The Day the World Changed

[Trent Valencia]

Trent was alone, a scene of carnage spread all around him. Limbs, heads and torsos were strewn about the room. Weapons fell where they were dropped only to be picked up again by advancing soldiers. Trent's small reserve force was no match for the army who outnumbered him five-to-one.

An enemy soldier lifted his rifle, aimed right at Trent's head and fired.

"P'choo! You're dead, Valencia!"

The boy smiled and stood up to tower over Trent, who was seated on the floor of the daycare.

"No fair, Erik!" he shouted. "You never play fair!" Trent stood and kicked through the line of Erik's mobile suit figures, smashing and stomping as he went until there was nothing but pieces scattered everywhere.

"Oooo, you're in trouble now! Miss Mary's gonna make you put them all back together yourself!" Erik ran off into the other room shouting, "Miss Mary! Miss Mary! Look what Trent did again!"

Knowing he was about to be scolded, and dreading what his parents would do to him later, Trent sat down and reattached the limbs and heads of the mobile suit figures as fast as he could. ESS arms found their way onto insurgent torsos and vice versa, but if he could make it look like everything was fine, surely Miss Mary wouldn't know the difference.

Erik appeared in the doorway, pulling on Miss Mary's hand and shouting, "Look! Look!" Before Miss Mary could even glance at what Trent was doing, a shockwave blasted apart the window, spraying shards of glass all over the room. Trent, still seated, missed most of it, but Erik and Miss Mary were not so lucky.

"What was that?" Trent asked, but Miss Mary only answered him with a wide-eyed gaze and rivulets of blood that began running down her face. "Miss Mary?"

The daycare attendant dropped to the floor without a sound. Erik stood next to her, dumbfounded. Trent pulled Erik away.

"C'mon, we have to go to the infirmary. My mom's there. She'll know what to do."

The two boys left the daycare and stepped into a strange world, a world where the North African sunlight still beat down savagely upon the ground, but rather than stay inside in the relative cool, people were running haphazardly all across the naval base. In the distance, out where there should have been nothing but clear blue water and sunlight shining off of the ships moored in the harbor, a thick black column of smoke rose into the sky.

"What happened?" Erik asked, not to Trent, not to anyone in particular, not even to himself.

"I don't know. C'mon, let's go!"

As they started to run towards the infirmary, another series of explosions rocked the compound, this time on land and much, much closer. Trent and Erik were thrown back against the wall of the daycare where Trent passed out amidst the sounds of chaos.

To be continued...

[Trent Valencia]

"C'mon, son. Up and at em."

Trent drifted slowly awake, pulled back into reality by his father's voice. He kept his eyes closed for another few seconds. The flattened pillow and scratchy sheets told him he'd been sleeping on a cot somewhere in the infirmary. He'd spent many an afternoon nap here while his mother was on duty. If his father was here, surely his mother couldn't be far behind.

"Hey, Dad. I had the craziest dream."

Trent rubbed his eyes with a knuckle to clear the sleep out of them and stared up into an unfamiliar face.

"Where's my Dad? Who are you?" Trent looked at the man's insignias. Two silver stars. Rear Admiral. A much higher rank than his father. "Sir?" he added for good measure.

The man knelt down beside the bed until he and Trent were eye to eye.

"I'm a friend of your parents. They called me 'Sir,' but you can call me Brody." The man had a kind face but a forced smile as if he'd rather be anywhere else but here. "You feeling okay to walk?"

Trent sat up and swung his legs over the side of the cot. It was only then that he noticed the bandages wrapping his own arms and legs. He reached up to touch his forehead and found it patched with gauze.

"I think so, Brody, sir." Trent stood up and immediately felt the blood drain from his head. The room went dark except for a few bright flashbulbs. Two strong arms caught him before he crashed back down to the cot. As Trent was lifted up and carried off, he rested his cheek against a shoulder bearing two silver stars.

"Where are we going, Brody, sir?" His cheek brushed against the rough material of the man's uniform as his steps quickened.

"Just Brody is fine, Trent. And we're headed to a convoy that will take us off the base and out of Dodge, as they used to say."

Trent's memory played flashes of the scene before he fell asleep: the daycare, shattering glass, ground-shaking explosions, blood...

"Is Miss Mary, okay? And Erik?"

