Hello, chums! I have a couple messages to start out with...

For those of you who read Tainted, good for you! You found the remake! No characters will be accepted this time, but all the old ones will stay (including those I didn't have time to work in).

For those who have no clue what I'm talking about, here's the story- I made a story called Tainted a while back with basically the same plotline as this one- unfortunately, it got banned (well, actually, a warning to get banned) because people could turn in characters for the story. So this is the remake where people can't turn in characters, but I still retained the old ones. Kapish?

Aaron (my partner in writing) says this chapter is "alright"...I have a bad feeling about this.

And...that's just about it. Huh.

The moon hung in the sky like a great orb, briefly illuminating the silhouette of a caped figure who flew with bat-like wings. Silently, with the stealth of a trained warrior, the figure alighted- too small to be human, the wrong proportions to be...anything. At least of this world.

Carefully drawing a sword in the shape of a flame, the creature glided forward, watching as two groups advanced for each other.

The first were almost on par with him- but that was only because they lugged around so much equipment. Night-vision goggles bathed the soldier's sight radius in dull green, guns were up and ready to fire.

The second was composed of ragtag group, stomping clumsily along- a few weapons, a few skilled. Most seemed to be hoping to win on faith. The knight sneered. Pathetic.

With only a small dust cloud to mark his presence, the figure swung his cape around him and disappeared. Materializing out of thin air next to a straggler in the second group, he seized the man's head and forced it to the ground, cloaking it in his cape.

Meta Knight

The captured soldier's muffled screaming went unnoticed.

When Meta Knight backed away, the writhing man was already paralyzed with fear, as hundreds of small, spherical, violent purple things crawled around him.

Meta Knight drew a cell phone, plain and nondescript, from the billowing folds of his cape. "Do you have confirmation?"

"Oh, yeah. We got him good.", came the reply, in a rough sneer.

"Enough, Wario. Ugh, these humans! Can't we just kill this one- all he does is gibber about something called Allah!"

"Allah? Is he a king? Some kind of champion of this man's people?"

"No, no- Allah is the god of these people. Sheez, Meta, you just had to go and snag a freaking terrorist?"

"They do not inspire much terror, Snake. In fact, this human appears to be the one in fear, not causing it."

"And what does he fear? Keep the purpose of the mission in mind."

"He fears...several countries. America being the foremost- the Americans are the ones he was about to face. America is the most powerful."

"You know, you could have just asked me that. Why'd we go through all the trouble of capturing an insurgent?"

"Time passes differently in our world than this one, Snake. You, of all people, should know that."

"Enough! It is settled. We shall build our army in the land called America."

"You know that 'listen' and 'silent' are spelled with the same words. Is that why you don't talk?"

The boy said nothing. He just raised an eyebrow.

Nathan, the Silent

Dr. F. Roy Dean Schlipp rubbed his temples. All his other cases were easy- test anxiety, mostly, but this boy! He just sat there. He didn't say a thing. He didn't give Schlipp anything to work with. And what's more, the good doctor knew there was a brain behind the silence.

"You are not dumb, Nathan."

The teenager's face twitched, almost imperceptibly. Then his apathy continued. He continued to stare, unblinking, at Dr. Schlipp's brown eyes with his own, pale gray.

Dr. Schlipp wrote something down, and leaned back in his leather, swivel chair. "Fine, then. As I said, 'listen' and 'silent' are spelled the same. I will listen to you, even if you have nothing to say."

The man, in his tweed jacket, looked down his long nose at the boy, at his blank face, at his bristly, black hair and thin lips.

The seconds ticked by, followed by minutes. And then a whole hour had passed, and neither had said a thing.

Then all the windows in the little office simultaneously shattered.

Schlipp didn't even have time to make a sound- a golden disc simply flew through the air, caught him on the head, and he was consumed in a blinding golden light. Two vaguely humanoid figures jumped in through the window, completely ignoring the broken glass beneath their feet.

The first pointed at the now still figurine of Nathan's therapist, and turned to the second, who merely shook his head. Then they saw Nathan.

The diminutive creatures didn't really look dangerous- comically proportioned limbs hung off of a cylindrical body, as oval red eyes stared from a little sphere of a head. There was even a little feather dangling from their heads.

They didn't look dangerous. If it hadn't been for the big, nasty looking guns cocked on their hands.

Nathan was still sitting in the chair, caught in a kind of deer-in-the-headlights reaction. It wasn't like his entire life was flashing before his eyes- but suddenly, everything in the world seemed so small.

Time wasn't important anymore- in those few seconds, Nathan saw the room he had spent so many hours in with astonishing clarity. Shelves full of psychological textbooks lined the beige walls of the study, and the mahogany desk was cluttered with notes and an ancient desktop.

There was a picture of Schlipp, a woman, and a little boy.

His family. Nathan realized in the same slow-motion way that the world seemed to be in.

There was also a tiny, porcelain elephant figurine on his desk, ornately decorated and of some Oriental origin.

He always did like elephants. Nathan thought, and snickered. For some reason, that was funny.

Then a revolving golden disc hit him square in the forehead, and a trophy lay still on the ground.

One of the Primids dissolved into a mass of purple spheres, crawling across the stained carpet like ants, and swarming Nathan's trophy. Several seconds passed as the clumps on him grew larger, and larger, until an exact replica of Nathan stood before the fallen original. Dark Nathan raised an eyebrow at his comrade, in exactly the same way the Silent had done to Dr. Schlipp.

"Too old." warbled the second Primid, shaking it's head. "No use."

The copy shrugged, as if to say, "Your loss".

Stretching his new limbs, Dark Nathan jumped out of a broken window and grinned at the chaos around him. The invasion had begun.

And that's it for the not-prologue. It's kind of short, but the horrible, horrible thing known as reality is catching up to me. Soon I think I'll be writing dark poetry about homework...

For the people who read "Tainted", you know how different this is from the old version- and maybe it's worse. O.o. Remember to review and tell me.

And for those who didn't, still review. I have a slight (OK, big) suspicion that you guys will have no idea what's going on.

Uh...I think that's it. Until next time- ta, chums!