Time passes on, but this time Raphael isn't simply waiting things out. His mind is thinking over what his next course of action should be. He thinks over the positives and the negatives on whether he should go back to the ship or not. He knows that if he is lucky, all the Demu people that he had knocked out earlier would still be asleep, but if they weren't he would easily be overwhelmed, but then again, he could just use that spell from earlier and put them all back to sleep again. Little did he know that that certain spell can only be used once a day, his sleeping recharging his holy energy.
After a few minutes of deep thinking, Raph stands up from his seat and speaks to June. “Unfortunately, when I was looking around the ship earlier, I found Huro's body.” June's eye's flash as Raphael says the word 'body'. “I'm sorry, but there was nothing that I could have done for him. The pilot guy, though, was...” Raphael thinks for a split second about whether or not he should talk about the pipe, and decides that it would be a better idea to leave that part out, for June's sake. “alright... he was the one who told me to look for June. As for whoever that Miyra girl is that you were talking about, I didn't see her on the way, so I'm not sure about her.” Raphael takes the fighting soul kitchen knife in his hands “I'm going out there and I'm going to bring those two back, until then, keep June safe.” Raphael says to Sherah before leaving out the backdoor.
Raphael leaves the house without speaking another word, ignoring Sherah's constant reminders that hope is already lost for them and that he is just going to get himself killed.
Raphael has never been to war before, but Sherah has. She knows how deeply into enemy lines that the ship is in and that there is no hope left for anyone in the ship if there are so many Demu in the forest that they were almost able to take her down, a standing UMA soldier that has been to the front lines multiple times.
Raphael notices that the forest is quiet again as he walks hurriedly through the woods. He has also somehow gained a boost of endurance since the earlier explosion, allowing him to traverse the distance to the ship within a few minutes. Little does Raphael know that since he had become the Guardian, he has gained access to his hero mode, which makes him seventeen times the man he used to be, increasing his speed, strength, endurance, wisdom, and just about any other thing he can think of to well over a professional level.
Raphael notices as he makes the trek through the woods that there is not a single Demu in sight, sleeping or otherwise. His fear makes way into his reality. The Demu had awoken earlier and there are probably swarms of them waiting for him in the forest, watching and waiting to strike. But yet, he hears nothing. The forest is quiet, with not a single leaf or branch being rustled or broken.
The Demu, as soon as they had awakened, had realized that they had lost the key and needed to go back to get reorganized. Even the most outrageous Demu, them already being a chaotic bunch, know how important the mission is to stop the key. Their commander brought them back to their command ship that looms in a nearby galaxy and has been monitoring the planet since then, attempting to find out where the Key and the Guardian have gone.
Raphael reaches the ship quite easily, not even beginning to run out of breathe by the time he reaches it, which has struck him as extremely odd, since he had gotten so worn out from running there earlier. He decides to make things easy for himself and takes the actual entrance into the ship instead of the alternate route that he had taken before-hand.
The ship is quiet, which he decides is a good thing, because it means that not a single one of the Demu have infiltrated the ship, increasing the crew's chance of survival.
Raphael rushes through the ship's multiple levels and runs straight into the cockpit, yelling out what he believes is the pilot's name through a process of elimination. “Um... Chiot! Chiot! Are you still there?!”
“My God boy, you're still here?! I told you to get the Key and run!” screams the pilot back in anger from the other end of the cockpit. Raphael runs full speed into the room. “Wait a minute, I never told you my name! How did you-”
“June told me.”
“My God, you found her. Wait, where is she right now! We need to protect her! You need to protect her! She needs to find the Guardian as soon as possible so that she can be in safe hands, and for now you-”
Raphael grabs a hold of the back of Chiot's destroyed chair and interrupts him mid-speech. “She already found the Guardian.”
“Really, who is it?”
“It's me-!” Raphael gives the chair a great pull and rips it straight off of it's hinges. He rips the chair up in the air after the pull, holding Chiot and the chair both suspended level in the air.
Raphael places Chiot's chair gently on the ground. Chiot is sitting in his seat the entire time with a look of utter shock painted on his face.
“Um, uh,” stutters Chiot as he slowly stands up from his dismantled chair. He doesn't understand what is going on. This small, scrawny child just ripped his one hundred pound chair straight off of it's harness. It would make sense if this kid is the Guardian, but why would God choose someone so weak to be the Key's chosen protector, but then again, he does meet within the lore somewhat.... “Well, um, where is the key right now if you're still in the ship?”
