“Solar Flare” embarrasses themselves on galactic television

Last night, in case you missed it, was billed as the first one-on-one interview for the new hero, and it couldn’t have gone worse. Social media lit up while she was on, mostly zeroing in on her answers regarding the Black Zero incident. “Girl really cant give a straight answer,” wrote one commenter. “How hard is it to condemn the guy responsible for so many deaths? Getting serious “I’m okay with genocide” vibes from her,” said another. “I got nothin but side-eye for this one,” went yet another. We reached out to Roxanne Belmonte for a comment, but our messages remain unseen.

-Dramalactic Express

After leaving Roxanne behind to focus on her inner self, Enehva walked amongst her people for some time. Walking was how she found peace, lest she gives in to the madness that had eaten up so many of their hearts and minds. She hugged her arms closer to her body and ensured her hood was snug against her head. Roxanne told her billions of years had passed, but it became hard to tell.

Her sense of time broke into two parts: Pre-singularity and post. Pre-Singularity, she partook in the games as they all did. In retrospect, it was communal mass hysteria. But it was always against each other; that was the difference. That made it easier to digest. And when the sun finally collapsed into a singularity, the sky became a twisted and pulsating caricature and was endless. The colors of the atmosphere ripped away and blended haphazardly, becoming a sickly green.

Post-Singularity is when Ordlach usurped her and forged his counterfeit rings. Post-Singularity is when the abductions began. Abductions, torture, depravity, and sick experiments. The Uzrath became cruel children who tortured small animals just because, yet some spoke out, if only privately. That toxic mix of anti-matter and light allowed Ordlach power over life and death; he had no issues using it.

Compliance became a practical matter of survival. Dissenters get vaporized, but who could take their place? Babies born stayed in larvae form, unable to age like the rest. Those with any voice were it for the foreseeable future. Many still bought into the survival of their culture above all else, so silent they became. This silence became an ever-tightening noose around their collective necks.

Enehva paused at a stall; she knew she had a tail. She had been bold and careless ever since the human girl arrived. She picked up a shiny bauble from the table and held it high to inspect. She caught a soldier ducking behind another stall and shook her head. The time for discretion had long passed, and so had these silly games her son played. She put the ruby down and continued walking.

Roxanne finally represented the best chance to end this nightmare, and Ordlach had little idea what part he was playing in it. It almost broke her heart. When the abductions began, it wasn’t long until they learned of the Bleednet. Uzrath forgers built a machine that could open a window into it, a one-way galactic mirror into the Bleednet, pulling down all that information flowing in it. She was fascinated by how life and galactic society had evolved and changed. Enehva became addicted and resolved to spend the rest of eternity in the blissful ignorance it provided. Ordlach could do as he liked.

But something changed.

Her neurons started firing familiarly, and Enehva could suddenly feel the Balance again. At first, she was frightened by the notion, but she soon felt something she thought long gone: Hope. She saw Roxanne and welled with a bit of pride, knowing that the legacy continued. It wasn’t the farce that she currently saw every day, every hour. Now aware of Roxanne and the mantle, Enehva immediately started setting things into motion.

First, she clued Ordlach onto Roxanne's existence, what the human was doing, and, more importantly, what it was wearing. This knowledge caused a tantrum, as expected. It took little convincing on her part to get him to want the human here. He vowed to destroy her and those rings, long self-convinced that his rings were the real deal. She then met with Sten; he had been a part of her guard once upon a time. She admired him greatly. Sten always spoke out against what they had become; he lived alongside a few braver ones. She told him what she wanted to do, and he loved it.

With Roxanne here, she became more brazen. How could she not? It was going better than she had hoped. Ordlach never seemed to pay it any mind; too busy drooling over the coming slaughter once he laid eyes on the human. Too busy fantasizing over exactly how she was going to die. Her coming down to the bazaar got his attention finally; it was why she was being followed. The whispers from the people became too loud to ignore.

Enehva paused again and caught sight of her singular admirer. He wore clothes typical for the people, but he stood out, tall and wide. He wore cloth rags down to his legs and a shawl wrapped around his face so that only his bald green head protruded out the top. Enehva decided to confront him. She turned and began walking in his direction, catching him off guard. He tried to turn around immediately but met the wall behind him. She tapped him on his broad back, and he turned around sheepishly.

“I demand to know why you’re following me.”

“Because I told him to.”

