"Because Silver was a coward." Mapleshade spat, eye glowering. She waited, silently, for River to stop talking. Wolfram was horrified to see how calm she looked, her arms crossed across her chest, leaning her weight on one leg as if she were listening to a casual conversation.
"You see," she growled when River had stopped talking. Wolfram slunk forward beside River, the knife clenched in his fist. "Whether or not it would have killed me, it wouldn't have mattered. I would have destroyed the Inhuman's once and for all. I would have won either way." She was pacing restlessly now, tail lashing. But Wolfram saw her hand was now on her hip where her gun was held.
"And another thing you are sadly wrong about, dear River, is that I still have won. How? My men out number you by hundreds. We are taking your group down one by one, and sooner or later you will all be dead." She lashed her hand toward the clearing, pausing to pin her stare on them both. "Inhuman's are pathetic—"
"But you're a Inhuman." Wolfram's voice was low; he was watching her through slitted pupils. "So was Michael. Neither of you are pathetic. What is your goal, exactly, Maple? Just to watch us burn?"
Mapleshade whipped her head around to look at him, her ears pinned to her skull. "Precisely."
Wolfram shook his head. "What I never understood," he muttered, shoving past River. "Is why. You're a Inhuman, and a lot of people you love, or shall I say loved, were Inhuman's. It makes no sense."
"Oh, I should have expected this. To much like your mother, not enough like your father. To smart and witty, brilliant instead of power-seeking."
"How dare you!" Wolfram's snarl seemed to scare Mapleshade enough for her to take a step back. "How dare you insult my mother like that! She was a genius, Mapleshade, she achieved so much more then you have, and ever will! I am proud to be like her. I would be disgusted even more with myself if I was like my father."
He glanced at River, and gave the ever so slightest tilt of his head toward Shadow. 'Go take him down,' he mouthed distinctly to her, before lunging at Mapleshade without a warning.
Taylor dashed to Brisa's side, pulling her hurriedly to the middle of a group of battling Inhuman's. "We have to get into that fire ring somehow. The group. Mapleshade and that dude will kill Wolf and River in a millisecond. Ideas?"