When all else fails, even the softest of cotton balls can be an effective weapon.
The bathroom door splintered inward, and John filled the frame, a beastly smirk on his lips. Ajax scrambled back, his shoulder screaming from a shattered bone socket. He slipped on the grimy tile, his back hitting the pedestal sink with a painful crack. The countertop was littered with cheap travel toiletries and a plastic bag of cotton balls.
John advanced slowly. "Nowhere left to run, little man."
Ajax's eyes darted around, looking for a weapon. A bar of soap? Too slippery. A toothbrush? Too thin. Then his eyes locked on the bag of cotton balls, 'Cotton balls it is.'
"Just end it," Ajax croaked painfully, playing for time, his hand inching sideways toward the bag.
John laughed, manically. "Rest assured, I won't." He barred his teeth, "Not after what you did to my pack."
As John reached for him, Ajax moved. He didn't throw a punch. Instead, he ripped open the bag of cotton balls and, with a roar, lunged forward and upward, cramming the thing—cotton balls and all—directly into John's open, laughing maw.
The effect was instantaneous. John's laugh turned into a sputtering, gagging cough.
The cotton balls weren't a solid object he could easily swallow or spit out; it was a dry, fibrous mass that filled his entire oral cavity, clinging to his tongue and the roof of his mouth. The plastic wrapper acted as a nose water-sealer further suffocating him.
He clawed at Ajax, his eyes wide with surprise and rage, trying to hawk up the material only to get swatted away by Ajax's other hand. All that movement, however, caused the dry fibers to settle, getting stuck deeper. The wrapper unshakenly pressed on John's snout.
He was still strong, still a threat. He swiped at Ajax, knocking him back against the sink again. But for a precious second, John was stunned by his gagging reflex.
That was the only opening Ajax needed.
Ajax slammed his palm onto the cold-tap handle of the faucet. His injured hand snaked towards the cheap, detachable shower hose attachment from its cradle. With a thumb on the trigger, he aimed the nozzle not at John's face, but directly at a torn hole of the cotton ball wrapper.
He squeezed the hose trigger.
A high-pressure jet of cold water erupted from the nozzle entering the wrapper and into John's facial orifices. Then the moment the water hit the cotton, the trap was sprung.
The fluffy, airy mass instantly became a dense, heavy plug like a damp cloth. The reflex honed from years of breaking bodies kicked in, and his uninjured arm adjusted itself exactly how it would when Ajax waterboarded people.
John sputtered in his spot, gagging sounds filled the air, as he frantically shot his limbs in all directions. Though soon, it all stopped. His final struggle subsided. His eyes bulged with primal terror, losing their sheen.
In the end, it wasn't the cotton, the water, or the plastic wrapper holding it all together that killed John. It was the sensation that it brought.
Exposed to a fluid, his body involuntarily triggered a powerful gag reflex called laryngospasm. A reflex that completely shuts down the airway to prevent water from entering and can cause death by asphyxiation.
Proving Ajax's theory that when all else fails, even the softest of cotton balls can be an effective weapon.
He loosened his grip on the big man, watching as John's body limply crashed into the flimsy shower curtain. A few seconds later he collapsed, turning spastic on the tiled floor like a beheaded poultry—dead.
Well, temporarily dead that is.
Ajax stood over him, chest heaving, shoulder ground to dust, hose still dripping onto the tile. Silence descended on the small room, broken only by the quiet patter of water.
"Hu-bubububu-buh!" Ajax shook his head, raising the hose and spraying water on his face.
He wasn't out of the woods yet.
Ajax sprinted out of the cheap washroom and into the bar filled with almost fifty dead werewolves and many firearms scattered about, then out of the bar exit; where a familiar bouncer stood.
The bouncer spotted him fast, "Hey—SLAM!
Ajax shoved his head on a wall beside him. He grabbed the guard's collar with his other, defunct arm, "Shut up and listen, grunt. You heard the gunfire, you know what went down there and I am alive to tell the tale, that makes me—dangerous. Now give me my steel Glock and all the mags you took with it, or I swear I will go in there, get every unused bullet—by hand if I have to—and shoot 'em all in you."
The bouncer's tough-guy act melted, "Listen m-man, I am just a part-timer. Your gun is in the back office, it's like a minute's walk,"—he produced a key ring from his pocket—"here have the keys."
"Where is the office?"
"To the right," he frantically pointed his shaky hands, "the first green door attached to the building."
"Scram." Ajax released the guy and ran towards the office.
◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇
Bang! Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang! Bang!
Without the adrenaline, reloading his Glock with a broken arm hurt like a bitch, but he will be damned if that stopped him from smoking the werewolves with at least two silver bullets.
Ajax walked into the washroom to kill the final member of this pack—John. Ajax pointed his gun at the heart of the thing, with a deafening—bang!—a hole appeared on his chest.
He almost walked away from the toilet when he turned to the mirror. The thought of walking out in public in his sorry state not being the best idea, occurred to him. So he looked to see if he was presentable or not.
"Same old, same old blonde hair, icy-gray eyes, perfect. Now, six-feet-three-inches height check, dashing looks check, badass alerting bu-zzzzz-ing loudly…" Ajax muttered lowering his gaze and grimacing, "Clean and fragrant, u-uncheck."
Ajax walked out of the room to find some good clothes.
After methodically purging the world from yet another man-eating pack of werewolves, savagely going through their wardrobe, and taking a shower next to a corpse, Ajax stepped out of the bar again—this time, with the peace and quiet necessary to finally register his rather painful shoulder.
He grimaced at how unnaturally his muscles and bones from elbow down were just… hanging from his shoulder, his entire shoulder socket was crushed, "Fuck, I hate suppression fields!"