CHAPTER 12: ANOMALIES

It was a short trip. Seven minutes and twelve seconds, she had been off on her estimate. She wondered if that was because of whatever tea Natia had been drinking or from take-off and landing times.

Duffy had put on a curved visor over their eyes. It looked like one of the augmented reality glasses but smoothed out into a single curved pane with nose pieces attached. Hiro could see flashes of color on their face as it showed them various information. The piece that held it over their ears connected the contraption to their green gemstone with a little disk on a wire.

Hiro remained silent as the group started going over their plans. Moria was going to be the speartip. She was going to assess the anomaly and see if she could stabilize it on her own while the rest of the team supported her and watched her back. Ghram was going to be in the center to heal as needed. Natia would be on one side and Duffy on the other. They were also in charge of analyzing the anomaly with their visor to find the anchor points. Bellator was to watch the rear in case any of the monsters approached from that direction.

Privately Hiro thought they put him in the back because this was his first time in the field against an unknown threat. The older teammates were trying to give him experience without putting him in a more dangerous position. He seemed happy with the arrangement though, so maybe he was better in the back.

When Duffy had finished going through plans with the team they leveled their gaze through the visor at Hiro. "You are to stay on the ship and outside of the anomaly. You can watch from the cockpit if you want. We will have the automated defenses turned on so if anything approaches it will let us know and we will come back to help. Do not engage anything you see outside of the ship. Natia will leave the autopilot on so if the ship takes substantial damage before we get back it will take off on its own. Without a PGA you can't hook up to the control helmets or call for help, so stay safe and out of trouble. I don't want to lose a new spark on her first day. Understand?"

After the translator finished telling her their instructions she nodded, "Got it."

"Good." They looked around at everyone, "Ready team?" They asked.

"Ready!" The rest of them replied, even Natia yelling from the front. The ship shook as it landed. Everyone began to unstrap themselves and form up as the ramp lowered.

"Good luck!" Hiro told them as they passed her. Moria gave her a big smile and a wink. Bellator grumbled but otherwise ignored her. Natia and Ghram nodded and smiled. Duffy reminded her one last time to stay on the ship and then they were gone.

Hiro stood from her seat and made her way to the cockpit. It was like a glass globe attached to the front of the ship. It allowed for a wide degree of visibility from the single seat situated in the middle of the space. The floor was a grate that you could see through to see through the bottom of the globe but sturdy enough to walk on. There were a few lines of wires and panels along the walls with various sensor-like devices snaking around the fishbowl cockpit.

There was a control helmet sitting on the pilot's seat. Curiosity got the better of her and she set the helmet on her head. She could see through the front screen like a motorcycle helmet. A little suction cup was attached to her broken gemstone before a red error message flashed up on the visor in front of her. A few other things joined the message as the screen came to life.

"Error, unable to connect, retrying." Flashed on top of the display screen. Behind that message, other messages read, "Automated defenses engaged. Emergency autopilot engaged." These were a gentle blue color. A new message popped up under the error message after a moment. "Unable to connect, User is not authorized to fly. Please reconnect to access flight controls." After that the suction cup popped off and the screen turned off leaving her with a slightly tinted view of the cockpit.

Hiro pulled the helmet off and looked at it contemplatively. What happens if someone's gemstone is broken while on duty? Did they get stranded? Her questions were pushed to the back of her mind as the team came into view of the cockpit's domed surface. She set the helmet down and sat in the chair turning her attention to what she could see outside.

She scanned the horizon in front of her. She had yet to truly examine what this planet looked like. Weirdly, this area didn't look any different from the prairies on Earth. Tall thin stands in greens and tans, sometimes ending in tiny flowers. She didn't recognize any of the plants, but she wouldn't be able to recognize any from her home planet either. Nothing looked especially alien. She did notice there seemed to be a vast amount of diversity of plants in front of her. She frowned, nothing looked like it was wrong from a causal glance. The prairie extended into the distance with little change. She did see something that looked like a beast of some sort in the distance. The way it was shaped it reminded her of bison. Big, furry, and hulking. Reality didn't seem to be breaking down anywhere. What was going on?

