The first actual chapter of Just Another Apocalypse, hooray! First I should explain, anytime you see a -, it means that character perspective is changing. A means Allen, N means Noah (Tyki), and B means Billy (Wiccan). There may be others later, but those are the ones you'll be seeing the most.

Chapter 1: Soldier in White, Magician in Black

At the beginning of the only slightly less fictional 21st century...

Allen woke up surrounded by tall buildings in an unfamiliar setting. Tyki Mikk and the several Akuma that were with him were gone, and Allen's left arm was re-attached, no longer a sword. He looked around, and noticed that the city he was in sorta reminded him of New York, which was another place filled with nightmares from his time with the evil General Cross. (The debt! The horrible debt!) Allen looked around a bit more and noticed that it was, indeed, the same place, only it had been renovated with astounding technology since his last visit here years ago. He called a taxi cab to ask where he was (just to make sure) and he noticed several hi-tech machines in the cab, including a little screen with a map and what appeared to be similar to a radio. This could only mean one thing. Tyki had dragged him into the future! It didn't appear to be a cataclysmic apocalypse, so he assumed that either the Black Order had won or the war was still going. He figured he would learn more from the Black Order themselves, so he went to the nearest payphone, only to realize that he had no American currency! He was dejected, when Timcampy suddenly fluttered out of his jacket. "Timcampy!" he exclaimed, grabbing the golden golem and holding it up, "You're here, too! This is great! Hey, can you try to contact the Black Order for me?" There was a brief pause when Timcampy was still, but then it's wings drooped and it shivered in disappointment. "They must be out of range... it's okay, Timcampy, you did your best, that's all I can ask for." He crouched onto the ground and started cooing and petting Timcampy, hoping to make the golem happy again while fighting off the rising feeling that he would be trapped in a strange city all alone with no money. Again.

Two girls walked by, with shiny bags on their arms and purses on their shoulders. They were talking and giggling. "Hey there, are you okay?" One of the girls said to him. The other scoffed, apparently feeling like this sort of emotional charity was beneath her. "I like your costume, were you supposed to be a superhero or something? That's so cute. But I don't think you'll find your party here, this street is nothing but shops." Allen looked up at her, confused. It took him a second to realize what she was talking about, but he figured it out. She must have thought he was a kid going to a birthday party or something. Time to resort to one of his old tricks; he hadn't used this one since he was 13 or so.

"I- I..." he started to whimper, making himself tear up a bit, "I can't find my mommy! She was gonna take me to Lavi's super-duper party, but now she isn't here no more!" He started to cry, and the girl put her arms around him comfortingly. Her friend rolled her eyes, not fooled, and Timcampy let out a sigh, which thankfully went unnoticed.

"There, there..." said the nice girl, "I'll help you find her. Do you know her cell phone number?" Allen didn't know what a cell phone was, but he knew about regular phones, so he nodded, sniffling a bit. "Here," she said, getting out what looked like a candy bar with buttons, "You can use mine to call her and tell her where you are." Allen took the phone and looked at it, the buttons had numbers on them (and little letters, too). He pressed the right numbers for the Black Order Headquarters, and held the thing to his ear. He was surprised to hear sounds ringing; it was like an actual telephone.

"You've reached S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters, how may I direct you in your call?"

Allen pulled the phone back and looked at it. Shield? He'd never heard of that...

"Umm... was this... umm... have you heard of the Black Order? Or Exorcists? Or... something?"

The woman's voice on the other line sounded confused. "Uhh... no, I don't think so. Is this a prank? Look, kid, you're obviously some superzero's little boy, and if you think you've stumbled upon a secret society of evil, you tell HIM, you got that? This is a secret emergency hotline and I don't have time to waste; there are ACTUAL people who need help; mmkay?" And then she hung up on him.

Allen was surprisingly calm considering what he had just heard. He closed his eyes, handed the phone back to the girl, who was a little confused, and stood up. The girl stood up too, and noticed that he was taller than he looked like when he was kneeling on the ground. "Are... are you okay?" She asked in a caring tone.

Allen responded by taking a deep breath, and yelling, "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!" at the top of his lungs. The girl jumped back and fell to the ground, Timcampy fluttered about nervously, and the girl's friend covered her ears.

At the same time as this, however, other people were also screaming nearby, and several windows of the shops on the street had shattered. One of the Akuma that had been in the room when Tyki rejected space-time was rampaging across the city, and it wasn't until it was within sight that Allen's left eye reacted, forming a gear-like monocle that showed him the soul of the Akuma. Thankfully, it was a level 1 Akuma. Unthankfully, it was surrounded by A LOT of people, most of which were running scared, but a few were actually fighting it! And doing a half-decent job at it. If Allen didn't do something quick, someone would die, be it oddly dressed human, civilian, or machine-imprisoned soul.

A-B

This certainly wasn't good.

A monstrous machine had popped into existence right in front of him, and if he hadn't had reality-bending magical powers, he would be fighting it without a costume. Actually, if he hadn't had reality-bending magical powers, he wouldn't be fighting it at all, but that didn't mean he couldn't complain about the inconvenience.

It had been a normal day for Billy Kaplan, which was very rare for him. His friend, Kate, had forced him to go shopping with her to give his opinions on the outfits she picked out, and apparently only his opinion would do. Why it wasn't Cassie or Tommy, he didn't know, but he could hazard a guess that it involved a certain stereotype, and that only fueled his anger and frustration.

