Fighting The Wildthing

"Let him go, Becca," Crashcourse said, her voice low and careful.

Instead of doing as she was asked, Becca did the complete opposite. Her spike tipped tail drifted almost lazily over to the hand that she was pinning to the wall before plunging violently through my flesh.

My knees gave way under the pain, but Wildthing held me up and steady against the wall. She twisted the spiked tendril like a screwdriver, digging deeper and deeper into my hand until the spike pierced all the way through and nailed me to the wall. Only then did she release me, allowing me to hang by my hand.

"Greave! Get out here now! Becca's gonna kill him if you don't!" I heard Lauren call out.

Not even that seemed to dissuade the beast before me as she took one of those clawed hands and placed the dagger-like talons against my throat, drawing a few little drops of blood.

It was over just as quickly as it started.

Greave barrelled into the room, his eyes glowing amber. He splayed his hand and a charge of orange energy flickered from between his fingers before materialising between the beast and me in the form of a castle wall.

The tendril that was piercing my hand was severed, the places touched by Bastion's power disintegrating instantly. I collapsed to my knees and, even though I felt like I was about to vomit, I just about managed to rip the spike free.

"I bloody hate it when you force me to do that," Greave snarled at the beast, who only growled back in return.

Villain life was already proving itself to be hazardous. But I knew one thing about villains, an important thing, something that I was going to need to employ now if I were going to have any hope of staying a part of this team.

I got to my feet unsteadily, just about able to hold myself up as blood dribbled down my fingers and dripped onto the ground, and staggered over to my backpack. My gauntlet was on my hand faster than anyone could react, a charge of energy building in the central emitter.

No one even tried to stop me as I unleashed a blast against the creature.

It wasn't as strong as the blast I'd used to help take down Phet, but it was still pretty damn strong.

Wildthing's back arched as the beast stood on its hind legs, the remains of its severed tail flapped uselessly in the air, and then the blast ended.

Wildthing slumped to the ground, her skin bubbling and morphing until quite suddenly there was no longer a gigantic creature writhing on the ground dealing with an electric shock, but instead a girl who couldn't have been more than a few years older than me, whimpering slightly like a dog who had been injured.

As the transformation ended she pulled herself up and gave me a dirty look as the pain subsided.

She wasn't downright ugly in her human form, but she wasn't attractive either. Her face was square, and her eyebrows were thick and bushy. Her nose was crooked, clearly it had been broken more than once. Her muscles were well built, even while human she could probably do some serious damage.

"What… The hell… Was that?" I seethed, the pain in my hand returning now that my adrenaline was starting to burn away.

She didn't reply to that. Instead, she just grinned at me. It was a nasty grin, psychotic. Even though she was the one who had been knocked down, even though I'd been the one to do it to her, she was acting as if she had won.

"Dammit Becca," Lisa yelled, "I thought I could trust you not to lose it like that!"

I couldn't keep my mind on the conversation for long. My power was raging in my mind, throwing even more schematics at me. Something about the form that Becca had taken was really doing something for my abilities. Designs were surfacing, creatures that I could create with the right genetic twisting. Biological structures that I could command through subdermal implants.

Before I knew it, I was cackling like a mad scientist from an old-world movie, my eyes directly locked onto Becca's.

My gauntlet was the bare minimum basics of what my power could create. I was capable of so much more.

After a few moments the laughter cut out, it was only then that I realised they were all looking at me like I'd lost my mind. All of them except for Lauren, that was.

"Don't worry, he's just figured something out about his Crafter power. Maybe unlocked part of his niche," She said. "Either way, no more fighting. I'm aiming that comment at you, Becca. You might not like it, but Tristan's part of the team now."

She glared at Lauren, then at Greave who was still holding up his shield wall, and then at me once again. She was defeated and she knew it, which was why her eyes then dipped down to the floor.

That almost caused me to start cackling again.

"Part… Part of the team?" I said, acutely aware of the fact that there was now blood dripping through the circuitry of my gauntlet.

"Hey… Tristan come on… Come sit down, I promise-"

"No," I snapped, interrupting Lauren before she could start weaving some crafty response with her silver tongue. "Screw this, and screw all of you."

"Tristan-"

"I know that you said she wasn't exactly happy with me becoming a part of the team, but you never mentioned that her killing me was going to be a risk factor," I spat.

I wasn't happy. I wasn't happy at all.

It felt like I'd walked right back into my school life, with evil dripping from the walls. For a brief moment, I'd forgotten that I had walked into a lair of villains. I should have seen something like this coming a mile off.

No amount of information was worth what I'd just gone through.