Sunset: Heroes of the Milky Way (Chapter 35)
- August 9, 2026
Aleti Ra’non
Aleti Alone
Light hits my eyes, enough that it helps to wake me up, but not enough to burn.
I’ve never been so… unaware of my body before. I have to move around to just to figure out that I’m folded up in the fetal position, like when I first crashed. I remember taking Hideo’s power and turning into sound.
It was somehow both painful and harmony. I was a living sound that struck the wrong note every time I hit a wall.
My body still aches, and my mind still hums to the rhythm of my song, but I think I can move.
I open my eyes and now I see why the light is so dim. I see the sky above the city and these large clouds storm over. At least the black ones are raining, but some are brown and just look ghastly. They only now seem to be dissipating as small amounts of light shine through.
It takes a moment to notice that there isn’t water over the head of Ramone’s dome. The water is barely higher than the city’s buildings. What happened?
I remove my hand from its clamped position on my forearm, feeling the cold breeze touch both the inside of my palm and newly revealed patch of skin. It’s a stark reminder that my clothes did not join me in my journey.
I move to get on my hands and knees, but it takes a while. My joints are all loose, my muscles weak, and just every little thing is wrong. It’s as if I’m a baby who can’t control any of its own momentum. Is it always like this for Hideo? Losing control and just trying to aim himself around? I felt like air without the breeze.
When my elbows and knees are parallel with the ground I just dip my head. This is going to be a slow and painful process, I can already tell.
I pick my head up, and look around to see that I am in for another surprise. Ramone looks like it’s been hit by the apocalypse. There’s buildings falling in on their supports, crap littering the ground, and smoke in the distance. There… there’s a few bodies littering the ground.
I turn away, before the bodies start look more like people and less like red shapes. I need to find help. I need to find a way back to the Rango.
I push myself up, doing what every part of my body is begging me not to do. I push myself up. When I get to something resembling standing, I fall against the wall, barely keeping myself from falling on my butt. I stick close and walk along the wall.
I whimper out, “Someone…. Is anyone out there?” I can barely hear my own voice. I sound like I’m wheezing. No is going to hear me without being right by my side.
When I limp around the corner I find what’s left of a shopping street. Maybe there’s a clothing store. The longer I am exposed to the cold, the harder and more painful it’ll be to walk.
I stick to the wall for support as I limp down the sidewalk. When I try to put my hand on a window, I find that there’s nothing there.
If you couldn’t tell, I fall in, cutting the left side of my left leg on the broken glass still connected to the base.
“Aaahhh,” I try to scream, but there’s not much to air out. My leg, it stings, burns, hurts, what doesn’t it do?
It happens before I can control it, the sniffling, the sobs, and the tears. They’re running down my cheek as I roll on the floor hugging my leg to my chest. I’m lucky that I don’t find more glass in my back, even as I feel the flat ends beneath me.
I look around while clutching my leg. The store seems to be a department store. Maybe there’s something I can wear, or at least cover up my new wound.
I crawl towards the nearest shelf, a foot away, and use it to pull myself back up. Now I see the food lining up the shelves of the aisle. I look over to the next but everything is just small fry, miscellaneous stuff. Nothing that I can use.
Instead, maybe something decorative? I look to the walls and see anything useful. I happen to catch sight of a flag, low to the ground, at least to me. The Riverti flag, not something I think I’ve seen before. I haven’t been shopping on this planet, and I didn’t spend much time looking for any fan fair at the stadium.
It’s hanging over the counter so I limp towards it. I’m sure I’ll be offending someone by touching a flag with my bare body, but hopefully the circumstances will justify my need. Once I get to the counter I find that I can’t reach it.
I climb onto the counter and try to stand up and reach for the flag. I grab hold, feeling its silky texture. It’s not cotton, or something similar. It feels like something I shouldn’t be touching, something regal and beyond me.
Oh well.
I pull as hard as I can, but it is stuck in its pole pretty tight. I need to pull with more force, even though I know that I’ll fall. I have to take that chance.
