Jack stood alone on the lip of the crater that Zachias had made with his giant ass. The last time he had been here, he had just taken his body back from the alien.

He and his friends had decided to visit the site whenever they got the chance. Despite Zachias' insistence that his enemies would not come looking for him, they wanted to be sure.

Jack wished he could have had Matt keep an eye from the shadows, but he was busy gathering intelligence somewhere, probably DC. Matt was the smart one, so Jack left that up to him.

He checked around, but was unable to see anything but animal tracks on the ground. Apparently, no one had stumbled upon the wreckage Zachias left behind yet.

He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw. This crater did not bring back good memories. He had tried to save Zachias’ life and he had returned the favor by snatching Jack’s body.

It was the worst possible violation. No amount of training or secret knowledge would ever be enough to balance that ledger.

He decided right there and then that Zachias was a mortal enemy. If Jack ever did help the alien get a new body, it would only be to put another hole in his chest.

"I am sorry about what happened here" the heavenly warrior projected himself next to Jack and spoke as softly as he could with his deep, booming voice.

"Sorry that you were the prey that day instead of the predator?" Jack used his own words against him.

"When we met, I was choking on my own blood with a hole in my heart. It is possible I was not exactly at my best. I was busy dying a gruesome death" Zachias countered insistently.

Jack remembered Zachias trying to speak past the blood in his mouth.

"And if you hadn't been bleeding out? You already admitted that your faction would have killed us or taken us as slaves on sight."

"My faction would, but that does not mean that I would have!" he argued. "If you want to survive, you need to change your perspective. All life is in competition. The people who climb the highest on the ladder are those who enjoy stepping on others. I have seen your memories. Do you think your world is any different? Do you think the wealthy oligarchs that rule your world achieved their positions by being nice?"

"I refuse to believe that sociopathic dickheads are the only winners in the Universe" Jack declared and Zachias sighed.

"This is why you have been unable to sense your Chakra" he said sadly. "You are lying to yourself. I know how you really feel inside. You are so desperate to be the hero. All you need to do is give in to that voice in your head that says to take what you want from this world with both hands."

"Shove it up your ass you muscular dickhead" Jack shot back.

"What is it that you hate so much about me?" Zachias pressed. "Is it the fact that we are so similar? That you know you would have done the same thing in my position?"

Jack did his best to ignore him. He wished that he could just cover his ears, but he knew that wouldn't shut him out. Instead, he punched the trunk of a tree hard enough to break his knuckles.

Well, he would have broken his knuckles before his training with Qi. Now, his knuckles broke the tree.

Woodchips and bark exploded from the point of impact leaving a sap covered crater of white wood in the trunk.

Jack looked down at his hand and wiped the splinters and sap off. There wasn't even a scratch on his skin. With every day that passed, he was getting stronger, but he also felt like he was becoming less human.

Maybe Zachias was right about him. After all, at this very moment, Matt was busy gathering information that they would use to attempt to dominate as much of their world as they could.

Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Hitler. Human history had one overwhelming theme: evil conquers. Was he walking the path of power or the path of evil? Was there even a difference between the two?

"No" Jack finally said. "I jumped into that crater to try and save your ungrateful fucking life. You wouldn't have lifted a finger to help me in that situation. I won't let you turn me to the dark side, Vader."

"I am not turning you into anything. You have always had the heart of a conqueror" Zachias responded.

Jack refused to answer that accusation. There was no point in arguing with the psychopath in his head. Also, there was a small part of him that was afraid Zachias was right, and he wasn't ready to confront that yet.

Jack turned around and started walking back to the trail with his head down, looking at the ground in introspective shame.

"Look out!" Zachias yelled at him urgently, and Jack dove to the side and rolled.

As he was rolling across the dirt, he heard a swoosh and felt the wind coming off of something that just barely missed his head. Whatever it was hit the ground with a boom while Jack rolled to his feet and slid to a stop

He looked up and registered what was attacking him with an expression of great surprise on his face.

It looked like a tree carved into the shape of a woman. Her skin, clothes, even her eyes appeared to be made of moving wood. Her hair appeared as thin, brown vines swinging around her shoulders like dreadlocks. She was wearing a dress made of dark green moss covered bark, and her uncovered skin was much lighter with swirling patterns of grain.

Except for her right arm, which was in the shape of a giant tree branch extended across the cracked ground where Jack had just been standing. As he watched, the branch-limb retracted into her body and a human-shaped arm of wood replaced it.

"Who the shit is that?" he asked out loud and Zachias projected himself to the side with his hands held behind his back looking at the woman.

"It is more of a what. I did not expect this to happen so soon."

As Zachias was calmly answering him, the woman exploded into motion, jumping straight towards Jack. He manifested his Qi and felt the lightning coursing through his veins. He side-stepped her lunge in a swarm of bright blue bolts and turned to face her.

