A Hero In The Dark

Chapter 152: Monsters Never Die

With another tendril of oily black ooze, she forces its way around my neck, strangling me. I reach to grasp at it to pull it away, yet I forget that its sharpness matches that of a battle-worthy combat knife. I only cut my palms at the attempt.

Still, it doesn't matter to me. I let it scratch and burn and tear at my skin while I continue trying to force the tentacle away as Phiri Dun-Ra uses it to lift me off my feet. Glistening with excitement and eager to make my death a reality.

Phiri Dun-Ra steps outside to our backyard, bringing me with her.

Using my legacy, she blasts upwards to the roof of my childhood home.

Looking out at our neighboring street, Phiri cackles and begins again, "Oh and what a great time of day it is! As all of your friends are still making their way home, this is what they'll see!"

She sets me down and the tendril around my throat unravels so I can breathe.

When my knees hit the black shingles of the slanted roof, I struggle to keep myself from sliding. Finding a handhold and gritting my teeth through the piercing pain of her oily appendage.

And through her legs, I can see kids and youth with backpacks over their shoulders walking home from school. Some of them alone. Some of them in larger groups. I even see some of my friends.

I can hardly keep my eyes open long enough to get a detailed glimpse of any of them, as I feel very much faint.

In seeing me impaled and on my knees below an alien that no one ever thought they'd see, every single person walking by stops to stare up at us. The Mogadorians pile out of my home onto the street to look up at us as well.

Phiri Dun-Ra laughs wildly.

"There's one little thing I want first before I end your existence Emily," Phiri says, projecting her voice so everyone on the streets can hear. "I want you to admit to my people here that I am their new Beloved Leader and I am the rightful heir to Mogadorian Progress."

Once said, the tentacle in my side twists and churns my inner organs and I have to stifle a scream. I don't want to scream. I don't want to scream in front of all my friends.

"Why-" I start, needing to stop for a breath. "Why would I- ever- say that?"

All Phiri does is smile and rolls her eyes partially before replying, "Good question. Although I believe that what you're really asking is what will happen if you don't."

She raises her palm and it emanates a bright azure light from my legacy. Then she aims it at the people on the streets. I'm barely able to get a single word out to stop her before a blast of energy shoots out directly near a kid; an innocent bystander.

I hear them all scream.

Some of them run. Only a few of them manage to escape this scene. Some of them run into the Mogadorian soldiers, who have set a perimeter.

"No!" I shout, trying to bring myself forward to stop her from endangering innocent lives.

"Declare it Emily. Or everyone down there will die," she threatens.

I grit my teeth through both the pain and foresight of the damage that she is causing to my lungs and insides. There must be some reason she wants me to say that; some reason that holds a strong significance for her. I have no idea what it is, but I can't bother to ask.

I choke to get a breath, try to speak, only choke some more.

"I- I can't," I spit.

Not even a second to wait that I instantly feel the tentacle of dark ooze twist and lurk inside me, causing a loud, painful, and nearly fatal scream.

It stops and I lie there.

I lie on the roof in total agony and despair. Out of breath. Dying.

"You can and you will," she only says, a stern expression on her face, refusing to look away from my crippled form at her feet.

With a hoarse grunt, I take a deep breath. One deep breath and Phiri Dun-Ra shouts.

A blue-sponge nerf bullet with an orange tip lands at my hands and knees and rolls down the back. In confusion, I follow it with my eyes.

Down the roof of the back of the house and onto the ground in the yard, my Brother stands 50 feet away holding a Nerf gun of mainly the color blue and orange and grey. He prepares his next shot, aims at the crazy mog woman, pulls the plastic trigger.

The bullet stops in midair.

He pulls the trigger again, it stops. Pulls it again, it stops. Pulls it again, Phiri yanks me by the tendril and dodges it. I grit my teeth and cringe at the tearing pain.

She jumps and lands feet first in front of my Brother, telekinetically pulling the toy in his hands out of his grasp and knocking him down to the grass.

I try to plant my weight; slow her down. Anything to stop her from advancing on him.

"Stop," I wheeze. "Don't, hurt him. Don't."

Phiri Dun-Ra does not listen. She takes a long stride toward him and my Brother crawls backward in the grass trying to get away. Her two tendrils of sickly destructive ooze dance around us and I fear of the possibility that which I dread to occur.

Though just as one of her slimy ooze-filled arms inch forward toward my Brother's chest, there is a mighty pow at the top of her bald head and she stumbles unbalanced.

Something struck her. Something hard and something fast.

I turn my head and to my left, my Father stands with a steel shovel in his hands. Clutched over his shoulder like a baseball player would when they step up to bat.

Phiri, angered and winded, yet still holding her ground strong sends a coil of ooze with a sharpened tip speeding toward him with full malice.

It happens so fast.

While the third of her tendrils lurks around me, my Father beats the one coming at him down with the shovel. It does little to stop it though he does not give up.

He steps on it, beats it, again and again. Until the shovel's steel is covered in the vicious black ooze from Phiri Dun-Ra's augmentations of her deceased Beloved Leader. Until the black slime of the coil is as wilted and frail as the flower that I brought back to life yesterday after school.

Only then does he take his foot off of it to ensure it is no longer a threat. Then looks to Phiri Dun-Ra with the shovel sagging low yet remaining tight in his grip.

"Release my daughter, you Monster," my Father barks with such divine determinism.

Phiri Dun-Ra does nothing but glance at me as I lie behind her feet on the hard ground, watching the blue sparkle of Loric Energy be extracted from my body and travel up my connection to her.

She turns back to my Father before responding.

"No," she says casually in a tone that I've heard before; not from her but from someone else. "No, I don't think I will."

It is then that I hear him gasp.

The shovel falls and clanks against the stone ground and I am shocked at the sight of what I see.

My Father standing motionless with an ooze tendril protruding from his chest. Through his back and out of his heart. Impossible to see it strike before he could jump out of the way.

My Father looks to me as he falls to his knees and I scream despite the pain of my lungs.

"DAD!"