• • Sunset: Heroes of the Milky Way
• February 1, 2025

Sunset: Heroes of the Milky Way (Chapter 15)

Alloya Ra’non

Return to the River

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The Shatter Drive was done,and that meant were ready to set out for Rivertia within the hour.. Hideo and Terra, they’re ready to go. Aleti has been, strangely awkward around me, like she wants to tell me something but won’t spit it out. I keep asking her what’s wrong but she just shakes her head and tells me it is nothing. 

Clay… he’s been avoiding me, specifically won’t be alone with me, and I can tell he’s been suffering by himself. I don’t know if he has been talking to anyone else, but I doubt it. I never wanted to hurt him, but I didn’t know how he felt about me. 

I’ve never thought the relationship we had could spawn those kind of feelings. I had only considered how Regamorphs would feel in such a relationship, and I assumed that Clay would too. Now I’ve let him slip away from me completely in every way. 

I’m in my room now, the Captain’s quarters, waiting until it’s time to fly off. Then I hear the door behind me open. 

I turn around to see Aleti, as she tells me, “Mom, I really need to talk to you about something.” 

About time.

“Sure, we have time. What do you want to talk about?” I ask her.

Aleti takes this deep breath and blurts out, “I saw you and Clay making out. In the gym… last week.” 

‘Three words, deny, deny, deny,’ Rega mocks me.

Shit. 

Why is this such a big deal to her? Did she have a crush on him? Out of everything that’s been happening, I really don’t have it in me to defend myself to her over her schoolgirl crush. “Aleti, I— I realize that I should have told you this sooner, but I didn’t think it would ever matter or that I would rekindle whatever Clay and I were, and—”

Aleti interrupts my terribly long and confusing conversation to surprisingly say, “He’s half your age, and for mammals who mate and procreate with the same person, that’s a big deal. Do you know how you can fuck him up that way?”

So Humans being mammals, was that common knowledge that no one told me?

“What does it matter how old we are?” I ask back.

“He’s my age, and your his boss, you can’t see how fucked up that is?”

“There wasn’t always this age gap—”

“I know Terra told me.”

Clearly, he didn’t tell you enough. 

I try waving her off, because honestly, it’s the kind of naive bullshit, a kid isn’t going to get. “Maybe you’re too young to understand this but—”

“I’m too young to understand but Clay old enough for you to ride like a horse?”

‘When she puts like that,’ Rega mutters, trying not to laugh in my ear.

“You know what, you’re right!” I yell at her, not because I agree but because I don’t care to explain to my daughter, why I —a grown woman — can fuck who I want.

‘Including men your daughter’s age, apparently.’

“He wasn’t half my age when we started fucking!”

Aleti looked aghast, after I yelled at Rega, but it definitely came off as me yelling at her.

I try to apologize, “I was yelling at Rega, not—”

“Who cares,” she snaps at me, “you’re clearly just telling me what I want to hear. The only thing you need to know now is that I’m disappointed in you.”

That shouldn’t sting as much as it does. 

‘To think you’d get so pathetic, you’re daughter’s parenting you.’

I get this urge to explain myself, that’s almost as strong as the urge to tell her she’s brat who needs to mind her goddamn business. She’s making me out to seem like this manipulative monster, like groomed Clay.

I was trying to pick up where we left off. I’ve lost enough of what used to make me the Captain, and Clay was something I thought I could have back. 

“I literally just rejected him, and now I’m getting shit for something I’m not even doing anymore,” I think out loud.

“You did?” Aleti looks more than a little surprised to hear that. “When?”

“What business…” I catch myself because I make another redundant comment. “After we slept together, he admitted that he had feelings for me, because apparently, I was the only one who didn’t know Humans were fucking mate-having mammals.”

“And then you broke his heart,” Aleti surmises, “did he try to convince you that you could just be fuck buddies, so you could keep stringing him along?”

Why is she talking to me like this? She’s not offering me a single ounce of leeway, no benefit of the doubt. I get that walking in on your parent getting busy can be traumatizing, but why did this become a complete assault on my character?

  “No, he actually ended as soon as I said no, apparently, sleeping with me and not being with me wasn’t enough for him.”

Aleti’s eyes bloom hearing that, she even gets this little smirk on her face. Oh, did that make you proud of me?

