Blue Nexus #10--Vanishing Act

            Kyle, as Blue Nexus, and Hood Nexus were suspended high in the sky over the school mere seconds after Hood Nexus told him of Orion Six’s disappearance. Though he hadn’t known much about them, he knew that the Orion System was a powerful one in the universe, particularly amongst the supers. One of their planets vanishing was definitely not a good sign, and the urgency it was presented with certainly didn’t help the situation.

            Hood Nexus explained how he was in his own hideout—the location of which he did not reveal to Kyle’s disappointment—and was going over the Orion System and found that one of the planets was missing. He went to go check it out, and found that it was indeed gone, and instantly came back to Earth to get Kyle’s help in figuring it out.

            “I can’t really explain what it’s like over there,” he said. “You have to see it, no, try to feel it even. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen around the entire universe.”
            “Really, nothing similar?” Kyle asked. “I kinda figure that someone whose been around practically the entire universe would have seen something like it.”

            “It’s both marvelous and terrifying,” Hood Nexus assured.

            An awkward silence. Kyle looked around while Hood Nexus seemed to look upon him. He couldn’t really tell, since he had his hood up and the cowl was blocking his face.

            “So how far away is Orion Six?” asked Kyle.

            Hood Nexus smiled. “I was waiting for that question. Very far, way beyond some of our sister galaxies.”

            Kyle looked Hood Nexus up and down. “So how are you back with enough time to tell me this? Shouldn’t you have gone and come back and the Earth be destroyed?”

            “Relativity, ha! If only,” Hood Nexus said.

            “Are you telling me it doesn’t exist?” asked Kyle.

            “I’m telling you we don’t need to worry about it,” Hood Nexus said. “We have access to a whole other dimension, which means we’re able to completely distort time and space, bending it to our whim if we need to. That’s how fast we can move.”

            “But we can’t do it now?” asked Kyle.

            “No,” Hood Nexus replied, crossing his arms and shaking his head. “And we can’t technically time travel to a previous date on Earth, or another planet. We can just move simultaneously across galaxies.”

            “How?”

            Hood Nexus, who was floating slightly higher than Kyle was, brought himself down so they were floating on an equal level.

            “There are many, many secrets in the universe that humanity hasn’t uncovered and if it were, it would be crushed by the empires outside its reach,” Hood Nexus said. “Having said that, those with our kind of abilities have found out these secrets and are using them to our advantage in order to help level the playing field. If you thought there were bad guys on Earth, you’ve got to keep in mind the amount there are in the universe. They need us, and so we need to use the power of the universe against itself.”

            “How do we do that?” asked Kyle.

            “Wormholes,” Hood Nexus replied. “The Kingdom Planets have established their way of travel through them. So, we can use them to basically break through the barriers of space and time. Sounds fun, right?”

            Kyle nodded slowly. “Yeah, sounds great, but we still have to get all the way out there. How’s that supposed to work?”

            “Oh, that,” Hood Nexus said. He put his hand to his chin thoughtfully. “Sorry, I’m trying to explain how it’s done.”

            “I mean we basically have to move faster than the speed of light to get there, don’t we?” asked Kyle.

            Hood Nexus, still floating, moved a full rotation around Kyle before nodding and looking up at him, his face still hidden.

            “Exactly,” he said. Kyle remained dumbfounded.

            “And?” he asked.

            “That’s how fast you’ll need to move,” Hood Nexus said. “Look, it won’t be too hard. You know how you can sort of sense the energy of other, strong, aliens, or even myself, when you’re in your Nexus form?”

            “Yeah, so?”

            “So, yeah. The wormhole will be a really big break in that kind of energy, breaking light, space, and basically time. If you manage to find it, you can go straight to it and your instincts will kick on when to stop. There’s only one around here anyway, so it won’t be too hard to find. Just be sure to follow me.”

            “How do I do that?” Kyle asked.

            “Sense me out,” Hood Nexus said. He turned up, moving his fists up too as if to blast off. “Alright, let’s go.”

            “Hold it,” a voice said.

            Kyle looked around, seeing nobody but Hood Nexus with him. Hood Nexus looked slightly annoyed. The voice was deep yet foreign to Kyle. It spoke once more.

