He was small. He knew that. Not to mention physically weak, compared even to Ray, and by all rights fragile compared to the likes of Dominic or even Thoma. The only way he could effectively win in any physical competition was to use his head, his practice, and even his size to his advantage. You can’t charge in headfirst. He could almost hear himself saying it to Emma all over again, explaining tactics to her. Her weak point, for all her agility and speed.
Use your head. Know your opponent.
Even now, even here, it had worked for him so far, very effectively save for once. His opponents weren’t clever, weren’t hard to outsmart. They’d been robbed of their wits, by and large, and left as half-sentient saboteurs of their own would-be salvation. The others who hadn’t been affected had seemed mostly able to handle the situation so far, but there was one thing the infected had in spades that the masters and their servants seemed to lack: numbers. The populace was, by and large, ordinary civilians. Though none of them were ordinary anymore, it seemed.
It came as no surprise to find another young man engaging a group of them, holding his own -- alone? Norman shrank back behind the corner he was at, hoping he hadn’t been noticed, and watched. The stranger seemed capable, but a little on the losing side, at a disadvantage for his efforts to spare his assailants from real harm. He had to find a way to help. What could he do, how could he...maybe if he drew them off the man, distracted them, they could both get away? Divide and conquer, he’d told Emma. He searched for something, anything, to help him. Take advantage of your surroundings. The terrain, objects, anything. Don’t see them for what they are, see them for what they could be.
He hardly had the chance to think before he spotted a second group of their opponents, flanking the stranger from the narrow street across from Norman. His heart sank.
You can’t charge in headfirst. He was small, weak, fragile, and he knew better. But even so...
“Behind you!” Courage as hot as sunlight seized him (adrenaline, he’d have recognized if he thought about it) and he charged the foremost of the reinforcements from the side. He spun to face the figure and planted his foot in front of the man’s. It would have seemed an almost ludicrous suggestion to him, ten minutes before, to even try to trip someone so much bigger, but now it was all he could think to do. He pivoted with the man’s fall, grabbing at his shoulder and heaving to throw the other’s weight down.
In the end, it was the afflicted man’s own momentum that doomed him. He went flailing to the ground, face meeting the asphalt, and Norman hardly managed to pull himself away in time not to be caught in the fall or latched onto by the rest of them.
He backed toward the militant man, his only apparent ally in this swarm. For an instant, the thought struck him as funny -- a total stranger, his sole friend in the world at this particular moment -- but he hardly had the time to question the baseless notion that he could trust this man. His desperate intervention had slowed and startled the second group for a few moments, at least broken up their charge and scattered them. With luck on his side, he might have managed to get away again, before they closed in, but --
“We need to go!” An obvious enough statement. Another of the infected, already, had set her sights on him instead, and he brought up his arms to guard, ready to throw her weight off to the side, past his shoulder. The only advantage he’d had was the limited element of surprise, and that was gone now. It was an idiotic move, exactly what he’d have told Emma not to do, and exactly what she’d have done anyway.
Ah, well. Sorry, Ray.
@panzerjagd
