He strengthened the tether. He felt something else there as huge chunks of excess current pumped over the bridge they shared and into Yuma. He needed it as wide as possible to bring her speck of Magnetic Affinity to him. Finally the channel became wide enough and he felt it warble to connect. It teetered on the edge for a pregnant second then latched tight. Now that he hit it he tried to reduce the electricity, withdraw it a bit, but some force wouldn’t let it go. He could ramp it up though and he did as he pulled at that force. It refused to come to him over the tether.
“You’re actually going to do it? To poor, delicious little Miss Yumata?”
Jack could sense that filthy Smile on his face, “Shut up snake, if you want it so badly then get over here!”
The Snake stopped his hands just short of touching the cocoon and leaned back and crossed his arms, “I believe I told you that I wanted YOU to give it to M-”
Jack had the electricity jump from the cocoon to the snake and used it to slam him into the wall right at his side, “I said shut up! Pull!”
The speck of Magnetic Affinity that was strengthening the connection still refused to travel over the tether.
Damn. Sorry Yuma.
He cranked the amps even higher.
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The battery in Yuma’s hand exploded sending small bits of shrapnel at her. The metal didn’t make contact with her though, it stopped just short of her and then blew out into the Clan around her. Thankfully it had been a small battery.
“Huh? Ah? Jack?”
“Yuma?”
A Shield Guard approached her and caught a zapp that blew him back into the ready arms of another Clanmate. She was unapproachable and the Clan Head took the only action he knew. “Contain Yumata! All Clan, full coverage! Hold your fire!”
She seemed to enter a trance as she turned toward a point in the distance, she raised her hands and fired off bars of hot light into the air as growing waves of crackling air filled the space. The sweat dripped off her until the temperature around her turned any moisture into wisping lines of steam then into gouts of evaporating liquid. She kept her arms raised as progressively larger light bars shot from her into the air. There was too much! She had to dump it.
Hendrew, the light user of the group, hadn’t known what those bars that Yumata had been firing except that they weren’t ‘light’ even though she called them that. Now everyone could clearly tell what they were, hyperdense bars of barely contained electricity.
She gasped, “Wha-” but the rest of her question was interrupted by her scream as an renewed stream of electricity uncontrollably pulsed through her. She couldn’t direct the bars anymore as they pumped out of her body randomly, one after another in increasing frequences. The random trajectories found armor, shield, and in quickly decreasing frequency, flesh. The Clan were all behind shields, daisy-chained to distribute the current that ran through a shield.
Another scream tore out of her, this one longer, deeper. Something was trying to rip her apart at a fundamental level. Random arcs of electricity shot out from her into the ground and her surroundings as she was driven off the floor by some force.
Something was happening to Jack, this she knew. That wasn’t all though, something was happening to her, this she feared.
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Jonah was watching Jack’s body grow massive tumors in an instant that sloughed off almost as fast; skin and muscle melting only to immediately reform afterwards. The pools of blood created by these procees was turned into clouds of clouds of swirling iron and smoke as the electric corona around Jack continued to grow in size. His Gauntlet was beyond strange, it seemed to have turned liquid and was whipping itself in water-like lashes of hot pink that jumped and swirled around Jack’s body, seeming to plunge into the tumors and dig at Jack’s decaying flesh in equal measure. There was something else it might have been doing but Jonah’s attention was distracted by what followed.
The Pull. Every weapon held by a ManRat suddenly snapped forward. Most ManRats released their weapons which then spun and flew in deadly, murderous arcs around Jack’s body. The rest of the loose metal in the room was pulled toward Jack and punched holes into him before continuing their parabolic trajectory from his body and were launched in scattered orbits around the room faster than the eye could track. The remaining RatMen who did not release their weapons were pulled directly into the maelstrom, cut into pieces before getting close to Jack, they were the lucky ones. The ones that made it close had it worst of all; their flesh peeled, burned, and boiled before disintegrating over the span of a fraction of a second.
The bags in Jonah’s hand almost ripped out of his grasp, he held on tight as Rattigan grabbed a large pawful of the back of Jonah’s robes.
“Jack! Too much!” His hoarse voice made hardly a dent in the crackle that deafened the room. He looked back at Rattigan and saw that he had planted his long dagger into the ground and was holding it back with great effort. Jonah’s eyes met a wide smile that shouted something to him, he couldn’t make out. Jonah looked around, there were hordes of regular rats covering the ground all around them near to the ceiling. The undulating mass kept swelling even as swirling electric-tailed weapons whipped through and carved deep trails of death through their ranks. More and more ManRats appeared in the room.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Insane.”
Rattigan was trying to communicate something to him. He pointed at Jonah’s bag, then at Jack. Jonah shook his head. Rattigan’s face hardened as he bared his teeth. Jonah felt Rattigan jerk back on his robes. The message was clear, let go or I will let you go.
Damn you Jack! Jonah released his bags and Rattigan threw Jonah back into a bed of crawling, squeaking rats.
The bags were shredded on the approach and Rattigan cut with a stone knife into his chest and slopped his blood on the metal blade held in his hand. He then relaxed the angle at which he was holding his knife in the ground. It shot forward through the rest of Jonah’s bag and continued through Jack’s chest, the mass of Jonah’s near-full lifetime of collecting blew apart and joined the maelstrom. Metallic things, like his precious portable shot into Jack and blew apart into scattered pieces. The metal on one particular Magno-Tube beat everything else in the bag on its collision course with Jack’s body.
