The web 1: Multiverse wars

Chapter 1: Shuggarian escape: Pappa's turn

The escapade of a desperate man who opposed the rule of the Ether, which was a huge
alliance spanning many universes. Year: Pre Rubelin (PR) 10, or exactly 779 million -seven-
years AD.

“Shemun, you sure about this? One step off and the Criags kill the rest of us... and that too if we
survive.”
The guy who was called Shemun replied, “And if we don’t go, we die anyway.” he was apparently the
leader of the revolt too.

It was a dark room. Hard to see anything but three pairs of shining eyes. Green, Orange, Orange. The
green one blinked. Then he said, “Rob, I know you are thinking about the long way, but that’ll take too
long. And then the Criags find us late, and we die.”
A new voice came in, it was gruff, “I think we should go with Shemmy, and go the short way, a few of us
will survive. If we lose the discussions, revolt. And if we go late, our abilities get undermined.”
“Doesn’t look like a plan and anyways, if we fall, our abilities are undermined. And there are about
seventeen of us.” it was ‘Rob’ who said this.

Suddenly, light entered the room. A brownish tinge appeared across the floor. Another pair of glowing
eyes entered. Darkish yellow.

“Shrane? What happened?” asked Shemun.

“I don’t know how to say this...”

Shrane paused. Then continued, “I really can’t... like... just...”

“Just tell me straight.”
“Your sons... they died. According to the Criags, anyway.”
“They... what. THEY KILLED HIM – THEM?!” Shemun’s reply was dry. It echoed across the room.

There was a short sound of stamping. A creak of a door. Dark beige filled the room. A door slammed.

The gruff voice said, “Rob, me, and Kreash go through the shortcut, deal with them, and revolt the hell
out of them anyway.”

Both of them nodded, as you could tell from the movement of their glowing eyes.

Dark beige filled the room again. The door closed politely this time.

*****************
A dark figure slinked through the Shuggarian forests, hiding from the vicious creatures which
unknowingly guarded The Base. The Base was basically a control base which was filled with Criags
(people of the Ether) and had full power over all the activities in the area. Criags were allowed to shoot
to kill the Shuggarian natives (Shuggar is a universe which has been captured by the Ether alliance) by
law. Basically slavery, by the law.

So, the person traversing the forest swiftly shifted, hiding behind trees for cover. Just in case.

There was a shifting noise right behind him. He whirled back, lifted his hand, which had a small-

PEW! BOOM! KABAAM!

-but potent gun. There was a loud roar, the roar of a tiger, except that it was not a tiger. And then a soft
thump.

The man had green eyes. Green shining eyes. With pearly shining tears. The trees before him were on
fire. He sighed, turned back, and continued. After a few steps, he stopped again, put on some futuristic-
looking goggles, and scanned the air. he mumbled, “A worlder three stines (two kilometers) away, no
criags, nor any burbobs, and no Skreks. Good.”

He looked straight ahead. “The Base’s 13 stines (8.7 km) away. I should make it in three hours...” the
voice was still cracked and dry.

“Why can’t I just die?”

He replied to himself, “NO, you won't die.”

He moved on silently. He heard a rustle, but it was he himself. Be quiet!

The rest of the journey was uneventful, if the dark brown forests’ creepiness is ignored. But now, on to
the hard part.

He squinted into the entrance. Two glocmen (Shuggarian native species. Same as Shemun and his
revolting gang) watching over it. Did they bother reactivating the kinetic shields? Shemun picked up a
stone, and hurled it at the guards. It harmlessly fell past them.

A smirk. Point the gun at the sweet target...

Pew... BOOM!

And confused screams. The blast was strong enough to knock the armored security unconscious, but not
that large so as to avoid unwanted attention.

Another smirk. “And that is the best part about making your own weapons. You can make it as deadly as
you want!”

Password to go through? Shame. Virus in, slave command out, no password needed. Ever.

“And that is the best part of being a genius!”

He picked up one of the guards’ guns. A Rageplane XIV. One of the best in class. Entrance security got
better guns than they themselves were.
He looked ahead. A bustling city. Empty for the moment; criags need to sleep too!

“Something looks off. Almost no security for a ‘The Base’” the leader murmured to himself. He retreated
behind. Suddenly, a ghastly sound of a flying machine came into existence. He covered his eyes with
hands containing three fingers; the criags could identify him with the glowing eyes. A heavy zoop came
down and a crashing sound occurred. Then the crafts went up ahead.

“Revolt, maybe?” Shemun whispered to himself, guessing that his fellows could have officially started it.
And the crafts had to neutralize it.

My friends might need to get some guns!

He paused for a while, looked up. The flying thingies had moved on. Straight ahead, two security criags
were chatting away.

Shemun stretched his ears to listen. Could It be a possible confirmation of a revolt? Could it be a
complaint about more and more glocmen dying? Unlikely. Anything about Rubble and Penald, (his foster
sons) maybe?

The robotic voice of a criag sounded, “Ant whuttabut tuu pyutting we ate yistertay? Yit taastit niss t’
me.”

The accent, as usual, was terrifyingly stupid. And funny. The revolt leader wanted to laugh. The criags
couldn’t spell ‘ee/i’ without putting a y before. All their ‘du’s were ‘t’. And a whole lot of stuff worth
mentioning.
In case you didn’t get it, the criag had said, “And what about the pudding? It tasted nice to me.”

“Ai lyik’t yit tyoo. Wat doo you twink yabut tu rey-vyult.”
“Tose tamn glowk-men. Can’ut twey jusht shwut up fyor ay wuh-ile. Jusht shuffer fyor tyuwoo
geyneyraytions, ywoo (censored words) -ersh.”

(Translations: “I liked it too. What do you think about the revolt?”

“Those damn glocmen. Can’t they just suffer for a while? Just suffer for two generations you (censored
words) -ers!

Shemun would have chuckled. If his life wasn’t to terrible at the moment. He had lost his wife, Hilda
(Yes, that’s an earthling name) three months ago. Two of his best friends had died two months ago. And
now, Rubble and Penald. Shemun wondered what the kids’ classmates were thinking. Probably how they
were brave people?

“Ay! Wayt’s wit tose yais?” (Oi! What's with those eyes?) the creaky sound of a criag.
“Shit!” the energetic reply of Shemun.
“Hyands up, ant tey goons in your pockyet. Qywick!” (Hand up, and the guns in your pocket. Quick!)

Shemun obliged, grinning from the inside, scowling from the outside. Got a plan! Legs exist, man. He
slowly lifted his hands up, trying not to look happy, and got up from his crouching position. His green
eyes were shining brighter than ever.

The criags were looking pretty triumphant. One of them lazily pointed their gun at our protagonist (at
the moment and shouted out, “Pollyow ush.” (follow us)
Nope. Shemun thought in his mind. Not at all

A wide, wicked smile...

Kick the gun at your waist...
And...

...with a loud boom, the two criags were thrown off their legs. The revolt leader gripped the gun with his
hands and launched four shots each at the heavily armored criags. A lot of colourful smoke had formed.
The perfect stuff to run away under. And so, he did.

Now, he had to rush to Ryushoy’s home to confirm his findings about the revolt and the deaths of his
(foster) kids. “Ryushoy”, he thought with a sigh. Ryushoy was the leader of the revolt earlier before he
promoted Shemun for the job. He had come up with a seriously superb plan to spy on the Ether. The
plan was that some people would secretly bomb the enemy areas. While the war was going on, Ryushoy
would act like a ‘messenger’ to the criags, who would then reach the destination and gun down the
robotic dummies of the rebels. The real damage, meanwhile, happened from the long-range missiles
remotely operated by Ryushoy. It had three advantages.

-The rebels actually dealt damage.

-Ryushoy was honoured and given all the facilities that a V.I.C (Very Important Criag) had. Which meant
he could easily spy on criag activities.
-It softened the Ether towards Shuggarians

There was a Telip (Teleporter-like thingy which zips superfast along its path. Does NOT teleport) stand
with a solid roof. Shemun wondered why Ryushoy could not be contacted through contacters (Phones).

He slipped under the Telip roof for protection against overground patrols.

Strangely, he heard a distant sound of lasers. Something told him that even in this city of criags, this
wasn’t normal. He continued doing what he had done in the forest. Except that here, there were light
poles and other futuristic stuff that were not trees.

He observed the surroundings. Most of the buildings were a metallic while, with colored lines
interrupting in a very minimalistic and strategic way. The buildings came in various shapes and sizes, and
the streets were fully uniform. With one white and grey track for Telips, while the pedestrian crossing
alternated between Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Cyan and Red. The sky was a deep violet at the
moment due to the fully filled Sfrite clouds. (Sfrite = Water)

It all gave the city a unique look. One of creepiness and thrill when the sky was deep violet, one of
majesty with beige and pink skies, and one of artistry when the sky was grey. As much as he hated the
criags, he could not help but admire the city. The noise of lasers grew as he came closer to it.

“Pew?” he absentmindedly told himself.

“Pew!”, came a very familiar reply. And then a laser bolt landed right in front of him.

“What? Ryushoy? It’s you?” exclaimed Shemun.

“No, Robshum decided to teleport here and adopt my voice all of a sudden.”
“Yep. It is you.”
Ahead, he could see the two flashing yellow eyes darting around with its owners’ body. He could also
see two dumb criags trying to hit him. They failed so miserably that Shemun began wondering whether
he was too good of a solder or if this base itself was guarded by recruits. He pointed his gun... This is
almost becoming a routine now.

Wide smile...
Free death for two! Boom!

He slammed two more explosive laser missiles into each of them just to be sure. Ryushoy looked at him
with a calculating expression, then said, “That gun is surely not for stealthy guys”
“Trust you to find a bad thing in everything.” came the reply. The gunner glared at him. Ryushoy gazed
back. Then he looked away and told the leader to follow him. He did.

They walked along a seemingly random route in which the next building seemed to be worse off than
the first one until the buildings became worse than their home. The spy walked into the worst of them.
Then he gave a sad smile and told him, “This is the trash that I got from the criags. Why did you not get
any good stuff from me? Well, they took away my contacter. And my V.I.C? Just bullshit from the Base
officials to make them look like good guys. Their tactic did not work. So did ours not.”
“And what about the criags who were chasing you?”
“Oh, I am wanted now. I apparently assualted a criag lady-”
“There are criag ladies?!”
“Uh, yeah. And they are even uglier than the males.”
“Oh, the ugly ones are ladies...”
“Yeahhh... so anyways, I apparently kicked her in the face and broke a ‘bone’”
“THEY HAVE BONES – I MEAN... THEY ARE NOT JUST FAT BONES?!”
“I don’t know. Maybe in the Ether, bones mean arms.”

Shemun looked at him harder. His green eyes darkened, then lightened, and finally brightened. “So, it’s
true?”
“No”, the yellow eyes looked straight ahead at him. Ryushoy continued, “Ever seen any glocman with
eyes which are not red, orange and yellow?”
It was Shemun’s turn to say no.
Ryushoy further said, “And you know the color of your eyes?”
“Green?”
“Yep. And that’s rare. The last time it happened, it was in a radioactive explosion. And guess who it
was?”
“Bruce Fries? He’s the only green-eyed guy know in Shuggar.”
“Exactly. He was smart, strong, and could wield the energies.”
“Really? How do you know?”
“Being a great-grandson doesn’t hurt. Heck, that’s half the reason I was the revolt leader.”
“But what about me? I am not his descendant or anything... and I wasn’t ever involved in a radioactive
explosion. Or a leakage.”
“You were. Hell, that’s why you are an orphan. Your mum died a day after giving birth to you. You had
red eyes.”

Shemun looked at himself in surprise. What was he supposed to do then? The he remembered
something. “Hey, Rubble has green eyes, and Penald has blue. What about them.”
Ryushoy showed surprise, “has? I thought they –”
“Yeah, they did...”
“Sorry man... but don’t get too worked up. Or else you die. So, whatcha going to do now?”
“I don’t know...”
“Shut the hell up. You are going to get a Breeze M7 and then you are going to run away to Blockscape or
starlight.”
“Breeze, you say?” Shemun looked a bit more attentive after Ryushoy’s rough talk, “Where is it?”
“Get out of this street from the left of my house, go straight ahead till the sixth telip stop. There will be a
large building to your right. Go straight through it, while staying unnoticeable, of course. There will be
an even taller building which they call the ‘ayr shryons’ (air hangar in Croijin). Do NOT go inside. Take the
left until you find a lightly green tinted building with red designs. Go in through the windows, you’ll find
the plane through the basement.”

Shemun nodded, “Awesome... so I can go now?”

“I guess not. It's day. Harder to be stealthy.”
“Oh, okay.” he paused awkwardly, “So what do we do now?”
“Wait a bit. Today's going to be very interesting.”
Shemun grinned, “With you every day is interesting.”

Ryushoy crinkled his eyes and nodded. That was a gesture of affection in Shuggar. The thing was that
not all Glocmen could crinkle their eyes, nor could teenagers.

Quite rudely, they heard a thunk and criags talking in their own language. Ryushoy narrowed his eyes,
and jumped up in an instant. Shemun was already up, awaiting advice. The spy waved his hands,
gesturing to follow, which Shemun obviously obeyed. Both, silent as shadows, slinked into a dark corner
of the house. They escaped through a hole which was obviously as old as the whole existence. Outside
the hole, they fell into a short tuft of grass. Shemun could see Ryushoy staring at him.

“What?” he asked, feeling uncomfortable at the sun-yellow eyes staring at him. They mixed a bit with
the pink of the sky. The eyes looked a bit romantic... but he was not a woman. And the look he was
giving him at the moment was not friendly at all. It was a bit cold, with a shade of concern.

Who am I to judge eyes and feelings anyway? I am a cold warrior, a rebel, and I am proud of it.

His group of rebels were the only thing he cared about – and were not dead. Ryushoy kept staring at
him.

“Dude”

He was ignored. The criags could be heard sifting through the home. They would be searching around
soon. The duo needed to escape.

The air hangar.

His curt reminder to himself. After what seemed like ages, Ryushoy looked down, took something out of
his belt which sounded a neat twink, and placed it in both hands before him. His voice was a rasping
whisper, “The shadow. Run – I mean fly off to Zoruana. Train yourself there, and give it to someone you
once thought dead. And worthy.”
“What...?”
Ryushoy squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again, they were as black as charcoal. Full, whites
and pupils and irises and everthing. He rasped, “Trust me. It may be confusing to you at first, but you’ll
get everything soon.”

The voice was unnatural, almost like a demon. Shemun looked at him with horror. He took the thing
from his hands, then, somehow knowing what he had to do, he squeezed it a bit and pressed its lower
side, which clicked like a button. A lightsabre-like blade shot out, except that it was pure black. So much
so that it looked two dimensional, and looking at it from the above, it seemed that the was a hole it the
grass. Shemun looked back to his companion, whose eyes were back to normal by now. Ryushoy
blinked, and then said, “You heard me. You will follow what I said, won't you?”
“Of course, I will. I will die trying. I trust you, man.”

His companion smiled, “Fist bump?”

And so, they did. A fistbump.

One criag barked to another. It seemed to be of rage. Ryushoy grinned, “And that, my fellow, is very
good news!”
“What?”
“It’s been a while... kill them all!”

Shemun did not wait to ask why. He sprang up from his crouching position and clicking his blade on
again, he sliced at a laser bolt, from the pitiful laser guns the criags had. He quickly jumped up high and
sliced a criag’s head clean off his enemy. The edges of the black blade lightened into a very dark grey. He
quickly backstabbed a criag who was aiming to backstab Ryushoy with his laser gun. He hacked another
criag into two and muttered to himself, “I felt worse killing those worlders than I feel killing the criags.
These things are worse than animals!”

Are they really?

Not a question to ponder at the moment. A pathetic laser hit his armored calves but dealt no real
damage. He quickly dashed forward and killed three Criags in an arcing sweep. Then, to kill a remaining
one, he thrust it forward, handsomely lunging forward. He saw a lightsabre shaped like a machete being
driven into a criag and painstakingly being taken out. In another arcing sweep, shemun killed another
pack of shooting criags. Then he realised how easily the blade was slicing through the enemy. There was
almost no difference in the air and the metallic criags – to the sword anyway. He found another “The
Shadow” being tossed toward him, and he could see Ryushoy, with his twin lightsabres, on a pile of five
to ten criags. Shemun grabbed it, turned it on and did a front-flip forward with the Shadows spinning.
Three more criags were transported for free to deaths domain.

Ryushoy looked savagely at the lone criag left, who started mumbling something loudly. Ryushoy dashed
forward at the speed of light, and in a flurry of the same,

“killed it”

The former leader looked ahead at his successor, and told him, “I am going back to the rebel, you do
what I told you to. If a criag sees you, kill it.”
It...
does a criag deserve to be called an it? What if they are also... slaves? What if they are not really
despicable? What if – what if they are doing to us what we are doing to worlders?

He closed his eyes. This argument with himself was not going to help.

He went silently down the crowded pavements and blended in. Wearing a security criag’s uniform
wasn’t so bad. He went into the tall building, unnoticed by anyone. The grandeur of criag’s living only
served to enrage him. The only reason they were living a nice life was because glocmen were suffering.
He needed to get into the air hangar.

Through the tall building, he coolly went in front of the security, who could clearly see he was a
glocman. But he could kill them off. The communications of the enemy were down. That was the reason
they were able to kill the small squadron of criags finding Ryushoy; no communication, no
reinforcements, no trouble, free kills.

With the beheaded security behind, he walked ahead with the cold grace of a smooth serial killer –
which he certainly was, for the criags. The Shadow(s) in his hands, his hard-green eyes bright, his face
handsome but scarred, fit waist with a utility belt containing his own gun and a ‘borrowed’ Rageplane.
His legs were covered skeletally with a thin armor, while his chest had a protective silver vest. His hair –
actually horns (Glocmen have so many horns that they look like hair) – glistening with sweat, pointing
here and there just like an anime. His eyes... he was a man who had suffered, had nothing to lose, just
like her.

She was supposed to kill him. But she might have found someone to lose. Kylie followed him as he sliced
his way into the air hangar. She followed him guiltily. She was on the verge of crying, but being a trained
assassin, the human managed to silently slip in.

I... how can I kill him? A man... just like me. With no tactical disadvantage too. Just how?

The glocman took long, confident strides through the narrow entrance till he reached a square (of
corridors). There were random symbols written on it. Shemun could read it.
“Main hangar to the left... to the right, there is some...” he squinted, “Weapons? What does
qyuleshyabok mean? Of yeah, Laboratory.”

He took out his gun. Looked at it, then put it back. “Wonder if they’ll ever make this?” he murmured to
himself, “Too much on stake. No mischief allowed right now.”

He smiled, probably thinking about what he would have done if he really had nothing to lose. He took a
left, his strides turning into cautious steps. The assassin silently followed. Shemun used every object that
could cover him to hide himself. Not that it was much use; he went into the air hangar in an uneventful
trip.
“Okay,” he told himself, “You have to get an Etherverse, fly off on it, and go to Zoruana. There you
become a monk till your son comes. Then you’ll know what to do.”
He countered himself, “And if one thing slips, your plan... zero. Listening to myself proves that I am
crazy.”

Meanwhile, Kylie was telling herself, “Just kill him, if you want to live. You have never failed before.
Come on!”
While Shemun was in his monologue, she had come close enough to chop his neck off. She removed he
blade, a metal one for silence, and struck.

Or tried to. The powerful rebel kicked powerfully at her face and she flew away, behind. He was livid
now. Enough of evilness.

“ENOUGH IS ENOUGH, YOU FITHY CRIA –”

Kylie fell face down into the ground. Shemun looked at her and stopped. “You’re a human?”
No reply. Shemun raised the set of small soft horns right above the eyes (aka eyebrows) in alarm. He
never knew that humans were in it too. He removed his Shadows, and held them close to her throat.

“No... please...” her voice came out.

The reply was given with a savage voice, “If humans are evil, they die. And so do you.”
“We... we are not... evil...” the ‘L’ trailed off.

His blades swiped off. Not at the throat, but at the metal swords in her hand. Then they returned to
their original position.
“In case you want to fight me, keep it in mind that I have killed millions of your filthy allies.”
“They... are not human’s... allies.” the voice was a whisper. Shemun’s blades came closer, “How can I
trust you, just after you almost killed me? Explain!”

She rolled on to her back, and saw the menacing green eyes. Even more menacing now. “They’ll kill me
if they find out I told you. And let you alive, by the way.”
“You’ll die later if you tell me. Their communications are down anyway, and if your explanation satisfies
me, well, I might help you survive.”

The edges of the Shadows darkened to pitch-black again.

“How much time do you have?”

“As much as you want.”
Kylie let out a shadow of a smile. “I need only one word. I am a slave.”

Instead of being shocked, he replied evenly, “So was I. What’s new in that?”
“Not of the Ether, of the partner of the Ether”
This did shock him, “They have a partner?”
“The king of Zoruana.”

He retracted the black sabres. “A person from Starlight, which supposedly doesn’t exist anymore, is a
slave of another forgotten universe?”
“Mind, I am a lot of trouble.”
He chuckled, “Good. As you can see, so am I.”

Shemun closed his eyes. Squeezed them. Kylie got up with great effort. The kick had been quite
powerful.

“How did your kind survive?” he opened his eyes, and asked.
“It looked like Zoruana was living in the dark and doing slave trade with all sorts of extinct species... like
humans.”
“Do they have glocmen?”
“No.”

Shemun blinked. “How did you get here? Why kill me?”
“No idea. The ether gave me a spaceship – perma-auto-pilot, of course – and brought me here. Why kill
you? I don’t know, but he seemed pretty scared.”
“Why you?”
“I am the best assassin he’s got.”
“Really? You’re not that good. While you were busy slinking up to me in the grass while I was killing
criags, I saw your sword. I dunno why, but you paused.”
“How did you know that it was an assassin?” she narrowed her eyes a bit.
“I am a spy myself, and the first rule of being a good spy is – at least in our rebel groups – never forget
that your equipment is your body.”

Kylie looked down. Then she suddenly shifted away and pressed her back against the wall. Shemun did
the same.
“Shit, that’s the noise of criags, you can shoot?” his hiss sounded.
The accented banter of the criags grew louder. Kylie smiled, “I can do everything.”
He tossed her his good old gun. And clicked his Shadows on. Then he rushed behind a memorial of some
weird criag. Kylie dissappeared somewhere he couldn’t see. The criags, however, he could see now. In a
matter of seconds, the dark blade of The Shadow tasted yet another criag. Somewhere behind, he could
hear a familiar boom and knew that Kylie had worked the gun. He fell ahead doing a somersault and
swept away the heads of a few criags. There could not be more than fifteen now. He thought he heard a
scream but ignored it.

He laughed to himself while killing off the criags, and his eyes turned black, just like Ryushoy had. It did
nothing bad to him though, other than making killing look like a joke, which the criags obviously
deserved. He tried remember how long it had been since the last time even a single criag had died. He
couldn’t.

Maybe that’s the reason their defenses are so low?

He sliced the last criag into two. And looked up. Kylie was hanging from up there, and she... had a hole in
her leg?
“No armor?” he asked casually. His eyes were green back again, but his bloodlust hadn’t worn off, which
meant he didn’t really care much about the injuries. Kylie silently nodded, frowning in pain. “Damn, it
hurts?”
“Course.” her voice was constricted in pain. For some reason, he laughed.

“HEY!” she screamed, possibly louder than a banshee.

His bloodlust wore off with that scream. “Shit! I’m sorry. You need any help?”
Then he noticed the pool of blood below her. Kylie fell down right after. “I’m a madman. Damn me!”

He picked her up and ran off...

“She’ll be okay, man.”
“You sure?”
“My dad was good at healing people, dude.”

Ryushoy had a slight edge to his voice as he spoke. Shemun recognized it and stayed quiet. Ryushoy
blinked at him and said, “So, what made you care for a human you barely know?”
“You know that already, first of all, she is a good source of information,” he paused.

Ryushoy put a needle attached to a tube which went who knew where on the back of her hand, and told
him, “Continue.”
“And we both can relate to being slaves. Saving another one is a good thing. Third thing, she’s extra
ammunition and pretty alright at covering up her tracks –”
“And yours”
“Yeeeaaaahh? I guess I am sloppy at that.”

