While I swear that I'll finish Winds of Change before I die, I figured taking a bit of a break from it to write something else wasn't a horrible idea. So yeah, I wrote this. Be warned, death shall occur. Bandai Namco owns Strangereal… not that they care anymore.
July 3rd, 1999
Daniel sighed. It was enough that he had to take summer courses at UNP St. Ark in the face of an alleged impending apocalypse, but it was just brutal that he had to share a room with some annoying liberal arts major… or anyone really.
"So, do you have any plans to see Ulysses?" his roommate asked as he sketched in his notebook.
"No Tim."
"It's Tom."
"It doesn't matter. Anyways, nothing's going to happen," Daniel replied.
"Hey, crazier things have happened. I'm going to take a drive, see the hills. You never know, it might be the last time I ever see them." Tom said, stressing his last words.
"And then you'll drive up there again tomorrow, most likely."
"If there IS a tomorrow," Tom replied, adding mock drama to his voice.
"You know what, how about you just go. Right now," Daniel said, clearly agitated.
"Fine," Tom packed up his pencils, got up, and closed the door behind him. He walked out of the dorm, and into the dull haziness of a summer afternoon.
Tom's car was a ten year old sedan that was a handful to drive, and he yanked the steering wheel as hard as he could in one direction trying to stay on the road as the office parks stopped and wooded hills took their place. The switchbacks led to an observation deck at the top of the hills. Tom parked the car and didn't bother to lock it. He didn't care if it got stolen now. A crowd of people had decided this was a good vantage point for Ulysses' impact as well, and Tom had a hard time just getting up the stairs on to the deck itself. However, he managed to squeeze into the crowd and make it to his favorite corner of the deck.
"Crowded?" a pretty girl with dark hair next to him asked.
"Yeah, this is the largest amount of people I've seen here, but the view is worth it," Tom said, gesturing to the suburbs to the left of the hills, and downtown to the right. Past the glass and steel skyscrapers, the hazy stump of the former Capitol Building could be seen, flanked by Museum Row.
"It is a great view… I should've come up here more often," the girl said.
"I'm Tom, you are?"
"Alicia," the girl replied.
"Well… it's nice to meet you… for four hours," Tom tacked on.
Alicia opened her mouth to say something, but decided to stay silent. The two stood there, staring at the sky in an awkward silence.
The sun was beginning to set as Terri finished up the rest of the paperwork. The forms were complete, and Snyder Aerospace was now a component to Grunder Industries Usea. The Snyder team was packing up their briefcases in a hurry, throwing in papers and pens with no thought to organization. She cocked an eyebrow and one of the Snyder representatives asked,
"Aren't you worried for Ulysses?"
Terri was bewildered; asking her if she was scared, scared of that ridiculous hoax made so the FCU and Erusea could get away with building weapons of mass destruction?
"Uh… no. Besides, I'm taking the next flight back to Osea, so your little "the sky is falling" story won't affect me anyways," Terri replied confidently."
"If you say so, ma'am," the Snyder rep said, and the Snyder guys filed out of the conference room.
Night had fallen, but the night clung on to the last vestiges of the day's blue sky, and the first stars were coming out. Daniel had finished his studies for the day and had decided to watch the news out in the dorm's common area. Unsurprisingly, it was still All-Ulysses, All the Time. It was enough to make him hurl, he decided, and flipped through the other channels. Nothing but more Ulysses news was on air. Daniel was used to irregular TV programming ever since the public revelation of Ulysses1994XF04, but there always was at least one channel airing something half decent. He sighed, and left the television playing the news.
As the anchorman went over likely impact sites on the fringes of the Usean continent, two people flopped down onto the couch next to Daniel.
"Hey Danny, think the world'll end?" a blonde girl with glasses asked sarcastically.
"Nope, not at all Lily," Daniel answered, turning to face his friends Lily and John, "Ulysses is a complete hoax."
