There were more.

We actually followed the screaming to them. On the way there, I looked back at where we had been.

"It seems almost like they are drawing us away from the office," I mentioned.

"Probably," Viktor said, not seeming to give a single solitary shit about it. I debated asking why he seemed so unconcerned, but I figured if he was confident, I should be as well. After all, I'd just watched the man play with something that had given me a lot of trouble - and an injury - like a cat with a toy, so I wasn't about to doubt his prowess or judgement.

The two we found were close enough together that they should have been having to avoid each other, but they didn't seem to be. As we arrived, I watched the whip from one collide with the other with a wet slapping sound, tearing the degraded flesh easily, but not digging in as much as it had with the bystander I had seen lose part of his leg earlier.

I'm not sure if the conversion was a controlled process (the thought of which freaked me out) or if it was just some sort of trigger that led them all to transforming at the same time (same). Either way it was clear that these weren't meant to be that close to each other and this was some kind of aberration.

Not that I was about to complain about our good luck. With them interfering with each other, they were less of a danger to us. Viktor seemed to realize the same thing, and he looked over at me.

"You take the left, the right is mine," he said in his deep baritone, with no room for negotiation.

"You're the boss!" I said, and took off running towards mine. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him sprinting at his like a man possessed, which was quite the scene considering his size. I'd have been terrified if I was whatever the 'whip monsters' were supposed to be.

Mine, on the other hand, probably just saw food. I can't imagine a veritable waif of a redhead running towards you was that intimidating.

I wouldn't have intimidated me, that's for sure.

That said, my strange ability to melt these things probably meant it should have been less keen to touch me than it was, lashing out almost immediately with a free whip, as it had the other one lashing out at some hapless pedestrian who'd made the mistake of turning down the right street at the wrong time.

I had a preponderance of stupid ideas today, and I came up with another one: to try injecting some of my energy into the whip as it passed. High risk, high reward, but I'm pretty sure that my brain hadn't processed that far down the chain in the moment. Instead, I just had a shiny thought and got obsessed with finding out the answer immediately after. Horse blinders, if you would.

Giddy-up!

Bringing forth a thick coat of my inner light onto my hands, I prepared to attempt to catch whip. I figured that if Viktor could do something like that, I probably could as well.

Of course, I hadn't taken into account that his hands were walls in their own right, and that he had a lot more experience wielding his Mote than I had with my Core, even if the Core was probably more powerful. Although I wasn't certain on the latter point, it was more of a gut-feeling than anything.

As a result, when the whip hit, at least half the energy I had gathered immediately flew away from the point of impact, being about as effective as dandelion fluff at blunting the force. The rest, thankfully, stayed put. The appendage started breaking down as soon as I pushed back against it, which was problematic in its own right as the inertia in the part that extended past my hands was far from spent. As a result, it tore loose and spun past me, giving me a solid slap on the side of my opposite leg as a parting present. Thankfully, a lot of the momentum had been spent, so it split my pants and tore the skin, but otherwise I was okay-ish.

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Or so I thought, before it the new wound started screaming at me bloody murder. I had completely forgotten about the caustic effects associated with these crimes against life. I hadn't developed any circulation of my energy through my legs yet, so it was difficult to direct the inner light down there to work on neutralizing the injury. After trying for a few moments in increasing agony, I gave up and put my hand down to directly treat it.

Which happened to save my head, as the other whip whistled through the air just above me. Being saved by my own lack or preparedness and general stupidity felt a bit too fitting for the day, but continuing to breathe seemed pretty awesome, so I finished up and kept a lookout for more attacks. I could see the disincorporation of the whip continuing up towards the body, and may have cursed a little under my breath when the monster decisively cut it off before it could reach the body.

Gran would not have approved.

Dodging rather than working with the other tentacle, I galloped towards the main body, hoping to score a finishing blow on it. It was aggressively working the remaining appendage, seeming to have a better sense of self-preservation than the previous one I'd encountered.

That didn't help it, as with only a single whip it just couldn't keep up with my agility. There was one more close call as I got right up to it, vaulted the incoming hit with a jump that went a little higher than I intended, leading to me using my outstretched hands to break my momentum against its body.

In a near panic, I had forced most of what I could wrangle out in front of my hands, and the outburst of the compacted power wound up blowing the entire torso of the thing away. It scattered bits and pieces out in front of me.

Viktor came up behind me as I looked at my handiwork, shaking my hands to get rid of the numbness.

"I have lost," he said, sounding almost sad, "No need to show off."

I was a little lost for words. Not that he really gave me much time to respond, turning on his heel and heading back towards the office. There were people running out the door, which wasn't a good sign.

We were almost up to the entrance when an explosion blew out of the side of a building. Viktor stepped aside as a body impacted the stone outside the lobby, more or less head first. I looked up, much more willing to look at the cause than the effect.

István was looking out a ring of shattered glass. I waved at him, and he waved back, although he seemed rather confused about it. Which I mean, yeah, I'd be too if some idiot gave me a friendly hello in the middle of an attack.

Guess that also explains why Viktor wasn't worried about leaving the office alone.

We bypassed the less-than-alive individual by the door and went inside.

"That'll feel better once it stops hurting," I groused as Viktor applied a gauze to my back. With his bear paws, it felt more like he slapped it on there, hence my remark. We sat in an infirmary I hadn't even known existed, and Viktor was doing the work because István had taken one look at the wound, gone white as a sheet, and immediately ran off.

"What, did you come here for cuddles?" Viktor replied, handing the brown wrapping or whatever it was around to me so I could pull it around the front before passing it back. We had a system down by this point.

I had my top bare, surprisingly, he was at least polite enough to let me take care of my front. I'd originally told him I'd take care of it when I got home, but he pretty much engulfed each half of my body with his hands and told me in no uncertain terms that I was getting that wound taken care of whether I wanted to or not.

"I take care of my people," Viktor had said at the time.

After we finished bandaging my back, I pulled my shirt back on. Viktor handed me the white cotton gauze and pointed at my leg.

"You can fix that one," he said, his gaze brooking no argument, as before. He sat there with his arms crossed as I wrapped that wound. It was still slowly bleeding, but that's mostly because of the location, which got flexed whenever I moved my foot.

I handed the supplies back, and Viktor cracked a smile for the first time in a while.

"Now lets go find where István is hiding."

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