Beep.. beep.. beep! It is 6:00am. Travis Hill struggled to reach his arm out of bed to shut off his alarm, but still did so successfully. Now with only the sound of a distant explosion in the background, he could finally go back to sleep, almost. Travis could feel himself suffocating the moment he closed his eyes. His wife, Adimas, was smothering him with a pillow. “Just because I’m off work today doesn’t mean you are. How do you plan to move out of this apartment, if you never want to work?” She said,

Travis lifted the pillow off of his face. “Ok Adimas, no need to be so Adimant about it.” Even when tired, he could still find himself funny. Though he doesn’t get much time to be amused with himself, as only seconds later, he could feel the entire bed has flipped over. Upon looking up, Travis could see he was staring at the floor, just before gravity kicked in and he came slamming into the ground with the mattress falling on top of him. Travis crawled out from under the mattress, and found himself staring up at a tired yet annoyed Adimas. “You know, most people don’t mind just saying I make bad jokes.”

“Maybe they should try living with you.”

“See, now look who’s making bad jokes?” Travis laughed at Adimas’s sarcasm. But she did make a point earlier, now is a good time to get ready for work. Travis goes through the same routine each and every morning; taking a shower, brushing his teeth, putting on his usual attire for work, being light brown khaki pants, a bullet proof vest, a yellow collar shirt over it, and some brown high top shoes. He then picked up his belongings from his nightstand drawer, which he just realized was knocked over because of the bed being flipped. Inside the drawer was his phone, wallet, an extra empty wallet, a loaded pistol, and a single custom bullet that was given to him as a tip from one of his customers yesterday. All that’s left now is a quick breakfast, and an update on what’s going on this morning from the news, if only all mornings could be this calm.

It is 6:30am. Outside in the city of Asogend, a pirate ship soared through the skies downtown. His dreads flailing in the air, the sun beaming down on his dark skin, wearing a tan, long sleeved, open cuffed shirt, dark brown pants, and a rope tied to his waist that trailed off to somewhere off the ship, Shanty took the helm as the captain of this vessel. Looking down from the upper deck, eight other pirates on board were merely lounging around on the main deck. “Kelton! How much further we got?” Shanty asked, shouting to the person in the crow’s nest.

“Not much further, I’d give it another six thousand miles, maybe more.” Kelton responded, “Also, we’re gonna run into some creatures from the Dreamscape in the next thousand!” Shanty looked ahead. A dragon and a hydra, that were in the middle of battle, were falling from the sky, blotting out the sun with their sheer size, and from the look of it, would end up crashing into them. Something like this usually would be reason to worry, as it posed a danger to the ship’s integrity. But seeing as lots of smoke was pouring off of both creatures, he could tell that it wasn’t long before they would blip back into the realm of dreams, the Dreamscape. Shanty continued flying the ship forward, and as their vessel was about to be seemingly obliterated by two creatures, they vanished into a massive puff of smoke. As expected, but it did leave Shanty curious as to what brought those creatures from the Dreamscape in the first place. Though he won’t get time to ponder, as something more dangerous was heading their way.

Rushing through the cloud of smoke was a jet that was quickly catching up to their ship. A man was standing on top of the jet with his arms crossed, wearing a white business suit with a black tie, along with sunglasses, and a golden wrist watch. Inside the jet, as it came side by side with the ship, it was being piloted by a python snake that had stuck its fangs into the yoke of the plane. There was only one man Shanty knew who would trust a snake this much to fly a plane, Mr. Bennett. “You thought you were going to get left off the hook that easily?” Mr. Bennett chastised, from the jet. His voice strong enough to carry his question from his jet to Shanty’s ship, and have it be heard despite his voice having to fight against the powerful, hypersonic winds created by their airborne vehicles, Mr. Bennett was clearly upset.

Shanty took a big gulp, knowing what this was going to inevitably come down to. The rest of the crew on the main deck armed themselves with weapons, two of them started manning cannons and aiming them at Mr. Bennett, though they all seemed shaken. “No worries, just need to spare a second or so. I can survive that long.” Shanty thought, calming himself down. He called one of his men over to hand him a microphone and take the wheel, deciding to respond to his aggressor, “I was hopin’ ya forget about it already. Didn’t I apologize earlier? What’s the problem?”

