Chapter Thirteen
Questions came at Kyle like a flood as he pushed his way through the crowd, which was getting bigger, since everyone was coming inside as he was going outside. Phones were being pulled out, and everyone was texting, calling, or receiving a text or call. Kyle ignored his own phone as it vibrated in his pocket. Everyone was talking at once, but Kyle didn’t answer anyone.
He knew he had to face this. No reason or why came to mind, just that he had to do this.
“Kyle, where are you going?”
He recognized the voice as Jules’. He didn’t stop to acknowledge or answer her. He kept walking until he had passed the entire crowd.
He stood outside by himself and watched as what appeared to be a huge red star came toward him. The incident reminded him of when he watched the blue being crash land in Colorado, except this time, he knew that this one was flying under its own power. This alien was flying directly toward him to face him.
Kyle didn’t move. The sky was lighting up as if it were day, except from a red sun. As it got closer and closer, objects around the yard started to move. Discarded trash was being blown around as if by the wind, and the tables and branches of the tree started to shake as well. Kyle could see the actual body of the alien, red veins like the light shown against a shiny black body. As it got closer, Kyle could see much more detail to it.
It was very similar to the blue being that landed in Colorado. It had the same basic body shape; very streamlined, with the front coming down to a point, and three ends to the tail. However, instead of four simple projections from the sides, this one had two giant wing-looking structures with a span probably more than twice the length of the creature’s body. It was still far off, but Kyle guessed that it would be close to the size of the blue alien, if not a little bigger.
Everything was shaking now. All of the tables were blown over, and debris was spinning around the yard as if in a vortex. Kyle stayed glued to his spot, not moving, not even blinking as the alien got closer and closer. He couldn’t move even if he wanted to.
Kyle felt someone pull on his arm. “C’mon, man, this isn’t funny,” the voice said. Kyle immediately recognized it as Justin’s. He tugged harder, slowly pulling Kyle inside.
“I have to do this,” Kyle said, struggling against Justin. His voice sounded as if he were in a trance.
“No you don’t, dude. Let’s just get out of here,” Justin insisted.
“I have to do this. I have to fight it,” Kyle explained.
“Why do you have to fight it?” Justin asked.
“Because I have to,” Kyle said.
“Not a good enough answer, dude. We’re going,” Justin said. He then wrapped his arms around Kyle’s waste, picked him up and began carrying him inside. The alien got closer and closer the whole while.
“Put me down,” Kyle said, completely devoid of emotion. Instead of waiting for an answer, he spread his arms and shot energy straight backwards. The force of the energy was like a Jet thruster pushing them away from the house and into the yard. Then he angled his hands straight down. Justin held on as Kyle lifted off.
“Uh, Kyle,” Justin said. Kyle ignored him as they slowly flew ten, twenty, forty, until they were sixty feet into the air. “Kyle, I’m slipping,” Justin said.
Kyle was hearing him, but his body was doing its own thing. “Kyle, I’m slipping,” Justin said again, only louder. Kyle could feel him slipping, but he couldn’t wake up from his current state.
“Kyle,” Justin yelled as he let go.
Finally, Kyle looked down. He saw Justin falling toward the ground. Then he looked back up to see the red thing coming toward him.
And his brain started working a hundred times faster. Within a split second, this was what he thought.
It’s coming. I have to fight it. I have to; it’s the only way. I have to fight. Wait. What? Why? Why do I have to fight? Why can’t I run? What am I thinking? I can’t fight that. What am I doing? Justin. I have to save him; he’s falling, and he can’t fly. Justin. Justin. JUSTIN.
“JUSTIN,” Kyle yelled. He let go of all the energy he had into one bolt fired directly at the alien. Kyle didn’t pay attention to whether that bolt hit or not. Without that energy, Kyle began to fall. Justin was about fifteen feet below him. Kyle drew more power and accelerated enough to catch up to him. However, he misjudged his speed, and ended up colliding into Justin. Tangled up in each other’s arms, Kyle tried to realign with the ground, but they were spinning on several axes. Kyle created his energy bubble in an attempt to slow them down, but he couldn’t find the ground.
Then an idea came to mind. A part of his mind for some reason was involuntarily always aware of where the red alien was. Using the alien’s location as a reference, he could determine which way was up and down, and thus where the ground was. It wasn’t hard to then find the source of the red light, line up with it, and see that they were probably only ten feet from the ground, and still falling fast. Kyle was forced to draw more energy so they wouldn’t hit the ground hard enough to break more than bones. Again, Kyle misjudged his own power, and instead of lightly landing, they stopped four feet above it, Kyle perfectly parallel. Good enough, Kyle thought to himself.
Justin and Kyle let go of each other, and Justin fell the last four feet, landing flat on his back. From that position, he said, “Don’t ever do that again.”
