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Pain, he tried to explain to the others, over and over again, was different for him. Sure, he sometimes cried out when he was hit—limped or dragged an injured limb, clutched at a wound like expected—but a performance doesn't mean he felt it. Certainly not the same as them. They tried to explain it too—it's hot or cold, a shock of white and then a dizzyness of black. It's tension, it's a release, it's a drop you didn't expect. It's the feeling of everything at once, and then nothing, and then everything again. It hurts. They can't ever describe it without saying that. It just hurts.
They're wrong, obviously. The feeling doesn't matter. Pain is a warning.
Perc-3 felt that warning before he heard the gunshot at all. It ate up his arm like a sudden, clinging clutch of kelp, a ringing in his chest that said, Don't ignore this. Something's gone very wrong. He ducked into an alley, back pressed against a stone-hewn wall. Out of sight, his chest stopped heaving—fuck, it pisses him off that he still can't knock that tic, even when the only people who can see him are his friends, but he had bigger issues than that. Warning. Warning. Broken. Fucked.
He heft his left arm up by the shoulder—the lower half of the limb dangled uselessly, a clean, circular hole halfway up the forearm, bored through the wood like a cigarette burn. He held his own twitching hand, manipulated the scorched arm to see the back. The wood split up to the elbow—that can be fixed, but not if it gets another bad hit. The little mechanical blade he kept stashed in his wrist squirmed unpleasantly within his arm—that can probably be fixed, and it'll just be uncomfortable while the thing is angry. Worst, the bullet hit the cluster of nerves that run throughout his limbs, connected all his fingers and gave him the dexterous coordination he relied on. Perc-3 tried to wiggle the fingers in his left hand. They barely responded at all, just fluttered pathetically regardless of his input. No casting, then. Fine, he pouted. That's all fine. Fuck.
Alright. He stood up straight, rolled back and forth on the balls of his feet to recalibrate his balance. Not all bad, all things considered. Still got his right side. Still got the shield on his left, even if this bullet happened to skirt past it.
Then he turned off the piercing pain-warning emanating from the bullet hole, shot a jolt of electric magic through his right arm and into the keenly sharp rapier at his side, and ran back into the battle. That's the downside of feeling, right? He can probably take a few more of those gunshots before it starts to really disable things, but he knows one blow from his sword is gonna really fucking hurt.