Star Bright

Cathleen could do nothing but look on as the two boys that she cared for so much threw themselves at the twisted creature. Their crystal like skin sparkled in the moonlight as they smashed into the monster. Lance went in low, striking at its exposed torso while Davis leapt into the air at its head. They each landed a powerful blow, which caused the creature to howl in pain. It stumbled back, and both boys relentlessly went after it.

The cry of pain instantly turned into a sinister hiss as they closed in. One of its arms shot out, stretching like a rubber band. The full length of it smacked Davis in the chest, sending him crashing into nearby farm equipment. Lance looked over at his fallen best friend, then roared a fierce battle cry. Charging in without hesitation, he rammed one of his powerful fists into the creature’s exposed gut. Although it wasn’t really a solid being, the monster made an odd sound and doubled over the way a person would if they had been punched in the same place. As it went down, it lashed out with one of its massive legs. Lance had just enough time to bring both of his arms up to defend himself before the thick talons on its feet slashed him. Even at the distance they were, Cathleen saw several splinters of crystals fly through the air as Lance was knocked to the ground. She tried to rush over to him, but Maude caught her before she could move.

“Are you crazy, Cat?” she yelled. “That thing will tear you apart!”

She tried to fight against her best friend, but in her bewildered state, she was pulled behind a small pile of hay bails. Maude placed a finger over her lips, and Cathleen instantly knew that she needed to be as quiet as possible. Davis and Lance needed her to stay out of the battle, least she put herself in danger. They needed to focus solely on the monster, which was a whole lot tougher than she could have ever imagined. Peeking over the top of the hay bails, Cathleen and Maude continued to watch the terrible fight unfold in front of their eyes. For the most part, it appeared that it was nearly even fight. The monster was tougher than either Davis or Lance, but with the two of them together they were holding their own against it. Whenever it focused its attention on one of them, the other would nail it in an exposed area. But when it did manage to hit them, it hit hard. Each blow either sent them tumbling through the air or knocked them to the ground.

As if to emphasize what she noticed, Lance was hit hard by the creature and crashed into their hiding place. Cathleen and Maude dove for cover as the hay bails exploded in a shower of straws. The world became a mindless blur for Cathleen as she tried to make heads or tails of where she was. It was just as she was beginning to realize that she was face down in the dirt that hands grabbed her shoulders and turned her over. Cathleen coughed hard, spitting out a few clumps of dirt. She looked up to see both Maude and Lance’s faces hovering over her.

“Cat, are you alright?” they both said at the exact same time.

“Ye…yeah.” she whispered, shaking her head.

Nearby, the monster roared. Cathleen shuddered at its unnatural sound. Although her mind was screaming to not look, she just couldn’t help herself. Glancing over Lance’s shimmering ruby like skin, she felt her heart skip a beat when the monster grabbed Davis and hurled him through the wall to the barn. Its constantly shifting head snapped in her direction. For a brief moment, she made direct contact with its shimmering lime colored eyes, and her entire body went cold from fright. Though it was completely alien to anything she had ever known, Cathleen instantly understood the endless void of hatred in those nearly lifeless eyes. They narrowed into diabolical slits, further emphasizing the rage that it was projecting from them. The creature’s jaws dropped to what should have been unnatural proportions, so much so that Cathleen could easily imagine herself being swallowed whole in that gapping mouth. A high pitched screech came from the depths of the terrifying void behind its dagger like fangs that hurt Cathleen’s ears. She screamed from both pain and fear, but couldn’t bring herself to look away from the monster.

Its rubbery arms stretched out further, to the point where they were nearly dragging on the ground. It clicked its scythe like claws together, and charged them. Lance instantly got between her and it.

”Stripy!” he shouted to Maude. “Get Cat out of here!”

“Lance,” Cathleen protested, reaching out for him, “don’t…”

“It doesn’t care about any of us, Cat. It wants you!” Lance tensed his body into a fighting stance and braced for the nightmarish onslaught. “Go. Now!”

