Year 2093
It was too sunny for a funeral.
Jacob glared up at the sky as though that might reprimand it into a more appropriate appearance. It had no effect. Green trees swayed in the breeze around the cemetery grounds, and birds chirped happily in their crowns.
The adults took turns saying words over the two coffins, and the priest made hand signs in the air while nodding along. They were probably saying something important, but Jacob wasn’t paying much attention. Jacob hadn’t known the Hartleys well, but they seemed like good people. They weren’t the ones he felt bad for, though.
He clutched the hand of the girl at his side. Hard, so that she’d know that someone was still there for her.
Becca wasn’t crying, but her lower lip was raw and red from biting it. Jacob wanted to say something to her, that he understood how she felt, but that would have been a lie. He’d never really had any parents, and none of the foster homes had been any replacement for that, so he hadn’t exactly lost anything. But Becca, she’d had people who cared about her.
And now they were gone, just like that. Dead things in wooden boxes. Their faces weren’t shown during the service. No one had said anything about it, but Jacob knew it was because their remains were too gruesome to look at. One of the girls in class had a dad who was a policeman, and he’d apparently told her that the villain had exploded Becca’s parents into a hundred pieces. Jacob wondered if they’d had to scoop them into bags to fit them into the caskets, but he chastised himself for thinking that.
Everyone else was wearing nice black clothes, but Jacob didn’t have anything like that, so he’d just come wearing his regular school clothes. His shirt had a rip on one sleeve. He felt out of place, but he refused to leave.
Becca needed him.
Eventually her aunt came over and asked gently if she would like to go say something for her parents. Becca wrestled with herself for a while before shaking her head. The caskets were lowered into the ground, and a bit of dirt was sprinkled on top. The priest droned on about something else.
Becca was going to stay with her aunt from now on. Jacob worried about that. She was acting nice now, in front of people, but he knew that she was a bad adult who drank too much. That just meant he needed to watch over Becca even more.
After the funeral they moved to a building next to the church where they were given food. The adults made conversation about random things, as though they’d forgotten all about the people who had just died.
Jacob got Becca a small plate of chocolate chip cookies and they sat down at an empty end of one of the long tables. She put one to her mouth to eat it, then hesitated.
And began to cry.
A tear streaked down her cheek. Her lip quivered. She let out a quick, shaky breath, then began to sob. She hunched over, clutching the cookie in both hands, crumbs going on her nice dress.
Jacob wasn’t sure what to do. He wasn’t so good with emotions. But he slowly reached out and patted her head and let his hand run over her yellow hair.
“It’s going to be okay,” Jacob said, more out of reflex than anything. That was what adults usually said at times like this.
She glared up at him, her little freckled nose scrunched up in anger, but her expression quickly softened. She threw her arms around him and let out a pained, shrill sob. He felt her hot tears soak through his shirt.
“It’s going to be okay,” he repeated.
“How will it?” she forced out. “I don’t have anyone now.”
“You have me.”
“What if a villain kills you too?”
“That would never happen.” Jacob tried to sound confident. “Because I’m going to be a hero when I grow up, and I’ll protect you forever. I will never die. And as long as I’m here, you’ll be safe, too.”
Becca looked up, eyes wet, her nose covered in snot. “Forever?”
Jacob smiled despite a bad feeling in his gut. “Forever.”
They pinky promised.
*****
Year 2094
Jacob heard Ricky’s voice from the boys’ bathroom, talking to someone else. He rolled up his sleeves, tucked his tie inside his button-up, and went in there.
Ricky was standing by one of the sinks next to another boy, idly fixing his gelled hair. So damn handsome. At least that was clearly what he thought about himself. Hearing footsteps on the tiles, the older boy had halfway turned around to see who was there when Jacob caught him by the collar.
Using every bit of strength he could muster up, every bit of anger, he slammed Ricky’s face against the sink with a dull thud. He fell backward on his ass, clutching his forehead as blood seeped through his fingers. He let out a mix between a moan and a hiss as he looked up in confusion.
“What the fu—”
Jacob kicked him in the chest, and the back of his head bounced off the tiles. It looked like it hurt. Jacob didn’t feel bad. He deserved it after what he’d done to her.
Ricky’s friend looked stunned for a moment, then ran out of the bathroom. Probably to get a teacher. Jacob didn’t try to stop him.
Two other boys came out of the stalls to see what the commotion was about. Jacob glanced up at them for just a moment—he didn’t see the tackle coming. Ricky got him on the floor, which smelled equally of floor polish and old urine. The older boy was on top, snarling, face bloody from a cut across his forehead.
