#tremorton

Dad and I moved to just outside the Tremorton area not long after my 15th birthday. Since Dad’s line of business hinged so much on planetary protection, he wanted to figure out why so much was happening around such a dinky little town. It wasn’t a capitol, nor was it a major industry town or military area, but alien attacks and supervillain appearances were more than fifty times the global average. He was surprised the place was still standing when we showed up, let alone thriving, but that was why he was there.

Our house, like all our houses, was huge; that was to my father’s taste, not mine. The biggest surprise about it, though, was that Dad had a safe room of his design installed near the center of the house for us to use in case an incident happened. It wasn’t that big - only just enough for my father and me - but it had everything we could possibly need for a whole two weeks, from food to water to a tiny bathroom area. He taught me every single detail of how to survive any sort of situation, and did his best to comfort my anxieties. “Those walls can withstand a point-blank blast from an ion cannon.” He said, with his usual grin of pride in his creations. “I was there when they tested it.”

Like the rest of my life, I had to take care of myself 90% of the time. Dad was off somewhere constantly: attending weapons technology demonstrations; grilling his employees to work harder on the next prototype; or reading through the legal paperwork of his latest contract. The money was only half of it, though; he cared about me - still does - and wanted to make sure I lived a comfortable life.  (It’s his way of trying to make up for not understanding the way I feel about myself.) So when the call came that he had to attend a convention in Washington, DC, I wasn’t surprised. Saddened, maybe: I’ve grown tired of being alone so much, but I don’t know how to go about fixing it half the time.

He’d been gone for a day and a half when the news reports started to hit, and that’s the first time I’d ever heard of the Cluster. I watched in utter disbelief as the events unfolded on the TV, and then slowly moved to the window. The sky above Tremorton was blotted out by swarms of what I now know are Cluster drones, massing like clouds of gnats around lampposts at night. Giant dropships shaped like hornets appeared out of portals, and began to eject more drones into the air, along with larger fighter ships. I watched the laser fire burst down onto the city below, and then the formations of vessels began to spread over a wider area. I panicked and ran to the safe room as quickly as I could, locking the door solidly behind me.  I felt ashamed of myself for running and hiding, but it didn't help the fear go away; it was sixteen hours before I could do anything other than curl up into a ball.

By myself there was a bit more space but it only made me feel so alone, being encapsulated from the world in a steel box, which was a bad time to realize that there was no way to reach anyone outside either. There was an alarm system that let emergency services know I was locked up, but they were so busy dealing with the rest of the invasion I knew it would be a while before anyone showed, if at all. There was enough food for me and Dad to last for two weeks, which meant I had four weeks worth for me in this situation. Still, I rationed it very carefully; there's no telling how long you're going to have to deal with this situation.

The only real form of communication was a radio receiver tuned in to the emergency frequencies. They were all abuzz with reports of the devastation that was being laid upon Tremorton, with Cluster drones taking humans as captives and destroying all sorts of public landmarks. I figured it was only a matter of time before they came for me, especially when the radio cut off one day in the middle of a transmission and was replaced with Cluster propaganda.

“Your freedom is a plague upon the universe. We are here to set it right. Comply with all orders and you will be spared. Any information regarding the location of subject XJ-9 will be rewarded; any subject caught aiding her will be terminated on sight.”

It was several days before the radio surged back to life again; the announcer was incredibly excited, the first positive emotion I'd experienced since this whole thing began. "She's back!"  He announced. "XJ-9 is here to save the day!"  I still had no idea what XJ-9 was, but I didn't care; if it meant an end to this invasion I was all for it.

No sooner did the announcement air, however, than the action began to increase violently outside. I could barely hear the blasts; instead, I was starting to feel them. As though someone was slamming a giant sledgehammer against the wall, begging to be let in. I began to worry about some sort of breach, even though I knew it should be impossible. Shattering a pane of glass, I retrieved my father's laser rifle: one of his developments from working with Skyway Patrol. My hands were quivering and my pulse racing as I aimed it at the entrance to the room. I expected to be swarmed by drones any minute.

Everything shook very violently for a moment and then - in a surreal moment - started to fly around, as though the room had somehow gone to space for a moment. Almost as soon as that happened, it stopped, and I was sent into a wall. I was barely able to bring up my arms to protect my head before impact; it hurt like hell, but it didn't seem to do any lasting damage. Everything had come to rest upon the same wall, so it was clear that the room itself had been toppled over somehow. There's nothing safe about this safe room anymore, I thought. Crawling my way over to the door, I found enough strength to unlock and push it open.

