Futuristic [ The Cherenkov Effect ]

[simulationanomaly]

One minute at a rolling boil will kill pretty much any waterborne bacteria or parasite. Ryan knew that—of course he did, it was basic science. Kid stuff. Still, that didn't stop him from boiling his water for two minutes, just to be safe. His eyes stayed locked on the raging pot of creek water, perched at a concerning angle over a small campfire, but his mind was elsewhere. It wasn't quite the safest thing in the world, for him to be out boiling water in the middle of the woods during sunset like this. He didn't really have much choice, though. His canteen was fine, but if he had to wear his clothes for one more day without washing them, he was going to just burn them and hope to find an abandoned suburb he could pilfer another set from.

Of course, he usually wasn't so lackadaisical about personal hygiene. He held himself to higher standards than that, and normally this would have been a daily routine. Unfortunately, he hadn't had much of a choice lately, having been run out of town with only the clothes on his back and a few hastily scrambled-together survival tools in a briefcase. Things like that tended to put a damper on personal routine. Still, despite the intense stress he had been in for the past three? Four days now? He couldn't recall, it didn't matter, he couldn't bring himself to feel much over it. Annoyance, maybe. This was a huge inconvenience on his life. Hatred? A bit. He had done so much for these people over the course of his career, and they ran him out over something he couldn't even control. Exhaustion? Always. God, he hadn't had a pot of coffee since he started this impromptu leave of absence. Only the exhaustion stood out to him now, though, a dull ache perpetually threatening to turn into a migraine wrapped around his skull like a python.

At least it was quiet here. Between the aggressive bubbling of the pot and the gentle flow of the rocky creek, the only other noises of note were bugs. The cicadas weren't out yet, he was grateful for that much, but the crickets still remained to sing lazily out-of-tune, and the occasional gnat or mosquito sometimes felt it appropriate to divebomb his ears. He made a note to scrape together some insect repellant. A lot of it had already long been scavenged, but he knew some settlements traded in it. If he got desperate enough, he'd just have to find out how to make his own. Beyond that, the trees overhead didn't offer much in the way of conversation, and neither did the orange-tinted light they allowed through their twisting branches and leaves. Compared to the constant office babble he dealt with at his old settlement, this was downright peaceful. Another bug skirted by his ear with that high-pitched drone, and he barely dodged smacking himself in the head just to kill it. Maybe they were equally as annoying, actually. He couldn't swat his coworkers though, so the woods were still winning.

He took his lab coat off and draped it over a large nearby boulder—making sure to clean it off prior to any of this, of course—and then took the pot of water off of the fire briefly to cool before pouring it over the once-white garment. Dirt ran out of the once-white fabric at a rate that made his lip curl in disgust, but at least it was getting done now. It wasn't enough to completely soak the coat, and he knew it would take several more rounds before he could actually wash all of his clothes. It would probably be dark by then. At least he would already have a fire.

As he collected another pot of water, the snap of a twig caught his ears. Damn, it couldn't have waited for a freshly-boiled pot? At least then, he'd have more defensive options. He set the pot on the fire to restart the cycle, then drew a knife from his pocket and stood with his back to the creek. It was honestly just a kitchen knife wrapped in fabric to keep it from stabbing him, but he knew it would do the job if he needed it to. He really didn't want to use option two, and option three was not an option for now. Besides, the footsteps sounded human. Humans generally didn't need the other two options. They all bled just as easily as he did. "Who's there?" he barked, his knife pointed into the thick underbrush in front of him. Admittedly, he had no idea how to fight with a blade. However, he had not gotten this far just to go down quietly to some random freak in the woods. "I know you're there, you're not winning this fight. Either go away or... Actually, no, just go away."

He wasn't sure what else he was about to offer the stranger, but the unconscious thought was rejected so hard by his brain that it was already wiped from existence by the time it made it to his tongue. The crickets fell silent with the increase in commotion, and his golden eyes narrowed as all he was left with were the footsteps, the creek, and those high-pitched wings in his ears. He just hoped they would pay attention to him and go away. As ready as he was to defend himself, he honestly didn't care for any of this. He didn't need another inconvenience in the parade of misfortunes that this week had given him.

 

[Pine]

She knew to follow along the creek. If she followed it for long enough, she knew she would find the next person she was supposed to meet. So when, after days of carefully picking her way through the brush, she heard the tell-tale hiss of boiling water splashing a cooler surface, Araceli was overcome with a nervous excitement.

