High in the clouds, Knox stared at the ground with his arms crossed.
With his flight, he was simply going around the planet sightseeing, taking this time to appreciate the beauty of the world from a bird's eye view. He could've been doing something more productive, but... well, he could fly.
To not fly around and take in the sights would've been such a waste.
And he had to admit that the architecture of this planet's people was breathtaking.
Sprawling courtyards cut into perfect geometric patterns. Towers rising like spears of glass and metal. Bridges arched over empty streets. It was a clear showcase of the architect's passion. It was almost... alive.
Or at least, it should've been.
The scouter on his temple flickered faintly, clicking as it cycled through readings. Knox's eyes narrowed at the numbers scrolling across the lens. A city this size should've been crawling with hundreds of thousands of people, maybe even millions.
Instead? Barely a few hundred scattered signatures could be picked up.
"...Weird," he muttered.
He shrugged it off and turned away from the city, his Ki enveloping him as he prepared to take off-
When a golden blast tore through the sky toward him.
The world slowed to a crawl. Whipping around he backhanded the thing out of the air with a grunt. The attack went careening off into the distance before detonating against a far-off skyscraper.
The sting of the tiny energy pellet lingered on the back of his hand.
'That was the same sort of blaster that the sniper had.'
Slowly, he turned back toward the city and watched as all of those signatures his scouter detected suddenly appeared. Each one came out of a different house or skyscraper or below vehicles, hidden in nooks and crannies. All of them resembled the same red ant-like alien from before.
'So it was an ambush, huh?'
With a clench of his fists, his Ki surged, wreathing his body in a black and red aura. With his two new Ki skills, his power level had tripled. These people weren't even a challenge anymore.
"Heh," he smirked. "Wouldn't this be considered self-defense?"
He kicked off the air and rocketed toward the city, straight at the attacker. The moment his body moved, the skyline lit up. Dozens of golden blasts ripped out from the towers, courtyards, and alleys. Energy beams crisscrossed the air like a storm of tracer rounds, all zeroed in on him.
Knox barked a laugh, the sound wild and exhilarated, and didn't stop moving. He didn't have the raw skill to dodge each blast while still advancing towards his attacker.
But who needed skill when you had raw power?
Ki flared from his limbs, carrying him in impossible angles as bolts screamed past his face and burst in his wake. The sheer speed at which he was thinking and moving made the entire ambush seem like a joke.
"Too slow!" he shouted, weaving through an arching barrage.
A blast nearly clipped his shoulder, but he twisted at the last second, letting it slide past with only a scorch mark.
His aura flared hotter, the red-and-black blaze snapping like a whip around him. Then Knox kicked off the air-
-and vanished.
One moment he was a target against the skyline. The next, a violent crack split the air as he reappeared against the side of a tower, boots biting into steel and stone. The wall caved under his momentum, and before gravity could even touch him, he kicked off again, launching at a diagonal.
Another sonic crack. Another blur.
He ricocheted between buildings in straight-line bursts. Wall to wall, rooftop to archway, each collision scattering debris like gunfire. The enemy blasts chased him, but only ever struck where he had been an instant before, detonating in his wake.
To them, he was a streak of black and red light, hammering through the sky in unpredictable angles, accelerating faster with every impact.
By the time they realized where he was heading, Knox was already there, dropping like a meteor onto the soldier who had fired first.
"One dow-!"
Something hit him.
One instant he was right in front of the red bug, fist cocked, the next it felt as though a hammer slammed into his ribs and ripped the breath from his lungs.
The world blurred. Knox's body spun end over end, pain lancing white-hot across his side as he was hurled through the skyline. Glass and steel erupted around him as he smashed through one building, then another, then a third, debris showering in his wake.
He finally skidded to a stop in a crater of stone and rebar, rubble collapsing around him in choking dust. His chest heaved, every breath jagged. Blood ran warm at the corner of his mouth.
Luckily, pain wasn't anything debilitating for him. Else he definitely would've passed out by now.
"What… the fuck was that?" he hissed, forcing himself up to one knee, vision swimming.
Knox wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, forcing his trembling legs to lock straight as he stood. His Ki slowly stabilized him, but that single hit had taken a decent chunk just to keep him from not getting knocked out.
"Che," he spat, glaring through the dust.
