Wires Crossed (Closed)

The northern regions of Earth had plenty of picturesque and relatively untouched swathes of woodland, crisp late-October air and clear skies over a sea of conifers could have made for quite a sight- maybe for someone else this would have made the perfect place to set up camp, unfortunately for Tarine he was occupied with more pressing issues, ones of a less… legal sort, where this made the perfect place to shy away from any prying eyes.

…Really it was something he’d been tinkering with on and off for a while, but as recent events had reminded him… he really wasn’t that safe, on Earth or anywhere really, the East City incident was just one terroristic event in a long chain of destruction leading all the way back to when the moon had a hole blown through it… the same night where he’d…

The point was it was starting to feel like the world was going mad and he was without a way to defend himself from the increasing amount of impossibly strong criminals crawling out of the woodwork, and while real training was frustratingly difficult for the non-Accords compliant, that didn’t mean he couldn’t start pouring his energy into finally finishing his prototype.

He wasn’t sure it was even legal to own an energy blaster even before the Accords came into play, at least without a licence he didn’t own… he didn't want to risk being questioned over buying an actual ki-based weapon. So instead, he’d tried to procure the individual parts himself and hope he’d learned enough theory from late nights pouring over outdated diagrams that he could mash everything together in a way that didn’t blow up in his face.

So that was what led him to coming out today and deciding to set up a testing area of sorts… it was more a widish clearing between a few trees that he’d brushed the sticks and dead leaves out of so he could kneel next to his equipment in relative comfort. A few other items were also strewn about, the Jet Squirrel he’d made his way out here with was parked a little ways back where the trees started to thicken, a backpack with a few essentials like lunch and his horribly outdated scouter that miraculously still took calls was thrown to the side. But what was sitting in front of him, the most important part of this venture… could barely be called a weapon, more a mass of wires and scrap in the crude shape of a turret and mounted to a tripod, the most pristine part of this device was a ki-battery sat snugly in the frame, though even it had some slight singes where wires had been connected and subsequently fried from an energy far different from the electricity they were designed for. Frankly anyone even vaguely away of how electronics should look would know how blatant the safety hazard posed by this device was- Tarine, for his faults knew this too but through willful ignorance and determination he was more than willing to brave through the occasional zap of a burning wire to see some kind of results he was happy with.

The process of receiving mild burns and singing his jacket through exploding wires and energy blowback was a painful one, one that repeated several times in the hour since he’d managed to set everything up, and his hands were realistically going to end up stiff for the rest of the week when the excitement of seeing a half-formed ki blast fly off into the sky wore off, but it was actually almost therapeutic seeing his work finally paying off. Of course he was still keeping a metaphorical eye out for energy signatures just in case something snuck up on him but it was very much the last thought on his mind as he’d carefully aimed his improvised blaster through the treeline and took another shot- he grimaced, a little too close to the trees for his liking, he wasn’t planning on doing some impromptu pruning… at least the birds had the sense to fly away after the first few blasts.