by Kipjo Ewers
She had very little time to process that the home she built and lived in for almost eight years was gone, or the untold damage the attacker’s destructive blast caused beyond her island.
Although she could hear screams from within the village, her assailant was not shooting up the entire island which meant she was coming specifically for her any second. The only two thoughts that entered her mind was the loss of all of her pictures, and making sure Earl was okay.
His anguishing groans said otherwise.
“Earl? Earl! Earl! Talk to me!”
She quickly rolled him over onto the sand to examine him. He was coughing up blood and going into shock. Not from the three-cracked ribs he received during the crash landing, but from his horribly burnt left leg and missing right leg now cauterized below the knee.
“Stay with me, Earl!” Sophia squealed her command. “Everything is going to be okay, just hang in there!”
Her attempt to lift him up and rush him to the medical center was abruptly halted by the thunderous thud of the foreign female invader spraying sand and shaking her island for a second time while touching down on her beach.
Agonizing frustration became etched into Sophia’s face as she held Earl in her arms knowing just by the alien’s visage she was not going to allow her to leave to tend to her friend.
Fortunately, an enraged Kimberly returned touching down with a thunderous landing of her own ready to brawl by her mother’s side.
“Kimberly! Earl is hurt! Get over here now!”
Kimberly did as her mother commanded, while Sophia kept her eyes locked on her attacker who for whatever her reasons waited for her to hand Earl off to Kimberly and clear the new battleground.
“Get Earl to the medical center right now,” she ordered Kimberly making sure to look her dead in the eyes. “Move everyone to the other side of the island, get them to the boats if you have to, and do not come back here for any reason. Do you understand me?”
Kimberly answered with a nervous nod.
“Let me hear you say it.”
“Yes, mom.”
“Go, now.”
Kimberly gave the woman who destroyed their home a quick glance before taking off with Earl to get him medical treatment and to do what her mother instructed.
Now free to fight, Sophia’s eyes blazed with unfathomable rage as she turned to the person who turned her life upside down once again in a matter of minutes. The warrior’s “could not care less” demeanor stoked the flames erupting within her.
“Sophia Dennison of Earth, I am Attea, first daughter of the High Region Nelron, and High Commanding General...”
Her introduction was interrupted by a retaliating eyebeam blast which she blocked with her thick metallic bracers. Sophia followed up the attack with a rush closing the gap, but just like Peace, a faster Attea delivered a crushing right to the side of her skull which shook the Earth as she went crashing into the sand.
Unlike Peace, Dennison fueled with nuclear rage recovered springing to her feet and retaliated with a planet splitting uppercut blasting the High Commanding General into the stratosphere.
A dazed Sophia with blurry eyes dropped to one knee as blood poured from her nose, while her skull felt as if it was split wide open from the blow she took. It was evident to her that her attacker was on another tier of power than she was from that one hit.
Not knowing how long she had before she came back, Sophia focused on getting to her feet while her vision returned and the fatal pain within her head went away. The first thing to catch her eyes was the damaged case with her Freedom uniform and other paraphernalia lying in the sand some distance away.
Somehow the energy blast shot it all the way to the beach, along with burnt parts of Robert’s Camaro.
She rushed over to it tearing off her clothes to put it on knowing she had mere seconds before combat began again.
High above near the edge where Earth’s atmosphere ended an unscathed Attea who stopped her own momentum floated giving her chin a slight rub. A savage grin formed on her face as her thoughts mirrored that of her brother observing from the confines of his command ship.
“Interesting.”
Attea knew she did not have to wait long.
The heavens were filled with rumbling as the speck coming toward her became larger. Though she could confidently tell that the human barreling toward her was nowhere on her level as far as a honed combatant, it had been ages since she had faced an opponent that was capable of giving her a sliver of a fight. She licked her lips preparing to savor every morsel of her meal.
˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜
Thousands of miles away at the Ranch, the central command center lit up with Lady Tech at the helm as her, and the android sisters sifted through the real-time reports coming all around the world. Rogers came barreling in with the rest of the team following behind him.
“We have just been invaded!”
Her blunt answer rattled everyone standing including Rogers who kept his game face on.
“Define invaded,” Heavy Element asked his question with a lump in his throat.
“We’ve got one massive alien warship that appeared within Earth’s orbit which by my readings is about thirty-five thousand meters in length, and a lone female alien combatant trading blows with Freedom in and out of our atmosphere as we speak. Judging from the images I could get from her and the markings on the ship, it’s not an Annunaki invasion.”
Lady Tech turned to Rogers while throwing up an image of the female warrior Freedom was battling that she got by patching into the United States Space Surveillance Network knowing that was the first question he was going to ask.
“I don’t have a clue who we’re dealing with, but based on her appearance and the ship that’s twice the size of an Imperial Eclipse orbiting over our heads, I can tell that they’re powerful and very hostile.”
“Any chance you get in contact with Freedom?”
