They’re offensive weapons, these things. They aren’t made for the back foot, so you’d better finish this quick. You put everything you’ve got into your first blow, and Claws is slow, slower than you could have hoped for. Maybe the claws usually do the talking. Maybe Claws isn’t accustomed to actually using them. All the better. All of your weight and momentum focused onto one curled bar of metal on the edge of your knuckles.

There’s a crack, but it isn’t bone. Claws gets a claw up just in time. You feel the hairs on your arm stand up as you smash it apart, the power discharging in a bright flare of light that leaves afterimages dancing across your retina. You swing again, left this time, but Claws is already on the way down, and now you’re going down too, something tugging at you, and you look down and see that just one of those…