(A/N: Another update! I had hoped to have this one out sooner, but a lack of an Internet connection delayed it. I also had a hard time polishing it, as it's one of my first real fight sequences. In any case, as always, let me know what you think. Enjoy!)
The punch connected with Eleanor's midsection, lifting her into the air like a rag doll. She flew through the first stack of aged wooden boxes, splintering them into a multitude of pieces, sending others cascading to the floor in her wake with a crash. Eleanor smashed into the corrugated steel siding of the warehouse with a force that resonated the entire complex, creating a deafening ringing similar to the one in her head.
She slid down the rust-spotted wall, stunned by the sudden impact. Her first breath seared with pain, causing her to gasp, which quickly turned into a gurgle as she coughed up thick black blood, trailing down her chin and spattering on the floor. She glanced down. It wasn't a pretty sight. A large splinter of wood had pierced her back and been pushed through her abdomen by the impact. Tatters of flesh and cloth clung to it, and it shone red with her blood. It had definitely perforated her lung. She was just lucky that it hadn't punctured her spinal cord. She wasn't exactly certain the extent to which her body could regenerate itself. With luck, she wouldn't have to find out.
Eleanor gritted her teeth and grasped the jagged shard, digging it into her hands and staining them with her own blood. She silently counted to three and began to pull. The pain was worse than any she had felt before. The world went black, only to fade in much too slowly. She started again, pulling more slowly this time. If she fainted, odds were she would never wake up again.
Carefully, Eleanor wrenched the splinter from her chest and tossed it aside. The pain abated, and relief flowed through her as her punctured lung stitched itself back together, allowing her to take her first breath. She stood up, wincing, feeling drained. She had probably cracked some ribs too. Those would take another moment to heal, another moment she didn't have.
The owner of the fist bull rushed through the tumbling boxes, entering view again. It was a giant, easily two and a half meters tall and 130 kg of pure muscle. Bald, with poorly sutured surgical scars crisscrossing its head, this thing was as ugly as they came. A coat large enough to be a camping tent, badly stitched from dozens of different fabrics, covered its torso. Denim feedbags had been converted into a semblance of pants, and huge rubber galoshes finished the ensemble, giving it the look of a strong man from the circus. The effect would have been comical, had Eleanor not just been punched through next week. A tank of a glowing blue fluid was strapped to its back, plastic tubing running from it to ports in the back of the giant's head.
"Eve." Eleanor thought, "This guy's equipped with Plasmids. Time to figure out what exactly I'm up against."
"Hey there big guy," said Eleanor, flashing a smile, attempting to hide the pain she felt. "I didn't see you there. What brings you all the way out here?"
The splicer stayed silent, either incapable or unwilling to speak, and stepped forward.
Well, it was worth a shot.
Eleanor flashed her hands out in front of her, firing off two Incinerate blasts. Moving with surprising speed for its size, the splicer dodged the first blazing orb, and instantly smothered the second with a swipe of its hand. It closed the gap in a heartbeat, towering over Eleanor, its gargantuan face still devoid of any emotion.
The giant wrapped one enormous, pale hand around Eleanor's head and lifted her off the ground like she weighed nothing. She grabbed its hand with both of hers and attempted to wrench it away, but to no result, despite her enhanced strength. She saw it smile between the gaps in its salami-sized fingers, a terrible rotting grin of huge crooked teeth like mossy tombstones.
The pump connected to the tank hummed to life, flowing Eve through the pipe and into the splicer's head. Its eyes widened, manic.
Oh no.
It felt like she had tried to take a bite of the third rail. Electricity arced down the splicer's hand and into Eleanor's head. Every muscle in her body contracted at once, causing her back to arch and her body to contort grotesquely. She went to scream, but her mouth forced shut and she tasted blood as she bit her tongue.
Smoke trailed from her body as the electricity cut off and she flopped limp in the giant's grasp. Everything was blurry, her mind fuzzy, and her body refused to respond to her panicked commands. Still silent, the splicer pulled Eleanor away from the wall, only to smash her head against it with all of its might, denting the metal with a deafening clang.
Stars sprung into her field of vision, and Eleanor felt her nose break against the heel of the splicer's hand with a sickening crunch. More blood joined the already alarming flow on her face and down her ruined clothes. Another heave against the siding, and she felt her skull groan in protest.
Desperate, Eleanor flung both of her hands out from her sides. Her arms began to itch and sting as dozens of holes opened from them, releasing numerous genetically altered bees, born of her own flesh. The swarm instantly honed in on her aggressor, targeting its eyes, ears, and mouth with a vengeance, stinging and dying by the dozens.
The giant stopped momentarily, twitching its head, irritated by the stinging insects. Taking advantage of the momentary halt in the attempts to burst her skull like a piñata, Eleanor flashed a Winter Blast at the splicer, encasing its head in a sheet of ice.
It dropped her unceremoniously onto the dirt, devoting both hands to sloughing off the ice at an alarming rate. Eleanor collapsed to the ground, her thoughts still clouded, feeling an alarming lack of pain in proportion to her estimated injuries.
