The Tales of the Legendary Mimic : Momo

Healing and Running II

“We have to move,” Lorne said. He snapped the med-kit closed and slung it over his shoulder. “Now.”

Max pushed himself to his feet with a wince, using the wall for support. His legs felt like rubber, but he forced them to cooperate. There was no time to rest.

With urgency, they packed the radio they’d been using to scan for signals. Its static crackled ominously, sometimes catching a broken fragment of a transmission—distorted voices, distant coordinates—before dissolving back into white noise. Lorne stuffed it into his backpack, tightening the straps.

They slipped out of the room and into a dim corridor, moving at a brisk, limping pace. Shadows stretched long along the walls, thrown by fires smoldering somewhere outside. Each step they took echoed faintly against the tile, too loud for comfort.

As they made their way through the estate, the sounds of the mutants drew closer. Heavy footsteps. The scraping of claws. The buzzing of oversized wings shook dust loose from the ceiling.

Their goal was clear: evade the growing horde and find a vehicle that could take them to the nearest military post. Maybe there, they’d find answers. 

The weight of their situation pressed heavily on their shoulders like a physical burden. They were low on supplies, outnumbered, and still recovering from a fight that had nearly killed them. But they knew they had to keep moving. Stopping meant dying.

Their journey through the estate was fraught with danger at every turn.

In a part of the ruins, a pair of twisted dogs stood over a mangled corpse, their skin patchy and stretched, eyes glowing with a sickly yellow light. The creatures turned toward them as one, lips peeling back to reveal rows of jagged teeth. Lorne grabbed Max’s arm and yanked him back behind a toppled cabinet.

“Don’t move,” Lorne whispered.

They held their breath as the dogs sniffed the air, claws clicking on the tile. After a tense moment, the creatures lost interest and slunk away, disappearing into the dark.

Farther ahead, they encountered mutants of all shapes and sizes—some humanoid, others warped beyond recognition. Menacing mantises with razor-sharp claws clung to ceilings and walls, their segmented heads twitching as they tracked movement below. Relentless wasps buzzed past in small swarms, their stingers dripping with venom, their shadows flitting over shattered glass and broken doors.

Max could swear he saw a zombie, and his fear of flesh-eating nearly made him go out cold.

Each encounter was a test of their resolve and resourcefulness.

They ducked behind overturned furniture, crawled under half-collapsed beams, and took narrow detours through ruined apartments just to avoid confrontation. Once, a mantis dropped from the ceiling right in front of them, its bladed limbs slicing the air inches from Lorne’s face. Max reacted on instinct, shoving Lorne aside and swinging a loose pipe he’d picked up, just enough to knock the creature off balance so they could bolt down another corridor.

Their lungs burned. Their legs ached. But fear pushed them forward.

At one point, they almost stumbled straight into the lair of a boss monster.

They rounded a corner into what had once been a grand lobby—now little more than a cavern of broken pillars and shattered glass. Near the center of the room, in a nest of bones, twisted metal, and torn fabric, something massive stirred.

A grotesque creature towered over the debris, its body a patchwork of swollen muscle and armored plates. Its arms were too long, ending in claws that dragged along the floor, carving trenches into the tile. Several eyes blinked open across its misshapen face, each one glinting with predatory hunger.

The monster drew in a slow, rumbling breath. The air seemed to vibrate.

Max froze.

Lorne reacted first.

He grabbed Max by the collar and yanked him back behind a crumbling wall just as one of the creature’s claws swung lazily in their direction. The tip of the claw scraped the surface inches from where Max’s head had been a moment before, leaving a deep gouge in the concrete.

They pressed themselves flat against the wall, hearts pounding in sync. The monster sniffed the air, its many eyes scanning the room. For a terrifying moment, Max was sure it had sensed them.

But after a few agonizing seconds, it settled back into its nest, its attention drifting elsewhere.

Lorne exhaled slowly. “We are not fighting that,” he whispered.

“Yeah,” Max breathed. “No argument here.”

feeling his hands gain weight, max checked up and sw the gauntlets equipped"Huh, No you dont i aint fighting at death door cause you hungry or something!!"

"who you talking to?" Lorne questioned with creased eyebrows

...

With painstaking care, they retreated, taking a longer route that kept as many walls as possible between them and the boss monster’s lair.

Finally—after what felt like an eternity of running, hiding, and narrowly escaping death—they slipped through a broken gate at the rear of the estate and stumbled out into the open.

The change in the air hit them first. Outside, the wind carried the scent of smoke, rust, and something foul rotting in the distance, but it was still a relief compared to the stifling corridors inside.

They followed a cracked, weed-choked path that led toward the outskirts of the neighborhood. Ruined cars lay abandoned along the roadside, some burned out, others half-crushed under fallen debris. The sky above was a dull, overcast gray, the sun hidden behind a thick veil of clouds.

Eventually, they found refuge in a half-wrecked house on the edge of the area.

The house leaned slightly to one side, its roof partially caved in. One wall was missing entirely, exposing the interior like an open wound. The windows that remained were shattered, jagged glass still clinging to the frames.

It wasn’t much—but it was something.

“This’ll have to do,” Lorne said, scanning the area before leading the way inside.

The air inside was stale, filled with the scent of dust and old decay. Broken furniture lay scattered across the floor. A moldy couch slumped in one corner, springs exposed. Faded family photos still hung crooked on one surviving wall, their smiling faces now coated in a thin layer of grime.

Max and Lorne stepped carefully over debris and settled near a relatively clear patch of floor, where the ceiling was mostly intact.

Outside, the world still growled and hissed with distant threats, but here, for the moment, the sounds were muffled.

Lorne slid down until he was sitting on the floor, legs stretched out, head tipped back. “We’ll rest here,” he said quietly. “Just for a bit. Then we figure out our next move… and how we’re getting to that military post.”

Max nodded, closing his eyes for a second. The bandage around his head itched, and his shoulder throbbed in time with his heartbeat—but he was alive.

He flexed his fingers, absently rubbing at his palm.

A faint warmth pulsed beneath his skin, right where the stinger gauntlets had wrapped around his hands. Max frowned and turned his hand over.

Between his knuckles, a thin red line of light flickered to life—just for a heartbeat—before snapping out again, like a tiny, uncontrolled laser trying to escape.

Lorne didn’t notice. His eyes were closed, his breathing finally starting to steady.

Max swallowed, staring at his trembling hand. 

For the first time, he wondered if the real monster out here might not be the mutants outside… but the thing waking up inside him. Weird enough, he could be right.