A True Hero

13 - Dark Matters

I drew my sword and sprinted away from the window. Now that Dark Matter knew we were here, specifically that I was here, he would seek to end us quickly.

"Nicolette!" I yelled, rushing to her chamber. Thankfully, she was already awake and met me sitting on the edge of her pod.

"Meta Knight, I had the weirdest dream," she began, holding her head. I thought I saw a trace of gold in her eyes; I hate to say it, but I was too distracted to care.

"We can discuss it later," I said, taking her hand and pulling her toward the hangar doors. "NME has recruited the Dark Matter to guard Nova, and if we don't leave now, they'll blow us to bits."

"Dark Matter?" she gasped, suddenly stopping. "Are they black sunflower-like things?"

"A few of them...yes..." I said, slowing down. "Have you met them before?" I asked suspiciously. I thought only I knew of NME's interactions with these beings.

"In my dream!" she cried, then hurried to the same window I had looked out. "That swordsman...I saw him, too. And that chest!"

"What else?"

"A pretty epic battle...but I was awoken before the results were revealed." She fiddled with the necklace around her neck. "You and I were fighting those things, and it looked to me like we were winning. I knocked down a bunch of them..but then I blacked out, and here we are." She turned back to me and laughed at my bewildered orange eyes.

Trying to regain control of my emotions, I opened the hangar and threw down my Warp Star. "Don't think too much of it," I advised. "After all, it was just a dream." Despite my final words, I knew better than to completely dismiss the relevance between her dreams and our current situation. When she told me what happened with Arthur, I had almost been expecting something like this.

Looking slightly insulted, she hopped on the star with me. We blasted out into space, taking a long route to avoid being seen by the aliens. As far as they knew, we were still in the ship.

"I wouldn't worry about them attacking us first," she claimed, drawing her swords. "In my dream, we were the first to engage." I drove the Warp Star behind another meteor and asked if she was sure.

"I'm 199% positive," she replied, and her eyes grew wide. "And we'd better engage now; Nova's coming." Sure enough, she was right. A bright light flooded the space in front of us as the objects pulled together. Very slowly, a large circle began to appear, and seven rainbow-colored stars circled above Dark Matter. He raised his sword triumphantly as they began to combine into one massive lightning bolt. His light gray cape, lined with orange and yellow triangles, whipped around him. It was framed with a golden necklace with a light blue stone and rested upon a red handkerchief around his neck. He had no feet or legs but floated above the ground.

"Let's go," I said, and we flew toward the mess. He immediately saw us, and sent some of the sunflower beings at us. They blasted lasers from their large single eye, but I raised my sword and deflected them. Despite being a rather cheap sword, it was serving its purpose better than the one I lost on Arkiva.

Once we were near enough, we jumped off of the Warp Star onto the rings around Nova and were met by the dark beings. They were fairly easy to destroy, but the problem was the sheer number of them. Nic and I were quickly separated, but I knew she could hold her own for a while.

I reflected a beam back at a monster, blowing it up, but twenty more instantly took its place. They began to try to jump on me, so I abandoned my sword and resorted to self-defense techniques.

As one jumped and shot a beam, I ducked and let it hit its fellow members. I punched up and kicked out, using some moves Nicolette taught me during our sessions. Grabbing one of the demons by their 'petals,' I began spinning, holding it out in front of me to take out as many around me as possible. With its eye facing out, I continued spinning on one foot like I was doing a pirouette and kicked its back, making it shoot a laser into the ones around me. I kept it up until the crowd around me had been defeated, then turned to the swordsman in the middle. What I saw made my heart stop.