I was moving before I even finished mentally cursing. The guy behind me yelled out, in alarm and I spared him all of a second to call out "Go call for help!" before leaving him in the dust.
He might have important information, might have been able to help, or even just ease out the situation, but the fact remained he was also a normal human and normal humans did not exactly have the capacity to run flat out in the woods like I did with very view of them able to match the speed I set even on level terrain.
That said I could move faster still, and within moments my eyes had sought out a means how, shifting course slightly to jump up to a massive beast of a tree stump to kick off of that to get mid way into the branch line.
From there it was just a matter of spotting and using the right branches to gain attitude and with it ease of travel.
And from there I entered an entire new level of Goes Fast. Not motorized vehicle fast, hell I wasn't even horse fast, but Iwasa heck of a lot faster then you'd normally expect a biped to move at, and that was a good thing considering I might have very little time to act.
Human hearing is very good at picking up the screams of other humans. That was, after all, the entire purpose of screaming. To let the rest of the tribe know trouble was near, and hopefully startle whatever thing had frightened us. That said human hearing also sucked and we were better at closing ground then most would give us credit for so if I was close enough to hear the scream of who I assumed to be 'Rachel' then I was probably close enough to act.
Hopefully.
Damn it I better make it there in time! What was the point of hearing someone call out in alarm if I couldn't!?
I wasn't sure what I expected to find, a young woman running from the stupid bear I encountered a couple days ago, maybe a teenaged relative of the bird watching guy who had slipped and fallen into some bit of scenery she couldn't get herself loose. Maybe even one of the various gang members harassing a really convincing trap who was sneaking off to meet 'her' boyfriend and watch the beautiful birds!
What I had not expected was all three at once.
Not all three variants of the redhead of course, that would be silly.
No instead what I found was a young woman, hanging onto the edge of modest drop into a river, with two armed young men standing above her nearby a pick up truck with a bear in it.
The men were armed with what I believed were dart guns given the three bright red darts sticking out of the bear, though one was also wearing a revolver.
For a moment I wasn't exactly sure what I was seeing, two hunters who had stumbled across someone in a precarious position? A set of forest rangers on animal control who had done the same?
Except that the men were not clad in any sort of uniform, the woman seemed to be trying to get further down, and I had a general feeling that this was not a good situation.
On the flipside the men actually...
Okay I paused on a branch to listen in as they called out.
"Just stop screaming and hold on!" The first man called out as he tried to get back, "Tim go get the rope!"
"But what if the bear wakes up!?" 'Tim' the other man asked in clear alarm.
"We hit it with enough tranquilizer to put out a horse! It'll be fine!" the yet unnamed hunter stated.
"MONSTERS!" The woman called out at that. "You can't do this! That bear is one of nature's creatures! Black bears don't even hurt people!"
I blinked slowly from my perch up in the trees as a great many puzzle pieces fell into my lap that did not want to fit into any sane configuration.
~Well obviously the answer is not a sane configuration then~
"It's abear," standing hunter, (poacher?) commented. "You are a person, stop being an idiot about this and hold on!"
The other guy Tim had at that point closed in with the rope, apparently originally intended for the bear, quickly held it out to his more wordy compatriot, "Here!"
The first man blinked, "Don't hand it tome!Tie one end to the truck and throw it over!" he said grabbing one end of the rope as he did.
"I'd rather die then accept your help you... you! Would be fascist world killers!" the woman called out again.
Oh gods this was really happening. I mean you heard of this thing, saw it on TV now and then but really? Really?
"Oh shut up you idiot!" Tim called out, "The Empire has fought at every Endbringer fight since Kaiser took over! Regardless of whatyoufeel about their going policy they still work to help protectthe world."
And now I was back to confused again.
"Tim, please now is not the time," The first... bear hunting good samaritan neo Nazi(?!) suggested.
"I'm sorry Jack but she's being a complete bitch about this! I mean yeah there are a lot of things the empire does wrong but it is amorally grey topic! I mean look at our city! There is a god damned monster pretending to be a man taking women just like her off the streets to sell into the sex trade! Drug pushers keep spreading further and further from the dilapidated cesspool thatwasthe trainyard and illegal immigrants are swarming over what few jobs there are for honest hardworking Americans! Yes they're nasty, but what other options are there!?" he asked pointing down at the woman. "What am I supposed to do miss? Just stand there and be nice to the gangbangers trying to turn my country into theirs just because some monster sunk it!?"
"You could try showing human empathy!" she shouted back up at him, "The empire doesn't help people find jobs! It ruins them! Do you know what Brockton Bay is called? The Nazi capital of the US! They're the reason the city is rotting in the first place!"
What is this, I don't even...
"Wellexcuse me, it's hard to show human empathy with fucking monster sat the gate! I mean sure we could play nice if the Endbringers hadn't shown up and global trade hadn't dried up, but-"
At that point I basically just tuned out everything as I stood there realizing something that summarized basically everything about what I was seeing.
This was Darwinian selection in action. Two idiot neo-nazis sitting by a likely soon to wake up drugged out of its mind bear by a cliff face on which a woman to morally stubborn to literally grab the rope that would save her hung upon.
They were all idiots, idiots in the process of trying their damnedest to die and in doing so insure that the next generation was alittle bit less stupid.
And I was going to have to save them.
Suddenly villainy seemed a much more attractive option.