So…This is my first story that I'm actually willing to publish. Let it begin, I guess.
Disclaimer: I don't own Max Steel or any of the characters affiliated with it. I own the idea of my OCs and a laptop.
I stared out my small window as the airplane landed. The rock pillars that jutted out from the dirt made me frown slightly. No greenery anywhere in sight save for a few cacti.
A hand placed itself on my shoulder, making me look at my father, who was sitting in the seat next to me. "I'm really sorry we had to do this, Natasha. You don't deserve to –"
"Dad, it's fine," I said shortly. "I didn't have many friends back in Michigan. Why we're now living in an entirely different climate, however…"
He flinched. "It was the job that would pay the most…I might have a degree in Mechanical Engineering, but that doesn't mean that someone as old as me can find a new job easily."
"Hence Copper Canyon?"
"Hence Copper Canyon. I'll be on call 24/7, but I'll get to pick my own schedule, otherwise."
"Tasha, stop bugging your father. This move was what was best for the family!"
I glared at my mother, who was sitting on the outside of the row. "The rest of the family is back in Michigan. They don't live in a desert."
"The way that the company that hired your dad and I lets us schedule will give us –"
"More family time and more money," I cut her off. "You gave me this speech about five times this week."
"Natasha," my mother snapped, her dark brown eyes meeting my extremely pale blue, "stop acting like a spoiled brat. Nothing is going to change just because you want it to."
I didn't speak for the rest of the day, instead going straight to my room after we arrived at our new apartment and unpacking. I only came out for dinner, during which I ate quickly and retreated once more.
The next morning, knowing that my parents had already signed me up for school, I quickly ate a couple slices of toast, downed a glass of orange juice, and fled the apartment. Once out the door, I slipped on my sunglasses and nearly crashed into the person leaving the apartment across the hall.
"Sorry!" I squeaked, taking a step back before he could run into me.
The guy grinned. "It's fine. I tend to smack into people too, sometimes." He zoned out for a moment, as if he were listening to something far off, before scowling. "You're not helping," he muttered.
"You know," I said, heading towards the elevator, "it's easier to not seem crazy if you only address your inner voices mentally."
He blinked, then nodded. "Thanks for the tip…you new around here?" He jogged to catch up to me and hit the button to call the elevator.
"How'd you guess that?" I raised an eyebrow.
"That apartment's been empty as long as I've been here."
I frowned. "Did you move here recently?"
"Yeah, why?"
"I could have lived here before, but my family had decided to take an extended vacation that cut slightly into the school year."
"Yeah, but…" he trailed off, before dropping his chain of thought. After a few seconds of him zoning out once more, he asked, "So my name's Max McGrath."
"Natasha Pharaoh." I slipped into the now-open elevator and hit the first floor button. Max held the doors open long enough to enter with me.
"Sorry, got to get to school on time, or my mom'll kill me."
I nodded. "Understandable," I replied, my tone clipped.
We stood in the elevator for a few moments, Max zoning out again. Finally, he decided to break the silence. "How are you getting to school, anyway?"
"Walking."
"Oh." The awkward silence reigned again until the doors opened with a 'ding'. "I guess I'll see you at school then?"
I narrowed my eyes, an action that was almost impossible to see through my sunglasses. "At some point today, considering there is only one high school in Copper Canyon? Most likely." I walked out of the elevator and began my trek to my new school.
Unbeknownst to me, Max growled, "Bitch."
A blue, digital optic stared out from the unzipped portion for a second before blinking. "I fail to see what female dogs have to do with her, but she was interesting."
School was…boring to say the least. I had pulled up my black hood before I had entered the building, so no one really noticed me. The teachers were pretty relaxed when it came to wearing hats and hoods indoors compared to the teachers at my old school. However, I was told by the secretary (who I had to see to get my class schedule) that I needed to take off my sunglasses.
It was lunchtime before anyone decided to speak to the 'creepy new kid'. I had glanced up from my book for a moment as I ate before groaning. Him again…
Max walked up to my table, flanked by a red-headed boy and a blonde girl. I stared down at my book again. Please go away, please go away, please go –
"Hey, Natasha."
Damn it. I looked up again to see Max sitting across from me. After a few moments, I replied, "Hello, Max."
"These are my friends, Kirby and Sydney," Max said, gesturing to the boy (on Max's left) and girl (on my right) respectively. I nodded to each of them, popping more pretzels into my mouth. "Kirby, Sydney, this is Natasha Pharaoh. She moved in across the hall from me over the weekend."
I merely nodded again, finishing my pretzels and opening my carton of chocolate milk.
"So…Tasha, where are you from?" Sydney asked curiously.
In response, I turned my left hand sideways, the palm facing Sydney, and pointed near the tip of my index finger. The other three at the table stared at me, confused. It was Kirby that spoke first. "Dude, what's that supposed to mean?"
