Armed Enlightenment V2

Investigate

Author's note: I have no clue how many times I've republished this. Call it me hitting a roadblock on the stories I usually frequent in writing.

***

The trees shed their leaves orange from the darkness he left. It was neither warm nor cold, just perfect. With the fresh air and the blue skies, it was almost too perfect as he stood in an empty patch in the middle of a pine forest.

The gentle, cold breeze tickled his neck, and he shuddered. The ground crunched, and he spun to the leaves on the ground at the mercy of the wind. Another cold breeze tickled his neck, and the chill went down his spine.

He turned around once more, squinting between the trees. There was something else watching him. It may be his alert mind, but he was sure of it. The wind continued playing with him, and every time he snapped in its direction, nothing revealed itself.

Then it tickled him again. He jumped forward and turned around, but there was nothing but the wind and the leaves lying in its mercy. The ground crunched behind him. He looked back, and something pounced on him. He sensed it for one moment, but there was nothing in front of him but his mind making sense of it with a mental roar.

He opened and moved his eyes, but his body wasn't following. He couldn't even blink. Then the wind tickled his neck again, and his mind screamed for him. Entire muscles flared. His body moved and straightened his joints for a stretch. Then his head followed, and all he saw was the blue sky.

Whatever force that latched on him invaded him intimately, wriggling inside from how his sight faded into darkness and saw...stars twinkling. The pain was gone. He could sense himself moving his body, but could not match the hand he placed ahead him from obstructing the universe. It's as if he was invisible.

Then the universe twinkled no more, and a blue light shone brighter. The darkness crawled away from his eyes and presented the deep blue with the branches and leaves dancing with the wind. The sound of his breathing had never eased his mind this much. He pulled himself up, but then his sore body weighed him back.

He whined, and he rolled to his knees, panting. He raised one knee, and somehow, the soreness left him. His body numbed or it never happened. Then his first thoughts repeated itself.

Why am I here? Rather, where was he?

However, it seemed like his mind answered that question with a desire. A desire only he knew from a knowledge he had not obtained or has yet to obtain. He rose with a gasp. Be it a nightmare or an epiphany that has given him that knowledge, it must never happen.

He grabbed for his head and hit something solid. He knocked it a few times. Composite?

A black viscous liquid lay from where he once stood in that frozen state. He went to his knees and sent a finger towards it, but since when was I wearing a glove? He went further than that, to sleeves of a jacket that was supposed to be just a shirt, trousers that were once a pair of jeans, and boots to what would've been sneakers.

Then the black liquid burst into flames, and he jumped back and dug the heels of his boots into the dirt, backpedaling further away until something stopped him. His hand fell on the roots of a tree, and he sighed.

He ran his other hand over his body. Flecktarn 5-color. It's been a while since he wore it. The vest's the same but seemed stuffy. A good tap on the side had him convinced it was not Kevlar. Nothing changed with the chest rig and pouches, but now that he looked at it, some of the blotches on the pattern were the same as his old jacket.

He reached for one of the pouches and produced a square mirror the size of his palm. He was Adel Enders, age twenty-two, blood type O-. He donned away his helmet, matched the blonde hair with his brown eyes, and stowed it back. At least he's still him.