2. Year 2560
The year is 2546: Humans and Zulaiths established contact with each other after the Humans discovered Zuloth. After a lengthy discussion between the two civilizations, both sides struck a deal. Humans are given access to Zuloth under the supervision of the Zulaiths in exchange for Human technology. From that day onward, both species started learning from each other.
As years passed, Human technology drastically improved the lives of every Zulaith. With the use of Human medical practice and technology, deadly diseases like cancer can be cured. Food shortages and famines were quickly solved using Human agricultural technology and training. Newly built fusion reactors quickly eliminated energy problems and the overall standard of living improved in the span of only 24 years. But not all good things come without opposing ideology. Multiple small groups started to protest against the Humans, but it's mostly ignored by the general public.
They started creating small disturbances that began to grow and grow more violent, forcing the police to detain them. But even so, the group started to consolidate, and the violence became more substantial and bolder, making the government enforce a new law to prohibit any protest against Humans. And it stopped; no more violence ensued, and peace was back, until that fateful day.
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[Year: 2560; 07:00 AM]
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Knock knock knock; with three loud raps on the door, I drowsily woke up from bed when Mom started calling through the door. "Blaze! Amber! Wake up! It's time for school!"
I drowsily answer Mom. "I'm coming!"
"Make sure your sister is awake, Blaze!"
"Yes, Mom!" I answer while yawning.
I dangle my feet off my top bunk bed before using the ladder to climb down. As I head towards the bottom bunk bed, I can see Amber snuggly sleeping under the blanket. Amber: my 14-year-old sister who is two years older than me.
I place my hands on her blanket and start shaking it. "Sis, wake up. It's time for school."
"Five more minutes…"
I quickly pull her blanket off her. "Come on, Sis, or I'll ask Mom to wake you up instead."
"Fine..." She begrudgingly gets off from bed.
Walking down the stairs, we saw Mom placing plates of warm food on the kitchen table.
"Morning sleepy heads," She says with a smile. "Ready for school?"
Amber groans, "Ughhh…"
My Mom chuckles. "Go and eat your food before it gets cold."
I answer with, "Ok."
Taking our seats, Amber and I start eating our food. When we finish eating, Mom picks up the plate and starts washing the dishes, watching the kitchen tv as she does.
"The ambassador of the United Terran and his family visit the Vulinus Capitol building for another diplomatic talk with the President—"
"Humans, huh?" Amber mutters.
Ignoring Amber's mumbling, I ask Mom a question. "Is Dad at the Capitol today?"
"Yes, he woke up early to get ready."
"Oh, ok."
My Dad was a former soldier before being honorably discharged and now works at the Capitol as a secret service agent.
"Now go take a shower and get change! Also, don't forget to brush your teeth!"
"Yes, Mom," Amber and I answer.
We head back to our room and grab our towels before heading to the bathroom. Amber walks inside and locks the door until I start hearing the shower. After a few minutes of waiting outside the door, Amber exits the bathroom covered with a towel and heads back to our room. I walk into the bathroom and get inside the shower stall. Pressing the digital screen on the wall, a spray of water hits me from the showerhead.
After soaking under the shower for a few minutes, I shut it off before applying shampoo on my short red hair, ears, and tail; with a quick tap on the screen, the water starts spraying again, rinsing off the shampoo. When I finish taking a shower, I shake my body to flick off the water droplets from my head and tail before wiping and covering myself with a towel. Going back to my room, I see Amber finished changing into her uniform; grabbing mine from my drawer, I start changing myself.
After changing into our uniforms, we both went back to the bathroom to brush our teeth. When we finished brushing our teeth, we grabbed our backpacks and went downstairs.
"Mom, we're finished," Amber says.
Mom walks over to us with two lunchboxes. "Here's your lunch," She says as she passes the two lunchboxes to us.
"Thanks, Mom," Amber and I say.
"Have a good day at school, kids!" Mom says while waving her hand.
"We will, Mom!" I happily answer back before going through the front door.
As we start walking towards school, Amber and I recognize someone familiar walking past the next intersection.
When he saw us, he started calling out to us. "Yo, Blaze! Amber!" He excitedly waves his hand while running towards us.
"Hi, Malt!" Amber happily waves back.
I also wave back before replying to him. "Hello there, Malt."
"Want to walk together to school?" Amber says to Malt.
"With my two favorite vulpine siblings? Sure!" He says with an excited feline grin on his face.
Malt Ashir: a Zulaith cat with blue cat eyes, white hair, and tail, who is the same age as Amber and our best friend.
We start chatting while walking to school and crossing some traffic stops until we finally arrive at school.
