by Lee, Tristan
“Are you alright?” Frank asks, taking a seat next to her.
“I’m fine,” Belle lies. “Just keeping an eye on Chris’s doughnuts.”
“That was a rhetorical question,” Frank says. “I know you’re not fine. What’s on your mind?”
Belle sighs, “I just don’t like the idea of Chris being up there alone. He’s got no backup, and if anything does happen, there’s no way we can get to him.”
“He’s gone to space before, hasn’t he?”
“Yeah, I guess. But that’s just been for trips to Xor; a destination with friendlies. This time . . . this time he’s out there quite literally looking for a fight.”
Frank smiles, “Belle, if I were you, I’d be more worried for the Aotiuer. You’ve seen him in action more than anyone else; can you name a single being, human or otherwise, who has been a match for the Prince of Xor?”
Belle laughs, “What about you, Franklin? You got someone you worry about out there?”
“I used to have a sidekick, but that didn’t really work out,” Frank says. “I have you guys, you’re all pretty much family now.”
“That’s not what I meant, silly,” Belle laughs. “I meant, is there someone you . . . you know . . .”
Frank glances over at Anna, “No, not really,” he lies.
The Blind Swordsman is good at many things, but Belle catches his lie like a bird catches a worm. Her eyes widen, as does her smile.
“You like Anna?” she gasps.
“Keep your voice down,” Frank hisses.
“You do!” Belle says, slightly quieter.
“I think that she’s a good friend and a capable fighter,” Frank says stiffly.
“Are you going to ask her out?” Belle asks, ignoring him. “You totally should! You’re both emo, but soft emo. That’s a good combo.”
Frank looks over to Anna again, who is playing darts with her brother. Every time Dick throws a dart, Anna intercepts it with one of her own. This results in a rapidly accumulating pile of impaled darts on the floor.
“I wouldn’t know how to,” Frank says. “Plus, I’m too old for her.”
“How much older are you than her?” Belle asks curiously.
“Not the point,” Frank says. “I don’t think the timing is good either.”
“Frank, last week we were this close to an alien apocalypse,” Belle says. “Look, if you’re waiting for a sign from God I’ll just tell Chris to become a crossing guard or something.”
Frank’s eyes fall on Anna again.
“I don’t know, Belle,” he says, scratching the back of his head. “I’ve only ever really talked to her in the lapses between alien attacks.”
“Tell her you like her shirt, and then go from there,” Belle advises. “Like I said, last week there was almost an alien apocalypse. Don’t wait too long to tell her how you feel.”
“Holy shit,” Titan says. Although he is still about a half hour away from the Kuiper Belt, the Aotiuer presence is large enough to be seen even from three million miles away.
Six of the large, pillar-like capital ships are hovering in a circular formation with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Aotiuer fighters and cruisers flying around them like a swarm of flies. Asides from the gigantic fleet, Titan’s immediate problem is that he cannot turn around. If he slows down enough to turn, he will not make it back to Earth for a long while; his initial plan, as always when undertaking a long journey like this one, was to catch himself in the gravitational field of a celestial body large enough and use the slingshot effect to loop around it and hurl himself back at Earth. This is obviously made harder by the fleet, not to mention the fact that the Aotiuer are systematically destroying anything large enough to damage one of their capital ships. If he keeps going and miraculously outruns or avoids the fleet, he will eventually make it to Xor, but that would take a couple of months, if not years.
“C’mon, brain,” Titan complains to himself. “You’ve got to help me out just this once. Give me a cunning plan or something. Bro, you got to help me.”
As he racks his brain for any kind of viable plan, the Aotiuer fleet grows larger and larger until finally his thirty minutes are up and he breaks through their borders. The effect is immediate, every single Aotiuer fighter starts to unleash their cannons on him. His flight skills allow him to weave in and out of most of the cannon fire, but eventually, as he gets closer to the capital ships, he takes hits from the fighters. Titan is extremely resilient, with skin stronger than impervium, but eventually even he is able to feel the cannon blasts. Even though he has lost his speed and is in agony from the feeling of sledgehammers being slammed onto his body with brutal force, the Prince of Xor continues to fly on, albeit unable to avoid the cannon fire.
