"W-What?" Kurt stammered in his puzzlement. "Conrad, seriously, there's no need for..."

  "I got a jacket in my luggage," Mila cut in with a chipper tone. "I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna get much use for it in Arizona, but it's zipper is made out of bronze. That's pretty conductive, right? Since it has copper and all. Why don't we rip it out and use it as a wire?"

  "Great idea, Mila," Conrad said as he exited the now stopped car. The orange light of the setting sun fell on his frame, giving his blond hair a reddish quality. "Kurt, come on! Get to moving, man, we don't have the whole day! Go get the stuff."

  Finally catching up to his companions outburst of support, Kurt exited the car, and quickly made his way around it until he reached Conrad. "Hey, dude, look. Thanks for the support, but we really don't have..."

  Conrad's placed his hand on his shoulder, so fast that the limb seemed to have just materialized there. "...time to waste! That's right, man!" The blond swordsman chuckled and walked past Kurt and towards the car's front, patting the younger warrior on the back as he did so. "Now come on! The jump starters are in a plastic orange case, and for Mila's jacket..."

  "In my purple duffle bag!" the girl screamed from within the car.

  "You heard the lady!" Conrad said with a chuckle as he opened the hood. "Come on! Chop chop!"

  Dazzed, Kurt found himself obeying, if only to keep Conrad from pressuring him. He accesed the car's trunk, where a big pile of dirt, meant to act as Christopher Robin's nest/food supply, stood tall. The group's luggage had been positioned around the pile's edges in a manner reminiscent to the circle of stones meant to contain a campfire. With a groan of resignation, Kurt crwaled into the trunk and, careful to maneuver around the dirt without touching it, took hold of both the orange case and the duffel bag. A quick and very awkward shuffling through the latter granted Kurt the jacket Mila had offered as a 'sacrifice' for the experiment. Pity that they were going through with this, really, because Mila looked very cute with it.

  Though, to be honest with himself, he really could say that about every single piece of clothing he had ever seen her wear.

  "Here," Kurt said when he reached Conrad, raising the case and jacket with one hand each. He then placed the case atop the car's roof, and opened it with his now free hand, and took from it the jump starters.

  "Cool," Conrad said with a smile. "Cain I have those, please?"

  Kurt handed Conrad the implement, and the speedster took hold of it by both its pliers- or however it was that they were called. Kurt didn't know- letting the main body fall and dangle from the cables that connected it to them. Then he swipped one at Kurt in a quick, blue blur.

  Kurt barely gave a step back before he realized that he himself had not been the objective of the attack. The jacket had been, cut by the blunt edge of the black plier through nothing but sheer friction, and its zipper fell to the dirt. Kurt picked it up and handed it to Conrad, who promptly hooked each end of the zipper to the machine.

  "Hold this for a sec, please," Conrad said as he handed him the pliers. Once Kurt had taken them, Conrad knelt and began fiddling with the main body. "And there... it... is!" The blond swordsman sprung to his feet. "Gimme that now!"

  Kurt complied, and saw how Conrad proceded to separate each plier to the full extent the zipper would allow, leaving the ochre extension of bronze as tense as a bow's string.

  "Okay," Conrad then said. "I'm pretty sure that the electrons are flowing from the black to the red, so..."

  "That's the direction I should make my aether flow," Kurt finished. "I get it."

  He conjured his wand, holding it sideways between his index and thumb, and carefully jammed it forward until both the zipper and it were juxtaposed, with the aetheric construct 'enveloping' the metallic chain. He then allowed his aether to flow into the zipper's structure, just like he would do to cast a Sharpening or a Structural Reinforcement, and felt a very faint pull on it. A pull that moved towards the red plier.

  With a thought, Kurt made his aether flow with this pull.

  And then the numbness came in.

  Before Kurt knew it, his wand had been enveloped by a halo of faint, purple light, and he began to feel a sense of throbbing and numbing on the tips of his fingers. When he tried to pull his hand- and wand- back, however, this 'halo' lagged behind, with a part of it remaining in place while the other stretched towards the wand, neatly illustratin the space his hand had covered on its retreat. A space which was now home to an electric field.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Still procesing the sight before him, Kurt unsommuned his wand, causing the aether that had been invested in this glowing field to either retreat back towards him or to dissipate entirely. The same aether that had been keeping both of the ionized ends of the field separate, in defiance of the laws of electric potential, and so, the electron-packed negative end rushed towards the cationaized positive end, rending the air between as a bolt of plasma.

  A faint, yet very bright and very noisy, bolt of plasma. More than enough to draw a reaction from Kurt and Conrad both. Their reaction? Blurting out whatever curse had been floating around their brains at the moment- 'Holy Fuck!' in Conrad's case, and a simple 'Shit!" in Kurt's- and stagger back as rapidly and violently as they could, with Conrad dropping the battery charger as he did so.

  Despite their athletism, the consequences of moving rushedly and blindly quickly came, and they both tripped and fell flat, first on their asses, then on their backs, so that their fallen forms were lying some six feet apart from one another.

  It was then that they both heard one of the car's doors hurriedly open, followed by Mila's voice. "Are you okay?! What the heck happened?!"

  "It's fine!" Kurt quickly exclaimed, raising one hand in an OK sign to further prove his well-being. "We just got startled by a spark, that's all."

  "Oh," She softly gasped. "Conrad! Are you okay too?"

  The answer to her question came in the form of an embarrased chuckle. "Perfectly fine, girl. If you don't count the blow to my pride, that is." Another chuckle, this one more hearty. "A freaking spark, man! We cannot tell that to anyone, got it?"

