With a click, the cage opened. Emma's smile retracted somewhat. She threw the cage away as it opened up, causing it to slam into the ground a tumble a few steps.
The lizard inside tumbled around in a daze.
It let out a weak groan, eyes spinning from being disoriented. After a few failed feeble attempts, the small lizard crawled out of the cage, turning around a few times before finally turning to face Emma.
It then let out a high-pitched growl that made it look more weak than anything else.
Looking at it, Mia couldn't help but feel a bit flabbergasted. She turned to look at Jessica, who was still a bit freaked out for whatever reason.
"Why would we even need to fight something like that? There's no point in having a fight against that monster, no?"
Emma tilted her head to the side and let out a giggle.
"For the grand majority of people, I do agree it is rather pointless for them to fight this thing."
Mia clicked her tongue, still feeling dissatisfied. She took another look at Jessica, who had a deathly serious look. After not knowing what to say for a few seconds, Mia tugged on Jessica's hand slightly.
"Um, hello? Why are you just standing there like that? Even Emma agreed with me and you have nothing to say?"
She was quite surprised by the lack of reaction Jessica had. Instead, the only thing she was doing was continuing to pull Mia away, like she had a phobia of lizards. In the end, Mia could only find herself unable to say anything more.
As for Jack, he was still trying to stand up so he could get closer and get a better look but was unable to as he was still healing.
As for Emma, she slowly and delicately pulled out a white light that morphed into a pistol from her storage deck all in one fluid motion. After taking a good few seconds to aim with both hands, she fired.
Mia averted her gaze, seeing this as more of an execution rather than anything else.
A bang rang out, as a bullet went straight through the lizard's eyes, causing a bloody mess to splatter out from behind. Though strangely enough, while it should've been a lethal wound, the lizard was still moving. Albeit, it was trembling from apparent pain, it was still alive.
Emma followed it up with another shot, hitting the lizard in the other eye, splattering even more blood on the floor. Although it didn't look too bad at the front, the back was completely blown open, revealing only fragments of bones and a few remnants of brain matter.
For the grand majority of living things, this was more than enough to kill them.
Yet, the lizard cared little of logic, instead taking a step closer to her.
On the other hand, Emma let out a sigh before shooting the lizard once more in the abdomen. A puddle of blood much larger than the lizard quickly began to form, and it finally stopped moving.
Mia blinked a few times.
"...It had a surprising amount of tenacity. But why does that even matter if it's so weak?"
The man in a suit turned to her and let out a chuckle.
"Oh, is that what you think?"
Although his expression was masked, he looked rather cocky.
"I wonder if you will think the same once the battle is finished..."
Right after being cocky, he couldn't help but feel sad right after, letting out an aggrieved sigh.
"Fuck. It's going to be a pain to get another one of these..."
At this point, Mia realized that something was wrong. However, no matter how she looked at it, there was just a small lizard lying dead on the ground.
"Isn't... the battle already over?"
As though that was a sign, the blood around the lizard suddenly retracted into its body in a spiral pattern. The lizard itself started to burgeon violently, its various body parts erratically increasing in size one after another.
Clear cracking sounds resounded in the air, as the lizard's bones were broken and reformed.
And after all that, it became the size of a normal lizard, still smaller than a crocodile. Although it still wasn't all that intimidating, its show of vitality still made it rather frightening.
Without flinching, Emma held up her pistol once more and fired three shots in quick succession. Two penetrated the eyes, and one through its heart. It trembled rather intensely, spasming in pain.
However, it was still alive.
Despite finding itself blind, it rushed forth, intent on taking advantage with its remaining vitality. Seeing that, Emma frowned for once, clicking her tongue.
"Ugh. You are disgusting, don't stain my skin."
She shot five more bullets in a second, one shattering its skull, and the rest each shattering a joint on the lizard's limb. Although the lizard still had the will to continue on, its body was too injured to move forward anymore. In the end, it simply remained there for quite a while, bleeding out.
After several minutes passed, Mia couldn't help but raise a question.
"Um... is it not dead? It hasn't been moving for a while now."
The man in a suit raised a finger, though before he could-
"This creature has several lives so to speak. I am letting it bleed to death right now as I don't want to waste any ammo, nor do I want to get my clothes dirty."
Mia blinked a few times.
"...How many lives does it have?"
Emma shrugged her shoulders.
"Enough for its purposes."
Before Mia could ask again, the blood once again retracted into its body in a spiral pattern. The broken joints didn't actually heal, but rather expanded and broke further before reforming again.
This time, the skull of the lizard had a fundamental change, becoming thicker and larger. By the time its transformation was done, it had become a velociraptor. After finishing its transformation, it let out a shrill cry into the air, before glaring at Emma.
It took one step forward, intent on rushing her down with its newfound bipedal legs. However, after taking its first step it had frozen up in fear. It didn't know why it was afraid despite being incredibly tenacious.
However, despite the fact Emma was only standing there, it couldn't bring itself to just take the few steps it needed to attack her.
It was at this point that Emma put away the gun, recognizing that it would take too long to kill with just bullets at this point. And then she slowly raised her hand, getting her new weapon of choice, pointing it at the velociraptor.
...Her finger.
Jack's eyes widened. Although he couldn't get close, he waved his hands in excitement.
"Wow! What are you going to do now? Is it the finger gun trick that my Dad showed me?"
Emma's smile widened slightly.
"Well... I'm not sure what that trick is, but it's probably a little bit different."
It was then that the tips of her finger trembled.
For one second, nothing happened. Then, her finger suddenly split apart into eight different pieces, cut rectangularly, the top of the finger into four equal pieces, and the bottom also in four.
It was almost like she was actually a robot.
The interior of her fingers were all pitch black, swallowing up any light that came into contact with it. It was hard to know if they were black, or if something was just blocking it out visually.
Both Mia and Jessica were somewhat freaked out seeing this strange sight. Although they thought Emma was quite strange, they still saw her as human. Now though, they couldn't help but think differently.
She seemed closer to alien rather than anything else, and it wasn't exactly an exaggerated judgment. The upper four parts of her fingers began to float away from each other a tad bit more and began to tremble violently.
Emma let out a sigh, pressing her free hand onto the side of her head.
"I don't really enjoy doing this, but cockroaches like you won't die otherwise."
Suddenly, a bright light flashed.
No, that wasn't accurate. In reality, everything turned black and white, with only the people being black.
Emma flicked her finger and a crisp sound of flesh splitting echoed, despite the fact they were in a wide open area.
The black figure of the velociraptor was split into hundreds of cubes. The black-and-white world gradually faded away, bringing everything back into color. And the velociraptor was indeed split into many different cubes, whether it was its flesh, bones, or organs.
All the various pieces scattered onto the ground. While the vitality of such a thing couldn't be underestimated, it was still very much dead.
But it still wasn't done there.
All of the various pieces rolled towards each other before combining, spinning as they molded together to become something bigger. This time, instead of taking the general form first, the flesh morphed together into a ball and continuously began expanding.
Exponentially increasing its size.