Written: Saturday. June 27, 2020.
Enough of this. The voice said in his head. I’ve searched and searched everywhere to find what I am looking for. And now it is here. And what good luck do I have to also be presented with the parts that have been missing in me for quite some time?
“Look, man.” Omnius said, as he was still clutched inside of Mr. Reyes’s arms. Though right now, it seemed Omnius accepted the fact that he was there. “I don’t know who you are, or what you want with me. But I gotta go and find my friends.”
“I’ve told you already,” Mr. Reyes said, “They’re not your friends, Omnius. They never were.”
And who are these friends that you speak of?
“None of your business, buster!” Omnius yelled at the being standing just a block away from them. “So if you’ll allow me — “ Mr. Reyes was caught off guard when Omnius suddenly pushed with all his might out of his grip. “Ha ha!”
“How did you — “
Don’t let it escape!
“He can’t hear you, stupid!” Omnius yelled back to the strange being.
Hmm, I suppose I’ll deal with you in another way. The being went down onto its knees.
“What are you doing?” Omnius said, as he quickly dodged Mr. Reyes’s attempts to recapture him. “Why are you kneeling like that?”
But the being did not exactly kneel on both its knees. It seemed to be in a kind of stance, like it was in preparation for —
“Oh shit!” Omnius started running away from the being. The being lunged forward almost at the same time as Omnius. Omnius felt the tremors on the ground. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!”
There is no running from this! The being said. Mr. Reyes seemed to have said it aloud as well towards the running Omnius. Smiling, he looked back to where the being was, and just as quickly — as he saw a flicker of movement from a figure running at a tremendous speed towards him — felt a strong force push him straight onto the ground, hitting his head, his body, and his everything, onto the pavement like a stray dog suddenly being ran over by a truck moving at 80 miles per hour in the middle of a deserted road, where no one was ever gonna know that it was there, or rather actually care.
Sucks to be you. The being was able to form in his mind, before his subconscious truly faded into nothingness.
When she opened her eyes, it was like pure conflagration. Everything was the color red — a tad bit of yellow and orange as well. And she felt a strong urge, an interesting sensation, of wanting to burn everything in her path. To turn them all into cinder. Her thoughts told her. Let’s make it quick, and lets make it all go boom!
June was standing on the edge of some evacuated building. She felt upset that she wasn’t able to get there first and trample everyone in it, and make things go into flame. Because that’s how everything should be!
“S-stop — “ She tried uttering. Somewhere inside of her, there was this voice taking control of her thoughts. And however she went about it, the voice seemed to overwhelm her with every word it said to her. As if anything it had just said actually made sense. She was trying to fight the urge of agreeing with it. “Stop it!” But we haven’t done anything yet, dear. We haven’t gotten to do what we want yet. “Wh-what do you want?” Silly girl! It’s what do we want? We want to destroy everything in front of us! Everything that isn’t already destroyed! “No I don’t! Stop it, please!” June tried moving her body, but she just stood there, like a stone gargoyle peering down on the streets. She couldn’t stand not being able to move her own body. Regardless, none of that mattered to this other June.
Her head tilted to one side, and June noticed something moving in the streets. It looked like a person, but it also looked like… a wolf? Or was it a bull? It looks like both. What is that? June’s body leaped off of the ledge. She wanted to scream, but she couldn’t. She felt her lips quicker on both ends, but also felt like she was somehow forming a huge smile across her face.
As she was descending, she felt a warm presence all around her. It was only when she noticed that she wasn’t particularly gliding, but actually re-arranging her altitude as she flew across a couple of streets, that she realized she was covered in a coat of flame. Her whole body was like a literal torch. June could only think of screaming internally, as she hovered in mid-air, with seemingly perfect balance. Not my own balance. She thought.
“You there!” her voice yelled out, to the figure roaming around the streets, slashing its claws through several cars that have been left by their owners. The bane looked human, for the most part. Although, its arms were twisted and seemed longer than the average length. Including its fingers, which had long and sharp nails on each end. Its legs were crooked, like an animal’s. It also had a crouched posture. Excluding the mane covering its entire body, the hair on its head was long and covered its face, making it hard to identify who it was.
It was only when the hair swayed in a slight direction that it gave June some semblance of opportunity to realize who it was underneath. A-Amanda? “Is that you?” Somehow, she was able to let out that much. The bane probably heard her, as it looked up to where June was hovering about, and gave her a loud growl. It tried clawing at the air, but June was way up for its claws to reach her.
