Roshma Book 1: The First Steps

“Tyerow, Hey Tyerow” The voice scared me at first. I had slipped out of this world and into the realm of my conscious, but the voice had reeled me back in and demanded my presence in the real world.

Turns out the voice belonged to A.J. He proceeded to ask, “Are you okay? You were really spacing out there.” I must have been really deep in thought to not realize the other had joined us under the tree.

I smiled, “Yeah I’m fine just thinking things over. Probably over-thinking things. There’s a lot to do before term ends.”

He seemed satisfied and nodded his head in approval. A.J.’s actual name is Adajanhiro Kunwaro Janovanpopavich, which is quite a mouthful. As for his skin, it’s much darker than the rest of us and almost everyone at the academy for that matter. His eyes were so green they almost glowed. A.J’s hair was different as well, it was braided tightly to his scalp and his pointy ears that protruded out the side of his head. He was an Elvin Zatt.

When it came to his clothing, it was nothing out of the ordinary. A button-down white shirt and blue pants. He wore a necklace with a small medallion at the bottom. There was a lone symbol on the medallion. He told me when I met him, “This means family. I may be on a different planet, but they are always with me.” A bit cliché, but his heart was in the right place.

The Elvin race had a rocky history on planet Zatara. For thousands of years they were discriminated against because of their difference in physical appearance. This led to many of these Zatts to leave their home world and form colonies on planet Barahareen.

His father is an interplanetary ambassador for Barahareen and A.J. too was recruited for powers. He was a large man, being slightly taller than myself and a lot heavier. In fact, the buttons on his white shirt seemed like they could pop off at any minute. His physique wasn’t the only thing that was large, his heart must have been twice the size of a normal Zatt’s heart. He cared for everyone and we were all his family.

To his left was a quite mousy man with shoulder length black hair and brown eyes named Adon Shodon who we called Shodon. He wore a long sleeve silk shirt and long pants despite the heat. In his defense, he had rolled the sleeves up to his elbows. There wasn’t much else to say about him. He was pleasant and every once in a while he would make you laugh but he barely spoke. Still, Shodon’s an oddball.

Westcon was to the right of Shodon. Next to him was Mott Blixer. He was a rather handsome man with a strong jaw line, baby blue eyes, and an athletic figure. This was especially apparent today as he wore a red tank top that was a bit too small. There was a charisma about him that you couldn’t ignore. It was different than Westcon’s underdog factor.

Mott sported short black hair with a neatly trimmed beard on his chin. If our group had a leader it was him. Mott was orphaned at an early age and wound up on the streets, but his talents ultimately saved him and landed here at the academy.

To my left was Katotta Robatachi. She was different from the rest of us for many reasons. First, she was a girl and we were guys. Also, she didn’t share our mutation. She was normal but labeling her as such would be unfair. Normal doesn’t do her justice.

Katotta was a Goddess who had graced us mortals with her presence. Kirsten, Michelle, and all other girls at Cashay’s Academy paled in comparison. She didn’t need powers, she had money. Her dad was the CEO of Robo Inc. a major contractor for the military. The Robatachi family had a copious amount of wealth.

It wasn’t her ethereal beautiful or vast wealth that made her so alluring. Of course all of this helped, but Katotta had something more. Her hair consisted of various shades of purple hair that she usually wore up in a messy bun on top of her head. The bun was accompanied by two small braided pigtails hung down slightly past her shoulders. She had long bangs that sometimes obstructed her vision. Katotta’s look was her own and she made it work quite well.

Katotta had the face of an angel and soft red eyes that could melt your heart as well as a nice figure to go along with it. There are many beautiful girls on Zatara, but they all looked the same. I’m not for sure of Katotta’s racial background, but I hadn’t met anyone else like her in all the places I’d lived. She was radiant. She glowed against the backdrop of this vanilla world.

Unlike everyone else under the tree, I knew Katotta from my days in Desantiago. She was one of my two desert friends that didn’t die. I became acquainted with Katotta as a result of her dating my best friend James. However, he wasn’t as lucky as Katotta. He didn’t survive, it was a really painful time in my life.

I try to forget my time in the desert. There was a lot of pain, but she reminds me of the good times. Fate brought us together again at the academy. I took the next step and introduced her to all my friends, now we’re all setting around this table. She splits her time between friend groups, but it’s always a pleasure when she’s with us.

A look of terror washed over Shodon’s face. He became flushed and his pupils expanded. It was obvious something was wrong. Mott asked, “What’s wrong Shodon? Something eating you up.

Shodon spoke, which was a rarity in itself, “Do you guys ever worry about the future? I mean seriously, we’re trained to neutralize threats made to be weapons, but what for? Everything is so vague so gray. What is this threat? Can’t seem to get a straight answer from anyone. I don’t know if this is what I want to do with my life, my dad basically forced me into in.”

