by Nailah Weaver » Sun Mar 25, 2018 5:45 pm
And snap they did, right into Nailah's leg. She let's out a scream as she loses her balance and falls to the floor, pulling Hazard down with her as the bone-clamp bites deeper into her leg. What the hell was he rambling on about? She only really half hears what he's saying between the pain in her leg and her eyes finding the phone on the ground not too far from where she fell. She reaches out but comes up a couple inches short, the sudden stab of pain in her leg reminding her that Hazard's weight is keeping her from crawling towards it.
There had to be something she can do. Had to be. She pushes her power out again and into the fog. She'd seen through it once, when he'd threatened her parents so she knows it's possible. Somehow. She pushes harder until she can feel her power burning in her head like a red hot wire. She screws her eyes shut at the pain but keeps on pushing, the throbbing in her shoulder and the grinding in her leg fading into the background as she tries to follow the burning line into the future. And then suddenly she's through, the fog is gone and the pain fades into a burning afterglow. She's found the path out of this situation and suddenly everything makes sense. The realization hits her like a tidal wave. She can see herself kneeling on the ground, Hazard's hand on her head. Her expression is empty while the lunatic is grinning. She can make out details in almost unnatural clarity, the tears clinging to her eyelashes, the points where the feathers of her wings have been roughly cut, rendering them useless for flight.
The moment is frozen in time. No... fixed. It's the source of her paths, the instructions she's been getting from herself. That she's been forced to send herself to ensure they would lead her to this exact moment and no other. And she realizes she doesn't know how to change it. She's relied on her power to get her to where she is and now she finds herself completely at a loss. She tries to push into her power again but the only thing that flares up is the red-hot bond tethering her to this future. Whatever that old lady had shown her, she's unable to call on any other path, any other future but this one. There has to be a way out, a way to shatter this connection, this future. At least give herself a fighting chance. She struggles, the pain in her leg yanking her back into the present.
"No!" she wails. "I won't let you do this!" she tries to scramble away again, one clawed fingernail cracking against the floor as she tries pull herself and Hazard's weight forward.
"No! No! No! No! No!" she screams and starts bashing her head into the floor out of desperation. Her vision swims as her forehead hits the ground and the burst of pain momentarily washes out the one in her leg. Again. The pain flowers in her head like a bright flash. Again. And again. She can feel... something in the flashes. Some kind of solution. Again and again she slams her head into the ground until her sight grows blurry from the blood running down her forehead. One last time she rears her head back and slams it into the floor and she can feel something snap. Break. And not just her skull. Along with the pain and the dizzying vision something else unfolds in front of her and for a brilliant moment she can see all the other paths. She latches on to one, anything that doesn't lead to the future she saw and she pushes.
Her body moves as if on autopilot, knows exactly which muscles to move and which to avoid to not set off any of her injuries. Her hand finds the leg of a chair and grabs it. She yanks it to the side and it topples over, hitting a table in the process. A can of air freshener on top of the table wobbles from the impact and slowly tips over, rolling onto the floor and towards Nailah's hand. She grabs it and a shard of glass from the floor and slams the shard into the side of the can at just the right angle and with just the right amount of force that the shard sticks in the punctured can. She twists herself slightly and throws the unstable can against the wall behind Hazard, it bounces off and down at a weird angle at his head, exploding right as it smacks him in the temple.