I leaned forward, and dove toward where Haley crouched on a branch. Pri's people pulled rifles off their backs, and the short guy crouched, preparing to jump, aiming upward at her.
I maneuvered myself into an upright position, hovering a little below Haley and above Travis.
In the anti, the short guy had left the ground.
Not much taller than Haley (who was around five feet), his physique could have doubled for a body builder's -- only smaller.
He flew over , and landed in the tree.
Overbalanced by his weight, the branch dropped downward, dragging nearby branches with it, one of which hit the back of my helt.
It didn't hurt, but it distracted long enough that I didn't notice that Pri's people had their guns out until they started firing.
A couple bullets hit my chest, knocking backward into the branches.
I held up my left arm, and blanketed them with sound, a single, painfully loud note.
They stepped backward, but only stopped firing when Vaughn's wind knocked them backward.
To my left, the man assigned to catch Haley dangled from a branch.
I pointed my left arm at him, and fired another blast of sound.
He dropped, still trying to grab branches as he fell.
Hitting the ground didn't take him out, but it didn't help him either.
His feet hit the ground, and more wind blew him over. I made a ntal note to complint Vaughn on his control when this was over. I barely felt the wind moving up where I was.
Taking my eyes off our opponents, I decided to check on Haley.
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Sensibly, she'd already jumped from this tree to the next, and even as I saw her she ran up one branch, jumped and landed on a branch from the next tree down the line. Travis wasn't far behind her.
Even as I thought we might be able to leave, I realized that one of Pri's people had jumped for .
I tried to press the button on my palm that would have sent higher, but I couldn't move quickly enough. The force knocked backward into the tree.
I shut off the rockets with the tongue control, and we fell, hitting branches all the way down.
He hit more than I did.
Unfortunately, even hitting the ground didn't do much to him. He grabbed my left arm, and kept on pounding with his right, setting off error ssages in my helt.
Not to ntion the fact that it hurt.
I tried to move my arm out of his hold except he would not let go. Worse, he managed to flip over, and sat on top of , still keeping my left arm under his control and pointed away from his body.
They all knew about the non-working sonics in the right arm. They had to.
Crap.
In the middle of that realization, I also got my first good look at the guy's face. He had a bald head and a goatee. He looked like he was in his twenties, but given their regenerative powers, he could have been born in the middle ages.
"Let's see how hard this is to break," he said.
He pounded the middle of the Rocket suit's chest plate, sending off even more error ssages, many of which included words like "danger," and "fatal error."
Seeing those ssages any other ti might have caused to freak out, but not that ti because even as all those ssages appeared, a couple disappeared -- the error ssages for the right arm's sonics.
At that mont, I had a sudden realization. All the ti I'd been working on things, I'd been assuming that my new arm had been the problem, and while I'd done so limited testing of so of the systems in the chest area, I hadn't done much.
Soti during the fight where the right arm got lted, the chest had to have gotten damaged too. It wasn't the arm at all.
I may have laughed at that point.
The guy stared at . "What the fuck is your problem?"
"Nothing."
I almost asked him to do it again, except that was the best way to make sure that he wouldn't, and I kind of wanted him to -- assuming he didn't crush my chest.
"Actually," I said, "it tickled."
Growling, he pounded the chest again, bringing up whole new error ssages, so of which included the word "critical."
In red.
That wasn't good, but I'd had my fingers on the right arm sonics' button. As his hand ca down, my right arm pointed up at his head.
The sonics went off at maximum possible volu, rattling my armor.
He let go of my left hand, and I hit him again with more of the sa -- except the right hand sonics had stopped working again.
But that was okay, since I'd stopped trying to use them.
Instead, I used my right hand to poke him in the eyes as hard as I could manage.
While he shouted, I pushed out from under him, shot back into the air, and tried to figure out who to help.
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