Author's Note: Hey everyone! This will be the last installment of this part of the story. After this chapter, the whole story will be from a different character's perspective. A fair warning to those of you that like the original characters and setting: Most, if not all of it, will not exist in the next sequence of the story. If you wish, I can always write flashback chapters if you all are craving more of what the story has been so far. The next chapter will signal the start of a plot line, setting, and cast that is greatly different from what I've written so far. Don't worry! Danny, Savage, and Nathaniel will still be in the story! I can include the group from Mystic Falls if you all wan, too, but you have to let me know! Anyway, I hope that you all enjoy! This chapters more of a filler for the enormous time skip that takes place, so there aren't any particularly violent scenes...except for the last part, anyway...
Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I do not own Vampire Diaries, only the story, plot, and my many OCs.
The first thing that Danny had thought of as Savage and Nathaniel stuffed her in the back seat of a miraculously still functioning sedan was what she had just seen. The sight of even more nuclear warheads, all heading for different parts of the world, had filled her with shock. All the knowledge of the repercussions of all out nuclear war flashed into the forefront of her mind. Her body was aching from all the injuries she had gained from her fall. Her ears still rang, and she could feel every beat of her heart through the throbbing in her head. Her clothes were tattered, ash was in her hair, and her face was as pale as it had ever been. The streak of red dyed into her hair made the blood on her clothes seem all the more crimson. The shadow of the enormous mushroom cloud cast her in darkness as Nathaniel floored it towards the nearest still standing city. The contrails of other nukes rose into the sky from distant silos, heading for populations that couldn't possibly know what was about to happen. The sky was as grey as the snowflakes of ashes, the roiling clouds as ominous as the mushroom cloud of the first atomic weapon use for national defense since World War Two.
"Hey," Savage said, eyes averted from the sky, "Stop staring at it like that?"
"Why, scared of a little radiation?" Danny smiled despite herself.
Savage's dirty blonde hair and cobalt eyes were exposed to the world, his scarf and hood were slightly tattered, "Shut up...I'm just freaked out that we just survived a freaking atomic blast."
"What the frickin' hell did we do to earn that crap anyway?" Nathaniel blurted, gripping the wheel of the car.
"I guess they saw what we could do and the world freaked?" Danny asked, "It wasn't the U.S. that fired that thing at us."
"Now I'm hungry..." Nathaniel grumbled.
"Why?" Danny asked.
"The cloud looks like a mushroom...I like mushrooms," Nathaniel said.
Danny's expression went blank and she face-palmed, "Really? Really?"
"What?" Nathaniel said, shrugging.
"The world's about to end, and it's making you hungry?" Savage face-palmed along with Danny.
"Is that a bad thing?" Nathaniel asked innocently, though he seemed offended.
"Yes!" Danny and Savage said at the same time.
They continued on at top speed towards the hideout they had last used before the assault. The clouds looked angrier and angrier by the second. Danny was thankful that they didn't have to worry about radiation thanks to vampires being impervious to any type of disease. Savage had been quiet most of the ride there, per the norm of his not talking much unless he was spoken to. Nathaniel started talking about what they needed to do to regroup the Legion and somehow find a way to either figure out what was going on, or to eliminate the problem as soon as possible. Danny herself spent the entire trip nodding off, the fatigue of the battle she had just fought weighing on her even more then the pressing situation that the world was in. She checked her gear over and over again, cleaning out her pistols and sharpening her blades, re-adjusting the straps on her sheaths, and checked her stock of supplies and ammo. She worked diligently so that she didn't have to think about what had happened to all her friends in the Legion. It was an extremely long cross-country drive.
The hide out was an abandoned motel that had been made into a safe house in the event that the Night Haunters needed it. Due to the Night Haunters being feared and as effective as they were, the safe house was not always stocked to full capacity. The doors, windows, outer walls, and everything else on the outside of the motel was designed to look as if it had not been touched since the Wild West. Tumble weeds frequented this part of Texas, in the Chihuahuan Desert, the only way in or out of the ghost town it was in was through a dirt road that was even less used then the well. They had been the only ones to use the road since the last time the base had been restocked with fresh blood. Sadly, that had been far too long ago. Danny was finding herself harder and harder to control, with the urges to fed driving her up the wall. Savage and Nathaniel looked the same way as she did, but Danny assumed they were just better at controlling their urges due to their experiences. There were bottles of aged liquor and alcohol, which tasted surprisingly strong, that took the edge off. They took their gear out of all their respective sheaths and holsters and laid them out in their own personal spaces.
Savage's, as to be expected, as the largest and most diverse with so many types of knives and supplies that it would take far too long to list them. Nathaniel's war hammer and battle ax were enormous compared to the largest weapon Danny and Savage used, a katana. He took off the armor that he had worn during the battle. In all he had worn a bulletproof vest, black steel gauntlets and shin guards, and gloves that had armored knuckles that did the same thing as a pair of Brass Knuckles, which he had also brought along as a back up. He had one boot knife, but that was the extent of his entire armory. Compared to Danny and Savage, it was minimalistic, but the fact that those weapons were wielded by Nathaniel meant that they were going to be used to their fullest in the heat of battle to fell many enemies. Danny's load out was a compromise between Savage's and Nathaniel's but leaned more towards Savage's type of gear. Danny had twelve throwing knives, four groups of three that were in special sheaths on her body. She had a katana, a thirty-nine inch blade that she used as her primary weapon. She had her pair of side arms, disassembled and left out with their ammunition next to them.
Nathaniel had turned the radio to the only thing that seemed to work, the emergency broadcast system, "The nuclear blasts have ravenged the world, spreading more and more radiation throughout the atmosphere. Scientists have estimated that the radiation that has been released in the strikes will take five hundred years to become nonlethal. In the meantime, the United Nations have made an announcement that surviving citizens of their respective countries should report to the following cities for an evacuation plan that has been in the workings since the moon landings in the late 1960s and 1970s.
