Alex would have sworn if he weren’t busy running. What was he supposed to do? Where was he supposed to go? He didn’t know, and so he kept running deeper and deeper into the lower reaches of Mars City.
Mars City was an unusual place. The city itself was built within a massive crater, which meant that the lower-level and ground floor were actually located below technical sea levels. Meanwhile, the suburbs that he lived in was built outside of the crater. This contributed to the reason why the lower-levels were so dark.
After a while, Alex realized that he was lost. The walkways were no longer familiar. While not a denizen of the lower-levels, he’d spent more than enough time there—usually during his practical assessments or when he was blowing stuff up… which often went hand in hand.
“Damn it,” Alex swore out loud as he stopped. “Where the hell am I?”
“He-he-he, lookie who we have here,” a mocking voice came from his left.
Alex spun around. Several people walked out from between two buildings, six of them, each one nasty-looking and repulsive. At the helm, a familiar face took lumbering steps toward him. Blond hair jutted from his head like spikes. He wore a red bodysuit that was vaguely familiar to Alex, who could have sworn he’d seen something like this before. Even those short, pointy ears and red eyes looked familiar.
The man grinned. “If it isn’t the copper who’s given me nothin’ but trouble. I was wondering when you and I would meet again. I still owes ya for the bruisin’ ya gave me back when me and ma boys were tryin’ to pick up that little chickidy—not to mention the troubles ya gave me when I tried fleecing that gold I stole from them rich snobs.”
Alex eyed the man warily, even as he felt confusion wage war within him. “Who are you? I’m sorry, but have we met before?”
The words caused the man to trip over his own two feet. Alex watched in mute silence as the man slammed face first onto the walkway. The thuggish brutes behind him looked worried.
“Hey, boss. You okay?”
The man in the bodysuit jumped back to his feet and glared at Alex. “Don’t act like ya don’t me, punk! You and I have been enemies since the very first time we met!” He pointed an accusing finger at Alex. “Surely you remember the name André Killick of the Black Panthers?”
“Hmm…” Mindful of the girl in his arms, Alex pondered the man for a moment before coming to a conclusion. “I have no clue who you are, and I honestly couldn’t care less. All of you are in my way, so if you don’t move, I’m gonna have to move you out of the way.”
André snarled at him. “I’d like to see you try, punk! Let’s get ‘im, boys!”
André and his group of thugs charged, their battle cries echoing along the darkened walkway. Those cries soon turned into screams of pain as Alex proved that not even holding a girl in his arms would stop him from kicking ass.
Left with little choice but to make use of his power, Alex called upon the blue aura that Gabrielle believed was an angelisian aura. It came to him, a rushing surge of energy. It filled him. Blue flames engulfed his body, which he directed toward his legs. He couldn’t build anything because of the girl in his arms, but if he released precisely timed burst of energy from his legs, it should help.
The group of thugs hesitated, but it was too late by then. Alex leapt at André, who received two booted heels to the face. A bang! echoed like a gun being fired as Alex released the energy in his feet, precisely timed so that it coincided with his boots meeting the thug’s face. As the man went down, he used the jerk’s face as a springboard, launching himself at his next victim, who suffered a broken jaw when a spinning heel kick slammed into him.
Alex didn’t waste time after that. Holding Nyx tightly to his chest, he launched a series of flying kicks that decked one, two, three of the thugs in the face, shattering their noses like brittle twigs. He then landed on the ground, bent low, and kicked the last one’s legs out from underneath him. Then he stomped on the man’s face, ignoring both the squelching sound of a nose breaking and the scream of pain.
Glancing around at the broken people lying on the ground, Alex glared. “Anyone else wanna question my authorita?” No one spoke up. Alex nodded. “Thought not.”
“Oh, wow!” a female voice exclaimed behind him. “That was quite the display you put on. I’m impressed, especially since you seem to have your hands full at the moment. (^_^)”
Alex blinked. He could’ve sworn he’d just heard an emote in that last sentence.
