Break

There is a boy standing on his feet in New York city, a phone in his pocket, soldiers all around. He has seen much this boy, seen blood and death and suffering and has not yet reached his seventeenth birthday. But no matter what, he carries on. He has a purpose, a duty, and he's going to fulfil it.

(Or die trying.)

Something has just changed, and now they have a chance. He feels as though nothing could destroy this moment.

(He is wrong, so very, very wrong.)

There's a smile on his face when the phone rings.

There isn't when the call goes silent.

The phone falls out of his hand.

He sinks to the floor.

There's a boy in Ohio who watches his Dad's Chevy truck pull out of the driveway. The boy will wait for him, he should be back within an hour at the latest. But he isn't, and the boy will wait hours, days, weeks, months, years before he sees his Father again, never quite knowing why he left and always wondering if maybe, just maybe, the reason he didn't come back was because of him.

There's a girl who watches as a monster takes away the woman she's come to see as a mother in the worst way possible. Whatever was holding the girl back falls away, and she shoves whatever remorse she can deep down inside. She vows to steer clear of emotional attachment.

There's a boy who feels himself become one as he's forced to do something he never wanted to do. He relives the moment over and over again, over and over again, over and over again, even years later it still comes back to him, coming to him out of the blue with a feeling of guilt, self hatred and ever growing rage.

There's a boy who's pushed to the side and forgotten in favour of a woman, a woman he can tell is bad news but can't say anything to the one person he can. He blames himself when the betrayal comes. He blames himself for not protecting his guardian, and swears he will never live to see another friend of his come to the same fate at the betrayal of another.

There's a girl who feels herself break when her first love falls to the ground. Her estranged guardian, her drunken friend, her best friend's Papa, it is her first love whose death hurts the most. It is her first love which turns her heart to ice.

There's a boy who feels himself break, or, more accurately, suddenly becomes aware of how broken he has been for quite some time, too long actually. The first cracks started to show on an island in the ocean and the following events just made them grow to the point where his shattered pieces shattered into even smaller pieces. When he sees the look on the girls face though, he becomes aware that there is now a black hole in place of his soul.

There's a boy like no other of his kind who stands on an imaginary beach and watches as the ghost of a girl he'd come to love fades into nothingness. It is strange, the boy thinks later, that he had never even had the chance to touch her. She was his catalyst, and his purpose since he was thirteen years old has been to avenge her, and maybe, just maybe, make the world a better place. Her spirit is gone, her memory isn't. The love of his life was his reason for living, and though she was gone he had to keep fighting.

There is a boy on his knees in New York city, a phone lying a few feet away, soldiers all around. He has seen much this boy, seen blood and death and suffering and has not yet reached his seventeenth birthday. But this, this is the scenario he did not dare even have nightmares about come true. This is the end of the world, not the spaceships in the sky or the dying people, but the impossible loss he has just suffered.

Surrounded by thousands of concerned people, soldiers and civilians alike, he is a supernova mixed with a volcano about to erupt, and with this blow, he knows this for certain:

He will carry on. Setrakus Ra will die. So will anyone who played any part in what led to the events in the jungle miles and miles and miles away.

There is also one more thing he knows.

He no longer has any intentions of surviving this war. He is a boy - not yet a man - with nothing to lose. And that means he is dangerous. Dangerous, ready to kill, and with an endless supply of legacies at his fingertips - the Mogadorians would later mark this as the day they lost the war.

John Smith, Number Four, was the last to break. The last to break and the fastest to break, he was a force to be reckoned with.