"Eep!"

Tessa jumped, throwing up her arms and nearly dropping her Tesla Gun. She stood in a ruined building, behind a wall with exposed re-barb, where bullets from outside had just chipped off a few more chunks of concrete. Dimm was up top, doing something, and she had no idea at all where Leo had run off to.

She didn’t like being shot at. It was scary! She was only even here because her friends had pulled her in! And then left her alone!!

Another bullet bounced off a wall. This time not the one she was hiding behind.

She groaned into the empty room.

A quiet mechanical chirp broke up her whining. A little drone looked up at here. Well, “looked” It was the size of 2 fists put together, maybe a little larger, with 4 spider legs and a sensor array on top. It didn’t exactly have eyes. Instead it tilted back and forth in a way that felt slightly questioning and a little reassuring to Tessa's frazzled mind. Most of the drone was an unpainted metallic grey, with shiny bits of copper at its toes and silver in its sensors. She had tried to personalize it a bit so that the antenna would look like little ears, the camera in between them.

She knelt down to put a hand on Nikola's 'head'.

Pat pat. Good droid. What a cute little inventor of modern electricity.

She glanced at the Telsa gun that hung from a strap around her shoulder.

Telsa...gun.

She had an idea. A way to stop them from shooting her. She almost wanted to jump up and shout that she got it, but stopped herself before another spray of bullets could end her.

They were getting closer to her now. They definitely had some idea of where she was.

She quickly flipped open the controller on her arm and entered some instructions for Nikola's simple AI to follow. She watched it blink green, confirming the order, then scamper off on the rubbley floor.

Tessa looked around again once the drone was out of sight, She needed...there! Another place for cover, further into the building, an extra thick pillar, just beside the broken stairs that lead up to the roof. It would hide her from outside and, hopefully, most of the interior as well. Someone coming straight down would probably see her, but as long as she was on the main floor that wasn’t too large a worry.

However, it also wasn’t attached to her current cover. She'd need to get across that open space to reach it.

How was she supposed to do that without getting shot!?

Okay. deep breaths.

Breath out.

Breath in.

And breath out again.

Whoooosh.

Okay. Okay! She could do this! Somehow! She had a little stealth!! She just needed...a distraction.

Oh. That would work.

She scrambled for her belt, struggling to pull loose one of a pair of grenades that hung there. Should she try to cook it? No, that was stupid! She'd just blow herself up!! They'd see where she threw it from, but well, she wasn't going to be here in a few seconds anyway.

She pulled the safety and threw the grenade as far as she could. It wasn't very far, but it made it out the window and that was far enough. Actually, what if it hadn't made it through? It could have bounced off the exterior wall and rolled back towards her!! Tessa silently thanked her lucky stars that that hadn't happened.

Then the grenade went off. The explosion was loud and probably nowhere near the people shooting at her, but it also created a cloud of dust that obscured their view into the building.

Not that that stopped them from shooting into it. She hadn't wanted this! But she was committed and so would go for it! Tessa half ran and half crawled out of her hiding spot, hoping that the random spray would not land a lucky shot.

Crawl run crawl sprint!

And then she was hidden behind her new pillar. The bullets took longer to stop; they were adding to the dust cloud and making it last longer, so they couldn't tell whether they'd hit anything outside. Eventually though?

Eventually it settled down. At least enough to see inside. They threw a grenade of their own and it landed exactly where she had been. It went off. There was another too-loud bang and another cloud of dust and then she could hear them start to run inside.

Tessa held her Telsa gun in both her hands. She flicked a switch, cueing it to begin to spin up. The coils silently started to glow as they filled with electricity.

"I'm going in!" One of the enemies shouted through the dust. A great big guy from the sound of things. She could hear him stomp stomping on the floor, sending yet more dust into the air.

Ugh. She'd need a mask if she ended up doing this again.

She waited until she thought he was close enough, then spun around the pillar and squeezed the trigger. The smell of ozone and burnt dust filled the air as raw electricity arced out of her gun and into the waiting body of her opponent. He was only a couple of meters away, within the effective range of her unwieldy weapon, though she couldn’t make out his fine details. He was big though, and she could see the hints of metal shining despite the dust. Was he wearing...armour? Oh. 

Oh!

That...probably didn't like electricity too much.

Tessa released the trigger and retreated back around the pillar. Hopefully between the remaining dust and the big body the rest couldn't tell where she was from that. Then again, they probably could. It was a noisy, bright lightning gun! She-

"Fuck! What the hell was that?"

"Lar's fucking fried! Was that light a flamer!?"

"No" a cold shout that sounded like an order. "Ever seen a dust explosion? Fire would have leveled the whole floor and us with it. It was probably a Tesla."

"Those shitty things?"

Hey! Watch who you're calling shitty!

"Obviously not when you’re aiming for someone wearing metal armour."

Yeah!

...Wait, no, doesn't that mean...?

"I told Lar's that stupid outfit would make him a target. Now you two idiots go in and flush them out. Just stand a few steps apart, in case they get a lucky shot.”

Breath.

Nikola still had her back.

"Come on oooooout!" It was one of the henchmen, as Tessa had mentally filed them, rather than the cool-voiced leader. His voice was higher pitched and a little grating.

"So we can shoot you full of holes!" The other henchman.

The voice was almost right behind her. Err, in front? The other side of her hiding spot.

Fuck it. She spun around the pillar again, squeezing as she went. The lack of conductive armour was made up for with point blank range and the bolt of lightning plunged into her target's chest. An Orc, this time she could see. electricity coursed around his belly, his tusks and vaporized strands of body hair where it was exposed between his tactical gear. His body shook in place and his tactical rifle hung from a pin on his chest, ceramic, by the way the electric pulses went around it.

"Gotcha!"

Tesssa turned her head to see his partner, another Orc maybe? Or a subtype at least. He was further away and there was still a fair amount of dust in the air. But whatever. He was over there in plain sight and clearly getting ready to shoot her dead.

Hope this works. She flipped a switch, and the lightning arcing from her gun changed. It became more wild as the battery load increased and her target shed larger arcs of energy, at first they traced randomly along the ground and ceiling, but after a moment they latched on to something more conductive.

Something like Nikola's cute little copper feet and conductive antenna

Right underneath the legs of the second shooter.

Tessa heard a sizzle and a pop, then the arc jumped up a leg and into the body of the second attacker, frying them both at once. She did it! She got them both at once! She-

"don't turn around."

She felt a barrel pressed to the back of her neck.

"Turn off the gun. Drop it. Then spread your hands out, away from your sides.

Tessa did as she was asked. When she turned off the current, both of her targets dropped to the ground. incapacitated if not dead. She let her gun fall by her hip suppressing a moan of pain as it struck just a little too hard. Then she stuck out her hands and arms as wide as they would go.

The voice behind her shifted. The leader from before. She felt something sharp on her shoulder and involuntarily flinched, then her gun fell to the ground. The strap had been cut.

"Now then," said the voice. "Let's see what you're worth."

Tessa gulped. Three days of subjective in-game time. That didn't feel like a lot. She didn't want to die!

Not again!