In truth, this was becoming exhausting, and there was no point in denying it: I was getting old. I didn't know exactly how long we had been fighting, but the body no longer lied with the same ease as before, and every accumulated exchange made itself felt with an honesty that the years teach you to respect. The creature before us was humanoid, a dark brown color, with several eyes distributed in a row along its head and a devastating force that hadn't diminished a single iota since the first blow. What made it a truly serious problem, however, was not that force itself — what was terrifying was its immediate regeneration: no matter how many times Atomic Samurai managed to section it with a precision that would have liquidated any other threat in a matter of seconds, the creature rebuilt itself immediately, complete, with no sign of accumulated wear. We had been at this for too long without results, and that, for someone of my experience, was a signal that wasn't convenient to ignore.
The first to fall was Puri-Puri-Prisoner. He trusted more than the situation allowed, attacked with the intention of impressing rather than eliminating, and the creature punished him with a single blow that left him seriously injured on the ground. I arrived in time to interpose myself and deflect the second blow before it finished what the first had started, but the cost of that distraction was paid by all of us: losing a companion broke our individual concentration for an instant — it was clear we weren't good at working as a team — and in that instant the creature found the angles it needed to connect blows that under normal conditions none of us would have allowed. We came away with damage we hadn't had at the start, and the creature began moving with a new confidence, pouring into the combat an intensity it had until that moment contained. If we didn't find its weakness soon, the outcome of this wasn't going to be favorable for anyone. What could we do?
"My, old Bang. I thought you'd be stronger. How disappointing."
That voice distracted me just enough for the creature's fist to arrive centimeters from my head before stopping — not by its own decision, but suspended in the air as if the world had paused at that exact point. I tried to take a step back by instinct and found I couldn't do that either. My feet didn't respond. My arms didn't either. The only things still under my control were my eyes and my mouth, which was enough to confirm that the others were in exactly the same situation, with the same contained alarm painted on their faces.
—What is happening? Why can't I move my katana? —said Atomic Samurai with the contained tension of someone who hasn't experienced anything like this in decades.
—Master, I can't move either.
—What the hell is going on?! Let me go right now! —Metal Bat's voice sounded as always, with his rage completely intact and his body absolutely incapable of backing it up.
—Miserable humans! What did you do to me?! —roared the creature from its suspended position, with a genuine confusion in the eyes it distributed across its entire body, trying to move without success. For a moment I saw its skin attempt something unsuccessfully.
—We are not responsible for this. We don't know who…
—Quiet, all of you!
I knew that voice. I had heard it before under circumstances I didn't easily forget. I made the effort to move my eyes in the direction of the sound and found her: Mrs. Fubuki, standing with that posture of hers of completely natural authority, while with visible concentration she attended to Puri-Puri-Prisoner who remained unconscious on the ground beside her.
—I'm sorry. This man has too much accumulated damage. In order to heal him in the time we have, I'm going to need to borrow the vital energy of all of you. It won't take long.
Before anyone could respond I felt exhaustion settle into every muscle of the body at a speed that gave no time to resist it. The legs gave way first, then the rest, and I ended up on the ground alongside the others without being able to make the slightest voluntary movement. Around me everyone had fallen the same way. The only figure still upright in that space was the alien creature, which was observing us from its immobilized position with a mixture of surprise and something that, if I had had to name it, I would have called absolute terror.
—Thank you for the collaboration. I was able to stabilize him considerably. —said Mrs. Fubuki with a calm smile as she passed beside us without stopping—. He'll recover well in a few minutes. Ah, and Metal Bat, I didn't know you had that quantity of energy available. I made particularly good use of it — I hope you don't mind.
—Damned… witch… —muttered Metal Bat through clenched teeth, with his rage completely intact and his body absolutely incapable of backing it up.
—I understand the sentiment but I don't have time for complaints right now. —she replied without turning—. I only came for something specific.
She stopped before the immobilized creature and studied it with her usual calm, from top to bottom, without any trace of tension in her posture or her face. The creature looked at her with all its eyes at once, with that intensity that in other circumstances would have been frankly threatening.
