Author's Note: Warning, violent and sensitive content from this point on. If you're sensitive to topics of extreme violence, I recommend not continuing to read this story.
Startled by the boy's presence, the first to speak was Angela's mother:
"Angela, where did you find this boy!?"
"Mom, I found him near the forest. I was looking for fruits to eat when I found him by the river." She spoke with enthusiasm, placing her hand on her chest and continued: "You always say to help people whenever possible, so I helped him. He got separated from his team that came to make contact with our planet."
"Alright, girl, but don't blame me when your father arrives and scolds you." Angela's mother replied, having no argument to counter her daughter.
She then stood up from the table and went over to Léo. With her hand pushing his back into the house, she asked:
"Anyway, boy, you must be hungry, right? I'll set another plate at the table and then we'll help you find your team."
Léo let himself be guided, enjoying the whole situation. He met Angela's family, which was composed of her brother Rafael, little sister Ana, her grandmother Denize, and her mother Rangel.
Léo acted like a normal boy, ate Angela's mother's food, which by the way was very good. It had been a long time since Léo had eaten homemade food. He always ate the awful food made at the base and, even though raw meat tasted great, it could never surpass cooked food or fried meat.
Léo was also questioned about some things by Angela's mother, but he always managed to dodge her questions without much difficulty, always responding vaguely so as not to be caught lying. And even if he was, it wouldn't change what was about to happen.
Not long after, the moment Léo had been waiting for finally arrived. Sounds from outside the house appeared. Soldiers who had received information about a lost alien in the village had arrived.
The right minister, along with the left one, had long mobilized their efforts to find Léo. Any report of species outside their teams would be quickly investigated.
The group of soldiers, composed of 100 members, was on the village streets, carrying many ground cannons, the same ones used at base 15. The leader at the front carried a portrait of Léo.
"Everyone out of your houses! We suspect that the extremely dangerous alien is in this village!" The leader of the soldiers shouted loudly so everyone could hear.
Inside Angela's house, everyone slowly turned their faces toward Léo, their expressions filled with disbelief. Rafael, Angela's brother, raised his arm and moved his family members a safe distance away from Léo.
"What a shame, I've been found out. It was fun..." A tone of disappointment came from Léo's words.
"Who really are yo—"
Before he could finish his sentence, Rafael had his head ripped off. That was one of the most satisfying ways for Léo to kill Thraxans because the purple blood spurted from their necks, splashing on everyone else present, giving them a beautiful visual aspect, almost exciting to watch. Shocked by this, everyone in the small house was paralyzed with fear. Angela's little sister, not understanding, poked her brother's neck, who was now headless.
A bad feeling hit her. Suddenly, the little sister opened her mouth and began to cry. Léo, with no patience whatsoever, as if stepping on a cockroach, exploded the little girl's body into pieces by stomping on her.
"Devil, you are a devil!" Angela's mother screamed as tears fell from her eyes.
Taking a step back, Angela's mother grabbed her daughter's hand and her own mother's hand and tried to run out of the house.
As if it were a game, Léo floated and, with amusement, passed through Angela's mother's body and launched himself toward the girl's grandmother, piercing her stomach.
Despair. That was the state Angela was in, complete despair. She knew that everything that had just happened was her fault. Even though Léo was responsible for killing her family, she was the one who brought this stranger into her home, and he repaid kindness with ingratitude.
She dropped to her knees on the floor, tears falling from her large red eyes, before asking a simple question:
"Why?" Her tone was emotionless, as if on the verge of committing suicide.
Amused, Léo approached Angela and played with her antennas before answering.
"You ask me why? Because I can, and I have the power to do it. If you were stronger than me, I would kneel and serve you, waiting for the opportunity to kill you."
Hearing those words, the girl's face filled with fury. Her eyes, still full of tears, lit up in a red flame of rage.
"You demon, I swear on my whole family, I will kill you!!" Angela clenched her two-finger fists and shouted these words looking into Léo's face.
A mischievous smile spread across Léo's face and, still smiling, he thought:
'Let's see how far my little experiment will go, how far you'll get with all that hatred, little Angela.'
"We'll see if you can." Dropping the smile, Léo walked toward the door, leaving her behind.
"You're not leaving like this!!" Angela shouted as she stood up and ran toward him, trying to attack.
Without much trouble, Léo, seeing everything in slow motion, dodged the punch she threw and knocked her out, hitting the back of her neck. With great control over his strength, he used just enough to make the enraged girl faint.
Already unconscious, she was no longer a problem. Then, Léo was finally able to leave.
Outside, the military group composed of 100 people awaited.
Everything that happened inside Angela's house happened in a split second. Several Thraxans were still coming out of their houses, paying attention both to the soldiers and to Angela's home.
Léo walked out of the residence as if nothing was happening, while staring at the eyes of many Thraxans.
Just moments ago, many screams had come from the house he exited. Probably, some family had been the victim of that alien — that's what both the military group and those who heard the screams thought.
"Wait… isn't that the same boy Angela brought earlier?!" a villager shouted, shocked upon recognizing Léo.
"Now that you mention it, that's her family's house!" another replied.
"The alien has been found! Everyone return to your homes immediately and remain protected!" the military group's leader announced loudly, cutting the gossip short.
Even if he hadn't given that warning, no one wanted to stay there, risking being killed like Angela's family. If it took so many to contain a single alien, he was no good.
Everyone quickly entered their homes, looking for safe places to hide — all consumed by fear.
