"Magic is just science we don't understand yet," Arthur C. Clarke.
…
Incident Log: UW-0828
Year: 20XX
Month: [REDACTED]
Day: [REDACTED]
Location: San Francisco
Description:
In the early hours of [REDACTED] CCTV footage recorded a mysterious giant tearing down the storefront of [REDACTED], stealing upwards of a one hundred thousand dollars worth of goods. The giant was found to be accompanied by a John Doe dressed in a red hoodie, and wielding a glowing staff of some kind.
…
Incident Log:ZX-0132
Month: [REDACTED]
Day: [REDACTED]
Location: Las Vegas
Description:
During peak hours at [REDACTED] casino, a middle-aged man identified as being a former researcher [REDACTED] was caught in the act of rigging slot machines. Instead of going over with the authorities quietly, the researcher converted one of the slot machines into a humanoid one that then lashed out and slaughtered the guards.
Casualties totalled to about a dozen victims, incident covered as another mass shooting.
…
Incident Log:OM-827
Month: [REDACTED]
Day: [REDACTED]
Location: Tokyo
Description:
A strange serpentine ghost has been reported abducting passengers in the middle of the night. When scouts were sent to the scene, the serpentine ghost was found to be fighting a mechanical monstrosity that was similar in build to a scorpion.
Property damage was estimated to be between six to seven billion yen.
…
"Bloody hell…all of this has been happening underneath our noses the whole time?"
"Yes, it has."
"How…how the hell has none of this been exposed or leaked?"
"If I hadn't brought you in and gave you the rundown, would you believe any of this?"
"Fair point."
In a room with no windows, a single door and hidden in a remote facility so unknown that not even the most predatory of data brokers could locate, a rather unusual debrief was taking place.
This debrief was between a well-dressed man who clearly had the bearing of a intelligence field agent veteran, and a scientist fellow that looked entirely too young to be working in a facility as remote as this.
The latter was inducting the former into a facet of society that had always existed but never really shown.
The reason for this action?
This facet was about to become incredibly public...hypothetically.
"As far as we can tell, this war between these two factions has been going on since the dark ages," the scientist explained.
"Which one?"
"All of them."
"Oh."
"But in recent years, for reasons we have yet to determine, their conflict has been becoming increasingly more and more unhinged and obvious. We have done our best to cover up these incidents, but social media memes and video editing can only go so far. The release of generative art programs has also helped to an extent, but the consequences of that have been...sure in other ways."
"That...makes sense," the agent nodded.
His children have shown him these nonsense videos before, but now he was worried about whether or not they were truly artificial. "But why debrief me about this now? Do you guys have a solution on how to prevent this war from going public? To neutralize the threats?"
"Not exactly, no," the scientist said before producing a tablet from a hidden compartment in the room and presenting it to the agent.
The tablet itself was displaying a map of the world, with several glowing red and blue dots on it. Some of which were, decisively, a little too close to home.
"This is..."
"We haven't been able to figure out a proper way to combat these forces, but we at least figured out a way to track them."
"Why haven't you attempted to neutralize them?"
"There were...attempts in the past...they didn't end well."
With a couple taps on the tablet, the scientist produced several videos that showed fully kitted soldiers and law enforcement officers getting absolutely slaughtered by nightmarish beings. Making the footage wose, was the fact that many of the soldiers managed to open fire before they were taken out.
"Mundane weapons we know it can't seem to scratch them. The only things that we know could potentially work on them qre each other and nuclear weapons. Granted, that last suggestion is based on a hypothesis. Moreso than anything else."
After reviewing the footage a couple more times, the agent returned to the map.
"So...you believe that once these two factions, whomever they are, finally collide, it will lead to the end of the world?"
"As we know it, yes."
"Is there truly no way to put a stop to this?"
"Well..."
Trailing off their sentence, the scientist took back the tablet before inputting a series of codes that caused the map to change ever so slightly.
There was now a singular yellow dot.
"What the heck is that?"
"We don't know, to be honest, but...we think it might be our last chance."
"Huh..."
...Meanwhile, somewhere significantly more urban, and close to that aforementioned dot...
"Okay, that was three General Tsao's chicken combo platters, one Queen Cola, and two Pixie refreshers and a bunch of fortune cookies...all for one guy...must be nice to be rich," Tyson muttered to himself as he marked the delivery order complete in his SprintEater app. "Now where to next..."
Sitting in the driver seat of a serviceable hybrid car from the late 2010s, was a young twenty something by the name of Stanford Kirby, or SK for short.
"Somebody wants to order Mexican half way across the city...oh, this guy wants Thai...wait, I think that counter lady still has beef with me about the time I called her out for using expired mushrooms..."
SK, by the standards of corporate America, was a loser.
He was born to the middle class, he was a talented artist that had zero following any major social media site and despite having a college degree, he couldn't find a job worth a damn due to a combination of corporate greed and the fact he didn't who he had to suck up to in order to get a permanent job in the richest country in the world...well, ninth richest country in the world.
"Okay, this one sounds good! Indian food to be delivered to the Hunter's Point Naval shipyard. Perfect."
However, he wasn't one to give up on his dreams just yet.
"Hmmm, should i try sketching a pirate based hero or a battle ship themed one?," SK thought to himself as he made the drive over to an Indian place he never heard of before called "Desi and Daal".
SK wanted to make comics, superheroes to be more specific, but the comic industry was one of the hardest industries to get into, especially if you wanted to do original comics, and that didn't even take into account that SK was a terrible writer.
Sure, he could draw and could come up with backstories for his characters all day, but actually putting them into motion, paneling them and editing was too taxing on his brain.
"Cool, thanks for the extra naan."
"Don't worry about it, have a wonderful evening!"
That still didn't stop him from trying though.
SK had published dozens of indie comics on platforms such as SPARTAN and NetToon to middling success, but he still wanted to be able to provide himself solely on these comics and not having to take a gig like delivery.
But alas, life wasn't fair like that.
"Okay, this is the spot...oh this is place is definitely haunted," SK commented as he stared out at the shipyard, the place barely illuminated by fluorescent bulbs, moonlight and starlight.
"Alright, I'm just going to leave it at the gate and...wait a minute, what the hell?"
From where he was sitting, SK could make out that the front booth, the main security gate that went in and out of the shipyard, was uncharacteristically empty. SK had delivered to this location before, so he knew that this booth was manned 24/7.
So the fact that it was empty was...worrying.
'Okay...I should probably drop this off as proof,' SK thought to himself as he dropped the order off at the booth. 'Call the police and-'
BOOM!
"Oh what the hell??"
Just as SK was about to drop off the food and drive away, the sound of a nearby explosion caught him by surprise. Evidently, the sound of the explosion blew away any courage he may have had in his body at this point.
"I gotta ignore that," SK told himself as he began to walk away from the booth and back to his car. "I gotta ignore that and-"
"H-help..."
"Huh?"
"Help..."
Just as SK was about to leave the area, he heard a subtle cry for help.
"I can't..."
"Somebody...help..."
"..."
For all intents and purposes, SK was nowhere near qualified to assist in a possible emergency. As such, going towards an explosion and helping a random stranger was definitely not something he should've done.
Which is why he surprised himself, when he found himself running towards that cry for help.
'New plan! Call the police, get that person safety and...probably clock out of SprintEater while I'm at it...'