At Five to One, the Payoff is Huge

(A point of order: anyone who feels left behind in this rush of posts is free to assert that during the last few moments, she has been doing this or that, and I’ll be generous with allowing it to succeed. After all, if no one is paying attention to you, you can get it done without interference.)

Sky is out of oomph. He has that sinking feeling that accompanies being without his usual cloud of luckiness. But of course, that doesn't mean it's time to deal himself out! Maybe the other guy's outta luck too, or he has luck but loses his moxie. Gotta have the moxie.

"Where did I leave my rifle and my ever-loving baseball bat?" he says aloud as he is running, to no one in particular. He is looking for Voinovich, last seen being clobbered by his own rifle.

Voinovich is not near his rifle. There is blood on the rifle stock, but Voinovich isn't anywhere to be seen ...

"Stand still! I've iced the ground!" calls Voinovich. He's behind a fallen log, covered in wind-drifted leaves.

Sky notes the frost shimmering under the grass. He almost walked into a patch which has been glazed to be slippery.

Having heard Sky's lament vis-a-vis his armaments, Voinovich says,

"I've got a knife. Can you use that better than I can? Perhaps you can Travel into stabbing position."

Voinovich holds his hand toward the ground and forms a three-foot-long icicle. He snaps off the end, making a wicked point.

"Don't worry about me. I'll make my own."

Sky beckons the Brute girl, Yurasu, toward him, hoping she slips on the ice. He asks Voinovich to spread snow on the burning hideout.

Sky notices that his coat, discarded by Yurasu, is in the dirt behind her. She probably didn’t even notice the weight of the guns in the pockets …

Yurasu advances hesitantly. What is she waiting for?

Suddenly Kaze leaps out of the darkness, tackles Nick and Fades him. Needles stab down from directly overhead, bypassing any cover the Grimnoir might be hiding behind.

Voinovich spun toward Kaze at the last moment and stabbed upward in self-defense, but she’s Faded, so she’s okay.

“Thanks,” he says. “I have to put out the fire. Can you keep Sky alive?”

He turns and runs toward the blaze, already spraying frost from the air.

Fortunately, Sky has advanced far enough toward Yurasu that the shower of needles misses him. The Mover doesn’t want to hit his own teammate.

Make that “teammates”. The Torch, Rock, and the Heavy are all converging on Sky as well. The Heavy is keeping his own weight up to resist the wind, and extending that courtesy to the Torch as well. And Rock has wrenched his arm right up out of the soil and stone with which it was melded by Sky. Apparently, adding rock and dirt to his Massive arm doesn’t really change its mass or composition much.

Sky’s knife suddenly weighs a ton. He feels a finger almost snap before he can drop it and let it bury itself to the hilt in the dirt.

The Torch lights up the area behind Sky, to flush out any allies he might have. It would have gotten Voinovich and Kaze, had they not dropped back to deal with the fire. (Although no one’s really sure where Kaze is, what with the night and the stealth and all.)

Yurasu kicks out at Sky’s legs, while Rock comes in on his blind side. Sky dodges the leg-breaking blow, but that forces him left, into Rock’s path. The Massive doesn’t get his arms all the way around Sky, but his sheer weight does force Sky to the ground, with a Massive pinning his legs down.

This leaves him two arms and a head. But all of those seem cast of solid lead, and he cannot summon the strength to lift so much as a finger. Sky realizes he isn’t hurt, or going into shock – he’s just being Heavied.

Yurasu pulls a tungsten rod from her wristband. Flexing it between her hands, she bends it like taffy, which heats the rod’s center red-hot. She blows on it to cool it, then bends it around Sky’s arms, pinning his hands behind his back.

Meanwhile …

Michael runs over to Sonny-boy to see what kind of shape he's in, and give what help he can right off. Apart from his leg being stiffly immobile, Sonny-boy feels fine. Michael heads toward the fire with Sonny-boy and the tungsten rod.

He is trying to get Sonny-boy to a better, more hidden spot, and himself to the fire to see if he can help Richter and Christine.

He gets to a position where he can see Christine, but the heat is intense, beating on Michael’s face and hands.

And then it eases, instantly, washing away. The fire opens up and rolls back, parting before Richter, who peels it back like a curtain.

“Atta girl, Christine!” he says. “We’re out! Now give me Crackler again and we’ll wrap this up!”

Christine is flushed and wild-haired from the heat. Her mouth drops open in horror.

“What’s the matter?” Richter snaps, looking back at her.

She is looking past Richter, into the unburned wilderness, where the Tattooed Man, wearing a metal-and-wood prosthetic leg, has just appeared.

The Tattooed Man activates a kanji on his arm, and gestures. Richter is flung back into the fire.

“At-uh lasuhtuh,” the Tattooed Man says in difficult English. “Wituh yoo-uruh Power, I wi’ notuh need anyone-uh else!”

He extends his hands toward Christine, and her feet float free of the ground as she is drawn towards him …