by Alana Melos
“You landed us on the branch?” I asked of the Siren.
She shrugged, “There was no other place flat enough. Besides, now we’re close up to get the work done, ja? You might have your powers, but we have to use our hands.”
“Just watch my back,” I said with a loud grunt as I hauled the dispersal device up and made sure of the button’s location to operate it.
“Always,” the werewolf growled.
The mechanism worked smoothly. As the chemical spurted out in a fine white mist, I lifted myself up and began to spray side to side, making sure to coat the whole thing, plus any other wandering vines which came my direction. Even in the darkness, it was easy to tell where the chemical landed: the plant matter stopped moving. The energy pulses from beneath our feet ceased. Now, it laid there like a dead thing. When I nodded, the two of them set to work.
I drew my o-wakizashi. When we got further in, I’d go for my teke, but it would take less energy to hack as much as I could with my blade. The vine didn’t twitch at all. I smiled to myself. Such a simple plan, and it worked! And everyone gathered would know it was me, that I was responsible, that I was the head bitch in charge. I didn’t care so much that it would get me brownie points with the white hats. The black hats… they would be indebted to me for this. I continued to grin behind my mask gleefully as we worked on the thick branch, whittling it down as fast and as far as we could.
It was Wolf who stopped first. He backed up, scenting the air. “Something comes,” he growled.
Normally, I would have spread out my telepathic senses. Since they were gone from me, however temporarily, I nudged the Siren. The plant’s goop didn’t stick to her uniform at all, and she had been going slowly, tugging and pulling on the fibrous wires inside the limb with her one hand. They looked like veins, but thicker and dark. She stopped when I nudged her. “Hmm? What?”
“Do you see anything coming?” I asked, panting. Truth be told, I sweated a fair bit under the trench coat. It wasn’t the work. The material parted easily with my blade. My arm felt a little bit tired, but nothing which would exhaust me. With a start, I realized I wasn’t seeing Wolf’s breath exhale. The temperature here was warm, well above freezing, and may have been upwards of sixty or seventy degrees.
I opened my mouth to make that observation, then something blocked my vision, flitting about in front of me. The Siren cried out something which didn’t make sense to me, at first. “Biene! Biene!” she shrieked, and her hand whipped out, punching something out of the air. It exploded under the force of the blow, covering me with warm ichor.
Wiping the eye holes of my mask clear, I moved as something came for my head. Slowed because of the surprise, I didn’t get out of the way in time as something made a clinking sound against the very edge of my mask. I pushed back with my teke, then struck out with my sword. The blade hit home, slicing...something in twain. When I looked, the body was as large a medium sized dog, and furry too. It was striped with alternating colors I couldn’t quite pick out in the dimness. Light, then dark, then light again. The legs were long and skinny in comparison to the segmented body.
I sucked in my breath behind the mask. Behind me, the Sirene kept yelling in German, forgetting her English as she panicked, “Biene! Biene! Verschwinde!”
My mind translated it now that I was listening, “Bee! Bee! Get off!” That’s what I’d sliced in two: a giant bee. What must have hit my mask was the stinger. Now that we weren’t hacking and hewing at the source vine, I heard faint buzzing coming from all around us.
“Ah, she birrths,” Wolf said.
“You could be helping,” I snarled.
“You arre not in any trrouble,” he said.
The flickering light we stood in ebbed as the buzzing grew louder. “We’re going to be,” I said, looking up at the source of the starlight blockage. It wasn’t just a few. These couple were the forerunners, showing the way to the invaders. I had no doubts these were Pangea’s guards, come to do away with us before the vine was severed completely. The light faded as the swarm came between the buildings and vines, flying towards us. Rebekah shrieked in panic and shadowstepped, disappearing from view entirely.
“Fuck,” I swore. “Keep them off of me, Wolf!”
He arched a fuzzy brow at me. I rummaged through my coat for my phone, swearing at myself. From here on out, there would be one piece of equipment I wouldn’t be without: a small flashlight. The phone would work for now, but the beam on it wasn’t the best. When I got it out and turned it on, it looked like we had gotten about halfway through the branch. Even now, the side heading towards the crash site reached out for its other half, trying to heal up before we could sever it. The paralytic had begun wearing off, and we were out of time.
