The forest remained sparse enough to see a fair distance, but it was deserted. No wildlife of any sort. No birds singing in the branches above, no insects flitting by on their way to be lunched by something bigger, and most definitely no animals. Dizzy, who was about six feet away from the red-clad guitarist, had never felt so uneasy in her not-so long life, and it was showing.

Her face had paled slightly, giving her a rather unhealthy pallor. Also, her wings were fully manifested, as well as her tail, which was idly lashing the ground behind her feet as she walked. I-No, on the other hand, looked to be almost sleepwalking. Her head was bent downwards, and her fingers slowly twitched along the guitar's frets, almost as if she were playing a tune only she could hear. Even then, she still uncannily dodged obstacles as she came to them, deftly ducking under branches, dodging around tree trunks, and stepping around boulders.

Dizzy, pausing to look at the still pyre of smoke through the sparse branches of a dead pine tree, heard something behind her. Almost instantly she spun around, prepared for anything, except... nothing. There was no evidence that anything had even passed through the forest, except for the snake-like trail left in the dead leaves and needles caused by her tail.

"Something bothering you?" Dizzy damn near jumped out of her skin at the quiet voice, then looked at I-No.

"Yeah. This place is, well... dead." Dizzy absently chewed on a fingernail, which she only did when worried. When she was really worried, she used to gnaw on the end of her tail.

I-No nodded. "I know. Passed through here some time ago. About fifty kliks thataway," She waved in the general direction of West, then grinned and brought a finger up to adjust her hat. "There's an ancient reactor. Called something like Chernobyl. From what I was told, the place went up about three hundred years ago in something called a meltdown. We are walking through what is literally a dead zone. The only thing that can survive in here are these trees, and maybe bacteria."

Dizzy shuddered, then looked at the smoke trail above her. "I think we should get going. I... really don't feel safe here."

"Hnn." I-No nodded, heading slightly to the right of the direction the smoke trail was pointing the two towards. Dizzy followed, having to jog for a few moments to catch up to the taller woman. No conversation passed between the two as they continued to walk, though the faces in Dizzy's wings had manifested themselves again.

I cannot believe that this witch would have anything to do with us unless she was planning to kill us. Remember our first meeting? Necros' voice echoed inside Dizzy's head, though she chose to ignore the guardian as he vented his current frustrations.

#All too well. Now, are you going to continue to be paranoid, or will you accept the fact that we've been heading roughly in the same direction without conflict for the last five hours?# Undine was, typically, much calmer, and asked the most relevant questions between the two beings.

No. She's waiting for something. I can feel it. The reply was solid with conviction, though Undine's watery chuckle burbled through a few seconds later.

#I agree with you there, but something else is in this forest. She might be waiting for whatever it is to flush it out.# The two guardians seemed to agree, then Necros seemed to grin, his voice tinged with amusement.

Yeah. I'll believe that when Testament turns into a girl. Almost instantly, he was mentally berated by Dizzy, who, in no uncertain terms, told him to either retract that statement or lose visitation privileges to Testament's familiar, which the male spirit had acquired a liking towards.

Necros sulkily recanted the comment, satisfying Dizzy, while Undine just laughed.

Meanwhile, the two guardians had been keeping their senses tuned to anything unusual, barring the fact that the only things alive in the entire forest were Dizzy and I-No. The witch had paused for a few moments, crouching as she looked at something. She actually stretched her hand wide, placing it in a depression in the ground, then shuddered.

Standing I-No looked at Dizzy, who had stopped and was looking at the depression in the forest floor. "We need to get out of here fast. Whatever left this here is likely to be coming back soon, and I don't want to be here when it does."

Dizzy took a closer look at the depression for all of two seconds, seeing that it was a print. A jagged, clawed print seven times the size of her hand. "I agree."

The two then took off running. I-No, due to her greater stride, even in her impossible-to-run platform shoes, easily distanced herself from Dizzy, who occasionally caught up with a self-propelled gust from her wings.

