• • Sunset: Heroes of the Milky Way
• December 7, 2024

Sunset: Heroes of the Milky Way (Chapter 11)

Hideo TriVi Die-Ve Eron  

Unleashed

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“Everyone pull back to the center! Now!” I scream out to everyone. I get out of the elevator with three defenseless scientists and walk right into a kidnapping party. 

I do not like being on the other side of one of these.

Challan, Tylorn, and Tyraid are already making their way back to escape along the edge of the room. I’ve got to stop three squads of Regnorian soldiers from stunning and capturing the scientists and engineers in the room.

I whistle and take inventory of everyone I have to deal with. Each squad has six soldiers, armed with blaster rifles that seem to be shooting disabling-to-deadly amounts of cosmic energy. 

Thanks for that, Captain.

The lead squad has already stunned three scientists, and already dragging them back to their drill pods. The other two are coming up on the front squad’s right and left sides, as they shoot at everyone with stunning shots. 

If I go after the lead squad, the other two should become distracted, which will lead to one of two things. They can open fire on their allies, which will save me the work and let me focus on grabbing the two scientists and getting them to safety, or they’ll hold their fire, distracted from their goal and be occupied with waiting for their chance to get at me. 

Either way, they’re is gonna to get wrecked.

I fly over their heads while changing my body’s rate of vibration. Just doing that a little let’s me turn my body into sound and flesh at once. It’s a partial transformation, where I’m not all sound bouncing around the room, but I get a durability and speed boost to get around those pesky blasters. 

Bonus, it makes me a bit harder to see since light and sound don’t mix like you would think. It really freaks people when I dive bomb towards them, you know, like right now.

I twist my body so that my feet land on one guy instead of my head, that would hurt me too. This soldier is crushed beneath my sonic pressure of my legs, or maybe it’s the vibration that get trapped in his suit that liquify him. I don’t have time to check. 

This next smuck with a gun has his side to me, dropping the scientist he’s kidnapping. 

Is it kidnapping when they’re adults? Eh.

Another soldier doesn’t even have his gun up, he’s still dragging his target across the ground like he’s a sack of potatoes. This means that there is only one who is ready to shoot at me. 

I go for him first obviously, put the fear of me in him with a quick dash above their heads. I cause a little sonic screech as I do that, making their ears bleed. 

I fly between the two soldiers holding one scientist while I’m at it, and split kick them both in the head. 

Then I’m on our gunman, whacking his puny mortal toy to the ground and release a small sound pulse from my throat. 

Pee-YOWW!

I’m sorry, did I say small? Small in effort, on my part.

This man becomes very dead as he goes limp before his body even flies through the air. 

Even the loser brigade who weren’t in my direct line of sight get blasted back my little attack.

As they fall backwards I keep moving. It’s like they’re moving in slow motion as I flap my wings to dash around them. The one who wasn’t carrying anyone has his gun trained at me—

Wait what? How is he still standing? Fuck that noise.

He shoots, but I dodge by spinning to my body to the right, narrowly missing the cosmic blast. Sure, I upped my durability with my speed but… I don’t want to test how tough I am. 

Still in the air, I then release a powerful but small soundwave, meant to hit only the soldier who shot at me. I see the effects this wave has on this soldier as he makes a choking sound before crumpling to the ground. 

I do not want to be the guy who has to pull him out of that suit. I can already tell he’s raw sewage, the body on the ground collapsing in to bones and a puddle of guts trapped in flesh. 

Plock!

Okay, that’s never happened before. The loser’s head explodes as I fly over him, getting his… blood on my face. 

“Ewww!!!”

The blood doesn’t really hinder me, but come on, it’s nasty. I fly over his body and land on the ground feet first, with the rest of the soldiers in one direction, making it easier for myself.

I do my due diligence, and whistle to make sure that this squad has no friendlies with them. It’s a group only of soldier. 

I fly up over their little heads while dodging all of their rifle blasts. As they move to train their weapons above them, I release another powerful soundwave like before, only this time wider so it encompasses all of them.