Cathleen wanted to scream at him to stop. She didn’t care about some stupid tradition from their home world that Lance was clearly gambling his life on. She didn’t care about her supposing to be royalty, and him supposing to be a sworn protector of what she was. She just wanted him to be safe. Cathleen reached out to grab him, but Lance launched himself at the charging behemoth with such stunning speed that he may as well have been flying through the air. Shouting his trademark battle cry, Lance rammed his clenched fist into its chest. Cathleen saw a ripple eerily similar to the kind that happened when dropping a pebble into a still body of water radiate from where Lance punched the creature all throughout its body. The force of the impact sent it tumbling back. As it went, the monster howled a cry that Cathleen instantly recognized as one of pain. Just as the two combatants went down, a part of the barn’s wall exploded and Davis charged out to join Lance in the fray.

Cathleen didn’t want to do anything more than look on. She felt horrible for leaving to hide somewhere while the two boys that she cared for fought for their very lives to protect her. Maude pulled against her arm hard.

“Cat, come on. We have to get away from here.”

“Maude, I can’t.”

Maude grabbed Cathleen’s shoulders and forced her to look into her friend bewildered and dirt covered face. “Cat,” she said in a voice more serious than she had ever heard her friend speak, “we…have…to…go!”

“But, Lance…Davis…”

“You’re not helping them by staying here!” she said. “They can’t fight that thing and worry about you at the same time.”

She grabbed Cathleen’s hand and roughly dragged her along.

“Now come on!”

Though she felt like she was abandoning them, Cathleen reluctantly let Maude drag her away. She hated admitting that Maude was right, but deep in her heart Cathleen knew that she was. If she didn’t get away from the battle immediately, she would only be hindering Lance and Davis’ ability to fight the monster. They had hardly moved when her parents appeared and rushed to her.

“Cathleen!” her mother shouted, grabbing her other arm and helping Maude to drag her away. Her father, still holding his shotgun, put himself behind her as a human shield as they fled. A few moments later they were taking refuge in the only spot that they could hide, the inside of the barn. As they all ducked out of sight, Cathleen’s mom began to pat her all over.

“Sweetie, are you ok? It didn’t hurt you?”

The fear in her adoptive mother’s voice reminded Cathleen so much of the way the holographic recording of her real mother’s voice had sounded. It made Cathleen want to just cry, knowing that she loved her just as much as the woman who had long since died did. And she knew without question that her adoptive mother would have done anything to keep her safe, even sending her away as an infant if it meant that she could save her life. Realizing that…only made Cathleen feel guiltier than ever.

Even as her mother continued to search for any signs of injuries, Cathleen placed her trembling hands over her pulsating crystal. She should be out there, she thought, helping the two boys whom her heart had become bound to in such a sort time rather than hiding away like a coward. Her fear for them began to fade the more she thought about it and listened to the terrible sounds of the fight occurring just outside the barn. It was replaced by a growing anger towards herself. Although she hadn’t the first clue how they had done it, Cathleen tried to search her mind for some way to metamorphosis into a crystal like being the way she had seen them do. But the harder she tried, the more she was hit by a sense of helplessness as she couldn’t even being to comprehend how either of them had done it. Dammit, why couldn’t she be out there now? She had the power too. Everything that Lance and Davis had become, everything that they could do, so could she. So why wasn’t she able to? Why was she stuck in a back corner of the barn, surrounded by everyone she knew that were trying so desperately to protect her, when she should be protecting them.

Cathleen screamed inwardly at herself as she continued to slam her mind against one mental barrier after another. Clutching her crystal tightly, Cathleen began frantically thinking of ways to unlock her hidden potential. It was supposed to be some kind of conduit or booster that enabled the transformation. She had figured that out on her own just by watching Davis change. If she could understand something as simple as that, then why was she still unable to employ that knowledge? Outside, the sounds of fighting were growing more intense. The monster’s screeches, along with Lance and Davis’ cries, were getting louder and more agonizing with every second that ticked by.

