Golden Leaves

What The Hell Is This?

November 25, 1963

All good stories begin with the end of the world.

I have been through enough apocalypses in my life to know when I was in another. As we fought for our lives as well as the lives of the innocent civilians, I began to wonder if we were right back again. After all we had been through, everything we had done, it was all for nothing at all. Somehow, we always made it back here, the apocalypse liked us too much to let us go.

Humanity had been theorizing how the world would end for generations. Hundreds of years worth of ancient literature points to how the world will end. Some say in fire, some say in ice, some say a plague will take out all of humankind, others say the child of the Devil themself will rise and take us all out. Perhaps one of the most popular theories, one that came to light at the turn of the Twentieth Century, was war.

Humans loved war, it was in their genes. Each war was more gruesome than the last. After you've invented the atomic bomb, where else is there to go besides barreling towards the end?

That is exactly where we found ourselves, in the end once again. I thought we had fifty years, but, it turns out, we didn't have any time left at all. My eyes had been glued to the moon for so long, I forgot to turn them towards humanity every once in a while.

I always thought I was lucky, but who else can say they've been in three separate apocalypses in their life? Perhaps I wasn't The Lucky Clover I thought I was. As I fought for my life, I began to believe I never was in the first place.

It was a quiet Dallas street before the war began. Once, the street was full of life. Every business thrived, the people smiled, and the sun always shone. It was The American Dream even before it became a warzone.

Now, it was a miracle any of the buildings were left standing. After all the bombs that had gone off, most of which came from Vanya, I expected them to come tumbling down. Debris littered the once clean streets providing shelter for shooters and shields for chargers. On one side charged the Americans, on the other, the Russians. All fighting for the same reason though they didn't know it.

"Get down!" one of the American soldiers shouted.

I jumped off the roof and landed just as another bomb went off. Water splashed beneath my feet, and hovered in the air for just a moment as it was attracted to the energy swirling around my hands and covering my body from head to toe. Armor made out of flickering blue energy morphed to fit my body, fitting into every nook and cranny like I was born to wear it. Shields as small as bowling balls completely covered my hands as I crouched. Flinging my head up, I glared at the oncoming Russian soldiers from under my bangs. The cold-blooded killer left behind long ago came back as I sent my shields flying towards the soldiers. They barreled over like bowling pins, they're guns still shooting anything they could possibly see.

The bullets they shot would be the exact ones that killed them. Using a well-placed shield, I ricocheted the bullets straight towards them. They soared right between each soldier's eyes, making them all collapse to the ground, lifeless.

"Bullseye," I muttered, glancing up as a flash of white light caught my eye.

One of the Russian tanks exploded, sending a bomb that would have surely killed us soaring through the air. White light flashed as Vanya rose from the ashes of civilization. Her skin was more star than human, glowing a brilliant white with energy I couldn't even begin to comprehend. Even from that distance, I could see her eyes glowing bright blue and threatening to explode at any moment. The wind whipped her clothes and hair like she was a divine being rising from purgatory.