As he flew up towards Egoneg, Pomimi slipped a device out from underneath his uniform. It was the size and shape of a marble. This was his mission, the mission that had been given to him by the Azure, to get to Egoneg and somehow get that device attached to him. 

     Egoneg seemed to grow bigger and bigger the closer Pomimi got. Pomimi couldn't even figure out how close he was to Egoneg. Egoneg's changing size threw Pomimi's perspective completely off. 

     Something else, too. 

     Something that...Something that... 

     Pomimi prayed to Xaxmar. 

​     He couldn't believe what he was seeing. 

     Egoneg wasn't up there alone.

​     His body was coated. 

     Hundreds of people clung to him, so many people that Pomimi could no longer even see Egoneg's skin. At first, Pomimi thought that they were maybe stuck to him in some manner, but, no, that was not the case. They clung to him. But why? No reason that Pomimi could easily come up with, yet...all those people below, all over the city, they ran and drove towards Egoneg, towards what, for the moment, terrified them more than anything else in life. Was that part of Egoneg's newly-gained fear power? Whatever. Hundreds of people were now hundreds of feet in the air. They were scared out of their minds, and they hung on to Egoneg for dear life. They couldn't all hold on, though. Even as Pomimi neared, he watched several of them fall away from Egoneg to make the deadly drop,

     This coating, this layer of people, made Pomimi's mission just that much more difficult. He'd have to find at least a small patch of Egoneg's bare skin to attach the device he'd been given by the Azure. 

​     And then there was a shift. 

     Egoneg turned in mid-air far faster than Pomimi figured he should be able to until...

     Pomimi no longer looked just at Egoneg but full into Egoneg's huge, brown eyes...  

     which Pomimi figured was good. No human beings clung to Egoneg's eyes, although dozens clung to his cheeks and jaw.  

     Egoneg smiled, and two people dropped from his face to fall screaming. 

     Now all Pomimi had to do was pitch the device the Azure had given him directly at one of Pomimi's eyes and... 

     He never got the chance. 

     Pomimi almost saw it coming at him, like this laser-beam emanating from the center of Egoneg's forehead.  

​     It was the strongest bolt of fear Egoneg had yet unleashed. 

     Fear as powerful as a detonating grenade slammed into Pomimi. 

     In no way could Pomimi prepare himself for such a blast. 

     It paralyzed him. 

     He could no longer see. 

     He could no longer move. 

     He could no longer think. 

     It shattered the warrior within him.

     Left a quivering mass of frozen fear, Pomimi dropped like a stone.   

                                                 CONTINUE