Clash Of The Aliens

             The kids were weary from the precedent events, having cuts and bruises all over their bodies. Their clothes were filthy, wet, torn, and smelled horrible. Tony had almost regenerated all his power in the last fifteen minutes. Pascal didn’t seem to regenerate at all, though he was indeed fully aware of all his injuries.

            “Gosh, how much time does it take you to heal back to normal?” Tony asked Pascal who was still on the ground moaning and rolling.

            “Oh god, my fingers are broken! Well except my thumb, and my pinky--OW s**t no, it is broken!”

            “What happened while I was gone? Looks like you’ve got beaten up by a mountain.”

            Pascal breathed in a couple of times, to fade away the fear and panic he had felt during his fall, and he was then calmed down enough to get back to his senses. He explained his tragic adventure from when Tony couldn’t reach the cliff, up to when he woke up getting dragged out of the lake.

            “You’re one lucky guy. Fortunately, the Hero was there to save your a*s this time.” Tony said with a friendly wink.

            “That hero dispute is not over yet, sir. Come on, Tony; now tell me your story. How the heck did you manage to survive after, you know, lacking the skills of a real Hero to fly up the Fiery Cliff?”

            “Fiery Cliff?” Tony asked.

            “That’s how I used to call that cliff. After living here a couple of years, you gotta come up with some name for it.”

            “Heh, I used to call it the Cloudy Cliff. But hey, you were here longer, you named it first.”

            “Hmm… the Cloudy Cliff. Awesome name, Bobin!”

            “It’s Robin, and you are way more qualified for the sidekick, look at you.”

            Pascal raised his neck and took a glance of his damaged body and ruined clothes, and then dropped his head back on the sloshy sand. “Let’s call it quits for now. Tell me your side of the story.”

            “Your story was pretty cool,” Tony started, “But mine is better. You see, when you zipped past behind me and I couldn’t reach the mountain in time, it made me panic so much I was barely able to fly. To my surprise, I managed to get just a wee bit higher than that magma ball when it collided with the cliff.

“Of course, the explosion would have just melted me out of my skin, but as I tried to dash to one side of the cliff to avoid the intense heat building up under me--look, half of my shoe’s gone--some gigantic boulder got spewed out of the collision and it bolted right towards me. Forget it, no time to dodge that. I even tried, but it was as if my body wouldn’t budge. The rock got me head-on, and I guess that boulder was a message of god or whatever but dude, it saved my life. It pushed me out of the way into super speed and super pain, and not only that, but it covered the whole front of my body as if to shield me from the magma ball’s heat.

“We flung together to some other part of the forest and yeah, however it helped me before, that was not the case for this part of my story. I safely landed on my back on some grass. You gotta recognise; it thrashed the breath out of me, and I thought I would die for a while. But oh, just to sprinkle that little extra cherry on top of the cake, the boulder landed right on me before I could even start getting my breath back! I think my leg was broken and I couldn’t move my neck anymore. After a couple of minutes of agonizing pain, my body had recovered from the blow, my breath had finally come back, and I could fully move my neck again. I tossed that b*****d aside and when I got back on my feet I couldn’t see anything but orange. I knocked my way through trees trying to find a spot where I could see something, but then I stepped on some thick fluid. I didn’t even have to see it to determine that if it was hot enough to melt right through your shoes and socks and make the crust under your feet sizzle like boloney on a frying pan, you gotta get the hell outta there.

“I flew as far up as I could, swinging my feet furiously to try and cool off my fourth degree toe burn, and when I could finally see something else than orange, I stopped and looked at the forest below me. It was simply crazy! The whole fricken’ forest was on fire! Looking at the red pile of burning rocks that was once the Cloudy Cliff, I knew you weren’t there anymore and probably down dying somewhere in wait for the Great Hero of Prophecies. Well, yeah, you could’ve been up in the air somewhere looking around just like me, but there you were rolling from side to side next to a tree, so I wanted to go and dash there to save you from whatever you were doing, but then the orange started flashing terribly once more and I couldn’t see anything. Instead, I thought up of another plan to save not only you, but the whole island.

“I tried to summon rain over the forest to extinguish it, but that didn’t work at all. The orange brightness started to decrease again and I could notice a little lake nearby. I flew over there, and don’t ask me how, it was just spontaneous, but I actually raised the whole water out of the lake, and threw it down at the forest. Trying to control the flow of the water was harder than riding a bull. Even though I’m not a cowboy and I never tried it, I’m pretty sure. Not only was it a hell to take it out of there, it was twice the work to put it back in its hole. And from there well… you can guess the rest.” Tony grinned.

“Damn.” Pascal responded in a monotonous tone.

“What?”

“Maybe you are the Hero. This is bullshit.”

“What do you mean? You can’t regenerate after being injured?”

“Whaddya mean, regenerate? Do I look like I can heal myself? Okay, let me try it.” Pascal did an ugly face, which was supposed to impersonate a man healing himself. “There, look at me!” Pascal got on his feet, screamed like a tortured demon and dropped back harshly on his back with a thud.

“Okay, okay! Be still there partner, I’ll help you!” Tony said while laughing.

 “You’re clearly a nemusian,” Pascal whispered out of his weakened breath, “Then, who am I? Can real nemusians really regenerate?”

Tony kneeled beside him. “I don’t know. I didn’t have a clue about anything, no idea that I had some powers before some monster knocked me out and dragged me into this island. I don’t even know where I am, or how to get outta here. I’m also starting to wonder who I am.”

“This is the only place I really know. I’ve been living here all my life ya know.”

“Yeah, I know. Cloudfire told me about it.”

