The Oddities

center}Prologue

"I didn't even know he can bleed!"


"That doesn't matter anymore! What we-", a flaming mortar crashes near their location, bringing a stunned confusion at their disposal. "Damn it! Just grab him and lets' go!"


The two picked up the wounded giant with their remaining strength and fled in a limping speed across the smoked dirt and what used to be New New York. The field, now covered with severed limbs and evil grounded creatures, starts to rumble and crack as Judgement foresaw their plan of retreat. Striking, storming, and demolishing our heroes' path and hope, one last blow is struck and the grasp of the giant is loosened and world-breaker slid from his grip. The blood-flavored gravel swallows the hammer, leaving the grip side up.


"No!" She yells as she uses the remaining power of her thrusting propellers to grab a hold of the tipping body.


"World-breaker is sinking into the ground, we can't afford to lose it! Use the rest of your juice to hold him up and I'll grab the hammer!", the feathered man shouted. He saw her saving attempt to grip the giant's tilting body and took the opportunity to save the massive weapon. Lunging and yelling to rescue what looks inches of the end, he holds it with all of his power in his torso to save it from the earth engulfing it's power. His metal claws start to scrape as the handle is giving into defeat. "Ahhhhh, Nooooo!", he shouts to the top of his lungs.


One propeller goes offline and into malfunctioning due to lack of energy. "I can't hold him much longer, just leave it!", she loses balance and slightly lowers her altitude, dropping the huge demon closer to the floor. Panicking, she tries to grapple his body from the destruction that lays underneath, but in doing so, risks herself into the danger. The titan groans as he lifts his arm to grab her chest piece, pulling her closer and whispers, "Is this it?..."

The Red Baron

Berlin, Germany

(German translated to English)

"If taking out the trash and washing the dirty dishes is too much for you, then maybe you should try getting a stable job, one that doesn't fire you on your second day!" Anabelle yelled across the chipped wallpaper that separated her from her daughter. She reaches up high into the food cabinet to get the spices she needs.

"To be fair mother, they claimed I was too 'hardheaded' to listen to the management team, and you and me both know a Pharaoh does not listen to anyone!" Amelia replied with her chest as high.

"Hey what did I say about speaking that tongue, wait until we get to America!"

"Sorry mom, what's the harm of speaking it now anyways?" Amelia asks.

"I do not have to explain anything to you, young lady. Do not forget to go pick up the lemons from your uncle, you know the soup is no good without the lemon!" Anabelle claims.

"Oh no! The same soup we've been eating for the past six months is going to lose flavor?! Somebody please help!" Amelia snickers in laughter as she gets up to start the dish washing.

"Ha ha, very funny. Just go get the damn lemons, I will take care of the dishes." Anabelle bumps her side with her daughter's to move her away from the rusted sink. She turns the hot water knob to let it heat up and goes back to adding her spices to the soup.

Anabelle makes a living with her 24 year-old daughter in an aged home that can barely be managed to keep after her retirement. Her husband tragically passed away and got buried in her previous life that she painfully remembers from time to time. She keeps many secrets from her past to keep Amelia safe at all costs. She hopes to find a better life in America and to leave all of the terrible memories in Berlin.

Meanwhile, Amelia runs up the exhausted staircase to grab her dark red scarf and dark navy blue coat to fight the cold. she open her window with a bit of a push, exposing the cold brushing winds of Berlin into her room. She pulls her head out of the window only to feel the rushing hair between her smile and ears. Her brown boots scrape at the bottom of the hatch to pull herself up and out of the window, landing on the roof of her garage that had a couple of misplaced tiles. She sneaks up to the edge and kneels down, surenduring to the wind. Her eyes closed as she felt herself in the seat of her most favorite fighter pilot's plane. People have questioned her taste in history, and why "He" stood out to her. As a child, little Amelia would take multiple trips to the Denkwürdige Ereignisse der Geschichte museum to ask the cyber-assistant information about the famous Red Baron. She would activate the robot's trivia application and would score 100% on the fighter's category, every single time.


