by Oscar Reeds
It wasn’t just the planes. Subs and battleships were going after my seaborne buildings and facilities, which were equally well shielded. The tanks roamed the streets, seeking alien life forms to eradicate. Not a lot of my men died that day, but the ones that did were about to be bitterly avenged. Even the infantry did its worst to make my life miserable. They went after people they assumed were my friends, and it was by sheer miracle that my father hid away so that they didn’t get to him. Immediately I sent out my teleporter squads (yes, I had those at the ready, too) and they brought everyone I cared for aboard my personal spaceship, me included. My house was no longer safe.
Melissa was the first person to be pissed at this, but her anger was directed at me. Because of my spat with the Pentagon, she missed her flight, and now was ready to tear me a new one. Endolande made things worse.
“Settle down, ex,” she said, disdainfully, and with that competitive edge that only a woman can have against another woman. Melissa was fuming.
“So you must be that queen slut that Conrad banged up there, huh?”
“Oh, no, no, no, no, no…” Endolande teased. “I am an empress, sweety. And your Conrad’s favorite.”
“I don’t care about Conrad’s favorites!” Melissa screamed, and the two would have started a cat fight had Petra not intervened.
“Not the time for it, you dolts,” she said, slightly losing her grip on the language. “More importantly, Conrad, you didn’t pull out Dwyer.”
“I didn’t think of him, it all happened so fast.” I fidgeted about. “I hope he’ll be okay…”
“So what now, emperor?” Gene asked, equally pissed. I had forgotten how close he and Dwyer were. I sighed.
“Okay, look, you guys, I’ll send a few people to protect Dwyer.” Anticipating this, my flying Cotahi squad bolted out, and in a few minutes Dwyer was talking to Janine through a communicator. He expressed his desire to stay put on the ground. Didn’t really understand that one at the time, but hey, he was well later nonetheless.
“This whole thing is very clearly my mess, you guys,” I said, preparing myself to disembark the ship, much to everyone’s surprise. “And I intend to fix it.”
Out of shock, nearly everybody kept quiet, except for Melissa, who spoke first, and Endolande, who wasn’t shocked one bit.
“Conrad, you can’t take on the US military alone,” she said, barely hiding that there was still care for me in that voice of hers. I embraced her a bit.
“I can, and I will,” and immediately I regretted saying that line. Good God, that sounds lame! Especially when said out loud, in a semi-whisper, like I did. How I didn’t die right then and there out of sheer cringe, I will never know. “I mean, I have a plan, and it can only work if I act alone.”
Nobody wanted to see this plan put into motion, but they reluctantly agreed. The high command of the ship was taken by Endolande, under the condition that she and Melissa don’t bicker. Melissa was to hold up her end of that bargain with a promise not to be launched through the ship and into the upper atmosphere of the Earth.
My troops near the transport facilities were stunned that I was there. Their emperor, much like he did on their own planets, was now walking unarmed and unprepared towards the mass of tanks, gunmen, bombers, and God knows what else. The slow walk alone was giving them chills. For all they knew, I looked unequipped and suicidal. But that was what I was counting on – walking against the foe with nothing but my wits about me. And my foe was indeed catching on when it came to this scheme. If they were to attack me now, they would have an all-out interplanetary war on their hands. They had to keep this local. I was not to be touched.
The generals themselves exited a fully armored vehicle, surrounded by the very Special Forces that guard the president. They looked pleased with themselves. That mood changed significantly when I snapped my fingers, and a young Cybel approached me with something in her hand. They assumed defensive positions, and their troops were aiming their guns at us.
“Relax, generals,” I said. “It’s just my camera girl.”
“How do we know you’re telling the truth?” one of the generals muttered.
I snapped my fingers, and the Cybel was pointing her “camera” at me. It buzzed, and a hologram appeared over the whole fucking battlefield, showcasing me in my full glory.
I then scratched my ass, which produced a very loud, very craggy, and very annoying sound. Everyone, both near and far, were now able to hear and see me, and with some adjustments done by the catgirl, hear and see all of us.
“Now we can discuss the terms of surrender,” I said, self-important. The generals grinned.
“So, kid-emperor, you want to surrender to us? We told you that you bit off more than you could chew.”
“Oh, don’t misunderstand, generals,” my response was calm and purposefully overly polite. “I am here to accept you unequivocally surrendering to me.”
They couldn’t believe what they were hearing.
“Are you insane, kid?”
“No, general Stark, I am in fact the sanest person standing here right now. How will you surrender, then? Will you be cordial and do it properly, or will you whine and beg about it?”
They could barely contain their laughter.
“Kid, we control the strongest army this planet has ever seen—”
“No, that would be me,” I interrupted.
“Shut up!” one other general butted in, far too pissed to contain his rage the way any proper soldier would. General Stark continued talking.
“As I was saying, we have the strongest army ever, and based on what I’m seeing here, you’re standing before us all alone. So unless you launch an attack right now via some massive force, you’re not a threat. In fact, we can take you out right here and now and end this war.”
