[The halation of blistering orange-red abruptly ceases, and they whip around just in time to catch a glimpse of him stumbling forward, puppet-string cut, folding over cleanly as a warm patch of scarlet swims out across his abdomen in a glistening inflorescence.]
[It's a cold reminder of what they are. How humans and their fellows are really like. They don't fall to pieces the way monsters do. They can't be consolidated into ashtrays upon their demise. They don't split neatly in two.]
[They shatter.]
[It is sentiment, not the shock of such a blow landing but the frustration at the poor timing of it, that pulls at their attention for that handful of precious, inescapable seconds.]
[They are not in the habit of crying for help, or crying out at all. Big kids don't cry.]
[They manage one step in his direction, a hesitance and uncertainty that leaves them wholly undefended when the end of a stun rod slams into their side (the places where those little round circles burned) and muzzles them into silence with the sustained tetany of an electrical current, lighting their muscles on fire, arching their back, bringing them to the ash-powder floor.]
1/2
[It's a cold reminder of what they are. How humans and their fellows are really like. They don't fall to pieces the way monsters do. They can't be consolidated into ashtrays upon their demise. They don't split neatly in two.]
[They shatter.]
[It is sentiment, not the shock of such a blow landing but the frustration at the poor timing of it, that pulls at their attention for that handful of precious, inescapable seconds.]
[They are not in the habit of crying for help, or crying out at all. Big kids don't cry.]
[They manage one step in his direction, a hesitance and uncertainty that leaves them wholly undefended when the end of a stun rod slams into their side (the places where those little round circles burned) and muzzles them into silence with the sustained tetany of an electrical current, lighting their muscles on fire, arching their back, bringing them to the ash-powder floor.]