Crystal: The Tyranny of Demolus

Zohaifa's story

Kaboom!

A beam shot from the spaceship of the beast’s destroyed a wing of Giasuddin’s spaceship.

“Dammit! What’s that?” exclaimed Giasuddin.

“A sci-fi beam of course,” answered Zabir.

Another beam was shot but since the motion of the spaceship became too wobbly by the last beam, it evaded this one accidentally.

“Phew! Now I have to drive carefully so that I don’t get hit by one of those.”

But the spaceship ceased attack for a moment. Contrary to what they expected, the next attack was a set of target missiles.

Giasuddin closed his eyes knowing that he cannot evade this time and let his spaceship turn into space debris. An exploding sound occurred before the computer screen showed ‘no connection’ in red font.

On the other side, when Zohaifa woke up, he found himself wearing the casual t-shirt and pants he wore under the suit. The spacesuit he wore was taken. He also found the person who fought by his side sitting there with him in the room. The door of the room was like bars of laser beams imitating a sci-fi prison.

He asked the person, “What happened after I lost consciousness?”

“I am as clueless as you are.”

“So, what do you think they will do with us?”

“There are many possibilities. Maybe they are keeping us for food. Maybe they will make us fight to the death so we can entertain them. Or maybe they are going to sell us as slaves.”

Hearing these speculations made Zohaifa sweat nervously.

“What do you think we should do now?” he asked in a shaky voice.

“I checked if there are any ways to escape but didn’t find any. So, we shall wait till the time they decide to transfer us for whatever job they want us to do. That would be our best chance to escape,” the person replied.

“Okay.”

They sat there for a few minutes in silence until Zohaifa decided to ask, “Umm… How did you get your power?”

“Through training of course,” he replied.

“Does every one of your species emerge blades from knuckles with training?” asked Zohaifa.

“Of course not. That sounds like a stupid question. Don’t tell me you are not from Cant world,” he said.

“Cant world? What's that?” Zohaifa asked.

“Argh… Where did you come from then?” he asked.

“Planet Earth,” Zohaifa replied.

“Never heard of it,” he replied, “But I never knew there are beings outside Cant World who can control elements.”

“Actually, my species can’t. Only I can somehow,” Zohaifa replied.

“Huh? How did you get that power?” he asked.

“Should I start from the very beginning?” Zohaifa asked.

“Sure, we are stuck here, anyway.”

Thus, Zohaifa started, “My name is Zohaifa. I used to be a very ungrateful person, always complaining about my boring life. Going to school every day, doing home works, etc. made it feel like I was living the same day over and over again.

But that day was different. Though it appeared to be a normal day. I was coming from a school like I always do. My best friend Mahir wasn’t there with me that day. I guess that’s what made the difference.

I saw someone dropping a wallet by accident, or at least it seemed like an accident. Me, being who I am, went and picked it up and gave him back without any thoughts of stealing whatsoever.

Surprisingly that guy was a scientist. What are the chances of him being not? But that thought never came to my mind. He wanted to reward me for my honest action by giving me a tour of his lab. I was overjoyed hearing that since I was bored out of my monotonous life.

One thing, I should have suspected is that he told me to bring as many friends as I can.

I went home to take dad’s permission. Obviously, he didn’t let me. He turned me down with logic. How can I be sure if it’s not a scam?

But I was dead bored with my monotonous life. So, I irrationally decided to sneak to the lab with my brother, Zabir, and sister, Zaziba. Zabir always followed me in every footstep, getting him to agree is no big deal. Zaziba would agree with just a bar of chocolate.

The lab was amazing. It mainly comprised various robots. We were mesmerized. But I found the scientist’s behavior very peculiar.

He was getting more silent as time went by. At last, after getting us all in a room as a part of the tour, he gave the command ‘Operation: X25i, activate!’

At first, we were excited, thinking that maybe this is a part of the tour. Maybe he wanted to show us an operation live. But we realized soon enough that it was an operation to get us ready to be used as experimental subjects.

