Redwoods (Kinks : corruption, petplay, hot aliens wearing latex are going to take over the world)

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Redwood trees are known to be some of the oldest trees in the entire world, with some dating back to 2000 years. One can only imagine how many civilisations they’ve seen come and pass.

Maple tells herself that, to think that maybe this too, will pass. Asphelia is not the end, merely a new beginning to it all. A cycle that’s back at it’s origin point, and somewhere in the future it will crumble and fall like empires before it. The redwoods will still be there, standing defiantly as they add another fallen empire to their count.

It’s a sweet thought, but she’s no redwood, she only has the here and now.

She’s sitting up high in the tree she’s waxing poetic about, hidden between it’s crown of autumn leaves with her bow and arrow clutched in her grip. Her plucky auburn hair is nearly invisible amongst her environment, the only thing that could betray her to the patrols below would be her goggles. Dusty old aviator things, passed down from her grandfather. He used it to fight his wars, she’ll use them to fight her’s, with newly added night vision of course! Her long thick scarf waves behind her in the wind, obscuring and keeping her lower face area warm in the middle of the chilly night.

“C’mon…”

She sees their lights, ultraviolent and allen, as they scan the forest floor for any trace of the resistance camp here. Funny how even aliens don’t look up, maybe their whole “we’re not so different” spiel was right.

Maple liked to think her similarities with those imperialist freaks ended there. She bit her lower lip in rage as she remembered how quickly it all went. On the first day they took over an entire city, it took them a week to expand to the state, the country didn’t even last a month…

How many friends had she lost in that time? Too…too many, the specifics hurt too much to think about.
PFSSHHHHHH

A bolt of flame rips through the branch she’d been sitting on, as she falls she only sees ultraviolet. She hits the ground hard, even with her powers manifesting vines and moss to catch her.

She can only taste blood, can only hear the ringing in her ears, can only see the ultraviolet end.

When her eyes adjust she can see an Asphelian Praetor, clad in dark purple latex with a combat helmet over her head. She’s monologuing about something but Maple can’t hear it. Her eyes are too busy wandering down the leashes she’s holding in her hand.

3

She recognises the blank-eyed girls at the end of each of them, her former Elementheas. Scarlet, Swift and Clea. She knew that fire looked familiar, scarlet was always a hell of a shot.

She’d like to say that she fought, that she spat the blood in that monster’s face and cursed her out. That she welcomed death with pride and dignity.

But as she laid there on the forest floor, broken and alone, all she felt was the cold. A symphony of desperate whines erupted from her former allies, each begging for a scrap of the Praetor’s attention. When the Asphelian cradled Maple in her grasp and softly ran a latex gloved hand through her hair…Maple’s voice joined their chorus.

She hoped the redwoods would remember her as she was.