I could have switched into my Jacob disguise before going out there. Honestly, in some ways, maybe I should have. But hearing what I had, and picking up the implications of it, had made me want to go out there as myself. Maybe that was stupid, emotional, dangerous in multiple ways. But I honestly didn't care that much. I was going to beat the shit out of these people as myself, as a girl. Any further consequences that might end up stemming from that I would deal with when the time came. For now, what these fucks needed was my foot going through their skulls.
And the first thing I did, the instant the head piece of shit ordered them to attack us, was to freeze my staff in midair, floating there horizontally. Then I took a quick step forward, pivoting around the outstretched arm of the nearest guy who was reaching for me. Using my boost, I lashed out with a kick after finishing my pivot, slamming my foot into his back with enough force to knock him forward and down a bit so that his forehead slammed into my staff with a loud thunk. Then I recalled it to my hand before snapping the weapon backwards up and over my shoulder to intercept the incoming sword thrust from one of the other guys. A quick adjustment by tilting the end of the staff up pointed it toward a third guy just as he was pointing a pistol at me. The concussive blast from my staff knocked the gun from his hand, while he gave a loud curse.
I could have summoned ghosts to help with all this. It would've been easier to sic an army on these people. But again, I wanted to do this by myself, as myself. Besides, I had a feeling I might want to keep Jacob the Necromancer separate from the blonde girl who was beating people up with a staff. It was already going to be hard enough to stop people from knowing who I really was.
Several more shots from Sarah had already filled the air, and I could feel Sands doing her own work behind me. But I couldn't pay too much attention to that. I trusted the other girls to deal with their part of this. They already knew what they were doing without any help or advice from me.
Instead, I released my staff once more before using my rocket burst power to throw myself forward so I could grab the next guy who had been coming at me. He was taken by surprise when I slammed into him, dropping his pistol with a grunt. But he was even more surprised a second later when I transformed into my lion shape. I'd become very good at using the Seosten boost to speed up the transformation. What started as a grunt turned into a literal squeal of surprise and fear as the weight of my furry body knocked him to the ground. Before he could even start to react, my frying pan sized paw smacked the side of his head with enough force to crush his skull. I had a very brief thought that I might have just changed history, since I didn't check him with my stone first. I really needed to be careful about that. These guys had just pissed me off too much. I wasn't really thinking straight. Seriously, I needed to control myself.
In the background, I could see Sands give me a brief, confused look for a second and belatedly realized what that was about. My aura. It had flashed blue rather than gold, and she’d obviously noticed. Yeah, I was definitely going to have to explain that once we had an actual chance to talk.
First, I launched myself off the dead guy and clamped my teeth on the arm of a man who had been aiming at the other girl. His arm came right off in my mouth, leaving him bleeding and screaming on the ground. At least I didn't kill this one. They could survive losing a few limbs, right? Between regeneration and special prosthetics, that wasn't such a big deal to the timeline.
Whipping around so fast that my tail smacked the screaming guy in the face and knocked him back down, I took two shots from a laser rifle across my shoulder and chest. They definitely didn’t feel great, leaving stinging burns. But they also didn’t exactly slow me down that much. The guy who was holding that rifle didn’t manage to retreat fast enough to stop me from ripping the gun out of his hands, biting it in half while one of my paws smacked against his chest to knock him down with a pained yelp. With a quick jerk of my head before opening my mouth, I sent the broken rifle into the face of another guy, making him stumble backward. Then I pivoted and lunged that way. In mid-leap, I shifted back into my own form, clad in my borrowed Seosten bodysuit, and summoned my still-floating staff just before the pause ran out and it started to fall.
As the staff appeared in my hand while I was leaping toward the guy whose face had just taken the hit from the broken gun, I lashed out with it to smack that same gun sideways so it would rebound off the chest of yet another guy. A second later, I collided full-on with the one who had been hit in the face, knocking him to the ground. Just as quickly and without any sort of hesitation, I angled my staff toward the ground and used the boost on it to launch myself up and forward. Over a dozen rifles were pointed my way from every direction, but just before they could all fire, my finger found the little piece of wood in my staff and I possessed it. From their point of view, I would have just completely vanished without any warning, leaving my staff flying by itself through the air while all their laser shots cut through the space where my body had just been.
