It had only been a few days from the Circus Folk's perspective since they had left Victorian London. Carlene had done all she could to try and get to know her new teammates in the meantime. Ironically despite initially finding her a bit stuck up, Carlene found Florence to be the easiest to get along with. She and Carlene naturally had a lot in common, having both been turned into vampires at such a young age, though Florence did still find Carlene's somewhat coarse language and behavior quite off putting. She hated Carlene's smoking habit in particular. Keptis meanwhile generally tended to ignore Carlene's attempts to get to know him and keep to himself.To be fair, Keptis wasn't too eager to talk with anyone else among the crew, except for Florence. He seemed quite keen on her.
Denika on the other hand was absorbed in her work throughout most of the journey. Unlike Keptis she was more quiet than anything else, though Denika would be quite rude or short with Carlene when she tried to make conversation. Still at least it wasn't personal. Denika was always tinkering away with her magic and trying to create new weapons and gadgets.
The Circus Master had been the most eager to talk to Carlene, but ironically she found his perpetual optimism somewhat annoying, though she wasn't sure if it was just because he was a vandal and her natural prejudices were kicking in. She tried not to let it bother her.
There was no point in trying to get to know the Strange Boy meanwhile. He hadn't moved an inch the entire journey. Much like the rest of the crew, Carlene found him quite unsettling to say the least. She did thank him for protecting Ashlei from her brother, but other than that she kept out of the young Jiang Shi's way.
Unlike Carlene, Ashlei had been mostly quiet. Truth be told she was starting to have second thoughts.
Carlene had helped Ashlei cope with the death of brothers. Indeed the strange, eccentric vampire had been the only person who had taken Ashlei's mind off of her troubles for even a second, but it was more than that. Carlene was the closest thing the young orphan had ever had to a mother. Ashlei was determined not to lose her. Now however the reality of what she was in for was starting to sink in for Ashlei. She had no idea where she was going next, and she really didn't know much about any of these strange people she was with. Also what would they face next? Monsters like the ones that had killed her brothers? Or something worse. The more she thought about it, the more she thought she had been too rash in leaving what would have been a comfortable life in the mansion with Daniel behind.
Carlene did her best to try and ease the culture shock for the young girl. She even showed Ashlei how to work the computer game system on the Tent. Ashlei at first thought it was magic, and she was even frightened of some of the strange creatures she saw on the screen. Still Carlene assured her that it was quite safe, and it soon became practically all Ashlei did on the long journey. Carlene would also try to teach Ashlei how to fight as well. Ashlei seemed to do quite well with weapons, though she struggled more with hand to hand combat.
"Ah good. We've landed. It seemed to take longer this time than usual." The Circus Master said as he jumped out of his chair excitedly. "We must have landed on the furthest edges of our galaxy. Oh don't worry about the atmosphere. This Tent's magic alters your body to be able to survive in any atmosphere on any planet. You won't choke or get crushed or anything like that" he said to Carlene and Ashlei. "However" the Circus Master continued as he reached into a box at the end of the room which contained purple pills.
"You'll need to take these if you want to have any chance of understanding people. Even on the same planet there are often dozens and dozens of languages. Imagine how many there must be across the entire universe. No one, not even an immortal like me would have the time for that. This handy little invention from I believe the planet Thracos in the 18th century will translate whatever you say, and whatever anyone says to you for a 48 hour period."
The Circus Master and the others stared into the fountain to get a vision of what they were here for (or rather see an image of what would happen if they failed whatever it was they were to do.) They saw what looked like an absolutely beautiful city from a society clearly well in advance of the planet they had just left.
Its inhabitants were humanoid, though they all had golden skin with flame red hair. The golden humanoids looked scared, frantic and desperate, and the Circus Folk soon saw why. Several hundred strange tentacled, cycloptic aliens started to descend on the city from the pitch black sky above. The creatures were amorphous in shape and glowed bright blue. Tentacles appeared to be able to emerge from any part of the monster’s bodies, and retract back into them just as quickly. Each tentacle was capable of stretching out over 80 feet.
