Caught In The Crossfire.

Chapter 2.

Daniel Hale and his family all huddled up on the sofas near the fire as they watched TV while sipping hot cocoa. There was a thunderstorm outside and his sisters were frightened, he personally liked this kind of weather, it made him feel excited, when he was younger and there was a storm he would sit for hours on end staring out of the window, looking at the sky in awe.

He glanced out of the living room window and saw a massive lightning bolt strike down right next to his house, it rumbled, the house shook and the electricity went off.

He heard his sisters whimpers and sighed, tomorrow he would check out what kind of mark it had left. He got up, leaving his parents to comfort his sisters and went to his room. His room was nice and cosy, just how he liked it. The walls were painted dark blue and the ceiling was white. He had a single bed in the far right side corner and by the side of it was a bedside cabinet with a lamp and a digital clock on it. In the far left corner he had his computer desk and on top of it was his precious Apple laptop. In the right corner he had a flat screen tv so he could watch TV while he was in bed. Magazines about videogames were strewn across the carpet and a few of his PS3 discs were scattered on the floor.

He glanced at the clock and decided he would go to bed seems as he couldn't watch TV. He stripped and put on his pajamas, he went to the bathroom which was opposite his room and left his clothes on the floor next to the shower,his mother would pick them up tomorrow. He brushed his teeth and then went back to his room and got under his sheets, curling up in a ball and going to sleep.

He woke up in the morning to the sound of birds chirping next to his window, he yawned, rubbing his eyes and rolled over. He looked at his clock and it said that it was five past ten.

He dragged himself out of his bed and went and had a shower, he changed into a pair of jeans and a simple black T-shirt, going downstairs and into the kitchen for breakfast. He sat down at the dining table after mumbling good morning to his parents while his mother served him pancakes with mayple syrup. After stuffing himself until he could barely walk he decided to go outside and see where the lightning bolt struck.

When he got to the garden he saw one of the bushes a bit burnt and guessed that it had struck somewhere near there. He went behind it and searched around confused, the lightning bolt should of left atleast some damage. He glanced at the floor and spotted a golden ball the size as a golf ball and as smooth as marble, he picked it up and was suprised at how heavy it actually was, he examined it for a minute before sighing and putting it into his pocket and made his way back inside.

Daniel examined the golden ball in his hands with interest, skimming his thumb gently over it's polished surface, trying to find a scratch or any kind of dent or imperfection on it. Nothing, nothing at all. He was disappointed, he couldn't explain why but he had thought that he would of found something like a small button to open it or something.

He ran his rather large hand through his rugged hair and placed the perfectly sphere shaped object in his front pocket again, maybe he would examine it with the microscope that his parents had bought him for his birthday later.

He opened the black steel gate of his garden and headed down the empty street towards the forest. His and his neighbour's house were the only ones next to the forest, they were isolated right on the edge of a small country town and all the other houses were situated about half a mile away.

Daniel had always enjoyed this place, it was peaceful and he'd usually go there in his spare time to observe the animals that lived there like a couple of rabbits which had a burrow under his favourite tree or sometimes even a herd of deers which would pass by every once in a while to graze on the lush grass which covered the forests floor.

Although they wouldn't stay for long as this part of the forest was known to contain a vicious pack of wild wolves that a few years ago had murdered some young teenagers which had gone camping in the middle of the forest, Daniel was only a little boy at the time but he still remembered that he was the one that found their mangled bodies when he had been playing hide and seek with his friends, half eaten and they had already started to decompose, the medics had to get a swab of DNA to identify them.

He climbed his usual tree and adjusted himself in a comfortable position on two strong thick branches.

He looked down and spotted a pile of dry leaves placed directly in the sun as if someone wanted to spark a fire.

Normally, he would of gotten down and dispersed them but today he was tired and couldn't be bothered climbing down just yet, instead, he closed his eyes and drifted off asleep.

He was awoken by the sound of a woodpecker drilling away at the other side of the trunk. He stretched carefully so he wouldn't fall off. As he inhaled deeply after yawned he smelt a hint of burning and saw smoke and looked around for its source.

The dry leaves had been set alight by the intense sun rays and it was passing to the other leaves, panicking, he quickly dismounted the tree, ran towards the leave and started stepping on the leaves near the fire and brushing the rest of them away from it.

Satisfied with his work, he stepped back and looked at the fire, it was in the middle of a small clearing away from any leaf or branch so it couldn't spread and it would soon die out.

His trousers started to vibrate and he looked down, bewildered. He realised that the vibration was caused by the object that he had in his front pocket.

Carefully, he gently removed the golden ball from his pocket, holding it gingerly and noticed how it was shaking and rattling about, as if it was going to explode any second.

He grasped it firmly, enclosing his hand around it and started to move away from the fire and towards his home and noticed that it suddenly slowed down and stopped vibrating.

Curious, he turned back around and headed towards the fire until he was about half a meter away from it. The golden object started to vibrate like crazy and was trying to escape from his grasp.

It was getting hard to contain in his hands, finally, it slipped through his fingers and flew into the fire. The fire abruptly stopped, not even a bit of smoke was visible nor a single flame. Then, a second later, it exploded sending him staggering back from the force of the explosion while he shielded his face with his hands. He peeked through his fingers and saw a small melon sized dark blue energy ball swirling around in the middle of the air.

It slowly grew in size until it transformed into what seemed to be a two meter portal to another dimension.