I sighed. Right, not at home. "In Michigan, the simplest way of telling someone the area where you're from is pointing out the location on your hands. Hence –" I pointed at my hand again.
"But…that doesn't look like Michigan," Sydney said slowly.
"Correction, it doesn't look like the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. I'm from the Upper Peninsula, where we live out in the middle of the woods and only got electricity in the last month." Satisfied with my mini-rant, I started chugging my milk.
Max grinned widely. "You must be going through a huge shock, coming out here and seeing all these buildings, then."
I set down my empty milk carton and began stuffing my trash inside."I play Starcraft II every day for several hours and watch Game Theorists and Netflix," I deadpanned. Before they could process what I had said, I got up from the table, grabbed my book, gray lunch box, and carton of trash, and stalked over to the trash cans. I tossed my carton and slipped through the crowd that was still present at the entrance to the cafeteria.
{You do realize that she hates your guts, right?}
"She's having a hard time adjusting. If someone's forced to move, they tend to hate everything about the place that they moved to along with their parents."
{And? That doesn't mean you have to be her friend, Max.}
"I know but…the first few times my mom had us move, I hated it. Whenever I got to my new school, I shut everyone out, didn't participate…"
{So you acted like Natasha? …Yeah, I can't see that happening.}
"People change, Steel. I got better at being friendly when I got to a new place. If Tasha's shy, she'll end up clo–"
"Max, who are you talking to?"
"Uh, no one, why?"
{Smoooth.}
I purposely took a detour on my way back to the apartment from school, not wanting another run-in with Max. As I walked, I found an empty Mountain Dew can, which I kicked as I grumbled to myself.
"Stupid parents…"
CLUNK! Clatter…
"Stupid Nevada…"
CLUNK! Clatter…
"Stupid school…"
CLUNK!
I lifted my eyes from the ground, a scowl set on my face. "What the hell, man?" I growled as my eyes met those of a man in dark clothing…with a pistol in his hand. My scowl turned to fear as I took a few steps back.
He grabbed my arm and dragged me into a nearby alley He pointed his gun at me and cocked it. "Look, give me all your money, and I won't shoot."
"I-I don't carry money with me!"
The mugger pushed the barrel of his pistol against the side of my head. His eyes darted down for a moment before he licked his lips. "Your necklace."
My mind went blank. "What?"
"Give. Me. Your. Necklace."
Slowly, my hands made their way to the clasp at the back of my neck. I skillfully undid the sliver chain that held a sapphire pendant before handing the necklace over. The second it left my hands, the world seemed to gain a blue tint. "There. Happy?"
He glanced down at my hands. "Your watch."
I glared at the man for even suggesting it. One of the few things that my closest friend had given me before I had moved… "No."
The mugger blinked before his face contorted with rage. "What did you say to me, bitch?"
My skin began to generate a blue, misty energy, but I ignored it. "I said NO!" On the last word, I ducked down and elbowed the guy in the center of his upper chest. He took a few steps back, wheezing from the blow to his sternum. Not looking back, I began running as fast as I could away from the mugger. As I ran, more blue energy came of off me, seeming to speed up my movements until I was running passed cars that were going twenty-five miles per hour.
Little did I know it, but over six thousand miles above me, two organizations were at war, attempting to capture what would appear to most to be a sphere of metal and plastic. Just as a green and white ship was about to snag the sphere from a red and black ship, however, it glowed green and began plummeting to the surface at speeds easily breaking the speed of sound.
"Jefferson to Base, we've lost the objective! It activated and started racing towards Earth!"
"'Berto, what's the current trajectory?"
"It's heading right for Copper Canyon at Mach 3! Wait…it's slowing down. Determining approximate coordinates now."
"Let's move it, people! We need to be there when the damn thing activates! I don't even need to say what'll happen if we don't contain it!"
I had reached the badlands that surrounded the city, but I still kept running. I just had to get away, had to escape… After running for about three minutes, I came to a stop at the base of one of the many eroded pillars that decorated the landscape. Finally feeling safe, I plopped down and put my head in my hands…only a tingling sensation, like my entire body had become numb. I pulled my head up for a moment to see that my hands were glowing before letting gravity pull my skull over again.
…
Wait, glowing?
I did a double take, then a triple take, then a quadruple take, before my brain finally confirmed that, yes, my hands were glowing. I yanked up the sleeve of my black hoodie to see that all my skin was glowing. The glowing intensified as the numbness turned to nothingness. All sensation disappeared as my body took on a vaguely human form composed entirely of the blue energy. I began to feel uncomfortable, like I had breathed in too much air and my lungs were reaching their capacity.