It sounded like all three of them were dying out there, while she huddled in the darkness. Clenching her teeth, Cathleen let the crystal slip from her fingers as the weight of total helplessness fell over her. That was the way she had felt her entire life. Alone and helpless. And now here, when she needed to rise above that, she was no more able to do it than she ever had before. She wanted to curse at the top of her lungs, damning everything that she knew in her feeble rage. As her mother and Maude tried to console her, whispering in completely unbelievable voices that everything was going to be ok, a thought passed through Cathleen’s mind.

Looking past them, she narrowed her vision on the pod. It had already revealed many things to her in just a short time. Maybe, if she could just unlock it again, there would be something within it that could tell her how to unlock her hidden abilities. Although common sense told her to stay put, Cathleen’s heart surged her onward to at least trying something, anything other than just hiding away and hoping that someone she loved didn’t get hurt because of her. She didn’t give what she was thinking even a second thought. Without the slightest warning to anyone, she jumped to her feet and rushed to the pod.

“Cat, what the hell are you doing?!” Maude screamed after her.

Cathleen didn’t answer. She raced over to the pod and clutched her crystal in one trembling hand. She touched the pod with her free hand exactly where she remembered touching it the last time. The pod instantly lit up with a low humming. Cathleen had no way of understanding how it was happening, but hundreds of images flashed through her mind in a horribly jumbled mess. She tried in vain to focus her mind on what she needed to know, but there was no way that she had the understanding or the practice to make heads or tails of any of it.

Her attempt to find some way to help her was short lived. Cathleen’s focus was shattered when Davis rushed through the gaping hole in the barn’s wall. “Don’t touch the pod!” he screamed, waving his arms frantically. “You’ll attract that thing!”

The instant after the words had escaped his mouth, the remainder of the wall behind Davis crashed inward, and the hulking beast forced its way in. Davis whirled on his feet to face it, and was struck hard across the face by one of its ropy tentacles. He stumbled back, crashing into a pile of rusted equipment. Cathleen froze when she didn’t see him get back up. Someone was screaming something at her, but it seemed like a distant mumbling. All she could do was stand in place like a statue as the enormous beast loomed over her. It swayed slightly from side to side, fixating its twin glowing orbs on her. A low, repetitive clicking came from its twitching jaws as it took a step towards her. It raised one of its abnormal hands towards her, dangling its thick claws just inches away from her face. Cathleen knew that she should run, but she couldn’t. Her body had become locked with fear, refusing to listen to anything that she tried to make it do. Sweat perforated her skin as those hideous claws inched closer and closer towards her vulnerable flesh. In the monster’s lifeless eyes, Cathleen could see her own impending death.

A loud boom came from behind her, startling Cathleen out of her trance like state. The monster recoiled slightly, clicking loudly as it turned its attention away from her. Cathleen fell onto her back, and saw her dad standing out in open to face the beast down with nothing more than his shotgun. Without the slightest hesitation, he brought the gun up and fired at it again. For all the effect it had on the beast, her dad may as well have been throwing pebbles at it. From behind him, her mother and Maude rushed to her side. Grabbing her around the arms, they both hauled Cathleen to her feet and dragged her away.

The monster’s insidious hiss rumbled throughout the interior of the barn. It raised its massive arms high over its head and brought them down to crush her father. Cathleen cried out just as he dove out of the way. Frustrated, the monster wildly lashed out at anything that was nearby. Several large support beams were snapped in half like twigs. As they stumbled out, the whole section of the barn where her dad was caved in. Cathleen looked over her shoulder to see if there was any sign of her father. When she didn’t see him emerge from the crumbling building, her heart sank.

“Daddy!” she cried, hoping that her voice would somehow make him magically stumble out of the wreckage.

