The Space Cowboys

It's been a week already since Tommy started training alone in the forest of terror. Hunting wild beasts, eating whatever he can get through his poor cooking skills.

"I think it tastes better than before, maybe adding these weeds would make the flavor better... Never mind, this tastes awful." Tommy says to himself.

It's the morning of the next day. Tommy is out for another hunt while practicing his skills on trees. He has learned to jump around trees like the wild beasts himself and has grown far more agile than them, swinging through vines and using his stealth behind the leaves to find an opening to attack.

Right as Tommy is walking back to the spot he usually rests at, another wild beast with wings starts chasing him down. He jumps on top of it and starts hitting its long neck with a log of wood he has been carrying on his back and takes it down to the ground unconscious.

"Today seems like a feast, I've caught two wild beasts, this should get me by for two whole weeks." Tommy says to himself in excitement.

"Hey, that's our prey, get your hands off of it" A guy in a cowboy attire standing on a tree nearby suddenly speaks up.

"Huh? I don't see your name written anywhere on it. I was the one who killed it. So it belongs to me." Tommy replies.

"That's for the boss to decide." Another guy dressed in cowboy attire speaks from on top of another tree.

"Yeah! Besides! Do you even know how hard it is to drag a sky beast to hunt down on the ground? We had to set up baits and traps like crazy for days to get it that low! But then you showed up right when we were gonna drag the beast to our final trap!" The previous guy speaks up again.

"Relax, how about we go easy on the child and settle this like adults?" A guy also dressed like a cowboy but in a cape shows up.

"BOSS!" The two guys from before exclaim.

"Listen kid, my men did a lot of work to hunt this beast down and they've been hungry for a while this time because of our big score, however, you did a fantastic job hunting the beast down too, so hear me out, we split it half and half and part our ways, that way, all of us are happy. Deal?" The boss makes an offer.

"Alright... I guess that's fine." Tommy replies as he takes his half and part ways.

A few days later as Tommy is making his way through the forest, he hears noises of people screaming in a forest as isolated as the forest of terror. Tommy decides to run towards the direction of this sudden noise and finds a group of cowboys wildly swinging on trees through their whips and raiding a military camp.

He sees one of the three guys he saw a few days ago sneak up behind a military officer, grabbing his face in a potato sack and then tying him up while the rest swing from the trees and kick the rest out in no time.

They take all their supplies and leave them there all tied up. Another military officer comes running from the opposite direction carrying a gun. He shoots towards another one of the cowboys that Tommy saw a few days ago but just before the bullet lands, the boss shows up with his cape nearly covering half his face and the entirety of his body.

The boss has an intense stare on his face and his eyes shine in a light blue color which ends up making the bullets redirect their path back to the officer. The officer of course drops his gun and runs away in no time before his own bullets kill him.

After the cowboys are done raiding, Tommy steps into the military camp and unties the officers. The officers recognize that it's the prince and ask him what he's doing in such an isolated place. Tommy replies that he's just there to train, which surprises the officers.

Tommy then takes his leave saying he'll try to catch up to those cowboy thieves and the officers ask him to stay safe.

After spending almost two weeks in the forest, Tommy's sense of smell has become as strong as a wild beast itself. Using his enhanced sense of smell and hearing sounds from far away, he finally makes his way to the camp of the cowboy thieves and hides behind a tree to investigate them.

"Another win for the Space Cowboys gang! Cheers!!" One of the gang members screams.

"HELL YEAH!" The rest scream back.

"ALL THANKS TO THE BOSS!! SOON WE'LL GO DOWN IN BOOKS!!" Another gang member screams.

"I think you guys should relax. This gang would be nowhere as strong as it is right now without the support of you guys. Enjoy the night. There's bigger scores to settle tomorrow." The boss replies to the rest of the gang with a modest smile and heads to his tree house to sleep.

Tommy waits several hours for all the gang members to sleep and draws out a whole plan to detain the gang on the ground with a stick of wood. Tommy then lays out several vine traps and holes underground silently.

