UNTITLED: Book One

REWIND 136.50

I’m not running

I’m not losing

I’m not scared

Left uppercut—left hook—right jab! *BOOM* A shockwave channels throughout The Hero’s suit before exploding out of her fist when she jabs right. Solara manages to barely dodge the jab. This is how it’s been with all of the Hero’s attacks—collecting cuts and bruises from being grazed by every single attack that’s been thrown at her. It was hard to gauge The Hero’s ability because of the suit constantly taking in power. She just keeps getting faster and stronger with each passing second.

It’s getting harder for Solara now. Another jab almost catches her. But she reflexively blocks it by uppercutting The Hero’s wrist with her palm. The shockwave ends up blasting right above Solara’s head. This is the fourth one she’s narrowly avoided now.

She’s not tired—nowhere near—since her body and all her training won’t allow her to be, but her ego has been getting drained like a bucket of water with a hole in its side. Every good move she makes adds a little something to the bucket while every move the 11th Hero makes drains it. Thankfully, that bucket is as big as the ocean below them, beneath the city in the sky. Still, only being able to barely dodge these attacks she can clearly see coming—it’s pissing her off.

This lady’s suit seems to be powered by all, or some of those ships, Solara observes, spotting them in the distance through her peripherals. She flips backward into a back handspring to dodge another incoming attack. In that moment, she catches glimpse of the mothership above. She creates some distance between her and her opponent then glances at the mothership, seeing more ships pouring out of it like a beehive. So that thing has to go. But that ain’t happening just yet…

She puts more distance between herself and The Hero and gets into a fighting stance, stomping her foot hard into the ground—cracking it. No, not yet. Because she rarely ever has to fight at full strength it tends to take her a while to get her body fully awake for a fight this demanding. This technique was something she and Thema actually created, as kids, to get themselves going when they were feeling lazy during trainings and sparring.

She briefly grunts, repeatedly and aggressively, before doing her stance again, slowly at first as she raises her knee into the air—deep breath followed by and exhale. Then when her knee gets halfway up, she drives her knee to its peak height and then brings her foot stomping down again, HARD. This time it’s much much harder and breaks the ground immediately surrounding her foot. Now I’m ready.

She zooms at the creepily smiling Hero, who takes up no defensive stance and just lets her arms rest on her side. Her mistake, Solara thinks as she zooms at her, pulling back her arm for a full-powered punch. She stops her momentum right in front of The Hero and leans completely into the punch. The Hero, in a split second launches a counter punch and their fists collide. The force of Solara’s punch dispersing the shockwave that The Hero tries to summon through her counter-punch.

Okay, the force is enough to handle. I’ll just—Solara suddenly spins around the arm and body of The Hero the split second she notices The Hero is about to launch another explosion from her fist. She fakes a spinning back elbow and when Hero moves to counter, still spinning, she drops to a knee and grabs The Hero’s leg, jump-spinning into the leg to take her down from behind. She drops and rolls to her feet nearby and when The Hero tries to get up Solara grabs one arm and pulls it to the left, digs her knee into Hero’s chest and uses her other hand to push her head towards the opposite direction that she’s pulling the arm—very hard.

Solara roars while she pulls with all her strength in both directions, unsure if she’s trying to take off The Hero’s arm or her head. The Hero roars in pain while being pulled. Her armor lights up with a flash that blinds Solara momentarily—forcing her to look away for a second. Hero uses this opportunity to charge her suit and then blow Solara and everything else away with her shockwave attack, except this time it comes exploding out from her entire armor in every direction.

Solara flies back and tumbles for a bit before flipping on to her feet into dodging by ducking The Hero’s follow-up shockwave jab. Blocking multiple blows and then jumping back for a moment of pause. Her arms feel like they’re gonna break. This isn’t going to work.

“I didn’t think you were this strong… Interesting. I can actually use the suit’s power now.” The Hero says.

“You should’ve started like that from the beginning.” Solara bluffs. “All that weak shit you were doing. You’ve got nothing on Aiye. You sure your his Mom?” She taunts.

She has absolutely no clue why she felt the need to add that part, but something about fighting this lady is really beginning to bother her, and she can’t figure it out. She feels out of character around her.

“I’m going to kill you now child.” The Hero says with a serious, dark aura about her.

So she’s to charge me. But I can’t keep blocking. Solara thinks back to her training where she had to block extremely heavy things moving at extremely fast speeds. In the beginning she would constantly break her arms and fists because she would always try to overpower them. And by doing so, she got strong enough to where it worked for a while. However, the objects got faster and denser and her bones would constantly break under the pressure. It took a while for her to realizes that she needed to redirect the shit coming at her. It also took a while to figure out how to do that, but she eventually got the hang of it. That’s clearly the technique she needs to be using now. Tch. Heroes. Weapons that can destroy mountains and planets. Stupid. Just all so fucking stu—Solara’s eyes widen.

