Knock! Knock! Knock!
"Come in," Professor Hendrick replied to the knock, turning his head left.
"Professor," a teenager's voice said as the door creaked open.
"Oh, Tommy. Come in."
Grumpy from his work, the professor immediately smiled gently as young Tommy walked in.
Tommy, a young survivor of 14, seemed to have lost all his family members, leaving him alone in the world. He was the younger brother of one of Professor Hendrick's students and had been waiting at the university to go out for a meal with her. The two siblings had survived, but three days ago, his sister went out scavenging with her group and never returned; she was now assumed missing in action.
Tommy approached the professor and spoke:
"Professor, something's happening down there. Raj told me to get you while the others keep people inside."
Hearing that, the professor frowned and stood up immediately. Many secrets were being kept from the public to prevent panic, and his students wouldn't do anything so drastic unless there was a real emergency.
"Let's go."
The professor walked up, picked up his old brown jacket, and changed his reading glasses for his normal ones. The gray of his hair and the beard, which he had let grow over the past month, revealed his age to be in his late 50s, a rare sight among the human survivors, who barely had any elderly left.
The factory they were using as a shelter was built with red bricks and had two stories. The upper story was built with metal and contained two rooms: one for research and the other for storage. The survivors lived in tents and blankets on the ground level, which was vast enough to accommodate them all.
The survivors seemed tense for some reason, and everyone watched the professor descend. There, he was met by Raj, a student of his who had awakened the Warrior class and now acted as the defense patrol leader.
"Professor, there is something you need to see," Raj said, looking at Tommy. "Thomas, wait here."
"Is it…"
Tommy was about to ask something, but his question only irritated Raj.
"It is not your sister, I swear," Raj said, turning to the professor. "Please, sir. This is not something we anticipated."
The professor approached the gate, where most of his students stood guard. Stepping out under the cloudy blue sky, he found four of his students surrounding two Strangers, their weapons drawn and ready.
The Strangers were dressed in tattered clothes and heavily cloaked. One was even masked, and when the one in front removed their hood, Professor Hendrick felt a jolt run through him.
"This… can't be true!"
What he saw in front of him was the closest yet farthest thing he could have imagined for such a situation: two individuals of non-human origin, with slender, almost petite bodies, one taller than the other. Their big eyes, like a cosmic night sky, were larger than our own; their skin was gray with subtle traces and patterns; and they had facial proportions which humans would call alien, yet not revolting to look at. However, what distinguished them from our imagination of them was how closely they looked like us, and their rather long, pointy ears and sleek, flowing hair.
On the 100th day after the world's end, Humanity encountered Aliens.
✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧
A hole had been dug deep enough to fit the large hatch door of the shelter. It was the morning of the 101st day after the apocalypse, and Adam and Kave were performing a burial ritual to the best of their battered abilities.
To dig at all, Adam had needed something new—something born from the all-night training he and Kave had spent refining his Puppeteer power. His invention was crude, reminiscent of the Gobzkin Shaman's grotesque constructs but much smaller. Built from scrap—can parts, wooden sticks, and steel wire scavenged from the Tanaka garage and the nearby ruins—Adam shaped the puppet's hands like a spade and trained all morning to move it properly.
After making a mass grave for the raiders and covering them in silence, they turned to someone who mattered—Mr. Tanaka, Kave's father.
Kave chose the backyard of the ruined house. The place needed clearing, but the earth was soft. The puppet dug efficiently. Neither of them could perform a proper ceremony, so they just sat, shoulder to shoulder, in front of the grave.
Kave's face was stiff, unreadable. But Adam knew the weight of the silence. Kave was rarely quiet—his nature was anything but.
"…So was your father."
"Hm?" Kave frowned.
"Mr. Tanaka. You resemble him."
"Bullshit."
"No, really. He was full of fire—loud, dramatic, couldn't bottle anything in. He always said you made him mad, but the truth is, he was already half-mad before you were born."
Kave gave a faint smile, seeing through Adam's attempt.
"I mean, how many times did he chase us out, beat us up, call our parents…? He even caught me and Magpie down in the cave once. That was the most awkward moment of my entire life."
"I remember. I couldn't bring you over for six months after that." Kave laughed softly. "Though he wasn't mad at you or Megan. He just kept saying, 'Your friend can get girls. What's wrong with you? You no man?"
"Right? We were, like, eighteen. And he still tried to call our folks. I can't believe he even humbled Mr. Dorsett that day."
