River rolled her eyes as Mapleshade declared that the Heroes would soon all be dead. "Guess it'll just have to be a David and Goliath situation." She murmured lazily, trying to keep the inevitable fight waiting as long as possible, while she came up with a plan and collected different cues from Mapleshade and Shadow that could be used while fighting; how they behaved.
The moment Wolfram told her to take down Shadow, she sprung into action.
Subdue him, then shoot. She kicked him in the shin, before throwing a hook punch to his jaw, then shoving her shoulder into his chest; knocking him to the ground.
"Wait!" Camilla scrambled up to them, highly aware of Finlay close at her heal, and her eyes nervously darted between Taylor and the fire. "I have ice powers, maybe I could freeze it over while a few of us go across...?"
"Okayokayokay." Bleddyn went to roll her sleeves up for utterly no logical reason and suffered a profound sense of disappointment when she realized that, not only did she not have sleeves, but that she couldn't even recognize nor remember what she was supposed to be wearing.
And that really hit her hard.
She bit her lip as she had to once more wrench herself away from the abyssal pull of psychological distortion. "I'm gonna do the thing." And so, with that declaration, she dove forward into the wall of fire, summoning the unparalleled might of an ancestral war cry nearly lost to the passage of time. "YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET."
Taylor blinked dumbly when Camilla ran up to her, then nodded quickly. "Sound's gr—
Bleddyn, wait!" She lunged out to grab the other girl, but she was already gone and through the flames. "Or...not. That's fine, I guess...alright, Camilla, do your best."
~
Shadow
had expected a good fight from the shifter, but never in his life had he expected her to be
that strong. With a yelp of pain, his leg and jaw throbbing, he felt himself falling. Blue flame spiraled from the ground with a soft growl, and caught him, wholly consuming him to stop him from falling.
A grin on his sharp features, he got to his feet in a fluid motion. "Is that all you have?" He purred. The air crackled as flame's snapping through the air, lashing around her wrists and dragging her closer. He easily towered over her, even though she was at the impressive height of six foot one, which gave him a advantage, but she would be quicker.
He hand came down hard against her jaw, his foot sweeping down and yanking her legs from beneath her, and at that moment the flame-strands snapped, leaving her to fall.
~
Wolfram no longer had fingernails, or natural human teeth made for consuming anything that was edible, or normal human eyes that were useless in the dark. Instead, lethal claws sprouted from the tips of his fingers, gleaming in the light of the blue flame. Fangs that scarily resembled a feline's grew in the place of his normal teeth, and his pupils slitted to a thin line.
A growl rumbled in his throat, not the normal growl of frustration he would often make, but was now undisputedly a noise that would come from a furious feline. Instead of human ears, raven-black cat ears replaced themselves on his head.
Mapleshade took a shaking step back, but Wolfram was faster. Like a shadow, he dashed forward, claws lashing against her already scarred face. "
Back. Down!" He spat, in a voice that was not his own. Deeper and raspier. More like a growl and a hiss then anything. He, vaguely, remembered that in times he forced himself to shift only half way, his voice would do that. He supposed due to the fact his voicebox couldn't tell if he should be human or feline. Or something like that. The physicalogical reasons his voice changed was not the matter at hand at the moment.
"Really? You really think I'll do that?"
Wolfram didn't hear her then, though, because something had caught his attention. Bursting from the blue-gray flames, he saw Bleddyn. A stab of horror consumed him, but he didn't have time to think about it any more because Mapleshade had slammed a violent punch against his jaw.
)
