TWENTY-TWO: THE BRODOWN AT THE I'M-NOT-OK CORRAL

Several hours later, Bawkman and I stood face to face, squared off like we were about to have a brodown at the I'm-Not-OK Corral. And like the real Western tale, sweat dripped from both of us in fountains, puddling at our feet and slowly transforming the soil into space mud. The source of the heat wasn’t a blistering sun overhead. We had worked ourselves to the bone, cleaning out a livestock pen for Thulg that also doubled as that training room Bawkman had promised. You’d think that a few hours of shared hard labor would ease the tension between a couple of birds, but it didn’t. Like my searing rage towards Len Bawkman, the smell of rancid manure lingered in my nostrils, and the kick I had taken to the chest from one beast that called the pen home had driven my health bar into the red.

Like almost everything I seen so far, the animals were just plain ducked up. They looked like the aftermath of a polar bear having its way with a dolphin. Each lumbering beast sported a smooth cetacean-esque head and four white, hairy limbs that dangled to the floor. The closeup I had gotten of a blowhole while I was herding the animals was guaranteed to give me nightmares for the rest of my life. It reminded me of the aftermath of one of those really raunchy “educational videos” Dumbass uploaded.

And the big one had sneezed on me, too. An explosion of white goo that covered me from head to toe.

The taste was so, so salty. My throat was still sore from throwing up.

“First hen, chickenshit,” Bawkman said. “I can’t believe you haven’t applied all your ducking skill points! What were you bloody thinking?!”

“Ducking poisoned!” I reminded him. “Been saving them to regen my health when it gets low. I told you that.”

“I know you did, but I didn’t believe it because you’re a damn bludger and its stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. There are a lot of easier ways to cure poison, chickenshit.”

“Yeah, like from an antidote chem. You don’t think I know that?!” I kicked at the dirt beneath my feet. “Well, I haven’t been able to find one, you duckhead! The damn game keeps ducking me in my watertight bunghole!”

“This isn’t a bloody damn game! Look at me, chickenshit. Look at my body. Or what’s left of it. How do you think I got like this? From flying around the galaxy playing Dog like Brahma? No, I did that other chook’s dirty work. I’ve always down the dirty work, dogdammit.” Bawkman shook his head and pinched his brow. “You got a lot to learn, Earthling, and it’s about time you started listening.”

“I would start listening,” I pulled out my combat spur and took a swipe through the air, “if you would ducking tell me something!”

“Be careful what you wish for, chickenshit,” Bawkman said as he removed his greasy shirt, exposing a more rippled breast than I would have guessed. “You’re about to get your first official lesson from yours truly.”

He threw his shirt to the ground, then flexed his wings. The cybernetic one made a whirring noise as the motors inside flexed his synthetic bicep, then went silent as he brought his thumbs to rest at his hips and scratched at the dirt with his gleaming spur. Bawkman sucked in a breath, did a little jig, and barked out a crow amplified by one of his many modifications. “Ba-kawk! Cock-a-doodle-do!”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so I just belted back my best mating call. “Honk!”

Bawkman raised a mechanical eyebrow and glared at me with that blazing red eye of his. “Holy bloody hell, chickenshit. Did your egg roll out the basket and crack its shell? We’re here to fight, not duck!”

“Are you trying to get us killed? Think before you say something stupid like that!” Dumbass squealed from its safe space inside my head. “He’s level 47! Look at him, he’s like the Universal Soldier of chickens! We can’t take that much Van Damage while we’re poisoned!”

“Something tells me he’s just trying to prove a point Dumbass.” I examined the guy as he strutted and clucked, damn near kicking up a dust storm as he did. He looked like he meant business, and an icy shiver ran down my spine. “And maybe showboat a little. But yeah, maybe I should think before I act or something. You got any pointers?”

“Try not to get hit, I guess?”

My mind floated back to the description of my Saurian Skin Duster, and the faint edges of a dumb idea formed in my mind. “Okay, get hit. Got it.”

“That’s not what I said you mor—”

I howled and rushed towards Bawkman, hoping to catch him off guard while he was busy getting hard in that stupid mating dance of his. He didn’t seem to notice, or care. As I closed on in for the attack, I raised my combat spur above my head, ready to bring it down in a sweeping strike.

Right before I was about to rid my world of Len Bawkman, he sidestepped my charge, and I went flying headfirst into that cloud of dirt. The Gallus drove a sharp kick into my hand while I was airborne, impaling the meat of my palm with his spur and causing my health bar to drop perilously into the red. I lost the grip on my spur as I hit the ground, and it went skittering across the gravel until it landed at Bawkman’s feet.

A heard a gasp from Weevul and gurgle from Thulg that sounded suspiciously like laughter. It pissed me off.

“Well, well,” said Bawkman in his gravelly voice as he kicked away my weapon. “Looks like chickenshit here got himself a high tier skill and thinks he knows everything. Blinky blink won’t save you from me.”

“Yeah? Well, that was some dance,” I laughed. “You must get your rocks off picking on poor, under leveled chickenshits like me, eh?”

“Ba-kawk!” Bawkman clucked and drove his metal fist into the palm of his other hand. “Enough ducking around. Listen closely, this may be the most important bloody damn lesson I teach you—”

I threw myself to my feet and leapt at Bawkman as I kicked out toward his head with my webbed foot. He easily swatted it away, ducked and drove a fist into my ribcage. Air rushed out of my lungs as the blow compressed my chest, and I let out a croaking wheeze as a quarter of my remaining health disappeared in a flash of red.