The vivid light went back on in Pascal’s eyes and he raised his head as if he had just waked up from a trance. “Cloudfire! Where is he? What happened during all this? You know him? You know where he is?” Pain shot in Pascal’s back, and it made him cringe and throw himself back down.

“Calm down, I’ll explain you later; this isn’t the time for it.” Tony explained, just then having his own flashback of the dragon’s bloody corpse exposed by the lightning of the storm. He closed his eyes, shook his head, and started talking to get the image out of his head. “Darn, what do I do with you? We still have a monster to go kill. I still have to get back home, I have to change clothes, get a shower, do my homework, and I’d have passed Banjo-Kazooie by now.”

“What?” Pascal asked before he got grabbed under the shoulders, and Tony lifted him up like a potato pouch. Tony flew up with him and headed back for the ruined forest.

“I guess I won’t be of much help this time.” Pascal said with a weak laugh. Tony hadn’t thought of how difficult it would be to fly with a boy on his shoulder and it made him fly wiggly through the air above what remained of the forest.

“What a mess! There’s nothing left.” Pascal said, looking at everything below. It was silent. No animals roaring, no trees dancing in the wind. It was all gone. The only sound left was the sound of the screeching vultures flying above the forest, gazing at all the fish and remaining animals that were left dead. Because of the cooled down lava, the ground was now almost all covered by a thin layer of stone and rocks were everywhere.

“That’s pretty creepy if you ask me. Ugh! Could you stop moving? I’m already having a hard time enough like that!” Tony said.

“Hey Tony,” Pascal responded, ignoring Tony’s request, “Where’s his sword? He probably lost it during all this. We could use it against hi--”

Tony was suddenly going really crooked so he braked to a stop in midair so he could try and stabilize his flight, but he accidentally dropped Pascal by doing so. “S**t!” With no trees to stop him this time, Pascal fell right to the ground. “Oh no, I’m sorry buddy! Are you alright?” Tony shouted down.

“Cool!” Pascal screamed back from below.

“What’s cool?” Tony shouted back.

“…Ow!” He replied. Tony went down to see Pascal, his face squashed to the floor, pointing at something further ahead.

“The sword! Ha ha!” Tony ran to it, picked it up and held it up in the air proudly. He then heard in the back of him, “Hey hey, quit it!” He looked behind him, only to see that Pascal was still on the floor and getting picked at by hungry vultures.

Tony ran to Pascal and swarmed the vultures off with his hands, laughing all along. “Hey, are you okay?”

”Well now that I know how it is to get attacked when you least expect it, I just thought up of a plan.”

 

 

***

 

Jaw was lounged on the stone ground of the dead forest, unconscious and all wet, when he started coughing and hacking. He opened his eyes and sat up, trying to breathe normally, with a shadow sneaking behind him. “What was THAT all about?” He asked himself. He looked before him to observe all the changes that had happened to the forest. He then remembered the flood that washed him away with the rest of the debris. He didn’t know from where it came from, but the only thing that was worrying him was those darn kids. His mission, and the whole reason he was born, was to kill the boy. And where did that other kid come from? Did master Rosayan forget to mention that to him? “They couldn’t have survived that attack.” He said to appease himself. With a deep sigh of relief, he started to lay back down to look at the sky when he noticed something behind him. “Wha--?”

“S**t!” Tony said, still holding his sword up, prepared to slash it down at the vulnerable lizaard. ”He woke up!”

“Who cares! Kill him kill him!” Pascal cried. Tony swung his sword down at Jaw, but now that he was alert, he was able to roll out of the way before the blade could strike him.

“God damn it we had him right there, you idiot!” Pascal yelled out of anger.

“Gah! What are you little runts made of?” Jaw hissed, now ready for another bout.

“We are made out of nemusian blood! Those things that you creeps were never able to exterminate!” Pascal shouted back from his little resting area, fist in the air, distant from Tony and Jaw.

“I’ll use your own weapon against you!” Tony ran for Jaw with the lizaard’s sword in hand, not really having planned the next move since he never actually had a sword in hand before.

“Pff! You better let go of that before you hurt yourself,” Jaw grinned while he ducked under Tony’s horizontal sword strike, “It’s dangerous to play with toys you don’t know!” As Tony swung the sword back for another slash, Jaw took the opportunity to break through the boy’s open guard and punched him in the face. Tony lost foot and fell to the floor. While holding his face which was still pulsing with soreness, he got himself back up. Jaw faked a left punch, and when Tony lifted his hand to parry the blow, the lizaard thrust his right hand right in his stomach while Tony had his hand up. Jaw lifted the boy up in the air with his pinnacle claw that was dug up in Tony’s abdomen and the boy screamed in pain as he was getting lifted. The pain was so harrowing that he had to let go of the sword.

“No!” Pascal screamed. Tony was so weak that he could not even scream anymore, and he was only letting out groans and moans of torture.

“Ha-ha, you missed your chance, you shrimp! Victory is mine!” The lizaard said with a sinister laugh.

“Heh,” Tony choked out, along with some blood as he painfully raised his head to look directly in Jaw’s eyes with a faint grin, “Is that all you’ve got?”

“Oh you little s**t, the only reason you’re not cut up in pieces right now is that I get an even higher praise if I bring you back alive.”

“Too much of a wuss to kill me.” Tony wheezed out of his few last breaths.

The creature grinded his teeth and lifted his tail, preparing to smash its skeesh right through the little boy’s face, but then the dirt around him started rising, the sound of multiple amplified heart beats pounded down from the sky and a sudden strong wind blew in his back and on top of his head. As he stared upwards to see the source of the commotion, he smiled and said, “Ah…earthling military.”