With more force, I tug at the flag, and the pole comes down hitting me in the chest, knocking me back off the counter. The flag falls on me and I bang my head on the shelf behind me, turning the world black.
*****
I hear murmuring going on over me, so I tug a cloth tighter around me. Something that feels like a blanket is tossed over me, and instinctively, I reach for it and wrap it around me.
My head is spinning from my migraine. Just when the soreness was ending, this pain in my head comes. I remember why: I fell off a counter, trying to get a flag.
I must still be on the floor…
My eyelids fight me to stay closed. I can’t blame them for resisting, I’d rather be dead to the world too, but that’s not an option today. Slowly but surely I can see, with my eyesight is blurry at first, I have to give myself a chance to focus.
I see two Riverti women standing over me, talking to each other. Their mouths don’t make it look like they’re whispering, more like shouting at each other. I notice that my hearing is out, as if it is buzzing.
My body doesn’t hurt as it did before. I make it known that I am awake by moving to sit up against the shelf. When they look at me, I notice the murmuring getting louder and louder slowly.
I tell them, or at least I think I speak since I cannot hear myself say, “I— I— I can’t— I can’t hear you… just… give me… a minute.”
I feel a liquid dripping down my neck. I reach behind my head and see my blue blood on my fingers. Must have cut my head open. Wait, my leg.
I flip open the blanket, not intentionally flashing the two women, but I take notice that the slice of my leg is bandaged. I point to it and ask, “You?”
I hear what I say in a whisper, so my hearing is coming back. They speak as they nod their heads, but I still barely hear them. “Thank you.”
I try to stand up while wrapping the blanket around at my chest like I would a towel, and both women immediately move to help me up. As soon as I’m up I’m able to stand on my own. Any hindrance to my movement now is due to my leg, not any after effects of my transformation, my… new powers.
Mom had told me it was possible for anyone of the Guardian bloodline to develop powers, but I never did. Why would they mature so late? Was seeing Rom…?
Is that what does it? Trauma? How… terrible, and trite. Didn’t getting powers cause Clay to cause the accident that put his mom in a coma? Or… was it the other way around? I don’t even know how my mom first got her powers.
Ugh, my powers seem to be that of a leech, a parasite. They seem to be to take that of other Guardians, while also running off of my emotions, or maybe my emotions make them harder to control? Most powers problem work off of emotions.
Maybe being with Team Sunset for so long must have been what triggered my powers. What does this make me? The strongest? More like the one most likely to blow myself and everyone else up. Oh god, Pekipsea and Torun were so close to me. Did I…?
I have to get out of here.
My hearing makes a point to start coming back faster, and I can faintly hear the women in front me.
“Regamorph? Young lady? Don’t tell me you don’t hear me now,” the older one with the teal colored fins says.
“Tele, stop! She said she can’t hear us, maybe she’s just trying to read your lips,” the younger one with the same colored fins cautions. Maybe they’re relatives, mother and daughter, cousins? Could just be friends.
“If she is trying to read my lips she could have easily figured out what I was saying,” the one named Tele responds to her companion. She turns back to me to continue shouting, “Listen alien, you have till the count of three to explain why you broke into my shop, ruined my shop’s flag, and are doing it all buck naked.”
Tele’s companion tries to stop her, but I raise up my hand. Tele tilts her head in annoyance. “I can hear you better now. I would ask that you speak very slow. My hearing is… not all there, my mind is… also not all there. Everything just hurts, especially my head.”
“Why don’t you start with your name,” the younger woman suggests, with an almost timid look on her face. “I’m Readine. This is my friend, Tele.”
“Nice to meet you, I’m Aleti, and thank you again for… patching me up and giving me a blanket.” I reach my head back to feel for my cut. I don’t think it’s too large, but I can’t tell. I bet my blood is all mixed in my hair.
“Better be thankful,” Tele comments, “without Readi here to sew and bandage up your nasty cut, you’d probably be dead from bleeding out.”
