In a rural town in Russia - 1:07 am
Above roads covered in ice, frigid, cold air begins to warp and change.
Like ripples in a tranquil lake, near invisible in just the pale moonlight, space begins to distort, warping unnaturally, made more eerie by a lack of any accompanying sounds.
Cascading from small visual distortions to a symphony of rippling, stretching air- Bright, pale, blue light starts to flood from the strange point in space, refracting with a plethora of directions and brightnesses.
A pained grunt breaks the cold silence as a hand forcefully pushes itself through the epicenter of the distorted space, grabbing onto the tear in space, another hand grabs the opposite side of the rift, straining as they start prying open space itself. No more than a few seconds after starting to try open the rift, the space around the fingers starts to crack, a spider-web of cracks extending into the space nearby, illuminated by the pale blue light silhouetting the figure pulling itself from the rift.
Boom
The last of the tranquility in the vicinity is shattered with a muffled explosion coming from the other side of the rift, any resistance the tear in space was showing gone, as an injured looking figure is pushed out of the rift with some speed, the space behind him shattering like glass as he struggles to catch his footing on the frosty tar below him.
BOOM
Launched backwards from the rift with extreme speed as the shattered space is rapidly filled by the air around it, creating a deafening explosion, The injured man makes it about thirty meters away thanks to the explosion, before impacting hard on a rundown car on the side of the road, crumpling half of the cars side before growing limp, embedded in the wrinkled metal.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Rising like a walking corpse as the sun begins to rise, the injured man opens his weary eyes.
With a cynical chuckle, He mumbles to himself as he starts to peel himself from the wrecked car.
"I guess I'm really back here, aren't I"
Rising from the wreckage with an ease that betrays his torn clothes and gaunt, exhausted face, The man takes a moment to get his footing on the treacherous iced road, squinting in the low light to observe his surroundings.
A light snow falls over the rather desolate road, aside from an abandoned looking barn seemingly accompanying the car he spent the night in, the only things nearby him are snow laden trees and deteriorated roads all the way to the horizon line.
"Really not a big fan of me are you, Lady luck?"
The man laments with a grin, Raising his arms out to each direction his brow furrows with concentration as he closes his eyes. Not accounting for his strange actions, he would appear rather average, standing at barely more that 170cm wearing a ragged and torn pair of loose jeans accompanied b a leather jacket worn loose over a skin tight T-shirt. Standing still for a few seconds, a smile starts to form on his face, though still concentrating, An unnatural wind flies through the air towards the man, rustling his hair and shaking the snow from the trees in its path.
"Haven't had to do that for a while"
With a nostalgic tone, The man opens his eyes, the howling of the wind stops the moment he drops his arms to his sides. He turns in one direction, looking down the road before doing his best to move his damaged frame, the burning motivation behind his eyes burning away some of the piled exhaustion in his bones.
Giving himself a few minutes of slow walking to recuperate from his crash into the car, The man collects his thoughts, everything from the remote location he appeared in, or the lack of people around him on his arrival- Though the more he comes to his senses, pain assaults him from every part of his body, Immense suffering wrestling with his mind for consciousness. Thoughts rattle through his head as he does his best to stave off the pain wracking his body, as well as a disheartening feeling deep within his character, a feeling of emptiness building with each step.
Shaking his head of distractions, He sets his eyes straight forward as he walks, intent on a destination, he does his best to focus on the cold caressing his skin, or the uncertain footfalls on the slick road beneath his feet as a distraction from his Injuries.
"Seriously though, Why did I have to land so far away from anything of note?"
The man grumbles to himself as an attempt to distract himself from the creeping tendrils of pain slithering through his body, not showing any signs of leaving any time soon.
"And not a person in sight, I wonder how much time I have- I guess I could check-"
As he says that, He concentrates on an area of air infront of him while walking, looking intently at it, He lifts his land and closes his fingers into a fist slowly, as if crushing an object between his fingers.
"Well, Shit"
He says with worry in his voice, The space he was focusing showing small distortions, though nothing as extreme as the night prior.
"No time to recover, This is bad-"
Breaking into a run, The man's face is filled with a plethora of emotions, worry, concentration, thoughtfulness, Fills his eyes and brow as he starts to break into a run, each hurried step bringing up his speed, though also accentuating the pain running through his nerves.