“Like I would accept an apology so shallow, you didn’t feel sorry about what you did to that cub at all!”

“I was fightin’ for my life, and was out of cannonballs. It didn’t die, so it all good, right?” Mr. Bennett didn’t respond this time, it was clear he became too angered to continue talking this one out. “Shit. Prepare to be boarded!” Shanty shouted to his men. One of the cannoneers immediately fired upon Mr. Bennett. The attack missed completely as he jumped with enough force to push the jet downwards, going above the cannonball, and landing on the ship.

From here, the other cannoneer quickly turned the cannon to fire at Mr. Bennett, who was even faster to turn and catch the cannonball with both hands, just before it hit him. Shanty jumped down from the upper deck, directly in front of Mr. Bennett. Summoning a scimitar, Shanty thrusted his weapon in between Mr. Bennett’s hands, through the cannonball, shattering it completely. The shrapnel proved a nearly perfect distraction, alas Shanty was still too slow to skewer his opponent, as he sidestepped the attack. Immediately after the failed attempt, Shanty felt a sharp pain in his gut. He instinctively jumped backwards as quickly as possible. Looking down at his bleeding stomach, a large gash was going horizontally, completely across his body. That’s when Shanty noticed Mr. Bennett pulled out a weapon of his own, a long rapier blade that extended from out the front of the wrist watch, now covered in his blood. If he had reacted a moment later, he would’ve been sliced clean in half.

Mr. Bennett didn’t just nearly slice him in two, but he also caught some of the pieces of shattered cannonball. He threw the shattered pieces, they boomed through the air like a shotgun blast, Shanty was not going to survive. But by the skin of his teeth, Shanty was saved by Kelton. He swung from the crow’s nest with a rope and helped him avoid the thrown cannonball pieces that end up destroying the wooden railing behind them, by swinging to the side. Mr. Bennett began to pull something out of his left pocket. Shanty’s eyes widened, “Don’t let 'em pull out a single gun!” he ordered, coughing up blood. 

The cannoneers, having now reloaded, both fired cannonballs simultaneously. Mr. Bennett weaved his way in between both cannonballs, as they whisk past his body, flew off the ship and tore through multiple buildings in the city that they were flying past. Taking him by surprise, a pirate grabbed Mr. Bennett by the arm, the others are also charging in, finding the courage to take on their foe head on. The pirate, already grabbing his arm, tried to tackle Mr. Bennett to the ground, but was instead flung by his right arm into one of the charging pirates, launching them into the mast hard enough to knock them both unconscious. Another pirate was also stopped in his tracks, as Mr. Bennett dug his foot into the floor of the ship and broke off a wooden board, kicking it into his chest. And as Shanty feared would happen, Mr. Bennett pulled from his pocket a seemingly normal magnum pistol.

The remaining three pirates stop and pull out their own guns. “Hold fire!” Shanty yelled to his crew, now standing near the edge of his ship, behind the broken railing, “Gunfire won’t work on him! Ya be wastin’ bullets!” Mr. Bennett, looked over toward Shanty, then noticed for the first time, the rope that was tied to Shanty’s waist, just under where he first slashed at him. With a final salute, he leaned backwards and fell off the ship.

Shanty was now dangling off the ship, due to the rope. And the moment his body tugged on the rope from falling the way he did, a cannon from the lower deck was fired. The rope was tied to a cannonball inside of that cannon, which allowed for Shanty to be dragged along with it. “Heh, talk about success. The rest of my crew should be safe, since I’m the only one he wants. Now to do what I came to do.” he said to himself, crossing his legs and putting his hands behind his head in glee, as if sitting on a beach chair while flying through the air.

Travis has just finished a bowl of cereal in the living room. He was sitting on the couch, watching the news to hear what’s going on in the city. He was just about to turn off the news channel, as other than an escaped serial killer and a drastic rise in people going missing in the past week, nothing really caught his attention. “This is Flya Lavender, with an emergency update regarding traffic.” Now this caught his attention. He decided it was best to listen in for a little longer, but hoping that this update wouldn’t affect him personally. Though seeing as on the television the reporter was in front of a destroyed bus station, and he takes the bus to go to work every day, he was already losing that hope. “I am here, at the downtown bus station, where there was recently a battle involving two members of the famous hero group; The Flamezation. The two heroes, Nish and Mikoto have captured the dangerous villain, but at the expense of obliterating the entire downtown bus station as shown behind me. With that in mind, all bus stops in that area should be considered inoperable, as no bus will be in use downtown for some time.”

