Chương 104: Analyst

The National Guard didn't take long to arrive after Shivvy finished eating the tree, while I took to piling up all the remaining ADU threats. Adansonia did turn out to have some kind of root, which I managed to just… rip off. He was too limp to stop me. I expected Shivvy to put on a lot of weight from the tree, but he honestly didn't look any larger than before. If this was part of the technology the aliens had during the Interstellar War, I'm not surprised we needed The Saint to deal with them.

Shivvy was a menace, and the only reason I could guarantee he wasn't the end of the world on… no legs, I suppose, was because I and his previous owner fed him well. There had to be some upper limit to his diet, but I just couldn't figure out what. He returned to his felid form and perched on my shoulder as one of the soldiers approached, hands sitting placidly on his rifle.

"Hercules, we were told to meet you here. Though I can see that you've dealt with the primary issue here?"

"From what I can tell. But you guys still need to collect these creeps," I explained, pointing a thumb at the unconscious Adansonia and the ADU riflemen.

"Don't give the scrawny-looking one water." The man nodded, glancing around.

"Reports said there were two of those large tree people here. What happened?"

"They seemed to be all wood, and Shivvy ate one. I threw the other up. I thought he'd be down by now, but…" I noted, glancing towards the sky.

"He could've gone so high up he burnt up in the atmosphere falling down." The soldier just looked at me like I had two heads, the flashlight on his helmet functioning almost like a halo with how it crested around his own head.

"You can do that?"

"…I mean it wouldn't surprise me if I could." After the National Guard finished securing the area and collecting the ADU members, I made my way onto one of the roofs for more private communications, touching my ear.

"Hey, Betsy. I'm all set at my spot. What's the news on everyone else?" I asked, glancing out at the horizon. The smoke piling up in the distance worried me. What worried me more were the large trees that looked closer to shrubs that were dotting different parts of the city. It took a couple of seconds for Betsy to report in.

"Not to be discussed over communication lines. You have good timing, though. Agent Tancred is requesting a regroup. Head back to base, go to the meeting room." That didn't sound good. I kept an eye on the horizon with every leap and bound. The smoke continued to pile up, though it colored itself paler and paler as I grew closer to the base, until thinning out into clear white streaks.

Another thing I noticed was, due to just the raw distance from all of the now far more overgrown trees and chaos, sirens and cars honking had died down. Some were still audible in the distance, but not much. I took in that little silhouette of quiet for a minute, before making my way into the building, heading up to the meeting room. It was a pretty dreary scene. Christian was barely wearing any of his costume, with a mask over his mouth and his body slouched over. His breathing was clearly labored.

Eyes red from tears. May looked bruised, with a prominent swollen eye that was being looked over by Sam at the same time. She looked gaunt. Didn't even pass a glance at me. Tancred and Richmond were observing a screen at the end of the room that featured a map, marking a few different areas. It took a second to abstract the shape, but I was able to intuit that each marking was a different tree, colored differently.

The one where I was at, which I could determine by its proximity to the river, was colored separately. Only one other had the same color. Slipping my mask off, I clambered into a seat. Shivvy slid off of my shoulders and curled on the table right in front of me.

"What happened?" I asked, wiping some sweat from my forehead.

"FUBAR," Tancred started without even looking at me.

"You and Richmond did fine. She was able to burn her tree, apparently it was unattended." Richmond glanced over, waving and featuring a sad smile.

"When I got reports on the ADU, I knew I should be prepared with something to burn so I requisitioned some incendiary devices. Easiest job I'd ever done," she explained.

"Aren't you lucky." I rubbed my face.

"Fought a guy who could repel every hit I threw at him with this big gut full of water, and swing it back at me." I looked over towards May and Chris.

"What happened?" Christian spoke first, voice partly muffled by his mask.

"Two higher ranking members. One of them had powers related to like…" He coughed, pushing the mask further against his mouth for the time being.

"…gympie trees or whatever they're called." he finally added.

"I couldn't get a proper blow on him that-" A hacking, wheezing noise.

"-wouldn't have killed him or left him so worse off he wouldn't cooperate."

"We don't need him completely unharmed. You could've just broke his arms or something."

"No, Leo, he couldn't," Tancred spoke up.

"He's not mentioning that there were hostages as well next to men with guns. As one person, there is no solving that situation. These people are not sane." The agent finally looked towards me.

"Awful as it is to say, he made the tactically correct move."

"That's bullshit, Tancred." My arms felt hot from the tension I was building in my fists.

"It isn't. It's not the end of the world. May, are you able to give your report to him as well?" May spoke up.

"I had two ADU Fathers too. One kept trying to tie me up, and the- Nn!" She winced as Sam finished applying some kind of disinfectant to a bleeding wound in her cheek.

"-the other was throwing these… these plant bombs. I couldn't sit still for a second. By the time I got my bearings, I saw they had hostages too." Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. I rubbed my face, letting out a heavy exhale.

"And- And one of them…" she sniffed, seemed like she was fighting to just get air at all.

"One was my brother." My hand stopped moving across my face as those words came out. My blood ran cold. Tyson?

"I haven't seen him in years. It's the first time I've seen him and he was tied up by the fucking tree and I couldn't help him and I had to run and I'm so fucking scared they're gonna do to him what happened outside the manor we raided and- and-" She gasped for air. Sam brought an arm around her into an embrace, quietly shushing her. Pushing up from my seat, I grabbed my mask and made my way to the door.

