Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.

Pro tip: Witches are allergic to bullets.

Neon Exodus 22:18 (Unified Standard Edition)

- - -

Hitomi's chest was on fire.

The bundled-up baby had absolutely crushed her sternum as she had caught it, but her breasts had done only the bare minimum in alleviating the sheer force of impact.

Had she gone deaf? The baby's piercing cries of pain and fright were at the edge of her hearing; it felt like she was hearing its shrieks from a mile away.

But then the moment of auditory confusion popped like a soap bubble: Hitomi could hear the insanity around her again.

"ARRRRRGH-hurkk!!"

The sharp snap of electricity and an oscillating buzzing sound erupted into life above her and the madwoman collapsed a foot or two from her.

OH! Right! That crazy lady had just tried to smash the poor, defenseless baby into the ground and Hitomi had dived to catch it. She HAD caught it. How?!

She didn't even remember moving. It was all so fast.

YES! The police officer had shot that fat bitch with a Taser! Take that!

"N-naa..." the deranged woman moaned pitifully, dropping down to the ground in a heap next to Hitomi. The jowls under her chin were quivering as she flailed under the Taser's disabling shock.

The lady fell forward on her belly, tearing her ugly dress, but her face lifted up and locked onto Hitomi even as her body convulsed in waves of pain. A clawing hand reached towards Hitomi - no! Towards the baby she had clutched safely to her chest!

"No... have to...." the woman sobbed, gaining unnatural strength and throwing off the Taser. "I HAVE TO!"

Hitomi scrambled backwards, still stuck on her back holding the baby on top of her, unable to get to her feet in time.

Zap-za-zappp!

The Taser fired another pulse of electricity, but the crazed woman was still coming for her - a hand caught her ankle!

Hitomi screamed, "H-help!!!"

Someone grabbed the baby off her chest, freeing her arms.

Oh, thank goodness! It was the young lady from before who had been so right to worry about this crazy lady. The girl's boyfriend gave a hard and firm jerk to Hitomi's shoulders, trying to pull her loose from the demented woman's demonlike grip on her leg.

The officer - Hitomi could see the sweaty panic on his face - was repeatedly shouting commands that the would-be baby killer was ignoring.

"STOP! Stay down! STOP!"

Hitomi's ankle was still caught, a fingernail raked into her flesh, tearing at her, trying to get a stronger grasp. "HELP ME! ARGH! HELP!" Hitomi tried kicking the woman's hand with her loose foot - anything to get away from that terrible woman!

"I SAID STOP! LET GO OF THE GIRL!"

Oh no, no no nonono, Hitomi was being pulled towards the lady - it was like she was a zombie, a living zombie who just wanted to hurt her. Zombies weren't real right? They were just make believe, right!? She just had that crazy adrenaline-fueled super-strength that people get when they go completely nuts or do bad drugs, right!?

Right!?

"Y-you!" the lady accused Hitomi through gritter teeth. Urgh, Hitomi could see blood in the lady's mouth. "It's all... YOUR FAULT!"

She must've fractured some of her front teeth when she fell and a bloody froth kept spattering onto Hitomi's ankles.

Hitomi tried to kick her in the face, enraging the woman further.

"I'LL KILL YOU"

What!? Why was this happening!?

"LET GO OR I SHOOT!" screamed the officer in the most commanding voice Hitomi had ever heard.

The sharp click of the plastic encased Taser bouncing off the ground registered in Hitomi's ear. She looked up and away from the deranged woman's bloody face. The officer had dropped the non-lethal weapon and was reaching for a holstered, hopefully VERY LETHAL pistol.

The guy trying to help pull her away realized the heavyset woman clutching and clawing at Hitomi was just too much for him. Switching strategies, he let go of Hitomi and reared back, smashing his foot forward in a harsh kick that caught the woman's jaw with his steel-tipped boots.

"Ar-ARGH!!!" the woman screamed unintelligibly, her jawbone shattering like a bundle of twigs. But her grip on Hitomi was like iron and she managed to pull Hitomi another inch closer to her. The man grabbed onto Hitomi again, realizing that he couldn't let her get pulled any closer, but still tried to stomp on the woman's other hand.

"GET BACK!" was the last thing the policeman said before:

BOOM.

The grip on her legs relaxed almost instantly and Hitomi finally pulled herself free. The same young man who had been trying to save her helped her up, but she was massively disoriented due to the ringing in her ears. It was hard to hear what he was saying to her; the gunshot had been so loud!

The crazy lady laid flat on the ground - the officer had shot from above at a steep angle, right in the center of her back!

