by Nick Ryder
It was still impossible to stop any rogue attacks though. When Cara’s beam of pure energy went wide and hit one of her own villagers, her face visibly crumbled.
That was when I chose to act, because if Cara lost to Mart then I wasn’t sure any number of creatures would be able to save us. His shield had tipped him over the edge into the range of being too powerful.
Capturing him alive wasn’t an option anymore, as desperately as I wanted to be able to.
So I joined the fight.
I launched myself from the perch in the top of the room I’d been hiding on. Everyone had been so busy with the fight they had no idea what I’d done. It was only when the huge wingspan cast shadows on the ground that people looked up.
I beamed at my girls, whose eyes widened at the sight of my body. Still more mutant than human despite all the changes I’d made, it wasn’t what I’d have picked for my final form. But for a fight? It was perfect.
Mart was who I headed for with my divebomb, the claws of a wolf extended from my fingers and the razor sharp teeth that felt too big for my mouth bared. I didn’t think I could bring myself to actually bite into another human, but I’d liked the idea of the fangs too much to get rid of them.
The most important aspects of my build were the ones that weren’t visible. I hadn’t had time to give myself fire breath, but I had intensely good eyesight, smell and reflexes. That meant that when Mart aimed his energy beam straight at me, I’d dodged to the side and out of the way before he had time to fire.
It was nowhere near as powerful as the decapitated chief’s superpower had been, but it was enough to give me an edge.
Now two on one, Mart didn’t stand a chance. His face changed, and he realized that he was trapped.
Cara lunged forward with her halberd, and he didn’t have time to dodge it properly. It caught him in the side, ripping into the flesh of his stomach and making blood spill over the edge and onto the ground.
When he put his hand to his side to feel how badly he was hurt, I got in close enough to claw at his face. My claw went deep into his cheek until it hit bone and I pulled away.
I landed roughly against the metal wall, not used to how the mechanics worked exactly. I’d only had my brain in this body for less than ten minutes, and I was working in such a small space that the wings weren’t really ideal.
My landing didn’t stop me in my tracks at all. I pulled weapons from my pocket, hating that I couldn’t use the guns I had strapped there because of the enclosed space. The ricochet was more dangerous than anything. Instead I had to use knives, which weren’t something I’d trained with extensively. I was a guns and grenades kind of guy.
The knives weren’t even sharper than my claws, but even though I’d watched my girls use their claws to devastating effect, I still didn’t feel comfortable going into a fight without a weapon in my hand.
I’d completely underestimated the impact of going into a body that I wasn’t used to, and how much of an impact the messing with my girl’s personalities had actually had on how they’d accepted their new bodies.
Now wasn’t the time for a crisis about how badly I’d wanted this and was struggling to accept it now it had happened though.
I had Mart to kill, before my body was destroyed and my facility lost.
My daggers went straight for his neck, and he only just moved in time. They grazed his neck. There was no stopping me though. I kept on him, knives clashing against his swords as he raised them to block me. He was definitely better at hand-to-hand combat like this, but he was two-against-one, and that was where his downfall was bound to come.
He raised a shield to block a sudden attack from Cara, and the heat made the feathers on my tucked wings ruffle.
“What the fuck?” I hissed, unable to glare at her to ask what the fuck she was doing. She could have just as easily hit me as Mart with the attack.
She didn’t respond, and instead lunged forward with the halberd. Mart blocked her attack, leaving his right side open for me to dash forward. I dropped the knives and extended my claws, pushing them all the way through his neck, stabbing rather than slicing.
For a moment it was like nothing had happened. He still raised his hands to block Cara’s attack, but instead of the swords stopping the halberd, they were easily knocked from his hands and onto the ground. His eyes stayed open and he coughed once before the life left his body.
“No!” a voice called over the fighting. “No! Cara, you said. You promised.”
I turned to Daisy, who had burst into the room and had tears flowing down her face. She was staring at Mart, who had collapsed to the ground when I pulled my bloody claws back, with wide eyes.
“My dad … my daddy. You promised,” she screamed again.
Cara turned around to look at the girl with dull eyes, but she didn’t look surprised. “I was lying.”
I looked between them, feeling like an idiot as my brain tried to figure out exactly what had happened. The fighting continued between the tribe and my girls, creatures, and the villagers. They didn’t have time to look at the girl who’d just stormed into their room, because one moment of distraction and they lost their lives.
“What’s going on?”
Cara lifted her palm and sent a beam of energy toward the far wall. An alarm began to sound, and sprinklers began pouring water from the ceiling, soaking everyone. Still the fighting continued.
She raised her halberd, and her hair danced with static.
“No,” I cried. “You can’t.” Images of floating dead rabbits passed before my eyes. My girls laying face down on the ground, their fur on end. “Don’t, Cara. Fuck you, don’t you fucking dare.”
“I’m sorry.”
And then the blue sparks in her hair were everywhere as she closed her eyes and sent a shockwave of pure power through the soaked, metal room, and through everyone inside it.
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