Tales from New Haven
The Robert
The chill of the early March morning hung in the air like a heavy drape over the cramped ghettos of West Haven, as the brilliant purple and orange light on the horizon slowly crept in the eastern sky. The stillness of the slums’ silence coupled with the occasional car whizzing by, a neighbor’s dog barking, or a random curse word shouted to no one in particular was always soothing for the few who were awake and cutting through en route to their jobs. One particular car, a white Volkswagen Jetta, was headed to an area of the slums where the hills dipped down, to an area hidden away behind old mills and an old gas station. “Haven Petrol,” it was called, and it was one of the only few landmarks the residents knew of the quaint little building the car made its way to. Parking on the side of a stucco building, its cream and peach paintjob less than lackluster, a man in appearing in his thirties stepped out after a few moments of pondering. Super Discount Groceries, the bane of his existence, loomed over him, seeming much larger than it actually was. He sighed as he straightened out the few wrinkles that found their way onto his gray short-sleeved polo shirt. Young as he was, the man was already beginning to gray in parts of his receding dark brown hair, and he could feel a few more grays set in as he slowly approached the barricaded IN and OUT doors of the store. He fixed his gold rimmed glasses before taking his keys out of his pocket, removing the padlock that surprisingly no one dared to remove bolting the barricade to the ground over the night, and pushed it upward. A moment after unlocking the regular doors, he was inside. Another weighted sigh escaped him as he locked both doors and made his way to his office in the store’s back room. The store manager of Super Discount Groceries was doing this job for the better half of fifteen years, and each passing day provided no significant payoff other than the privilege to go home and stay home. As he sat down at his cluttered desk and pulled the day’s paperwork towards him, he sighed again, grimacing.
“This is my life,” Robert Marques muttered to no one in particular, grinning sadistically to himself. “I come to work in a shithole every single day, serve scumbags of every kind of species shitty groceries, manage ungrateful workers, and go home late in the evening to go to sleep and do it all again the next day.” He signed off miscellaneous paperwork verifying the previous night’s final numbers and hours used, setting it away into his out bin with a speed and efficiency that could only be summed up now as second nature.
“I tell myself, ‘Hey, this’ll be the week, I’m going to just toss my keys to Jack over there and let him deal with this hellhole, and I’ll go off and find somewhere else to work!’ I never act on it,” Robert continued as he soon segued into a silent chuckle. “I never do. Nowhere else in this godforsaken city would give me the opportunity this place did, even if the tradeoff is less work and less frustration. This is my moneymaker, this is my—“
A bark of laughter erupted from him as he tossed his pen straight into the trash, folding his hands over his stomach as he leaned his head back in hysterics.
“This place is a goddamn joke!” he laughed, turning in his swivel chair to next observe the rapideye security. All seemed normal, from inside the store to the carriage corral, to the parking lot. A group of darkly-dressed figures were sauntering through the empty lot, which was normal this time of morning in the ghettos of West Haven. Robert nodded with a silent “Kay,” before pushing himself out of his chair and doing his daily morning checks of the store. Things weren’t out of place, messes were cleaned up even if a harmless stain was left behind—good thing there was no company visit today!—and no one managed to sneak their way into the building over the night. As the manager made his way to the front end of the store, he looked out the front windows as if it were second nature, just to keep an eye on the darkly dressed group. A group of about five, all walking slowly through the parking lot on the other end of the store’s small property. He furrowed his brow for just a few moments; their choice of dress was substantially different from the usual colors of the street gangs that roamed New Haven. Flowing black robes with their hoods pulled over their faces, and unless the Bloods and the Crips were beginning to delve into Satanism to combat ANGEL, Robert nodded once with a simple “Hm!” They seemed to stop for a moment in unison before turning their heads towards him. The manager grinned and nodded again.
“I see you there,” he muttered. He pulled out his cellphone and dialed the emergency number. As he did, one of the hooded members lifted a hand, the loosely fitting sleeve rolling down to reveal a black, scaly arm, ending in a gnarled and dragon-like hand. Robert put his phone to his ear, only to be greeted with a busy tone. A busy tone…?
“Seriously? 911? Busy?” he sighed. His eyes were still on the group, but they had suddenly shifted closer to the building. Uncomfortably close. They were only a hundred or so yards away from him just a second ago! What was going on? The one who had his hand raised was now gathering a globe of dark energy in his scaly palm, dropping Robert’s jaw in both awe and terror. This was not going to be a normal day!
Still got the store phone! he mentally reminded himself frantically as he turned and made for the back room again in a wild sprint. There was a loud explosion, like a sudden snap, followed by a collapse of rubble. Shit, they were inside the building! Robert had a few more yards to go before he could…
