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The ground was vibrating, strong tremors caused by the countless plains flying far over his head, soaring over his city and dropping bombs before they turned and flew away again, back to where ever they came from. He stopped paying attention to them a long time ago, it was always the same; the sirens would start to scream and screech, his mother would bring him down in the dark and damp cellar and there they would wait until everything was over, and only then could he go back to his room.
He didn’t know what was going on, his mother had tried to explain him a long time ago, but he was too young to understand. He was used to it by now and so he learned to live with it. In the beginning, he was afraid, always hiding under the jacket of his mother that promised safety from the day that he was born, always warm and comfy and he felt save there even when the ground shook so violently that his mother hugged him close and started crying. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do when that happened, normally she always comforted him when he cried in the cellar—sure, her voice was shaking and her tone was pitched with fear but she always cared for him.
But he didn’t know how to be a mother for a mother, how he could comfort her, and it made him feel a helplessness that he never wanted to feel ever again.
Then, he started to bring toys down there with him, his wooden sword, the horse plushy that he named Carl, just things to distract himself. Sometimes, his mother would play with him, and sometimes she would even smile while doing that, something that hasn’t happened in a long time.
But his mother was gone, now, and his hopes were drowned in a wave of sadness, fear and so much emptiness in his chest that he had lost all sorts of hope a long time ago.
He started his wanders around his city a few days after she didn’t get up after a particularly big earthquake that made parts of the ceiling fall down—it was normal for dust to trickle down but something like that never happened before. She had picked him up and hid him under her warm arms that were shivering and pressed them both in the corner of the small room before the lights went out (also something common but it never went on again) and he couldn’t see anything anymore.
When he could see again, many hours later, it was because the sun shined through the cracks in the wall, illuminating the rubble and making the dust in the air visible. He could see the chaos around him. He saw his mother, still clutching at him in an attempt to protect him from a particular huge pice of cement, crushing him if she wouldn’t be there to stop it. He had tried to shake her awake, but she was still, not even twitching and unnaturally cold in a way that had sent a shudder down his back. He had thought that she just was in a deep sleep, that he could wait and at some point she would wake up and hug him and tell him that everything was fine, that they were save—she always had promised that, that they were too far out to be really in danger.
But after a few sunsets, the hunger that was gnawing in his stomach got too much to bear and he thought he could just quickly slip upstairs to the kitchen and get a snack. But after he crawled out from underneath the rubble and shook all the dust of, he realised that there was no way that he was still in his cellar, because there was no house that could have one.
The district that he used to live in was nothing more that a expanse of rubble, buildings destroyed, cracks and holes in the streets, a battlefield with the only few buildings still standing being on fire.
He was overcone with the sudden urge to run, to search for someone who could help him, too afraid of the pure destruction in front of him and too jung to act rational. So he turned, running back to where he came from, but the ruins collapsed before his eyes, finally breaking under their own last and burring the entrance to the cellar where his mother still was, bleeding and sleeping, and she had felt so cold and he couldn’t help and everything around him was in ruins or burning and he-
He was so fucking afraid.
Afraid that he couldn’t get back to his mother, afraid that he could die, that he was helpless out here. So he did what he always did when he was afraid and he couldn’t get to his mother at that time—he run to the house of his friend. Or at least where he thought it was, the destruction making it hard to recognise streets or landmarks around him.
But the region he used to walk through so many times every day was a shadow of what it one was, the buildings and parks destroyed, sharp glass splinters on the ground that he tried to avoid stepping into although he wore shoes. He sprinted through streets with turned cars, broken hydrants and people who looked like they were sleeping, but so motionless that he felt like throwing up, and he didn’t know why because the were just sleeping, were they?
But when he arrived, he found the house of his best friend just as destroyed and burned to the ground like all the ones around him. He didn’t really know what he expected, but he at least hoped that there was someone who could help him. So he started searching, walking towards the tall buildings in the distance, the ones he remembered were the one from the city centre. Hopefully there were people, people that could help him and his mother, maybe even wake her up.
That’s how he found himself, walking through the ruins for days now, at some point he found some food, water wasn’t rare with the amount of broken pipes and hydrants, and, even if it didn’t seem that clean, it was better than being thirsty. But the only people that he found were stressed and carrying long metal objects that rung out from time to time, so loud that he had to cover his ears. All of them were dressed in green and brown suits, all of them looking the same. They always ran past him, no matter how often he reached out for them, no matter how often his eyes started to tear up when there was no one there for him.
