The helicopters circled overhead, their dark forms imposing a stark contrast to the half-dozen floodlights surrounding the quarantine zone.
This was a relatively empty area-enclosed by several hundred warehouses, and the sparkling ocean on the immediate right, the opaque moon obscured by clouds.
Every man and woman here had a crystal-clear idea of what was going to be done tonight. However, not a word of it was to be spoken to anyone, with the exception of an operation-related officer of higher rank. Not a whisper would be given to families, friends, vague associates alike.
Suddenly, like a flashing poltergeist, the words, "OMEGA-RANK CLASSIFFICATION. MISSION: RESURECTOR. STAGE 3; CODEWORD: BEGIN," flashed on the Head's-Up-Display's (HUD) of forty-seven soldiers.
Those forty-seven pairs of hands gripped their weapons a tad tighter.
A foreign-looking machine possessing various arms and digits was slowly lowered to the earth by a miniature helicarrier. Stopping at an elevation of roughly twenty feet above sea level, an unseen finger flicked a series of equally unseen switches. The mysterious mechanism slowly began revolving its respective digits, bits, and even bobs.
Over a small amount of time, a strange mix of smoke, fog, and sand began to obscure the machines progress. To counter this, the soldiers clicked their respective HUD's to a thermal viewing.
As could be seen within the mass of debris, the vague outline of a man began to take shape. The gathered people flicked the safeties off of their weapons, the cold gleam of metal shown in the moonlight.
The man was beginning to take a more identifiable shape; he was well built, but obviously old. He possessed a long, ragged beard, which clung with his white hair in a quite unruly state to his body.
The men in the helicarrier began to mumble amongst themselves; this was not whom they were supposed to bring back; this man was much older, and did not fit any of the database descriptions of their intended target.
The tornado revolving around the unknown man's body began to slow down…more of his features became visible. He had the general appearance of a ghost, pale skin and whiter hair. He stood tall, pushing seven feet at the most, from a distant view. His eyes and mouth were closed, his hands open, the palms facing his thighs.
Abruptly, the lashing winds stopped.
The chief scientist, from this point forwards a man that never legally existed, moved to the microphone, and cleared his voice with a scratchy, "ahem."
"Do you hear me," he inquired.
The lone figure below did not speak; instead, he simply replied with a curt nod, not visible to most of the scientists above.
The man burst in excitement inside. However, he quickly returned his mindset to the present. As if sensing the man's happiness, the other below lifted his head a few centimeters higher; his nostrils flared in the taking of a breath, and his fingers twitched in, to more than a few soldier's minds, readiness.
His facial features not betraying his terror, he spoke into the device, "Sir, do not move. You cannot see them, but I have men stationed in a controlled perimeter. There is no escape. You have been resurrected to aid my government, which you will do without question." He paused, then took a breath and continued, "If you follow me so far, nod, again."
The man nodded.
"Well, then, tell me, who are you?" The man calmed down; this was all going according to plan.
There was a pause. The man did not move, except for his chest heaving in a breath. Several infrared laser sights danced across said chest, not seen to the naked eye.
Finally, after several minutes of this procession, the man spoke:
"I…am…Roku!"
With this, before the head scientist could react, 'Roku' spun his arms in a wide arc, an immense trail of flame issuing behind his hands. The resulting wave of fire knocked nearly every soldier onto his or her backside, and the rest suffered a slight degree of shellshock.
Suddenly, the rear of the helicarrier exploded like so many fireworks, but this was no fanfare. Defenseless scientists were reduced to ashes before their minds registered what had occurred. Delicate equipment, worth millions of taxpayer's dollars, was burned up in seconds. The machine, still dangling from the base of the craft, fell to the ground and erupted into a firestorm from Hell.
Somehow, the head scientist had managed to survive this shocking episode, and observed Roku approach the shattered remains of the helicarrier.
Looking down at him, eyes and mouth glowing unearthly, Roku uttered a simple five-letter sentence:
"And I serve no man."
The next moment, the remains of the aircraft burst into an unerring blaze, and the roar of hungry flames drowned out the screams of former occupants.
One soldier, Second Lieutenant Ron Mathers, drunkenly reached for his radio, and carefully tuned it to the mission frequency, "Everyone, open fire, now. Show this bitch no mercy! Colonel, requesting ba-" he didn't have time to finish the request before he and several of his nearby comrades were enveloped in thirsting flames.
Having reduced the dishonorable man to dust, the resurrected Avatar turned his attention to the strange creatures flying above him. They were like the original menace, as having iron plates covering their bodies, and strange wings on the top and tail of themselves. Also like the first beast, these ferried more of the strangely armored people in their gullets.
