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Erin cracks her neck, and slips on her knuckledusters. The chain link gate rolls open, to the roars of the Thorn. God, she’s always wanted to do this.
The deathclaw moves slowly, then all at once. Rushes her with arms outstretched. Lord knows how mutated reptiles learned to clothesline people, but she learned to duck it from an old raider. Stabbing her spiked knuckles into its ribs is her own idea, the few good punches for the those engorged, visible veins. The leathery hide barely gives, and then it’s whirling around with those ten-inch claws. She jumps back, and the claws only graze her jacket. That almost turns out to be just as bad, because the damn things are hooked, and she’s flinged into the far cement wall.
When she hits the floor, she’s lost in pain for a moment- blinded, and she’ll black and blue and tender for weeks, but it doesn’t seem like anything’s broken. Anything important right now, anyways. Deathclaw rushes for her again, claws down, it’s gonna swing. Erin sprints to meet it, and drops when it lunges, slides under its leaping legs. She doesn’t have much time.
Courier Six grabs one of the back spines, and holds on. The abomination swings side to side before it realizes it can’t reach its own back, but by then she’s hoisted herself between the two largest spines, thrown her legs over its shoulders. The deathclaw spins, slams her against a wall, and snaps one of its spines in the process, knocks the air from her lungs.
Next step’s the scary part. Erin slides her right leg down- her good one- tilts a little sideways and moves her grip from the spines to the horns. It gets her good in the forearm- but she powers through it with a sort of stubbornness only found in forces of nature- and pries off her left leg. Or, the boot and metal apparatus within. Left leg’s the one she doesn’t have.
The deathclaw reaches for her- with the right arm this time- and Erin grabs the wrist, and wrenches it back, tightening her thigh and the upper arm trapped under it to its side. She doesn’t have time to revel in the satisfying crack as the bone snaps, or the deathclaw’s scream, but she enjoys the way intelligent, bipedal creatures instinctively cradle crippled limbs. Its gives her the opening to force its head back (the kind of raw muscle she doesn’t usually have, but triple her usual dose of Buffout seems to have done just the trick). Six stabs both of its eyes, before she hooks two fingers into its nostrils, and with her other hand, strikes the throat- again, and again, and again.
It’s at that point it occurs to her how fucking stupid she is, how wrong this could go. Clearing Quarry Junction doesn’t make her invincible- she was on the mining equipment the whole damn time, mother and alpha never even saw her. It’s only a flitting thought, though, as the deathclaw at hand gets hold of her leg and throws her off. She’s glad she hits the chain link; that kind of force would have shattered something.
The deathclaw comes at her one more time, but she’s ready for it. Its eyes are bleeding down its face and her knuckles, and though it can smell the blood on her, it can’t see, and it can’t hear over the cheers and jeers echoing in the concrete pit. She anticipates its swipe from the left, and dodges under the broken right arm. She hits it in the stomach as she passes, and though it doesn’t do much damage at all, it accomplishes exactly what she meant it to. The left arm crosses its body to catch her, but she’s stepped out of the way.
Scratch that. This is the scary part.
In one bound, she grabs it by the horns, and jerks down. Like any hunched creature, deathclaws have a low centre of gravity, pretty far forward. With all her (inconsequential, compared to the size of the beast) body weight, and its own tendency to rest on all fours, the deathclaw finds it easier to fall forward than fight back. That means occupying its only working arm with supporting itself, and since the thing is so used to those being the weapons of choice, it barely knows how deadly that maw she’s currently staring into can be. Erin holds on with one hand while it rights itself, and it doesn’t notice that she’s taken hold of the broken one. Not until one of its own claws plunges into its skull, that is.
There’s no muscle inside the skull to clench up, so its almost surprisingly easy to follow up that jab through the bleeding eye socket with several more. Just like that, the deathclaw’s toppling forward again, and Six has the good sense to get out of the way. Really her only good sense today, it seems.
Everything hurts when she stands, and she runs a bloody hand through her hair to the exuberance of the Thorn.
And, most importantly: Red Lucy, beautiful and adrenaline-drunk, clapping slowly from her catwalk. Erin makes a particular bow for her- and collapses when the blood rushes to her head.