Chương 21: Ecosystem

We were led up two floors to the meeting room. Tancred didn't care to wait up for us, the only reason we could keep pace was he just naturally walked slowly. It was just obvious he was walking with intent and not giving pause for us to follow. He brought his undamaged hand up and slammed it on the doors into the meeting room, bringing them open, his voice calling out afterwards.

"Got the kids, let's get this shindig going yesterday. Pile in and take a seat, Sentinels, we got more than enough for all of you." As we entered, off to my right I could see two new adults I hadn't seen before. One was a morbidly obese man, well and truly bald unlike Perry whose head was simply shaved. It outright glowed in the sunlight peering in through the windows. The windows. Those stood out to me. Massive, you could see the entire city through them. Stop getting distracted.

The bald man looked to be pushing his sixties. Probably wouldn't see his seventies at that weight. Not my issue. The other individual was a woman in a similar age range to Tancred. She seemed absolutely thrilled to be here, with the glare behind her thick-framed eyeglasses and tightly pursed lips. She seemed to be of average height, buried under a suit that concealed most features. The shoulderpads in them seemed unnecessary. We all took seats at least two chairs apart from each other.

Except Christian, who was adamant on sitting next to me. I wondered if he would be able to counter me throwing him out the window, but it wasn't worth the test.

"Okay," Tancred started.

"This is Mayor Wilfred Goldschmidt, and Chief Wendy Tancred." My face snapped towards the auditor immediately. He was prepared for that, as he was glaring right at me.

"You keep your cakehole shut on that." But he was too far to stop me; there was no jabbing my eyes from this distance. I capitalized on the weakness.

"Sister or wife?" The police chief was instant, her voice razor-sharp.

"Ex-wife. Just kept my last name for professional purposes." My gaze never left the auditor, who pinched his nose.

"We met at Langley. We divorced around the same time she quit to become a cop." She interjected.

"I quit because unlike you I grew a set of decent morals while you decided to start playing spook for the Super Commission."

"A set of morals-" He sounded actually confused.

"Come the fuck on, you lying broad, you were just as crooked as me!" The mayor interjected, his voice surprisingly both heavy and warm.

"Sorry to put a hold on this wonderful reunion, but which of you was the one who put the governor's son in a wheelchair?" Agent Tancred perked up. He saw a retaliatory opportunity, and leveled a calloused finger at me.

"That'd be Leo Holt. He's going by 'Hercules' for his hero work." The mayor nodded, waddling his way towards me.

"Mr. Holt, could you come with me for just a minute? I should give you an appropriate lecture for that but I don't need everyone else hearing it." Taking a deep breath, I gave a nod, my eyes fixed on Tancred. He didn't smile, but I could feel it. The mayor rested his hand on my shoulder, and I complied, following him out of the room behind closed doors. I could hear Tancred and his ex-wife arguing behind the doors already. I paid it no mind as Goldschmidt spoke in a low voice.

"So I was told by the chief I should give you a dressing down for reckless vigilantism, but I just wanted to tell you I've hated Rupert Bailey since we went to Stanford. Huge slimeball. And his kids are just as bad." There was no way to stop me from raising my eyebrows at that point.

"If anyone asks, I told you that in the future you will never take the law into your own hands, and you have a standard you need to follow down to the punctuation. But personally? The look on Rupert's face when he learned his son got his legs broken because he was participating in a drug ring in Richmond was the most satisfying thing I've seen in thirty years." That prompted a real question from me.

"What was the most before thirty years ago?" He shrugged.

"Shook hands with The Saint in the eighties." Of course.

"And while you may not be The Saint, I'd love to shake yours." The mayor held a hand out. I did my best not to accidentally break his hand. Sincerely. Didn't expect someone with even just this much authority to be pleased with me. Gotta take it where you can get it. We returned into the room, the two Tancreds still swapping snipes.

"Unlike someone in France who said he totally needed to sleep with the ambassador's wife for information-""Well I wasn't gonna sleep with him, and they weren't giving me the go ahead to just break in-" The mayor interjected again.

