The Entrance Exams continue. If Suri thought they were gonna be easy though, she's got another thing coming. Surely there's nothing going on inside her head right?
It got worse.
Silver lining: She made it through the gate.
Barely.
And the first thing her eyes laid upon, once she was through the gate, was scrapped robot after scrapped robot. She heard teens shouting their score as they went. The city… Because of course UA made entire cities for training centers that superpowered teens could destroy. The city was filled with the sounds of explosions, loud crashes, and the sound of metallic debris littering the streets among the chaos of aforementioned teens causing the amount of structural and property damage that would make a supervillain blush.
She started sprinting again, trying to find robots to destroy. Something to get her score going.
Jackpot!
She found a 3-pointer rolling down the alley next to her and began bounding after it. Once she was inside the confines of the space she leapt, planting a foot on the wall to her right, springing herself to the wall on her left and then back to the right. By the time she bounced herself off the right wall the second time, she was above the villainous machine and let her momentum carry her. A low rumbling growl ripped from her throat as she grabbed the thing by the neck wrapping her arms around the sectioned appendage and used her weight, momentum, and gravity to tear the robotic head off. Her beast was unsatisfied. Instead of blood and meat, it was nothing more than metal and circuitry. Instead of veins, promising warm crimson to lap up, it was wires offering little more than a few sparks, a small pop of an explosion and black smoke.
One down, however more to go.
She rushed down the perpendicular alleyway, spotting a 2-pointer that had been turning and just spotted her coming for it. She wasn't getting the speed of her beast. Not that she cared. She wanted to prove she was just as powerful as the creature inside her when it wasn't coming out to play. She knew her strength and with a full head of steam she jumped, turning her body midair towards the fifteen foot tall robot and drove both of her feet into its chest. She rode it as it came crashing down, the chest of it caved in, letting her sort of sit inside of the metal shell. Her eyes spotted a heap of heavy duty circuitry and wiring and she let a toothy grin curl her lips.
"This looks expensive," she said to no one in particular. She then reached inside, grabbing bunches of wiring and pneumatic components and began pulling, tearing pieces of the robot from the inside out until it started smoking.
5 points.
"Dammit!" She growled under her breath. "At this rate, I'm not gonna have enough points."
Her eyes closed softly and she retreated inside of herself, searching for that energy and power that rested inside of her. Her beast. The creature with whom she shared a body, mind, and soul. Her other half. She found the power, sleeping. While she had fun destroying robots, it didn't. It… she… wanted to hunt live things, she wanted to bite down into warm flesh, she wanted to taste the meat of her prey and the bliss of having it writhe into submission. Robots, just flat didn't do it for her.
Fine. She didn't need that power anyway.
Suri scowled and began running again, traversing the fake city streets and searching for her next targets. She managed to find two more 3-pointers next to each other and readied herself as they took notice of the girl running towards them. One took a swing at her, sending its metallic arm in a wide sweeping motion, to which Suri laid herself out, sliding along the ground underneath the machine's appendage. Once on the ground behind it, she pivoted out of the slide back onto her feet, rolling her body against the robot's back and grabbed at its other arm. She let out a mix between a scream and a snarl as she pulled, mustering her inhuman strength to pull the thing's arm, ripping it from its socket and then with the motion's momentum, using the arm as a melee weapon. She caved the robot's head in on the first swing and then with a second, axe-like motion, decapitated it completely.
As the first began to spark and pop as it fell to the ground lifeless, she then threw the arm at the second 3-pointer, knocking it backwards and leaving it disoriented and wide open to her attack. She screamed again and punched it as hard as she could. With the robot's chest piece deformed, concave from her strike, she grabbed hold of the exposed edge of the panel and pulled, ripping it off to expose the machine's innards. She plunged both hands inside and began ripping at the inner workings until it too began to spark and black smoke billowed out of it.
11 points.
What was a good target? How many points would UA think was good enough?
"THREE MINUTES REMAINING!"
Dammit! Okay, maybe she could use an extra boost.
She set off running again, anger boiling inside her that, not only did she get a late start, she didn't have nearly enough points to satisfy her, let alone the judges. She figured anyway. She followed the sounds of explosions and chatter into an intersection where several of her competitors were gathered. A lot of them were exhausted and all but three robots scattered the ground around them. She scowled and focussed on the enemies at hand. She could take the remaining three herself. Again, something she assumed.
