Her mind pulsated with pain as she felt it changing.
It had to be said that her mind was already very good due to her species— easily superior to that of a human— it was capable of operating multiple things at once and granted her the ability to control the massive hive with ease.
Yet now something has changed, it was better— yet different.
It wasn't like when she used her mass to improve her mental state, it was more like a change in quality rather than a change in quantity— like a new section of her mind had awakened.
She could feel it.
It could do more, there was a small part of her mind that was able to access the minds of others. It was like a worm or parasite, she could extend out made out of mental energy of some form, that could invade the mind of others and read the surface thoughts.
It felt odd to put into words— it felt odd to even try to understand how it fully worked.
'I need to test this as soon as possible. Let's go back up for now.'
She was originally planning to head back home after this fight and consumption, but she decided it would be better to try and explore her new abilities more before that.
Plus the unit she left to pretend to be herself had been doing its job just fine, spending most of its time within her room using her unfamiliarity with them as an excuse.
Besides that, she did have something else she wished to do now that she was here. Get herself fake identification papers.
While she did have an identity now thanks to the agents, it was an identity that would always be monitored by them, as such it would be greatly limiting to do things she would need to in the future.
She used it to get here— now she'll use her freedom here to get an identity to mess around with.
This was one of the hotspots of the world, how hard would it be?
So she moved on— exiting the tunnel the same way she came in, she had to hide in the alleyway because she had blood on parts of her clothing.
But that was fine since she could now test out the new ability on the people that walked the streets.
She hid in the alleyway and extended the mental energy outward into the mind of one of the passersby. It felt odd as it pierced their minds and entered their outer thoughts.
It felt as if part of herself was entering inside of them— and she could hear what they were thinking as if they were saying it to her.
"I wonder what I should eat for dinner tonight."
The thoughts went on to ramble about food and what they should eat for dinner, but she stopped paying attention to it, instead, she tried to extend another mental connection to see if she could hold up multiple at a time.
"This new employee is going to get on my nerves."
It was a success, she was able to enter the mind of another person, but there was a slight strain from trying to maintain both at the same time, and the thoughts overlapped, making them hard to tell apart.
It was interesting because she could enter multiple at once, but it was loud and messy. It must have been why the girl fainted when she was trying to read her mind, due to the hive mind she was constantly having other voices in her head.
But this was nothing to her, she was already used to this. That's why she tried to extend it further— she wanted to test her limits.
As she did, she was able to push another piece of her mental energy into the minds of a passerby, but she felt something odd, the mental energy was blocked by some sort of resistance from the person's mind.
She couldn't enter the mind of the person at all— it left her confused and curious— was it perhaps due to how thin she had tried to spread it?
She retracted all the mental energy she had sent out before to the others, and now purely focused on the mind of the person that had resisted her before— yet nothing changed.
She couldn't enter the mind of the person, rather, it was as if the person's mind was covered in some sort of daze, she couldn't even feel the mind of the person being there.
Now she was certain that it didn't have to do with the strain on her mental energy, but rather this person was odd— she wasn't a normal human. At least that's what she could assume from her resistance to the mental energy.
Lilly gazed at the figure of the woman over once more to try and figure out if she knew her. It was a young woman, maybe in her teens or early adulthood, not very old from how she looked.
She had dark skin and black hair— hair that was tied in the form of dreadlocks, and her outfit seemed to compose of loose-fitted clothing, a jacket, and loose jeans.
She couldn't remember anyone like that from her Marvel knowledge, but that is to say, she had very limited Marvel knowledge when it came to the comics— so the woman could very well be one such character.
Now she was debating whether she should follow her and find out more, fuel her curiosity, or if she should leave it before she got into a mess.