—You and I need to talk. And given that you don't seem like the type who cooperates voluntarily, this is going to be a conversation entirely on my terms.
The creature tried to move again. It couldn't.
—Insolent human, I, Melzargard, will end your pathetic existen…
It couldn't finish the sentence. Fubuki's hand passed through its head with a surgical cleanness that startled me, and when she withdrew it with the same calm with which one removes a hand from a pocket, between her fingers five marbles of a material I couldn't identify were spinning. She held them in the air with her energy, making them rotate slowly, and the creature's expression changed in a way that in decades of combat I had never seen in any enemy, however terrifying: pure panic, without disguise, without the pride to contain it.
—Well. So these things are what keep you alive. How interesting.
—DAMNED WOMAN, DON'T…!!
—Destroy them? Ha. That would be too simple, and besides, not very entertaining. And there's not much point in crying to that Geryuganshoop of yours; he can't hear you anymore.
The alien went still with an expression of horror it could no longer close, because at that instant Fubuki's hand moved with precision and a section of its head fell to the ground. What followed was something I couldn't catalogue exactly as combat or as science: the separated piece was converted into a compact sphere, wrapped in her energy, and with a dry gesture the creature's remaining body was divided into five clean parts. Over each one she poured a liquid of unknown origin, and within seconds the pieces began to transform — reorganizing upward, taking on humanoid proportions, with firm eyes and a presence that was felt in the air before they finished forming entirely. When they were complete, the five beings knelt before her without anyone ordering it, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. As if Mrs. Fubuki were their master.
—Go and destroy the ship! Not one of those missiles is to touch the Earth. And when you're done, return.
The five nodded in silence. From their backs emerged wings, and in their hands different weapons took shape — swords, maces, spiked balls, spears — before launching instantly into the sky, where in a matter of moments explosions began to light up the shadow that ship cast over the sky.
Then Fubuki turned toward me. With a single movement she helped me up and left me sitting, and looked at me with that smile of hers that mixes self-satisfaction with something that in a younger person I would have called insolence, but that in her was simply her.
—Seriously, you have no idea what teamwork is? —she said with a lightness that was more irritating than any direct insult—. As the saying goes: you can't teach an old dog new tricks.
I didn't respond. Not because I had nothing to say, but because deep down I wasn't entirely sure she was wrong.
֍֍֍
Tatsumaki:
I was completely fed up with this piece of garbage ship. I didn't know how long I'd been going through every section, every enormous gap I found, and my husband was nowhere. Every time I detected an explosion I moved toward it hoping to find him and only found more destroyed scrap metal and no one there. To top it all off, the imbeciles on the ship kept launching missiles at me as if that were going to produce any different result than before, and every time they did I simply collected them with the aura and sent them back at triple the speed. They had already learned to stop trying, at least in my section. Or maybe I had already killed them, who knows.
—Sweetheart! Where are you?! —I shouted toward a considerable hole where I had just heard an explosion that shook the entire section.
Nothing.
Damn it! All I wanted was to find him, get him out of this garbage ship, destroy it on the way home and watch a peaceful film with him tonight and obviously do a few other things. It was not an unreasonable request. But then I felt it: an energy concentrated at a specific point in the ship, in the opposite direction from where I had been searching. It was dense, presumptuous, with that particular quality that things develop when they have gone a long time without encountering real resistance. Powerful, in objective terms. Enough that something in me registered genuine curiosity before I could ignore it.
And where there is something powerful, there is a problem. And where there is a problem, there is my husband.
I didn't think about it any further.
I located the point from below and lifted a rock the size of a mid-sized building with the aura without visible effort. I compressed it, sharpened it, turned it into a drill of considerable proportions and directed it against the lower hull of the ship at maximum speed. The process took a few minutes but the result was what I was looking for: a clean entry hole that went through several layers of reinforced metal as if they were wet paper.
