Drew's POV

Jack and I just stood there, stunned. It was a good 30 seconds before one of us said something.

"What the fuck was that!? We need to go help them, Jack! He said it was to the south, right?" I asked in a panic.

Jack nodded. "Come on! Let's go." That's exactly what we did. We unfortunately didn't have time to let Kenzi or the cubs know where we were going, but there was no time! Our military needed us! The closer we got, we started to see deceased and mangled corpses of our soldiers. Some were cut in half and were in pools of their own blood. They were scattered everywhere! I felt like I was gonna vomit!

"Jesus Christ…" I said, horrified at the sight.

Jack looked away, before his eyes opened. The look in his eyes was one of absolute rage and anger. I couldn't say I blamed him. If anything, I was just as pissed as he was!

"W- We gotta keep moving.." I told Jack.

He nodded, and we began to move forward. Pretty soon, there was sounds of ongoing battle just up ahead! You could hear the sounds of death clear as day.

"Come on!" I told Jack. We both rushed towards the scene of battle, prepared to help extinguish this threat! When we got into view of the sight, I couldn't believe my eyes! It was a singular man, white as a ghost! The man was bald and had a goatee. He had two flaming blades and was killing multiple soldiers in a matter of mere seconds! It was unbelievable! Our soldiers had guns, but he appeared to be deflecting every shot with some golden thing on his shoulder! I couldn't believe this.. Even still, our soldiers needed us, and this bastard was going down!

"Let's get this fucker!" I screamed to Jack. Jack nodded, and rushed down, rifle in hand. We joined our military and blasted away at the pale white man, but nothing was working! He was deflecting everything! How could we kill something that can't be shot!?

"What do we do!?" I asked Jack, taking cover to avoid being decapitated by the man's flaming blades.

Jack didn't respond, then he stopped. He grabbed his rifle, held it like a club, and rushed forward.

"Jack, DON'T!" I tried to stop him, but it was too late. He was already determined to end this guy. A lot of the firing had ceased because the soldiers realized the same thing I did. The man looked behind him to see Jack with bayonet in hand, ready to kill.

He effortlessly swayed out if the way, punching Jack to the ground, him dropping his rifle.

"FUCK!" I yelled, rushing to stop anything worse from happening. The man held his blades up, as if going for the finishing blow. "STOP!" I commanded the man. He stopped just before he could do anything. The ghost-like man turned to face me, and walked slowly towards me. I was chilled to the core! His face held that of anger, of no remorse, of regret.. I backed up slowly, afraid of what he might do. Surprisingly, the man then spoke,

"Who is the commander of your army!?" The man demanded.

"I am!" Jack cried, standing up. He had a long scar running down his right eye. He stood there, defiantly, without fear or caution. The man turned his attention away from me, and now solely on Jack. He walked up to him, looking down on him. This dude was terrifying! He was a good 6 foot 6 inches tall and 300 pounds of solid muscle! The man stared Jack down in silence. After about a minute of silence, the man spoke.

"Where am I? How did I get here!? What kind of sorcery is this!? Are you with the Sisters of Fate!? With the gods of Olympus!?" The man angrily demanded.

Jack shook his head. "No. We are a neutral, sovereign nation that has nothing to do with this. We are stuck here same as you." Jack replied curtly. The man nodded his head slightly.

"Hmph.." he said. Then what he did next shocked me! He put his blades away! "If what you say is true, then do you have any sort of explanation as to how this has happened?"

"People and creatures wind up here without any kind of explanation and are left to their own devices to survive. We have only been here a short while. We still don't understand this world, we only survive it." The man nodded.

"You have a fine military.." the man said. "Certainly different from what I've seen before." The man then chuckled inwardly. "But they are certainly not of the caliber of Sparta!"

Jack didn't respond. "Who are you?" He asked calmly. The man looked at Jack, then looked away.

"Kratos." He responded. "The Ghost Of Sparta. The God Of War.." He then turned to face Jack again. "And exactly who are you?"

"Jack Anderson, I am the Emperor of this city." The man known as Kratos cocked a brow.

