Helping out Foil

An arm motion and sudden movement from just about everyone who wasn't in the computer room with Lookout grabbed at my attention.

A wall of gas, tearing my way.

Spinning to produce some external force that might repel the gas, I flew up and away.

A new gas. This gas was a lime green, but thinner, with a wet shimmer to it.

And every surface it touched was left slick with slime. Fires here and there were quenched, and the weight of the slime pulled at already damaged structures. The rumble of buildings falling joined the whistle of wind and the low rumble of the Titan's movements.

I could feel Parian, Chastity, and Foil struggling. I flew straight to them.

Slime made the already sloping roof's surface slick. The dolls, too, were fighting to stay upright.

I had to take evasive action as a plume of black smoke washed down the middle of the street. In my peripheral vision, I saw Oberon leap, gathering up energy around himself.

***

"Whip me!" I called out. The Wretch was too slimy.

I held out my bandaged hand. "Hit my hand!"

Chastity twisted until her back was to the wall. Cloth tore more.

Only the fact she was at the corner of the building let her get her arm back far enough. The full-body motion of even getting the whip up and moving in a loose circle before she could send it where she wanted cost her more. Threads pulled on her and limited her arm movement, but many of those threads came loose.

Come on, I thought.

She struck out, whip lashing toward my hand.

It struck my palm, but the impact was only a graze.

The forcefield's teeth bit into the whip itself. A cue taken from Roman and Juliette.

I pulled back, gripping her that way. Lowering her toward the ground.

*****

I glanced at Foil, and caught her staring at the slime-marred exterior of my forcefield. It wasn't much, but it did give the forcefield a texture.

*****

"I'm sorry I didn't talk to you more, or maintain any contact," she said.

I looked at her and saw her simultaneously look away from my forcefield, which was shedding its last traces of slime now.

- Radiation 18.5