Raphael awakens wearily, as if he had lost all of his energy from whatever had knocked him out.
Even though he is in a weakened state, he can tell that he is laying on a hospital bed, but it is a much more comfortable hospital bed than the standard hospital issue on earth.
He pushes himself up into a sitting position and examines his surroundings.
From what he can see, he is in some kind of infirmary, decorated with state of the art technology and medical equipment. The area he is in is surrounded by a thick white shroud, blocking out all sight outside of it's perimeter. The entire room is lighted by fluorescent white lights that beam down from the ceiling above. The ceiling and floor are made out of iron metal and have been shinned to a reflecting perfection. The walls are made out of a thicker steel that is well-made for an infirmary room.
Raphael decides that there is no reason in sitting around and gets up to explore the area. As he exits his bed, he realizes that for whatever reason he was taken to this infirmary, it must not have been very serious, since his clothing is still intact and has barely been touched by anyone other than himself, and on that matter, they didn't even change him into a hospital garb.
He lets out a sigh as he looks around the bed area one last time, and then exits through a parting in the white shrouds.
What greets him on the other side of the white shroud stuns him to an extent, since a lot of stunning things have already happened in the last few hours. Raphael has now entered into the alleyway of the infirmary, and it seems to be kept clean without a single spot of blood or a speck of dust on the floor. Across the alleyway is a series of three massive, horizontal rectangular windows that view the outside of the building, that is what stuns Raphael. What Raphael is now looking at is a view of outer space, space so undisturbed that it could only be called fertile land. The realization strikes Raphael quite quickly. He is in a spacecraft and is traveling through outer space.
“I'm in... outer space...?” says Raphael in confusion. He has no idea how he had even gotten here or why he was unconscious. Everything in between him waking up in the infirmary and talking with June back at his house is a complete blank. He knew the answer somewhere deep in his head about how he got here, but it is just barely out of sight. He has absolutely no idea about why he was unconscious.
“Raphael! You're awake!” comes a disembodied voice from behind a shroud from the other side of the infirmary.
Raphael spins his head around only to see a brief glimpse of blond hair before whoever was calling him earlier wraps their arms around him, hugging him close. Raphael takes a wild guess on who it is based on the fact that there is only one person he knows that has animated, blond hair. “Miyra?” he asks in a confused voice.
“Oh Raphael, you saved us all. If you hadn't fought them, then we would be getting dissected right now by those crazed bastards.” comes Miyra's reply.
“Miyra, please calm down for a second. I have no idea what you're talking about.” says Raphael as he gently pushes Miyra away. “Now, can you please tell me how I got here.”
“Oh... okay, I can understand that, it's normal for people to lose some short-term memory after they pass out.” after Miyra speaks, she begins pondering to herself. “Let me think. . . Where do I start off? . . .” Miyra ponders for a few more seconds and then holds up her right index finger. “Ah, I know. We were being led out of the house by those black-suited guys. I was about to be put into one of their SUV's when suddenly...”
As Miyra speaks, everything starts to come back to Raphael. Everything that happened that he couldn't remember suddenly comes rushing back to him....
As Raphael stares back into the eyes of a pleading and fearful June, his anger blasts beyond it's breaking point. The Key is being threatened, and his true power is awakened because of it.
When Raphael's mind had gone white with anger, that was literally the light of heaven swarming into his body. His true form awakened, the form of a half-angel, a celestial being that is a combination of the free-will of a human and the celestial, heavenly power and good will of an angelic warrior of heaven.
June, despite now having the ability to fight back against her captors, decided that she would hold back. She did not know why, but somewhere in her heart, she knew that it was the right thing to do.
As she is being led out of Raphael's house, she catches a glimpse at the lead car. She felt something coming from inside of the car, something... holy....
She realizes what is going on right at the point that it happens. Her eyes widen as she sees the light grow from inside of the car until the car itself explodes into shrapnel, sending the remains spraying across the yard in several directions. Luckly enough, the group is able to see what is going to happen and drop to the ground in time.
When June peaks her head up from the ground to examine the field, she sees Raphael standing where the SUV had once stood. He is covered from head-to-toe in a holy aura that radiates both power and kindness at the same time. Behind his back are the great and powerful wings of an angel, measuring to be about four feet long in each direction. In one hand, he wields a sword made out of pure holy light that radiates in the day's sun.
Before any of the suited men can even begin to pull themselves up, Raphael is already there, literally phasing out of reality and appearing right over top of June's captor in the matter of a second.
Before the man could even look for where Raphael has gone, Raphael stabs his sword of light straight through his upper spine, killing him instantly and with barely a sound.
