by Andy and Jordan
The Destroyer walked the decks of the ship. He was so terribly bored! When his father had told him he was being sent on an important mission he had been excited. Finally, a chance to prove himself to the Empire! The Empire had conquered hundreds of worlds and he would be a part of that glorious history of conquest.
He had envisioned himself crushing all opposition and doing so well that the Empire would give him the planet to rule as the Imperial Military Governor. In his daydreams it was a planet full of lovely women and the lesser citizenry of the Empire, the Betans, for him to order around. But one thing he had never thought of, in all his daydreams, was how boring it would be getting there! He was the only Prime on the ship for some weird reason, which meant he had no one of his own genetic class to associate with. That was bad enough but every time he tried to let off a little steam, the way he used to back home, the crew swarmed over him asking him to control himself and be careful.
Was it his fault the ship was fragile? No, it was the job of the Betans to fix whatever he broke and deliver him to where he was needed. He had started breaking things on purpose after that which caused the ship to come apart in the most poorly mapped and backwater section of the galaxy. They should make these crumy ships stronger. If he didn't know any better he'd think somebody was out to get him! But that just couldn't be the case. His father was an Admiral of the Fleet! Nobody messed with an Admiral or his kids, nobody. Well maybe he was stuck here since the ship and everything in it but him had been destroyed in the crash. He was going to make the best of it and set himself up as a king.
If he had to wait for rescue in some misbegotten corner of the galaxy he would do it as befit a Destroyer. He was of the highest class of Primes in the Arion Empire, one of those whose ancestry was human but who now proudly bore the name Homo Sapiens Supremis and considered themselves a different, better species. He would make himself King of this mudball of a planet so that when the Empire finally found him it would know he was worthy of it and so would his father. The fiasco this mission had become was NOT his fault. Those lousy Betans didn't do their job and left him stranded here, wherever here was.
He had left the crash site and headed for the nearest town to show them his superiority. He marched into the center of town and declared himself king. The people laughed at him. He told them he was a Destroyer. They had looked blank. How backward could a people be to have never heard of the Empire?
So he started demolishing buildings with his bare hands to show them who he was and why he was better than they. Even after demolishing half a dozen buildings the natives were still attacking so he decided he would stand still and let them. Maybe if they saw how futile their bullets were they would accept the fact that he was now their king.
As the bullets and occasional anti-tank missiles exploded harmlessly against him he shook his head in disgust. This mission had been a fiasco from the start. He didn't even know why he was being sent to this sector anyway. His father was an admiral! He should have been given a place on the front lines where he could prove himself.
His father had said something about receiving the lowest score ever to qualify as a passing grade from the Academy, but hell he had graduated and besides his father was a frickin' admiral! Instead he got some crummy fragile ship full of Betans that just had to break down in some misbegotten part of space. Even the worthless Betan they'd called Captain had never seen or heard of this area until he got the assignment.
The sudden lack of bullets brought him back to the present. It looked like the townspeople were all gone and the military seemed to be pulling back. It was almost too bad. He had lost all his clothes in the crash and since he no longer had any Betans to take his anger out on comma these pitiful Frails would have to do. Maybe once they started worshipping him he'd stop killing them. Maybe.
It eventually became clear to his somewhat limited intelligence that the military were not going away. They were just clearing the area and opening a lane from the perimeter straight to him. Down that lane a topless woman started running towards him. Many women on this planet seemed to be topless but this was the first one he'd seen running towards him.
After using his tachyon vision to make sure she was not Homo Sapiens Supremis like himself he started grinning. She was almost certainly a local hero sort. No Frail, that is no normal human, could harm him. He would show her what he thought of Frails who attacked any citizen of the Arion Empire, and what happened to any Frail who attacked a Prime.
He watched her coming and grudgingly admitted that, for a Frail at least, she was in good shape. She was running full out and her breathing was still controlled. It moved smoothly in and out in steady rhythm with no harsh gasping. She was moving quicker than those who ran away. She was running barefoot and yet seemed in no discomfort even though the blacktop had started melting in the summer heat.
She was headed straight towards him. He stood with his hands on his hips and waited for her attack. He would laugh in her face when she was done and tell her she was now his pleasure slave. It was almost too bad she was a Frail. She would not survive even one night with him but there would be others. Perhaps even more lovely than her although that would be difficult.
He appreciated her beauty as she closed to within a hundred feet of him. A lovely tan with no white lines to mar it, full breasts, hair lighter than the usual Arion black but not the hated blonde of those Supremis who called themselves Velorians, and green eyes. You didn't see many green eyed people on Aria. His teachers had told him why more than once but he never paid much attention.
It was only when she got within 10 feet of him and activated her Battle Aura that he remembered what his teachers had told him about the green-eyed sorcerers who called themselves Diaboli. She ran right up to him and kicked out. He could not protect himself in time and her kick connected with his groin. It was carrying enough force behind it to punch a hole in a battleship and was perfectly placed. He screamed in agony as he flew back over the rubble he had created. When he landed, he was stunned and moaning. As he curled himself around his pain he wondered, 'why do horrible things always happen to me? Its not fair!'