“She's back at my house,” speaks Raphael. “She asked me to go back to the ship and get the rest of the ship's crew to safety. I've already found you and there is nothing that anyone can do for Huro at this point, so that just leaves Miyra, whoever that is.”
“Miyra is the ship's engineer,” says Chiot as he walks over to Huro and shuts his still open eyes, believing that that will leave him in some peace. “I don't know where she would be right now, but the most likely place would either be in the engine room or the armory. According to what I saw on the ship's indicator before we went down, we were hit a few meters to the side of the ship's engine, but it was with a fusion weapon, so if she was in the engine room, there would be no hope for her.” Chiot let's out a slight sigh as he tries to drawn out the fear that somebody else he knows may have died in the crash. “We should head to the armory and hope for the best. If she isn't in there, then we're going to have to check her room. If she isn't in her room, then she either already left the ship before us or she was in the engine room when we crashed, which would be very, very bad....”
Chiot walks out of the cockpit with a slight fear gleaming in his eyes. He waves his hand in the air as he leaves and says “Come on” back to Raphael before he walks down the stairs. Raphael follows close behind Chiot, allowing Chiot to guide him to the aforementioned armory.
As they near the armory at the other side of the third floor away from June's room, Chiot suddenly chocks out a question. “Hey, I just realized something, I never caught your name, kid.”
By the time Chiot has finished asking his question, the two are already at the armory door, which is barely lit in the dark blue hallway. “My name is Raphael Horizon Danteo, but you can just call me Raph.” says Raphael happily as he examines the doorway in front of him.
“Horizon, huh, that's an odd middle name, might have even been a sign that you are the Guardian. Your parents might have known something about your chosen path before you were born.” Chiot eyes Raphael as he looks over the wrecked door to the armory. “The door must have gotten smashed up in the crash, there's probably nothing we can do right now to get the door open. The only thing we have left to try is her room, and after that, we'll be out of options....”
Raphael pays Chiot's worries no heed, holding a stiff palm out to motion for him to calm his tongue.
Raphael places the side of his head against the broken door and listens. He can just barely make out somebody breathing heavily behind the door. Raphael feels around the edges of the destroyed door and can make out ripples in the door frame that would let air come in and out of the room, which also means that whoever is inside probably could hear someone from the outside. Raphael realizes this and begins yelling Miyra's name from behind the door, attempting to gain the attention of whoever is inside the room.
Suddenly, a female voice yells back from behind the door, saying “Yeah yeah yeah, I hear ya. Now can you please stop it with the yelling, my head hurts bad enough already!”
“Miyra, please back away from the door, I'm going to pry it open.” says Raphael as he grabs a hold of a rippled section of the steel metal door. With one great yank, he rips half of the crippled door off of it's hinges and with a second pull, he rips off the rest. He drops the door to his side and moves into the room to help the girl inside.
The girl is a five foot five tall teenager who has blond hair with streaks of red going down a few select strands of her hair. Her eyes are a light green color, with the iris' of her eyes colored a foggy-white instead of the standard black. “What the... how did you, ugh....” the girl tries to tell Raphael of her amazement over what he had just done, but her words are pushed away by an immense pain in her head.
“What's wrong?” asks Raphael as he walks closer to the exotic girl.
“I don't really know,” answers the girl as she rubs her forehead repeatedly in an attempt to null out an unbeknownst pain. “I was getting the weapons ready in here just in case we were boarded and then I guess the ship hit something. I got thrown across the room and I think my head hit the wall and then I think I blacked out.”
Raphael is about to speak up when suddenly he hears a tinging noise in his head. He freezes in place, believing that if he holds himself still, then he wouldn't feel the immense amount of pain that he had felt before when he learns something new.
But this time there is no pain, there are only words, holy scriptures that are recited within Raphael's mind until they became common place in his vocabulary. The word itself is such a word from God that it cannot even be said through any form of common writing, a word so powerful that none but the Guardian himself can speak it correctly.
As soon as the word finishes repeating within his mind, Raphael moves towards the girl and places his left index and middle finger against her head. He speaks the words slowly under his breath while he focuses his energy into his two fingers and into her body.
The girl suddenly feels a deep calmness envelope her as the pain in her head slowly dissipates and vanishes. The girl quickly realizes what is happening to her. This young man is using a spell to heal her head wound.
Raphael slowly lifts his hand away from the girl's head and takes a slow deep breath as he moves himself out of his state of focus. “There. That should have healed up your concussion.”
