[sub][h3][center]Archie[/center][/h3][/sub][hr]
It was an odd feeling, knowing that you were hurt but being unable to [i]feel[/i] the pain.

It felt like fire, but without the burning. Like there was some sort of constricting, irritating force that made his muscles spasm and lose control of his own body. The inability to move on his own was a feeling that had been so deeply ingrained into him from that horrible night. He remembered the gunmetal pressed against his body. It was cold, and he was wet and tired. He hurt so much in so many places that he didn't even know he had. He remembered the look in the eyes of the man who raised him, too. The fear, the dread, the disappointment. His town was small and abode by tradition more than anything else. The way things were was the way they always would be. Parahumans had no place there.

Muscles moved beneath his body's thin layer of skin, the way the bones stretching with every extension of his legs. The snapping of bones echoed and popped, the ripping of his muscles and the blood curdling chokes for air. The gunshots were distant and right in his ears at the same time. He could taste the blood in the air, along with the brass and lead and gunpowder. He felt the explosions rock the floor, and the screams for help. They were so loud, impossibly so. Most of the remaining gunmen had moved into the cafeteria to continue their onslaught, but two remained in the room to finish off survivors. He heard gunfire, and felt impacts against his flank, like spears digging into his scales- a sensation he had only experienced once before. He roared in agony as the transformation completed. An inhuman, primordial sound that raised the hair on people's necks and rattled souls. The giant stretched its newly formed muscles and turned its attention to the remaining Silent Court in the room.

They fired, but he was too big, too fast. On all fours he covered sixty feet in an instant, his enormous muscles carrying him forwards in a desperate flurry of claws and scales and teeth. His massive claws found purchase in the metal floors, leaving enormous, ugly gouges of torn metal and flooring in his wake. The first man had been flattened outright, the primeval monster trampling him under foot. There was a sickening popping and squelching sound as he was reduced to a wet smear on the floor- his torso effectively flattened. The second found himself coming face to face with the jaws of death.

The giant reptile enveloped the terrorist's entire head and shoulders in his maw. There was a muffled scream that was instantly choked as the power of Archie's jaws forced his teeth through skin and bone vice grip. The pressure was immense, and the the pain was unbearable. Like being caught in a giant bear trap that rent flesh and shattered bone. Out of desperation the man failed wildly, kicking and screaming as he struggled to get out and away. The monster was unfazed, and shook the person like a rag doll. Archie couldn't remember much after that, but he remembered feeling his teeth slide shut. He remembered seeing legs and no body, cast in the vapors of half images.

He did remember the explosion, though. Right in his face. The vest, the deadman's switch. The heat hurt, but he could take that. It wasn't hot enough or long enough to breach his scales. But the force? The force rocketed his jaws apart in unnatural ways and sent him- all four thousand pounds of him, reeling back. 

He hit the floor next to Eli, the force of his body weight shaking everything around him. He was alive- badly injured, [i]again[/i] but alive. His lower jaw had been [i]destroyed[/i], and what was left of the mandible hung limp at odd twisted angles. His upped jaw was mostly intact aside from a spiderweb of burn marks that caked the entirety of his hard palate and throat- of which the skin was torn open where the jaws met his neck. He gurgled, but didn't falter for long. A distant part of him knew that there would be more in the cafeteria. More of the terrorists with guns that could [i]hurt him[/i] like they had before. But that part of him was washed away by the pain. Everything with a heartbeat in the room could hurt him. Everything.

He turned his glowing white eyes to the closest living things in the room. Eli, Keaton, and the girl. He roared, his mangled, disheveled face and halfway exposed throat splattering blood and burnt tissue in their general direction.

He would be upon them in an instant.