He crawled himself into a ball in the nights, hearing the plains fly over his head consistently, the sirens had stopped screaming a long time ago although the flying danger wasn’t gone. He never had been out when the sirens were going, and in the beginning he didn’t know what to do. So he just curled up, cupped his cheek with one hand and trying to pretend that it was the one of his mother, soothing him into sleeping. At this point, he was sure that, even if he found help, he wouldn’t be able to find the spot where he had left her. He was fearing that she woke up and worried because he wasn’t there. He just wanted to hug her and she would tell him that everything would be alright.
He flinched when a bomb exploded not that far from him, the force of the impact sending him stumbling and he shielded his head with his arms to protect it from the dust and debris that was thrown up by he explosion. He rubbed his eyes with his dirtied hands—not because he was crying, just to get the dust out of is eyes.
He stopped crying a long time ago, the tears dried by the heat produced by the flames in between the rubble, but mostly, he didn’t even cry anymore. He just didn’t feel like it. Just like he couldn’t feel something when he looked at all the sleeping people on and under the rubble, familiar faces just like some of the men in green. He also lost his apatite and he hadn’t drunk anything this day so far, although he could feel how dry his throat was, all those feelings blocked out by the emptiness his chest that had grown and grown with each hour that he couldn’t find anyone to hold him close.
He was wandering down the streets that he realised was one that lead to a playground he used to play a lot on when he was younger, the reason that he didn’t recognise it was because of the huge house that had crashed onto it.
He heard footsteps approaching him, but he paid them no mind, he was used to the men running past him, not caring about him so why should he care about them.
“Hey, kid!” Someone called out, but he didn’t react, they never talked to him, only to each other.
“You, with the pink hair!” They called again, this time closer, and he turned because he had pink hair, even if it was blackened with soot and dust. There was a group of men in green running in his direction, nothing that surprised him, but what did surprise him was the man in the front with a different hat than all the others, was pointing at him. For a moment, he was scared, but then the man stopped in front of him while the rest of his group kept running past them. He looked up at a face that was just as black from the fire as he expected his face to look right now.
The guy was maybe thirty, with short black hair poking up from under his hat. He was panting like a wild dog, and he had one of those steel pips slung over his shoulder like the rest of his companion.
“What are you doin’ out here?? Get’n one of the bunkers, there’s a big air strike on its way, you won’t survive out here” he pointed somewhere behind him but he didn’t turn to look at it, eyes focused on the first person that had spoken to him in so long. Just when he finished those words, readying himself to leave when a plain flew over head, but the sound was different from what he knew, causing the ground underneath to vibrate like all the others but with a lower sound and choked, chopped like a helicopter that lost one of its rotors.
It caused him to look up just like the man in front of him, seeing a plane that was closer than usual, leaving a trace of smoke behind as it was clearly falling towards the ground. When he looked closer, he could see that it was burning, something that he had never seen before. He always thought that the plains were save up there, too far away from the ground to be hit with the force of the explosions.
There was another shape in the sky, close to the crashing plane but smaller and much more mobil, turning and soaring like a bird rather than a plane, and when he looked closer he could swear that the object’s wings were made out of feathers rather than metal.
It flew by close to the bomber and on the side where it passed, a new explosion erupted with a loud bang and new flames shot out the plane, causing parts of it to fall down, right in their direction.
The person in front of him seemed to realise that something was wrong, because he stoped caring about him but instead running in the direction where his companion went, screaming, “The Angel is here! Run!”
Angel. That name sparked something in his mind. His mother told him about him in one of the many nights that they spent in the cellar. They called themselves the Syndicate—a group of vigilantes that fought on no side, just fought to stop the war and from what he heard his mother say, they fought every solider, no matter if they were on the good side or on the bad one. They fought for peace, not for individual countries to win. She said that if they showed up, there were chances of them being able to go away from here, that they might never needed to go in the cellar again.
He ask her about more stories and she told him about Nemesis, a pink haired woman that a lot of seamen put on the same level with Poseidon, her water army not made of boats or weapons, but rather Hunderters of traitorous seamen who lead ships into flat waters or fired torpedoes to their own ships. Her biggest accomplishment was steering the biggest fleet of a huge army into hurricane—as the captain of the leader-ship—and being the only survivor. Some said that she was a siren with how the sea bowed under her hand, with how it obeyed everyone of her plans.
