I do not know where it lives
Or what it thinks when it blinks.
But I know for certain it watches me
When I think, drink, and grow pink.

It does not live in space
And it does not think.
It puts nothing in my drink
And leaves no trace.

That is what it wants me to believe.
And that is the case, I want to believe.

But I feel watched by it
Because I know it is there.
We cannot do anything about it
Because of the rules in here.

“The protection of the people,” they say
As it continues to watch me.
“Watch out for strangers,” they say
As it continues to watch me.

My heart pumps quickly.
And it seems to know.
I asked Mama what I deserved
To be confined in a sea of eyes.

“The protection of the people,” she says
As if it were obvious to her.
It was too late;
They had gotten her.

And soon I grow tired.
And soon I give up.

Because there is no worth
In fighting the metallic eyes.
Especially when it’s all around you
And never stops to blink.

@NarayanK

A family of four walked up the broad, stone steps leading up to a skyscraper. Some people were sitting on the steps and talking to each other, not paying much attention to those going towards the building behind them. Twin boys with light-blond hair raced to be the first to reach the top while their parents followed at their own pace. The mother was wearing a simple but elegant dress. The father had a black waistcoat over an orange long-sleeve shirt and a black hat on his straw-blond hair. He smiled when one of the twins jumped up and down to celebrate his victory and then looked at his wife. “Look at that, Sarah,” he said to her. “It seems Leonard won.”

“So it seems,” Sarah replied with a smile. “Theodore doesn’t seem to mind though. I think he’s impressed by the building Rob works in, Ben.”

Benjamin was taking his family to meet a friend, an editor for a famous magazine, at his workplace. He gazed up the tall building made of mostly steel and glass, it was obvious the magazine had a good revenue.

“On what floor is his office?” Sarah asked.

“The fourth,” Benjamin replied, to which Sarah nodded to show she heard it.

Once they were together again they entered the building through the automatic glass doors. The central hallway was broad and light, just how Benjamin liked places like this. He walked up to a counter to state the reason for their visit and after the receptionist verified it with a simple phone-call, she nodded to Benjamin and gestured to the elevator. Benjamin nodded as well and beckoned for his family to join him.

“I want to push the button!” Leonard exclaimed as he started running towards the double steel doors.

“No, me!” Theodore said as he ran after his twin brother.

“Boys, boys,” Benjamin said as he smiled at his wife. “There are two buttons to push, one now and one in the elevator. You two decide who presses what button, okay?”

“Yes dad,” the boys said in unity. With a simple game of rock-paper-scissors they determined who could push the first button while their parents were waiting patiently for them to make the important decision.

When the decision was made, because scissors still cut paper, Theodore pushed on the button and watched the small screen above the steel doors where the numbers went down. Moments later a soft ping sounded and the doors glided open. The four of them stepped in the cabin which was large enough to hold eight with ease and after Leonard pushed on the button with the 4 on it the doors closed.

They waited in silence as the elevator ascended smoothly through the building, but it came at an abrupt halt.

“What happened?” one of the boys asked. “Are we there yet? Why aren’t the doors opening if we’re there?”

Benjamin swallowed heavily and looked at the panel, the light around the button was still on, indicating they hadn’t arrived at the floor just yet. He watched how Sarah pushed the button again, but nothing happened. She tried the button to open the doors, but that didn’t do anything either.

“That doesn’t work,” she sighed as she looked at her husband. “Do we wait or do we call for help? I mean, maybe the elevator will continue by itself.”

“I think we should call for help,” Benjamin quickly said. “I... really don’t want to be here right now,” he added in a whisper.

Sarah nodded and pushed the phone-button. When a voice, most likely the receptionist, asked what the problem was she explained how the elevator had stopped somewhere between the third and the fourth floor. The receptionist promised to call the mechanics and asked for them to wait, she explained it was an external service, but they would be here as soon as they could.

After a trembling sigh Benjamin rubbed his face with both hands. He started pacing around in the small room. His eyes moved from left to right, but no matter how often he looked at the walls, the ceiling or the door, there was no way out. His could feel his heart pounding and he moved his fingers restlessly as he continued walking from one side to the other.

“Please, calm down,” Sarah said, holding the two boys close to her. “Help is on the way. You’ll see we’ll get out of here in no-time.”

“How long?” Benjamin asked.

“I don’t know. I think twenty minutes at most, probably shorter.”

Benjamin shook his head as he continued going back and forth. “Too long,” he muttered. “I want out of this elevator. Now. I need to get out now.” He closed his eyes and leaned with his forehead and hands against the cold, steel wall. His breathing went faster and more shallow and his fingers slowly slid over the wall until he had two fists. For a moment he stood there, breathing heavily through his nose. Suddenly he turned to the doors and hit them with both his fists. “Open these doors and let me out!” he called.

The sudden outburst startled the boys, who looked at their father with big eyes and dropped jaws. They held on to arms of their mother and Sarah gave them a quick hug. “It’s okay,” she whispered to them. “Why don’t you two sit down. It won’t be long before they let us out. I promise.” The boys nodded and took a place to sit. As soon as they let go of her arms, Sarah walked up to her husband.

Benjamin hit the doors again with his fist. “Let me out,” he repeated with a begging sound in his voice.

“Ben,” Sarah said with a gentle tone in her voice and she placed her hand on his arm. “Please. Calm down. It will be all right.” She gently pulled on his arm to make him turn around. When her eyes met his, she could see the panic. She put her hand on the side of his face. “Try to be strong for the children. Being stuck in the elevator is frightening enough. To see their father losing it won’t help them.”

Benjamin grabbed the arms of his wife. “Please get me out of here, Sarah,” he begged her. “I can’t take this. I can’t. You know that.”

“I know,” Sarah whispered with a compassionate look in her eyes. “I know, sweetheart. Trust me, it will be all right.” She could hear his fast breathing and she could see in his eyes how he struggled to keep his panic down. “Please stay calm, okay?”

Benjamin’s mouth opened and closed a few times, without any words coming out. Eventually he nodded a few times with quick movements of his head and he looked at the corner where the two boys were sitting, holding on to each other. He rubbed his face and tried his best to calm himself, telling himself this was only temporarily and soon the doors would open again to let him out, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of feeling trapped. He wanted to leave the elevator, more than anything else. It felt like they were here for hours already, even if he knew that wasn’t the case. He tried to take deep breaths in an attempt conquer the fear, but one look at the closed doors made him clench his fists. “I can’t...” he whispered. “I...” Without finishing the sentence he moved to the wall and stood against it with his back. He rubbed his hands, his arms, his face. He shook his head behind his hands and looked up at the ceiling, trying to stay calm. Shutting his eyes, he slowly sank to the floor and pulled up his legs. He wrapped his arms around his legs and put his head against his knees. He couldn’t deal with it and he hoped not seeing how small the elevator really was would help him wait it out.

It wasn’t long before he felt two pair of small hands on his arms. Slowly he looked up and he saw his sons.

“Daddy, are you all right?” Leonard asked.

“Are you scared?” Theodore asked in turn.

Benjamin didn’t answer the first question, but he nodded to Theodore.

“Why?” Leonard asked.

“I’m... claustrophobic,” Benjamin admitted.

“What is that, caustophobric?” Theodore asked.

“That is a fear of being trapped,” Benjamin whispered. “If I’m stuck somewhere, I get really afraid.”

“So you are afraid because we can’t get out of the elevator?” Leonard asked.

Benjamin nodded and buried his face back in his arms, being reminded he was stuck here didn’t help him at all. He knew he should stay strong for his boys, but he couldn’t. He was at the verge of a panic attack, one he could barely control. He trembled as his fingers dug into his arms, desperately trying to stay calm.

“It’s okay, daddy,” Leonard said. “Grown-ups can be afraid too you know. You came to sit with us with that storm. We can sit with you now.”

Slowly Benjamin looked up and he looked at his boys, he saw Theodore nod to show he agreed with his brother. Without a word he wrapped his arms around the boys and hugged them. He felt their arms around his waist. “Thank you,” he whispered to them.

Sarah watched it with tears in her eyes.

The family waited together until the elevator suddenly moved again. As soon as he felt that, Benjamin got back on his feet. The moving could only mean they would be out soon. Only seconds later it reached the fourth floor and the doors slid open. Benjamin rushed outside and went straight for the windows. His eyes moved over the glass and the wall, but he couldn’t see a handle anywhere. “I need fresh air,” he muttered. “I’m going outside.” With that he turned around and went straight for the stairs.

“Wait for us!” Theodore said as he ran after his father, closely followed by his brother.

Sarah smiled as she saw that and turned to the man that had joined them. “Hello Rob,” she greeted him. “We’ll come back when Ben had his fresh air.”

“Yeah, sure,” Rob said. “Tell him I’ll have some camomile tea ready for him when he comes back.” He glanced at the elevator. “I think he can use that.”

Sarah nodded to that and waved briefly before she too went to the stairs to go after her family.

As soon as Benjamin left the building he took in a deep breath of fresh air. He needed this, a moment to catch his breath without any walls around him. He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, just breathing and looking at the city in front of him, when he felt two small hands taking his own. He smiled as he looked down at his sons.

“Are you feeling better again, daddy?” Leonard ask.

“I am.”

“Are we going home now?” Theodore asked with a hint of disappointment in his voice.

“No, no, of course not. I promised both Rob and you two we would visit him. And we will, I just needed a breath of fresh air. But I’m fine now. I am.” He said that mostly to reassure the boys and partly to convince himself. Truthfully, the experience was still in his mind and body. Even thinking about going back into the building gave him a feeling of uneasiness. But he wouldn’t let that stop him from going back inside. He turned around and noticed Sarah waiting for them at the door. He smiled at her as she smiled at him. “Let’s go to see Rob for real this time,” he said.

“And we’re taking the stairs this time, right dad?” Theodore asked with a childlike enthusiasm, one that only grew when he saw the affirmative nod. “I bet I’ll get to the fourth floor first!”

“No you won’t!” Leonard shouted as he let go of his father to get a head start.

“Oh yes I will!” Theodore promised as he too let go of his father to run to the stairs.

Before they could even enter the building they were stopped by their mother. “No running up the stairs,” she told them. “You’ll be exhausted before we’re half-way, which will make it more likely for you to trip and fall.”

Benjamin chuckled as he too walked to the building. With those two it was easier to let the awful experience drift to the back of his mind and knowing he wouldn’t have to take the elevator for a second time that day made it easier to go back inside too. While he knew his boys liked going with the elevator, any child enjoys pushing buttons after all, they didn’t seem to mind taking the stairs at all. And that was something he was grateful for, he needed the support of his family more then anything and his boys were surprisingly supportive of this new-learned fear of their father. A fear his wife knew about ever since they started dating and one she had always taken seriously. It was one of the many reasons he loved her so much.

In the end they had a great time with Rob, who showed the twins what work he did while Benjamin drank the tea his friend has made for him. He knew he would be taking the stairs for a while, but he wouldn’t allow his claustrophobia to get the better of him. In time he would work towards feeling comfortable with using elevators again. Taking those was something he had conquered once in the past and he was confident he could do so again. He wasn’t sure how long it would take this time, but he promised himself he would get to that point again.

@WiseDragonGirl

I knew when I left that you had troubles. Not just your every day troubles, but things that gripped at your very soul, that tugged you into nights of heavy drinking and crying in my arms. As much as I tried to pull you away from your demons, get you off of smoking and binge drinking yourself into oblivion, you never seemed to get better. You were sick, and no doctor could cure you. I tried to be your doctor, even though I didn't have a degree, but my words never meant much to you through the long term pain you experienced.

You never seemed to mind the fact that I was a soldier. You thought the uniform looked good, and admired how fit I am. You were proud of me. We'd known each other a long time, from when we were kids. I can remember when I enlisted first thing once I got out of school. You were happy that I'd dedicated myself to something. But I never knew what was gnawing at your mind.

When I went to training, you sent me letters every other week. You masked your pain with words of praise, you told me how things were going great and how much you adored me. You told me everything was well, and I was fool to believe it. You were hurting, so, so badly. God, I wish that I'd known that, but out of everything I was good at, I wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed. You always found humor in my failures, and taught me to look on the bright side of the mistakes I made instead of beating myself up about it. But there was no way I could forgive myself, or find any laughter in what I'd been too blind to see.

When the war came, we both knew I'd have to leave. We both knew it, but I didn't want to believe it. I didn't want to leave you with your struggles. I didn't want to leave you without seeing the scratches on your arms healed, without seeing the cuts on your legs vanished, turned to scars like a warrior's valiant battle. I wanted to stay, wanted to help you, but you put on your best smile through the tears in your eyes. You told me, "You go do what you have to." And I listened.

I knew when I left that you had troubles. Now I sit in a foxhole, clutching a rifle to my chest, helmet askew on my head as bombs rain down from the sky, causing a cacophony of explosions and terror, and all I can think of is you. I see you in my mind, that beautiful smile, that sweet laughter. I see you in my peripheral vision, but I know it's just another soldier. I won't let my delusions make me think I'm home, back where I should be with you. Caring for you.