 A robot cheetah came forth shattering a glass showcase. For the first time, a robot appeared scary to us. But I gritted my teeth and mustered every bit of courage I had to fight against it. As expected, I was defeated in one blow. I lost consciousness.

When I woke up, I found myself coiled by wires. My siblings were caged up in a thick glass box.

His first experiment was to test the human body’s reaction against electric shock.  So, he conducted electricity to my body through the wires. He kept increasing the voltage slowly and noted my body’s reaction to that.

Every part of my body was starting to feel numb. I was losing consciousness as he kept increasing the voltage….. Till the battery was out of power.

He noticed something odd. A human body wasn’t supposed to endure this much voltage. I was supposed to die way sooner. Yet I was still alive.

Not only that. I don’t know how and why I gained the ability to create bursts of lightning. I noticed it when he commanded his robot cheetah to knock me unconscious again. When the robot dashed towards me, I did something which created a burst of lightning. I don’t know how to explain it but now there’s something new I can do. As if I grew a new limb.

But it ended up charging the cheetah, making it more powerful. So, he dashed at me and hit me even harder.

That is when I realized the other ability I gained from the miracle. New capacity!

I was knocked unconscious with only one hit the last time. Now I am taking even harder hits and getting up.

Unfortunately, the only thing I could do at that moment was that move I later named ‘Lightning burst.’ I kept repeating that move only to make the robot stronger and getting hit harder.

Until the robot was overcharged and fell down.

Losing his greatest soldier, the scientist got naturally became very nervous. He gave the command to all the other robots to attack me too. But those weren’t his best. And so, they were all overcharged with just one more ‘Lightning burst.’

By this time, he probably lost his mind. He ran away to the wires and thought he would get lightning powers too by shock himself. So, he tied his hand to a wire and instantly pushed the voltage to the maximum. Thus he shocked himself to death.

That was how I got my power.

But that wasn’t the only thing I received from that miraculous incident. After I went back to normal life and continued martial arts training, it seems my progress was inhumanly faster than before.

But there was a problem. Every time I tried to train my lightning skills, I felt an anomalous feeling in my heart. I was scared if it has a side effect. So, I eventually stopped using lightning to not take risks. The superhuman progression in fitness I gained was enough of a gift.

With time, I noticed that my brother had developed faith in the supernatural. He wanted to gain powers like me too. I could tell by the way he acts: shouting in the toilet, being dead focused on his hands trying to create lightning, try to give himself light shocks. He even developed silly theories of how humans should have the ability to control lightning by using the logic that neurons carry electric impulses. If we can control them, we get lightning powers.

That is totally not it. The human body although creates 100 watts of energy, it’s not electrical energy according to my knowledge. The amount of electrical energy created is probably too little. And if you study how neuron actually conducts electricity, it’s more of electrochemical than electrical.

About a few months later, I and my brother was returning home after training in the woods. We could see one person trying to rob another from a distance. We ran there as soon as possible. I thought it was time to put my new skills to use.

Unfortunately, we didn’t notice that he had a gun. He shot a bullet at my forehead when I tried to get close. My brother was terrified.

But surprising everyone, including myself, it didn’t kill me. It was stuck on my forehead. I plucked it off and threw it away. It hurt a lot but I concealed the pain.

Using their astonishment to my advantage, I quickly dashed forward to land a hit and knock him unconscious.

Seems the person I saved was yet again a scientist and yet again, he wanted to give me a tour of his lab. I immediately declined his offer.

But my brother reminded me that things are different this time. This time I am superhuman. This time I have lightning by my side.

But this offer seems less suspicious. There is this huge space agency named NASA. It deals with Aeronautics and Space exploration. It is a national agency over an entire country, so I didn’t think they would trick me. It is globally recognized and admired.

He was a part of that organization and was on holiday. They were trying to use their fastest spaceship and send a manned mission to the new Earth-like planet they discovered. But they needed a person with extreme adaptation capabilities. After surviving the bullet attack, he thought I would be the perfect person for this next mission.

 Thus I came here.”