21. The Gigaton Goddess

Alex unleashes an impossible slaughter on Xenu, but is it enough? Will Xenu finally be defeated?

“Solid rock armor?  This is getting hardcore!”  Ace cheered.  Otto let loose a sigh of relief and smiled as Alex stood motionless.

“This is a technique only a handful of Gaia’s kind can hope to achieve.  To be so in tune with the world beneath you that it fuses with your physical form and turns you into a warrior of rock and stone….it’s a glorious sight to see.” Athena reported.  Ace giggled sadistically.

“This is going to be awesome.”  She sneered gleefully.

Xenu was the first to strike, unleashing a massive wave of fire directly at Alex.  Alex, however, didn’t even bother moving- the attack hit her directly and exploded with such force the three onlookers were knocked back.  As the smoked cleared it was revealed that Alex had been moved exactly zero inches from her initial standing spot.  Not so much as a slight chip in her armor could be seen.  Xenu gazed in shock.

“N…Nothing?  Well, well, it seems you’re finally going to fight me at semi-full strength.  Now I won’t feel as bad when I pay you back for everything you’ve done.”  He said.  Alex only glared at him with her glowing eyes.

“What?  Nothing to say?  Very well, I suppose if you wish to remain si-”  Xenu couldn’t finish.  In but a fraction of a second Alex had raced across the seventy or so feet separating them and pounded Xenu in the face with her rock-encrusted fist, sending him flying through the air at near mach 1.  The three onlookers lost sight of him as Alex burst through the air, leaving another impact crater where she leaped, caught up to Xenu’s flying form, kicked him over the head by doing a flip in the air, crashed him into the ground, then jumped onto his body and rode him like a sled through the earth for twenty feet before jumping off and launching hundreds of massive spikes from where he stopped by flipping once in the air and pointing behind her.

Xenu was yet again launched into the air, but Alex followed on the ground, skating across the earth like a rollerblader.  She ducked both arms down and grabbed the ground before forcing it up into two large spirals that slashed at Xenu from both sides.  Skating off one of them, Alex found herself above Xenu once more.  She punched the air and launched part of her armor at Xenu, which grabbed him and stopped him mid flight by crushing him into the ground.  Alex did the same and body slammed him once more into the earth.  A shockwave of stone raced from the impact sight, turning the area into a spire-covered wasteland.  This was all Ace and the others could see, but it never stopped her from cheering Alex on.

Xenu tried to get back up on his own but before he could even turn around Alex had grabbed him by the collar and thrown him out of the crater.  The spires from the impact sight rushed to her left outstretched palm and formed a tightly packed ball of stone.  As she walked to Xenu, he fired burst after burst of flame that exploded on impact with Alex’s armor.  She didn’t flinch, or feel the impact at all.  She was completely impervious.

“This isn’t right…”  Xenu said, trying to back away from Alex’s approaching form, “When you left me you were not nearly this powerful.  How could your vassal become so strong with only a touch of your strength?  How could it become so rapidly different from you in combat style?  You never used close range combat, you could barely move!”

“I.”  Alex hurled the stone ball at Xenu, which exploded and sent him into the air a little.

“Am.” Alex grabbed his leg and forced his whole body to turn and face her.

“Not.”  Alex’s armor ripped from her arm and latched onto Xenu’s skull, tugging him in an opposite direction than she was pulling his leg.

“Gaia!”  Alex let go and slingshot Xenu back near the group.  She raised one hand slowly, causing a tremendous earthquake that centered and exploded in a volcano of rocks, spewing forth and bombarding Xenu’s body.  He eventually landed under a pile of rubble as Alex leaped through the air after reforming her armor and landed near the rock pile.  Xenu super heated the mound and threw it off with a violent explosion.

“I don’t care who you are anymore!” He roared. “All that matters is you, Jehovah, and this entire planet are obliterated!”   He pulled his arms out to his side as far as they would reach and absorbed heat from the surrounding area into  his palms.  Frost actually began to form a good distance away as the battlefield was super cooled to subzero temperatures.  He clapped his hands together and sent out a shockwave of white hot fire that set the area on ablaze.  A second result was a beam of flame sent directly at Alex.  The impact was met with a constant explosion that vibrated the onlookers’ eardrums.  Alex used her arms to block the incoming attack and slowly walk forward as Xenu desperately attempted to increase the pressure of the flame beam.  She grabbed his hands with one arm and snuffed the beam entirely before winding up a backhanded slap to the face.  Her armor snapped back small spikes of stone that stood straight out.