There's always something nagging at the depths of my mind, and it's separate from the shaking I get from the adrenaline of combat. It's separate from the sinking feeling in my stomach when I see a comrade's body blown to bloody pieces. It's separate from all of that.

It's the fear that when I get home from all of this hell, you won't be there. That you'll have been so lost without me that you drink and smoke and shoot yourself up with whatever drugs you can get your hands on, just to escape the pain you feel. It makes me feel terrible. It worries me more than the bullets flying towards me, aimed at my skull.

But I suppose I won't ever be able to see you smile again, like you did before your pain took the real you from me. I can hear their troops advancing; we don't have the numbers that they do. We don't have the weapons, we don't have the armor. I know I'm going to die here. With what little time I have, I wish I could relinquish my fears and know that you're okay. I wish I could know that you won't be buried beside me when I get home. When you see my casket, I hope it won't be from the sky above. I hope you'll be there on solid ground to say goodbye to me.

But I'm scared, more than this war has ever made me, that you won't be. War took away my knowledge that you were alright. War took away my comfort in being able to bandage your wrists. War took away my ability to take away the bottle and brush away your tears. It took away everything, and now... Now I die in fear that you've given up on living.

@Dewey Deftones

An alarm clock began to blare its morning cry, signaling the beginning of another chilly, February morning. Kyra rolled over in her bed and tapped the top of her alarm clock, sending it into sleep mode. She wondered why she had set her alarm clock to go off that morning, considering that it was in fact the weekend. After curling back up into her sheets, Kyra lay in her bed for a couple more minutes until her alarm clock reminded her that she had only placed it in sleep mode.

Now that she had turned off her alarm clock and sat up on the edge of her bed, Kyra rubbed her eyes with her hands in order to get the sleep out of her eyes. She then pulled herself off her bed and walked out of her bedroom, through the hallway, and into her bathroom so that she could put her contacts in. Once she had put on her contacts and shaken off the dreamlike sluggishness that one experiences when you wake up, Kyra realized that she had forgotten one major little detail.

When she peered into the mirror that stood before her, Kyra saw that a pair of fox ears crowned the top of her head, while at the same time it was evident that she did not have regular human ears attached to the sides of her head. Also, behind her, Kyra saw nine fox tails, which were covered by a coat of fur that matched the color of her blonde hair and seemed to have been arranged just like the train of a peacock or just like the nine tails of the Pokémon Ninetales. It almost did not seem real to her, especially since her kitsune-like appearance did not manifest until this past week.

Then terror appeared in her mind. Did she just walk all the way from her bedroom to the bathroom in this form? She had not found a good opportunity to break the news to her own parents that their little girl happened to be a metahuman, someone with special powers. Usually, being a girl in her sophomore year in high school with braces would be enough stress for anyone, let alone dealing with strange powers and an uncanny appearance. While it could have been worse, like either being permanently trapped in the fox form of a kitsune or having fur cover her entire body instead of just her nine tails and her fox ears, it is still a hard pill to swallow none the less.

After she wrapped her towel around her hair so that it would conceal her fox ears, Kyra cracked open the bathroom door and peered out, checking whether anyone of her family happened to be up. When she saw no one in the hallway, nor heard anyone, Kyra quickly tossed her bath towel on its rack and hurried back to her bedroom. Once she was back within the safety of her room, she gently shut the door and locked it. She sat back down on the edge of her bed and placed her hands on her forehead, wondering why this had to have happened to her. All she could come up with was that God was somehow using this experience to teach her something. However, what the lesson was, she had no idea what that was.

Kyra then turned to her nightstand and picked up a small wristband, which looked like a FitBit. However, this little device did more than measure how active Kyra was. In fact, the entire purpose of the device was to negate her powers. Not only would it prevent her from accidentally lighting something on fire with her powers, it also would hide her ‘monster girl’ appearance so that she could actually live her life out as normal as one who was in her position could. She had not been wearing this device while she slept during the night because if she wore it for too long, she would become sick by continued exposure to the device.

Right when she was about ready to slide the wristband onto her arm and activate the ‘power-nullifier’, Kyra heard a knock at her door. Since she was not quite use to her fire-based powers yet and because she was startled by the knocking at her door, Kyra accidentally produced small flames that engulfed both of her hands. While she was able to extinguish those flames and the ‘power-nullifier’ did not seem like it was scorched, Kyra was still worried that she might have done something to that vital device.

“Everything alright in there, Kyra?” She heard her father ask from the other side of her bedroom door.

“I feel alright. It’s just that time of the month again, I guess.”

“Well, when you feel up to it, breakfast is almost ready.” Her father told Kyra.

Once her father had left, Kyra turned back to the wristband that she had almost torched. She slid it onto her wrist and clicked one of the few buttons on that device. However, even though she had pressed down the button that was supposed to nullify her powers, when she looked back over her shoulder, she was shocked to discover that her nine tails had not disappeared. She reached up to the top of her head and found that her fox ears were still there too. Therefore, she pressed the button again and again. And with each time she pressed the button, she was disappointed that the device was not working, probably because of what she did to it.

After she had sat on her bed for a couple more minutes, Kyra rose from where she was seated, knowing what she had to do now. While it was not the most opportune moment to tell her family about her little ‘condition’, it was nevertheless necessary. She had no other options. How would her family react to this news? What about her friends? She had heard on the news of the reaction going to ways. They either hesitantly accept her condition, knowing that she is still their little girl, or they would disown her, not wanting to experience any discrimination for having a child or a friend who happened to be ‘special’.

Now, Kyra began that dreadful walk down the hallway that led down towards the kitchen. Her heart was rapidly beating because she had no idea how her family would react. They would love her no matter what, right? The only thing different about herself was her appearance and her pyrokinesis. She’s still the same girl they have known and loved for her entire life.

Once she had arrived in the kitchen, Kyra waited in the entryway, seeing if they would say anything before she took her seat at the kitchen table. When no one said anything, she took her seat at the table. Some of her tails slid through the openings in the back of her chair. Her heart continued to flutter and the suspense continued to kill her, especially because one had said anything about her appearance. Things became even weirder when her mother set a plate of chocolate chip pancakes in front of her. She did not even flinch when she saw Kyra. Were they so tolerate of her condition that they were trying to ignore it to make her feel better or were they as blind as bats?

“Your father mentioned that you weren’t feeling so good. I’m sure it’s just some butterflies because of your big date tonight.” Kyra mother was referring to the Valentine’s Dance to which Kyra was going with her new boyfriend, Will.

“Thanks for reminding me, mom.” Kyra said with a slight hint of sarcasm in her voice. Her mother then placed the back of her hand against her daughter’s forehead.

“Well, you do feel a little warm. We could call his parents and tell them that you’re not feeling well.”

“No, no, I feel fine. I swear.” Kyra flashed a smile to her mother, revealing the braces that were attached to her teeth.

“Alright.” Her mother said. She bent down and kissed Kyra on the forehead.

For the rest of the day, this bizarre situation kept happening. Even thought she could see her fox-like characteristics, her family could not. Throughout the day, there lurked as panging fear that for some strange reason her family would all of the sudden be able to see what she truly was. It did not hit her that her wristband was working partially until she began to get ready for the Valentine’s Dance. After she had finished deciding between wearing jeans or a dress by concluding that she would rather deal with her jean’s waistband digging into her tail rather than deal with her tail potentially lifting up the back of her dress.

When she finally went to the bathroom in order to brush her teeth and put any finishing touches to her appearance, Kyra finally realized why her family had not been able to see that she had nine fox tails and a pair of fox ears. When she gazed into the mirror that hung on the wall of the bathroom, Kyra saw her normal appearance staring back at her. In the reflection, she had her normal human ears on the side of her head and not even a single tail on her body! While it was kind of difficult for her to put her earrings on, since she was trying to put them in the piercing that was located on her fox ears while the mirror was showing that she was trying to put them on her human ears, Kyra felt a wave of relief permeate throughout her body. She had nothing to worry about now. All she had to do is wait until she could get the wristband fixed so that she would not be able to see her own uncanny appearance.

With her newly found optimism, the lead up to the dance went smoothly. Without any problems or incidents, her date’s parents promptly picked Kyra up from her house and took both her and her date to their high school where the Valentine’s Dance was being held. It was not until the dance was almost over when a hiccup happened. “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” had just finished playing over the speakers. Everything had gone so well so far, until some glitch happened in Kyra’s power-nullifier for a split second. Her ‘true’ appearance flashed for only a fraction of a second. No more and no less. While it seemed that no one else was paying close to her at the moment, her date, Will, happened to have been paying attention.

“Is something wrong with your nullifier?” He whispered into her ear, trying to make sure no one else heard what he was saying.

“What? Can everyone see me now?”

“No, it just flashed for a split second.” Now fear rushed back into Kyra. Was this a sign that her wristband was going to fail her at the most inopportune moment, when she is surrounded by many of her peers? Obviously, she wasn’t worried about her boyfriend finding out about her ‘condition’. In fact, he was also a metahuman like her. However, he did not have a secondary mutation that made it impossible for him to ‘blend in’ with normal homo sapiens (or homines sapientes, as Will would say as the correct plural form for the scientific name for humans). Kyra wouldn’t know what she would do if she was ousted as a metahuman. Would the Men-in-Black come after her, or a pair of those agents of that secret agency that has a policy of “one of us, one of them”?

Kyra hurried to the women’s restroom in order to make sure everything was alright. She fortunately went there at that moment because almost immediately after she walked inside, her wristband failed her. Even when she looked into the mirror, Kyra saw her ‘true’ self. Those god-forsaken nine tails and pair of fox ears. Was God punishing her for something?

However, she did not have much time to contemplate that question, as she heard a few voices entering the restroom. Kyra scrambled into one of the empty stalls and slammed the door shut, locking it behind her. She thought she was in the clear now and that she had to just wait for these girls to leave, until she remember her tail, or rather all nine of them. She had to make sure that they did not happen to stick out either above or under the stall partitions, lest she be discovered. Sweat began to pour down her forehead and her heart rumbled within her chest as she waited for the new-arrivals to leave. Meanwhile, she tried to keep pressing the “nullifier” button in the hopes that it would do the same thing as it did that morning.

Once they had left the restroom, Kyra cracked up the stall door, peaking out to make sure no one else was coming in. When she had confirmed that no one else was in the restroom, she walked out from the stall and checked her appearance again. Fortunately for her, somehow mashing the “nullifier” button repeatedly caused the wristband to be restored to its normal, or rather semi-normal, function. Now that everything was under control, or at least it appeared like it was, Kyra returned to the common area where the dance was being held.

“I think we should go now.” She whispered to her date, since she was concerned that something would happen again. He nodded in agreement and after they had said ‘good bye’ to their friends who were also at the dance, the two teenage metahumans exited their high school. Once they were outside and far away from the school entrance that the night concealed them, Will dashed towards the side of the school, leaping up towards it once he got close to it. His fingers adhered to the wall of the school and he climbed up to the roof. After a few moments, he leapt back down to where Kyra was standing, now wearing a red and blue costume with a mask that had two pure-white lenses that were trimmed with a black border.

“It seems like you are in need of a means of getting yourself home. I think this is a job for your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man!”

“You’re too much, Will.” She replied.

For this day, Kyra was able to keep her condition as secret. Even with all the inconveniences and the misfortunes, that day was a success in that respect. However, one day is just a fraction of the time in an entire year, let alone an entire life time. For the rest of her life, Kyra will have to keep looking over her shoulder, conscious of whether anyone has found out about her metahuman status. If such an endeavor was undertaken by a single person, it might become too much for anyone to complete. Looking over your shoulder at every waking moment of one’s life is no way to live. However, if endured with someone who can understand what you are going through can make this personal hell just a little bit more bearable and pleasant. Maybe one day, if it is even possible or conceivable, that ‘normal’ people will no longer fear what they do not understand and people like Kyra can live normally and not in constant fear. Maybe one day.

@Dedonus

warning: disturbing content!

Mike was too big to be scared of monsters. That’s what Dad said. He was three and a half feet big, which was even bigger than Newman, the golden retriever who liked to sleep by Mike’s bed. Dad said that even dogs are afraid of things, like thunder and big cars, and now that Mike was growing up, it was his job to keep Newman safe from scary things. Which was fine, for thunder and big cars – Mike wasn’t afraid of noises like that, and he always felt very brave when Newman would come and put his head in his lap, and they’d wait for the rain to go away. Rain couldn’t hurt you if you were in a house.

But monsters were another story. He heard them sometimes at night – outside the window, hiding in the big oak tree with the rope swing on it, or sneaking past the door of his room, leaving little shadows and creaking noises in the hall. Some of the monsters were tiny, but they scared him anyway – scratching around the walls and the ceiling, invisible. Mom said it was just a mouse, but she couldn’t see it either, and besides, she was afraid of mice anyway.