 

 

 

***

 

All the channels were talking about the same thing. Channels from all around the world had their newsmen talking about the sudden impossible time change. Here in North America it was 3h30 in the morning, and the sun was as bright as a sunny afternoon. No one could explain it, and no scientists or astrologists could identify the problem; it was impossible for the planet Earth to suddenly spin this fast. It was either that, or that somehow some electrical problem occurred and disturbed all the clocks in the world at the same time, for the same hour, which would seem like an impossible hazard, even for some incredibly brilliant hacker, and what the hell would be his motive to disrupt the whole world’s time? There would be no way to know what the actual hour would be now, so all over the world they struggled to find a clock that had a different time. Every country had their times disrupted and where there was supposed to be sun was moon, and the other way around on other continents.

Tony’s parents were in front of the television, eyes soggy from being unexpectedly awakened by the sun that forgot what time it was, and switched channel every second, tired of hearing the same reports about the sudden time change. Tony’s father continuously pressed on the ‘next channel’ button at a repetitive rhythm, but then he saw a flash of a rock-covered island with two figures in the middle, blood on both of them. In such a flash he would have thought it was an action movie or something. Oh well, he thought, it’s the only damn channel that has something different. He clicked his way back to the action film channel and quickly noticed that with all the helicopters surrounding the area and the news reporter talking in the background, it didn’t sound and look like a movie at all.

“Here we are, on a deserted isle in the North Atlantic Ocean, the mysterious Brazin Island, live in broad daylight when we’re all supposed to be sleeping under the moonlit sky. Neighbouring islands have been reporting a ‘volcanic eruption’ from the area. The problem is, however, that no volcanoes have ever been on Brazin Island. Strangely enough, the whole island is covered by a layer of cooled lava as if an eruption had truly occurred. Investigations will be made afterwards, but now an event of even bigger intrigue is the three single remaining life-forms on the island.” The newscaster had started.

 The camera then scrolled down to a map view of the area which was only dark, grey uneven stone covered with mud and natural debris like dead plants, leaves and branches, and a little boy on his four legs, farther away from another little boy who was held by someone, something, that was definitely not a human. Tony’s father had dropped his cup of coffee with a thud on the living room table, leaving splatters of coffee all over the table.

“It’s our son!” Tony’s mother screamed as she squinted at the screen for an absolute confirmation before ravaging the house in a panic fit. It definitely looked like Tony. Tony’s father held her by the back and steadied her before she would collapse to the floor or break anything. She calmed down and started sobbing as she lay back on the couch, covering her face with her hands. She got the courage of looking up at the television screen, but Tony’s dad immediately covered his hands over her face as the camera zoomed on the dying Hero and a pinnacle claw dug in his stomach.

“Two children are confirmed in the ruins of this area, and another is an unidentified creature that resembles a cross-breed of reptile, snake and human. The �"oh, oh god�"the kid is getting slaughtered by the monster and �"heavens I can’t do this�"Cut, cut! This isn’t appropriate for newscast, the kid needs help!” The sound started to cut off and the screen started to become all grey and then it reappeared back to normal again, with only a view of the sky and orange light. “Help. Mayday. Mayday!” Was heard through the background as the screen turned into rainbow colors, signalling the loss of signal, and then it came back to the hub of Radio-Canada with the whole staff motionless, awe-stricken and at a loss of words. As the anchorman stood there with mouth hanging open, Tony’s father shut off the television. He hugged his wife as she screamed and cried, knocking her own coffee mug in the process.

 

 

***

 

Jaw raised his tail in the air and the pinnacle skeesh closed down.

“Release the child now. We will shoot!” A voice said through the speakers of one of the four helicopters circling around Jaw and Tony. A hatch opened to the side of all the helicopters and revealed two men standing there in each helicopter, covered in camouflaged uniforms and holding guns.

The lizaard held his left hand as if to surrender, but he also held up his right hand, the nemusian along with it, just to show it was not the case. A miniature orange beam shot out from the point of Jaw’s tail. It was inoffensively similar to those little red laser pointer toys bought at the dollar store to annoy your cat with, and the beam poked right through the front window of one of the helicopters and through the head of the pilot. At first it seemed as if the laser pointer was aiming to shoot, but the pilot’s head suddenly exploded, covering the whole windshield with blood and gore. A split-second after, the windshield also exploded, spraying the co-pilot with pilot juice and shattered glass. As the helicopter wobbled down to the ground, the two unbalanced soldiers jumped out of the open hatch, and as soon as they pulled out their safety parachute, a shiny white boomerang smoothed its way through the lines of both soldiers’ parachutes. They plopped on the ground below like smashed raspberries, and the helicopter exploded as it had impact with the stone ground. The other door gunners from the helicopter behind Jaw started shooting their machine guns at the creature’s head, but in an impossibly fast motion, Jaw lifted Tony in direction of the shooters and used him as a shield. The bullets plucked through Tony’s back, spraying blood on every shot like a thousand unready pimples being popped at the same time. Tony was crying out the pain when he wasn’t retching out all the blood coming out of his mouth, but he kept his eyes closed and seemed focused on something going on in his mind, as if he tried to plan out something through this agony.

“Stop the shooting!” Another speaker screamed. As soon as the door gunners lowered their guns, Jaw’s tail rose up once more and the beam from its skeesh sliced right through two of the helicopters, making them explode instantly. The last helicopter had obviously given up circling the invulnerable monster and targeted out of the island. The hatch closed, the helicopter gained some height, but the white boomerang made its apparition once again and slit the propeller right off, sending the propeller up, and the helicopter’s body down into the open sea. The ocean was quite easy to see now that no trees covered the way.

The boomerang returned right in the hand of its owner, and Jaw got his focus back on the real mission. “Well that was awfully fun.”

