A six man squad was currently lined up in a single file line along an old shitty wall, in front of them equally shitty stone steps and a proud ‘225’ claiming it all. The squad was composed of 4 veteran instructors from the nearby Army boot camp, and 2 special ops agents who were stationed close enough to make it in time for this emergency mission. They were all highly capable men and women, some of the best the Canadian Forces had to offer on such short notice.

Snipers lined the rooftops looking through the scopes of their R700’s, confirming the target wasn’t in the living room through the large window.

The alley behind the apartment building was swarming with officers and Emergency Task Force trucks, the Canadian equivalent of SWAT. The unit had rushed from Toronto to the nearby town of Brunveld for this top priority mission that had been issued by the Minister of National Defence himself.

Every officer participating in the mission is armed to the teeth, even the local police who may have never even fired their pistols. At a minimum, they were equipped with: A bullet proof vest, an assault rifle with two mags, a sidearm and pellet or flash grenades. It was the largest scale military operation ever seen in this small town.

After the painstaking evacuation of every civilian in the building through covert means, the ETF Mobile Command Center opens comms, informing the officers that the mission is a go.

The squad leader signals the group to advance, and they make their silent entrance into the building. The civilians are out, so there isn’t a need for shouting yet.

They go up the stairs in 3 groups of two, moving with lethal efficiency to the targets home in the apartment building. Combat boots clomped in tandem, and once more they arranged themselves into a single file against the wall.

Squad leader Sgt. Michael Dunhald doesn’t even need to give the signal for the man behind him to move to the other side of the door, where he prepares his grenades. Michael takes a shaped charge out of one of his pouches, and places it on the lock in such a way that the door will be swung open after the blast. He takes a few steps back, one of his squad to the left and the rest on his right.

Their orders for this mission were grim. Use lethal force, if he isn’t killed immediately then attempt a capture. The squad was a little uneasy, they had all heard the rumors going around about this particular guy.

“BREACH AND CLEAR!”(Sgt. Michael) On his words, the shaped breach charge detonates, a controlled blast resounding in their ears. Without a moment’s hesitation the man with the nades, Lt. Harvey Davis, throws a concussion and tear gas combo underhand with his C-7 rifle slung across his back.

Waiting a moment for the blast, the first one in is Special Agent Alicia Ramirez, armed with her favorite MP5A3 with a flashlight attachment. Her mask filters the tear gas while she checks the closet and moves to the kitchen.

“CLEAR!”(Agent Ramirez) Like clockwork, her 5 squad mates who had been following her move past the incredibly modern and fancy looking kitchen she was standing in. She joins the back of the line, and they split into two groups of 3 going down the halls left and right to clear the remaining rooms.

Group 1 heads left intending to clear the bathroom and storage closet. It consists of Michael who had entered immediately after Ramirez, the other Special Agent and one of the other instructors, Sgt. Louis LeBlanc.

Group 2 heads right intending to clear the only bedroom in the bachelor apartment. It consists of the final un-named instructor, Lt. Davis and Ramirez who is taking up the rear.

Three distinct shouts sound off one after another, declaring the apartment cleared. Everyone except for those in group 1 who were piling into the bathroom began exploring the incredible apartment.

The un-named instructor, Sgt. Dilyn Levesque stood in front of the massive flat screen dominating the living room with a look of awe and worship on his face. If me and the boys had something like this, pu~tain. Dreams of his favorite football and hockey teams danced in his eyes and projected themselves onto the screen.

Special Agent Ramirez sighed in relief, and informed the Mobile Command Center of the all-clear, along with the fact that their target had not been inside the building. They knew he left rather dramatically earlier in the day, but they also knew that he had never come home from the hospital according to video surveillance cameras throughout the town. This led them to take no chances, and check his apartment in full force as a precaution.

“G-Guys, come look at this shit…”(Michael, you okay?) Hearing that rather unprofessional statement from down the hallway, Alicia clicked her tongue in frustration. Amateurs!! She had a rather bad superiority complex, but no one she knew well enough to make a meaningful impact with those words would dare tell her that. This was because for one she was an incredibly gorgeous woman who had just turned 30, with an all-male friend group vying for her affections. Secondly, she was an insanely formidable close quarters combat expert who didn’t hesitate to hold a nasty grudge.

