“Welcome Champion choose your power” A deep mellifluous voice boomed out of the impenetrable darkness surrounding me. Then a blue screen appeared before me with a list.

Speed

Strength

Perception

Defense

Magic

Mental

Technology

Energy

Elemental

To say I was confused would be a bit of an understatement. Waking up in pitch black conditions to a deep voice talking about powers would be one thing, but then to have some magic screen pop up stepped up my confusion to a whole new level. Last time I checked Earth didn’t have VR, or at least not any good VR. Maybe this was some sort of augmented reality thing. That made more sense, someone probably put contact lenses in my eyes that allowed me to see the screen. How or why they did that I have no idea, so I spoke up, “Ugh dude, what’s going on and where am I?”

The voice boomed again, “Seriously, just pick a power, I don’t want to have to explain a plane between life and death to someone that can barely grasp the concept..”

My left eyebrow shot up at that statement and I cocked my head to the right. I still couldn’t find the source of the voice, but my last memory was starting to come back to me. I was at work in a call center, that’s right I was a telemarketer, not my first choice either but I had to pay for college somehow. I’d been reading my lines preparing for another rejection when I heard the first gun shot. Then the shooter yelled out, “You assholes have interrupted me for the last time.” He might have continued talking, but the screaming and panic sort of drowned him out. I know it wasn’t exactly brave of me, but I hid under my desk.

It’s not my fault that there was only one door and I didn’t fancy a run past the shooter, after all the first person to try it died before I even finished hiding. Of course killing just two telemarketers wasn’t enough for the madman, he then proceeded to blindly fire through the cubicles missing way more often than he hit. If he had a pistol that would have been fine for most of us, unfortunately he was one of those well prepared psychos who brought some kind of high capacity rapid firing weapon to the party. For every seven bullets that completely missed everyone 3 were hitting something.

I watched as coworker after coworker was hit by bullets or shrapnel. Then miraculously the shooting stopped. I say miraculously but then I heard the magazine hit the ground as he slotted a new one into the gun. So much for miracles, the asshole apparently needed to reload. At that point I knew I wasn’t going to make it out of this mess by hiding and some hero wasn’t going to swoop in to save the day so I crawled forward toward the door and toward the area he had shot up the most. I kept out of sight as I made my way forward, taking note of the frightened expressions of my coworkers as they hid under their desks. I guess they too were just hoping he would run out of bullets and go away without killing them.

While staring at the terror stricken faces of my coworkers I took the time to notice how I couldn’t hear anything like screaming or crying, the only thing that really came through was the pounding of my heart and the surge of adrenaline that came with it. I made it to the cubicle closest to the door before the shooter opened up again. Ah yeah, there was a sound that broke through the overwhelming pounding of my heartbeat, the unpleasant and unwelcome staccato of more gunfire. I hunkered down behind the bullet ridden cubicle as my former position was targeted by the shooter. I closed my eyes and waited for the bullet storm to end unwilling to watch the deadly result of the shooter’s fury.

When the gun seemed to run out of bullets again after what seemed like an eternity I took a quick breath, opened my eyes and made a run for the door. I’m not sure if I was just trying to make it out of the room or if I was trying to take out the shooter. At that point my heart was pumping so hard that I’m sure half my blood was replaced with pure adrenaline. There wasn’t a lot of rational thoughts running through my mind. It didn’t really matter either way. As I got my first real look at the shooter I realized I wasn’t going to make it.

The shooter stood at maybe 5’10” with long blond hair and piercing blue eyes, he had a surfer’s tan and a nose that had clearly been broken at some point. Of course while all those features were fairly unremarkable they framed something that I will never forget, his smile. The man was smiling so big I could almost see his molars, his teeth were slightly yellow and two of them were missing, almost as if someone had removed the canines from his mouth leaving hauntingly symmetrical gaps in the insane smile.

Of course while I was admiring his features, oh and charging like a bull, the insane shooter was pulling a handgun. I got close to the shooter, maybe only seven feet away before I felt something tear through my body. The caliber of the bullet must not have been very large, because I didn’t get pushed back, I didn’t even lose much momentum so I continued toward the shooter while each half second a new bullet entered my body tearing into something vital.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

I ran directly into the shooter blood pouring from my wounds knocking him to the ground. I’d like to say that I intentionally followed him to the floor in order to disarm him, but frankly I could already feel the life fading from my body. So I fell on top of him. His gun had been knocked away by our collision though it hadn’t gone far. I reached out for it with the limited strength I had left, the motion was jerky and awkward as muscles in my back that would normally help with the motion had been destroyed by the exit wounds.

My hand came in contact with the gun, meanwhile the shooter was busy trying to get my rather limp body off of him. Fortunately I was a large man and he wouldn’t have an easy time shifting my bulk. With the gun in my hand I moved my hand a little bit to face it toward myself and the shooter trapped beneath me and pulled the trigger. I pulled it once, twice three four five times. Nothing happened, the shooter kept struggling to get me off of him and I stared blankly at the gun. Apparently the shooter had emptied the whole thing into me.