Finally, after sustained fire, the cannon blasts are able to permeate a weak point in his armor; the weaker mail on the back of his shoulder that allows flexibility in the joint of his arm and shoulder that is not covered by his epilate. The injury is on his left side and he can feel his flesh cooking as the blast sizzles until it dies down a few agonizing minutes later. The Aotiuer fighters, now seeing that their quarry is injured, decide to close in for the kill, forming an impenetrable orb around Titan with their cannons facing him.
He slows to a halt and looks around for a weak point in their formation. There is none, so he massages his injured shoulder and prepares both his heat vision and the imminent pain of the Aotiuer cannons.
“Alright, you ugly alien shits,” Titan says, his eyes turning orange. “Who wants to be the first to accompany me to hell?”
The Aotiuer open fire, but the moment the beams leave their cannons, they freeze in midair and a figure materializes in front of Titan. The figure is about the same height and build as Titan, only he wears black armor, a black cape, a longsword at one hip, and his helm is in the shape of a crowned skull. The eyeholes don’t show regular eyes behind them, only two dark, empty holes; revealing that the skull is not a helmet. The skull is the figure’s face.
“It is not your time yet, Prince of Xor,” the figure says in a hoarse, raspy voice. “Your death comes later.”
The figure then touches a finger to Titan’s helmet and he sees flashes of events that he does not recognize. An army of humanoids in black armor wearing masks of screaming faces, an entire planet on fire, a bright, blinding light.
The Invincibles are about to go home for the night, leaving Kaiju and the S.A.B.R.E. guard on watch when something slams into the landing pad hard enough to rattle it and shatter the windows. Upon further inspection, the Invincibles find that the offending object is an injured and unconscious Titan.
“Chris!” Belle squeaks.
“Get him inside,” Dr. Pryce orders. “Anna, call for a medic.”
Frank and Dick carry their teammate to one of the couches, where they set him down. Dick pulls his helmet off as Frank works on getting his armor off. After fiddling with the various fasteners for a few minutes, Frank manages to take off all the armor on his upper torso, revealing the red and bleeding patch on his shoulder.
“The light,” the Prince of Xor mutters in his unconsciousness. “The light.”
Belle collapses into an armchair and begins to cry again, “Is he going to be okay?” she whimpers. “He’ll be okay, right?”
Dr. Pryce rubs his eyes, “I don’t know. If whatever injured him was powerful enough to injure him, it might be pretty severe.”
Upon hearing that, Belle faints.
“Nice work, Doc,” Dick says sarcastically.
“At least she was already sitting down,” Dr. Pryce says lamely.
The medic emerges from the lift, accompanied by Sandor and Kaiju.
“Give the man some breathing room,” the medic urges as he drops to a knee and opens his first aid kit.
The Invincibles comply and move away so the medic can work. He takes Chris’s pulse and injects a clear fluid into his arm.
“Help me flip him over,” the medic orders. Kaiju picks up Chris a
nd effortlessly turns him over onto his belly so the medic can see the wound better.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” the medic says as he cauterizes the wound with two entire eight-ounce bottles of alcohol. “This is some kind of heat-related injury, but there’s no scorching or charring. It’s like finding a bullet wound with no bullet.”
“Will he make it?” Anna asks.
“The wound hasn’t been infected and I haven’t detected any poisons,” the medic says. “So chances are extremely high that he’ll survive. You did right to call me, though.”
“What caused it?” Frank asks.
“This isn’t from one hit, there are too many different levels of tissue damage for that. I wasn’t there, but my best guess is that he took sustained fire from something for a very long time and eventually his armor and his skin just gave in.”
After ten, tense minutes, the medic finishes bandaging up Chris’ shoulder, “I gave him a shot of morphine to ease the pain, assuming he feels that kind of thing,” the medic says as he packs up. “He should wake up soon, but he might be sore for a few days. He hit that landing pad pretty hard.”
“Thanks, man,” Peter says.
