Remembering how they met again, a smile formed on the alien’s face as he muttered, “It was priceless, seeing him relax his guard and treat me as if I was a human. It proved to be so much easier than I first anticipated in order to get closer to him and his group.”

After that, he got to watch the heroes, the royal siblings, and Lakshman battle it out in a mock duel in order for the Solaris Hero to understand better about their abilities. While Bruton did participate in the fight, he was more or less watching from behind, observing their movements, their attacks, and their strengths, which he had noted down in that notepad later that day.

“They certainly are strong,” he had thought after witnessing them putting up a decent fight, “especially that Natsu guy’s ability to cancel out elemental attacks.” Then, after watching Natsu had to struggle to stop that lance of energy attack from Lakshman, the alien wondered, “Well, he hasn’t gotten full grasp over it, but if he does gain full control over it, he’ll be a formidable enemy. However, not as much of a threat as him,” and his focus fell back on Lakshman.

He watched the king from another world burst out of the smoke to rise into the air and unleash the same attack from before, the Positron Lancer, down at them. As everyone were taken by surprise, Raze jumped forward and fired an attack she called Blaze Cannon to successfully stop the attack and made it fly towards him. In retaliation, the Solaris Hero merely put his hands together and slammed it back towards them before using a spell called Maga Distrab to cancel the attack out.

At that time, the alien was amazed to see the king from another world cancel the spell before thinking, “As I suspected, he does have such a spell with him since I did see him do something similar in our fight from several days ago. It’ll be tricky to deal with that, but any spell has a weakness that’s just waiting to be discovered. I’ll discover the weakness of that spell just as I will for the rest of your techniques, my enemy!”

With that, he momentarily wore a sinister look on his face before wiping it away and wearing a look of amazement on his face. He acted just as surprised as everyone else to witness Lakshman cancelling out Raze’s attack before it reached them as they did not suspect that he was capable of sending it back at them.

Lakshman declared it to be the end of their sparring match and decided to leave along with everyone else in going back into the castle or to their rooms. Bruton had been following behind Santa with the intentions of getting as much information about Lakshman as he could from him when the Solaris Hero requested him to stay as he apparently wanted to talk with him about something.

“I wonder what he wants to talk about,” he wondered, waving goodbye to the prince and turning to face him with a small smile on his face.

Instead, he was faced with Lakshman looking at him very seriously as he said, “You can stop pretending now.”

Bruton blinked in surprise, caught by surprise by the unexpected statement before he quickly replied, “Sorry? Pretend? What are you talking about, sir? I don’t understand.”

He was trying to sound cheerful, but his mind was racing as he thought, “Don’t tell me…?! He… He knows?!”

Sure enough, his fears were confirmed when Lakshman said, “Don’t pretend you don’t understand what I mean. Your acting skills are great, and you certainly deceived everyone, but I’m not blind like them so stop this farce, alien.”

“Damn!” The alien thought, bypassing shock in an instant and trying to think of a way to deceive him.

“Alien? Me?” He asked Lakshman and let out a light laughter. “What are you saying, sir? I’m human, see?”

To prove that he truly was human, he rubbed his hand across his other arm experimentally and pinched his skin to prove his point. However, it did not convince Lakshman as he remained resolutely fixed on the idea that this stranger was the alien that had attacked them several days ago. Bruton remained calm and composed on the outset, but he was rapidly using his mind control magic to get people of this world to use their surveillance systems to capture the goings on between him and Lakshman.

Realizing that no matter what he said convinced the Solaris Hero, he finally decided to give up and announce, “Really. This is really surprising. No! Truly interesting! How did you know?”

“If you want to know, find out for yourself,” replied Lakshman in a deadly voice.

The alien chuckled and thought, “Clever. He’s clever indeed, and I suspect he must have a sensory magic spell or something that enables him to detect someone’s true identity. It’s remarkable, but… why did it take him this long to activate it? What was the reason that he failed to detect me up until now?”

He did not have the answers to his questions, but he set them aside because he had to contend with the king from another world. As they continued speaking, with him revealing the mission he was on to observe Lakshman, he quietly prepared plans as he was prepared for his inevitable death if the hero chose to attack him. However, then he would make the hero look like an evil being, and the entire world would come to fear him, resulting in them hunting him down until he is either caught or is killed.

