The policeman was the first to attack. Training his revolver on what I assumed to be the queen hornet, he fired the strange blue light toward the massive beast’s black eyes. The thick antenna over the eye he’d targeted suddenly shot out and intercepted the policeman’s attack. The light that I had seen tear cannonball-sized holes into the smaller hornets barely even dented the queen’s antenna, which I realized was much thicker and chunkier than the smaller hornets. 

Is the queen’s exoskeleton basically reinforced armor plating? I wondered to myself with a groan. 

Over the din that the queen hornet’s wings were creating, a new whirring sound made its way to me. Frowning slightly, I glanced up to see a black helicopter moving swiftly towards us. My danger warning triggered, and without hesitation, I listened to it. With a push, I detached my hands from my shield before it shot up and expanded so that it was big enough to cover all five of us. Not two seconds later, an explosion rang out that knocked me to my feet. I could hear a shower of shrapnel pinging harmlessly off my shield, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

When the dust had settled, I slowly shrank the shield to see what had happened. Before it had shrunk too far, though, the fire guy yelped.

“It’s going after the helicopter!” he shouted frantically. 

I quickly moved the shield temporarily out of our field of vision to see a smoky but otherwise unharmed queen hornet flying directly toward what I assumed was a military helicopter. At least I hoped news helicopters didn’t carry around bombs in this story. I watched helplessly as the insect that was bigger than the helicopter wielded its double-pronged stinger and stabbed through the belly of the machine. Automatic rifles could be heard as the queen dragged the skewered helicopter upside down towards the ground. It then did a flip in the air, using the momentum to shed the weight of the helicopter and hurl it towards the earth. 

“Sh-shield!” I called out while imagining a protective dome around us. That liquid energy once again seemed to release from inside of me like a wave, and the shield transformed into an airtight dome, covering all five of us survivors. A terrible crunch of metal could be heard outside of my protective dome, and then several explosions rang out.

“H-how many bombs were they carrying?” I groaned as I covered my head and shivered. 

“What were they thinking? There are still civilians down here!” The policeman muttered in a dark rage as he came over and knelt next to me. “You okay, kid?” he asked me kindly. 

I would have loved to say I was fine. In fact, that was what I had planned to say. Yet for some reason, my entire body was shaking as if I'd just run a marathon. I groaned as a headache began to form behind my eyes, and I could feel sweat dripping down my face, neck, and back.

“Uhh… the shield’s disintegrating,” the fire guy pointed out with a hint of anxiety in his voice. 

I forced myself to look up, realizing that my vision was getting a little blurry, and saw that my pale gold protective dome was indeed starting to flake away. The older woman in the leather jacket came up to me and patted my head a little roughly before giving me a wide grin that made her slightly wrinkled face even more lined. 

“Thanks for protecting us, girly. You leave the rest to us grown-ups, okay?” she remarked cheerfully.

Her unfounded confidence actually did manage to soothe me, and with a large exhale, I released whatever was connecting me to the fragmented dome. It melted away without any residue, and my headache lessened almost immediately.

Giving me a nod and another reassuring smile, the wrinkled woman with gray hair, gelled up in short spikes, turned to look at the queen hornet. She glanced over at the woman covered in green slime and hooked a thumb towards the queen, who was slowly beginning to descend towards the wreckage of the flaming helicopter.

“Think you can rip that thing apart like you did to the little ones?” the older woman asked with a carefree smirk. My eyes widened in shock as the businesswoman beat her left fist into her right palm, causing a strange purple glow to erupt across her skin. 

“Only one way to find out,” the businesswoman responded before marching forward. The queen hornet instantly turned towards the movement, but it lumbered through the air more like a great blimp than anything.

I guess since the boss has higher defense and size, it lacks the speed of the lesser hornets, I rationalized to myself, wondering if there was any way to break through the queen’s exoskeleton. 

“Hey, Pyro,” the wrinkled woman called out to the fire guy. He pointed towards himself with a raised eyebrow, and the woman waved her hand in a “come with me” motion. 

The policeman moved to follow them, too, but the woman’s face fell into a frown as she shook her head.

“Take care of the kid. Your peashooter doesn’t seem suited to the big fella,”  the woman pointed out ruthlessly.

The policeman frowned, but I was surprised when he glanced back at me and nodded without making an argument. The woman flashed me one more self-confident grin before turning away and following after the businesswoman with the fire guy trailing behind her. 