A shroud of purple and black energy swirled in front of his office door and in a matter of seconds, one of the cloaked figures materialized in front of him in a disturbing blaze of purple fire, stopping the manager in his tracks. The figure raised its hand, revealing under its sleeve a similar kind of deformity on its arm. Palm facing Robert, it began materializing the globe of dark energy its brethren formed moments before. Acting fast, the manager ducked and kicked a leg out at one of the figure’s knees, suddenly knocking it to the floor and disrupting its spell, and soon he made his way into the office…
…only to learn that was a bad move on his part. The rest of the group showed up in front of him instantaneously, tending to their fallen brother. One of them raised a hand, and all electronic devices in the room, Robert’s cell phone included, popped and smoked. Just what kind of maniacs were these people?! They began closing in, and Robert, closing his eyes and breathing deeply, formulated a plan. The nearest thing to his right was to be his bludgeoning device. Throwing fate to the wind, and very well his life, he reached his arm out and grabbed hold of a steel pipe that he and his managers lay for a future project. Well, now that steel pipe’s purpose was self-defense, and with a wide swing at the heads and chests of the encircling misfits, he made hard contact. The pipe vibrated in his hands as he knocked the cloaked goons off their balance, knocking them into his desk and giving him enough of an opening to escape his own office.
The pipe his only true friend now, Robert made a mad dash for the massive hole at the front end of the building, the bright morning sunlight pouring through it like a beacon of hope. He stopped in his tracks when he saw the familiar swirling of dark energy form at the large opening, and readying his weapon like a baseball bat, Robert assumed a battle-ready stance. The cloaked goons materialized again in front of him, and a guttural sound, almost like laughter, reverberated from each and every one of them. Now all of their arms were raised, the scaly deformed arms exposed, and they were all forming the same globe of dark energy. Robert could feel a grin forming on his lips as his eyes narrowed in deliberation. Adrenaline coursed through him as the memories of his baseball days returned to him, only this time with the added layer of his very life being on the line. Five pitchers, one batter. The distance was much less than the regulated 90 feet from home plate to the pitcher’s mound. Try twenty-five feet. Robert watched as all the globes combined to form one massive ball, bigger than a bean bag chair made to seat five people, the energy reverberating wildly like it was breaking the barrier between reality and imagination itself. Today, he felt like he was going to make a difference…! He backed away a few yards to give himself leeway, and then--!
The loud bang rang through the aisles of the empty store, giving Robert the cue to swing his pipe at the quickly approaching energy ball, and then--!
A white figure suddenly appeared in front of him, holding off the approaching bomb of doom with nothing more than a steel bastard sword. There were disgruntled, throaty hisses coming from the assaulting cult, as if they knew the man who dared to intervene. Garbed in a white tuxedo and white fedora, the overcoat’s tails fluttering wildly from the energy being given off by the great orb, the white stranger turned his head to Robert. A simple nod to the emergency exit door on the farthest side of the store was all the communication the store manager needed. His days of baseball would have to wait as he made a sprint for the emergency exit.
He dashed through the door, disregarding his alarm as he threw fate, his job and his current lifestyle to the wind, making a run for the docking bays of the old mills across the street from the building that was Super Discount Groceries. The earth tremored in a rhythm, like a heartbeat, and each tremor grew stronger and stronger no matter how far from the store Robert ran. Whatever was transpiring at work—at Super Discount Groceries—was not going to end well. Robert ran for what seemed like hours then, ignoring the stares of any passersby he may have run past, stopping to catch his breath at the New Haven Credit Union’s West Haven branch. He felt his heart sink and his stomach lurch as he and several newly awakened and dressed-for-work pedestrians heard a loud explosion in the distance, like cannon fire. He turned in the direction of Super Discount Groceries, witnessing a large and thick cloud of smoke, dust and debris billowing from where the establishment once stood. Soon after, a shockwave spread through the area, knocking several people, including Robert, off their feet. The amount of power from those cloaked morons and that white-garbed…thing…was impressive, even to the former store manager! His eyes scanned over the steel pipe that he was about to whack the gigantic orb of energy with earlier, and sighed in relief. Pulling himself up, Robert could feel a genuine laugh welling in his chest. He was grateful for today, and it was only 7:15 in the morning! As other men and women of other walks of life stood up and dusted themselves off, Robert barked a loud, honest, contagious laugh. Soon, everyone around him was laughing, and they didn’t know why. They just knew they were laughing…
Robert?
He was just happy to be alive.
He was happy to finally be rid of the ball and chain that was his job.