"I think you two can save the debate for after the meeting. Mr. Tancred, could you please get us caught up to speed on everything you have." Agent Tancred groaned. I took his whining as time to review the room. His ex-wife had her arms crossed. The Sentinels were all looking away awkwardly, but started paying attention to the conversation when the mayor spoke. An audible click followed the sound of something mechanical whirring. Looking towards the sound, I could see the wall split open, both halves sliding away.

"Cool shit, ain't it? I demanded we get that because I've always wanted one." Behind the sliding portions was a large television screen. Another click turned it on, showing images of people with green robes covered in leaves and holding rifles, staves, interacting with each other in some kind of warehouse.

"These are individuals from an ecoterrorist cult called Anti-Deforestation Union. They're some weird mystic woo-woo offshoot of Greenpeace, bigger focus on plants than animals." He clicked his remote to another slide, showing an image of a tree with its vines crushing a gear.

"Their symbol. It's been found in a few different parts across the country, but going by reports, they all lead towards Charlottesville." Another click, another slide of a far more candid looking shot of them gathered in the forest around a fire. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

"We're not sure who yet, I've got a couple investigators on it now, but someone in Greenpeace convinced these wackos to get involved in magic bullshit. Likely a wizard or a guy who got the wrong idea from a wizard. They've gotten into some sort of commune with what's called the 'Arboreal Senate.'" Click. Blurry images of the tree-men at the park.

"We're still seeking out some magical experts to give us the full picture. Present information on those who know at least a little bit about the more occult topics is that they're some collective of sapient plant life that really, really hates humans." Yet another click. A few pictures of three different men. One had curly brown hair, grey eyes. The second had a shaved head and a thick beard, brown eyes. Third man was hairless, very dark complexion.

"These are three individuals with priors in other states for ecoterrorism-related acts that got by on technicalities. Our investigators have sworn up and down to have seen them but were unable to get images. Chief Tancred will need to put out warrants for all three men. These are your priority targets." He then pointed to us, broadly.

"You find them during your patrols, you apprehend them and report it through your ear pieces." There was no wait for a nod as he clicked again, showing a map with red, orange, and yellow dots on it.

"Yellow dots are from gathered eyewitness reports, either through social media or personal interview, of alleged sightings related to the ADU or Arboreal Senate." Quite a few yellow dots. Likely a lot of retrospective guesses.

"Orange dots are from reported behavior or signs by our and any third party investigators, such as local law enforcement." Less of those. Maybe six in total.

"Red dots are confirmed sightings, either to public knowledge or by investigators seeing them and reporting it." Three total. One was where the park should be.

"We're going over full rules of engagement tomorrow, but the core detail is if you see an ADU member alone, you apprehend and report." He held up one finger.

"If you see two, apprehend and report." Two fingers. Then the third finger rose.

"Three or more, you just report it. You do not engage with three or more of these guys. They are armed, they are crazy, and they know magic. It is completely impossible to understand the scale of whatever the individual members can do, but all of you have powersets that can handle one to two armed adult men." Technically I've handled six.

"And I bet you're thinking because you've fought idiots with bats or something," Tancred added, pointing to me.

"That a pack of psychos with guns and spells aren't a huge risk. Trust me, all it takes is one call and it goes from three maniacs to twenty. You are not beating twenty men in a fight. Twenty men will also not exclusively engage you." He put his unbroken hand on his hip.

"They will cause collateral damage. They will take hostages. They will do anything they can to prevent resistance, because they are fucking crazy and likely evil. And if you enable that crazy and likely evil, it will get people hurt." The agent rubbed his face before glancing to the group.

"Any questions?" Christian raised a hand, prompting Tancred's gaze.

"How many do you estimate there are?" asked the apparent team lead. Tancred glanced out the window.

"Estimates based on plausible and confirmed reports hover around about one hundred strong. The margin of error is about twenty percent. When everyone's in thick, green, leafy robes it's hard to tell them apart." Chris just nodded, before the police chief spoke.

"What're they rated as behaviorally? I haven't seen any reports of figures like in the images doing anything." The auditor looked up at her, visible disgust on his face, as he spoke.

"At that scale of manpower and a recent presence, we give them an ecosystemic rating of being ambush predators targeting untouched niches in small environments." He looked away as though he was averting his gaze from a bloody corpse.

