At first she hesitated. Absent were the triangular tanks dragging their vicious payloads or the metallic spiders who skittering steps haunted the night. Amid the rubble there were no minuscule warriors clutching tightly their rifles or the rotten larval white of their flesh sprawled across broken rebar and stones. But why would there be? Why would the agents of destruction lurk so deep behind their lines? Where would the demonic fingers that felled people to pry out their fillings and mine their bones find to grasp here? It was a haven, far from the gray ruin she had left behind. The prosperity of this place was fueled by burning worlds like her own ; but they knew nothing of what sustained it. The thought of their complacency sickened her. It filled her with the righteous fervor of the wronged. It made each rubber-stinking breath she dredged through the filter fill her up with heat and anger, sweeting the sadistic fantasies that swirled in her mind.

No, there lurked no vanguard to stay her hand. No worry for prickle-tickle needles in the night. No hissing horrors that hunted for her in the noon-heat when the shadows dwindled to slivers of gray. She’d learned quickly that the most they would muster to stop her were bladed insects and toys on treads - and that was only if she was stupid enough to attack in broad daylight.

On nights like this, when she took off her boots and approached quickly, quietly, they hardly knew what was happening until she was upon them. It was amazing how easy it was to infiltrate their spires of sparkling lights and well lined roads. How little reaction she got until she toppled their monuments to wealth and prosperity. Their blindness, their complete lack of preparation for such disaster, as though what they had done to her could never happen to them. It made the first kills of the night so much more gratifying when they only started to run as the shadow of her foot darkened their faces. The way they just crumpled under those toes - the way the meticulously smoothed asphalt exploded into shards and splinters. Occasionally one of them was smart enough to dive to the side but too stupid to time the jump. The pinch of snapping vertebrae that surely paralyzed them was distinctive. Like stepping on a green bean - she could hear the organic crunch and feel organs shuffle out of the way or just deform and pop. Struggling hands pounding against the side of her heel with more gusto than they ever had or would again. Sometimes she liked to watch them as she leaned her foot in - letting the pressure build in their chest cavities before they burst like ketchup packets.

Occasionally they would try to hurl themselves at her in some desperate bid to stop her rampage. Locking themselves in little metal cans, announcing themselves like lancers with a shriek of rubber and flashing headlights. She might have considered them noble, if the gesture was not so utterly pointless. Lifting her foot and slamming it down at the right moment was sufficient to quell the roar of those metal demons. Their sputtering engines struggling against her heel - pistons pumping their last as the little creatures within clawed and scraped at the den of steel they had trapped themselves in. The slow scrunch of her toes was generally adequate to exhaust what space remained, although for longer ones sometimes she twisted her paw to finish them off. Smoke and flecks of glass rising like the remains of a ground out cigarette.

Sometimes they would try and prepare blockades with their tinker-toys and bright, reflective tape. Most of the weapons they brought to bear couldn't even pierce her clothing. Only her gaze, her eyes so vulnerable without a pelt to protect them, were in any danger; and the twin lenses of the gasmask saw to that. The blistering rain of pebbles thrown at her with little pops and flashes stung, nipped at her fur but it wasn't enough to dissuade her approach. The biting of those tiny bullets announced the direction they dared to stand relative to her and the sparks of light pinpointed their location. They never seemed to expect her to kick a piece of steel or rip down a beam from one of the buildings and throw it at them. It was satisfying when they stood there in shock and got smeared across the pavement or crushed against a wall. Like beating one of those always-rigged carnival games. And if they were too far for a kick or sweep of her paw to attend to? She was always ready to lift her mighty companion and give them a demonstration that distance made them no safer.

There was a ritualistic pleasure in the occasional times she allowed herself to spend ammunition. The weight of the barrel in her hand and the way the grip slipped when she pulled at it. The mild resistance of the trigger as she squeezed. The recoil that rocked her arms with more force than anything else this pathetic playground could manage. Shockwave that felled anything infront her. The sound was hardly diluted by the neoprene of her mask and it felt scintillating. Pellets as big as the hands of those below reducing their erected barriers and bodies to something that better resembling a dried out sponge. Sometimes the mask failed and she could catch the faintest wisps of brimstone wafting up from below and it made her grin tighten.

The destruction of a city was not difficult to accomplish. She did not need to topple its buildings or uproot its life-sustaining wires and cables. All she had to do was decapitate the source of those blinking red and blue lights and sirens in the night. Their always made their nests easy to locate - usually in the center of the vermin den. In the wake of its decimation, she would often catch the sight of fires and sparks in the distance, along paths she had never tread. In the wings of the alleys and the suburbs their lurked those desperate few. Like a disease waiting, watching for a chance - her arrival would score the tender side of the city and the resulting infection did far more damage than she could. Broken windows and possessions transferred, bodies beaten in the street with more precision than her paw cared to afford. She needed only cut the chains and the city would destroy itself. Plucking a single loose thread was all that was needed for the patchwork to fall apart at the seams. As the tatters of civilization blew away in the wind of her wagging tail, she keenly moved on to the next destination.

At first she had hesitated, but they were guilty. They had thieved and pilfered the hopes of countless to sustain their own. And for those who could not seize justice for her own, she would deliver. She would scale their Olympia and throw it off the mountainside. She would swim the seas and drag their Atlantis down to the depths. There would be no end, until their world smoldered. Until the only thing twitching and writhing in the ashes were the broken remains of final dying generation.

Image Credit Fauxlacine