The Worst News

"What?" Akira, astounded by the sudden turn of events, tried to get up, but Max's hands on his shoulders were like solid iron. Forget about getting up. Akira couldn't even slide an inch.

The pink-skinned alien woman leaned forward, smiling.

"Hey, stay away!" Akira began trashing his hands and legs. "Max, you promised me that you wouldn't erase my memories."

"Yes," Max said in a calm voice, "and I'm not doing it. She is the one who is doing it."

"But you are helping her," Akira shouted.

"I never said I wouldn't do that part," Max said. "Besides, this is not my call. I'm just following orders. It's not like I want you to forget things you don't want to forget."

"This is not right," Akira said as loudly as possible. "Someone help me. Please." He looked around. A few people glanced in his general direction, gave him a grin or a bemused look, and then returned to their work. It was as if a boy screaming for help was an everyday thing here.

"Stop creating a scene," Max said and tightened his grip on Akira's shoulders. "Freta, could you please hurry up."

"Yes, sir," Freta, the pink-skinned alien, said and peered down at Akira. "Sorry about this, but don't take this personally." She began revolving her hands around each other while wriggling her fingers. "This will be a little painful. But don't worry, you'll forget about it in no time."

"Well, that's the problem," Akira said. "I don't want to forget the pain I've felt today."

Freta just smiled and continued making those weird hand gestures.

"What are you doing?" Akira asked, his heart now hammering in his chest.

"She is activating her abilities," Max said from behind him.

Thin threads of misty, red light were materializing between Freta's fingers and hands. Akira stared at them, his eyes wide in awe, his rambling heart calming down a bit.

"This was not what I imagined when Rin first mentioned erasing memories," Akira said, now completely captivated by the thickening web of bright red light. "I thought you would pull out some kind of a device from your pocket and then flash me with a special light. Like they do in movies."

"Something small and powerful like that doesn't exist in our world," Max said. "We don't have a device that can do that. We only have people with that kind of abilities."

"Abilities?" Akira asked, taking deep breathes. "Not devices but people with abilities... huh... abilities..." Akira's eyelids began getting heavier. He blinked, suddenly tired. His whole body felt sore. Only two things mattered to him right now: Sleep and getting more information about this new world he had just discovered. A new, strange world that had been hiding not in the front but right over his head.

"W-what happens when you don't have anyone who can erase memories?" Akira asked slowly, blinking, and nodding every now and then.

"If we don't have anyone here on Earth or don't have enough people to do a certain task," Max said, his voice sounding as if it was coming from a distant land. "We ask the alliance for help who then send guardians from other planets... Like they send Freta."

"Fre..." Akira muttered and looked at the alien woman through the curtains of red, gleaming threads. When had the strings covered his head? He didn't know, and he realized he had zero interest in learning about it. All he cared about now was to close his eyes and forget about his damn world.

And that's what Akira did. He closed his eyes and let it go.

Soon, Akira found himself in a pitch-black place. Akira expected the world to stay dark like this forever, but it didn't. A spot bright red appeared in the middle of this realm. A second later, the red spot started stretching itself out into a string of red light. Akira stared at snaking thread as it came crawled toward him. The front end began uncoiling and turned itself into a thin hand--a hand made up of fibers. Even after turning into a skeletal hand, the string continued to unwind itself, forming more thin arms and multiplying in the process.

And before Akira knew it, he was surrounded by these thin hands made out these glowing red strings. The spindly arms were reaching toward him, and Akira knew what they wanted to do with him. They wanted to go into his private world made up of his memories and change things up, control him like a puppet, and make his past self do stuff which he hadn't done, like not going up the hill but going straight to his house.

"Don't," Akira heard himself say. "Don't do it," he begged as the strings form a dom around him, still curling and crawling towards him. "DONT."

"They won't do you anything," a woman's echoey voice rang across this strange empty world. "You have my protection."

Akira felt his eyes growing wide as green hands slid past his ears and embraced him from behind. Akira glanced over his shoulder. The green woman was right behind him, her arms now hanging around his neck. She looked exactly the same. Only her size had gotten smaller.

