Oh, Sorry. I Thought This was Stand Up Comedy.

Lethe could feel the fabric of the one responsible for all of this within her fingers.



For but the fleetest of moment -- Radeka's body flew over Lethe's own. A small smile appeared the Sacha's face before the slam -- until the Silver Haired Witch seemingly flickered out existence right before impact. At the end of her perfectly executed throw...The Violet Vixen was the only one who had hit the ground. The handcuffs clattered uselessly to the ground as Radeka stood in front of her, admiring the well crafted carnage unfolding before the city's very eyes.

It was at that point that Lethe had all but ceased in attempting to attack her. Through fighting, she could poke and prod at people for reactions. And find out exactly how they reacted to certain things. And she could even anticipate dangers that others might be blind to. But Lethe's instinct was to survival. And if surviving meant defeating her opponent, it made it more likely for her to figure out how exactly to thwart someone. Radeka oddly enough did the opposite. She did not attack Lethe or show direct aggression towards her despite her attempts at killing and capture. She'd only her own conscious mind. And to be honest -- she was barely closer to figuring out how to rip this out at the roots than at the beginning. Worse yet was that people were dying or at the very least near it. It made sense as to why the woman was so nonchalant about her presence. As it stood right now -- no one here knew how to stop her from talking on.

And yet...

Lethe took a deep breath. And gave a long, exasperated sigh While she had all but given up on the endeavor of killing or capturing Radeka. And the woman would be able to talk freely. She could keep swinging on Radeka to look good or vent frustration, but that would do no good. While she had discovered things about Radeka, the people here were no further from danger and still yet died around her.

Lethe may have been sitting in the dirt with no answer currently to the Mastermind herself. But she didn't remain idle. While the woman continued to prattle on -- Lethe began to take items out of her utility belt. She rapidly laid out an array of explosives and began dismantling them. And then combining them to make larger ones on the spot. Most people would have trouble following her movements and in reality she hardly would herself. But she knew where her hands would go and where each item she needed was. Despite this -- she still had the bandwidth to listen to Radeka.

A blasting cap nearly slipped out of her fingers.



"Nothing's perfect." Lethe says, picking up the blasting cap and attaching the wiring to the final especially made explosive. "And I don't think it ever will be, if you ask me." With that she places the larger explosives on her hip. All four of them.

"The truth does come out. But what we make of it? And how much we see? And how we react? That's something else." Lethe would speak but it wouldn't slow her down. If anything, addressing Radeka did the opposite. Though a part of her wondered if just talking to her was rewarding her actions with just what she wanted.

As Radeka stepped out of the way -- the finishing touches on the bombs are complete. And she places them on her hip. With that -- Lethe looked straight ahead. And ran. The time for pondering the mind of the main villain was gone for now. And she focused on the battlefield beyond.

The world didn't slow down much. Everything happened quickly and she had to assess. Most of actors were a bit scattered. There was a woman with angel wings fighting the frog alone -- damaged and honestly struggling. But the civillians had managed to escape. There was one very large woman she saw from before who she could see clashing with the giant bird in the sky -- and she caught a glimpse of it being beaten down to the ground before an awestruck.

And then finally there was the crab. Oh the crab.

One could argue that she was more well suited to facing down any of the other monsters. And that one of the other heroes needed help. But what was happening with the crab was a complete disaster. The attempt at evacuation had been well impeded by the crab as it gunned straight for them. And two of the heroes here were fighting with one of another. Why? Lethe simply couldn't tell with all that had been happening between those two. And there was a lot less room to ask given the immediate threat the thing posed.

First thing was first. Civillians.

Lethe felt a wave of relief was over her as she saw the man telekinetically take hold of the crab, lifting it into the air and then flipping it as she slammed into onto concrete in the middle of the park. Upon closer look, the man seemed to manipulate gravity itself. And she took care not to get too close as structures began to collapse. Indeed -- she sought to use it, though she didn't consult him at all.



Bullets whizzed through the air -- Lethe gauging accounting for the increase in gravity. The bullets would curve, but rather than striking uselessly at the crab -- she shot at sections of the park's fencing preventing people from escaping as quickly. Pivotal points of the fence's structure would be hit as the bullets would quite literally cut through the metal like a powertool with precision that bordered on supernatural. Slowly but assuredly -- around 50 feet of the fencing surrounding the park would collapse. And make it much easier for people to go.

Some people called Lethe something of a ninja. And in her eyes she couldn't see that as farther from the truth. If she wanted to blend in with the night, she'd wear a navy blue or a black. But her outfit was a bright and obnoxious purple. One that served to draw the aggression of attackers as if a statement. And which served to allow her to be a an easily discernable beacon. With her costume and loud gunfire -- she hopped to draw people's attention as she unabashedly began to yell to the point of nearly screaming.

