It's just a scratch

A relatively common wild mental talent that allows the talented to ignore even serious injuries, either temporarily or permanently. The conviction of the scratchers, also called anti-hypochondriacs, that the wound is just a scratch is so strong that they can distort reality and force their bodies to heal.

Much rarer are the so-called scratch medics. Their talent is powerful enough that they can apply it to others. Such individuals are in high demand in medical facilities and in combat units, primarily because it is one of the few quick healing talents based on warping reality where there is no automatic risk of consequences much worse than the original injury.

Aencyclopedia Lunatica, 4. age, 2^nd edition

For the last two hours, I've been silently bitching and suppressing my urges to grumble out loud and make another attempt to convince the others that we should give up. I really wished for the damn chase to be over. Three long, sweaty, dirty days, almost without sleep. It was supposed to be a quick job, not three damn days spent crawling through the jungle on another stupid bug hunt. I was personally sure we lost the damn bug because I hadn't seen any traces of it for at least a day. I want this to be over, I said silently in my mind. Come on, you stupid bug, show yourself!

You know what they say. Be careful what you wish for. You might not like it when you get it.

As usual, I was keeping myself at the back of our group. It's the safest place and also the most convenient spot for a support guy. And despite the naginata in my hands and shotgun slung over my shoulder I was the designated support for our merc team after all. The worst place to be in the jungle is at the front as a pointman... but being on the tail as last in the formation wasn't much better. You never know if someone tries to hit you from behind so the tail end Charlie has to be especially careful and watch our backs. At that moment, this spot was the responsibility of Sonia the gun-nun and she wasn't doing a very good job because the first warning we had were her terrified screams.

I turned abruptly.

I got my wish fulfilled after all.

Our hunt finally turned into a battle because the damn bugger either ran out of patience or strength and decided to go around and hit us from behind.

The screaming Sonia was down on her ass. She was trying to grab her dropped double-barrel with one hand, while she was holding on for her life with the other one. Her screams were accompanied by terrible creaking and popping sounds from her knee, which was being crushed by a huge claw. A claw that was also trying to drag her into the thick bush where the rest of the damn bug was waiting.

I immediately slashed the naginata straight into the joint behind the claw. I didn't have enough strength to break it, but it must have hurt at least a bit because the chitinous asshole released the crushed knee.

Sonia finally grasped her huge double-barreled gun and shot into the bush with both barrels. You're not supposed to shoot a dinosaur gun one-handed. She probably dislocated her wrist and shoulder, but she was still screaming about her knee.

I grabbed her by her stupid black robe, shook her, and growled at her, "Stop faking it, it's just a scratch!" And then I heaved and pulled her to her feet.

She backed up a little with an uncertain look on her face and then she stared in disbelief at her barely scraped knee sticking out of her tattered robe. She froze but at least she stopped screaming. I thought I'll have to slap her face to break her out of it, but she finally started grabbing shells from her bandolier, loading her gun.

The claw came out of the bush again, at an unpleasant and almost unnatural speed. I tried to fend it off with my naginata, but someone grabbed my shoulder and dragged me away, just a split second before the second claw would take a piece of me.

“Stay back, Scratchie," Crock growled, and began to put on his game face. Luckily, he let go of me before his arm turned into a damn claw and scratched my shoulder.

Suddenly, there was a loud explosion and a cone of hot fire blasted so close it singed hair on my hands. And then another. I wanted to turn around and tell stupid Griller that incendiary buckshot wouldn't help here, but then I realized what he was trying to do.

The transformed Crock, hunched over in what was an unnatural stance for him, as he was more suited to moving on all fours, was holding one claw with his front paws and all the teeth in his huge maw, trying to chew it to pieces, while the other claw was busy trying to snap werecrock's head off. But the incendiary cone of Dragon's Breath shell vaporized the thick vegetation behind the claws and revealed that buggy bastard in all his chitinous glory.

And it was obvious that we were screwed.

The bug looked like an unholy result of a drunken mating between a huge mutated shrimp and an armored mud excavator. The last time we saw that bugger, there were several craters in its shell from the gunboat cannon, it was missing a few legs, and most importantly, it was running away into the jungle, as fast as its remaining legs could carry it. Like all merc bands, we needed money, but not so bad that we would risk hunting a healthy gigashrimp deep in the jungle. But we figured that in this case, it should be a piece of cake, with the bug being already half dead. We actually expected to find its carcass in a few hours, and get pretty good money just for a short jungle stroll.

