by Kipjo Ewers
She ignored the pain of her trembling right hand which was broken in several places from the punch as she saw to her daughter.
Freedom then realized what took the Thracian High General off of her game. A dazed Kimberly’s teary glowing eyes fluttered in between white and a gold hue.
“Baby …baby… talk to me …”
“She killed him ... she killed him,” Kimberly sobbed.
Freedom choked at her words as thick tears ran down her face.
“Earl is …”
“Sir George!” Kimberly screamed bawling. “He never made it out! He’s dead! She killed him!”
Freedom quickly drew her in embracing her tightly.
“I’m so sorry baby,” she said while kissing the side of her daughter’s cheek. “But you have to go right now. Go back to Sanctuary before …”
Her words were rattled out of her mouth as the Earth shook while smoke and debris fogged the area around them.
Freedom’s heart sunk as another one adorned with a purple and black bodysuit similar to Attea’s minus armor stood straight up in a sizable crater.
This one’s skin was pearl white, while his long blue mane was fashioned into a Mohawk with three thick braids. His eyes glowed a tremendous deep blue glow similar to her own signifying the immense power that coursed through his veins.
And Freedom could feel that his power was far higher than her own.
“Oh no …” she quaked.
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Several miles up, Horus’s familiar Seker hovered watching the scene take place below. Unbeknownst to everyone the silver and gold mechanized falcon had been keeping up with the battle since it first began.
It was transmitting what it saw back to the EVOlution base in Colorado. Horus stood with a bright grin on his face along with Dr. Alexander and Graves on the facilities theater-sized screen viewing what the cybernetic bird saw.
“Very good Seker!” Horus adulated his familiar. “The footage you collected was more than enough, but the arrival of the Thracian Crown Prince is a bonus. When my allies circulate the Dominion Council once again invading another foreign soil and imposing its will, we will incite additional worlds to our cause. Powerful worlds that will ensure their fall.”
Both Graves and Dr. Alexander fretfully made glancing eye contact with one another, knowing that they were witnessing the planet Earth drawn into its first universal war, one that it might not survive.
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Back in Africa, Freedom holding her daughter in her hands shook her getting her attention, as her eyes were transfixed on the intimidating view of Prince Merc that could be felt from where they knelt.
“Kimberly! Kimberly! Go back to Sanctuary right now! Do you hear me?”
“Mommy …”
“Go, right now! And no matter what happens, do not turn back! Do you hear me?”
She squeezed her daughter’s bicep with a bit of extra force getting her attention.
“Go.”
Streams of tear fell from Kimberly's eyes as she nodded agreeing to obey. With a leap into the air, she took off flying away as fast as she could. Freedom did not look up to watch her leave. Instead, she rose to her feet clenching her fists which regenerated to the point that they cracked.
She unleashed a war cry stoking the rage inside of her until it spread throughout every inch of her body. Massive chunks of the ground underneath her broke apart and sprayed as she flew right at Merc.
Her attack was upended by the most crushing backhand that felt like an aluminum bat to her skull if she was a regular human. For her, as a superhuman, it was similar to getting smacked with the planet Jupiter.
She could not tell how far she got knocked when she crashed. She knew she was still in Africa, and that she suffering from massive trauma as blood began to pour from her eyes, ears, and mouth. Her regenerative healing had been taxed beyond its limits from that one strike.
“Get up,” she gurgled through the blood in her throat. “Got to get…up.”
She did not get up with her own strength. Freedom painfully groaned as she was pulled to her feet by her braids. She could no longer feel the ground as Merc lifted her higher.
He did so find his target.
No words could describe the agonizing pain as she felt something sharp and cold pierce her stomach going right through her. She was more shocked that he stabbed her with the ice blue gleaming blade with black Thracian markings that looked like a mini hi-tech Gladius attached horizontally to a maroon sheath on the tailbone of his bodysuit, than the fact that there was a metal that could actually pierce her flesh.
Her throat drowning in blood would not allow her to scream.
As the unnatural chill of death returned to reclaim her, she could feel that this time it was different as her body began to involuntarily spasm from the life draining from her.
“Why …are …you …doing …this?” Freedom got out with what little life she had left.
Merc whispered his answer to her.
“Because I can …now I must warn you …the next thing you shall feel is your insides splatter as I cut you open.”
Before Merc could deliver the final killing cut, the sky crackled with the sonic boom of Kimberly’s hypersonic flight pattern and her blood-curdling scream as she dived toward him with the attempt to remove his head from his shoulders to save her mother.
An unfazed Merc went to pull the blade to cut her mother open, and slice her down.
Freedom defiantly clutched the blade shoving it deeper with her gut preventing him from using it on her daughter.
Merc sneered as he merely released the hilt and swatted Kimberly with a deceptive closed backfist that delivered the sickening sound of broken bones to Freedom’s ears. She hung there defenseless as she watched her daughter violently crater the ground on impact.
“No ...” she weakly squealed while struggling to break free of Merc’s grip.