Ryushoy narrowed his yellow eyes. “And what about your stupidity?”
“What? How do you know about that?” there was alarm in his voice.

“That was because The Shadows initiate bloodlust in you, which makes you feel less sensitive towards
emotions and others and makes you stronger. In case you didn’t know, three laser bolts hit your
unarmed stomach but nothing happened to you. I figured that bloodlust cause you to mock the human
and shen fell unconscious?”

Shemun looked at his stomach. There were three light scratches where his armored clothes were torn
off. He looked at his blades carefully, narrowing his eyes very suspiciously.

“You need to learn the ways of the darkness to master that, my junior friend,” Ryushoy said. He smiled
at the sight of the alarmed rebel. It was a benign smile. Then his face hardened.

“You have to go to Zoruana. Whether your companion likes it or not.”

“I know, stupid.”

Shemun looked angrily at his friend. Why won’t he just tell me everything, that jerk? Go her and you’ll
know, go there and you’ll know... what the serious nether?

Ryushoy looked at him back, faint sympathy in his eyes. He could guess what the fellow rebel was
thinking. “Trust me, can’t you?”
“I guess I should?”
“Of course.”

Kylie opened her eyes. She looked from Shemun to Ryushoy.

“Sorry about that outburst...” she whispered, loud enough for both of them to hear.
“I should be the one who’s sorry,” came Shemun’s reply, “It’s my bloodlust that caused it.”

Kylie raised her auburn eyebrows, “Bloodlust?”

“Yeah, you begin to feel less –”
She interrupted, “I know, it’s when you wanna kill and kill and kill. And the sight of hurt pleases you.”
Ryushoy observed, “Same as what I said. Just in a different wording.”
Shemun blinked, looked down, then looked back up at Ryushoy, “Got extra lightsabres?”
“Loads of them. I should have given them to you a long while ago.”
“Whatever.”

“Kylie, you good to go?”

“Yeah.”
“Come on now, then. Wait... how will you go through the crowd?”
The assassin smirked, “Think for yourself, I got this.”

Emotionless, Shemun, went for the door. He looked back at Ryushoy, who smiled at him.

And this is how brothers become fathers. Who knew?

He remembered being a father. To his adopted sons. Who were dead now...

“Shemun?” it was Kylie’s voice.

“Oh yeah, sorry.” he opened the door and went through it. Kylie disappeared. Shemun hunched himself
trying to make himself small, and it worked. He smirked as he went through the tall building and soon,
into the air hangar.

The dead bodies of the security were still there, unnoticed by anybody. He guessed that was because
the communications were down. He smiled to himself. Just then, Kylie landed softly from somewhere
above a few feet ahead.

“You know what? You are a good assassin.”

“Thanks?”

He ran ahead, took the left, and soon facing the huge area of the real air hangar, lodged himself into
some machine below, for protection from the eyes of the criags. He saw Kylie entering and disappearing
somewhere above. He set his sights to an Etherverse. Luckily, it was pretty close. He just had to go
stealthily and avoid the chatting group of criags in a centre. There were probably fifty of them, which
actually is something that he could not handle.
Then again, they may not be armed.

He suddenly heard a soft thump behind himself, and instinctively took out his lightsabres.
“Chill, it’s just me,” the familiar voice sounded.
“Kylie? How did you find me?”
“I saw you going there, stupid.” she smirked.
“But I thought – well, whatever.”

She scouted out through some holes. Noticing the group of criags, she looked at him back and asked,
“What about the group of criags in the center?”
“Too many, we need to sneak up to their Etherverse.”
“Why Ether-whateveryousaid?”

Shemun jumped at another plane and hid inside its bombing shell, “Because that’s the best one without
a lock. Or that’s what I think.”
Kylie followed, “That’s all?”
“No, it’s fast, can escape like a champ, and has a cool name. Perfect for us.” he glanced cautiously
around to make sure no criags were looking at them. “And it has double and single pilot. Which is
honestly perfect.”

He smiled evilly at his companion, who glared at him, “You are going to do the entire thing. Not me.”
Shemun laughed, “Alright, alright.” he leapt ahead, rolled to the ground, and reached the third plane.
Kylie followed and hid herself inside an escape pod. “Smart,” frowned her rebel friend, as he went right
inside the unlocked pilots’ cabin.

“But not smart enough.” he booted the plane in noisily steered it, pointed the guns at the criags, who
had noticed it and were running helter-skelter, and...

“Kylie, follow!”
“What? You aren’t killing them?”
“No need!”

The rebel leader jumped right out of the plane and ran past three of them while the scared criags were
stuffing themselves through the exit. They are animals, and they behave likewise too!

Kylie followed him; she even shot his gun a bit close to them that scared them even more. She laughed a
manic laugh that surprised Shemun.

“No wonder you are the prime assassin of that king; you could kill anyone with that laugh of yours!”
She frowned, “Whatever. I do not like my laughs turned into weapons.”
“Not like your master never told you that”

Kylie shuddered, “Shut up!”

“Sorry” Shemun realized that he had gotten her nerve, “I should have known. There are a nether lot of
people who do hate recounting their sessions being the masters’ right-hand man –” he looked at Kylie,
“– or woman”

They had reached the plane. Kylie quickly jumped in and settled herself in some sofas. Shemun followed
suit. He looked weakly at the woman and said, “So I guess I am the one who mans the plane?”
She looked comfortably at him, “No need to seduce you into doing that, then? Well, yeah. For the time
being at least.”
The rebel looked affronted, “Seduce? What the nether!” he closed the door and booted up the large
Etherverse. The system asked for the passcode.

Kylie sat up upright, “Passcode?”

“No big deal. You’re new to the Shuggarian ether, young girl. They don’t know a thing. For example,” he
typed some random stuff without looking, “Any passcode works when their communications are down.
We just got lucky as sugar.”
The assassin cocked her head in confusion, “Sugar?”
“It’s just a shuggarian phrase, you won't understand.”

She fell back into the sofa. Shemun looked back at her grumpily and muttered, “Lazy person... can’t even
–”
She interrupted, “I hear you!”
“Good.” was his response.
The noise of the scout jet filled the air, and they all took off.

A few minutes later, Shemun reasoned to himself, “Better set it to auto-pilot.”

Kylie looked lazily up at him and asked, “Anything cool to see?”
“Not really, though if we get noticed, you might get to witness the most exciting models of Ether
spacecraft.”
“I am not dying to see something interesting.”
“Nice pun.”

There were a few moments of silence. Then Kylie casually asked, “Where are we going?”
“Zoruana.”

Silence. Horrified silence. Then Shemun asked, “Why? Problem with it?”
Kylie shrieked louder than a banshee, “NO! CHANGE IT! CHANGE IT NOW!!!”
“No. Ryushoy's never been wrong. He said this was –”
“I DON’T CARE ABOUT THAT RUDDY RYUSOUP! CHANGE IT RIGHT. FREAKING. NOW!!”

She leapt at him and tried to jump past him to the cockpit, but he grabbed her legs and pinned her right
down. Her shoulder started bleeding from behind.

“Why?” was his question.

She looked at him with laser eyes. He noticed they were blue. Then she spoke in a measured manner,
“The king. He’ll kill you. And me too.”
“But Ryushoy –”
“And he can do that. He literally knows how many microbes live in his universe. He knows everything.”

He looked away. Then he asked, “How do you know.”

Kylie blushed a bit. Then her face hardened, “I – uhm... that’s none of your business.”

He left her and sat on the sofa. He scratched his head and then asked, “Zortana?”
“I guess that’s all right” Kylie was still lying on the floor. Shemun jumped over her and adjusted its
settings. For some reason, he was having a bad feeling about it. He gulped it down in his guts and
leaping over Kylie – who was on the sofa – again, he went right into the supplies.

“Hmm... there is some pretty cool food in there.”

There was a loud and annoying chewing noise. Kylie ignored it. She laid herself on the sofa and fell
asleep.

He poked his head out of the storage room. “Want some –” he noticed her sleeping, “Never mind. Looks
like a butterfly, sleeps like a log. Bet she’s a teen.”
Although he was just complaining, the trivial fact is that he was right. “I better sleep too,” he thought to
himself, and he slept on the floor; the sofa was too warm for him, and sleeping next to a female... would
be awkward.
Shemun slept pretty lightly.

They woke up a long while after to the sound of an alarm.

“What?”
Everything went black.

“What?” it was Kylie’s voice this time.

A pale blue light flashed upon her as Shemun opened a hologram. She got up from the sofa. Suddenly,
the hologram closed and another one opened, red this time.

“The lighting’s damaged!” Shemun bawled.

Kylie quickly got up and sat at the second pilot’s seat, “How?”

Shemun manoeuvred the ship to the left. Outside through the windows, a ship shot a continuous stream
of laser bolts at them.

“What are you looking at outside? SHOOT SOMETHING!!” Shemun roared. Kylie hovered her hand over
a hologram, then tapped at something. She smirked, though Shemun could not see it, “Sabrewings. I
think it’s some new technology, but you can –”
“AWESOME!”

The fighter sliced through an enemy jet whose mobility got crippled by the wings. Kylie shot a BS12 at
the other craft, whose operator was relieved of duties forever...

The fighter trembled; an enemy missile had found its mark. Kylie let rip a storm of laser bolts that went
on and on till another pilot retired for eternity. Shemun whirled his craft around and the wings dug into
yet another fighter like a vampire sinks its fangs into ones’ neck, and then pulled ahead. The craft
exploded.
Thunk.
A heavy kinetic weapon hit the ship. At this rate, they were going to go down soon. Kylie let out four
heavy projectiles that one-shotted one ignorant enemy. The bad news was that Etherverse was losing a
lot of its mobility. With a boom, another enemy ship was sent to afterlife. Then, a stealthy enemy plane
activated its own sabrewings and stealthily rammed its wings into the craft. The lasered wings entered
the cockpit and almost cut Shemun and Kylie into two.

With a boom, the hind side of their Etherverse exploded.

Kylie slapped Shemun across the face while he was watching the sight with sad, empty eyes.
“Get in the escape capsules, you sad dreamer!”
“Oh, shit! Yeah!”

And so, they did. The escape capules were luckily alright. Kylie got into one, Shemun into another one,
and the capsules went off towards the closest universe. It's strange, the meaning of universe is... it’s just
something else. There are many universes, but the name suggests there is only one.

He facepalmed himself and wondered where they were going to land next.

Then, a rough, loud, and magnified voice came out, “If it’s not Kylie!”

Is it even posssible to TALK in space?

There was no reply. Of course, there wasn’t; they were in space. The voice continued, “Did you not
recognise our spaceships?”
Shemun could not see her, but seemingly she nodded a no, because the stupid voice continued, “Well,
master is not very pleased. But he will speak to you personally soon.”

Shemun gasped. So, these were the Zoruaniers (Zoruana inhabitants) Kylie did not want to meet. The
voice was disgusting enough already, not to mention the lust in the voice when it said, “master is not
very pleased.”

The voice started again, “Who is the companion you were going with. Boyfriend?”

Shemun scowled at the empty space, because that was all he could see. It laughed in a way that would
creep anything. A minute passed in silence then.
Shemun felt a sudden jerk as he was lifted up into something he couldn’t see yet. A faint ‘fff...’ came,
and then stopped with a chunk of gears and everything.

“Why the scowl, kid? Isn't your dear still with you”

Shemun mouthed a swear word. He also silently shouted, “Nothing’s dear to me anymore, you (another
curse word)”
The voice started, “Is it?”
Shemun could swear that the speaker was smiling. He opened his mouth, then closed them again. There
was no point in acting like a teenager now. The scene was blacking out for him though he was in the
silver interior of the spaceship.

“Wait, what is happening now again?” Shemun managed to sound very, very angry and rude despite
being silent.
The voice laughed, “I can hear what you say, rude being. And as of what is happening? You’re going to
the i-league and Kylie here is going to her owner.”
“Owner?”
“She did not tell you, did she?”
“Oh yeah... nice reminder. Want some hate?”
“You’re funny, I give that to you.”

Shemun laughed a silent laugh as the world went black, “You’ll learn to give a lot to me in the future.”

Everything around him was a void. Or maybe it was so dark he just couldn’t make out the room. Even his
glowing eyes did not provide a lot of help. He looked around, or did he? What if he was spinning in the
same place at the same time? Or what if –
“You were thinking about the crazy theories that were not really going to happen?”
He tried to look for the the source of the voice
Literally reading his mind, the voice told him, “You can’t see me yet, and I cannot afford to tell you who I
am. But remember this, your weapon will always be with you whenever you summon it.”
“Like thor and his mjolnir?”
The voice would have smiled if it had a face, “Only stronger. Now go on, open your eyes...”

So, he did. His eyes fluttered open weirdly. He was chained from all side heavily. He looked down,
beneath his chained legs, there was an open void below
“So, we meet again.”
It was a familiar voice. Very familiar. Shemun looked towards its source.
“Yes, we do,” he replied to Kylie. She stayed silent. Shemun’s eyes hardened a bit, “Where are we, what
the hell is going on?”
she remained silent for a while. Then inhaled and said, “That’s our jail till we die.”

Shemun smirked. Somehow, he knew what he could to, and what to do. But he did not know how. His
smirk vanished. He smiled weakly again, “At least we don’t die so badly.”
“Haven’t had any hallucinations yet?” Kylie’s voice was not very stable.
“Nope? You did? What happ – oh, nevermind.”

Everything started going dark again.

“Oh, goodbye for a while,” was all he said for about an hour. Kylie gazed with interest as he turned into
black vapours going up through the walls. She guessed that certain creatures can die when they want to.
Although the really couldn’t.
“No matter, old life.”

Meanwhile, with Shemun, he went into the darkness again. “So, what this time?” he asked confidently.
“Free yourself. I will send you back in time. And remember, the prison cell you’re in is TPS Prime.”
Shemun squinted in unnecessary concentration, “TPS Prime,” he rolled the words around his tongue,
“alright.”
“Now GO!”

He fell with a thud in a medieval – looking area. “Weapons first,” he told himself. Something pinched
him hard on the back of his head, “Oh no, you stupid man”
“Ow! What?” he whirled back.
“Shhhh... just get into a hiding place.”
“Who are y –”
“Get into a hiding place!”

Shemun looked around a bit, then found a good place to hide himself. “Go towards the castle,” the voice
instructed.
“Sure... where is it?”
“Use your common sense. This is a test!”
“Then why are you here?”
“None of your business. I am not here for you anyway, nor are you.”

Some foot-soldiers marched ahead. Shemun stayed silent. “I guess I could follow him.”

There was no reply.

So, he did follow the soldiers, who ended up in front of the weapons room. He could hear them chatting.
“Hey Rory, you heard about that Glocman and Kylie?”
“Yeah, I wonder why the king wants that Glocman.”

A third one joined in, “I dunno, I think it was the Ether that wanted it.
And a fourth one, “Mundor, I thought you liked Kylie. Why so silent.”
A fifth one blushed, “Well, she’s a traitor, so I don’t.”
A sixth one barged him with a dignified voice, “Well, come on. And Mundor, if I find you doing anything
towards the good of any slave, you will be punished.”
“Eep!”

Shemun smiled. He had found his destination. But first, weapon. His smile widened. Stepping out of the
shadows, he held his hands out, then concentrated towards the palms very intensely. A swirl of darkness
formed at his palms.
Thunk
Something moved in the weapons vault.
Clang...
Something hit another thing.
Bang
Something crashed another thing.
Boom
The Shadows’ handles went right through the door creating two huge holes where the doorknobs were
supposed to be...
... and ended up in his dark, outstretched hands. He flicked the blades of the swords on and making an
‘x’, jerked them away from each other. Shemun grinned a very wide and sinister grin.

Behind him, footsteps sounded. Shemun decided that he should hide and do a recon first. The troops
arrived soon enough, about ten or twelve of them. They noticed the broken door and drawing their
weapons, checked around cautiously. Some of them entered the weapons room and were silently
assassinated by Shemun. He climbed back up to the rooftop of the dark room.

“We gotta tell the king!” one of them shouted.

“Thank you, captain obvious,” another replied

Their leader (apparently, anyway) told two of the troops to report the findings to the king. The rest of
them continued searching. Two more people entered the Weapons room and before Shemun could stop
it, turned the lights on. Acting with urgency, he jumped down, his dark blades in a contrast to the
lighting of the rooms. He sliced the firing hand of a soldier while kicking the other with the palms of his
legs. Then, in an arcing slash, he finished them both off. As a few more troops tried to come in, he
slammed the doors shut in front of them, due to which two fell down. Opening it forcefully, he sliced of
of them roughly and punched another one hard in the face. They fell down. Suddenly, a laser bolt landed
on his stomach, but he did not feel any particularly high amounts of pain. Driving his sword through
another troop, he jumped up and threw him on another one. Another weak bolt struck his stomach.
Shemun chopped yet another soldiers’ hair off before giving her retirement from life. Dashing to
another troop sniping from behind a wall, he sliced away the wall and the troop.

One of them ran away. Two were left. Shemun threw his swords at them which killed one each before
coming back into its temporary masters’ hands.

Shemun walked away. Calmly.

Meanwhile, Kylie was resting herself while being tied to the chains. She had escaped before, once. If
only she could remember how. She was still shocked by the way Shemun had disappeared, crumbling
into pitch black grains of dirt.

Creepy.
She had to get out of this. Now. However much of a jerk he may be, his sense of purpose in life; the
impossible task of defeating the ether, was a wake-up call. Without a sense of purpose you may as well
die.

So, she got into the task of wiggling around somehow to do something that would free her. Todays’
historians still have no idea how she did it.

This time, she didn’t.

The blank wall ahead parted and a very fat, grotesque creature stood behind – or before the walls. It
had reptillian skin, brown eyes and very small hands any legs. Basically, a small, fat T-rex with crocodile
skin.

She looked at him, half guilty and half angry. More angry though.

He smiled evilly. His yellow pupils dilated, “How do you feel coming back home, eh?”
No answer.
“There goes my favorite girl. Open your mouth,” he sounded irritated, “AND TELL ME!!”
She looked away, then said, “Sadly, my home is simply hell.”

He sounded very angry now, “You will only say what pleases me, bitch.”

Kylie had an even edge in her voice, “I am not your –”

“Oh yes, you are. I will make sure of that in a few days.” he turned back and murmered, “I liked you.
But... begin the torment, guys!”

It was at that moment, Kylie realised... wait and see.

A reptilian man came up at her, flying with a hoverboard. He smiled unevenly and rested his eyes on her
shoulder, then slid it down to her hip. Kylie didn’t react.

“Finally, a pretty one. Most of the jailees are men, or uglies. Oh, this is going to be fun!”

The man lugged her out of the room and onto a safe-like thing, then closed it. It was an inhumanly small
thing, and Kylie was already beginning to cramp. And suffocate a bit too. Then everything started to heat
up. It actually hurt a lot. For a brief moment, Kylie wondered if she was in hell. Then the safe opened
and tossed her out down a cliff. About twelve feet below there was a boiling mass of water. A pretty
deadly torture, but...

As she fell down, she squinted at the cliff side looking for a bit of metal to cling on to.
It arrived soon enough. Kylie grabbed it. As she was falling towards the ground at such a high speed, the
shock of stopping hit her like a truck, but nevertheless, Kylie managed to climb up the metal and sit. She
looked down. Boiling water tinted into red by the surroundings. lava nearby. People falling into the lava.
Suddenly, something flashed down into the boiling water, screaming like a banshee. She looked down.
The thing was floating around in the boiling water, still supposedly screaming. She sighed at it, then got
up and turned back. In front of her, instead of a cliff face, there was a cavern. She walked into it. A (Kind
of) familiar voice sounded.

“Not so fast, beauty. Our security is not as shit as you thought. Time to punish. Brace yourself, stupid
woman. You’re going to be swollen so bad that you’ll look like a diseased potato!
As Shemun walked back calmly and reached into a new hiding, a lightning strike struck the King’s
fortress. Shemun’s hiding? It was a cave he’d just found. No one would find him here; he was literally
around a hundred kilometres underground. This time, he decided to walk through the red cave. It had
bits of red, shiny metal around. Above, in the sky (or the void of the universe) lighting struck the Fortress
again, and a voice silently said to himself, “The Asgard needs to war again. However, this might not have
to happen now.”

Boy, I can see this becoming the worst sentence of the whole 2nd millennial.

Back to the story, the red-bearded character spun back and away into the sky. Down in the red cave,
Shemun kept walking in whatever direction. The red wall was starting to look sickening now. He felt
drained just looking at the landscape. Was this what real hell was like?

Shemun looked ahead. Still nothing but red. He squinted. Still depressingly red. He squinted hard.

Red.

For the first time, he actually hated red. Wasn’t it his favourite colour? At least he was protected from
the troops, who were on him.

They’ll surely use Kylie for that. That is if she’s not dead.

Then again, Ryushoy had said something about legendary stuff and freedom which included these
Shadows he had. And the swords were definitely strong, with its magical attributes like giving toughness
to its wielders and all. He had to go up the surface and do whatever the hell he had to.

Shemun sighed. Always with responsibilities. He scrunched up his face and went on ahead; behind there
were simply all sorts of monsters which threw out fire, had teeth like daggers, and...

A face just like a glocman? Yes. Shemun’s hands flew at his swords, and clicked their blades open. The
monster looked frightened, or pretended so. It suddenly lunged at him and he rolled sideways to dodge
him. The monster growled in rage as it reformed into its actual form; a fanged being with dirty, rugged
red-brown skin with bony spikes appearing all over its body. It looked like an old, hunched and grumpy
T-rex. Shemun’s green eyes contrasted his red. Shemun kneeled down and his hands (actually his
blades) sliced its legs right off. Then before the demon could react, he sliced its head and body which let
out a gush of sticky, white blood. The monster fell down in a mangled mess.

Shemun sighed and went on... his story of what happened later, almost completely unknown. He
refused to share his horrors after the war.

*************

A red-bearded man stood before a huge crowd. He was very handsome, with bulging muscles and a
perfect face. His hair was red but emitted blue sparks of lightning up the sky. He addressed the crowd,
“Asgardians...”
The crowd cheered, knowing what was going to be said. The man continued grandly, “Our time has
come.”
There was a certain power in his voice, though its tone was calm. The crowd grew deafeningly loud. The
red-bearded guy looked at a woman, who was obviously old, who smiled, then continued, “We war on
Odineon one-seven-eight-eight-five. Asgardians, we shall war. And very soon!”
Chapter 2: SuperPower Bros: Runaway
Remember the dead sons of Shemun? They’re not dead, just trying to plot out a way to
get out of the wretched place. They finally finished completing their weapons and now
can escape just the way their father did, but a few things come first.

“Like school.” the old, familiar man told them. He said his name was Ryushoy. He said he could send the
powerful brothers to a faraway place. He said he knew Shemun since they were small. He said they were
gods. He said that the schools here were the most useless things for a glocman anywhere in any
situation, that is unless you were facing off a dragon which has a heart in its legs so that you could just
stick your pickaxe in there and kill it. If you get the correct leg too.

Oh yeah, he also said that dad has a girlfriend.

Rubble looked mischievously at Penald. Was he going to take his on the escapade too?

Rubble and Penald are brothers. Brothers who were found lying down and crying in a war with criags
and glocmen. Shemun felt pity for the clueless souls, and they were so smart and joyful that he just kept
loving them. The day they ‘died’ was devastating for Shemun. It was a worlder who had almost torn the
duo into pieces. Luckily enough, Rubble jabbed a piece of Gukewood (strong wood from Shuggarian
forests) right into its eye and it fled. Rubble seemed fatally injured and was declared dead when he
escaped from the treatment room and reached Ryushoy’s house. Same with Penald, who found Rubble
at Ryushoy’s home.

“Rubble, go to school now, if the cri – nothing.”

Rubble squinted up at his godfather, “if the cri... ags?”
“No. The cri – the crifuvyers.”

(Crifuvyers = teacher in fighting. Shukkan english)

“What about them?”

“They wanted to check up on all the students fighting prowess. Today's an important day, you know?”
“Okay....” Rubble rolled his eyes a bit. Penald too.

Ryushoy was visibly weakened by now. He kept looking outside through the blasted windows. The army
of criags to clean up the revolters could be coming any time now. And no sword would help him...