As he and his pride suffered being dragged from trendy fashion store to expensive fashion store to lingerie store, he remembered how it would all be over soon, and he and Teddy were scheduled to meet up and have some alone time together; one might even call it a date. But that was hours away, and it looked as if it might be canceled, because five steps from being dragged into Victoria's Secret (Why was he supposed to help pick out lingerie in the first place!) the machine appeared and fell onto the ground. He and Kate stopped and peered at it, along with several other passerby.

"What do you suppose this one is?" whispered Kate to Billy. They were looking at a metallic sphere with guns sticking out randomly. It had a mask contorted in pain on it.

"A battle-ready Easy Bake Oven?" Billy joke, hoping and praying that it was broken and wouldn't attack.

"It doesn't seem to be moving... I think it's busted." Kate said to Billy, mirroring his hopes with her comment.

Someone out there hates me, thought Billy, as the machine rose and got a bearing on it's surroundings, almost as if it needed to dash his small hopes. "Exxxxorcissssst..." the machine hissed as it swiveled this way and that. "Noaaaaaahhh... gooonnnnnne..." It looked down upon the crowd of frightened onlookers. The mask of contorted agony grew into one of horrifying pleasure. "Hummaness... die."

The obscenely large gun barrels along it's sides all loaded themselves with equally obscenely large bullets, as Kate said to herself, "Oh snap, oh snap, oh snap, oh shi-"

The guns fired simultaneously, but the people surrounding the monstrosity were spared, thanks to Billy's magical blue barrier. The surrounding buildings, however, weren't so lucky. It was a good thing almost everyone in said buildings had gone outside to see the weapon or had gone as far away as they could, because no one was hit in the first volley.

"Billy!" yelled Kate, "I need you to teleport me to the hideout, so I can get my things and call for back up! You hold it off, but try to see if you can change your clothes, first!"

"Great!" yelled Billy, "Just what I wanted, to spend even more time waiting for you to change into a ridiculous outfit." Kate hit him over the head, and he began his chant to send her to the hideout and switch his clothes with his costume. He just finished when a car hit the machine and prevented it from unloading more bullets upon the populace. Billy (now Wiccan) looked to see the source of the flying car, and saw a welcome sight. His boyfriend, Teddy (now Hulkling), was flying around the machine upon green wings, trying to prevent it from unleashing another deadly round by keeping it occupied. Wiccan shot a blast of electricity towards the mechanical menace, and sent it reeling back. He had hoped to short circuit it, but other than the force of the shock, the electricity had no effect on it. The machine loaded and fired a single bullet in Wiccan's direction, and he wasn't fast enough to put up a barrier in time. Lucky for him, he had a friend that was plenty fast.

Speed (his spiritual twin brother, Tommy) sped by and pulled Wiccan out of danger. "Thanks To- err, Speed."

"No problem, bro." said Speed, "That's what superhero's do, they save helpless damsels from giant monsters. You may not be helpless, per say, but 1 out of 2 ain't bad." Wiccan rolled his eyes. "By the way, what are you doing at Victoria's Secret in the first place? I don't see you as coming here to sneak a peek at the dressing rooms, so that must mean your fulfilling some other fetish with women's underwe-."

"Just shut up and help me break this thing." retorted Wiccan dryly.

"Whatever you say, Billderella." and Speed was off to try and destabilize the turret of the machine as it tried to hit Hulking. Wiccan rose into the air to try and see if he could blast the machine into the non-existence it came from with a spell, but didn't get a chance, as Speed blasted it off first, the explosion at it's turret sending it flying across the street, into the wall of a building which caused a loud shattering of glass windows.

Wiccan and Hulkling flew towards the monstrosity as Speed dashed ahead of them on land. Hulkling grabbed a car and rammed it into the machine, trying to keep it pinned, while Speed ran around trying to get all of the civilians out of the area. Wiccan floated in the air, trying to regain his concentration as he chanted his desire for the weapon to disappear, when suddenly a voice yelled, "Stop!" and a white flash flew by.

In an instant, the machine was sliced in half, and the once disturbing mask now looked peaceful and content. "Thank... you..." it said to the immaculate white one who had severed it.

"My arm exists to save you, there's no need for thanks." he said to the machine, and the machine dispersed into glittering particles. Wiccan could do nothing but stare in awe, and a tug of faith slightly pulled at his heart. It was a truly marvelous sight. The white one turned to face Wiccan. One of his arms was a claw, and one of his eyes had a gear shaped monocle over it, with a scar over the eye. The eye seemed to peer into his very soul, as the man asked, "You wouldn't happen to have a place I could stay tonight, would you?" Wiccan knew, at that moment, that this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Which paled in comparison to the fact that it was the beginning of a horrible problem, which even the others could tell. Was this because he kept warping reality, thought Wiccan? Was that why the world hated him?

He sighed and made a glowing disc for the white one to ride on. "Hop on." he said in a depressed tone. "And here I thought I was gonna have a nice day." Hulkling flew up and wrapped an arm around Wiccan's shoulder, and Wiccan leaned against him, flying away with the white haired soldier in tow.

Atleast he wasn't shopping for women's underwear, anymore.

Yay for first chapter! I was going to add more commentary, but... I think most of it is saved for the next chapter; I'm not used to this yet. Oh well, that's life. Anyways, have fun reading, and don't worry, it gets better!