They'd cleared their area of the warehouse without incident and were heading back to meet up with the others when he heard the click behind him - a sound as damning as a gunshot. Scar whipped around with a sharp gesture for Ace to halt; the young Firelight froze mid-step, hands raised in the uncertain fear of someone who didn't fully understand what they'd just done, but knew it was bad.
Four inches. The kid's foot was just four inches to the right of Scar's own bootprint - just four inches off the safe path that had been so carefully charted out.
"...What now? What do I do?"
The vastayan's throat tightened. He took three careful steps back from Ace (not that it would make much difference) and held up a cautionary hand to stop their concerned teammates from coming any closer. Gestured instead for them to get back, back, stay the hell back.
"Get Ekko." He could barely speak. Fortunately, those two words were more than enough to convey the seriousness of the situation; Ray, Dax and Eve darted out on their boards without question.
Ace sounded like he was trying very hard not to panic now. Scar wished he had some form of reassurance to give him, but he had nothing. He'd stopped the young Firelight rom lifting his foot up - he was standing less than 15 feet away, very much alive and unhurt and doing his level best to do everything he was told to do - but the grim truth was that the kid's fate had been sealed as soon as he'd stepped on that pressure plate.
"Don't move." Blunt instruction in a quiet, grimly serious tone was about all he could manage.
"Just. Stay right there."
The moment Ace's weight shifted off that exact spot, the trap would detonate; he'd seen it before. It would most likely be a doomed effort to try to save him.
Ekko arrived, and with him came the words of much-needed compassionate comfort that Scar himself couldn't string together - setting Ace at ease a bit while he assessed the situation.
Scar caught his friend's eye; a discreet, wordless question. The flat line of Ekko's mouth and the bleak shadow in his returning look was answer enough. Scar's shoulders slumped a little.
Shit. Was that it, then? Was there really nothing they could do?
Ekko broke eye contact first, jaw working for a moment, eyebrows furrowing with a familiar steely resolve. It was an expression that usually preceded his friend flipping off the gods of fate and inventing a way to do the impossible.
"...We need an explosives expert for this. We need Jinx."
Of course, inventing something new seemed to frequently involve doing something no one else would consider doing - namely because it was batshit insane.
Well. If they were out of all other options, then, fuck it. Scar supposed it was worth a shot.
"Shit, I'm dead - I'm so fucking dead, aren't I?"
At the realisation that his hopes of survival now apparently relied on Jinx, Ace's fear swelled into something bordering dangerously on hysteria.
"You're not dead yet," Scar reminded him, doing his utmost to keep his voice very calm and pragmatic.
If Ace so much as moved the wrong way, he'd likely blow them both up - or Scar would end up wearing whatever was left of him - before they could even try Ekko's desperate and crazy idea.
Keeping a close eye on where he was putting his feet, Scar took a single, cautious step back. Then another. He wasn't going to be of any use here, and if Jinx was getting called in to tamper with the trap then it was best to clear the area. Ace pulled off his mask and stared after him with an expression that was equal parts forlorn and betrayed. He was a smart kid; he knew what the distancing meant.
This was their last resort. If it didn't work, that would be it.
“You should be. Trying to kill my favourite Firelight.”
Jinx breezed in with her usual performative and irreverent attitude, flagrantly disregarding the grim atmsosphere and the hazard-laced environment. Grudgingly, Scar let her pass.
If nothing else, she was suitably distracting Ace from his mounting existential despair; he didn't seem to know how to react being her alleged favourite Firelight.
Neither, apparently, did Ekko.
Jinx said a lot of shit that seemed to serve little purpose other than to push as many people's buttons as much as possible. Tuning her out whenever her voice took on that singsong asshole tone was usually less of a headache than dignifying her antics with a response.
"Can you disarm it?" Scar elected to ignore the remark entirely, in favour of directing the blunt question at her back.
Because someone had to keep them all focused on the task at hand.
Jinx was making a good show of examining the ground around Ace's boots, and with a concerning lack of concern for her own safety. Scar half-expected her to dust off her hands and stand upright, announce that their friend was screwed with cheerfully callous disregard for the impact her words would have on everyone else present, and swan out with the same flippancy as she'd arrived.
“Well, d’ya want the good news or the bad news?”
Of course, Jinx did have a penchant for doing the unexpected. Maybe that was actually working in their favour for once, today.
Ace was peering down at her with a dubious expression, fragile hope visibly wrestling with terrified dread.
“The good news is, you’re not gonna die.”
To his side, he heard Ekko release a breath; a quiet tell that he had been waiting just as anxiously as the rest of them to see what Jinx's assessment would be.
"I'm... not gonna die?" Ace repeated the words tentatively, as though he needed to sound them out to make sure he'd understood her right. He didn't look like he really believed her, but it was clear how badly he wanted it to be true. He kept glancing over at his friends.
Stay put. Let her work. We're not going anywhere.
Scar silently tilted up his hand, palm-out; a pointed reminder and a warning.
"What's the bad news?" Ekko, helpfully, had the presence of mind to press for the full picture as Jinx started rummagimg around in her pockets.
“The bad news? You’re gonna totally owe me for life.”
From Ace's slightly hysterical half-laugh, he didn't seem to know whether Jinx was serious or not.
Scar narrowed his eyes at her back. If she did manage to pull this off, and tried holding it over the kid's head, she'd receive an unpleasant reminder of who she owed her life to.
But it didn’t feel wise to bring that particular topic up right now. Not when she was currently holding their friend's fate in her hands with such casual confidence, like this was no big deal to her.
