The volcano has opened its non existent eye.
Wonny and Zhask too felt it.
Something ancient, long dead gone, long dormant and incomprehensively gigantic, is watching them.
Both two froze mid motion, as if they did something wrong.
Yes it is, they did. Both felt the strange "buzzing" feeling, neither pleasant nor unpleasant. Almost like a goosebump but not a goosebump after all. None of them had spoke
And in a blink of an eye, the planet was gone. Replaced by a violent force of explosion, that burns the space into white.
And Wonny woke up. The sky was in a weird green hue, but the clouds were normally white.
"Where the.... cosmic hell am I?"
He was lying down motionless at the massive crater that formed as he fall. His spacesuit had protected him as he passed through the planet's atmosphere. But its not his spacesuit that protects him after the planet explodes -- the CE can also act as an armor of the user's flesh, enhancing their flesh. The stronger the CE the user had, there's a certain possibility the user can withstand the explosion of the bigbang if having enough high level amounts of CE.
He gets up to the standing position, and a gigantic sphere of CE hits him hard. The planet explodes within him but he survives. "What the.... f ck!"
As he opened his eyes, the volcano was infront of him. Not typically volcano shaped though, but a volcano with tendrils writhing fast in dizzying speed. Wonny focused his eyes on the volcano itself, not those writhing tendrils as by looking at them it will make him nauseous. This also gives him a reason to hate that entity.
A fist landed on him coming from the right side -- Zhask's fist landed. The punch threw Wonny far enough but he stops mid motion. Wonny immediately threw a countless barrage of explosive CE spheres -- a lethal cosmic rain of deathballs.
Suddenly, an invisible force restrained Wonny so tight, almost breaking his spacesuit. The entity spoke to him "It was not nice.... you butcher"
"Thank's for that!"- screamed Zhask wildly as he flew. His fingers formed in a knifehand strike, aiming at Wonny.
But suddenly, an invisible force strucked to him. His body separated in half. Wonny could only watch and wonder who did it.
The restraints on Wonny becomes tighter and tighter each second in a sudden. Wonny let out a scream. His aura began to manifest, then becomes bigger and bigger -- appearing to burn more violently, burning faster. Like a star in its final moments.
He tried to unsheathe his katana, but the invisible restraints were too overwhelming.
_____________________________________________________________________
The HES ships stopped. The sol system is now full of innumerable space trash of debris.
The HES I-401 and the other starsubmarines "resurfaced" back to the outside space.
The ship's cruising silent. No shots fired for now. The planes returned to the staraircraftcarriers.
In HES I-401, only two starplanes returned.
The hangar of the starsubmarine closed tight.
Two pilots come out from their plane.
A pilot said: "I saw his plane floating motionless... where did he go?"
Another said: "Maybe he's dead? Should we leave the plane there?"
A reply came: "Yeah... he's better off dead. He's scary"
In I-401's bridge, the crewmen were silent. An occasional clatter of keyboards fills the silence.
Until, the comms operator spoke: "Captain... the admiral is ordering us to return to the port"
"Alright, let's comply then"- said by a female matured voice, named Fumikiya Takowa, 23 years old -- the ship's captain.
All ships turned, facing to the same side. They went through warp as they go ftl speed. Heading to Earth.
______________________________________________________________________
The ships slowly moved as trying not to crash into the massive platforms -- those are the docking bay.
Streching across thousands of kilometers, shaped as a gigantic megastructure ring, also functions as a space elevator attached to Earth. Heavily armed with turret armanents scattered around, some armanents suspended in motion. All of those turret and cannon-based armanents uses cosmic essence as its projectiles -- replacing the shells. Using cosmic essence energy as projectiles is a lot cheaper and cost a countless times lesser than using standard missiles, shells, nukes.
Each air tight gates, massive, towering tall, meant for the HES starships to fit in. The gates opened through the means of making the air tight gate disappear like a glitched hologram.
The HES I-401 entered inside. The gates manifests again -- as a means of closing.
Inside, the HES I-401 is attached to the reinforced berth cradle, moving fast inside the lightless tunnel until it reached the dark, spacious chamber -- a chamber meant for ship docking(this one is reserved for I-401 submarine). It turned the ship, facing to the tunnel where the ship once came from it. A light filled the chamber after the process was done.