New Milestone: When She Blows, She Blows!

Congratulations! You have just had the wind knocked out of you! Good luck trying to breathe for the next few seconds as your diaphragm spasms like the back of a fat construction worker after twenty years on the job. Just use proper lifting techniques, people. It’s not that hard to ask for help.

I gasped as I fought for air, but Bawkman didn’t care. He just kept on coming. He grabbed me by my shirt and threw me across the pen like a rag doll. Then he was on me in an instant, pummeling my chest with a flurry of lightning quick strikes before he threw me again. The man’s strength was unbelievable. As I flew threw the air, I instinctively flapped my arms like an idiot, despite knowing I couldn’t fly anymore, and even though I didn’t exactly take off, I generated enough lift to get my feet under me as I hit the ground, my momentum driving me backwards and throwing up a wave of gravel and dung as I slid to a stop.

A flashing prompt appeared on my heads up display.

BLINK SKILL READY

I stepped forward and raised both of my fists like I was about to box the ducking madchicken, then focused on the space directly behind him. I cocked my right arm back and squeezed my fists like I was trying to turn a rock to dust. The next thing I knew, I was standing directly behind Bawkman, looking right at the back of his head. I grinned like the idiot I was as I drove my clenched fist into the combination of chicken and metal as hard as I could.

There was a loud ping noise as I connected, and I felt a searing pain shoot up my arm and into my elbow. I honked in agony and saw that my stupid idea for an attack had backfired. My health was now so low it was hard to tell I even had any left.

Bawkman spun around and grabbed me by the neck. “I bloody dare you to try that again.”

I let out a nervous laugh. “Hehe. That didn’t work out too well did it. Maybe I should try something else?”

“Like what, chickenshit?”

“Um, hmm. Hadn’t thought that far ahead. How about this?” I raised my finger and poked him right in the good eye.

He roared and threw me to the ground, then drove a series of kicks into my gut that sent my vision flashing red. I felt like I was about to throw up everything I had ever eaten in my life—every fish, worm, every plastic six-pack yoke I had ever swallowed by accident. Those were absolute hell on the way out, by the way.

Do not recommend.

By the time Bawkman had finished getting his anger at the galaxy out on my fat gut, spittle dripped from his beak like he had space rabies. All I could see was red. But, my skill bar was full again, so in a move contrary to my evolutionary will to live, I activated my blink skill and went for one last attack.

I flashed out of existence, and reappeared exactly where I had aimed, except Bawkman was nowhere to be found. He reappeared in a wisp of smoke, ten feet away from me with a cyborg fist pointed at my head.

“You think you’re the only one that knows that trick, chickenshit,” he snarled, as a duster not unlike my own appeared out of nowhere. “Don’t look so damn surprised. It’s called transmogrification, you fool, and it’s a built in skill. You should really check all the settings before you try to save the bloody galaxy.”

“Save the… galaxy? I just want my ducking pond back!”

“Yeah? Well, too bloody bad.” A flash of flame erupted from behind his wrist, sending his metal hand rocketing across the distance between us. The prosthetic grabbed me by the neck and dragged me across the pen until it pressed me up against the stone stable, flame still erupting from the fist.

Bawkman strolled up to me, his coat flapping in the wind. “That first lesson was to never to judge a book by its cover, by the way.”

“I see that,” I choked out. “What’s the second?”

“Weevul?” Bawkman held out a hand. “Give me that damn brow ring.”

I heard Weevul skitter over. “Here, sir. Many sorry for, uh, not being nice to stinky Bawkman. You forgive and no kill?”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever, mate.” He took the ring and held it in front of my eye, then he screamed, “The second lesson is to always put on your best loot as soon as you get it!” and rammed the dull point of the ring down through my the meat of my eyebrow.

“Holy duck!” I belted. “That hurts like a motherducker.”

He patted me on the chest. “Equip your good shit next time and I won’t have to do it for you.”

My brow burned like fire, yet despite the pain, I could literally feel the added strength flowing through me, giving me a sudden dose of big duck energy that felt both refreshing and terrifying.

Bawkman clicked his beak. “Feel better, chickenshit?”

“Uh, yeah. I do, actually.”

“Good.” He grinned and let me go. In one swift flourish that made the showman alpha duck inside me jealous, Len Bawkman snatched the hand out of the hair, brought it back to his metal stump and twisted it back on. “Now, it’s time for your third and final lesson of the day. Instead of suffering through the mildest case of Curculian poisoning I’ve even seen like an unwanted chick, you can heal simple status effects by sleeping, chickenshit!”

“Really? Dumbass didn’t mention that,” I said, somehow not at all surprised. “Um, how do I do that... exactly?”

“Like I said, study the damn settings. Learn them like the feathers on the back of your wings. Sometimes, they can mean the difference between living and dying.” He flexed his hand a few times, then let out a weary sigh. “Alright, that’s enough of acting like a cock for today. You see that tab that says STATUS?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Select it with your eyes, then scroll to the bottom and—this is real complicated, so pay bloody good attention—select the one that says SLEEP.”

I did as he told. And I found it. Almost instantly, it was literally staring me right in the face. And sure enough, as soon as I selected it, I got a warning message telling me it would incapacitate me for four and a half hours. I thought that was an odd number. Maybe it was the ideal amount of sleep for space chicken or something? Either way, the most important thing was that the notice confirmed it would cure all my minor status effects upon waking. “So… now what?”

“Click yes, you ducking chickenshit!”

I punched the button with my eyes, and then everything went black.