Chapter 9: Deal

Chapter 9: Deal

When I defeated Alice and made up my mind in trying to recruit her, I bring Alice to my spaceship and let her sleep away in my bed since the other rooms were empty. Just in case I placed the cuffs that forced one's brain to not respond to using any form of power or resistance which are called Sealers.

So I waited around until she woke up which took five hours of me sitting on a chair beside the bed. When Alice awoke she quickly got up being all alerted.

“Sup, how you feeling?” I casually asked her.

“You!” Alice was about to attack me again but realized she had Sealers on. “B*****d! You intend to violate me?” She had eyes of disgust towards me.

“Just chill out for a bit, if I wanted to do anything bad then I would have done it when you were out. I’m not a fucked up person unless you made me go through some intense s**t that would make me hate you.” I tell her, mentioning Elisa.

“What do you want then? If you don’t plan to kill me or anything then let me go.” Alice showing no interest in talking to me or being on my ship. Reminding me back when I was in school how girls would always have that look and way of talking like it was a chore to communicate with me.

“Well, I was wondering if you wanted to be…. Friends?” I asked awkwardly, not having thought of a more proper way to ask.

“You can’t be serious?” Alice not expecting such a question.

“I am, well, it’s more like comrades? Or crew members? Basically, I need some extra hands who will help me in reaching some goals of mine.” I explained.

“Goals?” Alice wondered.

“The first is to kill the Uruk, after them, I will kill Larvien, and the last one is Elisa who I will personally deal with.” I list them in order.

Alice was about to burst out laughing but turned her head away from me and held it in. When she turned back she had her annoyed expression again.

“So stupid, like you could even pull one of them off. Besides, I have my own things to do at the moment and I can’t afford to waste my time playing friends with you.” Alice coldly declines me.

“Then mind telling me what are those things you are doing?” I asked, not really having anything to do.

Alice sighs in an annoyed way but decides to tell me anyways since she couldn’t do much with the Sealers on.

“I’m trying to take back my home galaxy, the Hoidu galaxy. The ones who took it over are known as Sceyth, another galaxy.” Alice said.

Alice started to explain how both Hoidu and Sceyth went into galactic war years ago. When Hoidu lost, five commanders who were the strongest of Hoidu died beside Alice. Her home planet suffered the same fate as mine because all of her people refused to be ruled by Sceyth. So Sceyth simply killed off all the planets who rebelled, not wanting to waste time dealing with them, in total they cleared up four whole planets of people who opposed Sceyth. Ever since then Alice has been working secretly with all the remaining rebels, giving them weapons she would buy or steal from Dark Markets and invade Sceyth camps to dwindle down their numbers so when a proper time came they would strike. Until then Alice would hide in empty galaxies with her darkness when Sceyth would go on a hard hunt for her.

You might be wondering why Divine is allowing other galaxies to go to war and take over? Well, Divine always gives galaxies or planets who are at the level of space traveling an opportunity to become part of Divine. However, they must comply with certain conditions like being open to migration. Both Sceyth and Hoidu had declined Divine, but that doesn’t mean anything bad. Divine simply accepts the refusal and lets them do their own thing, however, they don’t receive protection nor do they interfere with what they do unless it involves beings marked as criminals from Divine. That or either Hoidu and Sceyth end up attacking a Divine galaxy, army, ship, or anything Divine related including the neutral planets then they will become enemies of Divine.

“So no matter what you won’t join me?” I still ask after hearing her objective.

“That’s right.” Alice quickly replied and took a pause for a moment. “I’ll admit you’re quite an interesting one, in a weird way.” She randomly said as she began to finally settle down and not give me that cold expression. “What’s your name?” She asks.

“Ethan, yours?” I ask back.

“Alice. Can you take these off now, Ethan?” She asked while lifting her cuffed arms.

I decide to remove the Sealers and thankfully she didn’t try anything like attacking me instantly.

“How about this then, if I help you take back Hoidu will you join me then?” I keep insisting on her being part of my starting crew.

“There are plenty of others out in the universe who would gladly join you, I don’t understand why you want to waste your time on me,” Alice said.

“I mean, we have a connection going aren’t we? Plus, your power would benefit me a lot in many situations. Also, it’s not like I’m super busy I got plenty of time to kill.” I explain.

Alice actually thinks about it and doesn’t give me the instant denial.

“Fine, but I’ll only join if you made an actual difference in taking back Hoidu. If your help wasn’t necessary then I won’t bother.” Alice explained her condition.

“So you want me to carry?” I thought about it like it was a video game I played on earth. “Now we’re talking!” I started to get excited, not only because I was getting Alice to join me, but I was also going to test myself on how strong I truly have become by taking on an entire galaxy.

Once we agreed on the deal, we head over to Hoidu secretly with my spaceship going invisible along with the combo of Alice’s Hashin power just in case. We pass by many Sceyth spaceships roaming around painted in red and gray, having flags with the face of Sceyth himself as a symbol which was the ruler.

The planet we transported to was Najm, a very foggy planet filled with city-like buildings, although many of them were destroyed during and after the war. Many of the Najm people who are four-limbs are only given a set amount of food and water from Sceyth since a lot of their resources was also lost. That and they forced them to rebuild the way Sceyth wants it to be built and not how it used to be and those who refused got killed.

“That’s fucked up,” I tell Alice as we walked around the streets, looking at the people living the poor life.

“It’s not just our galaxy, apparently Sceyth does the same to his own people,” Alice explained.

“So dictatorship.” The thought never came to mind of such things.

It sucks that many who have yet to learn about the harsh truth of living in the universe expect fresh new experiences, but unfortunately a lot of it is mostly the same s**t one has heard or seen. Not saying it is all bad just don’t expect that the universe is all sunshine and rainbows, if anything it is a balance between bad and good in the universe until a Dark Age happens, then that’s just all bad until the good brings balance back to the scale.

Anyways, Alice took me to some underground base where some rebels hid, looking like a simple hideout I have seen in movies with monitors n such. Many came rushing being joyful that Alice came to visit, a few even had tears rushing down. It is to be expected, Alice was their only hope in having a chance to take back Hoidu on their own.

“This is Ethan, he is an outsider who will help us.” Alice introducing me.

“Yo," I said and give them that army salute with my right hand.

“An outsider? Why did you bring an outsider to interfere with our galaxy Alice?” Someone named Tark who was the leader of the Najm rebels asked.

“He could be a spy from Sceyth!” One shouts.

Many had their doubts about me right away.

“Let’s just say I’m madly in love with Alice and she is abusing me to do what I want for her,” I explained in a jokingly way.

“Hu?” Tark having a what the f**k look on his face.

“Can you not say anything stupid?” Alice tells me. “We made a deal, if his help was truly needed to take back Hoidu then I would join him in achieving his goals. He managed to defeat me so he is indeed strong.” She explains to the Najm rebels who got took by surprise when Alice said she got defeated by me.

All the Najm rebels look at each other to think it over and decide to have faith and trust in Alice.

They began to explain the situation more clearly to me. Sceyth’s army size used to be 4 billion soldiers not including citizens while Hoidu had 6 billion during the war. Sceyth had a commander rank known as Sceth and apparently there was 20 of them but now there are only four remaining. Like I said earlier Hoidu had five strong commanders of their own but Alice was the last one alive. The results after the war to now is four sceths with 209 million remaining soldiers against me and Alice with our 40 million Hoidu rebel army that was mixed with both soldiers who survived the war and citizens. As you can tell, they have more numbers but luckily it came down to quality and not quantity.