I entered through the hole and found myself in a room that clearly wasn't a service corridor. It was enormous, with ceilings that disappeared into the darkness, illuminated by a purple energy sphere that floated at the center and pulsed with a regularity that suggested it was something important to the functioning of all of this. At the far end, on a throne elevated by a staircase that had clearly been designed to impress, sat a blue one-eyed alien who was observing me with an expression that was trying to convey power and only managed to look incredibly idiotic to me.
This was the leader of this entire operation? What a disappointing specimen.
—Are you the one responsible for this garbage ship? —I asked with no interest in concealing what I thought.
—Truly marvelous, this planet never stops surprising me.
He rose from the throne with a calculated slowness designed to be imposing and directed a smile at me that he clearly considered charming. What an idiot.
—Before we begin the combat, introductions are appropriate. I am the leader of the Dark Matter Thieves. The conqueror of the known universe. My name… is Boros.
—And why should I care? Damn imbecile —I cut him off before he could continue—. Shut up and stay still a moment. I'm not in the mood for conversations and I don't care what the so-called conqueror of the universe is looking for either. I'm waiting for someone. When he arrives, I'll destroy you and we'll leave. As simple as that.
Boros looked at me with an expression I hadn't expected to find: genuine curiosity, not irritation nor indignation, but the particular interest of someone who doesn't remember the last time something surprised them. It was obvious his mother never scolded him, the spoiled thing.
—You truly are extraordinary. I have never encountered a being so absolutely insolent anywhere in the universe I have traversed. You generate a curiosity in me that I haven't felt in a long time.
—And you are not exactly what I would call attractive. Sorry… I thought we were insulting each other.
—You asked me what I seek on this Earth.
—I didn't ask you absolutely anything.
—There exists a prophecy that…
—Did you hear me say I don't care?
—I was for a long time the most powerful known being. I razed entire civilizations. No one in any corner of the universe could stand up to me, and what would seem to be any warrior's dream ended up becoming the worst torment imaginable. The void of absolute power without opposition. An unprecedented torment. Until one day a seer told me that on a distant planet…
I slammed him against the wall.
Not because he had particularly bothered me, but because if I had to listen to an alien whining about how bored he was I was going to go mad before my husband arrived. The impact opened a considerable crater in the reinforced metal wall and raised enough dust to obscure half the room. I waited. At least with that he would be quiet for a moment and I could keep watching the entrance.
But suddenly, from the dust a silhouette began to emerge.
Boros came out of the crater moving in a way that didn't correspond to someone who had just received that impact against reinforced metal, and as he did the armor he was wearing began to fracture and detach in pieces until it fell to the ground. The man was left half-undressed in the center of the room. How pathetic.
—The armor I was using to contain my power has been destroyed.
—Ok… And am I supposed to applaud you for that, pervert?
Boros didn't respond. His body began to change at a speed I hadn't anticipated: the blue tone darkened several degrees, a kind of energy began to form around his structure with a density that could be physically felt from where I was, and the aura emanating from him stopped being the presumptuous arrogance of before and became something qualitatively different. Something my eyes recognized as real.
A small smile formed on my face without my being able to prevent it.
—So the conqueror of the universe business wasn't just boasting. Good.
Boros raised his head and his single eye found me with an expression that mixed euphoria with something that looked like genuine relief — the expression of someone who has been waiting too long for this moment.
—IT'S TIME!!
The blow arrived in a fraction of a second. It didn't catch me off guard, but the force behind it was enough that stopping it cost me more than I had expected. The green aura I generated to intercept it pulsed with an intensity I hadn't needed in a long time, and the impact of the collision between his energy and mine sent a shock wave that cracked the floor of the room in every direction and created a true light show.
I held my position. So did he.
The two of us looked at each other for a second in the silence that followed the wave, with the rubble still falling around us and both our energies still visible in the air between us.
—Good. —I said finally, satisfied—. My husband won't mind if I entertain myself for a moment before he arrives. Right?
Boros smiled.
This time it didn't bother me. I genuinely wanted to see how I'd wipe it off his face in a few seconds.