First Rapture

Five years ago, 1/7th of the population of Earth disappeared in the blink of an eye. Those left behind began to claim the rapture had happened. Believers became more devout and Non-believers started to believe.

There was almost no one spared in the worldwide tragedy. Everyone lost someone. Anna is a girl who was left behind. Her mother was taken in what is now called the First Rapture. Many believed that that was only the beginning and started claiming that a new rapture would eventually take more. They dubbed this future prophesy, the Neo Rapture, and promptly began a new religion in the same name. Another large change in the world after the First Rapture was structure. Military, state, country, and international affairs were in a state of chaos. Important people disappeared and left spaces where answers needed to be given.

Over the past five years, some major strides were taken by those that stood up and accepted the challenge. For better or worse, the world was split into two major factions. The Western Union and the Eastern Union. While the two factions fought over some resources for a time, eventually peace was brokered and held together tenuously.

While Anna used to be an avid church attendee, soon after the First Rapture she felt like God had betrayed her. Either that or... This was no religious rapture. Anna, who was raised by her military father, had the military nearly beaten into her. She not only joined the military after the First Rapture, but she also excelled at her training. She lived with her father on the base they were stationed at in the Western Union. Most would call it "Tripple U."

Anna had been sent out on an errand by her father. She already knew it was to get her out of the house so her father and a couple of friends could set up a "Surprise" party. Unfortunately, one of her friends was a bit of a blabbermouth and spoiled the surprise last week. She figured an hour was long enough and was already headed back to base.

Anna was walking by a church of the Neo Rapture when the strangest thing happened. Sounding as if the sky itself was torn open, thousands of high-pitched screeches caused everyone to cover their ears. As the sound died down, black dots began to litter the cloudless midday sky. They got bigger and bigger. The basic shape of the dots was as of yet un-identifiable to the naked eye. What came next was the last thing anyone expected.

At first, a small pop. Then a few more, then hundreds more. The sky became filled with red balls of light that crashed into the ground and exploded.

Anna was only a few blocks away from the army base where her father and friends were about to try to surprise her with a party. But, that didn't matter anymore. Anna struggled to catch her breath after running those last few blocks only to see her father's house in pieces. The fire engulfing the remains wasn't a normal orange. It was a deep red.

As if it wasn't enough that the whole world seemed to be on fire, two massive metal feet smashed into the ground. One of them crushed a small three-story apartment building. There stood a giant humanoid-shaped robot. The color was entirely gunmetal grey. Its hands had only four fingers and the head was a dome shape with no signs of anything that could be considered a sensor or "eyes." It turned away and revealed a very conservative backpack that seemed to be the propulsion system for flight.

Overall the thing looked very round and the limbs were almost awkward. Either way, its capabilities for destruction were not in question.

Anna barely kept her composure over the emergency. The years of her father's military teachings helped keep her mind clear in the face of the enemy. Anna's first thought was to go to the base's hi-tech secret weapons lab. She had never been inside, but one of her friends on the base told her some top-secret facts about the lab about a year ago.

She kept low to avoid detection by the enemy robot. She slipped through a busted metal fence and hid behind some more burning rubble. As far as she could tell, it only fired on random buildings in front of its torso. She only moved when the torso was facing away. She made one last turn around a corner and hoped that the building she needed was still in one piece.

"It's there." She said under her breath. It was a small square building. It had only elevators in it that went down to different levels that contained completely different laboratories.

She took two steps before the door opened from the inside. A man in a full radiation suit emerged with a large backpack and a hose or wire hooked up to some kind of weapon in his hands.

It began to charge and the sound caught the attention of the robot. It was a low "thoom" sound that ebbed slightly higher and then even lower as the process got quicker.

The red beam on the robot's gun started to glow. The experimental weapon started to suck in the light around it, reminding Anna of what a miniature black hole might look like.

The human weapon fired first. Dead on target. A black ball of energy spiraled until it hit the chest of the robot. When it hit, the robot was instantly knocked back several city blocks and its shot fired off into the sky. It almost seemed to disappear when it was hit. A weapon that could knock back that kind of mass with a single shot was a massive win in Anna's book.

*BOOM*

An explosion from the direction of the lab sent Anna flying back several feet.

*BOOM BOOM BOOM*

A pair of robots was flying over and started systematically destroying buildings on the base, starting with the one that Anna felt held the most hope.

"No…"

Her hopes were crushed and Anna wasn't sure what to do. The skies were filled with the enemy. Most of the surface was nearly destroyed as far as the eye could see. Aside from the now lost weapon, no conventional weapons seem to be even scratching the paint on any of the robots.