            “Kyle Raiden, young hero of the Zanderia, I presume you’re headed for the Orion Six planet, am I correct?” the voice asked. It sounded extremely intelligent. Could it be…

            “Eclipse?” Kyle asked out loud. He wasn’t sure how mind-speak worked.

            “Of course,” the voice replied. “Though my identity is irrelevant. I’m a bit busy at the moment but managed to overhear your conversation with the other Nexus about the disappearance of my homeworld, Orion Six. I thank you for going out to see it, though be warned, this is a greatly dangerous task.”
            “We’re just going there for recon,” Hood Nexus said. “Kyle here is just here to be an extra set of eyes.”

            “Be that as it may, the entire Orion System has grown hostile because of the growing threat. Tread lightly, my friends, as anything posing the slightest threat may cast them in the wrong direction and could open war between you two.”

            “Something I would like to avoid,” Hood Nexus said. “Can you let us go, Eclipse?”
            “Not yet,” Eclipse said. “Blue Nexus, please, have your Zanderia communicator with you at the ready. Where you are going, I won’t be able to reach you and follow you, but the communicator can at least send us vague signals across our various stations in the galaxy. We will be able to find you and negotiate with the Orionians if need be.”

            “Shouldn’t be, but thanks anyway,” Hood Nexus grumbled. “Let’s go, bud, we’re running out of time. We’ve a mystery to solve!”

            Hood Nexus, without warning, blasted off into the sky. Kyle sighed, then shrugged, and did the same, following right behind him out of Earth’s gravitational pull. They were going at immense speeds—speed the like of which Kyle had yet to fly at, even when he met with Riko up on the moon.

            The small red dot in the distance grew larger and larger by the second. Hood Nexus turned toward him, pointing forward.

            “Remember what I said about the wormhole!” he shouted. “Lock onto me if you have to, but make sure it’s your priority!”

            He waved, then vanished in a flash of blue light, leaving Kyle alone hurtling through the vast emptiness of space toward…somewhere.

            Slightly, though, he could still sense Hood Nexus’s energy, but it was almost like he was trying to look straight at him in a crowd of a thousand people in a cramped room. He could see him, the senses were working, but it was extremely difficult.

            He continued to jettison through space, closing his eyes. Nothing was coming at him for another tens of millions of miles or so, he had some time.

            His aura of energy around him from the Nexus, that which was keeping him alive, too, intensified as his concentration did. He became very away of the green planet he was leaving and more aware of the big red one he was headed toward. Beyond that was Jupiter, but, there was something over to the left of that. Probably billions of miles away at this point, he felt a break in the energy of the universe. Almost like a tear.

            It was faint, but he knew where it was, almost as if he could visualize it. Hood Nexus’s energy was radiating from that spot, too.

            “Alright,” he said. “Let’s go.”

            The energy intensified, reaching a peaking point as Kyle pushed himself further along in the sea of nothing, then he surged forward.

            Two flashes of blue light that seemed to occur simultaneously later and Kyle was once again standing right next to Hood Nexus. He stopped, no gust of wind following since there was none of that in vacuum they were in. It was odd. Nor did he feel much different having used a lot of energy. Or, was it that the Nexus merely carried its vessel there of its own power? He had no idea. It certainly was an interesting new trick.

            “Glad you could join me,” Hood Nexus said. “Read to jump across the entire universe?”

            There was a slight tug on Kyle’s shoulder, forcing him to look over. All around him were the stars, with Jupiter behind him. Its presence was far easier to spot out now. But, there was something wrong. In front of him were the stars, obviously, but some of them seemed to be missing half of it, or at least part, as if something were blocking its path. Kyle pointed down.

            “Is that the wormhole?” he asked.

            Hood Nexus nodded. “Yup, that’s our ticket in. It’s the one I use most. It won’t put us right where we want to go, but just a few million miles short. We’ll be there in no time. So let’s go!”

            His hand radiated blue, and with a great push, Hood Nexus cast Kyle into the wormhole. The pulling feeling intensified the closer he got to the tear, and in a second, it was over, now on his opposite shoulder. Kyle floated through space freely, looking around curiously. Jupiter wasn’t around anymore, but, besides that the scenery hadn’t changed at all. The stars looked the same, except…

            “Whoa,” he muttered, looking to his left. Hood Nexus seemingly jumped in next to him, instantly looking to his left.

            “Yeah, pretty cool, right?” he asked.

