by Archer, Mia
I moved my hand up to her neck and gave it a squeeze. Sure she had that whole shield thing going for her to keep me from hurting her too much, but I was willing to bet it wouldn’t take much pressure for me to break through that thing.
“I’ve about had it with this planet,” I said. “I came here against my will and all I’ve tried to do since I got here is help people out, and what do I get for helping people out?”
Her eyes were still wide. She tried to shake her head, but it was impossible for her considering I had a firm grip on her neck.
“I’ll tell you what I get for it,” I said. “Everyone I’ve met since I came to this stupid planet has tried their best to kill me. Does that seem like a very nice thing for people to do when all I’m trying to do is help them?”
Again she tried to shake her head, and again it was difficult for her to pull it off because of my hand being where it was.
“Yeah, that’s right,” I said. “All I wanted was to get along with people. All I wanted was to be the hero, and they keep treating me like I’m a villain. I’m not a villain!”
Sabine tried to say something, but whatever it was got stopped by my fist blocking air from making its way into or out of her lungs so it’s not like I could understand her. I kept pressing until she slowly started to move back through the shields keeping the lava from frying everything. Her included.
“Huh. So you designed a shield someone could push you through,” I said. “Doesn’t seem like a very good design if you ask me.”
More choking sounds. Like she could obviously still breathe, but she was having trouble getting anything out. That was going to be a problem for her very soon, but I was beyond caring.
She choked out something else and it finally hit me that I might’ve actually been hurting the girl. I’d gotten so angry that I’d let the situation get away from me.
Which isn’t something I should’ve been doing. No matter how angry I got I shouldn’t have let it get to the point that I actually hurt someone.
At least not someone or something who didn’t deserve it. The jury was still out as to whether or not she deserved it. I relaxed my grip just a bit. Enough that she could talk.
“How did you survive that lava?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Considering everything that’s happened lately I probably shouldn’t have been able to survive a dip in lava, but I did and now you’re in a whole heap of trouble.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I had my powers taken from me,” I said. “It was very tragic and annoying and I owe Dr. Lana one if we ever meet again.”
“But you…”
“I got better. Now you’re going to stop trying to kill me, got it? You’re the only earthling I’ve met on this planet. That means you still get some lenience even though you tried to kill me.”
“But…”
“And remember that even if you do try to kill me you’re not going to succeed. Think about what happened just now. I don’t like doing mean things like this, but if you annoy me enough…”
I pressed her into the shield a little harder to illustrate my point. Her personal shields started to shimmer around her, and I assumed that meant it was doing the heavy lifting regarding saving her butt.
“Or I could keep you under this lava and we can see how long it takes those shields you have running around you to give out,” I said. “I don’t know if they’re the same shields Natalie uses, but I do know she has to focus them to get any use out of them because they can’t shield her whole body for very long.”
“You’re not fighting fair,” she growled.
“Yeah, funny thing about that,” I said. “I’ve recently learned from a mutual acquaintance of ours that fighting fair isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
I shrugged and smiled. Was some of it a bluff? Sure. It’s not like I was going to shove this Sabine chick into lava and let her die. She might’ve been willing to do that to me, but I wouldn’t be able to do that to someone and live with myself.
Still. She didn’t know that, and I wasn’t above using that to my advantage.
“Fine,” she said. “Uncle. Just don’t melt my face please.”
Even when she said it she didn’t sound like she was particularly worried that I was going to melt her face. Maybe she knew on some level that I was a heroic type and that meant I didn’t kill people.
Although my stance on that was starting to change just a little after seeing some of the stuff Natalie had been going up against. After all, if I ever found myself face to face with Dr. Lana again you bet your butt I was going to punch her face in, let it heal, and then punch it in again.
I pulled her out of the lava. She let out a relieved sigh. Okay then. Maybe she wasn’t as convinced I’d leave her alive as I thought.
“Okay,” I said. “Now that we’ve had that out, maybe we can sit down and have an actual chat with each other like adults who aren’t trying to kill each other.”
She moved her head from side to side a couple of times as though she was testing whether or not the thing still worked after having my super powered fingers cutting off her windpipe.
“Yeah,” she said, her voice a little hoarse. “That sound like a good idea.”
11
Introductions
“So you’re mostly right,” Sabine said after she’d had a sit down and a stiff drink.
I guess I’d shaken her a little more than I’d imagined. I wondered how long it’d been since someone or something on this planet had been a credible threat to this girl.
Natalie had been the same way when we first met, after all. She basically ruled Starlight City with an iron fist, and it took me coming along with my powers to threaten that dominance.
“Go on,” I said, my arms crossed as I glared at her.
Hey, we might’ve come to an uneasy truce, but that didn’t mean I trusted her. One of my mottos in life was you didn’t trust someone who tried to dip you in liquid hot magma in their villainous lair.
