The chimera moved between the spaced out bamboo poles as seamlessly as a performer would’ve spun on a dance floor. Any misstep would’ve landed him in the water below him, and he *was* deathly afraid of water. Thinking about how Rakim had had to confront his fear of fire to be able to see him the way they saw each other, he’d started feeling as though he should’ve at least tried to confront his own.
It certainly gave him a strong motivation for never faltering in his footwork’s precision.
He hadn’t counted on someone grabbing his ankle from below. Almost startled right off the pole, he kicked down with his other foot in a panic, temporarily dislodging whoever it was who’d done this. Moving to a different pole, he turned his four heads to look back at the pole which he’d moved away from so that he could see who his attacker had been.
It was an eel.
She was humanoid, to be sure, had arms and legs as much as he did, but he could tell from the shape of her head and body that she was still an eel. Dark green-skinned with bright yellow eyes and a bright yellow frill, she was grinning wickedly from ear to ear, as though her mind had been gone for long enough that everyone had forgotten what it’d ever looked like. He’d never harmed an eel in his life, as far as he knew.
“What gives?”
She started using her arms to move from pole to pole beneath him, following his movements on the poles from underneath trying to catch up with his feet. They just barely managed to stay one step ahead of her reach as they kept moving away from her as fast as the poles would let them. He was starting to tell himself that it’d been a lousy day for him to have picked to work out this way, of all possible days.
He saw a crackle of electricity emanate from her pupil-less eyes.
Climbing up on the poles herself, she started chasing him on his own level, faster than he was moving this way, and eventually caught up to him. She tried to jump on him from her pole to drag him down with her, unafraid of falling herself, and he narrowly stepped out of the trajectory of her leap. As she climbed back up from her missing pounce, he tried to jump at her to knock her off her own pole, but she moved out of his way easily as he came at her and he quickly had to climb back up another pole himself.
As blue streaks of current started visibly coursing through her entire body right in front of him, he realized with growing concern that all she had to do was knock him in the water once. If she dove after him herself before he had time to swim to a pole and climb out of the water, she could’ve simply used the water to conduct her shock therapy everywhere around him. He couldn’t have done anything about it.
She finally got near enough to him as she ran after him that one of the blue streaks of current which shrouded her form arced from her to him, and he yelped when it zapped him as he ran. It was different from anything that his cyborg would’ve ever done to anyone, even to someone he didn’t like. She was shocking for keeps.
She meant to kill him.
More arcs kept sparking from her even as he kept avoiding having her grip pull him down. His running was becoming more difficult as both of his arms and legs were successively hit by them, still functioning but burnt enough for using them to have hurt. Working by elimination, she’d just started targeting his heads and torso with them, and he started to fear more for his life than he ever had at any tournament that he’d participated in. He was almost at the boardwalk when she got one of his legs again, forcing him off a pole grabbing onto it with his arms instead.
That was when Rakim finally showed up.
Undaunted at first, she first thought she could go back to her original morsel as soon as she’d have dispensed with the temporary disturbance that this could only be. Falling back on her threatening display of choice, she smirked mercilessly at him as she electrified her body in front of him, hoping to scare him into dropping his guard, which usually worked. His expression not having changed at all as her glowing blue light had reflected on his face, Rakim illuminated his own body, making it a playground for a myriad of shapes and colors of electrical shows of force.
At this, she seemed somewhat dismayed.
She moved in close to him to touch him, hoping to pass a spark into him from her hand that would knock this strange bird off his perch. The bat’s eyes then body shone blue, easily absorbing the electric current that she was directing at him harmlessly into himself. He licked his lips as though it was delicious, then he turned his head back to see his chimera behind him, hurt, before returning his eyes to her.
Then, deliberately, shook his head no.
Going batshit at the sight, he leapt at her returning at her the very same motion that she’d imprinted on him when she’d tried to electrocute him earlier. The difference was, even though they could both dish it out, that he could also take it, whereas she could not. The eel fell back, limp, in the water below them with a loud splashing sound. Rakim wasn’t sure of whether she was alive or not, but he didn’t think he had enough time to check, because he had more pressing concerns to take care of for the time being either way.
Hurrying back to his wounded friend, the cyborg pulled his chains out of his torso, carefully wrapping them around the chimera’s body. He was determined to bring his friend to Soma as fast as he could, so that the reptilian dryad could heal as much of the damage that the chimera had received as possible. He knew the witch doctor was nervous around his fire-breathing friend, but he didn’t know how badly the chimera was hurt, and it felt like enough of an emergency to justify confronting his fears this time. He’d have to owe Soma one.
Beyond that, he’d have to find out who’d sent her.
Who it was that was responsible for this.