            To the left of Kyle, way off in the distance, was an entire galaxy to behold. It was a spiral galaxy, turned vertically, sending great amounts of blue light all around. In its center was the brightest light of all of them. It appeared to be unmoving, though Kyle knew it was moving at incomprehensible speeds, even for him. Could that be the Orion System, or perhaps just another galaxy?

            “Hey, don’t forget, we’re on a mission,” Hood Nexus said, grabbing Kyle’s cloak and pulling him along. Kyle could hardly take his eyes off of the galaxy even as he turned to face the nothingness ahead of him.

            They moved even quicker than when they had when they left Earth, though the distance was much shorter apparently. Kyle worried slightly about one of the planets crashing into the wormhole, but Hood Nexus didn’t seem worried about it for some reason. How many times had he been out in space?

            The two continued flying as Kyle sensed not only the presence of seven other close planets, but also some pretty massive amounts of energy. How great was the life force around here? Eclipse was strong and apparently his planet was missing, but there was still a great amount of energy.

            Hood Nexus stopped suddenly, as did Kyle, but he kept going. Hood Nexus reached out and yanked Kyle back by the cloak, choking him momentarily but he managed to regain his composure, floating back to Hood Nexus.

            The other Nexus stood with his arms crossed looking slightly downward, almost like he was trying to read something. Kyle did the same, pretending at first, until he noticed something.

            Much like the wormhole, there were stars way off in the distance that were behind the planet. But, there was a humongous circle of pure blackness that seemed different from the blackness of space that at least had stars in it. This time, it was like a shadow had been cast over the darkness itself.

            “Um, can space cast shadows on itself?” asked Kyle.          

            “That’s the exact same thing I wondered,” Hood Nexus said. “But this is it.”

            “This is what?”
            “Where Orion Six used to be,” he said. “And now, it’s just gone.”

            Kyle, startled, shivered. So, he was being serious. Kyle tried to sense for the planet, but couldn’t discern anything. There was just a shadow there, nothing to it. Because of the light of the system’s distant star, he could almost see the outline of where the planet would be. A moon was still orbiting it, off to the right. If the planet were missing, the Moon would have spun out of its own orbit.

            “It can’t be missing if the moon is here, and I can sort of see the planet still there,” Kyle said. “So what the hell?”

            “No idea,” Hood Nexus said. “But hey, you’ve got that communicator, right? See if you can scan the planet or something, maybe it’ll tell us if it’s really there or not.”

            Kyle extracted the communicator, looking at it as if it would react on its own. Hood Nexus mumbled something about the planet. Kyle tapped the communicator, having never operated it himself without someone calling in. He put it to his mouth, the receiving end pointed toward the planet, and simply said, “Scan…please.”

            Instantly, the communicator came alive, vibrating in Kyle’s hand. Slowly, it drew the shape of a sphere. Kyle beckoned for Hood Nexus to come over. The sphere was completed, and then, the communicator drew the crust, mantle, and core of the planet. The two Nexuses nodded.

            Suddenly, the communicator spat out the word, “Destroyed.”

            “What?” asked Hood Nexus.

            “How’s it destroyed if the core is still there?” asked Kyle.

            “Do it again, maybe it messed up.”

            Kyle shrugged, then repeated the command. This time the sphere was drawn without the crust, just the mantle and the core, but still said destroyed.

            “The heck is going on down there?” muttered Kyle.

            “Well for one thing it knocks out my theory that it was a black hole starting to form,” Hood Nexus said contemplatively. “I mean, the moon still being in orbit kind of nullified that already, but now that we know the core is still there, the moon being in orbit makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is that, besides the planet obviously missing, it reads the shape of the planet.”

            “It’s almost like we thought, that there’s just a shadow over it,” Kyle said.

            “Well if it is just a shadow, check for life forms,” Hood Nexus said.

            Kyle added “for life forms” to the command. It commenced, and came up with zero forms of life on the planet. Hood Nexus scowled.

            “Then what the hell happened here?” he shouted.

            A tearing sound ripped through the vastness of space, forcing the two to cover their ears. Kyle wished the Nexus abilities didn’t allow their senses to be active, as more sheering and tearing sounds appeared.

            “No, not them!” Hood Nexus yelled, almost like a whine.

            Bright lights flooded Kyle’s vision, coming from behind them. He looked behind him, on the missing Orion Six, and noticed that there was no light on the black spot. It was just pure…darkness.