Though to be fair she was the only person who’d ever tried to shove my head in lava, so I’m not sure how practical that rule was.
“That bitch Dr. Lana shoved me through a portal,” she said. “One moment I’m standing in front of the portal taking measurements of the high radiation on the other side and wondering if it’s because of the portal or because of what’s on the other side. The next thing I know Dr. Lana is busting in and talking about how she’s going to take our idea and there was nothing we could do about it if we wanted to graduate.”
She got quiet as she talked about this part. My eyes narrowed. That totally sounded like something Dr. Lana would do. Not to mention it totally sounded like the sort of thing that would have Natalie so pissed off at the Applied Sciences Department that she’d do all the stuff she did to try and get back at them.
“So she threatened to blackmail you?” I asked.
“She did worse than that,” Sabine said. “I made it clear we weren’t going to play along. Natalie tried to be the reasonable one. She always was the one with the bleeding heart between the two of us. I wanted to use the prototype plasma gun we’d been working on to vaporize that bitch for trying to steal our work.”
I arched an eyebrow. That was an interesting characterization. Natalie was the one with the bleeding heart?
“Well she didn’t like that, of course, and the next thing I know she’s running at me and we’re scuffling right in front of the dangerous portal that leads to who knows where,” she said. “I mean Natalie said she thought she had a pretty good idea of where she was pointing the thing, but then we found that radiation and figured her aim had been off.”
“Go on,” I said.
“Right. One thing leads to another and before I can do anything to stop her that bitch is shoving me through the portal to an irradiated planet that’s ruled by damned dirty cats,” she said.
“Um, excuse me?” I asked. “What the heck are you talking about?”
“I thought th
at was pretty obvious,” she said. “One moment I’m minding my own business trying to change the very conception of how we travel through three dimensional space in this universe and the next I’m getting shoved through that advanced conception of how we travel through three dimensional space and left for dead on an irradiated world that isn’t hospitable to earth life. If it weren’t for my shields I would’ve died of radiation poisoning within the first couple of days.”
She looked me up and down. An inspection that had me feeling the beginnings of a shiver. Beginnings that I ruthlessly smashed down.
I might be trapped on a strange alien world where the only other human was this girl, and sure she happened to be a pretty hot girl, but I wasn’t going to go down that path. The radiation was barely cleared out from the portal I’d been shoved through, but that wasn’t an excuse to go giving this woman who may or may not be a local villain the old bedroom eyes.
“I wasn’t talking about you getting shoved through a portal,” I said. “I was talking about the part about being stuck on a world that’s ruled by damned dirty cats.”
That sounded like a line. Like I could always tell when Natalie was quoting one of her nerd things at me because her voice took on a singsong quality and she always looked at me hopefully like she thought I was going to magically recognize whatever nerdy thing she was talking about.
She was usually disappointed.
“Um, I said that because this world is ruled by damned dirty cats,” she said.
She did it again. Her voice got low and gravelly. She was quoting something that I’d know if I sat at that weird table in the corner of the lunch room in high school where they were always throwing around weird cards and dice that had more than six sides.
“Right,” I said.
I floated up to where all the magma flowed over the edge of her lair and down into those channels. The top of the volcano hole thingy was that way, the caldera, and I figured that would be as good a way as any to get out of here.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But you’ve tried to kill me and you’re obviously crazy if you think this world is ruled by cats, so I’m going to head out there and see if I can’t find someone less crazy who’s trying to kill me.”
I figured it wouldn’t take long for that to happen. So far everything I’d come across on this world was trying to kill me, after all.
“Wait!” she said. “You don’t want to go out there. Not if you don’t know what’s really going on here on this world.”
I crossed my arms and glared at her. I’d heard enough people telling me they knew the truth of what was going on back on earth to know that was the sort of thing someone said right before they started spouting crazy conspiracy theories, but I was willing to hear her out.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll let you explain things to me, but if this is more crazy don’t expect me to stick around.”
She licked her lips and her eyes darted around. I kept my gaze right on her. Sure her eyes darting around could mean she was working up some sort of surprise to try and take me out before I could leave.
The problem with that was I was back. I had all of my powers and I was pretty sure there was nothing she could do to stop me even if she wanted to.
“This world has like the most fucked up ecosystem you could imagine. It’s a wonder complex life ever evolved here with all the radiation, and it’s even more of a wonder that some of that life became intelligent life considering what happened,” Sabine said.
“And what happened?”
“Simple,” she said. “This whole planet has been overrun by a race of semi-intelligent parasitic worms that become fully intelligent and sapient when they bond with a type of desert cat that may or may not be native to this world.”
“Okay,” I said. “You’re veering closer and closer to crazy town here, but I’m still listening.”
