ONYX 2097 - Prolog - Toni LoTempio

PROLOG –
EARTH – NEW YORK - 2097
ALL things considered, the New York of 2097 wasn’t all that much different from the city of the year 2005. There were moments, places of silence and small slivers of time where even the smallest breeze seemed totally insignificant.
It was, after all, New York.
There were still tall skyscrapers and the Empire State Building still ruled as the tallest of the tall. Broadway was still called the Great White Way; the Statue of Liberty still guided visitors to our shore. If you didn’t count the improvements intergalactic travel had made over the past 90 years or the fact that most piloted about in cars that gravitated 10 feet above the ground instead of the archaic motorcars, things were really pretty much the same. Neon and fluorescent lights bathed the streets in multicolored pseudo-light in the wee hours of the morning as music spilled from the doorways of trendy clubs and shops provided a never-ending cacophony of sound that boomed along the layers of pollution like an avenging angel.
Tonight seemed especially black.
Deep in the bowels of the city, in a dark room no bigger than a cube, a strange tableau began to unfold.
An alien pirate, a green giant of a man - no, make that creature - called Toza sat in a chair far too small for his hulk, his face contorted in rage. His large, ham-like hands gripped the edge of his seat and threatened to pull it from its moorings.
Across from him stood a woman. She too was large, although not of Toza’s gargantuan proportions. She was powerfully built. Muscular legs that seemed to go on forever peeped out from her yellow leotards. Her feet were encased in strapped sandals, bare at the ankles so that the wings positioned on each could have freedom of movement. Her well-formed lips were twisted right now into a sardonic grin and her most arresting feature - her pitch-black, flat eyes - were trained directly on the alien.
“Give it up, Toza. Surrender.”
Her voice was not unlike a rumble of thunder. Deep, commanding. She took a bold step forward. Toza’s beefy hand shot out and encircled her wrist.
“Never. Give me the tiara.”
Her obsidian eyes stared back. “Make me,” she purred with a sound deep in her throat. “Make me, Cretan.”
“Ah, little girl. You have no idea what you’re up against.”
His thick green lips parted in a sick semblance of a smile.
“And neither do you,” she thought, but aloud remarked, “Well, why don’t you show me, then? I dare you.”
“Many who have dared me have died.”
“I’m sure. However, this time is different. This time, you have no idea what you’re up against.”
She raised her free arm and before Toza could blink, twin bolts of lightning flashed out from under her fingertips and smashed against the side of his giant, green head. The force caused him to release his hold on her wrist. She moved her ankles swiftly back and forth as she fluttered in the air just above the dazed space pirate.
“Hold on now. This may hurt a little.”
She raised her arm again and as she prepared to do battle, the thought flashed through her mind again.
“How did I get here? Oh, yes…I remember….”