A Silver Bodied Destiny: The Starman Junior Story
Ten years in the
future
I gaze up into the star-lined sky from this derelict planet and wonder on a great many things. I can never return home, and the sight of this place makes that fact all the more bitter. Earth wasn’t always like this. The browns were once a mixture of greens, and life sprung up from where the dust now settles. This place used to be worth fighting for. The Saturns had it right; they took off once we’d won. I’d have done the same thing if it wasn’t for the Master. There are only a few heroes for the other side left, and the majority of us on our side are just plain bored. I have always thought I was meant for something great, but I came late into the war and it looks like I’ll live out the rest of my days as a mere Junior. The ruins of an old arcade, the place where I am sitting, is where I usually come to sit when such moods strike me, but tonight this feeling of futility is especially strong, and I can’t seem to shake my need for answers.
I hop down from my brick-built perch and wipe the dust away from my visor. I grimace at the sight of my silver, tail-like arm. Silver, a sign of my rank. The streets, if you can call them that anymore, are empty. The patrolling Regs were probably out drinking behind the old police station with that Titan Ant, he is such a bad influence.
As I come to the steps of the only sound building left for miles, I take a deep breath and enter. Blackish green pillars line the hallways of glass and give way to an atrium where grass still grows, the only place the Master has allowed it to. Before me lies two natural legends; a stump, on which a perfectly sphere-shaped stone rests, and a great tree, with a rich trunk that looks as though it’s been well lacquered for all of time and leaves the color of emeralds soaked in moonlight. On this tree hangs a single apple. I approach and sit at the dark bench beneath this tree and wait.
“Hey, hey! He’s back!” An excitable voice issued from the apple. “So what’s shakin’, how’d your boss like that bit about the three guys and a girl defeating him in the past? Sounds like a kind of sit-com, right?”
“I don’t know, Apple of Enlightenment. The Master wasn’t too happy about it, but that’s not really why I’m here.” I replied. I still couldn’t believe we were listening to this apple’s prophecies, for one it sounds like a game-show host, and secondly, it’s an apple.
“Ah, the whole existential thing, I can dig, I can dig.”
“Can we be a little serious this time?”
“Yes, you have come to me now, just as I have foreseen.” The apple said in a similar kind of voice it had used when the prophecy had been voiced ‘round the world. “Speak your question, little Starman.”
I took offense at the term ‘little Starman’, but I had become too eager to hear of my own adventures. “Apple of Enlightenment, where does my future take me, the last Starman Junior, born to hate and image of a dying world? Where does such a creature find his glory and meet his end?”
Silence, for a moment.
“Little Starman, yours is a fate consumed by destiny. Your actions will begin a series of events large enough to unmake the future, but you have no future of your own.”
That was enough for me. I had a destiny. I would do something so magnanimous that everyone would know my name. I kinda missed the last part of what the apple was saying in the end there, it was tough to concentrate after it’d said the buzz word, ‘destiny.’ Buzz word… speaking of which!
“Buzz Buzz, halt!” A malnourished looking human, with mangled brown hair that resembled a newly opened bag of peat moss, leapt out of the shadows and snatched up the stone beside the Apple of Enlightenment’s tree.
“Not on your life, Junior boy! I got me a planet to save.” Buzz Buzz called back.
I felt myself become so angry at this jibe, and my blood came to such a boil that I did what any other self-respecting Starman would have done. I called him out. “Why you rogue! You cad! How dare you steal the Sound Stone from this hallowed place?”
“Well, how dare you steal the Earth from its rightful inhabitants?” He argued, just as he was exiting the building. And that is so like him too, because he never lets anyone else have the last word.
