HK: Chapter 3

The Tyrannosaurus Rex was fast, incredibly so. I'd wager a guess to say that it could move at the same sort of speeds as a car. As it charged toward the promontory to try and bite me in half, it was going just about fifty-five miles an hour, something only specially bred horses could do, and which was only exceeded in speed by Cheetahs in terms of land animals. As it dashed forward toward me, my breathing changed slightly from the pattern it had been in. Oddly enough, I didn't feel as if I was losing power from it, but gaining speed. A lot of speed. As the Tyrannosaurus Rex closed, roaring out in a bellow that rattled my bones and burst my eardrums, causing me to bleed down the sides of my face even as my hearing dulled to nothing, I found myself sheathing my sword once again.

This time, however, something told me that I should rush forth, draw my blade, and strike fluidly all in a single motion. That when I did, the change in my breathing would draw forth something incredible. I didn't question it, giving myself to my instincts and taking the Iajutsu stance that they demanded I take. The Tyrannosaurus Rex had crossed the Half a Mile between the break in the forest and the rocky promontory I was standing on swiftly and was about thirty yards away when I breathed out and felt a sort of electric static build up in my body, steam hissing out of my nose as I breathed out. At ten yards, I let the technique I had been building fly.

I dashed forward, leaping off the rocky promontory as I did so. As I drew my blade, cutting out for the Tyrannosaurus' Neck, I moved at a speed that would have been inconceivable to me beforehand. It had taken the Tyrannosaurus Rex just over thirty-two seconds to reach me. Moving at this speed, I calculated it would only take me around sixteen seconds to do the same, roughly making me twice as fast as the Tyrannosaurus Rex. As I blurred forward into motion, I trailed sparks like tiny electric bolts behind me, leaving a trail of lightning in my wake. The Tyrannosaurus Rex roared out again, trying to hurt me further with its sonic bellow or to otherwise throw off my attack. It didn't work, merely leaving bruises on my toughened skin, which would heal with time.

The attack I landed on the Tyrannosaurus Rex, on the other hand, wouldn't heal with time. My blade carved out, trailing sparks and moving quicker than the normal eye could follow. There was a slight hint of resistance as the Tyrannosaurus Rex's armor-like hide fought against the electrically charged and masterfully worked bronze of my sword, before yielding with a great ripping noise and a gush of blood. My blade bit into the neck and shoulders of the Tyrannosaurus, but that wasn't what killed it. Its sheer bulk, scaly armor-like hide, and thick corded muscle prevented that from being a death blow. No, what killed the beast was the lightning trail that formed from the chain of electric sparks I left in my wake, slamming into its chest.

The Tyrannosaurus Rex stumbled as the lightning bolt slammed into it and inundated its organs with electric shocks, bursting its heart and lungs with a surge of electric power. As its muscular tail spasmed, as the Tyrannosaurus underwent its death throes, I landed on the ground and immediately had to dodge the tail. I was partly successful in doing so, but I had spent all the extra speed on my attack. The tail managed to clip me on the left side of my hip, cracking bone and sending me careening away to land in a heap near the waterline. I pushed myself up to my hands and knees, God Body ignoring the pain from my cracked hipbone, in time to see the Tyrannosaurus Rex flop on its side to the ground with an echoing crash, jerk in place one last time, then go very still.

I was breathing hard. That had definitely been more difficult than fighting the Sarcosuchus, and my body had only just managed to heal the bruised ribs from dealing with the Sarcosuchus fifteen or so minutes before the Tyrannosaurus Rex had shown up. Now, though, I had way more leather, bone, and meat than I could carry. What I wouldn't give for an extradimensional space right about now to haul this all off with. Furthermore, if I stopped to butcher these carcasses, it was likely that the sun would set by the time I was finished. The question was, should I do this and risk spending the night in the Mrudutalam Marsh, or should I head back to Apsadanam Village for the evening?

