Maxine sped towards the location of those men that had taken her mother. Even though she was filled with rage, she didn't loose her wits entirely and scanned the place where her mother was being held in advance to get a lay of the land. She found them in an abandoned house at the edge of town. Her mother was tied to a chair and was surrounded by all seven of the men that she found earlier. However one of them seemed aware of her spying on them with her spiritual sense and showed a smile as he said something to his compatriots in russian. No doubt it was to tell them that she was coming. They began pulling out their high tech weapons and started to position themselves around her mother.
Maxine stopped when she was about one hundred feet from the house and used her spiritual sense to talk to the one that detected her. Told him to release her mother or she would kill them all using her spiritual sense. Her message seemed to spook him for a moment. Apparently he had never communicated via spiritual sense before.
After he recovered from his initial surprise, he answered her. He didn't believe she would attack them while they had her mother and even tried to offer, what he thought, were rather nice benefits for defecting to Russia. However she understood that he was indirectly threatening to kill her mother. The four normal men were already positioned strategically around her mother and were watching all of the windows and doors.
Maxine rushed towards the house without any more delays. She locked on to each of the seven men with her spiritual sense as she formed fourteen essence darts in the air around her. She fired two essence darts at each of the men while aiming for their vitals.
The expressions of the three russian bronze stage essence cultivators switched to panic instantly as they dodged for their lives. The four normal men were not nearly fast enough to dodge and got hit in both the head and heart by Maxine's essence darts. Fortunately one of the cultivators had been hit in the left shoulder with her essence dart. Maxine smiled as she had made the essence darts that went for the cultivators in a different way. They were of the exploding variety. When it detonated, it took a big chunk out of the man's chest as well as detaching his arm from his body. It would be a feat of willpower if the man could still fight in that condition.
Before any of them could recover, Maxine smashed through a wall and into the house. She quickly finished off already wounded man by cutting his neck open. She didn't want to have to deal with a half-dead man pulling off a sneak attack in the middle of the fight. The other two were already had their plasma guns out and Maxine couldn't dodge at this range. However at this range she didn't need to be to worried about that as she slashed out with her left blade to cut the barrels of the weapons in half. She only half succeeded with that attack as one of them managed to dodge away.
Maxine pressed her advantage and unleashed a flurry of stabs and slashes at the both of them. She didn't want them to have an opportunity to fight back. Because if they did, she may not be able to win especially with how well they were able to dodge her attacks.
Maxine created a shadow clone during her assault and had it carry her mother out of here. She couldn't take the risk of her getting hurt in the melee. Her mother only had a red mark on her neck and unconscious as her shadow clone collected her. Maxine had it run out of the hole that Maxine had made coming in with her mother in it's arms. She had directed it to run away towards the center of the city. Fortunately she had figured out how to make it have a semblance of intelligence the past few days and it could follow simple commands.
Now that her mother was out of the building, she focused on killing both of them. However no matter what she did they always managed to avoid her attacks at the last instant. If this kept up, the bastard that had a working plasma gun may find an opportunity to shoot her with it. She forced an opening by unleashing a Crescent Moon Blitz at point blank at the both of them. Their eyes widened and the man that had sensed her spiritual sense before lept infront of his armed comerade and took the blast. Maxine was momentarily blinded by the bloody spray and barely noticed the last of her opponents fleeing through the front door. She chased after him, but her blood ran cold when she noticed that he was running after her much slower shadow clone.
Although Maxine was faster than her opponent, she still couldn't catch up to him before he got into firing range of her shadow clone that was holding her mother. She saw him take aim while running and she began to dispair. Her clone will disappear as soon as it recieves a certain ammount of damage and it was running over eighty miles per hour. Her mother would be lucky to only loose a limb and be horribly disfigured.