I laughed. They thought me insane.
“My dear generals,” I said, silencing my laughter as I did so, “I literally do not need an army to beat you, even though I have one.”
“But you forget, kid,” general with the tons of X’s in his name butted in now. “We have allies all over the planet. So even if you take us out, you’ll have France, the UK, India, Canada, and Japan to deal with.”
“Oh, really now?”
At the snap of my fingers, hundreds of massive screens appeared in the sky, and all of them showed different armies around the world. The picture was clear enough so that everyone down on the ground could see.
“General Hiro Nakayama,” I said. A Japanese general fell down, as seen on one of these massive screens. “General Andres Bouton.” A fall from a French general on a different screen. “General Cedric Arjuntadharma.” Yet another screen showed a drop by an Indian general. Next I uttered a whole bunch of names, and every corresponding person fell down. The last one I did was of the multi-X general standing before me. He dropped onto the ground like a sack of rocks.
“What is this?!” one of them screamed. “How can you kill people from that far away?”
“Well, number one, Death Note,” I said, snapping my fingers and allowing more people to drop. “And number two, I didn’t kill them. They are either fainted or crippled.”
The generals weren’t impressed.
“Nice show, kid. But we demand something more substantial.”
“Naturally.”
All I needed to do is to lift an arm. Immediately, the entire battalion stationed behind them was silent, as every single soldier fainted, not moving. The ones in planes were left alive, but when they saw that their planes malfunctioned from some invisible, but probably telekinetic force (wink. wink) was pulling them, they ejected their jets and continued their trip to the land fainted and/or asleep.
The generals could not believe their eyes.
“How?! Why??” Stark asked, but he, too, felt a little odd. That was because I was using my telekinesis to mess with his center of gravity.
“Why, Stark? Well, I’ll explain, but first you have to
address me by my proper title!” I shrieked. But he was a soldier until the end.
“I will never call you an emperor, kid,” he growled.
“You just don’t get it, do you?” I dropped him, and then used my aerial punches and kicks to teach them all a lesson. Next, I used my telekinesis and rammed tons of heavy metal into the ground around them, making them a sort-of cage. “None of you get it, do you? Look at me! I just took down multiple armies world-wide, and I didn’t even need to waste a single soldier! I brought about peace with my actions alone, and you still think you have the upper hand here? You still think you can do a single, solitary goddamn thing to me?!”
I snapped my fingers, and that was when the Earth remembered who Conrad was. For thousands and thousands of miles there was nothing but my spaceships, each and every single one of them equipped to level a city. Moreover, they were all different, from different planets, with different crews, yet all had sophisticated weaponry that Earth was yet to see, and had it not been for me, probably wouldn’t have seen until thousands of years in the future. Oceans were laden with my battle barges, big and small, and all of them carried enough explosives and firepower to fill each ocean with lead, and there would be lead to spare. Every major and minor street in the world was crawling with soldiers I accrued from the eight planets I conquered, and atop of all that, my finger-work (no pun intended) produced a million soldiers a snap, each of them with no need to eat, drink, defecate, sleep, or relax, each of them with innate weaponized limbs that could fire in a millisecond. But that was nowhere near the end of my demonstration. All over the world, militaries and their equipment would instantly disappear, having been teleported to distant planets where Conrad’s word is law. And right then and there, my scientists began dismantling the tanks, airplanes and ships, while my infantrymen rounded up the prisoners and put them in quarries on Zoav (after a teleport, of course) to work off their crimes of facing me and not working with me instead.
The generals couldn’t believe it. The world couldn’t believe it. Hell, not even I could believe it. That was all it took for Earth to fall, and that was all it took for the generals to finally realize something – after more than two centuries of existing, the US had finally fallen under a stronger foe.
“We surrender,” said General Stark, ripping off his medals in anger, “and our country, and I imagine our planet too, is yours…” I could tell he was trying hard. “…Emperor Conrad.”
***
I won’t hide the excitement of beating the US army. Sure, they were all my people, from the country I was born in, but considering how I’ve been treated in that same country, I felt no remorse. Not to mention that I did all of that without a single droplet of blood being shed. It was a more-or-less peaceful takeover, but changes were just beginning.
All of the military budgets world-wide were now invested in curing diseases, with some help from the Valahs and the ever reliable Girodians. Countries retained their sovereignty, but under the condition that they don’t dare and fight one another. Naturally, every race I was now controlling had access to Earth, and vice versa. People from my planet were now freely visiting the Ehre and the Dahrmites, though they had to be rearranged genetically so they could get used to most of the atmospheres out there that were nothing like the Earth’s. Once more, Girodian science took care of that, and rather quickly. It took them a bit longer to cure cancer.
I looked at my achievement proudly, but Norman was again not pleased.
“Why do all of this?” he asked.
“What do you mean, Norman?”
“Again you wasted your wishes, that’s the first thing.”
