PROTECTOR Episode 16

///PROTECTOR///
Episode 16
War Drums


     The large glass window at the top of the cathedral shakes, a tremor running through the ground. The preacher looks up, trying to discern the cause as everything becomes silent.

     Chris crashes through the window, a black form surrounded by a rainbow of colors. The wolf doesn’t attempt to slow down as he plows into the pile of tan robes and pins him to the wall with one arm.

     “You have seven seconds to explain why we were attacked by a man in silver armor… and I’ve just used five of them.”

     “Perhaps I can be of assistance in that matter?” A third person says, just out of Chris’s sight.

     The wolf lets the preacher fall to the floor, turning in order face the silver man, “Yeah, I guess you could…”

     The man’s voice, source hidden below a solid sheet of metal, explodes in the air, “Your… house… is an insignificant thing to lose.”

     The wolf’s ears twitch in anger, “Well excuse me for not being a masochist and for not enjoying my friends’ newfound lives being blown to pieces!”

     “If they had mattered at all to you, you would have gone back to where you belong.”

     “What’s that supposed to mean?”

     “‘You should have gone home.’” The voice becomes a lifeless monotone, “You are a liability to them.”

     “Tell me something I haven’t heard before.”

     “She’ll die, for real this time.”

     Chris’s ears finally stop twitching, “You don’t know that.”

     “I do know that, and you know it too: If you remain here, you will forget about the world that you come from. It will slowly be overrun... then…

     The man points a finger upwards, making a gun with his hand, “Bang goes the planet,” he brings it down, slowly, drawing the arc of an axe, “and then this place will fall… and the next, and so on until there is nowhere left for anyone to survive.”

     “What makes you think I will believe what you’re telling me?”

     The silver figure raises a hand, shattering reality and transforming everything into pitch black. Teardrops float behind his glowing armor, a single one enlarging and allowing the wolf to look through it.

*******

     Zar zips through the traffic on a hovering piece of metal, relentlessly pursued by three ulai, their bodies flying through the air. Turning around, the human draws two pistols and fires them in rapid succession.

     One of the creatures falls onto the hood of a car, its body shattering glass.

     The blonde human leans to one side, still looking backwards, and flies off the side of the highway and into the city streets below. A psionic blast dents the ground behind him just as he lands and he pulls the triggers again, causing the second to collapse on the pavement.

     Shifting to look forwards he spins to the right, darting through an alleyway as more take up pursuit.

*******

     Paronis looks down as Zar passes through the narrow passage, bracing herself for a jump.

     In a second she is in the air, then on the stone base of the alleyway running at full speed away from her comrade. Paronis dashes to her right, down the main street, using the fastest path to the communications array.

     The ground to her right dents from an invisible bomb.

     Glancing back once, she continues her desperate dash, determined to outrun her new pursuers.

*******

     Zar tucks in his elbows, his arms scraping the sides of two trash-cans. When he reemerges into the streets the human swerves to his left so sharply he touches the ground with his hand. The thrusters on the back of the hovering board under his feet flaring and causing the wind to tear around him.

     He crosses over in front of Paronis, dropping a small ball to he ground.

     The ulai collide with each other and fall around the device, emitting a shrill cry just as it detonates.

     The rabbit-eared woman leaps onto his transport, “Next stop-”

     “Communication-station!”

     Paronis smacks him in the back of the head for the unnecessary joke.

*******

     Chris raises an eyebrow to the white figure as the orb slowly closes in on itself, becoming a teardrop once again, “Looks like they can handle what comes their way.”

     “Even though you know that fifty percent of the city is ulai?”

     “They’ve been in worse situations, they won’t need my help.”

     “Are you sure?”

     Reality returns in the form of the stone cathedral.

     The wolf begins walking away, “I’m tired of playing the hero: I do something and another situation arises, I try to do the right thing and am hated for it.

     He turns around once, “Let someone who is a real role-model be ‘it’ this time and leave me alone,” then heads out the door.