Dragon moved back, and her body coiled around the spot where the gun had fallen, segments meeting to loosely interconnect with one another, forming a dome-shaped encasement.  Two shoulder turrets began dispensing foam directly downward, into the dome.

I suppose that works too.

“Count yourself fortunate, Skitter.  I’ve never killed a criminal without explicit permission and all the filed paperwork, and I’m not about to start with you.  I’ll be in contact.”

You off to try chasing down the Undersiders?

“What?”  I had to raise my voice to be heard over the high pitched whine.  I couldn’t figure out what she meant.

“Think about what I said.  Take a close look at those priorities of yours.”

Wait, is Dragon letting her go and trying to sway Skitter into going back to the original plan of betrayal?

Which left me in the gift shop with Dragon.

“I have a sworn responsibility to protect that data,” she said as she turned her attention to me.  She sounded surprisingly normal.  Her voice was clearly digitized, but it was still too human to match the massive metal frame.

Heh.

“Can’t help you there.  One of my teammates has it.”

“Where are they taking it?”

On one hand, of course Taylor isn’t going to volunteer that willingly.

On another, she’s being interrogated by a sysadmin. If she wants to know where her precious data is going…

I stayed silent.

“Your teammates left you behind.  I’ve read the file on what happened after the Endbringer attack.  Hard feelings?”

Correction: “teammate”, singular.

“Something like that.”

“If they aren’t going to be loyal to you, why protect them?”

Dragon does seem to be assuming that this is a thing with the entire team. If not for the clear difference between Bitch and the rest of the team from Taylor’s perspective, this might’ve worked.

Because someone else was depending on it.  But I wasn’t going to say that out loud.

…are you talking about Dinah? I suppose that’s fair.

The whine of the lightning gun increased by an octave.  I saw Dragon’s upper body shift in reaction.

Oh right, that thing is still going. Sheesh, how long until it explodes?

“Move the insects away from my suit, now,” Dragon ordered me.

“Why would I-”

“Now,” she ordered, and there was an urgency in her tone that banished any suspicion on my part that there was a ruse or that somehow it might serve my interest to disobey.  I withdrew my bugs, but I kept them poised to return if needed.

Yeeah, probably best to get out of the way before that gun becomes a zappy firework.

If you’re lucky, she’ll unfoam you to make sure you’re safe from it, too.

Dragon turned her upper body to strike at Bitch.  As she moved, her back leg was close enough that some of the vapor was getting on me, slowly liquefying the foam.  It was too slow to matter.  Dragon had me.

That she does.

Of all the people to get caught by, you got caught by the sysadmin after tampering with her system. You’re fucked.

Her stainless steel jaws snapped for Bentley, but the dog was already slipping out the window.  Bitch had dismounted and was running to one side, heading off in a different direction to exit at the far end of the window.

Bye, I guess. Fuck you.

Or, well, not necessarily a prison break. More like a custody break or something.

I tried to raise myself to see Dragon looming above, but the foam offered only a rubbery resistance.  It had set with the contact, bonded to my costume.  I was pinned face down on the ground.

Let’s hope Dragon’s careless with where she puts her feet?

What I did see, as I raised my head as high as I was able?  Bitch was astride Bentley, who’d grown large enough to ride, and they were standing near the window leading into the street.  I could only see her eyes behind the plastic of her mask, and everything else was communicated through her bearing, her posture, the angle of her head.  I’d seen something similar when I’d first met her.

Contempt?

Is she about to just leave Taylor to be arrested?

It hadn’t been Dragon that knocked me into the foam.

Fucking hell, Bitch.

Worst part is she’s got plausible deniability, too. “What happened to Taylor?” “Dragon got her with the foam. I couldn’t do anything.”

I guess we might be doing a prison break in upcoming chapters??

Before I had even figured out what my bugs were sensing, I reacted to their signals.  I slammed my arm out, rigid, my hand splayed, and felt a jarring pain as I tried to absorb my entire body weight with one arm and force myself away.

In other words, she was about to land on something she’d rather have only one contact point with: the metal leg.

I felt a lack of traction as my hand made contact with something soft and squishy.

Or at least that’s what she thought.

Soft and squishy isn’t the words I’d normally describe the hellhounds with, but flesh sure is soft and squishy compared to metal.

My maneuver was too minor to make a real difference, but I managed to buy myself a precious few inches.

My hand, arm and shoulder were caught in the containment foam.

…as is foam. Shit.

The gamble and assumption I was working with was that electricity followed the path of least resistance.  Insulated costume vs. vapor in the air?  It would travel through the vapor.  Insulated costume vs. metal leg?  It would travel down the leg.

Sounds about right.

Either way, I was glad when I didn’t burn my foot or have it get fried or go numb.  I was damn glad I didn’t die.

That would be awkward for everyone involved, including you.

With all of this consuming my attention, I was caught off guard when something large brushed against me while I was mid-leap.

