Divine Awakening

Ash glanced at the tree line twenty feet away, assuming he would flee in that direction, but his Root and Third Eye chakras both warned him of danger. Surprised, he spun his intent in a circle and found, to his shock, the safest path his survival instincts suggested went through the oncoming cops.

Not giving it another thought, Ash jumped toward the knife wielder, now five feet away. To the man’s credit, despite the wounds, he managed to lunge at Ash.

Ash grabbed the man’s wrist, pivoted thirty degrees on his right foot and slid his shoulder under the attacker. He jerked the man’s arm as he kneeled and leaned forward in the Bamboo Step called Sunlight’s Prayer.

The attacker sailed over Ash and landed hard on his back. With wrist pressure and a twist the knife dropped out of the man’s hand. Ash retrieved the knife and slammed it into the man’s heart. Not pausing, he jumped up, and sprinted around the front of the SUV, over the unconscious Stash, and toward the oncoming gunfire.

Five automatic rifles swiveled toward Ash, but he’d learned the hard way, multiple times, the consequences of ignoring his chakras, so he sprinted directly toward them. His Root chakra drank greedily from the earth with every footfall, saturating his body with energy.

The power from the earth caused his muscles to bulge, and his nervous system turned into superhighways of sensory input. His normally quick reflexes turned superhuman.

Third Eye painted the bullets’ paths through the air. Not visibly, but as dense areas of danger that repelled Ash like two magnets with the same pole. He weaved through this web of death, and the weakness of his un-awakened Third Eye placed him in two situations his reflexes couldn’t solve. Both times he touched a thread, causing blood to spray outward as a bullet ripped through his flesh.

The first bullet grazed his cheek and scalp. The second nicked his calf causing a bloody eruption.

Willpower poured out of Ash’s Solar Plexus, beating back the pain, as his Root chakra constricted the blood vessels surrounding the wounds to minimize bleeding. His Sacral chakra, located between his hips and groin, amplified his tightly controlled anger, converting the emotion into fuel for his body.

The damaged calf muscle caused Ash’s center of gravity to shift but he adjusted instantly. Years of fighting with injuries, some real and some simulated, made the process automatic.

Ash had never felt the emotions of his Sacral chakra so clearly and just like he’d done with his willpower, he grasped the feelings in the chakra with mental hands, throwing them outward, and using his willpower to shape the emotions into fear. His grandpa had explained this method many times, but Ash’s Sacral had never generated enough emotional energy to harness.

The five soldiers didn’t run, but they paused for a moment in confusion as they processed the sudden fear. That hesitation allowed Ash to close the final empty space between them. He’d hoped they’d turn and flee in terror, but he guessed that was asking too much from a first success.

Instead of rushing directly at the middle attacker, Ash aimed for the gap to the man’s left, and burst through their line. He snatched the collar of a bulletproof vest as he passed, just behind the shoulder, and yanked the cop backward.

Behind the attackers now, Ash slammed his right foot into the ground to slow his speed. Rotating his hips, he used his grip on the cop’s jacket to spin them both to the left, hurling the cop directly onto the knife of the lunging attacker there, the blade piercing the thrown cop’s eye.

Ash reached over his left shoulder, grabbing the arm of the cop attacking from behind. Taking a small step to the right, Ash didn’t lean away, instead he jerked the arm forward, slamming the attacker into his back, and dislocating the cop’s shoulder. The arm went limp making it easy to smash the attacker’s knife into the first knife wielder’s neck.

The two knife attacks had resulted in the death of the central cop and the first knife wielder.

Ash snapped his elbow back in the Viper Step Stinging Leaf, shattering the second knife wielder’s skull, and turning his brain into mush. As the man fell, Ash caught him and quickly stepped backward ten feet, using the man as a shield against the two remaining cops.

Bullets struck the vest of the cop Ash held, the sound dull like punching the ground. The velocity of the rounds jolted the body, but Ash’s strength easily kept hold. Two seconds later the bullet fire stopped from the attacker on the right as they grabbed at another magazine.

Ash threw the cop he held at the attacker on the left, the collision causing both to hit the ground, and sprinted at the cop on the right who had almost finished reloading. The man had understood Ash’s plan and kept the rifle pointed at him, planning to fire immediately after reloading.

Without pausing, Ash leaped upward, diving over the man.

The attacker had just witnessed his two companions die and knew better than to stay close. He jumped away, dropping his useless rifle and pulling a taser from his belt.

The cop fired the taser, discharging the barbed electrodes which traveled at one hundred twenty miles per hour. Ash snatched the barbs out of the air and leaped twenty feet to the attacker.

Ash slammed the barbs into the cop’s neck, just as he activated the weapon. He convulsed as the current spread upward from his neck, causing his brain to seize. Ash slammed a heel into the man’s temple with enough pressure to shatter the skull, and let the body drop to the ground.

Ash strode to the last cop, who had just extricated himself from the body Ash had thrown at him.

“Are their other teams?” Ash asked in a calm voice.

The man swallowed twice before answering. “One other. Watching the road from your farm.”

Ash’s voice dropped, turning icy cold. “Watching for who.”

“Just you,” the man replied.

Ash’s Throat chakra tingled at the man’s lie.

“Last chance to tell the truth, or you can lie to the crocs.”

The man repeated the lie immediately, as if offended. “Just you.”