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Her opponent fired his plasma gun and the round seemed to move in slow motion as it sailed towards the head of her shadow clone. NO!!! Maxine tried to take control of it to dodge, but it was just too slow. The plasma round made a direct hit and her shadow clone burst into a cloud of quickly disappearing grey mist. By some cruel twist of fate, her mother had regained consciousness just moments before and Maxine had gotten to hear her mother scream when she hit the ground. Maxine ignored the bastard that shot her shadow clone and returned her blades to her shadow as she swiftly rushed towards her mother before any more damage could be done. Unfortunately her mother had bounced off of the ground and it had put her into a violent spin. The second time she hit the ground her speed had almost halved and Maxine was close enough to hear bones breaking over her mother's screams. Maxine managed to scoop her mother up before she could suffer any more injuries and quickly came to a stop.
Maxine quickly used her spiritual sense to scan her mother's injuries and was horrified by what she found. Both of her arms were broken, she had alot of internal bleeding and several of her organs had been damaged. If nothing were done, her mother would die very soon and she couldn't move her for fear of making her wounds worse. Maxine held her mother while she cried helplessly. It took a few minutes before she heard the sound of an ambulance.
However even in this agrieved state, Maxine still had her spiritual sense locked on to the last russian, whom was fleeing for his life. If he hadn't, she would have killed him by now.
Maxine waited for the ambulance to arrive and for the EMTs to take her mother towards the nearest hospital. However she wasn't going to follow it. There wasn't anything she could do other than worry for her mother at the hospital anyways.
Maxine's rage reignited as she hid her essence fluctuations and charged towards the survivor that fled at full speed. He had foolishly stopped to hide in a large cave in the middle of the woods. It took her almost ten minutes to reach his hiding spot. When she did, Maxine crept silently towards him, but she didn't go inside of the cave. She used her shadow essence to create dozens of tendrils inside of it to quickly restrain him. She hadn't used this move earlier because her tendrils were slower than the men were. However inside the confines of a narrow cave, it didn't matter if he was faster if the tendrils appeared all around him.
Only when he couldn't move, did Maxine come inside of the cave. She walked straight up to him and started beating him viciously. She was venting out her rage as well as dulling his mind for what she intended next. After his face became a swollen mess blood, she slapped her hand on top of his head and stabbed into his mind with her spiritual sense to rip his very soul to asunder as she pillaged his mind for memories. She was searching for the one that gave him his orders. She wanted to know who she should kill if her mother died.
Maxine found several memories on what he had done the past few weeks. Apparently they were sent here to get not just to get her to come to their country, but to kidnap Emily as well. However Emily had almost a dozen of collared cultivators in her vicinity at all times based on this man's memories. The general knew that they were here, but he didn't kill or capture them. Why?!? Maxine delved deeper into this man's memories as she searched for answers, but he didn't have the answers that she sought. She only managed to find the one that gave them this assingment. They knew him as colonel Adreevich. Unfortunately he was still in russia and out of her reach for now. Maxine released the poor man and saw that he was bleeding out of every orafice on his head. The man was dead in every sense of the word.
Maxine didn't dally any longer and rushed towards the hospital that the EMTs had told her where they were taking her mother. She only retracted her essence armor just before entering it and sat down in the hospital waiting room after telling them who she was. She was worried for her mother and the adrenaline that had helped keep her concern for her mother out of her mind earlier was gone now. However that worry was at the forefront of her mind and as the time passed by, it only made her feel worse. While she waited, she thought about some things. She went over her recently acquired memories from that man and became more certain that the general wouldn't have put that kind of protective detail on Emily unless he knew something was coming. He wasn't the kind of man to waste resources like that. What she really wanted to know is why he hadn't even assinged a single cultivator to monitor her mother.
Amanda had arrived and was walking towards Maxine. Why isn't Emily with her? Emily was the one person that could heal her mother enough that she wouldn't die. However she knew that the general wouldn't risk the kidnapping of his only family member doing that when he thought that those men were still about. Although Maxine understood it, she still hated him for it.
When Amanda got close enough, Maxine stood up and recieved a hug from her. Maxine dug her face into Amanda's shoulder and started crying in an attempt to let out all of the fear out of her system. They stood there for several minutes before Maxine stopped crying. Amanda said a few words of comfort and sat down with Maxine. However that did little to soothe Maxine's worried heart and she could only wait as the surgeons tried to save her mother's life.