“No problem,” the medic says. “Just doing my job. If you need me again, the name’s Lukaterro. Simon Lukaterro.”
“Thank you, Simon,” Dr. Pryce says. “We are in your debt.”
Simon laughs as he enters the lift, “You saved my sister, brother-in-law, and my two nieces in San Francisco. You guys don’t owe me anything.”
Dick and Frank accompany Belle in the car ride to their house. They help carry Chris into the bedroom he shares with Belle, where they set him down to rest. A moment or two later, Belle awakens and enters their room. She smiles slightly when she sees him snoring, like how he passed out after stopping the cruiser.
“We’ll be leaving now,” Dick says awkwardly, but Belle is not listening. Instead she sits down in the chair on Chris’s left side and takes his hand in both of hers, massaging it gently.
“Asides from Chris being out of action for the time being,” Dr. Pryce says once Frank and Dick return. “We have a major problem. There is something out there that took a veritable god down.”
“The Aotiuer fleet could be out there,” Anna says.
“Most likely,” Dr. Pryce agrees. “But that doesn’t explain how he got back so fast.”
“Or why he got back at all,” Dick points out. “If it was the Aotiuer, they wouldn’t have any reason to send him back alive.”
“It could be a gesture of goodwill,” Kaiju suggests.
“If it was goodwill, why did they shoot him first?” Sandor asks.
“So really, we don’t know why the Aotiuer brought him back,” Peter says. “For Christ’s sake, we don’t even know if it was the Aotiuer.”
“Essentially, yes,” Dr. Pryce says. “We’re blind until Chris wakes up and can give us some insight.”
“How’s Belle doing?” Anna asks. “Poor girl almost lost her husband.”
“She’s fine,” Dick assures her. “She’s with him now.”
“If the Prince of Xor does not awaken,” Kaiju says carefully. “Our chances of defeating the Aotiuer will become much, much slimmer.”
There is a moment of silence as that sets in. Finally, Peter ends the moment, “Well, gents, it’s off to home for me.”
“Agreed,” Dick says.
And so most of the Invincibles go home to get some rest, all of them but one unknowing of the world-destroying fleet not even a light-year. And that one is unconscious and injured.
Gi-Chul
August 18th
Chris wakes up with Belle laying her head on the side of his bed, fast asleep. He looks around for the clock and sees that it is half past five in the evening. At this time less than a month ago he would be getting ready to go home from his work at the Goodwater City fire station. His work normally consisted of playing sports with the other firemen, watching hockey or sci-fi movies (depends on if it is hockey season or not) with Michael and Pierre, and the occasional maintenance check or drill. There has not actually been a fire in Goodwater City for thirty-two years, but the fire department is still widely known as the most efficient in the entire province of Quebec. He tries to sit up, but Belle involuntarily pushes him back down into bed without waking.
“Hey, baby,” Chris says gently. “Time to get up.”
“Leave me alone,” Belle grunts sleepily.
She pops up suddenly, her eyes wide in surprise.
“You’re awake!” she exclaims.
“It would appear so,” he responds.
She plants a wet, sloppy kiss on his lips for about a minute before slapping him in the face as hard as she can.
“What was that for?” Chris asks, massaging his face.
“For scaring me,” Belle pouts.
“You have my most sincere apologies.”
“I forgive you. And you can stop pretending that the slap even hurt.”
Chris stops massaging his face and grins, “So what do I get for my excellent recon? Breakfast in bed? Disneyland?”
“You get nothing because it’s my birthday and you were too busy getting shot and being unconscious to get me anything.”
“I’m sorry, Sweetheart,” Chris apologizes. “Happy birthday, though.”
“I’ll decide if I forgive you for forgetting my birthday later,” Belle says as she stands up. “I’d better call the others and tell them that you’re awake.”
She leaves their bedroom barely able to suppress the smile that she finally releases when she rounds the corner into the living room.
“Surprise!” the Invincibles yell collectively, making Belle yelp. The entire living room has been decorated with streamers, ribbons, and all the Invincibles, including Sandor, are wearing party hats. Kaiju is not present.
