My Werepanther System: Starting with Nine Lives
Chapter 71 CAT/CONCIOUSNESS

Chapter 71: 71 CAT/CONCIOUSNESS

TW: Self-Harm.

***

The drones were human sized jets with hand-like claws at the ends of carbon fiber ropes deployed from the underside. They were deployed to the ground and used to snatch up the Inheritence Ability users Rex defeated.

He was on the move again before Trish was fully off the ground.

With an almost magnetic pull, he was back in the water, zipping down and jumping across to new rivers to maintain his b-line straight after Simon Hugo. An anxiety filled him at the implication of the trainees new abilities.

From his words, it was obvious to Rex that he wasn’t seeing the Rex everyone else saw. Simon was seeing Rex for what he was.

"Simon knows im a Werepanther....." Rex thought as he exploded out of a river and surfed on a focused current through a wild clutter of twisted trees and smashed huts once belonging to native forest peoples.

"No..." Rex drifted right and spun around a pile of goblin corpses.

In the trees, jaguars and lesser jungle-cats ran with him.

"That isn’t entirely true." Rex said, "If Imani was here, she’d explain how his turbulent mental state is creating a sort of buffer between him understanding the truth of what he was seeing in me and how that fits with reality... fuck, I’m coping so hard."

In the distance, a horribly misshapen ogre stepped into the clearing. Rex had never seen an Ogre in person due to them usually being on the outskirts of dangerous cities. He’d only ever read about them on news bulletins. They weren’t like the old stories. Not directly. Instead of being born as giants, they were humans twisted into massive malformed titans due to horrific empowering reactions born from the magical drugs they ingested.

Ogres in the books, man-eating giants.

Ogre’s in real life, drug addicts turned into man-eating giants empowered by their magically tampered with substances.

Which also meant they weren’t usually just giants.

The same way goblins weren’t just goblins.

The ogre spotted Rex with his eyes. One was slitted like a cat and the other was full of a dozen pupils reminding Rex of a fly. The beast was ten feet tall and covered in glowing green pimples. The moment it saw Rex, the pimples popped and spiked glowing green tendrils screeched from gaping holes all over its body. Its mind was so gone, Simon couldn’t invade. And just like the last, that didn’t matter because it still wanted to kill Rex.

Quickly, Rex tried to level gauge the twisted man, considering the increased appendages, mass and visible circulation of virulent mana while also listening for the presence of other predators before raising his hands and sending his own volley of liquid tendrils at the brute.

As they sunk into the ogre’s chest, arms and legs, Rex infused his element with venom. The water steamed as streams of purple and green deadly essence flowed in tandem with the water.

The ogre roared and a shockwave of foul mist burst from the holes in its body like engine exhaust.

Rex’s focused tidal wave carried him straight up into the sky to avoid the blast. From there, he made a massive spear of poisonous liquid water and threw it straight downward.

The ogre’s roars were overpowered by the deadly splash at the spear ripped into the brute.

Seconds later and Rex crashed into the floor, landing in a puddle to survive the massive fall.

He stayed that way for a moment before regaining form like he was climbing out of a pond.

[+240 EXP]

No more than ten feet ahead of him, the ogre’s remains lay in smashed and slashed bits.

"I’m not eating that." Rex continued his chase.

The rest of his journey was calm. At least on the front, but he was beginning to hear things in the far distance.

Screams.

Collisions of steel and flesh.

Simon was connecting with New-Brazil.

Rex still had a mile to cover.

He kicked it into high gear and sprinted as the presence of rivers was slowly replaced with steel boardwalks and flat landed city-villages on the outskirts of the city-state.

He felt his pulse quicken as the distance shrank and the highlighted outline of Simon’s body expanded.

Half a mile.

A thousand feet.

Five hundred.

Rex moved through the trees to avoid the damaged clutter.

Until he was too close and flipped out of the canopy.

He landed in a field of cement lined with crappy apartments. Scorch marks lined the ground in jagged arcs.

He listened with his pistol drawn.

It was silent.

Too silent—

"AH!"

A woman screamed.

Rex’s predatory impulses had him ready to run into the dilapidated complex until he noticed the flicker of green within the third floor window.

He didn’t bother calling. He knew Simon knew he was there. Rex’s ears twitched. He could hear the breaths of hundreds under Simon’s control.

Within, he could also feel the flow of water through metal and hybrid plastic piping. It was all around him.

He holstered his handgun and spiked the surge of water, pulling from the city-state further north and flooding the pipes with pressurized flows.

Pipes began to pop. The ground shook. Rex felt his mana reserves plummet as he manipulated thousands of pounds of water all into one apartment complex.

It reached its apex.

The walls cracked and bathrooms were decimated as violent jungle water ripped apart the apartments.

Simon roared through the mouthes of hundreds as the waters flooded the apartment and slowly carried everyone out.

Rex stood in the cement streets with his hands out, like a composure of some aquatic orchestra as he raised up close to one hundred people in a focused spinning ball of water.

It was crude.

It was violent.

The people weren’t to blame but they were thrown and slammed into one another as wild currents took them inside until they were either unconcious from drowning or pure bludgeoning in a swarm.

Rex dropped them in the streets.

Simon clung to the shadows inside.

"I don’t know what you are...."

"Yea you do." Rex said as he neared the building.

"I don’t know anything!" A Psionic blast of light ripped apart a wall to a top floor apartment.

