With that in mind, I flew in, trying to keep my forcefield’s smaller frame in mind. I thought of sparring with family, and the gentleness required.

It was less like karate, more like judo. Not to punch, but to take hold.

I couldn’t focus on any one thing, but I could take in the whole.

One was closer to me than all the rest. My aura was on full force to disrupt and bother them as much as possible, while I put out one forcefield hand, trying to catch a stinger.

The point slid between my forcefield’s index and middle fingers. I pinched them closer together.

It stopped mid-air, forward velocity arrested, the stinger nearly tearing itself free of the thing’s abdomen, despite being rooted deep in the bulbous, long body.

Second—

I used my grip on the stinger to swing its hundred pound body to one side, putting it in the way of the next closest one, scraping it against two more on the way.

And then flew toward them, as they violently flapped their dark, wet wings to try to reorient.

They were fast, but that didn’t matter, because all I had to do was touch them, get a little bit of purchase, fingers curled into gentle claws, so the fingernails scraped, each one getting a chance to find a bit of purchase, a gap or a bump that a fingernail could catch on. I found those gaps and bumps on two more wasp-worms and—

Aha.

—I was capable of grabbing them with other hands.

The hands on this form were closer together, instead of being spaced out across a larger body. I had two less, but it was far easier to pass something from one hand to the other, especially with all the hands being in areas around the torso.

My last ‘Fragile One’ hadn’t had a torso, so much.

The fifth one was slow in coming at me. I didn’t flinch as it lunged for my head, then stopped where it was at.

At my bidding, fingernails ran down the length of its body, head to the stinger it thrust out blindly, and two hands pulled the cut open, practically bisecting it. Crushed and twisted apart, one by one, the other wasps fell to either side of me.

Okay, I thought.

This is a good lesson.

Soft, not hard.

I flew through another swarm, mindful of where each limb and section of this new, fragile, invisible other half was. My arms were longer than many of the smaller stingers. If I flew to position myself away from the larger stingers, I could reach the meat of their bodies.

I didn’t hesitate as I flew, and I didn’t make more than a second or two of contact with each wasp I flew past.

They ended up in pieces and by the time those pieces hit the ground, I was already on my way.