Seven looked at her strangely. Most everybody else had been so gabby so far that he was expecting some sort of heroic rhetoric in reply, but it never came—all he got was a counterattack.

He was on guard, and tracking her as best he could, but he didn't really need to. The two's shields collided, refused to intersect, and repulsed violently, crackling, flashing, sparking, and propelling each away from the other. Seven staggered, but made sure to keep away from the edge.

"Oh, so now you're goin' all silent, huh? Don't even pretend you're at my level," he spat, circling again. "Seriously! You guys are garbage. You won't waste my time anymore."

And with that, he directed his hand toward a moderately small fallen girder between himself and her, and sent it blasting horizontally straight at her.

Coop hunted desperately up the length of wires that looped around and connected the vibration sensors to each other. Only very gingerly touching the wires to move them, he searched for a wire that did not threaten to immediately cause the annihilation of the world as everyone knew it, in the event of it being cut. Every single one seemed to be linked up through the horrible string of wires to go immediately back to what he was sure was a voltage sensor on the circuit board; try to cut the wires, and…

He frowned and stared harder at it, trying to ignore the silent absence of any timer to tell him how much time he had left. He felt slightly sick—the adrenaline was not reacting well to the situation at hand.

The circuit board. He had considered trying to remove the circuit board, but why would it be turned over if any idiot could walk along and flip it right-side-up. Coop had very cautiously peered underneath the circuit board and had his caution rewarded by the sight silhouette of a very thin silhouette of a piece of wire, which attached the circuit board to the bomb frame. It had—something had been done to circuit board, it had been changed. The whole machine had been changed, so:

He stared at the back of the thin green wafer that lay there, searching for signs of tampering where the bundle of wires went underneath, and pinpointed…

There, where two very small components had been placed side by side, underneath the board, and very badly soldered into place. They had been put in by someone without much time to spare, because the tail ends of the wires that normally would have been trimmed properly stuck out, and were slightly bent to keep the whole thing in place.

He stared at the tips of the wires, and then very gently bent the wires of one of the small components back, and pushed on it with his thumb.

There was a krik, and a clatter, and the piece of circuitry dropped into the recesses of the bomb.

The eagle very quietly palmed a piece of glass, and then, grabbing onto the last end of the tremendous loop that ran back and forth across the whole chain of the sensors, he pulled it across the piece of glass

and

it

snapped




Coop stared at the cut wire in his hand. Then he began to laugh.

"Haha," he said, and then "Hahahahahahaha!!!"

He looked at Key, staring at the koala with a smile on his face that was far too broad to be actually happy. He ripped the string of vibration sensors out of the box, with a savage glee, and threw the wires into a corner.

He resumed staring at the box.

"... Bull!" Seven snorted at the sight.

He looked around. He didn't have anything useful. Time was ticking. He was set to win already, but he was apparently filled with an intense desire to put the girl in her place.

"Fine, then," he huffed. The canister jutting from his head began to glow intensely, and the field of ionized air surrounding him intensified immensely. His vindictive, grinning face was barely even visible behind it.

The tower began to quake again. Air conditioning units dramatically ripped free of the roof they were standing on. Already-fallen girders were joined by some fresh ones in a chaotically swirling mass. If one could see his face through the utter pandemonium of sparks, arcs, and fleeing sharks (or at least one), its pained redness would be the most noticeable thing. He was bringing down the house in the most spectacular way he didn't know how. He had barely felt the extent of his powers out at all, and had never utilized the Chaosol Emerald prior to this encounter.

His hands were gnarled like claws, his eyes bulging, teeth gritting together, veins throbbing out of his forehead, static-charged hair flaring out in every which direction, all under the shades of an unnatural, dark, reddish aura that began to sinisterly tint even the electricity itself. Then, in one heave and barked-sounding cough and grunt, he hurled the swirling, tornado-like mass of debris sloppily and only vaguely in his target's general direction.

((OOC: Edit to my last post on page 8 for those possibly confused with this one.))

Somewhere within the forest, one could maybe see, in better lighting, a trench of sudden destruction that had occurred amongst the branches, having simply appeared to be ripped right through with a sudden force. A hundred yards away from this disruption in the pattern of trees, emerging from the forest, was the green hedgehog himself, lightly clutching one of his arms as he limped along.

Before him, the outline of the tower rose and all the destruction and mayhem rang through the night air, but he barely took notice. Sheffer appeared to be on the last fringes of consciousness, his return to the solid earth having been one that triggered a wave of fatigue. Maybe it'd finally been the piled up days of physical endurance, or maybe the dawning realization of his lack of contribution to the whole situation, but either way, the tank was nearly empty.

A few, small huffs past his lips as he continued to the tower, his shirt tattered from his periodic, and rapidly occurring, spinning, obvious bruises along his body. It was beyond anyone's guess why he was returning, other than to see the outcome of it all.

