SCEPTER OF A DEMI-GOD

As the unidentified object moved closer to Ile Ife; a remote village located in Nigeria, those on boards were seen preparing for the initial attacks.

They are the aliens!

Their target was simple and perfect, they are to destroy the scepter and await further instructions.

They had waited so long for the right time, the right opportunity.

War is inevitable, human had long deserved it.

For ages, humans had been putting the planet earth in danger and misusing through pollutions, deforestation, mining, and the creation of dark energies from hatreds, murders, wars, and all forms of evils.

Like the biblical blood of Abel calling for vengeance, Mother Earth had called out in pain. Humans must pay for hurting her.

Of course, there is always an option, human can accept the leadership of hoorays.

They will be reoriented and teach the divine rule. Mother earth must always come first.

From the little, they had gathered from humans, they expect them to resist, so they had come fully armed and prepared.

The hoorays in the spaceship are fifty in numbers with one commander with the code name Shuri.

The aliens have humans female hair and distorted face. Their arms look exactly like human arms with two pairs of strong human-like legs on a locust body with a tail that stings and is filled with venom which no human has the antidote.

Shuri is a foot taller than the other seven feet aliens, all hoorays are well trained in all martial arts but forbid the use of guns and any chemical weapons that pollute mother earth.

Before the comet impact, they will activate a kind of EMT that will stop all human inventions and technologies. Cars, trains, planes, electricity, guns, everything humans had been enjoying at the expense of mother earth will be destroyed.

The world will be reborn, the remaining human will be given fair chance under the rulership of hoorays.

In the end, when humans learn the divine rule and mature enough to rule then perhaps they will be given a chance to rule the earth again.

Or maybe humans will never learn.

It's the year 2063 and the world is about to recover from the impact of the third world war which lasted for good seven years. Unbelievably, what started as a tussle of power between China and America had thrown the whole world into the bloodiest of all wars that lasted between 2045 to 2052.

Eleven years later, the comet appeared.

"They come in fast," Tom Brady, principal engineer with the Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris studies with Aerospace Corporation said in the morning presentation with NASA's emergency space operations on C.N.N news.

"In some cases, we normally have two years or so warning on something like this, unfortunately, this seemed not to be detected until a few minutes, ago. A tiny sliver of something is plummeting towards our home star, something icy, something unimaginably old and big."

He had continued by highlighting the effect of the comet and the way out of it when it eventually landed.

Simultaneously, another signal was disseminating from one remote village in Nigeria. In ile Ife precisely, a village located in the western part of Nigeria: a country located in West Africa and unarguable the largest in Africa.

As the comet came nearer, the signal became more rapid and violent like an awaiting time bomb.

A gathering of scientists was called to deliberate on the connection of the signal with the approaching comet. While some claimed the area the signal was coming from is the location the comet will strike, others argued the object transmitting has something significant to do with the approaching comet.

After long talks, it was agreed not to leave any stone untouched in this crucial time.

Agents were immediately set up to investigate and do the needful.

A few minutes before the departure, the five selected agents and pilots were seen talking beside a beautiful helipad.

Brenda: a stout six feet damsel with blonde hair and blue eyes looked at the four men in her front with a grin. They all look muscular and tough, the exact type of her kind of men, except for the priest; a tall and thin frail-looking fellow

with jaunty skin and a shallow face.

His work is to perform any needed rituals at the shrine of the Scepter and to find its spiritual connection to the incoming comet.

Brenda possesses the instinct of knowing odd people and reacting accordingly to them. She is a kind of a mirror, showing and relating to people exactly the way they are.

To her, the priest emits a negative aura, and she has done all in her capacity to drop him but was told he is important to this mission.

Upon more investigation, it was discovered the object transmitting is an ancient scepter that was believed to belong to a demigod. Ridiculous. Just a scepter and all these muses. But her superior had given the order. A priest is needed to perform any needed ritual and to protect the scepter back to the state.

'You have one hour early before the comet land as it takes proximately five hours to fly down to Nigeria in our fastest jet. The impact is expected in the next six hours.

Make judicious use of your time.' Her boss had said with a salute.

Brenda watched the two pilots with little interest, to her, they are of no importance, Andrew was a retired paramilitary officer, and work with them as a flight training officer, while Brew his assistance a first-class pilot with the CIA. They are here to convey the team to and fro.

The last man is of great importance, he had been an open admire of Brenda and can die to protect her. Of course, Brenda knew she did need no protection from him or any man. It though amused her whenever he tried to shield or protect her from any danger.

She had learned to fend and defend herself in a lawless world where women were the easiest of all targets.

She can handle any type of weapon and her favorites are her two black beretta, swords and knives,

A professional boxer, kungfu fighter, judo, and karate.

Few men can stand in her way and few Indeed stand.

Until Bobby came. A young veteran in the Us army posted to her team. Formidable tough-looking and loyal.

She had felt drawn to him immediately and taught him everything she knew about martial arts. Unsurprisingly he was a fast learner and had become her formidable partner in a few years.

Not quite handsome in any classic way, Thirty years old, tough-looking with squinted eyes, big nose, and wide lips with fleshy cheeks. He is six feet tall and 220 pounds in weight.

