Then two successive explosions from behind him made him turn around. Skan lay with a huge wound on his chest, and Z, with electricity sparking from an open wire in his stomach.
"JEDRA!" yelled Ittou. "Get Skan!! We have to get out of here and back into town!!"
Ittou knew that he was stronger than Jedra. Jedra was obviously some kind of spaced out nerd, but he would need him for this. After clearing out his space from the Slivers for a precious second, he ran over to Z and tried to lift him. He could hardly pick him off the ground.
"Shoot!" Ittou growled. "How can I carry him to town if I can't even pick him up?" A Sliver tackled into Ittou's back, knocking him down. Jedra ran over to Z, and told Ittou,
"You get Skan!"
To Ittou's amazing surprise, Jedra picked Z up and set him on one shoulder. With one hand he fended off more Slivers and began running towards town. Ittou blasted his way to Skan through the thick swarm of Slivers with a ball of ki and picked Skan up. He was a lot lighter, actually.
Ittou followed Jedra, running as fast as he could. The cloud of Slivers stayed where it was for a few moments before it realized there quarry was escaping and streaked towards Ittou and Jedra. It was no longer a cloud of Slivers, but several dozen of them flying as fast as they could to reach the two.
After what seemed like an hour, but couldn't have been a few seconds, they reached the town's edges. A red and green Reploid and a Namek gaurded the front. Jedra broke through their efforts to stop them, again amazing Ittou with his strength, and Ittou followed through before the gaurds could reform their small wall.
Then the Namek saw the Slivers a gasped. The Reploid created a small ball of light from one arm cannon and fired it into the masses. It exploded into nothing more than a bright light, which actually killed over half of the Slivers. The rest of them, when they got near enough, were stopped by the Namek. He fanned his eyes with his fingers, cried out 'Solar Flare', and created another huge burt of light, that killed the rest.
Ittou was impressed. He knew that to use a Solar Flare, a lot of light was needed. Most people, including himself, needed the sun's light to use it, but the Namek had only used the Reploid's explosion of light.
The Reploid rushed over to Ittou and Jedra, who were gently laying down Skan and Z's unconsious form. Ittou readied himself in a battle stance, breathing heavily, but the Reploid lifted his arms in a pacifiyng manner.
"Nononono, I don't want to fight! If I had known you were being attacked by the Slivers, I wouldn't have tried to stop you!" The Reploid looked at them angrily. "And what were you doing out in the dark, hm? Don't you know that the Slivers come out at night, where there is no light to kill them??"
Ittou scratched the back of his neck and grinned feebily at the gaurd. "To tell you the truth... no, I didn't. Neither did any other of my comrades, here. And if you can tell, they are not in the mood to vouch for me. Maybe if we got the to a HOSPITAL, they COULD!!!"
The Reploid smirked. "Yeah, sure."
Ittou was hardly surprised when there was a 'Sliver attack room' right next to the 'Emergency Room'. Skan and Z were placed on small white tables where nurses and doctors crowded around like the Slivers in the last attack. Jedra and Ittou were allowed in the room while Skan and Z were poked and prodded and examined.
After a few minutes, one of the doctors came over to talk to Jedra and Ittou. "We have some good news and some bad news. The bad news, well, had two parts. One is that your human friend has some sort of infection from the Acidic Sliver's kamikaze attack. Good news is that it can be fixed. The other part of the bad news is that your other friend is a robot. We can't fix that. And our Reploid friends tell us that he has about one or two days before his systems permanently shut down. The closest repair shop is weeks from here."
Ittou sighed. "Damn. OK, then, take care of Skan. The human."
The doctor nodded and went back to his work. Jedra looked over at Ittou. "He said Acidic Sliver."
Ittou looked over at Jedra with an annoyed look. "Yeah, and?"
"Well, that means that the Slivers are categorized by their abilities. The Acidic Sliver must be that one that blows up. I wonder if the other is called a Flying Sliver?"
Ittou shrugged. "Whatever. I don't care."
A few minutes of silence followed. Then Ittou spoke up again.
"You lifted Z pretty well, and knocked those gaurds aside like they were nothing. Do you work out or practice or something?"
Jedra shrugged and shook his head. "No."
Ittou blinked in surprise, then glanced over at Jedra. "What?? Then how...?"
"Huh? Oh. My strength. Part of it is my heritage," explained Jedra. "A bunch of barabarous people from the mountains. I'm born with a resistance to cold and above normal strength. I also have to gaurd my library often, since books are so expensive, and I guess I get a lot of practice from that or something. I guess."
Ittou blinked again in surprise. "Books aren't expensive!"
Now Jedra was surprised. "What? How can they not be! Printing presses are so rare only Kings own them, and most King's themselves don't, including Lord Wayrest. Books have to be written by hand, which takes a very long time to do."
Ittou didn't say anything for a while. Kings? 'Rare' printing presses, 'Expensive' books? Kings were non existant, and printing presses were very, very common. Books were cheap, not hand written.
"You know..." Jedra said slowly. "I don't live under a King. Books are as common as printing presses, and are duplicated in the millions. There is lot of technology where I'm from."
"Huh? Oh. Um, I was thinking about that. As radical as it sounds, we all seem to be extremely different. You have abilities that magic cannot account for. And, uh, judging by your expression, magic doesn't exist in your world. There's an actual Reploid over there, and a man who has your technology, yet understands the magic of the world I live in."
"The world you live in?" Ittou asked. "You think we are from different worlds?"
"Different worlds, different times.... yet all together the same. Are you from Earth?"
Ittou blinked. "Yes! Yes I am!"
"Well, do you think, on perhaps the far corner, magic exists?"
"Ummm... no.... OK, I think I get your point. It's weird though."
Jedra nodded, and looked back at where Skan was being operated on. "Yes. Very strange."