“You can’t reach me like that, Mandy!” June heard herself laugh. It was that other self that seemed to be doing it for her. The wolf-bane looked like it was purring, or was it growling? She couldn’t tell. But she knew what that look meant, anyway. The beast was angry.
“How can you let him get away with Omnius!” Toby yelled at Ervagh.
“Excuse me! I was busy here trying to safely land this damn ship while that beast girl started trampling everything she saw inside of this place! When we landed, she clawed her way out of here, and I simply lost it after that!”
“That still doesn’t explain how Mr. Reyes got away!” Toby replied.
“I thought the old lad was gonna go and fetch her for me. What was I gonna do? Leave this ship, while all of you were left unattended as you were still getting out of that damn mind-breach?”
“We could’ve handled ourselves, Ervagh.” Lady Veergha told him.
“Oh, okay, my Lady.” Ervagh said, in an unfiltered tone of sarcasm. “I guess you could have, since there’s already two of you that handled themselves very perfectly as they woke up having a random Inheritance in their system. My mistake for thinking that way — “ Ervagh stopped speaking when he noticed the Lady’s look on him.
Lady Veergha, despite her still looking like a teenage girl, managed to look menacing enough to catch Ervagh off guard. “I will allow you this one time, Ervagh. But speak to me that way again, and I shall have your head.”
“O-of course, my Lady. A thousand apologies. It’s just that the ship’s — “
“And stop worrying about the damn ship, will you!” Lady Veergha yelled at him, which seemed to do the job. “Now. The four of us will have to stick together as we search for your two friends. Never mind Omnius for now. We don’t know what the professor’s intentions are with him. He probably got frightened with all that’s been happening and naturally wanted to keep Omnius safe.”
“Yeah, well,” Tom said, as he was playing with two silver balls in his hands. “I don’t trust the old man. I wasn’t fully out of it yet, but I think I saw Omnius struggling to get out of Mr. Reyes’s hands. I’m not sure.”
“Well, Omnius would definitely do that.” Toby said to his friend. “He doesn’t ever know what’s happening around him, anyway. So he probably thought he was being kidnapped.”
“I mean, for heaven’s sake.” Tom through one of the silver balls towards a wall in the ship. The ball stayed on the part of the wall it hit. “Goddammit! Anyway, how is that thing even possibly an ancient being from outer space if it acts so goddamn stupid all the time?”
“Welcome to my world.”
The bane that was Amanda lunged itself off of the ground, with its claws in front of it, trying to grab the burning figure hovering in mid-air. June’s body quickly got out of the way, and seemed to know exactly what it needed to do. June’s mind, on the other hand, was going “Ooh shit! Ooh SHIT!” as it just watched what was in front of her like a passenger in a moving vehicle. Her body flew quickly upwards to a greater height. Probably enough of a safe distance that the she-wolf won’t get to her from up there. But Amanda seemed to get even more angry as she failed to get the flaming thing out of the air. It ran in all fours, leaping its way towards a wall, and somehow was able to push itself against the wall, and upwards diagonally to where June’s flaming body was. It happened so quickly that June was only able to lift her hands up to try and block the impact of the wolf-bane’s collision.
Amanda the wolf-bane successfully grabbed hold of the flying flame, and immediately regretted doing so, as she started to feel the burning effect of the encompassing miasma of fire she just openly hugged, as a result of her unbridled rage. Both June and Amanda were falling straight to the ground, as Amanda noticed that the flames were getting even more hotter.
“You like getting burned, huh?” June’s voice said to the creature. “Well how do you like this!” If it weren’t for the searing pain of the heat on her skin, Amanda would’ve never noticed that they weren’t falling anymore, but remained at a spot in the air, as she was strongly being burned to crisps by June’s flames.
“Ah! It hurts!” Amanda heard someone say. Was that me? It sounded lower than her normal voice. She let go of the floating mass of flames, and fell to the ground. Her body hit the pavement with a massive thud, and she growled in agony as her body felt even more hurt. It was all over the place; the pain from the landing, and the burning pain in her skin. But as she moved to feel the burning parts of her self, she almost as quickly felt it going away. As everything around her made no sense and felt like it was blurry and shaking, she touched the parts of her that was burnt, but when she did, it was like there was nothing ever there. The pain remained, but the sensation was also fading away momentarily as well.
