by Bryan Young
He quickly landed and sprinted into the cave, screaming at everyone to come outside with him. In a panic, everyone rushed out and stood in confusion, unsure of where the fire was. Tye ordered Ashley and Carmelita to fly into the air. Once they spotted the oncoming mass of bodies, they flew down and filled Kato and Dallas in on the situation.
Dallas immediately took off his jersey and shoes and transformed, ready to fight. Ashley summoned two balls of energy in her hands, Carmelita levitated and held her palms in front of her, and Kato raised his new sword up—everyone prepared to fight. Tye stood calm, listening. As they grew closer, the soft rumble turned into a thunderous stampede of cries and the mad stomping of feet. The figures appeared through the tree-line and just as the war was about to commence, they stopped without warning.
This gave the teens their first look at the creatures. They closely resembled the humanoid beings from earlier but took on many more shapes and sizes. Some were missing limbs, some had far too many; some were minuscule and others easily stood over seven or eight feet tall. But perhaps the most shocking was their numbers. There were easily hundreds of thousands or millions of them. The only thing uniform about them, other than their sickly pale skin, was their blank stares.
Tye held up his hand, waiting for the enemy to make their first move. Dallas, eager to strike first, let out a booming cry and just as he was about to charge into battle, Tye quickly flew before him and shook his head, signaling for him to wait.
The standoff was growing intense. Just as Tye was about to give the signal to charge, certain that the creatures weren’t planning anything, a hailstorm of arrows was suddenly fired into the air.
“Carmelita!” Tye called out in a panic. “Deflect as many arrows as you can back at them!”
With a short nod, Carmelita grabbed every single arrow out of the sky and returned the rain of death back onto the enemy, causing them to scatter, killing many.
As they ran about disoriented, Tye called out to the group to charge. With that, the teens steamrolled into battle.
Kato, most eager to prove himself, sped into the fight, slicing through an assortment of creatures and turning an already sharp blade into a weapon of deadly potential as he swung through bodies many times faster than the speed of sound. He danced through the battlefield, stringing together dozens to hundreds of kills within seconds.
Ashley followed, blasting through the enemy lines, shooting beams of energy that not only had enough crushing force to utterly destroy any creature in the way but also with enough heat to burn through their bodies. Her eyes glowed a fiery orange as she flew into the air and rained down heat bombs of energy that destroyed large swaths of the creatures. She shot undetectable packages of energy into the ground that detonated with three times the force of a grenade every time a creature stepped on one.
Not to be outdone, Dallas used his pure strength to smash through the enemy lines. He steamrolled his way through the bodies, flattening them as he went, even tearing the creatures in half as he approached them. One of the larger creatures attempted to grab him from behind but was met with Dallas’s tail piercing it straight through its chest and then being torn out of its body as he walked forward, completely unbothered by his own brutality. To celebrate his rampage, he looked back at his trail of carnage and let out a demonical guttural chuckle as he jumped back into action.
Tye was also enjoying the fight. He moved swiftly through the battlefield, attacking the enemies with a combination of energy beams from his hands and eyes. He cleared a path before him to find one of the larger creatures staring at him. A smile formed on his face. Like a torpedo, he took off with his fist before him, tearing through the center of the creature before turning around and launching a litany of energy balls at it, causing them to detonate and leave absolutely nothing behind. As he saw more begin to take the place of the creatures he had mowed down, he flew up into the air, closed his eyes and then let out a deep yell as he carved through them using his laser eyes, burning a smiley face into the dirt. He then flew down and barreled through the remaining creatures within his newly created boundaries, opting to use his speed and strength to punch them into oblivion.
Of all the teens, Carmelita seemed to be struggling the most. She appeared less interested in fighting back and instead seemed more inclined to be defensive. She was projecting a force field that was quickly being overrun by creatures who were gathering near her position like roaches to the kitchen pantry. Her eyes were shut tight and her hands were up as they continued surrounding her, bashing her shield with their fists.
