A Beast with a Smile
Chapter 24 (Elly): When the Thunder Strikes

My eyes partially opened to the gaping smile of Velicity who was sitting next to me, rubbing her hands together, forming little sparks of static electricity.

“Clear!” she screamed, slamming her hands flat on my chest.

I felt a rush of energy as my body began to reboot. The electricity felt warm as it swam through my blood to my heart. I loved the feeling; it made me perceive the comfortableness and normality that I lose when my body is deprived of electricity. The shock shot me upright and gasping for air.

“Time for school already? “I muttered sarcastically.

Velicity smiled like the little dove she was.

“You passed out on the way to school,” she laughed, fixing a stray hair that had fallen out of the bun I didn’t remember making.

She had put my hair into a tight perfect bun and my bright yellow armor was sparkling in the sun like it was freshly polished.

“Did you?”

“Sorry,” she apologized after noticing my complexion, “I couldn’t help myself. You must understand that I can’t control it. When I see something is out of place I have to fix it and your hair was all frizzled and your armour had little scuffs and dirt on it.”

She scratched her pixie cut gently from side to side. I rolled my eyes and sat up looking out the open hatch at a bright blue sky with coal black clouds conspiring in the background. The ramp was planted firmly on the green grass of a peak that dropped into a never-ending pit.

“We are landed? Where is Archy and Scarlett? And why is there not a five-year-old warrior running around poking me with his wooden sword?” I demanded.

She bit her lip and tried to avoid my eyes. I thought that I had dreamt the tale, but my world is filled with disappointment.

“Are they dead?” I asked, trying to keep my anxiety in my stomach, and not in my back.

She opened her mouth and then quickly closed it, rethinking her answer, “We don’t know. Mother didn’t think it was best for us to stop and check on them. She recommended strongly that… well… getting power for the city was more important than jumping out after our friends.”

I tried to hold back my anger. I knew it wasn’t Woodrow’s or Velicity’s fault that we abandoned our siblings and the girl we just rescued, the one who brought me back to life.

Yeah, we Atom’s really know how to show our gratitude, I thought to myself, feeling sick to the idea of being branded an Atom.

“Do we at least know where they are? Or if they are even safe? God Clark is just a child!” I yelled.

She bit her lip again, twiddling her fingers at light speed to the point where her fingers looked like a fan going full speed. Her face had a sense of contemplation that gave up their answer before they even said it.

“We…”

“Don’t know,” I assumed.

“Yes. I’m sorry. Please don’t be mad,” she answered, finally meeting my eyes.

“How are you not mad?” I glared.

“Because Mother told me not to be,” she explained with an awkward kid like smile.

I felt the rage bellowing in me and I knew there would be two lightning storms if I didn’t get some fresh air. I arose from the metal floor and stormed off down the ramp.

“Oh, Mother? I need to speak with you. OBSVR? Anyone? Who do I need to chew out for leaving my brothers somewhere?” I spoke on the telecom, hoping it would come off sarcastically and vengeful.

The air was cool and dry with a small amount of heat between the gaps of wind. Everything smelt like pine needles and everywhere my eyes touched a grove of trees stood tall in their way.

“Trees grow like weeds here,” Woodrow said behind me, startling me.

He was a sneaky one; he always hid in the branches of tall trees, eating an apple or some kind of fruit. He dropped from the branches of a tall pine tree and landed next to me. He was eating a pine cone.

“That’s disgusting,” I grimaced.

“Very healthy for you. You should try some. It tastes like a hamburger.”

“You’ve been a vegetarian your whole life. How would you know what a hamburger taste like?” I shouted with irritation.

“Don’t worry too much about Clark. Archy can handle himself. He went through the same training program as all of us and if I’m not mistaken he was your partner,” he smiled and offered me an apple that had sprung from a branch above.

I pushed his apple bearing arm away from me and said, “I told Archy and I’ll tell you. I don’t eat things that appear out of thin air. Capeesh? Now explain to me why I can’t yell at my un-biological sister/mom.”

I could tell he was displeased by rejection.

“We lost signal right before we landed. The last thing we got was a scrambled transmission from OBSVR. We couldn’t understand it, but I assume it has to do with there being no power. These mountains are probably the source of our connection issues and the storm isn’t helping either,” he answered with wandering eyes of defeat.

