WORLD END HEROES

-one-i don't want to die here-


I eventually managed to get up.

The scenery around me... not a single thing was left standing.

This truly was an end of the world.

But-

I'm still here. Am I… alone here? Why did I survive?

…the stinging in my eye isn't going away. What a pain.

I guess there's no point staying here. I don't think I'm in my town anymore, and even if I were in the right spot, the 'town' would probably be several thousand kilometres behind me somewhere. None of these buildings look familiar to me.

So I started walking. Across the ruins of various towns and cities, thrown together into a giant pile of concrete and dust. Across the homes of people who are no longer here. Across a dead world.

…It's cold. I'm only wearing a tank top and shorts. And those aren't exactly in the best condition now. It was rather hot when that huge ball of stone and fire was flying at us. But now there's no heat at all.

Wandering the rubble, I see scraps of fabric scattered around. Bits of metal. Broken CDs. Was this… a shop? Someone's house maybe? I guess it would have been more than one shop. I never saw a place that sold clothes and CDs and metal. Though, I never went out too much.

My decision to search the rubble did pay off. I found some sealed food that somehow hadn't been ripped open in the disaster. I managed to get some better shoes too, since my current ones weren't really made for terrain. Oh, and there was a long jacket-y coat thing too, but it was really thin and torn at places around the bottom. Better than nothing, so I took it. It didn't have a zipper or buttons, so I had to hold it closed. At least it had a hood in case in rained, and was black enough to hold in whatever heat may be left in the air.

I made a satchel out of some torn fabric to carry my food, and tied it to my belt.

And returned to walking the world.

The further I walked, the more disaster I saw. And never another person.

I had to stop a lot, to find more food, or water, or anything. I searched every city I found for signs of life.

The skies showed no life either. Only the blood red clouds.

Pieces of meteor fragments must still be falling. Every time I looked up, I saw things falling towards our ruined Earth. Nothing too big to cause another disaster, but I'm sure these would leave a fairly decent hole in the ground.

One was just about to land a ways in front of me. For whatever reason, I decided to head there. Maybe I'd get to see something interesting. Wouldn't have a clue where the big one is. I'd turn over my cool meteor fragment to some science people, and they'd probably give me a lot of money. Well, you know, would. If they were there. I doubt they have the time to be doing that now, assuming they're not buried under hundreds of tons of rock.

I saw it land a bit before I got there. Didn't make much dust come up, which was weird. Maybe it was really light or something.

It looked like some sort of robotic wolf. That's what I thought about it from this distance. I didn't want to get too close to it when I realised it wasn't a rock. But… some sort of alien robot? What was this thing?

If this wasn't just a shard of a meteor…

Maybe… the huge one that hit us in the beginning… was something else too?

…the possibility is there, I guess…

…!

I think the wolf-robot just moved…

It's definitely moving!

Crap crap crap…

I think it probably saw me…

I have to stay hidden here…

"AH!"

My head… the rock just exploded behind me…

It's staring at me…

"G.. Go away!"

leave me alone… please…

It's going to kill me…

I don't want to die.

I don't want to die.

I don't…

I…

I… won't…

Goddammit I won't die now. I just survived an apocalypse. I've been wandering for hours. I've kept myself alive.

It'd be a waste to die now.

What would be the point of everything?

I've survived. I've been given a chance to continue my life. My 16 years of life. My short life in that old world. I've been given a chance to live a long, full life.

Like hell I'm letting go now!

I still don't entirely understand what happened next.

But after I made that resolution in my mind, there in those ruins.

Some inner power awakened in me.

I lifted my hand, pointing at the robot wolf. Focusing my emotion. It all happened instantaneously after that movement.

My left eye, that had been stinging since I woke up, suddenly calmed. And burst into a long, blue flame. But… I knew it was fine. I don't know why, I just knew it. Like that knowledge was there the entire time. So I didn't panic even though my eye was on fire.

I also knew how to use this new power. Stretching out my hand, I focused my thoughts and out of the air, matter merged into itself, and a long, black weapon formed in front of me. My weapon. Grabbing it, I aimed it at the wolf. The weapon started charging its energy. The wolf noticed what was going on, and it started to charge at me.

But it wasn't fast enough.

I was ready. I was ready first. And I attacked first. I fired the weapon at the wolf. The huge blue ball of power fired out of the cannon with tremendous force, and I felt the earth shake at its release. It flew forward, and the robot was swallowed in the mass of blue light. And then. It exploded. The energy stored within the shot was all released at once.

The wolf-

The ground around it-

And a few remaining structures-

Were blown away in the force of that explosion.

But not me. I stood strong. And didn't move from my place even through all that force.

I relaxed my hand, and let the weapon fade back into the air. The flame on my eye settled, and flickered away.

You'd think I'd be questioning what just happened, but I kind of just… knew. How my power worked, and all. I don't know how I got this power, or where it came from, or why it activated when it did.

But… I understand it, I guess.

In any case, my eye isn't annoying me anymore. And I have a way to defend myself in this new world.

I won't die here. This is my life, and I'll defend it to the last breath.