She told him about Lethe, a killer without qualms to finish jobs that he started. His ability to sneak into parliaments without anyone noticing him until it was to late and the target was already dead was feared by politics all around the world. The few times he was caught on camera it was from behind, with no way for the police force to identify him—and eyewitnesses did not exist in his cases. Some said he was a heartless killer, some said he saved the people from the tyranny of the governments. But most believed that he could teleport with how fast he showed up and vanished after the crime was done.
There was Harpocrates, the spy that no one knew about, the man staying in the shadows and pulling strings from there. There were no informations about him, but people supposed that he was an important businessman with a lot of influence that got the Syndicate most of their informations apart from the countless spies they had in the individual countries and embassies.
And then there was Zephyrus, the Angel of Death, the king of the sky, the timeless—he had many names but most people just called him Angel because of his wings that no one knew how they worked or from which material they were made of, but no one cared because if he shoed up, people rather ran or celebrated, nothing in between. There were rumours of him being able to take out jets with just stroking them, and he could snatch bombs before they caught the ground and exploded, sending them right back to where they came from. He was feared by every pilot, because, once he was on their radar, there was no way of surviving. Legends about him told that he was an ancient god, an Angel thrown out of heaven for his brutal actions, cursed with black wings as punishment and banished to hell by god himself but Satan didn’t want him either so he now he was stuck between realities, forced to spent the rest of all eternity under the humans on earth.
He liked to believe that the stories were true no matter how crazy they were and when he looked up, he could see why the stories were so fascinating, the Angel looped and turned multiple times, leaving behind explosions where ever he got close to the vessel until everything that was left was a burning wrack falling towards the ground. Then, the small shape vanished from his view, and his eyes widen in surprise as he scanned the skies, searching for the shape that was there no two seconds ago, awfully unaware of the burning metal that came flying right his way.
He flinched violently as the first pice of debry landed not that far from him, is head spinning towards where the noise came from, eyes going wide in fear when he could feel a shadow blocking out the already dim light that the sun shined though the smoke—and he did the mistake and looked up. It was a huge part of one of the wings, smoking and burning and falling towards him with uncontrollable speed.
And for the first time in what must be days, he felt something. The hollowness in his chest that had settled in there was replaced—not with happiness of relief like he hoped, but pure terror as he looked up, knowing that, even if he would lunge now, there was no way that he wouldn’t get hit. But he couldn’t move anyway, to startled, and the threat fell closer and closer-
Something slammed in is side, hard. He yelped as he was shoved to the side, something that was moving to fast for him to see. He rolled over multiple times, now fully aware of the situation when the metal crashed down where he was standing seconds ago. He laid there for a few seconds, trying to comprehend what just happened before propping himself up on his elbows. He was panting like a dog, feeling parts of him starting to bruise—a few others to add to the ones he gathered over the last few days—and he could hear something move not that far from him and he lifted his head from where his gaze was glued to the ground beneath him, seeing a figure rise from the dust, pushing itself on their knees.
They looked human if it weren’t for the huge wings on their back. They were leaning forwards, supporting themselves on their hands as they panted just like he was, shaking their head wich made dust and grime fall out of gold-blond strands, shinging in he light like a halo—like an angel’s halo. They lifted one hand to push a black hood down from their head and pulled of storm glasses, revealing sky-blue underneath as they looked over in is direction, searching but flinching as more debris came down from the sky.
He watched with big eyes as the angel straighten themselves after making sure that there was no more threat falling from the sky, patting his suit that seemed to be made from a mix between dark, almost black metal armour and grey leather, probably to protect them from the wind, causing even more dirt and ash to decent to the ground. They looked around again, and he was half hidden behind a rock but the Angel’s eyes still froze on him, cold and brutal and he tried to stand and go backwards, only to fall over his feet as his legs gave out from underneath him, not being able to hold his own weight.
Instead, he scooted back as the Angel approached, cautiously, as if they didn’t want to scare him, arms raised in surrender, free for him to see that they weren’t carrying a weapon, but from what he heard, he knew that the Angle could be deathly without weapons. His breath hitched in his throat when he hit a wall behind him-, no not a wall, a ruin, and he could feel his eyes starting to tear up when the stranger in front continued to approach him.
“Shh, kid. I’m not going to hurt you” They sounded male, rather young and gentle—although he couldn’t see if the softness in his voice catchend onto his expression with his mouth and nose being covered, similar to what his mother had been wearing when she went outside—she had told him that it’s against the ash and dust in the air—but this one was different, made of smooth metal, black as the one of his suit.
