Gizzy stood with a cigar in her mouth, locked between her tusk and canine with a snarl. Her eyes glowed slightly, revolver un-holstered and western music playing, as if ready to quick-draw. The camera cut to a 6-gun and foam cowboy hat-wearing inflatable dinosaur suit, standing ready to challenge.

  “Draw... unless you’re yellah.” Gizzy growled, chewing on the cigar. The inflatable dinosaur quickly reached down, looking southward and back up, the shit-eating blank mascot face reflecting the realization that his arms couldn’t reach the gun. The camera cut to a zoomed out shot of the dinosaur suit frantically running away as the sound of shots firing preceded the intro fade.

  "Hey everybody, welcome back, my name is Sean and you’re watching Kentucky Windage." he said with a cartoonish whip crack "Yes, you read that video title right, it’s not clickbait. I am shooting a real life alien for this video…sorta. It’s gonna make sense in a minute, trust me. You’ll notice the range looks a little different today because it’s not my range. It’s a set made shocking similar to my range, and with me is The one and only, Gizzy Greggarious."

  “I do have a lot of clones, so that’s probably not true.”

  “…Really.” He whispered. “Anyway, you probably saw videos already of other Toobers featuring her by now. I was actually offered the first episode but for safety reasons I wasn’t super stoked to be the first to go somewhere alone with heavily armed aliens, but I figure if the first handful weren’t a trap and even Demo Mike didn’t make em mad enough to get zapped, I’m probably fine.” He said, turning to Gizzy, discreetly.

  “Sean here is known for many things, but one of which is all those episodes where he shoots zombie torsos and monsters and occasionally aliens, to see what would defend you from them, always for laughs, and views and entertainment but today, Sean will be shooting real alien flesh to show you what NOT to use to defend yourself against us.”

  “Yea, so…just to clarify, those were all skits, movie aliens and vampires, is this really a great idea to be demonstrating what to use and not to use against…yourself?” he asked.

  “Sean, the whole point is to show that nothing you have is gonna save you, and that if we wanted to invade and kill you, it would be so easy we would have just done it already. The fact that nobody is dead kinda proves our not wanting you guys dead. Just trust me.”

  “I mean, I’m here, so…that’s…a thing I did.” He cringed.

  “Now, this hefty covered object is no inflatable simulation or gel dummy. We’re gonna be shooting at a life-sized Ballistic Gizzy torso made from real Osirian bone and tissue, just like we print for our clones, so it’s technically not alive, but it is real Osirian body parts that just never got animated and downloaded with sentient awareness. I wanted to take the chance to demonstrate not only our guns but our body armor. Apparently humans just wear body armor, we have it with us at all times, subdermally.”

  “You people…implant armor under your skin.” He cringed again.

  “Oh no, we’re all just printed with it already in there. You may notice the size difference in that torso and myself.”

  “I did, notice. Loading a 400 pound ballistic torso with a crane definitely struck me as abnormal, even for this show.” Sean nodded. "Not by a lot though."

  “Well, that’s because the body you see talking to you, Me, has been downsized. As a hive species with bio-mech bodies and bio-printing down to an art, we pilot multiple bodies with the same consciousness and often modify or bodies for different purposes, I chose this small 6 foot 4 Charlotte model because my normal full-sized Osirian body wouldn’t be able to fire any human guns, and you wouldn’t be able to fire any of mine. That out there on the steel table is part of a normal-sized Gizzy body, with a few minor necessary changes. The nuclear reactor has been replaced by an eggplant, we added green blood in place of no blood so you could actually see the damage, as if we had blood. The organs are accurately armored but filled with nacho cheese balloons.

  “Which makes them, NACHO organs!” Sean yelled at the camera.

  “Precisely. We did fill the eyes with lights and a Halloween sound effect speaker that taunts you when you shoot it. Don't take it personally. Basically, this would accurately simulate what it would be like to shoot me, with the most powerful human guns. We even have some Sabot armor piercing rounds specially modded for extra kick.”

  “Boy, that produces a tingle. Since my accident, I’ve had the feeling someone was watching from above…turns out I was right, and most of them were aliens. Go figure. Now I was gonna suggest we shoot some outdated produce but…frankly I don’t know what Osirians eat and I didn’t wanna shoot something and then ask what they eat, find out it’s what I bought. That’s a bad answer. Could offend someone. So, what do you people eat?”

  “Meat mostly.” Giggy smirked.

  “Oh, yea that’s a far worse answer than outdated produce.

  “Now removing the tarp. You see here the one and only ballistic Gizzy Torso. Complete with transparent skin and muscle. Since this is actually obsolete bone alloy and armor, you can keep this, and shoot it all you want.”

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “That might be the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen in my life. So that’s real dead flesh?” he asked.

  “Technically never-living flesh, so yes it’s the same flesh I have and technically synthetic and also biological, but it doesn’t decay or rot and it won’t turn rancid. Believe me no wildlife is eating that and if they try you’ll find free dead wildlife.”

  “You didn’t…give one of these to Demo Mike, did you?”

  “God no, I’m not that stupid. I know what he’d be doing to it.”

  “Okay good. I’m just gonna shoot it. Can I just say this is really weirding me out? I thought we were going to be shooting an alien equivalent of a testing dummy, not literally a body, and the fact that it’s yours, and you’re shooting it with me does seem a little sketchy. This isn’t a test to see if I would shoot one of you, and I’m gonna be on a list if I agree too eagerly?”

