[sub][h3][center]T H E   P R O M I S E[/center][/h3][/sub][hr]
It had been a long time since Death Head had a meal like this. He had subsisted off of pig’s blood and the bare minimum required to keep him going for the longest time. This? This was heaven.

The hulk dropped his latest exsanguinate  victim- and continued on his hunt. The bodies were never particularly useful to satiating his hunger. He couldn’t see well, but his dark world was complimented bu red auras of beings that he could hunt. If he was capable of seeing other things, he had never tried. Nothing else mattered, frankly.

The soft cries acquired his attention, and he wheeled around, finding a small red shape that had curled in on itself against a wall. A screech tore from his throat, and he pulled at her. Pulling people was a talent he had discovered some time ago. It had helped him consume by tearing blood from their bodies at a distance. Anywhere he couldn’t reach, he would simply pull.

But when he pulled, that red aura did not disappear. He didn’t feel that sense of satisfaction or pleasure at another meal being consumed. No, the shape simply stayed where it was. If it was affected at all, Death Head could not see it. It didn’t matter to him, though. He couldn’t eat her like this. Primordial anger drove him now, frustrated and confused that his prey wasn’t simply dying. Another screech shattered the air and he hurdled like a runaway train towards her. This time, intent on getting his meal the old fashioned way.

[hr]
[i]"Square up."[/i]

Salamandra leaned back on one leg, one arm crossed under her breast and her chin resting on the other at Lynn’s little show, clearly unafraid of Lynn’s display. Her eyes flashed down to Lynn’s rapidly disintegrating clothing and then back up to her eyes.

“Well ain’t thatta bitch?” She said, not even dignifying Lynn’s demand with a proper response. That had happened to her a lot, too. It was why she tried to keep the heat to her extremities. Salamandra shook her head, more amused than anything else. She had tried to get everyone out peacefully, she really had. Any evaluators would probably be questioning her about this for the next several months. They’d go on about how all of her progress was wasted and how she made their job so much harder. But fuck it, she was on the clock.

She gave Lynn a smile that was all teeth, and her left hand, the one that had been cradling her chin flashed forwards and grabbed Lynn’s right. She felt the influx of energy at this, even more so than she had earlier, and her smile widened. She didn’t know how Lynn felt, but she probably had never been grabbed in this state. If she was surprised or not mattered little to her, though. She pulled Lynn forward and closer to her, almost pulling her off the ground as she did so, and stepped forward. People instinctively resisted being pulled in a direction, and this was what Salamandra was counting on. She placed her leg behind Lynn’s now off balance gait, and drove her right elbow into Lynn’s jaw. The force pushed Lynn, and she careened over Salamandra’s leg. The whole maneuver was fluid, taking less than two seconds for Lynn to go from standing to on the floor. The concept of directional reversal in judo was something Salamandra was very familiar with, despite not having any formal training in martial arts. She preferred fighting dirty and efficiently compared to all of those well practiced and incredibly useless katas. She had learned what worked on people through the best means possible- getting her ass kicked. Having abilities that made her so hot that she could melt through people’s skulls just by touching them long enough? Gravy.

Salmandra was not one to leave a job unfinished, though. That was just rude, and this little girl had [i]asked[/i] for this after all. She had continued a pace or so past Lynn after dropping her, and simply turned around, lifting her leg and intent on driving her heel down into Lynn’s head or throat. It didn’t matter to her, really.

[sub][h3][center]Archie[/center][/h3][/sub][hr]
Now, Archie would love to give you a completely detailed account of Lynn being turned into a smear on the floor. He really would. This was the first time he had ever witnessed an honest to god [i]fight[/i] like something out of TV, but he was finding it increasingly hard to focus. There were tearing noises, an a shit-load of pain. He wasn’t sure if that was him or Lynn being torn apart or the creature outside going to town on someone outside. It sure [i]felt[/i] like it was him though, but it was hazy.

Pain, a snap, it occurred to him that he was lying on my back. He probably would’ve been stumbling around if his leg didn’t feel like it had been bent the wrong way. A small part of him realized how weird it was that he could tell which pain was there before he started turning. Archie was getting bigger, taller, bulkier. His skin stretched in weird ways as the bones beneath cracked and popped. His muscles bulging and warping as they changed shape and location.

He managed to get a glimpse of his hand, which looked like some abstract sculpture made by a hack artist. His finger nails were falling off, and the part of him that came to the weird realization earlier reminded him that fingers nails falling off probably wasn’t normal. Ever helpful, that voice was. It was weird, though. Pins and needles ran up his arms. Normally he fought it, and it hurt the whole time. At least, until he blacked out. Given the circumstances he found himself [i]wanting[/i] to turn. It was like a switch had been flipped now and his body was dulling the pain. He wasn’t resisting it and  it felt good. It felt really good. Not like sex good, but like he had been plugged into a power plant. He felt strong, and the bigger he got, the stronger he was. He felt like he could outrun a horse. Fuck, he could lift a car if he wanted.

He was distantly aware of the twisting and snapping of his muscles and bones, but was honestly more concerned about clothes tearing apart. How fucked was that? He couldn’t even feel himself break, so his mind fixated on his clothing. He’d laugh at that if he could. While he hardly seemed to register pain, his senses were on overdrive. Archie felt like he was taking the world in at a hundred times the intensity that he normally did. He could hear what people were saying across the street, what was happening through through the window down with perfect clarity, was Natalie crying? He’d have to make sure she was alright. He had promised that they would look out for each other after all.

He could hear the steady tap-tapping of feet on the sidewalk. He realized that he could see through the dark just as easily as he could anything illuminated by the lights above, like something had muted all of the shadows. Most of all though, he could smell, and a powerful acrid scent burnt his nostrils. The smell of sweat, burning, and food. He could [i]taste[/i] the metallic signature of blood in the air. As if he was sucking on a coin.

The process was far from over, but it was well on its way now and seemed to be progressing faster than it had before. The living time bomb’s clock was ticking.