But there were no craters now. Just partially overgrown cracks in the shell. The bastard was able to keep away from us long enough to almost fully regenerate, then it decided to switch the roles of hunters and prey.

The other claw clamped around Crock's neck so hard that he lost his grip, then the bug started flicking him back and forth.

Sonia the gun-nun screamed an invocation of a holy handgrenade and fired her dinosaur gun. Both barrels at once, again. The recoil put her on her ass, but both shots slid down the asshole's chitinous armor, leaving just deep gouges. The penetrator slugs that Griller, standing somewhere behind me, was pouring one after the other from his pump-up shotgun had a slightly better effect. It at least forced the bugger to retract the claws and let go of Crock.

I grabbed the lazy scaly asshole by his tail and dragged him away a bit. I didn't waste my strength on him because saurothropes have even stronger regeneration than their werewolf cousins. He'll be back on all four legs in a moment by himself.

Instead, I switched the naginata to my left hand, fumbled for my lever shotgun, and began to pour round after round into the shrimp, hoping to at least to confuse it. I love my lever action. Unlike the pump-up, it can be shot with one hand, albeit clumsily. Until you run out of shells of course.

And then something exploded behind me, almost knocking me down to my knees, but I managed to keep up thanks to my naginata. I dropped the shotgun though. It was empty anyway.

I turned around, made a few steps, and angrily grabbed Griller by his shoulder. His damn shotgun was so hot from firing the Dragon's Breath that it cooked off new shells he was loading in. The resulting explosion destroyed the gun and tore Griller's face off.

I shook him and yelled: "Asshole! Stop squealing like a stuck pig and fight like a man!"

"I can't see! My face is burned! My eyes!"

"Bullshit! It's just a scratch!"

He wiped the blood from his scratched face, stared at the shattered shotgun, and then took his pyro-axe off his back.

"BARBEQUE!" he howled, ignited the axe, and lunged at the shrimp.

I didn't see Raghead anywhere. And Crock, the lazy scaly bastard, was still on the ground, doing nothing.

Oh. Because the damn claw had severed his spine. I could see crushed vertebrae sticking out. Shit. I screwed up.

I grabbed him by the mangled throat and pulled him away from the attacking claw at the last moment. Then I shook him and yelled: "Stop this bullshit, you lazy lizard! It's just a stupid scratch! You hear me? A scratch!"

My head spun and I almost went down on my ass.

The fight went on in a rather chaotic fashion. From somewhere up in the jungle canopy, Raghead appeared, landed on the shrimp's back, and attempted to pierce its chitinous armor with his swords, only to be thrown away back in the bush.

Sonia was firing her two large-caliber revolvers and her bullets were striking sparks from the shrimp's shell. The sparks were almost as bright as those spewed by Griller's pyro-axe, but had only a limited effect.

I expected the axe will have the best chance to deal with that overgrown bugger... but then its idiot owner failed to dodge the attacking claws in time and was almost ripped apart.

If it hadn't been for Crock finally getting back in the game, Griller would have been dead.

But thanks to Crock's berserker charge I managed to get to Griller in time. I scooped up all the bloody shit that fell out of his torn body, and probably a few handfuls of random jungle crap, shoved it back into his belly, and then I started to scream angrily: "Scratch! Asshole! You asshole, it's just a scratch, so stop lazing around and do your job!"

After that, I wasn't really able to follow the rest of the action. Barely standing on my feet, almost blind from exhaustion, all I could do was to spout weak curses and wave my naginata.

It looked like we were slowly winning. Gigashrimp lost one claw, a pair of legs, and a feeler. A few more scratches on our side I had to handle, but I was already running on fumes. I stopped with curses and had to lean on the naginata to keep from falling in the mud.

And then Griller finally managed to hit the bugger with the pyro-axe hard enough to penetrate the shell and, laughing madly, turned the fire up to maximum. The insectoid shuddered and threw him off, but the remaining claw was moving so slowly that Crock managed to bite into it and tear it off. The huge wound from the pyro-axe was still burning.

"Holy cordite be praised! We've got it! It's not gonna survive this!" Sonia, that stupid bitch, was cheering wildly.

"Bullshit," I snapped purely on reflex. "It's just a scratch!"