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You clasp the battery between your hands.
Someone behind you shouts for you to throw it away, but instead you hit your knees, pressing the pack to the floor beneath your hands. New instincts blossomed in your mind, ones that seemed almost incompatible with your body. There was a hollow inside you. Storage or... a tank? A hold? Capacitors? Something. It wasn't... <span class="mu-i">inside</span> you, but it was connected to you, passing up and through your body and somewhere else. It ached with emptiness, leaving you feeling cold and lifeless, worse than a ghost.
Motive Force pulsed between your hands. You could feel it, being drawn to it like a parched man was drawn to water. It moved at your touch, not freely whipping around- much like water, it flowed where it wished, and you could no more force it than a man could divert a river with his hands. And like a river, if you stood before the floodgates, it would sweep you away.
But something inside you spoke, gently nudging you to reach out to the now red hot case- and make yourself a path for the current.
Through the case, it suddenly arced to you, igniting the nerves in your hand with a searing pain which quickly dulled to a soft throb. The muscles spasmed and wanted to pull away, but you force your hands to the case and begin to <span class="mu-i">drink</span> of the Motive Force. Blue sparks danced on your robes, illuminating your body with a soft glow, as like a faucet inside you, the chamber began to fill with warm embers.
You heard soft chanting in your ears- the voice of the choir? It filled your head, and you couldn't believe how beautiful it sounded to you. How had you never noticed before? It wasn't perfect, by any means, but like a choir singing hymns to the Emperor, the purity of their faith shone through in the quaver of their voices, and the precision of each note. It was an imitation of pure binary, to be sure, but what was a painting, if not an imitation of nature? What was a statue, if not an imitation of man? No, there was purity in it, and it eased your heart, but you weren't sure it could give you strength.
The explosive force built in the case faster than you could siphon it away, but what little you could drain astounded you with it's energy. It felt like enough to blow a man apart, to light a thousand lumens or to run for days on end- and yet, inside you, only the barest trickle of energy. Leaving you still insatiable, empty inside. Why should this <span class="mu-i">creature</span> get to steal so much and cause so much pain, but leave none of it's theft for the rest of you?