"Alright, I just have to run in the line I've decided and all of them will be rotting in a prison cell for their petty crimes." Tommy says to himself.

Tommy then rings a horn that he made from a wild beast's tooth. This alerts some cowboys to come out. Tommy starts running in a star shaped pattern across their hideout and the Space Cowboys gang members fall into his booby traps one by one leading to Tommy getting an opening to use their own traps against them.

In no time, Tommy has all of them caught in trees. All except one, the boss himself who finally comes out of his quarters.

"Come out whoever you are! Stop being a coward and show your face if you have even a tiny shred of manliness inside you, you scumbag! You'll pay for doing this to my men!" The boss exclaims.

Tommy then makes his grand entry from the sky, landing right in front of the boss's treehouse.

"Quite ironic to call me a scumbag, don't you think?" Tommy replies to the boss's words earlier.

"Heh, the kid from a few days ago. Gotta say, quite impressive for someone your age. But no matter your age, you will be punished rightfully." The boss answers.

"We'll see about that!" Tommy exclaims as he prepares to strike towards the boss but feels a sudden force pushing him back as soon as he closes in.

"This force... Could he also be using the same kind of binding energy M1ke spoke of...?" Tommy thinks to himself.

"What's wrong kid? Scared? I get ya, you're too young for this." The boss speaks up to Tommy as he starts running in his direction.

Tommy immediately evades the boss's relentless barrage of punches, starts running in circles around him. He is so fast that he starts forming afterimages, making it difficult to make out the real Tommy. While the boss is just standing there, Tommy sees this as a chance to strike from behind.

Much to Tommy's dismay, the boss looks back immediately and Tommy feels the same kind of push back force he felt earlier, however, this time, immobilized by the force and the utter shock, Tommy is unable to switch to a defensive stance mid air and gets struck down by the boss immediately.

"You have some excellent moves kid, those punches could've really hurt me had they landed. I think you've already figured out my ability by this point. Whatever attack comes in a 2m radius near me, I can reflect it back as long as I can focus on it. As powerful as it sounds, I had multiple openings throughout the fight where you could've caught me off guard, however, it seems your offensive and defensive stances aren't in sync." The boss says as he walks towards Tommy who is now unable to walk because of the blow he just took.

"Don't worry kid, I won't kill you or anything. You hurt my men, I gave you your rightful punishment. That makes us even. The name's Maximilian by the way. Just call me Max if you want to." The boss speaks up to Tommy again.

"How can you talk about being fair and even? You're literally a thief!" Tommy exclaims, still unable to move however.

"Think of me however you want to kid. I can't really convince stubborn children like you. Maybe when you grow up, you'll understand. You've got a lot of potential, I don't want to see it go to waste. How about you join us? We can help you tap into what you're really capable of doing." Max replies.

Tommy maintains his silence and gets tied up by the rest of the cowboy gang while he is unable to move. Max simply leaves while the rest of the gang put him in a wooden cage for the time being.

It is the next day already, the gang has been surprisingly nice to Tommy. They've all returned from another raid and are giving him extra food but Tommy simply refuses to eat it.

"Kid, we're not as bad as you think we are. Just eat the food up, we didn't poison it or anything. You'll not grow strong if you don't eat." One of the cowboy gang members speaks to Tommy.

"I don't eat stolen food, hmph." Tommy replies.

"By the way, the name's Jack. I'll just let the food stay there in case you're hungry later then." The cowboy replies back.

Later that night, the military gang that had been raided had gathered a bunch of wild beasts in electric cages.

"Hahaha, now that we've caught these beasts, we can proceed with our plan to exterminate the cowboy gang once and for all!" One of the officers exclaims as he opens a box full of containers containing some purple stuff and starts injecting it into the beasts.

Upon being injected, the beasts grow even more feral and enlarged in size. The officers take these cages near the cowboy gang's hideout and open the beasts up there and run for their lives.

