Dragon Lily–Inner Power

These next few chapters are brought to you by Imagine Dragons! Things start to get funky up in this house.

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He was out hunting when the now-familiar heat rose in his chest. Thank God it was while he was alone and not around the others. He didn't want to accidentally burn anyone and then have to explain this had been happening for a while and he hadn't told them.

Rin wanted to master this issue before telling his family if he could. He'd only gotten better at suppressing it though.....

Marshal had looted an old Hunting Store in town and got a few useful things, including a bow and some arrows. There weren't very many arrows, do they had to keep reusing them, but that wasn't a problem if they used it to hunt. They'd had to learn how to shoot and hit their target first. Rin and Yukio could both shoot arrows pretty good with a little practice. Rin had great eyesight and so did Yukio. Yukio only needed glasses for a slight stigmatism in both eyes. He could see fine without them. Shura preferred spears, but knew how to shoot well with bow and arrows due to her time with the Amazon Women.

Rin had nailed a few squirrels and had them hanging from his belt as he trudged across and open field when the heat rose again. It took him by surprise and a pounding headache came out if nowhere with it. Was this because he'd forced it down so much over and over again? God, Rin's head felt like an elephant was tap dancing on it.

He fell to his knees, holding his head and sitting still. He clenched his eyes shut and tried to breathe calmly. It took a while, but the headache receded enough for him to open his eyes and let them adapt to the brightness of the blazing North Carolina sun again. He blinked and just did his best to breathe and and feel the heat simmering under his skin. He took a deep breath and released it. And with that breath, he released the heat from his body. It was so hot that it made a visible distortion in the air–a heat wave.

Of course, while he'd been down, a few corpses had creeped up on his and he had to dodge one that lunged for him. He pulled his katana and sliced the thing in half diagonally. The next one pretty much tried to fall on him but it it's too half fell on Rin. He'd redirected it's too half with his sword to fall beside him. The last one tried to take a bite out of him, but it couldn't rip through the thick leather of his jacket with it's brittle teeth. He'd gotten lucky this time. Rin sliced it and it fell to the ground.

He stood, ready to bring dinner home to the farm, but it was then he realized that a lot of dead were just laying there in the field, waiting for a meal to walk by or step on them unknowingly. So that was why Marshal had said she never walked through open fields....

Wonderful. It thankfully wasn't a huge mob like the one that had surrounded him right before Ryuji and his people had found him, but it was still a handful to keep spinning around to watch his own back constantly. Rin slashed and sliced and diced and swung around and spun and dodged. He settled into the routine movements and was glad he'd kept training with the sword all this time.

Another Zombie managed to chomp him, but it got his foot and couldn't bite through the thick military combat boots he still wore. He stabbed it through the head and it lay limp at his feet. Rin hadn't noticed, but he was putting off more and more heat as he fought, creating a wall of heat that was melting the rotting flesh off the skills of the corpses. It was a disgusting sight, but it held them off for a good while.

Finally, more had joined the group and it was turning into a mov and Rin wasn't dealing with this! He didn't know why, but Rin stabbed his sword into the ground in front of him and  screamed, forcing the festering heat outwards.

The wave of raw heat melted whatever flesh was left on all of the dead around him and their crispy bones fell to the ground with only scraps of rotted muscle left on them. He panted. It was such a simple move, but Rin felt like he'd just run  five kilometers without stopping. He groaned and fell to a knee, leaning on his sword.

He didn't even want to question what exactly the heat was or where it came from or how he could produce it. The easiest answer he could come up with? When the apocalypse started, nuclear power plants probably didn't all get to shut down right or got raised by the dead. The radiation would've traveled to the already-smog filled Tokyo. And Tokyo had had a lot of radiation storms. They were few with cities the farther away he traveled. Kyoto had that one that took out most of the Ryokan residents and Ryuji said he'd never seen a radiation storm. Rin could blame whatever freaky stuff was happening to him on radiation and move on with his life because life was too short to question things like that.

He took a long time to get his breath and energy back. He ate one of the pieces of squirrel jerky Chelsea had made for when anyone was away from the farm and away from any immediateand easy source of food. By the time he stood back up and sheathed his katana, the sun was slowly being covered by thick clouds. Rin looked up at the sky and cursed. It looked like it might start raining. The wind was picking up a little too. It was at this time he wished that wild horse would turn up so he could get home faster, but he stood and started running.