"EVERYONE!"

With a smoking barrel pointed towards the new exit she mad for the people in this area. "THIS WAY. LET'S MOVE!! GO GO GO GO GO!"

She yelled -- using brief and clear words. And repeated herself constantly. For every little second the crab Her arms swished to the air as she motioned towards the newfound exit. Sadly she couldn't do much for the injured...save point them out so that they aren't forgotten. And hope that some were decent enough to pick them up. Or that a hero quicker and stronger than she was would be able to move them. It wasn't that she was above it. But the threat the crab posed hadn't ended.

The crab slammed it's hands on the ground. And Lethe jumped to evade the most severe part of the oncoming earthquake as soon the crab began to go underneath the ground. And then she began to run -- reloading her dual Glock 18's as she ran.

"Oh no you don't." And then maddeningly enough -- the Wisteria Ronin jumped into the hole as the crab was half way in the ground. And she would land on it's undercarriage while it was still flipped upside down. It was at that moment things began to move slowly.

Crumbling rocks and dirt fell onto her shoulder as she landed on the creature. What little light shone down upon her from above began to be swallowed as the natural pressure of earth would begin to seal the earth above her she was in the crowd. Simply put she had to act fast.

Many things had weaknesses. The crab seemingly did not. So it was to be said that And thus she took to the plastique based explosive and threw them onto the holes in the crab's legs. The hole grew smaller. And the light grew thinner. But she remembered exactly where the holes on the crab's legs were. It wasn't enough to place them. She had to push them into the holes. And the explosives were thankfully like putty. And she set to shooting at them. Which was in and of itself not enough to set it off. But if the explosives landed -- they would be pushed further and further into the hole until firmly planted.

Success or not -- Lethe's time had run out. Perhaps if she hadn't tried to direct anyone than she'd have had a bit more time. But it was then then that in her attempt to climb out of the hole that walls quite literally came in.

An ocean of dirt moved in to fill the hole Lethe and the crab was in. And the earth had swallowed her. She wrapped her cape around her body and took a deep breath before being buried alive.

The soil rushed in and the pressure came around her body. The Crab swap through dirt, rubble and concrete as though water. But having avoided the rock, the soil itself made Sacha a woman stuck six feet under in what would be many people -- death via suffocation...

...

From the grass -- a hand erupted from the dirt the crab had burrowed into like something out of a George Romero movie. The violet vixen's face followed not too soon after, her cape wrapped around her mouth and nose like a makeshift scarf. Which she promptly ripped away from her face the instant she came up.



It was perhaps one of the best breathes she'd taken in her life. It was all she needed to finally pluck herself from the ground and return to the surface world that the living inhabited. Once out of the ground -- she took a knee, her chest heaving in and out to make up for lost air that the dirt didn't really have much of. All the while her eyes took a moment to survey the environment. And she watched as rocks were slung to Erwin. He repelled them with little effort and notably more strength than what he had shown before.

And Lethe anticipated where the danger was. It took a little bit of mental gymnastics. But she thought of going where the Psi was standing. The same way as she thought of going to different areas of the street. And her instinct simply told her to not go where the telekinetic man was standing. Thus she began to move towards him.

"You're next! Look out!" Lethe didn't know how prepared the man was. But hopefully one of the things she could do was tip him off.

One of the other things she could do, was launch an actual attack. The claw erupted from the ground and it showed the Violet Vixen exactly where the crab was. It still was underground. And thus it would make her next attack all the more safe. Lethe reached for the detonator and set the previous explosive off. And if they were still on the crab they'd go off.

While anyone could throw a set of bombs at the creature to likely little avail -- it was Lethe's intention to set off enough explosive to simply flatten a multi-story building, focused within the particularly crafted chinks she'd created in the crab's armor. With the explosives hopefully successfully smushed into the crab's carapace it would set itself to fill in the very cracks she'd created and try to blow off the creature's legs in a manner not dissimilar to trying to take out the foundations of a building. She couldn't punch very hard. But she could send hypersonic force into the creature's weakpoint in a more extreme version of a cracking a diamond with a hammer.

If successful -- Lethe sought to shatter the armor and blow it's legs off. A giant crater would form if the explosives were the creature was. The shockwave would travel through the ground rather than the air and make it ripple in a manner not unlike water for a brief moment -- knocking people off their feet for a few hundred yards. But that was much preferable to bursting eardrums and kicking up shrapnel as it traveled down the block. It could serve to setup the other two's attacks and hopefully, make the crab at least partially immobile.