The tentacled beasts took very few prisoners. Most of the humanoids they caught. Man, woman, or child, they butchered. They appeared to electrocute their victims with their tentacles, though they also tore several of the humanoids apart, smashed others off of buildings and impaled others through the chest.
All of the team, except for the Circus Master looked away in disgust. By the time the strange octopoid alien creatures had finished there was nothing left of the city and only a few of the humanoids left. The next vision showed the few survivors trapped in a magical bubble of some kind, screaming in agony.
"Horrifying. To see an entire people be wiped out like that. Even just in a vision" Florence said.
"Well that's what we're here to stop." The Circus Master said confidently as he prepared to open the doors, though not without some bravado first much to the annoyance of Keptis. The Circus Master always loved to make it a big grand moment the first time the team set foot on a new world, or time. It was even more special now with the team’s two new recruits.
Once he opened the doors however the sight that greeted the time travellers was a desolate wasteland, filled with corpses of strange animals and people. The life forms had clearly been killed by a fire storm of some kind. Their bodies were all burnt to a crisp. The sky was pitch black, though it didn't look as though it was actually night time.
Instead a black smog smothered the sky and filled the air, giving it a foul stench, and a despairing look.
"I was hoping it might be a better place for your first visit. Maybe London in the swinging 60s, or Venus, god I love Venus." the Circus Master said, shaking his head.
The earth of the planet felt burning hot. Ashlei was the most affected as she wasn't used to these types of conditions. At one point Carlene even offered to carry her as they trekked through the dark foreboding desert, but Ashlei refused. If she was going to be part of the team, then she felt she couldn't afford to be the weak link.
Ashlei looked back at the Circus which even in this miserable, pitch black terrain still stood out as colourful. Like a tiny little gem in a sea of coal.
Carlene meanwhile was too busy looking at the strange corpses around them. "I've never seen demons like these before." She said.
"That's because they are not demons." Said the Circus Master. "They are aliens. Trust me I can sense a demon. I basically am one remember. I didn't recognise either species in the vision. I can't imagine there are any survivors? Yet the vision showed us a city we're supposed to save?"
The Circus Master looked down at one particular corpse. It had a humanoid shape, though its body was too burned for him to get any idea what the creature looked like.
"Poor soul" The Circus Master said with regret "Though I don't know maybe he was a monster. Still" he said as he looked up at the smog covered sky. "It seems they were the victims of a greater evil."
The Circus Master turned to face his team. "Whatever the case, I think we can all agree that we want to get off this planet as soon as possible. We'll find what we were looking for a lot faster if we split up into two groups. Denika, Ashlei and Carlene you come with me. Florence and Keptis. You take the Strange Boy."
Keptis rolled his eyes "Why do you never take the Strange Boy?"
"Well you know how it is between vampires and vandals. We generally don't get on" replied the Circus Master.
"Carlene's a vampire?" Keptis responded.
"Well they're our two new recruits so I want to see how they get on" The Circus Master said as he hurriedly pushed Carlene and Ashlei ahead of him.
Even after the Circus Master was gone Keptis still moaned about having to look after the Strange Boy again.
"I don't exactly get along with vampires either, present company excluded" he said frowning.
"Well maybe this experience will help you get over some of your prejudices" Florence replied.
The two groups spent roughly half an hour searching through the wilderness of this strange seemingly dead world. All they found were more bodies, though there were also what looked like the remains of strange vehicles too. The Circus Master tried to examine one of them, but it was too badly damaged for him to figure out how it functioned.
Ashlei was tired and her feet were burning, so she sat down on a nearby rock. It was scorching to touch, and she jumped up when she first sat on it, but it was still better than being on her feet.
Carlene and Ashlei were more than a little jealous of Denika who was circling above them with her magic and not having to walk on the scorched earth.
The Circus Master meanwhile was distracted by what was the only living creature they had seen on the planet. It was a small furry beast, no larger than a wolf with pincer-like forearms, six pincer-like legs, and a long, spikey tail. It also had a small face with eight black eyes and four sets of teeth.