“Already tried that,” Erica shook her head. “Vincent said she’s not wearing her headpiece. Apparently, the bitch she’s battling torched her house.”
“So, she’s fighting mad,” Sister Sledge deduced. “What happened to Kimberly?”
“She’s fine, but Mr. Earl was badly injured during the attack.”
Shareef lowered her head fighting to keep her emotions in check and remain a soldier. Once again Rogers felt eyes on him looking for guidance as he stood looking at a scene straight out of a blockbuster movie, now placed at his feet.
“Contact the White House and the Pentagon,” Rogers began to give orders, “Let them know in detail what we’re dealing with if they don’t already know. Tell them we’re advising them to contact every foreign power with military capability and a superhuman unit, and I mean even North Korea. Put the whole damn planet on high alert, we need to be ready for whatever is coming.”
˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜
High above Prince Merc dressed in a purple and black bodysuit similar to his sister minus the additional armor sat in a relaxed position in his chair of command. He drowned out the reports coming from his subordinates in regards to the frenzy his ship’s appearance stirred in the inhabitants down below more interested in the fierce battled his sister was in with Earth’s supposed champion.
Despite being slightly shorter than her female rival, Attea was the superior female combatant besting her in all levels of physical prowess and combat. However, Freedom’s unorthodox fighting technique and inhuman rage ignited by his sister’s initial violating attack kept her on par with her as they lit up the sky above Earth.
Seeing how much his sister was clearly enjoying herself sparked the flame of battle that had been extinguished within himself eons ago. So fixed was he in the fight that his second in command had to slightly raise his voice to get his Prince’s attention.
“Forgive me my Prince, but we are picking up In
tel that the humans are beginning to communicate in an effort to coordinate their many different governments into a combined defensive effort against us.”
“Shut down all forms of communication then,” he waved off his second in command.
“My Prince, weren’t our orders from the Dominion Council to quarantine the planet and retrieve the human the High Commanding General is doing battle with?” His second in command asked with a lump in his throat.
Prince Merc lazily glared at his second in command, who was forced to take a step back due to the immense pressure emitted that just his gaze wrought.
“Etch my words into thy skull dear Ashtor so as not to make the error of misspeaking again. Before the Dominion Council, there was the Thracian Empire. My father and his father before him are the reason for the wealth and prosperity our world has enjoyed for eons and why you can stand as my second command. We do not answer to the Dominion Council, we are one of the major foundations of the Dominion Council. Do we have understanding?”
“Yes, my Prince,” Ashtor swiftly answered with a respectful bow.
“Do as told and shut down this planet’s communication. Leave the more intricate details of this quarantine to your better.”
“As you command my Prince.”
Ashtor quickly turned on his heel to carry out his Prince’s instructions as Merc went back to watching his sister in a full-on brawl with Sophia which spanned and echoed across the skies of the entire planet.
“Careful dear sister,” Merc whispered to himself. “You must appear to use all measures to restrain her before you are forced take her head. Her corpse is all we require to forward our plan.”
˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜
“And now the sons of bitches are jamming all communications on the planet,” Lady Tech hissed.
“Did we get through to anyone?” Rogers asked.
“We’re still getting through,” she defiantly snorted. “Maxine is running Morse code to the White House and all four military branches. Our Commander in Chief is threatening to launch a nuke strike against that warship, and top brass is doing everything within their power to advise him not to do it.”
“Any word from the Eye of Ra?”
Erica sadly shook her head causing Rogers to curse under his breath.
“Send a respectful message to our President that if he doesn’t want to be the man responsible for a billion deaths he won’t think of firing one damn nuke, lie if you have to,” Rogers ordered.
“What about this chick that’s been trading blows with Ms. Dennison all over our planet?” Nitro pointed. “Shouldn’t we be figuring out a way to help Freedom stop her?”
“At the rate their moving, we wouldn’t be able to catch up with them,” Erica answered. “Not to mention, her energy readings are three times greater than Freedom’s. We wouldn’t last a second against her.”
“Then how is …?” A baffled Cyclone was about to ask.
“In the short period of time they’ve been fighting, Dennison doubled her energy output,” Lady Tech explained. “The longer she fights, the higher it will rise giving Freedom the power she needs to surpassing her.”
“If it doesn’t?” Merge came with an ominous question.
“Then we need to coordinate a plan of defense and attack incase Freedom falls,” Rogers bluntly answered.
˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜
As the aerial battle across the planet continued, Attea found her task of felling Freedom to be both infuriating and fascinating as she defended and landed world-shaking blows historically known throughout the universe for felling far more powerful ancient beings. Yet this human with not even a century of age on her was either tanking or defending her strikes and then coming back for more.
Freedom on the receiving end felt like a rank amateur punching bag unable to find an opening after her first hit. The elf eared alien warrior from another planet was both comfortable in the sky and far more experienced in aerial combat than she was.
