Hourly Challenge: Pair

a/n: Doug and Hartmut face off. They make an odd pair, and I declare that I have matched the prompt.

Small swears, cliff hanger

All the good things belong to Monolith Soft, including the flail. Spidey the Octoskell is mine.

This match-up was so unfair, Doug thought. On one side, an indigen enemy longer than a football field, longer than a city block, and with more teeth than all of the Harrier division. On the other, a micro-skell, not even an official one. A mere prototype, armed with a salvaged skell weapon plus a useless ground one, and controlled by an injured pilot who'd only driven the thing for a few hours.

What Doug said out loud, in a steady growl: "This is going to work."

It took more than one of Spidey the Octoskell's puny limbs to lift the abandoned weapon. Three, to be exact. Doug would have used more except he couldn't disengage the beam saber from the last minor limb and he desperately needed the major limbs to maneuver. Hartmut's monstrous multi-leveled jaw crashed into the back shelf of the cave as Doug shook the Detonation-F flail free from the wreckage of its original owner. Part of Doug was impressed by the internal programming that let Spidey dance out of reach without requiring more than a nudge of the controls. Part of him wished for a skell that had more weight than an inflatable toy.

He ducked the skell low, almost flat to the floor of the shelf, and slung the flail over the tiny mech's shoulder. Rock fragments rained down on him, pinging off the pilot's capsule. One chip managed to ricochet through the break in the window, stinging his cheek. He didn't like that, not because of the minor insult, but because it reminded him of problems he couldn't solve. If this worked, if the scavenged weapon actually fired and did some damage to the giant beast trying to eat him entire, then there would also be some extra fire as a result. There would be a fireball that would fill the cave. No matter how good Spidey's thermal resistance was (and he wasn't sure if it was any good at all), that break in the glass would mean trouble. Doug didn't have a spare hand to repair it, or a spare second to do it even if he had.

But if he didn't, he might end up baked alive inside the skell. He skinned off a glove, the one on his injured side, using his teeth to allow the other hand to stay on the controls, and jammed it into the hole. The finggers flopped stiffly, waving at him, batting his face when he turned in that direction.

It was a dreadful repair job. Completely useless, to be honest. Doug recognized that it was a delaying tactic and pulled himself together. "This is going to work," he reminded himself, "and I am never coming ... I am not coming back here until I have Spidey 2.0, the Tarantulator."

He hefted the flail on his skell's shoulder, felt the tiny mech wobble backward, tried to dig in with the lower legs to keep from toppling. Hartmut had figured out that its prize was no longer at the roof of the cave and had stopped scraping the stalactites off the ceiling. It pulled back for a new lunge and the rush of outgoing air almost dragged Doug and Spidey off the shelf, even with the anchor of the flail.

Doug couldn't quite measure the gap between him and Hartmut, because of the darkness and the blinding from the virus status and the headache from smacking the leg tip. But there WAS a gap. This was probably the last chance. "Do it," he muttered, and he scrabbled at the flail's manual engagement trigger with one of the major upper legs.

Nothing. The air pressure was shifting, and Hartmut's snout and thousands of teeth were headed directly for him. He didn't need to see it to know it. He slapped it with the other upper leg, then with one of the lower legs. Hell, he grabbed it with all seven of Spidely's free limbs. The tiny skell flipped onto its back, clinging to the base of the flail. Hartmut was going to bite his butt, and that was the most undignified end he could imagine. The limb with the beam sabre was waving helplessly, sizzling the ground and the edge of the cave walls. He smacked the flail with the beam and then...

And then things started to happen, thank god.

a/n: Cliffhanger because I ran out of time and also I'm STILL not sure what happens when you use this weapon in a small enclosed space. Bad things. Blowy up things. I'm looking forward to next week.

Oh my god, I'm hitting the refresh button OF MY OWN BRAIN hoping that there is an update...