He was older than me by two or three years, so him being led by a minor was already salt in the wounds and the rejection of his kindness didn’t help his mood. He shook away the disappointment in his eyes and put on a mask of tolerance and obedience.

“The rain will set in soon. We need to get the Collector ready. We don’t want to miss the fireworks.”

“The second we are done here we are going to pick up the ones we left behind,” I ordered.

He bowed in mockery, then began the process I have seen a thousand times over in a thousand different locations. The ship carried a large circular machine that Archy built as a generator for the facility. It was supposed to be able to harness the power of lightning bolts, similar to my abilities; however, unlike me, power cables tend to explode into a massive ball of flames with that high of an energy surge. That is where I came in.

The first time I experienced this, Tyler had strapped the machine and me against my will to the highest, flimsiest tower in the facility and waited for the next lightning storm. I was up there for two days as a human lightning magnet and my lucky bolt finally struck the generator. I felt the bolt hit my chest; the surge of power was one of the greatest feelings I had ever felt. I touched the generator on accident and every ounce of the energy was drained into the machine.

The ropes they used to suspend me up there had burst into flame and the embers danced around me like children. I still had the scars on my arms and wrists from the rope melting into my arms until I was resurrected, then every scar that wrote my story left only story’s. Tyler had told everyone that I was sent on a sensitive intel mission and that I would be gone for a few days.

Archy still says that was the last straw, that I was the reason we rebelled. The legends will say that Scavenger built the city in a night with a million clones working at light speed, but they will never mention how bad of a builder a million of one mind can be. The place was chaotic, out of control, and very unsafe, but it was home, a home for all the Atom family.

Woodrow pulled the new modified generator out from the ship’s storage bay by forceful domination of a large tree branch. The wood would twist and curve to any shape he wanted and act however he desired. The bark transformed into an immersive god sized hand that picked up the Collector like a child’s toy. Another row of trees also conformed to his will, crafting a wooden platform on the edge of the peak. They spread out into perfectly placed planks, then more trees walked across the backside of the hill and rerouted beneath the platform as natural log pillars.

The branches poked through the slots in the wood, forming railings along the edges. When his boardwalk was complete, he and his hand tree walked to the end of it and placed the generator in a secure position. The hand split into just one finger which pressed against the top of the circular generator, holding it tight in place while the other half splintered into two clamps on each side of the generator, pinning it to the board walk.

“Thank you,” Woodrow whispered as the pine tree sank into the boardwalk, shredding it’s leaves and needles and forming to the planks.

Woodrow held out his arms and began to twist them to the underside of his palm, making the wood turn from a light brown to a very dark brown.

“Do you believe him about that being hard as steel?” Velicity asked behind me.

“I have to believe something or else I’ll always think I’m going to fall.”

“When I make wood, it is harder than any metal known to man. If it broke, an Atom bomb would have had to blow it up,” Velicity added.

“Don’t remind me. Velicity, keep watch and patrol the area for anyone. We weren’t supposed to land, remember?”

She nodded with approval, then vanished out of sight.

Thunder cracked in the distance and rain began to drizzle. It wasn’t soon after that the sky became the ocean. I could feel the lightning in the clouds, it made my hairs raise and my heart beat. The sky would flash with the preliminary futile bolts that meant nothing to me.

“Why are you sitting there? Start absorbing them,” Woodrow shouted over the rain.

He stood at the end of the bridge, far away from the danger. I pretended like I couldn’t hear him and paid attention to the mother lode of bolts. I could feel the air lose all static as the beast began to feed. My helmet was drenched in rain; I could feel the droplets begin to spark as I thrusted my hands into the air, summoning the lightning to my command. There was a crack that broke the sky with white blood and then a rush of power filled my body.

It was the most pleasing thing that I had ever experienced, and I never wanted to get rid of it. My body felt stronger, faster, and more agile when I was fully charged. I reluctantly grabbed the handle of the generator and felt the pleasure leave and fill another. The generator couldn’t take anymore, and I was left with more than enough electricity to fill my desires.

I looked at the end of the bridge to see Woodrow fixed in fear and stuck in one position. I tried to find what he was so scared of until I realized he was looking at me.

“What? Do I have a boogie or something?” I shouted.

“You...you...” he couldn’t spit the words out.

“Look at the sky, Elly,” Velicity answered as she appeared next to me.

