I've heard that all good stories start from the beginning.

So I suppose that mine should as well.

It all began on our world, the one we know and love. The one we refer to as 'Earth'.

The thing is, our Earth was unique. It wasn't just a planet in a sea of stars. It was the only planet in that sea of stars.

Of course, we didn't know that when the mimics came.

It took us much longer to understand.

The mimics weren't just alien invaders.

They were something more.

You see, while our planet is the only one we will ever find in our sea of stars, there are many, many other seas out there. The multiverse theory, or the theory that there is a universe representing every single possibility to ever exist in all of space-time was right.

I would know, I've been to quite a few of them. It all started in a world probably not unlike yours….

The invasion changed many things. Technological advancement began to go incredibly fast. In almost no time at all, we went from having soldiers utilizing pea shooters to soldiers using highly advanced exosuits.

Going up against a mimic in anything other than an exosuit was suicide, and even with one, it took around three soldiers to gun down one of the monstrosities.

Hell, even getting into an exosuit was nearly impossible for the average human. The human body just wasn't ready for the upgrades provided by the suits. The body had to be modified, fused with the suit. Few survived the process.

Few were willing to take the risk.

Slowly, the world became like something out of the books. First military service became compulsory. Then, if your name got picked out of a ballot, you became an exo-wielder.

I was one of the unlucky bastards who got his name picked.

Or lucky, depending on how you think about it.

"Thank god it's over."
"What do you mean?"
"The procedure. It's over. We survived. We got lucky."
I frowned.

"Yeah, but what makes you think we'll survive combat?"
"Hey, it's better than dying in a lab. Think about it. Get killed in a lab, and you'll just be forgotten. Die a hero, defending the world from these things? That's the kinda thing that gets put in movies."

He clearly hadn't ever seen combat. I chuckled, and started as I heard a gasp coming from one of the newly occupied seats. I looked over at the newly awakened guy…

And noticed he looked exactly like that movie star from those movies I used to watch when I was a kid.

He was freaking Tom Cruise, or at least a dead ringer for him.

He was panicking.

"The hell? Where am I? Who are you? WHY AM I STRAPPED DOWN?"
I waited. Everyone behaved like this after surgery. I did five minutes ago. The other three to arrive had done the same thing so far. He wasn't the first, and he wasn't the last.

It took him a minute to calm himself. After he seemed to no longer be in danger of having a panic attack, I reached over…

And poked him.

He stared at me.

"Hey."
He just stared.

"Where you from?"
He shook his head.

"Hey, you gonna answe-"
"No." He finally spoke."This is wrong. I didn't join here! I'm the PR guy! I'm not meant for combat!"
I stared at them, my eyebrows raised as high as they could go.

"Then why the hell can't I recognize you? Government officials are pretty well known around here."
He stared at me, then slowly began to touch his face. He moved his palms across it, growing more nervous by the second.

"Man,I need a-"
"LISTEN UP!"

The guy, who for now I shall call Tom Cruise, was somewhat rudely interrupted by a soldier boarding the VTOL.

"YOU PEOPLE ARE THE ONLY ONES FROM THIS SHIT-HOLE WHO SURVIVED!
YOU MAY THINK THIS MAKES YOU SPECIAL, THAT THIS MAKES YOU STRONG, BUT IT DOSEN'T! THE ONLY FREAKING THING THIS PROVES, IS THAT THE REST OF THE PEOPLE HERE ARE FREAKING PUSSIES!"
I leaned over, and whispered-

"Notice how he dosen't have any augmentations."
He was still panicking. Geez, what the hell was wrong with him? So, in order to reduce the level of panic in the room, I used my ultimate calm-the-fuck down ability.

I tickled him.

Unfortunately, he seemed to be rather tickle-resistant. On the plus side, he stopped panicking. On the minus side, he was looking at me like I was nuts.

Hey, I wasn't the one panicking.

As the massive M-14 VTOL Blackhawk(which obviously, was black) began to take off, I reflected on all the empty seats. Every single empty seat represented a person who had died.

A person who failed the augmentation.

A person who probably hadn't wanted to be there.

There were ten seats in the VTOL, and of them, only four were occupied.

It took the Blackhawk two hours to go from the place I called home to the mountains. While it was aided by booster checkpoints, those still some goddamn impressive speeds.

We were being deployed somewhere in the country of India, in a place called 'North Bengal.' We were going to land in a village. Nobody remembered what it had once been called, and very few people particularly cared.

The mimics and how to kill them were all that most people could really think of at the moment. The names of their victims were relatively….. unimportant.

And now our trials would begin.

We would have to get to the forward operating base, which was a few kilometers away from where we were.

For you Americans, that's five or six miles.

The massive craft, while quick and well armed, was ill equipped for the close, compact terrain found in this hilly region. Anti air flak was common, even this far from the front line. The soldier with us forced us out, and I finally got a good look at where we were.

I could barely tell that there had once been a village here.

Massive charred spots marked where there may have once been houses or shops. Here and there, a few lonely walls were visible. But the one sign that proved to us that people had once lived here were the bones.

They coated the ground, near a particularly large structure that seemed relatively unharmed compared to the devastation around it. The people who once lived in this place hadn't just been slaughtered. They had been herded, then burned to death.

There was nothing that needed to be said. There was nothing that could be said. There were mimics in the area, and we had to warn the forward operating base.

So, in silence, we trudged on, surrounded by those we were too late to save.