Star Dust (A Paladin Adventure)

Fighting my first alien on home turf. The arena doesn't count.

I ducked down and rolled away just as a bolt of some kind of energy emitted from the weapon.  I could feel the physical impact of the bolt hit my shoulder and the nerves scream even though my skin wasn't burned. I pulled out my staff and flicked it open, bringing it down on the Kree's wrist. Didn't have much effect; I felt it was much like poking somebody with a toothpick. The Kree backhanded me hard and I smacked into the wall. For the first time in a long time, I straightened the handle of the urumi and pulled it off the belt. The sheath slithered to the ground and it only took a couple of arm rotations to get it moving properly. The Kree looked baffled.

Until the blades bit savagely into his arm. Then he screamed.

It took longer to kill somebody with this thing than I thought it would. Or maybe it was just because he was so much larger than a human.

A thin reddish-violet blood sprayed everywhere.

Finally, I stopped.

"Poppy?" a voice asked from behind me. "What is that?"

I looked around. A couple of cops I'd worked with  before were standing behind me, their guns hanging at their sides, looking between me and the thing on the ground uncomprehendingly.

"This is what's next," I said after a moment. "It's called a Kree, apparently."

"What the fuck?" one of them breathed. Then he looked at me accusingly. "How long have you known that these things are out there?"

"A couple of days. We have been collecting information, which was presented to the authorities. The President is going to address the country tomorrow night. We haven't been hiding anything."

"How many of these things are there? What do they want?" the other one asked.

"Dunno about numbers, but they want to add the Earth to their empire," I said grimly. "There's another species as well. They are shapeshifters. We've heard that they can't be told apart from humans just by looking at them, but they're kind of reptilian in appearance and green in color. So far the only way we can think of to tell what they are is the blood. Look here." I used my good knife to pierce my skin and draw a drop of blood. "Ours is red. Theirs is a blue-green, I've heard."

One cop asked for my knife; I handed over one of my throwing knives. His blood shined red in the light of his  flashlight. He poked his partner's finger without asking.

The blood welled up green.

The...critter? what were they called again? tried to run, but the other cop brought him down and handcuffed him. "What do we do now?" the cop asked, steady despite his big eyes and rapid breathing.

I pulled out my cell phone and dialed. "Steve?" I said. "Got something you need to see."

It took about fifteen minutes, but by the time Steve showed up with reinforcements, the Kree's blood had stopped dripping. The three of us waited in silence. I flicked the last of the blood off the urumi and reattached it to my belt. The cop sat on his captive's back. Nobody said anything.

I heard the whine of a quinjet setting down in the intersection. "Emma!" Steve called out.

"Over here."

He pounded up followed by an unlikely crew. Bucky, of course, and Clint and Tony, but also Professor Xavier, Beast, Wolverine, and a tall man I hadn't met. "What happened?"

"I was surprised by the Kree," and I indicated the lump on the ground. "Then the policemen showed up and I had to explain. I told them about the blood difference, which is when we discovered that one. The Skrull. Officer Peterson incapacitated him. It?" Clint had gone to look at the Kree.