He did come. He didn’t even respond. There was nothing. And though she wanted to deny reality with every ounce of her willpower, Cathleen knew in the back of her mind the cold, hard truth. Her father had just been buried under hundreds of pounds of wood and metal. To be able to survive something like that was…

Cathleen didn’t know whether to rush back into the dim haze of the barn’s interior or to fall to her knees and weep. So much was happening so fast. She didn’t have time, for anything. As she wildly tried to come to grip with what she should do, her mind was made up for her when the beast bashed down the barn’s doors and charged them. Her mother instantly leapt in front of Cathleen to shield her from the coming onslaught.

“Mom, no!” Cathleen cried, reaching out to grab her.

Her mother snatched up a discarded hunk of wood and, against all rational concepts, ran right at the beast. “You stay away from her, you bastard!”

Cathleen was left stunned by her mother’s insane devotion to protect her. She could do nothing but look on as tears stung her eyes as the woman who had loved Cathleen her entire life as if she were her own daughter attacked the seemingly unstoppable monstrosity with nothing but a puny piece of wood. Screaming in a way Cathleen had never heard her use before, her mother smacked the creature in the leg. It emitted a single click, and swatted her mother aside with no more attention than brushing aside an annoying insect. The monster was on them before Cathleen could even gasp. Maude shouted something, but it was drowned out by the hideous clicking. As the towering beast lifted its arms to crush her, Cathleen was roughly shoved out of the way.

She lost her footing and fell to the ground. Every instinct in her mind flared, and she immediately began to roll. A heavy impact struck the ground where she had just been. There was no time for her to even think about how she had almost been crushed. She just had to keep rolling. Over and over again she went, until the world had become a blinding whirl. Right behind her, earth shaking impacts continued as the monster thrashed about in its wild attempts to crush her. Just keep rolling, she thought, just keep rolling. She tried to do just that, until she was hit in the side with a force that felt like getting hit by a truck.

Cathleen was tossed across the ground in a jumbled mass of flailing arms and legs. She came to a stop with her face in the ground and her mouth filled with dirt. Gagging, she spit the foul contents in her mouth out as she coughed horrendously. A vice like grip wrapped itself around her, and Cathleen was hoisted off the ground. The pressure around her tightened, leaving Cathleen gasping for air like a fish out of water. She was turned around, and came to within inches of the monster’s quivering jaws. Nothing came to Cathleen in that moment, her mind had become a completely blank slate shrouded by the absolute terror that coursed through out every inch of her body. The creature continued its dreaded clicking noises as it slowly stretched its mouth open to an impossible length and drew her in.

Click. A musky wave of odor washed over Cathleen as she was pushed into its mouth. The foul smell was like that of a dead fish.

Click. Her head was inside its jaws. She could see nothing within except an endless void.

Click. The tip of one of its many razor sharp teeth scratched across her face, cutting through her vulnerable skin with burning pain that she knew was only a microscopic morsel of the suffering she was about to endure.

Click. Its jaws quivered one last time, readying to devour her whole. In that instant, Cathleen saw her coming death. The one she had longed to have for so long but now wanted so desperately to avoid…had come at last.

Helpless to do anything, Cathleen closed her eyes and awaited the terrible sensation of being devoured by the monster. The next thing that Cathleen realized, was that she was spiraling through the air, and that she could breathe again. Her back impacted into a solid mass, the ground she realized almost instantly. She inhaled deeply, savoring the sweet night air that quenched the fire in her lungs. Stumbling weakly to her unsteady feet, Cathleen turned her head towards the sound of renewed fighting.

She had to blink several times before she could make sense of what she was seeing. When she did, her heart did a joyful flip.

Lance, in all his stunning ruby glint, was attacking the monster with a ferocity that rivaled its own. His fists were a blinding blur of pain, causing the creature to fold before him and actually retreat. Cathleen had yet to see the seemingly unstoppable monster do that. And it filled her with hope. Her bodyguard had returned to protect her.