“Huh, good for him.” I roll my eyes realizing who really impressed her. “Good for him, sticking up for himself, getting out of that power imbalance.”

My fingers start curling with the urge to smack her. “What… does that even mean?”

Aleti doesn’t answer. Rather, she looks down at me with this look of disgust. “It means you should read a book about sexual harassment, once in your life.”

Then she makes the oh-so mature move of turning her back on me, and out of my room.

I didn’t realize it as it was happening, but my heart is still thumping away in my chest. What the fuck was that?

‘Your calling you out for failing to be a decent person. It was quite cathartic to watch.’

Terra’rork

My throat still aches a little bit, but for the most part I think I came out of surgery good as new. 

I was only in the infirmary a day, being a fast healer, and I was able to care for many of the people still hurt from the attack. Not many were fatally injured, which made it easier to make sure no one died on my watch, but none ended up unscathed. 

Asides from the amputations, the burns, the gunshot wounds and litany of ways people were hurt and killed, even those who weren’t physically hurt at all were shook. These people were not prepared for this, and part of me hopes they don’t become used to it. 

Right now I’m waiting for my friends to gather on the Rango so we can get the Shatter Drive down to the surface of Riverteria. Unlike Acoustica, where the Noland’s landing ships can rest one Drive down easy, Riverteria’s surface is almost all water, and there’s not much land that isn’t used by people. 

Which means they need me to use my powers over the ground. It’s been a long time since I’ve down that to say the least. 

Clay, Alloya, and I are to go down to one of the oceans. Clay will quickly dissolve the water in a decent sized area, which will allow Alloya to set me down. Then I can raise walls made from the rock on the ocean floor to create a mountain range to protect the Shatter Drive from the water and storm weather. 

Thankfully, Shatter Drives run on solar power as easy as cosmic energy, which means they don’t need a round-the-clock manual power source. It simply needs to be set down in a place where it won’t be messed with and it will do its thing. If someone wants to change how fast time passes they will have to go manually change it, but no one on Riverteria should know how to do that even if they did go to it.   

Commander Starden isn’t sending any of his people down until we can confirm that there will be no violent opposition from Riverteria, and by that, he means an attack by their Guardian, Womby. It’s virtually a foregone conclusion that he will sense our presence once we commit to this process in his oceans, but hopefully he’ll give me the chance to speak to him. 

I’ve been waiting for my friends for a while now as I sit at the ship’s controls. We’re supposed to leave in ten minutes and everyone’s not here. I know the Ra’non’s are having a heart to heart just around the corner from when I boarded, and if need be I can go get them, but where is Hideo and Clay? 

This wouldn’t be the first time they’ve been late to something, but this is a pretty important thing for us to miss. Clay has been vying with us to try and intervene in Rivertan society forever, and this is honestly the first big step. 

Hideo needs Rivertans to-

“Sorry I’m late, needed to finalize placement for the Shatter Drive for Acoustica. The Director of my home base wouldn’t let me leave without going over every detail,” Hideo says as he enters the bridge behind me. “Is everyone else here?”

“Alloya and Aleti are in the Captain’s quarters. One of us can go get them any minute. Clay… I don’t know where he is,” I admit.

Hideo let’s a rather aggressive grunt, like a canine growling in a huff. “He’ll be here soon, he knows what’s at stake here.”

I hear doors open down the hallway and I hear footsteps start to come this way. In seconds, I see Alloya and Aleti come around. 

Neither looks very happy… 

I shoot Aleti a quick look as she goes to sit in her seat and she returns me a not-so convincing smile and a nod of the head. 

Then I look to Alloya who seems more than a little aggravated. I’m guessing that Aleti didn’t take my advice to give her mother a chance as well as I had hoped. I can’t ask about it now, so I’ll wait until later.

I do ask her, “Captain, do you know where Clay is?” 

I assume that she would, based on what Aleti was upset about in the first place.     

“How would I know? Is he still not here?” 

“Ugh,” Hideo groans. “Rango can you find Clay?” 

‘I’ll search for abnormally high heat signatures.’ The computer does its thing for a second and quickly reports back. ‘I believe a high temperature signature about his height is approaching the ship right now.’

“Oh great, wait until the last minute.” 

He says that like they haven’t spent much time together in these past few weeks, which seems quite strange for the pair. 