The two stopped as they crested a small hill, and looked down into a tree-filled valley below. Between the trees, the rusted, decaying hulks of blacktech vehicles, each with a still-visible red star on their sides leered at the two. "Wow. I've never seen so much old technology before. You think Zepp would pay for the location?"

"Zepp already knows about this heap. They've also avoided it for one reason."

"What's that?"

"Radiation."

"Huh?"

"Old weapon. Basically, it's an invisible killer, and does a pretty nasty job of it too. I've seen old pictures. People tend to have their skin melt when exposed to too much radiation, followed by everything else that's not bone."

"Guh-ross. Do we have to go through this valley?"

"No. You have wings, don't you? I can 'blink' over to the other side as well. I'll see you there." Dizzy wanted to ask what I-No meant by 'blinking' but quickly learned as the witch literally faded fro sight in the time it took for the young hybrid to blink. Taking to the air quickly, Dizzy caught sight of the now familiar pointed red hat, and flew over the irradiated blacktech as fast as she could, landing beside I-No in a small cloud of dust.

"Wow. Can you teach me how to do that?" Dizzy virtually hopped up and down, excited and oddly happy.

"No. I don't even know how I do it myself." I-No shot down Dizzy's idea, then pointed at the trail. "We're getting closer. Maybe another eight to ten hours of walking will get us there."

"We only have another three hours of sunlight though." Dizzy shaded her eyes to look at the sun, frowning as she did so.

"Well, looks like we'll have to make camp somewhere along the way. You know something about outdoors survival?" I-No started walking towards the still-visible smoke trail, following the edge of the valley so she didn't have to dodge so many trees.

"Some. Testament and Johnny taught me a lot of things." I-No raised an eyebrow for a second as Dizzy's voice seemed to choke up for a second, then nodded in understanding. She then grinned.

"The least of which was to be an effective pilferer. Now, tell your tail to cough up the pretty bauble it just snarfed down." Dizzy blushed a bright shade of red, then mentally forced her tail to disgorge whatever it had eaten. Ten seconds later, a small pile of gold coins, a half-pound of dead pine needles, a rhinestone amulet, a small pouch half-full of raisins, and a rather large chunk of an oak tree were lying on the ground, and Dizzy felt like her tail would be stretched and sore forever.

"Owww... That hurt."

"Not nearly as much as it could've." I-No scooped up the amulet, which was bone dry for some reason, then motioned at the coins. "We might need 'em. If you have pockets, that might be a better place for them."

Dizzy looked at the coins, glistening with whatever her tail had used to lubricate their eviction, and shuddered for a few seconds. Finally, seeing no better recourse, she reached out with her tail and gently picked up each coin, stacking them in her free hand. It turned out that there were just under fifty coins, and Dizzy used the pouch of raisins to store as many coins as possible, leaving perhaps ten behind as I-No waited. "There. We now have money, and some food."

I-No nodded, then turned and continued walking, Dizzy falling into step beside her almost instantly. They walked quietly for nearly twenty minutes, then heard something thrashing through the bush behind and to their right. "Not good. When I say so, fly towards where you want to go."

Dizzy shook her head, turning and watching the direction the noise was coming from. "No. I can fight too."

I-No shook her head. "You don't know what it's capable of." The witch looked in the direction of the slowly increasing noise, frowned, and stepped between Dizzy and whatever the source was. "I do. As I said: Run."

Dizzy didn't have time to respond, as the being that was making the noise slowly thrashed out of the brush. Standing at least twelve feet tall, the hulking form had long, clawed arms that dragged along the ground, carving divots in the hard earth every time it took a step. Thick, leathery skin, tinged a deathly grey pallor, and tiny, beady eyes perched just above a hook-like nose. The creature's red eyes focussed easily on the two females in front of it, and it seemed to smile, unfurling a two foot long tongue to slaver over its needle-like teeth.