Ryushoy told them not to pack any device in the bag other than the ‘Revolter’s Shuggarian Ideapad’ like
any other day and then took out two fat lightsabre handles.

Rubble looked at them. “We practice with lightsabres today?”

Ryushoy smirked, “Even better. This one is The Shine, and this one,” pointing to the thinner one of
them, “is The Glow.”

Penald rolled his eyes, “Pretty dope names.”

Rubble rolled his eyes at Penald, “You and your ‘cool stuff’”

Ryushoy smiled a bittersweet smile. This was the last playful banter between the brothers he would
ever hear. Or maybe not.
They both left the home, not knowing the terrors they would face in the next 24 hours. The brothers
crossed through the jungle like every day to the school, and when they reached it, it...
It was a battlefield, not a school.

The brothers had no time to grief, and they realised that too. Penald shouted at his brother, “Good thing
we’re late, now we need to get to the locker room. How, though?”
Rubble barely heard him over the cries of the battle, but he shouted back, “Like...” he removed The
Shine from its sheath and clicked its light on, and sliced right through a criag with the power of a literal
god. Penald sighed, messy, but the only thing they could do right now. Penald calmed his mind down,
then looked ahead smiling. Penald was the fastest thing ever, with his actual speed more than a
hundred times faster than a normal glocman. Oh, and if he wanted to, he can slow his perception of
time by more than a hundred times as well that is a second to you is a hundred seconds to him, which
means he is hundred times stronger, faster, and (maybe) smarter.

He zipped through criags, mowing them down with surgical blows. No criag actually died though, these
were just android robots. Meanwhile, Rubble, who is basically a superstrong and tough dude, has
amazing senses and enough power to lift a twelve-floor building. Shemun would be proud.

Slashing one criag effortlessly with his sword, he crashed down another with his bare fist. Taking a laser
bolt to the face and ignoring it, he crushed another ones’ face. Somehow, still, Rubble didn’t have any
big, fat musculature and six-packs. The power was...just present there. Rubble uppercutted a criag which
flew up and away into the yellow sky. Then, finding just enough space, Rubble charged in through to the
locker room. Not through the door, through the wall. He rubbed his nose, annoyed at the slight pain of
breaking through the wall.

“We’re all dying,” an unfamiliar voice sounded behind him. Rubble looked through the hole to the army,
“Yes, we are,” he agreed. Penald chipped in, “Or you are, if you can’t keep up with us.”

Rubble turned his head to look at Penald. He didn’t look happy. He was really crying. Or at least there
was a drop of tears rolling down his cheek... and it fell down. Rubble absent-mindedly stared down the
tear drop.

“Asia died?” he asked. Asia was Penalds’... umm... significant other. Penald nodded.

The unfamiliar voice also began to cry. Rubble closed his eyes. Asia was a good person. Not the fighting
type like the brothers.

Oh, and the criags could never spell her name right.

Rubble opened his eyes, then asked a bit too hardly, “You got the weapons?”
Penald had stopped crying, “Yes.”

Then he turned at the speaker of the unfamiliar voice, “I hope you don’t mind getting messy with blood,
do you?”

The glocwoman replied, “Not like I have a choice.”

Penald tossed them some guns and lightsabres – correction: Custom-made genius-class weapons of
mass-destruction.
The superfast brother looked at Rubble and pointed upwards with his blue eyes. Rubble nodded,
jumped right up and breaking the roof of the locker room, landed into the chemistry class. With Rubble
complaining about the hardships of somehow hurting the nose again and again, they all took the
miraculously undamaged steps to the rooftop.

“Everyone, strap your jetpacks on!” Penald announced.

“We have jetpacks?”
“We made them when we were in the pre-first!”
“Oh? I thought we were going to go all-out burrito bison!”

The Glocwoman (She’s Africa by the way. Naw, just kidding.) then asked, “Burrito-what?”

“It’s an awesome and old video game where –” Rubble started

“Shut up, addict!” intercepted Penald, annoyed heavily.

Rubble sighed and put on the jetpack, “Pretty uneventful so far. If there is a book about this, no one’s
gonna read it.” (Don’t say that, Rubble!)

A laser bolt struck Rubble’s horns (or hair) but nothing really happened. He powered the jetpack up and
flew high up. The sky turned a very bright yellow. Penald and Lishia followed. (Yes, that’s her name)

It would feel like a ride into heaven if not for the hellish screams that sounded and echoed below. There
was nothing the three could do, even with their ‘Custom-made-genius-class-weapons-of-mass-
destruction.’

By the way, Lishia’s eyes are red, which means something’s different. Very much so. Remember Mr.
Red-bearded man? His eyes turn red when he uses his powers too.

Baaaaack to the story, they rode safely down to the main Base of the area (and they sniped down the
incumbent guards) and then landed on right at the control area of weapons. Lishia landed first and for a
best friend of the most benevolent glocwoman (Asia) she was pretty good, slashing down three androids
in no time as Rubble reached next and slammed down then overtaking her with his running speed.

Penald zipped past the both of them and before Rubble could even reach, Penald had destroyed all the
androids.

“They’re really bad at security, eh?” huffed Rubble.

Lishia replied a bit quietly, “Psychological warfare, maybe?”
“They’re really bad at that too, I suppose.”
“No, it did work on me. It has worked on me till today, when you barged in through the wall and we all
went through till here with this jetpack.”

Rubble walked towards some craft. Penald punched his nose angrily (Do you realise the tragedy of
getting your nose hurt three times in a day?) and pulled him towards another side (You’re using
EtherSpace? Great idea!)

Dragging the dumb brother at the desired fighter, Penald told Rubble to crash its door open. So, he did,
and Penald immediately went for fixes. Time to talk and socialize?

Penald says no.

He fixed the door in literally 3 minutes. (a jatinite) and booted the engine on, set the destination to
Zoruana as Ryushoy had said and collasped. Then got up a few seconds later and turned back to the
other two, who had gotten into the sofas surrounding a round table.

“We’re free to cry now,” he declared.

And so, they did. Lishia cried till she slept. She'd had a comparatively happy life before. No direct losses,
just a few whipcracks from criags, other than that? Work, work, study how to rebel at the school, that’s
it.

This was a whole new thing. Everyone you know dies. Maybe you are the only surviving members of
your species in that universe. Then maybe they will find the trio and kill them as well...

Destiny accomplished.

Not.

The universe – no, the multiverse had to be freed from the monsters like the ether.

They all eventually felt asleep. Without talking to each other.

************

“Zeus, we need your help. Zoruana is in danger.” the voice belonged to the red-bearded man.
Zeus looked down at him from his throne with respect, “I know you very well. How long will the war
last?”
“I am sure more than twelve years.”
“You speak the truth. I must consult my empire, for the Ether threatens not only Zoruana, but also
Starlight. After all, we have sworn to protect only humans, no other beings. I shall take you into
consideration as well.
“There are human slaves in Zoruana, Zeus. There is no need to consult. This is your war as much as it it
mine.”

Surprise broke out from the straight, calm, chiseled and golden face of Zeus. He then said, “If that is so,
there shall be no need for a convention. When do we war?”
“When the energies tell us to.”

Zeus’ face changes from chiseled to completely human, “The energies?” he exclaimed.
“So, this war is not just dependent on us. It is dependent upon the real energies! I must make
preparations immediately. My thunder compatriot, would you be so kind and tell the Starlings to help us
as well?”
“My good friend, I will. I wish you Olympians good luck. Farewell!”
Zeus returned the courtesy, “I wish the Asgardians well, too!”

The bearded man left. Zeus thought seriously for a while, then announced to his companions in the
ruling court, “My friends, we must protect Asgard, but what about Starlight? Can it fare well in a
possible attack by Ether. I personally feel that we should divide our army into two. I hope he will
understand.”
Everyone thought this was a good idea. It was.
 *************

“Holy shit! Zoruana aircraft are after us!”

“What the hell?”
“Get up, you sleepy zombie!”

Lishia got up quickly. “Sorry, did I miss anything?” she asked a bit tentatively
Penald blinked at her. Then said, “Not really, but we are under attack.”
Then he continued kicking Rubble.
“Thumph” -Penald’s leg and Rubble’s face.
“Stop kicking me!” -Rubble.
“Then get UP!” -Penald
“Thumph” - Penald’s leg and Rubble’s nose
“NOT MY NOSE!”
“Jee. EEE. Tee. Yoo. Pee!”

Rubble finally did. Ahead, Lishia cried, “I can’t keep this up! They’re too fast!”
Penald grinned, “Fast, huh? My job!”

Rubble looked out through the windows, (actually camera screens but look like huge TVs) “My Divine
excreta! I need to go to the firing r –”
“Yes!” the other though shouted.

He did. Looking out through the screen to the enemy, he found that there were a lot of spaceships...
which had the logo of two swords on them. Which mean’t...

“It’s pirates! There go four lordshots...” screamed out Rubble as he scrolled through the holographic
display and tapped on HKS- Lordshot.

All four of them landed on a pirate craft and it was forever relieved of its pirate duties. Penald dodged a
heavy CCCM- 89 missile and a flurry of small missiles and lasers followed. Another pirate went down.

“Nice shot, Lishia!” Rubble called out, then launched out two CCCM- Bloodhounds of his own, which
missed as well. Penald looped the fighter to dodge a flurry of missiles and lasers which hit anyway. He
called out with urgency, “Get the shields up, Rubber!”
“Gotcha!”

He swiped the shooters holograms out and clicked the accessories on, then scrolling to the right,
selected energy shield. Lishia destroyed another fighter.

Penald jokingly complained from the cockpit, “Hey, that’s not fair! You get to kill all the bad guys!”
“Oh really? Well, there you go!”, Rubble replied, forcefully tapping on sabrewings. The wings of the
fighter suddenly illuminated and glowed just like a lightsabre.

“Best brother ever!”

“I know that!”
“Whatever.”

Rubble’s four lordshots found another fighter which took heavy damage but did not get destroyed.
Penald cut a pirate spaceship into two with the wings of his fighter. Suddenly, another enemy sabrewing
crashed into theirs’ and both the fighters went spinning. Rubble, somehow aiming through the spinning,
launched a savage NLW- ChainBlaster: S at the pirate ship, which immediately melted down the pirate
fighter in the explosion out of which hot sparks flew out and took down a few more planes too.

“Enough joking around,” Rubble declared. Penald sliced down two more planes, each with one wing, at
the same time. Rubble shot out a GCC- Black Hole: S, which took down a spaceship, turning it into a
spaghetti at first, then taking it down in spirals. He shot out three more, which took down one each.

“Their numbers are down to seventeen,” reported Penald. He sliced down another craft. “Sixteen now.”

“Less than fifteen,” Rubble quipped as his four Chainblasters took off the turret and cleaned out all the
crafts except for their own. The EtherSpace’s turrets got overheated

“Down to zero,” Penald smiled and said, “These new nuclear chain-reaction technologies sure help.”
“Yaps, Penny,” Rubble agreed.

The craft went on towards Zoruana. Everything was going good, going according to the plan. Except that
there wasn’t any plan. They were trusting Ryushoy on that, at least Rubble was. Penald checked the
radar for any enemy crafts. None. They were half-way to Zoruana. Just half-way.

“Anybody sleepy?” asked Lishia as she jumped down on to the sofa around the round table.
“Nah,” the brothers replied at the same time.

Rumble’s stomach grumbled, “Sure hungry though.” as he sat down in front of the holographic round
table. Clicking and scrolling at something in it, he relaxed. Penald came too, sitting down between Lishia
and Rubble. Soon after, from the roof, a robotic hand with a plate full of food appeared, which Rubble
proceeded to chomp down.

They all ordered food through the holograms, and got it.

“So, Lishia, how’s life with a mom and dad and no troubles?” it was Penald who asked.

“Not bad. Actually, pretty good as compared to yours. We could chat amongst ourselves for a while,
though we slepy pretty hungry. You get up, go to rebel school, work at the mines for whatever green
stones they’re searching for, and... yeah, that’s it”
“How’d you get to know about Rebel school?” asked Rubble.
“Well, I knew Asia since we were small kids, and when I found out there is a school where you learn real
good stuff, I came in.”

Rubble looked at Penald. Then he asked, “There is other stuff that killing in the school? Or anything not
related to killing? Because as far as I know, Asia hated murdering. I mean, why would go go to learn
something you don’t want to do?”

“Because sometimes, you have to.”, answered Penald. Lishia agreed with a yeah.

“Any idea where your daddy would be in Zoruana?”

“Nope. I trust Ryushoy knew that this would happen, he knew something. He had to.” Rubble pressed.
Half desperate, half trusting Ryushoy.
“He gave dad The Shadows too,” Penald told Rubble, agreeing with him. They went on in their
spaceship, chatting all the way.
 ************

“Caladon, you fuc –”

“No swearing, half butt.”
“If this was a stream, we would get demonetized like hell!”
“Yeah, Leon, we sure would, except that we are not streaming.”

It was two humans in a very small spaceship. The two guys would be arriving to earth shortly. The
Starlightan army had hired all outlaws and gangsters to be their mercenaries. All except the Ether-
aligned Tron a.k.a Jimmy Farter. The Universe government needed extra protection since Zeus and his
olympians had left to liberate Zoruana. It was only a matter of time till they could remember invisible.
Good money for the outlaws.

gOoD mONeY.

“I guess a couple of minutes till we get to Earth.”

Of course, the original earth had died in the supernova of the sun. This was a really large, artificial, self-
sustaining planet with a population of over 34 quintillion. More than a hundred times larger than the
local cluster.

Cerileon spoke again angrily, “Why the hell did you have to hit my hand? I was about to beat the boss
fight!”
“Does it really matter? You’re only on level 72! You can beat it again anytime.” Caladon answered coolly.

Cerileon sighed, “Whatever, you dumb jerk.”

“Where’s the curses?”
“You bitchass dumb jerk.”
“Sounds better, more like a teenager.”
This riled Cerileon again, “Just because you’re twenty and I’m sixteen doesn’t mean you act like my
parents!”
Caladon shot back, “Who’re dead.”
“You had to say that, didn’t you?”

The A.I assistant of the plane announced, “Craft landing in thirty seconds. Prepare to pillage!”

“We really need to change the announcements, now that we’re good guys.” remarked Cerileon.
“Yeah,” agreed Caladon. Cerileon got up and into the cockpit, then said into the mike nearby, “Leon and
Don, nearby gangsters hired as merceneries. We need a landing pass.”

A hologram of a man sitting somewhere with a deep blue hoodie flicked on.

A voice came, “Strafe here. Tell your A.I to land on Merc plot ZD- 178. Here’s the map. Area has been
reserved for merceneries 124 and 125. Correct?”
“Yeah”
“Welcome to earth!”

The hologram of the man dissappeared.

Caladon grinned, “We’re there, then?”

Cerileon grinned back, “Imma swear now. Fuck yeah!”
 ************

“Ra knows when to strike?”

“Yes, Zeus, yes. Also, would you please tell Tartarus to take care of Loki for a while? I fear that Loki
doesn’t listen to anybody else.” it was the Red-bearded man.
“Ah, sure. But we will do need Tartarus in the war. He is one of our greatest fighters. After me, of
course.”
“You and your ego. Do you realise these are your greatest weaknesses? Heimdallr could show you that.
He is as wise as Ymir himself.
“Let’s save that for another day, my dear friend.”

A shining person entered the room. Shining very bright. Literally. Luckily enough, the other two could
easily see though. He asked softly, “May I know what was happening?”
“Not much. We were waiting for you and Indra, another thunder compatriot.” replied Zeus grandly. As
usual.
The red-bearded guy observed, “Don’t all the kings seem to rule over thunder?”
The shining guy (Ra) answered, “There’s me.”

They all waited. Silent. Then another man entered the huge, grand room. It was Sopdu, a Starling senior.
He addressed Ra, “We have found Shemun. He’s starving out a death sentence in another prison,
though I do suppose he’ll not die till the next few days.”
Zeus looked at Ra, “Do you think Rubelin and Selemin will have reached by then, star defender?”
“Yes, tomorrow they shall reach. There are great odds against them. I figure that they will also be
imprisoned.” answered Sopdu.
The red-bearded man joined in, “That is if the energies don’t teach them a thing or two.”

*********

“Jump down with the escape capsules, they’ll find our planes” instructed Penald with urgency. Lishia and
Rubble did what he said quietly. They also took penphones (small holographic smartphones) and all the
‘Custom-made genius-class weapons of mass-destruction and bloody murder.’

The three fell lower and lower silently till the fell with a soft thump onto the surface. It was a weird
place, with the trees having wood just like starlightan trees (Our trees back on earth) and with blue
coloured leaves the size of a fully-grown human man.

Rubble climbed out of the small capsule clumsily and touched the wood. It felt a bit rough, unlike the
trees back home, which were very smooth and had small leaves of various colours.

Penald and Lishia were nowhere around, though from the messages of his communicator, he could say
that they had landed pretty much close, in a forest. Then, Rubble noticed a huge man standing in front
of him, with great musculature. He had a striking red beard and a very handsome face. Rubble looked at
him warily. His hands on The Shine.

“There will be no need to fight,” the red-bearded man smiled at him. Rubble ignored the statement and
asked, “Who are you?”
“I will tell you where your father is and bring your friends to you provided that you will not ask any more
questions, and march straight towards the Zoruana’s Capital.
“Okay, I guess.”

The guy smiled at him again. Then said, “Your father is in the nether of Zoruana, son. And good luck.
Beside him, Penald and Lishia fell down.

“What the hell was that? One second I am hunting down a rabbit, the next I fall down here! Next to
Rubble and Lishia!” Penald burst out in anger.
Lishia echoed his angry words.

Rubble proceeded to tell them what happened, and kept a straight face. Pretty weird stuff. He looked at
Lishia and noticed that she had red eyes. Just like the red-bearded guy’s when he brought the two
friends to Rubble. That was strange.

Glocmen only have different coloured eyes when there is something different in them. Like me, dad, and
Penald. But Lishia has red eyes! Which I have never seen before in a glocman.

They moved ahead picking a random direction and hoping that they would not die in the jungle. Who
knew how far it was? Maybe Penald could check. He suddenly heard a crack and Penald dissappeared.

What?

He looked at Lishia, confused. She was not knowing any better. A few seconds later, there was another
crack and Penald reappeared. He told them, “We’re pretty close to wherever we were planning to be.
Though I suspect it’s more of a resort. Mind if I go back?”

Lishia grumbled, “You guys and your superpowers... anyways, what’s it with the crack?”
Rubble asked the same thing, “It didn’t crack when you dashed away to somewhere back home.”

Penald replied scientifically, “Maybe sound travels slower than me around here? Because I couldn’t hear
anything which dashing. Not even air. Anyways, as of the crack, that was a sonic boom.”
“And what’s that, our acclaimed scientist?” Rubble asked further. Rudely.
“Nevermind, noob.”
“heeeeeeey!”

Crack!

Penald disappeared. The two slower persons walked on. A pretty uneventful journey, really. Before they
knew it, they had reached the resort-like place. It actually did look nice. People busily moving around,
others relaxing and a few more chatting happily together.

Crack!

Penald appeared in front of them. His face was grim. “I’ve got some really bad news for you... and us.”
“What?”
“They’re turning non-natives into –”

A voice interupted, “Maintainence slaves! Look good, work better!”

Rubble looked at the source of the voice in shock, and found a huge, furry, burly wolf-snouted guy
standing on two legs and holding a huge network of fat, rusted chains which held a few green coloured
human-like creatures with rabbit-like ears.

“What the skether!” [Skether is hell in Shukkar English] Rubble shouted, horrified. Were all governments
evil or something?
“I know, right? Not all the guys here have slaves, but those who do, have a lot of fun.” the voice was not
of Penald’s, nor was it friendly. It continued, just as Penald gave a sharp cry of pain, “Like me”

Rubble whirled back, his hands on his swords. He took them out and saw a huge figure just like the man
who was selling maintenance slaves. But this one did not have fur, had piercing blue eyes which seemed
almost artificial, and his hands had neat, serrated claws. Lishia tried an arcing sweep against the super
muscular figure, who, for his gigantic size, was surprisingly quick. He jumped up to dodge the attack and
with lightning speed, knocked her down. Behind him, Penald had laid down, looking straight ahead in a
pool of black ichor-like blood. Before him, Lishia lay face down, in the same state.

The man smiled, “Can you put on much of a fight? You know what? If you fight even half decent, I’ll let
you all live, but you must participate in the L-league. All of you. I must say though, your friend in there,”
he pointed towards Penald, “I quite okay. Better than most of the noobs I killed last season.”

“Name’s Rubble, you?” was all he said. Then man replied, “Jonthor. Prepare to die now.”
Rubble couldn’t help but grin, “We’ll see who has the long face in the end.”

He crossed the swords and slid them against each other. Sparks flew out.

Let’s see what shine does.

Jonthor took out a stylish hammer and charged towards his new enemy. Rubble quickly jumped to the
side but Jonthor was faster still. He jumped just as Rubble leapt and crashed the hammer down on him.

“There you go. Death in the first hit.” Jonthor announced triumphantly as the crowd around him
cheered.

But Rubble was not done yet. It was just a minor bump although it did hurt badly. He got up and
attacking as fast as he could, drove one of The Shines right through Jonthor’s heart. Jonthor only
grumbled, “Darn it, you’re good!” as the crowd suddenly became silent. The adversary grabbed the
sword by its blade which was sticking out of his chest and pulled it through, with Rubble’s grip
notwithstanding. he then turned around and sliced at Rubble who blocked it with his other sword.
Then, grabbing the sword’s handle (the one that Jonthor was holding) he jumped up and rested his feet
upon his enemy’s chest, trying to grab the handle. Jonthor, his hand getting stretched and paining
badly, used his other hand and hammered Rubble right into the ground.

“Man... my back!” murmured Rubble as he fell down. Jonthor smiled, “I do look forward to finding you
in the L-league.”

He picked Rubble up. Tossed him and ramming his hammer into Rubble, sent him flying over the crowd
that had formed. Rubble, falling down, held his hand out wishing for his sword to somehow come to
him.

It did.
The Shine pulled itself like a magnet towards Rubble, and flew right into his hands. Rubble felt much
better as it touched him. He got up and found Jonthor smiling down at him. He slid his swords again and
charged at the adversary, who sidestepped him. As Rubble fell ahead, he threw his blade at Jonthor,
which landed accurately. The first that Rubble had cut through him had already almost healed. The
Shine returned back to him as he willed it to.

Jonthor now felt annoyed and satisfied at the same time. This was one good fight that he hadn’t had in
days. He took his hammer and jumped high up into the sky to finish this for once. But Rubble jumped
too. Just a bit lower. Dodging the hammer mid-air, he drove the Shine half-way through Jonthor’s neck.
Then fell down ahead and chopped the rest of his neck off. The fallen face angrily grumbled at its
mistake and the said to itself.

“Let’s end this.”

Rubble looked at the beheaded body, confused. How could Jonthor survive like that? The head grew
back on quickly and in a gruesome manner. And before he knew it, a hammer crushed his head from the
side. Then crushed him again.

Jonthor pummelled him down till he was five feet into the ground.

***********

“Caladon! Cerileon! Report for briefing now.” the speaker rang across the large hall. Two tall, muscular
yet lanky teens made their way through a walkway and went through an automatically opening door.

They entered a small but equally sophisticated room filled with modern-looking architecture, holograms,
attractive furniture, a holographic desk, and a man in military uniform.

“Yes commander...?” Caladon started, then found that he did not know his name.
“Jason Ross. It's nice to meet you. I’d like to ask a couple of questions and brief you on your job. I would
also like to confirm your background. But before that, do you have any questions?”
Cerileon nodded and asked, “You do this to everyone?”
“No, only to accompolished ones. Those who are real experts at stealing and killing. Like you guys.”
Caladon asked, “And what did we exactly do?”
“You have killed three of our elite pilots,”
“Who turned out to be affliated with the ether...”
“Yes. I know, I am not punishing you.” Jason said, a little bit annoyed.
“You literally outsmarted Strafe in building powerful fighters.”

“Heeeey, that was me!”

The voice did not belong to any of the three. It was another man who had come in, wearing a metal suit.
Cerileon looked at him, then told him to have a seat. And Caladon announced, “This is Turios. Another
one of our four. The fourth one is Alder who is –”

Alder entered.