We wait a minute and as the Rango said, we hear and feel the rumbling of the Rango’s back ramp opening to let someone in. In the nick of time Clay walks onto the bridge.

First, he yawns and goes to slump down in his chair. Then he looks at all of us looking at him. “What? I’m here on time,” he asks us.

Hideo just groans and Aleti shakes his head. Alloya looks at him painfully, but he’s not meeting her gaze. “Are you going to be okay for the mission?” 

“Of course, doesn’t take much to burn water, or kick Womby’s ass,” Clay responds.

“You don’t burn water,” Aleti mutters under her breath.

I remind him, “Picking a fight with Womby is not the point of the mission. We’re not here to fight just to fight.”

“Well that’s no fun.” 

“You can get your kicks later, now we have actual work to do,” Hideo tells him, coming off as rather serious for him. He said he had been talking to Acoustica before he got here…

“Don’t worry, I’ll behave, I promise. I’m just glad that we can actually be on Riverteria without everyone we know turning into fossils.” 

After all of this, I wonder how much time has passed on Tora. By the time we’re done with this mission I’ll have aged months while my family has aged weeks, assuming it all takes as long as I expect it to.

“Let’s just get a move on,” I tell them. I let the piloting helmet fall onto my head and control the Rango’s engines and thrusters. 

I am one with the ship.

I elevate the ship above the ground high enough that absolutely no one can be tall enough to get hit by it. Then I turn us around towards the energy bay door. 

In the hangar there’s oxygen, carbon dioxide, and other elements going around. It’s hard not to think about this when I’m feeling the thrusters’ flames pour out of the back, especially when I’m flying on planets or inside docking stations. The rumbling alone reverberates through the whole spaceship. 

When I fly right through to the energy door, we phase right through it, and the reverberation, the rumbling, the noise… it all disappears with the vacuum of space. 

I push the ship towards the speed of sound to fly away from the Noland station a couple miles away, then I start the wormhole drive with coordinates to Riverteria. The Noland will follow the Rango’s wormhole signature a few minutes after I jump.

I don’t waste time calling for the wormhole. Even after watching it form a hundred times, I stll find myself fascinated watching it form. 

Think about it. It’s this portal that links to places as if bending a sheet of paper. Stars and solar systems begin to look small and clear as they move around a hole in space and time. 

Sadly though, I can’t sit and watch it. There’s no time to sit and watch what really is the product of years of scientific genius. I push us into the wormhole for the flashing lights and darkness to hit the Rango’s front window panel. Times like this are when I envy my more energy focused teammates, like Alloya and Clay. They can speed up their senses, improve their perception of time, and just… look at each interesting portion of the universe that we pass by. 

Then we are at the end, and I see the beautiful blue shell of Riverteria, that masks the pain underneath its surface. 

Time to put a small hole in that blue. Admittedly, I doubt the vast majority of living things could actually see the Shatter Drive from so high up, as if many of them will be so high.  

“Terra!” I hear Alloya call to me. I turn my head to signal that I hear her, so she continues, “Put the Rango on autopilot in the stratosphere. You, me, and Clay will fly down ourselves. Aleti, maintain communications between the three of us from your controls. Hideo, I want you to turn into sound once we leave to be able to constantly survey the surroundings. While I don’t believe the Rivertans have much in the vein of rocketry, we can’t let Noland take a single hit. Do you understand?”

“Hundred percent, Captain! I’ll watch like a hawken!” 

“You know, sometimes the translation our demons do is little weird,” Clay says.

I move to descend as per Alloya’s orders and start diving down through the atmosphere of Riverteria. Eventually, we catch on fire, and probably look like a falling meteor, but the shielding of the ship makes sure we have nothing to worry about. 

When I start to slow us down the fire will go out. I pull up once we hit the stratosphere. 

“Here we are!” I announce to the bridge. I look out and all I can see is water. There are no small islands around, or underground colonies so we don’t have to worry about getting anyone’s attention besides Womby. 

I switch the Rango into autopilot and then to stay exactly in this spot unless fired upon.

“Let’s get a move on people!” Alloya yells as everyone besides Aleti gets up from their chairs. 

I have to shimmy and move to get up and turn around. By the time I am up and walking Alloya, Hideo, and Clay are about to get to the stairs. 

