John dived to the side as a gigantic pink tongue shot from the Whowie’s mouth like a rocket. The earth exploded where he had just been stood and a crater was left there as dirt rained down around him. The audience cheered wildly.

  Rolling to the side and jumping to his feet, John stared helplessly at his opponent. The Whowie was a massive lizard with a frog’s head. It had six oversized legs that didn’t seem like they belonged on its body. Muscles rippled from underneath its dark green skin and purple veins popped out as it moved.

  Raising his hands, John summoned his revolvers and squeezed both triggers.

  Click. Click.

  The hammer struck but no round was expelled from the chamber. John looked at the guns in frustration, why wouldn’t they fire? How the hell was he supposed to reload them?

  “What’s wrong with you?” A familiar voice shouted from the seating, “shoot the damned thing!”

  Turning towards the sound, John’s temper flared as his eyes rested on Buck, who was sitting on the front row. Truffle was sat on his lap and cheering enthusiastically.

  “I don’t know how to reload!” He shouted back, seriously considering pausing the fight to break the triceratops’ jaw.

  “Twist the cylinder!” Buck called back.

  John had already tried to remove the cylinder. That was one of the first things he had done. He knew how a revolver was supposed to work, he wasn’t an idiot.

  Still, with so few options, he did as he was instructed and twisted the cylinder of the black metal weapon. Gold runes lit up all along the barrel and the same thing happened to the second gun as he repeated the process.

  “What the hell?” He muttered.

  He remembered that the guns did have golden runes on them when he’d first drawn them from the card, but why would twisting the barrel turn them on and off? Was it a safety feature? He’d have to ask Buck after the battle, assuming he survived, and assuming that Buck could still talk after John beat him senseless.

  With a wild grin splitting his face, John turned back to his opponent. It was about time he got in this fight. He raised his dual pistols… but there was nothing there.

  Looking wildly around the tent, he couldn't see hide nor hair of the scaled homunculus.

  Our challenger seems a little bewildered folks! The jovial voice rang out to the laughter of the audience, oh where, oh where could the Whowie be… perhaps it’s BEHIND YOU!

  John jumped, twisting around as the loud voice cackled both in his mind and through, what he assumed was, some kind of PA speaker. Of course, the Whowie was still nowhere in sight and John’s face flushed scarlet with anger and embarrassment as the audience laughed at his reaction.

  He tried to keep them out of his mind. They were obviously cruel aliens to enjoy this farcical spectacle. Maybe he’d shoot a few of them later.

  WHOOSH.

  Air blasted past John’s ear and he dived away from it on instinct, turning back just in time to see the air ripple as something warped the space where he had just been standing.

  Did the Whowie have some kind of invisibility? Following the rippling wind, John fired a bullet in the direction he believed it came from and a feral scream rocked the tent.

  Got ya, he thought as he raised his second revolver and unloaded alternate rounds from both weapons at the spot where his first bullet had struck.

  The crowd cheered for him, but after the first couple of bullets struck, the next few ripped through the edge of the tent.

  His invisible enemy had moved.

  “Look out boss!” Truffle shouted from the stands, but John reacted too slowly as something heavy forced him to the ground.

  He felt his ribcage crack as the Whowie’s invisibility faded and, to John’s horror, he was trapped underneath one of its enormous, muscular legs.

  The air had been squeezed from his lungs and he struggled to breath under the crushing weight of the kaiju. Still, he had to try something or else it was all over. He needed to survive; Anne had told him to win and he certainly wasn’t going to die on the first day. How pathetic would that be?

  John’s left arm was trapped underneath the giant webbed foot, but his right arm was free, even if it did hurt like hell.

  He lifted it and began firing his pistol as fast as he could. The Whowie screamed as purple blood splatted from the underside of its belly, painting John in its glowing fluids.

  The smell was atrocious.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Nostrils burning, he continued to fire until the beast retreated, and he breathed in deeply as the weight lifted from his chest.

  Breathing in, though necessary, was not pleasant. John’s ribs must have broken from the initial hit and each breath caused a sharp pain to resonate within his torso.

  Stumbling to his feet, he noticed that his left arm wouldn’t move properly. It was dislocated at the shoulder.

  John needed the use of both of his arms.

  Acting on instinct more than with rational thought, John ran, shoulder first, into the wall which separated the stands from the pit. He’d seen it plenty of times in movies. Some juiced up, action hero would ram his arm into a wall to fix a dislocation.

  However, in lieu of a miraculous, Hollywood-style recovery, John screamed.

  It turned out that action hero logic wasn’t always true, who’d have thought? He felt a nasty, grating click and he could move his arm a little bit better. However, the trade-off of severe pain and possible lasting damage probably wasn’t worth the limited movement he gained. That would have to be a problem for future John though.

  Gritting his teeth, he began searching for the Whowie once more. He needed to end this charade so he could work on healing himself without the threat of imminent death.

  The kaiju had turned invisible once again and John lost sight of it. The monster had every possible advantage over him. It was big, it was strong, and it could turn invisible. The perfect apex predator.

