Rusty ran and ran, following the narrow street as it turned. He spotted a group of Hepsguard up ahead, five visible spear carriers, and called out to them: "Help! There's a big'n'ugly thing chasing me!"

The Hepsguard had no idea what he was saying, but they didn't need to. The Gol'ur-Klem brute tailing him was impossible to ignore.

The brute, meanwhile, stopped at the sight of the guards. This was a group that it had been instructed to kill, so it raised its club into the air once more, and roared.

"Civilian!" the lead called out to Rusty. "Get behind us!"

"What?" Rusty said as he ran past the group, doing exactly he was asked.

"Good! Keep going!" the guard instructed.

Rusty, having no idea what the dude was saying, stopped to watch the guards engage the giant standing at the fork in the road.

"C'mon, you turd!" Rusty called out. "These guys're going to poke you where it hurts, yeah?!"

The creature strode forward, swinging its huge club in great sweeps, slamming the walls. The Hepsguard formed a line, raised their spears, and advanced. Then one of the guards hurled their spear at the creature, azure flame at the tip surging brightly. The brute batted the spear away, sending the weapon flying into the air. But the end of its giant club was now ablaze. The spear did not fall to the ground as expected, either. Instead, it zipped back to the guard who had thrown it, who caught the weapon one-handed.

"Cool!" Rusty exclaimed. It was a neat trick.

The brute was closing space. It would have been within swinging distance, except its club was being consumed from the tip down. The brute continued to swing the weapon nonetheless, flames crackling and whooshing. The Hepsguard backed up, Rusty keeping equidistant as they retreated.

The lead Hepsguard brought his arm back, ready to throw his own spear, when the wall of the building on their left exploded, knocking the entire row of Hespguard down like bowling pins. Rusty staggered as a hail of wooden shrapnel blasted over him. It was like being pelted with a thousand needles.

He quickly regained his footing as the maelstrom subsided, looking to see what had happened to the guards, and, more importantly, where the giant had gone. There was a second brute on the road now, standing over the fallen soldiers, club raised high. The first giant was still there, but its smoldering club was a fraction of its original size. The creature cast the stub aside, bellowing angrily as it did.

The second brute paused, looked at its unarmed companion, then handed its weapon over. Rusty was totally frozen in place. One of the Hepsguard on the ground tried to get up, but the new arrival stepped on the man, pinning him to the ground.

"Ger-har-gra," the new giant said to the one that had been chasing Rusty. It lifted the foot that was pinning the guard, then brought it down hard.

Rusty brought both hands up to his face. "No!"

The creature turned to him, drawn to the outburst. "Gar?"

"Oh, you bastard," Rusty said. His paralysis broke. It was time to run again.

So, he ran, away from the brutes, away from the guards who had tried to protect him. A part of him knew fleeing like this was cowardly, but what choice did he have? What weapon did he have? The giant had squished that poor soldier like an ant!

The brutes watched Rusty sprinting away. The second giant pointed at the first, then at the club. "Har-gor-rehar," it said, then pointed at the fleeing Rusty.

The club-wielding Gol'ur-Klem grunted an acknowledgement. It stepped over the fallen warriors and resumed the pursuit of its original target: the puny-running-human that had managed to get away.

For now. Said puny-running-human would not be getting away again.

Meanwhile, the new giant set to work finishing the remaining unconscious guards. It did this exercise as a matter of obedience. The creature did have a job to do, and it would do it well.

Rusty felt the brute closing the gap, the vibration from its footfalls gaining in intensity. He ran like the devil was chasing him (an apt analogy, if said devil was eight-feet tall and carried half a tree instead of a pitchfork). There were figures in the haze ahead, giants and guards clashing. Rusty re-doubled his pace. If he could get there, maybe he could use the chaos to lose the brute chasing him. Then he'd have other bad guys to worry about, and there seemed to be a whole bunch of them in the fog, but, as Sonic had said to him, one thing at a time.

The melee was only a dozen yards or less away when the creature pursuing him knew it was close enough to end the game. It swung its giant club at Rusty in a half-circle, down then up, with the intention to both crush the puny-running-human and send him flying. The swing was very good, very accurate. The brute's Klem-Core would have been proud.

Rusty woofed hard as the club hit him in the soft space between his ribs and hips. Amazingly, it didn't hurt; his abs clenched, his internal organs jostled a little, but that was it. Had he seen the blow coming, he would have prepared for death – scratch that, he should have prepared for death. A blow like the one delivered by the brute should have torn him in two.

But it didn't. Instead, Rusty flew as the creature intended (although it was disappointed puny-running-human was still whole... it had hoped for something more spectacular), the world spinning wildly as he went upward into the smoke and over the destroyed landscape. He was spinning and spinning, as though he'd been put into an aerial tumble dryer. His hands flailed, but there was nothing to grab. He was high up, and totally out of control.

However, as we are well aware, this land does have gravity, and as is the case in places with gravity, what goes up must come down. And down Rusty came, splatting into a tree. Now he had something to flail against... of sorts. The problem was the tree, while tall, was young, its branches soft and yielding. Those he grabbed snapped in his hands, covering him with sap. He continued to fall, this time getting facefuls of leaves, foliage, and bark. Attempts at grabbing a purchase of the trunk were futile, so he bounced all the way down, eventually landing with an almighty thump into the ground.

There he lay, on his back, coughing and spluttering. He tried to brush his face and head free of any detritus, but his hair caught in his sap-covered hands, and he almost screamed in his inadvertent trichotillomania. The litany of cuss words that followed were bad enough that (and I should not need to tell this by now) I will not repeat them here. He moved his hands more slowly, eventually pulling them free. The quantity of hair liberated from his scalp was a wonder to behold. More cussing followed.

He rolled over onto his front, put his hands on the ground (immediately regretting the action – dirt and pebbles stuck fast to his hair-lined palms like gritty superglue), and pulled himself to his knees. He was, apart from what he'd done to himself, completely, totally unhurt. "Wow," he said. There were no scratches, no scrapes, no bits poking out, no bones broken, muscles not even so much as twitching at the ordeal. "What the heck is going on?"

He surveyed his landing zone. There was dust coming from the ground in tiny dust-devils, but no wind was picking it up. He'd seen something like this before: vents of steam coming out of the ground in some New Zealand place he couldn't remember the name of. Here, though, it wasn't water vapor coming up. It was dirt, and it streamed upward with no obvious driver.

"That is weird," he said, oblivious to the irony of the much-larger situation at hand. He stood up, and thought: Now what? He had absolutely no idea where he was. The haze was thick, visibility severely constrained. But... was it lighter on his left? Yes, it was definitely lighter there. And the dust storm was moving to his right, so... perhaps he would be out of the storm if he headed toward the lighter area? Made sense, right?

So, this is what he did. And the haze did get lighter as he trekked down what seemed to be the base of a hill, all the while scraping his hands free of sap-glued hair and dirt, and kicking the trapped debris from his sandals. There was a flattened area up ahead through the trees, what appeared to be a wide and trampled expanse, so he made a beeline for it.

The air cleared suddenly, completely, as though he had passed through a curtain, and he froze. He could see very well now, spotting a bunch of ugly giants on the flattened fields ahead, maybe twenty or less. Godzillagator still occupied the horizon like a breathing, fur-covered mountain. A shallow but wide river, which was probably much prettier under normal circumstances, wended its way to his left.

Then his attention was immediately taken by the sight of one of the 'bad guys' seemingly floating over the river, chasing something... no, someone, splashing across manically, desperately trying to flee, and the person was familiar –

Rusty's jaw dropped. It's the fat old hippy!

That was when sky flashed brightly, and the air exploded.