            “Sure was.” Tony answered, raising his head with a wide childish smile that someone would find on a cartoon monkey. The whole time that Jaw was getting occupied with the helicopters, Tony took that intermission as an opportunity to get as much strength back as possible. Of course, those bullets did not help at all, and they stung quite a bit more than acupuncture.

            “Good, good. You’re not dead yet. Let me deliver you to my master before you die. Any objections, kid?”

            “Green…” The boy muttered.

            “Huh, what’s that?” Jaw asked, and then he stopped smiling.

            “LASER!” Tony shouted, while holding his hands in Jaw’s direction. Powerful green light started forming in Tony’s blue-radiating hands.

            “Noooo!” Jaw yelled out of desperation as he got blinded by green light. He dropped the boy and covered his face with his arms while Tony dropped to his knees and burst out the last remaining energy in his body. The green slowly vanished, and out of Tony’s hands came out a small cloud of smoke as if someone had choked out a bong hit.

“Heh-heh…woops, outta gas.” Tony said before dropping frontwards on the floor.

“You little elfin s**t!” Jaw roared, “This is your last time moving! The only thing you’ll be barely able to do is breathing!” He raised his pinnacle hand in the air, ready to strike, when he abruptly heard “RED LASER!”

Jaw turned his head around to see a red ball of energy the size of a basketball coming his way. The beam smacked him right across his left cheek, and then another came right on the middle of his face, and with both hits he backed off a step. A third one got him right on the forehead and it made him tilt backwards, almost making him fall but then a final fourth one hit him right in the stomach and  it automatically made him bend forward. The lizaard crouched and looked upward to where the beams came from. He then said, “Ha! You think that could actually stop�"

An enormous red energy blast crashed upon him and his surroundings. Tony had managed to crawl out of the way as much as possible, but the burst still projected him to tumble a little farther away. Thin smoke covered the area once more, and the blond boy dropped from the air like a fly who had just taken a whiff off a mosquito-repelling coil. Pascal landed front first against the stone ground and laid there unmoving. There was a moment of silence and inaction. After a minute or so, the smoke had disappeared and revealed Jaw, slouched unconscious on the ground, his skin partially burnt, with broken rocks all around him. Tony then stood up slowly, still not completely regenerated from his wounds, and he limped up to his seemingly dead buddy.

“Awesome! What the heck was that?” Tony asked as he turned Pascal on his back.

“Heh-heh… couldn’t let you be the star on your own. I invented some special attack myself, the Red Laser.” The weakened boy said as he barely opened his eyes.

“It’s nice, pretty nice, but still not as big as mine though.”

“Don’t you have a monster to kill?”

“I would have, but he’s gone.” Tony said as he pointed at the empty spot where Jaw was once collapsed on the ground.

“Oh, don’t give me that excuse; he’s right there, picking up his sword.” Pascal replied, pointing to a spot a little farther, where Jaw carried his languished body up to the sword.

“Seriously? Gotta go, can’t let him get that.” Tony blasted off his feet and glided as fast as he could to the sword before Jaw could reach it. Jaw noticed the boy’s intent, and started pacing up the step too.  Tony was almost there, but the reptilian fiend had dove for the sword a moment sooner, and as Jaw got hold of the sword, he quickly got up, waiting for the boy as he posed like a batter on the diamond plate.

Tony let out an “Oh s**t!” and performed an automatic U-Turn back to where he belonged. As he dashed back to the start line to think up another plan, the tip of a familiar sword struck out from his chest and Tony immediately stopped flying above ground and landed harshly on his side, scraping his body up to Pascal and leaving a track of blood behind.

“Holy moly that’s disgusting!” Pascal cried, still loafed on the ground like a handicapped person without his precious wheelchair.

“Yeah, I’m getting pretty tired of dying too; I think I died at least five times since we started this battle,” Tony painfully gasped out, “I won’t heal in time. I can’t even breathe.”

Pascal could see that the sword that Jaw had thrown like a tomahawk at Tony had caught him right through his right lung. Tony stretched out his left hand and posed it on Pascal’s scalp.

            “Hey hey, what you doin’?” Pascal asked, a little nervous from the fact that Jaw was running straight at the two heroes that couldn’t even stand on their legs.

            “I’m giving you this. I won’t have time to regenerate.”

            “Giving me what?” Pascal almost screamed as the lizaard approached ferociously fast with a clawed hand and skeesh in the air.

            “Some life force! You got it in you now, go go go!”

            Pascal didn’t even have time to think that he jumped up instinctively, grabbed the sword handle and yanked it out from Tony’s back. Encouraged by Tony’s acutely strong shriek, the boy swung the sword forward and slashed off the creature’s pinnacle-clawed hand along with his wrist shield. All of that in a mere, blurry second.

            Jaw bent down, holding his severed arm as he looked at his fallen hand with mouth hanging open. His arm started pouring blood severely and he fell on his four legs, or more like three legs, dizzy from his sudden huge loss of blood. He rolled onto his back and held out his arm tightly to stop the blood flow, and then the tip of his tail slithered up to his arm and out from the center of its skeesh came a fiery beam that burned the wound on his arm. As the beam toasted the sliced part of his arm, he let out monstrous roars that were almost as painful to hear as the lizaard’s current condition. Pascal, during all that time, was enjoying the show of his masterfully skillful results, surprised and confused himself of what had just occurred. All his wounds had healed and his pain was almost all gone.

            With Jaw’s wound burnt and solidified, preventing any further blood loss, he raised back up with an angry face that could have instantly made an infant cry. “I am invincible!” He shouted, “I don’t know what kind of impossible tricks you little runts have in your sleeves but I. Am. Invincible. No matter how long you try, no matter how long you last, I will win. I was designed for this…I was designed for victory, not to lose to some stubborn little scrubs!”

