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"Listen here, you are no longer a JENTI, you are no longer a SICISTE! You are no longer AYEYOLE, you are no longer a DIRTBORN! You are now a SOLDIER, JARHEAD, CLANKER, BOOTLICKER, ROCKETEER– BOLD, and BRAVE! "
The instructor exclaims. On each of my sides, I'm surrounded by hundreds of bald, scrawny peons and winged, turtle-faced. Actual turtles, Humans, Potenes, and others alike. A'roll stands right in front of me. We both try not to laugh while the instructor yells at the turtle for taking a crap in the tank of a toilet. The CO's toilet.
We walk. Well, not walk. We race hovercars around in a circle with toy guns on the side of them. When A'roll was working at retail, he noticed he had to ship out an order for 500,000 toy dart cannons. The shopper never arrived, and it was delivered in a truck.
A'roll and I are the only ones here who have shot and owned a raygun before. So the instructor tells us to help out the peons amongst the bunch. Training is intense. They batter and break our morale, but not our bodies; they need us in mint condition at all times. We fire weapons that are weightless. We jog from our bed to our pillow once a day after snack.
The military has gotten soft. Really soft, apparently, five years ago, some Cadet blew a hole through his drill instructor's chest, then his squad leader, in a heated argument.
Word spread around that the subject of my Yoleheim day speech at the temple.
I'm 18, and I had no idea what Yoleheim day is even about. But I sure do learn. It's a day to remember some important battles that caused the Federation to lay out the groundwork for what's legal and illegal in a war setting.
Including what constitutes a war, when to fight a war, and how to fight a war efficiently. And yes, in the pamphlet, war looks like that. Italics and highlighted, too.
One day, out of the time we spend in training, we get 'drafted' by a team and show up for tryouts.
A'roll and I reject all offers but one. 'LIBERATOR ROCKETEER DIVISION' commanded by Oza RoséGold and Boelin. They offer 700,000 credits per person they approve, and they have a near-unlimited budget.
Fast forward a week, and Bo drafts us for her team, 'THE LIBERATORS,' and asks Oza.
But she joins the special force team called the Ikarus legion.
We joined not only for the money but because A'roll thought these aliens were cool enough to be friends with.
That summer, we went after 3 escaped criminals: Alberto B Good, Angelo Wonder, and Benja the Butcher.
In order from most to least dangerous, we draw straws, and I get the shortest one, having to go after Benja the butcher.
Alberto B Good is a gravity-manipulating trickster who steals important documents and files, selling them to our Federation's rivals. Angelo is the inheritor of the 'Strato-surfer teleportation Belt,' a belt that allows him to travel to any place in the universe. Benja the Butcher has ~153,300 confirmed kills. Nothing else is notable about him besides the number of people he's killed.
Tracking them down is simple.
We know where they are, where they will be, and why they will be there. Bo and I's target is on the planet we need to be, retrieve Dyri's son and convince him to join our crew, then get our criminals. A'roll is on Earth with his now fiancée.
Arriving on Aesir is a long, tedious process.
You have to back up the shuttle and wait for a cloud to pass by because the clouds here are living creatures like whales, not sentient or anything, just flopping and flying around.
We park the shuttle in the clouds themself and skydive out of the vessel.
Bo lands right on top of Aedar's house. I landed in the middle of a mall. Allegedly, this is where my target is.
Benja the Butcher stands out like a sore thumb. His hat makes him look like one who is. He has a black sword mounted on his back. You can feel a sort of pressure or aura around him. Like he was a demon, or the devil.
On top of his pink striped prisoner polo, he wears a jumpsuit, a black satin-lined jacket with a tiger embroidered in it, and grabs at a ringed planet.
He steps out of his seat after someone points to my blue striped sweater. My pants are black cargos, and my shoes have spiked tongues as per Federation mandate.
If it weren't for my spikes, he'd have no clue I was a Fed.
He wastes no time and dashes forward to engage in combat. I enter a defensive stance and throw my civlink at his forehead when he attempts a downward slash with his sword. The phone is cut nearly in half; it stops at the battery before exploding.
The blade glistens purple for a second. He tosses it at me, it heats to thousands of degrees in an instant, and falls through the ground.
"What?" I say out loud. Benja punches my jaw, knocking one of my teeth out.
I ran for a minute around the mall acting a fool. Throwing chairs and tables at him. One collides and slams into his forehead, shattering.
He falls to the ground, I lean over him, and he jumps up like the undertaker.
Benja lifts me by my collar and slams me through a pot that's key to the mall's foundation for some reason.
That entire section of the mall tilts at a 23-degree angle. I tumble out of there, holding my back, and sweep his leg, causing him to fall under the wreckage.
Local authorities storm the mall, surrounding it.
The wreckage begins to shift and shake, pulsating before it explodes. Debris crushes several nearly to death, and The Butcher launches his body towards me, 170kg slamming into my chest at 160 kph.
