[hider=Music] What I listened to while writing (especially the second half of) this: [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imixg3jrJS8[/youtube] Lights (Bassnectar remix) by Ellie Goulding And hmm this is a really long post, I'll try to keep it a bit more concise next time. [/hider] The tiger drew more power from Lana than the dog had. It was the difference between walking on a treadmill or jogging on one. The latter took more effort, but it was also more effective. It fractured her focus even more strongly, but it also pulled her into a type of a zone where, for the space of only a few minutes, it almost didn't matter. Like it was natural and easy to be two things at once. She was awake and [i]on[/i], accelerating through turns instead of hanging back and dragging gravity. Riding the crest of a wave. She could feel the ground through the massive paws of the tiger, pads sensitive on the grit. Sharp claws still partially extended, like nails on glass. Tension through liquid-sly muscles, heightened awareness of noise. Round ears flicked toward a new sound - music. The tiger growled low in irritation, disliking the thrumming base hijacking its vocal chords with its transferring vibration, buzzing in its ears like an annoying insect. Then K-Ton pushed his powers, sending a cone-shaped wall of soundwave at the building, and though Lana was outside of the target area, her tiger's sound sensitivity made them both suffer. The tiger roared and flinched away from the sound like it was a physical attacker, ears flattening and hair bristling. Lana, too, cried out in pain, pointlessly clapping her hands over her ears. She was feeling it through her externalized ferocity, not herself. The vibrations sent through the ground were so much stronger to that animal, and it flattened itself nearly to the ground, snarling quietly now in distaste. Lana was distracted from the emotion of ferocity which had manifested the beast in the first place, and she no longer had enough anger to hold onto it. It was slipping, she was losing her connection to it, the creature was becoming less strong. The Neon itself was also weakening in her veins. She could feel it leeching out with the pain of poison, leaving her colorless and ill, like she'd barely survived the flu. [i]It's too soon,[/i] she thought. But what she thought didn't matter. It was leaving her. The tiger evaporated, and Lana leaned forward and caught herself on her hands, so that she was on all fours, unintentionally mimicking the lost tiger's posture. Her head hung, and she focused on not retching. It was this feeling of sickness that drove her to slump over onto her side and work her second pill from her pocket, swallowing it down. She just wanted to feel [i]not this[/i]. Her ears were already better before that sick ice cube feeling of swallowing the pill, the vibration in the ground back to normal human reaction as soon as the tiger was gone. She could feel the ferocity back inside of her, but she felt alone, bereft and defenseless. Too much like herself. Human sensation was not enough, like nakedness, like losing a temporarily experienced sixth sense. She couldn't even care about the mauled-apart body inches from her, or the insane things going on around them all. When H10 had arrived, they had taken the Breakers off guard with considerable destructive force, but the Breakers had long since had time to react. Those that had Neon stashes were in full swing, and those that didn't could still handle a fight well enough. By the looks of it, Lana thought that the Breakers might know how to use Neon a little better than many of H10 did. Certainly better than she could, at least. With her head on the ground, Lana could see a girl sending out flashes of silent pale blue light that knocked down her opponents. Lana closed her eyes and hoped she wouldn't be attacked. Then the second wave of Neon hit. Again, it swept through her body like cold fire: instant rejuvenation. She forced herself to sit back upright in the throes of it, inexplicably shaking. She didn't think of the gun that had been disarmed from her hand, or the faint pain in her wrist. The blood and gore in front of her was too clear; she looked away from it uncomfortably. She'd seen a dead body before, but not like that. Certainly not something she'd been responsible for. She half wanted to vomit, and she half wanted to murder again. In either case, she didn't want to think about it. The Neon made not thinking about it easy. She could feel nascent ability, waiting and ready. What did she want? What did she feel? The tattoos on her arms itched. She watched H10 members getting put down around her, and when she looked at the Breakers, she didn't see a crew defending their turf, though it could have been argued that's all they were doing. She saw enemies, bastards, killing and torturing her family. Maybe not people she was close to, but people she'd grown up around. [i]Mine, you motherfuckers,[/i] she thought. The expression on her face twisted into one that felt unfamiliar and ugly. She wanted to cause pain, for the joy of hurting. [i]Cruelty.