The Butterfly Girl: A Star is Born

New Encounter

[Apollo]

Apollo quickly regains consciousness and tries to stand up. He tries to survey his surroundings. Momentarily forgetting what he was trying to do before he blacked out. He stands alone in an open field. No trace of his friends anywhere. A memory quickly resurfaces, and he quickly sets out to find Sophia. He doesn't recognize the area he stands in at first. Sophia was dragged off into the woods, but he didn't even know where he was. He walks up a small hill to try to get his bearings. As he walked, he tries to remember anything else he can recall. But he just felt confused instead.

Sophia was able to save his life, on a few occasions. Now it's time to save her. Again...

Apollo continues walking up a hill and when he gets to the top, he looks behind him and sees something on the horizon of his vision. A hint of red and green.

Those must be the strawberry fields in there.

The forest must be just up ahead somewhere. Apollo decides to fly up and get a better view of his surroundings. He looks closely at the ground from up in the air and tries to recall exactly where they might have been when Sophia was dragged off. Usually, Shadovians try to be pretty stealthy, and they have managed to ambush them on multiple occasions. And they have been ever more annoying lately. It's been easy to outrun or defeat them, but lately they've been a little more erratic for some reason. But no one thought about why.

Apollo couldn't finish his thoughts as something came streaking down from the sky and struck him down. A different creature with tight wings and a skinny body, screeched in a high tone as Apollo tried to kick it off. Some sort of long, pointy beak tried to bite him, but it eventually backed off and tried to gain altitude for another attack. Apollo got up and took a few steps back as he tried to identify the creature. He didn't understand what it was. He had never seen it before. The creature dived at him and Apollo just barely avoided it. And as soon as it came down it rose back up into the air. Apollo stared at the creature. Black, shadowy body. Red burning eyes...

The creature screeched as it made another attempt. But he rose into the air just in time as the creature's wing brushed sharply against his arm. His hand lit ablaze and fired a shot directly at the creature. It shrieked and flailed its body before dropping from the sky. Apollo extinguished his hand and tried to dive in front of the creature, but it scratched his arm with the tip of it's wing just before it finally died and slammed onto the ground. Apollo stumbled as he landed and gripped his wounded arm. The scratch didn't look so bad, but it hurt like hell and it was beginning to bleed. Apollo then looked over at the dead creature that had crashed on the earth. He couldn't tell what it was or where it came from. This was something new...

But he was relieved that he had survived this strange encounter. As he turned away, he heard another high-pitched screech echo throughout the sky and whirled his head near the sun. A whole flock of those strange creatures hovered in the air as they began to fly closer to Apollo.

Apollo sighed loudly as his other arm began to turn cold and freeze.