“Are you bullying the youngsters again, Amalthea?” 

The clicking of a cane against wood followed the brush of a caged foot scraping the floor. Amalthea entered the physician’s office with a grim outlook.

“Save your old wisdom for someone who listens, Bob,” Amalthea popped the vowel in his name. Taking off her cloak, Amalthea revealed her battered attire. Gauze concealed half her face and covered half of her tall and honed body. Warily, her eyes tried to focus on the bed. “Let's begin with the therapy,” she said.

Amalthea wore the same linen shirt and dark pants most adventurers wore in their leisure time, but as fit and trained as she looked, she wasn't one. She had seen better days, much better days. Before, Amalthea could pick up an average goon with one hand and toss them over her shoulder, but now she struggled just to reach the doctor’s office. 

“Who even opens up their office on the second floor?” she fought back the urge to hiss at Bob when she remembered how she had to drag her body up the stairs. 

Bob sighed and helped her onto the bed alongside her metal-braced leg. “Take off your earrings, dear,” said the old man, taking off his alongside her. “Then we can begin.”

Amalthea's appearance changed drastically, while her injuries remained the same. Her tanned skin deepened to a darker shade of purple, with white birthmarks and freckles swimming in a dark ocean of stars. Navy blue eyes changed endlessly, like tidal waves from rich purple to a deep maroon red to midnight blue. Her luscious brown locks billowed out to gunmetal silver, and her ears became sharper, giving her an otherworldly and alien appearance.

“Relax, Amalthea, I'll begin shortly,” offered the old man, sharing a similar appearance as her. 

Neither were natives from this planet, but strangers from faraway stars. Days before, a blue shooting star tore through the sky. And days later, Bob the Physician, found Amalthea amidst the corpses of wild beasts next to her crashed spacecraft. Alien races were nothing new on this plane. Legends said that Elves came from faraway skies. However, someone like Amalthea or him was anything but ordinary. 

Prejudice followed anything too alien.

“You can’t delay your task, Amalthea,” cautioned Bob the Physician, preparing his tools for the therapy. “Acclimating to a strange world is arduous, but you must start somewhere and not tarry too long.”

Doffing off her shirt on a nearby chair, Amalthea carefully lay down on the table with her bare back facing her doctor. “You’ve not been there, Bob,” she said, trying to lie down in a less painful position. “You don’t know what it was like.” 

Bob inspected his silvery acupuncture needle, then Amalthea’s scarred back. The multitude of scars and wounds looked like milky ways covered her entire nebular skin, waiting to spill free its spark. Bob reminisced about home and inserted the needles along the meridians of Amalthea’s spinal cord. 

“I know what it’s like to lose your place and purpose, dear,” said Bob. His dark hand glowed, manifesting a weave of a swirling galaxy. “You are the Red Titan, Amalthea—a Guardian chosen to protect the many worlds of the cosmos. Giving up isn’t in your blood. Rebuild what you’ve lost. Endure the pain.” 

Amalthea screamed as Bob intensified the galaxy’s glow. Her body radiated heat; the speckles of stars on her skin brightened, turning the needles brittle and coal black. They absorbed whatever malice or pain lingered underneath her. 

Her eyes rolled back. She returned to a past best repressed.

‧. .ᯓ★. .‧

Amalthea walked the corridors to the team meeting, proudly wearing her sleeveless red and black uniform with the six-pointed star of the Star Guardians imprinted on her chest. A security monitor blared above her head. Minions swarmed a planet while their monstrous leader ravaged anything in sight. 

“A new mission,” she mussed.

Ter crew waited at the spacious assembling hall, each doing their own thing around the chiselled table as they waited for their leader. 

One flirted with their partner on the phone, another live-streamed about the imminent meeting, the third trained audibly in the corner, and Valerian, the Blue Titan, studied today’s agenda.

He met Amalthea's stern eyes, smiling brightly. She smiled, feeling the pressure washing away from her. Valerian was her first companion when they were scouted as new Guardians. Valerian was the one who was always the one by her side. 

But also the one who pushed her away during their last battle.

“We have to abort this mission, Amalthea,” he said grimly at the corner of the hangar. “This time, the enemy is too strong. The planet is a decoy for a larger invasion force.”

“No one is stronger than us,” Amalthea replied confidently, forming a dimple on her star-streaked cheek. “We are the Titans, Valerian. Whoever we face, I'll path a way. Believe in me.”

“No, Thea, listen…” Valerian tried to warn her. 

He tried to reel her back, but she was like a train set on a track. Strong and confident—unwavering. She was the beacon pulling everyone together—and the one to break it were she to fall. 

The mission was too much. 

Defeating the enemies on the ground, they engaged the rest in the sky. Flying through the asteroid belt, they fought their armies head-on and pushed them back hard, but they went too far. 

Confidence took them by the throat.

“It's my fault. It's all my fault.” Amalthea endured another scream, remembering Valerian’s face before the mission. 

His pale white skin was missing the kiss of the sun. His blond-white hair, streaked with a hint of teal, always waved at the wind when they unwinded in the evening. And his happy red eyes? 

Those were the simple things she wanted to remember before she failed him.

