Across Book 2

Chapter 3 : Origin : Jacob O'Connel

Jacob pulled out his hand, and put his foot back, making a point to Galen that there was more after this first strike.

Whenever Jacob was assigned to any mission, he always took the front line. He was quick on his feet and relentless. His enthusiasm was always accounted for, noticed even by his opponents. Members of the ACROSS organisation always wondered if Jacob would rise up to his elder brother's position, but only fate knew how different both the siblings were.

"Do you give up now?" Jacob asked, "It's your turn to attack, you know?" he continued

Galen noticed his wound and ignored it. Perhaps he didn't let it bother him. Instead he made his way swinging his legs to Jacob again. But even he himself knew that given his injuries, he was only getting slower with the next blow.

"So Galen," Jacob said amidst the fight as he countered an attack from his opponent, "where are you from?"

Galen shifted his weight on his other foot as he was about to lose balance and replied, "A planet called Krinster".

"It's definitely not near to us, is it?" Jacob asked, and turned his elbow to hit Galen.

Galen lost his balance but laughed a bit, "no it's not" he replied.

Jacob and Galen stood a few metres away, resting on their breathes as the exhaustion reached their body.

"The teenagers, where are they?" Jacob questioned

"Our leader saw them this morning" Galen stated, "and he was very curious as how humans could serve us as our treat"

"How did you reach here?"

"We were passing through the Andromeda Galaxy when we saw this planet. But it was odd." Galen said.

"What was odd?" Jacob wondered.

"Earth didn't show up in our map tracer, until we manually searched for it." replied Galen.

"That's odd, must be a glitch." Jacob replied, aware of the reason why Earth didn't show up in any interstellar map tracer - because of the NEMYS.

"And the curiosity brought us here." Galen continued, "Celio wanted to know how humans would taste like but that's when you four showed up."

"You don't want to taste us though..." Jacob replied, "Do you want to get sick with all the negativity humans carry in them ?"

"Huh !" chuckled Galen, "It's been long since I had a legit conversation with someone ! Celio just orders around and he isn't much of a conversation piece, or to say, at all" Galen said

"Then why don't you just leave?" Jacob questioned

"Celio wants to explore this Planet," Galen took his stance again, ready for the next round, "and he wants to win this fight.", a voice of loyalty to his leader followed under his tone.

"You haven't hurt the teenagers yet." Jacob said, raising his arm to compliment his claws, ready to go again, "If you retreat back then there's no reason for us to fight."

But they did engage in a fight again, with another round of intense leg sweeping fight. Jacob felt his claws striking on hard skin. "The Krinster lifeforms were hard to fight on", Jacob marked.

Alioth had stopped running once he reached a location outside anyone's vision but Brock managed to follow him. They were near the old 'APARTMENT 71'.

Both of them stared at each other, waiting for their opponent to make a move but no one did. Eventually Alioth got frustrated and said "I presumed you wished to win the round"