Newman would bark at them if they were real, because he had very good eyesight. But most monsters were invisible, so grownups didn’t believe they were real. Most -- not all of them.

One night, Mike woke up because Newman was in his bed. Newman wasn’t supposed to be in his bed. He was standing on all fours, very still, breathing really loud like he was trying to cough. Mike rubbed his eyes and sat up. Then there was a noise – very soft, like a thump thump thump on the wall. He froze, and Newman froze, and he could hear both of their hearts beating. Newman’s was fast, and Mike’s was fast too. Then there were more noises – wooden steps, like logs being tossed into a camp fire, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, getting closer. He looked at the big oak tree outside. It was moving – swaying back and forth, like the wind was in its leaves, but he could tell it was getting closer, closer, closer! It stopped when he looked at it – stopped coming closer, and pretended to just sway back and forth in the wind like a normal tree, but it was bigger than before, so it was closer. His eyes were wide. The tree wouldn’t move if he watched it, so he watched it, unblinking,

The thing that happened next was very loud. It started with a broken window – not in Mike’s room, somewhere else. Newman heard it first and got very angry, but also scared. He leapt towards the door and began barking – deep, angry, ferocious WOOFS! like Mike had never heard before, and in between his breaths, he was also whimpering – a high, squealing noise that only happened during big thunderstorms. He was so loud, but Mike didn’t dare take his eyes off the oak tree, so he just kept saying “Newman, Newman!” over and over again, like he did whenever Newman was scared. They kept on in this way, Newman barking and Mike repeating his name and staring out the window, while the monsters came into the house.

They were in Mom and Dad’s room. Mom was screaming. Dad was yelling, a lot like Newman – loud and deep and scary and angry, but with whimpering noises hiding in his voice. Footsteps crashed around – he knew what Dad’s feet sounded like, but there were heavy ones too where the trees were stomping on hard wooden feet. “Newman,” Mike moaned. Then there was a crack, like a branch snapping in half under too much weight, and Dad stopped yelling. Mom shrieked. He could hear a loud slamming noise, like another tree jumping into the room, and Mom said “Aaron, no!” and then screamed again. The trees roared. She just kept screaming “No! No! NO!” hysterical. Mike kept his eyes on the oak tree. He had to be brave. He had to keep helping.

Newman stopped whimpering and barking, and began to growl instead. The hairs on his back were straight up, and Dad said that when dogs did that they were going to bite. “Newman?” Mike whispered. The trees were coming. They were in the hall, stomping towards Mike’s room. The knob twisted. Newman barked and scratched at the crack. Mike couldn’t help it – he looked away from the big oak, and watched Newman pry the door free with his nose and his claws and run out into the dark hallway, slobbering and growling with savage and violent movements. He was going to fight the trees. He was going to bite the monsters and chase them away. He was very brave.

And then there was another wooden CRACK! Then Newman was very quiet.

Everything was quiet. Mike tried to stop crying, but he couldn’t. All the lights were off because monsters liked the dark, and there was a monster there, standing still, breathing in long, gentle wheezing sounds like a screen door in the breeze. It was a tree, only, upside-down, with two big branches covered in leaves that it walked on like feet, and thick, messy roots coming out of its head, dangling limp in the air because they just came out of the dirt. The monster had a mask on, wiry and metal, and its mouth was full of little brown acorns instead of teeth. Its arms were different sizes – one was short and hairy, and in the dark it almost looked like a person’s arm, but it was covered in spiders and roaches and centipedes, and it oozed with shiny black sap. Its other arm was longer and straight as a board, and it ended in a long hard stick, red like a cherry and also covered in sap that dripped into a puddle on the floor. There were bite marks all over the long arm where Newman had tried to fight. Newman was asleep. The sap was making him sleep. While he watched, the monster struck the dog again and again with its long arm, and kicked him with its mossy legs. Newman didn’t wake up.

The monster looked at Mike. Mike looked back. For a while, it worked – the monster couldn’t move when he was being watched. And then, it could. It shambled towards him, wheezing and creaking and swaying from side to side. Mike was still saying “Newman, Newman.” The tree grabbed his arm. He screamed, and he could hear Mom screaming “Michael, NO!” He tried to squirm away, and the tree raised its long arm, and held it in the air. Then it roared at him. He froze.

“Come with me, f-----g kid,” it growled. Its voice wasn’t like a tree – it was a high voice, higher than Dad’s but lower than Mom’s, like an owl almost. The voice hissed around its acorn teeth, scraping over a mossy beard and escaping through its wiry mask in tones that could have almost been a hooting song, except they were too angry. “F-----g come on, or I’ll crack your head. Move it!”

The tree was too strong. It dragged him out into the hall, towards Mom and Dad’s room. Mom was coming out, holding their big lamp and screaming, red and furious. She hurled it at the tree as hard as she could. It bounced off his wiry mask and bumped against Mike’s shoulder before it shattered on the ground. Then the monster hit her in the stomach with its long arm, right in the part of her tummy where Mike’s little brother lived. She staggered over. The tree hit her again and she fell. Then it shoved Mike into Mom and Dad’s room, and grabbed mom’s hair and dragged her in. She was coughing and screaming and trying to crawl away, but she couldn’t. The tree threw her on the bed and hit her again, and she was quiet.

“Turn on the f-----g lights,” the tree hooted. Mike couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. “Turn on the f-----g lights or I’ll f-----g kill her,” it said again. He turned on the lights. Dad was sleeping like Newman, covered in sap. The tree was bigger with the lights on – the bugs on his arm were big and red and twinkling. It trapped Mom and rubbed its hairy roots all over her face, dripping sap everywhere, poisoning her. “Don’t you f-----g look away,” it hooted. “F------g watch or I’ll crack you both!”

----------

The next thing Mike could remember was a bright room. There were strangers, grown-ups – he thought he’d met some of them before but he didn’t know their names. They said words he couldn’t understand, gave him chocolate cereal and milk and orange juice and blankets. He wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers, but he tried anyway – they couldn’t understand him, because the monster took away his voice. He cried a lot. They hugged him when he cried, and it made him feel better, but he couldn’t stop, and he couldn’t talk.

One day they brought a dog to visit. It was a golden retriever like Newman, but it wasn’t Newman and it wouldn’t put its head in his lap, or sit where he pointed, and when it barked it sounded wrong. The dog went away after a few days.

Mike had a new room, with lots of colorful toys and his own TV and a Nintendo that he didn’t play with. He was in there most of the time. Sometimes other boys and girls would come to play with him, but they didn’t really want to, and he didn’t really want to either, and so they went away after a while.

Whenever he was alone, Mike looked out his window. He didn’t really sleep, and he only ate a little. He didn’t like it when other people came to visit – he mostly just looked out the window, which was fine, because he didn’t know what they were saying anyway, and they couldn’t understand him either, because the monster took away his voice.

He was always looking out his window, watching the big oak tree in the yard. Because every time he had to look somewhere else, it got a little bit bigger.

@mdk

The cool December air was filled with the salty smell of the ocean, something Niall was more than accustomed to by this point. What he had to get used to, however, was the fact that everyone looked at him a bit longer than usual. It was rare that he wore his uniform in public, and it had been years since he had done so back home. He knew that the stares weren't out of spite (most of the time), but he had never been the kind of person who liked attention.

He tried his best to ignore everyone who was staring at his service khaki as he took a sip from his coffee cup, some welcome warmth in the cold afternoon. In dock to his left was the JDS Sendai, a destroyer that was undergoing its final preparations to be sent out. He had seen it from the deck of the Ronald Reagan when he had arrived months ago. Just like the Sendai, the Reagan was slated to be dispatched to the South China Sea tomorrow.

It took them long enough. Helicopter destroyers aren't enough to fight the entire Chinese Navy.

There wasn't much remarkable about the man, aside from his uniform. The closest thing to something notable was his copper red hair, a trait his wife had been overjoyed to see passed on to their daughter. Aside from that, absolutely nothing was special about him. No freckles, no piercings, no signature hairstyle even (just the oh-so-generic side part). His face wasn't that of the heroic soldier or the chiseled actor, nor was it that of the genius general who always has some improbable plan up his sleeve. It was one you'd expect to see on a street, just a normal face.

With his free (and quite pale) hand, he scrolled through a news site displayed on his phone. It wasn't the newest model, not that he really cared for the difference between the iPhone 5 and the iPhone 6. You didn't need that much power to read articles, and mobile gaming was something he had been steered away from by his daughter. A slight smile appeared on his face at the thought of his daughter, in stark contrast to the consistent doom and gloom that was always displayed on news sites.

The only good thing about the news was that it was at least relevant. Most of the articles focused on the war in Europe, especially in Poland. Everyone seemed to want to see if Poland would manage to remain independent this time. There were a few focusing around the Pacific and South China Sea, but Japan was seeing most of the action there. Given the choice, American news will always decide to report on Americans. Still, reporting on the war was a step up from the consistent stream of barely relevant peacetime articles apparently designed specifically to make you decide that all humans are inherently evil.

"I had a feeling you'd be here."

Niall shifted his gaze to his right, taking his eyes off of the stream of European war updates interspersed with the latest poll numbers. A great smile came to his face as his gaze fell upon the owner of the voice.

"Shinobu!" Said Niall, setting down his coffee and phone to stand up and pat the man on the shoulder "I'm so glad you're alright! When I heard your ship tangled with the Liaoning, I was so worried! How'd you make it out of that?"

Shinobu was Japanese. As much as Niall hated to think about it (even though it was nothing more than basic human instincts), the first thing he noticed about Shinobu was that fact. The second thing he tended to notice was that he was bald, in fact, Niall had never actually seen a non-bald Shinobu. It was quite a common joke among his friends that he had shaved his hair off because he was a natural blonde and didn't want to be mistaken for a rebellious teenager, but such things were purely the realm of humor. He also happened to be significantly more muscular than Niall.

"They sent some of the helicopters out before the carrier arrived. I was lucky enough to be held on standby on the Izumo, but I ended up in the air just in time for us to be hit with their air wing."

"You fought jets in your helicopters?" Said Niall, eyes widening in surprise "How the hell-"

"They don't tell you not to attack helicopters in training just because they think it would be a waste of ammunition. The Chinese had to disengage so they didn't lose too many planes."

"I'll bet they're the laughingstock of the People's Navy now."

"I got five kills in that battle, it's safe to say that the pilots have been discharged for incompetence."

Niall quickly took on the fabricated emotionless look he tended to use whenever something he thought was impossible happened. He blinked deliberately three times, then reached down into his pocket and pulled out a wallet. Holding it right up in front of both their faces, he carefully pulled out two ten thousand yen bills and a single five thousand yen one. Taking hold of Shinobu's hand, he positioned it horizontally directly between he and Shinobu. Finally, he slammed the money into his hand, all while keeping the same, comedic expression.

"Twenty-five thousand yen?" Said Shinobu quizzically, looking at the money in confusion.

"You won the bet."

Shinobu started to laugh, which only served to further humiliate Niall. After Shinobu had transferred from the Air Self Defense Force to the Maritime SDF, they both just took it for granted that the bet was off. After all, it was doubtful that Japan would ever build an actual aircraft carrier due to the fact that it was flat-out illegal. The only Japanese naval pilots flew anti-submarine helicopters, they weren't supposed to become aces in a day.

"I suppose I did." Said Shinobu, finally done with his laughing "Tell you what, if you end up as a double ace, I'll give you the twenty five thousand back."

"If I do it in a day, you relinquish all bragging rights."

"It's a deal."

The two shook hands, despite the utter implausibility of Niall becoming a double ace. It was as much of a joke as the original bet. After all, neither of them actually thought it made sense to reward five kills with what amounts to twenty bucks. Rewarding ten kills with the same amount was just ridiculous.

"Oh yeah." Continued Shinobu "Your daughter sent this to me, she wanted it to be here when you arrived."

He handed Niall an envelope, the address of which identified it as having come from his family's apartment in New York. His daughter had asked for Shinobu's address a week ago while he was on leave, and he was pretty sure he had figured out why she wasn't willing to just use Shinobu's e-mail. With a sloppy tear he opened the envelope, luckily not ripping the letter inside of it. He stared at it for a moment-seemingly in deep thought-before yelling rather loudly in English.

"DAMMIT!"

"What's wrong?"

"She took the Eastern US! I needed North America's troop bonus!"

"You're playing a game of Risk by snail mail?" Asked Shinobu, chuckling "Why don't you just use e-mail?"

"She thinks it's more fun this way, more suspense."

"I think that's the first time a teenager has chosen the slower option."

The two looked at each other for a moment, both wanting to be on their way but not wanting to be rude by being the first to suggest it. Instead of settling the matter, they just turned and stared at the Sendai for what felt like an eternity. Neither of them had anything they particularly needed to do, but nor did they have any reasons to stay. In the end, Niall was the one who decided to take the risk.

