Your hunting sense won't save you!

Hearing the fading wet sounds of the demon as it crawled away from her  and the building whose wall they'd damaged, the smaller girl - a young woman of appearance about ten years old gritted her teeth as she focused all willpower on the edge of unconsciousness into her legs, forcing her tired, drained muscles to pump blood and adrenaline. Slowly rising onto one knee, she heard a charging noise - particles gathering unto a focal point, air ionizing. She jerked her head up in time to see the enemy had junctioned itself between a handful of bamboo on either side, both monstrous mechanical arms forcing them apart; sniping at her with a concealed firing port in its deformed left shoulder.

Willing, brain screaming at her to MOVE, she struggled to shudder in fear, let alone regain the acuity to dodge with any semblance of ability. Squelching her eyes shut as the charged particles lanced outwards, from the treeline beelining straight at her. A searing heat overwhelmed her senses as her body finally moved - a half-second too late. Her right arm caught in the piercing beam's direct path, tearing off from molecular explosions disjointing and deforming her bicep before it fell out as the density of the beam raised the temperature of any matter caught in its path, this case being her right arm, to 15,000 degrees Celsius.

Still without energy to scream the now-armless redhead turned, legs pumping like pistons as she bolted from the rainstorm seeking shelter and safety from the demon assaulting her, tears welling up in her golden-iris eyes as her body finally resumed most functions. Unwilling to involve others, yet fully realizing the danger of taking on the monster alone, she slammed into a double-wooden door, headbutting it a couple times before it gave way, stumbling into what her eyes perceived as the lobby of a clinic in the core of the night; occupants, live-in residents presumed all asleep; no lights nor reaction to the commotion outside... Yet.

Swallowing down the pained tears building in her stomach and throat even gulping a few times as she ran deeper into the building, the redhead screamed - a primal inarticulate benthic roar calling for assistance, tears clouding her vision as she zigzagged, overbalancing and almost crashing on her stumps; one bleeding, the other cauterized. Her breathing was ragged, hyperventilating almost, body reacting to the uncompensatable trauma already sustained. Hazily, she recalled the words of the demon whom had been amiable and spoken to her directly about how she foresaw this fight ending, a binary outcome that Lana Nielsen disagreed with immense hatred.

"I only see this ending one of two ways, you somehow win alone, I die, but I'll pull a deadman's switch and mercifully erase your memory of being that monster, Hustler One. I failed you, the rebirth was unsuccessful; you kept your memory of being that all this time, no wonder your self-title is 'A Nest of Sin'... Or, I win and you get a merciful if inhumane death."

She couldn't accept either of these, naturally. The four years spent in humanoid form, her shift in perspective, all of that despite being under the demon - a Shivan named Amon's tutelage had taught her that humans were tenacious and capable enough that sometimes, barely, with luck and prayer and cunning and power, they could make alternative options happen. So Lana responded with a third option formed as a question.

"Is it better to be born good, or to overcome one's evil nature through great effort?"

It went against her life up to this point, but if she could just disable Amon's weaponry, maybe they could reach a stable platform for dialogue...