"Alright, I'll go handle them-""You won't." Richmond. I pivoted on a heel.

"Why?"

"You need to remember you're on the ADU's top list of targets right now. If you immediately go back out there, still recovering from a fight, they might all converge on you."

"And? You guys think I can't tear through a bunch of losers in green? Have you all forgotten what I can do?" I asked, Shivvy leaping back up to my shoulder, still failing at figuring out how to lick a fake paw. Just looked like he was punching his own mouth. Tancred added on.

"You and I both know they'd send Gleditsia. You and him are both capable of fighting kaiju. That last fight, we lucked out that it was entirely personal with him so he wasn't interested in collateral. These attacks are part of an agenda. They're trying to make the situation worse. If they're all fighting you, and then Gleditsia shows up, there's only two outcomes." He held up an index finger.

"The first is you two fight. He will exploit your priority of protecting the city and cause greater damage. That will drive you nuts, and then we will have one very angry superhuman fighting one deliberately violent superhuman, both of whom are more than capable of flattening this city. The other ADU members will exploit this distraction to achieve their ends." He then held out his thumb.

"The second is Gleditsia intentionally leaves you to the horde while he runs around wreaking havoc. Now it's a giant chase across the city that produces a trail of destruction none of us are prepared to fix."

"That's ridiculous. If I clear them out fast enough, we don't have that problem. And Shivvy can destroy those big tree growths, so if I can get those done first then they're going to likely give up."

"And if you're late by even a second, Leo?" Tancred asked, hands going into his pockets.

"I know you're prepared for risks, but are you actually willing to let a hair-thin error, potentially one out of your control, result in greater harm?"

"As opposed to what they're doing now-" Agent Richmond piped in.

"Leo. The situation has stabilized. Those tree growths, May told us that one of the ADU called them churches, have encapsulated approximately a city block each. No one's gone in or out, but they're all surrounded by the National Guard. We're at a stable point." My grip tightened on my mask.

"Stability? We're looking for fucking stability when people could be getting fed to Wyrdwood right now?"

"When there are men with guns pointing their heads at those people, yes, we are looking for stability," Tancred stated.

"Hostage situations are incredibly delicate. Any collateral or provocation could kill them. In fact, they may be seeking to provocate." He raised a finger again.

"Chris and May both said their hostages were held prisoners. On Chris' deploy, the civilians were in cages. On May's deploy, they were tied up. If they were interested in feeding them to people, they'd have done it already. They had weeks to get that all set. They chose to just hold them prisoner. I get you're pissed off, Leo, but please really take those statements in. Then remember the warnings they sent us. What do you think that decision means, with that prior communication in mind?"

Hated having to consider his ideas, but it did raise my curiosity. They already had access to people with Hidalgo's human trafficking. Random civilians in panic might not be as valuable due to lack of stable influx. Random civilians are also far more difficult to get value out of. You're grabbing what you can just to say you have them. Tancred did also say they're seeking to provoke us. They were always subtle up until now.

Then that video came out, where they were offering people options to join them before this all would kick off… So if they pulled out everyone who sided with them, and had hostages, and kept trying to make us react more aggressively-"They're trying to make martyrs," I called out.

"They want us to go scorched Earth on them. Want me to go scorched Earth on them. If I did end up fighting them all, the collateral damage might get people killed. If their leaders aren't in the area, they could be proselytizing elsewhere and use the destruction in Charlottesville as a way to demonize us. Say how many awful things we're doing to people who just want to liberate trees or whatever." Demonize us. Demonize me. Like with the bodycam footage. No. That couldn't be the case. That would be too obvious.

If I brought that up I'd be going on a tangent for something with no real proof. Tancred snapped his fingers, pointing at me." Sharpest fucking analysis I've seen from you. Richmond brought it up with me when we were considering bringing in Agent Juneau. If we torched everything, the damage would be terrible optics if we failed to cut any heads off. They're trying to put us in a situation where we feel the only choice is to overreact." Not the only choice.

"Or to negotiate," I added.

"They might make demands at some point." Tancred nodded.

"Correct. Like I said, they want us to think the only choice is overreacting. They'll make us hem and haw about just how much of an overreaction we can do, before suddenly sending a literal olive branch and say 'We're willing to make an offer.' Then they expect us to take it. But they're going to sweat us out first." My shoulders sagged. Fucking checkmate. I was just lucky enough to actually consider listening to this asshole and notice it before I fell into what now feels like a very obvious trap.

I trudged back to my seat, clambering back down as Shivvy descended again, wandering the table.

"So what's our next steps, then?"

"For now? Treatment and recovery. You guys need to rest," Tancred explained.

"You're of no use to yourselves or anyone else while you're all beat-up and tired. We're likely going to wait until they think we're desperate before setting up a sting or something. Still in the preliminary plan phase of that. But that does mean we can't approach the churches until then. Just because we think it might be for some kind of ransoming doesn't mean they won't try." Chris spoke, voice weak.

"So what are they doing about the churches right now?"

"Said it earlier, National Guard's surrounding each one, armed to the teeth. Anyone comes out in green, they've got maybe five seconds to hit the ground before getting turned into hamburger." I wasn't sure why, but those words put a reminding thought in me. Glancing around the room, I did inventory. Me, Chris, May, Sam, Tancred, Richmond. How did I not notice sooner?

"Tancred." His mustache pointed back towards me.

"Where's Jairo?" Tancred took a deep inhale.

"He's stuck in one of the churches."