“Hurry up, Terra’rork!” I hear Clay call to me.

When I start moving I walk past Aleti who looks intently at the communications console. She looks stressed or maybe nervous, but it’s healthy to be either on a mission. 

I lean to tell her, “You’ll do fine, I’m sure of it.”

Aleti looks up and flashes me a smile. “Thank you, Terra.”

I continue my walk to the elevator where it’s waiting for me and I step in and wait for the doors to close. As it does so, I hear Aleti remind me, “Don’t let anyone forget their communicator!”

The doors shut before I can respond to her.

The elevator opens and I hurry up and down the hall to the bay doors. 

SWIRRR! 

I’m immediately met by a powerful gust of wind, the moment I open it, and feel a drop in my gut as I look over the side of the of the ramp. The stratosphere is the lowest part of the atmosphere before one gets to where mountains usually reside, but that’s still thousands of feet.

Just for the sake of looking, I look over the side of the ramp, and immediately remember something important.

I hate heights.

Alloya walks up to me and shows me my earpiece to communicate with everyone. I lean forward and let her put it in my ear for me. As she does so I watch Hideo stand at the edge. 

He’s going to turn into pure sound, and then he’ll travel as fast if not faster than sound, ‘see’ much farther, and travel easily through space. 

I watch him as at one moment he’s there, and the next he magically disappears like a gust of wind. His trousers and shirt flow frantically. I see Clay quickly grab them before they fall right out of the Rango put them in a locker on the wall.

Alloya finishes and speaks into her own mic by putting a hand to her ear. “Testing, testing. Can you hear me, Terra?” 

“I hear you, Captain.”  

“Good, these are waterproof and can work miles away, so don’t worry if it gets soaked or if for some reason we’re really far away.”

“Well let’s go!” I hear Clay say as he jumps off the edge.

Alloya looks at me with a smile of pity, knowing that I hate heights. “It’ll be okay, I promise,” she says to me as she puts a hand on my arm.

“With all due respect, Captain,” I start, “that’s a load of crap.” 

She shrugs and starts pushing me along as I am obviously hesitant to jump. 

“Time to go!” Alloya tells me. 

I shake my head. “No choice!” she yells before shoving me off the ramp.

My screaming is… less than dignified.

“Aaaahhhh!!” 

I knew it was coming, but that doesn’t change how absolutely terrifying it is.

The worst thing is the spinning. In the ship, I’m in control. Even when the ship is spiraling, I’m not, I’m glued to my seat.

In free fall, gravity has lost all control over my body, or at least that’s what it feels like. 

I’m glad my powers don’t need me to fly to use them.

I’m spinning for what feels like minutes before Alloya’s next to me, and steadies me by flying by my side. She positions us so that we are falling face first in a nose dive. I look at her, her liquid hair flowing vibrantly and widely, a grin on her face. 

Alloya says to me, “You know, people always say that they would love the power to fly!”

“It’s awesome,” I hear Aleti say through the headset.

“Sure,” Alloya continues, “but falling is great too!” 

My dear friend is secretly a maniac. Everyone can fall, it’s a superpower to survive hitting the ground.

Maybe I should look down. 

This is a mistake. 

I see Clay falling spread eagle and doing flips in the air, enjoying himself. We gain on him fast, but what I mostly see is the ocean below and that makes me feel so small. 

It looks so much bigger than me, like the hand of a giant and I’m the fly about to be swatted. I can only imagine it’s the moving waves of water that look like the ridges and bungs of a calloused hand.

“Terra,” I hear Aleti say through the earpiece, “close your eyes, let it feel like you’re falling asleep, and you’ll realize that you have nothing to fear, because you won’t see anything to fear.” 

I close my eyes, per the girl’s advice, but I still feel the falling sensation. I hear Aleti speak softly once more, “Imagine you’re floating, you’re still, and the world is what’s falling away.” 

I’m trying to do what she says but it’s just not working. 

“Nothing to fear, nothing around you. Nothing at all.” 

Then I think I feel what she’s talking about. I’m just here, but not here. Nothing but a presence touching my arm. Nothing around me, nothing to collide with, nothing to fear. Time seems to pass me by as I keep falling thousands and thousands of feet. It works, and I have to thank Aleti later.