Knox dragged in a shaky breath, brushing dirt and grit from his shoulders. His gaze flicked to the cracked scouter still hanging off his temple. The lens was spiderwebbed, the readings jittering like static.
"Useless thing," he muttered, peeling it off. "Couldn't warn me about whatever that was?"
His eyes lifted to two figures hovering above.
The first was obviously the one who hit him. Another bug-shaped alien, tall and thin with the segmented body of an ant, its carapace gleaming black under the sun. A shimmer of white Ki rolled off it like heatwaves, flaring wildly around its limbs as it stared down him with blank compound eyes.
But it was the second figure that caught Knox's attention.
Another ant-like alien, but stark white where the first was black. Its carapace glinted almost metallic, polished to a shine. Draped across its body were robes and cloths in what looked like some sort of royal or noble garb.
It didn't bother with flight like its counterpart. Instead, it sat back leisurely in a hovering vehicle reminiscent of a floating throne.
'These two are entirely different colors from the rest of these bugs.' He noted.
The white ant raised a sleek device, curved and studded with black nodes. When it spoke, the sound didn't come from its mandibles, but from every building around Knox.
"You have fallen straight into our trap," it droned, almost amused. The voice was most definitely feminine.
Knox didn't respond, letting the woman talk so that he could use this time to recover.
"We anticipated your arrival," the alien continued. "Not you, specifically, but the invasion as a whole. Once we noticed your spacecraft in our orbit, we immediately assumed you were hostile. And if that assumption were true, your forces would strike the densest settlements first, eradicating the populace to cause the greatest damage."
The white ant leaned back in its hovering dais, tone dripping with disdain.
"So of course we made precautions. Every major city has long been evacuated before your vessel fell. You are surrounded on all sides not by helpless civilians, but by soldiers."
"Struggling," She finished coldly, "is futile. Cease resistance and you will be unharmed."
As if to punctuate the declaration, the midnight black warrior drifted down from the air, landing heavy on the fractured street just a dozen yards from Knox. Dust plumed around its feet as the white aura flared hotter.
Knox's lips curled at the white ant's speech.
He opened his mouth to finally reply-
Bweep. Beep-Beep-Beep-Beep.
But then he froze. The scouter he'd half-written as broken flared to life, stabilizing at last on the figure standing before him.
A power level of 1297.
Knox stilled, grin faltering for the first time. "...Shit."
Of course he'd run into the literal strongest being on the planet, if the briefing was accurate. Though he doubted it was entirely correct, as it said the highest was twelve hundred, not fucking three points away from 1300.
Just... lovely.
He exhaled sharply through his nose, rolling his shoulders as if to play off the hesitation.
"Alright, alright, hold on a second." He raised his hands but kept his guard up. "Look, I think you've got the wrong guy. I'm not some invader here to destroy your world. I mean-I am, technically-but not…"
He trailed off, a bitter chuckle escaping him. "I'm just a slave, okay? They call us expendables. They drop us out here and tell us to kill anything that walks. I, however, was just sightseeing. It was your people who attacked me first, technically."
The warrior didn't move. It simply stared with those empty, compound eyes, aura still flaring around its limbs.
Knox's grin strained. "So, you know, you could just let me leave. Wouldn't that be smarter than wasting both our time?"
The silence stretched long enough that he wondered if they'd even heard him. Finally, the black ant spoke. Its voice was far deeper than the white ant, but still clearly feminine.
"…Orders are orders."
Knox's jaw tightened.
"Don't worry, I am not here to kill you," she said evenly. "Only to subdue. If you give up now, you will not be harmed."
Then, its head tilted slightly, compound eyes narrowing.
"...Though, you are quite literally oozing malice. That dark energy that clings to you is the most baleful thing I have ever witnessed. I doubt your story is entirely truthful."
Knox's grin finally slipped. He sighed and shook his head in disappointment. 'I knew this damn [Evil Aura] was gonna be a pain in the ass.'
"Welp," he muttered, rolling his shoulders as his fists clenched tight.
Cracks spiderwebbed out from his boots as his Ki erupted, black and red aura lashing violently around his frame. The air warped under the heat, dust and gravel lifting into the haze and disintegrating in its pressure.
"You can't say I didn't try diplomacy."