She turned her attention back to the team. Bellator had drawn his sword and was limbering up with it. His movements were impressive. Smooth and practiced. Thinking back to her attempts to use weapons in the caverns she decided to ask for some tips. Maybe he'd warm up to her then. Natia had summoned a pair of scaly wings that matched the scales of her armor. Her hands had also changed into clawed taloned hands with scales up to her elbows. Ghram just had his backpack with the red cross on it. He was doing some torso twists. Moria was pulling water from the air into a swirl around herself. Her control was impressive. Hiro wanted to learn how to use water the way she did. Duffy was the only one Hiro had no clue what their powers were. They had procured some sort of gun that looked like a rifle from somewhere. Otherwise, they looked very unmagical.

Around the team, the biome was also a prairie grassland. But something tingled to Hiro's senses. The color of the grasses surrounding the group was wrong. The greens were darker, some had more blue to them. The tans were browner. It was subtle, but her lighting and color senses were sharper now. As she compared the two areas she noticed some of the grasses were different shapes. The more she looked the clearer the line between the two prairies became to her. Was that the anomaly? She was expecting the world to go crazy and then dissolve, not a slight change in landscape.

The five in front of her set off and crossed the barely perceptible line in the grass. They walked a few minutes until Duffy halted them and pointed at a spot in the air. Moria used some of the water around her to touch the spot up in the air they indicated. Then all hell broke loose.

Reality rippled, and the sky broke into fractals from the point she touched with the stream of water. The creatures in the distance raised great horned heads. A faint bellow reached her through the glass. A raging storm whipped up, instantly forming above them. Lightning unnaturally chased horizontally across the landscape aiming right for the group. Bellator flattened himself to not get struck while Natia lept high in the air with her wings only to promptly get blown further away from the group by the storm.

Waves of broken sky rippled out from the spot Moria touched. Hiro's chest tightened as she watched the sky spiraling out of control. Moria channeled more water at the source of the disturbance. Suddenly, something dripped down Hiro's face and she reached up with a hand and touched her cheek to find a drop of water. Tears? She was confused, she wasn't crying, was she? She tasted the liquid, it wasn't salty. She looked up. A small dark cloud had formed above her. A few drops of rain hit her face. Baffled, she reached for her magic. As far as she could tell, she wasn't powering this cloud.

She didn't have time to dwell on it however, the horned beasts had reached the team and her attention was drawn back to the action. Natia had flown back to the group struggling against the gale and placed herself between the lead creature and Moria. She met it head-on, gripping its horns in her talons. She skidded back digging into the ground while flapping her wings to stop the heard leader's forward progress. The rest of the herd split around them preventing any of the charging creatures from hitting Moria. Bellator had moved to the flank and was slashing at the monsters. Hiro got her first good look at them as Bellator made a wide sweep with his blade and an arc of wind sheared the grass down in a wide arch. He killed one as Duffy shot at another one.

They were Bison. Sure they had great curled ram horns instead of the modest points of the ones she saw at the zoo, but they were undoubtedly Bison. The unease she was feeling at watching the sky fracture increased as she recognized them. What was going on? First, the landscape looked like it would be near her hometown in the States, next the monsters were a weird variety of a common creature on Earth. She expected more biodiversity from her first alien planet. The shards of sky reached the team making it look like she was seeing them through a broken mirror. When it reached the Bison, however, they began to change in the cracks of reality.

Their curled ram horns unfurled into arms covered in tough horn-like material. The ends of them split into hoof tips, sharp as razors. The bison bellowed in pain and fear as it happened. Their dense fur turned metallic and shiny. Each of the already large bison grew noticeably bigger. The one whose horns Natia had been wrestling used its new horns to grapple her back and throw her.