YE-OOOWWW!! 

Just like that, they’re all dead—

Psss….

“Fuck!”

One of these little shits hits my left wing! Who does that?! 

Psss…

Another hits my foot, both shots poking holes in me. Sure, since I strengthened my durability beforehand both holes are no bigger than a pencil, neither capable of permanently grounding me, but that fucking hurts! Do you have any idea what’s it like to feel their pencil long hold in you just sizzling. 

Actually, scratch that whole thing about being grounded, there’s no wind in this room to support this important thing called flight, and suffice to say…

I’m going down.

Like, I spiral towards the ground, and land flat on my face among the soldiers I just killed. 

When I try to whistle to regain my surroundings it’s what I imagine being cross-eyed is sort of like. Two versions of everything moving back and forth, over-lapping. Both versions have the last squad training their guns at me while I’m temporarily stuck to the ground.

I try to crawl and halfway jump behind a desk as they open fire on me, but then I hear a loud growl. Then I hear a slash and scream so I lift my head over the desk and whistle, this time with a clear handle on reality. 

I find that Challan has just rushed on this last squad, surprising them and tearing them apart. He had just half-slashed, half-uppercutted a soldier up and away, tearing this soldier’s face to shreds, the helmet protecting nothing. 

I hear another howl from Challan’s throat as he raises his left arm to bat away more more soldiers. Being nine feet tall means one will have massive arms, and when he swats them away he gets three of them, throwing them against the wall. 

Then he brings that same arm up, claws out, then brings it down to sink into the shoulder and neck of one soldier. The last one to die turns around and understandably tries to run away in terror of the beast that is Challan. 

I realize now that something must have set Challan off, because he is letting his primal Lupian instincts take control. He pounces on the retreating soldier and sinks his teeth into his neck. He tore at it like a predator who’s experienced in killing prey. 

The pain in my wing now numb, I charge up more power and launch myself back into the air to fly over to Challan. Then I notice that the three soldiers he slammed into the wall aren’t dead, just stunned. Challan notices too and he stands straight up on his hind legs, which I must say is quite intimidating due to him being fucking huge. He may be old for a Lupian, but he’s still in great shape. 

Challan rears his hind legs to pounce at the three of them, but they are going to shoot him down before he would be able to get them. As I’m flying, I speed up to the same velocity I was at before, allowing me to perch on Challan’s left shoulder and let forth a killing blast towards them, and in front of Challan.

I don’t hold back, the sound wave that hits these soldiers eviscerates them into paste, splattering them across the wall. I smile in pride at saving of the day, then I realize something.

I’m standing on the shoulder of Lupian that’s gone primal.

I slowly turn my head to face Challan. He is staring right at me, and growling as he bares his teeth. I know that when Lupians go primal they usually can still tell between friend and foe, but Challan didn’t exactly like me a few minutes ago.  

I hold up my hands to show no intention of attacking him. I say, “Good puppy, Hideo friend, Hideo help you, don’t eat Hideo please.”

Then Challan stops growling and grunts, “You would taste terrible.” I let out a sigh knowing that he isn’t primal anymore. 

“Now get off!” he yells as he rudely shakes me off of his shoulder. 

I jump and flap my wings to land on a table. I turn back to him to tell him, “Thank you good sir, for the assist.”

He grunts and walks past me. “I didn’t mean to help you, I wanted to kill every last one of them.” Well, this guy certainly has a sparkling personality doesn’t he?

‘Yarg,’ Yarg agrees.

“Didn’t take you for the violent type,” I tell him as I get down off the table to follow him. He can handle himself in a fight, but based on the fact that we’re fighting against ranged cosmic weapons and he’s armed with claws, I probably shouldn’t abandon him yet to go help Clay.

“I abhor violence, but…” He starts his response but doesn’t finish. “Raw!” he growls fiercely as he takes off on all floors along the wall. 

“Hey! Wait up!” I say as I start flapping to keep up. I continue after him and after a few feet I can see what set him off.