"Charlottesville doesn't have any notable superhero or villain presence, its last kaiju attack was in the eighties, and crime is at a thirty-year low right now, as you'd know." The police chief nodded, and the auditor continued.

"They're armed, and those tree things talked about wanting human blood, meaning the group is not only violent but interested in killing. We've seen no non-violent motivations from them, meaning ideologically they are obligate carnivores and not opportunistic ones." Jairo raised a hand.

"Mr. Tancred, what does all that mean?" Agent Tancred pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaling.

"Of course you didn't pay attention. Right, so the Super Commission handles a lot of threat-eval for superhumans, namely villains. We've found that behaviorally, due to the culture being outside of legal norms, it's best to compare the 'game' of superhero vs supervillain ecologically." Jairo stared.

"Like animals, Jairo. We treat supers like animals for threat assessment. Not dehumanizingly, of course, but we've found identifying behaviors based on ecosystemic presence instead of human social dynamics is a much more efficient predictive model. It's not a hard rating system, and more of a diagnostic set of logic." That had me curious enough to speak up.

"How so?" Tancred glanced at me, crossing his good arm over his slinged arm.

"We view villains from a consumption perspective. They're usually either scavengers who simply wish to acquire resources in typically illegal fashion without direct intent of harm on the populace, or they're predators who knowingly engage in behaviors that will harm people indirectly or not." He rolled his hand.

"Thieves, counterfeiters, heisters, and generally reckless assholes are primarily scavengers. Terrorists, killers, cult leaders, and what have you are predators. We also recognize their ecosystemic presence as either valuable or harmful, as sometimes apex predator villains with a desire for order actually suppress a larger potential criminal element." Walking around the table, he rested his hand on the tabletop.

"Then finally there's the dietary recognition. We try to also diagnose based on their focus on gain — herbivorous — versus their focus on negatively impacting the lives of others, lethally or no — carnivorous." Quite a bit to take in.

"Someone focused on making money by scamming and hurting people is an omnivore," And he's still going.

"He just wants to gain things and doesn't care who he hurts along the way." Sounds like the drug dealers.

"Heisters with set non-lethality rules aiming purely for money are herbivorous, either obligate or opportunistic depending on how strict they are on it. Maniacs with guns bombing buildings are obligate carnivores, they specifically seek to harm people." I nodded purely just to shut him up at this point.

"Right, anything else?" The mayor spoke.

"Right, so do we have any sort of time window on when we can deal with these cultists entirely?" Agent Tancred shook his head.

"Obviously we want this done yesterday but we can't afford that luxury right now with the lack of information available. The fact they haven't immediately escalated again means we likely have a time advantage, but that advantage closes by the minute. I need you both to give the go-ahead on getting ready for an early deploy on the New Sentinels." He then looked to his ex-wife.

"And I need the chief to put out warrants on the individuals I mentioned earlier. I'll have our paperwork on them handed to you before you even walk out this door. Now do I have both of you in agreement?" The two authorities nodded, Police Chief Tancred speaking.

"I'll need to speak to the AG but I can get that done within the next couple of days. Is that within your time-table or are you gonna be a demanding prick about that too?" A big head roll from him, probably because you couldn't see him roll his eyes behind those glasses.

"If we can be ready by Friday I don't give a shit if you get the approval Thursday. Thank you! Meeting adjourned unless you two need to add anything." The mayor got up from his chair, which creaked and groaned with relief, and began to toddle his way to the door. The chief, meanwhile, glared at the auditor.

"You know you're fucked up for putting kids up to this, right?" Tancred shrugged.

"The Commission's putting kids up to this. I wanted to turn some of the less active Patriot Project guys public. This was the compromise. And trust me, I don't like it any more than you do. Only reason I'm managing this pack of barely-out-of-puberty brats is the fat check they cut me and the other candidates to run it are freaks."

"Really encouraging," I sniped out. His response was a calloused middle finger from his good hand. I rolled my eyes before getting out of my chair.

"I'm gonna go shower," I declared and made my way out of the meeting room, followed by May.

"Don't try to contain all your excitement for the spandex, Leo," she taunted, tapping me on the arm. Honestly, I'd rather chew glass.