Chapter 6: The knife

Safo Nur was confused, in front of him stood a giant green lion on his legs like a human, beside him were a green tiger and somebody in a black mantle. He currently was in some kind of control room of a space station from which he clearly could see the Earth and a Moon. And on top of that, the green lion just told him that he is the king of some planet.

To tell that he was confused is to the least. He stood there with a blank mind. All his questions and assumptions just vaporize. Fear for his life also went away, somehow the image of the Earth comforted him.

Safo Nur squinted his eyes and curved his lips, with an expression of disbelief and disdain he said. "King?! Really?! Is this some kind of super sick prank or a setup?"

Safo Nur heard about some companies which specialized in that sort of thing. Where a customer could make an order to prank someone by kidnapping. There were lots of different scenarios: police arrest, gang attack, being kidnapped by a maniac, and probably alien abduction. But they never hurt the client, that was the weirdest part. He experienced extreme pain. Maybe because of that thing that they injected him before the "procedure"? If that was true and he felt only phantom pain that will explain why he is not feeling any pain now.

"Hey kid, we don't have time. We spent 3 months to reach here, tell me where the Princess is and we will go back to land. We need to talk to her as soon as possible." A stern voice from the tiger girl cut Safo Nur's thought once again.

"Probably she didn't tell you about us, just tell us where your mother is. We can't detect her." Chipped in Kutch the lion.

"Fu*k you and fu*k that person who ordered me. End this sh*t and let me go. It wasn't fun at all." All that stress Safo Nur had for the past hour now was turning into anger. He snapped at the actors in their ridiculous costumes but to his surprise subconsciously something stopped him from moving towards them.

O'rmon the tiger girl rolled her eyes and turned her head to Kutch and said. "Kutch, I don't have time. I will leave this matter to you to deal with, please take care of him." Then she turned to Safo Nur. "I have to go now, I will try to be faster. Prosperity to you, your ancestors, kin, and descendants." She nodded and just disappeared in a blink of an eye.

Safo Nur moved his head a little forward doubting his own vision. A person who talked to him just disappeared, only some light breeze left after fluttered the mane of a Kutch.

A complicated look and expression came inside of Kutch and the hooded person, Safo Nur was trying to comprehend what happened right now. "Is this some kind of trick, she is a magician?" Safo Nur asked himself.

"Speed is her resource, mine is telekinesis. What is yours?" Kutch responded to his confusion.

Safo Nur remained silent.

"Look" As soon as Kutch said that he ripped off his ragged clothes that were currently covering his body. Under that clothes was a muscular body in short black shorts filled with knives. The upper body was covered with a short black shrug coat and two straps of leather crossing each other making "X" on his chest. Knives were everywhere, two straps had sockets for short throwing knives, clothing had no pockets, only small magnets to hold more knives. Two machetes, long and thick hang on his waist.

Kutch reached out his hands to his lower back area and pulled out a spiral knife. Without any warning, he threw it towards Safo Nur's face.

Milliseconds took the knife to reach Safo Nur's Left eye leaving no time for him to react. A rush of emotions and different thoughts flooded Safo Nur's mind. "I'm gonna die here…"

Episodes from his life flashed in front of his eyes, his childhood, he was a cry baby. His kind and caring parents, his beautiful girlfriend, he was about to propose to her. Not only due to her pregnancy, but they also loved each other. He was more than happy to raise children with her. He regretted that he will not see his child, he even doesn't know the sex of the baby. It was too early to determine.

"I wonder if there is a chance that I will lose only my left eye and will be able to survive. I want to live...I need to live… Can I dodge it?" While the sudden will to live gave him a new wave of energy he noticed that it takes too long for the knife to reach him. The moment when he saw the pin of the knife in front of his eye and the actual piercing was taking too long.

With new strength, in a flash of a second, he moved his head out of the way, his whole body followed after the head and now he stood one step to the right. He checked the knife which was still where it was a second ago.

Safo felt like a speedster superhero or someone who can stop the flow of time. He understood that he could move while a knife in the air couldn't.

Now he was fully concentrated on a knife, nothing existed in the world, only him and a knife that almost killed him. It was attracting Safo Nur making him focus on it and nothing else. Safo Nur slowly lifted his right hand in an attempt to touch the knife. When he almost reached the handle of the knife…

"Don't touch it yet"

"Aargh," Safo Nur screamed and jumped back like a cat. "You scared me." He looked at Kutch which was looking at him with a grin on his face.

"This is my telekinesis, that I mentioned. I can move my weapons freely as I wish." And he started to swing his hand which led the knife to copy his gestures and move as if it was held by Kutch.

The knife in the air, flew like a snake, up and down, right and left, front and back. Safo stood with his jaw wide open.

While doing his manipulations Kutch continued. "My sister can run super fast. While I can do this. What is your resource?"

Safo Nur just understood that it was not him who dodged the knife and moved fast like The Flash, the fastest man alive. It was Kutch who simply stopped moving the knife forward. He felt embarrassed. But still, confused. "How is this possible?" He examined the knife but could notice any string or wire attached to it. "How can something like this be real?"

"Hold on to it and I'll lift it" Kutch suggested to Safo with a very friendly and childish tone.

Even to his surprise, Safo Nur obeyed, he took a knife by the handle and felt how the invisible power was controlling it. Next moment he found himself a couple of centimeters high from the ground.

Then suddenly invisible force disappeared, dropping him back. The knife was as regular as it could be.

"I lose my control over my knives if someone else grabs them. So what is your resource, I bet the heir of the throne has to be powerful." Kutch knew lots of types of resources and he knew few powerful ones. Being a natural fighter he was keen on learning more and more about it.

"If it is real it is cool. And he thinks I have something similar? Humans can have abilities like that too?' At this point, Safo Nur threw away thoughts about setup. No human could do such things, and he was open to the option that they are real aliens. Which was very cool in his understanding, he was the first human interacting with aliens.

"I don't have any powers like that, but if you teach us, I'm sure we humans could be capable of learning and using these powers." He thought of talking about the allience of two races but stopped, he had not enough authority to talk about those matters.

Kutch's eyes were wide open, he even stepped one step back affected by shock. "What do you mean you don't have any powers? You have to have something! What is that thing that makes you different from other humans, tell me! Even if it's something small, I need to know."

"I, really don't, I'm a regular human like everybody down on Earth." Safo Nur began to understand, these creatures suspected that he is different, that he has some "resource" and abilities. When in fact he was an ordinary earthling.

Metallic mumbling came from under the hood. The person that was quiet up until now was talking. "She never ..."

"What? What are you mumbling under your nose there, you metalhead? Speak up if you want to tell something." Kutch snapped at him, his tone was full of disdain towards the hooded person.

"She never let him see her. She decided to abandon him to protect him from engaging with our world. He never saw his mother." The cold metal voice came again but this time it was sharp and clean, no emotion could be detected from the tone.

Kutch's face fell, he tried to speak but no words came from his mouth. His eyes couldn't hide his sadness. "Poor boy." He muttered, no one was able to hear what he said.

"Search for her. I'll take care of him." Then he lifted his head. "So you never-ever have been in space let me show you around. You will, absolutely love this place. We came from another galaxy, if you like I have so many interesting stories to tell you."