With her hand -- she would wipe the sweat from her brow. A little bit of the mud from her face. In one hand, she had the grappling hook, ready to grant more options for her to maneuver. And in the other hand a Glock 18 simply because you never knew when you might need it. A magazine fell to the floor and a fresh one was placed in at the blink of an eye. She pressed the bottom of her palm against the gun's slide and racked it back to chamber the very first of a fresh magazine.

[attr="style","background-image:url(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/904711125596262420/984552958417068062/New_Project2.png);color:white;"]

Rumbling - that's all that could be described as Psi stepped back, the gravity around him increasing even more as he swung himself around. On the outside, he clutched his head and started swinging his hand around. Rocks would fly blindly towards everyone around him, making everyone around him a target now. It happened right after the link was made with the limb, fragments of rock speeding like bullets being fired. Lamposts bent out of shape, the buildup of Psychic backlash as he fought to control his movements. He was trying to stop himself, he was - it very clear that he was but he was acting more like a wild animal as he did.

Screaming - that's all that could be heard. He was screaming his lungs out, a scream so wild and feral that no human could have made it as a monochrome light covered his body. It erupted around him, cracking the pavement under his feet. The pressure was intense, the pressure making the Red Strings behind him react negatively. Now that Lethe started to give them the message that civilians needed to move, a new priority was found within the red strings. All at once, they vanished from Psi’s body.

His coat? Gone. The blood red light? Gone. With no indication of where they went. Psi would continue to lash around - blindly smashing everything that came close to him. His eyes faded as a new light formed, the gentle blue or the harsh red gone - they were replaced with white pupils that look like an overcharged flashlight; flashbanging the whole street with light out of nowhere.

- - -

Inside of the Mind…

Psi would be feeling incredibly weak in this situation as the Parasite trembled - it knew the dominance wouldn’t work on it. It could adapt, overcome; but Psi couldn’t. Not mentally. It would detach from his arm in this mental space, forming a psychic bubble around him as the dominance came in. It couldn’t fix the damage that was done already. But it could try. And it was as whatever backlash was hitting Psi mentally bounced off initially - but cracks started to form in its barrier quickly as the assault from inside and out wore it down.

“Get up! Psi, feed her your fist!”

It cried out as Psi laid there motionless, eyes glazed as thoughts passed by like years. Who… Was he? What was this? It was like an ocean of thoughts and Psi was drowning. Deep below, Psi as a person was drowning in everything the Witch was throwing at him. The parasite's eyes looked at him in concern as it shifted it’s form, appearing outside the dome in a humanoid form - putting its arm’s up in defence.

“You won’t take him. I’ll crush your mind before that happens! No one hurts him and lives!”

A bluff - but the tone was clear. Care. Affection. He had grown on Psi, and Psi on him - it would feebly stand there and just step closer to Witch. His form crumbled apart as he stood there, eyes staring at Radeka. It couldn’t do anything, but it was an obstacle. It grit its teeth, claws forming at its hands as the barrier around Psi crumbled like glass.

“The kids got stuff to do, and - he’s not getting twisted into a weapon anymore!”

Weapon. Weapon - weapon. As the words echoed throughout the mindspace, Psi’s eyes regained their colour slowly. His leg slamming onto the ground, his fist twisting into a fist as cracks started to form into the mind space. Through these cracks, a dim red glow fed into the area. Then they appeared, the strings. They would feed towards Psi as he got up and time, for a moment, seemed to stop.

[ PSI.AccessFragment(REDSTRINGS.ACCESS) ]

[ GRANTED ]

[ VIOLENCE = REQUIRED ]

Time resumed as the Red Strings slammed into Psi’s back, feeding under his skin out of nowhere. He would step forward, eyes glowing red as strings waved around him like a beautiful dance. His eyes glowed a white as the Red Strings poured into his back - vanishing from sight. What the witch would feel was… Nothing. There was no emotion behind his mind, no thoughts in his mind as the Red String pulled control back toward him. Just one thought -

[ DIRECTIVE: KILL THE WITCH ]

Each time it was wiped, it reinstated itself back into existence. Each time. It seems Radeka was seeing something that should have never been seen. Something deep, buried within Psi. The cracks formed, as he pulled back from the near comatose subservient state he was in. At this point, was this even Psi?

Or was it something else?

- - -
Back outside...

After the blinding light and the attacks, Psi collapsed to his knees with his eyes closed. Whoever he may have hurt, he was unaware. The Red Strings would appear again all over his body, but a bundle would wrap around the crabs arm he had stolen and started to tighten - cutting it but not slicing it clean off. It was a clue, something that could be seen. No matter what state he’d be in when he got back up, the first step was cutting the arm off. But the Red Strings were slow… And anyone could hurry up the process.