Before they could adjust to that, two of the guys were knocked down by brutal hits from Sarah’s rifle. She was being careful not to take kill-shots, but she was definitely aiming to incapacitate. As was Sands, who trapped one of those guys in a small dome made of solid rock before catching the back of another guy’s neck and pivoting to forcefully slam his face right into that same dome.
With those people suitably distracted, I popped back out of my staff just as it started to lose momentum and fall toward the ground. Landing smoothly with it held in my outstretched right hand, I pointed with my left while hitting the button on the staff to send a cloud of sand out. That cloud was immediately super-heated as it flew off into the faces of four more guys. They dropped their weapons, screaming and flailing as the heated sand burned their faces, their ears, everywhere it could reach without actually killing them. They could live, but I wanted them hurt and afraid. Maybe too afraid to do this evil shit in the future. Which could also change the timeline, to be fair, but… yeah, I really couldn’t bring myself to care as much as I should have.
That, apparently, was the moment Saign decided to involve himself once more, after having taken in what we were doing over the past few seconds. I saw his form blur suddenly while rushing right at me. He seemed to transform into a semi-liquid shape, leaving a trail of the same behind like a living river or something. It was like he himself turned into liquid, and everywhere he moved, a wave of that same liquid was left behind to splash out and down violently to either side.
In the blink of an eye, he had crossed the distance between us, one hand snapping up toward my throat. But I was quick enough to jerk my head out of the way and twist so he only managed to cut my shoulder with what turned out to be incredibly sharp claws. His hand had turned solid just in time to cut through me, while the rest of his body was still liquid. Which I found out a second later as my foot lashed out to go right through him. Before I could pull it back, however, his entire body completely reshaped itself so he was crouched to one side and his hands were where his stomach had been. That allowed him to grab my outstretched leg and pivot to hurl me sidelong through the air, straight toward one of Sands’ raised stone walls. But I recovered quickly enough to focus, first slowing my flight by making it harder for my clothes to move, then halting it completely by pausing my clothes in midair as soon as the sudden stop wouldn’t give me as much whiplash. I was halted just a half-second before I would’ve smashed into the wall.
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Even before seeing what I did to stop myself, Saign was already twisting around toward Sands. His arm grew to several times its normal length, turning into that liquid-like form in the process as he lashed it out toward her. Sands managed to turn herself back into smoke before her cloud-form spun away from the incoming water fist. Just as quickly, she became solid once more with her free hand outstretched. A second later, a wide beam of what looked like incredibly intense heat erupted from her palm. It didn’t travel very far, but it did go just far enough to hit that outstretched liquid arm, immediately boiling it and making heavy clouds of steam appear.
If Saign was more than mildly inconvenienced by that, he didn’t show it. His arm vanished before reappearing at its normal length back where he was standing as he gave Sands a brief squint.
In the meantime, while that was happening, several of his men had decided my form hovering there made a convenient target and took aim. I made sure to play up looking helpless, just before they opened fire. Five, six, seven lasers collided all over me, just as I activated my energy-absorption power. A second later, I dropped back to the ground. They stopped firing, clearly expecting to see me fall over. Instead, they were treated to a sly smirk as I let my gaze pass over them. Then I used all that energy I had just absorbed, shoving it into my Seosten boost for a supercharge just before launching myself forward with a quick shot from my staff.
The next five seconds passed in a blur. In the first second, my feet collided with the nearest guy, knocking him to the ground as I rebounded backward off him. In the next second, my right arm lashed out with the extended staff to smack into another guy’s face as he came rushing up from the side. In the third, I recalled all that burning-hot sand that had fallen to the ground after I stopped focusing on it before, turning it into a white blade-shaped cloud that tore across and through the arms of a few more guys, forcing them to drop their weapons as they were burned. In the fourth second, my backwards momentum from kicking off that first guy carried me into another who had been running up behind me. As I collided with his rushing form, I possessed the guy. Once again, from every other point of view, I would have simply vanished. In that same instant, my incoming cloud of sand enveloped the guy I had just possessed, as I immediately forced him into unconsciousness. Finally, in that last second, I used my item-growth power on the sand, making the grains large enough to very effectively obscure the body as it fell while simultaneously shaping the cloud to look like my own lion form. That lion-shaped sand was blown apart immediately as I launched myself out of the fallen guy, shifting to that shape in mid-leap. From an outside perspective, it would look like my sand had transformed into a lion.