Mauler roared next to me. It wasn’t expected, and I nearly dropped the phone. I caught it with my teke and let it hover above the yawning chasm in the vine so I could see what I was doing. The growth wasn’t fast, but it was fast enough. I concentrated and imagined a sharp cutting blade, wide as the thick vine, which was almost as wide as a medium sized house. Then, I pressed down with the telekinetic blade. The vegetative matter split under my mental assault and, in just a few seconds, it was finished. Or so I thought.
I grabbed my phone and looked up, throwing a telekinetic shield over myself as the swarm bore down on us. Mauler growled, swatting some of them out of the sky, his claws splitting open the fat, mutated bodies. Ichor splashed over my shield as I stood up. A few dead here and there didn’t matter. There were too many of them. The branch we stood on withered, cut off from whatever life sustaining force was behind it. Both of us hopped to the other half. I saw a few of the mutant bees explode as darkness hit them. It was the Sirene. She’d only just mostly run away.
Mauler snarled, saying something I couldn’t understand with his thick growl. He raised both of his hands up, and our footing shifted underneath us. I lifted myself into the air. The wolf didn’t move at all, concentrating on making the plant twist and warp under us.
“What in the fuck are you doing?” I said, giving him a horrified look. Mutant bees bounced off my shield and I hovered there, staring at the mutant werewolf. He was undoing everything we’d done!
As I prepared to drop my shield and ram my sword through him, the vines and branches which had answered whatever call he gave them shot into the swarm of bees. They impaled the insects, driving into the fat, plushy bodies with extreme and ruthless force. The plants wove together, making a shield in front of us. The buzzing grew more intense, and I drifted towards the makeshift shelter, facing outwards. When I dropped my shield, I began slicing and dicing. It wasn’t hard. There were so many at this time I couldn’t miss.
In the next heartbeat, the Sirene appeared next to me, having shadowstepped into the shelter. “Lot of help you’ve been,” I growled, but the words went unnoticed in the tidal wave of loud buzzing. It bored into my brain like a screwdriver, making the left side of my face hurt as it trickled upwards through my ears. Rebekah fought as well, less effectively since she had no weapon for reach, but keeping them away from the mouth of the shelter. Each of her augmented punches caused the insect she struck to explode and before long, I was covered in the slimy ichor while she stood in a puddle of it.
Wolf kept the shelter open, so we could have our backs safe, but continue to attack. Through the darkness and haze of bees, the plants around us moved and writhed, attacking still. He howled, long and loud, sending a primal shiver of fear through my body. I looked at him through the ever-moving cloud. Fearsome to behold, he continued to use the plants to do his bidding, but he also snapped bees out of the air, shaking them in his great big jaws before tossing the body aside. His massive claws found purchase in their squishy bodies, and the look in his eye… oh, the look of a madman reveling in the darkest of desires. Our gazes locked for a moment. Time slowed. A slow grin spread over his jaws as he showed me all of his long, white teeth. The animal held him in thrall, and he wanted death, destruction, anarchy, more t
han I could ever imagine. I forced my look away. Focusing on the task right in front of me, I swung and cut and jabbed, letting the corpses of the bloated, mutant things drop into the gap of the main branch and out of sight.
At first, I didn’t even notice the buzzing had subsided. It rang so loudly in my head, I didn’t stop moving until Rebekah grabbed me by the shoulder and shook me. “They’re going!” she said, her voice alight with excitement and relief.
I shoved her hand off of me, and glared at her. With some dissatisfaction I noted the ichor wasn’t clinging to her enchanted clothing, sliding off in thick, fat rivulets of gore. I, on the other hand, stood coated. I didn’t want to imagine what my hair looked like. “Where the hell were you?” I snapped, and realized I heard my voice loud and clear. “What the hell was up with running away?”
“I didn’t run,” she said, her tone turning whiny and defensive. “I am… bees are bad. They could kill me.”
“You’re allergic to bees?” I asked as I wiped my blade off. There were still a few stragglers here and there, but the swarm had either been wiped out or moved on. I didn’t care which.