A noise above me caused me to look up in confusion, only to see a green, black, and silver sphere hurdling towards me. I screeched sprinted away from it, only for it to change is path to continue heading towards me. Giving into the inevitable, I held my arms over my head and ducked into the classic 'Tornado Drill Position'. Silently, I closed my eyes.
A flash of green light shined through my eyelids. "Human, I would like to speak with you."
I slowly opened my eyes and stood up. To my amazement, I was surrounded by a dome of green energy with small hexagonal patterns in various areas. A sphere of light a few feet ahead of me faded to reveal a small, floating robot. Two servos extended from near the top of its upside-down-teardrop of a chassis. A small, almost spiky area protruded from the edges of its joints. Its chassis was almost entirely black, save for a few patches of silver hexagons on the upper areas of its servos. A ring of green circles stared out from the center of the black screen that dominated the majority of its chassis.
"I would like to help you, Human, if you would be willing to help me in return," it said in a surprisingly feminine voice that held a synthesized echo to it.
I narrowed my eyes at…her. I'm guessing it was a 'her'. "And why should I trust a strange robot that I've never seen before?"
"You are experiencing a buildup of TURBO energy, are you not?"
"…What."
"TURBO energy."
I blinked, then nodded as understanding dawned upon me. "The blue energy that I'm emitting, right?"
"Yes, Human. You have no way of properly releasing it, so it will continue to build up until there is no longer room for it."
"Judging by the waves I was sending out earlier, I would explode, right?" The robot somehow managed to nod. "How big of an explosion would I cause?"
"You would take out everything in approximately a mile."
I nodded in understanding, surprising myself by not freaking out as much as I should have been. "I'm going to assume that you're offering a way to stop that from happening. What would be in it for you?"
The robot's 'eye' flickered for a moment, almost as if it were blinking. "You see…my species kind of wants to – and don't freak out – assimilate your planet for the resources it possesses. I'm tired of helping Makino, the one that's leading the charge to destroy all other life forms. I'm tired of the destruction I've been forced to help cultivate. If I help you, I want your help in fighting back when my species gets here."
"So the deal is that you keep me from exploding and, in return, I help you save my planet," I stated, more than asked.
"Do we have an agreement?" the robot said.
"Yes," I said firmly, knowing that I wouldn't be able to back out afterwards. "Do you have a name?"
"Reethir K'Gra Z-183."
I grinned. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Reethir."
"Likewise!" With that, Reethir slammed into my sternum and collar bones. There was a flash of turquoise light, during which I actually felt the uncomfortable feeling go away as my body was practically remade.
When I opened my eyes again, I was staring out from under a helmet. I looked down at my hands to see them both covered by black and silver gloves. Several blue green lines ran across them, each one glowing slightly. I was at a loss for words. "I…wow."
"I agree."
As I looked my new suit over, I decided to bring up something that was bugging me. "So…not to be rude or anything, but what exactly are you?"
"I am a Techno-organic X-435 Omega class of Bio-parasitic Ultralink warrior," Reethir lectured. "I was floating up in your planet's troposphere when I felt your uncontrolled surge of TURBO energy."
My eyes narrowed. "Bio-parasitic? You're a parasite?"
Reethir decided to entirely ignore my question, however, in favor of asking, "What is your designation?"
I blinked at the sudden change in subject, but decided to go with it. "Natasha. Is it…okay if I call you by a nickname instead?"
The green emblem I had noted on my chest flashed briefly as Reethir…popped off of me. She tapped the tip of her right servo on the bottom of her chassis, almost like a human tapping their chin. "Hmm…how about Ether?"
"If you'll call me Net," I said jokingly.
Ether shrugged. "Alright, Ne-DUCK!" Ether jolted her servos downward. My body acted like a puppet, dropping to the ground. A rock sailed through the area that my head had been moments before. I forced myself back onto my feet and turned in the direction the rock came from. What I saw…surprised me, to say the least.
"Ether, you see the Earth Elemental too, right?" Sure enough, there was a tall being made entirely of rock standing on one of the natural land protrusions, a pile of boulders stacked next to it.
Ether's screen displayed a question mark. "Earth Elemental?"
As I stared at the red orb in the Elemental's head, I explained, "An Earth Elemental is a creature made out of rocks and stones that usually assumes a humanoid shape. It can control the earth around it to an extent and is usually found in fantasy games, not real life!"
There was a brief silence before the Elemental roared something and jumped off the cliff. My muscles stiffened and Ether slammed into my chest again. Without my direction, my body shifted into a boxer's pose. "It's an ultralink, and it's definitely hostile," Ether growled.
I stared at the Earth Elemental, unable to move due to Ether's influence. I only had one word to say about that. "F***."
Well, now that that's out of the way, I'd just like to say that updates will be very, very sporadic. I'll post the chapters as they get done, but that could take anywhere from one week to two. The next chapter will hopefully be out by a week from Friday. Hopefully.