“Don’t tell me you have heightened healing abilities!” June said to the she-wolf. “That’s not fair!”
Toby and the others got out through the hole in the ship. They now saw the extent of damage that’s been done by the Quadmius. A lot of stores were now either closed or abandoned cause of the wreckage. People were running for their lives, and a squadron of police were there patrolling an area they’ve built as a safeguard spot for their group. Several of them were being treated by patrol medics, others were prepping up gear — probably in preparation for another attack from the sudden appearance of a strange creature running around the streets. There was no sign of it anywhere at the moment. But the look on their faces seemed to be a mixture of anticipation and worry. The ones who were being treated to had these gaunt looks in them. The color was just gone from their faces.
“They must’ve seen it up close.” Drew said, as they tried to walk passed them unseen from one side of the road. “They’ve been trained to deal with surprise attacks. But not like this.” He looked at the rubble hitting his shoes every time it hit them. The police would’ve look their way, if they hadn’t worn hoodies on the way out of the ship. The texture that was growing on Drew’s skin was covered up by it, as well as Tom’s many eyelids.
“How long do you think before we have to give these powers back to the Lady?” Tom asked. “I dunno if I wanna give ’em back. Though, of course, the thousands of eyes that I have on my face isn’t gonna go well for the ladies. Know what I mean?”
“Given practice,” Lady Veergha said, not seeming to pay all of her attention to Tom’s stupid voice as they walked slowly out of sight of the squadron. “you could wield those abilities without ever having to change your appearance. You lack it the required skills. Hence, the insect features on your countenance.”
“So I just have to focus real hard and I’ll be able to — “ Tom stopped moving. His eyes — all one thousand or more of them — closed up, then opened up again, as Tom looked to the distance.
“What is it?” Toby asked his friend.
“My spider-senses are tingling.” Tom replied to him. Toby would’ve slapped some sense to him, if not for the loud noise that just came from a direction near them.
As they ran to check where the noise came from, Toby noticed two figures fighting each other a few blocks away. He noticed that one of them was covered in flames. “June!”
Enough of this. The voice said in his head. I’ve searched and searched everywhere to find what I am looking for. And now it is here. And what good luck do I have to also be presented with the parts that have been missing in me for quite some time?
“Look, man.” Omnius said, as he was still clutched inside of Mr. Reyes’s arms. Though right now, it seemed Omnius accepted the fact that he was there. “I don’t know who you are, or what you want with me. But I gotta go and find my friends.”
“I’ve told you already,” Mr. Reyes said, “They’re not your friends, Omnius. They never were.”
And who are these friends that you speak of?
“None of your business, buster!” Omnius yelled at the being standing just a block away from them. “So if you’ll allow me — “ Mr. Reyes was caught off guard when Omnius suddenly pushed with all his might out of his grip. “Ha ha!”
“How did you — “
Don’t let it escape!
“He can’t hear you, stupid!” Omnius yelled back to the strange being.
Hmm, I suppose I’ll deal with you in another way. The being went down onto its knees.
“What are you doing?” Omnius said, as he quickly dodged Mr. Reyes’s attempts to recapture him. “Why are you kneeling like that?”
But the being did not exactly kneel on both its knees. It seemed to be in a kind of stance, like it was in preparation for —
“Oh shit!” Omnius started running away from the being. The being lunged forward almost at the same time as Omnius. Omnius felt the tremors on the ground. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!”
There is no running from this! The being said. Mr. Reyes seemed to have said it aloud as well towards the running Omnius. Smiling, he looked back to where the being was, and just as quickly — as he saw a flicker of movement from a figure running at a tremendous speed towards him — felt a strong force push him straight onto the ground, hitting his head, his body, and his everything, onto the pavement like a stray dog suddenly being ran over by a truck moving at 80 miles per hour in the middle of a deserted road, where no one was ever gonna know that it was there, or rather actually care.
Sucks to be you. The being was able to form in his mind, before his subconscious truly faded into nothingness.
* * *
When she opened her eyes, it was like pure conflagration. Everything was the color red — a tad bit of yellow and orange as well. And she felt a strong urge, an interesting sensation, of wanting to burn everything in her path. To turn them all into cinder. Her thoughts told her. Let’s make it quick, and lets make it all go boom!