            He snatched the boomerang out of his socket and threw it swiftly at Pascal. Now that Pascal knew what a boomerang was, he nimbly slid beside the flying projectile and waited for it to come back so he could evade it once more. Even better, he would catch it in mid-air and break his damn weapon in two pieces. Now that wimp would have to fight using his own…hand. He turned around to watch the boomerang make its U-Turn, but he then felt movement behind him and as soon as he spun around the lizaard had launched a collapsing elbow right in Pascal’s face. As he fell backwards, he quickly grabbed Jaw’s collar and brought him down with him. Pascal arched his back to roll backwards and land more smoothly on the ground and as soon as he landed, he brought his feet up in the air under Jaw’s waist and projected the reptile up in the air. The boomerang smashed right in Jaw’s body while he was still up in the air, and he fell back down on his side. The boomerang continued its way, and then magically spun around another time to go back to its owner. Pascal jumped over Jaw and caught the boomerang once and for all. He took the boomerang by both ends and smashed it down on his knee, breaking it in two. He angrily threw the two parts down at Jaw, who was still down, while saying, “Take this! And This!” He quickly looked to the side, ran to go get Jaw’s cut off hand farther away, ran back to Jaw and threw the clawed hand at him. “And THIS!”

            The boy rested his palms on his knees, but then noticed that he wasn’t even exhausted at all. “Holy s**t, Tony, what are you made of? I’m healed back to normal!” He kicked Jaw in the ribs as a finale, making the beaten creature roll up a little farther. “Ta-dah!”

            He walked up to Tony who was still asleep on the hard ground and told him, “Hey, buddy! You usually don’t take that long to heal, don’t you?”

            He woke up and said, “I gave you almost all the life force I had left, of course it’ll take a while. Now go finish him off while you still have that power rush. Your friend’s already back up, you know that?” Tony didn’t really know what happened. He was half-conscious and it just came out instinctively. He didn’t even know that if he gave his energy to someone, it would heal him. It seemed like new powers arose every time he was about to die, but of course, they came without a “how-to” guide.

The battered predator slowly got back up with great effort, and his body suddenly turned back to his original crocodile-looking hiking form. “The other kid was not in my plans,” He grunted, “I was not told about this one. I was not created for two nemusians… I’ll have to use Plan C.” The creature tensed his legs and sprinted away. Jaw ran a lot faster in his hiking form.

            “Oh no you don’t!” Pascal shouted at him and blasted off in pursuit of the cowardly creature.

            As Jaw ran, he unattached his empty sword holster with his lone hand and dropped it to the ground. Under his holster was hidden a little socket on his waist belt. The socket contained a large surgical needle. He approached the island’s lake and dived in. Pascal saw him jump and dived in as well. As he anchored down the lake, he searched around thoroughly, but the water was so filthy from the precedent events that he could not see a meter farther ahead of him.

            Master told me that if everything fails, take a blood sample and flee, Jaw was thinking as he approached the little boy’s back, I don’t know what he plans on doing with this, but I must obey…

            Pascal shrugged and came to the evidence that there was no way he’d find him in this disgusting lake, so he decided to fly up on top of the lake and eventually, the dastard would have to come out. Marvellous plan. He looked up at the sunlight and started swimming his way up when something latched on to his back and suddenly an alarming pain shot out in his arm as if he had just been stabbed. He quickly shook his shoulders to budge the monster off and as the creature let go, he threw a blind elbow behind him but it caught nothing. The monster had already swum away. Pascal rocketed out of the water in panic, hovered over the lake and waited impatiently for his rotten opponent to rise from the water.

            “Come on, get out you f****r!” He screamed on top of his lungs. He then said, “I think I pissed myself. What the hell did he stab me with anyway?” He looked at his arm and only found a tiny, hardly visible hole on his shoulder. “A giant, underwater wasp or what?”

            Jaw had easily snuck out of the water while Pascal was scrutinizing his arm in search of side-effects, like swelling or a sudden rash. He had experienced unpleasant symptoms before from getting bitten by a snake that he tried to swing around when he was six. Since then, anything that bit or stung was considered to be an immediate report to Cloudfire for examination and healing. His arm seemed perfectly fine, so he resumed his watch on the lake. “I’ll wait all day long if that’s what it takes!”

 

 

 

 

***

 

            Tony sighed as he brushed off his blue, torn apart T-shirt and then spun his arms around to ensure the flexibility, durability, and complete regeneration of his body. “Ha! Am I invincible, or what?” he asked himself, looking at his radiating blue hands with a confident smile, “I can recover from everything, it seems… I wonder if I’d get an arm cut off, would it grow back? Hopefully it won’t come to that…decapitation may be my only weakness. After all, Narco was immortal, and that’s how he died. “Hey, so even my scars heal?” He then thought back about the matter at hand. “I should find Pascal before he gets in trouble.”

 

 

***

 

            Pascal has always been an impatient, impulsive kind of boy. The two things he hated the most were waiting and staying still. After a good five minutes of watching over the lake, he was fed up and was about to throw a tantrum. He started shooting energy blasts at the lake in frenzy, thinking it could provoke Jaw and make him come out. After uselessly exhausting himself, he understood it did nothing so he thought about what Tony had told him a moment ago: moving the water out of the lake. He tried and quickly reached the conclusion that he wasn’t able to do that at all. “Why is he able to do stuff like this? He can’t even fly properly!” He let out in resentment. He looked at the lake hesitantly, and screamed in anger because he didn’t want to go back in it. He was actually scared to get stung again. He spotted a nearby sand shore so he decided to go there and sit down to reflect on what to do. The boy settled on the shore and sat on a big rock lying in the sand so he could have the broadest view on the lake. He let out a deep sigh and started to think over his life because he wasn’t understanding it anymore.