The voice came from behind her, and it belonged to Ordlach. Hushed awe permeated the crowd. She turned around, and there he was, her son. The red cape hung heavily off his shoulders and covered his outer shell and arms. He wore his helmet as always, a little boy playing dress up. It broke her heart anytime they shared the same space. Enehva closed her eyes and steeled herself; this was a long time coming.

“And why is he following me, my son?” She asked.

“Do you think I’m stupid, mother?” He clicked back. The crowd had stepped away and given both of them a wide berth. The two have very rarely if ever, quarreled in public with one another. But they needed to see this. Enehva slowly opened her eyes and clasped her claws together in front of her abdomen.

“Say what you mean to say, my son.”

“You set the pretender free! How could you do that to me? Your son and your King!” The cape flew off his shoulder when he pointed his claw in her direction. The crowd shifted uncomfortably at once. Their voyeuristic tendencies clashed with the gravity of what they bore witness; half of them attempted to look away. Enehva considered if she could finally reach her son one last time, maybe make him see the madness that’s taken hold of them all. She walked up to him and placed her claw on his chest. He flinched.

“Don’t you see?” She told him. “It’s time…we can’t keep living like this.”

He stood there like a statue and stared at her hand. He felt so still; this was the closest they had been in ages. Ordlach brought his gaze up suddenly and stared straight ahead. The crowd murmured while other soldiers arrived and pushed their way to the front. His gaze snapped back and locked onto hers.

“Mother, that’s stupid!” Ordlach brought his giant arm up and slapped her back. There was an audible gasp when he connected. Enehva staggered and fell to the ground. Instantly soldiers were on her; they grabbed her by her arms and dragged her back to her feet. Ordlach strode toward her and placed her chin in his massive claw.

“You’ve betrayed us all!! For the outsider!!!” He looked up and around at the crowd and raised his hands. As if on cue, they began buzzing their disapproval. “I’ll have to make an example of you, mother,” he said. The crowd got louder; they were feeding off each other. “She’ll…be tortured and…executed at the arena!!”

The crowd cheered and held their claws up. Ordlach spread his hands above his head and led the now mob in guttural chants directed at their former Queen. He returned his attention to her, brought his mother’s face closer to his own, and said:

“I should have killed that alien when I had the chance, and now I will.”

***

It was a pure white construct the first time Roxanne ever stepped into her mind palace. It was simultaneously a state of mind, a feeling that danced across her brain impulses and a place she could enter and experience as if it were an actual physical space. Within her mind palace sat The Sight, the accumulative skills, and experiences of all her predecessors. As she performed as ring-bearer, she started personalizing it; Roxanne detested the pure white lack of aesthetic.

Over time it came to look like her dream apartment or living quarters. In the real, she preferred a sparse life; she kept nothing out but the bare necessities. She hated “tidying” or any upkeep in real life, so the less crap, the better. But in her mind palace?

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Roxanne wallowed in her love of ancient tech and messed with reasonable facsimiles of record players and even paper magazines; that tripped her out the most. She had a meticulous collection of records, an ancient means of transporting sound, purely for show and because she liked the artwork. Any music she wanted could hit her senses whenever she wished; this wasn’t the real, after all.

From minute one, Roxanne tried to reaccess it. It always felt just off base, like a smidge beyond her fingertips. Now she saw why. It looked cracked, broken. Aspects of her apartment scattered into jagged chunks. Bits of her floor floated like islands, and most of her furniture—a red sofa, cushion, and loveseat—floated uselessly everywhere. Some chunks floated upside down, and a particular pair led to something new: a staircase. To get to the next floating island, she’d have to jump.

Roxanne sighed; she wasn’t much athletically. Everything fantastic about her was born from the power worn on each middle finger. But, she reasoned, this was still her mind, and she ultimately had control. She leaped and floated effortlessly to the nearest chuck of the floor. Half of a record player sat on it, while the yellow tile floor had a scattering of mini-disks and CDs. The ground was cluttered so that when she landed, it was with a crunch.

She ignored it. Above her floated more chunks, including the one attached to the stairs. Those gave her a bright idea: If she could just find a way to let go, perhaps gravity would take hold and flip her right side up as she got closer.

What was the worst that could happen?

You could fail.

Roxanne paused in her tracks. The voice was not her own, but it came from inside; it had a terrible echo. It careened inside the caverns of her mind and made her skin tighten. She heard a sound behind her, a soft step. She turned around, and it was Wes. Wes Gibson, the so-called Black Zero. Her ex-best friend.

