Timeline: Present

Point of View: Claudia & Ralph

Location: Earth

“Where are we going?” Ralph asked, as they rushed down the center stairwell of his apartment building. Claudia was holding his hand, and he took note of how soft her small fingers were. My God, he thought to himself, how long has it been since I’ve been laid?

Claudia said nothing as they approached the stairwell (apparently the elevators would have been too slow), and she leapt down the steps taking two at a time. Ralph nearly fell forward as she pulled him along. “Hey,” he said, “What’s the damn rush?”

In his pocket, his phone buzzed. Notifications had been going wild since earlier that day, the day the giants had come to Earth. Tik Tok videos out of Colorado were hot off the press now as giants stampeded out of the trailer park, leaving a blood trail in their wake. Ralph had only been able to watch one video of a teenage girl hiding in her room as a giant walked by her house before Claudia had hurried him out the door, telling him she had something to show him.

“Hey,” he tried again, “I think we should watch these videos and see what’s going on out there. Colorado isn’t that far away. There could be hundreds of them on their way here right now.”

“Shut up,” Claudia said. They landed on the final step of the stairwell, and she slammed the door open. There were people crowding the entry way, some looking out the windows, some on their phones. They looked up at the intruding duo briefly before returning to their distractions.

Claudia stopped for a second, seemed to consider something, then pulled Ralph out of the building.

“Claudia, for fuck’s sake, can you tell me what’s going on?” Ralph said, exasperated.

She was glancing around the parking lot, the sounds of car engines and the impatient chatter of horns among them. There was a small group of people outside also on their phones. Ralph could hear the videos playing, people explaining what was happening, sometimes screaming things happened to them. Ralph wanted to see what they were seeing, wanted to stay informed. He considered leaving Claudia's insanity outside and returning to his room.

“I need to show you,” Claudia said. “I want you to see, because I need you to become aware of your own abilities if we're going to fight those things. You have to get stronger, and fast.”

“What are you talking about?” Ralph asked, but Claudia was already walking ahead at a fast pace.

“Keep up!” She yelled as she disappeared around the corner of the building.

“You gotta be frickin’ kidding me…” Ralph said as he ran to catch up.

When Ralph came around the corner, he watched as Claudia leapt up into a nearby tree. She climbed it seemingly impossibly fast, and Ralph found it hard to follow her swift movements up the bark. Finally she leapt down from one of the higher branches, landing softly in before him. She had a squirrel in her hands. It squealed and scratched at her, but Claudia held it firm.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Ralph asked, worried she might eat the poor little creature.

“This seems to be the hardest part, becoming aware of your own power. I became aware of it when I felt the sap from the tree on the red planet enter my body. Lisa became aware from... from the things the buzzsaws did to her. You are partly aware because you travel to the planet, but you’re not yet fully aware. I'm going to make you aware. First, you need to understand that your power is fueled by your essence, and we take essence from living things.”

“Oh God, you are going to eat it.” Ralph said quietly, already feeling disgusted.

“What? No.”

“Oh thank Christ,” Ralph said, dropping his hands on his knees and taking a deep breath, “I was worried you’d turn out to be a damn cannibal or something.”

“I guess, in a way it’s like that. But we don’t eat anything. We just absorb the excess essence into ourselves. We’re batteries, Ralph. Watch. When I kill this animal, I will take it’s essence as my own.”

“Oh come on, that animal didn’t do anything to you,” Ralph said.

“It’s a damn critter. People shoot and eat these in the South for sport. Some people think of them as pests. What is wrong with you.”

“I had a pet rat once. Some people see them as pests, but I don’t. They’re just trying to survive like we are. My rat's name was Zeus and it lived for 3 whole years. I really miss him. Please don't kill the squirrel,” Ralph said, feeling Claudia’s gaze upon him. He knew at that moment that his hope for getting laid wouldn’t be happening anytime soon. The worst part about that fact was that he both understood and accepted it, because he wouldn’t want to sleep with someone like himself either. “Fine,” he said, “Just make it…”

Claudia snapped the squirrel’s neck with a quick twist of her wrist. Ralph watched as a tine bone, small enough to be in a chicken wing, popped out from the poor thing's neck. It immediately stopped squirming, going limp in Claudia’s hands.

“Oh fuck…” Ralph said, and he bent over to dry heave.

“Get over it,” Claudia said, “Worse things are coming. Look at me. Look, damn you!”

Ralph wiped his mouth and did as he was commanded. She placed her hand over the creature’s body, and held it there for some time. Then she pulled her hand away. She dropped the poor critter and it hit the ground like a rag doll. It lay there, its small little life wasted. Ralph thought again about Zeus. Poor Zeus. He really missed that rat.

