Chương 141: Gad, Part 1

For the entire ride, my focus was on following Billy's instructions on treating the slash across May's stomach. She called it skin deep, but her constant flinching whenever she so much as leaned over meant it was a huge liability. We ended up having to dose her on some painkillers and wrap her entire midsection in gauze. The whole time she kept saying she was fine, but I was too tunnelvisioned on making sure she wouldn't bleed to death.

My focus on triage did not stop Tancred from ranting in our ears the whole drive there explaining the situation. Nothing actually criticizing us, which surprised me, given May and I just ran off without Billy. Then again, if Assacu were just trying to distract us... it was pretty likely they were going to wait to attack until May and I were distracted regardless. The briefing was pretty straightforward. An abnormally large regiment of ADU troopers, maybe about four hundred, had appeared.

Initially, they seemed to look like ADU sympathizers that were doing a peaceful display around the Albemarle County Office Building, wearing green shirts and jackets that weren't in the material style of the ADU's green hoodies and the higher ranking members' leafy cloaks. Then, from the ground, came one of those thick trees from their last large-scale attack. Out came another group of ADU troopers that appropriately armed them.

Alongside that, multiple tree men — the ones Viscum called Knights when I saved Jairo — and several of those Hussars had come from the same tree. They initially just took over the perimeter of the area; no shots fired, but they made a very active effort to scare off any police from trying to take control of the situation. The assumption Tancred had made for the motive was this being over the governor being in that building for a meeting today.

The fact it timed with our investigation made it clear they were looking to extract him. Probably feign it as a kidnapping. Initially the plan was to have some National Guard come in, but contact attempts had failed for reasons they're still trying to discern. After contact had failed, Father Quercus, his wolves, and two other Fathers showed up from the tree. Neither of whom were ones we had seen before. Just how many were there? That was about when we pulled in, and it was chaos.

Lots of shouting from police officers, from Jairo and Chris. Quercus was nowhere to be seen. Instead there was simply a large, Quercus-shaped hole in the wall of one of the buildings. I could only guess who made that. His wolves were around though. Four of them. The small ones. The larger one was nowhere to be seen. Must still be swimming back. There were supposed to be two other Fathers with him, but there was only one person with a leafy cloak that I had seen.

Covered in scorch marks, the cloak not only hid their entire body, but the hood hid all but their face as well. He stood there, inbetween the building and the perimeter of ADU troopers keeping anyone from getting in, just quietly observing. His gaze sat on the van as it pulled in.

"So what all of you, Hercules, Flowstate, Teiú, and Spectroma need to do is get together and form a spearhead to breach and secure the building. At least one of you is going to have to go in and confront Quercus. I'd prefer it be all of you, but with the numbers we're facing here, there's going to be splitting of tasks. For starters, I'm going to need you all to gather by the van. Billy's got some basic equipment to pass to Teiú and he's going to go over what tasks need to be done.

I've gotta go argue with more brass than a trumpeteer's lawyer," Tancred explained. A minute later, the van door swung open. It was Chris, with Shivvy sitting perched on his shoulder. The liquid metal arced away from him and back to me, sitting itself on my lap. At the same time, Jairo arrived.

"So what are you getting me?" Jairo buzzed out, only to be answered by Billy digging a few bags out from the front seat and laying them down in the back of the van.

"Teiú, open that one on the left," Billy asked, and Jairo obliged. Inside were a bunch of canisters with handles and pins on them.

"Those are tear gas grenades. Normally, I'd bring a thumper with me to deploy those, but if anything fires we're probably going to turn this into a shooting conflict. So you're gonna run around dropping those off to disorient and cluster the group so that you all can push through." Jairo nodded, shouldering the bag.

"Yeah, I'm fast enough to do that. What else needs to be done?"

"Right," Billy said.

"What we need is someone to coordinate with the police to help with the ADU troopers. Someone on the ground to fight with the non-treed up guys. That's something either Flowstate or Spectroma would be good at. We need someone to deal with the big wooden guys and wolves. Spectroma, Hercules, and Teiú all would be great at this. We need someone to deal with the Father. We don't know who they are, so in that kind of situation maybe Hercules or Teiú. And we're going to need someone to actually get into the building.

