Satyr Play 03 Pt. 01

"Shit!" Crane exclaimed.

Sam looked at his friends then back to the Colonel. "These things duking it out over a city would not be good. I don't know what effect the lightning would have on people, but I can't imagine it would be good." A sudden pang of guilt made him look to the new Silver People they'd made. "You should know, we get our energy from the lightning. I guess it's how we eat."

Jake scowled at Sam, but he just shrugged. He wasn't about to let them starve to death.

Brenda and Jeannie went back into the barn and returned with handfuls of the silver strips, handing them out to the soldiers. Brenda took the remaining strips back to the barn when they no longer melted into the soldier's skin.

"We have to leave," the Colonel said, looking at Sam.

"That's cool with us. It's up to you what happens to your people. We're just going to keep running as that's what feels best. We won't interfere with you. I'd like to ask that you do the same for us, but maybe you don't have that authority. I'm asking anyway. We'll just have to be more cautious." Sam realized his need to collect the stuff was gone. He looked to Jake, but he seemed oblivious.

"Take it slow at first," Jeannie said to Yablonski and touched his hand. The soldier's head whipped around to stare at her in shock as he'd felt her emotions! "That's just another bonus of being what we are," Jeannie giggled quietly.

"Let's go, people!" Crane bellowed.

Mick got her soldiers moving, and they followed the Colonel east, back to where their vehicles were waiting.

"Colonel, are we really going to be put in a lab and dissected? Cuz that sounds really awful, and I'd rather not," Yablonski said.

"How easy was it for this elite group of trained professionals to take down two farmhands and their wives?" Crane grumbled, and his team went silent then began to chuckle.

"We have a mission to protect civilians in Washington, DC." He looked at their expectant faces. "Anyone here have a problem with doing their duty?"

"NO, SIR!" they yelled out.

The sound they made was weird, but it forced a smile onto his face. Maybe the situation was fubar, but he felt better knowing his people weren't worse off for the experience and may actually be able to use these new abilities to secure the nation. He had his own squad of super soldiers.

"OOF!"

Crane looked back and saw Yablonski picking himself up off the ground. The man looked at him, sheepishly.

"Sorry, sir. My boot slipped off." He looked at the laces, but they were tight, so he tugged on the other one, and it came off too. "I'm too slippery for my boots?"

"I guess you don't need them," Gordon sighed.

The others quickly pulled off their boots as well.

He cast a troubled eye over the squad of shiny-faced barefoot soldiers he was bringing back to Washington with him.

His super soldiers. Right.

-=-

"Do ya think they'll leave us alone?" Jake asked Sam.

"Nah, I doubt it," Sam sighed.

"What was the point of telling them they could have all the stuff we collected?" Jake asked his friend.

Sam thought about what he'd told the Colonel. "It... I felt like that's what I was supposed to tell him. Totally weird."

"You know what's also weird? I don't feel that urge to collect it anymore," Brenda stated.

The others nodded as they realized the compulsion was gone.

"So, why were we doing that?" Jake asked.

"Maybe it was a mating instinct! We just made new people like us," Jake proposed.

Sam nodded slowly. "Maybe. That idea makes me uncomfortable, though." The others nodded in agreement.

"So... what do we do now?" Jake asked.

Sam smiled at his friends. "Since we've been outed by the Colonel, anyone feel like visiting the Nation's Capital? I hear there's a really big storm battle about to strike. Maybe we can do a little good there, too."

Four identical smiles beamed at each other then they zipped away.

Chapter 21

Henry grinned at Mahati's attempt to hide her smile. The afternoon had been perfect. Now, the two had finally managed to shed their escort and were enjoying the peaceful walk along the mall towards the Lincoln Memorial.

Peaceful, if not quiet.

They'd just visited the Washington Memorial and were just moving on when they found themselves within a large group of people with homemade signs and banners demanding the legalization of marijuana. The agents who were escorting them fell back, and they had privacy, at last, not counting the hundreds of people chanting their message around them.

Henry caught the eye of one of the agents behind them and pointed to the big memorial at the end of the mall. The man nodded, collecting his partners and briskly jogging towards the roadway. They'd likely catch a ride with the convoy of vehicles keeping pace with them.