"An Emperor? You are of more worth than I had once thought, Jack Anderson.." Kratos abruptly said.

Jack didn't respond.

"Anyways," Kratos started, noticing Jack wasn't gonna respond. "I can see that your military is of no threat to me.. I'll be on my way and find my own way back to the shores of Greece! I'm far from finished with Zeus.."

Jack nodded in tacit acceptance. After all, what choice did he have? There was nothing he could do if Kratos wanted to continue the fight. Kratos said not one other word and simply walked off into the distance. Where he was going to go, I had no idea.. I walked up to Jack, breathing heavily.

"Are you okay?" I asked, noticing his minor injuries.

Jack nodded.

"Let's...let's say there was an accident involving a stampede. The citizens don't need to know about this." I sighed, but knew that he was right. What else could we do?

"I agree.. What-" I looked around at all the corpses, the sight still making me sick. "What of the dead? Who will pick up all those bodies? We've lost I'd say a good 400 men!"

Jack nodded. "We bury them. Give them a proper funeral. They deserve that much."

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Jack's POV

"I swear, this place, its inhabitants, or both, will be the death of me." I groaned as we walked back home.

Honestly, after that whole ordeal, I just wanted to go home and sleep. I was tired, and in pain. Jesus Christ was I in pain! Drew sighed and replied,

"I know.. There's always at least one problem every day. And I gotta say, this one's been the worst by far!"

I nodded. "I just hope we don't get something like this for a good month or two."

I stopped, before chuckling. "Every time! Every damn time we want to relax, something happens. What? Does this world have a bad sense of humor or something?!" Drew looked just as pissed as I currently was.

"Tell me about it!" He said with frustration. "I never would've guessed this many problems would happen in such a short time! Especially of this magnitude! We're just lucky he wasn't so keen on fighting us.. He's after some 'Zeus' guy or whatever.."

I laughed. "I'd hate to be him, considering the hell he put us and our men through." He laughed back.

"I would too. Who knows, we may never see him ever again. Let's hope so anyway.." Drew said.

"Still want to watch that movie?" I asked. I swear, I was going to watch it if it killed me!

"I thought you'd never ask!" Drew said with a laugh.

"Mind if we join you? After that hell, I think we all need some kind of downtime."

I turned to see the Admirals, all similarly beaten up. Carandial seemed to have had it the worst, with substantial scarring on his face.

I looked to Drew. I personally didn't have a problem with it. Drew shrugged.

"I don't care. The more the merrier." Drew then smirked. "Come on! Get your asses over to the house. It's supposed to be a good movie!"

We all shared a laugh, and headed over.

Kenzi, the teens and the cubs were hanging out in the front yard.

They looked up, and stopped, each of them obviously surprised by our disheveled appearance. Kenzi and the rest ran over to us.

"Oh my God! What happened!?" Kenzi asked with worry, seeing all of our battered faces and bodies…

"Don't ask." I deadpanned.

"We heard. We saw. We lost." Carandial added, rubbing his skull, still in obvious discomfort. Drew sighed.

"Angry Spartan.. I'll leave it at that.." Kenzi cocked a brow.

"Spartan? As in just one? What was all the trouble?" She asked in confusion.

"There were...complications." Caesarius sighed.

"We'd rather not talk about it. Honestly, we just want to watch that fricking movie!" I finished. Kenzi nodded, deciding to not question the matter any further.

"I'm glad you're home, Daddy.." Adia said happily, nuzzling Drew. Drew smiled and hugged her in response.

"Believe me, Adia.." Drew said with a smile. "So am I.."

We all joined around the TV, and for the first time in a while, we were able to enjoy ourselves.

The next morning, I awoke with a MASSIVE headache. When I looked around, I couldn't help but chuckle. Everyone looked absolutely hilarious.

Kovu was lying backwards on the couch, his head hanging off the couch. Caesarius was leaning back in a recliner. Carandial was rubbing his head, seemingly in the same process of waking up. Decimius was leaning against the wall, Palenix was sipping some coffee on the other side of the room, and Siriulilus just waking up.