Could be whoever finishes their task first." We all nodded, before Chris spoke.

"So, I think this is a pretty easy set of delegations. I can handle the troops. They're all human, and I'd have the cops backing me up. I'm not fully kitted out for fighting Fathers yet since they hadn't shown up until we were already there." Chris gave it a second to see if anyone would disagree. We didn't. I had bigger fish to fry. He then pointed to May.

"You should focus on the big wood guys. If you burn them from the van, Billy can cover you and they'd have to get through the crowd of people anyway." May frowned.

"The ones with the swords are super fast. If they clear the gap I don't think Billy would be of much help. Sorry, Billy." The man shrugged.

"Yeah, but we know there's no people in them. You can go aggressive," I pointed out. Might as well put that dangerous fuck-up I made to good use.

"You know, yeah," May conceded.

"I can do it." Chris nodded.

"Teiú, you're the only one fast enough to chase those wolves. You don't need to tear them down completely, just disable them. Easier said than done since we saw them heal really fast, but if May clears out the big wood guys then she'll be able to support you with getting rid of them while they're disabled." Jairo nodded.

"I can do that," he croaked. Chris then looked at me.

"This means you're on Father duty. We don't know what he does. Is that okay?" A nod from me.

"Just one person makes my job a lot easier." Chris threw me a thumbs up, smiling.

"Awesome. Alright, let's hit the roof of the van. Once Teiú's thrown out all the tear gas, we move in. Billy, do the cops know about the tear gas coming out?" Looking over at Billy, I could see him nod.

"They've got gas masks and know tear gas is coming in the next few minutes." Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

"Okay," Chris confirmed.

"Let's get in position." We all clambered through a hatch in the roof to get on top while Jairo fiddled through the bag to get his hands on some of the tear gas canisters. All eyes were on us, but they couldn't guess what we were planning. All the same evaluations Billy made were likely the best they had. Meanwhile, besides the Father out there observing, we knew exactly which way the wind was gonna blow.

Chris avoided giving a signal, instead tugging up a loose piece of fabric from his costume to cover his nose and mouth. May did the same. I was lucky my mask covered those. Jairo took that as the hint to start moving. Like a blur, he encircled the entire perimeter multiple times, plumes of smoke rising up from the feet of the ADU troops as tear gas canisters flew. They were already beginning to pull back and move around, but Jairo seemed to have tossed a few behind them so that they couldn't regroup.

This caused them to start breaking into clusters between the thicker piles of gas. That was Chris and I's signal to move. Chris yanked some kind of chained weapon out from his costume as he slid off the roof, rushing towards one of the nearer crowds. As I lunged from the van with enough force to rock it around, I could see Jairo speed up and tear a leg off one of the wolves. That convinced them to start chasing him, and that left the lone Father alone. Even in the chaos, he didn't move.

He just watched me as I landed. My approach didn't warrant any reaction either. I could tell, by that point, he was waiting for a chance to counter. I gave him a couple of seconds to decide if he wanted to hit first, which got me nothing. So I simply started to step past him. That's when he turned and shuffled a bit to intercede. He wasn't going to just let me pass. But until he did something, he wasn't going to stop me.

So I just kept walking, and suddenly- THUN A thick gout of flame shot from his body in a rounded burst, almost like one of Assacu's seed pods were full of gasoline. How many fucking trees were capable of blowing up? Stepping back from the little firy explosion, I raised my fists. Shivvy didn't lose his balance at all sitting on my shoulder. Likely waiting for my command.

"You might as well name yourself now. We're gonna find out regardless." The Father spoke.

"Father Eucalypt. I am specifically here to ward you off. We know your specialty is in physical might. No body is hard enough to withstand fire." His accent was thick. Hard to parse. But he was articulate besides that. Well, if he was going to do explosions at close range, I had a solution.

"Long," I called out, as Shivvy coiled down around my arm before extending into a rod for me to wield. I wasn't good with weapons, but I didn't need much skill to swing a six foot long metal stick at someone's head. THUN Another burst, coming from the side of his head. The flames rode along the shaft of Shivvy's pole form and licked at my mask for a second, causing my body to instinctively step back from the heat. I attempted a low sweep again, same result. Proximity was when the fire happened.