He was happy for the encounter he had today with the shady morons who walked through his parking lot.
The laughing soon stopped, however, as the fedora-donning gentleman in the white tuxedo sauntered casually in Robert’s direction, his bastard sword sheathed and slung casually over his back. Robert’s laugh trailed off, and then with it, his smile. The features on the man were disturbing, yet simple. No hair, no face, skin as pale as his suit. Some of the ladies and gentlemen around Robert fled the vicinity, fearing the unknown the man would bring. Others carried on their usual days, presumably supernatural beings trying to live normal lives among humans, having been used to sights like the man. Once the gap between Robert and the walking white sheet was closed, the man removed his fedora in a wide sweep, bowing low to one knee.
“Greetings, Mr. Marques,” the man spoke formally in a deep and smooth voice, standing and replacing his hat. “I presume you had a pleasant morning?”
“Well…I had a peaceful morning until those…heh, gangsters arrived,” Robert sneered, leaning on his pipe. “What’s the deal with them, anyway? Who the hell are they? And, hey, while I’m at it, how the hell do you know who I am, Mister F—“
“Face. You may call me Face,” the man chuckled. “I used to shop in your store before I ‘died’ at the hands of those five demons.”
“So why not just give me your real name? And if you died before, how are you still alive now?” Robert was quick to shrug. Face simply raised a white-gloved hand, dismissing the thought.
“You have nothing to worry about from those five, for now,” Face continued. “They simply saw you as a threat to their plans. You, like me, do not really matter to their agenda. They are not hesitant in killing any onlookers to keep their anonymity safe, and that is simply what they do.”
“Alright,” Robert huffed, shifting his weight to one leg as he leaned further forward on the pipe. “Enough with the cryptic stories. Who are they, what do they want, and how can I file a lawsuit on them for the loss of my job?”
Face only chuckled again. “So quick to jumping to conclusions about your employment, Mr. Marques. Your job is in safe hands. We can just say, given the conditions of your store, you are on…permanent leave with indefinite pay.”
“Now you’re pissing me off,” Robert said. “You ain’t answering my questions and you keep talking like I’m part of this bigger picture of yours or something. Now spit it out or I’m calling the cops on you.”
“Hard to do so with a shorted out cell phone,” Face reminded him casually before carrying on, “And besides, they are nothing more than an experimental cult deployed by ANGEL and VS Pharmaceutical. Those names, I am sure, you are familiar with?”
Robert nodded, shifting again to stand upright now, his steel pipe beside him like a cane. “Yeah, I hear those names constantly, despite me working over important news times. Not a whole lot of good, but not a whole lot of bad either, like Congress.”
Face chuckled jovially at the sarcasm, delving then into his explanation.
“ANGEL and VS Pharmaceutical have an agenda of their own, as you know. They wish to construct the perfect race of superhuman soldiers, an army powerful enough to make China shake in fear and Russia question its own masculinity. They have already begun circulating the super-soldiers among the ranks of the militaries here in the United States and in those of the Middle East as a test of their capabilities,” he explained. “The results have come back….satisfactory.”
Robert grimaced. ANGEL and VS Pharmaceutical were usually at war with one another, as he learned from newspapers and gossip circulating from customers. Combining their efforts…?
“What are ANGEL and VS doing working together?” he asked, intrigued.
“I’m glad you asked,” Face replied, waving his arms in a big fanfare. “You see…their rivalry is nothing more than a charade for the media. The CEO of VS Pharmaceutical, Inari, and the Administrator of ANGEL, only fight for show. They show up in media outlets like LNN, Vulpine Today and other mainstream news outlets to spread their propaganda about how wonderful their company is and how terrible the other one is.” He pointed an extended arm at Robert, nodding. His tone dropped, almost to a solemn level, as he added, “The truth, however, and as you may have guessed, is that they are both disgustingly bad. Believe me when I tell you.” He let his arm drop to his side then, sighing.
“How do I fit into all of this?” Robert asked with a curious tilt of his head. Face suddenly snapped to attention, lifting two fingers as if to point to something in the sky.
“That…! That will be explained some other time.” Robert scowled then, and if he scowled any harder, he would have stabbed Face multiple times with his glare.
“So why lead me on like this, you moron?!” he shouted through gritted teeth, slamming the pipe to the ground, but before he could even reach out to grab Face by the collar of his shirt…the man was gone. Stunned, Robert bent down to pick his pipe back up. He couldn’t sling it to his person, nor could he sheath it like a normal sword. Were he to carry the piece of metal around like a baseball bat, he would be questioned by the police. He’d have to dump it off somewhere inconspicuous.
So…this was his new life. Robert Marques was a free man, free of his soul-crushing job, free of his ghetto store. He was a man who, while he didn’t show on the surface, was ready to tackle the world for what it was, and not the financial gains it had.
He shook his head, taking deep breaths to let his building rage gradually dissipate.
Day 1 of a very long vacation…perhaps an amazing journey?...was a go.