“NO!” Amalthea shouted when the explosion of his spacecraft entered her vision.

Her agonised body tore itself up from the inside. The pain clouded Amalthea's mind, and her heart broke for her lost members. She fell from the physician’s bed as the needles on her back turned to ash. Then she noticed a series of cries outside and followed Bob's gaze out of the window.

“The city’s under attack.”

“...Let the authorities deal with it.”

Bob regarded Amalthea’s struggle to stand up. The once proud Titan of Endurance… now covered in pain and self-wallow. “You can't ignore your duty forever, Amalthea. Your soul needs healing too, not just your body.”

Amalthea donned her shirt back on and draped her cloak over her battered body. “I'll take a look at least,” she said, putting on her disguise earrings again.

‧. .ᯓ★. .‧

“Send support to the right!”

“We need more people on the left flank, or the monsters will push through our defences!”

“Hodor, everyone. Hold the door!”

Amalthea hobbled towards the city gates where a hoard of monsters was trying to break through—like every other week since she came here. It was such a normal occurrence that Amalthea didn't feel compelled to get to safety. 

In fact, no one did. 

“Do you sell shawarma?” She asked a vendor attending to the surge of customers, who left work early to watch the spectacle. “Wherever I go, the people are the same. Starved for entertainment.”

“Any wishes for a sauce?” The orc vendor asked. 

“Do you have Tarator sauce?”

“Coming right up.”

With a snack at hand, Amalthea made her way to the first rows, where someone gave up their seat for her. “Forthcoming,” thought Amalthea, biting into her shawarma.

City guards and adventures, young and old, defended the city. Spells flew, swords and axes slashed against flesh and bone, and shawarma were eaten.

When Amalthea first became a Titan, Amalthea would have charged right into the fray, punching villains left and right to protect anyone in danger. Now, Amalthea felt blissfully conflicted with her shawarma in hand. 

“Everyone, take cover! The Ewes are breaking through!”

“The what?”

Here came the dangerous part of being a spectator so close to the action. Things could and would go massively wrong. Amalthea saw that whenever a villain tried to seize the opportunity and take hostages whenever someone was smart enough to film the whole thing instead of running.

But Amalthea didn't expect two monsters bleating their way through. “Why does it have to be sheep, again?”

The enormous monster sheep were called Monster Muttons. Two-metre (3 feet) tall muttons bristling with their overgrown and unkempt white–brown fleece. They pawed the ground and shook their heads, equipped with four curved horns. Sharp blue eyes glared right at Amalthea. 

“Oh… oh that's not good,” she thought, biting into her shawarma. “I am not exactly mobile right now to fight sheep.”

The muttons baaed, scaring away the pedestrians and charged. Eventually, everyone got themselves to safety when the Ewes overwhelmed the adventures. Amalthea, however, stared the beasts down, noticing the blind rage in its eyes. 

From the corner of her eye, she saw a black-haired boy, equipped with a wooden club in hand, blow the mutton away. 

“Now!” Yelled Ajax and fell upon the ewes with his two friends. He engaged the muttons as Lydia plunged her two kukri knives into one beast, and Marius hit the other hard with his giant, metallic gloves, eventually rupturing its insides.

They quickly regained control and pushed back the rest of the muttons. Amalthea watched them intently as Ajax evacuated the people and fought the monsters alongside his friends. Even if he was a fourteen-year-old boy, he proved more bravado than Amalthea expected. 

“Why don’t you help?” Ajax suddenly pointed his club at her. 

Perplexed, Amalthea cocked her head at the boy. “Why would I?” She took a hearty bite from her shawarma. “I’m but a handicapped woman twice your age. What could I possibly—” 

“You’re a Star Guardian, aren’t you?” 

Amalthea paused. “What if I am?” She nervously adjusted her grip on her cane. “What would that change?” 

“You swore an oath to protect,” insisted Ajax. When he saw Amalthea laugh and ignore him over her shawarma, he hit the food out of her hands. “I saw you,” he said, gaining her negative attention. “Six moons ago, when everyone saw the mysterious comet fall from the sky, I saw a sign.” 

“Ajax,” Lydia cautioned, “what are you doing?” 

“Being stupid,” Marius laughed. 

Ajax waved them away and closed his distance to Amalthea. “I saw the signs of a Guardian coming. One which the world has never seen!” Ajax yelled elatedly, drawing annoyed groans from everyone. “When the star fell, you appeared. When half the mountain burned for seven days and nights, you were already there. When the monsters attacked, you were always there to watch. Admit it, you’re—” 

Distant bleating interrupted Ajax’s speech. More muttons bounced their way out of the forest with their overgrown wool, surrounding the overwhelmed city guards. The sheep baaed the adventures away. Ajax aimed his club at them before he heard Amalthea laugh. 

“You’re a shameless boy,” she said, standing up. “Out of the way,” she growled like a wolf, forcing the crowd apart as she limped through them to the gate. “I’ll take that, thank you.” Trading her cane for a sheathed longsword, Amalthea stood face-to-face with the monstrous muttons. “You want to see a Star Guardian? Watch closely then, boy.”