"Decisions, decisions." I grunted as I levered myself up to my feet, wincing as the pain from my cracked hip overrode whatever pain-editing powers my God Body had.

At the very least, it seemed that my God Body was already working on healing my burst eardrums. I got the vague sense that if I fell asleep, I would be able to recover almost fully with enough hours. Given how bad it hurt to stumble around with my broken hip, the answer to my previous question was fairly self-evident. I was going to need to spend the night in the Mrudutalam Marsh recovering. Fortunately, I had a handy-dandy rocky promontory to do it on that would largely ensure I wouldn't be attacked in my sleep.

"Looks like I'm gonna have to start butchering and hope that my powers let me do this." I muttered to myself.

With that, I began to get to work. I found myself not just butchering the Tyrannosaurus Rex, but also salvaging what I could from the corpse of the Triceratops that it had slain in the trees over by where it had emerged to attack me. Not only that, but I also gathered wood and clay from the trees and a small pit of clay that I found near where the Tyrannosaurus Rex had slain the Triceratops. The wood I used to build not just a fire on top of the rocky promontory, but also drying racks for leather. I got the sense that drying the hide out normally would lead to better quality leather than just shortcutting the issue using my powers. Once the fire and drying racks were built, I began my work of crafting things.

First, I used clay to shape a number of jars, using a bit of Tyrannosaurus Blood and some herbs I had found as ritual components for a pigment I knew of thanks to the Ken Okita memories teaching me Tsoo Alchemy, which would create a sort of stasis jar when painted onto the clay jars that would keep the contents fresh and stable so long as the jar wasn't destroyed. I set those jars in the fire I had built to bake for an hour before beginning work on the next item, which was a backpack from Tyrannosaurus Hide using leftover hide, bone needles, and thread made from sinew.

Thankfully, my powers also allowed me to expand on the backpack. It wasn't until I was part of the way through the stitching that I even realized what I was doing was embroidering runes into the leather backpack. My Marco Manfredi Memories told me the runes were a variant of Pre-Cataclysmic Ancient Atlantean from his world. Whatever they were, I was easily able to make them visually blend into the pattern of the leather. By the time I was done with the backpack, I was able to imbue it with enough extradimensional space to hold plenty of bones, leather, Stasis Jars of Blood, Sinew Thread, and what have you.

Next, I began work on painting the now fully baked clay jars with the Tsoo Pigment. While that happened, I hung up my first section of hide to cure as five thirty began to roll around. Interestingly, the sun hadn't set yet, though it looked like it might start to if you gave it another hour or so, which seemed to put whenever I had shown up here in late August. Regardless, I kept working, and soon I had five stasis jars, three for blood, one for eyeballs, and one for internal organs. Then I began work on my next project, crafting a number of bone and wood javelins. I wanted a ranged option, after all.

By the time I was done with all my crafting, the sun was almost completely set, which I judged to be happening sometime around quarter to eight in the evening. I carved a bit of meat out of the tail of the Tyrannosaurus Rex and began cooking it over the fire, along with some herbs. It was a meal that, somehow, I knew would mystically promote healing once eaten. Plus, it tasted pretty damn good. By the time everything was said and done, and everything was packed away, I lay down on the rocky promontory and went to sleep.

When I woke up, my wounds would be fully healed after a night's sleep and the mystical meal I'd eaten, and I could continue to explore the Mrudutalam Marsh. . .

XXXX

Marcus Brown was pretty sure he'd figured out exactly what to do to keep the Protectorate and PRT occupied by now. Ever since he'd arrived in this world, having given the powers of a goddamned comic book character and then some, he'd set out to build a criminal empire the likes of which would make nobody fuck with him ever again. His Old Life back on Earth had been a bit of a problem with that. Everyone was always stepping on his nuts, demanding shit of him. It came with the territory, being from a big family full of assholes. However, ever since he'd shown up here in this world, Marcus had vowed that he'd live life on his terms now that he had a second chance. No more being pushed around.