Eleanor was drained, most of her EVE having been used to heal the life threatening injuries and keep her body functioning. Drawing on every last drop she had, Eleanor tapped the ground near her, conjuring a Decoy, identical in appearance. It was slumped against the wall, seemingly unconscious, its breathing shallow. Eleanor saw herself from a third-person perspective for the first time since the fight had begun. She looked like shit.
Crawling on her hands and knees, Eleanor edged past the giant as it hopped around, scratching furiously at its frost-covered face. Its hubcap-sized feet glanced past her head, getting dangerously close to squashing her into the dirt. She weaved through its legs and, unsteadily climbing to her feet, made her way down the corridor as quickly as possible.
Moving painfully slow, Eleanor randomly turned through the twisting maze of crates and boxes, trying to put as much distance between her and the splicer as possible. Blood streamed from her nose, dripping onto the ground as she went, but she was too exhausted to attempt to cover the flow. She hoped it would blend into the dirt and make her harder to track.
A large, rusted shipping container came into view, branded with several likely long extinct logos unfamiliar to Eleanor. Stumbling along, trailing a hand on the rough steel wall for support, she turned down its side. Eleanor stopped, gasping, trying to catch her breath. She glanced left and right, looking for an exit. She had to get out now if she was going to get out at all.
A small sewage grate set into the dirt near the opposite wall caught her eye. Scrabbling over, she yanked at the dusty iron bars, but to no avail. It was rusted into place, and all of her strength had left her.
From behind, she heard a spine-chilling scream, made all the worse by the fact that it was her own. Apparently the splicer had finally freed its head. She didn't even want to know what had happened to the Decoy. Although, if she didn't get this grate free soon, she had a sickening feeling that she would find out the hard way.
Eleanor redoubled her efforts on the drain, pulling and looking around for anything that might let her leverage it open. An errant fragment of a crate, about the length of her arm, thrown far from the initial wreckage, lay nearby. She grabbed for it, inserted it between the bars, and began to push all of her weight onto it.
She could hear the giant as he began to search for her in the warehouse. The pounding of its enormous feet harmonized with the clunking and shattering as it destroyed everything in its wake. Eleanor could taste adrenaline as she heard it drawing steadily nearer. The warehouse wasn't that large. Soon enough, it would be on her, and then…. She couldn't let herself finish that thought. Another desperate shove on the wooden lever caused the grate to move slightly, dislodging large chunks of rust. Her heart leapt in her chest.
The splicer burst through the shipping container behind her, leaving a giant hole in its place. The sound of twisting metal was echoed by the crunching of the wood as Eleanor's weight caused the lever split in two, mirroring the shattering of her hope.
As the giant approached her, cracking its knuckles, Eleanor balked at the unfairness of the situation. She hadn't even had one normal day, and already she was back to fighting for her life. She had liked living in a house with other people, pretending to be a normal girl, even if it only had been for one night. Although she had ended up killing a splicer in the backyard…. Ok, maybe it hadn't been that normal, but it had been nice. The Traces had been more of a family to her in a day than Mother had in her entire life.
The splicer took a swing at her with its immense fist, which she barely dodged, somersaulting on the ground, intensifying the already significant pain she felt all over. The strike left a large crater in the ground, kicking dust up into the air. She turned around, facing the splicer, crawling backwards until she hit the wall. The grate dug into her back, a reminder of her failure. Fear overwhelmed her, blotting out all reasonable thought. She was going to die. Rapture was going to win. She hadn't even gotten to tell Rory that she thought he was cute.
She hadn't thought it was going to end like this. She had always imagined going out in a blaze of glory, surrounded by splicers, fighting for some righteous cause, or something like that. She had never thought that she would end up bested by a mindless brute, cowering in the corner.
The giant raised a foot and aimed a stomp at her chest. Eleanor rolled sideways, again clearing the strike by a small margin. She rolled towards the wall, using it to help get herself off the ground. Too slow. She felt a hand wrap around her torso from behind, lift her up, spin her around, and throw her to the ground.
The impact knocked the wind from Eleanor's lungs. Her head hit the dirt, and the exposed stones cut into her face. She lay there, too battered to move. She could hear the giant's footsteps as he moved slowly, almost casually, towards her.
With significant effort, Eleanor raised her head slightly. The iron grate sat a foot from her face, its bars sheared off. Apparently the splicer had driven its foot through the drain after it had tried to stomp on her. With the last of her strength, Eleanor gripped the edge of the now exposed shaft and pulled forward.
In response to her movement, she heard the giant's footsteps quicken behind her. As she felt the splicer's fingers touch her foot she kicked out and gave one final tug, pulling herself into the drain.
The jagged edges where the bars had broken raked at her arms and legs, leaving deep gouges, but she didn't care. She was free. She slid down the chute, away from the thing above.
Deprived of its kill, the giant uttered its first sound, letting out a savage roar of frustration as Eleanor slid down, down, and away.