“No!”  Xenu whispered when he saw them.  Alex cleaved Xenu in the head with her now spiked gauntlet of rock, but didn’t let go of his hands.  She pulled him back in for another cleave.  And a third.  On the fourth she let go of his hands and let him fall back. 

“Gigaton….” Alex snarled as she leaped up into the air with her arms above her head.  She slammed down on top of Xenu and began to punch him furiously.

“Barrage!”  She screamed as she punched him in the head faster and faster, her attack becoming almost too fast to see.  Each hit shook the ground around them so much that the soil almost seemed to hover around them.  Alex pulled her hands above her head and began to suck in rock from around her, creating a single ball of iron and metal that fused both her hands together.

“Gigaton Finisher!”  She yelled as she brought the iron ball down hard on Xenu’s skull.  The resulting explosion launched Alex into the air, doing a back flip and landing on the ground a few feet away.  Alex then raised both arms up slowly, as if she was lifting a massive weight with outstretched hands.  A massive rumble could be heard as behind Alex a tsunami of rock ripped from the surrounding area and spiraled into the sky above.  So much stone was accumulating that it turned black, almost sucking the light up around it as a result.

“That can’t be….It cannot be!”  Xenu sputtered in terror.  Alex raised her hands to the sky as the giant ball of blackness sucked in more and more stone.  After absorbing what seemed like a mountain’s worth of rock Alex pulled it down to her fist, covering it in a giant black swirling vortex of pure darkness that seemed to suck in even more rock from the ground and her armor.  Xenu could only watch on in fear of what was coming.

“Gigaton….” Alex growled as she walked up to Xenu.  She pulled her arm back, letting all of her armor get absorbed in the black sphere.

“Oblivion!”  She screamed at the top of her lungs and she launched a punch directly at Xenu’s stomach.  The orb let out a blast of light that threw the three onlookers back from the sheer force being unleashed.  The orb continued on a warpath, carving a canyon as it sliced through the air and rock, dragging Xenu with it.  The entire time he screamed in pain as it felt like his organs were being sucked out through every orifice on his body.  After traveling hundreds of feet, the orb exploded into a pluming mushroom cloud of dust and smoke that sent a shockwave through the air, tearing the ground up as it went.  Everyone was sent flying.  Ace had to grab and hang onto Otto to keep him from falling to the ground while Athena made her shield appear once more and used it to hold her to the ground.  Only Alex remained unmoved.

As the smoke cleared from the explosion, the once flat desert land had been uplifted and destroyed.  Nuclear bombs would have been jealous of this kind of destruction.  Alex slowly walked over to Xenu, unconscious in the half mile deep crater stained black from the explosion.  Ace landed on the ground with Otto in her hands.  Otto clasped his hands together in mocking fashion.

“My hero!”  He said sarcastically.  Ace dropped him to the ground with a thud and blushed.  Athena stood up, lifting and carrying the giant shield with her back to the others.

“The heck was that?”  Ace said.  Athena was physically shaken.

“The Giagton series…”  She whispered.

“The what?”  Ace tried to clarify.  Athena shook her head and let her shield vanish.

“The Gigaton series of attacks.  Stone power so immense and heavy that it actually becomes a gravity well.  Alex just hit the general with the equivalent of a very weak and very small black hole!”

Ace laughed.  “Are you serious?  That chick throws black holes at people now?  Jesus Christ, I thought I was jealous before, but that’s just incredible!  I wish I could do that!”

“Incredible maybe, but that’s freaking impossible!  You can’t throw black holes at people!  That doesn’t even make sense!”  Otto tried to argue.  Ace tried patting his head, but found herself slightly too short to do so correctly.

“Well, it doesn’t need to make sense.  That just happened.”  She said pointing to the impact crater.

“Indeed it did, but by all accounts it should not….Only one Person in the history of the universe has ever done that.  Only one.  Not even Gaia, not even the Original People could achieve such a thing.  This Alex…her power is beyond anything I could conceive.  Even if this was a one-time only excursion, to use a Gigaton attack on the general....She’s truly, as you would say, a goddess.”  Athena praised.

“The Gigaton Goddess….I like it.”  Otto said with a grin.

Alex had made her way down into the crater as the other three hurried over to watch.  Xenu was unconscious.  Alex’s armor was gone.  She was breathing heavily and looked exhausted.  Her once sleek and beautiful hair was disheveled and filthy.  Her clothing was slashed and singed.  She was a wreck.

