Forecast

[WP] All natural disasters are actually the results of wizard duels. The wizarding world is horrified to learn of modern predictive technologies for said natural disasters.

*****

They knew the tornado was coming for a week. The biggest ever, it would pop up somewhere outside of Kansas City. The predictions had never been so sure, yet Dr. J Sampson didnt trust them. He rarely trusted severe predictions more than in passing, as an indicator of potential trends. Nonetheless he had a few tornado chasers following the clouds, waiting for it to descend.

There he was in the lab, running predictions over and over. He had a few balloons giving shaky readings down south and the storm was moving. All signals moved the storm closer to the heart of the city. The heart of the city he called home, the heart of the city that housed his lab and his collection of exotic plants in a small green room. His paradise.

Traffic had a number of people leaving the city. The storm chasers had no chance of tracking it down. Maybe he could face it himself. Maybe this was a storm worth believing in. He packed his bag and took the elevator down sevens floors. There was a nervous looking man and woman from the defense contracting business everyone felt nervous about. They were always averting gazes, and this time he felt that they knew what he was beginning to understand. This wasn't some yearly storm that would ruin a couple hundred lives. There was something worse coming.

Dr. Sampson got on his bike in the garage. His wife had always disapproved but he wasn't a man to let safety dissuade him from living the life he was born to live.

The sky was dark at 4:37 in the afternoon. The roads were looking crowded. He thought he'd head out southbound on the 71. But he'd have to skirt the traffic to have any chance. He stuck to surface streets. The rain hadn't started yet. The wind was in his face, he had classic rock and roll blasting out the stereo and all felt right for a moment. Then the thunder started, he checked the the tracking sites running his algorithm. He was definitely in the right spot. It wasn't long before the lightning was splitting trees in Heartland Preserve to his right and left. He hopped off the bike for a moment to pull out his camera

Before he could turn it on he saw a man in the park with a dark cloak looking him down. He looked back to his bag and when he looked up there was another man a fair distance away who had his hands at his sides.

The first man was no where to be seen, and then lightning struck again. Thunder boomed and the good doctor looked up to see the sky descend. He saw some sparks flying and the men were there again, their silhouettes dancing between flashes as the rain began to pour.

Yes. This was a proper storm. Wind ripping, and somewhere the twister would arrive and he'd capture it. Perhaps he finally had the algorithm right, the readings accurate enough to end the tradition of completely missing some disasters while false alarming for others.

In another quick flash of lightning he noticed the twister was halfway touched down, already moved up north. Yet his prediction still told him to stay put. And the men were there again. Dr. Sampson whipped back his wet hair and put his helmet down on the bike. There was something going on with those men.

He cursed when he saw one flying through the air. Ten feet then twenty, flying backwards toward the twister which was hundreds of feet away. He chased after the man on foot to see what'd happened.

He saw a few black cars pull up behind him by his bike but he kept pushing forward.

"DR. SAMPSON!" One of them screamed.

He didnt look back but he felt his stomach drop. He continued to see sparks flying up ahead. Not lightning though. It was all he could do to chase. He knew he ran the speed limit all the way over, but somehow he knew that wasn't what this was about.

His mind began to race through the last 72 hours. Breakthrough after breakthrough. His team solved two bugs that had almost sent his project to the grave and any future chances at funding with them. But no, they skipped meals. His wife even asked if she could bring them something, and before he read the message he found her over his shoulder with a grocery bag and a tupperware. Tofu, green beans, rice and soy sauce, the usual. Somehow it had been the tofu and green bean nights when the team had been at their best.

There had been something strange in the balloon readings they'd never tracked before. Unique pressure patterns that followed strangely coordinated movement cycles. It seemed like silliness, but somehow he knew it was why this storm was so bad, and why he was exactly where he needed to be.

There were the men. The one who'd been sent flying back was knocked out on the ground. Head bloodied, eyes closed with large, dark ovals surrounding them.

"JULIUS!" The same voice screamed from far behind him.

"Fuck," he muttered. One casualty of the storm, or of something. He'd never seen a man fly through the air. There was no tornado in the park.

He waited. The man caught up to him with a partner in pursuit.

"What happened?" He asked when he saw the body. The large man was the very same from the elevator. But his partner was not the girl. It was a slow walking man in a suit. He wore dripping wet sunglasses despite the poor visibility.

"He just flew..."

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Dr. Sampson pulled out his phone. His heart started racing. Everything was moving north just as predicted. He could hear the lightning trail exploding trees up ahead.

"He must have been hit. Look at his eyes."

"Lightning," the man said, then turned to his partner who shook his head.

"Julius."