Brenda truly enjoys his company and always looking forwards to this. She truly wishes she can take the relationship a step further as he wants even though he never said this yet. If only she feels secure enough to start a family in this insane world, then definitely it has to be Bobby. Unfortunately, family is far from her mind. She wasn't able to protect those she once had, now they are all gone. Her mum, Dad, and younger brother were all killed during the world war. Why bring another innocent soul whom she won't be able to protect.

"I'm in command here," Brenda said loudly, as the noise of the starting jet becomes louder.

"And here is my second in command, his name is Bobby. Get us to Nigeria as fast as possible." She shouted at the pilots as the trio entered the beautiful jet.

Shuri spoke some strange language to the ship code breaker who nodded and responded in the same language and typed furiously on a keyboard attached to a desktop computer on a table in his front.

He had instructed the codebreaker to hack into the language spoken by inhabitants of this location.

A few minutes later, the codebreaker nodded with satisfaction as he was able to hack and download the spoken language, and sent to each hooray's file for updating. One of the advancements of hoorays technologies, every hooray can learn any spoken language in a minute.

"Henceforth, " we will be communicating in English terminology," Shuri spoke his first English language looking mystified as it rolls in his tongue. He checked the ship wall clock. A minute to zero hours. He waited patiently.

Zero hours, the hooray in control of the EMP pressed a red button on his keyboard. The downloading of the virus started immediately.

Shuri nodded well satisfied, worldwide, the same set of viruses is released to stop human technologies and advancement.

Now humans have a fairer chance of fighting for their claims of leadership in a simple one-on-one fight. Not that the hoorays are afraid of human technologies and advancement in warfare. They are all a tip of an iceberg. Hoorays surpass humans in all ramifications. Only there is no honor in such ways. Honor lies in killing your opponent in a fair fight. looking into his eyes as you snuffed life out of him, or when eventually, your time come and life is snuffed out of you. What honor lies in killing innocent people with chemical weapons. Innocent people who have no idea who killed them or why. True honors lie not in this. The law of nature must be obeyed, survival of the fittest.

Humans have erred and corrupted all existing protocols. They have failed in all ramifications, it's now left for the hoorays to clean humans' mess, put them on the right way, the only way.

Whatever put mother earth in danger had been abolished and will remain so.

In an hour, the comet will strike distracting humans' attention. An hour later, the hoorays will land and this will be the beginning of the biggest alien invasion in human history. The beginning of a new world.

The jet bumped vigorously as the light in the jet and on the switchboard suddenly switch off.

"What's going on?" Bobby asked the two pilots in the cockpit.

"No idea buddy." The pilot with curly hair and brown eyes replied.

"The jet engine just suddenly stopped working. Surprisingly, the other engine isn't working too and there seemed to be no apparent reason for this. except everything has stopped working. We are on emergency manual mode for landing."

"How far to our destination?" Brenda asked.

Two hundred and fifty kilometers. You should be able to cover this in two hours by driving."The pilot replied.

Bobby brought out his pack of cigarettes and light a stick.

I will be staying with my co-pilot to try and fix this stuff." The pilot continued.

Sebastian the priest bowed his head in meditation, counting the long rosary beads on his neck.

"Holy priest, praying to your God for a safe landing? Brenda asked.

Sebastian does the sign of the cross looking more bemused at Brenda who seemed to have hated him at first sight. He bowed his head and continued his meditation.

One pilot gave a scuffle laugh at the dry joke. " This jet is built with the manual engine for instance like this, though I never in my imagination believed I will ever need it. I bet we will have a jolly safe landing."

The screen is blank due to the breakdown, he won't be able to see what lies ahead but can only guess and pray.

Why get the poor priest worked up?

Bobby shrugged unconcerned, He and Brenda had been in a more difficult and deadly situation than this. They had survived it all. They had once made a maddening unbelievable ten thousand feet fall into a rocky land filled with hostile inhabitants during the third world war. Together they had broken the enemy's defense and walked through their territories with broken legs and bullet-shattered bodies.

Brenda had a hip dislocation and was hospitalized for some time. It was a gruesome experience, yet it was one of their numerous near-death escapades.

Brenda grinned, reading Bobby's mind. " This is getting more interesting, " she said. "More than I ever imagine and am glad you are here."

Bobby nodded in reply. He is more glad to be here. Boredom is almost killing him at home alone and he would have strangled Brenda if she had come here without him.

Brenda told both the pilot to step out into the passenger section and took over the control of the plane while Bobby worked the checklist for engine restart. The aircraft slowed but continued to descent, accelerating to 105 knots at 1:14:05 it descended through seven hundred and twenty feet.

"Brace for impact" Brenda shouted over the noise created as things flew across inside the plane.

The landing is one impact, no bounce, then a gradual deceleration. In Few seconds, the whole plane is already filled with water gushing in from the rear left door which was opened by the priest out of panic. Water was also entering through a hole on the fuselage and cargo doors that had come open. As the water rose, the five passengers struggled to exit the plane out of fear of explosion.

Bobby opened the cockpit door and gave the order to evacuate. They all evacuated through one of the four overwing windows exist and into an inflatable slide deployed from the front right passenger door.

Soon, they were met by two men on the boat, who had helped them into the boat and paddled off into the land. Brenda checked her wristwatch, dead. Amazed. This had never happened before. She immediately felt it.

The darkest of all auras. Something strange had happened when she was still in the jet.

Something unimaginable that had left her speechless all through her time In the boat.