Duffy was shouting something at the team and they repositioned. Two of the Bison had been killed in the first charge. They did not move when the fractured sky reached them instead part of the dead bodies shifted positions with other parts making a strange bloody Picasso-like mess in their wake.

Bellator rushed to take the forward position to cover Moria from the lead bison. Bellator swung his blade in controlled slices parrying each strike the horn hands threw out easily. The other seven had made a wide arch and were setting up for another charge. Natia and Duffy repositioned to account for the new challenges.

Meanwhile, Ghram threw his hand out toward Natia. Some of the scrapes on her unscaled skin faded into pink lines. She flapped heavily back to the fray. Next to him, Duffy was firing their rifle in great bolts of angry red energy at the Bison. One of the dead ones had fallen to his laser rifle in the first charge. Now the lasers bounced off the metallic fur.

More lightning ripped from the sky at impossible angles as the storm above them whipped the grasses into a frenzy. The team was able to dodge the bolts as they came. Even Moria, who was unmoving while controlling her water, deflected a bolt meant for her by forming a water barrier around her and then sending the charged water into the ground. The bolt that would have fried her got pushed into the ground instead.

Moria had not been slacking during the battle. Both hands were raised to the shattered sky water flowing around the cracks and reforming lines almost as fast as they spread. Soon she was gaining on the spreading cracks, closing them as quickly as they formed. Only the dense center of the break gave her trouble. A web of water stretched above the battlefield. Moria pulled the very rain from the storm to feed her expansion to keep up with the fragmenting sky.

The rest of the group battled and deflected the Bison, but Hiro only had eyes for Moria and her water web. She felt a pull like she had back in the caverns. The sky was broken and screamed at her. Not with sound but with waves of unstructured magic. She wanted nothing more than to put it back together. She had stood from the pilot's chair and walked forward without realizing it. She stood on the very edge of the deck and reached a hand out to rest on the glass separating her from the sky outside. The volunteer raincloud above her had grown to fill the top of the globe. Her borrowed uniform was soon soaked through.

Hiro looked back at the still-open ramp. She could go out there and try and help. She wanted to do something. The sky was breaking and she could feel it to her core. But yet she stood there frozen. The last time she did something without knowing the consequences she almost drowned and messed up her magic. This time, if she made a mistake, it wouldn't just be her on the line, but the team who rescued her. Every time she reached for her magic it either barely responded or flat out didn't work. What could she even do anyway? She couldn't even summon her armor to protect herself from the monsters.

Her fist curled into a ball. She had been so stupid. Why hadn't she listened to Button? He clearly hadn't just been a fancy Siri, she should've taken his instructions more seriously. A few seconds of flying weren't worth feeling this useless. Not that she had known that would happen, but he had tried to warn her. She banged her fist into the glass a few times in frustration.

The battle still raged in front of her. Three more of the Bison lay dead. Duffy had switched the beam of their rifle from angry red to thin and violet. It seemed to pierce through their metallic hides with ease but did not do nearly as much damage. They had to hit one multiple times before it fell. Bellator still fought with the one who had thrown Natia. Easily holding it back from Moria. He was unable to slash or pierce its hide.

Natia changed up tactics and cumbersomely flew through the winds to dive at the Bison to push them off track of their charge. She successfully broke several charges this way keeping the Bison occupied while Duffy whittled down the numbers.

Ghram was periodically holding a hand out to various team members. Hiro had a hard time seeing what he was doing in the rain. Occasionally bleeding cuts would stop bleeding and get washed clean in the rain. Hiro was a little envious. Hopefully, she could learn how to heal others with her water.

