Niagara Bodyguard

The Invasion

Chapter 5:  Not ready, Not Ready At All

                You ever wake up to a gong banging next to your poor sleeping head?  It’s not fun, at all, especially since the gong then fell off of its rusty stand and right onto the sleeping head mentioned before (my sleeping head).  So I got up, ready for any other gong about to attack me, but a gong wasn’t coming.  Something much, much worse was.

                You have to understand, I was still half asleep so that whole groggy point of waking up was still running the programming in my body.  An arrow shot through the open doorway leading to complete darkness.  Thankfully, it was a few centimeters AWAY from my head.  Just far away that my curly hair wasn’t caught in a conundrum of wood and steel and… IS THAT FIRE?!  A fiery arrow is impaled into the metal wall in my house... great.  I ran out of the house, gratefully I live alone, and run next door to my father’s house.  As I screamed his name I searched through the rubble of the one story house that used to be there.  I found Layna Anyal protecting him and greeted her with a quick hug, can’t be distracting the person protecting my family.

“Where have you been?  This has been going on for an hour!!” She chastised me as I lifted and moved anything I could to find an exit.  The way I came in was littered with flying arrows, so I chose to go somewhere else.

“Alright, I can see 4 guys from where you ran in and 1 where we’re heading.  Let’s keep moving forward.”  Lanya reported.

                Lanya can see through infrared and x-ray vision and other ways scientists could only dream of.  As she explained about the guy we were heading towards she guessed he was from one of the American villages.  That was the most dangerous news I could’ve heard.  I approached with more caution than a bomb detecting squad.

“Right around the corner now.”  Lanya told me.

                I slid out with my hands held out like Banner taught me and immediately tried to clinch my unknown opponent.  Suddenly I was standing in a blur and almost instantly relaxed.  That is, until my head felt like another gong landed on it.

“Norrik!  Sorry, I came as soon as I heard there was a raid was being held today!  I need you to come with me, and bring your family, where are they?  I can go find them.”

                I felt just as groggy as this morning and pointed slowly behind me as Lanya came in ready to burn Banner into… well, into nothing.  As Lanya got ready to use her abilities I quickly looked at her with eyes that said ‘Don’t even’.  After I coaxed her to follow us with my dad, now fully awake, not far behind her, we quickly got outside.

“Alright, everybody follow me!  I have a safe house nearby that we can hide in.  Norrik and I built it underground, c’mon.”  Banner explained.

“Wait!  Wait, we have to go get Nally and Hael!” Lanya warned.

                Nally and Hael were Lanya’s sisters and the other two ‘assets’ in this village.  I split us up, Banner and my father to the safe house, Lanya and I went to go find her sisters.

“Nally would be behind her house just like we practiced.  I’ll go get her.  You know where Hael’s going to be.”  Lanya panted out as she sprinted off towards her sister’s house.

                I did.  I knew exactly where she’d be and I had to stop her before she really got hurt.

Chapter 6:  Never too late

                As I ran through our village none of it was burning, which meant Hael hadn’t started fighting yet.  It was just a matter of finding her before she did.

“I’ll kill you!  There is no way you’re getting away with that!!!  Stop running from me you cowards!!”  I heard closer to me than I thought I would.  I hurried towards the source and found Hael cradling someone in her arms and crying.  Just as she was about to get up and run in the direction she was facing I grabbed her arm and pulled her into a hug.

“They killed her!  They shot an arrow right into her chest.  What am I going to do?”  She sobbed into my chest.  I told her we had to leave now.  She didn’t put up too much resistance, which was really surprising considering who was shot.

“Let me just grab the necklace I gave her last year.  It’s around her neck. Wait!  You saved your dad last year.  Can you do it for her? Please?”  Hael begged me.

                Last year my dad had had a heart attack and we found out that the people in our village need heat to live.  Without it we die, but the warmer we are the stronger.  So last year, I burned through his clothes, on accident, and warmed up his whole body with my hands.  Might as well try, right?  She’s practically family.  Everyone in the village is.  I placed my hands on the girl’s chest and made my hands as hot as possible.  Then her stomach, thighs, legs.  Finally, I put my hands around her head at the base of her neck.  I cooled down, wiped the sweat off of my forehead and picked her up.

“Will she be alright?  Is she going to wake up?”  Hael questioned me unrelentingly.  I didn’t stop her, I was a lot worse with my father, and I was the ‘doctor’ that worked on him.  I let her ramble on to me with questions about her girlfriend’s condition.  If it was my girlfriend, I promise, I would’ve burned down every last raider in the village that was stupid enough to fight back.  Then I would’ve turned the rest into ashes.  We got back to the safe house and I laid the girl down finally realizing who it was.  If not for Banner’s incredible strength I would’ve kept my promise.  That was another one of our ‘assets’.

That was my sister.