I gave chase after I’d recovered from his rebuke because, let’s face it, he makes a good argument. He was a good ways ahead on me, and he was on our turf so I decided to get some help before anything else. I spied a couple of Regs and that darn Titan Ant with some bottles, but the problem was they saw me coming and took off running in the opposite direction. I thought I heard something along the lines of, ‘It was Junior, he’ll rat us out’ and ‘Oh shoot starman, we’re busted’ but I couldn’t be sure. I ran back to where the pizza parlor was; the walls were intact but the roof was missing. Most of the higher ranking Starmen hung out here. I burst through the doors, breathing hard. My head felt so light, I usually didn’t do this much exercise so I grabbed my knees and took a moment. I really didn’t want to vomit. Meanwhile, the other Starmen just went about their business until one of the Supers seated at a table shouted.
“Hey everybody, look, Junior’s here. Hey, Junior, pull up a chair.”
“Don’t try to divert our attention, here, Super. We’re right in the middle of a hand.” A Reg said suspiciously.
“Alright, alright. Don’t get so upset, I was only welcoming Junior.”
The Super, two Regs, and a DX were playing cards, star hold ‘em to be exact, and the Super rose the bet again.
“That’s it, I’m out.” The Reg grumbled.
“Yeah, me too.” The other Reg griped.
Everyone knows that a DX can’t get bluffed by a Super, so they go in every hand and are usually the first to lose their money, which is why DX said, “We call.”
The cards were laid out and Super came out with a full house, DX had the table’s ten high.
“Your cards were much stronger *whirrr* than our intelligence indicated... We were not *beep* prepared for that eventuality... but you must not *whirrr* underestimate us.” DX conceded expectantly.
“Your ‘intelligence indicated’? DX, we’re playing cards, of course my cards are going to be good when I’m betting that much. And who’s this ‘us’? There’s no ‘us’ to underestimate! It’s just you! You’re the only DX here!” The Super fumed.
The DX let out a long *whirrrrrrr* in response, all the Super could do was shake his head.
“We don’t have time for this, Buzz Buzz just swiped the Sound Stone from the-”
“Our intelligence indicates that we don’t care.” The DX said crushingly.
“Yeah, high five to DX.”
“Woot, go starman, alright.”
The pair of Regs at the table gave DX a couple of mean spirited high-fives, which in our case should really be called high-ones but who am I to stomp on tradition?
“Come on you lot, this is serious!” I pleaded, but my urgency was lost on them.
Super sighed, “Ok, Junior, since it’s important to you I’ll help you out. I don’t know why I’m humoring you, maybe because this ‘X-mas’ the humans celebrate is around this time. Clearly it would be a time you normally do things you don’t want to.”
The Super stood and slipped his winnings of anchovies and ketchup packets behind the counter. “Those better be there when I get back.” He warned the remaining three, and walked outside with me. We came to the town’s hotel and looked up to the top of the three story building.
“I’ve got my weapons up there, can you fly yet?”
I shook my head. Give me a break here, it’s not my fault I was born a Junior.
“Wow, that sucks.”
He wrapped his arm around mine and lifted us up. There was still a corner of the roof remaining, where a strange looking rifle and a kingly looking sword were leaning against the sill. We touched down gingerly and he snatched up his gun.
“I didn’t know we had these kind of weapons…”
“Yeah, well, officially we don’t. Using the stars all the time takes a lot out of a starguy.” Super took aim, “Alright, I see him. I always imagined Buzz Buzz to be taller.” He fired.
A direct hit, but instead of a dead body falling to the ground something round and gray did, while something small and black hovered above it. We also heard the words, ‘my sandwich!’ yelled.
“Oh.” The Super said.
“Oh? You turned him into a fly. That’s not dead.”
“Huh, must’ve had this thing on bug transformation. It’s a setting on here so that you can actually say, ‘I’ll squash you like a bug’ to your enemies and not be a liar. Relax, you can’t do much when you’re a fly. Wait… is he?”
“He’s picking up the Sound Stone!”
“How can a fly… that’s amazing, oh starman, he deserves that thing.”
“What else has he got there?”
“It’s a time warp device. Well, he’s earned it.”
“We can’t just let him go.” I jumped from the building and landed with a heavy roll. It was clear by now that Super was too impressed by Buzz Buzz to do anything more.
