I fixed some of the spelling errors, and messed with some pictures.

The first report can be found herehere. Or you can skip ahead to the third report by clicking here.

Centered text owns you.

-Act One: Hellraiser-

"This is Bravo Two: Solus is here!"

"Kill him!!"

"Yes, sir!"

A sequence of explosions decimated the entire area.

"Did you get him?"

"Blew him to bits, sir! Not much left here of the floor, either. There's no way he sur..."

"Bravo Two, report! Shit. Romeo One-One-Five to all units: Bravo Two is down; all units retreat from the fifteenth floor immediately!"

• • •

In the gloomy silence of the corpse strewn hallway I stood alone: the clear sign that I was the victor. Seconds ticked by like hours as I thought about what had happened. First, I had met with a T'lan warrior. Then I killed him with my bare hands. Seemed like a simple fact, but the only way it could be so would be if I also possessed the substance known as T'langen. Maybe I did have it, somewhere deep inside in a place I couldn't see or feel. I just didn't know how to use it.

"How did you do that?" asked a man from behind a locked door. Suddenly I remembered where I was and what he had done to me. Now that the T'lan was defeated it wasn't much to complain about, but the fact that he left me behind with that monster would have spelled disaster were I anyone else. Fortunately, I'm not just anyone. He now knew this and unlocked the door to allow me passage. "You killed that T'lan warrior!"

I briskly stepped through the reopened office space, only sparing enough time to give it and its occupant a begrizzled glare. Sensing what he believed to be violent intent he held up his hands and said, "I didn't want to die..."

Whatever, I thought. Though he could never have known it my mind was the stoutest example of serenity available. That may have been because the competition encompassed a pile of dead men, a broken facility, a cowardly survivor, and my own unique brand of wild-eyed crazy-face, but I digress: I left him behind without even saying a word. I know it would have been more heroic to stop and make sure he was uninjured but I also knew that every second that passed was bringing me closer to certain doom and he was probably going to die soon anyway. With all this in mind I decided to start moving at a clean jogging pace.

It wasn't long before I was stopped. My interruption started with the reappearance of the white-and-black cat, the same one I had seen on the bridge with Alex. It walked away from me and around a corner. Since the vicinity was clear of present danger I followed the cat for lack of a better path to go on. At least I tried to follow; the cat was gone by the time I rounded the same corner. Instead of the feline I saw a bright golden light at the end of the hallway. As I walked into the enigma the light cleared. It was sand. Lots and lots of sand. I had just stepped out of the facility complex and into a desert, one that spanned farther than my eyes could see even in the light of mid day. I walked in a circle around the spot where the hallway turned into the Dune Sea which led me to a cache of military munition boxes, one of which was boke open. Here I acquired a fresh magazine for my sub machine gun and a mate to go with it, a pistol, and more. Once I was dressed to kill I felt safe enough to probe farther out into the shining sands.

There wasn't much to the place other than random things one would not normally find in a desert. Brokren cars. Street lamps. Randomly placed walls. A soda machine (which I purchased a few drinks from with change I had discovered in my vest). After wandering around for what felt like a lifetime I came upon two rows of neatly lined corpses. Now, I had seen a lot of dead people in the fairly recent past but this was the first bunch to be neatly arranged and covered in sticky web from head to toe.

As I was standing there musing over the possibilities of how these people came to such an end I noticed a fist-sized creature with many legs sitting on top of one of the corpses. Not wanting to take any chances I unholstered my new pistol and shot the thing down. That was a mistake. The sound of my firing must have stirred a nearby colony of the creatures because before I had reholstered the sidearm several dozen more of them had climbed out from beneath the sand, with more surfacing in smaller numbers all the time. They were surrounding me.

Since there were more targets than I had bullets I used my sub machine gun to cut a path through them and took off at full speed, stomping the ones I couldn't shoot or dodge. Right then I saw a door and went to it. Mustering all my courage I kicked it open and hoped for the best.

On the other side I found the air-conditioned passageways of the facility. With a start I wheeled around, sub machine gun at the ready, but the desert was gone. All there was to see was a typical passageway. Nothing unusual about that. I noticed that I still carried all those things which I had taken from the desert world but decided against trying to make sense of it. I had other problems that still needed attending to. What was I trying to do again, anyway? Oh yeah, I was going to the roof to catch a chopper ride out of this place.

As I climbed a stairwell I heard a voice calling out for help. I followed it to a burnt door but it was either locked or broken with the desperate sounding man on the other side.

"Is somebody there? Please, you have to get me out of this hellhole! The whole fifteenth floor is on fire! Please, you gotta hurry!"