"Never forget about your quest," the green woman said. "Find my brother's stones. Bring them back to me." She started glowing, turning brighter and brighter, radiating an emerald light that began destroying the red, fiery strings. It burned them and turned them into dust the way a real fire would burn an actual thread.

A moment later, Akira Ito opened his eyes and found Freta sitting on the floor, breathing heavily, her eyes wide. She looked as if she had seen a ghost. Akira was about to ask her if she was okay. But the look of horror (or was it surprise?) disappeared, and a smile took its place. "Sir, Maxim, you didn't tell me that he can use cosmic energy."

"I didn't know that myself," Max said. "I did feel some residual cosmic energy on his body. But I thought it had come from the Kitod."

Freta stood up and brushed herself off. "I've had people resist me. But I've never had anyone push me out of their head."

"I..." Akira started. "I don't know what you are talking about it. I didn't do--"

A loud arm cut him off, and suddenly the lighting in the enormous room turned red. The big screen that covered the whole front wall was now showing one word: Emergency. Soon, the word was replaced by the video of a humanoid with big, yellow eyes and wrinkled skin.

"What is the meaning of this, Captain Tredaf?" the old man, who had been giving Akira seething looks a moment again, said. Hadn't Max called him the second captain?

"First of all, I'm glad that you answered my call," the humanoid, his image covering the whole screen, said. "I was afraid that no one would be there to answer it," he added, his amplified voice booming across the big room.

"What do you mean?" the second captain asked, his voice also loud and clear in the ensued silence.

"You know what I mean," the humanoid said. "We lost another planet, another class-one civilization."

"A..." the second captain took a long pause. "Are you sure?"

"Dead sure," the humanoid said. "I believe there is a Grevatian with you on Earth. Is she there with you right now?"

The second captain turned around and glanced at Freta. "No, she is not here. Out on a mission. Why are you asking?"

"Well," the humanoid said. "If the grevatian returns, tell her this--I don't' know how you will, but tell her that her homeworld has been wiped out. Tell her that the alliance failed to protect it. Tell her she is the last of her kind."

This was greeted by an ominous silence.

"Wait? Are you telling me that the grevat has fallen?" the second captain asked.

"It has."

"But that's impossible!" the second captain shouted at the screen and banged his fist on the curved table. "You have to be joking. The Grevatians had Guzu, one of the Ten Holy Knights."

"The attackers probably defeated her," the humanoid said.

That line made the whole room erupt in hushed whispers.

"Though we don't know who our enemy is, we do know one thing. Our enemy is strong," the humanoid went on. "However, they are still targeting the class-one civilizations. Earth could be their next target. I'm sending fleets to guard the outskirts of your star system, and since Guzu is dead or missing, one of the seats for the Ten Holy Knights is now empty. There are many people in the race for that seat... but we all already know who is going to win it and take Guzu's place. Therefore, I'm declaring Maxim Sharp as the unofficial tenth member of the Ten Holy Knights."

If the past few lines had earned hushed whispers, his last line made the whole room erupt in loud murmurs.

"Everyone, quiet," the second captain ordered when the room started getting too noisy. "Do you have any other information for us, Captain Tredaf?"

"No," the humanoid replied. "This is all I could tell you now."

"Okay, then we'll be waiting for the alliance's fleets."

"Yes. I'll send the fleets right away," the humanoid said. "Take care of yourself and your planet. Goodbye."

The video of the strange humanoid disappeared, and random images of maps and texts took his place.

No one in the room spoke a word.

Then, a few seconds later, Akira saw a woman approach Freta with a concerned look on her face. "Freta," the woman said, gently tapping Freta's shoulders.

Freta didn't say a word. Her body simply tilted back at the woman's touch, and Akira stared as Freta fell and slammed her head against the floor.

Akira watched as people gather around her unconscious body. Only one thought was now running through Akira's mind: When will this terrible day end?