Chris walks out of his room with a wide smile on his face, “You aren’t as good at staying awake as you think.”
“What? When did you plan this?” Belle asks incredulously.
“Uh, like, five days ago,” Chris says. “No one actually went home, they were just crashing on the couches and stuff.”
“So you weren’t actually injured and you just scared the shit out of me without any basis?” Belle asks, on the verge of anger.
“What? No! I was still injured as heck, they wouldn’t even let me help with the decorating,” Chris protests. “All they let me do was bake the cake because I’m the only one who can actually bake a cake.”
The cake in question has three tiers with a four-by-six picture of Belle and Chris at the Eiffel Tower at the top and frosted in Belle’s favorite colors, pink, purple, and red. Rimming each tier are Chris’s incredibly well-crafted frosting roses and on the other two tiers there is a picture of Belle and Chris’s Leonberger, Thor, on the lowest tier and a picture of their Pembroke Welsh corgi, Wigglefloof, on the second tier.
The festivities commence as guests begin to arrive. All of the guests have already been informed about the Invincibles and their various secret identities, but the majority of them already knew each other. Among the guests, asides from the Invincibles, are Eva St. Clair, Janet Vice, Marilyn de Lorencez, and of course, Belle’s parents, George and Sandra Brightly.
“Mama! Daddy!” Belle cries happily.
“Happy birthday, dear,” Mrs. Brightly says, embracing her daughter.
“Thanks, Mama,” Belle answers. She pulls away and accepts a hug from her father.
“How old is my Little Belle now?” Mr. Brightly asks. “Nine? Ten?”
“I’m twenty-six, Daddy,” Belle laughs. “When did you fly out?”
“We just got here this morning,” her mother replies. “The flight was a blessing from the Lord, you know how hard it can be to find any flight in Oklahoma, much less one that happens to arrive on the day of your birthday.”
Belle rolls her eyes, “Are you still religious and stuff?”
“Your father and I are still very devout, thank y
ou very much,” Mrs. Brightly says. “And may I ask why you lost your faith?”
“I watched The Exorcist. After that I couldn’t look a priest in the eye.”
“Don’t you mean your rebellious stage?” Mrs. Brightly asks.
“I never went through a rebellious stage!” Belle protests.
“So that forsaken Cookie Monster tattoo on your hip just appeared, did it?” Mr. Brightly asks.
“Daddy!” Belle hisses. “Too loud.”
“Well, are you going to introduce me to your friends?” Mrs. Brightly asks, awkwardly changing the subject.
“Mama, I’m not in eighth grade,” Belle complains. “You don’t need to meet all my friends.”
“Well I’d still like to.”
“Whoa, this drink is like, the shit,” Peter prattles on as he stumbles in front of Belle and her parents. “What is this? What did they spike it with? Who’s they? Oh hey, Belle, happy birthday. ‘Scuse me, I think I’m about to vomit.”
“That’s Peter,” Belle says. “He’s weird, but he means well.”
The Barnes twins approach, “Happy birthday, Belle,” Anna says, embracing her.
“Likewise,” Dick says, raising his drink.
“They’re twins,” Belle tells her parents. “Both of them are sort of emo. But soft emo.”
“Happy birthday, Belle,” Frank says. “Is the party to your satisfaction?”
“Of course it is,” Belle thanks him. “You didn’t have to go through all this trouble.”
“It was nothing,” Frank assures her. “Have fun.”
“He’s Frank,” Belle explains. “He’s quiet, but he’s really nice and he’s a ninja.”
“Mr. Brightly, Mrs. Brightly, it’s a pleasure to meet you both,” Dr. Pryce says as he rolls up to them. “Happy birthday, Belle. I hope that you are enjoying yourself.”
“I am, thank you,” Belle says. She turns to her parents again, “That was Dr. Pryce. He’s sort of the leader and the brains.”
“Speaking of leader and brains,” Chris says as he walks up to the Brightlys. “Here comes both comic relief and a tad bit of know-how. Wit and wisdom, all in one six-foot-nine-inch package. It’s good to see you again, Mr. and Mrs. Brightly.”