She targeted the 3-pointer in the middle first, rushing forward at full speed, bounding upwards off of some of the rubble that littered the intersection and forced her body into the machine. The impact made a significantly less drastic crater and it began to move soon after it fell to the ground. Still standing on its chest, Suri grew more enraged that her attack did almost nothing to the thing. With that pent up rage she jumped, the muscles in her legs tensing as she catapulted herself skyward. She then braced herself for impact as she began falling back to Earth, stiffening her legs outward as she drove them like a railroad spike through the droid's neck, crushing the segmented metal structure, making it separate from its body.
Suri panted as she turned and looked at her next two opponents, debating on which to attack first. Her chest heaved rapidly and sweat soaked her skin. Lycanthropy did wonders, blessing the person that contracted it with inhuman abilities and near endless amounts of stamina and strength. That was a fact. So why was she getting so exhausted, surely she hadn't burned through that much energy destroying these things. Unless...
"You're draining me cause you're not having any fun, aren't you?" she muttered to herself, once again addressing the beast inside her. She had a mental image of the creature looking bored, lazily sprawled out like a cat, simply stretching and just staring at her unamused. Seriously?
"So you're gonna make us lose. Is that it?"
It remained silent and unmoving.
The two mock villains, one 1-pointer, and one 3-pointer, focused on her still standing in the remains of their fallen comrade. She locked up and grimaced, readying herself for a fight once again even though her energy was depleting. As the two crowded in on her she readied herself to charge them, exhaustion be damned, until a firestorm of electricity erupted from behind them. The rush of electricity overloaded both of them, making them smoke, pop from the inside out, and then collapse in front of her.
As she looked for who might have just stolen her points her expression changed from absolute untamed rage to complete and utter... bewilderment. The culprit, a blonde and black haired boy, held the most baffling, dumbfounded smile and was visibly drooling from the corner of his mouth. To top it off, he was slurring words incoherently, mumbling with a sort of laugh mixed in, and best of all; he held his arms close to his sides, giving double thumbs up.
"What the f-"
"TWO MINUTES LEFT!"
Before Suri could curse again the ground began to shake violently and dust began to billow from the streets and alleyways behind her. The group all stared wide eyed and terrified as something rose from the ground just down the street from them. Screams erupted even louder as a green metallic creature staggered out from behind towering buildings, which it stood over. The thing was at least two to three hundred feet tall and it shook everything around it as it moved, making buildings tremble just from its presence. As it grew closer, she and everyone around her began running, trying to escape the gigantic machine's presence. That is, all but one. As Suri ran, her eyes flicked from person to person and made the realization that the kid that saved her wasn't with them. She turned back to see him wandering in place, thrusting his thumbs up forward repeatedly and completely oblivious to the looming thing behind him.
She slid on her heels and turned, rushing back with everything she had left, racing past the group and back toward the downed robots that she and him had destroyed. Suri grabbed him by the arm and started dragging him behind her, his feet stumbling and soon not even grounded as she pulled him off balance. She growled and pulled him hard, throwing his chest onto her back as she ran with him riding her back and, even though her running was sluggish, she thankfully managed to catch up to the tail end of the group.
Barely.
A scream rang out and forced Suri and some of the others to look back, desperately searching for the source. Suri's running slowed and her eyes went wide as she found a girl pinned by her legs under debris that had fallen from the quakes generated by the lumbering behemoth of a robot coming towards them. It was then that her nose perked up as she caught a sweet iron and vanilla scent. Her beast roared to life as it caught the slightest hint of something that it craved and its energy rose to the surface of Suri's skin, making the animalistic energy prickle and roll against the hairs on the back of her neck and arms, making them stand on end.
"Hey!" She shouted at several of the other participants next to her. "Take him, I've got her!"
Without looking, she tossed the blonde electricity user towards the crowd she had been running with. A growl ripped through her throat as she turned, running on all fours as her eyes bled over from human to wolven, her sclera turning to black surrounding her golden green pupils. As she ran, her shoulders and hips moved with muscles that shouldn't normally be there and the tips of her ears lengthened an inch or two into points while her fangs grew sharper, as did her fingernails, turning into claws. A long serpentine tail with lush black and golden brown fur appeared from underneath the black windbreaker jacket she was wearing. Her speed was back to full and then some as she kicked up dust and rushed towards the trapped girl who was trying desperately to use a pair of scaled wings to pull herself out from under the slabs of concrete that held her leg in place.
