3/22/54
ALEXANDER GALDUR
I’m starting to notice a trend with me and anything competitive. Just like in sparring, I lost. I lost big time. Like, I never came close to these professionals. I wasn’t sure why these two were so good, maybe it was practice, maybe it was innate talent, but either way, it was something that I was lacking a lot of. The thing was, we didn’t just bowl. No, we had done a variety of activities for a large sum of money.
We played games at the arcade, threw darts, played pool, went to a batting center, and a couple of other things. The only thing I wasn’t completely awful at was an obstacle course as well as some hiding activities. While I lived off of generally illegal activities, I needed to be nimble, agile, sneaky, and quick with my limbs and mind. I was able to score second in some of the more agility-based activities, losing out only to Deimos.
We played some video games, and I managed to almost get second for some while managing to barely get second for others. Racing games were fun, fighting games were fun, platformers were fun, the motion-controlled games were bullshit. Seriously, the quality of the motion-detecting equipment was so poor that it picked up changes in light as us walking forward. What the fuck?
We could have just flashed a light on off again to keep our characters moving instead of actually having to put in the effort. We tried that actually, with Deimos just holding his phone’s flashlight in front of the sensor. Moving it up and down out of the sensor’s range managed to make Deimos’s character jump a couple times. Though, even then, the bullshit was still fun.
We all had a fantastic time, and we decided to leave at some point and just walk around the city. As Deimos and Max talked about one of the games back there and how good it was, Halo, I think, I looked around the city. Sky-piercing buildings, slightly greasy and tainted, but still fresh air, beautiful buildings with a full rainbow of colored lights, all while shining under the night sky. Despite all the light pollution, I could still clearly see quite a few of the shining stars. The moon was there, and it shined so brightly that its crescent form was just jaw-dropping.
I almost made a comment on how beautiful this whole scene was, but then I remembered that I was the only one who could see it.
The reason the stars were so gorgeous, the reason the moon shone so brightly, all while I could still see how the lights of the city illuminated the night sky, it was all because of magic. My magic specifically. I had both dark and light magic, and they affected how I perceived and was affected by the environment.
My light magic lets me be resistant to light and my dark magic lets me see through it without a hitch. The lights, the darkness, I could see it all, even when mixed together. That really gave the whole beauty of this a bittersweet ending. Something that only I could enjoy. When it came down to it, I may have been in heaven, but I was the only one there. I was alone.
I’ll always be alone.
I’ll always be alone.
I’ll always be alone.
I’ll always be alone.
The thought echoed in my head, multiple voices, all of them own, synchronized into one messy yet understandable message. I wanted to cry. I felt like I was breaking down. Everytime I feel like this, I just want to give up, but I can’t. I’ll continue to move forward. I’ll never truly be in another’s company, and that’s just one more thing to have to deal with.
As my thoughts trailed off, red and blue lights began flashing above me. I looked up and saw police cars gathered around an alley. A very familiar alley.
Is this the same… Yeah. Yeah, it is. I recognized this alley as the one where the chef had attacked me after I stole from him for the second time. Overgrown foliage, dented and ruined buildings, the signs of someone going wild with their plant magic.
I started walking ahead, trying to just go by this without anyone possibly recognizing me. Deimos, however, walked right up to the officers, flashed them some ID, and now he was suddenly just being filled in on all the details.
Tire marks, misuse of magic, and some eyewitness reports of a morbidly obese man using plant magic to attack some poor sap with light magic. The guy was chased down an alley, and that’s where any evidence that the person with light magic had been there at all. Deimos heard it all out and just rejoined our group.
I was worried he might notice my slight change in demeanor, but part of me also knew that there was no change in demeanor and that I was just paranoid. He came back with a thoughtful and troubled expression on his face, and Max asked him what was wrong. Giving him a rundown of what had happened, he expressed his own thoughts as well, “There have been an increase in magic incidents recently. The ARO have been stirring up trouble lately, more cases of magical crimes in general, and there have been monster outbreaks recently.”
At that, both Max and myself looked up and spoke in tandem, “Monster outbreaks?” I glanced at Max to see his reaction, and I could see that he was surprised, worried, but most confusingly, panicked and anxious.
“Yeah,” Deimos confirmed, “I was called in on an emergency where a small swarm of monsters appeared on San Diego St.”
“Oh, I saw that on the news! Weren’t they a bunch of different species of monsters?” Max asked.
Deimos nodded as we kept on walking, “Yeah, they were made up of all sorts. Dogs, cats, birds, rodents. All of them mutated into monsters.”
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“How do you think they got into the city?” I asked, “I thought the DME regularly patrolled places where people lived.”
“We do. We still aren’t sure how they all got in the city unnotic-”
*Boom*
Before Deimos could finish his sentence, The front of a kids’ entertainment building exploded outwards. Screams soon followed as people ran away or tried to drag the injured to safety. With heavy footsteps, a large beast walked out from the ruined face of the structure.
The first thing that appeared was a large set of horns, curling in on themselves. Then was the monster's head, revealing the beast’s eyes and its horizontal slit pupils. Then the hoofs, hardened structures made for walking across rough terrain. The rest of the beast was soon revealed. Standing there ominously with dust swirling around its gray fur, the mighty beast stood at the size of a short bus. Huffing, it started to pull its hoof across the sidewalk in a show it was about to charge.
