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There wasn't any time to come up with a craftier plan.
But, you didn't need a craftier plan, did you?
You had all the variables. You knew the targets, you had the lines of attack, and you had your eyes. Shuffling back and forth, your eyes dart around as you stand facing the center of the room. Flashes shot by you, leaping from lumen to cogitator to receptacle to receptacle to lumen, unleashing arcs of electricity as they passed, torturing the people hit by the stray bolts with the power of the Motive Force on their bodies. To their credit, the techomats continued to hum their strange counter chant, although it didn't seem to be having any effect.
Bolts flow past so quickly, becoming streaks in the darkness from dimming lumens as you drink in the trajectories, memorizing every single transit as if they were lines on your arrival schedule. Departures from Receptacle 01 to Lumen 02. Arrival at Cogitator 00. You count each and every single jump and transit, and allow your mind to settle, passively absorbing all the information.
You knew this far too well. Things were never truly random, even chaos had it's own rhythm. Ships arrived, needed different bays, different landers, times, no matter how perfectly choreographed. Yet, even those deviations had their own peculiar rhythm, beyond even that of statistical models. It wasn't just probability, but an understanding of how the port beat and moved like an organism.
Understanding like you had.
<span class="mu-r">Your Strain has increased.</span>
Arrival. Departure.
Arrival-
You lurched forward, before the entity even emerged, thrusting out the power pack in one hand as it launched. It burst from the lumens in the ceiling, attempting to feint away from Tobias by diverting to an outlet nearby the room, hoping to try and catch him on a return bounce. Now it was in the air, committed, unable to change course. You had the pack in it's way- it was going to catch it, trick the creature into falling into your impromptu prison, sending all that dangerously lethal power it had consumed into...
...into the power pack? Wait, weren't those dangerous if...
Out of your corner of your eye, you could see the widening eyes of one of the technomats, slowly starting to brace for what he knew was coming. You hadn't considered that. If the pack was <span class="mu-i">empty</span>, perhaps, but...
Wait. Before, when the creature had managed to make a direct impact, it had been sent spinning off away from it's intended destination, almost as if- it must be a solid entity. Able to transform into some state, but still solid enough to be <span class="mu-i">hit</span>, just like you had. If that separated it from it's electrical charge.
Something within you forced you to look <span class="mu-i">up</span> seeing the creature approaching. You had very little time, you...
>[Conditioning/Strain Check] Punch it again to separate it from it's charge.
>[Manipulation/Strain Check] Pull your bag around to use as an insulated shield.
>Allow it to enter. You'll figure it out.
>[Write-In]