"Rumors are already flying around that there are impacts in Estovakia," John said, "and besides, what exactly is the motive for lying about Ulysses anyway. Erusea's our ally, the FCU doesn't have any hard feelings over the rebellion, and we can't attack nation out of Usea with Stonehenge. Therefore, there's no reason to lie about Ulysses."
"Whatever, it'll be so funny talking about this tomorrow. Hey, Lily, what time is it?"
"9:48," she said, "Two minutes to predicted impact time."
"Ooh, I'm so scared," Daniel said sardonically," What's next, some massive impact in a major city or-"
The anchorman on TV raised his voice on air and interrupted Daniel, "This just in, we have confimed reports of downtown Farbanti being destroyed by a Ulysses fragment…"
The anchorman continued, but before Daniel could listen and feel ashamed for his skepticism, the dorm broke into absolute chaos.
"So yeah, Rick, I'm heading back for Osea right now. And there aren't any asteroid fragments yet… oh, which airline am I flying? I'm taking OsAir through Apito back to Sudentor… yeah, I know, OsAir's service is miserable, but Trans-Usean Airlines went under and Osea World Airways still hasn't restored their Usean service… and God only knows when the flight is leaving," Terri chatted over her phone as she drove back to the airport in her rental car, "I'll probably miss my connection, so I have no idea when I'll be back, 9 next morning at the earliest, but I think I'll be back by tomorrow. But let's look on the bright side of things," she said as she pulled on to the freeway, "Snyder's ours and that gives us full access to the XFA-27 program… Yes Rick, they do have a working prototype, and it actually got combat experience last year too," Terri added on excitedly as the suspension bridge to the airport came into view.
Suddenly, an object, billowing fire and smoke, smashed into the supports for the bridge on the airport side. A Ulysses fragment had struck. Terri dropped her phone and slammed on the brakes. The rental sedan skidded sideways as the cables snapped on the bridge, sending it and a few unlucky cars into the gulf. Just as Terri thought she was going to go over into the water, her car stopped no more than three feet from the edge. She set the car into park, turned off the engine, and clambered out of the car on the passenger's side door. As she got off of her knees, ripping her brand new suit in the process, she got the disturbing scene of over a hundred fragments of Ulysses1994XF04 hurtle directly towards St. Ark. She screamed, and ran towards the freeway exit to find some cover.
"OH MY GOD!" Alicia screamed as the first fragments appeared into view.
She clung on to Tom and cried as the first ones struck on the edge of town. One of the museums, Tom was pretty sure it was the Museum of World History, took a direct hit and imploded. Other fragments ravaged the suburbs of the other side of the hills, and soon the fragments were assaulting downtown. The Telamont Building had a fragment strike the edge of its façade, scraping off a swathe of steel and glass and sending it to the street below. The Hotel Royale took a hit towards the bottom, and the whole building collapsed. Tom prayed as fragments created craters the size of city blocks, wiped the top stories off buildings, and set the wooded hills between the city and the suburbs alight.
Alicia continued to cling to Tom, holding back tears. Tom, watching his city get torn to shreds, could only do the same.
Daniel, Lily, and John finally escaped the frantic campus. Everyone had gone crazy trying to flee, looting the classrooms and dorms, and even though the campus had taken no hits from Ulysses, the trio decided to take their bets outside in the ravaged city.
Lily led the way, "I think we should head for the subway, it's too dangerous aboveground!" she shouted over the hordes of panicked citizens.
"It's too far! We're going to get hit an asteroid at this rate!" Daniel shouted in reply.
"Says the skeptic. Lily's right; if we want to live; we need to hide in a subway station!" John agreed.
The three ran past abandoned cars, jumped over fallen lampposts and chunks of concrete and glass for six blocks.