June was standing on the edge of some evacuated building. She felt upset that she wasn’t able to get there first and trample everyone in it, and make things go into flame. Because that’s how everything should be!
“S-stop — “ She tried uttering. Somewhere inside of her, there was this voice taking control of her thoughts. And however she went about it, the voice seemed to overwhelm her with every word it said to her. As if anything it had just said actually made sense. She was trying to fight the urge of agreeing with it. “Stop it!” But we haven’t done anything yet, dear. We haven’t gotten to do what we want yet. “Wh-what do you want?” Silly girl! It’s what do we want? We want to destroy everything in front of us! Everything that isn’t already destroyed! “No I don’t! Stop it, please!” June tried moving her body, but she just stood there, like a stone gargoyle peering down on the streets. She couldn’t stand not being able to move her own body. Regardless, none of that mattered to this other June.
Her head tilted to one side, and June noticed something moving in the streets. It looked like a person, but it also looked like… a wolf? Or was it a bull? It looks like both. What is that? June’s body leaped off of the ledge. She wanted to scream, but she couldn’t. She felt her lips quicker on both ends, but also felt like she was somehow forming a huge smile across her face.
As she was descending, she felt a warm presence all around her. It was only when she noticed that she wasn’t particularly gliding, but actually re-arranging her altitude as she flew across a couple of streets, that she realized she was covered in a coat of flame. Her whole body was like a literal torch. June could only think of screaming internally, as she hovered in mid-air, with seemingly perfect balance. Not my own balance. She thought.
“You there!” her voice yelled out, to the figure roaming around the streets, slashing its claws through several cars that have been left by their owners. The bane looked human, for the most part. Although, its arms were twisted and seemed longer than the average length. Including its fingers, which had long and sharp nails on each end. Its legs were crooked, like an animal’s. It also had a crouched posture. Excluding the mane covering its entire body, the hair on its head was long and covered its face, making it hard to identify who it was.
It was only when the hair swayed in a slight direction that it gave June some semblance of opportunity to realize who it was underneath. A-Amanda? “Is that you?” Somehow, she was able to let out that much. The bane probably heard her, as it looked up to where June was hovering about, and gave her a loud growl. It tried clawing at the air, but June was way up for its claws to reach her.
“You can’t reach me like that, Mandy!” June heard herself laugh. It was that other self that seemed to be doing it for her. The wolf-bane looked like it was purring, or was it growling? She couldn’t tell. But she knew what that look meant, anyway. The beast was angry.
* * *
“How can you let him get away with Omnius!” Toby yelled at Ervagh.
“Excuse me! I was busy here trying to safely land this damn ship while that beast girl started trampling everything she saw inside of this place! When we landed, she clawed her way out of here, and I simply lost it after that!”
“That still doesn’t explain how Mr. Reyes got away!” Toby replied.
“I thought the old lad was gonna go and fetch her for me. What was I gonna do? Leave this ship, while all of you were left unattended as you were still getting out of that damn mind-breach?”
“We could’ve handled ourselves, Ervagh.” Lady Veergha told him.
“Oh, okay, my Lady.” Ervagh said, in an unfiltered tone of sarcasm. “I guess you could have, since there’s already two of you that handled themselves very perfectly as they woke up having a random Inheritance in their system. My mistake for thinking that way — “ Ervagh stopped speaking when he noticed the Lady’s look on him.
Lady Veergha, despite her still looking like a teenage girl, managed to look menacing enough to catch Ervagh off guard. “I will allow you this one time, Ervagh. But speak to me that way again, and I shall have your head.”
“O-of course, my Lady. A thousand apologies. It’s just that the ship’s — “
“And stop worrying about the damn ship, will you!” Lady Veergha yelled at him, which seemed to do the job. “Now. The four of us will have to stick together as we search for your two friends. Never mind Omnius for now. We don’t know what the professor’s intentions are with him. He probably got frightened with all that’s been happening and naturally wanted to keep Omnius safe.”
“Yeah, well,” Tom said, as he was playing with two silver balls in his hands. “I don’t trust the old man. I wasn’t fully out of it yet, but I think I saw Omnius struggling to get out of Mr. Reyes’s hands. I’m not sure.”
“Well, Omnius would definitely do that.” Toby said to his friend. “He doesn’t ever know what’s happening around him, anyway. So he probably thought he was being kidnapped.”