It took all of her self-restraint to not run straight towards the source of the noise. It felt like ages since she set out to find this person, but she knew that not everyone shared her gift, and so they probably wouldn't be expecting her. The wastes were a dangerous place. Even she knew this, so it only made sense for people to be on edge out here.

Even knowing this, she was still surprised when the first words her fated person were hostile.

Araceli cringed as she stopped in her tracks. She strained to peer at the mass beyond the shrubs. How did he even know she was there?

She looked over her shoulder to mentally retrace her steps. "Dang it," she said under her breath. She had been hoping to at least get a good look at this guy before introducing herself, make a guess about who he was and why she needed to be with him, but she must have stepped on something in her haste, and now her chances of doing that were ruined.

So instead, she threw her hands in the air, palms open and waving to show she wasn't armed to attack. "Wait, wait, I don't want to fight!" she said.

Araceli twisted her body to wrestle through the final throng of shrubs. This was a bit of a challenge, because with her arms up there was only so much maneuvering she could do to keep from getting thwacked in the face by hundreds of little branches, and her go bag kept getting snagged by various shrubs and vines. She struggled for several moments before she finally crossed into the clearing.

She took a once-over and saw no indication that he was part of a larger group. No extra bags, bed rolls, canteens, anything like that. That confirmed all that she needed to know. He needed her.

Araceli rubbed her face along her sleeve, still keeping her arms up, so that her bike goggles were pushed up and the gaiter was pushed down from her mouth. Not only could he get a better look at her this way, but the goggles were also starting to get a little dirty, so she could see him better too. If she were to describe how he looked in one word, it would be "rough," and not in the tough guy kind of way.

"I've been looking for you," she blurted. "You're a super too, aren't you?"

 

[simulationanomaly]

Ryan watched with a humorless glare as the interloper stumbled through the underbrush, sleeves and pant legs snagging on brambles and burs as she made her ungraceful appearance. He knew better than to underestimate physical strength—some of his old settlement's most vicious fighters were a half-foot shorter than him—but he was confident in the assessment he had made of her intelligence. That being that she was a bumbling moron who didn't seem to know her left from right. Honestly, when a man tells you he's going to fight you and to leave him alone, you leave. So, even if she was freakishly strong, maybe he could distract her with a particularly odd pebble if he needed to escape. Convince her it was a dragon egg or something.

Those plans shifted pretty rapidly once she spoke, though, and he found his lips pulled back into a wary snarl. She had been tracking him? For how long? Granted, he hadn't been trying as hard as he could to cover his tracks. That was on him. Typically, once supers were run out of town, the residents just left them to rot. He didn't expect to have a bounty on his head. His reputation may have preceded him in ways he didn't intend—maybe some disgruntled townsfolk told a few white lies to a bounty hunter. In all fairness, he had made sure to burn that bridge to ashes.

He gripped the knife tighter and took a tentative step forward, begging his glasses not to slip as he prepared to fight for his life. Though, he couldn't say he wanted to. His pot of water began to boil behind him, and honestly, all he wanted was to clean his clothes and find some shelter for the night. Climb a tree or something. Anything that didn't involve dealing with another person. "Who's asking?" he said, locking eyes with her as he tried to remember humans' biological weak points. "Who sent you? Or did you send yourself? Either way, whatever's on my head isn't worth all this trouble, I assure you. Now if you would just turn around and drag your knuckles back home, that would be great."

He took this moment of standoff to further analyze his would-be attacker. She honestly looked like one of those small-breed dogs that people used to hunt rabbits and back in his settlement. Short, stumpy, and maybe ten seconds away from keeling over out of fear at any given moment. Her voice reminded him of them too—short-breathed but full of information, loud, at just the right frequency to make his headache teeter closer to migraine territory. He wouldn't go so far as to say he wanted to kick her, but he wished he could just pick her up and toss her out an invisible front door to end this interaction. Maybe let the coyotes get her so he wouldn't have to deal with her anymore. Still, like those rabbit dogs, there's a chance she had one niche usage or two. That fact and a general lack of desire to engage in a real fight kept him at a distance. If it was worth it, he'd be surprised.

