As the chopper circled ominously like a gigantic vulture, the girl in question pressed tightly against her companion, more for comfort than for any actual attempt not to be seen; the high LED light being emitted would have made Illia's pallid skin shine like a diamond at high noon. It was all he and Effie could do to simply stay out of its path and as poor luck would have it, the forest had opened into a rather sizeable clearing. There were still enough trees and shrubs to provide adequate cover but not without having to shadow-hop. Nonetheless, Illia did his best to remain optimistic, at least for Effie's sake if not his own.
"We're halfway to the other side," he said, "If we can can keep this up, we'll lose them under cover in no time."
"Yeah, 'if' being the key word,"Effie replied. "Just face it Illia, we're screwed this time. We definitely can't stay in one place out here, but each time we move from shadow to shadow we risk exposing ourselves." Although I have to admit, she thought to herself, those Shinobi skills Ibuki was nice enough to teach us are coming in quite handy.
"Even if we manage to avoid being spotted from the air, our bio-signals are all over this place. What makes you think they'll just fly away instead of landing and searching us out on foot?"
" I don't," Illia admitted, "but we stand a better chance if we keep moving. Should push come to shove, we can always give 'em a few thousand volts to think about, da?"
"Riiiiiiiiiight. My friend, the walking, talking electric eel," Effie allowed herself to quip."Ok, I'm sold. Lead the way, Sparky." Despite that she had used the one nickname he absolutely hated, Illia had to chuckle at that. Unfortunately the lightened mood did not last very long at all. Just as Illia and Effie made into the shadows of the next tree, the wandering light passed over them. It was only for a second that they could be seen but that was enough. Gunfire pierced the night and bullets shredded the bark from Illia and Effie's hiding place. It was only a matter of time before flesh was next.
"I knew this wouldn't work," Effie wailed. But Illia didn't even waste time responding; he already had one last trick up his cuff. In one fluid motion, he snatched Effie up, cocked his arm like a rubber band and snapped it forward. In a flash, he'd stretched it across the remainder of the clearing and into the forest, depositing Effie safely out of sight and for the moment, out of harm's way.
Now to give those trigger-happy fools one very electrifying performance, Illia told himself. Grabbing two relatively high and sturdy tree branches, Illia pulled himself backwards, stretching both arms to their most considerable limits. When he could go no further, he took careful aim and snapped himself forward, literally flying toward the gunship at breakneck speed.
Effie picked herself out the shrub Illia had dropped her in. At first she was angry--she'd gotten scratched up and would be picking twigs out of her hair for at least the rest of the night--but that quickly subsided. I could have bulletholes instead of twigs and scrapes, if not for Illia's quick thinking. For that matter, where is ol' Rubber Band Man? She looked around and froze in stark terror as she scanned the sky.
"Illiaaaaaaaaaa," she screamed "Nooooooooooooo!" ...
