Brandon Attacks a Chrysler

Brandon Attacks a Chrysler is the moment a training exercise meant to help Brandon prepare for a school fight exam spills beyond the forest and into danger for human motorists. His bison strength first appears as a comic tool for smashing rotten wood; once he loses focus, that same force is turned against a car. Carag intervenes to protect the occupants, but stopping Brandon does not undo the damage or erase the risk that the friends’ identities have been exposed.

From practice to pursuit

The incident begins away from Clearwater High, where Holly leads Carag and Brandon to a clearing and climbs onto the stump of a gigantic fir. Its wood is damp and rotten, and Holly’s plan is for Brandon to reduce the trunk to chips. She connects the exercise to the upcoming fight exam: charging hard at a target, she argues, will make an opponent move rather than stand still. Brandon’s first impact sends splinters flying, but Holly tells him to strike harder. On his next charge, his hooves thunder over the ground and his horns smash into the trunk with enough force to scatter pieces of wood and send earthworms and woodlice fleeing.

The exercise quickly becomes less controlled. Brandon pulverizes the trunk, asks to find another one, and gallops away before his friends can keep him on course. He knocks down young trees and charges at mushrooms and a bush. Holly calls after him that he is heading toward the highway, but Brandon no longer seems to hear her. Carag worries that, in this state, Brandon might not even recognize him as a friend. The training has moved beyond the chosen target: Brandon is following the impulse to destroy, while the others are left trying to catch up.

The Chrysler becomes a target

Carag hears an engine approaching and recognizes the danger of a bison meeting a car. He tries to warn Brandon, but the headlights are already lighting the edge of the forest and Brandon continues onto the asphalt. The approaching vehicle is a relatively new, metallic Chrysler. Its driver notices the obstruction and brakes, then reverses. Holly tries to soothe Brandon by suggesting that the car will soon leave and that he can return to the trees. Instead, Brandon lowers his head and charges.

Carag knows that a bison can run as fast as sixty kilometers per hour. The Chrysler speeds backward, but Brandon catches it, drives his horns into the radiator grille, and jerks his head upward. The car’s front end rises; its wheels spin without traction as metal creaks. Brandon treats the feat as a victory. After he steps back, the car crashes onto the road again. He then targets the right headlight and breaks it with another blow from his horns. The occupants’ fear is audible to Carag even through the closed windows, while Brandon remains caught up in the attack.

Carag intervenes

Carag urges Holly to get down and bounds between Brandon and the people inside the car as Brandon prepares to charge again. The interruption works for a moment: Brandon stops and seems confused to see Carag in front of him. Carag positions himself on the hood, claws gripping the slick metal poorly, and makes himself a barrier between the bison and the occupants. Brandon begins to relent, but the driver sounds the horn again. The noise provokes him into another assault.

Brandon strikes the passenger side with his head. The heavy car shifts across the asphalt, and the impact nearly throws Carag into the ditch; his claws slide across the smooth bodywork. When he gets a clear look at the door, it is badly dented and pierced by Brandon’s horns. Carag sees no other way to stop the attack. He orders Brandon to stop mentally, then swipes him across the nose with his claws. Brandon backs away, hurt and offended, and appears to come out of his fury enough to ask what Carag is doing. Carag’s intervention ends the immediate assault, but only after the Chrysler has been lifted, struck, and damaged on both sides.

The return and the risk of discovery

Holly climbs onto Brandon and strokes his shaggy head as they try to calm him. The Chrysler manages to start again, sputtering away from the scene, so its occupants are not left stranded. The three friends, exhausted and subdued, return to the school, retrieve their belongings, and transform back into human form. Brandon gradually realizes what he has done and looks frightened by the consequences.

Holly tries to reassure him that nobody knows who was responsible, suggesting that the damage could have been caused by any ill-tempered bison. Carag points out the obvious weakness in that explanation: there are not many bison roaming around with pumas. The exchange turns the return journey into more than a retreat from the immediate danger. The group must confront the possibility that an encounter witnessed by humans could threaten the secrecy on which their lives depend.

Significance

The episode gives Brandon’s training a sharp reversal. The same force that makes him an effective opponent in a school exercise becomes dangerous when he cannot distinguish a target from an obstacle—or attend to the warnings of his friends. Carag’s choice to place himself between Brandon and the motorists makes friendship an act of physical restraint, not merely encouragement. His eventual claw swipe is forceful, but it prevents a further charge and ends a situation words have failed to control.

The damaged Chrysler also makes the boundary between woodwalker life and human life materially visible. A ruined tree trunk in a clearing can serve as practice; a car on a public road has occupants, and its destruction risks attracting human attention. Earlier, Donald Ralston had protested when a bison appeared at Clearwater High, questioning whether Jay could be safe in a school where such an incident occurred. The Chrysler attack carries that concern into the woods: humans may encounter an animal in a place where they do not expect one, and the consequences are harder to contain than a school’s explanation about stimulating biology lessons. Brandon’s friends leave the scene hoping that no one can identify them, but Carag’s observation about the unmistakable pairing of bison and puma leaves that hope uncertain.