Ethan and Emily had fallen asleep by eachother, and were leaning against eachother. Luis was getting some coffee from the cabinet, and CG was...leaning against my shoulder, utterly knocked out.

Drew woke up with a similar headache, only to widen his eyes in surprise at what he heard. He looked to one side and saw Adia snoring directly into his ear, and Kenzi on the other. Drew closed his eyes again and sighed in annoyance.

"I need a fucking Xanax.." Drew said.

I nodded in agreement. "This never happened. If word of this got out..."

"It won't." Carandial growled, getting a pack of ice from the freezer. "Because I will personally missile dropkick anyone who reveals this into the next millennium."

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I continued sketching the animals. Drew, Kenzi, the teens, cubs and I had gone out on a short safari. Things were going fairly slowly, so we decided to just pass the time by going out and just watching the wildlife.

"Wow...I never would have thought this desert could support so much life." Emily commented. "There are more species here then I read lived in the Serengeti."

"Welll," Drew began. "this isn't exactly the planet Earth we once knew of.. I'm still getting used to there being Prehistoric animals here myself." He ended with a chuckle.

I nodded. "We all are."

Before I could continue, the herd of Camarasaurus, a longnecked dinosaur at least eighty five feet in length, suddenly began to emit panicked calls.

Their alarm calls were followed by them beginning to group up, trying to close the ranks of their herd, while the young and weak stayed in the center.

Then, we saw it. Coming up over the hill, an absolutely massive dinosaur began to stalk forward. It resembled a Carcharodontosaurus very closely, but it was three times bigger! It had seven foot long arms and a twelve foot long skull full of teeth as long as my arm!

The massive theropod let out a thunderous roar, and rushed forward.

The herd didn't disperse, but instead kept close together, swinging their tails rapidly. The predator couldn't find an opening. It began pacing along the flanks of the herd, roaring its challenge.

Then, it turned towards us.

Then, with an earsplitting roar, it lunged forward, each step covering a good twenty feet.

I slammed on the gas, and we began to jet away, but the predator still chased us. In fact, he was slowly gaining on us!

"He's getting too fucking close!" Drew screamed. "Try and trick the bastard! Make a U-turn, do zig-zags, doesn't fucking matter! Hurry!"

I gunned it, and twisted the wheel rapidly. The car nearly flipped over from the stress. We just missed the titan's jaws as it snapped shut.

I gunned it again, and we were driving rapidly away. The monster had little time to turn and continue the chase, and instead turned its attention back to the herd. Within thirty seconds, we had driven over a hill, and began heading back to Colossus.

"What was that?!" Luis asked in shock.

I sighed. "I don't know. We didn't exactly have time to ask for its name." Drew stifled a laugh, and was elbowed by Kenzi.

"It looked a lot like a Carcharodontosaurus, but much bigger." Kovu commented.

"Carcharodontosaurus.." Adia said aloud. "If I remember right, that was the one similar, but bigger than a T-Rex, right Daddy?" Drew chuckled and scratched his head.

"You may wanna ask your Uncle.. He's the 'dino-whisperer'." Drew said with a smirk.

I rolled my eyes. "Yes. But they weren't nearly that big."

I stopped. "Giganotosaurus. I think that was what that was. An oversized Giganotosaurus. Relative of Carcharodontosaurus actually. I just don't understand how it got so massive."

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I sighed. Why the hell did we always wind up with this kind of luck?! Even when we tried to relax, we all awoke with serious headaches and what resembled a hangover.

After the Giganotosaurus incident, we were all trying to figure out what exactly to do about this monstrous creature.

"Any ideas?" I asked Drew. "That thing is a huge threat that can't really be ignored." Drew sighed and really hesitated on what he was gonna say, but he said it anyway.

"As much as I don't like the idea," Drew began. "we may have to ally with the angry spartan. Or Kratos.."

I groaned. I really didn't hope it came to them.

"I know.." Drew said. "But think about it: if he could hold off our entire military, who have fucking guns with relative ease, just think of what he could do to that Giganotosaurus!"

Caesarius nodded. "One powerful threat can often be negated with another."