Ash’s stomach clenched in fear for his grandpa. In a hand-to-hand fight, his grandpa could fend for himself easily against a group of five, and even the knives wouldn’t prove an obstacle. The guns however, changed the equation, and he worried his grandpa’s reflexes wouldn’t be up to the task. Especially since his chakras remained a mess. The only thing that gave Ash hope was that he hadn’t heard any distant gunfire.

With a quick twist, Ash broke the man’s neck and immediately strode toward the front of the SUV and Stash. He’d only taken three strides when he noticed the woman, fifty feet away.

She sat cross-legged in the middle of the road leading away from the lake. Ash had never seen her before, and she didn’t look local. Her skin and white shoulder length hair marked her as a gringo. He couldn’t tell from this distance, but something seemed off with her eyes.

She wore a thin white shirt that reached her thighs and matching white pants. The attire looked odd but appeared thin and suited for the heat. He guessed she wasn’t much older than him, maybe in her early twenties. She had exotic features that made it hard to place her origin, and his breath caught for a moment at her fierce beauty.

Ash’s Third Eye exploded with extreme danger, but his Root chakra’s survival instinct remained quiet. It didn’t appear she meant to attack him, but if she did, he planned to flee immediately. The thought of engaging the woman caused his mind and body to recoil. He’d spent his whole life never meeting anyone his chakras’ feared, and then within a couple of days he’d met three.

Unsure how to proceed, Ash bowed to the woman. When he stood up straight, she’d disappeared. He frowned and quickly tried to locate her with any of his chakras, but none of them even twinged.

Ash would figure this mysterious woman out after he finished with all the ambushers. The fact he’d not heard gunshots meant they’d missed his grandpa’s departure, so he needed to kill them before his grandpa returned from town.

Just one last piece of business to take care of. Unfortunately, Ash needed to cut the discussion short in case his grandpa unexpectedly returned home early.

Ash strode to the front of the SUV and found Stash trying to pull himself up.

“It was foolish to return,” Ash said.

Stash collapsed to the ground, sitting once again against the bumper. With a face full of pain, he spit at Ash. “Vete a la chingada.”

Ash squatted in front of the cartel hitman. “I’m already in hell. Ironically, one of your making. Now why did you come back?”

“Chinga tu madre,” Stash hissed.

“She’s dead, so good luck with that. Now tell me why.”

Stash just glared.

Ash tapped the energy in his Throat chakra, and this time when he spoke, his words carried an overwhelming desire for truth. “Why did you attack?”

Like a floodgate opening, Stash couldn’t speak fast enough. Ash pieced together all the rambling and determined Stash wanted to use the success of killing Ash and Pine, along with taking the farm, to gain the support of the boss in Guadalajara since Stash planned to take over the local branch in a coup. In fact, he’d already killed his boss.

The news relieved Ash, as it meant Stash had acted alone and this attack didn’t indicate a wave of new ones. Plus, the local cartel branch would likely be in chaos for a while, giving the farm a reprieve from attacks.

Ash quickly snapped Stash’s neck, feeling no remorse. He immediately sprinted toward the farm. Once the other ambushers had died, he would come back and clean all this up.

The cartels rewarded brutality which brought out the worst in human nature. He never went looking for a fight and had never killed anyone who hadn’t first tried to kill him. The world he lived in didn’t have room for sympathy or rehabilitation, and the government had completely failed to protect its people. The cartels had free reign and the entire structure from local cops to the country’s president, slept in beds stuffed with drug money.

The one truth Ash had lived with his entire life, was that the strong made the rules, and here, no one protected the weak. He couldn’t change that, so he concentrated on the only thing that mattered: protecting his grandpa. Ash just wanted everyone to leave them alone.

The fact others felt confident in taking something that wasn’t theirs, knowing there would be no consequences, infuriated Ash. It represented in the clearest way, the country’s complete failure. And with the massive inflow of drug money, things here would never change.

So Ash created his own government, an island of respect and rule of law, that spanned their small avocado farm. Maria had almost gotten him to leave this shell, but just like everything else, the cartel had ruined that for him, and he hadn’t seen her in a year.

No one had the power to fight, and no judge protected their rights. The world here consisted of binary decisions like, take this money and be quiet or I’ll kill you and your family. Decisions like that were easy to make, which is why the system had broken beyond repair.

So, while Ash felt sadness for the unfair pain most people suffered here, he didn’t shed a tear for any of those he’d killed.

Passing the house, Ash slowed as he made his way past the shed and through the trees that lined the road out of the farm. Ten minutes later he found the ambushers.

They lay in a rough circle, as if they’d all been talking before collapsing. A walkie-talkie hissed in the grass, and a SUV idled nearby, the passenger door open.

What had happened?

Ash squatted and examined the bodies, confused by the lack of visible wounds. On his third pass he discovered a clue, and quickly confirmed it on the other bodies. Each dead ambusher had a single, finger width bruise, somewhere on their throat, neck, or head. The bruise locations all corresponded to nerve bundles and other critical junctions of the human body. Locations he’d spent his whole life studying.

Had Grandpa Pine found the ambushers and taken them out on his way to town?

Ash studied the corpses for a few seconds longer before piling them into the SUV. Who had killed them didn’t matter right now. He needed to take these bodies to the first location and split all the corpses between the two SUVs. Then he’d open the back hatch, doors, and windows before driving each SUV into the lake.

The crocodiles in this reserve were some of the biggest in Mexico, and only Ash knew the real reason why.