Jailbreak, Part II: Electric Boogaloo [Daglobster]

[DragonSong]

She hated needing his hand to guide her, but the winds were so strong and the dust so thick in the air that she could sometimes hardly see him through the storm, even with him barely an arm's length away. Touch was the only guaranteed method to keep them from getting separated.

Which, unfortunately, she couldn't afford just yet.

She let him usher her behind the new rock formation and quickly crouched down out of the wind, shaking her head and rubbing at her eyes carefully with the heel of her palm. Dust covered her face, but the red earth that had coated her hair almost actually blended in with the natural color, so she looked a bit like she was shedding particles of herself when she shook her head again and bits of it came loose.

She squinted at the bullets he showed her, rubbing her twisted ankle--which had started to throb in protest of so much movement, and now that she wasn't fully panicking she'd actually noticed the dull pain.

Can you make them hurt?

Annabelle's eyes widened as they met his gaze through the visor. She swallowed convulsively, briefly worried she might be sick again, then managed to croak out, "I--maybe, but I can't--I don't know if I'll..."

Yes. Yes, she could. She could pull the electricity from the dust storm around them if she really put some effort into it, could connect a chain reaction from the bullets to their attackers and back until they were a living circuit.

The problem was, she didn't know if they'd stay living. She hadn't meant to kill those two guards, but...but clearly she was capable of some truly horrendous things.

"I don't--" She swallowed thickly. She knew she was being stupid, she was wasting time. And these people clearly didn't care if she or Saendyr survived. But still, she couldn't stop herself from choking, "I don't want to kill again."

[Daglobster]

Tucked next to her behind a rock, it wasn't hard to notice the sheer dread that washed through Annabelle right then and there. This specific scenario, pinned behind cover with stresses running high, was perhaps his most familiar one as a former soldier.

Her words started choking out, and he put a stiff, steadying arm against the front of her shoulder.

"You won't. Those suits are rated for void combat, user's completely insulated," he said, and with a tap on the side of his helmet, his visor shimmered away. Annabelle would see bright yellow pupils staring at her, surrounded by dark brown irises and a black sclera. These eyes, set into an angular, squareish face that was definitely not human (as if the dark blue skin wasn't a giveaway), looked back at her with the hard sympathy only a soldier could give. Now that his body was directly exposed to the charged storm, Annabelle'd be able to see small lines of energy run along the bony plates on his jaw and set around his eyes as his body redirected the static in the air.

"But if we can fry the suit itself, guy inside's going to take a little lie down whether he likes it or not," he started. He would've continued, had a voice not come booming out from the storm ahead, a man's voice amplified by a helmet's speaker.

"Phylips! Come on, is this any way to treat some old friends?" came the voice, speaking in a spacer's thick drawl. At the sound of his name, of that voice Saendyr's fingers tightened audibly on his rifle.

"And to think Trenk wanted to see you again! You haven't lost your touch, he's deader than a doorknob now. Why don't you walk the little bitch over to us and we won't make this any more unpleasant than it has to be, hmm? Maybe I'll even talk Jess out of cutting your crests off after that pussy shit with the net."

The entire time the man was speaking, Saendyr had his head leaned forwards, helmet leaned against the sight rail of his weapon, shoulders rising and falling with his breathing, now heavier and deliberate.

His expression was that of surprise, apprehension, and just a little bit of... grief? He bumped his helmet a few times with his rifle as he smiled grimly and muttered something to himself.

"Idiot. Always knew that back-up pistol would get him killed..."

[DragonSong]

“I can’t—“ Annabelle started again, but then his arm was braced against her shoulder, snapping her out of her own head and drawing her attention to his face as his visor cleared and she actually met his eyes for the first time. She tried to force herself to breathe, to focus on what he was saying. She wouldn’t kill anyone, the suits were too efficient, this was fine, it was fine…

One of their attackers started shouting, talking to…Phylips? She had to assume that was the bounty hunter. Her eyes widened slightly—someone was dead, but she hadn’t been the one to kill him. That was…

“Hey.” Without thinking, she leaned forward into his arm braced against her shoulder, bumping her head lightly against the side of his helmet. “They attacked. You fought back.” She hesitated, then repeated his words from earlier in a murmur: “Monsters don’t kill out of fear or defense. Right?”