The abomination paused for a few seconds, which was enough time for I-No to get to work; before the creature could take three steps towards the two, the witch had summoned her considerable powers and knocked the creature into the air with a powerful spike of energy that blasted through the ground until it erupted right below the creature's feet. The creature didn't fly far; it skidded to a stop three feet away from its launching point, just in time to get a solid kick in the face followed by the body of I-No's guitar slamming hard into the creature's chin, snapping off several teeth.

The witch didn't let up, pounding the monster repeatedly with a series of blows that would have left most humans near death. However, the creature just climbed back to its full height, shrugging off the solid series of blows. Smiling again, the creature flexed its claws, then brought its left hand down, trying to squash I-No. It missed, and, in response, received a solid boot to the chin that sent its head snapping backwards, a spray of blood and teeth gushing from its mouth.

I-No had used the momentum of the vertical kick to backflip twice, stopping safely out of the creature's reach even as the thing slowly stood back up. "I told you to go! Now!"

Dizzy was torn. She didn't want to leave her only companion alone, even though it was apparent that the witch was easily taking care of herself. However, she could see that the creature, whatever it was, could take a lot more punishment than either of the two women could. Dizzy tried using her more gear-like senses to examine the creature, but all she got in return was the creature's attention. Somehow, the hideous being had picked up on the magical energies pouring like waves off of Dizzy's body, and it decided to try to take a chunk out of what seemed to be more helpless prey. Almost before Dizzy could react to being turned into the new target, I-No bashed her guitar into the back of the creature's left knee, dropping the monster for a few seconds.

Dizzy's tail took the subconscious opportunity offered, and darted out, toothy maw gaping. When her tail retracted, the creature lay on the ground, howling in agony. Dizzy's tail had torn off two fingers on the thing's right hand, taken a chunk out of the creature's torso as big as I-No's guitar, and messily amputated half of the being's face. I-No, not feeling much pity for the thing, smashed her guitar into the gaping wound in the creature's side, rebounding the heavy instrument off of its liver, and provoking another howl of pain as she ducked back in and poked the thing's good eye with the toe of her boot.

Dizzy, sickened by what she had done to the monstrous being, reached out and grabbed I-No by the arm, pulling the witch away from the now-helpless creature. "The hell? Let go of me, kid! You don't know what you're doing!"

"I know exactly what we're doing. We are leaving before that thing decides to turn us into snackcakes. Maybe you didn't notice because you were busy trying to pop the thing's liver, but it had regrown both fingers that I had taken off in just under five seconds." I-No stopped resisting Dizzy's insistent pulling, and began to run alongside the shorter hybrid.

"Damn. I think there's only the one in this area, but we should be careful. Besides, I don't want to be eaten."

Dizzy glanced back at the now-invisible clearing where she and I-No had thrashed the creature, then looked ahead just in time to duck a low-hanging branch. "What... was that... thing... anyhow?"

I-No's breath came in short gasps, so she slowed to a jog to get some air into her lungs, Dizzy doing the same, for the same reason. "Don't really know. Someone called it a troll once. Name fits; thing's nearly unstoppable and it's ugly as hell."

Dizzy nodded. "I'll say. It took everything we threw at it and laughed at us. I guess we won't be sleeping much tonight."

I-No paused, looking at Dizzy for a few seconds. Dizzy, uncomfortable with the scrutiny, bushed and turned away. I-No stopped looking, and smiled gently, totally at odds with her bloodthirsty actions during the fight. "I didn't know you had a sense of humour under that shy shell you're in. Kinda nice to hear someone crack a joke about our present predicament."

Dizzy smiled as well, pausing for a few moments before she settled into her own distinctive jogging style, which allowed her to use her wings to assist in her forward momentum. I-No simply jogged alongside, ignoring the blood dripping down her back.

Far behind them, the creature finished healing enough to rage mindlessly at anything in its immediate reach.