Globe Tracers 3: Heritage of Triad

Chapter 18: We can do it!- Attack!

Kyle:

The next few days passed. Xao and J-Star trained hard and we ran drills on how things might go. I was actually surprised by Jay and how quickly she evolved her skills. She was able to come pretty close to trouncing Xao most of the time. She had a pretty hard time getting around my magnet but she was still able to get the drop on me a few times.

One time Xao and I both ran at her at once as part of a drill.

"Get her down!" I shouted, tipping her off quickly to our goal. She stood by a tree with her back turned to us. I jumped on her back- landing on the ground as when she had stopped ACTUALLY standing there who knew.

I quickly fired a magnet forward, planting it on a nearby tree and activating it. All three of us were suddenly pulled towards the magnet. My eyes went wide, looking for telltale signs of involuntary falling or- a super bright strobe light flashing at both of us boys. I hit the ground as I turned off the magnet.

I blinked several times, feeling around as- a loud sound shot out around me, forcing me to grab my ears.

I looked around to see- yep, Xao was on the ground, one handcuffed to the opposite ankle. I was then in short order grabbed and slammed into the ground, arms held down and out.

The girl giggled as she looked at me. "Suppose you want me to congratulate you?" I asked.

"Might mean something if you didn't suck so bad," was her cocky reply.

"You are not winning next time."

I spied on the leprechaun camp one more time in the middle of the second day... they had a virtual army going... what exactly were we going to do?

I poured over my notes for a plan.

Their forces were composed of maybe around ten or so hunters and nearing a hundred mimics. Only the leprechauns themselves were able to fight at range, but them churning out forces like this... they couldn't be doing that just because they were worried. They knew someone was out here.

I asked Xao for help.

"Hm... how did you spy on them?" he asked as we sat down to look at my papers.

"There's a cliff on the south side of the camp that overlooks it," I said.

"Throw an explosive off that cliff we could take out a good number of mimics if they're bunched up. How are they laid out?"

"The mimics don't seem to be moving with a purpose, they just mill about," I said. "They bunch up. Both ideal and bad at the same time. We could destroy a number with one attack, or one explosive would be absorbed by a smaller number than ideal because it wouldn't be able to get past the first group of fake bodies... fake bodies." I bit my lip.

Xao sighed. "What you said the other day, not sitting well with you is it?"

I looked up from my notes clenching my teeth "Why can't anything be simple about this?" I asked. "Why can't we just be attacking a bunch of weird leprechaun creations? I keep thinking back to that squad- when we met them. They had fear, they wanted to live, they had intelligence... like the gargoyles when our parents came down to earth right? They're not like us of course, which the gargoyles weren't either. They're not human... our parents declared gargoyles to just be monsters." I looked at the ground. "In my mind, I justify destroying them using the same reasoning as my parents. Leprechauns are not like us, I reason, so that makes it okay... we both know attitude matters so, what attitude should I take?"

Xao paused.

"This is the point where you tell me how I'm supposed to look at this," I said.