I don’t notice how far down we’ve fallen, or how long it’s been. Suddenly, I feel a hand on my chest, and energy swarm from it to encase me. Once my body is encompassed, the wind stops hitting me in the chest, and I truly feel nothing.

“Terra,” I hear a voice say, “I used my power to slow you down, we’re at the surface of the ocean.” 

“Finally, I can open my-” I open my eyes inches from the water. “Aah!” I scream. Then I’m jerked back upright so that I’m screaming and floating inches above the flowing water.

“Oh fuck, that was funny,” I hear Clay laughing. I’m hyperventilating now as I look around to see Alloya and Clay laughing. 

“You’re jerks!” I yell at them. “Little fucking brats!” 

When curse they go silent, and look to each other.

Over the coms, Hideo says, “Did dad just say ‘fuck?’” and they all burst out laughing again.

“You were safe the whole time,” Alloya assures me. “I just thought, why not show you how little danger you were in? You didn’t even know we were done falling for a whole minute.” 

“A whole minute?!”

“Yep, nothing for you to be worried about.”

I can’t stop glaring at them. “Let’s just get this done. I’ll remember this. Make sure to keep your seatbelts on in the Rango from now on.”

“Terra’rork, it was just a joke. We didn’t-” 

I turn my glare to him, and Clay stops talking. 

“She did it! And it was her idea!” 

I glare at him again. 

“Ugh, I’m just gonna get started now.”

“Good idea,” I tell him. Then he starts getting undressed. “Why are you doing that?”

“I’m getting real sick of destroying every pair of clothes that the Proto-whatever makes. I can just put them in Alloya’s backpack.” 

When he finishes shoving his clothes in her backpack I notice she isn’t wearing her duster or batons. Hopefully, that means she has confidence that we won’t have to fight.

Then once he sets down, Alloya flies us away. “We might want to get clear of him before he blows, but Terra, once he does we’re going to book it. You need to work as fast as you can.” 

The water will come rushing back, and I need to raise the mountains high enough above the ocean floor so there’s a place for the Shatter Drive.

We found a rather shallow spot in the ocean, but since when is an ocean ever that shallow?

Clay floats above the water and has positioned himself into a stance meant for balance. His legs are spread apart and his knees bent with his back arched over. It’s a strange way to concentrate but that’s how he uses his powers. His veins start to become visible and what was originally a lack of muscle becomes less so. 

I turn to ask Alloya what is wrong with him, because I’ve never seen him take so long to transform. 

“Usually, if I’m right, when he turns into pure solar energy it’s with a large flux of energy from a sun, but without it… well, it can be a strenuous activity. Unlike sound or cosmic energy which are literally always potent and around, a direct light source is rarely close by. This light that lets us see if pure to you and me, but to Clay, it’s actually pretty diluted.” 

I turn to look back at Clay, and I can see light eeking out of holes in his exterior, his skin turning to ash and flowing off of him. As this slow and probably painful transformation continues, he steadily curls himself into a ball.

Then BLAM!

Suddenly he goes spread eagle and his skin instantly burns away, his body becoming completely solar. Within another instant, a monstrous cylinder of light becomes realized and starts expanding, consuming everything it touches. The cylinder of light rises hundreds of miles each second, and its width expanding just as fast.    

Alloya throws up her hand and creates a barrier to shield us. She creates a bubble of cosmic energy, which filters the light so we can see, and allows us to move. I can feel us descending inside this bubble, and then I wonder if Alloya expects me to be able to use my powers from in here. 

After a minute my feet touch the oh-so wonderful ground. When the wall of light finally dissipates Alloya to drops the bubble. 

There’s nothing around us for a couple miles. Clay had successful turned the water into vapor with his self-explosion, and we’re are standing on a scorched, dry seabed. The water looks like a wall until it starts falling back to rush over where we’re standing.

Now it’s my turn. I begin to reach down into myself, and take inventory of my body. I feel my own body send a pulsating wave downwards in Riverteria. It starts with my legs, but then into the hearth below. This wave goes through this planet’s ground, sensing the land as if it is a larger part of me.

I raise the land as if I am raising my right arm, and I can feel the land rise high above. Then I feel the water touch my back suddenly. No, the water is making contact with the land behind me, and I realize I have to raise everything. 

It’s all or nothing.

The land has to rise in a circle. 