            “This is the craziest moment of my life…” He utters, “I try to transform into a tiger and I get stuck that way for days…” He glared incessantly at the lake, remaining alert. “… When I finally turn back to normal, I don’t even have time to go back to the Fiery Cliff that I have this lizaard chasing me.” Looking annoyed and uncomfortable, he yanks off his wet, grimy and torn red t-shirt and is about to toss it in the river, declaring it scrap, but he then realizes that this was now his only shirt left. The rest of his equipment had all been engulfed by Jaw’s huge, orange magma ball, along with the whole cliff. He flung the shirt on the sand instead and said, “I lose track of him, then I find him again with this guy, Tony. Since when is Tony on this island anyway, and why? What was he doing close to the Fiery Cliff?” Then something clicked in his mind. “That’s right, Tony was with Cloudy, and Cloudy… where is he?” He gasped out in panic. “Cloudfire!” He rocketed in the air, vacating his shirt and the lake he was supposed to supervise. “Cloudfire,” Pascal screamed again while flying over the ruined island, “Where are you? Are you alright?” Screw everything else, he thought. Cloudfire was the most important thing he had in the world. “Could he have escaped the big explosion? Could he…be dead?” He shuddered. The young nemusian fought back his tears, convincing himself that he couldn’t draw conclusions without verifying first. He left off on the search for the one he had always considered his mentor, his best-friend, and his father.

 

 

***

 

            Jaw was hiding under a huge tree that had tumbled to the side during the meltdown. The top of the tree had landed on a proximate piece of elevated land, and therefore he was able to find some space under the tree trunk to cover himself. It was now awfully difficult to find a hiding spot since all the plant life had burnt to crisp. He may not have been able to kill or capture one of the boys, but at least he was able to get a DNA sample and that should be enough to satisfy his master. The big problem he needed to think about right now was how to get out of this island before the nemusians would find him again. He had arrived here with a jetpack that his master had given him, a jetpack so dangerous that he almost killed himself trying to drive it. The machine was so hard to navigate that from his base in India up to Brazin Island he had done three accidents, and he even caused a few deaths during a crash-landing on a German highway. Next time, he would go south and around Africa because he was pretty sure that he had been shot at multiple times, especially while he was flying over Syria and luckily, nothing had hit him. His master had told him to be stealthy and not get seen by anyone, but it was nearly impossible with this extremely loud engine that couldn’t even allow him to steer in a straight line. He had arrived here by zigzagging and spiraling all the way to Brazin Island, crashing in the forest, but so intensely, that his jetpack broke into pieces. His vehicle was dead, and he possibly could have been able to swim all the way back to India in his hiking form, which he thought would take at least a week, but that was if he had all his members. With a hand missing, swimming adequately would be impossible. He would have been screwed if he hadn’t known about the microscopic camera implanted in his neck. Usually, Rosayan’s lizaards don’t even know about the camera, but Jaw discovered it while examining his perfect body in the mirror.

            “Master Rosayan, I really hope you can hear me right now. As I think you’re aware, things are not going as planned. You told me told me to kill the boy on this island but you never told me there was a second one! I was able to steal some blood from one of them, but now I need you to come and get me. I’m injured, and the jetpack you gave me doesn’t work anymore for some reason. These kids are going to kill me if I stay here. Please arrive as soon as possible!” Now all he needed to do, he thought, was to stay hidden, wait and have faith.

 

 

***

 

            Pascal kept screaming Cloudfire’s name around the forest but there was no sign of him. He was getting disheartened so he reasoned himself to believe that either Cloudfire had died during the cliff’s meltdown, or that he had fled the island before that. He felt it was now imperative to go ask Tony right away about what happened to him. Maybe he had finished healing and so he could tell him why Cloudfire wasn’t there when he met Tony for the first time. He headed back at full speed to the place where Tony was resting. “Why didn’t he tell me what happened to him earlier when I asked him? Is he trying to hide something from me?” He suspected. The boy glanced at the ruined woods below, trying to recall how the areas he flew over used to resemble before all this began. He then sees a fast blur from the corner of his eye, zipping from under a tree trunk to another nearby fallen tree trunk. “Is this who I think it is…”  Pascal groaned, ticked off that the lizaard just had to show up in his range of vision at this moment when he had way more important stuff to deal with. But then he reconsidered and realized this was actually well-timed: Jaw probably knows what happened. The boy nose-dived down to the ground and landed on his feet so harshly that the stone cracked under him. He pointed at the creature, who was trying to sneak out from under the trunk unnoticed. “I see you. Come over here we gotta talk.”

            Spotted, the lizaard turned around and let out a moan of frustration. “Goddammit you annoying kids, why is it so necessary for you to ruin my mission?” Jaw had been hidden for a good fifteen minutes until he fathomed that if he wanted Rosayan to find him he would have to show himself in the open. He was just about to do that. He was planning on sprinting to a further open area he had seen to draw a big symbol in the sand with a stick, a symbol only a lizaard could recognize. He could then hide a little further away and come out when Rosayan would land close to the symbol. It was a great plan, but on that day, it seemed like everything was screwing up for him.

            “You’re gonna tell me what happened to Cloudfire and what you did to him!” Pascal shouted at him.

            Jaw frowned and answered, “How should I know who Cloudfire is?”

            “You know who he is! He was with Tony.”

            “Oh, that weak little bug? I killed him. It was so easy.” He conceded.

