September 16, 2066
Cinder Cone Trail in Lassen Peak National Park.
Sweat poured down Jason Nathaniel Joseph West's face as he climbed up the torturous volcanic route. He swore in Russian as his right foot sank into the volcanic sediment for what seemed liked the twentieth time, filling his shoe with tiny ancient, pebble sized pumice." Stupid rocks, why couldn't they have laid a tarmac trail? " He said as a drop of sweat dropped from one of his eyelashes. Impatiently he blinked it away as the sun partially blinded his retinas when he raised his eyes up again. " Wished I bought one of those civilian exosuits for this trip. That would have saved me a lot of energy and strength. " He said as he slowly but steadily, hiked toward the rim of the dead cinder cone volcano.
Jason Nathaniel Joseph West, or more commonly called as Jason West by his colleagues, is a 34 year old California treasure hunter, a former marine, and a former student in the ways of martial arts. Having abandoned his military career in search of some fun and adventure, Jason has collected countless archeological artefacts in the Americas, China, and Europe. Like Indiana Jones, Nathan Drake or Lara Croft, he'll always break the law in order to get his hands on anything that looked valuable in his eyes.
But for now, our dude is taking a break from his work. Walking down the career path of a artefact raider means that our human amigo will be prone of meeting all sorts of dangers, rivals, and the supernatural. He had fought swarms of man sized Piranhas in the lakes of Amazon in search for an generic, golden Aztec statue. Fought Hulk sized Chinese mummies in an old crumbling Mongol temple for Qing Shi Huang's paintbrush. He even managed to defeat Hattori Hanzo's reanimated corpse in his tomb in Japan for the search of his sword, which was made out of an ore that came from an asteroid. With the help of his old friends, Jason even managed to take down the remains of rogue Atlas forces, which were searching for an ancient Jewish vault, filled with incredible technologies. All of this exploration and chaos had caused our protagonist's life to become very tiring and stressed and because of that, he decided that taking a vacation in the United States's seventeenth National Park would help relax his body.
But right now, Jason was having a really hard time enjoying the weather and view. The sun was beating down on his back, his head felt like a fluttering plastic bag, and his legs felt like that they weighed a ton. Chemical erosion had caused the entire volcanic terrain to become a sluggish, sinkish place, causing his foot to sink into the ground every time he took a step. Global warming had caused the sun to feel like an oven, baking his flesh into patches of inflammable skin.
" Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, " Jason said as he climbed up the volcanic slope. He checked his thermometer and discovered that the temperature was already over 110 degree fahrenheit. " Fucking Rockefellers, " he mumbled as he finally reached the rim of the dead cinder cone. " Whew, finally reached to top, " Jason said as he stretched out his arms and flexed his fingers. A gust of wind cooled him off as he observed the area. The entire place was practically bare, with only several small pitiful trees dominating as the primary organic lifeform in this sector. The rim was around several hundred meters in diameter and was completely made out of lava rocks, giving it a brownish, reddish tint. There were several trails, some which circled the entire area while the others led into the very heart of the cinder cone's crater. " Might as well collect some pumice, fuck the rules. " He said as he took a swig from his coca cola bottle before descending into the depths. The trail was steep but manageable and quietly Jason descended until he was in the center of the crater. There were several stack of rocks there, probably created by past visitors or enthusiasts. " Heh, might as well create my own, I'm bored to hell. " He said as he picked up a lava rock and began to stack.
A few minutes later Jason was finished. He gazed solemnly at his creation, five large pyromagnite rocks placed on top of each other. " Looks like an overgrown rubbish pile but meh, whatever. " Jason thought as he snapped a picture with his phone sized Mini DataSlate. There was a large rumbling sound overhead and several rain drops began to fall to the ground. " Gotta go, " the human thought as he packed his equipment and was beginning to hike up the trail when he noticed something that was shimmering in the piles of lava rocks. Walking back to take a better look he noticed that there was indeed a pale blue glow that was emitting from under a bunch of rocky ores. " I wonder if that is a flashlight, " Jason muttered as he began to dig, hoping to find whatever is emitting the blue light. After several seconds of excavation he found the source. " I'll be fucking damn, it's a pumice that fricking GLOWS! This shit is definitely going to be valuable, I'm keeping it. " With that being said he opened his backpack and carefully placed the glowing pumice, the size of a potato, into one of his pack's many compartments. There was a flash of lightning, followed by a roar of thunder. " I'm definitely going to have to go now. Last thing I want to become is a 落汤鸡. " He said as he quickly jogged up and out of the crater, heading towards his one man tent in the Manzanita campground area.
An hour later…..
