by Ross Buzzell
“Officer, that is almost three hundred feet in the air. No one is surviving that. From the looks of it, the glass breaking was caused by a black vulture… it could have been a turkey vulture. It all happened so fast and I did not get a good look at it, but there aren’t that many birds in this area big enough to break through one pane of glass before crashing through another and keep going.”
The officer gives Danielle a bit of side eye, doubting her story.
“And what do you know about birds, ma’am.”
Danielle shrugs.
“I’m not an ornithologist if that is what you are getting at. But I do know a big bird when I see one and if you type in ‘big birds near St. Louis Missouri’ into google, three birds come up. Two are vultures and one is a bald eagle, and whichever bird it was that broke through that window did not have a white head.”
Her reply is smooth and perfectly timed as if telling the truth while trying to remember the details clearly. The officer nods.
“Then what do you say about the falling man?”
Danielle shrugs again.
“I couldn’t tell you. My guess is wrong place wrong time and the glass fell around him. He got spooked, then ran. I can tell you now if glass came raining down around me for no reason after I picked myself up off the floor, I would just run away too.”
The officer shakes her head as she looks at the people, trying to show off the falling man to her partner.
“We keep getting calls like these; with editing software on phones these days, everyone is trying to go viral. Any chance we can speak with the tenant?”
the officer asks as she hooks her thumbs inside of her utility belt.
“I’m sorry; in all the commotion, she slipped, fell, and dislocated her shoulder. Her boyfriend took her to the hospital to get it re-set. But if you give me your contact information, I will gladly have her reach out to you when she gets back.”
The officer hesitates for a moment; she reaches into her front left breast pocket and pulls out a card before handing it to Danielle, who graciously takes it.
“Thank you, officer. I am sorry to have wasted your time. You have a safe night.”
With a sigh and shaking her head, the officer begins to walk back towards her partner.
“You too, ma’am.”
The officer waves her partner over. Danielle keeps an eye on them, trying not to look too obvious before breathing a sigh of relief when the keepers of the peace walk back to their squad car and drive away. She pulls the kimono cardigan tighter around her shoulders while scanning the dissipating and disappointed crowd. Her eyes fall on a familiar form, Doug. Limping and clearly injured, a flash of concern for his wellbeing ignites within her, and in the blink of an eye, she is by his side with his arm over her shoulder.
As they exchange “pleasantries,” Danielle and Doug make their way into the apartment building. She is surprised at how light he is for being able to shift into different, heavy materials. They get into the elevator. Danielle notices the gentle rattling and bouncing of the carriage causes Doug to wince in discomfort. Her heart goes out to him. Something deep within her wants to take his pain away, not in a romantic way; more like that of a shepherd wanting to take care of her sheep.
“I can dull your pain, Doug. Please let me.”
Doug shakes his head as his face grimaces a bit.
“I’m fine. I’ve had far worse than this… besides, isn’t pain just weakness leaving the body?”
he adds with a laugh before grunting and holding his side again.
“I would say pain is your body’s way of saying ‘stop,’”
she responds as the elevator doors open. Danielle leads Doug from the elevator and turns to the stairs.
“Wait, the apartment is the other way!”
he calls out as Danielle bangs on the door as hard as she can.
“I know, but I put someone in here.”
The door quickly creaks open and Emma walks out. She glances down the hallway.
“Everything clear?”
she asks with mild trepidation.
“We are good. I convinced the police that a vulture flew through the windows and that the ‘falling man’ was just a way to try and get a viral video online.”
Emma nods as an impressed look gradually dances over her face before her gaze falls on Doug.
“What happened to him?”
Emma inquires.
“I took on…”
Doug tries to explain himself, but Danielle interrupts him.
“He got his ass kicked because he decided to go against someone Konner himself trained for almost two decades without any backup.”
Doug nods with a sigh as he resigns to Danielle’s statement.
“That is a fair assessment… now can we please go to the apartment? I could use an ice pack.”
Danielle turns, helping Doug as he leans on her. She can tell that his strength is already beginning to return and his side is not hurting him as much anymore as he no longer holds his side and the weight he leans against her with is significantly less. As the trio make their way down the hall in silence for a few minutes, Emma asks in a hushed tone as they approach the apartment,
“What do you think of Avio?”
Doug glances back at her while Danielle opens the door. She hears Doug question:
“What do you mean?”
Danielle enters the apartment first; Doug releases her and follows with Emma taking up the rear. Danielle turns to face the door as Emma closes it and Doug makes his way to the kitchen, the sound of the freezer door opening and a soft groan by Doug as it closes again.
“Avio… Every hero has to have a name. Danielle, you are The Emissary. Doug, I heard your thoughts, Protolith? That is excellent. I figured mine would be Avio, because of the flight… Any thoughts?”
Danielle listens intently as Emma chooses her name; she sits down, nodding in approval.
“I like it; it suits you well.”
Doug nods as well as he enters the main room, holding an ice pack against his side as he contributes too.
“It really does.”
Emma’s cheeks flush lightly as she shyly tucks a tuft of hair behind her ear. This is a new side of the confident woman; clearly the new aspect of her life is bringing forward the girl inside that has always wanted to come out.
