Origins

Prologue: Awakening...
Two eyes flickered open.

It was time....

''Pushing lightly against the other figures by it, the figure examined it's surroundings. ''

A sudden glow pulsed through the room....

and thousands of eyes flickered to life.

It was time.

Yeah yeah yeah, real scary, right? To be honest, I found that rather campy myself! But I did my best. Whatever, lets get to the fun part...

Chapter 1: Six Years later...
"BAELEN!"

Oh, that jerk. Even the thought about him makes my cheeks color.

I opened my eyes to reveal just how close his face was to mine.

"Ha ha! Got ya there!"

Naturally, I was annoyed, "Gosh, Garad, do you have any idea how much sleep you get after covering someone else's shift? I'll give you a hint: not very much. Don't do that again."

"Of course, my good sir!" he said in his usual annoyingly flamboyant attitude, "Why I would love to leave you snoring in the corner with a snot bubble as you dream about- OW!"

Ah, the glory of smacking a guy across the mouth is brilliant.

Various onlookers chuckled. No one liked Garad much.

***

After a few minutes (which felt like a few years in Garad's presence) our dropship landed.

"GO GO GO!"

We jumped out of the ship and ran for the nearest cover, blazing a trail through a flood of Krytos Ground troopers. Finally, we made it.

"Garad, your on sniping! Baelen, Jacenn, and Nathar, you guys provide a diversion while Panzor and I go get the hostages! Go!"

And so we did. Diversions are never easy, and I almost got my head shot off by some Ground trooper's lucky shot. Said trooper got a clip full of bullets in the mouth for that. Not they have mouths. But whatever. I lobbed a grenade at the Commander, while Jacenn and Nathar fired took out the turrets. After ducking back into cover, we all agreed to throw our grenades simultaneously. Which we did, to deadly effect.

The coast was clear, and we slowly came out of cover to check the remains. But that Commander still wasn't dead! Being the theatrical fellow it was, it grabbed Jacenn's leg: a useless, if awesome-looking, move. We watched him wrestle with it for a while before a sniper round suddenly ripped itself through the Commander's head. Annoying beyond words or no, Garad really does his sniping right.

I checked my intercom to see how our group leader was doing.

"Hey commander, how ya doing?"

"Not too good, there's a Monger here, and it's putting up one heck of a fight!"

A Monger. Great. My day was made.

"What road are you on?" came the sudden question.

"Pan. Avenue. Why?"

"GET OUT OF THERE! The Monger-"

Said Monger suddenly crashed through the building next to us with considerable gusto.

"- is heading your way. Damn. We're coming!"

<p style="text-align:left;">Now, as you can see, I was in a pretty bad situation there. If you happen to not know what a Monger is, I'll just tell you that it's essentially a large, heavily armored.... thing. I don't honestly know how to describe it. It's weapon of choice tends to be the two large plasma cannons on it's shoulders...

<p style="text-align:left;">Which happened to be aiming at me.

<p style="text-align:left;">" Oh for- AUGH!" Unable to even complete an exclamation without being interrupted by a blast of plasma, I rolled out of the way. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a sniper scope glimmer. With a loud bang, one of the Monger's eyes went out. Dang, Garad, whatever I said before, I'm sorry. Panzor and the commander suddenly came in from the hole in the building and began shooting. After several more grenades, it finally went down.

<p style="text-align:left;">"Whew! Now that was fun!" I turned to the general direction of Garad's sniping position and gave him a thumbs-up, which he returned.

<p style="text-align:left;">"Great. Now each of you go bring one hostage to the droppoint. Come on, let's GO! Garad, you too!"

<p style="text-align:left;">We went back through the hole in the building and got to the hostages.

<p style="text-align:left;">"Come on, your safe now. Lets go." Each of the hostages came out from their hiding places and followed us. We hadn't gone three steps when the sound of a large robot sounded behind us.

<p style="text-align:left;">Oh great. Another Monger.

<p style="text-align:left;">"RUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNN!!!!!!" I don't honestly know who said it, but someone did. And we complied.

<p style="text-align:left;">It didn't even bother chasing us. It just aimed it's guns on the top of the building with the hole and fired. Luckily, we had all made it through in time.

<p style="text-align:left;">Except me.

<p style="text-align:left;">--More Later--