Quickly Challan comes upon the right side of Tylorn, who is being held up against the wall by Tyraid. I land in front of him and whistle to get a look. 

Tylorn had been hit bad, right in his stomach. His wheezing is getting weaker and weaker as he tries to hold in his burned intestines. 

“We need to get him to the medical bay,” Tyraid says.

“There’s no point,” Challan says, “he won’t make it, let him go without the pain screeching in his head. This is quieter.” Challan then starts petting Tylorn’s head. I remember then that Challan is Tylorn’s mentor, he must have some affection for the young Lupian. 

I ask, “Why did they shoot him? They were stunning everyone else.”

Tyraid informs me, “They were only stunning the Regamorphs.” 

Oh.

Tylorn is wheezing harder and tries to say, “I don’t… *wheeze* I think I can…” 

“That’s alright, it’s okay to be scared,” Challan tells him. 

“I don’t know where I’m…. *wheeze* going,” he croaks out.

Yarg? Can I do anything? I have to ask. Maybe lend him some power, help him heal. 

Yarg doesn’t answer, which means that he can’t, or won’t.

“Don’t worry pup,” Challan speaks softly, “there’s nowhere you could go that’s worse than where you are now.”

“Hideo, Dr. Tyraid, would you let me have a moment? Go help the others, I don’t believe anyone else is going to come in here,” Challan asks of us.

“Are you sure it’s safe?” Tyraid aks. I notice Challan lift his head to face Tyraid and give him a cold stare. Then Tyraid turns to me. 

“Let’s go, we should go find Commander Starden. Maybe he’ll know what we should do, and if not, my Captain should be with him.” 

Tyraid and I leave Challan to be alone with Tylorn. 

Not everyone on this installation is a scientist or an engineer, many are just family members and labor workers forced to be here. There will be more blood spilled yet.

Aleti Ra’non?

‘Rage… kill…. him….’ 

I… I don’t recognize these voices pounding in my head!

‘He hurt him….. Finish him…. Kill him… Break….’

My eyesight is blurred with the color red, but only him in my hands, and this… other him that I hear. 

He taunts me, threatens me. 

“How are you going to stop me?” he says. 

He’s threatening me? No, not—

‘Threatening him!…. Defend him!….’ No, that’s right, not threatening me. Threatening him.

Threatening Clay.

No, no, Clay.

What can I do for Clay? 

“I’ll… I’ll kill you,” I tell him. 

No, Chronos. I’ll kill Chronos. 

There’s something… something flowing through me, around me like an electric current without the shock. Where does it come from? It appears through my pores, in multiple colors.

“Hold on,” he says— Chronos says. “I thought you weren’t a Guardian, what are you?!” 

I’m standing. When did I get up? 

Doesn’t matter. He threatened me, threatened Clay, threatened my mother. 

‘End him….. Now.’ 

Who said that? Who are you?

I barely see him, but I can’t miss. No, just not possible. 

I lunge at him. He doesn’t move. He can’t move. 

He does move. I’m just too fast. 

My hand. The energy. The wall of energy. Around me.

My hand hits him—hits Chronos, and everything burns bright.

BOOM!

Alloya Ra’non

“What was that?!” Commander Starden yell, the shaking of the station causing him to hit the ground. I managed to grab and pick him back up instead of almost running him over. 

“Are you talking about the boom or all the blaster shots?” 

There was just an explosion and we can hear the shots of blasters ahead of us. Less then a minute ago too, I felt this gaping hole inside that Terra also felt. As soon as I felt it, it disappeared, not as if it were filled but more like it was taken away. 

I need to find the rest of my team so I leave Starden behind.

Terra struggles to catch up as he sees me start running even farther ahead. “Captain, slow down! You’ll go right through the door!”

“That’s the idea!” I yell back. I’m covering yards in seconds. It doesn’t take long to get to the door at the end of the hall. 

I quickly put my hands out in front, palms open. When I hit the door my fingers sink into the metal and the door tears off its hinges. As the light of the center moves around the door, I leap up above, just missing the heads of some people trying to rush into the hallway.

