1 Year Previously

         Ben walked through his apartment door; he had worked the late shift at the meat factory.

     "Diana?" he called, setting down his bags. "How's our little girl doing?"

     Ben walked into the living room of his apartment but stopped. Everything was trashed; the chairs were overturned, the television had been broken, and papers were all over the floor.

     "Diana?" Ben asked, panic rising in his voice. "Diana!"

     He ran into his daughter's bedroom, but everything in there was destroyed too. He ran around the house, screaming his family's names. There was no response, and he stopped before the far wall.

     Etched into the very plaster was a burnt image in the shape of a black dragon. Scrawled in dark lettering were the words: GONE.

     "What?" Ben stammered. "No!"

     His family was gone. They had been taken, but by whom he did not know. It wouldn't be until the authorities came that the culprits were identified as members of a terrorist organization known as the "Black Dragon".

     Around the country, people had gone missing in similar scenarios. Thousands of people, families, and children had been taken by the Black Dragon for mysterious reasons. No one knew why, no one knew how, and no one could stop them.

     "NO!" Ben had yelled in agony.

**

Present Day

     "Bastards!" Ben screamed, throwing himself at the men in front of him.

      He practically flipped the table, lunging at the monster in the navy-blue fedora. He punched him in the jaw, feeling the flesh give way under the force, and whirled around to hit the other man as he jumped on top of Ben.

     "Stop!" someone yelled.

     Ben's arms were painfully pinned behind his back, and his body was harshly shoved to the floor. Over him stood one of the men that had been sitting next to the man in the fedora.

     "You sick-minded bitches!" Ben hissed under his breath. "How dare you think that you would get my aid after what you did. I'm going to fucking kill you!"

     "We understand what we have done," the man calmly said back to Ben, casually dabbing at the blood on his lip. "But we have a proposition for you."

     "To hell with you proposition," Ben spat.

     "If you aid us," the man continued, "you will be reunited...with your family."

     Ben stopped struggling, stunned by the unexpected news, "T-They're still alive?"

     His enemy nodded, "You will be reunited with them, but only if you give us your assistance."

     "Liar!" Ben screamed. "You're nothing but a deceitful liar! I saw what you did all those months ago! I saw the explosion over the water! You're nothing but murderers!"

     The man pulled out his cell phone and flipped across the screen a couple of times. He came to a video and showed it to Ben.

     "This was taken seventy-two hours ago," the man said.

     On the screen was a video feed of a woman sitting, in what appeared to be, a cell. She was looking around, but then she gazed almost directly into the camera. In a heartbeat, Ben already knew the identity if the woman, his heart had known before his mind.

     "Diana!" Ben whispered, tears beginning to roll down his face. "Where's my daughter?!"

     "She's alive, and well too," the man answered.

     Ben began to sob at the sight of his wife. He had always assumed that they had been killed, and that he had been left alone. He thought he was alone in the dark, unforgiving, world. The idea of being reunited overwhelmed him with emotion.

     "I-I'll do it," Ben whispered through gritted teeth before he slackened. "I'll...help you."

     The man put his phone away, "Good."

     Ben was released from the iron grip of the man with the navy-blue fedora. He rolled onto the ground and slowly stood up.

     "What exactly do I have to do?" asked Ben, with a tone of bitterness and tears still glistening in his eyes.

     "Retrieve the Stone of Ascension," the man responded. "Take this file, all of the information you are going to need will be in there."

     A thick file was pushed into Ben's hands, and the men got up to leave. Inside, Ben felt a grudging feeling that he shouldn't be trusting the men. But the prospect of being reunited with his wife and daughter was too much. If there was a chance, even a small glimmer of a chance, that he could see his daughter's smile again then he would take it. As the men walked out of the bar, Ben stood for a moment with the file in his hand. He felt neither happiness nor sadness, but he did feel hope.

     He had...hope.

**

     Later that night, as Ben sat in the very same apartment that his family had been abducted from, he poured over the thick file he'd been supplied with. They wanted him to go to a place called Starlight Laboratories in San Diego, which was where the Stone of Ascension had been brought after its discovery just mere months prior. The archaeological team had wanted it to be analyzed and shown to the world, but after the artifact was proven to be real the U.S. Government had other plans for it. The stone was to be tested, and to see if any secrets could be garnered from it.

     Ben flipped a piece of paper on the file and stared at the description of the history of the stone. His eyes burned from the strain of reading as he focused in on the oddly-small print. Legends about the stone went back millennia, to an ancient race of people that had long gone extinct. Most of their religious beliefs appeared to be centered on beings from the stars. According to one particular legend, the stone had been given to them from a god descending from the heavens. It had been a gift from him, after a valiant warrior sacrificed his life to defeat a barbaric titan. However, one of the men of the civilization feared the being and used the stone to imprison him in the Realm of Darkness; a distant dimension of isolation.

     The god-like deity who presented the stone was seemingly referred to as Abraxas. Their interpretation of him was a shadowy figure. There was a picture within the file of a crude cave-painting of the being, and Abraxas seemed to resonate with an unearthly glow. He had a dark face with red eyes, and merely looking at it gave Ben the chills. It was, of course, all legend, but if the Stone of Ascension was true who knew what else could be?

     Ben looked at the crumbled cave-drawing of the Stone of Ascension. It was shone as a circle of multi-colored life, which compared remarkably  well to the supposed real picture of it. Something about it seemed fake to Ben though, and he knew that he would not totally believe its existence until he held it in his hand. All his life, Ben had never cared much for folklore, legend, or conspiracy theories. His mind was always centered on the city he lived in, and the situation at hand. He never had time to dabble in the fantastical, and part of that stemmed from him growing up in an all-too-realistic world. Nevertheless, he simply had to remember what he was doing the job for: his family.

