Note: at some point my edit of this story went past the point in this story where these posts were up to – please excuse any apparent discontinuities, jumps or even the same bit re-appearing 🙂

The fire didn’t last long as there were several high-pitched cracks from behind him somewhere that sounded like sniper rifles firing, and he assumed that they were taking out the Japanese firing at the civilians. The pressure on his shields continued to build as more and more of the women and children panicked and stampeded across the bridge. Every so often, another burst of fire came from the Japanese side of the river that would invariably be met by repeated shots from the snipers on this side. The response either killed the Japs firing or forced them to take cover, which helped keep the casualties down. He had no idea of how many women and children came across the bridge before the flow started to slow to a trickle, but it was thousands, possibly tens of thousands. He thought he’d heard maybe twenty grenade explosions that hadn’t been in the water, which wasn’t too bad, all things considered. Finally, The flow eased to a stop, and Andrew decided it was time to advance.

He climbed up the bank to join Simpson, who was hunkered down right at the edge of the bushes next to the sidewalk. He relaxed his mental shield, although he wasn’t as mentally exhausted as he had been before his nap.

“What say we go and find this mentalist and take him out?” He said to her with a grin.

“I can feel him,” she said, looking surprised. “He’s on the left-hand side of the road in those bushes, or at least under their cover.”

There were bodies scattered all over the bridge of women, young men, and lots of young children. Some looked to be barely old enough to be able to walk on their own. Andrew felt his gorge rise and his anger grow. He pulled buckets of power, the air frosting around him as he marched across the bridge. There were at least a couple of hundred women and children who’d been wounded, some horribly, who were still trying to make their way across the bridge, but he couldn’t stop to help them with the Jap mentalist just the other side of the bridge. He had his physical shield up as well, but he had to keep only just wide enough to cover him and Simpson due to all the bodies he was having ot make his way around. Simpson was tagging along right behind him as usual so as not to be obvious what she was capable of.

The roadway sort of dipped down a little on the far side of the bridge, and when they were about two-thirds of the way across, a man stepped out of the building on the left-hand side beyond the bushes Simpson had spoken of. He was wearing a dark, long coat with a high collar, dark pants, and a dark shirt under the coat, all embroidered elaborately, plus shiny tall boots. He was glowing with power and began throwing fireballs at Andrew immediately after he came into sight. The barrage of fireballs landed on Andrew’s shield in the air heated up, and he drew power from the heat, adding it to his store, strengthening his shields, and readying a counterstrike. The mentalist swapped to a slash, but it had little effect, so he threw a few more fireballs.