Jane frowned as several evolutionary disasters were forcibly fast-tracked toward extinction at Kiran’s hands. Maybe she should have just ducked out of the city for a bit, lived off people migrating in and out of the place. This was a valuable chance to expand her repertoire, but why did it feel like she was going to be left out to dry? The Undercity Initiative was supposed to be the brainchild of some unknown bigwig who had bought up a majority share of one of the plates; an up-and-coming Corpo, at least that was what Panopticon had said, and he’d never known her to lie. She was purposefully misleading and tended to speak in half-truths, sure, but an outright lie? Not really her style. So what the actual fuck was she supposed to be doing here? An anti-gang movement to win points with Congress? It wouldn't be the first time a Corpo tried that maneuver, but it was far too simple for Panopticon’s M.O. 

It didn’t matter at that exact moment, but it was still mental gristle for her to chew on. Organic weapons stood on either side of her, moving in for the kill, and Jane would’ve hated to disappoint. [color=FF0080]“Irony? You want to talk about irony. The Wiindigoo can’t [b]order[/b] anyone to do [b]anything;[/b] it amplifies what is already present. If your men are trying to kill you, that’s on you.”[/color]

She gave him a shit-eating grin, [color=FF0080]“Can you blame them? That is easily the worst bottle service I’ve ever seen in a club, and I’ve been to a lot. I’d rather be back with the Founding Fathers trying my damndest to get blasted on wine and cider.”[/color] Jane took a few steps to the side as Kiran’s "bottle service” turned the gang member into what could only be described as a rabbimpanzee.

[color=FF0080]“And the funny thing about people who play God?”[/color] The newly created beast threw itself across the room, as Jane jumped ever so slightly into the air, ready to meet the creature’s advance. Her body shifted, along with the flow of manitou in the room, as she turned to meet the Tinker’s creation. The two collided mid-air, the force of the impact sending them flying towards J-3. [color=FF0080]“They’re predictable.”[/color] Jane bit down as her body expanded like a pufferfish, driven by a boiling chemical reaction typically found in ground beetles. Her tail dove into the ground, splitting itself into several anchoring points that were driven further into the ground by spring-like muscle coils, slowing their advance to a manageable speed for her unwilling ally. 

Her ribcage shattered as she was sandwiched between an ape and a rooted bramble-patch of iron spikes she had driven into the ground; her abdomen burst, the boiling chemicals within her body released in a gaseous spray, carrying the last of J-3’s neurotoxins into the air around the rabbimpanzee. 

The male Doe let out a low keening noise, all but lost in the chaos of the club. Rather than join the fray and potentially meet the same fate as Jane, it scaled the wall it had been thrown into, body shifting as it tore a hole in the wall and disappeared into the wall cavity. He made his way to the skylight he had created, tearing through wall supports where necessary.

[hr]
[color=Magenta]J-3[/color] flinched away, leaping straight up into the air when the mutated cultist-turned-Apex sailed in her direction, tangled with Jane as it was. They watched as some cultists tumbled over, writhing with pain as boiling hot acids and potent toxins attacked flesh and nerves alike. Others simply rose and continued fighting, turning their attention to either the Apex in their midst, or the now airborne J-3. 

They landed, once again on the back foot as the Apex charged into their space. Its massive arms came down in an overhead slam, leaving cracks in the floor and shaking the foundations of the already trashed building. The shapeshifter had leapt to one side, only to launch themself into the chest of the apex as they dodged another wild swing.

Faster than they expected, J-3 found the arm of the rabbimpanzie rocketing into their chest as it then [b]launched[/b] them into the air. For moments in a heartbeat’s span, the Polymorph simply… Watched. A plan had already taken root in their mind, and they prepared their body accordingly.

J-3 watched impassively as the Apex leapt up at them, leaving small craters in the ground as its immense mass rushed up into the air. And then, they acted: ink whorling over their face as a newly formed pair of jaws yawned open. When the rabbimpanzee collided with J-3’s form, their neck flexed against the shoulder that sought to choke them up. The bone blade ridge on the dorsal (the top) side of their skull sliced through flesh, muscle, and then collided roughly with bone. Something in their chest cracked, and the roaring scream that they had been keening, stuttered. 