I ignore her comment. “I know you probably have some questions about why I am here, but all I can say that you’ll understand is that I was in a predicament that left me excruciatingly weak, defenseless, and vulnerable. While I was in that condition, I limped my way here, slipping in and out of consciousness, looking only for something to wear, or at least protect me.” Then I gesture over the rest of my body before adding, “I mean come on, it’s not my birthday.”
They both looked at me like I had two heads. Maybe that’s not a phrase around here? Or the translation came out weird on their end? I never really thought about it, but I probably always had the translation power. They’re definitely not speaking Codex like the people on the station, and Guardians have their own natural translation.
What a great way to find that out, with two strangers, at the end of their world, without a pair of pants to cover my ass.
Readine walks away for a second as Tele gives me a judgemental look that only the old give. When Readine comes back she has clothes for me. “This is a shirt and skirt for you to wear. It’ll probably be very short on you, but at least it’s something.”
She gives me this shy smile I feel an obligation to return.
“Thank you,” I tell her as I take the clothes and stand up, with much less difficulty than before.
As I let the blanket fall to try and squeeze into the shirt, it fits better than expected. The pants are shorts now though.
Now, Tele starts her line of questions again. “How long have been unconscious?”
“I’ve been unconscious in the alley next over since the Tourney, or at least a few hours afterwards think.” When I say this Readine puts her hands to her lips. Tele looks at her with a glare to force the young woman to stay calm.
“You’ve been naked in the alley since the Tourney?” Tele repeats for confirmation. I was trying to avoid the embarrassment of admitting I was naked, but I guess I don’t get what I want.
“I think,” I answer, slightly annoyed.
“The Tourney was two days ago,” she informs me. I stop for a second to consider the time I have missed. Mom must be worried sick, and now I feel terrible, but I shake my head of those thoughts.
As I try to take steps, I can’t help but notice that these pants would probably be something to cover their whole legs, but for me they look like short shorts.
“I have stockings,” Readine immediately offers. Before I can even ask for them, she’s leaving. I look at Tele to ask what is wrong, but the old woman looks at me with sorry eyes.
“What?” I ask her with blatant confusion.
“You were out in the city, in the alley, for two days, there must be people worrying sick about you, you must be sick,” Tele mutters all in a hush. She starts walking towards me, touching my arm with her hand ever so slightly. “Ramone’s been taken over by riots. Those cavedwellers are destroying everything after the Tourney, and after the explosion.”
“The explosion, is that why the sun is blocked and the water’s receded?”
“Yeah, we’ve asked around the few times we could, but we’re not in the business of talking to strangers. Everyone’s taken it as an excuse to be the worst or to hide, so… I don’t quite know what that was. Could be an attack from one of another foreigner, or one of you aliens for all I know. What I bet is that destroyed most of the caves under Ramone as far as we know. After what happened to their contestant,” I cringe ever so slightly when she mentions him, “they went crazy. Pillaging the city, destroying shops and homes, attacking us.”
I remark, “Don’t know if I blame them after the hells they’ve been put through.”
They lost their champion, their homes, and possibly their chance at freedom, why would they not revolt in some way?
Tele’s eyes narrow on me, just as she adds the accusation to her tone. “How can you side with them after what they did to our home?”
“Did to this city?” Great, I should have kept my mouth shut, I did not want to have this conversation here and now, but never back down, you know? “What you did to them down below is worse. I’ve seen how they lived, how half your species live—”
“They could of made things better for themselves—”
“With what?! With what are they gonna build new homes with down in the caves? What do you think they have to use down there? They’re lucky to have electricity. They live in slave dens!”
“Like your people are so perfect.”
What the fuck does that even mean? I have to be perfect to criticize them?
“Whatever,” I sigh and try to change the subject, what I should have done before. “So everything around us, the destruction, the buildings, the smoke in the distance, I’m supposed to believe the Watree did this in some massive riot?”