As I soar through the air I see that the center is a gigantic flea market, good for providing people with cover, but I don’t have time to sightsee. 

As I fly overhead, everyone else is moving in slow motion. Below me, a large group of around thirty people are trying to pool into the hallway I came from, apparently they had been locked in. I also see a squad of Regnorian soldiers, easily identifiable by their shape and uniforms at the edge of the group. They had their guns trained and are firing on the people, each shot killing someone.

Not anymore. 

I fly downward between the people and soldiers, slamming the door between them to act as a mock shield. But a shield isn’t a enough. These people need a sword to, and that’s what I intend to be when I hope over it. 

I’m still moving faster than everyone else. Super speed makes it feel unfair, but being fast enough to dodge bullets isn’t enough when others are still going to get hit.

I reach behind me to grab both of my cantorium bantons as I touch the ground, but then I sense… energy? That makes me stop.

Clay talks about feeling light all the time, he once described it as having your own gravitational pull, and you can just feel things that want to come to you without hurting you. I sort of felt that when I would power up reactors as a side gig, but that feeling was always so dulled. The power that was calling to me came from. And with cosmic energy being some I made when I pulled in what’s probably dark energy all around me, there wasn’t anything to feel for.

But that’s not the case here. I feel cosmic energy around me, and that’s never happened before.

It doesn’t take more than a quick look over to see that it’s the blasters, they’re shooting cosmic energy. How is that even possible?

At least I know that I don’t have to worry about being hurt. I move as fast as possible without breaking the sound barrier, moving my body into the cosmic blasts, instantly absorbing them. I use that energy to transform the points of my batons. My left baton uses the cosmic energy to form the head of an axe, and the right forms the blade of a short sword. 

I swing my right baton across the neck of the first civilian shooting coward in front of me, then I hook the head of the axe into his neck to toss his body away like the trash he is. Then I stick my sword through the chest of the soldier behind him, and it’s like stabbing water. I twist as I go so the scumbag can feel his insides wrench and break.

At this point I start moving at regular speeds, my presence and subsequent counter attacks should draw their attention away from the others. In real time, the four other soldiers jump as I surprise them, and point to shoot at me. They make the mistake of not realizing that they’re only fueling me. I realize then as they are all focused on me that I can take them all out in one go. 

I transform the axe head into a long whip with a blade at the end. I swing it over my head, causing the sharp whip to crack and move across my line of vision, beheading the first soldier and cutting the other three in half one after the other.

All of their bodies fall to the ground and I survey the area to see if anyone else is left, and let my hears take the blasts and screaming coming from all directions around me. This place is massive, and I’m needed everywhere. 

This place has multiple different floors and terraces, full of people being attacked or running away.  Going around and killing all the soldiers isn’t a strategy that’s going to save many people. I need to evacuate as many people as possible and I need to find Clay or Hideo so one of them can get the soldiers all in one shot. 

Great, two completely doable tasks. 

I hear stomping coming my way behind the now relocated door and I notice people moving away from the hallway. They must be making room for Terra. 

I walk back around the door to see Commander Starden and Terra get swarmed by people trying to get into the safety of the hallways, not realizing that tight corridors make for nastier killboxes. They’re civilians, they wouldn’t know, but that’s not oing to save them.

Moments like these can get out of hand real quick, so I fly slightly above them, pool power into my arms and slap my hands together. I create a loud and powerful clap that startles everyone. Most people never have and never will again hear something like that. It’s easy to get them to shut up this way.

“Everyone listen up! It’s not difficult for me to figure out that you don’t have that many people policing you in here. That means that many of you are going to have to fight for yourselves, for your friends, and for your family. We need to get as many people out of here as possible. 

“If you are injured and incapable of firing a weapon on the enemy, move inside the hallways and take residence anywhere but in this marketing place. We need everyone out of the center in a formal fashion. If you can fight, pick up a weapon from the dead soldiers, or wait for more to drop while moving the injured around this doorway. Terra’rork!”

