Public transit sucked.

When it was on time, you ended up crammed into a bus with more people in your personal space than you’d ever experience anywhere else. When it was late you were inevitably left waiting on a street corner like a jackass for an hour. And that was assuming the driver didn’t fly right past you or something like that - or that a transient didn’t spend the entire hour at the bus stop harassing you.

Why am I saying this? ‘What, Nicholas, could you possibly be thinking, to be complaining about the bus when you’ve got so much to worry about right now?’ You must be wondering.

Well, as it turned out, life changing events didn’t actually change the flow of time all that much. I don’t know if I said something wrong, or they just decided to randomly make my life more difficult, but the police ended up holding me for questioning for a full hour. The tents weren’t particularly secure either, so I could actually see my co-workers popping in and out of some of the other tents in less than fifteen minutes.

The entire time I was being questioned, the guy questioning me kept checking his phone, and honestly just repeated the same question in half a dozen different ways. When I tried to - politely, because getting belligerent with a cop even when the cop is an ass is a bad idea - call him out on it, he just shrugged and said it was ‘standard procedure’.

I was starting to get the sinking feeling that my new powers weren’t all that secret after all. Not that I was that distressed by it. I assumed the police would see me using obvious superpowers on the security cameras anyway, so someone was bound to figure it out. Hell, I was more worried Adrenaline would identify me and come for me.

I hadn’t exactly had a ski mask on hand when I fought him.

“Next stop; Front Street” The bus intercom said in its tinny feminine voice, the pre recorded announcement rousing a majority of the people on it, along with myself. I stood, and entered the seething mass of other people that were moving to get off the bus with me, stepping out of the rear doors onto the recently rained on sidewalk.

My stop let me off near Union Station, which was probably one of the busier portions of the city if you discounted places like Times Square or the Eaton Center. It was the transportation hub of the city, the places where all subway lines connected, all bus routes passed, and all train access was granted. I didn’t live directly in this area, and I could have caught another bus to make it the rest of the way home - but I decided to walk instead.

My home was one of the many, many condos lining the waterfront not too far away, and frankly, I didn’t mind the fresh air.

As I walked through the winding streets of the city, I couldn’t help but marvel at how… okay… I felt. I knew that getting powers tended to reset your body to factory settings, erasing wear and tear, disease and poor maintenance. Tons of sources claimed that now famous metahumans had terminal illnesses or something before getting their powers. It happened with enough frequency that speculation existed that trauma must have something to do with getting powers in the first place which… tracked, I guess. Everyone knew that the comics and tv shows the big names had made to tell their stories were over exaggerated, but they also all tended to be a little on the tragic side to start too.

So I guess I should just count my blessings that my own powers came from a slightly bad day at work that I was currently walking away from with no actual consequences.

Still… my legs didn’t hurt. And neither did my feet. My nose wasn’t stuffed by the omnipresent smog of the city, and I found myself walking home not in the slightly pained haze that always accompanied me after a day at work, but rather, entirely relaxed and unbothered.

There was probably a moral of the story in there about taking care of yourself, somewhere, but I had obviously bypassed the effort required to do so - so I managed to ignore it. Hopefully I could continue to eat like shit and not exercise and my powers would maintain things for me.

Is that a petty and trivial use of superpowers? Yes, absolutely. But it wasn’t like I could change it if I wanted to, so I figured it was best to just enjoy the perks.

At length, I got to my building - one of the cheaper ones, where the view of the lake was obscured by surrounding buildings - tapped my key fob on the scanner in the lobby, and rode the elevator to my eighth floor condo.

I could never have afforded this place under normal circumstances. I worked at a superstore as a cashier. But somewhat ironically, while most of my friends and family had been heading off to college, I had been… working. When they graduated and started looking for jobs way better than mine… I had been working. When they started having kids, or getting married… I had been working.

