[h3]Ranch House[/h3]


Oren had offered little in the way or resistance or disagreement to Mina's necessary, if rather brutal attempts to treat her. ANy other time such a thing would have caused her enormous concern, but by the point, everything that was awful and traumatic was sort of running together. At least she couldn't feel much of it. That put it a fair way above most of the times someone had stuck something sharp into her back in the last few weeks. Besides, by then it was kind of hard to feel that strongly about anything. She remained with her head low and her eyes shut. 

The sound of Spire's voice had over the last few weeks provoked an almost pavlovian response. Her head shot up as the smug, sneering tone of the man who'd been itching to slit her throat for weeks. She glared at him, as if she stood even the remotest chance of being threatening as she was. 

All of Erubesco's scientific ability and she was powerless against that bastard. 

If he went after her again. She would more than likely die. 

The only thing she could really have over him now was that she wasn't scared to die anymore.
She wasn't going to give that psychopath the satisfaction of her fear or distress. 

When it came down to it, that might have been the only thing in a very long time that she truly had a choice in. 

The combination of fever, painkillers, dehydration and days of sleep deprivation had already had sufficient effect on Oren's ability to think clearly, that any power nullification in effect passed by her entirely unnoticed. Had it been noticed it would probably have been met with as much indifference as anything else that day.


Meanwhile, outside, the effects were far more clearly being felt. 

'Feeling strange' was kind of a hard thing to work out for Rei. If anything, she was always feeling strange. Her whole existence was a sin against nature by definition, and no way of how she functioned was in any was congruent with how any other living thing seemed to work, an ever-shifting, transient state that was constantly re-routing itself as a means to adjust to small changes in a situation, even when her exterior gave  little indication of it. In that way, it was very hard to define 'normal'. It was also very hard to define when that was threatened. 

So indeed the first thing that gave Rei a reason to be at all concerned was when she abruptly doubled over and vomitted green blood and pieces of rat all over the roof tiles. 

That hadn't happened before. Rei frowned.

[color=a2d39c]
"...weird...I feel kind of-"[/color]

The mutant dropped off the roof like a stone and hit the ground in a manner that made on attempt to stop the impact. There was a distinct crunch on landing, but no reaction whatsoever from Rei herself. Her abilities were the only thing keeping the disparate collection of human and animal cells running as a functioning organism. Without Rei's powers, there wasn't a Rei. 

Moments after the Erubescan experiment had smashed into the ground by the kitchen window, the small form of Hel came hurrying out of the back door, pausing for a moment to stop by her usual silver-haired punching bag and viewing the scene with distaste. 

Nobody ruined her toy. 

Except maybe her. 

Not keen to wait for anyone older or more cautious to prevent it, Hel rushed forwards, over towards the source of the voice, her berry-coloured eyes narrowed in as much contempt as a six-year-old child could reasonably express. She didn't stop until she'd reached the foot of the armoured truck and was looking up at the man who had so unceremoniously crashed into her garden and started ruining her things with whatever it was that he was doing. 

And she made her demands.
[color=f6989d]"Stop it." [/color]