LIONS: FINAL FANTASY "HOME" EDITION

Kaliah jerked me from napping on the sofa screaming in his high-ass accent, “Li-ONEL! Wake the HELL up, night now…NOW!”

“Night… now…?” I groaned, opening my eyes frowning up at my big brother. I sat up when I saw the panic in his dark green eyes as his red chiseled face came into view. Kaliah had tears running down his cheeks, and I was on it. Nothing scared Kaliah. He was the brother that everyone looked to like a father figure. “Benjamin…Bro, what’s up?”

“I sent Mandisa and everyone, HOME, Lionel…Tha SUN! I woke up a while ago…Tha sun is too close to the planet! We have to send as many human souls out of here as we can…AND right now…Dere won’t BE an Earth to call home! I waan u to go! Now!

‘The OTHER Brothers gonna help! But you can’t stay! You have to go, Lionel! Your violet soul…People need to see how great they can be…They need your light…!

‘We can come back… LEAVE…You’ll be destroyed!”

“Hell naw, Kaliah!... You already sent everyone else?” I shouted, shoving him off of me as he threw a tantrum, snatching my jacket. I glanced out the giant-ass bay window…Yo…If the sun was closer…why was it so dark and freezing cold outside?! He’s always playing with me. I stared over at Kaliah suspiciously, rolling my eyes, chuckling. “Ah! You almost got me, Bro! Good one…Where’s Cyrus? Mandisa come home from work yet?”

Kaliah stood, staring out the skylight with wide eyes. I didn’t spot anything but gloom. His creamy skin was so crimson that his red hair looked brown! My brother was a tall musclebound, tatted-up mess of emotion, but it wasn’t like him to be in a constant state of panic. I felt the fear lingering in the back of my mind ease its way to my heart as Kaliah nervously exhaled and screeched unexpectedly, “I NEEDED more time! Just one more go-round…what the HELL?!”

Kaliah marched past me toward the front door, then hesitated, grabbing the handle demanding, “LIONEL…GO!”

“I’m not gonna leave you all here…I thought the MISSION was to help as many people as we could before this shit happened!? Now you want me…to just let you stay here? Naw…I didn’t wake up to leave my family behind. Everyone here on Earth is OUR family, and WE can’t let this happen, Bro.

‘WE all have a choice in what WE do with OUR lives. All the people we’ve encountered changed ME, Bro. I don’t care if we never met…That’s more FAMILY I’d leave behind if I go! Naw…If you stay…I stay. I can help!”

“Let the MAN help, Benjamin…Free will?... Hello…?” Kaliah’s twin Christopher snickered as he pushed Kaliah over, opening the door. Chris’s dark hair and blue eyes were the only difference between him and his twin. “There’s no TIME nor SPACE for debate here, Gentlemen. We have work to do. Let’s get centered and glow!”

How did it get to this point, you might be asking yourself right now? How can a bunch of mixed-raced brothers from all over the world come together in the final moments of the planet’s existence to show people how to vibrate high enough to reach the Mothership connection? It wouldn’t be possible at all without one amazing woman waking up to show us all that our minor differences hid the fact we all were family.

Once we united as a family and started protecting and healing one another, things changed for all of us on a much deeper viewpoint. So yeah, Kaliah, Chris, Zach, Camerick, Hillenon, and Sai are alien energy beings that have been here on Earth for more years than any one man could count. But they were only trying to show us how to make amends for destroying Mother Earth and one another.

Now that the sun is entirely dark…It’s like being trapped inside of the darkness of the human psyche shrouded in fear. The stars are so bright now they look like Lite-Brite pegs. The street lights still worked put it was like the darkness was trying to swallow up any light… dimly fading into nothing down the street and above. But once Kaliah and his brother joined hands, shedding their human flesh…Their energy illuminated the entire block a vibrant green and blue.

With a wave of his left hand, Chris opened the dimensional gate to his other brothers waiting, hand in hand glowing brightly like a bright rainbow of pigments from red to purple! The light was so dazzling that Chris abruptly snatched my arm, pulling me!

I gaped at Chris as he hoisted me through the doorway, grinning irritatingly. He was always smirking about something. Chris knew the future, but he never spoke a word about what he saw to anyone! It scared the hell out of me when he was quiet and smiling like he just won a trophy for his good looks or something. Okay, I get it…all of you Starchildren possess the best-looking mash-up of human DNA! My skinny-ass is inferior, but you don’t have to lug me around like we’re in a three-legged sack race, Bro!! I CAN walk! I did say I wanted to go! You acting like I’m scared or something?!

“Lionel, did you forget that we can hear your thoughts?!” Christopher raised his brown eyebrows, thinking toward me, smirking.

Damn! I was still in a state of disbelief, okay? It’s difficult for anyone to think straight when they’re too responsive …Enlightenment lesson 101… I sniggered, recollecting, and lurched away from the Morgan twins. Kaliah snorted as he peered over at Chris curiously.

“Kaliah is worried, Lionel. He doesn’t want you here.

‘You realize…it’s about to get very heated and panicky once the lights come back on?” Chris glowered gravely.

