ellectrical | (no subject)

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Wandering outside is about the last thing Elle wants to do right now. But as she can't find X for the moment, and the choice was rapidly becoming step outside or set something or someone on fire, she made her way through the back door and out into the fog.

Elle doesn't look at the forest, or at the building out by the lake. Mostly, she just looks at her feet – she's still in jeans and a black tank top, no shoes. Basically, she's freezing. But the bright arcs of electricity that crackle and flash from her skin, through the fog and up toward the sky, remind her that she'd rather be freezing than on fire.

If those are the only choices, anyway.

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What's with that weird building, anyway?

Appearing from nowhere.

Looming out of the fog.

The woods around it echoing with screams.

Come to think of it, that scream may sound familiar.

It's a moment before she hears it above the crackling around her. Elle kneels down in the lawn as bright white streaks of lightning flash up into the sky, and smaller sparks fall around her, flaring up in the grass.

There's no conscious thought when she moves back to her feet. Elle doesn't recognize the screaming, not at first, but she still begins to walk, and then run toward the forest.

And then her mind comes back, and she abruptly halts. Despite the electricity still flashing over her, she looks back toward the Bar.

One side of her screams that she has to go on, the other that she shouldn't go on alone.

The screams pause, plunging the forest back into eerie silence.

But apparently, all the pause meant was somebody needed to breathe: they begin again with a vengeance.

"HELP!

PLEASE, SOMEBODY HELP ME!"

Elle's still looking back at the bar.

But now, she does recognize the voice.

(Sam told Elle that Ava attacked her because she was like them.

For better or worse, Elle's training had always been very much the opposite.)

She turns back, and follows the voice into the woods, arcs still snapping up from her skin and into the trees.

The woods are cold and still, the chilling fog wending through the trees.

Behind them, that strange building looms craggy against the night sky. Not too close-- not inexplicably close or anything.

But it's there.

Ava's screams have gone wordless again, interspersed with dry, hacking coughs.

Elle ignores the building, but as she follows the screams, her sparks intensify again. Her footsteps leave flames that flash in the brush and flare on tree roots, but the moment she's moved on, the fire vanishes.

She doesn't call out for Ava. But then, if Ava can see, she really doesn't need to.

Yeah, those sparks are great.

Like signal flares.

There's a rustling in the trees ahead, the specific kind of thrashing of something with two legs and two arms and no real understanding of how to move quietly.

It's coming closer.

"Hello??"

Elle's movements are quiet, but the light and crackling sparks do more than cancel that out.

But still, when she speaks, her voice is soft.

"Come on."

Ava bursts through the trees. Her face is pale, expression panicked, and she seems to be bleeding from a scratch across her cheek.

She stares, wild-eyed.

"... Elle?"

Elle doesn't hold out her hand. No one would want to take it right now. The light's growing so bright that she has to dig her heels into the ground to keep from shaking, and she's getting more and more nervous that one of these trees is going to catch on fire and actually stay that way.

But her voice remains nothing more than a loud whisper when she repeats, "Just come on."

Ava sees her lips move, but isn't entirely sure what she's saying.

Whatever. There's no time.

"Elle! By the lake, there's--"

She staggers another step closer, blinking and squinting against the light.

She's so pretty.

"It's--"

At this point, something cold and utterly silent jabs out in one quick, brutal blow, and catches Elle at the back of the head.

Streaks of blue-white lightning flash up through the trees, from her hands, and her shoulders, and her head.

And then the light goes out entirely.

In the dark, Ava's breathing sounds very loud to her.

She wipes a hysterical tear from her eye.

"You're lucky," she tells Elle after a moment.

"It's hard to get these guys to go without claws."

The thing standing over Elle seems to coalesce in the darkness, gain more substance. Ava surveys them both as best she can.

(Not that she needs light to perceive the demon.)

"Help me move her," she says to it.

"We'll be late."

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