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Patrick Meyers was going to die.
Patrick Meyers was twenty-three years old, planning to major in the culinary arts next year, knew his way around three separate instruments, and he was going to die.
He was hopeful at first, when the robots started attacking the city, that he would survive. His hope persisted when he, along with a small group of equally terrified survivors, found their way out of the thick of the chaos, down an abandoned street.
He was less hopeful when the earth shook, and he looked to the sky to see a sedan-sized chunk of concrete hurtling his way.
There was no way he could dodge it, not in time—the only thing he could do was follow the example of the others around him and scream, throwing his arms over his head as if his too-fragile flesh and bones would do anything to prevent him from becoming a bloody smear on the asphalt. He clenched his eyes shut, teeth bared, and braced himself for death.
It didn't come.
Instead, there was a sudden rush of air, a loud grunt, and a gentle sprinkling of dust and pebbles into his hair, like glitter dust.
He held his position for a moment, mid-flinch, just in case it was a postmortem hallucination or something equally absurd, but when no pain or white lights or angels with harps appeared, he cautiously cracked open his eyes. In front of him, the sidewalk, his own feet, a dark shadow like a grim reaper peering over him. Heart racing a marathon, he turned.
There was no grim reaper. Instead, there was... something.
It was difficult to describe. It sort of looked like a turtle, if a turtle had taken a dip into a bathtub filled with nuclear waste and used steroids nonstop for eight years. It looked like an alien. It looked like some weird, horrifying mashup between a reptile and a human.
Patrick yelped and threw himself backwards, out of reach, landing on his ass. The group he'd fled with had similar reactions—a young woman holding what he assumed was her child or younger sibling screamed. A man with a backwards baseball cap shrieked: “Monster!” Someone with a yellow construction vest stumbled away and gasped as if they'd been stabbed.
With a few feet of distance, Patrick stared at the monster. They looked strained, and it took him a few seconds to realize that this was likely due to the fact that their arms were lifted above their head to hold the hunk of rubble aloft, keeping it from crushing them. Their eyes were narrowed, but still appeared comically large behind a thick-framed pair of tortoiseshell glasses with tape wound around the bridge. Around their face was a ragged purple bandana, with long, dirty tails drifting down the back of their neck and to their... shell? On said shell was some sort of machine, covered with buttons and antennae and scratches like it had been thrown around a lot. Or like the monster had been thrown around a lot.
Their teeth were gritted with the strain of holding the concrete—they had strangely human teeth, even with a little gap in the front like Patrick used to have as a kid before he got braces. They did, on the other hand, have only a total of six fingers. Which were green. Did he mention that the monster was green? And easily seven feet tall?
Their eyes, somewhere between olive and hazel, met his.
“Move them out of the way,” they gasped.
Patrick was so struck with the shock of the fact that they spoke english that it took him several moments to realize what they meant. In fact, there was one person that hadn't yet gotten out of the way of the rubble—someone near his age, with curly brown hair, limp on the asphalt like they'd passed out. In the time it took him to figure it out, the monster's arms trembled, and they fell to one knee, still holding the concrete, but wobbling as it slowly crushed them.
Despite the instinctual fear of the strange creature, Patrick ran forward to grab the arm of the stranger and drag them out of harm. The person with the construction had helped him, and together, brought them out of danger, still unconscious, but largely unharmed.
The monster grunted—either with pain or exertion. Patrick was struck with the image of them holding the rubble, and a memory came to mind; Atlas, holding the world.
The monster was strange and terrifying, but they had helped a scared clump of strangers from certain death, and they were about to be crushed.
Hands shaking, hardly thinking, Patrick grabbed a piece of rebar that had fallen along with the rubble and shoved it between the concrete and the ground, propping it up. It wasn't nearly enough, but there was more—he reached for another, and found that the man with the baseball hat was following his example, and the woman with the child following him. It was flimsy, but it was enough to hold the concrete, at least for a few seconds.
“Go!” Patrick urged the monster.
They didn't need any more prompting—just as soon as he'd spoken, they dropped to the ground and rolled out of the way, popping back upright in one fluid motion. Not a moment too soon, the rebar shrieked and crumpled, and the concrete slammed into the asphalt, sinking down and leaving cracks in its wake like an asteroid.
The monster was breathing hard, limbs bent like it was poised to run, eyes flickering between them all. They looked like a cornered animal—or a scared kid. Patrick had the sudden feeling he was older than them.
In the distance, an explosion. The monster whipped around, stared for a second, then turned to give them all a final glance and a single nod before darting off, slipping into a dark alley like a ninja. Only a few seconds later, Patrick saw their huge shape running across the rooftops, leaping the gaps between buildings with agile flips and twists.
What a fuckin' day.