It had been a day like any other, people going to work and school, the smell of breakfast, and the chirping of birds filled the Earth. Some people slept in, others hadn’t even gone to bed yet, the world was full of life and not a single thing was unusual about the day. It was just after lunch, around 1:30 in the afternoon when there was an earthquake, a literal earthquake. It wasn’t just one city, one state, one continent, it was the entire Earth, scientists would later class the entire quake as a magnitude ten or higher. Older buildings and homes with lackluster foundation crumbled in a second. The actual quake lasted maybe ten seconds, but the damage looked like it had happened over a period of years.
When the dust settled, people started venturing out of the previously civilized areas to look for clear areas to live in that weren’t covered in debris, rubble, and ruin. The ones who left the cities saw them first, the Towers. They were impossibly high, looking as if they bent in odd ways when you tried to see the top of them – which was impossible even with binoculars.
Over the next few weeks, they were observed and tested, governments and the military, of course, oozed over it and created bases around the towers like they’d been there for years. Everyone was still trying to figure out if they were a threat or not. Then, after a year of observation, something happened. While everyone was focused on the main Towers, smaller buildings appeared nearby, quite close to the Towers themselves and they looked like they were made of the same material. No one had seen when they’d popped up, they just appeared.
These structures were stone gray squares maybe 4000sqft, no windows or markings, there was nothing that stood out about them at all except the doors. The doors were ornate with rune-like script on them, the base of the doors were a dark ebony color while the runic writing faintly glowed yellow-white. It gave off a presence whenever anyone got close to it, it felt like hope and power.
It took a month of probing before someone actually opened the door of the smaller building. The recordings of this event were shown sometimes in future schooling that focused on the new world they’d found themselves in, it was one of the most pivotal, if not the most pivotal, points in recent history, it changed the world in more ways than one. The movie showed a man who would become known as the First Focused, The Liar, The Hero of the First Wave, the list was long, yet each title was well deserved.
Lyle Dozer had been an average man before sneaking into the A.T.C. or the American Tower Compound. He was lazy, only serious when he had to be, he liked to goof around and have fun, he enjoyed travelling and, well, lying. His lies were light and fun, little white lies to people who he would never see again. When he travelled and met new people, he would give a false name, background, life story, he would create a completely new person just to see what he could get people to believe. He had been doctors of various practices, a vet, a soldier, a stuntman, you name it, Lyle had tried it. He didn’t always get away with it, but he tried and enjoyed every second of it.
In the video Lyle was walking in a uniform that fit him like he’d been wearing it for years, he was whistling as if he owned the place. An officer walked by and he saluted crisply after being scolded over whistling. Then, as the officer left, the camera picked up the wicked grin on Lyle’s face before he spun on his heel and went toward the building. He got to the door and started staring at the runes, hypnotized by their intricacy and faint glow. He just stood there swaying a little, the video only showing his back in front of the door which had started glowing a bit brighter.
Guards came on screen followed by some men in white coats, they called out to him as he extended his hand and grabbed the center handle. He opened it and steam rolled out like a gentle wave, his footsteps disturbed the smoke as he took a step in. The door closed behind him, the rune light swelled then disappeared like it had swallowed the man and everyone outside went still like the video had been paused. Then, as if they’d been given permission to move again, they rushed to the building. The scientists and soldiers tried to pull the door open – it wouldn’t budge.
The video sped up and skipped through five hours of footage before the runes lit up red, then yellow, then dimmed again as the door opened outward this time. The video showed Lyle walking from the low steam, a face splitting smile plastered on his face and hands raised in surrender before it ended. This video only showed Lyle acquiring his Focus, as for his actual abilities, they were a well-hidden secret, most people believed that not even the Climber’s Association knew the full extent of his power and how it worked.
A lot of Focused kept their abilities a secret, but most had obvious effects – a fireball here, strength there, maybe some laser beams. Lyles didn’t really manifest until he was fighting and then it was as if he always had the answer to whatever they needed.
After the first Focus was obtained governments started to realize what these devices could do and the potential of them for military and lifestyle innovations. Nations closed off from each other, again. Close allies stayed together and shared information, others becoming independent only to be swallowed by larger powers. A not so cold war started, spies sneaking into other Nation’s and their towers to search for ways to sabotage it or if the Focuses in one were different form another.
A year of hiding and skirmishing, with no one really making a true opening move, things started to settle into this state of mostly peace. Non-allies still didn’t speak to each other and were hostile in certain scenarios, but those were rare these days.
It wasn’t until the Towers made their next move that the Earth really understood, as a whole, how badly they’d fucked up. Doors that hadn’t been there before appeared on the Towers, unable to be opened yet, but there all the same. The doors resembled the dark ones on the small building, the base was black, but the runes were different and glowed faintly green.