[/i] This time it was almost a choice, and she doubled, sliding out of herself like a yolk from an uncooked egg white. Immediately, she was aware of fractured vision. A million of everything, so that she almost couldn't see at all. She felt dizzy, like she was looking out from inside a glass golf ball. Everything was almost painfully sensitive, the air on her skin, how stillness was a vibration, how movement and distance was a taste. With the part of herself that was still normal, [i]her,[/i] she forced herself to focus, to look with with her regular eyes. A...hornet? She couldn't be sure, it was so huge. It was the size of a small scorpion. It was two inches long with a three inch wingspan, its body black and pumpkin-orange. Her brain supplied her with the information, some untraceable recall: the Asian Giant Hornet. Flying was not something she had experienced before, but the hornet knew what to do. It was like being a helicopter and being seasick at the same time, because she wasn't moving but she felt like she was. Lana pushed back into the corner and closed her eyes, focusing on the the hornet and not the strong vertigo. It lofted into the air, an upward-drifting penny. She felt the weightlessness of its legs, hanging long beneath it. She felt the heaviness of its body, dripping toward the back into a stinger pulsing with intent. [i]Yes,[/i] she agreed. [i]Let's hurt them.[/i] She sent it towards the blue-light wielding woman, but whatever the blue light was pushed the hornet back, harmlessly as a butterfly in the wind current of an oncoming car. After several approach attempts, she gave up as the hornet was repetitively cast aside without even being intentionally targeted. That's when she noticed Dante getting thrown into a car, which was a hard thing to miss, even when sharing split vision with discoball eyes. Dante was probably not in a lot of danger. It was more likely that whoever hitting him was going to get hurt. Even wearing a set of brass knuckles. (She didn't realize that Knuckle-fratboy might be the one who killed David King, and therefore if so, when on Neon, had chest-collapsing-punching-powers.) But no one got to throw fucking [i]Dante[/i] around. It was a bit too much like watching one's dad get beaten up. The psyche's understanding of power can only take so much insult. As she tried to come to his aid, Lana found that it was difficult to direct the hornet to the specific person she wanted. It was like moving a hand in the double reflection of two mirrors. Several course corrections and a careful landing later, (Brass) Knuckles had a giant hornet on the top of his head. Lana could feel the man's hair tickling the hornet's belly. It didn't matter, it didn't stand in the way. She drove the hornet's stinger down into Knuckle's head, simultaneously injecting venom as she did so. She felt his pain through intelligent, twiggy legs. It was a slow gunshot, or a hot nail piercing deep into flesh. Knuckles hollered and reacted, and she alighted into the air. It was easier now, the hornet's focus on this specific victim as if he wore a bull's eye. The hornet landed again, on bare skin this time, and stung him once more. His palm struck the hornet off too late, and she spun off into the air, unharmed. "What the fuck!?" Knuckles shouted, several pitches too high. The psychic got distracted by his friend's plight, reacting the way anyone would when a hornet is flying around another person. "Look out! Get--move here--" he coached, getting too close, hands up, possibly to use telekinesis. She stung him, too, in the palm. He didn't bother to form words, he just screamed while the hornet withdrew its too-long stinger and floated backwards to look for another spot. Lana laughed from across the lot, a perverse rush of delight wracking her. This maniacal cackle was cut off when Knuckles punched the hornet, which was a surprisingly effective move. The small body was sent spinning back, and Lana threw up in her mouth. Welts were rising, large and disfiguring, where she had stung her victims, but apart from some unpleasant side effects, they would be fine as long as they didn't have an allergic reaction. The welts would collapse into deep-sunk craters, severe nausea and suffering would plague them for awhile. Knuckles was already pushing through the blinding pain and turning back to deal with Dante, for whom time had merely been bought. Psychic hipster boy was working one-handed, but working nonetheless. While Lana's hornet was dazed, he managed to pin her location and freeze her movement, similar to how he had jammed bullets. Lana was a sitting duck, and she knew it. [i]Fucking no![/i] She pulled her awareness back from the hornet, who was useless to her now. Cruelty was a bitter, addictive foam in her mouth. Could she somehow move herself to the psychic and get him to stop? If she could just distract him for a second-- then she noticed small black dots swarming through the air. Regular wasps, but a lot of them, pouring out of a nearby nest that had never been sprayed. They were drawn, she suddenly knew, by the venom