“You killed him?” Pascal asked with a shocked face; the emotionless face someone might have at the remembrance of a trauma, with eyes staring through everything and nothing.

            “He was in the way so I disposed of him,” He answered with a smirk, “Do you have any problem with that?”

Terror was rising up in the boy’s body and he felt sick. He grew pale and stared at the ground in shock. His father was gone forever and he was left wordless.

            “The other boy’s not here…” Jaw remarked, “I may still have a chance if I take them on individually.” His skin shed quickly like that of a snake, and revealed the smooth grey skin of the predator form. His nozzle shrunk in and blended into the pointy one of a serpent, and his mohawk grew a little longer, getting more stiff and spiky, and turning blue. Three large but short tentacles grew in the back of his head. His shin shields and his wrist shield grew out of his legs and arm, and a pinnacle-claw ripped out of the grey end of his tail. The claws on his feet and hand grew longer and curved at a more threatening angle, and his yellow hunter eyes grew narrower. Now that the predator was ready for battle once more, he posed in his favorite Kradda stance and started calculating his next move.

            Pascal was still staring at the ground, sobbing and trembling, and suddenly his hanging mouth transformed into an angry teeth-grind followed by the furious frown of a psychotic killer. He glared right in the lizaard’s eyes and yelled at him: “Why did you kill my father? What did I ever do to you? I’ll cut your head off you heartless monster!” Jaw knew that the boy was going to run straight for him in anger, so he waited for Pascal to dive at him, with his tail up in the air, ready to strike, the skeesh closed firmly to make one deathly spike. The blond boy dove headfirst at the lizaard, sword in hand, and as he approached he tried to anticipate the exact time where Jaw’s tail would move, just about to strike him. He got in close and saw the tail move. Jaw’s tail thrust at Pascal’s face but with blinding speed he somersaulted over it, sword held over his head, and during his flip the sword had slashed the end of Jaw’s tail off. Pascal landed and turned around, kicked the cut off part of the tail, along with its skeesh, a little farther away, and pointed his sword at Jaw. “Your game ends here, Jaw.”

“My perfect body! You’re ruining it!” Jaw gasped as he held his bleeding tail and stared at it with shock. The predator gritted his teeth with anger, and muttered to himself, “I absolutely need to make him let go of that sword or else it’s over for me.” Jaw now understood that he had been overconfident. “I let too many chances pass by because I thought this would be easy. If I would’ve been serious from the start, I could have killed both of them right from the beginning, and I wouldn’t be in this condition.”

Filled with rage and tears running down his cheeks, Pascal dashed frenetically towards Jaw once more. The lizaard resolved to stay on the defensive this time, until he would find an opening that would permit him to retrieve the sword, or at the least, make him drop it. This wasn’t assault anymore, this was self-defence. There was no more time to be cocky. He needed to concentrate on the basics and follow to the detail what his master had taught him. Pascal swung the sword in all directions with erratic movements, and Jaw was continuously backing up, distancing himself from Pascal while dodging and blocking some blows with his wrist shield. Pascal was growing impatient and started swinging more wildly, which slowed him down because he was losing his balance after each swing. Jaw was only waiting for a predictable horizontal swing so he could duck under and charge in. Pascal slashed his sword vertically in a downward motion and the tip of the sword got Jaw on his right thigh. The lizaard cringed but he kept his focus for the next strike. Pascal followed his combination with a huge, sideways swing that got nothing but thin air. Pascal found himself both arms swung to the side and that’s when Jaw pushed in Pascal’s chest, grabbed his arm and twisted it.

“Oww!” Pascal screamed and instead of letting go of the sword, he blasted off to the sky. Jaw, scared to get cut by the sword if he held on, let go of Pascal’s arm, surprised by the unexpected move. “Ha-ha! What you gonna do now?” Pascal blurted out to the creature below. Pascal had just got the brilliant idea of attacking Jaw from above by swooping down and slashing him. Since the lizaard couldn’t fly, the only thing Jaw could do was move out of harm’s way, but Pascal would always be out of reach to get hit, since his tail and his boomerang were dead. The nemusian ate a rock the size of a golf ball right in the face with intense velocity. The blow was so hard that it sliced an opening on Pascal’s forehead, which started to bleed heavily. “Ow, s**t, okay okay, I won’t fly anymore! That was way too painful.” He moaned as he started floating back down.

Pascal then faintly heard in the distance: “Wait for meeee!” He knew it was Tony coming here to join him. “Finally!” Pascal says in relief, “What took him so long?” The nemusian settled back on the ground and saw Tony arriving from the sky. “I’m glad you’ll be seeing me destroy this piece of s**t!” Pascal cries out to him, but Tony didn’t hear him so he lands in front of Jaw with a confident smile. “Here I am!” He declares, and then readies himself in an improvised Tai-Chi stance.

This one’s weaker than the blonde, Jaw was thinking, so I’ll just knock him out fast and then focus back on the other kid. The lizaard walks up to Tony carelessly, and as soon as he enters Tony’s fighting range, the boy instantly shoots out a left punch, but it was so circular that Jaw just slipped right and countered him with his own left hand. Tony staggered for a short moment but quickly responded with a front kick, which Jaw blocked, but then the boy followed up with another left punch and a right hook which got his opponent on the side of the face. The creature tilted to the side from the impact of the blow but as Tony was about to follow with a haymaker, Jaw charged in his chest and gave him a breath-taking uppercut in the stomach, followed by a powerful roundhouse kick in the ribs that sent Tony flying away for a good two meters. Jaw then grabbed a rock on the ground, intent on smashing the boy’s skull with it.

