AN: Enjoy and explanation after the jump!
4: Reverse
"Well, that's the last of them in this section."
He nodded and holstered his pistol. He looked at the bodies in front of him and shook his head in sorrow. Had it only been five years since this whole mess started? Some days, it felt like fifty years had passed but he knew better. Monsters had surged through strange pillars of light and flooded the Earth with their filth and savagery. They swarmed everywhere, ripping away the natural beauty of the world and capturing the Eldest for food and…something much worse. He didn't want to think about it but he forced himself to do so.
He remembered the yells of pain mixed with the depraved grunting of the creatures as they ripped into the Eldest with their fingers and whatever rudimentary tools they could get their hands on. He remembered seeing the various fluids leak out of the body of the Eldest as they finished their savage rituals and he saw the terror and disgusted pleasure in the dead eyes of his brother. The only positive they had in the whole mess was the capture and study of one of the many monsters. Strangely, it seemed that whatever world these creatures had come from – they were the top predator around. Despite this impressive feat, they had little to no external weapons.
Their teeth contained few incisors and looked like they were mostly used to grind up their food before swallowing. Their nails grew at an incredibly slow rate and – in an unbroken state – didn't have any sort of edge to them, let alone any sharp points. They could run incredibly fast but tired out after a few minutes and the specimen they had picked up showed high amounts of intelligence and would even try to communicate with them in some strange language.
"I don't get it, bro. They outnumber us but yet they don't have any sort of united front."
He nodded absently and wiped the blood off his upper arms. It was rather perplexing that the monsters didn't seem to have any sort of organisation amongst themselves. Instead, they had split off into distinct groups and were more pre-occupied with killing each other than their attackers. They had captured a few more specimens since that day and had introduced them into the habitat of the original specimen. The other males had been found strangled to death the next morning which left the original male alone with several females of seemingly different species. Two of the other females had spawned smaller monsters within the span of a few months and the researchers had separated a seemingly unwanted baby monster from the rest to dissect.
"Guess that's how they managed to survive in their world. What did the techs say they called themselves?"
His brother scratched his head with the butt of his pistol and frowned. One of the more 'strung-out' researchers had managed to communicate with another specimen and learn about the world where they had come from. They had stripped the planet clean of natural resources but could not journey past their moon. The discovery of the dimensional walls had been a shock to them and had shaken up everything they believed in…but they had concentrated their remaining energy into breaking the barriers and coming into whatever world they saw first. It had been pure luck that the first world hadn't been home to frenzied dinosaurs or something; but they had come through unprepared for what they found. His brother plucked a small fish bone out of his teeth and looked to the pile of pale-skinned bipeds with hair on their bodies.
"Humans. They call themselves human."
TBC…
AN2: In this world, monsters roam the streets in harmony. The pillars of light were an attempt to break through the dimensional barriers and have a mass exodus into another world on the part of the humans. They failed miserably. Imagination is key for what happened to the Eldest (Raph)