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| Maverick energy danced lazily across fingertips, wisps of colored power dissipating into the aether in small gasps, yet leaving so much more still active behind. Each palm representing a polar extreme in violent and virulent vibrations, the energy danced and whirled waiting for the strikefall, the clasping of conjoined hands in a first step into a waltz of death, which would entwine with the steps of dust and debris storming into the atmosphere after impact. It was a seismic symphony of structural seduction, and quite an apt tune for the way in which the day was being turned out. Arclight studied the disengenuine interloper softly, canting her head to the side in quiet amusement, her sickening grin faltering into lopsided pursed lips, considering. Which took all of a scant second for the ex-soldier to come to the same decision as before: finality? This habitation was an aberration in the natural order of things, and one, which would not stand. Its very ambiance grated against the mercenary’s better sensibilities, being here was nauseating, and there was only one thing to be done with a sickness. Extirpate it. An intrinsic accord reached over the diminutive deliberation, Arclight concluded with a glance to stay the course. Floodgates opened as the gathering musical storms conflagrated, power washed out of Arclight’s hands as she slammed her palms together in a thunderous cacophony, firing off a wave of dismantling, scintillating, and proliferating energies; designed not to kill, but to deconstruct. Smattered window panes and battered window frames aside, the house behind the boy and his would-be-saviour still stood, and that made it a useful element of the environment. Thunderclap shockwaves were pitched to override the structural integrity of the concrete foundations and framework. The energy would pass quite harmlessly by the mortals (aside from an unpleasant, roaring earful,) however there would be a rather alarming creaking sound as the house began to strain against supporting its own greater mass. Now as to why Arclight might do this thing, as to why to be here in this place…? Well the answer was as simple as a straight line. The greatest congregation of closely quartered non-combatants was gathered at the community church’s weekly communal. And when enacting out actions for terrorist organizations, the greater the collateral damage in non-hostiles, the better. Non-hostiles were the targets anyway, since their non-hostility was subversive and treacherous. Their ideas of intermixing with a lesser species, of tainting the gene pool with inferiority and weakness was all anathema to everything the Lord M was trying to bring about. In that way the non-hostility became hostility. Arclight was here to deal with their blasphemy, to wipe out their sickness before it could spread. Or at least that was her professional and official raison d’etre for being here. Her ultimate destination being the Church: the community pillar which supported these blasphemers, the anchor which stayed them from wandering to a better path, and of course it was their primary symbol for hope and unity. Symbols are a dangerous thing. Symbols can outlive their originators, becoming the physical cancer behind the wrong ideas. And the quickest way for Arclight to reach her ultimate goal was straight through the town, through the interloper, and through the child. Which is really an over complication of the most honest truth in the woman’s actions. The penultimate reason for her being here: she just liked to hurt things. What were they compared to her anyway? Arclight was perfection of form and power, an alpha of the highest order. She could but snap her fingers and the very winds would howl in agony, tap her foot and the very earths would bellow in terror, smash a fist and all opposition would drop in dissolution and despair. Compared to others, she was as a god, and an active one at that. She didn’t truly hold a candle to Magneto’s ideals in her blackest of blacker hearts. Mutant or human alike as long as they suffered and died, what did it matter? So long as they suffered like she had suffered, so long as they suffered so that she might never have to suffer again, so long as they suffered and she did not: that was what mattered in the end. The rest was only pleasing side effects: one less child in the world to annoy her, one less interloper to delay her immediate gratification in achieving her own ends. Simple and fatalistic logics, just the way she liked them. Of course simplicity in her logic didn’t mean she’d make an end for these two too simple. She eagerly anticipated the building collapsing on them, all so that they wouldn’t die immediately (or at least she hoped they wouldn’t.) Instead the rubble-strewn refuse would weigh down upon their fragile bodies and slowly crush the life out of them over many, many long and ghastly hours. In the mean time Arclight would be free to exsanguinate just about every last miserable retch in this misbegotten hellhole of a commune. That was what Arclight planned as she released her waves of sonic destruction in nigh simultaneity to the interloper’s own assertive actions. |