"Fuck Mr. Dorsett."
"…But your dad, man. The way he saved you."
That brought silence again.
Adam lowered his gaze, then spoke with quiet honesty.
"He went out like a total badass. And he loved you something fierce. He said he wanted you to move out, sure—but when push came to shove, he was the one to chicken out."
Kave broke. His face sank into the dirt, fists clenched. Grief poured out in silence, raw and heavy.
Adam patted his back for a time, then left him to grieve alone and say goodbye in private.
An hour passed.
Now he leaned against a fence post—an old marker they'd repurposed for the grave. He scooped a fistful of earth, kissed it, and smeared it over his face. Then he stood—not as his father's boy, but as his own man. He had inherited a debt—a weight of sacrifice—and he knew now that it must be turned into something great.
"Tōsan…" (Father…)
He knelt once more, lowering his head, hands on the ground.
"…gōmen nasai… arigatou." (… I am sorry… thank you.)
He raised his head, stood up, and turned back. He walked through the half-burnt house, filled with memories, picking up things as he went, each one dear and near.
He then sucked in a breath of cold air and saw his reflection in a half-broken piece of glass in the kitchen. His hair was almost all gone from all the madness and hair-pulling he had gone through, his beard scattered and messy, and his overall look was miserable.
He opened a drawer, took a pair of scissors, and stood against his reflection. Not two minutes passed before he got rid of everything.
"Sorry, oka-san."
He looked at his mother's favorite sewing scissors, put them in his pocket, and went outside to meet Adam, who was sitting on a nearby garden stone.
"I am ready. Let's do this," Kave said.
Adam looked back at him, paused for a while, and revealed something in his hand.
A miniature, of course. That's what made them friends from the start. The hobby that would turn into power.
Adam placed the miniature back in the toolbox alongside the many unique others they had made and painted to the best of their ability all night long.
Summoning more people from a war-torn world to an apocalyptic one in hopes of saving it. Just what could go wrong?
There was hesitation, but eventually, Adam found a friend to lean on.
"Have you decided on the first one to summon?" Kave asked.
"Yes." Adam nodded and picked up the most important miniature in the set of nine they had.
Kave looked at that miniature and nodded to his friend.
"That's some fine work," he said.
"It was you and me working on this together, after all," Adam agreed.
In his hand, he held a miniature of a female Man-at-Arms Sergeant: medium blonde hair, blue eyes, a face scar right beneath her sharp gaze, and red lips. Her left arm was a glowing red bionic prosthetic, while her right hand held a light Blazer gun. She wore an elegant black and red military coat and a black, red, and gold peaked visor cap emblazoned with the winged sun of the Solarium. [A/n: The cover girl.]
Adam put the miniature on the stone he was standing on and raised his hand over it. He closed his eyes and remembered the feeling he had been perfecting all night.
He took in a deep breath and reached out to the Puppeteer Rune within him, surrendering most of his mental capacity to it and delving deeper into its mysteries.
He felt every aspect of his energy being drained. He would faint if it drew more than this, but he needed to push himself further and further. He clenched his teeth and knew that he was against something far greater than himself… but he couldn't let it overwhelm him, that's for sure.
It demanded more power, and once its conditions were fulfilled, Adam opened his eyes, which were beaming with power.
"ARISE!"
And he collapsed!
≪ Your Psyche has improved! (II → III) ≫
≪ Your Sanity has improved! (I → II) ≫
Kave rushed to help him, but then light flashed in front of his eyes, almost blinding him. From the light, she emerged, a presence brimming with power and authority, stepping ahead.
Kave was speechless, gulping at the overwhelming scene no man could comprehend.
As for the figure stepping from the light, the moment she took a step, the whole aura of light disappeared behind her. She then took another step to stand in front of Adam, who was down on his knees, holding his head in pain.
She offered a hand, the left one, before his face, and as he held onto it, she raised him with one pull without even trying.
One look at her eyes would unnerve any man, and the scars beneath them only asserted her dominance in the madness of war. Still, one like Adam, who had survived 100 days in a world that tried its best to kill him, was not easy to unnerve or scare. He seemed tired, but his eyes demanded authority, and his ambitions spoke volumes.
She approved of him right away, a growing feeling of patriotism igniting within her, fueled by his tired yet unyielding eyes, and she spoke:
"Sergeant Mechanic Elena Skarn, reporting for duty!"
≪ You have gained 1 EXP! ≫