Raphael sees another two men across from him near one of the intact cars getting up and he swings his blade in an arc, sending out a sonic wave that cleaves straight through both of them.
Three men come around from the side of the house with gun's drawn and begin firing as soon as they see Raphael. He hears the first shot and dodges it quickly, sending up his unarmed palm out toward the oncoming enemies. A barrier appears in front of Raphael that grabs the incoming bullets and holds them suspended in the air. He pushes his hand forward and propels the bullets at twice their sent speed toward their handlers. He kills two of them with the flurry of bullets, while one of them takes cover behind the house to escape the rain of lead.
The man stays behind the house for a few moments before moving around his cover to get off another shot, but Raphael has already disappeared from view.
Raphael phases right behind the man while he is looking over his cover and stabs him straight through the back of his head. He kicks the man away from his blade and down to the ground while grabbing the man's gun in the process.
Four more men appear from the other side of Raphael's house, from where the backyard gate is at. Raphael sees them coming before they are even there and grabs the gun of the man he just killed and aims it forward towards where they will come. The first man appears in front of Raphael and is directly within Raphael's cross-hairs. Raphael fires three shells out of the firearm and hits the man three times in the chest. He drops to the ground when one of the shells hit's him straight in the base of his spine. A fire fight ensues a second later between Raphael and the rest of the black-suited men, but it only lasts less then a few seconds.
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After the fire fight, only two men are left standing on the enemy side, enemies that Raphael had not noticed, and that had been knocked unconscious by the shock wave from the SUV exploding earlier. Unfortunately, they are just starting to come to.
One of them rises to their feet from behind the destroyed SUV, dazed and confused. Once he sees Raphael, he pulls his gun up to shot him, but Raphael reacts faster and fires a bullet into his throat and then another into his head.
During the fight, Miyra and Sherah had grabbed a hold of June and pulled her into one of the SUV's for safety. They waited out the fight and as soon as the bullets stopped flying, Miyra decided that she should go out and check on Raphael.
Once outside of the SUV, Miyra notices Raphael simply standing in the middle of the driveway, with his angel wings still out and light still radiating around him. He has his eyes shut and he is breathing deeply. He can feel Miyra staring at him, and once she says his name in a questioning voice, he looks over at her with a calm patience in his eyes.
The calm patience in his eyes is exchanged in a matter of a second for a look of hurried fear, as one of the two men that had been unconscious moments ago suddenly appears from around the corner of the SUV that Miyra was in moments ago and quickly grabs her into a choke-hold with one arm and holds a gun to her head with his other. “You bastard!” speaks the man behind gritted teeth. “What are you!? Some kind of damned demon?!” Raphael raises his gun toward the hostage-taker, only to see the man tighten his grip on Miyra and shout out “Put the gun down or I'll blow her damn brain's out!”
Raphael looks into Miyra's pleading eyes and then to the black-suited man's, and he knows that there is nothing that he can do. Raphael lowers his gun and decides to let things take their course, but never lets his eye's drift away from the situation.
“Now listen here, I'm going to take this alien girl into one of the cars and were going to leave.” says the man as he starts to back away. “If any of you alien freaks follow me, I'll blow her damn alien head off, you got that!?”
As the man begins to walk backwards around the side of the vehicle he is next to, Raphael notices a figure moving along the back of the SUV through the tinted back windshield of the car. He also notices another figure inside of the SUV pushing up against the left passenger side door, which is right in the path of the hostage taker. Apparently his new friend's know exactly what they are doing.
Chiot suddenly appears from around the back of the SUV with a shinning white metal baton and runs up behind the hostage taker, clubbing him on the back of the head before he can even realize that Chiot is there. Before the man can even begin to drop to the ground, Sherah throws the SUV door open, smashing the unconscious man in his side and sending him and Miyra flying across Raphael's front yard.
Chiot lends Miyra a hand and lifts her off the ground. Miyra hugs Chiot as soon as she has regained her footing, since he had just rescued her from her captor. She looks over to Raphael the moment after she lets go of Chiot and notices him looking at her with a weary smile on his face. His eyes slowly close as Miyra approaches him. The light surrounding him dims and fades away. He falls to the ground, his angel wings dispersing into the air as he drifts away into unconsciousness.
“And after that,” says Miyra, her voice breaking Raphael out of his trance. “the UMA escort arrived right after you fell unconscious. I personally dragged you into one of the transports and we left through an evacuation portal down the block in an abandoned warehouse.”
“Wait,” questions Raphael. “how did I get here then?”