Of course, starting out, he'd had to be a lot more sneaky about shit. He had no clue what sort of stuff the various heroes and villains in this world could do. He just knew that he was in some kind of fucked up superhero world. He'd figured out that much when, the day after he'd first shown up, all the news was reporting on some kinda giant clash between some Godzilla-Looking Motherfucker and a bunch of Superheroes and Villains out in Japan. Godzilla was a thing that Marcus was pretty familiar with. So were Superheroes, though he'd been more of a DC Guy than any of the shit he'd seen in this world.

Of course, that wasn't to say he couldn't adapt, especially not after he'd discovered what his main powers were based on. He'd read DC Comics mostly, which was why, when he figured out his Vibrational Powers, he could only grin. He had the exact same primary powerset as the DC Comics Character Vibe. Not only could he blast folks with vibrational force, manipulate sound, render himself invisible to cameras and microphones, and mess with people's equilibrium, but he could also travel between dimensions, look into other timelines, and even sense energy. It had come in handy when he'd realized that, since he immediately started looking for anyone who had the same kinda energy that he did. He'd found one too, fairly early on. Sharon Takeda, AKA Kunoichi.

Sharon was like Marcus, a traveler from regular old boring Earth, no alphanumeric designation or what have you to it. While Marcus was from Detroit, Sharon came from Seattle. Aside from that, and the fact she was an Asian Chick while Marcus was a Black Guy, their backgrounds were actually pretty similar in a lot of ways. Both had that drive to make themselves unfuckwithable. It was pretty natural that they'd wound up teaming up. Within a couple days of finding each other, the team-up of Beatz and Kunoichi'd been born. Honestly, between their powersets, they'd pretty much fucking killed it at information gathering, and they'd used that skill to begin building a major criminal empire right under the Protectorate and PRT's noses.

Financial details, Organizational Charts of Major Gangs, Power Profiles of various heroes and villains, they figured it all out. Hell, they'd even found a secret base, built by Professor Haywire using advanced tech stolen from a couple other Earths back in ninety-four, just before he'd been killed. Once they'd cleared it out of drones and reset the security, they'd pretty much managed to nab an unassailable fortress for themselves to use as a home base. Not only that, but their organization grew. First, they nabbed their main Tinkertech Base, which Professor Haywire'd called Sentinel Bastion, then they'd expanded, taking over another Tinkertech Base in the Sewers of New York City that'd been owned by a Tinker named Daedalus back in ninety-eight. Daedalus'd been axed by Uppercrust for being too unstable, but neither the Elite nor the PRT'd found this other base. Once they'd dealt with the security, that had become their B-Site.

Now, their organization had eight hundred members spread across eight states, from Maine down to Pennsylvania and New Jersey, six hundred of whom could at least shoot well, fight well in close quarters, sneak well, navigate the criminal underworld like they were born to it, and train to increase those skills. One hundred of them were specialists in various Specialty Fields, including Mechanical Engineers, Electronics Engineers, Software Engineers, Doctors, Biologists, Lawyers, Accountants, Spies, and Security Experts. Even better than that, around a hundred of them could do even more shit, having a combination of a bunch of skills, with most of them even getting to the level that some of those Badass Normal Guys that could hang with low-level Capes using training and specialty gear were at.

Moreover, they had bribed moles in a number of organizations, the Empire Eighty-Eight, ABB, Elite, PRT, Teeth, and even the Merchants, who they were nominally partnered with on the Black Market Project. If there was a large organization in the Northeastern US, they either had moles in it, or they could get moles in it. Really, they were the biggest and best organization in this part of the country, hands-down. To make things even better, the PRT barely had a clue about the sort of shit they were up to. That was largely 'cause of how careful and sneaky they'd been when building up.