After clearing out another area of the impending horde, Tye rushed to her. He used his energy beams to blast through the creatures, reaching her forcefield. She let him inside.
“Carmelita!” he yelled in the confined space as the creatures banged away, unrelenting in their ferocity. “You have to focus! If you don’t, these things are going to break through and kill you!”
“I can’t!” she yelled back. “There’s so much going on, I... My mind is...”
She seemed to retreat further into her own self-perpetuating cycle of anxiety and stress, searching for some kind of answer. Tye grabbed her by the shoulder and yelled her name to get her attention. Her gaze slowly turned to him and he simply said, “It’s going to be okay. Trust me.”
He pointed upwards at the top of the force field for her to let him out. He exploded out of the top, knocking back all the creatures that had swarmed around. She reformed the forcefield as Tye reared back and combined his laser vision with two powerful streams of energy from his hand that surrounded the shield and caused a shockwave of energy to explode outward and decimated everything in the immediate surroundings.
He gave her a thumbs up and she smiled back. Her smile was quickly wiped from her face when she saw another wave of the creatures rushing at him.
Tye noticed this just as he was about to fly away. He stopped and looked at the oncoming hoard. He glanced at Carmelita and then back at the creatures, standing his ground and bracing for impact.
“This may hurt but I need you to act, Carmelita!” he shouted. “If this is the only way to push you into action then so be it!”
Confused and scared for his life, Carmelita screamed at him to get out of harm’s way repeatedly but to no avail. Tye stood unmoving, not even attempting to push back the hoard. As the creatures zeroed in, the realization that Tye wouldn’t move to defend himself hit her. If they reached him, they’d surely kill him. Tears streamed down her face and desperation took over. In a final attempt to spur him move away, she yelled again, but he stood unmoving, his eyes shut tight for the coming onslaught.
In that moment, something snapped inside her. A newfound strength and determination to protect those she cared about bubbled inside so violently that she could feel her own determination and anger coursing through her body. She looked at a nearby tree and ripped it from its roots with her telekinetic strength. In an instant, she splintered the tree into thousands of pieces of shrapnel. She held her now-floating weapons in the air. With a single push, the pieces went flying through the air at a speed ten times faster than the fastest bullets on earth. She shredded the charging army, shooting the pieces through their bodies, severing their limbs, using multiple rounds for the larger creatures. Eventually, she had completely destroyed the force, leaving nothing but dead creatures cut up entirely or filled with holes.
Tye’s mouth was agape at her violent and powerful display. Unable to contain his excitement, he yelled at the top of his lungs, cheering her on for taking the initiative to be the aggressor and fighting back. But his cheering turned into trepidation as he spotted one of the bigger creatures standing imposingly behind her.
The thing stood nearly ten-feet tall with a massive bell-shaped clubbing fist that was nearly half the size of its body. Just as Carmelita turned around to notice it, it swung its hand onto her.
Not reacting quickly enough, she braced herself for the impact. Tye rushed to her side. Just a step too slow,
he watched helplessly as the creature’s fist crushed into her outstretched hands, causing a small impact crater to form from the force. Miraculously, Carmelita held up its fist with a single arm.
Her eyes, which had been shut tight, opened slowly and she saw that she had stopped the attack. The creature grunted as it struggled to crush her. She balled her free hand into a fist and whispered to herself, “I have... super strength?” Another wave of determination hit her and she reared her free fist back launched it forward, making contact with the creature’s stomach and sending it flying into the forest.
Tye stood next to her with his hands on his hips. When she turned to look at him, he gave her two thumbs up with a stupid grin on his face. “Carmelita, my dude. I think you’ve evolved,” he said with a wink. “Think you can use that same energy and kill some more of these things?”
