> Threats? This Maffiyir has barely left the Crash Course and we’re already seeing Threats?! That’s unheard of. It could be another Titan, I suppose… but we already had one today. Simultaneous Titans don’t appear so early either!

> -- Radio transmission from Voices for Non-Citizens

I hadn’t thought much about the Pylons. Each covered an area about the size of three Points Siphons, and more than half the ones in the Huntsville metro were dormant, doing nothing so long as no one with a Challenge bracelet was nearby.

Our Pylon, located several blocks west of Fort Autumn, was pretty big, rising about fifteen feet off the ground. Honestly, it could be the largest one in the state. The Arsenal had more Challengers in absolute terms, but they also had many more Pylons to spread them across. We had a huge concentration: Me, Micah, Gavin, Priya, George and Samar. That was six right away, and then you added on Clarice, Matilda, and Bunker Ben to make it nine… Oh, and two others from our fort had been eligible for this week’s Challenge. I’d heard that they had survived, so that put us up to eleven! On one Pylon! When many had zero Challengers in range! It was a little insane, but we had enough people in the area that the increased monster spawns were a blessing, and we had an excellent system for downing the additional Titans. Why change anything? Having fewer Titans spawn here and more spawn elsewhere? We’d probably end up fighting them anyway, but people would have to risk their lives luring them toward us.

The Pylons had seemed a little convoluted and weird, but I’d had plenty of other things to focus on. Stupid weird pillars that increased monster and Titan spawns? Check check, moving on.

I really should have been waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Our Pylon had been a shifting column of pink crystal tucked into the backyard of a two-story house just off County Line Road.

We were still at least three hundred feet away, but the column was still clearly gone.

In its place stood a strange tree, rising just above the roof of the nearby house, nearly twice as tall as the pillar had been. It, too, was pink, but darker: more ground beef than rose quartz. Twisting roots snaked away into the ground nearby and leafless branches drooped. It was vaguely reminiscent of a weeping willow, but it was shifting ever-so-slightly, in ways Analyze was quick to confirm weren’t due to wind.

“Stay back!” I shouted, and started digging for the Signal sticks I'd need to break to get Colonel Zwerinski's attention. In re-doing my backpack to keep all my Telekinesis tools accessible, I'd somehow let the emergency tools slip to God-knows where. “Can someone Signal-”

“Already did!” Veronica waved the broken ends of a popsicle stick at me.

Judging by Veronica's face, she was already hearing back. She was staring at nothing, focusing on a conversation inaudible to the rest of us. “Colonel Zwerinski’s looking at it and reaching out to the Arsenal. It sounds like they just found one at their Pylon, too. He’s asking us to stay in the area while he waits for more information and gets a team to bring the big guns out here. Someone will have to fight it, and most of you have a second of Invulnerability, so...”

I frowned. “I’m okay with that, but the kids should go. It looks like a tree, it looks stationary, but…”

Just then, one of the tree’s branches thrashed in a whiplike motion, sending something hurtling through the air toward our group. My iron plate joined a pair of Force Shields to block the missile. It was knocked aside, and the Force Shields shattered, but we managed to rob the object of the most of its velocity, letting it clatter to the street mere feet from our group.

“A pogo stick?!” Gavin asked.

“It’s just grabbing things to throw,” I said. “Look, there’s a deck chair! Retreat slowly. Shielders keep an eye behind us.”

“Even if the monster is stationary - which I don’t trust - that doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous here. This proves it, if we needed any proof,” Priya said. She turned to shoot a glare at Anju and Micah, preempting their complaints. “No arguments! Supposedly, we’re done with Mandatory Trials. We could just leave you guys at home from now on, if you can’t be listeners.”

Micah just rolled his eyes, but Anju couldn’t hold in her scorn. “You think that just because the Trials are done, we’re done needing levels? Come on, Mom. No way you’re going to leave us at home.”

“You get Points by sniping monsters safely from the walls of the fort,” George said. “Not as many as from here, true, but if you guys can’t follow orders…”

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Anju looked rebellious, but didn’t argue further. “Fine.”

Priya shook her head, then met George’s eyes. “I can go with them. We have three others in the group with Draw Attention, and ten with Healing Touch, but we only have one other person with Cleanse. Could I get... two other adults?”

