It's like a wave breaking over him, if he'd ever really had any experience with waves or beaches or anything of the kind. The first surge of percussive force is enough to topple him, the blast of heat scalding and immediate. He can almost feel his skin crackle as it blisters. He rolls over, blindly, away from the worst of the flames.

Some immeasurable distance away, someone's crying.

He's on his back, watching the Pauper's Drop sign smolder into ash.

He has to get up.

He has to move.

Tim closes his eyes and groans and tries to lever himself to his feet. High above, with a high, splintering sound, the glass has begun to crack.

The drill slams into the patch of floor that had, two seconds ago, been occupied by Tim's head, shrieking as it tears easily into the worn wood floors of Neptune's Bounty. Tim rolls, pitching violently to his feet, staggering unevenly ahead in a single-minded effort to get the fuck away from that thing someone apparently decided was worth pissing off.

The Big Daddy roars, the drill droning in eerie counterpoint to the its owner's low, menacing rumble.

Big Daddy. Someone here has a really sick sense of humor.

Tim picks himself up, eyeing the thing opposite him warily. It'll come at him quick, ramming him into the wall in what will doubtless be a perfectly calculated crushing maneuver. Once it comes at him, he'll have to throw himself to side. He'll have to move quick. He can't move too soon. It'll just adjust for the difference in angle and oh god, fuck, how is this his life right now? He doesn't deal with things like this. Not physical things, nothing as tangible and there as this.

His breath catches in his throat as the Daddy's eyes blink crimson and it charges.