The listed location for the United States was in Death Valley, "The governments of the world have refused to speak for themselves as far as the reasoning behind the nuclear warfare, but they have implored the citizens of the world to make it to their designated cities before the end of the week, when the radiation will have made a majority of the world inhabitable. If one will not be able to make it, then they will not be able to make it into the evacuation plans and will most likely die of radiation poisoning."
Nathaniel looked over at Danny, who was still scrubbing away at a piece of dirt on the barrel of her right side arm, "Looks like we need to book it over to Death Valley."
Danny sighed, feeling dumb for asking a foolish question, "Why do we need to go to the evacuation site when we don't need to worry about the radiation?"
"Our food source is leaving," Savage said, breaking into the conversation, "Where they go, we must follow for our survival."
"Right..." Danny said, sighing.
She re-assembled her gun, loaded a clip, and holstered it with a twirl cowboy-style. She stood up from the rusted foldable chair, holstering her second gun and moving on to her blades, and looked over at Savage. He had risen, and started to sheath his many blades into their hidden scabbards, twirling them around in his palm before doing so from time to time as he did. The pistol he had was in a holster on a bandoleer and situated so that he only had to grab the grip and pull it out quickly. Nathaniel had the two massive hilts of his battle ax and war hammer looming over his shoulders, the business end of the two weapons ending near the bottom of his thighs. Even with Danny's vampire strength, she still needed two hands to pick up either of those weapons. She couldn't comprehend how he was able to wield them in on hand each at the same time. They all slowly made their way to the place where they had hidden their bikes.
It was a shed that was like the safe house in that it looked long abandoned and desolate. The sheet metal that made up its roof was rusted and falling off, the bikes inside under dark tarps to guard against satellite detection. There were a good amount of tools that were useful in repairing their bikes, since they had taken a few bullets over their short period on the run from the Hybrids. Nathaniel threw away the tarps, and mounted his bike. Normally, he had special clamps that let him attack his massive weapons to the side of his bike, but he didn't even seem to bother now. Had not Savage and Danny followed him as quickly as they did to the shed to leave, he may have dragged them with him. He seemed Hell-bent on getting them to Death Valley.
Then there was a presence that Danny didn't expect to feel. It was immense, oppressive, and authoritative beyond measure. Danny had felt it before, just a couple of weeks prior to the massive battle that they had just finished this afternoon. Nathaniel quickly dismounted the bike, stumbling over the seat and collapsing unceremoniously onto the group. Danny and Savage dropped to one knee, resting a forearm on the knee that they hadn't dropped, and bowed their heads in reverence. Nathaniel, after recovering from his stumble, assumed the same position as the presence neared the entrance to the shed.
"Thought I'd find you three here," Elijah said, his aura making Danny's teeth clench from the amount of inferiority she felt in the Original's presence.
"What may we do to serve you, Lord Elijah, Founder of the Night Guardians?" Nathaniel asked.
"Please, do away with the formalities, Nathaniel...or should I say 'Ares'? Anyway, I have a request to make of you and your family," Elijah said.
Danny rose, along with Savage and Nathaniel, "What is it, Lo-...Elijah?"
He smiled, "Well, Shadow, I want to ask that you three looked after the vampire race as you did before this whole catastrophe. I don't want you three to lose sight of the duty I gave you and your comrades just because the world is ending and all."
"Of course, Elijah," Nathaniel said, rather quickly and seeming to have trouble addressing the Original vampire so informally, "We would never forget our duty."
"I wanted to remind you because of where the humans have decided on going," Elijah said, "My family and I will be going on on of the more private and luxurious types of escape from this radiation. You will be going on the main versions, for the public's sake. And when you find out just what the humans have in store, I think it will be most clear why this country was in such terrible debt."
"Is there anything else we can do?" Savage asked.
"When the humans return to normal everyday life," Elijah said, "or as close to that as we will see...I what for you to make some...precautionary measures.
I know only you three are heartless enough to do it."
After Elijah's request, and their subsequent acceptance of the rather drastic measure, Danny found that she and her siblings were now on their way towards Death Valley. The sun was high in the sky at noon, and Danny revved the engine of her bike. They had stopped at a convenience store, for a restock on any supplies. Since there wasn't any blood to be drunk, Savage and Nathaniel insisted that they get food and booze to take off the edge of the hunger util they ran into any survivors. Danny, who didn't really care what the boys chose, had gone back out to the bikes to guard them against the off chance that some marauders or bandits decided that they liked the fast motorcycles. It had been a recurring sight to see people dressed up as if they were post-apocalyptic movie rejects, driving in caravans to complete the act. There were already vehicles that had sheet metal bolted to them, with bullet holes and blood as their decorations.
Danny found it almost funny how quick the world was screwed over since the nukes went off about a week ago. Danny wanted to be at Death Valley much sooner, but gas soon became an issue, since it was as scarce as people were. They were dragging their bikes along about as much as they drove them. But thankfully, this gas station convenience store hadn't been raided yet, so the three of them had helped themselves to the gas. They had found some black para-cord and tied gas cans to the sides of their bikes. They kept their stores of booze and food in black backpacks that they also found along the way. Danny had brought everything she thought she would need once the radiation died down and the humans roamed free again. She had her sniper rifle slung across her back, the butt-stock looming over her right shoulder. Her duel pistols were strapped to her thighs, as were her many knives. She had moved her sword from her back to her hip, the scabbard hanging from her left side, and it reached down to her mid shin when she stood up. She still wore her Gear, the set of special padded pants, knee high boots, black tank top, and leather jacket. the black ensemble had gone through some changes. Her tank top was in ribbons at her midriff, exposing the small of her back and her toned abs with the wind pick them up. She had shortened the sleeves of her leather jacket so that they only reach to just past her elbows, since she was sick of pushing them up past her elbows because of the heat. She still hadn't had the chance to wash the blood from the battle a week ago, and they had seemed to be there to stay.
