Chapter 77 - Hunters

Marius went off alone to find a police officer while Mike recovered from the aftermath of their literal flight and the following fight. Sitting cross-legged on the trunk of the tree that had almost ended his life, Mike worked on his clearing. He didn't like the fact that the kinetics he would be facing were stronger than him. He liked even less the fact that he had killed a man. But what he liked least of all was the fact that Marius would let him die if he couldn't handle himself in battle. All of that added up quite obviously to the conclusion that he needed to get the clearing thing figured out as soon as possible.

Mike once more studied the pile of residue in his mind, prodding at it with precursor and wishing he could directly manipulate the residue instead of the clumsy secondary approach he had to use. He piled up some more residue by creating waves of precursor, then packing it in by creating pressure around it. And then he had an epiphany. The early stages of clearing -- piling and compacting -- could be done automatically if he drew out the precursor in more of a spiral flow so that the force of it automatically deposited residue in the proper area. He began to play around with the method he had intuited and then reached out with his corona to lift the fallen tree he sat on. It rose into the air at a glacial pace. He couldn't be sure, but he didn't think he could have lifted the hefty trunk just a few minutes ago. Quite likely he had given himself another little boost in strength. Not enough, but it was something.

His mentor dropped down beside him with a scowl on his face. "They're going straight east along interstate eighty. Small towns on the way are being harassed. It also looks like some of the inmates are being killed en route and their bodies are being dropped from the sky onto the roadway. Speculation is they are heading for New York City."

"That's bad," Mike said.

"I understand it's a big city."

"Yeah."

"We're going to try catching them before they make it there," Marius said. "Though they have a serious head start on us. I'm oddly impressed that Zellar Wilson is moving over a hundred new kinetics so quickly. That's not even accounting for how rapidly his crew is gaining competence. He must be better at replicating our old teacher's motivational methods than I am. Wilson is not a creature of empathy, Mike. He is cold, calculating . . . maybe a bit of a coward, but all the more dangerous because of it."

"And you're going to use me to flush him out," Mike said.

Marius grinned. "Isn't it great to feel needed?"

"I don't see any point complaining about your self serving behavior. You obviously see me as an expendable resource."

"Mike, you really need to get over it. You were a loser before I elevated you. And if you prove to be a loser as a paragon, then I can train up someone else to take your place. If you want to be important for real, you need to become a full paragon. That's the ticket, my friend. Now it's time to fly again."

They lifted into the air and began hurtling east once more, finding the ribbon of interstate as they went. Marius piled on accelaration until they were at the same cheek-flapping speed as their previous journey. Mike hardened his body, warmed himself, and squinted through his teary eyes. Brief stops to hover over towns impacted by the terrorists punctuated the ordeal of flight. At times, the people on the ground would notice them and point. Once, someone even shot at them. They always moved on quickly, though. There was no point to sticking around when their prey had already moved onward.

The daylight fully expired before they reached their destination, forcing them to ground themselves for the night. Marius chose to camp on a hillside overlooking the interstate. He built a makeshift structure by leaning several large stones against one another and then using pressure and the teleotic talent to weld them into a single structure. Inside their housing, he heated the walls until they gave off a pleasant warmth and then settled down to sleep. Mike found himself asleep in moments.

Predawn chill brought him back awake, shivery and tight in every joint. Mike began to warm himself up with his corona.

"Don't get too comfortable, we leave as soon as it is light enough to see the road," Marius said.

"I'm guessing a stop for breakfast is out of the question."

"We're hunters. We eat after we've taken our prey."

Mike sat in the darkness until Marius grew impatient, then they took to the sky once more, flying slowly to follow the interstate below, which was only visible due to the headlights of traffic. They peeled off from I-80 onto I-280 to follow street signs towards New York City. By that time, dawn's light had illuminated the landscape sufficient for them to move a little faster. As gray predawn gave way to an orangish morning light, their eyes finally caught something more than roadway, building lights, and street signs. In the near distance, planes descended upon an airport in an erratic dance, their movements shaky and unnatural. Mike stared in bafflement for a few minutes of their journey as the realization slowly came to him. The planes were not moving entirely in accordance with the principles of aerodynamics. Kinetics were involved.

Marius seemed to come to the same conclusion. "Go stop them, Mike."

"I could use your help."

"It's a solo mission."

"There are more lives at stake than just mine. A lot of innocent people could get hurt if one of those planes lands wrong."

"I accept that risk. Get moving, Mike. And be more aggressive this time. You have more tools than them."

He shot forward and upwards, aiming towards the center of the swerving planes. There were three of them, each skidding about midair. One of them had begun to take a dive, though as Mike neared he realized that it was more accurate to say that its tail was being lifted. Each of the three planes had a human figure flying about its flanks, looking like wolves harassing sheep.

Mike went straight for the man tailing the plane with its tail in the air. As he rapidly approached, the man turned to face him. Too late. Suspecting his corona wrestling was not up to snuff, Mike had decided to fall back on what he did best. He struck hard with his shoulder into the man's abdomen, seizing a body lock to prevent them from separating after the hard contact. As the two of them spun through the sky, Mike climbed his grips higher onto his opponent, moving one hand at a time so that they stayed connected. When he had both hands cradling the crown of the man's head, Mike pulled down as he drove his knee straight up, throwing his hips in aggressively as he hardened his knee to endure the impact. The contact rocked the man. Mike withdrew and struck again, this time his knee being blocked by the man's arms.

Mike wrapped his legs around his opponent to maintain control, took one hand off the back of the head, and drove a hardened elbow at the temple one, two, three times. The man moved feebly to defend that and Mike transitioned to palm striking directly at the nose. By this point, the man's corona had faded as the repeated concussive strikes broke his concentration. Mike took advantage of that by performing a brain push. He unwrapped his legs to let the body drop to the tarmac below.

He reoriented himself in a moment and then shot towards the next closest opponent. That guy saw Mike's approach and abandoned his plane to join up with the third man. Then the retreat turned into an advancement as the two men moved to surround Mike. Before the action began, Mike saw the planes had begun to pull away, no longer on the verge of crashing. At least that worked out, he thought. When the men made it close enough that their stronger coronas began to batter his, Mike sent out a vicious meme blast and the men wobbled in the air.

Mike wasted no time. He accelerated himself to full speed and hit the closer of the two in the face with a literal flying knee. The followup brain push killed the man instantly.

Having attacked the one, however, he had moved far enough away from the other that the man could recover his faculties enough to sum up the situation. The man swore at him in Spanish and then began to fly away in the direction of New York City, just across the river.

Mike caught the man by his ankle, which proved to be a mistake as the man pulled on that leg to drive the other foot back at Mike's face. Even with his hardened body, the blow rocked his brain. Even as Mike made a mental note that he needed to figure out how to harden the contents of his skull against knockouts, he used the grip on the ankle he still held and flipped his body around to invert in the air to that their heads were pointing in opposite directions.

He clamped his knees above a single one of his opponent's knees, then used his grip on the guy's shoe to twist the foot in a circular fashion while the upper leg remained immobilized. He felt the snapping of ligaments. As the man screamed, Mike grabbed clothes and shucked himself around to his opponent's back, where he seized a rear naked choke and squeezed with adrenaline-fueled intensity until the man went limp. One brain push later, a body dropped into the Newark Bay.