Unexpected Hope
Chapter 1
It was a calm, warm night in Austin Texas and in the two-story, single family house we're moving towards and entering, it's not so calm for a few. Current reason standing; being a man in his late 20's/early 30's on the phone with someone else and having a mild argument with him or her. When he finishes he sees a figure on the couch, with the lights revealing it to be a girl in the midst of waking up.
"Hey…." Said the girl half asleep with a light stretch
"Scoot." The man said with a tired kind of grunt, making the girl shift on the couch to accommodate him
"Fun day at work, huh?" the girl asked as the man rubbed the upper part of his face with a hand
"What are you still doing up?" asked the man, "It's late."
"Crude! What Time is it?" said the girl a slight panic as she moved to look at the clock hanging high on the wall, with it showing it being less than 15 minutes to midnight
"It's way past you're bedtime." Said the man
"But it's still today." Said the girl as she crawled off the couch
"Honey, please not now," said the man with a light groan in his voice as the girl grabbed something and brought over to the man, "I don't have the energy."
"Here." Said the girl as she handed a box to the man
"What's this?" asked the man taking the box
"Your birthday," the girl replied as she watched the man open the box, revealing a watch, "you kept complaining about your broken watch…. So I figured. You know."
About the same time, different place
Two figures raced through trees of a forest, both panting heavily from the long run they had sprinted. Reasons for their haste were other figures in hot pursuit. One of the two that were being chased turned round mid-stride doing a seamless 360 with out breaking its pace as it lobbed something at a nearby tree in the midst of the pursuers. The object shattered and a violent explosion destroyed the tree and forced the pursuers apart sending some crashing into other trees and burning others.
"Damn these guys are relentless," said the figure that threw the explosive object, with a young masculine sounding voice, "They must be seriously desperate if they are attempting to take us on."
"Considering what we're transporting, hardly surprising," said the second figure sounding more like a female, "these things if used right could make even the most pathetic ninja a near invincible existence."
"Well I'm all for ditching these punks," said the male as he repeated the throw again, disrupting the pursuit and increasing the distance, "evasive plan: beta marigold?"
"Works for me," said the female as she copied the male, except she tossed two objects, "see you at the meeting point."
"Roger that." Said the male unsheathing a sword that was hanging limply in one of his hands and slicing the air in front of him, before vanishing from sight
The pursuers were about to chase down the female, when two of them were swiftly cut down, due to the loss of connection between their heads and their bodies. That caused immediate panic as the pursuers started launching attacks at random some nicking each other because of friendly fire as the female of the pursued rapidly left the area. It was after that, one of the pursuers whistled to the others and pointed out to large shuriken embedded in the tree(s) behind the two fallen, causing a number to start swearing and cursing like incensed sailors as they took off in pursuit of the female while one or two took off in another direction.
Back in Texas
Joel had just finished shooting the rabid neighbor, whose first name was Jimmy, and ushering his daughter out the door as a truck pulled up.
"Where the hell you been?" demanded a male voice (Joel's brother Tommy) as Joel and his daughter had just exited the building as a person walked over to them from the drivers side, "do you have any idea what's goin' on out there?"
"Yeah, I've got some notion," said Joel with a slight sigh in his voice, before addressing his daughter, "come on baby girl. Get in."
"Holy shit, you got blood all over you!" Tommy declared in shock
"It ain't mine," said Joel attempting in assuaging Tommy's fears, as he ushered Sarah into the back seat, "let's just get outta here."
Both men got into the front seats with Tommy taking the driver's side, Tommy informing Joel about the gist of what's happening inside the city, while Joel was egging on about getting as far from the house and the chaos as possible.
"Hey Sarah, how are you holding up, honey?" asked Tommy a gentle, yet concerned tone evident in his voice
"I'm fine," said Sarah lowly before, "can we listen to the radio?"
"Yeah, sure…." Said Tommy turning the said electrical device on
Back to the Chase
The male that turned invisible was halfway through a clearing when he suddenly dodged an attack barreling down his six o'clock, the attack being several shuriken mixed into several fireballs aimed dead center on his back.
"Seriously guys, just stop it!" stated the invisible male sword up in front of him as he turned round on the pursuers that had decided to go after hime
"We'll let you live if you give us the scroll with the 'cargo'." Said one of the pursuers sounding like a male as well, a nasally, oily sounding sort of male
"Why?" asked the chased male, "that desperate for power or something?"
"No, our boss won't kill us if we bring him the 'cargo' to add to his collection that will allow him to dominate even the five great village," Replied the male pursuer with a demeaning sneer in his voice, "so make it easy on all of us and we may let you live. After all killing the Golden Phantasm of the Sea Vault is considered a bonus in cred and money, although the few errant fools who believed they had slain you wound up with some big targets on their backs, before meeting their ends less that a week later at your hands."
"If you know who I am, then you also know my partner will end up annihilating your compatriots," said the Golden Phantasm as he kept his guard up while casting his voice about, making less easy for his opponents to zero in on him, "so that makes you all equally as foolish."
"That amount of fodder went after her because they weren't informed about the more valuable stuff loaded on your soon-to-be deceased body, if you keep on resisting," The oily one replied, "and don't bother hiding, my partner here can see and sense where you are."