This isn’t bragging. I’m not bragging, because that implies I prefer my situation to anything else, and the truth was, I didn’t. I wanted to go to school, I wanted to get a girlfriend, I wanted to have a home and kids and a dog and all that other stuff.

I just… didn’t do anything that would help me acquire those things.

I worked.

And that was the only redeeming feature of my character that I could easily state.

It was probably incredibly sad to say, especially as I meandered into my almost completely empty condo, but my life consisted of working, browsing the internet, playing video games, and not much else.

I didn’t even cook for myself. I paid for an inexpensive meal prep service that dumped two meals a day in front of my door, and called it good.

“Alright so… what first?” I asked myself thoughtfully, shucking my jacket off and hanging it by the door. I didn’t hang it on anything in particular - I wasn’t cleanly or organized enough to have a coat rack - but rather, I hung the thing on the doorknob. My keys, my wallet, and everything else I needed on a day to day basis remained inside the jacket, and thus, I ensured I didn’t lose anything important, and that my jacket would always be exactly where I could find it.

Then I walked into the middle of my ‘living room’ with my socks on and thought about my ‘menu’.

>>>Stats<<<

Skills

Inventory

Quests

Strength

🔼 10 🔽

Dexterity

🔼 10 🔽

Vitality

🔼 11 🔽

Intelligence

🔼 11 🔽

Wisdom

🔼 11 🔽

Luck

🔼 10 🔽

Health:

200/200

Ki: 11/11

Available Stat Points: 17

Name: Nicholas Cole

Class: Monk

Attunement: Summoning

Status Effects: None

It appeared before me as predictably as rain on a cloudy day, which is to say, I expected it but had the lingering thought that maybe it wouldn’t show up.

And I stared.

Because my health total? It was completely different from what I remembered.

“Wha- okay, okay so… one point of vitality was worth… one hundred health? That doesn’t seem right…” I muttered to myself, scratching my chin as I leaned forward to squint at the numbers on the screen. Leaning forward and squinting weren’t actually helpful given the screen always remained a specific distance away from me, but it let me feel like I was being clever and I was nothing if not simple minded.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

Most of the time, anyway.

Looking around at my living room - a completely empty room devoid of furniture with a scenic view of the next building over, and not much else, through the glass that made up the exterior wall - I couldn’t help but get stuck thinking about the math that had to be happening there.

If having ten points of vitality left me with one hundred health - why did having eleven give me two hundred health?

Was one hundred health the standard amount of health for a normal person, or was my health higher than normal because I had powers? Did that single point of vitality instantly make me twice as hard to kill as a normal person? Was that how it worked?

Experimentally, I put another point in my vitality stat, and swiftly turned my gaze back to my health.

Nothing. My health remained at two hundred out of two hundred points - I assume I must have… regenerated or something? But that seemed weird too, because I definitely hadn’t been regenerating that fast before so…

Actually, now that I think of it, my health didn’t go up when I was playing with my stat points back in the parking lot either. It just… changed, suddenly when I reopened my stats. But…

“No, there’s no way it works like that. That would be a stupid, stupid, limitation for a game based superpower to-” I muttered, quickly closing and then reopening my menu.

And sure enough, now my health read as three hundred out of three hundred.

“...it can’t update when I’m looking at it?” I asked incredulously.

Now somewhat annoyed, I sighed and plunked a point into intelligence and then wisdom for parity - since I’d already spent a point in vitality I might as well go for broke and get the extra point of Ki out of the trade.

And now I had a dilemma. I mean… what did I actually want to do? Absently I activated my skill - Summon Terracotta Soldier - and closed my menu.

As before, it had cost me two points of Ki to summon the thing, and that was really all the information I had on the ability. I mean… how durable actually were these things? How strong were they? I knew I could control it by willing it to do things - in fact, my control over it was surprisingly detailed given I was fully capable of ordering it to complete complex martial maneuvers that would otherwise require greater proprioception than I was personally capable of… before I got powers.