“Talk of the devil!”

After they all settled down, Jason Ross asked them, “So, what made you think we were safe? Most
outlaws hate the ruling government.”
Turios answered, “I checked you guys like a hundred times and there were no signs of a ready ambush,
so we guessed you were serious.”
“Are there more members in your gang?”
“Nah. You see we’re not really criminals. Okay, we are, but stealing two billion bitcoins from guy with a
trillion of them isn’t really going to hurt anybody.”
“But you killed three pilots...”
“Dude, come on, it was so obvious they were with Ether. Just because your government is dumb and
slow doesn’t mean we are.

Jason smiled. These were the type of fighters he needed to win in a possible Ether attack. It also meant
less crime. Hopefully.

“What do you think is your strong point?”

Caladon replied, “We’re rough, we’re smooth, we don’t love. We have no weak points.”

“Really? You have no weak point? Are you sure about that?”
“Dunno, to be honest, if we think we have no weak point, that’s our weak point.”

“Okay. Let me rephrase. What is it that you do the best?”

Cerileon shot a look at his elder brother which said that there was no room for philosophy as Alder
answered, “We’re good spies, no-nonsense murderers and awesome assassins. Except Alder here, who
is not... very stealthy.”

Jason smiled at the foursome and said, “I like you already. So, you want a hard mission or a
comparatively easy one?”
“Hard!” the four shouted in unison!

“Okay...” the commander said conspiratorially. Then handed a small device to each of them and they
clicked it on. Four holographic screens appeared.

“Here’s what to do. Don’t kill anyone unless you have to, but I assure you, it is going to get juicy later.
Good luck.”

As if they needed it.

**********

His eyes opened. He was in a very modern looking room. Rubble got up and looked around. It was a
beautiful and modernistic contrast of red, green, blue, and yellow, though most of the room was
metallic white. At one side, there was one huge window curved towards the outside and covering the
whole side. The room looked good and was pretty good too.

For evil slave traders these guys are surprisingly courteous. Or maybe that’s because Jonthor was
impressed.

He looked through the window. It was overlooking a stadium. The seats were full and people were
cheering. Their slaves were sitting at their feet. The sky was a soft yellow. It all looked pretty nice. A
sweet blend of chaos and peace.
“It sure looks beautiful. Doesn't it?” Lishia’s voice came up from behind.
“Yeah, it does. Not really though. I bet there are a few more people who were dragged to the L- league.
And look at the slaves! Terrible!”

Penald agreed, “Yeah, it’s bad. I just got up. Did I miss out on anything? Why do I have such a cool
house?”
“Dunno, I was sleeping too.”

Lishia joined, “Me too. But I think we are participating in the L- league. And this must be some sort of
the warrior’s cabin...?”
“Isn’t that a bit too precise? But you know what? I think the same too.” Rubble accepted.

A speaker’s voice filled the air, “Welcome to the ninety-seventh edition of the L-league! Before we start,
let’s look at the statistics!

The crowd half-groaned and half-cheered.

The contenders, ranking wise are...

The audience now chanted out the word “Jonthor” loudly.

“Jonthor Bonecrusher for the first place, with great strength and perfect speed. That’s not to mention
his overwhelming charisma!”

The audiences’ cheers turned deafeningly loud.

“Zomoclone Norman in the second, with an awesome record last season, he seems to be the one of the
only persons who has the chance to defeat Jonthor! Also, he has a great resemblence to our defender:
Thor!”

A small part of the crowd cheered while the rest groaned and booed. What the audience said next
actually caused the brothers to fall down from shock.

“Shemun Nightshadow, who despite being jailed for a while is a strong contender for the cup. Maybe
the one to cause an upset against Jonthor!”

Penald simply looked at his brother, shocked. He had imagined that his father was in the netherworld of
Zoruana, hiding like a true revolutionary. Rubble had the same thoughts. Then he figured that this was
just one of the strategies that he used to pressure criags. First friends, then betray.

“Rubble Nightshadow, claimed to be Shemun’s son, had reportedly impressed Jonthor with his power
and speed, which seemingly rivalled Jonthors’, as bystanders said, is the fourth one in the ranking. He
managed to cut off the great’s head before getting slammed down five feet into the ground. Rubble is
still living.”

The crowd did not react at all. It didn’t for any of the announcements.

“Johstrom, who defeated Blake, Agnos and Zomoclone to win the championship deserves at least fifth!”

“Blake, a four-time human champion who ruled before the age of Johstrom and Jonthor! Lands sixth!”
“Agnos, another four-time champion who tussled with Blake and defeated him in every final they played
gets seventh place in the rankings!

“Morganola, who claims to be a demonic warlock went into the semi-finals defeating the likes of Agnos
is eight.

“Penald, who was described by Jonthor as ‘Almost too fast for me’ gets the ninth place while Kylie, who
is debuting after being the favorite assassin and toy for the king, but independent now, is tenth.

“Lishia, who is thought to be a quick and graceful swordsman is eleventh and Rogomos is twelfth for
being strong enough to pick up a tonne of weight.”

“You don’t need to know the rest of the twelve, do you?”

The audience, knowing that the rest were simply labour slaves murmured a no. Let the group stages
begin!

Rubble looked at the screen and felt another, deeper chill up his body. He was up against Jonthor. After
Zomoclone and someone named Madina were done fighting.

Suddenly, the door to his room opened and he saw two figures moving in. One of them was very
familiar, with green eyes and characteristic pointy horns. It was papa.

“Dad!” he cried jumping at the man, teardrops trickling down their cheeks. Rubble felt another impact
as he hugged dad tightly; Penald had joined in. They shouted weird stuff to each other, as Kylie and
Lishia came a bit closer to each other.

“Who’re you?” Kylie asked, making small talk with Lishia.

“Who’re you?” Lishia demanded, then said, “I am Lishia. Shemun’s old friends’ kid, maybe? I don’t know.
I just followed Penald and Rubble –”
“Like I followed Shemmy?”
“Yeah...”

They continued their talk, meanwhile, Shemun took out two handles of sword and handed them to
Rubble, then turned to Penald and said, “You’ll have a more powerful sword too, but it will be in the
nether world. How about you use The Glow and The Shine both?”

Penald agreed, his dad had always given them equal stuff. And there had been a huge reason for
everything that had transpired till now. So, he knew better than to argue. For the moment at least.

They looked out of the window and found Zomoclone crushing the poor slave’s body down again and
again with his hammer. Rubble looked away. Shemun looked at him sadly, “Very gruesome, isn’t it?”

It sure was very gruesome.

Then, the commentator started, “The next match, between Rubble and...”
The crowd cheered madly.
“Our greatest, our favorite, our number one, Jonthor!

Jonthor jumped down from the highest area of the stadium and acknowledged the crowd. Rubble
smiled from the top. The Shadows and his dad had given him a new inspiration.
He too jumped, performing a graceful front-flip and landing like a meteor, sending sand up into the air.
The sky was already black, and everything was quite dark, while Rubble’s eyes glowed brighter than
ever.

And then they became black. With a thin, green outline. Bloodlust activated.

The crowd actually gasped and cheered a bit too.

“I was actually hoping to fight you again,” Rubble declared. Jonthor laughed harshly and shot back,
“Why would you want to lose again?”

A small part of the audience laughed.

“Oh, as of that day? I am just a mean actor.” Rubble flicked The Shadows on and held them at his sides
pointing them forwards.

Jonthor declared, “Be prepared for a shock, everyone! Pun intended!” he went into a battle stance as
two electric swords formed in his hands. “Let’s see how strong you are, bragster, when you see my real
powers!”

Rubble looked at his room, where his father was looking at him thoughtfully. The audience, meanwhile,
gasped at Jonthor’s words and swords (get the pun? Word-sword!).

Rubble smiled, “Did you ever see mine? My mentor once told me that I am a god. And I believe that to
be true, as my holy blades have accepted me.”

“What are you blabbering?”

“Dark energy.” Rubble grinned as felt the power and the knowledge flow through him. He felt The
Shadows’ feelings. He could feel the energies now. Just as he felt Jonthor charging at him lightning quick
with his blades in hand.

He dodged it. Jonthor launched an electric bolt at him which was too fast to dodge. But slow enough for
Rubble to block. So, he did. Then, he whirled one sword over his head which was thrown a split second
later. Jonthor kicked its handle and it returned to its true master.

Rubble suddenly felt a shift in the energy behind him, and rolled just out of the way as a clone tried to
stick its sword in his chest. Luckily enough, the clones were weak. One of them went down with a single
slice through its chest, while another died with a chop of its head. Rubble charged at the real Jonthor
who, instead of blocking the attack, let out loose a stream of thunder and lightning right at Rubble.
Rubble held out his sword and it sucked in the whole beam of lightning. When it ended, Jonthor was
already somewhere else.

The thundering adversary leapt up from behind and almost got Rubble when the master of The Shadow
crouched down and smoothly cut Jonthor into two.

The crowd gasped loudly. As a series of boos and cheers followed as Rubble stared at Jonthor in
concentration. The audience didn’t know that Jonthor could regen his whole body, which meant the
only way to kill him was to strip him apart particle by particle. So, he did. As his lower body lay dead, to
be disposed of, his upper body quickly regenerated the stomach and legs. Jonthor somehow managed to
regenerate his clothes as well.
“You are good. You know what? You win this round. But the next match and the finals... I’ll kill you.”
growled Jonthor. Then thinking for a while he continued, “Or I’ll defeat you now.”

Rubble slid his swords roughly against each other and smiled back, “I’ve just started smashing your
pretty face down.”

Jonthor growled and leapt at him. Rubble easily sidestepped it. “That’s all you’ve got?” the glocman
taunted. Then he proceeded to chop his hair off and Jonthor responded with a powerful punch of
lightning that threw Rubble up into the air and he fell down far away on the glass which protected
spectators from getting hit by fallen combatants. A few drops of blood trickled down his neck, where
Jonthor had unleashed his punch. He smiled anyways and said, “Want to see me bloodlusted?Alright!”

He jumped high up from the protective glass and as Jonthor dodged the impact, shot The Shadow at
Jonthor. The thundering champion was hit on both of his shoulders as The Shadows buried themselves
into him down to the hilt. Then they tore carelessly through his back as they made their way back into
Rubble’s hands. Jonthor growled with rage and suddenly, lightning from high above struck Rubble hotly
all throughout his body. He somehow held his swords up to block the attack coming from high above.
Jonthor fell to his knees with exhaustion while Rubble fell due to the force of the lightning. The
thunderer charged one last lightning bolt which hit the Master of The Shadows as he collapsed on to the
ground, grinning widely. Rubble was hit hard by the bolt and fell back, almost exhausted and badly
damaged. The lightning from above stopped and Rubble lay down as well. He was so engrossed in battle
that he had not heard the booing audience and the commentary, which said, “and the powerful attacks,
rivalling the great Thors’, knocks down Rubble as Jonthor gets the last laugh.”

Something about the biased commentary got his nerves and made him feel extremely angry. The
audience and everyone were booing him just as he’d just defeated Jonthor. He obviously had.

How dare they!

The anger built up to a great extent and the black eyes turned back to green. Then the green eyes
shone. They shone brighter than a laser.

Jonthor, now almost fully healed, stood up amidst a cheering crowd.

Rubble healed too, something which hadn’t happened before. He got up, rolling back. He only roared
inhumanly as he smashed at Jonthor with his bare fists. He got hit by lightning again, but without
heeding it, he ran into Jonthor, who dodged the charge. However, Rubble grabbed him by his
regenerated hair and smashed him down powerfully, then summoned The Shadows and ripped Jonthor
apart again and again and again...

Soon enough, Jonthor healed, and Rubble went back to normal Rubble. Jonthor glared at his enemy and
signaled that he accepted defeat, then was stretchered away by some of his own slaves.

Rubble limped back to his room, his energy completely drained and he, very hungry. He murmured
random stuff and when he went back, his father welcomed him. They saw the replay as a lot of the
audience grumbled and cheered along the way.

Rubble concernedly looked at his dad, who asked him, “What’s the problem?”
So, he asked, “Why are we in the L- league, dad?”
“Because you need to learn of your abilities.”
“Abilities?”
“Yes, you are a god, don’t you know?”
That got Rubble a bit irritated, “All of you guys keep calling me a god. But what’s godly about me?”
Shemun smiled a bit, “Well, nothing. By god I mean that you are a legendary guy. One like no other. And
you were sent here to fight. So, I thought getting you in the league would be nice for you to learn your
abilities.
“WHAT ABILITIES?!” he burst out angrily, with rage that even his father’s face couldn’t stop.
“Calm down, kid. I – I will explain.” the guilt in Shemun’s voice made Rubble feel bad. Meanwhile, Kylie
was explaining to Lishia how terrible Zoruana was right now. Penald was sitting all by himself plotting
out ways to beat Zomoclone. Shemun beckoned Penald to come in too, who had barely noticed that
Rubble had come.

Penald came.

“So.” Shemun started, “It’s a pretty weird thing, really. You both... are mot my real kids.”
“We know that,” the brothers replied grumpily in unison.
“Well, do you know anything about the energies?”
Penald automatically answered, “Yes, there are lots of kinds of energies, though really, energy is really
an abstract thing that allows –”

Shemun laughed, “Yes. But instead of going into all sorts of darn physics, why don’t we simply say that
energy is simply power? It's just that you can twist and turn power like converting it to get super speed,”
he looked at Penald, “and superstrength,” he looked at Rubble.
Rubble interjected, “So, we got a bit more power. So what?”

“You haven’t got a bit of power, you are literally living incarnations of power which were born right at
the height of the ether.”

Rubble looked at his brother in shock. Shemun took The Shadows from Rubble and clicking his blades
on, pointed towards it, “Look at this. Why does it consider you as its owner? Why can it be summoned
at you will, Rubble?”
“Why?”
“You are a major reason why The Ether will fall. And the blades of The Shadow recognize that, they are
made of Energy. Very concentrated and powerful energy. The energy of gravity. Oh, not to mention that
you have power in every inch of your body. Your body is energy in every inch of it. And you can meld
your energy in the way you wish, but only after you learn, which shouldn’t be hard.

Meanwhile, Johstrom was beating down a fairly powerful Rogomos. However, Rogomos couldn’t land a
punch right.

“Another beautiful dodge by Johstrom as bends down, and wielding his battleaxe, going for the legs, OH
MY GOD!”

Rubble looked away.

“Rogomoses’ legs go flying right out of the stadium! Thats' a whole kilometer of length and 281 meters
of height!”
“Gruesome,” commented Kylie as she sat down on the sofa next to him, watching the battle.

“Johstrom wins the first match to go on the top of the table, overtaking Shemun, who is one match
behind and two ranks above him!”

The next match was Group ‘D’, with Kylie vs some random set of slaves used as fillers. A small while
later, Kylie arrived on the stadium, going up against Macdog, whose name was set by his former master.

Both of them held their swords at the ready and the commentator boomed, “Debutant Kylie versus filler
Macdog! Both wielding typical swords, it is quite certain that Kylie will win, with her record of seventy-
two successful assasinations, before she was stopped by the crowd favorite Shemun!”

The audience had mixed reactions.

“GO!”

Kylie, rushed ahead at the speed of lightning and struck her enemy at the side. Easily dodging Macdog’s
slash, she struck at his shoulder and red, human blood poured out of it. The weak slave fell. She
whispered to him, “Do you accept defeat? I don’t... I just – just can’t hit another human again.”

Macdog glared at her, “You lying girl, quit it and kill me already. They’ll torture me and murder me and
all anyway. You already murdered so much. Seventy-two people, right? I’ll avenge them...”

“No! I –”

He thrusted his sword right into her stomach. Then somehow got up, leaving the sword in there. “I hate
everyone who is not a slave, EVERYONE!”

He twisted the sword in her stomach.

“Son of a bitch...” Kylie shot as she crossed her two swords around his neck and then sliced it off. His
beheaded body fell down and taking his sword out of her stomach, she too fell. She was stretchered
away carefully and restored to full health in a few hours.

Back at the room, everyone was deep in discussion. It was completely possible that all slaves hated
them, including Kylie herself. Which also meant that the government considered them good. Then again,
Kylie’s reluctance to kill at first and their conversation obviously planted a seed of doubt in the
government. They could weave a fake story around it, like Macdog and Kylie were friends once, so she
felt hesitant about killing him, but he hated her and tried to kill her and all the chaos followed.

Shemun continued whatever he was saying, “And that story means we still regain a certain element of
surprise. After we have done a quiet recon of the troops, we can just go to the armies and attack. Now,
the only problem is the slave barrier.”

Rubble chipped in, “After you’ve taught me and Penald stuff, we can take care of it with our powers. So,
what remains is the strength of their army. It will be difficult to count, unless...”

Penald joined, “Unless I go in there and count down people in one hour. I think I’ll quetly put markers on
the enemy troops and make them release a certain signal. We can program a screened device which will
count the number of directions the signals are coming from precisely. The darker the average is on the
screen, the stronger the army.”

Shemun looked at his son, impressed, then asked, “How can you make sure there is only one signal per
unit?”

“No need, if that turns out to be the case, the numbers will obviously go wrong, but the strength of the
unit will be affected because one sensor will only scan the area that another sensor is not scanning.”

Lishia suggested, “Then how about we actually show the total strength of the army and not just the
nuber of units in points?”

Shemun and Rubble agreed. Behind in the stadium, the commentator announced, “And that’s another
shock defeat as Morgonola beats Blake for the first three points, Jumping to the second place!”

Rubble added, “So, which is the army that you were speaking of earlier?”
Shemun replied, “Remember the red-bearded guy that you said teleported you here and said you’d find
me in the netherworld?”
“Yes?”
“His army.”
“Whoa!”

The commentator shouted, “And for the last match of the day, It’s Shemun, who was the first person to
ever force Jonthor to regenerate his body, up against Endy, an aspiring warrior who is a lieutenant in our
defence forces and also owns the largest collection of slaves until now!”

Shemun grumbled, “I’ll kill this one.”

He jumped of the rooftop and in his hands were not the pitch black blades of The Shadows, but were the
bright white blades of The Shine.

“GO!” the commentator shouted, and Shemun, dashing forwards, buried one of the two bright swords
in Endy’s chest, who swallowed and fell, dead.

It was all over in three seconds. The audience showed no reaction, not expecting any better, and
Shemun came back to the room that was their temporary home.

The commentator announced the next fight, between Sacrasia, another military woman, and Mostiey, a
filler. Fillers were people used to fill empty spots in the group stages.

*********
Fast forward to a month later.

*********

The commentator announced, “And now, for a quick recap, Zomoclone sits on the top of group A with
12 points, followed by Penald who is also on 12 points, after which there is Blake, with nine points with
a slow start but a thrilling win against skilled swordwoman Lishia, who, also with nine points sits on the
fourth place. Morgonola, who has failed to excel after a thumping win against former champion Blake, is
on the fifth place with six points and finally, the fillers go last.”
“As of group B, with a big surprise, Rubble had defeated Jonthor in the legendary Thunder and sword
match and sits on the top of the table with a whopping fifteen points. Jonthor, who is now the pole
enemy of Rubble, is on the second place, obviously, with twelve points. Cornoa, ranked even below the
fillers for 24th rank, has nine points while the rest of the three, trading defeats and draws have five
points each.”

“In Group C, Shemun, revealing his awesome powers of energy balls, and now a crowd favorite, is in the
first place with twelve points as three point were fined for killing off a champion with low protection.
Endy was for sure a miser! Johstrom, with his record-breaking chop of Rogomos’ legs, swings his
hammer at the second place with twelve points while Rogomos punches with his knuckles down in the
third place with nine points. Meanwhile, Endy, who is dead right now to the joy of many, is in the fourth
place with six free points awarded to him. Aaron is down in the fifth place with six points and Pisces has
gained zero points.”

“In Group D, Agnus rules the table with twelve points after the shock defeat to Kylie, who, also with
twelve points is in the second place after another shock loss to Sacrasia. Sacrasia, down in the third
place with twelve points is, along with Kylie, a testament that even without great strength or near
infinite speed, you can rule the battle. Down in the fourth place with six points is Kreigsnalia and below
him, two fillers reside.”

“And now, for the final battle of the group stages, the battle for the first place, a battle for speed, and a
battle maybe even as fierce as the one between Jonthor and Rubble, I give you...”

The spectators destroyed the stadium with noise, so to say.

“Zomoclone versus Penald!”

The audience went completely crazy. One of them beat their slave down to death in happiness. (Don’t
imagine that)

Zomoclone entered the stadium with speed and grace rivalling light. So did Penald. Penald held two red
swords with blades of pure black to his sides, and Zomoclone whipped out a weapon that shocked
everyone. The hammer of the lightning god. The one and the only, Mjolnir.

“Where did you find it?” Penald asked in shock.

“Thor left Mjolnir to the one who would reach first and use it. He ditched it since he himself was much
more powerful. It was fallen from the sky, to be wielded by not someone worthy, but someone with the
will.”

Zomoclone smiled slyly.

“GO!”

With multiple clicks, Zomoclone’s clones appeared. A lot of clones. Not very strong though. Just kind of
like Jonthor’s. They all whipped out their swords and tried to slice Penald. He hacked at one clone with
the pitch-black blade and it disappeared into ashes. Another took a kick in its face and poofed into ashes
on impact. He felt a hammer rushing at him. Penald quickly whirled around and deflected its path with
his sword. The audience oohed. Penald tracked the movement of the hammer which returned to the
real Zomoclone after accidentally turning one of the Zomo-’clones’ into ashes. Penald poofed yet
another clone and jumped up high right at the real one. Zomoclone looked at him in surprise, and
remarked, “You are a smart one. I doubt my clones will do anything to help me.”

One clone landed a hit on Penald who did not get affected at all. Penald said, “You are right, man.” and
pulled a clone and slammed it into Zomoclone, who remained unaffected as the clone poofed.

“Let’s fight”

Zomoclone swung his hammer at Penald, whose sword stopped the hammer that never stopped, and
started to bend its metal in.

“You’re not the only man with the fancy weapon, Zomoclone. Welcome to the Nighteater’s wrath. He
swung it at zomoclone’s stomach, who dodged it but just barely. A deadly series of sparring occured,
which was too fast to be tracked by the normal eye, unless you’re Penald. Or Zomoclone. Finally,
somehow, Penald sliced his sword into his adversary’s shoulder, who, a split second later, retaliated with
a heavy swing right at his left cheek and Penald flew to the edge of the stadium. The lightning in the
attack paralyzed Penald for a few seconds, and it was declared that, “Zomoclone WINS!”

Just then, Penald got up. The audience gasped and the people right in front of him cheered him on. He
got up weakly and unable to track the hammer coming at him, took another to his face and fell down
again. He again got up and as Mjolnir charged at him, he rolled out of its path sluggishly. Then he blinked
slowly, a blink that turned his blue eyes into black. He held his hands out for his sword, whose red
handle was now stained with green blood belonging to Zomoclone. The sword came to his hands which
were covered in some black mist. He glared at Zomoclone, the dark grey pupils dilating. He smiled of a
millisecond and his lips twitched with pain.

“Well done. Good game!” Penald called out as simple clothes darkened to pitch black.

Zomoclone smirked and they both charged at each other.

Another deadly dance of death followed. They were so fast that they actually evoked small twisters and
storms. Penald sliced away Zomoclone’s palm, and Zomoclone crushed his to as thin as paper. The
Nighteater cut off three-fourths of mjolnir’s hammerhead, Mjolinir crushed away a part of Nighteater’s
handle. Zomoclone ripped off Penald’s leg, Penald scooped of one of Zomoclone’s eyes. Penald couldn’t
defeat Zomoclone even with his newfound energy-bending abilities (

Zomoclone kneeled in pain, Penald lay down, half-dead.

“You were a worthy opponent, Penald. Well done.” he fell down. Both of them were stretchered away
along with their body parts, and everything was restored well enough... except zomoclone’s eye,
which... uhh...

[Big cringe alert!]

Zomoclone stepped on his fallen eye while fighting and it got crushed to a pulp.

[Big cringe over!]

The spectators were voting for this one to be the match of the season, or maybe even the whole history,
which was previously held by the epic Thor versus Loki (With Thor won, by the way), when the universe
was ruled over by a good and fair king and there was no slave trade.
Even the commentator was screaming his head off in the awesomeness. Then, he finally decided that
Zomoclone was the winner.

