We are all living in the past.
This is not a comment on the human psyche’s penchant to remember key events in our personal history but in the literal sense that what we perceive is the past. The light that touches our eyes does not instantly get relayed to our brain nor, upon reaching our brain, get instantly decoded. Much like playing an online game, there is latency between input and output.
In animals, and humans, we call this reaction time. An average human will have 150ms of latency for reacting to stimulus while the simple housefly has a reaction time of only 20ms. This shortening of reaction time can also go in the opposite direction when you scale the creature up.
So why pray tell, would one need to have a rudimentary understanding of how size correlates to reaction time when Xena is about to be shot? It’s because Xena can’t really do anything about it.
For all that she has two massive fucking brains made from a mix of two apex predators, she is still far too slow to dodge, duck, dip, dive or maneuver her fat ass out of the way of a point blank shot from a big fucking rifle. What those two massive fucking brains did help her with was perceiving the translucent green bullet exiting the barrel and make a pirouette towards her chest.
She couldn’t do jack all as she watched the round spiral towards her. She attempted to turn ethereal again but every time she tried it felt like she was waiting for a ski lift. Her shape shifting was far too slow for such a high-speed change, and her Flight was in a similar conundrum.
The one power she could still employ that would be beneficial was taking Yuri and shoving her into her inventory as she had closed the distance enough that with a painfully slow movement of her outstretched hand was enough to make physical contact with the Asian.
Her only saving grace would have been Hannah’s shard empowered aim-assist. But unfortunately, Hannah did not have a proper footing when she took the shot. Normally her power would have compensated for this, but it seems that in her panic she overcorrected.
Instead of the likely original target of Xena’s massive head, which ironically might have very well caused the armor penetrating round to be redirected, to instead go low.
Her slowed down perception gave her a front row seat of an 8-fps video.
The simulated gases expanding out from the barrel overpowering the red hue form the emergency lights and washing the mocha skinned woman, green. She saw the wave of force the recoil of the gun caused on Hannah’s body traveling from her shoulder to the rest of her body, her hair and bandana being flung about.
And, of course, she saw the green and black 20mm bullet making its spiral descent into her boob. Any attempt at grabbing the bullet slid off it like trying to grab a greased-up metal egg as she felt it stretching her softer ‘skin’ before it split, tearing and corkscrewing a path through her chest. It was only after time sped up and she heard the round impact a wall behind her that the pain finally reached her brain.
“AAAAAH!!”
She felt the route the bullet took in her rapidly. The tearing of her skin, the cracking and shattering of her ribs, the tearing of muscle, the perforation of one of her lungs and the remnants of the round rupturing out of her back.
It was the most pain she had ever felt in either of her lives.
Her caustic blood shotgunned out of the exit wound peppering the hallway. While the entrance wound sprayed out, catching one of the PRT agents. The vibrating simulacrum of a gun that Hannah was holding took the brunt of her acidic blood while leaving her mostly untouched.
The PRT agent wailed in agony as first his uniform melted to his skin before his skin began to melt. He writhed on the floor as he tried to get this gear off his body only succeeding to spread the acidic blood making the melting of his flesh worse as he quickly succumbed to his wounds.
The other Agents could only watch on in horror as their compatriot died a quick and painful death, unable to help the man for fear of getting the acid on themselves. The acid that is already eating through the flooring.
Xena instinctively recoiled from the pain only to cause more of the hallway to become debris. She collapsed to the floor as she used one of her large hands to cover the wound.
She could feel her lung filling with the green liquid before she was forced to cough it up, spraying the already deteriorating floor and causing an even bigger hole to form.
Hannah stumbled back from the recoil of the gun she used and could only look in shock as she watched it all play out. Her hands shook as she momentarily remembered a scene from her childhood. watching a man get reduced to bits and pieces of half burnt flesh. She was snapped out of her mind by Xena coughing up more of the acidic blood.
“WHY?!” Xena roared.
“WHY IS IT ALWAYS THE BOOB?!”
Acidic Blood ran down her chin as she coughed up another glob of it. She could feel her flesh already knitting together but it did nothing for the fact that she was still feeling the pain of the wound. The cut off cries from the PRT agent barely crossed her mind as she wondered why it was that every time she’s been shot, it’s been in her boobs.
The blood had melted a large hole in the floor and was not stopped by the several layers of reinforced concrete. Already she could see what appeared to be the next floor’s electrical and plumbing being eaten away, the fire suppression systems being eaten up by the blood while the water diluted it.
Xena gave it till the end of the day before it was either diluted enough to be safe or somebody used tinker bullshit to stop it. But she put it to the back of her mind as she coughed up another glob of the green blood.
“You know, I have been a rather good person till today.”
The surviving PRT troopers took out their sprayers and primed them, Hannah quickly summoned a sprayer herself, not wanting to cause more collateral damage.
Xena could feel her body heal the damage leaving a beige splotch where once was an open wound before that too began to darken.
“But I should have known that the government would always be incompetent.”
Hannah aimed her sprayer.
“Stand down Black Queen! You are under arrest for the murder of a PRT agent and destruction of government property!”
Xena gave off a wet laugh that resulted in her coughing up the last blood from her lung.
“HAHAh, blaming me for the death that you caused? The nerve. HAha”
It took a moment for her to calm down. Her smile fell into a flat line.
“I think you guys have bigger issues to solve than worry about little old me, after all; I’m not the one who’s managed to lose track of an apex predator…”
The reminder caused the group to remember why they were pinning down Yuri to begin with. The realization caused them to finally catch what was being said on their radios, or what was being screamed.
“…target has been tracked heading towards wards section, I repeat Target has been tracked heading towards the wards section!”
The voice of arms master followed up the PRT agent.
“DO NOT engage in close range. Blood from the Bio-tinkered organism has severe caustic properties that will eat through PRT issued gear, I repeat DO NOT engage in close range.”
The warning was far too late for Hannah and her group it seemed, and with the announcement that the original intruder was heading towards the underaged members of the Protectorate, Xena waved goodbye.
“Toddles, do enjoy the hide and seek.”
She seemed to vanish from their eyes though the vague outline could still be seen until it vanished too.
“Shit, we gotta help contain the other one.”
They looked at the remains of the hallway before realizing they could not actually use it due to the massive hole in the floor.
“There’s another stairs this way. Come on, move it!”
