U.F.Otaku
by The Jason Jack
—————————————————————
The UFO hovered outside of Keiko
Allstar’s window, shining a paralyzing blue light into the woman’s bedroom. The
bookshelves along the walls shook, numerous model aircrafts fell from the
ceiling, and stacks of manga piled around the room tipped over while the light
sucked Keiko from bed and into the air. Staring at the ship pulling her in, she
could only think of one word.
Finally.
*****
Keiko ran through the forest onto a
tropical clearing, watching a flaming pod soar through the air. It passed in
front of a cliff range off in the distance and crashed into a thicket of trees
to the woman’s right.
The ground shook beneath Keiko’s
feet, causing her to stumble onto the beach and nearly fall into the ocean at
her left. While she regained balance, a man garbed in a futuristic astronaut
suit stumbled out of the trees and onto the sand. He cast his flaming helmet
into the ocean and revealed his face.
He’s
. . . blue. Keiko squealed then pinched her cheek. It hurt. I’m really awake which means the UFO outside
my window, this tropical island, and, and, the blue man over there are all real.
Keiko held up two fingers to form
the peace sign.
I’ve
been waiting to be abducted my entire life. Success!
“Oh, Mr. Alien.” She frolicked
across the sand to the blue man, peace sign in full. “It’s me. The human you
abducted last night?”
She extended her hand in greeting,
while the alien extended his fist which Keiko ran into with her face. The woman
held her cheek but smiled.
“I’m going to be in the record
books for being the first human to have been punched by an alien. Awesome.”
The blue man brought his face close
to Keiko’s. He had three connected eyeballs, nostrils with retractable skin
flaps covering them, and a lipless mouth. He snarled which revealed rows of sharp
teeth and dual tongues.
“You are so alien,” Keiko drooled.
“I love it. I’ve dreamt of meeting a space man like you since I was a little
girl, staring off into the wide open terrain that is space. People thought I
was nerdy for consuming science fiction all my life, but who’s laughing now!”
The blue man silenced the girl with
a roar. He emitted enough air from his mouth that Keiko’s long hair twirled
about. Her smile unmitigated, Keiko pointed at herself.
“MY-NAME’S-KEIKO-ALLSTAR, NAMED-AFTER-THE-HERO-FROM-THE-FAMOUS-ANIME,
‘STARSHIP-ALLSTAR’!” She showed the blue man the peace sign. “ANIME-IS-SHORT-FOR-JAPANESE-ANIMATION.
THAT’S-VERY-IMPORTANT, UNDERSTAND—”
The alien pinched Keiko’s lips shut
while covering one of his ears.
You’re
not deaf, you just can’t understand what I’m saying. Oopsy.
Keiko nodded while the blue man
lowered his hand from her mouth. She tapped her chest.
“Kei-ko.”
The alien motioned to himself. He emitted
a high pitch noise that sounded like a dial-up modem connecting to the
internet. Keiko winced.
“Since I can’t hit the high notes
like you can, I’ll just call you . . . Azu-El. How’s that?”
A giant bee swooped out of the
trees and knocked the blue man to the ground then dove toward the alien with
its large stinger drawn. Azu-El tried rolling to safety but the stinger still
connected, tearing through the back of his hand. He flashed his teeth and
roared.
I
bet he’s going to put his phasers on kill, Keiko imagined.
Azu-El, instead, grabbed the bee’s
pincer and snapped it off. The giant insect fell to the sand in a pool of its
own guts and venom. Keiko smacked her lips.
That
was lame. I thought all aliens had
phasers.
The blue man eyed the back of his
hand, at the green blood seeping from his wound, then looked at Keiko. He
approached the woman with hunger burning in his eyes. Keiko stepped back.
“Hold on there, fellow. If you’re
thinking what I think you’re thinking, stop thinking it. I know what the sci-fi
media portrays, that we humans are plenty tasty and will replenish your energy,
but it’s not true.”
She backed away.
“We’re sweaty, stinky, and I
haven’t shaven lately. Why don’t you just eat that bee instead? Tastes like
honey, I bet . . .”
Keiko heard a buzzing behind her. She
spun around and gazed at yet another giant bee hovering an inch away.
The bee lunged forward while Keiko
stumbled back. She dodge the insect by falling to the sand but scraped her arm
on a piece of bark. With clenched teeth, she tossed a handful of sand into the bee’s
eyes.