her hornet had deposited in her victims. They would cluster to the stings and repeatedly attack these marked individuals for as long as they could. Again, it might not kill them (especially since she hadn't been smart enough to target their mucus glands), but killing wasn't even what she wanted most. She wanted them to hurt. A bonus side effect was that it would basically incapacitate them. Lana had gone back to laughing, and a moment later, her hornet's body was unfrozen thanks to the distraction help of the wasps. She could feel her power waning, though. It was the Neon, it couldn't keep up, but she wasn't ready to let go of her vitriol. Her hornet landed on the crushed car, body throbbing as it rested, and Lana watched with two pairs of eyes and an infinite number of fractals while Knuckles and Psychic were mercilessly attacked by wasps. She swallowed down her last pill, a bite in her throat. She focused back on the hornet, channeled her desire to inflict pain, and forced its lethargic body back into the air. It was much harder to control for a moment, before the Neon kicked in and she was surging once again. The hornet went from listlessly zigzagging, to slicing through the air at twenty-five miles per hour, dodging Blue Light's projected corona, and then giving her a brutal kiss on the cheek. Blue Light sent out defenses, but the hornet was too close, and then lifting off and flying away, knowing that the incoming wasps would give her plenty of trouble now. The hornet entered the building, looking with initial difficulty for the Breakers. There was chaos everywhere. Gore splattering the walls, humans that barely looked like humans anymore. But when Lana focused on the hornet, time seemed to slow. Those earlier-sensed vibrations of stillness were capable of guiding her. Lana closed her eyes and gave up as many as her physical senses as she could so that she could better see and feel through the hornet, since it was inside a building she was still far away from. Maybe it was a flying insect's sped up receiving and processing power, but everything felt molasses speed, like a slow-motion scene in an action movie. It was almost too easy to weave through danger, wait until she was sure she was circling a Breaker, and then sting them. Flares of heat singed her too-fragile wings, legs broke as she received slaps. Bullets couldn't find her, and most of her victims weren't aware she was there until she'd stung them. The hornet could hear-feel-sense-whatever some wasps finding their way into the building, looking for the beacon-targets. They were drawn only to the marking venom of her hornet, so the H10 crew were probably safe as long as they didn't swat at one or something. Lana rocked, knuckles on asphalt, dumb, absent smile on her face. She felt the silkiness of her long hair hair against her neck, a sensuous waterfall that mimicked her sense of the air sliding around the hornet's body. Then, the flare. Even with her eyes closed, Lana's human body, linked to the hornet's sensitivity, felt the heat of it sear her skin, the light of it trace through her eyelids. She opened them and watched the flare disappear into the sky. She looked at KillRoy, unsure what to do. As a last minute interloper, she wasn't exactly solid on the plan. Lana was still riding Neon, but her awareness of Cruelty blinked out. Instead her mind was occupied with, [i]fuck, what now?[/i] and [i]what am I supposed to do? How do we get out?[/i] She felt herself narrow, squeeze inward, and she knew her hornet was gone. Her only remaining vision was her normal sight, and the hypersensitivity on her skin as gone. The air no longer seemed to tremble or speak to her. She was still high though, still strong and sharp. Still a little compromised. And the hornet, being gone...she felt like she'd just undergone siamese twin separation surgery. She got to her feet, moving slowly and carefully to make sure that she wasn't going to fall over. She spat out the taste of vomit, blood, hatred. Blue Light was being attacked by natural wasps now, and her smaller, erratic flashes of light were rendered ineffectual against H10. She was still up, though, swinging like a crazy person. Lana looked around, recognizing felled H10. Some were definitely dead, some were injured, and some she couldn't tell - especially a few that Blue Light had taken down just looked like they might be asleep. She went over to a nearby one. It was Jackie. Blonde, feminist Jackie, who had babysat and indoctrinated her more than once. She prodded Jackie's limp weight, tried to feel for her pulse. Lana couldn't find it with inexperienced fingers and heightened adrenaline. She grabbed Jackie's wrists and tried to pull her back, further away from the fray. Even on Neon, Lana wasn't strong enough. She stopped and stood up straight, glancing around for help. [i]Shit. What now?[/i] And panic, about death, was dropping on her. [i]Don't manifest that - don't manifest that.[/i] She could feel it trembling in her chest, trying to break out of her. She wished now that she hadn't taken another Neon pill so close to the end.