Not The One - part 9
By Dru



The Council of the Twelve sat in their circle as they had done for eons. The
discussion this morning had been quite heated , but their spying devices had
just given them pictures of Tyrin, the one who would save them, handing his
ring over to Susan.

"How can things have become this bad?" one of the older men asked in a silence
that followed. "We are wiser than this."

"I fear our universe is doomed."

"We cannot think that way." The freshest member interjected. "There is always
another course."

"This is mistake of ours has lost two rings now, Councillor! Our chances of
recovering one were slim..."

"We have gone about this the wrong way. If she will not give up the ring, we
must contact this Earthling and instruct her in its purpose."

Everyone looked at the young fellow who spoke, violently dubious about that
idea.

"We have to work with her now, don't you see that? She is not the One, but she
has twice the power."

Susan hovered above the meeting, carefully inspecting each one of them. The
skylight made a good window. There were guards far below guarding the
entrance, and Susan assumed more were up here. She was a little concerned with
the weapons they were carrying...the guns strapped to their backs were very
large...but all her fear was washed away as she realised that the group
gathered in the room below were more terrified of her. These fellas were just
about ready to barf they were that scared.

Listening to the conversation Susan was heartened to hear one of them suggest
a peaceful meeting with her. The hostile reaction from the others to that idea
got her mad again though. Those fools weren't prepared to listen to the wise
suggestion of their colleague, and it was a mistake they would pay dearly for.
Now that Susan had felt the freedom offered by the rings, there was absolutely
no way she was going to part with either one of them. Looking through the
atmosphere of this over-developed planet and focusing on Earth so very far
away, she smiled. No way was she giving back the ring.

All twelve councillors looked up as the dome above them cracked, and pieces of
stone fell with resounding force into the floor. The crack widened, two rough
halves of the roof sliding apart. Through that gap their eyes made out a
figure in the dust, and they realised that their time was up.

"The Council of the Twelve, huh?" Susan asked, her hands on either side of the
opening.

They sat in mute horror while she descended smoothly to the floor,
intentionally cracking the tiles with her toes and shaking the tower with her
feet.

"We need to talk, people."

They looked at her, then looked at each at each other, then the Council of the
Twelve looked back to her. None of them spoke.

"Well? Haven't you got something to say to me?"

"You're naked..."

"So what? Is that a problem for you, asshole? Does my appearance offend your
grace-ship?"

"Young lady. You are not the one."

Showing them her flawless pearly-whites, Susan held up her hands and revealed
the two rings.

"I came here to tell you that you'll never get your ring back. And this other
one's mine too."

The tower guards picked that moment to come charging through the door. Twelve
big men armed with ceremonial staffs came running into the room to surround
her.

"Restrain her," the leader commanded, his rank shown by a yellow strip on his
shirt.

Susan spoke over their heads at the decision makers, allowing the foolish
guard to place strange cuffs on her wrists. "Check this out."

Looking into the eyes of the alien in front of her, Susan separated her arms
with deliberately slow motion. The metal made a bizarre sound as it stretched
to breaking point. Before the broken link clanged to the floor, the other
eleven warriors moved forward. Outnumbered in an alien world by creatures much
larger than any Earth man, Susan found the fight a total white-wash. She had
no training...none of the experience that these battle-hardened troops had
gained through their lifetime of interstellar training. Allowing them to
massage her tightly packed body with their useless weapons, Susan was
impressed by the speed of their assault. They were getting frustrated, but the
impossibility of what was going on didn't plague their thoughts for very long.

Catching one of them by the wrist, she snapped her arm back to send him
spinning into the tower wall at terminal velocity. Her other fist obliterated
her second victim before the first was dead, the guard's explosive demise
knocking the rest off their feet. Grabbing the ankle of the closest one, she
put a foot on his hip and ripped the leg away. Bashing him on the head with
it, she proceeded to kill a few more until on the third swing the armour
plating he had been wearing was shattered.

They had guns after all, and began shooting bolts of colourful light at her.
Her bare body took these energy bolts differently than bullets. Instead of
bouncing away, these intense energy beams burnt out violently on her skin.
Testing an idea she had, Susan pointed at the one who was shooting at her head
and released a little energy blast of her own. The narrow bolt that projected
from her fingertip flashed brightly, disintegrating the poor fool and the wall
behind him.

"Brilliant!" Susan declared, shooting the rest with laser blasts from her
hands. "And you think I'll give this up? Not a chance."

Even though she had used much less power on the remaining guards, the series
of explosions had ruined most of the chamber. The councillors had gathered at
the far wall, unsure what to do.