“I should say the same,” Kyle returned, still hovering. Then, he noticed that the world was still bathed in red light. Twisting, he lined up his body perpendicular to the ground, still hovering a few feet above the ground, and faced the red alien.
The majority of its body was jet black; if it wasn’t for the red vessels and its veil of red light, it would’ve been invisible against the night sky. It had come to a complete stop only fifty feet from where Kyle was hovering. If Kyle’s bolt had hit it, it showed no sign of damage either on its body or in its behavior. Kyle had a feeling that it was looking at him, although it nothing of a face for all he knew.
Then, without any warning or preamble, its vessels flashed. Kyle’s vessels flashed in sync with the alien’s, completely on their own. From the tip of the alien’s front, a huge red bolt of energy was shot toward Kyle. It was the size of a car, and its color made it look like a ball of lava.
Immediately, Kyle shot a blue bolt at the red bolt. He would’ve dodged it, except a bolt of that size would’ve wiped Emma’s house, and everyone inside, off the face of the planet. Kyle’s bolt appeared to be nothing compared to the red missile barreling toward him; yet, he luckily struck the underside of the bolt, deflecting it, sending it flying harmlessly above the neighborhood into the distance.
Kyle flew up to where he was level with the red primal, shooting three more bolts at it as he did so. Two of the three connected, although the red alien didn’t seem to notice. Once he started hovering at the alien’s elevation, it shot another large bolt at Kyle. Kyle swiftly dodged it and answered with four bolts of his own. This time, all four hit their target, knocking the alien away, but they didn’t appear to do anything else.
Kyle began to realize that he was at a major disadvantage. His power didn’t seem to be enough to hurt the alien, yet he dared not let one of its giant bolts hit him.
He tried a different strategy. He flew about a hundred feet above the alien, turned, and fired four more bolts. However, two of the bolts were spent neutralizing a red bolt that had been shot at him. The other two hit the alien, which was now flying up to meet him. The bolts did nothing to slow its progress.
Kyle panicked as the red alien barreled toward him like a freight train. He raised both hands and shot a flurry of bolts, not worrying to make them uniform in size. The alien used a large sweeping red laser to neutralize every single bolt Kyle shot. When all of the bolts were gone, the laser came at Kyle. Kyle dodged the first sweep, narrowly, by shoving himself backwards out of its way. However, Kyle didn’t expect the laser to turn around so quickly, and the second time the laser brushed his rig
ht side.
The blow was like being smacked aside by a bus. Kyle was knocked out of the air. He tried his best to once again slow his descent, but he was tired from the fighting; he had never used so much power so quickly before. However, he was able to coax energy out of his vessels, at least enough to not die when he hit the ground.
It wasn’t a soft landing to say the least; He hit, bounced, hit and rolled three times before coming to a stop. He staggered to his feet to find that he was standing in the middle of a street. People were running along the sidewalks around him, all going in one direction. Some of them were calling his name, and he recognized some of their voices. He looked in the general direction everyone was running from and confirmed his suspicion. This was the road he walked down to Emma’s party. The people around him must have been at the party, too.
Once he got a feeling for where he was, he began to check himself out. The right side of his shirt was smoking and black as if it had been on fire. He tore what remained of it off to see that he was bruised and bleeding from a gash on his head and his right arm. Warm blood ran into his right eye, causing him to wipe it constantly, and down his right arm, covering the blue vessels. Blood fell down his face and into his mouth. Nothing felt broken, but he was utterly exhausted.
And from the sky came the alien, which looked as fresh as when it had first appeared. Nothing Kyle had done had even scratched it.
How could he win? The thought didn’t come out of despair, but more like a challenge. A straight on attack obviously wasn’t working; he just wasn’t strong enough to last any longer doing that. But what could Kyle do? He drew as much power into his vessels as he could, which wasn’t very much to say the least; barely enough to keep him in the air for very long, but he had to do something.
A new thought came to Kyle. It was obvious that his powers had been spent up for the most part, due to the amount he had used in such a short time. If he could run out, maybe the alien could as well. From what Kyle had seen, it was already using so much more energy than Kyle probably ever could in just their short battle. Maybe he could force it to use most, if not all, of its powers.
Kyle once again took to the air. This time, he flew at the alien. He didn’t fire any bolts at it, yet dodged the car sized bolts that headed his way. He got within ten feet before he veered out of the way of another bolt and flew over the smooth surface of the alien. Once he was completely cleared the alien, it began to twist to its left in order to face him again. Kyle began to circle around again to his right, deliberately to where he would soon pass in front of the alien. The second the alien and Kyle were aligned, it fired. Kyle simply moved faster to dodge the bolt. Now that the alien found him again, it was following him as kept flying straight, and fired again. This time, however, Kyle dodged it by stopping quickly, letting the large bolt fly harmlessly ahead of him. Once the bolt was completely clear of Kyle, he flew underneath the alien, and this flew counterclockwise to the alien. They repeated the process, but Kyle was getting even more tired than when he started, and the alien didn’t appear any different. Whatever Kyle did, it seemed indifferent except for the fact that it was trying to kill him.