Unable to break the door and with the building's elevator service out of commission I took the stairs again, this time stopping on the sixteenth floor. Before I continue I want to be clear on this point first: if the stairs to the seventeenth floor weren't broken beyond use I would have left the man to his own end. I know that is exactly what had just happened to me only worse, but I really didn't see a reason to bother myself with his problems. It seems that heroism is more luck than anything, though.

Now that I was on the sixteenth level I had to step carefully: the destruction of the level below had left the floor in bad condition. With that said, it was still of some surprise to me how quickly and easily the floor gave way beneath me. I, and several tons of material, fell on top of the man who was still waiting feverously by the burnt door, and he let out a short scream before he died. His fate was most unfortunate but now his worries were over while mine were steadily growing.

So here I was trapped on a floor that was thick with smoke, and the nearest exit was unreachable behind the debris of the sixteenth floor, and I could not go back. Flames belched from random rooms, live electrical cables hung from precarious places, some people were still alive, all of them were on fire. Couldn't get much worse, you say? Oh, my naive friend, how soon you forget: the best part is that there was also a pack of T'lan warriors roaming about as if nothing was wrong.

I busied myself with finding a way out while destroying what T'lans I could. In the end I had to climb out a window (fifteen floors up!) and walk along a narrow ridge all the way to the other side of the facility where things were a bit more stable. Of course, when things returned to something resembling normalcy someone got the jump on me and before I knew it there was a gun in my face.

"Derrick! You look horrible, are you OK?" exclaimed Alex. I opened my mouth but before I could relate any of the terrible things that had happened since I last saw her she waved it off. "We'll talk later. He's coming; we'd better hide."

-Act Two: Enter the Dragon-

There was something ELSE that I needed to worry about now? Well, whatever it might have been I was confident that it couldn't be too much worse than what I had already been through. Just to be on the safe side I let Alex lead me behind a pile of overturned desks. We hid there until the thing made itself known. He was much more human than the T'lan, what with hair and bright, intelligent eyes but he was definately an inhuman bio-mechanical body simmilar to the T'lan. He dragged along a still-but-barely breathing man. I started to get make my move but Alex grabbed me by the shoulder and whispered, "don't move." The man's neck snapped loudly as if under great pressure and he sighed one last time. A phone rang. The creature threw its lifeless victim across the room, now its interest on the noise making machine. It picked up the receiver. A man on the other end shouted without hesitation.

"Hello? Hello?! We're taking the helicopter out of here. If you can, get to the roof now! Hey, can you hear me?"

The slender T'lan responded by crushing the phone's reciever. Then he left, as if he had been called to the hunt. Alex breathed a sign of relief.

She said, "yeah, that was definitely Solus."

That bit of information was not sufficient to cure my pride. I wasn't allowed to showcase my new powers and I wanted to know why. After all, wasn't my power to destroy the T'lan what she intended to use me for? She wasn't too bad herself considering her skin wasn't electrified, that is. I felt sure we could have taken him together, if not I by myself. It only seemed natural that I ask, "why not fight him?"

Her mouth dropped open in awe of my stupidity. "You don't know a damn thing, do you?" she said. My question must not have been worth answering, though I could not imagine why, so she changed the subject completely. "Well, sounds like there's a helicopter on the roof. That's our only ticket out of this place."

Now better than before we raced through the facility, but the marines fell not without effort. Time passed quickly, and much to my satisfaction the thing called "Solus" found us out in the open. It happened when Alex sped before me in pursuit of marines. I found her being held by Solus in the same way it had held that man before killing him. He dropped her upon seeing me and turned to face me head on. This was almost too perfect.

After a dramatic pause I ran straight at him, throwing a punch towards its chest with all my might. At the last possible moment Solus' arm knocked my attack to the side with fantastic speed. A small smile on his lips, he returned in kind but much, much faster. Its fist pounded on my chest with the strength of a score of T'lan warriors. That was the first time any T'lan had hit me, actually. I came close to blacking out. Before I could recover Solus picked me up by the throat in the manner it seemed to favor, and smashed my head through one of the office windows. Wind roared in my ears as I dangled at the center of the pressure leak. I felt strange, like something inside me was trying to get out or was being called. Then, for no clear reason I can think of to this day, he dropped me on the floor instead of out the window and jumped through the ceiling. With Solus gone Alex and I exchanged dazed glances.

Alex was the first to speak, "maybe killing us wasn't his objective. Anyway, we should get out of here... before he finds us again."

I heartily agreed with her and secretly vowed never to question her authority again. Then as if on cue the voice of a marine popped up on my radio headset.

"Did you hear something? Open the shutters."

