[Wids]

Well, regarding that, there's one more thing to consider: Maximilian's perpetually flying; therefore, he's not grounded.

To the best of my knowledge, I'm the only person in my family who has ever had the dubious distinction of being struck by a bolt of lightning. (Sure, it was a secondary arc, but it still counts.) It was back some time in 2002, when I was living back in St. Louis County and working as a security guard. I was too broke to afford a car, so every morning, I'd ride my mountain bike ten miles to work, from Hazelwood to Earth City. And every evening, I'd ride my mountain bike ten miles home again. So on one of those evenings, there was a nasty thunderstorm grumbling overhead, my relief showed up and I couldn't stay on the client's property after my relief showed up. So I got on my bike and rode home in the thunderstorm. I was used to bicycling in the rain, so why not?

Well, at the time I had several different routes to take between my apartment and the Exel Logistics warehouse that I guarded, and on this particular day I chose the route where I took Dunn Road, crossed Taussig Avenue, passed through a little residential area and continued down to the I-270 South Service Road. Said service road crossed Interstate 270 at a fairly high overpass which crossed over onto an equally high hill, from which the road descended to the same plane as the highway. So my bike and I picked up some fairly good speed after crossing over the apex of that hill, and when I was about 400 or 500 feet downhill from the apex, that's when I heard this horrific ear-splitting KRAOOWW behind me at the same time a blinding white light engulfed my left handlebar, my left hand, the portion of the road's guardrail next to me, and the six-to-eight-inch gap between the guardrail and the tip of my handlebar (since the road didn't have much of a shoulder to ride on, unfortunately). And in that exact same moment as the ear-splitting kaboom and the blinding light, everything between my left fingertips and my left elbow went completely numb...and we're talking numb, as if every part of my left arm from the elbow downward had suddenly ceased to exist.

Lightning tends to strike the highest point of elevation in its affected area. So as near as I can figure, the lightning bolt struck the apex of the hill, traveled down the guardrail and arced over into my handlebar, where my left hand just happened to be. Of course, I was dripping wet (which helped my body's conductivity) and I was sitting on a hunk of metal; the good news is that it was a secondary arc off a lightning bolt (which isn't quite as powerful as the main arc that jumps between heaven and earth), plastic and rubber are electrical insulators, dry air isn't much worse as an insulator, my hands were separated from the bike's metal frame by rubber handlebar grips, my feet were separated by thick, rubber-soled shoes and plastic pedals, my butt was separated by a plastic bicycle seat and the entire bike was separated from the ground by two cushions of rubber and trapped air. So the sheet of water all over my bike and me got me zapped, but the rest of those factors are what probably saved my life.

It's still a bit sobering to realize that if I had left the warehouse about two or three seconds later, I might have been at Ground Zero for that lightning strike. Who knows what would have happened to me then?

Anyway, after sitting in the muddy grass for about half an hour, my heart finally slowed down from OMFG Beats Per Minute to something reasonable and I stopped worrying that I was about to die. So I picked up my bike and walked it the rest of the way home. The vision in my left eye came back after 30 or 40 minutes (about two or three times as long as it took the ringing in my ears to finally shut up), the motor control in my left arm came back some time during the walk home, the sensation in my lower left arm came back after about fourteen hours (though my pinkie and ring fingers were still numb for about a day or two after that), and I was finally able to go to sleep after two or three days. I called in sick the next day, of course. Believe me, lightning is no joke.

But back to the point, the amount of harm which electricity does to someone or something is based in part on whether or not that someone or something is grounded, or how well that someone or something is grounded. If you're dripping wet and standing barefoot in a puddle of water, you're just asking for it. But if you're dry as a bone and in midair, you might only get singed, if there's enough conductivity in the air for the electricity to reach over and zap you at all. So Maximilian, hovering robot that he is, isn't quite completing the circuit between Maleficent's hands and the ground. Factor in the fact that Maximilian has electrical weapons of his own (against which he must be insulated, lest he fry himself with his own electrics) and you might find that Maximilian is more resistant to Maleficent's lightning bolts than the unenlightened might first guess.

...more resistant to her lightning bolts than she is to Maximilian's lasers, I would expect. ;)