I didn’t last long after that, my vision already going dark at that point cut out. The struggles of the shooter finally yielded dividends and I felt him get out from under me. Then a booming voice awakened me from my slumber or death I guess and showed me the whole blue screen of choices thing.

I spoke up, my last moments now fresh in my mind, “Did I just die?”

The voice boomed, “Kind of, but not quite, anyway pick your power I don’t have all day for this.”

Me not dying after having an entire clip emptied into me didn’t make a lot of sense, but then again this whole thing didn’t make a lot of sense. “Okay, so before I pick my power or whatever, can you explain to me what’s going on?”

The diety boomed, “ugh, fine I’ll give you the broad strokes, but you literally aren’t worth much of my time, so this is going to be quick. I’m a god from a different reality, I just moved into this one and my brothers and I are having a competition the see who gets control of the resources from this one. We do this with every new reality and this time the competition is taking place on earth. You will be one of my champions, I will reward you for gaining power, whether it is financial, social or political power, it doesn’t matter to me, the stronger your position becomes, the stronger I will make you. I’ll even allow you to pick the direction of your growth, so do your best to amass power otherwise you’ll probably end up dead…”

I paused for a second to left that soak in before responding, “Okay so just to be clear, you saved me from death, your letting me start a new life on a different earth than the one I’m from and you want me to amass wealth, fame, and reputation in order to help you win a competition between you and some other gods. I guess me real question is if you win what will you do? I mean if I am going to fight for you, which champion implies, what will you do with what I win you?”

The god paused, “Frankly, not much, I’ll use the belief generated to expand my influence, I don’t really care about good or evil, or anything else really, I like to let you mortals do whatever you want, honestly your whole debate over morality is a joke to us higher beings. Anyway, I’m better than my brothers, because they actually kind of care about what you do and I don’t. Can you imagine not being able to take a piss in public because it is too evil or taking a shit in a toilet because it is too good?”

“First off, why are those the two examples and second off why do the other deities care about that stuff?”

“Frankly we don’t, but what we do care about is when you mortals offer up your defiance, now my brothers all have a strict moral code they expect you to live by, a set of laws that range from pointlessly detailed needlessly vague. I have one too, but it’s pretty simple, don’t kill all of my followers and direct your faith toward me. The shitting and pissing examples came from two of my brothers holy books.”

“Wait, so if I were to piss in a public place?”

“You would literally be crushed by a meteorite.”

“...”

“...”

“So, how do these powers work?”

The god responded, “I will enhance your body or your mind to allow you to perform superhuman feats, if you pick speed I can enhance your body to move 4 times faster than it used to, or I could give you the ability to slow time so it would appear to the world that you were moving at twice your previous maximum speed. Same thing with strength, I could quadruple your physical strength or provide limited telekinesis that would double your apparent strength.”

“So with each category I can either get a physical or mental improvement, the physical one being the stronger of the two?”

The god chuckled, “Yes and no, but I’m tired of answering your questions so make your choice so that I can send you out into the world and you can start gaining power.”

I guess it was time to consider my options. I eliminated strength right away, who wants to be super strong, most big things would tear the minute you tried to pick them up and who wants to deal with accidentally breaking everything because you don’t have you strength completely under control.

Perception might be cool, although I had a feeling it would be something like a spider sense or potentially being able to see into the future. It would be useful if combined with something else, but without pairing it up its’ value dropped significantly. Same thing with defense, without some kind of offensive ability defense would get owned be a constant stream of attacks. Frankly they all seemed to have some kind of weakness, tech would cost too much money, elemental could suck, imagine stopping a bad guy only to set half the city on fire. Energy was a little vague which left mental, speed and magic.

Magic could be anything and frankly it would be awesome to be able to do magic, although I would be really annoyed if it was just something like sleight of hand and illusions. Mental would also be good, as it would either give me some kind of psychic power like telekinesis or telepathy, or potentially it could increase my intelligence. Then there was Speed, the Flash was one of my favorite superheros I loved his powers and always kind of thought he could have used them better, there were just so many possibilities that being a speedster opened up, plus if you want to power up in a hurry speed is always a good option.

I nodded and made my choice. “I’ll take speed, the time slowing version, not the physical enhancement please.”

“Also, how do I upgrade my powers and will I be given a choice every” I wasn’t able to finish the sentence as I suddenly felt a shooting pain erupt from my temples. I kid you not it was worse than being shot, and I can say that now, because I was literally shot less than an hour ago. The throbbing pain became my world for far too long, I’m not sure how long it lasted I do know I blacked out for a little while as the world changed from an endless dark void into a city once again.