“Thank you very much, both of you.”
Danielle opens her mouth to speak, but a soft humming begins to fill the room, followed by the sound of metal vibrating rapidly against itself. Danielle’s gaze slowly moves from Emma to Doug, who both looks just as confused as she is. She turns to look behind her and sees Disa’ani’s remaining spears vibrating so quickly they appear to phase in and out of existence. A twisted, dark voice emanates from the weapons, one that causes an icy chill to course down Danielle’s spine and through her entire body. Goosebumps form on her skin as her heart nearly stops and her body is filled with an unparalleled fear as if the being on the other end has some spell to illicit that emotion from anyone who hears his voice.
“Disa’ani, report!”
the dark voice demands in a harsh tone. Disa’ani’s voice echoes back.
“I almost had the ring.”
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN ALMOST?!”
The voice roars with such ferocity and rage that both Doug and Emma recoil from the weapons.
“I had the girl in my hands, but then these people came out of nowhere.”
As Disa’ani tries to defend himself, Danielle glances over at Doug. He shakes his head as his face is full of worry and even a hint of fear. Danielle can tell both he and Emma are feeling the same things she is.
“You were stopped by humans?”
The voice drips with evil, with malice, something so dark it should only exist in the deepest recesses of nightmares. Disa’ani’s voice crackles through; this time, it has a hint of fear in it as well.
“Not exactly… There was a girl that could fly, a man who could turn himself into stone, an Emissary somehow and, sire
… Konner was with them as well.”
The voices on the other end pause. The air is still, but static seems to fill the air from the sheer tension between the conversation and the being that sounds as if he is the source of all evil.
“Good.”
The voice responds after a few moments, his tone dripping like thick, heavy tar.
“We can use her; she can use the rings full power without the backlash I experienced. You will wait for me; turn the people against this team. Kill the flyer if you get the chance and even the stone man but wait to move against the Emissary until I arrive. After we have her, then Konner will fall; should you fail me again, I will banish you to a place that makes this blue marble seem like heaven. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, m’lord.”
Danielle looks over at Emma, who has collapsed against the wall, holding her knees with a silent tear rolling down her cheek. Doug has backed himself into the furthest corner away from the weapons and his body trembles in terror as well. There is something about the man’s voice, something corrosive. It penetrates Danielle’s soul and spreads like a cancer trying to instill fear within her. The words “move against the Emissary” echo on repeat over and over in her mind as she fights with all of her might to expel the darkness that was introduced to her by the being’s mere voice.
“Who was that?”
Doug asks, his voice quivering.
“Xero, the one who overthrew Konner and singlehandedly overthrew one of the most powerful races in the universe in a matter of hours. He is a cancer, and if he is here on Earth, we have to tell Konner!”
Emma begins rocking back and forth, shaking her head, and whispers over and over again.
“We can’t stay here, we can’t stay here, we can’t stay here…”
Chapter: 13
To New Friends
Konner glances around the hospital entrance to see everyone staring at him in his armor. Catching his own reflection, he pauses for the briefest of moments as a sobering thought enters his mind. “They are going to fear you.” In the blink of an eye, Konner runs around to the side of the building. An alleyway across the narrow one way street becomes visible to the prince, and with the narrow path having little, almost no lighting, he will be able to vanish in the shadows and hide from prying eyes.
The prince presses a few glyphs on his bracer and his armor begins to dissipate into an azure blue light as it dances over his body like a river of energy and over to his left arm. Konner begins to jog across the street as the last of his armor retracts itself and forms into the ring his father gave him. Once he reaches the alleyway and is under cover of darkness, he is away from the prying eyes of the hospital that followed him around the building but are too scared to peruse into the dark alleyway. The scent of soot fills his nostrils, and immediately, he begins to see the attack on his family and his palace. The image of the mountain of a being that slew Na’era and Ryan marching through the flames with a massive sword forged of bone and steel. Konner drops to his knees as his heart begins to race. Identifying he is having a panic attack, the warrior does what he is trained to do; he focuses on the object in front of him, in this case, a small red cross on the side of a metal container. He stares at the familiar symbol; it is similar to the symbol for doctors back home. This distracts his mind and allows him to mentally get hold of the terror that tried to gain control of him.
As his heartrate slows and his breathing returns to normal, Konner stands up, getting a glance at the source of the soot smell to begin with, his sleeping gown. It is still charred and torn from the fight at his home and there is no way he can keep walking around in these clothes. Just above the symbol on the metal container, the words “clothing drive” are written in white lettering to offset the blue box. Konner walks over to the container and notices a door on the side that has a hefty lock built into the door. Stealing is wrong; he has been brought up learning that. The concept was not lost on his people, but it was never really a problem with the Boronian race. Only upon coming into contact with other species did the actual concept of stealing make itself known to his people; in this case, however, an exception needs to be made.
Konner crouches down next to the metal box; he pushes his thumb against the locking mechanism and attempts to turn it with his superior strength, but to no avail. He even tries to form a malleable miniature force field and insert it into the lock to form a key within and turn to unlock the door, but the energy field fails. His bracer calls out into the darkness.