Her enjoyment of the breeze plundered as she heard the familiar sounds of helpless people crying, men shouting that followed by glass breaking, and the regular cursing of the city's crooks. Amelia did not like the way her town was working it's gears. She knew someone had to do something, someone bigger than any human being.

Amelia was born to be a fighter, just like her mother. She felt that the world needed more than just a police force to help, her imagination of a silent hero in the sky would soon come to reality. She lived with her only parent in the same home who's wallpaper were chipped since the date of purchase. During her childhood, her mother had the skills of an anciet martial arts that would later be explained to her by her mother when she would be ready, The art takes a lot of mastery and time to perfect it finishing blows. Amelia still uses her technique to this day to master each and every strike, and when her mother isn't spectating her every move, she become the perfect gear for the city. The scarf that wraps her warm can transform itself to a hidden cowl to suppress her from those that do wrong. Her saber tooth blade, which was given to her by her mother as a birthday present, sleeps in the side of her boot and gets awoken when needed. Her name has spread like wildfire ever since she introduced herself to the world of hatred and crime. What do they call her you ask? She respectfully passed the torch onto herself into taking the title Red Baron.

Her name runs like a plague through the town as she strikes justice from above. She hops off the roof with a whirlwind flip and grabs the cold light pole to help her ease the fall. She land and rushes to the scream of a woman that cries for help. The Red Baron quickly moves along the dark street and rushes to a nearby apartment complex where the screams are emerging. Her skin, hot with a red shade on her cheeks, boils as the suspense lifts from the cheap carpet. Crawling along silence, she closes in on the shouting; her tooth starts to poke its head out, begging to quench its blood thirst. The Baron cracks the door to real the conflict, she breathes in a surprising take as she exposes the truth of a woman lying on her side while carving her very own arms with what appears to be a knife that should only be in the hands of a butcher. Another corpse is beside her with his neck slashed repeatedly over and over. The Baron quickly makes note of the incident as she acknowledges the rope that is tied to their arms, only to buff a vein. The woman's body is dripping with sweat as her tongue begs for a drop of water. She creeps in, seeing as a human alarm bomb will go off if she were to make too much noise. The poor soul looks up to the Red Baron and asks "Will....he know? Please.. tell me he won't know." The woman sees her kneeling down to listen and proceeds to chat without she stopping her own dismemberment. “He won't know...... will he? You", she pauses to get more attention towards her heavy breathing, "must understand! He looks up to us!" The woman grinds her teeth and tears start to run her crusted face. "That stupid voodoo slut said we will be invulnerable! Please....just don't tell him..."

"Tell who? What are you talking about?" the Baron asks.

"Our son you dumb piece of..." Her mind reconfigured. Her head looks down in shame and she says, " She told us to look. She said if we fill our blood with the blood of the gods we will find our way." She lifts her head to stare into the Baron's eyes. "We only needed money, please, you must understand."

The Baron's face puzzles around the room to find this "voodoo slut" that she mentioned numerous of times. "Who is she? She only gave you drugs and you fell for her scam. Tell me where she is, your son too."

"Oh no, no! She helped us; please don't say such FOUL LANGUAGE!" The woman screamed as she completely hacked off her hand. "I'm sorry....the itching got much worse, that was very rude. I am not usually rude." She body slumps down and she lays her head sideways with her remaining minutes of life. Her eyes turn towards her separated hand and whispers in agonizing pain, "the lady you seek is always with you, as she is with me. Look into me sweethe-".

Amelia crawls up to the expired mother and scavenges for clues of her son and the infamous woman. She snags the ID to submit a later report and finds a washed card that lay in her coat pocket. The Baron read quietly out the writing front and back of the card, "Mediate the following and capture its quest: luft luft atme unter meinen federn". Her curiosity took over her actions and kept the card for later examination.

Fleeing from the scene after leaving an anonymous police call to find the woman's son, she passes by her uncle's home to collect her objective lemons.