Unfortunately, there was no such thing as safety just yet. The box let out a digital-watch-like "deetdeetdeetdeet" alarm, and a uselessly uninformative LED started blinking once per second, as if a final countdown.

Coop had successfully removed the bundles of little accelerometers and other devices that would have otherwise kept the bomb from being safely moved, but there was no way he was going to be able to finish the job—especially not when they couldn't tell if they had 60 blinks, 30 blinks, 10 blinks, or possibly worse left before their ultimate doom.

Coop, Key, and Jack had seconds left to act.



Meanwhile...



"..."

"Disbelieving" was not a strong enough word to describe the dumbstruck, brows-uneven, mouth-agape, lips-curled-down, eyes-squinted look that was plastered on Seven's face as he slouched there in a tired, wide stance, arms and balled fists drawn up tightly against the sides of his neck, clutching at the collar of his black shirt.

He opened his mouth, but before he could figure out what to say, a series of rapid beeps came from one of the many devices he wore, matching the timing of the bomb above. It was his time to go alarm.

"Yeah, well, screw you!" he blurted ever-so-maturely as if replying to the unspoken insult of Jam's actions. "You lose anyway!"

He pressed a button, and almost immediately, a four-turbined VTOL dropship much like the one they saw back at the chemical plant jumped up out of some distant trees, and whooshed with sounds like jet engines as it raced his direction. In the seconds it should have taken to arrive, however, something horrible happened: a streak of glowing thruster exhaust sliced across the dark sky, and the recognizable toomp-toomp-toomp of a rapid-fire grenade launcher thudded out. Bright flashes momentarily lit up the transport craft even through the rain as it was covered in a series of explosions, dove promptly nose-first into the ground, and tumbled, jostled, flipped, rolled, careened almost all the way to the tower's base, where it stopped in several large, smoldering pieces.

So that's where their robot friend had been waiting so patiently.

There was that look on Seven's face again, except etched with dark lines. He just stared.

He couldn't do anything about the bomb.

No longer thinking straight, he turned back to Jam and unleashed all of his aggression in one sudden charge. He bolted with extreme speed; his crackling shield dropped and vanished, so he'd be able to strike through hers; he leapt, drew his arm back for a humongous, hurling punch straight at her barrier, and howled like a boy possessed.

Jolted by the harsh stop, and disoriented by his sudden flight backward, Seven barely knew where he was by the time he struck the girder... although that was less the movement's fault, and more the fact that the back of his head had just smacked straight into a steel beam.

The boy didn't stay stuck in place for long. The device on his wrist was dashed to pieces against the obstacle, freeing his arm, and dropping him face first on the corrugated roof with a sound clang. The bits of the contraption had flown everywhere; sadly, what used to be Jam's lightning ring became "lightning" and "ring" separate. That is to say, the little white gem popped right off, and the dented, warped ring fell elsewhere on the roof, wobbling to a stop like a big coin.

That was the end of Seven's light show, but not the end of Seven himself. Wall-eyed and red-faced with pain, he clutched his head and writhed on the floor, moving in awkward scrapes and pushes as he kicked his feet and made profuse groaning, whining, and growling noises. The canister attached to the back of his head still pulsed, and that strange glow was still around him, but the electricity was long gone.

"You can't do this," he cried out plaintively. He was blubbering out a lot of things, most of them hard to make out in his hysteria, with his face buried in the floor. Some were just protests and statements of denial, but at least one awkwardly placed threat came through clearly: "I'm gonna kill you!"

He repeated it several times like some sort of mantra as he started trying to pick himself up.

Coop jumped as the alarm went off.

When the bomb did not show signs of immediately detonating, he stared at it.

No, there was no way he could figure it out, not with the beeping signifying their approaching of the end of the three-minute period.

He stood up.

"Time to go," he said. He slammed the lid of the chest shut, and hoisted it up by one of the chains, slinging the enormous box over his shoulders like a backpack. He looked at Key, blankly for a moment, before offering:

"Bye."

Then Coop leapt out of the window, into the rain, swooping low over Jack and Ember's head as he worked to pick up speed.

He continue to work for speed.

He beat the air with his wings but, silhouetted against the under-lit sky, it was obvious he was not having the best of luck.

Coop had not realized that the tremendous chest was so heavy, and, with the wind screaming at him, and the rain spraying in his face, it was becoming increasingly difficult to focus on keeping aloft. He took deep breaths, fighting for altitude as he flew the bomb off to where he knew that it would be safe.

The ocean.

In the distance, lit up by distant flashes of lightning that were beginning to flicker through the sky, the sea heaved and rolled and beat the shore.

Coop blasted air through his beak, causing a spray of water to shoot off, and clearing his mouth for another breath before it filled up with rain again.

He continued to pull at the air with his wings, but at this stage, he should've been able to glide—it was becoming rapidly apparent that he was probably not going to make the shore in time.