"Okay guys," Lily shouted encouragingly, "We're almost to the station. Just one more block and-"
A fragment struck the office building next to them, blowing out all the glass, sending shards down like deadly rain. Daniel screamed and felt the shards of glass lacerate his skin, drawing blood immediately. He found himself knocked on to the pavement, crying out in agony. Lily lied next to him, a massive gash going down her face and deep cuts visible on her bare legs and arms. John was in a similar state ahead of Lily, his clothes ripped to shreds and the remaining rags soaked in blood.
"I'm so sorry," Lily whispered over the din of destruction, "I'm so sorry. I led you here, and it's my fault we're…stuck here"
"No, it's not your fault Lily," Daniel replied, "Can you move?"
Lily tried to move her legs, but she let out a cry of pain.
"I can't Danny; there must be a whole bunch of glass in there or something."
Daniel attempted the same, and a searing pain shot through his whole body. It was then that he realized he was in a pool of his blood, and how he was beginning to feel lightheaded. All John could do was groan in a language of suffering, his cuts separating his mind from Lily, Daniel, and the rest of the world. Lily slowly extended her hand to Daniel, and he took it. They both reached for John, but his arm didn't reach far enough, and the two settled for his foot. The three remained in silence of the ground for a minute, together.
Then, the building, the root of their suffering, let out a groan of its own. The asteroid fragment had not been kind to the building's structure, and so it collapsed. Just before a one ton piece of concrete and steel rebar hit Daniel, he smiled, knowing that at least he didn't have to live with being wrong about Ulysses.
The rain of asteroid fragments had ended, leaving behind a scorched and ruined St. Ark. Alicia let go of Tom, and stared at the city in shock. The place no longer resembled a home; it was Hell on Earth now. Marvels of architecture and civil engineering were now reduced to piles of concrete and steel and glass and wood. It seemed like not a single window was intact in the whole city, and the skyline now resembled a smile with teeth missing, and other teeth chipped.
"We could never rebuild from this. Not in a million years Tom," Alicia said.
"No, of course we'll rebuild. It's what humans do," Tom said, though secretly he agreed with Alicia. The city looked forlorn and hopeless. It looked like… a ruin.
We'd better go, the fires are getting close," Alicia said, noticing a blaze caused by a fragment. The crowd assembled at the observation deck held the same opinion, and were now stumbling aimlessly down the hills, wondering what they should do now that they were rendered jobless…homeless…hopeless.
"Yeah, we should go," Tom said. Tom and Alicia stepped off the deck and into the night, wondering what morning could bring.
Terri stumbled on a broken heel through the streets near the docks, looking like the haggard Useans in her ruined suit. This block had been leveled, with somewhat modest homes imploding under an airburst of a fragment. She saw bodies, sometimes whole ones, sometimes just still, cold limbs sticking out of the rubble. It was enough to make her sick, and she forcibly held back bile. As Terri stumbled on, a cry broke the eerie stillness of the annihilated neighborhood. It was small and high-pitched, and Terri could hear it two houses down. She teetered over as fast as she could, and started picking up pieces of rubble and throwing them into the street. After finding another body, (and sending the restrained bile onto the remains of scorched roof trusses,) Terri found the source of the cry and pulled the rubble aside. Under it, cowering under her bed, was a little girl in a tattered lavender nightgown, having the sense to hide when the fragments came raining down.
"Thank you," was all the girl could say.
Terri took her by the land and led her towards a semi-intact looking area. There'd be other survivors there, and maybe a nice blanket. Returning home could wait, first she needed to rest.
"So, why did you decide to go to sleep?" Terri asked the little girl.
"I hoped sleeping would make it go away," the girl answered.
"Make what go away?" Terri asked.
The girl gestured towards the ruined city in front of them, and Terri wished that sleeping would make it go away too.
I haven't ever seen a fic about the actual impact of Ulysses, and I felt as if someone needed to show just how chaotic and destructive it was. Just flying over St. Ark in Ace Combat 2 is kind of sad for me, knowing what happens to it. For all intents and purposes, this also fits into Winds of Change, and perhaps one or more of the surviving characters might appear. Please give any feedback you deem necessary.