“I mean, for heaven’s sake.” Tom through one of the silver balls towards a wall in the ship. The ball stayed on the part of the wall it hit. “Goddammit! Anyway, how is that thing even possibly an ancient being from outer space if it acts so goddamn stupid all the time?”
“Welcome to my world.”
* * *
The bane that was Amanda lunged itself off of the ground, with its claws in front of it, trying to grab the burning figure hovering in mid-air. June’s body quickly got out of the way, and seemed to know exactly what it needed to do. June’s mind, on the other hand, was going “Ooh shit! Ooh SHIT!” as it just watched what was in front of her like a passenger in a moving vehicle. Her body flew quickly upwards to a greater height. Probably enough of a safe distance that the she-wolf won’t get to her from up there. But Amanda seemed to get even more angry as she failed to get the flaming thing out of the air. It ran in all fours, leaping its way towards a wall, and somehow was able to push itself against the wall, and upwards diagonally to where June’s flaming body was. It happened so quickly that June was only able to lift her hands up to try and block the impact of the wolf-bane’s collision.
Amanda the wolf-bane successfully grabbed hold of the flying flame, and immediately regretted doing so, as she started to feel the burning effect of the encompassing miasma of fire she just openly hugged, as a result of her unbridled rage. Both June and Amanda were falling straight to the ground, as Amanda noticed that the flames were getting even more hotter.
“You like getting burned, huh?” June’s voice said to the creature. “Well how do you like this!” If it weren’t for the searing pain of the heat on her skin, Amanda would’ve never noticed that they weren’t falling anymore, but remained at a spot in the air, as she was strongly being burned to crisps by June’s flames.
“Ah! It hurts!” Amanda heard someone say. Was that me? It sounded lower than her normal voice. She let go of the floating mass of flames, and fell to the ground. Her body hit the pavement with a massive thud, and she growled in agony as her body felt even more hurt. It was all over the place; the pain from the landing, and the burning pain in her skin. But as she moved to feel the burning parts of her self, she almost as quickly felt it going away. As everything around her made no sense and felt like it was blurry and shaking, she touched the parts of her that was burnt, but when she did, it was like there was nothing ever there. The pain remained, but the sensation was also fading away momentarily as well.
“Don’t tell me you have heightened healing abilities!” June said to the she-wolf. “That’s not fair!”
* * *
Toby and the others got out through the hole in the ship. They now saw the extent of damage that’s been done by the Quadmius. A lot of stores were now either closed or abandoned cause of the wreckage. People were running for their lives, and a squadron of police were there patrolling an area they’ve built as a safeguard spot for their group. Several of them were being treated by patrol medics, others were prepping up gear — probably in preparation for another attack from the sudden appearance of a strange creature running around the streets. There was no sign of it anywhere at the moment. But the look on their faces seemed to be a mixture of anticipation and worry. The ones who were being treated to had these gaunt looks in them. The color was just gone from their faces.
“They must’ve seen it up close.” Drew said, as they tried to walk passed them unseen from one side of the road. “They’ve been trained to deal with surprise attacks. But not like this.” He looked at the rubble hitting his shoes every time it hit them. The police would’ve look their way, if they hadn’t worn hoodies on the way out of the ship. The texture that was growing on Drew’s skin was covered up by it, as well as Tom’s many eyelids.
“How long do you think before we have to give these powers back to the Lady?” Tom asked. “I dunno if I wanna give ’em back. Though, of course, the thousands of eyes that I have on my face isn’t gonna go well for the ladies. Know what I mean?”
“Given practice,” Lady Veergha said, not seeming to pay all of her attention to Tom’s stupid voice as they walked slowly out of sight of the squadron. “you could wield those abilities without ever having to change your appearance. You lack it the required skills. Hence, the insect features on your countenance.”
“So I just have to focus real hard and I’ll be able to — “ Tom stopped moving. His eyes — all one thousand or more of them — closed up, then opened up again, as Tom looked to the distance.
“What is it?” Toby asked his friend.
“My spider-senses are tingling.” Tom replied to him. Toby would’ve slapped some sense to him, if not for the loud noise that just came from a direction near them.
As they ran to check where the noise came from, Toby noticed two figures fighting each other a few blocks away. He noticed that one of them was covered in flames. “June!”
End of Chapter.
* * *
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