"Well, I should be on my way. Take care of yourself out there." He said, nodding as he shifted his weight towards the door.

"Good luck to you as well, you'll need it if you want me to relinquish those bragging rights."



"You look like you haven't even laid down yet, what on Earth have you been doing?"

Niall's worn-out face stared off into space just barely below eye level through the laptop monitor. Though the dissonance between where he thought he was looking and where it looked like he was happened to be quite small, it was still noticeable to anyone who didn't use video chatting for the majority of their social interaction. Until someone invented an invisible webcam that could float in midair and adjust itself for perfect eye contact, the problem wouldn't ever be properly solved. In the meantime, they would have to deal with the barely but clearly present annoyance.

Both were of a pale complexion, and that was exactly where the similarities ended. She had black hair kept in a bob cut (which everyone just loved to contrast with Niall's ginger side part), not to mention the fact that she was quite clearly taller than him. The only thing they really had in common was their heritage, which was Scottish according to their own parents and various websites that they paid too much for membership on. That, and the fact that neither looked very strong.

"Well I'm glad to see you too, Isla." Said Niall, semi-sarcastically. The tone, however, could easily have been blamed on the fact that he appeared to have just woken up from a midday nap that was just barely too short to do anything but make you more tired.

"Well, you do!" Said Isla "I know it's three in the morning over there, but again, you look like you haven't even tried to sleep."

"I haven't. I've been up this whole time."

"This'll be a fun story." Said Isla "There's not exactly much to do in a studio apartment right next to a Naval base."

"Erm..." Began Niall, scratching the back of his neck "I was kind of analyzing a Risk board. Then I got distracted and watched youtube videos for two hours."

"That sounds like something you'd do. I assume you got the letter from Dione?"

"Yeah." Niall nodded "Shinobu gave it to me, he found me in the Starbucks by the base. It's pretty chilly over here, it's nice to have some quality coffee close by."

"A friendly reminder that we're in New York. It's snowing right now, actually."

"Maybe it's a good thing I'm shipping out tomorr-" Said Niall. He caught his mistake, and took a moment to actually decide to correct it "Today. It's the morning. Well, anyways, it means I get to miss the snow. Oh, speaking of Dione, is she there?"

"No, she went to watch The Day After at her friend's house. Probably for the better, you want to travel in packs in this weather."

"Ah, I suppose it can't be helped." He said, failing spectacularly at hiding his disappointment "It's still a shame, it could be months. We don't have skype on the Reagan."

"There's still email." Said Isla, before she giggled quietly "Look at us, we're complaining about not being able to talk face-to-face from opposite sides of the world while you're at war. If this was the last World War, we'd be waiting weeks or months to even know if we're both still alive."

"I guess we're a bit spoiled." Responded Niall, smiling. Shortly afterwards, however, it gave way to a frown. "I have to wonder, though. Would I, in your place, prefer to wait for the news if you died?"

Both were silent for quite some time. It wasn't an awkward pause, but it had the same components. Neither knew what to say in response to an unexpected comment, but it still couldn't truly be called awkward. It was a foreboding silence, one that everyone knew led to a conversation that would leave a bitter taste in their mouths and a wound on their hearts.

"I guess we need to have that conversation." Said Isla, lowering her head in acceptance of the fact that they had to bite the bullet and get it over with. "Oh, why can't we just say you won't die and pretend that's enough?"

"Because that would leave us feeling even worse."

Isla let out a heavy sigh, finally surrendering to the need.

"How would I tell her?"

"I don't know."

Isla's first instinct was to get angry at Niall's lack of a solution, but she suppressed it better than she usually did. The conversation was too important for an argument. If they disagreed later, she'd have to make sure it became something more of a formal debate. Being hostile early on wouldn't help that at all.

"She's a teenager now, but that just makes things worse. As a kid, I would hide it all behind a curtain of metaphors that just barely got the message across, she'd lean on me for support. Now she's too smart for 'Your daddy is in heaven now', too independent to just hug me as we cry together. She'll know if I'm not upfront about it, if I hold back she'll notice and never forgive me."

"Are you sure things would go better if she was younger?"

"Of course they would, have you ever met a teenager who didn't try to keep everything inside of them? Now she would just go into her room and try to process it, then just end up never talking about it. No matter who you are, that's just too much to keep inside of yourself."

"A while back-when I was in college, I think-my uncle died in the Gulf War. He had a son, maybe two at the time. His mother simply told him 'your dad's dead'. He had no idea what 'dead' meant, whenever someone asked, he would happily explain that his father was dead. People tried to explain it, but he just didn't understand. Every 'he's in heaven now' was met with 'when will he be back?' It was weeks until he finally understood, and until then, his mother could barely take it. Believe me, it's much better for you that she's not his age."

"I understand." Said Isla, unsure of how to react to the anecdote. She couldn't quite imagine a little boy nonchalantly saying "My dad's dead!", it felt like something out of a horror movie. "That doesn't change the fact that this is hard."

"There really isn't much of a choice. You'd have to tell her as soon as possible and as clearly as possible, she'd take anything else as an insult."

"In that case, do your best to make sure I don't have to."

"I wouldn't think of doing anything else."

Niall moved to use his laptop's touchpad to end the call, but the action was quickly suspended by Isla.

"Wait, you answered your own question."

"I did?"

"You wondered if it would be better not to know, then said that we'd just feel worse if we didn't talk about... this. That's the answer. It tends to feel worse to not know."

"I suppose it does."

"Good luck."

The call ended with the annoying bloop sound it always did. It usually wasn't anything but annoying, but this time the sound meant something. This might be the last time she ever saw her husband's face, and even if it wasn't, it could be weeks or months before she did again. Never before has that whimsical bloop been so disheartening.

Sighing, she pulled up her internet browser tabs and continued to click through jobs listings like she had all day. It felt wrong, to just go back to the monotonous grind after that kind of talk, especially with how short it was. There wasn't anything that seemed like the right thing to do after that, even just sitting there doing nothing would leave one feeling empty and exhausted.

Let's just hope I never, ever have to tell her that.

---

"I can barely believe we just saw that for the third time, and I simply can't believe that it's still good!"

The comment could barely be heard over the other conversations going on in the packed subway car, especially with the whir of the engine. School might have gotten out two and a half hours ago, but everyone with a job was just now on their way home. Rush hour in the New York subway wasn't a fun thing to experience, but as Dione knew well, things could have been worse. Still, she had to question the logic in their decision to watch a movie after their early release (their school always let out early on Wednesdays).

"After the travesty that was the Star Trek reboot, I wasn't expecting J.J. to make a Star Wars reboot good." Said Dione, awkwardly trying to turn around so she wasn't staring at some stranger's back. "I guess this time he actually watched the source material."

It had already been a workweek since Dione's father had talked with her mom, and six since she herself had been able to talk with him. She'd gotten an email just yesterday, sure, but it really wasn't the same. Just the usual impersonal updates on who was doing a terrible job at hiding their relationship, what movies they had available, whether the sea was calm or not. Sure, it was all just your usual small talk, but getting it over lines of text made it so much less. It felt more like a textbook than a conversation.

There were, however, still some good conversations, ones that reminded both of them that they were talking with a real person and not some robot. The best was indisputably an hour-long chat through g-mail discussing the plot of The Force Awakens. Niall had seen it in California the day after he left, but she had seen it two days later. There hadn't been time for him to talk about it in detail thanks to the sheer amount of things he had to catch up on that took out of the relatively short period in which he could use the internet. A friend of his, luckily, had given up his timeslot to let the conversation take place.

"The lightsaber cross guards are still ridiculous, though." Replied Caroline, ignoring the fact that Dione still couldn't actually see her. "Oh yeah, did you watch the GOP debate yesterday?"

"Of course I did, the debates are my main source of entertainment at this point."

"Same here, it's just so hilarious how they pretend to answer the questions while they're really just taking potshots at each other."

"That's the best part!" Said Dione, holding back a giggle at what she was about to say. "Remember the bit when what's-her-name managed to slip a joke about Trump's hair into her explanation on how she was going to fix the economy?"

"Yeah, Fiorina said it. My favorite part was when Trump turned the same question about the economy into a rant about immigrants, that was just hilarious!"

"Trump in general is funny. The fact that he might end up as the nominee is completely overshadowed by how absolutely over the top he is in everything that he does. I just can't really take him seriously, even though he's dead serious himself."

She'd given up trying to turn around, instead playing with her scarf. She'd gotten it from Caroline for her eighth birthday, just a few weeks after she'd moved to New York. They were both from outside the state, and ended up being friends simply by virtue of the fact that they always sat on the sidelines together. Both considered that birthday the official beginning of their friendship, and remained extremely proud of the fact that they'd shared most of their classes since.

"Honestly, the President could declare themselves Emperor of North America and I'd just add a funny caption to his face and post it on Tumblr."

"I wonder if politicians will ever realize that they're just a reality show sitcom to half of America."

"Maybe they did, and the antics of this election have been the result of their sudden self-consciousness."

The two shared a laugh, drowned out by the rest of the talking in the virtual sardine can that was the New York subway at rush hour.

"Hey, isn't this your stop?"

"I don't know, my upwards gaze extends to this guy's head. What stop is it?"

"Pelham Bay Park."

"Yep, that's it. My bike's just outside the station. Probably. I mean, let's be honest, anyone with some good wire cutters could steal it."

"I remember when that happened, it made for some of your best snapchats."

The conversation was interrupted by the pre-recorded voice of a woman giving the passengers the obvious information that the doors were opening, which prompted Dione to stand up a bit straighter in preparation for exiting before she got stuck on the train back to the last station. A flood of people began to pour out of the train, a sight to be expected, since it was the last stop of the line before it headed back.

"See you tomorrow!" She said, following the crowd out into the station.



Men in black jackets encircled the plane, inspecting every nook and cranny of the F/A-18. The muffled screech of jet engines could be heard even in the cockpit as they stood by, the pilots within awaiting their turn at the catapult. Only visible if the pilot looked back were the ordnance men in their red uniforms, attaching missiles to the plane's wings. Niall went over the operation in his head, barely managing to keep his mind from wandering. His training had drilled him to be stone-cold in combat, not before combat.

So... spearhead the attack on Yulin, clear a path for the helicopters. Protect them while they take out the subs, then we cover their retreat while the fleet pounds the base with everything its got. A simple yet solid plan. He sighed, looking down at his instruments. The only question now is at which stage this all goes to hell.

He didn't have time for conjecture. A woman in a green uniform ran out from behind the plane, and a hand signal set off a series of actions like clockwork. He brought the throttle to full power and took his feet off of the brakes, moving all of the plane's control surfaces in under a second immediately afterwards to verify that they were operational. Not noticing anything unusual himself, he saluted the catapult officer to confirm that he was ready for the launch.

The black jackets of the final checkers (whom Niall liked to call the "men in black" in his head) scurried away from the plane, and a thumbs up to the catapult officer told Niall that he was all clear. He himself couldn't see it, but he knew that the catapult officer was almost certainly signaling the catapult operator that the conditions were perfect. This was confirmed when the hold-back on the catapult snapped in half and the plane was launched forwards, shoving him back into his seat as if he was on a roller coaster made by a company that had a blatant disregard for safety regulations.

Music started playing in his head-it always did when he flew off of the carrier. It wasn't exactly the most professional thing to have going through your mind while going into combat, and if his CO knew about it he'd be thoroughly chewed out. He just couldn't help it, which he (perhaps unfairly) blamed on Dione and her love of metal. To be perfectly honest, he didn't have that much of a problem. He'd never lost his focus because of it, and he doubted he was the only one. He just wished that it wasn't always the same song, and that said song was actually about Navy pilots and not the Battle of Britain.

Jump in the cockpit and start up the engines!
Remove all the wheel blocks,
there's no time to waste!
Gathering speed as we head down the runway,
gotta get airborne before it's too late!

As he climbed to meet the rest of his squadron, he continued to chastise himself on his choice of background music for the band in his head to play. A radio message from the squadron leader would have snapped him out of it, if there had been anything to snap out of. It wasn't as though the music was an actual distraction, after all, he was a pilot. If a pilot gets distracted, then there's something wrong with that pilot.

"We'll be taking the center." He said, his age concealed by his young-sounding voice "If I've been half-competent, you'll know not to rely on anything that even involves satellites. The Chinese could take down our whole network if they weren't afraid of also taking down every other thing up there."

Niall joined his squadron as they continued to climb to combat altitude, streaking towards the enemy the whole time. He'd been in combat plenty of times before-he couldn't count how many bombs he'd dropped in Afghanistan-but it was an entirely different can of worms this time. Al-Qaeda didn't have interceptors, nor did it have an aircraft carrier and a full fleet to support it. He might have had the countless hours of training, and the similarly large number of hours spent in practice engagements, but never the real thing. He'd be lying terribly if he said he wasn't nervous.