He was right. The first three I acquired had to do with targeting generals, from one to many, from the US to the world, The following three were essentially the same, but with names of soldiers, then some people, then all people. The final four had to do with fainting or crippling people from a distance, which by the end of my wishing spree included any creature out there. I had to agree, some of these were redundant, but I did them just to piss Norman off. And while it didn’t really piss him off per se, it did mess with him a little. I was proud of that. “And the second thing is all of this peaceful nonsense. Why not just mow them like grass?”
I sighed.
“But I literally just showed you how it’s possible to prosper and conquer without doing that.”
He still disapproved, but then he had that look on his face again. That look that he had before the Dahrmites came to our planet. Again he was sensing an opponent, and whoever this opponent was – they were certainly more dangerous than the US army. And if I have to stress that, then it’s really off the charts how powerful they potentially were.
Chapter 12
I got out onto a clearing, a little close to the woods that stood behind Janine’s house. The closer I got to it, the more fidgety Norman became. He felt something odd, and I wanted to know what it was.
“Norman,” I said, looking around everywhere, “what the hell is going on?”
He said nothing, completely ignoring me.
“Damn it, Norman, talk to me!”
This is where he turned and acknowledged my existence anew.
“Come on, kid, stop yelling like that! My ears work, you know.”
“Sorry. Now tell me, what are we facing now? What alien threat will come to take us away and get blown to bits in the meantime?”
He kept looking about, as if trying to locate someone or something.
“You do know I come from Earth, right, kid?” he asked, somewhat bored despite the red alert vibe he had been giving me since earlier that day.
“Yeah, so?”
“So it should not surprise you that I’ve been through threats that are also from Earth, mm?”
That made perfect sense, though I wasn’t convinced.
“Most of the people we were fighting had an amazing level of technological knowhow, proper warfare, and most importantly – planets that were, for the most part, united as a single force. No human civilization in known history has had such power to wield.”
“Oh, how naïve you are, kid,” he almost laughed. I hated those rare moments of his presumed superiority over me. “You lot have no damn idea about your own home, do you?”
I nodded, cautiously.
“This planet is older than what you imagine it to be,” he said, and I was about to hear the weirdest theory about Earth since the flat earthers became a thing online. “You see, it was once smaller in size, yet vaster in manpower. As the planet grew, old civilizations died. Their tech was either stolen or purposefully destroyed, to be reinvented by their less intelligent progeny like you humans.”
“And were you part of that planet once, Norman?” I asked, still rather suspicious of the whole thing.
“Oh, I was more than that, young man,” he muttered, his eyes protruding and staring at something in the distance. His “tiny Earth” theory had to wait – I wanted a good look of what was coming at us, so I ordered monitors and cameras to observe, but I literally saw nothing but static. Whoever this was, they knew their way around technology, or knew it enough to avoid it.
I wish I had been wrong about them being worse than the US army, though.
In the distance, at a speed of an average human, there ran towards us about a hundred or so of, I shit you not, elves. The Lord of the Rings type of elves. The elves that deviantArt had abused to oblivion. The same elves that an overweight virgin uses as character models while playing World of Warcraft (that’s me!). I was as bewildered as I was enchanted – actual, proper elves were about to attack us! Just us, though – there were no troops around, a fact I was about to rectify…
…rectify my ass! The moment I grabbed my communicator to call for backup, an elf wiggled his fingers and boom – all of my tech from my body was gone. Enraged, I hurled a ton of shit at them with my telekinesis. An elven girl, not older than twelve by the looks of her, crunched her nose three times. Everything I
threw at them came right back to me! Desperate, I began hurling aerial punches and kicks, and NOT A SINGLE DAMN ONE CONNECTED. Now I panicked. Norman, I could tell, was not happy to see all of this, but even if he had had an idea to avoid this, he didn’t feel like sharing. And I didn’t feel like staying there. The very second they stopped paying attention to my aerial punches, I began to run away like a little bitch. It proved useless, considering they fucking jumped up into the air and hopped atop of trees, from canopy to canopy! They were like very elegant monkeys in cool sylvan suits. I needed to escape, so in my haste, I begged Norman for super-speed, and was granted a surge carrying one. When I got enough distance between us, I shot a few freezing powers at them, and they didn’t work. They just kept coming and coming and coming! These elves were damn persistent.
Lucky for me, the little woods behind Janine’s house continued into the larger wooded area, the one nobody dared to enter. I ran into it swiftly and tried my damnedest to locate a hidden cave, or a hole, or a ditch, or SOMETHING to hide in. Thanking my lucky stars, I located an old military bunker, which I pried open with my telekinesis, and later, with that same power, cloaked well so that nobody could find it.
I was alone and scared in that old bunker, the first time I’ve felt this in a long while. A pack of elves – that’s what took to make emperor Conrad cower like a little cunt.
Oh and when I said I was alone – I was wrong. Less than two minutes of me sitting there, three elves popped up from underground and tossed a bit of dust in my face. I remember falling asleep…