The ebbs and flows of battle, Clan Head Lee was familiar with the concepts of battle between sentients. The fight had ebbed, and their assault had been relatively successful, managing to sever several legs.
The crabs regrouped around the remaining legs. The newly formed crab-men were numerous and ever-appearing from the Cryo-Pods behind them, but individually, they were weak.
A few more had fallen, the Sentinel’s voice popped into the edge of his awareness, “73 able to fight, Clan Head.”
He turned to her and smiled.
“New orders Clan Head?”
“Nothing Sentinel, you are doing fine.”
He was distracted, scanning the battlefield, looking for the next shoe to drop. He didn’t see Jack’s companions, Yuma or Jonah. He didn’t see Jack either.
“I don’t see Jack, Clan Head.”
“I don’t either. Perhaps he is no longer worrying about it.”
Continuing his sweep he saw that the crab was missing a leg on the other side, it looks like the others from the North had managed something.
The group he guessed that was responsible for it had stopped, they appeared hesitant to close the distance to the reformed mob of crabs. They had drawn back a bit to consolidate their formation.
There, there was a problem. Each group was intercepting the newly formed crabs but the Cryo-Pods with no Humans between them and the giant crab kept feeding into the growing chitinous mass swarming around its feet.
There. There was Jack. The Clan Head watched him stumble out from the base of the Cryo-Pods. He looked terrible. It appeared that he got caught in the concussive blasts. He strained his eyes to pick up more details but was unable.
“Clan Head, he looks like he is about to collapse. Also, he is glowing. Potentially sparking.”
The Clan Head wasn’t sure what was going on but it wasn’t difficult to imagine. The volatile electricity in Jack was approaching the crab that stored tons of volatile electricity. It was not something he wanted his Clan to stand near.
“Pull back to the Pods. At least two rows deep.”
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Yuma finally saw Jack and breathed half a sigh of relief before minute levels of panic built inside her. He looked terrible. She could see some liquid trailing in his wake and small sparks ripped and smoked through the vapor cloud around him. The flashes caught in the small cloud, made him look like he was glowing. Like a thundercloud she had seen in one of her old movies.
Jack raised his hands towards the belly of the crab and yelled, he screamed, his pained voice cracking.
She saw crabs rushing towards him from underneath the main crab. That broke her out of her trance and broke line of sight with Jack as she starting sprinting.
The malformed hybrids were slowing her down. She looked towards the open portals on the side of the giant crab and she saw a familiar orange glow appear and quickly start to build. The crab dropped itself lower. Her hair pulled upwards and she tasted static. The giant crab didn’t want whatever Jack was trying to do.
She rammed a knife through a hybrid in what she thought was the brain. An electrical sense brushed over her, it didn’t stop at all to focus on her but with it she felt an impending sense of doom. She closed her eyes but the flash still partially burned through her eyelids.
Three percussive booms sent her lurching to the side. The booms were sequenced so tightly together that the first hit, the second, and the third all ended at the same time.
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Tule didn’t have hair but long experience had given him the ability to know when bad energy was coming.
“Cover your eyes!”
Everyone did and he was forced to protect his group from a few oblivious hybrids before he braced himself at the last second. He kept his eyes open and focused in on Jack.
Jack’s outstretched hand pulled back and a thin white bolt flowed from the bottom of the crab, directly into his hand. Three dense and writhing cords of electricity zigged and zagged as they followed from Jack back towards the crab.
Maybe it was electricity, he wasn’t sure. He protected the three that were behind a Cryo-Pod with their eyes closed and ears covered.
A rapid set of flashes and claps hit. The three echoing booms hit and died at the same moments. He was deaf and blind. His vision, burnt and damaged by the proximity and intensity of the strike, would take minutes to recover. That was unacceptable.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
He burnt his pre-prepared Nano to boost himself and regenerate his fading vision. It would take weeks to rebuild those Nano-pathways, even with his level of training and control. He felt his Allocation to his Senses take an overall hit when he next regenerated and rebuilt his eardrums and inner ear. It didn’t matter, he needed to see, needed to hear, needed to move.
His wholesale slaughter of the hybrid crab-men reached new heights as all the crabs were in a state of stun or shock. The rote slaughter let him keep an eye on the smoking crater in the crabs belly.
The already faded sounds of fighting stopped completely, except for Tule. The difference this time was that the crab’s laser-repeaters also stopped; he noticed the orange-glow had faded from the gaps in the shell.
There was a creaking groan that killed off a few fresh decibels at the edge of his hearing range as it vibrated through his head. Something inside it broke as a mass of ichor, charred crab flesh, and strange alien machinery evacuated itself from the hole in the crab, dropping on the heads of the churning crabs below.
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Jack felt the connection snap together and a sharp jolt ran from the crab into his hand. He stared at the point, felt the connection. Tried to bring it all together. The three snakes jumped down the newly formed connection. He was already unconscious.