  There was just one thing that John had that the beast didn’t: the ability to think critically. He knew that he’d shot the Whowie multiple times so far and that it was bleeding – his skin was a testament to that.

  So, he looked to the floor and found the purple trail of blood leading away from the ground he’d been stomped into. He followed the blood with his eyes until he found a growing pool of the stuff in the far corner of the tent.

  That was where he aimed his revolver as he began firing at the location.

  The Whowie screamed once more, it was high pitched and feral. John’s ears pounded with the pain of the loud noise and the crowd cheered enthusiastically at it.

  Those sadistic bastards, he thought as he continued firing at the spot.

  Just like before, his bullets began ripping through the tent, but this time John was ready.

  Searching the ground quickly and diligently, he saw a dripping trail of blood and followed it. The Whowie seemed to panic as it began zigzagging and jumping around, but John did not let up.

  No matter where the beast went, his bullets followed. It almost felt too easy as he fired round after round from pistols that never seemed to run out of ammo.

  This Frontier Justice card is awesome! He thought as he continued shooting the kaiju.

  Blood gushed from its many wounds as John continued to fire round after round at the beast. It had to die sometime soon, it was more hole than body by now, at least that was what he surmised from the amount of purple blood that gushed from its body like an open faucet.

  WHACK.

  Something soft and wet collided with John, forcing him off his feet. He dropped his guns and they returned to the card inside his solar plexus.

  Attempting to sit up, John realised that he was wrapped in the soft, fleshy thing. It had to be the Whowie’s tongue. It had lashed out with it a few times before, but this was the first time it actually made contact.

  John suppressed the urge to scream as the sticky tongue squeezed his chest, crushing his already broken ribs. He was wrapped up like Cleopatra in a fancy carpet, and then he began to move.

  His body was lifted from the floor and he flew through the air as the invisible tongue shot back into the kaiju’s mouth. Everything went dark as his body was sucked down the beast’s gullet.

  The warm stench inside the Whowie was suffocating and it smelled like rotted meat and vomit from the end of a boozy night out. He gagged, but at least the crushing pressure on his ribs had subsided. John couldn’t see anything, and as he forced himself into a sitting position he hit his head on something gooey.

  Gross! He thought, trying hard to keep his mouth closed as the sticky, wet, interior liquid dripped all around him.

  He placed his hand on the floor of whatever part of the beast he was in, the stomach maybe? However, he had to pull it away quickly as his skin began to sizzle.

  Stomach acid burned through his bodysuit and began breaking down his skin. His flesh burned, turning red, and the smell was just awful.

  Thrusting his good arm out, he summoned his revolver again and began blasting rounds at the Whowie from the inside.

  I am not going to die like this!

  He fired round after round into the darkness until he heard a thundering sound coming from further within the seven-meter-long kaiju.

  Oh no, he thought, realising what was about to happen just as stomach acid, vomit and bile crashed into him. He was forced out of the stomach region as he held his breath and hoped it would all be over soon.

  He’d never wondered what it felt like to be flushed down a toilet, but now he knew. His body banged and battered against the inside of the Whowie as he was flushed away with the current of stinking, burning liquid.

  Then, for a moment, he felt weightless as he was projectile vomited out of the beast’s mouth, flying through the air.

  The crowd cheered with even more gusto than before as the soaked human was launched across the circus tent and into the stands.

  “Oh my, that stench is utterly atrocious!” A fat, Jabba The Hut-looking alien cried as he crash landed into a wooden bench in the mid-section of the stands.

  “You’re not allowed in the stands plebian!” Someone else yelled at him as he tried to regain his focus. His eyes saw stars which marred his vision as his broken body struggled to do what his brain commanded. He attempted to pistol whip the rude fuck but his arm slid straight through it like there was nothing there. The image distorted for a moment before settling.

  Holograms?

  It looks like our contestant wants to take a selfie with the audience. I’m sorry contestant, but you still have a Whowie to fight!

  Sitting on the floor of the stands as alien holograms moved away from him in a disgusted manner, John rubbed his head before a purple light enveloped him and suddenly he was sitting in the middle of the pit once again.

  The Whowie stood above him, bleeding heavily and looking extremely angry.

  Skill Unlocked:

  Locate Weakness

  “Fuck this!” John shouted, anger rising through him as the events of the past few minutes caused his blood pressure to rise.

  Pulling out both pistols, even though his left arm could barely move, he blasted the homunculus repeatedly in the face. It was as if suddenly he knew exactly where to aim to cause maximum damage.

  Using his right-hand weapon, he aimed for its eyes and one after the other they burst from within their sockets, covering him in clear goop.

  He didn’t stop there though, he pulled the triggers again and again until the Whowie’s face was nothing but a bloody, pulpy mess of broken skull and ravaged skin.

  Then, when the beast finally fell to the ground defeated, he stood up gingerly and raised his good arm at the crowd, levelling his revolver at Buck.