The Dawn of the New World

Every single nano machine within Hao Xuan’s body pulsed with energy, building up to something big.

“Interference Protocol activated,” a notification popped up, swiftly followed by its sudden expulsion.

A blue bubble expanded outwards with Hao Xuan’s body as the center, covering the Puer within. It tried to activate the fifth appendage once again but as soon as its fingers started moving, strings from the blue bubble that looked like spider webs shot forward and covered it completely.

The Puer jerked back, panic ridden from the sudden loss of its life saving ability. Hao Xuan was watching from behind it, waiting to see if it would actually work or not but seeing that it did, he leaped forward.

With one hand he pushed the Puer down and with the other grasped the fifth appendage, ripping it clean off the Puer’s body. Something took over him in that moment and he completely lost control over his body.

His hands moved by themselves, bringing the appendage closer to his face. Then his mouth opened and without even realizing it, swallowed the appendage whole.

He could feel it entering his mouth, the sensation of its rough skin against his tongue was still carried over clearly to his brain.

The muscles in his throat moved by themselves, pushing the appendage further down his gullet. And as soon as it reached his stomach, an explosion occurred.

*BOOM*

Hao Xuan’s entire body twitched, expanding by several inches to compensate for the sudden expansion and to keep itself from blowing apart.

His eyes rolled back into their sockets as a feeling of intense heat overtook him.

“Warning! Intrusion Detected!”

“Warning! Information overflow! System overloaded!”

Two more warning popped up but Hao Xuan was in no shape to respond to them.

The Puer that was screaming in pain and horror pushed him off itself and fired another red beam, this one impacting directly with Hao Xuan’s body and sending him flying off into the distance.

He flew through the air for a good ten to fifteen seconds before making an abrupt landing.

“AAAHH!” Hao Xuan pulled himself out of the two-meter-wide crater, screaming in terror.

The whites of his eyes were the only thing visible as he flailed about beating his chest, trying to tear open his skin.

“Warning! All systems shutting down. System Reboot initiated, standby.”

Fragmented warnings in big red letters covered Hao Xuan’s vision completely, only Baracus’s sound was coming through in one piece but it was falling on deaf ears.

The nanotech had completely stopped functioning.

Hao Xuan felt like his innards had completely evaporated. He couldn’t even throw up blood because most of it had burned away from the impact of swallowing the Puer’s fifth limb.

It wasn’t as ordinary as he had expected and swallowing it as he just did caused a great deal of physical and mental harm. The limb held the unique ability that belonged to the Puer and somehow, Hao Xuan had acquired some aspect of it.

But obviously he did not know how to control it, not that it was stable to begin with. It belonged to a demonic being, a real demon and his human form as it was now was not able to deal with it.

He was seeing things, visions of the past and the future in no specific order. He couldn’t even tell if it was him in the visions or someone else. It was psychedelic experience to say the least and much less enjoyable.

In one of them he was fighting against giants made of light and fire. In another battling a creature that had moons for eyes. In one he held a sleeping child in his arm that called him father; in another he held its burnt body. In one he was teaching martial arts to a bunch of playful youngsters; in another he was killing them.

Hao Xuan grabbed his head from the waves of intense pain that kept getting stronger, before punching himself in the hopes of passing out. His body shook back and forth before twisting left and right akin to a warping image.

In the span of 60 seconds he saw more than a million different faces and numerous different lives. Some that will be, some that could have been, some that would never be, and some that should have been.

Hao Xuan screamed until his vocal cords gave out, stopping only when Baracus finally restarted and the nanotech resumed their functions once again.

“System Reboot Complete.”

“Foreign Bodies Detected. Temporal Disturbance detected. Initiating countermeasures!”

*Zzzzt*

The nanotech reorganized, releasing small sparks of white electricity that stabilized Hao Xuan’s body.

“Reality Anchor Created. Temporal disturbances quarantined.”

Hao Xuan’s eyes returned back to normal and he fell back lifelessly. Black smoke followed by a charred smell escaped from his eyes, nose, mouth and ears while white steam rose from the rest of his body.

The raindrops continued to fall and even though for the first few seconds that evaporated before even touching him, now they fell on his skin further lowering his internal temperature.

Hao Xuan laid in the mud, staring at the rumbling clouds above him with an absentminded expression. He couldn’t remember anything that had happened after he swallowed the fifth limb. If he did, it would save him from a lot of heartache that was coming his way but alas, something’s weren’t meant to be.

Yet the loss of memory couldn’t stop the flow of tears that were streaming down the side of his face.

“Can you hear me?” Baracus’s voice sounded in his head, bringing him back to reality.

Hao Xuan blinked twice since that was all he could muster right now.

“Good, at least you are coherent enough to answer. Over 40% of internal organs have been damaged.”

“Initiating recovery process. Emergency treatment implemented.”

The sound of pitter patter came from behind him. Hao Xuan forced himself to look up and saw three small undead staring at him from a distance.

His first instinct was of panic. They were close enough to reach him with a single jump but then he paused after noticing their strange behavior.

They were just sitting there on all fours, looking at him much like confused children, rotating their heads left and right.

“Krrerrr”

“Krrrr”

Strange noises came from their mouths.

‘Why aren’t they attacking?’ Hao Xuan thought inwardly.

Gathering every bit of strength he could muster Hao Xuan pulled himself up, not that it would do much good in his condition.

Seeing Hao Xuan move, one of the undead took a couple of cautious steps forward but all of a sudden its head jerked to Hao Xuan’s left and it let out a sharp howl before jumping back several meters behind a rock.

‘Huh?’

Hao Xuan looked to his left and found a person standing there.

“I was wondering what all the noise was about, so it was a guest. Oho, it looks like you have been through a tough fight, eh?” a slightly amused voice said.

***

Authors Notes:

Sorry for the wait guys, internet was completely down :/