Arnold ran through the streets of Anthem, sliding across the hood of an abandoned Mercedes and juking hard around the corner of a high priced SUV that had been thrown on its side by one of the monsters that had poured in from across the desert when the system initialized. He flinched when a bolt of fire spun the car next to him and set it on fire. Still on his feet and moving he zig zagged through the graveyard of high priced cars and SUV’s praying to whatever gods he could think of he made it to the Lake Pleasant settlement before “King Jame’s” killed him.

They had been on his ass for the last hour. Just when he thought he’d lost them a mutated lizard burst out of a nearby building and tried to take his head off. In the ensuing melee the “King’s” men rounded on him as soon as he finished off the monster. And so, he ran again. It’s not like I just killed the ‘Kings’ wife, or anything. If she had kept her head around his cock instead of looking up, it would have been the King himself. Not that she was an innocent saint or anything.

A smattering of rounds striking the wall above his head broke him out of his reverie. He spun further out of sight and broke for a section of the sound dampening wall that had been collapsed by a burning semi-truck that apparently careened off the I-17 at a high rate of speed. He reached the front of the still warm truck and dove under the jack-knifed trailer. He spun around and enhanced the heat in the front of the burnt out truck and reignited the flames. He guided the fire to spread and fill the gap he just tumbled through. Hopefully they think I went somewhere else.

He waited silently under the truck as it burned and listened for the men that had been chasing him. He tensed up when he heard them talking as they looked around for him. “The fuck he go!?”

“No idea man, he was right there by the building when I shot.”

“He didn’t fucking go through there.” Arnold’s anxiety cranked up assuming they were talking about the flaming truck.

“Yeah, let’s check down here.”

Arnold waited for several minutes and didn’t move until he thought he was in the clear. He looked around as he crawled from underneath the trailer and stayed low as he weaved his way around the log jam of cars and trucks that was now the I-17. He had to backtrack up the highway a bit before he found a spot he could turn back towards Lake Pleasant. He quickly found his way to the 74 and followed it from a distance until he reached the Agua Fria and then followed that up to the dam, and, ultimately the village settlement of Pleasant Harbor.

Humphrey was posted on the gate and saw him approaching from a mile out. The older man stared at him for a time through his rifle optic before raising the rifle from pointing at his head. Arnold waved at the crotchety old man and a moment later the gate opened enough for him to slip in and he found himself standing in front of the Village leader, his mother.

“Hey ma.” He smiled despite the harsh look she gave him.

“Did you do it?”

"Nah, I probably made it worse.” He admitted with no small amount of irritation. His mom didn’t accept excuses. And he braced himself for a tongue lashing.

“What happened?” Not yelling yet? Something else is up.

“I caught him and his wife about to get it on. I was lined up on his face, I didn’t know if I’d get a better shot at him so I let the bolt fly.” Arnold fidgeted with a bit of embarrassment at where the story was going.

His mom looked at him and her face began to pale, “Just tell me plainly, Arnold, what happened?”

Arnold deflated in a heavy sigh, “She was sucking him off, she chose the moment I launched my plasma bolt to lift her head. She’s ash. He’s pissed.”

“Fuck me, did he see you? Did he follow you!?” Anger was replaced by panic and his mom stepped up to him with fear in her eyes.

“They tried, I’ve been running for almost two hours straight. I lost them at the I-17.”

“Good! Good, maybe they won’t put two and two together.”

An older man than Arnold, yet younger than his mother, walked up and joined the conversation. “Irene, I don’t think it much matters. Even if we weren’t outed, there’s only four groups in the area. He’s not smart, but he’s not stupid either. He’s got the numbers to send attack groups after all of us.”

“Fuck!” Arnold flinched at her language, she never swore like that.

“It’s not all bad, we have the water at our back and an open field for miles that they have to approach, plus, we are the farthest from his backyard, so-to-speak.”

“You’re right Bailey. I think if our new friends can help us out, maybe we can pull through this. It sure would have been nice to be done with that bastard though.”

“Sorry, ma.” Arnold apologized again.

“Don’t be, his woman wasn’t worth a damn either. We should give New Phoenix a shout out, they’re trapped between that asshole in Litchfield Park and King’s group in Mesa.” Bailey saved Arnold from his own recriminations.

“You’re right. I didn’t mean to be so intense, I was just really hoping you would be successful.” Arnold’s mom hugged him and wondered just how fucked up the world had become that she sent her only son, barely 17, to assassinate another man. Then she looked over to the river where the representative of the Mer-man refugees slithered out of the lake to join their conversation. Oh yeah, when the world became a fucked up video game with fantasy creatures and monsters running around.