I fell to the ground out of breath.
The butcher stands over me, impaling my hand with the handle of his sword that reformed itself in his palms.
He looks down at me and opens his mouth. Speaking quietly.
"Never in my life did I want to kill anyone." He states, twisting the handle.
I attempt to squirm out, but he elbows my nose, causing my head to slap against the concrete floor of the mall.
"I could've been out here in this mall buying clothes for my children. I could've been playing games and having fun outside with all of those school children when I was a boy."
He shifts his elbow to my neck and applies pressure.
"I was going to be a great paramedic and save millions of lives. I could've been great–I would've been beautiful."
I wince and attempt to shake him off.
"Don't bother to fight."
I attempt to lift his arm off my neck.
"It's Reality In Motion. Let it happen–y–y–you can't win. I mean, you won't win. All of these officers are dead. You are dead, like them. They died bootlicking trogs, and so will you."
His sword fully reforms, he takes the handle out of my hand, and stabs it through my sweater. It goes through my left Onerariam
"Why are you telling me this?" I wail and scream, writhing on the ground.
"Because you won't live to tell anyone else."
He twists and shifts the blade, destroying more and more of my Onerariam.
I cough up Syreline and blood, on the blade and on his face.
"That part. It always gets me." He says, stepping back, wiping the blood off his face. I reach into my holster and fire my raygun at his eye socket. It should've killed him, but it instead blinded him.
He prances around covering his eye and skips in a circle. Benja plucks the eyeball out and tosses it aside. If I were able to throw up, I would have.
"You know it's over, Jenti," Benja states. His bracelets glow and shift into a bow and arrow.
"It's never over," I state, crawling into a ball.
I recite a prayer said often around the temple—something to encourage myself.
"Exalted Mother, praise be your name, please hear my voice! Grant me a sign so I may conquer my foes." I state. Shivering on the ground.
Benja drops his bow to his waist.
"What did you just say?" Benja the Butcher states. His voice was surprised and questioning.
"I was praying. To Aheia." I cough. Falling over and staring at the luminescent light piercing through my eye socket.
Benja the butcher takes his hat off. Revealing a similar mark to that of what's on my forehead. Three circles orbiting each other.
"I'm a Monadist. If I knew we were so much alike, I would've never tried to kill you," He states, tapping his fingers and thumbs together, "but it's too late for that, isn't it?"
My heart slows down, from the fast-paced 250 beats a minute down to 180, down to 110, down to 80. And it continues to drop, my eyes try to close themself without my interference. I knew it was over. I just didn't want to accept it.
4 pods crash through the roof. The Crisis Service Division is on the pods; they glow silver.
"My name's Esmes and I'm the leader, Demi-god son of Mutaar!" Esmes is a blonde Earthling, it seems, with brown eyes. He's tall and lanky, wearing a cropped vest on top of a white t-shirt. He has a beard.
"I am Angner, it rhymes with Anger!" Angner is a ginger man who's around 8-10 feet tall. He wears Federation standard-issue blue compression armor with white gloves and white boots. His hands are the size of my head, he's missing eyebrows, and his haircut makes him look like a carrot.
"I am Senitator the shapeshiftor!" Senitator is a crocodile-looking creature with a sun tattooed on his belly. His shorts are bulletproof, and he wears jewelry all over his body. His belly is white in contrast to his dark green body.
"And I am Elios the speed demon!" Elios is dressed in a silver one-piece compression suit with wings on his sandals and a silver cap. A lightning bolt strikes down his chest, and on his back is a black tree.
The chant, one after another, lining up tallest to shortest.
Angner runs towards Benja the butcher and throws an overhand punch, followed by an uppercut to Benja's chin, which he falls for. He throws up a block but fails. Angner punishes him for it by elbowing his nose.
Senitator picks me up and places me on a stretcher and carries me to a vehicle.
He looks at my boots and my eyes, he watches them closely, and watches them shut tightly.
"I'm sorry, Co'ol. But dude, you should've waited." He is about to place a blanket on my face.
"I'm not dead! I'm alive!"
I yell using the last bit of my energy before passing out on the stretcher. He places the blanket on my chest and wraps it around, stopping syre and blood from pouring out unnecessarily.
The vehicle is an ambulance, of course.
I woke up a week from then in the hospital. My skin was replaced with synthetic skin, and my heart was regenerated using 'organical nano-tech special devices.' My eyes are opened by the doctors so they can install a communication chip with the Federation. If I blink 'CO'OL' in Morse code, they send out a distress signal. To me, it was a blip. I was in the snow somewhere in a destroyed mall, and now I'm in a hospital.
Although I appeared fine, they were confident I was going to die there. By them, I mean the doctors.
A'roll opens the door, and it creeks open.
"Wake up, bro. It's been a week already. Your birthday is in two days, and we have a surprise for you." He sits by the corner of the bed with a book in his hand. I can tell by hearing him place it in his lap and flip through the pages.