A goat. A giant goat. I recognized the creature from a very old picture book I saw back in the orphanage. Of course, I’ve never seen one in real life before, but I could still recognize it despite the gigantism mutation. As I stared in awe upon an actual animal, I felt someone grab the collar of my shirt and quickly pull me to the side. It was fortunate that they did as the goat chose to rush right then.
The goat, while charging, veered off a little towards the road while I stood as still as I could against the wall of a building. The monster, meanwhile, ran into a car that was hurriedly trying to drive away in reverse. However, they had to stop first, so they were trying to pick up speed again. While the might have succeeded if the goat was a little slower, it was not, and the mighty beast backed onto its haunches as it prepared to devastate the car.
While its head was in the air, it walked on two legs—or more accurately, fell with the support of two legs—towards the car, and once it was close enough, the goat brought its head down like a meteor. The toughened structures crushed the hood of the car, and the sudden force popped the front tires. The airbags went off, though that didn’t protect the driver and passenger’s legs from being crushed by metal, plastic, and other car materials.
The goat lifted its head, but as it did, small, dust-like particles flew from the wreckage up to the monster. Swirling around its head, they eventually settled onto its horns. Looking closer, I could actually make out many parts of the horns that were covered in small pieces of whatever.
While everyone seemed to just silently stare at the goat, too afraid to move and draw its attention, another boom went off. Then another. And another. And another. One after the other, sounds of destruction rumbled throughout the city, and looking down the road where we had first spotted the goat, I saw what was causing them.
Ground erupted, buildings exploded, and chaos spread as monsters of all different species found their way into the now-crowded street. One animal in particular stood out, however. A tortoise that was rapidly increasing in size, finally stopping at the size of some of the buildings. There was a figure on top of it, but they were too far away to see.
Then, from the sky, a silver pod floated down. It stopped while still high in the sky, changed its rotation so that a glowing, blue circle on its presumed-front faced us. The sphere then split into four parts that flew across the sky until they measured slightly over the width of the street, sidewalks and all. A blue panel energy stretched from each section until they met each other to form one, large screen.
A man in a purple suit, a purple tie, a purple tophat, a green shirt, a green pair of pants, one purple glove on his right hand, and one green glove on his left. The final cherry on top of his slightly-lunatical clothing was a green mask made to look like an elephant. The mask covered the top half of his face, leaving the rose-tinted skin of the bottom of his face to be revealed.
He gave a courteous bow and announced over the magic screens, “Hello, everyone! My name is Viola Greco, though I am also known by the title of the Custode. With all the monsters here, you may remember a similar event from yesterday evening; that, too, was us. We are the Riserva Naturale, and it is our belief that humans' rule over this world has been far too long. We have suppressed and abused animals and mother nature, and it is our mission to free the superior power that are these wonderful creatures.”
“In the past, before magic had ever come to this world, humans had destroyed habitats, enslaved and captured animals, and suppressed these wonderful creatures. Now, in the age of magic, we have the gaul to push their ecosystems even further back, in addition to now exiling them from anywhere humans reside!”
“With the existence of monsters, it is undeniable that animals have become our superiors as magic’s effect on them has increased over the years. Not only that, our god, Bestia, queen of beasts, has descended to Earth to deliver her message to us. Now, our plans begin, and what has been set in motion, is an unstoppable force of nature.”
“Welcome to the grand opening of a zoo!”
The man bowed once more, and then, he leapt into the air in a clean backflip. He fell behind the tortoise, leaving the view of the screen as it deactivated. The magical screen retracted, the pieces all flew together back into a seamless ball of metal and glowing blue lights and flew away over the rooftops.
Then, all the monsters rampaged, destroying everything around. People were crushed, pierced, dismembered, burned, and all other sorts of awful things. I tried to take my eyes off the massacre, but I couldn’t. I was frozen, frozen whilst staring at the brutality of the animals' monstrous instincts.
I was then, for the second time, grabbed and dragged away. Looking to see who was pulling me despite already having a feeling of who it was, I first saw Max who was also being dragged away to my left, and turning my head more, I saw Deimos who was urgently pulling us along as he spoke with a mix of seriousness and fearfulness, “We need to move! I’ll get you two to safety and call in backup. Once we’re far enough along, I’ll release you, and you’ll need to get away as fast as you can.
Max shakily nodded, “O-Okay!”
I was about to respond with more confirmation, but I heard something. Something that made the whole world seemingly stop.
“Mom, d-dad, wake up!”
Turning around, my eyes immediately locked onto who said that despite the chaos swirling around me. A small boy. A small boy crouched over two figures. He held one of their hands, trying to pull the body out of the rubble. He wept. He cried. He pleaded and begged. No one helped. No one was there for him. He was alone.
A husky-sized toad with electricity running across its slimy skin hopped to the side of the young boy, looming over the small child. Slowly, as if the world paced itself with a snail’s crawl, the toad excruciatingly slowly opened its mouth. Rows of serrated teeth revealed themselves, and strings of electrified saliva stretched between its jaws.
No.
No.
No.
NO!