A few minutes before forced teleportation.

"Thanks for the food" Drake called back over his shoulder as he was leaving the dinner, his favorite double beef burger stocked away in a brown bag next to a bottle of freshly squeezed pineapple juice. He knew it wasn't the ideal lunch but he got by that craving when he woke up today and who was he kidding ' I'll take this supposedly unhealthy burger over the food being served at the cafeteria any day' . They were serving some sort of paste and called it healthy food, no today was a good cheat day as any. From everybody else's point of view they would call Drake an average looking guy with a build maybe a bit on the vaguely defined side, sure he had a bit of muscle and kept fit but he wasn't really up for any body building competitions while a more scathing view would be an athlete who is starting to let himself go.

At 29 he was a bit on the older side for being in his second year in university but no one really bothered him abut it, his hair was a nice midnight blue that was hard to notice unless he grew it out but was currently still suffering a military sort of trim that was just beginning to grow out, his eyes were a sort of golden brown that were fairly common from most people that you could hardly tell apart no matter where you were in the world.

he always had a sort of lazy smile that just screamed average dude, heck it was pretty awesome how great it blended in with the majority of those in campus in their early 20's. That was Drake, average guy a bit late to join the academic side of life, ... well mostly. Drake had a few secrets from most of those in the campus, his first biggest one was well his job before coming to campus was being in the military and not just normal military he was one of their infiltration specialist , one of the best they had in the past few years. with the death rates in the unit being as high as 5 people per year , surviving more than 7 years was due to more than luck that's for sure. His second secret was well even in school he was working. current assignment was infiltrating an organization that liked to 'recruit' from a couple of universities, mostly targeting students who seemed to have given up in their education and had few who would miss them, they had managed to get a few positions in the administration as well as the students to try flushing out people who helped get people off campus and promptly forgotten. Sure he had to work but didn't mean that he didn't want that degree , it would look great to go along with a recommendation for a transfer to a more advanced team that would handle more than just getting info but also stopping these kinds of situations from happening.

Thoughts of how he had ended up here drifted unbidden to his mind as he took a stroll from the dinner, down the street past his unofficial workplace, that seemed more abandoned than anything, as he headed to where his third current secret resided. As he got a seat in the park he caught a glimpse of his current third and not so well kept secret, he was looking at the view of a largish pond with a sort of island in the middle with a small little tree growing that had a few purple flowers were growing. He always wondered what tree it was but never got around to looking it up. As he loosened his tie the memories of the past played in his mind.

He never knew his parents, they had supposedly found him at a fire station abandoned next to the body of his twin sister who had unfortunately died due to exposure to the elements, they had barely been covered in rags and it was sheer coincidence that he hadn't died himself. Most of his life was spent in a few orphanages just trying to get through school and do the thing he knew had a chance at getting things better for him as he knew he wasn't gonna get any scholarships and that was the military. He wasn't really patriotic but he figured that as long as he did what he was told then after a couple of decades when he got to his late 30's he could retire and live on his pension somewhere remote. He didn't have much more aspirations than that so that's what he did after finishing high school at 17. Here is where things took a turn, he wasn't the most physically able and years on a not so stellar diet didn't help when he needed to perform the more taxing of duties in the army. After basic training he knew he would have a better time during deployment and was ready to quit when he got a recommendation for the infiltration unit training due to his slighter frame and difficulties in training when a few officers had noticed his struggles. He was skeptical at first but now after years of doing it and being good at it he knew this was what he wanted to keep doing. Over the years he had seen a couple of things that his Military assigned therapist said messed people up and he was right, that it did but he knew deep down that he could do more good if he kept at it and that's what he did. Up until last year when he was told he needed a degree in something to help pretty up his file for the advancement he wanted and that's how he ended up in University though still working on the side to earn some cash and justify the military paying for his three year sped up course in human psychology. He chose it on a whim but it has helped in his work as he now knows a couple of things when dealing with more tight lipped groups like the one he was currently assigned to bring to the light.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Drake watched the tree sway in the wind a bit as he unwrapped his burger and sat the juice next to him. After taking a bite while putting the few clues he had in order in his mind and reaching out to grab the juice a screen of sorts snapped into focus in front of him while he felt more than saw a giant of an arm grab his head. He couldn't understand what was happening but he could still see the screen in front of him

SUBJECT FOUND!!!! INITIATING TRANSFER TO DESIGNATED LOCATION IN

10..