It was clearly on the level of an animal and nothing more than a scavenger, feasting on the endless corpses. It looked weak and sickly however, but it was not alone. A further six similar creatures began to hover around the carcass, before a larger one, roughly the size of a bear emerged from just over the hill. It was clearly the mother of the pack. The Circus Master made sure not to make any noise. Though they appeared to be scavengers he didn't want to risk it in case they wanted live meat.
Whilst they were alone Carlene felt she had to try and talk to Ashlei about what had happened back on earth. Ashlei practically hadn't said a word about either of her brothers after she had been forced to kill Brian.
"It's not what you expected, is it Ashlei"? Carlene said in a dry tone.
"Well you know it is only our first journey. I did hope there wouldn't be quite so many dead bodies mind you". Ashlei said with regret.
"Well like you said it's our first journey, love." Carlene replied. A few more moments of awkward silence passed before Carlene finally talked about what it was that was really bothering Ashlei.
"I know you said you don't want to talk about what happened, and I understand. You're not ready to accept that your brothers are gone yet, but you're here among friends." Carlene said.
Ashlei spoke, struggling to hold back the tears. "All this time the horror of what happened to them has distracted me from the fact that I'm never going to see them again. I miss them, Carlene. Every day when I wake up, I. " She couldn't go on any longer.
"I know Ashlei. You'll never stop missing them. Still the memory of Tom and Brian won't always be unhappy. In years to come you'll be able to put it in perspective. The loss will always hurt, but you'll be able to think back on the happy times you had and feel lucky that you had those people in your life."
Ashlei felt somewhat comforted by Carlene's words. "Thank you Carlene. I don't know what I'd do if anything ever happened to you." Ashlei said with a slight smile.
"You'd cope. You're stronger than you think Ashlei. I know you don't think that about yourself, but here you are. You're doing what no one else from your time has ever done. You're on the frontier of discovery. Again it's just a shame that it had to be this planet."
Denika meanwhile had been flying across the nearby area searching for signs of life and just her own amusement. She loved to use her magic as often as possible, even for mundane tasks. In the distance however Denika suddenly noticed something. A tiny orange light that pierced the darkness. It looked like a flare at first, but as it drew closer, Denika could see that it was much larger. It was in fact some kind of strange magical craft made of fire!
Denika shouted to the others to warn them, but almost as soon as she did the craft fired a large bolt of fire at Ashlei and Carlene. Fortunately Carlene's vampiric reflexes allowed her to push Ashlei out of the way in time. The ship would fire several more bolts of fire at Carlene and Ashlei, but the vampire continued to dodge them each time.
Denika fired an energy beam back at the ship which caused the flame to turn blue for a few seconds, but otherwise didn't appear to affect it.
"I'll draw it away" Denika shouted as she flew towards the ship and fired more blasts at it. The ship however simply absorbed all of her attacks before releasing a massive energy beam that enveloped Denika.
Denika tried to break free, but the force field was strong. As she was pulled closer Denika could see a small hatch start to appear in the flaming vehicle. A bright light shone from the hatch that made it almost impossible to see what was inside. However several red tentacles soon began to spread out from the light and poked their way through the forcefield. One of them wrapped itself around Denika's arm. The pain shot through her entire body. Had it not been for her magical constitution the energy would have most likely killed her!
Denika however soon summoned up another magical blast strong enough to shatter the forcefield and sever all of the red tentacles grabbing or reaching out for her.
The blast had completely drained Denika's power for a few moments however to the point where she wasn't able to even fly. She fell over 80 feet from the ship, with no magic to protect her, towards several jagged rocks!
Fortunately Carlene, jumping through the air, was able to catch Denika several feet before she fell on the rocks.
"Thanks" Denika said as her power quickly returned. "I need to draw it away from here" she continued before flying through the air and blasting the ship, drawing it away in the process.
Unfortunately however the flaming ship's attacks had alerted the scavengers. They all turned around and instantly spotted the Circus Master. The children hissed excitedly whilst the mother suddenly spread two gigantic, reptillian looking wings out of her back.
