Under normal circumstances, Rinzler would have seen it coming. Under normal circumstances, he might be able to react. Here and now, with heat glitching half his functions and damage limiting the rest?
There's a flash of light. And pain.
It's his intact side that slams into the ceiling. That much saves him from derezzing, but the blow still sends sharp sparks of agony through half his core, unhealed fractures grinding glass-edged against one another. Processing is still locked on what and where when the momentum reverses, and he's not nearly so lucky this time.
Visuals white out, one arm going limp entirely as the cracked and aching hole cut through his side crashes into the surface of the bench. Circuits flicker and go dark in patches, warning: critical threshold— looped and seizing through through processing in a way that's much too recently familiar. There's a skittering sound as red-orange voxels scatter across the cell, and when the hook of force in his core jerks back up, automation shoves all conscious thought aside.
It's the arena, but too fast, reactions lagged and with his enemy locked out of reach. It's the arena, but he's already half-shattered. The enforcer doesn't have the power to stand, much less fight back, but he curls inward as gravity inverts, shoulder rolling with the force as he turns off the ceiling, re-orienting to take the next fall on the only part of his shell he can still feel.
It's still too hard, too much. More cracks spiral out from the widening gap as he hits the floor in a heap, and if the program's limbs are still twitching inwards, trying to brace for the next blow, Rinzler's in no shape to defend himself.
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There's a flash of light. And pain.
It's his intact side that slams into the ceiling. That much saves him from derezzing, but the blow still sends sharp sparks of agony through half his core, unhealed fractures grinding glass-edged against one another. Processing is still locked on what and where when the momentum reverses, and he's not nearly so lucky this time.
Visuals white out, one arm going limp entirely as the cracked and aching hole cut through his side crashes into the surface of the bench. Circuits flicker and go dark in patches, warning: critical threshold— looped and seizing through through processing in a way that's much too recently familiar. There's a skittering sound as red-orange voxels scatter across the cell, and when the hook of force in his core jerks back up, automation shoves all conscious thought aside.
It's the arena, but too fast, reactions lagged and with his enemy locked out of reach. It's the arena, but he's already half-shattered. The enforcer doesn't have the power to stand, much less fight back, but he curls inward as gravity inverts, shoulder rolling with the force as he turns off the ceiling, re-orienting to take the next fall on the only part of his shell he can still feel.
It's still too hard, too much. More cracks spiral out from the widening gap as he hits the floor in a heap, and if the program's limbs are still twitching inwards, trying to brace for the next blow, Rinzler's in no shape to defend himself.