My embedded sarcasm factory may not have been able to improve my hand of fire, but since she was already working hard repairing my bruised—but otherwise magnificent—brain, she did give me a little perception boost. As the ogre brought the maul back in for another horizontal strike, I was able to step back out of its reach and find the perfect moment to shove it with my left hand, throwing fuck-ugly’s balance off, which had the effect of bringing his upper body slightly farther forward. I stuck my superheated right hand into that ugly face, igniting his coarse hair, monstrous eyebrows, and bristly, overgrown Fu Manchu. Howling in panic, the ogre began swinging his maul indiscriminately, flailing in every direction.
“Oh, shit!” I exclaimed articulately. I grabbed a pitcher of what I thought was beer from a nearby table, where a trio of lynix sat watching the now-too-thrilling show, and threw its contents at the raging brute. But, since the pitcher held a half-gallon of some caramel-colored spirit instead of beer, the raging brute quickly turned into a raging fireball.
“Shit again!” I yelled, flinching from the whoosh of heat.
Now in full panic, the ogre dropped his weapon in mid-swing—the maul went flying, narrowly missing another patron before embedding itself in a framed and autographed poster of a mostly naked Feyn model—and ran pell-mell right into an upright metal beam. The reverberating clang of skull on metal was immediately drowned out by the swoosh of fire suppressant from a multidirectional nozzle on the ceiling. Fire was a serious hazard when you lived on a ship the size of a small moon in the middle of the deepest, blackest space.
Subtle, Paige remarked.