Back at the room, Penald had made all the sensors he needed to, with he and Rubble working as a unit
like they were used to. Now it was time to deploy the sensors and check the strength of the army.
Rubble grinned at him; they were finally doing what they loved to do; kick some real stuff. Penald shot
off to do his part of spying while Rubble got ready to avenge his brother. His next match was against
Zomoclone.

Shemun came in front of him and barked out, “You both, ready for training!”
Penald protested, “But dad! I have to deploy the –”
“Later! I thought you were the one interested in learning how to make bombs of energy?”

The brothers sighed. And grumbled to themselves.

Maybe that’s what normal dads are like?

A few minutes later, the three appeared at the training grounds. Shemun announced, “We’ll just make
small and weak bombs because we are not trying to break the stadium. But first, both of you, shoot of
the laser of energy out without using your bodily energy.”

Rubble closed his eyes, felt around for all the energy around it, and manoeuvring his hands into an
energy absorbing gravitational field, farmed the energy around him, which gravitated towards his hands.
Then he forcefully pushed his hand forward, and willed himself to want to hit the target. Suddenly, his
hand started repulsing the energy he had garnered, and it flew ahead in a laser like stream right at his
target.

Shemun yelled out, “Not fast enough! It should happen in a few cons (3 cons = 1 sec). And for you two,
that means minicons(1/5 of a con)! Come on, you both, you took a one whole jatinite (3 minutes)! Try it
again.”

So, they did. Rubble tried to do it quickly and all that came out was a faint bolt of transclucent energy.
Meanwhile, Penald charged it for a whole three minutes, and the resulting beam was so powerful that it
turned from a foggy transclucent to a deep grey. It didn’t destroy the target though. Shemun just sat by
and watched. His kids needed an angry coach, not a baby-sitter.

Rubble tried it again, and he took one-third of a Jatinite this time. They went on and on again for the
rest of the day. Meanwhile, back at the room, Lishia and Kylie were sparring with each other using blunt
sword. The commentary rang in the background, “Rank five and six dishing it out in the stadium today,
the first quarter-final match of the season, I give you Agnus and Johstrom!”

“The old rivals, who in their win to loss ratio, with the rank 5 having 798 wins and 614 defeats against
Agnus in all competitions, but 123 wins and 178 losses in L-league, are almost square with each other.”

Agnus arrived from the gate, a body-less amoeba-like guy with two hands and psuedopodia. He smiled a
jolly smile at his enemy, who grinned back.

“Want to see who’s even, bro?” called out Johstrom.

“Evidently, yes, my jolly old bean!” replied Agnus, his voice coming out in jolly guffaws.
“I’m warning you, though, I trained a lot. You are gonna lose, bruh.”
“Oh, that’s okay. I have no intentions of really winning, my fighting friend.”

Johstrom smiled back, “Dude, I hope that doesn’t mean that you aren’t gonna be much of a challenge.”

“Double negative? Yes, I am going to try and beat you.”

The commentator screamed over the crowd, “GO!”

And they started the battle.

Agnus, stretching out his body, made yet another pseudopodia which wrapped around Johstrom, who
jumped ahead with a front-flip, his dark, muscular body showing beneath his armour. He cut a deep
gash at Agnus’s thick hide and swinging his battle-axe for momentum, cut his friend-cum-opponent's
body almost into two. Agnus jumped far away and regenerated a bit before Johstrom swung his battle-
axe almost into his skull. Agnus quickly rolled into a ball and ran over Johstrom before rolling away for
regeneration. Johstrom sprang up, his armor corroded a bit by the digestive acid that Agnus secreted.

“Gross!” Johstrom grumbled, the clanged his battle-axes together and charged at his opponent, who
rolled into a ball again and sped towards Johstrom. The axeman jumped up to dodge the ball and sliced
into Agnus. Agnus's yucky translucent blood splattered all over and hit Johstrom’s armour, making it
(and him) look even more battered.

Agnus stretched out of the ball and went back to his original self as Johstrom charged at his enemy and
using his battle-axe, sliced away a pseudopodium, which wriggle around in pain before dying off. Then
he sliced at his fat adversary and chopped a small piece of him right out of the stadium. Agnus, holding a
hammer with his pseudopodia, hit Jonthor square at the cheek and sent him flying to the side. Johstrom
got up and punching the other side of then cheek, charged angrily at his adversary. He charged ahead
and using every inch of his power, crashed his axe through the heavy hammer of Agnus’s and sliced his
head, which went straight ahead and hitting the audience’s glass, slid straight out of the stadium leaving
a translucent goo-trail behind. Johstrom waited patiently for his enemy’s brain to grow back, which it
did, and somehow, retaining all of his memories, he smiled at Johstrom weakly and announced, “Ouch,
pipper! I accept defeat before he gets my piled into dust! I am POOFED!”

The audience laughed and cheered and one of threw a slave right off the stadium. Just because they
could.

The commentator announced, “And that means... Johstrom wins!”

The spectators cheered.

By now, Rubble and Penald had come back. Shemun chose to do a rough and personal recon of the
troops.

Rubble laughed along with Penald when the saw Lishia and Kylie bantering with each other. For some
reason, the two were having a hard time deciding whether to buy the fighter’s special or a combo of
spicy chip with gross sauce and bread butter with Earth’s authentic garlic and many spices.

Here’s what made them laugh: Both of the packs contained the same thing.
Penald mentioned it and Kylie rumbled out exasperated, “I know that! The packaging quality is different!
I’m never eating sauce that has a trillion gnats in it! You men will never understand!”
“Stop doing gender discrimination, Kylie!” Rubble shouted out from the bedroom in a comedic voice and
all of them laughed. After a few more minutes (years for Penald, for a number of reasons) of arguing,
they decided on something else entirely, which was Rubble’s suggestion, (The noob cake of spiciness,
and why not?)

With that decided, the four went down to the stadium mall and ordered the cake. Turns out everything
in there for free for all the participants in the league.

Rubble smiled to himself and ordered a host of new things such as food, some titanium armour and a
super insulated body covering for himself as he was going against Zomoclone. They soon went back up
to the room and stuffing all the new stuff in a corner, Rubble kitted himself up, complete it a ‘paint-job’
(which he didn’t use), a hair-color, (which he did use), a deodorant (and now he smells like blood) and
the insulated covering protected by an armor. Rubble used his energy melding powers to create a pitch-
black shield and stood in front of his friends with pride.

Instead of clapping or scoffing at him, all of them rushed to costume themselves up and stood in front of
the mirrors like vain and mundane people looking to make themselves look threatening.

They all laughed at themselves at their funny doings and then fell down in their beds, satisfied and
happy with themselves.

They slept like logs that day.

The next day, coming back to their senses, but still in their new armours, they laughed at each other
again and then tidying themselves up, went down to their daily routines, which equalled sparring and
looking at the league tables with concern.

After a few hours, the commentator announced, “The next fixture, with the dynamic couple, is going to
take place... NOW!”

“Dynamic couple?” Rubble wondered as he and Penald stopped beating each other with small sticks,
which had broken down into even smaller sticks.

Penald wondered the same too, but with his faster brain, he finally deduced that it was, “Obvious man!
Dad versus Mum!”
“Who mum? Ryushoy?”
“Kylie, you dumb teen!”

Rubble realised that Kylie was probably his pseudo-step-mother. No wonder she scolding him for not
doing (or doing) small things.

Shemun, without coming to the home, went right into the stadium as his recon finished. Kylie walked
out too, lightsabres in hand. Shemun looked at the two lightsabres and laughed, “That’s what you call
swords? Let’s make this fair.”

Kylie grinned in half-anticipation. Shemun tossed The Glows to her and she caught the swords by the
handles.
The commentator yelled, “GO!”

Kylie, with extreme speed, sliced at his leg but barely missed and flipped out of the way as Shemun’s
lightsabre sliced vertically through the air. Shemun quickly followed with a spinning strike and Kylie
blocked the lightsabre, cutting its solid, bounded laser off. Shemun quickly closed and clicked his
lightsabre back on as he rolled away from a shoulder strike of Kylie.

Though the fight didn’t cause any tremors or gruesome blood spattering and body parts flying away, the
gracefulness of the fight charmed the spectators, who hooted. Some diehard Shemun fans shouted for
him to finish it off, which was not his intention. Kylie’s speed was actually pretty fast. Correction, it was
very fast.

Even Shemun was shocked by the speed she was showing. She threw away The Glow and pulled out two
more lightsabres as Shemun asked why.

“You don’t know my speed, Shemmy.” she smiled. Then Kylie sliced at his side which Shemun barely
blocked and gave him a kick right at the chest with both legs as she flipped back and landed on the
ground like a feather.

Penald gasped, “That – that’s impossible! She’s almost as fast as me.”

Rubble replied, “I had no idea dad was so fast!”

Penald scoffed at him, “Of course he is fast, he’s our dad and the leader of the revolt!”
“Then Kylie is an assassin –”
“Who killed seventy-two mundane people. I bet you counting everyone including pirates and criags we
have killed over a few hundreds.”

Back at the stadium, Shemun shouted, “Time to ramp it up!”

Kylie nodded, “Ssssure!”

They both front-flipped into a battle as crazy as the one between Zomoclone and Penald, except there
were more successful dodges. And it was not so fast that it caused mini-storms. Shemun’s lightsabre
sizzles as it hit Kylie’s who jumped up and doing another flip, cut a slight gash into Shemun’s shoulder.
Shemun quickly, ducked down and in a sweeping arc, damaged her leg-armour. Kylie brought her sword
down at his shoulder but he rolled back, dodging the strike. He then jumped ahead, almost head-butting
Kylie though she dodged it with uncanny grace. Shemun smiled dangerously and as he flew ahead – his
head missing the target – and threw his lightsabre right at her, which found its mark and she fell down,
her waist dripping red blood. Rubble retrieved his lightsabre and got up, looking at the crowd, who were
now chanting for Kylie to get up.

He shouted out, “You want more of our fight?”

The audience shouted in unison, “Yeah!”

Shemun looked back at his adversary, (Just for now. Only for now! Don’t get ANGRY!!) who got up and
smiled, “Yeah, I’m ready. Nice tactic by the way.”

They continued. Kylie quickly poked at his stomach and he face-punched her with the lightsabre’s hilt,
then grazed her arm and it all started dripping more red blood. They didn’t bother for it though, as Kylie
gave a back-hand slap and cut into his boots. Then, jumping back, she kicked his face and almost got his
cheeks with her sabre as Shemun hacked at her leg armour, but missed by far. Suddenly, rolling through
her legs, and before she could turn back, he got Kylie’s back armour and cut clean through it, though
missing her back. Kylie lunged back and doing so, she noticed her ‘kids’ pointing at the leaderboards
concernedly. Apparently, Shemun noticed it too, as he charged up a punch full of pulsating enemy and
knocked the former assassin out. With just five seconds of the match to spare.

Kylie was stretchered away and fixed up is just a few minutes while Shemun just casually walked back to
the stadium.

His sons and Lishia dashed up at his tall frame and exclaimed, “That was just ULTIMATELY TURBO-SUPER
AWESOME!”

Shemun laughed, “Dang it, you three. The only reason it looked awesome was because we’d agreed that
we would just make the audience go ‘oooh!’”

“So, you knew Kylie was so fast?”

“Well that was a surprise, to be honest. Because she’d never been so fast before.”

The Glows came through the open door and Shemun directed them to close it, then come into his
hands. Rubble clicked The Shadows on and waved them around just for some random satisfaction.

They all went down and ate some multiverse-famous Starlightan food.

Down there, they were suddenly caught on by media persons who demanded an interview with Rubble.
Just as Rubble was going to say no, Shemun and Penald grinned and pushed Rubble forward who
growled at them as he was voluntarily dragged away.

A few minutes later, he found himself seated in a comfy, white sofa in a very modernistic room with
smartly carved and attractive edges and a neat, smooth and simplistic table with a holographic
computer upon it. The person, seated next to him, asked him the first question, “I’ll be direct with you I
think you’ll like this question. How many slaves do you have?”
Rubble opened his mouth angrily but only said an ‘I’ before closing it. Then realising that if he said
anything of his real thoughts, the people and people could start doubting him.

“I don’t have any at the moment since just as I arrived here, I got busy in the tournament. I do plan to
buy a lot from the commission and the loot I get.”
The reporter enquired, a bit of interest visible in his own eyes, “How do you feel about your image in
front of the people?”
“What is my image in your opinion?” Rubble shot back.
The reporter replied, “Well, a lot of Jonthor fans now support you instead of Jonthor. They think you are
charismatic, powerful, a bit of a showboat, and a hero-type, as compared to Jonthor’s charismatic
destroyer type image.”
Rubble, his slight shrewdness allowing him to speak confidently, replied, “So I am a charismatic hero and
he is a charismatic destroyer?”
“Yes,”
“Well, to be honest I never try to look charismatic. You see, I am that clumsy, bumbling guy who
suddenly gets his tracks on whenever he needs to.”
The reporter smirked, “Well, you’re in luck, then. Because you’ve made a total zero mistakes while in
battle, according to popular vote.”
“Thank you, audience, for ignoring my mistakes!”

The reporter laughed. Then asked, “Why is your name Rubble? Did you dad keep it or it was already
known when your dad adopted you?”
Rubble smiled, “Hey, you’re asking me all the comfortable questions! Well, dad kept my name Rubble,
because it means...” he paused for a second; he couldn’t say rebel, which it actually meant. So, he
continued with, “Power. You know, raw power in the Shukkar language of our area.”

He added out ‘area’ because if anyone researched the name in Shukkar, they would get rebel, and he
would be guilty of lying and would be killed and whatever.

The reporter then asked, “Now, I’d like to ask, how did you, or your dad get the sword that you wield? It
seems to be quite powerful.”

Rubble froze for a second, then thinking quickly, he said, “Oh, yes, it’s crazy strong. You see, Thor is soon
departing to meet Zeus and needs a next defender in an invasion that seems to be quite possible. Only
two chosen people can wield the Mjolnir and the Blades of Niflheim, or my two swords.”

The reporter stifled a gasp and asked him, “So, does that mean Zomoclone is one of the Chosen ones?”
“Yep”
“And Jonthor isn’t?”
Rubble felt a bead of sweat trickling down the back of his head.

“I am very sorry to say, he isn’t. However, The Shad – Blades of Niflheim do tell me about his having a
significant role in all this.”

The reporter clicked on his hologram and told him, “Thank you for all this! You may go now. With our
carriages if you –”

Rubble ran back to the room. The next fixture was between Penald and Jonthor, and he had to see it.

Just as he reached, ignoring Kylie’s anger about making the floor dirty, he leapt up and smashed down
into the sofa, fitting perfectly between Lishia and Shemun.

The commentator was announcing, “With the speed that almost stunned Zomoclone and the power that
would rival Rubble, I give you... Penald!”
“And giving you the crowd favorite, whose power, grace, charisma, and speed has given him ten titles,
with only one defeat to his name and an innumerable number of wins, I give you...”

The crowd got extremely excited.

“Jonthor!”

The audience chanted his name countlessly. Again, and again and again.

Penald and Jonthor stayed silent. They stared at each other, obviously loathing each other.

“GO!”
Penald flipped back and flicked the blades of his nighteater out. Jonthor took out his own heavy battle
axe with runes scratched roughly all over it and in his other, a golden spear.

He quickly realised what the spear was. Looking at it in shock, he asked, “How did you get the spear
now?”
“Gungnir? I stole it from Odin, kid. Not like you would understand.”

Penald hadn’t waited for an answer, he quickly slammed his Nighteater into his stomach and sliced
Jonthor into two, who fell down and quickly regenerated. Penald chopped at his head but Jonthor
dashed away like a streak of lightning, but Penald quickly charged the energy from himself and blasted it
in a beam which hit Jonthor square in his body. Then charging up his hand for a punch of energy, he
slammed his clenched fists into Jonthor’s head, who thumped down and bounced up with the impact.
Penald, with his superior speed, slashed the Nighteater roughly through his body and and the adversary
fell down heavily injured. As Penald continued smashing at him, Jonthor grumbled.

“Enough is enough. Time to finish this battle.”

He kicked a surprise kick at penald who flew away to the other side of the stadium. Then taking the
spear he had stolen from Odin, threw it at penald who got hit right in the chest. Black blood poured out.
Taking the hammer covered in runes, he ran towards Penald and jumping high up, spun around for
momentum. Then he landed down, smashing his hammer straight into the spear, which completely
pierced Penald’s chest and fell down behind him. Penald somehow charged up energy around his palms
and punching his adversary right in his chest, sent him thrown up and thudding down a few feet behind.
Penald got up unsteadily, covered in black blood everywhere below his chest.

Jonthor groaned and summoning his spear, which created a hole in Penald’s palm, looked at his enemy
with pure loathing.

“I’ll murder you for what your brother did!”

He charged at Penald, who somehow dodged the swinging hammer, but suddenly felt chokingly intense
pain as the Gungnir (The spear that Jonthor stole) pierced into his body.

Jonthor roared and pushing his spear back out, he pointed it at Penald and let out a strong storm of
thunder rage on. He then looked down at him and with his hands, tore through the hole, splitting his
body into two. He took his hammer and licking the blood on it

Penald fell limply. Jonthor looked at the crowd and away from the gory sight of a blacked-by-blood,
crumpled, and torn Penald, whose body parts were stretchered away.

Everyone of the audience was shocked. They wondered if Penald was even alive. There was a higher
probability that he had died.

Rubble screamed for a whole few hours while Shemun just sat there. Stoic, impassive. Maybe angry at
his enemy.

No. Not angry. The battle was gruesome? Okay. The body parts were disposed off? Yeah. Did Penald
die? Evidently Yes
The anger on Rubble showed in the next match as he pounded down Zomoclone with rage, breaking the
Mjolnir into pieces (Don’t worry, Thor’s much stronger than that nowadays)

Rubble sliced Zomoclones legs away which slammed into the glass and without waiting for a “Rubble
wins!”, went back to his room.

The semi-finals...

Jonthor got a thumping win against Shemun as the latter lost an eye and was permanently paralyzed
due to heavy concussions, which were given even after Shemun had lost. Rubble swore to kill Jonthor
even if it was the last thing he did.

**********

The commentator yelled, “GO!” and Rubble and Johstrom charged at each other, swords drawn, ready
to beat the other.

It did not take long. Rubble amputated his adversary’s legs, and charging up a huge punch of great
energy, blasted Johstrom’s face with his powerful fists.

Johstrom fell down and was carried away in a stretcher as the spectators groaned at the shortness of
the match. Not like Rubble really cared now. All he wanted was to kill Jonthor, whether it would make
him feel good or not. It was strategically good anyway, as Jonthor was the most dangerous single threat
to the whole army. According to Penald’s old analysis anyway.

Thinking of Penald just made him cry, and no amount of comforting words from Kylie helped him. Nor
did Shemun’s

He just lay on the sofa. Looking blankly at the now empty stadium. Kylie joined him, “I don’t know how
Penald was exactly like, but looking at you, I can tell that it was very bad.”

“I don’t need your stupid words.”

Kylie pressed the issue, more aggressively, “Oh, no, but you do. You have no idea what it was like being
a slave. I know that sweet, sugarcoated words aren’t going to help you.”

“Glad you understand that. Now can I go back to sleep?”

She looked at him. Half-compassionate, half impassive. Hard to imagine, yeah.

Kylie then said, “At least you lost only one member of your family, I lost everyone. Mom, dad, brothers,
sisters, even cousins.”
She paused. Rubble said nothing, but his ears twitched a bit. Kylie smiled a bittersweet smile at that.

“That ordeal turned me into a literal mindless monster, devling into insanity to the limit that I thought
that people like me were born and deserving towards slavery.”

“And then you killed 72 people?”

“No, 67, the other five were Zoruanian soldiers. So, anyways, I spied on Shemun and found him living a
good, responsible life with two carefully rescued and foster kids and revolting against his masters.” she
paused again. Then continued, “It almost breached the lies that he had fostered in me, but not quite
completely. I actually tried to kill him, without knowing that he knew someone was tracking him. He
caught me, chopped away my swords, and did something that shattered my false belief about how the
world was evil and everyone got it and all. He spared my life.”

“You don’t look like that sort of person who would need to have her life spared?”
“Shemun sure doesn’t look like he would let me live either.”
“But you both still look good together,” Rubble complemented her, feeling guilty at his non-
responsiveness.

He went to his bed and fell asleep without eating anything. His father, acting like an actual, loving dad,
curled up around his kid, who, despite all of his powers, still shivered from cold...

Kylie stayed awake. Still looking at the stadium – which had been renovated to span a whole five
kilometers diameter for the finals – where Rubble would either be killing, or dying. Rubble was her son
now. And she, his mother. She had felt a motherly affection for that child, who was so boisterous, lively,
goofy, smart, with the required dose of responsibility. His biological mother would be proud. If he had
one. He was an incarnation of life, after all. No mums for incarnations. No dads too, really.

The next day arrived, with Kylie still awake, in no mood to sleep, as Rubble stormed the large stadium
and kicked up the sand particles into a storm with his powers.

Jonshit dies tonight, he thought to himself savagely.

He had finally managed to make big bombs of energy that his dad had chided him about, and also
managed to turn The Shadows into what they actually were. The commentator arrived but before he
could say anything, a huge flash of lightning occurred, turning one slave into ashes.

Rubble roared, actually using his energy to amplify his voice. The roar caused a very small tremor.

He shouted out all sorts of obscene words that would, if uttered, turn this book right to 18+.

Jonthor landed slowly, wielding a hammer that looked just like the Mjolnir and had the same rune, but
was much bigger.

“I made the dwarves make a better Mjolnir,” Jonthor roared. A few of the audience cheered but were
not heard through the lightning. Jonthor descended some distance away, and he looked grand, in
advanced armour and the powerful hammer which threw a white, heavy flash of lightning right into the
sky. He himself emitted sparks out of him continually.

Rubble roared again. He looked back at Kylie, whose eyes were shining white from the reflection of
lightning and she seeming shouted to kill the bastard and mash him into pulp...

Jonthor smiled lazily at Rubble, who roared and charged at Jonthor at a speed that would rival Penald’s
Jonthor barely missed, and then, suddenly turning into pure lightning, smashed into him. Rubble flew
back, a few kilometers away, as half the audience cheered Jonthor on.

Rubble got up and saw the bigger ‘super mjolnir’ charge at him, and he blocked it with his sword. The
Mjolnir persisted, pushing him back a few feet, before Rubble decided to utilise his full power before he
was rendered half-dead.
He focussed at his blades, searching through its memories, philosophies, and then binded himself with
it. The swords were a part of his body now, with his life energy residing in it. Rubble let out another
ripping roar, and the swords’ blades burst into black fire, dark purple at the tips.

He pushed the hammer back out of its path and backflipped behind to avoid a strike of lightning from
above. As another flash approached him, he constructed a portal that let the lighting and and then
created another that released the lightning right at Jonthor, who dodged it.

He then charged at Jonthor again, who let out a stream of lightning straight at him. Rubble, movng out
of the way, lobbed a bomb of energy that he had made at Jonthor. Jonthor fell away but landed on his
legs. One knee down. Recovering quickly, he threw out a beam of white lightning at his enemy who
blocked it with one of his swords. Sensing the super mjolnir coming at him, he ducked down. Suddenly, a
hammer hit him at his side, and he fell, losing his balance. Finding a clone of Jonthor behind him, he
sliced it with his sword and it burned down to death in black flames. Not even any ashes remained.

Somehow creating a portal beneath Jonthor, he made another one right in front for him, from which a
mass of lightning sent him flying back. The audience cheered again. While mid-air, the mjolnir came at
him from behind, and despite his blocking it, the Mjolnir sent him flying to the other side of the stadium.
Creating a portal and coming right behind Jonthor, he sliced at his adversary with great difficulty, and
Jonthor, unable to go to a stable range, had to fight him melee. Jonthor grabbed Rubble’s and tried to
dig his electric fingernails inside to tear them out. However, Rubble chopped his hand off with The
Shadow. Jonthor’s hand burned off. However, his body had regenerated. He sliced Jonthor at his head
but missed as the hammers crushed him down and the electricity weakened him.