Kimberly lying face down in the dirt of Africa drooled energy saturated milky white blood from her lips. With a blind dazed look, she painfully looked around for her mother.
“Mommy …?”
“No! No! No! Leave her alone! No!”
Her pleas fell deaf upon a merciless Prince Merc as he raised his right leg and delivered a killing blow stomping down on the back of the child’s head and neck.
The sickening sound of bone breaking and the dying squeals of her daughter unleashed a high pitched scream within Sophia as she was cast into the nightmarish memory of Pubudu’s mother clutching and rocking his dismembered body after he was torn apart by the Sand Lion and his murderous regime. As she relived that trauma that very second, it brought forth the most destructive eyebeam blast she every unleashed blasting Merc at point blank rage in the face.
The blast was enough to cause Merc a slight form of discomfort while Sophia found the strength to rip free of his grip leaving him with a fistful of some of her braids. Oh, the way down she placed her hands in the wave position chanting the words in her head triggering the power within her to seep through the pours in her hands forming a glowing blue soccer ball.
She screamed again as she unleashed it hitting him at point blank range. It doubled the blast pattern Peace used to kill all of the Defenders of Justice.
The planet trembled like never before from a blast powered by a mother’s rage and sorrow. She cared not that she was breaking her own rules, about the alien blade that was still in her gut, or where the energy wave went or what it destroyed. All she cared was that it got him off of her daughter.
A distraught Sophia stopped an attack she could have kept going almost indefinite to see what had become of her daughter.
The Crown Prince with a hand covering his face was pushed back a couple of yards only due to loosening dirt that could not hold his footing. He narrowed his eyes as he examined his suit and ha
nds which had visible scorch patterns all over them.
“Interesting,” he muttered to himself.
Sophia ignored him ripping the dagger from her stomach causing her to spit up new blood. Shutting down the pain of a wound that was slowly healing, she tossed it away and darted over to Kimberly’s body. Freedom crashed knees first into the ground as she reached in pulling her out of the crater. She turned her face up as she pulled her onto her lap cradling her. With a trembling bloody hand, Sophia began brushing dirt from her daughter’s face and body.
“Why won’t you listen to me?” Sophia wailed. “Why won’t you listen? I told you to go home! You’re going to be okay! You’re going to heal and be okay! You’re just like me! You’re just like me!”
Merc fluttered his eyes in disgust at the gut-wrenching scene before taking a step to finish the job. His advance was halted by his sister crating the ground with her landing standing in between him and a grieving mother.
“Have you lost all of your senses?” Attea furiously spat at her brother. “You cannot be here!”
“No member of the Thracian Regime can enter or set foot on this planet,” Merc roared pointing a finger at his sister. “I am a Crown Prince, and it would not be so if you had sped up your task!”
“And since when was murdering a youngling apart of your plan brother?”
“As if you would shed a tear for the litters we will raze the second we claim this planet. That thing is an abomination that dare raised had against a Thracian Crown Prince! It is also additional evidence we need to cleanse this wretched species from the universe before it is too late!
Do you have any idea what would happen if she was allowed to mature with what was coursing through her veins?
I shall personally remove the head of that half-breed right in front of his cousin! He’s the only one capable of infusing that thing with of all things the Awakening!”
Attea took a step back examining her brother with her eyes as if she did not recognize him.
“Your ambitions have pushed too far brother, this is not the way of a proud Thracian! We are warriors, not butchers!”
A scowl formed on her brother’s face as he leaned in to remind her of something.
“We are whatever our people need us to be so that we can flourish …dear …sister.”
In the middle of the sibling spat, a catatonic Sophia rocked back and forth caressing and kissing a lifeless Kimberly waiting for her regenerative healing to bring her back to life.
“You’re stronger than me!” Sophia bawled. You are stronger than me! So, heal! Baby heal! Please!”
Kimberly remained unresponsive with a blank, lifeless visage as Freedom pulled her limp body closer to her bosom kissing her forehead. She raised her head to the heavens wailing.
“Please, don’t do this! Don’t take her away from me. Please! I swear I will make you pay if you do. I will make you pay!”
With those words, Sophia’s running tears evaporated as her eyes became brighter than two stars, while the visible veins underneath the skin of her hands and face bulged and illuminated a blue hue.
The power boost instantly amplified her regenerative healing repairing all of her wounds and injuries. The same rising energies would turn on her the second she moved aggressively.
Even if she didn’t move her building power creating a gravitation field within her would eventually tear the planet apart.
The ground gave out from underneath Freedom’s feet as the output of the power she unleashed created an enormous sinkhole. Freedom instinctively hovered as she held her daughter in her arms.
Her eyes slowly raised with endless hatred and rage behind them.
Eyes that cared for nothing else, but vengeance.
All of it was turned towards Merc and Attea who were forced to hover due to the expanded size of the sinkhole. Attea slowly turning to Freedom frustratingly ran her hand over her braided Mohawk before directing a glare at her older brother.