“Hey, little one, what’s your name?” 

I startled slightly, glancing over to see the policeman smiling at me kindly. I opened my mouth to answer, but ended up inhaling some smoke that made me cough. He patted my back gently as I fought my coughing fit. With watering eyes, I finally croaked out, “Teagen.”

“You’ve been extremely brave, Teagen. I’m Officer Guzman. Can you climb onto my back? If we need to run, it’ll be faster if I’m already carrying you,” he explained gently.

Knowing that my shaking legs were pretty much good for nothing at this point, I nodded my acceptance. He crouched in front of me, and I clambered gracelessly onto his back, doing my best to hold onto his shoulders so that I didn’t constrict his neck. With me situated, he jogged towards a tipped car and peeked around it to keep an eye on things. 

From my position, I attentively watched the three adults. The businesswoman and the wrinkled woman were standing next to each other, and I tilted my head in confusion when they linked elbows. The air around them seemed to turn a little fuzzy, and then suddenly they bent their knees in synch. A startled yelp left my throat when they rocketed up into the air. Fire Guy also looked stunned and shouted something up at the women, but whatever had affected them hadn’t transferred to him, so he could do nothing but watch as the two women soared towards the queen hornet.

The queen hornet flew towards the women and opened its jaw wide as if it planned to swallow them whole. They were twenty feet in the air, so I couldn’t see exactly what was happening, but I sure heard the bellow of pain from the boss monster followed by what looked like half of the queen’s jaw falling to the ground with a wet splat. I looked back up in the sky and saw the businesswoman had somehow clambered over the queen’s face and looked like she was attempting to yank out its antenna with her bare hands.

The queen hornet shook its head and flailed its upper legs, obviously trying to dislodge her unwelcome passengers, but suddenly the massive beast started plunging straight down to the ground like an anvil. Fire Guy rushed to get out of the way as the queen slammed against the pavement, causing a mini earthquake that made Officer Guzman and the car we were hiding behind teeter. He jumped away from the car (which luckily tilted forward instead of back onto us), but he still jogged over to a new hiding place while holding onto my legs firmly.

The boss monster writhed awkwardly, looking as if an invisible hand was pressing her against the ground. Whatever force was pressing against it must have increased because a weird creaking sound rang out, and the queen’s back caved in slightly, eliciting another shriek of pain. I watched in stunned silence as the spiky-haired lady slid down the boss monster’s side and walked away, patting her knees casually.

“Hey, Pyro! Your turn,” she called out as the businesswoman walked away from the queen, holding the antenna she had successfully ripped away earlier.

Fire Guy jogged over to face the downed queen head-on, stretched his hands out in front of him, and once again created a swirling column of fire to erupt in front of him. The fire lapped at the queen’s unprotected eyes, up its head, and caused a chain reaction on her fuzzy body that soon helped the fire spread all across its body. 

Whatever force was holding down the boss monster was also affecting Fire Guy’s magic fire. Unlike his usual column of fairly bright and flickering flames, the fire that spread over the queen hornet burned fiercely hot, climbed several feet in the air, and emitted so much heat that both Officer Guzman and I were sweating bullets from our hiding spot. But oddly enough, the flames weren’t very bright. In fact, they seemed to be much darker than the normal fire that I was used to.

Whatever was causing the change, though, seemed to be making the fire more effective. I felt my stomach turn as the boss monster’s exoskeleton began to crimp and then melt away in sections. When the shrieks and screams of the dying insect finally quieted, the air around it lost its shimmer, and the dark and tall flames slowly faded back into a normal “happy campfire” type flame.

The wrinkled woman let out a heavy sigh before plopping onto her bottom and sprawling out, looking rather exhausted. Officer Guzman slowly started walking towards her, and soon all five of us were watching the queen hornet burn like some kind of Halloween-themed bonfire.

A familiar swooshing sound caught my attention, and I tapped Officer Guzman on the cheek that didn’t have blood on it before pointing at the gate. We all turned to watch as the black gate began to shrink in on itself, soon becoming even smaller than its original size. 

With a rather anticlimactic pop, the black smudge disappeared, leaving behind no trace other than the carcasses of the dead monsters it had expelled and all of the poor people that had been slaughtered. Sirens rang through the air, punctuated by the pops and crackles of the burning boss monster. Any hope that I was in a cushy slice-of-life story joined the smoke that filled the air.