"I'll go to my classroom now, I'll see you later at lunch," I say to Amber and Malt, who are two grades above me.
"All right, see you in a bit," Malt says.
"See you later, little bro," Amber says.
"See ya," I say before walking towards my classroom.
While walking in the hallway, someone suddenly bumps into me, making me fall to the ground.
"Ow…" I groan as I wipe my sore butt.
"Look what we have here. A little kid not looking where he's going," Someone says with a familiar, snarky voice.
"Knock it off. I didn't do anything to you, Tina," I say to her with irritation.
Tina Evun: a wolf-girl with yellow eyes, gray hair, and tail; who is also the acting alpha of my class. For no reason whatsoever, I've been the target of her harassment since the first month of school.
"Growing a fang, are we?" She says with an amused look while I'm still sitting on the floor. "Just because you're a soldier's kid doesn't mean you're strong."
Ignoring her jibes, I get up and wipe my pants with my dexterous and fluffy reddish tail, before going to the classroom.
"Aw… leaving so soon, little kid? Are you scared?" She laughs while mocking me.
A few moments later, she started following behind me. Ugh, is she going to prank me again?
"Look, if you start anything, don't ever think you would get away with it," I say with a snarl.
"Oh, how scary, please don't hurt me," Tina says with a sarcastic tone.
After a bit of walking and patience, I arrive in the classroom with Tina following behind me; trying her best to bully me. Heading to my seat in the middle, Tina finally ends her harassment before sitting in her chair. Waiting for the teacher, I grab an "English" book from my backpack and start reading. When the first humans arrived here, they quickly managed to translate our language Awuri using super-powerful computers in just under an hour, which piqued my interest in learning their language.
When I was only six years old, I received my first English book from a Human man who was kind enough to teach me a few English words. Since then, I began to learn English so that I can better understand Humans; now I'm confident that I'm fluent in reading and speaking English. After a few minutes of reading the book, I got the sudden urge to look behind me. When I looked, I saw Tina sitting in the back corner of the room, looking at the window while resting her chin on her hand.
When the school bell rang, I looked at my book's cover for a few seconds before closing it and placing it inside my backpack. A few seconds later, the teacher arrives, carrying with him his tablet. With a quick tap on the screen, the digital board shows the lesson for today.
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[12:00 PM]
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When the electronic bell rang, the teacher ended his lesson and everyone in the class got up for lunchtime. Stretching my back from sitting most of my day in the chair, I stand up and head to the cafeteria like most of my classmates. As I was about to pass through the door, I forgot to grab my lunchbox from my backpack. So I turn around and walk back to my chair. Grabbing the lunchbox from my bag, I notice Tina laying at the desk again without heading to the cafeteria.
It has been a daily occurrence for her to lay there without eating anything before classes start. With her always bullying me, I would instead let her be and ignore her, but for some reason, I can't. With a sigh, I went to the cafeteria to buy a sandwich and a juice box using my pocket money, before carrying it back to the classroom.
When I got back, I called out to Tina. "Hey, Tina." She looks at me confused before I place the sandwich and juice on her desk, "Here." She stares at the food with wide eyes.
Surprised from being offered food, she regains her composure before saying, "I don't want it." While she says that, I notice that her tail is slightly wagging, and I can hear a faint rumble from her stomach. With a shrug of my shoulder, I head to my chair and unpack my lunch box; leaving the food I bought for Tina on her desk.
No purpose in going back to the cafeteria again now that I'm here.
As I ate my lunch, I also took a few sneaky glances at her to see what Tina would do. After a few seconds later, she couldn't resist the temptation and grabbed the sandwich before taking a quick bite. She was smiling, savoring the flavor of the sandwich before drinking the juice box with a straw. Seeing her like this surprised me, which was quite unusual for her.
She looks cute like that if she wasn't always picking on me… wait, what? What am I thinking!? No way! She's just a bully who keeps making fun of me! Yes, just a bully…
Without knowing it, I've been staring at Tina for a good few seconds now. Suddenly, she starts yelling at me. "Don't think I'll thank you for this!" Tina says with a threatening and slightly embarrassed voice, returning to her regular old self. After I finished eating, I packed my lunch box in my bag before the bell rang.
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[04:00 PM]
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As the final class ended, I packed up most of my stuff in my backpack before heading to the main gate to meet up with Amber and Malt. As I was about to pass through the door with my classmates, someone suddenly bumps into my shoulder before quickly disappearing with the crowd; the only thing I noticed before they disappeared was a glimpse of gray hair. Ignoring what just happened, I head towards the front of the school.
"Yo!" Malt says with his usual energetic self, with Amber beside him. "Hey Blaze, why weren't you at the cafeteria?" Amber asks.