"Your friend Erik is already on the convoy; you guys can ride together."

"And Miss Mary?" Brody's pace quickened further. "Our daycare teacher?"

"I'm sure she's just fine. We'll see everyone once we get ourselves out."

For the first time, Trent noticed the smoke trailing along the ceiling, blackening the stark white walls of the infirmary. Licks of flame curled around doorways and down halls. It was eerily silent. No alarms, no orders being shouted, no gunfire...only footsteps.

"Is my mom at the convoy?" Trent tightened his grip around Brody's neck so he wouldn't be dropped in his hurry to escape the burning medical facility.

"She sure is, pal. She sent me here to get you. You'll...we'll see her soon."

"And my dad? Is he still out on his ship? Is he coming back to see Mom and me?" Brody held him tighter still, tight enough that Trent could drift back into sleep if he'd wanted and would be safe and secure.

"I'm sure he's out there fighting the good fight. That's what we need to do, too. Can you do that, Trent? Can you be a good soldier?"

Trent nodded his head against Brody's shoulder. He shut his eyes tight as they burst out of the heat of the burning building and into what was once the Tunisian Naval base of E.S.S. and was now a raging inferno.

To be continued...

[Trent Valencia]

Trent didn't need to look at the carnage around him to know that the base was in bad shape and that he and Brody were very much in danger. He could smell things burning all around him: buildings, bodies, even the water itself thanks to a layer of fuel skimming along the bay's surface. A curtain of fire was closing in on the two of them, but Trent kept his eyes shut tight against the red-orange glow.

He heard a barrage of popping sounds; whether they were the bursting pockets of air within the burning wooden beams or more gunshots fired in the assault, he had no idea. There were few shouts or screams on the air so Trent hoped the worst was behind them. If he had opened his eyes he would have seen that the worst actually lay just ahead of them.

Two Pisces Mobile Suits parted the curtain of flame as they rose from the fiery bay and stepped onto shore. Each standing fifty feet tall, the suits could have simply stepped on the flesh-and-blood forms of Trent and Brody. Instead, they opened their shoulder-mounted missile launchers and fired off a barrage. The next thing Trent heard was a thunderous roar of the world cracking in half.

Somehow, miraculously, both he and the Admiral were unscathed, though thick smoke billowed all around them. As it cleared, Trent opened his eyes for the first time since the infirmary. He looked up. Standing amidst the curling smoke was the glimmering form of an E.S.S. Mobile Suit, its legs arcing over the two humans whom it protected from the blast by a building-sized shield that had been anchored into the ground just feet away from them. A voice rose above the chaos.

"Admiral, sir. Stay put. I'll handle these two and then escort you to safety."

As the massive feet of the Mobile Suit stepped in front of the shield, Trent watched as its gargantuan hands drew a dual scythe from its back. The blades ignited with a hum and a whiff of ozone. The Pisces suits, now faced with an enemy that far outmatched them both, began to withdraw into the water. The E.S.S. suit launched itself forward with phenomenal speed and sliced the amphibious suits in half with one clean strike. Parts of the ravaged suits fell into the burning water and exploded, sending a flaming rain falling down upon Brody and Trent. A second Mobile Suit appeared out of the destruction and extended its hands over the two of them, forming a metallic umbrella that shielded them from the worst of the burns. A new voice addressed them both.

"Glad you're safe, sir. Now, if you don't mind, let's get the hell out of here."

As a hatch opened in the second Mobile Suit's chest, a zipline with a safety harness was lowered down to the ground. Trent looked Rear Admiral Broderick Thompson in the eye, not with fear but with excitement.

"Who are they?" he asked.

"They, Master Valencia, are the cavalry. And they're here to take us to the convoy, so let's not keep them waiting."

As Trent rode high into the sky on a zipline tethered to an E.S.S. Mobile Suit, carried in the arms of the Rear Admiral himself, a bittersweet realization took hold of him. This is what he was meant to be: a Mobile Suit pilot protecting the innocent and defending the weak. But for the good guys to be necessary, evil would have to exist in the world along with the death and destruction that came with it.

Trent, at five years old, thought that he'd like to fight on the side of right and that it would always be as simple as good vs evil. As if he hadn't seen enough examples for one day, he was about to get another lesson in the ambiguous evils of humanity.

To be continued...