"Did it really take you that long to grab some damn lemons?" Her mother asks. "You know how he gets, if it's not the dog story, and then it is the time when he broke the law to save that aged cat. He really needs to go get some friends." Amelia giggles out the ending of her statement. The lemons slice quickly before Anabelle could acknowledge them and her daughter swiftly flies up the stairs.

"Uh uh! Woman come down here to slice these damn-" Anabelle pauses as she sees the lemon slices rolling away from their halves, "-lemons."

Amelia locks her door and reaches into her pocket for the mysterious note. She analyzes it over and over and tries to remember how her mother meditates. Her mother was a very religious woman that Amelia could barely understand why. Anabelle would meditate day by day to restore her inner mind to its full potential every day. She tried teaching her daughter these ways, but the Baron was very impatient with these kinds of things. "Meditate and capture its quest? Eh, well it shouldn't be too hard right?" Amelia assures herself as she sits on her bed pillow. She crosses her legs and leaves the note staring in front of her. Relaxing every muscle and memory in her body, her hands lay on her knees, and she begins to repeat the process.

"Luft luft atme unter meinen federn"

"Luft luft atme unter meinen federn"

The session goes on for less than 20 minutes until her patience choked her out. Grabbing the card and throwing it to the side of the room seemed to be her way of relieving the stress from the meditation. Huffing and growling, Amelia gets up to her bed and lies on her stomach, exposing half of her face to her old mattress. Her eye lid drifts downward as she stared at the tossed card on the floor.

The horrible cycle of taking a nap during a late day has it's consequence of waking up in the witching hour of time. Our hero wakes with a rubbing headache as she widens her eyes to look around the pitch black room. The tossing and turning of her body start to make her sleep drive far away. Her thoughts start to cloud a rainstorm in her mind with the confusing meditation method. She sighs of defeat and wants to get a rematch with the card one more time. She lights the half-melted candle that rests on her night stand and snatches the card right away to set up the ritual as soon as possible.

"Everything in place? Okay...” Amelia tells herself and she takes in one deep breath to release all the tension that was formed earlier.

"Luft luft atme unter meinen federn"

"Luft luft atme unter meinen federn"

The phrase gets repeated over and over, and the smooth darkness starts to relax her soul into submission.

"Luft luft atme unter meinen federn"

"Luft luft atme unter meinen federn"

She begins to feel a lifting sensation from the inside of her body, almost as if she were in the pilot seat of the Fokker Dr1. Her voice becomes softer as the sensation gets deeper.

"Luft luft atme unter meinen federn"

The phrase gets released slower and the earth starts to growl at the summoning of a faint light.

"Luft luft atme unter meinen federn"

At the blink of an eye, a blinding pale light strikes in her eyes and she hears the sound of a bald eagle yelling its power. She gets pushed back with a force, wiping her from her station. In awe, she gets up to be presented a glowing streak that radiates from the floor. The Red Baron whispers, "The quest..."

The Crow

(Miami, USA)

The sweat on their skin cools down from the smoothing water waves that approach them. They laugh their problems away with the cheap martini in one hand and the other holding them together. Curtis and Savannah Reyes are enjoying their first winter out-of-state trip in the warm Miami Beach on their 10 year anniversary together. They gave birth to a successful business of home security named 'Shadow Guards: From the shadows, we got your back! The couple built the security system from the bottom up. With 24 buildings in the USA and over 10,000 employees, their long awaited journey of traveling around the world starts here, in Florida.

"You know, this was a perfect, beautiful, and wonderful idea to come to this, GORGEOUS part of the beach," Savannah burps with a giggle, "...who knew it would be '$1 Martini Monday' for tourists?!"

Curtis grins to towards his wife, trying to keep the balance of both of them. “You really need to know your limits, Savvy, cause I know I don't know mine!" His joke gives off a spit reaction for Savannah. His pocket rings and he mutes the call. The device continues to annoy the couple and Curtis snatches is phone out and answers in a frustrating tone, “I told you, Anthony, if I'm not in town, do not call me!"