“Weak. Just like Penald. He was an ignorant, good-for-nothing, useless –”

Well, emotions are a prime part of life. In this parallel, anyway. And the emotion of anger is supposed to
make you a fighter to defeat your enemies. And Rubble is the incarnation of life.

Know what that means?

Jonthor continued with relish was he pinned down Rubble and intensified the already electric chaos that
had been unleashed, “Parasitical bastard. Wanna hear more?”

A magnified voice came out that did not seem to belong to Rubble at all. It was very rough and angry.

“You Must Die.”

Rubble suddenly grabbed Jonthor by his neck and looked up with a gaunt and ashen face. Jonthor was
rendered surprised. He tried to pull Rubble away but he wouldn’t budge. Rubble stood up, his eyes
turned from green to black, with the whites turned to a bright, shining red.

He stood up, lifting Jonthor, whose body was still spewing electricity all over, his legs slightly below the
ground. Jonthor turned to electricity and flashed behind Rubble, trying to strike him with his mjolnir.

Rubble turned back and blocked the mjolnir easily, then punctured a hole in his chest. Rubble drove it
out and blocked the gungnir – the spear of Odin, as well. They both engaged in a deathly dance as
Rubble chopped his most hated enemy’s arms and legs and hair again and again. Jonthor finally struck
Rubble with the super mjolnir and the powerful brother flew behind, crashing at the glass and almost
sliding out of the stadium, which is also considered a loss.
Rubble jumped in again and literally flew at Jonthor crashing into the Mjolnir and Jonthor as well.
However, the foolhardy move cause Rubble to take really heavy damage, and he fell down in the place.
Jonthor staggered, he himself barely regenerating, at Rubble and used his full power as he pounded
Rubble down into dust...

Everything went black when he heard Penald shouting at him from somewhere. “No! Don't die! You
can’t! You have to live for the sake of the multiverse. Don’t accept it, dot! DOT!”

He suddenly came back to life. He just lay down for a while, unable to feel his chest properly, then
realised it was probably in pieces.

I must be regenerating right now. I can’t hear anything. Maybe the git squished my face too, because I
can’t see or... I don’t have teeth...

His face and rest of the body healed, though as he was so deep in the ground, the audience couldn’t see.

Jonthor was bragging, “See? It’s official. I am the champion again, and I always will be. Even the
commentator just said it. See the medics? They're going to take Rubble away now. I won, I win, and I will
always win!”

The crowd cheered. Jonthor continued, “Rubble, like Penald –”

Rubble’s blood boiled again. How dare he say his name!

“Was just another young bastard who thought they could get away with disrespecting us. They thought
they were the rulers of the world. All they had was a bit of speed and foolhardyness. I am going to
punish their dead souls again by killing everyone they knew or loved!”

The audience cheered again. Jonthor looked at the mini home where Rubble’s new family had stayed.
Lishia was clinging to Kylie’s hand like a little afraid girl, who clutched the little twelve-year old’s hands
back, staring at Jonthor with angry, burning eyes. (Lishia was twelve.) Shemun looked at Jonthor with a
slight smirk and then looked at his son. And winked

Rubble was somehow able to see them. He three empowering emotions. Anger at Jonthor for daring to
taunt him again and all, fear that Jonthor would kill his family, and a boost in self-morale with the
knowing smirk and the that his father gave him.

His swords vibrated and whispered in a toneless voice. Do it. Use me. Throw the mad monster into the
dark realms of death. I shall give you the knowledge. Do it, son. Do it.

Rubble grabbed his swords, got up. Feeling as powerful as it was possible to, he crossed his swords
noisily and flicked their flames on.

“DIE!”

He roared like a powerful lion jumped high up at Jonthor, who saw him and blocked the hit, still sliding
back with the impact. Rubble charged up and let out a huge wave of heat, and Jonthor fell down.

He took out his two swords, and dashin at him, powered by the influence of three powerful emotions,
he hacked at Jonthor in a terrific and a terrifically one-sided melee until Jonthor couldn’t regenerate
anymore. The evil champion’s body burned out and the sky that had turned a flashing blue, white and
grey now turned back to a peaceful yellow with a slight tint of pink. The dumb audience now just
cheered for Rubble, who without saying a single word, went back. He was welcomed by a proud father,
a doubly proud mother, and... Rubble thought, as he looked at Lishia, who actually sort of resembled
him.

A triply proud sister.

He smiled after three days of a single frown. He hoped that Penald was happy and satisfied with him in
heaven.

No. He wouldn’t be. Yet. Rubble still had work to do. That's what he thought as he picked up his
weapons and decided on the army formations with his father for the war to free Zoruanian slaves.

“Thor says that we'll send in a few waves of androids and then check whether what we think about the
intel we sent to them was right.”
“That’s an insult to Penald!”
“We losing the war would be an insult to him.”

Rubble sighed, “Okay.”

He kicked a gun's battery on and Shemun smiled to himself. The father said, “You know, I used to use
this gun a long time ago. I think it’s still my best one.”

Rubble smiled and turned the gun off, “Why'd I be needing it anyway? Even if it is your strongest?”
Chapter 3: Zoruana’s freedom siege
As Rubble and his dad battle against the likes of Zoruana, they realise that the enemy turned out to be
much more powerful than they thought. This chapter underlines the war against slavery and the lax rule
of the king.

“Holy moly, look at this report, dad! Some guy's come around and started a revolution all by himself.”
Rubble cried out as he showed the written report (on a hologram, of course) to his dad, who just
mumbled, “It was just a matter of time, l'il kid. Someone of this quadrillion strong universe had to
actually know that. It was bound to happen.”

The report had said that some guy had actually started a movement against the stupid king, who, other
than making lives terrible with slavery had been doing almost no development projects that actually
helped the king.

Rubble couldn’t help but smile. For once there was someone other than he and his family who was
actually doing something. He still supposed that Thor was powerful enough to beat Zoruana with his
own army. Then why was he looking for so many reinforcements? Why?

*********

“Oi Tron, you dumb donkey! Don’t think we don’t know that you’re in here like a rat!” it was the voice of
Caladon. They were going along with an army of other gangsters and they were trying to find Tron.
Whom they found sure enough. And now came the hard part.
In case you didn’t know, Tron was a hardened criminal with serious ties with the Ether. According to the
Starlightan government, anyway.

The scene was of a whole lot of people surrounding a small bunker-like area which someone could
mistake as a garbage fill, which as true as well too; Tron did live in a garbage fill. A voice came out from
the bunker, “I suppose you have aircrafts above too, waiting to blast me to smithereens?”

One of the 'governmental criminals' laughed, “That is if we don’t blast ya. How about you just
surrender?”

Tron didn’t reply.

The army, which was chatting amongst itself, also slowly quietened down and a awkward silence
ensued.

Just then,

Dhooosh

A missile barely missed Cerileon, who grumbled about always almost getting hit by stuff. Caladon yelled,
“Attack, ye scurvy rascals!”

And so, they did.

From inside, a voice shouted out, “Oh carp! I need to go to Zoruana right freaking now!!”

“Aye, the soft warm-blooded fish can’t even swear!” Caladon roared, acting like an actual pirate.
“Aye, aye! His army roared back as they intensified their attack on the bunker. Two or three of them
climbed into the bunker and shouted in terror as they flew away, the reason being powerful punches
throwned at them by the villain with infinite battery.

The bunker collapsed down all around him and a very powerful thing emerged out of it; A man covered
with some metallic armour and two big guns on each hand. His face was covered by a full helmet and his
armour seemed to be joined with it.

“Avast?” Alder tried to joke.

“Not cool, bro,” Turios silenced him.
“Aye…”

“Goodbye, fellow pirates, hope you had a good time!” Tron said as he kicked his jetpack on and dashed
far away, High up.

Caladon quickly switched on his communicator and roared in it, “The rascal’s escaped! Get him, you all!”
High above the ground, Tron was dodging the fighters. He swerved to the left as a missile barely missed
the villain. Another stream of laser bolts hit the armour of on his back and he pulled away in an
awkward loop.

“Dammit, you!” he yelled with a metallic edge to his voice due to his suit and blasting a solid,
inescapable laser, sunk down one of his ships. The A.I assistant said automatically, “Accuracy reduced to
98%. Performing internal suit repairs to improve accuracy to 99.56%. Hope you –“

“Shut the f – oh, I programmed you. Nevermind…”

Swoop! A missile flew past him.

Tron yelled out, to his A.I, “What is the maximum speed of these jets?”

The suit scanned it out.

“sixty-seven light fractions, sir.”

Woosh! Another missile missed his body.

“What’s the best we can do?”

The A.I searched through his suit and the others.

“This one can only get to sixteen light fractions.” It said calmly.

“The others?”

“The traveller can get you above a hundred light fractions.”

“Cool.”

Tron stopped mid-space and charged down back to the old garbage dump. He dodged a huge stream of
laser bolts and sliced of a spooky hand that was about to grab him and somehow crashed down into
garbage fill where he lived.
Quickly putting on a blue-yellow armour which looked a lot more modern and covered him from head to
toe, quite literally, he dashed back high up, taking another route to evade the opposing fighters. They
found him anyway and Tron gave out one last warning for them to flee before he blew them up.

He could swear that a few pilots laughed.

Pew, Pew, Pew!

He launched out laser bolts that some crafts dodged. Then, herding the crafts smartly, (which were also
trying to hit him) he dodged a huge laser and blasted off a purple beam of death. For some reason, his
newly invented Heavy Lasers (or fart lasers) always were purple in colour, and Tron never tried to ring it.

Guiding the powerful, solid beam of purple light, he dozed down a lot of jets.
Then the A.I reported, “Ready for super speed.”

“Seventy-five light fractions should do the trick. Go to Zoruana. Thanks a lot, Finn”
The A.I assistant replied politely, “You’re quite welcome, sir!”
The glass windows in front of his eyes closed with a safety shutter in front of him and feeling a sudden
but not very hurtful jerk, he launched into super speed.

Down below, Caladon shouted in his communicator.

“Sorry to report, but we missed the target.”
“Holy shit, man! Chase it!”
“It’s too fast. We tried measure it, but he escaped. Sorry, bro, but not all criminals as badass smart super
pilots. Really sorry.”
“Chill, I actually get it. Kinda. You know what? We’ll just give up for now and report back to the
government.”
“I should tell everyone to back off?”
“Yes. And make it compulsory. We don’t want casualties.”

He heard a weird sort of gulp from the other and the voice became a bit nervous. “More than half of us
just died.”

“The shit! Really?”

“Yes. You know, what’s worse on a personal level?”

Caladon wondered, everyone else now packing their stuff and getting ready to get back to headquarters,
with Turios and another senior gangster major herding troops, “No?”

“My wife. Almost my wife anyway, she died. And that means I have no family.”
“Lack of family. Is that why you took to criminality?”
“Umm… I'll be honest; yeah.”
“Same here bro. You have a buncha' bros to get the richies looted down with?” The voice replied, “No.”
It sounded pretty sad.
“Wanna join us? We won’t even give a damn how good you are or not

The voice sounded very smallish, “Okay.”

Caladon smiled. As much as the gangsters he and his partners in crime were, there was no doubt that
they were good guys as well. They had never really hurt a single guy, other than cutting the hand of a
soldier, (which was the soldier’s own fault) and downing a senior Starlightan pilot, who was really just a
person who worked for the stupid Ether.

He clicked the communicator of and stared at his faithful troops. They were indeed awesome. Way
better than any Elite force of the world. The Starlightan government wasn’t so stupid after all!

Still, damn it. They had just found Jimmy Carter and lost him just as quickly. He was, for sure, a powerful
mercenary in the Ether's side.

********

Rubble had left the hostile territory of the Zoruana’s main landmass and landed in Asgard, the realm of
the Nords who were a remarkably powerful species who had the power to lift one tonne without any
internal or external power inducing stimulus. Which was extremely rare. In comparison, the homo
sapien lupus, who are the strongest species of humans, can, on an average lift only 147 kilograms on an
average.

Anyways, they stood in war, and the red-bearded guy (okay, enough. Let’s just call him Thor) threw his
new weapon, a battle axe, right through the chest of his enemy, who was a bloody red demon fuelled by
dead demonic energy. Fitting. It even looked ferociously ugly.

It grunted and fell easily, killed by the legendary battle-axe thrown by the legendary battle-hardened
Thor.

Rubble sliced another demon open in its face with grace and another devil which jumped at The Shadow
Wielder was brutally slashed into three and the demonic blood fell into Lishia's mouth, whose grace was
temporarily undone by the crown as her tongue tasted the yucky blood.

“Gagh! It tastes like rotten socks!”

Rubble joked, off-handedly slicing a demon that was trying to bite is tough skin into two, “You’ve tasted
socks? Wow!”
“Shut up!”
“Just being a not-so-well-meaning bro.”

Lishia would have slapped him if he was close enough, but contented herself by beating his big dumb
body down till he bled.
It wasn’t possible. Unfortunately.

Rubble's swords suddenly spewed fire and they turned into the blazing black blades that had killed
Jonthor.

Within a few seconds, he had flamed down all the demons, not including the ones that had been killed
by Thor's El Grindaxe.

“Way to go, young children, Thor announced, as the fifteen thousand year old Asgardian ruler made his
way through the hellish gates of Surtr's abode, which a hotspot for the dumb, evil, dimension-crossing
demons who invaded the whole multiverse from who-knows-where.

They needed to get Surtr on their side immediately. They had already called the super powerful Tron (or
Jimmy Farter)
The place was unguarded; Surtr didn’t really need any guard. He was often rumoured to be diabolically
bad but since Thor had taken over, there was no account of an attack or any other bad act by Surtr.
Then again, Surtr himself had said, coming to Asgard in his small form, that he had realised that his
destiny of destroying Asgard once in Ragnarok had already been fulfilled millions of years ago and now,
with the new Asgard of Odin formed, he was free to do whatever he wanted. And he wanted Asgard to
prosper. After all, that was what Ragnarok was all about. It was all about a new and a better start. Also,
Thor needed a new weapon which would surpass the ones that a weak Mjolnir (which was weak now,
since Thor’s powers had greatly increased) possessed. He hoped that Surtr’s people, who were the best
blacksmiths (or battlesmiths) in the whole multiverse.

Rubble chatted with his dad, both of them filling each other with interesting details that happened when
either of them didn’t exist in Shuggar.

“Damn, they made a school as a memorial for me?

“Yep! Being the first Glocman to ever escape the clutches of the Ether, was had to celebrate ya.”

They entered Surtr’s palace.

“So, what happened next?”

“I’ll tell you later.”
“Okay, as you wish.”

Lishia, in the meantime, was chatting with her 'mum'

Thor observed, “Don’t little girls prefer to be with their dads and little boys with their mum,”
Shemun smiled, “I never had time to think about that. I couldn’t really care less right now.”
“I wouldn’t disagree.” Thor smiled. Then he continued, “Back to the main point, you all need to stay
back. If Surtr attacks, only my thunder can stop his raging fire. Even your storehouse of energy won’t
save you, little Rubble.”

They all obliged.

As they still behind, Thor strode ahead in steady, confident steps and found Surtr simply sitting on the
throne room.

“What happened, Ragnarok?” Thor asked.

“I knew you would come, and I knew that you coming meant that I would have to make a new choice.
And I have never made a choice. Nor do I know morality. All I know is that I want power. Power and
happiness.”
“Most of the world is not ahead of you. However, inculcation of morality is not very hard. If you take the
decision I recommend you to take, you will learn the ways of morality easily.”

Surtr smiled, “And what choice is that? My diabolical days are over. You are free to reveal whatever you
wish to.”
“Well, that’s very nice. Want to join me in a literal war for morality?”
“You versus?”
“All the guardian races versus the Zorunan empire which has sunk so low that it has started slave trade.

“Wow, I wholeheartedly join you. I do realise that keeping anyone in that sort of condition is not nice.”
“You have morality alright. You know, to be honest, I expected the big, powerful and angry Surtr to see
me, remember me, and attack me.”
Surtr laughed, “I remember you alright. You and Odin were, for sure, a very strong duo.”

Thor turned back and said, “Come to Asgard and meet me as fast as I can. And please stay close to the
deserted areas. Hope you don’t mind…”
“I am not a total lack of brains, I know.”

Thor laughed and returned to where the other four were standing.
“How'd it go?”
“A billion times better than I anticipated.”

********

“Five seconds before we land, bro.” Tron's A.I assistant declared.

“Four, three, two, one…” Jimmy counted.

Thwak. The noise of landing wasn’t too loud but not very discreet.

Taking out his deep violet lightsabres, he walked up on ahead.

“Where are we?” he asked Finn as he traversed through the area. It looked like a giant botanical garden.
Finn answered after a while, “We have successfully hacked into a connection. More battery required.

Jimmy nodded, squeezing his eyes tight as he did something that felt like… a forceful fart?
He was still in his suit, so it’s pretty hard to note down the features of his body.

Finn continued, “We are in the Asgardian botanical grounds in the army assembly and training area.
Want to know the way to the grounds? Most of the population has already assembled there.”

“Yes, man.”

A route opened up in the holographic window in front of him? Jimmy followed it carefully, not touching
any of the botanical plants.

He saw one of them trapping a super primitive insect species and eating it down in a gulp. Another very
primitive animal came in and chomped down the plant which had killed the insect.

He reached the battlegrounds and landed down smoothly among a couple of Asgardians. One of them
noticed him and said, “Hey, that’s a nice idea! Even I'll design my armour like him! What do you think,
Hel?”

“Do whatever you want to. Just tell me what sort of armour do you want.” Hel replied, the tips of her
hair starting to burn a bit from irritation

“Oh, okay, how about the guy in Tron's armour?”

“Okay. You’ll have to pay for that though,” she replied.
“Alright.”

Tron inwardly grinned. At least he had his fans here. How did they know that he was not an evil git with
no intentions other than death, though?

Hmmm...
Anyways, Tron approached the Nord (asgardian) and asked him, “How do you know that Tron is not an
evil git who supports the Ether?”
“We’re asgardians, friend. I had to check why did this Tron guy have one of the most Ether kills by a
single person till date? So, I researched and found out that Tron is not bad!”
“I can relate, friend. I researched on the subject myself.”

Jimmy smiled, “I’ll show you. You'll know soon enough! Where had Thor gone, though?”

The asgardian thought for a while, then said, “I think that he has gone to meet Surtr and get his
assistance in the war.”
“Where’ll he go to next? I have not been paying attention to his happenings, honestly. Too busy
designing this suit,” Jimmy smiled.

“Heimminer! I am calling you!” an angry female voice screeched. A woman charged at him and glaring at
Tron like it was all his fault for whatever he’d done.

All the asgardians paused, a great sense of foreboding washing over them. Hel's hair turned to solid,
burning napalm and she evacuated everyone from the spot.

A wave of heat erupted from the angry woman as she yelled at her poor husband and then she suddenly
left him. Looking at Tron with eyes of fire.

Jimmy yelled out through his armour speakers to leave him alone, and Hel did not argue. Tactically, it
was better that only one person died as compared to a lot.

With everyone safe and away, the mad-woman screamed out, “How dare you support the spineless,
stupid Tron! I don’t care what Hel or my stupid husband or anybody else thinks, Tron deserves to die,
and so do you.”

Heimminer looked at him weakly, and Tron asked, “Do I have permission to kill her?”
Hel instinctively nodded; the mad-woman was her dumb half-sister, and she’d anyways deserved a
death sentence if it was not for Loki, who wanted to keep his new reputation untarnished. Quite frankly,
she did not like her mom, nor did she like her dad.

Her dad? Who would even like Loki?

Hel nodded sideways, indicating a ‘no’, then whispered, “If you have to.”

The madwoman’s body erupted in fire, and her eyeballs were replaced by bright yellow fire. She charged
at Tron, who quickly jumped sideways and officially showing that he was Tron, clicked his trademark
lightsabres on.

The smiled evilly, and taunted, “You don’t want to fight the great and the powerful Tron? He doesn’t
mind killing, really.”

She roared which was futile as literally three seconds later, she was beat down by Jimmy and rendered
unconscious.

“And that’s that.”, he announced, as he descended down slowly and stood straight, with his arms
folded, right in front of the fallen woman. Hel smiled and said, “I didn't really like her, anyways.”
“Nor did I, in all one out of one encounters with her.
Hel smiled. “Nice to meet you, Tron.”
“Call me Jimmy.” The twenty-six-year-old was already blushing. Damn the cheeks! At least in my suit, so
no one sees me blushing. LoL
"So, Jimmy, I am Hel, deputy general of the Asgardian army. And I must say, your fighting techniques are
quite astounding”

She actually praised me! Hooray! Stop blushing, Jimmy, STOP!

Tron smacked his head as the battery level increased. He just farted. You see, Jimmy’s got a pretty funny
history about farts. And it’s the reason he is such a multiverse class warrior. Not to mention the new suit
he was working on which repaired itself so fast that only a single, super-powerful explosion would
penetrate it.

Jimmy smiled. Then, realising that Surtr lived nearby and was coming to them soon, he decided to meet
them.

Till then, he simply sat down on the ground and watch people doing their jobs around in the ground.
Some people came and asked for his acknowledgment (Or autograph in today’s English)

Suddenly, a shine appeared over the castle of Thor and Jimmy realised that it was the rainbow bridge.

Way better to fight on the ground for asgardians than space. He thought randomly.

Jimmy flew to the castle where The Bifrost’s shine was falling and seeing Thor and his companions there,
he jumped down towards them.

“Very good to meet you, Thor.” he said, holding one hand out to shake it.
Thor smiled and said, “I thought you were going to wear another suit?” he shook Tron’s hand.
Tron nodded; his smile invisible because of his armour-suit. He said, “I ran into a bit of a problem here.”

Thor left the armoured warrior’s hands and left. Everyone but one followed him. Rubble asked, “What’s
your real name? I can see that you’re human.”
Tron clicked his helmet open. “You guessed right. I’m Jimmy Farter. And you’re Rubble, am I right?”

Rubble knitted his eyebrows curiously, “How did you know?”

“Thor. Now if you don’t mind, I need to ask him where Surtr’s going to land.”
“Right here, don’t you worry. Now if you don’t mind, I need to go back to my room and prepare –”
“Goodbye,”

The teenager Glocman dashed away. Tron had known Surtr all right. He had tricked the flame covered
giant into beating himself down to near death to regain morality. Damn. He hoped Surtr would have
forgiven Jimmy.

Soon after, the shine of the bifrost appeared and Surtr arrived. He looked at Tron and then asked him
quite politely, “Where’s Thor?”
Jimmy smiled, “I’ll tell. But do you remember me? I do remember you, and I would say that you have
actually come pretty close to discovering that ‘morality’ you want. I suppose this war would help you
quite a damn lot.”
“That’s quite a speech. But I do not recognise you. I suppose I should say sorry for that?”
“You should, but not to me. Because I am just a pretty old friend. I do think you’ll get me when...”
He opened his helmet.

“...I do this.”

Surtr frowned with recognition and grunted, “I forgive you for that day. I suppose with my new
knowledge attained in the past two years of observing, that was just a joke.”

Jimmy’s face suddenly turned serious and he close his helmet. “I actually wanted to talk business with
you. Not really a business, but a favour.”
Surtr smiled, “I am not looking for revenge, friend. Other than that event, you were still pretty amicable.
Ask on without sugar-coating it.”

“Okay,” Tron said, “I need some metal from your sword and a lot of surtum from your territory.”
“I can give you that by tommorow, but why do you want it?”
“To make a new armour. You know what I taught you? Right now, all that we want is happiness and
power.”

Surtr’s smile widened, “You are a good teacher.”

“Thanks.”

Remembering that Surtr wanted to meet Thor, he gave the fiery destroyer the directions.

Everything went on pretty smoothly then on. Jimmy went to the grounds and found Hel still training her
recruits.

He just lay down on there and went to sleep. His suit already comfy enough...

He woke up with a wave of heat coming over him and he rolled back, his suit quickly lighting up, ready
to fire.

“I am a pretty good alarm clock. Or do you call it watch?”

