M.W. Short: Douglas' Vision

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Douglas woke up in his bed with a yawn and a stretch. He slowly got out of his bed and began walking towards the bathroom. When he reached the door, he felt a light headache tingling at the side of his head. He ignored it as he showered and dressed himself for the day.
When he reached the Kitchen, he saw Mario and Meggy sitting together at the table.
It was the morning of the 15th of February, and Douglas didn't get home from his trip until late last night, meaning he only got four to six hours of sleep.
He noticed Mario's hand intertwined into Meggy's, and they didn't seem to notice him right away. Mario seemed lost in thought, and Meggy seemed to be blanking out.

Douglas: Uh...Did...I break the fabric of reality or something?

Mario and Meggy both jumped and separated their hands from each other and turned to Douglas.

Meggy: Oh, Uh, hey, Douglas. You're home.

Douglas: I got home around one in the morning. How was your weekend and Valentine's Day?

Mario: It was...eventful.

Douglas looked between the two of them.

Douglas: You finally took her out on a date?

Mario: As a matter of fact, I did.

Meggy: We were rudely interrupted when John showed up, but we were able to get out of there unscathed.

Mario: Except for the—

Meggy: Yeah, the bullet hole in your car. I feel guilty for that.

Mario: It's not your fault, Meggy.

Meggy: But I feel like I caused his behavior.

Douglas: He's just some sore loser who can't accept that you know how to move on and he doesn't.

Meggy: I guess that sounds right.

Douglas felt the tingling in the side of his head again, and this time, it was much stronger.

Douglas: I...I think I have a slight headache. I'm going to go lay down for a bit longer.

Mario: Rest easy.

Meggy: Don't worry about today. We'll do the house chores today.

Douglas: You guys are great roommates.

With that, Douglas walks back to his room and lays down.
He was starting to wonder if the reason he had a headache was his increasing worry about why Aliya hadn't returned from her trip yet. She promised him she would be back by the time he got home. So where was she?

Douglas let exhaustion take over him, and with a couple deep breaths, he fell asleep.
But that nap wasn't going to go well for him.
He woke up, or, felt like he woke up in the middle of a city street. The sounds of Fire consuming structures reached his ears, and he heard the distant alarm of a car. His eyes came into focus and he scurried to his knees from a laying position as he looked all around him. He was kneeling in the city street of a run-down, burning city block. He looked around, trying to get his bearings from where he could be, and saw the old Sentinel Energies building had been completely restored. It was bright with activity, but he got a sensation from looking at the structure that didn't feel welcoming.

He looked to the other direction and saw something fly towards him, but stop about fifteen yards away. It was a person.

He scrambled to his feet and ran over to the person and was shocked to see that it was SY35. His hat was dusty and tears and markings were on it. His blue sweater had holes and bloodstains on it. His face looked pretty bruised up.

Douglas: SY35! What's going on!?

SY35 forced himself to his feet slowly and drew a small rod from his side, ignoring Douglas. He snapped the rod to the side and revealed a four foot long retractible blade. He charged it with electricity and ran back down the street, where there were others firing guns and swinging weapons. Douglas ran with SY35, even though he probably couldn't be seen nor heard, and passed through a thick blanket of smoke and dust, coming into view of a massive amount of alien-like creatures crawling on the walls of the buildings.
He saw himself and Aliya, standing back-to-back next to Mario and Meggy, firing their weapons.
Anthony, Karter, and Cruce were swinging strange, technological weapons at some large black-armored creature, and Hudson and Desti were working together to take down a creature with massive claws on its hands.

Anthony: You will never get the Axiom, Duratros!!

Douglas: Duratros? Who's...that?

His questions were answered when he looked over and saw a heavily armored creature walking towards the teams.

The creature stood at nine feet tall and wore deep black-pearl colored armor. Most of his skin was Jet Black, but his face had a more dark gray appearance. His eyes glowed a menacing purple color, and he held a two sided sword. Each end had a different elemental aspect to it.
One seemed completely frozen and seeped a poison green ooze, while the other end was much like Anthony's trident, but with purple fire and lightning bounding off of it.

Douglas couldn't even comprehend what he was seeing right now, and he became even more frozen when he saw two figures come up beside the supposed Duratros.

One of them looked like Meggy, but she was wearing a deep ruby colored armor and she held two katanas in her hand. Douglas thought it was really strange how he felt suddenly attracted to her appearance. It must've been some dark magic in the armor.

The other person, was someone he recognized. It looked like it was one of SY35's friends. It was Nona.

The two of them shared a similar aspect to their appearance: They had purple eyes, and some of the veins on their neck and arms were purple and bulging. They looked hungry for blood.

Duratros' voice made Douglas shake to his core. He had never heard such a menacing and dark voice before.

Duratros: Kill them all. Leave none alive. That Axiom will be mine.

The Meggy clone and Nona rushes forward, weapons extended, and Douglas tore his eyes away from the scene when he watched Nona plunge a blade deep into Desti's side, and the Meggy clone slashed at Aliya, making her fall backwards.

He got up and stumbled away a bit, but stood absolutely still when Duratros snapped his attention towards him.

Douglas: Oh you've got to be shitting me. There's no way he—

Duratros aimed his blade towards Douglas, but as he turned to run, there was Cherry right behind him with a techy looking sniper rifle.

Cherry: Oh crap. Guys, I've been spotted.

Mario: *from a radio* Get out of there, Cherry! Abort!

Douglas: I can't believe this...What the actual hell is happening?

That's when an explosion hit, and he felt himself fly backwards along with everyone else. Everyone was seriously injured and couldn't manage to get up.

He looked over to see SY35 kneeling over Desti as she clung to life, a knife sticking out of her side and blood trailing down her chin.

To their side was Aliya and Marchionne, and Douglas could barely keep himself contained when he watched as Marchionne tried to pull Aliya off of a section of exposed Rebar that had impaled her side. Hudson was nearby, shooting at enemies trying to get to them. Her cries of pain brought tears to Douglas' eyes and he wished whatever dream this was to end immediately.

In another direction, was Anthony and Cruce standing from the wreckage, and sparks were flying from Anthony's arm as he tried to activate his weapons, but it was no use.

Whatever fight was happening here in the Kingdom...They were losing.

Douglas snapped awake in a cold sweat the next second, and felt around him for any dust or blood on him. The dream felt too real to be just a simple nightmare, and everything looked too real as well.
He turned to see the time said 8:27PM. He had slept all day, and this dream, even though it only felt like a couple minutes, actually had lasted hours.

Douglas jumped out of bed and went over to Mario's room to see if he was still alive, and was surprised to see him laying in bed, with Meggy in his arms.
Douglas breathed a sigh of relief to see that both of them were alive.

He walked to the kitchen and looked out a large window to the streets below and saw no smoke or fire.

Douglas: What kind of situation are we getting ourselves into?

He could only ask that question to himself as he stared out to the horizon, wondering if that was more than just a dream. Will him and his friends actually have to witness such an event? Will they have to face a creature such as Duratros? Is he even real, and is he already here? How long away is this fight?

Douglas knew he had to warn his friends, but the only issue was: Who would believe him?

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