Tele explains in a stern tone similar to before, though not as strong, “Believe what you want… The buildings that came down did so because of the quakes that followed the explosion. I don’t know what it measured, but it was easily the worst ever felt by the city. The fires and the destruction of the buildings on the inside,” then with a gesture to the trashed store, “were done by Watree, out to drag us down to their level.”
I ignore the comment, not feeling up to arguing any points right now.
“This is your shop? Why are you even here if it’s so dangerous?” I ask.
Tele looks at me, annoyed. “I live above the shop, there’s a stairwell to my apartment in the back of the building. Where else were Readine and me to go when everything went to shit? We got sick of staying cooped up, and want to see if there was any food left. Figured we try for some as soon as possible before someone else took everything.”
“Sorry, I didn’t know,” I remind her with a dip of my head. She shakes her head.
“AAH! Let me go!” I hear someone scream. A woman’s voice.
Tele panics and shouts, “Readine!” She runs towards the entrance shouting her friend’s name. I immediately follow after her.
Tele gets outside before me, and as soon as she gets outside I see her get punched in the face, knocked down to the ground. A Watree man looms over her, moving to grab at whatever passed for hair on her head, calling out, “Another surface dwellers. I can already smell the—”
He doesn’t get to finish his sentence before I punch him in the face. I don’t remember having such a strong right hook as the man doesn’t just recoil. His body flies face first into the stone sidewalk.
He… makes no move to get up. Did I just—
“Flubber fuck!” I hear another man curse.
When I look to my left I see three people holding Readine, two men, and a woman, all Watree.
“She’s a Regamorph,” the woman mutters while holding Readine’s left arm. I take notice of a scar across her nose, and bruises and scars all over her arms. She continues muttering, “I knew the Captain was on the planet, but… she’s been flying around, whose that?”
“She’s not the Guardian, right?” says another man holding Readine’s other arm.
“Let her go!” I shout at them. “We don’t need to fight, they didn’t do anything to—”
The woman is the one who interrupts me. “Didn’t do anything? Didn’t do anything is right! That’s what surface dwellers do, bums do nothing,” then she lets go of Readine’s arm to gesture to the destroyed world around us, “and they get this?! Why shouldn’t we have it?”
“I don’t know!” I yell back throwing up my hands. “What’s beating her up gonna do? What were any of these normal people gonna do? They weren’t in charge—”
“They put him in charge!” she screams as she shakes her head at me, and spits at my feet. On reflex I take a step back. The woman tells me, “Just what I thought, just like them, the Riverti. If that had been someone like me, or them,” she accuses while pointing back to her companions, “we wouldn’t have even felt the need to move.
“You don’t get it. I bet you live in a nice house back home, with food, water, nice clothes and a bath. You think being hungry is a little tummy ache until you can get a snack.
“They get to see the sun. Every. Day.”
“Someone hurt you, and I’m sorry, but these women have nothing to with that. Why attack them? That makes you just as shitty as them,” I tell her. She glares at me with such hate while the men just watch on while they hold Readine back.
“Just as shitty? I do one thing today and I’m just as shitty as people who have been shitty their whole lives? Fuck you.”
I don’t know what this is, I don’t understand how these things got this way. I’ve just been reading about it all for years and nothing about it prepared me for the hateful look this girl looks at me with. It’s like I’m standing against justice but justice can’t be a fist against a woman’s skull because… because she didn’t do enough, right?
That can’t be the answer.
These… rioters, whatever, they’re not in it for sadistic pleasure, but they’re still unreasonable. There’s never been reasoning with anyone, is there? Once they get to this state? The talk had to happen ages ago, now it’s too late. Now, I have to fight them, for Readine and Tele.
I make one last remark. “I can’t… I can’t let you hurt them.”
The woman scowls at me, and gives me this look of malice that can only lead to violence. She tells me one last thing. “You know what, you prim, stuck-up, little bitch? Maybe we’re all sick of being the bigger person. Being the bigger person has done nothing but made us slaves. I’d rather be shitty.
