'Gotta get the kids, gotta get the kids!' These thoughts raced through Osbourne 'Ozzy' Kostas's head as he raced down the smoke choked hall of one of the many Hellenic schools settled in Neo Athens, on a planet settled by the Hellenic League named Sparti. Sparti, sporting a huge population of Hellenic peoples, especially Hellenic Pagans, became a sort of 'Crystal Spires and Togas' planet to many, valuing martial prowess and intelligence.
Schools, huge schools, held children in their halls of learning as teachers dispensed knowledge upon the younglings.
However, they were popular places for Pirates to attack.
The Terrans, though prospering and populace, had no shortage of pirates, bandits and thieves. There were always some who saw it easier to take rather than make.
Schools, when they couldn't get what they wanted, were popular targets to terrorize the populace into submission.
Ozzy's rubber boots squeaked against the tile floor, his once white and blue uniform stained by soot and smog and a splatter of blood from a recently deceased pirate whom thought it a smart idea to fight an angry giant with a fiercely protective side to him. Looking in the rooms as he ran, almost all of them were completely devoid of the once smiling children and happy teachers that would reside there.
All but one room.
Turning into it with a jump, Ozzy hollered at the teacher who, with her students, was huddled in a corner as a burning beam blocked their path.
'Get. Them. Out.' A voice, it wasn't his this he could tell, ordered into his head. An amulet he wore around his neck, the face of an owl, burned a bit as if trying to spur him into action.
He need not be told twice.
Ozzy, uncaring for his own safety, grabbed the burning, crackling orange-lit beam and hefted it onto his shoulders and pressed upwards with his arms stock straight and legs wide and load bearing. "Go!" The teacher, thanking Ozzy with a frightened, sobbing look on her face, ushered her children outward past Ozzy and between his legs.
They were almost all out when the room's roof caved.
Screaming, pain, and ungodly terror filled the room as the beam, joined by the plaster, iron and wood of the other supports, crashed onto Ozzy's head. The entire left side was almost completely smashed, yet he held on tight and hefted the roof with shakey arms and legs, a smile on his blood soaked face as his one good eye fixed on the ghost faced children.
"I've got it, go!" The children, after more encouragement, ran from the room.
His amulet continued to burn.
'Not today.'
The roof crashed again, the fire claiming it.
His job complete, Ozzy dropped it and stumbled from the room. Somehow, with half his head and brain smashed and his energy quickly being sapped, he made it.
Not far, but he made it.
Dropping to his knees as the school, a temple of learning, crashed around him.
Lifting what remained of his head Ozzy caught sight of a black, skeletal hand lifting from the floor before him.
Thanatos.
Ozzy sighed, ready to accept his passing. He'd done his job and the children were safe.
A light encompassed him, a shield extending before him as an arm wrapped around his bloody body.
'Not today!'
The hand, shaking with anger, reached before descending again.
Ozzy looked at the shield, recognizing it's design from the art he'd seen all his life, seen in the temples.
Aegis.
Athena.
'Not today.'
With that, he blacked out.
It was many, many years before Ozzy awoke again. After nearly a decade working on his body, after nearly dying multiple times, Hellenic scientists managed to revive him with cybernetics. Compelled to, by forces unseen, they replaced the left side of his head with a cybernetic half-brain, doing their best to model it after Ozzy's own with the best of their information.
Between prayer, many a sleepless night crunching numbers, and much currency dispended, Ozzy soon became the first man to be returned from death.
To some of his own community, minusing the teachers and children he saved, he was seen as unnatural. Hades was to claim him, as he claims all dead men.
To the scientists, to the teachers, to even some priests, it wasn't to be so. Ozzy would live.
The left side of his head was replaced, his left arm, and much of the left side of his chest and his full left leg was replaced.
He would live.
A Greek Frankenstein's monster.
Ozzy was suited up in his diving gear, a power suit large enough to fit him, with his huge excavator's claw attached to his left arm. Its large jaws closed and ready for use. Testing it a few times, Ozzy was satisfied when its hydraulics hissed causing the claw to open then close.
A helmet attached to his head, styled after old diving suits with a large porthole in the front, gave him a wide view of the area round him. Currently on a large excavator ship in the middle of one of Shanxi's oceans and ready for the job ahead, scavenging Turian vessels from the depths, Ozzy said prayers to Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, and Poseidon, God of the Oceans. Offerings made on a make-shift shrine he'd set up the day before for this very job, Ozzy was ready for what was ahead.
In the captain's nest, he was given the all-clear.
He stepped up on the port side of the boat, checking to make sure his airtanks were full and satisfied to see a green light, he jumped off.
Deep, deep, deeper he went.
Sound drowned out, all but that of the water rushing around him, and finally the thud as he landed on a shelf.
He'd go down slowly, gradually, and come up the same way. Cybernetic though he was, he could still get the bends. He'd nearly died once, he didn't need a repeat.
His footsteps slow and plodding, constricted by the water, Ozzy continued down the great stone shelf as fish and other creatures, some native and some not, inspected him curiously. Some already knew him, he'd come out here numerous times, and the ones that knew him swam closer.
A smile crept over his face
He was always at home in the ocean, wether it be on Sparti, Shanxi or Earth. The water was a second home for him.
His journey through the new world of the water took him deep enough that he actually needed his headlamp, the bright white light cutting through the darkness like a sabre.
Finding the hulks, Ozzy began to clear the area of obstructions. Rocks and other debris were cleared out, excavator claw giving him an unrelenting grip on the obstructions.
The Turian ships were destroyed utterly, burnt hulks and husks of what once were proud vessels of a foreign navy now destined to be scrap metal for the Alliance's material efforts.
Waste not, want not.
As he cleared the obstacles, he felt he was being watched.
This wasn't uncommon, he was being watched after all by Gods know how many creatures, but this was different.
His hair stood on end, though he ignored it, and kept at his work.
Walking under one of the hulks and pushing more obstacles out of the way, Ozzy felt the sensation again a little later.
He turned, gazing out into the darker shelves as sound met his audio receptors, which fed sound to his years.
It was black.
Pitch. Black.
It was there, he could feel it.
Whatever was watching him was out there, watching him.
Deep into that darkness peering, long he stood there, wondering, fearing.
And the abyss stared back.
(Well everyone I hope you enjoyed this chapter. I have a question I wanted to ask, on the behalf of the story. As I'm sure many of you have noticed, I've got alot on my plate with this story. Theadra and Lukas for example, The Blackwatch, etc. that I don't want to clutter up the story. So I wanted to ask, would you all like to see spin-offs that would tie into Visions that tackle certain character arcs? For example LukasXTheadra, or the Blackwatch's operations, etc. etc. Regardless of yes or no, shoot me a message or a review and tell me what you think.)
(Also, I'm doing my best to begin a diet (starting January First) so if my updates are slower, my apologies, as I'm juggling many a thing.)