Normally I don't give out a disclaimer because its fairly obvious I don't own the story...if I did...why would I be writing fanfiction? Great question...and moving on. I do want to say that the Ether characters that are original, Sicerio, Lily, Cindy, and Red are mine. You can't have them. Not for a bajillion dollars.

Sicerio: Age 21

Lily: Age 20

Red: Age 21

Cindy: Age 20

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It was Ohallow's...no wait...it was Christmas eve. Yeah...we'll say it was Christmas Eve. There in a cabin for four friends. Their names...probably the most known throughout the multi-verse. Their actions...their feelings...their thoughts...all recorded and viewed over by thousands. Their very way of life reciprocated amongst the masses they would lead. But that is later...and this is the beginning of their tale...when they had no power or mass recognition to their name.

Each was perhaps twenty years old at the time. Two of them...whom would become married later in life...were perhaps the most romantic couple you could ever find. For eight years they had giggled with each other...laughed with each other...held hands...gone to dates...and...well...done a few other things to.

"Will you two keep it down?" yelled the third occupant in the front room from his couch. Since he and the fourth occupant were not a couple...they did not share the only other bedroom...sticking him to listen to the actual couple's constant movements and weird little noises couples make with each other.

When no sounds came he yelled at them again, "Look...I mean come on! Its been what? Eight years? You two plan to marry sometime soon...consummate your fucking relationship already!" he curses at them enough to make the fourth occupant blush. A little firecracker herself...it was not uncommon to hear her normally shy lips...part words of extreme vulgarity. Why did she blush? Because she was listening in to our third occupant swearing at the first two play around with each other.

Still no answer came, "I mean...come on! For the people who don't get any...you could honor the fact that humans have needs!" he continues on at them...grinning that their noises were slowing down. Though he was not completely satisfied with their not entirely stopping just yet.

Still...no noise that sounded like words came. "How about this...you want help? I'll come in there right now...show you how the whole thing is done!" he says this time with a hint of suaveness to his voice. That charm that attracted the flies. That zazz that attracted the alley cats. Yes indeed...that suaveness that did him absolutely no good with the ladies.

Now...all noise had stopped but the odd snigger of laughter from our fourth occupant. Finally...the first two occupants emerged from their room...glaring at the center of their lack of playtime at the moment. His natural response was to raise his shoulders as if he were innocent of any crime. That which was not true...as he had quite the reputation for playing jokes and pranking people.

"Sure Sicerio..." the man of the couple said in a highly delectable platter of sarcasm, dripping with exquisite venom. It was a meal meant to kill by words alone after shoving them down someone's throat. The woman of the couple just rolled her eyes at the rivalry the two men had with each other. It was no little known fact that Sicerio had had a crush on her in the seventh grade...but...that had been oh so quite a long time ago. She was sure the men had completely forgot about that that fact. The fact that their rivalry stemmed from their need to make her love them. Besides...if she remembered correctly...it was the fourth occupant who had ended the whole thing when she snatched Sicerio's heart. But...being the constant oddball that Sicerio was...he had never acted on it.

"Oh yeah Red? Well if I remember correctly it was I who won that chess competition," Sicerio said back to his good...and probably best friend. It seemed she had missed out on quite a bit of the conversation if they were already fighting over chess. Instead of scolding them...she watched as the fourth occupant, her own best friend came out of her room silently...and attempted to stop Sicerio, sneaking up from behind him with some pop.

It was a well known fact amongst their friends...Sicerio was the probably the strongest...the smartest...the best paid...but he had a few severe weaknesses. While he was immune to pain, heat and cold...chemically...slip him some caffeine, or alcohol and he was as drunk as a sailor on land.

"I can hear you Lily," Sicerio spoke when she was about to come up upon him. He continued on with, "Your steps are better and lighter...but you forgot about the swishing of the pop in the 2 liter." he spoke with his usual voice. That usual voice had been the bane of mankind. It was when he really was suave. When he was hip. When he was certainly the cockiest man alive. The voice just screamed in the subtle languages that he knew everything. That he was always eight steps ahead of you, and three steps behind you in pretend.

Lily just sighed and sat down next to him...closer than what regular friends might do...but with enough distance to say 'we're not sleeping together'.

Red in turn looked to his own woman...for that was how referred to the female best friends, 'his woman,' and 'Sicerio's woman'. "Cindy..." his very mentioning of her name sending the needed sentence into her cerebral cortex. She sat down on the opposite couch, opposite from Lily...much as Red sat beside her opposite of Sicerio.

The four were silent for a time. Silent as you can be when its three in the morning, the officially dubbed, 'Dead Hours'. It was Sicerio who broke the silence...his cheerfulness always catching people off guard after what he had been through. "So...are we going to sit here? Or are we going to go back and make us a baby!" The others look at him and just shake their heads. It was also a well known fact that Sicerio was desperate for a child to come his way...and accepted just about any relationship that came his way. In turn...growing closer and closer to Lily seemed to become a religion for him. It was the very reason why they all left eventually in his relationships. He was just so obviously in love with someone else entirely.

Lily smacked him upside the head for this. Her shiny red hair giving his a smack at the turn of her head as well for double the effect. She was a little disappointed he took it in stride and grabbed some of her hair with his mouth when it smacked him and playfully munched on it, not really doing anything but putting his lips together.