Westcon started to laugh before he finally spoke, “You’ve got to relax. You’re looking at this all wrong. What we have here is an opportunity, we’ll neutralize whatever threats exist. When the job is done we’ll go out get some drinks, the ladies will be all over us (Katotta proceeded to roll her eyes). We’ll be heroes. Not everyone can do what we do; we’re special and I choose to embrace it not brood over it.” From my own personal experiences, I knew he was greatly misinformed, my dad did exactly what we’re training to do, and he was never a hero at least not in the public eye.

Mott went on to add his perspective to the mix, “I embrace the opportunity, but I don’t run into headlong like you do Westcon. This is all I have, it was this or selling drugs on the street. I’ve killed before and don’t necessarily like to do so but I’ll do what I have to keep the life I have now.” It’s easy to take the little things for granted like growing up with both parents.

Katotta brought a different perspective to the table. She said, “I can’t really relate to your struggles, I don’t have your powers but you guys are all looking too far into the future. Take advantage of the present.” This was something I greatly struggled to grasp my mind was never in the moment.

With this, I left the courtyard and made my way into the main campus. Got to go learn about Environmental sciences. The topic was rocks. When was this actually going to be useful? However, it was at that moment when fate beckoned me and gave me the push that ultimately started my Roshma, though point of origin can always be argued. My summoner was a hologram projection. First, a loud alarm went off. Everyone immediately stopped what they were doing and their eyes were drawn to the walls. Then the projection started up and I couldn’t believe what it was saying, no one could.

The hologram of a news lady came up, “Prominent government official Charlie Dexter’s starship was shot down while reentering the planet’s atmosphere at 1100 hours. The culprits have been confirmed to be ships from the Panamore Corporation.” They showed footage of the ship exploding in the atmosphere. I could hardly believe my eyes, tell me it was a dream or at the least a cruel joke.

The lady continued, “Zatrara had a trade embargo with them over the last year for questionable business practices such as working with known interplanetary criminals. As of now Zatara is at war with the Pananmore Corporation. Any additional attacks will be met with retaliation.”

This was horrible, our planet hadn’t had a war in over 100 years, let along an interplanetary war like this. It may have been selfish, but I knew this was an end of the life I knew it. Lots of people would die. Finishing school was probably off the table. My life was falling apart. One ray of light got through and now the whole canopy was falling apart. The system was failing. Nothing is perfect. Nothing is permanent.

Needless to say, class was canceled for the day. I returned to the courtyard under the shade and safety of the tree. I was trying to pull it together, but my breathing was heavy and my mind was racing at the speed of light. Katotta said to live in the moment, but the moment was one of war now, so I needed a distraction. After about half an hour I was able to slow down my breathing and get my mind right.

It was time for me to go home I simply wanted this day to end. While on the train, I found myself looking out to window my eyes screening the surroundings half expecting a missile to fall from the sky and end it all. The train stopped right in front of the parking garage like usual.

I was walking but my eyes darted to the sky every few moments expecting something to attack at any moment. Suddenly, something did come hurdling towards the back of my head, I saw it out of the corner of my eye. Immediately a field of energy formed around my body. The object bounced off. I turned around to see what my attacker was and to my surprise it was books.

Turned out a student tripped over something and her books went flying out of her hand and came hurling towards me. My assailant, the books, lie on the ground smoke imitating from the cover where it had come into contact with my force field. Luckily, for me the damage was very minimal. I reached down picked up the book and walked over to her. She was a small girl with long black hair and big rimmed glasses.

She was a mixed bag of emotions, shocked by what she had seen and scared of what I was going to do next. In all honesty, I wasn’t mad, but felt like kind of an idiot. Luckily, there were no more close encounters in the parking garage and I hoped on my speeder and I was on my way.

The city was always the same every time I passed through it first there was the Indratrial district, with its magnificent building and rail systems that ran above the highway. After the Indratrial district, you leave to valley and enter downtown, less factories more office buildings. Next comes the suburbs, this is where the well-off lived. The houses were all dome shaped, they all looked modern but they all looked the same. It was a little out of my price range.

Finally, came the “bad” part of town. The only people who lived here were the people who couldn’t afford to live in the nicer part of town. This is where I resided a neighborhood called Foxwood to be exact. These houses were unique not cookie cutter like the dome houses, but they were much smaller and in disarray.

My own house was on 1400 Tipper Lane, a small two bedroom house that could use some maintenance. This is not what I envisioned for my life when the men in black suits came to Desantiago that fateful day but this was my life now. There wasn’t anything to do so I practiced my Jijitsu and managed to study somehow admits the chaos of the day’s events.

The hours passed, it got late, around the time when people usually go to sleep. However, tonight sleep didn’t come easy to me, this is actually true of a lot of nights for me I’m a bit of an insomniac. Luckily for me there was my insomniac go to late night program on the hologram box, Action, Suspense and Drama. This show is episodic in nature, every night is a different story.

Tonight’s episode was about a boy who wished he could turn invisible so he didn’t have to deal with the world. His wish came true and he found out it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. I would have enjoyed it more if there wasn’t so much racket outside my door but there’s always something going on in Foxwood. Sleep eventually came.