“I’m utterly not shocked by this,” she shouted. She could talk mentally at the construct, but why? Half the fun was immersion, like VR.

“Youyouyou areareare veryveryvery predictabletabletable,” the construct said.

It wasn’t how she’d have chosen to remember him if she had her say. Black varicose veins throbbed across his face, and he alternated between painful agony and amusement. He wore a black suit that looked alive; it shuddered and pounded in silhouette.

She nodded and turned back around, refusing to engage. She needed to get up and quickly. However, “Wes” had placed a hand upon her shoulder; black ooze seeped from his fingertips and spread across her chest armor. She winced. The slithering creature felt disturbingly real. Her knees buckled, and she could hear his voice echoing inside her.

“You’veyou’veyou’ve onlyonlyonly mademademade ususus strongerstrongerstronger…”

The lack of balance ate away at her every day. Roxanne hid behind bravado and duty, but she couldn’t help but feel like she’d messed up. She was always hardest on herself and her own choices. There goes Roxanne again, doing what felt right at the time. But she had to remind herself that she had no choice. That’s what she wanted to believe. Then again, maybe she did all she could, and all she had done was make the wrong choice.

“Is this the other shoe dropping?” She asked. “Am I here because I ruined the balance?”

“Yesyesyes,” the construct said as black veins spread and consumed her insides like spider webs. Her head pounded; this was her greatest fear come to life. She had to accept what she had done, own it, and seek her new path. Instead, Roxanne jumped around the verse as if nothing had changed. She was doing what others before her had done, and it would work itself out. In hindsight, that was maybe a mistake.

Every step she took since the day she dipped in Brachium was a new step for all others to follow. Roxanne’s eyes shot open. Sten was in front of her, screaming. Beyond him was an explosion. Multiple members of the camp were on fire.

“They’ve come for us!” She heard him shout; it felt like his volume switch kicked up a notch from nothing. Behind him, a massive frame filled the doorway; she grabbed him by his armored collar and threw him behind her while simultaneously lifting her hand and letting loose a blast of plasma that collided with the creature and sent him flying. Her aura crystalized around her body like second nature, and she expanded it into a bubble that surrounded the entire pod before she hardened it. A group of guards and soldiers gathered just beyond the hard light divider and started firing.

Bright multi-colored beams of light bounced off but made her wince; it was strange energy they were firing at her. Was this anti-matter? Regardless the more they poured it on, the more the bubble shook. Her hard light aura typically did that as an early warning for failure, and she needed to think fast. Behind her, Sten was rummaging through a trunk and pulled out a rather large gun, at least as big as he was. Any other circumstance and Roxanne would laugh, but it took every bit of concentration to maintain their protection.

“Cut the shield when I say!” He shouted, and Roxanne nodded. The gun had a boxy-like exterior; within that was housed a round cylinder for the projectile. Four sets of legs unfurled from the outer casing, and Sten placed the weapon besides her. The gun started moving on its own, shifting and pitching the barrel as if it were settling in and preparing to aim.

A light bar carved into the side slowly filled up with orange light. Roxanne looked back from the weapon to Sten with a cocked eyebrow; he didn’t notice. He was busy keying something into the touchpad on the top. He finished what he was doing with a flair and lightly tapped her on the back.

“Now!”

The weapon fired; Roxanne waited until the last possible second and let the bubble collapse. An oblong orange energy ball screamed out from the pod and collided with the group ahead of them, and they all started screaming. The energy hit them like a splash of acid clung to their bodies and started spreading; each soldier collapsed forcefully. The wet snap of bones immediately followed each fall. Roxanne winced; their gravity had increased tenfold to crippling results. She took a step toward the opening and leaned against the wall. Roxanne peered past the space and quickly pulled her head back as a plasma bolt whipped right by her head. Before that, she caught a glimpse of more soldiers pouring in.

Outside the opening were the burnt unconscious bodies of Sten’s mates mixed in with the disabled soldiers who made them that way. The thought of them suffering through those burns and broken bones, unable to die, made Roxanne shudder. She looked over at Sten, who was already looking to her for a plan, idea, basically anything.

She whispered, “Any other way out of here?” And he shook his head before he pointed at the opening, reminding her that she was looking at it. Roxanne had a saying when it came to these situations: when in doubt, go up. She had crashed through many ceilings in her thus far short career; what was one more?

