With little time to think, I simply grabbed ahold of the power inside me and pushed it out towards the direction of the incoming attack. I felt a bit of a push in my Core as it moved down my arm at lightning speed before a formless blossom of shimmering energy burst out of my arm.

It shoved me back, pushing me away from the whip while at the same time deflecting it from its deadly path. It whooshed over my head, clipping off a few red hairs as it passed. I stared at the air where it had been.

That was way too close, I thought, scrambling to my feet, And way too much power.

Indeed it was, it nearly put me in a worse position than what I'd started in. Honestly, I didn't know if it was "too much" or if I was misusing it. It seemed like there would be a fairly steep learning curve. I kinda doubted the 'fight fire with fire' approach was the most efficient here.

Either way, I needed to fight it with something. Another whip came flashing in from my right, and I jumped into the air, pulling up my legs after me as it swept through below. Without a target to impact, it had too much momentum and collided with the corner of a building, becoming entangled around its center, wedged into the gap it had created.

A quick glance showed that it wouldn't be there for long, already the caustic nature of the whip was breaking down the building materials, as a hazy smoke arose from the location. Can't imagine that was any good on the lungs.

Taking advantage of the gap, I dashed in towards the whip critter, enjoying my good fortune that this was downtown and the ground wasn't nearly as cluttered as it was out where my family and I lived. Made running a ton easier.

Now that I was closer, I could better see what had become of our loiterer. Not that I really wanted to. He had well and truly been split from stem to stern, a rotted-looking chasm carved straight down his torso. There was only darkness inside, and now that the whips were out, it was pretty clear that all his organs had been either converted or… eaten. Not something pleasant to think about.

I generally wasn't one to have compunctions in doing what needed to be done. In this case, that meant taking this weird abomination down before it did the same to me. Gran had told me to get back 'in one piece', and if that meant going through this guy or any other people with ill intentions for me, then so be it.

I was within spitting distance of it when I heard the whip tear loose from the wall behind me. But I was already committed to my strike, having preemptively moved my inner energies, collecting a small amount in my palm in a similar way to how I had before Liam interrupted me. I figured if it worked on the extractor, this model of mutation probably had a similar vulnerability. They seemed crafted of by the same hands, to my eyes at least. Or at least a similar process.

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Keeping my mental fingers crossed that shutting down the main body would also stop the whip, I slammed my outstretched hand into the side of the thing's head, and immediately realized I'd made a small miscalculation.

The whips were coming out of the chest, not the head. My strike immediately took out the head, and I could tell from the way the rest was bubbling and breaking up that it'd go down too, but it wasn't going to be fast enough.

I tucked my hands behind my head and neck to protect them, and was in the middle of moving some energy to my back when the whip landed. I felt, rather than saw, the nascent power I'd collected splash away from me as it blunted the worst of the impact. The blow still left a searing pain across my back and sent me sprawling onto the ground.

I slid to a stop, dizzy from the impact and actually panting from exertion, for a change. The tough clothes that were my standard wear from being out in the field had blunted the worst of the road rash, but I was still going to be a hurting unit in the morning. They seemed to have held up pretty well.

My back, however, had a hot streak of pain diagonally across it, that while just barely tolerable made me nervous. I sat back up and looked behind me at the whip… thing, which was mostly a puddle of mush at this point, slowly nibbling its way into the concrete and giving off an awful stench.

I pushed myself to my feet painfully and started looking around for Viktor. I heard some noise off to my left, so I took off running that way. It didn't take long before I rounded a building corner and saw something so absurd I'd probably never forget it.

Viktor had another whip guy by the whips, one clenched in each of the massive pieces of construction machinery he called hands. They were smoking and the color of molten iron, and he was yanking the body at the other hand around by the tendrils, slamming it into the ground repeatedly and having just the time of his life doing it, a giant grin plastered across his face and something that passed for laughter rumbling in the depths of his sizable torso.

I'd fought with my life on the line and this guy was out here playing with his prey like some sort of ginormous kitten.

I'm not jealous, you are.

He spotted me as I rounded the corner, looking quite a bit more roughed up than the last time he'd saw me. His eyes widened a little, and he increased the speed of his slamming.

"You finished it off already?" He asked, and then I realized his surprise came because he thought I was competing with him. Oi.

"Well, yeah, but it got a bit out of hand as well." I turned and exposed my back, not really knowing what he was seeing. When I turned back, it might have been just me, but he seemed a little paler. That probably wasn't good. "Bring that down by me and we can move on, there might be more."

The thought of more toys seemed to snap him out of whatever thoughts he was having, and he brought it over by me. It crashed down, looking like a pile of mush but still somehow mostly intact. As it landed, I wasted no time, lashing out with a fragment of my light and pushing it through my hand into the tenderized body. It broke down within moments, like it was in a hurry to do so. Not that I blamed it.

"We should get that looked at," Viktor said, as I walked over to him.

"It'll be fine for now," I said. My wincing as I took the breath to say the words probably wasn't super convincing.

"How many different people did you see hanging around out here?"

"I'm the wrong person to ask, I'm just the messenger. István was the one with the eagle eyes."

"He always has been," Viktor said, getting a far-away look in his eyes as he said it. "I owe him a lot."

I nodded, as we walked off. "Me too."

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