“Yeah, it did,” speaks the girl before she takes a deep breath and lifts herself up to a standing position. “but how did you do that? Who are you?”
“My name is Raphael Horizon Danteo. June sent me back here to gather up the survivors of the crash.”
“Raphael Horizon Danteo...?” questions the girl as she combs her mind for an answer to the familiar name that is being said to her. Suddenly, she remembers “Oh, that's right! You must be the Guardian! That would explain everything!”
“Wait,” speaks Raphael questioningly “how do you know my name and, more importantly, how did you know that I'm the Guardian?”
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“You may be surprised,” says the girl cheerfully “but there are some things that June may feel better saying to a stranger than to her protector, your name is one of them. Oh, and my name is Miyra Penelope Sinnt, by the way.”
“Well, regardless, it's nice to meet you Miyra. Now, we need to get off this ship and back to my house, since I have now idea where the Demu have gone...” Raphael's view shifts from Miyra over to the massive amount of weapons that are stored in the ship's armory. Raphael suddenly remembers the weapon problem that they are having back at the house. “but first, everyone grab as many weapons as you can, we're going to need them.”
Raphael exits the ship with as many weapon's strapped to his back as he can carry. He almost looks like some kind of commando that is ready to join a para-military organization. Chiot and Miyra follow close behind, wielding the a massive assortment of weaponry on their backs. Miyra is holding up better with her load than Chiot is for an unknown reason. Since she is still just a teenager and Chiot is in his thirties, Raphael pays it no mind and starts leading his friends through the outstretched forest and back to his house.
They pass through the forest without incident, wading through the trees with their heavy loads as if they were hiking a mountain.
The clearing that Raphael made when he ascended to become the Guardian is still and quiet, with the bodies of the dead Demu laying scattered around the area, exactly the way they were when Raphael had left earlier with June.
“My God, what the hell happened here?” chokes Chiot as he gazes upon the destroyed area of the forest that is laid out before him.
“I don't know,” says Raphael as he motions for everyone to follow. “I woke up in the middle of this clearing about an hour ago and now I'm this Guardian person that everyone keeps saying I am. Now, come on everyone, we need to get back to my house before June starts to worry.”
The rest of the heavily-armed group follows closely behind him as he leads them through the forest and to the back of his fence. He ducks down low as he walks through the fence's new hole so that he wouldn't knock any of his weapon's against the upper portion of the fence. Chiot follows closely behind him, struggling with everything in his body to keep his balance with the massive weight that is produced by the weapons holding him down. After Miyra says some encouraging words to Chiot to help him move forward and pushing him with as little might as possible to get him through the hole, Miyra goes through the hole. Miyra has a lot better of a time getting through the hole than Chiot, possibly with greater speed then Raphael.
Miyra Sinnt is a complete mystery to Raphael. She is an alien, that he knows for sure, but she is unlike any alien that he has met so far. She is nearly as strong as Raphael, which is a large feat for someone of her stature, and the amount of weapons that she has with her is nearly the same as the amount Raphael is carrying, but Raphael has a hunch that her weapon's are a lot heavier than his.
Suddenly, the mystery of Miyra Sinnt grows even deeper. Miyra calls out to Raphael a few seconds after she exits the hole in the fence. “Wait, there's something going on in the house....”
Raphael looks at Miyra questioningly as she speaks. “Something's happening in the house? What's going on?”
Miyra walks closer to the house as she attempts to focus her eyesight through the kitchen window. “I don't know, there's a lot of movement going on and... I think there might be a fight going on....”
Raphael drops his weapons as a sudden realization hits his mind. The back door is open. He forgot to lock the door when he left. The Demu are in the house. “Oh shit...” Raphael grabs the knife that he had originally brought with him off of the ground and calls back to the others. “There's Demu in the house, stay back while I take care of them!”
Chiot nods his head in agreement, but Miyra places her weapons on the ground and pulls out a silver-coated greatsword from her back holster. “No way your doing this alone. June's my friend and I'm going to make sure that she's safe!”
Raphael sighs to pull himself back from arguing. The Demu have been in his house for who knows how long and he has no time to argue. “We don't have any time to argue about this, so stay behind me and don't get separated, got it!?”
Miyra nods her head and points toward Raphael's house with her left hand. Raphael understands what she means, that there is no time to tarry and that they need to hurry up, exactly what he had said a second ago.