From a jog to a sprint, his gait is inconsistent, stumbles frequent from the pain eating at his mind, though easily corrected when they occur; As he gains a rhythm to his running, He does his best to steady his breathing. As he catches his breath, symbols start to appear on his skin, glowing with a deep green, the veins on his arms and neck becoming more accentuated as his pace starts accelerating past anything someone injured, or of his build should have ever been able to muster.
With a grunt: "Why'd I have to be so far from anything"
Unsatisfied with his near inhuman speed- His eyes begin to glow, matched by red runes appearing on his jacket and boots, accompany a heat mirage on his shoes, removing any interference caused previously by the ice, leaving nothing but water below his boots before his feet manage to hit the road, Letting him get into a more consistent rhythm; additionally, as he is able to pull more of his concentration from keeping himself upright, the green symbols on his skin begin fading into his body, bringing from his skin a wholesome green glow, the pain wracking his body fading slightly, enough at least for him to continue to bring forth sets of strange glowing symbols, this time only appearing as a faint white glow from under his loose jeans as he starts to almost fly with each step, an inhuman force springing him forward tens of meters with each step now.
_______________________________________________________________________________
A small shopping center in Russia - 7:54 pm
Having just finished his shift as a guard for the local mall, Alexi stretches out in the freezing winter air, his thick coat barely keeping him warm enough for the few hundred meter walk to his car.
Crash
Turning with panic at the loud crash from the direction he just came from, Alexi sees a person sized hole in one of the walls of the building, along with a faint, strange glow rapidly rapidly entering the mall.
Eyes wide with shock, Alexi breaks into a jog towards his car, quickly pulling the door open without a care to the frost on the door handle, before reaching under his car seat and pulling out a small pistol, turning back to the mall as he carefully places the magazine into the weapon.
Eerie silence emanates the building as Alexi steps through the hole in the wall, having to crouch a little to enter.
Holding his gun out in-front of him, one hand on the handle, the other on the base of the gun for support, finger ready at the trigger. He calls out to break the silence, telling the phantom intruder to show himself, or risk getting riddled with bullets. Though as his voice permeates the empty building, the only response he gets is the sound of more things being broken much further into the shopping center.
Turning the lights to the mall back on, Alexi follows a trail of dirty bootprints as well as shops and stalls that seem to have been looted: Security bars warped enough to make space for a person, with a rather incomprehensible list of stolen goods, ranging from reams of paper to curtains from the rather small fabrics store.
Eventually, not having heard any more breaking of walls, The rather staunch security guard follows the trail leading to the mall's arms store. Fear and curiosity builds in his chest as he sees the gun store's increased security measures once again breached like nothing. Ducking to enter the store, his hands shake slightly as he sees enemies in every shadow, copious amounts of ammunition obviously having been looted by the mysterious intruder.
The trail of bootprints seems to just disappear, the sporadic steps making their way through the entire store, accompanied by loose shells spilled from stolen boxes of ammunition; and then they just end, no more footsteps, no sign of the intruder having hidden anywhere, as if they had simply disappeared into thin air.
___________________________________________________________________________________
????? - 8:25pm
Hunched over a fairly flat piece of rock, an exhausted, frantic man leans forward, Scribbling with a ballpoint pen, pages upon pages of words written on, scattered across the stone infront of him, acting as a makeshift table amongst the eldritch, jagged landscape of stone.
It takes him an hour to finish writing on half of a ream of cartridge paper, all the while his eyes grow more tranquil, the panic in his eyes fading more with each of his thoughts he gets to paper.
Stacking all of the pages into as neat a pile as he can, The man digs through a backpack next to him, the price tag still attached. scrabbling through a variety of things before pulling out a fairly thick looking fabric, combined with a hefty needle and thread- he spends the next few minutes mindlessly in thought, binding the stack of paper together with the fabric as a rudimentary cover.
"At least I landed in somewhere like Russia- Would have taken a lot longer to get this much gunpowder anywhere else"
Talking to himself, he pulls a case of center-fire, large ammunition from his bag.
Placing the rather poor excuse for a book he was binding on to one side, finished, He places a fresh piece of paper in front of himself, pulling open one of the bullets and pouring the gunpowder from the shell into a strange pattern on the page, then retrieving from his bag of-many-things a lighter, and setting the powder atop the page ablaze- visible amongst the flames emanating from the intense burst of heat, strange symbols and patterns. Though as the fire dies down and the man shakes the power from the page, what remains is a page sporting a strange, glowing symbol.