[ WP ] A soldier in the heat of battle suddenly hears a voice that says `` I am your child 's imaginary friend . They have sent me to protect you in your greatest time of need . ''

It was June 1st, 2015 when they opened the sky above our home. The world remembers the day the Veck invasion started, but for me, it was also the day my daughter was born. As plasma scorched the heavens, my world was changing in a hospital delivery room. 
 
 I was 39 years old, too old to be drafted, but when the world is at war, the Army can find something for you to do. Four years into the war I was considered an oddity, the casualty rate had been damn near 75 %, but I had been lucky so far. I had a bit of skill building and repairing networks and it had kept me out of combat. Hell, I even got to Skype my family now and then, they had made it back into the Midwest and were staying with my folks. 
 
 I was always worried about our daughter Ally though, she never talked, just watched her videos and looked at her picture books. The doctors said it had something to do with the radiation that the Veck's used in their propulsion systems, it was affecting children across the globe. Developmental disorders and birth defects were very common, but one doctor in particular was hopeful as she had escaped the front early on. 
 
 I was in the basement of what had once been a strip club trying to keep communications up for my regiment when the second wave hit Atlanta. They tore a wormhole open half a mile wide, and soldiers from H. R. Giger's nightmares poured out. The United Nation troops that I was assigned to fought tooth and nail, hand to hand combat in some places when the shock troops poured into the green zone. I was going to die in the heat and humidity of Atlanta 850 miles from where I was born. 
 
 As they burst through the ground floor windows I could hear the mixed gunfire of my troops, I went about the task of setting the explosives. I was under strict and direct orders to not allow our encryption software to fall into the hands of the enemy. I could n't hit the broad side of a barn if I was standing inside it, but at least I could do this final task. Sweat poured down my face as I went about my grim final actions and I could hear the unearthly screams of the metal and flesh beasts as they tore apart my friends. 
 
 The temperature in the storeroom where I had spent the last six months suddenly dropped, I frantically spun around from attaching the last of the cables to the C4 to come face to face with a small teenage girl whose green eyes pierced my soul. At that moment the fortified doors burst open, and half a dozen steel demons burst forth hellbent on destruction. As I stood I grabbed the detonator and whispered, `` God forgive me'' and slammed on button, but nothing happened. 
 
 The girl looked up to me and in a hauntingly beautiful voice she sang, `` Do you want to build a snowman?'' 
 
 We had been seen and the beasts were coming for us, I frantically pushed the button again and again, but once again, nothing. The girl turned and for the first time I saw what she was holding, it looked like a flashlight, but when she thumbed the side of it, a very distinctive humming came from and a beam of solid blue light emanated from it. `` Come on let's go and play!'' her melodic voice continued and she leaped into battle. 
 
 It was a slaughter, she moved faster then I could follow, but before she could finish `` I never see you anymore, come out the door, it's like you've gone away.'' There was nothing but a pile of severed limbs and heads and she was gone out the smashed in doorway. In shock, I looked down and found out why I was still alive, I had n't connected the last wire. 
 
 I grabbed my sidearm and rushed up the stairs, they were slick with melting snow. As my vision adjusted to the blinding light, I had a hard time understanding what I was seeing. The Veck were being pushed back, but not by tanks and jets. A serpent dragon that I could have sworn was tattooed on the back of a Japanese soldier I had lost 3 days of desert to a few weeks ago was fighting alongside what could have only been a 12 foot tall and feral form of Winnie the Pooh. Harry Potter and Wolverine were back to back holding off what had to be a dozen Veck. My Little Pony characters were feasting on the flesh of both man and beast like some rainbow colored Mares Of Diomedes. My body and mind decided in unison that they had enough, and I woke up 8 days later in a hospital in Des Moines, Iowa. 
 
 Within hours of awaking, I was being debriefed by a Brigadier-General and his staff who were very interested in my accounts of what was to be known as the first battle of `` The Children's Crusade''. After being grilled for 4 hours on my experiences in Atlanta there was a knock on the door, and a nurse whispered `` his family is here''. I have never seen so much brass move that quickly and they ushered in my wife and daughter. 
 
 My wife wept and told me how great it was to see me again, even if it was in a hospital and she sat my Ally at the foot of my bed. She clutched a 30+ year old Princess Leia figure that my folks must have dug out of my childhood closet, looked at me with her big green eyes, and for the first time spoke. `` Do you want to build a snowman?'' It got very quiet, and the July heat was drained from the room.