They advance in a single line, with Raphael in the front with his knife extended parallel against his body. Miyra follows close behind, walking exactly behind Raphael with her greatsword extended to her side.
Once they are at the center of Raphael's backyard, Miyra lays a hand on Raphael's shoulder and says “Wait... something's happening....” Miyra's eyes go wide as she gasps. Everyone hears a large booming sound explode from inside Raph's house that is loud enough for even the neighbor's to clearly hear.
A Demu in leather armor blasts through the back wall of Raphael's house and lands a few feet to the right of Raphael and Miyra. Raphael knows exactly what that noise is, he had already used that skill earlier. It is exactly the same as the telekinetic burst that he had used in the forest after his awakening to combat the Demu, except this time he isn't the cause of the blast. The blast had come from inside the house, and this blast is a lot louder and has a lot more force behind it.
As Raphael rushes over to the downed Demu to finish it off, he starts to wonder exactly what is happening inside of his house. He isn't completely sure, but he has a hunch that June might have done this. He doesn't know exactly how she did it, but than again, he barely knows anything about his new alien friends.
Raphael slashes his transformed kitchen knife through the Demu's throat and kicks him once in the head for good measure. He looks toward Miyra, who has broken off from the group and ran straight into the house. Raphael moves his attention away from his now-dead enemy and runs into his house, following closely behind Miyra.
Raphael stops himself behind Miyra as she begins to survey the carnage that has happened within the house. There are about nine Demu laying dead on the ground inside of the living room, their black blood spilling on the ground in large pools. There is black blood spilled all over the walls of the living room, but yet, no furniture was damaged during the fight, some of it has blood spilled on it from the combat, but nothing has been broken, torn, or ripped.
The thing that has the most complexity, Raphael thinks, is the fact that June is sitting up in her seat with her right hand held out in the direction of where the Demu had been thrown out of the house. Her eyes are wide and she is sweating and breathing heavily. He knows almost immediately that she was the one that had let out the telekinetic blast that threw the Demu out of his house.
Sherah is standing over top of a dead Demu and staring at June in sheer astonishment. She is as wide-eyed as June is. She notices June's gaze move towards Raphael and Miyra who are surveying the battle that had engulfed the living room. She spins her head around, ready to face down another enemy, but is surprised to see that Raph has returned. She does not have a look of happiness on her face, though, but instead it shows sign's of anger.
Sherah throws her sword to the ground and rushes over to Raphael. Before he can move, she grabs him by his shirt collar and rams him against the far side of the den wall next to the hole that had just been created. Miyra looks on in utter astonishment as Sherah lifts Raphael up against the wall and starts barking out questions to him in pure anger. “What the hell did you do to the Key! She isn't supposed to be able to do that kind of shit! And what the hell happened to her earlier when she started getting sick and radiating that white light! You know what the hell is going on here, now you better tell me before I make you!”
“Sherah!” scowls June from across the room, who now knows exactly what is going on. “Raphael didn't do anything wrong to me! All he did was give me the power to defend myself when nobody is around or whenever my life is in danger. Don't you dare get angry at him for doing something right! Now you better let go of him this instant, because I'm not going to hurt you, but I'm damn sure that the Guardian wouldn't hesitate to defend himself.”
Slowly, ever so slowly, Sherah lowers Raphael from the den wall until his feet touch the ground. She let's go of his shirt and slowly backs away, staring at him the entire way. When she is halfway through the living room, she spins around and sits down next to June on the couch and begins to stare at Raphael again with a tinge of anger flaring in her eyes.
Chiot's voice breaks the still silence that has dropped upon the group. He enters the den and shuts the door behind him. “Is the battle over yet? It's too damn hot out there for someone wearing a UMA flight suit to be outside for as long as I've been waiting.”
“The battles been over for a while, Chiot.” says Miyra as she motions Chiot into the house's living room. “There was just a little disagreement between Raphael and Sherah, but that's all over thanks to June.”
“Oh,” says Chiot with a tinge of surprise in his voice as he takes a seat on the living room's two-seated sofa. “what was the disagreement about?”
Catching a swift, menacing stare from both Sherah and Raphael to Chiot, Miyra simply says “It would be better if you didn't know.”
