Insomnia Wake #Wattys2016

Chapter 21 - Some People's Green Thumbs Are Just Too Good

"Where did you pests go?!" Havel beckoned, walking through the thickly wooded area around him. He tapped glass eyepiece over his eye, changing the numbers over it. "Pesky power. They can't stay in there forever though. Even though they can't be starved out like on earth they still have to breath at the very least."

In the darkness were three girls in hiding. Their enclosure was a completely black dome, hardly big enough for all of them to fit in. The dome didn't let any light pass through it at all, just like a black hole.

Two of the girls had an almost identical appearance. They wore traditional red chinese dresses that went down to their shins, but were somewhat open on the sides. They both had short black hair and both had a particularly long lock of hair next to their faces. One of them had it braided next to her left cheek, and the other had it beaded on her right side.

The third girl wore black and grey fur clothing which was striped in certain places such as around her neck. Everything from her boots to her hood were furry, and her moonlight grey eyes hid behind it all.

"If you won't come out, then I guess I'll just have to strangle you out!" On his command, the plants around him grew rapidly, constricting movement everywhere but in a given radius of him.

Inside the dome, plants started sprouting out of the ground.

"You forgot to seal the ground!" yelled the girl with the braided strand.

The eyes of the other twin-ish girl widened when she saw her mistake, and she tried to seal up the ground the best she could in a panic. Many of the plants had already grown past a manageable point though, and were slowly taking up the space within.

The last girl couldn't do anything but cower in a fetal position, terrified of what was to come.

They were running out of space quickly.

In a last ditch effort, the dome suddenly disappeared and one of the red girls created a small, pitch black dot in the air, and her lookalike flicked it. The dot shot through the plant matter and in a lucky shot passed right through Havel's eyepiece, shattering it.

He looked at the broken shards on the ground and the plants stopped growing. "Are you kidding me?! That's the second one this week!" His anger quickly converted to confidence. "Oh well, I saw some familiar soul signatures on my scanner to the north a second ago, so I should probably leave anyways. Don't think that you'll get away, though." He faced the general direction that the black dot came from, scaring the girls. "I'll be sure to finish the job regardless of where you run off to hide."

He pounced somewhere else in the blink of an eye, leaving them shaken and enclosed in the jungle like area.

"I-is he really gone?" asked the hooded girl, looking up from over her knees.

"Looks like it," said the braided girl, "but I don't think that he'll be gone for long. We need to find safety quickly. Rin, are there any good vantage points around here?"

The girl with the beads nodded. "There should be one not too far to the north."

"Alright, let's head there. Sounds like our pursuer didn't like a group of people heading this way, so if we can find them then we'll surely be in good hands." She stopped and looked at her friend in the fur. "Does that sound good, Catherine?"

"But Ren," she cried back, "even if we find them will I be safe?!"

"We can hope so," Ren replied. She scooted over to her and comforted her with a hug. "We can hope so..."

-----

"No, I can make the loudest noise!" yelled Ariel from atop the rocket couch.

Please no, we're all within a few feet of you, Ariel.