It was clever. A stroke of genius, even. Amy would have never thought someone would infest her atmosphere with millions of brainflies, nibbling at her mental energy. Her plasma anomalies were destroying them systematically. It was like an immune response, but there were so many. Death by a thousand cuts was probably the idea. Whoever came up with this deserved some very special attention. John Crow, probably.

He’d be getting it.

Inside the eyescraper, her biomass had gone mostly numb thanks to the higher concentration of bugs. Spawning an avatar and generally doing anything near the building would be difficult. She wouldn’t be getting Norman out of there so she could go nuclear on these guys. No yet, at least. Amy could vaguely perceive him if she focused. So, she reallocated some focus to the battle avatar’s area of influence … unfortunately for the hapless sap happily hammering her into the ground.

The peeping buildings around her had poured out brainflies that stuck close to them like a stench. That one guy assaulting her had deployed no such protection.

Sucked to be him.

Amy dislodged her head from the crater and looked up at him. With half her face missing, its inner workings were exposed. She didn’t have a skeleton, or any other clearly defined structure. Being translucent, she should have had nothing to see in there, but for whatever reason? The exposed area was rife with swirling, squirming things.. Even at this distance, they tickled and prickled at his sanity. One spiral tightened, a beady red glow embedded in its core. It was where her eye would have been, had he not destroyed it. This ... nò̴̡͓̆t eye̷̓͜ burned it's gaze deep into his psyche. He almost forgot about her predatory grin. He almost forgot about everything. Was this a defensive mechanism, or something worse?

“W-WHAT ARE YOU LOOKIN’ AT, GIRLIE?” he demanded, pushing through the effect. “YOU WANNA TRY SEIN’?”

He pounded all the harder, smashing avatar and brainflies alike. Nonetheless, temperature dropped as she drew in energy. Never did she break eye contact with him. Her atmosphere hummed hauntingly.

*wmm WMM WMM WMMM …*

“M-Mr. Brusque! W-we’re all supposed to deploy fly screens!” stammered a smaller building.

Brusque took a swing at it, which was narrowly dodged.

“DON’T NEED IT!” he raged. “I’M JUST ABOUT DONE WITH THIS LITTLE-!”

Amy caught his hammer tentacle with brute strength and aerokinesis. Her eyes alit with delight.

*WRRRRM!*

Spiraling rings of red wrung their way up his tentacle. They mangled it. Mr. Brusque lurched back as she rose up. The atmospheric hum silenced for a moment.

Then chaos took its throne.

*Kaka-KOOOOOOOM!*

*B-BOOOM!*

*KA-KOOOM!*

Ravening blasts of exotic lightning ravaged peeping buildings and cityscape alike. They came in a plethora of forms, from booming blooms to structures far more bizarre. Like otherworldly creatures chilling to the eye, their ferocious lifespans began and ended in a blazing flash. Amy floated in the midst of it all like an orchestrator of doom.

The only thing louder than the thunder was was her laughter.

John Crow drank in every detail of the bedlam as best he could. Her lightning wasn’t nearly as bright as it could be, but for most nyctals? It was borderline agony.

The snipers couldn’t do much with the blinding light in their sights. She was operating beyond expected parameters. He had reason to believe she was just warming up, but this couldn’t last forever. She had to take a breather sooner or later.

Besides, he’d overprepared.

Brainflies fried by the tens of thousands as her eldritch lightning crashed across the peeping buildings’ insect shields. Even their lightning rods melted like mercury. The battered buildings burned, billowing black smoke. Atmospheric anomalies sucked up the fires, recycling the energy. The Earth shook under her power.

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Mr. Brusque had enough.

He pushed his building forth, powering through her lightning. Flames engulfed its exterior, but he kept going. The burning building was a menace to behold. He raised one of the remaining hammer tentacles.

Something felt lighter.

The tentacle should have swung, but he didn’t see or feel it move. He glanced at it. Did a double take. The tentacle was gone. Nothing but a stub remained. He looked back at Amy. She was gone too.

He caught movement at the side of his eyes.

Ah, there was his tentacle. And there was Amy. Lifting it. Swinging it. Bludgeoning his squad mates and licking off rooftops as she heaved its trail of destruction towards him. Aerokinesis kept it aloft in her grip.

He raised two of his last main limbs to shield himself. The tentacles collided in an ear-shattering shockwave, but his held firm.

Wait ... he actually blocked that?

“HAHA!” laughed Mr. Brusque. “ALL THAT AND YOU CAN’T LAND A HIT? SO MUCH FOR THE MIGHTY AM-!”

She disappeared. Streaks of neon red shot across his vison. She reappeared, reclaiming the tentacle before it could even fall.

Amy dragged away his tentacle without a word, flying close to the ground where her lightning had conveniently cleared a path through the brainflies.

“WHERE ARE YOU GOING? WE’RE NOT DONE!” Mr. Brusque declared.

He tried to snatch at her … except there was nothing to snatch with. He looked down. All his tentacles were strewn about the street.