“Don’t you ever go near Cat again!” Lance roared, ramming his fist into its now pathetically spongy body.

His assault was short lived, though. The monster regained its footing, stopping Lance’s advance abruptly. Flashing its fangs, the beast lifted a fist high over its head, and brought it down on Lance with a force that would have likely leveled a building. The bulky boy raised his thick red arms up to meet the blow. The two impacted with the force of a small bomb. Cathleen actually felt a small shockwave hit her, causing her to stumble back a step. She caught herself, and looked on at the two combatants. Against all odds, Lance had taken the blow head on, and was still standing. His legs and been pushed into the ground past his ankles, but he was holding his own. Both Lance and the creature’s arms shook violently as each tried to overpower the other. The monster’s lime green eyes narrowed and it made a noise that was easily interpreted as frustration. Mashing its jaws, the monster lifted its free arm and brought it down against Lance with a force equal to the first one.

Cathleen gasped as Lance shot out one of his arms to brace for the attack. Cathleen instinctively jumped when the fist smashed into Lance like a massive hammer and drove him to his knees.

“Lance!” Cathleen cried. “Get away from it!”

He didn’t listen. If anything, her cry to him seemed to energize his entire body. Shaking all over, the red eyed boy struggled back to his feet, still holding both of the monster’s arms at bay. The looked that its alien eyes fixated on Lance was unmistakable. Pure, uncontrollable rage. It shook about wildly, trying to free its arms from Lance’s grip. Though it was obvious he was in immense pain, Lance held on. Cathleen felt her eyes water at this blatant display of unyielding devotion to keep her safe.

“Lance, please.” Cathleen begged. “Don’t do this. I’m not worth…”

“You…” he growled, staring the monster straight in its nightmarish face. “…will…not…touch…her. Ever!”

With a sudden burst of hidden strength, Lance punched away one of the monster’s trembling arms and grasped the other with both of his hands. Releasing a cry that likely could be heard from miles away, Lance ripped off half of the arm that he had been grasping. The creature threw back its head and emitted a cry unlike any Cathleen had ever heard it do before. Clutching its now flailing stump with its one remaining hand. Before Cathleen had a chance to move, or say, or even think anything, the beast retaliated. A tentacle whipped around it with deadly speed and struck Lance directly in the head. Cathleen’s eyes widened as she saw glistening red shards fly into the night air. The blow was so powerful that it knocked Lance around. Large cracks were visible all across his crystal like skin, and his red eyes darted about in confusion. With his back to the monster, it loomed over him sinisterly. From over its shoulders twin tentacles snaked high over its pain filled face. Cathleen felt her heart skip a beat when she saw a deadly spike suddenly spring forth from each tentacle end.

“Lance!” she screamed. “Look out!”

Her cry was too late. Before Lance could even move, the two bladed ends arched down at Lance’s vulnerable back. They both struck home, and Cathleen felt her heart shatter when she saw both tips pierce through Lance’s chest. His mouth dropped in a voiceless gasp. Cathleen shook her head, trying to will away the soul crushing image that she was witnessing, but knowing deep in her heart that she what she was watching was undeniably real. Lance fell to his knees, looking right into Cathleen’s tear filled eyes. All the strength and determination that she had ever seen in them was gone. There was nothing but a weak gaze that was like that of a terrified child. In that moment, Cathleen’s entire world shattered apart, because she knew that she was watching Lance die right before her eyes.

Blood, as deeply red as his eyes, frothed from Lance’s mouth as he fell limply over on his side. Cathleen stared on helplessly as his gaze began to lose focus. Just before his eyes closed for what she knew was the last time, he shared one final look with Cathleen. In that final moment, she could see nothing in his eyes but an unyielding love for her. Lance had died for her, as he had proclaimed that he would since they had first met.

“LANCE!!!”