I had the instant satisfaction of seeing several of these guys cut and run then, dropping their weapons even as I plowed right into a couple more. My lion form was big enough to knock them over, just before my paw slapped hard enough into the stomach of a third to put him down too. A couple other men actually kept themselves together enough to take aim and shoot at me. Of course, I simply absorbed it once more. But that time, instead of channeling it into my boost, I released the energy in one blast. Just to add style, I did so by opening my mouth and roaring, expelling the energy I’d just absorbed through the roar so it would erupt from my mouth. To those guys, I had just tanked their shots before literally roaring a wide-beam energy blast back at them. I had intentionally stretched it out enough to hit as many of them as possible so it would hurt them without actually killing any. Burning and injuring, however, I felt no such compunctions against.
Even the ones who weren't actually hit by my mouth-projected laser still reeled under the deafening sound of the roar. Seriously, I was a big lion right then, which was capable of producing a pretty loud roar all on its own. And I might have added to that by channeling just a little of that energy I had absorbed into making the sound louder. Enough to seriously rattle the windows up and down the street. And, most likely, enough to empty at least a few of these guys’ bladders.
Sands, meanwhile, had apparently picked up another new trick of her own that I hadn't seen before. Her hand snapped out, launching what looked like a glass bowling ball toward the nearest guy. As it collided with his chest, the man was sucked into the thing. He literally shrank down upon impact, screaming as he was pulled inside it. The ball bounced off the spot where it had hit the guy before abruptly flying off to the left to hit another when Sands pointed that way. He was absorbed as well, along with two more in rapid succession. Just like that, four guys had been shrunk down and imprisoned in that orb. She tried to get their leader too, but Saign was too quick, managing to turn back into that liquid state and launch himself sideways so all she caught was a bit of the water, or whatever it was, that he left behind.
Around that point, as two more of their little army had their guns knocked out of their hands thanks to a couple shots from Sarah, the rest of the men who hadn’t already fled had decided they'd had enough. Apparently they preferred having targets who didn't fight back this much. Staggeringly brave warriors, that lot. They broke and started to run in every direction.
Saign, for his part, made a noise of discontentment. He glared our way, expression making it clear that this wasn't the end of the situation. We had come out of nowhere and screwed up their fun, just as they were reveling in how much power they had over these people. Which, even if he hadn't made it obvious in his expression that he wasn't planning to just back off and leave us alone, I still would've planned on it. He was a piece of shit who needed to be taken down. Besides, I was pretty sure he had some connection to the rift around here. I wasn't sure what that connection was, but I didn't think people like that with such advanced technology could be here without noticing the rift.
Unfortunately, just as I was trying to decide how to go about containing the guy, he straightened up and spoke in a tone and voice that seemed completely different from the voice he had spoken before. Either he was putting on an act now, or he had been then. “Jolly good show! It has been some time since we had such a proper scrap. Very well, I suppose a moment of regrouping is in order. Tally ho, and all that.”
Sands and I both threw ourselves that way, trying to catch him in a pincer move. But in that moment, the guy launched upward. He transformed into a liquid once more, but this time that liquid became a rapidly growing cloud. A cloud which immediately transformed all his men, both the ones who had fallen and the ones who were running away, into liquid as well. That liquid joined up with the cloud, making it even larger before it all flew up and away.
Wait, no. It wasn't just the troops he had brought with him. Those had been the ones I was focused on thanks to the threat. But the man actually managed to transform all the townspeople as well. Just like that, he had grabbed all those civilians and sucked them into his cloud. I only realized belatedly what had happened. And just like that, they were all gone. Saign, his troops, and what appeared to be everyone who lived in this town. Why he hadn't been able to transform us, I wasn't sure. I would have to ask him the next time we saw the guy. Preferably in between breaking every bone I could reach with my staff.
To our great vexation and irritation, it appears we must track-follow-stalk this strange man. Why do you believe-think-imagine his demeanor and mien changed so thoroughly at the end?
My head shook as I muttered softly, “I don’t know, Wordsmith.”
Hearing a thud nearby, I turned to see Sarah, having jumped through the open window, land next to her sister. Both of the twins looked in opposite directions to take in everything around us. Seeing no sign of anyone else, they turned back to me. Sarah spoke first, her voice quiet with a single word. “Flick.”
Sands, stepping forward, put her mace away while nodding. “Yeah, we need to find those guys and save people they just kidnapped. But first, maybe you could do us a favor since we had a second to breathe?
“And tell us what the hell is going on.”