Rex’s eyes went slitted like a cat as he sprinted at the apartment and began climbing up the wall.

"Easy, specialist." AG Brennus said over a communications channel broadcasted through the mic in his helmet. "You weakened him but his powers are purely mental. He could evolve again entirely by his own mind. Keep him steady. Don’t entertain his delusions. Don’t aggravate him."

"We’re kind of past that." Rex thought.

"I... please, just stop. I’m tired." Simon said from inside the apartment.

"So rest. I’m not here to hurt you. I don’t really know you, Simon...." Rex said as he flipped up a fire escape on the fourth floor, "But I know you want your family to succeed. That’s real. Remember that. Family."

"My family.....my... they said I’m the weakest. This power..... it’s not mutating! They said you’ll kill me." Simon said.

"Who will kill you?" Rex asked, "The monsters?"

"AHHHH!" A Psionic pulse wave ripped through the apartment, shattering windows and stripping paint entirely. In the pulse waves, Rex could make out artistic depictions of Simon. He was much younger. Maybe twelve and visibly destraut as his abilities manifested. His Psionic blades were nothing more than sticks of light. He trained. He fought hard while his father prepared for bankruptcy.... And worse. Rex suddenly wished his eyes and overall perception wasn’t so advanced to make out the trainees story.

Some of the last things Rex saw was Simon taking a blade to himself after years of failure to advance. And in those moments of self harming euphoria and release, the alteration of his mind, ultimately did the same for his powers.

"You’ve always been a danger to yourself. Your powers becoming this..... makes sense, unfortunately." Rex thought.

It was then that he realized, sure, Simon was seeing Rex in his true form. But the monsters were metal. His own mental. Himself. His doubt and shame and trauma.

"I’m way out of my price range." Rex thought as he climbed another floor.

"What do you want from me?"

"I want you to stop hurting yourself." Rex blurted out, partially with irritation.

Simon was quiet.

The air suddenly didn’t feel so hot.

"I want you to act like you’re here to save lives. Come on, you gotta play hero. You want money for your family?"

"Ye—"

"Fuck no!" Rex clawed at the walls as he climbed. He had some practice being motivational to lost individuals. "You want to prove yourself. You want to shut your dad up. You wish punishing— hurting, yourself didn’t feel as good as hurting the enemy. You want to be normal. Like the other stick-up-their-ass inheritors with perfect hair and perfect bank accounts. But you’re not. You’re Simon Hugo. You make swords with your mind. You’re probably a little edgy. You’re not normal. But you’re not insane either. Tighten up. Remember why you’re here."

"You’re not a monster..... are you?"

"Don’t entertain his delusions." AG Brennus said practically through his teeth. "You could trick him into a new superpower!"

"I don’t have a choice." Rex said as he backflipped off the building, twelve floors up.

As he free fell, he pulled all the previously discarded waters to himself. From the jungles beyond, he pulled waters from the rivers.

The blue streaks of glimmering fluid covered him, taking shape through focused currents and hurricanes until he was standing as a sixty foot tall liquid Werepanther.

Simon gasped.

"W-what..."

"You know what!" Rex roared.

From so high up, he could see Simon, hidden in a scalped apartment at the top floor of the complex.

He looked terrifying.

There was no human skin. No hair. No eyes. He was poorly shaped Psionic energy huddled into a corner. The walls around him changed in waves, going from concrete to brick to carpet to Fire. They slowed as he faced Rex.

"You’re a god... I’ve reached the gods..... am I dying?" Simon asked as he looked down at his hands.

"You’re living."

"I don’t feel like it....." Simon began to grow with the pop and fizzle of energy.

"DAMMIT REX." AG Brennus yelled through his helmet.

"That’s because..... you’re not doing it right!" Rex managed.

"....remember why I’m here." Simon mumbled.

"Yes. Remember. Say it as prayer. To me..... you’re ....uhh... god."

Simon mumbled to himself.

He shrank down to human size.

Rex watched him. He could make out a nexus of wild energy flow and interweavings where colors changed and reality went fluid.

His brain.

Rex’s target.

Like a pouncing tiger, Rex jumped out of the mouth of his liquid construct and flew through the window with his pistol raised.

He fired three shots into Simon’s brain as he prayed

The trainee jumped before his energy quickly stabilized and forced him into solid form as his genetics went dormant.

Rex watched as his body tried to reimagine itself back to a normal state.

It did the job.

Somewhat.

As he laid in the empty apartment, his hair was gone. His scalp was seethrough, revealing his brain that was now a mess of Psionic spinning energies.

"Damn, Simon." Rex said.

"I don’t know if I should demote you or do the opposite, Specialist Rex." AG Brennus said. "That was the last of them. Spc Stein was intercepted by the Jungle-Monkeys. The Operation was successful."

Rex picked up Simon and hopped out of the window. With his claws, he slid down the cement walls leaving a trail of rubble until he hit the ground, dropping the trainee out in the open for the recovery drones.

"Alpha-General." Rex said.

"Yes?"

"I apologize in advance."

"Rex. I just considered your promotion!"

"And demotion. I guess you don’t have to anymore." Rex took off his helmet. As it fell, he could hear the Alpha-General yelling for him to return to base immediately.

Before the drone even arrived to retrieve Simon, he was on the move, making his way to Syphen and the others with one thought in mind.

"Please don’t be crazy wolf monsters, please don’t be crazy wolf monsters...

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