“...I guess I could fight crime with you… it’d probably be pretty safe since I only have to get into the fight myself if I run out of Ki…” I pondered aloud, walking around the soldier where it stood motionlessly in front of my home. It looked like you would expect. A nondescript looking guy wearing that… I didn’t know the word for it but… that kind of leather armor that had the circular bumps on it? Like studs? I’m sure there was a word for it. Lamellar or… something. But I didn’t know it off the top of my head.

In fact, I was surprised I remembered even that tidbit of information. Maybe increasing my wisdom and intelligence made my memory better? It was something I would have to explore later.

It also held a stone sword in one hand - the only piece of ‘equipment’ on the minion that was separable from the greater whole. The armor and the body of the soldier were effectively one singular unit - but the sword wasn’t.

Hesitantly, I stuck my hand out, and had the soldier drop the weapon in my waiting hand. It was… not heavy, but… hefty. And when I found myself focusing on it, a window popped up.

Stone Saber

[Inferior Quality]

A saber. Made of stone.

I blinked at the spectacularly unhelpful description.

“It’s… it’s not magic at all? It’s literally just a stone shaped like a sword? Are you kidding me?!” I exclaimed angrily. Feeling my irritation rising rapidly in the same way it would if I was playing an actual video game this unhelpful.

But this wasn’t a video game. It was my life now. My power. And unless some really groundbreaking research had happened recently - there was nothing I could do to change that. Oh sure, metahumans were known for their powers changing over time, improving, being refined, but what did you expect when all of us were basically barely stable mutants?

I still had a hard time with that thought. The fact that when I thought of metahumans as a whole, I had to think of ‘us’ instead of ‘them’.

And that begged the question I had been avoiding…

What the fuck did I want to do? I didn’t mean my build for lack of a better word - whether I wanted to prioritize strength, speed, or just dump all my points in my Ki generating stats. If someone had asked me that question a day ago, I probably would have answered ‘join the Ultra League and be a superhero’. I mean, it wasn’t a spectacularly hard decision. I didn’t have it in me to be a supervillain, and to all accounts the Ultra’s paid top dollar to their members, if only to make sure no one had a reason to seek alternative employment.

But… I nearly died today. No, I pretty much did die today. I had been dead to rights, and knocked out cold. I had been thrown so hard that I was genuinely surprised I hadn’t exploded on impact with the store. My continued survival was a fluke, a mistake of epic proportions.

I could only assume Breakdown had chased Adrenaline off before he could finish the job, which was itself another minor miracle. I’d consider thanking her, but the chances that a famous cape like that would even remember me in the first place let alone allow me to speak to her was so slim that I instantly set the thought aside.

So what did I want to do? I wanted to live for one thing. Beyond that… I wanted to live easily. I mean, I wanted to live well too, but more than that, I didn’t want life to be tons of work. I didn’t want to fill my days with non stop action, or training, or fighting crime or… whatever.

Now more than ever, the same instinct that led me to working while everyone else was advancing through life, the same instinct that made me an inherently stagnant person, was pushing me to just… not. Not fight crime. Not be a hero. Not be a villain. Just… not.

I could take my superpowers and improved health, and I could go to work tomorrow like nothing had happened, and that would be that. I could use my powers to improve my life a bit, I guess, like using my stone soldier guys to help me lift stuff, or to defend myself if something ever happened to me - a mugging, a freak accident, that type of thing.

And I could do what I always did.

I could work. I could play video games. And I could do… not much else.

Eyeing my stats, and the fourteen stat points I had left, I turned back to my stone soldier, and willed it to get me a glass of water from the kitchen. It was entirely mindless, I knew that it was entirely mindless somehow, which meant that it had to draw its knowledge of how to do things from me and me alone.

That meant that it should be able to do things like find my kitchen, find my only cup, and fill it with water at the sink.

Just to maintain the purity of the experiment, I turned and faced away from the kitchen as I waited, hearing the loud thud of the heavy stone object moving across my floor, then the sound of my kitchen sink turning on and off, and then the same loud thudding noises as it returned.