 

[Pine]

Araceli furrowed her brow in confusion. He was shooting a rapid line of questions that didn't make any sense to her. She had expected him to start calming down, maybe even feel relieved to be in the company of another super, but instead he only seemed to tense up more. She took a small step back, beginning to feel less and less comfortable with that knife pointed at her.

"What? No, I- nobody's asking, nobody sent me," she said. As her panic rose, so too did the words that came tumbling out of her mouth. "I mean, I guess you could say I sent myself? I walked here. Does that count? But I don't even see anything on your-"

Araceli stopped, realization finally dawning on her. "Wait." The way he was poised in such a defensive posture and kept trying to make her go away instead of attacking himself...

"Oh, wait." Araceli's eyes crinkled up as she let out a laugh. Her hands came down to cover her mouth. "You think I-" she started, rolling her pointer fingers from herself towards him, but then she couldn't help it anymore. Araceli burst into a fit of laughter. Part of it was from nerves, part of it was from relief. She knew the problem now. She just needed to clear up the misunderstanding, then everything would be fine.

While still recovering, she tried speaking to him again. "You think I- oh my gosh, no. I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh."

By this point, she had almost managed to stop herself. Araceli only giggled here and there as she pulled her shirt collar to wipe her eyes. Remembering the knife he still had, she raised her arms back over her head.

Araceli took one final sniff to compose herself, and looked back at him with the most serious stare she could manage. "I'm not here to kill you. I don't even know who you are. Let me explain."

She started to lower her hands to pat her chest for emphasis, but caught herself, remembering she's trying not to do anything that could set him off. "I have visions. Or at least, I know what's destined to happen. It's clairvoyance. So I just follow what fate tells me to do, and fate led me to you. Here."

Araceli kept her eyes on him while she slowly took the hatchet off that was hanging on her hip, crouched down, then set it on the ground. She raised herself back to stand straight and put her hands back up to where he could see. "Okay?"

 

[simulationanomaly]

And now she was laughing. Great. So, either he had the completely wrong idea about her, or she was prone to manic behavior. He found it easier to believe the latter—ego notwithstanding, he had seen his fair share of sadism from the nomads wandering these lands. Though, it did come off more as honest amusement—nervousness, even—than any sort of malice that he had encountered. He considered the odds, and decided that there was a non-zero chance of this being a genuine attempt at gaining trust in him. Possibly forming some sort of partnership in the wastes, but for what? Survival? That seemed the most reasonable. He had to admit, he'd been having a rough go of things on his own. But then there was the other, very distinct chance that she was looking for partnership simply because she wanted some form of human contact. A companion.

He'd really rather she just kill him.

But then she got serious, and he realized that this chance was increasing, as much as he hated it. It still wasn't a fantastic excuse—"oh hey, actually, I haven't been stalking you, it's just that your existence was revealed to me in a dream." He had come up with better excuses as a child, and those still didn't tend to work on adults with a lick of sense about them. Still, even if she was a stalker and not a seer, that didn't explain why she put down her weapon. It made no sense to assume she had any intentions of actually committing violence after that. He narrowed his eyes and pulled an old washcloth from his pocket—his butcher knife's makeshift sheath. As he wound the cloth around the blade, he kept his eyes firmly locked on this newcomer. Peace or war, he didn't want her or her intentions.

"Convincing," he said, his tone completely flat in the face of her excuses. At this point, he could tell that whoever this girl was, she wasn't going to take a hint. Or a direct order, for that matter. At least she had deduced that she had come off as shady, good for her. He wasn't sure if she'd ever crack that code. Still, he was beginning to see her as less of a threat, so her negotiations did have some effect, even if it wasn't working exactly how she intended. "Really, truly convincing. Fine then, I'll bite: if you're not here to kill me, then what else for? Did your 'visions' also account for that? Or were you just blindly following some vague 'I'm going to meet up with a random stranger in the woods' feeling?"

The water began to roll, and he knew that by the time she tried to talk her way out of this one, he'd have another batch to pour on his coat. Might as well try to find some amusement in this purse dog making her case as a "definitely not assassin or stalker" in the meantime, hard as that would be through the ache in his head. He also never put the knife back into his pocket. Like the non-zero chance of her being friendly, there was also a non-zero chance that this was some sort of front. He wasn't about to play around with odds in this situation. He had already fallen out of favor with them more than once.

 

[Pine]

Her eyes brightened and her face broke out in a grin when she saw him pull out a cloth and wrap begin to wrap it around her blade. Yes! She did it!