Still, the afternoon was beautiful, and they were enjoying the sights and the sounds of Washington. The scent of pot coming from the group around them was pungent, so they slowed their pace to allow the others to move past them until they were left behind.

Henry rubbed at his nose. "Man! That's one special interest group you can identify easily."

Mahati chuckled as she looked around, noting they were finally alone. "Our hosts are quite persistent in attempting to recruit you. Their last offer was significant."

Henry grimaced. "Yeah, I wish they'd finally get the fact that I'm not interested. I don't need more money than I currently make. I have no desire to leave my friends."

"They do have some lovely museums. You seemed to quite enjoy them," Mahati remarked, referring to the hours they'd spent wandering through the Smithsonian and the Air and Space museums.

He glanced at her and saw her teasing smile. He shook his head with a grin. "Visits only." Henry decided to change the subject, so he turned the topic to her. "How are you enjoying living away from your family?"

Mahati looked at him in surprise but considered her answer before speaking. "I lived my whole life within the walls of my family's estate, surrounded by my family members. My mother was the ruler of the homestead and controlled the actions of everyone within. The only one who seemed to be able to skirt her rules was my sister Kali. Seeing this, I finally realized how limited my opportunities would be if I stayed and how I'd become a slave. So, I severed ties and struck out on my own. I was not prepared to take on such responsibilities, but at least they were my decisions." She smiled. "I was fortunate to have met Camila and Sigrid when I did. They gave me a wonderful place to live and purpose in my life."

Henry was smiling broadly. "I feel exactly the same way as they did the same for me."

They walked for a while, smiling as they recalled their good fortune.

Henry was curious about something she said. "How did Kali avoid the rigid rules of your home life?"

Mahati shrugged. "Kali is the youngest and showed little aptitude for magic. Mother had no use for her. She contributed nothing to the family business, so Mother ignored her."

Henry nodded slowly. "Leading to her being someone who stirs up trouble for others."

Mahati sighed and nodded. "Yes, I'm sure it's all an effort to gather attention, but it draws the wrong kind. She has come home beaten and bruised more than once— not since living with me! Earlier."

She frowned. "She has been rather occupied lately, since the night of the housewarming party. Something is on her mind, occupying her thoughts, something that makes her fidget and pace. I've asked her about it, but she won't open up to me."

Henry wondered what could possibly have shaken Kali that much. She was such a calm and cool shit disturber, always in control of the game.

They were almost to the Lincoln Memorial, and the pot protesters seemed to be gathering there. They were a happy bunch. There was a police presence, but they appeared willing to watch from the sidelines.

Henry felt a cold drop of rain land on the back of his neck. The hairs in that location all began to stand on end as the droplet sent tiny sparks through his nerves. He stopped walking and looked back towards the Capitol Building.

"Henry? What is it?" Mahati asked as she saw his smile drain away, replaced by an expression of dread. She looked back as well and saw two enormous thunderheads colliding over the city. Lightning suddenly shot down the side of one of them—brilliant white lightning. More droplets of rain arrived, and Henry felt them like mini-shocks. He turned to Mahati. "We have to run!" He looked desperately for shelter and pointed to the large stone building ahead. "Get up those stairs and as far into the Memorial as you can."

"What's happening?" she asked, alarmed by the fear in Henry's voice.

"Those-those aren't normal clouds! Their lightning is filled with Wild Magic. They change people! The Glass People and the Silver People! We have to get everyone out of the rain. It's saturated with magic, too!" he exclaimed.

They began to run as people around them watched the approaching storm.

"Get to cover! Lightning storm coming!" Henry yelled.

The behemoths collided slightly north of the Capitol Building, and a brilliant flash of light exploded down their sides to strike the buildings and streets below. The thunder's boom hit the people in the Mall almost immediately, and every light within sight went out. Even the cars on the surrounding roads went dark.

Between Henry's fearful words and the boom, people finally began running until there was a stampede headed for the Lincoln Memorial.

Henry lost sight of Mahati and looked back. He stumbled to a halt as a distance behind him, a mother was pushing her baby carriage as fast as she could go, but she was also holding the hand of a three-year-old struggling to keep up. They were moving too slowly, and the monstrous clouds were getting closer.

