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Having transformed a quite energy-intensive danger sensing skill as she became a deer, Nyssa leapt out of the way. She transformed into a bird and flapped into the air. Once a little higher up, she looked down only to have her face blanch.
Below her, the two deer had disappeared into the worm—their fate unknown. Nyssa assumed something gruesome, but given their penchant for capturing people with transformation energy rather than killing... she prayed they lived on.
The worm, however, had continued to extend, and now chased her into the sky. While flying around to dodge the weird machine-worm, she surveyed the rest of the plains... and it didn't look great. Machines unfolded from the ground one after another. Each gleamed under the moonlight as the light reflected off their snow white casings.
Given their blue lights, Nyssa would've assumed they were the good guys at first... until one shot a net at her. Another, a second later, shot a pair of lasers at her, aiming to clip her wings.
Biases are everywhere! I must stay strong! They're certainly bad! Very bad!
Nyssa sighed. Before she knew it, a swarm had gathered below her. One blink had passed, and now they all attacked her too!
Assigned the entire first wave—unless they became overwhelming—Nyssa clenched her jaw. She needed to get them to open the hatches into the actual base without giving them any clue if she had reinforcements or not.
Save some energy...
Doing a mental calculation of how much she could still muster after making the danger sense from before, she frowned.
It'll be tough.
Brushing aside her own concerns, she transformed in the air. Her form expanded into a giant obese creature. For the onlookers in the trees, if they had to say the creature resembled anything, they'd say it resembled a gorilla—one that just had a crippling addiction to fast food, and was several times taller than normal... possibly from a crippling addiction to fast food. Nyssa fell from the sky, hitting the ground like a meteor.
The first casualty?
The worm.
Crushing it under her body, she felt a satisfying crunch under her as she broke off the upper half of the worm. The rest, sparking and writhing, retreated back under ground. Now on the ground, the rest of the machines began swarming over her. Along with them came wildlife. The wildlife attacking her seemed... on a spectrum.
Some seemed like the deer, they looked and acted like normal animals—just ones who saw her as their number one enemy in life. Others seemed crazed. They froted at the mouth as crystal outgrowths jutted out from the back of their skulls. Some of the most crazed ones, having torn away pieces of their own flesh, had mechanical implants in place of limbs, skin, and other organs.
The sound of slobbering, animal screams, and clanking filled Nyssa's ears. She swung her arms, clearing out a wave of small creatures on either side. Now closer to two stories tall, she towered over the battlefield and swung her arms around like clubs.
With each swing, she grimaced. The feeling of crushing flesh, sharp crystals, metal, and slight electrical singles traveled up her arms.
One swing to the left.
BOOM.
A wave of machines disappeared.
A swing to the right.
Silence.
Having swung with greater than a freight train, she ejected the half-machine bear clawing at her into the stratosphere as a newly formed blood mist.
A bite clamped down on her stomach.
She sent a new arm outward from her stomach to punch it away.
A laser hit her chest.
No matter, her skin was stronger than battle armor.
A missile hit her shoulder.
... mild matter, her shoulder was in fact not missle-proof.
Must've missed that transformation. Nyssa thought to herself as she continued torque'ing her body back and forth to clear out the area around her. With each swing, her range of motion increased as she re-transformed her spine into a spinning joint.
A couple more rounds later, as her momentum carried her to the edge of her physical limit, she transformed her torso.
"Spinning top..." Nyssa murmured to herself as she closed her eyes. The middle of her body now resembled a ball bearing as a motor replaced her heart. Her eyes blazed with actual fire as she began spinning.
Her fists, dyed red from her enemies blood mixing with her own, now had shards of machine coming out of them.
Increases damage, who cares.
Adrenaline coursed through her body. The enemies—brainless, to put it lightly—rushed at her in never-ending waves, like enemies in a poorly designed phone game.
Her eyes, on fire, swept across the battlefield, their vision unhampered. Though spinning at the speed of a rotor, she increased her dynamic vision until she could get a clear view of the entire battlefield.
Peering through the constant wave of enemies being thrown into the air, thrown aside, or just pulverized, she tried to spot any stragglers, any strategists, or anything else not rushing at her. Not seeing anyone, Nyssa returned to her mindless grinding. She waited until the crowd thinned, and with just a few left, she murmured to herself. "Seems fine to do this then."
She fused the top and bottom of her body back together. Locking them together, she created a drill below her body. Her weight, along with her angular momentum from spinning threw the drill into the ground.
She burrowed like a mole.
Just a fat one.
A really fat one.
Her energy stores decreased by the second, but the numbers of enemies also decreased—crucially, at a rate much faster than her energy. At the same time, dirt when flying as she created a vortex of mud around her. Thrown into the air, grass, dirt, bugs, rocks, and anything else in the area, made way for the industrial fatso burrowing its way into the ground.
Once she began to slow, she transformed her heart back into a heart and let her eyes cool down. As the fire faded, she looked back up at the moon, enjoying the light for a second before sticking her arms out to the side.
"I must look so goofy right now," Nyssa grumbled before turning each fist into a jet engine. They roared to life, crackling and popping as they BLASTED the night's peace away. She, however, achieved her goal: her deceleration disappeared, instead replaced by both noise pollution and aggressive acceleration.
The dirt vortex reappeared, and her huge body began disappearing into the ground.
The rest of the strike team, having just watched her unique fighting spectacle, just watched on in awe as Nyssa hit metal, and—with a loud clang set off an alarm before a metal-against-metal grinding sound leaked into the air.
Of course, all this seemed miniscule compared to the sound of jet engines, but those with keener ears could still make out the sounds...
"What in the actual drug-fueled brain tumor powered rampage is this..." One guild member spoke as he watched the ground begin to open up. "Oh shit, we're almost up."
On the opposite side, Class Zero couldn't help but laugh.
Half the class stayed hidden—but laughed into their fists. The demure half. Olivia, Celeste, Titus, and Albion. The rest, Ryker, Electra, and Conrad, rolled on the floor, slapping the ground howling like monkeys.
Olivia, who had placed a contract on everyone to make ninety-five percent less sound, just smiled as she herself couldn't help but chuckle as well. Alecto, the only non-laugher, just watched on with gleaming eyes.
"It's been so long since I've seen anyone with this caliber of power..." Alecto sighed. "Such freedom in her ability to transform. I wish I could give her some lessons to use it better. Though she's still young I guess..."
"Will it change as she gets older?" Olivia asked, in between laughs.
"Definitely," Alecto shrugged. "Everyone with transformation powers usually sees a qualitative difference once they're twenty. Their energy stores swell exponentially over the course of a couple months to years. She must be quite limited right now. But the fact she can do this worries me... She's strange. Energy stores usually scale inversely proportionally with freedom of transformation, but she already has more energy than a lot of people post-development, and with more freedom than anyone, period."
"... So, you're saying she might become a god," Olivia sobered up, hopping down from the tree she had hid in as the ground opened up.
"No, she likes to sleep too much, but if she was power hungry, she'd be a tier or two above S class.. Easily..." Alecto murmured, floating along behind Olivia. "We can chat more another time. Let's go."
"Mn, agreed."