She flew into the air at a lightening speed. Despite her hulking frame the monster was very quick. The children it seemed had not grown their wings yet, but they were still able to scurry quite quickly towards the Circus Master, Carlene and Ashlei and surround them whilst the mother circled above.
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The monsters were salivating with hunger. Carlene pulled an electric sword from her beehive. The beehive topped vampire had found the weapon, which had been fashioned in the 22nd century in the Circus Tent. Carlene also gave a similar weapon to Ashlei. The Circus Master meanwhile unsheathed his claws confident that he wouldn't need a weapon anyway.Sadly he no longer had access to the hat Denika had created. It exploded in fact on the journey here as its magics were too unstable. Denika promised she would try and find a way to perfect the weapons chest, but of course she didn't get round to it.
The monsters were all hesitant to strike at the three time travellers. The scavengers had never seen anything like them before, but the lure of fresh meat was just too strong for the beasts.
Ashlei was the first to strike at one of the aliens who got too close. She prodded it with her sword which sent the beast scurrying back. Two more monsters got angry and started to attack, but the Circus Master scratched both of them.
Unfortunately however whilst they were too busy focusing on the children, the mother swooped down and was able to snatch Carlene.
Whilst the Circus Master was distracted one of the children was able to jump him. Ashlei started swinging her sword around blindly to ward off the other scavengers, but one of the monsters whacked the sword out of her hand with a swing of its tail. Another swing then sent Ashlei crashing face first into the hot earth.
The scavenger then latched onto Ashlei's foot and pulled her away from the Circus Master, and though she tried to hold onto the ground it was so scorching she let go. Nevertheless Ashlei managed to hold on to a piece of burning hot earth which she then threw in the scavengers face causing it to let go.
Ashlei immediately went back to her sword and started slashing the creatures, again warding them off. The Circus Master meanwhile managed to overpower his scavenger and picked it up with both hands, and threw the beast over Ashlei's head and into the scavengers behind her, which sent them all tumbling backwards.
The Circus Master then grabbed Ashlei by the hand and sped off in the direction the monster had taken Carlene.
The two soon saw that their fellow time traveller had overpowered the queen of the nest. The Queen was lying on the floor, knocked out cold, whilst Carlene was just dusting the burning ash off of her top.
"What did you do to her? asked a puzzled but delighted Ashlei. "I hit her in the face. That normally seems to work." She joked. "Remember I'm a lot stronger than I look darling."
Just then however the scavengers began to swarm the time travellers again. As they all prepared to fight the monsters off, the scavengers suddenly ran towards their mother and began to tear her flesh off her bones.
She was helpless now, and they could sense it. The Circus Master, Carlene, and Ashlei looked away in disgust. "Well I suppose it’s all very Darwinian in a way, if a little disgusting" said the Circus Master as he winced.
Denika meanwhile had continued to evade the flaming ship, dodging its attacks, keeping ahead of the vehicle, but she couldn't keep it up for much longer.
In the distance Denika saw a gigantic mountain. Maybe if she could phase through it? Denika had only done it once before, and it would take a lot of power to not only phase, but to maintain it. Still it seemed like her best bet and she flew through the rock. The flaming vessel stopped in its tracks for a few seconds. Even it had never seen magic like this. Inside the rock Denika struggled to remain transparant. If she gave up for even a second, she would be incased in solid rock.
The flaming ship started to blow the mountain apart and Denika hid behind a large flaming boulder. The ship searched the rubble for a few minutes before speeding off in the other direction.
The Circus Master, Carlene and Ashlei ran to the rubble of the mountain whilst still trying to keep hidden.
"The ship belonged to the monsters we saw in the vision" Denika said as she flew out in front to the relief of her fellow time travellers.
" When they almost pulled me in I saw several tentacles try to grab me. Their magic is strong."
"I thought as much. This planet clearly wasn't destroyed through natural means. The foul odour of dark magic is still in the air." The Circus Master said. "Come on, we need to find any survivors before they do."