“Well?” Claudia asked. “Did you see it?”

“Yes. I’ll be seeing that in my nightmares for weeks. I'm truly traumatized.”

“No, you fucking idiot, did you see the essence? As it died, I took what it had left as mine.”

“What are you talking about?” Ralph asked.

“Fuck!” Claudia yelled, then turned back to the tree.

“Wait, wait,” Ralph said, “No more squirrels. Please. I saw it, I saw it, I swear. Just no more squirrels.” But he didn’t see, and Claudia knew he hadn’t seen.

She leapt up, seemingly jumping higher than a human should be able to, and grabbed one of the branches of the tree. She fell with gravity, then heaved downward with her weight as she did. The branch snapped from the tree with a loud crack. Splinters flew, but some of the bark held. Claudia, now on the ground and holding the low end of the bent branch, bent left and right sharply until the branch tore off. She walked toward Ralph with it in her hands. “Touch the branch,” she said. “Quickly, before it all evaporates.”

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Trees don’t evaporate, Ralph thought stupidly, but he touched the branch anyway.

“Not there. Touch here, where the wound is, on the wet green,” Claudia commanded.

Ralph obeyed. They stood there in this way for a long time, looking at each other, Claudia holding the branch, Ralph rubbing the wet green of the wounded branch semi-erotically.

“Well?” Claudia asked.

“Don’t rush me. I have performance anxiety.”

“Fuck this,” Claudia said, throwing the branch down.

Ralph quickly tore his hand away from underneath the branch, but it was too late. The force from Claudia’s thrust downward cut him on his finger as the frayed edges of the branch fell. Blood pooled from the cut, and he stuck his finger in his mouth.

Claudia stood facing away from him as she considered her next move. Ralph oddly felt as he had when he was a child after disappointing his parents. A strong wave of shame rolled over him like storm clouds. He stared down at the branch on the ground, not really sure what he should be doing or what Claudia expected him to see. His phone again buzzed inside his pocked. More video notifications were flowing in. He didn’t understand why Claudia was wasting time on this when they could be researching and reaching out to others that had been to the planet.

“Claudia…” he said, his finger still in his mouth. His words escaped his mouth in a mumble and he could taste the copper from his wounded finger. “Claudia, are you a super hero?” He asked.

She turned to face him, that look on her face again that was becoming far too frequent, the look of a disappointed parent or a defeated and hopeless school teacher. Then she approached him.

“Here,” she said, “Give me your hand. I’ll show you.”

He pulled his fingers from his mouth, and the blood started to bubble out from the cut. It was deeper than he’d anticipated. Claudia took his hand, and they stood there for some time with nothing happening. Then, the bleeding stopped. Ralph, curious, wiped the excess remaining blood on his shirt, then looked at his finger. The cut was gone. No scabbing, no faint red line. It was completely gone. He looked up at Claudia speechlessly.

“I’m not a super hero,” she said, “Don’t be dumb. But for some reason you and I have abilities that few other humans do. The ability to heal is one of mine.”

“How did you do that?”

“It’s essence, our very life blood. We create it within our bodies as we consume food, and use it as we go about our day. However, people like you and me can gather that essence from living beings around us, like batteries or magnets. When we become aware of our control of the essence, it allows us to train it and learn more about our hidden potential. I can share my essence with you to heal wounds, for example. However, it would seem that the living things here on Earth aren’t strong enough for you to see. Maybe if we took it from another human being, but that’s… I’m not that morally depraved.”

“So you’re saying…” Ralph started, pausing to gather his thoughts. “You’re saying that I am a super hero?”

“Ralph, is everything a damn joke to you? People are dying, and those things will be here soon, and I’m trying to do something about it.”

“No, no, I get it” Ralph said, feeling shame. He remembered being a child watching his older brothers get in trouble from mom and dad, or throwing tantrums because they weren’t getting their way. He remembered watching his older brothers become withdrawn and emotional when they experienced their first breakups, remembered when their doors started getting locked one by one as they grew up, secluding themselves away from the family to do their own things. He remembered being all alone, the last child to grow up in the house with no one to play with. The harsh reality was that, to survive, Ralph needed humor. When things were falling apart around himself, he chose to find an aspect of the chaos that could make him smile. Because without that… life didn’t feel worth living.

But Claudia was right. There was a time and place for everything.

“I have an idea,” Ralph said.

Claudia said nothing, only glared at him, waiting.

