I didn't want to push my luck and things are working now. Unfortunately I didn't take any photos of the process. I'm so happy because this was a last ditch effort before I sent my original phone back to google and would have to live with the RMA they sent me which could not be bootloader unlocked (this is a whole other issue!)
Surprisingly, my PC recognized my phone (made the little USB sound) and I was able to fastboot flash-all the newest factory image on it!! No toolkits required! When it stopped blinking, I hooked my dead phone up to my PC via a USB 3 port and held Power + vol down to boot into fastboot (the battery was still too low for the phone to boot normally - it would just show the battery icon).
Then I put a rubber band over the power button so the red led would blink (I wanted to completely drain the battery). I wound up fixing it by entering fastboot and making it display barcodes until the battery died.