Busy belittling her squad in her mind, she was the last to make her way over to whatever they were all excitedly discussing in the bathroom. His dead body? Something fucked up? Her extensive training had her prepared for virtually anything, and she was determined to let her professionalism show.

Peeking into the bathroom from behind Davis’ back, she caught her breath. This was a big moment in her life, finally taking her first steps towards being a more humble person thanks to a massive contrast in expectation.

A massive solid gold bathtub gave everyone present a flattering wink.

~~Roughly one hour prior~~

The prime minister sat in his office with an unbelievable report on his desk. His schedule for the day had been cancelled, and he had rushed home to deal with this top priority decision.

A thick beige binder sat on his desk. Across the top in large red letters, it read ‘TOP SECRET’.

The first time he read the report, he threw a bit of a tantrum, demanding to know if this was some kind of elaborate joke. Despite the fact that it would never make it to his desk if it were false, he couldn’t bring himself to believe it.

This was his second time opening the folder, and he did so with a heavy heart.

The first page was an extremely detailed biography on one Joseph Ashton, containing nearly everything he had ever done and everyone he had ever known. It listed it all in bullet point form, starting from his birth in Toronto to his recent hospitalization.

He had already skimmed his major life events, and read about his excessive internet porn usage. No matter how he looked at it, this was just a normal guy.

It began to deviate from normal when it came to the robbery of a certain Ronalds. 5 pairs of frames from the restaurants security camera were displayed, zoomed into Joseph’s chest. In each pair of frames was first the moment his body was hit by a bullet, and in the next it was the same wound rapidly closing. They had easy access to the company’s security system, and so they were looking through the camera that monitors the cashiers. He didn’t need to read the doctors’ comments along the side to know that it impossible.

Next in the folder was a series of pictures taken by a pair of fighter jets 40 minutes ago. Call sign ‘Caveman’ and ‘Scarlet’ moved in to intercept an unknown flying object near Toronto in a military no-fly zone. The picture was of a glowing Joseph, who for some reason had no clothes on from the waist down, a pair of golden wings extending from his back. Comments were displayed on the bottom of the pictures, noting a few differences in his physique that must have happened very recently.

The comments read ‘His muscle mass has increased significantly, he has wings (No shit), and his penis is approximately 2 inches longer. The glowing effect is not a malfunction of recording equipment, as it was correlated with videos taken from his catastrophic launch into the air.’

He had taken this all in stride the first time around, until he turned the page once more. Two pictures taken by a satellite were side by side, juxtaposing each other. In the one on the left, the fighter pilots had sandwiched Joseph. In the image on the right, Joseph was no longer visible, in his stead a brand new CF-18 Hornet. After a short and almost laughable exchange over the radio, his jet outperformed what should have been possible by 3000% in the following dog fight. ‘Scarlet’ launched a Sparrow air-to-air missile, which was intercepted by an unknown phenomenon. Magnificently outmaneuvering the veteran pilots, he swiftly brought ‘Scarlet’ down. Though she miraculously emerged from the flaming wreckage without a scratch and safely landed. He was assured by a comment made from the manufacturer of these planes that ‘What his plane is doing in these images is not physically possible, not to mention mechanically impossible for this model’.

On top of all that, the woman that had gone with him to the hospital, Elise Pelletier was admitted as a patient. They had sent police over just in case, but when they arrived at her bedside they reported back and confirmed that she was indeed in a coma. Her files and life story, along with a few testimonies from doctors and one particularly interesting account from a young female nurse, were the last item in the folder.

This report was laid out in this amount of detail so that Prime Minister Harry Cocinbells could decide their course of action in dealing with this boy.

“This is going to be a huge mess…” In a resigned voice, he pressed a button on his land line and spoke into it, “Delegate this task to the Minister of National Defense.” Receiving a quick affirmation from his reliable secretary, he sat back in his leather chair, crossed his legs on top of his oak desk and joined his hands behind his tired head. He let out a lo~ong, relieved, and apprehensive sigh. “At least I got the day off…” he mumbled half-heartedly.