“Yes! Deadly venom,” she said. “I couldn’t afford to be stung, and there were so many!”
I took in a deep, shuddering breath, and tried to let my anger go. It stuck to me like the tar baby from Br’er Rabbit’s story… something thick and sticky, which wouldn’t let me go no matter how hard I struggled, and only got worse the harder I fought against it. I grunted instead and turned away, the desire to kill on the verge of overwhelming. Without my ‘pathy, it was so much harder to shift my emotions around. I was stuck, caught.
“They arre gone,” Mauler said, his voice serenely deep. I forced myself to look at him, some primal lizard brain part of me thinking he was still on the verge of cutting loose. He wasn’t. Looking calm and unruffled--and also ichor free for the most part, dammit--the big green wolf brushed his claws against his fur.
Taking a big breath, I counted to five then spoke. “Do you know where they’re going?” My voice shook with anger, but it was better. I probably would have rabbited too if something could kill me in one hit.
“It does not matterr,” he said.
“Yes, we won!” the Siren said. She shuffled her feet and tugged at the corner of her jacket. “You really, Rory. I mean, Mauler. Wolf?” She raised her goggles and lowered her gas mask, then scratched the side of her face. “What should I call you?”
“It does not matterr,” he repeated. “I am what I am.”
“Ok, Popeye,” I said, my words sarcastic. I knew I was lashing out at him without reason, but it helped to drain some of the aggression saturating my mind. I stepped out of the makeshift shelter and looked around. The vegetation looked to be wilting, but… it wasn’t enough. Even now, the severed massive tentacle grew and stretched. I severed the healing tentacles once more. They continued to try to stretch, but slower. “Dammit,” I said. “I must not have sprayed it enough, or it’s not as effective. Maybe the thing is too thick.” Looking around, I saw the rest of the plant lay motionless. In the distance, blasts of red and blue and purple flashed in the night as the other metas worked on their branch and fended off their own invaders. As I watched and listened, the noise of gunshots and flashes of color grew less and less as each team worked their part of the invader and defeated it.
“We should move on, I think,” Rebekah said, looking around. Her blue-green eyes were clear and earnest. “It’s not healing anymore, look!
Looking down at the split, I saw she was right. Even though the fibrous veins in the plant wiggled, they didn’t grow any longer. “Huh,” I said, the feel of victory seeping into me, helping to strive off the anger.
“We should help elsewhere.” Rebekah smiled and bounced in place, excited at the prospect.
“Move on, I guess--” I started. My words were cut off abruptly as something in the distance roared. The ground shook, almost knocking me off of my feet. “God damn,” I swore. What was it now?
“What was that?” the Night Siren asked, looking around. “It’s not near, I don’t think!”
“You’re right, you don’t think,” I snapped, then raised my hand for silence as the roar came again, not any closer, but definitely louder. The ground shook, sending gentle tremors up our legs through the massive tentacle we perched on. “Hold on, let me go see if I can see anything from the air.”
Before either could say anything else, I rose into the air and looked around at where I thought the roar came from. It was a crisp, clear night with no clouds in the sky. Though there wasn’t any streetlights here to see by, I didn’t need them. A massive shape, easily as tall as a skyscraper, shook the earth as it stood up from the forest, moonlight gleaming from the twisted vines and branches it was made from. It blotted out a huge swath of stars in the sky. Two bright green holes for eyes glowed, reminding me of Wolf’s green eyes. The faint light from the city illuminated it in fits and spurts as the massive body lurched forward, moving out from the forest of the crash site towards the city. The creature roared, a sound of rage and hate, cutting through to the primal side of me as Wolf’s roar had done. The two eyes bobbed as if they were will-o’-wisps coordinated in a slow dance, but it wasn’t dancing. It was walking. It was moving towards the heart of the city.
I lowered myself back down, still trying to get the sight through my brain. Nothing like this had ever existed before. Even the golem Dirtnap had taken down had only been twenty or so feet tall. This monster towered over us insignificant specks. The Nacht Sirene bounced in place as I landed. “What did you see? What did you see?” Her accent became thicker in her excitement, and it took me a few seconds to understand what she was asking.