Jacob got his guard up, arms tight around his face, while Ricky pummeled him. When he got tired of beating his guard, he began to hook him in the sides of his stomach—right, left, right, left. Drove the air out of him. But he was clearly dazed, because his blows came clumsily, and he quickly exhausted himself. Jacob was able to recover his breath and buck Ricky off. He was the one on top now, elbowed Ricky’s perfect face, felt his nose crunch.
“Stay the fuck away from Becca,” Jacob hissed between heavy breaths.
Jacob had always hated him. There was something insincere and smarmy about his unearned confidence that, for some reason, girls found attractive. Becca had gotten caught up in it. When they stopped dating, he started showing all his friends the pictures she’d sent him via the System. Laughing about it.
Ricky spluttered something about giving up, but Jacob didn’t pay him any mind. He grabbed the older boy by his disgustingly sticky hair and brought their faces close.
“Stay away from her,” Jacob said, enunciating each word clearly. “Don’t talk to her. Don’t look at her. Delete her pictures from your System.”
A teacher pulled him off before he could get any kind of intelligible response. They both got dragged in front of the principal after a visit to the nurse. When asked, all the other students had confirmed that Jacob started it, even though Ricky’s friend was the only one who could have seen it. It was true anyway, so it didn't matter.
Jacob was suspended for a month.
But Ricky kept his mouth shut after that. And his nose was permanently crooked.
It was worth it.
*****
“Is this really what you wanna watch?”
“Yep!” Becca chirped as she synced the TV with her floating System interface to pull up the footage. Jacob groaned, but she ignored him.
They were at her aunt’s house, bowls of snacks and dip arrayed on the table. The weekly friday-night viewing party. They hadn’t talked about the thing with Ricky—not one word. They didn’t need to. She probably thought he’d gone too far, but he knew some part of her was grateful.
The video showed A-Rank hero Starman facing off against a villain named Spectral. It was shot by a drone from high up in the air, looking down on the two Users as they leaped across rooftops. Starman was a shining beacon in his full suit of silver armor. He had the Blessing known as Force of Will, which allowed him to repel pretty much anything thrown at him. He’d specced hard into speed to complement that, allowing him to crash into enemies like a wrecking ball. There weren’t many Users who could take a hit from Starman and stay standing.
Spectral’s Blessing was unknown, but the name he had given himself gave some hints. Whenever Starman charged at him and came within reach, Spectral would briefly become like a nebulous black fog, allowing the hero to pass straight through him, before reforming again.
Becca had cultivated a slight obsession with Starman over the past few months. There were plenty of higher ranked heroes than him, but she probably liked him because he was an Arcadia native. That, and she liked the forthright, classically heroic types.
The video was from earlier today, when Starman had tracked down the serial-killing villain in a raid conducted with Arcadian special forces and chased him across the Yellow District. Starman had won, obviously, so Jacob didn’t see much point in watching the footage.
“Does this never get old to you?” Jacob asked.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
She shook her head, eyes fixed on the screen. “Nope. Don’t you think it’s exciting?”
Jacob sighed. “I guess so.”
He wondered how she could keep that childlike innocence after everything that had happened. Sometimes Jacob thought it was a conscious choice. That she chose to believe in good and hold it up as the highest value so that she wouldn’t have to face all the evil in the world.
He couldn’t blame her for that. But part of him wished he hadn’t made her that promise, back then. He had assumed that she would forget about it eventually. But the way she looked at him, the way she always dragged him to everything, the way she idolized new heroes that came onto the scene and hung up posters of them in her room, he could tell that she hadn’t.
She was counting on him to become a hero.
It was a lot of pressure. Especially since he’d never been all that into the hero stuff. It was just something he’d said to put her at ease. He’d only grown to like it less the more he was forced to engage with it.
But he couldn’t bring himself to go back on his promise, either. He found himself watching Becca more than he did the footage. The simple joy on her face put him at ease. She wore a pair of baggy sweatpants and an old tank top with a few permanent stains on it from old food spills, blonde hair done up in a messy bun. She dressed all neat and pretty at school, but he preferred her like this. Most people never got to see her this way.
Jacob’s attention migrated to her lips and he quickly forced himself to look away. He didn’t know when it had happened, but at some point he’d started having inappropriate thoughts about her. It wasn’t right. How was he supposed to protect her if he was too busy ogling her? He was no better than the boys who followed her around like dogs.
He had to be better.
Starman seemingly stumbled and Spectral rushed to take advantage, enveloping him in black fog to either smother or phase through him, whatever the specifics of his Blessing were. He clearly wasn’t too familiar with Starman’s Force of Will, however, as the hero released a nova of light from his silver armor that cut through the darkness and scattered it in a hundred directions, leaving only little wisps of drifting black fog behind and no trace of a human.