Showing no fear, Roku clenched his right fist in fury, and punched the air in the general direction of one monstrosity…in the blink of an eye, an incredible vacuum of air appeared around his hand, and a bright blue fireball erupted from it, hissing like so many snakes. The unearthly projectile slammed into the side of the beast, causing screams from the men inside, which abruptly stopped upon the delivery of a second from Roku's left hand to the head of the bizarre animal.
A second beast turned it's maw to face him, and Roku leapt several feet into the air, and delivered a right kick, which, in turn, sent a raging inferno into the face of the monster, killing it and sending the body tumbling to earth.
Sensing something amiss, he curled into a ball as yet another strange object zoomed in front of his face, accompanied by a deafening sound. From what he could discern from it, it was a small ball of steel surrounded by miniature flames invisible to the human eye.
But Roku was a little more than human.
Gathering moisture from the air, Roku sent a series of liquidized darts through the chest and throat of the man to launch this threat at him from a strange, metal staff.
He fell to the ground without a sound.
Suddenly, dozens of similarly armed and armored men stumbled to their feet, and began hurling even more of the…things at Roku.
Before they could reach him, though, he raised a shield of rock and the strange substance covering the ground around his body, and formulated a plan.
The soldiers, those surviving, that is, made a perimeter around the strange shield. Several of the more "jumpy" soldiers fired a shot or two at it, to no avail.
Glancing at his fellows, Corporal Steve Anthers saw that most of them had a strange skin tone-that of a serious sunburn on their hands, faces, and any other revealed skin. One man even looked like he'd stuffed his face in an oven for several hours.
Opening his mouth to speak, the Corporal Anthers didn't have time to start as the shell exploded, shrapnel embedding itself in his stomach before a blast of fire to the face ended his life.
Several others weren't so lucky-one man was struck by pieces of sharpened rock in the throat and legs, rendering him paraplegic and slowly dying of internal bleeding.
Raising his hands above his head, Roku created a disc of fire in his hands, and threw it along the ground, shattering the ground and dislocating one man's leg from the sheer force of it…right before vaporizing him in seconds.
The remaining soldiers dove for cover as spears of rock and ice impaled another twenty of their number.
In a mad attempt at escape, eighteen men mad a dash for the water-maybe they would be safe there-but they would have no such luck. As if coming to greet them, a massive wave rose up to nearly fifteen feet, and then slammed into the concrete pier, drowning both soldier and fire alike, dragging the bodies back to the hungry ocean.
Breathing heavily, wounded in the shoulder and leg, Chief Warrant Officer Hong peered into the darkness-his eyes were fading in and out of blackness, but his hearing was as good as ever. He was lying on his back, and so managed to see the terrifying man known as 'Roku' lift two other survivors to his own eye level-their feet dangling off of the ground. He spoke with them for a moment, and Hong caught one enquiry,
"Are you God?"
There was a deep, tenacious pause, followed by the last words of this Roku:
"I am no god."
An impossibly bright light followed this up, and the two soldiers fell to the ground in a few ounces of ashes.
Silence followed.
Gazing out at the destruction he had unleashed, Roku heard a massive rumbling sound. Turning, he spotted-with a growing internal sense of awe-a massive hunk of metal coming his way. Accompanying it were six more soldiers, in black fatigues with face-obscuring masks. They walked three on each side.
The beast lowered an obstruction on its "head" towards Roku, the tip of it stopping about eight feet from his face. The soldiers, almost simultaneously, raised their weapons to Roku's body, and he heard a distinctive clicking.
Before any one of the men could make a move, Roku had already gone through with his.
A pillar of rock lifted the tank into the air, jettisoning it's living cargo, and the soldiers made a futile attempt to open fire on Roku…before the three on his left were blown off of their feet and into the wind by an absurdly powerful gust.
Meanwhile, the tank had fallen to the ground with an incredible thump, sending two of the other men to sprawl to their knees in shock.
However, Roku heard a loud, boom from the direction of the sixth.
Looking down, he felt an emptiness to accompany the hole in his chest.
Falling to his knees, Roku felt as if a part of him were leaving. It seemed as if he couldn't feel his hands…and looking at them, he realized they were indeed disintegrating, falling to the ground in the form of smoke, fog, and mostly sand.
Slowly, he looked up at his killer-his arms were gone up to the elbow by now-and simply locked the man's gaze.
As his body was, quite literally, falling to pieces, he maintained that look until he blew away in the wind.
As his team ruggedly rose to their feet, the mysterious leader of the group sighed.