Maybe he should’ve waited just a bit longer. Maybe at night. Maybe earlier in the morning tomorrow. There were too many people on the streets, and those old seeds deep under the pavement grew wilder than he’d anticipated— they responded… [i]too[/i] well to the radioactive pulse. Vines, roots, gnarly bark— it shot through that predatory company headquarters like it was merely sand. All the concrete crumbled, steel beams creaked and broke and flung through streets, still red from the sheer radioactive energy the infamous Gamma-Burn lets loose. 

Smoke clouded his vision, and only a green eye glowed through the fallout at dawn. 

The forest kept spreading. Through streets, parking lots, basements, office buildings— a concrete jungle was far better than the disgusting smog each factory and car greedily bellowed into the atmosphere. Maybe he was too hasty. Maybe he let out too much energy. Maybe his hands burning in pain should’ve been a sign to stop channeling more and more radioactive heat through the roots. Just a bit more. Just a little thicker, a little harder to uproot. Just… enough to stump the idiot at the top floor, *permanently.* 

Sorrel saw the way people ran, screaming and turning away from the plants and the rubble. They could run— they weren’t his targets. Hopefully they were okay… maybe they’d get some kind of light burn from the dust? No matter. He needed to keep going. He couldn’t back out. 

Pain shot up his arms as he pushed into the ground again. Pigeons started to faint from being cooked alive. Raccoons fell from their trash cans as vines tangled and burned them. Rats bled from their mouths as the dust settled on them— Sorrel couldn’t think of that. He was Gamma-Burn. He was the harbinger of death to the corrupt, and the giver of life to the new. These few animals… it was okay if they died tragically, there will be more who can make a home in this reclaimed land. The people who ran, it was okay— they’ll learn that what he was doing was the right way… the [i]only[/i] way to deal with the rot on the earth. 

A silhouette came into view among the growing weeds. “Turn back!” Sorrel warned, his voice muffled by the thick gas mask he wore. The area was already hotter with the unstable particles buzzing in the air— Sorrel knew this would be a lethal dose for most normal people. So… this wasn’t a normal person. 

He forced himself up from the ground as he glared and squinted his eyes. A green carapace. 

“Oh, you fucking [i]maggot![/i]” Sorrel cursed, flinging his hands up in the air and then to his sides where his trusty blades were. He couldn’t hold up in a fight right now. His body creaked and begged him to just have a normal morning— have some food, some coffee, some time alone in a comfy bed, but he had something important to do, for the sake of the new world.