Araceli once again had to restrain herself, this time from jumping up and pumping her fist in the air. He still didn't seem to share her same enthusiasm, and he was clearly making a point to not let her out of his sight. She would be lying if she said she didn't feel giddy, though.

She used the morsel of trust he was giving her to lower her arms back down to her sides. Thank goodness for that, too, because one of her arms had already started to fall asleep. If it had been her hatchet that had been making him feel wary before, she didn't mind continuing to distance herself from it. Araceli took a few steps forward, leaving the hatchet on the ground behind her now, but not getting too close that it might set him up again.

Araceli was pulling her goggles and gaiter back into place when he started questioning her again. She didn't mind the questions themselves, but his tone alone wiped the smile off her face. "I feel like you're mocking me."

He talked about following her path like it was a bad thing. It wasn't 'blindly' following anything, the feeling was there! "My visions have never led me astray," she said, a stubborn frustration creeping into her own tone. "One time at my old settlement, I knew a creature needed my help. I spent hours walking in the rain, but finally, I found a frog drowning in a pond! It was unconscious when I pulled it out, so I had to do CPR on it, and it worked! The frog came back to life and it hopped away all on its own."

Araceli folded her arms over her chest and looked at the man expectantly, waiting for him to concede her point.

 

[simulationanomaly]

Rather than concede, Ryan stared at her with the same baffled bemusement that one would look at an irrationally stubborn child with. The kind of kid who clearly got caught drawing on the wall with crayons and dirt, yet remained insistent that their imaginary friend did it. His overall expression was stoic, keeping that exhausted want for solitude in his heavy-bagged eyes. Yet, his eyebrows were now arched rather than furrowed, and he found himself pushing his glasses slightly up the crooked bridge of his nose to gain a better focus on what type of idiot specifically this girl was. Her usage of "I feel" was familiar—a manager had once chided him for his judgemental views and told him to use those sorts of statements to deescalate a conversation. The problem was, people tended to keep coming back after gentle deescalation. He just wanted to set the bridge ablaze and be done with it.

She was also beginning to approach, and he found himself leaning back as if magnetically repelled. That tone, the folded arms, the stubborn petulance—it all spoke of a person who wasn't about to back down. Not to mention the frog story—what was the point of that? Was it meant to be a good comparison? Some sort of "fate would never mislead me" statement? It did nothing to answer his questions, and it did even less to convince him of her reliability.

Still, assuming she wasn't lying, this did suit his "rabbit dog" theory well. Yep, she was still acting loud, annoying, and largely useless. However, if she really did have some vague form of clairvoyance, he could use it to act as an early alarm. Creatures stalking him in the woods? A band of nomadic raiders? An actual assassin? Well, if her supposed clairvoyance had told her to meet him in this specific area by this specific creek, surely she could sense life-threatening events like these. A niche usage, and one that he would quickly discard once he found a new settlement, but a usage for her nonetheless. Now for the second question: was it worth the cost?

"I didn't ask for your life story," he said, thumbing the wrapped blade in his hands. "I asked why you're here. Sure, good for you, performing CPR on a frog in the pouring rain, very admirable. What does this have to do with me, my super status, or your purpose here?"

 

[Pine]

That wasn't the reaction she was looking for. She already explained herself. What wasn't clicking with him? Not only did he seem to pay no heed to their destinies being intertwined, as if destiny was some irrelevant thing he could just ignore, but he still had that same bad attitude as he did before. He should be grateful that she even showed up at all for him!

"Look, I-" Araceli groaned and threw her hands up in frustration. "I don't know why exactly fate led me here, okay? The universe is complicated. It's not like the gods just gave me some magic printer that gave me a magic itinerary of what I'm supposed to do at what place and what time."

Now it was her turn to look at him like he was dumb. He may have missed the mocking expression behind her head bobble, though, considering how she had everything on her face covered but her cheeks and her nose.

She tried to rein in her temper, which she did by pinching the bridge of her nose and sighing. "All I know is that I came to the wastes looking for someone, and you're who I found. It's our job to figure out why fate brought us together and help each other out!"

Araceli set her arms over her chest again and looked him over once more. Whoever he was, he obviously needed her help. If fate led her here to give him a makeover, she had her work cut out for her.

"Let's start with you." She gestured with one hand towards him. "You're on the run from something. Where are you headed?"