It would spurt and burst out. Almost like a liquid more than just the air igniting. If I didn't just fight Assacu earlier, I wouldn't be thinking so much about things like this with explosives. So few of the villains I've faced really dealt with that. Really, it was just this guy and Assacu. It had to be some sort of liquid that ignited. Maybe an oil. He was squirting it out whenever I got close. It stuck to whatever it touched, and that's where the flames rode up. That made the answer simple enough.

"Round," I yelled, turning Shivvy into a small sphere and flicking it underhand at Eucalypt's head. He tilted it out of the way before finally spanning his arms out. His entire body was covered in this thick, dark tar-like substance. It didn't look like he had any clothes on besides the cloak. He was taut with muscle. He began to take a stance. Ready for a fight. That tar. That was what was causing the ignition. He could squirt small amounts of it out. That had to be it. That meant my idea would work.

Had to work, I couldn't waste too much energy on this asshole. I took a similar stance, fists raised.

"I just gotta knock you out faster than you can burn me," I stated. I wanted him thinking that was my direction.

"You are free to try," he taunted. But he was still waiting. He wanted to counter. So I gave him something to counter. I took a step forward, fist reared back slightly further than usual. Right when I was about to extend:"Round!" Shivvy understood perfectly. My strike was reaching towards Eucalypt right as Shivvy began to converge around Eucalypt. I kept the act up until his face was obscured by a silvery sheen and- THUN THUN THUN THUN THUN THUN THUN THUN Shivvy didn't budge an inch.

He ate every explosion like it was nothing, a little cat head forming at the top of the bubble around Eucalypt to look at me.

"Thank you, Shivvy." I then glanced back down at the bubble.

"Guess the stuff on you is just as easy to burn as what you spray out. You stay there." I tapped a fist on the dome before looking back up at the felid head.

"Don't move. Give him some air holes, though." Shivvy stared at me as a few small pores formed around the top of the dome, steam and smoke pouring out. Glancing around now that I had no chaos, I tried to see if the others needed help. The Knights and Hussars were being torn apart by May from afar. While the Knights were regrowing, the Hussars were clearly stuck maneuvering around the attacks. They couldn't repair themselves, for whatever reason. But there was no flesh in them.

Maybe they gave up healing for better mobility. Some were bursting into flame. She seemed to have it under control, even if she had to sit still from the injury. All around me I could see Jairo playing basically tag with the wolves, occasionally stopping as he ripped off entire limbs from them in bursts of movement so fast the air cracked. He was in that horrible bug-like form again. I wasn't fond of how often he was turning into it, but he kept turning back.

All I could hope was that he was in tune enough with his parasite that it could stick with enjoying fighting an endlessly regenerating enemy that was moving as fast as him. Finally, I looked towards Chris. He was in one of the big piles of ADU troopers, moving like a whirlwind. None of the troopers seemed comfortable with firing off their guns yet, but the ones with Wyrdwood weapons were absolutely trying their best to beat or stab him, but they couldn't. It was like they were trying to strike air. They were fine.

I could focus on Quercus. So I took my exhausted body and ran through the large hole broken into the building. It wasn't hard to find where to go, since there were paint chips and splinters and brick dust forming a trail leading towards where they were all gathered. I had anticipated a fight, maybe trying to stop them from getting Governor Bailey out without being arrested. Instead, what I walked in on was a meeting room full of blood. Dismembered men in suits splattered against walls and floors.

Quercus stood off to the side, hands and weapon soaked in the sanguine substance. In the middle of the room was a gaunt and pale man, Wyrdwood growing out from his chest and bits of it reaching towards his limbs, holding up a limp governor by the neck. Lips blue, skin pale, eyes rolled over. Dead. Our one lead on the conspiracy, dead. Any potential witnesses or informants, dead. The distraction was specifically to eliminate our best possible source for finding and stopping the ADU in advance.

Quercus turned as I entered.

"Ah, warrior. You were too late. I warned you. War is an old man's game. You're just too naive to defeat us."