There was also the head-on approach, go out there rings blazing and fight her way to the front; she had zero confidence in that plan without her connection to The Sight. No, it had to be up. Roxanne turned back to Sten:

“I could get us out of here, but you got a place we can go and lay low? I’m not ready.”

However, a familiar voice spoke up before Sten could answer: “Are you in there, pretender?”

Roxanne’s heart skipped a beat, and she cringed. She had already despised the artificial voice Ordlach employed, which triggered her like very little else.

“You only delay the inevitable!” The voice shouted.

Roxanne wasn’t in the mood to engage in banter, but she was thankful this one sought to engage in it because it gave her time to plan her next move. She looked down at Sten and pointed upwards; he nodded. The plan was to rocket up through the roof and head to a different safe house if one existed. She just needed to complete the task Enehva had set for her. She needed to reconnect to Azonne, and sitting here listening to that monster drone on would not get that ball rolling.

“After I kill you, I will take those fakes off your corpse and throw them at my mother just before I end you,” Ordlach shouted. “I can’t believe she’d work with you. How infuriating!”

Roxanne rolled her eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“I saw you, you stupid idiots!” He threw a wide beam down the space between the pods from his ring. In an instant, the bodies disintegrated like sand in the wind. Sten dropped to both knees; his brothers and friends were among that mass. He had continuously hoped they would all go out together on their own terms. Not wiped from reality but a rudding child-emperor. He was even starting to believe that they were almost there too. One last conversation with Enehva calmed his worries. Have faith, old friend. She said. She was well chosen, and she wore the mantle well.

Sten remembered those days when Enehva held it. Back when life made sense, they were a society that created amazing things to make a better galaxy. He pounded the floor; it wasn’t supposed to be this way. He stood slowly and looked at Roxanne. He wondered if she knew what he wanted to do. It seems she did because she held out a sympathetic hand. She gently shook her head and then held a finger to her lips. Sten had no idea what that meant, so he just copied her.

“Me! She’d do that to me, her only son and king!” Ordlach had been bellowing the entire time. Enehva had warned her about Ordlach’s tantrums, but this was ridiculous.

“What did you do to your mother?” Roxanne shouted.

“Oh, nothing!” Ordlach responded. “You could say I’m spoiled for options!” He laughed. It was a synthesized, high-pitched buzzing that made her skin crawl. He fired two more blasts down the path. They split the atoms in the air, leaving an almost invisible stink in the air—anti-matter. His armor glowed despite the dull light of the overhead lamps. He took a step further and said:

“I’ll execute her in front of everyone but you,” he breathed. “You, I’m glad to do in private.”

Roxanne held her fist close to her chest and took a deep breath. Running away had ceased to be an option. She couldn’t allow Enehva to die, not without a fight. She stepped out into the path, “I won’t let you,” she said. “Fight me, coward!” That gave him pause. He cocked his head to the right and let his cape fall back over his massive round shoulders.

“Are you challenging me?”

She pointed at him, “Was I not clear? I want a rematch.”

There was silence in the air. The guards looked at their leader, some usually had itchy trigger fingers, but they knew better than to step on his toes lest theirs get blown off. Suddenly the air filled with his buzzing laughter.

“I like it!” He said in between breaths. “Everyone can watch me kill you both. That’s even better!” He took a step back and allowed his guard to move forward. “Surrender peacefully? We’ll have to start promoting the events!”

Roxanne looked to her right. Sten was standing in the opening of his pod, and his expression was complex for her to read. He may have just been waiting for her to make her play, which was fair enough. She was willing to go into custody to buy more time, so she raised her hands behind her head. One of the guards broke away from the rest and stood behind her. He raised his rifle and pointed it at the back of her head, and she shut her eyes tight. It pushed her with the end of its gun and forced her to walk.

“This is exciting!” She heard Ordlach say ahead of her. “Two arena fights in one day!”

When dealing with him, Roxanne could tell the guards were awkward in their body language—feigning laughter and deference for every movement. A crowd had gathered outside the hideout and met them both when they had emerged. Most seemed to eye her dispassionately; just another dumb human lamb ripe for slaughter. Been there, done that.

Ordlach, however, had a pep in his step. He led the procession toward the coliseum, oblivious to the boredom present in every face.

This, too, like all things, became old hat.