"Alright!" Savage said, cheerily holding up a six pack of beer, "We. Are. Set!"
Danny rolled her eyes, "Of course you are, idiot."
"Hey," Nathaniel said, "Don't drink all of it this time, okay, bro?"
"Its not my fault you two didn't want any," Savage shrugged, throwing a beer to each of them.
Danny caught it, looking at the back pack Nathaniel was wearing. It was abnormally over packed, and she raised an eyebrow, "What did you pack? The shelves too?"
Nathaniel blinked, looking over his shoulder at the back pack, "Oh, no, they just had a really stocked snack section."
"How much of it is chocolate?" Danny asked as her brothers mounted their bikes.
"..."
"Ares?" Danny lift an eyebrow.
"...All of it?" Nathaniel laughed.
"You two..." Danny shook her head, "Did you at least get me what I like?"
"Oh yeah," Savage said, throwing Danny a plastic bag full of loli-pops, "Here ya go, sis."
"Good, you didn't forget," Danny sighed, catching the bag, "So, how much farther?"
Nathaniel shrugged, "I think we have about two or three hours until we get to the coordinates that the government gave us, but that's not including traffic."
Danny rolled her eyes, "What traffic? All we have to worry about are those bandits."
"True," Nathaniel inclined his head in agreement, "So we should be there in no time."
"Good," Danny said, "'Cause I don't feel like living off of booze until all of the humans come back."
Savage shrugged, "If only that were possible..."
"Just shut up, you alcoholic!" Danny yelled.
"That was low..." Savage looked like a wounded animal.
"It's true though," Nathaniel clapped a hand on his brother's leather-clad shoulder.
Savage groaned and mounted his bike, shouldering the backpack he'd brought out from the convenience store. Danny and Nathaniel followed suit, Danny having topped off all three tanks while she was waiting for her brothers to finish. They revved their engines and rode off towards the place in Death Valley that had been given to them. The coordinates were in the most remote parts of the region, with nothing around for miles. The air was getting...Danny wasn't sure what was different about it. It felt thinner, and the sun felt harsher then it usually did. This was most likely because vampires were more sensitive to things of that nature. It felt as if there wasn't that much to guard against the sun as there used to be. The bandits, the humans that have given up trying to maintain society, were acting just like all bandits did in the post-apocalyptic movies. They wore the same clothes one would expect them to wear, tattered with mix-matched armor and belts. They carried makeshift weapons and made their cars and vehicles match the part. Danny thought it was funny that her brother's and her looked like they belonged in this new version of the world. With their blades, guns, and tattered leather clothes and the way that they acted. She actually found herself sort of liking the feeling that she was the main character in an action story.
They rode on, keeping up their triangular formation with Nathaniel at the lead and Danny and Savage flanking him to the left and right respectively. Danny and Savage kept helmets on, the shaded visors doing the same task of masking their features as their hoods did. Nathaniel left his helmet off, letting the wind catch his dark shaggy hair. The heat was getting more and more apparent, making Danny glad that she was basically cold blooded being now, with her being undead and all.
The sun was at high setting in the West when they finally made it to the coordinates in Death Valley. They looked around, finding a group of survivors that looked like the bandits, but without the armor and weapons. They looked like they had been through Hell and back, and they probably have, considering what the bandits were doing to their victims if they didn't kill them. Danny had had to watch, since they had to wait for a group of bandits to move into a position to where they could pass uninterrupted. They beat them to a pulp, did terrible things to the women, stole their gear, and everything the bandits from the movies usually did. Danny was struck by the sense of unoriginality. It was almost as if they had watched the movies then started to act like the people they saw. It made Danny shake her head every time.
"Where do you think the safe house is?" Danny asked.
"I don't know," Nathaniel shrugged as they stopped on the side of the road, "There's a Haunter safe house near here. So we at least have a place to stay if this turns out to be a trick or something."
Danny also shrugged, "With all the Hybrids dead, and you two with me, I have no worries."
"Amen to that," Savage butted in, "So where should we start looking?"
"Maybe where the smoke is coming out of that mountain?" Danny asked pointing to the land mass in question.
Savage and Nathaniel looked, and said in unison, "Sounds like a plan."
They moved to go towards the mountain, but that soon seemed to be a pointless effort, seeing as the entire mass was imploding in on itself. Great clouds of dust were rising into the sky where the mountain used to be, with nothing remaining in it's place. Danny looked around the area to see what there was to have caused something like this, but she couldn't find anything. The humans that were in the area were looking at the mountain too, the distant rumbling of the occurrence alerting them to what was going on. They looked confused, disbelieving, and terrified at what they were watching. Danny, with her hyper-sensitive vampire hearing, listened to their frightened whispers. They were thinking it was another nuke, or so sort of attack. Danny shook her head, fear finding no foot holds in her being, as she saw the event unfold.
"Huh," Was all Nathaniel could say.
It was a flying ship. Danny's eyes, for the first time in a while, widened in surprise. Rising into the sky was a massive battle ship, with gun turrets launch bays, and everything else that one would think would be on a space battle ship. It looked like a star ship from the Star Wars movies, with an elongated body, an incredibly tall super structure, and monstrous engines propelling it. The sun only reflected off of the windows and view ports of the ship, the metal body having been painted the darkest of flat blacks. There were markings on the bow of the ship, in bright yellow, that was a word preceded by three letters. They read, "SBS Liberty."
"So that's what Elijah meant when he said this was the reason the country was in debt..." Savage muttered.
"Yup," Was all Danny could say, still sort of taken aback from the sight of a science fiction object becoming reality.
