The streets of MegaCity were bustling as usual. People making phone calls, automated busses making their stops, hovercars beeping at one another, pure chaos. In the middle of this chaos was an androgynous man by the name of…$@&#%@.
The man cut through the immense crowd of people like a hot knife on butter and once he sat down in the automated bus, he sighed in relief.
"Good grief, this city only gets more and more populated. We're already packed like sardines and yet more and more people insist on living in this hell hole." He mumbled angrily as he stared out the window. As the bus drove down the street and as he continued to stare out the window, he saw an unfamiliar billboard.
"WANT TO FIND YOUR PURPOSE? GO TO OUR WEBSITE AT WWW.FINDYOURPURPOSENOW.COM!"
"What the hell? I've never seen that ad before, where the hell is old man Benji's ad for his law firm? Shits already changin' around here…"
The bus ride continued until the man reached his final destination, in front of a skyscraper two stories short of being considered a megastructure.
"Time to slave away another day for Akasara…" He said dejectedly as he scanned the barcode tattooed on his wrist and walked into his job. He greeted the receptidroid and walked inside of the elevator pressing the button for floor 68.
"Hey, $@&#%@! You're in early today!" A slightly obese orange-haired man yelled as he jogged down the hallway. The man sighed before putting on a fake smile, "Heh, you know me Vick, can't wait to clock in!"
"I betcha can't! I have your new assignment and deadline on your desk. This time try to follow protocol because-"
"Striving for greatness is our primary objective, I know. I'll do better this time around I promise." The man slightly bowed as he walked past Vick and toward his cubicle.
"Fat piece of shit telling me how to do my job… he wouldn't even be my boss if his pot-bellied father didn't hand him the job that he is 100% underqualified for…" The man continued to mumble in anger but began doing his job.
While researching a necessary topic, an ad popped up on the man's screen.
"WANT TO FIND YOUR PURPOSE? GO TO OUR WEBSITE AT WWW.FINDYOURPURPOSENOW.COM!"
The text was bold and black on a white background, nothing else. No company, no copyright, not a single thing to help identify where this ad is coming from.
"This shit again? Go away spyware I'm too broke to be robbed anyway…" The man clicked on the X and continued his work until 15 minutes later the same ad popped up.
"Tch, what the hell is up with this ad? Has our IT tech gone senile? You know what? I'll discover my purpose just for you little spyware." The man clicked the highlighted link on the ad and was brought to a white page.
"HELLO! LOOKING TO FIND YOUR PURPOSE? ENTER YOUR NAME, DATE OF BIRTH, FAVORITE COLOR, AND CURRENT GREGORIAN CALENDAR YEAR!"
"Doesn't seem to be asking for anything crazy personal." The man shrugged and entered the information.
[NAME: Valugias (Vah-loo-shuhs)
DATE OF BIRTH: 4/8/2135
FAVORITE COLOR: White
CURRENT GREGORIAN CALENDAR YEAR: 3/18/2157]
"But, I can't trust any old thing with my real name, so my gamerID will suffice."
"SUBMITTING RESPONSES…"
"THANK YOU! NOW, ANSWER THE PROMPT BELOW!"
"WHAT DOES PURPOSE MEAN TO YOU?"
"What does purpose mean to me?" The man whispered in thought. As his mind delved deeper into the thought of what purpose means for him, the world around him suddenly silenced. No more coworking chatting, no more ringing phones, no more clacking keyboards, not a single sound.
"I believe purpose is what drives your existence into action. Without purpose, you wouldn't find a reason to get up every day." The man subconsciously said this out loud, but the website still picked up on it and entered it into the box.
"THANK YOU FOR YOUR ANSWER! FINDING YOUR PURPOSE…"
"PURPOSE FOUND! YOUR PURPOSE IS: DEVOURING."
"THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME! GOODBYE, $@&#%@!" The website blipped off his computer like it was never there. The man on the other hand was incredibly shocked.
"How did this ad know my real name? I didn't -" His words were cut off due to an intense blue light flashing in the sky. Three-tenths of a second after that, a fireball brighter and hotter than the sun expanded. One second after the flashing light, the fireball already incinerated most of the country's capital. Ten seconds after the light flashed, MegaCity was nothing but an empty crater. Either by sheer luck or incredibly high chances, nothing outside of MegaCity was harmed. Most residents of XY-City didn't even realize such a tragedy happened not even 15 miles away.
The death toll was well into the tens of millions and the only surviving piece of architecture was a blank billboard.
————
[Arctic Circle, Earth, 2014]
Deep inside a glacier sat a silver egg with blue ripples throughout the shell. The egg shook once, then again, and then again. Until a crack formed on the surface. The egg shook and the crack expanded until a white head popped out. The rest of the creature's body eventually came out of the egg albeit with a bit of struggle.
The creature was clearly a dragon of some sort. It's head was avian in nature so it had a slight beak, its eyes were bright blue, it had four legs each with 4 razor sharp talons, on its chest were two inlets similar to a vent, the scales on its wings were softer and more flexible giving them the appearance of feathers, and its tail had a large sharp barb. The dragon itself was around 2 feet tall and around seven feet long with a wingspan of 18 feet.
'Where the hell am I?! And why did I get shorter?' Our poor office worker, Valguias thought to himself as his bright blue eyes scanned the dark glacial cavern.
'The last thing I remember is that weird ad saying my real name, that flashing blue light, and…my purpose.' Once the word 'purpose' was uttered a wave of information flooded his mind.
'My name is Valguias and I'm the last member of my species and the last of the royal bloodline. My egg becoming fertilized was a miracle among dragons due to my parents being to completely different species. My father was an ice dragon but my mother was…something greater? They were then wiped out by a vicious plague and my mother sent me to a distant planet, Earth, 12,000 years ago…'
Valugias was silent for a moment before his infant vocal cords squealed with joy, 'I'M FINALLY FREE FROM THAT SHIT JOB AND SHIT LIFE! I DON'T CARE THAT I'M SOME ORPHAN DRAGON NOW! MY LIFE HAS BECOME INTERESTING!'
Valugias hopped around in joy for a few more minutes before calming down and thinking of his next move, 'I'm guessing since I've been sitting here for the last 12,000 years, the small glacier I was once inside of is probably humongous now. Which means I'm basically in the center of this damn thing… what a drag.'
'My lifespan is pretty long so I can afford to wait if it weren't for how small this cave is in comparison to how large I'm supposed to grow and how boring that would be. So I'm going to get out the fun way.'
The inlets on Valugias's chest opened and began sucking in air like a vacuum. Inside of his chest, air molecules collided with shiny blue spheres and ignited. Blue energy leaked out of Valguias's wings and his eyes turned completely blue. He pointed his head upwards and opened his jaw.
A thick beam of blue energy fired out of his mouth and melted a large hole in the glacier until he saw the sky.
'My wings are too large to fit inside of that hole so I can't fly out. Guess that leaves climbing.' Valugias jumped up and used his sharp talons to cling to the glacier. After around 15 minutes, he stood on top of the glacier.
'NEW WORLD HERE I COME!'