A woman stood behind him, with bright green hair, bright amethyst eyes, and an even brighter grin. Her smile almost reminded him of Gabrielle, except it lacked the naivety of his roommate’s smile. She was wearing a russet colored shirt, a dark skirt that barely covered her thighs, and a long lab coat that trailed along the floor. She was also really short, which made her large chest stand out all the more.
“Um…” Alex didn’t know what to say. “Hello?”
“Hi!” The girl responded cheerfully. “My name is Ēostre. (^_^) What’s yours?”
“Um, Alex.”
Why does this woman look so familiar?
“Alex…” The woman tested the name several times, and then smiled. “I like it! XD So, Alex, what are you doing here?”
Alex debated on what to tell her. Honestly, he didn’t have time to deal with her. Nyx was in danger. Her body was dangerously hot, and her breathing was labored, and he couldn’t be sure, but he was positive that her heartbeat was slowing down. If something wasn’t done soon, she might die.
“Is that Nyx?” the woman suddenly asked.
Alex didn’t show how startled he was. “You know who Nyx is?”
“Of course. :3 Everyone who belongs to the intergalactic community knows about the greatest assassin to appear in the last decade.”
Now that Alex was looking at her more closely, he noticed some unusual features about her. Her eyes had no white. It was like the entire eye was just a pupil. They were large and oddly attractive. Her nose was also a bit smaller than a normal person’s. Likewise, there were two large extensions from her head, which he at first thought was hair, but were soon revealed to be ears. They were long and floppy and looked like rabbit ears. This person was obviously not human.
What sort of alien is she?
Alex shook off the questions that popped into his head. Now wasn’t the time. “If you know who Nyx is, does that mean you can help her? Or maybe find someone who can? She’s injured.”
The woman looked into his eyes, searching for something, though he didn’t know what. Whatever she was looking for, she apparently found it, because she gestured for him to follow her.
“I can help her out. I’m the local doctor here for alien immigrants. (^-^)”
“Thank you.” Alex studiously ignored the strange emote at the end of this woman’s words, shifting Nyx in his arms. They were beginning to get tired. “Can you really help Nyx?”
The woman grinned at him as her rabbit-like ears twitched. “Of course I can. XD I actually happen to know quite a bit about your pretty little friend here.” She then gave him a curious look. “Though I’m surprised that you know her. Tell me, how did you become acquainted with Nyx?”
“She tried to kill me,” he said without thinking.
Ēostre raised an eyebrow. “She tried to kill you? And you still want to help her?”
“I can’t just leave her like this,” Alex defended his actions. “It wouldn’t be right.”
Ēostre laughed. “Is that so? :-D Well, I guess you have a point.” Chuckling some more, she muttered to herself, “I knew you were going to be an interesting fellow. Like father like son, I guess.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s nothing. (-_-) Follow me.”
Alex followed Ēostre to what, at first glance, appeared to be nothing but a blank wall. Yet when the woman walked up to it, lines shimmered along the wall’s surface, a network of glowing silver veins like the cables on a circuit board. A small section of the wall slid aside at eye-level, and the woman stepp
ed up to it as a beam of green light shot out and hit her left retina.
It’s a retina scanner, Alex belatedly realized. He’d never seen one in real life. Even the Galactic Police Force didn’t use those. From what Alex knew, only the rich, elite members of society used retina scanners, which left him with a question. Just who is this woman?
“This way please. X3”
Ēostre bade him to follow her, which he did, descending down a flight of steps before reaching yet another door. The silvery door slid open to reveal a room that Alex couldn’t identify. It looked sort of like a hospital room. It possessed all of the equipment of a hospital, including a bed with a detachable vitals monitoring system, but there were a large number of items that he did not recognize.
They must be equipment used for healing extra-terrestrials, Alex theorized, even as he gazed at the large cylinder that sat before a wall at the far end of the room. Its bulbous frame reminded him of a flower bud before it bloomed. Interior lights revealed an empty chamber inside.
“Please put Nyx on the bed and take her clothes off. (^_^)”
Alex stared at the woman, nonplussed. “Excuse me?”