And when I turned around it was gently holding my orange mug out to me, with a blank look on its face.

“Note to self, see how detailed these things can get when following orders. I mean… Can you play video games? No right?” I wondered aloud.

The soldier didn’t answer me, but it did turn its head fractionally to look me in the eyes as I took the mug from it and had a sip of murky water. Its stone exterior warped and bent in ways stone absolutely could not in order to simulate the movement of the soldiers muscles and skin, and I found it oddly fascinating to watch now that I wasn’t in a life or death situation.

I locked eyes with the weathered stone face of the soldier for a solid minute - and then I snorted, turning and heading upstairs to get changed out of my work clothes.

Like hell I was going to make an important long term decision like ‘be a superhero or not’ within fifteen minutes of truly pondering the thought. I wasn’t a cartoon character after all. I’d let things sit for a while, go to work tomorrow, and maybe poke around for a recruitment pamphlet or something for the Ultra League on the internet tomorrow.

Once I knew what I wanted to do… I could think about how I would go about doing it.

There wasn’t much reason to spend stat points on strength if I never planned on punching anyone after all.

So I went to my room, - the only part of the condo that had any furniture in it at all despite the plethora of rooms and amenities - changed into my sweatpants and a t-shirt, and spent the next five hours playing some shitty platformer that had released with my Ultrabox until I got tired and went to bed.

I was met with many surprises the next morning when I woke up. For one thing, I woke up feeling… excellent. I wasn’t groggy. I wasn’t tired, despite staying up late to play video games.

And I wasn’t even all that hungry, which meant I was able to get up and shower without the lingering annoyance of having to figure out breakfast before I clocked in for the day.

The second surprise I had, was when I went down the stairs to my living room and found my terracotta soldier still just standing there, in the exact same position it had been when I went to bed - with one arm extended as though it was still holding my glass of water. That was a pleasant surprise, actually, because it implied there was no effective duration on the things. It meant that I could conserve Ki by simply not letting them get destroyed. I knew ‘never’ was a strong word, but it was still something to keep in mind.

The last surprise I had that day occurred when I got in the elevator to go to work that morning. I’d woken up early enough that I was able to brew a pot of coffee and dump most of it in a thermostat, which I was happily sipping on for no other reason than habit, when the elevator stopped at the lobby. I made to exit, ready to make the twenty minute walk up to my bus stop, usually the most peaceful portion of my day, when two men in suits stepped forward, blocking my path.

At first I didn’t really register them, the same way you don’t register most of the people you pass in the street on your way to work or any other location.

But I was forced to rapidly rethink my situational awareness when one of them - the guy had to be at least seven feet tall, and looked so roided out that he barely fit in his suit - lifted and hand and slapped a palm into my chest.

Now, normally this wouldn’t be a huge deal. I mean, I had superpowers right? No normal gym bro should be able to screw with me anymore.

Unfortunately, the man - he had a very military looking buzzcut to his blond hair - was anything but normal, and I felt the air rush out of my lungs as I was summarily bounced off his extended palm and into the back of the elevator, my hip hitting the little waist height guard rail inside so hard that it deform under the force of my impact.

“Mister Suite. Please accompany us to the parking garage.” He said politely, and my eyes nearly bulged out of my head as I realized I had lost nearly fifty points of health from the seemingly casual gesture. I tried to get a look past him, hoping someone else was seeing this that could call the cops, but all I saw was a suspiciously empty lobby, and the unaware expressions of the handful of passersby outside the building.

I was on my own here, and one look at the expectant expression on the guys face - mirrored by his companion, an equally large look black dude with no hair at all - told me he was more than expecting me to try and fight him over it.

So I did what any sane person would do when faced with an unknown, probably insane, metahuman who could paste me with a lazily placed slap.

I lifted my hands in surrender and shut the fuck up.