New Years Explosions

“Wait,” I say softly, moving my head slightly to face the others but not taking my eyes off the creature in front of us.
“Wait?! You can’t be serious!” Charlie hisses, holding up her katana. Cale, likewise, is holding up his large, sturdy metal pole, scowling at the bird-like creature. I have my makeshift bow in my right hand, but I have it held harmlessly down by my side, the shaft of poorly designed arrows across my back. I nod.
“Yes, I am.”
Cale gawps at me. “I think he’s lost it already,” he mutters disdainfully.
“No, I haven’t. This thing clearly has intelligence, aye?” Slow, unsure nods from both of them. “So it must have answers to at least one small thing we don’t. If we question it, calmly at first and getting torturous the further we go, we might be able to find something out. We can’t do that if we just straight out kill it. Who knows? It could be part of a group (flock?) of them.”
They both stare at me incredulously, their eyes flicking from me to the bird-thing as they keep a close eye on it. I still haven’t wavered my gaze, watching it come ever so slowly closer.
It’s hideous, a freak of nature, something that should never have existed yet does all the same. It’s eyes look too small for its large head, the pink-red orbs appearing to glow. The head itself is dark and grimy, the flesh deformed and twisted as with the rest of its body, small cracks in the flesh around the edges of its beak, which hosts several rows of wickedly sharp teeth and a blue forked tongue. The body was short and stubby, with a long flowing reptilian tail flowing out behind it, making the total length of the creature about nine feet. Its large, canvas-like wings were folded in against its body, but from what I saw as it was landing, they gave it a wingspan of maybe twenty feet tip-to-tip. All in all, it was the most deformed and hideous creature I’d come across so far. Were there others like this one? Or maybe even worse?
“Fine,” Charlie snaps, shooting dagger eyes at me. “I’ll go with your plan for now, but if I think it’s useless, I’ll jump in, a’ight?”
“Same here. I’ll kill it if I reckon it’s a lost cause,” Cale says, lowering his pole slightly. I give them both thankful looks, then take a small step forwards.
“We mean you no harm,” I say softly, gesturing to my lowered bow, which would otherwise be pointed at it with an arrow in the shaft.
“Well I do,” it hisses in its horrible, throaty voice. I shiver at the sound of it, but keep my features composed.
“Why? Is it instinctual, or something higher?”
“What’sss it to you?”
“Just tell us, bird-brain,” Cale interjects. It spits at the ground by his feet, it’s dark spit sizzling and corroding the stone. He grimaces, and Charlie scowls.
“You dare not ssspeak to me that way, boy.” I catch a hint of anger in its normally cruel, hungry voice. Great.
“They mean well. We seek answers. If you would-“
“Anssswersss!” It laughs, the sound making me shiver again. “You amussse me. Why ssshould I tell you pitiful foolss anything? You are nothing but mere survivorss in a destroyed world. You cannot esscape ussss...” I spreads its wings and gives us that shrieking, hungry caw.
Then it leaps, opening its beak wide, aiming straight for us.
“Move!” Cale yells, and we all leap out of the way.
“Try and find its weak points. The eyes, down the throat. Take out the wings or the isosceles -that will out balance it,” I say, putting my many years of useless knowledge to good use. It won’t be able to fly properly if we take out one wing or destroy the tail, if it goes by the same laws of flight all winged creatures do.
“What the heck is its isosceles?” Charlie calls from my left, swinging her katana at it, barely missing its right shoulder.
“You know the pointed bit on the end of a dragons tail? One of those. Just the general area around there. I'm going to try for the eyes,” I say, whipping an arrow out of my quill and hoisting it on the bow. I let it go, and it flies past the creatures head, going through its left wing and leaving a small hole. My hopes rise the slightest bit, but are instantly put down even lower than before as the fabric of the wing knits back together.
“It can...” Cale begins, having just swung his pole at it.
“No way!”
“Aye. It has regenerative abilities, it would seem.” This fascinates me more than anything else. I've always wondered if it was possible to be able to regenerate, like a lizard or starfish does, but never really believed anything other than those would be able to do it, especially not with all their appendages. This complicates things.
“Well what the hell do we do now?” Cale yells, opening a wide cut in its side, which quickly begins to close. Black blood pours out before it can fully heal, coating the end of his pole as he jumps out of reach of its flailing limbs.
“Just kill the damn thing!” Charlie cries back angrily, swinging at it. It spins out of her reach, roaring at her.
“What if we can't?”
“We can still try!”
“Can't argue with that.” I add, then fire another arrow that buries itself in its abdomen as I try to think up any kind of plan. “Ideas?”
“None here. Just stick with your original?” Cale says, stabbing it with the end of the pole.
“I say we just stab the thing to death. Ugh!” She makes a disgusted sound as blood spurts out of a deep hole she just made, covering her. “It can't have unlimited amounts of this stuff, right?!”
“Even beasts like these have to abide by the laws of physics, so in theory, yes.” I keep my voice calm and leveled as I fire more arrows, moving around to my left where Charlie is. I keep my thoughts as calm as I can, the chances we're taking foreboding on me but suppressed.
“I'll keep it busy. You two sort something out,” Cale calls to us from the other side of it, barely audible over the enraged and hungry cries of the bird-beast. I fire another arrow.