“No one here happens to know Godzilla? Have a Mecha-Godzilla in their pockets?” I asked. “I’d even settle for Mothra.” Both of them blinked in confusion, and I shook my head, irritated they hadn’t caught up on their pop culture. “Something big, bad, and giant-sized.”
Wolf looked up and cocked his head to the side, one ear swiveling in that way animals have when they want to listen to more than one thing at once. “Ah,” he said. “I told you, the Motherr birrths.”
“Yeah, that’s why I’m pro-choice,” I quipped, causing both of them to look at me with quizzical looks once again. “Never mind,” I sighed. “We’ve got more work to do.”
Chapter Twenty
It didn’t take long for Imperius to contact me. I was already gathering up the black hats whose numbers I had, telling them to yank their teammates and meet me at the Empire State Building. The higher stories hadn’t been affected by the plants yet and if we had all done our jobs they weren’t going to be tonight. Being that far up would give us a good vantage point of the monstrous kaiju--which for those of you who don’t watch classic Japanese movies that meant ‘monster’, usually one large enough to dwarf Tokyo. Hence, the reason for me asking if anyone knew Godzilla, but my witticism was lost on the Axis refugees. I found it a little sad they’d never experienced a big monster movie like that and I thought I’d fix that, provided we lived through this one.
We met on the observation deck of the building. Some of the black hats had made their own way in through the toughened glass instead of coming up from below. I didn’t care. Made it easier to fly in and out. I stood next to Lethal as I munched absently on some food, refueling. He had a scope out and peered through it, though at this height everyone could see the darkened blot of night sky and faraway giant glowing eyes. The manifestation of Pangea moved slowly towards us. That was, perhaps, the only saving grace. The daikaiju--’giant strange monster’ in Japanese--didn’t seem to have the energy to move swiftly. Instead, it was like a slow moving avalanche. It was going to crush us… eventually.
“Hoooooleeeeeey shit,” Lethal swore for the tenth time.
“Do you see any weaknesses?” I pressed him. “You’re the one shot, one kill wonder.”
He shook his head, still peering through the scope. “Uh, yeah, things that h
ave brains and stuff,” he said, his voice scornful. “This thing… I didn’t sign up for this shit.”
“Run and you forfeit,” I reminded him, and tossed the empty wrapper on the ground. The deck stood full of metahumans, more arriving every second either by the open window or the elevator.
“Run and you forfeit,” he mocked, his voice a high falsetto. I smacked him on the back of the head, which caused him to jab the end of his scope into the window. “Ow, dammit!”
“Just find a weakness, dumb ass,” I said. I looked around for Mauler. Standing a full green fuzzy head over most other people, he was easy to find, but not so easy to get to. A large crowd stood around him. I elbowed my way through it. The closer I got to him, the more I heard and kind of felt hostility grow. Maybe it was my ‘pathy starting to make a comeback and maybe it was just my mind interpreting the body language around me. Either way, people didn’t like Wolf. The vegetation and glowing green eyes… people were putting together one and one to get forty-two, figuring out he was connected to Pangea somehow.
Most of the metahumans held back, simply watching, but a couple were facing Wolf straight on. Mauler had crossed his arms over his huge chest, and stared at the few standing before him, his ears laid back in displeasure. “I have told you,” he growled, his eyes focused on a tall dark haired man in front of him, “I am my own perrson. I am not Motherr’s pawn, but she did help to birrth me.”
“Back off,” I said, grabbing the guy by the arm and whipping him around to face me. “You have a problem with Wolf, you have a problem with me.”
“What are you going to do about it, little girl?” he said, and ripped his arm free from my grasp. My brow twitched. As he turned back to Wolf, I kicked the side of his knee, hard. Everyone heard the crack as something very crunchy broke. The guy shrieked and turned to me, his hands glowing blue as he prepared to blast me with something. I punched him, angling my fist down as I did, and hit his nose square on. Another satisfying crack erupted from his body and with it, a howl of pain. His hands ceased glowing and he grabbed his face. He stopped trying to stand and sat down hard on the floor, groaning.