Running, scrambling, flying
Rolling, turning, diving, going in again!
Run, live to fly, fly to live, do or die.
Run, live to fly, fly to live, Aces high!

The song kept on repeating itself over and over again in his head, filling the endless wait for enemy contact. In a way, it was worse than combat. In combat, he knew exactly what he was doing and exactly how to act. At this point, all he could do was sit there, fully alert, waiting for an enemy plane to show up on his radar or to hear the alarm telling him an enemy plane had locked onto him. Constant alertness means constant anticipation, and constant anticipation means a constant flow of adrenaline. It was all he could to do keep his arms and legs in place. Instead of fidgeting, he just crossed and uncrossed his toes over and over again in an attempt to relieve stress.

The origins of the action were embarrassing, to say the least-Dione had walked in on a conversation between him and Isla about how twitchy he was in combat when she was five or so. Right when they were bracing themselves to come up with some implausible explanation for the overabundance of the word "die" in the conversation, she mentioned that crossing her toes always helped her sit still. He'd done it in flight ever since.

A series of dots suddenly appeared on the screen to the left of the plane's joystick, radar signatures. Enemy planes, almost certainly from the Liaoning. Obviously, there wasn't any "green dots good, red dots bad" system on the radar. That was purely the realm of video games that didn't expect players to be trained combat pilots. Still, there wasn't much else that an arrow made up of aircraft coming straight from an enemy Naval base could be.

"We outnumber them by four, we can sort for this one." Said the squadron leader, his voice completely serene despite the situation. "Akiyama, Yates, Kijek, Hudson, Heffernan, Flanagan-you're on your own. Adler is with Rowe, Krämer is with Junge, Mingo is with Aritza, Sobol is with Lister."

Hearing his last name second to last with Sobol, Niall immediately knew what to do. Sorting into twos without any explicit instructions always meant that one pilot would fire a missile at a bad angle just to scare the enemy by giving them a lock and a missile to worry about while the other pilot fired a missile with the intent to kill, guiding it perfectly the entire way at the risk of getting hit by a missile themselves. To make things easier, it had been agreed upon beforehand that the first name was the one who would go for the bad shot while the other member of the group went for the kill (unless otherwise specified, obviously).

Unfortunately for VFA-102 (lovingly known as the Diamondbacks), China's strategy for holding superiority over American forces focused on having the best missiles on Earth, which was a goal they had regrettably accomplished. Their standard air-to-air missile had a longer range, which gave them the first shot advantage. Given the utter futility in trying to fire first, all the pilots chose to hold their fire until the enemy launched a missile.

For the pairs, it was a given that whoever was locked onto would fire the decoy missile, no matter what their preassigned role was. It may have seemed like too quick of a departure from the plan, but had it not been carried out, multiple pilots could have been lost. In some scenarios plans and orders came before reactions and survival instinct, but this was not one of them.

"I'm painted." Reported Sobol in the monotone that pilots were so famous for. He immediately began to maneuver to avoid the missile headed towards him, which put Niall in the lucky position of getting to have his chances of continued survival reduced to the same probability of getting tails in a coin toss. It might have been unquestionably the "cooler" position to be in, but looking cool doesn't mean anything if you die immediately afterwards. Besides, it never feels good to know you're about to end a life.

Niall's instruments informed him that he had succeeded in locking onto one of the enemy planes, but he didn't take the shot. Though technically not that bad of a move, it was generally better to have the decoy come in before the actual killing blow. Otherwise, you've really done nothing but more or less waste a missile. Which, aside from costing thousands of dollars, also represents a possible kill.

Sobol fired off his decoy missile, choosing to temporarily position himself so that the angle wasn't absolutely abysmal. Though he would still have to guide it from numerous terrible positions, firing it off at a good angle made it just a little bit more likely to hit. It was a minuscule difference, but there were countless instances in such battles where the missile meant to be the killing blow missed, while the decoy hit. Even the slightest change in chances could mean the difference between life and death for a pilot, and that difference could make or break an operation.

Niall, seeing Sobol's missile, fired off his own. He had barely any chance to make evasive maneuvers now, unless he was willing to compromise the accuracy of his shot. Just moments later, an enemy missile came streaking towards Sobol's plane. He wasted no time in dropping chaff and rolling to the side and down away from the missile, narrowly avoiding certain death as the missile detonated in the cloud of aluminium pellets. Niall kept pressing forward, not yet locked onto by the enemy.

What felt like an eternity passed, and the screen which displayed enemy locks remained reassuringly empty. He was still outside of visual range, most certainly too far for an infrared tracking missile. Unless the enemy got a radar lock, he was perfectly safe. Finally, his own lock faded as the enemy plane plummeted to the ground. He'd just achieved his first air-to-air kill, as had two of his fellow pilots. Whom, he couldn't be sure of. The sudden change in plans brought about by the Chinese using their technological superiority made it impossible to know exactly who's kills they were.

The sound of an explosion overpowered the sound of Niall's own engines, instinctively making him look over to his left. He honestly didn't know what to expect, after all, critical thinking isn't one's strong suit when presented with a deafening sound. The view of a third aircraft falling to the ground confronted him, one of his own comrades. He counted to five, then looked away. There wasn't any sign of an ejection seat or parachute, whomever had been piloting the plane was dead.

"Lister reporting, one of ours is down. Over." He reported, not even a hint of emotion in his voice. Training had beaten it out of him. He wasn't emotionless-not by a longshot-but in combat, an emotional voice could mean an unclear message, and nothing good could ever come out of an unclear message.

"Copy, Kijek reporting. That was Hudson, the missile came at a bad angle for chaff. Over and out."

As if nothing had happened, the squadron performed the attack once more. Sobol fired off another decoy, and Niall let loose his second and last long-range missile. They'd be entering visual range any second, and nobody wanted to let anything go to waste. The enemy fighters fired off their last few missiles as well, but didn't see them through, instead choosing to attempt to evade the incoming barrage. It was really no more useful than throwing a handful of rocks with your eyes closed, but even a blind man can score a hit through sheer luck.

Luckily for Squadron 102, the Chinese turned out to not be that lucky. All of the enemy shots missed, but one of their planes went down thanks to a missile that Niall guessed had come from either Akiyama or Yates. With all their long-range ammunition exhausted, both groups rocketed towards each other, waiting for visual contact. Though still technically in combat, there wasn't any weapons fire or evasive maneuvers, just waiting like before they had detected the enemy. Niall kept himself locked on the same enemy he had fired on last time, ready to open up with his cannons or heat-seeking missiles at a moment's notice.

"Akiyama reporting, visual contact at 12 o'clock."

Once again, not a hint of emotion.

"Roger" Was the only response Niall sent and the only one he needed to send. He scanned the sky, finding the enemy aircraft within a moments notice.

"All pilots, head on! Head on!" Said the squadron leader, not quite yelling, but certainly speaking louder than normal.

Knowing exactly what he was saying, the squadron flew right into what was almost certainly the enemy group. Niall was the first to open fire, launching a heat-seeking missile at the one enemy fighter he could clearly see. Luckily for him, their suspicions had been right. The Liaoning was there, and with it its air wing of Shenyang J-15 naval fighters, which were never designed to have a conservative heat profile. The missile hit perfectly, without the enemy pilot even knowing it was coming. He was luckier than Hudson, and after a few seconds the white fabric of a parachute silhouetted itself against the sky. His second kill, and a damn lucky one at that. Had the pilot deployed chaff, he would have missed.

The five remaining enemy aircraft came at them from one side, downing two planes with their cannons (it was hard to get an infrared lock on an F/A-18 unless you were right behind it). Both ejected successfully, cannons being what they always were. The enemy swooped in behind the remaining planes, all of whom dropped flares to fool the heat-seeking missiles. It was the perfect call, which they learned when ten missiles passed below them, their locks lost. One pilot, whomever it was, was just a little too slow on the call and was downed. Five seconds, no parachute. Perhaps another young man's first kill.

"Lister, Sobol, Fredrick, Freeman, go for it." Ordered the squadron leader.

"Wilco!" Called out Niall, steeling himself for the turn that he knew was coming.

Bursts of cannon fire flew past the planes, putting holes in a couple wings. Niall and the other three planes pulled Immelmann turns, passing above the enemy fighters as the rest of the squadron continued its evasive maneuvers. The maneuver was already harsh enough on the body, but nothing a trained combat pilot couldn't easily handle. The only concern was what came next.

Niall pointed his plane's nose straight down, careening towards the ground for a mere few seconds. In a sharp movement, he pulled the nose back up and brought himself back into level flight behind the enemy. The maneuver shoved him abruptly down into his seat with the power of multiple times Earth's gravity. Ignoring the momentary pain, he fired off a missile at the plane that was now situated directly in front of him, downing it within a split second. His third kill, an impressive quota for just a few hours of combat.

His comrades opened fire with their own missiles, downing two more enemy planes. Niall didn't check for parachutes. The enemy, meanwhile, had downed three other planes. The remaining few enemy planes took a gamble and began their own Immelmann turns, hoping to position themselves behind the four planes that had broken off. Niall braced for enemy fire, his hands ready to begin evasive maneuvers.

Before he had to, however, the planes that had stayed ahead to draw enemy fire performed their own Immelmann turns. You didn't often see three of the same maneuver performed within a few minutes, especially not one as fundamental as the Immelmann. The perfectly-timed maneuver put them right behind the enemy planes, at which point they fired a barrage of cannon fire (not to mention a few missiles). The enemy planes dropped behind Niall and his group, a few uncounted parachutes opening. The enemy squadron had been brought down.

"Good job, everyone. Make sure HQ knows where our boys went down, it'd be a damn shame if someone survived their ejection only to drown in the ocean."

Below them helicopters from the Izumo were scanning the ocean, looking for the submarines stationed at the nearby Naval base. One of them stopped, and shortly afterwards about five of them opened fire on the water. A few moments later, they stopped and waited for a tense few seconds before dispersing to continue combing the sea. They'd got one, a very welcome victory for the allied fleet. Yulin was China's main submarine base, and the one where they kept the ones armed with nuclear missiles. Each one they sunk was another blow to their nuclear deterrent.

Niall sighed, relaxing the tiniest bit in his cockpit. It was a job well done, and he'd gotten three kills-more than he could have ever hoped for in his first real air-to-air engagement. At this point, someone always congratulated everyone alongside the squadron leader, and usually cracked a joke or two to lighten the mood. Every once in a while, the joke fell flat thanks to just how serious the mission had been, but it was always well-meaning. This was the perfect time for a joke, something to make everyone feel a bit more optimistic, better about what they'd done. Niall was waiting for it, but it never came. He quickly figured out why.

"I'll miss Hudson." He said, this time without the emotionless monotone he was trained to use.



The school's blacktop was covered with snow, dotted by footprints as students crisscrossed it on their way to the surrounding benches and tables. A dozen or so teenagers were having a snowball fight in the middle of it, completely ignoring the idea of eating lunch. To be fair, more than a few probably just didn't have a lunch. Luckily for them, the world had decided that it might as well provide them a distraction in the form of what was shaping up to be one hell of a fun snowball fight.

Dione sat on the sidelines of the spectacle, every once in a while looking up to consider joining in. She opted instead to eat her lunch, after all, she was quite hungry after last night. Isla had been out interviewing for a job at the Freedom Tower, and she had neglected to actually have dinner due to her engagement in the story of Fallout 4. She also hadn't had breakfast, mainly because she had stayed up until two playing the game and couldn't be bothered to wake up in time for it. Pathetic? Extremely. Worth it? Most definitely. She'd made it a quarter of the way through her second playthrough.

She kept on pulling her scarf down from over her mouth to eat, then quickly putting it back up again after creating a white cloud of moisture with her breath. It was still freezing cold outside, and she didn't spend too much time outside to begin with, instead preferring the warmth of indoor heating. Even so, she always liked winter weather. It might make your fingers freeze without gloves and force you to constantly wear a coat, but it was nonetheless soothing in a way. As such, New York was the perfect place for her. It might not snow overwhelmingly often, but the freezing cold and dreary gray sky were actually her favorite parts. And New York had plenty of freezing days where the sun was obscured by a hazy sky.

"Watching the boys play? And here I thought you only had eyes for Allen."

Dione looked up to see her best friend, Caroline. She faked an annoyed sigh, the comedic value of which was somewhat diminished by the scarf around her mouth. The exaggerated eye-rolling, however, got the point across just fine. She lowered the scarf before speaking, not wanting to muffle her words.

"The winner wins my royal hand in marriage." She said sarcastically, wiping some of the snow off the bench to make room for Caroline. "Long line in the cafeteria?"

Dione and Caroline, although best friends, didn't look at all similar beyond the fact that they were both girls. Caroline always kept her dirty blonde hair well-combed, while Dione's copper-like hair tended to be so unkempt that it could easily harbor a bronze-age civilization without anyone actually noticing. Caroline was easily taller as well, after all, Dione had inherited most of her looks from her dad. In stark contrast to nearly every other human being with ginger hair, however, she had not a single freckle.