A smaller ship, a space version of one of the newer stealth fighters, launched from on of the port launch bays. It banked sharply and aimed itself directly at the three Prodigy Night Haunters and the human group near them. The humans looked like the might run away, but they saw Danny and her brothers not moving and seemed to find the courage to stay. The fighter flew over from the space ship to them, then hovered over them. Danny looked over to her brothers, to the humans, then back to the jet. It just hovered over them omniously, until it used a microphone to relay a message.
"Ares, Savage, and Shadow," The pilot of the fighter said, "Be thankful that you have friends in high places, or you would have been left behind."
And with that, a rope ladder was lowered to them, as well as hooks for their bikes. Danny looked, once again, to her brothers, then toook the ladder while Savage hooked up their bikes.
Five days later...
"So," Danny said, looking out the window of her quarters, "This is the Earth from space?"
The orb of blue and green hung suspended in space, orbiting the massive sun as it always had. But the green was visibly fading. Fires from the cities and from the nukes were burning everything, charring the ground. There were so many bombs that Danny could visibly see from where she was that everything would soon be dust. When they got back, there probably wouldn't be anything left. All the fresh water was gone, the only one's remaining too shallow to nourish the plants. Without the plants, there was no soil, only an endless sea of sand. The radiation had weakened the atmosphere, making it even harder for vegetation to grow. There were already reports of radiation poisoning in plants, animals, and humans. Vampires, now an internationally recognized species of its own, were reported to have made slaves out of whole populations and were starting to use them as a source of nourishment. Danny was thankful, utterly grateful, that the Original Family had been on board the SBS Liberty, or they would have had to commit the same atrocities in order to survive. There were pillars of smoke rising from the metropolitan areas, and the world's greatest capitals. Industry, other than weapons manufacturing, had ground to a halt. All people in existence, even ones that were safe in the bowels of the space ships that saved a small portion of humanity, wished to spend their fortunes only on things that aided in their safety.
Already, there was a whole market that sold special shields, weapons, and gear. It really was as if the world had gone from realistic, and then it was thrown into a science fiction movie. Danny and her brothers already had purchased, with the Night Haunters fortune, a plethora of weapons and gear. On top of continual lessons in marksmanship, Savage was teaching Danny the ins and outs of the new technology that the ship had on board. Everyday was spent training one another. If they found a Haunter, or a vampire, they would make sure to earn their undying loyalty. Elijah had a plan for all vampires that were not worthy. And it was the job of Death's Children, the official name that Elijah gave to Danny and her brothers, and a name that he had given them permission to bestow upon any Haunter that they felt was their equal, to carry out that duty. It was gruesome, and Danny would have to do some things that she never thought she would have to do, but it was the will of their founder, and therefore, absolute.
Savage nodded, "That's right. It was much prettier before the nukes, though."
"You go that right," Nathaniel sighed, "It's becoming more a ball of water and sand by the minute. Sad, really. There won't be much left."
Danny cringed, thinking of all the lush green places of the world she had been. All the places that shared the calming scent of him. Danny turned away from the view port, suddenly unable to look at it. They were going to orbit the Earth, or so said the captain's announcement, for as long as it would take. Danny thought of spending the next five centuries of her life in the conditions that they were in, and she shivered. It was probably going to be the most boring experience in her existence, that was for sure. Savage and Danny planned on going through every part of the ship, learning everything that they could about the craft. Nathaniel was already working on getting access to the training rooms, so that they could spar and use the equipment to get even stronger then they already were. Nathaniel was starting to get called by his old nickname of "Ares" more and more. The walls of the ship, especially the outer hull, were amazingly strong. They barely even dented when Nathaniel had tried to punch it.
Danny looked around her quarters. She had exchanged the bed for a makeshift hammock, which was hung from the ceiling. The bed was in Nathaniel's room, since he tended to bring in girls, compelled or not, into the room when it was light's out. Danny used the extra space to have a work bench so she could practice messing with the circuits and gear that were so new to her. Savage was teaching her as he learned himself about the new gear and equipment. She was learning how to reprogram the electronics to do whatever she needed them to do, modify her gear and others, personalize her weapons, and everything else she could learn. She was going to use this massive amount of time in space to learn whatever she could that would help her fight in the new world that awaited the human population when they made planet fall.
Savage was doing the exact same, while Nathaniel just kept training to get stronger. It was as if they had always been on this ship, adapting quite easily to the life style of a refugee. The crew of the ship were all implanted with vervain charms, Danny having learned that the hard way, and a good majority of the crew were buying vervain jewelry and herbs for the same purpose of repelling the vampires. When Savage and Danny found out about this, they had searched a good portion of the ship before finding that the humans had mass produced the herb soon after the outbreak of the knowledge of vampire's existence was made.
Danny found out quickly that there had been laws passed by the humans that discriminated against vampires. The laws treated with the vampires with a degree of spite. Official blame of the outbreak of nuclear war was given to the vampire race. The Original family was recognized as the monarchical family, with Elijah as it's head, and the military was the Night Haunters. Since Death's Children was indisputably known as the most deadly group of beings in the world, they were appointed as official leaders of the Night Haunters Legions. The only thing was that Nathaniel never fully accepted the offer, and neither Savage or Danny was the type to take the lead over an entire force.
The end result was the Legions of Night Haunters taking very highly... encouraged suggestions from the avatar of the God of War.
Danny felt branded when she walked up to the counter of a food dispenser store front and asked for the blood from a new Vampire Menu, forever labelled as a "blood sucking leech". The humans looked at her with fear, and hatred, and with disgust. It was as if she were an alien, like she had personally killed any of their lost loved ones. She could tell they were irrationally thinking that she was going to suck out their children's blood and their own just because she was what she was. It would only get worse from there
Four hundred years later...
