Giygas' Spawn
Another Beginning
Part 2
Ness felt something he hadn't felt in a long time - fear. He felt it when Buzz Buzz had said, for the first time, that he was chosen to battle against the greatest evil known to mankind. He felt it when he encountered the Electro Specter. No one knew it, but Ness was pretty scared of the Electro Specter. No man had ever even gotten close enough to it to be able to make out its true form, as all the light and lightning bolts surrounding it distorted its shape. And that same lightning that Ness had been approaching had seriously injured 6 scientists, and mortally wounded 5 more. Perhaps it was the thought that this power that had been called the 'Electro Specter' would do to Ness what it had done to many other people. Ness hadn't been scared of the other guardians of Shining Spots because no one had ever been killed by one. Ness felt fear when he encountered Giygas for the first and last time, because he saw what it had done to Pokey. And Ness felt fear now, perhaps because he had been softened from weeks at home, instead of fighting monsters. Perhaps he was scared that Giygas had not been truly defeated.
What Ness had said earlier about wishing Pokey would come back wasn't that much of a joke -- he really did think once in a while about a final battle with Pokey. But Giygas - no, not Giygas. Giygas was only defeated because of the divine intervention they received. Giygas would have smashed them like grapes, had Paula not prayed for strength.
Ness's jaw dropped when a monstrous, red spike emerged from the ground in front of him. Then another and another, until he saw that the spikes belonged to a being who was slowly pulling himself up from under the ground. He realized that two of the spikes were giant claws, and the creature was pulling itself up, out of the ground. The being finally emerged, and Ness saw that it was like a giant, red and black fire ant with spikes. Ness knew, without even thinking of it, that his worst fears had been realized -- Giygas was not totally defeated.
Ness prepared for a fight, but then came the horrible realization that he had left all his equipment, his backpack; everything he needed was at his house, sitting under his bed.
****
The monster shrieked horribly and struck out at Ness with a spiky appendage. Ness wasn't sure if it was an arm or a leg, but it was long and had three joints dividing it. It looked heavily armored, and must have been a foot thick. Ness jumped back and looked for something, anything, to use for defense or as a weapon. He saw a large rock on the ground, and lifted it over his head. His adrenaline level was higher than it had ever been before. Ness hurled the stone at the monster with all his strength. The rock flew and hit the beast in the abdomen, catching it off guard. It fell backwards and smashed a small tree under its weight. The monster appeared to be dazed, and Ness took the opportunity to run.
The monster, according to an anonymous source who must have witnessed the attack, woke up from its daze and, after seeing that Ness was no longer around, dug back into the ground.
That night, the police had blocked off all the roads, but there were still people from all over town, looking at the huge hole made by the burrowing monster. Many rumors began to spread, the most popular of which was that Ness had never even taken time to find out what was coming out of the hole, and that he simply ran home to his mother. That rumor dissipated when Ness appeared at the site of the attack to give an account to the police.
****
Ness was tired. He had just had a terrifying encounter with some humongous, strange monster, and had spent the last 4 hours talking to the police. Of course, he was highly respected by them (he even saw a few of the ones who he had to defeat to get Capt. Strong to open the road to Twoson), but the police had to do everything by the book, including fingerprinting Ness and interrogating him.
"Did you make contact with the creature?"
"What??? What is that supposed to mean? Yes, I had some tea with the nice little monster! What do you think?"
It was obvious Ness was becoming annoyed and irritated at his being kept at the police station. For the first time in a while, he actually wanted to go home instead of be away from it.
"Did the creature harm you?"
"No, but I threw a big stone at it. That knocked it over and it blacked out, for the fiftieth time."
"And then you ran?"
"Yes! For the last time, yes!"
The policeman's radio crackled and a voice gave the officer the OK to let Ness go.
"You can go now, son. Sorry about all this."
Ness left the interrogation room as fast as he could. He hated the smell of the police station, for some reason. It smelled of coffee, doughnuts, and prisoners who hadn't taken baths in a long while.
Ness stepped outside and saw that it was dusk. He heard the weather report earlier that day telling that there would be no moon showing tonight. He would have to run to get home before it got too dark to see where he was going. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, Ness saw three figures sitting on the porch of the police station -- three familiar figures.