"I'm not stupid, you know."

"You're not the one."

"Can you give that line a rest? No-one's picking it up. That Tyrin fella was a
bad idea, wasn't he? You do realise that if he hadn't come I wouldn't know
where to find you people. That's so stupid."

"You can use those rings to do wonderful things, Susan." It was the one who
had suggested working with her earlier. "The bearer of the ring is supposed to
guard and protect our universe. You are not ready to do that."

"I'm ready for anything," Susan insisted. "Didn't I just show you that?"

"You're a danger to the universe!" another interjected, japing his finger at
her. "You abuse the powers!"

Susan was about to tell him where to go when she decided to show him. He was
gripped by a phantom force and lifted into the air. "Having your head up your
arse is an abuse of power, Shorty." The room filled with the councillors'
screams, his back bending backwards far beyond its natural ability until the
top of his head touched his rump. Everyone looked away as Susan finished him
off with a sickening crunch and dropped him to the floor.

"I'm afraid you're not listening," she told her shaking audience. "I AM the
one."

"What have you done?" The biggest of the twelve came forward and covered his
friend with his cloak. "You're nothing but a thief! Those rings are..."

Silencing him with a motion of her hand, she beckoned to him and floated over
to hover in front of her.

"Finish that sentence very carefully," she warned.

He looked at her, his arms and legs waving about as he tried to distance
himself from this extremely dangerous Earthling. He could reach anything, and
just flailed about.

"The ring is meant for greater things..." he bellowed.

"Now I'm meant for greater things. If you can't live with that, well," Susan
clicked her fingers and ignited the air around him into a brief white flash.
Containing the explosion to protect the other councillors, she decided to do
away with the lot of them. The pain she had experienced because of these
official fuck-ups had been more than any other creature had experienced
before. Now she was going have a nice and tidy revenge on them.

"And once I'm through with you, I'm going to destroy your planet. I'm not sure
if I can do that, but I can't imagine it would be too difficult."

"Listen to yourself! You've become corrupted by the power! That is why we must
choose carefully who wears the ring..."

Her eyes looked at this bold speaker and a moment later he disappeared in a
cloud of blood, body parts flying in all directions.

Spreading her arms out, she pushed with her mind at the walls around them and
the chamber was destroyed in heatless explosion. Looking around at the night
sky of this strange world, Susan ignored the noisy impact of the tower's
debris with the ground far below. A fireball rolled up beneath her, but burnt
itself out long before reaching the heights of open platform she had made.

"I just though you'd like one last look at your world before you die," she
told them, lifting her feet up and hovering a few feet above their heads. "But
first..."

Focusing on the first guy, Susan dived through his brain and sifted it for
knowledge. He had a lot more information than any of her previous victims, and
when Susan was through with him she was aware of many aspects of her
abilities. With great anticipation, she turned to the next one. From this
ancient sage she took two hundred years of learning in two minutes, and
stepped back from the experience with her eyes wide open.

Susan couldn't believe she'd been planning on living on the coast near Sydney.
The universe was full of thousands of civilisations, few of them as advanced
as Earth in terms of technology. Most of them were human, but there were many
other intelligent forms of life that the curious councillor had been aware of.
One of these star systems would make a perfect home for Susan now that she had
a better idea of what she was really capable of.

"You should think about what you're doing," the next one her eyes fell on told
her. Sweat was dripping off him, she could hear his heart and smell the fear.

"I've seen the inside of two of you, and I know you'll never stop hounding me
for the ring back. There's really no other choice for me. I owe all you pricks
a regular limb-tearing for calling that other ring-bearer in. Now then, bucko,
can you feel this?"

Susan reached out with her enlightened mind and activated every one of the
mans pain receptors. Boosting the signal with a little of her own juice, Susan
invaded her victims head with more precision than she had ever used before.
This guy knew a few things that the first two hadn't, and Susan found that
each of them had their own extra piece of information for her. By the time she
turned to the sixth man she had progressed to the level where she could
rummage through a mind without damaging the cellular structure. The rest of
her "teachers" survived with their sanity intact, all their knowledge
unwillingly shared.

"That was the smartest I thing I've done," she told her captive audience. "Can
you believe I was going to spend my life on Earth? If Tyrin hadn't come along
I'd never have known how to fly. And if I hadn't found out where to find you
from him, I'd never have known I was so powerful."

The sound of strange vehicles turned her head, and Susan focused on three
formations of bizarre flying machines streaking toward the tower.

"Now watch as your destroyer goes to work."