Becca informed him that the villain had died on the scene. The video ended and Becca immediately put on another one. This one was also of Starman, but it was older footage. Probably a few months old. She’d already watched it dozens of times.
Jacob held back a sigh.
*****
Year 2095
Jacob made sure to go someplace secluded for what he had to do, out in the woods away from any trails where people might be walking. He took out the knife from his backpack. Not a kitchen knife or anything, but a proper hunting knife he’d “borrowed” from his foster dad. He’d chosen it because it was the sharpest knife they had in the house, as long as his hand with a single curved edge and a soft wooden handle.
He had done his research on the internet. A person became a User and gained their Blessing from the Hidden System through a process called Snapping. It was supposed to be brought on by great exertion or danger. This would bestow you with a Blessing supposedly based on your own personality, and allow you to pick a class.
He had already come up with a strategy for what he was going to do when he Snapped. He would see what Blessing he got first, then choose his class and allocate his attribute points based on that, since the Blessing was the only thing that couldn’t be chosen and was therefore the part that had to be built around. This was basic stuff, and the sentiment was regurgitated pretty much everywhere online when he looked up Users. A lot of Blessings were seemingly useless or restrictive at first glance, but could become powerful with the right build options.
Jacob balked at what he had to do, but only for a moment. He couldn’t do it on his arm—someone would probably notice eventually. Instead he undid his pants and dropped them. He hiked up one leg of his boxers and put the knife to his upper thigh.
He hissed with pain as he sliced through the skin, drawing blood. Nothing happened, so he kept going, making more cuts on himself. Still nothing. That angered him. He was doing what he was supposed to. People online had said they Snapped this way. Maybe they were lying. Users were extremely rare, anyway—about 0,001% of the population.
Jacob kept going until his left thigh was a messy criss-cross of angry red lines. Blood ran down his leg, and he cleaned it up with a wad of kitchen paper from the roll he’d brought.
“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath. It hadn’t worked, not even a little. He’d felt nothing out of the ordinary beyond regular pain.
Once the bleeding stopped he taped more kitchen paper over the wounds and pulled his pants back on.
In that case, he’d need to go further.
I made a promise, didn’t I?
*****
Year 2099
Becca was half-asleep on his chest. Her warmth, her chest rising and falling, they made him feel calm. The movie had finished and was rolling credits, but he couldn’t move his arm to bring up his System interface without displacing her, since she had it pinned down against his body.
The room was dark. Becca’s aunt was out for some epic drinking binge, so she wouldn’t be back until the early hours of the morning. They were alone in the house.
He looked at Becca for a long while. He still remembered how it felt to touch her golden hair, to stroke it.
“I love you,” he said without really thinking about it, and his body instantly went cold.
“I love you too, bro,” she mumbled drowsily and rolled over, crushing him a bit harder in the process, a shoulder poking him in the ribs.
She definitely didn’t get it, he thought with a suppressed groan. He wasn’t sure if he was annoyed or relieved.
It was probably better this way.
*****
Year 2105
Jacob took a deep breath, a hand on the handle of the nondescript metal door with flaking red paint. A neon sign flashed overhead, reading ‘The Sleeping Cat Bar’ alongside a picture of a curled-up cat with a flicking tail and little slits for eyes.
His face hurt. Everything else hurt, too, but his face was the worst part. He turned sideways, held a nostril closed and snorted a glob of red phlegm out the other.
Whatever pain he felt, he dreaded the next part more. He forced himself to open the door and descend the concrete steps leading into the basement bar.
Most people had already left aside from a few stubborn regulars determined to nurse their poison of choice right until closing. Becca stood behind the bar in jeans and a black tee, her hair tied up, wiping down the countertop. She looked tired, and her expression darkened further when she saw Jacob. He slid down onto a barstool without saying anything.
“You’ve been fighting again,” she said.
“Yup.”
“Are you hurt?”
He smiled a bloody smile. “Nah. Just scratches.”
“You need to stop doing this, mister.” She slapped him upside the head, not hard, but enough to set off a hundred other hurts. He hissed. “Oh, sorry!” she said, a hand over her mouth.
“Don’t be sorry. I had that one coming.”
She shook her head and finished with the counter, throwing the towel in a sink. “You can’t need the money that bad. Have you got a death wish or something?”
“Someone’s gotta make sure rent gets paid.”
“Hey, I make okay money!”
“Except you spend it all on useless shit.”
“I do not.”
Jacob let it go with a shrug.
“Well, did you win at least?” she asked with a sigh.
He put a roll of cash on the table in reply. Almost all payments were done through the System these days, but underground fights like the ones he participated in still paid in good ol’ fashioned paper.
