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[s][sub]should be easy for you, right devushka?[/sub][/s]
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By all rights it should have been over as soon as it began. Rivka's shots were perfect, two in succession grouped no more than centimeters apart. Her hand could have covered their path quite comfortably, and they struck with tremendous effect. Hell itself was nearly neatly nicked cleanly in two, nicely nominating her for her rightful acclaim. Its right arm simply separated at the shoulder, cleaved from its form and dispersed with prejudice. But still it remained.

To see it fall intact, to hear the commotion below that signified its survival, was disquieting. It warred with her sensibilities, made assault upon her wisdom, and openly clashed with all common sense. But she recognized the dissonance within her own mind quickly and the world slotted into its [i]new[/i] proper understanding. Her brain insisted, despite all evidence to the contrary, that this was a living thing. It simply didn't compute to think of it as anything else. No living thing could cope with such massive trauma; contained within its torso were all sorts of vital organs and squishy bits, things that were supposed to remain intact and inside. Such wounds could only cause death, swiftly at that. Even her assailants at the station would have succumbed, had she the power to pierce their corrupted skin properly. It simply didn't make sense that things thing could still be alive, not even after she had already seen how its smaller kin manifested. But there was the root of the issue.

This Thing did not live. Not the way she understood life. This Thing was naught but Power, Power wrapped around a core somewhere in its being much as she could be thought of Power wrapped around a core called an Armagus. Rivka still possessed all of the incidental squishy bits, the form and functions that made her a human and not simply a gem that controlled Nox. But that had been stripped away, had it ever existed, and this Thing was nothing but power and control. Of course it didn't care if it lost an arm, or a leg, or half its body. It would simply will itself another, as it was already doing far below. It could not be mortally wounded, not without striking the core of its being. Would the same happen to her if someone struck at her Armagus, the prism of her soul? Would she be nullified as effectively, again reduced to merely mortal?

It didn't bear thinking on, but in that flash of insight she understood. If it had no form to wound, and its core could not be found, she would simply have to incinerate its entirety in the fires of creation. Let it burn within her soul, reduced not simply to nothing but erased down to its merest iota of energy. Let whatever remained scatter to the winds and speak her name, warn its kind that a new song had begun and theirs would soon end. 

She laughed aloud and waved as Selma dropped like a messenger from the heavens, like the herald of her very own presence. Though, perhaps that was a thought better left unsaid to the girl who could tie her in knots? Still, Rivka didn't much like the idea of dropping to the street below quite so much. Her rocket idea had a lot of promise, but trying to slow a give herself a little bump and attempting a controlled landing were two different propositions. If she couldn't angle straight up and down what would she control her fall with? Her sleeves? Her gun? Did she look like Demonetta?

Actually, the gun thing had promise.

[color=7e5e7f][i]Kto ne riskuyet, tot ne p'yet shampanskoye.[/i][/color]

Laughing again, more to cover her own flash of concern with her [i]own[/i] plan than anything else, she dove over the edge and felt the wind whip her hair around. She would never reach terminal velocity, not from this height, or she would never attempt such a thing. She waited, and waited, and waited for what seemed like an eternity but transpired only in the merest fractions of seconds until she was about two storeys off of the ground and-

Her rifle ignited, not with a shot but with a plume. Rather than focused, it was diffused; combustive forces erupted form its barrel and in direct opposition to the rifle's path. They pushed it up, and with Rivka's steel grip pushed [i]her[/i] up. Not enough to stop her, not nearly, but enough to blunt the forces; and for her to bleed them off even further by using her makeshift booster as a fulcrum, swinging herself down a hundred and eighty degrees to alight on her feet. Well, to hit her feet, feel her knees buckle, and turn it into what she made sure to act as though was a perfectly controlled somersault.

That one actually hurt a bit. Work on that idea.

Still she popped to her feet with no visible discomfort, spreading her arms in an expansive gesture proclaiming her mirth and enveloping the scene before her all the same. 

[color=7e5e7f]"Sel[i]ma![/i] A kiln for our new friend, pozhaluysta!"[/color]