The Savages

Chapter 22: Dark Clones, Revealists and The Undead

Unai, 1834

It was Autumn when the legendary hero first stepped foot on Unai, crushing a dried up leaf underneath his black boot. Austere golden eyes, flecked with faint traces of ice blue, scanned the landscape, settling on the two remaining members of the Jagger family.

Jerry's entire body froze up. His gaze strayed over the coarse, inklike markings branded into the legendary hero's fair arms, following their swirling, coiling patterns up to the section of skin dividing his shoulder from his neck. The rumours had been true — he was of a completely new species, unheard of on Unai. The legendary hero had travelled a long distance from his own planet, Irediez, to assist his long-time friend in the fight to exterminate dark clones.

He stood at five foot and six inches tall, wearing clothes none of the occupants on the planet had ever seen before.

Covering his hands were a pair of fingerless black gloves, the backs of them emblazoned with an eccentric symbol. It bore similar shape to that of a circle, intercepted vertically down the middle by a broadsword, the perimeter lined with dozens of small dark blue fiery balls. The hem of the sleeveless white shirt he wore slid over his thighs, the words imprinted on the front in bold reading: 'You Cannot Destroy Me', and hanging loosely from his legs was a pair of black camouflage pants. Carried behind him in the gentle breeze, billowing like curtains caught up in a storm, was a black and white checkered blanket scarf wrapped loosely around his neck.

His face, stripped of emotion, held a resolute countenance. Curved sharply above his eyes were a pair of sleek brown eyebrows, and beneath his perfectly sculpted nose was a hard-set mouth, creased into a firm, unimpressed line. Framing his oval face, tenderly caressing either side of his chiselled jawline and spilling over his upper arms, were thick tresses of mocha brown hair, tinged with black on the underside. It was unlike anything Jerry had ever seen in his life.

"I cannot express how good it is to see you after all this time, Nick," the creator of Unai warmly greeted his friend, offering a hand for him to shake. "Thank you for coming all the way here to help us out. As you can tell by the ravaged look, Unai is facing a troublesome time at the moment."

Jerry shuddered as a cold shiver crept down his forearms, raising goosebumps to the surface of his skin. The town of Uziden laid around him in shambles — misshapen rock and cemented structures littered the barren wasteland, smashed and torn apart as if an earthquake had desecrated the area. The dark clones responsible for causing such extensive devastation were nowhere to be seen, cohering to the shadows during the day, only emerging when the sky darkened to commence their plans of wreaking more havoc. Jerry had been caught in the thick of it a few hours before, somehow escaping unscathed without a single graze on his body. The same could not be said for his brother, Micah. He stood beside Jerry as the two founders conversed, gazing down at the white pouch his broken arm was confined in. Dark semi-circles sagged beneath his once bright blue eyes, showing the gradual accumulation of sleep debt.

The legendary hero accepted the formal gesture, shaking Jonathan's hand firmly as a leader seeking to negotiate his own terms. "I see you haven't changed a bit. You still lie through your teeth."

Jonathan Walker laughed tersely, without any humour behind it. "Good to see you haven't changed all that much either."

"You there," the legendary hero said, considering Jerry for a long moment. He shrunk under the hero's scrutiny, suddenly feeling two feet tall. "What's your name?"

The clone swallowed the tight knot lodging itself in the centre of his throat, struggling to find the right words to speak. "J-Jerry Jagger, sir."