Not that he fought for the money. At least, that was only half of it. He figured if he did it enough times, one of these days he would Snap.
But it hadn’t happened yet. A growing part of him doubted it ever would.
Jacob waited while Becca shooed out the last few patrons and cleaned up for the night. The owner, Mr. Beau, came out of the back office to look things over. He was used to Jacob hanging around after hours, and the two made a bit of small talk. Mr. Beau was a tall man, lanky and drawn, with an unhealthy complexion and graying hair combed to one side. He looked like a car mechanic in baggy pants and a stained wife beater. He had a slightly evil look about him—no doubt that and the bar’s charming location in a back alley basement helped chase away all but the most seedy clientele. He was good people, though, once you actually got talking with him.
Around 02:30 AM, Mr. Beau called to Becca that she could take off and he’d finish the rest of the clean-up. Jacob accompanied her up into the fresh air and they began walking through the city back towards the dingy apartment they shared in the Gray District. How he’d let her talk him into being roommates, he’d never quite swallow.
It was dark, and the streets were largely abandoned at this time of night except the occasional car passing by.
“I’m so hungryyy,” Becca said while patting her belly as they walked through a square filled with fast food places.
“Okay.”
“As repayment for making me worry, why don’t you use some of that prize money to buy me a burger?”
“No. This is what I’m talking about.”
“What?”
“You’re wasteful. It’s not enough to waste your money, either—now you want to waste my money, too.”
“It’s not a waste if I’m hungry. A girl’s gotta eat.” She looked at him with a very serious expression. “Or do you want me to stop growing?”
“Hate to break it to you, but I think you stopped growing years ago.”
She cupped her petite chest. “Don’t say that! Rude! Buy me a burger!”
He sighed. “No. I’ll make you food when we get in.”
“Nooo, I want something unhealthy.”
“When do you ever want anything else?”
“Rude.”
He ended up buying her a burger from Smiley Boy, a double cheeseburger. The cashier looked at him like he was a criminal when he tried to pay cash, but eventually took it. Becca ate while they walked. A lone humanoid cleaner bot was sweeping the sidewalk, occasionally emptying a dustpan into a slot in his chest. It looked up, waved, and hit them with a standard "Hello, citizens!" as they circled around it--its face blank and emotionless. Creepy.
“You know, we’ve got to find you a girlfriend one of these days," Becca said. "I liked the last one, what was her name?”
“Laura.”
“Yeah, what happened to Laura?”
“Didn’t work out,” Jacob muttered.
“Well, I’ve got this friend, Amanda, she’s sooo funny. And cute, too. I think you’d love her.”
“I’m sure I would.” He couldn’t force much enthusiasm into his voice.
“But you know, you can be a pretty bad wingman sometimes. You always scare all the boys away.”
“Only the bad ones.”
“That’s all of them, according to you.”
Jacob just shrugged.
“You don’t need to act like my dad or something. Next you’re gonna start giving them the talk.”
Jacob opened his mouth to say ‘Someone’s got to’, but stopped himself. She must have noticed, because she went quiet too, her gaze flitting downward.
They took a shortcut across an ill-kept park and got to their apartment building. The elevator was out. It was always out. That sign on the door that said ‘I will be fixed soon! :)’ had been there since they moved in a year ago. So they climbed the four flights of stairs. Becca was breathing heavy when they got in.
It was cramped and ill-kept, with peeling wallpaper and creaking floors. Their couch intruded on the kitchenette, and the TV didn’t work so good, often requiring a whack or two for the image to come in. Jacob had found it sitting next to a dumpster. At least it was free. There were dirty clothes strewn about the place, despite Jacob telling Becca a thousand times to pick up after herself.
First thing after they got in she made him hose himself clean, then brought out a well-used first aid kit and had him sit down on the toilet so she could clean him up. His face, his hands, his arms. She stuck about two dozen pink love-heart band-aids on him.
Then she shooed him out so she could have a turn at the shower. Walking into the kitchen, he found that she hadn’t even finished her burger, leaving half of it on the counter. Not wanting the money to go to waste, Jacob ate the rest.
Becca was the most infuriating woman he had ever known. He could fill a book with all her bad habits and have enough material left for a sequel.
Laura had been the opposite. Maybe that was part of the reason why he’d been drawn to her. Calm. Rational. Sensible. Humble. Kind.
She’d bored him to death in a month.
After her shower, Becca laid down on the couch to watch some hero documentary on the TV, but ended up falling asleep the minute she turned it on. Jacob put a blanket over her and looked at her a little while before going off to prepare himself for bed.
Tomorrow, he thought. I’ll tell her tomorrow.