The foursome trekked through the wasteland for another half an hour, finding nothing but more corpses and bits of rubble. Over the next hill however there was nothing. No bodies, remains or anything? The earth was still as dark and scorched as it was elsewhere however. "Strange" said The Circus Master. "I wonder why there are no bodies here? Either this wasn't a populated area or".
"Or what?" said a scared Ashlei. "There's some giant, greedy bastard monster out there that's eaten everything, dead or alive in this entire area and we've just wandered haplessly into its nest?"
The Circus Master rubbed his neck somewhat nervously. "Well that does seem to be the likely option, but it's best to keep a low profile no matter what."
"And how do we do that? We're in the middle of a desert" said Carlene. Just then the four time travellers suddenly heard a massive shriek.
As they looked up, they could see a gigantic, winged, reptillian beast hovering in the sky, its eyes fixated on the four, strange aliens.
The monster looked somewhat like a Pterodactyl. It was a reddish brown in colour, had a long beak-like mouth full of sharp, yet jagged, and in some cases broken teeth. Its massive talons also looked burnt and decaying too. The beast overall was thin, covered in burns and looked weak.
However its massive size still made it a truly intimidating sight. The monsters wingspan was over 80 feet. It dwarfed even the mightiest Pterosaurs on earth, and was bigger than a small plane.
Denika tried to fire a magical energy beam at the monster but it was able to swerve past the blast and quickly grabbed the witch in its talons.
Ashlei however was able to jab the monster with her electric sword. She only got it for a second, but it was on one of its rotten, broken toes. The monster roared in agony, and whilst it was distracted, Denika used her magic to blast it back into the sky.
The monster went tumbling back through the air, but it didn't take long for the beast to regain its balance in the air again and start circling Ashlei, Carlene and the Circus Master, whilst dodging more blasts from Denika.
The Circus Master shouted at the monster to come to him, assuring Carlene and Ashlei that he knew what he was doing.
The winged beast chased the Circus Master across the black desert and though he was able to keep ahead of the monster for a long time it eventually caught up to him.
It grabbed the vandal in its talons and started to lift him in the air. However once it had lifted him a good distance above the ground, the Circus Master stabbed his claws into the monster’s toe. It released him, and the Circus Master hoped that would be that, but it once again started to descend in the direction of his friends. The Circus Master then jumped onto the winged terror's back, and tried once more to divert it with no success. The beast hadn't eaten in days and was desperate. The corpses around were of no use to it as they were poisoned with the same magic that had devastated this entire world. With no choice the vandal stabbed his claws into the beast’s spine. The monster screamed in agony and in its throes of pain it did manage to toss the vandal off its back, however on the way down the Circus Master managed to dig his claws into its right wing and tore a large chunk of flesh off.
The Circus Master went plummeting to the ground, but he survived the fall easily due to his Vandal constitution.
The monster meanwhile, unable to keep flying with its torn wing, also went crashing to the ground.
"I told you I could deal with it. I know we're the aliens on his planet, but I didn't have a choice." The Circus Master said to his team mates as they helped him up.
The monster had clearly broken many of its bones in the fall. It struggled to even move, but it was still able to scream.
The Circus Master went over to put the beast out of its misery, but as he got near the monster however, the earth started to shake so much that the vandal and his companions were thrown off of their feet.
A massive snake-like monster, so huge it dwarfed the winged beast, came bursting out of the ground.
The Snake like creature was at least over 500 feet long. Its skin was bright purple, with yellow spots, and a large green sail which ran down its entire back. It had a single green eye, with a red pupil.
The monster opened its jaws and with one scoop it swallowed the flying creature before disappearing beneath the ground again.
The shaking started again however, and this time a smaller snake like creature, though still over 50 feet long emerged from the ground in front of the Circus Master, Ashlei, Carlene and a hovering Denika.
The monster darted at them and would have eaten Ashlei had the Circus Master not been faster and managed to push her out of the way.
