Leaves, and corpses, in Chicago. (Roland Vincenzo)

Tempus of the Four Seasons walked, for the first time in a long time, in a city. Autumn though, knew what he was doing. He'd finally, oh-so-finally convinced Winter and Summer his way- namely, that it's better if humans are dead, and he'd finally managed to quell Spring's arguments. Now he could finally, after such a long time of planning, such a long, long time achieve his goal. He could begin to kill. And so Tempus walked in Chicago, murder his goal near and far. But Autumn knew he had to be careful about it. He couldn't just kill everyone he saw. First, he'd want to get himself in a situation where he could not pick up too much attention if he killed someone, maybe go into one of the less safe parts of town, trick someone into provoking him... Yes, that would work fine.

And so Tempus of the Four seasons, currently a shambling, gaunt elemental of dead leaves and roots, navigated through Chicago, ignoring the varying weird stares he got, whether in terror, accusing, or otherwise, simply moving until someone did something foolish. Those who did not, they were not yet his concern. For now... he would let fools come to their deaths. He didn't quite need to start anything going... And indeed, he didn't have to, Autumn turning his head with mild contempt as some thug and a group of fellow thugs approached the leaf monstrosity. One of them spoke up. "Ey, buddy. I dunno what you are or who you think you are, but you're on our turf, so you better pay up."

Autumn surveyed the thugs, expressionlessly. Then he opened the gash that made up his mouth and laughed. He laughed at the presumptious fools. They thought they could extort from Tempus? Hah, this merely provided an pooprtunity for him to kill. And apparently they did not like the laughing, as one of them stepped forward, took out a baseball bat and prepared to swing. Autumn moved just as fast, though, and circled around behind the thug- who would have been able to get at him, if not for the killing arm around the neck, that rotted the flesh and took away his life as the thug struggled and Autumn shifted to match. Autumn turned to the other thugs, grinned. They rushed at him. Autumn ducked under a knife, grabbed the hand of the stabbing thug until the hand atrophied, swinging the unfortunate thug who found himself suddenly weak straight into the path of another thug's knife. Yes, indeed, there would be much death today. And soon enough, Autumn stood over the bodies of the thugs that had attacked him, smiling eerily, one thug left, who he grabbed. "Thank you for offering yourself up to die."

Roland had been sitting on the roof of his apartment, looking at the city below. It was all so beautiful. He leaned back on his chair and closed his eyes, nothing could ruin this perfect day. Just at that moment, one his henchmen burst through the door, rather noisily, with a beaten and bloody man. "We found him outside screaming about some tree thing". Roland walked over to the the bloody man and put a hand on his shoulder, "Tell me what happened". Roland's tone was soft, but still had some authority in it. The man started rambling and shouting "I don't know boss! It just came at us after we tried to shake it down! It fucking tore us all apart, man! I saw their flesh rotting and then they just died! It was some sort of tree or leaf thing! Oh fuck me...". Roland turned to his trusted hit-men, the elite soldiers of his criminal empire. "All right men, we're find this little tree freak and take it down!". Not many people knew this, but Roland was very protective of his men. When you messed with them, you messed with Roland. "I want you to stock up and gasoline and lighters, because we're going to burn it until it ain't nothing but ash! You fuck with Roland's boys, Roland's gonna come for your head". The hitmen quickly nodded and hurried out.

Roland went down to his apartment suite and took his custom made M1911. Sliding a magazine into it, he holstered it and went down to street level with four of his hit-men. This was going to get messy.

Autumn pondered his next step as he rustled his way along the street. He'd seen that human run away as he killed the only other one left, so the others had probably been alerted... Autumn shrugged, rustling leaves along his arms and shoulders. He would let them come after them. Simply more deaths to the count. Autumn smiled, cruelly. Oh, yes, he would enjoy this. And then his train of thought was promptly cut off as a bullet whizzed close enough to Autumn's head to take off a single leaf. Autumn smiled, not particularly hurt by the bare, bare hit."That was a close one. A shame for you. Autumn's smile turned into a grin as he lunged for the hitman who ran, though Autumn kept about the same pace- made of leaves and dead wood or not, being a magically-made elemental allowed for its improvements upon what is normally allowed by physics. Autumn briefly wondered if he was taking bait. And then he paid it no mind. Whatever they were going to do, he had the power to get out of it, whether as his powerful self, as Winter or as Summer. They simply didn't know how powerful he was, and that was his advantage.

When Rocco spotted the tree thing, he ran as fast as he could to the ambush point, an abandoned warehouse that Roland had bought a few months ago. He was convinced that what he was doing was crazy, but how could he argue with the boss after all he did for him. Rocco went into an alleyway and didn't dare look back. He finally made it to the warehouse and quickly went inside to see the other men pouring gasoline all over the place and there were barrels filled with C-4. That freak wouldn't know what hit him. "He's comin this way, boss. We better hurry or the plan won't work". The men started dumping the contents of the gasoline everywhere and quickly rushed out of the building.