“Alarm clock’s right,” Jimmy smiled at his friend’s funny social skills. Surtr was a pretty good guy. He
wondered why a lot of people looked afraid of him. Thinking of Surtr, he wondered, “Two years back
you were much larger.”
Surtr laughed, “Oh, I’ll teach you a bit about myself. You see, I am not Surtr. We are Surtr. I am simply a
body part of Surtr. There are about a thousand of us. Only one big Surtr out there though, and if I do set
my foot here, Asgard will go burning again. I am too hot and large.”

“Being overpowered isn’t always nice, eh?”

“You mean being too powerful? No, it isn’t fun.”

Jimmy looked beyond Surtr. Another flaming Surtr was arriving with some luggage.

“That’s your stuff.”

“Thanks man, you’re a real bro.”

The little Surtr smiled. The other little Surtr came and set down the luggage. Then it dissappeared into
mist.
“I suppose that’s normal.”
“It is. I’ll go now to prepare for the war. You go do the same.”
Jimmy said, “Thanks. I sure will.”

Surtr went away into the castle and Jimmy detached his helmet and turned it into a toolbox by using the
awesome technology that he had created.

“First, I’ll use the energy converter of my traveller... and remodel it a bit...” he said to himself and
squatted down, melting some of the metal of the hip armour of his suit away so that it pinched his butt
less and expanded it.

He then manually plated it with a huge heap of hot surtum (a powerful metal found in the Asgardian
volcanoes and sometimes, underworld.) to protect it and kept it aside. Slowly taking off all of his
armour, and upgrading it to such an extent that he was now literally a mechanical, little Surtr.

He even tinted his lasers yellow and lightsabers red. He used the piece of Surtr’s sword to make his own
little, retractable sword and a thin line of fiery metal that stretched from Tron’s backhand to his elbow.
One on each. He tinted his holographic shield a deep orange and using an old spray-paint from the
garbage dump (He took two round trips for some materials. Starlight and Zoruana are pretty close.) he
painted the suit to be mostly black with lava-like orange lines that shaded the suit. He looked and felt
awesome.

Oh and another thing. The orange matched with Hel’s hair and eyes.

Oh, and yet another thing. In battle mode, Tron’s suit catches on fire.

**********

Hel’s voice rang throughout the Asgard’s main battlegrounds, “Today, everyone, is the day we war! The
Zoruana already expects us, as evidenced by the fighters patrolling the skies. We shall take out the
asgardian army for a battle is space, while Zeus and Indra are the most proficient on land and will fight
the same way.”

Tron lit his suit on and rose up a bit into the sky. He blinked and keeping his hands to the sides, two
flaming swords popped out. The pieces of Surtr’s blade. The eyes of his suit lit up in an amber colour.

Hel continued after a brief pause, “Ra and his Starling comrades shall join us in war! My fellow nords,
you all do not need a speech. You all simply need the will to rise up from yourself. Prepare yourself and
your regiments, my men and women! Let us free Zoruana from its oppressive regime!”

Jimmy smiled. He dashed him up in the sky and turned all the lights off in his suit. Looking back, he
found a mass of electricity charging at him. Tron supposed it was Thor. Looking up, he found a huge
body of fire dashing towards Zoruana with a very bright sword. Surtr looked quite powerful in space,
with his huge body flaming all over.

Figuring that the enemy might as well see him; they had already spotted Surtr, he switched his suit back
on into full being. The flame all round his suit came to life and he swooshed the blades of Surtr which
shined in full glory. The lines around his suit shone and the paint-job of the splashed of black and orange
became visible. Nothing ever went wrong with Jimmy Farter. Did it?
Okay, a lot did, but whatever.

Tron looked ahead at the Zoruana military which was quite powerful, though Starlight technology
definitely seemed more threatening since Strafe’s inventions revolutionized the whole universe.
Zoruana was, however, a universe he did not know much about, so...

A powerful white beam missed him by inches and landed on a line of planes, wiping them all right out.

Behind him a golden figure stood, looking just like a human except too muscular to be human.

“Sorry about the scare, Tron.”

“You know me?”
“No time to chat.”
“Oh, right.”

The mysterious golden figure vanished into a beam of light and appeared elsewhere, blasting down the
fighters that were in his ow range as well.

The fire around his suit grew brighter and he dashed toward a fighter, smashing clean out of it. Finn
automatically said, “Battle mode initiation?”
“Oh my! I forgot that! Yes!”
“Battle mode initiated.”

He dodged a huge missile and blocked a stream of lasers with his newly orange tinted Surtum reinforced
shield.

Raising his hand, he shot out a powerful laser that blasted down another Zoruana aircraft. Far away, he
found Surtr slashing a fighter right down with his powerful sword. The fighters was reduced to dust
within a few seconds as it burned down due to the powerful fire. Making a graceful loop, to dodge a
huge missile, he saw an asgardian spaceship strike it down.

Zwoom! A powerful sound rang through his suit (not through space. Space is silent, y’know) as he
launched a powerful laser bolt down through another line of Zoruanan crafts as they went down like
paper planes.

*********

Rubble flew through space, leaving his father’s spaceship. Launching a blast of energy, a craft easily
went down and yet another did as Surtr’s sword threw a solid beam of fire through the enemy ranks.
The war was getting too easy.uu

Thor, throwing his newly attained battle-axe Thunderburn, sliced down an enemy craft and another
missile blasted his back with no effect whatsoever. Rubble flew to him and asked, “What is the point of
this battle? We are simply doing to stomp them!”
“That’s what I was thinking as well, but I checked a spaceship and it turns out that they’re trying to
collect intel. Also, my communicator’s broken.”

A stream, of lasers missed them but hit another Asgardian spacecraft, which got destroyed.
Thor told Rubble, “Tell all the Nords to retreat and tell Hel to be ready for the signal.”
Rubble did what he was told to with his communicator. Everyone retreated. “I hope we’re not too late.”
“Me too.”

An orange laser barely missed him and Jimmy came flying at them. “Guys, I just hacked into their
systems, and they’re trying to get a plan from our planes.”

Thor threw his Thunderburn to strike away yet another enemy craft. “What intel did you get? I have
already told our troops to retreat.”

“Tell your troops to be less flashy next time. They know everything other than our strategy.

Thor frowned as his weapon returned to his hand casually and struck it at a plane again. His new
weapon sliced and diced multiple fighters.

“Take formation B and pull Surtr in the front-line with Tron closely behind him.” He muttered, first to
himself, then through Jimmy’s communicator.

Tron smiled inwardly. His new best bro and him fighting in a battle as one? Sounds fun!

Before the fighters could reach the enemy, The few powerful beings like Surtr, Heimdallr, Thor, Tron and
Rubble had wiped out the enemies quite easily.

They charged forward. There was no point in a stealth mission.

The Zoruanan planes appeared in their own formation.

Thor shouted out though a new communicator to Tron, “Breach their defences! Our planes will follow
afterward!”

“Wilco!” (military speak for will comply) Jimmy replied. Looking at the huge Surtr, he nodded in
affirmation who nodded back, knowing what to do.

Tron roared, “I’m going to try to smile one of them down.”

Surtr kept on charging anyway. Reaching a fighter, he swung at it but missed dreadfully. Grunting,
heWith took another swipe and missed yet again. Annoyed, he grabbed the fighter, which fit in the
palm of his hand, though barely, and crushed it down.

Click! The silent and fast sniper missile flew through the air and landed on to a target. With a silent blast,
it destroyed the fighter. His shield blocked a hostile missile that he didn’t care to dodge.

Jimmy saw that Rubble had reached the enemy and was blasting spaceships to smithereens. He swiftly
flew to Surtr and taking out the swords he had fashioned out of the piece of Surtr’s blade, he pointed
them towards a plane.

Flames erupted out of out of it and struck a fighter which was enveloped by the fire that needed no
oxygen.

Surtr swing his heavy sword once again and got three planes in tr he hit, all of which burner to hell. A
missile hit Surtr and Tron flew out of its area of impact. He then looped around and blasted his iconic
laser which tore through Zoruana.
“We've created a hole in their defences!” Tron said in the communicator.

Thor replied, “Waiting for a report from Rubble and Hel. Then we're good to go!”

“I didn’t know Hel could breathe in space? I mean, you are an exception, Surtr doesn’t need to breathe
and Rubble… I don’t know him.”
“She can. Loki can, that’s why. By the way, thanks for killing Friday!”
“Who?” Tron dodged a stream of lasers, “That person who hated me? My pleasure!”
“See you later.”

Tron focussed back to the fight. Surtr was religiously cutting off fighters and mini Surtr's' were crunching
down spaceships while also dying again and again.

Tron rammed clean through a fighter and blasted another one with a steady red beam of death. Slicing it
sideways into two, he dodged yet another missile.

A stream of lasers hit him on the back. Shocked, he commanded Finn, “Tell me the damage
encountered.”
“Flight direction negligibly affected. You should have no problems taking these lasers.

A huge green laser zooped past him.

“And what can that do?”

Finn replied, his voice monotonic as always, “Destroy you in three shots. Possibly kill you in one.”

Tron saw Surtr slashing a huge spaceship which kept hitting him with the huge green bolt. The spaceship
was barely getting damaged.

“Oh crap. What can I do?”

He replied to himself, “It’s obvious. Hijack it. Or destroy it from the inside. But now, how do I get in?”

He saw Rubble’s sword’s brilliant black flame with tips of purple shoot out and burn another plane just
like Surtr’s did.

“Call Rubble, Finn.”

“Calling Rubble now...”
“Call recieved.”

He sighed, then as Rubble asked what’s up, he said, “See that big ship over there?”
“That one which Surtr’s attacking? Yeah.”
“Correct I need you over there. Right above the pilot’s cabin.
“It’s fast but I’ll try.”
“You have to.”

Surtr roared. It sounded weirdly through space. Very faint.

But that was a good thing, they were close to Zoruana. Presence of air and gravity and all, y’know.
Tron looked in the direction of Zoruana. It looked at big as a football from there.

Tron landed right on the top of the pilot’s cabin and grabbing some edge to not be thrown away. He
hoped Rubble was a smart kid and would come in there as stealthily as he had.
Well, Rubble outshone him. Turning completely invisble and his energy granting him superb mobilty, he
landed there just as soon as Tron had.

“So, what’s the plan?” he asked, holding Tron’s back to keep from falling away.
“Follow me,” Jimmy replied, trying to judge a place where nobody would notice them coming through.
Just travelling barely behind the pilot’s cabin, he said, “can you cut a hole in here? It’s very hard, mind.”
“My sword can cut through anything,” he lighted his blades on and the awesome-looking swords slowly
dug through the ship’s armour. Jimmy smiled and flew towards Surtr and told him to retreat.

“Sometimes you need a small size and a silent body.” Tron said as he shut all the lights off and changed
to stealth mode.

“Must I accept defeat?” Surtr wondered, his voice curious and get giantish.
“Yes, the ship will kill you. And you’ll kill us accidentally.”
“I understand.” Surtr flew away, slicing away a couple of more planes.

He flew back and found Rubble almost done with digging a hole. A few seconds later, that almost could
be removed. Guns (and swords) at the ready, they both jumped down and found a single troop dead,
crushed by the heavy circle that fell down after Rubble was done.

They moved towards the rear, aiming to blast off all the weapons right when they were at the turret.

Rubble turned to Tron and asked, “Don’t all sci-fi guys have some sort of spy drones –”
Jimmy slapped him, “Dumb kid, this is real life, not fiction or fantasy!” (Author: Wait, what!?)

Rubble grunted, annoyed and followed Tron who had gone off in a particular direction nonchalantly.
Hacking away another troop, who was working on some internal repairs due to overheating, they made
their way towards the main desktop, which was again controlled by some unarmed guy so instead of
killing him (which was going to happen anyway) they tied him (or her, you can’t really tell with Zoruanan
species) to some rope around.

Tron told Finn, “Hey Finn, you still there? Can you hack into the government controller desktop in here?”
“Trying to patch self. Self-patch successful. Hacking into desktop. Basic information tapped into. Error in
hacking. Non-starlightan security detected. Identity Card required for hacking.”

Tron looked at Rubble, who was just standing around and waiting for Tron do his thing, and at the tied
man, who was trying to scream despite his gag. Tron asked Rubble, “Hey bro, can you get his I.D card?”
“Yeah, I sure can.”

The gagged man stared in terror as Rubble yanked his identity card away. The card suddenly lit up and a
voice came, “Why can’t I fire the weapons! Dude, give the authority!”
Rubble imitated the man’s voice, “Yeah, just a second, there’s a minor error.”
“Hey, you can imitate well!” Tron remarked.

Rubble just sat down and threw the card to Tron, who caught it and let Finn scan it.

Finn continued his rambling, “Zoruanan patterns guesses formed. Pattern one unsuccessful, two, three,
four, five also unsuccessful...”
Finn went silent, still scanning through the files. Rubble felt more wary, as he seemingly doubted that
somebody was coming his way to complain.

He was right, some guy burst through the door to complain and was automatically silenced by a
tranquilizer from Tron. Tron looked at his hand in surprise.

“I installed tranquilizers in here?!”

Rubble laughed. Finn was now scanning the twelve thousandth possible pattern and became successful
on the thirteen-thousand-five-hundred-and twenty-seventh pattern.

“System completely hacked into,” he declared.

“Awesome. Insert extreme slave code. Delete everything completely.” Jimmy commanded, opening the
face of his suit for some openness.

“Thanks a lot, Rubble bro.”

“You’re welcome, man, cheers.” the teenager replied as he sped of the craft to war. Tron just lay in
there, stealth mode on and people ran around him helter-skelter after a while.

A few more minutes later, everyone had died from a lack of oxygen. Tron’s suit had plenty of it left,
though. And so, he dashed out of the big craft. When he came out, he found out that a full-scale war
had broken out. Ymir had arrived on the screen. Ymir was a giant, just like Surtr, except that he much
older, wiser and powerful. He was definitely not evil.

Ymir smiled at his grand-grand-grand-grand-grand... and so on... son. Surtr was definitely somewhere
along the lines in being his offspring. He was definitely strong, and he didn’t even have any weapon. He
and Surtr came together and destroyed another big ship. Which were becoming commonplace now.

Just as Tron was about to call Rubble, the latter tapped him on the soldier.

“Wanna go?” Rubble asked, and Jimmy simply nodded. “Stealth mode back on.”

*********

Hel stared above and found yet more aircraft flying down at her. The designs could be desciphered
anywhere. Sure, she may be a twenty-three-year-old little kid (average asgardians live till five-hundred
years old) but she was a god level being, not an average asgardian.

Like her sister.

She covered herself in fire with her hands flaming up the most and shouted through the communicator,
(which was temperature resistant) “Etherites coming from above! We need support!”

Ra recieved the signal and responded, “Wilco. That's the Starlings’ job! You all asgardians don’t need to
engage them.”

He nodded to Anubis who spoke something to him through his mind instead of mouth. Set charged high
ahead past them slammed right through a plane. Ra frowned and looked at Anubis who shrugged and
muttered in his mind speak, “At least I am not him.”

They both flew up to support the warrior god.

Back to the main battle, Ymir smashed down yet another craft and roared at Thor through his mind,
“Sorry for the mind-speak, but I think we should ignore the fleet now and dash ahead top finish the
enemy off.”

Thor obliged, listening to the old giant who was the first of their species. He told all of his troops to go,
charge towards the ground and join the Olympians in the bloody war.

Tron had received the command and already reached the ground. So had Rubble.

Zeus was high up in the sky, striking all sorts of battle machinery. A spear flew through a lot of enemy
machinery and landed into its master’s hands, who was Odin. Looking at the enemy machinery, and
their intensely rough power, he decided to do what he did best. Be the God of War. The Gungnir (Odin’s
spear in case ya forgot) swooshed past him as he flicked his lightsabres on, lighted up Surtr’s blades, and
announced to Finn, “Extreme warfare. Brace yourself, Finn.”
“Instant kill mode and warfare mode both should be activated?”
“Yes”
“Instant kill mode activated. Warfare mode activated.”

Flames burst up all around him and the eyes of his suit shone a deadly red.

“DIE!” he screamed as he charged the battery to full (a.k.a farted a lot. And a lot means enough to lift a
seventy-tonne object.) rushed right through some guarded battle machines. A troop in a suit punched
Hel down but she quickly got up and slammed it right into the sky with a powerful punch befitting the
heir to the underworld. Jimmy incinerated it with an orange stream of laser using his epic lightsabre, he
danced through the enemy ranks and reaching a huge turret which was obviously guarded better that
the huge spacecrafts above, checked by striking it with his laser. He smiled. And he announced to Finn,
“Hey, Finn, bro! I’m going to show them what I am really made up of. Crinkle your nose, little fella, Imma
going to rip it!

The A.I laughed.

Jimmy pointed his butt towards the huge turret, which had just hit Ymir who was currently falling from
the sky due to the direct hit. And let rip a huge fart that was converted to fiery laser by the hip cover.

I know, gross.

The whole building was reduced to rubble (no pun intended, but laugh all you want) and an extremely
stinky smell affected the troops around. Thankfully the frontline was far ahead and he and Hel were the
only people to have rushed in. And thinking of Hel...

Tron called her, “Hey dude, where’re you at?”

“Way beyond the frontlines. It's pretty hard to incinerate enemies when you are not very old and
experienced.”

A cracking sound came and Hel thudded off. She groaned, then a wooshing sound of fire came and Hel
continued, “See? They keep coming. Where are you? Surtr’s been asking.”

“Doing my part, except even better. Tell him that he’ll be alright be Ymir.”
“Okay.”
“Where are you, anyway?”
Another woosh of fire came, “Close to the frontlines.”
“I suppose the temperatures must be pretty high?”
“Of course.”

Jimmy smiled thinking about the possible double-meaning of that statement.

“Turn the infrared on.”

“Sure.” Finn replied.

He went through the ground flying around and searching for Hel.

Thor and Rubble were doing the same. Loki still hadn’t joined the fight and Hel was the only person who
could convince him. And Loki, despite being dastardly vile, was definitely a huge asset in the battle.
While in the skies the asgardians had reigned supreme, the ground was a completely different affair. A
Zoruanan war-machine blasted down an asgardian warrior with a blitz of hot laser bolts. The warrior
died. Swiping down another machine, Rubble focused his energies to find yet another. She was also not
picking up any calls. Including emergency ones.

“Think positive, Thor,” the thunder god told himself. Hacking an armoured enemy soldier down and
launching a wave of thunder in his path, the fighter desperately searched for Loki’s newest daughter.

Loki had raged at Thor when he appointed her the general at the age of twenty.

“What if she dies a horrific death and hasn’t even crossed the age of hundred? How terrible would that
be? I will not do any good for Asgard as long as my daughter is the general.” he’d said.

Sweat trickled down his body. Rubble slashed an enemy tank. Just then the good news came from Tron,
“Hel’s been found. Severely injured by powerful troops. Not her fault too, to be honest. Everyone was
targeting her.”

“Holy Buri! Will she survive?”

“No time to check. I am clearing all the troops around here. My accuracy’s down to ninety-eight percent.
Which always happens.”

Pause.

“Oh, crap! Gotta go. Bye.”

The communicator switched off. Tron meat-shielded Hel with himself but was barely harmed by the
impact.

“My turn.”

He slashed through a small turret with his lasers and uprooted another. Slamming it down, he took out
five armoured soldiers.

Someone (actually something landed softly in front of him and wiped out a bunch of soldiers with bright,
white laser streaming out its eyes. It was (and looked) completely metallic and

Whoooom!
Another stream of laser raged and wiped out the rest of the enemy. Tron grabbed a bleeding Hel while
the metallic thing wiped out more of the enemy. Flying straight towards Thor, he left her there and flew
away, not wishing to participate in the murderous debate that Thor and Loki would be having.

He flew high up, looking for a sight to bomb out with his just-recharged “Super-fart” and noticed
something very interesting.

Somewhere down below, a red armoured fighter with a glowing red sword and a dark body was
chopping off hordes of enemies. That guy, he was stunningly powerful at battling. He went down
towards him.

Mars sliced down yet another enemy without his brain telling his body what to do. That's why he was
the god of war, after all. Just behind him, Athena was slicing away powerfully at the armoured enemy.

“What’s the strategy?” Tron called out from above.

“Make holes within the enemy. Who are you reporting to?” Mars shouted back.
“Hel. Actually Thor now.”
Athena said, “Can you tell everyone else to do that? We can break the formation that way!”
“Sure thing.”

He reported the thoughts to Thor who replied with an ‘okay’.

Then he flew down and made a hole of his own.

*********

Hel opened her eyes and found herself heavily injured. I guess dad was right... I am too young to war.

Loki appeared and frowned, “What was I telling you and Thor the whole while?

“Sorry... I thought –”
“No, I’m going to get Thor back for that. If it was not for that Tron guy, you would have been dead!”

He turned around and vanished. Hel stared at nothing for a long time. Then fell asleep.

The door silently opened, then closed. A figure smiled as it came in with pitch-black armour and clothes.
It pointed a gun in hand at a vulnerable Hel, and he... pulled the trigger.

Almost pulled the trigger.

A howl erupted that woke Hel up and the figure fell away from the force of the gigantic wolf. Crashing
through and into a wall, Fenrir jabbed at his enemy, who rolled of and quickly sank a bullet into its heart.
Fenrir fell in pain but got up before the guy with the gun could kill him and dodging another silent bullet,
the wolf and a son of Loki roared for Hel to get away. She got up and somehow threw a fireball at the
Zoruanan troop who dodged it too before collapsing to the bed, two more troops popped up from
behind while Fenrir was trying to chomp the first one and dragged an unconscious Hel away. Dragging
her to a closed spot, they smiled to each other and pulled the trigger.

Almost pulled the trigger.

A very familiar figure crashed through the wall and finished the lives of the three sneaking troops within
seconds. He held his hand out and the mjolnir came tightly into his hands, striking right through the
heart of the first troop who was about to finish Fenrir. The mjolnir was, interestingly, still perfectly
intact.

Hel woke up, quickly recovering from her unconscious daze. “I’m not dead?”
“No, thanks to me.” the familiar figure said. “Who are you, by the way? I saw you on the battlefield, and
for a young lady, you are very powerful.”
“Who are you?”
The guy smiled. “Someone a few of your friends already know.”

Hel looked really confused. The fast guy with the mjolnir continued.

“I am Zomoclone. And I really need to do my stuff.”

He dashed away. Hel just looked ahead.

**********

Back to the battle...

“They’re changing their formation. Looks like we’ll have to keep a siege!” Athena shouted out to Zeus
via a communicator. Zeus mind-spoke with Thor. Then proceeded to blast one more stream of lightning
down to a battle machine.

Thor shouted out to everyone, “Prepare for a siege! They're adapting, and they’ve got the Ether with
them.”
Thankfully, he had somehow convinced Loki to fight in the war. And with Loki, you had the powerful
Jormungandr to fight alongside with.

For some reason, Fenrir did not come, though.

Shemun and Kylie were easily overshadowed by the monstrous powers of gods and giants.

Tron arrived where Athena, who was retreating towards the main army and shouted out, “What are the
odds?”
“They have much deadlier stuff than this. We'll have to leave the fight and run soon!”
“How much power do we need?”
“Enough to cut a huge hole if the uni –”
Tron facepalmed himself, “Any suit I can design?”
“Concentrate Surtr’s sword. Can you do it?”
“I can do anything,”

She jumped behind the frontlines and heaved a sigh. She looked up and Tron and shot, “Then use your
brain!”
Jimmy smiled, “I wanted to hear that.”

He dashed away, throwing a complimentary laser blast that killed more moving turrets. Moving towards
Surtr and Ymir, he asked boldly.
“Surtr, I need half of your sword.”
“No way!”
“Yes, that’s the only way we can win.”
“But, but –”
“No buts. NOW! We don’t have time!”

Surtr looked at his ancestor, Ymir. Ymir nodded. “What he says is true. Athena has never been wrong
before, has she?”
“Okay...”

He flaming giant cooled his sword down (yes, you can do that) and with its mundane temperature came
mundane power.

Surtr broke the sword such that its length remained the same. Tron took it and nodding, dashed away.
He dug deep into the ground far away from the duelling army and hid the sword’s blade in a hole.
Dashing back, he went to Heimdall and borrowed his Bifrost sword (or hofuo). (“Sorry about this, but I
need the sword if we are to win.”
“Athena told me.”)