 

[simulationanomaly]

Oh, so she could bite back. That made things a little more interesting, at least, even if she only had baby teeth to her name. Not to mention it dispelled any chance of her being there to kill him. Anyone who wanted to kill him likely would have had better excuses prepared for why they had to find him besides "because the universe told me so," otherwise they wouldn't have been a very good assassin and would have just given up on pretense sooner. Finally, he put his knife away and returned to his previous task: getting that damn coat clean. He scooped up the pot of boiling water and tossed it over the top of the coat, his glasses steaming up briefly as raging liquid met cool stone. If she really wanted to stick around, well, he wasn't going to kill her. But she had better have the human decency to not interrupt his tasks.

"Springville," he said, walking back to the creek to collect more water. The pot hissed in discontent as it was dipped into the cool stream. "It's northeast of here. Apparently, uncreative as they are, it's built around an underground spring. I figure if I go there looking for clean water, they won't have any reason to suspect I'm... Yeah."

For some reason, it still brought him a bit of shame to think of himself as a super. Goddamn Pavlovian bullshit. It was ridiculous to even consider feeling shameful over this, what was he supposed to do about it? Oh, sorry for being born with mutated genetics, let me just go in and edit those. Even if the tech to do that was finalized prior to the war, it was certainly blasted back to the dark ages by now along with everything else. He glared at nothing in particular, but aimed it within himself. The fact that he even had to worry about his own inborn traits to begin with was ridiculous as it was, it was a waste of brainpower to continue enforcing that sort of harm on himself. And yet, here he was, unable to wrestle the word "super" out of his mouth. Unbelievable.

He stood back up and subtly shook his head, walking back to the campfire and setting the pot back down over it. The water on the side hissed and popped as it was consumed by fire. "And what about you?" he asked, not making eye contact as he adjusted the pot's position in the flames. "You're a super, you mentioned that much. So, are you from a settlement? Or are you literally just wandering to wherever 'fate' takes you? I'll give you one thing, you definitely have better gear for traveling than I do."

He assumed her to be a scout of sorts, or maybe a messenger. She was certainly dressed for the task, hardly any skin visible. Still, with how readily she blabbed about her super status to a complete stranger, he had to assume she didn't have much to lose. Maybe she was already on thin ice with whatever settlement she came from—if not for her powers, then definitely for her stubborn, moronic petulance. Though, he couldn't bank too hard on that latter. He had a few cohorts like that in his settlement, and they all seemed well-liked. People were easily pleased by a smile and a dream.

 

[Pine]

She was surprised when he put his knife away, then elated when he turned his back on her to get more water from the creek. Not only was he letting his guard down, but he was also telling a little about himself!

She clapped her hands together and squealed quietly in delight. She had started to think that gloomy atmosphere this guy had was going to take a lot more work, but Operation: Gain His Trust and Start Whatever They Were Actually Supposed To Do was already a success! By the sound of it, his path laid out for himself was pretty simple. He couldn't survive in his settlement any longer, so he's just trying to find the next place and hope it works out better.

Araceli scooped up her hatchet and hooked it back onto her pants before shuffling closer, following not too far behind him.

She hummed when he asked her about herself. "Well... I did have a settlement, but I had to leave just like you did." She paused to mull over how exactly she wanted to approach the topic. When she decided, she said, "But I probably had more time to prepare than you did. Here!"

Araceli knelt down and slid her go bag off her back. She spun it around to face her, then unzipped the front pouch and pulled out a book. It was a paperback titled "Surviving in the Wastes." Even though the cover was laminated, there were signs of frequent use marking the crease. She held it out for him to either see or grab. "There's a few checklists in the back for what you should bring depending on how long you plan on being out here. Then of course what to expect, some field guides, simple recipes if you choose to forage, blah blah blah. There's even a chapter on when and how to drink your own pee." It was a subsection, not a whole chapter, but she didn't care to correct herself.

She rested her elbows on her knees, continuing to crouch for the time being. "I want to find that group of supers that people are always talking about. Have you heard anything about them?"

