Chapter 210 Stay Away From The Water
"It was not the ground, it was the water." the brown cat corrected.
"No, it was the ground, I saw it clearly." the white cat insisted.
Scarlet looked between her two eye witnesses, wondering which one to believe. The one that disdained humans or the one which vehemently persisted on being right while it rubbed it's head against her fingers. The white cat was a people pleaser probably, a glutton for rubs and scratches.
"Severus," she called in her mind, "What should I do?" she asked.
Something coming out of the ground or the water was dangerous was for them. Even though all the water bodies within the city had been shielded, water was not something one controlled easily. It could divert at anytime, shields did not stop divergence and captain Vangar had already warned her about this. But what puzzled her the most was the fact that the water in the lake and the river was frozen as far as the eye could see, it would take a very extraordinarily strong beast to break through the ice and bite an arm off of someone. Nothing made sense about this story at all.
"Read their minds," Severus told her. "Place your hand on the head of the spirit animal and use your power to invade carefully. If you use too much force, you will kill the animal so be very careful."
"No pressure." she said sarcastically.
"Wait." Severus blurted out as soon as her right hand touched the head of the white cat. "You have to take the glove off and do it with your bare hands but I am not sure if this is a good idea."
She took off her glove and scratched the chin of the cat gently, "Don't worry, I am getting better at controlling the flame. I will not risk harming this little cutie pie."
The brown cat jumped closer and attempted to push the white one away saying, "It was water, just read my thoughts. It's easier when we let you in, come and take a look."
"Go with him, he looks smarter." Severus pointed at the brown one and the white cat hissed at him. Not too pleased at becoming the stupid one in this scenario.
Scarlet placed her hand first on the brown one, letting her energy travel slowly into the brown cat, connecting with the threads of red in it's head. She could see everything that had happened in it's day, the memories were like broken fragments and she could pick which one to look at.
"Hurry." the cat complained grumpily.
She found the memory from the forest, the two cats were patrolling around, keeping a close eye on the shadow guild members in their mechas deep in the blue forest who were tracking mutated beasts with a special device. They moved in a large group towards a spot the red dot on the device indicated. She recognized this part of the woods, it was one she had come through as a grim reaper before winter. There was a small isolated hot water stream that run through the area. It was obvious that the stream too was frozen, the entire are was covered by a layer of ice.
"It should be here," one of them said, "I see nothing."
"I don't see anything as well." another said.
"We should return, any mutated beast that can make itself invisible is not one we can handle." this was said by a woman, she was inside the mecha in the middle and she looked like the leader of the group.
"The device indicates a strong beast, this can be millions in payday for us Sephora, if you are scared, you should not have come." a man replied.
The man was inside the mecha at the front, the way he spoke portrayed arrogance and excitement.
"I sense danger Quinlin." the woman, Sephora insisted. "We are teleporting back, now."
"Teleportation devices only have six runs and then they fry, they also cost hundreds of millions, are you going to waste hundreds of millions on your mystery sense? I think..."
The man was still speaking when something broke through the ice, tearing the arm off the mecha with one large bite and then ripping one arm off the nearest hunter. There was loud screaming and panic and then the mechas disappeared in a flash of white and pink light.
The cats stayed behind, and watched the creature swallow the hand in one bite and return to where it broke out from.
Scarlet let go of the cat and fell back, sitting on the ground in shock. "What the bloody hell!!" she said in shock. You had creatures jumping out "You have things jumping out of frozen water now? Is any place safe in these terrible times, I am beginning to think, Severus, that the threat level on this world is equal to that of the world I came from. Without these energy powered shields we would be sitting ducks. How does something even stay under frozen water and still have the energy to move around violently like that?"
"Maybe it generates it's own heat or maybe it likes ice cold water, I don't have the answers to everything. All I know is that you should warn the humans to stay away from the water. Something that can rip one of those mecha machines in one bite is not one they need to entangle with."
Agreeing with him, she sent the image of the creature to the forum for identification. Unlike the usual ones which were identified in a few seconds, the identification of the creature that looked like a mixture of a behemoth whale and a over grown crocodile was taking a while. 'I might as well go and check on the shadow warriors, she thought. She had only seen them once, it was when they had arrived on the blue star.
Their group was led by Sephora, she was master Shadow's daughter, however, it seemed to Scarlet after what she had viewed in the brown cat's memory that Sephora was not accorded much respect by some of her fellow hunters. If they did, they would have turned back when she told them that she sensed danger.
Tion drove her to the hospital where the nurses were surprised to see her again, so soon, in their opinion.
"Are you here to bring more medicine governor? The internal heat regulating pills worked perfectly." one of the nurses from the children's ward said to her as she escorted her to an elevator.
"No, I am here to check on the injured man from the shadow hunters guild, were is he?"
The nurse scanned her wrist and an elevator leading to a private floor eighty five opened. "They have money so they asked for one of the VIP private wards. They scared many of us when they brought their friend in, his entire arm was gone and ripped off violently and there were deep teeth marks on his neck. Part of his ear too was gone, if they had not brought him in time he would be dead right now. W-what kind of beast do you suppose did that kind of damage?"
She spoke freely, but nervously because she kept her massaging her fingers and pressing them. Her voice too, was shaking, almost as if her teeth were chattering from the cold.
"Are you scared?" Scarlet took both of the nurse's hands in her own and held them.
The nurse nodded her head up and down slowly, and then she looked sown. "It's stupid, right? This is a part of what happens when winter comes, we should be used to it, especially those of us in this profession but I am scared, I am so scared and seeing that man like that_"