Omake Week 2017, Day 7: And we finish off Omake Week where we began, with yet more Bloodborne. I apologize to anybody who was really hoping for one of my other series (...I think it's been three years since I've done an Omake of the Godless Month short, for example), and for an excuse, well, I can only refer to the title of this story!

~X X X~

The hands were everywhere.

Balyn supposed that he shouldn't be surprised. The thing did have eight of them, after all. Or did the back two count as legs? He wasn't quite sure of how that worked, especially as the Amygdalae spent most of their time clinging, spider-like, to the sides of buildings.

Whichever it was, there were at least six hands, flailing like a webwork of pain all around its front and sides. Balyn rolled like a madman, left, right, gauging the extent of the thing's reach and then flinging himself out of the way when he got it wrong. Again.

But then, it all came together. Amygdala lunged for him, slamming its outstretched hands into the ground—but he had stepped back just a couple of feet, making all the difference between a pancake and being just fine, and then charged in again. Its head was down, thrust forward as its body had come nearly prone with the lungs. Down—and in reach! He chopped once with his saw cleaver, twice, then as it started to lift a third whipping, overhead strike with the extended blade caught its "chin" just before it got out of range—and its head dropped again. Dazed. Stunned.

Helpless!

It was only a few seconds, he knew. For something like this, getting its bell rung would be no more than a moment's annoyance. But he was ready! He could have shoved his glove in between the bony webwork of his head, ripped out whatever matter he could grab hold of, but Balyn had a different plan. Something special.

He brought up his left arm. Without the enhanced flesh of a hunter, he could never have carried the massive cannon strapped to it, let alone held the thing stable. The sheer mass of a dozen quicksilver bullets, charged with the explosive force of the Powder Kegs' ridiculous machine, charged again with Bone Marrow Ash from Hemwick, slammed into the monster's egg-shaped head.

What was left of that egg afterwards was very, very scrambled.

~X X X~

"I trust things went well, good hunter?" the Doll asked.

"Uh huh! How could you tell?"

"Your hunter's hat includes a cloth mask, and yet your smirk is still obvious."

Balyn supposed that might have been a clue.

She looked at him again, a long, measured stare as if she was considering the wisdom of some decision. He was always amazed how much expressiveness she could get from a face that didn't move. It didn't seem possible. But then again, he supposed that a walking, talking, occasionally nap-taking doll wasn't really possible either, by ordinary standards.

"Ordinary" was kind of boring. For all its frustrations (repeated bloody and miserable death chief among them), Balyn thought he would regret it when he eventually woke up from this dream.

That probably says more about my mental health than I really want to think too hard about.

The Doll, too, seemed to have decided to seize her courage in both hands and take a foolhardy step into Things Men And Eldritch Dolls Were Not Meant To Know.

"If I may ask, good hunter, why was it that you made such elaborate preparations for this fight? In the past, when you were defeated by an enemy, you would simply try again, and again, and again, and again, and—" She broke off, apparently noticing that her precision was making his eyes glaze over. "In any event, you would change tactics only in the most extreme circumstances. Yet this time, after only one encounter, you at once came back here, obtained supplies, worked on that cannon with blood stones for hours to enhance it. What provoked such dedication to defeat Amygdala?"

"There! That's it!" He pointed at her, prompting her to tip her head to one side in curiosity.

"What is 'it'?"

"What you just said! Amygdala. A-mig-dah-la," he repeated, dragging the pronunciation out.

"I do not understand."

"It's supposed to be A-mig-da-la! That cosmic nightmare put the stress on the wrong syllable. Some of these eldritch horrors are pretty strange, but that's just sick and wrong!"

~X X X~

A/N: Given that he was driven to use the cannon strategy, you might say that Balyn was...triggered.