 

[simulationanomaly]

Before he could comprehend the absolute flurry of noise and motion he had just unleashed, Ryan was suddenly face-to-face with a book. The lamination caught his eye almost immediately, and he took the book to investigate. Sure enough, it was an old world style paperback, just like the ones his settlement had scavenged for their library. Only, upon taking one glance at the title and a quick thumb through the pages—a subsection titled "how to survive a fire bear attack" as well as a list of known settlements caught his eye— he realized that these details all pointed towards a book written in this current era. His face kept that mild annoyance, but his eyes were glimmering with fascination. This wasn't just some guy's composition book with a title slapped on it, this was a properly-made paperback with illustrations, a table of contents—there was even one of those "thank you to my friends and family" type blurbs at the front that no one reads. He was so engrossed in these details that he didn't even have the mind to comment on the piss-drinking chapter. He'd keep that in his back pocket for now.

"Did your people live out of an old book factory or something?" he mused, not sure if he was talking to himself or his new companion. "This is the most competently-made survival guide I've seen so far. Though, your competition is a loose-leaf mess in a three-ring binder buried somewhere in my old settlement, so don't get a big head about that."

Then, she started talking about the legendary super colony, and he was right back to rolling his eyes. The only people who believed in that old legend were the incredibly bigoted mundane and the desperate supers. It was a fairytale for the wasteland age, a bogeyman for the purists. All these whispers of highly-trained supers with incredible control over their abilities all living in a military group somewhere in the deep wastes—please. Every super he had ever met was just like him: they exert themselves too hard and suddenly they're on death's door hacking up blood.

Then again, maybe the bleeding was just a him thing. He wasn't sure.

"I heard that if you're a good kid, they'll leave a gun with ammo under your pillow," he said with a scoff, though his gaze remained humorless as ever. "Honestly though, I've heard the same rumors as most of the nomads and settlements in the area. That there's a group of supers somewhere—sometimes they say a blast crater, sometimes it's an old melted-down reactor—with extreme control over their powers. Some also claim them to be more powerful than the average super. Pyrokinetics who can melt through bunker walls, speedsters who can lap the continent in minutes, things like that. It's all just heresay, though. Why waste your breath hunting myths like that?"

 

[Pine]

Araceli laughed over his musings, albeit a little awkwardly. She couldn't actually tell if he was trying to make a joke or not. Either way, in her experience, pretending like a man was funny was the best way to keep them from prying further, so she did it out of habit.

Just as soon, though, he was mocking her again. This time about her very ambitions.

She stood back up and set her fists on her hips. "Ha ha," she said in her most unamused tone.

Without warning, she swiped to snatch her book back.

She knew a lot of people dismissed the group as nothing more than a fantasy, so his response didn't surprise her, but the skepticism this man had for everything she said was starting to grate her.

"Think about it for a minute," she said. "We know that supers like us have existed for a long time. Generations before us. And we know that humans without powers have never, ever trusted us. Do you really think after all this time, no one has ever tried to make a single community?"

 

[simulationanomaly]

Well, that was rude. Was a man not allowed to ask questions anymore? Failing to catch the contradictions in his own internal dialogue, he went right back to his task of cleaning off his lab coat. The pot had been at a rolling boil for—fuck, how long? This girl was a great distraction. Maybe he could just leave her with some raiders if things got dicey. He was sure it had been long enough, and he carried out his routine once again. As he poured it out, the hiss snagged him by the ears and he found himself stumbling forward slightly, catching himself by the head. Fuck, that headache was beginning to teeter into migraine territory. He could see the auras. No doubt, that girl had accelerated it. Whatever. He'd just have to grit his teeth and weather through, just like every other time.

She was asking a question. Still whining on about the supergroup. What was she saying, that she thought he was doubting the existence of super-only settlements in general? Was she hard of hearing or just lacking in the auditory processing department? Because he couldn't recall ever denying that possibility in general. He went to the creek and fetched another pot of water, this time dumping some of it on his head first before grabbing the next batch to boil. This should do it. Then he could move on to his vest. He was starting to regret all the layers, but at least they served him well for the weather.

"I never said there aren't super settlements, Miss Fortune," he said, leering at her through squinted eyes. "I'm saying that the super settlement probably doesn't exist. Most supers I've met can barely use their powers without keeling over, or else they just have very minor abilities. Like having vague dreams of a guy by a creek and following them to the source. The rumors of them being high-powered just sounds... Unrealistic."

He all but tossed the pot back onto the fire, cursing himself for letting it slosh onto the pyre. At least it didn't put it out, just dulled the blaze somewhat. Steam and smoke billowed in a puff of defiance. "Like something from a kid's story, you know? Dragons, the Mass, ultra-strong supers, same thing."