"The children..." Henry wheezed from his suddenly tight chest. He couldn't leave them behind, so he began sprinting back through the crowd to get to the children. He burst free from the fleeing mass and poured on the speed.

As he got closer, he could feel every hair on his body beginning to stand on end. Little sparks were jumping between the strands, and he could taste something metallic. The rain was picking up, as was the wind, and soon he was drenched. The closer Henry got, the brighter the sparks snapping across his body became. It felt like his entire body was being pricked by pins and needles. The woman suddenly looked up at him and stopped with a look of fear on her face, clutching her child to her side.

Henry looked closely at her and realized her hair was as soaked as his, but hers wasn't attracting the sparks at all.

He looked past the woman and saw the tiny sparks leaping through the gap between himself and the approaching storm. He was a lightning rod! FUCK! He had to get away from her and the children! He spotted two young men running by.

"STOP!" he roared, and they froze in fear. "Help her get her children to cover!" he ordered, and they rushed to her and got her moving, one pushing her carriage and the other carrying her other child. He ran in the opposite direction, farther from them and closer to the oncoming storms. The sky darkened dramatically as the monsters rushed closer.

Another bolt of raw energy shot down the side of the clouds and struck the ground. The boom was immediate and knocked everyone off their feet.

He was terrified as he'd seen the horrific devastation these storms caused. Everywhere he looked to find shelter, he saw people huddled. There were still too many people in the park. He saw a cluster of people huddled under their drooping protest signs. They were all drenched.

"GET TO COVER!" he shouted at them, pointing back towards the Memorial. Most dropped their signs when they fell onto their asses in shock as they saw a man covered in lightning shouting at them.

Cursing in fear, he knew he had to distance himself from them as well, so he pushed onwards, running parallel to the reflecting pool. Ahead, he saw another group of people staggering around in the rain, so he slammed to a halt. He cast around for somewhere to go but realized the clouds were almost upon him. He turned and saw the first group he'd told to run for cover were actually running towards him instead! Henry realized he had nowhere to go to avoid people. He contemplated running across the pool, but he had no idea how deep it was, and he couldn't swim.

As a feeling of hopelessness filled him, he was suddenly facing four of the Silver People. He recalled seeing them help the Glass People escape through an opening to Eden. He desperately pointed to the two groups of people. "Please! Please, save them! Get them to shelter! Get them away from me! I'm drawing the lightning."

He watched them look at each other, then they were gone. Henry couldn't feel his legs anymore as the prickling got worse. Maybe he should have asked them to carry him away from the area, but that wouldn't have saved the people from the lightning.

The clouds were almost overhead when the next bolt struck downward... and leaped sideways to slam down over him.

His vision filled with blue-white light, and his hearing was overwhelmed with the sound of his blood rushing through his veins. He quickly lost all sensation of his body as his feet slowly lifted a few inches off the ground.

"HENRY! We need your help!"

He struggled to recognize the voice which seemed to be coming from all around him.

"They're being tortured! You must save them!"

It was... Xiong! Henry didn't recall seeing any openings to Eden.

"Please, Henry!" The voice was coming through the magic!

"Where... where are they?" he asked.

In his mind, he saw a large metal hanger on the edge of a desert. Inside were the Glass People from Kuwait City. The darkness within wasn't absolute as the metal sheeting on the walls had holes in it, and the searchlights from the guard towers occasionally passed over the building's surface, sending little beams of light across the starving beings inside.

Henry's rage flashed, and he reached for them, his mind leaping across the distance. With the power flowing through him from the lightning strike and Xiong's help, he cracked open small tears under each of the captive beings, dropping them onto a grassy field on Eden, then let the tears seal up as he moved to the next group.

Shouts of anger rang out from the guards who watched their prisoners drop through the floor and vanish.

Once the hanger was empty, Henry was exhausted and wanted to rest, but Xiong pointed him to another building next to the hanger. There were three more Glass People chained to metal columns. Various tools like industrial stone cutters, acetylene torches, and arc welders littered the floor around them. Six Human men stood in the room, smoking, talking, and gesturing to the being they managed to crack. Henry looked closer and saw it... it... it had been a child.