"Demon Boy, you really hid well. At first, we thought you had died with the base's self-destruction, but even so, we were forced to search for you with all our might." The military team's leader looked at Léo up and down, noticing that there was no damage on his body, and continued, astonished: "And it seems your regeneration is also above-Thraxan. Not only is your strength far superior to ours, but your regeneration is also spectacular! Even if you weren't hit by the epicenter of the explosion at base 15, I can't believe you're without a scratch!"
"Poor Thraxan... your race will never understand even a fraction of what I'm capable of." said Léo, skeptically, while floating close to the ground, 16 meters from the group.
Pulling out a portrait with Léo's face and crushing it, the leader said:
"Really, maybe I'll never understand… but don't think you can insult our Thraxan race as you please and walk away unpunished."
'Strange… seems like he's trying to buy time. And it's very odd they only sent 100 people after me. They should know what I'm capable of... let alone 100 — not even a thousand Thraxans would be my match.' Léo thought, finding the situation completely suspicious.
Still floating, he pushed his body a little higher, removing the large houses from his line of sight. Without even needing to strain his pupils, he could clearly see what was happening 3 km away from where he stood.
A stretch of metal plates, 10 meters tall and the thickness of two brick walls, was being formed side by side. A blue streak extended from end to end of each one. And the strange object had already reached 100 meters wide.
'So that's it… all this time, this guy knew I was already here. They were just waiting for the perfect opportunity. That weapon probably makes a lot of noise when activated — which would alert me and allow me to escape by flying.' He then looked down and saw the frightened faces of the soldiers, amused by their naivety.
'Maybe, if I were someone who only fought without thinking, I would have fallen for this trick. If they had attacked me with the ground cannons, which are very loud, I might have gotten confused and not even noticed that weapon being activated...'
Léo laughed loudly and finished the thought by saying out loud:
"What a pity for you all… who are facing me."
"But I have to admit... you really are brave men. Even knowing that, if that thing manages to kill me, it will end up killing you too… you still came." said Léo, while preparing to launch himself toward the huge metallic plate.
"Wait, don't go—!"
Before he could finish his sentence, the man commanding the team of 100 soldiers was completely interrupted.
Léo broke the sound barrier as he flew straight toward the metallic object.
In the blink of an eye, Léo reached the metallic structure. Several Thraxans operated the machine. When they saw Léo quickly approaching, their first reaction was to fully activate the weapon.
And just as Léo suspected. Its sound was loud, but at three kilometers away, if used together with the sounds of many ground cannons, it would be well disguised, hardly noticeable.
Unfortunately for them, even if they had activated the structure while Léo was still in the village, there still wouldn't be enough time for a shot.
Léo pierced through the metallic structure from various sides while killing the Thraxans operating it.
After a while, Léo had already damaged enough of the structure. He didn't want to destroy it completely because he didn't know what was inside that gave them such courage to use their power source to try to kill him.
After that, Léo went on for another massacre. There were many Thraxans protecting the location of the metallic structure. There were the operators and the guards of the place. Counting only the guards, they numbered in the tens of thousands. That clearly showed the great value of that structure.
Even being a Viltrumite, Léo got stressed having to deal with so many at once.
One of the things that irritated him the most was the number of ground cannons being used. There were hundreds. When one firing team died, another took its place, and so on.
Even though it felt like an ant bite to Leo, even the smallest bite, in large numbers, becomes annoying.
After not much longer of massacre, the last Thraxan was finally dead.
Leo approached the structure and saw that the material looked new. So, indeed, they might be using some powerful energy source or a weapon made with advanced technology.
He began breaking some of the outer parts of the structure until he found something radiating blue light at its center. It was a blue cube the size of a golf ball.
"This looks interesting, I'll take it with me," he murmured.
He reached into the structure, and as he touched the small cube, he felt, for a split second, his strength suddenly being drained. He quickly pulled his arm back.
"This is really interesting. I'll need to study this thoroughly. An object capable of lightly draining a Viltrumite's strength!" he thought, excited by the discovery.
He then broke the metallic structure into a square-shaped chunk slightly larger than the cube, and inside that larger square was the smaller blue cube.
Holding the iron cube along with the blue one, Leo departed toward the spot where he had previously been hiding, in the mountain hills.
In Angela's village...
Angela was now lying in a soft, large bed. Beside her was the leader of the team of a hundred men.
The Thraxan girl was slowly waking up and speaking in a low voice:
"Was it a dream...?"
"Unfortunately not, girl," the leader replied, looking directly at her.
"So that means my family really..." She gripped the sheets covering her, tears falling from her eyes.
Before she could finish her sentence, the man responded, bowing his head in shame:
"Yes. All dead. Even your father, who was part of the local army. He's probably dead by now."
"My father...! Even my father!? Who killed him? And how do you know my father!?" Angela, even more desperate, cried out uncontrollably.
"I believe you already know the answer to the first question. And to answer the second: I'm the general of the southern region. I didn't know him personally, but he was one of our soldiers."
"Alright... Thank you for telling me," said the girl, devastated by the news.
Even so, she raised her head with a sad expression and asked:
"But why did you come here, besides telling me that? I know you could've sent someone else to deliver the news."
"You're really smart for your age. The truth is, I didn't come just to tell you that. I also came to recruit you into the army." He raised his hand for a handshake and added: "Of course, only if you want revenge."
Angela, who thirsted for vengeance, didn't think twice. She shook his hand and, with a crimson glow in her eyes, replied:
"From today on, I'll be under your care."