"I want you to teach me how to be stealthy," Nathaniel said on day, as Danny was working on a piece of her sniper rifle.
"You? Stealthy?" Savage cocked an eyebrow, "What? You want to be able to sneak into girls' quarters without getting spotted?"
"For the fifteenth time! That was an accident!" Nathaniel grumbled, "And no, I just think it would be best if I knew how to get away from a tight spot. The humans haven't exactly been friendly to our kind."
"It's true," Danny chimed in from her messy workstation, even though she was all the way across from her brothers, "But it was embarrassing for you to 'walk in' on the girls' communal shower while I was in there."
"...Sorry, sis," Nathaniel mumbled.
"It was ten years ago," Danny shrugged, scrubbing a spec of gun oil from her sniper's barrel, "Did you at least get a good look while you were in there?"
"Uh, what?" Nathaniel blinked.
"You heard me," Danny sighed.
"Anyway," Savage said, before Nathaniel could answer, "I'm alright with teaching the was of the ninja."
Savage made an exaggerated hand position and bowed like you would see in a Japanese anime. Nathaniel rolled his eyes, "Thanks, bro. I guess, anyway."
"Let's not forget, Ezekiel," Danny said, still not turning away from her sniper rifle, "That you were using your stealth abilities to do the same stuff a little while ago too."
"What are you even talking about?" Savage said, sounding uncharacteristically nervous, "I've never peeked in on any female areas of the ship since we got here."
"Not true," Danny said, polishing the lens of her scope, "You did look in the girls' bath a century before Nathaniel, saying that it was for my safety."
"But there-" Savage objected.
"Was a bath full of naked girls to feast your eyes on," Danny said, sighing.
Savage was speechless. Nathaniel snickered, "Guilty, you closet pervert."
"Shut up! Do you want to learn or not!?" Savage yelled.
Danny heard them leave, and started to reassemble her sniper rifle. The rifle was the latest from one of the rising companies, the Omega Corporation, and had excellent range, firepower, and versatility. Danny already had just about every attachment for the rifle, and had been working on her shooting almost daily ever since they had started to orbit the Earth. The view ports were closed off on the entire ship, since a group of people commented suicide by breaking the glass of theirs down with a rocket launcher and sniper rifle-sized laser gun. Trust was waning among crew and passenger, with the guards becoming less and less understanding and much more forceful in the laws. They had long been enacting the death sentence to anyone that got to be more trouble then their rations were worth. It was because if this that they had long since closed off the view of the decaying mother Earth, and due to this, none of the current generations knew what the current Earth looked like. Technically, Danny didn't either, but she had a much closer idea as to what it looked like. The last she saw of the Earth, it had become completely filled with sand and dust. There were patches of green here and there, but they were surrounded by encampments of mutated bandits. Besides those exceptions, the world had become a desert, filled with sand.
Currency, in order to make it uniform among all the surviving humans in space, had been changed to a single type. They were decided to be called Credits, almost as if to keep with the theme of a science fiction movie, and had the approximately value of the former U.S. dollar. The four major corporations were one of the biggest factors in this. The Omega Corporation, Phaser Company, Artemis Industries, and Zakar Munitions were all working together to increase their profits. Since they were basically the only major companies, they basically had a monopoly on all the ships orbiting the Earth. There were minor companies that manufactured food and other necessities, but they didn't have nearly as much resources and influence as the major ones. It was annoying Danny that the corporations were seeming to gear up to take over the human race. The only thing that Danny could take any solace in was that vampires were being treated with caution as well as spite. It was only a matter of time before they were hunted by the growing Hunter Association, though.
The humans, at least those that weren't slaves to the ever-increasing poverty rate, were getting more and more bold with how they spent their credits. Militias and sects were forming among the weaker of their kind, and the tensions were only quelled by the over hanging fact that the ship's hull were to be compromised if there were to be wars that broke out on board. Savage and Nathaniel had moved their quarters to a secluded maintenance area about two hundred and fifty years ago when the populations suffered from a huge class difference. The three of them, plus about fifty Haunters that they had either found or recruited over the time that they had been on the ship, had lived out of the public's eye just like they had on Earth. The part of the ship that they occupied had, thanks to a few well placed and controlled leaks of information, been rumored to be haunted. It was nicknamed "Devil's Corner" and was the main place for adolescents of the current generation to dare on another to go. And when they did, Danny liked to blow off some steam by scaring the living daylights out of them.
As soon as she attached the scope on her sniper, Danny rose from her desk to follow her brothers. She slipped her side arm into a holster situated over her rear at her waist, and also a boot knife. She slipped into her Gear jacket, which still was tattered at the bottom and at her sleeves, and wrapped her equally tattered scarf around her neck once. After throwing the twin tails of her dark scarf over her shoulders so that they would be behind her back, Danny slid out of her quarters and into the dark hallway that lead to it. The dim lights of the maintenance area flickered, the age of the ship showing, as she made her way to the training areas of the ship.
She reached the end of the metal corridor, climbed a ladder up two levels of the ship, and exited through the vents just before she would have been in the main hallways of the exercise area. Danny and Savage had long since figured out secret ways to get around the ship without getting noticed, so she knew all of them by memory. When she finally reached the exercise room, she didn't find either of her brothers.
Danny snapped her fingers as she remembered, Right, stealth training today.
She crouched low, pulling out a cell phone-like device that was able to synchronize with almost anything electronic. She quickly unlocked it, went to her settings, and dimmed the back-lit screen. It was a device that had a holographic ability, but mainly displayed its information on the see-through glass screen. Once she had finished turning the brightness all the way down, she hacked into the room's lighting systems. Just as she felt a presence behind her, she cut the lights, pocketed the device, and dove out of the way. She heard the being that she had sensed stumble slightly. Her eyes adjusted as she slipped into the darker parts of the room, pulling out her boot knife and scanning the area.