Mr. Brusque growled and urged his building forward. Its mollusk-like foot didn’t respond. He extended an eye stalk to check the area. It was missing several vital connections and just generally looked like sushi. Amy had been busy. Oh, and that attempt to move forward? All it did was tip him over.

“Wait-WAIT-WAAIIT! UUUUWAAAAAAAAAAH!”

His building hit the ground with a great cloud of dust.

Why weren’t the snipers laying down suppressive fire? Did they dislike him that much? No, of course not! He was an MVP alpha male! If anyone hated him, it was ‘cause they ain’t him.

“SNIPERS! WHAT ARE YOU EVEN DOING RIGHT NOW!?” he roared, the slightest quaver of fear tainting his voice. “LIGHTSHOW’S DYING DOWN! GET ON TOP OF THIS, MR. GUTTER!”

"My name is Mr. Perk, sIr," came the calm, vaguely sardonic voice of a sniper through his bio radio. “You said she was all yours, sIr.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right,” nodded Mr. Brusque. “HEY! WHAT’S WITH THE TONE!? YOUR NAME IS MR. GUTTER CAUSE I SAY IT'S MR. GUTTER!”

“There is no 'Mr. Gutter' under our employ, sIr," dismissed that insubordinate such and such. "Just deploy your fly screen, sIr. Also, use your radio. She doesn’t have to hear everything you say on loudspeaker.”

“DON’T TALK BACK TO ME! I OUTRANK YOU!” Mr. Bursque raged. “AND WHERE’S THAT DRAUGHT COMING FROM!?!?”

“Why are you asking ME why there’s a draught in YOUR control room!?” Mr. Perk finally snapped.

Mr. Brusque was about to retort. He stopped himself. Come to think of it, how was there a draught? Why was the chilly air flow going warm? Since when had the room turned red?

He spotted a hole in the wall.

“Oh …”

The warmth concentrated behind him. He felt it at the back of his neck, like body heat, but hotter.

“Oh …”

He swung around for a punch. His body froze against his will. A thin, red tendril had connected to his forehead. Inches from his face was that open-mawed grin. Those wild, wide eyes with flickering pupils. He could practically feel malice radiating off of her like the dreaded sunlight.

“Sir, did an avatar breach your control room?” asked Mr. Perk.

Amy’s hair sprang up, twitching with every syllable of the question as it tasted the radio waves. Some of her locks wrapped around his bio radio, inspecting it.

He felt a question in his head: How to use the sound caster again? The appropriate memories bubbled up. Why was he thinking about this? Was she probing his mind?

She leaned towards his radio’s ear. Words came out of her, even if her mouth didn’t move.

“WHY ARE YOU TALKING TO ME? JUST SHOOT HER!”

Mr. Brusque flinched. Was that supposed to be his voice? What a joke! He did NOT sound like some puffed up manchild! Plus, it still had that slight, Amy-specific quality that he could only describe as ‘echoey’. What kind of idiot would fall for-?

“Whatever you say, Sir,” sighed Mr. Perk with the tone of an eye-roll.

Mr. Brusque ground his teeth. It was hard being the only competent person besides Mr. Crow. His frustration went to good use, pushing him through whatever she’d done to his beautiful muscles stop responding. Through grit and determination, he slowly lifted his hand, reaching for the tendril attached to his forehead. He would tear it off.

Then, he would punch her.

Mr. Brusque had almost reached it when Amy gently, smilingly, grabbed his wrist and moved his hand back to his side.

The tooth-grinding grew verrry audible.

She slinked around him, hair tendrils slithering across his skull. His mind raced. It was like that moment when one tripped and fell. Everything slowed down as the brain jumped into panic mode mid-fall. This time, he had a hunch it wasn’t natural, especially since he wasn’t afraid of her enough to panic. Definitely not afraid in the slightest, actually. Nope. Nuh uh. Just when he’d gotten used to the sensation of 50 thoughts a second, she amped his mind into hyperdrive.

Having circled like a shark, Amy stood before him. Her hair tentacles spread so wide that they stretched her head with them. That fanged smile warped all the bigger. She ascended and suspended herself in the air. For the first time, her hair didn’t look like hair. Her face didn’t read as a face. It all looked like jaws. His eyes no longer identified a girl. A predator was all they saw.

Okay. Maybe he was scared.

“̴͇͛͌L̸͖͍̜̊͊͒et’̴̨̋̓̇ṡ̵̹͕̟ hà̴͎͚̗̊v̷͉̠̈́̈́e̴̘͚͚̓ a̶̛͇͕̅̅͜ lḯ̷̙̉tt̷͍̮̖̓le̴̛͈͆ fū̴̡̗́n,̶̘̘̀ ̵͚̟͝Mr.̵̯̤͔̈͋ ̸̲͓̍Bru̷̡̐sq̷̗̌ú̵̠̹͓̾e,̴̮̇̒͑”̴͖̫̂̀͌ she purred.

Her tentacles engulfed him.