However, as they continued to converse, the alien begun to realise that the Solaris Hero was being very cautious of him, almost as if he could sense the plan he was sketching. This amazed the alien despite keeping his emotions in check so that his enemy would not understand, but it did make him realise he would have to use other means to get the better of his enemy.

“Well, do look forward to the many great things that’re about to happen from here onwards. I expect you will,” the alien commented, and he laughed before turning around and walking away to catch up to the second prince.

Since then, their interaction had been minimal, with Bruton observing Lakshman’s movements whenever he got the chance, even going as far as making his mind-controlled puppets to track the hero’s every movement. He did however notice that great attention that Lakshman was showing to Raze while completely ignoring the princess, whom the Tempest Hero appeared to be trying to impress.

“Typical human,” thought the alien in an exasperated voice. “Always trying to aim for the top guns. Heh. As for him, I have absolutely no idea how a woman that hides behind her mask day in and day out is so appealing? For that matter, why does she hide her face behind a mask? Is it because it’s hideous, or is it something… more?”

Once again, he did not have answers for those questions, and he had to put them aside as he was more intent on learning about his enemy, what made him tick, and what weaknesses he could exploit. Unfortunately, it proved to be a great challenge ever since his identity was discovered, with Lakshman keeping it cool and acting with consideration.

A few weeks passed quietly, and Bruton was invited to a lunch out with the royal siblings and the Nine Heroes of Legends. There, he was once again puzzled by how affectionate the Solaris Hero seemed to be towards Raze, whom Santa seemed to thoroughly hate for some unknown reason. He thought about questioning the second prince’s anger about Raze when they were suddenly come under attack by two members of a criminal organisation known as the Raven’s Guild.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Bruton was amazed when Lakshman saved them all by using his magic to warp them out of the restaurant and into the street. But he did dislike the magic he used because he felt he might vomit his insides due to how dizzying the teleportation felt, which everyone else also experienced and complained about.

“What a nuisance,” thought the alien, eying the two attackers loathsomely as his opportunity to finish his meal was ruined. “That’s why humans are such a pain to deal with.”

The two attackers proceeded to introduce themselves from the organisation they came from and seemingly surprised them by saying they came there to talk. Even the alien was surprised when the strangers revealed that they were not the cause of the explosion and the thereafter attack by one of their members against Lakshman, Bolten, and the others when they arrived to check the destruction.

That made the alien remember something he had forgotten as he thought, “Oh! Right! Of course! I did that!”

It was a few days after he grasped full control of several people with higher authority and got in touch with one member from the Raven’s Guild. The alien promptly used his mind control to take possession of the man and gave him orders to eliminate the heroes when they are together and make it seems like a terrorist attack conducted by the Raven’s Guild, pinning the blame on them that left him to roam freely.

“Right. After that, I made the authorities release him, and then I too left to go join the Hero Academy. Since I never thought that would happen, I easily forgot about it as I was more focused on getting close to Santa and then meeting the enemy while undercover,” he thought to himself, narrowing his eyes and looking very seriously at the two men. “This is bad. Due to my carelessness, the puppet got caught and all of this investigation began. I should’ve made him take his own life once the task was over, but I guess I just didn’t think about it. A big mistake on my part.”

He knew the appearance of these two members there meant bad news for him because they were there trying to convince the royal siblings and the heroes of their innocence in the bombing and their member’s assault on them. Fortunately for Bruton, Gram did not care for anything they said and wanted to immediately use them to eliminate their entire group as he perceived them to be evil and should cease to exist, ending up into a fierce argument with Lakshman.

While the Tempest Hero argued in favour of killing them and while the Solaris Hero proposed capturing them, the alien was thinking quickly on what he should do about the situation. If the situation went along with Gram’s way, he had nothing to worry, but he was worried because Lakshman was putting up a strong argument to protect the two attackers. As he was desperately searching for a method, he suddenly took notice of the shock that Vikram was in due to his ice-cream being destroyed when he was just about to eat it.

Bruton snickered and thought, “This will do,” and aimed his hand at the Sonic Hero before using his mind control magic on him. To his surprise, the magic failed and made him think, “I see. The heroes are protected from mind control. Then, how about persuasive magic?”

He silently activated the spell, and this time it succeeded, making him smile and telepathically say in Vikram’s mind, “I know how you feel. Your ice-cream was destroyed by them. Make them pay.”

