The First Flame part 10

This is the 5th update this week :) I hope you guys enjoy. There will be 5 more next week. The First Flame will update twice next week since Nebula was completed

Ran fought her restrains until her wrists became chaffed. It ached horribly, but she would rather squirm until bone showed than wallow in misery.

Siox didn’t show up for a long time. She wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing. There might be something mechanically wrong with the ship. They had rushed out of Tulis, so something could have gone wrong in the take-off.

As she sat there, body on fire, she tried to plan. Her body was broken, but her soul was still intact. First, she needed to free her hands. Siox had pissed her off enough times to make her fantasize about killing him. She plotted it plenty of times while she was a Lieutenant, going as far as studying his matches. She knew his weaknesses and doubted he knew hers.

The sick bastard probably focused on the swinging of her breasts as she fought, not her actual formation.

She needed her hands. Without them, she was hopeless.

The door slammed open, and Siox’s irritated expression softened. The calm only made her heartbeat skyrocket.

“Good,” he praised. She didn’t understand what he was talking about until he reached for her thighs and rubbed his semen on it.

“Siox,” she tried again. “I… am pregnant. You can’t do this.”

He looked angry at first, and then unsure. 

“What?”

She nodded eagerly. “The warrior you saw on my warship. He was sent by my father. I slept with him. Please let me return to the father of my child.”

Siox was silent for a long time, and she dared to hope.

“You know what children mean to my people. Ezronians barely have any babies,” she added. “I will miscarry if you rape me.”

It was the word ‘rape’ that hardened his face all over again. The small window of hope slammed shut.

“It is not rape. You will enjoy it. You just do not know it yet.”

She wanted to scream. She got so close to touching that sane part of him, only to blow it.

“Can you do it slowly?” she requested. “Please? I’ll comply if you don’t take me too roughly.”

He liked that she was negotiating. “Good, Ran. You look much prettier when you are not fighting men.”

That condescending bastard! 

“Can we drink some cooling fuel? So I can relax? Please?”

Cooling fuel was used to run ship. If consumed in large portions, it would cause intoxication effects. It was awful for the liver and whatever organs Feducians had, but the careless soldiers in The Academy didn’t care. Ran drank enough of the stuff to know that it could fuck you up good.

Siox led her outside, weak to the batting of eyelashes. Ran silently thanked herself for spending years manipulating her father with her eyes.

He made her sit down on a corner, not trusting her anywhere near the command center. He was still wary.

He walked around and pulled two cups from a saddlebag. Seeing that he had prepared for this trip made her gag. He was truly, unquestionably, obsessed with her. Ran understood, to a degree. She had declined his advances for two years. Siox was a crown prince who was used to compliance and ass-kissing, not stubborn Ezronian females.

As he prepared the drinks, Ran planned where to dispose of his body. Did these ship models have space shoots? 

Siox held the drink up to her lips, and she pretended to take a long sip of the tangy, dark drink. Siox took his own drink. The process continued until he was hallucinating and she was whispering “release me” into his ear. He grinned, thinking she was ready to lay with him. He produced a key and unlocked her.

Siox dominated the conversation, rambling word salad that she couldn’t keep up with. She nodded to encourage him on. While he was tipsy, Ran was clear-minded. Her only obstacle was the pain that was radiating through her bones. She waited an hour for the right time for him to turn and offer that blind spot of his.

She rammed him into the wall, and Siox’s tipsiness cleared. They began to wrestle. Her abused muscles screamed as he rolled on top of her and smashed angry fists on her cheeks. She took the blows, but returned a few of her own. When she hit him square in the chest, he bent at the waist and fell off her.

Now that she had the upper hand, she twister her hips and knocked his shoulders onto the cold metal of the ship. His head bounced off the floor, once, twice, before retaliating by punching her bruised ribs.

Ran doubled over and fell off him, the pain unbearable. The last thing she remembered before going out was a surge of pain that she wouldn’t wish on her worst enemy. She didn’t know how long she was out. When she opened her eyes, she she wasn’t sure if she was truly awake.

The spaceship she had been in was replaced with a grey, sad sky.

She eagerly tried to make sense of what she was seeing. None of her surroundings looked familiar. There were ruined boxes with wires hanging out of them. They looked liked the tablets her mother messed around with. Paper and furniture were scattered all over the place, and there were endless windows. She crawled to the closest window, her legs refusing to hold her weight.

Bold, enormous, deteriorating letters stood in the distance, spelling out HOLLIWOOD. The D was about to fall apart. Behind the word was smoke, more grey and tall, dusty structures.

Ran knew English, but the word “HOLLIWOOD” meant nothing to her. Whatever it meant, it wasn’t from Ezron.

This whole place wasn’t Ezron, or Tulis, or The Federation. It was advanced in its own way, but ancient at the same time. Once upon a time, it must have been beautiful. 

This was Earth– or what remained of it, at least. This is where her mother was born. Where the saviors of Ezron were from. It looked nothing like the stories that her mother shared. This place wasn’t lively with colors, sounds, and movement. It was a graveyard. The only creature she saw was a bird that flew high in the frozen sky.

Feeling stressed, she tried to run her stressed hands through her hair, but found them bound. All she could do was kneel as she processed the fact that she was on the wrong planet. Her mother explained Earth’s history, and the darkness of humanity. If its countries found out that there was a female walking through the planet, they would go to war all over again.

How did Siox make it here? It was supposed to be impossible. Earth was just too far away. The only way Kira and the others made it to Ezron was because of a mishap with a portal that was beyond their years.

Ran staggered to her feet. What in the fates was she supposed to do now?

Seeing activity down below, she fell to her knees and squinted. It was human. Four men. She stared with awe and horror. She had never seen a human male before. Her mother described them as averaging shorter than Ezronian men, but that never helped her picture them.

These men were in rags. Their chests were covered– an odd sight, since Ezronians were typically shirtless. Their hair was so ratty and skin spotted with dirt that she could tell they smelled awful. They looked skinny, too, which made her wonder if their collapsed society pushed them toward cannibalism.

Here’s to hoping that they ran into Siox and turned him into dinner. 

She tore her eyes from the men. She needed to find a way home. Somehow, someway, she needed to get her hands on the spaceship.

Her eyes locked on a building in the distance. Familiar words were written atop it. She had seen the pattern of letters before, but couldn’t pinpoint where.

On the brown, exhausted, shattered building was the word:

NASA