A plume of blood blossomed from beneath the light floral dress, spreading more quickly than Hitomi would have expected and moving downwards to soak the ground in a growing puddle. She had never seen someone get shot in real life before.

It was nothing like the movies.

She felt sick.

"...are.. OK... hey... Hey!" The ringing in her ears subsided slightly and the young man got her to her feet. She bent over a bit, clutching her chest, and he tried to gently guide her away. His girlfriend rushed up with the baby, who was still crying but at least more quietly now.

The man's girlfriend was just about to say something but Hitomi could see her flinch back in surprise.

"STOP!" she heard behind her, and Hitomi gasped in horror when she turned to look.

The deranged woman was still alive!

She must've been playing dead until the officer had bent down to check her pulse. She was using her weight to try to overpower the middle-aged man, wrestling with him with her arms wrapped around his waist. Was she BITING him!?

The young man was racing over to help the officer but -

CRACK!

Another shot rang out, this time from the ground. The officer had fallen back on his haunches aiming his gun directly into the woman's face. Or what was left of it.

They couldn't see all the carnage, but her corpse immediately lost all strength and flopped to the ground in a smear of blood and gore.

"Oh shit, don't look honey," the man said to his girlfriend, moving to stand in front of her. "Jesus H. Christ. What the hell kinda bath salts was she on!?"

Bath salts? Never mind, just another thing Hitomi didn't understand today.

His girlfriend rocked the baby gently, trying to hush it. In the background another police vehicle had pulled up right onto the curb and two officers had jumped out and were rushing over to their shocked compatriot still sitting on the ground, staring at the ruined head of the woman who had attacked him. He was panting and staring at his discharged weapon, hands still shaking.

"T-thank you," Hitomi said to her rescuers, "I'm Hitomi. Thank you!"

"No! Thank *YOU*" the man's girlfriend said, "You saved that baby! Twice! I'm Hailey, this is Josh. How did you *DO* that?"

"Yeah, holy shit, that was amazing. One second you were standing there and the next you had caught this kid and you were on the ground."

Hitomi blushed, hard. "I-I just don't know. That's what it felt like to me too. I just... I imagined what would happen to him," she was looking at the baby in Hailey's arms, "It was just too terrible! I didn't know she was a bad person! She offered to hold the baby and there was all the smoke and - I thought I could trust her!"

An ambulance pulled up and EMS workers jumped out, first running over to the body of the driver on the sidewalk, double-checking that she was, in fact, deceased, before jogging towards them.

Hailey had already turned and started walking towards them, holding the baby out to the qualified medical personnel.

"Hey! Over here!" She was saying, gesturing at the baby in her arms. "This baby was in the car crash and some crazy bitch just tried to throw it on the ground, it's badly hurt! We need help!"

Josh and Hitomi just watched as they brought Hailey over to the back of the ambulance and took the baby from her, placing it on a cushioned bench and beginning to check it over. Another medical worker walked Hailey back to the group.

"Hi," the EMS worker said in a clipped tone, "We can't be certain until we get X-rays, but the kid probably has some broken bones. Head contusions as well. Do you have contact information for the next of kin - " He waved his arm towards the driver's body that was still on the ground.

"No," Hailey spoke for the group, "We just saw the crash, and Heetomi got the baby out of the car."

No one could say her name right in this country.

"Alright, I'll talk with the officers. Look, shit's going down all across the city, we would normally take statements, er, but this is our second priority call in the last 15 minutes. They're making us triage everything already. We can take the baby, but..." He waved at the deceased driver. "The city will have to send another crew for the bodies. The word is that the morgue is already going to be overwhelmed."

"Seriously?!" Josh questioned.

"Is it because of what the Voice said?" Hailey started to ask but was interrupted by the ambulance crew who were yelling.

"HEY! COME ON!"

"Sorry, no time. Uh. Get somewhere safe and hole up. Good luck!" He jogged briskly away, slamming the metal back doors of the ambulance clsoed with a thump-thump and hopping in the side door. The ambulance's lights went on and it let out a loud squawking sound, then it pulled away.

Hitomi hoped the baby would make it to the hospital.

The officer's radios burst to life nearby and everyone could hear something being said rapidly but couldn't make it out. The officers looked surprised, then all looked up in the sky to the south-east.

The trio of baby-rescuers followed the gaze of the police officers and then they heard a low whine in the sky. There was a plane flying low across the city, lower than it should. It was tilted at a banking angle, but it wasn't turning.

Josh's mouth opened in shock.

Hailey's hands went over her own mouth, and she said, "Oh no, no no no, no..."

