[quote=@Doc Doctor]Nothing of concern drew his attention. Now that he didn't have anything nasty being pointed in his direction, at least to the best of his knowledge, he felt like he had finally managed to seize upon some small vestige of control.[/quote]
Indeed, perhaps to his immense relief Donny saw upon closer inspection that the tripod-device the teenager from earlier had deployed was little more than an aggrandized lightning rod. It had some rudimentary wiring near its base, probably to make up for its lack of elevation, but it was obvious the device was far from the rail-gun he had initially estimated it to be.

His crack marksmanship had also definitively put the knight with the crossbow down, the armored figure toppling to the ground with a clatter. Their fall was somewhat curious - the kinetic force from the magnum round should have knocked him flat on his back a good three feet away and exited out the back of the helmet, but the knight had simply slumped [i]forward[/i] and fallen as though pushed down from behind - and the back of his helmet did not even appear to be dented. Discrepancies easily explained away in less than a moment of conclusory thought. The bullet had probably grazed the visor [i]just so[/i] and hit the knight's face while pinwheeling, shedding much more of its velocity than normal. The armor itself was probably also much heavier than it looked, which might explain why the knight had not been blown clear off his feet. Stranger things had happened, and the splatter of viscera plus the dribbling lumps of gore oozing down from the helmet's neck told that whoever he had been, he was dead now.

As Donny turned his attention back to the passengers and the limousine however, he found something that was definitely worth his attention.

[@Cruallassar][@PlatinumSkink]

As Kael, Donny, and Amelie looked back at the rear of the limousine they saw that the grinding sound was not the result of any kind of compression or tearing. The cylindrical bolt was sticking up out of the limousine's trunk, its head adhered to the surface of the lid by a congealed mass of glowing, white-hot magma - and spreading from that epicenter, a wave of silvery, glistening metal was spreading across the limousine's surface. 

[@mdk]

As Luca had a rather good view of the limousine's rear himself, he would have been able to immediately deduce what was happening. [i]The limousine was being electroplated.[/i] The how was a matter of interesting speculation - had the bolt injected enough electrical current into the car's surface to turn it into an electrode? Was it just emitting an EM field that acted as an intermediary for induced binding by the spreading pool of dissolved metal around the bolt's head? Was it magic? Molecular golems or homunculi?

More importantly, [i]why[/i] would anybody design let alone use a weapon like that? It seemed a lot less effective than just using conventional firearms, as the red-haired gunman had just viciously demonstrated a moment ago. It was probably lethal enough if you got hit or were close enough to the impact zone, but its utility was questionable. If the objective had been to kill them, a simple grenade would probably have been a more effective and drastically less expensive option.

[quote=@Bright_Ops]With the barrier down, there was only one action left to him. Drawing his sword he charged at the small team armed with crossbows and some kind of advanced firearm, his shield up in order to be moved to protect him from what was no doubt going to be a hail of fire. All he could do was trust in his shield, his armor and the gods themselves to protect him from injury and death; If he could somehow manage to close the distance before they had the chance to reload, he might have a chance but it was a big if... 

It was the only course of action left to him through. The only alternative was to turn and try to run away but not only was that absolutely cowardly all that it would do was provide them with his back to shoot at. Charging forwards was the only way now. "FOR BRETONNIA!" [/quote]
From Donny's perspective, it happened in the split instant he turned his attention away from the three corpses he had left in the street. They had all been dead. He had seen the shattered skull fragments and the thoroughly bespattered grey matter. Then he heard the passenger - the one who had been wearing knight's armor, just like the crossbowman - roar out some kind of battlecry, and movement registered in Donny's peripheral vision.

Standing there in the middle of the intersection, apparently completely unharmed, were all three assailants. Upright and standing on their feet. 

Their corpses were also present, still lain low on the ground in addition to being splattered across the general environs. They were unquestionably the same entities - the thugs were wearing the exact same workout clothes and the same tattered chainmail. The design of the knight's armor was wholly identical to the one on the ground. The only perceptible difference between them and the individuals on the ground was that the knight now clutched a Vector submachine gun, while the two visibly startled and confused thugs were holding empty compound crossbows.

Fortune himself was experiencing the inverse situation. One moment he had been charging the three upright figures, and scarcely a foot later he saw their own corpses lying behind them, previously obscured by their angle relative to him. [u][b]It was as if the universe itself had twisted in order to accommodate the passengers' relative, incompatible perspectives.[/b][/u]

If the knight was anywhere as surprised as the thugs or any of the passengers, he dealt with it remarkably. He promptly raised his submachine gun and opened fire at Fortune, the weapon erupting with sound and a curious, soft iridescent muzzle flash - if the thugs had been uncomfortable wielding theirs, the knight had the disadvantage of having to use the weapon while wearing his extremely unwieldy gauntlets. He could barely fit his finger into the trigger-guard and was having trouble keeping the trigger depressed, resulting in an erratic and wild spatter of fire and a multitude of stray shots, most of them hitting the ground or flying around Fortune, quite a few of them flying into the thoroughly destroyed limousine windshield that he had barreled through just moments earlier. The few that came close smacked flat into his shield. He was pleasantly surprised when they hit with barely any force at all - if that was all his adversary's spray of fire was worth...

A split second later, a creeping wave of a silver-hued metal rushed over the lip of his shield from every direction and began encroaching on the handles, accompanied by a keening, grinding noise akin to metal being shorn or compacted. The others, looking on, would see that the stray bullets impacting the street were busily in the process of layering the cobblestones with small patches of glistening metal.

Amelie, however, did not see any of what was occurring on account of having turned her back to the trio of enemies who she had seen die nearly less than a second ago. As she ran towards the nearest building and side-alley, a number of stray bullets fired by the knight past Fortune hit her cloak. They failed to penetrate, instead surging and blistering into lumps of white-hot, molten metal that adhered to its fluttering surface. Like a curtain of dye, a glistening wave of silvery metal began to envelope the cloak's surface - and it proved to be exceptionally heavy altogether at once. Amelie, still mid-step in her run, lost her balance to the massive displacement of weight and fell down with her cloak falling on top of her, pinning her to the ground in a surreal twist of fortune.

As the wave of glistening metal approached the edges of her cloak where it would turn inward and start spreading across the inside, it would be immediately obvious to anybody watching that Amelie only had a few moments before the silvery metal spreading across her cloak made contact with flesh...

[@Holmishire]

"If you are calling us from a cell-phone ma'am, I need you to tell us where you are so we can send a slug your way." The voice at the end of Ariett's phone replied as she watched the stray bullets stick to the young girl's cloak, and the spreading wave of metal unbalancing and then pinning her. "Ma'am, is that gunfire? Seek cover immediately please..." The voice at the other end of the line, still accompanied by a soft ticking, was oddly dispassionate.

The only silver lining to the situation was that the levitating sphere hovering above the intersection had not try to electrocute any of them. It was humming in an imminently ominous fashion and the air outside the limousine reeked of ozone, but it either did not see the passengers as threats, or else simply could not fire another bolt of lightning for some reason.