Pascal ran at Jaw from behind, prepared to tackle him to the ground but his opponent felt it coming so he turned around, moved to the side and stuck his foot out to trip Pascal as he came running. Pascal’s leg collided with Jaw’s, and as he lost balance frontwards, he grasped Jaw’s arm and swung it behind him, throwing Jaw further ahead and making himself regain balance. “This is between me and you, Jaw!” He snapped, “Tony, don’t get involved in this. I can deal with him on my own.”

“What? You sure about this?” Tony asked, doubtful he could pull it off.

“This is personal.”

Tony understood what he was talking about, so he backed off and said, “Fine then. Give me a good show.”

Jaw stood back up, posed in a combat stance, and said, “I’ll kill you first then if that’s what you want.”

“Oh wow, your two most threatening features are chopped off. Now your perfect body is as weak as any animal that once lived on this island!”

Jaw quickly pushed himself off from his feet and dashed to Pascal, throwing him a punch powered with all his weight right in the boy’s jaw before Pascal could lift an arm in defense. Pascal backed off a couple of steps and as soon as he advanced back to his opponent, Jaw struck him in the stomach with a sidekick and that one made him fall to the floor in a gasping fit.

“Ugh, how much limbs do I have to cut off?” the boy told himself.

Jaw jumped and tried to stomp on Pascal with mighty weight, but he rolled out of the way just in time, flipped back on his feet and delivered a horizontal sword strike to Jaw’s neck but the predator blocked it with his remaining wrist shield and thrust him in the stomach once more with his right foot. The boy got pushed backwards and that gave Jaw the opportunity to give him the Coup de Grâce: A powerful spinning roundhouse kick to the side of the face. To be indestructible, not only did he need strength, speed and endurance, but he needed the technique to go along with it, and that was why every soldier on Lizaross was taught the deadly martial art of Kradda ever since it was invented centuries ago. Now that the planet was destroyed, only one person was able to teach it, and that was fortunately his master.

Pascal collapsed to the floor, stunned and conquered. He then declared: “Tony, I could use your help now.”

Tony had already been sneaking behind Jaw while Pascal was getting battered. He was right behind him so he grabbed his tail firmly with both hands and stated: “I knew you’d say that!” Jaw jumped back in surprise but it was too late. Tony pulled his tail and started swinging Jaw around like an Olympian spinning in circles for a hammer throw. He spun wildly four times and then released the alien’s tail, launching him straight like an arrow with incredible force. The lizaard’s body flew at such speed that it broke through several burnt trees that were still standing before it fell on the ground violently, bouncing and tumbling for quite a few meters.

“Now’s the time to finish him for good.” Tony stated, minded to kill him. Jaw had caused enough trouble. He jumped up to fly but instantly fell back down. Perplexed, he tried again, but it clearly didn’t work anymore. “Are you kidding me?” He said, feeling the panic rising in him.

Pascal stood up slowly, pacing his breath. He was still stunned but he was ready to go on. He walked up to Tony, saying “Nice job buddy!”

“I am screwed,” Tony muttered to himself, “Boy am I screwed.”

“So…you’re healed back to normal now?” Pascal asked him.

“Yeah, I’m back to really normal now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well… like this, I’m just a normal guy. No powers, no nemusian stuff.”

“Are you kidding me?”

While Tony briefly explained his story to Pascal, the beaten up lizaard, hardly breathing, limped back towards them.

“How many times do I have to repeat?” Jaw hissed. “I am perfect, flawless, invincible! I’ll kill you boys, no matter what it takes�"

“Yes, yes Jaw,” Pascal sighed, “We know the song. Can’t you give up?”

“Uh… be careful there, I think he’s pretty angry!” Tony suggested.

“Come on, he’s nothing now, let’s gang up and finish him off!”

“Oh no, I’m not part of this!” Tony affirmed and he backed off quickly.

Pascal turned and looked at him. “What? Are you wimping out after all this?”

“Look out!” Tony shouted.

Jaw tried to slash Pascal’s face with his claws, but the boy grabbed his arm in mid-air. Jaw pulled his arm close to him, pulling Pascal frontwards, and gave him a massive head-butt right on the nose. Pascal instantly fell on his behind and started bleeding from the nose like crazy. With Pascal lying on the floor holding his nose, Tony was left alone with the enemy.

“No, back off, go away!” Tony shouted in terror as he grabbed the sword and held it unskillfully in front of him. It was also awfully heavy.

“What’s wrong, Hero, you lost the courage? You’re strong enough to resist all of this, but you can’t even face me without crying?”

“You don’t understand, it’s not fair. I’m not the guy you’re looking for anymore!”

Jaw thrust his hand forward with all his might at Tony’s chest, ready to tear his heart out, but at the same time, Tony clumsily tripped backwards and fell on his back with the sword held out in front of him. The momentum of Jaw’s strike, plus the insufficient endurance left in his body, made him lose balance and fall frontward right on top of Tony. The blade pierced right through the monster’s chest, and Tony was under the monster, horrified by the accident, and grossed out by all the lizaard blood that drooled on him. “Aah! Help me, this is f****n’ gross!”

“Tony!” Pascal rushed to his friend and tried to toss the lizaard out of the way.  Jaw was holding Tony’s arm, his claws desperately dug in his forearm.

“Make him let go! Cut his last arm off!”

Pascal kicked Jaw in the face and with a loud cry, the half-conscious predator finally let go of the boy. “I’m invincible…” He whispered out of his last breath, “How could this be…I was born for this, and I failed…”

“The calculations went bad, I suppose.” Pascal said with a smirk. The lizaard was finally dead. Pascal grabbed Tony’s arm and helped him up.

“So now…” Pascal started, “I think we have some little info we’ve got to share with each other.”