“So what are we going to do?” Charlie asks as she makes a huge tear in the wing. I keep myself composed as I try to think of something.
“I'll come at it from this side. You're the one with the most potent weapon, so you'll have to find a way up to its head. Stab out the eyes-” I pause to fire another arrow, watching it bury itself deep in its ribs, “-and shove your sword straight through to the brain. If it's still in the head, it should in theory kill it. Make sure you go deep, and don't hold back at all.”
“Hold back? Like hell I will!” she yells, slicing a chunk of flesh in the underside of its throat away.
I risk a look at my quiver to see how I'm doing, and realise I'm running low. Eight shots, maybe less. I should have thought this through better. Accepting this, I rip another one out and hoist it, aiming at the bone where its wings meet its body. I fire, the arrow going deep in the hollow of the joint. Cale slides underneath it and stabs the torso just under where I hit it, twisting the pole cruelly as he digs it in deep, then shoves downwards and rips it out, leaving a satisfying gash that pours out jet black blood.
“Help Charlie!” I tell him, and he nods briefly, running around to the front of the beast. I fire another arrow, which sails past its back and lands uselessly on the other side. I scowl. Ammo isn't something I can be wasting.
I spot Charlie hoist herself up onto its back, stabbing her sword into its spine to keep herself on as it bucks wildly in an attempt to throw her off. I fire an arrow into the edge of its surprisingly fleshy beak, and it squawks angrily. That lapse in concentration was enough for Cale to come up and whack the side of its beak, making a satisfying 'slap' noise. The lapse in concentration his attack made was all Charlie needed. She clawed her way up to its head, then poised her sword above its right eye. It hisses, knowing what she's about to do, but it's too late -she shoves it down, twisting it as she works her way through the socket into what I hope is its brain. It screams a bloodcurdling, high-pitched cry that sends a shiver down my spine. It topples over, thrashing and screaming, blood pouring out of the hole in its eye socket. Charlie leaps off before it can crush her under its weight, landing nimbly to its side. It thrashes for a bit longer, then goes still.
“Well, that was annoying,” Charlie says, and Cale laughs.
“Hell yeah. What was that thing anyway?” he says, poking it with his pole.
“Do you two mind if I study it?” They both gawp at me.
“Excuse me, what?” Cale says incredulously.
“Just for a few minutes. I'll find out as much as I can about the creature, see if vital organs are in the same place as a normal bird so we can fight it easier. You never know, I might find something interesting. Please?”
They give each other one of those 'looks', then Cale shrugs. Charlie sighs. “Only a few minutes. We shouldn't hang around here too long.”
I nod. “Aye, a good plan. Now...”

I spend the next five or so minutes scouring the body, borrowing Charlie's sword to check out its insides. Funnily enough, its regenerative organs appear to have died along with it, so its corpse can't regenerate. Makes it easier for me to pull it apart. I rummage around in the bird-beasts guts, pulling out entrails and taking note of everything I find. All the organs and such seem to be in the same place as usual, but there are a couple of long, thin ones that I've never seen in a bird before. Upon close study, I realise they might be the regenerative organs, the ones that produce whatever it is that lets it rebuild itself. If only I had a microscope or something! I could find out what it is that makes this thing keep on ticking when its time is supposed to be up. After I spend the few minutes studying it, I stand up, handing Charlie her katana then wiping the blood off on my jeans.
“Find anything useful?” Cale asks, cocking an eyebrow. The two of them -he and Charlie- had been talking quietly while I was fiddling with the body, and they'd both stood up from where they were sitting on the ground when I'd stood.
“Mostly. The organs are all in the same place, which is good news for us. I also found the organ that lets them regenerate themselves, which is here, here, and down there.” I point them out with my fingers, running them along the flesh just outside where the organs would be if I hadn't pulled them out. “There are three, about the size of a thin lung. Also, I found something... intriguing. Come take a look at this,” I say, squatting back down over the corpse of the bird-beast.
“I just need to know how to kill it,” Charlie mumbles, but comes over anyway, along with Cale. I clear my throat before continuing, my throat sore from all the walking and explanations.
“See here,” I say softly, running a finger down a part of flesh just next to its spine, the dark flesh curving around it slightly hairy with a few feathers here and there. I point out thin, jagged lines, a slightly darker colour than the rest of it. The body is covered in them. “What do you think those are?”
Cale shakes his head. “They look like scars, but that can't be right.”
“Exactly. It's true they're scars, but not from any threat it would have come across on the wastes. There's something else it has been in conflict with. The scars appear to be the same width as one of its talons, so I assume it would be because others of its kind are able to hurt it without it regenerating. There must be some sort of chemical -we'll call it RG, just for ease of name- that flows through their bodies which lets them be able to do it, but the chemical can't fix itself. The organs are there to reproduce it. If another creature with RG cuts it, the existing atoms are unable to fix it. It's like trying to stick a positively charged magnet to another of the same charge -it can't coexist with itself.”
“If that's true,” Charlie begins, squatting down beside me to examine the scars, “then there are two things we've learnt from this.”
“One, we can use the creatures against each other,” Cale says excitedly, catching on. The concept of being able to use one to kill the other is a great addition to our poor weaponry.
“And two,” I finish for them, looking up at them, accidentally letting a hint of worry enter my features through my calm facade. “There are more of them.”