Denika used her magic to create a circular barrier around herself and the others. She tried to fly out of reach, but several more snakes soon came bursting out of the ground and started to hit her force field. The field held off the monsters who struck at them several more times, but each time the field was hit, Denika was hurt. One strike from the largest monster there sent the bubble tumbling into a hole in the ground the snakes had created and into the dark caverns below.
It was so dark, that Denika could barely see ahead. She was forced to pilot her sphere blindly through the pit, trying to avoid any monsters.
One of the snakes, even larger than even the first, soon came bursting through the darkness from below and engulfed the three time travellers with one bite.
The sphere passed down the beast’s throat and into i's stomach, where the monster’s digestive acids slowly began to eat away at the force field, weakening Denika further.
As the time travellers floated through the animal’s gut, they bumped into bits of rotting flesh, and even the severed head of another strange creature, whose flesh had almost all melted off. The head had two massive horns on the top of, and two more above its eyes. It also had a fifth long horn on the tip of its snout, with several shorter spikes running down to the back of its head and what was left of its neck. There were three sets of long, curved, razor sharp teeth set deeply into its skull. The overall shape of the beast’s head was similar somewhat to that of a large theropod Dinosaur.
Ashlei screamed as the acid began to peer through the sphere in small drips. One drop even hit her and burned Ashlei's skin causing her to jump into Carlene's arms.
Even the Circus Master himself began to panic. "It can't end like this. Surely?" He said to himself quietly. Denika meanwhile who was almost completely exhausted suddenly rose up and performed a magical blast. Doing so whilst still holding the crumbling bubble together.
It was only a small blast with very little power, and did no lasting damage to the monster, but the blast still hurt its stomach lining enough to cause the snake to vomit the sphere up (along with countless bones, skulls and fragments of its other unfortunate victims.)
The sphere went plummeting in a sea of green vomit down the abyss, with the time travellers all holding on to each other and screaming. Denika however, using her last ounce of strength pushed the sphere out of the vomit, though it still fell to the bottom of the pit below where it smashed to pieces instantly, sending Ashlei, Denika, Carlene and The Circus Master flying in different directions.
Pieces of rubble were still falling everywhere around them, and the Circus Master was barely able to dodge a massive boulder that nearly crushed him.
Carlene ran towards Denika who had been knocked completely unconscious by the strain of the magic. She tried to rouse her, but Denika was completely out of it. Carlene hoisted Denika up over her shoulder and ran.
The Circus Master meanwhile, acting quickly was able to stop a small snake monster (still about 45 feet long) from devouring both Ashlei and Carlene. He only noticed the monster when it was looming over Ashlei and Carlene from behind, despite its massive size due to the darkness of the cave! Wasting no time, the Circus Master lifted the large boulder that had almost crushed him and hurled at the Snake monster sending it flying back through the air.
The time travellers ran ahead in blind panic. They could barely even see where they were going, it was so dark, and the sound of the monsters screaming was deafening.
They suddenly reached the edge of a cliff, where several hundred feet below they could see a massive city, similar to the one they had seen in their vision.
"How do we get there?" Ashlei asked.
"We jump," the Circus Master said.
Before Ashlei could even ask what he meant, the Circus Master grabbed her and jumped over the edge of the cliff alongside Carlene who was still carrying Denika.
Once they reached the bottom of the cliff near the city, The Circus Master, Carlene and Ashlei saw to their horror hundreds of giant snake monsters flying through the air above. The light from the city allowed them to see through the darkness more clearly now. The biggest were over 700 feet long! They were swirling around snapping and biting at each other.
The four ran towards the city, with the snakes not noticing them as they were too busy fighting with each other.
Once they reached the city however, they found that they couldn't get within five feet of it. A mysterious barrier was preventing anyone from going any further.
"On a planet this nasty you'd have to have some kind of force field. Question is how do we get through it?" The Circus Master said.
Ashlei could see several more snakes, hovering in the air above them. "I don't know but please figure it out quickly!"
Suddenly a massive green spotlight shone from the tallest tower in the city and landed squarely on Carlene, the Circus Master and Ashlei.
They all panicked as the light had surely brought them to the attention of all of the snakes, and for a moment the monsters, all of them, regardless of size, looked as though they were about to pounce on them.