Savage, his eyes slightly glowing a sinister looking neon green, had been who had snuck behind her. The glowing of his eyes meant that his vision bionics, experimental technology that they had stolen and applied to themselves, were active and that he was now able to see in the infrared spectrum. Basically, he had heat vision. Danny's didn't let her see heat signatures like her brother's, but she had vision bionics that let her see farther then normal. Danny and Savage stared at each other in the dark, and Danny reached out with her senses to try and find Nathaniel. She felt for her brother's killing instinct, his power as a Prodigy, and everything that made Nathaniel who he was. Then she pinpointed his presence, and it was closing in right behind her slowly.
She, as silently and unnoticed as a ninja would, vanished into the darkest shadows of the room just as the emergency lights came on. With the sudden light, Nathaniel was revealed crouching in the middle of the room, just as he bumped into a weight set. Danny took the opportunity to sneak behind her warrior brother. As he was getting up as quietly as he could, Danny tapped him on the shoulder.
"Not bad," Danny said, "But you could still use some practice."
Nathaniel stood to his full height, towering over Danny's slightly shorter frame, "Whatever, I know that being an assassin takes way more patience than I've got."
"Well, you're doing better then I thought you would, I guess," Danny turned to Savage, "What have you taught him so far?"
"Just the basics," Savage said, walking up to them, "Uh, could you turn the lights back on? I don't want to have to deal with a maintenance crew thinking the the lights shorted out."
Danny nodded, pulling out her device and doing what was requested of her, "Done."
The lights flickered back on as Savage nodded his thanks, "Alright, bro, it looks like you handled that well."
"Hard to sneak up on someone who's earned the name 'Shadow'," Nathaniel said, "So I'll take that as a compliment."
Danny giggled, "Yeah, you should."
"Next lesson," Savage said, pulling out his own hacking device.
Then the lights went out.
One hundred years later...
"Attention, all passengers, attention!"
"What could this be about?" Danny mumbled, turning away from what she was working on.
"Our lead scientists have confirmed that the radiation levels of the planet have finally gone below the recommended levels," Announced the ships PA system, "We're going back home, everyone! Planetfall's in three days' time! Pack your things, and be ready for humanity's homecoming!"
Danny's eyes widened, "No way..."
Savage looked up from where he lay on Danny's hammock, "Did I hear that right?"
Danny looked over to him, "I think so..."
Nathaniel barged into her room, "Did you guys hear? We're finally going home!"
Danny and Savage looked at each other, speaking at the same time, "Huh."
"Let's celebrate!" Nathaniel cheered.
Savage suddenly seemed far more chipper then his usual if-looks-could-kill-you'd-be-a-mutilated-corpse self, "Sounds good to me!"
Then out of no where, he produced a bottle of bourbon. Danny face-palmed, "How long have you had that on your person?"
Savage shrugged, "Couple years maybe?"
Danny sighed, holding out her shot glass that she had forgotten to put in the sink, "Hit me up, alcoholic."
Savage grinned, "Much obliged."
They blew through the bottle of bourbon in no time, and moved on to Savage's extensive stash of booze. Soon, any close by Haunters joined in the party. With the most powerful of assassins, and the strongest warrior, now drunk, fights were bound to break out. Brawls were the staple of gatherings of Haunters and booze. Nathaniel, at knife point, was forced to only be a referee because he was known to easily defeat all of the Legions without weapons. Danny and Savage had to fight with at least a hand tied behind their backs and use no weapons, since hand to hand combat was one of their assassin specialties. Even then, they too were forced to only fight Nathaniel on a two versus one battle. They enjoyed themselves to the fullest in celebration of their homecoming.
Some of the Haunters that were there had never even seen what the Earth looked like, and only had the data files of the ships libraries to go on. They had no idea of what would await them when they returned to the ground.
Danny, however, knew exactly what did.
Three days later...
Danny and her brothers, backed by all the Haunters that they had either found or recruited in the past five hundred years of being in space, stood at the edge of the ramp that lead from where the ship landed to the ground. The air was harsh and hard to breathe in. It was sadly still fresher then any of the recycled air that they had been breathing since they were on board the SBS Liberty. The sun, by some atmospheric phenomena, had a halo of light surrounding it as it hung suspended in the lifeless sky, sometimes blocked by wispy clouds of acid rain. Danny and Savage stood behind Nathaniel's crouching form, hoods and scarfs covering their features from sight and from the sandpaper-like winds of this new Earth's Death Valley. The world was now a desert, with no where in sight being anywhere near hospitable. The humans had all made the vampires proceed them, out of fear of anything that might try to kill them. They were their meat shield, for all intensive purposes, and Danny hated them for their cowardice. The vampires were all in various forms of the Gear that Haunters were known for.
They all looked like they belonged on a post-apocalyptic movie set, with weapons and technology that seemed other worldly in its complexity and use. Devices that could store nations worth of data, wrist watches that displayed holograms of whatever their users chose to look at. Everyone of them had a headset on, microphones reaching down from their ears to the corners of their mouths. Over half had bionic implants that either improved their vision, hearing, or perception. They sometimes had a pair of goggles that did the same thing to their senses. There were some, Danny and her brothers included, with weapons of light that looked as of they were stolen from a Star Wars movie and others with the same swords and guns that they entered the ship with. Throughout the gathering of them all, pale blue lights glimmered like stars against the midnight backdrop of the sea of dark clad warriors, the lights the default color of their gear. An army of high tech, ageless, and skilled vampire warriors stood behind the three most deadly of them all.
Nathaniel had grabbed a fist full of the sands that had used to be the soil that gave life to their former home, which was now as alien to them as Mars.
Nathaniel stood, letting the sand slip between his fingers as he turned over his palm, "So this is what's become of our home."
"What are we going to do, Ares?" Danny asked, her voice gruff from a coughing fit after she inhaled the harsh air.