            “Nexuses,” a deep voice said. “You are to follow us to the Kingdom of Orion One this instant.”

            “Who are they?” asked Kyle.

            Some of the lights faded, revealing humongous battleships. Kyle’s eyes widened as his whole body basically went limp looking at them. They were humongous, probably the size of air-craft carriers back on Earth. Hood Nexus didn’t seem too impressed, which begged the question once more of how he wasn’t, but Kyle could hardly care. They were so cool!

            “The security force of the system from Orion Three,” Hood Nexus replied. “Probably on their toes since Orion Six was, uh, gone missing. Two dudes in space probably tipped them off the wrong way.”

            Two cables shot out from one of the gun ship’s cannons.

            “Wrap those around your body and we will bring you, without force or violence, to the Kingdom for you to be judged before a court of high marshals and our Lord,” the voice said.

            Hood Nexus nodded to Kyle, clearly not in the mood for fighting, and the two wrapped what looked like a floatie for swimming around their waists. Gently, they were tugged across space, their speed quickening at a not very dangerous level for them. Hood Nexus looked disappointed, but Kyle couldn’t help but feel concerned for the two of them. He’d never been to Earth court before, let alone alien court.

            Lalay and Brenda, like two small jets, soared over the skies of the Atlantic. Brenda looked at Lalay once more. A fellow alien to Earth, Brenda felt at awe in sight of the beautiful woman. She had light blue hair with matching eyes, but had very pale human skin. She wore a one-piece that was also clad with armor across the chest and had two metal shoulder pads. Lalay seemed very content while flying, Brenda noticed, almost as if she were one with the sky.

            Brenda felt a little uncomfortable flying, partly because of her costume. She tried to match Kyle’s, because she thought it was cool, but it was hardly working out for her. The hood kept flinging off of her head every time she would look up while they flew, so her red hair would go nuts behind her in the wind. She wore a black cloak as well, which was good for concealing her identity. She figured she could just get a mask and save herself all the trouble. Or she could just use her natural form, sort of like what Riko would do. Brenda wasn’t absolute on it yet, though knew the time for that was on its way.

            Below them, the glistening ocean seemed to be moving very quickly behind them. Brenda always liked flying, though not as much as Lalay did apparently. Her mood soured slightly, she noticed, right after they flew. Perhaps it was because of her powers.

            The two were sent on a mission into Prague to stop a small gang that escaped Phoenix’s grasp a few times. But Phoenix had a larger entanglement with the government to work out and thus was not available. Lalay was sent on the job and Brenda was brought along to see how another Zanderian worked, as well as to get to know someone on Earth not named Kyle Raiden.

            During the mission, Brenda showed off her magical abilities to create force-fields, and Lalay showed off her astounding abilities to control the wind in any way she wanted to. She even intimidated them, and caused a little havoc on the streets, by creating a gigantic whirlwind. Brenda herself was hardly able to stay out of it. Something about her powers was very familiar to Brenda, she just couldn’t put her thumb on what it was exactly.

            Lalay looked back to Brenda briefly, flashing a smile. Brenda returned it. The two hadn’t talked very much but when they did, Brenda found out that Lalay was an amazing woman. She was very friendly and a very proud woman. She carried herself with a lot of esteem but was not in anyone’s face, and in fact made sure to use her powers to put everything back the way it was in Prague. She even tried speaking with them, despite her being unable to speak with them. She knew several languages, like Brenda, but neither of them could communicate with a frustrated crowd. Still, they cleaned up their mess, and were headed back home, moving incredibly quickly.

            The two pulled up as a cruise liner came into sight. They didn’t want their waves to negatively affect the cruise, and thus stayed out of the way. Once the cruise was out of sight, then dropped back down. Brenda moved closer to the sea, extending her hand out and allowing her hand to run through the waters. Lalay smiled but kept her distance from the water.

            “Shindari, Lalay,” a voice called in Brenda’s head.

            Snapping her concentration, Brenda’s flight suddenly cut and she bounced across the Atlantic Ocean. Lalay stopped quickly, slamming on her brakes, but Brenda continued to bounce until she dropped into the water, kicking her legs to remain afloat.        

            “Eclipse?” Lalay asked. She had a sweet voice, one that resembled an endearing mother.

