Raj looked on as the team systematically cleared the nests one after the other. It was the fifth nest they faced their first challenge. For all intents and purposes, the new nest looked like the ones before, except it had 5 Ravens the largest number they had seen so far. It was still within the expected range and still a simple task. Bolt readied to fire.
Three bone shards made their way to the Ravens. One of them was impaled with a shard and fell from the nest. It struggled mid-air for a second before falling to the ground and dying. The other two shards went through the Raven which dissolved into a mass of shadows. It coalesced back to its form as soon as the shards passed through it.
It turned to look at the group before croaking. It looked like the leader of the pack and was a mutated Raven at that. Raj leaned forward in anticipation of the fight ahead of the group. Ravens dived from the tree towards the group.
Domain shouted "Lookout we have a mutated Raven coming in. Keep it in your eyes. Don't let it get the drop on you."
Every member of the team tensed. Cheeta reacted almost instantly and swiped his blade at the birds as soon as they were in range. The Alpha dissolved into shadows and avoided all damage. One of its nest mates was not so lucky and got sliced at the wing before falling at Bark's feet who promptly stomped on it taking it out of the action.
Cheeta rushed to the other Ravens ignoring the Alpha. He kept targeting the other birds. Flicker was flickering around the birds keeping their attention scattered and taking them out any chance he got. Another one of the Ravens died at his hands.
There were two Ravens left, the Alpha and the Raven flew out of the group's reach and revaluated its options. It dived at Domain who looked like the weakest in the team while the other Raven made its way to Bolt. Bark swatted the Raven out of the air before it could reach Bolt and Cheeta took the chance to kill it.
The Alpha managed to get through the protective teammates at Domain and scratched her eye out. Cheeta smacked at it, almost feeling as if he touched it before it dissolved into shadows and flew out again. Domain's eye was ruined, and it looked like she was bleeding heavily from a gash in her face. The Alpha looked like its wing took a bit of damage.
The Raven divebombed again at Domain. Domain shouted "Let it attack me and when it does Flicker be ready to kill it. It becomes solid when it interacts with the world. If you time it right you can kill it."
The Alpha scratched at the remaining good eye of Domain. As soon as it made contact a knife plunged into it but not before it took the other eye out of Domain as well. Possibly blinded and horribly disfigured Domain stood there for a moment in triumph over the Raven.
Before Raj could ask Roger about it, Domain's face started knitting itself together. Her eyes reset themselves in their places. It was as if the Alpha never hurt her at all. Raj then understood how Domain became the leader of such a capable team. It looked like she could regenerate from almost fatal attacks.
Domain spoke up "Anybody needs healing? Looks like it was a mutated Raven and a shadow mutation at that. Let us move out after a short rest."
After about 20 minutes, the group started to get back on the trail to find more nests and finish the job. The rest of the nests were easy, and they cleared them up quickly. Raj was lost in thought. He wanted to look at the mutated Raven, he felt that it would be very useful to understand what made up for the biology of such an interesting specimen.
He wanted to stick around for the Brunch but the mutated Raven went to the top of his priority list as soon as he saw what it could do. He said goodbye to Roger, who promptly exchanged contact information with Raj.
About 15 minutes later he was near the mutated Raven. Flicker's knife wound seemed to have severed its spine. Raj took out a scalpel and started cutting various parts of the Raven. He also took blood samples from the bird. He wanted to understand what was so special about this Raven that it had mutated.
He left the suburbs deep in thought. The way Domain handled the Raven was inspiring. She was a healer and she was sure of her skills. At the critical moment, she acted like a Tank taking the hit from the Raven while her teammates finished the job. Any later the Raven would have attacked another teammate seeing her attacks were ineffective on Domain. Any earlier it would have been able to get away by using its powers.
One of the things that he wanted to try was to see if he could increase his defense. He wanted his cells to dissipate the force before it even propagated inside his body. He will have to test it out in the dojo later today during practice with a sandbag. He will have one more day of the weekend before school on Monday and he will be able to implement the changes he wanted by then.
The Syn cell upgrades he made were amazing in themselves, but he obviously did not consider all the things he would be able to do with its powerset. Raj had early lunch and headed to the MMA dojo after a short break.