X-Trees| Volume One: Welcome Home

Chapter Seven

Summary: The stage is set...

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Back in Nevada, the city that sins, continues much the way it always has. Visitors drink and gamble in the smokey gauze that slips like mist throughout the casino floor. Trees less inclined to spend their time gambling, take to clubs, and dance floors, swaying and gyrating like it was their last days alive. In the darker, less traveled parts of the city, crime goes on, unhindered. Mobs take what they believe is theirs, while Trees pray for mercy. Mercy is not a thing that exists in the city known for its sin. Retribution is swift, but it is not painless – a warning, for any others. Do not cross, do not forget, the world is not meant for you, that's what these punishments signify.

But even there, in the darkest alleys, where the light seems unable to penetrate, there is hope. A squat Canadian pine retracts his adamantium needles with a SNNKT, and another Tree, lithe and limber falls to the ground, sap oozing down his trunk. There are three stark gashes, one to his face, the others his torso. Lips turn blue under the pale moon's watch, and the beauty of Las Vegas's skyline, is lost to him forever.

Behind a dumpster, a third tree shakes. Her canopy is tousled, her branches shook. She breathes heavy, puffs of mist condensing around her mouth as her breaths mix with Vegas's humidity. She clutches a vine purse close to her heartswood, her eyes bigger than the moon that watches from above as more and more sap pools around the fallen tree. It nears her roots, and with a yelp she recoils, receding further into the darkness. She does not know if the Tree that has helped her is friend or foe; she doesn't want to find out. And so, with a rattle of her branches, she jolts to her roots, turns, and sprints down the alley. Not once does she bother to look back.

She'd heard tales. Of them. The mutated. The cursed. The freaks. Trees with inexplicable powers; capable of manipulating ones mind. Another able to call upon the elements and bend them to her will. She's heard rumors of cannibalism, and terrible acts of violence. Some of her family believe the state propaganda; the X-Trees are terrorists.

But now, as she makes her way onto the strip, the vast neon lights splashing down on her like pools of the rainbow, she's not sure how to feel. On on branch, she was saved, certainly; on the other, could the X-tree have been plotting a fate worse than that? Was he not satisfied with the sap that dripped down his claws? Would he have thirsted for hers as well?

A shudder crawls up her trunk, and she slips into the first bar that has its doors open. Drunken patrons spill onto the sidewalk, and she pushes past them brusquely, eager to quell her nerves, to calm her mind, to drink and forget about what had happened, and what could have happened.

The X-Trees, she's certain, are not all bad, but neither are they all good.

*

Log-an looks annoyingly at the corpse at his roots. One more to add to the growing list. How many had that made? In all his agonizingly long years, was this his hundredth kill? Or thousandth? He blows out, and the itch, that insatiable urge for a cigar, makes his stomach clench. His branch-fingers go rigid. Who he's killed, and how many, don't matter. He was just doing what he was made to do; and being damn good at it.

Charles knew it; Charles wanted it. No matter how he didn't want to admit it, Charles wanted a killer, ruthless, merciless, someone to die and fight and die again for their cause if need be.

Log-an snickers, a cigar seemingly materializing out of nowhere from beneath his spiked canopy. He places it deftly in his mouth, never minding the sap stuck to his fingers. In a matter of seconds, flames as bright and red as the neon lights outside of the Venetian Theater, dance across the tip. The first inhale is heaven, or, at least, the closest thing Log-an believes himself capable of getting. He will never be allowed in Heaven; it wasn't a place for murderers.