Henry roared as his rage exploded. The small building's windows shattered, and the men dropped to the floor as if the building was being fired upon. The floor beneath them suddenly vanished, and each fell through. The drop was maybe ten feet at most, but they didn't land on Eden's soft red grasses. Instead, they fell onto one of the lava flows. Their terrified shrieks and painful screams were quickly extinguished as the molten rock consumed them.

Henry's rage faded as quickly as his victim's cries, and with it went his strength. Xiong was next to him immediately.

"Let us bring these three home," Xiong said softly to him.

Henry looked at the three columns once more and opened a tear beneath their feet. The weight of the building resting on the pillars drove them down through the tear. Henry released the rip between the dimensions once the posts were through and struck the grass. This severed the tops from the building, which continued to collapse in the desert on the other side of the planet from Henry.

But he was unconscious by then.

-=-

For the first time in recorded history, people witnessed cloud-driven lightning striking the same spot for forty-seven continuous seconds. Too bright to watch directly and too loud to endure from close range, the display went on as the witnesses huddled under the protection of the shelters they'd run to or were carried to by the surprisingly fast yet gentle Silver People.

What began as four silver streaks rushing around the Mall, physically plucking people up and carrying them to whatever shelter might be nearby, became two dozen silver streaks, as a second larger group joined in. Surprising some of the rescued people, they saw the second group was wearing US military uniforms.

The lightning had been a continuous uncontrolled drain from the clouds above, and they'd begun to glow a brilliant yellow from deep within their cores. The near-simultaneous detonation of the glowing things within the monstrous clouds ripped them apart, and within seconds they dropped their mass as rain. The massive boom of the dual explosion shook the ground, and the huddled people cried out in alarm.

Many had tried to record the scene with their cell phones only to find the devices were dead, knocked out by multiple EMP bursts from the clouds. It was still dark, and everyone was wet.

With the clouds' destruction, the sky began to lighten, allowing the early evening light to filter down.

In the densely packed Lincoln Memorial, Mahati was struggling to contain her panic. She'd gotten separated from Henry, and she couldn't find him. She wasn't the only one calling out to find a missing companion, so the noise made it impossible for her to hear his response.

She pushed closer to the outer edge of the crowd and saw a woman with two children standing next to two young males gushing about their encounter with a Lightning God.

"He was fuckin' glowing, man! His eyes were lit up white from within, and electricity was jumping all over him!" one male exclaimed excitedly.

"I thought he was coming for my children, but he stopped and told these two to help me get to safety. They saved my family!" the woman said before bursting into tears and hugging the two young men who were looking very pleased with themselves. Everyone loves a hero!

Mahati pushed past. That couldn't have been Henry. He didn't have powers like that. She reached the steps and spotted one of Wallace Granger's agents scanning the crowd. He spotted her at the same time. "Ms. Chandra! Where is Mr. Gable?" he called out.

"We got separated in the run to the Memorial," she said as she looked around.

"Henry, where are you?" she thought in desperation.

-=-

Sam and his group, as well as the changed soldiers, had finished moving people to safety, so they rushed back to the strike zone to see a crumpled body lying face down in the center of a scorched ring of grass and dirt. As the burning snuffed out quickly in the falling rain, the well-trodden ground sprouted new grass and flowers pushed through to bloom before their eyes.

Brenda tried to step into the ring but cried out in pain, and Jake pulled her back.

The ground was radiating so strongly, none of them could get close. They felt their energy levels climbing as they soaked in the power radiating from the circle.

"What the fuck is happening?" Yablonski gasped.

"It's like the wheat in the field where the lightning struck," Jake said, and eyes turned towards him. He looked a little embarrassed, but he took on the educator's role at Sam's grin and urging. "Everyone join hands, and I'll show you what we saw."

They were circling the spot and had just enough people to touch hand to hand all the way around. The soldiers were stunned by the openness of the communications and how fast it was. They saw what Sam and Jake witnessed that first night and how the wheat had been affected. Sam also shared how they'd become Silver People. Jeannie squealed in protest as their lovemaking was included, and they all saw how chubby she'd been then. Sam chuckled and sent his love to her, letting the others feel that as well. Then they released their hands.