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But then the hotplate beeps plaintively as the timer reaches zero, and you shake your head and sigh. Fighting? Showdowns? Who has time for that? Your shift starts in less than an hour and if you're even a minute late, Kou is still gonna be whinging about it a week for now.
Just whinging, mind you. He'd never go as far as to dock your pay. But the noise would be most annoying.
So you scarf down breakfast, finish dressing, and grab your toolbag, all the while keeping an eye on the monitor and your unwanted visitors, who probably have a rough idea of when you usually leave for work and are showing increasing signs of impatience.
Finally, you get up, open an innocuous wall panel over your bed, reach inside to grasp the bundle of cables that runs through there and close your eyes.
Not cause you need it to help you concentrate, mind - you've long since reached a level where you don't need to shut off all possible distractions to properly control your abilities. You're simply multitasking - letting your eyes adjust to darkness ahead of time.
Admittedly, closing your eyes does make things just a tad easier. "Seeing" the electricity coursing through cables inside walls and rolling through active electronic devices, and even the chaotic, branching forest of bioelectric signals racing through living beings can be... overwhelming even when not overlaid on top of the physical world.
And ultimately it's a trivial thing that you're doing. Simply... pausing the flow of electricity across a specific set of cables within this particular node. No, not even node - from the closest junction box. There isn't even a need to worry about your small trick cascading unpredictably - because while Barter's electric grid was a web of madness and nightmares at the best of times, you've made personally sure years ago that this particular corner of it was neat, orderly, and at minimal possible risk of spontaneously catching fire.
<span class="mu-s">Vis Drain: 2 Wyrd spent</span>
When you open your eyes, it's to the grayscale view of your room in complete darkness. Silence rings in your ears: the quiet hum of the fridge, the almost imperceptible buzz of the overhead light, the whisper of the air vent - all of the usually inescapable murmur of technology's has ceased.
For the next minute or two anyway.
>Mana: 253/253
>Wyrd: 32/34
(cont)
