Close Nemesis

Chapter Two: The Incident

LAIVA:

The supermarket is super busy today. It is my day off, so this gives me an opportunity to go shopping. Normally, every second sunbright, I have to work at the construction site, building abodes out of the orange-brown wood from the acacirch trees found in the Occos system.

Lately, we've been fixing homes that have been damaged by Oppugnant's attacks. Of course, these houses were destroyed by accident. How do I know? I know because I am Oppugnant.

Before my plasma energy powers manifested, I was just like the other construction workers. Except I was the shy one. It was a job that I was always excited to go to. On a typical day, I would either help build or renovate houses with the rest of my construction crew. The bright blue and green glow of our holocrete safety vests made us instantly recognisable. even during the daytime, much like the bio luminescent plants in the Ryxn Timberland on the world of Zevlag.

I also lived with a beautiful Plassilmaver boyfriend with white, rubbery skin that never gets wrinkles or skin deformities. I must say, I'm really jealous. I put on make-up on my face to hide my flaws, but Xalir doesn't mind. He's my soulmate, the bright star that motivates me daily.

Three and a half Occosian years ago, however, my life changed forever when I received my powers. I had journeyed by myself to help humanitarian works on the distant planet of Knirdova. One of its coastal cities, Egtonelaf, had been devastated by a fierce hurricane, and because I was taking some holidays from work, I was feeling quite bored, and wanted to build something. So, I travelled there to help.

While I was gone,  Xalir was on a fishing trip with Aacis at the time, so I had to pilot my space car to Knirdova, using a telethrust engine. A telethrust engine is a type of engine that enables space vehicles to travel from system to system in an instant. It is commonly mistaken for teleportation, but I don't think anybody's mastered that technology, yet.

When I arrived on Knirdova, the unusual time dilation caused by travelling at the speed of light meant that I had travelled roughly a decade into the future. However, travelling back to Occos II using telethrust would mean that I could easily return to the time from which I had left Occos II. Although, if I telethrusted to Occos II using a future vehicle, I would find myself in a future version of that world.

Inevitably, I did end up doing just that. During the course of the following several weeks, I had been helping repair an autoshop owned by a thirty year old car salesman known as Zieré.  She was a grey furred Garzlegar, a species of humanoid felines with two-furless noses that sit parallel to each other. I didn't really want to talk to her, but she insisted on talking about superheroes and calamities. Due to Knirdova's far proximity from the rest of the galaxy, she knew of events that were yet to transpire in my parts of the galaxy.

The time ripples are so confusing. Whenever one travels to Knirdova or any other planets and systems within the  border zone, they are technically travelling to the future. That's where the future version of Occos II comes into this.

What I saw of the planet was horrific. The future version of Occos was charred, devoid of life, its purple skies ashen and bleak.

Zieré had taken me there in order to convince me that she wasn't crazy. She explained that the calamity on Occos II would happen within the next decade or so. In her time, this had already happened, obviously, as a powerful supervillain known as Rotcetorp had wreaked destruction and death across the galaxy. After showing me a highly detailed image of Rotcetorp,  she then instructed me that after I had finished rebuilding her autoshop on Knirdova, I would have to find her younger self on Garbatrak, a literal garbage planet located in the system that neighbours Occos II's Terraepara System.