The four friends decide to reminiscence about their pasts. Everyone but Sicerio talking mostly. He for the most part sat back, watched them, and built up his courage. After a while he hushes them, saying he had something very important to tell them.

They in turn silence themselves as he looks at each of them and speaks two...immortal words. It were these words that changed the face of the world...and lead to far greater bloodsheds and pinnacles of power and golden ages than perhaps any other other two words, "I joined."

I joined? I joined?! Those were the words? But what did they mean? The answer lay in the state of the world. He had joined the army. The friends are morbidly silent at this. Their good...no...best friend, the strongest and brightest of them, was condemning himself to die in a fool's war. Why? Why? But...how do you ask why someone condemns them self? How do you ask in a subtle language meant not to tread toes, just where in their past did it lead them to this?

The friends...were silent...morbidly silent. And it came as no surprise that the friends offered small words of comfort and hope for Sicerio...before they turned in for the night. It started with Cindy and Red slipping back into their room to sleep. Then, it was Sicerio scooting Lily around just enough on their couch so he could lay down...with her sitting on the end, with his head in her lap...and her fingers running through his hair. It was...one of those romantic moments you find in your lifetime where everything is about to explode into fiery chaos...but you just sit down for the night and cuddle.

They spoke no words...their actions spoke everything that they felt. For example, Lily could feel the steely resolve in her good friend laying in her lap. She could feel the cold articulating mind that processed everything behind his warm visage...the very thing that separated him from taking any final step into obtaining his goal in life...fatherdom. The kingdom of family...for which he had sought for twenty long years.

In return, he could feel the bubbling fear in her. The truly warm and living heart that beat just to make him happy. It warmed a part of his heart he had frozen it seemed. For to all the world he was the nicest and quite possibly kindest person in the world to see...but behind his mask...you could find the dark parts of every human heart thinking harshly and coldly of the world. It was a miracle that he had any sanity attached to his mind as it was.

It was awhile, long after the soft snores of the true official couple could first be heard when he spoke, almost in the softest whisper, "I've been thinking about the universe lately." And she knew where this was headed...he wanted his thoughts to be known should he die...and in return for his silent plea to be remembered she gave a small hug that she 'forgot' to stop giving to his head, pulling him close to her center.

"I believe," he continued, "that the universe that we live in is just a middle ground. That their is universe underlying to this one, where infinite energy resides...or at least as near infinite as the human mind can imagine." He stopped to think on this again a little.

"This universe is almost completely unattached. There are however, small points where what is on our side can channel this energy...though I believe it must be objects of living essence and mind. A small piece to every piece of the universe channels this energy I call ether into this level of the universe." his words are that of an abstract attachment.

"I think I can conclude, that if this is true, that with enough energy channeled, you could create an overlying level to the universe. Where different laws bind the world." he settles his thoughts to look up at her, his brown eyes curious for her opinion.

She cleared her throat and spoke the absolute truth on what she could, "I believe that its a deep thought." He nodded towards her and lightly stroked her light red hair in absence of conscious, articulate thought.

There he laid, and she sat for quite some time, wrapped up in their own tender thoughts, and each other. It was a quarter past three when she made the motion for herself to go to bed, and he eagerly agreed...as he was missing out on the the precious sleep so often denied to him.

As she was about to enter the smaller bedroom she looked back to the huddled form of her good friend and wondered before deciding another one of those things that was not only a ripple...but indeed a small wave in cause and effect. She turned to him and called, "Come on Sicerio, its too cold to sleep out here," her hand motioning for him to follow.

Now there is a saying that you can attract flies with honey, more than you can attract them with salt. Well, Sicerio on that night proved just how much women rule as the honey, when he got up without a word, and followed her into the smaller bedroom, and laying his sleeping gear...meaning a pillow and blanket on the floor beside the twin sized bed.

Now...with both laying in their respective bed, or 'bed' for one, they spoke softly to each other as the night floated on into more dead hours of the night. As a historian...it is pointless to remark on every little word spoken...but on record there is a very interesting conversation at the end that does take place.

"Why?" It was a sudden question, one of which so sudden and so filled with panicky quivers of the tone that it could only be a question to his earlier statement that had filled her with bubbling fear. Well, now the cauldron had bubbled over.

He looked up at her for a length of time before speaking, "Because I have nothing. Good friends yes...but no love in my heart. No goal I can accomplish. What good do I achieve in wasting space, and air, and nourishment?" he asked in return at length to her own question. His words meant something else she knew. He was only just born before given away...never to receive the love or attention of a mother or father. He was only two when the scars he bore to this very day, when inflicted upon him by the guzzling flames. He was only ten...just half his life he had lived, and he was trying to get away from it all. To kill himself, and be done with life. He was only fourteen when his family was murdered...killed in an accident by a drunken idiot...who couldn't contain himself...or his rifle when the family had been driving by in a van. Three shots fired...and not a thing so much as scratched Sicerio. That did not say that his grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, and sisters were not unharmed...or even alive. She had helped him...but he had sealed his heart away. It had already been viced in tightly, under strict reign and control...but now it seemed no key existed to unlock its true depths. Just fleeing moments of thought and feeling.

His words did indeed mean something...they would be words to inspire Eight Great Men of their time to defy all thought and common sense/reason, and redevelop what it meant to be the top. The Third World War ended all conflict on Earth...the middle ground world of the universe for human civilization for almost three centuries. It however, did lead directly into a war into what was to come as the pinnacle of power, between these very same Eight Great Men.