06-16-2018, 07:54 AM
July 2011
Karl Jak winced as he tripped and scraped his knee against the wooden floor.
“My favorite pair!” He growled as his manicured fingers squeezed into fists at the sight of the blood stains forming above the torn flesh.
He wanted to change, but a partially gloved hand clenched his own. “There’s no time to dawdle, Mr. Jak!” Without waiting for a response or even a non-verbal affirmation, the soldier yanked Karl forward, prompting a scowl from the executive.
“It’s just another damned alien invasion,” the man grumbled as he was led up to a group of men, women, and extraterrestrial species making their exodus from the main Syntech facility in Central City. Coupled with the postponement of Syntech’s annual Dante’s Abyss event, the current ‘situation’ on the planet was absolutely infuriating for Karl Jak. The Board, in their ‘infinite wisdom’ had opted to co-sponsor and intergalactic tournament on Namek to commemorate a bunch of dead slugs and starry-eyed soldiers.
The soldier—a young woman who looked half his age—turned and gave him a stern glare. “This one is different, Sir.”
Karl wanted to roll his eyes. That was the type of sappy drivel he’d expect from some promo hyping up a competition or a redemption arc for a downtrodden hero. “They’re always different. Were you even alive when the whole planet was frozen? That was what… five years ago?”
Before the young woman could provide a response, some sort of artillery shell struck the building a few stories above them. The blast tore clean through the elegant, classical architecture of the Syntech building and carried enough force to destroy the electrical systems of the centuries’-old structure. Yelps and screams started to pollute the now blackened room as a wayward Karl Jak started to retreat back from the crowd.
He had made it nearly to one of the side doors of the lobby when the small arm’s fire—either munitions-based or a handful of ki-spewing foot soldiers—tore into the crowded mass of people from five or six different angles. In the flash of lights, Karl caught a final glimpse of the young girl soldier as she took a burst of ki to the gut. The attack clipped her, which meant it left her alive just long enough to struggle momentarily to keep her charred entrails inside her stomach.
Heading into one of the side hallways, Karl shut the door as calmly as he could and found the latch. The faint glow of emergency lighting washed over the sweaty executive. The screams had lingered beyond the initial salvos, and the sheet of steel he now stared at was far too thin to muffle to lamentations.
“Senseless,” he whispered, shaking his head as he backed away from the door. He hadn’t noticed before, but his hands trembling. “We’re fine,” he assured himself as he straightened his back and ran a hand through his hair. He didn’t have a compact, but he didn’t need one to know he probably didn’t look half as good as he wanted to feel. The Earth had been a big giant mess for the last few weeks. One minute, everyone had been all eager beaver to head over to Namek to help the healing process. A few months’ prior, some alien species had invaded the planet and been quashed with the help of an expeditionary army from Earth. The mastermind behind the Earth force had been some goofball from an old-school academy.
Now, the Earth was under siege once again, and who was here to help them?
The Nameks?
Karl scoffed at the thought of the green slug-men lifting a hand. They were as bad at being allies as they were between the sheets. Too busy farming their overgrown produce and sitting around in prayer circles to help fight off the city-killing ship and the horde of Red Stallions it had belched forth onto the Earth.
There was supposed to be some sort of retaliatory force. Karl knew that there was half a dozen spec-ops and black-ops organizations centered on the planet, and he found it a little hard to believe that all of them had been caught off guard or unprepared for a catastrophe to this degree. Didn’t they have sleeper agents or some nonsense?
An explosion shook the producer’s focus and shifted his eyeballs to the ceiling over his head. Had there always been tiny cracks like that?
“Let’s go,” Karl barked as his legs started to move him down the hallway. He was businessman and an entrepreneur who worked in a company who had intergalactic interests. “Not our first rodeo,” he spoke to himself as he advanced through the side corridor. For all he knew, this was being filmed for some sort of Syntech reality show to be aired after this attack fizzled. With that thought in mind, Karl couldn’t help but smile as he glanced up at the tiles overhead. Those little spider web cracks were probably concealing itty bitty cameras.
Somewhere high over Karl’s head, a bomb went off, and even the emergency lights couldn’t handle it. When they abruptly died, the businessman broke into a sprint, allowing a photographic memory of the headquarters’ back halls to guide him through the handful of unpainted passageways as chunks of masonry started to crumble around him.