A shining palm almost engulfs her face. THAT WAS FAST. Fuck! She redirects the arm using her training and it blasts right above her again, but this time the blast is fucking HUGE. It catches her off guard for a moment, but that’s all the time that was needed.

The Hero catches Solara by the arm while her suit lights up again. The Hero then roars as that shockwave energy forms a huge bubble around the both of them before rapidly enclosing onto Solara alone—slamming into the insides of her body with extreme force. It’s like it’s vibrating through her and the pain is excruciating. Solara screams as it continues on.

Hero steps back, turning to walk away without bothering to even watch Solara struggle. But then, she’s grabbed at the waist by Solara who proceeds to suplex her into the ground. Except, The Hero’s suit never powered down from her last attack, and so like a bomb, it explodes upon impact on the ground. All the while, Solara is still roaring in residual pain.

Solara rolls out of the dust cloud, slowly and in pain. She’s slow to get up as the aftershocks of The Hero’s attack give her some final jolts of pain. Solara looks toward the dust cloud as she’s standing, waiting for it to clear. She’s waiting for The Hero to zoom out of it, or come up from under the ground, or shoot something out at her—something.

All her fucking attacks just caught me off guard, but now she’s ready. She’s got the speed, strength, style, and general understanding of what this lady is capable of doing with that suit. She’s ready this time.

As she reassures herself, she notices The Hero’s silhouette in the dust cloud. It then lights up as her suit starts glowing, blowing away all the dust and dirt. Solara uses her forearm to shield her eyes while making sure to keep her focus on The Hero and any of those potential methods of attack she thought of.

“You really are something.” Hero speaks up, running her fingers through her hair, then down the back of neck and off her chest. She looks up at her army’s mothership for a moment.

Suddenly, a stray blast from a battleship smacks against the shield, right behind Solara who is now standing close to the edge of the city. Solara takes that moment to glance behind her. She sees the Broker’s ships, some of the city in the sky’s remaining ships, and Dark State ships, all clustered in a raging battle. She observes the shield for a second and gets an idea. A grin follows as she refocuses her attention back on The Hero, but she’s startled by the Hero. Not because she took advantage of Solara looking away, yet again, but because the lady is just staring at her blankly. Waiting on her, it looks like.

“Hm. Best to keep your guard up child. Hmph. But no matter. Honestly, you really are something.” Hero states calmly as she looks Solara up and down.

“You said that already. Say some new shit, or let’s get this the fuck on.” Solara retorts, her nervous eyes and body staying ready for The Hero’s speed.

The 11th Hero chuckles to herself, shaking her head while admiring Solara from a distance. “No weapons, no armor—not even one of those battle skins.” She does a mocking gesture with her fingers. “Yet, you’re so…durable. It’s amazing, is all… Maybe too amazing…”

“What’s that even supposed to mean?” Solara questions, annoyed and impatient, but still on guard. She begins to wonder where Aiye is. The top of the city is a flat surface, so where the heck did he go?

It’s not just her strength that motivates her to jump into fights recklessly, it’s knowing that she always has someone she can rely on. That will always show up. Because usually, while one of them takes on the brunt of an attack, the other comes into the situation by surprise, disrupting the flow of the enemy and helping to finish them off. But it doesn’t ever take this long. He’s playing it veryyyy close.

“What does it mean indeed. I wonder…” The Hero’s admiration turns to suspicious observation for a while before she speaks up again, “You know… my Mother, she had a journal. Of hers and your Father's adventures throughout the galaxy. Talks about how they became what they are. The places they went. Their triumphs and atrocities—shit like that. But, there’s also some strange stuff in there about what they saw. My mom, so military, decided to blackout some parts so it was tough to really get the full picture…but today I find myself remembering what I did see. At least right now. No one else knew about it, not even my-… not even my brother.” She briefly enters into a trance like state, staring at Solara blankly again.

Solara doesn’t budge or respond immediately, trying not to get caught off guard again.

The Hero then shakes out of her brief trance and continues, “Nooo matterrr. I guess it’s not my concern anymore… SO!” She claps her hands with false enthusiasm as she changes the subject, “Solara, was it?? You’re pretty damn strong. The strongest, perhaps. In a different life, you’d be perfect for my boy. Unfortunately for you, that’s not what this is today. But as strong as you are, what you’re missing is the fact that I didn’t train to fight The Warden, I trained to defeat The Warden—and Sollar, at the same time. Meaning their weapons and all. I’m sure you’ve seen what those can do, but know that they can do far more than that. I’ve seen it twice before.” The hero holds up two fingers to gesture this, then continues, “I’ve suffered because of them. What this all means is that, if he can do much more, so can I. I remember earlier when I told you that I was going to kill you now. Yeah… I have things to do, so I think that ‘now’ has arrived.”