“I know ma, hey Srookimal.” Arnold greeted the weird looking man.

“Were you successful, young Arnold?” He shook his head in response and Srookimal grimaced.

“That’s unfortunate.” the weird fish man grimaced. “We will prepare, then.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Have we been able to reestablish communications with any of our forces in the field, General?” President Hiden asked from the comfort of the decades old command bunker that sat beneath Washington, D.C. Before this ‘system’ initialized he had one foot in the grave. Afterwards he found himself invigorated and sharper than he had ever been. The little AI in his head had shown him a slew of statuses that were being corrected. Which showed him his closest advisors, and maybe even his own wife had possibly been slowly poisoning him for some time.

So, he did what any reasonable 80 year old man who survived the system initialization and found himself with super strength would do when he realized he was being taken advantage of for others political ambitions. He snapped the necks of all the old fucks that had also survived the initialization, whom he suspected of using him. That, of course, included former Vice President Norris, and would have included his own wife if she hadn’t had an aneurysm during initialization.

“No, Mr. President, we have not, it seems all of our land based forces have been scattered and our navies aren’t doing much better. At current estimates, we are sitting at about 3% strength in naval forces, seems the… ahem… Dragons only went after major troop concentrations, so any ship sailing on its own wasn’t neutralized by the heavy hitters.” General Brock responded nervously to the President’s question. He had seen him lose his temper several times over the last two weeks. Each time seemed to end in the death of another staffer or advisor. And his Secret Service detachment had become his own little goon squad. The last thing the current General of the Army wanted to do was piss off the strongest man in the room.

“I see, so shouldn’t we have more troops remaining? What took out the smaller outposts and such?”

“Ah, yes, well, that would be higher level monsters than what has been wreaking havoc on our cities. And lots of them. It’s also important to note we don’t hold air superiority either. We essentially have no military force to respond with.”

“You’re telling me the strongest military in the world has been reduced to nothing in little less than two weeks?” The President stared hard at the General who was now visibly sweating.

“Unfortunately, that is the case.” To his credit the General didn’t back down from delivering the bad news. He’d seen the President's new found strength, though he was confident he could defend himself if need be.

“Relax, Ansel, there’s not much you can do from this bunker I suppose. What about our nuclear strike on China and Russia?”

“Ineffective. Not a single missile made it to target.” The General having avoided a fight he didn’t want to engage in relaxed and delivered his report with more ease.

“How’s that possible? What happened to the missiles?”

“Unknown for certain at this time, we tracked the missiles as they reached the upper atmosphere, ours and theirs, and they all just disappeared. We are speculating that there was some kind of alien intervention. We also estimate the rest of the world is in much the same state we are in.” Thank god those nukes got evaporated was all that General Ansel Brock could think as he delivered the report.

“Yes, the aliens.” President Hiden turned his attention to the other two people in the room he hadn’t yet decided what to do with, “Nancy, Chuck, how about you prove your worth and tell me you’ve figured out something to do about these Refugees.”

“Of course, Mr. President” Nancy was the first to speak up. The woman was actually older than the President himself by a couple of years and had managed to hold on to her power for just as long as he had. She was also looking better than when the system took hold, it seems she had in fact undergone extensive plastic surgery as she got older and the system found it to be foreign material within her body and expelled it. Painfully at that. It was quite a horrifying process to watch as years of silicon and botox were pressed out through the pores of her skin. Though once that was complete they all took on a far healthier complexion that suggested they weren’t a day over 45.

“The various refugee groups that have cropped up around the D.C. metroplex have all been refused and sent away. Some had to be put down. Not that that is really a problem. They’re not human so they aren’t covered in our Bill of Rights.”

“Did we get an official legal opinion on that?”

“Yes, Justice Santos-Mayer, the only one currently available, agreed that they had no rights on the planet whatsoever and went so far as to suggest the only way they gained rights would be if we accepted them. Only problem with that is we don’t have control of the City Core for D.C.”

“Why’s that a problem?” Joe Hiden looked at her confused.

“It seems the City Cores are what establish authority within this.. System. According to the Universal Mana System we aren’t actually in control of anything right now.”

“Nonsense, these aliens can’t just come and take everything away.” The President’s anger was rising and he didn’t notice the slight tremor in the walls around him.

“What was that….” Senator Shchumaker asked, suddenly looking at the ground and gently pressing his hands to the table, feeling the vibrations traveling from the floor to the material in front of him.

“What is what!?” The President barked, irritated at being interrupted.

Chuck looked up at the people gathered and stumbled out of his chair, “Something’s coming!”