  "Got it," Kurt agrred, chuckling.

  "Fine by me!" Mila said between giggles. Kurt began propping himself up, only for the plants around him (Which consisted almost exclusively of grass) to beat him to the punch. The strands around his feet lashed at his ankles, looping themselves around them, and the ones beneath his back thrashed exactly once, but with enough force to launch his upper body upwards, with the restraints around his ankles being the one thing to stop him in a standing position, after which they let go of him without a fight.

  "So," said Conrad, who Mila had also 'helped' get on his feet. "You got it, man?"

  Kurt raised a hand, and conjured his wand on it. He thought back to that feeling of thruming and, sure enough, that purplish halo appeared around the implement. As soon as he had confirmed it, he disspersed it. "Got it, yeah."

  "That's it?" asked Mila. "Try something with it!"

  Kurt groaned, tied. "It might be dangerous, remember? Electricity isn't something that you can just throw around. There are differences in potential you gotta create, it's immposible to know what path it will be the one of least resistance that it'll take..."

  "You are to chicken to try." Conrad cut in, imitating Kurt's tone. He had a mockingly serious expression and a hand cupping his chin. "Proffesor Scaredy Pants is right, Mila. There are a ton of things to keep track of. It's better that he uses it somewhere safe and controlled, like his crib."

  Kurt shot Conrad a thouroughly unimpressed look. "Seriously, man? That's what you are retorting to?"

  "Yeah," Conrad said with a nod, before he turned to Mila. "Think that's gonna work? Cause I can get way more annoying if I have to."

  "Nah, I think this level is right," Mila answered sincerely. "Though you wanna be careful with this stuff. He hates getting called a coward. Like, he very seriously hates it."

  "Oh, is that it?" Conrad hummed, turning towards Kurt with a mischiveous smile. "Is that a sore spot, buddy? Something that, if some very handsome person kept pressing on, would cause you to, I don't know, start throwing lightning around?"

  Kurt raised an eyebrow. "Are you actually asking for a second dose of lightning after what happened last night?"

  "Well, not at me, you dum-dum!" Conrad said, laughing earthily. "But really, I really think you should give it a spin, man. Just try something out, get a feel on this new trick."

  "We'll be fine, Kurt," Mila said. "In fact, it would be kinda nice to see how this magic goes, cause at least I didn't get to see much of it last time."

  "Me neither," added Conrad, raising his hand. "Whole thing just happened behind my back, y'now?"

  Yet another morbid joke about his seared back, just like last night. Really, Kurt was actually a bit envious about Conrad's ability to seamlessly shrug off the whole incident, even when he had arguably been the one closest to death because of it. Which was also the reason Kurt didn't feel like he could tell him to stop with the jokes because, what was he gonna do? Tell the one that had suffered the wound to not joke about it because it was insensitive? No. Sadly, and for the time being, Conrad had a carte blanche to make morbid jokes.

  At least this one had been funny.

  "Holy shit, dude..." Kurt managed to say between laughs, rubbing his temples with one hand in a 'What-am-i-gonna-do-with-you' fashion. "Okay, you beat me. I'll do it, just... get in the car first. That way, if anything goes wrong, you'll be protected. Thing's frame should act as a Faraday cage or something."

  "Oh, yeah. Definitely," said Conrad, already making his way to the car. "Not up for another dose."

  Mila however stood in place for a moment and, when she moved, she did towards him. Before Kurt knew it, the girl was giving him a bear hug, her lithe arms doing the best to envelop the larger boy's frame.

  "Good luck," she said before letting go and rushing to the car. "Make something cool!"

  Something cool, uh?, Kurt thought as he conjured his wand and attuned his aether to the desired element. Let's see if I cna do something at all.

  This element, Lightning. Just what the hell even was it? What was he merging his aether with to form it? Electrons? Electric potential itself? The last one seemed far fetched, but given how his Fire manifested through heat, which was nothing but the vibrational state of molecules and atoms, somehow merging with it without his aether really interacting with those same particles, the possibility didn't seem all that impossible.

  Guess that's magic for ya. Making the impossible happen.

  Nevertheless, he was still left with the question of how exactly he was supposed to manipulate that weird purple energy which, now that Kurt thought about it, was probably ionized air, with the glow coming from the loose electrons emmited from it. Fire and Air were intuitive enough, because those he could at least move around and shape. This though? Just a cloud of potential that seemed to take in electrons from anything it touched, like some sort of starving void.

  "Well then," Kurt said to himself. "Let's feed that void."

  And so, he began pumping aether through his wand, causing the glow and thrumming to grow even more intense, and his hold of the entire mass of energy to strain. It was almost like his Fire acted when he tried to concentrate it too much, the natural repulsion of the energy fighting against the unnatural influence of his aether.

  And just like he had done with his Fire to create the Blowtorch spell, Kurt changed the focus of his magic. From containing the repulsion, to guiding it, letting the electrons to flow free as yet another air-rending lightning.

  Electrons were, however, much trickier to control tha heat was. Without a proper positive electric field the could interact with to create potential energy, his negatively charged blast seeked the second best option: The ground itself. The whole thing managed to course perhaps half a foot forwards before making a complete turn downwards and plunging itself on the earth, leaving only the shinning spots on Kurt's vision and a patch of charred grass as proof of its existance.

  Lightning Sorcery: Cationization (Rank E spell)

  The user directs his aether to yank electrons from the surrounding matter.

  Intensity of the charge garnered and storable increases with MND stat, Aetheric Attunement skill rank, Evocation skill rank and AP spent.

  With a sigh, Kurt turned on his feet and walked towards the car, waving a hand at his friends.