“Try and stop us. You’re not the Guardian. You think you’re a hero, but guess what? You’re not.” She lets go of Readine to approach me, with her fist clench. She’s going to go for a right swing.
All of my time with Rom will hopefully carry me through. He taught me how to fight one person, I need to finish her before the others grow a pair and help her.
When she’s within arm’s length she swings for my face. I see it coming a mile away and bobbed so she misses. Despite the rough start to the day, I’m somehow perceiving her better than I ever have. It’s child’s play to grab her wrist and pull up over my head, making her dangle over the ground.
She starts screeching something intelligible, all as I reel my other hand back and punch her in the gut, getting an ‘ompf’ sound from her. Her knees bend like she is going to buckle from the pain.
I have a foot on this woman as I do all of the people here, so when I let her go, the fall isn’t kind to her, as small as it looks.
Her knees buckle, but she’s tougher than she looks. I should have made sure she was finished, but I didn’t.
She hits me higher in the rib, my height only makes me more open to my carelessness. When she punches me the second time I shove her away. This woman seemingly can take a punch where the first guy could not, though, maybe I didn’t hit her so hard.
Alright, this is not a fight with Rom. I am not in the best shape of my life anymore, but I’m also not weaker. I’m just armed with weapons I don’t know how to use, strength that I don’t know how to use.
And I am not fighting an opponent practically equal in physicality. I am not going to get a surprise attack like with the first guy. She is scrappier, and probably more vicious than I can ever be, and I need to watch out.
Hopefully though, she’s just someone who throws random punches.
She charges me and swings her fist from above, but being taller I easily brush her fist away. As she stumbles past me, I trip her onto her face.
She slips onto her back and tries kicking at me, flailing almost. I keep swatting her legs away, not risking myself to try to get close. After learning how to fight, watching everyone on Team Sunset, I forgot how cumbersome and emotional normal people are when they fight. There’s no strategy behind any attacks here.
The woman turns her head to her pals holding Readine, who are currently enamored by our fight, demands them, “Want to help me or what?!”
They Readine to the ground. Once they start running to get me, Readine starts crawling towards Tele where still laid.
I move away from the Watree woman to face the men, and she scrambles back to her feet. I look around me as the three of them try to surround me. She warns her friends, “Watch out, she hits hard. Nearly knocked the wind out of me.”
“We noticed.”
“Didn’t fucking do anything though…”
They both nod their head. Right now the woman is my left, one man to my back right, and the last man to my front right. Definitely nowhere to go.
I try to rush the man in front of me to try and shove him down. I move to kick him right in the gut, but he clams up and I end up kicking his wrist.
Crack!
I hear the bones in his wrist or hand break, which leaves him crying out and clutching his hand as he feel to his knees. Normal people don’t take a lot to bring down.
Before I can turn around, the other man brings his arms up behind me, trapping one wrist to my side as the woman gets in front of me. She throws a punch to my gut.
“Ugk!” I choke, flailing around with my other arm, to tired and dazed to really aim. I’m too tall, I can’t reach that far back and that low to get him before she hits me in the stomach again, and again.
I feel like my insides are being crushed over and over as she wails on me. I try to struggle against the man’s grip, but I cannot conjure the strength, I lose it every time she hits me.
WACK!
She hooks me right in the left side of my jaw. I feel my teeth bite my tongue and taste some blood.
WACK!
She does it again, this time higher on my check. I feel blood in my mouth, and it drips out of the corners of my mouth.
“Not so tough now?” the woman taunts as she switches between hitting my stomach and my face.
WACK!
WACK!
WACK!
WACK!
“Stop!” a girl screams. I think it is Readine. My eyes are tripping from the clobbering being done to my face. I squint and see Readine try and grab the woman’s left arm and pull her away. I see the woman pull back her right fist and punch Readine’s in the face. Readine still does not let go and continues to pull our attacker away from me.