Take this Jamestowner thing, for instance. Batshit insane Tinker hits a Nuclear Power Plant in Pennsylvania, looking for fissile material for his tinker stuff. That's the kind of thing that makes the Protectorate sit up and take notice. Of course, while they're doing that, they aren't noticing that the formula for Containment Foam is being stolen from the Boston PRT Headquarters, courtesy of some of those Ninjas that Sharon trained using forged ID so perfect that not even the Tinkertech the PRT can flag it as fake. Since the stuff is mass-producible, it has to be just on the edge of Tinkertech, like the Smartphones and Laptops that Dragon puts out every couple of years. Marcus and Sharon had clients overseas in various war zones who'd pay top dollar for something like that.

In fact, this was such a good distraction that Marcus had sent Sharon to help Jamestowner escape so that her Ninjas could copy down the formula without anyone getting wise. As far as the PRT should be able to figure out, this was an authorized file access, thanks to the forged credentials. It'd take even Dragon a couple of days with her full attention on the project to figure out exactly what happened, and by that point, Marcus and Sharon would be counting Drug Money and Blood Diamonds all the way to their black money bank in Monaco. Sure, it let a dangerous megalomaniac who could turn folks into some sorta mutant minions run loose, but so long as Jamestowner didn't fuck with them, Marcus was agreeable to just watching the situation play out.

Of course, that didn't stop him from keeping eyes on the Man. Thankfully, he could do that from afar using Remote Viewing. Another of his many and varied powers. The second Jamestowner looked like he was gonna start shit that Marcus wasn't willing to let him burn, that's when he'd ice the Guy. Until then, he was one of the best distractions that Marcus could've asked for.

As he smirked at that, he realized that while it was midnight here in Brockton Bay, it was almost time for his twelve-thirty E-Meeting with one of those buyers he was selling the Containment Foam Formula to, General Zin Ko of the Burmese National Union. The Military Junta in power in Burma had been having issues for years with protests, though they'd generally gotten by thanks to having a number of Capes that the Army Sponsored. Until recently, that was, as border clashes with the Royal Thai Army and Thailand's own Military Capes had sent a bunch of the Burmese Capes to the hospital or otherwise home in Body Bags, forcing the Junta to sign a peace deal forswearing most of its claims on the Islands at the Mouth of the Kraburi River.

Of course, that had resulted in unrest and protests that the Junta was finding difficult to deal with, as there was a pair of Brute/Movers among the Student Protesters who were capable of punching through the Armored Personnel Carriers the Junta had tried to use to disperse the Protestors, who could shrug off machine gun fire, and who could run at roughly eighty miles per hour. The Junta was very eager to get their hands on anything that might be able to deal with those two and restore balance. Naturally, that was where Marcus came in. The Junta was willing to pay top dollar for the formula to create Containment Foam, and they were just the first of the meetings Marcus had set up for the next twenty-four hours.

As Marcus made sure his mask was on properly and Beatz was ready to go, the video call screen chimed, indicating the video conference was ready. Marcus hit the enter key on his terminal and got into character as Beatz. As soon as he did that, the lined face of General Zin Ko of the Burmese National Union's Military Junta filled the screen.

"General. I trust you got the money, 'cause I have the goods, as promised." Began Beatz in Burmese.

"When will you send me the information?" Questioned General Zin Ko.

"When you send half the money. Then I'll send you the info." Smirked Beatz.

"Why do things that way?" Queried General Zin Ko.

"Standard Procedure. I find it helps cut down on the number of fools who think they can play me." Answered Beatz.

"Very well. I trust you provided the correct banking information?" Asked General Zin Ko.

"I sent you the right routing number. Just do your part, and this'll go smoothly." Confirmed Beatz.

"Very well. I am wiring over half the money now. Please confirm when you have received it." Nodded General Zin Ko.

Beatz looked over at a second terminal. Soon enough, he received a chime letting him know that fifty million dollars had been deposited in the right Dummy Account to be laundered and filtered through half a dozen different shell companies before being sent to the Bank in Monaco. Nodding to himself, Beatz sent the schematics over across the multiply-encrypted link before turning back to the Burmese General. Of course, that wasn't just the schematics. He'd also sent a little program that'd delete the Schematics and itself if the rest of the payment wasn't sent within ten minutes of the General receiving the Schematics.