The plane was too low. Washington D.C. didn't have any giant skyscrapers. The tallest office building was 300 or 400 feet. The plane was below some of the rooftops already and then... it was gone.

An enormous plume of fire erupted upwards from the southern end of the city, well short of where Reagan Airport was.

She couldn't stop watching. Even the officers just stared in shock at the distant carnage.

Nobody was talking or screaming anymore. They were all just staring at the distant, billowing cloud of thick, black smoke. It roiled and tumbled into the atmosphere, billowing and mushrooming.

"It's only been 15 minutes," Josh said in horror, "Fucking loonies took 15 minutes and... FUCK!" He couldn't finish his thought, full of disgust and horror at the unfolding situation.

Hailey hugged onto his side, reassuringly, and they both turned towards her: "We need to get out of here. Do you need help?"

Hitomi wanted to hug them both. "Y-yes! Yes please! My English is not so good and I don't know how to get to the embassy from here!"

"OH! The embassy!" Hitomi continued, not letting them talk, "My phone! Where is my - "

She looked around wildly for a moment before spotting her phone a few feet away. Oh thank god. The screen was fine - it wasn't shattered when she had dropped it earlier. Suddenly she was glad she had paid for that pink protector case even though it had made the phone way too bulky.

"I can call the embassy!" she explained.

"Well, that's good," said Hailey. "Go on and try, we can wait." She looked at Josh expectantly.

Hitomi flicked through her contact list and hit Favorites, finding the Embassy's emergency number and thumbing the call button.

*Doooooooooooooooo*

Argh! The busy signal again?

"Here let me try, what's the number?" Hailey offered, and then tried to dial what she saw on Hitomi's screen.

*Doooooooooooooooo*

"I think the lines are down. This is like 9/11 all over again," Josh commented, looking around, trying to get a feel for what the people around them were doing.

"We could walk?" Hailey offered, pointing north, "The embassy district isn't that far north from here. Heetomi, do you know in general where yours might be?"

Josh was already trying to pull up Google but realized the internet service had been interrupted as well. "Internet's down. Actually, yeah, the embassies are all that way like you said. Mostly."

"Uhm, I know this is rude to ask, I know you're Asian and I'm not trying to be, um, racist," Hailey started, trying to delicately ask exactly what kind of Asian Hitomi was.

"I'm Japanese." Hitomi offered.

"Oh, hey, awesome!" Josh said. Hailey gave him a cross look. "I mean, I know where Japan's embassy is. It's like, literally just across Rock Creek on Massachusetts. It'd only take like a half hour to walk there, tops."

Hailey nodded, "Oh, yeah, I think I know what you're talking about, it's pretty big, right?"

"Oh thank goodness, I'm so glad." Hitomi offered in her most grateful and polite English. "But is it OK? I mean, you both are taking this... whole... thing? This whole thing really well."

Josh looked around as the police cars pulling away, no doubt on their way to the plane crash or another crisis. He pointed vaguely towards the direction where the embassy probably was.

"I hear a mysterious voice saying a bunch of mumbo-jumbo about souls and stuff and everyone goes batshit crazy? Yeah. Fuck that shit." He said coarsely.

Hailey nodded, saying, "We're not going to be able to find a cab, either. Emergency response will shut down the streets, I bet, so, better to help you walk so we know you're safe."

"Thank you both, so so much!" Hitomi said, incredibly happy to have been offered an escort.

She picked up her laptop bag and tucked away her useless phone, and they started walking together.

They talked as they went, of course, trying to figure out what was really happening.

Hailey laughed nervously, "And it could be a big hoax, you know? Some super high-tech hoax."

Hitomi shook her head, "I don't know. I was watching it on TV."

"You were? You saw it? What happened?" Josh asked.

"We only heard it out loud, we thought there were megaphones somewhere at first," Hailey explained.

Oh, so they hadn't seen what had happened. But the Voice must've been heard by everyone, everywhere, Hitomi realized.

"No, no. It was in my head in Japanese too. Other people heard it in English," she said, "And then IT killed the President."

"W-wha? Are you serious?" Josh asked.

"It?" Hailey asked at the same time.

Hitomi tried to gesture in front of her, explaining with her hands, "I was watching TV, and it was a speech, by the President. A U.N. speech." Josh let out a grunt, not a fan of boring politics. "Then there was this bright light! And, I don't know, it said It was a Messenger from God, or something like that. I'm sorry my English is not good enough to explain very clearly. But it had a big sword and it stabbed the President!"

She mimed the downward thrust of the angel's sword.

"Holy shit," was all Hailey could say.