She slashed her claws forward, only for them to be blocked by something.
A yellow semi-translucent bubble had formed around the girl as she tried to slash her, blocking her claws from even reaching inches of the girl's body.
'A barrier?'
She was surprised, not a pleasant one either.
This would make it much harder for her to kill the girl— she originally thought that mutants from the underground didn't have anything strong or good for combat, but this barrier told her otherwise.
The girl seemed to have also realized that her life was saved by the barrier before her— surprised that it had protected her— but not surprised that she had it.
"Why didn't you use this to protect the others if you had it?"
Lilly asked the girl in order to probe her— the flinch and anger that appeared on her face gave her the hint she wanted, allowing her to come to the conclusion that she either couldn't control the power, or couldn't use it on others.
"I see. That's unfortunate."
She said once more as she tried to slash one more time— this time she exerted more force than she had before, yet all that happened was her claws breaking from the impact.
Her claws, which were stronger than that of a leopard, broke on the barrier.
The barrier didn't even have a single scratch on it, which just went to show how strong it was.
'This is getting problematic.'
She thought to herself as she stopped trying to break the barrier, retracting her claws for them to heal on their own.
Since she couldn't break the barrier she decided to try and capture the girl for the time being.
Extending her hand she tried to grip onto the barrier in order to keep it in place, only for her hand to slip off it with ease.
'What?'
She tried once more, only to fail again. She couldn't touch the barrier— no— rather it was more like she couldn't hold onto the barrier.
She simply slipped off as if she was grabbing onto something that was very slippier— or didn't have any friction to hold onto.
'Capture her.'
She ordered her workers that had been lingering around the area to come out from the ground and wrap around the girl.
The appearance of them breaking out of the ground and their horrific looks made the already scared girl even more terrified— but motivated her to run as fast as she could.
Getting up from the ground she tried to run in the other direction of them as fast as she could. She wasn't very fast— allowing the creatures to catch up to her rather quickly.
They tried to wrap their bodies around her as they had been ordered to— but even they couldn't wrap themselves around it. Their bodies simply slipped off from the barrier that protected the girl.
They couldn't stop her.
"What? Why do you have something so— strong?"
Even Lilly was flustered at this point.
The barrier prevented her from killing the girl and it also prevented her from capturing her, so what could she do, just let her get away?
She wasn't too worried about the girl spreading how she looked because her current looks were altered somewhat, but that would throw a wrench in her plans.
Her altered looks had limits— she couldn't take an endless amount of forms.
Her alterations were a basic feature of her species. It worked on the same concept as her adaption— the changing of her bodily structure.
She used her abilities to slightly alter her bodily features, hair color, eye color, slight face shape, height, skin color, and stuff like that was easy. But it had limits.
She couldn't keep changing forms, not to mention that if she were to spread word of this, it would alert the Morlocks that someone was down here killing them.
They would move in groups, or just not come here anymore.
She didn't want that, she wanted the mutants for the genes, and she had just found the perfect place to farm them.
Clicking her tongue slightly she looked over at the girl who was trying to run away once more, she tried to think about whatever she could use to go against her.
'Venom maybe?'
She gathered venom in her mouth using the abilities she had gathered from multiple types of snakes— a powerful venom that was capable of killing a full-grown cow with ease— and she spat it at the barrier.
Yet all it seemed to have done was slip off the surface of the barrier without even being able to reach the girl.
It was annoying but she couldn't find a way to kill or capture the girl.
'Fine, even if she gets away it doesn't change anything. I'll keep hunting in these tunnels— I will find more mutants one way or the other.'
She thought to herself as she watched the girl run away, ordering her worms to follow her from under the ground.
While allowing the girl to get away may mess with her plans, nothing was ever set in stone, and she could easily alter her plans to change with the shifting of the winds.
Being flexible was what made her species superior.
As for what she would do, she decided to just head back home for now and figure out the rest of it as it happens.
There was little one could do when one lacked information, so her first plan was to set up an information network to know everything happening within this city.