"All right, the schematics've been sent. Lemme know when you got them and wire the rest of the money within ten minutes of getting 'em, or the schematics will delete themselves. Little precaution, you understand." Nodded Beatz.

"I would be sorely tempted to question whether or not to do business with you if you were not this cautious. I am wiring over the remainder of the Money to you now." Grinned General Zin Ko.

Beatz checked his second monitor, and within a minute of the confirmation that the Burmese got the Containment Foam Schematics, Beatz got confirmation the remaining fifty million'd been sent to the right Dummy Account. Grinning behind his mask, he turned back to the Burmese General and nodded.

"Pleasure doing business with you, General. Lemme know if you want to do more in the future." Offered Beatz.

"I will keep that in mind." Agreed General Zin Ko.

Then the uplink winked out, and the screen showed a general terminal screen. Marcus sighed as he removed his mask, rubbing his face. General Zin Ko was one of the more amiable folks he'd set meetings up with. Andre Baptiste and Impisi in Sierra Leone and what used to be South Africa were probably gonna be a lot more nerve-wracking. Both were warlords, but Andre Baptiste was your traditional kind of African Warlord, the kind that used good old-fashioned troops to fight his wars, even if the guns they were armed with bordered on Tinkertech. Impisi, though, he was one of those Cape Warlords that'd divided up what used to be South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe. Really, whatever'd happened to cause folks to turn into Parahumans on this world could not have come at a worse time for Southern Africa. Between the aftermath of the Rhodesian Bush War and Apartheid going strong in South Africa, the Southern Part of Africa was in the top three regions with the largest number of Triggers for the first few years of Parahumans being a thing.

Marcus was just lucky he was a Black Man. None of the Cape Warlords he was dealing with today would've so much as spoken to a white guy, and half of 'em probably wouldn't even deal with Sharon on her own. Speaking of Sharon, as he thought on that, she walked into the comms center, Stealth Suit on, mask off, and hood down. Her Amber eyes sparkled with intensity as she sashayed over to where Marcus was sitting.

"You were right." Smirked Sharon.

"I'm always right. You oughtta know that by now." Scoffed Marcus.

"It's been confirmed this time. This particular Earth shares vibrational frequencies with more than just Earth Bet and its whole multiverse. The drones we sent out through the Portal took a bunch of video you're gonna want to see." Informed Sharon.

They had recently uncovered a busted portal that Professor Haywire had left behind. Normally, those sorts of portals only led to Earths like Bet, Aleph, and so on, but this one'd had a weird vibrational resonance to it that'd pinged off Marcus' Vibe Senses. A bit of Psychometry revealed the reason. It was tuned to a specific vibrational frequency, the kind that Marcus could use to move between Earths. They'd recently nabbed a couple of Tinkertech repair devices to get the damned thing operational again and sent through a couple stealth drones. Those drones'd just returned an hour ago, and Sharon'd been supervising the Tech Geeks in doing final checks before downloading the data.

"All right. Lemme see it." Agreed Marcus.

Sharon slid over the data drive, and Marcus plugged it into his terminal. What the drones showed was nothing short of amazing. First, a flyby of one of the worlds by a pair of drones revealed a cityscape Marcus'd know anywhere. The Gargoyles, the Art Deco skyscrapers clashing with the Gothic Spires, that was Gotham City! Unfortunately, one of those drones was tagged with what seemed to be a batarang before transitioning back through the portal, but that was the price you paid for this sort of recon. Marcus'd cool off on the portal travel for a bit to lull the Batman into a false sense of security. Of course, the next City the next pair of drones went through had a similar thing happen.

