As soon as Annabelle had gone into this she had known there would be no going back. As soon as she had stepped onto that transport she had worked to steel her mind for it. As soon as they had crossed into the undercity she had accepted what she was going to do. As soon as they walked into the facility she had buried her qualms. As soon as she walked into the arena and stared at the pod she knew her destiny was just in hand. She just had to reach out and take it. And she took it with the ring of a gunshot.

Shooting a gun wasn't like what she had expected. The jarring of the wrist. The trigger being forceful to pull down. The vids she had watched prior to all of this had made it seem easy. Shoot for the head. Her fingers had been slick with sweat. Trembling really around the grip of the handgun as she had pointed it at the back of the unsuspecting man's head. It was him or the pod. There would not be another chance like this. This was her only chance. The only chance anyone would get. So she sealed her destiny with a pair of shots and became a murderer.

These were the moments she was reliving. Over and over at the moment as her world became a bright series of lights. She tried to open her eyes but it was more akin to the fact that she couldn't close them anymore. She wasn't even aware if the pod was still working or not. Had she passed out? Had she died? There was no air for her to breathe here, but yet there were things she was aware of.

Pathways. Routes. Roads she had never seen before. Railways of pure light that bore warmth along them. It seemed so different. Like she had been teleported into a world beyond this one. Like her perceptions had been altered. There had never been talk of this in the notes of her Great Grandfather. Even he hadn't known what would happen to the first to take the step to the next phase. Whatever that phase was.

She tried to move her arms and legs and she found that there were none to move. So instead she focused on what she was. Anna's mind reached out over her body and she was made aware. Aware that she was like the pathways she was looking upon and could see. Her body, it resembled a cloud of energy. A pink swirling mist of pure energy that she could manipulate. It was... incredible. She tried to sharpen her senses and senses she had never known could exist sprung to life. Signals, power sources, heat, she was aware that was what she was seeing. The emergency grid of the facility. The signals of the Hand's comm system. The heat emitted by their forms.

Yet oddly enough she couldn't see them. Annabelle pushed that from her mind for the moment. She focused on her form and tried to manipulate it. Tried to twist this form she found herself as. To bend it to take a shape she imagined in her head. Sure enough the cloud that made up her body started to shift and turn and twist and expand outward. It formed matter of a sort and shifted around into the shape in Anna's mind.

Her body slowly came into existence. The same slight form. The same shorter stature. The flaws were ironed out however. Her pale skin was flawless. Her clothes once discarded simply formed upon her body and took their place there. Her hair however had changed, taking in a pink hue as well as her eyes. Her hair seemed to shift a bit and move on its own at the edges and her eyes almost had a glow to them. No glasses were upon her face, she had no need of them as her eyesight was flawless.  It felt like squeezing her form into a container for the moment, but she still had her new perceptions. Just she also created her old perceptions.

The first thing she perceived with her new perceptions was a pair of guns pointed directly at her head. Annabelle blinked as she drank that in. She could see the weapons down to their details. One was a laser rifle, the other was a solid projectile. She could feel the energy rifle like it had a presence greater than the people in front of her. Her pink eyes then shifted to the Fingers. They were moving their lips but for some reason she couldn't hear them. Their voices sounded distant.

She focused, trying to attune her ears and then she managed to understand the sounds they were making with their flapping meat lips.

"...On the fucking ground! Get on the ground now!" One of them was barking.

Annabelle opened her mouth to try and respond but no words came out. She frowned as she tried to change around her mouth and develop her vocal chords from her new body. It was rather complicated. It was like she had to... lower herself in a way to communicate with the two people in front of her.

"I-I will not." Were the first words out of her mouth. "I won't let the same government that forced my Great Grandfather to abandon his dream to take what isn't theirs."

"Crazy bitch!" The one with the solid projectile rifle reached out and grabbed her.

Anna winced as she expected to be jerked around violently... only to find... she wasn't. The slight girl opened her eyes and saw the man was physically straining with all his might to move her. Annabelle couldn't even feel that he was touching her. It was a bit like trying to detect the movement of a skin mite or some other micro-organism upon one's body. She marveled at that. Her eyes were wide as she watched in disbelief. There was a surge of something that filled her at the sight.

The other one with the energy rifle struck her with the butt of the weapon square in the face and the weapon simply shattered into plastic and circuitry. The energy cells fell over Anna and she let out a moan as she felt the energy bonding with the energy that made up her own body. As soon as it did the petite girl immediately sprang up, doubling her size. The man trying to hold her was pushed away and the other had fallen over onto his back. Both looked up as she stood at a towering ten feet tall.

