200 years ago.

* * *

Angelo Pappardelle was eleven when the world he knew vanished. The Italian boy woke up to the sound of explosions, crashes, fire, and screams. He noticed the sun's position and realized he was late for school. Startled, he wet his bed. Shame and fear took hold of his mind as he jumped and called for his mother.

Mamma Pappardelle rushed into the bedroom. As soon as the door opened, Angelo ran to hug her waist, his pajamas leaving a trail of droplets on the floor.

"My angel!" Mamma shouted. "Are you hurt?" (A/N: Angelo is "angel" in Italian)

"No, mamma!" Angelo. "What is going on?"

"The TV told everyone to stay home. Don't worry, angel. There's no school today. Not even pappa went to work. Come, I'll make you honey pane for breakfast."

Angelo followed his mother to the kitchen. As he passed past the living room door, he saw his father with a stern face and a rifle on his lap. Angelo shuddered as he averted his eyes. He disliked weapons.

Breakfast was black coffee, bread with so much honey it dripped, and yogurt with oatmeal. He took his time eating, under the loving gaze of Mamma Pappardelle. Breakfast

"Why don't you go and talk to your father, angel?" Mamma suggested. "I'll clean up everything here."

Angelo nodded. He stood up and pushed his chair back in place, dragging his feet out of the kitchen, through five feet of corridor, and into the living room.

"Boy, come here," Pappa Pappardelle called with the somber tone of a Greek deity in Viking lands.

Beside Pappa, Angelo saw an old radio, softly chirping the news. It was almost inaudible. He approached, staring out the window. Angelo noticed huge plumes of black smoke rising to the heavens like the moans of the damned in the day of judgment.

He winced when gunshots rang from the outside. His father told him to stay away from the window. He didn't see the roving band of looters until they rammed a log against their door. The hinges buckled but held. Angelo screamed as his father stood up and readied his rifle.

"Go away or I'll shoot!" Pappa warned. The log rammed the door again. "Cover your ears, Angelo!"

The boy did as request.

"We just want some food!" Someone shouted from the outside.

"Go away!"

They rammed the door again.

Angelo's hands did a poor job of suppressing the gunshots. On the other side, the looters screamed. The rifle fired, bullet after bullet, the metal cases striking the hardwood floor of their house and causing young Angelo to wince as if the hot metal was falling on his head.

Outside, the crowd went wild. Instead of running away from the gun, the looters went into a frenzy. They surrounded the house and broke the windows, climbing inside.

Angelo ran under the dining table as glass rained on him. The looters were pushed through the window by those behind. It was irrational. With his eyes closed, Angelo could only hear the grunts and moans of pain as people cut themselves in the broken glass to get inside.

He heard more gunshots, but of a different tone. Another kind of gun.

"Angelo, go to your mother!" His father shouted.

More glass broke, elsewhere. His mother screamed. Angelo opened his eyes and saw blood everywhere. The couch his mother was so proud of, the crochet mantle his grandmother painstakingly made, was covered in bleeding and dying people. More were coming after them and his father had a pistol in his hand, shooting at those who tried to enter the room.

The door broke. More bodies fell to the ground as it opened. People moved over them. His father divided his shots between the two groups of invaders.

Then he saw a blue ball appear and fall to the ground. it was a clear blue that soon became marred with blood.

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"Ugh," the ball spoke with a feminine face. "I'm drowning! Somebody, help me!"

Angelo darted from behind the table and grabbed the ball. It was an object he was familiar with, something that couldn't hurt someone. Not even when playing dodgeball at school. He was good at dodgeball. With the comfort object in his hands, he met his father gaze.

"Run, kid!"

Angelo nodded and ran deeper inside the house. His mother was still screaming and he hated himself for being a coward. Instead of going to help her, he ran to his bedroom in the back.

Shutting the door, he climbed underneath his bad. Angelo ignored the smell of his own urine and the blood. He wiped the ball with his shirt.

"Thank you!" The ball said.

Angelo turned the ball around and saw it had a nice lady face stretched over the ball, as if someone had their face ripped off and... Angelo didn't like that train of thought.

"What are you?"

"I am power incarnate!" The ball boasted. "If you take me to your soul, I can grant you the power to understand any system you study for a small amount of time!"

"I don't get it! Can you stop what is happening here?"

"I can't. But if you have my power, perhaps you can! Come, just say you accept me into your soul."