She was also unnerved by the sickening feline grin that barely left her face. It was clear that she was enjoying the battle, most likely toying with her. Freedom thought to herself that she had to something to shake her confidence.
To make it clear that attacking her, and her home was a huge mistake.
Freedom went orbital knowing she would follow, in the middle of entering the void of space her eyes slightly widened to the sight of the dull black gargantuan extra-terrestrial killer whale shaped ship with red alien markings on the side of its hull parked in Earth’s orbit.
As jaw-dropping as the scene looked from her viewpoint, Freedom forced herself to keep her head in the game dealing with one planet threatening issue at a time.
The female powerhouse from the other side of the universe sent to kill her for some reason was who she had to put down first.
Freedom quickly spun around unleashing an eyebeam blast praying she would not be able to dodge it.
As Attea blocked the powerful blast with her bracer Freedom followed up with a city-destroying single hand beam that she held for more than eight seconds.
The Thracian High General not only tanked the energy attack that could have obliterated half a continent. She barreled right through it knocking Freedom into a painful spin in the middle of weightless space.
In an attempted to right herself, Freedom was hammered again by a painful hit that knocked her back into upper part Earth’s atmosphere. Before she could recover, Sophia felt her hood yanked off of her head as Attea dragged her into a hypersonic dive to the planet’s surface. Freedom struggling to break free now realized as much as it was an homage, hoods were just as bad as capes.
The alien Thracian warrior sprinkled insult onto her injury as she hit the breaks in mid-dive sling-shotting her with her own hood while ripping it off of her suit.
Freedom groaned in frustration as she tried again to recover. It was her second and third battle with Peace all over again, only worse. Being the most powerful superhuman on the planet meant her upper limits were never really tested. She was able to defeat Peace only by tapping her energy reserves to pushing them to dangerous levels for a few minutes. In actuality, it was the Eye of Ra who got rid of Peace by knocking her into a portal he created sending her into the nearest black hole.
Although she had a vast knowledge of combat that she could execute due to her super eidetic memory and physical mimicry abilities, the female warrior from another world revealed to her once again that she was a green combatant due to her lack of experience.
In the midst of attempting to stop both her descent and momentum, Attea flew up right to her flipping and curling her body into a well tucked ball. She then straightened out delivering a megaton piston powered dropkick turning Freedom into a pinball.
The first thing Freedom felt and saw was that she was going right through a building. She then hit the ground tearing up everything in her path before coming to a stop. All she had time for was a groan as she pulled herself back to her feet.
It was then that she realized, she was in Italy and that she had taken out the first two levels of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. As her ears filled with the familiar sounds of people running and screaming for their lives. Freedom looked up to see Attea slowly descending down to the ground with her hood in her grip.
With a sneer, she gave it a casual look over before chucking it to the ground.
“Thy must know by now that you are nothing but a plaything to me. No matter how hard you fight, there is no victory at the end of this tale for you.”
Without a word, Freedom raised her hands up turning them into fists as she got into a fighting stance. A slight smirk formed on the Thracian High General’s face realizing before her stood a fighter.
This time both of them charged at one another exchanging a flurry of punches and kicks that shook the ground, cracked glass and brought down already weake
ned structures. Almost eighty percent of the strikes Freedom hit Attea with were the defended, the other twenty percent that did hit their target were followed up with harder strikes.
On the other side of the spectrum, almost ninety percent of Attea’s strikes found their mark, yet much to her surprise the human not only stood her ground standing toe to toe with her …she fought harder.
In the middle of the exchange, Freedom charged her hands amplifying her punches to deliver harder shots.
An irritated Attea decided to do the same. Except she only charged her right fist and aimed her strike at the ground.
In one fluid motioned she ducked one of Freedom’s head removing right hooks striking the Earth with her energy charged fist detonating it.
Freedom screamed as everything became blinding red. Although the heat from the blast would not kill her, it felt as if she was doused with scalding hot water. She was pretty sure she was knocked off her feet. It was confirmed as she felt herself bounce off the ground several times before she came to a stop.
Her body violently trembled as her eyesight went from pitch black to fuzzy.
With another painful groan, Freedom got back to her feet.
The fuzziness vanished as her eyesight came back to her showing her horror.
Everything and everyone within a fifty-mile radius had been reduced to ash. The only cries that could be heard were from four downed Titans writhing in pain as ninety percent of their flesh had been seared from their bodies.
It was then that she realized what happened.
Whether Attea sensed, heard, or saw them, the Thracian High General knew she was about to get ambushed by some of the Earth’s resident heroes. The nuclear-packed fist strike was not meant just to knock Freedom backward, but to clear the battlefield in one fail swoop. Aside from the felled Titans, two Mercurians were not fast enough to escape the blast. The female screamed in agony with her eyes boiled out of her skull while her taxed regenerative healing slowly worked to repair the critical damage done to her. The other Mercurian that was closer to the center of the blast point laid dead succumbing to part of his head being blown off by the explosion.