            “My apologies, Shindari,” Eclipse said. “I forgot you and Blue Nexus aren’t accustomed to my telepathy.”

            No problem, Brenda thought. There wasn’t a response. “No problem,” she repeated. She created two red barriers over the ocean and pushed herself up, then sustained flight and moved over to Lalay, who was floating casually in the air.

            “What’s with the call, Eclipse?” asked Lalay.

            “I would just like to inform you two about the departure of the two Nexuses earlier this morning,” Eclipse stated.

            Brenda froze. Kyle was gone.

            “Where’d they go?” she asked quickly.

            “The Orion System, tracing something very important to the Nexus not Kyle Raiden,” Eclipse stated blandly.

            Brenda, in shock, looked wildly to Lalay. Lalay raised an eyebrow in confusion.

            “Is there a problem, Shindari?” she asked.

            “Please, call me Brenda,” Brenda insisted. “And, yes, there is! Kyle shouldn’t be anywhere near the Orion System, he’ll get himself killed.”

            “Relax, he’s with the other Nexus,” Lalay said, placing a soothing hand on Brenda’s shoulder. Lalay’s voice was indeed calming but not nearly enough. Brenda thought she felt a small panic attack on the way. “There’s no trouble they’re not strong enough to avoid.”

            “That doesn’t matter to me, the point is that Kyle could get dangerously close to secrets that he’s not meant to know yet,” Brenda said.

            “If you’re afraid that Orion One will tell him of his parent’s location then you really have nothing to fear,” Eclipse said. “While I’m sure they’re aware of the planet, they Orionians could care less about the users of the Nexus now.”

            Kyle and Hood Nexus, still in full gear, were forcefully walked from the ship toward a tall tower that seemed sharper than the Space Needle in Seattle. The blue aura was still around Kyle, telling him that the atmosphere was toxic for him. The soldiers didn’t seem bothered by it. But, then again, they and Kyle didn’t look much alike.

            They had green, scaly skin with eight-fingered, webbed hands. Their eyes were large and they blinked vertically. They were larger horizontally than vertically, but the way they jabbed their dual-sided spears into Kyle’s back told him that they had some force.

            They were leading the two Nexuses from the ship on a platform that was already pretty high in the air. They landed on a circular pad meant for only one gunship while the other gunships flew away, probably back into space. The landing pad, walkway, and even the tower they were being lead to were all a dark, yet shiny, shady of gold. In fact, Kyle noticed, the sky around him wasn’t even blue, it was actually a dark gold hue that bled onto the other buildings. While he was sure they were all normally gray, at least on Earth they’d be, they had a small golden tint to them because of where their Sun was relative to the planet.

            The other buildings of the city, or possibly even planet, were all much smaller than the tower they were headed into, though still skyscrapers. How high up were they really? Kyle stole a look down, and could just barely make out the ground below them, as if he were standing atop the Empire State Building. If he wasn’t accustomed to flying, the walk to the tower would horrify him.

            The convoy stopped at the door. The soldiers stood at attention for about five seconds before the large doors opened inwards, revealing a large room. The Nexuses were pushed through, and once the final soldier was in, the doors shut instantly. The soldiers held up their weapons as if in reverence of the hallway.

            On either side of the entryway were stairways spiraling up to the rest of the tower. Kyle could see some of the other Orionians moving up the stairs. There was a railing, so falling down onto the floor way below would be rather difficult. About fifty feet overhead, too, there was a ceiling, and probably yet another floor.

            Before Kyle was just an empty room. The two Nexuses, bound with alien technology—and Hood Nexus told Kyle not to make any smart moves about breaking the bonds—moved into the center of the room as the soldiers stood at attention around them. The floor in front of them opened up, and from it came a very large, very shiny, golden throne.

            Of course, that alone wouldn’t be enough. Statues, women, and statues of women (naked, obviously), were all around the base of the throne. The throne itself was very tall, so the person on it would be placed way above whoever they were looking upon. Along the throne were spears, swords, and shields embedded in the gold, and also turned to gold.

            The person at the top looked similar to the other Orionians with the exception of a few things. First, his pupils were golden, and he seemed to be wider than the rest of them. His fingers had bronze and silver rings practically covering them, and a small short blade was already drawn, the sheathe resting nicely in his lap. He was smiling down at the Nexuses.