She blasted past him and turned her left arm into a vine. She wrapped the vine around a thick tree and used it to swing her momentum around and launch herself towards Jack with both feet out in a flying kick.

He dodged again, sliding to a stop and watching as she landed on the ground where he was just standing with earth-shattering force, leaving a small crater behind. If that attack had landed, it would have been game over for Jack. His ridiculous speed was the only thing keeping him alive right now.

"You didn't expect what to happen so soon? Is this one of your enemies?" Jack pressed.

Zachias actually laughed at this to Jack's increasing frustration.

"No, it is one of your enemies actually" he said between chuckles.

Jack was a flash of blue light zig-zagging through the forest while the tree woman hurled herself through the air faster and faster using vines to change directions.

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"I've never seen her before in my life!" he exclaimed.

"No but you became its enemy the moment you attacked that tree. It is what is known as a Guardian which are a species of natural golems. The collective consciousness of this forest has used Qi to take a new form."

"You're telling me that Mother Earth here is actually from Earth? You might have Guardians on whatever planet giant douches are from, but we definitely don't have them here on this one."

Jack was dodging ducking dipping diving and dodging, but with every missed attack, the tree woman struck faster and harder. The time was quickly approaching when Jack would get clipped by one of her strikes and then he would get torn apart.

"I warned you that your world was changing" Zachias said.

"You said there were warring factions coming from outer space to take over" Jack was starting to get out of breath. He hadn't been this winded since he was running through this forest just before he met Zachias. "You didn't say anything about this planet becoming Middle fucking Earth. How do I make peace with her? I didn't even mean to hurt that tree!"

"You know what you have to do. It does not care about your motivations. Now that you have its attention, it sees you as a great source of power. You are nothing to that thing but food."

"No" Jack answered while jumping off the trunk of a large tree to dive over one of her vine-arms. "I'm not going to kill her just because you say so. There has to be another way. Can she understand me?"

Zachias sighed, disappointed.

"It is much too young to be able to communicate with you" Zachias explained slowly and calmly. "Although eating and absorbing you would do wonders for its intelligence."

"If this is another one of your tricks, I'm going to eat and absorb you" Jack threatened while narrowly dodging multiple attacks.

"I might be more afraid of that if you were not about to be killed by a malformed block of wood. Besides, if I could do that to get you to unlock your Chakra, I would have already done it. Now, are you going to fight back, or are we going to die here?"

Jack didn't want to admit it, but he was starting to worry that he was destined to kick the bucket in these woods in some absurd manner. First, he was almost smushed and then possessed by a falling douchebag, and now, he was about to be pulverized by a sexy tree.

She had transformed both of her arms into thick vines by this point, and she was using them to swing through the forest and throw devastating kicks at him with her dainty wooden feet. Jack was still able to dodge, but only just.

He could try to run away, but if he ran out of lightning before she ran out of her own Qi, she would catch up and tear him limb from limb. Besides, he wouldn’t leave a monster alone in these woods to eat all the babies it wanted to.

"Jack, if you die here, your family will see desolation."

Zachias had found the magic words. Jack focused on the fractal pattern in the small piece of metal that he was wearing around his neck. He summoned a spear with an ornate black handle, and a long silver blade.

Jack channeled his lightning qi through the spear, the handle erupting with arcs of tiny blue lightning bolts. He willed the spear to take the shape of a double bladed axe on both ends of the staff.

The four axe heads glowed the color of his lightning. The tree woman landed on the ground staring at the axes in Jack's hand and tilting her head to the side.

"I don't want to do this" Jack said to the strange woman.

She transformed her vines back into arms, and in her right hand, she was now holding a beautifully carved wooden lance.

"I can't let you kill me." Jack was already starting to catch his breath again. "There are too many people counting on me."

He had hoped that she would somehow understand him, but she leapt towards him again with the lance stabbing out to impale. Jack swung his axe across his body, smashing the lance out of the way and ducked under the staff to bring the other end around to attack.

Apparently, there is a reason that a staff weapon with a double bladed axe on each end doesn't exist. It was awkward to wield, and required Jack to spin and twirl the handle around his body to keep the momentum.

On the other hand, every time one of the blades made contact with her lance or the trees and branches around them, it smashed through them leaving a spray of splinters and bark in its wake.

Jack decided to use a weapon with a little more versatility. He willed the staff to take the form of a fangtian ji, a long spear with two crescent shaped blades arcing out away from the middle. It was a bit like a halberd, and it excelled at both stabbing and chopping attacks.

One of the first things he had done on taking the staff which could take the form of any pole-arm, was to do extensive research on the many forms of them. The fangtian ji was one of the ones that he had been most interested in.