Before the President could respond he finally felt the tremors that were growing increasingly violent. As he was about to speak the room began to shake and an audible roar was heard behind the back wall of the room where he sat. In the next moment the wall was breaking apart in a shower of wood, steel, and earth and President Joe Hiden’s world went instantly dark.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Captain Devers was currently ruminating on just what kind of shit show had befallen him and his men. It had been two weeks since the system initialized while his armor company was conducting it’s two week yearly training at the National Training Center in Nevada. His company was currently moving across the desert back towards Arizona where he and his men had originated. They had been out on maneuvers when the system initialized and therefore avoided the flyover of that big ass dragon. Thank god for small miracles.

When they returned they found the base largely a wreck with only smaller elements of mechanized infantry and support troops trying to figure out what just rolled through them like a hot knife through butter. No other commander remained except for a surly old Master Sergeant and a gathering of Lieutenants from various units. In the end he was the highest ranked field officer and as such, was in charge of the men that remained. When communication with Central Command ended suddenly Captain Devers had to make a decision.

Training systems were stripped almost immediately after they returned. A couple of the ammo bunkers remained intact and provided plenty of ammunition for the M1’s and the smattering of Bradley’s, MRAP,s and various other vehicles that remained functional. Which was fortunate, though the Dragon moved on when it felt it sufficiently trashed the base, monsters poured out of the desert. Most of the monsters fell easily enough to concentrated machine gun fire. Though that just seemed to be throwing down a challenge to whatever led the monsters. For they were certainly being led, they came in waves with a variety of tactics and formations. Soon their commanders appeared and the big guns on the M1’s spoke in return. Surprisingly the enemy commander ate the first round that hit it like a champ. I mean, it didn’t turn into pink mist, though watching it fly two thousand meters into the desert was certainly entertaining.

After that encounter however, he decided it was time to move on. All the assembled troops were pretty much National Guard out of Arizona with a smattering of troops from various other locations across the country. As one they agreed to head off to Arizona and Captain Devers then found himself in charge of what could only be described as a Reinforced Armor Company. As well as the aforementioned armored vehicles they had a pretty significant supply chain of HEMTT fuel and cargo vehicles, as well as a pair of Paladin artillery pieces. This is a force for a Major or above to command, what the hell am I doing? He thought more than once.

All of this brought him to the current task, two weeks later, traveling at a sedate fifty kph across the Nevada desert merc’ing anything that crosses their paths. That was, until they reached a point just outside of Laughlin. At which point a very large and very angry looking Giant Stonebacked Crab stood blocking their path forward. They needed to reach the Armory in Kingman and they didn’t have the fuel to detour around this particular monster.

“Sergeant Grant” He called the scout platoon commander over the radio as his tanks came to a halt several kilometers from the massive creature. “See if your scouts can find us a way around that doesn’t take a week. Everyone else dismount, form a perimeter, and meet with me in ten.”

After they had set their perimeter the Senior NCO’s and platoon Lieutenants gathered up to discuss how to tackle the ever evolving situation they found themselves in.

“Alright gentlemen, what are we thinking here?” He liked to give his subordinates the opportunity to become problem solvers themselves. They occasionally have solutions that are better than what I would come up with myself.

The artillery section leader, Lieutenant Portnoy, was the first to speak up, “We’re at a good range, I think we can drop some HE right on top. Maybe break that rocky shell.”

“We still have some TOW’s left in the tubes.” Sergeant First Class Anders spoke next, “They got longer range than the guns on those oversized coffins of yours.” Everyone snickered at the joke.

“Yeah, we’re gonna’ need the armor to do the heavy work though, aren’t we?” Captain Devers asked the question they knew the answer to.

They all nodded and smiled. “Alright, here’s what we’re going to do. Portnoy, get your guns set up maybe 2 more kilometers back. Jackson.” Devers turned to the commander of the two infantry platoons that decided to tag along, “Set up protective positions around the big guns.”

“Yeah, we’d appreciate that. Don’t wanna get swarmed by a random monster patrol while we’re dumping rounds on that big bastard.”

“No problem, baby, we got your back!” The man smiled and Captain Devers returned to his briefing.

“Anders, you got flank coverage, keep the riff raff off of us after you empty your launchers. Sound like a plan?”

A chorus of Hooah’s echoed across the desert as they broke up to deliver briefings to their own troops. Captain Devers looked again at the giant crab thing that sat in the pass and wondered if they would be able to drop it quickly enough to not incur any casualties on his end. Better yet, Grant could come back with a way around. Like that’s going to fucking happen.