            “Thank you, men,” he said, his accent thickly foreign. Kyle winced at it. How could this guy speak English?

            And did Eclipse look like this, too?

            “So, Your Holiness, what brings me back here?” asked Hood Nexus.

            The Orionian looked at Hood Nexus queerly, then stood straight to his feet. The sheathe fell out of his lap and straight into the arms of the statue of an outstretched statue’s arms. Kyle noted some of the women sitting at the base of the throne. Most of them were very alien looking, such as the ones that were devoid of any arms or legs and some had no hair and a few had four eyes. The Orionian royal angrily pointed toward Hood Nexus.

            “You will be the first to die!” he exclaimed. “You do not come into the Lord’s throne room and make a mockery of him. Guards, get me one of them.”

            He didn’t even look at the guards, and pointed down at one of the women. Randomly, the guards picked one and forced her to climb up the throne. Kyle watched as she, looking pretty sad, climbed up by the weapons and sat in the lap of the now sitting Lord. He rubbed his hand up and down her back and she began to lick his neck. Kyle felt some puke form in his throat.

            “And who—ooh, my—is your accomplice?” the Lord asked, clearly in a much better mood.

            “A friend, a fellow Nexus as you can see,” Hood Nexus said.

            “Is he as armed as you?” asked the Lord, pushing the woman alien closer to him. She began to kiss his face.

            “He did have this, my Lord,” one of the guards said, holding up the communicator.

            Kyle angrily looked over to Hood Nexus, who had a calm face.

            “Then destroy it, of course,” the Lord commanded.

            “No!” Kyle shouted.

            The soldier dropped it and stepped on it, shattering it. Without thinking, Kyle jumped at him. Hood Nexus was quicker to react, sticking out his leg and kicked Kyle to the ground.

            “What are you doing?” he hissed. “The situation is under control!”

            “I beg to differ, seeing as how you’re both going to die no matter how much you’d want to brownnose me,” the Orionian Lord said. “Now that I’m…roused…I would like to get this over with as quick as possibly.”

            He licked the face of the woman with a long tongue. Kyle crawled back to where he was and stood back up without the use of his bound hands.

            “Get what over with, our execution?” asked Hood Nexus. “If you wanted that, you would have killed us in space.”

            “Actually I should have killed you a long time ago,” the Lord said. “But this one is still suspect.”

            “To what?”

            “One of my planets is missing, you fool, and you were there,” the Lord said. “You Nexuses have always been in the way of all the great powers in this universe, why should I suspect otherwise?”

            “You think we destroyed one of your planets?” Hood Nexus asked incredulously. “Are you that insane?”

            A solider came up behind Hood Nexus and whacked him hard with his spear, cutting him in the back but he remained standing. The guard stayed behind Hood Nexus, yet the Lord advised him to hold off on striking again. He leaned forward, so the woman slipped behind his back and began to lick and caress his back. Gross, Kyle still thought.

            “What other force in this universe, besides one of the greatest armies, has that ability?” asked the Lord. “And it could not have been an army as we were unable to detect it. Probably using my wormhole again, a crime punishable by death!”

            “It wasn’t me, or him,” Hood Nexus said. “Look, we want who—or what—ever did this gone just as much as you do. Perhaps it was just a freak accident.”

            “Orion Six is a powerful planet,” the Lord said. “As well as wise. It was no freak accident. Whatever it was, it had the ability to make sure it went unseen by the whole Orion System and destroy the planet.”

            Hood Nexus sighed. “Did you think it was another Kingdom Planet?”

            “We don’t associate with them. It was you, there’s no denying it. Once you were spotted at the scene of the crime, it was all but settled. Now, we can settle it.”

            The spearman pulled back his weapon, and was about to swing when the woman clinging to the Lord’s back looked up, pointing up to the sky.

            “A black star?” she asked.

            The Lord looked up, forcing the soldiers to stop the assault. Kyle and Hood Nexus looked curiously to each other.

            “Impossible,” the Lord muttered. “What is it, then?”

            “Perhaps an experiment?” asked the woman.

            “Shut up.”

            Kyle grunted, about to take another step but didn’t want to get owned by Hood Nexus. He wanted to take this Lord down with all of his might, but was being restrained. Hood Nexus definitely seemed to have a plan in mind but as to what it was Kyle was clueless.

            “Why’s it growing?” asked the Lord.