"I envy you people who have time in the morning to pack lunches."

"Time in the morning?" Said Dione, before breaking out in a laughing fit which filled the air around her with moisture from her breath "I pack exclusively non-perishables before I go to bed."

"Well, that's still technically packing it in the morning, given how late you stay up."

"Can't argue with that." She responded, before taking a bite out of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich she had packed, which was now more liquid than solid. "Did you manage to finish your update this time?"

Caroline stuck her fork into a small pile of unseasoned mashed potatoes, swallowing the whole bite in a somewhat annoyed manner before responding.

"They turned 'Procrastinating Caroline' into a local meme. I have a great idea for the next installment, but the homework's been killing me. I might do it tomorrow."

"I know the feeling. I'm still trying to come up with a plot for my magazine submission, and the deadline for that is in two weeks. I'm waiting until the weekend, maybe Santa gives me an early Christmas present in the form of a saw to cut the writer's block."

"Damn, Christmas break is right around the corner. That just feels wrong, didn't we just start school, like, yesterday?"

"I know right? It's too early for this!"

"Oh yeah, what did he say?"

Dione stopped eating mid-bite, slowly chewing and swallowing the soggy peanut butter and jelly sandwich that had morphed into a single blob of non-Newtonian fluid since being packed. After doing so, she sighed and looked down.

"Of course you didn't ask him out." Said Caroline, slapping her palm to her forehead in disappointment.

"Oh come on, it isn't as if he actually likes me." Said Dione, more defensive than one might expect from such a pessimistic comment. "Allen and I have been friends for quite some time, I'm not going to end that by asking him out when he doesn't even like me."

"Dione, we already talked about this. He totally likes you."

"No, he really doesn't."

"Look, isn't it worse to let it lay in uncertainty? You can either figure it out instantly and maybe be hurt, or live the rest of your life wondering if things might have gone differently."

"I'd choose the latter."

"Then your life must be pretty stressful. Just trust me on this one, ask him out today. No matter what he says, you'll have your answer. Even if the answer isn't what you want it to be, at least you asked."

"But if it's no, what'll happen to what we have right now? I'm happy with it, and this just risks losing that."

"You're happy, but not satisfied. Besides, Allen is sweet and easygoing. Even if he says no, I doubt your friendship would fall apart."

"Can you be sure though?"

"He calls the guy who is actively campaigning for Jeb Bush his best friend, meanwhile, he's making calls asking for donations to freaking Bernie Sanders. His policy seems to be 'I disagree, wanna play a video game or something?' Again, kind of a d-" She cut the remark short, realizing how mean describing someone as a doormat might sound. "He's really easygoing, trust me, you'll be better off if you ask him."

"Oh, alright." Said Caroline, making the reluctance clear in her voice "I'll do it tomorrow."

"Nuh-uh, you're going to do it after school today."

"I'm doing it tomorrow, or else you don't get the Cheetos."

Caroline closed her mouth, which was already open to fire back with a spiel about how Dione would just "forget" about the whole thing.

"You brought Cheetos today?"

"I don't know, but I'll bet the chances are higher if you don't give a full hour-long persuasive speech."

"Okay, do it tomorrow. Now give me the Cheetos."



The sound of the jet engine at half-power had nearly faded into nothingness, having been continuously droning on for nearly an hour. The Naval Base stood in ruins below the squadron of fighters, still smoking from the missile strikes. The operation was supposed to be over by now, planned to be nothing more than a short hit-and-run. Instead, it had turned into an all-out naval battle. The helicopters hadn't managed to take out the second nuclear submarine, and plenty of conventionally-fueled ones continuously struck at the allied fleet. It would be a victory, ,but a costly victory. The worse part was that there was nothing a fighter squadron could do about it.

"Incoming." Said the voice of Kijek, breaking the excruciating calm. "Twenty-four planes. Approaching from inland."

A two to one advantage versus us. Thought Niall. But not enough to combat the whole air wing, what the hell are they doing?

Numerous dots appeared on Niall's own radar screen, the enemy planes reported by Kijek. He didn't break from the idle formation the squadron was in, after all, they had expended all of their long-range weaponry and quite a few short-range missiles. If they planned on engaging, they'd need to pull of one hell of a miracle.

"We're engaging. We were ordered not to let anything through, and we're not going to."

Despite his personal objections, Niall followed the orders and broke out of the idle formation to engage the enemy fighters. The enemy could devote two planes to each of their own, meaning that he'd have to make perfect split-second decisions if he wanted to survive. He might have always been a bit lucky, but not lucky enough to avoid four missiles. He kept one eye on the sky ahead and the other on his screens, not wanting to miss any lock-on warning.

The thrust of the plane's engine at full throttle pushed him back into his seat as the squadron streaked towards the enemy. As he had expected, two red dots appeared on his right-side screen. He began to fly his plane in a wave-like motion in an attempt to hopefully avoid being hit. A mere thirty seconds later (an eternity for a fighter pilot in combat), the missile came. Knowing it was a decoy, he just pushed his nose down and spun to the side. He braced for the killshot, scanning his radar screens and the sky for a sign of it.

Nothing showed up though, the other enemy pilot having wasted his long-range missile lock. That's when it really hit him. The enemy didn't intend to end up in a serious battle with his squadron, the one missile they decided to use was fired at him to keep them all guessing. Instead of focusing on scanning for incoming missiles, he turned his mind to planning a strategy for the visual-range engagement. They were most likely newer models, so he couldn't rely on a shoddy heat profile. In a head-on fight he'd have to rely on cannons, so getting behind them was a massive priority. Once again, the best way to do so was a good old-fashioned Immelmann.

"Visual contact." Said Yates,

Niall refocused his attention to the sky, and sure enough, there was the enemy. All twenty-four of them, bearing down on the weakened squadron. He immediately locked onto the plane right in front of him, repositioned his plane to point at the ideal targeting point as calculated by his onboard computer. The moment the heading marker and the aiming mark aligned, he fired a burst of cannon fire. The plane spun out of control, its pilot desperately trying to right it in order to bail out. He quickly switched targets, after all, firing on a plane going down had similar implications to putting holes in a parachute.

Four He thought, eyes widening. I'm almost an ace, in just a single battle.

With lightning instincts, he pointed his plane at yet another target and fired a burst. No connection. Seconds later, he fired another at the same target, downing it. Much to his annoyance, he then passed the enemy formation, missing his chance to take out another plane. He immediately pulled up into an Immelmann turn, planning to strike the planes from above with his remaining missiles. The realization finally struck him in the middle of the turn.

I'm an ace.

After completing the turn, he aimed downwards at the enemy squadron to find that four more of their planes had been shot down. He had rushed in behind them earlier than the rest of his squadron, and was in the perfect position to strike.

"Better have the twenty bucks ready, Shinobu!"

Without a second thought, he launched both his remaining missiles and locked on to the third nearest plane (not wanting to waste bullets on a plane that was about to be downed by a missile anyways). One of the enemy pilots deployed chaff just in time, the other wasn't so lucky, and his plane's engine was completely obliterated by the hit. The blast sent him spinning headfirst towards the ground. He wasn't going to be ejecting. A couple bursts of cannon fire brought down his locked target, and he quickly switched to the plane his missile had failed to hit. Not waiting for the lock, he fired a stream of bullets in a wide area in front of the plane, ripping a hole in its right wing. Another burst, this time coordinated with the automatic targeting system, brought it down.

He dipped below the enemy planes, this time circling around them to bleed off speed until he was behind them once again. It was a vomit-inducing maneuver, but it was certainly better than flashing his widest profile at enemy cannons. Finding himself right on the tail of the rightmost plane of their formation, he fired another stream of bullets. His eighth kill of the day. At the rate he was going, it was almost inevitable that he'd be a double ace. It was nothing more than a streak of amazing luck, but he was going to be a double ace in a day.

I wonder if Erich Hartmann just ended up getting lucky. He thought as he prepared a lock on what would be his ninth kill.

"I'm seeing a convoy moving in from the northwest, headed towards the shore." Said Kijek, just as Niall pulled the trigger, downing the enemy plane "Looked military, someone ought to check it out."

"I'm out of missiles." Responded Niall "I can go."

"Do it." Said the squadron leader. "That convoy could be carrying anything, we're not taking a risk here."

Niall turned away from the fight, taking comfort in the knowledge that he might have, through sheer luck, turned it into a winnable one. He re-oriented his plane towards the northeast, keeping an eye on the ground for any sign of the convoy that had been spotted. It could have been just Kijek seeing things, but if it wasn't and he hadn't flown out to check, God knows what might happen. It could be anything from a medical team to a bunch of nuclear missiles about to pound Japan into dust. Not that a nuclear war was likely, after all, if one missile launches, all of them do. Nobody wanted to cause a mass extinction.

I guess I'll just have to wait a bit for those twenty-five bucks.

After a few minutes of searching, he found them. A dozen enemy vehicles, moving towards the shoreline. One of them was a large truck, a mobile missile launch site. There wasn't any easy way to tell what kind of missile it was carrying, but it was obviously one of their "carrier killers". A land-to-sea missile designed a few years ago to destroy enemy warships from well inland. The only reason the allied Navy was still afloat was because satellites kept eyes on every single mobile missile launch site China had, if that wasn't the case, every last ship would be destroyed right in its berth.

"It's a mobile launch site, probably carrying a DF-12."

Moments after he sent the message, the convoy abruptly stopped, spooked by the presence of his plane. The missile began to slowly tilt upward, moving into launch position.

"We'll send a ground attack squadron." Said the squadron leader "Mark the location."

"There's no time, they're setting up!" He replied, the emotionless monotone installed in him by training breaking up. There was no doubt it would be aimed at the Reagan, and if it hit, the ship went down.

We should've sent someone who still had missiles. He thought, before leaning back into his seat. There was only one way the carrier survived, and it wasn't at all favorable to him.

"Shit." He muttered, pushing his throttle up to military speed and circling around. "I'm ramming it."

There wasn't anyone who voiced opposition, but there wasn't anyone who liked it. Still, they knew there was no way to avoid it. If he didn't take out the missile launcher, thousands of people would die and the battle would be lost. It was simply the only option.

I should've written up my response to her invasion of Scandinavia before the battle. He thought as he turned his plane to face the missile launcher, rocketing towards it faster than the speed of sound. He took a big gulp, not at all prepared for what came next.

A sharp tug on a handle below his seat deafened him with the sound of the plane's canopy being blown off with explosives, giving way to the sound of whooshing air. A split second later his chin was slammed into his chest as his seat rocketed up into the air, his legs narrowly missing the cockpit instruments. Seconds later, the drogue chute of his ejection seat deployed. It all happened too fast for him to notice what was going on, but that told him what he had to do.

He immediately pulled at the cord that cut the chute's wire, then pulled on the one that opened the main chute. It was a hell of a gamble, though he was too low to use the drogue chute, the main one could easily rip off and leave him hitting the ground at speeds faster than sound. Even if he did survive, he'd have some major injuries. If not for his seat and gear, he'd be suffocating as his arms were torn off. At the moment of ejection, he flat-out couldn't breath due to the g-forces. Now he got to look forward to broken bones from a high-speed rendezvous with the ground.

Thankfully, the main chute didn't snap off, which he confirmed by the fact that he wasn't dead yet. A few moments later, he fell through the tree branches and hit the ground. Hard. The seat landed on its side, and he tried to remove his restraints. His arms wouldn't move. Panicking, he looked down at one. It was a shredded mass of flesh, bone, and blood. He was absolutely horrified for a moment as the pain rushed into him, but it was soon dulled by his sheer ecstasy at still breathing. He'd survived something he really, really shouldn't have.

The happiness was broken when he heard the rustling of leaves behind him. He couldn't look thanks to his shredded arm, but it was quite obvious who they were. It was against the Geneva Conventions to kill a pilot parachuting from his plane, but the law didn't exactly cover what to do if said pilot had only ejected because he didn't want to perform a suicide attack. He didn't doubt that it would be easy to make it seem like he'd bailed out with hostile intent, and could therefore be killed. With all the branches, he couldn't even see the shadow of whoever was behind him. If they did plan to kill him, he wouldn't even see it coming.

"Fǒu! Fǒu!"

The screaming came with the sound of more rustling leaves, and the next thing he knew, there was a gunshot. He closed his eyes at the sound, fully expecting to die instantly. He didn't feel anything though. For a moment, he wondered if the universe was merciful enough to take away the pain of death.

"Tāmen tuīchū hé dǎodàn! Jiéshùle!" Said the same man who had been screaming earlier.

The gunshot had made it clear that they were soldiers, but Niall had no idea what they were saying. He didn't know a word of Chinese, for all he knew, they could be discussing whether to kill him or take him prisoner.