"I have something to do in the classroom, so I didn't have time to eat at the cafeteria. Sorry for not showing up."
"Nah, it's cool," Malt says, "Come on, let's go already!"
"Yeah," Amber replies.
As we walked down the road, we started chatting.
"Tomorrows a weekend, so what should we do?" Malt asks.
"How about the arcade? There's a new game in the VR rigs," Amber says.
"Please don't let it be a new shooter game, I'm bad at those," Malt says with a gloomy face.
"Is it the new middle age fighting game?" I say.
"Yep! The gameplay is so realistic! You can almost feel the sword digging into the flesh and bones of my enemies!"
Typical Amber, she got her attitude from dad.
"That sounds fun!" Malt says energetically. "So what time do we me-"
Suddenly a loud detonation roared in the direction of the Capitol, shaking the ground like an earthquake.
"Yaaaaggghhhh!!!"
"What the heck happened!?"
"Did something explode!?"
After the explosion, screams and multiple gunshots were heard throughout the city. As Malt and I stood there, shocked at the events, Amber quickly snapped us out of it. "Malt! Run back to your house! Blaze and I will also run back home!"
"Ok!" Malt quickly replies.
"We'll call each other when we get back home!" After she finishes talking with Malt, she tightly grabs my hand. "Let's go!" She says with a serious face.
"O-ok!" After I answered, we quickly run back home
When Amber and I reach the door of our house, we are already out of breath. Suddenly the door slams open, before suddenly being embraced.
With a relieved voice, Mom calls out to us, "Thank goodness you're safe!"
"Mom, w-what happened!?" Amber asks, scared.
"Y-yeah! What happened!?" I also ask Mom, scared.
"Let's go inside first," Mom says.
Amber and I nod at Mom. Walking into the living room, the tv was broadcasting the news channel.
"Breaking news! Heavily armed men are attacking the Capitol building! We advise everyone to avoid going to the Capitol and take shelter immediately if you're near the vicinity. The police are now sending in SWAT teams to control the situation-"
As I watch the TV in shock, Amber asks Mom a question, "Mom... where's dad?" That question made my stomach drop.
Mom places both hands on top of our heads. "Dad will be fine, I know it," She says with a smile, easing both our anxiety.
"O-ok," I answer.
"I have to prepare something, so call me if you need me." After saying that, Mom went upstairs.
"Blaze," Amber calls out to me.
"Yes?"
"Can you call Malt and tell him we're ok? I'm going to go upstairs and help Mom."
"Ok."
After accepting her answer, she went after Mom. Grabbing my phone from my pocket, I call Malt's number.
After a few short rings, the line connects.
"Blaze! You finally called!" a slightly scared and youthful voice answers. "Did you two arrive safely?"
"Yes, Amber is helping Mom. How about you? Are you safe?"
"Ye-Yeah, I'm at home with my parents."
"It's good to hear you're safe. I'll hang up now."
"Ok, I'll call you la- wait, quickly check the tv!"
Following Malt's suggestion, I look back at the tv, which is still showing the news. The news broadcaster reading the tablet suddenly went silent. A few seconds later, she regains her composer and reads it out loud. "J-Just in! The Human ambassador and his escorts have been confirmed to be killed! Reports are in that the United Terran has declared war on the Zulaith race and is now beginning to mobilize!"
After the news broadcaster finishes reporting, a live stream plays, showing an aged woman with a dignified stance on a spaceship. With a cold tone, she speaks.
"I am General Katharine Stewart from the United Terran Space Military. The recent attack and killing of our ambassador have deeply angered my people and my government. Our show of goodwill to your race has been betrayed by this senseless violence. Thus, we declare war to face the growing hostility; that is all." After it ended, something started playing on the tv with a loud and scary tone. "This is the official state of the emergency broadcast; this is not a test. The country is now in a state of war. Everyone must seek shelter immediately. Stockpile as many essential supplies as possible and avoid going outside if possible-"
Suddenly, there's a commotion outside. Mom and Amber quickly ran down the stairs to go outside, which I follow behind them.
"What's that?"
One of our neighbors says as he points something from the sky, showing multiple meteor-like objects burning from the atmosphere. As it slows down, the meteor-like objects emerge from the fireball, revealing spaceships flying in formation. Loud sirens sound throughout the city.
"Blaze! Amber! Get inside the house now!" Mom shouts.
As we quickly run towards the house, I look behind me and see multiple missiles intercept the spaceships before abruptly exploding mid-air. Followed by the sound of explosions and gunfire. Before I know it, I'm inside the house with the door tightly shut.
The war has begun.