"What we were told to do, Shadow," Nathaniel said, sounding rather hesitant as he turned and whispered into her ear so that only she would hear, "But so we're clear: Betrayal is not something that I like to do on a regular basis."
Danny, startled by the sudden venomous edge to Nathaniel's voice, took an involuntary step back and looked him in the eye, "As an assassin, my honor will be defiled by this act. I'm in no position to argue with you, Ares."
"We better find a place to stay, brother," Savage said, walking past Nathaniel to the very edge of the ramp, "One small step for Haunter..."
"One giant leap for vampire kind," Danny chuckled as Savage planted his foot on the ground.
They continued on, the vampires following behind them as the humans watched with weary eyes. Arm bands, maroon in color with the Night Haunters crest upon them, marked the vampires from the humans. Danny, Savage, and Nathaniel were not given these, for reasons that were not explained, but they knew that there had been a law that had been passed forcing the vampires to wear the arm bands. There was no more trust among the humans for the vampires, after an incident not even a month before were a Rogue vampire was caught drinking the blood out of a young girl until she was pale. They were all now presumed to be just like that Rogue, whom was dealt the most severe of punishments by the most brutal of torture practitioners, Nathaniel.
Danny looked around the desert of a planet, feeling the antsy eyes of the Haunters behind her. Then Nathaniel suddenly made a turn towards the mountains. Danny and Savage looked at each other at the same time, a knowing look shared between them as they new what was about to happen. The Haunters and vampire allies followed without hesitation, completely trusting in the master of the vampire military's judgement.
Danny wandered what Nathaniel must look like the world right at that moment. He stood at the mouth of a cave, a mix match of Carbon Fiber Steel armor strapped to his mighty frame. He had an ax, its blade replaced by two rows of chainsaw belts of teeth, strapped to his back. He wore black bots, pants, and a t-shirt, his chest and stomach criss-crossed by belts of ammo and straps from his gear. He had a grim look on his face, which made him look authoritative and strong when compared to his usual mad-man grin. He was flanked by two of his siblings, both in similar sets of clothes and gear, with hoods and scarves covering their features from sight. A sniper was strapped to both of their backs, knives of all kinds in sheaths all over their bodies. Photon Sabers, things that were basically the light sabers from science fiction, hung from each of their belts. Danny, who was on Nathaniel's left, had a side arm holstered over her right buttock, while Savage had a pair of them holstered at his thighs. Both had bionics in their eyes, and had pale blue light accenting their bodies were their high tech was peeking through their holsters. Aside from the difference in the number of side arms, and the difference in the sniper rifles they both carried, the only noticeable difference between Savage and Danny was Danny's admittingly hot, curvy body and Savage's lean muscled frame. Both looked as intimidating as their reputations as the avatars of Death and Darkness made them out to be.
And with all that in mind, Danny wandered if they looked like heroes and saviors...or demons and devils.
Once the entire contingent of vampires was inside the caves, they noticed that the two sibling assassins that had flanked their leader had disappeared. With the stories that surrounded both of them, fear washed over them just from the thought of those two lurking in the shadows. They pressed on, the rocks of the cave getting harder and harder to see as they went deeper into the bowels of the cave system. Eventually, they were lead to an enormous open cavern with a hole in the roof that let in the harsh sunlight. There was a plateau-like outcropping that served as a pedestal for the avatar of War, the unofficial leader of the vampiric military, as well as Death's Children.
"My brothers and sisters! Friends, comrades, vampires!" Nathaniel called out over the rising chatter among the congregation before him, "We have survived the tribulations of the life aboard SBS Liberty. We have suffered from discrimination, sabotage, and outright unwarranted hatred towards our kind for half a millennium. Now, a new problem presents itself to us. What it is is overpopulation. We have out matched out food source. Lord Elijah has given the order that we are not to Turn anyone without either my or either of my sibling's permission. Failure to comply with this order will result in your immediate death."
Nathaniel continued after he calmed the crowd down, "If you don't like what I'm telling you, then there are two choices for you as of this moment: One, you fight me for your right to live, or, two, you kill yourself right now."
Instantly the crowd roared with hatred and distaste. Those of them that were Haunters flocked to stand behind their leader, while the majority of the crowd remained. There were about a hundred Haunters standing with Nathaniel, the rest of the thousands of vampires in the cave were drawing their guns and blades in anger. Stronger members of the now rioting mob were rallying support in fighting, none of them thinking that, with odds of ten to one against them, the Haunters would stand a chance with all their weapons. And with their two greatest assassins out of sight, the felt even more able to fight. The whispers of discontent soon rose to roars of hate and betrayal. They realized, with the look on Nathaniel's face, as well as how the Haunters were acting, that Elijah hadn't only ordered them to stop making new vampires. Elijah had ordered their execution.
"Let's kill 'em!" Yelled a seemingly skilled fighter as he charged towards the wall of Haunters, jumping over them to land on the plateau where Nathaniel stood.
But when he turned towards the leader of Death's Children, the vampire's head suddenly jerked up. A nice, neat round hole between his eyes. A sharp report of a sniper rifle cut across the throngs of rebelling vampires. Instantly, it was as if all the air had left the cavern as the vampires looked around to find who had fired the shot. When they remembered that both Shadow and Savage had brought along their rifles, fear seemed to grip them as never before.
"If you wish to die," Nathaniel said, "Then die honorably!"
And with that, the Haunters converged on the rebelling vampires.