“Yes I know sir, but this isn't about work. It's about your dad. He-"

Curtis hangs up his handset and takes the battery out of it and stores it in his back pocket. His mood shifts to a more serious direction and his drink gets thrown to a nearby trashcan. "Curt?” Savannah calls for his attention in a worried voice. "Sweetie is everything okay?"

12 years ago

"Again." A low raspy voice responds to the boys' failing results from a one way mirror that is located on the second floor. The concrete arena surrounds the young Curtis with obstacles and barriers to simulate a training ground. He gets back up on his two feet, using his exhausted knee to push him up. He then picks up the two fallen shotguns that carry less lethal bean bag ammunition to use on his opponents. The boys' face looks to be beaten to a repetitive state with swollen eyes and bleeding lips. Huge purple circles cover his body like a flu symptom. His sparring partners that hide around him seem to be using the same ammunition that he has equipped. Curtis lifts his head in pain and holds his shotguns out to the dark spot in the room. He breathes in an unordinary fashion and holds one of his weapons to the side of his ribs, attempting to relieve his pain.

A softer voice speaks out of the mirror, "Assurez-vous de vous déplacer plus vite cette fois, chérie."

Present

Curtis shakes his head to realign his thoughts and focuses his eyes back to his wife, "Yeah, sorry about that sweetheart. Let's go back to the hotel, yeah?" He asked. "Well, the sun is going down too fast." Savannah leads the way with her fixated walking. The two laugh of their work problems and reassure each other the upcoming locations of their romantic trip around the world. They visit a couple of candy stores along the way, picking up sweets and tarts to decay their teeth at a more 'plastered' state. Walking past the goofy gift shops, they try on different crazy hats and funky glasses with a huge 'MIAMI' logo on the lenses. They pick up a couple of ironic Snow globes that drop Leaves instead of snow. After enjoying their smooth walk back, they head to a nearby ice cream shop to get their favorite flavored ice cream; cotton candy. As Curtis waits for his cold dessert to be served, Savannah encounters an attack on her waffle cone, from a crow. "Git! Go away! My ice cream!" Savannah yelled. Curtis starts to chuckle hard as he sees his wife battling a bird. The trip back comes to an end as they walk into their six star hotel that was booked months in advanced. The suite they ordered has an amazing view of the beach with the glowing lights of Bayside Marketplace. Living room filled with snacks in every corner and soda pop in every mini fridge, it was a fat kid’s wet dream in there. “Thank God we're here; my feet are completely pooped at this point." Savanah claims as she throws her sandals across the room. Curtis runs and dives to the water bed, almost instantly snoring. “It’s only 6 p.m.! You're so la-" Savannah gets interrupted by her own yawning. She tries to fight the temptation of closing her eye lids, but she quickly found herself lying on top of her husband, snoring just like him.

The hungover couple awakes from their slumber in a groggy mood. Curtis yawns as he lifts his head to check the alarm clock that read 12:23 a.m." Sweetie, wake up." Curtis rises up to sit, digging into his eye sockets. Savannah swipes her saliva away that was collected in her sleep. He turns to her with gazes at the committed woman who made him rebuild himself to a better, stronger man. She fixes her eyes on him, catching the stare. “Get outta here you cuter fart face.” she says in a soft voice while slowly slapping his face in another direction. Curtis scoots over to the side of the bed, looking into the bedside mini fridge. "Blegh, no alcohol", he complains. "Savannah, can we go get some beer, tequila, something to burn my soul?"

"Please, you have no soul", Savannah throws the pillow from under her head to her husband's back. "Why don't we just go to a club?"

"Club? Like a night club? Not really a club person, but clubs have bars! Let me search one up real quick." He grabs his phone and heads over to the bathroom. Savannah nods her head and gets up to her luggage to begin her preparedness process. The two dress in a young hipster fashion with hint of luxury brushed in, given the expensive watch on his watch and the beautiful pearl earrings she had, but with a casual black skirt on her and some dark navy blue loose jeans on hi, but they are allowed to wear these things in their late 20's right?