Unfortunately, no matter what he tried, he was unable to pierce her defenses. She weaved between his attacks like a long blade of grass swaying in the wind. Her fighting style was actually quite beautiful. Despite the fact that he was faster than her, he had yet to land a single attack.

"Of course the rabid forest babe trying to kill me would be a Kung Fu master" Jack said sarcastically. "That's just my luck isn't it?"

He twisted and spun and stabbed with his fangtian ji, but she slid past his attacks with the grace of a dancer.

Jack tried to catch her off guard by changing the shape of the weapon quickly. He swung the staff over his head trying to chop her with the crescent blade on the side, and continued the swing all the way around jumping and spinning.

When the blade came back down on her, it was a large scythe. Still, she managed to slip to the side of the chop and even landed a push kick that sent him flying, nearly cracking his ribs.

Jack spun with the momentum of the kick and backflipped to land, knees bent with his feet on the trunk of a massive oak tree, parallel to the ground.

He turned his weapon into a spear and jumped off of the tree straight towards her in a flash of lightning. Jack left behind a burn scar in the tree bark in the shape of his shoeprints.

He was moving so fast, it was difficult to aim, even with his lightning enhanced reaction time. He felt his spear make contact with something, but he was unable to make out exactly what he stabbed.

Jack rolled forwards across the leaf covered ground and slid into another large tree trunk almost too fast to stop. Sensing danger, he used the momentum to run up the tree and backflip off of it.

He heard and felt a bone-shaking boom beneath him and when he was upside down, he saw that she had extended her left arm into a thick flexible branch that she had nearly clubbed him with.

In her right hand, she was still holding the wooden lance, but she was favoring that side.

On her right ribcage, there was an inches deep valley where the spear had connected and gouged out some of her wooden flesh.

Jack spun in the air and landed facing her while she retracted her giant club and turned it back into her left arm. Her face had seemed to be carved into one blank expression this entire time, but for some reason, Jack got the impression that she was thinking when she stood unmoving and did not attack him for a moment.

He turned his weapon into a naginata and held it out in front of him, ready to attack or defend.

"Is it over?" he heaved and Zachias snorted.

"Has anyone ever told you that you ask stupid questions?" Zachias condescended to him and Jack clenched his jaw and furrowed his brow.

Then, he noticed that the scar he had left in her side was quickly filling in with more wood. Even the moss covered bark dress that she was wearing was repairing itself.

"How am I supposed to stop this wood golem if she heals?"

"You need to stop holding back."

Jack flinched and realized deep down that Zachias was right. He hadn't been trying to kill her, only dissuade her from continuing the fight.

However, as it dragged on, he was getting slower and wearing down while she was improving. Jack tried to prepare himself to finish the fight, but he was still reluctant to kill such a whimsical creature. He had grown up in these woods, and had always felt a connection to nature. Now, he had confirmation that the trees had a consciousness of their own, and the last thing he wanted to do was kill it.

Still, loathe as he was to admit it, Zachias was right. If he died here, the people that he loved would not survive the coming world shaking changes happening on Earth. Jack imagined his parents murdered, his sister and little cousins enslaved. His resolve hardened exponentially.

The wooden girl dropped her lance to the ground and Jack started to relax thinking that she intended to retreat.

Then, her hands extended towards the ground and became two scythe blades like a huge praying mantis. Jack's heart fell and he transformed the naginata into a simple bowstaff. He liked to use the staff for defense.

She jumped towards him with both arm-blades held high. Jack held the staff with both hands and caught the scythes above his head. He tilted the staff to the right, allowed the blades to slide to the side, and swiped her feet out from under her.

She slashed out with her left scythe on the way to the ground and forced Jack to jump away in a swarm of lightning.

He turned the staff into a seven foot long battle axe two feet of which was made up by the wicked blade. Jack channeled as much Qi as he could into the weapon and prepared to take his first life.

She rolled backwards to her feet and darted towards him with both blades held out to the side.

With remorse, Jack projected a huge bolt of lightning through the staff of the battle axe into her chest. The energy blasted her away and she slammed back first into the nearest tree, cracking the trunk and sending chips of bark flying.

Jack darted forward and was swinging the axe before she even bounced off the tree. He slashed from right to left and then from left to right leaving a huge X carved into the tree behind her.

The Guardian fell to the ground in pieces and landed in a pile of unmoving wood.

Jack gasped for air from the exertion. He dropped the battle axe and rested his hands on his knees while trying to catch his breath.

He turned around and beheld the devastated forest around him. There were still smoking burns, fallen trees, and broken branches laying all over the place. It looked like a plane had crashed through the woods.

“The Parks Department is not gonna like this” Jack observed as an entire tree toppled to the ground with a thunderous boom behind him.