“Bee-gone.” Keiko chuckled, but
squealed when the insect shook off the sand and pointed its stinger at the woman’s
heart. Before it could swoop down for the kill, Azu-El caught the insect in mid
air and ripped it in two. He tossed the bee over his shoulder before taking a
step in Keiko’s direction. Keiko crawled away.
“Alright. Compromise time. No
eating me, but because you saved my life, you can lick me anywhere but here,
here, here, here, and most definitely not here—”
Keiko watched a large stinger protrude
through the blue man’s left shoulder. The alien snarled, reaching behind his
back. He removed the giant bee’s thorn then ripped the insect into two.
Azu-El fell to the sand, venom and
blood oozing out the hole in his chest, twitching, no doubt a precursor to
hallucinations and a fate worse than that.
“Crap, crap, crap.” Keiko crawled with
haste to the alien’s side. “Don’t you have automatic healing powers or
something?” She smashed her palm into her forehead. “What a goof. That’s
superheroes I’m thinking about.”
Azu-El grabbed Keiko’s scraped arm
and brought it to his mouth.
“Whoa, wait—”
The moment the blue man’s mouth
touched her skin, its tongues lapping on the blood trickling from the cut,
Keiko witnessed a flicker of images. She saw a planet at the edge of the
universe populated by sickened people. She saw Azu-El leave the planet in his
spaceship to find a cure. There was earth, the outside of her bedroom, and the
spacecraft abducting her while she squealed with glee.
Then, she saw what went wrong.
A fleet of scorpion-shaped space
ships attacked Azu-El’s ship which forced him to land on the nearest planet
capable of sustainable life. The ship fell to the planet in three pieces: the
remains of the ship and two escape pods, one for Azu-El and the other belonging
to Keiko.
Keiko’s vision returned as soon as
it had been corrupted. Azu-El was busy crafting spears from wood and bee
stingers, and the hole in his chest had vanished.
“Oh. I get it. I know what the cure
for your people is.” She looked at the cut on her arm. It, too, had vanished.
“It’s human blood. My blood.”
Keiko jumped to her feet, wobbling,
then hailed Azu-El over.
“Let me get this straight, space
man. Through the magic of what I could only fathom was some sort of alien
memory transfusion, you showed me the events that brought us here.”
The blue man planted both spears
into the sand while he nodded.
“And now you can understand me,
because you’ve . . . bonded with me? Creepy. I feel violated.” She crossed her
arms. “Alright. Clear something up, then. You botched an alien abduction, my abduction, and got attacked by a rebel
alien force on the way back to your home planet to feed your people my blood?”
Azu-El shrugged then nodded.
“And here I thought this tropical
resort was your home planet. Thanks to you, now I’m an alien, stranded on an
alien planet, with an alien. Not cool.”
The blue man pointed to the cliffs.
Keiko grabbed the side of her head when another image appeared.
“Not going to get used to that.” She
glanced at the rock range. “You’re saying that we landed here but the bulk of
the ship crashed somewhere over that cliff. And the transmitter to send help
back to your people is inside of the wreckage. Our only way of survival.”
Keiko stood face to face with her
abductor, squinting.
“You actually need me alive. You
were never going to kill me, were you?”
The blue man shook his head and
shed a smile.
“Right. I’d probably just wind up
back home without any memory of this. Most alien abductions don’t end in death.
But going over the cliffs, heading into the unknown to get to that spacecraft .
. .”
Keiko dashed to the cliff range at
the far end of the beach and quickly climbed to the top.
“Azu-El, uh, you really need to see
this.”
The alien scaled the wall with
spears in hand. His mouth gaped open when he saw what Keiko saw. He thrust the
handle of a spear into Keiko’s arms with a pat on her back.
“Can’t be much harder than killing
aliens in video games, right?”
Keiko stared at the vast lands
before her, the lone skyscraping tree with a smoking aircraft in its side, and
the dozens of roaming creatures between her and her destination. Two-headed beasts,
spider-serpent hybrids the size of tractors, and towering mantises were only a
few that stood out to her. It also did not help that the spacecraft had knocked
a giant bee hive out of the tree which had filled the air with hundreds of
blood-thirsty bees.
Keiko turned to Azu-El, her eyes
wide, and smiled.
“I’ve always wanted to fight in an
alien war.” She clenched the spear to her chest and slid down the mountain. “Yippee!
Hurry up, Azu-El. Whoever gets to the spacecraft last is a rotten alien.”
Azu-El shook his head in regret from
having abducted the human female. He slid after the manic earthling with one
thought in his mind.
What
did I get myself into?
