One rock, two rocks, three rocks—Askin couldn't blow the rubble away with a single punch, but his containers could shift aside boulders with relative ease. He and the others had cleared a side exit, but with the main entrance clogged up there was little hope for the non-nomads escaping.
It was chaos, of course. He hadn't been expecting anything else, but in person it was all very overwhelming, and Askin was finding trouble concentrating. Robots and screaming and blood, and nomads and ki blasts and dust everywhere. Askin had just dispelled a piece of wreckage the size of a minivan when one of his new companions was suddenly there beside him. One punch, and the entrance was clear, a blast of rock and mortar and pure, fiery power that blew Askin's hair out of his face and sent his cloak flapping like a great angry bird.
"Oh. That's, uh, one way to do it."
Askin decided it was time to stop trying to take the lead, and just be content as one of the sheep. As the tall, dark woman hurried off, Askin followed her, calling out behind him, "The exit is clear! If you're not a fighter, get out, run!"
Up on the bleachers, with a fuller view of the arena, Askin lost track of his friend(?), but before he could look for her, or maybe help one of the others, a great shadow fell over the heart of the arena. Askin didn't have to look up to know this couldn't be good.
The ground exploded as a silver sphere dropped from the heavens and crashed to the ground in a shockwave of air and rock and metal. A chunk of rubble thrown up from the impact cracked Askin across the head and sent him tumbling down the bleachers, head over feet, then feet over head. For a moment, everything went black, and his vision spun in a thousand directions. Blood ran thick down the top of his head and across his face. When his vision cleared, Askin found that the ground had gone out from beneath him, and he was being pulled through the air as though in an invisible river. The huge silver sphere wasn't a sphere anymore, but a robot, a fat, insectile thing with great thick legs, and at its head was a black sphere of shivery somethingness. Whatever it was, like some child-version of a black hole, it was sucking him towards it.
He swung his hands through the air, trying to grab on to something, anything, but it was too late, he was already nearing the metal monstrosity. Others were being plucked up from the ground and pulled towards the shadowy sphere as well. Change of plans: dynamic tactics, go with the flow. Askin opened up a container and unleashed the brunt of a winter storm around the sphere, crashing ice and snow and wind all around the singularity. For a second, parts of it froze up, and the gravitational pull faltered—then, the ice was broken up by the irresistible pull, one of Askin's strongest moves turned to nothing more than slush and water and snow.
Ah. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, okay, alright. Dynamic tactics, he told himself, just roll with it!
Askin kicked his feet, ignoring the sinking disappointment growling in his chest, and released a burst of wind from one of his other containers, shooting quickly and suddenly towards the singularity sphere and the silvery, many-eyed head of the robot. Suddenly up against the mechanical monster's face, Askin threw out the now empty container that had once held a winter storm. With a sound like a sighing old woman, the face of the robot rippled and twisted, and suddenly the heavy metal plating armoring its face was vanished away, exposing the eyes and wiring beneath.
"Shoot the face, shoot the face, someone!" Askin yelled, floating wildly through the air. Blood from Askin's head injury had dripped over his face again, clogging his eyes and blocking his vision.
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Mixtape Ghost N