With a grunt, Karl threw himself against the steel-plated door at the rear of Syntech Main.
Without so much as a sound, the door sent the well-coiffed man stumbling backwards.
In the darkness, Karl couldn’t see the scrapes, but he could smell the tinge of blood and knew that the suit was destined for the incinerator. Balling his hands up, he walked up and felt around for the latch. His dust-stained digits found the handle, which had been twisted closed. Whenever that had taken place, it was impossible for Karl to tell. Perhaps the jostling of the structure had done it. Perhaps some idiot security guard had locked the emergency escape thinking it was something else.
“You can’t make good help these days,” he whispered as he fumbled around until he managed to wrench the latch where it was supposed to be. A beat later, he shoved open the door and stumbled out into the evening.
Wait a second…
The producer glimpsed to his wristwatch and confirmed that it was barely two in the afternoon. A look up at the sky revealed dark clouds and the even blacker shapes of alien space craft flying low over the skyscrapers of Central City. Green flares light up on the belly of the ship, and moments later, fresh plumes of fire blossomed up across the block, and an errant bolt crashed through the thirty-second floor of Syntech Main. Karl winced as smoldering office equipment and furniture spilled from the gash in the structure.
He didn’t have long to mull over who would need new walls, because there was yet another brilliant lightshow that pulled his eyes skyward. A little spec of vibrant green energy floated a few hundred feet above the city streets. One of the planet’s special little hyper-powered persons, here to save the da—
In the blink of an eye, there was a flash of purple and the floating individual was gone. The ship that had once blocked out the sun was now smoking and sporting a small, person-sized hole through its hull.
Karl watched in mild horror as the alien ship sagged and started to spiral downward, its engines flaring as its crew desperately tried to salvage the situation. Instead, whatever complement who served onboard did little but smack controls and panels until the ship tore straight into the side of Syntech Main. There was a flash of white before the fifty-story office building ceased to exist. While he found himself mesmerized and mortified by the complete and utter destruction, the producer managed to drag himself away before the chunks of super-heated steel and smoldering masonry started to rain down onto the streets.
All gone…
Karl Jak winced as he tripped and scraped his knee against the wooden floor.
“My favorite pair!” He growled as his manicured fingers squeezed into fists at the sight of the blood stains forming above the torn flesh.
He wanted to change, but a partially gloved hand clenched his own. “There’s no time to dawdle, Mr. Jak!” Without waiting for a response or even a non-verbal affirmation, the soldier yanked Karl forward, prompting a scowl from the executive.
“It’s just another damned alien invasion,” the man grumbled as he was led up to a group of men, women, and extraterrestrial species making their exodus from the main Syntech facility in Central City. Coupled with the postponement of Syntech’s annual Dante’s Abyss event, the current ‘situation’ on the planet was absolutely infuriating for Karl Jak. The Board, in their ‘infinite wisdom’ had opted to co-sponsor and intergalactic tournament on Namek to commemorate a bunch of dead slugs and starry-eyed soldiers.
The soldier—a young woman who looked half his age—turned and gave him a stern glare. “This one is different, Sir.”
Karl wanted to roll his eyes. That was the type of sappy drivel he’d expect from some promo hyping up a competition or a redemption arc for a downtrodden hero. “They’re always different. Were you even alive when the whole planet was frozen? That was what… five years ago?”
Before the young woman could provide a response, some sort of artillery shell struck the building a few stories above them. The blast tore clean through the elegant, classical architecture of the Syntech building and carried enough force to destroy the electrical systems of the centuries’-old structure. Yelps and screams started to pollute the now blackened room as a wayward Karl Jak started to retreat back from the crowd.
He had made it nearly to one of the side doors of the lobby when the small arm’s fire—either munitions-based or a handful of ki-spewing foot soldiers—tore into the crowded mass of people from five or six different angles. In the flash of lights, Karl caught a final glimpse of the young girl soldier as she took a burst of ki to the gut. The attack clipped her, which meant it left her alive just long enough to struggle momentarily to keep her charred entrails inside her stomach.
Heading into one of the side hallways, Karl shut the door as calmly as he could and found the latch. The faint glow of emergency lighting washed over the sweaty executive. The screams had lingered beyond the initial salvos, and the sheet of steel he now stared at was far too thin to muffle to lamentations.