Ralph continued, social niceties like audible responses be damned. He held out his hand. “Hold my hand and do what you did again.”

“Why?” She had a look of disgust on her face, though Ralph didn’t understand at what she was directing it.

“There might not be enough essence in a squirrel or the trees here on Earth, but you have enough. Send more essence to me like you’re going to heal me. Maybe that’ll jump start my battery.”

Ralph had heard once that men can make anything sound sexual, and he thought this now as he repeated the words in his mind, yeah, that's right. Jump start my battery.

Claudia’s eyes brightened. “Oh, that’s smart,” and she grabbed both his hands quickly.

For a while, nothing seemed to happen. They were nothing more than a romantic couple out on a walk, staring into each other’s eyes, and Claudia did have pretty eyes.

Then Ralph felt it, like a tingle in his… wait is that an erection? He thought in horror, then looked down at himself. No, no it wasn’t. It was something else.

“Claudia, I think I feel it now.”

“Okay, I can see your essence growing. I’m going to send you a little more, and then stop. It’s like I'm over charging your battery, and you’ll have to release the essence in some way. For me, it was through an attack where I sent the raw energy through one of the buzzsaws and killed it.”

“That kinda sounds dangerous?”

Only if you have a self-destructive ability, Claudia thought, but chose to say nothing at all. When Ralph’s essence grew to over the amount a human body could normally sustain, she attempted to break the connection...

Then found that she couldn’t. Her hands felt glued to Ralph’s.

“Ralph, what are you doing?” She said.

“I’m… I’m not doing anything, but… But we’re going, Claudia.”

“Going?”

“We’re going back. I don't understand it, but before, when I was a kid, it would just happen. I’d suddenly be there without warning… But now, I think I can… Yes I can sense it now. Maybe I can control it. No… No I can’t. It’s not working. We’re going back, Claudia. We’re going back!”

The world around Claudia seemed to spin in a circle. When she’d awoken on the red planet that first time so many months ago, it had been near instantaneous, as if she’d always been there and only then became aware of her presence on the planet. The same had happened when her and Ralph first collided to return home to Earth. But now she sensed that she was seeing what Ralph was seeing. They were getting a glimpse of what the act of traveling to the place looked like. And…

It looked like the Earth turning upside down.

Then the sky was red, and the trees were unbelievably tall, and she felt heat on her skin again. She looked up into the sky, and there it was - the red sun, big and bright.

“Ralph…”

“Beatrice?” Ralph asked.

Goddamnit I told you to hide that.

It snuck out.

Claudia opened her mind and examined what she could now see regarding Ralph.

Name Ralph Lacy Hughett Base Ability Astral Projection Essence Current: 6 | Max: 20 Tiers Achieved 1: Energy Awareness Learned Abilities • Astral Vision Pylons Located 0

“You can see it now?” she asked.

“Yeah, it’s… What?”

“What?” Claudia asked, confused by his question.

“No, not you,” Ralph said, “There’s a fucking voice in my head. It’s…”

“It’s you,” Claudia explained, “It’s the excess essence in your body manifesting itself as a voice within your head, but it’s still you. You don't have to talk out loud to it. It can understand your thoughts.”

Ralph nodded, then stood there, staring ahead with a dead look on his face. To Claudia, it seemed as if he might fall over, or fall asleep. He looked like a man devoid of a brain.

“Ralph,” she said.

“Quiet, I’m talking to myself. It’s like…. Explaining things to me. Telling me I need to…” And he trailed off again.

God this is going to be annoying, Claudia thought.

You can talk to me if you’re lonely.

I’m not.

Harsh.

“Okay, it… or me… I told myself that I’m only projecting my body here. That’s why I don’t stay here. I’m not actually there with you. I’m still on Earth, but I’m projecting a copy of my body to the red planet... and I guess you traveled with me there. It’s… or I… am telling myself that I need more power in order to obtain the ability to remain there on the planet physically. Which means it’s costing me essence to project myself there. Oh my God… Claudia, I am so sorry, but I have to go.”

“What? Ralph.”

“I have to go. My essence… I’ll die if I stay. I don’t… I need to regain my lost essence and then I’ll come back and get you.”

“Ralph, just take my hand…”

“Okay yeah,” Ralph said, reaching out to grab her hand again. Before he could, buzzsaws seemed to swarm from the trees. They both turned to face the unexpected creatures.

“What the…” Ralph said, as one collided with him. He disappeared from Claudia’s sight. Both of them seemed to disappear entirely from existence.

Claudia didn't have time to consider what had happened. As the first buzzsaw approached, Claudia assumed a fighting stance.