She noticed the bottom of the globe was starting to fill with rainwater from her volunteer cloud. A few crackles and sparks from some of the wires alarmed her. She sighed. She reached out the best she could with her muted senses and tried to disperse the cloud. When she brushed it with her senses the whole cloud just felt wrong. It wouldn't respond to her attempts to get rid of it at all. Would Duffy be more upset to come back to a flooded ship with electrical damage, or her standing at the end of the ramp ready to run back in if anything came toward her? She wasn't going to be helpful out there, but she also didn't want to break anything either.

She looked at the team once more. Moria seemed to be in a stalemate with the fracture. It wasn't spreading, but she also wasn't gaining on it anymore. The team was dealing with the Bison alright and nothing had come remotely close to the ship. She determined she would probably be okay to stand by the ramp. She wouldn't have a good vantage point to see the team, but she also wouldn't accidentally short-circuit anything because the poor broken cloud flooded it.

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Hiro experimentally walked back into the traveler's bay. The cloud followed her like a lost puppy. At least it wasn't just going to hang out inside without her. She carefully examined the land around the open ramp. A Gatling gun was tilting back and forth from a hatch under the tail of the ship. Nothing else was in the prairie as far as she could tell. She cautiously stepped outside. The cloud followed and then formed an amorphous blob over her and the ship. She sighed. At least the rain was outside the ship now.

Her spongy shoes squelched in the wet grass and mud. Sucking on her feet as she tried to walk. She stuck close enough to dash back to the ramp, but she stepped out just enough so she could see the battle. She was surprised at how far away the team was. The ship's cockpit must magnify the view through it. The situation hadn't changed much. Bellator's wide sweeps and cutting winds had cleared the battlefield of grasses. It was harder to see from ground level but she could still tell what was going on. The team was clearly in a rhythm and slowly whittled down the bison's numbers.

Hiro looked up to check the sky and Moria's progress. The battle faded from her thoughts yet again as she examined it. Out here the draw to fix it was almost irresistible. Trying to distract herself from the pull and stay out of trouble, she decided to try to observe what Moria was doing. When she watched with her magic on the ship, her powers didn't interfere with her, so looking at what she was doing with magic shouldn't be a problem. Maybe she could learn something about how to control water herself by watching. Duffy had said watching was alright.

She reached out with her water sense. There was so much water around her and it answered immediately. She could feel the rain dropping from the sky. One rain was soft and sad, unconcerned with the storm. The other was fierce and angry as it lashed out in the wind and storm. The ground was saturated. She could feel the contours of the prairie around her. It wasn't as flat as it looked. She slowly worked her senses out feeling the drops and water in the mud.

She took a shaky breath as her heart raced. She had been so worried that it wasn't going to work. The rest of her powers had been so hit-and-miss. It had been weighing on her. It was like she could feel the sky again. Even if she could only feel the water inside it with only faint hints of the rest of the input she could sense in the past.

She carefully examined her surroundings for danger. Three more gun barrels were poking out along the side of the ship above her head. Trusting them to warn her if something came close, Hiro closed her eyes. With a deep breath, she moved her sense of water toward the anomaly. As her senses crossed the border her unease grew. Things in there were deeply wrong. Every instinct she had shouted at her to fix it. Demanded she do something. Taking a few deep breaths she resisted. Tears of frustration clung to her closed eyelashes. She was here to observe, not participate.

She reached for the closest part of the web of water Moria had woven. She wanted to watch how she controlled the water. If her water powers worked without difficulties, she wanted to learn as much as she could about them. Moria was a master, so watching her should clue her into some insights. She brushed the web of water lightly with her magic sense, curious about how she was stabilizing the cracks in the world with magic. She had just touched the water with her power when things went wrong. Something hijacked her powers.

Like a drop of rain, when Hiro's magic hit the ocean of Moria's powers it was drawn in and absorbed. It was pulled from her tentative control and she could feel her power pouring out of her like a river to the sea. At the same time, the sky reached through the water and tapped into her raw power. The cracks suddenly exploded and the carefully constructed water web surged and unraveled where she had touched. In a panic, Hiro's eyes flew open. She imagined a dam around her core of power and she yanked her touch back cutting herself off from the anomaly.