Unknown to the Prime Minister, three other world leaders striking were similar poses, the same thoughts on their minds.

~~Back to Paris, his apartment has just been stormed~~

Elise’s angry face was so cute! Her face was lit up by golden moonlight that reflected off my wings. It revealed to me her furrowed brows, her small rounded nose and her lips set in a firm horizontal line. We were too high in the sky to be tainted by the artificial lights from the city, and I was more than happy for it. The natural lighting complimented her features perfectly, her platinum blonde hair glowing an interesting mercurial silver.

Though I held her by her waist, due to the height difference she had to turn her head around and look upwards in order to glare at me. It’s impossible for this woman to be unattractive isn’t it? She wasn’t saying anything to me, her eyes were speaking for her I suppose. A rather long sentence lay in them, something like: ‘I know it wasn’t intentional, but I’m still angry with you! Also, I’m sure it’s within your capabilities to fix!’

I peeled my eyes from her beautiful face, and looked back to the state of the tower. The upper third portion of the structure had been separated from the thick base by the downwards diagonal force produced by his launch.

*BOOOOOM-KEEEERRR* The behemoth of angry twisted metal crashed into the ground and groaned in agony as its metal supports collapsed and warped further under their own weight.

“Tch… No way am I fixing that shit, do you even see how fucked it is? That would take way too long.”(Joe with some angry words to say to Mr. Eiffel)

“Joseph!” She yelled in my arms and maintained her seething glare. I have no choice but to do ‘that’ eh?

It was finally time to test out a potential trump card, one that could change my life drastically if it worked.

I focused with all my might, and centered myself in a meditative state. Once my attention was fully repurposed, away from monitoring my surroundings, I began a series of complex imaginations. Like a recording playing in reverse, the past few minutes went backwards slowly in my mind. It was extraordinarily taxing on my brain, and it almost felt as if smoke was coming out of my ears. Finally I arrived at the scene I wanted, the moment we arrived at the top of the tower.

I slowly opened my eyes, prepared for the worst. Not prepared enough though. The fuck is that?!

Elise and I were standing atop the no longer destroyed Eiffel tower once more, and it seems my time travel went ‘well’. Everything aside from a massive growing spider web crack in the fabric of reality was exactly the same as a few minutes prior. It was located where we had been previously, several hundred meters at a 45 degree angle from where we were standing.

Four obsidian arms covered in glowing red runes shot out of it at once, gripping the sides of the spreading web and tearing it further. Elise’s teeth were chattering next to me while my arm gripped her tighter around her shoulder, she was petrified by fear. The being emerging from the crack let out a powerful and terrifying aura, after all.

After what seemed like an eternity but was only a few moments, a massive 3m tall jet black man emerged. The crack quickly sealed as soon as he was out, as if not even the fabric of reality wanted anything to do with this guy and had dumped him here saying ‘Your problem now’.

His body, like his arms, was covered in shining intricate red patterns. Protruding from his head were two 10cm horns that didn’t match his massive stature at all. On his horns were patterns of the same menacing red as the rest of his body, but at the tips there was a pitch black void. I had my doubts that light had ever seen whatever was contained at the points of those two horns.

“Kuh…Kukuku…KUHAHAHAHAHAHA!”(Obsidian monster) Three stage laugh?! “Finally! After an eternity of darkness, I AM FREE!!” His voice was as powerful as his presence if not even more so, and resounded throughout the city, stopping night-owl civilians in their tracks with a piercing fear.

The demon guy was scanning his surroundings with a greedy gaze, like he couldn’t get enough of the sights he was seeing. It’s a nice looking city, after all. Suddenly he locked eyes with me, squinting, and moved closer. The look in his eyes as he approached went through a range of emotions from suspicion to bewilderment to rage. In an uncharacteristically low voice, he spoke.

“Were you the one to free me from my imprisonment?” Though he tried his best to hide it, there was definitely a threatening undertone to his words. Paying his concealed threat no respect I answered.

“I think so? I was just fucking around though, it definitely wasn’t on purpose. If I knew your ugly ass would show up, I wouldn’t have tried taking the easy way out.”(Casual Joe) Whether it was my words, my lack of reaction to his oppressive aura or maybe the look of disdain I was giving his small dick, his eyes filled with rage and wonderment once again. And yes, he was stark nude.