"Or don't." He reads the book. The tone of his voice changes when he says or doesn't, as if he were on the verge of tears.
The doctor walks into the room and places a towel over my face.
"He has no immediate family we can alert–"
I muster the strength to arise, and I jolt up. My upper body aches.
"It's never over!" A'roll and I exclaim.
The doctor walks out of the room and hands me a form.
The form contains information that pertains to my recent surgery. Questions like 'Do you regret this procedure? Did this procedure endanger your life?"
I fill out the form and stand on the bed. A'roll's sitting on my uniform, he stands up and hands it to me before shaking my hand.
"We're going to beat Alberto B. Goode together. You and I, like we beat that space cowboy."
"Sounds like a plan." I walk out of the room holding my uniform tight to my chest and head towards a bathroom, slipping the uniform onto my body.
I overhear someone in the stall right next to me, destroying the porcelain bowl, but they're on the phone in an intense argument with somebody.
"No! Naku! Not Fack you! Listen dickwad!" He exclaims, exiting the stall without flushing. He washes his hands right next to mine, his Federation uniform bright blue– he outranks everyone I know.
I tip my head to him since I don't own a hat.
A'roll knocks on the door.
"We're ready, right?" He says, covering his nose and walking in.
"I guess so." We walk out of the hospital and head towards the shuttle parked in the parking-lot next to the building.
Bo waits with a boy, his hair looks like waves, his hairline being the shore. Caramel skin and really big ears. He's between 8 and 10 years old, and he wears a federation uniform.
"This is Aedar, his species ages to maturity really rapidly. Next year, he'll pretty much be one of us." Bo says, throwing a bouncy ball at the windshield.
Aedar grabs the ball and tries the same, and it breaks the windshield's upper corner. A piece of glass falls off the windshield, which, if it weren't for the protective barrier between our windshield and space itself, we would've been sucked out to death.
"We don't need it," A'roll shrugs, referencing that piece of glass.
"Yahflay said that before they shot him. Right here." I point to my forehead, then back at the windshield.
"Fuck you. Keep his name out of your mouth." A'roll bumps into my shoulder.
A'roll sits on a couch with his head in his hands, rubbing the top of his head and patting it.
"We've got a year left until civilian life. When we kill this bastard– capture him, we'll be goats. Greats at our craft," A'roll begins his chant.
Aedar pilots the ship and flies us to the last known location, Planet Rah of the Maat system.
Yes, all the planets are named after Egyptian gods. Yes, the people here worship them. They have proof their gods exist, and that's because they come down to them every thousand years; they've come down 250 times each. Every time they do signals the end of the largest civilization there.
Aedar reads that off the synopsis of the star system while drinking his juicebox. Shortly after we land on the largest continent of the planet. A barren wasteland.
Alberto B Goode wears a blue quarter zip with a black-fur tophat. He has a birthmark on the left side of his face. Amidst the orange dust and crumbled buildings, it's hard not to miss him.
He appears to drag the floor from under his feet and bring us towards him.
"When will these Federation guys learn?"
Angelo Wonder teleports behind Bo with a gauntlet on his arm. Angelo wears a plain white T-shirt with jean shorts; his belt is white and has a purple portal he can press as the buckle.
"I know, right?" Angelo screeches. His voice was high-pitched and squealing.
Alberto slides Angelo towards him, then snatches his gauntlet.
"Well, you've served your purpose." He grasps Angelo by his head and begins squeezing until blood pours out of Angelo's nostrils; he tosses him on the ground.
"Why would you kill your partner?" I ask.
"I'm a criminal, I make bad decisions and do bad shit," Alberto states, rolling his eyes.
A'roll takes his shotgun off his back and blasts a golfball-sized hole through Alberto's forehead, then another in his ribcage. He takes out his ray gun and fires twelve shots into his femur bone. Alberto falls over dead.
"You didn't even let us fight him!" Bo says.
"He killed a continent of people, Bo." A'roll states, blowing the raygun.
"I still don't know why they do that, there's never any smoke coming out of it or anything."
"Smoke, you say?" Alberto appears from an alleyway, his quarter zip now red, his top hat altered into a beret.
He slides onto the scene in dress shoes. He lifts his left foot, sending an Oxford shoe flying directly towards A'roll. The shoe shifts and glitches before turning into a knife, cutting A'roll's hand as he catches it.
"The Federation doesn't know who I am! And they sent the scum of the world to capture me. All you care about is fighting, and honor, isn't that true?" He states.
The Knife shifts back into the shoe, then onto his foot. Alberto places his belly to the ground and shoots himself like a torpedo right under my leg; I narrowly dodge. He crashes into a garbage can, and this garbage can starts to float.
He lifts the can and tosses it at me.
A'roll shoots Alberto again, he shoots the alleyway where he was waiting in a gold quarter zip, then he grabs the tophat for himself.
"Jackass."