She hadn't wanted to disrupt Moria's careful and controlled flows. She had just wanted to look at what was going on! She watched horrified as the disrupted part of her web spread across the sky. The fractures raced outward catching most of the Bison for the second time.

The four bison who had peeled away to charge morphed with bellows of pain. This time great spiked and hairy wings sprouted from their backs. One of them opened their mouth and an angry purple laser came out with a scream. Moments later four Supercharged bison took to the sky and began to rain down lasers into the team's midst. These were not the flying bison she signed up for.

Moria turned toward the ship and her mouth was moving in a shout. Hiro was too far away and the storm and battle were too loud for her to hear. Duffy was next to turn and face the ship. She couldn't tell what their whole face did behind the rain-covered visor but she did see their jaw tense. She supposed it must look weird to have a raging storm above the whole plains and another smaller depressive rain cloud hanging just above the ship. She had a strong suspicion the look was directed at her for standing in the shadow of the ship. Shit.

Guilt was worming its way up her back. The last thing she saw was Duffy shouting something to the team. Ghram dove awkwardly out of the way of a sweeping laser and rolled away holding his arm. She couldn't watch any more. She had done enough damage. She retreated to the base of the ramp allowing the ship to block the battle from view.

She had fucked things up again. She didn't think her looking at what she was doing was going to affect anything. It hadn't been pulled in on the ship earlier! How was she supposed to know? She had just wanted to observe. When it came down to it though, she hadn't stayed on the ship, and somehow that had interfered with the team. The broken sky and water were so strong she couldn't resist it when it pulled her into Moria's magic. How did her power get pulled into Moria's anyway?!

This day had been so strange and bizarre. A dream of magic became reality and she felt like she had gone with the flow very well. Even when she had lost her composure, she was able to regain her equilibrium and keep pushing forward. This time though, Hiro had endangered a group of people who had only helped her. Their motives might still be unclear, but their actions spoke for well enough. An internal dam she had been holding at bay cracked and an insidious voice crept into her thoughts. A voice she had spent most of her adult life ignoring.

'You're a screw-up just like your father.' the voice started circling her own thoughts, 'You'll never make anything out of your life.' Hiro sat on the end of the ramp and placed her head in her hands as her mom's voice berated her. 'You're not smart enough to do anything right.'

She had focused on her magic and Button for so long, keeping the inner voice at bay behind a wall she had built long ago. Hiro had focused on fixing her problems and trying to figure out what kind of people had rescued her. However, the shame and guilt of endangering the team finally brought the callous voice of her mother to the forefront of her mind.

She tapped her forehead with her fist trying to knock the voice from her head. Finally, she spoke over it, voicing her own thoughts, "Stupid! So Stupid! You're not in the machine shop anymore. Mistakes here cost more than time and money and being heckled by the guys," She berated herself. "Stop trying things if you don't know what the consequences will be." She ended in a whisper.

'You thought you knew.' A small voice spoke in the back of her mind, barely noticeable in the echo chamber of her self-loathing. Yes, she had thought she knew what would happen this time. She thought she'd just be able to watch Moria work water magic and maybe learn some things. She didn't even know that you could be pulled into another's magic. Maybe it was the anomaly's fault. Even if it was, she was to blame. She'd take responsibility when they got back and apologize. Hopefully, nobody would get too hurt from the flying laser bison in the meantime.

Hiro took some deep breaths trying to calm the turmoil inside her head. She decided she would stay put and not cause any more problems for the team. She wouldn't even watch them. The rain cloud huddled under the tail of the ship in order to keep raining on her. She felt like she deserved the rain.

Moments later the ship's guns went off. Hiro lept up whipping her head around to spot the danger. Did she need to retreat onto the ship? Peering around the bulky dragonfly ship, she searched the sky. Two pairs of wings darted around in the rain and thunder. One pair covered in scales and one hairy massive set following.