The now defunct conglomerate, A.N.G.E.L., has a thousands of years old legacy behind it, originating as far back as the early ancient Greek days. During the final years of the War of Fates, one man who rose to senatorial power in the council of Greece ordered a seizure of the libraries for special information pertaining to human anatomy, supernatural beings' abilities and aether wells. While other empires were destroying the books and scrolls that held this valuable information, this man kept his libraries' knowledge to himself, claiming to his people that they were destroyed along with the Ancients and other members of the Staff of Revelation his armies had captured as hostages. He was only known to the populace as J, and he was held in high regards by his loyal subjects, so much so that they were willing to even work for him in a new type of employment one could only deem shady.

Using the knowledge he gained from the research done by the Staff of Revelation, among the other works he held in his possession, J started his own sick experiments slowly. He and several scientists he recruited from all over the Greece area put his captives through several torturous experiments, all just to see how each individual being ticked. They collected samples of all kinds, ranging from blood and waste samples to even semen samples. Interbreeding programs were started in order to produce generations of experimental slaves, and in the meantime more beings were kidnapped from the comforts of common life so they could be subject to Senator J's inhumane methods. His means of capturing the beings in a justifiable manner came as followed:
"They are different from you. They are a threat to your existence. Would you want these beings around your children? Your wives? Would you want your life thrown away at the snap of their fingers? Bring them to me. I will keep you safe, and deal with them."