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Yuma opened her eyes and looked around, she stepped around the Cryo-Pod that was shielding her to look. The crab was hurt, bad. She looked around her to check for hybrids and saw Jonah walking calming with a huge smile on his face. His glasses faded from pitch black to their normal transparent.
“That was something! Right?” He looked way too excited. “Was that Jack?”
She nodded and looked again for Jack, she couldn’t see him but she did see the giant crab groan and start to list to the side.
Without warning, its legs gave out and it fell. A hundred plus feet of crab end to end impacted with the deck driving through the metal, the internal explosions sent another concussive boom around it sinking it deeper into the floor. Both she and Jonah were sent backward in an uncontrolled stagger.
“We have to find Jack. I don’t think he’s going to be doing well.”
Jonah nodded groggily, “Agreed.”
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Well shit, he actually did something after running off. Devin didn’t enjoy the thought.
Kala’s group had been surprisingly close to Jack when he had first exited the Cryo-Pod forest.
“Some-fucking-boom!” Kala was hyped, she was torn between adding her own firepower to the mix and continuing to appreciate the carnage. Emotion overtook her and she sprinted off. She didn’t look back to see if anyone was following her.
Devin turned towards Mikey. Saw that the man was already facing him.
Devin had a feeling something like this was coming, “Well the crab looks pretty much cooked. Looking to take a shot dickhead? I’d watch out, you’re not the main character here, I am.” He finished his statement with an ice-cool grin.
Mikey’s face bunched and twisted, “You’ve read too many Old-Earth comics. Life’s not a game, there aren’t any main characters here, just you. And me.”
Devin grinned, his plot armor secure. He slowly raised his Gauntleted right hand and light-pistol in the other. Oh yeah, a showdown, classic protagonist stuff.
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Thankfully the vast majority of the crabs Tule had seen charging at Jack were knocked back. He couldn’t see anything on that side anymore. Something had flown back towards Jack, Tule saw his shield flare, but the hit had knocked him back, into the Cryo-Pods, out of sight.
He barely managed to keep his own feet after the crab came down. There wasn’t time to search, he’d have to run the entire circumference of the giant crab to reach the man.
“Reorg-” Tule coughed out a wad of blood and matter.
“Tule! Are you okay?”
He wiped the blood off his mouth, didn’t get it all, leaving a bright red smear, “I’m fine Korl, stay with Cura, I’m going up top to see what’s going on.”
Korl started to protest but he had picked up plenty of his own wounds. Tule was already gone and Telane held him back, “Let go Telane!” Telane wouldn’t, Korl knew he wouldn’t.
Tule analyzed the crab as he approached. With a solid jump and a bit of climbing he could reach the upper shell.
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“Clan Head the crab is down.”
He wasn’t sure what Jack did but he now knew, for a fact, that it had to do with storing and transferring electricity. That was some power.
“I didn’t think that he had that kind of power.”
Leanne paused, she rarely paused.
“I can’t imagine how he was able to process all of that power.”
Chief Monitor Yosef pulled himself away from the recovering groups of Monitors, they had all sorts of portables and auxiliary attachments running as they processed their surroundings.
The Chief Monitor chimed in, “I don’t believe that was actually his. Some of our measurements showed comparable readings to when we were underground. Our prime supposition is that he simply held the energy, then, released it.”
“What do your measurements say now?”
“Apologies Clan Head, all electrical sensors have been fried.”
“Well find out what you can Yosef.”
“Clan Head, I don’t imagine he handled that much electricity well at all. I mean with the sheer voltage of the blast, the current must have been tearing him apart.”
He eyed the slightly over-eager young man, “well done.” He finished with a nod at him.
With a smile the Head Monitor retreated back to the huddle of screens behind them. He was too needy, useful though.
Even if that wasn’t his power, to be able to hold and channel that much, it was impressive. So, the boy had his own secrets. He couldn’t find him anywhere.
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He floated on his back, weightless. He felt twinges in different part of his body. They wanted to send signals, signals of pain he guessed, to the rest of his body.
He scanned himself then scanned himself again with his Affinity. He dove into the sense and felt nothing in his body. There was no electricity at all.
The shot had taken everything from him. He could roughly sense the pathways carved through and comprised of his body’s matter. He wondered why he wasn’t healing.
None of his Skills were starting to heal him. He realized that none of them could activate when he was completely drained.
His body was invisible to his Affinity but he could pick out the energy churning through the room.
His grip on his Affinity was slipping as he caught a compact but dense electrical signature approaching. Holding the dense signature was a duller profile.
Maybe it was Yuma? Did she have his zappa? It didn’t feel like Yuma, he remembered her being brighter. Well he could also remember being able to sense his body but he couldn’t do that either.
She was pulling on his right hand, why was she doing that?
He just needed her to give him a charge, he wasn’t dead he was just out of juice! Dammit Yuma!
He felt a burst of electricity enter his wrist followed by a nerve shredding carving pain. He yanked his hand, it responded sluggishly, it was a relatively small amount of electricity very far from his head.