  “Oh honey, you’re already on the watchlists, but this won’t change anything. If it makes you feel any better, some of my friends have shot me, and not one of the dummies. I didn’t even kill most of them. Now you may notice the right side is missing the subdermal armor, that’s to show the difference between the soft tissue and the armor scales, and why we have those. Again, we don’t have blood, but the organs have green fluid to represent damage, and it glows so it’s easy to see. You wanna start with the 416 Rigby?”

  “Sure. Um. So this is a rifle rated for elephant hunting, and it’s known on my channel for punching through just about anything. You wanna START there?”

  “Absolutely. Just put one on the right side between the sternum and the big alien titty.”

  “Never thought I’d hear that phrase in my life.” He said letting off a shot and feeling the thunder, as the torso jiggled slightly, mostly titty, and he waited for blood.

  “Did I hit it right?” he asked as they began approaching.

  “Yea.” She said, drawing attention to the small dot where a heart should be.

  “I don’t see any damage, did it just zip clean through.” He said checking the back. “No, I think I found the bullet, I hit the rib and it just…turned to shrapnel. That would not feel good, but we didn’t get very deep even with the Rigby and brass solids. That's mildly troubling."

  Sean peered down the scope, taking a second shot and jiggling the torso again, this time seeing a splash of green.

  “Oh, nice.” She nodded.

  “This really isn’t weirding you out, hu?” he asked

  “Nah, I get shot all the time. I have a lot of enemies.”

  “Well, that time we got the…is it even a lung?” he asked.

  “Yes, it’s a lung. We have lungs, just not for the same reasons you do. Now, despite the blood, that wouldn’t be a vital shot. I’m sorry, but we can survive that pretty easily with no medical attention. That would really hurt, though. I’d be furious. Let’s try a bigger gun, you wanna put a 700 nitro in the stomach?”

  Sean felt the thunder, as the safari rifle hucked a 70 caliber brass solid 50 yards into the abdomen. Moving it a little.

  “You know,” he puzzled. “Even on the high speed, there’s just not a lot of expansion. Usually the temporary cavity with these is huge, basketball sized, cuts the zombies in half in a few shots. Look at that slo-mo. It just looks like a 380 pistol round hitting it. The size of the torso messes with the perspective, but there is just no cavitation. It goes in and straight through the soft stuff, stops on the bone. The whole torso just ripples and absorbs the energy.”

  “That’s woven fibers in the muscle tissue. Osirians have zero body fat, so the meat is extremely durable, synthetically grown with woven strands, and our natural muscle fiber is much stronger than human meat. And I know you’re thinking it, no fat, massive rack, what’s up with that?”

  “I wasn’t, but I am now.” he sighed.

  “Coolant gel. Extra coolant for the nuclear reactors that run us. Gotta store it somewhere, the reactor is right behind them, and also I wanted huge tits. Now one would think being outside the armor they would be very vulnerable, and a coolant leak sounds pretty bad. This is just extra coolant so I can push my reactor harder than most for combat, so with the thickness of the gel and shutoff systems, that’s not a vital shot either. The best part is that we don’t have very many vitals. Everything is redundant, and the important organs themselves are armored.”

  “So what IS a vital shot?” he hesitantly asked.

  “Basically nothing with your guns. If you take out the power core, there’s a backup, the coolant loss is compensated by lowering reactor output and the brain has a backup processor so even a headshot…you know what, get the 20mm Lahti.”

  Sean aimed prone with the 7 foot anti-tank rifle, aiming for the head and letting it rip, blasting Gizzy’s hair to one side as she stood dangerous close to the muzzle, eating beef jerky without ear protection. The sharp clank send the dummy whipping back and forward, now very green across the right side of the head. They approached the dummy and examined the damage.

  “Oh wow.” He nodded. That really peeled the meat clean off, but that skull is not even dented. It’s got a little scrape, but I think that may just be the 20mm round smeared on the skull. That’s still gonna hurt, though. Sorry.” He winced.

  “Ah it’s fine. See if that was a living me, that would regenerate in no time. Good shot placement, that’s pretty flat center. Left eye is obviously toast. You’d have a really angry half blind Gizzy getting up about now. Eye shots hurt like a bitch, that really gets you mad. They take forever to grow back right."

  “So the soft tissue isn’t vital, the organs are armored, the whole chest is armored over that, the head isn’t even a killshot. Is there anything that would actually go through that metal?” he asked.

  “Anything that humans have that’s not mounted to a battleship or nuclear? No. Not a damn thing. Hit that all day with 20mm, explosive tips, armor piercing, incendiary rounds, thermite grenades, you’re just gonna whittle the meat off and be shooting metal. Sadly, this isn’t living active tissue so it won’t regenerate."

  “Well there you have it folks.” Sean said, as the sharp clink of a wench release sent a Menard’s gun safe silently dropping onto the ballistic Gizzy, folding the table. “Apparently we can’t kill these things. But if you wanna know what weapons they have to kill us, stay tuned for the next episode of Kentucky windage, yes this is a 2-parter.” He added, as a puff of flame rose up in the background, setting the table and safe on fire. As Gizzy casually hoisted the flaming torso from the wreckage, filthy but intact. “So like and subscribe while humanity still has hope of survival, my name is Sean and thanks for watching Kentucky Windage!” he said, giving a thumb’s up as a black truck flashed into view, ramming the dummy and shattering the windshield, the camouflage logo and dubbstep extro rushing in slightly too loud for the video, but that’s just my opinion.