I heard Super calling to me from the hotel, “How’re you going to do anything, Junior? You can’t even warp yet.”
“I have to try!” It was all I could think of to say, and really, I’ll admit, it wasn’t very good. Very melodramatic of me.
Super was right, I wasn’t fast enough. Buzz Buzz warped in a bright white line up into the heavens and out of our time leaving nothing but the clattering warp device on the ground and the skip sandwich at my feet. I snatched up the sandwich and moved toward the warp device. That’s when I felt it. Somewhere deep within my chest cavity, as though my insides had twisted into a rubber band ball. Then the fear began. It started as a tingling and slinked and slithered up through my spine. So much terror. I wanted to scream.
Meanwhile, On the Skip Sandwich
The land was moving again. Grains the size of boulders broke off and came terribly close to the black sesame’s body, but he held fast.
“Oh, black sesame, I’m terribly frightened.” His darling trembled.
“Hold on, dear one, hold on. We’re the last, you and I. I don’t know what I’d do if I ever lost my pearl.” The black sesame encouraged.
The black and white sesames prayed with all their might for the rumbling to stop and finally, after what seemed like ages, but to us it would have only been a few seconds, a sesame’s sense of time is severely slowed, the movement calmed and they were left with their thoughts of life and how good it was to have one.
“That was close, wasn’t it black sesame?”
“Indeed it was, white sesame, indeed it was. But we’re safe now, never you mind.”
The black sesame and white sesame gazed at one another with such pleasant longing. The black sesame had never known anyone quite like the white sesame, and the white sesame had always dreamed of meeting a sesame with such obviously gentleseedly qualities as the black sesame. It was like a two-loaf fairy tale.
“I… I feel safe when I’m with you, black sesame. I don’t ever want to lose you.”
“Don’t you worry, white sesame. We’ll be together forever.”
“Oh, black sesame.”
“Oh, white sesame.”
And then a few things happened one wouldn’t think possible between seeds, but for the sake of their privacy it’s best we move back to Starman Junior.
Starman Junior Continued
It was him. I knew it was him. So few Starmen get the honor of speaking with him personally, and all of us fear it but will never admit it. A voice reverberated in my head, I felt as though my skull would crack.
“Starman Junior.”
“Yes, Master Giygas.”
A series of violent images ransacked my consciousness. I felt nauseous. The word would never seem sane again. “Follow.”
“I follow, Master Giygas.”
My head felt as though it split, my eyes failed, and my body burned. Was I screaming? Was there any part of me left to scream? And then it stopped. Like picking up a scalding hot bowl and then setting it down quickly, the ache evaporated and I was myself again. ‘I follow.’ The Master singled me out; there was no way I could turn back now. Skip sandwich in hand, I moved to where the time warp device lay, brought up the previous coordinates, and pressed ‘execute.’
I was surrounded by a white light and the next moment I was whisked up into the universe. I expected to feel smaller, but instead I grew and watched as everything shrank in comparison. I grew and grew and watched as galaxy after galaxy shrank into small clusters. Finally, I was surrounded by complete and utter darkness, save for a small speck the size of a star from Earth where everything I had ever known existed. The speck was still for a moment and, suddenly, it glided counter-clockwise behind me. A giant Mr. Saturn popped into existence in front of me, “DAKOTA” it said. I turned to look back and found I was already becoming drawn back into the galaxies I knew; back past planets, and solar systems, until at last I saw Earth once more. Not the Earth that I knew in the future, but a younger planet, fresh and vibrant. In my descent I passed cities above in pink clouds and cities below in the golden deserts. I passed by a great ocean, larger than I had ever imagined from the old stories that had survived. Then came a large city with four points, like a compass, followed by three small towns. The last town, I saw smoke rising from a raised hill, as though from a meteor. That was my destination, and the time warp device confirmed my suspicions by smashing me face first into the forest floor at the base of that hill. I looked down at my hand… when had I lost the sandwich?