“I wish it was crazy,” Sabine said. “Believe me. It took me at least a year of watching how things went down on this world before I believed it.”
She walked over to one of the walls that was dripping with lava. She pressed some buttons on a little control panel at her side, she seemed to prefer that to the wrist computer Natalie used, and the shields keeping the lava from frying her moved slightly so the lava flowed around it revealing a screen.
Well then. That didn’t strike me as very practical, but it did look cool.
“Here,” Sabine said. “Take a look at this and tell me what you think.”
She hit a button and I was treated to a view of the city we’d just exited. It looked like some of the military types in their open air flying saucers were still trying to fight off one of those giant monsters, but around the rest of the city those blue humanoids were going about their business like the city wasn’t under attack.
“I don’t see what’s weird about that,” I said. “Idiots in Starlight City have gotten so used to things attacking that they go about their business even if something nasty is a city block over.”
That was something Natalie always complained about, but I’d always figured it was just people trying their best to get on with their lives in a situation that sucked. If you couldn’t do anything about the giant monster attacking the city then why not get on with your life?
“Look closer,” she said. “The weirdness isn’t that people are going about their business when there’s a giant monster attacking the city. I wouldn’t think that was weird either. I came from Starlight City, remember?”
I crossed my arms and leaned in closer to the screen. It occurred to me that she might’ve been doing this just to get me to look closely at the screen that’d been covered in lava just moments ago so she could drop more lava on my head.
I figured even if she was going to do that it was a stupid fucking plan considering she already knew I was invulnerable to that sort of thing.
She helpfully zoomed in as I leaned in.
Clearly Sabine had spent some time putting cameras up all over the city. Or maybe she was tapping into existing feeds considering she’d said it wasn’t possible for drones to operate on this world for some reason.
Odd. Every blue person I saw was accompanied by something that looked like a house cat, only it was much larger than any house cat I’d ever seen. Like the cats I’d seen on those open air flying saucers.
They were small enough that I could see them being domesticated. Maybe on this planet they domesticated cat creatures instead of dogs like we did back on earth. It’s not like it was that weird.
“So they all have pets,” I said. “That doesn’t mean the pets control the planet. You sound like an alien visiting earth who decided something stupid like cars are the dominant form of life because they’re all over the place.”
“Nothing like that,” she said. “Those cats are the dominant form of life on this planet. At least the worms that are controlling their brains are the dominant form of life on this planet.”
“This is crazy,” I said. “And I don’t have time for this.”
“Yeah? Well watch this,” she said.
She moved the camera in on something odd happening at an intersection. It looked like someone had walked out into the middle of traffic, apparently they had land vehicles on this world in addition to the strange open air flying saucers, and someone had plowed their land vehicle into one of the cat creatures.
“Aw,” I said. “Poor kitty.”
I always hated to see something happen to a creature that couldn’t defend itself and didn’t know what was going on. I guess it was no different when I was talking about a strange oversized kitty on an alien world.
“Poor kitty my ass,” Sabine said.
“How could you say that?” I asked.
“Just watch.”
12
Retcon
“Okay, so people are gathering around to help the poor kitty,” I said. “I don’t see what the big deal is.”
“I told you to watch,” she said
. “I didn’t believe it the first time I saw it either. You need to see it to believe it.”
I rolled my eyes, but I figured it’s not like I was hurting anything by hanging around here watching this peep show she was obviously intent on making me watch.
Another blue person walked up to the car and ripped open the door. Okay. That was a little weird, but maybe the person in that car was injured or something. It’s not like that was too out of the ordinary in an emergency or…
A circle had formed around the car. A circle that looked very angry. Like people were getting more and more pissed off. They were really working themselves up.
Someone reached into the land vehicle, I wasn’t going to call it a car since it didn’t exactly look like a car, from the other side. They pulled someone out kicking and screaming. At least they were being pulled until the kicker and screamer managed to land a punch and pulled back into the land vehicle.
The not-a-car pulled back and slammed into a couple of people who were running up behind it. They stayed there on the ground twitching, looking like they’d really been messed up by the hit.
“What’s that person doing?” I asked. “Don’t they know they’re going to cause more trouble?”
“That’s exactly what they know. More trouble is coming for them, and it’s not going to be pretty when it gets here.”
That sounded cryptic. I wasn’t sure what was going on here, but I did know that I didn’t like whatever the heck it was.
“Here we go,” Sabine said. “The cats are getting in on the action now, and it’s never pretty when they get in on the action.”
Sure enough one of the cat creatures that was larger than a housecat but smaller than some of the bigger cats I’d seen in zoos back on earth shoved one of the blue aliens aside. For a surprise the blue alien stood there and took it like it was no big deal that one of their pets had just shoved them to the side.