[Author note: This will be a bit shorter than the normal chapters as of late, so please bear with it. As well as that, there will be no chapter Thursday nor Friday. Thanks for your continued reading!]

Beep Beep Beep Be- Click

A man that looked to be in his late thirties clicked his alarm clock and stared up to the ceiling, lying in bed. He closed his eyes again and simply meditated on his thoughts.His ears twitched as he heard yet another shootout happening in the distance and he sighed. There was no reason to fight over food as long as everyone shared- or at least he thought that way. He groaned and sat up in bed, looking into the mirror on the breau across the room.

His relatively handsome face stared back at him. He had a darker skin color, a product of his birth country, and he had white hair. His hair was not white like the hair of an older person, but was white like the fur of a polar bear. His eyes were a deep blue that could pierce the soul and his nose was a bit on the small side, but not disturbingly small. His hair was a mess compared to his usual comb-over and was about an inch’s length at its longest, being shorter on the sides. He rolled off of the bed and stepped onto the ground, putting on his old slippers as he stood up.

He completed his morning routine; he took a shower of cold water, dressed himself, brushed his teeth, and turned on his old radio that was tuned into a classical music station as he prepared breakfast. His breakfast today was green peppers, tomatoes, and pork diced and fried. He diced the ingredients and slid them neatly into the frying pan that sat on the electric stove. The smell of food made the man drool a little, but he was patient, letting it cook to his satisfaction. He then poured the contents of the pan onto a ceramic plate, grabbed his fork, turned off the stove, and walked to the window of his living room to eat. He looked outside and marveled at the change that had happened a few weeks ago while eating his breakfast.

The area used to be dry, dusty, and arid before a few weeks ago, but it was now a lush forest with verdant trees sprouting densely. The formerly dry ground was wet with moisture, most likely from the thick rain that happened the night previously. He saw grass that looked so healthy that they seemed to glow green covering the forest floor around the clearing near his house. His old car, that he had been using for many years before, had been claimed by the forest, a tree growing its roots through the cabin and engine. He was thankful for the fact that he had moved all of his possessions out of his car before the event occurred. He looked at the car, which reminded him of that night.

He was just moving into the house, finally finishing after a few days of packing and transport. Thankfully, the town had helped him by lending him their aid. Though they may have helped, they had not been nice about the previous owner, who was a good friend of the man’s. Those people asked him what magic he had used to drive the man away, or what prayer recited to banish the demon living there. He was furious at them for saying such things and said as much to them. They backed off when he became angry, because no-one wanted to upset the town’s Uncle.

After he moved in and got settled, it began to rain. He took a cup of calming tea and sat by a window on the second floor and watched it rain deep into the night. The strange thing about the rain, though, was that it never stopped. It only got louder and louder and louder. Eventually, he felt the sky and earth quake. He looked up and saw blue streaks of lighting covering the sky. There were so many that he thought that the world would be burned to a crisp were they to land to ground. The sky looked like a sea of blue light for minutes on end. To the man, it was as beautiful as it was terrifying. Soon enough, though, the sky darkened and the lightning ceased. What replaced it was a splitting headache that flayed his brain with pain. The man was used to pain from his early years fighting for scraps of food, but this pain was something that he never felt possible. He began to choke up blood and ran to the bathroom to expel it. After a few hours of torture, his headache had finally ceased and he stopped vomiting blood. The man shuddered imagining the pain, unwilling to feel it again.

The man went to sleep the next morning and turned his trusty radio on only to find the world in chaos. Through various real-time stations covering the events, the man learned that everyone in the world felt the headache he had felt, though some, like him, felt it much more severely than others. It was not just humans, though, it was every animal on Earth as well. And, after the storm that rained down on the entire planet passed, many animals had turned into monsters. Animals in zoos, homes, farms, or in the wild gained tyrannical strength, became able to shoot any manner of magical attacks, or even gained other strange abilities.

Some families woke up to their dogs being able to breath fire and become invincible on command. Some towns were overrun by hivemind-like insects that devoured anything edible and devastated anything that wasn’t. An entire city was even overrun by hordes of creatures infected by fungal viruses that controlled their every move. But it was also through this event that humans learned, through the ‘betrayal’ of other humans, that they could use the same abilities as the monsters could, though some could do it more than others. Soon, many monsters were fought back into the wild, but it was not without cost. Some estimates said that 60% of the world had been slaughtered by the wave of monster-like creatures.

Throughout all of this, there were reports of the deterioration of public order. Looters would ransack any towns they happened upon, especially if they were capable of using powers. Marauders cut bloody swathes through every country, killing, raping, and doing whatever else they wanted to do to the innocent and defensless. It did not sit well with the man, but while he had great power from the ‘awakening’, as many called it, he had no clue how to use it so he had spent most of his time training in the use of his powers.

The man sighed, it was because of the marauders and looters that the order in the country had not been restored, and he could feel the tension everytime he listened to a news broadcast. He picked his dirty dishes up and put them in the sink, washing them. He turned off his radio and headed outside. He had a few chores to do before training. His first stop was the water tower that was on the property. He opened the tower and noticed that the water level was a bit low. He held up his hand and drew out his body’s energy, creating three lines in the air made of the energy. As he was creating them he imbued each with a different concept, a skill he had long mastered. The first line was given the concept of water. The second line was given the concept of a spout. And the third line was given the concept of being continuous. He took his time constructing the lines, memorizing almost every detail to help with future practice. Once the lines were complete he condensed them into rings and arranged them in a way that would let him cast the spell: he put the ring for water in the center, which was surrounded by the ring for the spout. Behind both of these, he bent the ring for being continuous back into a line and layed it across the other two rings. Once the formation was complete, he fed his energy into the rings, producing a spout of water that slowly filled the water tower.

He filled the tower up until it was about three quarters full, being sure that it would not overflow were it to rain again. The man climbed down from the tower and began to walk toward his new destination: the small garden. For some reason, plants began to grow at incredible rates after the awakening, meaning that the vegetables that the man planted a few weeks prior would be ripe. He walked over to his garden, finding nothing wrong and all of the plants being healthy. Among all of the plants, about a quarter had ripened. The man grabbed a basket near him and picked the vegetables, filling his basket with squash, tomatoes, green and red peppers, and lettuce that was all ready to eat. He stored them in his basement, keeping them out of reach from any vermin that might sneak down there.

With his tasks done, he could now train. He went to the clearing next to his car and began to cast his most complicated spell yet. He created five lines: one for sound, one for amplification, one for condensed waves, one for narrowed focus, and one for resonance. He placed the line for sound in the middle, making a ring, which was surrounded by the line for amplification, making another ring. Behind the formation, the line for condensed waves was spread into a circle, connecting the previous two rings. The line for resonance then stuck into the circle, climbing a few inches before making another circle as big as the largest circle. Finally, the last line for narrowed focus attached itself to the climbing line for resonance and created a circle that layered itself below the line for resonance. Now that the man’s construct was ready, he pooled energy into it. Such a complicated formation required a great deal of energy to fuel, but the power was worth it. The formation lit up and created a sound wave that was amplified, condensed, tightened, and finally resonated, which gave it even greater power. The wave boomed and flew forward, devastating every tree in its wake. In the end, a three foot wide corridor was made in the verdant forest that extended for fifty feet.

The man wiped the sweat from his brow. Such a spell required a great amount of energy and he needed to recharge. The man laughed, talking aloud to himself, “Kain my boy, if you were here, what would you think of seeing your Uncle Trunks doing something so amazing?” He laughed, and prepared to create another spell. “Ahhh… Just another day in paradise.”