“I said—”
“I heard what you said!”
Ēostre frowned at him. “DX Then why did you say, ‘excuse me?’ like some kind of idiot?”
“Because you asked me to take off Nyx’s clothes,” Alex spat. “You can’t honestly expect me to take a girl’s clothing off. That’s just wrong. And besides, couldn’t you take her clothes off yourself?”
After staring at him for several seconds, Ēostre sighed. “)-: Listen, Alex. I would normally do this myself. However, I can’t touch her.”
“Why not?”
“Because her nanomachines are overheating.” When all Alex did was stare, Ēostre gave him a flat look. “(-_-) Do you know how hot nanomachines run at before they overheat? Three hundred and fifty-two degrees… Celsius.”
“W-what?”
“Right now, your friend’s temperature is hot enough to burn through my flesh if I were to touch her. I’m actually surprised you’re even capable of touching her like this without getting so much as a burn.”
Alex’s mind numbed. 352 degrees Celsius. That meant Nyx’s temperature was 665.6 degrees Fahrenheit. That was insane! How could anyone survive at such a temperature? Her skin should have been melting off her bones! Hell, her bones should have turned to ash long ago! And why was he not suffering from the heat? How could he…
“My crisis suit…”
His eyes widened. Of course. His crisis suit was heat resistant. He had assumed that meant it would be minorly retardant to flames, but it seemed Gabrielle’s propensity for making overpowered machines held true to his suit, making it resistant to even the most extreme of temperatures.
He would have to find some way to thank Gabrielle later.
“What was that? (T_T)” Ēostre raised an eyebrow at him.
Alex shook his head. “Never mind. I’ll do as you ask.”
“Good. Now chop, chop! Hurry up and strip that girl naked! XD”
“Ugh.”
He was already beginning to regret telling her that he would do what she said, but he wanted to help Nyx.
Alex gently set Nyx on the bed, which he noted must also have been heat resistant, as it didn’t burst into flames when her burning body touched it, though smoke did waft from the sheets, which turned a molten orange. That reminded him…
“How is it that Nyx is still alive with that kind of temperature?”
“You didn’t think the people who created her would leave anything to chance, did you? (*_-)” Alex blinked when he realized he’d asked that question out loud. He turned to look at Ēostre, who was typing on a console near the cylinder. “Nyx’s creators took everything into account when making her. I was not involved with the project, of course, so I do not know everything, but I do know that when building a weapon, you should take care to ensure that it can’t break easily. XP”
“Nyx isn’t a weapon,” Alex growled.
Despite being the recipient of his fierce glare, Ēostre giggled. “You’re so protective. XD Do you think you’re some kind of hero by acting defensive toward the girl who tried to kill you?”
“Wanting to be a hero has nothing to do with this! I don’t like how you called Nyx a weapon. She’s a living, breathing, thinking person, just like everybody else, and she should be treated just like everybody else.”
Ēostre’s smile to his response was odd. Alex wondered what she was thinking.
“If only everybody was like you, then maybe Nyx wouldn’t have suffered as much as she has. :-p”
“What?”
“Oh, nothing.”
Alex frowned but quickly got back to work. Taking off Nyx’s clothing was a pain, and not just because it was embarrassing. The clothing was stuck to her skin; he realized that the reason was not because she was sweating. Her clothing had melted. The leathery material had actually become adhered to her skin, and as he pulled the fabric off, a good portion of her melted flesh came with it. Nyx’s pained whimpers as he peeled those parts off were like lasers drilling into his chest.
He soon realized that Nyx didn’t wear a bra—not that she needed one. Her breasts weren’t large, maybe a handful at most. They were topped with light pink nipples that were currently swollen and red. She did wear panties, though they had already burnt to ashes some time ago. He noticed, almost absently, that she was hairless. Her boots also took some effort to remove, and he winced upon seeing how the skin had peeled off to reveal muscle tissue and bones.
When all of her clothes were stripped away, Alex stood back and wiped the sweat from his brow.
