Rebel Nebulas: A Character Universe #3

More Cricket, less Crimzin please.

Roughly 34 million light years in the direction of Orion's Belt lies one of the most beautiful sights in the entire known universe. First you would see a shimmering blue point of light as you approached. Once you are close enough that point of light begins to grow and melt before your very eyes, eventually settling into a psychedelic mosaic of all the juice the cosmos has to offer.

You have arrived at the Glowing Ocean Galaxy. A swirling mix of purples, blues, and greens orbiting a supermassive white star called The Diamond.

Orbiting Diamond is a planet very similar to earth simply known as Cricket. The first thing you notice about Cricket are what look like impact craters all over it's surface. The planet is covered with dense forests interrupted by these large circular sites of destruction and regrowth. The next thing you will notice is that Cricket has 4 massive and distinct rivers and all of these craters are no more than 21 miles from the banks of these rivers that dwarf the Nile here on earth.

The planet gets it's name from an infamous creature that is well known and thoroughly studied by numerous civilizations. Cricket is a bit more intelligent than an ape but not quite to human standards, and that is a very good thing.

During the day cricket is a gentle and docile creature that you would be tempted to approach and pet like a puppy. His big doughy eyes, small stature and cartoonist yellow cue ball head has a way of disarming any fear you may have. During the day you can find Cricket quietly roaming the forest and even interacting with other creatures in a playful way.

But at night, Cricket becomes something so wicked that no living soul in Glowing Ocean will dare enter the planets atmosphere where it is night time. If you find yourself on the night side of the planet at the same time as Cricket you are already dead.

Without the presence of sunlight Cricket morphs into a horrible red beast called Crimzin. He gains teleportation, telepathy, blinding speed and an unthinkable ability to release a small nuclear blast once every two weeks. This behavior has been observed primarily in hunting situations.

Crimzin becomes extremely aggressive and wreaks absolute havoc on anything he sees moving in the night. He has been seen ripping a creature to shreds just for the sport of it, leaving behind mangled bloody corpses that even jack The Ripper would be impressed with. He uses his telepathy to predict how his prey will move and then teleport to catch it before pulling off limbs and spilling guts onto the forest floor.

Crimzin will sometimes mistakenly teleport to the day side of the planet in the heat of a hunt and instantly morphs back into Cricket. This really does a number on Cricket as opposed to the gradual morphing brought on by a sunrise.

Cricket and Crimzin evolve at an extremely slow rate, but they are evolving and that is a huge problem. The Glowing Ocean Federation (GOF) is a collection of governments similar to NATO here on earth. The GOF have been at odds about whether to incinerate the planet or continue spending the massive amounts of resources to study, monitor and contain Crimzin.

Some of the GOF members seem to think Crimzin could be useful in helping to fight the many attempted invasions by Glowing Oceans galactic enemies. Other members see Crimzin as an abomination and think it's inevitable that he evolves long enough to become a force they can no longer contain. For now, the GOF have agreed to settle for a sort of gravitational cage around the entire planet.

What would you do in the case of Cricket and Crimzin?

Thanks for reading!