The public gave Senator J their unconditional support, and soon after funding for his research came into his grasp. The funding was used to found a secret research base: Atlantis. Similar to the lost civilization now lost to the sea, this Atlantis' sole purpose was to perform research on supernatural beings and captive Ancients, all while furthering Senator J's own goals. To see how the beings ticked, Atlantis moved their sights to something else, which aligned with J's ultimate ambition--immortality and world domination. Atlantis researched in secret and the facility grew, both physically and financially. The facility even changed with the times, staying true to every shift in the historical timeline and global paradigm to suit the needs of the science and of J, all while continually to grow downward. Yes, downward. An undersea military and research facility was the product of all of this funding and genetic meddling, and after the collapse of several societies J seamlessly settled into, he made off with a large cut of money and poured it straight into his desires to raise an unstoppable army.

By the time the United Nations gave rise and the world set the stage for modern-day events to transpire, J's calculating mind took advantage of the opportunity as straight away as he could. With a few favors done behind the scenes for different nations with differing views and governing philosophies, he received indefinite funding and support from the United Nations and was given international permission to establish his base expansions hundreds of miles off the coast of New England of the United States, as well as establish land-based branches across the globe. Creating thousands of science-centered jobs, J singlehandedly saved the global scientific community from a most certain annihilation by big business owners, big name bankers and powerful politicians trying to quell the thirst for knowledge. The age-old facility's name Atlantis was changed to Angel Corp.

He waited for the right time and war to use his rapidly growing army of genetically enhanced supersoldiers. Even the pivotal World War II and Korean War were not ideal testing grounds for his superior military. Vietnam came and went. The conflicts in the Middle East were exactly that, just conflict. Kuwait lasted for seven days, barely anything for J to put his soldiers to good use. It wasn't until the War of 1999 that the officially dubbed Administrator J deployed his first wave of supersoldiers along the east coast of the United States. The armies went in, fought with clean and cold efficiency, and returned to base with barely a dent in their numbers. Pleased with his results after the one-year war was over, Administrator J continued down his path with one more milestone in his reach: become a God. As a result, Angel Corp simply became A.N.G.E.L., or the Artificial Neo Genetic Entity Liaison for short.

The next thirty years would provide wild successes in his endeavors, and literally overnight, A.N.G.E.L. became one of the highest invested companies in the entire world. Their name was on everything both military and medical, and even expanded into day to day products like cars and healthcare. A.N.G.E.L. was even responsible, by and large, for rebuilding the Federal Government after its collapse in 2000 from the Y2K Bug. Administrator J met a young business upstart named Neil Adalbert, a man who graduated from UMass New Haven with a Master's in Business Management. The young man started a pharmaceutical company while he was still in high school, named VS Pharmaceutical, and when the two met it was as if Fate intended it to be. A.N.G.E.L. soon partnered with VS Pharmaceutical in its continued journey to create the perfect supersoldiers, using New Haven, Massachusetts as a testing grounds for an impending and calculated war. VS Pharma took care of selling genetically altering over-the-counter medicines while A.N.G.E.L. further trained and grew its militaries for a full-scale assault on the city and its civilians, all while kidnapping as many supernatural beings as possible for their collections of genes. Administrator J had all the cards he needed right in his hand, and he was free to play them at any time.

His arrogance would be his undoing, however, as Operation: Fractured Ascendancy turned the city of New Haven against him and Neil, and quickly brought a bloody war to their separate turfs. Just as A.N.G.E.L. saw literal overnight success over three decades ago, the war brought overnight collapse to the conglomerate. When news hit that A.N.G.E.L. was no more, and their military was defeated, and research destroyed, every investor pulled their money out of the company before the collapse was finalized and done. No one wanted to support a nosediving business. The Federal Government faced a second massive collapse, instantly disintegrating and losing its chokehold on the United States. Anarchy reigned across every state, the economy crumbled into dust, and multibillionaires committed suicide, much like the First Great Depression in 1922. The only difference between 1922 and 203X was knowledge. The knowledge that entities could be rebuilt.

A.N.G.E.L. was over. But The Fallen rose from its ashes.
Some legends just refuse to die.