“The fields’ generators are unable to copy the small details required to mimic the key for this lock. Suggest breaking the lock to retrieve the items you need inside.”
Konner’s eyebrows raise at the concept of breaking the lock is suggested to him. The idea of opening a portal inside the box crosses his mind, but if one of the pieces of clothing ends up fused into the metal, it would raise too many eyebrows. After only a moment’s hesitation, Konner pushes his outstretched fingers against the seam of the door. His fingernails get a slight angle on an edge and he ever so slowly uses that edge. The door gives way slightly; this allows him to get a few fingers in between the door and the box, and without a moment’s hesitation, he bends the door like a piece of aluminum foil, revealing a box of clothing inside.
“I am really sorry about this, people of the cross,”
Konner says softly to the alleyway as he reaches in and grabs a pile of clothes. Removing them from the box, he gets a glimpse at them. A pair of blue, coarse pants, the likes of which he has never seen, a soft green shirt with strange wording scrawled across the chest, and a brown leather jacket with elastic fabric around the waist and wrists with a false fur collar around the neck. On the sleeve is a banner of red and white stripes, a blue square in the corner and white stars inside that blue square. On the other sleeve is a patch that reads “Ironman Squadron.” Konner stands up and quickly strips his gown away from him and steps into the strange pants. As he buttons and zips them up, he is surprised to find they fit like a glove. He pauses for a moment as he sees the scar on his stomach made by his own weapon; it is the first time seeing the evidence of the wound. Gently, he touches the mark, which causes a dull pain to radiate from the mark as if it were a bad bruise; it still is not completely healed. Quickly, he slides the long sleeve shirt on him before throwing the jacket over his shoulders; whoever donated this outfit is his exact size because everything fits him perfectly. Glancing down the cold concrete against his feet, that wouldn’t do, so Konner leans back into the box and feels around; he feels a number of different fabrics and a few shoes with heels to them, none that would work.
After exhausting the resources from within the donation box, Konner closes it back up and bends the metal back to the best of his ability, having failed in his mission to find some shoes. For a brief moment, he glances at his ring. Giving it a quick spin, two small beams of dancing light float over his fingers, under the sleeve of his shirt and down to his feet, where they form only the boots of Konner’s armor, the majority of which is covered by the jeans, making them appear to be normal black boots. After searching the pockets of the clothing, Konner finds a few pieces of green paper with a two and a zero on them right next to each other. The paper appears to be similar to ancient currency around the Boronian alliance, so he elects to keep it on the chance he is right.
Konner makes his way back to the mouth of the alleyway and looks both directions; to his right is the entrance of the hospital, to his left what appears to be a normal street. Standing on top of one of the buildings on the far end of the street is a large rectangular board with a photo of a man with green eyes and facial hair that outlines the edge of his jawline and chin before forming up under his nose. Next to his head, there is a strange-looking device with four metal blades on the head and the words “The most precise shave you’ll ever have” in white above it. His eyes are striking and could give him away to the more curious of the humans. Closing his own eyes, Konner focuses on drawing the energy that naturally
courses through him away from his eyes. A tingling sensation begins to form before they begin to itch like putting contacts in for the first time. Konner opens his eyes before rubbing them with the back of his hand.
“Ah, that is going to be annoying,”
he says softly to himself. A few feet away an old, beat-up car is parked; he missed it the first time crossing the street due to the distraction of making sure he was not being followed. In a few purposeful strides, he is by the car. Leaning in towards the window, he tries to get a look at his reflection, but there is not enough light to allow him to do so. Suddenly, out of the darkness, a snarling beast lunges against the glass, baring its fangs with drool dripping from its jowls as they wave wildly accompanied with a noise he has never heard before.
The shock causes Konner to fall backwards against the wall as his heart jumps into his throat, the being appearing to be a smaller yet more ferocious form of what attacked his home. His shield explodes into existence as his right hand forms into a fist ready to defend himself. When his shield is not attacked, Konner immediately lowers it to see the drool-soaked window holding back a small furry animal with droopy ears and a saggy mouth. Its big brown eyes are sad as it stares at Konner. A soft whimpering whine leaves its snout and its head turns to one side. Something inside the warrior breaks for the creature. Slowly, Konner rights himself and kneels before the vehicle door. The animal paws at the door with its small furry hand and lets off a small, far more pathetic noise than before. Konner catches his reflection in the mirror posted on the outside of the vehicle; he notices that his eyes are now a deep forest green. This brings a smile to his face. Konner turns his attention back to the beast and places his hand on the car door and a portal opens up against it and immediately the creature leaps into his arms, his tail wagging wildly as his slobbery tongue rubs against the length of his face similar to how his dragon would greet him back home. Clearly, this beast is not a relative to the monsters that attacked his home but is a sad little creature looking for happiness. Konner wraps his arms around the animal and slowly stands up, a “thud” rings out in the silent street, which makes Konner glance back at the car; a handle has fallen out of the car with a string that is clipped to a harness around the beautifully colored brown and black animal.