" Goddamnit, " Jason swore as he entered his little, one man, artificial adobe. The rain pattered against the waterproof multi nanoconic weaved tent fiber as Jason steadied his body into a more comfortable position due to the lack of space. " Hopefully the teriyaki chicken soup I bought at that Japanese outback store tastes good, I'm starving! " He quickly opened the food back and heated his meal with miniature sized microwave. " Gonna go check the weapons, ammo, and gear I bought. I heard that Manticore infected bear attacks are becoming more and more frequent in these areas. Last thing I want to happen is some animal catching my pants down. " He crawled over to his digital patterned duffel bag and opened it, revealing a collection of weapons and gear. Jason reached in and grabbed out the first one, a HBRa-5, the primary assault rifle of most of the world's militaries. Replacing the HBRa-3 only several years ago, the new HBRa-5 is even more formidable, capable of firing 5.56x45 mm tungsten carbide tipped, depleted deutrium ( a material that is around 24.2 time harder than tungsten ) cored rounds at a rate of fire of more than 900 rpm. Thanks to Atlas's advancements in ammunition nanotechnology, each clip is capable of holding more than four hundred rounds of ammo, giving it superior ammunition capacity than its predecessors. Fired at a velocity of more than 1750 m/s ( 5250 fps ), each 5.5 gram conical shaped kinetic projectiles has a kinetic energy of more than 8.4 kilojoules and can penetrate more than five inches of solid steel. This gives it superior firepower to most older firearms. All in all, Jason thought it was worth his money ( and it only costed around 80 dollars! ) The next weapon on our amigo's list was the EPM-10, another successor to Atlas's long list of infantry weaponry. However this is were the similarities stopped. The EPM-10 is a condensed focused long range plasma rifle, a directed energy weapon to be more precise. Powered by micro fusion power packs, each shot from the EPM-10 are heated to a temperature of over half a million kelvins and are fired from the muzzle of the rifle at sub light speed. This allows it to penetrate virtually any type of armor that are not equipped with energy resistant armor, turning it into a ideal infantry weapon. Thanks to the ridiculous amount of energy the fusion reactors generates ( more than 375 megajoules per second ), a single shot from this weapon is capable of vaporizing more than 8 kilograms of titanium and a super shot ( when the user overcharges the reactor and dumps all of the energy into a hyper condensed beam ) is capable of dishing out more than 700 MJs of hate into a target, vaporizing most of the target's mass. However, this will likely overheat and damage the gun. The EPM-10 essentially has infinite ammo, its fusion power packs capable of generating energy for million of years. Jason had managed to pack half a dozen fusion power packs for backup just in case something went wrong with the primary.
Jason last weapon is also a DEW, the EM-2A. Like most weapons it's the successor of most weapons Atlas had built over the decade. The weapon is a supercharged particle accelerator, firing highly energized beams of super condensed wave particles at the enemy at near light velocity. Each particle's kinetic energy, due to its extremely high energy and velocity, usually hits with a force of over 280 MJs of energy, turning most targets into clouds of ash. Powered by a rapid rotating nanoceramic magnetic turbine, the EM-2A can essentially generate infinite amount of energy, like most of Atlas's energy weapons. Due to the complexity of the EM-2A's turbines, he only got two extra energy turbines.
Our protagonist packed explosives and other gear too. Half a dozen variable grenades. A plasma heated combat blade as well as a Bay of Pigs multi purpose combat google.
After finishing his equipment check Jason cooked a nice bowl of Teriyaki chicken soup as dinner and ate it as his meal. " Hmmmm, it's delicious! " he said, his voice muffled due to the fact that his mouth was filled with chewed bits of poultry. It only took several minutes for him to finish eating and drinking the soup before taking some extra clothes for an shower. After the shower ( which made him feel much more refreshed ) he decided that it was time to take a look at the weird glowing pumice he had collected. It was the strangest thing he had ever seen and he decided it was time to investigate it more properly.
Taking a hammer and hitting the pumice again and again, Jason finally broke through and shattered the rocky shell. The pumice, which wasn't a pumice at all was revealed to be some sort of weird metal ball with glowing outlines. " Holy crap! This looks like a piece of alien technology! " Jason's mind guffawed with delight. One of Jason's greatest dream, besides collecting ancient artefacts was discovering anything that was alien. He was a bit of an extraterrestial nut, and loves to discover and share the discoveries of UFOs to anybody else. When he touched the strange looking ball, the area where he touched rippled, like it was made out of water instead of metal. " This is definitely cool, " he said before pressing a glowing blue button that was centered in the middle of the sphere. Our human smiled before he was consumed in a kaleidoscopic burst of bright light that blinked him out of this universe.