Author’s Note

The Panamore was a corporation and at the same time it wasn’t. While they did make weapons, not unlike Robotics Inc., they were something more, something far more sinister. The corporation itself was a front. It was ran by the Raikai. They were the embodiment of fear and harbinger’s of death. They usually resided in the outter realm. Though it’s a matter of persoective residents of the outter realm would insist that we are the outter realm.

The region where this story takes place is the inner realm consisted of, Zatara, Barahareen, and Tybus as well as many minor planets and moons. These planets were modernized, civilized and even shared a unified language. We live in a modern age where man is always in control. Many cringe at the mentions of Gods and demons. They scoff at the idea like they outgrown such things. This was also why the inner realm planets let the Panamore Corporation in the first place .They saw a profitable business venture and didn’t think about the why or the how this business had come to be.

Of course, things went well at first, they always do. If one saw the devil they may not even realize it. He wouldn’t be a horned beast with sharp fangs. He may appear as a well-dressed man. No one would trust a beast, so the beast must hide and disguise his true intent. However, stick around long enough and the beast cannot help but show its nature.

This too was true about the Panamore Corporation. They started dealing arms to known war criminals and shooting down unarmed carrier ships and even set up small bases and troops on Zatara biding their time waiting to strike. Tyerow had ran into these forces in Deasantiago and didn’t even realize it. Still, we didn’t want to start a conflict; and when we finally decided to address the devil by his name he was on our doorstep, it was too late.

Return to Tyerow

I woke up in a cold sweat, sleep had brought a terrible dream. I was drowning, the water kept rising. I swam towards the ceiling but it was so low it didn’t really buy me much time.

Though, it was just a dream it was much to my relief to wake up moments before drowning. Nightmares were a common occurrence. As an insomniac I didn’t get much sleep as it is, but even when sleep came the dreamscape wasn’t very kind. However, the dream may have been over but with this war my life had become a nightmare. Wake or sleep it was all the same.

The planet was at war, and there was nowhere one could go to escape it. The hologram box served as a constant reminder. The news was always the same WAR WAR WAR. It didn’t matter who was giving it Linda May, Peter Linn, or Chelsea Day the news was the same. Despite the war Mako City remained unscathed behind heavy military fortification, but we’d hardly seen combat yet, the war efforts seem to remain concentrated in the East while our city lied in the Wester quadrant of Zatara.

This was fortunate because if Mako City fell to enemy forces then we’d probably lose the war being it was the biggest city in all of Zatara. The second largest city, Junesong in the eastern province had already fallen, the death toll was staggering. Day after day, it became harder to ignore. 10,000, 20,000, 40,000 and the war had only been going on two months. Whole cities fell, the media showed us privileged citizens of Mako City how lucky we were.

The war permeated into every facet of my life, classmates would disappear, off to join the war effort. I felt like I too should join them, but we were informed by our superiors that we were not to join the war effort yet, they had special plans for us special people. My kind we wouldn’t be summoned until the time was right.

They wouldn‘t tell us when this time was or what our purpose was, it was maddening. The only bit of information we received was that we would be getting our degrees early and we would be graduating with this class. This was quite alarming because the program we were in was supposed to train us to be officers and it was a five year program we would only be finishing our third. Going out into the field, my friends and I would only have 60% of the knowledge required to prepare us for battle. The degree felt like a consolation prize, they were going to go ahead and give it to us because we may not be alive in two years.

Life went on as normal as it could considering the circumstances. I asked my friends how they felt about the situation. We all agreed that it sucked, but no one really opened up about it. They seemed laissez faire about the whole situation. Westcon was still sticking to his guns, he continued to believe it would be great to go to war and he touted on about how we would be heroes.

Even Katotta, kept up this tough as nails facade, which I could semi-understand from her since she probably wouldn’t be whisked off to fight in the war. Not wanting, to appear too soft or vulnerable I kept my mouth shut and never expressed myself, or the storm raging inside my heart.

Time took no pity on me and before I knew it, only a week remained before Samsara. The graduation ceremony meant that soon this limbo, this purgatory, would be over and my fate would be decided. It was the end of an era. The era of peace was being swallowed up at an alarming rate. I’d grown quite fond of my new friends, and student life.

This anger, this raw frustration led me to do something a bit out of character, I cursed loud and clear so the whole city could hear it, “Giaka.” Since no one inhabited my house but me, my dirty deed went unnoticed. I didn’t usually use those kinds of words, but this was an existential crisis in the life of Tyerow Hawkins

I continued on with only Elohim as my audience, “Why must I walk this path? Are these my birth given scars? My curse to bear? Am I simply born to die?” Only time would tell.

Out of my distress was born an epiphany, let’s go ahead and call it the Tipper Lane Epiphany. There was an ocean of blood between where I currently stood and my little island of happiness. It may not be a pleasant journey, but what other options were there, Let the world burn around me? Or worse, die? I would tread through an ocean of blood, go through hell if I had to, and reclaim my comfortable life my happy place. My destiny from this point on was up to me.