He seemed to catch onto that, though, and the Angel undid something behind his head where the mask fused to his suit, and the next second, it was falling down around his neck, revealing a soothing and slightly worried smile. He let himself fall to his knees a few feet away from him, arms still held up where he could see them before he rested them in his lap.
The world seemed awfully quiet around them both as he continued staring at the man that was searched by over a hundred countries, that was what his mother told him. But the man in front of him didn’t look like a criminal, not with the smile and the calm position, waiting for him to do the first move. There was something soft in his eyes, something that he only knew from his mother, and the memories made him tear up even more.
“Hey, Shh.” He said in the same shooting way that he had before, reaching out for him, and he pressed himself against the ruins, with no where to go, helpless at the mercy of the man in front of him, squeezing his eyes shut, bracing him for what was sure to come and—a hand cupped his cheek, leather gloves wiping tears away from where there carved trough the grim and ash on his cheek, gentle in a way that he hadn’t felt in so long and after a moment, he leaned into the touch, desperate for more although the person in front of him was a total stranger.
The Angel chuckled sadly, thumbing his cheek with care and he opened his eyes to look at the man’s own ones, and there was nothing of the coldness that had clouded them before, just fondness, soft ad real, and in this moment, he couldn’t believe all the tales of a cold and heartless warrior, that could bring armies to fall with the swing of his hand, were true.
“Hi there,” The Angel of Death said when their eyes met. “What are-“
He didn’t get to finish whatever he wanted to say when a sharp, almost high-pitched-scream-like, sound whistled through the air, and the Angels head snapped towards the noise, smile gone in under a second and replaced with a surprised and slightly fearful expression. He knew that sound just like he knew the back of his hand, it was often mixed with the sounds of sirens and followed by loud impact noises. It was the sound of bombs falling to the ground.
Before he could do more than blink, there were arms around him, pulling him close as huge metal feathers filled his vision, cradling around them both for protection, and his head was tucked under a chin and against hard but warm armour, warmer than he had felt in a long time, and he curled his hands into the leather pars of the suit when the impact hit, whimpering, but the wings swallowed the force of the bomb, thankfully, it had been far enough for them to not get caught in the fireball.
It were multiple bombs, but none of them really hurt them, and when it was silent for a moment longer, the cocoon of wings lifted, revealing that they were hurled up in a corner, the few exposed parts shielded by metal feathers, and the wings were twitching, shaking of the rocks that landed on them in the explosion.
Next to them was a lone siren standing out admins the destruction, the speaker wiped off and only connected to the pole through a few cables, dangling from one side to the other in the wind that the bomb had caused, giving a high but silent, almost gurgling sound before it went deeper and deeper until it broke completely, the cables snapping like gras halms under the blade of a sword.
“It’s not save here” he heard being murmured above his head, and suddenly he was very aware of what was going on, but he didn’t want to leave the hug that he was pulled into, instead leaning further in and burying his face in the Angels collarbone, silently praying that he wouldn’t shove him away. But the Angel did not let go, instead securing his grip a bid before he could hear metal scraping silently against each other when the wings extended, and then, suddenly, they were soaring upwards and he yelped when the ground was so far from one moment to the next, but the Angel just pressed him closer and murmured assurances that got lost in the hauling of the wind in his ear. He just froze, trying to not move to much.
He didn’t know how much time passed until they landed, but when they did, it was far out of reach of the roaring of the planes and the explosion. They were on a field with grass that almost touched his knees with how high it was.The Angel sat him down, hands gentle when he refused to let go, prying his hands open with care. He still stood close to him tho, close enough that he could reach out and touch him, but he didn’t move, to afraid that he would just fly away and leave him alone like all the others did.
But instead, the Angel reached up to his ear and he couldn’t see what he was doing but after a few seconds a voice spoke up, contort with electricity and static. He was close and his ears were good so he was able to understand what was being said.
“Oh. My. God. Finally. What were you thinking just cutting your coms like that? And why on earth are you so far away from the operation site?” They sounded angry but he could swear that there was worry in their voice.
“Sorry, mate. Didn’t mean to. Promise. But I found myself on the ground at some point and you know that the connection isn’t great there-“ he tried to explain but got interrupted.
