Rolling towards the crow, watching more birds floating down towards the puddling blood, some pecking at the farmer's fingers and clothes, Meerplex put another surge into its dash forward. Trilling with malicious pleasure, focusing on the crimson splatters on the birds' obsidian bodies, the furball was already concocting a plan, drawing a line from the crowds clustered around the farmer's living corpse to the half-dozen vultures wheeling overhead. They were more stronger, larger, more adept at tearing flesh. The wet snap of muscle ripping, the moist spray of a severed artery: These were what made the fuzzball's shaggy coat tremble. The murder of crows was growing around the farmer. If he was not dead yet, he would be soon. It was a delicate art, finding which creature was best suited to possession. They could not be too strong, neither too weak. Anger and passion made it easy to enter a mind, but more difficult to control. Must always they must be able to kill and draw out blood.
A crow fluttered down and landed a few feet from the furball, pecking at it, hacking out a caw. Meerplex leapt into the air, whistling harshly like an upset whippoorwill. It landed on the back of the crow, splitting its small mind open deftly, cracking through the bird's riotous surface of hunger. Underneath roared greed, an ocean shrouded in mist. Fear and confusion rushed upward in a furious waterspout, but it was all to easy to forge the ill-formed motivation and animal drives of the creature into a glassy wall that pushed the jet back, crashing onto the ever-changing waves below, flattening it out into a canvass, motionless and blank. Weaving a net across the surface, Meerplex took the crow's eyes, its wings, its beak, and made them its own, flapping clumsily into the air.
A crashing, blinding swath of color and sound filled the air, and with a jolt time froze. Another memory. Asuka falling, air whistling, a rope flailing behind her, the ground rushing up until it crushed against her, heavily and forcefully. Pain and shame pushed back. The lesson this time was less evanescent than the egret. Meerplex released the crow, pulling back immediately, and pushed against its body in mid-air. They flew apart, the crow spinning towards the ground and the furball twirling in a misbegotten arc. Damon's body came crashing down, as if fulfilling the memory's prophecy, smashing the crow. His head slapped the furball, more of a glancing blow than that against the bird. It was enough to slap Meerplex down, skidding it across the ground, bouncing slightly like a clumsy child falling down the stairs. As the furball slid to a stop near the farmer's feet, it howled mornfully, mewing like a sick cat, expanding and deflating slightly, panting painfully. Would no one take pity on a wounded creature?