Alex jumped onto Xenu and slammed his head into the ground, waking him up.  She slammed his head again.  And again, with more force.  Eventually she was pounding his skull into the ground, screaming uncontrollably.  She planted his face in the dirt with one hand and held her other fist up to strike a final blow.  Earth formed around it and solidified into a metal ball- it was the Megaton Punch.

“Well, Gaia?  Finish me.  I have been defeated.”  Xenu said depressingly.  Alex raised her arm up higher and tried to bring her fist down, but for some reason couldn’t.

“What’s wrong, Alex?  Finish that b*****d!”  Ace called from above.  Alex tried again, but hesitated.  A look of fear and anger washed over her face as she desperately tried to force herself to hit Xenu with the final blow.

“I…..I can’t do it…”  She whispered.  She dissolved the Megaton Punch’s rock and metal and dropped her hands to her side.  Xenu let out a bellowing laugh.

“You can’t?  You can’t beat me?!  After that display of fury before, you find yourself unable to finish the deed?”  He taunted.  Alex only sat there, hunched and brought to tears.

“I want to, but….but for some reason, I can’t do it. I can’t kill you, Xenu.”  She said in horror at what this meant. 

“What?!  Bullshit, Alex!  Finish him off!”  Ace yelled down.

“I can’t.”  Alex called back.

“You were doing so well, kill him!”

“I can’t.”

“Kill that f****r!”

“I can’t, d****t!”  Alex cried out.  “I can’t kill another living person.  Even after everything Xenu did, even after kidnapping the one I love and planning to destroy the planet.  Even after taunting me, insulting me, belittling me, after all of that…I can’t kill another living person!  It’s not right for me to do that…”

Xenu took no time to wait and immediately kicked Alex off of him with a flaming burst of energy.  She flew up and out of the crater and collapsed in a heap near the others.

“Alex!”  Otto cried out as he ran over to her.  Xenu rose to his feet and laughed in triumph.

“Even when you’re victorious you’re weak!  You had the perfect opportunity to defeat me and instead you were a coward!  This is why you’re inferior!  You’re too weak to finish an enemy off, giving them all the chances in the world to retaliate and rise victorious from the ashes!”  His sinister grin left as he looked at Athena.

“What’s this?  Treachery from my soldier?”  He mused as he climbed out of the hole. 

“Sir!  I didn’t-”  Athena tried to explain but Xenu lit his hand on fire once more and scared her silent.

“Silence!  You let the prisoner escape!  You didn’t assist me in my fight despite being there the whole time!  Of all the soldiers in my fleet, I would expect this least from you, dear Athena….”

Just then a small space ship came down from the sky and landed a few dozen feet from the group.  A man in a sleek black business suit stepped out.

“Hades!”  Ace called out.

“Hades?!”  Athena cried out in shock.

“You!  You attacked my ship?!”  Xenu screamed in anger, recognizing the ship that attacked him earlier.

“Aw, nuts.”  Hades mumbled as he dodged the fireblast from Xenu.  Xenu turned back to Athena and grabbed her by the neck.

“Hey, what’re you doing!”  Hades yelled.  Xenu ignored him.

“And you!”  He screamed into Athena’s face.  “You knew who it was, yet you lied and said otherwise!  How dare you try and deceive me!  I hereby banish you to this putrid rock until I have it blown to bits, then you’ll be captured and tortured as the Outcast that you now are!”

“No!  You have no right to do that!  Only the queen can decide!”  Hades called out.  He ran to the two of them but was knocked back with a blast of fire from Xenu.

“Ha…Hades…”  Athena whispered, still being choked.

“You have no say in this, librarian.  It’s bad enough your friend Jehovah caused this whole mess, I don’t need your wretched name tarnishing my perfect record.  As far as anyone is concerned, you died a coward’s death along with my ex­-strategist!”  Xenu threw Athena to the ground, making her squeak in pain.  He pulled a small device from his pocket and placed it to his ear, ordering his crew to teleport him up.  In mere moments a light surrounded him as he began to vanish.

“You b*****d!”  Hades called out. “No one hurts Athena!  I’ll get you for this!”

“If only I cared about your petty threats.  You’ll be in our custody soon enough, so enjoy your last moments.”  Xenu said calmly before vanishing.  Hades fell to the ground and gripped Athena in his arms.

“Hades…is it really you?”  She whispered in shock.  Hades tried to smile through his tears.