Marcus recognized New York City and also recognized some of the folks fighting down there. At least some of those guys were X-Men, and even non-Marvel fans knew what Spider-Man looked like. Marcus didn't recognize who they'd teamed up against, though. Some kind of big, gray-skinned Dude in blue armor? Either way, one of the drones exploded from a stray blast, and the other high-tailed it out of there. Marcus had no clue what the next City was, though. The skyline wasn't familiar in the slightest, neither was the Guy in the Helmet with the Red and Blue tights with the Star on them. He couldn't figure out who the Guy he was fighting with the Spider-legs was, either. Another Drone lost to a stray shot, and the last drone high-tailing it out of there ensued here as well.

Twice more, this repeated itself. Once in New York, as a Bald Guy in Gold and Blue Armor duked it out with a Monstrous-looking shapeshifter in a battle that shattered windows along Fifth Avenue from the sheer force behind the blows. Once again, one of the drones was destroyed as the Monster grew a shitload of spines and tried to fire 'em all at the Bald Guy, only for one to destroy the drone, leaving the other one to escape. Next was what looked like New York City appeared as a Bearded Man in Blue and Yellow rushed in to attack a mustachioed man in Red and White, ranting about the Mustachioed Man killing some sort of Guardians or whatever. Either way, the shockwaves from their fight destroyed one of the drones, and the other escaped through the portal just before the Mustachioed Man finished off the Bearded Man.

Marcus wasn't sure what the last three Worlds were, but he knew Marvel and DC Comics when he saw them. This proved his theory correct. Unfortunately, they were gonna have to cool it with the portal for a while, just in case. Still, today had been a damn good day so far. They were a hundred million richer, and he'd just had one of his dimensional theories confirmed.

And the day wasn't over yet. . .

XXXX

I woke with a yawn, feeling my body having knit itself back together in my sleep and without having been assaulted by any more dinosaurs. Seems like the Tyrannosaurus Rex scared most of the other predators away. It might be a good idea to leave before they get curious about why the Big Bad Tyrannosaurus Rex hadn't come after them yet. Besides, I still had to figure out what was causing this mass migration. Pulling the backpack I'd made on, making sure my blade draw was unobstructed, and ensuring my armor was buckled on firmly, I walked over toward the edge of the rocky promontory and began climbing down using my powers like I was Spider-Man or something.

Then, I began making my way back through the Mrudutalam Marsh. Fortunately, I wasn't exactly pressed in the next fight I got into. It was just a trio of Velociraptors, which even all together weren't as dangerous as the Tyrannosaurus Rex. They got one slash in that barely managed to pierce the bone, padded cloth, woven cord, and leather armor I wore, and even then, the armor largely kept it from doing more than scratching up my thigh a bit. I managed to slay one with an albow strike to the skull, crushing it with the same force that I would use to smash a rock with my fist, using the initial breathing technique that I possessed to lend extra strength. The other two then fled, not wanting to meet the same fate. Just to be sure, I hurled one of my wood and bone Javelins at one of the fleeing Velociraptors that punched through its side and pinned it to a nearby tree. The other managed to get away, but a single Velociraptor wasn't all that dangerous.

After a bit of time to butcher the corpses and take the hide, feathers, eyes, heart, tendons, and claws and put them in stasis jars and my expanded backpack, I retrieved my javelin and kept going. My next encounter was with another Sarcosuchus near a bend in the Gadah River that wound through the marsh on a north-to-south course. This, I actually needed my sword for, but was able to get the drop on it, thanks to somehow being able to sense the predatory mind lurking near the riverbank with some sort of crude telepathy. Changing up my breathing had me once again building up speed and electric power, and even as the Sarcosuchus turned to lunge at me, I was able to literally cut it in half, though the follow-on thunderbolt that the technique made ruined most of the corpse. I was only able to get the teeth, a few scales, and one of the eyes.