“Yes Captain!” he responds, informing everyone to whom he is. 

“Terra’rork will be giving as many people attention as he can, right here. Once he has done everything he can for you, leave back into the hallway. Everyone must remain calm, and we will save as many of each other as we can. If you start panicking, you will start dying, and you all might be the safest people here.” 

Most scramble to the hallway as I expected. There are many who have been shot with blasters and a handful stay behind with them, unable to move their loved ones. Commander Starden motions to the Regamorphs among the group to grab the blasters that they would find behind me, and two Waverites are picked out to help move the injured to Terra’rork. 

I then descend next to Commander Starden. I open my mouth to speak when screams and gasps come from the few who went to get the guns. I gesture to them with my thumb as I explain that, “They probably didn’t take to the way I dismembered the soldiers.”

“She can be rather violent,” Terra tells Starden. Terra then begins immediate surgery on another Techanot who had been shot in the neck.

“Can’t deny that,” I admit. When some of the Regamorph civilians come back, some with bloody guns, one leans against the wall as he throws up. 

“We need to talk, Captain,” Commander Starden says coldly. Then he suddenly grabs a blaster from someone who walks past us. That person immediately has a look of betrayal on his face.  “Let’s head this way towards the lab, and take out as many as we can,” he continues. 

We start towards the left and keep moving. “Why do we need to get to the lab?”

Starden explains, “We need to secure the Shatter Drives, you need them, we need them, and if they go boom… Well, let’s say that that would be very bad.”

“Okay, is that what you wanted to talk about?” I ask. That issue doesn’t necessarily deem the cold demeanor towards me.

“No, you told the people to keep the injured by the hallway door. If they get attacked, the injured are the first to go,” Starden points out. I didn’t take him to be so perceptive. He’s realized that their placement is on purpose.

“That’s what I thought best. If all the injured are saved then they get away beforehand, but this way they’ll act as a buffer and delay those hiding from being added to the injured.” Now how does he feel about the strategy.

He narrows his eyes at me sideways. “You’re shooting them at the kneecaps to draw attention away from a predator on the hunt.”

“That should decrease the list of deceased in the long run.”

“What about your friend? The Techanot.”

“Terra can take care of himself,” I assure Starden. “He wouldn’t be taken out by these weapons, and while he isn’t the best fighter on my team by a wide margin, he’ll hold that hallway with his body alone.”

“It’s only one hallway of many,” Starden points out.

“True, I would give similar orders to them all.”.

“I don’t like this.” 

“You’re not supposed to. Leaders don’t have to like every order we give, but we have to do it, because-”

“You don’t need to tell me what my job entails. We make hard decisions, I get it.” 

I look ahead, taking the hint not to continue the discussion. 

Then comes a sharp scream ahead. Starden and I both rush forward.

We run through empty streets, or more so pathways I think. Hard to explain, imagine we’re walking between different stores in an outdoor flea market.

We come outside to a clearing and see two squads of Regnorian soldiers being led by two armored individuals. The lining in their suits are blue-green, like my power and like their blaster rifles. The suits have to be made out of cantorium to be containing and manipulating cosmic energy. 

The soldiers are standing over the bodies of over half a dozen people. They spared no one, they didn’t care for what species they were. 

This won’t stand.

There’s no one alive now to get hit in the crossfire, so no need to hold back on the hand blasts. I fly high above them, hold my hands over my head and form a ball of cosmic energy, enough to reduce any man to ash.

Then I aim down. 

The side of the ball opens up to create a powerful blast that rains down on the armored soldiers and their squads.

The two squads are immediately disintegrated by the destructive force, but the armored soldiers are simply forced to their knees. Their armor sizzles on the surface but they make no movement or sound to single that they are dying on the inside.

“It’s the Captain!” the one on the right says. This one is a he armed with a baton and a sidearm in the form of a blaster pistol.

“Thanks for stating the obvious, I had no idea,”  the one on the left snapped. This one is a she armed with a rifle.