Suri snarled ferociously as she leapt upwards, the scent of fear radiating from the girl giving her yet another boost of power as she crashed into the left track of the monstrous villain. Her impact caved in one of the front wheels and the metal track itself, making it harder for the machine to continue forward at its current pace. She then turned with a vicious grin and sought out the robot's right track and rushed forward, dislodging the same front wheel and sending it into the building the thing was scraping by. With the two front wheels and tracks incapacitated, she turned back towards the ruble and the trapped, screaming girl. Her clawed hand gripped at the top piece of concrete and threw it, catapulting the heavy slab across the street. In the process between her pulling, and the panic stricken girl flapping her wings in a crazed state, more debris fell onto them, cutting up her draconic wings, Suri's arms and back, and popping Suri's right shoulder out of socket. Both girl's screamed, Suri's coming out like a mix between a wailing beast and a howl.
"Gah! Fuck!" Suri snarled as she grabbed at her shoulder and hissed in pain. The attention to the pain was short lived as the scent of fear and panic brought Suri's beast's attention back to the girl below her.
"Help! Oh God, help! Please!"
"Gimme your hand, let's get the fuck out of here. We gotta go. Now!"
The girl was panicked, screaming and thrashing wildly, her hands and wings scratching at the beast girl, leaving her face, neck, and arms clawed up. Suri growled and reached forward, grabbing the girl's thick silver colored hair and pulled her forward, pressing her forehead against hers, the closer proximity lessening the area the frantic girl could claw at. Both girls were panting, heaving, and the winged girl's fear made Suri's beast roll throughout her, the energy pouring through her dark bronzed skin into the fairer girl's own, the electric power bathing both of them. The surge of power made the injured young woman finally lock eyes with her rescuer's and her pupils became ever so slightly more normal.
"Calm. Down." Suri's usual voice was laced with a harsh rasp and her tone lowered from her normal mezzo soprano to a low alto.
The girl's screams quieted in time for the behemoth behind them to lurch forward again and Suri quickly leaned back and grabbed the girl's hand. She pulled her upwards and let her stagger to rest on Suri's side, the girl's sobbing then increased as her crumpled ankles gave way.
Great Suri, injure the girl more why don't you? She cursed herself for the lapse of judgment.
The girl screamed in pain and latched onto Suri to try and keep herself from falling to the ground again before Suri finally pulled her up, pushing her back into the girl's chest and carefully reached with her left hand, gripping the winged girl's thigh, careful not to pinch skin under her claws. Suri took a second or two to make sure the girl was securely on her back and tried to calm her down the best she could, only to be immediately interrupted by screeching metal and rumbling once again.
Suri turned to run towards the group again as the machine began coming down on them, reaching down and striking impending doom throughout their bodies. Her legs worked like hell to keep the two of them balanced while the ground quaked violently below them and the droning sound of an ear aching rumble and series of crashes erupted through Suri's ears. Her head ached furiously and began to spin, forcing her to close her eyes and run forward blind, hoping and praying that she could make it out with her and this girl alive.
That's all that mattered.
Dust plumed around them and Suri was thankful she had her eyes closed and just as she felt they were nearly safe, the ground shook beneath them vehemently enough that the two were soon airborne. Suri realized two things. One, she didn't want to land on her face and began twisting her body to brace for impact. Two, she was lighter; the silver haired girl had let go of her while they were mid air. In the brief second she had before the two hit the ground, Suri reached out and was able to grab the girl, pull her in, and cradle her into her chest just as the pavement welcomed them, and the back of Suri's head, to Earth.
The two bounced and skidded to a stop, both heaving to catch their breath and all but failing. Suri's vision swam and bright flashes floated across her eyes, the only thing she was able to make out were dark shapes of people beginning to crowd around them. One shadow grew over her entire vision and her eyes tried but failed miserably to see who it was.
"TIME'S UP!"
"T-Thank… you," a voice whispered from above her and she felt a few warm droplets pepper her cheeks and lips. Then a weight collapsed on her chest.
As Suri's own consciousness began to slip and the flashing lights soon clouded her vision into darkness, she felt the warm traces of something roll down her cheek and the others that rested on her lips fell into her, dripping onto her tongue and down the back of her throat. Her beast rolled happily inside of her before it fell back into its slumber. It wasn't exactly how it wanted it but the thing got a taste of what it wanted. What both of them wanted. And with the last conscious movement she made, Suri's mouth flexed and let her swallow down the sweet taste of crimson iron.
And with that, darkness took her.