[@MelonHead]

[i]The monster seemed to know where each bullet was going to be. Its echolocation warned it at only half the speed of sound. Its frequency had to hit an object and travel back. So powerful was the creatures hearing, however, it could feel the faint traces of a change in air pressure whenever something faster than its echolocation was released. If you climb into a bath, the water rises. If a bullet enters the air at high speed, however small, there is a shift, one that the monster could detect almost instantly. This sense perhaps bordered on the supernatural, so keen it was, and the monster knew that it had at least a second to avoid any projectile coming its way. At a closer range it wouldn't be able to react in time, but at this distance it was safe. It noted how the metal thing did not have a perfect idea of where it was going to move. Perhaps...

For the second time that day, the monster made a mistake. It had taken a bite out of its own wounded gut to regenerate enough to stop the bleeding, but no mucous could glaze over the deformed scar tissue. The mucous helped it to slither over rough objects. A pointy rock caught its damaged underside as it scurried along and tore the wound afresh, just as a lucky bullet came whizzing right at it. Silently the beast ducked, the round passing so close the monster could feel the heat of it on the tips of its ears. It stopped to chew off one of the bony protrusions on its right arm which normally framed and flexed the membrane. Another bullet right for it. It threw itself to the left before charging on. To an observer, the creature would have still seemed calm. It was noiseless and punctual. On the inside, though, its hatred seethed like worms of fire. The metal thing had intruded recklessly into its forest, was tearing down its trees, attacking so freely and with impunity. Never before had the Magna Pater felt such loathing. It no longer felt the urge to kill for merely food or sport.

Beneath the tar and pitch folds of its brain, nightmares dinned like a million black bats. If it ever caught the metal thing with its pants down, so to speak, it would show it that down in the dim recesses of the Earth, there were many things too terrible for the imagination to conjur.

It was halfway to its lair, but hadn't managed to gain more distance on the enemy, having lost what little space it had earned. The mech was still three-quarters of a mile behind. A cold sun had risen up, but its light did not penetrate the foliage.

[/i]