Natia was making a dive toward the ship, a flying Bison hot on her tail. It bellowed out an angry purple laser. In response, the guns bombarded the creature with both bullets and lasers while avoiding Natia. One of the bullets hit the Bison in the eye and it peeled off with a screech of pain.

Natia landed heavily at the tail of the ship and dashed to Hiro. She spat out a few words and scooped her up like a blushing bride before Hiro's collar had even started translating. "Moria needs your help."

Hiro swept into the sky in Natia's arms. Thankfully she left her mother's voice behind in her confusion. Each beat of her wings made them bob in the air. The wild winds pushed and pulled the pair in unpredictable ways. Hiro had barely gotten her bearings at the sudden change when they passed the threshold of the anomaly. Hiro's stomach rolled in protest as the planet's magnetic field turned sideways then flipped before rotating again. It pushed and pulled itself in ways that shouldn't be possible. It was so strong she was surprised she hadn't felt it outside the border. Everything inside felt wrong to Hiro. She clutched Natia around her neck as they flew. While the claws of Natia's hands at her side were disconcerting, their firm grip made her feel secure. The newly one-eyed bison swung back into view. Gaining on their tail causing Natia to perform awkward acrobatics in the sky to avoid its beams.

Hiro wanted to ask what Moria needed her for. She was the one who messed everything up. However, when she opened her mouth to ask, the wrongness she felt along with the bumpy ride came out in the form of vomit. Natia cursed and her translator told her what some of the terms meant. Unfortunately, she wasn't paying attention so she didn't pick up any fun new vocabulary.

Hiro did get a good view of the battlefield as she recovered from throwing up. Ghram was next to Moria, back to back one arm clutched to his side. Bellator fought the one bison that wasn't caught in the last wave of evolutions. Having not received wings or lasers it was still valiantly trying to trample the party in the old-fashioned way. Duffy was too busy fending off the other three flying bison to take potshots at it. All of them looked bedraggled. Only Moria stood firm. She was back in control of the water web that followed the fractional breaks in the sky.

Fortunately for Hiro's stomach, Natia deposited Hiro roughly on the ground an arm's length from Moria and Ghram before taking off with the one-eyed bison hot on her tail. Unfortunately for Hiro touching the ground in the electrically charged anomaly made her into a one-woman lightning rod. The magnetic field doing summersaults wasn't the only thing not following the laws of physics anymore. She had felt how the electricity in the storm was moving incorrectly. It was just one of the many things screaming at her now she was inside the anomaly. When her feet touched the ground, however, the magical concept of electricity asserted itself without her consent or control.

Just like the raincloud that had followed her here, the electricity also converged. Invisible streaks of electricity screamed through the air and ground to tell her how wrong this place was. Soon they were visible to all. Ghram and Moria's eyes got wide as they saw over two dozen bolts of lightning arc across the ground and sky directly to Hiro. In a panic, Hiro slowed time. It responded as it always had. Easily. Naturally. She had no time for celebrations. She was too close to Ghram and Moria. She needed to move. She took off running. She hoped it would be enough.

Time resumed, and the bolts slammed into her unperturbed about the slight change to her position. She screamed as the electricity coursed through her. It burned as it struck, thousands of pinpricks all over her body. She reached for all the water in her body and around her. Her flooded magic channels, her wet skin, the rain and mud, even the water held in her cells. She kicked all of them into overdrive to heal her as the lightning stuck her.

The air around her buzzed. She lifted off the ground as all her particles became charged. She absorbed all the electricity as it fled from the wrongness around her. It sought refuge in the stability of her absorbed concept of electricity. Soon, electricity raced on the surface of her skin. She felt as if she was on fire her mouth stretched in a silent scream, her every muscle taut.