---

Roland stood inside the warehouse, watching his men unload the barrels of C-4 and pouring the gasoline all over the building, everything was going according to plan. All of a sudden, Rocco bursted into the warehouse and told him that the target was following him to the warehouse. Roland quickly ordered his men his men to evacuate the building. Once everyone was safe outside, Roland gestured for one of his thugs to hand him the detonator. "We'll teach this freak a lesson he'll never forget".

Autumn followed along, but to his annoyance, he lost direct sight of the man he was chasing due to his quarry's knowledge of the city. However... the man had left a trail, a trail that Autumn could use and follow. It was somewhat obvious a trail, not that Autumn cared too much. He was sure he could deal with whatever was thrown at him. He had power beyond whatever they could throw at him, after all. Autumn let out a self-satisfied hmm, then continued to walk, finding an alleyway and turning down it. Eventually, he found a warehouse, and a brief sign of human activity, a flutter of movement. Autumn realized that the warehouse was where he would likely find people- and as he walked into the warehouse, he noticed that it was not in fact full of people. It was full of a black liquid Autumn recognized as gasoline. Autumn regarded it with a critical eye. "Ah. Well then."

Roland saw the freak enter the building, just as planned. After waiting for a bit, Roland finally pushed the button on the detonator. It was beautiful. The explosion nearly knocked everyone of their feet and it the flames shot out of the windows of the warehouse. As the flames started burning brightly, Roland couldn't help but smile to himself. No one could have survived that, especially when you looked like you were made out of a pile of dead leaves.

Autumn looked warily at all the gasoline, already knowing what he was going to do. He looked at a spark blossom on the wall. He sighed. "Onwards, then." And then it exploded, blossoming into flame, C-4 exploding as flames devoured the warehouse, the glass of the windows shattering into dust and flames billowing out of the remaining holes, the warehouse shaking and bits of concrete falling and crashing loudly to the bottom of the warehouse, as flames continued to lick at the building. It was rather definitely concludable- nothing could have or did survive that. And yet that conclusion was very promptly overturned as something blew through the wall of the warehouse.

That something was a 6'10''... man... thing, huge and brutish, a yellow-white and softly glowing humanoid creature, humanoid because with how basic the creature looked, and with the fact that it was yellow-white and glowing besides, it sure as heck wasn't human. It had a single vine going down its body. And it was in the process of ripping a large chunk of flaming concrete out of the wall with its fists- punching a hole in, getting a grab in the hole and simply pulling out the piece of the wall, cracks spiderwebbing along the area outside the hole, setting alight the remaining bits of gasoline with flames that emanated simply from its hand, and with a roar, threw the two ton chunk of flaming concrete with a significant amount of force straight at Roland.

As Roland started to depart, he noticed something moving in the rubble. He got ready for anything that was going to pop out of there. In that instant, a flaming pile of rubble came soaring towards. Roland quickly rolled out of the way, narrowly avoiding the falling piece of rubble. "The fuck...?", Roland stared wide-eyed at the monstrosity that walked out of the burning building, completely unharmed. "What the fuck is that!?". It started hurling more of the boulders, and Roland's men started to flee. He followed soon after. The group managed to get to a safe distance and Rocco was the first to speak "That thing was on fire man! What the hell are we going to do now?". Roland paced around before coming up with an idea. "We're gonna need water. I'm not sure if it'll work, but it's worth a shot"

Finally stopping hurling flaming chunks of wall when his dull mind realized that they were too far away and that the flaming boulders were merely crashing loudly upon the ground, Summer roared again and stuck his fist into the wall of the warehouse, which combined with the structural damage of the C-4, of the fire, and that Summer had already dealt, caused that side of the warehouse to come down with a loud crash. Summer wasted no time on plotting, unlike Roland, bellowing out "IF YOU RUN I CHASE!" and proceeding to follow up on this by chasing after Roland's men albeit after they'd got a safe distance away. He ran along the road, lumbering tall and wide as he ran towards their location.

And when he did get there, he went full offensive, running up and sticking his fist through any walls that might be in the way, and proceeding to use its palms to spray fire over the general vicinity of Roland and his men. "I can burn you as you tried to burn us! I can use fire too!" And considering how he was blasting fire from his palms at Vincenzo and his hit-squad, it would seem that the word of the large yellow-white elemental rang true in this instance.

As the fire thing started charging at them, Roland ordered every single one of his men to concentrate fire on it. He wasn't sure on what exactly happened. He blew the damn thing up so it changed into some other form? Roland quickly ducked away from a blast of flame before pulling out a cellphone, frantically dialing a number. "I WANT EVERY SINGLE MAN NEAR THE ABANDONED WAREHOUSE! NOW!"

The individual bullets had little effect on the brute, piercing a little into it, but the fact that Roland had ordered all of his men to focus fire upon Summer had had more of an effect, as even with relatively smaller wounds, it began to add up. Not that this stopped Summer. In fact, the elemental brute continued to charge and spray fire, and once he got within melee range he very much took advantage of it, spraying fire with little reserve and swinging with his huge and meaty fists, intending to crush and hammer, intending to kill the men filling him with lots of little holes whether he do it by burning with fire or by the fact of his brute strength.

Thread killed