Perspective: 3rd person

A group of people are hiding in a bus stop building near the edge of a city. Nowhere else seemed safe. The city had been overrun and was in the process of being occupied. Whatever country it was didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that they were now there. There had been zero warning and they had sweeped through the streets with military precision. Those that fought back were being killed and those that hadn’t were captured. Even the latter option didn’t seem preferable as adults were being used for hard labor and the children slowly indoctrinated. It was not something that happened in a single day but it had been around a week. Nobody had come to rescue them and sectors of the city had been falling under control one by one. This section was one of the last. They had given one of the patrols the slip so far but a second one would catch them. They had agreed to all play dead if another group passed. A group of seemingly dead people wouldn’t stand out. Not when tanks rolled around in the open now.

Sure enough, another unit walked down the street. Everyone from young adults to the elderly drop to the sidewalk in front of the bus stop. The unit walks up to the group and stops.

“Another group of dead huh? Did the initial surveillance group kill them and not report it?”, one of them asks out loud.

“… are they really dead?”, another one questions.

The leader steps forward.

“Either way, we need to check.”

The anxiety of the group reaches a fever pitch as they walk up to the nearest person on the ground: a young adult woman. They pull her upright and reach out to check for a pulse.

Suddenly loud groovy music seems to get closer to the area. The soldier pauses. A wide grin spreads over the face of the woman without any movement otherwise. The otherworldly knowledge that they were all saved flowed through her. The group stopped playing dead and looked towards the sound. The group of soldiers were fully focused on the source of the sound as well.

A man wearing a colorful unusual mask and a flashy almost circus preformer silver outfit sauntered over to the group. An almost antique looking boom box rested on his shoulders playing the music. He walked over to the bus stop and set the boom box down on the seat. He started dancing in place. Soldiers and citizens just stared at the strange man. The tone shift was too shocking for the soldiers. The citizens seemed to have their attention drawn to him by some other force.

“C’mon! Dance with me!” The man said cheerfully.

The soldiers snapped out of their stupor and fired at the man. The gunfire stopped almost immediately in a new type of confusion. Absolutely none of the shots hit. It was like they had missed on purpose but they found that they simply couldn’t physically point their weapons at the man.

The citizens stood and the man pointed at them.

“I need a good crescendo. Give it to me,” he told them.

Colorful crystals the size of a baseball materialized in the air in front of all of them. Out of instinct they took them. The soldiers turned their attention to them instead and fired.

Just like the man, not a single shot hit target. They had some kind of protection. Now it was time to fight back. Their loved ones and city could be saved if they were careful and strategic. Whatever eldrich entity the masked man was, stretched and sat down cross legged on the bus stop bench next to the boom box. It would just watch now. It was now up to them.