The ship's hatch opened. The crewmen came out: first the captain herself Fumikiya takowa, the technicians, weapons officer, the XO, the two seiran pilots(Abrams Nicohlie -- 24 year old blondie, and Johnery Seery -- 20 year old dark blue haired), and lastly the 4 engineers.
Some laughed. Some whispered, stating Wonny is better off dead indeed. Some relieved. Some couldn't process why the f ck they are still alive.
Only their sound of shoes tapping the floor filled the silence. No senseless trivial chit chatting.
Until they reached the elevator door. It opened automatically. The crews wordlessly entered. The door closed. Inside, the elevator has its own gravity.
Within few seconds, the elevator descends in a fast falling speed. Inside, the crewmem were fine, but at the outside, the elevator falls as if it was malfunctioning.
The elevator were also made of reinforced unobtainium of holy sh*t!
Fumikiya watches the window. The elevator outside, has passed many giant metal beams, platforms, and many more.
In this speed, it should turn the humans into crimson colored paste. But thanks to the artificial gravity inside and the logic of physics not functioning properly -- since this is a shamelessly soft scifi story.
A younger crewmember, 3 years younger than Fumikiya, looks at the other window.
The sight of it would make her barf, so she look away. An older crewmember says: "You'll get used to it"
"Hopefully"- said she.
"yeah"
"At... what, several kilometers per second?"- the girl asked, not thinking serious on her question.
The older shrugged: "Probably." Infacr, he didn't know what to answer her kind of weird question.
"And nobody thinks that's insane?"
The older replied: "We just survived that battle, didn't we?"
The girl looked out the window again. At the outside, the clouds split beneath them and the massive armored spine of the elevator continued downward into the world below.
Far beneath, the city-lights of the planet surface glimmered.
The older tech folded his arms: "Kid, after you've been in that ship and ridden this elevator enough times..." Then he sighed: "...you stop being impressed. Everything became normal to you as the time passes by"
The platform kept descending in a same terrifying speed, carrying the crew inside
_____________________________________________________________________
[Earth: sector #149]
The elevator has come to stop so smooth.
Elevator doors opened.
The warm air hit the whole crews -- killing the cold in them and soothes their muscles. Then the noise, a noise from busy personnels.
The crews took step outside, walking throughout this military base.
Hundreds of personnels run in every directions -- others sprinted fast to the available space elevators. Some are naval officers, flight crews, star marines, engineers, medics, logisticians, technicians, and scientists were most of them are a bunch of 50 to 60 aged people.
Massive screens displayed battle reports, fleet routes, propaganda slogans, casualty numbers, and recruitment footage.
One screen showed the Humanity Empire crest burning over a kneeling alien silhouette.
Another showed a smiling child saluting beside the words:
HUMANITY FIRST, HUMANITY FOREVER
As the HES I-401 crew walked in group, they passed groups of off-duty personnel gathered near vending stations and steel tables bolted to the floor.
One group of mechanics were already gossiping:
"It seems that Dionaldo-guy got left behind."
"Really?"
"Really... just look at them, not even a single sight of that man..I don't know why he's not among them this time"
"Oh... that's a good news."
"Good news?"
"Yeah, a good news.... that bloke gives me the creeps."
"Same here"
"Saw him once while I walked at corridor. Both of us had an eye contact... I shivered for no reason in that moment. Like, I did something wrong or irreversible"
"I remembered sitting next to him once... even a slightest inconvenience makes him slam his own hands to a table"
That earned a few laughs.
Another woman, a logistics clerk, lowered her voice as she joins in without proper permission: "My cousin who's one of the engineers of HES Musashi, told me the momentWonny and the personnels once came aboard for resupply once and the crew members stopped talking."
An off duty marine nearby nodded. He added: "Welp, he once stared at a captured xeno prisoner during in interrogationroom for ten straight minutes without blinking."
"Whathappened?"
The marine sipped his drink, then answered: "The prisoner started screaming and banging his own head at wall!"
A loud tapping of shoes, as someome walked closer, she muttered: "Honestly? He's better off dead at that point"
Fumikiya heard it as she passed. She didn't react. But Johnery looked back with a grimace. The younger crewmember looked between all of them, uneasy: "Do you guysreally hate him that much?"