She took a second to look down at her hands, now imbued with super strength, looked back at him with a half-smile and nodded. With newfound confidence, she rushed forward towards an unsuspecting creature and punched it straight up into the air. Then she used her telekinesis to keep it suspended and levitated hundreds of other nearby creatures towards it into a massive ball. Looking up to admire her work, she closed her hand into a fist and in an instant, the wad of creatures was crushed into the size of a bowling ball. After her devastating display of power, she turned around to Tye and gave him a wide smile.
“Huh. Neat,” Tye replied. “I’ll leave you to it.” He gave her a salute and then shot forward to add to his kill count, tearing through another section and then stopping to admire his work and crack his knuckles.
When he turned to fight again, one of the creatures jumped onto his back and began pounding its fist into him, screaming. Like a moth drawn to a flame, another heard the commotion and joined in on the beating. Within seconds, there were hundreds in a massive dog pile that seemed to be growing larger by the second.
Kato, fighting the creatures nearby, caught sight of the growing mass and rushed over. He desperately tried pulling the creatures off and cutting the ones that he managed to get off, but the pile seemed to be growing at a faster rate than he could handle.
However, unfazed by the increasingly smaller odds, he kept going until he could feel an energy reverberate through his body. He took a step back as he noticed a bright-blue light emanating from inside the pile. It burned bright enough to make its way through the tiniest of cracks in Tye’s coffin of bodies.
Kato wasn’t quite sure what it was but something inside him told him to take cover. He dove behind a nearby boulder and peeked out. In an instant, the pile exploded with a burst of the same blue energy. He not only felt it vibrate through him, he could also feel the power shake the very ground beneath them.
Surrounded by a radiant blue hue stood Tye, completely unharmed and unfazed. Kato looked at Tye’s hands to see that each one now bore blades of pure energy that each extended roughly two feet past his fingertips.
One of the creatures who hadn’t been killed by the initial eruption tried to charge at him. Without turning his head towards the creature, Tye sliced it in half with his new weapons, completely cauterizing the wound as it lay unmoving on the ground.
Tye turned around to the dead creature and jumped in the air in excitement, giddy about his new power.
Kato rushed over to examine the damage, and then turned to Tye. “YO!” he exclaimed, sliding his hands down his face. “Yo! You have energy blade hands?! That's gotta be the coolest power out of any of us!”
Tye looked down at his hands. He focused for a second and the energy encompassing his hands completely dissipated. He looked back at Kato and shook his head. “Nah, man. I think Carmelita’s still got me beat, unfortunately.” He brought his hands up again, summoning his blades with ease. “But ya know, this is definitely the flashiest. And I very much dig flashy.”
Kato shook his head. “Right. Well, I hope flashy there can help us take on this horde because they seem to keep coming.”
Tye nodded, “You stay here and hold the fort. These things are easy to kill but we can’t fight forever.”
He extended his arms and powered up his blades. He charged into the battlefield towards Dallas, using a combination of his speed and powerful to slice through anything in his path like a katana through butter.
Dallas, meanwhile, was in the middle of his rampage, enjoying every second of it. He crushed another foe and beat his chest at his own savagery. He looked over to see Tye charging towards him through a sea of bodies. As he approached, he told Dallas to head to where Kato was, pointed in his direction.
Not being capable of forming coherent words, Dallas nodded and jumped towards Kato in a single leap. Tye repeated the process for Ashley and Carmelita before meeting up with all of them.
As they stood back to back, ready to continue fighting the horde before them, Kato asked why Tye he had gathered them.
“Because this isn’t working,” he replied. “No matter how many we kill, it doesn’t seem like there’s an end in sight.”
“So, then we keep killing them until there is, right?”
“I don’t think so,” Ashley said. “During the last trial, there was a marker, right? What if... What if it’s the same here? What if one of these things has a marker inside them? Something tells me we could kill a billion of these things but they’re gonna keep coming until we find that marker.”
As the creatures approached, Ashley and Tye both shot waves of energy to push back the forces.