Instead however a hovercraft came flying out of the city. It was yellow in colour, triangular in shape and had a strange blue glow coming beneath it, not unlike the one from the city.
The craft was completely smooth with no designs or markings on it whatsoever. As the ship zeroed in on the Circus Master and the others, the snakes stopped in their tracks. They didn't seem scared of the craft. Instead these unspeakable monstrosities suddenly seemed more like a litter of puppies anxiously awaiting their masters commands.
The top half of the craft opened up, revealing three golden humanoids, just like the ones the Circus Folk had seen in their vision. There didn't appear to be anything else in the craft, including even controls of any kind.
The humanoids circled the three strangers whilst holding their unusual looking weapons for a few minutes before the Circus Master spoke.
"You know you're never going to get anywhere if you don't ask us questions? The Circus Master said in a dry tone.
The aliens were a little taken aback. A male alien spoke in a voice that sounded, in contrast to the creature’s appearance, thick and rough.
"How can you speak our language?" said the creature. "You don't resemble any of the life forms we've colonised, or even any of the known life forms from the seven Galaxies? You're with them aren't you?" He began to shout. "You've come to spy on us! Tell me how did you find us?"
The Circus Master did his best to try and diffuse the situation. "I don't know what's going on on this planet. We're just travellers. We mean you no harm."
"Right" sneered the alien. "You're just a simple traveller who managed to stumble into the middle of an intergalactic war, and then survived an encounter with the Lystegrias? We should feed you to them."
"No" interrupted one of the females "We'll take them in for questioning. Find out what they're doing here. They'll wish our little pets had eaten them." She said with a sadistic smile.
Whilst the male alien wasn't looking, the Circus Master was able to kick the gun out of his hand with his vandal speed. As he reached down to grab it, the other two alien women instantly fired several times on the Circus Master. The laser beams from their guns cut several holes in the Circus Master but did not otherwise deter him and they quickly healed.
"I knew it," said the male. "You have magic. You are with them!" The Circus Master picked up the gun and aimed it at the three aliens. "You can't kill me, but I can easily kill all three of you. Even without these" the vandal said as he unsheathed the claws on his other hand.
The two females dropped their guns. "What do you want from us?" the male asked.
"I want to know the history of this planet. Who are you? What happened here? With monsters like those as your pets, who could possibly terrify you to the point where you're living underground and are ready to shoot at anything that moves? We're here to help you."
The aliens seemed a little perplexed by the Circus Masters questions. They felt sure he was a spy for their enemies.
"You know our history. We were once the greatest civilisation until your masters tore it apart. Go on kill us. I'd rather die now than see my people burn."
As the male spat back at the Circus Master, Denika finally began to rouse from her slumber.
Carlene tended to her, whilst the Circus Master continued to argue with the aliens, trying to convince them that he wasn't a spy. Ashlei meanwhile noticed another six yellow crafts descending from the city towards them.
She tried to alert the Circus Master, but he cut her off each time, he was too busy arguing. It was only when the male alien started laughing that the Circus Master turned around and saw what was waiting for him.
Whilst the Circus Master was distracted, the male alien rushed him. Carlene meanwhile pushed the drained Denika and Ashlei behind her and started to fight off several of the aliens. The aliens strength was no match for that of a vandal or a vampire, and the Circus Master tossed him away effortlessly. However the alien did manage to knock the gun out of the Circus Masters hand, and whilst he was busy fighting the male alien off, who attempted to rush the Vandal again, one of the two female aliens grabbed her gun and then held it to Ashlei's head, before calling out to the Circus Master.
"We know you are laser proof, but is your little friend?"
With no choice the Circus Master and Carlene got on their knees and put their hands behind their heads as the six other crafts landed around them..
"Well" said the leader of the group. "Rather strange looking aliens. I don't care what little magic tricks you have. You're outnumbered. You will tell us what we want or you will suffer. Trust me. We were once the dominant force in this galaxy. We know how to force people to do what we want".
To Be Continued