It took four punches, and over a hundred bites of varying sizes, for Titan Blue to break free of her former commander’s tent.
Emmett’s disgusting animals tried their best. With strength above and beyond their tiny frames they leap at the Non, gnashing twisted teeth into her rubbery hide and slashing at her with jagged claws. It was Blue’s lack of bodily definition that ultimately saved her, as the animals, despite possessing the intelligence of a young girl, nevertheless relied on common animal wisdom to choose targets - and Blue, a massive slab of rounded, blobby black, offered up no easy weak points besides her eyes. These she pinched shut as she wailed at the walls with one arm, using the other to blindly sweep the tide of hybrids off her back.
“GET HER!” Emmett cried shrilly over the din of chittering laughter. “BRING HER DOWN, YOU USELESS THINGS! GET OUT OF THE WAY SO THE WEREWOLVES CAN ADVANCE!”
Before the werewolves could do any such thing, however, being penned at the rear of the pack, Blue burst through the side of the tent, spattering purple-orange gore in every direction. The tent spasmed and moaned lowly as it began to collapse, its brittle, mismatched bones incapable of supporting its flappy, membranous skin. Emmett howled his rage behind her as Blue staggered onto the grass, blinking and looking around, ready to shout for support.
There was no support to be had. Or, at least, they were nowhere nearby. Somehow the tent had sped Emmett well away from the army, leaving the foul doctor to deal with Blue privately. And what could she expect anyway? He was a commanding officer. She was just a grunt. Her friends would be forced to listen to him.
Staggering forward, bleeding liberally from dozens of wounds - her hide was only so tough, enough to block out enhanced squirrels, not enough to ward away enhanced lions or bears - Blue swivelled ponderously towards the tent, trying to keep her eyes on the pulsating entrance she’d torn in its side. Dozens of the smaller creatures poured out of the hole, their ochre gazes falling immediately on her as they chittered war cries and scurried across the grass in her direction.
Blue continued to shuffle backward, thinking quickly. She wanted to head towards the army - they were wandering along in the far distance, far enough that she wondered if Emmett had used a fast track to get so far away - but Emmett’s creatures would be on her long before then. Her only option was out, away, in a direction that was somehow opposite to the collapsing tent. Perhaps if she moved quickly enough -
The first squirrels and foxes were on her as the thought ran through her head. They leaped at her legs, nipping viciously. Blue swept one slow arm down to brush the first wave away, but the second dove beneath her fingers, dangling from her flesh like ornaments on a tree. She stomped, hard, to dislodge them, but they were replaced by more… and more… and more…
I still want a house, Blue thought. Hold on to that. I want that fuckin’ big house. And I’m gonna get it.
Drawing on Non powers she’d long ignored - they were hardly Hero level powers, but they would do the trick here, where they’d been useless elsewhere - Blue sent a tiny tremor through her skin. At once her hide became almost gelatinous, rolling in a shockwave of currents that knocked every living thing clinging to her away from her body. The waves roiling up and down her skin nauseated anything that was on the verge of reaching her, as well, just long enough that Blue managed to stagger another twenty feet away.
Twenty feet. That was not enough.
She did it again. And again. And again. Every time the creatures caught up, every time a little bigger, a little faster, a little stronger, Blue triggered the shockwave. Beasts fell away in great waves, knocked for a temporary loop, long enough for Blue to gain a bit of ground on the pack. But with each resonance she, too, became rather sickly, her stomach churning as her body chemistry forcibly altered itself to push away antagonists. It wouldn’t be long before she’d be puking… and by then, she wouldn’t be able to do anything at all. Then Emmett would have her.
I should’ve stepped on him, she thought, head spinning as she reverberated again. I should’ve… ugh…
Near a small forest, minutes after her flight, Blue fell to one knee. Her last defence had been particularly violent, stopping over three-dozen small-to-medium pursuers with a legion of shockwaves that had given Blue herself a sickening headache. She wanted to empty her stomach, but there was nothing to empty, because she’d gone so long without food, and now, with so many wounds and so little energy and the sounds of Kara bounding towards her, Blue resigned herself to her fate.
That’s when a hand patted her on the arm.
Blue’s instincts told her to spin around, to slap the intruder aside and pummel him or her to the ground. Blue was in no fit state to do any such thing, however, and so she simply turned to look at the shadowy figure beside her. It was holding a familiar green orb, something so rare and precious that Blue had only seen three in her entire life.
“D… Driscol…?” Blue grunted, so pained that she could barely whimper out his name.
The gaunt man smiled a little. He’d been ‘gifted’ with a pair of baboon arms since his recapture, one longer than the other, and he awkwardly held out one, the green orb now floating an inch off of his palm. “Hi. I have no idea where this goes, so you’d better brace yourself.”
Blue wanted to protest, for some reason, but her pains - or perhaps her brain - wouldn’t let her. She’d always liked Driscol the best of the CeDrisArd beast, as he’d always been the quietest, the most courteous. She’d not spoken to him often - Emmett held a no-talking policy towards his creations most of the time - but she’d known he was not a bad man. Not as bad as some, anyway. She tried to communicate her desire for him to at least come with her, because she knew, however he’d procured the thing, Driscol would be in for a harsh punishment for ‘wasting’ a fast track. No doubt Emmett would grant him some fate even worse than his current un-death.
Driscol shook his head. “Too late for me. He controls me. He’ll fuck you over if I go with you. Go tell Dragomir what that lunatic’s doing. He’s even more dangerous than Kierkegaard. See ya.”
Probably not sure what he was doing, Driscol awkwardly jabbed the fast track towards Blue. That in and of itself would have done nothing - but Blue, fortunately, knew what needed to be done. Only a Non could use a fast track. Drawing on her almost infintesimal magical powers, the same powers she’d used to gyrate her bulk, Blue touched the fast track with her mind, picturing the action it would spur -
- and, with a mighty woosh, the fast track hurled her into the air, carried on a wave of flowing emerald energy. Carried to safety.
Bereft of their prize, Emmett’s legion of monsters angrily set upon Driscol instead, and as his master discovered through them what had happened he wrought a very painful lesson indeed upon his captive subordinate. Driscol smiled the whole time anyway.
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