“Leave her alone!” I spit out, with some actual blood from when I bit my tongue. When Readine takes another punch, she falls to the ground. Where the woman moves to kick her.
“No!” I scream. I’m angry, I lean forward, away from the man holding me, lifting him off his feet.
I jump onto my back so we land on him.
CRACK!
“Ack!” is the sound the man makes as he fell on something left my head reeling from the sound, but I have to save Readine.
I stumble towards the woman kicking Readine, and I scream, “Stop! Leave her-UGH!”
The woman turns around and kicks me in the gut, causing me to stay on my knees. She could kick me instead, I could take it, but I’m not the one she hates enough to be a monster. She goes back to kicking Readine in the face, splaying her blood onto the ground.
“Leave her alone!” I croak, but still she kicks her. My heart is beating so fast, like I should be able to run at her, but my body will not move.
“Make me,” the woman taunts cruelly before stomping on Readine’s hand, causing her to cry out. I feel like something is pooling in me, but I can’t get it out. I feel flush, but numb.
Readine’s crying now, tears streaming down her face, and I can’t do anything!
The woman is beating on her, incessantly, and all I can do is watch. All I can do is watch as my vision gets blurry. See my eyesight lighten up as I crawl and squirm. There has been nothing I can do, not for Rom and not for Readine.
I growl.
Then the woman turns to give me a sadistic grin but it drops when we make eye contact. “What the… what are you?” she mutters.
What feels like a fire is just pooling into my face. It makes my head feel so warm, like my cheeks are on fire without the actual burning. I scream at this woman, “Leave her alone!”
SEERRR!!
Somehow, for some reason, I feel my head bottom out of everything. This heat forms from my eyes. Energy beams, flow through my pupils straight for this—
“Aaahh!” the woman screams as the beam hits the left side of her face, burning it. She falls away before the beam can burn through her skull, but the beam does not stop going. It keeps moving forward towards the buildings behind her, and turns them to ash.
I change my gaze to look left and the beam follows, setting the block on fire.
That’s when the anger that had been boiling falls to panic, because it doesn’t stop. It won’t stop.
I… I don’t know how to stop it.
I scream as I look up into the sky, sending it forth towards the top of the dome. It feels like I’m staring at the ceiling for ages, blasting away. How long before the dome gives way and the water comes down to flood this city and kill us all?
Should I look away, should I risk killing others, just to put the hole somewhere else?
It’s too much, it’s just… I’m doomed, no matter what I do… I’m doomed.
It’s this sense of failure, this apathy, this… I just… I give up. I gave up.
That’s when the beam starts to dull, grow smaller, lose its power, and then dissipate.
I had to give up to make it stop, to show me the black tar that now covered the top of Ramone.
As soon as it does so I shut my eyes and bring my hands to cover them. I feel my eyes tear up from the ordeal they just went through, this burning sensation that makes the tears feel comforting.
“Aleti!” I hear a woman scream from above me. A familiar voice, one I have longed for all day.
I take my hands away and I look up, eyesight blurry, seeing a figure fly towards me from above. Blue and green colors emanating from her. My eyes focus and I see who it is.
“Mom!” I cry out. I find the strength to get to my feet, stumble closer to where she might land.
Mom is here, she is here to save me from it all. The thought, or really, my last hope runs through my head as I stumble. She looks so close to the ground, so close to touch, but I trip, and I feel myself begin to fall.
I’m so tired… so… I just… I just want it all to end as I feel the ground coming.
I hit something soft. Something padded. I feel arms wrap around me. A hand behind my head pressing me forward, and another around my back holding me tight. I crack open my eyes to look up at Mom’s face as she puts her cheek against my forehead. I feel tears drip onto my face, and I realize she’s crying too.
“I was so afraid,” Mom tells me. “I thought I lost you to something I couldn’t fix. I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”
I don’t think I have ever heard her say something like that before before. Maybe a trick of the words, but they fit her.
“I love you too,” I whisper, before I let myself fall asleep in her arms.