The internal battery of power that she had first filled with light now held only electricity. Her core burned with power. Through the pain, she directed all the water to heal the electrical burns as they formed. Hiro vibrated with more power than she ever felt. Crackling and static filled her ears. She had to do something with the electricity, so she spun it into the water. Trying to get it to power the water to heal her. If Moria could cover cracks in the sky, maybe she could cover the electricity with water.

She didn't know how long she tried to get the electricity and water to be friends and work together. If she hadn't been in so much pain she would've realized how odd that was. As it was it took several attempts. Finally, though, she was able to wrap the power in water and her healing soon outpaced the damage still being done as more and more electricity found her.

The pain faded away and all that was left was the feeling of power. She reveled in it. She could feel the charge of the molecules in the air. The electricity insulated her from the wrongness of the anomaly. The power felt right, no not just right it felt amazing! She laughed in amazement but it quickly became a cough. Blood splattered on her hand to then instantly charred away. Thin lines of white power kept forming in her skin before closing back up.

Concerned she looked for someone who could tell her what she should do. First finding Ghram and Moria. Moria kept flipping her attention between her and the web with a worried look. Ghram was shouting at her panic in his eyes. His good hand reached out to her. He looked so small standing below her floating feet.

A foreign feeling brushed against the electricity surrounding her. It was coming from Ghram. It was pathetically weak compared to her power. She tried to connect to it, but the electricity fried the connection. Suddenly Duffy ran into view shouting and pointing. She turned to where they indicated, and the Bison they had kited over to her. Of course! She could help them with the Bison. She needed to burn off some of the power. She felt overcharged, and taking out some Appa impersonators would be the perfect way to do it.

She turned away from the trio scanning for the other two. Bellator was to their left frantically dodging the unwinged Bison's flailing horn hooves. Natia had done a wide loop away from her cloud electricity. Good, neither were in the path of fire. She wasn't sure how this was going to turn out. The two bison in the lead opened their mouths and launched their purple lasers at her. She darted to the side with a thought, electricity rocketing her to the side. A boom of displacement echoed through the sky.

She reached out both hands cracks of white were starting to form and not heal. The power contained inside her had begun to outpace her ability to heal. Hiro took a breath. She pushed the electricity through the channels down her arms, cracks growing wide. forming traces of lightning webs across her skin. Pain spread up her arm to her shoulders. She gritted her teeth and grunted as she tried to pull more water through the channels in her arms to keep her arms in one piece.

It worked, the lightning arced from her hands before joining together an arm's length from her hands. A giant bolt formed and raced to hit the flying bison in the front. She kept channeling the power trying to use as much of it as she could without blowing off her arms. Hiro willed the electricity to fork from the first bison to the two behind it.

All of them went stiff as the lightning struck them. They lost altitude as their wings froze and their weird horn hooves curled back up like a ram's horn in response to the electricity. Deep gouges from the sharp hooves cut across their cheeks. The electricity arched up as each one hit the ground dispersing the particles into the earth and sky as they settled back into the proper place. The Bison were dead before they hit the ground.

Hiro felt better, the air around her had quieted. She could comfortably hold the power inside her. She had burned off the excess with her overpowered attack. Her hands and arms were throbbing the tips of her fingers were numb. She held them up to examine the damage. She had seen pictures of scars that electricity could cause in one of her OSHA safety videos. Her arms looked like that. A thick bolt of split skin still healing over with thinner fingers coming off of the main stem. Her fingertips were bleeding, the skin having been blown off with the power. Hiro went pale and her stomach tightened. If she couldn't heal with magic it would be a career-ending injury. She looked away from them instead looking at the less gruesome injuries on her arms. The cracks slowly closed as she used the rain to help her heal faster. They left a faint network of fine white scars behind.

Surprisingly her translator had survived her imitation of being a lightning rod. Duffy's voice called up to her. The voice of the translator was a bit garbled, fluctuating as a trail of electricity crawled along the collar. "COme DoWn HERE. MOriA ThiNKS yoU CaN heLp cloSE tHE AnOMAly!"