Perhaps my casual attitude broke the atmosphere of fear for Elise, because she let out a giggle as she also examined his unusually small member.

“YOU DARE MOCK ME?!” Shooting out of his hands and hurtling in our direction was a massive silver sphere with a radius of 5m. Following his sphere, he let out a mighty roar as a blade of pure darkness was released by his horns, taking form over his head. He had no wings to speak of, but he was flying without issue. Grabbing the newly formed void blade from the top of his head by its bejewelled hilt, he prepared to follow up his ball attack with a devastating horizontal slash. JESUS! That escalated quickly. I tried to delete his sphere attack, with no success. Shit. Something was telling me I would not survive either of his strikes if I took them head on, and I began grasping at straws. There was no time left to teleport away, so I quickly spawned a massive diamond blob in front of us with no time to spare forming any kind of structure.

The barrier lasted all of 0 seconds. The second the silver ball impacted its surface, it was thoroughly shattered, raining down on the surroundings and blasting debris towards Elise and I. Not that it matters at this point, we are so fucked! I closed my eyes and prepared for my end.

The demon’s oppressive roaring was abruptly cut short, and my body was not blown into a million pieces.

I opened my eyes to an incredible scene. As if someone had pressed ‘pause’ on the universe, the glittering diamond debris was frozen in front me. Not far behind the diamonds, was the glimmering silver sphere. It had a milky texture, and where the diamond made impacts on its surface it reacted like liquid, sending ripples across its surface. Immediately following the large ball, was the demonic figure. His arm was pulled back, as he prepared for a one handed horizontal slash. Power radiated off of him, his rage channeled into his attacks.

Looking to my side to examine Elise, she was a heartbreaking sight. Her eye lids halted midway in the process of closing, her amber eyes filled with fear and welling up with tears. No doubt she was also expecting her death.

“*Whistle* Quite the mess you’ve made here.”(???) The familiar voice came from my other side and a click resounded in my mind as I recognized who it must be.

“Aunt Til…” Indeed it was my aunt, standing by my side illuminating me with her characteristic stunning beauty. She took hold of my free palm, leaving me with flower in each hand at the doorstep of my demise. Am I going insane? Is this what they mean when they say your life flashes before your eyes?

“Now isn’t exactly a great time for a ‘family’ reunion, but I have a little gift for you~.”(Mysterious Til) Materializing between our joined hands, was a 15cm long cylindrical metal tube. “Your parents wanted you to have this… He~he” There was clearly more to the story, but I was distracted from asking any questions when she pulled her hand away.

The instant her hand was no longer in contact with mine, pulsing energy exploded from the tube and swiftly took shape.

“No…Way…” I muttered, dumbfounded by the sight before me once again. The tube was the hilt of a 1.4m long energy sword, looking like something straight out of HALO. It radiated a powerful aura and an incredible glow, like lightning was licking it all over. It enveloped the top of my hand in a spherical dome, cutting off halfway down my wrist. Past my knuckles which was also the top of the dome, it shifted from a spherical shape to a level plane angled at 30 degrees. This plane continued for a few centimeters and slowly split into two narrow, elongated blades. Both sides of the two blades tapered down to a sharp looking edge, meaning I could slash it just about any way I felt like and it would cut smoothly. The separation of the blades became uniform shortly after they split apart, leaving a 5cm gap between them. The whole sword was covered in intricate markings, along which the lightning reminiscent energy traveled.

“Oooh, quite an interesting shape it has taken. This is a unique blade made by yours truly with the help of your parents out of Soul Crystal. To call it forth and dismiss it is as simple as willing it to happen. That’s about all we have to discuss… For now. Good luck! I’m al~ways watching.”(Til)

Naturally, she didn’t give me a chance to respond with one of my many questions. With a large bright smile on her face she disappeared and time resumed, an epic battle for the lives of myself and Elise ensuing.

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Thanks for reading! Drop some feedback... *sob* PLEASE!

But seriously, I have no idea how you guys like the characters so far or the pacing of the story. Do they feel realistic? Do they lack substance? Is the story advancing at a good pace? These things I do not know haunt me at night.