The creature clawed its way out of the soft earth which had been like a womb to it for…..how long? The creature didn’t know. It only knew it needed to feed. It knew that it wasn’t a simple predator, but its memories and sense of identity were fuzzy, vague. Its long dormancy had fogged its mind. It knew, instinctively, that the cure for its present mental lapses was to feed. With nourishment, in the form of blood and flesh, it would soon remember fully what it was and why it had slept so long. In the corners of its mind, it had elusive glimmers of an impression or fragments of a notion that it had slept too long, that the length of its hibernation was abnormal, that something had gone wrong in the past. The creature shook off any further reflection until after it had fed. Feeding would restore its faculties. Then, things could be figured out.

The creature’s hide sported many tendrils that looked just like the flowers of the Yellow Fields. These tendrils grasped at the tiny dragons fleeing from its sudden emergence beneath them, like Venus fly traps seeking to ensnare insects. The dragons were too fast, though. No matter. They were too small to be adequate sustenance anyway. The humanoids off in the distance, though, were another story.

What was this? Suddenly, one of the humanoids was right in front of it, having closed the distance across the Yellow Fields in a mere eyeblink of time. How did that happen? The creature concluded that it must be groggier than it had realized. Feeding must happen. And it must happen right then and there. This golden-haired human who smelled like a female would be first.

*******

Mary had gently passed her husband Roger over to Anita and then tapped into her superspeed to confront the strange, monstrous-looking creature. In the wake of her superspeed dash, yellow flowers had been torn up by her churning feet, bits and pieces of them sent flying as if scattered by a weed eater.

Mary knew that strange creatures were not to be judged solely by appearance alone. Just because something looked like a monster didn’t mean that it was one. However, she decided to assume hostile intent as she saw Smerd, Roxxie, and Melody flying away at the top speed that their cute little wings could carry them screaming things like, “It tried to eat me!”

The giant, yellow, flower-covered creature lunged at her, its ferocious maw and sharp-looking claws looked dangerous indeed, though the chances of the thing ever being fast enough to touch her were slim and none. She wasn’t called Velocity Girl for nothing.

*******

Amy Wrenolds rose from her sunbathing position on the picnic tarp, gazing appraisingly at the yellow monstrosity in the distance that Mary had dashed ahead to scout. “Damn! Just when I thought I was going to get a day to relax.”

Amy bent down and rummaged the pile of clothes that she had worn when the group had first arrived at the Yellow Fields before she had stripped down to her bikini for sunbathing purposes. She lifted out of the pile two scabbarded longswords. Though they looked, as always, too large for her, she had been hefting them around for years at this point, and unsheathed them quickly with practiced grace.

As she prepared her weapons, she barked out commands at the Pocket Protectors who surrounded her. Amy, or her heroic persona Amizara, was the combat leader of the Pocket Protectors, a role she had taken over from Xuan Hu as the elder man had become more retired from combat and field work. Amy had been doing the “costumed hero thing” the longest of any of them, a full two years before the public had seen the debut of the crime-fighting duo Velocity Girl and Xuan Hu. Amy was, in many ways, the First Protector.

“William, start opening the Qwai Gate in case we need to retreat. Anita, cover William. James, stay with Lee and Roger and be ready to get them through the gate. Keep in mind that we don’t know that this is the only one of these things. For all we know, there could be a lot of them underneath us that could emerge anywhere. I’m going to go tank this thing.”

Amy next gave her attention to her mysterious swords. Someday, she hoped to learn the whole story behind them. All Amy knew, and had known for years, was that when her grandmother had died, Amy had been left these two swords in a safety deposit box with a curious set of instructions, instructions that Amy was following to prepare to do battle with the yellow flower creature.

Amy crossed the swords in front of her face. She looked at her reflection in the swords and met her own gaze in her reflection. Suddenly, the barely five foot tall Amy Wrenolds grew to slightly over seven feet tall. The swords were no longer oversized for her. Her hairstyle transformed into a tall mohawk that made her seem even taller. The transformation was so complete that Amy never needed a mask to hide her true identity as a costumed hero. Very few people, outside of some government agencies, knew that the petite Amy Wrenolds was one-and-the-same as the large, super-strong warrior woman Amizara.

Her voice was even deeper, richer, more sultry, as she said, “Let’s do this!”