Lightning fizzled along their spine, rippling down from their torso as nerves disconnected from the biological whole. Their roar stopped entirely, cutting off with a sharp, shrieking chirp. The room, for a moment, fell silent.

And then the Apex fell from its surging leap, clutching a twitching J-3 that seemed, for all intents and purposes, to be dead already. The rabbimpanzee turned and began stalking back towards its creator, leaving the now seemingly limp reptilian body of its foe to hang from its shoulder; an awful trophy of visceral, if brief, combat.

Jane sputtered out a last few breaths as she looked at J-3 and the Apex, more a product of leftover gaseous agents than any real attempt at oxygenating herself. Her mangled body spread across iron brambles, flesh necrotizing rapidly due to her being unaccustomed to the toxins. The face she had borrowed from Kiran struggled to look down at the real Dr. Kingsley, the tendons and arteries in its neck using themselves like tentacles to prop up her skull. It had something in its mouth, flesh, fur, and gristle; a piece of forearm from the rabbimpanzee that she chewed slowly, deliberately, making eye contact with Kingsley as she swallowed, life leaving her body. 

The male Doe screamed in horror, a dismayed braying noise that sounded like a donkey having intercourse with a hyena. Its voice emanated from the skylight his arrival had created. A vortex of conflicting emotions settled into Doe as his mouth contorted and his form shifted, coughing up a rolled-up bear skin in the process. The skin hit the floor with a wet thud, rolling into the corner of the joist space as he unfolded himself from his hiding spot, falling to the ground in the center of the bramble patch; the phantom taste of rabbimpanzee still in his mouth, despite it not being the one he had used to take the bite. He retrieved Jane’s head from the mess and sighed as a whirlwind of intent rushed into it, flesh knitting itself back together until Kiran’s serenely sleeping face sat in the palm of his hand.

Ink pulsed over the whole of J-3’s form, shocking some of the still living cultists into movement. Brightly glowing bioluminescent markings rippled to life over J-3’s flesh, with their armor pulsing in rapid flashing colors. Their flesh was now dotted with oddly ovoid nodules, each of which had a trailing line of pale gray-blue tissue connecting them.

Doe’s eyes flashed with recognition, [color=FFDEAD]“Oh fuck.”[/color] He bowled Jane’s head straight up, sending it full of intent soaring through the hole in the roof. 

The Apex had enough time to ‘hrrf?!’ with surprise, before a crackling, electric [i][b]‘ZAP!!!’[/b][/i] rippled through the room. J-3s form lit up brilliantly, each nodule revealing its purpose as a roughly grapefruit sized sack of specialized cells, along with holding some of the same compounds found in a firefly.. Similar in function and form, even, to a species of South American freshwater eel. From their mouth, their claws, and the base of their tail, pitch black salt water began to pour. Gallons of it, sloshing off their body and spraying in all directions. 

The electrical current hit Doe, carried along by the saltwater, causing his muscles to contract violently. His heart ruptured as muscles spasmed, bones breaking in kind, eyes melting, even frying his brain. The Apex’s bodily system was, politely, not quite robust enough to keep up with both being electrocuted with enough volts to knock elephants twice as big as the apex down, alongside a sudden drowning. 

J-3’s victorious roar as they rode the Apex to the ground like a predator would a large herbivore was proof enough of that.

They had felt the beast’s breathing stop, felt its heart stutter to a halt; thus their confidence was thorough: the mutant was dead, surely. It was nearly silent for a moment, the shock having put out most combatants; even the pigeons had momentarily ceased their cooing. 

[color=FFDEAD]“What fun!”[/color] [i]Intent[/i] slowly coalesced around Doe’s burnt corpse as his flash-fried throat struggled to get the words out. Its arm lurched upward, ulna sticking out at an odd angle as it pointed an index finger toward the sky. [color=FFDEAD]“Re-mind-ss me of Tox-cat-lll.”[/color] A bolt of elation crashed down from the sky, invisible to the unawakened eye. The skull with Kiran’s face on it landed in the corpse’s upraised hand. The corpse smiled at the actual Kingsley, gesturing with his chin at J-3 and the Apex, all the while metaphysical Haze and cloying physical smoke poured from its mouth, [color=FFDEAD]“Seems mine was bigger.”[/color]