Lightning Farron Audition

Lightning was getting irritable. She was aching and dizzy and tired as hell. She pushed through the haze, shooting off a couple more rounds, to her irritation missing her target once. She shook her head. She needed to remain focused. What if it were Hope or Serah you were protecting. Get it together. She told herself. One of the little things latched itself to her back, slashing painfully across her left shoulder. She managed to grab the thing by it's antenna and throw it off of her, but her shoulder hurt. She glanced back at it, the wound was deep and she was losing blood. She couldn't afford that with the hunger pangs and dehydration. She switched paradigms. 

A quick cure and the skin knit itself back together, leaving nasty scabs. It still ached badly, and the skin pulled uncomfortably when she moved. It wasn't nearly as debilitating before. "The kid was always better at that stuff." She muttered to herself. Thinking about him wasn't going to bring him here, so she cleared her mind of the distraction. The empty lonely feeling that was eating away at the bottom of her heart was getting more and more difficult to ignore. 

She didn't know any of the people here, and as people were starting to pour in who recognized each other, it was getting harder to accept. Despite her cold demeanor Lightning was never a loner. She always had someone to look after, Hope, Serah, her friends. She always had something to protect and here, she had none of that. 

Lightning shook herself from her slightly distracted daze in time to slash the oncoming enemy. She was startled for only a moment when the duplicates of her unwanted comrade started appearing. She hadn't expected it from the boy. She was always interested in what the people around her could do. They all came from different worlds, where different entities and circumstances gave them their power, and yet a lot of it was very similar, but also very different. Battle was always something that easily distracted her from the things that were bothering her. 

As the vile vermin began splitting up and going for the boy's duplicates she switched her paradigm once again, letting off shots at the distracted beasts. They were much easier to hit when they were attacking something else. She kept a wary eye on the real Ceodore, as not to let a bullet off too near him. She didn't need one of them to phase into the floor and her bullet to be embedded into him. No one could call Lightning reckless. 

She tipped her weapon, her clip was just about empty, and rummaging through her pouch for a new one would not hasten this process so she lunged in. She slashed at the enemies that she could reach, sometimes multiple times before they dispersed in smoke. One managed to rake it's claws against her right arm, but she didn't pause to heal that. She wanted this over, and a couple of scratches on her already injured arm were not going to slow this down, or kill her. She brought her sword through a few more, her blade sinking into the earth as one phased into the ground. She pulled it out, some sand was thrown into the air and she made sure not to get any in her eyes. She lunged for the next set, coming down in the middles of a small group and sweeping her blade in a clockwise motion. The quick spin made her a tad nauseous. The dehydration was much harder to deal with than she had expected. She made a mental note to carry water, or some sort of purifier with her if she were to ever go on an extended mission, though this was general practice for the Guardian Corps, and she assumed other military forces, it wasn't something she had needed on Valhalla. She'd need to restock. 

Fantastic to read, as always.

1/2.

2/2 Accepted.