No. Water has seeped in, it’s flowing over me, weighing me down, but it won’t hold me, and I lift higher. I raise the ground above my head, and I keep going. I feel myself reaching for the sky without touching the ground. Then I start to feel dry, the water slinking back over me. 

I open my eyes slightly, my arms raised over my head. 

This break in my thoughts causes my connection with the land to break, and then my large arms become too heavy to hold up. They come crashing down in front of me, banging on the ground and sending a wave of pain straight to my brain.

“Terra! Are you alright?” 

I open my eyes to Alloya. It didn’t take long for me to become lost in my own powers and forget who’s around me.

“I’ll be fine, just hurt myself a little,” I say as I take a look at what I’ve done. Then I see it, my wall, it’s humongous.

The area I made is large enough to fit a town, maybe a city and the mountain range that forms a circle around us is probably the highest that can be seen on this planet. Anyone can tell though that they are not natural with how incredibly steep they are. 

If Alloya tries to stand on its side she will be parallel to the ground. I most certainly can’t see any water from the waves slamming against them. I turn around in a full spin to make sure that it’s all evened out..

Then my eye catches something. The small amount of water inside my mountain range from is flowing upwards. 

Upwards, as in up the inside of the mountain range.

“How is that…?” I ask with a loss for words.

“He’s here,” I hear someone say. I turn around to see Clay floating down towards us, in his form of pure sunlight. 

“Oh dear.”

“He was quick too, I have to give him that.”

“Let’s just hope he’s still our friend,” Alloya says with a hint of doubt.

“I believe that Wombinal will understand. I think I can talk to him,” I tell them.

“Here’s hoping you get the chance,” Clay remarks.

Then suddenly from the same place the water goes over, I can see a huge wave rising, if one can call it a wave. The water rises high above the mountain, looking like a legless bug as it peers over the mountain, no doubt looking down at us. 

When it starts to really take shape, it no longer looks like a bland and simple circular insect. It gains edges and details in the shape of a mouth and teeth. Spikes run down its back, and the skin starts to look like scales. 

The water forms a dangerous and massive sea creature which, if I remember right, populates this planet. The Hydroninad. 

“Looks like a water dragon,” Clay mutters. I guess that’s a creature on Earth.

“I don’t think Womby’s going to give you the chance to talk, Terra,” I hear Alloya say.

“He can’t possibly think he can take the three of us, does he?” Clay questions.

“This place is surrounded by water, and water will put your powers out if he gets to consume you in it,” Alloya reminds him. “This is his home turf, and we shouldn’t underestimate him.” 

Clay grunts in indifference at that comment. 

“Don’t get cocky,” Alloya warns him, “being that this is his planet, his demon is also probably more capable of helping out then ours, and none of us are match for any demon.”

This doubt and worry aimed towards someone who we once fought tooth and nail alongside infuriates me. “Would you two stop?! This is our friend, a member of our family, and he deserves a chance as much as any of us.” 

I turn back around to face them. 

“Just think for second, while you two have been pre-planning your kill, he hasn’t attacked us. That Hydroninad is probably insurance to protect himself from us, which seems like a good idea listening to you two.”

Clay arches his brow at me, surprised by my outburst, and what he no doubt believes to be my naivety. Alloya looks at me sideways, her eyes holding as much doubt as Clay’s, if not a little sympathy. 

“Okay, Terra, I’ll fly us up to talk to him,” Alloya assures me, and orders Clay to, “stay here, but be ready.” 

He nods but has a visible face of disapproval.

“Thank you, Captain,” I tell her with a nod of my head.

Alloya looks at me and then cracks a small smile. “Don’t thank me yet. I might be thanking you.” Then she takes my arm, and encompasses us in her cosmic energy like she had before to fly us up together. 

“Don’t lose your breakfast,” she jokes as we takes off into the sky.

“If I didn’t before, I won’t now!” I defend myself… then I think I feel rumblings in my stomach. Maybe my body prefers descension to ascension actually.

We fly at moderate speed towards the water Hydroninad, and thankfully it makes no move to attack us. Womby also makes no move to reveal himself to us. When we are within yards of the water dragon it still makes no move. 

It should be logical to assume that it can hear, all unnatural things can, so I try to speak to it. “Womby, please come out so I can explain what we are doing,” I yell out loud, assuming the dragon would call on it’s master.