“Are you going to be ok?” Adimas asked, walking into the living room having overheard the television, “That’s a nine hundred mile walk you’d have to do. Can you even make that in time?”

Travis sighed before checking the time on his phone. “It’s 6:29. If I leave now, I could possibly make it, but I won’t have any time to spare.” Travis got up from the couch and began to head towards the front door. He unlocked the door, and felt Adimas softly pressed against his back as she came to embrace him from behind.

“I’ll be rooting for you. Try not to tire yourself out too much today, ok?” She hugged him tighter, getting him closer. “I love you.” She whispered into his ear before kissing him on the cheek.

Travis turned his head toward Adimas, giving her a gentle smile back. Then jumped in fright at the thunderous sound of something crashing into his living room. They both quickly turned to see what could’ve caused such ruckus. Two large, gaping holes were in their living room, as if something just bulldozed through their apartment from one side to the next. They could also hear coughing, coming from the hole that led to further inside.

“W- what was that? Is someone breaking into our apartment?” Adimas questioned, slowly moving herself behind Travis.

Travis could feel Adimas trying not to shake with her hands on his shoulders. He took out his loaded gun, holding it up in the air. “Get Quinn and take him out the fire escape.” He told Adimas. She nodded and followed behind Travis as he approached the hole. As he aimed his gun down the hole in his wall, Adimas rushed past, going down the hallway to their son’s room. Down the hole, Shanty was still holding his stomach as it was still spilling blood.

“Yeah, that’s gonna need stitches.” Shanty said to himself just before noticing Travis standing in front of him, “There you are, been lookin’ for ya. You’re a guy I’d much rather die to.”

Travis looked at him confused. “Um, what? I’m sorry, but why are you here?”

“To prove myself right.” Shanty said, pressing his thumb against his chest. “And for that, the two of us are ‘bout to have a little brawl.” The second Shanty finished speaking, Travis fired his gun at him. Shanty felt an immediate wave of disappointment about the first move made as he sidestepped the bullet fired at him. “Ok, no foolin’ around here, I ain’t some weakling who decided to break into your house.” Shanty manifested a scimitar in one hand and a flintlock in the other, but seemed to have taken notice of something behind Travis, something that loomed a large shadow over them, darkening the entire room. Shanty bolted to the opposite direction, going through the other holes that were made all the way onto the other side of the apartment complex, quick enough to barely be seen.

Travis himself turned around and was surprised with what he saw. “What the hell?” A massive creature was about to fall directly on top of the apartment. He couldn’t even see the creature in its entirety, but saw enough of the back to notice it was a dragon, and possibly smoke was spewing off from it. It was too close to think running would do anything for him. Travis prepared for the worst, then suddenly the entire dragon poofed into a giant cloud of smoke that filled the entire apartment. “Was that from the Dreamscape?” He questioned. Creatures within the Dreamscape, an astral plane of existence, would sometimes pop into the world of the living merely as non tangible entities if powerful enough creatures are fighting. The why and how of it all still eluded Travis to this day, it doesn’t help that he rarely witnessed such phenomena. Not that it really mattered, he needed to make sure Adimas and Quinn were alright. He pulled out his phone to call them.

“Thank the gods you’re alright! I didn’t know what to do when I saw that thing was about to crash!” Adimas shouted through the phone, forcing Travis to move it away from his ear.

“It seems you made it out alright too, but you might want to tone down using the ‘g’ word like that outside, especially with Quinn with you. We don’t need Chaos coming around.”

“Right. And what about the person that busted through the wall?”

“He left after he saw that dragon falling over here. I guess that unexpected surprise made his plans go up in smoke.” Even with his life just having been threatened, Traivs still found himself funny.

There was a second of silence before any response. “Just be careful and go to work already.” Adimas plainly stated before hanging up.

“She’s totally laughing.” Travis said to himself, still chuckling. But with all dangers out of the way, Travis knew he needed to leave now if he wanted any chance of not being late to work. This morning was definitely interesting to say the least, but with any luck, today would actually be a good day. Or at the very least, better than yesterday.