The pinkette let out an erotic moan as she felt the stray energy bonding with her body, expanding it, melding with it. It felt amazing. She look down at her hand and curled it into a fist. So this was Homo Novus. The next stage in human evolution. The dreams of her Great Grandfather, carried over the years until they reached her. Of a world saved from itself instead of a world that staved off its inevitable death. A world under the guidance of a new human race. That was her. She had done it.

She blinked as she looked behind her and winced. Her growth had been amazing but it had destroyed the machine. Unfortunate. Well. Perhaps she could make another. For now though... She turned her attention to the two cowering Fingers. "Stay out of my way of you don't want to end up like the other one." She said.

Her eyes turned to the observation area and the blonde woman there. Ryna if she recalled. She saw the cracks in the observation window from the gunshot and had a thought. All at once her physical body vanished and it its place there was a large pink cloud. A cloud that drifted toward the cracked glass. It seeped through and out into the observation room beyond the arena. It was then that her form returned to its ten foot tall physical shell in front of Ryna.

The blonde fell onto her rear. "W-what are you...? Yo-you're related to whoever ran this place?"

Annabelle frowned. She must have caught something with her Great Grandfather's name on it. "I'm different now. Homo Novus. The next step. The next stage of human evolution."

"What do you want? You-his notes mentioned trying to stop the drought. Are you going to try to pick up after him?" Ryna asked, sounding terrified.

Anna lifted a brow. "Why. Would I ever care about doing that?" She asked. A smirk quirked up her lips as she grabbed Ryna by the arm.

The sheer animal fear filled Ryna's eyes and it was something Anna could see down to levels she had never imagined before. Andrenaline flooding into the bloodstream, signals being sent to a meat brain so very limited in its design. To her the span of moments could last an eternity. She saw in an instant what a human would have to slow down to see. It was then that Ryna started flailing uselessly against her.

"My Great Grandfather's genius passed onto me. His dream isn't mine though. His dream was of unity. A human race that pools together under an ideal of commonality and community, evolved beyond petty squabbles. I can see a bit clearer. I've studied sciences for years. I've studied history before that and the most common thing about all humans is they will always disagree with each other. What humanity needs isn't a community and a stage for more squabbles. It needs a superior. A being beyond. A God, if you will." Annabelle said, finally able to speak without that annoying fluttering in her chest. Without that stumble of her tongue. Without the useless fears of ridicule.

"You're insane! Crazy!" Ryna screamed as she pulled out her pistol and fired it at Anna.

The rounds simply passed through where they hit. Anna shrugged. "Maybe I am. Not much point is there in discussing it with you, now is there?" She remarked as she released the blonde and started walking.

Her eyes were following the paths inside of the building until she found what she was looking for. An outlet. An electrical outlet. She licked her lips as her pink eyes flashed. "Since you brought me here, this is your chance to run. To run and flee while I stretch this new body. While I learn what it means to be beyond humans."

With that said and having put the three humans out of her mind she reached toward the electrical socket. Her index finger dissolved slightly and a pink mist entered. She switched the flow of energy on and started to drain the emergency power from the facility. It was akin to a larva devouring the food left behind by its mother. And devour Anna did. She let out a moan as she felt her body shuddering from the influx of new energy. It was an order of magnitude more than anything she had gotten from that mere energy rifle. An erotic feeling filled her again as her form started to expand rapidly, her container no longer able to hold in her reserves at this scale.

Her shell body, flawless and perfect expanded more and more. Her head hit the ceiling but it was like she had touched paper. Like paper it broke at the slightest strain. She tore through to the floor above and she could see the three humans scrambling up the stairs. Their speed was almost comically slow compared to the rate of her expansion. The energy of the facility was being guzzled down, flowing into the unending font of Annabelle. Another floor was torn through and the destruction grew wider as well as more of the concrete and metal rippled and ripped away from her form.

So much, it was so much but it felt so very good. She wasn't going to stop until it was dry, the little strand of energy connecting her to the socket traveled out to other sockets and sped up the rate of the energy drain. The emergency lights flickered out as soon as her head broke through the top of the facility and out through the ceiling. She kept going, more and more, smashing through floors, rooms, whatever the facility held was worthless compared to what she had become. Eventually she stopped. At an even fifty meters tall in the middle of the undercity.

She doubled over, gasping and panting as she hugged herself, her mind fogged with the delight of the new energy being added to her form. It was euphoria at its finest. An sublime sensation of power. She opened her pink eyes and saw that one of the trio had managed to escape. Ryna. The other two must have been crushed in the rate of her expansion. Irrelevant really. Not a concern. The energy being looked up at the ceiling of the undercity and took a moment to revel in what she had become. She had ascended.