The mech came bounding down from a high place, whips slicing down. Cradle moved to be atop it as it came down, then moved to higher ground.

I flew to Rain, skimming past a line that appeared in my way. I caught his hand, pulled rather than lift or push. The hand-mech was two fists and two more hands as back legs, the fists coming down where Rain had been.

That wasn’t where it stopped. It had no reason to pause or hesitate, and it acted on its own, a hand lunging toward my mom. My mom who had no Capricorn, and who was too busy with the soldiers in the alley between two buildings to even turn around or go ball-form.

I let Rain fall, and I put myself in the hand’s way, Wretch active, pushing back as it pushed.

A mess of limbs against a mess of limbs.

My mom started forward, to assist, or to cut at joints.

“No!” I ordered. “Get—”

I felt the sick impact, and I couldn’t even stop to react to it, because there wasn’t a moment to spare, nor an inch of ground to be given.

Heavens 12.9

I wrestled with a hand that was the size of a car, that had more leverage than I did. It had a partner hand, planted on the ground to my left, and two smaller ‘back’ hands, like a dog had back legs, one gripping the side of a building, the other digging fingers into dirt. Any number of fingers had invisible cables attached—I’d seen two before they stopped moving. Cables that could slice right through me, given a chance or a reckless movement on my part. I knew exactly where the Wretch was, where each hand and foot was placed, at one giant fingertip, at the ‘webbing’ of cables that stretched in a bow between two fingers, at a finger to my side, and in the ground.

But a hand was a series of moving parts, and I had to account for all of them. With the way the machine was positioned, three hands planted on the ground and one for me to deal with, it was trying to lift me up and push me back at the same time, or to get in position where it could squish me beneath, given a chance. I could deal with three fingers, but as the pinky finger came at me from the side, I didn’t have the bracing ready to catch it or stop it from punching through the Wretch.