Chapter 111: 109 – Sparks and Ball Lightning

She continued to use the dumbbells, but moved onto exercises other than lifting - squats, bent-over rows, crunches, push ups with alternating lifts between each rep, and a few exercises that she couldn’t quite remember specific names for. 

The entire time, Zel felt Zef’s eyes on her as a nearly all-consuming stare, only occasionally dimming whenever the blonde couldn’t keep her stone eye open any longer. When Zelsys was done with the dumbbells - that is to say, when she got bored - she decided to continue attempting to manifest ball lightning using the Essentia Crucible. 

She picked one of the chunkier stone targets, one that was closer to a boulder than a pillar, largely because it was the closest one. With deep breaths she gathered Fulgur, compressing it as tightly as she was able within the space of that second stomach. Three lungfuls later and she had to actively keep it down, and so chose to let it free, this time focusing on keeping the whole mass together on the way up and even trying to use her tongue to contain it into a single mass inside her mouth before she would release it.

Fulgur bled off from the central mass as it traveled up her throat, forcing her to dedicate focus to directing most of it outward through her skin and spending what was left for body control, lest it run havoc and make her muscles twitch or contract out of control. With seething serpents of lightning slithering forth from her skin, the homunculus tried to focus the Fulgur that neared her mouth into a single burst… And it sort-of worked.

Instead of a continuous whip-like discharge, it took the form of an almost Thundercannon-esque shotgun spread, myriad tiny spheres of lightning having formed around droplets of spittle.

It went wide - so wide that it didn’t really have a direction. Just a semi-spherical outburst, carving pits into the ground and boulder both.

In her second attempt she tried molding Fulgur with a nucleus of Aether, the same way she formed smaller forms of ball lightning. This time, there was the issue of stability. It held while inside her body, but the moment it left her mouth the bright-white sphere just exploded into a semi-directed burst of what was effectively just light and noise.

Slipping into the trial-and-error mentality, Zelsys decided to see if the issue was in igniting the nucleus too early, if she hadn’t had this issue before because her ball lightning never had to hold together for that long. Perhaps if she formed a nucleus in her mouth and used the Essentia Crucible to store and deliver an igniting payload, it would be easier to make. There was also the option of storing the nucleus and Fulgur payload inside the crucible simultaneously but separate, but since Zel wasn’t sure how to do that or if she could even do that, she decided the preceding method would be more achievable as a proof of concept.

It felt much the same as the first time, but the moment the payload met the nucleus Zelsys felt a sudden burst of heat inside her mouth, and the light emitted by the newly-ignited ball lightning was so bright as to shine out. A split-second after ignition she used her tongue to whip it by the umbilicus at the boulder. 

The fist-sized sphere of light zipped about just as wildly as its smaller siblings, vaguely following the path Zelsys had intended for it, but the moment it touched the stone it expanded many times over. Not twice, thrice, four or five times, but more than tenfold, shining with only the brightness of a fireplace and screaming thrice as loud as the Lightning Butcher. It lasted a moment, a moment which felt like an eternity, for through succeeding in her endeavor a new technique had been sealed into Zel’s mnemonic record. When that moment passed, there were firefly-like sparks in the air and a gaping hole in the rock.

While Zelsys caught her breath and regained her bearings, she noticed her odd-eyed lover leaning over to the side and grabbing the bag with her camera, and so she did the only thing that made sense - she struck a pose, pretending to stretch as Zefaris took a photo.

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CLACK.

Then, as if nothing had happened, she carried on actually stretching, trying to purge residual Fulgur from her system so that her next attempt could be more consistent.

Only, Zefaris called out before she could even get to that point, pointing in the direction of the main building: “Did that statue just move?” 

She turned to look, only to realize moments later she’d been had when she heard the sound of the fotoapparat operating. Immediately after a Fog missile splattered on her back with all the force of a light push, accompanied by an amused, “Hahahaha, gotya!”

That explained why Slayer’s Instinct hadn’t gone off to warn her - the absence of any real danger or violent intent didn’t trigger it. It didn’t change anything about what she did next, though - this being to turn on her heel and a headlong sprint after Zefaris. 

Having been Fog-breathing already, she had begun forming a bead of Aether in her Essentia Crucible imparted with a light kinetic impact, essentially an appropriately lessened analogue of Zef’s own Concussion Impact. Only, Zelsys couldn’t catch the markswoman. 

As easy as these tiny kinetic missiles were to form and as quickly as they flew, Zef dodged them with such ease as to imply that she knew where they were going to hit from the moment Zelsys spit them out. Despite her far greater running speed, Zel couldn’t even catch the blonde, who maneuvered between the many small structures of the pavilion with near-prescient planning, laughing and firing off Fog missiles from odd angles to confuse Zel further.

It was a protracted game of tag amongst the trees and targets, but once she finally got Zef out in the open, the advantage tipped in her favor. Even as Fog missiles splattered on her body and Zefaris deftly slipped just barely out of her grasp time and time again, Zelsys was getting closer, the chase moving through the pavilion. 

She caught Zefaris right in front of the right-hand side greenhouse, cornering her up against the door of the building.

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