“Why the fuck were you on the ground. Do you have any idea how many bombers there are??” Now, the worry was clearly audible, mixed with annoyance and confusion, waiting for explanation.
“Well, there was a small problem” The Angel said and couldn’t hide a smile at the outburst of his companion.
“What small problem.” Their voice was filled with more ice than the Antarctic.
“How old are you, kid?” The Angel asked, turning to him and he could hear the person on the other end gasp in shock. The question made him think from a second.
He would have celebrated his birthday a few days ago, the day marked clearly in the calendar that he had in his room back at home, but that calendar was burried together with a wooden sword and a horse plushie under mere meters debris and cement and, if he didn’t selebrate his birthday, did he even grew older? He didn’t know. He was too jung.
“Dunno” he murmured, not looking the Angel in the eyes while he spoke. “Seven or eight”
Out the corner of his eyes, he could see the man look at him sadly before turning back to speak to whoever was on the other end on the line. “A seven-or-eight-year-old problem to be exact”
“What?” The other person sounded shocked, almost scared. “That town is supposed to be evacuated, why the fuck is someone there??”
“I know,” the winged man said, sounding tired “but it looks like the information that he government gave was false. There are a lot more civilian corpses than there should be-“
“There shouldn’t be any at all, Philza!” The voice—sounding female but filed with so much charisma—scolded, almost like a big sister would scold their little sibling after doing something wrong. Wait. Philza? Before he could think about it more, The Angel of Death spoke up again, and it took him a few seconds until he realised that he was talking to him.
“Kid, was your town ever evacuated?” He asked.
“What does evacuated mean?” He wondered in all honesty. The Angel was put of by that for a moment before he smiled again.
“Did you and your neighbours went to a save place, brought outside the city?”
He shook his head. “No.” he explained “We only went in the cellars”
The Angel sighed. “No, they weren’t evacuated. The government lied” there was anger in his voice, but also tiredness.
“Oh, those, filthy, dirty, drowning in their riches with no heart, fucking careless, pice of absolute-“
“Niki. Calm” The Angel said dead serious, managing to shut his companion in an instant. “I’m mad as well, but I can’t have you go out and kill them in rage before we get things settled here”
“I want to Phil. I want to do that so fucking bad—drag them out on the open battlefield so that they can see what they’re doing with their own fucking eyes” her voice whined, filled with a coldness that promised pain for everyone that looked at her funny.
“And we’ll do that, mate. Promise. But I’m pretty sure that the kid is the only one who is still alive and I can’t take down the jets until he’s save. So could you get me the fastest rout back without stumbling into the army?” He asked, his voice cold as well but he didn’t feel like the fury was directed at him. At the mentioned of being alive he looked over where, in the distance, he could see a huge cloud of smoke, rising slowly up in the sky and mixing with clouds that were passing by peacefully, innocent, and still being pulled in the black cloud, like the civilians in the war that was being held by people high above them, people that they didn’t even know.
“I can do that” she said, the words followed by very harsh terms that were in a language he didn’t understand—but it sounded very insulting—,and the earpiece disconnected.
The Angel turned his head back to him and he stared at the vigilante in wonder and fear, not sure what was going to happen to him now.
The man approached him, crouching down in front of him with that look in his eyes that he had from the beginning, as if he silently promised that nothing was ever going to happen to him, no matter how bad everything was, no matter how much blood—that didn’t belong to him—was splattered across his face.
“Hiya, mate” he spoke so quietly that he almost missed it—and there was nothing of the rage and coolness anymore. “I’m gonna get you out of here alright? Somewhere safe. I’m going to offer you my hand in a few seconds and if you take it, you’re gonna join the Syndicate, and with that you’re gonna be under our protection—under my protection. You don’t have to, of course. I think you know our reputation and what our methods are and if you don’t want to get tangled up in that stuff then I completely understand that. If that’s the case, I’ll drop by the capital and sent you somewhere where they take care of you. It’s your decision—… what’s your name by the way?”
“Technoblade” his mother had picked this name after his father left because she thought he neended a new one, one that represented his strength and power—that’s what she said. He had a normal one, once up on a time, but he got used to the new one rather quickly, and if he really would never see his mother again, then he would wear the name she gave him with pride.
“Alright, Technoblade ,” the Angel let his name roll over his tongue for a moment, but did not comment on the unusual name, just keeping his fond tone and soft look “are you ready?”
When Zephyrus, the Angel of Death, Philza, extended his hand, Technoblade took it without hesitation.