These doors were studied just like the Towers were, studied as much as a stationary building and its unopenable door could be. One month after the doors appeared they morphed into large double door gates of metal, jagged and angry runes carved on them that screamed danger and stoutness. They looked to open inward, so the officers in charge started to assume the gates were there to keep something in and not out. So, although they were being created, the defenses weren’t anywhere near complete when the Towers showed the Earth how ruthless they could be.
They opened inward and monsters poured from them, beasts from fantasy, little difference in them from the lore Earth already knew, along with other gruesome beings no one had heard of or seen before. They tore through the defenses created to keep out humans and humanoids, some of the bipedal monsters having a hard time breaking through, but the larger monsters on four, six, and sometimes eight legs crawled over and plowed through walls letting the smaller monsters run rampant.
It was as if Nations had gotten these Focuses and then forgot about the space scraping Towers that appeared before the Focusing rooms, it wasn’t until years later that the Earth learned when Focuses started to be acquired a warning appeared on the doors. It had foretold the opening of the Towers; it warned of the monsters and how the Focuses were meant to save our world. Nations held this information tightly thinking they could handle whatever came out of the Tower.
Not one Nation had thought about training these Focus users to fight anything other than other Focus users. The wake-up call was brutal and unforgiving. The years after the emergence of the monsters and their subsequent reign had been called the Decimation or the Dark Years by most. It took five years before humanity took back the areas around the Towers.
During this time no new Focused could be created as the rooms were held deep in hostile territory. Before it was taken, however, the government funneled hundreds through the buildings to acquire every kind of Focus they could to study.
It was found that only the person the Focus was given to could use it, sometimes the Focus was a tattoo or something unremovable. A Focus, they found, could be anything from a watch or ring to a set of clothing or full body tattoo. Size didn’t necessarily mean strength only what the power affected. A ring could fire the most powerful lightning bolt ever known while a full body tattoo might just harden skin or grant strength.
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Some monsters were able to be killed by Earth’s weaponry, but many could not be. Their hides tougher than Kevlar, the bullets would simply sting the beasts making them angry. Hundreds of thousands died, Focused and non-Focused alike, for months humanity was pushed back, farther from the Towers, farther from the power they needed. They tried air dropping people in to get some Focuses and get out, but flying beasts took care of the sky, preventing this tactic. When the usage of the stronger monsters’ parts started to be explored in hopes of crafting weapons and armor able to fight back more effectively, a scientist made a shocking discovery.
Monsters that exhibited powers and abilities could have their cores harvested, these cores were a Focus in themselves and could be attached to anything to create a Focus useable by anyone on top of their personal Focuses. The war against the first wave finally came to a standstill, humanity strong enough to stop the push, but not enough to start taking back territory. It wasn’t until they started pulling every Focused they had to fight in a desperate attempt to boost their power just enough to start winning after three years of losing.
Lyle Dozer had been imprisoned for his actions, he had been in a cell for almost three years, questioned every day about his abilities; he gave them nothing. It took them months to even see his Focus, a tattoo that started on his tongue and poured down his throat like jagged lines of soup. He told them he had no idea what he could do, he had never tested it before being locked up. They brought him into different scenarios to try and gauge what he could do, most of the time he would just take the test and act completely human. Over time they realized he had to be lying as other people getting their Focuses were given a practice period in the room before leaving.
It was for these reasons they let him rot for so long, his refusal to bend to their will, his apparent weakness that would only get him killed, they wanted him to break.
When they finally let him out, he told them what he could do with three words, “Win the war.” He said, “I’m strong enough to push them all back, trust me”. Some of the government thought that maybe he really was extremely strong, he’d held out for three years without any sign of breaking. He had told them he was pretty good at boxing; at first, he didn’t seem to be anything special but at the end of the war everyone had been wondering how he wasn’t a world champion previously.
The films of him ducking and weaving through monsters and shattering them with a single punch had been shown all over the world, it inspired humanity, it was the push they needed. Over the next year and a half Lyle had pushed the first generation of Focused to become such an elite fighting force they had started taking land without casualties, gaining back their homes. Among the first generation were ten who stood out, ten Climbers that could single handedly turn the tide of a losing fight. The Ten Titans became heroes and eventually the leaders of the soon to be established Climber’s Association.
When the war was won and humanity started to move back to the devastated areas that surrounded the Towers. All signs of civilization had been completely eradicated, buildings, stores, everything reduced to rubble, refuse, and monster dens. From the ashes of the nations that crumbled rose a single unified front of Humanity verse Towers. Everyone was finally working together toward a common goal, survival.