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A swirl entered a giant rent in the ceiling of the space, it was illuminated in the dull-shine of iron particulate. The hole was quickly covered up by a pink liquid that strained and stretched, but held. There was something about it that seemed…
Jack didn’t have time for that. The swirl of magnetism whirled through the room and steered right toward him.
“There it is! Go get it you slippery bastard!”
Snake Jack looked at it with hungry eyes then with flickering eyes as his Smile slightly faded.
“There’s no way to manipulate this, just grab it!”
He smiled, “There’s always a way to manipulate things.”
Jack returned the Smile, “Guess it’ll go into Yuma, or maybe into me. Maybe I’ll get some electromagnetic Affinity. Guess you won’t find out, snake.”
The snake’s Smile held until the swirl of iron picked up speed in its circling trajectory toward Jack.
“Tsk.” He moved a chitin shell aside and jumped out onto the top of the cocoon. Jack sent a burst of electricity that entered the snake Jack and drove the metal dust toward him as if each grain was fired from a microscopic railgun. Each hit rocked the slick looking Jack as he laughed with each impact, “Yes! Yes I feel it! More! MOOOOOORRRE!”
Jack upped the current and the snake was pinned against the top of the cocoon as they continued to punch into his body, he laughed the entire time.
“See beast?! Now I have my own!”
Jack released the electricity from snake Jack who immediately jumped and attacked wild Jack who was still fighting the clouds. Wild Jack saw the new wound and smiled.
“Finish helping the boy,” then sent a beam of electricity with a wave of his hand that connected to the Core’s shell as it completed the electro half of the magnetic connection with the snake. Jack, still locked in with Yuma, was trapped on the other end of the connection as they locked together and the snake slammed into the cocoon and was immediately dragged to the outside of the shell across from Jack.
“You going to help release the magnetic side, snake?”
“Why would I do that? If Miss Yumata dies then it will naturally release, unless you want to make a Deal?” The cold, dead eyes met his and were joined by a predatory, gleaming Smile.
Jack felt his perception twist. A deal with a snake? This guy had just attacked the wild Jack the millisecond he had gotten the Magnetic Affinity. He’d rather Yuma die than be in debt of this monster. Still, if he had the choice he’d like Yuma to live. He reviewed the memories he had previously blocked out. This guy was definitely going to continue being a problem. He didn’t know if he’d have another opportunity to talk like this with it.
“Don’t you want to kill her yourself? How unsatisfying that would be if she died before you had a chance.”
The Smile faded into a shadow of its former gleaming glory, “That electric bitch! You bastard!”
The snake waved his fingers, hands and body were mashed against the cocoon. The snake’s Smile had faded but it was still there, “I know you, you don’t have the conviction.”
“You really want to test me on that?” Jack motioned to the wild Jack, “and maybe I’d have trouble doing it, but we know that he doesn’t .”
“Damn you, that’s as good as killing her yourself, you won’t tell him. Just make a deal, I get to kill Yumata and I have control for… a few hours every cycle. Cut the electricity already fool, I’ve had this Affinity for all of a second!”
“Maybe Yuma should die if that’s the only way to hurt you.”
The snake’s face twisted even further, the Smile was gone, “You wouldn’t dare.”
“You really want to test me on that?” Jack yelled up to the wildman, “Jack! If this slimeball tries anything then I want you to kill Yuma!”
He paused and turned to the pair, “Kill Yu? Now?”
“No, not now, if he tries anything to jeproadize the mission!”
The wild Jack stopped moving to think in place then took a hit that knocked him across the space. He resumed fighting and created more space to think, he turned to Jack and nodded, “Ok boy. Deal.” At that Jack felt a lock form in between him and the wild copy of him. The Deal was inviolable. He wasn’t expecting that. Jack got the sense that there was no backing out of it unless they both negotiated another one.
Jack met the snake’s eyes. Nothing and no one would compromise the goal. Not Yuma. Not even himself. “No tricks at all or Yuma dies right now. Make the Deal!”
The snake’s face twisted into a vile grimace, “Fine! No tricks… until we’re off the ship! It’s a Deal, don’t kill her! Just release your current you fool!”
Jack wanted the deal in perpetuity but at least this way it’d be manageable until he solved whatever was going on in the ship, Jack wasn’t even really that confident he’d get past that point.
“Deal.” Jack finalized it with a word and as he did he felt another lock form somewhere deep between the two of them. As inviolable as the other Deal. It would hold or a violation would tear them into oblivion.
A dangerous warning eminated from the center of Jack and he cut off the electricity. The snake fell to the ground as the electromagnetic connection released.
“Bastard. You haven’t solved anything and this isn’t over, I’ll be ready the next time.”
“Come on you snake, stop crying, put on your tethers and get to work! Cya boyo, give Tule a good killing for me! Oh, and that other crab that thinks its me, kill him good!”
The wildman and the snake, together now, pushed back the clouds until they shrank back into a green and red mushroom and a crimson shard that emitted small motes of something with a faint green sheen. The hearts of both Catalysts were both bound by tight electromagnetic bands of lightning.
“I can’t think of a single reason why you would have helped him back there.”
“We got loads of fighting ahead and that boy’s got a nose for getting in the thick of it.”
“Simpleton. Ogre! Can’t believe I made a deal with him. Like that! I’ll never forgive you.”
“Good stuff,” He bellowed a laugh, “I woulda killed Yu just to see ye squirm!”
“Brute bastard.”
“Ye think he’s gonna remember?”
“Unlikely.”