Everyone kind of paused, creature included, locked in a strange stalemate. Kira started flickering again, this time more agitated. The gaps between her being present and not, were smaller and Nisha had to look away fairly quickly, looking too long worsened her headache. Valeria held up her hand, possibly knowing what Kira was doing without seeing her? But that seemed to work, calming her down enough to stay in place.

The creature squinted it’s eyes, observing everyone closely. It’s eyes would land on a specific person for a while, Valeria first, until it seemed satisfied with her and moved on. Nisha wondered what it was doing. It could possibly be deciding what it’s next move was, but could this thing even think? Could James mindread its thoughts or did that only work on human-

‘I can’t’ a voice came into her head. Nisha flinched, it was an uncomfortable sensation having someone else suddenly speaking in your mind. She looked up to James, who made an apologetic little wince. His voice in her mind was strong and clear. Nothing like the reedy, stuttering amalgam of sounds he made when talking in person. Well, his thought-voice was reedy too, but easier to understand. His words came through in succinct coherence. Not like Nisha’s thoughts, jagged and rapid, moving and changing at infinite speed.

‘Sorry’.

‘No, it’s fine’ Nisha said (thought?). ‘Just a weird feeling to get used to.’

The creature kept making its chirping noises, adding in a few clicks as well, as it analyzed everyone. Nisha couldn’t tell if it was talking in a legitimate syntax or if the noises were just sounds it was making. They seemed intentional, whatever they were.

When it’s eyes reached Nisha it paused for a moment, and then let out a high pitched squealing noise, high pitched meaning so high in pitch it caused everyone present to wince and cover their ears (Sam included). As everyone recoiled, the creature sped forth to Nisha, narrowly weaving through the persons in its way. It reached her with strange tendril arms raised and then wrapped those tendrils around Nisha’s waist, squeezing slightly. Not hard enough to hurt, but strong enough to make a good grip.

Nisha proceeded to freak out. Only noticing slightly, in the back of her mind, her hands gained the green mist again. She placed both hands on each tendril as a way to try and leverage herself out of that situation but she noticed they had gone to the dark green again, the almost black green. Bits of bone peppered throughout the most. First contact between her mist and whatever counted as skin on the creature, bore a hissing, sizzling sound. This was the sound of battery acid dissolving a styrofoam plate, this was the sound of a high school chemistry class gone wrong, this was the sound of Nisha brining the death of this creature, cell by cell. The dark mist was so powerful that in the second Nisha’s hands touched the creatures tendrils she had already managed to completely erode a hole through its flesh/bone/membrane/whatever.

The creature screamed in pain, releasing Nisha to flail it’s tendrils around wildly. She took the opportunity to stumble backwards as fast as she could, refusing to break eye contact from it. It looked like it was about to reel back and attack Nisha when it’s body completely locked up. Carolyne held both her arms out, palms facing the monster and watched it with a small smirk on her face. Jets of water hit its sides, Valeria sending quick streams, her right pumping like she was throwing frisbees of water held by her left arm.

“KIRA!” Kendra shouted. Her voice was concerned but her face stayed professional, brave. “You need to get her out of here NOW!”

Kira seemed unsure what to do, glancing at her older colleague and Nisha, while flickering in and out of place, likely locked up in fear. Carolyne swore loudly as the monster was released from her grip, falling to the floor with the sudden lapse of tension. The monster made to move toward Nisha again, but before it truly could, a large gust (no) torrent of wind blew into it, forcefully pushing it until hit the wall with a ‘crack!’

Kira was at Nisha’s side in an instant, her small shaking hand on Nisha’s shoulder. Before Nisha could truly comprehend what just happened her vision blurred. Like those photographs where all the lights become long lines, the world spun around her in unrecognizable lines and colors. Before she could really get a grip on the new sensation and experience, she fell, her body hitting a plush yard of grass. All she saw was Kira’s legs in the grass jumping up, and then disappearing again.

Nisha felt bad. She felt worse than bad she felt awful, but she laid in the grass a hand covering her eyes. She listened to the sounds of birds and rushing cars. She felt beams of the strong Georgia sun hit her face, warm and powerful even in September. She let all these sensations hit her at once and laughed. She laughed and laughed, her voice raw and rough from stress. She laughed until she cried, and then cried some more.

She was alive. She died but she was alive. For the first time in such a long, long time Nisha Kakkar felt alive.