Those words became the trigger that spurred Vikram into rising to his feet and moving to smash the two strangers away. Now he watched in silence, smiling triumphantly as the situation started to escalate in a chaotic direction as he thought, “This should get interesting.”

Vikram took out his anger on the two attackers and knocked them out, which greatly angered Gram as he felt the Sonic Hero was needlessly meddling in his business. When he shouted at Vikram to stand down, the youth from another world became angry and readied to do battle against the Tempest Hero. Natsu quickly got in between them in an attempt to calm the two enraged warriors while everyone, including Lakshman watched in shock.

Just then, the people began appearing from everywhere from the commotion caused by the heroes, and upon seeing the two enraged heroes, everyone began to fear. Though they lacked the ability to sense their power levels, they still could sense the danger that those two posed because of them being on the verge of battling it out in the city.

The alien was surprised at the sudden spectators before smiling and thinking, “Well, not what I intended to happen, but it’s welcomed considering injuring the reputation of this so-called heroes is an added bonus.” He turned to look at Lakshman and thought, “Now let’s see how you get out of this one, hero.”

That was when he was shocked when he saw Lakshman deliver a power punch straight to Gram’s face, knocking him out in the process and proceeded to order Vikram to cool down in a powerful voice. This instantly caused all negativity towards the heroes shift onto him, but it appeared as though he did not care because, at that moment, he turned and glanced at the alien with a knowing smile on his face, a smile that was filled with arrogance.

Bruton returned to the present and looked down at his notes, where he had written in his alien language, “Normally kind and sincere, but sometimes shows off a strange arrogant behaviour that contradicts his normal personality.”

“It just does not make sense how someone could have such wild mood swings,” he mused, thinking about how strange his behaviour when normal and when he changes into an arrogant person. As he continued to think over it, a plausible explanation came to him that made him mutter, “Is it possible… for there to be two entities dwelling in that body?”

He questioned himself, and as he continued to think deeply, the idea of multiple individuals dwelling in a single host made sense, but he felt frustrated because there was no proof of this other than the wild behavioural change in the Solaris Hero from time to time. Then he sighed and leaned back on his chair wearily.

“Well, I’ve got a much more important mission to take care of, but I still got to take care of him… somehow…” he muttered, staring into the ceiling and closing his eyes.

At that moment, there was a knock on his door that made him sit upright in surprise and quickly open the drawer beneath his desk, shove the book into it, and close it shut. He then rose to his feet and headed over to open the door to his room, finding a person that was under his mind control standing there carrying a slim rectangular object under his right arm.

“Greetings, master,” the man said in a voice void of emotion, staring straight at the alien unblinkingly. “I’ve come to see you as we discovered something that could be important to you.”

This made the alien narrow his eyes suspiciously and ask, “Were you followed?”

He knew the man was under his spell, but he was still on guard in case someone detected the strangeness in his puppet and followed him to discover the truth. In case that were to happen, the alien was ready to activate a forced teleportation of moving him and all of his possessions in the room to a place far away from there. Truth be told, he did not like the idea of having to use the teleportation as it would strand him in a place that he would be unfamiliar with and face the difficulty of mixing into society again.

The mind-controlled person shook his head and replied, “No. I ensured that no one was following as I excused myself that I had to use the bathroom.”

Bruton groaned when he heard what excuse he had used to leave the office, but he decided to ignore that aspect and ask him, “So? What’s so important that you come out now?”

“Please. See this,” the man said, flipping open the rectangle object to reveal that it was a miniature sized computer system that many people use in their offices, which they called a Laptop.

The alien took the laptop from the man and looked at the screen, where a video was seemingly paused. He looked puzzled as he did not know what to do, causing him to look towards the man with irritation on his face.

“Show me,” he said in an irritable voice, handing the laptop back to him.

“Yes. Sorry,” the man apologised, walking into the room and playing the video on the screen.

The video began playing, showing the view point from the castle side looking out into the dark night. The alien watched silently as the video seemed to show the same thing constantly when a sudden something that flew past a few meters away from the camera that made the alien widen his eyes in shock.

“Reverse the video and show it to me again, this time slower!” He ordered the mind-controlled man.

“Yes,” the man replied, doing as he was told and reversed the image playback to resume the play, this time slower.

The alien watched the video in slow motion as he looked intently at the screen as it slowly displayed Lakshman and Raze flying through the air with smiles on their faces while two pairs of unknown creatures perched on his shoulders.