The house that used to surround me was now almost completely gone, and in its place was a pile of burning lumber, concrete, and what used to be furniture. The safe room - formerly on the first floor - was now in the basement area. As I rolled out of the room, I saw what had caused the destruction: a crashed Cluster fighter ship, smoldering in defeat. It was laying halfway into the cellar space, its rear end poking out above the ground. The sounds of combat continued in the distance without it.

A new sound drowned out all others, and I only had enough time to see the creaking and cracking of the beams above me to realize I should have stayed in the room. A large portion of the house collapsed over me, and I closed my eyes so that I didn't have to watch my own fiery death coming down. While I did feel an impact, it wasn't strong enough to hurt me; when I opened my eyes, I found myself pinned beneath a large concrete slab over my chest. The only thing that saved me from getting instantaneously crushed was the spaceship, which was close enough to soften the impact, yet there wasn't enough room to escape. More of the house was crumbling away around me, embers almost landing close enough to singe me. Even more terrifying was that the slab was slowly starting to slip off of the ship, putting more pressure against my ribs as the seconds passed by. I could barely muster up the strength to breathe, let alone call for help. All that escaped my mouth was a pleading whimper that couldn't have possibly been heard by anyone.

After the most terrifying few seconds of my life, I heard a sudden roar of jet engines closing in on my position. In the sky outside, I spotted a streak of blue and white come nearer and nearer until it had landed next to me. That's the first time I saw her.

She was unlike anything or anyone I'd ever seen before, her six-foot-plus stature towering over me as she touched down. Before I could even notice them, she spun around and gave a couple quick blasts of a laser gun - wait, was that her arm?! - at a swarm of Cluster drones that were pursuing her. They all burst into scrap metal, peppering the environment with their remains. She looked at the ship that had crashed into my house, likely to make sure it had been disabled, before quickly taking notice of me. Her pigtails, which moments ago had been rocket thrusters, perked up in shock, and she covered her mouth with a hand as she gasped.

"H-help..." I whispered, not able to do much more. My ribs were really beginning to hurt.

In response, she rammed a single arm beneath the concrete and flipped it over with one fell swoop. I took a relieved breath of fresh air, and the sigh of relief turned into a cough. Her eyes seemed to scan me for a moment before she spoke.

"No broken bones...no ruptured organs...the worst you have is a nasty scrape on your arm. No biggie!" I hadn't even noticed, but when I raised my right arm to see the damage, the robot girl had already turned one of her own into a tube and plunged the injured limb inside. Whatever was in there must have been amazing, because the whole arm felt numb and started to heal before my eyes. What was once a deep laceration that would have probably taken twenty or so stitches to heal was gone in a matter of seconds. My eyes widened at the sight, but my chest was still so sore that I could barely utter one word - "How-" - before coughing again.

"What's important now is to get you out of here." She replied, picking me up.  "You're going to be okay now.  I've beaten them all back." I heard all sorts of mechanical adjustments as she converted herself into some sort of jet-robot; she was soon lifting off of the ground, and I watched in disbelief as the house my parents had spent several million on continued to fall apart into dust behind us. All of the town was below us, with several other buildings turned into smoking debris. The only thing I could do was look at this robot - this hero - that just saved me, as she concentrated on her destination: the Tremorton High football field, which had been converted to an emergency medical center.

She touched down as gently as a feather and laid me down on a cot outside a tent. She told the doctors she'd get as many more as she could, and then turned to me, placing a calming hand against my heart.

"You'll be feeling better in no time." She said with the sweetest smile I'd ever seen. I nodded, but before I could say another word, she was gone.

------

My father came back a few hours later. He'd been worried sick ever since he saw the spaceship crash on the news, and he came straight home afterward. It was a tearful reunion, but considering the fact that it could have gone a whole lot worse, it was still a happy one.

The longer the conversation went on, though, and the more I told him about what happened, the more he seemed to change. He went from relief to resignment to a subtle, underlying anger the more I said. I don’t know what it was, but at the end he just got up and took a deep breath, as though holding himself back. We were about to talk about living arrangements when his phone went off.  He took a look at the caller ID and immediately began to perk up. The conversation would be considered kind of jovial were it not for the atmosphere in which it took place, surrounded by destruction and wounded. When he hung up, he gave me his grin of pride.