     Ben searched through the remainder of the file and scanned the plane tickets to San Diego that were inside. The men had said that he was the only one who could pull off the heist, but Ben wondered if that was really true. He had never considered himself particularly skillful at what he did, nor had he ever considered himself better than anyone else. However, he had gained a reputation from a lifetime of being on the streets and running projects. Despite the fact he'd gone off the grid for a couple of years to be with Diana, his reputation had never faded from the streets of New York.

     Ben looked at the tickets, seeing that he was scheduled to fly out in 48 hours. That would give him ample time to prepare for the voyage at hand. He closed the file and laid it on his old table, sitting back on his creaky cot and staring at the skeleton of Platinum Tower. Ben remembered back to a particular event in his career, one that helped shape the modern perception that everyone held of him

     He had taken up a job robbing a bank with an old buddy of his. After the ordeal, though, he and his friend never quite spoke to each other again.

     What had happened was that the police had surrounded the bank, and Ben, along with his buddy, were trying to escape. They were outside the perimeter of the structure and making a run for it, but the authorities were quickly gaining on them both. They were cornered in an alley, with only one fire escape snaking its way to the top of one of the near buildings. Ben knew that only one of them could make it, so he shot his partner in the leg to slow down the cops. He knew his partner would have to stay and put up a fight, giving Ben enough time to scale the fire escape.

     It was brash, but he became one not known to be trusted. From that point on, he worked alone with no further accomplices. His life of crime continued for some time, until he got seriously injured in a car-chase. Ben was taken to a hospital where he was cared for by a kind nurse that would later become his wife.

     Her name had been Diana Tess.

     At first, she simply regarded him as any other patient. Soon, though, her visits and checkups became more frequent. The two began to talk, and she seemed to be attracted to Ben's dangerous past. He promised to meet up with her again after he recovered and was taken away.

     He spent a few months in prison, but got out on parole. As soon as he was free, Ben tracked down Diana and the two began to see each other. He was attracted to the sense of peace that she seemed to instill in him when he was around her. It was something that he had never experienced in any relationship before. Ben was so used to being hit and punched, that he had never quite understood the concept of love.

     Diana Tess had been a beautiful woman with thick, flowing brunette hair. She had two, intelligent brown eyes that would capture Ben in a kind of trance whenever he looked into them. Diana was young, in her early twenties, when she met Ben and had just started out as a nurse in St. Angelica's Hospital in Upstate, New York. The two would talk for hours into the night on their dates, and she gave Ben a glimpse into a world that he could never have a dreamed. It was a world of parents, friends, and comradery. Ben wanted so desperately to be a part of that world, but he would forever feel isolated because of his origins on the streets.

     Time passed, and Ben scratched enough money for an engagement ring. He took her out on the bay for a romantic night and proposed. She didn't even seem to care about his lack of a job, because she was so blinded by love. Ben never quite knew what she saw in him, but what he saw in her was angelic. She was young, untouched by the harshness of the world. Ben would often picture her as an unblemished swan with pure, white feathers that never got tarnished. They were together barely a few months when she became pregnant with their first child.

     Her birth was the happiest day of Ben's life. They named their new daughter Hope, a name that Ben especially took to. They were his entire life: her and Diana. Nothing else mattered, and the world didn't seem as harsh as he previously had thought. A few years passed, and Hope grew into a toddler. The family would often go on walks through Central Park, and they would point out buildings on the skyline. Diana's favorite place to sit at was the Pierce Memorial, before it got trashed by angry civilians. Diana had always had an admiration for Aaron Pierce, and she had often stated that her dream was to go work in the Medical Division of Pierce Enterprises.

     Life was good for the family, and their income improved when Ben got a job at a meat-processing plant. The money was sparse, but it was money nevertheless. Diana got a promotion, and the family was looking at possible schools to put Hope into. Their life was normal, until it happened.

     Ben came home one evening, and they were gone. His life, the life he and Diana were building, was gone. Ben was devastated, and he was angry at everyone for their disappearance. He went into denial, and he hunted the streets for information on the whereabouts of his family. The authorities had said it had been the Black Dragon, and that they were abducting people all over the country. When Ben asked for what reason, they said they didn't know. This prompted him to nearly throw one of the officers through the wall.

     Suddenly, the future grew dimmer and darker. Ben was hit with depression, and things worsened when he was fired from his job. Nobody else would hire him because of his criminal record, so he resorted back to his primal instincts: crime. Ben began taking up clients and rich buyers looking for artifacts, and he garnered a reputation as a burglar of sorts. He was ashamed at himself for having to go down the same path he had tried to avoid for so long, but it was the only way he could survive. Ben would sit in his apartment, sometimes, and just stare at the wall starving. The hunger would claw at his stomach like a savage animal because he didn't have enough money to eat.

     He grew more savage. Ben's fighting techniques grew more brutal, and his value of human life deteriorated. The assumed deaths of his wife and daughter left him a grief-stricken shell of a human being. He would get into fights and take out entire gangs on his own at times. Ben's physical physique grew to startling proportions, and the savage look in his eyes grew in an ever-increasing amount of intensity.

     As Ben lay on his cot, preparing to embark on a journey working for the people he hated most, he reflected on his life. He saw all the struggle, all of the pain, and all of the violence that he had to endure in his lifetime. Ben wanted to change, and he wanted things to get better.

     "I'm so tired," he whispered to himself, closing his bloodshot eyes.

     He was tired of the struggle, and of the uncertainty. Ben knew that after he retrieved the stone and got his family back, he would kill the members of the Black Dragon. There was a fire within his being telling him that they needed to die.

     They needed to die.

     The Black Dragon needed to die.