She had no idea what she was saying, why she was saying it. Clearly he’d known this Trenk—and honestly she didn’t know why she cared how he felt.

But, despite being the person who was going to drag her back to TRIM, he’d also been the first person she could remember who told her that her magic, her panic, didn’t make her a monster.

She leaned away quickly, peering out cautiously around the edge of their shelter, then glanced back to him.

“You land the shots, I make them hurt, right?”

[Daglobster]

Saendyr heard the tap against his helmet rather than feeling it, and his proximity sensor gave a a quick blip-blip and a small flashing light. He didn’t move his head, but he gave her a short, sidelong look. It was almost grateful, even. Eyebrows softening, he looked forwards again, and set his shoulders with a breath, closing his eyes as he spoke.

“Main power exchanger is near the base of the spine. The suits are designed to shut off if a catastrophic surge happens. Give it one last jump so the starter battery fries as well. You’ll know when it pops.”

He turned his head against hers just enough so he wasn’t looking with one eye.

“Same with the electric net. I’ve got one more of those. The storm will mess with my plasma sidearm unless they get close up, but that’s an option too,” he added, and even though his visor only showed the upper bridge of his nose to just barely the top of his eyebrows, she’d still see his eyes wrinkle under the effects of a smile. Or maybe a shitty grin.

“Feel free to share some of your own juice too, miss Annabelle Lightning.”

[DragonSong]

She was shaking slightly, but she gave him her best attempt at a firm nod as she tried to quickly process the information he was giving her. "I--I can--" She licked her lips, cleared her throat, and tried again, "I don't know how precise I can get in this storm--the electricity in the air fucks with my magic--but I can definitely overload batteries. I could even make a rough circuit, if you're using electric rounds."

She glanced sideways at him, then added with the barest hint of a wry smile at the corners of her lips, "If you want me to share my juice, you might get zapped." She eyed the bony ridges on his form that seemed to be redirecting the ambient energy in the charged storm, then added with a shrug that was definitely trying too hard to be casual, "Though it seems like you can take it."

[Daglobster]

"Precision? Forget precision, they have us outnumbered," came Saendyr's quick response, eyebrows turning upwards with some amusement at her forced casualness, which seemed all too sudden.

"Just focus on the targets I put out for you."

He tapped the side of his helmet, and his visor went fully opaque, then started to glow a dim green as he stopped using his eyesight and enabled the imaging systems.

He rose, and saw his targets. Lauph, standing front and center with his arms crossed and fully suited up, an automatic rifle gripped in one hand. Jess, standing and snarling behind and to his left, sans her helmet and still in the process of tearing net fragments from her armor's place. Rigo, their old sharpshooter, was behind a rock and with his rifle trained on their position.

Saendyr and Rigo made the briefest of eye contacts through their scopes before Saendyr fired first, sending stun rounds into the rock around him and forcing him into cover.

Jess ducked into cover and Lauph swore and moved to raise his own gun. Saendyr kept true to his promise and sent a stun round sticking into the chest and abdomen of his armor. Lauqh was forced to take a backwards step from the impacts, but found himself chuckling as the stunners started delivering their shocks into his suit to no effect.

"Stunners? Seriously? TRIM's cheaper than I thought."

Annabelle would be able to clearly see the stun rounds, blinking where they remained stuck. Their conductivity would draw in and excite the energy of the storm, basically forming little "targets" that would open a circuit between herself and the suits.

[DragonSong]

I can do this.

I can do this, I can do this, I can do this!