Throught my travels on that second day, I had left a bloody swathe of dead megafauna behind me, killing two more Sarcosuchus, four more Velocoraptors, A Trio of what seemed to be some kind of Compsognathus, and a Giant Cat-Sized Scorpion which totally wrecked my armor yet again with its pincers and tail barb and which forced me to hit it with my sword enough times that my blade bent in half. That thing had still managed to dig its pincers deep into the meat of my calf, forcing me to take a break and wait for my leg to heal. Thankfully, my God Body had a sort of passive regeneration, and after two hours of doing little more than sitting there while butchering the giant scorpion, I was able to heal my wounded leg. By the time the ground began to firm up and the trees began to thin out, it was inching toward five-thirty in the evening again on the second day of my travels.

It was here that signs of civilization began to show themselves once more. Not people or buildings, mind you, but devastation. Chopped down trees, burned and blackened areas, and dug up earth. It seemed like someone was trying to trim back the jungle for some reason. As I crested the next hill, that reason quickly became clear. There was a military camp, set up in Roman Fashion, on the plains that stretched out from the broken and decimated treeline. Not only that, but there were actual Roman Legionaries who were taking a number of prisoners who were tied up into the Camp. They looked like a mix of the Vedic Indians that formed the population of Apsadanam Village and what looked like Greek Hoplites in battered and bloody armor. As I watched on, a pair of Compsognathus were being wheeled into the Camp in a carriage, bound inside a cage.

"I guess I've just found out what's causing the Mass Migration." I muttered to myself.

As I did so, however, a horn rang out from inside the camp. The Slavers, for what else could they be? And the Beast Tamers, all hurried back inside the camp as the Legionaries filed out, with a man at their head that seemed to be not only a leader, but who moved like he possessed a Brute and Mover Rating of some kind. The reason for the Legionaries' haste swiftly became clear as a number of triremes came rowing down the river. The decks were packed with Greek-style Hoplites with a mixture of Bronze and Iron equipment. Standing at the prow of the lead Trireme was a man in blackened armor with bronze fittings who reached out with one hand and conjured a lightning bolt out of thin air.

It seemed the Romakas and the Yavanas were at war, and the Vedic Indians were caught in the middle. As the two sides lined up and prepared for battle, I realized that if I got involved, I could tip the balance in favor of the Yavanas and possibly help drive the Romakas out of the area. Not only would that help liberate various slaves, but it would also fix the cause of the Mass Migration, if the Legionaries weren't constantly trimming back the Jungle and capturing wayward Marsh Beasts. Of course, this presupposed that the Yavanas wouldn't just set up shop in the area afterward, but Amala made it seem like they and the Vedics were on more or less friendly terms, given how her cousin was supposed to marry a Yavana Noble. My choice made, I hefted one of my bone and wood javelins and made sure my gear was ready for battle.

Then the horns sounded, the battle lines moved toward each other, and I charged into the fray, eager to deal with the Slavers and hopefully save Apsadanam Village all in the same action. . .

XXXX

AN: All right, so here we have the next chapter. It turns out that it's the Roman-descended Civilization that has been causing the mass migration, largely by trimming the Jungle Back and capturing dinosaurs and other beasts from the Mrudutalam Marsh to feed the colosseum in their capital, as well as by engaging in battles against local Greek and Vedic Indian Settlements to feed their need for more slaves. Of course, Trito doesn't know the reasons yet. He just knows they're slaving, capturing beasts, and generally causing a ruckus, which is causing a mass migration of dinos and whatnot.

Meanwhile, back in the States, we get to see a bit of what Beatz and Kunoichi have been doing, why they helped Jamestowner Escape, and what sort of people they are. We also get to see that the other crossover bits of this fic are accessible to certain kinds of interdimensional technology and abilities, though it has to be specially configured for it, and the Ability-User has to know what they're doing to reach them.

At any rate, the next chapter will involve the Battle with the Romans and Greeks. I'll also have character sheets for Beatz and Kunoichi out before then as well, along with a couple more images of various things.

Stay tuned. . .