My first thought was that Dragon decided to attack her with another leg, but the word choice “brushed” makes me think it’s Bentley.

The impact threw my airborne momentum off, drove me to one side.  My first, most immediate, thought, before I even considered the source of the attack, was where I was about to land.

Although if it was, that was kinda careless of Bitch to let him do.

It was reflexive, but I sent a spray of bugs out from the armor near my glove, scattering them onto the area just in front of me.

…what if the electricity decides to go through the bugs?

Dragon moved to bar more of the window with the bulk of her body, her back arching.  Her upper body and head now pointed almost down at an angle, the streams from her shoulders reorienting to block off the escape routes available to Bitch, her dog and me.

At this point, a good tactic for Dragon would be to fill the window with foam.

So I did something risky and borderline stupid.  I lunged forward and stepped onto the metal foot of Dragon’s armored suit, like Regent had been planning to do until he discovered it was electrified.

……

I had known the same spider silk I’d used for my costume was insulated against electrical charges, had even put that into practice in my fight against Armsmaster during the fundraiser.  This was something altogether different.

Oh, right. But this is electricity from the lightning gun, isn’t it? Or did Dragon independently electrify her mech’s limbs?

But yeah, if it’s from the lightning gun, we can’t assume it’ll follow normal electricity rules entirely.

I could feel the faint tendrils of electricity snake over the surface of my body, though I only stepped on the metal foot once.

…and there’s one spot on the body that isn’t insulated. Shit.

I couldn’t tell if the source of the electricity was the gun Tattletale had rigged and thrown – Dragon’s tail was close enough to it for the electricity to flow to her – or if it was from Dragon’s body itself.

Who knows.

Though the footing was unsteady, I was careful not to touch the metal leg with my upper body, and even turned my head away, risking throwing myself off balance, so my hair wouldn’t make contact with it.

Right, two places that aren’t insulated. I was thinking of the divide between the mask and the rest of the outfit, forgetting about the hair hole as usual.

As I understood it, the biggest danger the electricity posed was that my body would become part of a circuit.

Ah, yeah, it won’t flow through you if it can’t flow back to where it started through you.

If the circuit included vital organs, I’d be a goner, and that kind of closed circuit could happen if the electricity could run from my hand and through my heart on the way to my foot.

Yeah.

“Go!” Tattletale shouted, setting her feet below her, then leaping between the twin streams of foam that Dragon turned toward us.  She came only an inch shy of making contact with the heap of foam that Dragon had created.

Niice.

Dragon heaved herself over and beyond the electrical surge the gun was still pumping out, chasing Tattletale, swiping with one mechanical claw.  I got the sense she was pulling her punches to avoid murdering my teammate, because the attack was slow.

Oh yeah, might wanna avoid hitting too hard.

Tattletale slipped past, stepping onto the bookshelf to clear the window.  Or maybe it had something to do with the bugs I had gathered on her sensors.

Eyyy, here we go.

With Tattletale’s escape, Bitch, Imp, Regent, and I were left in the gift shop.  Dragon’s lunge for Tattletale had put her directly in our path to the window, and an uneven pile of containment foam surrounded her, in the middle of the room.

Hrm.

Regent and Imp made a break for it.  Imp ducked around to the left, coming within a hair of being caught by the spray Dragon turned her way, then used the cover of the bookshelves to stay out of the line of fire as she ran for the window.  Dragon half-turned away from the rest of us in pursuit.

Regent moved as if he were going to try to move beneath Dragon using the distraction Imp had provided, clearly intending to step on her metal foot.

Neat! But what would stepping on her foot accomplish? I highly doubt she designed this mech to transfer toe pain to her real body.

He changed his mind when a crackle of visible electricity flashed down the mechanical limb.

I suppose it was just one available foothold on the way. But apparently it’s not as available as he thought.

He turned a hard right, picking up a piece of bookshelf, and used the wood to block the majority of the spray as he passed beneath one of the stray streams.  From there, much as Imp had, he had a clear route.

Excellent.

That leaves Skitter and Bitch. Maybe the two of you could ride Bentley past Dragon? Though that makes you a large target.

The whine of Tattletale’s gun reached a crescendo, and a blindingly bright arc of electricity flew from the side of the barrel to skip along the floor.

That doesn’t look like something the gun’s supposed to do.

I worried it would ignite something, but it winked out before it could.

Ah, good.

Tattletale lunged for the shelf next to the magazines, grabbing a head-and-torso model of Miss Militia.  She jammed it in between the trigger and the trigger guard of her gun, forcing the trigger into a depressed position.

Aw, poor trigger. Kid Win, you need to get your gun some therapy.

But, uh, is this actually a good idea to do? It seems the gun is overexerted already, I’m not sure you should be pushing it much more. You already got the metal bars down, did you not?

Then she lobbed the setup over the back of the shattered bookshelf.  The lightning licked the wall and the ceiling before the gun crashed to the floor.  Dragon lurched back to get away from it.

…ah, fair enough. That works!