I looked up and saw the clouds had vanished and only a bright blue sky was left. The water around me was evaporating in a thick steam and the rest of the rain followed in a similar manner. A slight haze filled the valley below and the mountains above. An eel made of electricity slithered along my body, hunting down the surviving droplets.

“I did that? All I did was absorb a bolt.”

“No, you threw the bolt,” Woodrow finally spit out while walking towards us, “Elly, you just cast the bolt that killed the clouds.”

I could see blue lightning floating in the mist and a constant wave of electricity would shoot across the waves of clouds like an electric current. The mountain appeared through all the haze. The sun made its native trees a bright healthy green; the sides faded in the distance with their majestic purple valleys and long sloped hills that reached past the stars. The peak was the best part. It stood high into the sky and shone brightly.

For the first time in a long time I was able to forget everything and dismiss my stress and distrust for the world to admire the natural beauty and perfection of nature. The fantasy was quickly destroyed.

Black SUV’s were pulling up at the base of the hill just below our platform. Multiple military helicopters flew overhead, destroying our ear drums as they hovered above us. I had to act fast or the whole city would be paying for my mistake, again.

“Woodrow, get the Collector on the ship. Velicity, run around us as fast as possible. I want you to create a smoke screen out of the dust. Now hurry. We don’t have too much time.”

Woodrow nodded and began to deform the bridge, his tree companions reforming into their more natural states. The pine needles flew back to their owners as if they were reversing in time. One formed into a massive hand and picked up the Collector, taking it back towards the ship. Woodrow walked behind it, flailing his arms around like a madman giving the trees battle plans.

Two rerooted themselves in the soil at the end of the board walk and formed into wooden machine gun turrets. The others took spots around us to give us cover from bullet fire. Velicity began her sprint, kicking up as much dust as there was sand. Soon enough, her vortex was spinning into a dust tornado, growing higher with every gyration. The helicopter was blinded, trapped in a vortex of muck and mud with no way out.

Just like the good old days, I thought to myself with a half grin.

I could still feel the current in the air. I wondered if I could harness it to buy us a little more time. I held out my hands to try to move the blue wave to where I pleaded for it to go. It was resistant and shook unevenly through the mist and clouds, but it jumped through the helicopter, separating the blades from their host. The chopper began to spin and fall out of control. The whirlpool finished the job by snatching onto the tail and tossing it like a hacky sack across the plains.

The sound of metal crunching against iron trees rang in my ears. The turret trees began to return fire with a thousand pine needles a second. Woodrow was securing the Collector in the storage while his handy tree had taken the shape of a large shield and protected him from any stray bullets. Velicity’s vortex was doing a superb job of keeping us away from the onslaught of bullets until three little red dots entered her arena. They followed in pursuit, tracking her wherever her journey took her. In a matter of seconds, I heard a way too familiar clunk as she went sailing past me and caught by a defending tree.

“Are you ok?” I asked, running over to help her down.

“Yes, just took a nice clunk to the head. Nothing to worry about. Had my fair share of Atom’s advanced tracer rounds to walk off the pain.”

Her helmet had a scuff on it from the impact. I refrained from alerting her or else she would be spending half the battle trying to clean it. Her vortex was beginning to sink and stager.

“Can you stand?”

“I don’t know, but can’t let the fuzz get us, right?” she laughed, failing to stand, “You know what? I feel rather dizzy.”

Her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she fell hard into my arms.

“Woodrow! Could use some help over here!” I screamed.

He spun around and commanded the nearest tree to become a hand. The pine tree shrunk to a small hand that enclosed Velicity in its grasp and waddled onto the ship at a rapid pace. With Velicity out of the fight I had to pick up the slack. Channeling the current was much more difficult while being shot at, but the wave moved over the black SUV’s with surprising fluency.

A burning sensation pierced my side and I lost my breath to the pain. Reluctantly, I looked down to see a black smudge burned on my armor. Blood ran from the hole and dripped to the ground steaming. The storm in my eyes was more powerful than ever; I felt it in and outside of me. I screamed in pain and released the bottled-up emotions.

The sky turned a cruel black and gray before releasing an onslaught of lightning bolts over the entire valley. I could hear muffled screams in the distance as Atom’s men fled the deadly storm.

“You cowards! We finally have them right where we want them, and you run off like babies scared of a little storm,” a spoiled brat shouted in the distance.

