JLA Watchtower (Archive)

Boneshirt, the police, the Feds, and the firefighters are cleaning up and scouring the place for evidence. McKay was small-time, but Domestic Terrorism still sent up all the flags.

Charges of conspiracy, vandalism, arson, Federal hate crimes, assault, and attempted murder. And felony murder charges are also being filed.

Rainbow Collins was dead on arrival, despite Bart's speed. the bullets killed her instantly.

People are rebuilding, best they know how.

She's spent all morning gathering her own kind of defense, scouting through woods and fields that she knows with her eyes shut, re-learning them with her new body. The creatures do not see her as human any longer, and she has been speaking to them. It would be a dangerous thing to fight, but an even more dangerous to do nothing.

The sun is sinking to the west by the time she gets home.

Damn it, it was never supposed to happen HERE. Not to a town and community based on peace. Not to the sanctuary those weary of war had created to make a last stand, which embraced pacifism as an act of open defiance, rejection of the mentality that it was inevitable or the way things always here and always had to be.

Every adult swore that they would die for that ideal when they saw…maybe too little of the world. If she hadn't been taken, she would be taking those oaths. She would be prepared to walk in front of McKay's gun and accept her own death rather than cave into the temptation to strike back, and start the dance of escalation, giving the pleasure to those who found pleasure in the fight, in squashing resistance. To make it not any fun for the bullies and zap their wills.

But, she had changed, irrecoverably.

And this militia was lusting for dominance and power, wanting to satiate their lust for pain on her home.

Sooner or later, they would use this place up, and their craving for violence and domination would find another target. Rapists didn't tend to stop with one rape, after all. One of the confirmed "takedowns" of her small time career was a rapist. She saw him leaving a classmate of hers broken and tied up with duct tape while he tried to skulk off into the night. As Fauna, she chased him down, causing enough of a ruckus to alert campus police and give him the scare of his life. Later she learned that he was convicted for three other attacks on campus, and possibly more that went unreported.

It would seem everyone's out today. Some carry shovels and rakes and implements of destruction, jaws set and walking into the square. Others she has seen anonymously leave tools and supplies for the traps that she's been helping her friends set up. As a native, she knew the lay of the land best and could scout them to some of the trails and landmarks. Others from the Commune helped. In ones and twos, they offered advise, supplies, or their hands. Most who aided directly had young children they were afraid for, and willing to take the rist to help them.

Arguments have broken out. She's seen people who grew up together come dangerously close to blows prevented only by vows that are starting to unravel like a sweater badly made.

It's too late to save the peace, but she can do her damndest to save her home.

The closest airport is merely a field with just enough room for single-engine planes to take off and land without causing a collision. The roads are mostly gravel and dirt once they leave the two-lane highway passing the southern border of the Sequoia National Forest. The Jeep will have to take them the rest of the way.

As they drive through the Tulle reservation, they see signs in the windows for hunting and fishing licenses, grocery stores selling live bait, and roadside shacks selling produce grown nearby or the oddball selling fireworks with enough kick to rival TNT. The houses are blighted by poverty, residents trying their best to stave off entropy without quite enough resources to do it effectively.

The trading post, the largest building here, is about the size of a large supermarket. It's also the only gas station in fifty miles. The Jeep rumbles up to the pump.

"Last stop before the Commune, folks," Aurora reminds the others.