The doctor started breathing quickly. Short breaths. It was time to go. He needed to make it to his bike.

"He flew from over there." Dr. Sampson pointed and started slowly walking over. He noticed the others weren't following yet and made a break for it. He hustled to his bike with the one man yelling after him.

This isn't a damn storm, he thought. "And he ain't no damn defense contractor."

He found his biked untouched and turned it and and sped off with the men right behind him.

He also found something long and stiff in his coat pocket. A long stick? He patted it down on his chest. He'd grabbed it off the ground beside the man without thinking about it. The 9 inch slender baton had a knot and had been smoldering, yet cool to the touch when he grabbed it. Perhaps not the best thing to put in a coat pocket.

He sped back up surface streets and saw sirens wailing across the highway in a few places, although he was certain traffic was a mess.

He saw a huge bolt of a lightning, not a word he thought would come to mind, yet it was wide and struck near the metropolitan area somewhere. Maybe 60th street.

And then suddenly the tornado touched down right after it. Normally you wouldn't see all of this rain and lightning spawn a twister, it made no sense. Yet he had a gut feeling he was going to find something on his way there. His readings kept him further south still. He was headed to 70th street, almost there.

He had a feeling the men were going to be on his tail but there was no time to worry about them or how they found him. He couldn't believe his eyes when he approached 70th. The tornado had thrown cars around, windows were shattered. He saw a woman screaming as she huddled down over a body, but pushed on. The wind was ripping and he kept skidding around the slick streets as he avoided debris. Soon enough the bike would lose all practicality.

As soon as Dr. Sampson reached his mark at 70th street he noticed his phone vibrating.

Social Security Administration

He rolled his eyes and silenced it. Then the phone speaker came and he heard a voice.

"Julius, we need to talk. Don't turn off your phone."

There was a brief moment in which he considered tossing the phone, but it beeped three more times on cue. He could still navigate to see the radar projections and he didn't say a word.

The phone beeped a few more times as he was taking a peek. He saw a blinking dot roughly where he stood and then he felt a pressure against his chest. It was the same type of pressure he'd felt when he had steroid injections for the carpal tunnel. It was slight but it began to burn. A heart attack? He panicked and stepped off the bike, letting it topple over. The pressure built until there was a weight weakening his legs.

He grappled at the baton in his jacket to throw it away once he made the connection. But as soon as his hand touched it his fingers closed just below the knot in the wood. A handle. His gripped tightened and the pressure disappeared from his chest and everything focused into his hand. The weight of an elephant focused to a point and sparks started to fly out of the tip.

He whispered something from the deep recesses of his mind and a timeless feeling came over him. The same feeling he'd had when he kissed his first crush Meg Redford on Halloween. The same feeling he'd felt when he was accepted into his graduate program with his best friend, the woman who would become his wife. He felt alive, very alive. And he looked up and felt some strange connection to the tornado.

His phone was still in his hand, and the blinking dot was moving toward 60th.

"DOCTOR. DON'T TOUCH THE WAND!"

Julius looked around and felt like he'd just awoke from a strange dream. His hand was in pain and he loosened his grip on the...wand. It hit the ground with a drum stick rattle and he realized he'd somehow tuned out all of the yelling coming from his phone for the last minute.

What the hell he mouthed "If the men in black would like to inform me of what's going on, maybe we can help each other out. I'm going to follow it."

"Dr. Sampson. Open your eyes and look your own damn app. It's not tracking the storm anymore, it's following you."

He felt disgusted in that moment. He didn't look at the phone but put it in his pocket and mulled. He mulled over the strange dreamlike feeling and could sense the storm inside of him. The tornado felt personal. He could even feel it drawing him in from afar like a sixth sense.

He put in some air pods against better judgement and noted his bike on the ground: the side mirror smashed, the red paint scuffed up. And there was the wand on the ground beside it. He felt drawn to it and picked it up. The storm swirled and winds rippled in response. With his other hand he picked up the bike and hopped on, accelerating away.

Beep Beep Beep

He couldn't look now, but he suspected the blinking dot was moving up The Paseo at roughly 45mph. The damn blinking dot that was supposed to highlight the focal point for the storm chasers. He hadn’t seen one around thankfully.

"Don't go near that storm, Sir," spoke the man's superior, voice muffled by the buffeting wind. "I'm Colonel Bashik with the DOD. We have some intelligence and have been watching your work. We suspect that this storm isn't done growing. Best let us catch up to you."

“SORRY BOYS,” yelled the doctor. “NO CAN DO.”

The helmet sat back by the park. His wispy hair was slicked back wet and flicked with the wind. It was hard to see as he squinted through the rain, some shades would have done him good...

*****

THE...END?