PHANTOM : Cosmic Birth

Professor Zack Zeeman sat assiduously in his futuristic laboratory, constructing doomsday contraptions.

He modified his aluminum visor, upgrading its thermal vision goggles to enigmatic multifunctional laser projectors.

His passion for science propelled him, fueling his curiosity to experiment with a variety of optical materials in prisms, sapphire and glass.

Fascinated by the full spectrum of the prism's dispersion, as well as its radiation according to wavelength and refraction, reminiscent of an intriguing, blinding rainbow, the scientist's specificities kicked in, an attestation to his choosiness.

Studying the energy absorption of the electrons in the optical material's atoms, the Professor meticulously amplified the purifying flow of electrical current.

The extra energy excited the electrons, moving them from a lower-energy orbit to a higher-energy orbit around the atom's nucleus.

After three failed experimentations and a ceiling set ablaze, Zack grinned in satisfaction, on completion of his latest invention.

He tweaked a few explosives, modifying their unbridled nuclear power.

And lastly, he forged a pair of clawed gauntlets from galvanized steel, their razor sharp talons, glistening in synchrony with his onyx black wings.

Finally his bizarre experimentation was complete, his efforts, fruitful.

With that, Zack donned his fascinatingly nightmarish tactical combat gear and took off into the wild blue yonder.

...

"Alright everyone, that's a wrap!" Bobby Olusola, V.A.P.O.R.'s managing director proclaimed.

The software engineers sighed in relief, preparing to retreat back home, after a tedious day at work.

Platinum robots deactivated in perfect synchrony, gargantuan industrial bots shutdown, rhythmically.

The sonically engineered L.E.D. lights flickered dimly, fading into utter darkness with rapid succession.

Employees moved with briskly urgency, transferring barrels of biohazard elementals and gallons of radioactive waste to the warehouses.

The marvelous megastructure stretched into the evening's stratosphere, its voluminous breadth, devouring the wastelands.

Yet, V.A.P.O.R.'s mega factory for robotic reproduction was responsible for the most toxic environmental crimes in the city, polluting the vast lagoons of Ikeja with radioactive waste.

Even the fish had begun to mutate, generating an extra head or two, inedible for human consumption.

And as night fell, a baneful U.F.O. was spotted at the rooftops by surveillance cameras, glistening in its neon armaments, under the moonlight.

Bobby Olusola, incognizant of the threat creeping up on him, inspected every corner of the stupendous factory, scrutinizing every chamber.

The thirty five year old, most certainly feared his boss' rage and would do anything in his power to win the Billionaire's approval.

Benga Folarin was a man famous for his explosive tempers.

He often transferred the aggression to whomever his eyes first riveted to, resulting in over a thousand fired staff.

Forthwith, Bobby stumbled into the enormous kitchens, intrigued by the fascinating chinaware and ageless cocktails, pondering why they had never been used.

Concurrently, a soft thud reverberated behind him, stimulating his curiosity.

"Who's there?" he called, particularly unperturbed.

"John? Ola? Soji? That you?"

A hushing silence accompanied Bobby's voice, clouding his cerebral vortex with suspicions.

Abruptly, soft footsteps echoed through the doorway, reminiscent of an impalpable force, unseen by the naked eye.

"Who's there?" Bobby cried aloud, his heart skipping a beat.

Hitherto, as if to mock his tears, the winged predator emerged from the shadows, his talons, glistening in the moonlight like a thousand splinters of diamond.

A brutal swipe to Bobby's chest, flung the employee backwards, crashing him into the steel doors.

The unbridled force of the impact left his silhouette calved into the abysmally hollowed dent as he gasped rigorously in suffocation, bleeding internally, choking on his own blood.

Three deep lacerations ran across his chest, his assailant's talons, barely missing the heart by a millimeter.

The image of the U.F.O. materialized, ambling out the darkness, his sixty foot wingspan, gleaming like onyx, beating with robotic gentleness and fluidity.

His pulsing emerald thermal goggles glowered in the shadows, his fiendish aluminum mask, akin to the nightmarish face of death.

"You.." Bobby gasped, wedging the rapid blood flow with his scarlet stained shirt, applying pressure on the open wounds.

"You're that U.F.O. from the news, Scavenger."

Zack's feet were non vacillating, despite being recognized.

He clutched onto Bobby's neck with a cynical grin, raising him in the air, until his feet hovered over the floor.

"Interesting choice of nicknames," his distorted baritone, altered by the acoustic frequencies of his visor, took on a rich robotic cadence, laced with sarcasm.

"Which I shall cherish, henceforth.

Scavenger.. a haunting pseudonym, beginning to stick, already."

The winged assailant tightened his grip, strangling the employee, vehemently.

Bobby had never witnessed anything more powerful, an unforgiving grasp with a magnitude, reminiscent of a vice.

"Please.. I have done nothing to deserve a gruesome fate such as this," he coughed.

"Indeed?