The three of us were walking down the street, trying to figure out what to do.

"Sirs!"

We turned to see a lower ranking officer approach.

"Some scavengers want to join the Empire. They requested to see you."

I blinked.

I nodded, and motioned for Caesarius to follow me.

When we got there, I was surprised to see Joel, Owen, Hera, and to my surprise, a large Raptor.

I stopped.

"You guys have a reason for loitering here?" I asked.

Joel blinked in surprise at my harsh tone. "We were hoping we could join you. As you can tell, resources and food are rare at the moment, thanks to the drought-"

"We'll definitely pull our own weight!" Joel interrupted. "We'll do our best to help out with this whole..."

I smirked. "Empire? Glorious and magnificent capital? Place of refuge for twenty thousand people?"

"Can we hurry this along?" Hera growled.

Caesarius rolled his eyes. "My my, such ferocity from such weak, starving people. I am impressed, most speak with more respect when in the Emperor."

"Yeah, we are starving! So let us in!" Joel replied sarcastically.

Caesarius' smirk widened. "You are in no position to make demands."

I nodded.

Hera sighed, and began to leave.

"I thought you were starving? Surely you can understand our reluctance after how you treated us when we first met? You weren't exactly welcoming either." I pointed out.

"That's because you showed up in a fucking jeep when everyone else here has to struggle for the barest necessities. We want to work out our differences because we don't want to be threatened." Joel interjected.

I looked at him seriously. "We had no intention of harming anybody. We actually hoped to help you guys since we thought you were in the same situation as us."

"How did you make all this?" Joel asked flatly.

I stopped. "That very same remote. We used it to build all this. We need to survive as much as food and water."

I looked down. "I don't know if you noticed, but we've been dealing with a ton of threats lately. We're not quite sure who we can trust."

"Why should I trust you? Give me a reason why. Any reason. It doesn't matter."

Hera chimed in. "Because we aren't a threat?"

"There is no possible way we can threaten you with that remote. If it can replenish anything, you have nothing to fear from anyone here."

I stopped to consider her explanation. It did make sense.

And they had offered to help us in any way they could. Still…

I sighed. No use distrusting people for no good reason.

I looked up at them.

"Very well. For now, I will reserve judgement. Help us and you will be rewarded and protected. But if you cross us..."

"Won't happen." Joel declared. "I promise."

Caesarius stopped.

"Well then, welcome to the Empire." He said. He focused on Joel. "We'll see who you really are."

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"Jack!" Drew called out, him and Kenzi walking over to us. He looked at the newcomers with narrowed eyes, not fully trusting them and not knowing who they are. "Who are they?"

"Some old friends." I replied.

"Remember when we found them on a safari a few weeks ago?" Drew sighed and closed his eyes in annoyance.

"Yeah." He answered. "I remember.."

Owen sighed. "Look, I apologize for my associate's hostility. We're not normally that..distrusting of people." Drew looked at Owen and said,

"Look, I can see that you're the most sensible of the entire group, so I'll just say this: trust can always be built.." Drew cast his gaze over to Hera and Joel. "But when you act like a cocksucker like these two, then trust is a little hard to build.. The whole empire is basically one big team. And what's a team if there are a couple players who don't function with the rest?.."

Joel gawked at him, before scowling, and then turned to leave. Hera turned to follow.

"Oh come on!" Owen cried in frustration. "Can't we just move past that stupid incident?"

He looked to both his comrades and us. "I've dealt with enough bullshit about people hating each other for little to no reason. Guys, we don't have to react with such hostility to each other every time we meet! What is the big fucking deal with all this?"

I blinked. "Alright...why did you automatically assume that we were a threat simply because we had something you didn't?"