The Hydroninad’s mouth begins to move, “I’m here.” 

Whoa, I didn’t realize Womby has acquired such transformative capabilities. When we left him after the Dion explosion, he was only able to turn his body into water to avoid blasters and bullets. This kind of transformation… it’s an unbelievable jump. 

“Surprised? That I could come so far without your help?” 

“Not at all, Wombinal. I’m impressed by how far you’ve come in such a short time.” He huffs and puffs, as if insulted by what I say. If this higher form is anything like everyone else’s, his ego and sense of superiority is automatically boosted, especially in the learning phases of such a technique. 

Clay was a real prick when he first discovered his sun form. 

I try to explain why we’re here by first saying, “We’ve come to help you and your people—”

He doesn’t like that.

“Do you not think we can help ourselves?” 

Alloya whispers in my ear, “The defensive attitude is a trait of all of these people apparently.”

“I heard that…”

“Ignore her please Womby, and Captain, shush.” She rolls her eyes at me. “Womby, you know your people don’t have space travel. It’s virtually impossible for you to have developed a device to fix the time dissonance on your planet.” He looks insulted again so I add, “At least not in the little time you have had. We’re simply building the basis for a device to be set down and give Riverteria an equal chance to compete with the other worlds.” Womby arches his watery Hydroninad brow“Above us is an installation that makes such devices, and at your behest it will set such a device down.”

“Hmm,” Womby states, why does he even need to consider it? 

“I would like the device inspected.” 

Damn it, that’ll take time that will fly by. 

“Womby we don’t have that kind of time!” I yell at him.

“You don’t have time? Then you’ll have to make some.”

“What would an inspection even be for?”

“That it is indeed what you say it is.”

“What else could it be?”

“A bomb of some kind.”

“Are you kidding me?!” I hear another voice behind me. Then quickly a gust of wind hits me as a flash of light comes across my vision. Then suddenly Clay in his sun form is up and in Womby’s face. “A bomb? Are you an idiot?! If we wanted to bomb you, I could destroy your planet from orbit!” 

“The bomb could kill Rivertans specifically so you could plunder Riverteria!” Womby retorts.

“The Captain could do that from orbit!” Clay yells at him.

I turn to Alloya and ask quietly, “Could you?” 

Alloya purses her lip and kind of shrugs. 

Womby is at a lost for words.“Uh, er-”

Clay interrupts him to say, “Let us help you! That’s why we’re here. To help you, and your people. Get out of your own way.”

Womby growls at Clay but Clay doesn’t back down. They stare each other down, and I can feel Alloya charging her power next to me. If she has to break them up, well, I would be taking a survivable but painful fall to the ground.

Clay and Womby stare each other down. A being of heat, and a water dragon. Not something I see everyday. It’d be much better as a picture.

Womby stares his big dragon eyes right into Clay’s soul, and he caves.

“Bring down the device, it should be matched with Regnora’s time zone,” he demands.

“That was already the plan,” Clay tells him. I’m surprised he doesn’t add an insult to the end of his sentence.

“Get all that, Aleti?” I hear Alloya say into her earpiece. “Good, give confirmation to Noland.”

While we wait for Noland’s ships Clay and Womby separate, but stay in their higher forms, most likely to intimidate each other. Alloya acts quick with a blast of her hand to flatten a mountain peak. She sets me down there so, inadvertently giving me a place to sit and speak with Womby while she takes the opportunity to speak with Clay. 

It will take a long time for the transport ships to safely transport the Shatter Drive because they have to move really slow to avoid fire damage when entering the atmosphere. 

Womby is pacing back and forth in his Hydroninad form, and I am sitting down twiddling my joints between my feet while I sit. While I am doing that, I realize something to be true now that Womby has a higher transformation. I’m the only Guardian that doesn’t have any kind of transformation of my own. I should get on that.

“Wombinal!” I call to the water dragon. He turns his head towards me. “If it’s not overreaching could you tell me how you progressed to this form so fast?”

He cranes his to face me. “The Prime Minister helped me.”

“How so?”

“Science, ingenuity, duty and Targent.” 

Okay, so cryptic and ominous is also a trait of this Hydroninad form.

“Okay, don’t tell me,” I say sarcastically. What’s Targent?

“I told you as much as I can,” Womby replies.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Nothing.”