9..

8..

7..

6..

5..

4..

3..

2..

1

TRANSFER COMPLETE.....

He had barely read the first line of text when he was straight up yanked into the dark void that he understood the arm originated from before his mind took a second to catch up to what the hell he was seeing. He was beginning to think that he had finally cracked like the therapist had said he would before pain that he was sure was his insides turning to mush then he passed out.

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back in the prison realm

He had just gotten everything ready before the system message telling him his selected individual was on the way. Like most of the deals he had managed to make with the system most of the details were left to it to guarantee the most optimal and efficient possible outcome , all he needed was the overall shape of what he wanted and let the system build the rest then he would have the best outcome especially when it came to things no one fully understood like say escaping an unescapable prison or perhaps retrieving a possible otherworld to help in escaping said prison or better yet how about simple dimensional teleportation without ever visiting or even knowing what's on the other side of the unforgiving void to name a few. 'more like to name my exact circumstances' he thought with an amused snort.

He had gone through his long existence with many names and quite a few faces to boot but he had found himself gravitating to his base form that was simply a floating shadow cloud with two orbs of gold for eyes. He didn't really need the eyes but habit made him inclined to form them. He quite liked the golden color contrast to his black body. His original name thought basically forgotten by all but his little sister was Gilka. Didn't make sense except for when you realized his sister was Kagli. 'Yeah his was an anagram of his sisters name or was it the other way round? He would have to consult the system aka Mom. Yep his Mom was the system or rather she used her entire being to create my sister me and the system, its how I'm able to make deals though this is my final one before I can access one of the system nodes deep in the void aka my dad. Yeah whole of a weird family dynamic with your mum basically running the system by being the system and your dad as the only thing protecting the master node of the system while basically protecting everything from the very real very dangerous eldritch beings that want to suck up everything that exists. And yes there are more than one quite a nuisance to deal with once they get a foothold on your reality plane, take it from me a quite literal entity of creation. My sister well she is stuck quite literally making sure the void and essentially the system don't lose their connection with our plane of reality. She is doing a hell of a job you see because well it normally requires the two of us. I had left our post to go deal with some idiots thinking themselves gods while they made a deal with one of those eldritch beings called, well his name literally breaks minds so I call him Varutha the fart coz of the stink his power leaves once it infects reality, for more supposed power. I should have known though that Varutha had been watching all those times I had interfered before because he had set up a nice little trap a sort of prison that adjusts to the being trapped sort of making an inescapable trap especially for beings with power to make prisons useless.

Yep that's how I ended up here monologging to myself while I wait for my interdimensional traveler. weird times I tell you.' More often than not Gilka had found himself making more and more time recently to try and plan things, most of the time in the past he had managed to sort his problems with pure brute force but now he was coming to realize he maybe needed a scalpel rather than a giant bastard sword that his power was. His plan currently consisted of a two part plan and he had maybe a year at most before things became really dire for his sister and reality as a whole. So he really needed things to at least work the way he needed them hence why he left it to dear old Mum to make the details while he dealt with the broad strokes.

He felt it then, the time had come to see if the planning he had done in the past 170 years or so was gonna fail him 'Well not 170' years of planning per say more like the past 2 years since I was kind of unconscious and weakened to use the system help and then I started to catch up on some things happening on earth like pop culture and tv shows I mean how do you expect an all powerful being to spend his time doing while trapped and unable to use his powers for like 70 years?'

Regardless he got to work getting ready to receive his guest and finally get out of this dreary place.