Chapter 4-113: Run, You Fools! (1/2)

The two young women got out of the black panel van, and joined him in watching explosions going off a couple miles to the west.

Dark clouds were staring to gather there, the Haze thickening and red hate lightning gathering quickly.

“There’s two helicopters pouring in some missile fire,” Sama said, ornate Mask Tats around her eyes, making them glow inside the pupils. “That might be some sustained gunfire underneath it...”

There was a flash of ruby red definitely coming from sky to ground, leaving a black imprint in the air for a moment. “Scratch one helo,” Sama reported calmly, and in reply half a dozen explosions lit off over the area, the fires whitish in hue. “Gods, they are using phosphorous. Anyone without fire resistance in that area is toast. It’ll burn to the ground.” The crackling boom of the thunder drifted past them, momentarily overwhelming the distant sound of manmade explosions and gunfire.

“I’m thinking we got here a mite bit late,” The Mick observed heartlessly.

“Oh, I dunno. Inconvenient witnesses and everything.” Klitza turned her head towards a pickup racing their way eagerly.

“If they touch my car, I’m going to kill them straight off,” The Mick promised casually.

They stood behind the posts so the incoming truck couldn’t do something dumb like run them over, and it screeched to a halt in a spray of dirt and gravel.

“You, you outland bastards, are going to pay for what you’re doing!” the first one to jump out of the truck shouted at them, already getting a little hairy.

Totally ignoring him, Sama asked, “Lord Mick, what are those secondary explosions coming from over there?”, pointing at some scattered plumes of smoke and fire going up.

The Mick made a show of squinting at them. “They look like mortar shells, coming down, sweet thing. Never been on the other end of an artillery barrage?” he inquired.

“I try not to be in the area of them,” she agreed, totally ignoring the werewolves gathering and glowering at them. Klitza was attracting their attention, as they instantly identified her as a Packless werewolf, and of course The Mick could instantly be sniffed out as a Blooded.

They weren’t quite sure what in the Hell Sama was, but the way she was ignoring them as irrelevant gave them pause despite themselves.

“You!” the first speaker started forwards, hands balled up. “You are intruders in our territory, attacking-“

“Shut up and get out of the way, idiot,” Sama said, not even looking at him as she pushed on his chest. With a shout of surprise, he went up over the hood of the pickup, and crashed into the windshield, fracturing it. “Look at that damn sky over there... hooo, the fuckers just lost the other helo before it could run far enough...”

The black line of the lightning stroke was some distance from the fire zone, but a flaming spiral was spinning towards the ground out there regardless. It didn’t stop the clouds above from roiling and churning.

Even the werewolves paused at seeing the unnatural agitation in the air.

“The dumb fuckers did it,” breathed out the Mick, as that turbulence began to widen with unnatural speed. He could feel a tremendous Aura swelling there, far beyond anything he had ever felt before. “That’s some old, old power there...”

“The Owl Woman,” breathed out one of the native werewolves, all their eyes going wide now.

“You’re watching the wrong thing. Look at the trees...”

Eyes dropped at Sama’s words, and the way the trees in the distance were agitated, moving in what seemed like an uncertain wind, rocking and swaying...

Sama very deliberately turned to an old maple tree at the edge of the property as that racing wave of power hurtled towards them from the epicenter. Despite themselves, all the eyes followed her gaze, everyone tensing as the wave blasted past and over them, cries escaping throats from the Powered, dust and small stones kicked up and flying in a sharp gust of wind...

Except around Sama...

The tree over there swayed impossibly at the gust, limbs bending far too much, and even the main trunk swaying like it was made of rubber.

Then the roots began to move, pulling out of the ground in huge, snaky ropes, lurching free of the ground in an immense web that lifted the tree right up out of the ground, the dirt and soil all around it starting to sink as the roots were withdrawn.

And every single tree in the area was doing the exact same thing!

“She’s bringing all the trees in the area to life!” Sama snarled, and shot towards that old maple tree with startling speed. One of the native werewolves was in the way, and got knocked aside like a bowling pin as she raced between the writhing, rising roots, closing in on the trunk even as it seemed to bend and turn to focus on her...

Four roots and three branches coiled and lashed for her, and suddenly a glowing golden Sword like a bar of light was in her hand.

Three of the roots were chopped through and went flying, one was ducked underneath. The branches slammed down left, right, left as her progress used the roots themselves to push off and change her course, and then she was up on the trunk and slashing up through it.

Something visibly popped to all the Powered individuals behind her, and the tree quivered and stopped moving.