Forcing herself to ignore the pain in her ankle and the churning in her stomach, Annabelle popped up in the brief break in firing that Seandyr had afforded them and threw one hand out toward their attackers, the other reaching up above her head into the sandstorm.

And she become a lightning rod. The electricity in the air coalesced around her up-thrust arm, crackling along her nervous system visibly, blue sparks dancing down her spine and along the lines of her limbs, then exploded outward from her outstretched fingertips. The sparks hit their targets one at a time, a cascade of blue-white magic that created a brief live-wire circuit from Annabelle to the mercenaries and back.

She curled her fingers into her palm and yanked her hand back with a cry, ripping the circuit apart in a blast of ground lightning so quick that it actually caused a small clap of thunder. She collapsed backward, just barely able to catch herself on her free hand before she hit the red earth, panting heavily.

"You...okay?" she managed to rasp in her companion's general direction. She hadn't been aiming any magic in his direction, but a move like that was almost impossible to pull off with real precision. She just hoped any backlash from it hadn't hit him worse than his physiology could take.

[Daglobster]

A shot from Rigo cracked against the rock they were sheltering behind. During the pause, he'd popped back up to his firing position and drawn a bead, only to throw his aim off at the last second once he saw it was their objective and NOT Saendyr. He barked some warnings into his helmet, and Lauph made to move out of the way, but the lightning had already struck.

Lauph yelled, an infuriated sound that was a mix of pain and surprise as the electric current made his suit's servos go taut with electricity. Rigo threw himself back down behind the rock while Jess tried to dive away, only to get lashed by a whip of raging energy as Lauph's suit power drained into the surrounding air.

By this point, smoke was rising from the panels and joints of his armor while Jess, caught without her helmet off, shook fully in the throes of a near-lethal shock, alleviated only by the insulation she DID have on. Finally, when Annabelle ripped her hand back, the entire back section of Lauph's suit exploded outwards in a shower of electric bolts and scrap metal, and the thunderclap cleared the storm away from them for a few brief moments before it came blowing back in.

The whole time, Saendyr had simply turned off the electronics in his helmet and put his arms over his head. Lightning cracked and left black marks and scores against his armor, but while the white plates blackened, they did not buckle. The lightning that wormed its way past didn't seem to bother him, in fact...

Saendyr tried to turn his helmet back on, but found that it had been drained by the experience. With a small huff, he quickly took it off, allowing Annabelle to see his face. His dark blue skin glimmered with lines of captured elecricity like a night sky filled with falling stars. Lightning crackled in between the lines of the crests that ran down his head in neat corn-rows. Contained energy glowed underneath the bony ridges that formed his jaws and eyebrows.

He took a few breaths, breathing out a static-filled electric haze, before helping Annabelle sit up against their cover, staying close enough to her to protect her with his armor as he took another look up above their cover.

"I'm fine. Them? Not so much..." he said, looking over to Lauph, still twitching on the ground, and Jess, rolling around and moaning plaintively as she clutched at her head.

Without saying much else, he looked back down to her to meet her eyes. She'd be able to see some of her own lightning streaking around in his eyes. "You?"

[DragonSong]

"I--"

Annabelle groaned, pitching sideways as the world spun wildly around her. That had been a lot of magic, and ever since her last escape attempt her inhibitor had kept her operating at a fourth of her usual power, maybe even less. It was a shock to her system--quite literally--and in the aftermath her stomach churned and her vision blurred.

"I'm...fine," she managed to grind out, struggling to raise her head and meet his eyes.

Whoa...

"You're a live wire," she noted vaguely, gesturing almost drunkenly toward the skitterings of light that had taken up residence on his skin. "You look like...a night sky..."

She blinked, struggling to focus her attention, her vision, focus anything. "I--I didn't...kill anybody?" Her voice was tiny, pleading, and though the blue of her eyes was still electric as she stared up at him, there was a threat of tears behind them. She was tired, hurting, and now magically drained, but that was the only real question she could form. "Please tell me...I didn't kill anybody..."