If their suits really are made of cantorium, smashing them isn’t going to be enough. It’s one of the hardest known substances in the galaxy and it’s absorbtive. It has a relatively low melting point for something so tough at room temperature though, but I’m not Clay. My powers won’t melt the suit away without also releasing enough energy to destroy Noland. I need to go hand-to-hand, and even then I should use my batons if I want to do so without destroying my knuckles.

‘If you let me have some control, I can keep your power from going overboard,’ Rega offers. ‘I can measure out your power level so you can break their armor without breaking the nail.’

Yeah, no. I’m not going to trust you, I assure her.

‘Heh, I’d thought I’d offer,’ she said. I can feel her holding in a laugh.

I lower myself several feet away in front of the two armored soldiers. I make sure to be on the opposite side from Commander Starden so he won’t be dragged into this fight. 

The man takes out his baton and summons power from what seems to be his suit to form a blade, much like my own.

He tells his partner, “Don’t shoot your rifle at this one. We made these weapons from her, they’ll just energize her.” 

They probably use energy from all the reactors I powered up. That’s what I get for providing people with clean energy. 

“Noted, I can still beat this bitch with the butt of my rifle.” The soldier gestures her threat at me by smacking the button of her gun. “You hear me?! Payback for what you did to my men.” 

“You think so?” I taunt her back, gesturing for her to come out with two fingers.. “Well, come over here and try it.”

“You stuck up-” the armored soldier starts.

“She’s taunting you, getting under your skin on purpose. Don’t let her,” her compatriot interrupts her.      

“Oh, why ruin the fun?” I taunt him, before I rush the woman first.  

I will have my bantons out and I transform their ends into the axe and blade combo again. 

I bring down the axe on the woman, and she brings up her rifle to block my blow, just in the nick of time. The blade of the axe goes half an inch deep, most likely piercing the barrel. I twist the axe’s head to pull it to my right and try to take it away. Even better, the woman hangs onto it and stumbles in front of her partner who is about to rush at me from the side. 

As she stumbles I sweep my right leg at her shins, knocking her legs out from under her so she can fall flat on her face. I then quickly roll over her to slash at her partner. 

As I swing my sword arm across at the man, I feel a powerful kick connect with the inside of my left ankle. The woman recovered faster than I expected and used her position on the ground to go after my leg. 

I stumble to my left and narrowly miss my swing of the sword. I don’t hit the ground on my side because the armored man tackles me and hits my nose with his helmet. I fall backwards away from the woman with him on top of me. 

He brings his forearm down on my throat so he can hold me down, and tries to bring his blade down through my head. I fuel energy into my eyes, and when he starts bringing the knife to stab my face, I let out a quick blast which he isn’t prepared for. The blade deflects off of my blast and goes spiralling away. 

I then wriggle my left arm out from under the armored man and grab his neck. He makes a distinctive “HUCK!” noise when I squeeze his throat. 

It’s child’s play to slam his helm into the ground, but the armored woman is up and right behind him. 

She brings her knee on top of me as she brings the butt of her rifle down on my face. I hear a crunching sound when that happens, but the adrenaline is driving me. My nose is probably broken right now, but the butt of her rifle is crushed so maybe that’s it. 

She looks between my face and the rifle and says, “Damn.” 

I do the same with the armored woman as the man. I grab her with my right hand, and with the man still in my left, I smack the two of their heads together to make a loud CLANG! 

With them both in my grasp I fly up so that I am upright a few feet above the ground. Then I toss the woman onto the ground face first, and then the man at her. His back lands on her head, giving a nice concussion I hope..

I then look back at the ground behind me to see that my batons are sprawled away from where I had been tackled. I descend and grab them before my opponents get back to their feet. I’m aleady flying for them as I think about how I can more easily dispatch them. If there’s only one of them, I can more easily focus on finding the weak points in that armor. 