"Well then, I guess that makes things easier for me." Said Golden Phantasm as he threw several kunai the majority corralling the chasers, while a hidden one shot straight down at the feet of the two, hitting something that exploded, critically wounding the two. This opened the window for Golden Phantasm to bifurcate the partner before turning round to see the other fleeing.
On random thought and impulse, Golden Phantasm pulled on two separate things and directed it through the sword in his hands, before launching a wave at the fleeing man. The wave took the guy out, and Golden Phantasm was about to leave when he felt a pull and realized too late, that he did something and was violently pulled into some rip in front of him.
Texas near the bridge
Joel was nearly overrun by some infected as he carried Sarah in his arms, but the said infected were instantly mowed down by rapid gunfire. This caused the man and the girl in his arms to flinch slightly at the sudden burst of loud sounds and the girl screaming in fright. Pacing towards them was an armed, camo-clothed individual, indicating the person was a soldier.
"It's okay baby, we're safe," said Joel, "we're safe."
Joel then directed his attention to the soldier, "Hey. We need help."
"Stop!" the soldier declared in a masculine voice
"Please, it's my daughter," Joel pleaded through pants, "I think her legs broken."
"Stop right there!" The soldier shouted causing Joel to step back slightly
"Okay…" said Joel attempting to be rational, "we're not sick!"
"Got a couple of civilians in the outer perimeter," the soldier spoke into a radio on his person, "please advise…"
"Daddy," said Sarah slightly scared, "What about uncle Tommy?"
"We're gonna get you to safety and go back for him. Okay?" said Joel doing what he could to remain optimistic
"Sir, there's a little girl," the soldier replied to something, "but…. Yes, sir."
Joel was too stressed and frightened to figure out from the bits he had just heard as he attempted to persuade the soldier, "Listen, buddy. We've just been through hell-."
There was a sudden thump that drew all attention and the raising of a weapon trained so that it could hit Joel and Sarah as well as the origin of the sound. There was a pained groan as a figure stood up and it wasn't the two infected the soldier had shot down, no. It was a different person, a strangely dressed, blonde person, who had an unsheathed Japanese style sword in one hand and had the other hand on his head shaking it as if to clear a daze or clear his head of pain judging by the pain evident on his face.
The soldier primed his weapon and the sound of doing so incited reaction and a completely unexpected reaction. Because out of nowhere several objects seemed to materialize out of thin air in a split second and in that same-amount of time flew with uncanny accuracy right into the soldier's torso killing him instantly. However this didn't stop his body from reacting as the brain stopped function and this led to the gun being fired as the finger on the trigger tensed. However because the body was collapsing the aim was rapidly skewing and so happened it trailed over the place where Joel and Sarah were occupying.
Joel jerked round when he heard the weapon go off and a few seemed to have grazed him, causing him to cry out in pain. This threw Joel and caused Sarah to scream as the fell. Joel was quickly up when he heard rapid footsteps and a slight amount of whimpering. He glanced to see Tommy running up gun drawn and the stranger moving past, as the whimpering got louder, until it clicked.
"Sarah!" Joel cried as he scrambled over to his daughter as the stranger knelt next to her cursing, "Sarah!"
"Wait!" said the stranger holding up a hand, "I can help her."
"What?" said Joel as the stranger pulled out an object that looked like a tube
"I can help her…." Said the stranger a little more slowly as he ripped Sarah's shirt enough to uncover the wound, while also exposing his own torso, "as an apology…."
The stranger unrolled the object revealing a number of designs and images, before placing his hand on one and in a puff of smoke pulled out what appeared to be a butcher knife. Joel was about to say something, before the stranger flipped the knife so the blade was in his and placed the handle in Sarah's hand as a tendril of what seemed like golden energy extended from his torso. The tendril entered the bullet wound and extracted the bullet and all it's fragments before returning the wound just as the knife glowed and the wound began to close. What surprised the brothers other than the knife and the tendril was that the sight of blood coming from the exact place on the stranger's body that was slowly disappearing from Sarah's.
"Come on. Come on," Said the stranger before his being seemed to ripple and his face became a rigor of surprise and grabbed at the object and the tendril retracted, as he seemed to fade, "shit!"
Just as the stranger faded a slight glow came from the designs and several lights suddenly shot into the starry night. However Joel was still worried about Sarah as the wound hadn't fully vanished. But his worry turned to terror as Sarah started to fade as well.
"Sarah!" Joel cried out as he made to grab his daughter only for her to vanish, "NO!"
Little did Joel know, was that Sarah had survived and that one day, she'd return to him. Although that day would feel like an eternity between then and the agony of the night his daughter had vanished.
Hey readers, been a long time
I apologize for my long time of inactivity on the writing stage and I have no excuse
and after some time and some recent... insight
I've come to an executive decision
shortly I'll be taking down pretty much all my stories, sans this new, and a number of them shall be undergoing rewrites in the future after this story has reached it's conclusion
I again apologize and would like to add one more thing
this story was a challenge idea proposed by the mind of one Lovinaelita