The crowd cheered and Vanessa felt good surprising him that way. Scum like him should hurt. She knew she hadn't injured him much, just caused him pain and alerted him that this planet had a defender even if it didn't have a Velorian Protector. She now needed to be sure he would leave the poor normals alone and chase her and only her until either she was caught or, more optimistically, until her plan succeeded and the Destroyer was himself destroyed.
She smiled as she thought, 'I think I definitely got his attention'. Now to make sure he would follow her. She approached cautiously until she was sure he was in no condition to attack. She needed him distracted for a minute or two while she worked on his mind. Reaching him with her Battle Aura still active she stomped on his temple with her dirty bare foot, disorienting him further. Then she dropped to her knees in the rubble, lowered her battle aura, and placed her hands upon him. It didn't matter where as long as there was skin to skin contact.
She slipped into his mind with ease and there she engendered a powerful compulsion. He would chase her and only her until he caught her or until he was no more. If she had just left he would have likely killed all the townsfolk for having witnessed his humiliation. She made sure that he would do nothing else but chase her until she could deal with him permanently, or until he caught her and killed her. That was a real possibility but she should be able to beat a brainless example of thuggishness regardless of how extreme his genetic birthright, and it was certain no one else on this planet could.
As she levitated and let the wind blow her along, hopefully out of his reach, she reflected on how unlikely a defender she was. She was trained to bring down governments and leave nothing but chaos and war in her wake. When she first got here if this...thing, this...Destroyer had landed then she would have just stayed out of sight and hid until she could leave the planet. Maybe she would have even added to the mayhem he was causing.
Back then she wouldn't have cared, but the people here, these gentle wise folk of Polynesian descent had taught her to care. They had saved her humanity and now she had the chance to return the favor by saving their lives and their freedom. It was ironic that a good reason to leave the planet coincided with her recent ability to do so and she was not only staying but using herself as bait in a deadly game of cat and mouse. One where it was still to be determined who would be the cat and who the mouse.
She had drifted pretty far by now, so concentrating in ways she had been taught, she shaped extra-dimensional energy to her desires. Most races encountering the Diaboli called it "magic" and the Diaboli rarely argued. They often even spoke of "spells" among themselves as it was shorter than using the technical term, and many got a kick out of being considered sorcerers. In this fashion then she cast a "spell" of farsight to enable her to see what the brute was doing. He seemed to be searching for her. That was good, as soon as he saw her she would start fading in and out of visibility at random brief intervals to prevent him from just frying her with his heat vision. He would need to come and deal with her in person.
Meanwhile said brute, Paul the Arion Destroyer, was slowly searching for her with his tachyon vision. He had only one thought on his mind, to find her and kill her. First he scanned 360 degrees around him with his tachyon vision and then scanned up as if searching for a Velorian and spotted her a few hundred feet up, moving slowly with the wind.
As soon as he saw her she noticed and faded from sight. He cursed and leaped towards where he had last seen her. At the top of his ballistic arc she briefly reappeared and then vanished again before he could do anything. He thought about just blasting the area with heat vision but that would be very difficult with her fading in and out of visibility and he really wanted to kill her with his bare hands, so he didn't.
He saw her again as he was landing. She apparently could fly a little since she was farther ahead than he thought the wind could account for, but she was certainly nowhere as good as the accursed Supremis who called themselves Velorians. He was able to keep up with her but could never keep her in sight long enough to grab her during a leap.
It was frustrating. If it kept up much longer he would start using heat vision anyway and try to catch her with it regardless of the difficulty. Wait, there was something they taught at the Academy, it had to do with boxing in a flying foe. If he could just remember what it was he could maybe give the wench a nasty surprise. He stopped trying to grab her and settled down to think. 'Now what was that technique again? Hmmmm.'
Vanessa was enjoying this. The brainless hulk had no clue and apparently no money to buy one. He was randomly attacking and getting nowhere. She laughed at him every time he missed. When he finally stopped in pure frustration, apparently to sulk she danced a visible jig in midair to celebrate. This was her mistake. It kept her nearby and visible until he finished recalling the method he had been taught.
Suddenly he shot to his feet and the air around her filled with momentary blasts of heat vision. She knew there was a pattern, but it would take her time to recognize it, and she had to dodge incoming beams in the meantime. Of course that was the point of the barrage. It forced opponents that were not as invulnerable as a Prime to move to a certain point, and he knew where that point was in advance. Visible or not it made no difference
He leaped into the correct area and reached out searching. His hands hunted around a bit and contact! He had a grip on one leg and then the other and dragged her to the ground struggling. Her levitation was not strong enough to keep both of them aloft, so they slowly sank. This gave him the needed time to position her underneath him and get a better grip.
The fight on the way down did not completely go his way, but he was stronger than she and had trained to fight Velorian Protectors. He eventually prevailed and they landed with him on top. She was knocked unconscious by the fall. He could have just killed her then, but he decided to wait until she was awake and could appreciate what was coming before he killed her. He grinned at the thought. This was a mistake and his mistake helped cancel out her mistake.
As Vanessa regained consciousness she felt an urge to panic. She quelled that urge before it could destroy her and once her eyes refocused she teleported out from under him just as he started gloating. Sitting invisibly on a rock in the near distance she caught her breath. That was too close! She would have to be more careful of him in the future. He was not as dumb as he looked.