I found the strength to climb to my feet and shouted, “Because unlike you, they actually have brain cells.”

He stood in a jeep with a megaphone and wore his gray colored armor that he had the engineers build because Archy refused. His malicious grin told me the fight was far from over.

“I’m going to come up there and kill your friends. Then, I’m going to fly over to Utah and kill precious little Archy with his own creations. Clark, the little abomination, will finally meet the end Scavenger failed to deliver five years ago. My Scarlett will be returned to her brainwashed state and Scavenger will be forced to watch as she marries me, as she gives birth to my children, and as I make her nothing but a common slave,” he snickered.

Woodrow stood on the ramp, attempting to get me to come over.

“Come on. We need to go,” he said over the telecom.

I shook my head in defeat, “I’m going to give you some time. When you see the signal get that power back to home.”

He didn’t approve and tried to make a tree pick me up, but I was too quick for the branches. He angrily slammed on the hatch switch and began to cry inside the ship.

My leap from the cliff gave me enough time to think of a bad plan that required a big bang and a lot of power. With my hands held high the fall seemed to slow. The static still clung to the air like a cat in a tree; I just needed to absorb as much as I could.

Every last drop, I planned.

I focused on letting it into my body, trying to open myself up to let it flow through me like a controlled tidal wave. Nothing was happening. My stomach began to feel queasy, my breath grew shorter with every second, and the ground was fifty feet or a thousand feet away. Either way it didn’t matter. I thought I could finally do something right, something extraordinary, be someone extraordinary.

My body began to tip into a nose dive and I didn’t bother to stop it. I disengaged my helmet and let the cool air blow into my face. Then, I closed my eyes and listened to the last chirps of nature I thought I’d ever hear. They were strange bird chirps, definitely not from any bird I’d ever heard. It was some high-pitched off tune peep that was growing louder as I fell.

It almost sounded like… a smile sprung to my lips, “Electricity!”

I found the courage to open my eyes, praying that I was right, and I thanked any god that would listen. A blue wave of electricity flowed up and down my body; it’s long reaching zap formed a blue trail behind me.

It’s amazing how long a second feels when you’re plummeting to an unknown fate.

My impact sent an electrified shock wave across the entirety of the valley, setting the grass on fire and sending a lightning storm directly at Tyler’s forces. They screamed in terror, sprinting away from the lightning. The storm flipped cars, blew them up, and incapacitated any poor soul touching the ground.

The ship lifted off and raced across the sky, retreating home. The thunder roared and shook the ground like an earthquake. Eventually, the storm dissipated and left only the fires and wounds.

“You cowards! Get up and fight!” Tyler barked atop his sideways SUV.

“We need to retreat, sir. We have too few of men to take her on.”

Tyler smacked the soldier with his metal fist and broke his jaw in half. The soldier fell violently to the ground lifeless.

“We leave when I have her head under my boot! Get this sorry excuse for a man out of sight!” he shouted while jumping off of the SUV.

Two other men pulled the dentist nightmare towards safety. The hole in my side ached with agonizing pain and I fell to one knee, barely able to stand. The hand that was trying to keep my insides from falling out was soaked in blood. The shockwave had drained me of my strength. I couldn’t stand, and I was barely holding my head from planting firmly into a mud pie near my feet.

The ground between me and the atom bombs was completely destroyed by fire; black smoke pillared high into the clouds, smoldering into the heavens. The ground was soot and mud. None of the grass had survived the wave.

“Is the whittle girl hurt? Does she need her mommy?” he laughed, beginning his charge.

I needed to stand, I needed to fight, and I needed my world to go the right way just once. He was gaining speed and closing in on me. I used the last sliver of my strength to throw one last deadly lightning bolt.

At least if I die, he comes with, I thought.

The energy harnessed in my hands, the power surged through my bones, and then I let it fly. It would’ve worked, it all would’ve been over, but that’s not how happy endings work.

A massive metal container descended from the heavens, crashed directly in front of me, and deflected the blast back at me, knocking me off of my feet. The shipping container read Titans.

The world began to fade to black as I lost consciousness.

Tyler stood over me, “I’m going to kill you now. No coming back this time,” he belched, taking off his helmet.

“You’re a monster,” I spit at him.

“No, I’m worse. I’m more of a beast that’s hell bent on killing your kind.”

He bared his teeth with one final, pleasurable smile, then proceeded to kick my face in.

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