“I don’t care…I’m here…So, let’s get lit!” I replied as I anxiously pulled my braids. Suddenly…I thought about Shamaya, my wife. Kaliah must have sent Maya and my kids with Mandisa. “Kaliah…Viviana? Kaire?”

“Aye, Lionel, Mandisa knows what to do. We talked about everything, but we thought there was more time. We could have reached so many more using the kids!!!” Kaliah grumbled, rocking his head… “You don’t want to die here, Lionel… You’ll be grounded to a dying star…! Chris could never cross over spacetime enough to put you back together…So…you have to leave.

‘This is our fault for being cruel to the only mother that always held us while we kicked each others’ asses! She’s made way for you to go HOME to be with the HUMAN family. Our matter…will eventually find you again. We ARE CONNECTED!

‘This is not the END. Energy Never Dies…But a soul can be destroyed with no HOME to be rooted. Go…HOME! Your Mission is over…THIS is OURstory…Tell…Our children the truth until we can hold them and their mothers again?

‘Your new mission is to show those that go home the inner magic that love can unlock through mutual respect. Don’t ever sleep again unless it’s to rest. EYE will SEE you again, Lionel….You are the KING of Lions, baby brother…and I love you.

‘Protect them all until we meet again.”

“Kaliah…wait? I thought…” I huffed as Christopher leered at me viciously and pushed me back through the doorway. It was pitch black back on the street, now! But… for a moment…soon…The entire sky was lit the color purple! “What…the…? Prince was… right?!”

The second that thought crossed my mind, people began to come outside looking around. I guess they thought it was just still oddly nighttime at 3:33pm on a Tuesday afternoon…? In the darkness above…you couldn’t see anything at first, but with that purple skyline above…reaching higher and higher…

Covering everything was a massive black hole floating directly overhead like a vast UFO sucking the damn light into the center…like swirling purple led light beams. MY entire body began to tremble… That was just before I suddenly saw a shooting star leave the ground in the distance turning from red to purple like a rainbow!

That was a human soul escaping!

As I glared around, it was like fireworks going off as millions of prismatic comets shot off through that dark vortex’s gravity and vanished into space…Those comets all looked like rainbow-colored snakes slithering into a brilliant starfield!

All those rainbows meant humans were waking up to the reality that we all need each other if we want to survive. That’s the Starchildren’s purpose. To prepare us to go HOME when this planet dies from our own undoing. They kept being killed and coming back, sacrificing themselves to show us another way, but we messed up the message because of fear and ego!

But this is the END of the MOTHER…People were either going to wake up, learn to vibrate with love, or be forever destroyed by stubborn beliefs that never mattered. Everyone has free will…we make OUR own choices. But you can’t keep running from place to place to avoid destruction. It creates that same fate for the next generations to come. No actual ship could save us, but ourselves, I learned. Only love, healing, accepting one another, and genuinely getting down to our own issues can we vibrate to fly like the Starchildren.

They could have left us…but they allied with us through their bonding with mankind for millennia! But they couldn’t have kids of their own…They have no soul, so in a way…the Starchildren are ALL our fathers, and they appreciated one another unconditionally to save us.

I’ve learned so much from connecting with their compassionate yet, tortured lives. We humans have gotta do better.

As I attempted to center myself, I suddenly felt heat began to rise from beneath my shoes. I suddenly felt like I was in an oven! I became sensitive unexpectedly. I didn’t want to go! What if Kaliah or the others don’t make it? It didn’t matter to us that he wasn’t human…He loved and always protected us when he didn’t even know who HE was…He’s my real brother…they all ARE!

“What’s this….” I gasped, observing a golden light pulsing in my jacket pocket. My fingers clutched a chain, and I withdrew a golden heart-shaped locket that glowed in the dark! As I cracked it open carefully, inside was a picture of Manisa in her hospital gown. Her curls back in a bun, tears running down her face with bright gray eyes holding Ayo and Alika the day they were born. It never ceases to amaze me that one woman could change so many people…doing what she did. Those babies…woke us all up! This was Kaliah’s…He lived for both those babies, though Alika was biologically his, and Cyrus was Ayo’s father. What an anomaly! The first Starchildren born were twins… Ayo, dark like Cyrus, and the Alika, light like Kaliah, but full of Kaliah’s magic. “Why’s it… glowing?”

“Sorry, Lionel, I knew you wouldn’t go HOME if I told you…We probably cannot overpower the destructive gravitational pull without the human connection… We will be fine…Peace, Brother,” Kaliah’s voice wept to my thoughts then loudly. “Give…my kids all my love until EYE see them again? You just leveled up, Baby Bro!”

“Kaliah! Ben?!... Bro!” I wheezed as the heavens unexpectedly launched before my eyes! “No! Not yet! Wait!”

I quickly put Kaliah’s locket around my neck, realizing Kaliah placed it there earlier. He was sending me HOME against my will to be with the kids... The tears were falling the moment the anxiety that my brothers were about to die struck me.

As my skin and physical body were burned away. However, there was no pain, only the growing warmth in my heart near Kaliah’s locket… The sky became infinite rapidly, and only darkness surrounded me. All I could do was think and let my soul carry me to see HOME with my own 3 eyes.

But I still could sketch all my brother’s faces in my mind’s eye!