Time goes by slowly for the next hour. Miyra and Chiot remain mostly quiet for the entire time, only speaking when they are spoken to. Raphael and June, on the other hand, spend a good portion of the time chatting with each other about the universe outside of Raphael's planet and, this case solely sided by June, about Raphael's home planet. During this time, Raphael discovers that for everyone in the universe, they always name their home planet earth, but to the UMA, each world is given a different name and no world is called earth. For Raphael's earth, it's UMA name is Pontractus Numarus, which takes June a while to pronounce. Raphael also learns from talking with Sherah that June's last name is Twara, which he finds to be quite interesting and cool. He also learns that June hasn't always been with the UMA. She was discovered as the Key seven years ago when something happened that Sherah refuses to speak about with June in the room.
The Demu bodies are disposed of in the woods and the weapons are stockpiled in the center of the living room floor. The only thing that is left to do is to clean all of the blood out of the carpet and off of the walls and to patch up the hole in the wall, which everyone decides will all be left to the UMA, who were contacted moments after Raphael had re-entered his house with Chiot and Miyra.
After thirty minutes have passed, the living room starts to get very quiet. Nobody has anything left to say and all that is left to do is to wait for the UMA to arrive and extract them to a nearby space freighter.
The silence is suddenly broken when June's eyes go wide in horror. Sherah notices her fright and asks her what is wrong. She simply responds “Great evil is coming....”
“What... what's coming...?” asks Sherah as she looks out the living room window and examines the street, just in case June is predicting something bad is about to happen.
Unfortunately, something evil is coming. Three black SUVs turn down the intersection toward Raphael's street and pull into his driveway. Four men in black business suits jump out of each of the cars and walk calmly towards Raphael's front door.
Sherah let's out a gasp as soon as she sees the black-suited men walking towards the house's front door. “Oh shit!” she yells out. “Everyone hide, we've got big trouble.”
Everyone follows Sherah's lead and starts running single file deeper into Raphael's house, hiding in the office area of the house that is positioned next to the downstairs bathroom. That is, everyone except for Raphael.
“Sherah,” asks Raphael “what's happening that's got everyone in such a rush?”
“No time to explain,” answers Sherah as she turns around to speak to Raphael for a split-second and to grab a hold of the weapons that were leftover in the middle of the living room. “just get rid of those bastards, and don't let them inside!” Sherah disappears behind the living room wall and takes cover in the office area with the others.
They leave Raphael standing in the middle of the living room, him still questioning what exactly is going on at the moment. A quick knock on the front door pushes Raphael out of his questioning state, making him walk over to the door.
He opens the door, only to see a heavily-built Caucasian male standing in front of him and flashing a badge, with a group of two other men standing close behind him. “Excuse me, kid, but are your parents around?” asks the suited man as he eyes the young boy in front of him threateningly.
“No, they're on a vacation. They're not going to be back until the end of the week.” answers Raphael. He could feel a deep darkness radiating from the man in front of him. This man, he can tell, doesn't care at all who he hurts or kills, he would murder on command. A truly evil creature.
It also seems, however, that because of Raphael's positioning, they aren't able to easily see the black blood in the room behind him
“Have you been outside of your house at all today? We have reason to believe that some highly dangerous people might have broken into your house while you were away.”
“No, I haven't been outside of my house today, so can you please leave. I have things that I need to do.”
Before Raphael can fully shut the front door, the suited man grabs a hold of the door and throws it open. “You're one lying little twerp. We're going to search your house for the people you're hiding, whether we have permission from you or not.” The man grabs Raphael by one of his arms while the other men grab him by his legs and his other arm. They pull him down the driveway and throw him head first into one of the SUVs and lock the door behind him.
Raphael regains himself quickly, but not quickly enough to get out of the car in time. He let's out a sigh as he lifts himself up in his seat and begins to address his situation.
Whoever these people are, they are most likely from a government organization sent to clean up the aftermath of an extraterrestrial encounter. He realizes that they are going to find everyone, and that he has let them down by not getting rid of these black-suited men.
Instead of him becoming sad over the fact that he has let his friend's down, he gets angry. Angry at these people who call themselves the good guys, the people who are going to keep everyone in the dark about the truth of these friendly aliens that have come to earth.
He screams in anger and punches the bulletproof glass that separates the driver and the people in the backseat. He hits the glass with such force that he cracks the glass all the way down the middle.
He has almost calmed down when he sees all of his friends being led out of the house in handcuffs, each one being escorted out by gunpoint. His anger has grown again to a blistering level. Then they led June out, the miserable look on her face is enough to drive Raphael insane with anger.
Suddenly, everything goes white in Raphael's head... and he loses control....