“Done… what do I do now?”
“There should be a canister in the cabinet over there. :-| It contains a cooling agent that I want you to spray on her. We need to decrease her temperature before placing her in the healing tank. The code to the cabinet is eight-five-six-nine-seven-D.”
“Right.”
Alex didn’t waste time in retrieving the canister, a large, hulking thing that reminded him of an old-fashioned fire extinguisher from the late twentieth century. He pointed the nozzle at Nyx and fired.
An icy white spray emerged from the nozzle. Alex gritted his teeth when Nyx yelped as the freezing agent made contact with her blistering hot body. He didn’t know how much to spray on her but stopped when her body began to turn blue.
“Do her back too, please.”
Grimacing, Alex turned Nyx onto her stomach and sprayed her entire backside before turning her onto her back again.
“Now what?”
“(=_=) Wait five minutes before wiping it off with some rags using a cleaning agent that you’ll find in the same cabinet. Make sure to be thorough. The cooling agent will adversely affect her healing process if any is left on her.”
The five-minute wait was probably the worst thing that he’d ever had to do. Nyx was lying there, naked and shivering and in pain, and he couldn’t do anything for her. All he could do was stand by her side, holding her freezing hand and trying desperately to ignore the fact that she was naked. There were more important things at stake than his hormones.
“Now that’s not true,” Voice Number One said. Alex clenched his teeth as the hairs on the back of his neck prickled. “There’s nothing more important than hormones.”
Shut up…
His personal commlink on his Idband began beeping. Alex didn’t think he’d ever been more relieved.
“Hello?” he asked into his Idband.
“Alex, are you okay?” It was Gabrielle.
Alex smiled. Hearing Gabrielle’s voice was enough to brighten his gloom and take his mind off the voice’s words.
“Yes, I’m fine. What about you?”
“I’m good. Karen and Yumi are over here. They said they wanted to talk to you.”
Alex winced. “Is that so? They’re not… angry, are they?”
“I don’t know. Let me ask…” The
ten seconds of silence nearly killed him. “... Karen said she wants to castrate you. What does castrate mean?”
“U-ugh. It’s not a very pleasant thing, and you probably don’t want to know.”
“Okay!” Came Gabrielle’s cheerful reply. He loved Gabrielle, truly, but there was something seriously wrong with that girl. “Hey, Alex, when are you going to come home?”
“Probably not for a while. Nyx is hurt, and I’m currently helping someone heal her.”
“Is she going to be alright?”
Alex smiled at the concern in her voice. Gabrielle may have been cheerfully oblivious and lacked common sense, but she was, at heart, a good person. She was upset at Nyx for what the girl had done, but she still expressed worry.
“She’s going to be fine. Listen, I’ve got to go. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
“All right. Bye, Alex!”
“Bye.”
Alex turned off the commlink in his IDband. He then felt a pair of eyes on him and noticed Ēostre wearing a sly smile.
“Was that your girlfriend? XD”
“N-no, just a friend that I’m helping avoid an unwanted situation.”
Though he wouldn’t mind if they were actually boyfriend and girlfriend. Damn it. Alex hated how their relationship would never progress because of Gabrielle’s marriage candidates. So long as they had to pretend they were engaged, he would never be able to tell how she really felt about him. This was all her old man’s fault!
Note to self; kick Gabrielle’s father’s ass whenever I see him.
“If you say so. :p” Ēostre shrugged. “You should probably start cleaning Nyx’s body now. Otherwise you run the risk of her nanomachines freezing.”
“Uh, r-right.”
Alex acquired a cloth and a tub full of cleaning agent, which he set next to the bed. After dipping the cloth in the agent and wringing it out until it was only partially damp, he began to gently wipe Nyx clean.
He started at her face, which was the least injured part of her. The cloth lightly touched her cheek, which caused the girl to whimper, but she remained still. As he slowly wiped the cloth across her cheek, the pale blue coloring, which he had originally thought was her skin turning blue from the cold, was wiped away.
A Most Unlikely Hero, Vol 4 Page 17