“Hi babe…” He said.

“Wait, what?”  Otto chirped up, turning to the two of them.  Hades pulled Athena to her feet before she leaped into his arms and kissed him passionately.  Otto stood there with mouth agape.

“Huh.  Hades had a girlfriend.  That’s pretty cute.”  Ace said nonchalant, helping Alex to her feet.

“Cute?  Cute?!  Didn’t you pay attention to Greek Mythology?!  Hades and Athena an item…this is fucked up on so many levels if you knew anything about the pantheon!”  Otto yelled at her.  Hades slapped him gently with a black tendril.

“Hey, what did I say?  Most of what you guys know is wrong.  Pantheon, nothing.  Athena’s been the love of my life for who knows how long.  I mean, look at her!  The cutest thing in existence, the sweestest woman you’ll ever meet, and brilliant beyond her years.  She’s perfect!”  He gloated.  Athena blushed and giggled.

“Stop it, you’re embarrassing me.”  She squealed quietly before they kissed again.

“My goddess….seduced by the devil himself….”  Otto sobbed.  Hades slapped him with another tendril.

“Hey, no names!”

Ace chuckled a little at the conversation but turned her attention to Alex, whose look of sadness was impossible to describe.

“Hey…don’t look like that…”  Ace said, trying to comfort her.  Alex pushed away.  Ace continued to push the issue.

“Come on, you were awesome back there.”  She said, “You threw a freaking black hole at Xenu.  That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!  So what if you didn’t kill him.”

“Wait, what’s this about black holes?”  Hades asked. 

“I’ll explain everything.”  Athena said, pulling him away from the group to let them talk alone.

“Alex, don’t be down.  I hate seeing you sad.  Actually, I’ve never seen you this sad.  It’s…it’s scary.”  Ace continued.

“Shut up.”  Alex responded bluntly.  She covered her face with her messy hair and turned away.  Ace stomped her foot.

“D****t, woman, stop moping!  You just wrecked the strongest general in an alien army!  You threw a physical impossibility at him and gave him a run for his money!  For crying out loud, he admitted defeat!”

“He’s right.  I’m a coward.”  Alex replied, ignoring Ace.  “I couldn’t kill him.  I had all the power of the world at my fingertips, and I couldn’t kill him.”  She fell to the ground and began to sob.

“After everything I’ve gone through.” She continued through her tears, “After all that work and patience and tolerance, I still failed.  When it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter how good I am.  I cannot defeat anyone because I’m too afraid to kill.”

“Oh come on, just because you don’t kill doesn’t make you weak.  Hell, it makes you stronger because you show restraint.”  Otto said.

“Shut up!”  Alex snapped.  “What do you know?  You didn’t go through twenty years of being an outcast!  Everything’s f*****g peachy for you!”

“Alex….”  Otto responded, trying to hold back his hurt feelings.

“Don’t snap at him!  He’s trying to help you!”

“Enough, both of you!  Xenu was right.  I’m a coward and a weakling.  All of this to cover my own faults, yet it doesn’t do anything!  I’m still seen as fat, stupid, weak, ugly, and overall inferior.  I could be the queen of the gods and it would still mean nothing.  So just leave me alone!”  Alex stood up and ran away into the desert before stopping and falling to the ground in a flurry of tears. Ace tried to go after her but was stopped by Otto.

“Let her go, she needs time to cool off.”  He said.

“How could she yell at you like that?  She’s gone overboard.”  Ace responded.

“No, she’s right.  Her life’s been hell.  It’s impressive she made it this far without bursting like that before.  I can’t talk about it lightly.”

“Why not?  We all had troubles in our life.  Hell, I bet you have your own backstory on par with hers.”

“Who cares if I do?  This isn’t about me.  Let her be for now, alright?  She just needs time to cool down.  Being that awesome’s hard on someone.” 

“She’s not the brooding type.  She’s the calm and optimistic type.  This isn’t right, we have to do something.”

“Really, we don’t.  We all have those days when it feels like the world’s against us.  Alex had to put up with that most of her life, so she’s used to it.  All she needs is time to calm down.  She’s not my Gigaton Goddess for nothing, you know.”  Otto said before turning back and walking to Athena and Hades.  Ace took one look back at Alex in the distance before sighing.

“Gigaton Goddess, indeed.”  She whispered.

Author's Note

I had way too much fun writing this part. I say 'too much' because it's going to be hard to top throwing a small black hole at someone. Challenge accepted. :o