She actually ended up with four volunteers, as some parents were unwilling to entrust their children to others, and some children were unwilling to be separated from their parents. After they departed, that left fourteen of us behind, staring anxiously at the twitching tree. It stopped throwing things at us after a bit, either because we were too far away or because it had run out of things to throw.

Not that we were left alone. Tiny sparrow-sized birds in that same raw-meat pink flew out from the tree to dive-bomb us, and dog-sized ferret-monsters scampered toward us, but the monsters trickled out in ones and twos.

The new monsters were as fragile as the leafenrats, and only gave 12 Points each, but they were more dangerous. Most of us couldn’t be scratched by the leafenrats anymore, but these new monsters could hit hard enough to draw blood… when we let one of them get near enough to test.

Most were blasted down before they came close to us. They might have been a problem if they held back and came at us in a big wave, but they drabbled out in ones and twos. If the presence of more new monsters today wasn’t so alarming, I doubted we would have noticed them at all.

“Feels a bit wrong, doesn’t it?” Veronica asked. “Just waiting, letting the soldiers run the risks for us?”

I glanced down, where my maimed hand was strapped into my shield. “No.”

One of my other groupmates clapped Veronica on the shoulder. “Keep in mind, we were the first group to get info on that Z-Rex. Just because our Meghan here is a trouble magnet doesn’t mean we gotta charge in the moment we spot danger.”

I shot him a withering look. “Come on. You can’t blame this one on me.”

“It’s on the Pylon, isn’t it? Don’t your bracelets make the Pylon big?”

I frowned at my bracelet. It had returned to its original color about a day after we’d fought the mutated Titan. “That’s not… There are a lot of people near here with bracelets.”

“Sure, sure.”

“It’s not my fault!”

“You betcha.”

I glared at him. He grinned back, pleased to have provoked me with his clearly insincere agreement. A rumble of laughter spread through the group and I turned away, face burning. Unfortunately, my rearview eyes meant I could still see everyone clearly, but at least it hid my expression.

I guess it’s kind of a win, that they’re comfortable enough with the topic to tease me about it?

Blessedly, a rustpile spawned nearly on top of us, and the ensuing scramble distracted the group enough that the teasing didn’t resume after the monster fell.

We waited another thirty minutes, killing a few more monsters but staying in place. Bunker Benjamin and another combat group showed up with two of his massive guns sitting in the back of a flatbed truck. He set up his guns but didn’t fire. “Colonel said not to provoke it until we heard back.”

With the arrival of another combat group, I relaxed slightly. The tree hadn’t come for us yet, and with over forty combat-hardened adults present, any monster that flickered into life was wiped out near-instantly.

Sunset started to cast the streets in shadow, but Small Light Sources spread throughout the neighborhood allowed us to maintain visibility.

“Finally!” Veronica said. She'd been the first to reach out, and now remained the point-of-contact for telepathic communications. Her face glazed over and a slight furrow deepened between her eyebrows. “Huh. Well, that’s good. No! How’d they learn- Oh. Oh, yeah, of course. And so… No. Seriously? Ughhh.”

She shook her head and refocused on her surroundings to find the rest of us staring at her expectantly. “Oh… uh…”

“Good news first?” I suggested.

“Good news, right… um. Well, the trees don’t seem to move.”

“Nice! Can we just leave it where it is?” George asked.

“Not… exactly,” Veronica frowned. “The Arsenal got a report from near Priceville. The one there - Arsenal’s calling it a treezilla - killed someone shortly after it spawned, and the locals claim it got bigger after that. Some Analysts also believe the treezillas are slowly growing bigger over time even if they don’t kill anyone, but who knows, really? They spotted a few more. The runt of the bunch is in a field north of Toney, and they’re going to evacuate the area around that one and watch it for a day before killing it.”

“So we know how to kill them? That’s great. Can we do it from range?” I asked.

“Well… you can damage it from range, yeah. But after a certain point, the tree goes invulnerable.”

“And we have to kill it by hand?!” I asked. “Ugh, that sucks.

“Kind of?” Veronica said.

“I’m not going to like what you’re about to tell me, am I?”

Veronica smirked and gestured to the bracelet on my wrist. “We’re gonna need you to talk some shit.”