With that, The Dawn Hero’s suits shines bright like a star again. This time it’s so bright, in fact, that Solara can see through her own skin, through her closed eyelids. It’s like a bright white light shining everywhere that is outlined by a darkness. The dark star. Then, everything abruptly goes dark for a split second. Darker than pitch black. Like a being-blind type of dark. As if the light was absorbed. Because it was, into the suit. All this happens pretty quickly before Solara can open her eyes again and blink away the discomfort.

Shit. I might actually need your help right now Aiye.

Solara looks up at The Hero again and now her suit is no longer shining anymore. Not even that constant luminescence it had before. Almost like it’s dead, but she knows better than to believe something like that.

And right on cue, The Hero begins to levitate slowly off the ground. Solara dismisses it at first since she’s starting to get used to all the weird powers, but then she notices a bunch of battleships and cruiser ships start falling out of the sky as if they suddenly ran out of power. It’s like some just abruptly turned them off.

She looks around, in a full 360-degree turn, at the air battles raging on in the distance all around her. While looking around she witnesses more Dark State ships falling out of the sky… This is why they brought so many…

She gets goosebumps and her hairs stand on her skin as she’s filled with a new sensation. It’s something that she’s never really felt before. Fear.

Aiye… Where are you?? Solara begins stressing internally because around this time one of them often pops out of nowhere to catch the enemy off guard. As much as she loves a one-on-one with a strong opponent, she realizes she never truly has experienced fighting someone this long because she either defeats them quick or Aiye comes to help finish it. Always, on cue. He normally comes.

Is he avoiding me because it’s his Mom… Is he choosing her? The irrationality that comes with fear starts taking root in her heart.

“Now…has passed.” The Hero simply states before she extends her palm out toward Solara.

It’s as if all the color in the world is drained, as if Solara was seeing things through a black and white filter. More chills shiver down her spine. Then it comes.

While Solara can’t see it, she can feel it. So she instinctively dodges. Her dodging lands her right in front The Hero. But she feels her too, and she lets instinct completely take over, causing her to roll out of the way as fast as she possibly can as she feels another force brush over her, just missing her.

It was The Hero punching past her, releasing another shockwave from her fist that then hits the shield. Finally! Solara was waiting for this. Her big plan. She gets into a crouch and braces herself. Nothing that’s not allowed, gets in or out of this shield. Ever. She’s tried. Firing off such a strong attack like that is like shooting a flamethrower in solid, closed dome. At least it should be.

The attack, instead of engulfing everything inside the shields on the surface of the city, it starts to pierce through the shield—like how spraying water would enter through cracks in a window. It finally breaks through entirely and leaves a gaping hole in the city’s shielding. It doesn’t stop there as it continues across the sky, tunneling through a cluster of ships of all sizes—friend or foe. Anything hit gets obliterated immediately upon impact.

Solara sees this, then shoots a look at The Hero who is just standing there looking at her, dead calm. This…i- i- is a Hero at full power.

It ironically takes an encounter with The 11th Hero—The Dawn Hero for it to finally dawn on her that there is a entire universe of people out there, beyond their world, that exists and this woman is only one of them. She feels like she is falling into an abyss as she imagines herself going from her small waters to an endless bottomless dark ocean. Aiye, please. But he’s not here, so instead, fear completely takes over.

Rather than running away, she runs right at The Hero for a desperate attack. Barraging The Hero with all of her best and strongest moves, landing every single one, but they do nothing at all. The hero doesn’t even budge. In fact, the blows actually hurt Solara the most, but she ignores the pain and just keeps going. Giving up entirely on defense and hitting harder and harder. Hitting as fast as she can. Refusing to stop. There’s nothing! Nothing! Nothing I can’t beat!

The Hero just watches Solara’s frantic eyes as Solara continues her flurry of attacks. She observes that Solara’s fists are bloody from the impact of her punches, and her eyes are no longer alert. Somehow this annoys The Hero and her frustration with this girl suddenly flares.

She catches one of Solara’s arms by the wrist, grabs her opposite shoulder, then headbutts her face. CRACK. She then slams her into the ground. BOOM.

Solara, who has now abandoned battle instinct for her fight or flight instinct, smacks her bloody hand in The Hero’s face and smears it around before getting a punch in. It does nothing at all except to further piss off The Hero who punches her in the face three times before dislocating her arm. Solara yelps in pain but raises up very quickly—using only her core strength—to bite at The Hero’s neck. Instead, The Hero ends up catching her by her neck and slamming her back against the ground, pinning her there.

While Solara is pinned down she keeps trying to slap at the face of The Hero to no avail. Grunting and ground like a rabid dog. But after a while of struggle, her grunts and growls turn into light sobs, calling for Aiye while still slapping desperately at The Hero’s face.

The Hero closes her eyes for brief moment before opening them with new determination. The world around them drains of color again and an explosion follows.

The thunderous drum strikes once…