“A star eater, your bloody milk sow whore failed to relay to you that our target was also a star eater.”
Merc did not answer his sister as he stared at what could potentially be the most significant snare to his plan glaring back at him.
“Tell me, dear brother,” Attea sarcastically snarled. “What is the Council law when the said planet you are planning to acquire has been blown to atoms?”
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Back at the Ranch, the Regulator team looked in stunned disbelief as the unique alert signal blared while monitors lit up measuring and calculating a specific familiar event that spelled the destruction of the entire planet if not stopped.
“Tell me that’s not what I think it is,” Rogers swallowed.
“It is,” Erica whispered. “Sophia’s entered World Buster mode, and its rising faster than the last time.”
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Within the Colorado base, Horus bore an expression upon his countenance he had not worn in centuries, one of great concern.
His devious plan had also hit a snare.
“Well, this was unexpected.”
Despite his near godly mental abilities, the destruction of the planet he planned on ruling by a grieving mother, was not something he foresaw.
EPILOGUE
On the other side of the Universe billions of light years away, the second Eye of Ra found himself along with the Eye of Set and the Eye of Osiris in the middle of a diplomatic matter. As fellow peacekeeping diplomats, the Eyes were at times sent to intervene with other advanced species that were not a part of the Dominion Council depending on the situation.
Recently they accepted a mission to venture to Volori and speak with the Volorion High Prime about claims of piracy enacted by his people on merchant starships whose species were under the protection of the Dominion Council. All three went into the meeting knowing that Volorions were not only a species known for weapons manufacturing, arms profiteering, and skin trading (kidnapping and selling other species). They also were one of the few species that sent a message directly to the Dominion Council flat out informing them that they would never in their equivalent of a billion light-years join the Council. They would never obey nor respect any law or treaty created by the Dominion Council and then told the Dominion Council members in the vilest way what they could do with themselves and to their family members.
Volori although noted to be a far more advanced world that other civilized planets like Earth was categorized as non-threatening on a universal level and calmly subjected to territory bans and heavy sanctions. This did little to deter the defiant Volorions who mostly traded and sold arms to other worlds outside of the Dominion Council and continued with their skin trading ventures despite their ships either being captured or destroyed when they dared to enter Dominion Council territory. The Dominion Council continued to be diplomatic about the situation until a recent rise in piracy from Volorion ships on merchant ships either under the protection or within Dominion Council territory forced the Council’s hand to take a more militaristic stance.
As with all diplomatic, military campaigns carried out by the Council, the objective was to achieve a peace accord to avoid war at all costs while showing the overall strength of the Council via the species representing them at the time. As with each situation, each Council member whose species have a massive display of militaristic might volunteered for the campaign. A vote was then taken, and that species decided how best to deal with the campaign within the rules created by the Dominion Council.
On this campaign, the planet of Anu received the majority vote. So, Anu’s Council of Elders decided it was best to send Anubis, Bastet, and Lawrence to have a sit down with the Volorion High Prime, and attempt to persuade him to come to some resolution in exchange for the Council lifting some the sanctions that were placed upon Volori.
Part of their mission in retrospect
was simple; Volori under a single kingship rule meant they only had one individual to persuade as opposed to a world that may at times be comprised of several ruling parties that may not see eye to eye and might not all wish to agree to their terms. The fact that they were also granted an audience and allowed to land as opposed to being shot out of the planet’s orbit was another good sign to Lawrence.
His opinion changed the minute Anubis’s red luminous chariot class starship entered Volori’s clear blue-green atmosphere. As they descended to the capital city of Vennatara, Lawrence noticed that there was barely any plant life visible in the gleaming cold ice blue metallic metropolitan. Through visiting planets in the known universe over the years, Lawrence learned to become wary of civilizations that had a severe lack of foliage.
They were allowed to land at the capital’s central transport hub.
As they exited the craft, they were greeted by a heavily armed guard that informed them that they were to be escorted by foot to the main capitol building to meet with the High Prime. It was the first insult, as it was a standard universal courtesy to provide some type of transport vehicle to the meeting location. Unfazed the trio of Eyes began their walk surrounded by their escort. During the walk to the capital, Lawrence noticed large grated vents in the metal ground blasting high concentrations of oxygenated air into the sky.
He also noticed the citizens of Volori observing them from afar during their trip to the central capital building.
Volorions had the appearance of humanoid hairless cats with feathers that grew mostly on their heads and back. Male Volorions only grew one solid color of feathers, while female grew many color feathers. Both male and female skin color varied from pale pink to cocoa brown, they were also one of three known races where the majority of the population had one eye color, a gleaming sky blue. The males grew their feathers mostly on their heads or none at all, while the females grew their feathers on the top of their heads down to the small of their backs. The majority of male Volorions in the capital were nobles, statesmen, or soldiers adorned in two-toned color form fitting robes with mandarin collars and solid single-color skirt flaring pants. The females wore risqué outfits that accentuated their backs, chests, rears, and legs.