The duo exits the hotel’s entrance and checks their appearances for each other." Good?” he asks. She lifted his tie a little higher and replied, "good". She asked the same question, but he answered, "Wait, you're missing something." He brought her closer and gave a long kiss to make her blush. "Now you're set!" The two continue the walk to the club, joining hands in the misty street light's view.

"I'm so excited! What if they have one of those DJs who scream out 'how is everyone doing tonight?!', and then everybody yells! He then grabs those t-shirt guns and shoo-" Curtis interrupts Savannah, "Is this what you see in every club?" he asks with a raised eyebrow. “You’ve got an odd mind, Savvy", he lets go of her hand and wraps his arm around her waist.

They approach the glowing warehouse with an exciting drive to lure them deeper to its attraction. The line that dew across the block was an easy barricade for them to face. Curtis walks up to the body guards that block the club's entrance and starts to negotiate a deal of their lives. Both with their crossed cliché arms and black, tight shirts, their shoulders block the corners of the warehouse revolving door.

"hey boys, how's that $12.75 an hour treating you two?” Curtis grins as the guards looks at him with an expression of "It's one of those guys again".

"My wife and I are just trying to ease up in this great reviewed building by our community in Yelp and these two visa cards are called black holes." Curtis pulls out two platinum black cards out of his coat pocket and shines theme with the neon lights of the building. The two meat heads look towards each other in a confused matter. "No English?” Curtis asks, until he noticed one of them with a gigantic tattoo of a map location reading "Jalisco". Curtis smirks as his idea floods to exit his mouth. "Mira, amigos. Estas tarjetas le darán mucho más oportunidad de construir aquí en América. por ejemplo; ¿Qué es lo que realmente te gusta hacer para vivir?" The guards smile to each other and proceed to walk towards Curtis. They grab the cards and walk past him with no words spoken.

"What the hell? Ah, whatever. Let's go babe and everyone else too!" The crowd cheers loudly to march behind the star couple. People rush to the sides as they all flood in to what looks like another planet. The building roared with life and music that followed every LED light. Smoking and drinking were a must inside, if you weren’t holding anything, you'd be shoved out! The night snatched Savannah's and her husband's lives away and took them to a realm of no return. Drinking, smoking, snorting, they almost forgot who they were at some point.

Curtis hits the sober pole as he catches a few bald men with symbols on their forehead staring at him. He loses his smile and starts to question if they are actually looking at him or just his way. He wife snaps him out of the trance as she grabs his arm to pull him into a dance circle. He Glances back at their position, only to find them gone. The two dances as time slowed in their favor. Once the groove juice ran, Savannah called it quits and begged for her mattress back at the hotel. Curtis retires his drink at the bar and takes his drunken sweetheart's hand. The two walk out with a heavy alcohol scent that followed their path, but it wasn't the only one following.

The couple cuts a corner down an alley that leads straight to the hotel, but in a flash, Curtis sees his wife get taken by the arm and swung to the wall. Curtis wakes from his intoxicated trance and focuses on the men's swinging arms towards him. He dodges one in reflex and gets caught with another man’s fist afterwards. He loses balance while putting his arm up in defense. The poor husband saw his wife getting taken away as hopelessly tries to fight back. One block after another hit would strike every second, bruising Curtis's face more and more. The fighting skills he learned as a child were trying to capture the advantage, but his intoxication drew him closer to defeat. “Savannah no!" he yelled as his head was slamming against the floor, dropping his concoussiness. The men pick up the beaten body and drop him in the same limo as his wife. Her voice muffles over a brown cotton bag as she asks" Please stop, we'll give you anything! Why are you doing this?!" She cries out as she looks down. “Shut up or we'll cut out both of your tongues!" the driver shouted. Savannah's head nods sideways as she repeated idly said, “No. no please doesn’t." Her voice went to a whisper, "Please I'm sorry if we didn't ...” her voice softly stopped as she felt her husband’s leg. She grabbed onto his ankle, squeezing to stay as close to him as possible.