“Senseless,” he whispered, shaking his head as he backed away from the door. He hadn’t noticed before, but his hands trembling. “We’re fine,” he assured himself as he straightened his back and ran a hand through his hair. He didn’t have a compact, but he didn’t need one to know he probably didn’t look half as good as he wanted to feel. The Earth had been a big giant mess for the last few weeks. One minute, everyone had been all eager beaver to head over to Namek to help the healing process. A few months’ prior, some alien species had invaded the planet and been quashed with the help of an expeditionary army from Earth. The mastermind behind the Earth force had been some goofball from an old-school academy.
Now, the Earth was under siege once again, and who was here to help them?
The Nameks?
Karl scoffed at the thought of the green slug-men lifting a hand. They were as bad at being allies as they were between the sheets. Too busy farming their overgrown produce and sitting around in prayer circles to help fight off the city-killing ship and the horde of Red Stallions it had belched forth onto the Earth.
There was supposed to be some sort of retaliatory force. Karl knew that there was half a dozen spec-ops and black-ops organizations centered on the planet, and he found it a little hard to believe that all of them had been caught off guard or unprepared for a catastrophe to this degree. Didn’t they have sleeper agents or some nonsense?
An explosion shook the producer’s focus and shifted his eyeballs to the ceiling over his head. Had there always been tiny cracks like that?
“Let’s go,” Karl barked as his legs started to move him down the hallway. He was businessman and an entrepreneur who worked in a company who had intergalactic interests. “Not our first rodeo,” he spoke to himself as he advanced through the side corridor. For all he knew, this was being filmed for some sort of Syntech reality show to be aired after this attack fizzled. With that thought in mind, Karl couldn’t help but smile as he glanced up at the tiles overhead. Those little spider web cracks were probably concealing itty bitty cameras.
Somewhere high over Karl’s head, a bomb went off, and even the emergency lights couldn’t handle it. When they abruptly died, the businessman broke into a sprint, allowing a photographic memory of the headquarters’ back halls to guide him through the handful of unpainted passageways as chunks of masonry started to crumble around him.
With a grunt, Karl threw himself against the steel-plated door at the rear of Syntech Main.
Without so much as a sound, the door sent the well-coiffed man stumbling backwards.
In the darkness, Karl couldn’t see the scrapes, but he could smell the tinge of blood and knew that the suit was destined for the incinerator. Balling his hands up, he walked up and felt around for the latch. His dust-stained digits found the handle, which had been twisted closed. Whenever that had taken place, it was impossible for Karl to tell. Perhaps the jostling of the structure had done it. Perhaps some idiot security guard had locked the emergency escape thinking it was something else.
“You can’t make good help these days,” he whispered as he fumbled around until he managed to wrench the latch where it was supposed to be. A beat later, he shoved open the door and stumbled out into the evening.
Wait a second…
The producer glimpsed to his wristwatch and confirmed that it was barely two in the afternoon. A look up at the sky revealed dark clouds and the even blacker shapes of alien space craft flying low over the skyscrapers of Central City. Green flares light up on the belly of the ship, and moments later, fresh plumes of fire blossomed up across the block, and an errant bolt crashed through the thirty-second floor of Syntech Main. Karl winced as smoldering office equipment and furniture spilled from the gash in the structure.
He didn’t have long to mull over who would need new walls, because there was yet another brilliant lightshow that pulled his eyes skyward. A little spec of vibrant green energy floated a few hundred feet above the city streets. One of the planet’s special little hyper-powered persons, here to save the da—
In the blink of an eye, there was a flash of purple and the floating individual was gone. The ship that had once blocked out the sun was now smoking and sporting a small, person-sized hole through its hull.
Karl watched in mild horror as the alien ship sagged and started to spiral downward, its engines flaring as its crew desperately tried to salvage the situation. Instead, whatever complement who served onboard did little but smack controls and panels until the ship tore straight into the side of Syntech Main. There was a flash of white before the fifty-story office building ceased to exist. While he found himself mesmerized and mortified by the complete and utter destruction, the producer managed to drag himself away before the chunks of super-heated steel and smoldering masonry started to rain down onto the streets.
All gone…
![[Image: KarlSig.jpg]](http://omniverse-rpg.com/images/KarlSig.jpg)