What the hell. What did that mean? An utter cause for panic, Singh ordered his men to get ready to shoot. Willow fell into a panic attack, I mean, we all fell into a panic attack but hers was extremely dramatic.
"What do you intend to do to the humans?!" Singh yelled.
Xiota stood up, facing the man and his gun. "What I'm programmed to do, dispose of them," it replied.
"I thought you said you were not programmed to kill?" Isoken asked.
"That is correct."
"Then how do you intend to dispose of the humans?" Isoken asked once more.
"According to the master, humans are —"
Before It could finish, something stopped the A.I. It stood still, turning Its head around. We could not see it but Xiota was definitely sensing something. It turned around, looking towards the hovering Orb, which in turn made us look towards the orb too. There was silence for a while, then the A.I. finally said with a stoic voice.
"Traveller, present yourself."
A few seconds later, a man appeared out of thin air right next to the orb, at least he looked like a man. He had a blue coat over his plain pair of trousers and shirt, and his hair and beards were short and silver in colour. He looked like a serious British private investigator, and his hands rested inside the pocket of his coat. His sudden appearance caught us off guard, startling everyone, especially the Singh and the soldiers. One of them, out of sheer surprise, pulled his trigger unconsciously, hitting bullseye right on the chest of the stranger. But much to our surprise, the man was unharmed. He looked down at his chest and dusted off the smudge made by the bullet, the bullet which had fallen to the ground, compressed.
"You need not lie to these lifeforms Xiota," he said, walking over to the A.I. and pretending as though we didn't just attempt to end his life. "Abacus has spoken, Nebulon cannot have this planet," he added.
Lie to these lifeforms. Was Xiota lying to us? These were the first thoughts that troubled our minds when we heard those words, besides the fact that this stranger just proved invulnerable to our only means of defence at the moment. Isoken, Eddie and I had the same looks on our faces. It wasn't hard to tell that we were thinking the same thing…who was this stranger, where did he come from and how did get here?
"You have no business here, Oliver the traveller," Xiota replied.
"My business is not with you but it is with the humans on this planet," the man replied, pulling out a black small box from his pocket and drawing out what appeared to be a black lollipop. "A war is coming Xiota, and these poor unsuspecting humans are in the middle of it."
"I don't recall you having a heart," Xiota replied.
"And I don't recall you ever talking this much, Xiota," the man smiled, pulling out the lollipop from his mouth.
"Why are you here traveller?" Xiota asked.
The man was about to speak, but then mom and Ruben interrupted, waltzing into the conversation without any invitation.
"Could one of you explain what the hell is going on here?" Mom blurted out.
Her words made the A.I. and the stranger stop their conversation and turn to look at her. Their stare was intimidating to say the least but despite the immense pressure of their eyes, mom stood her ground.
"Who is this stranger Xiota?" Ruben asked, walking over to stand by mom's side.
The man pushed in the lollipop in his mouth and exhaled, rubbing his nose bridge.
"My name is Oliver," he said to us, bowing gracefully. "Very nice to meet you, Amanda, Ruben, Isoken, Eddie, Peter, Willow and Singh. Now that we have the introductions out of the way, let's get back to—"
"How do you know our names?" Isoken asked, stopping him from saying any more.
A relevant question indeed. Nobody told us we were going to meet a teleporter here, in fact, not until some few weeks ago, the sheer idea of aliens and teleportation would have sounded like ridiculous science fiction to us. We knew nothing about the orb or Xiota, and even worse, we knew nothing about this stranger and yet he seemed to know each one of us by names.
"He is a demi-guard," Xiota replied, "a traveller of the sixty-seventh quadrant. He has no business here."
"Did you say demi-guard?" I asked, trying to make sense of her words.
"You mean demigod, right?" Eddie asked.
"Demigods aren't real child," Oliver replied, returning to the orb, "what we have on our hands is something very serious…so why don't we skip the little chit chat and get to the matter on ground?"
He stopped before the orb, raising his hand and reaching out as though to touch the it. This made Xiota gasp.
"Don't you dare, traveller," it said with a warning tone.
"Forgive me Xiota," he replied, "but time is of the essence."
At that, he began elevating, and a bright blue light began emanating from his palms onto the hovering orb. The light protruded gradually and enveloped the orb completely, and just at that moment the orbiting of the orb stopped and the blue pulsation also stopped. Xiota's avatar began fading off, disappearing slowly before our eyes. In response to this, the avatar stood up and walked towards the elevated stranger and stopped before him. The man turned his head to look down at her, he was nine feet above the ground. Xiota's avatar had now become like a faded spirit being.
"The master will not like this interference Oliver," It said to the man.
"I'll deal with the master when the time comes for it," he replied. And then, with a loud booming voice he exclaimed, saying;
"Void, come forth!"
Immediately the ground began to shake violently, despite the fact that we were underground and a violent wind started swirling around the room, almost carrying a few of Singh's men away. The next thing we heard was a loud cracking sound, follows by a bang…this happened three times. For those who did not have their eyes shut and their ears blocked, we saw exactly what was causing such incredible noise. It was the orb. The traveller was reducing the size of the orb from a large entity to the size of a football. Afterwards, what appeared to be a giant large vortex, somewhat like a black hole, appeared out of thin air.
"Void!" The man called once more.
In response, something jumped out of the black hole, something strange. It was as bright as a star burning off green flames. We could not see it's appearance clearly but from what eyes could show us, we believed it was in the form of a wolf.
"Take this to the pocket dimension," the traveller instructed, handing the strange being the orb, "ensure it does not escape."
As soon as the orb landed in the mouth of the creature, it returned through the black hole, to where it came from. The violent shaking of the room and the violent wind stopped. Oliver flew down to the ground, landing before.
"Now that Xiota is out of the way," he said, pulling out another black lollipop, "I believe it is time we begin preparations."
He pushed the lollipop into his mouth and looked at us with a lackadaisical stare, as though he did not just do something god-like a few minutes ago. Singh and his men had lost every last morsel of fighting will that they had and the rest of us were completely on gaurd.
"Pre…pre…preparations for what?" Ruben stuttered.
Pulling the lollipop out of his mouth, the traveller said with a serious look on his face.
"Preparations for the war."