Ancient Forces (2018 Reboot)

Chapter 26 - The Rumble After the Storm

It was eight in the evening now. Police, ambulances, and firetrucks had been in and out of the assembly hall over and over again, all of them checking and rechecking the same things. The reports were all the same. The show goes into intermission, strange wolf monster shows up, everyone comes under attack, strange scaled human shows up, they fight, scale human wins and runs off. The police had no idea how to go with this other than to compare it to their previous cases of strange incidents. The information didn't match up with anything in their previous cases except one. The Midnight Horror. The Midnight Horror was a massive, scaled monster according to reports. A scaled human was oddly similar, wasn't it? But the information about a 'Thunder Fang' was new, and everyone was stumped by the question: Why were they fighting? What were their separate purposes?

From the police's eyes, they were both strange freak monsters that had been in the same place at the same time. They'd both been reported to have cognitive human thinking skills, so animal-like instincts to protect territory was out of the question. Why had they fought each other? The question was brewed down to a simple statement that many eyewitnesses agreed with. The simple was this. Thunder Fang came to attack people, then the scaled kid came in at the right moment and stopped him. Many believed there was some hidden purpose to this, but the overall crowd agreed with the basic statement since they'd seen it first hand.

But very soon it wasn't just the local populace. The people who had recorded everything had very quickly uploaded it. After a few hours, the video was viral, and the entire population of the United States was freaking out about the incident. Theories and articles were thrown out all over the place within those few hours, and many people were wrapped up so deep into this stuff that they started calling it aliens and government experiments gone wrong. Others who were paranoid but inquisitive about this kind of thing were scarily close to the truth. The government was hiding something, or maybe they didn't even know about it in the first place. In the end, by the time nine rolled around, almost everyone on the North American and South American continents knew about the event and had voiced some sort of opinion.

Zayne waited and waited on the roof of the main college building a distance from the assembly hall waiting for Ver like he was instructed. Ver would have been coming out of the on-field therapy care about now, and it would take her only minutes to come to find him. He sat on the edge of the building, his body glowing dimly so no one could see him, but he would still be warm enough to not freeze up here. Thunder Fang was still knocked out cold, but just as a precaution, Zayne had drilled a hunk of concrete over him and trapped him to the floor. He wasn't about to mess up with this capture as he did with Arachnid at the school. Then again, there wasn't anyone to stop him this time around. The wind howled and Zayne's shirt up a little bit, his glowing orange skin meeting the cold, outside world. He quickly yanked the shirt down and rubbed his hands together, creating the friction he needed, then planted them on his chest and let the heat flow through him.

Another abnormally aggressive push of wind made Zayne think twice about the weather pattern. He turned around and saw Ver on the other end of the building. She looked somewhat relieved, but at the same time, Zayne saw a deep sorrow hidden below her face. He got up and walked over to her, giving her a bright smile.

"I got another one," Zayne nodded to the Mythic in accomplishment.

"Yeah. You did," Ver replied in a mellow tone.

"What's wrong?" Zayne asked.

Ver sighed and turned away from Zayne, her long hair blocking his view of her face, "You know exactly what's wrong Zayne. I saw the realization in your face right after the fight. Why'd you do it?"

"What do you mean why did I do it? You were all going to die," Zayne answered in confusion.

"But letting us die would have prevented the news from getting out," Ver argued, still looking away.