For millennia, there have been strange locations where large quantities of energy gather. No one really knew why energy gathered here, or what the cause of the gathering pools of energy were. All they knew, all they could gather, was energy collecting en mass in certain spots across the world. For this reason, a group of researchers came together and set out on a journey to investigate these curious spots, recruiting like-minded folks who were interested in obscure and scary topics. Across several sites, researchers found that these gathering spots of energy, these...aether wells, as they came known to be, emitted certain colors and affected their environment in odd ways. Some wells would turn the colors of plantlife around them to exotic shades not indigenous to the area. Some quickened wildlife evolution beyond the thresholds of survivable means. Some provided unexplained energy to otherwise primitive villages. Needless to say, most of the researchers developed aether sickness and fell ill or died while collecting their data. It was in this trying time that the researchers, who came known to be the Staff of Revelation, began a taboo. They recruited supernatural beings for their dangerous work, beings who could withstand the severe weight of the aether wells' power. Results were recorded more quickly and efficiently with the help of demons, angels, vampires and other recruits, and the guild grew tremendously, though at the cost of being obscured by the general paranoid populace.

They soon branched throughout the known world, establishing research facilities all over the super-continent of Eurasia and crossed over the land bridge to a new land, a massive land where aether wells were abundant and the native folk were peaceful and in tune with the energy. The beings here were abundant and various, from humans to animal demons to elves and fae. The humans in this land were born with innate aether-centric powers. By then, the guild's Eurasian human members had evolved to be able to withstand the massive amounts of aether pouring from these wells, and some even developed innate abilities that most normal humans could only call "witchcraft." These humans, as well as the native humans, became known as the "Ancients," and each being was in tune with one particular element. They could still live the normal human lifespan, but with great powers came greater risks. Given Ancients could not use their abilities without giving a bit of their life force in return, they needed to use their powers sparingly. Most Ancients who constantly expended their powers could only live to their mid-fifties if they were lucky, although there were the rarer ones who gave up an important sense such as sight or hearing to continue living into old age.

The Staff of Revelation published their results continuously as they worked, whether they were accepted by society or not. So long as the knowledge of aether wells was in the access of the curious public, the researchers could be ostracized into oblivion for all they cared. However, one crucial turning point soon drove the Staff of Revelation apart and set disaster to the knowledge the guild provided the people with. A war broke out, a war fought between the large guild and several empires looking to eradicate what they feared the most--the Ancients. Blood was spilled first on the Eurasian super-continent, and quickly crossed over into the new lands. Brutal militaries killed innocent Ancients, took several thousand more hostage, and lay waste to the libraries that housed the Staff of Revelation's hard work. Dictators, emperors and monarchs seized any remaining aether well research and kept the information for themselves, out of blind fear that such knowledge in the hands and minds of the public would turn their people against them. Though, as we know from history, uprisings against dictators would happen no matter what. Power was, after all, in the hands of the population--it didn't have to be something as powerful as aether. One particular dictator ordered for his nation's library to preserve the research and bring every bit of it to him. The dictator was only known as J, and he would soon go on to found his own research guild, called Atlantis.

The Staff of Revelation, a guild dedicated to researching the aether wells, was no more. The knowledge revolving around aether and its affects on living beings and plantlife faded into obscurity, the Nikola Tesla of supernatural research as it came to be. However, surviving Ancients who hid from the assaulting Eurasian empires held these facts close, and passed the information on to future generations by word of mouth. Ancients who were still alive were able to pass their genes on to the next generation. Captured Ancients who were forced to interbreed with humans were still able to carry over their traits. The plan to breed out these people fell moot.  Research on aether wells became controlled and limited to almost nonexistent for millennia afterward, and the bloody battles which came to be called the War of Fates drew to a swift and painful close.

To this day, there are still scientists in the world dedicated to recovering and renewing the research in the field of aether wells, using the more modern term "aura points" for strictly innovative purposes.  There are no known major guilds who research aether wells in depth, although HUDSON has included this research in their own multiverse endeavors.  The public has become more open to the concept of aether wells, with most colleges even covering the subject in many physics courses, and engineering firms adopting methods to harness the power as a means of "new energy" while abandoning the old ways of coal and oil.  That is not to say that aether has completely dominated the energy market, but it is slowly making a rise back into the general public eye.  Perhaps history will not repeat itself as it did thousands of years prior, although there will always be those leaders who wish to take power all for themselves.