“On the ship? Oh, well the portal led straight into this freighter's hanger. Once we were in the ship and the portal shut, a gurney came by and we loaded you on it. Before you were carried away, June told me to follow you and to tell you to go to the commander's office once you wake up. Speaking of which, you should get going.”
“Alright,” says Raphael as he begins walking past Miyra, placing his hand on her shoulder as he goes. “I should get going then. Thanks for telling me Miyra.”
“No problem Raphael,” says Miyra as she turns her head and body to watch Raphael go by. “When you're done talking to the ship's commander, come and meet me and Chiot in the cafeteria, alright? There's a lot of things that we can explain to you that the commander may not have told you.”
Raphael nods his head toward Miyra and leaves the room, saying “See ya soon.” Miyra nods back and leaves out the room's other exit.
The area that Raphael enters next is a long, elegant looking hallway. There are people in blue and white fatigues dotting around the hallway, sitting on benches or leaning against the black metal walls. Everyone seems like they're in a good mood, talking to each other and enjoying their break from whatever their job is on-board.
Raphael realizes that because he has no idea how long he was unconscious, June has been waiting an unknown amount of time for him to appear at the commander's office. He needs to get a move on and get to this meeting with the ship's commander, but he has no idea where the commander's office is at on the ship. Raphael begins walking down the hallway and passes a few people before turning down an intersection and finding a map of the ship. The map is extremely informative, showing a complete outline of the ship, it's various areas, the section where Raphael is at, and Raphael's current location.
From what Raphael can tell from the map, the ship has thirty floors and Raphael is on the twentieth floor. An elevator is located a few hallways down, but there is a set of staircases that are closer than the elevator. “Probably wouldn't be able to operate them anyway.” After doing more map searching, Raphael is able to find where the commander's office is. “Alright, I'm on the twentieth floor and the commander's office is on thee... twelfth floor.... Looks like that staircase leads straight down to the tenth floor, so I just have to make sure that I count the floors and I'll get to the meeting without a hitch.” Raphael smiles to himself as he backs away from the map and begins walking toward the staircase down the hall.
Raphael gets to the staircase quickly, since it is just down the hallway. The walls of the staircase are made out of a shinning metal that gleams back the reflection of the blue fluorescent lights that illuminate the entire stairway, the lights being placed along the far walls of the staircase in-between each level. The railing is a simple, single bar barrier that goes down the edges of the stairs all the way down to the bottom of the staircase, just like how a staircase from earth would be like.
Raphael doesn't really care about the staircase at the moment, all he currently needs to do is get to the meeting. He walks down the staircase quickly, nearly running down the stairs until he is sure that there is only two floors left of stairwells down to the bottom. As soon as he is sure that he is on the twelfth floor, he immediately exits out the nearest door.
Upon exiting the staircase, Raphael immediately finds another map right by the exit. He takes a mental note of the exact directions to the commander's office and then leaves the map behind, doing a slight jog down the ship's corridors.
After a few twists and turns, Raphael arrives at the commander's office, which is in the center of a small hallway and guarded by two UMA soldiers, clad in the same body armor and helmet that Raphael had first seen Sherah in. He attempts to walk past the two guards, but they stop him as soon as he reaches for the doorway handle. “Halt,” one of the guards says. “do you have a meeting with the commander?”
“Yes,” says Raphael as he stares back into the hollow black visor of the guard's helmet. “I'm with June. She should be in there.”
“Name?”
“Raphael Horizon Danteo”
“Just a moment....” the guard turns away from Raphael to press a pressure-activated button on the wall behind him. A small section of the wall shifts away to show a hidden intercom system behind the silver-colored wall. The guard places his right index finger on the left red button underneath of the intercom and then leans in to speak into it. “Commander Lendlock?” speaks the man, who then places his right index finger onto the right blue button.
A few minutes pass before a middle-aged man's voice comes over the intercom. “Yes, what is it?” says the voice.
The guard places his finger on the red button as soon as the voice stops and speaks into the intercom again. “Someone is here to see you. He says that he is with someone named June.”
“That would be the Key, soldier,” responds the voice. “did the person happen to give you his name?”
“Yes he did, commander. He said that his name is Raphael Horizon Danteo.”
There is a momentary pause in the conversation as the commander seems to apparently be verifying information. The intercom blurts out “Let him in” after some apparent deliberation.
“Yes, sir.” says the guard before pressing a touch-activated button on the side of the intercom, which makes the intercom window shut down tight. There is a brief interlude, and then the office door opens automatically. The guard says “You may go through” and motions for Raphael to go into the room with his left hand. Raphael nods toward the guard and walks into the room with a sudden feeling of uneasiness looming in his stomach.