"Hé dǎodàn?" Asked the man who Niall thought was the first soldier to find him. His voice was quivering, hopefully a sign that he wasn't going to shoot again. "W-wèishéme ne? Tāmen wèishéme yào nàme zuò ne?"

"Měiguó tuīchū tāmen de, ránhòu èluósī. Jiéshùle, jiéshùle..." At this point, the man was clearly in tears. Not happy ones either, he was devastated. It wasn't the voice of a man who had failed his mission, it was the voice of a man who had just seen everything he loved burnt to dust before him.

"Wèishéme ne?"

"Wǒ bù zhīdào! Zhǐyào bù shāle tā!"

"Wèishéme ne?" Yelled the other man, less sorrowful and more angry. "Tāmen shāle wǒmen suǒyǒu rén! Měi gèrén! Tāmen shāle dàjiā!"

"Tā méiyǒu zuò dào zhè yīdiǎn! Zhè shì tā de zhèngfǔ, méiyǒu rén huì xiǎng zhège! Bǎ qiāng fàngxià!"

Whatever had been said, it made one of them drop their gun. Footsteps followed as one of them came around to where Niall could see them. Only the legs and hands of the man were visible, but they were telling. Their pants were torn and blood tickled down their hands, they'd run right through the forest without even trying to avoid branches and thorns. The man reached down to take off Niall's helmet, then removed his straps. Even as he hauled his body out of the seat, Niall couldn't get a look at his face. All he heard was sobbing.

Niall was finally set down, and finally saw the man's face. He was rather lanky, and had short, black hair. He was, after all, a Chinese man in the army. The sobs weren't just in his head either, the man was quite clearly crying, and not at all softly. His face was twisted into an expression of absolute devastation that it would chill the soul of anyone who looked at it, and Niall was no exception. The man was so incredibly sad, and he had no idea why.

"Stick" He said weakly, pointing to a twig lying on the ground with his now-freed left arm (which was luckily still functioning). "Give"

Despite the fact that he didn't speak any Chinese, he could read it. Anyone who read Japanese could read about eighty percent of Chinese, as they both shared most of their characters. There was still a way to communicate with his captors, he just hoped it didn't require knowledge of the twenty percent of Chinese that was completely different. The man was able to understand, and handed him the twig. With his good hand, he began to draw a single character on the ground. It was only the word "what", but he hoped the idea would get across.

Much to his dismay, the man looked at it in confusion. Apparently, it wasn't shared between the two languages. He wiped away the drawing, replacing it with a simple question mark. The man nodded, and pulled the twig out of his hand. Apparently noticing that he only knew Japanese, the man drew only three characters, hoping that the message would be simple enough.

The first one was a cross with two more arms below the horizontal line, followed by a vaguely z-shaped figure above the curved line of a half-circle with a single line protruding from the center. He didn't know what it was in Chinese, but in Japanese it was the character "Kaku", a character he knew well because it was both the name of a renowned physicist and also used in the (now very often thrown-around) phrase "Kaku heiki". Nuclear weapons.

His stomach twisted into a knot at the thought, bile flowed into his mouth before he just barely managed to swallow it. He tried to dismiss it, telling himself no one would dare use nuclear weapons. One of them being launched meant all of them being launched. Mutually Assured Destruction. It seemed like the only logical conclusion that something terrible had happened, that the underlying fear of everyone that knew the full gravity of the situation had come to pass. Even so, there were times where the truth was much easier to accept than what it looked like it had to be. He was sure it was such a time.

The next character he didn't know, but the third one he did. It was a part of the latter phrase. He didn't need to know the second character, it was obvious now. His luck was over. Their luck was over. The horsehair had been snipped and the sword had fallen on the Kings of the Earth. It was exactly what he had feared it was.

He'd always wondered how he would react to such news, what he would do if he knew everything he had done was in vain. He'd imagined himself doing almost everything. Going mad, destroying everything near him in anger, cowering in fear for what could be the last moments of his life. He never imagined himself doing what he was about to do.

He just started crying.



The classroom was filled with the sound of students typing on their laptops, despite the fact that there wasn't actually any reason for them to have them out at the time. The teacher was just droning on about the rubric for a project, probably. Nobody was actually listening. It was something the students tended to like about the new model the school used; now they could procrastinate in class. The wonders of technology never ceased.

At least half the class was engaged in an online chat of some kind. Skype, google, IRC, everyone was doing something that had absolutely nothing at all to do with the class. It generally worked out just fine, since all the teachers just put the work online. The "Flipped Model" so many Charter schools had taken up had become "Do all the work at home, have fun at school". Not that anybody was complaining, now they didn't have to put effort into hiding their communications. Seemingly legitimate work was just an alt-tab away.

Dione was continually spamming the google chat she happened to be in with the cover of a book she'd recently read, "Salt: A World History." A title so dull one had to wonder if it was a satire. Interspersed between the never-ending stream of pictures were pieces of what had probably been an argument at some point. Since nobody could actually read the other side's responses through the flood of salt jokes, they'd started to just either send obscenities or random statements in all caps to get their point across. Said point being "I'm mad for some reason!"

Yet another google chat on her screen was filled mostly with jokes comparing the Russian invasion of Finland to the original Winter War, right down to the unbelievably good sniper. The rest of said chat was a serious conversation about how smart it actually was to completely ignore class in favor of procrastination. The irony was completely and absolutely lost, as was any resemblance of both chats to a single, coherent conversation.

Just as she was in the process of actually attempting to diffuse the oddly humorous excuse for an argument, the sound of a civil defense siren began to blare. For a moment, everyone just looked up, confused. There wasn't a hurricane coming, in fact, it wasn't even the right tone for a hurricane warning. Its pitch went up and down-like an air raid siren from a WWII movie. Nobody really knew what it meant, but they understood that it was something serious. Civil defense sirens don't just malfunction.

"The hell?" Said one of her classmates, speaking for everyone present so they didn't have to embarrass themselves.

"It's an air raid warning." Said Dione, still not entirely sure what was going on "I don't have the slightest clue why its going off though."

Nobody would attack a civilian target in this day and age. She thought to herself. For what was probably the first time in the day, everyone looked at the teacher, expecting him to confirm that it was a drill.

"Someone go to Miss Nicholson's class." He said "Nobody told me about an air raid drill."

Dione jumped out of her seat without actually volunteering, but being closest to the door, nobody challenged it. Miss Nicholson always had the radio on, being the art teacher, she had an excuse. If this wasn't some kind of prank, her class would know. Given the situation, it was either that or an unannounced drill. After all, if there really was an attack, you wouldn't be told about a week before. Despite this all, there was that knot in her stomach that made her run through the hallway instead of walk.

After dashing through the hallway, she ran down the stars two at a time, the whole time just making her stomach feel worse and worse. The constant up-and-down drone of the air raid siren didn't help at all. Once on the bottom floor, she had to run all the way across the building a second time to finally reach Miss Nicholson's room, at which point she was panting heavily along with the small army of students that had arrived there with her. One of them opened the door (not that she really knew who they were). The entire class was standing around the radio, which had been turned up so it could be heard above the sirens.

"The following message is transmitted at the request of the United States government. This is not a test."

The creepy, robotic voice and the sirens outside was all that could be heard. It was surreal. Nobody could have imagined hearing it, and nobody wanted to believe it was real. Everyone was just telling themselves that it was some elaborate drill, that there was just some missing child. Nothing they came up with was plausible, not if the government itself had sent the message, but they didn't care. They just wanted something, some lie to cling to in the face of their most horrific nightmares.

"A nuclear attack has been launched against the United States. Seek shelter immediately."

The bone-chilling tone so commonly associated with severe weather warnings played, and the message repeated itself. Everyone just stood there, frozen in fear. It was New York City in the middle of the day, almost two and a half decades since the end of the Cold War. There was only one place for them to go, and everyone else would be trying to get there too. Still, it was infinitely better than being incinerated in a nuclear blast.

"Fucking run!" Screamed Miss Nicholson, doing absolutely nothing to hide her horror "Get to the metro!"

Nobody stopped for a single moment to question it, and immediately bolted out of the room in whatever manner they could. Some pushed their way through the door, while others smashed the windows with their desks to open up new routes of escape. Dione was lucky enough to have remained relatively close to the door, and made it out into the hallway just after a group of students from the fourth floor. She followed them to the main lobby, but instead of continuing out the door, she ran to the stairs. It wasn't a conscious decision, her body just kept moving and forced her brain to agree with it.

Once again she entered the stairwell, bounding up them two by two. She stuck out a leg to stop her just in front of the classroom door, falling in the process. No time was wasted in picking herself back up and pulling the door open.

"It's real!" She screamed "Get to the metro!"

Her classmates flooded out of the room, scrambling for the stairs. Once again, her body vetoed her mind's decision to run, instead forcing her to open the next door over.

---

Next up is Ps. 189. Thought Isla, staring out the subway window into the pitch black darkness of the tunnel. Come to think of it, that's right next to Dione's school.

The subway car was completely empty save for her, the only sounds being her own thoughts and the sound of the train itself. It was to be expected, after all, it wasn't as if eleven in the morning on Tuesday was a particularly high-traffic hour. The only reason she was on the train was because she had an interview a few minutes' walk from its next stop. Budget cuts because of the war had stolen her last teaching job, and there was only another one open because the former holder of it had signed up for the Army.

The train slowed down as it pulled into the station. It was the deepest in the entire system, and used even rarer than the other stations during day. The amount of traffic it recieved was lowered mainly due to the fact that it was surrounded by schools. After classes, nobody really went through it aside from the odd school group on a field trip. Which was why she was surprised to find that it was packed full of people straight to the yellow line.

She stood up as the train halted, lurching forward to finally come to a rest. The doors opened into the ocean of people, the nearest of whom made room for her.

"Thanks." She muttered, looking around to see why the station was so crowded. Nobody seemed to be getting on the train, and there didn't seem to be any reason for half of them to be there. There were plenty of students, but there were also people in business suits, aprons, wearing hairnets-it was as if the entire area serviced by the station had decided that being underground was really fun. There were even a few people with half-done, messy haircuts. One of them had a bandage wrapped around her ear, probably the result of a particularly bad mistake made at a salon.

She opened her mouth to ask why there were so many people inside the station, but she was cut off by a muffled bang from outside. Some of the people screamed, some started to cry, and yet more still just stood there in shock. A low roar, like that of a lion, permeated the very structure of the station. The ground around them shook, and the lights died. A few people lit candles, but there weren't any flashlights. She frantically took her phone out and tried to turn it on. It was dead. An EMP had hit.

No. She thought That didn't happen. There's no way.

Catching the image of the uniform of Dione's school, she called out in their direction, desperately hoping she'd be there. Within a few moments, the crowd moved slightly to make room for someone to get through. The last two people parted to let them through, revealing Caroline's face to her.

"Caroline!" She exclaimed, happy. Wherever Caroline was, Dione tended to be "Where's Dione?"

It was then that she realized fully what had just happened. Caroline's head was hung low, and when she looked up to speak, the tears streaming down her face

"Outside..." She said through the tears, though still barely able to talk. "She saved us..."

Without a second thought, Isla dashed towards the tunnel to the surface, shoving aside anyone in the way. She made it out of the sea of living people and into the sea of the dead. The tunnel was filled with bodies, hundreds of them without skin. The floor was soaked in blood, urine, and feces. You could see the bones and muscles of the dead through their ripped-off skin lying in plain sight. The stench made her vomit on the spot, which only added to the sea of bodily fluids and organs which covered the floor.

It was the most horrifying thing she'd ever experienced. With every step she desecrated a body and lined her shoes with gore. She felt her socks getting wet as her shoes filled up with the unholy liquid which lined the floor. Still, she pressed on to the light, giving no thought to the people whose entrails she was grinding into a pulp with the pounding of her feet. Every once in a while she'd step on something hard, either a bone or a piece of shrapnel which had been thrown into the tunnel. Most of the clothing on the bodies was half-burnt, the fires on them only put out by the puddle of gore created by the dead.

She finally reached the entrance of the tunnel, which only provided her with more horrors. A mushroom cloud rose right in front of her, along with multiple others further away. The buildings around the metro station were nothing but rubble, and it occurred to her that the only reason those in the station survived was because there were so many people to act as human shields for them. Incinerated bodies laid all over the streets, with the same horrifying cocktail seen in the tunnel falling into drains in the road.

A weak groan could be heard behind her, she spun around to look and laid eyes upon a... thing. It was some kind of inhuman monster, one with no face and leathery skin that looked like the scales of an alligator. One of its arms was torn off completely, with blood pouring out of its shredded stub. All the thing had for a mouth was a red hole surrounded by the bloody remains of what were once lips. It was just... wrong, a corruption of the person it once was.