Nathaniel drew his chain-ax, his own invention in which he had effectively replaced the blade of an ax with a pair of chain saw belts that ran in opposite directions, and pulled the trigger on its handle. The chain-ax whirred, growling as the engine revved, and Nathaniel took a deep breath. He was about to slaughter most of his kind, vampires that the Night Haunters had allied with and befriended to combat the alienation that they had felt. But he shook that thought away, giving in to the temptation of battle. His blood boiled with excitement, he grinned like a mad man. He looked across the cavern, hearing the deafening roars of hatred and hurt from the vampires that now realized what had just happened. Sharp reports of his siblings sniper rifles heralded the end of a vampires life every time they rolled over the cavern. His sister and brother had trained non-stop for the past five hundred years in everything that an assassin would need in this new, dystopian world. Close combat, long range sniping, hacking, information networking among living and artificial means, and many others.
Shadow, though she didn't seem to know this herself, had kept herself busy for the past five hundred years so that she could escape thinking of her first love's death. Nick had meant everything to her, plain and simple. He had been the first boy that had cared for her and loved her like the ideal guy, and the fact that they were both vampires only heightened the feelings between them. He had been the ideal guy for her, caring, protective, strong, calm in the midst of chaos. He had done everything for her, and she had lost him. She had lost him because of how strongly she had loved him. He was only targeted because of how much they cared for each other. Deep down, Shadow was always grieving for her loss. She had trained so much that it was all she thought about, learning new techniques when she had mastered others. She had learned even more close combat fighting skills, how to snipe, how to hack, how to set up a reliable information network with electronic and living elements. If it would help her become stronger as an Assassin Prodigy, then she had set out to master it. She made sure that there was to idle time for her to think of how much she missed her first love, and it had made her the ultimate assassin.
Savage and Nathaniel had grown stronger by teaching Shadow what she needed to know. They understood what she was going through, sadly. But that was a long time ago, back when it was just Nathaniel and Savage in Renaissance Italy.
"Haunters!" Nathaniel roared, feeling himself being lost in the sounds of battle around him, "Tear these wenches limb from limb! Show them the might and terror that owns the night! Then drive a stake through their rotting hearts!"
There was something in his voice that somehow brought out the worst of the Night Haunters present. They went from fighting their foes, to slaughtering them with such ire and ferocity that it would have made Nathaniel blink in surprise if he was actually paying attention. He jumped high into the air, then slammed down into the rocky ground of the cavern. The rocks cracked, caving in slightly as Nathaniel palmed a vampires face into the ground, pulverizing the poor soul's skull into mush. Extending his arm and revving his chain-ax, Nathaniel laughed maniacally as he spun around two times. The teeth of the chain-ax ripped the flesh from the enemy's bones, and their bones shredded to dust. He batted away a counterattack with the flat of the chain-ax, sending the vampire flying into the air. If Nathaniel had cared to look, he would have seen that vampire's head explode as a sniper round drove through his temple as he flew through the air.
Nathaniel snatched an assault rifle of of a corpse with his free had and started to laugh even more and he mowed down an advancing line of vampires. When the clip ran dry, and about five vampires fell, Nathaniel rammed the barrel of the gun into an unlucky vampire's spine, then slammed the flat of his chain-ax into the butt of the rifle. The result was the rifle skewering the vampire through the heart as he writhed in agony. By now, some vampires were starting to lose faith, the sight of Nathaniel's chain-ax ripping away limbs and flesh like a wild animal making some throw up where they stood. Limbs, bodies, and blood flew this way and that as Nathaniel carved through the battlefield laughing the entire time. Across the battlefield, vampires were finding themselves with holes in their foreheads as each report of the sniper rifles belonging to Shadow and Savage rolled over the cavern. The fight dragged on, the fact that their lives were in the line making the vampires fight harder.
Thousands were falling to Nathaniel's strength and chain-ax. Arms being ripped from their sockets and shoved down their former owners throats as his chain-ax disemboweled their comrades. Nathaniel was bathed in the blood of the vampires they were betraying, some of their guts stuck to him as he torn through the throngs of vampires still alive to fight. There were multiple bullet wounds on his body, some housing the lead that had caused them, a gift from a few lucky vampires with sub machine guns and assault rifles. There was a knife hilt jutting out of Nathaniel's side, and it was bleeding pretty badly. Despite all these wounds and injuries, Nathaniel seemed to be unaffected as he hacked and ripped through all that opposed him. He was grinning, cackling as he placed his chain-ax on the chest cavity on a mortally wounded enemy. Since he had ripped away every limb from this particular vampire except the head, all the poor man could do was scream from terror and pain as Nathaniel pulled the trigger on his chain-ax and the teeth ripped away the flesh and bone that protected his heart and lungs. And soon, those too were ripped away bit by bit as blood bathed the area around Nathaniel and Nathaniel himself.
The fight, now too small to even be called a skirmish, died out with the sight of such a horrible death. Haunters were already sheathing their weapons and wiping away blood that had splattered the faces and clothes. They were already going around and looting the bodies of the corpses, stuffing the weapons and gear that they found into duffel bags so that future Haunters could make us of them. Nathaniel was finally coming to his senses, his heart rate and battle-high dying down. He slashed the air, flinging off the blood and gore that had gotten stuck in between the teeth of the chain-ax.
He tapped the button on the headset in his right ear and spoke into the microphone, "Alright, you two, that's enough for today."
Shadow exhaled loudly, "Well, my training paid off, I guess. Didn't miss a single shot."
Savage chuckled over the radio, the clanking of his rifle as he stood bleeding over into the microphone, "I bet I got more then you though. Nice shot on that one Ares tossed up, though. Priceless."
"Thanks," Shadow laughed, "So, Ares, what now? What does one do to celebrate betraying thousands of vampire allies?"
Savage, along with Nathaniel, ignored the venom in their sister's voice, "I vote for booze."
"And the plot thickens..." Shadow said sarcastically, "Seriously, dude, if you weren't a vampire you would die from one week of the liquor you drink."
"She'e got you there, bro," Nathaniel said, "And Shadow?"
"Yeah?" She asked.
"Their deaths were not in vain."