The beasts manage to kill a few cowboys sleeping in the open which alarms the rest to come out.

"Killed by these wild beasts? Really? We take these ones out daily, come on!" One of the cowboys exclaims.

Max then comes out and says, "No, these beasts, they're larger than they usually are and they're far more feral."

The gang starts taking these beasts on but has severe difficulty fighting them off.

Jack, who was in charge of taking care of Tommy's cell runs towards his cage and tries to find it's key to free him up.

"HEY, WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?? WHY AREN'T YOU RUNNING AWAY??" Tommy screams.

"Kid, you need to run too! We can't hold you here forever! You're innocent, it'll only be inhuman of us to leave here for having your dumb fun!" Jack screams as he finally opens Tommy's cage and screams "RUNNN!!!"

Tommy and Jack start running from the beast but sadly, Jack gets caught by the beast and is eaten alive in front of Tommy in no time.

Tommy gets pissed beyond belief and says to himself, "Wait... This is just like before... I'm still running away from my problems... I've got to face them like a man..."

Tommy then kicks a tree behind him and makes it fall down. He then grabs the giant tree and swings it in the direction of the wild beast. The beast is then squished between the tree Tommy swung and a giant rock which makes it puke and return to it's normal size.

Just then, another one of the feral beasts is about to attack Tommy from behind but Max shows up and jumps in front of Tommy in his defense.

The beast was about to scratch Tommy but Max's power reflects the force of the scratch onto the beast's eyes.

While the beast's eyes are covered in blood, Max jumps high in the air, raises his fist up and proceeds to dash towards the blinded wild beast while screaming "DOUBLE IMPACT!!!".

The power of the move ends up exploding the beast into a bloody mess.

"Are you alright kid?" Max looks back and asks Tommy.

"Y-Yes... I'm okay... B-But why would you save me...?" Tommy replies.

"I told you kid. It'd be really sad to see someone of your potential to die. We're not evil people, I think Jack told you that much. Plus, you're a good soul. The way you helped save our lives proved it even more to me. You did great out here today taking one of those feral beasts out all by yourself. It took at least 5 of my gang members to kill one of those and on average, 3 of them died." Max replies.

"But Jack... He died... I was too weak to save him... He really didn't do anything to deserve this..." Tommy replies with tears in his eyes.

Max walks towards Tommy and hugs him.

"It's okay kid... You're still very young... No matter how strong one is... You can't save everyone... That's just how harsh reality is... But he didn't die in vain. He believed you could do great, he believed you were innocent enough to deserve living. Don't let his sacrifice go to waste." Max says to Tommy.

Tommy tightly hugs Max back and continues to cry while the rain begins.

To be continued in Chapter - 6...

[Characters]

1. Name: Maximilian Craig

Age: 44

Gender: Male

Description: Max is the leader of the Space Cowboys gang. He seem to have some sort of personal grudge against the Military and conducts his operations exclusively in Forest of Terror. His abilities include reflecting attacks he can see within a 2m radius as well as the Double Impact which sends back the recoil force of his accelerated attacks back at the enemy doing double the damage, hence the name.

Appearance: Maximilian has short brown hair and a beard. The sides of his hair have grown silver with age. Unlike the rest of the cowboys, he is the only one to wear a cape. He's around 5'10". He wears a white shirt, a black sleeveless jacket, a black hat and black pants. His cape is also black. One can say he's inspired from Batman when it comes to looks because even his gear is all black.

2. Jack Sheen

Age: Deceased

Gender: Male

Description: Jack is member of the Space Cowboys gang. He was in charge of Tommy's cell during his punishment which was no different from a parent grounding their child. He was very kind and talkative and had a tendency to laugh at his own bad jokes.

Appearance: He was 5'6",had long black hair and a really long nose. His eyes were also really big and goofy. He was really just the laughingstock of the gang but he really enjoyed putting a smile on everyone's face either way. He wore a red patterned shirt, brown pants, a yellow hat and a blue sleeveless jacket.