And yet, I was blessed with a photographic memory since birth.

How do you think I got all these P.H.D.s?"

So understand that I could never forget the sound of your whining for eons and eons to come," Scavenger mocked, his tone, a gentle whisper.

"I swear on my mother's grave, we have never met," Bobby gasped in exasperation, desperately.

"Then you might as well join her," the Professor retorted.

Concurrently, it dawned on the director, the realization of the murderer's identity.

The night of the explosion loomed across his memories.

The spectered fragments of a wounded Professor, lingering in excruciating pain with a throat, wedged between his unforgiving grip, at the mercy of terrorists, led by the notorious Viper.

"Impossible!" Bobby gasped beneath his breath, two coughs accompanying his words in rapid succession.

"How? You were so.. frail.

How did you.."

"Survive?" Scavenger's intonation bore the stench of mockery.

"Actually, the Professor died that night.

Yet, reborn in the cataclysmic infernos.. was the Scavenger!"

The winged assailant sunk Bobby into the steel doors once again with maliciousness, the bang reverberating through the night.

V.A.P.O.R.'s director shattered his ribs, elbows and wrists at the sheer intensity of the unbridled impact.

Groaning in a puddle of his own blood and tears, Bobby relied on V.A.P.O.R.'s ingenuity as a last resort.

"Now, tell me, where is Benga Folarin?

You've got three seconds," Scavenger's robotic cadence was overshadowed by his swiping gauntlets, talons retracting with a husky shrill.

"He.. uhh, he's outta town," Bobby croaked.

"Two!" The assailant hastened the countdown.

"I swear, he's not in town!" The employee whimpered.

"He's at sea, supervising his imports, grande vessels, innumerable containers, numbering into tens of thousands.

The good stuff, ya know, stuff for business! I'm telling ya!"

"One!" Scavenger's cold whisper stung the employee's soul.

But Bobby had long been prepared for uncanny extraterrestrial attacks such as this.

With a briskly little finger, he clicked on the control buttons of the dented doors he leaned against.

They slid open with frenetic motion, sensors compromised, seeming redundant in grace and fluidity.

Suddenly, the slumbering bots were activated, their platinum sophistications, glimmering in the dark, their pulsing lenses, glittering in the shadows.

Abruptly, the blue specters in their synthetic eyes discolored scarlet, a dark contingency measure, programmed by the nefarious Billionaire entrepreneur.

The A.Is started at Scavenger, their motions, akin to haunted puppets.

"I had reckoned these were household bots, programmed with simple domestic tasks, oblivious to combat, whatsoever," Zack pondered behind the nightmarish visor of the Scavenger.

"Mr Folarin, just what are you hiding?"

The bots darted through the air, their combustible jet packs, propelling them to supersonic speeds, unimaginable.

Mere inches close to the winged predator, the antihero unleashed the wrath of his laser projectors.

The emerald green lenses heated up in a crimson pulse, wreaking a gorgeous beam of despair, reminiscent of a prismatic spectrum.

The rays decimated the robots, severing them like mere play toys.

In the interim, the few that somehow managed to evade the searing laser beams fell by the uncannily swift talons of the E.T.

Scavenger proved to be an unstoppable force and an immovable object, all at once yet, Bobby resiliently unleashed more A.I.s at him, attempting to flee at the heat of the battle but his fractured spine and limbs only slowed him down.

In the interim, the nano-bots regenerated machine guns from their arms, plates shifting and morphing as they opened fire at the extraterrestrial but his steel wings shielded him from the maelstrom of fury.

In mere seconds, the nuclear scientist emerged triumphant, annihilating the weapons of the adversary with a prismatic laser beam.

Bobby crawled into the warehouse, at snail pace, making his way to an articulated truck when the flickering shadow of the bewildering xeno-human eclipsed his.

Scavenger sank a scythe shaped feather into his victims' ankle, pinning him to the ground with the swiftness of a searing ray.

Bobby's squeaky wails saturated the hemisphere, shattering the peace of night.

"Why do you mourn? We reap what we sow," the winged assailant taunted at him.

With bewildering pace, he impaled Bobby's other ankle with a second tendril, blood, akin to fine wine, oozing like a fountain.

Slowly, the Scavenger sauntered towards the face of the employee, yanking one last feathery blade from his great dark wings.

It seemed to shrill, shimmering like onyx.

"You're a demon!" Bobby lisped in excruciating pain.

"Fallen angels make the best demons," the Scavenger replied in mockery, the shrilling cry of his tendril, accompanying his words.

"Yet, scumbag like you will always have a V.I.P. spot in Hell.

So, see ya soon," the xeno-human's reply was bereft of humanism, a cold inhumane cadence.

With one resolute blow, the Scavenger ran the tendril through Bobby's occiput, pinning his skull to the ground.

The victim's incessant whimpering hushed to utter silence, laying in a pool of blood, akin to rum.

The culprit vanished into the night, soaring above the crime scene with mellow precision.