Kyle figured his constant movement would cause the alien to make a mistake. However, he was the one who made the mistake. At Kyle’s fourth attempt to confuse the alien by flying over it, the alien responded by going straight up. It was little more than a bump, but when Kyle touched the alien’s smooth body, all of the energy he had left him. Kyle slid down the side of the alien, his hands scrambling around for a handhold that just didn’t exist. Once he was free of the alien, he was able to summon power to slow his fall. It was a miniscule amount, but enough for him to not die when he smacked the ground flat on his back.
Grass. At least he landed on grass. If he was about to die, he was glad he would have this one small comfort. He looked around to see that he had landed in a front yard, but he didn’t know who lived in the house. The door was left open, but that was understandable, as closing doors behind themselves is one of the last things people think about when a giant alien battle is going on over their heads.
Kyle just laid there for a few seconds, resting and waiting. He had nothing left; it would probably be a miracle if he were able to get back up on his feet. To his left he watched as the red alien turn toward him, when at the same time Emma came into his field of vision.
She was tugging on his arm, crying, “Kyle, please get up.”
Kyle was flattered that Emma was there. Emma was there; right beside him. And the alien was going to fire the bolt that would finish him off any second now. Emma wouldn’t have time to get away.
At that moment, the alien fired its laser. In a split second, Kyle reacted by twisting and flipping over Emma’s shoulder, going from under her on his back to standing with her kneeling behind him. Energy poured into Kyle; energy he didn’t know he had. He quickly unleashed his own laser of blue energy, which met the red energy only feet away from where he stood.
Kyle felt the strength of the stream of energy like a tidal wave; it was like holding back a fast moving river. The initial shock of the two blasts almost blew Kyle’s arms out. He held on, though, but he wouldn’t be able to for long. The red stream of energy almost completely dominated Kyle’s blue energy.
Slowly but surely, Kyle’s power diminished. The only thing keeping him up was his will to protect Emma, who was frozen in fear on the ground behind him. Kyle could hardly stand himself dying at this point, but he couldn’t allow one of his friends to get hurt. If something happened to Emma and he survived, he would never be able to live with himself. If it was to be the last thing he did, he would protect Emma.
Then something started to happen; something Kyle could neither understand nor explain. His vessels, which were very dim, started glowing brighter. Brighter and brighter until Kyle could hardly see anything other than blue light. Kyle’s entire body ached, yet all of this energy was coming to him from an unknown source. It was so much energy, it was leaking out.
The red alien’s attack was drowned out by this new found power. The river of red energy was being shoved back at its alien with no effort what so ever from Kyle.
Kyle had no idea what was happening, but somehow power had returned to him, and more than he thought he ever had. The vessels glowed bright, so bright you could see them through his shirt, and strong, and started to spread and cover his entire chest and even a little on his face. To his amazement, he watched the gash on his arm just vanish, and blood stopped flowing into his eye.
Kyle was laughing for some reason. He couldn’t help it; it felt great. He looked up at the red alien in a new light. Nothing in its composure suggested that it had even noticed a change in Kyle. Kyle, on the other hand, felt like he had just been dealt a new hand.
Kyle couldn’t help it, but he spoke to the alien. “Now you’re going to get it.”
He let loose a single bolt at the alien, but it was unlike any bolt he had shot before. He put the force of his full power behind it. And it not only hit the mark, it blew it out. The bolt knocked the alien back as if it had been hit by a truck. Kyle shot two more bolts, ending with the same effect. He then jumped into the air, an energy bubble forming around him instantly.
The alien recovered enough to start firing a volley of giant red bolts at Kyle. Kyle ducked and weaved all around them, still laughing at how easy this was becoming, until a red bolt hit him straight on.
Kyle was surrounded by red energy, but his thin layer of blue energy kept it at bay until it dissipated.
Finally, Kyle had had enough. He changed direction and flew straight for the alien. It was still firing a storm of bolts in order to stop Kyle, but it never backed down. Kyle drew all the energy he had in him, and yelling the whole time, he flew straight into the red alien.
A flash of heat was all he felt as punched a hole right through the middle of it, from the tip of its front to the tip of its middle tail. Kyle landed and slid several feet afterward. Once he came to a stop, he immediatel
y turned to see about the alien.
First of all, Kyle could see straight through the hole he had made with his body. The alien was also twitching violently, and its vessels were flashing wildly. Kyle was scared for a minute that it might explode. After a few seconds, it started to break up as if it were withering away. Pieces of it would break off, but they would dissipate before they hit the ground. The whole mass started to sink and its light faded to complete darkness. It did this for about a minute before the entire thing just disappeared as if it had never been there at all. Kyle’s strength finally left him and he let himself go.