Angelo winced. The priest always said the soul was a sacred thing that God gave humans so they could live a righteous life and one day go back to God.

"Are you a demon from hell?"

"No."

"Were you made by god?"

"I don't know. Were you?"

The screams and the gunfire didn't stop. His parents needed help. Angelo made his choice. He knew he could do nothing but if the speaking ball was of any help, he couldn't hide forever.

"I accept you into my soul!" The boy said.

The ball burst into a cloud of smoke that billowed toward Angelo. Trapped underneath the bed, he tried to escape the smoke but hit his head on the slats. The smoke reached him and entered his pores as Angelo screamed with abject terror.

he didn't pass out. Angelo heard the looters moving inside the house, their heavy footsteps shaking his very core. He shimmied out and stood. But he started to see things.

He saw the walls and the door and the closet and knew. He knew how the floor supported the closet, how the walls held the roof, how the door would swing if opened. How the window moved. He even knew that the window frame had an imperfection and that was the reason it always gets stuck when he tried to open it.

When he looked at the bed, he knew how much urine the mattress could absorb before it would let the liquid drip out of it. He knew how resistant the blanket was to shear forces. How soft the pillow was. How each piece of wood in the bed supported each other to keep them from falling apart.

The door opened. Frenzied looters covered in blood stared at him. "Where is the money, kid!" They barked at Angelo.

Angelo could ace an anatomy test in that moment. He knew each bone in the looter's body. How they moved, how fast they could move, how far they could reach. As the looter moved, Angelo could predict where they would go if they remained moving in the same way.

And he knew how to dodge them. The same knowledge of the human body applied to his own body. Angelo was keenly aware of his own prioception and of his senses. He had a mental image of his body; it wasn't visual but it had the same accuracy as those anatomy models in the school infirmary. He could feel how his heartbeat and how his blood moved. He knew how he could exert his muscles to move the way he wanted, to achieve his goals.

Angelo moved. He ducked underneath the grasping arms of the bloody looter, darted past the bedroom door into the long corridor that connected the front to the back of the house. He heard the sound of bodily assault and the breaking of bones.

A fire ignited inside of him. Angelo ran to the kitchen and saw the looters holding his mother's arms as she struggled to defend her integrity against those who held her legs. He opened his mouth and let the fire out. A tongue of flames burst out of his mouth and caught on the two holding his mother but without touching her skin.

The looters screamed as the fire clung to their flesh and burned. Angelo felt spent. He had no more fire to give. The looters on fire ran out of the house through the broken kitchen door. The other two stared at the pre-teen in shock and followed the others.

The boy looked at the pantry doors, wide open, the food they had all taken. Most looters had already moved to their next victim. Only a few stragglers remained.

Angelo approached his mother.

"My angel. Il mio Arcangelo Michele (my Archangel Michael)!"

His mother was wounded and battered. Angelo knew she had broken ribs, a broken arm, and nasty bruises where the looters hit her. She wasn't under any mortal danger, though.

"Wait here, Mamma. I'll see if Pappa needs any help."

Looters came from the inside, chasing after him. They screamed. Angelo roared as he blew a smaller gout of fire at the deranged person. It struck their face (Angelo was good at aiming dodgeballs) and the person screamed as they turned around and ran deeper into the house.

Seeing that the corridor was empty, Angelo ran to the living room. There, his father was buried under a mound of corpses. He saw Pappa's pistol. The slide was all the way to the back, signaling it was out of ammo.

Angelo wept. His Pappa wasn't breathing, nor he would breathe any more. He heard the looters that went to the back returning from his parent's bedroom.

Angelo also felt the fire returning. He understood that the fire was not real fire until he pushed it out of his body and percolated his will into the energy. What he felt was his energy reserves. He also understood that he had a deep connection with the concept of Fire. An... affinity, of sorts.

He also learned that the energy that returned came from killing the man whose face he burned.

Moving to the corridor, Angelo waited. He was so furious with these looters that he didn't even see them as people. Once the looter came out of his parent's bedroom door, he spat a fast ball of flames. Angelo realized he didn't need to use his mouth. He could shoot the balls from his hands.

The Firebolt hit true. The man screamed. The second looter in his parents' bedroom decided to escape out the window.

But the fire caught. The wallpaper started to burn as the smoke alarm in the corridor finally triggered.

Angelo helped his mother back on her feet and took her out of the house.

Soon, the Pappardelle residence became one more smoking building in the chaos of the Rift Apocalypse.