Information was traded, training programs started, research on monsters intensified, and Focuses in general emerged and quickly changed the entire world for the better. Humanity learned much over the following years; they learned that with each monster kill a Focus would absorb part of the power held inside the core of the monster, this power would help the Focus evolve and gain strength allowing the ability to fight stronger monsters and climb higher in the Towers.
As the Earth changed and people adapted, parts of the population emerged that didn't want anything to do with the new world, other than the completely transformed utilities and technology that were more efficient and capable, of course. They wanted nothing to do with monsters and death, they wanted peace and stability. They moved into the central parts of the world that were far away from the Towers and walled themselves in to be protected by those who accepted the new world. This city, bigger than any two of previous Earth’s combined, became known as Quondam, City of the Un-Focused.
This did not mean there was no contact nor was there any enmity between the two, some of the older generation just didn’t want to fight the monsters directly or chance another attack like so many remembered. Quondam reverted back to the way things used to be, but with much less hate. Everyone was united under the protection and peace they now found themselves in.
New associations and secondary governments were created for the Outer Cities owned by the Focused - The Climbers Association, Focused Military, etc, making a sort of council where the heads of each branch met and decided on the next steps the Focused community would take.
They worked together to make sure the relationship between new aged humanity and purist humanity stayed friendly. Years went by and the walls that grew around the Towers became so well defended and the Towers were so often explored and cleared that a monster hadn’t escaped since humanity pushed them back into the Towers.
In time, a decade after the Towers appeared, true paragons of power appeared and were given titles to match their accomplishments. The top one hundred climbers were given titles that would stay with them forever even after they retired. Like a Yokozuna of old, once the position was earned it could not be lost. The protection and knowledge gained from these veterans helped to create academies that trained the future generations of the outer cities, each class more knowledgeable than the previous. Of these one hundred active Titled, the top ten were known as The Titans.
The Academies became the dividing line between old world and new, anyone could enroll, purist and new age alike. They would give you some basic training, Focus you up, then, if you wanted to stick around and train to climb? That’s when the fun really started. Climbers became a little too good, reaching higher in the tower than ever before, creating newer and more powerful equipment with each floor cleared and new monster killed. It became the norm, people became complacent, all but the best and most devoted climbers started to just go through the motions.
These climbers truly believed that, at the rate they were going, the Tower would do something to “spice” things up again. They were too good at this now, survival for someone in the city was basically guaranteed, most people stopped training their Focuses and used them to make a living doing something safe. The Climber’s Association was split, the higher divisions who knew how the Tower monsters could adapt and evolve in the middle of fights were adamant that the Tower would become more dangerous, it would scale with their power; the other, younger, half disregarded it and wanted to maintain the status quo.
The heads of the Climber’s Association may have been climbers once but the vast majority of those who worked in the offices now were the younger generation who were used to the peace as children and not needing to fight during the war, those who didn’t remember what the Tower could do and what it had done.
The office was small for the head of the Climber's Association, but Oliver Kentwood wasn't in it much, so he didn't really care. It was only when he needed to have a private conversation as the room had been fitted with protections against spying and eavesdropping.
“I’ve told you a hundred times, we are outvoted, we cannot take any more action than we already have. Shore up the Tower defenses and wait –“the grizzled veteran climber spoke to the man and woman who were standing in front of his desk, too heated to sit down. The woman interrupted him while the man sucked his teeth dismissively at Oliver's words.
“That’s bullshit, Ollie, and you know it! The Tower will-“Oliver Kentwood, lead Climber of the Association cut her off now.
“By the Tower, Liza, what do you want me to do? Declare martial law?” the heat in his voice could be felt physically, Liza recoiled without thinking.
“Why not?” the man standing next to Liza asked. “Who would stop us? Who could? Ninety out of a hundred of the active Titled are with us, all of the Titans are... who cares if the majority of the association tries to stop us”?
Oliver let out a long breath, strands of his graying mane fell over his face as he put his head in his hands “And if the Tower does what we expect while we’re committing a fucking Coup, Dalton?!” He stood up and looked them both in the eye, “Listen to me, and listen to me good. You are strong, we are strong, whatever comes will come and we will take it on then. All we can do is prepare for what we think is coming…” his face turned even more grim “what we know is coming. Now get out of my fucking office, I’m tired of listening to you”. They didn’t have an official salute but after waiting a tense few moments the two nodded curtly and turned to leave.
“God help us.” ever since the Emergence, Oliver had faded away from his religion, but in times like this it was comforting to return to the old saying. He sat back down and stared up at the ceiling while reclining in his chair. “We’ll get through it; we did last time.” He was trying to convince himself as he knew that if the Tower wished it, it would send out horrors that the vast majority of Climbers couldn’t even imagine. He looked over at the two-handed axe hanging on the wall across him and wondered if he’d ever have to become the Floor-Splitter again.