Even now, I saw him smile.

“This is stupid, and way too dangerous Blake, and you know it!”

My boyfriend, in all his stubbornness, shook his head and laughed, a cheery sound that contrasted so starkly with the ruin around us. Buildings burned, bodies lay scattered like broken dolls, and the church we had been staying at while living in this town was barely standing. I yelped and dodged to the side as a chunk of what used to be a house crashed down next to me. Blake grinned at me.

“This is the day I’m at my strongest, Lys. No matter what that thing is, the Mutated are animals. As long as you’re stronger than them, they’ll bow to you. And so, I’ll make that thing bow to me. One final service to this place before the world ends, for letting us stay here for so long.”

I shook my head. “You’re being a moron. There is no way I’ll be able to get in there and help you if you get injured! Even if I try, I could get hurt in the crossfire, and then who’s going to pull your butt out of the fire?”

“C’mon Lys, we’ve known each other for so long, you should have nothing less than full confidence in me! None of that will be a problem, and you won’t need to do a thing but sit here and look pretty.”

I closed my eyes and inclined my head, “Fine. I know I can’t stop you. Just…be careful, alright?”

In a rare moment of intimacy, something we almost never get, Blake grabbed me and hugged me tight. “It’ll be just like any other fight. I’ll come back smiling. Just watch me!”

With that, he stepped into the smoke that I had been ignoring, hoping it might go away. We weren’t sure what it was, but the thing that had attacked this small town was definitely not normal. Likely a Mutated, an Amp that had been exposed to someone else who had just unlocked their powers. Sometimes, nothing happens. Sometimes, your power changes, gaining some new aspect to it. And sometimes…sometimes it warps into your body, twisting you into an animal. A monster. A Mutated. Though this one had seemed strange, even for a Mutated. It was almost humanlike in its movement, for even though Mutated were humans deep down, they tended to act like animals. But this one hadn’t, it almost had seemed like it was looking for survivors.

I stared at the mist with bated breath for several minutes, before realizing it might be a long fight, and anticipation would do me no good. So, slumping down on a nearby crate, I relaxed my body, stiff from the past five days of activity and combat. Despite not being the person doing most of the fighting, I still felt aches due to my power. Allowing me to sync up my body with someone else’s, and normalize their body to my state, it was an extremely useful power that did me absolutely no good in a combat scenario. Without someone to protect me, I was just the weak backline healer...or so most thought. I had trained myself in martial arts, or whatever I could learn from YouTube anyway.

Even though that blasted smoke was too thick to see through, I could hear sounds of a fight. The dull thud of a fist hitting some fleshy appendage, a grunt of pain, an inhuman snarl. It was like listening to a movie, you could almost make out what was happening, but you could not quite grasp what was happening, not without looking up at the screen.

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My mind wandered as I sat in the empty village, the lack of things for my brain to focus on causing it to drift into the deep recesses of my mind, seeking out corners I forgot were even there. Today, I thought about the first time I met Blake.

I shook my head. Harbinger, Alyssa. You know that. Speak and think in our super names, so we don’t expose ourselves. Not that it would matter all that much, but my parents knowing I was an Amp, but didn’t join a hero team? Chose to run away with a boy, practically elope? I don’t think it would go over very well. Though I doubted they hadn’t noticed I was gone by now.

I smiled as I recalled Blake’s face when he first saw me. It was like a child’s face when they first see someone preform a magic trick. It was the face of someone who had just seen something that was magical, at least to them. It was probably that expression that first made me like him.

Of course, looks didn’t hurt, and he was not lacking there either. Tall, dirty blond and muscular, Blake had the kind of face that could switch from looking like a puppy to an attack dog depending on who he was talking to. Of course, it would be puppy mode with me. But with some of the more unsavory types of our school, he would switch to attack dog mode. I don’t know what he could have done if he hadn’t gotten his powers, considering for all his muscle, he tended to lose fights, simply because he was clumsy. But now…well, it were his powers that convinced me, in part, to fake our deaths and leave our hometown. He said the apocalypse was coming, and he wanted to keep me safe when it happened.

Pausing, I glanced at the dust cloud. It hadn’t moved or settled…in fact, I realized I hadn’t heard any sound coming from the cloud in several minutes.

Then, I heard Blake shout in anguish.

It was a short sound, but it punctuated the awful silence, and my heart slammed into my ribs.

“Blake?!” I screamed, forgetting anything about codenames.

Running into the smoke, I screamed again, “Blake? Blake!” but no response. As I got closer to the center of this smoke storm, I started to feel little nips at my side, then my hand, then my leg…I glanced around, and realized I was standing inside a veritable sandstorm of metal shard and wood slivers, capable of giving you more than just a splinter. Ignoring the minor pain I felt, I looked around wildly for Blake. And then, I saw it.

As large as a lion, with similar features: a long, whip-like tail covered in wicked spikes, and a face that looked like a human face, but distorted, twisted into a permanent snarl which curled across the lower half of the beast’s jaw, full of sharp teeth. More spikes covered it’s face, the long, lithe body…even its eyes were nothing more than two especially straight spikes. A mockery of a nose sniffed the air, and it lifted a bloody, dripping paw from-

“Blake!” I shrieked. I don’t think I’d even screamed that loud when I was in choir. And apparently it was the wrong decision, as the lion…thing turned its head towards me, and I swear it smiled. It readied itself to pounce, but the second before it did…the world seemed to pause.

My head suddenly hurt. I clutched it and saw, with no small amount of surprise, that the lion monster was scratching at its head as well, grunting in pain.

Memories flashed inside of my head as a static-like buzz filled my ears. Choir class, school in general, friends I had and lost through stupid arguments, Blake…

Was this what they called seeing your life flash before your eyes? I had thought that only applied to the one dying, though. Or maybe the apocalypse was coming early. It was scheduled for tomorrow, but maybe plans changed. Do gods get bored? Was there one, or several, floating above us, yelling at the human race to get going and do something interesting? Who knows. I had never paid attention in church…maybe I should have. I would have had someone to pray to, at least.

And finally, the noise stopped. The images stopped. And the world stopped.