Finally, he needed Dansleif the sword whose wounds could never heal, for an extra punch. Swooping
down in the midgard region of Asgard, he stealthily took the sword and dashed off.

Finally, he needed something tough enough to withstand the recoil of his gun. He flew back to Starlight,
home to carbonade, a metal which was virtually impossible to destroy and so dense that spinning a big
enough chunk of it could create noticeable gravity.

He frowned as he saw the security around there. Worse thing still? They were the good guys, so... wait.

If he appeared, he could simply ignore the lasers and missiles thrown at him, take the carbonade and
dash high into sky.

That's exactly what he did. And superheating all three of them, he plated a thick coat of Dansleif, and on
the top of that, he plated semi-molten carbonade to protect Dansleif from falling to the ground after
melting.

He then took out his armour and turning his helmet into a bunch of tools, started working. He casually
asked Finn, “How many days do I need to complete the Wartron armour?”
“Seven”
He smiled, “I’ll do it in four,”
“Good luck, bro.”

Removing, the inner cushioning for his armour, he applied the semi-solid carbonade on every part of his
armour individually and taking out his spray paint, gave it a black colour (carbonade is transparent.)

He improved the laser guns so that they were much more concentrated and powerful. Taking his
lightsabres, he added a little bit of liquid Dansleif into the ‘laser movement control’ and using
carbonade, he could make his lightsabre much more durable.

The next day, he continued making design adjustments to his armour and killed a primitive tribe of four-
legged creatures that had tried to kill him.
He tipped his swords with the venom.

Meanwhile, on the battlefield, the Indus defenders from Zortana had also arrived. While it provided
temporary reinforcements, the battle was still in the Zoruana’s favour. Indra, fighting alongside Zeus,
grunted that a seige was a bad idea.

“Give me a better one, newcomer!” Zeus snapped back. Meanwhile Ganesh crushed a tank down by
rolling over it and joined the other giants in lifting and crushing enemy machines. He grabbed one of
them and burned it down with the fire sticking out of Surtr’s body, then threw it back into the scores of
enemies trying to kill them. A whole patch burned down. Ymir smiled at the Elephant-faced god and did
the same.

The starlings were not far behind in kicking enemy butt, Ra sliced though a long line of machined
enemies with his powerful laser. Set savagely punched down multiple machines right into the ground.

But no one, not even Thor or Zeus matched the power of the lord of Underworld.

Tartarus. As a god.

Slamming down his huge mace, the god, as large as the giants, caused a huge earthquake that tumbled a
huge area of machines down as well. Looking at a turret akin to the one that Jimmy destroyed with his
destructive... um... fart, he grabbed it in his hand and pulling it out, crushed it down into another side of
enemies as well.

Sadly, these were the only people who were faring well. A big green laser slammed down on Rubble as
he tried to hack down yet another moving turret. Another follow-up green laser rendered him
unconscious and he flew far away from the state of war. Lishia and Shemun had already been evacuated
after severe hits from Etherite and Zoruanan turrets. Loki's whole family, with the exception of
Jormungandr, were heavily injured while Loki himself was barely battling. He knew he couldn’t blame
Thor for it. He would exact his revenge later. No time for it now.

Thor fell face down as an armoured soldier shot his back again and again until Odin sliced the soldier
down with his spear, Gungnir. Right then, Odin also fell, a green laser having hit him. Thor’s thunderburn
prevented another green laser from reaching Odin.

A lightsabre sliced Ares down as Hephaestus looked on in horror. He then somehow blasted the troop
with fire and fell down, heavily exhausted. Three Asgardian soldiers flew back as a turret blasted them
off at point-blank range.

Athena prayed for Tron to quickly come back as a bloody gash appeared at her cheeks. She spun around
and spun her powerful sword to clump down a horde of enemies.

A fallen Mars, looking ordinary and thought to be dead by the defending Zoruana, suddenly jumped up
and spinning with swords at the side, sliced down enemies at his side.

Back to Tron, this is day three, and Jimmy was just halfway done. Putting on a scrappy armour to
complete his work faster, he attached the newly formed chestplate to the stomach armour and folded it
down. Taking measurements, he chipped at the carbonade legs using his new, super-dense lightsabre
(which had been tinted a bright, alien green) and fitted it into two slots in the folded chest-plates.
Now, designing the battery, which now had to hold and provide twelve times more power at a
minimum, he took out his spray paint and made some designs on the ground.

Quickly making them true, he put his automated suit on and smiled.

“Now all I need is –”

“A powerful hammer for crowd control that swings, shoots out thunder, is an infinite store of energy,
and can go in whichever place you want to.”
“What?!”
“Behind you.”

He turned behind, finding a guy with an outstretched hand with claw-like fingers and holding Mjolnir. He
was, as you probably guessed already, Zomoclone.

He took the hammer from Zomoclone’s hands and thanked him till the speedy guy, well... sped away.

Getting back to work, he redesigned his back to accommodate the hammer which he could use to
recharge his power, in case he couldn’t fart in it for some reason, and also use it for mowing down
multiple puny enemies.

Day 4: ¾ Suit completed.

He worked non-stop as his communicator told him that the asgardians were heavily losing. Finn
supported him, his smart A.I understanding the situation clearly. Mid-way through the day, as the suit
was almost completed and only the boosters were left,

“Surtr’s down! Take him to Hel, the place! He’ll heal there! Quick!” Ymir bellowed out loud. Hel, who
was back up and fighting from the backside, thanks to Loki, reported the news to their strongest
weapon, Tron.

Rubble snorted as if he was stronger than Tron rammed right into a line of soldiers unevenly, then he
climbed up on Tartarus and jumping high up in the sky, dug his sword s right through a huge turret,
which exploded greatly and Rubble walked out, looking pretty annoyed by the yellow dust on his face,
then he sneezed so powerfully that a turret simply tipped over. Nah, just kidding. And for the record, he
coughed, not sneezed.

He did the same thing but this time, he was blasted high up in the sky by a green laser and flew right into
space, where he again crashed through a strategic command area of the Zoruanans. Ruthlessly killing
everyone in the area, he rushed back towards the field of battle.

Blam!

A powerful blot suddenly struck everyone as they all fell back, even Tartarus. A very large army of large
criags descended and a lot of asgardians quickly got slashed. Eros (or Cupid) was tossed high up in the
air and a huge Etherite monument bursted down a stream of laser bolts bigger than the green ones that
erased him into nothingness. Apollo’s head was almost chopped of but a clone of Hermes took the hit.
Hermes slammed the offending criag into the ground and Apollo finished it.

Osiris got chopped down gruesomely by the criags and Set roared. Crushing the murdering criag down
with his elbow, he yelped loudly as a lightsabre stuck out through his chest. It suddenly got pulled out
and Set fell, groaning. The huge figure dragged the lightsabre out before crushing the attacking criag
down to dust. A powerful alleged enemy of the gods and the son of Tartarus and Gaia, a powerful
combination indeed, named Typhon, launched a raging earthquake and uprooted several turrets with a
hurricane – then another hulking figure, his father, slammed down into him and both of them fell
behind, crashing into the ground and razing a small mountain down. They both were hit by powerful
lasers. Multiple powerful lasers that burned into their body hotly. Tartarus expressionlessly got up while
Typhon lay there in pain.

The hulking lord of death fell down soon after. Still expressionless. But clearly struggling and almost
done for.

The situation with the small people was just as bad. Zeus and Indra got separated as they dodged a
stream of huge laser bolts. Lady Sif fell right into Thor’s face and they both fell down. A criag held his
lightsabre at the ready to kill them both but Odin saved them both again. Hel took a small laser bolt on
her right cheek and got a deep gash on her hand as she slashed down three sneaky criags. ‘

Loki’s clone took a fatal hit as he kicked down and killed a criag who had dared to challenge him. Then
himself flew back to a missile blast from a powerful turret. He tried to reach till Hel, who he sensed was
getting heavily injured, but an army of insurgent criags blocked him.

Hel fell behind, blasted away by a point-blank hit from a turret. Two criags chopped the head clean of an
asgardian who tried to save his commander, getting up on her knees, she fell down from weakness
again.

“Hel? HEL! Where are you at!”

Some sounds of war. Then the voice of a criag came, who was surprisingly fluent at Multiversal English,
“Looks like some deary guy decided to call his signi – hey, WHAT!?”

Heavy green light fell on the surroundings as a pitch-black object with greenish blurry lines rushed
through the criags. Another green blur of speed crushed two weapons down. The whole army that was
fighting and dying to free the slaves cheered. The black thing stood high in the sky and its helmet
opened.

“What are you waiting for, dumbies, SLASH THE DAMN HELL OUT OF THEM!”

A criag swung his lightsaber down into Hel’s chest but before that could happen, a quick laser bolt from
the suit’s eyes and crushed the enemy machines down and finally, for the topping on the cake, he took
out his newly crafted, blindingly bright sword.

The army cheered louder. Tron punched the air with his free hand and taking out his ‘super-
concentrated lightsabre’ flew into enemy ranks, cutting through them mercilessly and crashing right
through the dumb big turret without realising it. He then climbed on the top of Ymir and yelled into his
ears.

“Dude, I told you! Knowledge is power.”

Ymir laughed. “I suppose small size is power too?”

“I guess?”

He flew up high again and rammed into the endless horde of the Zoruanan army. Then his
communicator glowed angrily.
Thor roared, “Dumb guy, get the darned Etherite craft and not the unlimited army! Tartarus alone can
take care of that!”
“Okay, smart guy.” Tron shot back. Flying into the large ship that had felled Typhon and Tartarus, he cut
a small hole into it and hopped in.

Murdering more criags, he easily danced into the control room.

I didn’t know that you could dance while battling.

Anyways, in the control room, like any other good video-game, there was a boss fight.

A huge, dumb criag stood in front of him armoured to the teeth. “Good to meet you, human,” it said.
Tron laughed, “I disagree. No human can fart as powerfully as I can.”
“Quite literally. But you know what? I don’t even care about Ether’s reign for domination. All I ever
yearned for is a battle with the all-famous Tron or the astoundingly powerful Rubble.”
“He’s just a pile of stone, and I am just a chunk of steel, but you know what? Challenge accepted.”

By the way, big, fat and huge Criags are always overconfident.

The battle started, and it was over as Tron lazy blew a faint beam of laser through its heart. Hacking into
Etherite systems was impossible. But not with a commander’s I.D card.

Finn quickly turned the craft’s course and...

“Extreme slave command attached. The ship is now just an empty shell. It is now advisable to silently
silence all the Etherites abroad and aid our army in battle.”
“Sure!” he didn’t even feel bad about ‘cleaning the ship’ off criags. They looked like robots, anyway.

They also ‘cleaned up’ the army and white blood, covering the battle could be seen everywhere (and on
everyone except Tron.)

Loki grumbled about the battle with Odin and swore that if Hel was made the general again, he would
personally make sure that Thor was killed. Odin irritably replied that despite being younger than them
both, Thor was much more powerful.

“Oh, really? How many times did you have to save Thor’s butt? Three times. Mine? Zero.”

Odin proceeded to ignore him and got involved in consolidating their rule on Zoruana. Meanwhile,
Rubble jumped from one place to another slapping everyone hard in the face who had supported
Jonthor even when he had (almost) killed him. Zomoclone, meanwhile, enrolled himeself in the L-league
once more and found out that he was the only one who had enrolled in the bloody battle.

Shemun smiled as the screen counting the death counts of serial killers showed Tartarus in the first
place with nineteen million kills. ‘

Isn’t that like half of their army?

Kylie had dropped to the nineteenth place, with only a total of 73 kills.

“What! I killed more than just one!”

Rubble laughed at her.

Going back to their ‘home’ for some nostalgia, they felt no nostalgia.

Meanwhile, Tron departed for his “NEXT GRAND BATTLE”

Chapter 4: The birth of Zyphone
This chapter is about the life of the newly formed gangster army and how the fivesome of
Caladon, Cerileon, Alder, and the newly ‘drafted’ guy called Tommy. They all have their
moments, despite the failure to bring Tron, who seemingly has ties with the Ether.
Interesting fact: he doesn’t. Well, they die, except one. And he becomes the soon -to-be
revered and worshipped Ether’s Jack the Ripper

[Swear words alert!]

“You dumbass! What were you thinking! No one puts noodles in sweets!”
“Not even fried ones?”
“Especially not the fucking fried ones!”
“Crap! I thought it would taste good!”
“Go to hell Alder!”

In case you were wondering, it was Turios yelling at Alder because he had put fried onion noodles (with
schezwan sauce) into a bowl of freaking ice-cream.

What's worse? Alder put noodles from Alder’s bowl to Turios’s cone of ice-cream.

What the hell.

Meanwhile, Caladon was wiping his mouth with his bare hands, and the red sausage was getting all over
his body. Cerileon frowned. Tommy, the new guy who had been the head pilot, was just looking around
curiously, not being subjected to such a kind treatment.

Regardless, they all seemed to enjoy their time as an elite part of the army.

Caladon wondered if there were more such plans. If there were, he was proud of the universe. Anyways,
the Elections had started and he would be soon voting for the first time in his life. The results were
pretty obvious though, the military general was going to be Kenakin after a disastrous reign from
Doripo. Kenakin was the most experienced person and had already been the prime of the legislative
committee, executive committee, and currently a judge in the apex judicial hall (supreme court).

Caladon wouldn’t be voting in anything else, because he didn’t know nor did he care about anything
from it. Maybe when he becomes an official Starlightan and not an outlaw, he would read the news and
have a soft, nice, time.

A happy ending. Except that happy endings existed only in stories. Not in the real world.

Back to the point, their next assignment was a weapons raid on Owlett, a universe that belonged to the
alliance of Ether. It was heavily guarded and not many people had survived. The gang of five decided to
do it only amongst themselves. After eating food (like prehistoric animals ate) they rambled on and on
about what colour the lightsabres needed to be (a deep blue was the perfect colour according to
Tommy) what fighters they would use (any, the real stuff began when they came in)

What clothes would wear?

Any, they were going to steal the uniforms from a ship.
What everything?
Yes, they discussed everything, even the design of the shoes. (That’s Tommy, by the way)

And so, uneventfully, they set off in their own stealth fighters.

“Caladon, I told you not to do that!” Cerileon roared at his brother as usual.
Caladon asked innocently, “What did I do?”

Turios laughed and Alder turned around to look curiously.

Cerileon sighed and a strange farting sound came out, followed by all the lights flickering in and out. And
then something blasted right in Cerileon’s face.

“This is what you did,” he groaned, too disappointed to even say it loudly. Caladon just laughed, “Dude,
you know what’s worse?”

Alder, now laughing, asked, “No?”

“The mud on his face is animal dung!”

“Ewww.... dude!” Turios laughed.

“You f***ing son of a bitch!”
Caladon smiled, “You are my brother, so we both are what, dogs?”

Cerileon flung himself at his brother and the rest of the three ran away as the two fought each other and
poop flew all around.

In the end, it was Cerileon who got the last laugh as Caladon, his face twisted into the most unfunny
expression possible, sprayed water onto the poop that had flown all around and mopped it off. The five
reached the place where they were supposed to reach and quickly taking out the armour and weapons,
jumped off the stealth craft, which burrowed itself in the ground.

The five outlaws took cover behind the craft as they made their way to the weapons storage. They cut
an easy hole through and jumped in.

But wait. Free the prisoners first!

“The prisons, right below us. A camera might be monitoring.” Turios announced as he looked through
his visors that allowed him to see through anything. Cerileon commanded, “Bro, look for the cameras,
we could crudely bust through it.”
“Sure, boss!”

Cerileon smiled. Caladon unsheathed his blue lightsabres and waited. Some traitor was coming. He came
and Caladon kicked his legs high up and sliced the enemy’s head off which fell down eerily. Caladon
kicked the bleeding body right out.

Boom!

A powerful blast sounded as one camera was blasted away. The huge craft’s guards rushed towards the
five.
Turios put on a heavy suit of armour and that resulted in the roof breaking due to the bg and clumsy size
of his armour. Alder took out his own blue lightsabres while Caladon was already in position. A relatively
inexperienced Tommy put on the visor and searched for more hidden cameras through infrared.
Cerileon was ready behind with his guns, ready to fire at the enemy, and ready to fire at any camera
when Tommy found one. He did, but it was far away, and Cerileon’s gun could only penetrate so many
walls.

You see, Cerileon’s guns and shoot right through big, heavy walls and hit the cameras under them, which
could not see them.

“Cover him,” Turios shouted as the duo of Tommy and Cerileon went towards the walls. A heavy laser
bolt pierced through the armour and cut a square hole through his hand. The armoured guy jumped out
of his armour and blasted away a stream of lasers that the enemy dodged.

Caladon swiped at the bullet and the battle-hardened prodigy quickly hacked through three burbob
(kinda like a criag, but with a built muscular system? They looked uglier, by the way.)

Cerileon shot his own stream of laser bolts, all of which pierced right through the enemy in a line.
Caladon ducked down and sliced off the waists of four criags, he quickly rolled ahead and then flipped
back, killing a few criags and burbobs.

Turios shot down the final one.

“Easy peasy,” they declared.

Cerileon shot down the final camera as they jumped down into the prison. Caladon slashed open a
prison cell as two humans fell out, almost dead. The five ignored them and slashed all the prisoners free.
Tommy shot down a criag prisoner coolly. He was starting to get how the group functioned. Answer?
Ruthlessly and coolly. And that was the psychological warfare.

Slicing the hinges of the door roughly open, they were greeted by...

“Run! That’s an army of criags!”

“So much for being badass!”
“Fuck!”

Cerileon pulled his brother away as Turios quickly fell with multiple wounds on his shoulders.

Caladon slapped himself and roared out, “What the hell were we thinking!” he deflected the lasers going
at Turios’s heart but himself got hit in the head.

A missile hit and Tommy fell behind unconscious, maybe even dead. Caladon knew that there was only
one thing to do now.

“RUN, CERILEON AND ALDER! RUN!”

Then he found out that Cerileon and Alder had also fallen. He dived behind, deflecting and dodging all
kinds of warheads, and running and running, he finally lost the criags, behind, he saw all the prisoners
being massacred. Including his gang.
He couldn’t really blame them for wanting to protect themselves. But it was this moment that made him
really hate the Ether.

His eyes burned and tears welled up heavily in his eyes. He would get back to the Ether for all they had
done. They had killed his mum, dad, sister, and now his brother. What were they going to do next?
What could they do next to hurt him?

Nothing.

Now the Ether had a lot to lose.

Jack the Ripper mode on.

He flicked his lightsabres on, ready to fight a last stand battle, his reflexes and power now
immeasurable.

He turned back to face the criags who had found him and had already torn holes through his body by
now.

But for some reason, he could not die. He only heard the voice of someone shouting that he was not
supposed to be able to die now. He sure didn’t know the voice, but we do.

It was Penald.

Five minutes later, he was done with hacking the ship apart. He packed the obtained weapons, sifting
emotionlessly through the mess of hot flesh and blood of many colours.

And he sent the stealth fighter back with the weapons and a note.

He set abroad to start the trail of Etherite blood behind as the deadly Zyphone.
Chapter 5: The Freedom Battle begins
Fast forward to a month later, the re-elected Starlightan government has revised and improved its
schemes and giving more power to inventors, its unorthodox rule has resulted in heavy concern to the
Ether, who plan to attack Starlight.
Starlight, however, with its new government, has forged brand new alliances with Zoruana, Zartan (a
nearby universe), Cellite, which has been its closest ally, Blockscape, Cubeslite, and Mortom central,
which had been the world’s superpowers before the advent of Ether, and provided constant support to
the rebels of Shuggar. With the ruling Ether going after a resurgent Starlight, and the latter going after
the former, the war finally begins, lasting more than a hundred years.

Oh, and also, Rubble and his remaining family have been officially promoted to army warheads.

Rubble was going comfortably through a spaceship to Blockscape. Enbrawne, a very saintly person who
had mastered the energies had demanded to see him.

He had been recognised by the governments at last. They had realized that Rubble was probably the
only way they could beat the Ether. Then again, the recent storming of a whole enemy craft by a single
person – Caladon – was a really commendable and outstanding thing. Rubble, Zyphone, Penald, Lishia,
Shemun, they were all shining beacons of hope in the sea of defeats, losses and hot blood of many
colours.

That's what Jason Ross thought as he made his way to a routine raid of Etherit materials. He felt proud
that for the first time, something was getting even close to defeating their enemy. They had to attribute
it all to Kenakin and Strafe, both of whose superb decisions had led to Starlight becoming a great power
that struck fear into the hearts of the Ether.

A transparent government that let you do whatever you wanted as long as you didn’t hurt anyone.
That's all that you need.

Meanwhile, a muscular figure hammered an object and then fitted it onto some sort of main hull. He
smiled at his new invention. Earlier he would madly jump with happiness, but when you make
something like ten inventions in thirty days all you do is smile.

He supposed that an improved nuclear reactor would increase the fighters’ overall speed and reduce the
reload time. Best thing was that almost no overheating. So that means you can slam one lordshot a
second and there will be literally no side-effects.

Okay, this invention was now worth jumping at, but what he was working in next would just burn off the
planes of Ether.

Literally.

Fighters that shot fire were almost impossible to make due to the heat that the plane itself would have
to take in, but Strafe had found a way around that. The other problem with fire-breathing planes was
that the fuel required was too damn high.

He had found a way around that too.

And... we go back to Jason. He was now commanding his QP- Gnat: GCs with Strafe’s custom lasers
ready to rip through the enemy.

Zooming to and around Jade, a universe belonging to the Ether, his squadron of gnats met another of
Mortom SP- Central’s Slizers and passed them after some friendly strategic communication.

Reaching an enemy megaship, he got his troops into formations and got his destructive fellow Gnats
into formation.

“Launch two Lordshots to one side and I’ll lead the troops!”
“Wilco,” the troops replied.

After a small while, the designated troops slammed their heavy kinetic weapons and called out, “Done,
retreating, launch the attack!”

“Over!”
Calling the rest of the troops, he roared, “Charge! Gnats at the flank, be stealthy!”
“Recieved”
“At the front, slice at them with your sabrewings!”
“Wilco!”

He slashed down an enemy plane and killed it with a stream of lasers. Taking aim, he killed of another
plane that was about to kill one at the flanks. He quickly dodged a hit simultaneously, looping his fighter
upside down. He shot off three lordshots at one plane at point-blank range and released a long stream
of lasers. The enemy fighter took a hit till it collapsed down.

He slashed at another fighter with his sabrewings and blasted the hell out of another craft with the new,
long lasers that strafe had installed in the fighters.

“Crap! Flank 17 down, sir! Jumping out via capsule, sir!”

“Yes, right!” he replied.

He blasted another fighter down with a stream of lasers, but the fighter survived. Knowing that it was
about to go down, he rammed into it and it blasted away.

“Fighter seven from the frontlines here, number three's down!”

“Sorry, sir!”

“Go support the flank!”

“Okay, sir.”

He sliced through yet another plane and crushed it with powerful point-blank lordshots back to back.
While the main cannons had overheated and unloaded, he struck another plane with some lasers
through the other super-laser.

A fighter rammed through it and destroyed it straight.

“Intel on troops killed?” he asked the A.I of his plane. The A.I replied, “11 personal kills. 84 total kills.
Quota of kills is hundred.”
“Okay! Thanks!”

He hacked a fighter down and let a lot of lasers rip into the enemy ranks. The fighters got hit in a spread.
One lordshot took out another fighter. The engine roared as he suddenly manoeuvred and twisted his
craft one eighty degrees behind.

He launched forward as his engine roared once more and lasered down another fighter. The A.I
announced, “Eleven fighters to go.”

Someone yelled from the communicator, “Craft 13 and 18 from the backline down. Going home via
capsule.”

Jason rammed the sabrewings through another fighter which got blasted down. “Ten to go. Now nine to
go!”

Two more fighters were taken down as a far-away dogfight ended. Jason slammed into another fighter
and the two sabrewings hit each other. The two planes went spinning. Quickly getting the Gnat back in
control, he shot four lordshots which all hit their targets and the plane burst down.

“Eight to go, sir!”

The enemy was easily outnumbered now, and the wiped the enemy clean off with zero permanent
casualties.

“Let’s get, back, guys!”

“Sure, sir! Nice day for battling, I suppose!”

They flew back and