One of the seiran pilot answered quietly, more like a whisper: "No..... we're just scared of him."
______________________________________________________________________
Somewhere in unknown planet.
The dead volcano-like being lie down motionless next to Wonny, while he hovers rising to the air, then sends a continuous barrage of explosive cosmic essence energy balls to his enemies -- in a speed almost as same as the minigun firing.
His black suit cracked further each action he does. He must be careful, if not, his suit will be destroyed and possibly exposing him to dangerous air and worse the planet could have zero oxygen.
His enemies were a race of gray skinned egg-shaped head humanoid losers, most lying down on the ground utterly lifeless.
Some tried flew towards Wonny only to met the exact same fate as most of their kind.
Wonny grew tired. He hovers down... until his boots touched the ground. His breathing becomes heavier than usual.
This was the limit of his cosmic essence output for now, as he haven't train hard that much. If his cosmic essence energy somehow perfectly synchronize with his emotion, like truly and perfectly aligns without even a slightest delay, a phenomenon occurs where his cosmic essence levels is based on his emotion -- the higher his emotion, the powerful he is(even allowing him to move in a speed faster than ftl travel and shatters planets at ease instantly)
An alien threw a perfect punch, landing on Wonny's right cheek. He didn't dodge.... too tired to dodge, but not tired to counter attack as he draw his katana and swung his weapon splitting the alien's head in half. Its blood was something of bluish violet hue. Thankfully, it wasn't corrosive.
Another alien threw a barrage of cosmic essence energy balls. Wonny had a split second decision to imbue the blade of his katana with his own cosmic essence energy -- in this way, he can use the blade of his katana to deflect the incoming enemy projectiles -- swinging as fast as he could and trying not to miss incoming projectiles. Each deflected cosmic essence energyballs bounced, richoceted back to the shooter.
The shooter lost an arm first, then its head, and then the bounced cosmic essence energyballs disappeared like a bubble.
And few seconds...
A fleet of airships has cornered him, forming a circle as they surrounded him. The airships just float in midair, no sound, it just appeared instantly, like a grim reapers appearing out of nowhere and never invited nor expected.
Wonny grinned, akin to a rictus smile. His anger rises, too much for a strongest roof to contain -- his whole body trembled, like not just his blood boiled but also every muscles within him. Then there was hate -- a hate so high it became immeasurable. His aura deploys, a flame-like cerulean colored aura as he powers up.
Somewhere -- inside an unknown craft. The egg-headed aliens worked on their stations, calculating, operating.
A single alien stood with an air of superiority and authority, his hands placed behind folded.
The camera zoomed in to Wonny, not zoomed in too much but zoomed in enough for Wonny's full body to be seen.
The alien said: "Hmmmp What is he? Does the cosmic flash saves him?"
In a sudden, a subordinate spoke to him: "Sir... I've heard a space cult has mastered that phenomena"
"What?!"- the captain responded, eyes widened: "The chances of that phenomena from happening, is as same as fishing at the ocean for a needle!"
The same subordinate responded with a bitter quick chuckle: "Just because the chances were abyssmally low, it is never zero... just think of that man sir... he could be a part of that cult"
"All ships, keep firing"- yelled the captain, as he ordered them to do so.
At the outside, the ships encircling Wonny, had send a defeaning barrage of cosmic energy bombs launched from the ship. Cosmic essence is a type of energy that can be used by living beings, and can be intergrated in machinery serving as a powersource -- hence the ships can weaponize them.
The explosions from the cosmic essence energy bombs were 1.9 millions times powerful than the tsar bomba's explosion.
The barrage ended in 10 seconds. As the dusts left, only an incomprehensively massive craters left. Not even a sight of Wonny.
Because he was now in space, near at the planet's atmosphere. His left hand now clutching the hilt of the now sheathed katana, and his right index finger -- above it is a cosmic essence energy ball in a same size of 9mm bullet.
"Sorry, not interested"
He throw the energy ball into the planet in instantaneous speeds -- the planet became nothing but an exploding space dusts and debris within few seconds. Its moons were not spared from the planetary explosion.
In a single thought, he flew in warp speed, heading to Earth.
Whether he could reach to his home planet or not, is up to him.
But it will be a good news for his allies if he didn't make it back to Earth. As his return will be a nightmare to them.