Three days had passed since the girl had begun her new life in the city with her new family, and during those three days, she rarely left the house aside from the first day here.
Now it was the fourth day, and she planned to return to hunting the Morlocks that lived under the city again— this time, she planned to go on a mass hunting spree.
She didn't make this plan rashly just because she wished to grow in power, either.
While yes, she knew she needed more strength as soon as possible to deal with future issues, she also decided to do this after observing the city for the past two days using her scouts.
Speaking of scouts, Lily had used all the mass she collected over the period of the two days— from her units eating and herself eating— to focus purely on making more fly scouts.
She wanted to increase the amount and, in turn, increase the range which her eyes could cover.
With that focus in mind, she had now reached a total of 3500 fly scouts in total, and they covered most of Lower Manhattan and even further beyond it with their range.
She had to stop creating more, not only because she ran out of mass but also because she could feel the mental strain that was starting to affect her because of how thin she was stretched.
But using all her scouts, she was able to verify that the X-Men were currently not within the city— at least not anywhere she could see them.
She was even able to use some of her scouts to find mutants in the tunnels below the city and hidden mutants throughout the city that hadn't even been exposed yet.
People who had recently awakened their abilities and didn't know what to do, those who awakened their abilities for a while but hid them, or people with powers so mundane they didn't even know they had them.
She planned to get most of them— eat them.
Her goal for the day was to at least get herself ten or fifteen new abilities— only then would she consider herself safe enough to not have to worry about escape from the X-Men.
Functional abilities that is.
Of course, she knew that many of the abilities she would acquire would be useless to her right now; most of them were weak or just outright useless. That was why she planned to get a lot to combine them to increase their effectiveness.
It was currently Noon, and she planned to hunt throughout the entire night and return tomorrow morning at the latest. So she left before it got even later.
Switching with her clone in the shower like before, she snuck out of her house and into the city in her altered form. This time she brought a bag with her that had extra clothing so that if her clothes got blood on them, she could switch out without worrying.
The last time she forgot to bring a change of clothing, it was hard to move around while avoiding attention being drawn to the blood on her.
Once out, she decided to head directly to the tunnel because she could see some mutants walking around in them through her scouts. It would be much easier for her to pick them off within the tunnels than throughout the city.
Getting into the tunnels wasn't hard; she went in the same way she did last time and started to explore.
She stuck to the top of the tunnel using her Reptile Physiology— an ability she had gained from all the reptilian animals she had eaten. This way, she could get a drop on anyone she came across— literally.
And came across she did— it didn't even take long since she knew where some of them were located thanks to her scouts.
The first person she came across was what looked like an older lady. She had grey hair wrapped in curlers— showing her old age— a wrinkled face and a short build.
Lily didn't even allow the woman to notice her or give her a chance to act; she dropped from the ceiling of the tunnel onto the woman below, the impact of the crash breaking the woman's back and killing her instantly.
It was painless; at least Lily tried her best to make it as painless as possible.
With the woman now dead, she didn't eat her body yet. She decided to save most of the bodies till she finished hunting so she could eat all of them at once— in case eating them would alert the Professor.
She had one of her worm units that followed her carry it away and store it somewhere safe in the tunnels so she could eat it later, ordering it to return to her once it was finished.
Then, she continued the hunt— with one down and many more to go.
She climbed back up to the ceiling of the tunnel and, this time, made her way down a side path. Her scouts had detected multiple mutants in that direction that seemed to be moving as a group— the old lady was most likely going to meet them up.
They were close, so it was the perfect chance to deal with them without wasting time; naturally, she planned to obverse them for a while before acting.
It took little to no time to reach them with her speed, and she stayed hidden within the darkness above to look down at them— her eyes seeing perfectly clearly without any bother.
Three people, three women, from the looks of it.
One was a young girl with dark skin; she had long black hair and seemed rather outgoing and friendly with the two beside her. She appeared around the age of the mutant she killed previously, which made her somewhat repressive about killing them.
She didn't enjoy killing children— hell, she didn't even enjoy killing innocent adults.
But she had to do it in order to grow.
'No, that's a lie.'
She corrected her train of thought. She didn't have to kill them to grow; she didn't have to kill anyone to grow; she killed them because it made her growth faster— it made it easier.
If she wanted, she could try to grow in other ways. This was Marvel; after all, hundreds of methods for an average person to suddenly spike in power existed— but she chose this way.
She did it because it was her nature— her mind told her to do it, and while her rational human side whispered in the back of her mind, holding her back, she did it anyways.
She wanted to grow faster, she wanted to be stronger— she was selfish.
Nothing more, nothing less.
She was no grand hero that planned to save the world; she wasn't some villain that planned to end it; she wasn't even anything in between.
She just wanted to become stronger however she could— strong enough to survive, to thrive.
These thoughts were good; they grounded her, made her understand her limits, and made her know when to hold back and act— but she didn't have the liberty of holding back yet, not right now.
She had to kill the young girl— even if deep inside her, she felt displeased doing so.
Shaking her head slightly, she broke her train of thought and looked at the other two.
One was a lady that seemed older than the girl but was still relatively short, in her opinion. She had a slim build with white skin, wearing what seemed like a dress and pants matching black. She also wore a hat with a small piece of cloth covering her head slightly, but it was thin enough to see through.
Lily instantly noticed the pipe in her hand— albeit not lit— but she could smell the scent of smoke drenched on the lady's body. It seemed like she was a smoker, one that did it quite often.
The final lady was taller than the other two, but not by a lot. She had black hair and wore a jacket and jeans. She didn't really have anything that made her stand out, aside from maybe the tattoo on her neck that looked like an eye.
But that was all of them in the area— she decided to observe them for a while before acting since it seemed they didn't notice her.