"Put yourself in our position." Hera said firmly, but fairly. "Think about how we've lived here for years, without seeing a single piece of advanced technology. We scrounged for food with the bare minimum. We created our settlement by using that river. And then we see these new guys, driving up to us with a car of all things. We don't know how or even where they got it. What their intentions are, and what the hell they want with us. We hadn't seen another human in years! Then to see you drive up to us with something that we could never hope to have out here, that we could never match, let alone counter. How would you react in that situation? When every day for three years is spent wondering whether its your last, where your next meal is going to come from, and what creature is going to try and hunt you, you tend to get a little defensive." Drew was stunned by her words. He looked down at the ground in silence, deep in thought. He looked back up at her and replied,

"That's fair.." He looked at Jack, then back to Owen and his group. "I say they deserve a chance.. Reserve judgement, sure. But I suppose a shot to prove themselves wouldn't be that bad. If your story is true, then you have more than earned your chance at at least that.. I'm sorry I acted the way I did. It was a little uncalled for. But it's just who I am."

Joel sighed in relief. He then smiled, and nodded in acknowledgement and agreement. Hera sighed, and nodded half-heartedly.

I chuckled. "Now that that's out of the way, would you guys like some actual food?"

Joel grinned. "Yes. Please."

Hera sighed, and said under her breath, "Yes."

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The whole group sat at a long, rectangular dinner table. We were all enjoying some really nice food. Everyone got their own favorite dish, and considering how well the replicator made the food, everyone was happy.

"Thanks." Joel said sincerely. "This is really good."

I nodded. "One of the miracles of the Replicator."

"So Hera," Kenzi began, trying to start a conversation. "you say that your group has been here for years? People have really been appearing here for that long?"

Hera sat, deep in thought. She began to smile a little. "It's been happening since long before I arrived here. People and animals from different times and places all seem to arrive here with no explanation, or way to get home. However, in all the years of living here, we've never seen anything like the replicator."

"Wow.." Drew said in awe. "We're really the first humans you've run into in years, though? You haven't run into, say, another military? An angry spartan?" Drew noticed Hera giving him a glance and he paused.

"Heh, I should probably stop talking.."

Hera shrugged. "Don't worry about it. It's fine."

"But no, we haven't encountered anything like that." She added.

"Fascinating." Decimius commented. "It seems we might be entering a new phase in this world's cycle. I would recommend we all stay on our guard."

Hera and Joel looked at him, puzzled. "What do you mean?" Joel asked.

"It's quite simple really. This world seems to follow repeating patterns. Relatively rare new animal arrivals, frequent single or small amount of sentient arrivals, and the occasional entire civilization arriving."

Joel blinked. "Occasional? That happens on occasion? That happens at all?!"

"It would seem so." Decimius replied.

Hera blinked. "How do you know all this?"

"I've been studying this world. Several fossils we have found do not match completely with existing organisms. There are ruins here and there, indicating past civilizations, and judging from the frequent arrivals of new survivors, it seems that all this happens in a cycle. A few years of nothing changing, and then it starts to change again. It's almost as if..."

He stopped.

"As if?..." Drew questioned, wanting him to finish his thought.

"As if it's being controlled by someone or something beyond this world. It doesn't make sense how this could all appear naturally."

"You mean like God is playing with us or something?" Drew sarcastically asked.

"No, I think He's trying to control us. As if its part of a grand plan." Joel suggested.

"But why? What would anything have to gain from all this?" C.G asked.

"Knowledge. Power. World Domination. Or maybe it's just bored?" I deadpanned. Drew shrugged.

"Who knows.. But one thing's for certain, it's happening whether we like it or not. Should we find out if it's God or something sciency or a fucking flying spaghetti monster, then it should be reported so everyone knows. The sooner we find the truth, the better the understanding we have and what to do."

I nodded.

"Whatever's going on, we need to be ready."

"I assure you, we will be." Carandial declared.

Dinolion92: So that was the new chapter. I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Yes, the action is only going to pick up from here. Another writer is going to join us soon(he helped write the last story, and his character was an important part of it.)

LionKingIsAwesome: What's up, guys! :) Hope y'all are liking the action packed chapters and the storyline! Now we have Kratos in the mix, a new group has joined the Empire, and now a new discovery has been made that a possible outside force is behind all of these people appearing here! Will Kratos return? What will everyone do about this new giant predator now appearing? Who else will appear? Guess y'all will have to keep on reading and find out! XD God bless, everyone! Have a good one! :)