How we think the fight will go

It was nighttime on the Raft when the slake moth materialized above the command tower of the USS Enterprise. It perched for a moment, testing the air with intangible antennae. Its bug-like carapace quivered with excitement: it had found someone tasty…

Below decks, Raven sat hunched over his workbench, filing away at a blade of pure, green glass. Light from a nearby lamp danced off of the blade, throwing green shapes on the cabin walls. This knife would be his finest yet: imperceptible to metal detectors and crafted to an edge sharp enough to cut bone. Outside the small porthole, the sound of a crowd engaging in glossolalia seemed to carry just a little further in warm summer breeze.

But as Raven finished working on the blade, the gentle murmur of the crowd on the adjoining ship turned to shrieks of terror. Curious, Raven stood—his gigantic frame all but filling the tiny room—and moved over toward the porthole. People were running around in an obvious panic, holding their heads in their hands and jumping off the sides of the ship. An attack? Was it the Mafia? Maybe a rival religious cult or an incorporated drug cartel? Within moments Raven had maneuvered through the small corridors and passages of the Enterprise and emerged onto the deck. Two ships away, a black monstrosity the size of a bear was perched atop a man, who stood unsettlingly still. Raven couldn’t make out much detail on the creature as he bounded over ropes and boxes, jumping from ship-to-ship. It looked something like a cockroach and a velociraptor, with some humanoid features thrown in for good measure.

Raven arrived at the scene and plunked down his briefcase; the very briefcase that contained a nuclear warhead attached to his heart. If this thing was going to take him down, dammit, it was going to fry as well. Now that he was closer to the creature, he could make out numerous chitinous arms, all wrapped around the enthralled man, with a large, snake-like proboscis wrapping around his head and disappearing down the man’s throat. The man’s eyes were wide, focused on the huge wings that spread out above him. A black slime dripped from the victim’s mouth.

Bending slowly so as not to attract the attention of the monster, Raven reached for the throwing knife in his boot. With one beautiful motion, Raven arched his back and threw the blade with deadly precision, which flipped end-over-end until it stuck in the thorax of the creature. The slake moth reacted, withdrawing its proboscis from the man’s mouth with a sickening sluuuurp. Dropping the limp body on the deck, it turned to face Raven, wings folded. Its most recent prey just lay there, still breathing, eyes wide.

The Aleut warrior steeled himself, ready for the beast to launch itself forward any minute. Instead it simply stood upright on its large hind legs and unfolded its massive wings. The last thought Raven had was how beautiful the wings were; how colors, textures, concepts, and notions both familiar and foreign swirled around in an incomprehensible pattern of extra-dimensional magnificence. The slake moth sauntered up to the paralyzed Aleut, grabbing hold of his massive frame with legs, arms, tentacles, and any number of other appendages. Slowly, almost sensually, the proboscis snaked out of the slake moth’s pincer-lined mouth and into Raven’s gaping maw. It shuddered with delight as it began to feast upon Raven’s consciousness; it had found a delicious mind to devour!

Predicted Winner: Slake Moth (Don’t forget, too: since the slake moth paralyzes its foe as opposed to killing it, Raven’s tactical nuke doesn’t even come into play in this fight)