So far I’ve been unable to stab or punch them myself, but I do know that I shouldn’t expect to crack their armor with more cantorium. Banging them together only made them groggy. I need an opening to either stab or punch them with a lot more cosmic energy. 

I think I have a interesting idea. I put my batons back into the holsters on my back. I then slip my duster off of my back.

I see my two opponents with their sides to me as he helps her back up. I amp up my speed with my duster grasped in my hands as I come up right on them. 

I dropkick the woman to send her flying several feet into a small shop. I then pirouette on my heel and kick the man in the face with a swing my leg again. I turn the man all the way around just like I want.

I quickly throw my duster over his head and pull it tight to blind and bind him. I rest both of my hands on his shoulders atop of the duster to keep it from slipping off. Then I pull my leg back and then knee him right in the base of his back.

“Aargh!” he yells in pain as he feels an attack on his spine. I then bring my leg back quickly and knee him in the back again, receiving the same vocal response. He tries to struggle out of the hold, but the duster keeps him from properly seeing where to move his arms. He keeps struggling to move his arms and feels the tightness of my duster. I bring my leg back and knee him again, this time not only receiving a signal of pain from him but I also feel the armor crack inwards. 

I quickly repeat my knee to his back in the same spot, and this time I break through. This pushes a broken and sharp part of his armor into his actual flesh. I feel a few trickles of blood run down my shin.

Now I have the chance to break him now that he’s been exposed. I bring back my knee for one more killing blow. 

SLICK! 

Damn it! I feel a blade slide into my shoulder blade. My left hand releases its grip on the duster and the armored man, allowing him to wrench himself away and take a swing at me. I bring my left arm up to block my face and he hits me with enough strength to make me almost trip, freeing him. 

He moves away and tears the rest of the duster off. The armored man is definitely injured as he leans over. His right arm droops at his side while the other reaches to stop the bleeding on his back. I can hear his huffing and puffing. I was so close to finishing him, but it shouldn’t take long now.

I reached for the blade embedded in my back with my left hand and I grasp it. I try to pull it out as an arm reaches around my neck and as another hand lays its palms flat against the bottom of the blade, trying to push it deeper in.

I hear the armored woman speak right before she puts her chin on my shoulder. “Nah, I don’t think so.”

I struggle to pull away from her while also trying to pull the knife out. This is made harder as she pulls me towards her and tries to push the knife in deeper. 

“You stuck up, bit- aah!” The armored woman is interrupted as I feel her wrenched away from my back. 

Before I can turn around I hear a voice say, “Wanna hear a secret?”

I turn around in time to see Hideo perched on her shoulders and his mouth right near her head. Then he releases a sound wave directly where her ear should be. 

I see her body jerk and her arms tense. She goes limp as Hideo hops off her shoulders. She falls forward slowly directly onto her face. Then blood starts spilling onto the floor, seemingly from her helmet.

“I appreciate the assist,” I thank Hideo. He gives his classic devious grin and turns to face the man I’ve beaten half to death.

The armored man moves his hand to his wrist as Hideo sucks in air to release a sound wave at him. The armored man curses, “Need to make the damn switch!”

As Hideo releases the sound wave, the man has already pressed a button on his wrist. When the sound wave hits him the man leans back as if hit by a strong gust of wind, but sits on his knees unharmed.

“That worked just a second ago!” Hideo complains. He’s right, it did before the armored man hit a switch, then suddenly he could take sound waves. Maybe…

I quickly raise my hand while holding my fingers flat together, aiming right for his neck. Hopefully this works. I charge cosmic energy around my fingertips, and then blast them straight for his neck like a sharp wave. 

The armored man isn’t fast enough to move to press a button on his arm gauntlet, and when the sharp cosmic wave makes connection he is no longer safe against my blasts. The wave slices through his armored neck and takes his head clean off. Thankfully, the cosmic energy cauterizes most of the wood so blood isn’t blasting everywhere.

I walk towards the man, proud of myself, and pick up my duster to put back on.

Hideo makes a confused look, “Uh, Captain, why didn’t you do that before?”