One of the room's walls began to retract into the ceiling, revealing a pack of marines and a stationary turret gun that even made Alex think twice about attempting a frontal assault. The enemy opened fire on us and we were forced to take shelter behind the single concrete-and-metal obelisk that stood between our room and theirs.

"We're sitting ducks here!" Alex informed me. Though we both knew the problem there was nothing either of us could do about it. We waited. They didn't stop firing. We blindly returned fire. Our protection broke in half. We ducked, and I threw a grenade I procured in the desert. I heard someone go down but the others didn't stop. The last of our safety began to give way.

"Come on, Derrick! You've got to do something!" pleaded Alex. All the weight was on my shoulders. I could feel the desperation burning in my blood. It rose in parallel to the decline of our cover. That's when the lightning crackled across my skin once more. It was stronger this time. I could save us from this now. I stood up, extended my hands, and set my desperation loose.

-Act Three: Desperado-

The veins along my forearms and hands glowed as if they were filled with white hot fire and the lightning leapt between them. I stood there for a second to marvel at this change. I was blissfully unaware that the marines had not stopped shooting, that they had even focused their combined firepower on me, because their attacks never touched me. Like the T'lan warriors, and probably Solus too, a shield of golden radiance unfolded around my body and made me invincible to their efforts. Now I had nothing to worry about from the likes of them. I charged headlong into the heavily armed fortification. I could hear their cries of disbelief over my headset.

"He's coming straight at us?!" "I don't believe this!" "We need reinforcements!"

I bowled over the first marine in my path and with Alex right behind me we made short work of the lot of them. An elevator arrived and two more marines jumped out, but they were too little too late. After we made sure all was safe Alex turned her attention towards me. She was quite excited.

"Let me see your hand. Yes... your powers are returning, arn't they? The Derrick I know has got to be in there somewhere. Wake up!" and then she shook me by my shoulders. When it was apparent that she couldn't shake me into being whatever it was she wanted me to be she let go and took a step back. "Damn. Patience, Alex, patience. You'll get better. You have to."

From there it wasn't far until we reached the roof. We saw the helicopter still there with more than the recommended number of passengers fighting one another for space aboard this last hope. Alex and I both ran as fast as our legs would allow. We were no more than a two dozen meters away when an assault chopper rose like a shadow in the gray sky. We stopped, but the white coated facility workers didn't even see it coming. I heard the pilot talk over the com set.

"This is Devil Eight-Zero to Romeo One-One-Five: we've located the target on the roof. Awaiting orders, over."

"You know your orders," said the higher authority, as cold as ice.

"Yes, sir," said the pilot. I thought I could hear a frown in his voice. Nevertheless, the chopper fired a single rocket at the grounded helicopter, blowing it and everyone on and around it to flaming pieces! Alex and I were dumbstruck.

The assault chopper saw us standing there and took action. A rocket flew from the chopper and landed right in front of me. Rocket-propelled explosives are not like bullets, I know this because my shielding could not protect me from the full force of the blast. The concussive shockwave launched me high into the air and I landed on the edge of the roof. Another slightly-off missile knocked me dangling over the edge, but I was able to hang on by digging my fingers into the solid concrete. Alex showed up and with the speed of an experienced agent she secured a safety line to the roof and took hold of one of my hands at the same time.

"You ready?" she asked. I did not have time to asnwer. The chopper fired a third missile at us as Alex jumped off the roof and we went into freefall.

There was a brief pause in the chaos. It was almost peaceful. I remember falling into a tree. That's when I lost touch with Alex. Then I hit the ground, and the wind was knocked out of me. I laid there until Alex came to get me.

She said, "well, looks like you're still in one piece." She eyed the surroundings (another roof on a lower building) and seemed pleased with what she saw. "This place... this is the Botanical Research Facility. Perfect! Glen is underneath this building in a lab called 'Terminus IV.' He'll help us, you can count on him. Now let's go: there's got to be some way to get down to the lower levels in this place."

This roof seemed to be a little more open to travel than the one we had just jumped off of. There were walkways and gated fences, and even a soda machine. Not one to waste an opportunity I purchased myself a refreshing drink.

I had barely sipped it when the assault chopper dropped in from above. Having already learned my lesson from before, I gave up my ground freely and fled with Alex close behind. It chased us all the way to the other end of the roof where we found an entrance to what looked like a hospital or museum exibit. Once inside we were safe from the chopper. That's when the white and black cat showed up again.

And so they both died at the hands of the mysterious cat, thus ends the story. Too bad, so sad! The next series is about the titanic clash between the interdimensional supercat and Ra the Sun God! Stay tuned, you might learn something n__n Comments?