Horrified by the monstrosity that stood before her, she drew her pistol. Niall, in his infinite paranoia, had demanded that she get a concealed carry license when they moved. She'd stopped considering it worthless after he had scared a mugger off with his own handgun. Ever since, she'd carried it herself when she went out. Now was the first time she would ever use it; in a knee-jerk reaction to an unnatural creature that was once human.

She fired a split-second after drawing the weapon, giving herself no time at all to examine the thing. The sound made her close her eyes instinctively, as she hadn't fired a gun without ear protection in quite some time. The groaning continued, so she fired again, and again, and again. The entire capacity of the 9mm pistol was emptied into the abomination, and only after she heard it drop onto the concrete did she stop firing.

The walking carcass laid on the sidewalk, its torture ended. Only now did Isla take the time to truly look at it. It's remaining arm was partially clothed in the shredded rags of what was once a school uniform, and around its neck were the charred remains of a scarf. A torn-apart backpack was slung on (or perhaps fused to) its remaining shoulder, half of it taken off by a piece of shrapnel. Despite what her instincts told her, Isla decided to open it, in case there was some name inside of it that would identify its owner. The only thing inside was a brown paper bag, empty except for crushed Cheez-Its. A name was written on its other side.

Dione Lister.

Isla fell to her knees, then onto her side, realizing what had just occurred. She'd just killed her own daughter. Without hesitation, she raised the pistol to her own head and pulled the trigger.

Nothing but a click.

There was nothing she could do, no way to die, and no will to keep on living. She just laid there, outside the only safe haven within reach, sobbing. Time was nothing more than a myth, it didn't pass, nor was it frozen. It simply didn't exist. There was nothing in the world but her tears and the faint light outside of her closed eyes, and soon, there wasn't even the light. Finally, the crying had stopped, replaced by the nightmares. The same thing, the same gunshots, over and over again she relived the whole scene. From wading through the mutilated bodies to the name on the bag, she relived it all again and again, with no way out of the torture.

---

Isla awoke to the face of a man looking down at her and the smell of diesel fuel. As far as she could tell, she was lying in the bed of a pickup truck. The man turned away for a moment, before slowly sitting her upright. He'd piled up a bunch of pillows to create a makeshift bed for her, a surprising amount of preparation given the fact that he'd just picked her up from the streets of what was now a pile of radioactive rubble. He popped a tablet out of a plastic holder, ripping off its covering in the process.

"These are potassium iodide tablets, for the radiation." Said the man, offering her one. She didn't take it.

"I shouldn't be alive."

"No, you shouldn't. The blast should have killed you, but you just got away with the radiation. Just take the pill, you needed it ASAP about five hours ago."

She didn't want to. She didn't want to survive. What point was there in it? Her family was dead, her friends were dead, and the world was dead. Even so, her hand reached out and grabbed the pill, which her mouth then took and swallowed against her will. Her survival instinct had taken over, much to her anger. All she wanted was to give up and die.

"I don't want to be alive."

"Look, Miss, you've been through hell and then some, and you're still alive. A nuke detonated next to you and you lived, you laid in the snow for five hours and you lived. You might not want to be alive, but there's someone or something out there that disagrees."

The man wasn't exactly the kind of person you'd expect to be in New York, if anything, he'd fit in better in some rural southern town. He looked like a much older, American version of Shinobu, except perhaps not quite as strong. If he had any hair, it would probably be completely white. There were bags under his eyes, and from his slow movements, it was clear that he hadn't gotten a wink of sleep. Given how out of place he seemed, he was probably driving the whole time.

"It's Mrs, Mrs. Lister." She said, refusing to listen to the rest of the statement. After what she'd seen, she didn't even want to believe in any kind of higher power. If they would allow such a horrible thing to happen, then they were just keeping her alive to torture her.

"Oh God. That thing-"

"That was my daughter."

The sentence felt so ordinary to say, as if Dione had simply passed through the living room while a guest was over. She still couldn't really bring herself to accept it. She couldn't even cry.

"You killed her, didn't you?"

Just as he asked the question, it began to snow. Not a white snow either, a grey, corrupted snow. The whole thing replayed in her head, just like it had all night. There wasn't any escape from it, no way to snap her out of the flashback.

"The blast fried her nerves, she died without any pain. You did the right thing, better to be dead than a walking corpse."

There wasn't any response this time, it was like she'd simply been broken. She couldn't find anything to say, so she said nothing. The man sighed, before picking up his collection of medical supplies and jumping off of the truck.

"Get in." He said, motioning for her to follow. "I'm not going to just let you die, not after what you've gotten through."

She complied with the request, slowly standing up and stepping off the truck. There wasn't anything else for her to do, so she might as well do what he asked. Her legs were shaky, probably thanks to the fact that she should have died from hypothermia long ago. The truck itself was clearly quite old, its aqua-colored paint job combined with the classic design made it obvious that this wasn't by any means a recently-built vehicle. This explained why it worked, after all, modern cars and trucks all tend to have sensitive electronics involved in their very operation. As a diesel-run pickup truck from what was probably the early 50's, it wouldn't have any problems at all surviving the EMPs from the attack.

The moment she buckled in he stepped on the pedal, heading south according to the compass he had placed on the dashboard. She still didn't feel the passage of time. The only indication that anything was happening was the trees to the side of the road moving by. At some point, the sun gave way to a starless night. The dust cloud created by the nuclear attack had blocked them out. War had claimed even the stars as casualties. The sound of the truck's engine faded away as it coasted to a stop, which was met with a sharp curse from the man.

"No more fuel, we have to walk." He said, tapping her on the shoulder.

She couldn't quite see him, but she could tell where he was. They both got out and continued to walk along the road. It was excruciating for her, with every step she felt more and more like vomiting. Even in the freezing cold, she felt like she was burning up. It seemed as though her head was split wide open, and the whole time she left behind a trail of hair. She had a desperate need for sleep, one that couldn't be fulfilled. The only option was to keep walking.

"Why were you outside?"

The question was completely innocent, but it made Isla want to break the man's neck. She didn't know why, she just did. It felt like a grave insult, but for once, her mind overrode her body's demands.

"Because Dione was. I thought there might be something, some shelter that she could have taken that would let her survive. Why were you up here?"

"I was on my way back from a trip to Canada, I'd arranged to buy a rare gun. Certain guns are cheaper there."

"Who are you?"

"James, James Hudson. My son's a Navy pilot."

"My husband's a pilot too. Do you think they're still alive?"

"They have better chances than you did, I just hope they stopped shooting. There's no need to keep killing after exterminating entire cities."



The smoldering remains of a fire were all that lit the campsite, one of the only safe havens the two had been able to find. It was the very peak of the rock formation, devoid of any major predators simply by virtue of the fact that there was nothing but cold, hard rock wherever you looked. There was rest for the weary, but no sleep. Both were dehydrated and starving, as James didn't have much food or water with him-only a bag of chips and a Gatorade. Only the latter had been touched, the rest of their food came from hunting or gathering. It wasn't nearly enough, and all of it was irradiated. The worst they had to throw out, the rest they just treated with potassium iodide.

Over the days, they had hoped that the dust cloud would clear up, if only to give them a nice view at night. It never did, in fact, it had only gotten worse. The only explanation was that the planet had been plunged into a nuclear winter, exactly what they had been dreading. Even if they reached shelter (which James assured her was just a few days away by now), there was no guarantee that they'd live for much longer. There was still sunlight, but it was fading day-by-day as forests and cities burned across the world.

There was still no explanation for the attack, as both sides of the war would only have launched their missiles if the other one did. James thought that one of the nuclear powers had simply had a glitch in their system which made it appear as if they were under attack. It had happened before, and the world had been saved by a single Soviet soldier who refused to press the button. This time, however, there wasn't someone brave enough to believe it was a glitch, and the world had ended.

It had been weeks since the two left New York, and both were showing signs of radiation sickness. Isla had it the worst. Her hair was completely gone, and her nails were a disgusting tar color. One of them had been cracked when she tripped in the forest, and it had been bleeding ever since. There wasn't any pain, just blood. Another horrific side effect of the nuclear attack. Both had high fevers, and were only kept from overheating by the snow and the little medicine they had left.

There wasn't enough left to get them through. James had insisted that they'd be able to survive long enough to reach the safe haven he kept talking about, he said that there were plenty of people who had survived longer than the "normal" amount of time without food or water. The fact of the matter, however, was that they were both sick. Sick enough to be near death even without the conditions and lack of sustenance. It would be an incredible streak of luck if one of them made it, both of them making it would require nothing short of divine intervention.

Fed up and restless, Isla stood up, walking away from the dimly-lit campsite and over to the edge of the rock. It was higher than she had expected when James had described it, in fact, it was almost as if it was on a different plane of existence than the landscape below. The view encompassed the forest that surrounded the state park, as well as fields just outside of it. Both were on fire, creating a morbidly beautiful picture of the end of the world.

I shouldn't have ever made it this far. She thought as she looked out on the spectacle, the image of the gore-filled tunnel rearing its ugly head in her mind once more. Whenever she closed her eyes she saw it, imprinted deep within her brain. We're both cats in Schrodinger's box, waiting to find out whether of not we live or die.

I shouldn't be alive. That thought echoed over and over again in her head, plastering itself on the walls of the tunnel, twisting the fragments of human intestines on the floor to spell itself out. I shouldn't be alive. I shouldn't be alive. I shouldn't be alive.

"I shouldn't be alive."

She reached down to her shoes with her radiation-charred arms, taking them off one by one and placing them in the snow on the edge of the drop. Without anything to write on, it was the only way to let him know what she'd done. Before she could think, she leaned forwards off of the edge, letting herself fall headfirst towards the burning forest. The ash-filled air flew past her as she fell closer and closer to the ground, looking forward to the moment she hit it.

I don't know if you're still out there somewhere, Dione. But if you are, I'm on my way.

And then there was nothing.



The orange flames of the monastery's torches were all that lit the pitch-black, starless night. Niall sat in the garden, legs crossed in a meditative position. After living as a refugee for so long, he'd started to pick up a few of the monk's practices. Though he didn't plan on actually becoming Buddhist, he couldn't deny the fact that their forms of meditation helped. It took away his fears for the future of the world, giving him a little bit of peace in his day.

The night, as he and the other refugees had learned, was the most peaceful. Without the voices of the monks and refugees, the mountain was completely silent except for the wind. Most of them meditated now, the perfect break from the constant foraging. Bhutan was among the least affected by the war, having barely any diplomatic relations at all as well as plenty of mountains. As a result, it found itself accepting the vast majority of survivors, Niall and his comrades included.

After the nuclear attacks, the battle at Yulin had been stopped. Both sides chose not to cause any more death, and instead gave themselves the task of finding and transporting survivors. All of the teams had stopped only when their vehicles ran out of fuel, and Niall's group had run out at the monastery-Paro Taktsang. Most of the refugees had started to eat like monks, consuming only small amounts of the readily available plants that encircled the monastery's mountain. It was a perfect survival strategy, one which they hoped would keep them alive until the end of nuclear winter.

He tried not to think about his family, having accepted the inevitable fact that they were dead long ago. He'd chosen to move on, focusing his energy on helping the other refugees at the monastery. It was quite often that he forwent meditation in order to help out in the clinic, after all, the meditation was just for clearing his mind. When given the choice between clearing his mind and standing in for an assistant to save someone's life, he'd always choose the latter.

The period of meditation ended, and he opened his eyes. Looking up at the pitch-black night sky, he saw a tiny dot of light. A star, shining through a rare gap in the cloud of dust and ash that encircled the Earth in the stratosphere. Moments later it was engulfed by the sky, turning it into a void of black once more. But the image stayed with him, the image of that one star that reminded him that it was still shining.

Maybe we'll keep shining too. He thought, staring up unto the darker-than-black sky.

---

"Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us." -John F. Kennedy, September 25th 1961

---

@Keyguyperson

What you're looking at are posts. Bed posts, to be specific, but posts, with the little 'permalink' post button from RPG on each one (see the top-right corner of this post? That sign right there). If you were to click on that little button, you'd get a URL that links directly to individual posts somewhere on RPG. And if you were to navigate to post 6509 by typing that into the end of the URL, you'd find this:



"Boogeyman" was the answer.

I meant it to be "flag" because I sort of meant it to be extrapolated into being afraid of what the flag symbolizes? Like, being afraid of the government, or some such. That was a very ill-thought-out one on my part.

With "Nyx", I meant it to be an "accidentally-on-purpose" misspelling of Nix. Which I don't have to explain. Heh. The solution I was looking for was snow, or winter.

So, this one probably led people on a goose-chase because I was too nonspecific. My fault, probably. If you went to my profile and moused over the statuses, to figure out what time they were posted at, you would have found that the last one on the list (or second-to-last, depending which day you looked) would have been posted on 18 Sep 2015 at 1:54.
That status read: I am the silence that mutes all songs, the dark that stifles every light. If you think you've escaped me, you're wrong; I will claim you, one night.
The solution to this riddle was oblivion.