I explain to him, “I couldn’t before, they both took a powerful blast of my cosmic energy and acted like it didn’t even scratch them, but then when you killed the woman her armor didn’t protect her from the sound wave. They must have been switching on the fly, the only way for the suit to compensate for our power is to do so one at a time..”

“Huh, that means that these guys can be immune to probably all of us. It must have sucked to have to fight them by yourself.”

“It did, thank you again,” I tell him. 

He shrugs like it was nothing. Then he begins to think to himself as a Regamorph in a lab coat walks up to us from the same way I can assume Hideo came. 

“Oh, thank Rega!” he gasps. 

Rega didn’t do anything.

“I’m Dr. Tyraid,” the man introduces himself. He holds out a hand to me, as if he expects me shake it.

“The Omniguard scientist, I believe you were once a prisoner on my ship,” I remind him as I cross my arms. 

Tyraid does the smart thing and takes his hand back.

Commander Starden comes out from the shadows behind me. “That was a good fight Captain.” 

I huff and smirk.

“I need to get back,” Hideo says as he starts flapping his wings to fly off. Why is he in a hurry? I need to give him new orders. 

I quickly grab his leg and pull him back down. He squeaks on his way down but I just demand to know what’s his hurry. “Where do you think you’re going? I need your help here.”

“Captain, those armored soldiers can make themselves immune to any type of our powers,” he reasons. “I left Clay to fight one alone. If they could take your punches, he’ll need my help.” 

“Wait, where’s my daughter?” I question him sternly. 

Hideo leans forward, as if guilty. “You see Captain, we were separated, and she’s with Clay, fighting one of the soldiers.”

“What?!” I yell at him.

“I had to go! We needed Tyraid and another scientist alive if we were going to get Shatter Drives!” he explains anxiously. “They told me to go when we got cut off and I had to get the civilians to safety. Clay told me to leave him behind. I didn’t know what he was up against.” 

I breathe in, and then breathe, and still I can’t help but let out this annoyed fucking sigh. Hideo made the right call, I’m just no longer here to make the right call before the call I want. 

He’s reminded me of that without realizing it. We have to focus on the necessary mission and not on immediately going to get them. 

“Okay, new plan,” I say to get everyone’s attention. “Hideo, I need you to do two things.” Upon hearing this he picks his head up to listen to his orders. “I need you to send out a message to everyone, telling the civilians to exit the center as fast as they can. It won’t be safe in thirty minutes. Can you do that?” 

He nods his head as he exclaims, “Of course!”

Commander Starden interjects, “Send out a message telling everyone, Delta 42 Protocol. That’s the evacuation of the center. We don’t want the invaders to know what we’re doing too.”

“Perfect, then in thirty minutes Hideo, I want you to release a soundwave to kill all the invading soldiers. Make one to bounce all around this room. Then we come in afterwards and finish off any armored soldiers that may have been set to protect against you. Is that understood?” 

He nods his head. 

“What do I do in the meantime?” Hideo asks.

“Kill as many as you can, however you want.” 

He smiles deviously again when I told him that.

“What are we to do?” Commander Starden asks. 

“The Omniguard rat can head to the exit the way we came and stay near Terra’rork. You’re taking me to the labs. We’re going to get Clay and my daughter, while killing as many as we can in the meantime,” or really as many as I can kill in the meantime. 

Starden hesitates for a second, thinking of something else we should be doing, but at this point he has learned better than to question me. He just gives me the good old nod of agreement.

“That’s the plan, now execute it!”

“Yes ma’am!” Hideo sounds off before flying up towards the center. Probably the best place to send the message.

I then turn to wrap an arm around Commander Starden. He asks with a befuddled look, “What are you doing?” 

I tell him, “It’s much faster to fly now that we know where the others are.” Then I take off the way Hideo had come from. Starden yells out a bit but then calms down as we fly several yards above the roofs of the shops. He starts pointing to where I have to go.

Suddenly I hear, “All Nolanders, please do the Delta 42 Protocol! You got thirty minutes!”