            Immediately after the question, the ground began to shake. Lightly, at first, but then it grew. As it grew, sirens blared all around the city and within the tower. Kyle felt his weight shifting without his permission, and he realized he was swaying.

            “A quake?” shouted the Lord. The woman dropped out of her seat, and Kyle took action, diving to save her. She looked at him, pretty terrified, too. She pretty, he had to give her that, for an alien. Her eyes were a cooling blue. She actually looked fairly humanoid, just save some of the weird features along her body and the unnaturally smooth skin.

            A cracking sound began to fill the air. Hood Nexus snapped free of his binds, spun around, and punched the soldier straight in the face. He caught the spear and threw it at the glass as the cracking stopped and a loud waning noise filled the area. Kyle leapt to his feet just as he recognized the sensation: they were falling. The spear shattered the window, opening a gaping hole. Hood Nexus shouted out of it, pulling Kyle by the cloak. Kyle caught his own power and launched up, the woman still in his arms. The Nexus aura was covering him, too.

            The two stopped amidst the chaos that was transpiring below. The black circle in the sky was breaking through the golden air and heading straight for them at an alarming rate, seemingly swallowing all the gold in its path. Hood Nexus pulled right and Kyle made a sharp turn. He felt himself being pushed away from it, though, almost as if the black sphere of energy was rejecting him. The woman, however, was a different story, being almost sucked into the black sphere, but Kyle was able to push through it by boosting his power.

            “It’s the same thing!” shouted Hood Nexus.

            A rather odd thing to yell, Kyle thought, until he realized what Hood Nexus was talking about. It was the same phenomenon was Orion Six. The planet was being destroyed.

            The more the sphere ate of the city, the more it grew. The two surged through the thick atmosphere, breaking into space. The Nexus aura was covering the woman, shaking with fear and breaking out in a cold sweat, too, protecting her from the harms of space.

            Horrified as well, the two users of the Nexus looked down at the planet. The black sphere practically ate the entire thing up in seconds. Maybe three gunships made it out, but those were the only ones that Kyle could see. It happened so fast, it was a wonder that they were even able to get those off.

            The three of them moved back, out of the way of if the sphere were to grow. The light of the Orion Star was much greater here, yet even then, there was a huge black blot in the middle of open space, blocking out all other forms of light.

            “It’s like it ate the—” Hood Nexus began.

            “Planet,” Kyle finished.

            “No, not the planet itself,” Hood Nexus said. “It ate the planet’s energy, swallowing the whole thing. That’s why it was taking longer to get the core of Orion Six, because it had to chip away at the large amounts of energy swelled up there.”

            “And since the crust has a lot less…”

            “It can do it in seconds.”

“But what the hell caused it?”

The woman screamed and shouted in Kyle’s arms, throwing an arm up toward the Orion Star. Kyle and Hood Nexus were just barely able to dodge a small black sphere thrown their way. If not for the light of the star, they would never have seen it, Kyle realized.

            “Who’s that?” Kyle asked, flicking his head.

            Against the star was a black figure. Obviously, they couldn’t make out any of its features, but it was a figure of total darkness. In a mere blink of an eye, the figure was gone too, leaving a streak of dark energy similar to the streak of blue energy Kyle and Hood Nexus left behind them.

            “No way,” Hood Nexus muttered. “He was right.

            “Who was right, what are you saying?” asked Kyle, floating a little closer. The woman had a tighter grip around Kyle’s neck.

            “That stupid bastard Lord was actually right,” Hood Nexus said, this time clearly marveled at something.

            Kyle and the woman waited eagerly for the thought to come to speech.

            “The Nexus did destroy the planet,” Hood Nexus said. “Whoever it was, that thing in black, has the powers of the Nexus. I could sense it.”

            “What?” asked Kyle. “So he’s like some, Black Nexus?”

            “That’s exactly what he is,” Hood Nexus said. “And I’ve got a feeling I know exactly what this guy wants.”

            “What, to blow up the universe?”

            “No, just pure chaos in the universe. Notice what direction he went in? He went toward the wormhole. Bud, he’s headed for Mars, or more probable, Earth.”


Next time: The attacker's identity revealed! And...he has ties to not just the Nexus, but Aequitas?! Not only that, but we find out the beginnings of the Nexus powers. Check out "Blue Nexus #11--Origins"