“I think you’re right, Ash,” Tye replied. “If I had to guess, it’s probably one of the two.”
“Okay,” Kato agreed. “But even IF that’s the case. It could take us just as long to find it. It’d be like finding a needle in the ocean. So, suggestions?”
“I think I can help,” Carmelita said, plucking roughly twenty of the creatures from the crowd and crushing them into a bowling ball-sized lump. “I can try looking into these creature’s heads and see if any of them is carrying it. I can create a mental link with all of you to feed you the location of it as soon as I know.”
“Wait what?” Tye exclaimed. “Don’t you have to make physical contact to do any of that?”
“Not necessarily. It definitely helps and I don’t have to focus as much, but I can do it from afar. The only catch is that I won’t be any help in battle because I need to focus,” she explained.
“I guess that’s the plan then,” Kato said, gripping his sword. “BREAK!”
With that, Carmelita levitated above the battlefield and hovered in the sky, focusing on trying to enter the minds of the dim-witted creatures.
The rest of the teens took off, sectioning the infinitely growing horde into four. Tye powered up his blades again and charged into battle. Dallas continued to smash his way through the enemy forces. Ashley rained bombs of energy on her foes. And Kato swung through any creature in his path with blinding speed.
Carmelita desperately searched through the minds of the creatures one by one. She randomly went through hundreds of the near-mindless beings, hoping for some sort of tell. Seconds felt like minutes and minutes felt like hours as she struggled to balance infiltrating their weak minds while maintaining the mental link with her friends.
Their numbers only seemed to increase as the fight drew on. Eventually, the teens realized they would soon be overwhelmed in a sea of bodies, all biting, clawing, and scratching to finally subdue their prey.
Kato was the first to experience this as the pain of an unexpected bite radiated through his shoulder, causing him to drop his sword. With his guard down, another creature tackled him from below and pinned him to the ground while three others began kicking him. Ashley rushed over but was met with one of the bigger creatures punching her out of the air with its massive fist.
Dallas came over to tear the creatures away but two of the smaller creatures jumped onto him, sinking their teeth into an arm and a leg. Tye yelled to his friends, slicing the creatures off Dallas and quickly dispatching the
ones harassing Ashley and Kato. Using the mental link, he frantically asked Carmelita what her status was, but she had no response.
As she watched her friends slowly get overtaken, a cold sweat now formed on her brow. She shook in frustration, speeding up her search, stretching her mental limits to the absolute. Without warning, one of the creatures pointed up towards her and screamed. Within a few seconds, it had launched itself towards her and grabbed onto her leg, causing her to lose focus for a brief second as it repeatedly tried to eviscerate her with its hands.
In the confusion, as it dragged her out of the air, she caught a glimpse of what she thought was the marker she had been desperately searching for. She angled her fist and punched the creature off her. She took to the sky again, scanning the area until she finally struck gold. Maintaining her focus, she mentally shared the location with her friends, but they were too busy with their own struggles to even consider getting to it.
Dallas however erupted upwards through a thick layer of bodies and charged towards the humanoid with the marker. He parted the creatures in his path with ease as they rolled off his scaly body like water. Once he had it within sight, he let out a yell and lunged forward fist-first and punched it with so much force that its body was completely crushed, hurling it forward into a nearby tree and nearly fusing its body and the marker with the bark.
Dallas then stomped towards the dead creature, cracking his neck and laughing gutturally, and ripped the marker from its body, without taking even a second to inspect the blue object that looked like a marble in his massive paws. He held up the object, letting out another bestial cry of victory while beating his chest. Almost instantaneously, the creatures that had plagued the forest began to disintegrate.
The assault completely ceased as soon as the marker was taken. The creatures seemed to melt away as if their bodies were sand blown away in the wind. They turned into dust, leaving no trace that they were anything other than the memory that would forever plague the minds of anyone unlucky enough to have encountered them.
