"Those… those fucking beasts, they really… Fuck… Fuck…"
"Please, you've got to relax, you might go into shock if you strain your heart too much, sir."
"I… I'm going to kill them… I'm going to kill those fucking discussing mongrels, I swear to fucking Osva… They’re not going to get away with this…"
A young man tries what he can to deal with an injury. He is a field medic and he doesn't know what he can do, besides using his healing magic to dull the nerves of his patient’s leg. The patient, a man in his late forties with graying black hair, speaks as if he doesn't fully grasp his own injury. He's screaming hatred and obscenities against beastkin, demihumans in general.
Oh… my God… did the guards really abandon this area just because the Captain and his sergeants died? Did they really… abandon these people? What a bunch of fucking cowards…
Even Shaula cannot fathom how the city guards could abandon the people here who need help. She turns her eyes away from the older man’s grievous wound.
He is lying down on the bare ground currently, and there is a crater of empty flesh and visible charred bone where his left knee should be. He's not bleeding from his thigh since his leg has been cauterized, overly so. The smell of burnt flesh is palpable to Shaula, though not just from this man's injury alone. His calf below his cratered knee remains. However, since blood flow to it is non-existent, he might lose his lower leg altogether.
Shaula is standing a short distance away from a scene of deeper carnage than she had originally assumed it would be. She's standing in shock, her eyes darting from person to person, some barely injured, some in shock, some unconscious, some on the brink of death. Then, she finds the ones like that middle aged man who have been injured in some of the most grotesque ways she could imagine.
She has a strong constitution so she is able to hold back feelings of overt nausea. Her arms are crossed and her teeth are grit as she observes the sight of several inexperienced medics participating in helping these people recover or at the very least feel less pain.
These medics were originally attending the statue march. Most of them are on the side of the human supremacist sympathizers, but some of them are just humans who wanted to help those who they could adequately treat. Every one of them feels a sense of horror as they witness the effects of the fire bombing that had resulted in only a small plume of smoke earlier.
Shaula hears anger and hatred coming from the crowd, both from the injured, the medics and other humans who have decided to offer their help and sympathy. They all seem to be blaming the demihumans for this heinous terrorist attack, though Shaula knows that it isn't they who have committed an atrocity like this.
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They're really just… fucking terrorists. Where are those Twin Moon pricks now? Did they die in the flames or… Wait, how many of them showed up here anyways, two or three? A dozen would at least have to be involved in order to move people away from the square over to this area, right? Did they lure them out here, kill forty or fifty humans here and then just leave? Why?
Shaula remembers the various terrorist cells on Earth, some from the Middle East as well as various domestic terror groups, most of them white supremacist and neo-fascist. Whether through bombings, hostage situations, mass shootings, or otherwise, they never got what they wanted and they just kept coming.
They just kept coming and coming, each week a deluge of terror attacks around the world, never ending reports surfacing from various news programs on TV. It felt like a sign of a dying planet, at least to Shaula.
Yet here she is, standing without fear even when she knows that there might be ruthless terrorists in the area around her. She looks at her right index finger. She adds heat to a small point on her finger tip. A small dot of light shows itself, her control over her power at this point marvelous. She smiles slightly for a moment considering who she is in this place.
She isn’t prey anymore like she had once been. She isn’t prey anymore. She is the hunter.
Shaula breathes deeply, relishing in that newfound sense of strength.
She can really confront terrorists if she wants to. They can try shooting her, they can try burning her, they can even try killing her. Yet, her strength, her speed, her agility, make her a difficult target to harm.
She's actually tested it before. Ajax had once thrown something light and (mostly) harmless directly at her eye, using his enhanced strength.
The object had reached the speed of a bullet and she had actually been able to move her head fast enough to dodge the projectile when it was a few centimeters away from touching her eye. It's not something she can pull off all the time and Ajax found it even more difficult to achieve and maintain such fast reflexes.
Yet it made her think of comic book superheroes who were faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than locomotives. They could defeat terrorists, lift up buildings, deflect meteors that were about to hit the Earth's surface. They could save many many lives, and now… so could she.
I could become that, couldn't I… when I get back home I could actually be… I could be a superhero! I might even be able to fly… Well, maybe not, but I could still do a lot of cool things, a lot of spectacular, selfless things. And… I would also see the messier side of the world firsthand. I would be drawn to it, wouldn't I…
Just like right now. Her power allows her to dive headfirst into the operations of a terrorist group. It probably allowed Ajax to do the same. She shakes off these thoughts as she remembers her main mission. She has to find Ajax now. She finds herself grimacing as she considers how he must have felt seeing this gruesome sight.
Yet, she hasn’t seen it all. Not yet.