Meanwhile, Back on
the
The black sesame was just now learning what being together ‘forever’ meant. The white sesame had been talking almost incessantly, and it would shoot the black sesame accusing glances whenever he would go around to the other side of the sandwich for too long, even though there wasn’t another sesame in existence for much farther than they could have known. “At the very least,” the black sesame sighed to itself, “the white sesame hasn’t dropped the ‘m’ word.”
“There you are!” The white sesame cried as it came ‘round this side of the roll. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you, I just had the most fabulous thought. We should get married.”
The black sesame panicked. “Why would you want to marry a tiny black sesame like me?”
“Oh, you’re horri-” the white sesame started, but it never finished that thought, instead it screamed, “What’s happening!”
The sandwich
gyrated in every which way, it had come loose just after
the city of
“My little pearl! Oh, what have I done?” The black sesame moaned, but it wouldn’t have much time for its lamentation, because a moment later it too plummeted to the desert.
The two
sesames were destined to lie in the desert, mere yards apart, for eternity.
Travelers passing by might come across and attempt to speak to one of them, but
the black sesame, traumatized by the incident, could only say, “Why would you
talk to a tiny black sesame like me?” The white sesame
would respond a little more coherent, and a little more bitter with, “I heard
that the tiny black sesame I used to love is somewhere in this desert.” For the
purpose of closure, the skip sandwich landed in a cave in the small town of
Starman Junior Concluded
I dragged myself from the self-created crater and sidled my way between the forest trees and waited at the side path to what must have been Buzz Buzz’s crater. My resolve was as strong as ever. This world was wonderful. I needed to exist here. The humans didn’t deserve this place, not as much as I, who lived on the carcass of it for so long. Of course, we made it that way, but things would be different this time around. I would gain the Master’s praise and convince him to let things grow. Now, my moment of glory was nearing. A white, hairy beast trotted past my place of hiding quickly. It looked scared. If it only knew where I was lurking, ho ho!
To be honest my ‘place of hiding’ wasn’t the best, but I could only teleport three feet and one must teleport to look cool. Trust me on this one. I heard the buzzing of my adversary and I peeked around the tree. He was flying around a boy in a red hat and striped shirt, a portly looking piggish fellow, I’m not sure he was human, and another fairly chubby boy who at least had himself pulled together. They were nearly at my tree, I readied myself, concentrated, and teleported in a beam right before them.
Ok, I wasn’t completely centered on the path, but that was alright. I still had my cool factor working, I teleported, but I needed to say something imposing.
“It's been a long time, Buzz Buzz. You've been successful at foiling Master Giygas' plans. But... Buzz Buzz, you must now surrender. You're no longer a hero, but just a useless insect. I'll stomp you hard!” And it did feel good to call him an insect and not be lying.
I blocked the way and all Buzz Buzz could think to do was set up some shield. I was feeling pretty confident. Then, that chubby kid swings at me. The kid in the red cap has this cracked bat and takes a swing, and while it didn’t really hurt that badly, it really hurt my confidence and I’ll tell you why: Here I am, a Starman, transcending time and space to destroy a legendary hero and ensure our victory over Earth and these humans start poking at me with nothing more than their fists and broken sports equipment. I decided to show them what real power is, that’s right, a little PSI Freeze ought take ‘em down a few pegs. I let the ice flow from my will… but nothing happened.. the shield! Buzz Buzz charged while my guard was down. I felt the power of a sledge drive into my chest. I couldn’t breath, something was broken. I tried defending, but the hail of attacks just came faster and faster. I struggled to wave them off, but couldn’t, if only I could teleport. I tried to focus, but the third blow from Buzz Buzz was enough. I felt my body break apart and fizzle into nothing. Is this what happens when you die in a time that is not your own? And then it really set in, I was dying. I was hearing words, Buzz Buzz’s, “Whew! I was taking a big chance there. He came from 10 years in the future to kill me…” all sound faded. I was going to die, there was no return now, no hero’s recognition. Then, a sudden revelation. I realized the power of the stars, PSI Starstorm. That is when I came to understand that death, was only the beginning.